But in the Canterbury settlement at least will be offered the opportunity of testing the truth of this idea in its highest and grandest view; and we look with confidence to this appeal to a prevalent and almost universal principle of human nature. The experiment will here be tried under the most favourable circumstances the whole organization of the Church will be brought into play. "The absurd anomaly" to use Mr. Wynter's words" of attempting to plant episcopacy without a Bishop," will not be committed. There will be no false step made, to be subsequently retrieved no sheep to be wiled back into the fold, after being allowed, and even compelled to stray from it: no future struggle to be entered into for a Church, which has either never existed, or has been allowed to decay.

The question now presents itself,-and of all the questions. connected with the scheme, it is the most perplexing, and the least susceptible of a complete and accurate answer,-What security can be given against the intrusion of Dissent into the settlement, and for the maintenance of its original status as a distinct Church Colony?

The only reply is to be sought in the conditions of its foundation, and in the distinctive character which will be from the first impressed upon its infant institutions.

We may be told that this is not enough, and that some pledge more distinct and more definite must be given. We answer, that all that can be done is done, and the result must be left with humble confidence in the hands of Providence.

It is impossible to say that a positive guarantee can be given that differences of opinion shall not creep in, and that dissensions shall not arise. All that can be said is, that the most efficient safeguard has been presented, that could be found.

The material conditions of the scheme, which provide for a distinct and definite contribution for a distinct and definite end, guard against the admission of a hostile element among the purchasers of land; and they, for their own sake, being, as we have said, ex necessitate rei interested in the preservation of the peculiar element for which they pay, will be careful that the emigrants whom they select for free-passages shall partake their views:

'The Association retain, and will carefully exercise, a power of selection among all those who may apply for permission to emigrate to their settlement, either as purchasers or as immigrants requiring assistance. They will do so with the view of insuring, as far as possible, that none but sons of good character, as well as members of the Church of England, shall form part of the population, at least in its first stage; so that the settlement may begin its existence in a healthy moral atmosphere.'

per

The names of the Committee lead us to believe that this power will be exercised in a conscientious manner; and we,

therefore, feel that at the outset no means have been neglected which can tend to preserve the religious feature complete and unimpaired and were it possible to enact in the Colony of Canterbury the blue law of Massachusetts, which deprived of the rights of citizenship all who varied from the state religion, we do not believe that it would be found so effectual as the simple argumentum ad crumenam which has been adopted.

For the future, we well know that two principles are unceasingly and unremittingly at work within the mind of man-the moral element of permanence-the intellectual of change.

The new Colony cannot hope to be exempt from their conflict; and with the Colonists it must rest to determine which shall exert the stronger influence, and the more abiding sway. We know that dimidium facti, qui cæpit, habet, and we look hopefully to the maintenance of the principle so indelibly impressed at the outset. The field will have been preoccupied with the good grain, which, we may hope, will have attained a sufficient growth and strength to assert its own superiority before the weeds begin to show themselves; and we know it to be as infallible a rule in ethics as it is in agriculture, that the surest way to eradicate or prevent a noxious growth, is, by careful tillage, to improve the quality of the soil, and of the cultivated crop which it bears.

One main difficulty under which the Church in England labours is, that the contributions which are made to her funds, whether in the shape of tithes or of rates, are levied as it were upon income. They consequently act as a constantly recurring tax, and excite an amount of hostile feeling which would not exist had they been once for all charged upon the capital of the country, in days blessed with a more unquestioning faith, and unvexed by sectarian dissensions.

The Colony of Canterbury will commence its existence in precisely this position. The original purchasers of the land deliberately adopt this principle, and it will hereafter, although unfelt and unseen, pervade every transfer of property which shall be made. Thus, by the very conditions of the purchase, men will be stopped from raising future objections to the exclusive application of the fund destined to religious purposes, and from embarrassing the executive by that agitation of counter-claims, which so grievously impairs the efficiency and impedes the extension of the Church at home.

But after all, the main security will be in the pure and healthy moral atmosphere, in which the first breath of the infant settlement will be drawn

'Quo semel est imbuta recens servabit odorem
Testa diu.'

The first body of Colonists will find prepared to receive them Mr. Godley, a Member of the Association, who has been appointed its resident chief Agent in New Zealand.

Mr. Godley is well known as the principal originator of the scheme, and is as such the fittest person to carry out the work which he has begun. No other man could have been selected so likely, as the author of the plan, to keep the end steadily in view, so well qualified to adapt to it the requisite means, and so certain to pursue it with steadiness and consistency.

When, in addition to this, we speak of him as a man distinguished by all high qualities of head and heart, of known and undoubted attachment to the Church, of great energy, and of very considerable Colonial experience, we feel that we may look with confidence to a plan brought forward and conducted towards completion under such auspices.

The time is rapidly approaching at which it must be decidedwhether the Canterbury Colony is to be a reality or a dream. At no distant period 33,000 acres of land must have been purchased, or the Association will forfeit their right of pre-emption, and the tract of land, at present secured to them, will cease to be available for their purposes. It is, therefore, necessary that those who may feel inclined to join the band of Colonists should lose no time in making their intentions known.

