illustration of the former of these positions. If these be ascertained, we have either the means themselves, or we have the data from which the means may be determined that are to enable us to give a great and permanent illustration of the last.

But let it be asked, what is that favourable circumstance, the predisposing and efficient cause, operating with an influence so greatly, so peculiarly our own, as to have enabled us to present that striking anomaly in the history of the world, of a people which is in wealth so far above the richest, while for piety and virtue we are not inferior, if it is not rather to be acknowledged that we go equally before the poorest of the nations? We answer, and with the certainty of making good our assertion to every candid mind, that for this we are indebted to the unparalleled excellence of our established church.

To the consideration of the views out of which the truth of this position may be clearly seen to rise, we are the more anxiously desirous that attention should be drawn, because it is a point on which there is at present a tendency with

many to refuse her justice; while many, who are thoroughly persuaded of the services she has rendered, are blind as to the means through which alone she has been enabled to confer them.

In the effort we are about to make to assist in placing in their proper light the advantages of which the Church has been the source, it is not our purpose, for the present, to enlarge upon those obvious qualities of excellence, which are involved in a strict conformity of her views and principles, with the leading principles and views of Scripture. With the exception of the members of that church, whose claim to infallibility precludes the power either of their acknowledging the merits of another, or correcting the errors which are inherent in their own, there are few comparatively, who, in this respect, have not been accustomed to do her ample justice. By the wisest and the best of those who have been placed beyond her pale, to the standards in which those principles are held, the tribute of admiration has been fully paid. Our attention is at present to be chiefly bent on tracing out the in

fluence of qualities, of which, because they are less obviously connected with doctrine and with practice, the value has often been unappreciated, and the nature misconceived. They are qualities, notwithstanding, which we are persuaded have their foundation upon the views of Scripture as fully as what pertains more strictly either to doctrine or to morals, and qualities, without which we equally believe that the Church could neither have secured the uncorruptness of the one, nor effectually maintained the purity of the other.

CHAPTER VI.

OF PROPERTIES ESSENTIAL TO AN EFFICIENT CHURCH.

FROM the sanction which Christianity has given to the secular employments of mankind, there results the necessity of a portion of her adherents being set apart, and consecrated to the service of religion. The order, which she has thus made necessary, she has also instituted by express appointment. Having leisure to investigate her evidences and the bearings of her doctrines, as they lie dispersed in different directions, and are involved in the history of individuals and of nations existing in the periods which preceded, or that which witnessed, her promulgation to the world, it is the part of such an order so to arrange and to display them to mankind at large, that the latter may be enabled to feel the obligations which Christianity has imposed. By means of this arrangement, while their reasoning powers have still an ample range in the efforts which are required fully to keep pace with the instructions.

of their teachers, and by comparing their deductions with the record of Revelation, the body of mankind are at the same time placed in that favourable position for receiving and retaining Christian principles and Christian feelings, which would otherwise be incompatible with the multiplicity of pursuits which occupy their time.

But for the instrumentality of such an order, so to detail her evidences, so to explain her truths, so to enforce her sanctions, it is evident, that to the exclusion of every impression from Christianity that could lead to a beneficial influence on belief or practice, there is a moral certainty that the minds of men would be thoroughly engrossed by objects, in which their attention must be partially absorbed.

With that regard to the circumstances of human nature, which belongs to hers as to a reasonable service, Christianity not only institutes this necessary order, but lends her sanction to the claims of justice, that the temporal interests of her more immediate servants should not be neglected by those whose spiritual interests they guard. On this point is her language as clear and unequivocal, as it is consonant with reason: "If we