because it recommends religion. Many good men complain of its total want of discipline among its own members; but a notorious declaimer against it in an adjoining county has been annoyed by what he thinks its over strictness. He is violent against Church abuses, because his moral character in one particular is such, that the clergymen of his parish will not visit him. I am always anxious, therefore, when I hear any attacks against the Church, to know what sort of a man they come from; for though a great deal that is said against it may be very true, yet considering the principles of many of those who say it, I should exceedingly object to any remedy of their proposing.

The most general complaint against the Church turns upon the excessive amount, and the unequal distribution of its property, and especially upon the burdensome and impolitic nature of the tithe system. There is also a strong popular feeling against the political opinions of the clergy, particularly of the bishops and other dignitaries among them; and this, with the evils of the tithe system is, I believe, the main cause of their unpopularity among persons who are not ill affected to religion itself.

My conviction of the benefits of a Church Establishment arises from this that thus only, can we insure the dispersion of a number of well educated men over the whole kingdom, whose sole business is, to do good of the highest kind; to enforce, in their public teaching, the purest principles and practice that mankind have ever yet been made acquainted with; and to exhibit these in their own persons in all their daily intercourses with their neighbours, instructing the young, visiting the sick, relieving, advising, and maintaining the cause of the poor ;-and spreading amongst all ranks the wholesome influence of a good life, a culti. vated understanding, and the feelings and manners of a true gentle. For these reasons, I most earnestly admire and love a Church Establishment; and because it has in it the means of doing all this better, I think, than any other sect of Christians, therefore I value and would most rigorously reform the actual Church Establishment. Nor are the needful Reforms so difficult as many persons imagine.

man.

I will state them, even at the risk of seeming to dogmatize, because I have not space to state at length the arguments on which they rest.

1. A commutation of tithes, even if it can only be effected at a great loss to the Church, because it is far better that the Church should be somewhat poorer, if at such a price it can remove what is at present a great cause of offence.

2. An entire remodelling of the Episcopal Order, that many scandals may be removed, and the Church obtain an efficient government.For this object it seems essential,—

1. That Translations should be made illegal.

2. That the incomes of the smaller Bishoprics be so increased out of the larger ones, as to supersede the necessity of annexing to them Deaneries, livings held in commendam, or any other ecclesiastical preferment whatsoever.

3. That the Dioceses be divided, so as to give the Church an effi. cient government. For this purpose all Deaneries should be made Bishoprics, retaining their present incomes, and with no seats in Parliament. The Prebends should be annexed to underpaid livings in large towns, and the largest Church in all such towns should be erected into a Bishop's See; so that there should be no great town throughout England without its resident Bishop; who, without being raised to any undue elevation in rank and fortune, would yet in both be sufficiently respectable to maintain the just influence of the Church with the higher classes as well as with the poor.

4. That in all large towns and populous districts a sufficient number of new parishes be created, with a resident minister to each. Funds might be provided by annexing, for the future, every one of these new parishes to some valuable country living, if possible in the same neighbourhood or county. Any incumbent accepting such living for the time to come being bound to reside in his town parish nine months in the year, and to keep a resident curate on his benefice in the country.*

*The following paper was circulated by Dr. Arnold in 1841, and develops another part of his " Principles of Church Reform." It is appended in this place as more suitable than when standing disconnected from its congenial subject.

ORDER OF DEACONS.-The want of a sufficient number of ministers of the Church is more or less felt everywhere; but in large towns, and in the extensive and popu. lous parishes of the manufacturing districts, it is a most serious evil. To provide a maintenance for as many additional clergymen as are needed, is clearly impractica ble. It has been suggested whether the desired end could not be attained by giving efficiency to the order of deacons; and restoring to them that importance in the Church which in ancient times belonged to them.

To get a sufficient number of deacons nothing seems wanted but the repcal of all laws, canons, or customs, which prevent a deacon from following a secular calling, and also of all such as subject him to any civil disqualifications, or confer on him any civil exemptions.

It is conceived that if this were done, many pious and active members of the Church would be very glad to be ordained deacons, and to take a part in the ministry. In all spiritual functions they would be under the direction and control of the presby ters of their respective parishes; but in temporal matters, such as the management and distribution of funds for charitable purposes, and in making provision for the bodily wants of the poor, they would form a council, of which the presbyter would be the head, and to which all such matters might be entrusted.

5. The Church government being thus rendered efficient, by reducing the size of the dioceses to what would be within the power of an individual to manage, a system of ecclesiastical jurisdiction should be framed, for the prompt punishment, not only of scandalous vice in the clergy, but of what may be called unclerical conduct and neglect of duty; so that the class of "sporting clergy," as they are called, should be gradually weeded out of the establishment.

These reforms would, I am persuaded, work a change in the usefulness of the Church, and in the state of feeling towards it, especially in the manufacturing districts, which would be well worth purchasing at the cost of far greater innovations. Of reforms of a more strictly religious character,-such as relate to the liturgy and articles of the Church, I have purposely said nothing. But there are some other points of a less serious nature, such as the relations of the Church with dissen. ters, and its excessively aristocratical character, which I shall notice.

XIII.-It happened to me some years since to be visiting at the house of a Scotch clergyman, the number of whose parishioners amounted to nearly five thousand souls. I asked him how he found it possible to look after so large a population without assistance. His answer was, that he had assistance: that there were three or four dissenting congregations in the town, and that the ministers of these were very

According to the present form of ordaining deacons, no deacon is authorized to preach, except he shall obtain the bishop's license to do so. This provision might be enforced, and the license to preach given only to such deacons as the bishop should judge expedient, and might be granted only durante bene placito.

