tige of care and concern for their souls, or that they ought to be left by him to the tender mercies of every propagator of heresy, schism, falsehood, and scepticism. We speak not now of the judgment of those only who were ready, at all hazards, to defend the altar and the throne, but of their judgment who had no overweening fondness for either-of the men whom Dissenters would fain look up to as their progenitors, and from whom they would attempt to trace a spurious succession. These men, the first Nonconformists, maintained that it was the duty of a king, or of the head of a nation, whoever he may be, to provide for the souls of the people; nor did they know of any better way by which this could be done, than by means of an establishment, and accordingly, as soon as they had overthrown the establishment of Christ's Church, they formed a human Church, and sought to establish it-so little sympathy had they with the dangerous nostrums of those who have followed them. A congregation of men who would, perforce, compel a king or a queen, in his or her public capacity, to act the part of an infidel. "He that is not with me, is against me," saith the Head of the Church; but modern Dissenters would say to a monarch, "You ought to be with Christ, as a man; but, as a monarch, you ought not to be with him. Be religious in private; but before the nation cherish a profound indifference-at the altar, confess the Saviour; on the throne, deny that thou knowest him."

"That it is the incumbent duty of parents (says the Doctor) to impart religious instruction to their offspring, is a position which I am as far as possible from questioning. But there is a duty which takes precedence of this, and is indispensable to its being rightly and beneficially discharged-the duty, I mean, of being religious themselves.'

To our humble thinking-which, though humble, is at least serious-there is another duty, which, important as are parental instruction and personal religion, takes precedence of both, as, in the absence of this duty, the other two matters would cease to exist -we mean the duty of a certain community, denominated the Church, to fulfil the commission given thereto, to "Go, teach all nations ;' for if it be the duty of parents to impart religious instruction to their offspring-a position which we are quite as far from questioning as any one besides-this instruction must be imparted according to some definite standard; because, if it be not thus imparted, it must degenerate into unimportant speculation, and those who are to be taught may naturally have a right to doubt, discuss, deny, or believe, whichever they may please to do: so that the idea of instruction in such a case is destroyed. And while Dr. Wardlaw's great concern is, that the religious instruction to offspring should be rightly and beneficially imparted, our great concern is, that the instruction proposed to be imparted should be right and beneficial in itself. This highly necessary position the Doctor does not make the least effort to secure he says, "It is the incumbent duty of parents to impart religious instruction to their offspring ;" and so say most people. But what an uncommonly unsatisfactory and indefinite a thing is

"religious instruction," seeing that, if the parents are to be the judges as to what is right and what is not right in religious instruction, one parent may be imparting that in the shape of religious instruction, which another parent may deem poison and blasphemy, and vice versa. If parents be not only to impart religious instruction, but to decide as to what sort of religious instruction ought to be mparted, the duty of deciding must be as universal as the duty of mparting; and the right to impart orthodox or heterodox religious instruction, according to parental taste, prejudice, pride, or ignorance, must be plenary; and those who are imparting the most pernicious and erratic religious instruction, are engaged in just as respectable and lawful an occupation as those who are imparting religious instruction the most beneficial and truthful. Nonconformity has ever countenanced the teaching of such as will neither teach themselves nor submit to be taught; and every Dissenting teacher, be he parent or father, presents to our view that most outrageous of all anomalies—a man despising all submission himself, demanding submission from another who does the same.

But as the foregoing may seem to require some explanatory notices, we may proceed to the Doctor's amplification. He says, "The injunctions contained in the New Testament on this subject are addressed to Christian parents." Truly, Dr. Wardlaw, thou art exquisitely sapient in this observation-" addressed to Christian parents!" Surely no one ever thought that they were addressed to Pagan parents! But the Doctor evidently intimates, to use a vulgar expression, that he attaches a very knowing" idea to the word Christian, for he has had it printed in Italics; so that the Doctor's Italic-letter Christians, are a different sort of Christians from his Roman-letter Christians. Still we can guess what it is he (Dr. Wardlaw) is driving at, for he clearly intends to assert that the injunctions are addressed to those who possessed personal religion; or, to use the common cant phrase, formed out of a term, of the signification of which scarcely one Dissenter out of a hundred has even a glimpse "really regenerate persons." We deny this assumption wholly; and say, without fear of contradiction from any man, whose theological opinions are worthy of a man as distinguished from a coxcomb or an old woman, that the injunctions spoken of were addressed to them, not on the ground of their personal religion, but on the ground of their public profession; they were addressed to the Church, composed of men bad and good, of sincere disciples and hypocrites-to Christians, of whose inward state uninspired men can but form a conclusion, more or less probable, from outward evidence.

