men are setting themselves up as teachers. Every novelty is dignified with the name of an invention. Religious "discoveries" are spoken of, as though religion was an affair of science, and as though the eternal principles of truth were the shifting sands of man's theories. Before the Church can make great progress, those who believe in her, must submit to her. If the Church be not a true Church, a Gospel Church, Christ's Church, do not belong to her; but if she is believed to be all this, then her members must submit to her, bow to her decisions, and help on by their active obedience her plans and her rulers.

The next thing that the Church desires is attention to and love for the means of grace established by her, in the ways and forms she has decided to be the best, and as most calculated to promote the glory of God and the salvation of men. There are a great many well-intentioned, but exceedingly unwise men, who, whilst they profess to belong to the Church, yet act as if imbued with the spirit of Dissent. They are really anxious for the conversion of men from darkness to light, and from Satan to God. To deny this would be unjust and uncharitable. And yet they act as if they believed that the Church, of which still they are members, had not the same objects in view as themselves. Thus some of them preach for Dissenting societies, belong to mixed associations, make speeches calculated to lessen the influence and dignity of the Church, and yet pray in their closets, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven." Others there are who establish modes of worship and forms which the Church does not recognize, or wholly omit those which the Church approves, and yet would be quite offended at being called Dissenters. Yet, in truth, they are so. One man holds private prayer meetings in his house; another preaches in an unconsecrated temple; a third administers the communion once every three months; a fourth gives out Watts's or Wesley's hymns; a fifth neglects catechizing; and a sixth baptizes after the public services of the Church are finished, just as though baptism was a private and secret ceremony, instead of an open and all-important sacrament. Some obey one rubric, and neglect another; others obey all, except a few which are disagreeable to them; and some hardly obey any at all. This is not obedience, but rebellion; and this is just the spirit which the Church desires to see put down. She has adequate, evangelical, spiritual, and heaven-taught forms and means of grace, and she desires ardently that these, and these only, may be adopted and followed.

Then the Church desires that both clergy and laity may, one and all, be more given to prayer and supplication for her spread and influence.

The Dissenters object to the length and number of our prayers. But this is the peculiar characteristic of the Church of England-it is a praying Church. The Church of Rome is a ceremonial Church. There are raisings of the host, and tinklings of the bells, and throwing about incense and perfumes; and there are banners, and processions, and a multiplication of ceremonies, which are substi

tutes for the spiritualities of religion, and which occupy men's minds about the non-essentials, to the exclusion of the essentials of truth. Then the Protestant Dissenters, on the other hand, make preaching and human teaching the one essential part of religious worship, and, with the exception of a long prayer, devote the rest of the time to an address of an hour or an hour and a half from the pulpit. But the Church of England is essentially a praying Church, and it is therefore that she desires to be prayed for, and to have for her members praying men, and praying women.

Finally, the Church desires to see union and unity amongst her members, and a separation or broad line of distinction between them, and those who have separated from her. This is not bigotry; this is not intolerance; this is not persecution. It is a simple adherence to truth and to the commands of God-nothing more. The Church, therefore, does not wish to encourage mixed societies, and does not desire to educate the children-of Dissenters, whether Romanists or Protestants, except they are to be educated in the doctrines and principles of the Church of England. It is not true that the Church desires to take from Dissenters their children, and compel them, either by physical or moral coercion, to attend at Church schools. But the Church cannot and will not consent to have schism taught in Church seminaries, or to confound opposing principles in the same school. It is not true that a child had better be taught error, than remain in ignorance. A child remaining in a state of ignorance may, at some time or other, learn truth; but a child brought up in error, is nearly inaccessible to right impressions. We do not say to Churchmen, do not be amiable, polite, or civil to Dissenters, in the ordinary transactions and business of life, for this would be to encourage a spirit opposed to the love, and to the meekness and forbearance, of the Gospel; but we do say, that in all moral and religious movements let the line of distinction be clear, between Churchmen and Dissenters.

