Blair Collection > Practical grammar of the antient Gaelic, or, Language of the Isle of Man, usually called Manks

XXXVlll A SERMON.
no danger of an innovation while we can appeal to the good-
sense of the people. The great body of the people is always
influenced by opinion ; and as that opinion may or may not be
rights an ignorant people will, in the hands of designing men, bo
made the instruments of irremediable mischief : whereas the con-
stitution of our country challenges investigation, and the better
we understand it, and the more we examine it, the more it must
excite our admiration, attachment, and zeal. Ignorance alone
can be its enemy ; and the best guard to our established govern-
ment, both in Church and State, and their true security, wall
arise from instructing the poor, and from preventing those vices
and melancholy distresses which ignorance brings in its train ;
for " the destruction of the poor is their poverty.^^*
But if we add to all these considerations the advantages to bo
derived to individuals and the public, from the mode of religious
instruction intended more particularly to be communicated by
this institution, the utility of it will be placed in the most con-
vincing light ; for if ignorance be an enemy to labour, to the
arts, and to regular government, this is but a temporary evil,
and of short duration, affecting only this world, and " the things
of the world ;'* but that evil which affects the soul, and is of
eternal duration, demands our most serious attention; and, as
St. James has pronounced, " Let them know, that he who con-
verteth a sinner from the error of his way, shall save a soul
from death :'* and we then most effectually remedy those in-
equalities and evils which the Almighty permits to exist among
mankind when we become to the poor as the providence of God ;
when we attend not only to their temporal wants, but administer
to them the spiritual manna ; when, like the Saviour of mankind,
*' we go about doing good ',"-f far He divested himself of His
superior nature, and assumed the human ; He appeared upon
earth in the garb of a servant, that He might teach the poor
contentment, and the great humility. He came indeed to teach
His kingdom to the poor, and to hold out to them, in a more
* Pruv. X. 15. t Actsx. 38.