LIBRARY r TJIK UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. O] September ,. ../cV Accessions No. ^7^ Shelf No. DR. CHALMERS' WORKS. Complete and Uniform Edition, now Publishing in Quarterly J^olumes, \2rno, Price 6s. cloth. ALREADY P U B L I S II E D. VOLS, I, II. On NATURAL THEOLOGY. These two volumes contain the BRIDGE WATER TREATISE; besides which about one half of them consists of original matter. Ill, IV. On the Miraculous and Internal EVIDENCES of the CHRISTIAN REVELATION, and the Au- thority of its Records. These two volumes contain the whole of DR. CHALMERS' former work on the Evidences of Christianity ; besides which as will be seen from the Contents about three fourths of them consist of entirely new matter. V. Sketches of MORAL & MENTAL PHILOSOPHY. This volume has never before been published. VI. DISCOURSES on the Application of Christianity to the Commercial and Ordinary Affairs of Life. This Volume, besides the former eight Discourses, contains eight addi- tional Discourses of a kindred character, several of them never before pub- lished. VII. DISCOURSES on the Christian Revelation, viewed in connection with the Modern Astronomy. This volume, in addition to the former seven Astronomical Discourses, contains seven additional Discourses of a kindred character, some of which h;ive never before been published. VIII. CONGREGATIONAL SERMONS, Vol. I. This volume contains several new sermons. IX. CONGREGATIONAL SERMONS, Vol. II. About one half of the eighteen Sermons in this volume are altogether new. X. CONGREGATIONAL SERMONS, Vol. III. This Volume concludes the Congregational Sermons, arid consists alto- gether of new Sermons, none of which have been published before. Volume XI will appear on the 1st of July, consisting of Ser- mons preached on Public Occasions, several of which hare never before be n published. ** As many conceive that this new and uniform edition of DR. CHALMERS* WORKS is merely a reprint of his former published Works, the Publisher deems it proper particularly to state, that a large portion of li the vo- lumes have never before been published, and that the whole haw been carefully revised by the Author. WORKS OF DR. CHALMERS. LECTURES ON THE EPISTLE OFPAULTHE APOSTLE TO THE ROMANS. Vol. I, 8vo, 10s. 6d. The Second Volume will be Published in July. ON THE MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL CONSTITU- TION OF MAN. Fourth Edition, 2 vols. 8vo, cloth, 16s. ON POLITICAL ECONOMY IN CONNECTION WITH THE MORAL STATE AND MORAL PROSPECTS OF SOCIETY. Second Edition, 8vo, cloth, 12s. CHRISTIAN & CIVIC ECONOMY OF LARGE TOWNS. 3 vols. 8vo, cloth, 26s. SERMONS PREACHED IN ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, GLASGOW. 8vo, cloth, 10s. 6d. SERMONS PREACHED IN THE TRON CHURCH, GLASGOW. Third Edition, 8vo, cloth, 10s. 6d. DISCOURSES ON THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION VIEWED IN CONNECTION WITH THE MODERN ASTRONOMY. Eleventh Edition, 8vo, cloth, 8s. THE APPLICATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE COMMERCIAL AND ORDINARY AFFAIRS OF LIFE. Sixth Edition, 8vo, cloth, 8s. SERMONS PREACHED ON PUBLIC OCCASIONS. 8vo, cloth, 10s, 6d. SPEECHES AND TRACTS. 8vo, cloth, 8s. 6d. ON THE USE AND ABUSE OF LITERARY AND EC- CLESIASTICAL ENDOWMENTS. 8vo, cloth, 6s. SCRIPTURE REFERENCES, designed for the use of Sab- bath Schools, &c., 18mo, 4d.; or with the verses printed in full, for the use of Parents, Teachers, &c., 18mo, cloth, 3s. THE Publisher begs leave to intimate that as the 8vo Editions of several of Dr. Chalmers' Works are nearly out of print, and as some of them will not probably be again reprinted in (he same form, tlx.se who wish to complete their sets of his works in 8vo arc requested to make an early application to their own Booksellers, who will easily obtain them fiom the Publisher, or from his London Agents. LECTUKES ON THE ESTABLISHMENT AND EXTENSION OF NATIONAL CHURCHES; DELIVERED IN LONDON, FROM APRIL 25th TO MAY 12th, 1838; THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D.&LL.D., h PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, AND CORRESPONDING MEMUMMWUYAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. GLASGOW : WILLIAM COLLINS, 7 SOUTH FREDERICK STREET. LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 1838, GLASGOW: WILI.TAM COLLINS & CO., PRINTERS, CANDI.F.RIGG COTRT. PREFATORY NOTICE. THESE Lectures were undertaken, and are now published, at the request of the " Chris- tian Influence Society." CONTENTS. Page LECTURE I. Statement of the Question respecting a National Establish- ment of Christianity ; and Exposure of the Misconceptions regarding it LECTURE II. Vindication of a Religious National Establishment, in Op- position to the Reasonings and Views of the Economists 42 LECTURE III. Vindication of a National Religious Establishment, in Op- position to the views of those who allege the Sufficiency of the Voluntary Principle - 77 LECTURE IV. On the Circumstances which determine a Government to select one Denomination of Christianity for the National Religion . . . .113 LECTURE V. On a Territorial Establishment, and the Reasons of its Efficacy . . . . . .140 LECTURE VI. Circumstances which justify a Government, that has as- sumed one from among the several Denominations of Evangelical Protestantism, for the National Establish- ment, in abiding by the Selection which it has made . 166 LECTURES ON RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. LECTURE I. STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION RESPECTING A NATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY; AND EXPOSURE OF THE MISCONCEPTIONS REGARDING IT. 1. THERE is a felt indisposition on the part of certain religionists to the question of an Establish- ment ; and that just because it appears to them a mere question of machinery. They view it as at best an earthly expedient for the diffusion and settlement of Christianity in the world. It seems with them to imply a distrust in the efficacy of divine grace ; nor can they find room in their con- templation for the respective parts, which belong to the agency of God and the instrumentality of man, in the great work of providing for the re- ligious education of the people. Such is the ho- mage which these men, of strong but unintelligent piety, would render to the supremacy of that Being who rules and actuates and determines all things. In the entireness of their dependence upon Him, they would themselves do nothing as if in things 10 sacred, and more especially in the affairs of the church upon earth, human skill and human activity were alike uncalled for. 2. To meet their antipathy in this very general form, it might be perhaps enough to say, that, if acted upon or carried into effect, it were in utter violation of all the analogies both of nature and of providence. In the business, for example, of agri- culture, as well as of seamanship and the arts, do we behold processes of human contrivance, adapted to powers that often, in their principle and mode of operation, are altogether beyond the reach of human comprehension. And certain it is, that the dependence we ought to feel on the Sovereign of our world, for the shower and the sunshine, and the various influences of the firmament above, does not supersede the diligence wherewith we ply the labours, and both devise and prosecute the schemes of our well-arranged husbandry below. Here, then, we have a supernal influence in the hands of God, conjoined with a terrestrial economy in the hands of man. If nature withhold her part, there might be no valuable produce from fields cultivated with whatever skill or whatever strenuousness. If we withhold our part, there might be a hundredfold less of valuable produce from the same fields lying waste and neglected, however genial the seasons, or with whatever benign an aspect the year may have rolled over us. But, instead of this, in the operations of common husbandry, man concurs with nature, and nature concurs with man he 11 by his unremitting industry, the processes of which are all palpable and known ; she by her ceaseless and mysterious agency, the footsteps of which are recondite and unknown. Man cannot fathom or foretell the courses of nature for, whether in the arcana of our heaving atmosphere, or in the depths of the vegetable physiology, there is in each a labora- tory, the recesses of which we have never entered, and the inner movements of which are alike beyond our cognisance and our control. Yet this does not restrain the confidence wherewith we address our- selves to the culture and management of the soil ; and it is by the patent working of man, super- added to the inscrutable working of nature, or rather of Him who is the author of nature, that we obtain the sustenance of millions from a territory which, if abandoned to nature alone, would yield but a precarious subsistence for the beasts of the field, and a few straggling savages. 3. Now this holds true, in all its parts, of what may be termed the work of spiritual husbandry. It may be, nay it is by the descent of an influencefrom above that eTery human spirit is reclaimed from the bar- renness, from the deadly blight of nature, and made to abound in the fruits of righteousness. But our entire dependence on God, who giveth the increase, does not supersede the entire diligence wherewith the ministers of the gospel should give themselves to the labour of planting and watering, each his own allotted part of the vineyard. So far from super- seding, it should stimulate, that labour; and affords the best warrantor vindication which can he given of it. There is a region in South Africa, where the soil is of the best capabilities; but where, from the utter want of rain all the year, vegetation is nearly unknown, or, at least* no human iriv'ustry can obtain a recompense, by any additions which it can possibly make to the produce of it. Here, then, it is not the presence, but the negation, of a ce- lestial aliment, which suspends all terrestrial labour as hopeless and unavailing; and if, in virtue of some physical change, this aliment were restored, or rain were to fall as in other countries of the globe, then, and then only, could there be a meaning or a jus- tification for the appliances of human activity and skill ; and then a busy agriculture, npw unlocked, would find room and encouragement for its various processes. And it is even so in the work of spi- ritual cultivation. For the prosperity of this work, we are taught that there must be a descent of living water from the upper sanctuary. Yet this descent does not supersede it ra'iier calls for a work of preparation on the earth which receives it. The part which God takes in the operation, does not abrogate the part which man oni^lit to take in it. They are the overflowings of the Nile which have given rise to the irrigations of an artificial husbandry in Egypt, for the distribution of its waters. And there is positively nothing in the doctrine of a sanctifying or fertilising grace from heaven above, which should discharge us but the contrary from what may be termed the irrigations 13 of a spiritual husbandry in the world beneath. It is not enough that there be a descent ; there must be a distribution also, or ducts of conveyance, which, by places of worship and through parishes, might carry the blessings of this divine nourishment to all the houses and families of a land. There is nothing, therefore, in the doctrine of the Spirit's agency that should foreclose the question, which still remains to us in all its importance, of the best polity, or the best platform, for a church upon earth. While we acknowledge the celestial de- scent, we must not neglect the terrestrial distri- bution. That there is a co-operation between these, is evident from the single expression of men being fellow-workers with God. But the principle rests not on any single or incidental testimony. It pervades the whole system of the Divine amdinis- tration ; and the neglect of it is a radical and pervading error in Christianity. A machinery is not the less essential upon earth, that the impellent force which guides and animates its movements is from Heaven. There is nothing in this to dis- parage or do away with the paramount necessity of a spiritual influence whatever the apprehensions may be of a mistaken,! should even say a drivelling, though sincere, piety, which greatly underrates the importance of a visible and material economy in things ecclesiastical, and would set it asidea sa mere system of earthly means and earthly expedients. Such an economy may, notwithstanding, in the order of cause and effect, be an essential stepping-stone to the salvation of millions; and that without the slightest relaxation of essential dependence upon God. The husbandman, after having dressed his field, looketh for the former and the latter rain, without which the cultured territory would be a dreary waste. The Christian governor, after having laid down his parishes and planted his churches thereon, looketh for the descent of that blessing from above, without which the country will abide as hopeless a moral wilderness as before. Its channels of distribution, however skilfully drawn, will, if dry and deserted of Heaven, convey nothing for human souls ; and the goodly apparatus of a throng and thick-set Establishment in the land will neither prevent nor alleviate the curse of its spi- ritual barrenness. 