or two of these we shall merely glance at. Christianity it is said, increases the value of property; and in illustration, we have contrasted the state of New England with that of Turkey. True, the laws are good in the one place, bad in the other, and of consequence, the security greater, which might fairly result from enlightened self-interest. Property was secure in the best days of Pagan Rome, but that in itself, though an admirable proof of the wisdom of Roman legislation, was no argument for Roman religion. Individually the Turks are proverbially honest, but they are the victims of bad laws, laws in no wise justified by their religion, and therefore, in making such inconsiderate assertions, we support Christianity at the expense of justice, a support which Christianity is too powerful to need, and too generous to accept. Again we are told that, "except where Christianity prevails, we shall not find those partnerships in trade and commerce, which are indispensable to give property its greatest value." We throw no discredit upon partnerships in trade; they are the necessary result of great commercial civilization, and may consist with the most rigorous probity; but we ask any man to read their history, and say whether he can plead them in evidence for Christianity whether in these combinations for gain, united in most cases, but by the one tie of interest, he can discover the good effects of his blessed religion. What has been the conduct of such associations, in trade with savages, but the most fraudulent extortion of the intelligent and the strong over the ignorant and the weak. What, for long years, was the conduct of the despotic and rapacious East India Company over the millions whom it oppressed?—and to sum up all, what but partnerships, partnerships in every Christian nation, supported the African slave-trade, that curse and shame of human nature, the blood-spot upon the white man's hand, the mark of Cain upon his brow? But we reject this mode of argument altogether. We do not wish to infer the growth of Christianity by the spread of traffic, nor to measure a nation's piety by the number of her joint-stock companies. We are not in favor of appeals to the selfish for religion on grounds of worldly and pecuniary economy; on either hand they are useless; the zealous do not need them, and the indifferent will not mind them. We admit the pulpit is worth more than it costs; and though it should be proved that religious institutions required far greater expenditure than they do, the argument for such institutions would still remain unchanged.

Our main object in this paper is to consider the present position and influence, difficulties, and duties of the pulpit. We shall endeavor in our estimate to be impartial and unbiassed.

Let us then take as a principal test the pulpit's position and influence, the amount of attendance on its ministry, and the extent to which it operates on the moral conditon of society. Apparently, the numerical attendance of all popular sects is considerable. Extraordinary talents with an adaptation of them to some dominant passion or opinion, command throngs of eager listeners, arrested by the coincidence of prejudice, or fixed by the spell of eloquence. And these talents, high for the popular purpose, need not always be high by a positive standard; when men believe they are easily pleased, and when the speaker reflects their own sentiments, they are not disposed to be critical. Nor does it require that order of eloquence in which enthusiasm must be polished by fine taste, to move a multitude, who seek more for earnestness of manner and strength of utterance, than for ingenious thought and elegant diction. But whether the talents or eloquence be or be not of the highest order, the men, who can use them to collect and interest large numbers of people, are comparatively few; and the audiences by which they are attended form no fair criterion whereby to estimate the real influence of preaching. Whom then are we to consider the regular and steady adherents of the pulpit? These may be resolved into three distinct classes, as different as can be one from the other; the sincerely devout, for whom the house of prayer has in itself attractions; conventional attenders, who go from habit, fashion, or interest; and zealots who are drawn more by doctrines than devotion. We add to these, the inhabitants of rural districts, who commonly attend worship, wherever there is a church within any available distance; but in such cases, it is as much a place of news as a place of prayer. When we have counted all, however, who are regular and permanent adherents to the pulpit, we doubt whether a majority will not remain, on whom the pulpit has no power, who habitually desert it, or are but very occasionally present. We count among these considerable numbers of young men of the working classes, studious in their habits and anxious for knowledge, who after six days toil, employ the seventh in rest and reading. We are not giving our own opinion; we are stating facts; facts which we know. We are aware that many in the same grade of life are absent,

but from very different causes; they are away in idleness, ignorance, or the pursuit of pleasure. With such our subject has no concern. But respecting those whom we have first specified, the fact is plain, that they have become readers, rather than hearers, and that in all these cases the loss of the pulpit has been the gain of the press. A vast portion there is besides of society, whom the pulpit can neither attract nor hold; the ignorant that cannot understand, and the intellectual that will not listen. We have neither time nor space to verify our statement by tabular statistics, but that such is fact will appear to any one who compares, throughout Christendom, the number of worshippers with the number of inhabitants. Masses there are in all populous districts, masses dark and dense, amongst whom the voice of the pulpit is never heard ; masses buried in a moral wilderness of ignorance, crime, and destitution, whom the public ministrations of religion never reach. Persons who have no means of knowing this by their own observation, have only to consult the reports of those in our own country or Europe, who have paid attention to the physical or spiritual condition of the poor. What hordes of human beings in London on whom the Sabbath sun never dawns with the gladness of religion, on whose ears the churchgoing bell never sounds with the music of peace? We know it to be asserted as a certainty, and we have no reason to think it otherwise, that thousands in London have never crossed the threshold of a church or chapel. Suppose, then, two persons to take different directions in a great city during the hours of divine service; one to the churches, the other to the dwellings of the poor, and the retreats of vice; on comparison of notes, which would be found the most crowded? We fear the result. Yet all not at worship would not be found in guilt. Many are dead in the apathy of ignorance, born to darkness, they have fulfilled their destiny; many without provision for the wants of nature, forget those wants which are latest and deepest; many from shame-faced delicacy will not go in raggedness to the congregation of their neighbors, nor let those who once knew them otherwise see them in their fall and wretchedness.

