this was the very time. Fifteen months before this time, the Irish public had been surprised by the announcement of numerous conversions which had just then appeared in the county of Cavan. This was speedily followed by similar communications from many other and distant districts of Ireland, and the secession was actually in progress, though with a diminished velocity, at the very time, as it appears, when an extensive system of itinerant preaching was conceived to be necessary for assisting its too languid efforts. Yet this revulsion of religious opinion among our Roman-catholic countrymen can be traced only to the great and general improvement of the protestants, both laity and clergy, in attending to their religious duties, especially to that of communicating to the young the advantage of a scriptural education.

"That most promising reformation of the Roman catholics was indeed checked and suppressed in its second year; but this was the effect of the violent resistance which its so successful commencement had excited, not at all of any relaxation of the efforts of the protestant clergy. The clergy of the Roman catholics were struck with alarm for their own security, as if the ground on which they stood was passing from beneath their feet; to avert the calamity of a general desertion they urged the laity everywhere to press forward for the attainment of a political aggrandizement which should bind them to their church as a successful party; and, in the next following year, the hope of a further extension of religious reformation was lost amidst the triumph of a political equalization, which fixed the selfishness of the wavering and alarmed the apprehensions of the timorous. Thus did even the early suppression of that incipient reformation bear testimony to its reality and importance, for its adversaries manifested, by their prompt and vehement resistance, how much they feared from its success.

"The Home Mission appears, therefore, to have grown out of the religious energy of the Protestant church, not to have been called into action by the necessity of supporting its weakness. I remember that a very eminent physician once remarked to me that it was among the maxims, I think, of Hippocrates, that men, when in the enjoyment of full and vigorous health, should be most apprehensive of disease. The maxim seems to have found in this association a moral illustration. No one questions the religious zeal of the managers of the Home Mission, or of the individual clergyman who is the impugnant in the present suit. No one even imputes to any of these persons a disposition unfriendly to the establishment of the protestant church, however their efforts may be deemed, and this indeed is by themselves acknowledged to be, adverse to a strict observance of its discipline. The question is only whether their case is not one of irregular and morbid excitement, which has arisen from the full and vigorous health of the ecclesiastical body, but which the preservation of that health may require us to repress. (To be concluded in the next Number.)

TITHES IN IRELAND.-RESOLUTIONS INTENDED TO BE PROPOSED BY LORD J. RUSSELL,

1. That it is the opinion of this committee, that tithe composition in Ireland should be commuted into a rent charge, at the rate of seven-tenths of their amount, to be charged on the owner of the first estate of inheritance.

2. That it is the opinion of this committee, that on the expiration of existing interests, so much of such rent charge as shall be payable in lieu of ecclesiastical tithe should be purchased by the state, at the rate of sixteen years' purchase of the original tithe composition.

3. That it is the opinion of this committee, that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners of Ireland should be empowered, with the consent of the incumbents,

to demand from the state the purchase at the same rate of any other portion of ecclesiastical tithe composition or rent charge not exceeding one-tenth of the whole amount in any one year.

4. That it is the opinion of this committee, that until such rent charge shall be purchased or redeemed, the amount of ecclesiastical rent charge and ministers' money should be paid to the incumbents from the consolidated fund.

5. That it is the opinion of this committee, that the arrangement of such payments, and the investment of the purchase monies paid by the state for ecclesiastical rent charge, should be entrusted to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for Ireland.

6. That it is the opinion of this committee, that the rent charges for ecclesiastical tithe should be appropriated by law to certain local charges now defrayed out of the consolidated fund and to education, the surplus to form part of the consolidated fund.

7. That it is the opinion of this committee, that the rent charges for ecclesiastical tithe and ministers' money should be collected by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests for five years, and until parliament shall otherwise provide.

8. That it is the opinion of this committee, that further provision should be made by law for the regulation of ecclesiastical duties, and the better distribution of ecclesiastical revenues in Ireland.

9. That it is the opinion of this committee, that provision should be made for the revision of certain tithe compositions where such compositions operate with injustice.

10. That it is the opinion of this committee, that the rent charges for lay tithe should be collected by the tithe owner, and facilities afforded for redemption upon mutual agreement between the parties.

INCORPORATED SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING THE ENLARGEMENT, BUILDING, AND REPAIRING OF CHURCHES AND CHAPELS.

A MEETING of this Society was held at their Chambers in St. Martin's-place, on Monday, the 23rd of April, the Lord Bishop of Durham in the chair. There were present the Bishops of Winchester, Bangor, Ripon, and Norwich; the Venerable Archdeacons Pott and Watson; the Revs. Dr. D'Oyly, Dr. Spry, Dr. Shepherd; H. H. Norris, J. Lonsdale, T. Bowdler, Joshua Watson, N. Connop, jun., H. J. Barchard, W. Cotton, W. Davis, E. H. Locker, B. Harrison, and J. W. Bowden, Esqrs.

