Bennett has decked out the Christian pastor, we must just stop to remark, that he pays his brethren but an ill compliment in supposing that ungenerous treatment on the part of their * people, would render it difficult for them to do much more than forgive their wickedness.'.

There is much that is impressive and highly deserving of attention in this sermon, and we earnestly recommend it to the perusal of our readers. The exceptions which we might be disposed to make to its general excellence, would respect chiefly a few incautious statements and extravagancies of style. We quite agree with Mr. Bennett, that a mode of contribution. absolutely voluntary, is most in harmony with the genius of our religion, and most honourable to the Church.

"For this I cannot but deeply lament, and seriously protest against the mode of supporting ministers by a seat-rent. I readily admit, for it is, indeed, incontrovertible, that, as long as men are at liberty to take a seat, or entirely abstain even from entering our doors, this cannot be called a tax. Yet it has so much of the appearance of a rate imposed, and is so unequal in its operation, that I most earnestly entreat you to supersede this, as far as possible, by providing for the support of your ministers, chiefly by voluntary subscriptions, in which every one may give, according as God has blessed him with property and religion. For your sakes as well as your ministers I urge this change; for it is only in proportion as the support of your pastor is the spontaneous effusion of a grateful heart, anxious to render some kind return fór spiritual blessings received, that it secures the approbation and blessing of the Saviour which is better than life.' p. 24.

Be not satisfied then, with paying a mere seat-rent. Satan himself could not devise a more effectual way to introduce injustice, and expel from our churches, generosity to ministers, and faithfulness to God. When three persons, of vastly different circumstances, sit in seats of the same rent, one perhaps pays rather more than he can afford, another al most as much, and the third far less. This will always be the case, in a certain degree; but then, it should be owing to their own disposition, not to the arrangements of the church. Every person should be informed, that what is given for their sitting is but a small part of the minister's income; for this arises chiefly, if not entirely, from the voluntary subscriptions of those who give according to their varied means, and the different degrees in which they love the cause of religion.

If this is the scriptural rule, how completely have many rich persons mistaken, their duty! Their expenditure is, perhaps, twenty times that of a person who gives a guinea, a year, and yet, they would think it wonderful if they should give twenty guineas a year. I have known, however, more than one person in the same congregation, living ino humble style, who were in the habit of giving between twenty and thirty pounds a year. Some splendid exceptions, also, I have known, who Contributed fifty and even a hundred pounds per annum. But I have known several who give ten guineas; and have seen a whole range of

seats occupied by plain persons who were subscribing five nually Pp.39.-40.5 10

The following remarks, which occur in reference to the deacon's office, are also highly important. Deacons Deacons have to attend to three tables, that of the Lord, that of the poor, and the minister's table.' Of the last two, however, many who hold the office, scarcely ever think; and it is for want of a proper solicitude on the part of the deacons with regard to the minister's income, that many a minister is as poor as he is..

For if any one,' continues Mr. Bennet, on hearing the miserable pittance that some churches give, should exclaim against them, covetous wretches!' I should not wonder, but I should not consent. For I would say, look at their subscriptions to other objects. They give to the Missionary Society, almost as much as they raise for their minister; they add to this, liberal contributions to the Bible and Tract Societies, to Sabbath Schools, Hospitals, and Dispensaries, till their charities double or treble their contributions to their minister's support. Nay, they even subscribe to other ministers, if they do not support their own. If to this the person should reply, the more shame for them! Do they not know, that the God who says, "I hate robbery for burnt offering," and bids them be just before they are generous, must blow upon their charities, taken from their pastor's just recompense; as men would upon the alms of him who should keep back the wages of his labourers, and then say, but look upon my charitable subscriptions."

But leaving these strange facts, my object is, to answer him who should enquire after the cause of this contradiction, between you and yourselves. How is it, we are asked, that the same men are at once cove tous and liberal, generous to those whom they never saw, and unjust towards the man, whom they profess to see every sabbath as an angel of God? I can easily solve the mystery. It is because ministers are modest, disinterested men. You exclaim, this only increases the difficulty it professes to remove, I mean, then, that ministers plead every other good: cause but their own. Their zealous advocacy has displayed the claims: of the Missionary, Bible, and Tract Societies, and called forth the liberal zeal of christians, till all these excellent institutions are furnished with fands, But they cannot, will not plead for themselves. What, exclaims some generous stranger, and is there no one else to preach for them? Shall they be suffered to pine in poverty, because they are modest, and devoted to the interests of others? No, replies the faithful deacon, I will plead their cause. They shall not suffer for their excellence. As they place every other good cause in all its lights, till men feer and meet their claims, I will shew their claims on our generous support, and wipe away the intamy that hangs on us, as long as it can be said, the advocate of all is left himself unrewarded, because there is no one to advocate bis

cause.

I urge this with a warmth, to which no words of mine can give adeu quate expression; because I know that every thing depends on the spirit of the deacons. One parrow-minded man among them, will often pres VOL. XVII. N. S.

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vent all the rest, and the whole people from doing their duty towards the minister of their choice. I know of no way by which that man can escape the condemnation of Christ for robbing the minister, not only of what he himself owed to his support, but also of all that he prevented others from giving, except by retiring from an office, for which the soul of a niggard is unfit, or obtaining from Christ a generous heart more like the Saviour's own.

Some, however, soothe themselves by saying, but our minister is contented. How do they know? Because he does not complain. What then, must a minister's delicacy always be tried, by being left to suffer until he is compelled to complain? Is this generous? Ought not his charge to think it their duty to consider, whether he has not reason to complain; and if they are conscious that he has, should they not de termine to spare his feelings by never leaving him to ask for that addition to his income, which they feel to be his due? pp. 37.-39.

