tenths of that number are children under ten years of age, and other two-tenths are made up of the sick and the aged; it is there fore obvious, that if we assume that all the villagers are disposed to go to church-but alas! how unlikely an assumption !-there will not be an average of more than sixty persons who can attend public worship in each of these parish churches. We should like to learn the average number of those who do attend them. Now we know that in the rural districts there are scores of places which do not appear in our lists, where the gospel is preached to more than sixty persons weekly? and we leave every impartial inquirer to judge, whether our little chapel congregations may not take their stand beside the little congregations of more than six thousand churches of the Establishment? We therefore are disposed to believe, that were all the sections of the nonconformist body in England to return all the places which are used by them exclusively as places of public worship, they would find that the gross number, both of places and attendants, would approximate very near to, if not actually exceed, that of the Established Church. If this assumption be correct, we come to the conclusion, that the voluntary principle in religion has enabled the nonconformists to provide by their ministers an equal amount of religious instruction with that afforded by a richly endowed establishment, while they have, at the same time, been burdened with its legal, yet unrighteous imposts. It is true we cannot compare the scholarship of dissenting ministers with the high classical acquirements and mathematical skill of the established clergy. Two reasons may be assigned for this; first there is a principle uniformly re cognized amongst us, that true piety is an indispensable pre-requisite to the Christian ministry, and therefore our youth are not devoted to professional studies until the evidence of their serious religion is satisfactory, and their natural talent for public preaching is apparent. The other is, that when they enter on a course of studies for the ministry, they do not possess the best literary advantages, as they are excluded from the national universities. To obviate this disadvantage, the various bodies of nonconformists have, in the metropolis and in other parts of the kingdom, nearly twenty seminaries or small colleges, in which about 250 students are educated, at an annual cost of more than £25,000. These young men are retained in these institutions from three to six years, and many of them become respectable scholars. 'Their education is so conducted, however, that they generally acquire a facility for the discharge of their professional duties, and in scriptural knowledge, and the art of popular address, they are, as a body, superior to the clergy. We possess a variety of evidence of this fact, but will only give two illustrations. Within the last 25 years many wild theological speculations have for a time occupied public notice, and while a good number of the clergy have adopted and diffused these new notions, the orthodox dissenting ministers have maintained their own sobriety of sentiment, and been the means of preserving that of their people also. The other is, that recently several dissenting ministers have conformed to the episcopal church, whose mediocrity of talent rendered their position quite unenviable amongst their brethren, but who have been welcomed into the establishment as a desirable accession, and some of them have been ranked among its popular preachers. But the advocates of an endowed clergy may further object, that the ministers of the voluntary churches are brought, by the system of popular support, into a state of dependence on their people, unfavourable to the fearless discharge of their duty, and are also subjected to a poverty which degrades them in society, and diverts their minds from the great duties of their calling. We reply, that if the justice of this statement be admitted, the established system itself is not exempted from similar evils. There are at the present time nearly 8000 benefices and appropriations in the hands of private owners, and 1600 more in the hands of the Bishops. The lay patrons are usually men of the world, and are doubtless influenced by the obsequious attentions of expectant clergymen. They have only to please the patron, and their business is done. Hence it is, that the hunters after preferment are found dancing attendance on the great, and exhibiting traits like those depicted by the bard of Olney. Loose in morals, and in manners vain; In conversation frivolous; in dress goes, But rare at home, and never at his books, Or, with his pen, save when he scrawls a Constant at routs; familiar with a round By infidelity and love of world, To make God's work a sinecure; a slave To his own pleasures and his patron's pride." modern novelists, the faithful delineators of living manners, to confirm this. The sober records of biography supply many instances of the same thing. And as to episcopal patronage, it is pretty obvious, from recent events, that even bishops are not always influenced, in the bestowment of their preferments, by a simple desire to promote the welfare of their flocks. Here, then, are nearly 10,000 livings to be obtained by private favour: how can the advocates of such a system venture to reproach the voluntary principle with producing ministerial subserviency? But it may be said, True, there may be something of this to obtain a living, but when once inducted, their subserviency ends. We doubt this. There are nearly 4000 livings under £200 a-year. Can it be supposed that the possessors of these humble benetices do not hope for preferment, and are not still employing the same courteous means to obtain promotion, which most probably secured for them their present livings? And what can be said to the curates? They form a body of more than 5000 clergymen, who mainly depend for their yearly stipends upon the will of their incumbent, his will being influenced again by the representations of some resident gentleman, or some officious churchwarden. This opens another source of clerical subserviency, and it is notorious that the humiliating restrictions often imposed upon curates, seem almost to rob them of the rights of free agency. We contend, therefore, that the system of endowments, as it is at present administered by lay and clerical patronage, abounds with as many snares for the consciences of its ministers, as the voluntary sytem is supposed to do. But we do not admit that supposition to be true, except in It is not necessary to refer to the cases, which amongst ourselves Here, it is true, is a splendid average income for the Lord Bishops of nearly £6000. per annum, but the average income of the parochial clergy is not £300. per annum, while 5232 curates toil for an average income of £81. a year. But this Table does not show the worst of it. For if the average income of beneficed clergymen is only £285, it is obvious that there are many livings, what a misnomer, that fall very far below that sum. