NOTES OF THE MONTH. 219 



a thing, we should advise the immediate translation of stich men as the 

 Rev. Mr. Cunningham, of Harrow, and the Hon. and Rev. G. Noel, to 

 the two archiepiscopal sees ; this would, perhaps, prevent the contem- 

 plated reduction in the establishment : could placemen and others be 

 prevailed upon to deem salary of no object, our political, as well as our 

 spiritual regeneration would be certain. 



AN APOLOGY FOR THE CLERGY. We are among those who consider 

 the clergy to be hardly used in the present day. Their accusers are 

 numerous, their defenders few we proudly reckon ourselves among 

 the latter. The principal outcry raised against the body spiritual, is 

 for their absorption of wealth, but it shows a very poor acquaintance 

 with theology, to imagine this to be an offence either against public 

 morals or Christian charity ; for our parts, we believe it to be the very 

 magnanimity of theological virtue. We are continually told, of the 

 damning quality of riches, is it not declared to be easier for a camel to 

 go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to go to Heaven ? 

 that the love of money is the root of ALL evil ; and that the inordinate 

 desire of riches shall go hand in hand with condemnation. Considering 

 all this, ought we not to honour the clergy for taking unto themselves 

 eight million pounds' worth of voluntary damnation ? 

 " For Satan, wiser than in days of yore, 

 Now tempts by making rich, not making poor." 



Before the reformation, the value of a human soul was set at three 

 marks, to take it out of limbo double that sum, to redeem it from 

 purgatory four times that amount. Now, as it required thus much to 

 save a soul when England was so thinly populated, we may reasonably 

 infer that much less is required to condemn one, now that the popula- 

 tion is so much more dense. Taking, however, the probability of 

 damnation at about three marks, or a pound sterling, the Bishop of 

 London, by taking one hundred thousand pounds of such "perilous 

 stuff," out of the hands of the poor, annually, may be said to save at 

 least one hundred thousand souls every year, being as many as are 

 computed to die in that space of time in his diocese. In the same ratio 

 of calculation, the income of the bishops are supposed to preserve the 

 soul-destroying comforts of this life, no less than five millions per annum. 

 So that the monstrous and unchristian complaint, that the clergy do no 

 good, is proved a complete fallacy the growing wealth of this country 

 absolutely demanded that a safety-valve should be opened somewhere ; 

 but the twenty-five years wars, the rent-roll, and the pension-list, 

 would all be insufficient, were it not for this annual self-devotion of the 

 clergy. Their efforts to scrape together the filthy lucre, that we may 

 not be calumniated with it, are as praiseworthy as the exertions of the 

 benevolent individual called the quixotic scavenger, who is now peram- 

 bulating the metropolis, with his satellites and their vehicle, for the 

 purpose of removing, gratuitously, the causes of infection from our 

 streets. By such means multiplying the soul-saving fast-days among us, 

 without marking them down in the rubric, we find the bishops doing 

 good by stealth, blushing to find \tfame. 



MARCH OF CANT. We heard of a serious old gentleman upon his 

 conversion to Swedenborgism, or some other schism or i m, giving up 

 the Times newspaper, and becoming a subscriber to the Morning 

 Herald, because the former printed " God" in small letters, and the latter 



