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means of resistance and success that have been noticed, will not ascribe that praise to himself, which is due only to Divine Providence and grace. If, prior to his conversion, he was suffered to fall into many hurtful lusts,' he ought to view himself as 6 a brand plucked out of the fire.' If, on the contrary, he was preserved in Christ Jesus till he was called,' he should remember, that it was God who kept him from evil,' and withheld him from siuning against him. If, since his profession of religion, he has been permitted to fall openly and scandalously, it was Divine grace that raised him up again, having restored his soul, and led him in the paths of righteousness.' If he has hitherto escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, it is God who hathheld up his goings in his paths,' that his feet did not slip This comparative degree of spiritual prosperity, however, by no means implies that he has no failures to lament, nor any lost ground to recover. The experience of every day teaches him the contrary, as noticed by conscience, if not by his fellow-men. Since, like wise, he will never be exempt from danger on this side of the grave, interest, as well as gratitude to his heavenly Protector, will urge him to continue 'sober, watching unto prayer.'

"These acts of caution, diligence, and self-denial, the occasion for which is so incessant, and continues so long, tend to excite disgust and weariness. But beside the intervals of ease and enjoyment which mitigate the severity of the Christian's warfare, the certain and speedy prospect of ultimate success ought to prove a most powerful and never-failing stimulus to patience and activity. How great and necessary is

the object for which he thus bears

arms! How infallible is the triumph which he will shortly obtain ! How

glorious is the recompence he will receive! With what transport will he review the cares, the labours, and the sufferings, that have conducted him to so happy an issue! Many whom he recollects to have been long engaged in similar danger and conflicts, are now entered into peace, into rest, and into the joy of the Lord! He will follow them quickly, if he holds fast the beginning of his confidence, and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.' ⚫ Blessed is the man that endureth temp.

tation; for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.'-To him that overcometh will I give to inherit all things; and I will be his Father, and he shall be my son.'” Vol. II. pp. 197-199.

Our preacher might be suffered now appropriately to proceed to another important subject, grounded on the sufficient assistance afforded us against temptation, namely," the guilt of yielding to Here, as temptation." a text, might be taken, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, &c. ;" and the subject would be, The removal of those vain excuses which all are apt to make to themselves for yielding to temptation; such as, 1. Ignorance; 2. Its suddenness; 3. General distion or condition; 4, 5, and 6. advantages and difficulties of situaDifficulties arising from the infinitely diversified forms of temptation; from the formidable power of evil spirits, as described in Scripture; and from the present state of conflict in the human mind itself. Many observations of great depth, as well as much liveliness, occur in the course of these several discussions: but we have room neither for extracting the passages we had marked, nor for offering the comments with which it might be fit to accompany them. We shall, there. fore, only observe, in general, that the very discussion of some points intimately connected with human conduct, however ably and justly maintained, may be injurious to certain minds, which have been accustomed to the single, practical, and conclusive appeal for all moral and scriptural duty," The Lord hath spoken." Such points we should of course be very far from recommending for pulpit instruc

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text for this would be, "Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations." But here we must beg leave to quit both our readers and our author: having brought them so well acquainted with each other, that we cannot believe any reason can remain for the former not pursuing the same train for themselves which we have commenced for them. We recommend them not to be content with our analysis, but to put themselves in possession of one of the most valuable depositories of moral and religious research which for some time we have had occasion to notice.

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ALTHOUGH the direct object which Dr. Chalmers has in view in the Seventh Number of his quarterly papers is not an object of any high interest with ourselves-inasmuch as the peculiar evils of which he complains in the present constitution of the Church of Scotland do not exist in the English Church -we are induced to confine our attention exclusively to this paper on the present occasion by several reasons. It will be sufficient, however, to burden our readers with only one of them; namely, the great extent of the subject treated of in the Eighth of these papers. Whilst we could not, on any account, consent to cripple our examination of the important topic to which we shall next come, namely, "Sabbathschools," we were unwilling altogether to sacrifice the paper now before us to that topic; and a due attention to both was next to impracticable in one Number. It will be found, also, that the present Essay involves in it the discussion

of an important aud fundamental question in the economy of morals, to which, for many reasons, we are desirous of drawing the careful attention of our readers.

