fields, would seat 1000, and besides these we cannot recal another Independent chapel approaching to them in magnitude.

Haberdashers' Hall, with 400 sittings, the Weigh House, Fetter Lane, Aldermanbury, the Pavement, with about the same accommodations, were amongst the most respectable places in the connection, and New Broad Street, with 800 sittings, was quite the cathedral of Independency in those days. A majority of our existing chapels will accommodate more than 600, and not a few from 1000 to 2000 persons.

Nor has the advance of the Baptists been inconsiderable, although their chapels are not usually so large and respectable as those of the Independents. The Baptist Chapel, New Park Street, is a beautiful place of worship, and there is not to be found amongst the Dissenters a more complete house of prayer than the Baptist Chapel at Tottenham.

A singular change has occurred during the last quarter of a century in the ecclesiastical edifices of the rival denominations. The Church of England no longer erects massive edifices, like Christ Church Spitalfields, or St. John's Westminster, but to anticipate and prevent her active competitors, she is content to build very "conventicle" like chapels-such, for instance, as St. Philip's, Clerkenwell, or St. James's, Islington; while, on the other hand, the Dissenters, finding it no longer necessary or politic to erect "barn-like" meeting houses in obscure neighbourhoods, seek out eligible sites, and adopt a style of architecture suited to the improved taste of their own body and the public at large.

While the Dissenters have thus advanced with the population during the last century, a new and important secession from the Church of England in the metropolis, and throughout the empire, has been affected by the rise and progress of Methodism.

London was the principal scene of the labours of both the Wesleys and George Whitefield, and it is extraordinary that their followers at the present time are not more numerous in the metropolis. Still they form an important section of the nonconformist bodies, as will be seen from the following numbers.

Many of the Wesleyan Chapels are amongst the best places of worship in London, and are, we believe, well attended: the old and spacious Calvinistic Methodist places are chiefly supplied by various Independent ministers; but where the liturgy of the Church is retained, with very dubious success.

It now becomes an anxious question for the nonconformist bodies to determine what means they intend to adopt to retain their relative importance, and to extend their usefulness. Their vigorous efforts for the past half century have fairly roused the sleeping energies of the Established Church. Many of her opulent members are dis

posed to erect churches and chapels at their own proper cost, and whatever may be their motives, and with which we have nothing to do, it is obvious, that as far as church building can effect it, they are resolved to secure to their own communion the long neglected population for whom no church accommodation has hitherto been provided.

Besides the fair and honourable competition of church building, and the establishment and maintenance of schools, &c., they resort to other methods of promoting the interests of the church, such as exclusive dealing and intimidation, which is most un-english and oppressive. Old churchmen are but youthful voluntaries, and they can well afford to enter upon a career of spontaneous liberality, who have so long enjoyed the advantages of a church at the cost of the nation. Nonconformists cannot enter with equal freshness or equal means into the contest. Their 372 places of worship in the metropolis have been already erected by voluntary liberality. Still they must come to some general and united effort to prevent those who wish to run them down from gaining their object."

"The Metropolis Chapel Fund" we trust will yet obtain the combined and liberal aid of all the pastors and churches of the Congregational denomination throughout London and its vicinity.

The Wesleyan Methodist body are, at the present moment, making a splendid effort to raise £100,000 to commemorate the centenary of Methodism, a part of which will, no doubt, be appropriated to the erection of several new chapels within the boundaries of London. We have shown that the Church Commissioners intend, with the consent of Parliament, to appropriate old endowments for the instruction of the people, which were originally bequeathed for other purposes. Now there are amongst the Congregational body many valuable private trusts, which are, no doubt, very faithfully administered according to the wills of their donors, but which tell very little upon the advancement of our general interests. How desirable it is then, that, imitating the example of the church itself, dissenting trustees should employ the property confided to their stewardship in the spirit rather than the letter of the original benefactors, and so to administer their bounty that it may not be dribbled away in trifling grants, but used to sustain efficient ministers in their attempts to establish new churches, and to sustain enfeebled interests that are in danger of falling into decay.

Hitherto we have proceeded in our remarks on the assumption that the church and chapel accommodation already provided is occupied, and that those who attend are supplied with scriptural aliment suited to the wants of the soul. But, alas, both these assumptions are, to a melancholy extent, fallacious.

