of a misguided or venal press, Crystal Palaces (we trust) will still be closed on that day. Covetousness is one of the national vices, and the money-loving spirit is pronounced to be the ruling spirit of the age. Myriads of our countrymen worship at the shrine of mammon all the week and all the year round. This is the British Juggernauth, crushing the souls of innumerable victims beneath its ponderous curse. Yet, on the other hand, where is the country that can compare with England for philanthropy and public charities? "It was impossible for me," said Lamartine, after a visit to this country, "not to be dazzled by the immense progress made by England in population, industry, wealth. The sanitary improvement, vast growth, and embellishment of its metropolis are marvellous: but especially deserving of notice are the ever-multiplying charitable institutions; the many associations of real, religious, conservative, and fraternal socialism between the different classes. These prevent explosions, by evaporating the causes of them; stifle murmurs from below, by conferring benefits from above; close the mouths of the people, not by the brutalities of police, but by the arm of public virtue. The source of that public virtue is the religious feeling, with which English people are endowed more than many others." -The licentiousness of the present day, fearful as may be its extent, differs widely from that of one hundred and fifty years ago. We may use the language of one who has lately written well on the state of morals during the reigns of the first two Georges :-" Marriage was despised; sisters, daughters, and wives of the most loyal subjects, the greatest Generals, the wisest Statesmen, and the gravest Judges, not only practised, but unblushingly avowed, the grossest licentiousness. The Poet Laureate (immediately before this period) published a poem in which he formally advocates polygamy, or something worse; and his atrocious work is said to have been universally read and quoted, even in discourses from the pulpit.” With this state of things let the most cynical contrast that which now prevails in the court and aristocracy of England, the higher, middle, and lower classes.-Nor are we afraid to contend, despite the dreadful prevalence of infidelity among artisans and operatives in our towns and cities, that the majority of England's labouring population respect religion. Government statistics show that more than half of the population who can attend public worship, do attend ;-i. e., out of 9,860,000 who might have attended on the 30th of March, 1851, 6,356,000 did attend. Such being the undeniable fact, we cannot adopt the ultra-alarmist tone of some persons, as though the large majority of the working classes were altogether ungodly and infidel. Things are black and bad enough, but not so dismal as that. During a beautiful summer evening in 1851, an excursion-train was passing from the provinces to London. It was crowded with working-men and their wives on their way to the Great Exhibition. In one of the carriages was a little coterie of "fellows of the baser sort," who dealt out language of obscenity. The worthy wife of one of these men rebuked them for the offence. Rebuke made them worse. The good woman happened to be a good singer, and she struck up a good old tune to Bishop Ken's Evening Hymn. The exquisite old hymn and tune soon swelled on the gentle breezes of the night. The strains were caught by those of the next carriage, and by those in the next, and the next. The tongue of the libertines was stopped by the general song of praise. Yea, and a thousand thousand of our working people, in spite of the poison of a false philosophy, of pestiferous lecturing, and of a ribald and infidel press, are ready to sing down both the sceptic and the obscene. Public opinion is, surely, in favour of Christianity; and among the masses, even of our town and city populations, the leaven of Christianity extensively works. To this, in a large degree, is owing the security of England's throne, during general Continental revolutions in years scarcely past. If we have thus taken a glance at the bright side, we must admit that there is a fearfully dark one. Our national vices are, after all, heartsickening. Drunkenness has been pronounced "the Englishman's sin;" and England "the most drunken country on the face of the earth." "I am aware that, with all the superior privileges which are our boast, we cannot hold up an unabashed and unblushing face before France, or Germany, or Switzerland. In the course of last summer, I spent seven weeks in these countries. I saw Paris at a time of national rejoicing, and the population of that gay city let loose from business to pursue pleasure at their will. If in that mighty crowd there were gloomy looks turned on the royal pomp, and serried regiments, that conducted to his baptism the infant heir to the throne,-the eye detected no drunkard. If some were sullen, all were sober. I was in Brussels during three days of prolonged public fêtes. All its people were abroad in the streets, and the mighty throng was swelled by some fifty thousand, who had poured into the Belgian capital from the various cities of the kingdom. There were not presented, in all these seven weeks, so many cases of intemperance as may be seen in any of the large cities of our island in seven short hours!" Who would not be ashamed to take a Pagan through some of the districts of our towns?