God. Some parts belong to houses, others are let to individuals, and were any considerable mass of the labouring poor to seek for admission, they would not even be offered the alternative reprobated by St. James, "stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool." They are excluded not only by their own circumstances, and by their natural feelings, but by law and by the rights of others.

It is difficult to estimate the true magnitude of this evil. Were the rich excluded from our parish churches, it would be in comparison a slight thing; they could and would provide others for themselves. But to the mass of the poorest class, exclusion from the existing churches is practically total exclusion from the house of God, from all the means of grace, and from all the privileges of Christianity. And to this condition it is (we cannot too often repeat it), that hundreds of thousands of our countrymen are now reduced. How their lives are spent, and what is the comfort of their dying beds, who shall say? It can hardly be, but that numbers among them are altogether in a condition more wretched than that of their heathen ancestors, or of the unsophisticated savages of the American forests. Knowing nothing of civilization, but the heavy pressure of its laws and restrictions; of property, nothing but the invidious fences which ward off their iutrusions on that of others; of religion, nothing but a dark and gloomy

dread of something beyond the grave. And on what hope do they lean, among the sorrows and anxieties of life, which to every one that breathes is full of care," and to none more than to them? or how do they appease that restless and eager craving after "some good "", which the Creator has implanted in man to attract him to Himself? Man was not made to be like some machine, whose object is to produce the greatest amount of manufactures, to work through the day, and rest during the night, until, worn out at last, it is cast aside to make room for another. Something more his nature requires ; and where do these men find it? Let our ginpalaces, our prisons, and our court-houses reply. In drunkenness and excess, in crime and violence, are expended those human energies which God has given for Himself, which by His blessing we may direct; but which, do what we may, we cannot extinguish.

The condition of our manufacturing and metropolitan population is an evil so overwhelming, so enormous, that it naturally demands our first attention; and yet there are others, for whom provision is urgently required in our national Church. Many of our country towns, even in the agricultural districts, have been

1 Psalm iv. 6. "There be many that say, Who will show us any good? Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us." St. Augustine explains men's restless wishes. "Quia fecisti nos ad Te et inquietum cor nostrum donec requiescat in Te." Conf. 1. 1.

very considerably augmented', and are insufficiently supplied with churches and ministers. Their wants, indeed, are less urgent than those which have been detailed, and yet, if custom had not reconciled us to these and worse things, we should surely feel them to be deeply impressive. We have become familiarized with awful facts, and we can speak of the spiritual destitution, of hundreds, or thousands, or millions, with as little emotion as a conqueror who numbers his army, and regards them not as so many individual responsible immortal beings, but as counters in the great game which he is playing. Let us divest ourselves of these habits of thought, and estimate, by the standard of God's word, the worth of a single soul. Let us consider how great it seems to us even now, in the chamber of death, or by the side of the grave, and then let us attempt to realize something of that value which it will assume in the great and dreadful day of judgment. These are the units of which our account is made up. It is of such interests that we speak, when we estimate the number of our countrymen, who live and die in habitual forgetfulness of God, and neglect of His gospel. If they could be told by hundreds, by tens, or by units, it were no light evil when weighed in the balance of the sanctuary.

And what is the case in the larger towns of our

.1 Sussex has increased in population 80 per cent. in twenty years. See Address of the Lord Bishop, p. 6.

agricultural districts. They seem in general to afford church-room for about one-third of the whole population; very often for less. An exception, however, must be made, in favour of the cathedral towns, which are commonly better supplied. Thus, Bath has church-room for 10,000 out of 38,033; Southampton, for 7,140 out of 20,900; Oxford, Reading, Maidstone, Shrewsbury, and a great number of other towns, present a proportion nearly the same. Here, however, as before, we are far from estimating the real amount of spiritual destitution, when we have ascertained the proportion of church-room to the whole population. For the rights of pews form an insuperable bar to the attendance of the poor, in many places where it might otherwise be possible. It is stated for example by the Lord Bishop of Chichester', that the unappropriated church-room in six towns of that wholly agricultural diocese, will accommodate less than three thousand out of a population of 26,697. And this is far from an extreme case. In one of these very towns the proportion is but twenty to 4000. In a parish of another agricultural diocese2, containing 8,083 souls, there is no accommodation for the poor except in the aisles." When we reflect how reluctantly any man, whether rich or poor, will subject himself to the risk of

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1 Address to the clergy and laity of the Diocese of Chichester, 1838.

2 Statement of the Lord Bishop of Winchester. Dec. 1836.

being ejected as an intruder; we may, in some measure, estimate the degree to which our churches are emptied, by this most unbrotherly and unchristian appropriation.

In the country villages, these evils, although by no means unknown, are comparatively rare; and here, accordingly, the parochial system still sheds its unnumbered benefits. Assailed and reviled as it is, and compassed by ten thousand foes, we may surely point to the villages of England, as a sign that God of a truth is still with His Church among us. Who can estimate the numbers, who in the great day shall give Him thanks for the blessings she has here dispensed? And yet, even here, much remains to be done. The agricultural population are very commonly deprived of their Church privileges; not indeed by the pressure of numbers, but by remoteness of situation. In the diocese of Winchester alone, no less than sixty hamlets have been reported to the bishop as needing new churches from this cause; all of these contain a population of more than 200, while 25 of them range between 500 and 1200, and their distance from church varies from two to six miles. Such is the state of the counties of Hampshire and Surrey; districts probably more favourably situated, than the average of the country.

On this hasty survey of the existing condition of the English Church, the question naturally arises; how did such evils grow up among us,