never ceased to look up as to an earthly parent, we may say, with love and reverence. Her first words of independent.

speech were to call the Church of England "Mother" acknowledging that to her she "is indebted, under God, for her first foundation, and a long continuance of nursing care and protection." Nor only so: to her has she looked mainly for the pure stream of Catholic truth, and from her alone was she content to receive, as through its safest consecrated channel, the apostolic gift of the Christian ministry, with its authoritative sacraments of covenanted mercy. These, we say, are bonds never on our part to be broken, debts never to be cancelled, obligations never to be forgotten -dear to the heart as the filial tie; and, if possible, even more sacred. In weal in wo, therefore, the Church of England is and must be near to the sympathies of the American Churchman.

Towards the Church in America, again, though here of course we must speak more conjecturally, we still feel confident that the Church of England, now, more than ever looks, in proportion to her knowledge of us, not only with ordinary Christian benevolence, but with deep and pure affection. Nor let our republican pride be shocked, though such feelings partake more, as we doubt not they do, of a mother's kindness towards a child, than of a sister's love towards an equal. It is natural they should do so; and for ourselves, we are well content there to find their type, in the hopeful love and maternal pride with which some aged Christian mother dwells on the lengthening line of generations that have gone forth from her bosom, or listens to the glad recital of their temporal and spiritual welfare. We, therefore, American Churchmen, are very willing to believe that we are near to the sympathies of the Church of England, even as we know they are to ours; and to feel the bonds that unite us to be stronger than the barriers that separate us; and of this feeling we take as a pledge on their part the recent action of Parliament, at the solicitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, removing all legal impediments to what has too long been wanting-full Christian communionexhibited by the introduction of the American clergy into

* See Preface to American Book of Common Prayer.

Even while we write is our fraternal voice responded to. "English and American Churchmen," says the reviewer, in the last number of the British Critic," are beginning to feel themselves brothers."-Jan. 1841-Art. VII.

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English pulpits.* Thus indeed should it be in the courtesy of Christian intercourse; and may safely be, for what are our verbal unimportant differences when compared with our essential spiritual agreement? The same Church, ministry, and sacraments—the same translated Bible, and the same interpretation of it-the same liturgy and services, with but needful variations in the letter,† and the same common model as our guide of primitive apostolic Christianity. Co-workers therefore we are in the greatest of all causes, that of Christ and his Church. We have the same high duties to perform, the same urgent message to deliver, the same spiritual foes to contend with, the same promised aid to look to, and the same solemn account to render of the stewardship of reconciliation committed to our charge. Is it not fitting then, we ask, that as brethren we embrace before we go forth to our one battle, and more especially in times that try men's hearts? As in human affections the cords of love are drawn tighter by a sense of common evils, so too, we deem, should it be, and will it be between these sister churches; and thus, out of the dark womb of adversity, as in human trials is even found, this unlooked-for blessing will be brought forth-new bands of Christian brotherhood; marking an approach sensibly, perhaps visibly, towards the great prophetic consummation of the unity of the Church of Christ upon earth-an ocular answer as it were to its daily petition, "thy kingdom come!"

In the mean time, each, as every other national branch of the Catholic Church, will be found to have its own peculiar perils and duties-each with its own high mission. That of the Church of England we may hold to be, to guard the citadel of primitive Christianity, to bear aloft with armed hand, in the eyes of the old world, the banner of Catholic truth, unstained by papal, untorn by protestant hands, and to be herself a beacon light to the national Churches of Christendom, guiding them, viâ media, safely in mid-channel, between the Scylla of popery, with its sensual syrens on the one hand, and the Charybdis of ultra-protestantism, with its

The first who thus preached was, we believe, the Rev. F. Ogilby, in October last, in the pulpit of Dr. Hook, at Leeds, a worthy leader in a good cause. The lamented Dr. Bayard, it is understood, was to have officiated on his return to England, about the same time, for the Bishop of London.

"In which it will also appear that this (American) Church is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship, or farther than local circumstances require."- Preface to Book of Common Prayer.

yawning and bottomless gulfs on the other. The mission, again, of the Church in America as clearly is, to go forth a pilgrim teacher into the wilderness, and to mould into Christian and apostolic shape the plastic energies of a new but undisciplined world. Its warfare is to grapple with the untamed, self-confident mind; to rule the license of democracy; to guide the independence of self-will; to abate the absorbing love of gain, at once, to spiritualize a material age, and to materialize, that is, give form and substance, to a vagueless, ever-shifting Christianity, by exhibiting it embodied in the doctrines, ministry, services, and sacraments of the Church.

Such, then, we deem to be their respective battle, and in this guise we behold them. The Church of England, fighting as from behind intrenchments, from the apparent vantage ground of an establishment, clothed in the panoply of learning, and armed on all hands with the munitions of wealththe Church in America, on the contrary, descending naked into the arena of contest, with little armor, either offensive or defensive, beyond the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit. How each fares in their respective struggle we propose now to look into.