But hear him yet further:

"The absence, indeed, of Christian principle in others does not obliterate the obligation." We say that, by the Doctor's showing, it does; for, if the injunctions be addressed to those only who possess personal religion, or to Christians in reality, and not to Christians by profession, then those who do not possess personal religion or Christian principle are not included in these injunctions.

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Supposing, then, that some parents give no religious instruction to their offspring-what is to be done? Since, according to the lecturer's reasoning, there are not a few who can positively put in a claim to exemption, they being not Christians in italics! Are the offspring to be suffered to perish for lack of knowledge? Oh! no; the Doctor has his remedy at hand, and it is this-"In such cases (that is, where the parent does not impart religious instruction) we do what lies in our power to supply the melancholy deficiency, by interposing our own efforts for the spiritual benefit of the rising offspring." We grant, that in doing this they would be doing what lies in their power; but would they be doing what lies in their vince? Verily, no! If they did what lies in their province, they ought to sit still and do nothing at all. What has the interposition of efforts to do with Voluntaryism? If a parent do not choose, either from want of Christian principle or from a determined enmity to religion, to impart religious instruction to his offspring, what authority, according to Dissenting notions, has Dr. Wardlaw, or any one upon the face of the earth, for interfering? If, to use their own language, no man has any right to regulate the religious belief of his neighbour, or to obstruct his private judgment-if religion be altogether a voluntary affair, one man must have as much right to withhold religious instruction as another has to impart it; and in neither case can a second or third party have any right to interpose efforts: to argue otherwise, is a blow at the very vitals of Voluntaryism.

The most ridiculous passage yet quoted, occurs a few lines further on "The child has no power of choosing what principles of religion shall first be instilled into his mind. In this he is necessarily passive. But when he becomes a man, he has a power of choice; and a power which it is not only his right, but his duty to exercise."

Was ever such a tissue of nonsense crammed into so small a space? The child has no power of choice! No! nor the man either-if it be allowed that there is any definitiveness as to what are or are not the principles of religion. If these principles be not defined, it certainly is too late to set about defining them; but if they be defined (and at any rate to us they are), there can be but two alternatives— we must either receive them all as defined, or reject them all, picking and choosing being out of the question.

But why, according to the tenets of Dissenters, should religious principles of any sort be instilled into the child's mind? The Doctor shows that the whole process may, and that part of it must, be nugatory: for when the child becomes a man, he has a power of choice, which it is not only his right but his duty to exercise-that is, by this power it his duty to undo, wholly or partially, all that his parents may have done for him. But why instruct him at all, at such a risk? The reward is very unworthy of the labour.

Is the duty here mentioned to be understood as a moral duty? If it be, it is at least a duty very contrary to nature; for how very few are there who in after years doubt their parents' early instruc

tions. There would not be so many Dissenters among us as there are, if the children of Dissenters, when they become men, would only do as Dr. Wardlaw exhorts them to do.

If the exercise of this power of choice be a duty, and if, in the Doctor's concatenation of incongruities, it be also the duty of parents to impart religious instruction to their offspring; then, as religious instruction, among other matters, comprehends instruction for the performance of duties, it must be a parent's business to instruct a child how to perform the duty of exercising his power of choice, as soon as he shall come into possession of it; that is, the parent is to put into the child's hands a weapon which may afterwards be turned against that parent-he is directly to instruct the child to bow to parental authority, and indirectly to instruct him to make light of it.

