with composing and preaching unprofitable sermons, and with the discharge of ceremonial duties, they would have leisure to devote themselves to doing good in many ways. It is hardly possible to over-estimate the good that might be done in raising the character of the nation, and in helping on the world by an enlightened national religious establishment, having at its command the resources enjoyed by the present Established Church; its clergy animated by the same zeal (for more is not required), but freed from the dogmatic system by which they are now paralysed, and feeling it their duty to be constantly abreast with the intelligence of the age.

In addition to the circumstance that it affords an opportunity for religious gatherings, the value to the rich as well as to the poor of the Sunday as a day of rest and leisure and rational amusement can hardly be over-estimated; and its observance as a holiday is on all accounts to be encouraged and insisted on. To the overworked labouring classes especially, the institution of the Sunday is of inestimable value, as affording an opportunity of recruiting their exhausted strength and restoring to them some degree of healthful vigour by cheerful refreshment of mind and body. In the exhaustion which they feel, the temptation to resort to hurtful stimulants is difficult to be resisted; and it is of the highest moment that they should be withdrawn from this temptation by attractions which are not injurious to health. It is on this ground that it especially be

hoves the rulers of the land to see that provision be made for the innocent amusement of the labouring classes on this their day of leisure. Parks and public gardens and especially seeing how uncertain is our climate-picture galleries and museums, should, wherever possible, be provided. The taste for these should be encouraged, not merely as a means of withdrawing the working classes from the public-house, but, as I prefer to say, with the view of cultivating in them a taste for higher and nobler pleasures.* It would almost seem as if there were a conspiracy among the higher classes (especially those making more than ordinary profession of religion) to drive their poorer brethren to resort to low and degrading pleasures, by discountenancing amusements of a more innocent kind, and making their day of rest as dull as possible.

Amusement is a thing too much despised by good people in this world: on Sunday especially it is sup

* It was happily observed by the Times, on the occasion of the opening of the Bethnal Green Museum, in calling attention to the princely munificence of Sir Richard Wallace: 'The craving desire to be lifted out of the dreariness of toiling and moiling, of dirt and disorder, is half the secret of the fascination of the gin-palaces, which are ever open to tempt the workman and the workman's wife; and the best reward for Sir Richard Wallace's munificence will be in the thought that he may save some of the rising generation from yielding to the lures of haunts like these by giving a noble and pure development to their aspirations.' And yet the access to this holy influence, owing to a perverted public opinion, fostered and sanctioned by the Church, is required to be closed on the day on which of all others it would be most powerful for good!

posed by them to partake of the nature of sin. Even so innocent and healthful a recreation as rowing on the Serpentine, or bathing in the evening, the authorities are constrained to prohibit on the Sunday, in deference to the religious spirit of the age, as it is called. What are we to think of the religion which makes such a prohibition necessary, or of the Church which lends its sanction to such puritanical austerity? There is nothing of this spirit in the mild yoke of religion imposed by Jesus on his followers.

'Tis not from earthly paths I bid you flee,
But lighter in my ways your feet will be;
'Tis not to summon you from human mirth,

But add a depth and sweetness not of earth.'-PALGRAVE. Milton did not consider cheerfulness inconsistent with godliness. Surely with Christians, as insisted by the late Mr. Godfrey Higgins, in his Hora Sabbaticæ,

the Sunday ought not to be a day of penance and humiliation, but of happiness, joy, and thanksgiving, as it was established by Edward the Sixth at the Reformation; a festival to celebrate the glorious resurrection of their Saviour to life and immortality.' When it is considered how conducive to health are exercise and cheerful occupation, and how dependent on health is

To measure life, learn thou betimes and know
Toward solid good what leads the nearest way;
For other things mild Heaven a time ordains,
And disapproves that care, though wise in show,
Which when God sends a cheerful hour refrains.

the efficient discharge of all the duties of life, it is difficult to understand how intelligent and benevolent persons can feel other than anxious to turn to good account in this way the enforced leisure of the Sunday.

case.

It is common to assume, as I have already remarked, that we are in the highest degree interested in being able to prove the truth of the Church's creed; and to represent a firm belief in a future state of retribution as the main consolation of suffering virtue, the sole curb of powerful vice, the hope of the dying, and as being especially needed to soften the hard lot of the poor; their one romance,' it is called by Mr. Lecky. But surely this is to take a very one-sided view of the No doubt the prospect of a future life, when rationally entertained, may be called the hope of the dying; but how often is that prospect, as our Church looks upon it, rather the despair of the dying. When,' (Miss Cobbe remarks), orthodox persons boast of the great comfort which their creed has been to the suffering and bereaved, we are bound to remember the misery, agony, madness, which that same creed has brought on thousands more.' Think, for example, how it saddened the lives of such excellent men as Dr. Johnson and the poet Cowper!

6

Whatever may be said for the great scheme of salvation, we cannot consider it apart from the counter scheme of damnation, which all orthodox persons hold

to be the more fruitful of the two.

When we think of

the narrow gate, and of the few that enter in thereat, surely, in all reflective minds, terror must preponderate, if not for ourselves, at least for our relatives and friends. Trembling, fearful hope is a state as high as any intelligent man, even at the best, could reach; and when we consider the dreadful alternative which the orthodox scheme holds out, it surely would not be a bad exchange (were that the only alternative open to us) to be able to feel quite sure of escaping the wrath to come in endless obliviousness.

To consider the scheme under the most favourable circumstances-i.e., as affecting persons who are members of the Church-of the Established Anglican Church, we will suppose-and who have done everything necessary to entitle them to its privileges; if we take the orthodox doctrine of the Apostolic suc-. cession to be true, how fearfully uncertain must be their hopes. We must not forget that the scheme begins by assuming a universal damnation. This awful admission we must make if we accept the scheme, and then we are to trust to the Church to deliver us. To do this the Church must be, in the technical sense, a true Church. Now, considering the probabilities against an uninterrupted succession from the Apostles by the imposition of hands,* and the awful consequences

* Macaulay says the question whether an Anglican clergyman be truly a priest by succession from the Apostles depends on the question