Having seen what the Church needs and what the Church desires, let us now seek to explain WHAT THE CHURCH WILL HAVE. When we say "will have," we use the term in a spiritual, and not in a worldly signification. We do not mean to say that the Church will resort to pains and penalties against her enemies; nor that she will discontinue to manifest a spirit of forbearance and love to those who still are "out of the way;" nor that she will refuse her aid or her charities to any who are in physical want and misery, be they ever so opposed to her views and principles. But when we say "will have," we mean by moral and spiritual agencies, and by moral and spiritual efforts.

She will have herself entrusted with the education of the people. She will not be satisfied with a divided empire. She will not have Dissent recognized as an institution of the country, as a State agent, and as an established means of moralizing and Christianizing the people.

She will have an adequate provision of churches, ministers, and schools for the population. She knows that voluntaryism cannot

and will not provide for the spiritual wants of the population; and that it is just because the country has, during a century past, confided, most unwisely, the instruction of the masses to unauthorized and voluntary teachers, that therefore the people are now sunk in ignorance and left in thick darkness. She will have Church extension, and a large addition to her clergy, and a vast and systematic organization of schools. She will not let it be thought to be a matter of indifference whether the children of this country are brought up in the religion of the State-i. e., in the religion of that branch of the one only true and Catholic Church established in these realms—or are handed over for instruction to those who separate from that Church.

She will have the prisons, the poor-houses, the hospitals, and the public schools of this country placed under her moral influence, and her spiritual teaching. She does not ask to exclude from the sick bed of a Romanist, or from that of an Independent, the religious teachers they may specially ask for, for that would be intolerance; but in all cases where such special demands are not made, the Church must be the teacher, and the State cannot recognize any other.

To carry this into effect she neither asks for proscription or persecution, as against her opponents; but only for zeal, union, and decision, on the part of her friends. And as she desires that all may be one, she invokes her members to pray for the teaching of the Holy Ghost, and for the consolation and direction of the blessed Comforter.

Let us all, then, in our respective spheres, set the example of a spirit of submission, obedience, teachableness, and prayer, which is not the less necessary for our own growth in grace, than it is for the unity, extension, and prosperity of the Church.

EVERY MAN A PRIEST IN HIS OWN FAMILY. THE man who refused to do anything for posterity, because posterity had done nothing for him, was a being as selfish as he was ungrateful, and as unjust as he was unwise. There was a time when his folly was the object of imitation to many; but that time, and many other of the vices of that time, have passed away; and it is a matter understood and acknowledged by all, that the obligation due from us, by inheritance, to posterity, must be faithfully discharged, or neglected to our great and certain peril.

Education, in its fullest sense of training, is the best recognized means by which we can benefit posterity. The edification, the building up, as that word implies, of the present youthful generation, is the commencement of a temple of which our successors will be able to find the corner-stone; and if we lay the foundations in utility, it may be safely and appropriately left to them to provide as they will, its adornment and beautifying. This base of the fortress of future happiness and peace is supposed to consist in national education; and that it does so, in a great measure, we would

be among the first to express our cager and avowed conviction: but there is also a preparatory training, without which that of our national schools will have no results but those of accident, when good; and, when evil, as in many cases they must be, they are results which we may deplore, but which cannot surprise us. More than one of the names that lighten and glorify the generally dark records of ancient history, owe all the lustre they possess and bestow, more to the wisdom their owners have received from the lips of a mother, within the sacred and narrow precincts of home, than to the knowledge they have toiled for, and gained at great cost, after the wide boundary of the world was all before them where to choose. From Cyrus to Washington-nay, even from remoter periods down to that of yet unconscious, but incipient sages and heroes, who can make but feeble forays into the territories of language and enquiry, the holy and effective influences of home are either acknowledged or visible; and it is to our homes that we must look as the nurseries of the great and good, since, if the seed be not sown there, the harvest will rarely, perhaps never, be gathered abroad; and if the early spring time of our lives be permitted to pass by without cultivation, our reaping season will be a time of whirlwind and of

storm.

