y, without a deep inculcation of the love and fear of God, and
the penalty hereafter of an irreligious and wicked life, will have
but one leading idea--self-aggrandizement and self-indulgence, and
will be checked by no restraint of conscience in the way and means
of securing them. Gigantic frauds will be perpetrated, if riches
can thus be acquired; atrocious murders will be committed, if these
will remove the barrier to unholy and polluting connections, or
cast out of sight the objects of jealousy and hatred.

I have no disposition to reprobate this defect in the system of
education, prevailing with the authority and support of Government
among ourselves. I know the difficulty, the almost impossibility,
of securing the temporal boon with the addition of the spiritual;
how hard it must prove in a divided religious community to
introduce among the secular lessons which are meant for usefulness
and advancement in this world, that lofty and holy teaching which
trains the soul for heaven. The irreverent and fierce assaults
recently made upon a praiseworthy effort of the Superintendent of
Education in this Province to introduce a special work for moral
and religious instruction amongst our common school pupils, testify
too plainly the difficulty of supplying that want.

I have confidence in the good intentions and righteous efforts of
that venerable gentleman to do what he can for the amelioration of
the evils which the absence of systematic religious teaching of the
young must induce; so that we may have a hope that, from his tried
zeal and unquestionable ability, a way may be devised by which such
essential instruction shall be imparted, and the terrible evils we
deplore to some extent corrected.

In response to this portion of his address, Dr. Ryerson addressed the
following note to the Bishop on the 1st of July.

I feel it my bounden, at the same time most pleasurable duty, to thank
you with all my heart for your more than kind reference to myself in
your official charge at the opening of the recent Synod of the Diocese
of Toronto; and especially do I feel grateful and gratified for your
formal and hearty recognition of the Christian character of our Public
School System, and of the efforts which have been made to render that
character a practical reality, and not a mere dead and heartless fo