INHUMANITY OF THE CHURCH.

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out of the highways of learning. The Church takes the property and the education of the land under her own control. Not satisfied with this, she claims the receptacles of the dead. A Dissenting minister is forbidden to perform the funeral rites over his own dead in the consecrated burying ground. The child that has been baptized, educated, brought to the truth by a Dissenting minister, grown up under his care, been consoled by him in sickness, and cheered by him in the last fearful hour, must die with the certainty that he will be interred by a stranger, if he wishes to sleep in the old burying-ground where his fathers rest; or (if no Dissenting burial place is near), be buried on the world's wide common by his own minister. If his friends will consent to have the hours of his bereavement embittered by the presence of one who insulted and wronged their dead while living, and treats them in their distress with scorn, then, indeed, they can bury their loved and lost one in the old churchyard. But if, as it often happens, the clergyman of the parish is a fox-hunting, wine-drinking, godless man, and the Dissenter, under the keen sense of oppression and insult, under the deeper consciousness of the man's unworthiness and heartlessness, refuses to have him minister at the burial of his child, if he would have him rest with the ashes of his ancestors -" with pious sacrilege," a grave he must steal. And if the minister who has prayed with him-bound up his broken heart, and spoken the words of truth and earnestness to him, perform the service over the stolen burial, he is compelled to do it standing without the paling of the churchyard, while the suf fering friends listen from within. And this is the charity of the Church of Christ-these the shepherds of the flock, whose office it is, like their Great Master, "not to break the already bruised reed!" This is Christianity! The wild Indian of the wood has more humanity; the savage of the desert shows more sympathy for bereaved men. They will not invade the dead; even the jackals wait till the living have retired to their dwellings; but not so with this Church of Christ-it casts out the dead before they are interred, in the very face of the

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BENEVOLENCE OF DISSENTERS.

living, if they have not subscribed to the Thirty-nine Articles.

D'

ISSENTERS are obliged to sustain their own churches and clergy, and pay just as much to the Established Church as its own members. Hence, to obey both his conscience and the government, the Dissenter must first pay a tenth of his entire income to the establishment, besides being called on frequently for Church rates, which are taxes ostensibly levied for keeping churches in repair and erecting new ones, to the extent of several millions per annum; and finally, he must erect his own chapel and support his own minister. It is no small compliment to the Dissenters to say, that in addition to all these expenses, they raise more to support missionaries abroad, and benevolent enterprises at home, than the churchmen of England. The author of the Natural History of Enthusiasm, passes upon them the following just tribute of admiration: "The sums yearly raised by Dissenters for benevolent objects, reflect a lustre upon England brighter than all the glory of her arms!"*

* I might here record many instances of generosity among Dissenters, illustrating this remark; I will allude to only one. I was told by two highly respectable maiden ladies, in Liverpool, that the various sums they were required to pay annually to the Church and State, amounted to $123; no inconsiderable part of this sum going into the pockets of the clergymen of the church, from whose ministrations they received not the least advantage, since they attended a Unitarian chapel. To me this seemed the more oppressive, for every shilling they were thus taxed for the Church, left them one shilling less to pay to their own minister, who devoted himself with great fidelity to his congregation. These ladies had long maintained themselves by keeping one of the most genteel boarding-houses in the upper part of the town; and although their means could not be supposed to be so ample as to admit of any large offerings to the cause of benevolence, yet I had occasion to know, that the poor who came every day to their door, were not frowned empty away; and that they contributed generously to the support of their own minister. All this was done with a Christian spirit, inspiring two sisters, who stand alone in the world, to deny themselves, that they may know the luxury of doing good to others. I was sitting with

THE LOAD ON DISSENTERS.

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It often happens that Dissenters refuse to pay the taxes levied on them to support the Church, since they regard it as helping to uphold a worldly and corrupt institution. They then suffer distraint on property. Anything on which the officer can lay his hands, be it the last means of subsistence, the last comfort procured for a sick family, is taken. The distress thus caused is often very great, and such scenes are witnessed every day.

June, 1841, a man of the name of John Cockin suffered distraint on his property for refusing to pay 18. 10d. for Easter offerings, in addition to his tithes. He declared that this was a tax never imposed on him before, and he would not pay it. The warrant for attaching his goods, process and all, swelled the amount to 11s. 10d., which the magistrates took in dried bacon. This was done by the agent of the Vicar of Almondbury, Rev. Lewis Jones.

