where discipline is attempted, it seems to fail before this base temptation; it "rots to nothing at the next great thaw." Mr. Ridley, of Hambledon, said, we believe, that the introduction of beer-shops had undone in two years all the good he had done in twenty-five.

The "London Temperance Intelligencer," No. 15, gives the following illustration of the moral powerlessness of the school systems of this day.

"A respectable teacher of a Sabbath school near London, made enquiry relative to the character of the first one hundred children admitted to the school. The character of only sixty-five could be ascertained, but of these thirty-eight had become confirmed drunkards! five had been transported! one had been the cause of his mother's death at a public house! Of the others several had been occasionally drunk. Only two had joined a Christian society."

Mr. Slaney proved from certain parliamentary returns, &c. which he read at a recent meeting of the British Association, that the amount of crime has nearly doubled in the course of twelve years, and the quantity of spirits consumed has trebled in twenty years.

One lesson we ought to learn from the dreadful statements contained in the Reports before us, which, though exaggerated in some points, are, we believe, in the main, true-viz. humility. We compare ourselves with certain by-gone ages, and somewhat unfairly, we compare our intentions with their performances; our hopes with their disappointments. Notwithstanding their high pretensions, whose very height was a reason of their many failures, we throw into the scale against them all the exceptions, anomalies, miscarriages, degeneracies, languishings, and slumberings of their systems, and every flaw and blot we can discover. Whereas fairness suggests that we should compare design with design, results with results. For the future then, when we compare the actual religion of the nineteenth century with the actual religion of any other ages, whether the 14th or the 15th, we should bear in mind, amongst other things, the appallingly rapid increase of the sin of drunkenness, disclosed and proved by the Report before us.

Can a worse case be made out against the last century, than against the present? Was the Church really then more inefficient than now? Surely the dead bones of a true prophet had more virtue in them than the living system.

Again, what mockery do all these results throw on the confident calculations of worldly wisdom. Locke, in his Second Letter on Toleration, p. 360, mentions, that in his time, licences to sell ale could not be granted to any but members of the Church of England, who were obliged, therefore, to receive the sacra NO. LI.—JULY, 1839.

ment in her communion. Doubtless, the politicians of that day smiled at those who were bold enough to predict, that dispensing with this qualification would make public houses a greater evil, and increase drunkenness. But who now can assert the contrary of that prediction, if it was ever ventured? A few years since, no public-house could be licensed (and beer-shops there were none) without the leave of the clergyman. Now, he is out of the question. A new publican has given his house-warming, or a license "to be drunk on the premises" is stuck over a cottage door, before the unhappy clergyman has heard a word about the matter. We ask,-Are things better for it? Let the Report before us answer the question.

Now we are far from upholding the dangerous rule that results are always a fair test of systems. But, when any party atta any truth or institution professing to be of any Divine right and authority, on the very ground of its apparent failure, and sets up itself instead, on the ground of its own success; we think we may reasonably require it to show, at least, more success than the system it dethrones; and we think that the failures, which might be only stumbling blocks in the way of legitimacy, are absolutely fatal to the claims of a usurpation. We ask then, who has not heard of the morality of Scotland, the one sovereign equivalent for the self-will and waywardness of her religious economy? But on the impartial testimony of the books before us we are informed that " great as the need of temperance is in England itself, the necessity for reform is even more manifest in Scotland." The consumption of spirits, as far as can be ascertained from parliamentary returns, is in that country considerably more than twice as much for each person as in England, and is much more than even in Ireland. Dr. Gordon says that he found while studying at Edinburgh, that in all the bodies he had occasion to open, "there was, more or less, some affection of the liver; and I account for it," he says, " from the fact, that these moral and religious people were in the habit of drinking a small quantity of spirits every day."-(Mr. Baker, p. 145.) The parliamentary Report on Drunkenness," says (p. 143), “In Scotland, where they drink about three times the quantity of spirit that is consumed in England, the number of insane persons. is about three to one, as compared with the number in England.' But "Mr. Gowans affirms, as the result of his extensive observation, that ale and porter are producing more intemperance in Edinburgh than even ardent spirits." (Rep. p. 66.) Who, again, has not heard the oft-told tale of the wonders John Wesley achieved; the barbarous districts he humanized, Wales, the collieries, Cornwall, and many other a dreary region. Yet, strange to say, while a thriving sect of shopkeepers are raising 200,000l.

to celebrate the centenary of Methodism, the moral geography of those districts, whereon Wesley's fame, and the pretensions of his society are mainly founded, continues the same as before Wesley ploughed the soil. In all these places, the Methodists themselves proclaim that Tee-totalism is absolutely necessary to revive the people-to revive that class for whose special use Methodism was founded, and to bring them over to a rational listening state of mind. The charm of Methodism is therefore extinct. Its trumpet no longer wakes the echoes, now that its master's voice is asleep. The system has worked for a century, and what is the result? A population, born and bred in that system, is now, by the showing of Methodists themselves, lapsing through drunkenness, into utter irreligion, and even barbarism: and nothing now can save them, but a mere social bond-Tee-totalism.

"WALES.-The prosperity of the societies in this country is truly astonishing. The alteration for the better, in a civil and religious point of view, is so very eminent to a resident in Wales, that if he has any remains of Christian feeling in him, he is ready to exclaim, 'This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. It is stated in 'The Friend,' that six hundred ministers have signed the pledge in North Wales alone. Great revivals of religion have commenced in some of the churches, and there is a continual increase of their members.