We have known instances in which the conscientious pastor has submitted to exigency, rather than risk in any degree his hold on the affections of his people, or any measure of his usefulness, by a complaint as to the narrowness of his stipend. We have been credibly informed of one instance, in which a deacon accidentally called on his pastor on the Sunday, and found him dining with his family on potatoes. Smitten with self-reproach, he made the circumstance known among the congregation, and the minister's income was instantly doubled. Frequently the fault does not lie with the people: it originates in the appointment of deacons ignorant of their duty, or unfaithful to their trust. A deacon ought to be a man of business as well as a man of prayer, ruling his own house well, and not greedy of filthy lucre. The neglect of this Apostolic caution has proved the ruin of many a minister's peace, and blighted the prosperity of many a church, Nominal deacons are worse than none. Sometimes, a church is found languishing under the superintendence of some two, or perhaps one venerable sexagenarian, whose deaconship is a dead weight upon its exertions. No trust ought to be suffered to fall into the hands of one man, whether it in volves property or only power. It is a minister's best security, to have the fullest number of deacons that the church will admit of it renders him less dependent on any one individual, and it tends to preclude a jealousy on the part of the congregation with regard to the direction of church affairs. The frequent recognition of their power of electing deacons, would lead them to confide in them as representatives, in the management of those matters which common discretion may forbid to make the subject of public discussion. All the objections which seem to lie against the Congregational mode of church-government, will, we are persuaded, be found to originate in a prac tical departure, either from the spiritof the Apostolic injunctions,

or from what no system of policy can remedy, the absence of true religion.*

With regard to the generosity, the disinterestedness of ministers, and the sacrifices made by those who enter the Dissenting ministry, our private information would afford us the means of amply substantiating all, and more than all, that Mr. Bennett has affirmed. Still, it were as well to disarm those who may be aware of facts of a different kind, by the admission, that the rank of life from which our academies are chiefly replenished, is not such as to render the Dissenting ministry an ineligible mode of support. And as to a large class of worthy and efficient labourers, but whose capacity would never have raised them, in any other line of life, above the lower ranks, while we fully admit their claims on the generous support of their own people, yet, we cannot admit that they are much worse off than they would have been as mechanics or little shopkeepers. Talent, we believe, generally fetches its price in the Dissenting ministry. Would to God that solid worth and Apostolic piety always did also! But whatever ground of discouragement and just complaint may exist, there are good things enough in the shape of Dissenting benefices, to operate as some temptation, when combined with the gentility of the cloth, and the chance of a prize in the matrimonial lottery, to a brisk young fellow who is impatient of the counter or the desk, the warehouse or the bench. Nor is even the average of the incomes of Dissenting ministers so much below the stipends of many curates in our proud and wealthy Establishment, as to render Conformity, where the choice presents itself, a much more attractive alternative. But sometimes, these pulpit adventurers do at length conform, and the Dissenting ministry happily gets rid of them.

The loudest complaints against the niggardliness of Dissenters towards their ministers, we are apt to believe, proceed from disappointed rather than from suffering men. Some who have, not entered the ministry from mercenary or improper motives, have either been betrayed by their own imprudence into embarrassments which have compromised their respectability, and undermined their influence, or have caught the infection of a trading spirit, and murmur only because they are not making money. And some are making money, by means which, how

* We may take this occasion of recommending to our readers asermon entitled “The Work and the Reward of Faithful Deacons," by Dr. Newman of Stepney, which contains some highly useful hints. It bys no means, however, exhausts the subject, and some points are touched much too superficially. The duty of the Deacons to provide for the com petent support of the pastor is barely mentioned at p. 10; and no attempt, is made to illustrate or enforce this part of their office.

ever legitimate in themselves, too often lead to a departure from the proprieties and the true spirit of the ministerial character. And such individuals may be found complaining that they are driven to these expedients, when, possibly, the same intenseness with which these secular concerns are pursued, had it been carried into the discharge of all their pastoral duties, would have issued, not only in an extension of their usefulness, but in an équal improvement of their income. Others turn merchants on a larger scale: they will have a chapel of their own, and be at the mercy of no deacons and no people, but issue their quarterly tickets of admission, and be their own paymaster. And they have their reward. Several of these chapel-mongers have succeeded in filling the house, and are growing rich. And these men will be among the loudest in deprecating the narrow spirit of Dissenters, and in pitying the luckless pastors who are said to be starving on narrow incomes. Some, indeed, thus preach Christ for money; and the best that can be said, is, What then? whether in pretence or in truth, if Christ is preached, we will therein rejoice."

But there are other ministers, who make far less bustle in the religious world than these buyers and sellers in the Temple, and who give away fewer guineas to religious societies, but whose reward shall be great in heaven. In every age, a mercenary spirit has been the foulest pest of the Church; and it signifies little what form it assumes. But shew us the minister who for twenty years denies himself a servant, that he may be able to give his guinea or his five guineas, when a case of distress presents itself, and who is munificent simply by means of selfdenial, where another would be in straits;-or the minister who, without making a merit of it, refuses, for the bribe of a larger salary, to desert a post of duty, and to fling away the affections of a united people, although they cannot raise him much above a bare maintenance; or the humble and self-devoted servant of Christ, who can be content to labour in obscurity for his thirty or forty years, in the lowliest poverty, among the poor, and yet be happy to live and die in the service; we could name not a few such men in the Dissenting ministry, and these are the generous men who have drunk into the spirit of their profession, and who alone acting up to Mr. Bennett's excellent exhortation, consecrate themselves to serve Christ's interests, and trust him to take care of theirs.'

There is one topic to which we are surprised that the Preacher omitted to allude in discussing the general subject of the support of the Christian ministry. If the Gospel is to be preached to the poor, it must be, in many cases, preached to them under circumstances which render it absolutely impossible for the minister to derive his support from the contributions of the