The Sun.
London, England, 1838-04-26 00:00:00

v.IGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE TO-MORROW.
IllorrJag '7 minutes after 4 I Evening
the striking peculiarities of his pronounciation, and the
rapidity of his discourse, make him an excellent lec-
turer ; and though we entertain no little contempt for
his professed object, that of animating the hostility of
the religious community to Church Reform, we are
bound, in justice, to say, that to hear the oration of
one who is both eloquent and fervent is quite a treat.
With that, however, our praise ends. We can no more
admire the character of a factious political Priest in Dr.
CHALMERS than in MURTAGH O'SULLIVAN, or in
dupe M'GHEE. The Doctor sported Ultra-Tory doc-
trines, had a Tory audience, appealed to Tory prejudices,
made a severe attack on Reformers, and pretended to
advocate the cause of Christianity. He mourned over
the persecuted Hierarchy of Ireland—men with princely
revenues, levied and forced from a starving people,
and with nothing to do but pass their time at agree-
able watering-places ; and made common cause with
PHILLPOTTS, and the rest of the Bishops, against
the Ministers, and those who wish to improve the
machinery of Christian instruction. He had MUR-
TAGH'S and M'GHEE's foremost men to wait on him.
Their audience, except the better part of it—the
ladies—was his ; and though the subject of the ora_
tion was not Peter Dens, its object to enforce
and strengthen, political animosity, and obtain the'
ascendancy of a party by the help of religious bigotry.
The whole affair was but a new performance
of the Exeter-Hall mountebanks on the Hano-
ver-square stage. Dr. CHALMERS is a little more
fashionable than Messrs. M'GHEE and O'SUL-
LIVAN, and he calls on Members of Parliament
especially to attend to him ; he undertakes to instruct
our rulers, but his object and his means of effecting it—
to give power to the Priesthood, by enlisting religious
bigotry against the attempts at Reform—are essentially
identical with those of the factionist Missionaries.
We were prepared for a discourse wholly religious ;
the proceedings began with prayer, but ending in fac-
tion, we thought the appeal to the throne of Grace might
have been spared. There was some little quackery
too, for the collect of the day, according to the Epis-
copal Church of England, was read, because, we pre-
sume, it contained an allusion " to God having in-
structed her Holy Church," and to its members not
being carried away by every " blast of vain
doctrine." Dr. CHALMERS could hardly join sin-
cerely in a prayer which does not apply, accord-
ing to English Divines, to the Presbyterian Kirk; but
the Learned Presbyter piously submitted to that, as
the prayer tended to give greater effect to the Lecture,
and to lend it a character different from that of a
factious political oration.
But putting aside the poor exhibition of a Minister
of the Gospel bawling himself almost hoarse from
overflowing zeal on a political question, and putting
aside the sorry motives which gave -impulse to the
priestly zeal, we shall examine at some length the
arguments on which the Learned Presbyter, of all other
men, advocates a National Establishment for teaching
Christianity. The principle on which he began
will certainly not be denied by us. We readily
admit that Christianity, like all other branches
of human knowledge, must be taught by hu-
man means. The arguments, indeed, of the Learned
Presbyter were,not directed to worldly men like us ;
but to those who, with something like " drivelling"
piety—yes, drivelling was the word—rely on " God
instructing his holy Church," according to the Collect,
and are careless to use human means to attain the
same end. We adopt Dr. CHALMERS'S principle,
but we were surprised to hear him contend, in the
teeth of the Collect, that Christianity can only be taught
by human means ; that all Church Establishments are
the contrivances of sinful men ; and that great human
exertions, supported by no . small emoluments, are
necessary to secure the permanence and the suc-
cess of the mission of human salvation. No
scheme of mere Paganism—no fetiche and offensive
Idolatry—no wretched Afahomedanism, the creaeure:of
the sword, to say nothing of any useful art—could ever
require more human labour to propagate and preserve
it in the world, than, according to Dr. CHALMERS,
it was necessary to employ, in order to propagate
Christianity, and keep the miraculous religion alive in
the hearts of men. That our Bishops, Priests, and
