and to an amount of worldly comfort or luxury which in former times was little known.

S. I incline to think that you attach too much importance to this latter point. There have always been, from the earliest times, some rich men in the Church; and a Gaius, a Joseph of Arimathea, or a Philemon, may as certainly be saved as a Lazarus or an Onesimus.

P. Doubtless; but Christ's own declaration remains true, that such cases are only attributable to the mighty, the omnipotent power of God. To all human apprehension the salvation of one clothed in purple and fine linen, and who fared sumptuously every day," would appear to be impossible but a few such are saved, to show that "with God all things are possible." The ordinary, every-day course of things, is, I fear, much as it is depicted in the sketch I just now read to you.

:

S. No; that was a caricature, a highly-coloured sketch, resembling the truth merely as such sketches usually do. There may be a substratum of fact, but the features which strike the eye are almost wholly imaginative.

P. I fear not. A friend of mine, who would rather rejoice than mourn, rather praise than dispraise, gave me a sketch from life the other day, which far exceeded in saddening characteristics the rapid outline which I copied from a HighChurch periodical.

S. A sketch of what, or of whom?

P. He described to me, without any reserve, a disappointment which he had recently experienced, and which filled his heart with grief and with alarm. He had been brought, in the providence of God, to take up his residence in a place which was commonly reputed to have the advantage of an evangelical ministry. He soon found that, so far as the services of the Church were concerned, "the half had not been told him." The Vicar was not only faithful, and fully evangelical, but his sermons were far above the ordinary standard, and were delivered with great earnestness and feeling. As might have been expected, the church was always full, and its aisles thronged by people from surrounding parishes. Hence, for some weeks and months, he deemed himself to be most happily circumstanced, and could not help telling all his friends how much he was privileged in having such a pastor.

This state of delight and gratification lasted for many weeks; but then he began to hear, from several quarters, that the Vicar was not much seen among the people. A few dying or declining Christians, whose bed-sides it was a pleasure to attend, received visits from him; but the sick of other kinds-the doubting, terrified sinner, who heard of death with alarmcould not easily bring his pastor to his bedside. It was but

too clear that there was a deficiency in one of the most important duties of a pastor.

Soon after, too, he learnt that the Sunday school was scarcely ever visited; that a single passing call was all the notice it received between Christmas and Midsummer; and that there were no weekly or monthly gatherings of the Sunday school teachers at the vicarage, for instruction and prayer, as in most other parishes. He began to think, "Well, no man can be great in every department. I suppose that preparation for the pulpit is the chief work of this man's life."

But, soon after, he heard a sermon, which he remembered to have heard but a few months before! This startled him; and not long after that, he heard one Sunday-school teacher ask another, "Was that the third or the fourth time we have had that sermon?" A fortnight after this, he heard the question asked, "This is June ;-have we had one new sermon since Christmas?"

This revelation sank him into despair. He thought, "If there is no visiting of the poor, no Sunday-school teaching, nor yet any composition of sermons, how is the week filled up? What does the man do with his time?"

Soon after, a zealous layman was struck with the unregarded heathenism of many of the working-classes in the parish; and he found a room, in which he assembled them for tea-meetings, and for reading of the Scriptures and prayer. He desired to place all this under the direction and guidance of the Vicar. But he was repelled; the Vicar would take no part in it. On the contrary, he spoke against the effort, on all occasions and in all companies. And, on the whole, while, at the outset, my friend had felt the greatest delight and admiration, after the lapse of two or three years his feelings were wholly changed. He perceived that when the Vicar's name was mentioned in the hearing of any of the Christians of the parish, it was received with sadness and in silence; while, if brought before the worldly-minded of the place, it was met with scoffs and derision.

Such was the disappointment which my friend described to me; and he added, that if he were asked to account for this sad declension, he should be able to assign no other cause than "easy circumstances." The Vicar had gone to college as a gentleman. As a gentleman he had passed through the University, doing only just so much as was necessary. He was then awakened by a faithful sermon, and went into the Church full of zeal. He preached well, and wrote many sermons with much care and study and earnestness. But then, sitting down in a small incumbency, his habits as a gentleman became a sore temptation. Labour was foreign to all his habits; hardship

and poverty, and their concomitants, he shrank from. The gentry of the neighbourhood were glad of his society, for he was himself a gentleman. Thus he became involved in general society, and immersed in the habits and engagements of higherclass life. Every man must choose between God and Mammon, and he did not quite reject the seductions of the latter. He still went on preaching his old evangelical sermons, a third, or fourth, or a fifth time; but he neither wrote new ones, nor visited the sick poor, nor cultivated his Sunday school, nor encouraged missions to the heathen of his parish, nor, in fact, did any other thing that he ought to have done.. Satan had drawn him on to the "Enchanted ground," and there he held him, asleep, if not captive.

S. This must be a romance. You do not repeat it as a fact. P. I have not enlarged or exaggerated the story told to me, and I know that my friend would speak only of what he actually knew.

S. Do you mean, then, to denounce even moderate wealth, as a foe or a hindrance to the progress of men in the Divine Life? Are you wishing to bring us back to Romish Asceticism?

