come. These circumstances, and the amount of good effected, encourage the committee to expect that they may now obtain the services of some who doubted whether the society's plan could be carried into practical operation, and of others who feared that the duties of the visitors would subject them to unpleasant collision with the poor. The committee have great pleasure in acknowledging the persevering support which they have received from many of the clergy and dissenting ministers, and they hope they may expect that, by the continued exertions of these gentlemen, sections now vacant will, ere long, be occupied by members of their congregations. The visitors of the society might also materially promote its further success, by endeavouring to obtain new visitors among the circles of their respective acquaintance.

They fear that the public is still not fully conscious of the evils resulting from the practice of indiscriminate almsgiving, and that many lawless vagrants and idle and unprincipled families are supported by the misdirected charity of the rich. The labours of the society's visitor of Mendicants disclose much gross imposition on the medical charities of the town; and the committee conceive that this abuse will receive no efficient check, until the cases applying for relief at the medical institutions, are examined by agents, similar to their visitor of Mendicants, before being entered on the books of the hospitals and dispensaries. From the 1st July to 31st December, there have been 184 applications made to the society for tickets of recommendation to the Lying-in Charity, 137 have been granted, 47 refused for the following reasons:-one, not being a married woman; three, because the husbands had turned out from good wages which they might still have been making; one of these was a dyer, one a tailor, one a sizer: the dyer was in receipt of five shillings per week from a Union. Nine applicants were not found to reside at the address which they gave; eleven refused to allow investigation. Twenty-three were rejected because their circumstances appeared to be too good to require the aid of the charity,-one actually keeping a servant: their average wages appear to have been about thirty shillings per week:-nine received wages not exceeding twenty-five shillings: five not exceeding thirty shillings: nine not exceeding forty shillings: one not exceeding fifty shillings. Of the 47 cases refused, 33 gave a false account of themselves: 11 had no family: 13 had one child: 8 had two children: 15 had from three to six children,-altogether sixty-nine children, of whom twenty-nine were earning wages.

MANCHESTER UNITARIAN VILLAGE MISSIONARY SOCIETY. THE annual meeting of the members and friends of this useful Society, was held in the school-room of the Unitarian Chapel, Mosley-street, Manchester, on Monday evening, the 20th April; the Rev. W.GASKELL in the chair.-In introducing the business of the meeting, the Chairman observed that, as it appeared to him, sufficient attention had not been paid to the great sources of all anti-social evils;-that instead of endeavouring to stop them in their outset, we, as a people, had allowed them to increase in consequence, and to become almost too mighty for us to grapple with. We had busied ourselves with merely stripping a few leaves from that Upas tree, which was casting its deadly shade over society, while its stem was all the while strengthening and its branches extending far and wide; instead of seeking at once to lay the axe at its root. Till we had reformed the vices of the poor, till we had given them moral habits and religious principles, we had done nothing for them on which we could depend: the secure foundation on which to rest the structure of their comfort and peace must be wanting.

Mr. FRS. DUFFIELD, one of the secretaries, read the annual report of the Committee, which stated that their attention had been chiefly directed to the gradual improvement of the field which they had found occupied by their predecessors. At their missionary station at Astley the average number of hearers during the last year, was 50 in the forenoon, and 54 in the afternoon. A short service had been adopted to the Sunday scholars, intended to impress on their minds the first principles of religion, and to enforce the practice of moral and religious duties. The present number of scholars was 100 and teachers 26. At Swinton, the average number of hearers was 41 in the morning, and 42 in the evening. In the Sunday school, there were 126 scholars and 31 teachers.

A week-night service for prayer and exhortation was held alternately at the houses of twelve members of the congregation. The labours of Mr. Shenton in Derbyshire had been successful, especially at Over Haddon, Ashford, Sheldon and Flagg. At Sheldon the services were attended by far the greater proportion of the adult population; and the societies at that place and Flagg would be much greater if there were larger places of meeting. Padiham and the neighbourhood had been thrice visited, and the congregation, the services of which are conducted by working men, was found to be increasing. The circulation of books on loan to the various stations on the itinerating plan had been found eminently useful; and donations were solicited. By the treasurer's account it appeared that the expenditure of the past year, including the salaries of two missionaries, amounted to no more than £114. 13s. 11d., and that there was a balance due to the treasurer of £16. 5s. 9d. In the transaction of the routine business of the meeting several ministers and other gentlemen addressed the meeting.

