vent all the rest, and the whole people from doing their duty towards the minister of their choice. I know of no way by which that man can escape the condemnation of Christ for robbing the minister, not only of what he himself owed to his support, but also of all that he prevented others from giving, except by retiring from an office, for which the soul of a niggard is unfit, or obtaining from Christ a generous heart more like the Saviour's own.

، Some, however, soothe themselves by saying, but our minister is contented. How do they know? Because he does not complain. What then, must a minister's delicacy always be tried, by being left to suffer until he is compelled to complain? Is this generous? Ought not his charge to think it their duty to consider, whether he has not reason to complain; and if they are conscious that he has, should they not determine to spare his feelings by never leaving him to ask for that addition to his income, which they feel to be his due? pp. 37.—39. ·

We have known instances in which the conscientious pastor has submitted to exigency, rather than risk in any degree his hold on the affections of his people, or any measure of his usefulness, by a complaint as to the narrowness of his stipend. We have been credibly informed of one instance, in which a deacon accidentally called on his pastor on the Sunday, and found him dining with his family on potatoes. Smitten with self-reproach, he made the circumstance known among the congregation, and the minister's income was instantly doubled. Frequently the fault does not lie with the people: it originates in the appointment of deacons ignorant of their duty, or unfaithful to their trust. A deacon ought to be a man of business as well as a man of prayer, ruling his own house well, and not greedy of filthy lucre. The neglect of this Apostolic caution has proved the ruin .of many a minister's peace, and blighted the prosperity of many a church. Nominal deacons are worse than none. Sometimes, a church is found languishing under the superintendence of some two, or perhaps one venerable sexagenarian, whose deaconship is a dead weight upon its exertions. No trust ought to be suffered to fall into the hands of one man, whether it involves property or only power. It is a minister's best security, to have the fullest number of deacons that the church will admit of: it renders him less dependent on any one individual, and it tends to preclude a jealousy on the part of the congregation with regard to the direction of church affairs. The frequent recognition of their power of electing deacons, would lead them to confide in them as representatives, in the management of those matters which common discretion may forbid to make the subject of public discussion. All the objections which seem to lie against the Congregational mode of church-government, will, we are persuaded, be found to originate in a prac tical departure, either from the spiritof the Apostolic injunctions,

or from what no system of policy can remedy, the absence of true religion.*

With regard to the generosity, the disinterestedness of ministers, and the sacrifices made by those who enter the Dissenting ministry, our private information would afford us the means of amply substantiating all, and more than all, that Mr. Bennett has affirmed. Still, it were as well to disarm those who may be aware of facts of a different kind, by the admission, that the rank of life from which our academies are chiefly replenished, is not such as to render the Dissenting ministry an ineligible mode of support. And as to a large class of worthy and efficient labourers, but whose capacity would never have raised them, in any other line of life, above the lower ranks, while we fully admit their claims on the generous support of their own people, yet, we cannot admit that they are much worse off than they would have been as mechanics or little shopkeepers. Talent, we believe, generally fetches its price in the Dissenting ministry. Would to God that solid worth and Apostolic piety always did' also! But whatever ground of discouragement and just complaint may exist, there are good things enough in the shape of Dissenting benefices, to operate as some temptation, when combined with the gentility of the cloth, and the chance of a prize in the matrimonial lottery, to a brisk young fellow who is impatient of the counter or the desk, the warehouse or the bench. Nor is even the average of the incomes of Dissenting ministers so much below the stipends of many curates in our proud and wealthy Establishment, as to render Conformity, where the choice presents itself, a much more attractive alternative. But sometimes, these pulpit adventurers do at length conform, and the Dissenting ministry happily gets rid of them.

The loudest complaints against the niggardliness of Dissenters towards their ministers, we are apt to believe, proceed from disappointed rather than from suffering men. Some who have not entered the ministry from mercenary or improper motives, have either been betrayed by their own imprudence into embarrassments which have compromised their respectability, and undermined their influence, or have caught the infection of a trading spirit, and murmur only because they are not making money. And some are making money, by means which, how

*We may take this occasion of recommending to our readers a sermon entitled "The Work and the Reward of Faithful Deacons," by Dr. Newman of Stepney, which contains some highly useful hints. It by no means, however, exhausts the subject, and some points are touched much too superficially. The duty of the Deacons to provide for the competent support of the pastor is barely mentioned at p. 10; and no attempt is made to illustrate or enforce this part of their office.

ever legitimate in themselves, too often lead to a departure from the proprieties and the true spirit of the ministerial character. And such individuals may be found complaining that they are driven to these expedients, when, possibly, the same intenseness with which these secular concerns are pursued, had it been carried into the discharge of all their pastoral duties, would have issued, not only in an extension of their usefulness, but in an equal improvement of their income. Others turn merchants on a larger scale: they will have a chapel of their own, and be at the mercy of no deacons and no people, but issue their quarterly tickets of admission, and be their own paymaster. And they have their reward. Several of these chapel-mongers have succeeded in filling the house, and are growing rich. And these men will be among the loudest in deprecating the narrow spirit of Dissenters, and in pitying the luckless pastors who are said to be starving on narrow incomes. Some, indeed, thus preach Christ for money; and the best that can be said, is, "What then? whether in pretence or in truth, if Christ is preached, we will therein rejoice."

