too often attribute to it as a cause results which are in no wise produced by it; and, at the same time, shew themselves too often "partial in the law." As to the former, the old story touching the sapient Wiltshire jury applies here. An inquest was held on the body of a man found dead on Salisbury Plain. The Coroner, on discovering indications that the poor man had perished by his own. hand, suggested the verdict of "Felo da se,” which the learned foreman interpreted--being guided, it may be presumed, more by the sound than the sense- "Fell into the sea. Difficulties were urged

by one at least of the twelve, on the ground of there being no sea near Stonehenge; but these were speedily set aside by the foreman, with the remark that "the Coroner knows best." The suicide, therefore, according to the verdict, "fell into the sea" on Salisbury Plain! Now, the parallel in the present day is just this: People perish through want of food and the necessaries of life-fuel among the rest, in our inclement part of the Temperate Zone-and the single cut and dried verdict of the temperance tribe is, "Death from drunkenness." As to the one-sidedness of this quackery, we woud say If beer-drinking must be stopped, club-house potations should be inquired into. The boast of England is that all men are equal in the eye of the law. Yes, rich and poor here must be tarred with the same brush. We trust that the Rev. Basil Wiberforce had an eye to some thing more than beer-drinking when, according to his speech, as reported in the Gloucester Chronicle, date April 10, 1875, he thus expressed himself:-“ I venture to say from my experience of this sin of drunkenness, that it has ruined more young men starting in life, it has robbed of their honour more pure women, it has brought down more grey hairs with bitter sorrow to the grave, it has emptied more churches and chapels, and, I say, it has damned more souls than all the sins of the Ten Commandments rolled into one." So, then, our new school of Moral Philosophy has discovered an important omission in the Decalogue. Moses is weighed in their newly-invented scales, and found wanting. Murder, adultery, fraud-these are as the small dust of the balance. Our Divorce Court, and all other

Courts of Justice, must of course be pronounced impertinent, and bidden forthwith to close their doors. Deeds of violence, adultery, chicanery (what a blessed gospel for public companies!) are mere peccadillos. Nay, it is taught that these sins only enter into the man together with the alcohol. Hence that favourite phrase, "demon drink," of the new gospellers. Wisdom once proclaimed upon the house tops, "not that which entereth into a man defileth the man." These public instructors, on the other hand, hold and teach that "the heart of man, out of which proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, &c., &c.," only becomes evil when inspired by liquor. Philip sober is a saint!

Should the movement among the agricultural labourers extend to all the counties, so that the wages of the sons of the soil become fairly proportionate to their reasonable wants, the "House Test" wiil become in a manner obsolete, as it regards this portion of the labouring population, from the paucity of applications for relief. This desideratum is, doubtless, that which animates those who support this movement. All honour to them, therefore; and, despite the fact that certain Episcopal charges seem to betray some hesitation on the part of those delivering them, as to the duty of the Clergy sanctioning these efforts among the rural poor for securing self-relief, all charitably disposed persons cannot but hail with the highest satisfaction the prospect of seeing those by whose toil "the staff of life" is maintained, relieved from the dread of the Union, with its prison life, and all its horrors for old age and honesty. The writer, for one, rejoices at this self-emancipation of the rural population; and heartily bids "God speed" to all who have been raised up in the good providence of God to assist their poor brethren in working out this Exodus from the oppressive grasp of the Mammon-Pharoah.

Other Church-rulers are deploring the spirit of the age as betraying no fixed principles and shewing that something is yet lacking" in the state of Denmark." Let us boldly tell them that that indefinable 'something' is charity-charity for those "who have none to help." When true Christianity shall prevail,

'Bastilles' will be a thing of the past. "The end of the com mandment is charity.'

It is this loving spirit which has influenced the people of Elberfeld. Hence they enjoy the two-fold happiness of knowing that they have performed a Christian duty, and also that of seeing not only that the unfortunate and the afflicted are sympathised with and relieved, but also raised from their degradatiou and misery and then enabled to help others, thus passing from the class of the relieved to the relieving one. Their plan is not to pauperise permanently, but to elevate. To accomplish this, all persons who have the requisite time at their disposal assist in the distribution of the money raised for the relief of the poor. They do not make " a job" of distress. Poor-law Presidents and Commissioners with them must do their work for the love of it, not that they and their families may ride in their carriages supported by money which should relieve the destitute. This is Prussia's method of assisting the poor. May England, for once, confess that she has been misled by her self-styled Political Economists, and learn, though late, "the more excellent way." For England's God it is that bids her "go and do likewise."

