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still required, would rather be ready to wonder and regret that so few are annually undertaken. Now he measures the work done; then he could not withdraw his eye from that which remains.

But besides adequate churches, the parochial system requires the residence of the clergy. In the country districts this can of course be secured only by providing a house as near as may be to each church; but in our great towns it seems possible to adopt a plan at once less costly and more efficient. That every parish should have its appointed pastor is indeed essential, but not that in every instance he should reside within its bounds. In many parts of our great towns, where immortal beings are crowded with unexampled density, the proposed parishes will be of very small extent. The existing evil is in their population, not their size; and were 30,000 souls assigned to ten separate cures instead of one, the present house of residence would very often be not inconveniently situated with regard to each of them. In these situations, meanwhile, every inch of land is sought with so eager a competition, that the rental or erection of a house in each parish would be peculiarly onerous. Many advantages, then might be united, if something of a collegiate establishment were provided for the clerical body, open to as many of them as chose to avail themselves of it, and leaving to all others the liberty of a separate residence. That such a plan would be highly economical is ob

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vious; for, besides the erection of one building instead of many, the daily cost of providing for a number of persons in a common hall is known to be far less than would be incurred by them in separate establishments. A considerable saving, again, would result from the great diminution of the number of necessary servants; and each of the clergy would be freed from much expense in the purchase of books, too often a serious charge on a very slender income. But in such an experiment, the moral and religious results would surely far outweigh any merely economical. It is not good for man to be alone; and who is so painfully alone, as he upon whom the care of thousands is ever pressing, who is contending day by day against vice and misery, instructing the ignorant and warning the obstinate; while for himself, as for our first parent in Paradise, no equal friend, companion, and counsellor is found; none of like mind and pursuits, and furnished with a congenial education, with whom he may take sweet counsel, "and walk in the House of GOD as friends." The biographer mourns over the departure of the meek Hooker "from the tranquillity of his college, from that garden of piety, of pleasure, of peace, and of sweet conversation, into the thorny wilderness of a busy world, into those corroding cares that attend a married priest and a country parsonage;" but how much more corroding, how much more sickening to the heart, the cares of a priest in a

poor town population. And how many are there who, worn down by them day by day, are without the solace and refreshment of domestic life. Their number, too, must of course be greatly increased, if we plant in a great town thirty, forty, fifty, or even an hundred new churches, each of which is to have its minister, and often two; while the endowments, for a time at least, cannot be expected to be large. How dear to them would be such a society as has been suggested; the bond between its members drawn closer by daily social prayers and all the blessed intercourse of religious fellowship; and how beneficially would such colleges affect the Church at large; which, besides other functions too numerous to be here detailed, would afford to candidates for the ministry a school at once for theological study and for the practice of the pastoral care; and that (as it might easily be arranged) at so low a cost, as to remove the only serious objection, which has hitherto prevented the English Church from providing for every candidate, something of a professional as well as a liberal education.

Considerable practical improvements, again, might be adopted in the internal administration of our parishes. The pastor, in general, stands too much alone; and, as a king who is without a senate and a body of nobility is more absolute, but less safe, so the priest, doing all himself, is often liable to exercise his unchecked authority

over a body diminished by the alienation of many of his flock. In some places, indeed, the services of the more zealous laity have been thankfully accepted and wisely directed; but not being part of any general system, these instances have been little more than experiments, originating in the personal exertions and influence of an individual pastor; modelled, more or less wisely, by his own judgment, depending for their existence on his life, and for their vigor and efficiency even on his health and energies. They have been but excrescences arising in one and another instance out of our parochial system, not incorporated with it. We may surely conclude that much strength would be added to the Church, if these important labours were directed on some more uniform system. Without any invasion of the pastoral office, the services of our laity in visiting the poor of specified districts and reporting their state to the clergy; in superintending daily or Sunday schools; or in instructing the more ignorant of the adult population; might be authorized by a license from the diocesan, to be obtained on certain fixed conditions. This measure might be immediately adopted in any parish where it obtained the approbation of the incumbent and his bishop. It would strictly harmonize with the principle of the existing rule, which directs that schoolmasters and parish clerks should act under a similar authority; and

its general adoption (besides the great advantage of introducing something of uniformity throughout our parishes, and regulating on system the exertions of zealous laymen,) would produce the most salutary effects both on themselves and on churchmen at large. With how much more of authority and boldness would men discharge their several functions, who were designated to them by the chief pastor of the diocese, as the parochial clergyman to the ministry of the Word and Sacraments. Meanwhile, acting on a delegated authority, and no longer tempted to rest their claims on their personal qualifications, their own dangers would be much diminished; their functions would tend to unite and attach them more closely to the Church and her ordinances, of which they would feel themselves to be a part; and they could at no time assert an independent authority, and usurp the functions of the ministry, without destroying their past influence by annulling and disowning the commission on which they had hitherto acted. Meanwhile the authority of the bishop, as the chief pastor of the whole diocese, would become a matter of experience to every member of the Church; and the mass of the laity, who now too often regard her most sacred order as unconnected with them and belonging only to the clergy, would feel that the diocesan was their own spiritual ruler, and, under God, the source of every order of religious ministration. It