Page:The Parochial System (Wilberforce, 1838).djvu/53

 but by his own free and deliberate choice. The openly irreligious and profane, who "fear not God nor regard man," and who neither desire to serve Him nor even affect the desire; these would stand aloof from her. But all others would seek and desire her communion, except such as were dissenters on principle. How few of the more orderly and peaceable of the existing dissenting body can be classed under this head! How many have become dissenters almost of necessity; have been allured to the meeting not from the Church, but from the streets and the alehouse, and remain there partly from habit, partly because the claims of Christ's Church, and the blessedness of her children, have never been set before them. Let our parochial system be made universally efficient, and we may hope that we shall soon find them among us. Who can estimate the dignity with which Religion might then raise her head; or the blessings which might be called down on our Church and nation by the continual prayers of thousands who are now aliens from, "sitting in darkness and the shadow of death." Surely we might expect that the very face of our land would wear a brightness hitherto unknown. Even the secular and worldly condition of our poor would be changed. From the beginning, the Church relieved her own poor, and in parishes of due dimensions she might do so again. We begin a wrong course when we