tended to discharge. We are ready to confess', says the Author of the Tract" on the Congregational System", "with deep and unfeigned sorrow, that the principles of the Congregational 'system, so far as they have been adopted by religious societies, though they have done much, have not been productive of all 'the benefits which might have been expected from them.'* This affords no reason for abandoning those principles; but, surely, it ought to moderate the boastful tone of those who advocate them as the panacea for all the evils of society.

The Congregational Dissenters of England occupy at this moment a high and honourable, but, in some respects, difficult and critical position. At no period, perhaps, had they a nobler opportunity of justifying their principles, and serving their generation. Delivered by the tardy justice of the Parliament from the political stigma that had been perpetuated in the statute-book ever since the days of Charles II., they have nothing to fear from the State, and nothing to ask for. At the same time, the Established Church, their ancient oppressor, has declined in popularity to so extraordinary a degree, as materially to abate her social ascendancy, and to render some great practical reforms indispensable to her political security. There is even danger that the cause of religion, so far as identified, in the minds of the people, with the Establishment and the clergy, will suffer serious prejudice from this state of public feeling; and upon the Dissenters, the duty seems more especially to devolve, at such a crisis, to stem the torrent of infidelity, by lifting up the banner of the Cross. Any peculiar demonstration of hostility to the Established clergy at this moment, would not only wear the character of ungenerous and vindictive policy; nay, more, of a confederacy with those whose disaffection is envenomed by irreligion, and stimulated by interest; but it must tend to hinder those necessary reforms and wise concessions which the spirit of the times calls for, and which, if no boon to the Dissenters, would be at least a benefit to society.

In some respects, the Congregational Dissenters have lost ground. That proportion of the nobility and the Senate which

*To the causes enumerated by the Writer of this Tract, as rendering the results of the system less considerable than they would otherwise have been, we must take the liberty to add, the ultra-democratic principles of Church government advocated in this Tract, and which are foreign to the genius of primitive Independency. The Congregational system, as here delineated, is a vague theory, ill adapted to Jewish or Oriental customs, to patriarchal, feudal, or the mixed condition of society, unknown in the Apostolic age: in fact, it is primitive Christianity jeremybenthamized.

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was formerly allied by religious conviction to the Dissenting body, is now found attached to the evangelical party within the Church. Orthodox Dissent has almost entirely disappeared from the higher classes. Evangelical Dissenters no longer form a phalanx in the Legislature; nor, as formerly, are they found prominent in the direction of all the great commercial companies of the metropolis, and proprietors of all the principal manufactures of the country. The professional classes have also, with few exceptions, deserted the ranks of Nonconformity. And even among the middle classes, so far as our observation extends, the rising youth of England are not being trained up within the communion of Dissenting Churches. This consideration, if well founded, deserves the serious attention of all who are interested in the permanency of our institutions, as it seems to render the attachment of the next generation to them, highly precarious.

The Dissenters have lost ground, too, or, at least, they have not kept pace with the advance of society, in literary influence. They have relied too much on the pulpit, and been too negligent of the other great organ of opinion, the press. Not one daily paper is in the hands of the Orthodox Dissenters; and of the four Quarterly Reviews, two are high-church, and two are under the influence of the infidel party,- all are hostile to both evangelical religion and Dissent. The old Monthly Review, after declining from Presbyterianism to Unitarianism, has been transferred from party to party, till all that we know about it, is, that it is lost to the Dissenters. Of our own labours, we shall only say, that if they have afforded any support to the cause of Dissent, or procured for it any slight degree of reputation, it has been in the face of the most thankless indifference, and even, in some quarters, of the basest detraction and the most vulgar-minded hostility on the part of the body we have endeavoured to serve. With difficulty, indeed, any literary or religious journal conducted ostensibly by Dissenters, maintains its existence, having to contend at once against the illiberal prejudice of churchmen, and the supineness, want of literary taste, and party-spirit of their own body.

The Dissenters have for the last few years enjoyed the unenviable distinction of supporting the worst-conducted newspaper of the day. Contemptible in a literary point of view, radical in its politics, vulgar, prosing, dogmatical, and abusive in its style, it has not a little contributed to lower the body of its patrons in the estimation of the public, and has at the same time infused into the minds of its readers, a spirit of party rancour and violence, far more injurious to those who cherish it, than it can be to the parties against whom it is directed. We can conceive of nothing more directly calculated to destroy the vital spirit of Christian piety, and to bring dishonour upon the cause of religion, than

polemical newspapers, in which the ministers of Christ are made to appear as political gladiators, not involuntarily, but for love of the game, and religion to seem but a branch of politics*. .

The irreligious character of the daily and weekly press is a portentous and gigantic evil, which sincere Christians of all parties have too long contemplated with tame and indolent dismay. Why should this mighty engine have been abandoned to political faction and hireling management, when a mere investment of money, if discreetly effected, and to an adequate extent, might have secured at least some one journal of commanding influence to the interests of Christian morality, without committing the name and credit of religion, by sanctimonious professions, without hanging out the Bible and Crown, or the Bible without a Crown, as a sign. An ostensibly religious paper will of course never be read by the secular and irreligious, and therefore presents no remedy for the mischiefs of which we speak. But a daily journal, conducted with first-rate ability and independence, speaking on religious subjects, when adverted to, with firmness, dignity, and explicitness, but not attempting to dose with religion, the man of business or of politics,-religious in its conduct, rather than in its phraseology, and tolerant of all parties,—such a journal would, we are persuaded, become, as it would deserve to be, the leading organ of public sentiment, by acquiring the respect and confidence of all classes. Nothing short of this seems to us likely to effect important good. Newspapers are taken in for the sake chiefly of the advertisements, the debates, and early intelligence;

