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century. In most Roman Catholic countries the area is entirely open, and the congregation, for a very small sum, are provided with chairs or stools. We have seen, however, that the Pulpits of most commanding power have often been the rough plank, the door-step, the fishing-boat, or the mountain side. So with the Pew. It represents the place where the people sit. Circumstances may make it 'the grass of the field,' the bare piece of log, the chaptred stall, or cushioned seat; but in whatever form, within the walls of an earthly sanctuary, or amid the wall-less amplitude of nature, the place where the Word of God is statedly heard, possesses immense importance and dignity. We do not hesitate to affirm that in every essential respect the Pew is on a moral level with the Pulpit. Not to speak of the fact that there is as solemn a responsibility connected with hearing the Word as in preaching it, we regard the Pew with profound respect, and even awe, just because it is the seat of the people. In saying this, we disclaim rhetorical verbiage or sycophantish adulation. We here speak and seek to judge in the spirit of Christ. Well do we know that there may be a fear and flattering of the people' in the church as well as out of it,-base, self-seeking, and trimming as the soul of the political demagogue; but while we recoil from one extravagance, let us not embrace another which is worse. It is true that the people' do not possess all heavenly wisdom and virtue, simply because they arithmetically bulk largely. Their voice at times is very far from being the voice of God, when their excellence, forbearance, and justice are not very striking, and form a poor bar of appeal. Public opinion in the Church is frequently unjust, tyrannical, and madly contentious; and to assume that infallible wisdom and irresponsible power sit enthroned in the Pew, would be as bold a fiction as to believe in infallible Popes or infallible Presbyteries. Yet we repeat, that we look on the place where the people' sit as deserving deep respect and honour, believing that if it is folly to idolize the people,' it is vile to underrate or inwardly to despise them. This is alien to the whole spirit of Christianity. Some men, both in Pulpit and Pew, wrapped up in their own class-interests, and assuming secret superiority to the masses or the rabble,' exist in a state of chronic prejudice at the very name, because there is nothing associated with it in their minds except low tastes, senseless fickleness, restless caprice, vulgarity, and brutishness of understanding. And on the ground of this one-sided view, they despise 'the people' alike in the Pew and in the Forum. Now, true religion repudiates all this. It disowns and condemns alike a social Pharisaism as well as a quasi-religious one. If Christianity has made itself a benefactor to the race in one thing more than another, it is in its pure spirit of respect for humanity. Revering and loving it, though fallen, it demands honour for all men,' affirms a common human brotherhood, uttering unsparing anathema on class-pride and selfish alienation, its aim being to bind heart to heart in spite of artificial distinctions and infirmities; and just as its benign spirit practically spreads and takes possession of the race, men will feel themselves brothers, the varied ranks in society will contribute to the aggregate of human happiness by mutual love and help, and the world fulfil the benevolent design of the great Father of all.'

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THE PRIVILEGES OF THE PEW.

It is impossible to enter into detailed enumeration of all these. There are, however, three, which, from their scriptural prominence and their incalculable value to the Christian people, seem to call for special mention.

1. The privilege of self-government, through spiritual office-bearers chosen by themselves. This principle is recognised by the apostles in their very first acts of organizing the Church. When a successor was appointed instead of Judas, Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, the number together being about one hundred and twenty, and stated the case. It was not only in the presence, but by the consent and prayers of the whole Church, that the election took place. In like manner, when deacons were to be appointed, the twelve called together the multitude of the disciples, and invested them with the right and duty of looking out among them seven men of honest report;' and it was only when this was done, through the free and united suffrages of the people, that the deacons-elect were ordained. All the information furnished of the constitution of the primitive Church, point to the same interesting fact-a recognition of the people in the choice of those who should rule over them. In this, as in everything else, apostolic precedent and example are equivalent in authority to positive command; and it is undeniable, that on the part of the apostles there was a studious avoidance of everything that would supersede the action of the Church, or intrude between it and its ordinary ministers. But reason and justice can no less be appealed to in behalf of the rights of the Christian people. The submission which they are enjoined to yield to those over them in holy things, is to be free, voluntary, and intelligent. There is no scriptural obedience where there are no affection and respect. Religion is of a nature so sensitive and tender, that it withers and dies amid distrust and suspicion, and especially when the rude hand of force infringes its rights. Impose ministers, therefore, on a reclaiming people, the intrusion violates divine law, and dishonours religion, by outraging its spirit, and disturbing the very condition of its life. Neither baton, bayonet, nor civil court, can force the heart. If, indeed, you find a people capable of selling their birthright, or so sunk in moral servility, as to transfer it into the hands of patrons, to be graciously wielded according to their pleasure, there is nothing to prevent the voluntary degradation. It is their own act. Your sympathy is misplaced, since they get what they want. The bargain being made, they are bound to be content with the mess of pottage, and humbly to eat it. But if, on the other hand, a Christian people do not choose to surrender their rights, then to deprive them of them by violence or any species of state-craft, is robbery. It is to spoil them of what Christ has given them, let the spoliation be glossed over by all that legal subtlety or political expediency can devise.

