tem, to any extent, provides for assistance to Popish schools,-schools tending to promote, not light, but darkness! They obstruct education, frustrate the object of Parliament in 1846-7 respecting the annual grants, and turn the money received from the Committee on Education to the purposes of propagandism and the establishment of nunneries, as the Tablet has fairly confessed, and triumphs in the fact.

The following are the dates and exact amounts given by Government for the support of Popish schools, together with the annual increase during the last four years:

Total Grants.

From 1839-1852 £14,583 7 02

1853

9.879 7 10

1854 10,907 12 94

Thus it will be seen the wedge is being rapidly driven home. A few years more, and the grant will reach £100,000 per annum.

PRIVY COUNCIL PATRONAGE OF POPISH BOOKS.

THE Committee of Privy Council are no match for Rome, who has succeeded in leavening their educational works with Popery! The Scottish Reformation Society has been informed by the Committee of the Privy Council, with whom they remonstrated on the subject, that they intend to insert in their list of educational works several alterations, specifying that certain books are written

by Popish authors; which is very much like digging a pit in the highway, and then placing at its mouth a stake and a lantern! Why dig the pit at all?

The entire question of the Privy Council list of school books was brought before the Free Presbytery at Edinburgh by Dr. Begg, and a remonstrance to the Council was agreed to. The subject has been considered in the Commissions of the Established and Free Churches of Scotland, and petitions to Parliament have been agreed to. The question will also be discussed in both the General Assemblies in May next. This is an example to the Christian public of England.

Managers of schools are recommended to examine every work received by grant from the Privy Council, as communications from various quarters show that Romish and other erroneous works have been unwittingly admitted through this channel into Protestant schools and libraries.

MAYNOOTH.

A MEETING, numerously attended, was lately held at the King's Arms, Palace Yard, Westminster, to determine as to the course to be pursued in reference to the Maynooth question. It was agreed by Mr. Spooner and a large majority of those present, that the payment in one sum of the various amounts proposed to be paid by Mr. Spooner's bill, in full discharge of all claims upon the nation, would be received as a settlement of this question.

minister and his family, to pay him a salary, or

2. That supporting the minister is supporting a man in a life of mere learned leisure.

3. That a minister's salary should be fixed by usage, without regard to the amount sufficient; or by age in the work (inversely).

4. Against the notion that churches are to consider themselves the guardians of ministers against covetousness, and therefore to keep the support low.

5. Against the notion "we are not able," (pleaded often in the most solid congrega tions, as to property).

6. Against the sentiment that if a minister happens to have by inheritance or by marriage, a little property, it absolves his people from rendering him a full support.

7. Against the notion that inadequate support is an evil to be cured by the dissolution of the pastoral tie.

8. The notion that the contract for the ministerial support is to be managed like bargains, in which the object is to get a minister for as low a salary as he can be induced to take.

Advantages of the generous support of the ministry.

1. The people better satisfied with themselves.

2. Makes ministers of good courage in their work.

3. The people better profited than by a stinted and starved ministry.

4. More young men of Christian character will be willing to go into the ministry.

5. The better prosperity of religion and the revival of religion may be more hopefully looked for under a change of the habits of ministerial support.

H.

STATE OF THE ESTABLISHED
CHURCH MINISTRY.

IF the condition of matters touching the various bodies of Dissenters is bad, it is still worse in the Church of England. A late number of the Ecclesiastical Gazette contained 30 advertisements from clergymen in search of curates. Out of this number one only offers £100 a-year, there is one at £90, one or two at £80, and the rest rapidly fall from £70 down to £26, with a small furnished house, where the rector is non-resident. One is unique. It offers £50, with the use of the rectory house, the curate to buy the rector's furniture at a valuation of £360! Another gives £70 in a parish of nearly 6,000, where there is daily service. And this, too, in a town in which of course the expense of lodging and living is comparatively high. The applicant in this case is moreover precluded from increasing his beggarly income, for he is required to be "active, zealous, fond of schools, and parochial visiting, and willing to devote his whole time to pastoral work in the parish." Some of these offers are avowedly addressed to men of "private fortune," and in them there is either no stipend given, or it is so small that shame prevents its publication. There are not less than seven which give only £50 a-year, or half what is expected by trained national schoolmasters, and much less than is given to a respectable commercial clerk, whose education is infinitely less costly than that of a clergyman, and who, in addition, enters on his calling at least eight or nine years earlier than the parson. Surely it is high time that such an order of things were either mended or ended.

