maintain the dispensers. So that, at least in the extension of Christianity, we do not sell the gospel, but offer it: we do not calculate on a price, as in the operations of commerce, but have recourse to a bounty, that dread and deprecation of all the economists-without which, whatever the effect might be on the continuance of Christianity in old countries, the propa gation of it, at least in new countries, were altogether hopeless. Some may contend, that, on the principles of free trade, Christianity could be perpetuated wherever it is already planted; but few will have the hardihood to affirm, that, on these principles, its first settlement could have been effected in any land.

Let a bazaar be instituted for the sale of provisions; and, at the powerful and ever-recurring call of hunger, the multitude with one accord will flock daily to its portals, and with such a price in their hands too as will remunerate all the expenses of the establishment. Let the institute be a church, for distribution amongst them of the bread of life, or for the supply of their moral and religious wants; and its presence in the midst of them, with the weekly invitations of its Sabbath-bell, will fail to attract beyond the veriest handful of the surrounding population to this house of prayer—and, more especially, if the market-price for the accommodation and the service be expected at their hands. It may or it may not be filled to an overflow by hearers from all distances, who have both the wealth and the will to pay for their attendance. But hundreds often are the families in the precincts of this temple of piety, so near that the voice of its psalms may enter their dwellings, yet not awaken them from the insensibility of their spiritual death. In the midst of besetting opportunities do they abide in their fastnesses; and just because left, as the system of free trade leaves every one, to their own inclinations-are there thousands, nay millions, in our land, who, abandoned to themselves, and voluntary aliens from the light of the gospel, are left to live in guilt and die in grossest darkness.

We might thus go on to multiply extracts all-powerfully demonstrating the importance of providing religious instruction for those who are naturally indisposed towards it; but we are persuaded our readers in general are satisfied on this point, or, if any doubts remain, we would earnestly entreat them to read these Lectures for themselves.

The fourth Lecture on the circumstances which determine a government to select one denomina

tion of Christianity for the national religion, contains much powerful and original argument. After referring to early and to Jewish history, the Doctor proceeds:

The causes, as far as they are known to us, which led to the first establishment of Christianity as a national religion, might be stated in a few words. For centuries after the original promulgation of the gospel, it was not only an unprotected but a persecuted faith. Under this severe regimen it was nurtured into strength; and, from year to year, took deeper and firmer root -as if cradled by the storms, in the midst of which it grew into maturity; and it was only fed and fostered the more by every new edict that was framed for its extirpation-till converts were so multiplied, and the public mind was so far carried in its favour, as to leave it doubtful whether it was the piety of Constantine, or the policy of Constantine, which led to his espousal of Christianity, and determined him to throw the shield, not only of his imperial protection but of his imperial patronage over it. If the former explanation be the true one,-if the change of his profession originated in the power of truth and principle, then he but did upon his throne what a Christian parent does in his family. The one carried into effect the wishes of a Christianized heart over a larger, as the other does over a smaller sphere of operation. Each, by the arrangements of Providence, obtained a certain measure of ascendency over other minds and other consciences than their own; and, gifted as the one was with influence over an empire, and the other with influence over a household, we behold in each the example of a gift consecrated to the honour of Him who is the Universal Giver; and whom they now believed to be the author of that Christianity, sent down from heaven on purpose to rule and to regenerate the world. In compliance with this great duty, and as fellow-workers with God, the one did for his subjects what the other does for his children-provides them with a Christian education, as the best boon which a religious monarch can confer upon his people. On the supposition of the monarch being himself a Christian, such is the account, and such also we deem to be the vindication of that procedure, by which he awards a maintenance to the teachers of the gospel, and bids them, in return, carry the lessons and services of the gospel throughout his population. But he may have been no Christian; and policy, not principle, may after all be the key for the explanation of his conduct. He must then be tried by a different standard; and if he cannot be vindicated as a religious, he may at least be vindi

cated as a wise governor; and that, not because he conceded to the religion of the majority, but because he consented to place his subjects under the best moral regimen, for the formation of a virtuous and well-ordered commonwealth. If even the heathen of these days could say of Christians, behold how they love each other; if so palpable was the exhibition of their superiority, that, by general acknowledgment, they made the best citizens and the best soldiers in the empire-Constantine may have seen that, by the establishment of a universal Christian education, he best consulted, both for the economic well-being of his people, and for the prosperous administration of his own civil and political affairs. If we cannot speak to the sincerity of his principles as a man, we may at least speak to the soundness of his policy as a monarch; and although this vindication leaves the blemish of ungodliness and of political hypocrisy on the memory of Constantine, it lays no blemish on the compliance of the other party in this great transaction-we mean of the church, in having complied with the overtures which he made to them. We read of the earth helping the woman. But we no where read, that it is the duty of the woman to refuse this help, or to refrain from the facilities which are opened up to her by the hand of Providence, for the multiplication of her converts. He who can make the wrath of man to praise Him, can make the ambition of monarchs subserve the honour and extension of His own spiritual kingdom in the world; and the church, in prosecuting this subserviency, and labouring to make the most of it for the salvation of human souls, is but following the bequeathed duty of preaching the gospel to every creature-is but doing good unto all men, as she has the opportunity.

