measures should be taken, without delay, to remove the alarming destitution of religious instruction which has thus arisen." No case can be clearer. If we are to have a national church, the nation ought to provide for its due extension; and private voluntary agency ought to be in addition to, not a substitute for, public endowment. We rejoice to find that the Queen's majesty, upon the strong representations of the church authorities, has graciously commanded another collection throughout England and Wales to aid this good work. We trust and believe that the contributions will be very large; we would hope much larger than they have ever been upon any former royal letter. The demand is urgent, and the church ought to shew that she does not implore aid from the legislature, without having duly appealed to private bounty, or without such a response to her appeal as proves the zealous interest which the people of the land-let Romanists, Radicals, Chartists, or violent political Dissenters, say what they will take in the prosperity of the established church, as an instrument of spiritual benefit to themselves and their children after them. Still this is after all but casual and temporary aid, and does not exonerate the legislature from the duty of devising and carrying into effect large and adequate measures for bringing church ordinances within the reach of every individual in the kingdom. We do not hope for any thing in this matter from the present cabinet; and we wish we could say that we should be sanguine, if merely political conservatives were in their place. No, it is, and must be, a religious question; not one of party strife but of conscientious duty. The whole work must be begun and conducted in faith, if we would hope for the blessing of God to attend it. The building of churches is necessary as a means to an end; supplying clergymen to minister in them, is also a means to an end; nor can we have schools, or the public ordinances of religion, or pastoral visiting, without this external apparatus, which it behoves a nation to supply; but that which has stimulated church building, and so many other works of Christian benevolence, is the wide extension of true religion throughout the land. The legislature was induced to afford facilities for erecting temples, because piety had created a demand for them; and the demand extended beyond itself; so that many men may have been led, as patriots and enlightened politicians, to promote the object, who felt no spiritual anxiety for its pro secution. But such men are not to be depended upon for duly carrying out the principles of a National Establishment, in the spirit of the prayer which we daily offer in the Liturgy, "Endue thy ministers with righteousness, and make thy chosen people joyful." This prayer, early introduced into the Christian church from the Jewish service, connects the true welfare and happiness of the people with the blessing of God upon the ministrations of a righteous priesthood; and in that epithet "righteous is expressed all that belongs to the evangelical covenant; whether the righteousness of justification, or the righteousness of sanctification; the doctrines of grace, or the duties of life; Christ as our sacrifice, or Christ as our example. Luther, in writing upon Psalm cxxxii., where this prayer occurs (verse 9, as also in Solomon's dedication of the temple that ever memorable instance of church building by royal ordinance), says: "This psalm is a prayer in which Solomon and the people of Israel beg of God to preserve the priesthood and the kingdom, that is, that he would maintain the true religion, the true worship of God, and a prosperous and happy state of the kingdom among that people. In a word, it is a prayer to God, that he would be pleased to preserve the ministry of the Word above all things; and then also the laws, the magistrates, and the public peace: for where these two things, the word and the laws, are rightly constituted and preserved, there all things go well with a kingdom." This is the consideration which induced Luther and the other Protestant reformers so zealously to promote national church establishments. They did not argue, with our modern Dissenters, that human laws have nothing to do with religion; that civil government ought only to regard man's inferior nature, and may not concern itself with his spiritual interests; that provided "laws are rightly constituted and preserved for secular concerns, "all will go well with a kingdom without any national provision for the administration of God's word and sacraments. They received and acted upon the divine promises without such faithless reasonings. They did not think the providence of God over nations, as nations, extended only to the ancient Jews. They trusted to the promise in the sixteenth verse of the Psalm just alluded to, "I will clothe her priests with salvation, and her saints shall shout for joy;' and on the strength of that and similar promises they offered the prayer, and they put their hands to the work, and God abundantly blessed their labours. We have thrown out these remarks in too desultory a form, but they may serve as suggestions to others to follow up the subject in their riper contemplations; so as to view, in a scriptural light, the connexion between a priesthood clothed with righteousness, and a nation "rejoicing in goodness"-so the expression runs in Solomon's consecration prayer. In specifying the evils arising from a priesthood inadequate in numbers, we do not overlook the evils of a priesthood unsound in doctrine, unholy in life, or negligent of the duties of their sacred calling. We do not ask for churches, as though altars were enough, without the sacred flame of piety, and zeal, and love to burn brightly upon them. We connect the prayer with the duty, and both with the promise. There has, through Divine mercy, been a great revival of religion in the land; but we ought to pray and labour for its abundant increase. We are building churches; we are requiring many additional clergymen; but numbers alone prove little as to the amount of good done, or likely to be done; spiritual statistics are deceptive, unless quality be estimated as well as amount. Our clergy must be carefully trained and tried; we do not mean as regards intellectual acquirements, which are a