the "semi-Popery" of some members of his church is described as "lamentable." Of course, the remedy for every defect in worship, whether in one extreme or the other, is in the right use of the Prayer Book. But it is not on such topics that Mr. Allen most frequently dilates. He ranges in fact over the wide field of Christian doctrine and duty, saying, in a somewhat promiscuous fashion, and with a little hardness of tone, many wise and weighty things. The topics of the day have a prominent place in his illustrations. The defalcations of fraudulent trustees, the iniquity of agricultural gangs, the claim to the Tichborne estates, with many other matters of popular interest, lend their several aid to the enforcement of religious truth. In short, Mr. Allen talks to his people like a sensible man of the world: though sometimes, we must say, with a superabundance of words. He was formerly a school inspector; we wonder whether he would have "passed" the narrative of the drunken man who lay down in the snow, and was "providentially" picked up (pp. 119-120). There are other evidences of the haste with which the book was written, and for which we are bound to say the author apologises. For instance, it was not to the Macedonians that Paul discoursed until midnight (p. 312). Again, we at least have not met those Gnostics of the nineteenth century who speak of Christ "as a phantom or a spirit" (p. 253). What, moreover, can this sentence mean? "I know of nothing more likely to make a man a Christian (the italics are ours) than carefulness and cleanliness in his person and dress, regular habits of living, and a proper observance of a good outward demeanour in his connexions with the world" (p. 188). As is too common in teachers of Mr. Allen's class, there is more in his sermons about the Christian religion than about faith in Christ, although, in reference to the Apostle's creed, as compared with the Twenty-nine Articles, he makes one good point. The statements of the former, he says, are Articles of Faith of the latter, Articles of Religion. Great is the difference, if people would but mark it well! Week-Day Sermons. By R. W. DALE, M.A. Alexander Strahan and Co. London. 1867. "There is no reason,' 19 says Mr. Dale, "why these week-day sermons should not be read on Sundays. They are about everyday life, and some readers may think them "unspiritual; " but is it quite safe to divorce the hours we consecrate to devotion from the hours we spend in the family, the counting-house, and the shop? If week-days are never thought about on Sundays, will not Sundays be forgotten on week-days? Would it not be well for every man to spend one hour on the first day of the week thinking over-not the business affairs-but the morality of the other six? The first sermon on "the use of the understanding in keeping God's law," still further illustrates the author's intent in his publication. Ignorance and inattention are the causes of many a fault, and the reason of a debased and feeble piety. No one can honestly study these sermons without practical benefit: they treat questions of personal and social morality in a genial Christian spirit, and must deepen the conviction that Christ's Gospel is for the regulation of the whole of life.

The Family-its Duties, Joys, and Sorrows. By COUNT A. de GASPARIN. Jackson, Walford, and Hodder.

The family institution, both in itself and its relations to questions "of politics, of social organization, of happiness, of morality, or religion," is a subject to which Count de Gasparin has given considerable thought and research, and which he intends to treat in a series of three volumes, of which this is the first. Those which are to follow will be the fruit of study, and will embody the results of that which he has gathered from other authors. In this he has given free scope to his own thought, and what he has written has been dictated, he says, "Only by my own most intimate experience; by my faith, and by the promptings of my own heart." And very beautiful, very tender, very suggestive, are these carefully drawn pictures of what family life may be and ought to be. The Count writes like a man of high-toned piety, sincere goodness, great warmth and purity of feeling, and yet considerable practical sagacity, and has given us a book which must do good in every household in which it finds an entrance.

EDITORIAL NOTE.

THE opinions expressed in articles signed by the writers or by initial letters, are not necessarily those of the Editors of the Free Churchman. Articles which diverge strikingly from the line of currently received opinion will be so marked, and the Magazine will not be committed to the advocacy of views it has not formally adopted. As a rule, subjects which admit of controversy, will be treated from different points of view by writers drawn from opposing sides. Thus the article on the conduct of Public Worship, advocating the introduction of Liturgies into the services of the Free Churches, will be replied to by writers who believe that Liturgies are incompatible with the genius of Free Churchmanship. The publication of an article in defence of the union of Church and State in a Magazine devoted to the advocacy of the voluntary principle, may, however, seem to be an unreasonable application of the principles upon which the Free Churchman is conducted, and may cause some not unnatural surprise. But members of the Established Church not unfrequently assist him to contribute his views in the form of an article to this Magazine. That he has done so deserves the acknowledgment of our thanks. A rejoinder will, of course, appear hereafter.

THE

FREE CHURCHMAN.

MARCH, 1868.