Turning then from those who are absent by extreme ignorance or extreme indigence, let us refer for a moment to those, who are neither ignorant nor indigent; who remain away from the mere want of inclination or inducement to attend. To the

former class we shall allude again, before we close this article; of the latter, we may consider that no small portion of it is to. be found in the intelligent and independent working population. Thousands we believe of this class, both in our own country and Europe, rarely go to church. And how, it may be enquired, are they in the mean time engaged? Variously. Some walk into the fields; some instruct their families; some give themselves to private study; and others attend philosophical debates. The rapid and extensive progress of Owenism among the operatives of Britain is an evidence to which nothing stronger can be added. Shall we find the case otherwise among the higher classes? In America and England, where attendance on public worship is a matter of decorum, where such attendance is commonly a sine-qua-non of respectable station, few that desire to stand fairly with society will entirely desert the house of prayer. But look to France, and other countries on the European continent, and where conventional scruple does not operate in the same manner, and you see churches all but empty. Exceptions there are, such as those we alluded to before, but literally they are exceptions. M. Coquerel, with his fine delivery and polished eloquence, is surrounded with the Protestant élite of Paris; and a few years ago when M. Cordaire, patronized by the young men, was the fashion, his church was thronged with the aristocracy of Catholicism. So was it with Edward Irving in London; a mob of nobility, senators, and statesmen pressed about him to suffocation, but the time soon came, when the magic could charm no more; and when after a life exhausted before its prime, he sought his mother-land to die, he had been long forgotten by the courtly circles. While his eloquent eccentricities had novelty they went to hear him, as they would a new Prima Donna at the opera; curiosity gratified and taste satiated, they had nothing else to desire; deserted on all sides, he laid his head among those who knew in private his manly and Christian worth; who were not held merely by the lam-. bency of his genius, and did not with the crowd depart, when the lights began to fail. Numbers of professional men are habitually indifferent to the pulpit, with whom, however unjust it may be considered, a sermon is but another name for an opiate. Rare talents may draw them forth, but rare talents, implied in the very epithet, are scattered over wide intervals both of time and space. Looking, therefore, from one extreme

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of society to the other, and taking any part of Christendom as our field of observation, we think the fact established, that the pulpit, - not of this sect or that, but the general modern pulpit, to a large extent, has lost, or is losing, its power. If such be the fact, what the cause or causes? We shall, to the best of our power, endeavor to explain.

The first reason we shall assign is extrinsic to the pulpit, and is founded in the growing influence which progressive civilization has been giving to the press. Previous to the reformation and the invention of printing, the priesthood was the depository of all the knowledge that existed, and the only medium for its utterance. The pulpit was then the single and solitary source of popular instruction, and around it was the submissive throng of believing multitudes; uninquiring faith listened to its mandates, and princes, equally with the people, bent before its authority. The instrument of moral teaching, the peculiar dispenser of religious thought, it was, moreover, the only means of civilization. When we consider the gross. ignorance of the lower classes, as then existing; the equal ignorance of the lay nobility; with ferocious and despotic passions superadded; if it were not for the impressive sanctions of religion, and the influence of preaching, we know not how society could have been preserved from the most frightful and savage anarchy. Whatever raised men above their grossest and their worst propensities; whatever restrained them in their fiercest and most unlawful desires; whatever softened or humanized their manners; whatever nurtured or diffused the best charities of life, were mainly or entirely in those ages gathered from the pulpit. The pulpit was the people's protector, as well as instructor; the only power which could make the despot quail; a power, before which the mightiest monarch became weak in presence of the most lowly monk. The priest may have often been a tyrant, but most commonly he was the tyrant of the tyrant; and the hand of the oppressor, filled with blood and plunder, has not seldom been broken by the lightning of the church. In such times, it was well to have a power which feared neither knights nor kings; a power, which in its very supremacy over worldly rank, could humiliate the great and protect the poor. When we fling sarcasms at the priesthood unsparing and unjust, we do not probably recollect, how much popular rights awe such men as Becket and Langton. While slavery and silence, except when speech