requisite portion of a well appointed biblical apparatus; but in regard to spiritual qualifications and scriptural aptitude for the sacred office. Private interest, family pretensions, and the temporal sweets of patronage, must be less accounted of. The flock must demand a high standard; they must feel the purport of the prayer that their ministers may be clothed with righteousness; and also act up to the duty involved in it as respects themselves, to encourage a faithful ministry by an affectionate and teachable spirit; and by taking care that those who minister at the altar shall be able to live by the altar in decency and comfort; a duty not always duly regarded in adjusting the secular arrangements of our new churches. Both the saints and "the priests" must awake to increased energy; the former must supply the means of building and endowing temples dedicated to the Lord wherever they are wanted; and the latter must cultivate with zeal and fidelity the field of ministerial labour which will be afforded by them; both relying upon that promised blessing, without which a Paul will plant and an Apollos water in vain. The second urgent want we mentioned is that of religious education for the whole infant population. We have dilated so often upon this imporant subject, that we will not repeat our statements. We rejoice that a Board of Education has been formed for the diocese of London, under the superintendance of its zealous prelate, which, from its metropolitan advantages, will probably furnish a model for the whole kingdom. We rejoice still more at the check which the no-religion scheme of her majesty's official advisers has received from strongly-expressed public opinion, and from the address to the queen by the House of Lords. Their lordships justly protested against a matter of such moment being decided upon by a mere vote of the House of Commons (in truth, by only a section of its members, with their notable majority of two) without an act of the united legislature. The queen's majesty was advised to reply somewhat reprovingly to the address; but its moral weight throughout the country has been very powerful; and we trust, and almost hope, that the advisers of the scheme (or rather its official abetters, for her majesty's ministers were but the tools of the Central Society-the bishop of London called them "fantocinni," puppets, having adopted to the very letter what that society had recommended) will not venture to persist in urging their purpose. The speech of the archbishop of Canterbury, who did himself much honour by proposing the address, was replete with important facts and sound and Christian reasonings; as were those of the Bishop of London and others who advocated it. The House of Lords has earned the public gratitude by its conduct in this solemn matter; as well as on many other recent occasions; and not least in rejecting that anti-protestant, anti-constitutional, and most senseless, clause in the prison-bill, by which the nation was to pay teachers to inculcate whatever fifty men in a prison should choose to say they believed to be true; though with more especial reference to Romanist priests for saying mass, absolving culprits, and, as Shakspeare too truly says, though the point of the allusion seems to have escaped his critics, applying the "flattering unction' to their departing souls. ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. T. M.; W. M. H.; S.; J. R. S. L.; BEDELL; V.; W. H.; D. B. G. N.; and various "Constant Readers' are under consideration. "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Such was the pious and paternal resolution with which Joshua concluded his last address to the people of Israel, assembled before the Lord at Shechem. Having, according to the Divine command, distributed among their tribes the promised inheritance, and thus finished the work which God had given him to do, this venerable patriarch was now, as he himself declares, “about to go the way of all the earth.” With a heart duly impressed by a grateful sense of God's peculiar favour, in bringing him and Phinehas alone, of all the men who had left Egypt, into the promised land, he assembles the people, that he may urge upon them, as with his dying voice, to "take good heed unto themselves to love the Lord their God." He recounts to them the promises, the threatenings, the past favours and mercies of God: and thus appeals to their hopes, their fears, their gratitude. Throughout his address, we observe this zealous and faithful servant of God anxiously labouring to press into the service of his Divine Master every pure feeling which could animate their bosoms; and to touch every chord in their hearts which might be taught to vibrate to the praises of God, and tuned into harmony with religion. This venerable patriarch was now in his hundred and tenth year, an age at least double that of any whom he addressed. He had long and often led to the battle the generation of their fathers, now sleeping in the dust of the wilderness: and he himself stood among the people as a time-bleached monument of the mercies of God-a memorial of the days of old, and the years that were past, with all their hallowed remembrances. He briefly, but most impressively, sketches to them the leading features in the history of their race, every circumstance of which was a miracle and a blessing. With the most consummate address, he dwells upon the mercies of God freely bestowed upon their fathers, when they were beyond the flood, and serving other gods: upon the consequent call of Abraham, by God's covenant with whom they were now put into possession of the promised land : upon the several miraculous deliverances of their fathers, and of themselves, from Egypt, and in the wilderndess: and finally, upon the casting out before them of the idolatrous Amorites, in whose land CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 21. 