The Jewish sabbath was commemorative of the termination of the great act of creation; it was to record that the world had not been from eternity, nor had arisen as a dream by itself, but that God had created it by distinct acts of power, and that he had hallowed the day or season in which he rested or desisted from his work. When our Lord arose from the dead, the old creation was, as it were, superseded, and the new creation then began; and therefore the first day and not the last day, the commencement and not the end, of the work of God was solemnised.

Luther, in speaking of the good by itself, and the good for its expediency alone, instances the observance of the Christian day of rest,-a day of repose from manual labour, and of activity in spiritual labour,—a day of joy and co-operation in the work of Christ's creation. 66 Keep it holy"says he "for its use' sake, both to body and soul! But if anywhere the day is made holy for the mere day's sake, -if anywhere any one sets up its observance upon a Jewish foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it-to do anything that shall reprove this encroachment on the Christian spirit and liberty."

The early church distinguished the day of Christian rest so strongly from a fast, that it was unlawful for a man to bewail even his own sins, as such only, on that day. He was to bewail the sins of all, and to pray as one of the whole of Christ's body.

And the English Reformers evidently took the same view of the day as Luther and the early church. But, unhappily, our church, in the reigns of James and Charles the First, was so identified with the undue advancement of the royal prerogative, that the puritanical Judaising of the Presbyterians was but too well seconded by the patriots of the nation, in resisting the wise efforts of the church to prevent the incipient alteration in the character of the day of rest. After the Restoration, the bishops and clergy in general adopted the view taken and enforced by their enemies.

By the by, it is curious to observe, in this semi-infidel and Malthusian Parliament, how the Sabbatarian spirit unites itself with a rancorous hostility to that one institu

tion, which alone, according to reason and experience, can insure the continuance of any general religion at all in the nation at large. Some of these gentlemen, who are for not letting a poor labouring man have a dish of baked potatoes on a Sunday, religionis gratia-(God forgive that audacious blasphemy!)-are foremost among those who seem to live but in vilifying, weakening, and impoverishing the national church. I own my indignation boils over against such contemptible fellows.

I sincerely wish to preserve a decent quiet on Sunday. I would prohibit compulsory labour, and put down operas, theatres, &c., for this plain reason—that if the rich be allowed to play, the poor will be forced, or, what comes to the same thing, will be induced, to work. I am not for a Paris Sunday. But to stop coaches, and let the gentleman's carriage run, is monstrous.

MAY 25, 1834.

High Prizes and Revenues of the Church.

YOUR argument against the high prizes in the church might be put strongly thus:-Admit that in the beginning it might have been fairly said, that some eminent rewards ought to be set apart for the purpose of stimulating and rewarding transcendent merit; what have you to say now, after centuries of experience to the contrary ?Have the high prizes been given to the highest genius, virtue, or learning? Is it not rather the truth, as Jortin said, that twelve votes in a contested election will do more to make a man a bishop than an admired commentary on the twelve minor prophets?—To all which and the like I say again, that you ought not to reason from the abuse, which may be rectified, against the inherent uses of the thing. Appoint the most deserving-and the prize will answer its purpose. As to the bishops' incomes,-in the first place, the net receipts-that which the bishops may spend-have been confessedly exaggerated beyond measure; but, waiving that, and allowing the highest estimate to be correct, I should like to have the disposition of the episcopal revenue in any one year by the late or the present Bishop of Dur

ham, or the present Bishops of London or Winchester, compared with that of the most benevolent nobleman in England, of any party in politics. I firmly believe that the former give away in charity of one kind or another, public, official, or private, three times as much in proportion as the latter. You may have a hunks or two, now and then; but so you would much more certainly, if you were to reduce the incomes to £2,000 per annum. As a body, in my opinion, the clergy of England do in truth act as if their property were impressed with a trust to the utmost extent that can be demanded by those who affect to believe, ignorantly or not, that lying legend of a tripartite or quadripartite division of the tithe by law.

MAY 31, 1834.