The Rev. J. G. ROBBERDS said that it would be an unjust opinion to go abroad respecting the preachers of this society, that their only object was to change the opinions of their fellow-men. They had a much higher object to endeavour to induce men to carry out into all their practice, the inferences and bearings of the doctrines which they believed to be the doctrines of the Gospel. Unless they could make men not merely believers in God, but worshippers, lovers and servants of the one God, he believed the experiment would not by any means come up to the wishes or expectations of those more particularly engaged in carrying it on.

Mr. F. DUFFIELD stated, in reference to the Unitarians of Padiham, that they were as liberal of their time and their labour as others were of their money, and having by the aid of friends succeeded in erecting a place of worship and purchasing a burial ground, the morning following the purchase of the land, he had seen fifty or sixty with pickaxes and spades, digging and levelling the ground, to put it in order with as little delay as possible; and several, who were not able to work themselves, hired some stout able-bodied labourer in their stead.

The Rev. J. R. BEARD dwelt on the necessity of greater zeal and exertion, the want of which might be inferred from the slender auditory on that and other occasions. He noticed the establishment, in London, of infidel schools, by the followers of Robert Taylor and Richard Carlile, from which religion was systematically excluded, and the being of a God was not allowed to be taught. The master had expressed his disbelief of every thing of which he could not have ocular demonstration. Ninety of these children were educated by the weekly subscriptions of their parents, many of whom were not aware of the real nature of the education given. Surely if infidels thus endeavoured to preoccupy the youthful mind with their doctrines, it behoved every Christian not to allow them to excel him in benevolent zeal.

NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Our arrangements are such as to enable us to assure our friends that their Booksellers are solely to blame if they do not receive the Christian Teacher at the time of the delivery of the Monthly publications.-Owing to some delay, the Report from Leeds came, we regret to say, too late for this number.

T. Forrest, Printer, Manchester.

PROVIDENCE.-No. III.

GENERAL AND PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE.

THEOLOGY and Science are distinguished chiefly in this; that Science deals, not with the great Agent in the universe, but with his acts and his agencies-with the creation, not with the Creator. It regards facts and events, the order of their occurrence and their laws, and, so far as the purposes of science are concerned, stops there; whilst Theology regards all these only as the instruments and manifestations of the Power who moves in them the things that are made as containing information of their Maker-the ordinances which nature obeys as unfolding the character of the government under which we live and of Him who governs, and so examines what God does, with the view of discovering what God is.

Theology is thus, in reality, an after-science, built upon the conclusions of all the other sciences. Each of them is its handmaid. It takes their truths, established, without any consideration of religion, from an examination of what actually occurs, in mind and matter, in the heavens and on the earth, and on these truths founds an inquiry into the character of their Author, and deduces the science of God and Providence.

Before we can judge of the character of any being, we must first discover, in the manifestations he gives us of himself, some fixed principle of action which determines and shapes his conduct. When we have detected the rule that guides him, and seen that in the variety of all his separate doings, he is acting in the spirit of his rule, we are then in a position to draw inferences about the character of his mind, from the settled aspect it impresses upon his performances; we have something definite, something permanent, to reason from. Now, in regard to God, the fixed rules and laws of his actions are the very facts which Science establishes and hands over to Theology to institute upon them her own process of inquiry, and from these uniform methods of conduct to deduce the attributes and the intentions of the God who adopts them. The one detects the principle which regulates the manifestations of God; the other makes that discovered principle the ground-work of a new investigation, and infers from it the character of God. To put this still more plainly, I examine narrowly a man's actions, in order to discover the rule that guides him; and when the rule is discovered, I commence a new examination upon it, in order to determine whether it is wise and good. In the case of God, the first of these two departments of inquiry is science; the second is theology.