* An announcement has appeared, of an approved Plan for the establishment of a new Weekly newspaper, devoted to the support of the great principles held in common by British Nonconformists;' to which are annexed the signatures of a most respectable body of ministers and laymen, as the provisional committee for carrying the design into immediate execution. The plan, aware as we are of the motives which have originated it, cannot but have our best wishes; although we could have desired that a wider basis had been adopted, and that if a religious paper' is thought desirable, it had been found possible to make it the representative of the catholicity, not of any division, of the religious world. On one point, however, we venture respectfully, but earnestly to express our hopes. The character of a minister of the Gospel is too sacred to render it expedient or becoming, that his name should be lent, as an authority, or sanction, or pledge, to the best conducted newspaper. If the union of secular and spiritual office in our clerical magistrates be with reason deprecated, that of divine and politician is not less undesirable. When, therefore, the paper is fairly started, (for we are not objecting to any preliminary arrangements,) we trust that the responsibility of conducting it, will not attach to any of our ministers, nor to the denomination, but to lay proprietors alone.

and an extended sale can alone secure the first, or support the vast expense of obtaining the others. To establish such a paper, demands a fortune; and after an expenditure of £30,000, the project might prove as abortive as a recent attempt of the kind, backed by all the talent of a political party. What is most ardently to be desired, is, that the proprietors and conductors of the political press should, to some greater extent, be brought under the influence of religious knowledge and religious principle, which would qualify them to perform their proper functions in a manner beneficial to society. On the other hand, it might be as well if a religious newspaper, designed chiefly as a reporter of missionary and other ecclesiastical intelligence, foreign and domestic, or of the public meetings of our great Institutions, kept as clear as possible of politics *.

We have great pleasure in transcribing into our pages, the following remarks on Religious Newspapers,' which appear in the Congregational Magazine for the present month. The time has come when we feel it to be our duty to break the silence we have reluctantly maintained, respecting the weekly papers which profess to advocate the interests of religion. The World Newspaper, which appeared, in 1827, as the avowed advocate of dissenting principles, did not originate with any body of Dissenters; nor were the private parties who embarked in the speculation much known in the metropolis. While it must be confessed that this journal did efficient service to the dissenting community on the question of the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts; and has served the general interests of religion by its reports of public meetings; yet, the tone it assumed, has long been felt by all Dissenters of moderate and gentlemanly feelings, to be decidedly unfavourable to the interests which it professed to advocate; and not a few of those who, as officers of the leading and benevolent institutions of the kingdom, had given their testimony to the general faithfulness of the reports of their public meetings, and on that ground recommended the journal, have been grievously annoyed to find their names employed to sanction a paper which, in its style, temper, and general conduct, was very unlike what they wished it to be.

The Record Newspaper, though avowedly devoted to the interests of evangelical religion in the National Church, received, on its first publication, respectable support from liberal Dissenters, who were willing to read an episcopalian journal, if conducted on Catholic principles. How those principles have been outraged in that paper, we will not now pause to detail: it is enough that the sober-minded and candid members of the Church of England are as much ashamed of its personalities and violence, as men of the same class among Dissenters have been of the World Newspaper.'

Of the two journals, the Record exhibits by far the greater portion of cleverness, information, and adroitnes. But it is due to the old World to say, that its party violence never ran into personal malignity; it was coarse, but not dishonest; and it never employed wilful and systematic misrepresentation as a regular trick of trade."

We have been imperceptibly led into this digression. We were saying that, in some respects, the Congregational Dissenters have been losing ground and losing caste, as it were, in the nation. Yet, it is true, notwithstanding, that their national importance was never so great; their resources never appeared to be so considerable; and they never occupied so advantageous and honourable a position. As we have boldly and freely exposed their deficiencies, let us be suffered to indulge a little in the foolishness of boasting. First, then, the body of public instructors who sustain the office of the Christian ministry among the Congregational Dissenters, when considered simply in relation to their office, as 'able ministers of the New Testament,' claim to rank as the best qualified and the most exemplary of any order of Christian teachers in the world. In comparison even with the evangelical clergy, they will be found, on the average, better grounded in theological and biblical knowledge, as well as more ready in the exercises of devotion and public teaching, and consequently less subject to be carried about with every wind of doctrine. Modern fanaticism has found few among the Dissenting Clergy to countenance its perilous absurdities. This steadiness of religious sentiment in a community among whom creeds are discarded, shews that the perpetuation of sound doctrine depends far less upon accurate and orthodox formularies, than upon the system of clerical education; a point upon which, according to the testimony of an impartial and competent judge *, the more ' respectable of the Dissenters have far exceeded in wisdom the 'rulers of the Church.' In other respects, the evangelical clergy exhibit a zeal and devotedness to their office, worthy of exciting emulation. But, if we compare the Dissenting ministry with the whole body of the national clergy, great as is the reformation that has taken place in their professional character, it is unnecessary to say a word as to the immense superiority of the former in point of moral respectability and usefulness.

In their Academical institutions, the Dissenters possess a system of tried efficacy for supplying their churches with a more than sufficient number of pious and competently instructed pastors; so that the state of things which formed the subject of complaint, and the occasion of destitution, previously to the establishment of such institutions, is not likely again to occur. We have admitted, on a former occasion, that this system is not producing or attracting to itself many learned or eminent men. Yet, the Congregational Dissenters are able to enumerate contemporary names not a few, and of no mean reputation, as those of their preachers and writers. The Baptist denomination are with reason proud

* Mr. Acaster. See Eclect. Rev. 3d Series, Vol. V. p. 468.