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The last cause specified by Mr. Ramsay, is the little respect that is at present paid to the authority and discipline of the church. He dwells with much earnestness upon the light esteem in which ecclesiastical censures are held, and the frequent unwillingness even of the magistracy to take cognizance of offences of a profane, immoral, or impious character, even when brought regularly before them. If this is a just source of complaint in Scotland, we are grieved to add, that, with some honourable excep tions, it is still more so in England. We would trust, however, that the temper of the times is beginning to amend in this respect; as a proof of which we might state, that the operations of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, at one period so unpopular, because so greatly misrepresented, have of late met with the concurrence and respect of many who once opposed them. Persons of influence throughout the kingdom ought seriously to consider how powerfully they might counteract the progress of infidelity, by cordially upholding the salutary laws of their country in reference to profaneness, Sabbath breaking, and other offences against our Christian statutes and institutions. Still this is but the least part of their duty. They must begin to live as Christians themselves; to edify their neighbours by their own pious example; and must evince the truth of the Gospel in the way most impressive on the public apprehension, by a heartfelt submission to its doctrines, and a course of humble, zealous, and cheerful obedience to its commands. In the case of the clergy, the exhibition of this personal argument is doubly incumbent; and truly does our author exclaim,

"If ministers of the Gospel, indeed, act inconsistently with their office; if, instead of being examples to their flocks, of piety, conversation, faith, godliness, they go along with the prevailing fashions, and partake of all the amuse

ments and pleasures that are within their reach; if, instead of labouring to pull down the strongholds of sin and satan, and win souls to Christ, by all has supplied them, their chief object be those powerful means with which he to please and make themselves agrecable, with a view to their own private advantage, or pleasure, or ease, how can they urge their hearers to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Christ? While their minds are engrossed with these earthly things, how can they stir up and cherish in their hearers a desire of those that are heaven ly? When they are negligent abont the worship of God in their own families, how can they exhort their hearers to the performance of this important duty? And if by their misconduct or neglect religion languishes and decays, they may be flattered and caressed by worldly men, but they will sink in the estimation of the wise and the good, and those who have no pretensions to a reli in time come to be despised, even by gious character." Inquiry, pp. 36, 37.

We have thus gone cursorily through Mr. Ramsay's specification of the causes of modern infidelity. Many other causes might be mentioned, some of which we are surprised did not find a place in his enumeration. We have already stated that we do not profess, in the present article, to follow up the subject to its source; otherwise we should be inclined to ask our author if our legislative and executive bodies have been altogether free from blame? Has all been done that might have been done in these quarters to check the progress of infidel and immoral principles? Have new churches been built equal to the increased wants of the population; or at least, have sufficient facilities and inducements been afforded for building them? Have the public patrons of lay, and still more of ecclesiastical, preferment been sufficiently attentive to makcheck to the mischief in question, ing their appointments an active and particularly by nominating to the cure of souls such men only as appear to have the eternal interests of mankind deeply at heart? Has

due, care been taken to rescind every public law or regulation that has a tendency, direct or indirect, to demoralize the people? Have, for instance, the numerical items of our customs and excise been considered an affair of trifling moment compared with the sobriety and virtuous habits of the community? Is the increase of the revenue by lotteries, dram-shops, and other polluted sources universally felt by our public men to be, as it is, a curse and not a blessing to the nation? Has the sleepless vigilance of parliament contrived and enforced adequate measures for giving the whole mass of the people a plain Christian education? or are many of them still left, as far as preventive legislative remedies are concerned, to the unmitigated influence of infidel and other mischievous publications? Have our poor-laws, and our laws respecting various moral offences, been duly investigated, with reference to their bearing upon the principles and character of the people?-But we forbear to proceed with our queries. We have said, we think, quite sufficient to afford our author an additional head or two to his enumeration; and, what is of more importance, have endeavoured incidentally to hint at some appropriate checks and remedies to the evils of which he complains. Mr.Owen, too, has his plan; not indeed for the extirpation of infidelity, of which he is not very intolerant, but for the cure of those moral evils, and the attainment of those national benefits, which oldfashioned persons like ourselves are apt to think depend upon the proportion in which the religion of the Bible prevails among all classes of our population. We indeed agree with him in many of his positions we fear with him, that the comforts and education of the poor have been lamentably overlooked by many whose business it was to think and act and legislate for them we concur with him in opinion, that the great remedy for most