The claims of the Church are never outlawed, although not enforced for years before. Unless they can be shown to have been abolished before the year 1180, they can be enforced with the certainty of being collected. Thus any titheable property, that has been suffered to go exempt for a long period, can be subjected to the tax when the clergyman pleases. These clergymen cannot even pay for the washing of their own surplices-the poor Dissenting minister, himself, is equally subjected to all these taxes with his own people.*

them one morning, as a friend entered to solicit charity for a family in distress; what they had was freely given. After the person was gone, they spoke of the trials to their feelings they often experienced, of not being able to select for themselves the objects of their benevolence, rather than have those objects dictated by ecclesiastical law.

* Colton tells a story of a rector, who one morning made, what he professed to be, a friendly call upon a Dissenting clergyman who happened to reside in his own parish. The Dissenter was pleased to receive the call, since he hoped from the bland address of the rector, that he designed to open friendly intercourse with him, which had never before been extended, although he had lived for years in his immediate neighborhood. The Dissenter showed him his grounds, and took great pleasure in displaying his little premises and giving

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MORE BREAD AND FEWER PRIESTS.

VI.

CTOBER 1, 1841: "The Norwich Society for the Propaga

tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," Lord Wodehouse in the chair, was broken up by a Chartist mob. As one of the clergy stepped forth to appease the tumult, he was hailed with the shout, "we want more bread and fewer priests."

In that shout was manifested the prevailing spirit of the mass of the English nation, towards an institution which, for ages, has over-shadowed the people with its magnificence and oppression. Everywhere in Christendom, the people are beginning to discover that they have long been robbed of the choicest gifts of heaven. That not only have they been made uncomplainingly to surrender the fruits of the earth to the tyrannical grasp of power, but that Christianity itself, the kindest and best provision heaven has ever made for the souls of men, has been turned into an instrument for his more complete degradation. The poor of England hate the Church of England. Its magnificent churches and cathedrals are left vacant, and while the

him a history of his improvements. "There is about half an acre as you see," said the Dissenting minister; "half of it is ornamented, where I take pleasure with my thirteen children, and the other half furnishes vegetables to feed them. You would hardly believe it, but this little patch, under the culture of my own hands, goes a great way towards supplying the table of my numerous family." “Indeed, sir. And how many years has it been so productive?" Some half a dozen or more." The vicar confessed himself greatly pleased, and having ascertained all he came there to know, withdrew, wishing his Dissenting brother a "good morning."

Now for the result! Immediately after, the rector's steward sent to the Dissenter's study a bill for tithes on the little garden of £6, or nearly $30 per year, for six years previous, and the same for the then current year, amounting in all to $200. The rector was a single man, and had a large salary. The Dissenting clergyman had a family of thirteen children, and a small congregation, who could afford him with the greatest economy but a slender support. But the tyranny of the English Church is such, there was no relief for the outraged man. To pay this large bill, swept away every comfort he had gathered around him, and reduced his cheerful family to want and sorrow. And yet this is "Apostolical !"

THE POOR HATE THE CHURCH.

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jewelled priests minister at the altars, humble dissenting chapels are crowded. In the time of our Saviour the rich were the enemies of the Church-the poor now; the titled and the luxurious are its advocates and supporters, and the lower classes its antagonists.

It may be well to inquire into the cause of this growing hatred of the poor towards the Established Church; why it is that more than one-half of the whole number of those who profess serious religion " (Dr. John Pye Smith) prefer to withdraw from the establishment, and worship within humble chapels, while they not only bear the burden of maintaining their own services, but are just as heavily taxed to support the Church of England as her own members. Why it is, that dissenters are continually and more rapidly increasing in power, wealth and influence; why it is, then, when the bishop dashes by with his gorgeous equipage, the starving wretch, as he shakes the dust of the chariot from his tattered garments, murmurs to himself, "this splendor costs the sweat and toil and famine of me and my brethren." Why is all this? "There is a reason for it somewhere." Christ came to the poor. The neglected multitude, the starving widow, the abandoned leper, were his associates. The haughty priests shook their mitred heads at him, and called him a friend of publicans and sinners. The elevation of the mass was the grand design of the Saviour and his religion he came to heal the broken-hearted—to preach deliverance to the captive. Ancient philosophers and heathen priests had passed unheeded by the lowly dwellings of the poor and forsaken, but the Son of God proclaimed himself the restorer, the comforter, the brother of all earth's neglected children. Feeling that their deliverer had at last come, they crowded around him, caught hold of his garments, pressed upon him in his retirement, and wept at his feet, as the Gospel with its new and abundant consolations was spoken in their ears.

All this is felt by the despised and depressed classes, and if they have read their Bible, or heard its truth preached, how can they help contrasting "The MAN of sorrows," "The FRIEND