Dr. Chalmers opens the paper before us by giving a brief description of the constitution of the Church of Scotland, which we shall extract, in order to put our readers in possession of the facts of the

case.

of Scotland, it is provided that, in each
"By the constitution of the Church
parish, there shall be, at least, one mi-
nister, whose office is to preach and
dispense the ordinances of Christianity,
on the Sabbath, and to labour in holy
things among the people, through the
week; and elders, whose office it is to
assist at the dispensation of sacraments,
to be the bearers of religious advice
and comfort among the families, aud,
in general, to act purely as ecclesias-
tical labourers for the good of human
souls; and, lastly, deacons, to whom it
belongs, not to preach the word, or ad-
minister the sacraments, but to take
cessities of the poor." p. 249.
special care in administering to the ne-

It appears, however, that in the course of time this constitution has suffered a material change; by which, in many instances, the office of deacon has been wholly absorbed in that of elder. The effect of this change is, that the elder, now, in many instances, exercises the joint function of elder and deacon-as elder, assisting the minister in his clerical duties, and, as deacon, dispensing those funds which have been raised, either by benevolent or compulsatory contributions, for the benefit of the poor. The elder, therefore, now goes forth, not as the mere assistant of the incumbent, dividing with him his spiritual labours, but also, and chiefly, in a capacity analogous to that of overseer of the poor of the parish, sitting in judgment on the claims of applicants for relief, and assigning to each his portion of the parochial charities.

It is against this union of spi

ritual and secular offices that the present Essay of Dr. Chalmers is mainly directed and as the argument is, in some points, new; and, as usual with this powerful writer, conducted in a very masterly manner; we shall here allow him to speak somewhat at length for himself.

«Conceive, then, an individual to be associated with a district in the joint capacity of elder and deacon, and that, at the same time, its pauperism has attained such a magnitude and an establishment, as to have addressed itself to the desires and the expectations of a large proportion of the families. The argument must suppose him to be equally intent on the duties of each office, without which there is a defect of right and honest principle, on his part; and this of itself is a mischievous thing, though no exception whatever could be alleged against the combination of these two offices. It will, therefore, serve better to expose the evils of this combination, to figure to ourselves a man of zeal and conscientiousness, on whom the burden of both offices has been laid, and who is uprightly desirous of fulfilling the duties of both. There are many who are but elders in name, while deacons alone and deacons altogether in practice and performance; and this, of itself, by the extinction, as far as it goes, of the whole use and influence of the eldership among the people, is, of itself, a very sore calamity. But let us rather put the case of one who would like religious influence to descend from him, in the former capacity, and, at the same time, would like to acquit himself rightly among the people in the latter capacity and we hope to make it appear that a more ruinous plurality could not have been devised, by which to turn into poison each ingredient of which it is composed-and that it is indeed a work of extreme delicacy and difficulty for an individual, on whom duties of a character so heterogeneous have been devolved, to move through the district assigned to him, without scattering among its people the elements of moral deterioration.

:

"He goes forth among them as an elder, when he goes forth to pray with them, or to address them on the subject of Christianity, or to recommend their

attention to its ordinances, or to take cognizance of the education of their

children. There are, indeed, a thou sand expedients by which he may attempt a religious influence among the people; and, in plying these expedients, bourer. And, did he act singly in this he acts purely as an ecclesiastical la capacity, we might know what to make

of the welcome which he obtains from the families. But they recognize him to be also a dispenser of temporalities; and they have an indefinite imagination of his powers, and of his patronage, and of his funds; and their sordid or mercenary expectations are set at work by the very sight of him; and thus some paltry or interested desire of their own may lurk under the whole of that appa rent cordiality which marks the intercourse of the two parties. It were a great satisfaction, to disentangle one principle here from another; and this can only be done by separating the one office from the other. It were desirable to ascertain how much of liking there is for the Christian, and how much for the pecuniary ministration with which this philanthropist is charged. The union of these two throws an impenetrable obscurity over this question, and raises a barrier against the discernment of real character, amongst the people with whom we deal.

