Dr. Jessopp's paper was to us, on the whole, the
most vivi- fying of those yet read. He drove home a point often forgetter, that village agitators, in pressing so strongly the demand for more material comfort, are injuring the Nonconformist clergy as much as the parsons. The labourers learn to dislike the latter, as they do in Wales, as friends of the landed interest, and desert the churches ; but they do not go to the chapels. They think they can do without religion altogether. Dr. Jessopp acknowledges that they cannot, because the human. heart is so constructed that it has a religious instinct ; but we regret to see he thinks this can now be best evoked in children. We doubt that altogether. Children should be taught religion, to make the work of the next generation easier, but preaching is for adults, who, if they listen at all, will listen eagerly. They have experience of life and of sin. There is a failure in modern Protestant preaching somewhere, which is not caused by doctrine. The Catholic priests and the revivalist type of Dissenters, whatever their other failures, which are many, make their voices reach lower down. We wish the Church produced preaching friars, among whom might be developed many, a Wesley and Whitfield.
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