4. To establish our conclusion the more, let it further be remembered, that when the Spirit does enlighten or impress a human soul, it is generally through the medium of the Word ; or, to express it otherwise, the Bible forms the material path- way for His communications. There is nothing in this doctrine therefore to extenuate, but rather every thing to enhance, the importance of mul- tiplying the Scriptures, and giving universal cir- culation to them over the world. But the appli- cation to our argument becomes still more obvious when we also recollect, that, both at the com- mencement and throughout the successive ages of Christianity, although the Spirit has ever been the great agent in the work of conversion, He makes 15 choice of His own vehicles, and has always annexed an especial virtue to, or puts an especial honour on, the instrumentality of man. By means of one heavenly visitant, the whole substance and truth of Christianity might have been conveyed with power to the mind of Cornelius. But for this purpose two were employed one preternatural message having been sent to Peter, for the purpose of bidding him go to Cornelius; and another to Cor- nelius himself, for the purpose, not of delivering the gospel to him, but of preparing him to expect the visit of a fellow-mortal, from whose lips he should receive it. And so it was in the act of Peter speaking to Cornelius and to the other mem- bers of his household, that the Holy Ghost fell upon them. The same mysterious agent who gives efficacy to the read, also gives efficacy to the preached, word but preached, not by beings of a higher to those of a lower order, but by men to men. It is the Divine Spirit alone who sends the message with efficacy to the heart ; but still it is a message borne to the ear by human messengers. In other words, they are bibles and ministers that form the two great parts of His main and chosen instrumentality. And, in our capacity as fellow- workers with God, it is for us to set this instru- mentality agoing to see that a bible should be in every house, and that a minister should have access to every family. These form our plain and palpable doings for the furtherance and distribu- tion of that Christianity upon earth, which, never- 16 theless, but for tiie descent of a heavenly influence from above, could have no being in the world. It is ours to strike out the channels of conveyance, it is for God to fill them. The work which belongs to us in this spiritual husbandry is as patent as that of planting and watering is in common hus- bandry. The work which belongs to God of giving the increase, is, in both, beyond the sight and search of all our faculties wholly inscrutable in the mysteries of grace ; and far from being fully comprehended, whether in the mysteries of the fitful weather above our heads, or in the still pro- founder mysteries of vegetation. 5. There is nothing, then, in the doctrine of the Spirit to reduce, but everything to enhance, the importance of the gospel being preached and so, therefore, the importance of the question, what is best to be done, that we might secure its being preached to every creature. If there be one eco- nomy, under which there is every likelihood that, with all our strenuousness and care, we shall fall short of more than half the population ; and an- other economy, by which it may be made sure that the calls and lessons of Christianity shajl be brought to every door this, all other circum- stances being equal, forms in itself a strong ground for our preference of the latter over the former. It is our purpose to demonstrate, that this in- valuable property of a full or universal diffusion belongs only to a National Establishment; and to make it palpable, by all the lights of history and 17 human nature, that it never is, anil never can be, realised either by the Voluntary System, or by what has been termed the System of Free Trade in Christianity. But we must first premise what is meant by a National Establishment of Religion in a country or tell what that precisely is which creates or constitutes such an establishment. 6. We should assume, then, as the basis of our definition for a Religious Establishment, or as the essential property by which to specify and charac- terise it, a sure legal provision for the expense of its ministrations. It is a question merely of nomenclature or of definition, and not of doctrine, wherewith we are at present engaged. Our single attempt at this moment is, not the statement of our belief, but the settlement of our language that there might be a clear and common under- standing of the terms used by us, in the course of our argument. We are not saying, at present, whether the legal establishment of religion be a good or a bad thing we are only telling what we understand such an establishment specifically to be; and saying, that wherever we have a certain legal provision for the ministrations of Christianity, there we have an Establishment of Christianity in the land. It is this which forms the essence of an Establishment, and, as such, must be singled out from among all the other accessaries wherewith it may happen to be variegated. This idea of an Establishment may or may not imply what is com- monly meant by a connection between the church B 18 and the stale. If it be the state which maintains the church, we admit that there is such a connec- tion whether this maintenance be their ancient and original gift, or a grant renewed every year, and which may or may not be recalled by the civil government. But the truth is, (hat the maintenance may have originated in other sources in the be- quests of individuals, or numerous private acts of liberality, prompted by the affection of the pious for the Christian good, whether of the community at large, or of special districts in various parts of the land. In our eyes it is not less an Establish- ment on this account, than if supported by a direct allowance from the national treasury. To realise our idea of an Establishment, it is enough that there be legal security for the application of certain funds to the maintenance of Christian worship or Christian instruction in a country ; and this in whatever way these funds may have originated. If the church be indebted for its revenues to the benefactions of the rich and the religious in other days, then it may have no more connection with the state than the state has with any other cha- ritable endowments in the kingdom where so much property is destined to certain ends ; and all which the state has to do in the matter is to make good the destinations, or to see that effect and ful- filment be given to the intentions of the original testators. It is in this sense chiefly that we un- derstand the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge to be national or established institutes for the pur- 19 poses of education. Their status or character, as such, does not depend on the antiquarian origin of the property which belongs to them which, it so happens, they owe, in greater part, not to the liberality of the civil rulers, but to the piety and patriotism of individuals. It depends not on the origin of their property, but on the sureness of its application; the justice of the nation, or the au- thority of the state and of the laws, being engaged in the defence of it, whether against encroachment, or against its application toother objects than those on which it is now expended. 7. But even although the church should be wholly supported by the state in things temporal, and a connection between them be established thus far, it follows not that this connection should proceed any farther. There might be an entire depend- ence on the state in things temporal, without even the shadow of a dependence upon it in things ecclesiastical. Although the church should receive its maintenance, and all its maintenance, from the civil power, it follows not that it therefore receives its theology from the same quarter ; or that this theology should acquire thereby the slightest taint or infusion of secularity. The state is the dis- penser of things carnal ; and the church, in ex- change for this, is the dispenser of things spiritual : but these things spiritual may retain their purely spiritual character, notwithstanding; and be minis- tered by the priests to the people, without adul- teration or one ingredient of earthliness. The B % 20 church receives from the* state the maintenance of its clergy ; and the clergy, in return, give to the subjects of the state a Christian education, but they might, and do, reserve to themselves the whole power and privilege of determining what that education shall be. For their food and their raiment, and their sacred or even private edifices, they may be indebted to the state ; but their creed, and their discipline, and their ritual, and their articles of faith, and their formularies, whether of doctrine or of devotion, may be altogether their own. Such may be the line of demarcation between the civil and the ecclesiastical that, while the state maintains the teachers of religion, it meddles not with the things that are taught. It may ordain a scholastic establishment, yet leave unfettered the whole determination of the learning to an educational board. Or it may ordain an ecclesiastical establishment, and leave entirely with the church the determination of its own lessons alike unfettered by any dictation or control on the part of the civil authority. By a system of endowed schools, education might be introduced into hun- dreds of districts which, but for this provision, might have remained in unlettered ignorance ; and that, too, a right and pure education. By a system of endowed churches, public worship and religious instruction might be introduced into hundreds of districts which, but for this provision, might have remained in grossest heathenism ; and still nothing else be observed or taught but a pure and scrip- 21 tural Christianity. An endowment may not dete- riorate the quality either of common or Christian education, while it adds inconceivably to the dif- fusion and the amount of both. 8. And it is the more necessary to insist on this consideration, that the attempt is so often made to excite the idea of an essential contamination, in every approach which the church might make to the state, and even when with no other object than that of simply holding forth a maintenance to her clergymen. And the church might submit herself so far to the state as to receive this maintenance, and yet abide as spiritual, as holy and independent a church as before only enabled to distribute the waters of life more copiously among the population, while as purely as ever. When a West India planter sends for a Moravian missionary, and maintains him in the work of instructing the labourers on his estate, we have here the little model of an Estab- lishment. The planter maintains the missionary ; and the missionary, in return, teaches on the estate of the planter yet teaches nothing there but his own Christianity. The Bible is as much his foun- tain-head as before truth and holiness as much the objects of his resolute adherence as before. The whole effect of the relation upon which he has entered, is to bring the gospel into contact with hundreds of immortal creatures, who but for this miniature establishment, might have lived in guilt and died in darkness. It may or it may not have been a spiritual impulse on the mind of the planter which originated the proposal; either a regard to the immortal well-being of his fellow-men, or an enlightened regard to his own safety and advantage, on the principle, that, if his labourers were reli- giously trained, they would be thereby transformed into a submissive, orderly, and industrious popu- lation. With him it may have been a mere calcu- lation of profit and loss ; but, whatever the force was which opened the door, still it was a door of highest Christian usefulness to the missionary and they may have been motives of the purest and highest order, which led him to acquiesce in the proposal. And what is true of the little model of an establishment on this single plantation, may hold true when expanded into the actual machine of a great national establishment of Christianity over a whole empire. It is uncertain whether it was policy or piety which actuated the mind of Constantine. But whatever secularity it may have been which prompted the overture on the one side, it may have been accepted on the other in purest love to the souls of men, and without the surrender or com- promise of one iota of Heaven's high sacredness. When the great autocrat of the Roman Empire, from a persecutor became a nursing father, the church might then have raised her orisons of gratitude to Him who turns the hearts of kings whithersoever He wills ; and, now that, a way was opened to the plenteous harvest of so mighty a population, might have entered on her now larger field with as holy a zeal for her Master's work, and as lofty an independence throughout all her pul- pits, as in the days of martyrdom.