THE RIGHT REVEREND JOHN BIRD SUMNER, D. D. LORD BISHOP OF CHESTER, THE FOLLOWING SERMON IS, WITH HIS LORDSHIP'S KIND PERMISSION, MOST GRATEFULLY AND MOST RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, BY HIS LORDSHIP'S VERY OBLIGED AND HUMBLE SERVANT, THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. In the following Sermon, the usual objections to the education of the poor are not noticed; because they have been so often and so ably refuted; and experience, the most conclusive of all reasoners, has shewn, and is daily shewing, their futility. Besides, these objections lie chiefly against education in general; and therefore do not properly fall within the province of a Discourse, purporting to advocate the dissemination of religious knowledge. The writer, who pleads for the diffusion of secular instruction, is bound to associate with it the principles of religion, because the former would probably have an unhappy influence without the rectifying properties of the latter; but religious education may be, and often is, safely set afloat on the stream of mental capacity without the helm of philosophy or science to guide it. Whatever may be thought of the propriety of teaching the poor other things, there is surely not a person to be found, so infatuated with the supposed grovelling advantages of keeping their inferior brethren in ignorance, as to wish to interdict the instruction afforded by a Sabbath School. If, however, such a man exist, we leave him to his narrow-minded policy, only just asking him to recollect that the sum and substance of this instruction is the WORD OF GOD. And we put it to his conscience whether, after an admission of this fact, he dare throw out such a profane reflection on the wisdom of the Almighty in revealing his will to man, as to say that children ought not to be taught to read it? |