-especially in the vicinity of our shops, public-houses, ginpalaces, licensed by the Government, in which the money, the health, the virtue, the happiness, the souls of the community are all lost! Sixty millions of money spent, year by year, in intoxicating drinks! Directly or indirectly sixty thousand lives annually lost,-sacrifices at the bloody shrine of Bacchus. Drunkenness is a representative vice,-representative of poverty, disease, wretchedness, destruction, beyond all estimate. Poorhouses, gaols, asylums, are filled by this demon-spoiler. We rejoice greatly in the educational movement of the day. It is little more than fifty years since Joseph Lancaster commenced his day-school under his own father's roof in Southwark. Quickly the day-school was patronized by men high in rank and office, and even by our good King George III. himself. It were not difficult to trace the history of the day * Dr. Guthrie's "City-its Sins and Sorrows." school, from the formation of the British and Foreign School Society, along the line of Parliamentary debates, Parliamentary grants, Minutes of Council, to the establishment of our own admirable Westminster College. It is no small achievement that, even now, day-schools may be numbered by the thousand, and scholars in them by the million. The influence of this no mind can appreciate. Yet there are millions of children of the educable age, many, many of them trained in the very hot-beds of vice, "wild as the untaught Indian's brood." A journal of recent date reported the case of a boy twelve years of age. He had been seven times in gaol. The period of his last imprisonment had expired. He was shivering in the street, in the depths of winter, shoeless and stockingless; his clothes were rags. He was weeping bitterly-helpless, friendless. The poor child's mother was in the grave. His father had married again. Husband and wife were both drunkards. Their "den" contained but one bed, reserved for the father, the wife, and her child. If allowed a shelter at home, this boy and his brother would have had no place of rest but the hard floor; but their own father drove them from his door! What chance had the poor creature to subsist honestly or live virtuously? O for some HomeMissionary, instead of the police,-some ministering angel of Christ's church, some tongue of kindness to speak to that young heart, some hand of benevolence to snatch the child from the guardianship of the turnkey, and put him to school! A case so deplorable may be thought by many, unacquainted with the "slums" of our large towns, an extreme one. Would that it were! Let the church take the sponsorship of as many of the neglected and worse than fatherless children as possible. Let her send forth her Missionaries to bring them to one of her nurseries. As to the irreligion of our adult population, we have had details absolutely appalling. None of us can be ignorant that throughout this kingdom are to be found masses of people, immense and truly formidable, on whom Christianity has no hold. They are without God and without Bible; they keep no Sabbath, attend no church, chapel, or meeting-house; they are sunk to the lowest depths of demoralization, are capable of the grossest outrages, and are ready for any crime. Let the following particulars be especially noted:- 1. The moral state of the general population.-In London, out of a population of 2,027,528, there are but 374,015 who attend any place of worship; this number including all Sunday-scholars. There are more Irish in London than in the city of Dublin; more Roman Catholics than in Rome. It is fearful to add, there are more young thieves, under training by older ones, than the population of a large town like Huddersfield; and more prostitutes, and the like, than that of several such towns. On one Sunday 324,000 persons embarked and landed from the piers between Chelsea and London Bridges;-a multitude of Sabbath-breakers this, (exclusive of such as indulged in railway-trips, &c.,) greater than the entire population of Manchester.-In Manchester and Salford, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Hull, Leeds, Bradford (Yks.), Sheffield, VOL. IV.-FIFTH SERIES. 3 s Nottingham, York, Devonport, Plymouth, Norwich, Wolverhampton, and Bath, there was an aggregate population, in 1851, of 2,135,461; while the largest number attending worship, March, 1851, was only 488,060.-As to rural counties: That of Hereford has a population of 115,489; only 28,451 of whom are found to attend public worship. Other counties show little more favourably. The population of England and Wales is 17,927,609 ; out of which 6,356,222 are found attending public worship. All these are representative facts-representative of ignorance, irreligion, wretchedness, crime, beyond the power of description. "Because of these things the land mourneth." 2. The inadequacy of our operations.