It is conceived that besides the great benefit of increasing the number of ministers of the Church, other advantages might be looked for from allowing deacons to follow secular callings. A link would be formed between the clergy and the laity by the existence of an order partaking of the character of both. The confusion of confining the term Church to the Clergy would be dispelled: inasmuch as there would be not only members but even ministers of the Church who did not belong to the clergy considered as a profession. As the deacons of the Church would be expected to live in all things as became Christians, the same standard would be followed by them which general opinion requires the clergy to conform to, but which it does not always enforce in the laity; as for example in the case of duelling. The ministry of the Church would thus also be safely and most beneficially open to persons of inferior rank and fortune, who cannot afford the expense of an university education, and have no prospects of a maintenance by entering into the ministry as a profession, but who may have gifts which enable them to serve the Chuch effectually, and who may naturally and lawfully wish not to let these gifts lie idle. It does not seem improbable that many persons who now become preachers amongst the dissenters, without. objection to any of the doctrines of our Church, but simply because they have no means of following what they feel to be their calling in our communion, would gladly become deacons on this system, and would thus be useful to the Church instead of being in some sort opposed to it.

useful auxiliaries to him, in providing both for the physical and spiritual wants of his parishioners.

The words of this answer, as well as the simple and natural manner in which they were spoken, have often recurred to my memory when I have noticed the totally different light in which the Dissenters are regarded even by some of the best of the clergy in England. With us, the notion of an opposition of interests between the Church and the Dissenters seems always paramount; and I have heard it said over and over again, when people were giving the highest praise to the zeal and general excellence of a Minister of the Establishment, that such a man would soon thin the meeting houses, and bring back the people to the Church.

Now we cannot doubt that the Scotch clergyman's feelings with regard to Dissenters is a far happier one than that generally entertained in England. It is a great misfortune that Christians should not all heartily co-operate with one another; and a still greater, that they should actually look on one another as rivals-almost as enemies. is a most tremendous evil at a time when their most vigorous efforts, if strengthened by the closest union, would not be in any degree too great to meet the dangers which threaten them both in common.

It

But it is an evil which must be laid as much to the fault of the Dissenters as of the Church. They have been quite as intolerant, and talked quite as foolishly about the superstitions of the Church Services, as their antagonists on their side have talked of the sin of schism. And at this moment, if the government should attempt to effect an union between the Church and the Dissenters, there would be found quite as many obstacles to such a plan on the part of the latter as of the former. Nor is this wonderful, if we remember that the dissenting ministers, generally speaking, are men of inferior education and inferior rank to the Established Clergy, and have thus a less share of the two great antidotes to bigotry-a large acquaintance with the wisdom of ancient times on the one hand, and with various classes of living men, viewing things in many different lights on the other.

But it is far from my purpose to throw blame either on Churchmen or Dissenters. Thus much, however, is clear, that from the Church, as holding the vantage ground, ought to proceed the first advances to a reconciliation. Now, if uniformity be insisted on, reconciliation is of course out of the question. Two men of different habits cannot live together on friendly terms, if either be called upon to conform to the fashions of the other; and a compromise of our own opinions has always something about it so bordering upon meanness and insincerity, that no good fruit can be looked for from a seed so rotten.

One great cause of Dissent has been the utter inefficiency of the Church in populous towns, as a religious society. Men's feelings of Christian union, all their social propensities as Christians, desire some better satisfaction than to be members of a parish of 10,000 or 20,000 souls, half of whom must necessarily be strangers to the other half. It is impossible that they can have much personal knowledge of their Minister under such circumstances; and what sort of a society is it in which the members neither know one another, nor him who, in some respects, is their head? In forming themselves into a distinct religious society when so situated, the Dissenters acquired a bond of charity more than they had before; but I know not what bond it was which their conduct violated, ¦

This cause of Dissent would cease if the parishes in our large towns were properly subdivided; and the same measure would remove another cause not less powerful, the actual want of room in the churches of the Establishment for the population which that Establishment professes to instruct. But other causes would still remain, and could not be so easily obviated. Some, however worldly their character, are in practice among the most difficult to overcome. I mean the property vested in the different Dissenting chapels, and the incomes actually enjoyed by their ministers. It would not be easy to purchase these, and this alone, therefore, would seem an indissoluble bar to such an union with Dissenters as should merely merge them in the Church Establishment, supposing that by some compliance with their religious objections the Establishment might become such as they would not on religious grounds alone object to join.

There is yet another cause of Dissent very deeply rooted. The established clergy must belong generally to the richer classes, because so long as a residence at the university is a necessary passport to ordination, none but the rich can afford to enter the Church. But separated as the richer and poorer classes are from one another in England, separated not only in manners, habits, and feelings, but actually in language also, who can wonder if the poor desire a religious instructor with whom they can more nearly sympathize than with their regular clergyman-an instructor, who by birth, station, language, and manners, is more nearly one of themselves. True it is that when the regular clergyman is at once a good man and a sensible man, his being a gentleman is all so much in his favour; for though a gentleman parson be a very bad thing if the gentleman be the predominant element in the compound, yet a good parson, who in education and feeling is a thorough gentleman beside, in the best sense of the word, inspires justly a degree of respect and confidence as well as of affection which the poor never can feel towards a man of coarser manners and less