It makes irreligion derisively laugh, not without cause, and enlightened piety glow with indignation, that in any section of the Christian Church rectories and incumbencies should be put up for sale-advertised and sold as so much merchandise—and the auctioneer's hammer dispose of the guardianship of human souls. Surely this is prizing the flock for the sake of the fleece, and bringing down a sacred office to the level of the huckster's stall! How little difference is this legalized simony from much that the history of patronage in Scotland exhibits! Patronage has blighted whole epochs of the religious life of our country. It has rent it with division and strife, over which angels might weep; nor will generations to come survive the evils it has produced. Current events show that its hour has come; but we believe that if the iniquity is to be destroyed and swept away, it will be done mainly by the awakened spirit and influence of the Pew.

2. The privilege to hear the gospel preached.—If it had been possible, this privilege would have been interdicted at the first. And. indeed it was so by the Jewish rulers. Fear of the people deterred them from violent action

for a time. Had they dared, they would have debarred the multitude from listening to Jesus, as they afterwards treated it as a criminal offence to speak in His name. Unlawful power, which is ever short-sighted in its policy, has shown a uniform tendency to commit this egregious blunder. It has dreamed that pains and penalties could extinguish thought, that fines and confiscations could fetter truth, that coercion can match itself with the human conscience, and rear physical barricades against human progress. But Ossas and Pelions, piled never so high, cannot keep the sun from shining, nor stay his course in the heavens. For the bare liberty to meet and hear the Word of God, our own forefathers had to contend, when 'hunted as partridges on the mountains;' but their memorable struggle resembles that of all ages and lands, and takes a glorious place in the annals of civil and religious freedom.

It has usually been on three grounds that intolerance has defended its attempt to bind the word of God, or proscribe hearing it preached. The interest of society, the expediency of keeping the people in a certain degree of ignorance, and danger to the truth, have been pled. The defence assumes much that is false, and betrays the spirit of all despotism. What is the freedom claimed? It is quietly and peaceably to assemble. It is to injure no man's person or property-to violate no law, human or divine. It is simply to be permitted to yield conscientious obedience to the law of God in hearing it spoken. Popish priest, slaveholder, and dominant State-religionist have often denied the right, or admitted it only on sufferance; but there are individual rights which not even society itself may challenge, without striking a fatal blow at freedom: and this is one of them. The gospel is dangerous to no human institution that deserves to exist. It is the best friend of order, because it claims to base it on truth and justice. False policy and superstition have sought security for their abuses in popular ignorance, and have dreaded the entrance of light as the dawn of revolution. Falsehood has, indeed, cause to fear. Selfish imposture can thrive only in darkness; but there is no throne so safe, and no legitimate power so respected, as those supported by the loyalty of an enlightened Christian people. Neither does alleged danger to truth justify prohibition of free discussion. On this ground the Brahmin would silence the missionary in India, the Chinese mandarin conserve Confucianism, and Popery put down Protestant worship wherever it can. It was this plea about truth being in danger that drove the fathers of English freedom from their country, threw a Bunyan into prison, and placed a Baxter at the bar of the judicial profligate, Jeffreys. It is this that has reared the Inquisition; and there are still those who would ignore religious equality, and invade religious liberty, on the plea that they must curb dissent. The assumption on which all this rests is prodigious. No man or body of men are judges of the truth, or have authority to repress it on any plea. To assume this authority, and act on it, is to trench on the sacred domain which lies between God and the individual conscience. Let error by all means be heard! The best way to render it innocuous, is to meet it with the antidote of truth. The latter has everything to gain by perfect liberty of speech. Temporary discomfiture affects in no wise the general and ultimate issue. God overrules all. Man is personally responsible for his belief. In this world, good and evil, light and darkness, Christ and Belial, are set before each individual. None can choose for another; and just because this is so, is the right to hear the gospel preached, God-given and inalienable.

3. The privilege of having the Bible in the Pew.-All the reasons which

NO. I. VOL. XV. NEW SERIES.-JANUARY 1871.

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confer the right to hear the Word of God are equally valid in support of the right to read it. Its possession ceases to be valuable unless accompanied by freedom to search it, and test human words by its opened page. It is appealed to as the one standard of religious faith and practice by the Son of God Himself. He found the Scriptures open and accessible to the people, and invites them diligently to study them even affirming that if men hear not Moses and the prophets, neither would they believe though one rose from the dead. He quotes the Word of God against tradition, as superseding, annulling, or contravening its pretensions. Tradition is a mass of heterogeneous opinions which no man can harmonize or expiscate, and is so voluminous as to be useless even to one man in a million. In it there is no such thing as unanimity, while it is as contradictory and discordant as it is full of ‘old wives' fables.' The law of the Lord, in the perfection which it claims, refuses to admit a partner on the throne of its authority. It is its own best interpreter. Sufficient to make wise unto salvation,' it shines with a light so clear on the way of life and all human duty, that he who runs may read. Not only has Christ given His imprimatur to the reading of the Scriptures by the people, but they are declared to be the charter of Christian rights and privileges. Acquaintance with their contents is essential to spiritual growth. They supply the divine food on which saints live and grow immortal— the materials for their devotion, the rich comfort which sustains them in their trials, and are a light to their feet, and a lamp to their path,' until the earthly pilgrimage ends in glory. This great treasure of the Word of God has been bequeathed to no particular class. Like the love which it reveals, it is designed alike for prince and peasant; it is no more the monopoly of the priesthood than the light of day, and is no less needed by the philosopher, exalted on his pedestal,' than by

'Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door,
Pillow and bobbins all her little store;

And in that charter reads, with sparkling eyes,
Her title to a treasure in the skies.'

