waste their energies in vulgar strife, and are dead to the voice of the crying millions, who sink to darkness year by year, and day by day, without religion, without hope, without God in the world ! Let but the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ be kindled in those lonesome regions of moral desolation, and "the mountains and the hills would break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree1." And we should learn that God's power and goodness are shown forth most largely,—not in the smiling scenes of untaught nature, lovely and refreshing though they be; but rather where the prayer of many worshippers ascends to the throne of the Most High, and the throng of reasonable beings submit themselves to the mild yoke of Christ their Lord'. 1 Isaiah lv. 12, 13. 2 The cause of the refusal of church-rates in certain places may be illustrated by the following example, contained in an extract from the Times of Sept. 27, 1837:: "ASHTON CHURCH-RATE.-The poll for a church-rate for Ashton-under-Line closed on Saturday last, when the numbers were-For the rate, 992; for the adjournment, 2,020; majority against the rate, 1,127. This result can hardly excite surprise when it is known that, in the town of Ashton, accord ing to the statements of the Manchester Statistical Society, read last week at Liverpool, there are no fewer than 1,293 heads of families 'making no religious profession: and in the neighbouring town of Staley-bridge 1,174 more.' Why, you might just as well propose a church-rate in New Zealand as in such towns as these! and these are English towns! and we call ourselves a Christian people! 295 CHAPTER XXIII. THE CHURCHMAN A MAN OF PROPERTY. "Is this a time to plant and build, Add house to house, and field to field, CHRISTIAN YEAR. SEVERAL years had elapsed since the occurrences just related, and time, as it passed, had brought with it many changes in its train. Herbert sadly missed his sister at the parsonage. The Provident club, the Infant school, the Lyingin charity, did not go on at all to his mind, since she had given up the management; until at length, whether in despair of conducting the affairs of his parish without an "help meet" for him, or for some other good reason best known to himself, he followed the example of his friend, and entered into the holy estate of matrimony. About this time also he was appointed to the office of Archdeacon, and the sphere of his use. fulness was greatly enlarged by this accession to his dignity. Arthur Ridley's worldly circumstances were much changed by the unexpected death of his elder brother, who had long been absent from England. There is a class of English gentlemen, who, unfortunately for their neighbours as well as themselves, prefer any other country to their own. They desert the station in which God has placed them, spend their ample fortunes amongst those with whom they have no interest in common, and shut up their family mansions, which have long been the centre of beneficial influence in their respective neighbourhoods, and leave a blank which is not easily filled up,-a broken link in the chain which binds English society together. Sir Edward Ridley was one of this class. He had imbibed a passion for foreign travelling, or rather rambling from place to place; and, without perseverance of character to turn his travels to any good account, but from mere idle curiosity and love of excitement, had wandered from country to country over most parts of the habitable globe. He could tell "Of moving accidents by flood and field, Of hair-breadth 'scapes." He had climbed the snowy peak of the Jungfrau, at the imminent peril of his life; had staid just fifteen minutes, and then come-down again, He had served a campaign with Zumalacarregui. He had beaten off a band of Suliote pirates who boarded his yacht in the Mediterranean. Not always equally fortunate, he had been plundered by the Arabs at Petra, and imprisoned at Smyrna for his rashness in entering a Turkish mosque; at last he was carried off by a three days' fever, which he caught amidst the ruins of Persepolis. Though a man of enterprize and talent, of amiable disposition and honourable principles, he had wasted his best years with no single useful object in view, guided only by the caprice of the hour. He knew less of his countrymen than of almost any other nation under heaven; he was a stranger in the hall of his fathers, and the only memorial which remained to show that such a person had possessed it, were a few Murillos and Titians, which he |