caused our eyes once more to behold the light of life. Let us, then, be thankful for God's goodness; but let us not vainly imagine that our present possession of the truth is a pledge of its perpetual continuance in the midst of us. Truth is a celestial visitant, that remains only where she is prized and her instructions hearkened to. Worldliness, zeal for human traditions, and careless indifference, combined to drive her from the Jews; and the same causes produce every where the same effects. If we as a people prefer wealth to truth, display more zeal for the commandments of men than the word of God, and take the same pains in the propagation of error as the extension of truth, we cannot expect that God will long continue to us the possession of the pearl of great price. The truth which we disregard may be removed, and the falsehood which we have ceased to abhor be allowed to recover its ancient dominion. If we would retain it ourselves, or have it to hand down as a goodly inheritance to our children, we must learn to love and value it above all things, to maintain its interests, uphold its rights, and diminish the power of its rivals and its enemies. In a word, we must possess the certainty of which our Lord spoke, when he said, "We know what we worship;" and having that certainty, we must be ready, as he was, mildly, but firmly and uncompromisingly, to oppose the errors of those who worship they know not what. Let us, however, not be satisfied with a sort of national assurance that our faith is correct. When our Lord spake these remarkable words, and spake them truly of the faith of the Jewish Church and nation, there were multitudes of Jews, who knew what they worshipped just as little as the Samaritans. They had not made use of the religious advantages which God had vouchsafed them; and therefore, as individuals, lived and died, and went to eternity, without any certain knowledge of Him whom they professed to worship. Let us take care that this be not our case: the only way to prevent it, is conscientiously to employ the means within our reach. Let us diligently study that word in which God has revealed himself. Let us by earnest prayer seek the guidance of that blessed Spirit, who is promised to guide us into all truth; and above all, by steady obedience, let us seek the fulfilment of that promise which says, "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."

THE MAN OF GOD.

How great, how wonderful, is the power of a name !-It is recorded in history that a Roman general quelled general destruction, by simply changing the title a mutiny in his army,-a mutiny which threatened under which he addressed the mutineers. They were accustomed to be addressed as soldiers: he dropped the appellation which they were wont to hear, and when they rushed to his tribunal shouting for redress of imaginary grievances, and demanding indulgences inconsistent with discipline, he opened the harangue with which he was to answer them by calling them citizens. They heard the word, and they sank under the sentence it conveyed. They heard the unusual appellation, and like men benumbed and thunderstruck, they turned from the violence of their former conduct to deprecation, to entreaties, and submission.

Nor need we wonder at the effect produced, however sudden and extraordinary it may seem. The alteration of the name changed in a moment the character, the position of the men whom he addressed. It took from them all the proud distinctions in which they used to rest, and levelled them with the class they had been accustomed to despise. The change of that single word obliterated the memorial of past victories, and the hope of future triumphs; it left the veteran bereft of the glory for which he had endured the labours and perils of the field; and cut off from the young aspirant all expectation of renown. It was but a word, but it carried with it the conviction of disaffection and revolt; and sounded to their ears like the voice of their country denouncing her rebellious children, and casting them off for ever.

We see, therefore, that it is in the power of a name to produce effects which could hardly be expected. A name given, a name withheld, may supersede a long chain of reasoning and reproof; may anticipate conviction, may overwhelm the mind by the declaration of a fact which had been the secret object of fear or hope; and may raise or sink a man in his own estimation, as well as in the judgment of the world. Nor is the process by which this mysterious effect is produced difficult to trace. A name describes a character, a condition; and wherever the relations implied by that character or condition are understood; wherever a man knows what is meant by or included in the words applied to him, the conclusion to which he comes follows with the quickness of thought; and he feels the elevation or the degradation he is called to, almost as

where reflection will be found to diminish the effect of

soon as he perceives the sound by which his denomination is expressed. And we may add, that just in proportion as there is no time given in this process for reasoning or consideration, there is no time given for losing the force of the impression. There are cases such a charge, by introducing other and collateral subjects. The mind has leisure to argue against conviction, when argument is employed to produce conviction; and he who might have sunk before the sudden shock conveyed by the name under which he was addressed, may resist the charge, if he is allowed to have time to meet it, and to consider the means by which it may be disproved or extenuated.

But we are not called to discuss at present the means by which conviction may be effected. We are directed by our text; we are called by the service of the day to contemplate elevation, privileges, honours, rather than the opposite; and if I have endeavoured to shew by this example the power which a name possesses, it is, my brethren, that you may feel that power more deeply when used for the purpose of quickening, of sanctifying the spirit of man.