With a view fairly to open this question, to American, perhaps to English Churchmen, of the mutual benefits to be derived from a deeper sympathy as well as a more thorough acquaintance with each other, and with the specific lessons given on either side, whether of encouragement or caution, we have arranged at the head of our article the pamphlets above enumerated as bearing upon the question of Church extension in the two countries. Among these, we shall enter mainly on the examination of the "Speech" and "Annual Sermon," as those which have suggested the comparison, though using the statistics of all so far as they bear upon the question before us. However diverse at first sight in their titles they may appear, they will yet be found to agree very closely in their general bearing. The first three, touching the Church of England-being its Parliamentary appeal for the means of Church extension, together with the documentary proof exhibiting its necessity-the last three, relating to the Church in America, being its corresponding Church appeal for the same end, together with its proof and answering results; and, what is singular enough, to add to this parallelism, these two correlative appeals were made, it

appears, within a few days of each other; the one in London, the other in New York, as reference above to their respective dates will show. And it is our object to deduce, from the comparison into which we now enter of this common action in the two Churches, some leading results bearing upon the duties, the difficulties, and the prospects of each. And first for the Appeal of the Church of England.

Sir Robert Harry Inglis, the accredited spokesman on this occasion of the Church, is, as is well known even in America, the representative from Christ's Church College, Oxford, having succeeded to that honorable station, of member for the university and leader of the High Church party in the house, some twelve years since, upon the defection of Sir Robert Peel, the then member, on the question of Roman Catholic emancipation. Not only to English Churchmen, therefore, is the name of the appellant in this case one of high authority, (though our argument demands nothing farther,) but to Americans also, we would add, it is one of acknowledged weight, more especially to such, and those not a few, among which we beg ourselves to be numbered, who have been privileged to witness, within the sanctuary of a Christian household, the many private and domestic virtues which so well entitle him to stand forth, as he pre-eminently does, in the high rank of England's Christian statesmen. To such readers of his appeal, on whichsoever side the water, will his words come home with double force, as being from the mouth of one, whose heart they know to be in the cause he advocates, as well as a ripely matured judgment in the measure of relief he proposes.

On the thirtieth of June last, this speech, in substance, was delivered by him in his place in Parliament, being an earnest, eloquent, and well-reasoned appeal to the representatives of the nation, and to the nation through its representatives, for the means of "Church Extension." The sum and bearing of his argument may perhaps be best gathered from the motion which concluded it.

"Sir Robert Harry Inglis then moved, that on Wednesday, the seventeenth of July, this house will resolve itself into committee of the whole, to consider of the following address to her majesty, that is to say-That an humble address be presented to her majesty, praying that her majesty will be graciously pleased to take into consideration the deficiency which exists in the number of places

of worship belonging to the Established Church, when compared with the increased and increasing population of the country, the inadequate provision therein for the accommodation of the poorer classes in large towns, and the insufficient endowment thereof in other places, as such facts have been set severally forth in the reports of the late ecclesiastical commissioners: to assure her majesty that this house is deeply impressed with a just sense of the many blessings which this country by the favor of Divine Providence has long enjoyed, and with the conviction that the religious and moral habits of the people are the most sure and firm foundation of national prosperity, to state to her majesty the opinion of this house that no altered distribution of the revenues of the established Church could remove the existing and augmenting evil, arising from the notorious fact that an addition of more than six million souls has been made to the population of England and Wales since the commencement of the present century, and that the rate of this increase is rapidly progressive; that the grants made by the wisdom of Parliament on the recommendation of the crown in 1818 and 1824, have been inadequate to supply the national wants; and that though private and local liberality has been largely manifested in aid of particular districts, the greatest wants exist where there are the least means to meet and relieve them; to assure her majesty that this house, feeling that God has intrusted to this nation unexampled resources, is satisfied that it is the duty of the government to employ an adequate portion of the wealth of the nation to relieve the spiritual destitution of large masses of the people by whose labor that wealth has been enlarged; and humbly to represent to her majesty that this house will cheerfully make good such measures as her majesty may be pleased to recommend in order to provide for her people in England and Wales, farther and full means of religious worship and instruction in the Established Church."— pp. 90, 91.

Before proceeding to inquire into the result of this Appeal and definite motion, let us look a little at the evidence afforded to Parliament of its most urgent necessity. This indeed, was a point conceded on all hands, borne out as it was by evidence of the most conclusive character. The reports from their own committees constituted of course, to the house, irrefragable testimony; while that from the Church commissioners was at least equally so, including as such commission does, not only the most eminent Bishops on the bench, but also the highest officers of the crown, and men of the first standing and of either party in the State. Now, the facts reported by them are as conclusive as they are authoritative, and evince a degree of religious destitution through