What efforts have been made of late years for the evangelisation of the million! But where are the results? As to the National Church, she has long since been constrained to confess that she has lost the working population. Ah, is there not a cause? Time was when the poor, wasted with sickness and starving through being thrown out of employment found sympathy with their "spiritual pastors and masters." But the new Poor-law Amendment Act introduced another state of things; and from that unhappy moment the poor have not ceased year by year to be more and more alienated from the Church of their fathers. Churches may be built, aye, and expressly for them, but they decline the proffered boon; and if they are Sunday worshippers at all, they are to be found at the Conventicle. Even the American Evangelists met with indifferency from the producing classes. These latter have discovered that 'faith' as in St. James's day can still be dis

sociated from charity (love); and that lock-ups which they call (specially in Yorkshire) Bastilles, with prison dress and "skilly" withal, for used up toilers, is no proof that the teachers and preachers who uphold such systems of poor-relief, have "verily and indeed" received themselves the regenerating gospel which they seem so intent on urging upon the acceptance of their less fortunate neighbours. They discover from "The Book and its Story" that those who first preached "Jesus and the Resurrection" were content to share and share alike, as to "the bread that perisheth" with those who received their doctrine. No doubt this state of things did not long continue; but nobody heard in the early and best days of Christianity of its members being suffered by their fellow-members to perish of starvation; or, of such a contrast as is presented by the boundless extravagance of the rich and the awful destitution of the poor, in our own day; or, of millionaires on the one side and penniless mendicants on the other; of those who fare sumptuously every day and the thousands who know not how to contrive to get enough to keep body and soul together; of Lord Mayor's Feasts and our Legion of Lazaruses subsisting nobody knows how, but certainly not even on the crumbs falling from the groaning tables. Evangelists, would they be received by the million, must give them the Gospel "whole and undefiled." Our heart's desire and prayer to God is that the poor may be saved as well as the rich; but how can this be, if they are virtually excommunicated, cut off from Christ and all participation in the means of grace for the growth of their souls, by their appalling destitution?

What confusion everywhere prevails as to the very foundations of all morality! The Times seems bewildered at contemplating it. The Bremerhaven monstrosity demonstrates that the unsuspecting multitude are ever moving over cineres suppositos. Total abstainers will of course be ready to swear that the inspiring dæmon of the Thomases and the Wainwrights was drink. The fabricator of the infernal machine, however, when dying, simply declared that he was "a native of New York." Yes, it is Brooklyn,

b

where "the almighty dollar" is so openly worshipped, that has the honour of generating both a Beecher and the Bremerhaven monster. Then, again, our publicists are compelled, however reluctantly, to confess that, as to cana fides, there is none. Its hoary hairs have been followed by dissolution. Witness the thousand and one nefarious companies launched under the auspices of noble Lords and Members of Parliament. Listen to the cries on all sides of the widow and the fatherless, defrauded of their means of existence by this flagrant chicanery. In any other nation in Europe the victims of these glaring frauds would be indemnified, by a righteous judicature, from the property of those who have elicited their confidence only to betray it. But, alas! in England the defrauders are tho makers and administrators of the laws.

What desolations, then, are wrought throughout the land! And yet, what are they, after all, other than the natural outgoings of corrupt principles? In 1833 appeared the Tracts for the Times. Oxford hereby elaborates a scheme that destroys the very foundation of morals. Non-natural' is the watch-word. Terms are now to profess a meaning the very opposite of that for which they were adopted and had for 300 years been employed! The next year (1834) improves upon this spiritual teaching, and brings forth the New Poor Law Amendment Act, which for the charitable provision of the law of Elizabeth substitutes the most transparent sham to which England has ever closed her eyes. When for nearly a half century falsehood, as such, and cruelty to the poor has been allowed to supplant charity, under the plea of a false expediency, or the dictates of a 'philosophy' worse than false, who can marvel at beholding results which appal even the coolest and clearest heads of our thinkers?

Let none, then, be surprised at finding in these pages some plain remarks touching the preachers of our age. The writer has long been convinced of the truth of Isaac Taylor's observation that the pulpit has lost its power of rebuke. Such honest thinkers, too, as John Ruskin, maintain that the times call for men endued with the spirit of the ancient prophets-men bold in their God to expose