privations health and nerve broken down under unaided family cares, and unrequited official labors; and when too, we hear the appealing voice of our numerous Church associations,* with scarcely a single exception, all trembling on the verge of bankruptcy-and only saved from it month by month, by some spasmodic effort of individual benevolence: shall we, with all this before us-this picture of poverty, suffering, and degrading dependence,† say the Church would derive no benefit from adequate endowment, stands in no need of it? Such, indeed, is ever the language of wild fanaticism, and sometimes of the unreflecting spiritual mind. "God needs not human endowments to carry on his work." Surely not; but then, neither does he need human learning, nor human hands, nor anything else that poor sinful man can either offer, or give, or do. But what then? God's work, for all that, does need them; and the Church needs them, as a visibly organized body on earth, such as Christ has established it; the Church has its worldly needs and its human agencies, as much as if it were of man's appointment, and must therefore have its worldly means and its human supplies; and it is not faith, as we think, but arrogance, to pretend to place the Church above such necessity; but note, too, its folly. such arguer admit one dollar to be needed for the Church's support, then has he broken the charm on which he restedhe has abandoned the high ground of spirituality - he has come down to human needs, and brought himself and the question under the very law of endowment which we here urge that of enlightened Reason and Christian zeal. The Church's support is an argument evidently either of miracle or reason. In abandoning the first, we stand necessarily upon the second, and consequently hold the actual needs of the

If

We instance but one as under our own more immediate knowledge; the City Mission Society of New York, driven to the alternative of selling its Churches, or starving its Missionaries.

To him who thinks ill of the independent provision for the English Minister, as tending to raise him above his parishioners, we recommend the following extract from a recent Western paper before us, of an everyday picture in those regions, as a pendant for the same, exhibiting the danger of the dependent system, placing the American Minister below his parishioners :

"A Donation Party was holden on Christmas Eve, at the house of the Rev. Washington Philo, the Episcopal Missionary stationed at this place. We learn that the party was numerously attended, and went off extremely well. Many were the presents bestowed upon the Rev. Divine, by our benevolent citizens; and we are very much gratified to hear that, among them, was the cloth for a coat, of a very nice quality, together with full trimmings therefor-donated by an association of the Journeymen Printers of this town.' Madison (Wis. Ter.) Express.

Church to be the only limit and measure to the rightful endowments that should be given to the Church.

But, as before said, let very shame withhold the American Churchman from speaking lightly of Christian endowments. Let him bethink himself whence came the gospel to him. and his land? What stamp our earliest Bibles and prayerbooks bore? By whose funds were missionaries sent out and supported, and the Cross planted, when there were neither means, nor perhaps inclination to set it up? Rather, we say, let the American Churchman look back gratefully on the past, and around him, wisely on the present, in order that he may also look forward hopefully on the future, recognizing now among the deepest debts he owes to his Church and country, and her coming millions, that of making now while he may ample provision for their Christian wants, even as our pious forefathers in England did for their sons by wise and liberal endowment; and so, too, shall we in future age be like them remembered. And from them, too, let American Churchmen take their pattern, and learn the manner and the means by which, at small expense, this adequate endowment of the Church in a coming generation may be by us wrought out. The principle they give us is a demonstrable one, and the rule, short and simple, as it is feasible and

efficacious.

PERMANENT WEALTH COMES ONLY FROM LAND.

Let the Church, then, but have its lands, and, humanly speaking, its adequate endowment is secured-not, it may be, wrought out in one generation, perhaps not in two; but the endowment is going on under nature's laws, and eventually it is done-the Church has its adequate, permanent provision, and the contributions of Christian zeal will do the rest through God's blessing on both. Let, then, American Churchmen, we earnestly entreat them, open their eyes to the wisdom and pious foresight of their English progenitors. We are now even as they were some 500 years since, with more land than money, at the time most of their endowments were created; and with a Church inadequately supported, with demands upon its extension, far beyond its means. What they then did for their Church, let us now do for ours; let us give lands into her bosom, wild "government lands," if none other, with adequate productive funds to secure them against loss, if themselves be unproductive. Thousands there are in our Church now among its members, lords of wider domains than any baron of Edward's days, who gave of his

broad lands; and therefore, at least, equally able with him to secure to the Church, in the second or third generation, what every rural parish in England now enjoys through such wisely prospective gift-Church, and parsonage, and school, and some adequate provision of support. In that coming day will the Church have reason to bless him who in this day shall be instrumental in carrying out such voluntary system. for its support. One wise and good old man, at least, we have among us in this matter, of whom future times will talk, who is now thus looking, and thus acting with a wise foresight for the endowment of the Church of his great grandchildren. Thus, we think, after a few years, will the venerable Bishop Chase be spoken of among Churchmen, when the land endowments of Kenyon and Jubilee College, now looked down upon with scorn, will then be looked up to with respect and admiration. But if this be so, why, then, in our broad land, in the name of common sense, as well as Christian zeal, we ask, are there not hundreds and thousands of similar endowments going on, springing from abler hands, and perhaps with wiser guidance, to save from intervening loss, lands which, if preserved to the Church, will, without peradventure, give to it in a coming age all those human means of spiritual good which she so sadly wants in this. A Diocesan Society duly incorporated in each diocese, to act as such trustee, and to guard the lands, with adequate funds, might not be an unwise suggestion. Now, at any rate, is the time or never. Had it been done two generations ago generally through the Atlantic states, how different would now be the means of the Church in those older dioceses, whether for self-support or missionary exertions in the newer ones? "Now," therefore, is for the western states what "then" was for the eastern; and under the good Providence of God, the Church, without any exorbitant demand upon its members, may now sow the seed widely for such harvest. Again, therefore, we proclaim the secret-let the Church by voluntary gift have a lien given to it upon the land, and the land, through means of its spiritual teaching, will have its reward and blessing from the Church.

