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benefactors to their age and country. But, in reality, they did either too much or too little. They touched, instead of grasping, the nettles. They meddled with what they should either have let altogether alone, or dealt with far more thoroughly and decidedly than they did. They "observed the wind" too anxiously, and too narrowly watched and "regarded the clouds ;" and hence it was their fate neither "to sow," to much purpose, nor yet "to reap." They went just far enough in their interference with the Establishments, to do harm; and not far enough to have the satisfaction even of defeat in doing real good. They saw the popular party in the Church of Scotland beginning the career of improvement, and set no bounds to their approbation and applause. But when the very course they had at first encouraged, led to the difficulties and embarrassments which ultimately broke up that Church, the Liberal Government looked on unmoved, and handed down to their successors the unsettled and vexatious question of jurisdiction, which, had there been a very little timely foresight and courage on their part, need never have been raised. So, as to the English and Irish Establishments, they approached the really tender parts with so delicate a hand, while, at the same time, they raised so loud a cry of sacrilege, by their attempt to regulate the purse, that the enormous abuses of these Churches remained entire, and the only effect of the meditated reform was to create the reaction of which Puseyism is the fruit. The truth is, they had too many masters, and too many parties to please. They were not Churchmen: bat they had church-interests and church-prejudices to consult for. They were not Voluntaries: but they stood in awe of voluntary influence, Had they been less afraid of the Dissenters, they might have done more for Church reform, and for making existing endowments really more available, in education as well as in religion. Had they been less wedded to Church patronage, they might have done more towards the retrenchment of needless waste, and towards setting free for national purposes

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funds now selfishly locked up. As it was, they did little more than awaken the alarm-cry of the Church in danger, without winning much, after all, of the confidence of the other bodies; and the result was the paralysing of their own power for effecting real good, by any movement, ecclesiastical or educational, on any scale of extent and energy at all adequate to the emergency. It would seem that the party have learned wisdom by experience. Not a whisper is there now, on their return to power, of interference with any existing establishment; no appropriation clause: no inquiry into sinecures: no reform of any sort and no retrenchment. The policy is changed. "Let sleeping dogs lie," is now to be the motto. Even the Scotch Establishment is to be treated as if nothing had happened: and neither bishoprics, nor pluralities, nor colleges, nor cathedrals, are to be looked into. The understanding would seem to be, that these things are to be all let alone. As to what is done with the public endowments at home, and the public grants abroad, devoted to pious uses, no question is to be asked. But the nation is to be set, full cry, on the equalizing of the whole system, by new votes, promiscuously, to any, or to all, opinions.

There may be worldly wisdom in all this, and our Liberal statesmen may. reap the reward of it. But a calm observer can scarcely fail to wonder at the readiness with which, on all sides, the sop seems to be taken. How feeble and unreal, now, is the demand for a redress of the grievances of existing establishments, whether educational or ecclesiastical, in any other way than by endowing Popery, and supporting all sects alike. Only give grants to Rome and educate liberally, without respect to creed; and we will ask no questions as to the institutions that we used to canvass and condemn.

Foremost in applauding this liberal style of policy, are Conservative Statesmen and Churchmen, from the highest to the lowest. Churchmen like Dr Hook, and Statesmen like the Quarterly Review, vie with one another in making concessions to the spirit of Liberalism. Not a whisper now of the

exclusive right of the Church to educate, and the special duty of the State to assist the Church, alone. Fair play is now all the vogue; a fair field and no favour; all to be on equal terms; the public money to be divided indiscriminately among schools of all sorts, in which religion may be taught by all sorts of men; Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Methodists, Papists, Socinians, Socialists, just as the case may be.

