Page images
PDF
EPUB

Only among the English Dissenters is found that highmindedness, which despises the enemy; and sees scarcely reason even for taking precautions.

The establishment of Popery in Ireland as a National Church, will be a vast step towards that ascendancy which Rome covets. Equality must first be realized, before the final step can be taken. But equality, whatever statesmen may imagine, cannot long be maintained. If it be right that Popery should be a Church of Ireland, it is indisputable that it ought to be the Church. And the Church, it will surely be, in a very short period after its endowment by the State shall be resolved upon.

As the Church of Ireland, however, it will soon make short work with Protestantism, and especially with Protestant Dissenters. The Austrian government is said to be a paternal government; but no sooner did a few peasants in the Tyrol discover the duty of reading the Bible, and the sin of idolatry, than this paternal government said to them, under the dicta of the priests, "You must go: you cannot be permitted to live here, except you obey the Church! And so, just now, in Madeira, as soon as a Scotch physician has taught a few of the islanders to read the Bible,—the mob, under the direction of the priests, straightway harry them out of the island. There will be no better fate for the Irish Protestants, so soon as Romish sway is nationally acknowledged.

Our conclusion, then, is, that if ever there was a crisis at which it was an incumbent duty on all Protestants to make common cause against the advancing enemy,-this is the moment. what we would earnestly recommend is, that both parties,-Churchmen and Dissenters,-should earnestly set themselves to frame some plan of united action, as the only course by which the common foe can be successfully resisted.

A LETTER TO HIS GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, ON THE PRESENT WANTS OF THE CHURCH. Fourth Edition. London: Seeleys. 1846.

THE publication of this little pamphlet has proved an event in the history of the Church. The station, character, and earnestness of the writer, have gained for it immediate attention. And, when seriously considered, the case it presented could not be overlooked or trifled with. The following are some of the facts of the case:

"Let us look the evil in the face. We cannot conceal it if we would. Enemies to the Church, for the sake of exposing its defects,-friends, to enlist the public sympathies in favour of their several schemes of improvement, -economists, for the sake of building up some favourite theory with an array of figures and calculations,-have exhibited the principal facts till they have become familiar to us all. Let me give a few as a specimen of a hundred more, showing how completely inadequate is our existing machinery for the spiritual education of the people.

"The population gathered within eight miles of St. Paul's, is computed at 2,250,000. For the instruction of this vast multitude there are about 500 clergymen, or one for 4500 souls. But the instances are not few in which 10,000 and more are allotted to a single man as his flock.

"It has lately been ascertained that in Lambeth, and the five adjoining parishes, there are no less than 20,000 children without the means of education; and as this is no new evil, the parents, in a vast number of cases, are as untaught as the children. The population of the metropolis, and the suburban parishes, increases at the rate of 30,000 a year. To keep pace with this growth, fifteen churches should be built annually, and two ministers appointed to each. I need not say with all the efforts of the last ten years, since the Bishop of London's scheme was made public, how short the supply falls of this demand. Probably not half the increase has been provided for, and the other half is added to the previously existing mass of some MILLION AND A HALF who are living without any public acknowledgment of the Almighty.

"Deplorable as this case is, if we take the whole metropolitan population, and divide it amongst the metropolitan Churches and Clergy, it is far worse when particular instances are selected. Many of the City parishes are abundantly supplied. Some of the most populous districts, thanks to the recent zeal for Church-building among the laity, and to the unwearied labours of many admirable Incumbents and Curates who ply their daily task in courts and alleys, are thoroughly explored and faithfully overlooked. But there are others near them, absolutely waste and desert as regards spiritual cultivation, where the people are so many, and the teachers so few, that the spiritual provision made from public resources becomes a perfect mockery.(pp. 4, 5.)

