cannot be formed or fostered by attending the less suitable morning and evening services; and it will become with the children, as they grow up, a growing necessity to attend the services of the church, by which, during their childhood, they have profited so much. Another difficulty which has forced itself upon my attention in keeping our younger members attached to the church is one, in mentioning which I am quite aware I shall draw forth the (I suppose) "silent opposition" of a good many present here to day; but I can only say, I hope I shall not be considered as travelling out of my proper course for the mere purpose of reflecting upon a particular educational system, even though I may say I have as hearty a dislike to that system as the Archdeacon of Taunton has for the "conscience clause." But this has been forced upon me, and I am therefore bound to state it—that in detaching the younger members of our communion from the church of their fathers, and in introducing and fostering a spirit of utter religious indifferentism among them, the principles and working of the National system of Education in Ireland, have done an amount of mischief that is positively incalculable. This must be so, from the very principles and working of the system. my own district I can run over in my mind the number of schools-I can without an effort count up twelve 'National'schools, and but one church school in all that immense district, although it has between 7000 and 8000 church people belonging to it. The children of our church attend those National schools, not, as a rule, that the parents approve of them, but from necessity, either because the National school is more convenient, or that there is no other that they could attend; and in every single case, in the district to which I refer, those National schools are under the patronage of Dissenters-ministers or laymen. In very many of them, I should add, a Sunday-school is also carried on. What is the consequence? The Church children who attend those National schools are receiving the very trifling-I may say homoeopathically triflingallowance of religious instruction which it is possible for them to receive under the system from a Dissenter a person who however conscientious and upright he may be, is not the man we would select to give religious instruction to the children of our Church.

In

Another evil is this: the children having got into the habit of attending the daily school, not unnaturally go to the Sunday-school in the same place. Now, whatever other persons may think of it, to me this presents a very serious difficulty in my struggles to keep the young poorer members of our Church attached to the Church of their fathers. How is this difficulty to be met? Some will say-more Dr. Webster-" attach your schools to the National Board, and take advantage of the assistance they are ready to offer you-take advantage of the system as far as you can for the good of your children." I know that some very conscientious and good men, in their excessive zeal for education, and for other reasons it may be, with which I am not acquainted, have taken this step, and I am willing to suppose that a certain amount of good may have resulted from their individual efforts in that direction. But-and this I express as my deliberate opinion,-for the Church of Ireland, as a Church, to do what some individual members of the Church have done, would be simply an act of ecclesiastical suicide, without the excuse of temporary insanity to justify it. For remember, it is not so much the actual working of the system as the principle upon which the system works which makes it so dangerous an instrument in detaching children from the Church. It is the pernicious principle which places all religious professions upon a level, like so many pauns upon a chess-board, to

be moved about at the pleasure of the master hand of the politician, and under the specious pretext of respecting the rights of conscience and parental authority, the actual impression that must be left upon the mind of every child trained under such a system is this, not directly taught by the system, but the whole nature of the system tending to produce that impression-that provided the child can read and write, do a little arithmetic and have a smattering of geography, it is of no earthly consequence whether he belongs to the Church of Ireland, the "Peculiar People," the "New Jerusalam Church," or any other monstrosity that may have arisen in our time. Now, at present our people do not believe in this principle: they do not receive this principle as a truth. They use the National Schools under protest and from necessity; but they frankly admit in almost every case where I have spoken to them about it that the principle of the system is wrong; and one great cause of this belief amongst the laity is the standing, perpetual protest the clergy have maintained against the system. Suppose it had been otherwise; and that the clergy had joined the system, would it not naturally follow that the principle of the system, which is, that all religions are alike, would come to be accepted by the people, under the sanction of the clergy? How are the young to be attached to the Church, when every day of their lives they see it jumbled up with a crowd of sects, her dignity impaired, her claims on the people ridiculed, and her divinely granted authority utterly despised and rejected? For these reasons I say the true way to meet the difficulty is, not by joining the National Board-the true way to meet the difficulty is this first of all, maintain your protest against it, for then you cut at the principle which is doing the main damage, and you keep the people thoroughly acquainted with the fact that while they use the schools they are sanctioning a principle destructive to the Church. Secondly, the way to meet the difficulty is, by multiplying as far as lies in our power schools in connexion with the Church Education Society,-where the word of God is freely used, and, we hope, glorified, and where the principles of the Church are taught without restriction or restraint. Thirdly, the way to meet the difficulty is, by diligent catechising of the children on the Lord's day, and circulating amongst them true information as to the working and principles and doctrines of the Church-a thing specially necessary in these times when false principles and doctrines are erroneously charged against us by ignorant men; and thus to seek as far as possible to counteract in such neighbourhoods and districts as that to which I have referred, those agencies by which I fear many of the younger members of our Church are being detached from the Church of their fathers. It was my intention before I closed to have alluded to one other subject; but it has been so well treated of by the writer of the last paper that it is only necessary to make one remark in reference to it. I do believe in my heart, from my knowledge of the Protestant working classes in the North of Ireland, that nothing would cause such a wholesale exodus from the Church, of that class of the popuation at all events, and it is the one with which I am best acquainted, as any attempt to introduce into this country that excess in ritual and those so called sacerdotal powers with which some profess our clergy to be invested. Nothing could be worse in my opinion for the interests of the Church in Ireland than any such attempt. For, from my knowledge of the class to which I refer, I say most positively, that whatever the people of England may choose to accept, or whatever they may have been, as we conceive-it may be in our ignorance-gradually "educated" up to the point of accepting, the Protestant