This great truth has, of course, not escaped the penetrating eye of one of the best benefactors of our own and of coming ages. Lord Ashley-he whose tomb may bear the proud inscription (far off be the day when his survivors shall first read it) that he was the friend of the poor-urgently insists on the necessity of a preparatory home education, as an introduction to that which is to be acquired away from the influence and inspection of parents. To render national instruction perfect, we must make home training perfect too : without this we are refusing to make a first step where we cannot make a second, unless we do so through that necessary progress; and with this we shall ensure the improvement and the happiness of parents as well as of children; with this, every father will become a priest and guide in his own family, and every mother, his smiling and efficient coadjutor; children will not then leave their public lessons, inculcating virtue, to return to their homes and view the practical horrors of vice; they will not then be taught to regard the great and the good of whom they read, and learn unwillingly to lose their respect for those they see at home; and who, in a healthy state of homee ducation, should, with all the faults to which human nature is liable, be, in the eyes of their children-the father, priest of the hearthaltar, holy, undefiled, and unequalled among men; the mother, "wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best," among her sister women. The pleasures of the humblest home would then be sanctified and desired pleasures, as those of a household always should be. The Romans never offered anything but what was pleasant to the gods of their firesides: their sacrifices of incense, wine, and flowers to their Lares, were typical of the enjoyments of a hearth whence bitterness was banished, and whose delights are secured and increased by the exercise of the beautiful in religion, in art,

and in nature. Home education, properly and zealously pursued, would bestow on us richer and more lasting blessings; for our sacrifices of prayer and praise would be made to one God, who can hear and repay-a God who would strengthen the virtue of Christian worshippers, and arm them against vice-and who, against the vanities, the follies, and the sins of the world, would place a flaming sword to guard those who loved Him, the handle of which should be at home, and its point everywhere.

He who plants an acorn, rears a bulwark to his country. The family priest-in other words, the father, who, zealously effective in a good thing, watches unremittingly for that moment when his child may first be made to comprehend the meaning and the uses of good, does much more than this-he provides for the succession of God's household priesthood, and perhaps ensures a line of blessings on long-after races, that shall not be checked, nor broken, nor interrupted, till time itself dies, like mortal man, and eternity begins its enduring and never-to-be-ended course. The moment when this may most surely be effected is one of the important epochs in the lives of children; it can hardly be done too soon, and when done, the acorn is deposited which may one day go abroad, over the world of waters, a gallant ship, bearing within her a freight of rich and costly things-beautiful, graceful, serene, and dignified in herself, and carrying, moreover, irresistible means of defence, should that grace be attacked, that serenity ruffled, or that dignity wounded.

Home holds the roots of a tree, whose fruit may be of good or of evil, according as the head of that home is the priest and teacher at its altar, or not. I have mentioned one important epoch in the life of a child: a period not less momentous is that from which there dawns upon his awakening faculties a consciousness that there is less of the beauty of virtue resident in his home, and less of virtue itself in his parents, than he can trace in other homes and other parents. From that moment a rose has fallen from the chaplet of paternity; a desecration sweeps the paternal hearth; there is no longer a sacred fire on its altar; and household gods cease to exist: the child grows up, not the friend, but the spy and the censor of the parent; he walks not backward, and carries no mantle wherewith to cover his faults; on the contrary, he strips him as he sleeps, even before the eyes of the stranger; and when he awakes, he becomes his accuser, his derider, and his judge. The tree, in such a home, bears fruit all evil; and be the fruit never so specious and fair to the eye, it is nothing but dust and ashes within, and the trail of the serpent is on every branch and leaf of that terrible tree: his deadly folds will soon be entwined around the limbs of the children of such a house; advice will be powerless to save them; and the arrows of reproach will only madden, and not rescue. Every father, then, who hath been, like Baal, sleeping, and eating much meat, will shake off his slumbers and arise from his feasting, too bewildered in faculty and too unsteady in hand to rescue the living treasures that have been entrusted to his care, and which he