and exercise. Children should be allowed long rest, | in the horizontal position, and sufficient sleep: eight or nine hours at least; under many circumstances, 12 hours. Children are extremely susceptible of vicissitudes of temperature. The muscles have not acquired that tone which enables them to perform actions which requires strength and persistency of action. Their exercise should be varied, not long continued nor disproportioned to their strength. Their bones and joints are soft and spongy in their texture. Children are not fitted by nature for laborious or stationary occupation. Subjecting them to business, or work which requires strong exertion, or which, even being comparatively light, demands uniform, long-continued, and therefore wearisome exercise, must ultimately have an injurious effect on their health. But if, in addition, their food is scanty, supplied only at long intervals, their occupation is not alternated with amusement and exercise in the open air, and their clothing is not warm, disease must be the inevitable consequence of this violent counteraction of all that nature suggests and demands. If you were to subject the healthiest child to the causes which I have enumerated, it is impossible that it should not become weakly, emaciated, stunted in its growth, dull, sluggish, and diseased. I fear that this country will have much to answer for in permitting the growth of that system of employing children in factories, which tends directly to the creation of all those circumstances which inevitably lead to disease. I am quite sure that the results will be, in regard to health, most destructive, and I think I may add, in regard to morals, most injurions; and that the consequence of this culpable inattention to the physical and moral welfare of the manufacturing class, will be a population weak and diseased in body, feeble and degraded in mind, and vicious and dangerous in conduct. Children were not designed for labour; but, if some labour must be permitted, both our conscience and our feelings equally demand that the labour of children should be under such restrictions as will ensure them against their being made the victims of avarice and disease, and as will render it compatible with their physical and moral welfare. Twelve hours' labour, including the time for meals, is the utmost average period of labour for the full-grown, strong, and healthy man. I am of opinion that the deterioration in the human frame caused by this system will become hereditary, and even increase from generation to generation, if the causes are to be continued. I should suppose that such results of the shortening of human life as are shown to be the case in the factory districts, by the official documents before the committee, would be the results of such a system. Manufactories and machinery-so long as they procure employment for the labouring poor, render the necessaries and comforts of life cheap and easy of acquirement, and are the means of the poor bettering their condition-must be regarded as blessings, and in every way conducive both to the physical and moral welfare of the people. In order to obtain this desirable object it is, however, necessary that the labourer should participate in the advantages and benefits arising from the employment of machinery; and, in diminishing human labour by its use, the only legitimate purpose must be admitted to be, that of substituting a machine for the performance of that labour which would reduce man to a mere mechanism, to the end that he may devote the time and leisure acquired thereby to his moral cultivation. It is indispensable, I say, in regulating a manufacturing system, that the labourers employed should never be considered as merely the means to its success, but that their condition, moral and physical, should constitute an essential object of the system, and its success, as the source of wealth and power, be subordinate thereto. But if, instead of this legitimate object, and this wholesome restraint,

ruled by the insatiable avarice of gain, the manufacturing system is without check, and has no bound but the possible means of creating wealth, and of making the rich richer, and the wages be lowered till it be simply calculated upon how little life and the motion of a pair of hands can be supported; if we find that these human beings (the factory workers) are only regarded as parts of the machinery which they set in motion, and with as little attention to their moral welfare; if we find that these, even at the tenderest age, and without respect to the distinetion of sex, and without regard to decency, are crowded together under all the circumstances that contribute to disease and vice; and all this to add to the wealth of their employers, to minister to the luxuries of the rich, and to make overgrown capitalists still more vast and oppressive, whilst the labourers themselves are degraded into the mere negro slaves of Europe; then, I say that these and all the physical evils incident to such a state require no medical opinion, but demand unsparing moral correction, or they await the punishment due to depriving man of the birthright of his humanity, of degrading him into the class of means and things to be used, instead of recognizing, as the end, his happiness and dignity as a moral and responsible agent.

