11. Let me give thee this charge also.
Study our teachings and keep them for ever. Think not that they
are the ordinary homilies See above, § 4,
note 3.; for though they also
are good and trustworthy, yet if we should neglect them to-day we may
study them to-morrow. But if the teaching concerning the laver of
regeneration delivered in a consecutive course be neglected to-day,
when shall it be made right? Suppose it is the season for
planting trees: if we do not dig, and dig deep, when else can
that be planted rightly which has once been planted ill? Suppose,
pray, that the Catechising is a kind of building: if we do not
bind the house together by regular bonds in the building, lest some gap
be found, and the building become unsound, even our former labour is of
no use. But stone must follow stone by course, and corner match
with corner, and by our smoothing off inequalities the building must
thus rise evenly. In like manner we are bringing to thee stones,
as it were, of knowledge. Thou must hear concerning the living
God, thou must hear of Judgment, must hear of Christ, and of the
Resurrection. And many things there are to be discussed in
succession, which though now dropped one by one are afterwards to be
presented in harmonious connexion. But unless thou fit them
together in the one whole, and remember what is first, and what is
second, the builder may build, but thou wilt find the building
unsound.