having each person, or each family, insulated and kept apart. How can people, penned up within those high walls, feel that they are joining in worship with their brethren, the crown of whose heads they can scarcely see? There is an old saying, of which the English are proud, and not without reason, that every man's house is his castle. This belongs indeed to a ruder state of society, but is a ground for thankfulness, as declaring that, through the power of the laws, the house of the poorest man in England is to be no less sacred and inviolable, no less capable of protecting him and his family from wrong and oppression, than the turreted and battlemented castle of the proudest baron, garrisoned by his men at arms. When this saying however is transferred from the State to the Church, from that which through the circumstances of the age was inevitably the seat of lawlessness and discord, to that which ought in all ages to be the seat of peace and love,—when people say, as too many seem to say in their hearts, that every man's pew is his castle,-the whole order of truth is inverted. We do not come to church to shut ourselves up within the walls of pride, but to prostrate ourselves before God, and to open our hearts to Him in humble penitent confession. We do not come to fence ourselves in and guard ourselves round from our neighbours, but to be united to them as children of the same Father, members of the same Lord, heirs of the same glorious inheritance, rich and poor, gentle and simple, one with another. This is the reason which makes me so desirous to get rid of whatever seems to cut us off from each other in church. This is the reason why, year after year, I urge you so strongly to remove those

eyesores and heartsores by which your churches are disfigured (v).

Besides, in what I have been saying about discipline, you who are Churchwardens are all intimately concerned. If the Church recovers her spiritual powers, it will be your special office to minister to her in the discharge of these functions by the presentment of offenders. Even now you may do much for the preservation of order and peace in your several parishes, if you will only work cordially along with your minister. You may do much in keeping order in church during divine service, which is one of your peculiar obligations. You may do much by frequent advice and exhortation to your parishioners to be regular in attending the worship of God, and still more by setting them the example of such regularity, to which indeed you are especially bound by the very act of undertaking your office. You may do much by admonishing parents to send their children regularly and punctually to school, and by using your influence to dissuade the farmers from employing the labour of young children who ought to be laying up a store of knowledge against the years when they will have no time for learning. Thus yours, if properly discharged, is a most useful and honorable office, by the worthy discharge of which you may contribute greatly toward setting your parishes in order, and helping your ministers in leading their people in the ways of righteousness and life.

Thus we have all heavy duties pressing on us; immeasurable fields of labour are stretching out before us; clouds are gathering round us; storms are threatening;

thunder is rolling in the distance. We see divisions and contentions in the Church, dissensions in the state, schism, ever multiplying, hydra-headed schism, discontent, insurrection, clamour, the uprore, as it were, of approaching rebellion. Whither can we turn for help amid all these difficulties and dangers? Our rulers, our legislators seem utterly unable to devise any counsel. Whither can we look for strength, that we may fulfill our duties amid all this commotion? Look up, Brethren: there is still a bright light overhead. Look not down: there you will find no help. Look not round: there you will only see fear and alarm. But look up, to Him who sits above the waterfloods, to Him who remaineth a King for ever, to the Lord who will give strength to His people, to the Lord who will give His people the blessing of peace. And let me end by offering up that prayer to Him, which our Church is offering up this week, and which is so exactly suited to our wants.

Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee, that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by Thy governance, that Thy Church may joyfully serve Thee in all godly quietness, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

E

NOTES.

NOTE A: p. 6.

Ir has been remarkt by many, what a revolution has taken place in public opinion with regard to the Church, and particularly on the value of Episcopacy, since the epoch of the Reform-Bill, fifteen years ago. This may be deemed an instance of the common fact, that, when things have sunk to their lowest point, they begin to rise again; a fact frequently exemplified in history, above all in that of the Church, in which, as it has a higher principle and source of life, the appearance of decay is not, so generally as in other history, the prelude of dissolution. For this fact there will doubtless be special grounds in each several case. In the present, it would not be difficult to find ample explanations for the low estimation into which the Church and its Government had fallen, on the one hand from the general tendencies of the European mind, which, for more than a century, in large classes of its representatives, had been growing more and more alienated from religion, at least as a positive social institution, and on the other hand from the prevalent torpour of the Church herself, subject, as she could not but be more or less, to the influences which modified the character of the age. For effects often outlast their causes, and in some cases do not attain to their full outward exhibition, until long after the inward crisis by which those causes have been counteracted. They lag in the rear, as the thunder after the lightning; and sometimes, when the shell is bursting and perishing, it is only to manifest the new life that has been growing up within. Moreover the new life which had been stirring in the Church, was almost exclusively personal, and dealt