people of Ireland will never suffer to be put upon them that yoke of sacerdotal tyranny which our fathers were not able to bear; and if such be attempted to be introduced under the sanction and with the authority of that Church whose whole spirit and teaching is utterly alien to those claims, and if it be tried to force them upon us under the sanction and authority of the Church, I do verily believe that though it may be done by godly and well intentioned men, as I am willing to admit them to be-men full of zeal for Christ and the Church-they will have struck the deadliest blow at the vitality and welfare of the Church of Ireland that ever in her long history of trial she has yet had to encounter.

Very REV. WM. C. MAGEE (Dean of Cork)—I listened with trembling to the kind reception which you have just accorded to me, for I fear that I am about to forfeit it, and perhaps to provoke quite a different expression of feeling at your hands; but I believe in the spirit of liberal discussion here recognised you will allow me to express my dissent, however briefly, from more than one sentiment uttered by the last speaker. I am not, however, going to follow his example by introducing matters which are barely within the letter and certainly not within the spirit of the subject which is at present before us for discussion. I had thought that when there had been an entire evening devoted to the discusssion of one particular topic, it might well have been considered that for this meeting its matter had been sufficiently ventilated, and that there hardly remained any necessity for now travelling over ground then so fully and ably traversed. The last speaker has, however, said that National Schools in Ireland are largely conducted by Dissenters-by whom, I presume, he means Presbyterians and others and that the Church children are being educated in these schools. Now I am not saying whether the clergy of our Church were right or wrong in declining to take the patronage of these schools. That is not the question at issue. But it seems to me hard to say that it is the fault of the Board that the clergy refuse to patronize these schools and then complain that in such schools the teaching of Dissenters alienates children from the Church.

The Archdeacon of Taunton tells us that in England the clergy are fighting manfully against the conscience clause; but it is only right that he should know that the clergy in Ireland are fighting just as strenuously for that very conscience clause against which the English clergy are fighting.

I will, however, now pass on very briefly to notice the beautiful and eloquent paper read before us to-day by Mr. Farrar; a paper so noble and so beautiful that I confess I had great difficulty in preventing myself going thoroughly with him from beginning to end of it. But I trust, indeed I feel sure, he will welcome one honest and sympathising doubter about his own opinion. He asserted the great truth that both the clergy and laity constituted the Church of Christ, that the powers of that Church are vested in both as trustees, and that this principle goes to the root of the sacerdotal theory. In that I cordially agree, with this qualification, however, that if the vital and inherent powers of the Church are vested in a corporation, and if there be divinely constituted officers in that corporation-and I state it as my belief that there are such-then I say that certain powers of the corporation do vest in those individuals divinely appointed to be officers of that corporation. I believe that in order that the powers of this corporation may be properly exercised, it is essential that there be an individual or individuals divinely appointed to be the officer or

officers of the corporation; and just because I firmly believe in the greatness of the corporate life of the Church; I believe in the authority and importance of the offices held by the divinely appointed officers in the Church. I believe that although the Church does not exist for the clergy no more than I believe that an army exists for the officers, still the officers have their authority in the army, and I maintain that the Church could no more exist without its duly appointed well-organized body of officers than the army could exist without its officers. But there is nothing to prevent this body of officers in the Church having their authority from and their foundation on the Church.

