servants, or else with those who wilfully and perversely neglect Him, and will not have Him to reign over them; to whom His Gospel is a savour of life unto life, or a savour of death unto death.

And now, how are these provisions of the Church realized in her practical working? It is not too much to say, that in our metropolis and other great cities they are wholly obsolete. These pages, perhaps, may meet the eyes of some, who scarcely know even the name of the parochial minister, to whom, as we have seen, the Church has solemnly entrusted the care of their souls, and of very many whose acquaintance with him extends little further. And such is not only the case of irreligious persons or of those who are ill-affected towards the Church; nor is it the result of their own choice; but it is of necessity the condition of great numbers of sincere, devout, and conscientious churchmen. Our actual condition, therefore, presents this startling inconsistency; that while we maintain the importance, and even the necessity, of the parochial system, and while in name we retain it, we have suffered the inhabitants of our cities, in many respects the most important part of our population, to be wholly deprived of its blessings.

This effect has resulted from the combined action of several causes, but chiefly from the rapid and momentous change, which during the last century has passed upon the condition of

society in England. From an agricultural, we have become, in great measure, a commercial and manufacturing people. In many districts, villages have swelled into towns, and towns into mighty cities. The population of several counties has increased with a rapidity unexampled probably in the history of the world, certainly without parallel in any long settled and civilized country. In Lancashire, which contained in the year 1700 one hundred and sixty-six thousand souls, there are now one million three hundred and thirty-six thousand eight hundred and fifty-four. The population, therefore, has been multiplied more than eight times. In the West Riding of Yorkshire again, in parts of Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and several other counties, the process has been and is proceeding with no less rapidity. The metropolis too, has wholly changed its character within the same period. The cities of London and Westminster it is well known, at no distant period, were separated by fields and gardens, and connected chiefly by the Thames. The population swarmed about the great marts of commerce, on the north bank of the river, in parishes astonishingly numerous and subdivided, now abandoned chiefly to warehouses and offices. A little to the west of Temple Bar were the pleasant gardens and houses of the nobility, extending along the Strand of the river, then no crowded street; and in many respects answering to those which may now be

seen in the neighbourhood of Brentford and Twickenham. And this is the space which now teems with immortal beings, and which we have neglected to subdivide into new ecclesiastical districts as occasion arose, and as ancient example, and indeed the principle of the parochial system, required. And now the overgrown parishes, which on every side surround the city of London, witness by their rural names against the remissness of a generation, which in so many cases has left under the care of a single pastor a district, which, when sprinkled with villas and cottages, gave him full occupation, and in which every cellar and garret is now the abode of families, whose numbers, by precluding all attempt at due pastoral superintendence, do practically destroy all pastoral responsibility. The parish of "St. Giles in the Fields" contains 36,432 immortal souls; that of "Bethnal Green," 62,018, and yet the former is still entrusted to the care of three, and the latter of four parochial clergymen. Nor are these solitary cases: in St. George's in the East there are 38,505, with two clergymen; in St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, 33,000, with two; in Stepney, 51,000, with three; in St. Luke's, 46,642, with two; in St. Mary's, Whitechapel, 31,100, with one'. And

1 The facts stated above are drawn chiefly from the documents which have appeared in different numbers of the British Magazine, and from the statements published by the Lord Bishop of London, and by the committee of the "Metropolis Churches Fund."

taking an average of thirty-four parishes, we find the proportion of pastors to their flocks to be one to 15,100. Such is the condition of our metropolis. Many of the manufacturing and commercial towns are not much less destitute. In two parishes in Liverpool there are but four clergymen to 34,000 souls; in Macclesfield, three to 23,000; in Oldham, four to 32,000; in Leeds, nine to 71,000; in Sheffield, the same number to 73,000. In other instances we find large districts (not towns, and therefore called villages), where, from the discovery of coal, and other causes, a scattered population has rapidly accumulated; and a flock of ten or fifteen thousand dispersed over a surface many miles in extent, are still entrusted to a single pastor.

In all these cases our parochial system is little more than a delusion; we retain the name and the form, we call the incumbents the pastors of the whole flock, they are charged by the bishop with the spiritual care of the whole; but in the sight of God and man they are not, and cannot be, responsible for the performance of impossibilities. They are the ministers of their own churches-they are the heads too of a sort of mission, bound to labour according to their power for the spiritual good of the multitudes around them; but to require that they should penetrate the mass, and become personally acquainted with the thousands who compose it, that they should distinguish the several charac

ters of those committed to their care, should warn the careless, should reprove the gainsayers, should build up the weak, should direct the inexperienced,—in short, that they should duly exercise the pastoral care,-would be extravagant. The people accordingly do not, and cannot, regard them as their appointed pastors. They feel themselves to be as sheep without a shepherd, and have generally no other notion of the very nature of a parish, than that it is a district relieving its own poor.

This state of things is obviously inconsistent with the rules of the Church, and with our professions as her members. But it may be asked in default of the parochial system, what other provisions have been made for the spiritual welfare of the people? These have been, until very recently, only the erection of proprietary chapels, and the labours of pious individuals and societies. That a considerable amount of good has resulted from these means is unquestionable; without them our state would have been worse than it is; but they are palliatives not remedies of a disease, which, if not radically cured, must in the end be fatal. If we suffer ourselves to account them an effectual cure, we do but deceive ourselves to our ruin, and change them from a good into an evil. They can but be palliatives, because, from the necessity of the case, they have been directed by an imperfect principle. Chapels have been erected, indeed,