Is there nothing under this sudden friendship struck up between the extreme of High Church Conservatism on the one hand, and the most Ultra-liber alism, in politics and religion, on the other? We have no wish to impute motives, or to suspect plots. We believe Dr Hook to be perfectly honest in his educational zeal; and we give the Quarterly Reviewer all credit for wishing well to the people of England; though we think, considering all things, he need not have been so vehement in abusing those who still have some lingering remains of his own old scruples and misgivings, on the subject of an irreligious education. (See the Number of the Quarterly Review just published.) We are willing also to regard the enthusiastic compliments paid to the Vicar of Leeds, by the Messrs Chambers of Edinburgh, as a pure tribute to the Doctor's patriotism, irrespective of any vestiges" these shrewd observers may trace in his plan, of what is probably more congenial to them than Tractarianism. (See Chambers' Journal.) But we cannot help offering a suggestion to those who are so apt to be carried away by the apparent fairness and equality of this new levelling proposal of Dr Hook. That it is plausible, in this view, we admit. It has a show of liberality. What could possibly be more impartial?

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ligious bodies are to be on the same footing. Two rooms are to be provided in every school-one for Dissenters as well as one for Churchmento impart religious instruction; and the money of the State is to be given indiscriminately to both. Now, we do not stay to remark upon the obvious absurdity of having the whole religious

community thus marshalled in two classes. We do not dwell on the happy scene that would be presented in the Dissenting apartment, during the hours of separate religious instruction, with a Babel of creeds and catechisms making confusion worse confounded. It would be quite too much to ask that Mother Church should condescend to be placed on a level, in point of accommodation and authority, with any one or more of the other religious bodies, severally and distinctively considered, though she may consent to slump them all together, and say to them, in the mass, you and I shall have separate rooms to ourselves. But we venture to hint a more serious drawback upon this fine-seeming scheme of equality. We take leave to whisper that there is a small preliminary matter to be adjusted. If we are to have a fair fight, let us both strip for it. very well for you, Dr Hook, and your friends of the Establishment, to make a flourish about coming down to an equal field.

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But be good enough, first, to dismiss your State retinue, and put off your State accoutrements, and then, if you please, let us have a friendly tussle for it. The scheme, in truth, of this learned divine is a very ingenious one, and marvellously wise. The State invites equally all the Churches in the land to come and give religious instruction in its schools. Well. The Churches hasten to obey the call. But mark the difference. The Dissenting Churches have their hands full of other work; the Establishment has its hands comparatively free. Take away the advantage which the Establishment has in being supported by endowments and grants of public money, and then there may be some propriety in bidding the Dissenters compete with it on equal terms.

Can any one of common discernment fail to see how the thing would work? Take the town of Leeds. Suppose some fifty schools set up there, on Dr Hook's plan. Each has its two rooms for separate religious instruction. The proper hours on the proper days are sacredly set apart. Teachers of all opinions are made welcome to come and gather classes among the children. What

next? A strong body of Tractarian clergy are instantly ready and on the alert. No more of that begging for school funds, which Dr Hook tells us, now occupies their time so much, and tries their temper still more. Every thing is provided for them in the schools; and they are themselves provided for the schools; and at once they begin. Meanwhile, where are the dissenting agents? The ordinary teachers of the schools, we must suppose, are, on the average, neutral. The Dissenting Churches are no longer led to train religious teachers for themselves. Their ministers are few and overwrought already. Any efforts they could make would be but desultory and feeble. The Dissenting-room might be occupied by a succession of visitors of different denominations, each returning at a long interval to his labour of love. Sometimes it might be the scene of a unitarian or infidel harangue; and often it might stand empty altogether. The Church-room, all the while, is well filled with children, and duly supplied with clerical drilling in the mysteries of godfather and godmother-the charm of baptism, and the merit of hating dissent. there any doubt where all this would end? Is not Dr Hook shrewd enough to see to what it is tending?

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It is one thing, we observe, in passing, for a Dissenting Church to provide religious teachers for doing the whole work of their schools; it is quite another thing to get up separate religious instruction for four hours a-week. The former is comparatively an easy task. The latter is one for which the Establishment, as such, possesses very obvious and very unfair advantages.