of our national evils is to be found in a virtuous training of the people, and in removing the sources of temptation; but we differ widely from him as to the method of carrying these measures into effect. With Mr. Owen the inculcation of the principles of revealed religion, if we understand him rightly, is one great cause of the injuries which have afflicted society; whereas to our minds it appears the only adequate cure for them. His whole system seems to us unphilosophical, unsound in principle, and unsupported by facts. Does the benevolent projector imagine that there will be no vice, no selfishness, no evil passions in his parallelograms; that he can effectually exclude the seeds of envy, jealousy, covetousness, ambition, and every other injurious principle? And if not, the issue turns out to be nothing more than this,-that good discipline, a virtuous education, and the exclusion of temptation to what is wrong, will be found of service to the morals and comfort of the people. But this will be the case in a country village, or any where else, as well as in Mr. Owen's proposed allotments. We would therefore say, in fine,-Let all external matters remain where they are; but let the ameliorating agency that is to operate upon the people, be more actively and beneficially employed. Let it be extended through every gradation of society, from the prince to the beggar, from the most elevated intellectual professions to the humble individual who passes his life in manufacturing the twentieth part of a pin. Human nature, in all these stations and employments, is radically the same; and the only adequate remedy for its corruptions, whether innate or acquired, is that which is unfolded in the Revelation of Him who "knew what was in man," and who has mercifully devised a system of pardon, and grace, and sanctification, adapted to his temporal, spiritual, and eternal well-being.

The Christian and Civie Economy of Large Towns. By THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D. Minister of St. John's Church, Glasgow. No. VIII. On Sabbath Schools. Glasgow: Chalmers and Collins. 1821. price 1s.

IN our review of the earlier Numbers of the papers of Dr. Chalmers, the subject of Sunday-schools has been largely discussed and it has been shewn, as we think, incontrovertibly, that the most extensive benefits might be anticipated from the multiplication of small local schools, in which pious individuals might become the instructors and visitors, each of their own immediate vicinage. The extent to which we have already drawn upon the attention of our readers, in the examination of this topic, renders it unnecessary now to return to it. But as we have reason to know that some excellent persons have been stirred up, through the Divine blessing on our humble labours, to devote themselves to the construction of these local institutions, we are anxious to assist them by means of the reasoning in the paper before us, in encountering a difficulty which has already presented itself to the minds of some who are embarked in this important enterprise.

The difficulty to which we al Jude arises from the consideration that the institution of schools such as those to which we refer almost necessarily involves the employment of lay-teachers, and these lay-teachers, in some instances, unlettered men. Here it might be a sufficient solution of the difficulty to remark, that in this circumstance there is nothing which is at all peculiar to the institution in question. Almost all our existing Sunday schools and week-day schools for the education of the poor are necessarily under the immediate direction of lay-teachers, who are also unlettered men; and the proposed institution of local Sundaysehools does not, therefore, in this CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 242.

respect, involve any new or untried principle. The practice objected to is already universal; nor is there any thing in the frame of the local Sunday-schools which prevents the same interference and controul on the part of the clergy which is now exercised in other schools. But, notwithstanding the sufficiency of this answer, it may not be inexpedient to examine the subject more closely. It is obvious, then, that the minister of religion, be his zeal and activity what they will, is not gifted with ubiquity. His other duties on the Sabbath will, in most instances, exclude him from any thing more than a transient survey of these, or of any other Sundayschools; and they must necessarily be conducted, if they are to be carried on at all, by individuals selected from his own congregation or vicinage. In Scotland, indeed, the principle of lay instruction is not confined to schools: there is a body. of "elders" attached to every distinct church, all of whom must have the concurrent approbation of the minister. These constitute a class of ecclesiastical functionaries, who have the sanction of the Church for their being employed in visiting the sick and affording them spiritual aid, and in various other works of piety and benevolence. In England, no such order exists: on the contrary, a strong dislike prevails in the great body of churchmen to the employment of this spe cies of agency. Many of our parishes, therefore, exhibit the painful spectacle of a single labourer occupying a district, parts of which he may never have visited, and with many of the inhabitants of which he may therefore be utterly unacquainted. But if, in addition to this lamentable defect of spiritual labourers, the scruples to which we have adverted, respecting the employment of lay agents in the instruction of Sundayschools, were now for the first time to be admitted, the consequence must inevitably be, that the

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education of the youth of the lower classes in the principles of religion must be abandoned to the Methodists and Dissenters, who most certainly will be embarrassed by no Such scruples. Waving, however, for the present, this momentous view of the subject, let us consider ab. stractedly, whether the objection which has been advanced to the employment of lay agency in the work of religious instruction be well founded. And in coming to a decision on this subject, we shall be materially assisted by the powerful reasoning of Dr. Chalmers in the before us. paper

The author sets out with a strong and eloquent testimony to the necessity and value of a learned clergy. And we are anxious to allow him to state his own sentiments on the subject, lest, from any of his subsequent observations, it should be thought that his opinions, respecting lay unlettered teachers, are in any degree connected with a coarse and irrational contempt of human learning.