There was one other matter touched upon by Mr. Farrar in his excellent paper with which I cannot entirely agree. I allude to that part where he spoke of the Church sympathizing with the spirit of the age. That was beautifully expressed no doubt, but still I believe it is based upon a fallacy. The Church and the age are not distinct entities, but are merely symbolical expressions. The Church is in and of the age, and it is quite right that the Church should be en rapport with the spirit of the age; but it is not to be guided by that spirit, but to guide it. It is not the duty of the Church to dance to the pipings and lament to the mournings of the age; nor, on the other hand, to listen passively to the earnest cries and impulsive desires of the rising generation, but rather to ascertain what the age really needs; to take its youth by the hand lovingly and affectionately, and by her Divine power guide them into the presence of their Heavenly Father. It is also her duty to take care how she perpetuates the doubts of the age. The common saying of the present age seemed to be embodied in the sentiment "There is nothing new and nothing true and it does not matter." It appears to me then that it is the duty of the Church to shew, that in the Church there is something divinely and eternally true, and that it is her duty to put that before all men as ever and always new, and that it does matter vitally, for time and for eternity, whether they believe in that truth or not.

Then it appeared to me that when Mr. Farrar spoke of dogmas as being opposed to progress, he again expressed a fallacy in connexion with an important truth. No doubt a mere hard clinging to dogmas as such, is opposed to progress; but unless you have dogmas eternally true you can never have progress. You can no more have progress without fixed dogmas, than you can have trees without roots. But the real danger lies in the possibility of some portion of truth being complimented away in the earnest desire to win the doubter by shewing him that you not merely sympathize with his doubts but that it is possible that you should actually share them.

Again, I think there is a vital distinction between toleration of opinions and charity for persons. For myself I have no toleration for opinions; I believe a thing to be either true or false, it must be either black or white, or if I may use a homely illustration, I believe my hat is either on my head or off it. I hold that there are certain fundamental truths of religion as sharply defined as any other truths in science or philosophy, and within the limits of those truths there is no toleration for diversity of opinions, though there may be ample toleration for the persons who may hold them. the National Church is the accredited society for teaching certain doctrinal truths to the nation, and to tolerate within the limits of that Establishment, those who distinctly and positively deny these truths, does seem to me to amount to an act of ecclesiastical suicide.

But

The REV. JAMES NICOLSON (Dundee).-Coming after the eloquence that we have just listened to, I am sure you will be very happy to hear that I am not going to make a speech. I come before you as a clergyman of the Scottish Episcopal Church, a free and disestablished Church, but none the less a part of the Church of Christ, in full and complete communion with the Church of England and Ireland; and if you will allow me to put in an appearance here on behalf of that Church I believe she will feel grateful to you for the compliment. I have come here for the express purpose of making a statement which, on the principle "Ubi Hiberni sunt ibi Hibernia," has a clear connexion with the subject which has been before this meeting to-day, and I trust it may prove advantageous, for I wish to say a word or two on behalf of those Irish fellow churchmen of yours whom we have in Scotland. I find that there are no less than thirty thousand of these in Glasgow and its neighbourhood, and I know there are some five thousand in and about Dundee, and more than two thousand in Edinburgh and its neighbourhood. I want to ask what the Church of Ireland has done for these her people? It is a question which I think I may ask in all fairness at a Congress gathering like this in the city of Dublin. When these people come to Scotland they are of course made welcome by the Scottish Episcopal Church and that is the only Church in Scotland which can give them the services and ministrations to which they have been accustomed at home. I have been engaged all my life I may say as a missionary among Irish people, and I have now under my charge more than eighteen hundred souls, but I cannot help putting this question to 66 you, what are you as a Church doing for those your fellow countrymen and fellow churchmen in Scotland?" When I was coming through Glasgow a day or two ago, I met a brother clergyman and told him where I was coming and what I was going to say to you, and he said, "Well; if it had not been for the people in Ireland I never should have got my Church built at Paisley." But my lord, I know of another Church which was built by the alms of Churchmen in Scotland, and in England, mainly for these same people, at a cost of more than £3000, and of this sum £7 was all that came from Ireland. The children we have desire still to express their sympathy with you, and to forward the best interests of this their mother Church; and when statistics are so much made use of to the detriment of the Church in this land, it is just as well that you should not forget the thirty or forty thousand of the children of your Church who are located on Scotch soil, and who are one and all ready to help her in this her hour of need.

The REV. JAMES BARDSLEY (Manchester).—The special subject which is under the consideration of the Congress at present, is one of very great interest and importance-how to retain the younger members of the Church in communion with her. I entirely agree with all the Rev. Mr. Jackson said in his excellent paper, as to the importance of the rite of confirmation. I think as experienced clergymen we must all feel that the period of confirmation is the seed time of the Church. I also concur with him in what he said about the necessity of the younger members of our Church being instructed in distinctive Church principles-being taught how to use their prayer books, and being instructed in the Scriptural character of the forms of prayer used in our liturgy, and also as to the apostolic character of our mode of church government. I think also if I may in one word allude to another topic-I think that in the present day it would be an excellent thing if in all our Sunday schools and amongst all our young people, we were to distribute that most