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does not forget, that piety must ever precede mere learning in all Christian efficacy and benefit. He considers it scarcely a matter of discussion, whether a converted be not infinitely more useful than an unconverted ministry. Very few unconverted persons ever preach the truth at all. And, even where doctrinally correct, a want of earnestness and feeling characterizes their labours, and diffuses itself, by sympathy, over their hearers. Besides, the lives of such preachers generally tend to neutralize or vitiate their reasonings. Above all, it is only to the honest, simple, believing minister of the word; to the preacher, devoutly seeking the assistance of the Holy Spirit, that any promise of such assistance is made; and it is therefore, on his ministry alone, it can be expected ordinarily to fall.

The success of a hypocritical, formal ministry, is an exception, not a rule. The success of the true prophet is the rule, not the exception. If, therefore, the question be proposed, whether more is to be expected from learned indifference, or unlettered piety, in a minister; we no more hesitate to decide for the latter, than to prefer the fishermen of Galilee to the council of Trent.

Dr. Chalmers calls upon the Wesleyan methodists to adopt the local system, and carry the Gospel into every alley and cottage of Britain. And the Christian Observer admits, that the light and disposable force of that body supplies extraordinary facilities for such an enterprize; nay would carry on the Cossac warfare proposed, better than would the heavy armed troops of the Anglican establishment. Rather than the work of moral reform, among the millions in Britain, now without any means of instruction, should continue to be neglected, we heartily desire to see it in the hands of the methodists, or of any other body, who will supply the state church's lack of service.

If it be not done by the establishment, perhaps no body would do it better than the Wesleyans. The strictness of their discipline, their rigid system of in

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spection, their singular facilities of selecting the individuals best suited to the work; seem to constitute them, if the established church hangs back, suitable agents for so extensive an undertaking. But the business of locality ought to be taken up, in good earnest, by the national church; of whose formularies few complain, and the revival of whose discipline all desire. The Christian Observer implores the Anglican Church to awake from her sleep of ages; and to go forth for the recovery of her people from the depths of vice and ignorance, into which they have

sunk.

The existing condition of the country, more especially of its immense metropolis, cannot be contemplated without horror. Ten thousand individuals have passed through a few principal prisons of London, in one single year. Myriads of children, in its courts and alleys, subsist altogether upon depredation. Hundreds of thousands, in spite of all the laudable exertions of the national, and other benevolent societies, are still destitute of Christian education. Crime has so mastered the existing means of improvement, that its circle continually widens, and deepens, on every side. The race of benevolence after sin and misery, is, at the present moment, that of the tortoise after the

hare.

If the English people now, in the nineteenth cen tury be so irreligious and immoral, as thus represented by the Christian Observer; is it not conclusive, that the great body of the established clergy have been long, and are now, grossly negligent in the discharge of their all-important duties; have long been, and are now, any thing but faithful, zealous, efficient, evangelical preachers, and pastors? The facts and observations would apply still more forcibly to the conduct of the state clergy in Ireland. Scotland is directed by an ecclesiastical establishment, on a smaller and a simpler scale, less splendid, less imposing, less expensive, less burdensome to the community, than the 'Anglican and Hibernian hie

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rarchies; with what effect, in promoting piety, and preventing heathenism, may be the subject of future inquiry.

Is such an alarming state of irreligion and immorality, as now pervades England, a proof of the position assumed by Mr. Wilks, Mr. Wilberforce, Dr. Chalmers, the Christian Observer, and many other distinguished writers; that a state church is absolutely necessary to preserve religion alive in a country; and to prevent its inhabitants from degenerating into pagan darkness and idolatry?

In these United States, where no national church establishment exists, we certainly have no such widely spread infidelity and profligacy as, issuing from Hone, Cobbet, Carlile, and their disciples and followers, continually threaten to lay in blood and ruins all that is venerable and valuable in the British empire; and must, eventually, so destroy it, unless checked by a counter current of pure, evangelical piety. For mere legislative enactments, however seconded by fine, or imprisonment, or the gallows, or a formal, secular state clergy, slumbering in monkish apathy, and gowned ease, over the moral desolation of their country; can never do aught to reform a corrupted and rebellious people.

