g elementary schools; I
cannot but call on all London churchmen of the plain old school, to
stand by the organization and the doctrines of the Church to which
they belong; to rally in this matter round their bishop; and work
for him, and with him.

And now, there may be some here who will ask, scornfully enough, And
do you talk of nostrums? and then, after confessing that the masses
are hungering for the bread of life, offer them nothing but your own
nostrum, the Catechism?

Yes, my friends, I do. I know that the Church Catechism is not the
bread of life. Neither, I beg you to remember, is any other
Catechism, or doctrine, or tract, or sermon, or book or anything
else whatsoever. Christ is the Bread of Life. But how shall they
know Christ, unless they be taught what Christ is; and how can they
be taught what Christ is, unless the conception of him which is
offered them be true?

And, I say, that the Catechism does give a true conception of
Christ; and more, a far truer one--I had almost said, an infinitely
truer--than any which I have yet seen in these realms: that from
the Catechism a child may learn who God is, who Christ is, who he
himself is, what are his relation and duty to God, what are his
relation and duty to his neighbours, to his country, and to the
whole human race, far better than from any document of the kind of
which I am aware.

I know well the substitutes for the Catechism which are becoming
more and more fashionable; the limitations, the explainings away,
the non-natural and dishonest interpretations, which are more and
more applied to it when it is used; and I warn you, that those
substitutes for, and those defacements of, the Catechism, will be no
barrier against an outburst of fanaticism, did one arise; nay, that
many of them would directly excite it; and prove, when too late,
that instead of feeding the masses with the bread of life, which
should preserve them, soul and body, some persons had been feeding
them with poison, which had maddened them, soul and body. But I see
no such danger in the Catechism. I see in the Catechism; in its
freedom alike from sentimental horror and sentimental raptures; its
freedom alike from slavish terror, and from Pharisaic assurance; a
guarantee that those who learn it will learn something of that sound
religion, sober, trusty, cheerful, manful, which may be seen still,
thank God, in country Church folk of the good old school; and which
will, in the day