Numbers there must be who might answer the description given of the first Colonists of New England in the letter of Brewster and Robinson to Sir Edward Sandys, quoted by Hutchinson in his 'History of Massachusetts':

'The people are, for the body of them, industrious and frugal, we think we may safely say as any company of people in the world. We are knit together as a body in a most strict and sacred bond and covenant of the Lord, of the violation whereof we make great conscience, and by virtue whereof we hold ourselves strictly tied to all care of each other's good, and of the whole. And, lastly, it is not with us as with other men, whom small things can discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish ourselves at home again.'

Men there must be who will not hesitate to cast in their lot, in the relations of Bishop and Clergy, with such a band as this, and who will not be slow to accept the task of leading it to the new land; which will, under their associated endeavours, put to shame the abortive caricatures which have rendered the very name of Colonies distasteful to high-spirited men, who in old times would have felt it a privilege to be allowed to devote their lives in such a cause.

The spirit in which the new sphere of duty must be entered upon has been so well expressed by the admirable Prelate, who has himself exhibited as perfect a type of the character of a Missionary Bishop as any age has seen, that to him we leave the

few words of mingled warning and encouragement, which ought to sound in the ears of the emigrants as they leave our shores, and remain engraven in their hearts long after those shores shall have faded in the distance :

From the very first, you must have a social compact one with another; all the leaders, and all the Clergymen, with all their bands of labouring men and settlers, that they all go out to found, so far as God may be with them, a Christian Colony; that they must agree to support one another"like people, like priest "-in every good and holy usage of their Mother Church; and as they will leave their native country amidst the prayers and blessings of all whose names are already written on the land of their adoption, so their course of devotion must be carried on on shipboard with their own loved and chosen Chaplain, till they see their own Bishop, or one who will be to them as their own, standing on the beach to welcome them on their arrival; that their first act may be prayer and thanksgiving, and that the first building into which they enter may be the house of God.'

One word more, by way of suggestion to Churchmen, especially to Clergy. In our parishes, town and country, cases are constantly presenting themselves of persons desirous of emigrating, or, at any rate, for whom emigration is felt to be the best course; who are in difficulties here, have strength, and health, and would improve their condition greatly by removing to a Colony. Such persons often go to their parish Clergyman to ask his advice. On the present system of emigration many Clergymen feel a difficulty in using any persuasion with such persons to adopt this course, on account of the sad spiritual destitution, and the wild and confused state of society, which would await them in their new country. The Canterbury scheme, however, does offer something of a home, and some regular religious influences and supports to emigrants; and the Clergy may be enabled, by means of it, to recommend emigration more confidently to such parishioners, and others in whose religious interests they may be concerned.

On our Church must mainly rest the responsibility of the success or failure of this undertaking. In the eloquent language of Mr. Wynter :

'She can assume the sacred embassy if she will. The will alone is wanting. There is no other hindrance in her way. The ground is yet unoccupied. No settler has set foot there. Only one lofty spirit, forsaking station, hereditary fortune, fair prospects here, is on his way to lay the first foundation of a future home for himself and others. The pollutions of our sins-the dregs and lees of our prisons-have not yet tainted that sincere atmosphere: thank God for that! for (as Lord Bacon says) "it is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men to be the people with whom you plant." There are no natives there to vex its future tenants; it may become a nursery-plot for God's people, if the Church will be the nursing mother.

'If she lead the way, bearing with her the precious and eternal truths of light inaccessible-if she take the Bible in one hand, and the means of

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intellectual culture in the other-an accomplished laity will not lag behind. As of old, "gentlemen of aunciente and worshippeful families, ministers of the Gospel of great fame at home, merchantmen, husbandmen, and artificers,' persons of condition, education, fortune," "noblemen and gentlemen," will follow. These, according to the old writers, emigrated aforetime; why should they not again? Why should not noblemen and gentlemen embark for the Colonies now, as well as the labourer and artisan? Is there not one in the ranks of our peerage ambitious of the fame of the illustrious Lord Baltimore, and of the wise conciliatory Bellamont? Not one among the children of the peerage, who having no well-defined sphere of duty at home, yet feeling himself to be a minister of Divine Providence, a steward of creation, a servant of the great family of God, would be content to exchange inglorious ease for the honourable toil of building up God's Church in a distant wilderness, and of perpetuating a noble name and lineage in a new world?'

It is with these feelings that we recommend the publications of the Canterbury Association to the attentive consideration of all who are interested in these great social problems. An experiment is about to be tried, upon the success or failure of which hang consequences not to be lightly contemplated. Our reputation as a colonizing people, the character of our Church as a colonizing Church, depend more or less on the success which it meets with. We see, for our part, no extravagance or undue enthusiasm in the scheme; we see no reason why it should not succeed. It comes before us as the mature result of long thought and discussion amongst intelligent, disinterested, and practical men; and we again recommend it especially to the attention of the Clergy, who, with their great influence in their respective parishes and neighbourhoods, may contribute so effectually to the supply of emigrants for carrying it out.