* * "Now this very opening was presented to the ministers of Christ when the Roman Emperor, whether by a movement of faith or a movement of philanthropy and patriotism, made territorial distribution of them over his kingdoms and provinces ; and, assigning a territorial revenue for the labourers of this extensive vineyard, enabled each to set himself down in his own little vicinity the families of which he could assemble to the exercises of Christian piety on the Sabbath, and among whom he could expatiate through the week in all the offices and attentions of Christian kindness. Such an offer, whether christianly or but politically made upon the one side, could most christianly be accepted and rejoiced in by the other. It extended inconceivably the powers and the opportunities of usefulness. It brought the gospel of Jesus Christ into contact with myriads more of imperishable spirits and., with as holy a fervour as ever gladdened the breast of the devoted missionary, when the means of an ample service to the Redeemer's cause were put into his hands, might the church in those days have raised to Heaven its orisons of purest gratitude, that kings at length had become its nursing fathers, and opened up to it the plenteous harvest of all their population. There is just as little of the essentially corrupt in this connection between the church and the state, as there is in the connection between a missionary board and its pecuniary supporters. Each is a case of the earth helping the woman ; but whatever of earthliness may be upon the one side, there might be none, and there needs be none, upon the other. The one may assist in things temporal ; while the other may continue to assert its untouched and entire jurisdiction, as heretofore, in things spiritual. There might thus be an alliance between the altar and the throne, yet without the feculence of any earthly intermixture being at all engendered by it. The state avails itself of the church's services, and the church gives back again no other than the purest services of the sanctuary. Its single aim, as heretofore, is the preparation of citizens for heaven; but in virtue of the blessings which Christianity scatters in its way, do the princes of this world find that these are the best citizens of earth and that the cheap defence of nations, the best safeguard of their prosperity and their power, is a universal Christian education. There needs be nought, we repeat, of contamination in this. The state pays the church; yet the church, in the entire possession of all those privileges and powers which are strictly ecclesiastical, maintains the integrity of her faith and worship not- withstanding. She might be the same hallowed church as when the fires of martyrdom were blazing around her the same spiritual it y among her mi- nisters the same lofty independence in all her pulpits. The effect of an establishment is not necessarily to corrupt Christianity, bu tcextend it not necessarily to vitiate the ministrations of the gospel, but certainly to dis- 9. We know that, contemporaneously with this establishment of the Christian religion in the days of Constantine, there was, not the birth, but the progress, of a great and general corruption, which had its commencement in other causes two cen- turies before. There is nothing in the mere dis- tribution of ecclesiastical labourers over the terri- tory of the Roman Empire, each working in his proper vocation, and in return for a right and regulated income ; there is nothing in such an economy that can at all account for that fearful degeneracy of the church which began even in the first century; and which the establishment that took place early in the fourth did not originate, and, as it appears from the actual history, could not arrest. The essence of that corruption lay, not in the ascendancy wherewith an establishment had vested the civil power, giving it an undue influence over things ecclesiastical ; but, diame- trically opposite to this, it lay in the ascendancy wherewith the superstition and ignorance both of princes and people had vested the ecclesiastical power, of which it most unworthily availed itself, to its own enormous aggrandisement in things temporal at once supplanting the rightful autho- rity of God in His Scriptures; and substituting both a doctrine and discipline of its own, by which to blind the souls of men and subjugate them to its sway. Had emperors and kings understood seminate these ministrations more intimately amongst, as well as to bear them more diffusively abroad, over the families of the land." Sermon XV, Vol. XI, of the new and uniform edition of Dr. Chalmers's Works. OP THP! their own place, and resisted every encroachm by the hierarchy on their own proper and legiti- mate functions there was nought whatever in the system of endowed churches, for the universal spread of a Christian education, that could have given rise to a despotism of priests ; any more than a system of endowed seminaries for the spread of a common or literary education, could have given rise to a despotism of schoolmasters. The truth is that influences were at work, which, either with or without an establishment, would have landed Christendom in the terrific Popery of the middle ages the product, not of that economy for which we are contending, and by which, in return for their legal maintenance, the ministers of the church would, each in his own district, have given forth the lessons and performed the services of the gos- pel for their respective populations ; but the pro- duct of an enslaving superstition, that enabled an ambitious priesthood to riot at pleasure over the consciences and fears of their deluded votaries. Their enormous wealth was the fruit of voluntary offerings made by the people ; and their enormous power, in its first beginnings at least, the fruit of voluntary concessions made by princes, who par- took in the debasing fanaticism of the times. The effect of a regulated establishment might have been to regulate and restrain the characteristic excesses of that period ; and to those who, unable to dis- criminate, are ever sure to confound the adjuncts or the accidents with the causes of certain great 26 and complex phenomena, we would propose for contemplation the ecclesiastical state of Presby- terian Scotland on the one hand, and Catholic Ire- land on the other the first with an establishment, the second under the entire ascendancy of the voluntary principle ; and then ask, in which of the two countries it is, that a corrupt and a domineering priesthood are doing most to vitiate the pure doc- trine of the apostles, or to injure the peace and virtue of the commonwealth? 10. It is fortunate that the reformers knew, how, in this matter, to make distinction between the machinery and the men ; and that, instead of destroying the machinery of the establishment in their respective countries, they only placed it in other and better hands ; and so had it worked by men of another doctrine and another principle than before. An establishment, in fact, with its univer- sities and its parishes, might be the best and most effective instrument of conveyance in a land, either for good or for evil, either for a corrupt or a scrip- tural theology. And so they went intelligently to work. They did not, with blind and headlong zeal, demolish the old apparatus of distribution. They substituted the true gospel for a false one ; and sent forth its now amended and purified lessons alongthe old pathways of conveyance. The establishment, in the days of Popery, made sure of a pulpit and a minister in every little district of the country. The Reformation did not destroy this arrangement. It kept up the same fountain-head as before in the 27 colleges, and the same rills of distribution in the parishes and throughout the churches of the land : and maintaining, as was done most strenuously by Knox and all enlightened reformers every where, the necessity of a settled provision for the teachers of Christianity it but changed and new-modelled the system in respect of the things that were taught. Whatever the scholarship may be, whether common or general, wherewith you want to charge and innoculate the population of a country, if you desire that it shall be universally spread, you cannot but desire an effective mechanism for the full and ready diffusion of it. The lessons may be good or they may be bad ; say that they are bad, and then the question is, whether shall we change the lessons, or take down and so demolish the machinery ? The obvious thing, we should imagine, would be to do as the reformers did to change the les- sons ; and if, after this, they be the lessons now of a pure and wholesome theology, we ask, in the name of common sense, where lies the wisdom of destroy ing the machinery kept up, it would appear, so long as it subserved the propagation of corruption and error ; and now that this evil is transmuted into good, proposed to be taken down when it might enhance the propagation of righteousness and truth ? Is this the treatment, we would put the question, which the government of a country or if it be a popular government, at the bidding of the collective mind or will of the community at large is this the treatment which the society of 28 that country ought to bestow on the respective elements of good and evil? After having for ages furnished the evil with all facilities, for its rapid march and full circulation through the families of the land then, when the evil has been made good, is that the time when these facilities should be taken away ? So long as the religion taught was a moral poison, by which to vitiate the hearts and habits of the people, it had the prerogative of an establish- ment, by which access was made for it through every district and into every door. Strange, if when the religion, from a deadly virus has become the water of life that we should then dispense with those aqueducts of conveyance, by which it might be spread abroad for the healing of the nation. It is well that the venerable fathers of our Protestant church, making distinction between the things which differ, felt and judged otherwise from the headlong innovators of the present day. They medicated the quality of the thing that was circulated j but they let alone the apparatus of cir- culation. In their achievement we behold the wisdom and the principle of genuine reform. The other achievement is by men of a different spirit done, it may be, in the name of reform ; but marking the very crisis, and having in it all the characters of a revolution whether it be the act of a legislature, which lends itself, either to the cupidity of the nobles, or to the outcries of the multitude ; or an act of pillage by the multitude themselves, broken loose from the ancient holds of 29 authority, and borne waywardly and uncontrollably along on the surges and amid the uproar of wild insurrectionary violence. 