There are two ways of it. Let Church Establishments be abolished; and then religious bodies are on a very different footing for the trial of this experiment. Or even, Church Establishments remaining, let the several religious bodies be summoned to furnish and equip teachers, not halfteachers, but whole-teachers, who will give a religious education in all the branches of school instruction; and we have no apprehension of the Dissenting Churches failing to do their duty.

But the getting up of this fragmentary appendix, or small supplement, of religion, to be pinned on, like a purple rag, to the texture of secular training which the State undertakes to furnish, is a very different matter indeed. We have no hesitation in predicting that, if the plan of Dr Hook, or anything like it, be ever carried out, he and his Tractarian friends will make their own of it. Even the Evangelical party in the English Church would, in a great degree, be placed at a disadvantage under it. They are, like the godly Dissenters, too busy with the more spiritual duties of their calling, and, alas, too divided and disorganized among themselves, to be able to give much time and attention and united action to this scholastic work, however important. It is the High Church section, with its swarms of cathedral dignitaries and Oxford priests-all animated by a new-born zeal, that could really furnish the men and the means for putting a goodly and glowing apostolic selvage round the mantles of neutral tint with which the wise men of our day would fain clothe the shoulders of the rising generation.

The policy of High Church, therefore, is clear; and old Toryism sees the way also to a revival. It hated the Reform Bill, but worked the registration courts. It hated also the endless clamour about education; but now, when it cannot help it, it will work the schools. We most firmly believe, that as matters now stand, public national support, on a large scale, and on the most liberal and latitudinarian footing, would very soon be seen to be the giving away of money for strengthening the English and Irish establishments, promoting Puseyism, and preparing the way for the endowment of Popery; if that measure, indeed, be not associated with the other.

We are well aware that we expose ourselves to a vehement and indignant outcry, when we presume to arraign any of the new plans of national education. We regard very little the reproach of the mere infidel portion of the press or of the community, who are ready now, as it would seem, to consent to almost any measure of policy and

expenditure of public money, if only evangelical truth and righteousness be not put forward to trouble them. And to others, we would say, that we trust we are not insensible to the enormous magnitude of the existing evil, in the prevailing popular ignorance among us; notwithstanding our honest conviction that the Churches of Christ are better parties to deal with it, as matters now stand, than governments that have renounced their allegiance to God's truth, and tell us plainly they cannot discern it from Satan's lying delusions. If Government is to do real good to the cause of God just now, it is by withdrawing present endowments, rather than by granting new ones. If they want work, let them deal with existing establishments. If they have money to spare, let them remit taxes. It looks like a device certain parties are now trying, to stop the just call for reform and retrenchment, by an ultraliberal cry of endowment to Popery, and the latitudinarian watchword of education without a creed.

We have said nothing on the subject of reforming the existing educational establishments. We purposely reserve all questions respecting the kind of reform that ought to satisfy reasonable and Christian men; as well as in regard to the duty and propriety of attempting an agitation or popular movement with that view-the best way of making the attempt, if it is to be made-and the chances of success or of safety with such governments and parliaments, as we are likely to have, in the present state of parties and opinions throughout the country. As to the Scottish parochial schools, in particular, we would desire to be understood as by no means committed on any of the questions we have indicated. The monstrous injustice of the present arrangement, by which these schools are tied to the small sect in Scotland now recognized by law as the National Church, is as apparent and as intolerable as the continued establishment of that sect itself. There are peculiar facilities, also, in Scotland, if its various Presbyterian communities could agree about the matter, for imparting to the parish schools enough of practical ca

tholicity, without divesting them of a distinctively religious character, according to the one common creed and catechism in which these Churches generally concur. At the same time, there are difficulties, too, on which we need not at present enlarge, but which will readily occur to those who consider the spirit of the age and the present temper of men's minds; and it must be obvious that it might prove far easier to obtain a partial and precarious concession, in the way of a relaxation of the tests now in force, than such a thorough re-construction of the whole system, including the entire adjustment of patronage, superintendence, and other details, as alone ought to satisfy the Christian people of Scotland.