Deacons, who, just at this moment, are stunning the
world with their claims to be the heritors of the Apos-
tles, and who insist that God instructed his holy
Church, will coalesce with:the Presbyter on these points,
we cannot believe ; and his doctrine, even as deli-
vered in the Hanover-square room, is as much opposed
to their lofty pretensions as if he were thundering
away in the 'iron Kirk itself.
`We make no earthly objection, then, to the neces-
sity of propagating Christianity by human contrivance,
which Dr. CHALMERS elaborated through an hour
and a half, but to some of his illustrations of the
principle we are opposed. We have leaf ned, by long
and invariable experience, that unless man give his
labours, as well as Heaven give its showers, the
ground will yield but little food ; but we hare not the
same warrant by experience, that unless the Priest be
endowed, and secured a subsistence—that unless the
missionary be given an aliment, he will not travel, and
will not labour. Experience rather teaches us that the
Priest, as in Ireland—and Dr. CHALMERS, admits
that the Priests there have a great power—that the
Missionary, as in the'early ages of Christianity, and now
in some of the Pacific Islands, are zealous without an
endowment ; and that to endow a Clergy is to make
them indolent and negligent of their duties. To pursue
Dr. CHALMERS'S train of thought, as the agricul-
turist, would have no motive for cultivating the soil,
if his wants were provided for without labour
to endow the Priest is to give him motives for
idleness. Does Doctor CHALMERS not recollect
the satirical remarks of HUME, who approved of
rich endowments for the Church, and with great
justice, as Ireland proves, in order to prevent a priest-
hood from fanaticising the people. But Scotland is
itself a refutation of the Doctor's argument. The
endowed Clergy of Scotland, as well as those of Eng-
land, had gone to sleep over the work for which they
were paid, till they were awakened and aroused by the
voice of the loud-teaching and zealous, but unendowed
Dissenters. WESLEY and WHITFIELD, and their
disciples, with the Relief Congregations in Scotland,
have contributed quite as much to the zeal and the
beauty of the lives of modern Clergymen in Scotland
as in England.
Thus, while experience is invariable as to the ne-
cessity of cultivating the earth, and as to the necessity
of using diligence in order to succeed in any human un-
dertaking ; it is by no means invariable as to the ne-
cessity of endowing a priesthood. On the contrary, ex-
perience tends to a contrary conviction, and it is rather
perverting philosophy than illustrating Christianity, by
its means to infer, from the necessity of cultivating the
earth, a necessity to endow a priesthood. We could state
many other objections to parts of Dr. CHALMERS
political discourse, and may perhaps return to the
subject; but at present we must conclude with ex-
pressing our hearty approbation of that part of his
lecture which clearly took away the question of reli-
gious establishments from the exclusive jurisdiction of
the Priesthood, and explicitly declared, like PALEY
that they are human contrivances to be judged of'
by their effects. The national Church of Eng-
land, which Dr. CHALMERS came here to
support, is supposed to have in all a revenue of not
less than 12,000,0001. a year, and the number of per-
sons it teaches is estimated at about eight million.

'HEIRS AT LAW, AND NEXT OF KIN._
Upwards of Seven Hundred ADVERTISEMENTS, which
have appeared in the Daily Papers within the last Twenty Years,
will be RE-PUBLISHED in the successive Numbers of the
WEEKLY TRUE SUN, beginning the 29th of April.
The WEEKLY TRUE SUN is a Large Quarto Paper of Forty
Columns, Price 5d., conducted by D. W. HARVEY, Esq., M.P.,
to whom communications may be addressed, at 366, Strand.
Orders will be executed by all Postmasters and Newsmen in the
'United Kingdom.

HER MAJESTY'S DRAWING-ROOM.
CAUTION TO THE FASHIONABLE WORLD ! ! !
As a number of raistakes--of course not intentional—were made
by the Newsmen last week, in serving another paper for the
COI 1T GAZETTE, the following distinctions should be
r te,:iced
'The price is Sixpence, and not; Thep is a Stamped Supplement,
Eightpence. • Gratis.
The paper is the most beautiful' The New., is given up to the hour
in quality that is made. of pu.blication on Saturday.
The Type is new and clear. It is -published on Saturday After -
The Form elegant for binding. noon, consequently the right
There are no objectionable ad- paper cannot be served in the
vertisements. _ mornin