"O! while thou yet hast room, fair fruitful land, Ere war and want have stained thy virgin sod, Mark thee a place on high, a glorious stand,

Whence Truth her sign may make o'er forest, lake, and strand".* Lyra Apostolica, CXXXIX.

*

But to bring our long parallel to a close-such as we have seen them are the sister Churches of England and America- one in spirit, distinguishable in form, similar, yet dissimilar, and affording to the reflecting mind on both sides matter for serious consideration; and in a deep sense of the benefit to be derived from such mutual sisterlike* contemplation of each other's excellences-do we commend the matter thoughtfully to those on both sides the water, from whom must come the initiative in any measures of a nearer intercourse or a closer approximation.†

The leading lessons to be learned on either side appear to us as obvious as they are clearly just. The American Churchman is to learn to lay aside many ultra-republican prejudices, when looking at the Church of England; to discriminate in it between the Church as voluntarily endowed, and the Church as by law established — confounding the two neither in their origin nor their results, nor the feelings with which he regards them. Nor is this all. He is to recognize farther, in its alliance of Church with State, a moral and Christian bond, as well as a legal and arbitrary one, and take care lest his wellfounded objection to the one lead him to undervalue the inestimable national blessings that flow from the other, and of which Christian England, with all its drawbacks, is the noblest specimen that the world can offer. Again, his prejudices, if he have them, against adequate Church endowments, must, and will be given up, when he traces the blessings they have been, under God, to the Church of England; and this conviction will lead him to become an advocate for them in his own, and to labor for their attainment, if not for the present, at least for coming generations. He is, again, to learn modesty as to laying monopoly claim, as most Americans do, to the "voluntary system," seeing as he must, that it is a system working as powerfully, and appealed to as strenuously in the English Church as in his

"Our sister Transatlantic Church," such is the affectionate appellation used by the Bishop of London, in a recent letter, (Dec. 19, 1840,) submitted to us.--"We rejoice, and are thankful," he adds, " at the increasing prosperity and usefulness, which indicate the blessing of God resting on that portion of his Church." "I hope," he again adds, "that the act of Parliament, passed last session, will be received by them as evidence of our fraternal regard."

+We rejoice to find ourselves anticipated in the necessity of such advice. By a recent letter from Dr. Hook to one of our Bishops, (Dr. Doane,) inviting him to his pulpit, we find that the Church of England is as little willing as the Church of America can be to leave their recently gained Christian brotherhood a dead letter.

own. And, lastly, he is to find in the Church of England, a better model, generally speaking, of the Churchman, both in tone and spirit, than popularly belongs to our more arrogant, self-confident, authority-spurning mind.

From us, again, may the Church of England learn many things, not indeed new, but old and forgotten-to return to what is lost, not to add what is foreign. She will here witness the present working of forms of ecclesiastical union and action, such as she herself once had; and seeing, too, the blessing that accompanies them, may be led to look back more earnestly to her own "first love," and "to strengthen those things that remain, lest they be lost." Her defenders must learn, too, to abate their sweeping condemnation of the voluntary system, by seeing not only what in fact it has here accomplished in our case, but how much of her own best efforts have come from the same source; and while she may doubtless feel not unchristian pride in her own noble endowments, yet must she learn, too, to look with Christianly respect on what her sister pilgrim Church has done in the new world without them; and may, perhaps, learn from her the farther not unneedful lesson-how should she herself fail to win back within the Church's pale a recreant statehow she, too, may stand erect without its aid or alliance. But that catastrophe- for such, after a thousand years of union, would a divorce of Church from State doubtless be-is yet, we trust, far from her and her children. England, with her heterogeneous elements of an old-formed society-her social ranks and their vested rights, needs, we think, a closer and more legalized alliance with the Church, not for the Church's sake, but for the State's, than is needful in republican America; and to maintain and preserve such alliance for the example of Christendom, we deem to be her peculiar mission. Therefore do we say-Esto perpetua! America, with the simplicity of her written constitution, and the equality of her citizens, needs but the moral bond of such alliance. Of it too, we say-Crescat eundo.

But for the future fortunes of the Church of England we fear not. As with the touch of Ithuriel's spear has she already sprung to her feet, and donned her armor and assumed her earlier hue and nobler shape. "A thousand (spiritual) swords" have already leaped from their scabbards to avenge even the words of infidel insult, while on every hand, old forgotten truths and new awakened zeal and all