Thou, O man of God, flee these things."

From an admirable Sermon, on 1 Tim. iv. 11, preached in the Cathedral of Chester, Sunday, Feb. 24, 1839, at the Bishop's Ordination. By the Rev. H. Raikes, Chancellor of the Diocese, London, Seeleys; Hatchards; Nisbet.

gentle aspect. The first symptom of the mitigation of its horrors appeared early in the fifth century, when Rome was stormed and plundered by the Goths under Alaric. Those bands of barbarians, as they were called, were Christian; and their conduct in the hour of conquest exhibited a new and wonderful example of the power of Christianity over the fierce passions of man. Alaric no sooner found himself master of the town, than he gave out orders that all the unarmed inhabitants, who had fled to the churches or the sepulchres of the martyrs, should be spared; and with such cheerfulness were the orders obeyed, that many who were found running about the streets in a frenzy of consternation and despair, were conducted by the common soldiers to the appointed places of retreat. Nor was a single article touched of the rich furniture and costly ornaments of the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul. This, you will observe, was a thing very different from the boasted examples of Pagan manners, the generosity of Camillus, and Scipio's continence. In either of those examples, we see nothing more than the extraordinary virtue of the individual, because it was extraordinary, equally reflecting disgrace on his times and credit on himself: this was an instance of mercy and moderation in a whole armyin common soldiers, flushed with victory, and smarting under the wounds they had received in obtaining it. From that time forward, the cruelty of war has gradually declined, till, in the present age, not only captives among Christians are treated with humanity, and conquered provinces governed with equity, but in the actual prosecution of a war, it is become a maxim to abstain from all unnecessary violence. Wanton depredations are rarely committed upon private property; and the individual is screened as much as possible from the evil of the public quarrel. Ambition and avarice are not eradicated from the heart of man; but they are controlled in the pursuit of their objects by the general philanthropy. Wars of enterprise, for conquest and glory, begin to be reprobated in the politics of the present day.—Bishop Horsley.

CONSOLATION. With these blessings, the mourner feels relief under the anticipations of death, under the loss of friends, the disappointments, separations, and sicknesses of this mortal life. The thought of Christ's death and resurrection takes off the fearful character of his own dissolution. The thought of pardon, peace, reconciliation; the thought of a brief sleep only, after the termination of this life; the thought of Jesus coming again, and bringing with him all them that have slept in him; the thought of all the faithful being united in one company, and entering the glorious abode with him; the thought of being for ever with the Lord; this softens and mollifies the otherwise fearful meditation of death and judgment. The humble foresight of the blessings on the other bank of Jordan makes him forget, like Moses on the mount of Pisgah, the intervening pains and separations, and long to pass over into the good land. Thus, the child of sorrow is in the way to obtain abiding consolation under the thought of death.-Dr. Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta.

Poetry. PRAYER.

(For the Church of England Magazine.)

The following lines were suggested by a Prayer with which St.
Augustine was accustomed to commence his devotions.
MY GOD, I know thee not; but this I know,
Thou art my God, from thee my life doth flow:
I am a crawling worm; and thou supreme,
Of angels' and archangels' songs the theme:
Thou art omnipotent, most high, most just;
I am a heap of ashes, breathing dust:

Thou art omniscient; all that I can know Is, that from earth I came, to earth shall go : Thou art incomprehensible; thy ways Are far removed from my imperfect gaze: Thou art the same, immutable; each day Bears on its wing my fleeting strength away: Thine arm untiring guides the rolling spheres ; Mine bends beneath the weight of threescore years: Thou fill'st the universe; I see thee not, But trace thy presence still in every spot; Too narrow for thy throne is heaven's wide dome, Yet dost thou make the lowly heart thy home : All things are thine; we give thee of thine own, For all we have is from thine hand alone; Thou dost create, uphold, protect, supply; There is no darkness to thy searching eye: We loved thee not, yet thine abounding love Sent us a gracious Saviour from above: We sin against thee, and thou dost forgive; Death is our portion, and thou bid'st us live. Oh! how shall these unholy lips address A prayer to Thee, the God of holiness? How shall this vain and feeble tongue aspire To reach a theme must foil an angel's lyre? Yet be my faith with thine acceptance blest, Thy bounteous mercy must supply the rest.

L. C. W.

STANZAS SUGGESTED BY EZEK. Xxxii. 11.

(For the Church of England Magazine.) LORD, dost thou thus thy grace proclaim, Thy willingness to save;

And shall I still reject the same,
Thy boundless love treat with disdain,
Thy Holy Spirit grieve?

