The Sun.
London, England, 1841-01-07 00:00:00

the coast of China, capable of redressing any wrong
offered us, our merchants would be secured against
insult or oppression, and our commerce would gra-
dually extend from the mouth of the Canton river
to the entrance of the Peiho into the Yellow Sea,
thus opening a direct water communication with
Pekin itself. To trust to the good faith of the
Chinese would be as preposterous as to attempt to
read characters traced with a pen upon the face of
a descending torrent. We would just as soon ac-
cept the offer of a treaty alleged to be written on a
moon-beam, as a mere parchment scroll bearing
e imperial sign-manual, and deriving all its value
from Chinese adherence to the sanctity of written
obligations. We sincerely trust that this is a point
which has not been overlooked by Lords PALMER..
STON and AUCKLAND.

About ,even years ago there W3F, as there now is,
and has ever since occasionally been, a discussion
carried on in the public papers, as to the propriety
of calling the Church of England the poor man's
Church. It was then objected to the name by a
Liberal Journal, that the rich had their well car-
peted pews, while the poor sat on benches or were
crowded into the aisles, without seats at all. The
curtained anti cushioned seat of the squire, was
contrasted with the want of accomodation provided
for the poor, and it was maintained that it was a
mockery to call that the poor man's Church in
which the distinctions of the world were preserved,
and he was treated as if he were not, even in the
temple of the ALMIGHTY, equal to his brother of
the dust. The difference between the Anglican
Church and the Catholic Church, in which there are
no pews, and all persons kneel equally on the same
floor, was pointed out, and the name of a poor
man's Church was shown not be properly applied
to the Anglican Church. At the end of seven
years we are happy to find that the Anglican priest-
hood are taking lessons from the liberal news-
papers, and proposing to restore to the Anglican
Church the equality of a Catholic Cathedral or
a Dissenter's Chapel. A writer in yesterday's
Times, quotes the following passage from a charge
recently published by the Archdeacon of LEWES :
" The first measure which I would recommend would
be to alter the distribution of the seats, by getting rid
of those eyesores and heartsores—pews, and substituting
open benches with backs in their stead. Many advan-
tages would accrue from such a change, over and above
the power of seating a greater number of people.
This increase in capacity would be very considerable
in our country churches, where pews large enough to
hold from 10 to 20 persons, in the best situations in the
church, are often allotted to small families, and may be
seen gaping well-nigh empty : for even they who rarely
come to church themselves are not seldom most rigid in
asserting what they conceive to be their right of
excluding others from their pews. Meanwhile the
poor who, owing to the obtuseness of their senses and
and perceptions, need to be near to the minister, arc
thus driven to the outskirts of the church, where only dim
broken sounds reach their ears, the connecting links
of which they are unable to supply, and where, if
they are not altogether out of sight, they.can but im-
perfectly discern those accompaniments of manner and
voice and gesture, in which so much of the force of
preaching lies, and which are especially requisite to per-
sons less familiar with the power of words, and less
easily impressed by them. We all know, too, how many
jea!ousies and heartburnings are perpetually springing
up from disputes about rights of pews, which would thus
be extinguished at once. At the same time, for the
sake of order and regularity, seats might be assigned to
each family, according to its numbers, and one may feel
assured that such an arrangemuent would be generally re-
spected. Besides, do we not all know what facilities and
temptation pews afford for irreverent behaviour during di-
vine service, what facilities they afford to the somnolent ?
Moreover, the eyes of the congregation are not all turned
the same way, directed towards the same object ; but
people sit face to face, and thus are inevitably led to
look too much at each other, which interrupts the cur-
rent of their devotional feelings. Above all, the ten-
dency of pews is to destroy the character of social wor-
ship. Instead of our kneeling all side by side, rich and
poor, one with another, pews keep up those distinctions
of rank, which in the presence of tiod we should de-
sire to lay aside, each family penning itself up within
its high wooden walls, and carefully secluding itself
from all contact and communion with its neighbours.
Indeed, when one enters a church on a week-day, and
sees the strange fashion in which the floor is partitioned
out into large shapeless lidless boxes, one is involun-
tarily reminded of one of the ugliest objects on tkc face
of the eat th—Smithfield market when empty.
" I am aware that there arc many obstacles which lie
in the way of the change I have been urging, and
which may for a time prevent its being generally adopted,
All our selfish passions will resist it ; pride will resist
it ; indolence will resist it ; the baneful love of case and
comfort will resist it. But an excellent example has
already been set in the new church of St. John, at
Lewes, where the whole centre of the floor is covered
with open benches, for the poor, and pews on each side
are so low as to be almost inoffensive to the eye. From
various quarters, too, I hear that efforts are making to
throw open the pews in old churches ; and I trust that
ere long it will have been proved in several parishes,
how much more favourable the change is to devotional
behaviour in church, how it brings home to our hearts
that we are all indeed brethren, all members of the same
body, that we are all one before God, all one in Christ."
The same point is also urged by Mr. Wallinger, of
Lewes, in his consecration sermon. He says, that—
" To cull the parish church the church of the poor
man, when the accommodation afforded in it has no re-
ference to the capacity of the hearers, in an insult to the
understanding and the feelings. It is like throwing a
loaf at a hungry man, without thinking whether it will
reach him, or whether he will be able to gather up the
crumbs in.o which it may break. It is like saying,
Depart ye ; be ye warmed and filled : notwithstanding
tic give them not those things that are needful. Ile
with good reason bletses God, that, in the Church where
he was preach inl, the best places for hearing were allotted
to those ' who ought to Lave that advantage,' the poor :
and ho anticipates ;in early day, when the laity
and clergy of every tawn and village in England will
take up this godly work in right earnest ; when every
parish church will be so enlarged, or re-arranged, or
inultiplied, as to afford room for all to hear ; and when
we shall prove to our poorer brethren that we are not
selfish consumers of Gol's gilts, giving as little as we
may to their spiritual wants, but rather that we put a
right value on God's mercies to our own soul, by
our self-denial and exertions to communicate them to
ethers."

