SINCE the present edition of this work was putting to press, I have seen a review of it by the Christian Instructor, and the following are the immediate observations which the perusal of this review has suggested.

I meant no attack on any body of clergy, and I have made no attack upon them. The people whom I addressed were the main object on which my attention rested; and any thing I have said in the style of animadversion, was chiefly, if not exclusively, with a reference to that perverseness which I think I have witnessed in the conceptions and habits of private Christians.,

I have alluded, no doubt, to a method of treatment on the part of some of the teachers of Christianity, and which I believe to be both inefficient and unscriptural. But have I at all asserted the extent to which this method prevails ? Have I ventured to fasten an imputation upon any marked or general body of Christian ministers? It was no object of mine to set forth or to signalize my own peculiarity in this matter; and if I rightly understand who the men are whom the reviewer has in his eye when he speaks of the evangelical clergy, then does he represent me as dealing out my censures against those whom I honestly believe to be the instrumental cause of nearly all the vital and substantial Christianity in the land.

Again, is it not possible for a man to have an awakened and tender sense of the sinfulness of one sin, and to have a very slender and inadequate sense of the sinfulness of another? Might not the first circumstance beget in his mind an honest and a general desire to be delivered from sin; and might not the second circumstance account for the fact, that with this mourning for sin in the gross, he should put forth his hand without scruple to the commission of what is actually sinful? I do not know a more familjar exhibition of this, than that of a man who would be

visited with remorse were he to walk in the fields on a Sabbath day at the time of divine service, and the very same man indulging without remorse his propensity to throw ridicule or discredit on an absent character. His actual remorse on the commission of all that he feels to be sinful, might lead a man to mourn over sin in the general; but surely this general direction of his can have no such necessary influence, as the reviewer contends for, in the way of leading him to renounce what he does not feel to be sinful. But this is what he should be made to feel; and it may be done in two ways, either in the didactic way, by a formal announcement that the deed in question is contrary to the law of God; or in the imperative way, by bidding him cease from the doing of it,-a way no less effective and scriptural than the former, and brought to bear in the New Testament upon men at the earliest conceivable stage of their progress from sin unto righteousness.

I share most cordially in opinion with the reviewer, that he might extend his observations greatly beyond the length of the original pamphlet, were he to say all that might be said on the topics brought forward in it. I believe that it would require the compass of an extended volume to meet every objection, and to turn the argument in every possible way. I did not anticipate all the notice that has been taken of this performance, and am fearful lest it should defeat the intended effect on the hearts of a plain people. With this feeling I close the discussion for the present; and my desire is, that in all I may afterwards say upon this subject, I may be preserved from that tone of controversy, which I feel to be hurtful to the practical influence of every truth it accompanies; and which, I fear, may have in so far infected my former communications, as to make it more fitted to arouse the speculative tendencies of the mind, and provoke to an intellectual warfare, than to tell on the conscience and on the doings of an earnest inquirer. Glasgow, December, 1815. T. C.

THE

INFLUENCE

OF

BIBLE SOCIETIES,

ON THE

TEMPORAL NECESSITIES OF THE POOR.

BY

REV. THOMAS CHALMERS,

Minister of the Tron Church,

GLASGOW.

1

BIBLE SOCIETIES.

ARGUMENT.

1. The Objection stated.-2. The Radical Answer to it.-3. But the Objection is not true in point of fact.-4. A former act of charity does not exempt from the obligation of a new act, if it can be afforded.-5. Estimate of the encroachment made by the Bible Society upon the funds of the country.-6. A Subscriber to the Bible Society does not give less to the Poor on that account.-7. Evidence for the truth of this assertion.-8. And explanation of its principle. (1.) The ability for other acts of charity nearly as entire as before.-9. (2) And the disposition greater.-10. Poverty is better kept under by a preventive, than by a positive treatment. -11. Exemplified in Scotland.-12. The Bible Society has a strong preventive operation.-13. And therefore promotes the secular interests of the Poor.-14. The argument carried down to the case of Penny Societies. -15. Difficulty in the exposition of the argument..-16. The effects of a charitable endowment in a parish pernicious to the Poor.-17. By inducing a dependance upon it.-18. And stripping them of their industrious habits.-19. The effects of a Bible Association are in an opposi tedirection to those of a charitable endowment.-20. And it stands completely free of all the objections to which a tax is liable.-21. A Bible Association gives dignity to the Poor.-22. And a delicate reluctance to pauperism.— 23. The shame of pauperism is the best defence against it.-24. How a Bible Association augments this feeling.-25. By dignifying the Poor.— 26. And adding to the influence of Bible Principles.-27. Exemplified in the humblest situation.-28. The progress of these Associations in the country.-29. Compared with other Associations for the relief of temporal necessities.-30. The more salutary influence of Bible Associations.-31. And how they counteract the pernicious influence of other charities.-32, It is best to confide the secular relief of the Poor to individual benevolence. -33. And a Bible Association both augments and enlightens this principle.

1. WITHOUT entering into the positive claims of -the Bible Society upon the generosity of the public,