11. And here may we pause on the instructive contrast between the ecclesiastical reformers of the past and present day. It is on the high walk of theology and sentiment that we meet the former it having been their aim, not to destroy the esta- blished church, but to animate it with another spirit ; or to give it other doctrines and other principles than before. In these times, again, the hands of our reformers are differently employed taken up chiefly, not with the internal but the external with what may be termed the economics of the church, its rights, its revenues, the number and pay of its office-bearers ; and were their sole aim a better distribution of its wealth, instead of the abridg- ment or the alienation of it, this, though a humble, might yet prove an innocent, nay, even a salutary, undertaking. The real object of the first reform by Luther and his contemporaries was to mend the church's faith. The professed object of the second reform is to mend the church's framework though often the obvious effect of the at- tempted changes, as in Ireland, were to mutilate and weaken, and ultimately to destroy. In former times, it was a high war of intellect and principle, and many of the best heads and noblest hearts of England were engaged in it when the lore of her profoundest students, and the testimony of her sainted martyrs, and the outraged moral sense of a 30 now awakened community, were all enlisted on the side of Scripture, and of a pure scriptural minis- tration throughout the parishes of the kingdom. Altogether it was a nobler controversy, and main- tained on a nobler field, than that which now calls forth the championship both of priests and of par- liament-men. The struggle then related to the quality of that nourishment which should be given to the souls of the people ; and the noble result was, that it should be the pure bread and water of life, taken at once from the repositories and foun- tain-heads of inspiration ; and not adulterated, as before, by the mixtures of a corrupt and super- stitious Popery. The struggle now relates, not to the kind or quality of this spiritual nourishment, but rather to the kind of apparatus that should be maintained for the distribution of it. It is a ques- tion, not of theology or of morals, but of ma- chinery ; and many are the economical and the arithmetical reformers of our age, who feel them- selves abundantly qualified for the entertainment of it. We cannot but remark the total difference, both in character and aim, between the two re- formations. If the one were a doctrinal or moral, the other perhaps may be termed a mechanical or, as the sure effect were not to mend but to demolish altogether the framework of the establish- ment, it may best of all be styled a machine-break- ing reformation ; and of course its advocates, or rather its instigators and its agents, are the ma- chine-breaking reformers of the present day far 31 more mischievous in their higher walk, but hardly more intelligent, we do think, be they in or out of Parliament, than the machine-breakers of Kent, the frame-breakers of Leicestershire, or the in- cendiaries of a few years back in the southern and midland counties of England. It was by strength of principle, or strength of argument, that the venerable fathers of nearly three centuries back achieved their reformation it will be by strength of hand, or a sort of sledge-hammer energy, that the coarse utilitarians of the present generation, in a period of frenzied delusion on the part of the multitude, or by a wayward exercise of power, un- intelligent and unknowing on the part of the legis- lature, will ever be able to accomplish theirs. If it be the consecrated title of reformation which is to avail them in this day of conflict, if by its means, as with the magical influence of a watchword, they are to enlist in their favour the passions and pre- judices of men then never was there more ex- emplified the omnipotence of words or sounds over the human understanding never did conjurers in any walk, whether of politics or of fortune-telling, operate with such success on the credulity of the world, or practise a grosser delusion in the use and by the prostitution of a venerable name. 12. In this age of distempered speculation, we gladly look back, and that with affectionate re- membrance, to the more excellent way of our forefathers. Knox new-modelled the faith ; but he did not, in spite of all the violence that has 32 been ascribed to him he did not demolish the pulpits of the Catholic establishment. He did in- finitely better he took possession of them. He did not destroy a good machine, because of the bad working of it. He did what was a great deal wiser he dismissed the workmen, and committed the machine into other hands. Fury is often blind; and, if ever there was a provocative to its wildest excesses, it was at that time, when the accumulated wrongs of many ages had at length aroused an indignant community, against the profligate and the persecuting ecclesiastics who so long had lorded over them. Between the cupidity of the nobles and the indiscriminate rage of the multitude, the establishment itself might have been swept off as a moral nuisance from the face of the country. But our great reformer interposed in its defence ; and, making his resolute stand for the churches and stipends of the clergy, he transmitted the material framework, not without hurtful molestation, but still as entire and uninjured as he could, for the use of future generations. The truth is, that, without such an apparatus, he could not have pro- pagated, with the speed and facility which he did, the doctrines of his own reformation which went like lightning over the land, not on the wrecks of the establishment, but through the numerous path- ways, which the establishment, as far as preserved and upholder), had still left open to him. But for this, he might have found a lodgment, on the naked strand where he alighted, yet found the 33 country at large an impenetrable forest; and which he only entered and pervaded by the old channels, through which now, and by numerous rills of in- tersection, he sent forth the pure water of life, the lessons of his sound and scriptural theology, among all the parishes. And accordingly all that remains of Popery in Scotland is in those Highland fastnesses where there might be said to have been no parishes, or these so large and impracticable, as to have been left without the benefits of an establishment. And so, amid the stormy agitations of that period, when there was a general effervescence in all spirits, his views were calm and enlarged and philoso- phical. He may have looked indulgently on, when the edifices were pulled down, which har- boured the most corrupt and powerful of the old hierarchy; but he protested against all the vio- lence that was offered, and certainly with too much effect, on whatever of the establishment was really serviceable, or could be turned into use either for the instruction of the clergy, or the instruction of the people. He denounced the shameful ap- propriations that were then made, of the wealth which should have gone to the better and more frequent endowment both of churches and colleges. His was the inspiration of lofty principle ; but there was a regulating as well as impellant power in his mind there was the guidance of profoundest wisdom along with it. 13. That corruption and error have been spread abroad by the organ of an establishment is no more c 34. an argument for the destruction of the establish- ment, than that infidelity and licentiousness have been printed is an argument for the destruction of printing-presses. The way is to preserve and to extend both making the one the instrument for a full diffusion of Bibles, and the other for a full diffusion of Bible-preaching and Bible-sentiment through the land. To do otherwise, were as if a physician, to get quit of some disease in the blood of his patient, should, instead of operating on the quality of the liquid, so mangle the apparatus by which it finds its course through the corporeal framework as to stop the circulation of it. Were the water of London to take on a deleterious tinge from the accession of some impurity the way surely is to purge it of this, or, if possible, to bar the ingress of it, rather than make insensate attacks on the subterranean machinery, by which distribu- tion is made of it through the streets of the city and into the houses of the citizens. Yet this last is in the style of our modern reformers. They would suppress parishes ; or, by at least a partial destruction, keep back the water of life from cer- tain parts of the territory. Or they would abolish church-rates ; and no longer enforce those con- tributions from the wealthy, by which access and accommodation are provided for the supply of gospel instruction to the families of the poor. Their war is not against any system of theology for about this they are mainly indifferent, as if all systems were alike in their eyes; but their 35 war is against the machinery set up in other days, and preserved to our own times, for the cir- culation of its lessons a machinery effectual then for the spread of a deadly superstition, and so for the subjugation of all spirits to its sway ; but which might be as effectual now for the spread of a pure and undefiled Christianity, and so for the healing of the nation. The days were, " when a man was famous, according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees, or according as he gave of materials or money for the building and the endowment of churches. But now they would break down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers. They have said in their hearts, Let us destroy them together : they would burn up all the synagogues of God in the land." 14. The desirable church reform, then, whether for England or Scotland, is not certainly to destroy the machine not even to mutilate or abridge, but rather, as we shall afterwards state, to repair and strengthen, and greatly to extend it. There may, besides, beother external or even economical changes that should be honoured with the name of im- provements; but mainly, the great reform is that which, leaving the framework of the Establishment untouched, would infuse into it another spirit, or make it the vehicle of a more powerful and scrip- tural ministration than heretofore. In short, the thing wanted is an internal reform ; and, for carry- ing this into effect, we do not require a change in the theology of either of the churches none at 36 all in their creeds a very little, perhaps, in their service-books though at all times, for the effi- ciency of any church, even of the best and purest theology on earth, we are dependent, and that most essentially and vitally, on the conscientious and disinterested and well-principled exercise of its patronage. It is not enough that we have a good ma- chinery we must have good men for the working of it. Even when they had the worst of men, the reformers of other days, with a wisdom and dis- crimination which do them infinite honour, kept up the machinery ; and only, after they had sub- stituted the Protestant for the Popish doctrine, committed the working of it into other hands. What an emphatic condemnation is held out by their example, on the headlong reformers of the present day who, without the provocative of a more corrupt or incompetent priesthood than hereto- fore; but in the face of a most palpable amelioration, and that in all the three kingdoms, on the general worth and devotedness and personal Christianity of the clergy, would seize on this as the time for destroying, and so wresting from their hands the most effective of all instruments for the religious education of our people. To speak of our own Scotland, there cannot be imagined a wider contrast and dissimilarity than that which obtains between the long past and the now proposed reformation. The former made good by the resolves and the prayers, and at length sealed by the blood of their dying martyrs who fought, not for the demolition of their kirks, but for the free use of Scripture, and the setting up of a pure ministry within their walls. The latter reformation, even that of the times in which we live, borne along, as if permitted to take effect it most assuredly would be, on a wild career of sweeping and destructive violence, and amid the hosannas of a multitude, as unlike, as east is distant from the west, to those holy wor- shippers who, to hide them from their perse- cutors, assembled round their pastors in mountain- solitudes, and sat down to their sacraments, under the naked canopy of heaven. Such were the reformers of these golden days ; and they bear not one feature of resemblance to the reformers of the age in which we live those impetuous and bust- ling agitators, in whose breasts politics have en- grossed the place of piety; resolved at all hazards upon change; and prepared to welcome, with shouts of exultation, the overthrow of those altars, which, in holier and better times, upheld the faith and devotion of our forefathers. Though at the hazard of detaining you a great deal too long, I cannot resist the inclination I feel to crave from you the indulgence of ten minutes, while I read a few extracts from the writings of one, alike characterised by great power and great prejudices ; who saw clearly how to distinguish, when treating of the Church of England, between the machine and the working of it having at once the highest possible value for the one, and the worst possible opinion of the other. I speak 38 of William Cobbett, whose shrewd discernment at least will be admitted by all ; and who, speaking of the church as a machine or apparatus, expresses himself in the words that we subjoin.