PERCEIVING that a disposition to correct detected wrongs is rapidly gaining strength in the land, I feel encouraged to say that I consider Religious Bequests as one of the greatest evils of the present times. I view them as being obviously unjust in their principle, and as being highly injurious in their tendency.

1. Their principle is bad. No man has a right to leave property, in trust, towards establishing his plans or principles in the world after he is dead; for if such a right belong to any one man, or to any class of men, it must also belong to every man, and to all classes of men; and if any such right do now exist, it must also have existed from the beginning of time. If any such right can be claimed by Christians, it can also be claimed by Jews, Infidels, Mahometans, and Pagans. If a Christian may now bequeath his thousands towards establishing his religious creed or form of worship in the world, a Papist could do the same in the time of Thomas a Becket, and a Druid could also do the same in the time of Uthr Bendragon. The right, if now existing, must also have existed in the time of the Noachida, and in the time of the antediluvians. But it is evident that no such right did then exist, and it is equally evident that no such right doth now exist. The antediluvians had no right to leave their goods, in trust, towards establishing their observances in the world. The Druids had no right to leave their riches, in trust, towards supporting their institutions in the world. The Papists had no right to devise their lands or to bequeath their monies towards promoting their creeds in the world; nor have we any right to be

VOL. X.

queath any part of our property towards establishing or supporting in the world, after our death, any theological creed, or any plan of education, which we may have adopted. We now have no better right to make bequests towards establishing Christianity in the world, than the Druids had to make bequests towards establishing Druidism in the world. If a Christian can devote his thousands for ever to a Bible Society, a Mahometan may devote his thousands for ever to a Koran Society. If a Church-of-England-man may bequeath his thousands for ever to a Prayer Book Society, a Brahmin may bequeath his thousands for ever to a Shaster Society. If a Robert Raikes may bequeath his thousands for ever to a Sunday School Society, a Baron Rothschild may bequeath his myriads for ever to a Circumcision Society. We have no better right to invalidate the will of a Jew, than we have to invalidate the will of a Christian. But neither Jews nor Christians can have any right to force their creeds upon their descendants, or to attach the wealth of after-generations to their forms of worship, or to their plans of instruction. Every man has a right to make the best use he can of his property,, while he lives; but the property is not his after the day of his death. His will is to order his wealth while he moves in the world; but his will is not to order the wealth after his removal to another world. Silver and gold may be at his disposal while the breath of life is in his nostrils; but he can have neither silver nor gold after he has ceased to breathe. He may bequeath his property to the persons he pleases, but not for the purposes he pleases: he can

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give it to the individuals he may choose, but cannot attach it to the creeds he may choose. His descendants are not to be his stewards, but God's stewards. The whole wealth of the world is to be managed according to the will of the living, and not according to the will of the dead. Neither the blessed in heaven nor the lost in hell can have the least portion of the things of this world, nor should they have any “will” at all in the management of the least portion of its riches. A citizen of America, it is true, may have property in Europe; but an inhabitant of eternity can have no property in this world. An individual from Paris may have a steward in London; but a saint in glory can have no steward on earth. The patriarchs of the antediluvian ages once had worldly wealth, but now they have none. Solomon and Nebuchadnezzar did once enjoy immense possessions, but now they have none. Xerxes and Croesus could once boast of their boundless riches, but now they have none; nor can they, or any other dead men, have any will or authority in the use or management of a single farthing's worth of the riches they once possessed. The fulness of Britain once belonged to the Druids, but does not now belong to them their wealth has passed to other hands-their stewardship is at an end; and a power to bind their descendants, as their trustees, they never had; a power to obligate us to manage the wealth of Britain according to their "wills" they never possessed. The present generation are not the stewards of a past generation. The present age can be under no obligation to manage the wealth and to support the principles of past ages. The whole wealth of the world belongs to those who live in the world, and not to those who have been removed to another world. The religion and literature of this age are to be supported by this age, and not by past ages. Education, in the time of William the Fourth, is not to be promoted by the wealth of William the Norman. Genius, in our day, is to be cherished by the riches of our day, and not by the riches of Alfred and his contemporaries. The religious and charitable institutions of the present time are not to be supported by the riches of men or women who have been dead for five thousand years, or for five thousand moments; and to pay any sum of money towards any such institutions, in the name of a dead individual, is a direct violation of the rights of the living, and a reproachful stigma on the memory of the dead.

In supporting religion and literature, from age to age, the money of the living, and not the money of the dead, is to be employed; and it is strange how any one should ever presume to think that he, after his death, could have any "will" in the management of this world's affairs; and it is passing strange how the living could ever consent to be fettered in the management of their most important affairs by the "wills" of the dead; for if one of the dead had a power thus to fetter the living, all the dead must have had the same power; and if they had a power to attach a portion of their riches to their own principles, they could have appropriated all their riches in the same way; and if they had the power of making their testamentary orders binding upon one age, they could have made them binding

upon all ages; and consequently, accord

ing to this principle, the whole wealth of the world might have been now chained to the creeds and traditions of the fathers, and we, as well as future generations, might be forced to act in direct violation of the rights of conscience; to act, fettered by the testamentary orders of past generations; to act, clogged by the unmeaning ceremonies of the remotest antiquity; to act in accordance with the clashing creeds of acknowledged heretics; to act according to the exploded dogmas of the most pernicious errors; to act upon plans and principles never to be explained or reconciled; to act in humble submission to the cruel mandates of the darkest superstition; to act in compliance with the oppressive canons of the grossest spiritual tyranny; to act in obedience to the wildest dictates of the blindest enthusiasm:-in a word, to act in direct opposition to both reason and revelation, and thus effect the eternal ruin of souls immortal.