Sir C. Wetherell's Speech.-National Church.-Dissenters.-Papacy.—

I

Universities.

THINK Sir Charles Wetherell's speech before the Privy Council very effective. I doubt if any other lawyer in Westminster Hall could have done the thing so well.

The National Church requires, and is required by, the Christian Church for the perfection of each. For if there were no national Church, the mere spiritual Church would either become, like the Papacy, a dreadful tyranny over mind and body ;- -or else would fall abroad into a multitude of enthusiastic sects, as in England in the seventeenth century. It is my deep conviction that, in a country of any religion at all, liberty of conscience can only be permanently preserved by means and under the shadow of a national Church,—a political establishment connected with, but distinct from, the Spiritual Church.

I sometimes hope that the undisguised despotism of temper of the Dissenters may at last awaken a jealousy in the laity of the Church of England. But the apathy and inertness are, I fear, too profound-too providential.

Whatever the Papacy may have been on the Continent, it was always an unqualified evil to this country. It destroyed what was rising of good, and introduced a thousand evils of its own. The Papacy was and still is essentially extra-national;—it affects, temporally, to do that which the spiritual Church of Christ can alone do-to break down the natural distinctions of nations. Now, as the Roman Papacy is in itself local and peculiar, of course this attempt is nothing but a direct attack on the political independence of other nations.

The institution of Universities was the single check on the Papacy. The Pope always hated and maligned the Universities. The old cœnobitic establishments of England were converted-perverted, rather-into monasteries and other monking receptacles. You see it was at Oxford that Wicliffe alone found protection and encouragement.

JUNE 2, 1834.

Schiller's Versification.-German Blank Verse.

CHILLER'S blank verse is bad.

SCHI

He moves in it as a

fly in a glue bottle. His thoughts have their connection and variety, it is true, but there is no sufficiently corresponding movement in the verse. How different from Shakspere's endless rhythms!

There is a nimiety-a too-muchness-in all Germans. It is the national fault. Lessing had the best notion of blank verse. The trochaic termination of German words renders blank verse in that language almost impracticable. We have it in our dramatic hendecasyllable; but then we have a power of interweaving the iambic close ad libitum.

THE

JUNE 14, 1834.

Roman Catholic Emancipation.—Duke of Wellington.—Coronation Oath. HE Roman Catholic Emancipation Act-carried in the violent, and, in fact, unprincipled manner it was-was in effect a Surinam toad;—and the Reform Bill, the Dissenters' admission to the Universities, and the attack on

the Church, are so many toadlets, one after another detaching themselves from their parent brute.

If you say there is nothing in the Romish religion, sincerely felt, inconsistent with the duties of citizenship and allegiance to a territorial Protestant sovereign, cadit quæstio. For if that is once admitted, there can be no answer to the argument from numbers. Certainly, if the religion of the majority of the people be innocuous to the interests of the nation, the majority have a natural right to be trustees of the nationalty-that property which is set apart for the nation's use, and rescued from the gripe of private hands. But when I say-for the nation's use— -I mean the very reverse of what the Radicals mean. They would convert it to relieve taxation, which I call a private, personal, and perishable use. A nation's uses are immortal.

How lamentable it is to hear the Duke of Wellington expressing himself doubtingly on the abominable sophism that the Coronation Oath only binds the King as the executive power-thereby making a Highgate oath of it! But the Duke is conscious of the ready retort which his language and conduct on the Emancipation Bill afford to his opponents. He is hampered by that affair.

JUNE 20, 1834.

Corn Laws.-Modern Political Economy.

N the argument on the Corn Laws there is a μeráßaois eis aλλo yévos. It may be admitted that the great principles of commerce require the interchange of commodities to be free; but commerce, which is barter, has no proper range beyond luxuries or conveniences;—it is properly the complement to the full existence and development of a state. But how can it be shown that the principles applicable to an interchange of conveniences or luxuries apply also to an interchange of necessaries? No state can be such properly, which is not self-subsistent at least; for no state that is not so, is essentially independent. The nation that cannot even exist without the commodity of another nation, is