To the Editor of the British Magazine. MR. EDITOR,-As I consider it the duty of the clergy to make known, through the medium of your Magazine, what is passing in their respective parishes, I send you the balance sheet of St. Mary's Benefit Club* for the past year, and also the leading rules by which it is governed. This club was established last year, and has worked wonderfully well. The depositors are thankful for the benefits they derive from it; and such numbers are pressing into it, that the only limits to it will be the want of honorary donations to make up the sum which each depositor is to receive at the end of the year. The principle on which it is conducted is, that any one member of a family residing in the parish, being married, or a widow, or a single person above fifty years of age, of good character, may deposit twopence weekly, for fifty-one weeks. Two-shillings-and-sixpence, from the honorary fund, is then added to the sum saved, the whole amounting to eleven shillings, which is laid out in coals, shoes, or goods. The depositors buy their own coal, and the ticket is brought to the treasurer for payment; or, if choice is made to purchase goods, an order is given by a printed ticket of credit, drawn upon a tradesman in Chester. No money is ever repaid to a depositor to be spent as he pleases. Every Sunday, after evening service, the members make their deposits; and numbers who never had been known to attend any place of divine worship have been drawn to church since they joined the club. The rule which compels regular attendance is, " if, at the end of three Sundays, the sixpence due is not paid, the depositor forfeits sixpence of the half-crown he is to receive at the end of the year. I am, Mr. Editor, your humble servant, REPLY OF AN EPISCOPAL CLERGYMAN TO THE VOLUNTARY CHURCH ASSOCIATION. To the Editor of the British Magazine. MR. EDITOR,-The following correspondence will, I trust, be deemed worthy of a place in the pages of the British Magazine. The most unwarrantable attempts are making at the present time to undermine the Church as established by law in Scotland, by means of Voluntary Church Associations. Of these associations, the ministers of the Secession are among the most active members, together with a few Independents. Every effort has been made to induce the ministers of the Scottish Episcopal Communion to join in this unhallowed work of devastation; but hitherto without success. While these ministers conscientiously believe that their own form of Church government is the purest and best, and consonant with that of the primitive church, they cannot be blind to the fact, that the Established Church of that country has been instrumental in training a religious and moral people, and they would be the last to join in the attempt to separate it from the state. I am, sir, Your humble servant, T. T. Z. "Leslie, 16th November, 1832. "Reverend SIR,-The adjourned meeting of the Friends of Religious Liberty, to consider the propriety of forming a Voluntary Church Association for the counties of Fife and Kinross, is to be held in Mr. Scott's meeting-house, Leslie, on Wednesday, 5th December ensuing, at twelve o'clock noon. You are requested to attend said meeting, and to bring along with you one or two active members of your congregation, favourable to the object. "I am, Reverend Sir, "Your's truly, "The Reverend John Marshall, Kirkaldy." "JOHN JOHNSTONE. ANSWER TO THE FOREGOING. " "Kirkaldy, November 20th, 1832. SIR,-I have been favoured with a printed letter, signed with your name, requesting my attendance at Leslie, on the 5th December, to consider, with other friends of religious liberty,' the propriety of forming a Voluntary Church Association for the counties of Fife and Kinross, and urging me to bring along with me one or two active members of my congregation, favourable to the object. "As I am no sophist, I take the plain meaning of your intimation to be, that, on the day mentioned, there is to be a meeting of Dissenters at Leslie, for the purpose of taking into consideration the best method of subverting the Scottish Ecclesiastical Establishment. From that Establishment, Sir, I am a dissenter as well as yourself. Nevertheless, as I cannot find myself to be in the slightest degree aggrieved by its existence, and as I regard it in the light of an effective engine for the inculcation of moral and religious instruction throughout the mass of my countrymen, I must decline uniting to those of its enemies my efforts for its overthrow. Allow me to add, that it is with pain I behold a number of men clothing themselves with the characters of ministers of the gospel of peace, and yet associating themselves for the accomplishment of an object, which, if attained, must ultimately involve the three kingdoms in all the horrors of anarchy and civil war. "In thus expressing my sentiments on this subject, you must not, Sir, set me down as a party peculiarly interested in upholding the Establishment. Indeed, the very circumstance of your addressing your circular to me as a dissenter, shews that it is impossible for you to do so. I may, however, go farther, and state, that, in a pecuniary point of view, we Scottish Episcopalians would be directly benefited by its abolition. You must be aware that about two-thirds of the Established Church's revenues are drawn from Episcopal landlords, who have at the same time their own clergy to maintain. This is a fact, of which, were we inclined to act the part of political demagogues, great advantage might be taken. But we can never forget-what is indeed notorious to every one at all acquainted with the matter-that every estate in the country burdened with teinds, &c. has been bought and sold with that burden for centuries, and that consequently the wilful appropriation by a landlord to his own use of but one farthing of his parish minister's stipend is neither more nor less than an act of robbery, which will be punished, if not by man, at least by God. "I presume, Sir, that in the event of your exertions for the overthrow of all establishments for religious instruction being crowned with success, your next object will be the subversion of every endowed seminary for the common purpose of general education. The two systems being based upon the same principle, they must stand or fall