TO THE HOLY MEMORY OF JOHN KEBLE AND JOHN BRANTHWAITE, THIS ATTEMPT FIRST MADE IN CONCERT WITH THEM, TO ILLUSTRATE AN AUTHOR DEAR TO BOTH, IS NOW DEDICATED IN GRATEFUL RECOLLECTION OF THEIR APPROVAL, AND IN SAD CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE LOSS WHICH THEIR DEPARTURE HAS SEEMED TO BRING TO THIS, AS WELL AS TO MANY NOBLER EFFORTS FOR GOOD. PREFACE. HE notes which accompany this edition of the Church Porch have been compiled to facilitate the adoption of the book in upper Sunday classes in Schools. Most masters have felt a want of variety to be one great obstacle to the usefulness of Sunday teaching. How far the beaten round of Greek Testament, Epistles, Gospels and Collects, or the Church Catechism, which generally make up the Sunday curriculum, really subserves to Religious Education is a question that must have often presented itself to the Religious Instructor. The Church Porch, if well learned in youth, .ought to prove a valuable treasury of precept in manhood. The plainness of its morality, which forcibly insists on direct positive duties and on a sober common sense regard to the facts of human nature and the claims of Society, and the higher spiritual relations between man and God, which are not less distinctly and uniformly recognised as the basis and end of action, combine to |