Ah, no, suffice it that so long

I've trod the downward road,

Put wrong for right, and right for wrong, And joined with the giddy throngy Unmindful of my God.

Humbled before thy sacred throne I now devoutly kneel,

To plead my Saviour's name alone, The free salvation he hath won, And tell the grief I feel.

Myself a rebel-worm to be,

With sorrow, Lord, I own— A heir of hell and misery; Still I betake myself to thee, And mention Christ alone.

His blood can cancel every sin Of whatsoever die;

The leopard's spots, the Ethiop's skin, Lose every stain when wash'd thereinTo him, my God, I fly.

His blood I plead-that sacred stream Which flows from love divine;

O wash my heart and make it clean,
And to thyself my soul redeem;
Yea, make me wholly thine.

Miscellaneous.

:

6

EVILS OF SEPARATISM.*-A truly pious and eminent minister of the Church of England became harrassed with doubts, arising rather from morbid sensibility than from manly conscientiousness. Many parties were eager to claim him as their own; and his mind was soon filled with the doubts and cavils of others. The issue was, an effort on his part to found a church free from all imperfections, and entirely conformable to the Scriptural model. An old foreign church in the city of Dublin was rented for their meetings. A railing was drawn across the centre of the building the members were admitted within the railing; all others were to sit outside. The author was present at their first meetings in the year 1829. For a few weeks all seemed to promise well; but the scene speedily changed. Every one having equal authority (or, rather no authority), dissension and division soon reared their heads. One was for an adult baptist, another a pædo-baptist; one was for close communion, another for open communion; all had an equal right to deliver public addresses. The minister confessed to a brother minister, that many effusions were agonizing rather than edifying' to him, from the crude and erroneous views of the speakers. The most forward and the least qualified were the foremost to speak; the humblest and best instructed shrunk from a field already pre-occupied. But this was not all. They had meetings for the admission of members; these were usually held in the evenings, and, it is not too much to say, became coteries of scandal. Instead of the broad Scriptural rule of admitting all who call on the name of Jesus Christ the Lord,' the character of each applicant was minutely scrutinised; the shape of a bonnet, or the amount of ribbons upon it, became sometimes a deciding point; and a miserable spirit of judging, and seeking for faults, increased rapidly amongst the members. Some ladies came to the conclusion, that adult baptism was the only scriptural one. They formed a party, and accompanied by a gentleman (a member of the church), proceeded to a public bath, where they were dipped into the water by him. They returned home, and found themselves as unsettled as ever. A fresh difficulty was started, whether he had a right to administer the ordinance; and they thus unhappily added to the painful catalogue of "silly women... ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim. iii. 6, 7). The minister himself was one day induced to receive the communion from the hands of a pious Presbyterian minister. On his return to Dublin he communicated this to the church. The members immediately quitted the room and separated from him, leaving him to his own bitter reflections upon the folly of building Utopian schemes. He who was eminently qualified to profit the church of God, is now in retirement, and (as far as we can learn) laid aside from all usefulness. The church separated into different societies; one party joined Mr. Kelly's church; another was (we believe) the origin of the Aungier-street or Plymouth church. Were the internal state of many a small body of separating churches made known, we are persuaded several equally humbling scenes could be described.

TEMPERANCE.-Sobriety is by no means to be confined to the common and ordinary acceptation of the

From "The Institutions of the Church of England are of Divine Authority." By the Rev. Joseph Baylee, A.B. Dublin, W. Curry, jun. and Co. 1837. pp. 174.

