CHARGES CLERGY OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES, DELIVEKKD AT FROM THE YEAR 1840 TO 1854. WITH NOTES ON THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS AFFECTING THE CHURCH DURING THAT PERIOD. JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M.A. ARCHDEACON. WITH AN INTRODUCTION, EXPLANATORY OP HIS POSITION IN THE CHURCH WITH REPERENCE TO THE PARTIES WHICH DIVIDE IT. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. n. MACMILLAN AND CO. 1856. THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES, DELIVERED AT THE ORDINARY VISITATION IN 1843. CHURCH. My Reverexd Brethren", I BEGAN my last Charge by expressing my regret that Tou were again, for the fourtli year, deprived of the advantage of an Episcopal Exhortation ; and my regret cannot but be increast, now that a fifth year has past away since Bishop Otter held his Visitation, and you have still no person to address vou in these troubled times with words bearing the stamp of Episcopal authority. Our Bishop finds himself compelled by his parliamentary duties again to postpone the work of visiting his Diocese to another summer. This is a stronger case than ordinary, though every case must be more or less strong, to prove the exceeding injudiciousness of the rule which assigns the Chaplaincy of the House of Lords to the Junior Bishop on the Bench. For, as we must all know from our ow^n experience, every beginning is beset by pecidiar difiiculties. The entrance into a new office places us in a new position, and under a number of new relations. Even the things with which we before were familial-, acquire a new aspect from the new point of view whence we look at them ; and a variety of new duties start up, which after a time become comparatively easy, through the promptitude and dexterity resulting from habit and practice, but which at first call for careful consideration in each particular case. This is so in every condition 4 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. of life ; and each of us must have felt it when we first entered on our own ministerial and pastoral office. Still greater then, far greater and heavier must be the burthen of the new duties, which fall on a person when first ap- pointed to the office of a Bishop in the Church of God, more especially in the present state of the English Church, when our Dioceses are so large, that is to say, comprise such enormous masses of population, and when so many important labours of divers kinds are pressing on the heads of the Church, far beyond the limits of their own particular Dioceses. It surely seems a strangely perverse regulation, that, at the very time when a Bishop most needs every day and every hour to gain a thorough acquaintance, not only with his duties, but also with the whole body of ministers committed to his spiritual gui- dance, he should be compelled to spend half, or more than half, the year at a distance from his Diocese ; and the evils of this regulation are increast, now that it has become the practice to prolong the Session of Parliament till near the end of the summer ; so that, during the chief part of the season which a Bishop might most conveniently employ in traveling about his Diocese for the exercise of his various spiritual functions therein, he is compulsorily absent for the performance of duties of very inferior importance, and which a number of other clergymen might perform no less fitly and efficiently. There can hardly be any one amongst you, my reverend brethren, who does not recognise the truth of these remarks ; and I may therefore be excused for giving utterance to the regret, which we all feel, that our Bishop should thus be taken away from us year after year. It is indeed a somewhat singular occurrence. THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. O that the office of Chaplain to the House of Lords should be discharged by a Bishop of Chichester during three successive Sessions of Parliament : but the cases in which the inexpediency of a regulation is the most strongly felt, are the very cases where it is most natural and appropriate that the conviction of that inexpediency should be exprest : and in these days, when our Legis- lators deem it so light a matter to change and innovate and remodel, some remedy, — it would not be difficult to discover one, — may perhaps be devised for this great practical inconvenience, if it be but distinctly pointed out. Additional arguments of no small force might be drawir from the aptness of human nature to find a peculiar interest, and a strong spur to exertion, in a new field of action. Hence, if it be desirable that a person should discharge his office with diligence and zeal, and should give up his heart to its duties, we ought to beware of check- ing and diluting his zeal at the outset by dividing and dis- tracting his attention. According to the usual tendencies of mankind, whatever measure of activity and energy has been displayed in the first year is likelier to diminish than to increase in the following ones : and though, through the help of God's Spirit, which is ever granted to such as devote their hearts and minds to the service of the word, the faithful minister of Christ will rather become more and more diligent every year, still it is anything but prudent to turn aside the bent of Nature, when her im- pulses themselves would be subservient to the performance of duty, and to waste that freshness of spirit, which seems especially designed to carry us through the difficulties of a new undertaking. Moreover, to take liigher ground, no t> THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. great work can be performed worthily, unless we fit ourselves for it by a preparatory discipline of meditation and prayer : above all must this hold of the solemn and awful charge entrusted to the Episcopate. Yet one can hardly conceive any mode of life less fitted for such a discipline, than that which a person of eminence is compelled to lead among the manifold unintermitting distractions of the metropolis. But I must not dwell longer on this topic, though other arguments might be adduced. Let me turn from this wish to another not remotely connected with it. I ventured last year to say a few words on the desi- rableness of a large increase in the Episcopal Body. Similar wishes have been exprest here and there by others for some years past, ever since the revival of a stronger consciousness of the privileges and duties of the Church : and in the course of the last year they have become more general, and have found utterance in some high quarters : so that the hope, which a twelvemonth ago scarcely dared to shew itself, may now lift up its head (a). We cannot indeed be very sanguine, when we call to mind that like projects have been framed again and again in former times, and have terminated ineffectually, doing little or nothing ; so that a person disposed to en- tertain superstitious feelings about numbers might fancy that the scheme of two Archbishops and twenty-four Bishops, which Gregory framed for the English Epis- copate, was in some manner ordained to be coeval with our Church. At all events it is a wonderful fact, that the design which he conceived in his mind when he sent Augustin to convert England, should exactly coincide, at least in the total sum, with the Episcopal THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 7 Body of the present day, after the lapse of more than twelve centuries (b). Yet if on the one hand this fills us with admiration for the long-sighted far-reaching wisdom, which could plan a Church to last for twelve centuries, and lay the full germs of its whole future organization, in what was then a heathen country, on the other hand it is plain that a scheme, which was any wise suited to the wants of England with the popu- lation and civilization of those days, can never be adequate to our wants now ; when the population must be five or six times as numerous, and when the power of the World has been increast incalculably in such a number of ways, and is armed with so many new snares for drawing men away from God. If we con- sider what was the work the Church had to effect then, and what it is now, — how she had then to preach to bands of fierce, but simple, ignorant, open-hearted heathens, and has now to wrestle with all the perver- sions and corruptions of the human intellect, with all the refinements and debasements of social life, — how she then had to contend against Moloch, but now has to war against Belial and Mammon and Ashta- roth on every side, along with her ancient enemy, — we cannot fail to perceive that the army of the Faith requires more captains in these days, even as the hosts which come against us are far more numerous, and have far more captains and wilier to lead them. Or, if we look at the question from a different point of view, vdth reference, not to the war of the Church against the World, but to the wants and comfort of her own members, — surely, when we think of the fifteen millions of our population, and then of the six and g THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. twenty members of our Episcopal Body, we can hardly help asking, What are thetj among so many ? Although they may spend and be spent, how is it possible for them to do, what many of them would do if they could, worthily discharging the office of the chief shep- herd in their dioceses? How can they be known by their sheep, even faintly and remotely? How can they carry on those relations of frequent familiar intercourse with all the clergy under their charge, which would be so beneficial to both? If we were to fulfill the idea of an Apostolical Church, the Bishop ought to be the friend, the counsellor, the guide of all his clergy : he ought to know their characters, their feelings, the circumstances of their parishes, their peculiar wants and difficulties : and few measures would do more to strengthen the Church, than if a faithful and holy Bishop were to be seen from time to time exhorting and ministering to the people of the Lord in every Church in his Diocese. Such things however are quite im- practicable now. Nor would they become practicable, nor would the wants of the Church be at all adequately supplied, unless the present number of the Episcopal Body were doubled, I should rather say, tripled. Even this would not give us a Bishop for every two hun- dred thousand souls ; for which he ought to have a couple of hundred pastors under him. This may be deemed a very wild scheme. Would not those who so deem of it, have thought that of Gregory, when he commissioned Augustin to establish twenty-six Sees in the land of the heathen Saxons, still wilder ? One of the lessons taught by history is, that great enterprises, if followed out resolutely and judiciousl)', are likelier THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. V to succeed and to produce lasting results, than small ones : and this seems to be sanctioned by the prophetic de- claration, 0'pe?i thy mouth wide, and I will Jill it. That the opinions I have been expressing meet with your concurrence, I have reason to believe, since so large a number of you responded cordially to my invi- tation, when I consulted you on the propriety of petition- ing the Legislature for the preservation of the two Sees in North Wales; and our petition conveyed a wish for a large increase in the number of Bishops (c). In its immediate object, as you are all aware, it failed; that is, for the time. Still I can hardly persuade myself that the projected transfer will ever actually take place, after it has been shewn so clearly that there is not the slightest ground for it; unless we are to count it a reasonable ground, that the Legislature will not retract a false step, by amending an Act in which it was utterly impossible that all the clauses should have been duly considered, and which was framed moreover during a very different state of national feeling, when few persons would have hoped that the revenues for a See at Man- chester could have been drawn from better sources. At present, when it has been shewn so plainly, how a large part of those revenues may be raised, and when it is no vain trust that what might still be lacking would be collected without much difficulty from Man- chester itself, and by ready contributions from other parts of the Church, I trust that we are not calling for too great a sacrifice from the framers of the Act for the regulation of Ecclesiastical Revenues, if we request them to alter a provision in it drawn up under very erroneous impressions. Will any one say that 10 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. it is beneath the dignity of the Legislature, to own itself mistaken ? Surely our Parliament does not lay claim to this practical infallibility. On the contrary its fallibility has been too often evinced and acknow- ledged of late years, by the necessity for new Acts to correct the errours of those recently enacted : and there is a becoming confession of this fallibility in the provision attach t to every Bill for its amendment, if needful, in the course of the same Session. As to the argument on which so much stress was laid, that, unless one of the Welsh Sees is abolisht, the new See of Manchester cannot be erected, because it is im- possible, in the present state of public feeling, to obtain the admission of another Bishop into the House of Lords, — for my own part, — although we might justly urge that such an addition to the spiritual peerage ought not to be scrupled at, when such large additions have been made in the last two centuries to the temporal peerage, — still, for my own part, I would much rather see a new Bishopric erected, the incumbent of which was to have no seat in the House of Lords. Not that I am insensible to the advantages which the Church, and the far greater advantages which the State derives from the spiritual peerage (d) : but I know not whether an addition to the number of the spiritual peers is to be desired. The present number are amply sufficient to exercise a powerful influence in all questions in which religion and public morality are concerned ; where- as a larger number might have too much weight in the struggles of political parties. At all events no observer of the spirit of this age would expect to obtain any large addition to the spiritual peerage. Therefore, THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 11 since the object we are anxious for is a large addition to our spiritual guides and governors in the Church, I should hail the establishment of a single See unconnected with the peerage, as setting an example, which will remove this difficulty, and therefore may more easily be followed. You will not deem, I trust, that, in what I have been saying, I am either trespassing on matters which do not properly come under our consideration, or speaking of subjects on which you feel no immediate interest. For who can think of the spectacle which England at this day, in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, must present in the sight of heaven, — who, knowing anything of the schism upon schism whereby the Church of Christ is torn in this land, can call to mind how painful this sight must be in the eyes of Him who came in order that all His disciples might be one — who, having heard of the terrific revelations which have recently been made concerning the state of our manufacturing towns, can try to picture to himself what foul blots they must be in the sight of an All-righteous God, to whom the sins of the Cities of the Plain cried so loudly for vengeance, — who can think of these things, and not feel a longing to contribute what help he can, in thought and action, toward the removal of these withering plague-spots from our nation ? And the more firmly we are persuaded that the Church which Christ establisht, with its sacra- mental ministrations, and the word of life committed to its keeping, is the only efficient remedy for all the evils upon earth, for the social evils no less than the individual, the more anxious shall we be to see that portion of it which has been set up in this land, put 12 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. forth all its energies, all the power with which the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove can supply it, all the power which Faith can draw down from heaven, or gather from any corner of the earth, so that our exertions may be in some degree commen- surate to the enormous exigencies of the times. More- over all who know how important it is that an army in time of danger should be well officered, and that the officers should be familiarly known and honoured by the soldiers under them, — all who feel the value of order, and subordination, and government, — more especially all who recognise the importance of Epis- copacy for the well-disciplined action of the Church, — will join me in wishing that the Episcopal Body in England were really able to meet the wants of the age. I have heard it said in apology for the defects of the clergy during the last century, that the fault did not lie so much in them, as in the officers set over them, and that, if they had been better officered, they too would have done their duty better. We cannot however get rid of our sins, by casting them on the shoulders of our rulers : least of all can we do so in this case. For whence are our rulers taken ? do they not come out of our own body ? Assuredly too they have not generally been unfavorable samples of that body : laor would it be easy to name many, among those accounted orthodox churchmen, of whom it can be asserted, that they ought to have been selected in preference to the main part of them. No, my Brethren ; for our failings, whatever they may be, we alone are responsible ; for even if we had not ecclesiastical rulers to exhort and encourage us, yet the Spirit of God was ready THF, WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 13 to give us all the strength that we needed, had we only sought it from Him. But on the other hand, while we recognise the full weight of our own personal respon- sibility, we may feel that, humanly speaking, we should have more strength and wisdom to encounter the many evils which beset us, if our Bishops were able to dwell more amongst us, and to take a more active interest in our parochial concerns. We may feel this to a certain extent even in our own Diocese, though it be one of the smallest ; and, if so, like wants must needs press more urgently in others. Nor is it censur- able presumption, if we, who are under authority, take upon us to utter our thoughts and desires concerning these matters, the decision of which rests with our superiors, provided we do it calmly and respectfully, and know how to submit and wait with patience, if our desires are not immediately complied with. Surely too none of you, my Brethren, will say that, though these matters might appropriately be brought before the Clergy in other larger Dioceses, they are not such as you personally are deeply concerned in. For is not this one of the great blessings of Christianity, that it widens the range of our sympathies, that it stretches the ties of neighbourhood to an unlimited extent, that it makes us feel a lively interest in that which is far off? This was seen among the first fruits of the Gospel, in the zeal with which different Churches ministered to each other'^s necessities : and now in these days, when all the modes of communication have been so multiplied and improved, and when our very bodies may be transferred, in a portion of time which would have seemed incredible to our fathers, from one end of the 14 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. land to the other, — now, when the narratives of the events of the day and the discussions about them, have almost superseded all other objects of study, — we ought at least to learn this lesson from the many facilities granted to us, that they are not given to us for our own convenience or profit or amusement, but to the end that we may feel ourselves more closely knit and united to all our fellow-countrymen, so that the whole English people may stand as one man in the presence of God. This, it seems to me, is the real purpose of all our mechanical improvements. By facilitating our mutual communication and correspondence, they should enliven our sympathy with each other, and our eiforts to help each other. Yet how far are we from using them to such an end ? On the contrary have not our local attach- ments been sadly relaxt by our growing homelessness ? Is not the tendency of our so-called mechanical improve- ments to root up our ancient hereditary affections, to sever the fluxional body of the upper classes still more from the stationary tillers of the soil, and to render us more than ever the slaves of evanescent novelties and insatiable satiety ? The last twelvemonth has made the most appalling disclosures touching the social and moral condition of England. The unsoundness of much of our boasted strength, the hollowness of our wealth had indeed been manifested plainly by many symptoms before : and it had been long foreseen and predicted by such as discerned the unsoundness and hollowness of the principles on which our social edifice was con- structed, and by which the actions of our governors and legislators were swayed. So too was it foreseen THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 15 and predicted, that, unless vigorous measures were taken to renovate the health of the State, and to eradicate the ever-spreading seeds of disease, every fresh access of fever must be more dangerous than the former (e). Yet what have we done with this view ? "We have sought for palliatives ; we have sought to stave off the evil hour; we have sought for means to get through the day, and have put off the pain of applying a more searching corrective till the morrow. Or we have done a little for the improvement of the people, have dribbled out improvements with the one hand, while we were doing everything with the other to exaggerate their morbid con- dition, to increase the feverish irritation which increast our riches for the moment, to grind down the hearts and souls of our manufacturing population into the materials of gold. We have been worshiping Mammon ; we have been building temples to Mammon unrestingly and indefatigably in all parts of the country. Of late, it is true, we have also been building new churches. But we have built more than ten, yea, more than a hundred temples to Mammon, for every new church ; and we have driven our people to worship Mammon for six days in the week from morning to night. How then can we wonder that the teaching and worship in the churches, which are fewer than one to a hundred, on the seventh day, should be of little avail to counteract the poisonous idolatries of the other six? For a long period too we did not even thus much. For a long period we went on piling up riches, mountain upon mountain of gold, straining every nerve of our minds to devise new arts of amassing riches, and gathering swarms and hordes of men who were to IG THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. labour like beasts of burden, in order that we might lay up these riches in our stores. Meantime we seemed to have utterly forgotten that we were under any obhga- tion to consecrate a portion of these riches to the Giver. We wanted them all for ourselves ; and therefore they were not enough. In vain did we heap up our mountains of gold one upon another ; for we were heap- ing them upon a quicksand: we were heaping them upon our covetousness, upon our luxury, upon our ambition, which swallowed them up faster than we could heap them : and the more our national revenues swelled out, the greater was the accumulation of our debt. Nor did we bethink ourselves that we owed anything to the hordes of men, whom we had drawn together for the sake of heaping up these riches, at least any- thing beyond their wages. Nay, as the Father of His- tory tells us that the people, who took the gold from the northern Griffins, had a single eye in their head (f), thus many amongst us seem to have fancied that, for the persons who were to be employed in the various crafts for multiplying the riches of the nation, it would be all the better if they had only a carnal eye to look at the earth, and no spiritual eye to lift up to heaven. Until the recent awakening of a greater energy in our Church, — since which much has been done, more especially through the influence of the excellent Bishop of Chester, — the Church and the State, we are forced to confess with penitent shame, had been grievously neglectful of our manufacturing population, and had even left them through a long course of years with little spiritual teaching, except what they might receive from pious members of the dissenting bodies. THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 17 And even now, though I said that much has been done recently, 1 only meant much in comparison with our previous inertness, and much for one man to accom- plish. For what has been effected hitherto is very faf from adequate to the wants of the people. Indeed it is too manifest that the powers of evil are growing- more rapidly than the better powers which are raised up against them. The calm, sober, honorable spirit, which formerly directed the commerce and trade of England, and which contented itself with reasonable profits, has been supplanted by an insatiable voracity for gain ; and the miserable philosophy of the age, which taught that emulation is the principle of all moral and intellectual improvement, has beguiled men into be- lieving that emulation, under the form of competition, is in like manner the principle of all commercial and social wellbeing. Yet in commerce the iniquity and destructiveness of this principle is proved still more rapidly than in education (g). For it ensnares men into trying to undersell, with a view of ruining each other, each hoping he shall last the longest, and that then, by a multiplication of small profits, he shall accumulate an enormous gain. Now the immediate effect of such a struggle is to cheapen the articles produced more and more; and for this reason the consumers are delighted with the result, and bless the competition which has brought it about. Similar to this in its disastrous con- sequences, as in its no less disastrous motives, is the infatuated desire, which has possest the manufacturers of England to undersell all the nations of Europe ; an aim, which, if we could effect it, would doom us to be the one-eyed nation of the earth, the Arimaspians c 18 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. spending their lives in wresting the gold from the Griffins, who prey upon them in return. On the political and economical evils which such a system must bring upon England, I cannot speak here, further than as they are connected with a single point, which has led me to introduce these remarks. Where there is this rabid competition, this ravenous thirst after riches, it is plain that moral considerations will be little regarded, and that the machines, inanimate or animate, employed in the production of these riches, will only be cared for so far as they may seem con- ducive to the immediate end in view. Nay, in the competition of underselling the artisans will be the first sufferers : wages will be lowered to the utmost ; the cheapest labour will be sought: hence the employ- ment of women, of children, almost from their cradle : hence the car of Mammon, more cruel and deadly than that of Juggernaut, is driving ceaselessly through England over the crumbling hearts and souls of her people. My Brethren, you all know what a terrible revelation has been made through the exertions of that true nobleman, who has earned the glorious title of Pro- tector of the opprest children of England. You re- member what appalling pictures he brought forward of the corruption prevailing in many of our manufac- turing towns, which Mammon has almost been allowed to turn into schools and seminaries of hell. That re- velation produced a luianimity for the moment, which seemed to do honour to our Parliament: party-feeling for a moment seemed awed into silence : it shrank from the spectacle of these horrours : for a moment it THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 19 appeared as if our Legislature was really about to adopt some vigorous measures to check and remedy this moral pestilence. But alas ! you also know what has been the end of all this ? Nothing, or next to nothing. As soon as the picture was withdrawn from sight, party -feeling started up again : and the Bill has been opposed by a part of the nation with such frantic virulence, that the Govern- ment have found themselves compelled to abandon, or at least have abandoned, the measure which they had in- troduced, as a beginning, we hoped, of a more syste- matic attention to the moral wellbeing of the people. Most thankful do I feel, Brethren, that the Church is free from the guilt of having frustrated this measure. Some provisions in it were indeed such, that a large por- tion of our body could not cordially approve of them ; and, had the condition of England been diiFerent, we might have been justified in requesting that those pro- visions should be altered. But, considering how Eng- land is distracted by Schism of all kinds, and consider- ing the obligation of the State to provide for the moral wellbeing of every large body of its members, for my own part I have been led to think that the provisions for education in the Bill, as originally brought in, were on the whole expedient and wise. The great body of the Church too seem to have concurred in this opinion ; or else they were reluctant to do anything that might hinder or thwart a well-meant measure, de- signed to allay such a terrible evil ; and perhaps, recog- nising the impossibility of accomplishing all they would have wisht, they resolved to acquiesce in a plan, which appeared practicable and likely to be beneficial, and to render such assistance as the Legislature might c 2 20 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. require of them in carrying it out. By what arts the rejection of the Bill has been effected, will never be fully known. That all manner of exaggerations and misrepresentations have been practist, is too cer- tain ; and there is much ground to suspect that gross frauds have contributed to swell the number of the Petitions. Well ! the Dissenters think they have gained a triumph : tliey think they have exhibited greater strength than ever before: but let us be assured, my Brethren, that such a triumph is a fatal and shameful .disaster, and that such strength is miserable weakness. Let us resolve that, whatever we may be called on to do, toward delivering the children of England out of their moral degradation, we will do gladly, if it be not plainly at variance with our duty to our Lord and His Church (h). This however is not all. The eyes of Eng- land have been opened to discern the abominations which she is cherishing within her bosom. May she close them again ? God forbid ! Until the evil be removed, at least until some efficient steps are taken for its removal, we must lift up our voices and cry, Jh, sin- ful nation ! a seed of evildoers, children that are cor- rufters ! As I exhorted you last year, let us each, in our several stations, do what we can to help Lord Ashley in his heroic task of delivering the children of England from the clutches of Mammon and from the jaws of hell (i). I have said, and I repeat it with much thankfulness, that the conduct of the Church, as represented by her ministers, on occasion of this Bill, has been worthy of her position, calm and temperate and dignified, and that she is no way implicated directly in the rejection THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 21 of a measure, for which there was such crying need. Indeed her bearing has drawn praises from those who had not been wont at other times to lavish them upon her. The guilt of having frustrated the Act for the Education of the children in our Factories lies wholly with the Dissenters, whose opposition has been carried on in the most factious and schismatical spirit (j). But, though we are not implicated immediately in the rejec- tion, are we, the members and ministers of the Church, wholly innocent of all participation in the causes which have occasioned it ? If we were, I should hardly have said more than a very few words on this point ; for, among all subjects of contemplation, the two most un- profitable, I have ever found, are our own merits, and the faults of our neighbours. But the most cursory observation of recent events must have taught us that the chief motive by which the various bodies of Dis- senters, even those who at other times have been least hostile to our Church, were stirred to this factious vio- lence, has been a dread of the incursions and influx of what is vulgarly called PoiDery. This dread has been increast by all manner of exaggerations and misrepre- sentations, and by the imputing of feelings to the whole Church, from which feelings a very small portion of her members at the utmost would not revolt. But still. Breth- ren, can we say that we ourselves have done nothing to excite and aggravate this dread ? I am afraid that we have done much, nay, that opposite parties amongst us have, in opposite ways, heapt up the fuel by which this conflagration has been kindled. For has it not been a cry amongst ourselves for some years past, that a large portion of the teachers in our Church were falling away 22 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. from the truth, and trying to revive the worst errours and corruptions of the Romish Church ? I am not say- ing that this cry has been wholly without ground. It may be, that certain doctrinal errours have been gain- ing currency of late years, at variance with the prin- ciples of pure evangelical truth, and betraying an affi- nity to those errours, which, being in themselves akin to the selfish tendencies of human nature, overspread and darkened the Church during the middle ages, and are still tainting the sources of spiritual life in a large part of Christendom. It may be, that the proneness of man to self-exaltation has been perverting the love and honour which we are all bound to pay to the Church of our Lord, as the Communion of Saints, the Fulness of Him who fills all in all. It may be, that some have been too ready to limit the Church of Christ to our own national Church, and to narrow the Church to the Clergy, thus arrogating a large portion of the honour and power, which are due solely to Christ, for themselves as His servants and ministers and ambassadors. Moreover it is too certain, that, in the last two or three years, a tone has been assumed by a few writers in speaking of the Reformation, and its doctrines, and its authors, which is wholly incompati- ble with a true love for the Church of England, as it has existed since the Reformation, and which seems to warrant the suspicion that those writers personally do indeed wish to chain England again to the usurping See of Rome. Still, whatever there may have been of errour or offense in the writings referred to, the clamorous outcry which has been raised against the promulgaters and holders of the new opinions, is immeasurably THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 2^ beyond the extent of the offense. More especially was it so in the first instance ; and instead of lessening and correcting, it has much rather magnified that offense, and inflamed it by continual fretting and irritation. Surely when persons are acknowledgedly so eminent for learning, for piety, and for holiness, it might be ex- pected that, if they who profess to be spiritual concern themselves about them, they would attempt, according to the Apostle's exhortation, to restore them in the spirit of meekness ; and much reason have we, all of us, to consider ourselves lest ive also fall into errour. Yet how few ever think this possible ! or who can be brought to dis- trust his own infallibility ? And what is the tone which has been taken by a large body of the Church toward the writers in question ? Reproofs, invectives, denun- ciations : every word is watcht and sifted ; every ex- pression is strained to and fro in the hope of eliciting some mischief out of it : all shades of opinion, however distinct, are confounded : whoever recognises any of the truths which have been brought forward more promi- nently of late years, is charged with all the extremes of opinion whereby those truths have been distorted, and is branded with one of the popular nicknames. Inundated as we are with a periodical literature, with journals quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily, which subsist by catching the interest of the moment, and rejoice in whatever is likely to produce a temporary ferment, but which, it is plain, are most unfit channels for the discussion of deep questions in theology, all manner of readers, old and young, clerical and lay, more or less ignorant, male and alas ! female also, men, women, and children, are swept along by the flood, 24 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. and are heard swelling the din of theological contro- versy. The other day I happened to look through the last number of two of our theological Journals, the writers in which seem for the most part to be clergy- men, betokening a lively interest in the cause of evan- gelical truth. Yet from first to last each of them was an almost continuous invective against the opinions which are supposed to be leading our Church back into Romanism ; and the tone and spirit were such, that one might almost have fancied one had got among a pack of hounds in full cry after their prey, rather than among a body of sober, reasonable Christian divines. Is it then to be wondered at, that, when we treat and speak of our brethren in this way, — when we throw all those who have any reverence for antiquity, or who pay attention to the externals of religious worship, or who are anxious for a greater frequency of devotional exercises, or who practise any outward acts of self- denial, into one mass, as will-worshipers and covert papists, — is it to be wondered at, that the Dissenters should take . up our cry, and be still more indiscri- minate in applying it, charging the great body of the Church with those errours, which we ourselves are so ready to ascribe to a large number of our brethren ? One way of shaming an angry man is to bid him look at himself in a glass, and observe how his features are swollen and inflamed and distorted ; and the spectacle of the drunken Helots was deemed the most powerful lesson of sobriety. May it not be hoped that, when we see our conduct toward our brethren mirrored in that of the Dissenters toward them and toward our- selves also, we may be taught that what is evidently THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 25 SO unbecoming and reprehensible in others, cannot be altogether seemly and right in ourselves ? Here they who are so strenuous in their hostility to the opinions recently propagated in our Church, may perhaps rejoin, that the blame ought rather to be cast on those who have furnisht the ground for it, by maintaining and circulating doctrines inconsistent with those ever held by our Church since the Reformation, and plainly repugnant to evangelical truth. Now doubt- less, so far as these errours have in any respect been wilful, — that is to say, so far as they have arisen from any morbid self-indulgence of the imagination, or of the understanding, — so far as the holders of them have encouraged a dreamy antipathy to the present state of the world, and, instead of looking earnestly and search- ingly to make out its real character and worth, and setting themselves heart and mind to correct the evils within their own spheres, and to extricate and foster the better and more promising elements, have turned away in a disgust, no less flattering to the slothfulness than to the self-exaltation of our nature, pampering their fancies with delusive visions of former ages, and with fantastical wishes for their revival, — or so far as they have taken pleasure in displaying their ingenuity by defying and controverting received notions, and sub- verting the establisht order of thoughts, by trying osten- tatiously to prove that what has for ages been accounted evil is good, and that what all deem to be good is evil, that bitter is sweet, and sweet bitter, that darkness is light, and light darkness, — they who have thus estranged themselves from reality, and amused themselves in play- ing fast and loose with truth, are deservedly liable to 26 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. much blame. So are those who have wantonly and irreve- rently assailed the men and the doctrines most dear and sacred to the heart of every faithful member of our Church, — those who, in the presumption of half-know- ledge, seeing a few things in a strong light, and hence misjudging the relation between these and all other things, have rashly taken upon themselves to send a sword through our Church, for the sake of setting up their own idols, and of overthrowing whatever opposes them. Such persons deserve to be reproved; and it is requisite for the upholding of the truths which they impugn, that they should be so, with a severity in proportion to their offense. For in such things also he who loves will chasten. But, while our Chris- tian profession demands of us that we should refrain from bringing forward anything like a railing accu- sation, it is clear that, if we desire to convince our brethren of their errours, and to win them back to sounder views, we ought to begin by recognising those portions of truth which they do actually hold, and to contend, not against those truths altogether, but merely against the exaggeration and exclusiveness with which they are promulgated. It is a lesson which we all need to learn, and which very few have ever learnt to much purpose, that, though truths may often seem to be opposite, they can never be contrary, but will ever be co-ordinate ; so that, if we trace them to their centre, we shall find that they diverge from the same point, and balance and strengthen each other. No little censure again is due to those, who, from an inordinate fondness for the externals of public worship, such as is by no means ordinarily symptomatic of a THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 27 corresponding zeal in behalf of inward spiritual religion, have busied themselves in introducing novelties, or, which practically will often amount to the same thing, reviving what had become obsolete, in regard to postures, vest- ments, decorations, and other like matters, acting herein on their own judgement, without previously seeking coun- sel and direction from higher authority, and who by this course have offended the habitual predilections of their parishioners, and have awakened a number of misgivings and suspicions and jealousies. On this point let me say a few words ; for there may be some amongst you whom they may concern. The conduct I have been speaking of is connected, more or less remotely, with a tendency very prevalent in our age, espe- cially among the young, to assume that everything in the existing state of the world is wrong, and that it has been reserved for them to set everything right. The feelings and notions exprest in those fine lines of our great poet, — Of old things all are over-old ; Of good things none are good enough ; But we will shew that we can frame A. world of other stuff; — this discontented, selfconfident spirit, which has found such manifold vent in the revolutionary proceedings of the last half-century, may be seen working in all man- ner of ways, and scarcely less conspicuously among those who deem themselves called to wage war against the revolutionary spirit. Every other young man of a buoyant, ardent temper is prone to believe that he has hit upon the secret how to regenerate the world, and 28 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. that, in following out his plan, he may justifiably neg- lect the halting, temporizing counsels of prudence, and set all common opinions, all the affections which are wont to cluster around customary institutions and usages, at defiance. Such a person, when he takes orders, and enters upon his first cure, will be ready to suppose that he shall heal all the evils in his parish by some new scheme or practice. Now this tendency in youth is by no means altogether reprehensible or mis- chievous. For, although they who are to improve the existing order of things, ought to understand it well in its various complicated bearings, its workings and interworkings, so that the task of reforming would seem to require the fulness of mature experience, still, when we consider how apt years are to bring on an apathetic contentment with that with which we are familiar, and how our familiarity itself will deaden our sense of the evils in it, we may be thankful that the young are animated with a spirit fitted for counteract- ing this apathy. Only, as this is their natural bent, they need to be warned that they must not indulge it rashly, inconsiderately, offensively. The current of such feelings during the last few years has lain strongly in the direction of improvements, or at least of innova- tions in the Church, more especially in such matters as are external, — which therefore do not presuppose any deep moral or spiritual convictions, but will easily stir the fancy, and seem of great moment to a cultivated taste, — ecclesiastical architecture, and the ceremonials of divine worship (k). Often and earnestly as I have ex- horted you to do what you can for bettering the archi- tectural character of your Churches, you will not THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH, 29 suppose that I mean to deplore or disparage the increast interest felt in ecclesiastical architecture. But, as there is always an exaggerative tendency in mankind, es- pecially among the young, and as there is ever a rush to the ' leeward the moment the wind changes, many persons seem to think that the great work of the Church in our days is to restore her old churches, that this is the one thing needful, and that, when this is accomplisht, faith and holiness will come of themselves. Yet surely no reasonable Christian can doubt that a barn, with faith and holiness in those who gather to worship there- in, is a worthier temple of God, and more acceptable in His sight, than the most splendid minster in the land, unless the more precious living ornaments of faith and holiness are found there. These then are what we must labour above and before all to foster, according to the power that God may give us : these should be the object of our daily prayers and constant endeavours, so that we inay help in building up the spiritual Church of those purified living stones, which alone can have place in it. And then, in a secondary and subordinate manner, we may also think of doing what in us lies for the beautifying and adorning of God's outward house, provided that we are careful not to hinder the higher objects of our aim thereby. A like caution is still more needful with regard to any innovations we may make in the order and ceremonial of divine worship. Here a second maxim should guide us : the less important the change we may desire to make, the tardier and more cautious should we generally be in making it ; for the more likely will it mostly be to give offense. If we revive a better practice in matters which tend to promote 30 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. spiritual edification, as, for instance, by introducing baptisms during divine service, or a more frequent ad- ministration of the Holy Communion, all the better- minded among our congregation will readily acknowledge the benefits that may be hoped for from such changes. But when we innovate in things which are of no in- trinsic importance, which have nothing beyond a symbolical meaning, — as in placing candles upon the Lord's table, or in adopting an unusual dress, or an unusual posture in celebrating any part of the service, — the seriously disposed in our congregation are likely to think that we attach an inordinate value to an out- ward form, and to revolt from such proceedings with that disgust, which the pious always feel at whatever is merely formal in the worship of God (l). Yet there are persons in these days, who appear to deem that the salvation of the Church depends on reviving the prac- tice of wearing copes, or on setting a couple of light- less candles on the Lord's table : and, alas ! there are ministers who feel no scruple about offending the best part of their congregation by such pitiable trifling. Therefore let me earnestly exhort and entreat you, my Brethren, especially the younger part of you, to exer- cise the utmost caution, the utmost discretion, before you venture on such innovations. He who has gained the confidence and love of his parishioners by a long residence among them, and by giving proof that his affections are indeed set on things above, and that the first object of his thoughts and wishes is the spiritual welfare of his flock, will mostly be able to carry the goodwill of his people along with him in whatsoever changes he may deem expedient. The THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 31 younger ministers I would advise to \\-in that goodwill by diligence and faithfulness in their pastoral du- ties, before they think of introducing alterations in externals. There have been times indeed when such alterations might be made safely, and would have ex- cited little attention : but those times are gone by for the present. A fear that a large portion of our Church, especially of its ministers, are lapsing toward Romanism has past through the land, and is busily prying after evidence to confirm its suspicions. This fear has been bred in great part, and mainly fostered, by those very practices against which I am warning you. For doctrinal errours can only be appreciated by a few; but practices force themselves on the observation of all. Yet rash young men, thinking they have discovered a profomid hidden truth, when they have merely raked out some exploded conceit, have been zealously reviving a number of obsolete usages, without shewing a Kke diligence in feeding their flock with the word of life. Should such a course spread, it would be dis- astrous to our Church. Contention would grow fiercer and fiercer : schisms would widen : large bodies of our people would leave us ; and the ranks of Dissent would be swelled. Our duty with regard to all such matters is admirably set before us in that beautiful passage of the Epistle to the Romans, which contains the words of a divine wisdom especially needful at this day to all parties in the Church : Let us not therefore judge one another any more ; hut judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brothers ivay. — If thy brother be grieved with thy meat, thou walkest not charitably : destroy not 82 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. him with thy meat, for lohom Christ died. Let not then your good he evil spohen of: for the kingdom of God i^ not meat and drink, hut righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, O that both parties in the Church would endeavour to regulate their conduct by these principles ! that we were as careful as St Paul not to give offense, and as reluctant to take offense ! and that we could all discern the great truth, and seek and pray to discern it more clearly, that the kingdom of God does not lie in rites and ceremonies, or anything outward, but in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost ! If we, any of us, find a brother doing that which is likely to