* * "An Established Church, a church established upon Christian principles, is this that it provides an edifice sufficiently spacious for the assembling of the people in every parish ; that it provides a spot for the interment of the dead ; that it provides a priest, or teacher of religion, to officiate in the edi- fice, to go to the houses of the inhabitants, to administer comfort to the dis- tressed, to counsel the wayward, to teach the children their duty towards God, their parents, and their country; to perform the duties of marrying, baptizing, and burying, and, particularly, to initiate children in the first prin- ciples of religion and morality; and to cause them to communicate, that is to say, by an outward act of theirs, to become members of the spiritual church of Christ: all which things are to be provided for by those who are the proprietors of the houses and the lands of the parish ; arid, when so pro- vided, are to be deemed the property or the uses belonging to the poorest man in the parish as well as to the richest." Then follows his opinion of the actual working of this church in the hands of its actual clergymen, in which opinion I do not sympathise; and shall endeavour to qualify his conclusion, by a few closing sentences of my own. " This is an Established Christian Church; and this you, the parsons, will tell the people that they actually have; and you will tell the people who have no house and land, that, in calling for the abolition of tithes, they are in fact calling upon the rich to take from them, the poor, the only property that they have in the country. Alas ! you will tell them this in vain. They kno\v that the church is not this thing now to them ; they know that you fio not visit their houses and comfort them when they are sick, except in instances so very rare that they hardly ever hear of them; they know that you. do not tiMch their children, and that, though the churchwardens annually certify the l>ishop that the children communicate, hardly a workman in the kingdom ever saw or heard of such a thing being done; they know that you are fre- quently on the bench, perched up as justices of the peace; they know that you frequently sentence them to punishment without trial by jury, and sen- tence to transportation for what is called poaching. This is the capacity in which they now know you ; and to induce them to stir hand, foot, or tongucf in defence of this Establishment, is no more possible than it is to induce a Jew to give up a farthing of his interest." " I was a sincere Churchman" "because it was reasonable and just, that those who had neither house nor land, and who were the millions of the country, and who performed all its useful labour?, should have a church, a churchyard, a minister of religon, 39 Our distinct object, is to demonstrate the power and the properties which belong to a National Establishment of religion, viewed as a machine ; and all religious services performed for them, at the expense of those who did possess the houses and the land. In a word, in the church and its pos- sessions, I saw the patrimony of the working people, who had neither house nor land of their own private property. For these reasons I was a friend, and a very sincere friend, and able to he a very powerful friend of the Church Establishment. " But," &c Cobbett's Political Register, December 21st, 1833. " Ought we to ham any Establishment at all ? In answering which for our- selves, it is our owr, opinion, that this nation has been much more religious and happy under the influence of the Protestant Established Church, than it is ever likely to be in case that church were abolished. To make the ques- tion still more close, let it be this, whether it be reasonable t fiat anyone should be called upon to contribute towards the maintenance of a church, the tenets of which he dissents from? This is making the question as home as it can well be. And we do not hesitate to say, that there is to us nothing so outrageously unreasonable in the idea. One thing is certain, that if all are not to remain liable to pay for the church, it is no established, or at least no national, church. Reasons are not wanting, to show the benefits of a national religion, or a mode of worship, or some religious establishment, the peculiarities of which are under the especial patronage and peculiar favour of the government. In judging of such a matter, we can only be guided by experience; and ex- perience is not less wisdom here than in all other things." "It does not follow that because an institution has been abused it should be done away with, if the institution itself be necessary or beneficial. Even kings may require now and then to be driven from their thrones; but that does not prove the necessity of doing away with the throne." "If it be allowed (and we think it ought to be), that an establishment is desirable for such a pur- pose, the dissenters cannot well object to paying the clergy of a different persuasion. An establishment cannot consist of all creeds, or the Quakers themselves would have a right to form a part of it. As we have before said, the church is not national unless all be taxed towards its support; and, for the sake alone of preserving decency for religion, it appears to us to be no more unjust than it is impolitic towards the community in general, to require the aid of all in maintaining that in which all are equally inter- ested." Cobbett's Political Register, April 20th, 1833. " But then come the just and charitable principles of the Christian religion ; and they say this to the owners of the land and the houses, ' The land and the houses are yours, but not in such absolute right as to exclude your work- ing and poorer brethren from all sha e. There shall be a church in each 40 and, in regard to the working of it, we may at least state, as our triumphant confidence, that, not- withstanding the exaggeration of its enemies, the parish, and a priest for the teaching of religion ; there shall be a church- yard for the burial of the dead ; there shall be sermons, and prayers, and marriages, and baptisms and these shall form the possessions of the inhabi- tants, the property of those who labour.' " Polit. Register, Sept. 14, 1833. "Go upon a hill, if you can find one, in Suffolk or Norfolk; and you can find plenty in Hampshire, and Devonshire, and Wiltshire; look to the church steeples, one in about every four square miles at the most on an average imagine a man, of small learning at the least, to be living in a genteel and commodious house, by the side of every one of these steeples, almost always with a wife and family; always with servants, natives of the parish, gardener, groom at the least, and all other servants. A large farm- yard, barns, stables, threshers, a carter or two, more or less of glebe and of I. rming. Imagine this gentleman having an interest, an immediate and pressing interest in the productiveness of every field in his parish being probably the largest corn-seller in the parish, and the largest rate-payer more deeply interested than any other man can possibly be in the happiness, harmony, morals, industry, arid sobriety of the people in his parish. Imagine his innumerable occasions for doing acts of kindness; his immense power in preventing the strong from oppressing the weak; his salutary influence coming between the hard farmer, if there be one in his parish, and the feeble or simple-minded labourer. Imagine all this to exist close alongside of every one of these steeples, and you will at once say to yourself, hurricanes and earthquakes must destroy the island before that church can be overthrown. And when you add to all this, that this gentleman, besides the example of good manners, of mildness, and of justice, that his life and conversation are constantly keeping before the eye of his parishioners when you add to all tiiis, that one day in every week he lias them assembled together to sit in silence; to receive his advice, his admonitions, his interpretation of the will >f God as applicable to their conduct and their affairs; and that, too, in an edifice rendered sacred in their eyes, from their knowing tliat their forefathers assembled there in ages passed, and from its being surrounded by the graves of their kindred when this is added, and when it is recollected that the children pass through his hands at their baptism, r! at it is he alone who celebrates the marriages, and performs the last sad service over the graves of the dead when you think of all this, it is too much to believe that such a church can fall. Yet fall it will," &c. "This settles the matter as to the church as it now stands; and then the next question is, Can it be restored to what it ought to be 9 Jf it could be, that is the thing that ought fo be dene because, though people in great towns 41 evidence is every day growing, of its vast practical importance to the moral well-being of our nation. If it be an undoubted truth, that there is a distinct and a decided improvement in the personcl of the Church of Scotland ; if in England, the mighty instrument is passing into the hands of a more efficient clergy than before; if in Ii eland, per- secution, with its wonted influence, is begetting a resolute and high-toned spirituality in the devoted ministers of that deeply injured hierarchy is this, we ask, the time to wrest from the hold of its now more faithful and energetic agency, that engine which would enable them to operate with tenfold effect on the families of the land ? The work of reformation was prosecuted more wisely in other days; when, notwithstanding the provocative of a grossly immoral and tyrannic priesthood, they but changed the agency and preserved the engine. And, with our present agency, I trust we shall, by the blessing of Heaven, be enabled, not only to preserve but to perfect the engine; and that, with enough of energy and conscientiousness and de- voted zeal on the part of their ministers, all the menace and agitation by which they are sur- rounded will only rivet the three churches more firmly on their bases, and rally more closely around their common cause, the wise and the good of our nation. do not perceive it, it is a serious change to the country a serious change to the 465 parishes of Devonshire, for instance, to the 629 parishes of Lincoln, the 731 parishes of Norfolk, the 411 parishes of Kent a serious change to take away one little gentleman out of every one ol these parishes. " Cobbett's Political Register, February 22d, 1834. LECTURE II. VINDICATION OF A RELIGIOUS NATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT, IN OPPOSITION TO THE REASONINGS AND VIEWS OF THE ECONOMISTS. BEFORE entering on the positive and direct argu- ment in favour of a National Establishment of religion, I endeavoured in my last lecture to do away this initial objection, or rather this initial prejudice against it as if the connection between church and state which is implied by it, implied also a secularization of Christianity, to which it is not equally exposed under all other methods either for extending or maintaining the gospel in the world. In these days of fierce partizanship, we cannot