In the preceding observations we have referred to the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, and to the necessity of diligently marking them. No one can deny, who gives even a superficial consideration to the subject, that our times are extraordinary, eventful, portentous, perilous, and altogether unprecedented. And this with especial reference to the power and influence of Mammon. There never was a time when so much was done in the way of legislation, for the protection of property in the hands of the overgrown rich. There never was a time when so much was done in the way of legislation, to depress the value of labour. There never was a time when so much was done in the way of legislation, to cut down the provisions of the poor to the lowest possible ebb. There never was a time until now, when poverty and destitution were treated as criminal; when the prey, the victim of distress, was apprehended by the police-officer, carried before the civil magistrate, and committed to prison as a delinquent against the laws.

All this argues well for the Christian Dispensation. This state of things cannot last; the depravity of the system which tolerates such atrocities as these, cannot long disguise its deformity in a land where the Gospel is everywhere preached.

Indications of a change are already apparent. The head of our church himself, the Lord Primate of England, not many years since, charged the clergy to consider, that we live in one of those periods which are called ERAS in the history of the world; " his Grace, at the same time, expressing himself under great alarm at the inroads which some (to him) unseen power is making upon the institutions of the earth. "The signs of a storm are black in the horizon," says the first of our political leaders.* "Yes," saith another doctor of another college+" yes, the heavens are gathering, and let rulers of parties do what they may, the storm will come; and the religion to survive will be that which is least beset with the trammels of sectarianism, and most imbued with a spirit of charity toward all mankind.” Another modern seer of our age says-" What times are coming on the earth we know not; but the general expectation of persons of all characters, in all nations, is an instinct implanted by God to warn us of a coming storm. Not one nation only, but all; not one class of thinkers, but all; they who fear, and they who hope, and who fear and hope things opposite; they who are

*Lord John Russell's Letter to his Constituents,-1839.
† Dr Vaughan.

immersed in their worldly schemes, and they who look for some coming of God's kingdom; they who watch this world's signs, and they who watch for the next— alike have their eyes intently fixed on somewhat which is coming; though whether it be the vials of his wrath, or the glories of his kingdom, or whether the one shall be the herald of the other, none can tell. They who calculate what is likely, speak of it; they who cannot, feel its coming; the spirits of the unseen world seem to be approaching to us, and awe comes on us, and trembling which makes all the bones to shake. Times of trouble there have been before, but such a time in which everything, everywhere, tends in one direction, to one mighty struggle, of one sort-of faith with infidelity, lawlessness with rule, Christ with Antichrist -there never seems to have been till now. The ancient images of Antichrist are growing old and decaying."*

Another keen observer of the times+ says "There are signs of a revolution beginning; a more important one, by its higher principle and its expansive impulse towards a wide and remote beneficence, than the ordinary events of that name. What have commonly been the matter and circumstance of revolutions? The last deciding blow in a deadly competition of equally selfish parties; actions and reactions of ambition and revenge; the fiat of a conqueror; a burst of blind fury suddenly

* Dr Pusey.

+ Foster.

sweeping away an old order of things, but overwhelming, too, all attempts to substitute a better institution; plots, massacres, battles, dethronements, restorations; all actuated by a fermentation of the ordinary or the basest elements of humanity. How little of the sublime of moral agency has there been, with one or two partial exceptions, in these mighty commotions; how little wisdom, or virtue, or reference to the supreme patron of national interests; how little nobleness, or even distinctness of purpose, or consolidated advantage of success! But here is, as we trust, the approach of a revolution with different phenomena. It displays the nature of its principle and its ambition, in a conviction far more serious and extensive than heretofore, of the necessity of education to the mass of the population, with earnest discussions of its scope and methods by both speculative and practical men; in schemes more speedily animated into operation than good designs were wont to be, for spreading useful knowledge over tracts where there were none; in exciting tens of thousands of young persons to a benevolent and patient activity in the instruction of the children of the poor; in an extended and extending system of means and exertions for the universal diffusion of the sacred Scriptures; in multiplying endeavours in all regular and in all uncanonical ways to render it next to impossible for the people not to hear some sounds, at least, of the voice of religion; in the formation of useful local institutions, too various to come under one denomination; in enterprises to attempt the opening of the vast prisonhouses of human spirits in dark, distant regions; in

bringing to the test of principles many notions and practices which have stood on the authority of prejudice, custom, and prescription: and all this, taking advantage of the new and powerful spirit which has come on the world to drive its affairs into commotion and acceleration; as bold adventurers have sometimes availed themselves of a formidable torrent to be conveyed whither the stream, in its ordinary course, would never have carried them; or, as we have heard of heroic assailants seizing the moment of a tempest to break through the enemies' lines. Such are some of the insignia by which it stands distinguished out and far off from the rank of ordinary revolutions.

It is a revolution in the manner of estimating the souls of the people, and consequently, in what should be done for both their present and future welfare. Through many ages, that immense multitude had been but obscurely presented to view in any such character as that of rational improvable creatures. They were recognised no otherwise than as one large mass of rude moral substance, but faintly distinguishable into individuals; existing, and so left to exist, in their own manner; and that manner hardly worth concern or inquiry. Little consideration could there be of how much spiritual immortal essence must be going to waste, absorbed in the very earth, all over the wide field where the inferior portion of humanity was seen only through the gross medium of an economical estimate, by the more favoured part of the race. But now it is as if a mist were arising and dispersing from that field, and leaving the multitude of uncultivated and degraded