And Clutha, like a silver lake, Reflected back its blaze of light; The Highland shores were dark and dun, Which now o'er Indian mountains roll'd; Roll'd their dark waves from clime to clime. of the actual interest which they have in it. This is not so with their demand for food or raiment, or any article which ministers to the necessities of our physical nature. The more destitute we are of these articles, the greater is our desire after them. In every case, where the want of any thing serves to whet our appetite, instead of weakening it, the supply of that thing may be left, with all safety, to the native and powerful demand for it, among the people themselves. The sensation of hunger is a sufficient guarantee for there being as many bakers in a country, as it is good and necessary for the country to have, without any national establishment of bakers. This order of men will come forth, in number enough, at the mere bidding of the People; and it never can be for want of them, that society will languish under the want of aliment for the human body. It is wise in government to leave the care of the public good, wherever it can be left safely, to the workings of individual nature; and, saving for the administration of justice between man and man, it were better that she never put out her hand either with a view to regulate or to foster any of the operations of common merchandise. But the case is widely different, when the appetite for any good is Mine eye, 'twas fix'd—my mind, 'twas free, short of the degree in which that Its flight creation could not bound! It linger'd midst eternity And gaz'd on worlds revolving round. It mark'd the glory of the night, On earth-on ocean-on the sky : And midst its revels of delight, I heard it whisper-" they must die." But while I lingering mus'd-night fled, The moon grew dim-no stars were seen The sun in glory rais'd his head, And Clutha's banks again were green. D. EXTRACTS FROM DR CHALMERS'S THIRD NUMBER OF THE CHRISTIAN Ir is perhaps the best among all our more general arguments for a religious establishment in a country, that the spontaneous demand of human beings for religion is far short It good is useful or necessary; and, above all, when just in proportion to our want of it, is the decay of our appetite towards it. Now this is, generally speaking, the case with religious instruction. The less we have of it, the less we desire to have of it. is not with the aliment of the soul, as it is with the aliment of the body. The latter will be sought after; the former must be offered to a people, whose spiritual appetite is in a state of dormancy, and with whom it is just as necessary to create a hunger, as it is to minister a positive supply. In these circumstances, it were vain to wait for any original movement on the part of the receivers. It must be made on the part of the dispensers. Nor does it follow, that because government may wisely abandon to the operation of the principle of demand and supply, all those interests, where the desires of our nature, and the necessities of our nature, are adequate the one to the other, she ought, therefore, to abandon all care of our interest, when the desire, on the part of our species, is but rare, and feeble, and inoperative, while the necessity is of such a deep and awful character, that there is not one of the concerns of earthliness which ought, for a moment, to be compared with it. This we hold to be the chief ground upon which to plead for the advantage of a religious establishment. With it, a church is built, and a teacher is provided, in every little district of the land. Without it, we should have no other security for the rearing of such an apparatus, than the native desire and demand of the people for Christianity, from one generation to another. In this state of things, we fear, that Christian cultivation would only be found in rare and occasional spots over the face of extended territories; and instead of that uniform distribution of the word and ordinances, which it is the tendency of an establishment to secure, do we conceive that in every empire of Christendom, would there be dreary, unprovided blanks, where no regular supply of instruction was to be had, and where there was no desire after it, on the part of an untaught and neglected population. We are quite aware, that a pulpit may be corruptly filled, and that there may be made to emanate from it, the evil influence of a false or mitigated Christianity on its surrounding neighbourhood. This is an argument, not against the good of an establishment, but for the good of toleration. There is no frame-work reared by human wisdom, which is proof against the frequent incursions of human depravity. But if there do exist a great moral incapacity on the part of our species, in virtue of which, if the lessons of Christianity be not constantly obtruded upon them, they are sure to decline in taste and in desire for the lessons of Christianity; and if an establishment be a good device for overcoming this evil tendency of our nature, it were hard to visit, with the mischief of its overthrow, the future race either of a parish or of a country, for the guilt of one incumbency, or for the unprincipled patronage of one generation. We trust, therefore, in