From this it is apparent that religion can never be indifferent to the progress of knowledge that, in fact, it exists itself only as a conclusion from the results of every other science, an inference the soundest that can be made, of the character of a Mind from its fixed expressions, of an Agent from his principles of action, of a Legislator from his laws. Theology, thus reasoning of God in heaven from his rules of action on the earth, must evidently wait till philosophy has determined what those rules are. Where the other sciences end it begins-takes their conclusions in their last and most finished state as its data, their general truths, expressive of the modes of the Divine agency, as its materials; and thus, standing aloft above the rest, grows as they furnish it with evidence, has larger premises from which to infer the Divine character as often as the progress of discovery adds to our knowledge of the Divine laws, and commences its flight to God from the summit of a loftier pile.

Now, this distinction existing between philosophy and religion-science, in its common acceptation, taking no account of God, but only of his visible actions-taking no account of the great Mover, but only of his visible movements—or, to speak more strictly, the science of what God does only furnishing the materials for the higher science of what God is, it follows that the language in which the results of philosophy are expressed can only embrace facts, without connecting them with God, leaving that to the separate department of theology; and then it is most important to observe, how that very language, when the religious part of the inquiry is neglected, comes to exclude God from our thoughts, by the constant substitution of a form of expression in which there is no allusion to his agency or his name. Nature acts by general laws,' says the philosopher-meaning, that in the several departments of nature each class of facts takes place according to fixed rules, and that when the rule is known, we have then the knowledge-not of one particular case only-but of all the cases which can possibly occur, precisely as a rule of arithmetic enables us to determine, not one particular question only, but all the questions which belong to the same class, or a rule in morals applies not to one particular act, but to a whole branch of conduct. Nature is not an assemblage of insulated, disconnected things, each standing by itself. Its facts may be divided into parcels. Each parcel has its own distinctive character, its own distinctive law; so that, instead of a separate examination of each individual of the class, you have only to acquaint yourself with this common character to have the mastery over the whole;-and because a rule once discovered has never been known to fail, and you may then pronounce, with absolute certainty, what must be the result

in any given circumstances; because it never deviates from God's ordinances, Nature is said to act by general laws.

This language, however it may be enough for the purposes of philosophy, is by no means sufficiently distinct for the purposes of religion; it was not constructed with a view towards the theology of the universe, but with a view towards its science; and the consequence is, that not being framed for a religious purpose, it has served that purpose very ill; and the conceptions of God and Providence thus collaterally suggested by a form of expression so dim and abstract, are very far from containing the whole truth upon this subject are very little likely to throw into relief the constant action of God-to make lively the impression of the universality of His operation and His presenceand to present Him prominently to the awakened heart of devotion. The imagination that glides into the mind in company with this vague expression, that the universe is governed by general laws, is this, that God at the creation impressed upon it His general orders; that having made it and endowed it, He then withdrew His immediate agency; and that all its subsequent evolutions are only the results of that primary formation, its acts of obedience to His original commands. Now this style of conception respecting the Deity's agency on matter, that he endued it with certain powers, and then retired from it and left it to itself, impressed upon us by all our common language, accordingly as it is connected with minds of different religious temperaments, leads to two views of the doctrine of Providence, both of which we regard as most serious obstructions to the spirit of devotion. The first of these views is that which is known by the name of a general Providence that there is a preestablished plan and order of events which God arranged once and no longer interferes with-that there are universal laws which work out a certain amount of general good, but take no regard of individuals that there is a universal Sovereign, but no Father-that there is an administration which is wise and beneficent upon the whole, but no parent's pointed care around each living soul-that there is a constitution fixed and inflexible, not made for individuals but for the race which, whilst it provides for the universal weal, has no especial interest in, no especial adaptation to any, and even produces much partial suffering as the necessary result of a system, and not the especial appointment of God;-leaving us a world where the general order is preserved only by sometimes crushing individual hearts and interests into the moulds of a system. This is the view of Providence which will be adopted, when the notion that the physical agency of God was only once at the beginning acts upon a mind whose peculiar temperament is not devotionalwhich is more intellectual than emotional, more philosophical