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This was written in 1845. Let the reader judge how glowing the language of this monitor of Sunday-school teachers would have been, if the revolutions of February and March, 1848, had shown him his day-dream half accomplished. But we must follow him yet awhile, and learn from him how the foundations of dissenting truth are laid in the soul of the child. The section is herded:

"You must teach dissent dogmatically, or on your own word. Before your scholars can enter into the reasons of dissent, you must tell them it is right and true. It is in this way you give them your own notions about God, their souls, sin, Christ, the Holy Scripture, and other religious topics. They believe what you affirm or deny of these things, not because you have proved your propositions, but on your bare word. Perhaps you will say this is not so; but that in all your teaching, you appeal to the authority of the Bible. This is very proper; still, in the stage of imparting knowledge to which we are now referring, you do not, thereby, shift the ground of belief; for this faith in the Bible as the word of God is founded on your assertion, not on the external or internal evidence which proves the book to be divine. On the same ground the Mahommedan child believes in the Koran. This is according to nature. One of the earliest intellectual instincts which is called forth, is faith in the word of parents, teachers, and seniors generally. All the first ideas of a child respecting religious objects come to it through its faith in man. All infant education goes upon this principle of communicating knowledge. We mention this fact in order to induce. you to act on it in inculcating dissent. Speak of it as something in accordance with the will of God. Let your scholars feel that you consider separation from State Churches as highly pleasing to Christ. Tell them that national establishments of religion are sinful, are wrong in themselves, and in all their workings. If you do this, you will duce a deep faith in dissent; you will connect it in their earliest associations with the true and honourable; you will knead it into their inmost moral nature; you will make its ideas a part of themselves. If your silence would lead them to think it of no importance, or to conclude that you are ashamed of it, or do not understand it, so your speaking of it as something true, divine, noble, beneficial; something which they ought to live by and to live for; something which they may safely die by, and, if need be, die for, would make them regard it as the apostolic form of Church polity, and, after your example, rejoice in witnessing to it before men: in this way they would receive the first effectual initiation into dissent."

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If Mephistopheles himself had been consulted as to the best way of undermining the Church, he could scarcely have given better advice than this, to take advantage of the unsuspecting confidence of the young and uninformed, and to instil into their

minds the acetum of "dissenting truth," in reliance on the moral axiom, that this being once effectually accomplished,

"Quodcunque infundis, acescit."

It is almost superfluous to say that among the means of "inculcating dissenting truth," both upon the young and upon the adult, grievous misrepresentations of the Church and her system, exaggerations of the abuses unhappily existing in her, perversions of facts calculated to exhibit the Church in an equivocal light, and downright calumnies, hold a conspicuous place. The most preposterous assertions are made with a degree of coolness which is truly surprising. We are told, for instance, that "multitudes, ay millions, are forced into treason to God," by the Church teaching "submission to man as the supreme authority in religion ;"-that, under her instruction, "the very persons who prove themselves by their vices to be what the Author of the Christian religion Himself terms children of the devil,' are induced to imagine themselves children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven;"-that "an hereditary priesthood, with its blasphemous pretensions, is to supplant the unpretending ministers of the sanctuary;"-that "guilty and disgraceful persecutions are resorted to at the instigation of a besotted hierarchy;"—that "legion is the name of the religious errors and evils which a secular establishment of Christianity involves ;"-that "the union of Church and State is the most schismatic thing in being;"that "subscription is known to be a mockery, keeping out none but the honest;"-that the ministers of the Church have placed themselves "under strong carnal motives to keep the light out of their minds, or to make it darkness,-to close their understandings to truth, or to render their hearts insensible to its charms and power;"—and therefore it is declared that "to sell a birthright' for a mess of pottage,' was a prudent barter compared with the subjection of men's souls, for any earthly advantages, to so dishonourable and ruinous a process ;"-that "the English establishment has always presented the singular inconsistency, of attempting forcibly to compel all men into it, with one hand, while it has, as pertinaciously, with the other, driven the best men, and large numbers of them, out of it."

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The Church is described as a "blatant beast," which, after the death of William and Mary, "raised his head, and threw off all his temporary tameness;" whose history is nothing else but "the perpetration of a series of outrages upon the liberty of the subject;"-she is charged with "manifesting a persecuting spirit in church-rate and tithe-persecutions, even to the display of a dark

and furious revenge by personal imprisonment;"-with “taking from the poor their beds, and even their Bibles to pay churchrates ;" and this is followed by an assurance, that "did the law allow it, the State Church would play its fantastic tricks before high heaven as wantonly as ever." Again we are informed, that "the State Church is not the friend or the teacher of the people;" -that "her clergy place more reliance upon social rank than upon moral character and ministerial fitness. They can dine with the Queen, and drink wine with a lord or a squire; and therefore they think themselves better than other men ;"—that "all State Churches are contrary to the spirit and letter of Christianity, opposed to the practice of the Apostles, offensive to God, injurious to man, and oppressive to all, except to those who live by them;"-that "the State clergy, far from being the regular successors of the Apostles, are represented in history as the regular successors of the pagan priesthood;"-that "a State Church goes upon the assumption, that whatever opinions are adopted and supported by the State are true, and all others are false," &c. &c.

This species of weapon,-argument it cannot be called,-is, as might be expected, handled with particular freedom in the "Tracts for the Million," which present a tissue of malignant falsehood and of coarse vulgarity. At one time we have a description of a Church minister, coming to take possession of his living:

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"He was a tall man, rather stout; his neck very short; his face round and red; his whiskers black and bushy; his nose flat and florid; his eyes large, looking the wrong way The first thing he did, was to whistle for his dog, which was running away from a shop with a piece of beef in his mouth, followed by the butcher's wife with the broom in her hand. One man said, loud enough for the parson to hear, 'The dog knows how to take tithe, at any rate'. . . He was not a bad husband, nor a bad master. He was not a great drinker, nor a great swearer. But he was a keen lover of sport and tithe. In the winter he was almost always shooting or hunting; and in the summer he was almost always fishing.