We must quote yet another long sentence:

"We must not forget, under the beguiling influence of a sentimental figure, that the children of the royal parent, the father of his people, are not mere babes, but men and women, on whom there lies a claim of objection, prior and superior to his; a claim which requires to be recognised and fulfilled according to the unconstrained dictates of their own consciences; and that a more extraordinary and self-contradictory anomaly cannot be imagined by the human mind, than that of such a community placing over themselves a governor, one of whose official prerogatives it shall be to dictate to them their religion."

We look upon this to be a mere figment of the Doctor's imagination, which does not touch the subject in dispute at any one point. The subject is the establishment or non-establishment of the Church; and what has this to do with dictating a religion? By establishing the Church, a governor effectually puts it out of his power to dictate a religion; for, in so doing, he must submit to that religion which has been dictated by the Church, which carries with it the power and authority of Christ.

The phrase, "dictate a religion," is an invidious one, and the lecturer displays no ambiguous love of dictation. But we affirm, that to support the religion of the Church is not dictation; or, if it be, it is the Church that is to be blamed for it. If there be one religion, "one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all," there can be no other religion; and whether it be dictated or not, as Christians, we must receive this religion or go without.

Notwithstanding that Dr. Wardlaw is so irate at the thought of dictation in religion, what, we would enquire, is he but a dictator, as well as every one of his class? A minister of the Church is but an oral dispenser of the instruction of the Church, to which he is not to add-from which he is not to diminish. But what are Dissenting preachers but independent, irresponsible dictators in religion, who put themselves forth as spiritual superiors to the people, while they acknowledge no superiors? What are they but dictators, when even for the drift of the prayers which relate to a whole congregation, that congregation is dependent upon the lips of a single man?

Of all dictators upon earth, may we be preserved from the dictators of Dr. Wardlaw's persuasion!

The Church appears at present to be lost sight of by the lecturer, who is here engrossed with the thought of the monarch or governor; yet he ought not to put the grand theme into the background in order to bring on accessories. If the monarch or governor be a member of the Church-and with us he becomes a monarch by virtue of being so, and to the Church, as official, he owes the crown-is it to be expected that he can ascend the throne in a state of public neutrality towards all religion; that he will be indifferent as to truth and falsehood; or that his only object of neglect will be the prosperity of the body of Christ?

This fourth lecture abounds in the repetition of sophisms, and therefore we must stand excused if some reiteration should be discovered in our exposure of them. The strenuous indignation manifested in the following sentences, is positively ludicrous. "Under that economy (that is the Jewish), it was not the magistrate that determined the religion. He had nothing whatever to say in the matter. The religion of the people was directly revealed in all its principles and all its institutions by Jehovah himself, and by him enjoined on their national adoption and observance. In vain is a divine sanction sought for there; and if it is not to be found there, no less in vain will it be sought for anywhere else; to that insufferable outrage on the reason and common sense of mankind, that all but infinite absurdity, the investiture of the civil magistrate with the prerogative of authoritatively choosing a religion for the people!" Insufferable self-repeater! we are prompted to exclaim. All but infinite confounder! And must it be yet reiterated that a religion is not the Church; that there may be a hundred, yea a thousand, religions, while the Church is but one, and cannot be but one. The choice of a king in the establishment of the Church, is a very different act from his choosing a religion. The phrase, “choosing a religion," savours very strongly of that leaven of gross latitudinarianism, which is not devoid of particles of scepticism. If Christianity be a definite religion, and if the institution appointed for preserving and extending it, the Church, be a perpetually visible institution, then to talk, in a Christian land, of a magistrate's, or of the people's choosing a religion, sounds very much like profaneness. It is equivalent to saying, that religion is so uncertain and unthankful a thing, that, if men must have a religion, so long as they can agree about it, they may as well choose one religion as another; and if they cannot agree, let each person choose his own religion.

But upon the worst supposition, supposing that religion were an unsettled matter, and that there were no arbiter to settle it, we do not see that it would be so insufferable an outrage upon reason and common sense for a civil magistrate authoritatively to choose a religion for the people: in the case supposed, nothing could be more expedient. It surely would be better that the magistrate should choose a religion, than that the people should be allowed to go on quarrelling among themselves, and never come to a conclusion. And