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners inform us, that there are 297 Livings under £50 1629 Ditto under 100 1602 Ditto under 150 Then comes the starveling curates in the following proportions. 207 at £55 per annum each. 59 ditto. 113 143 79 ditto. Thus it appears there are 1720 curates who have not a stipend of £80. a-year, and a total of 8760 officiating clergymen, whose professional income is far below £150. per annum. And this is the recompense the Church affords the working clergy, who at the present time are so angry with their dissenting brethren for impugning the compulsory system of the Establishment! While we own that our ministers are not adequately paid, yet we feel assured, that could accurate returns be obtained, the voluntary system will bear comparison with that of an endowment. And with this obvious difference, that our best livings, from £500. to £700., are always accessible to men of piety and talent, irrespective of family influence or private patronage. Now while we fearlessly assert that the voluntary principle supplies an average income for those who minister in our churches, much greater than that possessed by the 5232 Curates of the Established Church, and more than equal to the average of 3000 of its beneficed clergy, it must also be remembered that the entire cost of erecting their places of worship, and all the incidental expenses connected with divine service, are defrayed by the supplies which the same principle alone affords. It is highly probable that the 8000 chapels belonging to the various nonconformist denominations have cost at least a million and a half of money, whilst the ordinary expenses of their ministry and worship must exceed a million annually. Now we put it to every candid inquirer, whether this spontaneous effort to uphold the public worship of God, and to make known the Gospel of his Son, does not exhibit to the sceptical philosopher a spectacle far more honourable to our common Christianity than can be supplied by a more stately system, which is upheld by force, and is too often employed for the low purposes of state influence and political intrigue. But as the members of the episcopal church have not to bear the expenses of their own worship at home, it may be supposed that they do more for the extension of Christianity in foreign parts. To illustrate this part of the subject, we have carefully analysed the efforts of the Episcopalian and Nonconformist Missionary Societies in every county of England. Two advantages result from this examination; first, as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, &c. is mainly supported by the ortho dox or canonical clergy and their friends, and the Church Missionary Society is maintained by the Evangelical Clergy and their adherents, the comparison between the contributions to each Society will show the relative strength or activity of these two great parties in the church in each county, while, in the second place, in uniting their receipts, and comparing the total with the contributions of the several nonconformist Missionary Societies in the same county, the relative strength or activity of the two great parties that now divide the kingdom may be fairly ascertained. in favour of the missionary efforts Leaving a balance of £40,662 15 4 of the voluntary churches for the last year! Now it will be admitted that the nonconformist bodies are almost exclusively composed of persons belonging to the middle and lower classes of society, and yet we plainly see that, after incurring the expense of building their own chapels -educating their own studentssupporting their own pastors—and of upholding their own worship their missionary contributions still exceed by more than a third those of that church which does not burden its members with the expenses referred to, and includes within its pale all the rank and most of the wealth of the empire! We leave these facts with our £78,073 2 10 readers, and hope to resume the subject in a future article. The Table at the commence ment of this article exhibits the particulars of each county, but the following totals will suffice to show which party is making at the present time the most powerful efforts to evangelize the world. Episcopalians. Propagation Society £13,087 5 5 Church Mission Ditto 64,985 17 5 CAUTIONARY COUNSELS ADDRESSED TO THE YOUNG. THERE have been few ministers of religion, who have not been depressed when reflecting on the small amount of real good which has been effected by their labours. Our hopes, we sometimes say, are fixed on the young. And yet how difficult to win their attention to serious subjects, and to fix their hearts in the religion of the New Testament. Well might an eminent minister once think, as his eye ranged over his congregation, "What can I possibly say that will interest that young man of eighteen ?" The world is all before the young. Its unbroached pleasures, and its untouched wealth, are rich in promise; experience, however, will teach how fallacious that promise is even when accomplished to its fullest extent. We say experience will read with effect the salutary lesson, but we are aware that a superior teacher meets the young in the pages of Divine Wisdom and that He who is the author of those pages has engaged, by his own unfailing promise, to pour out of His Holy Spirit on every humble and earnest suppliant, that the |