II. Their tendency is bad.

1. They tend to suppress in the bosom of the testator every disposition to be liberal; for, while he dreams of an opportunity to display his liberality after his death, it is not likely he will do much good in his life. Some like a liberal "will" better than a liberal hand; but God likes a liberal hand better than a liberal will: and were men once convinced that they can do no good after they die, perhaps they would strive to do more good while they live.

2. They tend to cherish in the mind of the testator a feeling-perhaps a dying feeling-not quite evangelical. The trembling anxiety of an individual to display his charity in the hour of death is tanta

mount to a dying confession of his having been too neglectful of his duty during his life; but a dying moment is a most untimely season to shake off a covetous disposition. A liberal bequest makes but a poor atonement for an uncharitable life; and to attempt such an atonement, at the expense of others, is not only a mock consecration of an offering that costeth nothing, but is absolutely a consecration of robbery on the high altars of heaven. Jehovah, however, will not accept from the dead the talent hidden by him through life. A liberal testament on earth is but a poor plea at the bar of heaven. A death-bed charity obtains but a sorry recompense there. A boast of having estates in trust on earth, must sound strangely in the hearing of angels. Good done by proxy, while the body moulders in the dust, will neither deliver a soul from purgatory, nor exalt a soul in glory.

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3. They betray the high notions which the testator entertains of his own wisdom and piety, and manifest at the same time mean views he has of the wisdom and piety of his descendants. His will, it seems, must live from age to age, to order the wealth and to support the creed, lest religion and learning should decay and die in the hands of his posterity.

4. They evince a want of trust and confidence in the faithfulness or power of the God of Providence; for truth and piety need support from neither tithes nor endowments.

5. They tend to suppress in the bosoms of the testator's friends and kindred every rising disposition to liberality; for, by obligating youth to support religion according to the wills of their ancestors, their minds are prejudiced against a fair examination of its excellencies, and their hands are fettered in the earliest exercise of their own benevolence; and a parent, by thus drying up the fountain of charity in the bosom of his first-born, may stop or derange its free course in his family for ages and for ever. Let parents, therefore, be liberal themselves, and let them cherish the same disposition in their children; and then they need study no "Forms of Religious Bequests," but may calmly die under the sweet influence of a sure and blissful hope that the streams of their benevolence will, after the time of their dissolution, divide, and swell, and flow in crystal currents, continuing to fertilize the world, until the joyful moment of their happy resurrection from the dust of the tomb. But as to the unhealthful

streams of spurious liberality which are pressed by the agonizing terrors of death from the stagnant swellings of a covetous heart, and which are wrung by the power of law from the grasping bosom of an heir, according to the testamentary order of the dead;-these baneful streams, after being slowly, and laboriously, and expensively, and unwillingly rolled along their antique and leaky channels, and after poisoning, by their constant evaporation, the whole moral atmosphere around,-these must inevitably convert fertility into barrenness, and felicity into woe, wherever their influence can reach or extend.

6. They tend to destroy every mutual good feeling in the minds of the parties intended to receive benefit from them, Were a hundred pounds a year willed to an individual for serving in a neighbourhood as a teacher or a physician, could this tend to promote any mutual good feeling between the parties concerned? Would not the one party coldly say, “Had it not been for the endowment, we should not have had your assistance?"-and would not the other naturally retort, "I am under no obligations to you for the remuneration I receive ?" In a neighbourhood where there is no will to support religion and learning, but the "will" of the dead, they will soon die with the dead.

7. They constantly subject trustees to the most painful anxiety, and frequently plunge them into inextricable difficulties. Were a person to bequeath ten thousands a year to support some plan of education, or some system of theology, or some form of worship which he may have adopted; and were his trustees, shortly after his demise, to detect some imperfections in his plan, some deficiencies in his system, or some errors in his creed,-what shall they do? They are in a great strait: they must violate either the rights of conscience or the orders of the dead. Were a Jew to bequeath his ten thousands a year to the support of Judaism, and were his trustee, shortly after his death, to become a Christian convert,-how, I ask, is the trustee to act in such a case? Were a Trinitarian, or a Unitarian, or a Protestant, or a Papist, or a Quaker, or a Moravian, or a Calvinist, or an Arminian, to bequeath his ten thousands a year to the support of his creed; and were his trustee, soon after his death, to adopt an opposite creed,-what must he do? How must he act? And were an individual to

bequeath his ten thousands a year, unshackled by any theological belief, to be