make his neighbours look upon him with an evil eye, let us try to restrain him by kind and gentle counsel : and let us all learn from the manner in which our quarrels have been exaggerated and turned against us by the Dissenters, what we have failed to learn from our Lord's words, that a house divided against itself cannot stand. In truth how can we think without bitter shame, that, if the question were askt among the angels and saints in Heaven, what is the Church of England doing in the year of grace eighteen hundred and forty three, when so many hosts of evil spirits are battling fiercely against her and against God, — the answer would be, she is quarreling and splitting into schism about preaching in a black gown or a white (m). The matters I have been speaking of hitherto have been connected with measures which have been brought before Parliament during the present Session. Another measure of great importance to the Church has engaged the attention of the Legislature: I mean the Bill for the regulation of the Ecclesiastical Courts. The time THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. S3 will not allow me to go into the details of this Bill, which now seems likely to be postponed to another year. In some parts the desire of fashioning everything anew may perhaps have led its framers to make too sweeping alterations ; and we may hope that what is faulty in this respect will be corrected, before it is brought forward again. Still the principles of the Bill are such on the whole, that we may well feel thankful to see them recognised, and for the attempt to establish them. A large diminution in the number of the Eccle- siastical Courts seems to be very desirable ; and still more desirable is it that their spiritual jurisdiction should be separated from the civil jui-isdiction, with which it has been mixt up, and by which it has been crampt and overlaid, so as to have become wholly in- operative for a long time past. This is the part of the Bill which is of the deepest interest to the Church, inasmuch as it holds out a prospect that, if we proceed soberly and discreetly, and if God is pleased to allay the present disastrous strife, — if we do not thwart His gracious purposes by our headstrong prejudices and jea- lousies and suspicions, — we may be enabled in time to establish a more efficient discipline than has subsisted in England since the Reformation. Such a discipline is urgently needed for the maintenance of order and the repressing of immorality. In my Charge two years ago, I spoke of one class of offenses deplorably fre- quent, which call loudly for some efforts to restrain them, and which doubtless might be restrained and greatly diminisht by a wise and sound discipline. There are also many other classes of sinful acts and practices, which are sometimes spoken of generally under D 34 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. the head of immorality, — offenses of which the Law takes no cognisance, because the Law rightly deems that its office is to repress breaches of the peace, and civil injuries to person, or property, or character; — but which are utterly incompatible with our Christian name and profession, and which, since the Law does not touch them, the Church from the first has felt it her duty to condemn and check by her spiritual authority and censure ; as we learn especially from the directions given by St Paul to the Church of Corinth. Now this authority and these censures have scarcely been exercised for several generations. Is it that the sins, which are their proper objects, have become extinct, or have so greatly diminisht in frequency and enormity, that we may hope to keep them down by mere exhortation ? Alas, we cannot delude ourselves into supposing that this is the reason why the Church has ceast to utter her censures. Whatever the reason may be, it certainly is not that the vices to which they used to be afhxt, have become extinct in England. Atrocious crimes may perhaps have become less frequent of late years. Some vices may have become unfashionable, and may now be com- paratively rare among those who draw their rule of hfe from the voice of honour and of pubhc opinion. But still there is a fearful black mass of vice, the smoke of which mounts up to Heaven from all parts of the land, and for the dispersion of which the Church has been armed with the powers of the Sun of Righteous- ness. The long intermission in the exercise of her dis- cipline has rather arisen from two causes, one of them common to us with most other nations of Europe, the other resulting from the peculiar condition and THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH, 35 relations of the Church in England: and both these causes we should try to counteract and to remove. The first is that laxity which naturally grows up in ages of luxurious refinement, the encroachment of the World, in all its forms, upon the Church, the ever widening growth and diffusion of a profane literature, and the diminution of that reverence with which simpler ages regarded the consecrated ministers and the holy law of God. Against that which is evil in these influences it is our duty to contend, with all the weapons with which the word of God and the help of His Spirit will arm us. But there is also another cause appro- priate to England, arising from the mode of the con- nexion between our Church and the State. This has led in divers cases to an intermixture and confusion of the offices and duties belonging to each : and one of the instances in which this confusion has prevailed, to the great detriment of the Church and of the whole nation, has been the practice of attaching civil penalties to spiritual censures. At one time this might be done without exciting much opposition : but for the last two centuries, during which the Church of Christ in Eng- land has been so grievously rent by Schism, the in- expediency and injustice of such a combination have become more and more strongly apparent. What was admissible and might be deemed warrantable when the Church was coextensive vdth the nation, became utterly unfit when a large part of the nation no longer acknow- ledged any allegiance to the Church. Besides, the clearer insight we gain into the true principles of Juris- prudence, the more we recognise the appropriate office of Law, and the distinct spheres of the Church and D 2 36 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. the State, the greater repugnance must we needs feel to that which confounds them : and doubtless a more or less intelligent feeling of this kind cooperated in dic- tating the legal enactments by which the spiritual au- thority of the Church has been so sadly baffled, and almost annulled. It has been felt that her censures, at all events in the present state of England, ought not to be enforced by civil penalties : only, instead of adopt- ing the right course of freeing the spiritual censures from the civil consequences which encumbered them, our legislators chose rather to throw difficulties in the way of exercising both the one and the other; so that they became next to a nullity (n). Yet on the other hand it has been deeply felt in every age since the Refor- mation, by those who were rightly zealous for the honour of our Lord and for the purity of His Church, that the want of a more effective discipline was the great calamity and scandal of our Church. In every age this has been urged more or less strongly : all good men have acknowledged the justice of the complaint : yet nothing has been done. On the contrary discipline has continually become laxer: and doubtless this has often been a leading motive in inducing pious men to secede from the Church, and to join one of the dissent- ing communities, — which are not subject to the same difficulties, — or to set up a new congregation of their own (o). At present however, since one great difficulty has been done away by the repeal of the Test Act, and by the other recent measures for the removal of the disabilities under which the Dissenters lay, and when spiritual censures, it would seem, are to be dis- encumbered from the civil penalties which have hitherto THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 37 hampered them, may we not hope that, if the Church is not unmindful of her duty, and does not waste and impair the new Hfe and strength which God has gra- ciously poured into her, by her divisions and quarrels, we may, under God's blessing, effect something for the correction of that immorality by which England is so wofully defaced, and thus contribute in this way also toward the great end and object, which her minis- ters ought to be ever striving after, of presenting her pure and without spot before her Lord ? If such an object is to be accomplisht, or if we are even to make any approach to it, the spiritual discipline of the Church must extend over all her members, the laity as well as the clergy. This is a point the more necessary to insist on, because, though everybody readily acknowledges the spiritual authority of the Church over her clergy, and many mouths are ever open to complain that it is not exercised more vigilantly, the generality of people, I believe, have little notion that the laity ought also to be subject to it. This is doubtless connected in part wdth the lamentable con- fusion which has long prevailed about the meaning and nature of the Church, and the forgetting that the laity are quite as much members of the Church as the clergy (p). At the same time we most willingly confess and declare, that, if sins of immorality among the laity ought to be represt by spiritual censures, it is of far greater urgency that they who minister in the congregation should be distinguisht by purity of life and sanctity of manners. Now here, my brethren, I have a couple of remarks to address to you. The first relates to your own conduct. Our ministers are ordained, our curates are licenced, our 38 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. incumbents are instituted by the Bishop: and Bishops are especially bound to take care that the persons whom they ordain and licence and institute, shall be men of pure life, becoming their sacred office. A Bishop how- ever has no power of ubiquity : he cannot in ordinary cases know what has been the previous life of the persons who present themselves before him. To ascertain this, he is compelled to rely in great measure on the testi- mony of others ; and the usual practice, as you all know, is to require testimonials of character signed by a certain number of clergymen, who profess themselves well ac- quainted with the applicant. Now this is a matter of conscience, a matter of sacred responsibility : the honour of the Church is compromised, the welfare of souls is hazarded, by the admission of unworthy ministers. Therefore no one ought to sign such a testimonial, unless he has a reasonable ground for believing that the person whose merits he attests, is really qualified for his sacred office. Yet in this matter, as I know from frequent experience, great carelessness prevails. Few like to say, iVb, to refuse an urgent request: people are un- willing to do what may hurt the prospects of their neigh- bour: and thus, through a blind and weak goodnature, men who are utterly unfit for the ministry gain an en- trance into it ; grievous, scandals are excited ; and the salvation of souls is periled. Yet, even for the person who is treated with this over-indulgence, it would often be far better that he should adopt another line of life, for which he may be better suited. Therefore let me earnestly request and advise you, my brethren, never to affix your signature to any testimonials, except where you feel assured that you have good ground for believing the trutli of what you certify. THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 39 The other observation, and the last which I shall address to you today, relates in part to myself personally, but more to the office which I have the honour to hold amongst you. I am referring, as you will suppose, to the action which was brought against me at the last Assizes, the occasion and particulars of which, I think I may assume, are pretty well known to the chief part of you. To you, my reverend Brethren, it must have been distressing and painful to see your Archdeacon the object of such a charge, which, though it did not take the form of a criminal proceeding, yet, had it been substantiated, would have implied most repre- hensible misconduct, and to see the respected name of your Bishop also involved in it. For myself, I felt this so strongly, that, when I first received notice of the action, I said to the friend who was with me, that, unless my conduct could be fully justified, unless the letter, which was asserted to be libelous, could be shewn to have been written in the conscientious dis- charge of my duty, without the slightest illwill toward any one, or even intemperance of language, I should be unworthy of the office wliich I hold in the Church ; and I soon after declared to the Bishop, that in that case I should request him to appoint another Archdeacon in my stead. But as it is, from the very kind expressions of sympathy and full cordial approbation which I have received from many of you, I feel warranted in believing that you do not think any blame attaches to my conduct in this matter. And here let me take this opportunity of assuring you publicly, as I am enabled to do from a thorough acquaintance with all the circumstances, as one thing after another came to light, that the conduct of your 40 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. Bishop also, through the whole of this sad proceeding, has been markt by the most considerate kindness, and by a faithful attention to the duties of his office. I feel bound to give you this public assurance, because many persons, from a partial knowledge of the circumstances, have thought that in one respect he ought to have acted otherwise; and even the Judge upon the bench, from a like imperfect acquaintance with those circumstances, and with the motives which determined the Bishop's conduct at the various stages of the affair, exprest an opinion which sounded like a censure, and has been so interpreted. Here too I would also beg leave to give utterance to my deep thankfulness to the advocates by whom my cause was defended, — not for their ability, — that we are accustomed to expect and find at the English Bar, — but for the exceeding delicacy with which they conducted the whole case, and for the truly honorable, the gentlemanly and churchmanly feeling which they shewed. They seemed imprest with a conviction that the honour of the Church was concerned in the trial, that the cause committed to their hands was hers, and that they must not sully it by a single intemperate word, even by what on other occasions would have been no way indecorous. Thus in their cross-examinations their tone was rather like that of well-bred conversation in a drawing-room, than of an interrogatory in a court of law (q). You will not deem it wrong or irrelevant that I should say thus much concerning a personal matter, in which I cannot but feel that, in consequence of my position amongst you, you must all have taken some interest. But I have a more important reason for speaking of it. THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 41 When I wrote the letter which was the subject of the action, I did so under the persuasion, under which I have acted ever since I became your Archdeacon, that the moral character of the Clergy of the Archdeaconry is among the matters of which I am officially bound to take cognisance, not indeed for the sake of exercising any jurisdiction over them by my own authority, but in order that I may inform the Bishop of all such things as it may seem to me desirable he should be acquainted with, so that he may exercise a vigilant superintendence over the moral conduct of his Clergy. This persuasion, I have reason to know, many of you share with me : indeed I should think it is common to you all : for I had no notion that its correctness was questionable, until I heard the Judge at the recent trial lay it down as the law of England, that an Archdeacon has no concern officially with the moral character of the clergy, or wath anything beyond the fabric and ornaments of the churches. That this proposition is entirely at variance with the history and canons and customs of the Church, I have the fullest conviction ; and, had the verdict at Lewes been different, we should have made this assertion in the Judge's Charge a ground for applying for a new trial. In that case I doubt not we should have gained a more correct exposition of the law on this head from the Court of Common Pleas. Or had not the motion for a new trial, which was actually made, been abaiadoned, before we had an opportunity of replying to it, we should have endeavoured, if per- mitted by the Court, to argue this point before them. As it is, feeling that the question is one of considerable moment for the welfare of the Church, and that, if the 42 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. proposition laid down by the Judge be held to be the law of the land, the Archdeacon would be divested of the most important and useful part of his duties, — knowing too what weight must ever attach to the as- sertion of a Judge from the Bench, and that such dicta prudentum, when uncontroverted, go to make up the law, — I feel it my duty to bring forward some portion of those historical and documentary proofs, which shew that the Archdeacon has been accustomed and was held bound ever since the Reformation, and for several cen- turies before, to make strict enquiry into the moral character and conduct of the Clergy within his juris- diction, and to correct the minor offenses himself, to represent the major to the Bishop. Indeed by one of the Constitutions of Othobon, which are among the chief authorities in our ancient Eccle- siastical Law, an Archdeacon who neglected to do his duty in this respect was to be excommunicated (r). In the Acts of our Convocation too since the Reformation there are several enactments enforcing the same duty. Thus in the Canons of 1571 it is ordered: " Archidiaconi in omnes delinquentes severe et graviter animadvertent, ne- que connivebunt ad vitia, aut quemquam, quem constat offendisse, impune abire patientur." Again the thirteenth Canon of 1575 is, " That all Archdeacons, and others who have ordinary jurisdiction ecclesiastical, and their officers or deputies, shall call before them all such per- son and persons as shall be detected or presented before them, or any of them, of any ecclesiastical crime or fault, and shall use all means by law prescribed to con- vince (convict) and punish such as be found to be offenders, effectually, upon pain of suspension from his THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 43 and their office." Here you see that the jurisdiction extends to all those moral offenses, of which the Eccle- siastical Law took cognisance, even on the part of the laity ; and of course a fortiori it comprises all similar offenses on the part of the clergy. In like manner it is enjoined by the Canons of 1597, that, whenever a sentence of excommunication " in immediatam poenam cujusvis notoriae haereseos, schismatis, simoniae, per- jurii, usurae, incestus, adulterii, seu gravioris alicujus criminis venerit infligenda, sententia ipsa vel per archiepi- scopum, episcopum, decanum, archidiaconum, — in propria persona pronunciabitur, una cum ejusmodi frequentia et assistentia, quae ad majorem rei auctoritatem con- ciliandam conducere videbitur." These extracts are amply sufficient to shew that the province of an Arch- deacon, according to the rules of our Ecclesiastical Law, was not confined, as was laid down by the Judge at the late trial, to the fabric and ornaments of the churches within his district, but extended over all offenses cog- nisable by that Law (s). And even among the Canons of 1604, there are several relating to the presentments for crimes and moral enormities to be made at the Visita- tions; and the context shews that this was to be done principally at the Visitations of the Archdeacon, who is enjoined in the 121st Canon " to certify to the Bishop, or his Chancellor, the names and crimes of all such as are detected and presented in his Visitation." Accord- ingly I have seen, in Articles of Enquiry issued in the seventeenth century, that it was the practice for the Archdeacons, as well as the Bishops, to make a rigid and minute investigation into the moral character and conduct of the parochial clergy (t). In the Articles which 44 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. I found current in this Archdeaconry, there was no question bearing on this point : but I am informed by my brother of Chichester, that a general enquiry con- cerning the moral conduct of the clergy is among the Articles issued from time immemorial in his Archdea- conry; and similar ones are found in others. Hence, taking warning from the recent trial, if I live to hold another Visitation, I purpose to introduce a query to this effect. Before I take leave of this subject, let me deprecate the notion that, in what I have been saying, I have meant to convey anything like censure on the excellent Judge who presided in the Court at Lewes, with exem- plary patience, and with an evident earnest desire that no prejudice or prepossession should be allowed in any degree to sway the scales of justice ; and who has given proof on many occasions that he is not only a profound lawyer, but also a dutiful and loving son of the Church. I regret that I should have to bring forward an objec- tion to anything that he said in his Charge. Had the matter been merely personal, I should not have spoken on it : but his assertion, if let pass uncontroverted, would tend to cut off the most important part of the duties of my office: and our Bishops, in the present scanti- ness of our Episcopate, would be very little able to watch over the moral conduct of their Clergy, unless they, who are especicilly termed their Eyes, were bound and authorized to help them in carrying on the inves- tigations necessary for the exercise of such a superin- tendence. Nor can I doubt that you, my reverend Brethren, — desirous as you must needs be that every care should bo taken to keep persons of impure lives THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 45 out of our sacred ministry, and that, if any such never- theless intrude, they should, if possible, be cast out again, so that the simple members of Christ's flock may not be offended, that unbelievers may not have reason to insult and blaspheme, that the Church may not be visited w^ith shame and reproach, nor her holy altars polluted by those who officiate at them, — I cannot doubt, my Brethren, that you must earnestly wish that every facility should be afforded for preserving the Church from the foul spots by which her garments have frequently been defiled, and that the numerous legal difficulties, w^hich have often hindered our Bishops from putting away the unclean person from the minis- try, may not be increast, but diminisht, and, if possible, wholly removed (u). It still remains for me to say a few words to you, my friends, who are come as Churchwardens on this occasion. But I have left myself no time for talking about your duties. Of one portion of them however, that which relates to the churches committed to your keeping, I have spoken pretty fully in former years, as many of you doubtless remember. Therefore I will only exhort you to bear continually in mind, that the building which you are commissioned to take care of is the house of God : and seeing that God has built such a beautiful and rich house for man, a house rooft with the blue sky, and having a carpet of green grass, and golden corn, and flowers, and fruit-trees, and forest trees, spread over its floor, it assuredly behoves us not to build a mean and sordid, but a noble and beautiful house for God, as noble and beautiful as we can make it. Our ancestors felt this when they built our churches. 46 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. Your business is to keep up these churches, to restore them when they are decayed, to remove what ignorance and parsimony have done to deface them. The chief improvements which I have recommended to you be- fore, I still recommend no less strongly. Get rid of the pews, which choke up the floor of your churches : get rid of the wooden bars which disfigure the win- dows: get rid of the whitewash which besmears the walls. If any of you can pay a visit to that grand church at Winchelsea, you will see how its grandeur is impaired, and almost destroyed, by the whitewash with ^ which the pillars, and even those fine old monuments, are bedaubed. If that church were properly restored, it would be the finest in East Sussex. Even in this church, where we are now assembled, if you will look around, you will see how much needs to be done, work which will take half a century, unless the Churchwardens make more progress in future years than during the last four. I have had much pleasure in seeing the im- provements which are now going on in St Anne's Church here in Lewes. But the work there will be sadly imperfect, the most important part will be left undone, until those huge high pews are removed, which are still more offensive to the moral sense than to the eye. Go to Falmer Church, go to Stanmer, go to St John's Church in this town ; you will see the people really looking like one congregation of the Lord, joined together in prayer and worship. The appearance in- deed would be much handsomer if the backs of the seats were solid, instead of mere rails ; but this is a secondary matter. The important thing is, that the congregation should be rmited together, instead of our THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 4< having each person, or each family, insulated and kept apart. How can people, penned up within those high walls, feel that they are joining in worship with their brethren, the crown of whose heads they can scarcely see ? There is an old saying, of which the English are proud, and not without reason, that every mans house is his castle. This belongs indeed to a ruder state of society, but is a ground for thankfulness, as declaring that, through the power of the laws, the house of the poorest man in England is to be no less sacred and inviolable, no less capable of protecting him and his family from wrong and oppression, than the turreted and battle- mented castle of the proudest baron, garrisoned by his men at arms. When this saying however is trans- ferred from the State to the Church, from that which through the circumstances of the age was inevitably the seat of lawlessness and discord, to that which ought in all ages to be the seat of peace and love, — when people say, as too many seem to say in their hearts, that every maris peiv is his castle, — the whole order of truth is in- verted. We do not come to church to shut ourselves up within the walls of pride, but to prostrate ourselves before God, and to open our hearts to Him in humble penitent confession. We do not come to fence our- selves in and guard ourselves round from our neigh- bours, but to be united to them as children of the same Father, members of the same Lord, heirs of the same glorious inheritance, rich and poor, gentle and simple, one with another. This is the reason which makes me so desirous to get rid of whatever seems to cut us off from each other in church. This is the reason why, year after year, I urge you so strongly to remove those 48 THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. eyesores and heartsores by which your churches are disfigured (v). Besides, in what I have been saying about discipHne, you who are Churchwardens are all intimately concerned. If the Church recovers her spiritual powers, it will be your special office to minister to her in the discharge of these functions by the presentment of offenders. Even now you may do much for the preservation of order and peace in your several parishes, if you will only work cordially along with your minister. You may do much in keeping order in church during divine service, which is one of your peculiar obliga- tions. You may do much by frequent advice and exhortation to your parishioners to be regular in at- tending the worship of God, and still more by setting them the example of such regularity, to which indeed you are especially bound by the very act of undertak- ing your office. You may do much by admonishing parents to send their children regularly and punctually to school, and by using your influence to dissuade the farmers from employing the labour of young children who ought to be laying up a store of knowledge against the years when they will have no time for learning. Thus yours, if properly discharged, is a most useful and honorable office, by the worthy dis- charge of which you may contribute greatly toward setting your parishes in order, and helping your ministers in leading their people in the ways of righteousness and life. Thus we have all heavy duties pressing on us ; immea- surable fields of labour are stretching out before us ; clouds are gathering round us ; storms are threatening ; THE WANTS OF THE CHURCH. 49 thunder is rolling in the distance. "We see divisions and contentions in the Church, dissensions in the state, schism, ever multiplying, hydra-headed schism, discontent, insurrection, clamour, the uprore, as it were, of approaching rebellion. "Whither can we turn for help amid all these difficulties and dangers ? Our rulers, our legislators seem utterly unable to devise any counsel. "Wliither can we look for strength, that we may fulfill our duties amid all this com- motion? Look up. Brethren: there is still a bright light overhead. Look not down: there you will find no help. Look not round : there you will only see fear and alarm. But look up, to Him who sits above the waterfloods, to Him who remaineth a King for ever, to the Lord who will give strength to His people, to the Lord who will give His people the blessing of peace. And let me end by offering up that prayer to Him, which our Church is offering up this week, and which is so exactly suited to our wants. Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee, that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by Thy governance, that Thy Church may joyfully serve Thee in all godly quietness, through Jesus Christ our Lord. NOTES. Note A: p. 6. It has been remarkt by many, what a revolution has taken place in public opinion with regard to the Church, and particularly on the value of Episcopacy, since the epoch of the Reform-Bill, fifteen years ago. This may be deemed an instance of the common fact, that, when things have sunk to their lowest point, they begin to rise again ; a fact frequently exemplified in history, above all in that of the Church, in which, as it has a higher principle and source of life, the appearance of decay is not, so generally as in other history, the prelude of dissolution. For this fact there will doubtless be special grounds in each several case. In the present, it would not be difficult to find ample explanations for the low estimation into which the Church and its Government had fallen, on the one hand from the general tendencies of the European mind, which, for more than a century, in large classes of its representatives, had been growing more and more alienated from religion, at least as a positive social institution, and on the other hand from the prevalent torpour of the Church herself, sub- ject, as she could not but be more or less, to the influences which modified the character of the age. For effects often outlast their causes, and in some cases do not attain to their full outward ex- hibition, until long after the inward crisis by which those causes have been counteracted. They lag in the rear, as the thunder after the lightning ; and sometimes, when the shell is bursting and perishing, it is only to manifest the new life that has been growing up within. Moreover the new life which had been stirring in the Church, was almost exclusively personal, and dealt E 2 52 NOTE A. Avitli men as individuals, rather thau as members of a society. Thus however, by a peculiarly favorable disposition, it came to pass that, at the very time when the outward danger assailing our Chm-ch seemed to many the most formidable, — when many anticipated, some with fear, others with exultation, that her down- fall was approaching, — there was a strong living energy within her, whereby, under God's blessing, she was preserved to come forth in greater power and beauty. Now it was at the very highth of the agitation occasioned by the Eeform-Bill, and when the cry against the Church and against her Bishops was at the loudest, that the need of a great augmentation of our Episcopate was declared, from a quarter from which few persons then, and even now not many, would have expected it. Arnold, who had a deeper feeling than any man per- haps of his own standing for the evils in the social condition of England, and who, directly and indirectly, has done more than almost any other single man, though but a small part of what he desired and meditated, for i-emedying them, — as he well knew what is the one remedial institution in the midst of an evil world, and saw and deplored the perversions by which that institution has been rendered so inefficacious, — had set it before him, as the first object of his heart, and the chief aim of his life, to do what in him lay for bringing out the real power of the Chm-ch. One of the measures which he held to be necessary for this purpose, was a large increase of the Episcopate, in order to increase the practical efficiency of our Ecclesiastical goverimaent. He was too wise a man indeed, and of too large and free a spirit, to regard Episco- pacy as an essential element of the Christian Church, much less as an indispensable condition of Christian grace ; yet, valuing it highly as a disciplinary institution, as well as on the ground of its historical authority, he was perhaps on this very account the more anxious to perfect its working as such. For the rudest piece of carving will serve as an idol ; but, when the statue is to express the divine idea, it will be wrought with the utmost skill of art. In one of the admirable letters which Arnold sent to the Sheffield Coumnt in 1831 and 1832, after expressing his conviction NOTE A. 53 of the benefits of a Church-establishment, he proposed, among other reforms, some of which have subsequently been adopted, " that the Dioceses be divided, so as to give the Church an effi- cient government. For this purpose all Deaneries should be made Bishoprics, retaining their present incomes, and of course with no seats in Parliament. The Prebends should be annexed to underpaid livings in large towns ; and the largest Church in all such towns should be erected into a Bishop's see ; so that there should be no great town throughout England without its resident Bishop, who, without being raised to any undue elevation in rank and fortune, would yet in both be sufficiently respectable to maintain the just influence of the Church with the higher classes as well as with the poor." Ifisc. Worls, p. 220. The same scheme is stated somewhat more fully in his in- valuable pamphlet on the Principles of Church Reform, which had the misfortune to excite much odium at the time, in great measure from being too much ahead of the opinions then current on such subjects; but many of the views in which have since been adopted by most persons taking a lively interest in the welfare of the Church, and which, if too Utopian in its compre- hensiveness, at all events shews how deeply Arnold felt that the healing powers of the Church are marred by the divisions among her members, and that these divisions can only be cured by our all forbearing one another in love, and by each party's seeking not its own things, but the things of the others. " In order to an efficient and comprehensive Church system (he there says. Misc. Worhs, p. 292,) the fii'st thing necessary is to divide the actiial dioceses. A government must be feeble when one Bishop, as is the case in the diocese of Chester, has the nominal superinten- dence over a tract of country extending in length above a hundred miles and over a population of nearly two millions of souls. Every large town should necessarily be the seat of a Bishop, the Bishopric thus created giving no seat in Parliament; and the addition of such an element to the society of a commercial or manufacturing place would be in itself a great advantage; — for, as in small cathedral towns the society is at pi-esent much too 54 NOTE A. exclusively clerical, so, in towns like Manchester and Birmingham, the influence of the clergy is too little ; they are not in a condition to colour sufficiently the mass of a population whose employment is to make money. The present Dioceses might then become Provinces; or, if it shovild be thought desirable to diminish the number of Bishops in the House of Lords, the number retained might correspond to the number of Provinces which it might be found convenient to constitute; so that Metropolitan Bishops alone should have seats in Parliament. And for the new Bishoprics to be created, the Deaneries throughout England would go a long way towards endowing them; — while in many cases nothiug more would be required than to change the name and office of the incumbent of the principal parish in the town; so that instead of being the minister of one church, he should become the Bishop of the Diocese, the income of this office remaining the same as at present." Among the details of this plan, which manifestly was a mere summary outline of such measures as the author deemed requisite for a more efficient organization of the government of the Church, several points would doubtless present a good deal of practical difficulty: but the purport of it coincides with what is now beginning to be generally recognised as desirable. Assuredly, if the truths of Christianity are to be brought home to each indi- vidual member of the huge masses congregated in our large towns, the ministers employed by the Church for that purpose ought to act in consort, with the increase of force ever imparted by union and concentration ; and nothing would promote this more than their acting under the counsel and guidance of a single head or leader, that is, under a Bishop. At present there is often little unity of action among the Clergy in our towns : each follows his own plans in his own parish : they want a common centre of union, which is seldom found except in a person. In some of our chief towns, it has been seen how much the power of the Church is increast by the influence of a man of energetic character : but it is unwise to leave this to the chances of personal vigour and activity; which moreover, if they stretch beyond their appointed NOTE A. 55 sphere, may easily excite jealousy, and be hampered with obsti'uc- tions. A soundei" policy would enjoin that in every large town there should be a leader invested with lawful authority to direct the movements of the Church, in other words, a Bishop : and as the number of ministers employed in the various duties pertain- ing to the great work of evangelizing the nation ought not to fall below the proportion of at least one to a thousand, towns with a population of a hundred, or even fifty thousand souls would fur- nish a sufl&cient body of clergy for a Bishop to superintend. In this respect however, as in some others, the views enounced in Arnold's pamphlet were in advance of those commonly enter- tained at the time; and owing to this, and to an imperfect apprehension of certain features in the plan, which indicated over-sanguine anticipations of the power of unity, the pamphlet was generally condemned, and was assailed in a manner which mostly proved little else than the ignorance and narrow bigotry of the assailer. On the other hand, the common opinions of those days Avere adverse to Bishops : even they who desired to retain Episcopacy, seemed to think that it must be almost a sinecure, unless charged with the care of a whole province by way of a Diocese. Hence one of the first ecclesiastical measures adopted by the Reformed Parliament was the diminution of the number of the Irish Sees; and when the enormous increase of the population in some of our English Dioceses led those who regard numbers as the one region of infallible truth, to the conclusion that those Dioceses were too large for any single Bishop, even the persons who bear authority in our Church do not seem to have admitted the notion that it was possible to augment the number of our Episcopate, or to divide those overgrown Dioceses, unless the establishment of each new see was preceded by the extinction of an old one. When this plan of diminishing the enormous burthen of our largest Dioceses was announced as one of the chief measures for the consideration of which the Ecclesiastical Commission was appointed in 1835, it was suggested in some quarters that an easier and more efficacious remedy might be obtained by the esta- 56 NOTE A. blishmeut of SufFragau Bishoprics, iu couformity to the powers con- ferred by the Act of the 26th of Henry the Eighth. This scheme was especially advocated by Mr Newman, in a pamphlet which for its sound practical wisdom is perhaps the most valuable of his writings, the greater power and depth of some of the subsequent ones being far more than counterbalanced by their sophistical perversities. He speaks strongly and truly on the desirableness of a frequent personal intercourse between the Bishop and the people in his Diocese. " If a Bishop is intended to bear with him a moral influence, to have the custody of the Christian Faith in his own place and day, and by his life and conversation to impress it in all its saving fidness of doctrine and precept upon the face of society, if he is to be the centre and emblem of Chris- tian unity, the bond of many minds, and the memento of Him that is unseen, he must live among his people. He is the one Pastor of the whole fold ; and, though by name an overseer or superintendent, yet his office lies quite as much in being seen in his Diocese, as in seeing. Human nature is so constituted as to require such resting-places for the eyes and hearts of the many. Some minds there may be of peculiar make, whether of unusual firmness or insensibility, who can dispense with authorities to steady their opinions, and with objects for the exercise of their affections ; but such is not the condition of the mass of mankind. They cry out clamorously for guides and leaders, and will choose for themselves if not supplied with them. Here then Christianity has met our want in the Episcopal system ; and in extending the influence of that system we are co-operating with it. Few per- sons can have witnessed the coming of one of our Bishops to consecrate some country church, or to confirm in some remote district, without being struck with the persuasive power of his presence in eliciting from the rural population a kindly and respectful feeling towards the Church over which he presides. The hour and circumstances of his coming are only one part of the benefit resulting from it. Days and days before it is looked forward to as a great event. From the clergyman down to the little child just come to school, all is expectation. Catechist and NOTE A. 57 catechumens are all coming before him who is the representative and delegate of the Chief Pastor, who one day will visit once for all. Lessons are learned, admonitions given, with reference to a direct and immediate religious object. No one has witnessed the decency, the tranquillity, and the sanctity of those limited Confirmations, which our Bishops, at an expense of personal con- venience, are so ready to hold, but must imderstand the benefit which would accrue, if such an arrangement could be the custom of the Chui'ch, the benefit of imparting to a very solemn rite those associations of home-scenery and home-faces, which will endear to them in after life the memory of the administrators ; and no one but will confess that, unless some very grave diffi- culties interfere, such meetings between Pastor and flock are the true means of strengthening the Establishment with the people at large. Viewing the matter even in a political light, I should say to the parties competent to do it, — Increase the number of our Bishops. Give the people objects on which their holier and more generous feelings may rest. After all, in spite of the utili- tarianism of the age, we have hearts. We like to meet with those whom we may admire and make much of. We like to be thrown out of ourselves. The low-minded maintenance of rights and privileges, the selfishness which entrenches itself in its own castle or counting-house, the coldness of stoicism, and the sour- ness of Puritanism, are neither the characteristics of Englishmen nor of human nature. Human nature is not republican. We know what an immediate popularity is given to the cause of monarchy, when the sovereign shews himself to his people, and demands their loyalty. And in like manner those who watch narrowly may see all the purer and nobler feelings of our nature brought out in bystanders, in a less enthusiastic, only because in a more I'everential way, by the sight of the heads of the Church, when in proportion to their knowledge and religious principle that flame of devoted and triumphant affection is kindled among them, which has even led to the highest and more glorious deeds, which, as it is loyalty in the subject, so is it gallant bearing in the soldier, and piety in the child." 58 NOTE A. When Mr Newman wrote his pamphlet in 1835, the Church had just weathered the storms which seemed to threaten her at the time of the Reform-Bill. Since then she has been rising eveiy year in the estimation of the English nation; and more and more minds have grown to take a deep interest in her welfare. Hence the need of a large increase in her Episcopate has been more and more widely recognised. Thus Mr Palmer, in 1841, in his Pamphlet on Church Extension, drew up a plan for the erection of more than seventy new Sees. Mr Gresley, in the same year, proposed that the matter should be dispacht by a sweeping Brevet, whereby every officer in the Church was to gain a step, all the Deans and Archdeacons were to be made Bishops, the present Bishops Archbishops, the Archbishops Patriarchs. To supply the archidiaconal void in the ladder, the Rural Deans were to become Archdeacons; whereupon a selection of the in- ferior Clergy were to be installed in the Ruridecanal chairs; although, as the Archdeacons would only have an average of ten parishes to superintend, one cannot see much need of an inter- mediate step between them and the parochial Clergy. A scheme thus crude would hardly seem to be worth the ink expended in committing it to paper ; but it may serve as a sign of the grow- ing desire for an enlargement of our Episcopate. A more powerful advocate for this enlargement, the Bishop of Exeter, spoke on the subject in his Charge for 1842 with the authority derived from a practical experience of the evil conse- quences of the present system. "Among the particulars in which I think we require an improvement in the outward form of our Church, I would place in the foremost rank the expediency, 1 would almost say the necessity, of an increased number of Bishops. In urging this I hope I shall not be considered by you as wishing to consult my own ease. The reasons for which I should wish a more numerous episcopacy in our Church, are such as would make the charge of every individual Bishop not less laborious, but far more effectual, and therefore far more satisfactory both to himself and to the Church. In truth the overpowering extent of the dioceses, in which several of us at present have to NOTE A. 69 discharge our fuuctions, cannot but affect those functions them- selves. Between six and seven hundred parishes dispersed over a district one hundred and forty miles in length and in some parts half of that extent in breadth, as in my own case, cannot be even known as they ought to be known, to him who has an equal duty of close connexion with every one of them. The consequence is, and can hardly fail to be, that your Bishop is unable to consult and be consulted by you, on the many occa- sions on which we should wish to consult together. If, as often happens, a matter arises in one parish, which indispensably demands much consideration, mutual explanation, protracted correspondence, this cannot be performed without rendering it physically impossible for adequate attention to be given to the reasonable claims of many other cases. It would especially tend, with God's blessing, to make every Bishop to be, as he ought to be, not merely in name, but in reality, the centre of uniti/ to the diocese over which he is placed, — one whose com- munication with other portions of our Church should enable him to be the channel of much of interesting and useful intelligence between different dioceses, — one who might thus be permitted to promote an accordance of views among the minis- ters of the same national Church, — to soften real, and remove apparent differences of opinion, to conciliate conflicting parties, and induce them to see, as they commonly might see, how much more they differ in names and words, than in principles. But that he should be and do this it is necessary that there should be that closeness as well as frequency of intercourse between him and his clergy, which cannot subsist in dioceses like those of England. Need I say how different was the case in the primitive Church, in which the strong expressions of Ignatius and the other earliest Fathers, of the necessity of ' doing nothing without the Bishop,' may be considered as indicating (besides the commission which it is the office of a bishop to give) his intimate connexion with every portion of his diocese, rather than a recognition of any exorbitant or arbitrary extent of episcopal controul." (pp. 80—83.) 60 Note B : p. 7. Gregory's letter to Augustia, coutaiuing this scheme, {Epist. xi. Q5,) is given by Beds, Hist. Eccl. i. 29. " Quia nova An- glorum ecclesia ad omnipoteutis Dei gratiam, eodem Domino largiente et te laborante, perducta est, usum tibi pallii in ea ad sola missarum solemnia agenda concedimus ; ita ut per loca singula duodecim episcopos ordines, qui tuae subjaceant ditioui, quatenus Lundoniensis civitatis episcopus semper in posterum a synodo propria debeat consecrari. — Ad Eburacam vero civitatem te volumus episcopum mittere, quem ipse judicaveris ordinare, ita dumtaxat ut, si eadem civitas cum finitimis locis verbum Dei reciperit, ipse quoque duodecim episcopos ordinet, et metropoli- tani houore perfruatur." Augustin indeed was unable to execute more than a small portion of this grand scheme ; nor did our Episcopate reach Gregory's complement until the reign of Henry the Eighth. See the account of its gradual increase in the English Review, Vol. i. p. 5Q. The remaining Notes to this Charge were left by the Author in too incomplete a state for publication. The Petition referred to in page 9, was as follows : — To the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament assembled, the Humble Petition of the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Lewes, sheweth, That your Petitioners look with deep regi-et on that Provision of an Act passed in the 6th and 7th years of the reign of his late Majesty, intituled, " An Act for carrying into effect the Report of the Commissioners appointed to consider the State of the Established Clmrch in England and Wales, with reference to Ecclesiastical Duties and Revenues, so far as they relate to PETITION. 