transpontine theatres, what childish anecdotes, what unfair inuendos against those who are not quite orthodox, according to the shekel of their tabernacle-pass for the noblest efforts of the Christian preacher among many of the adherents of popular independency. Their taste and judgment are formed on their literature, and the less that is said of the reading of the lower sort of Dissenters perhaps the better. Yet let such preachers once obtain a multitudinous and injudicious following, and a large chapel in consequence, as they easily may, and they straightway become powerful men in the "body," looking down with pious superiority upon those whom "God has not honoured" so much as themselves.

The thoroughly popular preacher, however, let it be said, may be one of the noblest, or one of the meanest, of mankind. He may come forth from a divine solitude with a voice fitted to reach or fill a nation's ear, armed with a knowledge of God's word, and with a desire to do His will, "accepting the person of no man," his "lips touched with a live coal from off the altar," and his whole life the visible sacrificial embodiment of his loving and luminous discourse; -or he may be an empty, ambitious charlatan, dealing in sacred mysteries chiefly for his own advancement, the careful student of he base tastes of the multitudes, rather than of the revelations of leaven; the stubborn opponent of honest thought and honest hinkers; seeking pew-rents rather than conversions, and a full congregation rather than his God's approval: the superficial parasite of he rich and ignorant, and of course the steady enemy of all reforms which would terminate the reign of tinkling cymbals. In the latter case, there is danger; for as soon as a religious communion geneally values an efflorescent type of popular discourse above that order of quiet instruction which is informing, logical, and practically persuasive to a holy life, it is penetrated by a poison which will paralyse its spiritual energies. Private prayer, and private study of God's Word will be abandoned, active duty will be discharged by proxy-life will become one shallow externality. The men who most truly represent the unseen and eternal will be practically excommunicated, and the ministry will become an institute of rhetoricians. The real power of Nonconformity is not in numbers, nor in eloquence, but in the spiritual life, and that can be sustained only by the teaching of spiritual and prophetic men.

4. The last avenue by which spiritual dangers may invade the domains of Secession, and which we shall here designate, is that by which political liberalism may enter among us in a state of too much disintegration from habits of devotion and piety. The alliance between earnest religion and a love of freedom is as old as Christendom, and the early history of our communities offers an excuse for the antagonism of primitive Nonconformity. The slow withdrawal of social disabilities during two centuries is a further

apology for the perpetuation amongst us of much of the same spirit. On the whole, considering what Englishmen are, and what Dissenters have been compelled to endure from their fellow-countrymen, nothing is more creditable than the good temper and patience with which insult, opposition and depression have been borne for so many generations. It is the divine mark on the forehead of the grand old cause of freedom in religion. But it must be borne in mind that the positive side of the truths for which we witness, is their noblest aspect and their most important bearing. In relation to the Church Establishment of England, we are indeed Dissenters; but in relation to the word and will of God, and ancient Christianity, we are, as we think, Conformists in the most essential particu lars, and the members of the Church of England are the real dissenters. The negative side or our belief and practice is an accident. The first thing is that according to the Bible we are, as we trust, right. It is only a secondary consideration that the establishment is wrong. Neither should a sense of personal injury get the better of a sense of the injury to truth and godliness inflicted by that Establishment, so as to lead us to think more of our wrongs than of the vindication of the rights of Heaven. It is the positive side of truth alone which is creative. Negations can do little but destroy. In vain shall we cast down imaginations which exalt themselves against the Word of God, unless we have something better to offer in their room. The establishment of pure and true churches in England is of infinitely greater importance than the breaking up of the Prelatical communion, or the dissolution of Church and State. And a merely dissolving process of negative testimony has no appreciable tendency to build up the living reform. A man may fire an Armstrong gun all through his lifetime, and demolish many a citadel of darkness, but not thereby leave behind him a single evidence that his life was an emanation from that new creating Spirit of Christ in glory, which is the fountain of every good and perfect gift among men. The Apostles did not visit Ephesus as "blasphemers of their goddess," for if they had done so, it would have been a long time before the theatre would have been filled with multitudes of religious people in the first stage of theological inquiry, throwing dust in the air, and extolling Diana's magnificence. It was a lodgment of positive truth which occasioned all the turmoil.

Besides, the formative evil in the Church of England is spiritual and requires to be assailed by a spiritual power. Its political and ecclesiastical constitution is in every respect the logical and necessary result of its doctrinal and spiritual character. And this doctrinal and spiritual character, so far as it is corrupted, is at once the outcome and the religion of unreformed human nature. To assail such a system as this simply by outcries of political wrong