of

THE POOR *.-Still, it is sometimes said, bad as the present condition of the poor, considered socially, morally, and religiously, is, yet in good times, or even when work is rather slack, notwithstanding all, things go on well. And, according to some ideas of well and ill, of right and wrong, they do. But good times (as they are called) have not of late visited us every year, nor continued with us for a very large portion any year. And supposing they were of more frequent occurrence, or of longer continuance than they have been, how is a population, so educated and trained, likely to improve by them, or to lay up in them store for bad times? Alas! the effect of very prosperous times has often been found really a heavy calamity, in inducing habits of idleness, profligacy, extravagance, and insolence, and a greater evil than of moderately depressed times. Persons, so ill-taught and so ill-disciplined, seldom look beyond the present day. Abundance of wages only affords means for abundance of riot and excess, of extravagance and indulgence. But, let the smooth tenor of a poor man's course be interrupted, by sickness for instance; then it is that the evil effects of our present system stand out in terrible relief to beholders, and are felt, for the first time perhaps, with unthought-of acuteness by the sufferers: then the combined influence of being early in life consigned to a manufactory, of having received no education, and of having found no friend or adviser in him whom he might naturally have expected to find one-his employer, is bitterly felt. If, perchance, in early days, a prudent foresight, or the advice or example of others, have induced him to join a club or a gift, the first few months of sickness (if the family is not large, and very young) are tolerable. But, when the allowance of the club is reduced, or (which is more generally the case) where no club has been entered; where the family is young, and the children can earn little-and (as is often found) the main support of the family is derived from the earnings of the wife, whose mind is naturally distressed by her husband's illness and the cares of her family-few sights upon earth can be more heart-rending. Cases are known in which the rent of the dwelling has not only exceeded the parish allowance, but the whole accumulated earnings of the family also. Here, if ever, is an opportunity for the kindness, the affection, the liberality, of the master to show itself, for the relief of the poor sufferer who is sinking into, perhaps, a premature grave by ham.

From a pamphlet by the rev. Thomas Nunns, of Birming

over-exertion in his service. But is this so? Instances of kind-hearted masters aiding, comforting, supporting sick and dying workmen, who have deserved well of them, who have served them faithfully, and acquired, by length of time, a character which all must respect, are, I know, always to be found. But I speak generally-of masters generally, and of workmen generally; and I must in truth acknowledge that a pretty long experience of my own, as well as the experience of all whom I have consulted (and they have been persons of every class), whose occupations have called them to frequent the abodes of the poor, painfully testifies that very generally-so generally that I might say almost universally-it is not so; that, except in very few instances, never does the master-manufacturer, in whose service the poor dying sufferer has lived and spent his best days, and on whom he has, therefore, the strongest claims, and by labouring for whose wealth his days are cut short, ever enter his dwelling; from him neither relief nor sympathy comes. "He is treated like a cast-off horse," to use the oft-quoted phrase of Mr. M'Culloch, "that is past labour, to live or die as he may." That I may not be misunderstood, I do not say that this neglect of the workmen by the master is universal; but, excepting the instances alluded to above, I do, without any fear of contradiction, assert that it is general-very general-all but universal. It is natural to ask, then, how do the poor live in such cases? I reply, mainly by each other. Ill as the poor are (I must say) circumstanced-badly as they are educated -low as their moral and religious feelings in consequence-yet no persons of any class are so abundant and untiring in deeds of kindness and charity to the poor as the poor are themselves. Often as I have had to lament their ignorance, their irreligion, their distress, that regret has almost always been alleviated by the virtuous, and charitable, and affectionate sympathy that is created in, I may say, every adjacent family when sickness invades any one. The affliction is in fact made spontaneously, if I may so call it, a common cause. Day by day, yes, and month by month, have I known the younger children of a sick and dying parent fed at the different neighbours' tables, and fed willingly, as members of the family. The patient's daily food has been derived from the same source; delicacies have been found for him where necessaries have scarcely been had at home; he is nursed by them, and attended by them, through a sickness, however long, at no little sacrifice, even without complaint and without grudging. And hence, with occasional contributions from his workmates, has his support been derived. With all the evils of large towns, and all the vices which attach to the poor (and I am not disposed to deny or to palliate either the one or the other), it must be confessed that the virtues of "weeping with them that weep," and dividing "their bread with the hungry," are found to exist among the poor to a degree which will be, I think, in vain looked for in any other class. It is, generally speaking, the poor man's one virtue. In prosperity, the poor may be envious and quarrelsome, dissolute and drunken, idle and profane; when favours are shown them, or eleemosynary benefits are conferred on them, there may be, owing to their bad training, generated a base spirit of envy and misrepresentation of each other; but, in sickness and distress, the hand of affectionate brotherhood is generally stretched forth, and aid, " to their ability, and even beyond it," is often ungrudgingly, and cheerfully, and self-denyingly given. I dwell the more, and with the more pleasure, upon this disposition in the lower classes, because it is the only spot in their condition, intellectual, moral, or social, at which I can -look with pleasure; and because it indicates the existence of a disposition of heart which, under good culture, might be made productive of the greatest benefits,

