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    parishioners are sure to be in hot water . Oh ! Dr . Blomneld , how could you put the gauge of utility into this boiling cauldron , without scalding your , fingers ? Again ; the Church can never be a national instructor , because it is essentially sectarian . Whether its creeds and articles be true or false , it has long been

    demonstrated by experience that they are too narrow not to exclude a considerable portion of the most intelligent religionists . It is evident that Dissent is growing , and Churchism is declining . The separation between the Church and the nation was cut broad and deep by the Act of Uniformity , and it has been widening and deepening ever since . At most , the church can only divide the religious intelligence of the country . Whatever her

    theological merits , she holds her own with conflict and difficulty ; and can only secure a partial and distracted attention to the teachings she delivers , with a continually-disputed authority . The political character of the Church must always render numbers disaffected towards it . The extent to which , under the pretence of being a religious institution , it serves as an endowment for the offshoots and dependents of the Aristocracy , and contributes towards the spoil to be divided amongst political partisans ; and ,

    in consequence , the firmness with which it presents its front of brass against any movement of reformation , must ever disgust honest politicians , and prevent their much profiting by its moral lessons . Here , then , are permanent and insuperable difficulties against its being the machine of national instruction . The Bishop supposes a perfect parish priest ( p . 37 ); and then supposes one such in every parish and district ; and then asks , with touching simplicity , * whether any thing could make amends for the loss V We might as well suppose we had the purse of Fortunatus , and ask what would make amends for its loss . The pious and laborious clergy are a small minority of the hierarchy : they are worse paid than dissenting ministers : they are much less judiciously distributed over the country , and less strengthened in their vocation than they would be , were the Church a free and voluntary church . The active spiritual

    influence of the Church is far more limited and irregular than that of Methodism . And yet the Bishop draws a comparison with America . He points to its religious condition as one which should strike us with horror : — ' In that country the great body of the people are left to provide and maintain their own relig ious teachers : and the consequence is , that great numbers are without any teachers at all , or at least without any who deserve the name ; and that vast districts are , to all appearance , rapidly sinking into heathenism . ' Let us look a little into this matter .

    And first as to education , which must be regarded as the best substratum for religion . We shall refer to an authority on which the Bishop relies , and which seems to be compiled with great care , the ' American Almanac , and Repository for Useful Know-

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    252 On the Bishop of London s

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  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 252, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/20/