The author of an amusing work, recently published, called "Travels about Town," speaking on this subject, says, "that in a great number of instances they (i. e. episcopalian places,) are not half or even one-fourth filled. Go, for example, to the city, and you will see churches capable of containing 500 or 700 persons, when the average attendance does not exceed 150. Nor is even this all. There is a goodly number of chapels which are connected with, and supported by, particular societies and institutions, and where

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the attendance of the hearers is not voluntary, or because they are attached to the Church of England, but is insured by what may be called a conventional compulsion." The endowment of churches places their ministers above popular influence. They therefore retain their pulpits, however inefficient or unacceptable they may be, and are therefore left by the people to possess their desolate places in the stillness of spiritual death. The District Churches and Proprietary Chapels, depending mainly upon seat-rents, are, to use a nautical phrase," better manned," and thus the attendance, as is the case at the nonconformist chapels, is equal to support the expenses of public worship.

But what are the doctrines taught? In the list before us we have included Unitarian and Romau Catholic chapels, Jewish synagogues and Quaker meetings, which provide more than 20,000 sittings, but with whose teachers we have no religious sympathy. And then as to the church itself, we must in truth declare our conviction, that the following passage from a writer already quoted is substantially correct: "Among the Church of England clergy in London, as every where throughout the country, every variety of theological opinion is entertained. We have Calvinists, Baxterians, and Arminians. Would that the diversity of opinion ended here! Unhappily it does not. We have men who hold doctrines of a far higher order than the first, and of a far lower order than the last. The pulpits of our London churches are, in some cases, filled by Antinomians; in others, by Socinians. Among the Antinomian clergy, there is, unfortunately, one very popular preacher, and I believe a very excellent and pious man. So much greater is the cause for regret, inasmuch as his influence over the minds of his hearers must be proportionally powerful. Need I name this clergyman? Need I say that I refer to the Rev. Mr. Dodsworth, of Margaret Street Chapel, Marylebone? Mr. Dodsworth may disclaim the name of Antinomian. The mere name of a thing goes for little. Will any one acquit him of preaching doctrines the tendency of which is strongly Antinomian, when they are informed that he inculcates, in the plainest and most forcibie terms he can employ, that man may have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, be accounted by God a saint, and be a faithful believer in Christ, even while denying the fundamental truths of the Gospel, and living in the grossest licentiousness? If any one question the fairness of this representation of Mr. Dodsworth's doctrinal sentiments, let them consult a volume which he published a few years since, under the title of Romanism and Dissent.' A mode of preaching more at variance with the whole tenor of the New Testament, or more destructive of all sound religion, was never devised. We denounce the Antinomianism of Drs. Crisp and Saltmarsh, of a past age, and condemn the Antinomianism of a Dr. Hawker and a Mr. Huntington of a more recent period, Never in their highest supralapsarian flights, did either of these men give utterance to expressions, whose practical tendency was more destructive of all true religion, than some of those which will be found in the work of Mr. Dodsworth, referred to. Do we wonder at the reverend gentleman's heterodoxy on this head? How could we, when we remember that he was one of those who went into some of the wildest of the vagaries of the late Mr. Irving, asserting the doctrine of modern miracles, and advancing the most outrageous notions on the subject of the millennium?

"Of the London clergy who hold Socinian views, the number is considerable. I need not point to individual instances. The merely moral character of their preaching, or their systematic omission of all the distinctive doctrines of the Gospel, will in many cases prove a sufficient guide to where they are to

* Travels about Town, vol. ii. p. 95.

be found. I am not aware of any case in which the clergy of the metropolis preach Socinianism, other than in the negative way in question. There is, it is true, one clergyman who a year or two ago-I do not know if it be so stillwas most zealous and unremitting in preaching against the doctrine of the eternity of future punishments; but as I am not aware of his having avowed any other Socinian doctrine, it might, perhaps, be doing him an injustice to include him among that body.

"It will be asked, has the newly-fangled theology of Dr. Pusey, and the Rev. Messrs. Newman and Keble, the Oxford Tract triumvirate, found its way into the pulpits of the Establishment in London? Let the question be put to the editor of the Church of England Quarterly Review,' who is not, as is very generally supposed, Dr. Pusey himself, but a clergyman who discharges the ministerial functions in a church in the north of London. I am not, let me in justice to this reverend gentleman remark, charging him with preaching the Oxford Tract heresies from the pulpit, because I have not any information on that point on which I can rely. But the charge of Puseyism lies against him, inasmuch as he has so lavishly praised the men, and commended their works, who were the first to broach, and still continue the leading champions of those sentiments. Mr. Dodsworth, of Margaret Street Chapel, the reverend gentleman of whom I have so lately been speaking, is another of our London clergymen who have adopted this pestiferous and most unscriptural system of belief. But I pause not now to advert more particularly to what this system is, as I presently shall have occasion again to refer to it.