As the Bible lies on the mother's knee, where young hearts, in curious wonder, drink in its truths,—as it reposes, marked or open, on the invalid's pillow, is brought out and reverently read by the cottar's fireside, or lies on the sacred desk, from which neither unbelief nor force can dethrone it,— innumerable hallowed associations belong to it. But Heaven's great gift is never more nobly used than when regal honour is paid to it in the house of God. Oh! it is a spectacle surpassingly beautiful, to see a religious assembly with the Word of God before it! It is so manly. It is an act of homage to the Book so great and worthy. It is so spiritually enlightening and elevating in this way to come into direct contact with the one grand instrument of religious life and thought. The Bible in the Pew! How much does this mean? It is the silent and majestic assertion of the right to its free and indisputable possession. It proclaims the privilege and obligation of 'proving all things.' It affirms that the word of God is supreme; that religion is not blind credulity, but is to be intelligent, and founded on conviction and divine truth; and that the human conscience owns no bar of appeal except one. Much depends, in our day, in keeping the Bible in the Pew as a sovereign authority. Prayer-books, liturgies, human devotional compositions, may be foisted into its place, and made to reflect its scattered broken rays, or altogether supplant it; but while we would disparage no scriptural help to devotion, give us shepherd lad or city artisan, servant girl, merchant, mechanic, and even monarch, with the Bible lying open before them in the house of

God! This is a higher order of religious life and moral grandeur than all that missals of devoutest human manufacture can furnish. Indeed, substitutes for the Word of God are as tapers, with the marks of human fingers upon them; and, in the practical result, we may be sure that a people who dispense with these, and profoundly and intelligently honour the Scriptures, will exhibit a noble and masculine type of Christianity. Such a people will neither be priest-ridden nor press-ridden. Their piety will teach them to think for themselves; it will give them divine principles to guide them, and they will surrender the right of private judgment at no price. How poor, after all, is the vaunted and incessantly eulogized power of the Pulpit! What are a few poor individual men, compared with one aggregate body of the Church itself? Oh! give us the Pew, awakened to its legitimate influence; give us a living faith pervading it; let the baptism of the Spirit be regarded and felt by it as more than historical, traditional, or mere dogmatic fact. Let the Pew as well as the Pulpit regard the souls of unconverted men within the Church, and out of it, as no less precious to-day than they were when the Son of God outweighed their value against worlds, and wept over their ruin, then there would be activity and self-forgetfulness. Complaints of a barren ministry would become wonderfully diminished in force; then God, even our God, would bless us, and make us like those who dream,' so far would His grace surpass our thoughts; then the best and holiest cause in the world would not be left to languish for want of succour, nor those be deemed beggars who are set to labour and plead for it. This would be the Church shaking herself from the dust, putting on her strength, and her beautiful garments. Mountains and hills would break forth into singing, and a new tide of spiritual life would rise and roll to the end of the earth, bearing on its bosom the blessings of salvation.

THE DANGERS OF THE PEW.

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'Take heed how you hear.' 'The kingdom of heaven is come nigh to you.' 'It will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for you.' 'I have called, and ye refused.' These represent a class of passages charged with admonition, warning, and reproof in connection with gospel-hearing, and assume danger the reverse of trivial or imaginary. Men, in general, think it is the easiest thing in the world to be a good hearer. They attach all the importance to what they hear, or how the truth is presented. It is never doubted that the preacher requires to be alive, that some special qualities or capacity must belong to him, if he is to discharge his great commission and be pure from the blood of all men,' but no man doubts that he is a thoroughly qualified hearer both in capacity and spirit. He has only to take his seat in the Pew; and forthwith, no matter though he has come up hither as void of prayerful feeling and serious thought as the wood on which he sits, or in the very same state of mind as that with which he would seek literary or musical entertainment, yet he installs himself without a moment's hesitancy as judge or critic, a most competent, accomplished inquirer after truth, able to take the measure, in about five minutes, of any man who addresses him, and not pleased if not entertained and profited according to his standard of taste and liking! The idea that he, who would not be a forgetful hearer' and thus condemn himself, has very much more to do than passively and prayerlessly to listen, is lost sight of to an extraordinary degree. And yet it is beyond question that good hearing requires both some intelligence, some humility of mind, some feeling of respect for God's truth, some desire after it, and conscientiousness of