population beyond the possibility of their
gratuitous instruction in religious truth by means of the national church.

The three great evils which have been felt in the political and social
world in England during the eighteenth century, are the prodigious, and in
general irresistible, power of an oligarchy; the unbounded parliamentary
and official corruption by which their influence has been upheld; and the
unprecedented spread of pauperism through the working classes of society.

In these days the reality of those evils will probably not be disputed in
any quarter; when we have seen the latter lead to the Reform Bill, and the
great organic change of 1832, as well as keep the nation, and all serious
thinkers in it, in a state of constant anxiety; and the former rend the
national church in Scotland asunder; threaten the most serious religious
divisions in England, and in both countries permit the growth of a huge
body of practical heathens in the midst of a Christian land.

Were these evils the necessary and inevitable result of the Reformation
and the Revolution; or have they arisen from causes foreign to these
changes, and which, in future times, may be detached from them? The Roman
Catholic writers on the Continent all maintain the former opinion, and
consider them as the necessary effect and just punishment of the great
schism from the church; which, by a natural consequence, ended in civil
convulsion, public immorality, and social distress. The English writers
have, hitherto, rather avoided than grappled with the subject; they have
rather denied the existence of the evils, than sought to account for them.
Let us consider to what cause these unquestionable evils of the eighteenth
century are really to be ascribed.

They know little of the human heart who expect that, in an age and country
where religion _is at all thought of_, sects and religious differences
will not prevail. As well might you expect that, in a free community,
political parties are to be unknown. Truth, indeed, is one and the same in
all ages; but so also is the light of the sun; yet, in how many different
hues, and under how many different appearances, does it manifest itself in
the world? In the smoky city, and on the clear mountain; on the sandy
desert, and in the stagnant marsh; radiant with the warmth of July, or
faintly piercing the gloom of December. So various are the capacities,
feelings, emotions, and dispositions of men, that, on any sub