lect reading, in one of the daily prints, the circumstance which has so powerfully affected his conscience and feelings as to draw from him "The Serious Address" we have reviewed so largely. Mr. Smith, we find, had applied for some benevolent object to the chief magistrate; who denied him his petition, and took occasion to caution him, in peremptory language, against continuing the practice of preaching in the open air within the precincts of the City. Into the circumstances of the case, and the conduct of the parties, we forbear to enter. If the Lord Mayor was deficient in urbanity, we regret it; nor can we feel surprised that Mr. Smith should resent the abrupt and imperious manner, in which he describes himself to have been warned off from pursuing a system by which he conceives much to have been accomplished for the glory of God and the best interests of mankind. We would take the liberty, however, of suggesting to that gentleman, for whom we feel the truest respect, that his wounded feelings have sometimes betrayed themselves in a tartness of language, personal insinuation, and uncandid constructions, which he himself on second thoughts would hardly approve. If the Lord Mayor mistook his duty, it was a mistake into which the responsibility of his official post might easily betray him. We are far from liking the sentence ascribed to that magistrate; but as the threat uttered in the justice-room appears not to have been followed up in action, Mr. Smith having still pursued his vocation unmolested, we really think the public officer should be more carefully discriminated from the individual. Nor do we doubt that Alderman Brown may be a worthy and truly Christian man, though his decision in the Mansion-house were not the wisest and best, nor expressed with all conceivable courtesy.

It is, however, a question of mighty moment, whether or not the plan, upon which the chief magistrate and the preacher are at issue, be, as the latter contends, the right plan, and the only plan for saving the perishing myriads of souls in this great city. A serious and humane man cannot dispose of such a question with a scoff, nor lightly put it by to a more convenient season. To the fact that London, with respect to the mass of its population, rises little above the level of Heathen and Mohammedan countries in moral principle and religious knowledge, the hardiest sceptic will be constrained to subscribe. The unblushing front with which Vice stalks abroad must silence the effrontery of those, who pretend that she is already abashed at the voice of instruction, and cannot long maintain her ground against the steady advance of intellectual cultivation. We cannot, indeed, affirm that matters would not have been essentially

worse, if the education of the poor had been neglected for the last quarter of a century, instead of being assiduously carried forward. But it ought to be remembered, that the children who attend our National Schools are the children, in general, of ungodly and immoral parents. Accordingly, they are subjected to two opposite influences the salutary influence of school, and the pestilent influence of home: and up to this moment the latter has had a decided ascendency. What else, indeed, could be expected by any one who is conscious of the pravity of the human heart, and aware of the assimilating force of parental example on the plastic dispositions of children? For a single instance, in which the child imparts to his parents his own amelioration by school discipline and teaching, there might be found, we are confident, a dozen instances, in which, by communication with his wicked relatives, he loses his own virtuous impressions of a morning's growth, and contracts the bad habits he is forced to witness. Accordingly, education, singly employed, is an engine to which one cannot look for the reformation of the people, except by a very slow process, if at all. In order to bring about this most desirable object there should be a simultaneous attack on the adult and on the juvenile population. And this would take place to a certain extent, if the grown up men and women could be induced to attend places of worship. But this, unhappily, cannot be obtained by fair means. Judge Best is of opinion that some coercion should be employed to bring the poor classes to the house of God; and, although objections occur to our minds in the way of this measure, which it would be difficult to remove, still we are far from scouting the proposition as inconsistent with charity and wisdom. One obstacle, mentioned by Mr. Smith, though decisive at the present moment, will soon, we trust, cease to exist it is, that places of worship are not in being for more than one third of the population. But in the mean time shall the famine of hell be glutted with innumerable victims, who "are destroyed for lack of knowledge?" And shall Christian people and Christian ministers look on quietly, and suffer these wretches to perish in their ignorance, because they deserve it for their backwardness in seeking for "the instruction of wisdom?" Every principle of piety, and every kindly feeling of our nature, exclaims against such a proceeding. What remains, then, but to bring the Gospel before them wherever and whenever they can be found? Christianity is not of a temper to sit at home in sullen state, complacently accepting the homage of willing subjects, but disdaining to invite and allure the reluctant. If the children of men are too infatuated to seek her in her own dwelling-place,