and lead on to the improvement of themselves and their children, and to all the good results that thoughtful men have calculated upon.

THE DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE OF THE CHURCH OF ROME IN THE DISPENSATION OF INDULGENCES*.

LET me refer you to Dr. Challoner's "Garden of the Soul," a work in high repute among Romanists of the present day, and published with the authority of the vicar apostolic of the midland district. At page 326, we have the following question and answer:-"What is an indulgence? An indulgence is the releasing the temporal punishment, which often remains due to sin, after its guilt has been remitted."-In strict accordadvocates of the papacy, since the days of the Council ance with this are the views of the most distinguished of Trent: so that feel assured, the summary that I am now about to give of the doctrine will be allowed by all Romanists to be fair and impartial; and they will not be able to charge me with mis-statements, when I meet them on their own ground, and prove them, from their own documents, to have advanced doctrines that are disowned and disproved by the revealed word of God.

It is said, that the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross was so infinitely meritorious, that one drop of his blood was sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world: but many drops of blood were shed; therefore there is a vast fund of superfluous merit, over and above the merit needed for the salvation of the whole world. To

this fund the church of Rome lays claim, as the treasury from which indulgences are issued; and, that it may never suffer any diminution, she adds thereto the superabundant merits of all the saints; that so, however large the draughts made upon it, the papal spiritual exchequer may be always full. This fund of merit is employed to release men from the temporal punishment due to sin; which temporal punishment is of two kinds-canonical penance, and suffering in purgatory. Indulgences are of two kinds-plenary and limited. A plenary indulgence remits all the temporal punishment that is due for sin, committed up to the time at which it is gained; and if granted, as they often are, to be used "in articulo mortis," in the article of death, that is, at the very last hour of life, then the indulgence frees the sinner from all fear of any temporal punishment for sin: by the sacrament of penance, the guilt of his sin is remitted; by the indulgence, the purgatorial punishment is remitted; and without further ado the sinner's soul goes immeA limited indulgence, on the condiately to heaven. trary, remits only so many days or years of the punishment as is expressed in the indulgence-some remit forty days, some a hundred years, some ninety thousand years. That there is a temporal punishment due to sin, as well as an eternal punishment, Romanists profess to prove from the case of the children of Israel, who, though pardoned, were shut out from the promised land (1 Numb. xiv. 20); or from the case of David, who, though pardoned for adultery and murder, lost his child and was punished in the sword never departing from his house (2 Sam. xii. 10). These, say they, prove that God inflicts both a temporal and eternal punishment for sin; and part of this power of inflicting temporal punishment God has bequeathed to his church, that it may be inflicted or remitted at her good pleasure.

I turn now to the practice of Rome as regards indulgences.

