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Saviour's little children tasks it all. So many different dispositions! So many different conditions! So many different circumstances! So many degrees of understanding! So many grades of acquirement! So many shades of spiritual progress! All to be met. All to be provided for. All to be encouraged. So much to do, and so little time to do it in. So much to undo, and such a fearful odds in opposition. Weariness to be avoided. Offence to be avoided. Undue indulgence to be avoided. The forward to be repressed. The wilful to be reproved. The diffident to be encouraged. The tender hearted to be protected. The weak to be sustained. The thought to be ever present, that every child has an immortal soul; and that its destiny hereafter may be shaped by a word said, that should not have been said, by a word not said, that should have been said. What exercise and what necessity for all the ingenuity of love!

3. And it needs the constancy of love. The training up of children is emphatically a work, never ending, still beginning. The interest and ingenuity of years may lose its labour through an hour's neglect. If it could all be done at once, if there were any given time in which it could be done, if the marks of progress could be noted always, and this year's issues be compared with those of former years, the trial would be less. But it cannot be so. The philosophy of teaching chil dren, and especially of their religious teaching, has something in it of homœopathy. It is "line upon line, line upon line." It is "precept upon precept, precept

upon precept." It is "here a little, and there a little." The slow attrition of the drop, that wears away the stone. The slow accumulation of the coral insect, that builds up the continent. Nothing so tires, nothing so wearies, nothing so tempts to disappointment and disgust. Like that teacher of the blind, who, after years of trial, when he thought his pupil surely now had mastered the whole mystery of light, was dismayed and overpowered by the ingenuous question, "Is it made of sugar?" There is nothing that so needs the persevering, never tiring constancy of love.

4. Of course it needs the self-denial and self-sacrifice of love. This is the point of failure. Motives of various kinds and various power will effect much. A sense of duty will go far. The temporal issues will weigh much. A kindly nature and quick sympathy are influential. Attachments will be formed that have great power to reconcile to effort and forbearance. But, one by one, these all will fail. Cases will arise, to which not one of them is adequate. The body will wear out, the mind will totter on its seat, the heart will fail and faint. To such an emergency, no temporal consideration will respond. For such a waste, life has no adequate return. Nothing but the love of Christ, nothing but the love which kindles at the Cross, nothing but the love which crucifies itself in Christ, will every where and always be sufficient for these things. Simon, son of Jonas, LOVEST THOU ME," "lovest thou Me MORE THAN THESE?" "FEED MY LAMBS."

Dear brethren of my pastoral care, you cannot look

on the beloved children, who are gathered to us here, from every quarter of our land, and not appreciate the purpose, and own the fitness, of my theme, to-day. To be made central, in the providential ordering of God, to so many hearts of parents and of friends, is an appeal to your best feelings, and a challenge to your continual sympathies. I claim for these dear LAMBS, I claim for my beloved, faithful, fellow-helpers in their care and nurture, I ask for my own heart-that we may exercise our sacred office with all good fidelity, and that the blessing from on high may keep and crown our precious trust-the charity of your continual prayers. "Brethren, pray for us." And let us pray together, as Royal David, when he asked the best things for the Holy City, in which God had set His throne, "that our sons may grow up as the young plants; and that our daughters may be as the polished corners of the temple."

SERMON II.

*THE ENDS AND OBJECTS OF BURLINGTON COLLEGE.

KIND NEIGHBOURS, AND DEAR FRIENDS,

I bid you welcome to our College. I count your presence here, as an omen of all good. I read in it, the strong assurance of your sympathy with us, in our great work. I feel, that we may count on your co-oper ation. I venture to rely upon your prayers.

It is a special pleasure to us, that our modest JUNIOR HALL has been the starting point of THE BURLINGTON ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. I regard it as a gracious earnest of the years to come, that, in our second, we have won this mark of gratifying confidence. We shall endeavour not to disappoint it. Letters and Science are the pillars, which we look to, to sustain the arch, to be erected here. Its blessing and its crown, we look for, in that pure and undefiled Religion; to be whose ministering servants, is the highest glory, as it is the only worthy aim, of Science and of Letters. The present undertaking proposes no contribution

An address introductory to a Course of Lectures in Burlington College; A. D. 1848.

The course of Lec

to Science, technically regarded. tures, to follow it, our first fruits in the golden harvest of the mind, will fully meet that expectation of the case. My purpose will be answered, and my estimate of this occasion carried out, by a brief outline of THE ENDS AND OBJECTS OF BURLINGTON COLLEGE. It is due to the kindly interest on your part, which has brought you here; and due to the great enterprize, which has been undertaken, and, I trust, will be forever prosecuted, in the most holy fear of God. What I say, will be informal, rapid and familiar; suggestive, rather than didactic; from the heart, more than from the head: as "a man talketh with his friends; " as I well feel, that I may talk with you. In what I say, I shall be understood as instituting no comparisons, as casting no reflections, as proposing no discoveries, as claiming nothing as individual or original. If there be any virtue in our plans, it is in their adaptedness to our whole nature, in its moral and its social aspects: if any confidence in their success, it is in the commendation to the hearts of men, which is to come to them from God. The single word, which best expresses all our ways and all our wishes, is the sacred monosyllable, HOME. To be domestic, first, and, then, religious; blending the two ideas-which God never meant should be disjoined, since He first knit the family bond, in Eden-in that expressive apostolic phrase, "a household of the faith," comprises all we count on, for good influence, and hope for, as good result, from Burlington College. The Poet of our times has made the sky-lark the best emblem of

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