of procedure was, to go and preach the Gospel to every creature, beginning from Jerusalem. And still, after Christianity has thus been planted in any land, it must not lay aside its missionary character but keep by it still, for its own further and fuller diffusion. For let the people of any locality be left to themselves; and they will lapse into irreligion, be it in the neglected outfields of a country or in the neglected streets of a city population; and still, whether to re-establish Christianity or to sustain it, the movement must be made not from them but to them. Nature has no appetency for that bread of life which came down from heaven; and which, after it has so come, must still be carried forth throughout the earthand that, not from country to country only, but from house to house, so as to attempt a lodgment within every heart, and to knock at the door of every habitation. It is not only true in reference to the people of other regions and of distant climes-how can they believe except men be sent to them? It is true in reference to the peo→ ple of other streets, and at the distance of but a few steps from us-how can they believe except men be sent to them? Each parish church of a religious establishment should be a missionary station, or the centre of a missionary process that bears on all the houses of its definite and assigned vicinity. And so of every new Church, every distinct and additional edifice that is raised for the services of the Gospel-it will lose its efficiency as a further propagator of that Gospel in the land, unless it assumes a missionary character and enters on a

missionary operation. Instead of waiting to be filled by a movement from without, it should itself originate the movement, and best, if possible, when among the families in a state of immediate juxtaposition around it-holding out all facilities for their attendance, and exciting to the uttermost their demand or their desire for Christianity, by presenting it to their notice, and bringing if possible its urgencies and its awakening calls within reach of their consciences. It is thus that each may reclaim its own district; may take possession and cultivate its own little territory; and, by the ligament which binds together the week-day attentions of the minister on the one hand and the Sabbath attendance of the people on the other, may gather into adjacent parochial communities those immense city multitudes, whose amelioration in the bulk looks so chimerically hopeless, but in detail and by fragments or sections, is really so practicable. We know of no other instrumentality by which this greatest of all problems can be resolved. It is only by a separate operation on each district, and then the apposition of one district to another-it is only thus we apprehend, that, as by the apposition of farm to farm, a moral fertility can be made to overspread a whole territory, or a whole country be reclaimed.

15. How then is it that philanthropists and patriots, those who have the amelioration of humanity constantly in their mouths, nay perhaps are honestly intent on it, how is it that they so little avail themselves of this patent and practicable way?

There is not a fonder speculation of theirs,

than the likeliest method by which to regenerate society to régenerate the world. We can imagine no other method of doing it than to do it piecemeal; or to do it in parcels. But like all those who say much and do nothing, they seem to be dreaming of some expedient or other by which to do it in bulk-so that, all at once, and on the back of their yet undisclosed and we may add, yet undiscovered specific, the human species might instantly start into a moralized and happy family. They are waiting till some new ingenuity be devised in education, or, perhaps, some new adjustment in politics-on which, as if by the lifting up of a magical wand, the earth is to emerge into a state of life and of enlargement, and the millenium of their fancy and their hopes is to be suddenly realized. The real millenium that is awaiting our world, if to be introduced by miracle or by a preternatural visitation from without which it very likely will, may come suddenly. But in as far as dependent on human effort, or even on grace attendant as it commonly is on the footsteps of a human process, it must come gradually. It must be with the moral or the spiritual as with the natural agriculture. To speed forward the one we must laboriously do the work of each furrow and of each field; and thus pass onward from farm to farm, till the whole earth is brought into its utmost possible cultivation. And so, for the purpose either of civilizing or of christianizing the world, we must pass onwards from one family and from one district to another. Every whole is made up of parts-nor can we see how the whole is to

be overtaken, but by each labourer or each distinct body of labourers acquitting themselves of their part, till at length the deed universal is made out, by a separate fulfilment and then a summation of the deeds particular. The way to reform a neighbourhood is just the way to reform a nation, or a quarter of the globe, or the great globe itself and all who inherit therein. This great achievement may be talked of in the lump; but it must be executed in detail. The thing must be gone about inductively. Our men of sublime and speculative genius, who have no patience for the drudgery of execution, may engross the ear of the public for a time with their generalized and magnificent way of it; but we must come to this way at the last-after that the schemes and the systems of our modern theorists have had their course; and the world has at last become tired of the conceits, and the crudities, and the thousand vacillating projects, and the as many abortions of our modern legislators.

16. But, recalling ourselves from this more extended survey to the means and the likelihoods of success in one little territory not half a mile from home-depending first on the power wherewith the kindness of those who are the messengers or the bearers of christian truth operate upon human feelings, and secondly on the power wherewith the self-evidence of the truth itself operates upon human consciences. On these we need expatiate no further; but we might at least remark how precious, we had almost said how proud an achievement it is, when, by dint of these, the people of

one district, nay but one family or one individual, is transformed. Apart from the consideration of immortality, we know not a spectacle of greater worth, and we may add of greater tastefulness and beauty, even beauty of the highest order as belonging to the moral picturesque, than a christian peasant-whose virtues are seen in all the greater lustre that they are arrayed in homely garb, or have taken root in a tenement of poverty-like the enhanced loveliness of a picture, made to stand out all the more strikingly, by the darkness of the ground on which it is projected. Perhaps it is

this contrast between light and shadow which causes it to be so fine an exhibition, when deep and thorough religious principle takes up its abode in the heart of an ordinary workman. But, however this may be certain it is, that, as there is no one event that serves more to strengthen the foundation, so there is none which serves more to grace the aspect of human society-whether we look to his well-ordered household through the week, or to his well-filled family pew upon the Sabbath. If there be one sound more like the music of paradise than another, it is when the simple voice of psalms arises in morning or evening orisons from the lowly cottage; or one spectacle more rich in promise, even the promise of fruit for immortality, it is when a cottage family is seen in full muster at the house of God. There is altogether such a refreshing moral healthfulness in the Christianity of humble life, that we feel for it, for the Christianity of artificers and tradesmen, a profounder homage than for the Christianity either of