though there are acute forms of religious controversy to which even those words apply. But it is not too much to say that Christ calls you to possess the future; that God has established strength out of the mouths of babes and sucklings; and that no amount of care spent on other parts of your duty can ever excuse you from the work of feeding the lambs' of Christ's flock with wholesome honest food, with the sincere milk of the Word that they may grow thereby.' Outline of course proposed My great aim will be to focus your attention on the various agencies which, directly or indirectly, subserve to a child's religious training, that you may be fully conscious that what you will have to say to him is only one of many forces that will affect him. This being so, you must study your relation to the other influences which bear on his religious life, first with a view of bringing your own teaching methods, so far as is right, into a line with the rest, and, secondly, that you may make the best of the opportunities which come to hand. My first lecture, therefore, will take up the child's religious life at its starting point, viz. Holy Baptism, with a view of showing you how sound the practice of infant baptism is, from the standpoint of modern educational methods, and yet how difficult it is to secure the conditions without which we have no right to administer infant baptism. ' Ps. viii. 2. Those conditions are in one word the environment of the child from infancy with a living Church. From this point of view emerges the importance of the day school. In my second lecture I propose to treat of the training of teachers to give religious instruction. Here, again, are two main aspects of the subject: (1) What can be done for the teachers in our primary and secondary schools to qualify them better for the work of religious instruction? (2) What can be done to qualify clergy to undertake the work of training Sunday-school teachers ? In the third lecture I propose to treat of the History of Catechisms, their origin and their influence in the Church, that you may have a better understanding of the nature of the work to which the Church calls you, and of its vital connection with the rest of primary education. My fourth lecture, after reviewing some objections alleged against catechisms, and examining in this light the catechism of our Church, will be devoted to methods of catechising, and particularly to the method of St. Sulpice, the object being to ascertain how far you can hope to adapt or use that method for your own work. The fifth lecture will treat of the Sunday school and of progressive religious instruction therein; how far we may borrow Kindergarten methods for our infant schools, and on what sort of lines we may arrange for the upper school such a course of religious instruction as might easily be worked in with day-school teaching, without any needless offence to Nonconformists, and yet might, so far as Sunday schools are concerned, lead steadily and directly up to confirmation. The last lecture will treat of the aims of the confirmation class, and of the best methods of continuing religious instruction that I can suggest, in the long lifetime that follows confirmation, when so much of our careful preparation seems to lead to nothing and to be almost thrown away. the course The object of the course, as you will see from this outline, is not to train you to teach, but to vindicate The object of the necessity for such training. It is to focus your attention upon child life, and to induce you, if I may, to study it, with a view of using all the best aids which the past experience of the Church has suggested, or which modern practice has established. At the same time I desire very respectfully to suggest that the divinity faculties of our universities should enlarge their scope, so as to include not only the study of the science of theology, but also the giving of diplomas in theological teaching. Our universities possess the confidence of the country, and are qualified for this work as no other existing institutions are qualified. It rests with them more than with any other foundations to restore the practice of giving religious instruction to its right importance in public estimation. If in making such suggestions I go beyond the province in tended for my lectures, you must forgive me. Watching, as we in Birmingham to-day are watching, the birth of a new University, and rejoicing in the t daring confidence with which it looks forward to a great influence on the education of the future, we see also the limitations which hamper it from its very cradle. Among these there is, I will not say the inability to teach theology, but the extraordinary difficulty that it must have in giving guidance to the sublimest aspirations and powers of man. From those difficulties you are wholly free. In the ancient universities theology has her true place as the scientia scientiarum. If ever that place is to be resumed outside the pale of Oxford and Cambridge; if ever England is to look on religious instruction as something else than a battle-ground of politicians; if the fear of the Lord is' to be the beginning of wisdom,' it must be through the practical teaching thereof revealing its value in the hands of trained and skilled teachers. When it is found that, in fact, religious education is the best education, the difficulties about giving it will disappear. It is my conviction-I hope you will not call it my delusion—that our ancient universities can restore the art of religious teaching to its true level; can raise it up from the position of inferiority which it occupies through want of bestowing attention upon it; can supply what I venture to call an order of catechists, lay as well as clerical, whose teaching skill shall be pro с portioned to the excellence and importance of the subject which they have to teach. For beginning a course of educational lectures at the point of infant baptism no apology is needed. For a long time the study of education Importance of unconscious training was confined mainly to conscious education. The large region of the unconscious mind was left out of sight, which every hour from our birth onwards is receiving impressions-impressions of the utmost importance, because of their influence in determining character. Powers, which neither parent nor child notice, are from the cradle helping to form the child-powers which do not all of them belong to the child's present environment. Darwin, we are told, considered the influence of education, as compared with that of heredity, as infinitesimal. And long before Darwin, Froebel and Pestalozzi and many others tried to teach us that, if we would educate a child, we must begin with its parents. This side of truth was overlooked by those who wished, rightly enough in their way, to insist upon the conscious dealing of the soul with God. Revolting from purely mechanical religion, and wishing to emphasise the spiritual character of faith and worship, they insensibly identified spirit with mind, and found it hard to believe that new birth and admission into the family of God could belong to the age of unconscious childhood. Overlooking the facts which have taught us the power of environment and |