Now, from the totals of the diocese of Lincoln, subtract the totals for the whole of the twenty-two counties, and it will be found that the church is as to each specification in a decided majority-the church in but two of the counties over Congregational dissent in the two and twenty !

It is manifest from statistics like these that Voluntaryism is utterly inadequate. It does not honestly attempt the church's mission. To the major portion of the community to the teeming millions who are being

destroyed"-destroyed in the darkest and most terrific sense of the word, " for lack of knowledge," the spiritual traffickers of this mercenary and hireling system carry no evangel-no celestial mission of mercy-no "good tidings of great joy." They leave the lower strata of society to rot in their vice and squalor. They leave the rural populations to their hereditary paganism. They leave

the poor to their pauperism and ignorance. Towards the conversion of the dense and degraded masses, who are at once neither able nor willing to pay for the ministrations of religion, voluntaryism makes, practically speaking, no provision whatsoever. Only its surplus energy is contributed towards what is by preeminence the mission of christianity, —that trifling modicum of power which remains to it, after that an almost exhaustive effort has been made to secure its own individual and organic self-sustentation. Let it be remembered that in 1863, Congregationalism distributed only some 351 working pastors among two-andtwenty English counties, being at the average rate of not quite 16 to each county! Imagine Northumberland with but 14 pastors, Cumberland with 13, Durham with 15, Huntingdonshire with 15, Nottinghamshire with 13, Worcestershire with 14, Bedfordshire with 9, Herefordshire with 8, Westmoreland with 4, and Rutlandshire with 1. Think, again, of Ireland, with its five and a half millions of souls under the pastoral care of 25 Congregationalist ministers, Think, too of Jersey with 4, of Guernsey with 3, and of the Isle of Man with but one of such pastors to a population of 143,779 !

And Baptist voluntaryism is no better. In the same year (1863) there were in 18 counties in England and Wales not more than 195 settled ministers, or about 10.8 to each county; and in Ireland there were but 25 ministers distributed over 12 counties, being at the rate of 2.3 or not 2 pastors to each county. In Berkshire to take a few cases in point, there were in 1863 but 16 settled Baptist

ministers, in Herefordshire but 16, in Cheshire 15, in Oxfordshire 15, in Nottinghamshire 14, in Anglesea 14, Cornwall 12, in Dorsetshire 10, in Northumberland 9, in Flintshire 7, in Derbyshire 5, in Merionethshire 4, in Rutlandshire 3, in Cumberland 2, and in Westmoreland but 1. Surely, this is not the scheme, by which it is proposed to replace the parochial distribution of the country? In sooth this cannot be the splendid organization by which a dissident voluntaryism thinks to supplant the venerable ecclesiastical establishment, which has upgrown with the growth of our English constitution ! Perish the thought!

"Procul O! procul este, profani!

But one more illustration. It is not infrequently thought that the Established Church is doing nothing, or next to nothing towards the conversion and religious instruction of the country worthy of being put in comparison with the successes of the voluntary principle. The facts already adduced are of course fatal to such a theory. But take one illustration more. Congregational voluntaryism has provided in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man a total of 1,117,153 chapel-sittings, and a total of not more than 1,795 working pastors. Now compare with these totals the following diocesan statistics :

* Aen vi. 258.

These be it observed, are the aggregates for but four of the English dioceses. Four and not more than four ! Subtract, then, from the aggregates of the four dioceses, the corresponding totals of Congregational voluntaryism for the whole of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and the Channel Islands :

and we obtain for four dioceses, and only four, over Congregational voluntaryism in the whole extent of the United

Kingdom, a splendid majority of not less than one thousand five hundred and sixty clergy, and of Church-sittings over Chapel-sitting as many as two hundred and twelve thousand four hundred and thirty-nine. As Erasmus has well said:"In certis rerum generibus, fateor, plerique malunt rem quam nomen; in multis contra!"