practice, and adop ing a complete liturgy, substantially that of the established Church, or one cast in any other form. But we are at liberty to give vent to our extreme wonder, that any knot of sensible men should have judged it worth while to expend their labours on a project so perfectly chimerical as that of bringing the general practice of the Dissenters into even that approach toward a liturgy which they have so gravely recommended.

There is no misrepresentation in our saying, "the general practice;" for the work is plainly and indiscriminately addressed to the Dissenters at large; though there is a passage in the preface that, at first view, would have seemed to imply a more restricted extension of the intended benefit.

Our only motive in this undesirable undertaking, which will probably expose us to the censure of many readers, is to serve the best interests of that body of Christians with whom we are most intimately and happily connected; whose grand principles we consider as more rational and scriptural than those of any other religious denomination.' p. iv.

It is but a small portion of space we can allot to this performance; but, having so freely charged it with absurdity in its main design, notwithstanding our perception and most willing acknowledgement of the good sense manifested in some parts of it, we ought perhaps to give a very brief abstract, with a marked notice of some things to which the serious attention of the Dissenters may very justly be demanded.

A chapter of Introductory Observations on the different Modes of Worship, begins, in a style dry and heavy beyond all example, by stating the divided opinion of Protestants between liturgies and extemporary prayer, and declaring against the enforcement of either mode exclusively. first passage that forcibly arrested our attention was that which cites the experience of Dissenters themselves, in evidence of the disadvantages of an entire exclusion of written forms.

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It may easily be conceived to be a very arduous service for any, but especially for young ministers, and such as are not endowed with some very considerable talents, constantly to lead the devotions of the same congregation in the extemporary method; and it must be naturally apprehended, that such as labour under peculiar modesty and self diffidence, will be liable, at least on some occasions, to have their minds discomposed, and consequently to feel their devotion interrupted.

Nor is this merely an imaginary supposition: many well-known facts have occurred to confirm the justice of it. Sonic respectable

ministers, principally on account of the difficulty of conducting the worship of dissenting congregations in the usual mode, have been induced to conform to the Established Chutch. Others, who had conscientious objections against the terms of conformity, have entirely quitted the ministerial office; and not a few who have continued in it have been known, on the same account, often to enter the pulpit with fear and trembling.

Some, again, by reason of their dissatisfaction, or that of their people, with the extemporary mode of prayer, (though they have acquitted themselves as well as most of their brethren, have been induced to adopt a Liturgy and on this ground several Liturgies have of late years been drawn up for dissenting congregations. But a greater number of dissenting ministers, from a dislike of Liturgies, have sought the relief they wanted by drawing up forms of prayer for themselves, and committing them to memory. While others, who have composed the like Forms, have preferred the READING of them, which has of late been a growing custom.' p. 5.

Now we would ask; what would be the probable impression, what would even be the fair impression, of this statement on a perfect stranger to the actual state of the dissenting ministry? Would it not be nearly this, that there is among them a very extensively prevailing dissatisfaction with the extemporary mode;-that a large proportion of them feel this the most onerous part of the service, and would be glad if dissenting custom would allow them to have recourse to written forms;--that considerable numbers are intimidated from the ministry by this dreaded exercise;

that in short, there is a very extensive feeling of distress for the want of some aid of the nature of a liturgy? We do not know whether the authors would accept this translation and interpretation of their language, but we think this is not more than the import which that language would convey to an uninformed inquirer. And we must take the liberty to say, that if this be the intended view of the matter, the representation is assuredly fallacious. There is one small and not increasing denomination of Dissenters, the ministers of which, it is understood, are very generally in the use of set forms of prayer. To this denomination, the reader will fancy he perceives cause to surmise, that the writers of the New Directory are considerably partial; and he may be led to suspect it is among this denomination that they have met with most of their instances of dissenting ministers so frightened, oppressed, and disabled, by the task of extemporary public prayer;-a thing very unaccountable, if such were the fact; since they boast of a great superiority to other sects in intellectual cultivation, and will hardly ac. knowledge an inferiority in piety. Setting aside this small

