7. But it is not in these great national establishments alone that the operation of this improvement is to be seen; but in every direction, wherever good is to be done, or suffering or evil to be allayed, Christian feeling is at hand to prompt and to supply a remedy. Hence our establishments for the reception and cure of the deaf, the blind, and the insane; dispensaries for the supply of medicines and advice to the poor, gratis ; societies for visiting the destitute sick, for furnishing clothing to the poor at a cheap and easy rate, for the relief of the aged and indigent, and many others which I need not enumerate. By whom are these establishments and societies maintained, by whom were they originated, and by whose contributions supported? Has it been by the philosophers? No, it has been by humble, quiet, and unpretending Christians.

8. Our establishments for education are all originally to be referred to the same source. It is not matter of doubt, but may be proved by historical documents, that all our establishments of this kind, from the universities down to the parochial schools, owed their origin, either to the efforts of the clergy, or to the gifts and bequests of pious individuals incited by their example, or under the influence of a kindred feeling. The great English seminaries were, in their origin, confessedly monastic, and this is now alleged against them as matter of reproach. The parochial schools of Scotland were established at or soon after the Reformation, by the same men who settled the form and discipline of our Church, and the clergy of the respective presbyteries are still the visiters of these primitive but useful seminaries. By these institutions, secular learning and general information have been diffused over the land, along with moral and religious instruction. Some establishments go farther than this, and in various places large masses of property

have been bequeathed for the pious and charitable purpose of training up the young to usefulness and virtue. The children of poor but respectable parents are received into these institutions, are fed, clothed, and taught for several years, and, after receiving an education better than is attainable by many of a higher class, are apprenticed to trades, and receive a sum of money for the purpose of establishing them in business.

9. With regard to the administration of justice, and the provisions made for dispensing it with an even hand, both to rich and poor, I may refer to one of the earliest Acts of our Scottish Parliaments, which, though enacted in an age comparatively rude, evinces the purest spirit of justice and benevolence, legislative wisdom, and Christian philanthropy. In its expression it is quite perfect, and forms an admirable contrast to the confused, verbose, and cumbersome style of our Acts of Parliament in the present day. After describing the judges before whom causes shall be brought, it proceeds thus:-"To the quhilk judges, all and sindrie, the King shall give strait commandement, alsweil within regalities as outwith, under all paine and charge that may follow, that alsweil to pure as to rich, but fraude or guile, they doe full law and justice. And gif there be onie pure creature, that for fault of cuning or dispenses, can not or may not follow his causes, the King, for the love of GOD, sall ordain that the judge, before quham the cause suld be determined, purvey and get a leill and a wise advocate to follow sic pure creature's causes. And gif sic causes be obtained, the wranger sall assyth baith the party skaithed, and the advocate's costs and travale. And gif the judge refuses to do the law evinly as is before said, the party compleinand sall have recourse to the King, quha sall see rigorously punished sic judges, that it sall be exemple till all uthers." Act 2d Parliament of King James I. 1424, c. 24.

The above enactment affords a clear and affecting proof of the influence of Christian principles in an age little removed from barbarism, at a time when it will not be pretended that the feeling it evinces could have been derived from It has been acted upon other source. any ever since, and never more strictly, according to its spirit, than at the present day; and the only inconvenience attending it is, that cases occasionally occur where poor persons, from a litigious or malicious spirit, may be enabled by it to persecute those in better circumstances with actions at law, which rest on no solid ground of reason or justice. Even in cases of this description, however, it has been decided, that it is contrary to the spirit of our law to decern for costs against a poor litigant, though he have been never so much in the wrong; it being thought better to submit to this kind of injustice, than to throw obstacles in the way of hearing the cause of the poor, the widow, and the fatherless.

That the means thus employed for promoting the general improvement of the people have not been without effect, may be evident, on considering what was the state of the country and its population a little more than a century since, and what is that condition now.

Fletcher of Salton, writing in the year 1698, ten years after the Revolution, gives the following account of the state of Scotland at that period. There are at this day, in Scotland, besides a great number of families very meanly provided for by the Church boxes, (who, with living upon bad food, fall into various diseases,) two hundred thousand people begging from door to door. These are not only noways advantageous, but a very grievous burden to so poor a country; and though the number of these be perhaps double to what it was formerly, by reason of the present great distress, yet, in all times, there have been about one hundred thousand

of these vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or submission either to the laws of the land, or even those of God or nature." Then follows a description of crimes too gross to be particularized; and he afterwards proceeds thus: No magistrate could ever discover or be informed which way any of these wretches died, or that they were ever baptized. Many murders have deen discovered among them, and they are not only a most unspeakable oppression to poor tenants, (who, if they give not bread or some sort of provision to perhaps forty such villains in one day, are sure to be insulted by them,) but they rob many poor people who live in houses distant from any neighbourhood. In years of plenty, many thousands of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and other like public occasions, they are to be seen, both men and women, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together." Such is Fletcher's account, and as at this period the population of Scotland amounted to only one million, so it is plain there must have been about a fifth of the whole living in profligacy or by plunder.

In the year 1717, or nineteen years afterwards, the system of pastoral and parochial instruction having, in the mean time, been in full and active operation, the following statement is given by Daniel Defoe, whose general accuracy is unquestionable. "The people," says he," are restrained in the ordinary practice of common immoralities, such as swearing, drunkenness, slander, licentiousness, and the like; as to theft, murder, and other capital crimes, they come under the cognizance of the civil magistrate as in other countries; but in those things which the Church has power to punish, the people being constantly and impartially prosecuted, that is,

subjected to the discipline of the Church, they are thereby the more restrained, kept sober and under government, and you pass through twenty towns in Scotland, without seeing any broil, or hearing any oath sworn in the streets." It will be admitted that the same general good order, decency, and sobriety, prevail throughout the country at this day, excepting in those large towns and villages where the population has, by its rapid increase, outgrown the means of religious and moral instruction.

Mr Combe has, in one part of his work, taken some trouble in collecting instances of the persecution of witches in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in different parts of Europe, to which he might have added a vast amount of similar instances in New England within the same period. He has attributed this, and certainly with justice, to the mistaken zeal of pious Christians, and an erroneous interpretation, or rather an injudicious application, of certain texts of Scripture.

This is apparently turned by him into a weapon of attack against Scripture itself, or at least an argument to prove that no reliance can be placed on its declarations, seeing that it is liable to be misinterpreted and misapplied. But it must be owned to be straining the matter beyond all bounds of fair inference, to argue, from an acknowledged abuse of any thing, against its fair, and cautious, and legitimate use; for were such arguments admitted, there is nothing in this world that may not be equally condemned. The persecution of the witches has now, for upwards of a century, been abolished, and admitted to have been the joint product of ignorance and fanaticism. Along with these have vanished all the dreams of magical incantations, evil eyes, ghosts, omens, and every species of diablerie, the offspring of a certain traditionary lore handed down from the days of darkness and heathenism. For all this Christianity is not entirely