The following is Dr. C.'s idea of a territorial establishment:

3. And first, as to what is meant by a territorial establishment. The circumstance of its being an establishment, involves in it a legal provision for the clergyman. But, over and above this, suppose, that, in return for this provision, this clergyman has a certain geographical district, whether in town or country, assigned to him; and that he is expected to take an ecclesiastical cognizance of all the families within its limits. To perfect this arrangement, they must stand so related to his church, as to have a right of preference over all extra-parochial families to the occupation of its sittings; and he, on the other hand, should be so related to his parish, as, if not to have a right of entry into all the houses, at least to be bound in point of duty to make a tender to every house-holder who is willing to

receive him, of such ecclesiastical attentions and services as his time will permit him to bestow, and which might be conducive to the Christian good of himself and of his family. In other words, he is bound to superadd, as far as the people will let him, week-day and household to his Sabbath-day and pulpit ministrations. He is the minister not of a congregation only, as far as the greater number of our unendowed ministers are; but he is the minister both of a congregation and of a parish.

4. To illustrate this distinction between parochial and merely congregational ministers the more, we may point to those few instances, which exemplify what we have defined to be the essence or principle of an establishment, without at the same time that establishment being territorial. There is a legal provision to a certain amount, in the shape of a regium donum, for the Presbyterian ministers in the north. of Ireland-who are helped, in consequence, to congregate their hearers at lower seat-rents than would otherwise have been possible; but without any definite section of territory being assigned to them, within the limits of which they might exact an ecclesiastical surveillance or guardianship over one and all of the families. The minister is thus enabled, to surmount in so far the barrier in the way of his ministrations, which lies in the want of wealth on the part of the people; but there is no guarantee secured under such an arrangement, for surmounting that other barrier, which lies in their want of will. He has to do with his hearers; but there is nothing in such an economy, which at all necessitates him to do with those who are not his hearers. They may choose to attend him if they so like; but if they do not choose, they may accumulate in any numbers without the sphere of his observation, or at least without the sphere of his moral influence and control. If they do not come to him, there is nothing in this congregational, even though endowed system, which insures that he should go to them; and at this rate it is obvious, that whole masses of heathenism might be formed out of contiguous families, lapsing into their own native earthliness, and infecting each other with habits of irreligion. We can see how possible it is that, in such a state of things, the people should sink into a rapid and fearful degeneracy-while there are no forces in a system so imperfect, by which to recal them. The same economy obtained at one time in the United States of America-only, instead of the legal provision being confined to one sect, it extended to all that were in sufficient force to muster one or more congregations. But neither here does it appear, that any ministers had the charge and su

perintendence of all the families within a given district. They preached to those who came; but there was no understanding on the part of the state, from whom they received their maintenance, of any obligation on their part to take any cognisance, to go in quest of all within the limits of a certain assigned territory who did not come. The presbyterian establishment in Ireland is sectarian, but not territorial. In the northern states of America, so long as it subsisted, it extended to a congeries of sects; and may therefore perhaps on this account be also regarded as sectarian-yet neither was it ⚫ territorial. In the presbyterian establishment of Scotland, the episcopalian of England, and, we believe, all the religious establishments in Europe, the ministers have to do with parishes as well as congregations; and therefore they are both sectarian and territorial.

The Doctor then proceeds, by an appeal to experience, to demonstrate that it is in the territorial principle the great strength of an establishment lies; and he ably illustrates the working of this system from his own experience, and that of other able and benevolent individuals. At the same time, he with great propriety checks the overweening expectations of many.

