may experience himself, and far better constituted in heart and head we think him than those miserable men who have made his case the excuse for a tavern triumph over all that has hitherto saved our land from ruin, the effect of his publications will be felt long after his lips shall be closed for ever, and God shall have taken the cause of his insulted majesty into his own

hands.

These considerations prepare us to enter with the stronger feeling into the observations which were suggested to Dr. Chalmers, by the want of church room to give opportunity, on the day of the Princess's interment, for the whole of the British people to pour out their hearts before their Maker in humiliation and Godly sorrow. It was then seen how very scanty a provision has been made for a religious population, should the population, in consequence of the teaching afforded them, be seized with the desire of coming to church. To think that any one man whom curiosity had drawn upon that occasion for the first time perhaps into the temple of God, under circumstances particularly calculated to impress the truths of Scripture upon his heart, should find no admittance, is a circumstance truly distressing. It was surely not an occasion to be lost it afforded the most favourable opportunity that for many years has happened to the sacred ministry of giving a sudden extension to religious impressions; and perhaps the best that could have offered itself of repelling the effect of profane ridicule, and the sacrilegious perversion of prayer to ludicrous satire. That this unavoidable narrowness of room should have been more contracted by the doors of any church being closed against the people-that they should have been disappointed in any of their religious expectations on that extraordinary day-that a mercenary advantage should have been taken of the public feeling by the exaction of money for seats in the churches, are three facts which have excited in us sentiments very similar to those which we find in the little book which stands first at the head of this article:-the first was constitutionally wrong, the second both unkind and impolitic, and the third disgusting. We will only add with respect to the second of the above mentioned circumstances, that in this extreme dread of works of supererogation, there is great danger of falling below the complement of regular duty: for, in reality, how much less is the danger of too much than the danger of not enough; and how much safer for a clergyman to strive to answer the call of Heaven, than to keep within the limits of exertion prescribed by man.

To justify Dr. Chalmers's digressions it is to be observed that the whole strain of his discourse is to 'show that the only firm pillar of loyalty to the prince, as well as of obedience to the laws, is the righteousness of the people; and that no government can rest

secure but on this support: and to all this we cordially assent. We hear much of an alliance of church and state, but we much question whether in the present condition of the country, if we look to that alliance in a political view only, there is so much in it as is supposed; and we feel that we have Dr. Chalmers with us in maintaining that the true centre of union between the civil and the ecclesiastical polity is lodged with vital Christianity deep in the heart. It is a living, not a mechanical principle; spiritual rather than conventional; a coalition of the duties towards God and towards man, rather than a contract of reciprocal convenience. It is a permanent alliance, similar in its spirit and character to that mingled sentiment of loyal tenderness and religious humility, which we trust has lately run through the Christian part of this great people. It is on these grounds that from our very souls we bitterly lament the absolute exclusion of so large a proportion of the population of most of our great towns, but more especially of the metropolis, from the national church, from want of room; and shall quote Dr. Chalmers upon the subject with as much approbation of his reflections, as sorrow for the facts on which they are grounded.

"My next remark, then, on this subject, will be taken from a sentiment, of which I think you must all on the present occasion feel the force and the propriety. Would it not have been most desirable could the whole population of the city have been admitted to join in the solemn services of the day? Do you not think that they are precisely such services as would have spread a loyal and patriotic influence amongst them? Is it not experimentally the case, that, over the untimely grave of our fair princess, the meanest of the people would have shed as warm and plentiful a tribute of honest sensibility as the most refined and delicate amongst us? And, I ask, is it not unfortunate, that on the day of such an affecting, and, if I may so style it, such a national exercise, there should not have been twenty more churches with twenty more ministers, to have contained the whole crowd of eager and interested listeners? A man of mere loyalty, without one other accomplishment, will, I am sure, participate in a regret so natural; but couple this regret with the principle, that the only way in which the loyalty of the people can effectually be maintained, is on the basis of their Christianity, and then the regret in question embraces an object still more general; and well were it for us, if, amid the insecurity of families, and the various fluctuations of fortune and of arrangement that are taking place in the highest walks of society, the country were led, by the judgment with which it has now been visited, to deepen the foundation of all its order and of all its interests, in the moral education of its people. Then indeed the text would have its literal fulfilment. When the judgments of God are in the earth, the rulers of the world would lead the inhabitants thereof to learn righteousness.

"In our own city, much in this respect remains to be accomplished; and I speak of the great mass of our city and suburb population, when

I say, that through the week they lie open to every rude and random exposure; and when Sabbath comes, no solemn appeal to the conscience, no stirring recollections of the past, no urgent calls to resolve against the temptations of the future, come along with it. It is undeniable, that within the compass of a few square miles, the daily walk of the vast majority of our people is beset with a thousand contaminations; and whether it be on the way to the market, or on the way to the workshop, or on the way to the crowded manufactory, or on the way to any one resort of industry that you choose to condescend upon, or on the way to the evening home, where the labours of a virtuous day should be closed by the holy thankfulness of a pious and affectionate family; be it in passing from one place to another, or be it amid all the throng of sedentary occupations; there is not one day of the six, and not one hour of one of these days, when frail and unsheltered man is not plied by the many allurements of a world lying in wickedness-when evil communications are not assailing him with their corruptions-when the full tide of example does not bear down upon his purposes, and threaten to sweep all his purity and all his principle away from him. And when the seventh day comes, where, I would ask, are the efficient securities that ought to be provided against all those inundations of profligacy which rage without controul through the week, and spread such a desolating influence among the morals of the existing generation? Oh! tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon-this seventh day, on which it would require a whole army of labourers to give every energy which belongs to them, to the plenteous harvest of so mighty a population, witnesses more than one half of the people precluded from attending the house of God, and wandering every man after the counsel of his own heart, and in the sight of his own eyes-on this day, the ear of heaven is assailed with a more audacious cry of rebellion than on any other, and the open door of invitation plies with its welcome, the hundreds and the thousands who have found their habitual way to the haunts of depravity. And is there no room, then, to wish for twenty more churches and twenty more ministers-for men of zeal and of strength, who might go forth among these wanderers, and compel them to come in-for men of holy fervour, who might set the terrors of hell and the free offer of salvation before them-for men of affection, who might visit the sick, and the dying, and the afflicted, and cause the irresistible influence of kindness to circulate at large among their families-for men who, while they fastened their most intense aim on the great object of prepar ing sinners for eternity, would scatter along the path of their exertions all the blessings of order, and contentment, and sobriety, and at length make it manifest as day, that the righteousness of the people is the only effectual antidote to a country's ruin-the only path to a country's glory?

