Page:A Plea for the Middle Classes.djvu/12

 numbers of work-people who so implicitly depend upon them? let those who think the highest of their virtue go and question them either on the Scriptures or the Articles of Faith, and see if they have, many of them, a knowledge of even the elements of the Christian religion. The painful ignorance of the majority is a standing disgrace to the Church, who cannot escape from the charge of having left her children without information on the most momentous questions of faith and morals. The Church receives at least nine-tenths of the population into her bosom by baptism, but this done, all is done. She has not confidence to believe that they are hers after all. If they find not her out, she shrinks from claiming them. In cases of this sort, the Church resembles an unnatural mother, who gives birth to children, and then exposes them, as if she could not feel for them as her own; for go from house to house, up and down one street, and inquire how many adults, even among trades-people, who have been baptized into the Church, are yet unconfirmed; add house to house, and street to street, and the aggregate of one parish will present such a disclosure of practical weakness on the part of the Church that the chief wonder is, how the people of this country have been kept together so well as they have. Poll again, a parish of 80,000 inhabitants, which I could name, and you shall not find one in two hundred who is a communicant, and yet nearly all have been baptized. Perhaps you will say, "We must look to the exertions of the Clergy." The exertions of the Clergy will increase this number, but in no sensible degree: the evil has gone too far—a distrust has been created, which cannot on a large scale be removed; the people have chosen their courses, some one, and some another; the education they have received has disqualified them for comprehending the necessity of the constitution of the Church—those who lead, corrupt those who follow; and the master, instead of being the guardian of the morals and Faith of his dependants, adds the irresistible weight of his own example to plunge them deeper in licentiousness and error. But another branch of the same argument is, that by neglecting the employers, you are, in the pesent pressure of civilisation, hastening on a very general state of barbarism. A high state of civilisation and barbarism are two extremes which have a constant tendency to meet. The demand for labour lessens the time for education and training, and as the nation becomes more and more refined and