We would not, he says, overstate our prospects of success in that great enterprise. We know it to be a work of slowness and difficulty. We are quite sensible that, with those who have arrived at manhood, and lived all their days in a state of exile from the ordinances of the gospelthat with many of them, the obstinacy of their habits, habits of neglect and nonattendance, is well-nigh irreclaimable. And therefore it is, that we count on a very gradual accession from the grown-up people of a newly-allocated parish, to its infant congregation. And yet all experience tells, that, even of these, a goodly number may be confidently expected-beginning perhaps with a small fraction of the whole, who, few at the first, draw others after them, till (the gregarious principle coming every year into fuller play) the regular, the respectful observance of church-going, ripens at length into one of the established proprieties of that little vicinage, which has been selected as the field of this momentous experimentthe experiment, we think, of all others, fraught with deepest interest both to the church and to the commonwealth. however confident of the final result, we demand time and patience for its successive footsteps. In the midst of all these bright anticipations, it is our melancholy

Yet

conviction, that many of the old and middle-aged of such a heretofore neglected population may never be reclaimed, even to the external decencies of Sabbath observation; and that the locality on which this apostolic enterprise is going forward, will be relieved from the spectacle of their profaneness or profligacy, not by their conversion, but by their death. Our best hopes, we confess, are associated with the coming up of another generation; and under a right treatment of the ductile and susceptible young, congregated in parishschools, and trained from earliest boyhood to a punctual attendance on the ministrations of the parish clergyman. He, if put in possession of a complete parochial economy, is on mighty vantage-ground-at all times of course a welcome visitor in those dependent seminaries, which have been reared for the express convenience of his operations, forming part and parcel of the machinery that has been committed to his hands; and where, without charging himself with the executive details of their week-day education-he, nevertheless, by the encouragement of his presence and the cognizance he takes of their presence and behaviour, might obtain the most wholesome ascendancy over the hearts and habits of his juvenile population. Over and above the juvenile influence, which, through the medium of their youth, he transplants into the bosom of families, these schools become the direct nurseries of his church-the feeders, as it were, of that grand reservoir, which, in return, becomes the centre and the fountain-head of a rich moral dispensation, to the neighbourhood around it; and so more prolific of blessings every year, as it rises onwards from its first slender beginnings-till filled to an overflow, even before the expiry of the present, or commencement of the succeeding age.

Having clearly evinced the importance of a territorial establishment, the lecturer proceeds to point out the necessity of a government supporting one denomination.

We ask you to conceive how impossible it is, to combine the full advantage and efficacy of this method, with the endowment of different sects. For, in the first place, how upon this system shall we parcel out the territory so as to make sure of a thorough ecclesiastical surveillancereaching overhead to all the families of any given portion of it? For shall we say first to the Baptist minister, You take charge of these contiguous streets in one part of the city, and of the two thousand people by whom they are occupied? Secondly, to the Independent minister, Here is the outline of your vineyard, in another part of the city, comprehending so many

of the courts and lanes and alleys which are to be found in it? Thirdly, to the Episcopalian, We assign to you this square, with its various outlets, stretching onward till the families come up to such a number as you can still overtake? And, extending the same system from the town to the country, shall it in like manner be pieced out geographically-so as along with the principle of a general endowment, by way of equal justice to all the sects, you may also secure the principle of a territorial operation, as being the only one by which to penetrate and pervade the mass of a community? At this rate, we shall have here a Presbyterian village; there, a Methodist township; somewhere else a landward domain, marked off either by natural or artificial boundaries; and within which the business of the paid instructor will, just as it happens, be to make Baptists of all, or Methodists of all, or Episcopalians of all, or Presbyterians of all. Each shade of opinion will have its own limits and its own localities; and, on the other hand, each locality, whether it be of town or country, will have its own theological designation. At this rate, the fair face of our island would be like the skin of one of Jacob's cattle-spotted, speckled, ring. streaked, with all the hues and varieties of sectarianism. At present the men of all parties can conveniently enough arrange themselves into congregations. But the government will not find it so convenient, if, attempting to be even-handed with all sects, and at the same time to provide a Christian education for all the people, it shall make the further attempt of arranging them into parishes.

It is quite obvious, that the people cannot thus be made over, at the arbitrary will either of civil ecclesiastical superiors -cannot thus be made over, in sections of contiguous households, to this one or that other denomination, just according to the locality in which they happen to reside. And if, to avoid this inconvenience, each shall be left to choose their own denomination, and government to endow all without respect to the territorial principle, then, on this system, all who choose to be Methodists may have their minister supported by the state; and all who choose to be Presbyterians may have theirs; and all who choose to be Episcopalians may have theirs; and all who choose to be Baptists or Independents, or of any other sect that is comprehended within the limits of scriptural and evangelical Protestantism, may have theirs. But what in the mean time becomes of that number, who relinquish, or never acquired, the habits of church-going, and choose to be nothing at all-a number altogether left by this system without guardianship and without observation,

and who are therefore sure to increase every year, and that either with or without an increase of population? There are no territorial ministers to look after these, or take any charge of them. Each minister is employed with the hearers of his own sect; and as to all others, he may presume that they belong to the minister of some other sect, and that, at all events, they lie without the scope of any care or cognizance on his part. It is obvious, both from the nature of the arrangement and from experience—the experience of America when it had its endowed ministers of various denominations, and of Britain when its parishes became too populous to be made the subject of territorial cultivation, that the families were left to recede, and accordingly did recede in larger multitudes every year, to the out-fields of entire heathenism.