61 Episcopal Dioceses, Revenues, and Patronage," whereby it is enacted that the present Sees of St. Asaph and Bangor shall hereafter be united into one ; in other words, that one of them shall be abolished, and swallowed up in the other. That they cannot but regard the abolition of any ancient Institution as a dangerous measure, the more so in proportion to the power and influence which that Institution has been wont to exercise ; unless it can be clearly shewn, either that the Institution is itself mischievous, or that some greatly prepon- derating good will be effected by its removal. That they cannot discover any ground for believing that the two Episcopal Sees, which have existed for so many centuries in North Wales, and which are associated with so many sacred recollections, are, or ever have been, more than adequate to the urgent wants of the Church. That, although the increase of the population in North Wales has not been so great as in some parts of England, yet in North Wales also the population has increased, is increasing, and appears |likely to increase ; and that the very nature of the country renders it a far more laborious task for a Bishop to acquire that acquaintance which he ought to have with every part of his Diocese. That the duty committed to the Bishops in North Wales of appointing the chief part of the Incumbents in their Dioceses makes it especially obligatory upon them to become familiar with the character and qualifications of the Curates under their charge ; and that, from divers peculiar circum.stances in the condition of the Church in North Wales, it is of the utmost importance that the ecclesiastical rulers should be able to attend to the minutest questions of parochial administration, and to aid all the Clergy with their counsel and encouragement and support amid the difficulties of their situation, surrounded as they are by varied and wide-spread schism. That for these reasons, if any change is to be made in the Episcopal Body in North Wales, a wise policy would much rather dictate its enlargement than its diminution. 62 PETITION. That, while your Petitioners earnestly desire that the two Sees of Bangor and St. Asaph may be preserved in their ancient honour and authority, to be lights and guides of the Church unto the end of the world, they are no less earnest in disclaim- ing the slightest wish of throwing any obstacle in the way of the proposed erection of a new See at Manchester ; but that they can pei'ceive no necessary connexion between the erection of the one See and the extinction of the other. That, on the contrary, they are persuaded that it is most desirable for the spiritual well-being of the Church, and for the moral and political welfare of the English Nation as intimately bound up therewith, that the means of Episcopal Superinten- dence should be greatly augmented, in some sort of proportion to the enormous increase of population during the last three centuries ; so that every member of the Chiu-ch might be en- abled to feel the blessings of that superintendence, manifested in the exercise of a vigilant discipline, and in the fostering and direction of every good w^ork. That, under this conviction, they would hail the establishment of a new See at Manchester with joy and thankfulness, not merely on its own account, but also as a pledge that other like measures will in time be adopted to give greater power and efficacy to the Apostolical Government of our Church. That, looking forward with hope to the day when the Divine Head and Lord of the Church shall move men's hearts to ac- complish the great object, they strongly deprecate a measure lying in an opposite direction, which, as such, they feel assured, would ere long be generally deplored ; and they therefore humbly pray your Lordships to repeal so much of the said Act as relates to the Union of the Sees of St. Asaph and Bangor. And your Petitioners will ever pray. IIOMANIZING FALLACIES : A CHAEGE TO THE CLERGY OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES, DELIVERED AT THE ORDINARY VISITATION IN 1845. ROMANIZING FALLACIES. My Reverend Brethren, It is now two years since I last addrest you from this chair ; and two years in these times have become a mo- mentous period in the hfe of the Church. At least we all know that they are so in our own Church ; in whicli events have of late been pressing so rapidly one on the heels of the other, that more of interest and importance is now crowded into a single twelvemonth, than in seasons of repose and comparative inertness has been spread through a quarter of a century. Indeed, when we think of all that has happened to our Church, and in our Church, during the last fifteen years, of the shifting aspects and prospects which it has presented, of the changes in its relation to the State, and in its own estimation of itself, as also in its anticipations of the future, — when we think of the increast and, we trust, increasing activity and zeal which are now prevailing among all classes of its members, of the new institutions for the better effect- ing of its great moral and spiritual objects which have been establisht in almost every diocese, of the anxiety for the fuller carrying out of its forms and ordinances, and even for the revival of such as had long lain dormant and become obsolete, — when we think of the alterations in public opinion, at least with regard to the import and significance of our F (J6 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. Church, manifesting itself in all the organs in which public opinion is wont to find utterance, — how, while a number of new journals, weekly, monthly, and quarterly, have sprung up, especially designed for ecclesiastical and theological dis- cussions, the affairs of the Church have become a leading topic in the principal old journals, and are almost a standing dish with the purveyors of the daily press, — how the same theme is an ever-recurring subject of conversation among all educated persons, — how religious books, and books on eccle- siastical matters, are the staple article even in what is termed fashionable literature, and are found more frequently than the popular novels or poems of the day on the drawing-room table ; — when again we think of the new body of theological doctrines, which has grown up, continually assuming a com- pacter form, and exercising a more diffusive influence on the moral and political notions of the age, and which has stretcht out its arms so widely, — of the opposition these doctrines have had to encounter, — of the controversies which have been waged with reference to them, — of the agitation they have excited and are exciting in the whole English nation, nay, wherever the English name and language have gained a footing, in our colonies, in our Indian empire, and among our kindred in America ; — when we think of these manifold symptoms and indications of that which is going on in our Church, symptoms which, external and superficial as many of them may be, do yet betoken an inward stirring and heaving, — and when we compare them with the quiet, un- ruffled, almost sluggish and stagnant calm which lay on the face of our Church during the main part of the last century, — we might be led to fancy that men's minds have been infected with a sympathetic contagion by the wonderful rapidity which has during the same period been imparted to ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 67 the movements of their bodies, and that the Church must be advancing with a kind of railway speed toward the goal which it is ordained to reach. By those who prize energy and activity above all things, without much consideration of the spirit which may animate and direct them, and who deem a beehive on a fine day in summer the emblem of the highest condition of society, all this may be contemplated with complacency and some sort of exultation : and this tone of thought, which is very common among such as can conceive no aim for mankind beyond worldly wealth and prosperity, is also found when persons of sanguine and bustling, restless tempers busy themselves in times like the present about the affairs of the Church. On the other hand the lovers of peace and sobermindedness, who desire the establishment of simple truth, while they have narrow notions of what truth is, and understand not how its roots and its branches are to strike out into every quarter of the compass, with many a twist and coil, nor against what fierce winds it has to battle, and by what strange convolutions and contortions it has often to maintain its stand against them, and to grow up in despite of them, may be apt to despond at such a scene of confusion, and to deem that the sudden increase in the move- ment of the Church is little else than that acceleration which all bodies acquire in their fall, A little reflexion however, even on the course of our own individual lives, may convince us that Time, in its reference to man, has not a positive, uniform, determinate, but a rela- tive, variable value, and that the regular motions of the heavenly bodies belong to a different order of things from that which we find in this world of change and wilfulness. In the lives of each of us there have been certain portions, years, months, weeks, far richer and more eventful than F 2 68 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. Others : nay, it may happen, that more of meaning, more of thought and more of feeling, and more of their outward expression in action, will be condenst and concentrated into a single day, than at other times can be extracted from a whole year. The length, the fulness, the richness of our days during childhood are a matter of common remark : for then thought and feehng of one kind or other were con- tinually pouring into us at every inlet ; and each day was hung with the records of ever so many marvellous events. In our later life, too, momentous, stirring, teeming periods will occasionally arise ; and no less in our spiritual life than in any other part of it. So again is it in the history of nations. They whose memory carries them back to the early years of this century, and the closing years of the last, will call to mind how Time's great clock was then perpetually striking, and how the sound was often that of midnight, how, in the words of the poet, men exclaimed again and again. Another year ! another deadly blow ! Another mighty empire over- thrown ! Whereas during the last thirty years, although the afterthroes of that great convulsion have every now and then been heaving, even so as to cast a throne to the ground, the calm of peace has on the whole prevailed in Europe, and nations have preserved their independence. Nor is the Church exempt from similar vicissitudes and alternations of activity and comparative repose. In her life also the story of her infancy is far the most eventful : for everything that happened then was big with meaning; every hour opened a wider insight into her purpose and character and destinies. And as, from the nature of this our earth, a long continued calm will end in languour and torpour, after which storms are sent to freshen and purify the atmosphere, so, when languour and torpour have crept over the Church, her Lord has sent ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 69 Stormy periods, wlien flash has followed thick upon flash, and clap upon clap, and when fateful events have heen thronged closely together. Such a period, for instance, was that most memorable one in the history of the Church since its first establishment, the period of the Reformation, extending in Germany from the publication of Luther's theses down to his death, in England from the latter years of Henry the Eighth to the early years of Elizabeth. Occurrences and acts, which at other times would have passed unnoticed, acquired an inordinate significance then : the flame having been kindled, everything served to feed and extend it. In the previous history of the Church, after the first century, the life of the great Athanasius forms the most eventful period. Since the Reformation, no other period has in England been comparable in importance and the fulness of its interesting events with the twenty years in the middle of the eighteenth century. Here let me make a remark, which may be of use in correcting and steadying our judgment, when we are tempted to despond at the contemplation of the manifold evils by which such periods, as well as all others in which sinful man has to act, are wont to be accompanied. These critical periods, as they may be termed — I do not mean in the sense in which that expression was used by certain recent French theorizers about the history of the world, but in the sense in which we speak of the critical moment in a disease, — these momentous periods in which some crisis is brought to pass in the history of the Church, have always been markt by a contentious spirit, as indeed is inevitable, inasmuch as what constitutes the crisis is the insurrection and struggle of a new spirit against that which had previously been dominant ; and the contest in its progress has always been disgraced by the 70 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. violence of the parties, by bitterness and injustice, by the grossest unfairness in judging opponents, and by all manner of prejudices and misrepresentations, distortions of facts and arbitrary imputations of motives, in a word, by those very features which make the hearts of the peaceful in our own times droop and sink, and on account of which the fierceness of theological controversies, the odium theologicum, has become a melancholy by -word. In the way of apology for these excesses it is sometimes pleaded, that a man, who is in earnest in matters concerning the very springs of spiritual life and death, cannot be altogether calm and measured, and that his intemperance is a proof of his sincerity. This however is not so necessarily: we may feel assured that the admixture of evil is never requisite for the vigour of good ; that a man may be sincere, and yet candid ; in earnest, and yet just. Our violence, our bitterness, our want of candour do not arise from our intense love of truth, but from our love of falsehood, through the seasoning of which alone, as Bacon has observed, does truth become palatable to the carnal mind. We connect the recognition of the truth contended for v/ith our own dignity and importance, and resent the unwillingness to admit it as a personal affront ; and exag- gerating the significance of the truths which have been pre- sented the most forcibly to our own minds, we demand the same homage for every corollary which by any logical pro- cess, however mistaken, we may draw from them, and thus often set them at loggerheads with other truths, no less momentous it may be in themselves, but which have never been brought home to us with the same impressive power. Moreover, as these excesses proceed in no degree from that which is good and sound, but solely from that which is frail and evil in man' so do they weaken the truths which wc ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 71 assert by such means, and hinder them from producing their rightful effect, both by irritating and inflaming opposition, and by supplying that opposition with matter which it will feel itself justified in rejecting, and which it will reject without being at the pains of distinguishing and severing the truths intertwined therewith, so that these also have to share the same condemnation. Therefore, when I said that we may derive some help to our judgement from recollecting that the various bad passions, the injustice, the recklessness, the outrages against truth and decorum, by which the contro- versies of our days are disfigured, are merely a repetition of what has always been found on like occasions, I did not mean that these evils are to be justified or palliated. On the contrary we should endeavour to repress them by all the means in our power, by doing what we can to discountenance them, by showing their futility and mischief, by reproving them openly and gravely whenever an occasion arises, and -by the strongest of all arguments, the example of a practice carefully eschewing all such things. Still, when we are troubled and cast down by the grievous evils of our present condition, and when, through that propensity to magnify whatever, whether of good or evil, is present and at hand, which, proceeding from the limitedness of our faculties, is a main disturber of the equanimity of our judgement, we are led to fancy that the calamitous symptoms visible in our times portend some tremendous disaster about to befall the Church, it is well that we should call to mind how, in every critical period in the history of the Church, our Saviour's awful declaration, that He came not to send peace upon earth, but a sword, has received a fresh accomplishment. In the first age of the Church indeed it was only fulfilled by the sword which was brandisht by the enemies of the Gospel, 72 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. and which the preachers of the Gospel had to endure, tlirough which they gave up their spirits into the hands of their Lord. But ever since, in the divisions by which the Church has been rent, both parties have mostly shown an inordinate fondness for the use of the sw^ord, more especially of those swords, which, the Psalmist tells us, his enemies bore in their lips. And that 1 may not be suspected of intending to apologize in any sort for a spirit and tone which I desire wholly to reprobate, and would gladly extinguish, I will observe that, although when men are striving and battling in God's cause against hosts of enemies, carrying their lives in their hands, ready to lay them down before His altar, and half expecting every moment to be dragged thither in order that they may do so, having a formidable power to contend against, a power which they see trampling upon truth, and driving its chariot-wheels over the consciences of men, one is glad to show indulgence to such combatants, and dares not require that their words should always be exactly weighed ; yet in our days, when there is nothing to fear, no risk to be encountered, when no physical force is to be encountered on either side, and the fires of Smithfield can hardly alarm the most ignorant bigotry; when controversialists sit at ease in their comfortable parlours, and read their news- papers and magazines, and tracts for the times, and tracts against the times, without even a deathwatch to startle their fears, if they fume and rave, and stir up a storm in the tepid atmosphere which surrounds their arm-chair, they are utterly without excuse. I began by saying that the time in which we are now living, the years we have recently past through, and, so far as any human foresight can anticipate, the years which are coming on, form an important and eventful period in tl le ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 73 history of tlie Church. Our immediate concern is with our own Church ; and I have already referred to a variety of notorious circumstances, which prove that it is in a more restless, perturbed state now than it had been for a long time past, perhaps since the events which attended its reestablish- ment at the Reformation. But if we look out beyond our own borders, we see that the present movement in the English mind is not an insulated one, and that in this, as in other things, a certain sympathy prevails among the leading mem- bers of the great European family, among those members of it at least who have borne a prominent part in the intellectual activity of the last two centuries, whatever may be the case with those who have tarried behind in the inheritance their ancestors had obtained for them. Thus it has come to pass that, while the interest taken in questions connected with religion has been increasing so rapidly in England during the last thirty years as to give them the first place in the thoughts of every person of reflexion, a like change in the same direction has been going on contemporaneously in France and in Germany ; and this religious spirit which has been awakened in those countries, as in our own, to resist the assaults of a rationalizing, or rather derationalizing in- fidelity, differs from the religious spirit which took possession of certain classes in the last century, in not fixing its atten- tion exclusively on the spiritual wants of the individual man, and on the means by which those wants are to be relieved, but has taken a strong ecclesiastical bent, and is everywhere agitating questions relating to the nature, forms, constitution, authority, and ordinances of the Church. I will merely point your attention to the disputes which have led to the establishment of the so-called Free Church in Scotland, to those about the rightful controll over the education of the 74 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. people and about the Jesuits, in France, — to the violent dissensions which the revival of the same body has occa- sioned in Switzerland, — to the schism which is spreading so rapidly in the Romish Church in Germany ; and to the synodical meetings of the Evangelical Church in Prussia, meetings held for the first time since the Reformation, and which, we may hope, will with God's blessing prepare the way for a better and more efficient organization of that Church than the Protestant Church in Germany has ever yet attained. I am not taking upon myself to express any opinion on the particular character of these events : it would be impossible to estimate them rightly without a thorough knowledge of the antecedent and present character and con- dition of the Churches which have given birth to them ; and one lesson we ought to learn from the difficuly of meeting with an intelligent judgement on the present state of our own Church is to refrain from the sinful habit of passing judge- ment hastily and ignorantly on other Churches. I have merely referred to a few notorious facts as testifying that there is a general movement in the European mind in our days, which, with sundry differences in other respects, has this one common character, that it is not merely a religious movement, the arousal of a deeper interest in religion as a personal matter, or in religious doctrines and dogmas, but that its thoughts and aims are in great part directed toward the social character of Christianity, toward Christianity as the source and ground of all well-ordered social union, toward the manner in which Christ's kingdom upon earth was designed by its Founder to be realized, toward its insti- tutions and ordinances, and the various means whereby it is to act on mankind, not merely individually, but also collectively, in order to the fulfilment of Christ's purpose that all the ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 75 nations of the earth should be gathered and incorporated into His Body, and that His Church might become a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. Our immediate concern however is with our own Church : nor should I deem myself justified on an occasion like the present, set apart for the consideration of our own personal duties in our ministerial office, were I to enter into any remoter discussions, however interesting or important in themselves, except so far as they can be shewn to bear upon those duties in the present position of our Church. But in order to understand the real origin and character of the movement which is now going on, and which has been going on for the last ten or twelve years, it must needs be of use to view it in connexion and comparison with other movements, if any at all analogous to it can be found, going on contem- poraneously in other branches of the Church universal. This ampler survey will be one of the best preservatives against the vulgar narrowsightedness, which, looking no further than at what strikes the eye on the surface of events, regarded singly, just as they happen to present themselves, is wont to ascribe them mainly to the accidental character and influence of one or two individual agents. Thus I believe it is generally supposed that the peculiar spirit and tendencies, which have been spreading so widely in our Church during the last ten years, are mainly traceable to the influence of two or three distinguisht members of the University of Oxford ; nor is it by any means duly recognized how a change essentially similar would have taken place, even if those who have become its leaders had never been born. What is this but the vulgar notion, whenever an epidemic prevails, that it must have been communicated by contact. It is true that. 76 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. when, in tlie order of God's providence, any momentous change is to be brought to pass in the destinies and aims of mankind, above all as comprehended in those of the Church, men fitted to direct the change, and to overpower the obstacles which the vis inertiae in human nature presents to it, come into the world at the appointed time, and, even though they may be born in a peasant's hut, are raised to the post where they may litliest accomplish the task markt out for them. But even if Athanasius and Luther, who of all men since St. Paul have perhaps exercised the greatest and most beneficent power over the destinies of mankind, and whose personal characters contributed in a more than ordinary degree to modify the events they were commissioned to guide, had never lived, we may not question that what they did would have been done by others, with no con- siderable difference in the general result, and that the course of the Church would have been in the main precisely the same. Nor can anything well indicate a shallower ignorance of the principles and laws by which the wheels of history are impelled, than the notion of those Romish Church historians who assert that the Reformation was owing to Luther, and that unless his passions had been inflamed against the Papacy, the unity of Christendom would not have been dissolved. As reasonably might one maintain that the ship which rides before the wind and the tide is the cause of the wind and the tide ; although there certainly would be some meaning in saying of Luther, as the poet says of his lordly ship. Where he comes, the winds must stir. Nor is this view of history merely shallow and ignorant, but, like all shallowness and ignorance with regard to important matters, also very mis- chievous. The notion that an epidemic arises from con- tagion, at once prevents our taking the right measures against ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 77 the disease, and our ministering rightly to those who are suffering under it : instead of endeavouring to heal them, we flee from them, and cast them out as lepers. When we look upon a social change as the product of some individual mind, we hold ourselves warranted in resisting it as such absolutely and unconditionally, without taking the trouble to discri- minate between that in it which may be a necessary stage in the gradual development of mankind, and those extravagances and absurdities with which individuals may have alloyed it : and such opposition, while it is necessarily vain and futile in arresting that which is ordained to be, is nevertheless effective in diminishing and marring the good which ought to have flowed from it, and is far likelier to exasperate than to lessen its evil results. A slight retrospect on the events of the last ten years will convince any intelligent person that these remarks are no less pertinent to the controversies of our own, than to those of any former age. The adversaries of the new opinions have not set themselves calmly and deliberately to examine their origin and grounds, the circumstances, previous and contem- poraneous, which have tended to breed and foster them, the laws, whether of sympathy or of antagonism, by which their shape and growth have been determined, the wants which called them forth, and for which they were designed to supply a remedy. It it so much easier to reprove and revile at hap- hazard and by wholesale, than to go through a laborious investigation with the purpose of forming a sound, impartial judgement. It is so difficult and so humbling to subject all our cherisht prejudices and prepossessions to a thorough sift- ing, to admit the possibility of their being mistaken, and that those who differ from us may have much reason on their side. Hence the religious world, as it is called, has 78 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. resounded with vociferous cries, which the irrehgious world has been only too glad to take up and echo back, that the new opinions are utterly erroneous, superstitious, popish, and that they who hold them are totally unfit to continue in the ministry of our Church, nay, that, if they were honest men, they ought to go over to Rome. Such an irritating mode of dealing with our adversaries, it is plain, is exactly calculated to produce the very effect which it provokes ; and when this is the case, when they who have been pelted and almost drummed out of the camp, turn their backs on it, their assailants count themselves justified by the issue. This is just what we foretold! they cry: see how right we were! That several members and even a few ministers of our Church have of late cast off their allegiance to her, and transferred their homage to Rome, is well known : nor is there anything improbable in the rumour that other like secessions are about to occur before long. But who can make out, among the motives which may determine a person to take such a step, what portion lay in his own positive tenets, and what portion in the rebukes and buffetings and scornful provoca- tions which he may have received from others ? At all events it is certain that the desertions from our Church would have been less numerous, if the men of unquestioned piety and holiness, who have been the chief promulgators of the new opinions, had been treated throughout as brethren, with a cordial recognition of those portions of truths which they had been allowed to discern and proclaim, and a ready rejection of those errours and faults in the prevalent tone of doctrine and practice of our Church, which they had been enabled to point out. A like course of wisdom and mildness in the last century would have retained many of those who left us, within our pale. Yet now, when, by one of the ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 79 ordinary oscillations in history, the opinions which were then opprest, have risen to a sort of ascendant, the very party that has inherited those opinions, and that is quick to discern and reprove the perversity and the mischief of the treatment experienced by good and holy men in those days, is the loudest in adopting the same tone in ours. Thus, whichever bucket mounts out of the well, the same folly is floating atop of it : whatever may be the fashion of the opinions in vogue, they denounce all that differ from them as heretical. Whereas Christian wisdom, nay, common fairness would have set itself in earnest to ascertain the origin and the tendency of the new doctrines ; to which end it is very expedient that they should be viewed in connexion with the previous and con- temporaneous state of thought and feeling in England, illus- trated, so far as may be, by any parallels discoverable in other branches of the Church. Now, when we do endeavour thus to view them, and are thereby led to observe how, as was stated above, in several of the chief nations of Europe a variety of movements, separate and distinct in their origin, have been going on during the last few years, all pointing in the same direction, so far at least as that they all bear a reference, more or less imme- diate, to the nature, the office, the essential character and authority of the Church, — and when we bethink ourselves of the numerous theoretical schemes for the regeneration of mankind, which had sprouted up from all manner of brains during the previous half century, and which past through every shade and degree from universal fraternization to uni- versal anarchy and license, terminating in the millennium of the guillotine, — we may mount without much trouble to the conclusion, that, as the perception of the utter vanity of earthly things is ever one of the chief ways by which men 80 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. are brought ' o feel a want and desire of heavenly things, so the tremendous convulsions by which the ancient fabric of European society was overthrown, and the manifold cala- mities arising out of them, while on the one hand they taught many to long for something deeper and more living in the way of religion than an elegant moral essay to enter- tain the compulsory inactivity of the Sunday, also prepared many for discerning the feebleness and hollowness of the foundations on which society was then supposed to rest, and for yearning after a higher and better order of things ; even as the perturbed state of Athens is said to have moved the Athenians to desire that Solon should legislate for the com- monwealth. The eye that had gazed on this yawning gulf, could not but see that the network of contrivances for the constitution and regulation of mankind, which politicians and theorists had been spinning out, however ingenious and specious, was frail and powerless to bind in such fierce tumultuous elements, as powerless as the chains of the Persian king to fetter the waves of the Hellespont: and this insight awakened a wish, more or less unconscious in most cases, for some higher regulative and constitutive power, for something coming with a pledge of divine authority, and an assurance that, as emanating from God, it is a reality, akin to the deepest feelings in man's heart, and with an inherent principle of life and duration. Thus far all is right: nor could any judgement have been wiser than that which induced men to seek for the true principles of social polity and union, for the moral groundwork of society, in the idea and laws of the Church. But an inference which may seem to be easily deducible from hence, and which has been deduced by many, is altogether fallacious. A profounder study of history, and of the divinely ordained laws by which ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 81 the human race is trained through the successive stages of its moral and intellectual existence, has bred a conviction in which all competent judges are now agreed, that the representation of the character and workings of the Catholic Church during the middle ages which prevailed in the shallow literature of the last century, was in many respects grossly mistaken, and that her operation and influence were on the whole universally beneficial, promotive of civilization, preservative of freedom and of religion, and the only check to the lusts of a trampling, crushing tyranny. Thus we have two propositions, distinct indeed, but intimately connected, that the Church contains the true principles of social order and organization, and that this was exemplified during the middle ages by the operation of the Catholic Church. They who held the former truth on speculative grounds, were rejoiced to find it confirmed by historical evidence; and this connexion was quite legitimate: indeed that truth must needs have assumed a very questionable form, if the great body of the evidence to be drawn from history contravened it. But one may easily be tempted to draw a further inference, namely, that the Church of Rome contains within itself the only true principles of social and moral order, and that the sole means of regenerating Europe would be the re-establish- ment of the Papal supremacy, and of the whole system whereby that supremacy would subjugate and drill the hearts and wills of mankind. Now this inference is no way legitimate. It has been drawn definitely by several writers on political subjects, especially in France and Germany; and it exercises no slight power over many persons who have never stated it distinctly even to their own minds. But it pro- ceeds upon an ignorance or a misconception of the grounds on which the above-mentioned more favourable judgement G 82 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. on the working of the Church in the middle ages was founded ; and it involves two complete fallacies. It assumes that the Church of Rome at the present day in its relations to the nations of Christendom occupies the self-same place, which was occupied by the Catholic Church in the middle ages ; and, as abuses of language are often wont to bring down their own punishment, this fallacy has been greatly promoted by the inconsiderate practice of calling the Church of Rome the Catholic Church, and of distinguishing our- selves as Protestants from the whole body of Catholics, as though there were no Catholicism except in communion with Rome, and as though we had cut ourselves off at the Re- formation from the Catholic Church, and no further belonged to it, nor had any lot or portion in the inheritance bequeathed by the ten preceding centuries. Yet far the most valuable part of that inheritance was that which belonged to the whole Church of Christ as the transmitter and propagator of Christian truth; and it was on account of this that the influence of the Church during the middle ages has been pronounced to have been beneficial, with little reference to the specific constitution and institutions which the Papacy superinduced upon the Church, except so far as that consti- tution and those institutions were specially adapted to the temporary condition of the nations of Europe, emerging out of barbarism and heathenism, and needing a severe tutelage during the centuries of fiery purgation whereby they were to attain to the maturity of moral consciousness and personal responsibility. The second fallacy is, that an institution, which may have been good and useful at one period in the progress of society, must also be good and useful at every other period ; as though the calix, which encloses and guards the bud, ought also to enclose the full-blown flower ; as ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 83 though the butterfly could not fulfil its destination, unless it trailed the slough of the caterpillar along with it ; as though St. Paul had not taught us that, while it is expedient for children to be in bondage under the elements of the world, they who pass out of childhood are no longer to be under that bondage; nay, that it behoves a man to put away the things which beseemed the child, inasmuch as they not only cease to be beneficial, but become positively hurtful. Yet, plain as this may appear, incontrovertible as it is, few delu- sions have been commoner than the notion, which, forgetful of times and seasons, forgetful of the mutability adherent to everything earthly, would stamp institutions valuable rela- tively, from their adaptation to the wants of some particular condition of humanity, with an absoluteness and permanency such as can only belong to spiritual truths. The vulgarest form of this delusion is that which demands of all ages and countries that they shall correspond in every tittle with our own, and condemns them whensoever they do not. But even learned and thoughtful men, when their hearts, after sicken- ing over the evils of their own times, have been refresht by the discovery of opposite excellencies in former times, have often longed to revive them under the very form of their previous manifestation. They who make such a discovery will naturally attach an inordinate importance to it ; and their cry is soon swelled by those who think to prove their superiority to their age by their invectives against it. The more ignorant they are of the spirit, and even of the facts of history, the readier they are to embrace this phantom. Yet one might deem that nothing wiser than a monkey would deck out a fruit-tree in autumn with the cast-ofF blossoms of spring, or think to improve its wintry bareness by hanging it with a coating of dead leaves. The world, moving onward G 2 84 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. in its predestined course, never repeats itself, never treads twice in the same spot : in truth no individual man can do so entirely, much less a nation, with so many elements of diversity fermenting within it : and when any one would make her do so, as many attempted under the Roman empire, whether by affecting archaisms in language, or by trying, like Julian, to restore an extinct rehgion, he dooms himself to the hopeless task of reanimating a corpse. Such too is the doom of those, who are endeavouring in these days to clothe our limbs in the paraphernalia of Rome, which was cast off at the Reformation ; above all is it the doom of that noisy crew, who would have us take up the coral and whistle of childhood. We have outgrown these things ; and none can make us resume them : He who com- manded us to cast them off, has spoken the word, and cast off they shall remain. Another idea, the misunderstanding of which has drawn men towards the Church of Rome, is that of the unity of the Church, and, as the political exponent thereof, the unity of Christendom. The earnest petition in our Lord's divine prayer for the unity of His disciples, and all that St. Paul teaches us in such sublime words concerning the unity of the body of Christ, must convince every Christian how precious that unity is in the sight of God, how precious therefore it ought to be in his own estimation. But during the last two centuries little had been thought or said about that unity: it would hardly seem that many aspirations and prayers were offered up for it. In the first ages after the Reformation it had been attempted to show how the division thereby esta- blished was not wholly incompatible with unity, or at least how the sin of breaking the unity of the Church did not lie with the Reformers ; and how, if the usurpations of the ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 85 Papacy were abandoned, and a mild and pacific spirit were to prevail, the essence of unity might be retained, notwith- standing the outward separation, which in that case would soon be closed up. But the contest continued from gene- ration to generation, and was defiled by the most atrocious crimes — falsehood, perfidy, cruelty, torture, murder; using every instrument of death ; at one moment pouncing upon individuals, at another making havoc among multitudes. The crimes committed in the name of that which called itself the Catholic Church, between the middle of the sixteenth and the end of the seventeenth century, were hardly surpassed by the bloody revels of the French revolution. Thus division was perpetuated ; men's hearts and minds were set against each other ; gradually it grew to be supposed that the schism in the Church was necessary and irremediable. Politically, also, the idea of the unity of Christendom was lost ; and for it was substituted that miserable fiction, which became the idol of statesmen, the balance of power ; a notion built on the supposition, that there can be no uniting, unifying prin- ciple, and that, instead of cementing love, must be substi- tuted an equiponderance of jealousy and rivality. Then came the age of luxury — the age of universal selfishness — an age which, it may be thought, in this respect, did not differ very much from other ages, inasmuch as selfishness has from the beginning been the besetting sin and bane of all mankind ; which however did differ wofully from other ages in this, that, while in earlier times moralists and divines had set themselves to war against selfishness, and to maintain the cause of man's higher nature against his lower, of conscience and duty against pleasure and interest, we were now taught that man cannot, by the constitution of his nature, obey any other voice than that of his personal interest ; nay, that this 86 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. is the only ground on which he can be bound to obey God : and the noxious effects of these doctrines are apparent in all the writings of the last century ; when, even in the letters of parents to their children, it is assumed that we cannot be influenced by any other motive than our interest ; and the same thing is openly avowed, without a blush of shame, as a matter universally admitted, even by the noblest men of the age in speaking of themselves. Thus all thought of unity passed away ; for selfishness separates and isolates : even religion, when regarded as a selfish matter, as merely the means of securing one's own personal happiness in another world, no longer binds men together ; the very idea of a Church, of Christ's kingdom upon earth, was almost become extinct ; and it was hardly recognised, even in word, that unity belongs to the very essence of Christianity. Mean- while, through the influence of selfishness, under the moral form of self-will, and the intellectual form of self-opinion, divisions multiplied almost in geometrical progression, each sect splitting into two or more sects ; and we seemed ap- proaching to the grand climax when every man would have had his own religion, and formed his own church. At such a time, when a higher idea of the Church revived, and when the preciousness of unity began to be felt again, it is not surprising that by an easy fallacy many should have fancied that unity cannot well exist without that which in a certain age of the Church was ordained to be the outward form of it, and that, as through the political state of the world in the early ages of Christianity, it had come to pass that the city, which was in a manner the capital and centre of the world, became also the capital and centre of the Church, so it is still requisite that there should be an outward centre of unity, a visible head of the Church living still upon earth. We ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 87 have been told by a person of much candour, who a few years since abandoned our Church for that of Rome, that one of his chief inducements to do so was the persuasion that, as the Church is spoken of in Scripture as the one body of Christ, it ought also to have one head ; and though St. Paul's words involve the true answer to this difficulty, inasmuch as Christ's body has one Head, even Christ the Lord ; the person referred to allowed himself to be deluded into believing that that one Head must be the Pope. This may seem grossly absurd ; but it is only the plain explicit avowal of an error which is deceiving many minds at this day, and has brought many into the nets of Rome. Whereas a clearer view of history would convince us that, though Rome, through its position, did act favorably for the main- tenance of unity, both in the Western branch of the Church, and in some measure among the nations of Europe during the middle ages, the heart and soul of Christian as of Pagan Rome have ever been hostile to everything like spiritual unity, and have never been able to comprehend anything higher than political unity, the semblance of unity produced by lying under the same yoke, the unity of slaves in a gang, or, at best, of troops in rank and file. I have spoken of two ideas, of two great truths, which had been grievously forgotten for near two centuries, and the revival of which has been leading men's minds toward Rome, through the common proneness of mankind to confound what is accidental with what is essential. The last century, in its reckless pursuit after the good things of the world, had thrown overboard the most precious portion of the intel- lectual and moral inheritance it had received from its ances- tors : and when people were shaken out of their selfish torpour by the convulsion of the French Revolution, the 88 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. wise and intelligent bethought themselves of the forgotten wealth of earlier ages. The excellencies of the middle ages were brought forward and became matter of historical in- vestigation and speculation : it was found that they had many intellectual treasures, which had since been lost : and while the more judicious were desiring to revive the spirit and the principles by which so much good had been wrought, others less wise, but energetic and practical, wishing to carry into act what their judgement approved, have thought it would be desirable to restore the very forms under which these excellencies came to light. All the while it was for- gotten that the form is not the spirit, and that the forms of one age must needs be a hollow mask when put upon the spirit of another. It might be interesting and useful to follow out this enquiry into other particulars, in which we should be led to the very same result, and where we should find that the Romanizing tendency, which has been gaining ground in Germany, in France, and in our own country, more or less since the beginning of the present century, has been fed and pampered by a series of fallacies akin to those which have been already exposed. But the time will not allow me to pursue a discussion, into which I entered somewhat impro- vidently, and which, if carried out into its details, would fill a good-sized volume. I must confine myself therefore to a brief allusion to some of the other mistakes, which of late years have been producing impressions favorable to the Church of Rome. And here let me premise a general remark, which is justified by a number of facts in the history of the world, and which most people, I believe, will have found confirmed by manifold personal experience. In the days of Noah, wc are admonisht, men ate and drank, married ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 89 and gave in marriage, until the flood came and destroyed them all. In like manner it has happened again and again, yea, continually in all ages and countries, that what men have regarded as the hour of their triumph has proved the hour of their destruction. Belshazzar's fate is only an example of a general law. On the other hand, the opposite truth has found expression in divers proverbial sayings, such as. When need is high, aid is nigh. When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses is at hand. The grandest example of this crisis and change was, when in the lowest corruption and degradation of the ancient world, just as the religions of the heathens were worn out, redemption and salvation appeared upon earth. In like manner it was out of the utter cor- ruption of the Church that the Reformation arose ; as Milton has noted in a passage of such exquisite beauty and sweet- ness, that I will quote it, since its charm is heightened in these days, when one so often hears the Reformation re- viled. " When I recall to mind," he says, " after so many dark ages wherein the huge overshadowing train of errour had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the Church, how the bright and blissful Reformation, by Divine power, struck through the black and settled night of ignorance and antichristian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads and hears, and the sweet odour of the returning Gospel embathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven." Now the aim and purpose of the Revolution at the close of the last century, the aim and purpose of the human agents in it, was to sweep away all the institutions and edifices and customs, all the births and offspring of previous ages, and to launch out the world afresh, stript of all its tackling and furniture, upon the ocean of Time. Whereas the actual effect of the French 90 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. Revolution on the European mind has been to revive the study, the love, the admiration of antiquity, more especially of that portion of antiquity, which it was especially desired to expunge from the earth, the middle ages. The middle ages had for generations been the object of general con- tumely : every witling could speak with contempt of their philosophy and divinity : their architecture and painting was allowed at the utmost to have a rude merit, as the work of uncivilized barbarians : but there was nothing in it to satisfy a refined cultivated age. Now it was just at the beginning of this century that men of wider and deeper knowledge began to see cause for reversing this judgement. It was gradually found that the architecture, the painting, the poetry of the middle ages, contained an unimagined store of beauty and grace ; that their philosophy and theology were so subtile and profound, that the philosophy and theology of the eighteenth century lookt miserably shallow and meagre in comparison. Thus in various ways men walkt toward the same point. Some persons were chiefly dazzled by the chivalrous virtues exhibited during the middle ages ; others by the saintly graces sometimes found in the monastic insti- tutions ; others again have been captivated by the grandeur of the ecclesiastical architecture, or by the simple beauty of the early religious pictures. The effect of these things has been increast through the previous notion that nothing of value was to be found in the remains of the middle ages, and from the contrast between the religious tone and spirit, and the consequent depth and solemnity found in the works of the middle ages, and the worldly sensual tone and spirit of modern literature and art, with its consequent superficial ness and frivolity. Now each of these classes of objects, I believe, has been the means of leading more than one convert to ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 91 Rome. One man became a Romanist because he admired the knights of the middle ages ; another, because he admired the pictures of Perugino and the earHer works of Raphael ; others, because they admired the architecture of our ancient churches and cathedrals. How strong this latter temptation is, we have seen of late in England. People are fond of comparing the three centuries subsequent to the Reformation with the four or five centuries anterior to it, and because the churches built in England since the Reformation are very inferior in beauty to those built before it, they feel tempted to go over to Rome. But in all these cases there is the very same fallacy of which I have had to speak above. The contrast, whatever it may be, between the works of the middle ages and those since the Reformation has not the slightest bearing on any controversy or comparison between the present Church of England and the Church of Rome. It has been seen in all nations, in which we know anything of the history of literature and art, that there are certain stages in the life of a nation in which its mind is better fitted for grand and genial conceptions in certain departments. But everybody would feel that it would be grossly irrelevant, if a man had said at the end of the Peloponnesian war that the Spartan constitution must be better than that of Athens, because the Homeric poems were grander than the tragedies of Euripides. The comparison, so far as any such comparison can be allowed to have weight in an argument of this kind, should be instituted, not between what the Reformed Churches have done since the Reformation, and what the whole Catholic Church did before, but between the works of the Reformed Churches and those of the Romish Church during the self- same period. This would seem quite plain and self-evident : and yet it would not be easy to calculate the number of 92 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. persons who have been imposed upon more or less by this gross fallacy. The same remarks will apply to the other heads of com- parison. If we are to judge the two Churches by comparing their fruits, the comparison must be instituted on equal terms. If it is to turn on the moral tendency of the two Churches, it must be between the moral character of Pro- testants and that of Romanists under somewhat similar circumstances and in the same age. If its subject is to be philosophy and theology, we must not put Anselm and Bernard and Aquinas on the one side, and Paley and Blair and Scott on the other : we must take the philosophical and theological works of Romanists since the Reformation ; and then, whatever shame we might feel at the scanty crop we should have to bring forward as the produce of a century and a half, we still should not need to shrink from the com- parison. But to compare the growth of a lean year in one land with that of a fat year in another can only mislead. It may seem to many of you that the various matters I have been enumerating ought not to be allowed to have the slightest efficacy one way or other in the controversy between the two Churches. Tliat some of them are less closely con- nected with it than others, I readily admit, as well as that the chief battle is to be fought upon different ground, namely, the relative consistency of the two Churches with the Word of God, and their recognition, practical, as well as doctrinal, of the whole truth revealed in Christ Jesus. Here again, though we may not boast, we may yet say that through God's grace, by which our Church is what she is, she will not fear the comparison. We may further say, that the sin of the separation does not rest with her, but with the Church which cast her off, — and that she is convinced of having not ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 93 only been thoroughly justified, but bound in duty, to reject the doctrines and practices, for the rejection of which the Roman pontiff schismatically excommunicated her. At the same time it is to be remembered that, as men seldom act from a single motive, so their minds are seldom determined by a single argument. A person may, indeed, fancy that he can state the cause of his conviction in some one definite proposition, and may believe that by this his conduct has been determined : but the very reason why this proposition exercises so much 'more power over his mind than over others, is, that his mind had been previously blast to wel- come it by divers other considerations ; as we know to have been the case with most of the eminent converts who have recently joined the Church of Rome. Their conversion has not been effected by a process of theological reasoning, but has been the growth of years, it may be, and has been grounded on the persuasion that Rome has exercised a more beneficial influence than the Reformation, on the moral, intellectual, political, and social well-being of mankind ; and this persua- sion has been mainly founded on the various fallacies spoken of above. Now it is a vain attempt to rebut this persuasion by a theological argument ; still vainer by one of the ordinary invectives against Antichrist, and superstition, and idolatry. If we would prevail with a man, who holds any firm persua- sion, we must try to place ourselves on the same ground with him ; we must recognise the truth which he holds : only by so doing may we reasonably expect to deliver him from the errour attacht to that truth. The course which has ordinarily been taken in combating the new opinions in our Churcb, has mostly produced little other efiect than that of confirming and strengthening the conviction it was intended to overthrow, to repell the holders of them more and more from their oppo- 94 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. nents, and to drive them further and further Romeward. Whether a different hne of conduct, evincing more sympathy, and a friendlier spirit, would have retained our brethren who have left, or are said to be preparing to leave us, it would be presumption to pronounce. At all events, it would have been conciliatory ; it would have promoted peace ; and we should then be free from the blame of having aggravated errour and provoked schism. The shallow rationahsm which prevailed in Germany at the end of the last century, the debased condition of the arts, the miserable degradation of all public worship, and the moral and political evils under which the German nation was pining, were the primary motives, I believe, which made several men of intellectual eminence throw themselves into the arms of Rome. In so doing, I have already said, they seem to me to have been led blindfold by a variety of fallacies ; whereas history, if rightly interrogated, would rather have declared that the excellencies which fascinated them, had grown up in many cases not through the influence of Rome, but almost in despite of that influence, and that the true generative cause was the influence of Christianity, of the Christian spirit, and the Christian life, acting upon the fervid fresh minds of the Teutonic nations. The archi- tecture which excites so much admiration was not Italian, but French, English, German. The graces of the chivalrous character were found in England, France, Spain, rather than in Italy. In fact, if Rome had been the centre of all good, her influence must have entirely changed its character, as it receded from the centre, just as it has been supposed that the sun is a cold body, and that his rays only communicate warmth when mixed with substances from which they elicit the caloric. For hardly any fact in history is more incon- ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 95 testable than that the influence of the Papacy at Rome itself and in Italy has been demoralizing and pernicious. Most strange therefore would it seem that the fallacies which were deluding men in Germany forty years ago, should now be deluding so many persons in England, unless one called to mind how apt we are, under the pressure of any immediate evil, to wish ourselves back in a former state, which at the time may have been far more oppressive ; how, for instance, the Israelites, when they were in the wilderness, so often wisht themselves back in Egypt. They forgot its bondage and task- work, when they thought of its fleshpots, and its leeks, and onions. Yet the grapes, and figs, and pomegranates from the promist land were unavailing to lure them onward, when there was an unknown danger to deter them. Is not this an apt type of our Romanizers ? They found themselves in what they deemed, and not without some reason, amoral and intellectual wilderness. In such a case all history teaches us that we should go forward to the land of promise, from which grapes, and figs, and pomegranates have ever and anon been brought to us, and where, if we go forward with a holy confidence in God, the dangers which seem to threaten will vanish before us. But no ; the temperament of many persons is so sluggish, they continually hanker after the past ; let us go back to Egypt, they say, take away your fantastical grapes, and figs, and pomegranates, and give us the leeks and onions which we know to be realities. I have been led to speak at considerable length on a sub- ject of the deepest interest and importance ; yet what I have said would require to be greatly expanded, in order to give an adequate view of that subject. All of you, my brethren, I trust will agree with me, that the Romanizing spirit with which many members of our Church have of late been 96 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. infected, is greatly to be deplored. You will also agree with me, I hope, in thinking that the various errours and fallacies which I have been trying, however inefficiently, to expose, have a strong tendency to prepare and dispose the minds of young men at least for looking with longing toward Rome. Therefore it might be useful if an abler and completer exposure of these and similar fallacies were put into the hands of our students. At the same time it behoves us to keep ever in mind, that the only way to combat false- hood successfully is to have our loins girt about with truth. We must not deem that we shall effect anything worth effecting by retailing all the old stale slanders and abuse of the Church of Rome. We must prepare ourselves for the conflict by the discipline of laborious study, carried on in a spirit of Christian candour, never setting down aught in ^nalice, but rather rejoicing if we can extenuate anything ; and, above all, our feet should be ever shod with the prepa- ration of the Gospel of peace. From this subject let me now turn to another, in some measure akin to it, and that has recently been producing a strange, almost frantic excitement in many minds, more especially among persons held in high estimation in what is called the religious world. You will already have perceived that I am referring to the Bill which has recently been passed by the Legislature, for an enlarged and newly-modified endow- ment of the Romish College at Maynooth. There may pro- bably be many among you who deplored that measure. Some weeks since I received certain letters from clergymen in the Archdeaconry which exprest the deepest regret at it when it was still pending, and in which I was askt whether I did not intend to invite the clergy of the Archdeaconry to petition Parliament against the Bill. As only three such ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 97 letters reacht me, I did not think it incumbent on me to take any step in consequence. Had they been numerous, I should of course have deferred to the wish exprest, as far as to convene a meeting of the Clergy, reserving to myself the right of stating why I could not personally concur in such a petition. And now that the measure has become the law of the land, as it is notorious that a very strong repugnance to it is still entertained by many pious persons, who regard it as an unprincipled and irreligious act, while it is greatly to be desired that the moral feelings and conscience of all good men should, if possible, be in harmony with the laws and institutions of their country, it seems to me that it would not become me to allow this opportunity to pass away without laying before you a calm and brief statement of the reasons why I cannot join in the common aversion to the measure in question, but, on the contrary, deem it in its general features — for I cannot discuss its details — a measure expedient in the highest and only true sense of the word, that is, a measure imperatively prescribed by justice and by statesmanly wisdom and policy. Besides, in these days of hateful personalities, when there is so much zeal, or at least so much of the froth and effervescence of zeal, and so little knowledge, and when so many are made sinners for an opinion, by those who are incapable of examining the grounds of any opinions, and whose own opinions are taken up almost at haphazard, and are held the more tenaciously and contention sly from the lurking consciousness that they have no root to stand by ; in these days, when a person is deemed an infidel or a papist because he does not join in all the virulent denunciations uttered by ignorant party-spirit, I am glad to explain my views on a subject on which those entertained by many estimable persons appear to me very erroneous. H 98 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. At first sight it may seem strange, that a measure which many good men condemn with such vehemence and abhor- rence, should be approved of by other good men ; only one knows that this has ever been the case, that there has hardly ever been a question on which good honest men have not been found taking different and opposite sides. Is there then no such thing as truth, that can be distinctly recognised by all as one and the same, and that shall constrain the assent of every ingenuous mind ? I believe there is, and that our differences in most cases arise from our taking different points of view, and from our looking at objects under the sway of differently formed judgements and associations. In many cases it may be difficult to point out clearly where the ground of the difference lies ; but in the present instance the distinction is plain and broad. The denouncers of the grant to Maynooth, that portion of them at least to whom I am referring, look upon the question as a matter of religion ; we who deem the grant expedient and right — I speak of it here, and throughout, with reference to its general principles solely, — regard it as a matter of policy or polity in the highest sense of the word. What, exclaim our opponents, is policy then to he considered apart from religion^ is religion to be cast out from the statesman's thoughts ? Is atheism to be enthroned as the only sound principle of government F This is a specimen of the exemplary logic, and still more exemplary candour and charity, with which men professing to be religious in these days are wont to leap to their conclusions. Religion is the fundamental principle of all truth, of all wisdom, of all know- ledge, of all justice, of all excellence, moral and intellectual. It is impossible for a man, and still more for a state, to be wise or just without it. But the faculties of man are various ; and so are the objects of human speculation and action ; and ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 99 each' has its own special principles and axioms, conditions and laws. And when persons who professedly make religion the sole object of their thought and interest, and who there- fore must needs be scantily fitted out with the means for exercising judgement on other subjects, especially when nice and intricate, take upon themselves to pronounce on questions which do not lie within their own immediate province, they are apt to err grievously. To refer to a single conspicuous instance : irreligious science is an abomination ; and I am firmly persuaded, not only that science rightly followed will minister to religious truth, but also that it is from religion that science, if it is to be healthy, must draw its principles and lifeblood, as we see first in the intimate connexion between all science and Christianity, and again, in that the Baconian reformation of science could only arise in a country where the Reformation of religion had already been establisht. Nevertheless, it is most certain that the particular problems of science are problems of science, not of religion. They are to be determined on scientific grounds, not on religious grounds. The truth of the Copernican and Newtonian systems of the heavens, for example, is a question of physical astronomy, not of religion ; and when those who pretended to have a right of exercising judgement on these questions condemned the theory of Copernicus and Newton, on what they called religious grounds, they wandered audaciously out of their sphere, and set up a miserable, presumptuous lie before the temple of the God of truth. This is now pretty generally acknowledged; yet falsehood and presumption, even when they are compelled to evacuate one post, will not give up the battle against truth altogether, but take up some other similar position, and renew the war. Thus, some who pro- fess to be religious in our own times, are trying to bring the H 2 100 ' ROMANIZING FALLACIES. wonderful questions which geology has recently started con- cerning the history of the earth under their jurisdiction^ and are asserting that these again are questions of religion, and not of science. And what is the result of such practices, except that they give the Lord's enemies cause to blaspheme ? It may be argued that religion is still more intimately allied with all practice, and that in all action it is most dangerous to lose hold of it even for a moment. True ; but in each particular sphere of action, the mode of our action is to be determined by special rules and maxims with re- ference to its particular subject matter. Thus, in making shoes, as Socrates might have said, a man acts not according to the rules of religion, but according to the rules of shoe- making. In tilling the ground, the husbandman is not guided by the rules of religion, but by the rules of agri- culture. It is the same in medicine ; it is the same in the administration of the laws ; it is the same in making laws or legislating. The higher and wider the field of action is, the more nearly does it approach to religion ; and the more im- portant is it that the agent should be animated by religious principles. But in each particular act, he is to be guided by the special principles of his own craft, the physician by the rules of medicine, the judge by the laws of his country, the statesman by the principles of policy or political wisdom. And when the officious obtruders of religion, or what is called such, on all irrelevant occasions, would bring it in to biass the judge or the statesman, they can only mislead ; they may, and often have led to atrocious crimes. A Jeffrey, an Alva, a Philip the Second, a Dominic, will endeavour on such principles to justify all his crimes : he did not act upon the principles of human justice and mercy, but lied, and burnt, and massacred for the glory of God. In the ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 101 examples of such practice we ever see how corruptio optimifit pessima. The Jesuits are the only body of men who have set up this as the one sole determining principle of their whole conduct ; its legitimate offspring is the Inquisition. Hence the profoundest thinker whom England has produced for centuries says, in the opening of his inestimable work on the idea of the Church and State, that he "dislikes the intro- duction even of the word religion, in any special sense, in Parliament, or from the mouth of lawyer or statesman speaking as such ;" and he " earnestly contends that religion cannot take on itself the character of law, without ceasing ipso facto to be religion; and that law could not recognize the obligations of religion for its principles, nor become the pretended guardian and protector of the Faith, without degenerating into inquisitorial tyranny." These words at first sound may be startling to those who have not reflected on the truths which I have just been attempting to express ; yet the writer of these words was the author of a work, the very title of which is " The Bible the Statesman's Manual," and no man was ever more anxious to enforce on all occasions, that religion is the centre and source of all healthy, moral, and intellectual life. The truth I am contending for will be recognized more readily, if we suppose a judge to be deciding a cause between a Protestant and a Romanist, or let us say, between a Christian and a heathen. How is he to be guided in his decision? by the principles of law? or by the principles of religion? I do not mean that there can be any real repugnance between them. True religion, that religious principle which pei-vades a man's character, and makes him live as ever in his great task- master's eye and act on all occasions as in the sight of God, of the God of justice and of truth, as we have seen it lately 102 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. set before us in the noble picture of a man, whom it was one of my highest privileges to call friend, and who has done so much toward making it the leavening principle of English education, — such religion would command him to decide according to the law, and would tell him that any other decision would be iniquitous, and therefore utterly irreligious. Nor, in the present state of public opinion in England, would the boldest and craftiest declaimer at a religious meeting presume in this case to say the contrary. Yet it is only by a long process of purgation that men, even in such a palpable case, have been brought to the conviction that they must not do wrong in God's service, and that the laws are to be admi- nistered equally, without any reference to the religious tenets of the persons who come under their sentence. And if we carry the question a little further back, where it does not come before us quite so broadly, we may remember that only a year since a violent ferment was excited through England because the legislature, in considering a legal ques- tion concerning certain endowments left for religious pur- poses, formed their decision according to the principles of the law of property, without regard to the religious opinions of the persons likely to benefit thereby. I am not contending that the provisions of the law were right ; the term of years which was held to give a right of property may have been too short : this is a question of legal and political expediency. Wliat I contend for is, that the legislature on that occasion were bound to form their decisions according to the prin- ciples of the laws of property, as bearing upon charitable bequests ; and that it would have been unjust, and therefore irreligious, if they had taken into account whether one body or another were to be the gainer. And in like manner I contend that the question recently agitated concerning the ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 103 grant of Maynooth was not a religious, but a political ques- tion, a question of political justice, or, what is the same thing, of political expediency, I am aware that, even after the ground of our argument has thus been shifted, and we have learnt to look at the question in its true light, it may still be maintained that even on political grounds the grant is inexpedient, for that nothing is more desirable and important to a state than unity of religion among its people. Most readily do I grant this : in a perfect state assuredly the people would all be of one religion : great too and precious was the blessing when the whole English people were united in one faith and one worship. But a government is not to frame its conduct with reference to an imaginary condition of society : it is not to legislate for Utopia or Arcana, for Lilliput or Plato's Re- public. Its duty is to look at realities, at the actual condition of the people committed to its charge : and when it finds that what prevails among its people is not the unity of religion and worship, but a great diversity, however a states- man may lament this, he must not blind his eyes to the fact, and proceed as if it were otherwise. This has ever been one of the ways in which governments have hurried on to their own ruin. They have chosen to follow certain traditional notions and maxims ; they have been unwilling to resign certain hereditary prepossessions and privileges ; they have not dared to look at the real state of things. Thus their ancient props have crumbled away from under them, and, falling to the ground, they have discovered themselves in the midst of an alien world. But how can it be right for the government of a Protestant nation to do anything in support of Romish errours ? After what I have said in former parts of this Charge you will not 104 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. suspect me of any very strong predilection for the Church of Rome : but predilections and antipathies must be cast aside, when the question is one of truth and justice. As I have pointed out divers fallacies by which people are lured towards Rome, let me here point out a fallacy in the question just stated, which, I believe, will be admitted to be no unfair mode of stating one of the commonest arguments urged in this matter, namely, that it is morally wrong for the govern- ment of a Protestant nation to do anything in support of Romish errours. Here I must contend that the word Pro- testant involves a fallacy, that the government of the united empire of Great Britain and Ireland can no longer be truly termed the government of a Protestant nation. Before the Union with Ireland, the inhabitants of Great Britain might be justly called a Protestant nation : the proportion of Ro- manists was not then sufficient to render the name inappro- priate. But since the Union this has been changed. We have been compelled to recognize the change by the ad- mission of Romanists into Parliament : and however we may deplore that the state of things is such as it is, we must not shut our eyes to it, nor shrink and skulk from the duties which it imposes upon us. In order to take a right view of this matter, we may derive help from a simple illustration. As it is desirable that a unity of faith and worship should prevail in a state, so is it still more desirable that a like unity should prevail in the nearest of all human bonds ; and a blessing above all price is forfeited, where it does not, where a Protestant, for instance, marries a Romanist. Far more terrible would be the loss were a Christian to marry a Maho- metan or a Pagan. Yet even in the latter case, were a man to enter into such a calamitous bond, he would contract certain obligations, certain duties, by doing so : he would be ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 105 bound to take care that his Mahometan or Pagan wife should be supphed with the means of the free exercise of her religion : and though he would also be bound to do what he could with the view of converting her to Christianity, yet, if he were to urge that his religion would not sufFer him to allow her the exercise of hers, what should we say of such a man, unless that he was a shameless hypocrite and scoun- drel? The other case, however, that of marriages between Protestants and Romanists, is of frequent occurrence, both in England and elsewhere : and however such marriages must needs fall short of that blessed spiritual unity which ought to prevail in this union, still, in the present divided state of Christendom, they appear to be inevitable, they exist de facto, not as insulated facts, which may be left out of account, but so commonly that they must be recognized to exist de jure also. Now such marriages are very analogous to the union between England and Ireland ; and he who contracts such a marriage is bound from that time forward to take care that his wife, unless he can convert her to his own faith, shall have full liberty and means of worshipping God according to the rites of her own Church : and perhaps it may also become his duty to provide that his children, or, at least, part of them, shall be educated in the tenets of the Romish Church. At all events, one party or other must make a compromise in this matter. Such too is the case with govern- ments, when they find themselves placed in a similar position over subjects holding a diversity of religions. They contract obligations towards each. For, I trust, no one will object that in the former case there will probably be a specific explicit agreement on the point ; even if there were no such agree- ment, the obligation would be equally binding. And though the law which binds governments to provide for the welfare of 106 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. their subjects is seldom, if ever, a written law, it is not a whit the less obligatory on that account. It may be objected that, according to these principles, a government would be bound to provide for every form of sec- tarianism to be found within its borders. Here, however, we are brought to consider the question as one of political expe- diency. An ancient and true maxim lays down, De minimis non curat lex. Before a state recognises a body of men, it will require proof of the permanence and magnitude of that body. Again, before it employs a portion of its revenues for the education and culture of that body, it will require proof that such help is needed. All history shows that the power of numbers is one of the means whereby political rights are acquired. When the plebeians at Rome became numerous, they acquired a right to share in the honours of the commonwealth. When certain of our manufacturing towns grew to contain such enormous masses of population, they thereby acquired a right to the elective franchise; and the Reform Bill only recognised as law what was already existing not only as a right, but as a necessity. Now nobody will deny that if there ever was a mass of people whose wants cried out to the government to provide them with the proper means of moral culture, it is the miserable peasantry of Ireland. Some however may say, that the way of doing this, the only way in which the government of a Protestant nation can be justified in doing this, so far at least as relates to religious instruction, is by endeavouring to convert the Irish Romanists to the Protestant faith. Here I will not say more on the fallacy already pointed out in the expression a Protes- tant nation. But there is another fallacy involved in that objection, a fallacy, which has been the source of tremendous evils and crimes. The work of conversion is not a work ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 107 which belongs to a temporal government, as such, for this among other reasons, that it is a work which a government cannot execute. It is the work of the Church, not of the State. When a State is in alliance with any one branch of the Church, its duty will indeed be to supply the Church with the proper means for exercising its influence, what- ever these means may be, and to give it full liberty of action, provided it do not act in such a manner as to destroy the peace of the country. But when a government fancies itself commissioned to convert unbelievers, when, for in- stance, Charlemagne resolved to convert the Pagan Saxons, or when Simon de Montfort set to work to convert the Albigenses, what can be the result of such enterprises but reckless cruelty and murder ? We abhor such acts in the heathen Emperors of Rome : they do not become more praiseworthy, when the Emperor is a Christian. On the particular details of the late Bill I shall not say a word. To speak of them to any purpose it would be neces- sary to enter into a minute examination of facts ; and I have already detained you far too long. Besides, it was not by these questions of detail that the English people were so much disturbed. It was the principle of the measure that people cried out against, or, as they said, its want of principle, its sacrifice of principle to expediency. Of the fallacy which lies in this cant phrase, I have spoken in a note to my first Charge, and will not prolong this discussion by recurring to it. But on the general principles involved in the measure, I have felt it my duty to say thus much, both because one may easily foresee that other measures will be brought forward ere long, in which the same principles will more or less come into play, and which it will behove us to consider, not as re- ligious, but as political questions, on the grounds of the largest 108 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. political expediency, and because, even if the vehemence of the agitation in men's minds has in some measure subsided, it has not been allayed, I fear, by anything like a calming recognition of the truth. When similar questions recur, it were at least to be desired, that the opposition to them, if they are to be opposed, should be carried on in a different manner. Thirty years ago the petitions of the English people had a meaning : they exprest the desires of the people, and therefore were attended to. They were sent up by counties, by towns, by corporations, assembled under their constituted authorities. But now the petitions are not without reason cast aside. For who are the petitioners ? how do they come together ? by whom are they convened ? They are everybody and yet nobody ; and are assembled to have their ears tickled and a morbid enthusiasm excited by some religious orator- errant. They shout with ecstacy, when they are told that the Pope is Antichrist ; and give three cheers to the doctrine of Justification by Faith. Among the many sad symptoms of the times, hardly any is sadder than these huge religious meetings, with all their unhealthy stimulants ; few things are more fitted to sadden a sober man, than that the system of agitating the country, which was devised by an Irish dema- gogue, should now be pursued by persons who are the admiration and delight of the religious world. After this long discussion on the two topics which I have felt it my duty to bring under your notice, I must not stop to speak on the various minor matters of practical interest, to which, on an occasion like the present, I should otherwise have called your attention. But I must not entirely pass over the melancholy disputes by which our Church has recently been disturbed, on account of certain innovations introduced of late years into the performance of divine service ROMANIZING FALLACIES. 109 in several parishes. I have in former times taken occasion, both at Visitations, and at Rural Chapters, to recommend certain revivals of ancient practices which appeared to be of real moment ; and still, wherever they can be carried into effect without breaking up the peace of a parish, I would recommend and urge such revivals. At the same time, how- ever, as some of you will perhaps remember, I have always been anxious to urge, that when you make changes in the mode of celebrating divine service, it should not be in mat- ters merely formal and ceremonial, which in the eyes of many might be deemed superstitious, but in such things as have a manifest practical value, which may be recognised by the more serious-minded members of your congregation. And this caution which seemed to me necessary in the years 1841 and 1843, is still more manifestly necessary now. Indeed, in the present excited state of feeling on these matters, it would be very expedient for every one to lay down as a rule for his own practice, what, if the number of our Bishops were sufficiently enlarged to meet the wants of the Church, would assuredly be a proper rule at all times, not to make any alteration in the mode of conducting public worship, which we find esta- blisht in our parishes, without a previous application to the Bishop for his advice and direction. If any of you, my brethren, are disturbed by conscientious scruples, and are desirous of bringing the service in your parish into nearer accordance with what you regard as the order of the Church, let me entreat you, in these troublous times, when so much tinder is abroad, and everybody is carrying a box of Lucifer matches about him, not rashly to let any spark fall which may kindle a flame, not to act without previously consulting our Bishop. As I said before with reference to another point : Let your feet be shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace. 110 ROMANIZING FALLACIES. And to you also, my friends, who are come as Church- wardens to this Visitation, since I have not left myself time to say many words to you, let me address the same blessed exhortation : — Let your feet also be shod with the pre- paration of the Gospel of peace. Just as I had written this last night, I lifted up my eyes, and saw the beautiful quiet light of the full moon falling on the sea, and playing on the numberless little wavelets that were rippHng toward the shore. Each wavelet was bathed in silvery light, and seemed to look up in tremulous love and adoration toward heaven. Considering the subject that was filling my heart and mind, you will not be surprised that the moonlit sea should have seemed to me a type of a devout congregation, listening with love and joy in peaceful unity to the word of God, read or preached to them by His appointed minister. And you who have the pleasure of living in sight of the sea, I would exhort you, when you see the same sight, to let it remind you of the same spiritual reality ; for bright and lovely and heart-gladdening as the type is, the spiritual reality to a purged eye is far brighter and lovelier, and gladdens his heart far more. Now it is the honorable and blessed privilege of your office to help in bringing about and pre- serving this heavenly sight of a congregation united in godly worship ; and you are specially to take care that no evil blasts of disorder and misconduct trouble that unity. I am aware that you have been advised and urged during the last year by turbulent spirits, that delight in division and dissen- sion, to keep a jealous and suspicious look-out on the conduct of your ministers, and to sound the alarm and break up the peace of the parish, the moment you find them saying or doing anything you are not accustomed to, and do not quite like. But spurn and cast from you this advice of the Evil ROMANIZING FALLACIES. Ill One : it comes from him who was a divider and brawler from the beginning, and who could not bear the blessed sight of the peace and love and adoration in Paradise, but set himself to mar and destroy it. You cannot think it would be better and pleasanter to have had the waves that were lying so peacefully and beautifully under the light of the moon, rent and torn and dasht about by lashing winds and storms. Yet far more hateful and painful and terrible is the sight of a congregation animated by bitterness and jealousy and suspicion, scowling with evil passions instead of shining with love. It has been a dismal feature in the last year, that such sights have been seen more frequently perhaps than ever before. Be it your business, my dear brethren, to use all the means in your power to procure peace and concord, and to prevent disunion ; for remember, that the two spiritual realities of which I just spoke, are themselves only types of eternal realities. You know where it will be that each man will hate his brother, and every heart will scowl upon its neighbour, and all will be hatred and malice, and everlasting jealousy and suspicion. On the other hand, beautiful as the sight on which my eyes rested last night was, beautiful as is the sight of a devout congregation drinking in joy and light from the word of God, far, immeasurably, unimaginably more beautiful is, and ever will be, the sight of the blessed communion of saints, gathered in peace and love into one eternal union, and drinking in love and joy and peace and truth and righteousness from the presence of God. THE ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE A CHAEGE TO TFIE CLERGY OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES, DELIVEHED AT THE ORDINARY VISITATION IN 184G. THE ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. My Reverend Brethren, Another year has past away since we last assembled on this occasion, to take counsel concerning the matters of the deepest and most pressing interest to our Church; and it has again become my duty to speak to you of those events in the past twelvemonth by which her welfare has been the most affected, of those signs in the present aspect of the times, which appear to portend anything momentous to her, whether for evil or for good, and of the warnings and lessons we ought to draw from them for our own conduct and prac- tice. Now if I look back and ask myself what is the most important event which has befallen our Church in the course of the last year, or if I were to put this question to you, my brethren, I conceive you would all join with me in replying that it is the deplorable schism by which so many members of our Church have forsaken her and gone over to Rome. Indeed, the very mention of such a fact has, and ought to have, some- thing quite startling in it. During the last few years, it is true, such a thing has been contemplated as a possibility : it has even been spoken of in the heat of controversy provokingly, as the only legitimate result of certain opinions which have recently been gaining ground. The holders of these opinions have been told that they ought to go to Rome, have been I 2 116 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. challenged to do so, have been taunted with dishonesty for not doing so. But a few years back such a thing would have seemed utterly incredible. They who remember what was the common mode of thinking and speaking concerning the Church of Rome, current in England twenty and thirty years ago, will agree with me that, if we had been told in those days that we should travel fifty miles an hour at the heels of a steam-engine, or that we should carry on a con- versation at a distance of a hundred miles with scarcely longer intervals than are requisite for taking breath, we should hardly have been more incredulous, than if it had been stated to us in the year 1820, that in the years 1845 and 1846, a considerable number of well-educated intelligent Englishmen, several of them ministers of the English Church, and eminent for piety and holiness of life, would abandon that Church, which is the great glory and blessing of their country, and submit their hearts and consciences to the dominion of Rome. Why ! many a person would have exclaimed, you will tell us next, that they are going to re- establish the worship of Jiqnter, or of Odin. Could anything have increast the marvellousness of such a story, it would have been found in the statement that the chief part of the seceders to Rome, and the whole body of opinions which were to lead to the secession, were to issue from the Uni- versity of Oxford, from the very head-quarters of those prin- ciples, which in the language of the day, were termed anti-Catholic. It is a useful lesson that we should be reminded how very insecure our hold commonly is even on those convictions which we may deem the most stable, and, as it were, wrought into the very substance of our hearts and minds. Sach a lesson may well diminish our confidence in our own judgements, and the severity of our condemnation ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 117 toward our opponents. It should lead us to ask ourselves what it is that has caused us to difter from them, what has preserved us from falling into the selfsame errours ; and it should also lead us to examine whether we do really under- stand the principles on which our opinions rest. Even in earlier times indeed, one might now and then hear of a person taking the same step ; but this was always accounted for by certain individual peculiarities of character, or of circumstances, which rendered him apt to fall into such a delusion. Hence the act was often scarcely known beyond the circle of his personal acquaintance, and excited little public notice ; nor was there reason for regarding it as a symptom of any malady lurking in the body of the Church. In the last year, on the other hand, the lapses have been so numerous and frequent, as to indicate that there must needs be some prevalent epidemic ; and such being the case, it becomes of pressing importance to inquire into the nature and causes of the disease, and to seek out the most efficacious remedies. Nor is it merely a state of things far removed from what any one would have ventured to imagine possible twenty years ago. Nothing at all similar to it has occurred in England since the accession of Queen Elizabeth, or, I might say, since the first dawn of the Reformation. For the relapse into Popery under Queen Mary was of a totally diiierent kind. It was not a voluntary deliberate act, entered upon by a number of independent individuals, without any outward force impelling them toward it, without any bond except that of common principles and personal aflection. In the main it was rather a change in the ascendency of the two parties into which the nation was divided, that which had previously been the lightest, becoming the weightiest when 118 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. the influence of the sovereign was thrown into the scale, while that large portion of the people, who had no strong determinate convictions either way, fell back without reluct- ance into their old familiar habits ; and whatever positive recantations may have taken place can hardly be supposed to have arisen from any but worldly motives. Nor did the reign of Charles the First, though the school from which the deserters of our Church have proceeded, has been wont to appeal to the divines of that age, as holding the same prin- ciples, exhibit anything parallel to the recent secession. The views indeed which prevailed then with regard to Church - government and discipline, with regard to ceremonies and sacraments, and on divers other controverted points of theology, were in many respects similar to those which have been brought forward so prominently of late. But, along with this similarity, there were important differences. They who held these views were mostly loyal and loving members of the Church of England, cognizant of the grounds of her separation from that of Rome, convinced of the legitimacy and necessity of that separation. They did not ogle and flirt with the Church of Rome, while submitting with a sigh to the bond which tied them to the Church of England. They did not keep on querulously mourning over the accidents of second or third-rate value which had been lost by the separation, for- getting the inestimable blessings, touching the very centre and heart of sound faith and morals, which had been gained. The galling of the yoke under which the Church had pined for centuries had not past away ; so that they could not feel ashamed of the name whereby we profess our duty of pro- testing against that godless yoke ; nor did they disclaim their brotherhood with the foreign branches of the Church which were joined to them in that protestation. The very conflict ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. IIQ which they had to wage, the sufterings they had to endure, for the sake of the Church, endeared her to them still more, and rendered their love for her a passionate reality. It was not merely in the solitude of their studies that they oftered up their homage to a phantom of their own imagination, the face of which some cross-wind of fancy might alter, or even obliterate : nor were the blows they had to bear those of paper pellets. Doubtless too, if there had been any outward warfare in these last years assailing our Church, if she had been the object of persecution, several of those who have now forsaken her, would have continued by her standard, and have rejoiced to encounter death itself in her cause. But there is hardly any situation more dangerous, more beset with temptations, than inaction to those who are framed for activity. The restlessness of the fervid spirit vents itself in lashing the bars of its cage, and fancies that, if it can but escape from those bars, it shall be free. Instead of sub- mitting patiently to " bear the ills we have," or taking up arms against them to oppose them, in the assurance that the soldiers of faith shall overcome the world, we are ever prone "to fly to others that we know not of." Now this, in the time of Charles the First men could not do, if they betook themselves to Rome. The evils of Popery were then too notorious, too flagrant, too glaring, so that a man could not hide them from his eyes by calling up a logical mist. But when the grounds on which Papists had been excluded from political power were pronounced by the Legislature to be invalid, they who could not appreciate the true principles of toleration, persuaded themselves that it meant approbation ; and, as is often the case when one approaches what had long been a bugbear, they who found that Romanism was not so terrible and atrocious, such a rampant monster of iniquity. 