cursor:

"Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached unto them." The Messiah did not enter into a declamatory statement of his tenets, as though that were the evidence of his pretensions; but told the messengers to look at the fruits of his advent, and thence judge of his mission.

Now, are the members of our Episcopal and Presbyterian Establishments prepared to supply visible, tangible, testimony of the sincerity of their preference for the creed of the Reformation-to silence the recriminations of a monk or cardinal, who should look narrowly into their daily conduct, as bearing upon the personal, domestic, and social duties enjoined by the Christianity of the New Testament?

Then, to descend from the heights of Ecclesiastical Privilege to the lowlands and valleys of Dissent, let us further remind ourselves, that the seceders from our national churches have imposed upon themselves a superadded obligation to be purer; in correspondence to the strength of the arguments by which they have justified their separation. They profess to im

prove upon the established branches of the Reformation; and, by consequence, are bound to live a more sober, righteous, and godly life in this present world, than can, under the relative circumstances of all parties, be expected from those with whose communions they are dissatisfied. At this point, we will pass by the Unitarians-as, in no intelligible sense, Christiansand pause at the assemblies of such separatists as preach the doctrines of the Thirty-nine Articles. Have these, then, a body of evidence ready to be advanced in their favour, and in default of testimony assumed not to be capable of being brought forward by our Establishments?

Very far am I from wishing to bring a direct accusation against either the Conformist or Nonconformist branches of the Christian family; but these things are said, to awaken us all-to provoke each other to jealousy—to examine whether we are in the faith; and not, by such inquiries, to increase the irritation already existing among those who own one and the same Saviour. We must say of ourselves, as we have said of our common opponents, What have we done? what are we doing? If Episcopalians, we may find it salutary to ask, whether, when we exult in a lineal descent from the Fathers of the English Church, our ancestors would

feel the glory or the shame of their posterity; and how far we may identify our own credit with such of our progenitors as resisted unto blood in an age of martyrs. If Dissenters, a parallel inquiry will arise, when we look back to the times of Howe and Baxter, of Henry or Watts, and ask ourselves, in what degree their successors have copied so great examples. In either case, are we "followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises?"

Before I close these introductory remarkssome of which too much anticipate what is said in the sequel-it may be expedient to add, in reference to the author's dark estimate of the religion of the times, that, if he is accused of writing bitter things against the world around him, he would ask, whether more defamatory charges are exhibited in these pages, than are thickly strewn throughout a thousand books, received among us as standard classics of the country-written by men who were neither religious alarmists, nor amateurs in reform; nor, in brief, other than have painted the manners of mankind with so much fidelity and spirit as, on that very account, to have gained a high station in the world's favour? What enthusiast ever uttered more severe declamation

against what he might call a world lying in wickedness or what Dr. Johnson termed a world bursting with sin and sorrow'-than has been breathed by such statesmen as Bolingbroke and Walpole; or by such writers as the Youngs, Popes, Swifts, and Addisons of former days-including almost the whole of our dramatic literature-and by the Crabbes and Edgeworths of our own times? We say nothing of a certain order of living, fashionable novelists, whose popularity is an avowed acknowledgment of the justice of their poignant descriptions of depravity, as prevailing in the circles of modern society.

We study the portrait of human kind in Gulliver's Travels; in the fictions of Fielding and Smollet; in the Satires of the author of the Essay on Man; and in the Tales of the Hall; and are never wearied of contemplating the address of the artist, of admiring the strength of his outline, the depth of his colouring, and the management of his lights and shadows. But let a minister of religion tell all these graphic stories over again; let him describe, in the consecrated language of inspiration, men as they actually are, and, at the same time, meaning what he says; let him deliver his statements with the solemnity due to subjects of

such impressive import-for these things will not be trifled with, except by triflers-and we then witness the self-same world, which had previously submitted to the most severe castigation, rising with indignant surprise; as though they were then, for the first time, told that they do lie in wickedness; that they really have followed the devices and desires of their own hearts; offending against God's holy laws; and, assuredly, erring and straying from his ways like lost sheep! Till such surprise was awakened, we might have supposed that Swift and Fielding had painted their portraits of mankind only with the pencil of flattery; and that, instead of our hearing kings and their ministers declare such things, as that every man had his price, and that the giving away of a place offended ninety-nine candidates and made one ungrateful, we should only be regaled by anecdotes, illustrating the universal disinterestedness of our species, and our own native and indestructible virtue. Oh, how unconsciously and how laboriously does the world expose its own disgrace!

But why do men resent the fidelity of a pastoral address? Because, a servant of Jesus Christ frames his charges against his fellows and himself-for no faithful minister will ever