And after further enlarging on this topic, the Doctor adopts as his conclusion, that

'The attempt to combine the territorial principle with an equal treatment of all the denominations, must be given up as impracticable; and some one denomination must be singled out, for an establishment whose ministers are to be charged over-head with the Christian education of the whole country-and, each in his own sphere, to have an oversight and a certain responsibility laid upon him, for the reli. gious knowledge and habitudes of all the families.'

The course of his argument here leads our author to refer to the Dissenters of a former age:

As Baxter and many others, who would have felt the abandonment of a national support for the clergy to have been a national abandonment of Christianity; and who, without ever once dreaming of such a support for themselves, demanded no more, and would have been fully satisfied with liberty and toleration.

I will not relinquish the hope of a consummation to all these differences; and that some high achievement of charity, a great and noble sacrifice at the shrine of true Christian patriotism, is still awaiting us. When once the habit of the Christian world is to think more on their articles of agreement, and less on their articles of difference; or, in other words, when they come to think more on that which is great, and less on that which is little-when principles on the one hand, and points on the other, shall hold their just relative proportion and place in the estimation of men,-then will the gravi. tating power which unites bodies to a common centre, prevail over the repul

sions which are almost all associated with the now rapidly fading, and we trust soon to be forgotten, wrongs of former generations. When once the Church of England shall have come down from all that is transcendental or mysterious in her pretensions; and, quitting the plea of her exclusive apostolical derivation, shall rest more upon that wherein the real greatness of her strength lies-the purity of her doctrines-her deeds of high prowess and championship in the battles of the faiththe noble contributions which have been rendered by her scholars and her sons to that Christian literature, which is at once ⚫ the glory and defence of Protestantismthe ready-made apparatus of her churches and parishes-the unbroken hold which, as an establishment, she still retains on the mass of society-and her unforfeited possessory right to be reckoned and deferred to as an establishment stillWhen these, the true elements of her legitimacy and her power, come to be better understood; in that proportion will she be recognized as the great standard and rallying-post, for all those who would unite their efforts and their sacrifices in that mighty cause, the object of which is to send throughout our families, in more plentiful supply, those waters of life which can alone avail for the healing of the nation. But the best and highest sacrifice of all were by the Dissenters of England, those representatives and descendants of the excellent ones of the

earth-the Owens, and Flavels, and Howes, and Baxters, and Henrys of a by-gone age-who rejoiced to hear of all the Christianity which there was in the church; and to see all which the church did, if but done for the Christian good of the people. We speak not of the sin of schism, of which we have sometimes heard, in language far too strong for any sympathy or even comprehension of ours. But we speak of the blessings of unity; and we confess how greatly more it is endeared to us, since made to perceive, that, only by an undivided church, only by the ministers of one denomination, can a community be out and out pervaded, or a territory filled up and thoroughly overtaken with the lessons of the gospel.

We will not weaken the effect of these arguments by any further remarks. The whole of these Lectures deserve serious and attentive perusal. There may be minor points on which all may not agree, but they are full of weighty and powerful observation and argument, and will, we doubt not, dispose many who have hitherto thought lightly of our establishment to form a more just, and therefore a more favourable, idea of its value and importance.

THE Common and prevailing evils of Wakes, or country feasts, namely drunkenness, cursing and swearing, gambling and cheating, anger and malice, and Sabbath-breaking, are here strongly and plainly pointed out. Alas! says Mr. Venn, still greater iniquities may arise from them; and the intemperate drinking, the licentious dancing, and singing, and midnight revelling too often end in such things as it would be a shame even to speak of. How many of the most wretched and de

Seeleys. Pp. 24.

graded beings date their ruin from the wake. We strongly recom

mend this sermon to the attention of parents, masters, and heads of families. It is most evident that the annual return of the Sunday wake is attended with gross and crying evils alike destructive to the present peace and future happiness of immense multitudes. Such promiscuous assemblies should therefore be as far as practicable discouraged.