MUCH is being said in all denominations of Christians concerning finance, and the complaint is general, that the churches are greatly at fault on the score of liberality. The New World, in this respect, unhappily, by no means compensates for the defects of the Old. Things in the United States are far from satisfactory. An address was lately issued by one of the chief organizations to each of the ministers of all the evangelical churches in the United States, which began thus :

"REV. AND BELOVED,-The officers of the American Systematic Beneficence Society deem it important that a sermon on the general subject of systematic benefi

cence should be preached by every minister in the land at the commencement of the year, since business men are then examining more carefully than usual the state of their pecuniary affairs. The object of this communication is to invite you very respecfully and very earnestly to perform this service at your earliest convenience. As the importance of this movement, in its bearing upon the spirituality and usefulness of our American Zion, is so apparent, we make the appeal with entire confidence of success.

"It is presumed that no one will deny that covetousness is the crying sin of our American churches, that it is eating out their spirituality, and ripening them for the doom of the Seven Churches in Asia. It is well known that the process of accu

"The amount of receipts to 19 of our most important benevolent institutions, as reported at the May Anniversaries in New York last year, was 1,850,000 dollars, which, estimating the number of communicants at 4,176,000, is but 45 cents each. The whole number of preaching missionaries sustained in the foreign field by all our American churches is 450 (less than one to a million of souls), with 570 male and female helpers, at an annual expense of about 800,000 dollars, which is less than 20 cents to each communicant. As it is well known that a great portion of these contributions are given in sums of 10, 20, 50, 100, and even 1,000 dollars, it follows to a certainty that from one-half to two-thirds of our church members give nothing! Where do these delinquents live? Should they not be searched out?

"And how is it with those who do give? Do they give as much as they ought, considering how freely they spend money for their own comfort and enjoyment? Do they give as much as they ought, considering that 600,000,000 of their fellowmen for the want of the Gospel are daily going down in unbroken ranks into the world of despair? Do they give as much as they ought, considering the test by which the final Judge will separate his friends from his foes?

"Is it not clear that the churches are asleep on the subject? And will you not aid us in our attempt to awaken them?

A public writer, with a view to rouse the churches to a sense of their shortcoming, has instituted a most crushing comparison between them and a society of merely worldly men. He says:

"According to a special report read to the American Board of Missions, at its anniversary held in Oswego, the number of churches contributing to the funds of the Board may be noted at 3,149, containing 385,000 members.

"From the annual report of the fraternity of Odd Fellows in the United States, it appears that their number of subordinate lodges is 2,729, containing 193,298 members.

"The number of churches more than of lodges, then, is 420; and the number of members of the churches over the number of members of the lodges is 141,702.

"Now let the annual receipts be compared. The receipts of the American Board in the financial year 1852-3, were

314,928 23 dollars; the receipts of the Odd Fellows' fraternity for 1852 were 1,164,331 dollars. From which it appears, that the Odd Fellows, with 2,729 lodges and 193,298 members, paid into their treasury 849,402-77 dollars more than the American Board received from 3,149 churches having 335,000 members.

"The average to be credited to each church patronizing the American Board for the financial year 1852-3 was a few mills over 100 dollars; call it 100 dollars a church. The average to each Odd Fellows' lodge for 1852 was 426-65. The average to each member of the churches patronizing the American Board for the year 1852-3 was 94 cents. The average to each member of the Odd Fellows' fraternity in 1852 was 6'02 dollars. So that it appears the Odd Fellows paid into their treasury 5.08 dollars per member more than the American Board received from the churches per member.

"If, in the financial year 1852-3, the 335,000 members of the churches patronizing the American Board, had contributed to the cause of missions each the sum averaged to each Odd Fellow, namely, 6.02 dollars, the sum placed at the disposal of the Board, for the year, to carry forward the enterprise of missions, would have been 2,016,700 dollars."