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she will go forth in search of them, and will endeavour to meet with them "at the entry of the city,' ""at the chief place of concourse," "in the openings of the gates," and "by the way of the places in the paths." With the yearnings of a mother's heart, she will track the lost and pursue the fugitive. She will stand at the door of sinners, knocking, and meekly win her way into their chambers. Urgent, though. unobtrusive, she will force them, by gentle instances, to grant her an audience. She will try all the avenues of their heart-one while with the authoritative tone of a mistress, and then with the pathetic importunity of a suppliant ;-and she will never be deterred or disheartened from her labour of love, while they remain within the reach of expostulation and entreaty.

The sentiments of that eminent Christian philosopher, Dr. Chalmers, which are copied by Mr. Smith from the "Civic Economy of Large Towns," are much to our point, and shall enrich our pages.

"Now amid the splendour and the interest of these more conspicuous operations (alluding to missionaries among the Heathen) it is often not adverted to, that much of the work of a missionary character is indispensable for perpetuating and still more for extending Christianity at home:-how families within the distance of a mile may lapse, without observation and sympathy on our part, into a state of practical heathenism; how, within less than an hour's walk, 100 souls may be found who morally and spiritually live at as wide a separation from the Gospel and all its ordinances as do the barbarians of another continent,-how in many of our crowded recesses the families which out of sight and out of Christian sympathy have accumulated there, might at length sink and settle down into a listlessness and lethargy, and to all appearances antichristian population, leaving the Christian teacher as much to do with them as has the first missionary when he touches on a yet unbroken shore. It is vain to expect, that by a proper and primary impulse originating with themselves, these aliens from Christianity will go forth on the inquiry after it; messengers of Christianity must go forth upon them, many must go to and fro amongst the streets, and the lanes, and those dark intricacies that teem with human life to an extent far beyond the eye or imagination of the unobservant passenger, if we are to look for the increase of a spiritual taste or scriptural knowledge among families:-that mass, which is so dense of mind, and therefore so dense of immorality, must be penetrated in the length and breadth of it, and then many will be found who, however small their physical distance from the sound of the Gospel, stand at as wide a moral distance therefrom, as the children of the desert: and to overhaul this barrier, to send out upon this outfield such ministrations as might reclaim its occupiers to the habits and observations of a Christian land, to urge and obtrude as it were upon the notice of 1000 what, without such an advancement, not one of them might have moved a footstep in quest of,—these are so many approximations that to all intents and purposes have in them the character, and might, with the blessing of God, have also the effect of a missionary enterprize." Smith, pp. 13, 14.

These opinions, expressed by so profound a thinker, and one of so much practical knowledge, as the writer from whom they

are drawn, cannot fail of making an impression on the public, It may do for lounging pedants to dismiss with a supercilious smile the opinions of this patient and sagacious observer. Sensible men, however, will consider the presumption to be in favour of any plan that has issued from the cool, discerning mind of Dr. Chalmers. We subjoin to it Mr. Smith's proposal for supplying the metropolis with a new class of religious labourers suited to its exigencies.