120 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. as they had pictured it, ran over to its side and exclaimed that there was nothing at all evil or alarming in it. Besides, there is something in the speculative habits of our age that renders it easier for us to neglect facts, and even to defy them. The prima facie evidence of facts has been proved in so many respects to be fallacious ; why should we hesitate to assume that it must be so in all things. So many pre- judices have been overthrown, so many prepossessions, which seemed to be as firmly rooted as the hills, have been assailed with a train of arguments, and exploded, that it has become a sort of sport for the ingenious to show their dex- terity by trying to blow up some new article of the popular faith. But no men are surer to fall into their own snares, and to perish by their own devices, than they who play tricks with their conscience, and amuse themselves by shewing off their subtilty at the cost of truth. If we forsake Truth, truth will forsake us, and we cannot recall her. We may cry to her, but she will not hear us : we may pursue her; but our feet will stumble every moment, entangled in our own meshes. On the other hand, it will easily be perceived that the con- versions to Romanism, v/hicli took place in the reign of Charles the Second, were wholly different from those in our days. It is to the honour of our Church, that in the time of her depression, hardly any of her children abandoned her. But when she regained her power, some of those who hated and despised the Puritans, thought they should find an anodyne for their consciences, an indulgence for their licentious habits at Rome. Then it became a fashionable saying, that Calvinism is not a religion for a gentleman, and that Romanism is. Such was the current version of the declara- tions, that the Kingdom of Heaven is of the poor; and that it ROMANIZING TENDENCIKS OF THE AGE. 121 is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. But in the conversions of our times it is remarkable and undeniable, that they do not proceed in any degree from what are commonly called worldly motives, nay, that they have taken place in opposition to all such, and at a great sacrifice of much tliat must needs be dear and precious, even to the most disinterested and magnanimous, of the esteem and regard of friends, it may be even of family ties, of opportunities of labouring in the vineyard of the Lord. So too, though we may deem that the converts have shewn much intellectual perversity or weakness, and not a little waywardness of will, several of them are indubitably persons eminent for holiness and good works ; and, so far as I am aware, there are hardly any whose character has been impeacht by credible testimony, unless in what regards the above-mentioned perversity of will. Indeed, this is what renders the event a phenomenon so strange, and of such interest in the history of our Church. This is the reason why we regard it with so much pain and awe ; and this is the only ground which could justify my bringing it thus prominently before your notice to-day. It is true, evil ought to be of all things the most strange, the most awful, the most terrible to the Christian ear. But we know far too well, that, awful and terrible as it may be, strange it cannot be. If the defections from our Church could be imputed to any peculiar vices in the persons who have left us, to motives of interest or ambition, to recklessness about holy things, or to individual profligacy, to any of those motives, the confluence of which renders the name of apostate the most shameful and hateful of all names — horrible as the sin would be, its perplexity would only be a part of the great mystery of 122 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. iniquity, and our struggle against it would be a part of that great war which we have to wage against the unbelief and other sins of the world. But I will not suppose, my brethren, that there can be any among you so destitute at once of knowledge and of love, as to join in the vulgar railing accusations, imputing all manner of evil to our brethren who have left us, however you may deplore and condemn their sad and fatal errour. I trust you all leave such language and such thoughts to those religious, or more truly irreligious, journals and newspapers, which are among the special calamities and pests of the day. Many of the seceders, it is certain, so far as human eye can pierce, have been exemplary for their piety, and for their zeal in acts of Christian liberality and love. Let us not deny this, or hesitate to admit it. Let us endeavour studiously to keep our hearts and our tongues free from that which has always been one of the worst characteristics of Popery, its unscru- pulous disregard of truth and honesty in speaking of and dealing with its adversaries. And this, we may be assured, will ever be the best mode of promoting the cause of truth, to hold fast ourselves to truth in all things, and to be careful of saying or thinking more evil of our opponents than the facts warrant and constrain us. If railing and reviling had any power to convince people of their errour, or to check the spread of pernicious doctrines, the work would have been accomplisht long ago : for those remedies have been tried in overwhelming abundance. But in dealing with errour, I believe it would generally be found tliat the homoeopathic treatment is the most efficacious, although the ordinary method hitherto, especially in matters pertaining to religion, has been the allopathic, and that too, using the most drastic remedies, which often have only inflamed the disease. ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 123 Whereas the manifestation of sympathy, the candid recogni- tion of such particles of truth as are ever mixt up, more or less, with the errour, more especially when held by persons of unquestioned intellectual and moral worth, and the attempt to disentangle and extricate these particles from that which distorts them, might win a way for arguments, which else would be angrily repelled. It is from the character of the converts, I say, in part from the intellectual eminence of a few, but in a far greater degree from the piety and Christian activity of many amongst them, that the recent schism derives its peculiar importance. Therefore does the Church of England mourn so deeply over the loss of so many of her children who had suckt in the love of God and the faith in Christ from her breasts, and whom she had trained to serve her and her Lord in the walk of good works. Therefore, too, do the Romanists, both at home and abroad, exult and lift up the song of triumph, and anticipate that these conversions are only the firstfruits of a rich coming harvest, and that the Church of England ere long will bow her free neck, and crawl on her knees to Rome, and beg for the chains of her ancient bondage. Therefore are these conversions regarded by many as falling stars, which by some are deemed to be the rudiments of a new world, by others to prove that the Church is entering into a new sphere of her being. What then ! you may ask : do I mean, in thus fully acknowledging the importance which the recent schism derives from the character of the converts, to imply that I partake in those anticipations which our adversaries found thereupon, that the Church of England is about to tear up the charter of her being, to surrender every right and every blessing which God bestowed upon her at the Reformation, to renounce the liberty wherewith Christ has 124 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. made her free, and to put on a monk's cowl in acknowledge- ment that she has no right to look up to heaven ? No ! my brethren, the words I have been using with regard to Rome must be ample proofs that this cannot be my meaning. So help us God, the Church of England never shall recognize the tyrannical supremacy of the Church of Rome, or any superiority or authority or jurisdiction of Rome whatsoever : for none is grounded in right ; and the least would open the way and afibrd encouragement to further usurpations. So help us God, Rome shall never impose her carnal fictions, her unholy ordinances upon us. " The faith we from our fathers hold in trust. We to our children will transmit, or die," Assuredly there are thousands and hundreds of thousands of hearts in England that are animated with this feeling. May I not hope that among you, my brethren, there is no heart which is not ? And if this be so, then, as we cannot doubt that our cause is the cause of God and of His truth, we may feel a humble but hearty trust that He will not withdraw the light of His truth from us, that He will not suffer that candlestick, which He has set up in England, to be extinguished, that He will not allow the dark clouds of Popery to spread over the nation that He has once delivered from it. If this however, be so ; if we may reasonably trust that the cause of our Church is the cause of the God of Truth, and if the triumph of Popery would be the triumph of gross errour and falsehood, how does it come to pass that persons of acknowledged piety and holiness have forsaken the Church of England for that of Rome? Are not uprightness and holiness, is not the endeavour to preserve a conscience void of offence before God and before man, among the best ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 125 purifiers of the judgement? Does not our Lord Himseli' pro- mise that they who do His works shall know that His doctrine comes from God ? Here it is requisite to draw a distinction. Simplicity of purpose, the purity of the feelings and affec- tions, the desire to walk in God's ways, are the best security for rectitude of judgement in those matters which lie imme- diately before us, or come within the reach of our clear knowledge. When the light of the Spirit dwells in the heart, it enlightens the understanding to discern good from evil. But this is necessarily restricted to those things concerning which we possess an adequate knowledge. It teaches us how we are to act according to the knowledge which we have; but it does not communicate knowledge to us concerning the things of which we are ignorant. Thus, for instance, it continually happens, that men, equally good, equally pious, equally desirous of serving God, are to be found on opposite sides, each doing that which is right according to his judgement. Even at the Reformation, great as was the pre- ponderance of moral energy, of faith, of singlehearted zeal for the glory of God, on the side of the Reformers, it is not to be questioned that many humble sincere Christians, con- tinued within the fold of the ancient Church. This convic- tion is no encouragement to scepticism, as it is sometimes hastily deemed. The assertion that there are divers things relatively right, does not militate against the recognition of one central principle of right and truth, which may be ap- proacht by various ways. The child, thinking and acting as a child, may do that which is right for the child, but which would not be riglit for a man : and the man, casting away childish things, may do that which is right for him as a man, but which would have been wholly unbecoming when he was a child. In like manner, as our judgement, even with regard 126 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. to visible objects is much modified by our position, so is it much more by our position in reference to moral objects ; and under the term positmi, we must include all manner of accidents of temper, education, information, habits, circum- stances. This is a point which I am for ever urging ; but it is a truth of much need at all times, above all in an age of religious dissensions. For by a natural unavoidable fallacy, we ever place our brethren in our circumstances, and invest them with our own feelings and knowledge ; and then we condemn them for not thinking and acting as we do. Assuming that their premisses are the same, we blame them for not drawing the same inference : but all the while we forget that they are not standing in our shoes, and that their premisses must be different, it may chance very different, from which they cannot legitimately draw the same, but must needs draw a very different conclusion. Still our conclusion may be the right one, and theirs may be very erroneous ; yet the way to refute it will not be by imputing it to obliquity of moral vision, but by explaining how it proceeds from obliquity or from indistinctness of intellectual vision. Thus it can hardly be doubted that a large part of the persons who have recently gone over to the Church of Rome, have taken this step with a very insufficient knowledge of what the Church of Rome really is, what it is as a reality existing at this day in those countries where it is dominant, what it has been as a historical reality from the time when it began to fall away from the simplicity and lowhness of the Gospel. Most of them assuredly have a very imperfect con- ception of the principles, which not merely justified, but, we may say, constrained our Reformers to act as they did in rejecting the usurpt supremacy of Rome, and to purge our ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 127 Church from the scandalous corruptions of doctrine and practice which had almost extinguisht the power of Chris- tianity. Such gross misrepresentations of historical truth have been circulated in all forms of late years, such exag- gerations of the human failings of the Reformers, and of the excesses inseparable from so great a convulsion, while the evils against which they had to contend have been slurred over or palliated, or wholly supprest, that it is not to be won- dered at if those who draw the chief part of their information and of their opinions from a certain class of literary caterers, have been led to suppose that the Reformation was the most calamitous event in our history, and that the Reformers were a body of rash, self-willed, ambitious, worldly-minded schismatics. There is enough in the events of that, as of every other age, to furnish some sort of colour for a twofold picture, more or less favorable and unfavorable to each of the two parties : and if all the evil on the one side be mitigated and excused or omitted, and all on the other side be brought out with divers aggravations and no slight admixture of falsehood, he who is imposed upon by such a representation may curse where he ought to bless, and may love and bless that which was indeed a curse to his country. It is not easy to estimate the power of such delusions, when they are propagated by those whom we regard with reverential affection, by those to whom we may perhaps owe the first eliciting and the subsequent culture of our spiritual being. A person who has exercised an influence of this sort may easily grow to be regarded as an oracle, more especially if he hap- pens to be the object of any kind of persecution. Then the power of fashion in opinions is so enormous. Any one who has had the opportunity of watching the vicissitudes of public opinion for a score or two of years, must have seen time alter 128 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. time, how some object suddenly darts forward, gets into vogue, is the one thing that everybody talks about, seems to absorb universal attention and interest, as if it were the one thing of paramount importance ; and then, after a season, by a turn of the wheel it slips down, and is almost forgotten. The greatest poet of the last generation has prefixt this motto to one of the volumes of his Memoirs: "What one desires in one's youth, one finds in one's old age in abundance." This he experienced himself in a number of instances, so that often in his latter years he had to strive against the overweening estimation of that, for the due appreciation of which, in his younger days he had been one of the first to contend. Living in an age of dreary, shallow, prosaic rationalism, when all former ages were viewed with self-complacent scorn, which vented itself especially upon what are called the middle ages, and which viewed all their memorials, their civil and religious institutions, their poetry, their painting, their architecture, as barbarous,— an age when all Europe seemed to have assumed the motto which the town of Geneva took at the Reformation, Post tenehras lux, — he discerned the beauty and worth of much that was then depreciated and despised, and he was among the first in opening the eyes of others to discern it. But in his latter years he found that what had been unduly deprest was no less unduly exalted. In my last Charge I drew your attention to the analogy between the conversions which have been going on in Ger- many, since the beginning of the present century, and those which have taken place recently in England ; and I endea- voured to point and trace out a variety of fallacies, by which, it seems to me, many of the German converts, and several of the English likewise, have been more or less deluded. To this point I will not recur to-day, except for the sake of mentioning two ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 129 important features in which our Enghsh conversions differ from the German, In the first place, when the principal German converts left the Protestant Churches in which they were born, the heart of religion in those Churches was almost eaten out by a rationalizing unbelief; and the unstilled religious cravings, which could find nothing to satisfy them in their original home, might excusably be tempted to go and seek for some- thing congenial, where at least there was the outward form and semblance of a religious worship exciting and gratifying some of the highest qualities of our nature. But no excuse of this sort can be alledged in behalf of those who have been quitting our Church. In her very lowest state of doctrine and practice, her ancient discipline kept her from running into those extravagances of speculation in which the theology of Germany has so freely indulged ; nor were the badges of our Christian profession ever banisht in the same degree from our social Hfe. And during the last half centuiy. Christian feeling has been gaining ground every year, at least among the upper classes ; the observances which bear witness to the influence of Christianity in our domestic life have every year become commoner ; the inculcation of Christian principles, instead of ethical maxims, the preaching of Christ, and of Him cru- cified, has every year become more general in our pulpits ; we have every year been acquiring a livelier consciousness of the great works to which God has vouchsafed to call us both at home and abroad, and more persons have felt how blessed is the privilege of being allowed to aid in the carrying on of those works ; church-services and communions have been becoming more frequent : even in the minor points of ecclesiastical order, of decoration, of church-architecture, many improvements have recently been made. It is true that, as is continually the case, both in our 130 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. inward moral life, and in the institutions of society, the earnest effort to remove one evil often disclosed others, requiring still greater efforts to remove them : nor, in speak- ing of what has been effected, do I mean to imply that we have the slightest ground for boasting or for self-satisfaction. I am merely urging that they who have left us cannot plead in their excuse, as the German converts might plead, that they have taken flight in consequence of the utter decay of all spiritual life in the Church of their fathers, or that they could not find an opportunity for exercising their gifts in the service of God within that Church. There are ample oppor- tunities within it, nay, pressing calls, for the highest faculties of every kind, for every intellectual, for every moral, for every spiritual power ; only that in this, as in other modes of operation, we are not to choose our own field of action, and our own method, but must submit to work in the field and after the manner which God has ordained for us. Nor ought we to desist from our work, because we are assailed with reproaches and abuse, however bitter and unmerited they may be. The scoffs of Sanballat only made Nehemiah urge the Jews to labour more diligently. And do not the beatitudes teach us that one of the privileges of Christ's ser- vants is to endure persecution in His service ? The submitting patiently and perseveringly to labour in that service, through evil report and good report, is an incomparably better discipline of the spirit than hair shirts, and scourges, and dark cells. This brings me to speak of that which seems to me one of the chief causes or sources of the recent unfortunate acts of schism. The second point of contrast, to which I ahuded just now, between the German conversions and the English, is connected with one of the pervading differences in the ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 131 character of the two nations. The decision of the German converts rested mainly on speculative grounds, with some of them on merely esthetical grounds, with some on political, with some on ecclesiastical, with some, it may be, on dog- matical. What some loved in Rome was the mother of the arts, who fascinated men's feelings, and purified their tastes by setting up the beautiful worship of the Virgin. Others admired what they regarded as her beneficial influence in cementing the nations of Europe by a common bond of union. Others desiderated a centre of religious unity ; others, an authoritative expounder of truth. With us, on the other hand, inasmuch as our practical tendencies predominate so greatly over the speculative, the cravings which have led, and which, it may be feared, unless the disease be checkt, may still lead many to Rome, relate more to matters of discipline. It is supposed that Rome has provided better for the religious wants both of individual and of social or national life. Some fancy that what they especially need is a greater frequency and variety of liturgical services, and that the worship of the Romish Church is more fitted to promote the growth in holiness than our own. Others think that they should be better able to contend against their inward foe, and to over- come the temptations that beset them, if they were able to confess their sins to a priest. Others again would persuade us that the panacea for all the social and moral evils of England is to be found in a clergy bound by vows of celibacy, and in monastic institutions. Others deem that the only effectual way of putting down and crushing the sceptical and rationalizing spirit of the age is to set up the infallible authority of the Church, embodied in that of the Pope; who, however, would not be able to accomplish much, unless he were suppo rted by his auxiliary tribunal of the Inquisition. k2 132 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE, Here let me remark, generally, with reference to these and all similar plans for healing the present evils of the Church, that they who place reliance in any of these remedies, if they deem themselves qualified for giving counsel, whether by word of pen or otherwise, would be fully justified in recom- mending the adoption of that which they think likely to be beneficial, and in urging it with an earnestness proportionate to the strength of their conviction. But for persons to leave our Church, because she does not straightway bow to their advice and do as they bid her, — for any one to go over to the Church of Rome, because his own Church does not supply him with those institutions and ordinances which he fancies would better promote his own personal edification, or that of his neighbours, — is an utterly lawless act of the most presumptuous self-will. It is just as if a political reformer were to abandon his native land, or to lift up the standard of rebellion in it, because the Legislature hesitated to adopt the measures which he recommended as expedient for the good of the State. We are not to frame our own institutions, our own world, though almost everybody in these days wishes to do so, and thinks himself qualified for the task. We are to occupy our station in the world, such as God and our ancestors have made it, availing ourselves of all the means of good which it may afford, endeavouring indeed, when we see anything wrong or mischievous, to correct it by legitimate methods ; but for the great bulk of mankind, the best mode of fulfilling their duty will be by striving to animate and actuate the existing forms of society with high, moral, and religious principles, not to change and re -model those forms. We are so apt in all things to fancy that, if we change the outward form, the circumstances, the dress, our work will be done. This arises in great measure from our moral torpour. ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 133 We postpone the exercise of that moral energy, which is the main thing needful, and which would work good under every combination of circumstances ; and we excuse ourselves to our consciences with the notion that our circumstances hinder us. Meantime, while the depths of our will lie stagnant ; the water at the surface, our wilfulness, is in com- motion, and is fluttered and flattered with the thought of altering the face of the world, whereas the results of moral energy would be far less prominent and obtrusive. Yet, even though the form were changed, nothing essential would yet be done ; the whole work would have to begin from the beginning. Even the heathen satirist, you will remember, had discerned this truth. Coelum, non animum, mutant, qiii trans mare currunt : Strenua nos exercet inertia : navibus atque Quadi'igis petimus bene vivere : quod petis hie est : Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit aequus. Even he felt that " the mind is its own home." Much more should we, who live in the time when the true worshippers have no longer to go to Jerusalem to worship the Father, but are called to worship Him in all places in spirit and in truth ; we who know that the mind of the Christian is not merely its own home, but that it is the temple of the Holy Ghost, who is no respecter of circumstances, and who assuredly is no less present in the Church of England than in that of Rome. Nor can we well fail to remember, among the numerous inconsistencies and contradictions which mark the new school in our Church, that one of its main purposes from the first has been to contend against the exercise of private judgement. You know how private judgement has been rebuked and derided : all manner of evils have been said to 134 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. result from it : much unseemly abuse has been poured out on the Reformers, because they followed the dictates of their consciences, instead of sacrificing their consciences to the dictates of the Church, that is, of the persons who happened at the time to bear sway in the Church. On this matter there has been a vast deal of confusion : very different acts, some of them reprehensible, some inevitable, some laudable, have been heapt together under the head of private judge- ment, and have all fallen under the same censure. This con- fusion I cannot here pause to unravel. Thus much however seems plain, that, while Luther's conduct, for instance, at Worms, was the only conduct consistent with honesty and truth, whereas, if he had recanted, and denied what the most diligent and careful examination of God's word compelled him to believe, he would have been a base recreant and renegade ; on the other hand, to make private judgement the arbiter of great and complicated historical and ecclesiastical questions, or of questions of practical expediency, is utterly incompatible with law and with the due subordination of the individual member in the social system. When the question is, whether we are to obey God or man, the Christian must not hesitate ; nor on the other hand, ought he to hesitate, when, with regard to outward matters the question is, whether he is to follow his own judgement, or that of those who are set over him in the Lord. I have been speaking on the supposition that the things which the deserters of our Church longed for, and for the want of which they have quitted her, are really expedient and desirable. Even then they ought to have abode patiently in the place where God had set them, doing what they could indeed, by calm reasonable persuasion to effect the alterations they wisht, but waiting until God in His own time should see ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 135 fit to bring them to pass. This is the only Hne of conduct consistent with Christian humihty and obedience, the hne which they ought to have taken, the hne which ought to be taken by those, if there are any still amongst us, who enter- tain similar opinions. In an ordinary state of things indeed, it might be deemed an idle truism to tell people that they must not fancy they are to regulate and remould ecclesi- astical institutions and ordinances according to that which may seem right in their eyes, and that they are to leave the settling of such things to those to whom God has committed the government of His Church. But even such primary maxims are violated in these days by persons professing to rule their lives by God's law. Still a further important ques- tion remains : would the changes, which are thought likely to be beneficial, really be so ? To answer this question at all adequately would far exceed the limits 1 must impose on myself : I can only suggest a few brief observations. The mere fact, that the institutions, for which several persons amongst us are longing, were devised or adopted by the Church of Rome, is at least a presumption that they were framed with a good deal of practical wisdom ; this being one of the qualities which the Church of Rome in- herited from the republic and the empire. In the wisdom of the serpent, so far as that can go when divorced from the harmlessness of the dove, she has ever been eminent above other Churches. But such wisdom is apt to degenerate into worldly cunning. Wherever the serpent goes, he leaves a sHme in his path; and whatever he touches is tainted therewith. Thus, as worldly-mindedness has always been a distinctive characteristic of the Romish Church, as her whole policy has declared, in direct contradiction to our Lord's declaration, that her kingdom is of this world, we 136 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. may perceive in her whole system that her chief object has been to make men dutiful and submissive to her, much more than to make them living members of Christ. Her ritual, for instance, with all its beauty and splendour, is certainly not framed for bringing men to worship God in spirit and in truth, but much rather, like the ceremonial pageants of the heathens, for winning and fascinating the minds of the people, and for giving the hierarchy a command over them. A large portion of it may doubtless have been intended in the first instance, to engage the imagination and the feelings in behalf of Christianity, in regions where these parts of our nature are more susceptible, and among persons whose understandings had hardly been drawn out of the shell. But as we find, in our days, that the understanding has its dangers, its own wilfulness, its proneness to substitute its forms and processes for spiritual truth, so the imagination likewise has dangers of its own, and these are no less de- structive to the purity and simplicity of faith. Hence all manner of idolatries ; hence a spirit of religious voluptuous- ness, so to say, which allied itself easily with the grossest im- morality. That which was meant to represent and symbolize spiritual realities, grew, as is perpetually the case, to be regarded as the only reality; and they who exercised autho- rity in the Church, many of them, not only did not contend against the delusion, but even fostered and pampered it. Hereby Christianity in course of time, was quite overlaid and overgrown with falsehoods. Owing to this, at the Reforma- tion, when men's minds were again quickened to discern the spiritual truths of the Gospel through the tawdry trappings which covered and concealed them, a severer ritual was establisht ; much of that which had fed the imagination was cut off, as ministering occasion to idolatry, and a greater ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 137 prominence was given to that which appealed to the under- standing. For the dangers of the understanding were but faintly known ; the rocks and quicksands which surround it were very imperfectly markt out in the charts of those days : it was not so well ascertained that we are scarcely less prone to idolize the abstract forms of thought than pictures and images, and that the words which address our reasoning faculties may leave our inward man quite as unmoved as the sights and sounds which strike on the senses. In such things the Church has full authority to determine that which it may deem conducive to edification ; and though private individuals have liberty to suggest and recommend changes, they are bound to submit to the decision of those who are invested with authority. That decision, in each national Church, will of course be regulated by a consideration of the general wants of the particular nation and age, as they manifest themselves in the great body of the people ; and it will hardly be able to take account of those religious fancies, which, among the revolutions of manners, may easily become fashionable for a time among the more cultivated classes of society. In fact, the main source of this ill-regulated craving for a splendid and varied ritual, such as shall act more immediately upon the imagination, is the want of faith, which, we shall find, is also the source of the other inordinate cravings mentioned above. It is because we have not a faith strong enough to give substance to spiritual truths, that we desire to have those truths imaged and shadowed forth by outward representations. Because we cannot take in the full meaning of the promise, that the Father shall be worshipt in spirit and in truth — because we cannot believe that God will be present with us in our seasons of solitary prayer, and of 138 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE, family worship — therefore do some persons go over to Rome, from not finding the practice of daily services in their Parish Churches. I grant readily that an additional blessing may be expected to rest on a parish where it is found practicable to gather any considerable number of persons together in the daily communion of public worship ; and wherever this can be done, wherever the local circumstances of the parish do not present almost insuperable obstacles to it, I would earnestly exhort you, my brethren, to ponder well whether it does not behove you to establish a daily service in your Churches. I cannot speak more positively in behalf of a practice in which, owing to the unfortunate position of my own Church, I cannot set you an example ; nor would it be expedient for you to proceed without due caution, or to take any step without consulting your Bishop, at a time when every innovation, however manifestly conducive to holiness, may disturb the peace of a parish. Most entirely too, do I concur with those who think, that, if the introduction of daily public services into a parish tended to supersede family prayer in the particular houses, it would be a great calamity. For the regular practice of family prayer in every dwelling would be a far greater blessing, not only because a far greater number of persons, indeed every soul in the parish above the age of infancy, may thus be assembled before God's foot- stool every day, but also because it tends to make every Christian more fully realize the blessedness of his calling, to make him understand how he too is a member of that holy priesthood into which all by baptism obtain entrance, how every father of a family is especially the priest of that family, and how every Christian dwelling is a holy place, how holiness is no way a prerogative belonging exclusively to Churches, and to those who are ordained to the ministry, but is granted ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 139 to all men and to all places in Christ ; so that all of us may draw near through Him to the Father. But I cannot see why the establishment of daily public prayer should check or interfere with the practice of daily family prayer, unless indeed, encouragement be given to a blind superstitious notion of an exclusive sanctity as belonging to the former. Rather, as all the Christian graces thrive and flourish best in union, so do all the offices of holiness : they who are brought to love God do not find their desire for communion with Him slacken, but increase, in proportion as it is gratified. Moreover, although I cannot deem that a person who seceded to Rome on such grounds would be justified in doing so, still assuredly it would not be seemly that our Church should be exposed to the charge that her children are leaving her because they cannot find opportunities for the daily public worship of God. Again, and in a still higher degree, does the want of faith manifest itself in the craving which is felt by many for an opportunity of confessing their sins to a priest, with the purpose of receiving his absolution. It is a proof of the strange ignorance, or wilful blindness, which prevails in a certain school concerning the most notorious facts in the history of the Church, that auricular confession not only finds its apologists, but even its eulogists in these days, that any persons should long after it for their own edification, that any should speak of it as the only efficient means for building up the whole people in faith and godliness. An efficient instrument it certainly is, an instrument of awful power ; but it has been tried, and it has been found to be a terrible curse. It is a power not committed to man, and seems like some magical charm which man is not fit to use, and which he can hardly attempt to use without abusing it. Twenty 140 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. years ago, if any one had to speak of auricular confession, he would hardly have done so without some word expressing abhorrence. If any person was enumerating the evils of Popery, foremost well nigh in the list would have stood " the abomination of auricular confession." So too, is it one of the chief abuses which are complained of in Romish countries at this day, and its abolition is anxiously desired. But, as it is the main prop of the power of the hierarchy, this desire will hardly be accomplisht, unless by some con- vulsive struggle. The wish for it now entertained by some persons in England arises, I said, from want of faith. We do not feel a sufficiently lively assurance of God's presence, of His hearing us, of our having gained an access to Him through Christ, so that we may confess our sins to Him, and of His readiness to forgive the sins of all such as come to Him with penitent hearts in the name of His Son. This is one of the great trials of our faith, one of the things which it is the hardest for flesh and blood to believe ; and therefore do we crave after a visible ear into which to pour our con- fession, a visible minister from whom we may receive the declaration of God's pardon ; and when this is granted to us, a number of superstitious delusions spring up ; the minister is exalted into a priest, and is supposed to have the power of conferring absolution ; which is soon regarded as depending on the outward act of confessing to the priest, rather than on the spiritual confession to God. At the same time there are other motives which induce the same wish, and which have perhaps acquired a more than ordinary strength from the peculiar character of the age. As we are not only members of Christ, but members one of another in Christ, God has been graciously pleased to order that, in our spiritual, no less than in our temporal life, there should be a constant inter- ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 141 change of giving and receiving. We are all to teach one another ; we are all to help one another ; to minister to one another, according to our ability : and so are we to confess our sins one to another. In a truly Christian community this would be the practice ; and its fruits would be most blessed : but it can hardly prevail except where true Chris- tian humility is found, and true Christian love, and true Christian simphcity, and true Christian frankness. On the other hand, where, under the hierarchal corruption of the Scriptural ordinance, the confession is not to be the mu- tual outpouring of two Christian hearts, opening their secret depths to each other, but is to be made to a priest, the whole relation between the parties is perverted ; and he who deems himself elevated thereby above the region of common human sinfulness, is perhaps the chief sufferer by the perversion. In an age of high cultivation and refinement, and sensitive- ness to worldly influences like the present, the difficulty of attaining to that Christian simplicity and frankness, which are requisite ere we can confess our sins one to another, is per- haps greater than ever ; and as at the same time we have been making rapid strides in many quarters toward the Eomish errour, which invests the minister of Christ with the super- human, mediatorial powers of the priesthood, it is not surprising that those who have imbibed the errour, and who cannot realize the idea of the universal Christian priesthood, should long to have a human substitute for the Divine Mediator and Absolver. Against this errour we can only contend by pointing out its utter fallacy, its terrible mischiefs, and the evil sources out of which it springs; and on the other hand, by increast earnestness and diligence in proclaiming the true evangelical doctrine of forgiveness granted through Christ, to all such as seek it contritely at the foot of His Cross. At the 142 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. same time, we should endeavour to cultivate Christian open- heartedness among our brethren, and to exercise it ourselves, and to shew a readiness in giving "ghostly counsel and advice" to all such as especially need it. I have said thus much on these two points, because, so far as we have means of judging, several of the recent converts to Romanism, and of those amongst them who have had the most serious motives for their act, seem to have been attracted by what they deemed the more devotional character of the Romish worship, and by the hopes of finding help in the confessional for the struggle against their sins. In both these motives we have found the same characteristics, a very repre- hensible wilfulness, and arbitrary exercise of private judgement in matters in which the individual has no right to determine for himself, and a want of faith in spiritual realities, in the privilege which Christ has obtained for His people, of wor- shiping the Father in spirit and in truth, and of seeking and receiving forgiveness from the Father through our one Mediator and Intercessor. On the other things mentioned above, as having exercised an influence in promoting the recent secessions, the time will not allow me, nor can it be needful, to say more than a very few words. That any persons should have arisen in our age to advocate the com- pulsory celibacy of the clergy, after the evidence which eight centuries have supplied of the revolting profligacy which it infallibly produces, is a proof of the wanton recklessness with which our divines in these days play at nine -pins, so to say, with truths, setting them up to display their skill in knocking them down. In Romish countries we hear numbers crying out for the abolition of the pestilent curse, which taints the very fountains of all social morality. But here in England, — partly from a fondness for paradoxes, and partly from that ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 143 spirit of dilettantism, which an eminent writer has noted to be one of the principal characteristics of our age, and which judges of institutions and practical measures by their beauty, or by their aptness to awaken poetical sentiment, not as • though they were realities to be handled and grappled with, and employed in the weekday drudgery of actual life, but as if they were works of art to be gazed at and talkt about, — through this spirit, which is above all mischievous and debas- ing, when it intrudes into matters pertaining to religion, we have dilettanti admirers of celibacy. That such persons must be weak and shallow in faith is plain : for dilettantism is the very antipode to faith. But no less assuredly does the whole institution of celibacy, though good motives may at times have actuated its authors and upholders, proceed, like the other errours of Gnosticism and Manicheism, from a want of faith in the spiritual character of good, in the purity and sanctity of all God's ordinances, and in the power of the spirit to bring the flesh into subjection, through the victory of Him by whom the Prince of this world was judged. And does not the desire to set up the idol of an infallible earthly authority in the Church evince a want of faith in the self-manifesting power of Truth, and in the abiding presence of the Spirit who was to guide the Church to the whole truth ? If the promise of the Spirit were not given to us, then we might perhaps need a human umpire to arbitrate in all controversies on matters of faith. No fables ever devised by man, not even the wildest in the Indian or Scandinavian mythology, are grosser fictions than that of papal infallibility: yet this is the weapon wherewith the Irrationalists of our times think they shall overcome Rationalism. But their hopes will assuredly be bafiled. Reason will overcome Rationalism ; but nothing else will : the right use of Reason 144 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. will correct and overpower the abuse of Reason : Reason working in unison with Faith will conquer Reason working without and against Faith. When I began I meant to speak to you about the strange explanation or apology which has recently been set forth for the peculiarities of Romanism by the leader of the late schism, where they are defended on the ground of their being developments, as they are termed, of the primary principles of Christianity. But the time will not allow me to enter upon this subject, which cannot be discust summarily. Perhaps too, such a discussion could not well be carried on in a manner suitable to the present occasion. Nor is it of such general interest as the topics of which I have been speaking, except so far as it derives an interest from the accidental cir- cumstances attending its being brought forward. In fact it is hard to believe that any one, even that the author himself, has really been influenced by the arguments urged in that apology. The reasoning therein, however ingenious it may be, can only be regarded, it seems to me, as an accessory after the fact. I cannot, indeed, agree with those who are scared by the use thus made of the notion of development in justifying what they have been accustomed to account gross and pernicious errours, and whose terrour makes them shrink from the thought that there has been any development in Christianity. Surely our Lord's declarations concerning the Kingdom of Heaven, where He likens it to seed, to a grain of mustard-seed that is to spring up and become a great tree, to leaven by which the whole lump is to be leavened, do not merely refer to the outward diffusion of the Gospel in space, to the spreading of Christianity over the earth. They also mean that the whole man, yea, that the whole of human nature, is to be leavened, all our feelings, and all our thoughts. ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 145 all our poetry, and all our philosophy, and all our history, and all our science. Surely these are among the kings of the earth that are to bow down to Christ : over all these the Gospel is to reign as King of kings and Lord of lords. And is not the same thing implied in the promise, that the Com- forter shall lead us to the whole truth, shall teach us the many things which Christ had to tell us, but which we were unfit to hear? For, I trust, you would not limit the abiding of the Comforter, either in this or in any other of His mani- fold offices, to our Lord's immediate disciples. Surely the promise extends to all ages of the Church ; and hereupon do we build our confidence that she will abide in the truth in spite of all the assaults and artifices of the Father of lies. We are not, indeed, to look for any new revelation. In lead- ing us to the truth, the Comforter, in all ages, has only taken the things of Christ, and shewn them to us, developing and unfolding the infinite riches of truth contained in the Gospel, shewing it to us in its numberless relations, in its adaptation to all the circumstances, all the wants, every possible con- dition of mankind. I cannot understand how any one who has the slightest knowledge of the history of the Church, of the state of religious opinion, of dogmatic theology in various ages, can deny that there have been continual developments of religious truth, in the sense just described, elicitings of the oak, whose branches are to spread over the earth, out of the acorn, in which they lay in the germ. Nor can I see what danger we have to apprehend from such a belief, so long as it is combined with the belief that the Spirit of Truth is still abiding in the Church, enlightening and guiding us, if we seek His light and guidance, and still continually taking of the things of Christ, and shewing them to us. Of course many things maybe called developments of Christian truth,which are not so. 146 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGF, In every path man is prone to go astray. Thus of late we have had a variety of developments set before us, which verily seem much as though a conjuror were developing a hundred yards of ribbon out of a walnut ; or as when Swift, in caricaturing the developments of etymology, deduces King Piper from Hotspur. But such extravagances need not dis- turb us, except with compassion for him who utters them. Our intellectual faculties remain to us ; nor does it require any extraordinary clearsightedness to pierce through such delu- sions ; and if we seek in faith for a higher illumination, we shall obtain it. With reference to the things which are now palmed upon us as developments, and which we are required to accept as such, let me observe that the march of thought, in all its regions, is progressive ; the human mind cannot walk crab-wise ; we cannot pare down our stature, and put on the worn-out, cast-off clothes of former years. We cannot rise above our philosophy by taking up the horn-book again. Dilettantism will amuse itself with antiquarian resuscitations, and deck itself out with modern antiques. But practical life requires its own growths, and that which is conformable and congenial thereto. In ages when intellectual and moral energy is almost effete, like that of Hadrian, people will, indeed, attempt to revive exploded superstitions, even as they may affect archaisms of language. But even then the revived superstition was no more like the reality, than a skeleton is like the living body which once clothed it. That which has once been exploded cannot again become a part of the organic structure of society. You might as well sow a husk, or expect a chicken from an empty egg-shell. For this reason, as well as from my firm conviction that the truth is with us, and not with Rome, in the matters controverted between the two Churches, I cannot myself anticipate that ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 147 the Church of Rome will ever triumph over ours. To many, I believe, it has been a consolation during the last year, that, while Rome has been gaining strength by the recent schism in England, she has been losing strength, in a far greater degree, numerically, by the schism of an opposite tendency in Germany. But, for my own part, I grieve to say that I cannot look with any kind of satisfaction on that schism. One of the greatest living Protestant divines in Germany said to a friend of mine, with reference to this schism, that Romanism, along with a belief in Christ, seemed to him far better than the rejection of Romanism, when accompanied by the rejection of the belief in Christ. This seems, so far as I have been able to learn, to be lamentably the predominant character of the new schism. Nay, even with regard to Rome, as her most formidable enemy has ever been a living faith, so, on the other hand, it is not likely that she will suffer much from a schism proceeding from any other principle. After a while, it is probable, some sort of religious longings will arise ; for society will hardly hold together without some such ; and these, when there is no strong principle of faith, will naturally incline Romeward. Rather, so far as my very scanty information enables me to form a judgement, should I augur good to the cause of Christian truth, from the desire for religious knowledge which appears to have been awakened recently in several provinces of France, and which is said to have led to the establishment of large evangelical congregations in a number of parishes, where, a few years ago, not a single Protestant was to be found. And even after all the deduc- tions which must be made, in consequence of the alloy and dross ever mixt up in every undertaking wherewith man is concerned, there does seem to be a better spirit moving about and stirring among the nations of Europe, from which l2 148 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. we may hope that the Author of all good will, in His own time, bring forth what He sees to be for the good of His Church. Only let us each in his station, do our part in sim- plicity and earnestness and love ; and let us be assured that they who follow the example of the Rechabites, and obey the commandments, and keep the precepts of their fathers, shall share in the blessing bestowed on the Rechabites. The deep overpowering interest which seems to me to attach to the subject on which I have been speaking, has led me on nearly to the utmost limits that I must needs set to my address to you ; and yet how small a part have I said of what might well have been said ! how many topics have I been compelled to pass over, and even on those on which I have toucht, how meagre and scanty have my remarks been ! That your interest, my reverend brethren, has gone along with me, in the chief part of what I have been saying, I would fain hope ; for to all of you, I cannot but believe, the recent acts of schism must have furnisht much deep and anxious thought, much pain and perplexity. One question they suggest to all of us : how are we to act in consequence of them ? how is our own conduct to be modified, so that we may not, in any way, furnish occasion for fresh offences, but may remove all such occasion so far as in us lies ; nay, may do all that in us lies to prevent others from falling into the same offence ? And here, it seems to me, and I trust you will concur with me, one line of conduct is utterly reprehensible and condemnable, that to which I have alluded, of provoking our brethren, whose views on certain ecclesiastical and theo- logical questions differ from our own, to leave us, that of taunting them with dishonesty if they do not. Rash, ignorant zealots, whose heads are hotter than their hearts, self-consti- tuted popes, whose first article of faith is their own infallibility, ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 149 and the second, the damnable heresy of all who differ from them, have often been scattering such fire-brands about. Let it be our rule, my brethren, to eschew such conduct. The time may come, when He who reads the heart may say to him who seems, to the outward eye, still hovering on the brink of evil. That which thou doest, do quickly. But even that was not uttered until all the power of Divine love had been tried, until that love had even humbled itself to wash the feet of him who was to commit the horrible treason, and to feed him with the sacred symbols of the sacrifice offered up for mankind. And even those words do not provoke the crime ; they do not decide what the traitor is to do ; they merely urge him to a prompt decision, and that too, imme- diately after everything had been done to soften his heart. This is the Divine pattern of what our conduct ought to be toward all such as we suppose to be likely to fall into any sin. We should wash their feet, we should minister to them in every way in our power ; we should endeavour, by devoted love and patient reasoning, to convince them of their errour, and to win them back to the truth ; then, but not till then, may we say. That which thou doest, do quickly. And as we shall never believe that we have done anything at all com- parable to what Divine love did for Judas, as the Christian will ever feel that he might do far more in washing the sinner's feet, far more in ministering to him, the time will never come when the Christian will think himself justified in saying to any one, whom he conceives to be meditating a sinful act. That which thou doest, do quickly. Tlie strange inconsistency is, that the very persons who would urge their erring brethren to go over to Rome, are the very persons who deem such an act utterly heinous and reprobate. Yet, if they suspected a man of cherishing too warm an affection for 150 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. the wife of his friend, would they urge him to commit adultery ? If they saw him brooding over some insult that he had received, would they bid him commit murder? Surely, my brethren, if any of us see a man, especially a young man, over-indulgent to the errours of Romanism, and most of those who are so are among the young, — if we sus- pected him of not feeling a proper repugnance to the idolatrous practices of Popery, — the rule for our conduct is laid down in that verse of St. Paul, Brethren, if a man he overtaken in a fault, ye who are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness. Let us try, with our better know- ledge, in the spirit of love, to shew our brethren what per- nicious consequences have proceeded from the practices which they regard with too much complacency ; and, at the same time, as I have said already, let us endeavour, so far as in us lies, to shew them how all that is lawful and right in any irregular wishes they may feel, will find its due food and nourishment in our Church, free from the dangers which encompass their excesses. On the other hand, should there be any amongst you, my brethren, who feel a sympathy with the general body of those opinions, through the exaggeration of which so many have recently fallen into the Roman schism, to them T would say, that they ought to regard the events of the last year as a grave warning and caution. They are admonisht thereby of the evils to which those opinions, when pusht to extremes, lead. The main body of those opinions, I have maintained in my former Charges, is perfectly compatible with a loyal allegiance to the Church of England; and I have referred above to the conclusive evidence of this afforded by the his- tory of our Church in the reign of Charles the First. Still, those opinions express but one side, the outward side, if I ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE, 151 may so say, of Christianity. They are concentrated almost entirely and exclusively in the Church, which is indeed the body of Christ, but is only His body ; and even that may be turned into an idol, if we do not regard it continually in its union with Him who is its Head, and its lifegiving Spirit. In everything our nature is carnal, and is prone to slip down from every spiritual height, and to cling and cleave to that which is carnal. It regards the outside, the carnal, the body, as the main thing, forms, institutions, ordinances, the letter of the law. Every one knows how apt men are to take carnal views of the sacraments, and they who reprove such in their neighbours are perhaps themselves taking views no less carnal of them from another point. Therefore, it behoves us to be always on our guard, lest we be drawn into some of these besetting errours, which have even led men to carnalize heaven and hell. They especially, who have been induced to take a deep and very justifiable, or at least pardonable, interest in matters relating to the externals of the Church, its forms and institutions and ordinances, or even things still more external and accidental, but excusable objects of literary curiosity and interest, its architecture and other decorations, should take warning from the events of the last year, and learn what noxious errours may flow from the indulgence of their allowable tastes, if they do not at the same time, recognize the deeper, higher truths which alone give life and power and sanctity to all this body of ecclesiastical knowledge. Above all is their danger great, if they are led by a spirit of controversy against what they regard as the opinions of an opposite party, to neglect the truths involved in those opinions while contending against their exaggerations and distortions. To restore a sound balance, when it has been once lost, may indeed be difficult for a 152 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. student in a college, where all his pursuits make him attach an exclusive value to what is intellectual and historical. But for you. my brethren, this is much less difficult. So far as outward helps go, you have everything. The devotion to your parochial duties, the intercourse with the poor, the manifold struggles you will have to wage with unbelief and other forms of sin, must bring you, if you do give yourselves heartily to your work, to see that there are other things in Christianity beside that which is ecclesiastical and historical, that there are far mightier powers, the Gospel of mercy, and the Spirit of grace and truth, that it is with these mighty divine realities that we have to deal, that by the help of these we can fight against sin and conquer it, both in ourselves and in others, but that without these we are nothing. I am afraid, my reverend brethren, my hourglass must be more than run out ; and I must not encroach longer on your patience. Thus I am compelled to pass over the other topics suggested by the events of the past year, though several of them are of considerable interest. Else T would gladly have exprest my satisfaction, wherein I should have felt confident of receiving a response from you, that the Bill for the preservation of the two North Welsh Bishoprics, in behalf of which we have sent up our petitions year after year to the Legislature, has been past in the last week by the Upper House of Parliament. At this very late period of the session, the Bill may not improbably be dropt in the House of Commons. Still the measure I trust, is practically carried Indeed for my own part, I never felt a doubt that if the Church persevered in expressing her wishes with the firmness and calmness which become her, our prayer, the justice and reasonableness and expediency of which are so manifest, would eventually be granted. If the preservation of the two ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 153 North Welsh Sees were to prevent the estabUshment of a new See at Manchester, our satisfaction would not be unmixt. But T trust it will only hasten it. The opinions exprest in the recent discussions by many persons, even by some whom we might not previously have numbered among the warm friends of the Church, entitle us to hope that what has long been an object of ardent desire with those who wish to increase her practical efficiency will at length be accomplisht, and that ere many years pass away, we shall see a large addition made to the English Episcopate. Three or four years ago I was askt by a brother Clergyman, whether we might venture to petition for an additional See at Manchester? I replied. Ask for fifty additional Sees, and we shall get them. This was thought a piece of wild extravagance at the time, but already we see this extravagance emerging into the region of practicability, and when so many wonders are wrought every day in the physical world, why should we despair of this, or even of far greater things, if we do but rightly consider Who and what is for us ? In truth I believe that, as has often been seen in history, they who seek for great things are likelier to gain them, than they who seek for little things. Only set high and grand aims before you, and you will rouse men's hearts to sympathize with, and to help you. Some persons may count it improbable that a boon, which was repeatedly withheld from us by a Government supposed to be friendly to the Church, should be granted by those whom we were accustomed to consider as regarding us with less favourable eyes. But it is anticipated in various quarters, that one of the results, an incidental but almost inevitable one, of the policy pursued by our recent Administration, must needs be to break up that whole system of parties by which the commonwealth of England has so long: been directed, or 154 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. rather often distracted. If so, whatever we may think of the other effects of that policy, I trust we shall all agree that this will be an inestimable blessing. Few thoughtful persons can have watcht the ordinary course of public affairs in England, without continually groaning in spirit, to see how the time and the faculties of the Legislature are wasted in endless contentions be- tween the holders of office and the claimants, and how the good of the nation has been postponed or neglected, while opposite parties have been hurling their missiles to and fro at each other. Surely then it will be a great blessing, if our Legislature be brought to the conviction, that it is not designed to be the arena for the gladiatorial exhibitions of political warfare, but that its great duty and purpose is, for all its members to unite in proposing and weighing and digesting such measures as may promote the welfare, moral and spiritual, as well as temporal, of the whole nation ; and may counteract the manifold evils which a high state of wealth and civilization is sure to breed. At all events, my reverend brethren, it behoves us to cherish and to act upon this conviction. Our office removes us far away from the contests of parties, and ought to lift us far above them. We are the ministers, not of a party, but of the whole people gathered into the Church of Christ, and we are bound to love and serve and aid one party just as much as another. Nor can we render them many better services than by help- ing them to get rid of party spirit. We ought thankfully to welcome whatever may be done for the good of the Church, and to join heartily in furthering it, from whatever party it may proceed. Some measures, it may be, will be brought forward, of which many, perhaps all of you will disapprove. Such measures it will of course be our ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 155 duty to oppose. Let not this however, render us less thank- ful for those measures of which we otherwise should approve. The opinions exprest, on the occasions above referred to, warrant us in believing that though several members of the present Administration may not entertain those views which are most prevalent among the Clergy with regard to divers important ecclesiastical matters, still they are sincerely de- sirous of increasing the practical moral and spiritual efficiency of the Church. And surely this ought to be our main object also. Gladly, too, would I have spoken to you about the conse- cration of the second Bishop of our Church at Jerusalem, at which ceremony I had the privilege and happiness of being presei^t. So many of you exprest a deep sympathy with the joy which I felt at the first establishment of that Bishopric, so many of you adopted the measures which I recommended for the sake of testifying our satisfaction and thankfulness, that, since most of you must be aware how that Bishopric has been the object of continual, and many of them virulent attacks, and how very grave charges have been brought against the religious and moral character of some of the persons principally connected with it, I feel in a manner bound to assure you that those charges are in the main utterly groundless, and draw their sting almost entirely from the grossest misrepresentations. The proofs of this I cannot bring forward here. I can only request you to take my assertion on credit. But I feel it my duty to you and to the Church, as well as to myself and to the persons accused, to seize an early opportunity of setting forth these proofs in detail. Another question which is forcing itself upon us more irrepressibly every year, is that which relates to the education 156 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. of the English people. But this I must wholly decline, merely recommending that you should look at whatever measures may be proposed for the more effectual accomplish- ment of this great work, not merely with reference to what we should think desirable in an imaginary or ideal state of things, but with reference to the great practical exigencies resulting from the actual condition of the English people. From one end of England to the other, the same voice sounds, which demands education— a sound, practical, moral and religious education. They who utter the cry know not its meaning ; indeed, their words may be the very reverse, but no voice clamours so loudly for it in the ears of Christian wisdom as that which obstinately rejects it. And now, before I take leave of you, my reverend brethren, I must hold out a hand of affectionate welcome to those among you who are come this year for the first time to our Annual Visitation, in consequence of the incorporation of the Peculiars in the Diocese. This measure, I trust, will prove beneficial to all parties. There may in this, as in other respects, have been advantages of old in the rich variety which characterized the whole organic structure of society as it arose in the middle ages. At all events, that variety had an ample justification in the circumstances out of which it originated. But the forms of the understanding are less rich and various than those of the imagination ; and, as the understanding is the predominant power in our age, the ten- dency is in all things towards uniformity and centralization. Practically too, this tendency if not carried too far, seems to be the most favourable to good government and administra- tion. At all events, in the present instance, it seems to me that it must needs be desirable and expedient that the Clergy, who are bound together by the ties of neighbourhood and ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 157 social intercourse, should also be united in tlie same ecclesi- astical system, so as to labour together in those good works which especially belong to the Church, and which, in propor- tion as our ecclesiastical system becomes riper and more vigorous, will naturally take a diocesan character. The way for this change had already been prepared by the reception of the Clergy of the Peculiars into our Rural Chapters, at which it has always been a particular pleasure to me to meet them. Those Chapters I am aware, like every other institution, have not produced as much good as they might have done, if we all did our best to draw good out of them. But still I would fain hope that the Clergy of the Peculiars have already felt, in some degree, that it was well for them to be united in this manner with their brethren ; and now that they are placed under the ecclesiastical superintendence and guardianship of our Bishop, the benefits of our union, and of our co-operation with each other, will, I trust, become manifestly greater. Nor can I refrain from giving utterance to the happiness which I feel, on this occasion, at seeing the most illustrious person of this neighbourhood coming to this Visitation* in the capacity of Churchwarden of his Parish. To us who are acquainted with him, it is no surprize that he should know where true honour is to be found. But assuredly it would be a blessed day for England if all her aristocracy and gentry were in like manner, to recognize and act upon the divine principle, that he who would be great amongst men should become their servant. Then, at length, might the Church approach to the fulfilment of her heavenly calling, if they who are first in rank and wealth and influence would come forward ' At Lewes, the Earl of Chichester. Ed. 158 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. in every parish, feeling that the most honourable office they could discharge is that of lay elders in the Church of Christ. To this honourable office you, my friends, who are come as Churchwardens to this Visitation, are specially called, and to you I must now say a very few closing words. Your patience, I much fear, has been heavily taxt ; and many of you may probably have thought that you were no way concerned in the chief part of what I have been saying. But surely my friends, this is not so. Surely you too, are loyal and affectionate sons of the Church of England. Surely you too, would revolt from the thought, that the idolatries and superstitions of Popery should ever again gain ground amongst us. Moreover you too, are called to bear your part in the great work of keeping them out. And this you are to do, not merely like every other Englishman, by your own dutiful and loving attachment to the Church of your fathers, by joining in her worship, and praying to God for her prosperity, but your office itself imposes this duty in a special manner upon you. For it is a complaint, per- petually urged by the persons who compare the Church of England with the Romish Church, to the detriment of the former, that we do not shew or feel a sufficient reverence for sacred things. Now with regard to that which is spiritual and truly essential in religion, this charge, I would reply, is unfounded. But can we say the same thing with regard to what is outward ? or, to come to the point which immediately concerns you, can we say the same thing with regard to the house of God ? Most of you might probably answer, that you cannot tell, that you have never been in a Romish country, and do not know how the Churches are cared for there. But, at all events, you have one means of judging before your eyes in your own parish. You can there see ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 159 what reverence our ancestors felt for the house of God, when they built our grand and beautiful Churches, how they spared no cost in building them, how they exercised their minds to make them suitable for their purpose, and full of symmetry and beauty. Now do we in these days shew the same reverence in keeping them up, in preserving them from injury, in re- pairing and restoring such parts as may have fallen into decay? I am very thankful to say, my friends, that considerable im- provements in these respects have taken place within the last few years. In several of our Churches restorations have been undertaken on a large scale, and sometimes with much judgement, mostly with a desire to do right, which after all, is the main thing. In a number of Churches works have been begun, and are carried on by degrees. For all this I feel thank- ful. If we call to mind however, what almost all our country Churches were twenty years ago, and how they were patcht up without any regard to propriety, and with the cheapest materials, we must needs confess that the reverence for God's house had sadly past away from amongst us. You will hardly tell me that we were become too spiritual to care for such things. We did not shew any of this spiritual disregard of externals in our own houses or furniture or apparel, in anything that flattered our pride or ministered to our luxury ; even our stables, nay, our very dog-kennels, were better taken care of than our Churches. Still too, my friends, a great deal remains to be done in almost every parish, before we can bring back our Churches to the state in which they were when our ancestors first set them up to be the glory and blessing of our land. Yet till this is done, it can hardly be said that we feel as much reverence for the house of God as they did. Now this is your special business, my friends ; your office calls you to redeem the people of England from 160 ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. the imputation of irreverence towards the house of God. Another complaint too, which is often made, and in which you are hkewise concerned, is that, while the Romish Churches are open to the whole body of the people, without distinction of persons, ours are almost always crammed with large pens or pews, all the best of which are doled out to the richest persons in the parish, so that the poor, who ought to have the best seats, and most need them, are shoved to the outskirts, and often cannot even find room there, so that they are in a manner driven to some meeting-house. On this point, as you well know, I have often spoken to you before, and I will therefore say no more on it to-day, except to remind you that, by getting rid of closed pews, you will also get rid of one of the great blemishes which disgrace our Church in comparison with that of Rome. These things are, indeed, outward, but, as I have sheM^n you, they have an inward meaning and value, and they are the special business of your office. Do your duty, my friends, in these respects, and in everything else which per- tains to your office. Do your duty diligently and faithfully, as Churchwardens and as men. Set a good example to your parishes. Do what you can to put down immorality, be kind, be liberal, be helpfull : above all, be yourselves a pattern to the people, in your regular and devout attendance at Divine worship. Join heartily in the communion of prayer and praise, and then you will have performed your part to prevent the spread of Popery in England. O if we did but all unite, each in his station, to do the Lord's work with all our heart and soul and mind, then we may be assured would the promise of the ancient Prophet be fulfilled — The voice of joij and the voice of gladness would be heard in the land, the voice of the Bridegroom, even of the ROMANIZING TENDENCIES OF THE AGE. 161 Heavenly Bridegroom, and the voice of the Bride, the Church, the voice of them that say. Praise the Lord of Hosts, for His mercy endureth for ever ; and of them that shall bring the sacrifice of praise unto the house of the Lord ! THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH IN TJMF-S OF TFJAL A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES, DELIVERED AT THE ORDINARY VISITATION IN 1S4S; WITH NOTES, ESPECIALLY ON THE CONTROVERSY TOUCHING THE MANAGEMENT OF SCHOOLS, AND ON THE JEWISH QUESTION THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH IN TIMES OF TRIAL. My Reverend Brethren, If on some former occasions I have been almost opprest with the consciousness of the solemn responsibility lying upon those who are called to speak of the duties and prospects of the Church in these momentous times, what must be my feelings now ? What are your feel- ings, my Brethren, when you reflect on the events of the last eight months ? what have they been ? if indeed you have ever found quiet leisure for gathering your thoughts to reflect on them, — if the press and throng and crash, with which they have succeeded one another, have not so swept you along and stunned you, as well- nigh to stifle the power of reflexion. For with sucli rapidity have they come forward one after another, so quick and sudden and complete have been their trans- formations, it has almost seemed as though, while our movements through space and our modes of communi- cation have been so marvellously accelerated by the inventions of the last twenty years, a similar acceleration had been whirling the destinies of nations, and the whole course of the world along ; so that, before we can adequately combine and arrange the various features of one prospect, it has changed into another, and again into B 2 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH another. Nay, has not the history of Europe during these last months been like a grand display of fireworks, in which one gorgeous or portentous form after another has glared and blazed for a moment before the eye, with alternations ever and anon of darkness, each form vanishing ere the eye itself could discern its ill-defined outlines? It is not to be wondered at, that at such a time, wlien the pulse of the world is beating so much more rapidly than usual, many have foreboded that its dissolution must be drawing nigh. To reflect however on the events of time, to view them in their relation to eternity, to trace, so far as we can trace, the purposes of God in them, to ponder in what way they are designed to mi- nister to the increase of His Son's Kingdom, in what way we are to deal with them, what particular truths they are meant to teach us, what new duties they im- pose on us, — this is the special task of those who are appointed to exercise any part of the prophetical office in the Church. Therefore, as we are here assembled today, on this little isthmus between the past and the future, with the waves indeed dashing tumultuously on all sides, yet having gained a resting-place for a mo- ment, from which to look back on all we have lately been going through, in order that we may try, with God's help, to ascertain what are the peculiar obliga- tions at this moment lying upon us, what the snares and temptations most likely to lead us astray, what therefore we have chiefly to guard and strive against, I trust, my Brethren, you will bear with me, while I endeavour to speak to you with freedom and frankness, and at the same time with an earnest, affectionate de- sire for the welfare of every one of you, and of the IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 3 whole Church, on the weighty, pressing, awful ques- tions, which the events of the last year bring before our thoughts. Even the questions belonging to the peculiar sphere of our Church, which have been started by the occurrences of the last year, have been more numerous and impor- tant than in ordinary years, and have excited an unwonted agitation throughout the land, an agitation very dis- proportionate to their real moment, and which has betokened the inflammable state of men's minds. Dur- ing the last four months however, the interest of these questions, great as it was, has been thrown into the background by the convulsions which have followed one another like the shocks of an earthquake, and have been changing the whole political and social condition of Europe. The reverberation of these shocks has al- ready been felt, and may not improbably be felt still more, unless God vouchsafes to protect us, in England also : and though in common times it may not be ad- visable on this occasion to mix up political matters with those more properly pertaining to our official duties, it seems scarcely possible today to turn entirely aside from those momentous questions which are agitating every thoughtful heart throughout Europe. Even the hea- then poet was able to discern that it is the province and duty of man humani nihil a se alienum putare, to feel an interest in everything that touches the hearts or affects the wellbeing of his fellows: and how much more deeply and vividly is this duty of sympathy with all the cares and wants and distresses of our fellow- creatures imprest on us by the obligations of Christian brotherhood! Moreover, while the events of every B 2 4 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH succeeding clay are shewing us more forcibly than ever, that no earthly power, no earthly skill can avail to heal the diseases and wounds of humanity, we know that for them also there is a remedy, if we can but bring it forth, and if men can be persuaded to receive it, in that Gospel wliich has the promise of this world, as well as of the world to come. The first event of importance to the Church, which occurred after our last Visitation, was the Meeting of Convocation. These Meetings have acquired rather more significance of late years, than they possest during the previous century. In proportion as the consciousness of our ecclesiastical life has become more vivid, we have also felt the need of a council, in which that life should manifest itself, and by which the laws and rules and institutions of the Church should be adapted to the altered circumstances and exigencies of the age. That such a desire is both natural and reasonable, few will dispute. That our present position is a most ano- malous one, nobody can well deny. Divers persons indeed, as is ever the case when a change is demanded, however palpable its advantage may be, or however imperative its necessity, have boded that it would cause still greater evils, than those under which we are at present suffer- ing. Into this argument I will not enter now, having considered it at some length in a Note to my Charge on the Means of Unity. But having spoken to you more than once in former years on the desirableness of an Ecclesiastical Synod, I feel bound to state that this desirableness appeared to be recognised by a consider- able majority of the members who were present in the Lower House of Convocation at our Meeting in last IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 5 November ; and the expression of our desire, which we introduced into the Address sent down to us, was readily adopted by the Upper House. I could have wisht for my own part that the expression had been stronger; and I proposed an amendment to that effect. But an- other amendment, which did not diflFer very materially from mine, being proposed at the same time, both fell to the ground. It is not to be wondered at that a body of men, who meet once in six or seven years for three or four hours, and most of whom are strangers to each other, should not fall at once into that orderly procedure, which a little experience sug- gests, and which is indispensable for carrying debates to a definite conclusion. Such a number of topics too came before us during those few hours, that it was impossible for any of them to receive the considera- tion they required. Owing to this cause, and to the vehement agitation by which the Church has been dis- turbed more than once since, I am afraid, the likelihood of the speedy meeting of an Ecclesiastical Synod has not been increast by the last Convocation. The somewhat faint expression of our wishes has been overpowered by the din of our subsequent disputes. Among the subjects that were brought before us, one has since excited a lamentable ferment, and a pain- ful and distressing controversy, a controversy in which I was reluctantly compelled to take a prominent part. For as T was called upon to invite you, my Reverend Brethren, to pronounce an opinion more or less con- demnatory of a writer who had filled the highest the- ological chair in one of our Universities, it became a duty, which I could not decline, to examine the grounds- 6 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH alledged in behalf of that opinion : and seeing that a careful examination of those grounds convinced me that they were utterly futile, I dared not shrink from the further duty imposed upon me by my office, of warning you more especially, and such other persons as might give ear to my warning, against being misled by what seemed to me an unjust clamour. In so doing I was aware that the opinion I had to express was at variance with that entertained by some of you. But surely you will agree with me that this was no reason for my suppressing it, that on the contrary this only made it more incumbent on me to speak out plainly and without delay, in order that, if possible, I might withhold some of those, whom I knew to have formed their conclusions on very inadequate grounds, from taking a step which they would afterward deeply regret. On the subject matter of this disastrous controversy I will not speak (a). But as the wrath of man, though of itself it does not work the righteousness of God, is often overruled to work it, so may we hope that in the present instance He, who alone can, and who often does, will educe good for His Church out of this evil. We may hope that, at a time when it is becoming more and more a recognised principle of politics, that there should be a sympathy and conformity between govern- ments and the nations they are set to govern, a rightful deference will be paid to the feelings and opinions of the Clergy in the appointment of those who are to rule over them. Since the ancient forms, which were regarded as affording some sort of security on this head, have been proved to be empty nullities, let us further IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 7 liope, and do wliat in us lies, to obtain, that some real, efficient enactment may be provided, — it would not be difficult to devise one, — whereby the Church may be preserved from any encroaching tyranny on the part of the State (b). On the other hand there is a warning and admonition with regard to our own conduct, to be drawn from the controversy referred to, which, if we give heed to it, will be of still greater value, and will far more promote the welfare of the Church. If any one thing was manifest on this occasion, it was, that a number of persons, who took no slight part in the controversy, had a very slen- der acquaintance with the grounds on which they were acting. I am not intending to express any censure on those, who, after a calm examination of the case, were led to a conclusion different from mine. Every con- scientious conviction I desire always to respect. But surely, my Reverend Brethren, you must all concur with me, when I ask you the question thus generally, that it does not become any person, least of all a minister of Christ's Church, to take a step whereby he con- veys a grave censure on a brother, without carefully investigating and sifting the reasons on which that cen- sure is founded. Surely this at all events is involved in our Lord's words commanding us not to judge. Surely too it especially beseems our clerkly character to set an example of caution and deliberation in forming our judgements. At a time when the Church is so torn by the counter- currents of party-spirit, and when each party has its journals, which live by fanning and fostering and fueling, and almost pandering to its prejudices, it is more than ever incumbent on each of us to keep a strict 8 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH watch over our prejudices, and to be especially scru- pulous in ascertaining the exact truth of whatever makes against an opponent. Party-spirit, like every other evil spirit, flies from the light, and dwells in darkness, be- cause its deeds are dark. It is in the darkness that incendiaries prowl about, political and religious incen- diaries, as well as others. Let us shun them, and their darkness, and endeavour to walk always in the light. Had this principle been acted upon, the second con- troversy of which I have to speak, would have been much less vehement and briefer; that, I mean, which has been excited by the Clauses concerning the ma- nagement of Schools required by the Privy Council as a condition of their grants. If this matter had been treated calmly, and with the desire of attaining to an amicable result, not only would much needless irri- tation and asperity have been avoided, but the points of difference, which are of any real importance, would probably have been adjusted satisfactorily long ago. For there are certain premisses, as to which, it seems to me, all intelligent and candid persons, who consider the subject, must agree. In the first place it would appear to have been lost sight of by many, that, when a new School is establish t, it is necessary to have a deed conveying the School to certain Trustees, who thenceforward have the sole legal authority to controll and manage it, unless their au- thority be limited by some express provision. To persons who have no acquaintance with such matters, all legal deeds are irksome and annoying. People like to have their own way in everything, and are unwilling to fetter what they deem their Hberty of action. Trust-deeds, IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 9 testaments, settlements seem to them very cumbrous and uncongenial. Why should not all things be left to go right, without passing through a process of legal drilling ? Nor, until we are lessoned by experience, are we at all aware how important it is, that questions, in which the disposition of property is concerned, should be technically regulated and determined. So apt too are we to tliink merely of the present, and of the future solely as a prolongation of the present, that we are very slow to project our thoughts into a period when that which now is will be wholly changed. Owing to these causes, the Foundation-deeds of Schools have often been drawn up with great negligence, vesting them incon- siderately in Trustees, who have felt little or no interest in education. I have been informed by two excellent clergymen, who have faithfully and judiciously dis- charged the office of Inspector, and who have thus been led officially to examine the Trust-deeds of Schools, that such cases are not uncommon, and that sometimes the whole purpose of the School has been frustrated thereby. In some instances Trustees, who were averse to education, have shut up a school ; in very many they have appointed inefficient, incompetent teachers, the office being con- ferred, for the sake of relieving the Poor-rates, on per- sons whose sole claim was that they could not earn their livelihood in any other way. Yet, when the Trust-deed has once been confirmed, there is no redress for such abuses, except by a special Act of Parliament, the ex- pense of which renders it imattainable. Now the know- ledge of these cases, and of the great importance of Trust-deeds, has led the Committee of the Privy Council naturally and rightfully to desire that such mischiefs. 10 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH which it is so difficult to remedy afterward, might be pre- vented in future by the adoption of Trust-deeds, which should provide, as far as possible, for the permanent efficiency and good management of Schools. Surely too, when their attention had once been directed to the evils which accrue from the present irregularities, it would have been a most culpable neglect of duty, if they had not tried to secure the Schools, on which public money is bestowed, from similar accidents and abuses (c). This, I think, if we look at the matter candidly, we must needs perceive, was the original purpose of the Clauses, which have excited so much opposition. Hence it seems to me that, if we had not been under the in- fluence of unfavorable prepossessions, we should not have taken offense, or had jealous suspicions excited, but should rather have been thankful for being thus preserved from the consequences of our inexperience. At all events I should myself have been so, if I could have obtained such help and guidance some years since for framing the Trust-deed of the School in my own Parish : and I have been informed that several persons, who have received this help, have exprest their gratitude on account of it. It is true, though the primary intention of the framers of the Clauses was not unfriendly to the Church, yet, as they would inevitably look at the affair from a dif- ferent point of view, they might introduce provisions, which we, from our point of view, might deem inex- pedient, or even hurtful. Still, if such was the case, it ought to have been made the subject of an amicable negociation. That there was no hostility, open or lurk- ing, in the Committee of the Privy Council, — could IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 11 we suppose sucli to have existed, — they proved in the first instance by their desire to frame their clauses in conformity to the Terms of Union required by the National Society, and afterward by submitting them to the Committee of the National Society, and adopt- ing the chief part of the changes which the latter Com- mittee suggested. That they should subsequently have been unwilling to alter and modify them again and again, according to the wishes or caprices of each indi- vidual applicant for a grant, is not to be wondered at, and cannot form a reasonable ground for complaint. Is not every Society, which makes grants in aid of any public works, wont to attach certain conditions to its grants, and to require that those conditions should be strictly complied with ? If the conditions are objection- able, we may find fault with them on that ground; but we ought not to find fault with them on the ground of their being imperative. Public bodies are constrained to bind themselves by general laws, were it only to protect themselves from the constantly occurring temptations to partiality, and to obviate the endless discussions and disputes which would arise, unless each particular case were decided according to some general rule. Hence I can feel no sympathy with those who object to the Clauses on the score of their being com- pulsory. Much energetic declamation has been poured out on this head, as though the clauses were an infringe- ment of an Englishman's vested privilege of doing as he likes, right or wrong. The wise however know, that true freedom does not lie in the region of wilfulness, but in that of a willing obedience to law: and the wisest of poets has taught us what sort of character will 12 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH protest the most vehemently against compulsion, so that he will not even give reasons upon compulsion. A cer- tain degree of liberty should indeed be left open, that the general forms may be adapted to the varying circum- stances of particular parishes : but when the main prin- ciples and outlines have been agreed upon as expedient^ it seems to me that a body entrusted by Parliament with the power of voting grants of public money, is under a kind of necessity to make their rules compulsory. I do not forget that, in the case of grants to some of the Dissenting bodies, the Committee of the Privy Coun- cil have been induced to exempt them from some of the restrictions, as well as from the supervision, to which we are liable ; and certain persons have cried out that it is very unjust and shameful, that we of the Church should have a worse measure dealt to us than they have. Now I confess, it has seemed to me, on more than one occasion of late years, that our Ministers have shewn what I could not but deem very reprehen- sible weakness in altering or giving up regulations, which they had declared to be necessary or expedient, in compliance with clamorous importunity. This is one of the many indications, which threaten that the art of government will ere long rank among the extinct arts. But at all events let us not be deluded into fancying that such an exemption is a special privilege or benefit to those to whom it is conceded. The children of the house have to submit to a care, a guidance, a rule, which is not extended to strangers. It is not a mark of oppression, but the privilege of the Church, that we are to a certain extent responsible to the State for the due discharge of those offices with IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 13 which we are invested by the State, The State recog- nises the Church alone, and, as one of the consequences of this recognition, is entrusted with the nomination of our Rulers ; while the Dissenters are left to choose their own ministers, and give no account in any way for the discharge of their duties. The State may indeed bestow its alms on them, as in the instance of the Regium Donum ; but it does not recognise them cor- porately : and perhaps on this ground it may be in some manner justified in not imposing the conditions I have alluded to. Only do not let us, my Brethren, envy as a privilege, what proceeds from their being treated rather as aliens than as citizens. The time will not allow me to discuss the specific provisions in the Clauses, which have excited the most animadversion. I will only notice a couple of points, premising that, if the Committee of the Privy Council has refused to alter its rules at the request of certain individual members of our Church, it might well deem itself warranted in this refusal by the fact that such alterations were not required by the Committee of the National Society, which it has been accustomed to nego- ciate with as the official organ of the Church in matters pertaining to education ; nay, that the Committee of the National Society had declared themselves prepared to recommend the Clauses to applicants for aid (d). The leading principle, which the Committee of the Privy Council has tried to carry out in the Clauses we are considering, is manifestly this, that the lay mem- bers of the Church ought rightfully to have a voice in the management of our Parish-schools. Now this prin- ciple, when it is stated thus broadly, few persons at 14 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH present will openly controvert. Thus far therefore we may regard the Clauses as forming a beneficial epoch in the history of our National Education ; since they contain a distinct assertion of a very important principle, which almost everybody, when called upon to admit or deny it, allows to be right, though in the common practice hitherto it has often been sadly dis- regarded, to the injury of every party, of the Clergy, no less than of the Laity, and of the School itself. Thoroughly indeed do I concur with you, my Reverend Brethren, in holding that the Church is the rightful, and the best educater of the English people : for this is merely another way of saying, that religion is the only sound and stable foundation for a system of National Education, in a Christian land the religion of Christ ; and, where there is a National Church, one main portion of its ofSce will necessarily be to take charge of the education of the people. But I trust that you on the other hand will go along with me in disclaiming the proposition, which some have substi- tuted for the one just stated, that the whole manage- ment and controU of our National Education ought to be vested exclusively in the Clergy. In bygone ages, when almost all the knowledge possest by a nation was concentrated in the Clergy, this was a natural con- sequence : nor need we be surprised that the proposition was inverted, and that it was accounted wellnigh indis- pensable for a teacher of youth to be in holy orders. This state of things continued down to the Reformation, being fostered by the jealous policy of that Church, which has always laboured to keep its lay members in abject spiritual subjection. Hence some of the rules IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 15 laid down by our own Church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, wdth reference to this as well as divers other matters, bear the marks of emanating from a like system. Tliese rules those in our days who belong to the tribe of the Seven Sleepers, and who fancy that the world is standing still at the point where their minds fell asleep, are desirous of reviving. Yet the results from the whole system were no other than what a sa- gacious man would have anticipated. On the one hand the Laity, being almost precluded from taking part in the godly works of the Church, grew to deem that their vocation was altogether secular : and, as it is scarcely possible for people to preserve a lively interest in that in which they find no room for action, many, especially of the more intelligent, among the higher classes lapst into the region of practical, if not of speculative, infidelity ; the evil of which was rather increast than diminisht by its combination with a nominal outward conformity. On the other hand the Clergy themselves, from occupying this false position, became outwardly weak, and, in a grievous number of cases, inwardly hol- low; — weak, from the want of that help, which they ought to have sought, but which they had rather re- pelled, — hollow, as we are apt to grow, when we are destitute of the interchange and reciprocation of our feelings, and when we are more tenacious of our rights, than of our duties. In