But nonconformity seems heedless of the things which imperil its spiritual existence. Perils of the same character that proved so disastrous to the church of the 4th century,-and whose consequences rudely shaken at the Reformation, yet remain in the church to this very day. Nonconformists may, and probably will gain their end, for they call in to their help men of all creeds and men of no creed, but what if their success should prove their ruin ?

They may probably will-disestablish the Church. They mayprobably will rise to still greater power in the state: but if, and it is more than probable, they should sacrifice the simplicity of their religious life, and should be yet further corrupted by prosperity-how worthless the victory! How enormous the price of the success!

It were an impertinence here to enter upon the discussion of so well worn a theme as the Education Act. Our purpose is to glance just at a few features, in order to point the moral which it is the chief object of this paper to enforce.

The main clauses of this Act bear the marks of prudent and fair legislation; and that dissenters have made the 25th clause the fierce battle field of conflicting creeds have raised about it false cries, and have made false issues to depend upon it; must be due to the fact, that the intolerance from which they so long suffered has infected and perverted their "moral sense"; and so, in their bitter obstinacy, the church is reaping a harvest of its own sowing.

Anything fairer than that a common fund should be available to all alike for the purpose for which it is raised, it is not easy to imagine. But nonconformity would have legislation go further in this matter, than would be sanctioned in any other. Not only must the end sought by the Act be gained, but it stipulates for the cutting off of any collateral advantages that might possibly arise.

It may seem sufficient to some impartial minds, that an Educational rate should in its application, secure the efficient education of every child who stands in need of state help, and that end gained, the function of the state should cease. But no! say dissenters, with a wisdom too deep for us, the "ratepayers must follow their money." Now, as a universal principle, it is not a good thing to follow money; but, that some ratepayers, prominent in this matter, might do so with advantage, it is not for us to deny; because, there might then be a chance of their being spent some day, which chance looks very remote at the time of writing.

But, do dissenters seriously purpose to saddle themselves with the responsibility of spending taxes, in addition to that of paying them? The proposition is seen to be too monstrous; therefore, the principle is of limited application, and is untrue.

But nonconformity has a conscience, that all the world knows, or it is the world's own fault. But have nonconformists purchased a monopoly of conscience? How then do they tell us what will, and what will not be a violation of the consciences of other people? "Secular education will

not hurt the conscience of any one" say they. "It will violate ours," reply churchmen. "Good friends it is a mistake, we know more about such things than you do; you may feel it to be a wrong to your conscience, but that does not make it so, you know." Can anything equal the cool impudence of this?

Dissenters may be warned by their own traditions against a breach of their own principles. The New England settlers, who left home and country for conscience sake, by the enactments of their penal code against Papists, Anabaptists, and Quakers, showed how little they understood the divine nature of their principles; and modern dissent really seems about to furnish another example of how mens' moral sense becomes vitiated by the possession of power. May they be spared the further degradation!

In the present divided state of religious feeling, any equitable adjustment of the "religious difficulty," must partake of the nature of a compromise. But if churchmen go in for too much, that is no reason why dissenters should abandon religious teaching altogether.

The conscience of nonconformity was greatly scandalised, not long ago, at the mere hint that the logical sequence of their position, was the total exclusion of the Bible from state aided schools. May we not now fairly say-no Bible! is one of the recognized points of the League? In forcing on disestablishment, and demanding simple secular educa tion, dissenters are going too fast for their faith, much farther than they intend. It is one thing to say a State Church is wrong, and that secular education is the most feasible; but it is quite another thing to say-and this grows out of the two others there shall in this country, calling itself christian, be no national recognition of the Almighty.

The Church disestablished;

No Bible! in the Senate,
No Bible! in the School,

and then the oaths in our forms of law-oaths forbidden by God, will be about the only remaining acknowledgment of God in the state.

Nonconformists beware! it is not yet too late! Is this what your traditions and your superior light are to end in? Then forget your traditions! and for once, let your faith in a divine revelation lift you above party trammels. Sink your political cries and names-forget that you are radicals-remember that you are christians! and the Bible shall at least be read in our schools.

AN ASSOCIATE.

AN EPIGRAM.

If the proverb be true-as we oft have been told,
That "speech is as silver" and "silence as gold,"
Then, tested by logic, this issue must come,
The richest and wisest are they who are dumb.

NEMO.

BUSINESS AND LITERATURE.

MUSINGS BY AN OLD MEMBER.

The age of eighteen which as an association we have now reached, is far beyond the average duration of life among kindred Institutions, and is in itself almost sufficiently suggestive of antiquity and general felicitation to justify the proposal that several of our pious founders should forthwith be solicited to sit for their life-size portraits before anything happens to Mr. Munns.

We have passed safely through the chronic tribulations of infancy, have survived the bumps and tumbles of childhood, indeed have become cautious and hardy by the discipline; and it is very cheering to find that there are around us so many indications of robust health, and vigorous life.

It is but simple fact to say that few similar societies arrive at that degree of stability or sustain that earnest force of which their commencement gave promise, and still fewer in which the literary remains the predominant element.

To what then must we attribute the flattering success in which we now rejoice to participate. Much is undoubtedly due to the early friends of the Association, who united in a remarkable degree zeal with discretion in all their plans, and it is pleasant to know that many of its earliest friends are its present friends ;—in the next place our success is due to the cordiality and unanimity with which the general body of members has ever supported the officers of the Association.

Further, our success may be attributed to the fact that this society occupies a thoroughly independent and neutral position. We are not hampered by considerations of political party, nor fettered with the restrictions of religious denominationalism, we comprise all parties, we embrace every sect, and have succeeded in making this very fusion and variety minister to our harmony and strength.