And, first, they are one of the undoubted novelties of the Romish church.

From a very valuable Sermon by the rev. W. G. Barker, M.A., minister of St. Paul's, Walsall:

I adduce, in proof of this, the words of Fisher, the Romish bishop of Rochester. He says "Who can now wonder that in the beginning of the primitive church there was no use of indulgences? Indulgences began awhile after men had trembled at the torments of purgatory*."

One of the earliest indulgences on record is that of Urban II. A.D. 1096, who promises to all crusaders, who are confessed and contrite, "indulgence of all their sins and an entrance into the paradise of blisst." In the year 1300, Boniface VIII. granted to all those who should for a certain number of days visit the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul, "not only a plenary and larger, but a most plenary remission of all their sins." Here then are already a full, a more full, and a most full pardon-a perfect, a more perfect, and a most perfect remission of all their sins; and is it too much to assume that, after gaining the latter, the happy votary of Rome considered himself as freed from all the penalty of all his sins?

Indulgences are sometimes of a more individual character. Fifty years after this, we find Clement VI. granting a most extraordinary indulgence to John and Joan, king and queen of France, and to their successors upon the throne; in which express leave is given to their confessor to free them from the obligation of all such oaths as they may have taken and find it inconvenient to keep! If this has any force or meaning, is it not a direct sanction to perjury? And, if perjury is sin, is not this a leave to commit sin?

Later still, at the end of the 16th century, Clement VIII. granted a plenary indulgence to all those who should take part in a contemplated rebellion in Ireland against queen Elizabeth. But instances of this nature might be multiplied without end. I will mention a few of a less public character, to show how cheaply the most lengthened indulgences may be obtained.

In a work called "The Hours of the Blessed Virgin | Mary," printed at Paris, A.D. 1553, fol. 62, we find the following:-"To all them that before this image of pity (an image of Christ) devoutly say five paternosters and five aves and a credo, piteously beholding these arms of Christ's passion, are granted thirtytwo thousand seven hundred and fifty-five years of pardon and Sixtus IV., pope of Rome, hath made the fourth and fifth prayers, and hath doubled the aforesaid pardon.”

out indulgences, to create a more speedy sale for new ones but is the wilderness any the better for changing its old weeds for new ones? There is no lack of them now in the church of Rome: in spite of all abolitions, they teem in every order that exists in the bosom of the church. To take but one instance :-in a work published in the year 1838, in Dublin, entitled "A Treatise on the Order of the Scapular," a selection is given out of what is called "the multitude of indulgences" that have been bestowed by different popes on the members of that order. Out of this selection I may enumerate, a plenary indulgence on the day of admission into the order; another, on the 16th of July, to all who pray for the church; another for all those who assist at procession on the 3rd Tuesday of every month; another to all those who visit the church of St. Teresa on the 5th of October; another to all who say five paters and aves, and a salve regina in honour of the virgin; and another, at the hour of death, to the confessed and contrite, who devoutly utter the name of Jesus. Besides these, every member, by visiting the churches of the order, and praying for the ordinary necessities, may free a soul out of purgatory, every Wednesday throughout the year. And, lest persons should fancy that these may have been revoked, it further declares that all these indulgences are unrevoked, and in full force at the present day*.

Brethren, this is the trash with which the minds of the poor ignorant Romanists are filled-this is the light which is given them by their priesthood, to compensate them for the loss of that divine knowledge, the key of which they have taken away-to help them to grope their way through all the windings of the vast labyrinth of that church's superstitions. Any Romanist, by undertaking to wear the scapular, which is merely a strip of cloth made out of the cast-off gowns of the Carmelite monks, may entitle himself to the benefit of all these indulgences; and every other religious order in the church of Rome is endowed with as many as the order of the scapular; indeed they have swarmed like the plague of locusts, * and, like that plague, have been followed by another-an Egyptian darkness, a darkness that may be felt-0, fearfully, terribly felt, in every corner of every land whither her pestilent sway extends.