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"It is mainly to the learning of the priesthood that Christianity has kept her ground on the higher platform of cultured and well educated humanity, and that she enters so largely, as a bright and much esteemed ingredient, into the body of our national literature. It is true that, in this way, she may compel an homage from many whom she cannot subdue unto the obedience of the faith; and save herself from con tempt, in a thousand instances, where she has utterly failed in her attempts at conversion. But it is well, whenever this degree of respect and acknowledgment can be obtained for her, among the upper classes of life; and more especially in every free and enlightened nation, like our own, where the reigning authority is so much under the guidance of the higher, reason of the country, it is of unspeakable benefit that Christianity has been so nobly up. held by the talent and erudition of her advocates. The fostering hand of the legislature would soon have been with held from all our Christian institutions, had the Christian system not been palpably recommended by those numerous

pleadings wherewith a schooled and ac. complished clergy have so enriched the theological literature of our island. Nor do we believe that, in the face of public opinion, any political deference could have long been rendered to

Christianity, had she been overborne in her numerous conflicts with the pride and sophistry of able, unbelievers. It is thus that we stand indebted to the learning of Christian ministers for the security of that great national apparatus of religious instruction, the utility of which we have already endeavoured to demonstrate and hence, though learning does not, of itself, convert and christianise a human soul, it may be in strumental in spreading and strengthis thrown, by our Establishment, over ening that canopy of protection, which those humbler but more effective labourers, by whose parish ministrations it is that the general mass of our popa lation becomes leavened with the doc trines of the Gospel, and Christianity is carried, with light, and comfort, and power, into the bosom of cottages." pp. 306, 307.

There is a subsequent testimony land to literary distinction, which, to the claims of the Church of Engas issuing from the bosom of the Kirk, and as being one of the few tributes of this kind which, since the days of Cromwell, have crossed the Tweed, we think it right to present to the attention of our readers,

"There are many who look with an evil eye to the endowments of the English Church, and to the [alleged] indolence of her dignitaries. But to that church the theological literature of our nation stands indebted for her best acquisi tious; and we hold it a refreshing speci tacle, at any time that meagre Socinian; ism pours forth a new supply of flippan cies and errors, when we behold, as we have often done, an armed champion come forth, in full equipment, from some high and lettered retreat of that noble hierarchy; nor can we grudge her the wealth of all her endowments, when we think how well, under her ve nerable auspices, the battles of ortho. doxy have been fought,—that, in this holy warfare, they are her sons and her scholars who are ever foremost in the field,-ready, at all times, to face the threatening mischief, and, by the might of their ponderous erudition, to over. bear it." p. 316.

No question can arise, we con- disperses them.. Every day of our ceive, in the minds of reflective in lives more and more convinces us, dividuals, as to the justice of this of the very great importance of a tribute either to theological learn thorough and classical investigation: ing in general, or to the merits of of the meaning of the language of our own church in particular. It Scripture. By a careful analysis. is, in our judgment, a powerful of its words and images, not only collateral argument in favour of will the diligent student discover: a church establishment, that no new mines of moral and intellecother system would supply, to indi- tual wealth in the sacred volume,. viduals of a certain rank in life, a but he will escape the mortification sufficiently strong inducement to of spending the latter portion of lifeencounter the expenses and labours in repenting of the absurdities of. of a learned education. Of such his earlier years. And, whilst we an education it is difficult to esti- thus insist on the general value of mate the full value. Dr. Chalmers learning, let us never forget the, touches on the advantages of gain- peculiar claims of our own church ing, through this medium, men of eleon the gratitude of the friends of. vated rank and of high attainments the Gospel. We may venture to: as champions of the truth; men, say, that we know of no error which quick-sighted in the detection of has not met in that church with its error and fanaticism among religio- most powerful antagonist. From the nists, and no less qualified to ex- moment when it erected itself in op-› pose the false pretensions of the position to Popery, and, led on by unbeliever to philosophy or lite- Jewell and afterwards by Chilling-, rature, or the assumptions of su- worth, fought the battles of Protes-. perior acquaintance with Scripture' tantism-through all those momentand theology on the part of here- ous stages in which it encountered. tics;-men, in short, furnished with, successively the assaults of puritan-, the means of establishing the au-, ism, of infidelity, and of latitudinathenticity of Scripture, on grouuds rianism, to these latter days when, which neither calumny, nor misre- under the conduct of Horsley, and presentation, nor ridicule, nor all the present Bishop of Raphoe, it has · the puny, though envenomed, wea- trampled in the dust all the hosts pous of infidel warfare, can suc- of Socinianism-we know of no cessfully assail. There is another, church which has equally made advantage of learning, as connect- good its claims, as far as exterior ed with religion, and to which we defences of religion are concerned, refer as bearing, to a considerable to the dignities with which it has extent, on some of our future reason- been invested. Nor is it our intenings; we mean the light which it tion, in referring only to the defence sheds on the contents of Seripture. of religion from outward assaults, It is not enough to say of it, that it, to contend that the Church has ren-, is valuable for the defence of the dered less assistance to the right record. It is no less valuable for the exposition and interpretation of devolopment and the exposition of, Scripture. Her formularies are perthe meaning of that record. It is haps, after all, the best human exposurprising how many controversies sition of Scripture; an exposition a little sound learning will adjust. which exhibits at the same time Alufost all strange and monstrous, the strictest regard to truth and theological systems, have sprung the most marked spirit of modera from false conceptions of the mean tion; an exposition which, more ing of particular terms or isolated, perhaps than any other, casts de- : expressions of Scripture; and a single, Laleable points into the shade, touch from the spear of sound criti- and gives the highest prominence cism, in many instances, dissolves or to the undebated principles of

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