ils of schools in some respects must be, yet, in
proportion as they exceed what must be, they do become at once
mischievous and guilty. And such, or even worse, is the mischief when,
with the evil which must be, there is not the good which ought to be;
for, remember, our condition is to know good and evil. If we know only
evil, it is the condition of hell; and therefore, if schools present an
unmixed experience, if there is temptation in abundance, but no support
against temptation, and no examples of overcoming it; if some are losing
their child's innocence, but none, or very few, are gaining a man's
virtue; are we in a wholesome state then? or can we shelter ourselves
under the excuse that our evil is unavoidable, that we do but afford, in
a mild form, the experience which must be learned sooner or later? It is
here that we must be acquitted or condemned. I can bear to see the
overclouding of childish simplicity, if there is a reasonable hope that
the character so clouded for a time will brighten again into Christian
holiness. But if we do not see this, if innocence is exchanged only for
vice, then we have not done our part, then the evil is not unavoidable,
but our sin: and we may be assured, that for the souls so lost, there
will be an account demanded hereafter both of us and you.

LECTURE II.

* * * * *

1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 11.

_When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away
childish things_.

Taking the Apostle's words literally, it might appear that no words in
the whole range of Scripture were less applicable to the circumstances
of this particular congregation: for they speak of childhood and of
manhood; and as all of us have passed the one, so a very large
proportion of us have not yet arrived at the other. But when we consider
the passage a little more carefully, we shall see that this would be a
very narrow and absurd objection. Neither the Apostle, nor any one else,
has ever stepped directly from childhood into manhood; it was his
purpose here only to notice the two extreme points of the change which
had taken place in him, passing over its intermediate stages; but he,
like all other men, must have gone through those stages. There must have
been a time in his life, as in all ours, when his words, his thoughts,
and his understanding were neither all childish, nor all manly: there
must ha