the face of every corruption which has been alleged against them, that our 11 parochial establishments will stand, so as that churches shall be kept in repair, and ministers, in constant succession, shall be provided for them. At the same time, we hope that no restriction whatever will be laid on the zeal and exertion of dissenters; and that any legal disability, under which they still labour, will, at length, be done away. The truth is, that we know not a better remedy against the temporary and incidental evils of an establishment, than a free, entire, and unexcepted toleration; nor how an endowed church can be more effectually preserved, either from stagnation or decay, than by being ever stimulated and kept on the alert, through the talent, and energy, and even occasional malignity and injustice of private adventurers. Still, however, such is our impression of the overwhelming superiority of good done by an establishment, that, in addition to the direct Christian influence which it causes to descend upon the country, from its own ministers, we regard it as the instrument of having turned the country into a fitter and more prepared field, for the reception of a Christian influence from any other quarter. Insomuch, that had the period of the reformation from Popery, in Britain, been also the period for the overthrow and cessation of all religious establishments whatever, we apprehend that there would not only have been no attendance of people upon churches, but a smaller attendance of people upon meeting-houses, than there is at this moment. They are our establishments, in fact, which have nourished and upheld the taste of the population for Christianity; and when that taste is accidentally offended, they are our establishments which recruit the dissenting places of worship with such numbers as they never would have gotten out of that native mass which had been previously unwrought, and previously unentered on. In order that men may become Christians, there must either be an obtruding of Christianity on the notice of the people, or the people must be waited for, till they move themselves in quest of Christianity. We apprehend that the former, or what may be called the aggressive way of it, is the most effectual. Nature does not go forth in search of Christianity, but Christianity goes forth to knock at the door of nature, and, if possible, awaken her out of her sluggishness. This was the way of it at its first promulgation. It is the way of it in every missionary enterprise. And seeing, that the disinclination of the human heart to entertain the overtures of the gospel, forms a mightier obstacle to its reception among men, than all the oceans and continents which missionaries have to traverse, there ought to be a series of aggressive measures in behalf of Christianity, carried on from one age to another, in every clime and country of Christendom. To wait till the people shall stir so effectually, as that places of worship shall be built by them, and the maintenance of teachers shall be provided by them, and that, abundantly enough for all the moral and spiritual necessities of our nation, is very like a reversal of the principle on which Christianity was first introduced amongst us, and on which, we apprehend, Christianity must still be upheld amongst us. We, therefore, hold it to be wise, in every Christian government, to meet the people with a ready-made apparatus of Christian education. It is like a constant and successive going forth amongst them with those lessons which they never would have sought after, through all the sacrifices that they else would have had to make, and all the obstacles that they else must have overcome. It is in order to perpetuate the religion of the people, keeping up the same aggressiveness of operation, which first originated the religion of the people. We are aware that itinerancy is an aggressive operation, and that dissenters do itinerate. But we are mistaken if, in this way, there is more of the gospel brought into contact with the inhabitants of our country, throughout the space of a year, than is heard on every single Sabbath within the pale of its two establishments. This is not fastening the contempt of insignificance upon dissenters; for, in truth, the good done by their locomo tive proceedings forms, we believe, a very humble fraction, indeed, of the good that emanates from their pulpits, and is performed through the week, and around the vicinity of their pulpits, by the ministers who fill them. It is a merc question of moral and spiritual tactics, which we are at pre sent engaged with. The ability and the Christian worth of dissenters, and the precious contributions which they have rendered to sacred literature, should ever screen them from being lightly or irreverently spoken of. And yet, among all their claims to the gratitude of the public, we think that they have a higher still, in their wholesome re-action on the establishments of the land, in their fresh, and vigorous, and ever-recurring impulses on a machinery, the usefulness of which they may disown in words, while, in fact, they are among the most effective instruments of its uscfulness.