THE ECCLESIOLOGIST. “Surge igitur et fac: et erit Dominus tecum.” No. LXXVIII.-JUNE, 1850. (NEW SERIES, NO. XLII.) OPEN CHURCHES. WHEN objects apparently difficult of attainment present themselves to the mind as things which ought to be compassed, encouragement in the toil can scarcely be more effectually imparted than by musing on some once similarly remote end which steady exertion has at length sufficed to achieve; and by marking how, step by step approached, that end was finally won. To make such a retrospect as this, and with such a purpose, is no vain-glorious meditation even in the individual who has acted in the successful contest; rather is it an exercise of gratitude and faith;—gratitude that so much has been accomplished, faith that what remains may yet be given to earnest, and sustained, and duly directed labour. Time was, and that not a score of years ago, that a crusade against the pew system, so deeply rooted, so universally prevalent in England, might well have seemed Quixotic; a futile attempt to overturn what three hundred years had immoveably established. There were impediments of various sorts to be encountered,-prejudices, (of the most venial kind, because springing from a mistaken spirit of conservatism, but still) strong prejudices, misconceptions, suspicions, economical considerations, selfish exclusiveness, love of privacy, fears of rheumatism, blindly dogged Protestantism. But the object was a sacred one, involving what the Psalmist loved, "decorem domus Tuæ"; identified with the cause of humble devotion, because subservient to it; with the cause of the poor, by the then prevailing system excluded, or consigned to places as beneath their betters' footstool. The crusade accordingly was warmly undertaken, was steadily maintained, and is now triumphant. Shall then success like this, to which our society has been permitted to contribute, not afford encouragement to plead boldly in behalf of |