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and charged the people with "robbing God." The Prophet Haggai by the word of Jehovah asks, "Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste?" It is truly painful to observe the depressed state of many pious ministers: while many of their hearers are living in comparative splendour, enjoying the pleasures and luxuries of life, he who labours hard for the welfare of their precious and immortal souls, is left almost destitute of his daily bread! This sure index of religious feeling shews that the cause of real religion in such congregations must be low indeed. whole tenor of Divine Revelation is directly opposed to the neglect. of this first and important duty of Christian churches; and no reasons can possibly be given that will justify the people of God in living in habits of self-indulgence, while their Pastors remain unprovided with the comforts and conveniences of life.'

There are many worthy pastors in various parts of the empire, who know, from bitter experience, the truth of these observations; who have been struggling for years against the tide of adversity, and whose extreme distresses are known only to the afflicted partners of their lives, and to those of their children who have been early inured to the severe privation of almost every domestic comfort. Their anguish has often been such as to render them totally unfit for the labours of the sabbath; and while they have been called to exhort their congregation to the practical exercise of every relative duty, they have been sensible that their own inability to discharge their just debts has been too freely circulated by some of their hearers; that unjust motives have been partially ascribed to their conduct, and that thus an advantage is taken, by the enemies of religion, to destroy the effect of their preaching."

It is no uncommon thing for good men to proceed upon false data, when calculating the expenses of a Minister and comparing them with his income. They know that working men do live, in comparative comfort, with an average of twenty shillings per week; and that if they are frugal, they pay their way and keep up their credit and character: this being the case, they naturally conclude that if they give their Minister one hundred pounds a year, then, as his income is double that of the working man, his means of procuring the necessaries and comforts of life must be doubled also.

Now the very reverse of this is the case. The working man lives in a lodging which may cost him two or three shillings per week, while the Minister cannot find an apartment that would be deemed sufficiently respectable under twenty or twenty-five pounds a year. The working man makes a second-hand suit of clothes last him for several years, while the Minister is obliged to spend a considerable sum out of his income every year for clothes to appear in as a gentleman. The working man never has any change of linen but once in the week, while the Minister, from his habits and respectability, is obliged to act very differently. These remarks will also apply to their respective families. The working man is never expected to contribute or to subscribe to any of the charitable institutions or be

nevolent societies of the district, while the Minister is often expected to give his assistance to them, as well as to attend to those private applications of distress which, as a public character, he feels himself obliged to do. These things, with many others which might be mentioned, will, I hope, convince any thinking mind, that the Minis ter with one hundred pounds per annum, is not better off than the working man with twenty shillings per week; or, in other words, that the former has not the means of purchasing more of the necessary articles of life, though his income is about double that of the latter.

With respect to those "stations, exceedingly interesting and im. portant, which are suffering incalculably from the want of Ministers," it is acknowledged, that the chief obstacle to such stations being suited with able Pastors, is the not raising a sufficient provision for their frugal maintenance.' pp. 11-13.

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Mr. Hale contends, and we think most properly, that a minister has a moral right to that sum which provides only a comfortable maintenance for himself and his family;' and that he ought not to be viewed as receiving that from the hands of charity or benevolence, which, in the sight of God, he is as justly entitled to, as the landlord is to the rent of his 'house, and the tradesman to the profits of his business.' In proportion as this principle is practically denied or disregarded, the argument in favour of the expediency and necessity of ecclesiastical establishments is strengthened: thus, both theoretically and practically, by erroneous notions on this subject, the church of Dissent is endangered.

The only way, then, to increase the existing fund, is, we are persuaded, to raise the tone of feeling, and to mend the principles. How is this to be done? How are religious bodies to be taught to set a higher estimate upon the services of the Christian minister,-to regard them as entitled to a more costly remuneration? We quite agree with Mr. Hale, that a mere diminution of the supply will not have this effect;-that able and learned ministers will not be valued in proportion to their scarcity. Were all our academies to be closed, the only consequence would be, that uneducated ministers, ignorant and vulgar intruders into the sacred office, would fill up the vacancies, and bring down to a still lower level both the demand for efficient religious instruction, and the funds for maintaining the Christian ministry. It is the quality of competent religious teaching to produce a demand for itself, and to elicit from the mind and heart that holy relish and appetite, that sense of spiritual want, and that perception of spiritual good, to which it forms the appropriate supply. It is thus with the Bible itself, as it is with the able ministry of the word: the gift must often precede and give birth to the power of appreci

ating it and the anxiety to enjoy its possession. If then the character of the ministry be deteriorated, as regards either intellectual competency or moral qualification, the demand will be contracted, and the estimate will be depressed. It devolves upon the Christian minister in a great measure to form his congregation: if he be a man of knowledge, he will be appreciated only as he teaches them to prize and value that knowledge; if a man of eminent spirituality, he must form them to the same temper of mind, before they will be able to estimate his character aright. That want of discrimination which is chargeable on too many of our congregations, and which leads them to be content with almost any and every description of preaching that can fill up the hour, must ultimately be traced to the low quality of the previous instruction. Hence, many an able and pious minister suffers, in his income, his comforts, and his usefulness, from the ineffective ministry of his predecessor; and if he remains faithful at his post, he must toil through many a year of discouragement, till a new generation has arisen, or till new feelings and principles have grown up, which may yield a rich harvest, not to himself perhaps, but to another who may enter into his labours.

