progress of scriptural education, the union of Protestant Christendom, and the spread of the glorious Gospel of Christ throughout the world."

THE NEW ORDER IN COUNCIL FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF EPISCOPAL REVENUES.

We are highly gratified that the Government has at length taken such an important step as this measure promises to be, in the conservation of the revenues of the Church. We are no advocates for a system which should be found to grind down the incomes of our bishops to the pinching point of niggardliness; but we have always protested as much against the amounts which some of our prelates have received, as against the mode in which they have become possessed of them. Of course, in the provision and operation of any plan that Government has formed, due regard has been paid to the interests of those bishops who have for years been occupants of sees, and who have not pledged themselves to hold them subject to the future settlement of Parliament. The Order in Council, therefore, only places under its provisions those bishops who have been appointed subsequently to 1st Jan., 1848. Its main features are,-first, that all these bishops shall twice a year return accurate statements of their revenues to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and that this body shall make the proper adjustment, so as to secure to the holder of the see, his allotted income, and no more. One other important point is, that provision, by which it is ordered that, whenever the fine for the renewal of bishop's leases shall exceed £100, the whole matter is to be absolutely referred to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, for them to arrange as they shall think best. The Commissioners are also empowered to enter into arrangements

for the above purposes with those bishops whose cases do not fall within the absolute order in question. The Times newspaper has a passage upon this head, which, though sarcastically severe, is not wholly unmerited by that portion of the Episcopate which it seems to point to. We could most earnestly wish that the idea thrown out by our friend "C. A." in one of our late numbers, could be carried into effect; and that our bishops, altogether unincumbered with the management of Church property, should be placed on the same footing, as to income, as are the judges of the land.

DEATH OF THE REV. JAMES CRABB.

We cannot but notice with regret the removal by death of the above excellent minister of Christ. Although not within the pale of our own communion, he "was a minister of the true sanctuary," and was ordained by God himself to preach the Gospel wherever he found souls that were perishing for lack of its knowledge. The Rev. J. Crabb, although well known and valued as the minister of a large chapel in Southampton, was chiefly distinguished by the interest which he took in endeavouring to

reach the hearts and influence the lives of the Gipsey tribe. A morning paper, in announcing his decease at the age of 77, remarks, that "he made no pretensions to learning, and only professed a knowledge of the Scriptures and of the human heart." Again, "he was respected by the clergy and the ministers of all dissenting congregations for his piety, sincerity, and usefulness." Besides his labours amongst the Gipsies, he assisted materially in the establishment of various charitable institutions. Indeed to him it was given, in his humble measure, to do much for the glory of God.

In a short notice of a publication by the Hon. and Rev. M. Barrington, called "The Child's Preacher," it was observed that our Church system wanted alteration to enable us to gain the attention and secure the interest of children in the ministrations of God's house. The present round of services, and the style and language of our sermons, are very little, if at all, calculated either to arrest the minds of children, or to awaken in them those feelings of love for the Sabbath and its public occupations which it should be our study to implant in their tender breasts.

From the earliest years in which children are brought with their parents to church, to their attainment of the age of ten or twelve, they can really gather but little, that prevent the services from being a weariness to them instead of a pleasant and a profitable employment of Sabbath hours. There may be some few who, with earlier development of intellect than others, may catch and appropriate some little seeds of Divine knowledge, that may be wafted over the heads of the many, and only find lodgment in the hearts of older OCTOBER-1851.

persons, but we are persuaded that the evil arising to the religion of the past, the present, and the future generations, from the present almost thorough want of suitable public instruction for children, is not justly estimated.

