into account. The German disposition is by nature more easy, sluggish, and tame, than the free and fierce spirit of the English. In these countries abroad there is an incessant, vigilant, scrupulous (or rather unscrupulous), superintendence of the police, which enters any man's house at any hour, and examines into his whole conduct and way of life; and without permission of the police, and its passports, no one can travel from one state to another. This municipal power is supported by an overwhelming military force, at the command of governments nearly absolute. Add to this, that every native is obliged or liable to serve, for a limited term, in the army of his country, and thus learns habits of discipline and obedience. Situations connected with the army are among the principal sources of profit, and almost exclusively of honour and distinction. In some states, a man cannot marry unless he can write, or until he is twenty-five years of age; and not then, unless he can satisfy the magistrate that he has a reasonable prospect of maintaining a family, and the priest, that he understands the duties of the married state.

These laws and restrictions would be thought intolerable encroachments upon the freedom of individuals in England. The plain, obvious inference is, that if you wish to breed up a population of good citizens and good Christians, as there are in this country fewer political and personal restraints, you must, in proportion, apply the more care to instruct individuals to guide and control themselves, by inculcating in the young mind sound religious principles, and training it betimes to habits of self-respect and moral discipline.

A system of national education for the bulk of a people, excluding religion, is a plan as yet untried in the world; but the calendars of our prisons shew, by fearful results, that knowledge without morals is far from being a preventative of crime; on the contrary, as a very experienced judge has lately affirmed from the bench, it is putting a weapon in the hands of a savage.

To do our countrymen justice, the wild and impious scheme of non-religious education, broached by desperate politicians for their own ends, and abetted by some well-meaning, short-sighted persons, will not go down. It shocks persons of real, hearty piety, of all persuasions, to leave out all consideration of the Almighty from a main national undertaking, and to degrade the gospel of Jesus Christ into a mere school-book for learning to read. Blessed be God, there are still thousands among us who have not bowed the knee to Baal, the god of this world, and who cannot, and dare not, begin a great work of this kind without prayer, united prayer, for the Divine favour to prosper their labours. There are thousands, nay, tens of thousands, who think and feel that a total absence of religion from a national system of education amounts practically to a renouncing of God on the part of the nation; and that such apostasy must, in the necessary course of events, be followed, as an effect from a cause, by heavy national calamities, according to the revealed doctrines and histories of the Bible, and to all corresponding secular experience.

The attempt to deal with mankind without religion has, in our day, providentially failed. There is not now "that unphilosophical, and,

indeed, fanatical animosity against Christianity which was so prevalent during the latter part of the eighteenth century." The battery is therefore pointed, not ostensibly against the Christian religion, but against the church of England; but the fire is kept up by much the same sort of persons who formerly assaulted our holy faith. They may be divided into different classes-sincere enthusiasts, dreaming of some unattainable perfection of piety and liberality; mischief-makers, for mischief sake; all those who live as birds of prey upon society, bankrupts in principle, in pecuniary means, and character; and lastly, politicians of headstrong, unbounded ambition, who "rejoice to make their way through destruction and ruin." To those who are, by instinct, enemies to whatever is established, and to what is good, must, in the present instance, be added, the ancient antagonists of our church on the right hand, and on the left, papists and dissenters, who look each party for their own separate advantage; the Roman catholics hoping to supplant us, and the dissenters to see our overthrow-some from conscientious, but the greater part from factious and envious motives. This host of foes, we grieve to add, are encouraged by the conduct of the present ministry, who may be said to hold office on the condition of depressing the established church. The existing party of whigs have been more bitter in this hostility than any great party in the state since the accession of King William the Third. Well might Mr. Wilberforce observe in his Diary: "Fox's hatred to the church of England breaks forth throughout his history" of King James the Second. "Poor fellow," he adds, with characteristic softness, "this was only too natural in him;" meaning, probably, that the great body of the clergy opposed his politics. The Rev. Sidney Smith has given to his friends in power some reasons for that opposition, and has pretty significantly intimated to them, that they do not go the way to conciliate the clergy. It would have been wise and just to have done so, and a fair opportunity was afforded. After the repeal of the Test Laws; after the Roman-catholic Relief Bill had passed; after the New Marriage Act; after the Commutation of Tithes, and the working of the Church Commission; and after the whigs had nestled their friends (very good men) into lucrative and influential situations in the church, one would have thought this was just the time for well-principled and resolute men to have made a stand, and to have said to the dissenters, "We will go no further; we are determined to support the ecclesiastical constitution of the country." But no; the ministry came into power on a pledge for the appropriation clause in Ireland, (which they dropped for their own convenience;) they abandoned Lord Althorp's healing measure for church-rates; they abandoned the protestant church in Canada; they have given up the sway of education in Ireland to the Roman catholics; and now comes this