P. I have said, already, that I did not set myself up as a propounder of remedies. I only felt a sad conviction, that we were suffering from a disease; and let us not wander from our point. My supposition or fear was, that an angel of the Church, a light-bearer, was encumbered, hindered, and "laden with thick clay," if placed in luxurious circumstances. As a matter of fact, I think you will find, that the men whom God has especially employed to do His work in the world, have been men who went forth, like the first apostles, with "neither gold or silver," "nor with two coats." I lay it not down as an indispensable condition, but I think that the current of experience was entirely that way. "The men who turned the world upside down" were "naked and had no certain dwelling-place; laboured with their hands, were reviled, defamed, and persecuted." When the Romish apostasy had well nigh extinguished the truth, the flame was kept alive, in the dreary middle ages, by "the poor men of Lyons," and by Wicliffe's "poor preachers." The great herald of the Reformation, Martin Luther, penned his will in these terms:-" My most dear Lord, I thank Thee from my heart that Thou hast willed that I should be poor and a beggar upon earth; therefore I can leave neither house nor fields, estates or money, to my wife or child after me. Therefore, O Thou rich and faithful God! do Thou feed them, teach them, preserve them, as Thou hast taught and preserved me, O Thou Father of the fatherless and Judge of the widows!" Another great agent of revival, John Wesley, was applied to by the Tax-commissioners, to

ور

know why he had not made a proper return of his plate, and his answer was :-"I have two silver tea-spoons at London, and two at Bristol. This is all the plate I have at present, and I shall not buy any more while so many around me want bread." And, sometime after this, he thus wrote:-"If I die worth more than ten pounds, besides the copyright of my books, and the arrears of my fellowship, I will give the world leave to call me a thief and a robber.' I think that these instances are sufficient to prove the truth of my remark, that when God raises up any special instrument for the spread of his truth, that instrument will be found ready to trample all such considerations as "comfort," "competency," "ease," and "independence" under his feet. S. You are again running into romance. But how do you apply such cases as those of Luther and Wesley to the circumstances of the Church in the present day?

P. I am not called upon to apply or to prescribe, for I have already disclaimed any idea of laying down laws or rules for my brethren. I merely point out a quiet change,-a change, I think, for the worse. John Newton and Thomas Scott, in the day's of George III., laboured hard in this metropolis, often preaching four or five sermons per week, and I do not think that either of them ever had an income of £300 a-year. I have heard a clergyman who occupies a similar position now, and who preaches only twice a week, say, very innocently, "I really cannot live on less than £1000 a-year." Mr. Walker of Truro declined a connection with a lady in all respects suitable as a wife, because she had £10,000; and Mr. Scott, when two young ladies of fortune were placed under his roof, earnestly counselled them never to marry a clergyman. "For," said he, "if he is not a good one, he is not worthy of you; and, if he is a good one, you will spoil him." His son and biographer says, "A marriage with a rich wife was, I believe, what none of his sons would have ventured to propose to him. Few things would have alarmed him more for their safety."

Yet what is more common, now-a-days, than this very same sort of connection, which to such a man as Thomas Scott seemed full of peril? And is it not true, that many a young man who entered on his ministerial course full of zeal and ardour, has been induced to marry a rich wife, by the seductive prospects of "greater independence," "extended means of usefulness;" and has soon found himself "lapped in luxury," and enervated by constant ease and indulgence, till, by the time he reached middle age, he was, in sober truth, only the ghost of his former self?

S. But you look at only one side of the question. Can you

forget the men, both ordained men and laymen, who, like

-, spend thousands in each succeeding year in raising churches, supporting missions, buying livings, &c.; or, like

having a competency of means, give up their whole time to do the Lord's work, like St. Paul, "without charge"? In the last generation we had Thornton and Simeon; and do you not know of any Thorntons and Simeons in the present day?

P. Yes, I do; and I bless God for them. He can keep his own, in any condition of temptation. But facts of this class do not nullify or destroy facts of an opposite kind. My fear is, that for one Thornton or Simeon who are now granted or continued to us, we have scores of men who more resemble the religionists who drove Newton from Olney, and Scott from the chaplaincy of the Lock Hospital.

8. Well, I fear that we shall arrive at no practical conclusion just now. All you say seems to point to the conclusion, that what is called "competence" is undesirable, or even dangerous, for the clergy. Yet, when I press you to name or define your results, you shrink from doing so. This is some

what unsatisfactory.

I

P. I know it; I cannot but be aware of it. But pray remember, I never proposed to be a teacher or law-giver. merely said, that I saw a "spirit of slumber" settling on the Church, and that I feared that a tendency to increasing luxury, both among clergy and laity, was one chief cause of this great peril. But I shall hardly make myself understood, unless I go forward to the other branches of the subject; and for this, we must find some future opportunity.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

RECENT intelligence from Italy tells us that Pope Pius IX. has resolved to celebrate the 18th secular anniversary of the Martyrdom of St. Peter, said to have been crucified at Rome A.D. 66. All the adherents of the Papacy from the five parts of the world are to be invited to visit "the Eternal City," when an Ecumenical Council will be assembled in the same place where, 1260 years before, an Imperial Edict (that of Phocas) and a Roman Synod combined to recognise the blasphemous title of the Pope as Supreme Head of the Church.

If this intelligence prove true, and the Pope's wishes are fulfilled in large masses of people from all parts of the world