expect much of cool and clear discrimina- tion when men are borne along as if by a sort of gregarious impulse, and under the influence of a popular and prevailing cry. In Edinburgh, a few years ago, at one of those public meetings, where the connection between church and state is no sooner spoken of than it lights up an instant and sensitive antipathy in the hearts of assembled thou- sands, there was a speech delivered by an Ameri- can clergyman of the Presbyterian denomination, who happened to be an acquaintance of my own. The multitude whom he addressed were every one of them enraptured, at hearing from his lips, that 48 the idea of any such connection was held in per- fect abomination all over America. I afterwards ventured to make the whole controversy a subject of conversation with him ; and my first question was, whether if a Christian philanthropist, seized with a strong affection for a district in Maryland, were to bequeath ten thousand pounds for the erection of a church and ministerial dwelling- place, and for the maintenance of a clergyman, providing at the same time that this clergyman should be of the Presbyterian denomination, and that, in things ecclesiastical he should be wholly under the control of his own Presbyterian judica- tories in America whether such an endowment would be rejected by their General Assembly or Supreme Court of Management, as an unscripturai and unchristian thing, or be accepted by the body as an accession to the means of religious useful- ness. There could be but one answer to this question, which was, that an endowment thus destined, and thus placed under the guardianship of what he deemed to be a pure and scriptural church, would be welcomed and encouraged to the uttermost. I then asked whether, if these en- dowments were so multiplied as that the whole state of Maryland should be covered with them still adhering to the supposition that the theology of all these Maryland clergymen was in no sub- ordination whatever to the will of the testators, but only to the will of their ecclesiastical superiors, the Presbyteries and Synods and General Assembly 44 of America, whether such an arrangement, ad- mitted by him to be desirable and good in reference to one small territory, whether the character and effect would be at all changed, if the benefit of it were multiplied several hundred times, and spread over the whole of Maryland. It of course was most readily admitted, that just as one apple, multiplied by 750, does not land you in 75t) oranges but in 7^0 apples so one moral and religious be- nefit multiplied by the same number, does not land in 750 evils, but in 750' most unquestionable and most desirable benefits. After this the transition was not a difficult one, from the single state of Maryland to the whole United States of America ; and then the only adjustment betwixt us which remained to be made was, whether such a great and general endowment that would have so de- lighted all their hearts, if coming from the hands of so many thousand generous individuals, whe- ther, if it had come down to them as the fruit of an endowment that had been instituted many hun- dred years ago, and was therefore so firmly based on a separate and proprietary right of its own, that no one individual could honestly affirm of himself, that he was injured by its existence in any thing that belonged to him whether, as he and his brethren would rejoice in the coming on of such an endowment, whether they would willingly con- sent to the taking of it offal the clamorous outcry of men who represented it, not only as a bane and a burden on the commonwealth, but as an un- 4,5 Christian abomination in the midst of their land. The rejoinder upon this was a very memorable one. If all you mean by an Establishment is an organized provision for a clergy, we should rejoice in it. If this be the whole amount of the con- nection between church and state if maintenance and nothing else come from the one quarter, and an unfettered theology from the other, without contamination from the authority of man, but sub- ject only to an ecclesiastical judgment, grounded on a principle of deference to the Word of God a simple arrangement of this sort is truly a different thing from what we understand by a Religious Establishment. The thing we deprecate is the authority of the civil magistrate in matters of reli- gion ; but we should be thankful to him or to any one else, for giving us what he termed an organized provision for clergymen. Now this organized provision is truly all that we contend for. It is just, in other words, a legal provision for the support of a Christian ministry an arrangement which might truly be gone into, and which actually is gone into, without the slightest infringement on the spiritual prerogatives of the church, or on the ecclesiastical independence of her clergymen. It is obvious from all this, that the indignation of our transatlantic friend, was directed against a wrong object ; and that he failed in making the re- quisite distinction between the act of a govern- ment in giving food and raiment to ministers, and iue act of a government in assuming a lordship over the creed and the consciences of ministers. 46 But it is not amid the din and uproar of public ac- clamations that men can be expected to distinguish very clearly between the things which differ. When an orator denounces the connection between church and state, the effect is instantaneous on all those who, without logic, and without discrimination, are carried along by the deafening outcries, and no less deafening plaudits of an assembly, amid the noise and excitement of which, the small still voice of truth is overborne.* * In respect of this ecclesiastical independence, I am not aware of any serious practical obstacle to the exercise of it in England ; and, at all events, "we know of nothing more perfect in this respect than the constitution of the Church of Scotland. There is, to each of its members, an independent voice from within ; and from without, there is no power or authority whatever in matters ecclesiastical. They who feel dislike to an establishment do so, in general, because of their recoil from all contact and communication with the state. We have no other communication with the state than that of being maintained by it, after which we are left to regulate the proceedings of our great home mission with all the purity, and the piety, and the independence of any missionary board. We are exposed to nothing from without which can violate the sanctity of the apostolical character, if ourselves do not violate it. And neither are we exposed to aught which can trench on the authority of the apostolical office, if ourselves we make no surrender of it. In things ecclesiastical we decide all. Some of these things may be done wrong, but still they are our majorities which do it. They are not, they cannot, be forced upon us from without. We own no head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Whatever is done ecclesiastically, is done by our ministers acting in His name, and in perfect submission to His authority. Implicated as the church and the state are imagined to be, they are not so implicated as that, without the concurrence of the ecclesiastical courts, a full and final effect can be given to any proceeding by which the good of Christianity and the religion of our people may be effected. There is not a clerical appoint- ment which can take place in any one of our parishes till we have sustained it. Even the law of patronage, right or wrong, is in force, not by the power of the state, but by the permission of the church, and with all its fancied om- nipotence, has no other basis than that of our majorities to rest upon. It should never be forgotten that, in things ecclesiastical, the highest power of our church is amenable to no higher power on earth for its decisions. It 47 But we must now pass on to the proper subject of tliis lecture which is the vindication of a Religious National Establishment in opposition to the rea- sonings and views of the economists. 1. By the system of a free trade in commerce, its various exchanges are left to the pure operation of demand and supply ; and the two, it is thought, should be permitted, without interference, to re- gulate and to qualify each other. When the de- mand for any particular commodity increases, it will be the interest of the dealers to provide it in larger quantity than before ; or, when the demand is lessened, it will be their care to reduce the supply can exclude, it can deprive, it can depose, at pleasure. External force might make an obnoxious individual the holder of a benefice; but there is no ex- ternal force in these realms that could make him a minister of the Church of Scotland. There is not one thing which the state can do to our independent, and indestructible church but strip her of its temporalities. Nee tamen con- sumebatur, she would remain a church notwithstanding as strong as ever in the props of her own moral and inherent greatness- and, though shrivelled in all her dimensions by the moral injury inflicted on many thousands of families, she would be at least as strong as ever in the reverence of her country's population. She was as much a church in her days of suffering as in her days of outward security and triumph ; when a wandering outcast, with nought but the mountain breezes to play around her, and nought but the caves of the earth to shelter her, as now, when admitted to the bowers of an establishment. The magistrate might withdraw his protection, and she tvase to be an establishment any longer but in all the high matters of sacred and spiritual jurisdiction, she would be the same as before. With or with- out an establishment, she, in these, is the unfettered mistress of her doings. The King by himself, or by liis representative, might be the spectator of our proceedings ; but what Lord Chatham said of the poor man's house, is true in all its parts of the church to which I have the honour to belong " In England every man's house is his castle not that it is surrounded with walls and battlements. It may be a straw-built shed. Every wind of heaven may whistle round it; every element of heaven may enter it, but the King cannot the King dare not." Sermon XV, Vol. XI, of Dr. Chalmers Works ; New and Uniform Edition. 4-8 accordingly so as that the market shall not be overstocked with any article, beyond the extent to which it is sought after. It admits, we hold, of the clearest demonstration, that it is unwise to interfere with this law of action and reaction or as it may be termed, with this natural law of po- litical economy. The supply rises and falls just as the demand rises and falls. Government should make no attempt to restrain the supply beneath this point by means of a prohibition, or to encourage it above this point by means of a bounty. Such an interference is an offence to all wise and en- lightened economists ; and resented by them as a disturbing force, that would violate the harmonies of a beautiful and well-going mechanism. 2. This prepares us to understand what is meant by the system of a free trade in Christianity. Under its hands the article of religious instruction is left to the same treatment, and to the operation of the same laws, with an article of ordinary mer- chandise according to which Christian instruc- tion should be provided for a community, to a greater or less degree, just as there is a demand for it ; or, in other words, is left to be regulated by the laws, and of course to be limited by the extent of the market. At this rate the supply, whether as respects its amount upon the whole or the proportion of it in various places, will be made to suit the taste of the customers. It will betake itself to those places where there is, what econo- mists term, an effective demand for it that is, where there is wealth enough and will enough, to ensure a remunerating price for the expense of its preparation. A free trade in commerce, only seeks to those places where it can make out a gainful trade ; but it is sure tp avoid or to abandon those places, where, whether from the languor of the demand or the poverty of the inhabitants, it would be exposed to a losing trade. By a free trade in Christianity, let the lessons of the gospel follow the same law of movement ; and these lessons will cease to be taught in every place, where there is either not enough of liking for the thing, or not enough of money for the purchase of it: Or that religion, the great and primary characteristic of which was that it should be preached unto the poor, must be withheld from those people, who are un- able by poverty to provide a maintenance for its teachers. And the teachers of this religion, whose * office it is, after the example of its great founder, to seek and to save those who are lost, must make no attempt tp awaken from their slumbers, those who have no value, and will therefore give 'i<- no price for their ministrations because lost in the apathy of a deep and settled unconcern, and sunk in the indifference of spiritual death. 