There is another subject, also, on which we wish to be understood as reserving ourselves for a fuller consideration and discussion of it; we refer to the questions that might arise, under a Government scheme of indiscriminate endowment, as to the lawfulness, the expediency, and the propriety, of a Christian Church accepting salaries, upon such a system, for the teachers of its schools. The questions to which we refer would require more elaboration than we can now afford to give them; especially as they become complicated and mixed up with various aspects of its own peculiar position and peculiar testimony, in the case of a body so situated as is the Free Church of Scotland. Besides, we really cannot regard this as a very urgent iuquiry-" sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." There will be time enough for us to determine about receiving, while Government and Parliament are deliberating about giving; and, for our own part, we cannot but believe, both that it will be a harder thing than many anticipate to adjust the terms of the proposed neutrality or amity, that, for ought we know, is to embrace the extremes of Popery and Atheism-and also, that while these preliminaries are in course of being settled, the paying party, to wit, the taxed and tolerant public, will begin to rub the eye of re-awakening economy, and gently ask, if there is no previous question, about existing

funds, to be disposed of, before the purse is opened for the supply of

more.

Our chief fear, we confess, at present, is-lest discussions as to what Government may do, or as to how, in certain hypothetical circumstances, a Christian Church might or should act, -lead away attention from the disdischarge of immediate duty. Some parties, we are afraid, would rejoice in this; and there might be satisfaction, in certain quarters, if unity of council were broke, and instant energy of action prevented, by such doubtful questions. But if there be a Church

in a situation to go on with the work of education, on her own high model, and for her own holy ends, let her not be misled by an ignis fatus, or distracted by rumours of lo here-lo there. Time is precious and whatever may be coming, it is a mighty thing to have the start. Let that Church, then, whatever others may do, and whatever she might do in other circumstances, make haste to realize her own ideal,-not of what is merely tolerable, but of what is right and of what is best. And she is on safe and high ground, whatever may betide.

RECORD OF PRESENT AND PASSING PERSECUTIONS.

WE intend to devote regularly a portion of our space to this dark subject.

We do so from a strong sense of duty. We have no pleasure in narrating instances of cruelty. We have no wish to depreciate the liberality of the age. We will not rake up the horrors of former days; nor will we lay ourselves out to canvass for fresh horrors now. The ordinary channels of intelligence will suffice for our materials. We have no desire to blacken the Greek or Roman Churches; nor would we do injustice even to infidelity itself. But we have a deep conviction that we are entering fast on an era of revived and aggravated hostility to the truth. We believe, also, that not only will bigotry resort to measures of extremest violence against it, but these measures will be tolerated or applauded by all sorts of men. The fact is, the Gospel is every where becoming troublesome; and there will be a general combination to put down, not perhaps the tame profession of it, but any thing like zeal to extend it. Is it not an ominous symptom of the state of public opinion, that even the most ultra-liberal and latitudinarian men of the world are beginning to have the idea that all the toleration a re

ligious man is entitled to is just liberty to keep his religion to himself? A

godly man, it seems, may think himself very well off, if his own personal godliness is patiently endured. Should' he venture out of his privacy, and speak to his neighbours about Christ, it is at his own peril. He is responsible for any tumult that ensues; and the notion of protecting either him or his converts, is a wild dream. We look for more indications of the persecuting spirit, as evangelical religion rises in Missionary enthusiasm. We mean to be on the watch, to note the progress of events.

Three instances offer themselves for our present number. We had designed to add a fourth-Tahiti—but we postpone that disastrous scene.

I. Let the Greek Church and the Greek mob have the precedence. Dr King, the devoted American Missionary at Athens, had dared, it seems, to publish a book, some time ago, with some reflections against the worship of the Virgin. For this he is indicted to stand his trial; and the following is his own simple and graphic account of his situation. It is contained in a letter dated 24th July 1846, and addressed to Dr Anderson, Boston, U.S.A.

I wrote to you on the 13th of June, informing you that the day fixed for my trial before the Criminal Court at Syra, was the 22d of

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