This is, doubtless, a very humbling state of things; but there is reason to fear that our own country would not gain, in this matter, by a comparison with America. The great practical question instantly forces itself upon us, What is the remedy? It must not be set down to the want of principle: this, we hold, would be utterly unjust. It is the want of system, and that alone. The proof is at hand. We have no idea that the churches of Scotland are the subjects of more heart-felt piety than those of England and America, although that country far outstrips them both in the race of contribution. How is this to be accounted for? Simply by its superior and admirable organization. The following letter from the celebrated Dr. Guthrie, to a gentleman connected with the Church of England, is of incalculable value, as solving the mystery. The Doctor proceeds :

"Edinburgh, March 1, 1858. "MY DEAR SIR,-You must pardon me for delaying so long my reply to your letter. When I arrived here I found such a mass of business waiting my return as has occupied my efforts for a week to get through. Now I am taking up my correspondence, and I proceed with much pleasure to address myself to your queries. "1. I have no doubt whatever that the

order of your church for the collection of offerings for pews and charitable purposes from the congregation on the Lord's day is most scriptural. In fact, I have been astonished to find a practice so plainly enjoined by the Apostle Paul, in 1 Cor. xvi. 2, so much neglected in the English Church.

"2. I don't believe that the instructions which Paul in the above passage gives to the Christians in Corinth were of local force. I believe that they embody a principle of universal application.

"3. The idea, by whomsoever promulgated, that this practice in our churches savours of Popery, or gives any countenance to the heresy of justification by works, is eminently absurd. The practice is, and has been for ages gone by, universal in Scotland, and I will venture to say there are no people in the world less likely to adopt either principles or practices of Popery than we here on the north side of the border.

"4. Not only do we collect voluntary offerings at every public meeting for worship on the Lord's day, but on week-days at prayer-meetings, whether these be held in the school-room or the church.

"5. In some of our churches we have pew-rents, in many of them none; and so far from objecting to the substitution of voluntary offerings for these, we would much prefer the voluntary offerings if they would serve the purpose. We would say that pew-rents should not be attempted wherever an attempt is making to evangelize a heathen district of any of our large towns.

"6. Were voluntary offerings universal in your English churches, as they should be, you could raise an immense revenue for the glory of God and the service of the church. In my congregation alone, where we collect voluntarily at both forenoon and afternoon worship, we receive about £500 annually of voluntary offerings-and this besides raising about as much from pew-rents, and about £1,100 for a fund out of which all the ministers of the Free Church receive an equal share. That fund, which congregations give to according to their ability, amounts to about £100,000

a year. The income of the Free Church, all voluntary, is about £300,000 annually; and if we, in our poor country-poor, as compared with England-raise such a sum as that from our share of the population, amounting to about 1,000,000, what might the Church of England do, did she put forth her vast resources? Including one thing and another, I mean stipend and the value of a manse and garden, none of our ministers have under £150 a year. Unendowed as we are now by the State, we are better off than very many of the clergymen of the Church of England. That shows what can be done through the vo luntary offerings of the people.

"7. These I have already said would form a mighty means of church extension in connexion with the Church of England. In them she has a rich mine, which she should work for the elevation of the lowest classes, and the salvation of our country.

"8. Certainly; the Church of England should not wait a day for endowments. Let her use the means she has already in her own hands. She would be all but inde pendent of endowments were she to do so.

"9. The plain, imperative duty of a church is to preach the Gospel, and send forth men for that purpose, and build churches, and set up the whole machinery of a Christian church, without waiting one day for the countenance of the State, or the support of endowments; and, in these circumstances, she is to call upon the people to give of their carnal things to those who distribute among them the bread of life.

To give anything like an adequate idea of the contents of this volume would require ten times the space we can afford. It is not offered as a life of the

admirable man from whom it derived existence, but as "Reminiscences of Labour and Adventure in the North of Europe, and more especially in

Russia. Prefixed to the volume, however, is a Memorial Sketch, of great interest, which forms a proper and pertinent introduction to the work, and will be perused with deep interest, as throwing much important light on the religion and ecclesiastical arrangements of the period.

