their country, have they not a really better and nobler education than many of the intelligent and skilful, but repining and irreligious, workmen of England? Ignorance is nothing but a pure evil;-it never is the parent of innocence, though often accompanied by comparative innocence. It has earned undeserved credit, because people have not aimed at a comprehensive and harmonious cultivation of man. The good also which may have been gained has been too often judged of by partial progress in particular branches. Poor men no more than gentlemen should be thought educated because they can read and write, nor because they can read lectures in mechanics, geology or botany. All man's powers must be taken into account, and all other educational forces besides schools and teachers. Education must act on all simultaneously, and must give a right direction to all, and its merits must then be estimated by the value, the religious, moral, intellectual and social value, of the whole man.

We are amongst those who feel an intensely strong desire that an extended system of national education should be set on foot in this country, and an earnest hope that the unjust and selfish outcry made against every proposed plan by those who, when they had the power, made not the least effort to counteract the growing ignorance of the people, may be speedily put down by the determinate feeling of the country. But schools are only secondary means for our object, and so we shall not dwell at length upon them here. One remark only about music. We think the low estimation in which it is held in this country very unfortunate. If the intellectual greatness of painting is so universally recognized, why should music be so little regarded? If the eye can be the vehicle for admitting what is noble and purifying, is the ear utterly incapable of conveying valuable impressions to the mind? Surely if the greatness of the five arts consists in their power of cultivating and setting in action our moral and intellectual nature through the senses, why should this power be thought the exclusive privilege of the eye? Music may be made an excellent foundation for the general study of art amongst a people, and if it has never obtained the intellectual eminence which sculpture and painting have reached, yet it has the advantage of being more universally pleasing. It has charms

which the least refined can feel and appreciate, whilst it opens a field of delightful and progressive improvement to those who can enter more deeply into its meaning. The two most intellectual nations that the world has seen, the Greeks and the Germans, have agreed in ascribing a high intellectual value to music. Shall we allow our prejudices and our ignorance to prevent us from trying the effect of that, which, if successful, would be a very easy and a very ready help to our civilization? However, if little value is set on music as an element of education, few will deny its usefulness as a source of amusement. And this is a point of no small importance. The amusements of a people are an essential part of their wellbeing. Mirth and innocent recreation are at all times excellent antidotes to brooding discontent; how infinite then their value in restoring life and freshness to the care-worn minds of the busiest nation in the world! They have never met with the thought and consideration which they so eminently merit in our day. A great change in respect to the number and kind of popular amusements has come upon the nation in modern times. The variety of the seasons, and the gladness that naturally accompanies the period of harvest, have ever provided an agricultural people with holydays and festivals; and if at times the labourers are called upon for unusual labour, nature diminishes their tasks at others, and leaves them in the possession of increased leisure. The Roman Catholic religion also came to the help of the poor;-it rescued many days and hours from the encroachments of the spirit of gain. But now every man is eager to be as rich as he can, and it has been discovered that the same sum must be paid the labourer for his support, whether he has holydays or none. Neither religion nor custom could protect the needy;-most of the old games have gone out of use, and our poor spend the whole of their weary days and years almost without intermission in the mills. The Socialists, with instinctive sagacity, have seen how strong is the want of amusement;-and music and dancing are far from being the least of their attractions for the people. It is most ardently to be hoped that the increasing thought which is directed to the condition of the poorer classes, will take up in earnest the whole subject of their amusements. We are now come to the last and most important part of

our task. Is there any adequate remedy for the evils of our social condition? Is there a remedy adapted to the wants created by the peculiar condition of our civilization capable of so adjusting the relations which the lower classes should bear to each other, and to the rest, as to cement us into a united, peaceful and powerful people? We think that there is such a remedy, and that that remedy is church. All our reflections have tended to convince us that in the idea of church the principle of our cure is to be found. Either our cure will come from this source, or there will be no effective cure at all. By church we do not mean the Church of England, nor the Dissenters, nor any one sect in particular; but the great principle on which they are all founded, and which they all, in a greater or less degree, embody. The idea of church is one of the most valuable gifts which Christianity bestowed upon the world, one of the mightiest and most blessed powers which Christianity was the first to call into being. A thorough realization of this idea in practice would go far to regenerate us into a healthy state, as far at least as it is possible to alleviate the evils and sufferings incident to human nature. For, in the first place, church acts on the strongest motives which the heart of man feels. Religious feeling exists in every human soul, and exercises an authority and a power which belong to none other. It speaks from the judgment-seat of the conscience, and has for its sanctions the present and eternal interests of men. Its force is felt in the rudest and in the most cultivated mind; it claims the obedience of all, from the highest to the lowest. Whatever, therefore, is supported by a strong religious feeling, will wield a power at once universal and paramount to all other motives. But in the next place, and this is a consideration of great weight for our present purpose, church is by its nature and institution an eminently social principle. It rests on feelings, and sympathies, and wants, that are common to all Christians. It is a society of men afflicted by the same sorrows, opposed by the same enemies, governed by the same Head, living under the influence of the same idea, and the same principles, and, amidst the trials and sufferings of this life, finding their greatest consolation in the thought that they will hereafter enjoy a pure and unbroken communion with each other and their common Lord.