In every point of view, the natural remedy for a depreciation of the ministry, as indicated by a diminution in the funds for its support, would seem to be, to insist upon higher qualifications as a pre-requisite for the sacred office. For after all, the character of our congregations will eventually be determined by the attainments, the social respectability, the moral attraction and weight of their pastors. We by no means think that the present race of Dissenting ministers are, generally speaking, valued and respected by their people as they fairly deserve; but, for this, there must be a reason either in the. present state of things, or arising out of the past. The effects of a bad system are seldom visible for the first twenty years of its operation. That the Dissenting ministry has not risen in popular estimation, has not of late produced a fair proportion of eminent men, has not, in fact, kept pace with the times, must, it seems to us, be regarded as a fact which it is impossible to deny, and useless to conceal. The imputation of a censorious or calumnious spirit, we disclaim with infinite contempt. We shall rejoice to be assured, that there are parts of England, in which the state of our churches is more prosperous, the ministry more highly honoured and more adequately supported, among Dissenters, than is generally the case in the South. We can have no satisfaction in exposing the practical evils or defects which attach to a body of Christians with which, by our avowed principles, we are per force identified;

but our attachment is to the principles, and to the party only for their sake. We wish to see the Dissenting ministry occupying a higher elevation, worthy of the fathers of our churches, because we believe that our ecclesiastical system is the most scriptural one, and that the interests of vital religion are very closely implicated in those principles of religious freedom, catholicism, and spiritual independence which are the foundations of our dissent.

Mr. Hale's pamphlet contains several useful suggestions which we hope will not be lost upon Dissenting laymen; and we strongly recommend the subject to the consideration of all the friends of religion, whom we have the honour to rank among our readers.

Art. IX. 1. Three Months in Ireland. By an English Protestant. Sm. 8vo. pp. 284. Price 8s. 6d. London. 1827.

2. A few Philosophical Reasons against Catholic Emancipation: A Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Farnham. 8vo. pp. 32. London.

1827.

THE

HE first of these publications comprises a poem of 800 lines, enclosed between a preface extending to 150 pages, and an appendix of extracts from parliamentary documents, occupying nearly a hundred. Of the poetical stratum thus curiously interposed, we shall present to our readers a specimen, that they may judge of the richness of the vein it con

tains.

'Oh come, return, resume your former reign;
Ye absentees, be Irishmen again!

Protect your tenantry-there still is time
To save them sufferings, and yourselves a crime.
Stand in the station where your fathers stood,
And dare to seem unfashionably good!
Let vain Macculloch bawl with all his might,
That absentees are wholly in the right;
Let wits or worldlings wonder at your zeal,
And rail at merit that they cannot feel;
Satire grows weak and stingless if it find
No self-accusing echo in the mind.
See hapless Erin your support implores,
And woos you to her solitary shores,

With famish'd lips, and faintly faultering tongue,
Her shamrock wither'd and her harp unstrung.
Fly to your parent,-fly, each duteous son,
And strive to do what Grattan would have done!'

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See, when its lord an absentee has grown,
Th' ancestral seat stand tenantless and lone.
Cobwebs and dust, on the decaying walls,
Mark the desertion of his father's halls;
The deerless park and unexploring hound
Proclaim his absence from the glades around:
Wild weeds are gathering round the rusty gate,
The portal clos'd, the chambers desolate.
See, envious ivy, with its darkening shade,
Conceals the ruin which itself has made,

And, clinging round each flower-ensculptur'd stone,
Entwines Corinthian foliage with its own.
Here, where the toils of Arras' richest loom
Wav'd in dark beauty round the pannell'd room,
Where ever-welcome guests assembled came,
Clustering around the hospitable flame,

Now tatter'd shreds and smokeless hearths recall-
The skill that deck'd, the friends that throng'd the hall.
The fading portraits of th' ancestral race

Seem frowning o'er their desert dwelling-place,
While their degenerate descendants shame
Their trophied banners and immortal name.
To Bath or Brighton they in crowds repair,
Proud to inhale that fashionable air:

Their strolls each morn the self-same streets explore,
'Mid toyshops yawn'd at twenty times before;
Yet these again they patiently search through,
In the faint hope to turn up something new.
There the same drones with daily dulness prate,
Haranguing on the weather or the State!

From dunce to dunce, from street to street, they stray,
To banish thought, and saunter time away.
Parties of painful pleasure try their powers
In vain, to pass the lazy, lingering hours;
Yet here each fool continues to reside,
Not merely without murmurs, but with pride.

And why? Because they see, or think they see,'
Half the beau monde partaking their ennui.
Thus they, in some dark dirty lodging pent,
Their useless thousands lavish on its rent.

How much they pay for inconvenience there!

Each room costs dearer than a house elsewhere.

Such are the scenes, the joys, whose fancied charms
Have lur'd so many from their country's arms.

So many--but not all!'

If these lines have not the bitterness of satire, nor the diamond point of wit, they are true to nature and to fact, and unite the strength of good sense with the gracefulness of verse.

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