term temperance in food and drink; to a freedom from gluttony and drunkenness, from uncleanliness and impurity, and from those fleshly lusts which war against the soul. But all this is necessarily included, and is an essential branch of the Christian's duty. If we would "be filled with the Spirit," we must take good heed to the apostle's exhortation, and "be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess." If we would invite and detain with us that divine Visitant who offers to come unto us and make his abode with us, we must not defile with uncleanliness and impurity those bodies which are the temples of the Holy Ghost; and if this high motive be not sufficient to influence us, let us remember that God has solemnly declared, that "drunkards shall have their portion in the lake that burneth with brimstone and fire for ever;" that "if any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy;" that "whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." We should be careful that in no particular we abuse grace unto licentiousness, and render the Gospel "a savour of death unto death," by using its liberty as an occasion unto the flesh, and not as a privileged opportunity of holy selfdiscipline and self-denial. If any persons consider stated occasional fasting to be inconsistent with the spiritual nature of Christianity, even they should remember that there is a daily, habitual temperance, which is not only perfectly compatible with it, but which is the bounden duty of every Christian. It is true that our Lord declares, "It is not that which entereth into the mouth defileth a man;" but evidently he must be understood with this limitation, that what "entereth into the mouth" neither oppresses the faculties of the mind, damps the heaven-aspiring ardour of the affections, nor stimulates the evil passions of our corrupt nature. To give particular directions on the subject of temperance in food were impossible. But of this we may be assured, that we have transgressed the lawful use of even the lawful refreshments of the body, when their use does not leave us in a state-I will not say equally, but still more ready than before-for meditation and prayer. "We should eat to live, and not live to cat." We should nourish the body in order to render it a more active and obedient minister to the soul; and not so pamper and indulge it as to render the soul a slave to its appetites and passions. But much more than all this is implied in the sobriety here spoken of. It implies not only a freedom from gluttony and drunkenness, but also from the cares of this life; not only a bodily, but a spiritual temperance; not only a due regulation and control of the desires of the body, but also of those of the mind. We might be temperate in food, yet embruted in the spiritual sensuality, if I may so call it, of selfishness, of covetousness, of earthly-mindedness. We might be temperate in drink, yet intoxicated with pride and ambition, with vanity and the love of popular applause. But the sobriety here spoken of implies a weanedness of affection from all these things; a freedom from anxious and inordinate desire; a curbing of the mind in the too eager pursuit even of legitimate objects; a fulfilment of our ordinary duties, and a prosecution of our lawful business and calling, in a calm, tranquil, unhurried spirit of submissive resignation to the Divine will; a spirit which diligently uses the lawful means, then leaves the issue contentedly with God. In a word, to be sober is, in the apostle's mind, to put the whole heart into that daily prayer to God, "Thy will be done.”—Rev. T. M. Hiffernan's "Watch unto Prayer."

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VOL. VII. No. 184.

OF THE UNITED

CHURCH OF ENGLAND

RESPONSIBILITY.

NOTHING can more clearly evidence the littleness and inability of man than the diversity of opinion, the factions, and the sects, into which the world is so unhappily divided. This truth will appear more apparent when we consider it with regard to the Bible, a book we know to be of divine origin, whose principle it is to spread "peace on earth, and good-will;" which teaches us to "be of one mind one toward another;" calculated to unite men in the fond embrace of brotherhood; whose doctrines and precepts are so plain, that even "wayfaring men, though fools, cannot err therein:" and yet what is more common than disputes and controversies on its sacred contents? Various, however, as are the opinions of mankind, most of them agree in the belief of a general responsibility. There are some, however, strange as it may appear, who, by their actions at least, do not acknowledge this important truth; they seem to suppose that they were sent into the world for no other purpose than to "do their own ways, to find their own pleasure, and to speak their own words." And why is this? Because Satan, knowing the inclinations and dispositions of the heart, is ever active to take advantage, to lay his plan, and to make use of the most plausible arguments, to alienate the mind from God, and to endeavour to delude them to forget their individual responsibility to him. These arguments are, alas, very successfully waged by our great enemy; but they are not so strong or so successful as that the Christian may not resist them; he has a "stronghold," whence he can obtain arms, and gird himself to the

VOL. VII.-NO. CLXXXIV.

AND IRELAND.

PRICE 1d.

battle: God's armory is ever open to all his "soldiers and servants;" they may "lay hand upon the shield and buckler;" they may at all times "bring forth the spear;" and going forth in the strength of the Lord God," they shall be more than conquerors through Him who loved them." The Christian does not listen to the artful and designing suggestions of Satan; he does not study his own feelings; but he looks to God's revealed word, and makes that the standard of right and wrong, of principle and duty; and surely he cannot look very far into that blessed book without immediately perceiving that he is a responsible creature: the position in which we are placed by creation being with the world the work of God's hands, so that we are consequently his property. The Christian has yet a higher position to take than he obtains by creation, and that is, his condition by grace; he considers himself as a poor, lost sinner, under the curse of God, but redeemed from that curse, and its awful consequences, by the precious blood of Christ; and so he feels that he "is not his own, but bought with a price;" and with the feeling of being "bought," he is made sensible of the obligation under which he lies of "glorifying God in his body and spirit, which are God's" (1 Cor. vi. 20). How different is the feeling evinced on every occasion by the wicked, and by the Christian! The same event which gives uneasiness to the one, affords the greatest comfort and peace to the other. We have seen that it is an object of Satan to draw from men's minds the idea of responsibility; and so they persuade themselves that "the Lord doth not see;" or, if he does "see" their conduct, he

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