pare a people for his more efficacious ministrations. The Catechist will complete what the Schoolmaster has begun, bringing a conviction home to the minds of our people, noble like that of the Bereans of old, inasmuch as it is founded on searching the Scriptures, and seeing whether the things are so as the Church teaches, believing not on the authority of any one, but from having heard Him in His Scriptures, and "knowing that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world."

With these remarks on the kindred duties of the Schoolmaster and the Catechist, and without any evil surmisings from the separation of their offices, I close these proffered reflections on the position and duties of the ministry in the fulfilment of the latter office. It is exclusively ours,-it cannot be taken from us. It is a vantage-ground we can only forfeit through our own neglect. If, therefore, we are disposed to assert a high, and, in the present age at least, a not unquestioned claim to the education of the people, let us ask ourselves, whether we have educated them as the Church directs,—whether, before claiming what is not within our power, we have done that which is. Suppose, however, the claim to be granted, that it is our exclusive province, it proves, surely, either too little or too much,-either we have not done that which it is our peculiar province to do, or we claim an exclusive right to do that which we in practice admit ourselves to be incapable of doing. In principle, we are either the educators of the people in secular, as well as religious knowledge, or we are only their spiritual instructors. In the one case, we are schoolmasters by profession; in the other, we are only the spiritual pastors of God's heritage, whose duty it is to build up the spiritual man, already versed in secular knowledge and attainments, in the knowledge of the faith of Jesus Christ. Let us not, then, whatever be our views, quarrel with the means, in themselves indifferent, but take rather even the lowest ground if we can but attain the end; neither let us so forfeit the stronghold we occupy, as to throw away the arms of heavenly temperament that are in our hands, and trust each rising generation to be blown about by every wind of doctrine, through our neglect of laying broad and deep the foundations of our faith in Catechising.

LONDON:

GEORGE BARCLAY, Castle Street, Leicester Square.

A CATECHISM

ON THE

COLLECTS, EPISTLES, AND GOSPELS, OF THE CHURCH,

FOUNDED ON THE

"COMPANION TO FAMILY PRAYER."

BY

THE HON. AND REV. SAMUEL BEST,

RECTOR OF ABBOTT'S ANN; LATE FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE.

LONDON:

JAMES DARLING,

LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS;

BROWN, SALISBURY.

M.DCCC.XLIX.

PREFACE.

THIS Catechism having already appeared, it is the author's object to publish it in such a form as may render it available to the purposes for which it was composed. It will serve, also, as an illustration of his views on Catechising, while the lectures contained in the "Companion to Family Prayer," on which this Catechism is founded, will illustrate the character of the lectures by which he thinks his views on Catechising may be carried out.