Page:A charge delivered at the ordinary visitation of the archdeaconry of Chichester in July, 1843.djvu/36

32 the sanction and support of the most illustrious personages and of the highest functionaries in the state. The contributions already given are on a scale without a precedent. Let us realize the greatness of this opportunity, and use it well.

This brings me to the last topic I will touch upon; I mean the Bill now before Parliament "to make better Provision for the spiritual Care of Populous Places." Into its details I need not further enter than to say, that the effect of it is to enable the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for England and Wales so to anticipate their future revenues as to begin at once to grant sums of 30,000l. a-year towards the endowment of new district churches in populous parishes. I refer to this measure for the sake of the important principles involved both in what it does, and in what it does not do. It seems to me to proceed upon the true theory of Church extension; and in that very point which some fasten on as an objection, I seem to see one of its chief recommendations, i. e. the fact that it does not carry with it a grant of public money. There can be no doubt, indeed, of the duty of a Christian legislature to apply the revenues of a Christian country to extend the knowledge of Christianity: that I conceive is an axiom. But it is a sound principle to obtain first from the existing ecclesiastical endowments, whether by re-adjustment or by better administration, an increase, if possible, of temporal means for the maintenance and extension of the