This passage expressly proves much that The Sun,
and other Liberal Journals, have urged against the
poor man's Church. While the best places are
pros rvcd for the pews of the rich, " the poor are
,-
driven to the outskirts of the church." Pews de-
stroy the character of social worship, " they keep
up the distinctions of rank and thus the clew
themselves now confess the truth of the charges
brought against the poor man's Church seven years
ago. Their present complaints admit the justice
of our accusation, and prove that in the poor man's
Church the poor are not held to be equal to the
rich, and are treated as an inferior race.
All the praises which some nameless writer,
quoted by the Times, heaps on the poor man's
Church, describing it as open on Sunday, where a
man, cultivated by learning, imbued with piety,
addresses to the poor man's ear words of inspired
wisdom, describing the music as for him, and the
clergyman as his friend, who will come at his call
in sickness and sorrow, is the mere theory of what
the Church and the clergy ought to be and are
not. How can the Times venture to place in the
same column the passage we have quoted, describing
the Church as hitherto appropriated for the coin-

totts of the rich, and another pwisage to this effect

dug from an
all in
Spitalfielch,
• is supposed to speak :
II (lay there is a house open to me ;
i%. poor shivering. shceiess wretch,
o:li(thOenstrlstiteivednaty here is a door, which is free as the
house of prayer ; there is a seat,
there is a bell, which peals on my car,
and into which / may
which is tree as the seats above,which
rises upon toy ear, :aid
'alto,dorcoafllsl-;)aievetro' ;that
cot, ; there is music,
rolls its sacred melodies for Me;
cul-
tivated, taught, and there is a minister,
ra
con-
secrated his lite his tpoiwllerd—s, a man who has
and his labours, to
the work of the sanctuary who has been
cul-
tivated by learning, who is imbued with piety,
who has been trained in the school of
man,
and
nurtured in the word of God. The roan
n
ad-
dresses to my ear the words of ancient, almost of I
spired, wisdom ; he directs to ate the living eloquence
of a human voice, and he beams upon nze the living
energy of a human eye
; he calls me, by all the protes-
tations of human reason, and all the appeals of Scrip-
ture promise, and all the consolations of the Gospel—
he unroll them, he spreads them out, he unfolds them
for me. It is for me that these services are ordered,—