-it is

But we go a step further and venture to say that the history of the C. L. A. establishes a principle which may be briefly enforced, although to many it is sufficiently axiomatic to render that unnecessary, this: the compatibility of combining success in life with a reasonable cultivation of the pleasures and pursuits of literature; and this applies with equal force both to employers and employed; though doubtless, there are in the world beings who will challenge this statement, men who prefer the sordid material accumulations of wealth, to the priceless possession of a well stored mind.

We assert that the faculties brought into exercise in the affairs of ordinary business, are not the only faculties we have, nor the best; we have others which may be employed to far higher purpose, and consequently bring us far higher enjoyment.

We are aware that the general practice among men of business in England, is to devote the whole of the early and middle portion of life to their business avocations, with the design of enjoying the latter portion in luxury and leisure. The culture of any of the mental faculties besides those required for business, is little thought of, and accordingly

where do you find a man whose ideas are so limited, as that of the thorough going business devoted Englishman. That this course of life is a species of slavery, is generally allowed even by those who are content to adopt it, but then there is the prospect of its terminating in a competency, which will give the means of spending life's latest years in a complete exemption from all drudgeries,

Is not that man most wisely answering the ultimate purpose of his existence, who is content with a moderate competency, and retires from the dusty contest with a cultivated mind, rather than the man who in his old age, having carefully added to his burden of provisions the nearer he approaches his journey's end, totters from his desk an imbecile millionaire, having lost in his life-long scramble for wealth, all his higher aspirations, and suffered the literary faculty to perish within him from sheer disuse.

Or who has not seen the melancholy spectacle of the retired citizen, vainly seeking in frivolous amusements and hobbies, the means of agreably whiling away his time, until at length, unable any longer to endure the vacuity for which he was unprepared, has found it necessary to return to his former business, or has ended like the Hebrew sage by declaring all to be vanity and vexation of spirit.

Would you see such an one at business? call upon him and attempt to interest him in something not connected with his ledger, talk to him of his wife and family and even then he will be unimpressible, for his children are fed by double entry and educated by brought forwards, and you will leave him with the conviction, that he has made that the grand aim of his life, which was intended only to be a means by which his being might be supported, while he was following more noble pursuits,— and all this comes of ignoring the principle, that it is possible to combine success in life, with a fair cultivation of the pleasures and pursuits of literature. If we consider how much literature enlarges the mind, and how much it multiplies and arranges the ideas, we shall be satisfied that we do well in promoting the objects of our association, which, if rightly used will afford pleasures which wealth cannot procure and which poverty cannot take away.

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Tom Hood, than whom few nobler men ever lived, has written :— Experience enables me to depose to the comfort and blessing that literature can prove in seasons of sickness and sorrow ;-how powerfully intellectual pursuits can help in keeping the head from crazing and the heart from breaking."

It may be said that these speculations are all very well in theory, but that existing necessities are such as to make their realisation in practice impossible. Englishmen we are told, have got into an artificial state, which renders incessant toil the doom of all who would live. Individuals are helpless, for if they relax the least in their struggles for a living their neighbours take advantage of the circumstance and thrust them aside. Granted that too frequently the tendency is in that direction, yet it cannot be denied that men dream of necessities which they think themselves liable to when they are really enslaved by their own inclinations, and that it is after all only the powerful thirst of gain, and

the undue ambition for position and rank in the world, which operate on most minds to persuade them that this absolute and unceasing devotion to business is indispensable. Let but the influences now at work experience no check and no misdirection, and we have little doubt that in a few years there will be such a progress towards the end at which we aim, as will cause men to look back with astonishment to the business customs which now obtain among us.

But our Society shows us a more excellent way, viz.:-that by judiciously combining the two, each will assist and relieve the other; for we maintain that the man of business will be a better man of business from his association with a Literary Society; over and above the purely selfish considerations of genial friendship, and the acquisition of knowledge, there is the welcome change which, bear in mind, is equal to rest to both mind and body, and the calling out of an entirely new set of faculties which would otherwise lie dormant and in time become extinct. In business, competition must have a hardening influence and a narrowing tendency; in an association like this, the greater and keener the competition, the more earnest necessarily is the co-operation for the general good; for the different sentiments of several speakers become like the union of rays, by which the common light is collected, and appears brighter and stronger than when dispersed. A happy hint is often started in a debate that would never have entered into a man's mind alone; and sometimes by comparing things together and observing the precise difference among them, a new opinion is formed, distinct from each and preferable to every one, for as in an organ many varying pipes are necessary to complete the full diapason of sound, so in our Association we are not merely individuals, but aggregated together by a Central Bond of Literary Association.

Let us thus cultivate most assiduously whatever literary tastes or talents we may be fortunate enough to possess, or we shall find that they will be taken away from us. There is no royal road to knowledge of any kind, we cannot depute or delegate this work to anybody else, it is a labour that none can accomplish for another; and it is well that it is so, inasmuch as the very toil itself is the chief part of the profit and blessing proposed to us.

In the present day, we are I fear, in danger of placing too high a value upon organization and association, and too little upon individual effort. Let us then be careful to guard against this tendency. Remember that the greatest achievements of this or of any age whether in literature, the arts or sciences, or anything else, have been wrought not by associations, but by individuals. Systems and societies aid men most essentially, but let us clearly understand that their object is in all cases to supplement, and in no case to supplant individual personal effort. Limited liability is all very well in commercial speculations, but in literary undertakings every member should hold himself responsible to the extent of his resources. In this as in every other duty I need not remind you that the can is the measure of the ought.

ESSE.