Often and often has this subject occurred to us as our eyes have fallen upon long rows of Sabbath school children, with difficulty brought and kept under the necessary restraint of order, but who are in the mass, sitting, standing, or kneeling, without the slightest feelings of interest or profitable employment. They are there because they must be; and with the most part it is a great relief when the service is over. With this class, too, it must be remembered that the children come straight from the previous confinement and occupations of the Sunday school, from a routine of lessons and Scripture reading, and in their case it is more than ordinarily essential that their attention should be at once freshened and sustained by services more adapted to their comprehension, and of more direct application and interest to children of such tender years. Nor with regard to the

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children of the higher classes in our churches, is there any exception to the bad effects of this want of public ministerial adaptation to the minds of the young. They may or may not possess greater home privileges, in the shape of a religious education, than their poorer brethren, although sometimes the religious knowledge of a Sundayschool child might put some child of higher birth to the blush; yet the eye of the clergyman cannot range along his pews and not be pained by the listless and thoroughly uninterested manner too commonly exhibited by the young members of his flock. We cannot but feel that there is a cause for all this, and that had the juvenile occupants of those benches and pews the sense and the courage to speak, they would reply to many a complaint of inattentive and improper conduct, that those services were wearisome and profitless which had so little in them that they could understand, and which were in length and language so unfitted for their age. The zealous minister may have his occasional, perhaps, annual, sermon to the young, and his monthly Bible classes for the young, and juvenile Bible classes for the still more youthful members of his charge; but these engagements will be comparatively of little value, if he neglect, systematically, Sabbath after Sabbath, to feed with fitting food the tender lambs of his flock. A recent number of a valuable Scottish periodical* has encouraged us again to bring forward this important question, as it proves that we are not singular in thus remarking upon a great and most injurious deficiency in the general exercise of the christian ministry. In its pages we find the following valuable remarks:

The Christian Treasury. October, 1851.

"We know how to sympathise with children in their sanctuary privations. The pulpit seldom gives them evidence that it cares for their souls, or that the gospel was meant for them.

"To children the gospel ought to be preached. They should indeed be required to attend the ordinary ministrations of God's house with their parents, for though they may glean from them little positive instruction, they will get good impressions, and they will gain a valuable discipline from regularly attending public worship, from feeling the awe of a solemn religious assembly, and from hearing truths which they cannot understand, yet which they perceive the adult hearers understand. But children need instruction as well as good impressions; they need to know that the messages and invitations of the gospel are designed for them as well as for their fathers. Accordingly the gospel should occasionally be preached to them.

"Preaching to children is supposed to be a difficult undertaking. Still it is an imperative duty; and what ought to be done, can be. It differs from ordinary preaching chiefly in being more simple, in presenting the truths of the gospel in concrete forms and in their elementary aspects. It is sometimes said that preachers ought to be understood by their juvenile hearers, since, if they are intelligible to them they certainly will be to adults. A distinguished preacher used to read his discourses before delivering them, to an illiterate but pious female domestic, and what she could not very well take in, he struck out of his Here is a high sanction of the principle just stated; but notwithstanding this endorsement, we cannot admit the soundness of the principle. It applies to some classes of sermons, but not to all, not to most. Adult hearers, whether converted or not, demand a range of discourse beyond the wants and above the capacities of children. Intelligibleness is not the only requisite in preaching. There is an error and an evil in reducing

sermons.

pulpit ministrations to the lowest grade of comprehension. The tendency is to render them feeble and barren; and the effect must be to restrict both the subjects and style of discourse within too narrow limits. Preaching should always be evangelical, but it should be unfettered in its range; from the level of the common understanding, it should rise to heights of argument, and plunge into deeps of truth, often pressing on the boundaries of men's vision, that it may enlarge the field of their knowledge. Even in preaching to children there may be an extreme of simplification, but they require much more than adults of average intelligence. It is in this sense that the gospel ought to be preached to them-the same gospel, but in its simple elements, conveyed in a natural easy style, and with a genial spirit.

66 Preaching to children is calculated to make the impression upon their minds that they are among the subjects of the gospel's claims. This may be told them by their parents at home, and it may be reiterated in the Sabbath school, but it will not have its full effect unless it is enforced from the pulpit. Christ's ministering servants, commissioned to declare his word to sinners, must preach to children as perishing sinners, and press the gospel claims home upon their hearts, aided by the solemn associations and sanctions of the house of God.