"But this combination does more than disguise the principles of the people. It serves also to deteriorate them. If there be any nascent affection among them towards that which is sacred, it is well to keep it single-to defend it from the touch of every polluting ingredient-to nourish and bring it forward on the strength of its own proper aliment-and most strenuously to beware of holding out encouragement to that most subtle of all hypocrisies, the hypocrisy of the heart; which is most surely and most effectually done, when the lessons of preparation for another world are mixed up with the bribery of certain advantages in this world, and made to descend upon a human subject in one compound administration. There is a wonderful discernment inour nature evinced by the Saviour and his Apostles, throughout their whole work of Christianising, in the stress that is laid by them on singleness of eyeand in the announcements they give of the impossibility of serving two masters, and of the way in which a divided state of the affections shuts and darkens

the heart against the pure influence of truth. Simplicity of desire, or the want of it, makes the whole difference between being full of light and full of

darkness. It is thus that Christ refuses

to be a judge and a divider; and that the Apostles totally resign the office of ministering to the temporal wants of the poor; and that Paul, in particular, is at so much pains both to teach and to exemplify, among his disciples, the habit of independence on charity to

country. In the first place, we have no church-officer, who is called to the aid of an incumbent in the discharge of his spiritual functions, except the curate he may himself employ; the churchwarden being

a

the very uttermost denouncing the
hypocrisy of those who make a gain of
godliness, and even going so far as to
affirm, that the man who had joined
their society, with a view to his own
personal relief, out of its funds, from
the expense of maintaining his own
household, was worse than an infidel.
On the maxim that my kingdom is
not of this world,' it will ever be a vain
attempt to amalgamate Christianity with
the desires of any earthly ambition;
and this is just as applicable to the
humble ambition of a poor man for a
place in the lists of pauperism, as to
that higher ambition which toils, and
aspires, and multiplies its desires, and
its doings, on the walks of a more dig-
nified patronage. We are not pleading,
at present, for the annihilation of pau
perism, but for the transference of its
duties to a separate class of office-bear
ers. We are for removing a taint and
a temptation from the eldership, and
for securing, in this way, the greatest
possible efficacy to their Christian la-
bours. We are for delivering the people
from the play and the perplexity of two
affections, which cannot work together,
contemporaneously at least, in the same
bosom. On the principle that there is
a time for every thing, we should like
a visit from an elder to be the time
when Christianity shall have a separate
and unrivalled place in the attention of
those with whom, for the moment, he
is holding intercourse; and that when
the impression of things sacred might
be growing and gathering strength from
his conversation, there shall not be so
ready and palpable an inlet as there is
at present, for the impression of things
secular to stifle and overbear them."
pp. 252-257.

Now it is evident, as we have already intimated, that the objection here alleged in the case of the Church of Scotland does not lie against the Established Church of our own CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 241.

mere watchman over the tem

poralities of the church; and, in the second place, there is a lay officer, the overseer, to whom, with the vestry and churchwarden, the office of distributing the parish rates is assigned, and who has no connexion whatever with the dis charge of ecclesiastical offices. The constitution of our church, therefore, as to these points, differs widely from that of Scotland. And we should not, ourselves, feel disposed to press the measure of separation as to temporal and spiritual objects to such an extent as to take from our clergy the distribution of the few parochial charities which now sometimes falls to them, or to drive them from the seat of presidency in parish vestries which has been lately assigned to them by Act of Parliament. We so far concur, however, in the views stated in these extracts, that we are inclined to regard these offices as demanding in their administration the most cautious vigilance at the hands of the clergy, because they will be found more likely than any other to compromise their clerical functious by investing them with a secular character, and to expose them to the risk of incurring the odium of their parishioners, and of impairing, in a proportionate degree, their spiritual influence.

