that extent, and on these grounds, injurious to the cause of Christianity and to the national interests.

But, on the strict principles of a reciprocal trade,' whether free trade or not, Christian institutions could not, it is said, be maintained. What economist, what voluntary has ever held language that could by possibility be tortured into the sense of treating the Christian ministry as a trade, or reducing the supply of Christian knowledge, or the education of the people, to the strict rules of trade? Dr. Chalmers is very fond of fighting the air; no wonder that, in so doing, he often deals his blows upon himself. It is a principle of trade, that, unless the price which a commodity fetches covers the cost of production, it will cease to be brought to market. But the returns for the articles ' of Christian instruction are very often beneath the prime cost incurred in the preparation of it.' They who receive the whole benefit of the ministration, do not pay the whole price of it, and the deficiency is covered by certain others. What then? An analogy may be pushed too far. The only object of trade is profit; the only principle of trade, remuneration of labour and capital. But the object of religious institutions, is not profit; and the principle of trade does not apply to them. What has this to do with the question, whether the supply should be free?-whether, so far as the analogy holds good, the principle of free trade, rather than of monopoly, should be adhered to? St. Paul, referring to the claim of the Christian pastor or evangelist to maintenance, lays down the axiom, that the labourer is worthy of his hire.' What if some well endowed Rabbi, nettled at the apostle's advocating the wages principle, had said; The world can never 'be supplied with its instruction on that principle; for, first, the labourer must wait to be hired before he can claim wages, and 'those who most need to be instructed will not hire a stranger to 'teach them: secondly, some of you labour for nothing, and 'thereby uudersell the paid labourer; thirdly, you abandon your 'own principle by robbing other churches, taking wages of them 'to preach the gospel freely' to others; and, fourthly, it comes to the same thing, whether you allow the brethren of Mace'donia to support you while preaching in Achaia without hire or wages, or whether you draw your support from the Temple 'funds or from the Roman treasury.' Would the learned professor of Jewish theology, who should thus have combated the voluntary principle as implied in the apostolic axiom, have proved St. Paul or himself to be the blunderer and the sophist? But, to use the words of our Author, such is the melancholy upshot of those rash and unfortunate generalizations which the philosopher ' often indulges in his closet.'

* 2 Corinthians xi. 8.

VOL. IV.

In his third Lecture, Dr. Chalmers undertakes to disprove the sufficiency of the Voluntary principle. But there are, lie tells us, two sorts of the Voluntary principle; "the Voluntaryism ab intrâ, and the Voluntaryism ab extra. The former is coincident with the principle of free trade: the latter is in conflict with it, and is but the Establishment principle in disguise! If a congregation is left, out of its own resources, to pay the expenses of its own ministry, it acts out the principle of internal voluntaryism.' But if it receives a sixpence by way of aid from the contributions of

a others, it “draws upon external voluntaryism,' and makes a pracótical acknowledgment of the insufficiency of the free-trade

system. Consequently, every Dissenting congregation that contributes out of its internal voluntaryism to the support of missions or village preaching, gives up the voluntary principle, ceases to be acting freely, and adopts the whole principle of a State Establishment! And if the offerings of the external be *thankfully received by the voluntaries themselves when harassed .by the short-comings of their internal voluntaryism, what becomes of the economical argument against National Establish‘ments of Christianity ?' With an individual who can impose this upon his own understanding for reasoning, it were useless to argue.

As this Lecture is but a fantastic repetition of the fallacious assumptions and almost insane logic in the preceding one, we shall not stay to dilate upon the ineffable absurdity of the Author's definition of the voluntary principle, which makes it mean any thing but what the advocates of the voluntary system intend or understand by it; a definition which identifies opposites, making the duty of a man's paying his own minister to clash with his attending to the claims of benevolence, and representing voluntary contributions for the support of religion to be the same thing as involuntary and compulsive payments exacted by the State. By such an abuse of words it were easy to make a show of proving any thing; and the Doctor complacently concludes, on the strength of such showing, that "it will be seen there is a • harmony not previously seen, perhaps not even suspected before,' [true enough !] 'between the doctrine of a National Establish

ment, and at least one great branch of the voluntary principle;' ' a parliamentary vote' being, both in principle and in effect, .but an example of the voluntary principle ab extrâ. Triumphant demonstration !

Lecture IV., On the Circumstances which determine a Government to select one Denomination of Christianity for the

National Religion,' may be dismissed with a very brief notice. The only distinctly intelligible proposition which we can extract from a flood of words, is, that the British Parliament did well to prefer Protestantism to Popery; and that should ever Government exercise its prerogative in a manner which Dr. Chalmers

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would think not right, by an application of the voluntary principle ab extrâ to the endowment of any other faith than the Protestant, he trusts that the people of this land would resist and overbear it. From which it is manifest, that it belongs to Government to select a denomination, when it happens to make a right selection; and that an Establishment is a very good thing, when the Established Church happens to be as orthodox as the Church of Scotland, or as prosperous, in the vital and spiritual sense,' as that of Ireland. Dr. Chalmers is a Liberal after all, for, in thus limiting the right and prerogative of Government, he clearly recognizes the sovereignty of the people.

