which the Association has adopted, to fulfil the difficult and delicate task entrusted to its care, to maintain its important station on the elevated post it has been commissioned to guard. From the Church of England the Association derives all its rules of action; from the Church of England the Association receives the Bible as the charter of its privileges, as the sole test of its doctrines. Under such a conviction, its first object is to disseminate that book of life, is to realize the devout and parental wish, that every cottage in the land should have its Bible. To all its Members therefore, and through its Members to all the inhabitants of the land, the Association presents that inestimable gift, with the admonition of the Jewish law-giver, These words shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates. But while firmly convinced that the Bible is the only rule of faith, the Association never for a moment entertained the opinion, that every individual would infallibly interpret every sentence of it aright; they felt it their duty to declare what the faith was, which, as members of the Church of England, they derived from the Bible, and to furnish the ignorant and the unthinking with such assistance as might direct their belief and their practice into that narrow and straight path which leadeth to life everlasting. Equally removed from the blind intolerance of the bigot, and the false liberality of the latitudinarian, the Association has felt that the sincerest toleration of the different sects of Christianity is compatible with the firmest attachment to its own Church, and has considered that indifference in the promulgation of her own faith would argue a dereliction of the most sacred duty, and furnish ground for suspicion that there was something unimportant or indefensible in the faith itself. Uncompromisingly therefore, it proclaims its conviction that there is but one true interpretation of holy writ, and points out to every inquirer after knowedge, tossed about in the midst of jarring and discordant doctrines, the Book of Common Prayer, saying, this is the way, walk ye in it. In that book, as a human composition unrivalled, are given that admirable epitome of the gospel, contained in the Church Catechism, to be learned by all its Members, and that Liturgy to be used by all in the time of their tribulation, in the time of their wealth, and in the hour of death. Similar in kind, though far inferior in importance, is the plan of the Association, to distribute at a cheap rate moral and religious tracts. To those who are acquainted with the unceasing efforts which the enemies of our faith are constantly making to disseminate their pernicious doctrines, to those who are acquainted with the books hitherto in circulation among the country schools of Ireland, it must surely be unnecessary to expatiate upon the advantages of thus sowing the good seed, ere the enemy come and occupy the ground. If tracts inculcating moral and religious lessons be not made the instruction of the young and the entertainment of the old, it E will be absolutely impossible to resist the impious and pestilential effusions of infidelity, profaneness, and sedition, which are daily issuing from the press. On this subject, though much remains to be done, yet the Association has not been negligent, for more than a million of tracts have been sent into circulation. Nor here let me be misunderstood, as if I meant to assert that the Association forced upon all persons its interpretation of holy writ-assuredly not. I am the more desirous to guard against this objection, as no part of the conduct of the Association has been more mistaken, no part more misrepresented. The Association is anxious for the distribution of the Biblemost anxious: this anxiety has grown with its growth, and strengthened with its strength; and it gives that Bible alone, to those who reject the interpretation it has adopted, or wish to seek an explanation by the help of their own unassisted reason. Following the direction of the Apostle, its care has ever been, as it had opportunity, to do good unto all men, and when it has made every exertion for those who are of : the houshold of faith, it extends its advantages to others as far as it can without compromising its attachment to the Church it reveres, or without endangering the permanence and safety of that Church. But the Members of the Association were well aware that, immersed as their countrymen unfortunately had been in vice and superstition, and ignorance, the distribution of religious books, the distribution of the Bible itself would be of little effect. They perceived that to purify the many polluted streams which spread their noxious vapours over the land, and turned its blessings into a curse, it was necessary to ascend to the very source, and they determined to cast the salt into the spring, and thus to heal the waters that were naught, and the ground that was barren. They were sensible that they must eradicate vice by prevention, and stifle corruption in its birth: from this conviction, emanated the plans for the religious education of the poor. The first attempt towards attaining this most desirable object was the establishment of Catechetical examinations; and never was project more |