"My next remark shall be founded on a principle to which I have already alluded-the desirableness of a more frequent intercourse between the higher and the lower orders of society; and what more likely to accomplish this, than a larger ecclesiastical accommodation? -not the scanty provision of the present day, by which the poor are

excluded from the church altogether, but such a wide and generous system of accommodation, as that the rich and the poor might sit in company together in the house of God. It is this Christian fellowship which, more than any other tie, links so intimately together the high and the low in country parishes. There is, however, another particular to which I would advert, and though I cannot do so without magnifying my office, yet I know not a single circumstance which so upholds the golden line of life amongst our agricultural population, as the manner in which the gap between the pinnacle of the community and its base is filled up by the week-day duties of the clergyman-by that man, of whom it has been well said, that he belongs to no rank, because he associates with all ranks-by that man, whose presence may dignify the palace, but whose peculiar glory it is to carry the influences of friendship and piety into cottages.

"This is the age of moral experiment, and much has been devised in our day for promoting the virtue, and the improvement, and the economical habits of the lower orders of society. But in all these attempts to raise a barrier against the growing profligacy of our towns, one im portant element seems to have passed unheeded, and to have been altogether omitted in the calculation. In all the comparative estimates of the character of a town and the character of a country population, it has been little attended to, that the former are distinguished from the latter by the dreary, hopeless, and almost impassable distance at which they stand from their parish minister. Now, though it be at the hazard of again magnifying my office, I must avow, in the hearing of you all, that there is a moral charm in his personal attentions and his affectionate civilities, and the ever-recurring influence of his visits and his prayers, which, if restored to the people, would impart a new moral aspect, and eradicate much of the licentiousness and the dishonesty that abound in our cities. On this day of national calamity, if ever the subject should be adverted to from the pulpit, we may be allowed to express our rivetted convictions on the close alliance that obtains between the political interests and the religious character of a country. And I am surely not out of place, when, on looking at the mighty mass of a city population, I state my apprehension, that if something be not done to bring this enormous physical strength under the controul of Christian and humanized principle, the day may yet come, when it may lift against the authorities of the land its brawny vigour, and discharge upon them all the turbulence of its rude and volcanic energy." (P. 26-31.)

This picture of Glasgow it is very painful to contemplate. But alas! it is the picture of almost all our populous districts and towns. The great bulk of our Christian poor lies under a virtual sentence of excommunication. Really, when one thinks of this as a religious man should think of it, one cannot be astonished that the soil of Great Britain smokes with the blood of daily murders; that whole families are swept off by the hand of the assassin; that the earnings of frugality in humble life are almost sure to pass into the pockets of the nightly thief; that there is not

a solitary house in the land which can be considered as a safe abode; that a new kind of curfew warns every elderly and inactive person of decent appearance to keep to the house after sun-set, all the streets of the capital having passed under the dominion of prostitutes and pick-pockets. And all this exists, and will exist, and will probably increase, in spite of the present state of public education.

We are far from meaning to doubt the general good effects of the exertions of the National Society. It is its most commendable distinction that it educates the poor in the principles of the established church. We learn from Mr. Walmsley, the reverend secretary of that institution, with great satisfaction, that "he is able to state, not only from his own observation, but from the communications he has received from various parts of the kingdom, that the happy effects of this extended diffusion of religious and moral instruction are already strongly exemplified, not only in the conduct of the children, but also in that of their parents, who from scarcely knowing the difference between Sunday and the other days of the week, except as a short intermission of their daily toil, now assemble with their children to participate in the duties and satisfactions of Divine worship." Alas! Mr. Walmsley, where are those parents to assemble in the established church? In the parish church of Allhallows, where the sermon from which the above extract is made was preached, and in some other churches in the city, they may so assemble, although we cannot but make large allowance for the official partialities of Mr. Walmsley; but in the great parishes in the western and northern divisions of the metropolis, how are poor parents with their children to become participators of Divine worship according to the established form of it in our national churches. In the parish of St. Mary-le-bone after many years of contest and agitation, one new and handsome additional church has appeared, and what proportion of the poor of the vast population of that parish (70,000) does the Secretary of the National Society think can be there accommodated with the comfort they are entitled to, and which it is our interest to give them? In the parish of Pancras a population of 50,000 souls have still only their little national church in Gray's Inn road, capable at the most of containing 300 persons, whose piety is strong enough to endure the squeeze. It is true they have an act of parliament, and we believe they have had it these two years, and not a stone or a brick is laid; the church is yet only a paper edifice: while at the southern extremity of Doughty-Street a bold and hostile structure of brick and mortar, of most capacious dimensions, for the reception of certain seceders from our church, is run up with the celerity of a new theatre. But we are consoled by the project of a new National