Page:The Parochial System (Wilberforce, 1838).djvu/28

 calculate that one-half of a city population ought to attend church (an estimate very low in the opinion of those who have most accurately inquired into the habits of a town population ), we need church room for 378,477, or more than 378 new churches, for 1000 each, in order to supply the deficiency.

We have as yet considered only the proportion of the whole population which is invited to the house of God and the means of grace. Another most important question remains behind. How are the existing privileges of the Church distributed? Looking as before to the great towns, it is not too much to say, that they are almost exclusively confined to the higher and middle ranks of society, whom, by a most unchristian abuse of language, we have learned to call "the respectable classes." When the Son of God would give proof of His divine mission, He said, "to the poor the Gospel is preached;" but in our overgrown parishes the order is reversed. A church is erected among a population of many thousands; and immediately those who have received the greatest advantages of education, and whose circumstances are the easiest, even if they do not attend it as a duty and a privilege,