Let the eleven thousand places of worship in the Anglican Church establishment, be filled with evangelical incumbents; let the stalls, and dignities, and palaces be filled with evangelical deans, and bishops, and archbishops; all faithfully discharging their sacred duties, as ministers of the everlasting Gospel; and England will soon be freed from all alarm respecting the infidelity and profligacy, which now menace the speedy perdition of all her civil institutions, and social order.

Let it be remembered, likewise, that all this wickedness belongs emphatically to the establishment. It constitutes an integral part of the state church, which claims the whole nation as her own, excepting only those individuals, who, under the shelter of the

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toleration act, enrol themselves as members of some dissenting communion. But no evangelical dissenters will receive into their body any infidel, or immoral person; and if any member of their churches become immoral or infidel, he is forthwith expelled from their community, and returns into the mass of the nation, to furnish his quota towards forming the general character of the English protestant episcopal church, by law established.

Accordingly, the parliamentary divorce bills are not obtained by the evangelical dissenters of England, whether presbyterian, or congregational, or methodist, or baptist; but they are procured, in countless numbers, by the noble and the gentle, the titled and the untitled patrons, protectors, and supporters of the Anglican Church establishment. And so, of other flagitious crimes, as theft, robbery, rebellion, forgery, murder, conspiracy, assassination; these do not find their perpetrators and abettors, among the dissenting evangelicals; but among the stanch members of the church of England; who, while they are convulsing society to its centre, by their crimes and villanies, rail against separatists, and sectaries, and schismatics, with all the rancour of a formal bishop.

No; a nation is not evangelized by a secular state church, but by real, vital Christianity; not Christianity corrupted and darkened by popith superstition, or diluted and debased by cold-blooded, heartless philosophism, or interwoven with national establishments for political purposes; but Christianity as taught in the New Testament, and practised by the faithful followers of their Lord and Master.

Doubtless, the outward profession of nominal Christianity, is, in numberless instances, adopted by worldly men, nay, by determined infidels, to forward their own schemes of policy. Finding the bulk_of the people inclined to the Christian religion, under some particular form of church order, or discipline; they deem it political wisdom, to give this particular sect a state establishment, and to allow its clergy a

share in the civil government. Hence, religion is converted into a mere engine of state policy; and the established church, as a matter of course, filled with a formal, secular, irreligious, persecuting clergy.

The politician may plume himself upon his own sagacity and skill; and the clergy may be delighted with their worldly honours, and their immense revenues; and the people themselves may be so uneducated, and so ignorant, as to receive churchmanship in lieu of Christianity; but deep and deadly gashes are inflicted upon pure and undefiled religion. Hence, the church, at an early period, ceased to be the bride of Christ; and became the mother of harlots, the established protector and promoter of all iniquity, and abomination. Whatever good may be done in such communities, is done, not in consequence, but in spite of their ecclesiastical establishments; is done by pious individuals, acting in direct contradiction, if not in open opposition, to the whole course and current of the state church.

A large proportion of every nation, if it suits their temporal convenience, adopt the prevailing religion; or, in other words, have no personal religion. More especially, the courts and cabinets of kings and princes, notwithstanding Christianity may have been the established religion of the land, have been generally filled by a far greater proportion of mere worldly formalists, if not of open and avowed infidels, than of evangelical Christians; and, in consequence, the public measures, both of state and church, have taken a corresponding direction. Nobility, and gentry, and courtiers, and politicians, are very apt to consider religion, as an affair quite beneath the consideration of their rank, and wealth, and fashion, and wisdom; as a matter, suited only to the poor, and vulgar, and uninstructed, and ignorant. They, therefore, either absent themselves altogether from public worship; or, only attend on state occasions, to save appearances towards the national church esta