these days therefore, when knowledge and the faculty of teaching are so much more widely diffused, and when God has so graciously vouchsafed to awaken a livelier spirit of faith in our land, a spirit which manifests itself with such rich fruits in so many of our lay brethren, it would be a most unvdse 16 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH and unrighteous abuse of the blessings so mercifully granted to us, if we attempted to prolong a usurpation, the only excuse for which lay in the condition of the age when it arose. Rather ought we joyfully to stretch out the right hand of fellowship to our lay brethren, and to join with all who are willing to join with us, in carrying on such good works as may contribute to the building up of the nation in Christian knowledge and godliness. The task is so immense, its difficulties are so enormous, we must needs feel perpetually how ut- terly inadequate we are to it, and what urgent need we have of help, primarily indeed of Divine help, but also of human. In these days above all, when the powers that are against us are so greatly increast, when so many fresh hindrances and dangers are starting forth on every side, surely it is as when a ship is struggling against a storm : all hands should be called to do their utmost (d). With regard to this principle however, as I have already said, there is little open diversity of opinion ; much as may be lurking, often perhaps without the consciousness of the holders. So far as my observation has extended, nearly all persons are now agreed on the propriety and expediency of having a certain number of laymen among the managers of our Parish-schools. As to the best mode of appointing them, there are differ- ences. Some persons wish that they should be selected by the minister of the Parish, or by the Bishop of the Diocese. But this looks too much like an underhand way of clinging to that exclusive authority, which we cannot rightfully claim, and yet are unwilling to re- linquish. It is keeping the Laity under a tutelage, which they have long outgrown. Practically too the IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 17 selection by the minister would often lead to painful divisions; since injudicious ministers, — and we know, my Brethren, there will always be some such, — would be influenced in their choice by personal feelings, and would pass over those with whom they were at all at variance ; while laymen, who were overlookt, might take offense ; and thus the School and the Parish would suffer. On the other hand it may be pronounced im- possible that any Bishop, in our present enormous Dioceses, should be capable of deciding what persons in each Parish are fittest to manage the School in it. In the plan recommended by the Privy Council, there is evidently a collateral wish to remove the difficulties often found in raising funds for the support of Parish-schools. With this view inducements are held out for persons to become subscribers on a twofold scale. Subscribers of half a guinea a year elect the managers; subscribers of a guinea a year are themselves eligible. Of course one point is of essential importance, namely, that the persons who are to have a voice in the manage- ment of our Schools, should be members of our Church ; and there has been a good deal of dispute about the best way of ascertaining this. The Committee of the Privy Council are unwilling to use the Holy Communion as a test ; and when we call to mind how this test was profaned, while it was used politically, we cannot won- der that they should be reluctant to revive it ; more especially as they belong to that party in the State, which perseveringly contended for, and at length effected its abolition. At the same time it is to be considered that the persons who are to exercise a controll over the education of our children, ought not to be merely nominal, c 18 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH but real members of our Church, and that communi- cating is the only outward mark of this ; that they ought to have something at least of a true Christian life and spirit, which will hardly be found in the upper classes, except among communicants; and that the test in this case ought not to be a single act, which an unprincipled man might go through to gain a secular end, but a habit carried on for years. Nor would this test be adopted with the view of excluding Dissenters from any civil privileges, which ought to be open to the whole nation, but solely as a security for the religious character of institutions, which, though we may be ready to receive the children of such Dissenters as choose to place them under our tuition, are expressly establisht for the training of the children of the Church. Still, since the Committee of the Privy Council have declared, that *' it is their wish and intention, that the managers of Church of England Schools should be bona fide members of that Church," and that *' they would be prepared to adopt any other description of the qualifications of School-managers, which would ensure this result, and which was not open to graver objections than those which it removed," we ought not to doubt that the differences on this point, as well as on other minor ones, may be settled by an amicable negociation, carried on by the Committee of the National Society under its excellent, pious President (f). Only let us, my Reverend Brethren, refrain from hindering or disturbing this negociation by needless heat and clamour. Let us keep continually in mind what our object is, of what paramount importance, — yes, of paramount importance, even when we look at it merely with reference to the IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 19 temporal and political welfare of the people and state of England, — but which, when we take a still higher view, stretches through eternity, and reaches from the bottom- less abyss to the foot of the throne of God. Such is the object set before us, the moral and spiritual education of the rising generation in England. Shall we peril its attainment, because we are not allowed, each one of us, to follow our own by-path in marching toward it ? Is this the way in which it behoves the Church Militant to fulfill, or rather to abandon her glorious task ? That we cannot compass our object by mere private exertions, without the concurrence and help of the State, has been sufficiently proved by the experience of these last years. Private exertions were made a few years since to an extent beyond the measure of our age : but the results of those exertions fell very far short of the wants of the nation, hightened as those wants have been by generations of neglect, and by the rapidity with which our population has been increasing, and accumu- lating in enormous, dense masses, under the influence of all manner of stimulants. Those exertions too were merely temporary ; while the wants continue, nay, grow every year. Or can we expect to call forth similar exertions again, — can we hope that our lay brethren will be very eager to pour their gifts into our treasury, — when the chief ground of our rejecting the aid of the State would in point of fact be the reluctance of cer- tain persons to surrender the exclusive management of their Schools by admitting our lay brethren to their rightful share in it (g) ? Another motive has indeed been spoken of in some quarters, as having contributed in no small degree to SJU THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH excite the general dissatisfaction, — the jealousy felt with regard to a particular person holding an important office under the Committee of the Privy Council. But sm'ely this is a most unworthy motive to sway the decisions of the Church on a matter so deeply affecting the political, moral, and spiritual welfare of the English nation. Wliat ! are we to break off negociations, which at length for the first time promise to supply a scheme of National Education in some sort commensurate to the wants of the people, because forsooth certain persons look with distrust on a Secretary of Council ? Does not the very question make one blush, half with shame, half with indignation ? If we have any positive, tangible complaints to bring forward against the person referred to, let us petition for his removal. If not, our business and our duty is to regard him as the minister ordained by God for this important office, and to treat with him as such. Jealous suspicions, that crawl about in men's hearts, but shrink from coming forward in open act, are evil coun- sellors, and are nowhere more out of place than in the deliberations of the Church. Nor let us give ear to those who cry, as people are ever wont, when they have nothing more definite to urge, that the Committee of Council are designing by this measure to drive in the narrow end of the wedge, as a prelude to usurping the whole controll and management of our National Education (h). They who are fond of using this form of argument, are apt to get clencht and wedged in themselves, through their own restless ingenuity ; and their end is a sort of parody of Milo's. So far as a measure is objectionable in itself, let us object to it, but not on the ground that it may pave the way for one IN TIMES OF TRIAL. ^1 can't tell what terrible consequences. There is quite enough in the realities of life to occupy all our fears, if we choose to indulge in fears. But even by these rea- lities we should not be dismayed or daunted. Let us look them in the face, knowing who is on our side. Let us try, with God's help, to contend against them, with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength, not only individually, but collectively, with the whole heart and soul and mind and strength of the Church. If we do so, through God's help we shall overcome them. But if we turn away from the serious conflicts of duty, to gratify our wayward jealousies by shadowfights against imaginary bugbears, the enemy will gain ground on us, and the victory will be his. Even in ordinary times, the honour which we are com- manded to pay to all who are in authority, should prevent those who are under a special obligation to rule their lives according to the precepts of the Gospel, from looking habitually askance at the measures of our Government. If those party-feelings, to which the nature and history of our Constitution have given such power over the English mind, render this very difficult, we are no more emancipated from this duty thereby, than we should be from any other : we are only called to be more watchful against the perpetual, strong temptations to transgress it. When the State oflers to help the Church in doing what is to promote the welfare of the nation, we should accept the offer trustfully and thankfully ; unless indeed it plainly involves the sacrifice of some high principle : and this we should not suspect without an urgent ne- cessity. Now that the Committee of the Privy Council 22 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH are really desirous of improving the education of the people, we have ample grounds for believing. This is one of the great questions of national policy, which their party have long advocated with an earnest assertion of its primary importance : nor would it be easy to devise any measures of more beneficial promise, than the recent regulations concerning Pupil-teachers and Certificates to Schoolmasters, The latter is well fitted to act as a sti- mulus on the existing body of schoolmasters, and to render them diligent in self-improvement, thus coun- teracting the natural tendency of their profession to count that they have already attained, and to forget that none can teach efficiently, except those who are continually learning. The former regulation, if it be carried out judiciously, will provide a constant supply of teachers duly trained and qualified for their task. The most in- telligent and best-conducted among the children of the poor will be raised from the necessity of manual labour to serve God in the education of His people. The diffi- culties which at present stand in the way of our retaining them at school, after they have entered on their teens, and of our maintaining them at Training Schools, will be removed. Thus the chief cause which has hitherto baffled our efibrts to educate the people, the inefficiency of the great body of our schoolmasters, will no longer exist. When such prospects are opened before us, surely we should not allow any miserable personal jealousies to prevent our cooperating cordially with the State in this godly undertaking (i). Confidence in those with whom we are to act, will win their esteem and respect, much sooner than suspicion will. Confidence wins strength. We shall be stronger in ourselves, from giving ourselves IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 23 up in singleness of heart to our work ; and they in whom we trust will take pleasure in helping us. It must be known to you all, that the vehemence of this unhappy controversy had not subsided a month ago. I would fain hope however that the singularly able and persuasive speech of the Bishop of Oxford at the Meeting of the National Society will effect much in allaying this agitation permanently, as it seems to have done with almost magical power at the time when it was delivered. On another controversy, of more recent origin, which threatened a few weeks since to excite a ferment through our whole Church, I must add a few remarks, — that, I mean, which was caused by the statement that a new definition of Heresy was to be introduced into the Bill concerning Clerical Offenses. Tills Bill, I believe, has been laid before you all at the Rural Chapters, in order that every one might have an opportunity of pointing out whatever he might disapprove of therein. It was minutely discust at a Meeting of the Rural Deans of this Archdeaconry, which our kind and excellent Bishop convoked last autumn at Chichester, for the consideration of such ecclesiastical questions as any of us might deem of immediate interest. It has been repeatedly weighed, year after year, by the whole Epi- scopal Bench, who have had the help of all the Law- lords. Thus the utmost care has been taken to frame it so that it shall supply the means of correcting criminous Clerks, without infringing on the rights and liberties of the Clergy ; and, as this twofold purpose has been kept steadily in view, we may reasonably hope that every objectionable provision will have been removed, and that our Bishops will at length be enabled to put an end to 24 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH those most grievous and terrible scandals, which arise wherever a clergyman disgraces his profession by an immoral life. The instances of such clergymen are indeed become very much rarer of late years. It is a source of perpetual thanksgiving to me to know how many zealous, godly ministers are devoting themselves every year to the service of our Lord in this Archdeaconry, which we have no reason to suppose peculiarly favoured above other parts of our Church. Still however some men, though but a few, of evil lives are to be found here and there ; nor is it easy to conceive by what precautions they can ever be entirely excluded. If among the twelve Apostles there was a Judas, how can we expect that in a body of above fifteen thousand Clergy no reprobate members should be found. Therefore, as the mischief done by such men, even though there should be but one or two in a Diocese, is incalculable, — as they must almost in- fallibly check the growth of godliness, if not absolutely deaden it, in their own parishes, or at all events drive many of the serious-minded into dissent, — and as the ofiense of their conduct is sure to spread far and wide, and to be magnified by all who wish ill to the Church, — we ought to rejoice in the prospect that these fearful evils are likely to be abated. Earnestly as we may wish to preserve our order from being exposed to vexatious and groundless accusations, we should be still more desirous that the Church should be delivered from such foul, destructive plaguespots. After a repeated careful examination of the Bill, carried on in consort with several of my brother Clergy, its provisions appear to me on the whole to afford us every security we can justly require ; where- fore I trust that another year will not elapse without IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 25 its becoming law, with such improvements as the reflexions of the ensuing twelvemonth may suggest (j). Among the provisions of this Bill, is one which re- stores the cognisance of charges of Heresy to our ancient Ecclesiastical Courts. This is very desirable ; as the re- ference of such questions to a Diocesan Tribunal, under the presidency of the Bishop, would expose the Church to have all^ manner of determinations of Heresy, according to the theological predilections and antipathies of each particular Bishop. Moreover a new Court of Appeal is constituted for all such causes, a Court incomparably better fitted to decide on them, than that to which they have hitherto been referred. Now a report has been circulated, that it was the intention of some person, whose name was not mentioned, to move the insertion of a clause in this part of the Bill, laying down that the Thirty-nine Articles are henceforward to be regarded as the sole criterion of Heresy, or false or unsound doctrine : and, in the irritable state of men's minds, this^ report, caught up, as it was, and made the most of by those whose favorite atmosphere is the breath of strife in the Church, excited a good deal of commotion. This com- motion however, it seems to me, was altogether prema- ture. I cannot see how it consists with that calmness and deliberation, which should characterize the pro- ceedings of the Church, to hold meetings and draw up addresses and protests on the strength of such an indefi- nite report. Surely we ought rather to have waited, until we had ascertained the real nature of the proposition, which many were so forward to condemn (k). On one ground indeed I should hold that every pro- position of the kind is exceedingly objectionable. For 26 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH it would imply that the Parliament is assuming the au- thority of determining what is the real doctrine of our Church, — an assumption which we must never submit to, which would have been an intolerable usurpation even when the Parliament consisted exclusively of mem- bers of our Church, but which now could hardly have any other result than the disruption of the Church from the State. Such a measure, it seems to me, would be utterly lawless, except our Ecclesiastical Synod were convened to sanction and adopt it. In principle it would be lawless; and practically what scandals must ensue, if the holy doctrines of our faith were to become a sub- ject of contentious discussion in an assembly constituted like the present House of Commons, which, we may without disparagement assert, is little qualified for such discussions by knowledge either theological or ecclesiastical, and which contains a number of members openly or secretly adverse to the tenets of our Church ! For such a body to legislate concerning our doctrine would be a violation of all right and of all decorum (l). Yet we are hardly warranted in taking for granted that any such purpose exists, at least as a reason for open remonstrance, until the proposition is actually brought forward, and set in a definite shape before us. Far less can we pronounce whether the supposed pro- position is, or is not, at variance with the received law of the Church concerning doctrinal errours, until we know precisely what it professes to lay down. On the very face of the Articles, it is manifest, from their dogmatical form, and even from their title, that they were designed to be the specific enunciation of the the- ological tenets of our Church ; and consequently they IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 27 are regarded, in the practice of our Ecclesiastical Courts, as the ordinary test whereby to determine what is heresy, or false, or unsound doctrine. This is implied, I say, in the title, in which they are stated to have been agreed upon " for the avoiding of diversities of opinions, and for the establishing of consent touching true religion." At the same time, since we are compelled by the Act of Uniformity to declare our unfeigned assent and consent to everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer, the doctrinal views of the Prayerbook are equally binding on our consciences. If it be askt, what is to be done, when these two tests are opposed to each other, when the doctrine of the Prayerbook differs from that of the Articles, — whether in such a case the Prayerbook should give way to the Articles, or the Articles to the Prayer- book, — the simple answer is, that we ought not to assume that any such difference exists. When there is the ap- pearance of such a difference, it arises from our mis- apprehending and straining the language of that test, to which we especially lean. Finding expressions in con- siderable accordance with our own views, we are apt to put our own views into those expressions, overlooking the limitations by which the judicious authors of our Articles guarded against the sin of setting up the conclusions of their own understanding in the place of God's revealed truth. Thus we make that absolute and exclusive, which was only intended to be stated in co- ordination with other truths ; and the opposition we talk about is of our own creating. If we take pains in ex- amining both the documents carefully and candidly, vdth a regard to their historical as well as their literal mean- ing, we shall find that the differences are merely apparent, 28 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH like the contradictions which opposite theological schools will wrest out of the Bible itself. Hence, with respect to the proposed clause, it seems to me that our plain path of duty is to suspend our judgement, until it is actually brought forward, and we know its real purport, and whether it contains anything directly repugnant to the principles and practice of our Church. It is scarcely becoming in a body of Clergy to sound the alarm through the land, for the sake of waging war against an embryo proposition, as to the nature of which we have no means of forming a precise notion. I recur to this point again and again, because, although one might have deemed that the ministers of Christ's Church would be more deeply imprest than other men with the solemn duty of not pronouncing a sentence, above all a sentence of condemnation, except after a scrupulous investigation, and under a cogent conviction of its cor- rectness, it has appeared to me that this duty has been lamentably disregarded by many, on occasion of the three controversies I have been speaking of, during the last year. Had it not been for this cause, those contro- versies would have been comparatively brief. Owing to this, they have so grievously distracted the Church. Party-spirit is always negligent of justice : it judges, not according to facts, but to its own prepossessions and prejudices: and of party-spirit there is always a restless store in England. It is the natural result of our free Constitution, of the manner in which each in- dividual Englishman feels called upon to take a personal interest in the affairs of the nation. Along with the various good effects springing from this cause, we have this evil one. Hence we are under a special obligation to IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 29 keep a vigilant guard against the excesses into which this spirit is so apt to run : and as the questions which are agitating the Church as well as the State in these days, come home to every heart, our danger in these days is peculiarly great. Let us Lear steadily in mind that the maxim of the Prince of this world, the maxim of the Prince of darkness, and of all the chiefs among his crew, has ever been. Divide et impera: Divide your opponents; and weaken them hy their divisions; and they will fall an easy prey to you. On the other hand the watchword of the Prince of Peace is Utiite : Unite your hearts to the Lord; unite them to each other; go forth in the might which that union will give you ; and thereby overpower and win your enemies. If we were indeed to enter on our blessed work with one heart and one soul and one mind, we should doubtless be enabled in God's strength to fulfill it. If we waste half our time, and more than half our force and zeal, in con- tending against one another, we shall have little left for fighting the battles of the Kingdom of God. Turning away from these unhappy controversies, on the evils of which I have deemed it my duty to speak to you thus frankly and fully, I would fain express my thankfulness, — in which most of you, my Reverend Brethren, if not all, I feel sure, cordially participate, — that the Bill which was brought into Parliament for the Admission of Jews into the Legislature, was rejected by the House of Lords. On this question I grieve to find myself differing from several persons, for whose judgement I entertain the highest respect, and whose concurrence on ordinary occasions I prize as the most satisfactor}- confirmation of my opinions. This so THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH however only makes me feel a stronger obligation to explain why, after carefully examining the arguments by which that Bill has been defended, I cannot find anything in them of sufficient force to necessitate or warrant our departing from the great ancient principle of our Constitution. That principle in all ages, from the very birth of our Constitution, has been, that we are a Christian People, a Christian Nation, a Chris- tian State, and therefore that our Legislature and Government are, and ought to be. Christian. It may be contended that this principle in early times was not expressly enunciated in any particular law. Indeed it has been argued that there is nothing to ex- clude the Jews from the House of Commons, except a form of words which was adopted for a totally different purpose, and which therefore only accidentally forms a bar to their admission. Surely however this is a mere sophism. It happens continually that those very prin- ciples, which are the most powerful, the most pervading, which permeate all our feelings and opinions, and are wound up Avith our whole being, do not receive a dis- tinct enunciation ; because, so long as we do not meet with anything to contradict or oppose them, we quietly take them for granted, and have no motive for uttering them in definite propositions. In the very act of enun- ciating a truth, we transform it from a living power within us into an outward object of thought. We do not make laws against that, which we do not even con- ceive as a possibility. No distinct Act was required to exclude Jews from Parliament, when, until very lately, they could not even hold land (m). Before the Reformation, Christianity was practically IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 31 identified with the faith of that which assumed the ex- clusive name of the Catholic Church. Even heretics were then deprived of their civil rights by excommuni- cation : those who profest a religion different from the Christian, were clast under the head of unbelievers, and could not lawfully acquire any. After the Reformation, Western Christendom became divided into a number of distinct, and often opposite bodies ; and, amid the con- fusion caused hereby, it is not to be wondered at that the idea, which was implied in our whole Constitution, as it was in the Constitutions of the other Christian nations in Europe, workt itself out only by degrees, passing through narrow, partial forms. It was assumed, and rightly so, that the Church ought to be coexten- sive with the Nation. This is especially the ruling idea in Queen Elizabeth's ecclesiastical policy ; and it found expression in the principle which declares that the Soverein is the head of the Church. But, owing to divers grievous errours and sins, to all manner of con- fusions between the secular and the spiritual, and between essentials and non-essentials, — confusions, which, when arbitrary power attempted to enforce its own narrow views, became calamitous evils, — the Nation in point of fact was very far from coinciding with the National Church. Hence, as political privileges were restricted to the Na- tional Church, there was a large part of the Nation, who were excluded from its highest civil rights, who were in a manner disfranchist, or only allowed to enjoy a lower franchise. As the confusions which had pro- duced thisi rregular state of things, continued to prevail, and as the lessons of experience, which would have dictated a more comprehensive policy, were wholly 32 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH disregarded, the disproportion between the Nation and the Church became progressively greater and greater. Such a state of things contains the germs of its dissolution. It must be reformed ; or it will be destroyed. We cannot uphold an idea or a principle, under a form to which the realities of life give the lie. The Nation was indeed Christian ; but only a portion of it was comprehended in the National Church ; the largest portion, it is true ; but still a very large portion, and not merely numerically, — a large portion of the national wealth, of the national property, of the national industry, of the national intelli- gence, of the national power, both physical and moral, — lay without the pale of the National Church, to the members of which the highest civil privileges were con- fined. This could not last. It could not, because it ought not, because the laws, as handed down from former generations, were at variance with the true idea of the Constitution. Hence it became necessary by degrees to enlarge the pale of our institutions, so that they should comprehend the other Christian bodies in the British Empire, as well as the members of the National Church. This was effected chiefly by the Repeal of the Test Act, and by what is called the Emancipation of the Roman Catholics. I am not entering into an argu- ment as to the expediency or propriety of these measures. I am merely speaking of them historically, as facts which have occurred, and which it was quite impossible to avert. For many years a large portion of our Church struggled against them successfully : but at length it became manifest that the struggle could no longer be maintained. Thus that which I have termed the prin- ciple of our Constitution, the principle or idea which IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 33 had been working itself out during five centuries, re- ceived its full development. All our civil privileges were thrown open to every denomination of Christians, to every person professing the faith of a Christian. That this was not a mere accident arising from casual majorities in our Parliament, but a conclusion toward which the mind of man, impelled by the divinely appointed course of events, had gradually advanced, is proved on the one hand by the fact, that the necessity of the change forced itself by degrees on the conviction of almost all our leading statesmen, even of many who at one time were strongly opposed to it, and that now hardly any one would deem it practicable, or would even wish, that we should retrace our steps. On the other hand similar evidence is supplied by the modifications of previous institutions, which took place in a like spirit about the same time in several states on the Continent of Europe. It began to be generally acknowledged that all bodies of Christians ought to be admissible to the enjoyment of every civil privilege (n). I have made this statement, because it seems to me of much importance to point out that there is a very broad and essential difference between the recent Bill for the Admission of Jews into the Legislature, and the previous Acts whereby the Dissenters and the Romanists were admitted. The advocates of the recent Bill have argued that it is merely the continuation and consum- mation of a series of measures, which the Legislature has been compelled to adopt, and by which one barrier of exclusion after another has been thrown down. On the contrary I would contend that the recent Bill is the commencement of a totally different course, the D 34 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH expression of a totally clifFerent, nay, of a directly opposite principle. For hitherto the Christian character of the State and Nation has been asserted and upheld, — its Christian character, not as restricted to any one parti- cular form of Christianity, but as embracing them all. In fact, I know not whether this is not brought out still more forcibly by the present declaration, which makes this the sole condition, without any ulterior de- termination, and consequently without a suspicion of favouring the interests of any one particular religious body. Whereas, by adopting the recent Bill, we should be rushing down the negative side of the hill, and plunging into that most antipolitical assertion, that all the civil privileges of a state are to be bestowed on all men, without any regard to their religion, that our Legislature henceforward is no longer to be an essen- tially Christian Legislature, but may be made up, to any amount, of Jews, Turks, Heretics, and Infidels (o). The real principle of our Constitution, it seems to me, the principle which has been working itself out during the last three centuries, is that exprest by my honoured friend, Dr Arnold, in passages which have been often referred to during the discussions on this Bill, and which several of its advocates have tried to refute, though with little success, and with an inadequate appreciation of the important historical truth asserted in them (p). I do not mean that this principle has always been distinctly apprehended, even by those who have taken a leading part in working it out. As the agents in the historical development of mankind are rarel}'^ more than half conscious, mostly quite unconscious, of the work they are engaged in, — as they often suppose IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 8o themselves to heave different objects in view, while God's overruling Providence shapes their ends not seldom directly against their wills, — so doubtless many of the persons who have been contending for the throwing open of all our civil privileges to all denominations of Christians, have acted under the notion that religion is an accident separable from man and from society, and that it has nothing to do with government. But even in the de- bates on the recent Bill, — although the principle of it appears to me to involve this proposition, — most of its chief advocates disclaimed such a consequence, and tried to rest their policy on a sounder basis. It will doubtless be said, — indeed it has been said by more than one person with regard to Dr Arnold's opinion on the subject, — that this view of the essentially Christian character of our Legislature is a theory ; and this, through some strange logical quid pro quo, is deemed a sufficient answer to it (q). Let us accept the word, and acknowledge that it is a theory. What then ? Is it a refutation of the Copernican and Newtonian system of the universe, to say that it is a theory ? Every intelligent combination of a multitude of facts into an orderly, connected, systematic whole is a theory, Oecopia. Hence, when we try to arrange the facts pre- sented by the history of our Constitution during a series of centuries, and to trace out the principles which have been unfolding themselves in that history, of course the result must be a theory. If we are able to trace the working out of the same principles contempora- neously in the other nations of Europe, it will still be a theory, Oecopia, only embracing a wider field of view. Should it be possible to discern the operation D 2 36 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH of the same or similar principles in the institutions of heathen nations, the theory would become wider still. Thus, so far from there being any opposition or repugnance between theory and facts, it is impos- sible to make any use of facts as the materials for reasoning, unless their life and meaning is elicited from them by some sort of theory. Without a theory they are dead lumber, insulated, purposeless atoms : though of course a theory may be more or less hasty and er- roneous, or partial, straining and distorting facts, or overlooking them and pushing them aside, if they seem to make against it. But what, let us ask, is the argument on the strength of which this theory is to be condemned ? on the strength of which it is contended that the Christian character of our Legislature, after having been preserved from its first origin down to this day, ought to be abandoned and sacrificed, for the sake of admitting Jews into it. This assuredly is not a theory : for there is not a single fact in our history, scarcely one, I believe I may say, in the whole history of the world, from which any such theory can be drawn, or whicli it would render intelli- gible. The whole history of the world, the history, the principles of every other Constitution, as well as of our own, bear witness to the opposite theory, and not to this. They bear witness that the government of a nation has always been, and ought always to be, connected in some manner with its religious worship, and that in the best ages of nations this connexion will be closer and more intimate ; that a man's religious profession has always had, and ought always to have, an influence in determining his political privileges. There are a IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 37 number of pages in history recording the evils which have accrued from the perversion of this principle ; but these only bespeak the tenacity with which man in all ages has clung to it, and in no way justify our rejecting the principle, any more than the corruptions of any other would. On the other hand the notion, on which the claim of the Jews is mainly grounded by their advocates, — that every man born in a country is to be eligible to all its civil offices, without reference to any qualifica- tion whatever, unless it be property, — is a mere fiction of abstract political speculation, a fiction contradicted by the wisdom of every nation, and by the experience of every age. In fact it is the mere spawn of that abstract pseudo-philosophy, which spread so widely over the shallow waters of the last century, and which reacht its consummation in Jacobinism, murmuring and roaring about men's rights, but knowing nothing, caring nothing about their duties ; wherefore the so-called rights ex- ploded at last into the right of committing every crime under the sun. The wiser doctrine of our Constitution, the doctrine of all sound political philosophy, is, that political rights are the creatures of laws, of those customs which are unwritten laws, and of organized social insti- tutions, and that no man can have any political rights, except what he derives from these laws and institutions ; while on the other hand it is the duty of the framers and modifiers of these laws and institutions in each country to be guided, in the distribution and appor- tionment of political rights, by a full, comprehensive, impartial, large-minded consideration of that which will promote the welfare, moral, social, and economical, of the whole State and of all its members (r). Hence 38 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH we may discard all arguments drawn from any sup- posed right of the Jews to political privileges. Right, as such, they have none ; seeing that the laws and customs and institutions of England have never given them such a right, nay, have been altogether opposed to it. The true question is rather : is there any political necessity, or any political benefit of sufficient strength, to justify us in giving up the ancient Christian principle of our Constitution ? Of course I am not intending to lay down that every State, or that the Government and Legislature of every State, ought to be exclusively Christian. Ideally doubt- less they ought to be so, even as every man ought, if he fulfilled God's purpose, and the true idea of his own nature. The Christian State is the highest form of a State, and alone fulfills the idea of a State. It alone contains those living, mighty principles of action, which will enable and impell the governors and the governed to discharge all their reciprocal duties (s). But the realities of the world, we know too well, diverge and deviate very far from the idea of what they ought to be : and the first duty of a Government is to attend to the realities of the world, to the real, actual condition of the people under it. The duty of raising the people out of their present condition into one more in conformity with the idea of what they ought to be, can only come second. Hence, if it had so happened, that the Jews formed a large portion, say a third, or a fourth, of the people of England, and if their social and moral weight were in any proportion to their numbers, it would then become the duty of the Legislature to consider what share this great and powerful part of the community IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 3v ought to have in the national representation. If they even formed a tenth or a twentieth, some question of the kind would require impartial discussion. For in such a case the basis, on which we found our assertion that the Legislature ought to be Christian, because we are a Christian people, would no longer be tenable. We should have ceast to be a Christian people ; and a Christian Legislature, as the representative of the people, would therefore be a false pretense. Wlien a Christian people are ruling as conquerors over a vast heathen population, as for instance in India, the solution of the problem will have to be modified by a variety of considerations; even if this were a case to which the system of a Representative Legislature could be applied. How far the diffusion of infidelity in France and Germany may have warranted the framers of their new Constitutions in laying down that political rights and privileges are not to be affected by any regard to a person's religious profession, I cannot presume to pronounce. At all events this does not belong to a normal, but to a most miserably abnormal and diseased con- dition of society, in which it would almost seem to be crumbling back into its elements (t). Now we, through God's mercy, have hitherto been preserved from falling so low. Through God's mercy we may still say, that we are a Christian people, and that therefore we ought to have a Christian Legislature. Seeing that the Jews scarcely amount to more than a thousandth part of our population, we are under no political or moral obligation to violate the Christian principle of our Constitution by admitting Jews into it. I have endeavoured briefly to point out the great 40 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH political principle by which, it seems to me, our Legis- lature were warranted, or rather bound, to reject the Bill for the Admission of Jews. That Bill was directly opposed to one of the fundamental principles of our Constitution, and could not have been carried without the subversion of that principle. It was not forced upon us by any political necessity. It was not enjoined by any political or moral expediency. No good whatever would have resulted from it; and the evil would have been incalculable, inasmuch as it would have been the first step toward the unchristianizing of our Legislature. A friend of mine, who was in Paris at the end of last year, heard one of the speakers in the Chamber of Peers say. Nous, qui ne sonimes tii Catholiques, ni Chrttiens : and, when some persons dissented, he appealed to the Laws as his authority. When such language could be uttered under the sanction of the Laws, it is not to be wondered at that the whole Government should have been shoveled away two months after like a heap of rubbish. God grant that we may never hear such words within the walls of our Parliament ! may the time never come when any one will be entitled to say We are not Christians here ! Yet anyone may, if our Christian profession on entering Parliament be • abolisht, so that Christianity will no longer be esssential, but a mere accident to our Legislature (u). The time will not allow me to enter into an examina- tion of the arguments by which the recent Bill was defended. That on which, it was alledged, the claims of the Jews mainly rested, belongs, it seems to me, as I have already said, to that spurious political philosophy, which has wrought such vast mischief during the last sixty years, which deals with rights as abstractions, caring IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 41 little about history, or the existing state of things, and spins a notional polity out of its own brain. Whereas the true political philosopher will deduce the idea of a constitution out of its history, not from the bare facts, but from the principles which have manifested themselves in those facts, and which have been working their way through them to a fuller, completer development. So too the true statesman, as we see him impersonated in Burke — who is also the grandest impersonation of the true political philosopher, — will look at every great national and constitutional question historically, not merely with reference to the outward shell and crust of history, but to the ideas and principles which have been unfolding and expanding in it. He will indeed earnestly desire to correct the abuses, which Time, and the foolish- ness and sinfulness of man, are continually introducing into every human work. He will desire no less earnestly so to modify the institutions of former ages as to adapt them to the altered condition and circumstances of the people. But he will always bear in mind, that, however it might flatter his vanity to sweep away the exist- ing order of things, and to set up a totally new system in its place, yet that, with regard to institutions, as in the Eastern tale, the new lamp, though it look neat and bright, is powerless, the old lamp, with all its rust, has a spirit that belongs to it, of mighty, mysterious, magical power ; and therefore he will beware of the temptations to exchange the old lamp for the new. These thoughts lead us naturally to the events which have just been transforming the whole aspect of Europe : and how can I close this address without saying a few words to you on matters, which for the last four months 42 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH have been almost absorbing our attention and interest, and which are unparalleled in the history of the world ? Formerly, when we have met on this occasion, it has been under the belief that the coming years would in the main be like the past, — that some of us, here and there one, would be taken away, so that their names would no longer be called upon earth, and that other names would be sounded in their stead, — but that our work would on the whole continue the same as it always had been, our duties the same, our motives and incen- tives the same, our diligence and zeal, we would fain hope, greater, yet still of the same kind ; and we should almost as soon have expected that the laws of Nature would be stript of their force, that the sea and the land would change places, and that the stars would drop from their spheres, as that the poHtical order of human affairs through the chief part of Europe would be utterly con- founded, that the primary laws and fundamental relations of society would be subverted, that throne after throne would be trampled under the feet of the rabble, and that the refuse of the people would start up as their rulers. Yet these things, we know, have been going on, not in some one country, — as has been the case aforetime in ages of revolution, — but in one country after another. No pestilence ever spread so rapidly as the contagion of popular fury. The work of years was condenst into a day, almost into an hour. That which was held to be the strongest, proved to be utterly weak. That which had always been esteemed as wisdom, came out as arrant foolishness. It was as though a mask had suddenly been wrencht off from the face of Europe, and as though everything was discerned to be the very opposite of that IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 43 which it had been deemed ; even as it wall be at the great final unmasking of all the deceits and frauds of the world. The very means of strength, on which mankind had always relied, — and which they had tried to gather and pile around them, counting that, if they could do so, they were quite safe, — crumbled away in the hand which attempted to grasp them. Armies were paralysed. State- craft was caught in the meshes of its own devices. Governments, which had stood for more than half a millennium, the roots of which spread through remote ages, and might have been supposed to strike into the heart of the earth, were removed like a tent, and cast down like a house of cards. Law, discipline, order, custom, reverence had lost their power. Nothing tri- umpht, except brute force, chance, wilfulness. Chaos seemed to be coming again, to swallow up all the fruits of a thousand-yeared civilization. Our own country has indeed been happily exempt from the fiercer shocks of these convulsions. But who can tell how long it will continue so ? That there are huge masses of the elements of evil, of the most virulent and destruc- tive kind, fermenting in divers parts of England, has been proved by occasional outbreaks, and still more by the elaborate enquiries of Committees appointed by Parliament for the purpose. Can we hope that the hurricane, which has been sweeping away other Govern- ments, will leave ours unscathed ? that, while the fabric of society is tottering and falling to pieces in other countries, it will stand unshaken here ? At all events we are bound by numberless ties of affection, of esteem, of common interests and aims, with the other nations of Europe. They cannot suffer, without our suffering also : 44 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH and, as we can hardly expect to continue erect, when all around are prostrate or falling, so we cannot contemplate the bare prospect of such an isolation without dismay. What will be the fate of England ? Will she weather the storm, which is strewing the earth with wrecks ? We can hardly help asking ourselves this question ; and our hearts will often quail as we ask it. But there is another question also, of still deeper interest to the heart of man, and which involves whatever of hope or fear connects itself with the future destinies of mankind : what will be the fate of Christ's Church throughout the earth ? what will be the fate of Christianity ? that is, so far as man's eye can see, so far as his understanding can draw conjectures from the signs of the times. In one respect indeed there has been a noticeable differ- ence between the bearing and conduct of the revolutionary spirit toward religion at the close of the last century and now- In the former Revolution its bearing was that of hatred, scorn, defiance, insult, outrage. But this year it has seemed that the revolutionary spirit has wisht to shew respect to religion, that, according to its own phraseology, it has been desirous of fraternizing with Christianity, that it has been willing, as is said of one of the Roman Emperors, to receive Christ among the gods of its Pantheon, or rather among the heroes in the temple of its self-worship. This change is in great measure the result of the philosophical and his- torical