Surely if the idea of a sympathetic, loving, brotherly-minded union ever dawned on the minds of men, it appeared in the glorious idea of the Christian church. And let not the hope of this heavenly feeling being ever found able to animate men's hearts, be treated as foolish and fanatical. Those who have felt its blessedness will have been taught by its own power to think otherwise of it; and to the rest we may say, that what has been once may be again,-" The living in one accord, the having all things in common, -the breaking of bread from house to house, the eating their meat with gladness and singleness of heart," are all matters of historical certainty. That for a long series of ages the Christian church has soothed many a sorrow, has visited the poor and the afflicted, has shed the blessings of kindness and civilization on many an obscure and lonely spot, are equally well known facts. And in our day too, the active benevolence which this Christian sympathy has called forth in many a private person, and the works of charity and love which it is constantly producing, furnish some of the brightest contemplations which a true friend of humanity can enjoy. And if this feeling is so vigorously alive in individuals, why should it not exercise its beneficial power in its still more legitimate province-the common body of believers. It does exist as a fact, and its natural warmth and lustre are, in principle, as unchanged as ever. Why should it not be capable of organization? And be it further observed, church communion is not confined to some isolated object of pursuit, or some unimportant point respecting which men may feel very varied degrees of interest, but it extends over the whole of life. Its influence reaches alike every branch of man's outward and inward life,-his occupations, his amusements and his inmost thoughts. In a word, it concerns him as man. And precisely because it has for its object all truly human interests, it is universal in character, and may be, and is exchanged with persons of every degree. And thus we arrive at the third great element in the idea of church, its all penetrating, its diffusive character. Being a communion between man and man, church can exist wherever men live together. It requires, in the first instance only, the presence of sympathetic hearts in order to produce its fruits. It is essentially a mutual and self-acting principle; but if em

bodied in a well-constructed organization, it is capable of the widest expansion. It not only can employ the services of a body of men, whose especial profession it is to promote its action, and discharge the duties it prescribes, but can command the cooperation of every other member of society, whatever may be his calling in life. In the actual condition of England this is by far the most important element in the idea of church. Were it in active operation amongst us, we should not only see an infinitely increased host of regular clergy, pastors and teachers of every description; but also the general feeling of the relation in which people stood to one another as members of the church, would express itself in an enlarged intercourse, both of action and sympathy. Of this there are now but few traces to be seen. There is no more melancholy proof of the weakness of the idea of church amongst us, than the utterly inadequate expression of it in our general and local institutions. However, our purpose in this place is to show, that church, if rightly conceived and as rightly expounded in practice, is capable of furnishing us with a machinery of the very widest range, such a machinery as might act on every village, and might number amongst its labourers the highest and the lowest; in a word, every Christian citizen in the land. It would give every man acquaintances that would live with him in the exchange of endless acts of kindness; it would prevent him from feeling alone in the world; and by showing him the value which he bears to others, would teach him to respect himself. And thus it would lead merely by the force of social motives to improved habits, to a steady desire not to forfeit the approbation of those whose esteem he will have learnt to value; and thus church would cement and bind together the nation, by strong feelings in each class towards the rest, and in all towards their common parent the State. Such is the conception we have of the idea of church, and such the services that we think it capable of rendering in the present conditions of the people of England.

The question then immediately arises, how far this idea has been realized in the constitution of this country. With sorrow and shame we confess that the prospect here is so melancholy, that we know not whether to grieve more as members of the State or as Christians. As a bond of social union