-pp. 89-95. It is quite true that the establishment has been greatly more powerless in cities, than, with care and vigilance on the part of our rulers, it might have been. It is not merely of the inadequate number of churches that we complain, though these, in some of the chief cities of our empire, could not harbour more than a tenth part of the inhabitants. Neither is it of the manner in which the clergy have been loaded with such extra-professional work, as, in fact, has reduced their usefulness as ministers, greatly beneath the level of that of their dissenting brethren. But, in addition to all this, the most precious advantages of an establishment have been virtually thrown away, and its ministers disarmed of more than half their influence, by a mere point of civic practice and regulation. By what may be called a most unfortunate blunder in moral tactics, an apparatus that might have borne with peculiar effect on the hosts of a rapidly degenerating population, has been sorely thwarted and impeded in the most essential part of the mechanism which belongs to it. Not by the fault of any, but through the mere oversight of all, a wide disruption has been made between city ministers, and the people of their respective localities; and we should esteem it a truly important epoch in the Christian economy of towns, were effectual measures henceforth taken, to repair gradually, and without violence, the mischief alluded to. What we complain of is, the mode which has obtained hitherto of letting the vacant church seats. They are open to applications from all parts of the town and neighbourhood, and that, till very lately, without any pre ference given to the inhabitants of the parish. It is this, which, trifling as it may appear, has struck with impotency our church establishment in towns, and brought it down from the high 'vantage ground it might else have occupied. In this way each church is made to operate, by a mere process of attraction, over an immense field, instead of operating, by a process of emanation, on a distinct and manageable portion of it. With the exception of his civil immunities, and his civil duties, which last form a heavy deduction from his usefulness, there remains nothing to signalise an established over a dissenting minister, though the capabilities of his office ought to give him the very advantage which a local has over a general Sabbath school. That which, in argument, forins the main strength of our establishment, has, in practice, been so utterly disregarded, as, in fact, to have brought every city of our land under a mere system of dissenterism. It is not of the powerful influence of dissenters that we complain. It is of the feeble influence of their system. It is not that they are become so like unto us, as to have gained ground upon the establishment. It is, that we have become so like unto them, as both of us to have lost ground on the general population. Locality, in truth, is the secret principle wherein our great strength lieth; and our enemies could not have devised more effectual means of prevailing against us, in order to bind us and to afflict us, than just to dissever this principle from our establishment. Our city rulers, without the mischievous intent, have inflicted upon us the mischievous operation of Delilah ; and since we are asked, why it is that, with all the strength and superiority which we assign to an establishment, we put forth so powerless an arm on the general community-we reply, that it is, because, under this operation, our strength has gone from us, and we have become weak, and are like unto other men. It is well enough, that every article of ordinary sale is to be had in stationary shops, for the general and indiscriminate use of the public at large; for all who need such articles, also feel their need, and have a inoving force in themselves to go in quest of them. But this is no reason why the same thing should have been done with Christianity. It is what all men need, but what few feel the need of; and, therefore it is, that, under our present arrangement in towns, there are many thousands who will never move towards it, but where still it is in our power to reclaim and to engage, did we obtrude it upon them. We cannot think of a more effectual device, by which to send a reaching and a pervading influence to this sedentary part of our population, than by binding one church, with one minister, to one locality. Under the opposite, and, unfortunately, the actual system, the result, that is now visibly before us, was quite unavoidable. All the activity of dissenters, aided by the established church, whose activity and influence have been, in fact, reduced to that of dissenters, could not have prevented it. It is not mere Sabbath preaching that will retain, or, far less, recal a people to the ordinances of Christianity. It is not even this preaching, seconded by the most strenuous week-day attentions, to hearers lying thinly and confusedly scattered over a wide and fatiguing territory. With such a bare and general superintendence as this, many are the families that will fall out of notice; and there will be the breaking out of many intermediate spaces, in which there must grow and gather, every year, a wider alienation from all the habits of a country parish; and the minister, occupied with his