Such has been the profligacy with which indulgences have been dispensed-such the heedless extravagance with which these so-called spiritual treasures have been squandered; each pope striving to outdo all his predecessors in cheapening these wares-one giving ninety thousand years of pardon for that for which others would only give thirty thousand years: such, I say, has been the heedless extravagance with which they have been granted, that I hesitate not to affirm, that, if all the indulgences that have been supposed to be obtained, by good deeds or otherwise, have been made available according to the intention of the

It is convenient to be able thus to get rid of worn

• Assert. Luth. conf. per rev. pat. J. Roffensem, Episc. + Baron. Annal. ad an. 1095.

Bullar. Compend. Cherubin. Rom. 1623, tom. i. p. 36. Dacher. Spicileg. Edit. 1723. T. iii. p. 724. Townshend's Accusations of History, App. p. 353. Mendham's Spiritual Venality, p. 18.

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the souls suffering in purgatory, then has purgatory been effectually swept out again and again, yea and must for ever be kept empty; for indulgences have been granted, and supposed to be obtained, enough to satisfy for all the sins of all the sinners that ever lived. Protestants have little idea of the desperate flagitiousness of the popes in the matter of indulgences. Pope Paul III." says bishop Taylor, in his Dissuasive against Popery, "he that convened the Council of Trent, and Julius III., for fear, as I may suppose, the council should forbid any more such follies, for a farewell to this game, gave an indulgence+ to the fraternity of the sacrament of the altar, or of the blessed body of our Lord Jesus Christ, of such a vastness and unreasonable folly, that it puts us beyond the question of religion, to an inquiry whether

• Order of the Scapular, p. 50.

+ Impress. Paris per Philippum Hotot. 1550.

it were not done either in perfect distraction, or with a worse design, to make religion to be ridiculous, and expose it to a contempt and scorn." The indulgence amounted to this-every member of the order of Corpus Christi, who shall visit the church of St. Hilary of Chartrès every day in Lent, can gain thereby, during one Lent only, no less than seven hundred and forty thousand years of pardon for himself, besides twelve plenary remissions for himself, and deliver four souls out of purgatory. All the surplus of this huge mass of pardons is applicable by way of suffrage to souls in purgatory. To turn this monstrous matter then into an arithmetical calculation, if one man, belonging to one order and using only one method, can gain all these, what must be the amount that can be done by all pious Romanists, of all orders, and using all methods?

O, surely, surely, in all this, there must either be the most accumulated mass of spiritual trickery, or else there is a wholesale licence to commit sin.

That indulgences are made subservient to the most unblushing trickery, is illustrated in what are called "privileged altars," one of which is set up in many churches, where masses for the dead are recited. A privileged altar is simply an altar to which an indulgence is attached, importing, that one mass said for a soul in purgatory at that altar, will infallibly deliver the soul out of purgatory. Now it is not an uncommon thing for Romanists to leave money for many masses to be said for the repose of their souls; cardinal Albernotius*, for, instance, left money by his will for fifty thousand masses to be said for his soul; an operation which, performed at common altars, would employ one priest for more than a hundred years: recourse is therefore had to the privilged altar, where one mass solves the difficulty, happily rendering all the rest superfluous, and setting the priesthood free from the discharge of a laborious and irksome duty. But what name will express the vileness of a system that can foster corruption so tainted as this?

I must turn now to another part of the history of indulgences: they have been, and still are, sold for money: they are to be obtained at their fixed price.

Romanists profess a holy horror of this practice, talk of it as an abuse, and deny it as a doctrine. It is not difficult however to show that this has been the practice of the church, from the days of the reformation to the present day; yet the system, without the money, is so iniquitous that, though the selling of indulgences proves and seals the iniquity beyond the possibility of equivocation, the mere sale adds but little to the flagrancy of the whole: for the evil effects of the indulgence are equally sure to follow, whether it is granted for muttering over three prayers, or paying down three shillings.