together. If George Heriot might lawfully bequeath his fortune for the rearing of a certain class of children, why may not a landed proprietor set apart a portion of his estate for the promulgation of the doctrines and duties of Christianity? "As matters stand at present, I perceive the body of my countrymen enjoying their moral and religious instruction gratuitously. Under the system advocated by the Voluntary Church Associations, they would be subjected to grievous burdens, have their own churches to build, and their own ministers to pay. "I have the honour to be, Sir, "Your most obedient servant, Presbyter of the Scottish Episcopal Church. "P.S. On looking into the Almanack, I find a John Johnstone, minister of the United Associate Synod of the Secession Church, at Leslie. I presume you are the individual. "The Rev. John Johnstone, Leslie." DIOCESE OF DURHAM. To the Editor of the British Magazine. SIR,-In one of your last numbers, p. 370, you ask, "Why will not those who can, supply information ?" Your question related to that which bishops and deans and chapters had begun to do, in the distribution of their funds for the augmentation of small livings, and for similar purposes, before clamour had reached its present height. I will tell you, as far as I am able, what has been doing in the diocese of Durham. The present Bishop of Durham has followed closely in the steps of his munificent predecessor, Shute Barrington; ever since he came to the diocese, churches, schools, and parsonage-houses have risen up. year after year in consequence of his benefactions. Many of the illendowed incumbents have had to thank him for increased incomes. In addition to private assistance, and to liberal donations, which have enabled some of them to derive full benefit from Queen Ann's Bounty, the bishop has ceded property under the Archbishop's Enabling Act, which will add, The Bishop has also made arrangements for the further cession of property, which will carry up other augmentations out of his own resources to double this amount, and has lately endowed the new church of Etherley. The Dean and Chapter of Durham, in like manner, have for several years past been proceeding upon a regular system, which has not only removed two of the principal complaints made against the church from the sphere of their jurisdiction and patronage, viz., pluralities and non-residence, but which also lays a tax to the amount of from fifteen to twenty per cent upon their several incomes, in addition to statutable and former deductions. In this spirit of spontaneous attention to the condition of their brethren, they have doubled the salaries of their minor canons and of the masters of their grammar school, or nearly so; and they have not left a single living in their gift with a provision under 150l. a year. Moreover, they have put measures in a train, which, if not interrupted by events beyond their control, will raise all their livings, Where the population exceeds 1000 to £300 a year Where it is under The permanent charge voluntarily imposed upon themselves to carry this one improvement into effect will not be less than 30007, a year. The amount of property likewise alienated as a free will gift to the Durham University is nearly 30007. a year. In fact, on an average of the last twenty-one years, it produced to the Dean and Chapter 29861. 18s. a year. I mention this exact sum because, when the grant was announced in Parliament last May, Lord Durham greatly under-rated its real value. Independently of these sacrifices, the Dean and Chapter of Durham, like their diocesan, have contributed largely to the occasional wants of the church. Parsonage houses have been provided in seven parishes, entirely or principally out of their funds. Last year they appropriated 12507. to the erection of a new church at South Shields, and 4501, to the purchase of a Chapel at Monk Wearmouth, besides voting 1007. a year and a house to the minister of the chapel. But that I may state something under this head which was going on long before the present outcry:-Within ten years previously to 1829, seventeen churches were enlarged, and eleven newly built, in this diocese, chiefly by aid of clerical benefactions. That the Durham clergy, throughout the whole diocese, have been equally liberal according to their means, appears on the face of a document which now lies before me. Two thirds of the sum total of the annual subscriptions paid to nine of the public charities of Durham and Northumberland, in which the laity are as much interested as the clergy, come out of the pockets of the clergy. This document was drawn up four years ago. I select two particulars for your information, in which the proportion is still greater on the side of the clergy. At the first Establishment of the Durham Diocesan Society for Enlarging and Building Churches, the amount of donations was Of this the Clergy gave 781 4 6 Durham, Jan. 19, 1833. I am, Sir, Your most obedient servant, To the Editor of the British Magazine. SIR,-Permit me, through you, to address one word of (I trust) no unfriendly remonstrance to the writer who signs himself "H." in your January number (p. 44-49, 54-57.) His criticisms, whether correct or no, are too ingenious not to attract notice; and this renders me the more anxious to lose no time in seriously requesting him to use his own better judgment on some expressions, fallen from him, which give his papers an air of lightness and irreverence (far, I am sure, from his meaning), and make it even painful to read them. Thus, Nathan's reproof to David is called "The Romance of the Pet Lamb." Certain words of our Saviour are designated as "Those very curious words." "Novies styx &c." is applied to the awful scene described in the account of the rich man and Lazarus. Abraham's bosom is "The Elysium of Death," &c. In a subsequent paper "On the Prophecy of Jesus," (is not this title unnecessarily irreverent?) not only casual expressions, but material facts of the writer's argument, appear to me chargeable with the same error, a kind of flighty conversational carelessness, tending to disparage the Holy Scriptures. Surely it is rather overbold, (especially in one who insists so much on the absolute necessity of literal truth in inspired words, except in cases of prophetic allegory or express parable, one of |