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But it is easier to state the grounds of preference on which 'Protestantism should be adopted rather than Popery, as being 'the worthier of the two for a national provision,' than to state any valid reason why one denomination of Evangelical Protestantism should be selected, to the exclusion of all others, 'as entitled to the privileges and honours of an Establishment;' and why a different denomination should be selected in two different parts of the same kingdom. Dr. Chalmers adverts to this difficulty, and leaves it pretty much where he found it. The chief subject of the Fifth Lecture is, the alleged efficacy of a Territorial Establishment; not an Establishment deriving its revenues from territorial wealth, as the term might seem to imply, but a scheme which assigns to the clergyman a certain district within the limits of which he may exert an ecclesiastical surveillance or "guardianship over one and all of the families.' In this territorial principle, he remarks, which is no other than that of the parochial system, lies the great strength of an Establishment, and its superiority over the congregational plan. It is true, however, he admits, that though we can create the right machinery, we 'cannot create the right men; and without these, the machinery 'may either be ill worked or not worked at all, and so be the in*strument of evil instead of good.' But what if the machinery itself be adapted to exclude the right men, and so to defeat its professed object in nine cases out of ten? We do not simply denounce this as Utopianism;' we deny, in the first place, that an Establishment gives any advantage to the territorial incumbent over the city missionary, the visitor of a Christian Instruction Society, or any other description of voluntary agency; and next, we deny the legitimacy of the ecclesiastical surveillance which an Establishment affects to vest in the parochial minister. We object to the territorial principle so explained, because it is one of usurpation and exclusion. The parish minister resents the intrusion of any other upon his territory, as an ecclesiastical trespass, an invasion of his office, a reflection upon his competency, or a competition with his endeavours. It is thus that a territorial

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Establishment necessarily fosters the pride of caste and the spiri of intolerance.

The concluding Lecture treats of the circumstances which justify a Government that has assumed one from among the several denominations for the National Establishment, in abid' *ing by the selection it has made.' And the first argument adduced in vindication of this policy, is the incompatibility of the territorial principle with the endowment of different sects. But not only is it incompatible with the endowment of different sects; it forbids their being placed on the same footing of civil equality. It therefore involves not only partiality, but injustice; and it throws the greatest possible obstacle in the way of religious harmony. Yet, strange to say, these necessary results of a territorial Establishment are Dr. Chalmers's reasons in favour of it.

• The attempt to combine the territorial principle with an equal treatment of all the denominations, must be given up as impracticable ; and some one denomination must be singled out for an Establishment whose ministers are to be charged overhead with the Christian education of the country, and each in his own sphere, to have an oversight and a certain responsibility laid upon him, for the religious knowledge and habitudes of all the families.'—p. 160.

Of all the families, Presbyterian or Episcopalian, Protestant or Romanist, native or foreign. It is this territorial principle which commits the charge of a Welsh parish to an English incumbent, unable to speak a word of the vernacular dialect; and consigns the oversight of some thousands of Irish papists to a clergyman of an alien church, whom they must consider as at once an intruder and a heretic. Regarded in one aspect, this exclusive system may be viewed, our Author admits, in the • light of an injury to the sects ;' but this collateral effect,' he treats as a trivial consideration, it being no part of the design of Government; while, regarded in another aspect, it should be • viewed in the light of a benefit to society. This is begging the whole question. The injury is undeniable; the benefit problematical. We claim his admission, and reject his hypothesis. We deny that the territorial principle would work beneficially, even if it did not operate thus unjustly,--even if no such sectarian distinctions divided society.

In resting the vindication of National Religious Establishments upon such grounds as these, Dr. Chalmers, however, concedes much to the Voluntaries, whose auxiliary labours he admits to be as valuable as they are necessary. Standing as a Presbyterian clergyman in the midst of Episcopalians, he could not altogether forget, that the orders of his own church are treated as invalid by the church established in this country, and that all its pulpits are

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closed against him and his brethren as schismatics. Some recollection of this kind, probably, prompted him to exclaim:

"We do not speak of the sin of schism in the abstract. There is much said on this subject by certain domineering churchmen, who arrogate a mystic superiority to themselves, while they would consign all others beyond the pale of Christianity-wherewith we cannot in the least sympathise. It is not on any pretension of this sort, that we would vindicate the establishment of the churches, either of Scotland or England. We do not feel it necessary for such a purpose, to depress immeasurably beneath us, either the creed or the government of other denominations. We most willingly concede of sectaries we could name, that they are at one with us in all which is vital, and only differ from us in certain minute and insignificant peculiarities; and yet the establishment, the single, the exclusive establishment, of our existing churches in their respective countries, might be made to rest, we think, on a firmer because a more rational basis-on a far clearer principle, than is alleged by those who claim for their ministers the immaculate descent of a pure and apostolic ordination. We disclaim all aid from any such factitious argument,

—an argument which could have been of no avail against the Popery that we rejected, and should be of as little avail against those denominations of Protestantism which have been left unendowed.

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* When once the Church of England shall have come down from all that is transcendental or mysterious in her pretensions, and, quitting the plea of her exclusive apostolical derivation, shall rest more upon that wherein the real greatness of her strength lies—the purity of her doctrines—her deeds of high prowess and championship in the battles of the faith-the noble contributions which have been rendered by her scholars and her sons to that Christian literature which is at once the glory and the defence of Protestantism—the ready-made apparatus of her churches and parishes—the unbroken hold which, as an establishment, she still retains on the mass of society—and her unforfeited possessory right to be reckoned and deferred to as an establishment still — When these, the true elements of her legitimacy and her power, come to be better understood ; in that proportion will she be recognised as the great standard and rallying-post, for all those who would unite their efforts and their sacrifices in that mighty cause, the object of which is to send throughout our families in more plentiful supply, those waters of life which can alone avail for the healing of the nation. But the best and highest sacrifice of all were by the Dissenters of England, those representatives and descendants of the excellent ones of the earth-the Owens, and Flavels, and Howes, and Baxters, and Henrys of a bye-gone age-who rejoiced to hear of all the Christianity which there was in the church, and to see all which the church did, if but done for the Christian good of the people. We speak not of the sin of schism, of which we have sometimes heard, in language far too strong for any sympathy or even comprehension of ours. But we speak of the blessings of unity.'--pp. 172--179.