3 U they then dwelt; and the giving them "a land for which they did not labour, and cities which they builded not, and vineyards and oliveyards which they planted not.' And now, to bring the several motives which their history furnished to bear upon the great object for which he had assembled them—an object dear to his own pious heart-he skilfully sums up all in his inimitably affecting and judicious concluding appeal. In it, by epitoinizing their own history, he indirectly reminds them of the impo. tence of idols to protect and deliver their votaries; and of the omnipotence of God to punish his enemies and to reward his people ; -thus appealing, at once, to their prudence and their gratitude. “Now therefore," he says, "fear the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity, and in truth and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt, and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served, that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land ye dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." : Such was the appeal which Joshua addressed to these professed servants of the Lord: such the resolution which he formed, for himself and for his house. Is such the present practice-is such even the sincere resolution for the future, of those whom I now address? This call of Joshua was enforced by the recital of temporal blessings, temporal promises, temporal threatenings; all of which were but the "figures of heavenly things, types and shadows of good things to come." And yet this call was successful. Israel," we are told, "served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua, and which had known all the works of the Lord that He had done for Israel." Since then, Jesus Christ has brought life and immortality to light by the gospel; and converted those dim shadows into solid substances, those types into realities. The minister of the Gospel, while he calls you to the same duties; and while he tells you of that love with which "God so loved the world, that He sent his Son to be the propitiation for your sins:" while he sets before you what the Saviour did, and endured, for your redemption; His holy life, His patient sufferings, His cruel death: while he proposes to your faith "Christ crucified," as freely unfolding to you the gates of the kingdom of heaven, with all its unfading crowns of glory, and all its mansions of everlasting rest: while, on the other hand, with warning voice, he speaks to you of the agonies of a lost soul; the lashes of awakened conscience; the writhings of impotent malice; the gnawing worm of repining and remorse; the feverish and insatiable thirst of covetousness; the unquenchable fire of lust; the blackness of despair, and all the other innumerable horrors of an undone eternity in all these, he enforces his call by sanctions, to which those so successfully urged in the context bear as infinitely small a proportion, as does the perishable body to the immortal soul-as time to eternity. In calling attention to Joshua's resolve, and deducing from it a few common-place and every day duties, I may perhaps appear to travel over a beaten and well-known path. So far as this charge may be thought to apply, I would answer it by repeating that "whether men will hear or whether they will forbear" neglected duties, however simple and well-known, must be inculcated by "line upon line, and precept upon precept." Men need much less to be instructed in new truths and duties, than to be stimulated to embrace and perform old and forgotten ones ;-much less to have their understandings enlightened, than their consciences effectually aroused, and their hearts savingly impressed. God may say now to His ambassadors, as of old to His people, "Lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument; for they hear thy words, but they do them not." It is "not with enticing words of man's wisdom" that souls are converted unto God; but by demonstration of the Spirit's power, in effectually appealing to the stupefied conscience, and addressing to the slumbering spirit "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." The beauty of holiness, faithfully copied from the great original, God manifest in the flesh, may indeed now and then captivate a soul: wisdom's ways of pleasantness and paths of peace, graphically delineated, may invite some solitary wanderer to quit, for them, the crowded walks of life. The Father's love, feelingly and impressively enforced, may find in some bosom a responsive feeling : the Saviour's sufferings, pathetically set forth, may sometimes melt a soul into conformity with His image: but it is sadly to be feared, that with the great mass of society the battle of the Lord must be fought, in the first instance, upon the field of natural conscience-a field where great will be the havoc of souls, and few the conquerors. Trusting to the omnipotence of truth, and to "the weapons of our warfare which are not carnal, but mighty through God," we summon your consciences to the controversy of the Lord and then press home our charges, and endeavour to render them effectual, by an appeal to the best feelings of your heart. : Deeply as man has degenerated from his original nature, and sunk as he is, from a state of purity and love, into the abysses of sensuality and selfishness, still we see gleaming from amid this universal wreck, latent, or partially developed, sparks of natural affection, fragments of a mighty ruin. Every trace, indeed, of the foundations of man's nature, every impress of the first and great commandment of the moral law, are wholly obliterated from his soul. The total absence of every feeling of dutiful and affectionate attachment to his prime Benefactor and his chief Good, brands man as alike an apostate from his nature and his God. Still, the natural affections-paternal and filial, conjugal and fraternal-divide the empire of cold-hearted, sensual selfishness; and redeem the moral waste, which man's fallen nature exhibits, from the character of hopeless and irrecoverable desolation. Who has not felt an ice-bound spring of happiness unlocked within his breast, as he looked upon some lovely specimen of innocent reciprocal affection: as he witnessed the delighted meeting of two objects of mutual love long parted? or caught, with a glance, the delicate tact of heart, in the more refined expression of a deep-seated and tender affection; whether its subjects were a husband and wife, a brother and sister; or, which is perhaps the purest, calmest, and tenderest of all, a father and daughter; as he drops those silent yet speaking tears of joy— "Tears, such as pious fathers shed Upon a duteous daughter's head." These natural affections, like the prostrate column of the decayed |