It is seldom safe to predict the fate of such a publication, since volumes of the utmost solidity and superior worth may long linger in a first impression, while the veriest rubbish, by the blinding or exciting influence of external circumstances, may go off in tens of thousands. We hesitate not, however, to affirm that if the work shall obtain anything even approaching to fair play, the demand will be great and general. Scotland alone ought to take, and to take forthwith, 500 copies; and England three times that number. Wherever the volume shall become known, it will long remain a book in favour, both in the private family and in the public library. From its very multifarious nature, it admits of no analysis; the variety is as great as the events set forth. It throws considerable light on the character both of individuals and of nations, of kings and of emperors. The following are specimens :

A NEOLOGIAN OVERTHROWN.

But I had another and more important matter to bring before the Bishop. The Orphan House in Altona had obtained from the Danish Chancery the sole privilege of printing and circulating the German Scriptures in the Danish German states. Now, an edition of the whole Bible in German was then passing through the press in Altona. The clergyman, to whom the preparing of it for the press had been entrusted, was a decided Neologian, and he had chosen to introduce Neologian notes and comments, some of which my friend Van der Smissen had seen, although the whole affair was conducted with the utmost secrecy. I foresaw that if this was allowed to go forward, no other German Bible would be suffered to be circulated or sold in the German states of Denmark, that is, in Holstein and Sleswick, and the poison of Neology would thus be spread among the people more and more. This was only another part of the plan of the Rationalists gradually to supersede Luther's Bible, and undermine the whole Gospel system. This I was determined, if possible, to counteract; and I thought I could do it. I got Mr. Van der Smissen to procure for me privately some of the sheets as they were passing through the press. This he succeeded in doing, and I found their contents bad indeed. These I carried with me to Copenhagen, and put them into Bishop Munter's hands. He was shocked at the shameless effrontery and dishonesty

of the directors of the Orphan House, and especially offended on account of the instrument they had employed to effect their object. He said it was a most delicate matter for him to meddle with, as he had no authority in the German provinces; none could interfere but the Chancery, who had given them the privilege. I urged him, for the sake of religion, to lay aside all delicacy, and to exert himself to the uttermost to prevent the ruin of souls. He promised to do what he could privately. At length he found an opportunity of bringing the matter before the Chancery, where it was fully investigated. The undertaking was condemned, and the whole edition ordered to be sent to the fortress of Gluckstadt, there to remain for

ever.

THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER AND LEGH RICHMOND.

When the Emperor was in England, he paid a visit to Portsmouth. This being known beforehand, people from all the country round resorted to the town, to have a sight of him, and, among others, the Rev. Legh Richmond. Many of them were on the top of the tower which overlooks the harbour and surrounding country, expecting that the Emperor would certainly ascend it, to enjoy the view; and Mr. R. was one of the number. After waiting a little, orders were given that they should all leave the tower. Mr. R., who was lame, was in no hurry, and he remained behind. After a pause, the Emperor came up, at first quite alone. He made up to Mr. R., and entered into familiar conversation with him, asking him to point out and describe the different objects in view. This he did in his own delightful manner, as none could do it better than he. By-and-bye all the great folks joined them; of these the Emperor took no notice, but stuck close to his guide, Mr. R., asking him questions, and receiving all necessary information from him alone. After thanking Mr. R. kindly for the information he had given him, he took his leave, and descended.

After some months, Mr. Richmond sent to me a copy of his "Annals of the Poor," handsomely bound, requesting, if I saw proper, that I would present it to the Emperor, and in his letter giving me an account of his interview with the latter on the tower at Portsmouth. I immediately wrote a letter to be presented to the Emperor, reminding him of what had taken place at Portsmouth, and stating that the author of the small volume which accompanied it was the person who had pointed out to him the different objects in the scene, also giving him some account of the author and of his works, and how useful they had been. The book and the letter were presented by Prince Galitzin, and gave much satisfaction. The Emperor ordered that a ring set with jewels, to the value of about £100, should, through me, be presented to Mr. Richmond.

Sch are fair specimens of these delightful "Reminiscences." We dismiss the volume with our very cordial commendation.