3. This brief and bare statement, one might think, of the effects of a free trade in Christianity, should be enough to condemn a system which seems to carry its own signal refutation along with it. But we ought to understand what the precise distinction is between Commerce and Christianity, 50 which calls for such a difference of treatment be- tween the two as that for which we are contending so that while the one prospers to the uttermost under the system of free trade, and reaches by its means the greatest possible diffusion of its blessings and benefits through the world ; the other, under the same system, would shrink into narrower di- mensions, and be limited to a small fraction of the human species. If there be a diversity in the two cases, there must be a reason for it, which admits of being distinctly stated, and which may be dis- tinctly apprehended. When Turgot and Smith and others proposed to assimilate the one to the other, so as to leave them both to the pure ope- ration of demand and supply ; and without the artificial encouragement, whether of bounties or endowments if there be error in the proposition of these economists, they must have been misled by the light of some false analogy, which surely is capable of being exposed. In other words, there must be some intelligible principle, capable of being propounded and put into language ; and on which the system of free trade, so applicable to the one case, is not alike applicable to the other also. 4. The following then is our explanation. Gene- rally speaking, there is, by the very constitution of our nature, a sufficient intensity of desire, and con- sequently of demand, for the articles which com- merce deals in, and so as to call forth an adequate supply of these articles, or a supply commensurate ,51 to all the exigencies of human society. There is no such intensity of desire or of demand for the article of Christian instruction. When it is af- firmed, in regard to the goods of ordinary mer- chandise, that they might, with all safety, be left to the operation of demand and supply, it is always presupposed of the one element, that it is suffi- ciently strong to stimulate and call forth the other. And so it usually is. The longer a man is in want of food, the keener will become his appetency of hunger till at length he would give any price, or make any sacrifice, in order to obtain it. And so it is of other sensations, which impel him to seek after other necessaries of existence : as the cold which makes it indispensable to his comfort, that he should be clothed and lodged, as well as fed. Even when the necessaries of life are refined into exquisite and high-wrought luxuries, there is a sufficiently spontaneous and wide-spread desire after these, to ensure a sufficient demand for them, in the physical sense of taste and the vanity of man or his natural love of distinction the one disposing him to the . gratifications of the table the other, though at the expense of all he can give away, to the decorations of his person and. equipage and household establishment. Man's natural liking for these things, affords a powerful enough guar- antee, either for that part of his labour which he is willing to put forth, or for that part of his wealth which he is willing to give up, in order to acquire them. Between the love of gain on the one hand, 52 and thfe love of enjoyment on the other, there is no danger but the wheels of commerce will move with velocity enough and in the very direction, too, that is most suited both for the needs of customers and the prosperity of dealers. It seeks no other aid at the hands of the legislature, than the en- forcement of justice between man and man. The bounties wherewith a misjudging government would seek to encourage it, but serve to displace or to embarrass its movements which, by the voice of all experience and all philosophy, might be left with the utmost safety and the best possible ad- vantage, to a self-going mechanism of its own. 5. Now the very reverse of all this holds of Christianity* or rather of Christian instruction, viewed as an article which is beneficial to man ; and which should therefore be distributed, to all the extent that is good or desirable to mankind, throughout the mass of society. It is not with man's intellectual, or his moral, as it is with his animal nature. Although it be true, that the longer he has been without food, the more hungry he is, or the greater anfd more urgent is his desire of food yet the more ignorant a man is, not the greater, but generally speaking, the less is his desire of knowledge. And this converse proposi- tion is still more manifestly true of his moral than of his intellectual wants. The more immersed a man is in vice or in voluptuousness, not most cer- tainly the greater, buT beyond all doubt the less, is his desire of virtue or his desire of holiness. There is no natural hungering or thirsting after righteous- ness ; and before man will seek that the want should be supplied, the appetite must first be created. The less a man has, whether pf religion or righteousness, the less does he care for them, and the less will he seek after them. It is thus that nature does not go forth in quest of Chris- tianity ; but Christianity must go forth in quest of nature. It is, on the one hand, the strength of the physical appetency ; and, on the other hand, the languor of the spiritual, the moral, or the intellec- tual appetency, which makes all the difference. The law of our moral and intellectual is not the same, but reverse or contrary to the law of our physical wants. With the physical, the intensity of the desire is directly proportional to the -want ; with the intellectual and moral, it is inversely pro- portional, or the less he has of these the less he cares for them. The strength of man's natural craving, guarantees an effectual demand for food or raiment, or all that might contribute to tbe shelter and convenience of the house that is over his head which, rather than want, he will go if he can to the most distant market, and with the full price in his hand for them. But though we may trust to his natural longing, for the goods which are to be had in a market, there is no such natural or universal longing for the good to be had in a church, or in a college, or even in ; ,a school. Apd never, therefore, was there a more unfortunate generalisation tha,n that by which our economists 5* have placed on the same footing, the articles of ordinary merchandise with the articles whether of common or Christian education ; or by which, because they are demonstrated of bounties for the one that they were unnecessary or even mischievous they therefore contended against endowments for the other, as bein, in their operation, alike mischievous or alike unnecessary.* * As far back as 1817, I had occasion to publish a sermon which I preached on the 9eath of the Princess Charlotte, wherein I adverted to the want of < -hurdles in Glasgow; and subjoined an appendix, in which there occurs my first exposition of this argument. The following is a brief extract. " Dr. Adam Smith, in his Treatise on the Wealth of Nations, argues against religious establishments, on the ground that the article of religious instruc- tion should be left to the pure operation of demand and supply, like any article of ordinary merchandise. He seems to have overlooked one most material circumstance of distincton. The native and untaught propensities of the hu- man constitution, will always of themselves secure a demand for the commo- dities of trade, sufficiently effective to bring forward a supply equal to the real needsof the population, and to theirpowerof purchasing. But the appetite for religious instruction is neither so strong nor so universal as to secure such an effective demand for it. Had the people been left in this matter to them- selves, there would, in point of fact, have been large tracts of country without a place of worship, and without a minister. The legislature have met the population half-way, byproviding them with a church and a religious teacher, in every little district of the land ; and by this arrangement have increased, to a very great degree, the quantity of attendance and the quantity of actual ministration. In point of fact, a much greater number of people do come to diurch, and do come within the application of Christian influence, when the church and the preacher is provided for them, than if they had been left to build a meeting-house, and to maintain a preacher themselves. There is a far surer and more abundant supply of this wholesome influence dealt out among the population under the former arrangement, than under the latter one; and it is this excess of moral and religious good, which forms the only argument for a national establishment that I shall now insist upon. " The argument of Dr. Smith goes to demonstrate the folly of a national establishment, either of meal-sellers or of butchers, or of any national esta- blishment for supplying the people with the necessaries and the comforts of life. But the peculiarity already adverted to, renders it totally inapplicable to thcquestion of a national establishment for supplying the people with the lessons of Christianity." 55 6. These principles are in full accordance with the facts, both of past history and of present expe- rience. With many, there is a confused imagina- tion, that, previous to the establishment of Chris- tianity, the whole ministry of. the gospel was con- ducted on the system of free trade. On a closer view, however, and a proper discrimination of the things which differ, it will be found, that what actually took place was the very reverse of this. It is true, that, in all ages, the lessons' of thegospel behoved to be paid for by some one, because the teachers of the gospel behoved to be maintained. But the whole system hinges upon this who paid for these lessons? We know by whom it is, that, in the exchanges of ordinary business and on the principles of free trade, the payments are usually made. They are the customers or users of the commodity that is purchased, who, generally speaking, pay its price and its whole price. It were in violation of the system of free trade, if This argument I have been incessantly repeating since, on numberless occa- sions, and in a variety of forms; but it strikingly marks the slow progress where- with a principle before unheard of makes way in society that for at least fifteen years any testimony I could lift upon the subject was like the voice of one crying in the wilderness. It is now more familiar to Scotland since the extension of our church, no longer a matter of mere speech or speculation, has become a living and practical concern. I believe that in this part of the world, it is chiefly indebted for any currency it might have, to the important circumstance of its having been adopted by Lord Brougham some years ago, who, in a speech in the House of Peers, made use of the very consideration) and propounded it, almost in the very words which' I ha*ve now uttered in your hearing after which it expanded into full notoriety, when this par- ticular reason for an established church, instead of lying hid in so many para- graphs of obscure authorship, went forth over the whole length and breadth of England under its far more influential title of the Lord Chancellor's argument. . government paid any part of that price in the shape of a bounty. And it were an equal violation of the same system, from whatever quarter that bounty should come whether from the state, or from any body of associated philanthropists, or from private individuals. It is the doctrine, and we hold it a sound one, of the economists, that an article should no longer be brought to market, if the price, which purchasers are willing to pay for it, do not remunerate the cost of its prepara- tion ; or if, to help out that price, advances must be made by any party distinct from the purchasers themselves. For in this case it were a losing trade; and so miich of the capital of the country, it is argued, would be thrown away on a profitless or hurtful investment. And one of the foremost articles in our modern, and, as we think, enlight- ened creed, is, that the supply of all those goods should cease, for which there is not an effective demand, that would cover the whole expense of bringing them to market that the whole matter of demand and supply, in fact, should be left to find its own adjustment, in the free choice of the two parties concerned in it; or should be made to hinge exclusively on the price which the one party are willing to give, and the profit which the other party are willing to receive. Let these two elements act and react at will on each other, and so as to make out between them a self-going mechanism, that would only be put out of order, as if by the violence of a disturbing force should V*OP 57 the intervention of any third patty toe ttdtaftfc^ for the purpose either of help or of hindrance. In other words, the economists contend, and with our entire acquiescence, for the establishment of a perfect freedom in the world of trade, as being the condition of things, in which the best and most beneficial result, the greatest good or maxi- mum of commercial prosperity is realised when dealers on the one hand are most profited, and customers on the other are most pleased. 