Beneath the shade of Westminster Abbey there is a district which every man ought to explore for himself, who wishes to know what the worst parts of London are, and to understand the kind of work which is before us, if we propose to pour the light of Christian truth into all its dwellings. To one of the two parishes which comprise it, a Scripture Reader has lately been sent at the request of the Incumbent. One of the regulations of the Society which employs him requires a weekly return to be made to the Clergyman of the houses visited. To distinguish the religious profession of the several families who inhabit them, the Reader is furnished with a paper divided into four columns. These are headed with the letters C, D, R and N.--C standing for Churchman, D for Dissenter, R for Roman Catholic, and N for a person who owns no brotherhood with any Christian community. Now, of

:

the visits made by the Reader, in five successive days, the result is as foilows:- On the first day, he visited families containing one hundred and fifty individuals and of these, one hundred had no home in the Christian Church, no preference for any mode of Christian worship. On the second day, the proportion of these persons was yet larger, seventy being their com plement, to nineteen who owned a relation to one body of Christians or another. On the third day,-by far the best-it is just half-and-half. On the fourth, for thirteen Church-people and fourteen Dissenters, we have sixty-two with the black letter N annexed; and the numbers on the fifth day are almost exactly the same. So in the metropolis of Christian England, out of five hundred and fifty persons visited and talked with in succession, three hundred and sixty, or two-thirds very nearly, had no such connexion with the Church as to be assignable to any one religious body.'

And Mr. Kingscote presses his suit, with a warmth which will not hear of denial.

"You must excuse me, My Lord, if I speak strongly; but I am indeed grieved to find that responsible persons, occupying the watch-towers of our city, and having great influence with rulers and with people, remain satisfied, while nothing is being attempted on any large scale to redress evils like these. It may be that they will baffle us when we rise up to meet them; for our sins the Almighty Ruler may have let this host of untaught citizens grow and grow, till we can cope with it no longer, and Christianity, possibly, must now surrender to the powers of evil the ground which they have held so long. But who would dare to come to such a conclusion till remedies were exhausted? New methods should be tried, if old ones have failed. A searching investigating spirit should be at work. Devotion to precedents should not pass for the highest wisdom, nor enterprise in a high and holy cause be regarded as wickedness and folly. If need be, something should be ventured for God and souls. For the Church to stand still, while all the world is astir and busily adapting its institutions to its wants, is, I make bold to say, at least as dangerous as the experiments of the rashest ecclesiastical innovators, and much more full of hazard than any thing which I shall venture to suggest in the following pages.

66

And let it be remembered that, in this matter of supplying spiritual instruction, through the Established Church, to the masses of our countrymen, we are left to our own resources. Your Grace doubtless remembers Sir Robert Peel's declaration, when at the height of ministerial power, in 1842. No hope was held out, while those who were considered the special friends of the Church were the dominant party in the State, that any grant for purposes of Church Extension would be voted by Parliament. We are cast upon the energies and zeal of individual Churchmen, or must trust to the wisdom of the Episcopal Bench to propound some general measures, and devise some new expedient for the expansion of our ecclesiastical system. From the latter quarter, since your Grace's views have been made known, even sanguine men are ceasing to hope for much. Consultations at Lambeth, we fear, do not embrace questions like these on which I am touching. No rumour reaches our ears of anything intended, or even canvassed, beyond the favourite expedient of late years, begging hard in all possible quarters for sufficient funds to build churches, with a given proportion of free sittings, which the bulk of the neglected population in our large towns never occupy. We would not have one Church less-we should like to have a thousand more. But with reference to the men for whom I plead,-those to whom Christianity has become a strange thing,-such an addition would be just as worthless as schools of philosophy to the grossest and most ignorant boor. The experiment has been tried, and the failure is complete. Not one working-man in ten, anywhere, speaking of our large towns, and in many districts not one in fifty, goes near a Church once in a month. This is the fact which your Lordship and the heads of the Church have to deal with. Let me ask, most re

spectfully, but with the earnestness of one who feels the tremendous import of such a statement, what is done, or doing, or imagining, to meet and correct this particular evil, to reclaim from positively heathenish indifference to religion the untold multitudes who are the nerves and sinews of our countsy? Can we be satisfied to let another generation go to their graves-without some manly, energetic effort to do our duty towards them? If they, who should be leaders, will not take their rightful place,-if men, whom God has called to be rulers in the Church, produce nothing before the country from which it can be inferred that their eyes are open to see what thoughtful, earnest men are deploring as a national calamity, at least, we might expect that they would thankfully accept what is offered them by others. Something better should be heard from them, in times like these, than civil acknowledgments of well-intentioned zeal, or damaging censures of every enterprise that has the look of novelty."-(pp. 7, 8.)

We have said that the publication of this letter has been an event. We mean, that it is already producing fruit. Measures are really contemplated, in good earnest, by some of the highest persons in the Church, which will at least remove from themselves the stigma, of reposing in quietness while myriads of souls are perishing.