We want a new class in London: it should consist of some fifty men of talent, zeal, energy, and piety, who would come out from all denominations, and give themselves up wholly to doing good upon general principles: "going about doing good" should be their simple, their sole, their constant, their invariable object and motto. The Lord Jesus Christ, with Peter and Paul, should be their daily pattern and example in their labours. The worth of souls and the love of Christ should be their fixed stimulus. The open air, during the summer months, should be their only chapel. The worst parts of cities and towns should be their preferable choice; and the common people, or the vilest sinners, should be the congregations they should aim to collect. They should belong to no other society. They should resolve to treat all ministers and places of worship with respect, but determinately to know no man, as to frowns or smiles, that would, for one moment, retard or hinder their onward progress. They should train up, as plain English preachers, men of robust constitutions, decent talents, fervent piety, strong voices, dauntless zeal, and steady persevering energy. Twelve such men in the summer, supported by six friends to each, should preach at twelve districts of London alternately, in the open air, every Sabbath morning at seven, with afternoons and evenings in fields, parks, outlets of London, and notorious resorts of the population. This plan of labour would do more good to arrest vice, diffuse knowledge, evangelize the metropolis, fill churches and chapels during the winter, and add members to district churches, or to missionary and benevolent societies, than all the present system of denominations, and mere church, or chapel, or room, or tent preaching. Every such city missionary should read one chapter from the Scriptures to each sermon, as I do invariably, and then the whole twelve would become Bible readers for London. No extensive good, I am confident, will ever be done until "Wisdom," by the Gospel, "crieth without; uttering her voice in the streets; in the chief places of concourse, in the openings of the gates; "-" standing in the tops of high places, by the way in the places of the paths, at the entry of the city, at the coming in of the doors." Police-offices, prisons, hulks, penitentiaries, houses of correction, transportations, and gibbets, have all been tried in vain. Nothing but the Gospel, preached as boldly, as plainly, as freely, as publicly, and as perseveringly, as it was preached by Christ himself, and his immediate followers, will ever evangelize London.... .. Human laws, restrictions, officers, and prisons, are good and necessary, but they are only human. They cannot convert. Reading the Scriptures, on the contrary, is a Divine command, and stands connected with a Divine blessing. Preaching the Gospel to the people, who will not enter churches or chapels, has the promised presence of Christ, and the assurance of God that it shall not return unto him void. The Gospel, then, I conclude (with unshaken confidence) must be the only remedy for London guilt and misery; and never will ministers, who are commanded by Christ to preach this Gospel to every creature, do their duty until they either go themselves, or sanction, promote, encourage, and aid

City missionaries, who are wholly devoted to this work, to "go out into the highways, the streets, and lanes of the city," and powerfully compel men to come in, that Christ's church may be filled. Smith, pp. 125, 126.

Mr. Smith, it will be seen by the extract just given-and it expresses the spirit of his whole pamphlet is a warm advocate for out-door preaching. For some years also his practice has corresponded with this sentiment; and we have his strong and emphatical testimony to the efficacy of the system, and to its innocence of producing idleness, disorder, and tumult among the people. If it did, a question would still remain, whether the accidental abuses counterbalanced the substantial benefit: and if it could be shewn that the evil was far exceeded by the good; that no instances, or none worth naming, had occurred of misconduct in the vast assemblages which the preacher gathers round him in Smithfield and Billingsgate; that numerous cases of individual conversions must be ascribed to this ministry; and that a considerable impression, for the narrow extent to which the process had been tried, appeared to have been made on the mass of iniquity in the metropolis ;-if this could be satisfactorily shewn, we must boldly rank ourselves among those who would rather say to such a system "Go forward, than "Stand still." We must plead guilty to the charge of rather being over-zealous in preaching the Gospel, than over-jealous of its being preached irregularly.

From the Report of a Society entitling itself "The Society for promoting Christian Instruction," we learn, that the example of this courageous Evangelist has been followed by some other Dissenters. The voice that cries in the wilderness is no longer solitary. Tents have been pitched at some of the crowded avenues leading to the fields near London, in which preachers have been stationed. On the judgment displayed by the conductors of the Dissenting academies, in sending the callow youth from Highbury, Homerton, and Stepney on a service which demands so much discretion and calmness, we forbear to remark. But what then? Shall the work be abandoned because it is now in the hands of persons whose zeal may occasionally outrun their judgment? Or shall it be taken up, cordially and resolutely taken up, by that religious body which is so constructed as to be secured, in a great degree, from enthusiastic excesses? This is the praise, we believe the just praise, of our religious establishment, working properly. To a power of active usefulness, exceeded by that of no other religious community, it adds safeguards against innovation and wildness, doctrinal or practical, which

exclusively its own.

VOL. II-NO. I.

Let not our brethren of other confes

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