în regular attendance upon its ministrations. If any thing can convince the gainsayers of the efficacy of the territorial principle

this surely ought. It emboldened us onward to the erection that we have now completed; and so far from suffering the contiguous church at Dean Street to lay an arrest upon our enterprise, it supplied the strongest argumentum a fortiore in favour of it. The church was opened on the 15th of May; and as we hold the results to be very instructive, we think it right that they should be made known.

About three hun

Its sittings are somewhat above a thousand. dred of these are let at two shillings each, and the rest are laid out in an ascending scale which terminates at twelve shillings each. These higher prices are, in the meantime, indispensable for the niaintenance of the clergyman. Should an endowment be granted, it will enable us proportionally to increase the number of low priced sittings; and thus give to the endowment, not the obnoxious character of a boon to churchmen, but its proper character of a boon to the population.

A capital circumstance in the seat-letting of these territorial churches, is the rigid preference held out, in the first instance, to the residenters of the district. They at all times should have the first offer; and the opportunity for a week or a fortnight of choos ing for themselves without the rivalship of competitors from abroad. This was observed by us with the greatest exactness, and with the following results.

All the two shillings sittings have been engrossed by the people of the district, and about a hundred more sittings at higher prices. Two large hospitals, the one an asylum for orphans, the other for the education of children whose parents have fallen into decayed circumstances, have taken two hundred and thirty-six sittings, and, as being really within the territory, furnish a strictly parochial attendance. Over and above these, we have sixtyfive extra parochial seat-holders, who are still continuing to flow in upon us. Altogether, we have, in the course of a very short time, let more than two-thirds of the church, so that, at present there remain only about three hundred sittings to be disposed of. But notwithstanding this gratifying result, the argument for an endowment, as grounded on the moral good that would result from it, remains as strong as ever. Apart from the hospitals, the

whole yearly produce of our seat-rents would as yet only amount to L.84, leaving a wretched pittance for the clergyman, after deducting all the minor expenses attendant on the service and keeping of the church. It is only by an endowment that we can afford to bring a greater number of our pews within reach of the common people, and make our church serve its proper and primary design, of a universal blessing to their families.

There is one instructive fact connected with this seat-letting, the simple statement of which ought to make that an easy which is unaccountably felt by some to be a difficult explanation. We have sixteen sittings at one shilling each; but these of such marked and decided inferiority, that, notwithstanding their cheapness, only one of them has been let—while all the two-shillings sittings have been taken, but comparatively few of the higher priced sittings, at least by parishioners. This exposes the sophistry by which it is attempted to palliate the grievous injustice done to a population, in retaining but a few refuse sittings at moderate prices for the poorer families of each parish, and fixing such high prices on the general accommodation of each church, as to cause a virtual exclusion of the great mass of the common people. To wait till these poor and disreputable sittings are filled ere any reduction shall be made on the higher priced sittings, is to wait for ever. The way to draw the great bulk and body of a population to church is to have the majority of the sittings low, and to hold out a preference to parishioners in letting them. It is the opposite practice which has frustrated the great purposes of an establishment in most of our large towns.

On the whole, the lesson we should like most to enforce on the friends of an establishment, is the immense power of week-day attentions when brought to bear upon the people with all the greater intensity, by their being confined to the families of a given territory. We trust that the projectors of new churches in towns will every day become more alive to the exceeding value of the territorial principle, and never lose sight of it in the arrangements which they make. As a preparatory arrangement the appointment of a district missionary previous to, and during the erection of the church, is of inestimable importance. To this we owe the achievement, that whereas previous to the erection of our church, the number of people in its district who held sittings in all places,

amounted to but one in nine; they now amount to more than one in three of the whole population.

The only explanation we would now offer in regard to the Sermon is, that it was followed up at intervals by two several addresses, one previous to the collection, and another at the conclusion of the service, when announcing the postponement of the afternoon meeting to the evening, because of the eclipse which took place on that day. These we have separated sufficiently from the Sermon to distinguish them from it.

SERMON XI.

ON PREACHING TO THE COMMON PEOPLE.

"And the common people heard him gladly."-MARK xii. 37.

Two discourses might be framed on this text-one addressed to the preachers of sermons, and another to the hearers of sermons. The great topic of the first should be the example of our Saviour as a preacher; and the great topic held out should be that He preached to the delight and acceptance of the common people. There is no doubt the vanity of popular applause; but there is also the vanity of an ambitious eloquence, which throws the common people at a distance from our instructions altogether; which, in laying itself out for the admiration of the tasteful and enlightened few, locks up the bread of life from the multitude; which destroys this essential attribute of the gospel, that it is a message of glad tidings to the poor; and wretchedly atones by the wisdom of words, for the want of those plain and intelligible realities which all may apprehend and by which all may be edified. Now the great aim

of our ministry is to win souls; and the soul of a poor man consists of precisely the same elements with the soul of a rich. They both labour under the same disease, and they both stand in need of the same treatment. The physician who administeis to their bodies brings forward the same appli