"It is a fact which is sufficiently curious to be worthy of mention, that nearly all the clergy of the church of England in London, are decided Tories in their political views. I state the fact without stopping to institute any inquiry into the causes how it happens to be so. Let me add, however, which I do with great pleasure, that comparatively few of them are in the habit of carrying their politics into the pulpit. He who would ascertain their sentiments on most great state questions, must, in the majority of cases, look for them elsewhere than in their sermons. He must inquire for them in the opinions they express in private, or, it may be, at some public meetings of a particular class, or in the way they vote when any measure of a political kind comes either before their respective parishes, or at the election of a member to serve in Parliament. The most marked exception to this rule is in the case of the Rev. Mr. Melville, of Camden Chapel, Camberwell. He is one of the most furious Tory partizans I ever knew, in the pulpit as well as out of it. I heard him preach a sermon five or six months ago in Burleigh Street Chapel, Strand, preparatory to a collection to support public worship in that chapel; and though neither the subject nor the occasion called for any thing political, he attacked the Melbourne ministry and liberal opinions with such vehemence, that a large portion of his discourse would have answered admirably for a leading article in the Standard' newspaper. The Rev. Mr. Mortimer, of Gray's Inn Lane Chapel; the Rev. Mr. Dale, of St. Bride's Church, Fleet Street; and the Rev. Dr. Croly, of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, in the city, do severally now and then indicate their political views in their pulpit ministrations; but they do it rather by implication than by direct or open advocacy."

Thus with much of dangerous error in the places of worship out of the establishment, and with the pelagianism and socinianism, popery and politics taught within its pale, it is obvious that there is a strong call upon evangelical Christians of every communion to make the most strenuous efforts to secure the extension and faithful preaching and publication of the truth as it is in Jesus.

It is lamentable to observe, that while the Bishop of London is so active in the erection of new churches, he is so hostile to "The City Mission," which sends its humble agents "into the streets and

lanes of the city," to compel them to come in, that God's house may be filled. His Lordship will expose himself to the unworthy suspicion of only seeking to increase his already enormous patronage, in the erection of new churches, unless he sanctions, yea, shares in such efforts with his own clergy. Can his Lordship forbid others to seek the most abject of London's population, and remain inactive himself? We would commend to his Lordship's notice and that of his clergy the following impressive passage from an anonymous but able modern writer:

"Who will deny that, at this moment, there is signally needed some extraordinary effort on behalf of the outcast thousands of the people, whom we have culpably suffered to grow up in the heart of our christian land, more profligate and more perverted than Hindoos? The exigency of the times calls for a disregard of every puny scruple, of every jealousy, of all ecclesiastical reluctance, and of all sinister views. The dense masses of our own atheistic and much degraded, as well as miserable population, should be assailed and courageously entered, by men thinking of nothing but how they may turn the impenitent from the error of his way. If ever it be wise and manly to sacrifice the less to the greater, would it not now be wise and christian-like to break through ordinary and petty obstacles, and to contemn frigid calculations, rather than that two, or more, millions of the people should longer be left as they are, utterly destitute of religious knowledge, and of every hope? If certain personages are reluctant to assign this work of popular evangelization to the alleged indiscreet zeal of sectarists, the path is open to themselves: the crowded streets of our great towns are not barred: and how noble a spectacle would it be, to see men of the highest order, the SUCCESSORS of the APOSTLES, supported by their colleagues of all ranks, mingling kindly with the people, and inviting the wretched to accept the consolations of the Gospel! Are precedents wanted to justify so extraordinary a course? Let then our Protestant Church look to the Church of Rome; and single instances, at least, will be found of episcopal zeal not less magnanimously irregular. Alas! the Church of Rome may boast examples of apostolic greatness and intrepidity, which Protestant Churches have failed to imitate.

"If there seem to be irony in such a proposition, whence does that irony draw its force? Assuredly no derision would have been suspected if, in some hour of public fear, it had been asked of Cyprian, of Gregory, of Athanasius, of Hilary, of Ambrose, of Augustine, to set a necessary example of evangelical charity, in publishing abroad the hope of salvation, when, to multitudes, that hope must be instantly received, or not at all. Is it true then, that it sounds like the most preposterous of all possible suppositions to imagine a mode of proceeding in our times such as Cyprian, and Gregory, and Athanasius, and Hilary, and Ambrose, and Augustine, would certainly have adopted, under similar circumstances? Sad inference, if this be the fact !"*

The Evangelical Dissenters must make greater personal efforts for the extension of the truth. Already they have done much, in supplying 2000 gratuitous visitors for the Christian Instruction Society, who exert some useful influence on at least 250,000 of them ost neglected portion of London's population. Still that goodly band might be increased in the existing Associations of that Society, and there are not a few evangelical churches of the three denominations who have not yet made any organized efforts for the instruction of the neglected thousands that live and perish at their very thresholds.

We must not close this lengthened article without adverting to the noble effort now in progress, under the auspices and by the

* "Saturday Evening," pp. 54-56.