Kepler's Problems, and still not a few unable to read it at all. Would this be the case if the shepherds of the flock were earnest? would it be the case, if the bloated revenues of our bloated Bishops, or even the thinner clergy, were requited by any hearty zeal in the cause? A great deal is said about the millennial blessings which are to flow in after the labours of the Bible Societies shall have been consummated. But what is this consummation so devoutly to be wished to effect, if the people had all Bibles at this instant, and do not read them? Heaven only knows how little the possession of a Bible effects even in their betters. If it rained Bibles, would not the services of the clergy be still as much as ever required, to ascertain whether these Bibles were read with understanding? "And Philip ran to him, and heard him read the prophet Isaias, and said, understandest thou what thou readest? and he said, how can I, except some man should guide me?" If the people do not need some man to guide them in their study of

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the Scriptures in the present day, then why are we burthened with a church establishment? What is the use of a ministry?

No wonder the Roman Catholic church, corrupt and indolent as it is, should regard ignorance as their best support; for certainly, if we are not to try and maintain the religion in its primæval purity, it makes one of the very worst national creeds imaginable, since it rejects the only aid that can make a mere state religion influential on the minds of the multitude superstitious ceremonies and imposing solemnities. As a piece of state show, I contend that even paganism would be preferable; for here the clergy might be as indolent as they pleased, without any inconsistency with their profession. There would be no need of expositors of the Scriptures -no need for distributing Bibles. The oracles would have better effect locked up, like the Sybilline books. A Bishop might then raise his mitred front in courts and parliaments, and lavish what share he liked of his 8 or 10,000 a year on his indul

gences, without one condescension required. from his dignity in the work of "oversight" or instruction.

Nor is it merely the indolence of the clergy which is calculated to do mischief. By a

I

strange fatality that cleaves to them, where they really do appear earnestly zealous and active, their services are to the full as injurious as when they are shamefully the reverse. allude, as one exemplification of this sad truth, to the multiplication of threadbare compilations, which are dignified by the name of evidences of our faith-things incalculably more fitted to darken counsel than to clear it up. Yet is there hardly an obscure village or country town, where the van of some bookseller's shop-window does not present something of this description to the eye of the passing gazer; and as if our religion were, as Burke remarks. of our Constitution, "not to be enjoyed, but always to be a subject of altercation," there seems not the smallest probability of any definite period to this contest of proofs and illustrations. The very titles on the back of some

of their books are fitted to do more harm than their learned contents can rectify. What is a quiet, well-disposed, honest believer, who never took it into his head to question one tittle of the record of his faith in the course of his life, to think, when such works as the following are obtruded on his observation:- On the Credibility of the Gospel Story; An Apology for the Bible; Christianity not a Cunningly Devised Fable; A Plea for Religion; Not Paul, but Jesus; Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures asserted; The Doctrine of the Trinity attempted to be Proved. One reverend divine announcing a volume of Corrections of the Text of the Scriptures; another proposing to reconcile its apparent contradictions, &c. with evidence upon evidence, and every variety of attack and defence between the combatants of the contending sects into which our religion is split and subdivided. What is the anxious bewildered traveller on his way to Canaan to think, when he sees his spiritual guides thus crossing each other's path? If the book entitled Jewish Prophecy the sole Criterion to distinguish between

Genuine and Spurious Christian Scripture, should happen to meet his eye, what strength it must infuse into his hope, to find a clergyman the author of it! Besides innumerable such comforting supplements to the pile of musty theology, we have The New Version of the Testament by the Unitarians. Animating novelty! The Bishop of such a thing's Refutation of Calvinism: the reader may be a Calvinist, but he is at liberty to draw comfort, by supposing the work intended as a set-off against High Church Claims Exposed, which announces the labours of some other reverend labourer in the vineyard. Then there is Evanson's Dissonance of the Four Gospels to counterbalance Macknight's Harmony of the same; and, to crown all, he is presented with a sermon on Fickleness in Religion, in which he finds the wavering lost sinner denounced for daring to doubt, when all is so clear that he who runs may read. Next we have a book of Evidences of Religion on a New and Original Plan; the old ones, of course, being somewhat the worse for the wear, or on the supernumerary list. list. Item the Integrity of the Greek Vul