Among other business transacted, grants were voted towards repewing the church at Steep, Southampton; building a church at Greenwich, Kent; repewing the church at Barnet, Herts; enlarging the church at Windlesham, Surrey; rebuilding the church at Hanham, in the parish of Bitton, Gloucestershire; rebuilding the chapel at Rosedale, York; enlarging the church of St. David's, Exeter; building a church at Brighton, Sussex; rebuilding the church at Llanvihangel, Radnor; rebuilding the church at Raskelf, York; building a chapel at Briercliffe, in the chapelry of Burnley, Lancaster; repewing the church at Astby, Worcester; rebuilding the chapel at Godney, in the parish of Meare, Somerset; enlarging the church at Upway, Dorset; building a gallery in the church at Cuxton, Kent; enlarging the chancel in the chapel at Haverthwaite, Lancaster; increasing the accommodation in the church at Hales Owen, Salop; enlarging by rebuilding the church at Haselbury, Somerset; increasing the accommodation in the chapel at Doddington, Northumberland; increasing the accommodation in the church at Ewhurst, Surrey; enlarging by rebuilding the church at Chilcompton, Somerset, increasing the accommodation in the church at Carew, Pembroke; enlarging by rebuilding the church at Paulton, Somerset.

567

CHURCH MATTERS.

EDUCATION SCHEMES.-LETTER II.

MY DEAR SIR,-In pursuance of promise, I now go on to vindicate the reasonableness of taking a firm stand on the old Christian basis in the matter of education; or, as perhaps it might be more correctly expressed, to offer proofs of the unreasonableness of those who seek to follow up all other modern revolutionary processes with a complete and sweeping revolution there. One cannot but be painfully aware what an up-hill task it is in these most restless times to plead the argument, that " our strength is to sit still." Nevertheless, it is something to contend for principles, and thereby possibly to lay up store of thoughts for future use, when the immediate madness shall be overpast. When people shall have found the phantom which they would not be persuaded not to follow, to be a phantom, or much worse, they may perhaps grow wiser in the school of a disastrous experience. But while a common mania appears to seize so many different classes -although, of course, in different forms-and there are to be seen the best and worst-intentioned men, the crafty and the single-hearted, preservers and destroyers, alike entangled in the work of rash excitement, and half disposed (as it would seem) almost to run a race, each in their own way, in furtherance of speculations of a common kind, and in the pressing forward of attempts which—if they be, as I believe, at war with nature's ordinances-cannot succeed, for any length of time, on any principles, the only thing that can be done is to protest in way of caution, and leave on record conscientious views, of which it must be left to time to prove the frailty or the value. Not that I mean by "sitting still," that we should do nothing beyond what is already done. By all means, let the course of our existing national instruction for the humbler classes pursue and find its way, under the auspices and guiding counsels of the church, as heretofore; but let us be content with this, "in quietness and confidence." The time is specially one in which it should not be forgotten that there may be "more haste" and "worse speed."

To give a specific instance, by way of illustration. It was not to be hoped that certain past language of a publication like the British Critic, recommending a bureau of education, and Heaven knows what besides, should fail to be taken advantage of by much less safe and cautious speculatists; but only take a later proposition of the same authority, mixed (in the plan where it may be found) with much wiser matter. "5. Grants, in aid of prizes upon the examination a of given number of schools, with a salary or fee to inspectors, would be EXTREMELY USEFUL at the present time." The National Society itself does not appear to be free from the mistake (as I humbly presume to think it is) of fostering this method of excitement. As if, looking to the state of the kingdom at large, the grand point were to obtain a maximum of rival exertions among schools, as is the case in flower-shows; as if prizes, adjudged by salaried inspectors, were a true and just criterion of the merit of schools; or (most of all) as if the desirable point, namely, to obtain or preserve a sufficiency of steady attention and progress, according to the circumstances and necessities of each average parish, were not to be attained without a system of stimulants! What is to be the end of making everything artificial?

I venture, then, to maintain that, in this matter of education, the great unreasonableness is on their part who would insist on the adoption of delusive theories, for the hope's sake of an imaginary future of their own, for which not only can the past supply no analogy, but does supply the most direct and positive disproof; and who, moreover, choose to overlook the plainest present facts or truths, open to every man's own individual observation. I shall endeavour to submit a few of these in an intelligible shape; remarking only, on the leading error of all, which runs through every part of these elaborate schemes-namely, the overlooking of the true principles of man's nature, -that it has been so well handled by Mr. Blunt, in the discourse before referred to, as to make further notice of it here unadvisable; it being always an unwelcome work to repeat in language of one's own anything which is fresh in recollection as having been better said by another just before. To come, then, to some more specific facts and truths.

