“I, for one, must heartily thank Dr. Brenton for his most suggestive lecture. No, don’t look ‘castigated’ Doctor; ’tis a lecture for weight and worth, but of commendable brevity. Speaking for the ‘cloth’ I should like to say how much we owe to this educational revolution. A century ago, our Church was supposed to show some signs of decadence; to-day she is _quick_ to her remotest extremities. And why? simply because she has gone with the times in following up the advances of the ‘New Education.’ She, with the rest of you, perceives that the world has ever one great thing to do--to bring up the young in advance of the generation before them; that the sole valuable inheritance the present has to leave behind is--exalted national character. Wherefore, she has laboured assiduously on the two lines Dr. Brenton emphasises to-night--‘that Habit is _ten_ natures’; and, that the spiritual life must flourish or decay as it is duly fed and exercised, or allowed to lie idle and unfed. Therefore, is every clergyman instructed, above all, to minister to the young of his parish--of all classes. The growing soul cannot thrive upon husks--therefore must the truth be divested of the husks of the past, and clothed upon with the living thought of the present. The young soul must be taught its work, the spiritual exercises of prayer and praise, the bodily exercise of service; and as no man can teach what he does not know, the minister to the young must be qualified and ever active in these. Seeing these and kindred truths, our clergy are raising up about them a body of ardent young spirits to whom self-sacrifice is a law; labour in spiritual uplands a necessity. And for much of this progress, I say, we are indebted to the labours of the ‘New Educationists,’ whom we therefore gladly hold up with both hands.”