"One winter there was a grand shooting match between the squire and the rector. All the hares in the neighbourhood were driven into a grove, which covered about ten acres of land, and which the old squire planted many years ago in the midst of fruitful fields, as an enclosure for game. When the day came, a large net was fastened to staves across one end of this grove. On each side of it, men and boys were placed in vast numbers, to keep the hares from running away. The parson and squire, attended by men to load their guns, and to count the number of hares that each killed, entered the grove at the other end. Very few hares did, or could escape. Oh! what a sore slaughter was there!

VOL. X.-NO. XIX,-SEPT. 1848.

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Towards evening, when the hares were driven to that end of the grove where the net was, the sight was heart-rending. The poor butchered hares leaped upon each other, and cried like children; but there was no pity, and no escape. The trees and bushes were sprinkled with their blood. Night came, and put an end to the sport. The parson beat the squire.

"One large farmer who lived upon his own land, made up his mind to force the parson to take his tithe in kind. At the time of harvest the rector's cart entered into each field, and took the tenth of the crop. When there was any addition to this farmer's stock, either in the field or in the fold, either sheep or fowls, the rector was invited to come and take his portion. Among the young folks, and at market, there was great laughter, and especially when it was known that a polite note had informed the parson that a numerous nest of healthy rats, out of which he could have what he would, had been found in the barn

"My next neighbour took some rough land on the hill-side. It was covered with large stones and thorn-bushes, which he rolled off and rooted up. During three years this man and his family toiled almost day and night on this land. At the end of this time, there was a fine crop of rye ready for reaping. One evening, while he was leaning upon the gate, looking at the ripe grain and admiring it, the parson came up to him and said, 'Well, Joseph, you can now afford to pay me my tithe for this field; for I see you have an excellent crop.' For some time Joseph was as still and as silent as the gate-post. But at length he said-'Pay you tithe for this land? Will you pay me the tithe of all the money I have spent, and the seed I have sown, and the toil I have bestowed on it?' Oh! no,' said the rector, that is no part of my duty. I am the spiritual guide of this parish. Every man is bound by law to pay me the tenth of every living and growing thing. And if you, Edwards, hesitate to pay me the tithe of this crop, I will make you and yours smart for it.' After this soothing speech, away he strolled, like a conceited corporal dressed in black

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"He was heard to boast that he preached the best sermons he could buy. The generality of his discourses, I believe, did neither good nor harm, except as they stood in the place of sound doctrine. They were about twenty minutes long. Dry and hard, like the bones in the valley of vision, all about authority and submission. Hardly any one listened to them. All the poor folk fell fast asleep. Young eyes travelled over the church in search of fine clothes and fine faces. Older heads seemed to be lamenting over bad bargains, or else rejoicing in the expectation of good ones; and, as soon as the service was concluded, crops, flowergardens, love, scandal, politics, and many kindred topics, were eagerly discussed by the retiring congregation. This was the general character of our Sunday services, and the general result also; but, at the election, and when the dissenters began to preach in the village, our rector became as furious as a swollen torrent. The parish was in an awful state. There was no Sunday school. Swarms of children, at every time of the year, broke the Sabbath. Not a tract was distributed. Many families

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had no Bible, nor a book of any kind. Drunkenness and swearing abounded. It was a rare case for a young woman, among the humbler classes, to retain her virginity till she was married. Many of the poor lived partly upon parish pay and partly upon plunder, Every year numbers of them were sent to prison, and not a few transported. As a magistrate the rector was often compelled to punish his parishioners for crimes growing out of ignorance which, as a clergyman, he was richly paid to remove. The conversation, even of wealthy families, was gross and often filthy. The few reading and thinking men among us were either inclined to infidelity or avowed deists. Such were some of the fruits of clerical teaching and example."

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Lest this ribaldry should lose any of its effect in creating prejudice against the Church, by the consideration that the age in which persons at all resembling the above caricature were to be met with, one of the interlocutors in the tract is made to "confirm these statements," and to give it as his "impression, that "in many quarters things are not, even now, greatly amended." At another time the Church is facetiously represented under the image of a baby, by whose "innocent encumbrance" all the “plans of enjoyment" in an "excursion of pleasure" are "effectually curtailed." After a lively description of all the obstructions to pleasant indulgence of which "the baby" is the unconscious cause, the allegory is thus expounded:

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"Just such as this is the curtailment put upon the legislative application of all liberal principles by the existence of a State Church. The Establishment is a baby-and a thumping brat it is-one that ought to have been weaned long ago. So it happens, however, that the Legislature can never move on in the direction of freedom, without finding itself hampered by restrictions imposed upon it by the claims of the Church. A statesman proclaims a right noble principle as the basis of his policy, and society begins to rejoice in the prospect of rapid progress; hope, however, sickens and faints as soon as it becomes apparent that the Church is by no means left behind. Cæsar, with a Church establishment in his arms, cannot lead us on either fast or far. The cry is still, For goodness' sake, take care of the baby.' So up gets one senator to protest against such and such a measure of justice, so long at least as we have an Established Church. Here, charity must be fenced about with a chevaux-de-frise of solemn declarations; there, wisdom must be fettered with embarrassing provisoes, simply because the Church must be cared for. The Church is in danger, the Church is in danger,' is screamed out at every turn of the road, or indignantly put forward as a bar to any reforming project, until, at length, society, if closely watched, may be overheard to mutter between its teeth, with heart-sick impatience, Ah! would it were.'

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In this strain the subject is pursued through two pages,-the

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