But there are other ministers, who make far less bustle in the religious world than these buyers and sellers in the Temple, and who give away fewer guineas to religious societies, but whose reward shall be great in heaven. In every age, a mercenary spirit has been the foulest pest of the Church; and it signifies little what form it assumes. But shew us the minister who for twenty years denies himself a servant, that he may be able to give his guinea or his five guineas, when a case of distress presents itself, and who is munificent simply by means of selfdenial, where another would be in straits;-or the minister who, without making a merit of it, refuses, for the bribe of a larger salary, to desert a post of duty, and to fling away the af fections of a united people, although they cannot raise him much above a bare maintenance; or the humble and self-devoted servant of Christ, who can be content to labour in obscurity for his thirty or forty years, in the lowliest poverty, among the poor, and yet be happy to live and die in the service;

we could name not a few such men in the Dissenting ministry, and these are the generous men who have drunk into the spirit of their profession, and who alone acting up to Mr. Bennett's excellent exhortation, consecrate themselves to serve Christ's interests, and trust him to take care of theirs.'

There is one topic to which we are surprised that the Preacher omitted to allude in discussing the general subject of the support of the Christian ministry. If the Gospel is to be preached to the poor, it must be, in many cases, preached to them under circumstances which render it absolutely impossible for the minister to derive his support from the contributions of the

people. The duty of individuals and of churches to contribute to funds in aid of such ministers and churches, would seem to be so clearly indicated by the practice of the primitive churches, that we cannot admit either Missionary Societies, or Bible Societies, or hospitals, or dispensaries, to have a prior claim on Christian benevolence. The admirable institutions for the relief of Dissenting ministers, which at present exist, deserve to be better known and more generally supported, as their funds are by no means adequate to meet the necessities of the times. The poor, after all that can be urged in enforcement of the duty of supporting the Christian ministry, and after all that can be done towards its support, we shall always have among us; poor churches and poor ministers; and these have claims which are too often lost sight of amid the general stir, and rivalry, and glare of highly patronized and more splendid institutions. We have pleasure in stating, that although this subject is not distinctly adverted to in the sermon, whatever profits may arise from its sale, are to be devoted to the assistance of ministers whose pecuniary difficulties may prove the ⚫ painful necessity for such a discourse.' The best means of affording this assistance would have fairly come within the subject. Local associations have sometimes embraced this object, but they must necessarily be inadequate to the general exigency, Many hundreds a year are raised by the London congregations for the purpose of affording aid to country ministers having narrow stipends, and are unostentatiously distributed as an annual grant. But these funds have by no means kept pace with the depression of the times, and the increasing number of applicants. There are rich congregations in the country as well as in London; and we have never heard any good reason assigned, why they might not in like manner contribute of their abundance to the want of their poorer brethren.

It must not be concealed, that a very inadequate sense of the claims of the Christian ministry to a liberal support, is chargeable on all religious denominations. We have no occasion to except the members of the Establishment. What they give to their own clergy, is for the most part given of necessity and grudgingly; and both the occasion of Lord Harrowby's Bill and the opposition raised against it, would amply bear us out in retorting the charge brought against Sectarianism, of starving its own cause.' But we make the remark chiefly in reference to Congregational Dissenters, whose liberality as a body, estimated in relation to their aggregate wealth, will bear a comparison with that of any class in the community; and yet, we repeat, that very inadequate notions are prevalent among them on the subject in question. It is a point on which we would deprecate any angry expression of feeling, and all

intemperate declamation; but there is abundant occasion to press home on the consciences of Christians, those plain Scriptural obligations to a voluntary liberality, which, owing to the modern system of pew-rents and tickets on the one hand, and the love of a cheap Gospel on the other, have certainly been to a great extent lost sight of. The chief difficulty in enforcing these obligations on the principle of the Apostolic precepts, arises from the mixed character of Dissenting congregations. Were those only to contribute to the maintenance of the minister, who are actuated by the proper motive, he would sometimes starve. Hence, when an appeal is made, it is made, not to the Church as an organized society, but to the congregation, as it has become usual to term the stated auditory; and it is clothed in language suited to the lax or general notions of worldly men. The higher motives are consequently seldom produced; and a system of policy is substituted for a system of principles. The plea is, that the rich man who pays for his curtained pew, the niggard who gives to save his character, and the needy man who gives only on compulsion, would all escape if the power of religious motives were trusted to. We are very strongly inclined, however, to believe, that were the system of voluntary contribution under proper management adhered to, although many would attend, who would never give any thing towards the support of the ministry, the total raised would, in many cases, be as large. It is not the rich who for the most part support the minister, let the mode of contribution be what it may: their subscription is very seldom equal, in proportion, to that of the poorer members. In excuse for this, they are ready to urge, that the calls on their munificence are so numerous. The fact too often is, that people will subscribe freely, when their donations are blazoned in a report, and some éclat or patronage attaches to it, who will not care even to be just to private claims. Is it right to leave such persons under a delusion? Ought the only consideration to be, that, by whatever means and motives, the money is raised? Is the support of the minister a mere counting-house affair, like other concerns of pounds, shillings, and pence? Or is it a strictly religious affair, for which the New Testament has expressly provided, and which is the subject of positive precept? The ministry itself is degraded under any other view of the matter; and if its claims in this one respect are merged in lower considerations, we very much question whether any of the moral claims attaching to the pastoral office are likely to be recognised. The congregations which give scantily and grudgingly to the support of their minister, will seldom be found setting much value on either his personal services or his office. It is not, therefore, as affecting merely his income, that