division of the dissenting ministry, we have the most perfect conviction, derived from a rather extensive acquaintance with the class, that no such feelings as the above representation attributes are prevalent among them; and that the individuals who experience the distressing difficulty here described, and are wishing the relief of written forms for either the whole or part of their public worship, are so exceedingly diminutive a minority, (if they are even enow to be recognized under any collective term) as to create but an impalpable and imperceptible diversity in the great body. The hearing of the representation made with such officious generosity and compassion by these New Directors, would be very apt,-together with a degree of surprize which it would excite-to raise an emotion, we will not say akin to scorn of this unsought and half-synodical kind of benevolence, but certainly a feeling that these public-spirited elders must have conceived an unaccountable disgust at the more immediately offering and feasible class of utilities, to go so far out of their way for an object of exertion. By the generality of the dissenting ministers, no question on the subject of written forms is ever for a moment entertained with any view to the determination of their own practice. They habitually regard them as things belonging to a quite foreign system, with which they have no concern. The aid of such forms is no more apt to be suggested to their thoughts as a commodious expedient, than the benefit of crutches is likely to strike the fancy of people who walk in the ordinary way. For one of their own fraternity (excepting, always, the small sect we have before alluded to) to begin to use such artificial aids, would only appear to them a whimsical singularity; or an. apeing of the establishment, into which they would be heard to observe it might be the fittest for that individual to dissent from them altogether; or an indication of exceedingly questionable competency for his office. If they ought to be restrained by candour from imputing, so readily and so generally as they are said to do, an incompetence to the independent exercise of public prayer to the established clergy, whose form of service withholds their ability in this respect from the proof; they, obviously, cannot avoid judging of the individuals of their own class, as their ability, or, to use their own word, gift, is actually brought to a test; and therefore they would necessarily form a humble estimate of the endowments of a minister who should be driven to the resource of written forms by the dread and difficulty of that extemporary exercise which is performing with apparent facility by thousands

of his class. And how did it elude the understanding of these new Directors, that the dissenting ministers are likely to partake too much of the ordinary qualities of human nature, to leave any probability of finding many of them sufficiently heroic in humility to be willing to subject themselves to this estimate and comparison? Verily these gentlemen are deep in the knowledge of man and of ministers; for they exhort Brother Simon to a practical acknowledgement that he is not able to pray more than five minutes in a manner fit to be heard, while Brother Timothy, in the same town or neighbourhood, is admired for the fluency and variety which he can prolong for half an hour. That a partial adoption of forms, (excepting in the case of persons confessedly leaning toward, though not uniting with, the establishment, or persons desirous to share its genteel respectability in the world) would really be thus regarded as the resource of incapacity, is beyond all doubt; unless this little council of reformers can, in the first instance, persuade into the practice a considerable number of the Dissenters of most acknowledged ability, and of the most decidedly nonconformist principles. And when they shall have effected this last object, their cause of self-congratulation will be, that they have contracted the range, and impoverished the variety, of a free and inventive devotion, and have partly reduced those who can pray the best, and have not very long to pray, into the readers of forms!

Extemporary public prayer has, then, by long and general usage, confirmed by opinion, whether correct or erroneous, been made to constitute so much of the practical essence of the dissenting system; and an inability for the performance of it, in one manner or another, has been so uniformly regarded as a total disqualification; that among the main body of the dissenting ministry there has not been, and will not be, the smallest deliberation on the matter. But it is not merely this established practice, and this universal requisition of a competence to maintain it, together with whatever of seriously thoughtful conviction there may be in its favour, and whatever of illiberal prejudice against the mode of the established Church,-it is not from these causes alone, that the Dissenters may be expected to regard with great indifference the project here offered to their acceptance. It is in vain for these or any other reformers to think of reasoning them out of their knowledge of the plain matter of fact; that there is among them a very large measure of competence, in some sense of the word, to perform their public services without the proposed assistance. Whatever

might be, on a collective view, a fair estimate of the quality of their devotional exercises, it is perfectly evident that they have in general such a facility in them as would appear very wonderful to an observer that did not consider how many causes contribute to it. Our authors represent, in terms of wide implication, the dread, the shrinking, the harassing sensations of toil, and the embarrassment, inflicted on dissenting ministers in the expectation and performance of the service; and in their preface they give an ingenuous hint that they have had personal experience of the evils they are going to describe. Their information and candour ought not to have been so sunk in the effort to make out a strong case, as to prevent an explicit acknowledgement, that this account of pains and penalties represents the condition of but a very inconsiderable number of the fraternity, after the earliest stage of their public labours; in which stage it is no great evil if they are constrained to the more serious exertion, and repressed into the more humility, by feeling the anxiety and difficulty which are to be encountered by beginners in all important employments. The arduous exertion required and compelled for surmounting these salutary difficulties of the initiatory and probationary season, is ten-fold repaid by the public self-possession and facility to which they often lead. But if, after the pressure and exertion of the earlier periods of the exercise have been undergone, there continues to be felt, habitually and permanently, in public extemporary prayer, a burden and a distress, greatly beyond that strong and solicitous effort of the faculties which may justly be exacted by a solemn employment, it is in some of the following cases;-that of a few persons so severely afHicted with what we commonly call nervous affections that they regard all their public duties, their preaching quite as much as their praying, with oppressive apprehension; or that of those would there were none such!-whose minds are so much estranged from the grand interests of their vocation, and from its appropriate reading and study, that they are not at home in the trains of thought adapted to prayer; or of those whose hopeless incapacity renders them equally unfit for each of the duties of the ministerial office. With respect to the two latter of these descriptions, we think the dissenters would do unwisely to encourage them in the use, if they were inclined to it, of artificial helps for continuing more at their ease in an office from which they should be exhorted to retire.

Take these classes out, and the great majority of the dissenting ministry will remain; and we can hazard nothing