-Take London, with its population of 2,027,528: Methodism is reported to provide sittings for 35,745, while the sittings provided by all denominations are only 571,738,—a number little exceeding one-fourth of the inhabitants. Take other examples :—In the county of Lancaster the population is 2,031,236; and Methodism provides only 98,420 sittings, the total number, provided by all denominations, being 813,335. In the West Riding of Yorkshire the population is 1,325,495: Methodism there provides 147,311 sittings; and the total number, provided by all denominations, is 715,777. The West Riding has been denominated "the garden of Methodism ;" and the Methodistical power in it, as contrasted with that in the metropolis, is sufficiently striking. Yet, what multitudes of people for whom there is no sanctuary! Take another view of things. In London, we have one Minister to nearly 100,000 population. In Manchester and Salford, In Liverpool, In Essex, In Suffolk, In Somerset, In Oxford, 30,000 3. How large an extent of country lies altogether untouched by our agencies! -For Methodism we claim rank as the most aggressive ecclesiastical system under heaven. Yet, mark what follows: Within ten miles of the metropolis, there is a Circuit comprising many country places, but at a visiting distance thirty towns and villages, with a population of 40,000, which we do not reach. "And how can it be otherwise," it is justly demanded," with only one Minister for the whole Circuit?" Not far from the one just indicated is another Circuit with fifteen places of worship. Near at hand there are three large market-towns, with 14,000 inhabitants, and many other places, having no Methodist preaching. Here the churches have but few attendants, and Nonconformity is unknown. From this Circuit a Minister has been withdrawn because a sufficient grant from the Home-Mission Fund could not be made. The one Minister left is overworked, and his labours are, in fact, dissipated over so large an extent of country. In the neighbourhood of Southampton and Winchester are fifty places, with a population of 44,000, for which we are doing nothing. A large proportion of the rural population is in a semi-heathenish state; and in not a few places Tractarian Clergy men are leading back the people to ecclesiastical bondage. Who feels adequately "the crushing burden of work undone ?"—which, alas! cannot be overtaken without additional Home-Missionary force. Such is the poverty, and such the indifference, of the people in many parts of our country, that the Gospel must be sent on the true Mission principle, or they will never hear its joyful sound. So feeble is our agency, so difficult is it to cultivate the ground already possessed, that, as it respects the most needy localities, aggression is impracticable without more men. At the same time, many of the existing Circuitinterests cannot be sustained in any vigour without further financial help. It is matter of shame to state that there are whole counties in which the average ministerial income ranges from £70 to £90,-less than our dayschool Teachers are obtaining, and far less than is paid to thousands of clerks in our offices and counting-houses. Many of the excellent men who are recompensed after this sort travel on foot between two and three thousand miles a year, do public duty nearly every day, and have the care of most of the business of their Societies, &c., devolving on them. Is it too much to ask that self-sacrificing servants of the Lord Jesus should, at least, be saved from the additional and oppressive burden of care in regard to their due maintenance? The salutary rules of their association prohibit them from making a sixpence by any secular trading whatever. Preaching the Gospel, by the call and appointment of the church, do let them "live of the Gospel." The mission of the Methodist people is still to our country, and to the world. Their doctrinal, disciplinary, financial, Connexional, and Missionary constitution is as much adapted as ever to the great, pressing, appalling necessity. Let Methodism have a fair chance with the masses, and, much as it has told on them during the last hundred years, it will tell yet more effectively. Its organizations are not to be framed,-they have been well tried. Its machinery was never in better trim. The Spirit is given as the dew unto Israel. Throughout the churches there is a quickening; expectation is raised; and numbers are increased. Let the country feel the impulsive, Home-Missionary power. Let funds be raised for the employment of clever, zealous, self-denying men, not only in the agricultural districts, but in the towns,-men who can grapple with the deadly scepticism of our operatives. Everyone should contribute, (as Mr. Wesley said, when, for the same object, the Yearly Collection was originated,) if it be only "a penny, a halfpenny, a farthing." Come then, one and all, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. Our Home-Missions have a very important relation to the ascertained church and chapel provision of the country.—As we have already seen, places of worship must be built in towns and eities—and many of them. But, to speak generally, the moral desideratum is, just now, not additional church and chapel accommodation, but people to fill churches and chapels already |