The following passages will put our readers in still more ample possession of Dr. Chalmers's opinions on this subject.

"There are two different ways in which an elder may acquit himself of his superinduced deaconship: either in the way of easy compliance with the demands of the population, or in the so as to act rightly by the fund which way of strict and conscientious inquiry,

has been committed to him. Take the first way of it, and suppose him, at the same time, to have the Christianity of

G

his district at heart, and what a bounty he carries around with him on the worst kind of dissimulation! Like a substance, where neither of the ingredients taken singly is poisonous, and which assumes all its virulence from the composition of them, what a power of insidious but most fatal corruption lies in the mere junction of these two offices! There is many a pluralist of this sort, who never can and never will verify this remark, by any experience of his own; because he has virtually resigned the better and the higher of his functions, or rather has not once from the beginning exercised them. But let him go forth upon his territory, in the discharge of both, and what a sickening duplicity of reception he is exposed to! What a mortifying indifference to the topic he has most at heart, under all the constrained appearance of attention which is rendered to it! With what dexterity can the language of sanctity be pressed into the service, when their purpose requires it; and yet how evident, how mortifyingly evident, often, is the total absence of all feeling and desire upon the subject, from the hearts of these wily politicians! How often, under such an unfortunate arrangement as this, is Chris tianity prostituted into a vehicle for the most sordid and unworthy applications-all its lessons no further valued than for the mean and beggarly elements with which they are conjoined-and all its ordinances no further valued than as stepping-stones perhaps to a pair of shoes. It is this mingling together of incompatible desires-it is this bringing of a pure moral element into contiguity with other elements which vitiate and extinguish it-it is this compounding of what is fitted in itself to raise the character, with what is fitted, in itself, and still more by its hypocri. tical association with better things, to adulterate and debase it-it is this which sheds a kind of withering blight over all the minstrations of the pluralist, and must convince every enlightened observer, that, till he gets rid of the many elements of temptation which are in his hands, he will never expatiate, either with Christian comfort, or with Christian effect, among the population"." pp. 257, 258.

There is something almost ludicrous in the frequent recurrence in this and other passages of the work before us,

"He will find it utterly impossible to find access for the lessons of Christianiity, into hearts soured against himself, and perhaps thwarted in their feelings of justice, by the disappointments they have gotten at his hand. It is thus that, by a strange fatality, the man who has been vested with a religious superin tendence over the people, has become the most unlikely for gaining a religious influence over them-and all his wonted powers of usefulness, now worse than neutralised, have, bythe positive dislike that has been turned against him, been sunk far beneath the level of any private or ordinary individual. There cannot, surely, be a more complete travesty on all that is wise and desirable in human institutions than to saddle that man, whose primitive office it is to woo the people to that which is spiritually good, with another office, where he has to war against the people, on the subject of their temporalities. There may, at one time, have been a compatibility between these two functions, under the cheap economy of the old Scottish pauperism; but it is all put to flight by the shock which takes place between the rapacity of the one party and the resistance of the other, under a system of English pauperism." pp. 261, 262.

"Never was public functionary more, cruelly hampered than by this associa tion of duties, which are altogether so discordant. There is no place for the still small voice of Christian friendship, in such an atmosphere of recrimination, and heart-burning and mutual jealousy, as now encompasses the ministration of charity, in our great towns. To import the English principle of pauperism among the kirk-sessions of Scotland is like putting new wine into old bottles. It so mangles and lacerates an eldership, as to dissipate all the moral ascen dency they once had over our popula tion. It is ever to be regretted that such a ministration as this should have been inserted between the two parties. No subtle or satanic adversary of religion could have devised a more skilful barrier against all the usefulness and effect of these lay associates of the clergy: and, as the fruit of this melan, choly transformation, a class of men, who have contributed so much to build

of the word element in its mathematical sense, which diminishes, we fear, the force of Dr. Chalmers's argument.

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