PASTORAL ADDRESSES. By J. A. JAMES. 2 Vols. London : Religious Tract Society.

WE have great pleasure in recommending these valuable Addresses to the attention of our clerical and other readers. They are truly catholic in spirit and evangelical in statement: nor can we forbear expressing the peculiar interest which we feel in every such testimony from our Dissenting brethren to the great essentials of our common faith, seconded by a sincere endeavour "to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." The pious aspiration which concludes Dr. Doddridge's dedication of his admirable sermon-"The Evil and Danger of Neglecting Souls," is one which we have often admired, and which it may not be unseasonable, perhaps, to append to this brief notice. He is addressing "the associated Protestant Dissenting Ministers in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk," and thus expresses himself:—

The subjects of these Addresses are-On the increased Holiness of the ChurchSpirituality of Mind-Heavenly-mindedness-Assurance of Hope-Practical Religion -How to spend a profitable Sabbath-Christian Obligations-The Life of Faith-The Influence of older Christians-The Spirit of Prayer-Private Prayer- Self-Examination -Self Renunciation-On reading the Scriptures -The Duty of Meditation--Sin remembered-Proof of sanctified Affliction-Sorrow for the Death of Friends-Attendance on Week-Day Services-Justification-Religious Joy-Prayer and Practice-Spiritual Idolatry-A New Year's Solemn Warning. The Addresses are published, we believe, as separate halfpenny tracts, and are well adapted for circulation, or, in their collective form, for religious libraries. They are full of valuable instruction and appeal, expressed in a clear, forcible style.

[ocr errors]

"May each of you, in the sphere which Providence has assigned him, be a burning and a shining light! And may the lustre of your fervent and active piety awaken, if any of them slumber, our brethren of the Established clergy, to guard against that growth in the Dissenting interest, which must otherwise be the probable consequence of such measures! [Certain measures which he had just recommended.] May they all emulate the most faithful and zealous among us, in the purity of their doctrine, in the seriousness and spirituality of their address, in the vigilance of their pastoral inspection, in their tender care to train up the rising generation for God, and above all, in the distinguishing sanctity of their lives! This will unite our hearts in such mutual esteem and affection, that even while in different communions, we shall treat each other like brethren and friends, and fellowlabourers in the vineyard of Christ; far more endeared by our common love to our Divine Master, and the souls he has redeemed, than alienated by our different apprehensions, as to the particular mode by which that interest is to be promoted. The question between us will not then be, How much may we lawfully impose? and how much may we lawfully dispute?' But on the one side, it will be inquired, What may we wave?' and on the other, 'what may we acquiesce in, from a principle of mutual tenderness and respect; without displeasing our common Lord, and injuring that great cause of original Christianity, which he has appointed us to guard?' Thus may the flames of undissembled love purge away our dross, and cement us into one mass; where the union will be closer in proportion to the degree in which the metal is the nobler and the more refined! And thus may it cause those fetters to fall off, under the weight and the straightness of which, however they may have been gilded over, the worthiest persons that wear them must secretly groan! We are praying and waiting for that happy day, which whenever it appears, will be the glorious earnest of the revival of the Protestant and of the Christian cause. In the mean time, may each of us have a pleasing consciousness, that we are labouring to promote it; or at least that while we are waiting for the appearance of the great Physician among us, we do not, by our own rashness, exasperate those distempers, which in His absence we cannot heal!"-(Works, vol. iii. p. 234.)

This was written in 1742. May we hope that the Evangelical Alliance of 1846 will prove no mean embodiment of this excellent spirit, and that whether connected with that Alliance, or not, all sincere Christians in these "perilous times" will carefully study thus to advance "the revival of the Protestant and of the Christian cause.'

HILL OF ZION; or, the First and Last Things, illustrative of the present Dispensation. By the Rev. THOMAS WATSON, M.A. Minister of St. Philip's, Granville Square. London: Nisbet. 1846.

THE spiritual reader will find much in this excellent well-written volume, both to interest and edify him. It touches indeed upon "the deep mysteries of free grace," but it is " only to show," as the author observes, " that God is love-that all the doctrines of Scripture are doctrines according to godliness-that true divinity is always more practical than knowing-and that in every instance

« PreviousContinue »