Sir James Macintosh's Life, i. 245, as quoted in an admirable article on Milman's edition of Gibbon, in the Quarterly Review for this month, p. 378. + Life of Wilberforce, vol. iii. p. 387.

notable scheme of national education for England, by which the established church is to be precluded from all parliamentary grants of money for the purpose of education, on the plea of its exclusive teaching; that is, in plain English, because the church teaches some fixed opinions and doctrines in religion. Whether the ministry will or will not support this scheme, with sorrow be it spoken, we cannot say; but judging from past circumstances, we must suppose that they will watch the balance of parties and votes in the House of Commons, or leave it an open question, as it is called, in the cabinet. Too truly may Earl St. Vincent's remark, on another occasion, be applied to the present government,-"There is such a deficiency of nerve under responsibility, that I see officers of the greatest promise and acquired character sink beneath its weight."+ Such persons yield to the importunate and violent, and are careless of the claims of the virtuous and peaceable. If the church of England is to keep and to extend its ground with the increasing population of the country, this can only be effected, under Providence, by the continued exertions of its faithful members, clerical and lay. We must learn the lesson of the day, and "agitate." The reformers, as reformers, are not unfriendly to the church. Of all men the clergy are, and ought to be, the most forward and desirous to remove abuses, of whatever kind, in the ecclesiastical establishment. They have shewn a cordial disposition to do this, and have listened, and will listen, with profound respect, to the recommendations and reproofs of such reformers as Burke, and Wilberforce, and Perceval, and Lord Harrowby, and other good and religious men. But with regard to those falsely-called reformers, who have no care for religion, and whose acts tend to the destruction of the constitution, it is the glory of the church that her principles will allow no fellowship with such persons, and her praise, that she is the first object of attack for their malice.

To set about to educate a whole people in the knowledge of their duties to God and man, according to gospel truth, is a great, noble, patriotic, and Christian work, and one which makes part of the design of a national church. It must be acknowledged to be a plausible and apparently liberal scheme, to do this by means of the scriptures alone, upon which we all agree; and no doubt many good and conscientious persons support such a scheme from the best motives. But experience, fatal experience, proves that the absence of church. formularies produces evils different, indeed, but scarcely less, if less, than the exclusion of the holy scriptures. Germany is a proof. In the country of Jerome, and Huss, and Luther, and Melancthon, and their brother-reformers, painful observations are now made, that the Roman catholics are sincere and consistent in their religion, mixed

The committee of the British and Foreign School Society" urge upon the attention of government the paramount importance of establishing, as preliminary to every other measure, a board of education, enjoying the confidence of the various religious denominations of the country !"-Letter to Lord John Russell, signed William Allen, April 14, 1838.

Brenton's Life of Earl St. Vincent, vol. ii. p. 327,

as it is with idolatrous superstitions; but that the reformed churches have very much lapsed into rationalism, and are split asunder among sects innumerable, chiefly on account of the want of settled articles of faith and effectual episcopal jurisdiction. At Geneva, what work would Calvin find for that high power of excommunication, claimed by his master-spirit, in the church which he there planted! So ephemeral is personal authority and influence. Durable effects upon society can only be produced by the unceasing operation of a system with known laws, method, and discipline. The plan of "scriptural education," as it is called, is only apparently, not really liberal, because it is all for the advantage of dissenters, and against churchmen; and also because the agreement would be hollow and superficial, leaving the seeds of jealousy and suspicion to spring up among the different parties, with constant bickerings and attempts, open or clandestine, to supplant each other and gain the ascendancy. Let it never be forgotten that the inveterate opposition to the established church is of a political, not religious character; and that those who now hate the church for its secular privileges, would be the first to despise the clergy when stripped of them.