to misunderstand its strength and the sources of its power. hat which is evil in it is mighty through spiritual forces, "the ower of the air;" through "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, id the pride of life;" and can be successfully encountered, if at 1, only by a divine life of love, humility, sacrifice, and godly stimony in the spirit, superior to its own. Exclusively political tacks will brace up the whole structure, strengthen every rivet in e plated fabric, and nerve every carnal resolution to maintain its wer. It is when the demonstration of its political injustice mes from men whose thoughts are evidently busy with higher ms than demolition, whose chief zeal is against the barefaced or btle dishonesty to which any national subscription to articles ast lead, against the moral and social Paganism which grows out secularized Christianity, against the ruin to souls which overadows every population delivered over to mechanical sacra entalism;-it is when the "assault" comes from men who are viously much more bent on creation than destruction, readier to dure wrong than to overthrow the worldly position of the wrongers; men who breathe the majestic spirit of the Son of God ther than the tone of democratic revolutionaries,-it is then that Church-leaders" and politicians are likely to tremble, like Felix, the prospect of that awful "judgment" which such witnessing eshadows. They fear one Richard Baxter with his spiritual ms more than a thousand men of purely secular antagonisms. Now is there not a danger that some of the persons who repreat the cause of political and ecclesiastical freedom amongst us ould be agents who have too little knowledge of the spiritual lms, and too little spiritual power for the "wars of the Lord?" greater calamity can happen to that complex truth which is bstantially represented by Nonconformity than for its political ment to be wielded by men who are deficient in that spiritual e, from which all valuable protest against corruption must spring. le political dissenters must be the religious dissenters, or else it is over with any hope of reform. Spiritual life brings us into ntact with the spiritual life inside the establishment, and how uch is there of this, and of every most beautiful type I-theogical testimony appeals to the theological mind in the establishent; and these are the forces which will, if anything will, achieve e improvements we desire to see.

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Let these powers be disused, and let the antagonistic testimony Dissent rush chiefly into battles respecting rates of two-pence in le pound, laid on recalcitrant parishioners by a set of ignorant and rrogant farmers, shopkeepers, and country gentlemen; and for ught we can see "Dissent" might almost as well, like Elijah under his juniper, lie down and desire to die; for such battles ring more vexation and misunderstanding than the most "glorious

victories" over unconvinced vestry-mobs can bring of comfort the spiritual warrior. But let the mighty power of Spiritual Tru go forth, as it went in Milton's life and writings, flashing in panoply of blazing diamonds-let the most interior truths of t Gospel revelation sound in the ears of this trafficking and huckst ing and advowson-selling generation; let compliments to the cler cease, and the fearful apocalyptic warnings of "the lake of fir for all who trifle with truth take their place on holy lips fr one end of the country to the other, and we anticipate a result once more noble and more speedy than any that can be hoped solely from the reclamations and utterances of the "volunt principle" in all the vestries in the kingdom. It is a sad ye somewhat ludicrous and characteristic consideration that the o "martyr" to Nonconformity publicly known in modern times i martyr for a Church-rate. And the ill-success of Dissent in ov throwing the Establishment, its own apparent stationary posit in public esteem, and the ever growing social authority of Church of England, notwithstanding its fearful divisions, and withstanding the issue of the religious census, might suggest inquiry whether the tactics of recent years have really recei in all respects, the sanction of the Almighty. The chief cons tion which we enjoy under many painful reflections on this mai is the knowledge that, as in the case of other departments allu to before, the most prominent and most deservedly honou opponents of the Politico-Religious Establishment, are men wł whole external policy is an effluence from an inward illumina and grace, which might be besought from heaven with advant by some of their pretended followers in every portion of kingdom.

We here most gladly close the present series of criticisms some peculiarities of modern Nonconformity, leaving a few mi topics to be perhaps treated occasionally hereafter. If at time has seemed as though there has been a little too much zest in so of the representations of prevailing faults, we must hope for considerate judgment of those in regard to the general spirit wh has animated us. Respecting our motives, we shall not "pro too much," being hopeful that they are "manifest to all me As to the manner of execution, there is little doubt that the fa of Nonconformity appear even in its own efforts at amendme These papers have drawn much more than the expected measure attention; and with the knowledge of that fact has come a necess for an early conclusion of the series, and a keener sense, at ev cage, of our own small right, and still smaller desire, to occu

he censor's chair. However, the spirit of prophecy came upon e Christian Spectator at the close of the Bartholomew Celebraon, and the fire in his bones which had been burning for many ears would not cease, until utterance had been given to that which emed to be the truth for the times. If he has occasionally waxed roth at some extreme evil (like Elisha with the ragamuffins of ethel), remember his mortality, friendly reader, and forgive him. As to the result of the prophecy, that remains to be seen. It is ood to "dream" of better things to come, in the ages that precede eir advent. Some prophecies hasten their own fulfilment. The easure of assent accorded to the suggestions astonishes us. Of ourse there is much difference, much counter argument, much artial disapproval, but the extent to which we have been supported these endeavours is truly wonderful and encouraging. It is roposed to give the opponents of our own views the opportunity f a hearing, and we shall gladly insert condensed letters in reply

O our strictures.

ttention.

The most hostile shall receive the earliest

Two facts must be mentioned in making an end-to the infinite onour, not of religious parties, let us say, but of English hristianity. The first is, that though the prophecy has been fficiently sharp, we have not received a single communication, blic or private, from Nonconformists urging a suppression of uth, or even of opinion, because their publication might be maging to a party. And the second is, that we have not observed single instance of the perverse use of our representations of existg evils in Dissent in the journals of the Church of England. We ve reason to think that this is not because they have been holly unknown. But it seems to have been felt by Churchmen at it would be exceedingly ungenerous to take a description of knowledged evils as a fair sample of the general character and orth of our communities, and that it would be a sort of sacrilege catch up a man's self-revelations as he stands on the brink of ordan confessing his sins before God, and to use them to his disdvantage. It seems to have been recognized that these papers ave been written in a spirit not hostile to anything really glorious the Church of England, and with a very sincere desire to bring bout some modifications of Nonconformity which may facilitate The ultimate union of Scripture-loving English Catholics.

Commending them, therefore, to the candid interpretation of our wn friends and on-lookers, and above all to the merciful regard of ur Master in Heaven, and praying the reader's forgiveness of all errors either in judgment or taste, we thankfully conclude this difficult undertaking.