those instructions are forced on no child whose parents are of a different persuasion; that Armenians, and Greeks, and Romanists, and even Hindoos, may be seen in our classes, their prejudices respected, and their progress and comforts no less attended to than the children of our own people, I shall have said enough, I trust, to establish the claim of the institution, for which I now am pleading, to the support of every man who wishes well to his fellow-creatures, and who, without neglecting the prior claims of " the household of faith," is desirous, according to his power, " to do good to all men."

They were these claims, and claims like these, appreciated by a heart and head, than which few in the history of British India have been so warm and so cool, so ardent in the relief of distress and so calmly judicious in the choice of measures for alleviating it, which procured for this institution a more than common share of the attention and liberality of that great man whose life was cherished still, though his presence and counsels had been withdrawn from these colonies, not by his private friends alone, but by every well wisher to India; by every one who had learnt to honour private worth or public integrity and firmness; by the guests who had drawn delight and improvement from his conversation while they partook in his hospitality; and by the poor against whom his doors, his attention, his indulgence, and his purse had never been for an instant closed. His loss, the in

stitution which I am now recommending, laments in common with almost every other religious or humane institution in the city; but it may be well to state, in order to intimate the extent of our misfortune in losing him, and to incite those who hear me to the exercise of a similar liberality, that accessible as Mr. Adam always was to the petitions and personal applications, of the frequency of which I have spoken, there was no charity whose claims he felt so strongly as this the eldest of all; that, ample as the donations were which the world saw affixed to his name, those donations fell considerably short of the sums which he contributed anonymously; and that even when he had left India without an idea of seeing it more, he had determined that, while life was spared him, his charities should linger here still. In him, in that other benevolent and virtuous statesman, whom, at a yet more recent date, the will of Providence has called to his reward; in others of less exalted rank, but of zeal not inferior for God's good cause, and the relief of their suffering fellowcreatures, whom since I last addressed you, a year of unusual mortality has swept from our social circles, the cause of charity has lost much; but to replace the void is not beyond the scope of our own increased exertions and the exertions of those fresh labourers who have, during that time, been added to the vineyard. Only let it be our endeavour to bestow alms as of the ability which God giveth, and that God may bless our bounty to its objects and to ourselves, let us devote it in humble prayer

at His Altar from whom we have received all things, and from whose grace only it cometh that we can render Him any true or laudable service.

To Him the Father of the fatherless, the Defender of the cause of the widow, to Him who heareth the cry of the destitute, and whose Son is not ashamed to call the poor His brethren, to Him, with that blessed Son, and the Spirit of bounty and love, be accounted all honour, praise, and glory!

SERMON XVI.

NEW YEAR'S DAY.

[Preached in the Cathedral, Calcutta, Jan. 1, 1824.]

ST. LUKE ii. 21.

And when eight days were accomplished, for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus.

In reviewing those circumstances in the life of our Lord, which it is the custom of the Church to commemorate on the first day of every year, there are two observations which would seem to force themselves on our notice; the one personal and respecting Christ alone, the other of a more general character, and relating to the institution itself to which He thus, in great humility, became subject. The first is the apparent strangeness of the fact that at His earliest entrance into the world, the Son of God should be made liable to suffering; the other the authority and sanction which, from the analogy of the Jewish covenant, is afforded to the practice of the general Christian Church, in not denying baptism to persons of like tender years.

The first of these is a reflection of no inconsi

derable importance, as it conduces, or should conduce, to our love and admiration of His goodness who, being throned above all created things, endured the elements of the world to save us; who, being born before all worlds, became for our sakes a suckling; whose entrance and exit into life were sprinkled alike with blood; and who, though Himself spotless and pure, thought it not unworthy of His nature or His character to fulfill even the most revolting forms of legal righteousness. It may teach, too, that even the forms and ceremonies of religion (particularly when those forms and ceremonies have received the sanction of the Most High) are neither to be neglected without abundant cause, nor dispensed with by a less authority than that which imposed them; but that, in these outward signs, an inward blessing dwells. And that He who Himself condescended to observe that law which was so soon to vanish away, will far less hold them guiltless who neglect or regard as trifling those rites which are to endure till He shall return again; of which the one was the legacy of His death, and the other the injunction of His triumph; His "do this in remembrance of me," and His "go ye baptize all nations." The second is a remark of a more controversial, but of a scarcely less practical nature; it is a reflection which penetrates into the recesses of every family, and which blends with the earliest affection and the earliest duties which we can feel

' 1 Cor. xi. 25. St. Matt. xxviii. 19.