Your notice is very consolatory, that the National Society, under its reverend president, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is making exertions for extending education, under the superintendence of the established church. Faveat Deus. In large towns, where plentiful wages are received by mechanics and workmen in manufactories, some plan may surely be suggested for inducing the men to allot a portion of their earnings for the education of their children, as they often set aside a weekly sum for benefit societies, and medical assistance. I am, Sir, yours faithfully, URBANUS.

MR. DAVISON'S AND BISHOP BUTLER'S MSS.

SIR,-Is it admissible to inquire, through the medium of your Magazine, whether that eminent scholar and divine, the late John Davison, has left any sermons, or other MSS., the publication of which might add to the obligations theological students are already under to his memory, for his great work on Prophecy? Such inquiries, if made within a moderate time after the decease of eminent men, afford at least a chance of bringing to light some of their remains, which might otherwise be irretrievably lost to the public. I can never take up the comparatively small volume of sermons by Bishop Butler, which has justly been pronounced "the most precious repository of sound ethical principles extant in any language," without wondering how it has happened (considering the early age at which he wrote most of them) that so few of those which one cannot but suppose he must have written later in life, have come down to posterity. Can any of your correspondents afford any information respecting the fate of Bishop Butler's MSS., or whether any, as yet unpublished, are still extant? Surely the principles of morals, which he so successfully investigated,

are of an importance which may justly be considered as attaching as high a value to any remains of this great ethical writer as can be claimed for the fragments of scientific researches made even by a Newton.

Q.

ON THE DISUSE OF THE PRAYER FOR THE CHURCH MILITANT. SIR,-I have for some time considered a difficulty to attach to the usual understanding of the rubric, which directs, that "Upon Sundays, and other holydays, (if there be no communion,) shall be said all that is appointed at the communion, until the end of the general prayer, [for the whole estate of Christ's church militant here in earth,] toges ther with one or more of these collects last before rehearsed, ending with the Blessing; and, as the subject has been brought to notice more than once lately by some of your correspondents, I shall be glad if you can find room for a few observations upon it.

The usual understanding seems to be, that at all times when there is no communion-whether there has been an attempt on the part of the clergyman to celebrate it, and it has failed through the people's actual refusal, or there has been no attempt on his part, through presumption of the same refusal-the offertory and the prayer for Christ's church militant are to be used; and the whole of the people who refuse to celebrate the eucharist to be present at the offertory and the said prayer. This accordingly is the custom in many churches, in which, nevertheless, while the offertory is being read no collection of alms (on non-communion days) is made or attempted to be made; and this, if I apprehend it aright, is what your correspondents have urged upon their brethren as a necessary observance of the rubric.

Now, in the first place, it is clear that where the offertory is read without any collection attempted, an undeniable violation of the rubric takes place; that, I mean, which immediately follows the sentences in the offertory, "Whilst these sentences are in reading, the deacons, churchwardens," &c. The church has never contemplated the case of the sentences of the offertory, or invitation to alms, being read without an opportunity being afforded to the faithful who are present to respond to the appeal.

Secondly, I question altogether the soundness of the usual construc tion of the rubric cited at the head of this letter, which would allow those, by whose sinful disinclination to celebrate the holy service, the eucharist fails to be offered and administered, to be present at the offertory and the following prayer. This I do on two accounts :

1. Because it is contrary to the received principles of the best ages, that they should be allowed to make pecuniary offerings to God who were separated from the eucharistic.-See Constitutiones Apost. iii. 8; iv. 5, 6.

2. Because we have no other time for the dismission of the catechumens, unbelievers, and unworthy persons but that which intervenes between the sermon and the offertory, and therefore can never tell, until that dismission, whether there will be a communion or not. VOL. XIV.-Dec. 1838.

5 G