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obedience to external law; and the goodness of the Christian in obedience to the law of Christ.

11. That it is a struggle against temptation. 12. That the struggle of a baptised Christian is different from that of a heathen. The one must strive to retain a blessing already given; the other to obtain what is as yet withheld.

13. That our real goodness is the Spirit of God, communicated to us at Baptism.

14. That the quality to which we give the name of good, is that which produces unity in plurality.

15. That the proof of our possessing this good, is our power of resisting our own inclination.

16. That our duties depend on our relations to persons, and ultimately on our relations to God.

17. That this relation is a Covenant.

18. That we are dealt with as free agents. 19. That the knowledge of God contained in a creed is the first foundation of all goodness. 20. That the will of God is our only law. 21. That the confirmation and preservation of the privileges conveyed to us at Baptism is to be the great object of our lives.

22. And that happiness is not pleasure, but something prior and superior to pleasure.

It is unnecessary to specify many other ethical questions which occur incidentally.

I would pray to Almighty God, that he would be pleased in his mercy, not to be offended at such an offering in behalf of his truth and his Church, from a most unworthy minister of it. And next to this, it is my humble desire that it may be received by the University of Oxford, as a grateful though mean acknowledgment of inestimable benefits derived from her sound discipline, her wise teaching, and her blessed institutions; which may it please God even now to preserve among us, as a light in a darkened age, and a safeguard to his Church in this land, and throughout the earth.

CHRISTIAN MORALS.

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Address to a Young Reader.

you had lived fifteen hundred years ago, though what I am about to say to you would have been taught you from a child, it would probably not have come to you in the shape of a little book. There was a time when Christian men did not trust to books to inculcate Christian truths. And why this was, you may understand, if you consider how you will deal with me, who now wish to. talk to you in the person of a little book. You have taken me up, have you not, in order to amuse yourself? You have seated yourself in a chairmade yourself very comfortable-propose, if you like me, to read me, just as long as is convenient and pleasant; and to throw me aside when you are tired. Whenever I become grave and uninteresting, you will cease to listen. You will skip this passage and that; turn over three or four pages, till your eye catches capital letters, which seem to indicate a story; exclaim against me when I am dull; pronounce me wrong, if I say what you do not agree with; call me dark and obscure, if you fail to understand me at first sight; criticise and judge me, in all things, instead of docilely submitting to be guided by me and overruled. And if I happen to coincide with yourself, you will go away flattered

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and confirmed in your opinion of your own wisdom. And, in the meantime, I am powerless in your hands. I cannot rebuke you for your levity; nor rouse you to attention; nor explain my own meaning, when you mistake it; nor chastise you for indolence and carelessness; nor reduce you to humility, by shewing your own ignorance; nor compel you to study me; nor encourage you to think afterwards on what I say; nor save you from perverting my words to your own injury; nor abide with you in your hands, ready to admonish you at all times; nor make you feel shame, or gratitude, or affection to me, by which you would act up to my lessons. And the words which I utter are all ambiguous-all of them may be made by any ingenious reader to take one meaning or another, according to his own disposition. What I say in the beginning will require to be balanced and qualified by something that occurs at the end--sentence with sentence, rule with rule, principle with principle. But whether you do this or not, will depend on your own industry, and honesty, and knowledge, and talent. If you fail in any one of these if you are either lazy, or partial, or ignorant, or stupid (and what young man is not liable to one or more of these faults?), you will certainly If you act upon your error, you will fall into mischief. If, what is not less likely, you do not act at all, but forget what you read the moment it has passed from your eye, and make it all a dream, then you will fall into a still worse evil; for you will have lost an opportunity of doing right, and have made your conscience more insensible to warnings, and learnt to practise contempt for your teachers, and to look on questions of right and wrong, virtue and vice, as things to be talked of and argued about, not for practice and self-denial; and your condemnation will be more certain, and your punishment more

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severe, because the knowledge will have been placed before your eyes, and you will have failed to profit by it.

These are some of the reasons, and there are many others, why wise men of old-wiser men than you or any of us in the nineteenth century-would have opened their eyes with as much contempt as holy men can feel towards ignorant fellow-creatures, if any one had proposed to make you a good Christian, or a good citizen, by means of a book.

And yet I suspect you will say, they certainly would have wished-would they not?-to make me both wise and good. At least, the better that men are around me, the more anxious they seem to be that others should be good likewise. And if books were of no use, what could they have had?

Now here is an instance of the evil which I mentioned above. You have, I suspect, mistaken my meaning. You are on the point either of throwing me down in ridicule; or at least you will declare to your father or mother, or some one who asks you what you have been reading, that I have been gravely telling you that books are of no use to make men good. Now, if you will look back, you will find that I said no such thing. I said that wise men in former days would not have thought to make you good by means of a book; but I did not say that books were not useful to make men good. When you have to take medicine, the medicine must be brought in a glass. When you mount your horse, you will look out for the bridle. And the glass is very useful in curing you, and the bridle in enabling you to ride; and yet I think it is not the glass which cures you, nor the bridle which makes the horse go. And so books may be of great service in making you good, and all the time not be the thing which makes you good at all. This is a problem,

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