The Parochial System

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1838 edition. Excerpt: ... SECTION III. THE MEASURE OF LIBERALITY AND SELF-DENIAL, DEMANDED BY THE PRINCIPLES OF THE GOSPEL. So great are the blessings which may reasonably be expected from the complete restoration of our parochial system, that we must prepare ourselves to hear men stigmatize the project itself as visionary and utopian. It is thus that we often reconcile ourselves to leave a great and good work unattempted. We acknowledge its greatness, not that we may gather to it all our force, but that we may discharge ourselves from the necessity of making an effort. And we must expect accordingly that men will reply to the proposals contained in the last section, that great blessings indeed might be expected if our whole land were divided into parishes of a moderate size, and if every such parish were provided with its church and its resident minister, and with the necessary institutions for the education of the young, the instruction of the ignorant, and the relief of the poor; but that, as it is hopeless that such provision should ever be made, we must content ourselves with other expedients. They will admit that some new churches ought to be built, that some enormous parishes ought to be divided, but they will denounce it as visionary, to propose operations so vast as are requisite for the full developement of the parochial system; and therefore they have recourse to other measures more or less beneficial and expedient, but which must ever be wholly insufficient to remedy the evil. And is this really the case? Is it hopeless that we should carry out a series of measures which would secure a blessing, and must we content ourselves to abandon the mass of our city population to the powers of darkness, and seek only to snatch from them one here and another...