SKEATS'S HISTORY OF THE FREE
CHURCHES.*

AT

T the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was calculated that the Dissenters of England numbered about one-hundredth part of the population. Mr. Skeats quotes from a return to an Order in Council the following figures. The Province of Canterbury-Conformists, 2,123,362; Nonconformists, 95,151; Papists, 11,878. Province of YorkConformists, 353,892; Nonconformists, 15,525; Papists, 1,987. At that recent period, therefore, the English Nonconformists hardly numbered more than 110,000 people. It seems almost incredible that within a century and a half, this insignificant portion of the community should have attained to such numbers and influence as to rival the Established Church itself. The fact is the more wonderful when we remember that the crown, the aristocracy, the landed gentry, and a large portion of the wealthy classes have been on the side of the Established Church,

"A History of the Free Churches of England, from 1688 to 1851." By Herbert S. Skeats. London: Arthur Miall.

4

that the exclusion of Dissenters from the Universities has given her a monopoly of the rewards provided for the encouragement of learning; that while there has been but little of the severer forms of persecution which often serve to stimulate and to quicken the loyalty and self-devotion of their victims, Nonconformists were long subjected to civil disabilities, and are even now exposed to those adverse social influences which tell so powerfully upon a large class of minds. That in the face of all this, the Free Churches of England have grown to their present status, is a fact which no thoughtful man will treat lightly, and the book which records their progress is certainly deserving of thoughtful attention. A certain class of Churchmen are very fond of statistical arguments. They insolently point to their alleged superiority in numbers, as a proof of the rightfulness of the position they occupy, and talk of Dissent as the religion of buttermen and grocers. Such a tone is strangely inconsistent with the facts of the case. It is of small importance, indeed, whether the census returns in 1851 were or were not slightly too favourable to Dissenters. The broad fact cannot be altered. When the Toleration Act was passed, "the great men of the Church" according to Bishop Burnet's statement to Calamy, fondly anticipated that Dissent would die out in a generation, and there were circumstances which made such an expectation appear not unreasonable. In 1851, instead of being a thing of the past, "the Free Churches had drawn half the Christian population of England and Wales within their folds." If this be an evidence of the essential strength of the State Church system, we wonder what proof would suffice to indicate its weakness.

The change in the attitude of the Free Churches is not less significant than their increase in numbers. In the reign of William III., the idea of comprehension was still entertained, and it was calculated that, if the project for the attainment of that end, proposed by the Earl of Nottingham, and supported by Burnet, Tillotson and Tenison, with all the influence which they could command, had become law, at least two-thirds of the Dissenters of the day would have returned to the Establishment. Even its defeat did not rouse their leaders to active hostility. They were content with the toleration they enjoyed, but few of

them had any true conception of the principles of religious equality, and they regarded with unconcealed dislike, the men who dared to take up a bolder position. When Defoe undertook to breast the fierce tide of reaction, which set in on the accession of Queen Anne, he found opponents among the Nonconformists, hardly less strenuous and decided than his natural foes of the High Church. Mr. Skeats tells us that "Calamy sneeringly alludes to him as a certain warm person, who thought himself well qualified for the management of an argument." And when the real point of his "Shortest Way with the Dissenters" had been detected, and the High Church party roused to even more than their ordinary hatred and fury, were wreaking their bitterest vengeance upon him-in addition to all the tortures of the pillory, to fine and to imprisonment, he had to encounter the reproaches of those in defence of whose liberties he had exposed himself to this storm of persecution. The truth was, the English Presbyterians, who numbered in their ranks many men of wealth and influence, who availed themselves of the concessions made to "Occasional Conformity," were unwilling to peril what they had by an attempt to secure more; and at least had little, if any, sympathy with that Political Dissent, of which Defoe was an exponent. The result of their half-heartedness, their cowardly love of ease and comfort, their failure to grasp the true principles of religious freedom, neither disarmed the hostility of their opponents nor contributed to the growth of their own power. The "Schism Bill" was the reward of their moderate and conciliatory demeanour, the decline of Dissent during the next two generations the fruit of their weak, temporizing and cowardly policy.

The Free Churches of to-day stand upon another and much more intelligible ground, and seek not merely selfish ends, but the assertion of a religious equality, by which all classes of the community are to be benefited. There are still a few, who sympathise in the spirit, and, to some extent, in the aims of the Presbyterians of the Revolution era; but, they are only a small minority. Toleration is now regarded as an injustice and an insult, the rights of conscience are better understood and more boldly asserted; and while Nonconformists ask no favour for themselves, they demand, with a consistency, an earnestness