And, I say, that the Catechism does give a true conception of Christ; and more, a far truer one—­I had almost said, an infinitely truer—­than any which I have yet seen in these realms:  that from the Catechism a child may learn who God is, who Christ is, who he himself is, what are his relation and duty to God, what are his relation and duty to his neighbours, to his country, and to the whole human race, far better than from any document of the kind of which I am aware.

I know well the substitutes for the Catechism which are becoming more and more fashionable; the limitations, the explainings away, the non-natural and dishonest interpretations, which are more and more applied to it when it is used; and I warn you, that those substitutes for, and those defacements of, the Catechism, will be no barrier against an outburst of fanaticism, did one arise; nay, that many of them would directly excite it; and prove, when too late, that instead of feeding the masses with the bread of life, which should preserve them, soul and body, some persons had been feeding them with poison, which had maddened them, soul and body.  But I see no such danger in the Catechism.  I see in the Catechism; in its freedom alike from sentimental horror and sentimental raptures; its freedom alike from slavish terror, and from Pharisaic assurance; a guarantee that those who learn it will learn something of that sound religion, sober, trusty, cheerful, manful, which may be seen still, thank God, in country Church folk of the good old school; and which will, in the day of trial, be proof against the phantoms of a diseased conscience, and the ravings of spiritual demagogues.

And therefore I preach gladly for this institution; therefore I urge strongly its claims on you, whom I am bound to suppose honest Churchmen, because the fact of its being a Diocesan Board of Education is, at least in this diocese, a guarantee that the schools which it supports will teach their children, honestly and literally, the Catechism of the Church of England, which may God preserve!

Not that I expect it to teach only that.  I take for granted, that that will be its primary object, the guarantee that all the rest is well done:  but I know that much more than that must be done; that much more will be done, even unintentionally.

For, shall I—­I trust that I shall not—­make a too fanciful application of the last fact recorded of this great miracle, if I bid you find in it a fresh source of hope in your work?

’And they took up of the fragments which were left seven baskets full.’

The plain historic fact is, that not only do the seven loaves feed 4,000, but that what they leave, and are about to throw away, far exceeds the original supply.