Indeed, he is perhaps never a gainer in public opinion, by any deviations from his prescribed course, unless it be into some path, either connected or parallel with his own, or else superior to it. Men might esteem Michael Angelo the more for adding the skill of a sculptor to that of a painter; but no man thought Nero a better emperor for being a good musician. And, perhaps, there is no employment in life which more scrupulously repels all such invasion of its rights than that of a minister of religion. It is in itself the most sublime, and it ought to be the most absorbing of all occupations: it is the most susceptible of a blot; and its blots are of all others the most indelible. When therefore a minister of religion is found in one county blustering or harlequinading in defence of "the Bill," or in another intriguing against it, he never fails to forfeit a part of the respect to which his profession is entitled. He has stripped off the robes of the sanctuary, and must prepare himself for the most rigid scrutiny. And what adds to the mischief is, that the contempt almost universally inspired by the incongruity of his new office-by his thus "sewing a piece" of secular "cloth" into the sacred "garment," is ordinarily deepened by his manner of discharging his new functions. As zeal of whatever degree of intenseness does not necessarily communicate proficiency, the raw recruit is apt to move awkwardly in his new uniform. And he thus incurs the double reproach, first, of doing ill, and then of doing ill clumsily. Nothing can

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be more affecting than to see a man who, if his heart were in his professional work, has qualities which calculate him to exercise a powerful influence over the consciences and hearts of his hearers; to stand in the breach and stay the plague" of corruption in his village or neighbourhood, descend from the pulpit to the political platform, and prove to the dullest hearer that he has deserted a pursuit of which perhaps he had some knowledge, for one to the very first principles of which he is an absolute stranger.

2. In the next place, having claimed for the Ministers of Religion the right of searching out and promulgating the great moral principles on which all true policy depends, I must freely avow my opinion that the less they have to do with the details of politics, the better for themselves and for the country. Let us consider, in order, a few of the reasons on which the opinion is grounded.

In the first place, Are the Ministers of Religion likely, as a body, to have the sort of knowledge which can alone give value to their decisions upon these subjects? Locked up as many of them are in the holes and corners of the country, how are they to acquire such knowledge? Mere abstract opinions upon such topics are, I believe, admitted on all hands to be the most hazardous. Half a dozen theories blown up for the intended benefit of Church and State in the retirement of a country parsonage, and which, in that bright and quiet atmosphere, wear the most attractive form and complexion, especially to their authors, are enough, when

set to work in a stirring and corrupt world, to scatter both Church and State into atoms. Lord Clarendon, whose zeal for the reputation of the Church will not be called into question, says,

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There is no class of men who take such erroneous views of human affairs as Churchmen;" and almost every page in the volume of history will teach us, that where this order of men have quitted their proper sphere they have seldom shed much light over the dark and turbulent region which they thus have rashly visited. When bodies have to move in non-resisting media, mathematicians, in most instances, find no difficulty in calculating their rates of movement. But it is a far more intricate undertaking to make the same calculations where the media in which they have to act are various and mutable. So the details of politics in a world of pure spirits might be an easy study; but in a world such as ours, no study can be more complicated and difficult. The facts are almost innumerable, on the faithful induction of which a right decision must often depend; and by what process are these facts to be seized and scrutinized in the recesses of a country parsonage? And what adds to the evil is, that, though thus complicated, these questions have often the appearance of perfect plainness and simplicity. Accordingly, almost every man has, in the present crisis, his own theory of Reform. Consign the projected change to a hundred legislators, and we should have at least a hundred new systems. Every man who can do nothing

else can 'tinker a constitution." The older class of politicians can of course lend to their felicitous inventions all the amazing benefit of experience, which would be all very well if men did not often see much and learn nothing; and the younger class, though few men would venture to follow them any where but into the mazes of a fox cover, confidently plunge into these discussions, like Eckius into the wide ocean of the predestinarian controversy, ut in ea juveniles possit calores exercere. "Confidence," as Jeremy Taylor says, "is the first, second, and third of their propositions; " but confidence is a good argument with those who have no better. And "prejudice," as we have heard it said, "is even better than good reasoning; for a good reason may be refuted, but a prejudice never."

Again: it is plain to me, that, even if the Clergy had the opportunity of acquiring this sort of knowledge, they have not, generally speaking, the leisure. The vast increase in the population of the country, in common with other circumstances, has cast upon the shoulders of manyofthem a professional burden which, without any foreign addition, they are ill able to bear. If, indeed, the Minister of Religion is to follow the lazy counsels of Addison, and to become the mere transcriber of other men's sermons; if he is to live by rifling the hive of more industrious labourers, instead of ranging from hill to dale in his own parish, and collecting the sweeter, because fresher and more congenial, fruits of personal visiting and domestic intercourse; if he is not to consider himself as

the "ambassador of God to guilty man," and to plead with them as in a question of life and death -if he is not to minister to every bodily as well as spiritual want—if he is not merely to lay the first stone of the additional church, but of the school, the dispensary, the savings bank-if he is not to "watch over his flock" as one that must give the most solemn "account" before the Judge of quick and dead-if he is to consider himself a mere Sabbatical labourer, and compensate himself for one day's work by six of trifling or sloth, he may assuredly find leisure enough for politics. But if, as large numbers of the Ministers of Religion in the land believe and feel, they are thus awfully responsible for the bodily comforts and spiritual interests of the flock committed to them; if it is their heart's desire to "spend and be spent," in the labours of their high and honourable calling, then every hour becomes precious; then the mere reading of four double folio pages, per diem, on subjects which have no express relation to their profession, becomes often a matter of difficulty; then pamphleteers must often scribble, and orators plead, and disputants squabble in vain for them, or their parish must be sacrificed to their politics. But let me not be mistaken. I am far from imagining that a minister of religion is never ministerially employed, except when his employments are directly professional. One of the heathen emperors, in his horror at the progress of Christianity, forbad the children of Christians to learn to read. The learning of the Reformers was