With grief:  but not with surprise.  For the religious public, even the Church portion of it, has of late been more and more inclined to undervalue the organization and the teaching of the Church of England, and to supply its place with nostrums, borrowed from those denominations who disagree with the Church, alike in their doctrines of what man should be, and of what God is.  How have their energies, their zeal, their money (for zealous they are, and generous too) been frittered away!  But I will not particularize, lest I hurt the feelings of better people than myself, by holding up their good works to the ridicule of those who do us no good works at all.  But I entreat them to look at their own work; to look at the vastness of its expense, compared with the smallness of its results; and then to ask themselves, whether the one cause of their failure—­for failures I must call too many of the religious movements of this day, in spite of their own loud self-laudations—­whether, I say, one cause of these failures may not be, that the religious world is throwing itself into anything and everything novel and exciting, rather than into the simple and unobtrusive work of teaching little children their Catechism, that they may go home as angels of God and missionaries of Christ, teaching their parents in turn as they have been taught themselves, and so awakening that sacred family life, without which there can be no sound Christianity.  I know well that there has been much work done in the right direction; but when I look at the ugly fact, that the population of London is increasing far faster than its schools; that in 25 of the poorest parishes thereof there are now nearly 60,000 children who go to no school at all; and that the proportion of scholars to the population is lower in Middlesex than in almost any county in England, while the proportion of crime is highest; I cannot but sigh over the thousands which I see squandered yearly on rash novelties by really pious and generous souls, and cry, Ah, that one-fourth, one-tenth of it all had been spent in the plain work of helping elementary schools; I cannot but call on all London churchmen of the plain old school, to stand by the organization and the doctrines of the Church to which they belong; to rally in this matter round their bishop; and work for him, and with him.

And now, there may be some here who will ask, scornfully enough, And do you talk of nostrums? and then, after confessing that the masses are hungering for the bread of life, offer them nothing but your own nostrum, the Catechism?

Yes, my friends, I do.  I know that the Church Catechism is not the bread of life.  Neither, I beg you to remember, is any other Catechism, or doctrine, or tract, or sermon, or book or anything else whatsoever.  Christ is the Bread of Life.  But how shall they know Christ, unless they be taught what Christ is; and how can they be taught what Christ is, unless the conception of him which is offered them be true?