7. Now let us consider whether this is the foot- ing on which the world ever is, or ever can be, supplied with its Christi'anity, or rather with its Christian instruction, in the way that is best for the moral interests of our species. It was not so at the first introduction of Christianity, in virtue, not of a movement from earth to heaven, but of a movement from heaven to earth ; and the expenses of which, throughout the infancy and boyhood 6f the Saviour, were certainly not defrayed by those for whose welfare the mission was Undertaken. It was not so during the time of His public ministry, when three or four women ministered to Him of their substance, as He travelled from place to place over the land of Judea; and so He was maintained at the cost of the few for the benefit of the many. It was not so in the journeyings of His disciples, two by two among their countrymen who, when they entered a city, fixed their residence in some particular house, and were supported by the hos- pitality of one individual for the good of the ge- 58 neral population. It was not so when the apostles went forth after the resurrection ; and receive.d their maintenance from such as Simon the tanner, or Lydia the seller of purple, or Stephanus and Fortunatus, and Achaicus, and others of those Scrip- ture worthies who harhoured and entertained the men of God, while they held out the bread of life, without money and without price, to the multi- tude at large. It was not so when the last, but not the least of the apostles, provided with his own hand for his own necessities ; and the wages of Paul the tentmaker, enabled Paul the apostle, to labour in his sacred vocation without wages. It was not so when he received from other and dis- tinct churches, that, in the church of Corinth, the gospel might not be chargeable to any ; and he would suffer no man to strip him of this boasting in the regions of Achaia. And, to come down from the age of the New Testament, it generally could not have been so, that the extension of Christianity was carried forward during the three first centuries. The men who were not yet Chris- tians did not, in those days, send to the apostolic college for men who might give them the lessons of the gospel ; but, by a reverse process, teachers went forth among the yet benighted countries of the earth ; and their expenses, at least in the first instance, behoved to be borne, not in the shape of a price by those who received the benefit, but in the shape of a bounty by those who dispensed it. In all these instances, contrary to every law or character of pure trade, the expense was borne either totally or partially by one party, and that for the good of another party. It was not as in the ordinary exchanges of commerce. The receivers were not the purchasers ; and what they did re- ceive was not a thing by them bought, but a thing to them given. It is an utter misconception that when Constantine set up in his dominions a na- tional establishment of Christianity, he made the first infringement on that sytem of free trade by which the prosperity of this religion had been here- tofore upholden ; for, from its very outset, Chris- tianity stood indebted, for almost every footstep of its progress, to a system and a policy directly the opposite of this. When he came forth with his great imperial bounty or benefaction, he only did on the large scale, what thousands of benefactors had pre- viously, and for hundreds of years, done on a small scale before him. When he became the friend and nursing father of the church, he did for the whole territory of which he was the sovereign, what, times and ways without number, the friends of the church had already done, each for the little district in which he himself resided, or for the introduction and the maintenance of Christian worship in some chosen locality of his own. With his great national endow- ment, he but followed in the tract of those private and particular endowments which, sometimes tem- porary, and sometimes perpetual, had multiplied beyond all reckoning, during the preceding ages of Christianity ; and in virtue of which it was, that 60 churches innumerable were raised, and congrega- tions were formed ; but chiefly in the large and flourishing cities of the Roman empire. The peasants, or they who lived in the country and vil- lages, inhabitants of the pagi, and hence called Pagans, were, in the great bulk of them, still un- converted insomuch that Paganism in those days became synonymous with heathenism ; or, in other words, the great majority of the rustics or country- men of that period, notwithstanding the strenuous and apostolic exertion of many thousands of Chris- tian missionaries for about three centuries together, were still adherents to the old superstition and idolatry of their forefathers. The universal endow- 'ment, by which a ministry was provided for every little section 6f the territory, or the whole was broken itlto parishes, opened a way to the moral fastnesses that were still held and occupied by the countless millions whom all the efforts of by-gone generations had not reached ; and so brought a whole host of gospel labourers into contact with the wide and plenteous harvest of the general population. 8. But, instead of looking to the distant past, of which the history is far from perfect, the same lesson might be drawn from the observation of present or modern times. Certain it is, that the introduction of Christianity into .any new land, proceeds by a very different method from the introduction thereinto of any of the goods of ordinary merchandise. The commercial adven- turers look for the remuneration of their expenses, 61 to the priee or equivalent given by the natives themselves. The missionary adventurers are up- held in their expenses, not by a price, but gene- rally in whole, and almost always in part, by a bounty the bounty of those who employ and send them forth in full equipment for their high enterprise of charity. In this process, that law of equal and reciprocal barter, between them who bestow and them who receive the benefit, which the advocates of a free trade contend for, is aliQr gether unknown. Rather than want the teas of China, the families of Britain do, in effect, send for them along half the circumference of the globe, and defray the whole cost of the expensive ,and distant voyage by which they are brought to ow shores. But who paid for the outfit and all the other charges of that first missionary vessel, which first wafted the gospel to the remote island of Ot*u heite? Not the natives themselves, who shoulcj have wanted the blessings of Christianity for ever, had we waited for their effective demand ; or not moved but in the expectatioD of ja safe and profit- able return from their hands, for the cost of this great undertaking. The undertaking originated with us ; and was defrayed to the last farthing, out of a missionary fund raised from the benevolent of our own land. It is generally thus that all mis- sionary work is upholden paid and provided for, not by the receivers of Christianity, but by its dispensers, or rather by those who maintain the dispensers. So that, at least in the extension of 62 Christianity, we do not sell the gospel, but offer it : we do not calculate on a price, as in the operations of commerce, but have recourse to a bounty, that dread and deprecation of all the economists with- out which, whatever the effect might be on the continuance of Christianity in old countries, the propagation of it, at least in new countries, were altogether hopeless. Some may contend, that, on the principles of free trade, Christianity could be perpetuated wherever it is already planted ; but few will have the hardihood to affirm, that, on these principles, its first settlement could have been effected in any land. 9. But though Christianity were indebted to the operation of a bounty, for every footstep of its pro- gress from one region to another, this is far from being decisive of the controversy. For properly the question relates, not to the methods by which Christianity is introduced, but to the methods by which it might be maintained in any land. It might be very true that the taste, and consequently the demand for this religion, must first be created among those people to whom it is at present un- known ; and that therefore anterior to this, instead of waiting till it be sought after, it must be offered to their acceptance, or be carried to their doors, and taught to their families, not at their own ex- pense, but at the expense of others beside them- selves. It is even thus that commerce sometimes obtains a footing for itself in particular countries. Before the natives can have a liking for certain of 63 its articles, they must first have a sight and a trial of them ; and so instances can be given, where dealers have adventured their goods into places, where, instead of finding a market, they had first to form one at their own hazard, therefore, or even expense in the first instance, and not at the expense of customers. But though it was thus at the commencement of the trade, it could not possi- bly be thus that we can explain the continuance of the trade. The same people, who would not send for the commodity at the first, might, when once made to know and to relish it, rather than want, be abundantly willing to pay for it after- wards. And might not Christianity be sped in like manner? Though introduced at the expense of others, might it not, when the appetite for its lessons is excited, be maintained by themselves afterwards; and that not by certain of the nation for the benefit of the rest, but entirely and exclu- sively by those who receive the benefit ? It might be very true that missionaries, at the charge and bidding of those who are Christians, must be em- ployed for the conversion of those who are not Christians ; but may it not also be true, that, after their conversion has been effected, then a native demand will be set agoing; and ministers be em- ployed at their own charge and their own bidding, for keeping up this religion from generation to generation ? 10. There is a great semblance of probability for this, in much that might be seen, "both through- 64 out our own teno} anpl in the various countries of Christendom. In Britain, there are many huo,- dreds pf large and flourishing congregations, where all the expenses of the service are defrayed by the hearers themselves. These are pure instances of free trade, and of an interchange as complete and equal as any which erer takes place between the buyers and the sellers of a market where Chris- tian instruction is rendered by the pne party, and where its price, its whole price, is rendered by the other party where there is not one farthing of endowment t;p Kelp put the maintenance of the clergyman ; and a remuneration for his labour, often adequate and respectable, is fully rnade good to him by those who enjoy the fruits, of i