1. If it were not for the well-proved wilfulness of human blindness and conceit, the overlooking, in our modern theories, of the established proofs on record of the inefficiency of intellectual cultivation by itself, or only in the company of weak or false religious apprehensions, would be a thing incredible. The fact of this being an adjudged case, is almost marvellously lost sight of; a proved failure is hardily offered as a grand discovery, and an exploded experiment raked up and passed off as a novelty!

Why, the argument deducible from the condition of the Greeks and Romans ought, in all fairness, to be admitted as conclusive upon this point. Not that the strongest force of this resides in those more general and (so to speak) theological inferences, which seem to be most commonly adduced upon the subject, but in such facts as those which follow, connected with our own personal experience; namely, that so complete and lasting are the evidences of a superior intellectual greatness in those two nations of antiquity, that we ourselves-now living in such fulness as is vouchsafed of gospel light-have found, up to this very day, and do still find, their writings to afford the very best materials for a superior mental cultivation. I do not enter into the debated question here arising, nor is it necessary to define exactly (what no man probably could tell) the why or how of this preeminence of Greek and Roman literature. It is enough, that to deny the fact of a peculiarly refining influence and power to enlarge the mind and

* E.g. "Remember Athens; it was the eye of Greece; its Academus and its Ilyssus were immortalized by great names; it was the model school of the world— the university of the age. In the midst of its intellectual light......there was-What? An altar to the unknown God!' and the very splendour of the mental illumination round it revealed in greater and deeper relief the melancholy dedication, To the unknown God!'-[Report of the last anniversary of the Home and Colonial Infant School Society Feb. 23, 1838.] This is, of course, popular declamation, and not to be examined too severely; but it appears to offer not an unfair specimen of the way in which many reasoners are apt to miss the point. It is hardly just to blame intellectual cultivation for not discovering a truth beyond its powers; its insufficiency is rather proved by its imperfect influence upon the moral and the social conduct of its disciples.

sentiments in classical attainments, would be to contradict the plainest testimony of our own experience. In point of fact, none yield more homage (if so much) to classical education as some of those who, on occasion, affect to undervalue or despise it. Witness the almost universal tendency in less instructed men to quote some threadbare scrap of Latin, as if it were at once an evidence of learning or accomplishment; witness the mercantile demand for classical translations-the dullest and the most unreadable of all things, to readers capable of feeling and appreciating the difference of elegance or force between the copies and the originals. And these, it is to be remembered, are testimonials yielded not formally, but undesignedly, and as it were naturally. Looking to coincident facts, no doubt there may be other knowledge more directly useful; and long-headed and shrewd self-educated men, who care not whether Cicero were Greek or Roman, may pass the scholar by in the rude jostlings of the world ever so often. Nevertheless, to generate the tact and feelings of a gentleman, to give the mind a truly liberal and comprehensive grasp, there is no substitute for Greek and Roman lore. Nor only so; but in the finer arts— wherever models have enough survived to us from these people, as in sculpture and architecture-do we not render homage to them at this hour? * It were a tedious thing to tarry and descant upon so trite a subject; let it suffice to press the fact, that Greece and Rome are still our highest intellectual patterns.

Yet, what did all their civilization-in other words, their intellectual training-accomplish for them in the department of social and moral excellence, without an all-pervading influence of true religion? + And, banish that pervading leaven from all our own first stages of instruction, and from the season of first impressions-or only separate it from these so far as that it shall no longer be regarded as the vital principle of all, but only as an optional or variable adjunct—and on what reasonable ground can a more favourable result of merely intellectual cultivation now be looked for, than was attained in Greece or Rome? Shall it be said, that the whole moral state of man is altered now, under the light of Christianity? That were a shameless begging of the whole question. To be entitled to make plea of Christianity, we must believe in Christianity; and can we think, believing, that any blessing will be likely to attend a scheme, of which it is the tendency, if not the aim, to nullify or undermine all Christian truth? None but a generation "professing themselves wise" could have conceived the thought.

But to come vastly nearer home than this, in the apparently unexplored region of familiar facts. What is to be discovered daily, hourly, as to the value and efficiency of mere intellectual accomplishments among ourselves? What check are they on vice-what

See, as a very modern exemplification, Mr. Hamilton's Letter to Lord Elgin on the subject of the New Houses of Parliament; the bias of which goes to exclude even the national feeling in respect of architecture from any share in the most conspicuously national of all public edifices, in favour of classical models.

+ See Blunt, pp. 8, 9. It is much to be wished that this highly interesting and lively sermon may obtain an extensive circulation; it having to claim, among other merits, the praise of multum in parvo.