extra-parochial congregation, will be bereft of all his natural influence over a locality which is but nominally his. The reciprocal influence of his Sabbath and week-day ministrations on each other, is entirely lost under such an arrangement. The truth is, that, let him move through his parish, he may not find so much as a hundred hearers within its limits, out of more than ten times that number who attend upon him. And, conversely, however urgent might be the demand in his parish for room in his church, which, under the existing practice, it is not likely to be, he has not that room that is already in foreign occupation, to bestow upon them. A parochial congregation would have, at the very outset, throned him in such a moral ascendancy over his district of the town, as the assiduitics of a whole life will not be able to earn for him. But, as the matter stands, he is quite on a level, in respect of influence, with his dissenting brethren; and the whole machinery of an establishment, in respect of its most powerful and peculiar bearings upon the people, is virtually dissolved. On the system of each minister feeding his church from his parish, he could not only have crowded his own place of worship, but stirred up such an effective demand for more accommodation, as might have caused the number of churches and the number of people to keep in nearer proportion to each other. But, under the paralyzing influence of the present system, it is not to be wondered at, that the urgency for seats should have fallen so greatly in the rear of the increasing rate of population; and that the habit of attendance on any place of religious instruction whatever, should have gone so wofully into desuetude-and that the feeble operation of waiting a demand, instead of stimulating, should be so incompetent to reclaim this habit; and that the labouring classes in towns, should have thus become so generally alienated from the religious establishment of the land-and, what is greatly worse than the desertion of establishments, that a fearful majority should be now forming, and likely to increase every year, who are not merely away from all churches, but so far away, as to be beyond the supplementary operation of all meeting-houses-a majority that is fast thickening upon our hands, and who will be sure to return all the disorders of week-day profligacy upon the country, because that country has, in fact, abandoned them to the ever-plying incitements and opportunities of Sabbath profanation. -pp. 104-109. An experiment may often be as instructive by its failure, as by its success. We have here to record the fate of a most laudable endeavour, made to recal a people alienated from Christian ordinances, to the habit of attendance upon them. The scene of this enterprise was Calton and Bridgeton-two suburb districts of Glasgow which lie contiguous to each other, bearing together, a population of above 29,000, and with only one chapel of ease for the whole provision which the establishment has rendered to them. It was thought that a regular evening sermon might be instituted in this chapel, and that for the inducement of a seat-rent so moderate as from 6d. to 1s. 6d. a-year, to each individual, many who attended no where through the day, might be prevailed upon to become the regular attendants of such a congregation. The sermon was preached, not by one stated minister, but by a succession of such ministers as could be found; and as variety is one of the charms of a public exhibition, this also might have been thought a favourable circumstance. But besides, there were gentlemen who introduced the arrangement to the notice of the people, not merely by acting as their informants, but by going round among them with the offer of sittings, and, in order to remove every objection on the score of inability, they were authorised to offer seats gratuitously to those who were unable to pay for them. Had the experiment succeeded, it would have been indeed the proudest and most pacific of all victories. But it is greatly easier to make war against the physical resistance of a people, than to make war against the resistance of an established moral habit. And, accordingly, out of the 1500 seats that were offered, not above 50 were let or accepted by those who had before been total non-attendants on religious worship; and then about 150 more were let, not, however, to those whom it was wanted to reclaim, but to those who already went to church through the day, and in whom the taste for church-going had been already formed. And so the matter moved on, heavily and languidly, for some time, till, in six months after the commencement of the scheme, in September 1817, it was finally abandoned. There were several ingredients of success, however, wanting to this experiment. There was no such reiteration of one minister, as would ripen into familiarity or friendship between him and his hearers. There was no reciprocity of operation, between the duties of the Sabbath, and the duties of the week. The most aggressive part of a minister's influence upon the people, lies in his being frequently amongst them; the recognised individual, whose presence is looked for at their funerals, and who baptizes their children, and who attends their sick |