"Again, preaching to children is an indispensable part of training, by which right habits of hearing the gospel are formed. While children go to church, not as hearers, they must form habits unfavourable to their ever becoming good hearers. When not asleep, their minds are vacant, or their thoughts are wandering over the world without, or they are gazing about them, or they smile, or whisper; then they feel the checking hand of the parent, or meet the reproving look of the preacher, and then they try to sit stock still, but they do not hear any more than before they were called to their proprieties. This process operating for years,

makes children mechanical where they ought most to be moral and rational, slavish where they ought to be most free. They form the habit of attendance at church, but not the better habit of attention. They become sitters, starers, sleepers, but not hearers and worshippers. Pastors well know how defective are the habits of hearers generally; may they not themselves be chargeable in a great measure with this evil? Can they reasonably expect adults to be good hearers so long as they neglect to train them in childhood, and early lay the foundations of good hearing habits?

"Furthermore, preaching is an indispensable instrumentality for conveying religious instruction to children. Neither parental nor Sabbath school instruction is sufficient ordinarily. Few parents or teachers are qualified to lead youthful minds into the knowledge of the Scriptures, and to unfold to them their relations and duties, with that precision, clearness, force, and unction, which are so desirable in a spiritual guide.

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Indeed, pastors generally feel inadequate to this task, and hence in part the infrequency of sermons to children. It is thought that peculiar talents are required to interest and instruct juvenile hearers. This is so undoubtedly; but it is no more true that the minister needs peculiar talents, than that other teachers of children do; still there is no lack of other teachers."

It may now be asked, is it enough then to meet this evil, if our pulpit addresses should be so composed as to bring a great and always important portion within the comprehension and attraction of the minds of the young? We think not. That which is wanted to train up these imyoung mortals in Divine knowledge, in active christian duties, and in valiant soldiership for Christ on earth, and preparedness for their heavenly inheritance,-is, for the first years of

youth at all events, a weekly separate system of public ministerial instruction, in which the devotional services employed shall be more suitable in length and character, and the form of address so varied as to combine the catechetical with the ordinary style of sermons from the pulpit. Here the children of all classes should weekly meet as one fold of Christ's lambs, gathered together to receive spiritual food from the hands of His under shepherds. In most of our evangelical parishes surely thus much might be managed in winter the Sabbath afternoon, and in summer the evening, might be given up to this more immediate service and instruction for the young; and were the subject to be brought before our ecclesiastical rulers, they might without much difficulty be brought to consent to such an adaptation of the liturgy, and such a selection of lessons as might be most profitable for such interesting congregations of Christ's little ones. Both the bishops and their clergy might be thoroughly assured that such a systematic course of pastoral juvenile instruction would be found to alter most materially the character and re

ligious acquirements of those who come up in after years as candidates for Confirmation.

We could greatly enlarge this paper by going at length into the various foundations for catechetical instruction, which it might be well to adopt. We may however instance not only our own Catechism, but also that of Dean Nowell, the Shorter Catechism of Scotland, the Heidelberg Catechism, the various Protestant Catechisms of the present day, and, in many respects, the admirable series written by Dr. Burgess, late Bishop of Salisbury. In most of these the minister, who is deeply concerned that his young charge should be fully informed of true christian and protestant faith, will find ample material for sound scriptural instruction, while from the volume of God's own Word he can draw at all times abundant matter for precept and example at once the most striking and attractive. Let us see to it that we do not suffer the young to perish in our Sabbath ministration, while we are feeding, according to the ability given to us of God, their older fellow worshippers.

H.

In our previous article on this subject we examined one leading reason why we assemble to hear instruction from the Scripture. We stated that reason to be a belief that the Scripture is the Word of God; and we endeavoured to give a summary view of the evidence in favour of that position, and

shewed, that if the Scriptures are the inspired Word of God, then it is the duty of the creature to seek instruction from them, and to obey their injunctions, by waiting upon God in the house of prayer, both to hear His Word preached and to call upon His Now this alone should be a

name.