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to win back some of the more reasonable separatists to the Church, at the same time that he raised the tone and standard of churchmanship to a far higher stage than they had previously occupied. But to

return.

"I had a singular visit to-day," said Sir John, "from a man, Mr. Wallis, whom you must know only too well; I mean Jupp, the Independent preacher. He came to ask me to allow a Teetotal Festival to be held next week in that field of mine by Collard's end: there is to be a procession, he tells me, and musick, and banners, and I know not what else. The association, it seems, has met with no great success here, and they wish to create a sensation."

"I presume," observed Mr. Trenton, "that you made no difficulty in allowing the meeting to take place on your ground."

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'Indeed, it would not be in accordance with my principles to allow it," answered the other: "and so, much to the man's disappointment and chagrin, I was obliged to tell him."

"Well now!" remarked Mr. Trenton, “I must say that I cannot comprehend your objections to the scheme. It seems to me a most excellent method of winning the lower classes to habits of sobriety; and it certainly has been attended with the happiest effects."

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My father probably thought," said George Mor

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ley, "that to make a scheme desirable, the means as well as the end must be right."

"The means are right enough in this case," replied the merchant; "people who have been in the habit of indulging to excess in liquor, find that by entering into an engagement with each other, they are able to resist the temptation better than they' could do separately: no harm in that, is there? And as to the processions and musick, why, if the poor wretches take a pleasure in the thing, why not let them have it, and welcome?"

"Oh! I have no objection to the procession, and the musick, in the world. But what I think extremely objectionable, is the banding together of men to bind themselves by an unauthorized vow to that, which by the strongest of all vows they are already bound to. It is paying a deference to human contracts, which they will not pay to the express commands of GOD."

"You speak," said Col. Abberley, "as if the only vow which is taken by these people were the abstaining from intoxication. But it is not so, of course to cut off all temptations to it, they bind themselves by a vow which they have not already taken, and which, as entailing a degree of sacrifice which proves their earnestness, I look on as very laudable."

"I cannot think that Churchmen have a right," replied the Curate, " to take upon themselves a vow

not authorized by the Church. Depend upon it, if they would wish for a fair field in which to exercise their temperance and sobriety, She has provided them a more spacious one than any which they can find for themselves. When we see them acting up to Her injunctions with respect to weekly and occasional fasts, then it will be time to inquire whether any further modes of self-denial are requisite or desirable.”

"I quite agree with what you say respecting the unauthorizedness of new schemes of self-discipline," remarked Sir Thomas Underby: "but you cannot expect me to agree with you as to the unlawfulness of private vows, otherwise I should be denying the advantages of the monastick system."

"I only said," returned George Morley, "that vows appeared to me unlawful, when unauthorized by the Church, and taken by a party as the badge, or as in this case as the vital principle of that party. I do not see why private vows should be unlawful : nor do I conceive, though I desire to speak in submission to the better judgment of others, that the monastick vow is unlawful, even if taken for the whole period of one's life, when authorized duly by the Church. Where it is not, as in our own branch of it, I do not see how it could be properly taken; but where, as in foreign countries, the Church has thought fit to allow it, I for one should take it without scruple."

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"But," said Mr. Wallis, a great argument with

me against the system is, that instead of enjoying the good things Providence has set before them, it leads men to throw them aside, as if they were better and holier for abstaining than for enjoying. Now such an idea seems to me quite at variance with the mild and beneficent spirit of our religion: and I ground my opposition to it on this consideration.”

"We must however," observed Sir John, “take care that we do not press that argument further than it will go; else we shall be met by the assertion of the duty of self-denial and self-controlment, even in lawful enjoyments, which assuredly is too much neglected in the present day. I think that the principle of singling out one vice, and binding men together in a league against that, has certainly a tendency to encourage men to make slight of others. We should see the folly of the thing, if we applied it to any other kind of crime. Suppose, for example, that a set of men, deeply impressed with the sense of the sin of stealing, should enter into an association to avoid it, and not only so, but to avoid all possible approach, or appearance of approach to it, should take a vow, not merely against abstracting, but against borrowing any thing from their neighbours."

"Laugh as you will," cried Mr. Trenton, “you cannot deny that infinite good has resulted from the temperance vow. Look at Ireland, for example; do you happen to know how much, since the success of Father Matthew, the duty on spirits has diminished there?"

"And do you happen to know," asked Sir John Morley, "how much that on opium has increased? Nearly, I take it, in the same proportion."

"We read," added his son, "of vast numbers that have taken the vow; I wish we were informed how many have broken it. We see in the reports of the different associations, assertions that very few have done so. Whether the gentlemen who write those reports are quite so particular in their use of the words very few, as less interested parties might be, I will not pretend to determine."

"Do you mean then to say," asked Mr. Trenton, "that no good has ever resulted from these societies?"

"By no means," returned George Morley. “But to show that good may have occasionally, or even frequently resulted from them, is only to say what may be said of many of the most dangerous and wicked systems ever devised. The fact is, that where teetotalism has had fair play, it has degenerated into downright heresy. In Cornwall, for example, teetotalers have meetings to themselves, not thinking it right to worship with those who disagree with them. Indeed, they would almost appear to exclude from salvation those who keep on in the old fashioned way; and against none is their language more bitter than it is against the poor temperance societies: the members of which will not carry the pledge to so great a length as their more violent brethren. And

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