In the year 1500, being the year of Jubilee, pope Alexander VI. granted to the inhabitants of the whole realm of England a plenary indulgence, with power to choose their confessor, and obtain from him "absolation a pœna et culpa, from the guilt and punishment of sin," and a dispensation or changing of all manner of vows. In the bull, however, there is a clause, strictly limiting the privileges of the indulgence to those who, "being contrite and confessed, put into the chest for the intent ordained such sum or quantity of money, gold or silver, as is limited and taxed:" and then follows a scale of sixteen different prices, accommodating the bull to the wealth and ability of so many grades of purchasers. Polydore Virgil, the historian, who mentions this bull, asserts, that, though the money was collected professedly to go to war with the great Turk, yet that after vast sums had been amassed, no war was waged, but all found its way into the private coffers of the simoniacal pontiff +.

• Apud Genes. Sepulvedam. in vita Egidii Albernotii Card. + Mendham's Venal Indulgences, p. 40.

Eighteen years after this, the monstrous excesses of Tetzel threw all Germany into an uproar: he unblushingly assured those who came to purchase release for the souls of their parents, "The moment the money tinkles in the chest, your father's soul mounts up out of purgatory"." The profligacy of the priesthood proved infectious, and spread to the laity; it was no uncommon thing for a man who had purchased an indulgence to carry it to the gaming table, and make it the stake in a game of cards or dice +.

O! bitterly did the church of Rome rue the folly and imprudence of that most unprincipled agent; yet, rotting as she was under the baneful leprosy of her own venality and corruption, her hands could not cease from sin; the evil continued, and even increased so that five years afterwards, in the year 1523, the princes of the Germanic empire presented to the pope a list of a hundred grievances, in which they complain "that the Roman pontiffs had sucked all the marrow of their estates from the simple and too credulous Germans "-" that by this traffic in indulgences the greatest encouragement is given to the commission of all manner of crimes, fornication, incest, adultery, perjury, murder, theft, robbery, extortion!" This catalogue of crime is no invention of the Germanic princes; as though to verify the charges thus brought against the church, a book was at that very time openly sold in Paris, called "The Taxes of the Apostolic: Chancery and Sacred Peitentiary," in which these very crimes and a multitude of others are enumerated, and the prices marked for which absolution from them might be obtained! For instance, murder and incest might either of them be pardoned for seven shillings and sixpence, while perjury would cost nine shillings, and robbery twelve shillings §. Romanists have made many efforts to overthrow the authority of this book: at one time, they called it a protestant forgery, at another a list of the fees of office; but both these subterfuges are rendered useless by the honest indignation of Claude d'Espence, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and rector of the university of Paris, who in his commentary upon the epistle to Titus, having cited several charges that were made against the see of Rome, proceeds to say, "that all these charges might be considered as the fiction of the enemies of the pope, were it not for a book, printed and exposed for sale at Paris, entitled, The Tax Book of the Apostolic Chancery,' in which more wickedness may be learned than in all the summaries of all vices, and in which licence of sinning is proposed to most, and absolution to all who will buy it." This authentication of the book, by one who would have been glad to have been able to deny either its authenticity or its existence, who laments over it, as doing an injury to the cause of Rome, puts the fact of its existence beyond a doubt; and it stands an incontrovertible witness against Rome, and her unblushing venality in the sale of indulgences.

A singular circumstance proves that the sale of them still continued two centuries after the publication of this book. "In the year 1709," says bishop Burnet, "the privateers of Bristol took the Galleon (a Spanish merchant vessel), in which they found 500 bales of these bulls, and 16 reams were in a bale, so that they reckoned the whole came to 3,840,000. These bulls are imposed upon the people, and sold, the lowest at three rials, a little more than twenty pence; but to some at 50 pieces of eight, about eleven pounds of our money; and this to be valued according to the ability of the purchaser, once in two years; all are obliged to buy them against Lent. Besides the account