"It is computed that about one hundred thousand persons have signed the pledge in Wales. But a few years since, and the whole of that principality seemed sunk in incurable bondage under the cwrw dda, or strong ale, of which they were so proud."-Rep. p. 28.

People who either in life or learning have outlived a few generations of ephemeral schemes, are apt at last, when any new and flourishing project is forced upon their notice, to ask the question, How will it wear? There is great difference in wearing. Some kinds of building and of apparel wear very ill, as people with short purses know to their cost. Some friendships wear very ill, because their bond is transient. The church has worn 1800 years; and some of her rivals, to do them justice, have worn very respectably; one of them twelve, several of them three centuries, though with an obvious decay. Now we ask, how will temperance societies wear? Will they be still vigorous when they have ceased to be fresh? Will they rise again and again as new as ever from the grave of neglect, denial, contempt, and oblivion? Will they survive secret casuistry and open renunciation? When after a few short years the Gospel and the temperance cause appear to the sensual equally dull, hacknied, and worn out, will the latter be still, as its advocates say it now is, the stronger agent of the two? Or will it, as we think, be numbered among the spurious motives and deceitful stimulants, which excite, eventually to harden, the heart of man?

ART. VIII.-Lectures on the Establishment and Extension of National Churches. Delivered in London from April 25th to May 12th, 1838. By Thomas Chalmers, D.D. and LL.D., Professor of Theology in the University of Edinburgh, and Corresponding Member of the Royal Institute of France. Glasgow: Collins. London: Hamilton & Adams. 8vo. pp. 182. It is above a year since the newspapers informed us that the cause of national Establishments was deriving a great accession of strength from the Lectures delivered by Dr. Chalmers in London. For some days he divided the attention of the London world with the Zoological Gardens and Exeter Hall; and after the requisite number of pirated copies had been circulated and disclaimed during their delivery, Messrs. Hamilton and Adams extended the benefit of his lucubrations to the more rustic parts of our land. All this, if it were allowed to pass away with the other amusements of a London spring, might be well enough. A London May without its excitements would resemble, we presume, one in the country without leaves and flowers; and we have no right to deprive the citizens of their spring. But when we see a disposition in the minds of many professed Churchmen to adopt the argument of these Lectures as their vantage-ground in defending the English Church, it becomes our duty to inquire into the fitness and wisdom of such a course.

That the ground is one hitherto unoccupied by English Churchmen we need not say. There had been no need to bring a Presbyterian professor from beyond the borders, if, in defence of our Church, he had only to tell us what we might read in Hooker or Beveridge, in Stillingfleet or Hammond. Of this Dr. Chalmers was well aware. He knew that he was inviting the English Church to take up a new position, and rest her defence on new grounds. In a passage with which most of our readers must be familiar, he anticipates visions of glory for the time "when the Church of England," not merely her injudicious children, but the Church herself, "shall have come down from all that is transcendental or mysterious in her pretensions," "when the true element of her legitimacy shall come to be better understood." Yet so sanguine was he in the issue of his summons that he speaks generally, not only in his own name, but in that of the Church of England. "We speak not of the sin of schism." (p. 172.) "We must willingly concede of sectaries we could name, that they are one with us in all which is vital, and only differ from us in certain minute and insignificant peculiarities." The lecturer plainly has entered into a partnership with the Church which he so obligingly defends. It is, Ego et Rex meus, I and the Church of England;

I and the bench of bishops; I and the episcopal clergy; all of us are in full theological agreement with "a very large majority of the non-conformists throughout England, who in our apprehension are so near in theology to the Establishment, that for ourselves, we cannot make out a principle in any of the differences on which they continue to stand without its pale." "We cannot deny the pure and effective ministration of Baptists, and Congregationalists, and Presbyterians, and many other sectaries, all varying circumstantially from the Church of England and each other; yet all in essence and effect teaching the same Christianity."(p. 133.) And so, gentlemen, having shaken hands all round, let us sit down and try if we cannot devise a theory which will bring Churchmen and Quakers, Baptists and Presbyterians, Methodists and Independents, into the same unanimity and harmony as regards Establishments, which already so happily prevails in their doctrinal views.

It is this problem which Dr. Chalmers solves in the Lectures before us; and we now proceed to give a digest of his argument as clearly and honestly as we can.

And first, the axiom of the Tully in this new Tusculan, is the great truth, that religion is the main cure for all evils, moral, social, and political, and that by making our countrymen truly religious, we shall best provide for happiness, both individual and public. The governing power of the nation therefore, is bound in policy and conscience, to do all that it can towards making the people religious. The best way of effecting this object is to divide the whole land into small sections, each of which shall contain at most about 1000 inhabitants, and to station in each of them a religious teacher, for whose maintenance the state must provide, (as it does for that of judges, policemen, and others,) and who is to bargain, on his part, that he will furnish religious instruction to all within that district. But here the lecturer is met with an objection drawn from political economy. This establishment, it seems, is inconsistent with the principle of free trade. Religious teachers are " dealers in religion," and the state should give no bonus on any kind of wares, but leave the price and supply of candles and Christianity to be regulated by the degree of wish which each man may feel for light, whether natural or spiritual. To this objection Dr. Chalmers replies (in his Second Lecture), that it is perfectly true that religious teachers are "dealers in those things which are necessary to godliness," supplying religion at a "market-price." But he argues that we cannot apply to religion the principles of free trade, because irreligious men have no sense of their need, and therefore no longing for its supply; nothing analogous to that hunger which renders it needless for government to interfere in order to tempt them to