enquiries and speculations of recent times ; owing to which the shallow, ignorant, sneering Atheism, so much admired under the name of Philosophy in the last century, can no longer lift up its voice. Yet the Pantheism, which has followed it, is scarcely better IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 45 essentially. Indeed in some respects it is almost worse, or at least more mischievous, as being more subtile, more guileful, more delusive, from having an imposing show of grandeur and comprehensiveness, which however, when tried, proves to be hollow. The lion''s voice at first sounded so soft and gentle, one might have fancied that, to use the expression of our great poet, he was trying to roar " like a sucking dove ; " and he gave out that his claws had been pared, that he was become a well-bred Christian beast, and had lost his relish for blood and crackling bones. But we have already seen dismal proofs that the human lion does not thus easily change his nature, which after a while breaks forth as rabid and ravenous as ever. So too the events of late years in Switzerland have shewn, that the toleration, of which Irreligion makes such boast, will soon change into persecution. Nay, what is it that Religion wants ? not compliments and courtesies : not that people should talk in elegant and civil, or laudatory phrase about her : not that they should bear with her, and tolerate her. She wants men's hearts and wills, their faith, their love, their obedience. She wants men's hearts and wills, that she may restore them to their owners in a new and sanctified state. If these are withheld, everything else is worthless. What then, I again ask, may we conjecture, so far as our human sagacity can read the signs of the times, will be the fate of the Church of Christ in the years which are coming upon us ? I cannot, for my own part, draw any favorable anticipations from the manner in which the spirit of the Revolution has been attempting to fraternize with Christianity. On the contrary, as the chief evil which Christianity has to dread, is not 46 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH open and forcible aggression from without, but that in- sidious insinuation, which cripples men's zeal, and poisons their faith, so, among the saddest signs of the times, has been the reciprocation which the fraternizing of the revolutionary spirit has won, — the examples of the ministers of Christ who have been beguiled into fraternizing with the spirit of the Revolution. That which has been proved by all experience hitherto, is equally true now. The blood of martyrs is still the seed of the Church. She cannot increase without it. She cannot increase, except where there is the readi- ness to shed it in her behalf. As it was by the great selfsacrifice of her Divine Author that her foundations were originally laid, so it is through selfsacrifice that she has continually increast, by innumerable acts of selfsacrifice, the only acts which find a place within her, the only stones whereof she is built. Hence, if there is any recent event from which we might deduce anything like hopeful prospects for Religion, in these times when political institutions are crumbling and falling to the ground, it is the selfsacrifice of that martyred Prelate, who trod with solemn joy in the steps of his Heavenly Master, and went forth with fixt, steady purpose to follow the example of the Good Shepherd, who gave His life for His sheep. If we look however at the present state of Europe in the light of God's word, its aspect becomes less dismal. Indeed such is ever the nature of God's word, that, though it may often be dim and cloudy, when the sun of this world is shining upon us, yet, when night and darkness gather around those who seek for its guid- ance, it brightens into a pillar of fire. The events of the IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 47 last six months may well remind us of the description of those days, when, we are told, the sun urns to be dark- ened, a?id the moon would not give her light, and the stars would fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens would he shaken. In fact I have already been led to make use of a similar comparison ; and it has been supposed by some of the commentators on this passage, that the phy- sical disasters spoken of in it were intended, as similar phenomena were used by the prophets, to be significant of the destruction of powers and dominions (v). Accord- ing to this interpretation, there has seldom been a period in history to which this description will apply so aptly as to the last six months. Now, at the very time when these convulsions were taking place, our Lord tells us, The sign of the Son of Man shall appear in heaven ; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn ; and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Atid He shall send His angels with a great sou7id of a trumpet ; and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. You will not surmise, I trust, my Brethren, from my quoting this passage, that I am going to copy the fond, dreamy presumption of those who turn the Bible into a book of divination, and deem that by some fantastical conjuration of texts they can make out the times and the seasons, which the Father, we are told, has put in His own power. But as our Lord's prophetical words referred in the first instance to the events which accom- panied the destruction of Jerusalem, and received their first fulfilment then, so have they been fulfilled more than once in the history of the Church since. In the 48 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH most calamitous ages, when every earthly power was tottering and falling, when all earthly wisdom was smitten with blindness, and hope shrank into fear, the sign of the Son of Man has come forth in heaven ; and, as all the tribes of the earth were driven to mourn, they have seen the sign of the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. The grandest example of this was at the downfall of the Roman empire, when people were foreboding that the world was going to rack, the moral and social terrours in men's minds giving a peculiar significance to the convulsions of the natural world. Yet this very de- struction was the means of gathering the Northern nations into the Church. Thus did the sign of the Son of Man then come forth in heaven ; and thus did He send His angels to gather His elect from one end of heaven to the other. In this manner, as the destruc- tion of Jerusalem became a powerful cooperating cause in the Christianizing of the Roman empire, so did tlie destruction of the Roman empire prepare the way for the Christianizing of the Northern nations. Moreover then too one of the means which God made use of for the accomplishment of His purpose, was the mission of the Bishop of Rome, who went to the camp of the Huns, " exposing his life," as our infidel historian himself expresses it, " for the safety of his flock."" Nor are we altogether precluded from understanding how and why these things are so. For, as it is with in- dividuals, so is it likewise ordained for nations, that they too are to enter into the kingdom of God through much tribulation. When every earthly strength fails, then are men readier, in the feeling of their own weakness, to look IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 49 out for a strength above that which is earthly. When all human wisdom is foiled and baffled, then, in the irre- sistible conviction of their own blindness, contrasted with the order and beauty which prevails in the universe, they learn more easily that the disorder and confusion and shortsightedness pertain to man, and that there must be another wisdom higher than man's, before which all is clearness and order and harmony. The utter despair of human help leads them to seek Divine help. The crumbling of all the strongest pillars of this world teaches them that they must raise their eyes beyond this world, if they would find pillars which shall never give way. This connexion is declared in our Lord's words, Then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn : and they who do thus mourn, with a weary, heavy-laden heart, receive the comfort promist to mourners, and see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, dispersing and scattering the clouds, with power and great glory. The most memorable example of this in later times is the age of the Reformation. But we too are living in the midst of a like age, as did our fathers, like, not merely in the overthrow of earthly powers and domi- nions, but also in constraining men to the recognition of higher powers, and a higher, indestructible dominion. No one can well be ignorant that the first act of the Revolution, — of which we are now entering on the third act, or, it may be, on the fifth, — full of horrours and calamities as that first act was, has given a graver, more serious tone to men's minds and characters. While it crusht so much that seemed bright and fair on the sur- face of society, it was a grand sweeping away of much that was hollow and rotten ; and, if it brought forth a 50 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH number of portentous abominations, it also taught men that life is a solemn, awful thing, and, opening their eyes to the might and depth of evil in the world and in themselves, made them feel the need of a strength far diiferent from their own, to combat that might of evil, and proved to them that, unless the course of human events were controlled and overruled by a superhuman Will, the world would perish utterly. It has often been remarkt that one of the effects which the French Re- volution wrought in England, was to fill the churches and doubtless it was a main agent, in God's hand,"; for- producing that religious revival, which, though amid a host of contrary influences, has gone on spreading through Europe during the present century (w). But this revival was so imperfect ; there has been so much of false philosophy mixing itself up with the re- ligious views of the age, so much of pantheistic specu- lation perverting the simple truth of the Gospel ; Faith has been waning away so beneath the broadening light of Science, whereas Science ought rather to manifest the boundlessness of the realms of Faith ; the kingdoms of the earth and their glory have so tempted and lured us away from the worship of Him whom alone we ought to serve ; the idolatry of riches has spread so widely, albeit we had been taught in manifold ways that he who heaps up riches for hirnself, heaps them up in a bag with holes ; the selfishness of man has become so careless, so prodigal and luxurious and selfindulgent, in spite of our continual experience that selfishness is weakness and misery ; the pride of man has grown up again to such a towering highth, notwithstanding all the lessons he had received to admonish him that his befitting posture is IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 51 humility ; we were again crying out, Aha ! I am strong ; I am, rich; I am poioerfid ; I am great; I am wise; the lohole earth is mine to pamper my lusts, and the sea to bring me ivhatever I desire from, far regions; and the winds themselves are my angels to carry my purveyors to and fro to every quarter of the globe : above all, my mind is tri- umphing over Nature, and eliciting new forms of power from her, which compell Time and Space to boiv down as my vassals before me : therefore He, whose fan is in His hand, has again stretcht it forth, that He may thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner, while the chaff is to be burnt up with unquenchable fire. This, my Brethren, assuredly is the light in which we should look at the events of these days, in their relation to the Church. Every age indeed is an age of sifting for her ; and perhaps of all ages the most perilous to her is one of unclouded outward prosperity, when the Tempter comes to her, and offers her the kingdoms of the earth and their glory, if she will fall down and worship him. On the other hand, in an age of worldly trouble and oppression, she is tried, to the end that she may come out purified by the fire. She is tried, that the pure grain in her may be sifted and separated from the chaff. O, how much chaff has been mixt up of late years with all our doings, with all our words, with all our thoughts ! How big have our thoughts and our words been ! big enough to set the whole world in motion, to make it heave like a woman in childbirth. Yet what have been our deeds ? Day swallows up day ; year swal- lows up year: and at the end of a score of years what have we done ? what for the advancement of God's e2 52 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH glory ? what for the good of our fellow creatures ? Have we uot been perpetually realizing the fable of the' moun- tain in labour ? We have now been enjoying three and thirty years of comparative peace in Europe. What fruit have those thirty -three years brought forth ? What are the good deeds, unknown to the doers, of which the Son of Man will remind the children of this generation, when He sits on the throne of His glory, and gathers the nations before Him ? If my business were to preach to you about our own personal spiritual life, of how many kinds of chaff should I have to speak ! How many ears, seemingly full and fat, have been growing up within us, ears, which we ourselves may have fondly and proudly deemed full and fat, yet which, when they have been sifted, have proved to be mere chaff ! Nor should I have far to seek for abundance of like chaff, if I were to search among our public acts and professions. Let me cite a single instance, not taken out of them indeed, but to which I am naturally led by the foregoing train of thoughts, and which at all events has gained a good deal of notoriety in these last months. You all know the modern revolutionary Trinity, in the name of which the French Republic issues its decrees. Of old it was the custom to inaugurate public acts in the name of the Holy Trinity. The acts of the French Republic come forth under the names of Liberty, Equa- lity, Fraternity. The falling off is indeed deplorable enough, from the three Divine Persons to these three abstractions. Yet still the words are good words, grand and noble words, in the fulness of their Christian meaning. But, as the motto of the French Republic, what mere cliaff are they ! chaff, to blind and to choke the gazing IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 53 and gaping multitudes ! Liberty, from which every rational man shrinks in dismay to take refuge under martial law ! Equality, which would manifest itself in the trampling down of every moral and intellectual dis- tinction, until society became a dead, blank, waste ! Fraternity, which, when you lift up its veil, comes forth as Fratricide ! The ideas indeed are grand and noble, in their true Christian sense: but, as the idols of the Revolution, they are mere mockeries, by clothing him- self wherewith the Spirit of Evil is aping the form of an angel of light. In this, as in so many other instances, we see, that, what the better spirit of man, groping about amid the darkness of the world, desires and yearns for, he may ever find, in its reality and perfection, among the price- less treasures of the Gospel. For there alone do we find true Liberty, — the Freedom which Christ came to bring us, the Freedom which we gain by coming to the Truth, the freedom from errour, the freedom from sin, the freedom from our own carnal, selfish nature, the freedom from the chains and manacles of the world. There we find true Equality, Equality in the sight of God, the equality of those who are all concluded under sin, and who are called to be partakers of 'the same redemption, the equality of those who are clothed in the righteousness of Christ, the equality of those who only differ in that He gives to them as He wills of His own, the equality of those among whom the greatest is as the least, and the least as the greatest. There too, and there alone, we find true Fra- ternity, the brotherhood of those who are called to pray to the same Heavenly Father, the brotherhood of those whose Elder Brother has sat down at the right hand of 54 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH His Father and their Father, the brotherhood of those whom He has commanded to love one another with the same infinite love wherewith He loved us. One hardly knows which is more amazing, the ignorance of those who fancied that it was reserved for the French Revolution to summon the world to Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity ; or the blindness and stupour of those who could fall down and worship these huge, glaring impostures, when the blessed realities had been set before mankind for more than seventeen hundred years in their heavenly purity and majesty. It would be easy to point out other bloated parodies of Christian ideas, which have been brought forward by the apostles of the Revolution, such, for instance, as the declaration that all men are now to be made kings, not by the writing of the royal law of liberty on their hearts, but by the rejection and subversion of all law and of all authority. So again it has been blasphemously pro- claimed that the Resurrection attained for the first time to its fulfilment in the convocation of the National As- sembly (x). But the time admonishes me to conclude. I cannot do so however, without saying a few words on the duties which these awful events impose upon us English- men, and especially on us, the ministers of Christ's Church in this singularly favoured land. Our first duty, every heart must needs reply, is deep thankfulness to God, who has again so wonderfully pre- served us in peace and tranquillity, while the whole fabric of society has been shaken and convulst in the other chief nations of Europe. For assuredly we cannot ascribe our preservation to any superior wisdom, or to any extra- ordinary virtues, in ourselves. When we consider what IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 55 poor returns we have made for the many precious talents committed to us, how faithless and negligent we have been as a nation in doing God's work, — when we think of the sins and of the distress with which the whole land is overrun, distress yawning fearfully by the side of the utmost riches and luxury, — when we think how little has yet been done to heal and remove the sufferings of the people, and how those sufferings, if not caused, are fright- fully aggravated by selfish carelessness and reckless covetousness, by each man's seeking his own, no matter at what cost to his brethren, — we may well marvel at our exemption from the disasters which have befallen our neighbours; and we should exclaim in penitent adora- tion. Not to us Lord, not to us, hut to Thy name he the glory and the praise, for Thy mercy's sake. But have we any reasonable ground for hoping that this exemption will continue ? We know how unstable and frail is the basis on which a large part of our prosperity rests, how the very highth to which we have mounted exposes us to greater falls, to more sudden and violent reverses, how mere caprices of fashion will reduce thousands and tens of thousands in a moment to the brink of starvation. On what then can we rely for the continuance of our safety ? On God's mercy ? But that will not be shewn forth unceasingly toward those who abuse it, toward those who are not stirred by it to repentance and to reformation. Or shall we rely on our Constitution, on the institutions which we have inherited from our an- cestors? It is true, they are of inestimable value in many ways, above all, in the formation of our national character. We have long been wont to regard our Con- stitution, our political institutions, as incomparably the best 56 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH that the wisdom of man has ever devised for any nation on earth ; and this our judgement has been confirmed by that of the wisest statesmen in other lands, and by the voice of the nations striving blindly and rashly to grasp on a sudden at something like that which has grown up amongst us in the course of centuries. Yet institutions and a constitution of themselves will not preserve us, unless the spirit which gave birth to them, and has gradually moulded and adapted them to the wants of the people, is still living and dwelling in us. For institutions, even the best, may become dead ; and nothing will breed or foster and perpetuate life, except that which has life in it. Two centuries have now rolled by, since Milton spoke of the peculiar privilege, which had been granted to England, of leading the way in great moral and social and religious reformations. Two hundred years ago, he whose heart and imagination seem to have glowed above those of other men with a fervid admiration and love of Eng- land, exhorted and admonisht her, in his own grand words, Ziet not Ejigland forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live. " Who (he asks) was it but our English Constantine, that baptized the Roman Empire ? Who, but the Northumbrian Willibrbde, and Winifride of Devon, with their followers, were the first Apostles of Germany? Who, but Alcuin and Wickliff", our countrymen, opened the eyes of Europe, the one in arts, the other in religion ? " If we call to mind what homage has been paid, since the time of Milton, in forein coun- tries to the peculiar forms of our Constitution, what a number of attempts have been made to copy our prin- cipal institutions, — our Parliament, our Habeas Corpus IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 57 Act, our Trial by Jury, — often without reflexion that institutions lose the main part of their worth, unless they are duly assimilated to the rest of the body politic, — we cannot but recognise still that such a precedence has indeed been marvellously vouchsafed to us. But this precedence, like every other privilege, entails its corresponding duties ; and weighty, and solemn, and arduous they are ; while our position itself must needs increase the ignominy of neglecting them. Still therefore in these days do we need the voice of Milton to cry out to us. Let not England forget her precedence of teacJiing natio7is hoio to live. The vanguard must not slumber at their post. If we are to be the pioneers of the moral and political and social civilization of Europe, we must keep on advancing continually forward. I spoke just now of the tlu'ee words which are the idols of the French Republic; and I called them chaff. But nobody sows any seed with the purpose of its bringing forth chaff. Even an idol too bears witness that he who worships it has a yearning after something to worship. Grossly as the true ideas of Liberty and Equality and Fraternity have been corrupted in this modern mimicry, this mimicry itself attests that there is a strong, though blind, yearning and craving after the realities which are thus mimickt. These true ideas, I have said, are set before us in the Gospel ; and the realities are to be found wherever the Gospel exercises its healing, fructifying power, but nowhere else. Moreover, as these spiritual ideas, through the might of the Gospel, become moral realities, so are there political and social realities in some measure answering to them. The latter are in the main the produce of the former : nor will they be found in any 58 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH sort of eminence, where the moral and spiritual realities are wanting, or where they are decaying. Thus the political and social wellbeing of a nation bears a close analogy and proportion to its moral and spiritual wellbeing. In England, through the Providence which has over- ruled the history of our Constitution, we have been allowed to enjoy the first of these prime social and poHtical blessings in higher excellence perhaps than any other people. Individually, socially, and politically, we are more free than other nations ; because no people has ever had so clear and strong a practical conviction that true Liberty is not only compatible with, but im- peratively requires a full subjection and subordination to Law ; wherefore the more complete and spontaneous this subordination is, the more perfect will be our Liberty. So that there is still much to be done, in order to render this subjection in all parts of the land a willing sub- jection, much in the way of persuasion and instruction, divers things in modifications of our laws and institu- tions, to bring them into more entire accordance with the reasonable will of the nation. In like manner, while we make no attempt to over- throw the order of Nature and of society, whereby diver- sities of gifts and faculties and qualities and attributes are found to prevail universally, the principle of our Constitution, which has been working itself out during a course of centuries, and divesting itself of whatever militated against it, is, that all men are equal in the eyes of the law, and moreover that every profession, every office, up to the highest in the State, is open to every Christian Englishman. Nevertheless we know too IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 59 well that enormous inequalities of many kinds exist in England, — not merely such as belong legitimately to a well-ordered polity, in which, as in its heavenly pro- totype, there are many mansions, — inequalities which are not created by the laws, and which the laws cannot remedy, but which have sprung from one form or other of the lust of concupiscence, and which in the sight of God often amount to iniquities. For these inequalities the only efficient remedy lies in the spirit of Christian Fraternity, in the spirit which enables us to feel that, whatever possession, whatever privilege we may have, we have not for ourselves, but for those who need it, and that the one true blessing attacht to wealth, of whatsoever kind, is the blessedness of giving. This Fraternity cannot be the creature of laws and institutions. They may cherish it, or afford facilities for it : but, inasmuch as it is a form of Love, it can only spring from the heart. Nay, it never has sprung, nor ever can spring, except from a heart re- newed by Christian Faith and Love. Other forms of love may have a root in our natural affections, and may rise in no small vigour from thence. Of this form our natural affections take no note ; and many of our natural appetites militate against it. Now what can we say of England in this respect ? Can we say that anything like true Fraternity is generally prevalent amongst us ? Among those whose hearts are swayed by Christian Grace it does prevail. But does it among the bulk of the nation ? Can we assert that there is no truth in the common complaint, that the differences of rank are nowhere more obtrusive and galling than in England ? Now this is a main part of England's appointed task, 60 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH if she would not forfeit her glorious prerogative, if she desires to retain her precedence of teaching nations liow to live. She must regard it as one of her first duties, and make it one of her primary aims, to realize those grand ideas, for the realizing of v^hich the heart of man is now restlessly craving, of Liberty, Equality, and Fra- ternity. She must endeavour to realize them more and more, in all the relations of life, political, social, moral, spiritual. As she has been allowed to lead the way in realizing the idea of true political Liberty, and at least to assert the principle of true political Equality, so must she strive to advance continually in the completer car- rying out of these ideas, and to perfect and crown her work, by animating all her institutions, and harmonizing all the relations of life, with the spirit of Christian Fra- ternity. And when I say that this is the duty of England, I mean that it is the duty of every Englishman, according to the means and opportunities with which God has supplied him for the work. It is the duty of the peer ; and it is the duty of the peasant. It is the duty of the merchant and manufacturer; and it is the duty of the artisan. It is the duty of the farmer ; and it is the duty of the husbandman. It is the duty of the layman ; and it is the duty of the clergyman. Everybody has an appointed field of action and influence ; and in that field he ought to look upon himself as God's appointed minister for this work. To us, my Reverend Brethren, is especially assigned the spiritual part of the work. This is the most im- portant of all, not merely in itself, but also as the only living principle and source of all the rest. We are especi- ally ordained to call men to that truth, which will make IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 61 them free, — to admonish them of their equality in God's sight, both as lying under the same sentence of condem- nation, and as invited to partake in the same blessed redemption ; and we are to tell them continually of their Heavenly Father, of their adoption as His children, of their Brotherhood in Christ Jesus, of their being members one of another, so that, if one member suffers, all members ought to suffer, if one member rejoices, all ought to share in his joy. In fact what is the modern Trinity, thus parodied by the Revolution, even in its best form, except a narrow, superficial expression for the blessed Trinity of Christian Graces, Faith, Hope, and Love. By Faith, and only by Faith, receiving the Truth, do we become free from sin, and from the bondage of the world. Through Hope we are citizens of the heavenly Jerusa- lem, where all distinctions will pass away ; for all will dwell in the presence of God, and in the light of the Lamb. And as it is by the love of God, that we, who were aliens from Him, are called to be His children, so through the same love we are no longer aliens and enemies to each other, but friends and brethren ; as a symbol of which, whenever a minister of Christ preaches to a congregation, though he may be personally a total stranger to them, though he may never before have set eyes on any one of them, though they may have been separated from him by half the globe, by race, language, customs, colour, he still calls them his brethren. These duties belong to us at all times, under every aspect of the world and of the Church. But they are forced upon us still more impressively in times of trouble and trial. And that which we are to preach and to teach, we ought also to shew forth in our lives. In these days 62 THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH we are called more urgently than ever to live a life of Faith, and of Hope, and of Love. Outward strength may fail us : wealth, dignity, learning, the power we may derive from ancient institutions and political supports, — all these may crumble under our feet. But these three cannot fail : Faith, Hope, Love abide and stand fast for ever. The spirit which animated the Archbishop of Paris, ought to hve in every one of us, — and so much the more, inasmuch as through God's mercy we have received the faith of Christ in greater purity. "We ought all to be equally ready to go forth for the assertion of every divine truth, whatever hosts of enemies the world may marshal against it ; and we should ever act under the con- viction, that he who would follow the example of the good Shepherd, is to give his life, — and, if so, of course every lesser gift and faculty and possession, — for his Master's sheep. Moreover let me add, recurring for a moment to the former part of this Charge, that, if we are to preach Fraternity to others, we are especially bound to shew it forth among ourselves : and while we seek to attain to Christian Liberty, we must guard, in the spirit of St Paul, against every thought and act which would violate that Liberty in our brethren (y). The number of momentous subjects on which I have had to speak today, has compelled me to detain you so long, that I must needs omit the exhortation I am wont to address to you, my friends, who are come as Churchwardens to this Visitation. Indeed what I have already been saying about the duty of every En- glishman in these times of trial, concerns you, as well as my brother Clergy. You too are especially called in these times to cultivate and promote Christian Liberty, IN TIMES OF TRIAL. 63 Christian Equality, and Christian Fraternity, in all your relations with your neighbours, above all with the labourers whom God has placed under your care. Let every labourer, every man, woman, and child in your parishes, feel that you regard them as your equals before God, as your brethren in Christ. Treat them as brothers ; love them as brothers. Your parishes will be bright" and blessed spots in the land, if you do. Your labourers will be blessed ; but the chief blessing will be that which returns into your own bosoms. And here let me just remind you, that this is the very reason why year after year I have so earnestly exhorted you to get rid of the pews in your Churches ; because they are adverse to Cliristian Equality, and to Christian Fra- ternity ; because they pamper vain distinctions and divi- sions, and separate us from our brethren, where we ought especially to be united as the members of one body. To you, to us, to all who love England, and desire that she should not lose her glorious precedence of teaching nations how to live, the events of the present year come with solemn exhortation and warning. When the funeral bell tells us that the spirit of a brother has departed from the earth, it should also remind us of our own sure portion, and admonish us to prepare for it. In like manner the bell, which this year has been con- tinually tolling the destruction of thrones and empires, should remind us also that the throne and empire of England, her wealth, her power, her orderly social state, with all the untold blessings of family life, and friendly intercourse, and manly enterprise, and intellectual activity and enjoyment, which spring from it, have no principle of immortality in them, — that they too may fall and be 64 DUTY OF THE CHURCH IN TIMES OF TRIAL. confounded with the wreck of other nations. Therefore it admonishes us all, that we are each and all bound to do everything that in us lies, to preserve and uphold the State of England, each according to the means and opportunities granted to him, — to cast out whatever has the seeds of death in it, and to infuse, to propagate, and to foster whatever has the principle of life and immortality (z). We are to do this primarily in ourselves, and next in whatever sphere of action God has appointed for us. Then may it come to pass, that, as the bell, which tolls the funeral knell, has often to change its note, and ring the joyous marriage-peal, — yea, as the funeral bell itself, when it tolls the death of a saint, announces the marriage of his spirit to the Heavenly Bridegroom, — so will these funeral bells, which have been tolling the ruin of King- doms and Churches, prepare the Church and People of England for the Marriage-feast of the Lamb. NOTES. Note A : p. 6. My Letter to the Dean of Chichester has been the subject of severe animadversions, especially in a Pamphlet by a person calling himself "a Cambridge Tutor," and in a series of long, elaborate Articles in the British Magazine. Of course I was pre- pared for this. I did not take up my pen on that occasion without counting the cost. But I have not found anything material in the arguments urged against me, which requires any addition to what has been said in the Postscript to the second Edition of that Letter; and I am unwilling to revive an irksome, never- ending controversy on minute points of detail. Nor should I have made this slight allusion to my assailants, except that the writer in the British Magazine tries to shew that I myself have been guilty of the sin, with which I have charged the impugners of the Bampton Lectures, by garbling my extracts from them. Had I done so, such an act would be doubly reprehensible in me. But his main ground for the accusation is, that, in quoting a long passage, several parts of which I omitted, " there are no dots, or marks of omission" (p. 530). The reply to this is very simple. The omissions are denoted, not by dots, but by dashes. My accuser indeed says, "the dashes would hardly be supposed to have that intention." Yet I know not why, if such be an ordinary mode of designating omissions. So far as my observa- tion has extended, it is the most usual one; though it may be that I have been led to adopt it by its continual occurrence in Niebuhr's Roman History ; the precision of that writer, and his reluctance to swell out his notes, making him merely quote those words from the passages he refers to, which bear F 66 NOTE A. directly on the inference he wishes to draw from them. Whether dots or dashes are the commonest mode adopted nowadays by English printers for designating omissions, I know not; nor is it worth while to enquire. At all events the latter are still not unfrequent; and that they were in use two hundred years ago, appears from Milton's Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, where, complaining of the licensers, he says : " If the work of any deceast author, though never so famous in his life- time, and even to this day, comes to their hands for license to be printed or reprinted, if there be found in his book one sen- tence of a venturous edge, uttered in the highth of zeal, (and who knows whether it might not be the dictate of a divine spirit?) yet not suiting with every low, decrepit humour of their own, though it were Knox himself, the Reformer of a kingdom, that spake it, they will not pardon him their dash." It is so difficult to attain to complete accuracy in such minute points of typography, that the dash by which I meant to mark an omission, may here and there have been left out by the printer, though I am not aware of it. This however is not garbling a quotation. Garbling involves an intentional misrepresentation of the passage quoted, mostly one injurious to the writer, though in my case it would have been otherwise, — a misrepresentation, which, by leaving out certain words, twists the meaning of the passage into something different from the author's purpose. Such an act is a sin against truth, which I have not wittingly committed, and which my opponent, with all his efforts, has not convicted me of My omissions are of such words as did not seem to bear on the immediate argument for which the passage was quoted, mostly of words which had no significance with reference to any part of the controversy. In a very few cases, it may be, the words omitted might have appeared to call for a separate elucidation. My purpose however was not to write a commentary on every questionable expression in the Bampton Lectures. It was merely to shew that the extracts brought forward, as grounds for the proceedings against the author, gave an erroneous representation of his views. NOTE B. 67 in a word, that they were garbled. Even as it was, I was under the necessity of making a number of long quotations ; and I gladly embraced every opportunity, that I could conscientiously, of curtailing them. Note B : p. 7. In the discussion which took place in the House of Lords on this subject in February last, the Bishop of St David's, according to the Report in the Times, said, that "his right rev. friend (the Bishop of Exeter) had spoken, as if the power which had hitherto been exercised in substance by the Crown, had been an absolute and irresponsible power. — His right rev. friend had forgotten this very important feature in the case, that, when the Crown exercised this power, it was strictly limited as to the object selected for nomination. It was not a power to nominate anybody whom the Crown might think proper : but it was a power limited to a certain known class of persons, who in the eyes of the law were equally well qualified to be the object of nomination. His right rev. friend — had made much too great a distinction between the inferior and superior orders in the Church : he appeared at the moment to have forgotten that there was no ulterior qualification required for the functions of a Bishop, which was not equally required for the functions of a Presbyter. The qualifications required for the Presbyter, and which fitted the Presbyter for the after functions of a Bishop, were the main qualifications : all others were secondary, and comparatively immaterial." This is an important observation, and quite conclusive as an answer to a case suggested by some alarmists, that, if the power of the Crown were to be exercised without any sort of check, it might nominate a Jew or a Mahometan. Still there is no absolute war- rant in the previous ordination, that every person who is ordained Priest will be qualified for the Priesthood. Even with the utmost vigilance on the part of the ordaining Bishops, unworthy candi- dates may gain admission. Moreover, during the long period F 2 G8 NOTE B. which mostly intervenes before a Priest is raised to the Episcopate, disqualifications, unknown at the time of his ordination, may have become notorious. His life may have been openly immoral ; or his opinions, as we have seen happen in so many lamentable instances of late, though previously in unison with the doctrines of our Church, may have diverged from them, whether toward Romanism, or toward Rationalism and Socinianism. Now surely it is not unrea- sonable to demand, that the Church should have some legal security that a person thus disqualified shall not be placed among her rulers. Nay, the need of such a security is greatly hightened, now that the Prime Minister will no longer be necessarily a mem- ber of her body, but may be a Dissenter, a Unitarian, a Romanist, or perchance, ere long, a Jew. This security would be afforded by those very forms, which have just been proved to be nullities, if they were but allowed to become realities. That they were originally intended to be so, is plain, without our entering into a historical demonstration to prove it : for no forms are ever set up in the first instance with the purpose of being empty and power- less. They were meant to have force, however they may have lost it. Nor would the revivifying of those forms invest the Archbishop, as has been contended, with a veto on the appoint- ments of the Crown. For the nominee of the Crown would only be rejected in a case where there was decisive legal evidence of his unfitness. The Archbishop would not act discretionally, but judi- cially, somewhat in the same manner in which a Bishop at present may refuse to institute a priest to a living, when he can shew valid cause for his refusal. But in fact the very existence of such a security would almost ensure its never being called into activity, by preventing the Minister of the Crown from nominating a person whose nomination could be called in question. Vexatious objec- tions, such as were offered in one at least of the recent cases, might be dismist summarily. 69 Note C: p. 10. The gi-eat importance of having regular forms for Trust-deeds, to prevent the evils which would result from carelessness in the mode of drawing them up, is forcibly urged by Mr Henry Wilberforce, in his Letter to Sir R. Inglis ; though the purpose of that Letter is to impugn the Clauses proposed by the Privy Council. After saying that hitherto the working of our schools "has not in most instances been very materially affected" by the provisions in the Trust-deeds, he adds : " But it were most imprudent to assume that this state of things will be permanent. Daily experience assures us that few legal deeds are operative until after many years. Deeds of marriage settlement are now as general as the marriage of those who have any property ; and how few of them are ever consulted, as long as the lives and mutual harmony of the married pair continue ! — But should discord and separation arise, or should one or both die, it is changed at once from a dead letter, a mere form, to a living and active law. — Need I add, that, if such a deed contains any inconvenient or unjust provisions, any obscurities or defects, — many years will usually elapse before their existence is suspected ? It is when change of circumstances makes a deed important, that its practical tendency is for the first time tested. — Now the Trust-deeds of our schools are strictly their deeds of settlement. We have not yet seen how they will work, whenever circum- tances shall arise which shall call them into practical operation. And that such circumstances will arise, and perhaps very speedily, I hold to be unquestionable. It is not merely that, as the original managers pass away, we must look to the Deed to settle by whom they shall be succeeded ; but already much has happened to involve the question. Popular education has hitherto been a neglected subject; at this moment all parties are exert- ing themselves to wipe off this reproach. I heartily rejoice at the movement : may it continue and extend ! Still we must not reckon upon the advantages which result from this increast attention, together with the quietness of neglect. Alexander 70 NOTE C. Selkirk would have been glad of neighbours; but he could no longer have said, I am monarch of all I survey. As population increast, he would have found the need of fences, fences moral as well as physical, of title-deeds as well as hedges. In this point of view, the new Minutes of Council have greatly increast the importance of the deeds by which the government of our Church schools must be regulated. — To nominate a master to a school, in which he will hardly obtain daily bread by daily labour, — this cannot be esteemed an enviable act of patronage. — But the office of a mas- ter is to be raised. He is to be an educated person : he is to be placed above want : he is to enjoy the prospect of a retiring pen- sion. — Can it be doubted that, as soon as this change is effected, the appointment of the schoolmaster will be regarded as a desirable piece of patronage ? The controll of the school wjU become an object of ambition. Men who delight to figure in parish vestries, will be no less rejoiced to see their names on school-committees. — Under these circumstances Trust-deeds will no longer be a dead letter. Men will enquire, in whom is legally vested the nomination of the Master, the controll and visitation of the school. Our school-deeds will then be tried ; we shall see whether they are valid or invalid, whether they secure anything at all, whether those, who, with great public benefit, and great personal sacrifice, now direct our schools, may or may not be excluded by others who desire personal importance or valuable patronage. I think it is certain that, before long, these deeds will become important documents" (pp. 15 — 17). In this conviction I fully participate ; and for this very reason, it seems to me, we owe our thanks to the Committee of Council, for having taken the trouble to provide certain forms, whereby the mischievous effects of ill-constructed Trust-deeds may be precluded. This question is distinct from those which relate to the particular provisions of the proposed forms ; and on this preHminary point, I trust, almost all persons who have considered the matter are now agreed. It has been a great satisfaction to me to find that the view which I have taken through all our discussions on this point, is NOTE C. 71 confirmed by the excellent Bishop of Salisbury in his recent Charge, pp. 13 — 15. "On the best consideration, — I am bound to say that it does not appear to me either unreasonable that the State should require a certain constitution of management for schools as the condition of its grants, or injurious to the Church to acquiesce in such a condition, but rather the contrary. I am not now speaking of any specific management clauses, the character of which is a subsequent consideration, but of the general question, whether the imposition of any clauses at all should be resisted by the members of the Church. And as to this I am clearly of opinion, both that the State is entitled to the security thus given as to the manner of the application of its funds ; and that the Church, far from sustaining any injury thereby, would, in fact, find in the settlement of such terms protection and security. The State has, I think, a right to expect that some terms of management should be defined ; because, when considerable sums of money are to b^ applied from the public funds for the establishment and mainte- nance of schools, it is reasonable to require that the schools be constituted on such a basis as to give security for the permanence of their character as public institutions, not liable to be affected by the fluctuations of individual caprice. Those who refuse all recognition of this right, and who require that all parties should be allowed to claim a share in the public money, and at the same time to constitute their schools accor- ding to their individual fancies, appear to me to take up a ground incapable of being maintained in dispassionate argu- ment, and which I hope the members of the Church generally will not be disposed to adopt. And this the rather, because the settlement of well-considered terms upon which grants shall be made, is, in fact, a security to the Church against that very aggression which is the subject of apprehension. If the con- stitution of the school is left in each individual case to be settled by discussion between its local promoters and the Committee of Council, it is easy to see how great a power would come to be exercised by this latter body, even though the right of compulsion were formally withheld. Should those who are 72 NOTE D. entrusted with the distribution of the public funds be at any time disposed to use the power in their hands for the promo- tion of any particular object, far more opportunity for this would be given by negociations in detail with the local promoters of each particular school, often little acquainted with the general bearings of the propositions submitted to them, under the in- fluence of hope and fear, not to say, subject to the constraint of their necessities, than is afforded by the deliberate discussion of terms beforehand with an independent body, such as the Committee of the National Society. It is true that, in the earlier stages of the administration of these funds, no such con- ditions were laid down ; and it is also the case that, in previous negociations between the Committee of the National Society and the Committee of Council, the former body have exprest a wish for the continuance of the same freedom; but experience and consideration have, I believe, produced a general conviction in the minds of the members of the Committee of the National Society, that such a demand is neither reasonable nor safe; and that, if the terms themselves be well considered, the necessity of their adoption is not an unsuitable condition in order to the reception of a grant from the public funds." The same line of argument was taken by the Bishop of Oxford in his speech at the Meeting of the National Society, and by Mr Gladstone, when the question was discust in the House of Commons. Hence I trust that the very unreasonable cry for leaving every one to do as he likes will now die away. Until we attain to that perfect love, which, being one with true wisdom, will ever fulfill the law, we need the help of the law at every step to keep us from erring at once against wisdom and against love. Note D: p. 13. The Secretary of the National Society in a letter to the Secretary of the Committee of Council on Education, dated May 12, 1846, states that "the Committee of the National Society NOTE J). 73 are prepared to concur with the Committee of Council in recom- mending the Clauses to applicants for aid, it being understood that the applicants may select the Clause most adapted to their own case." It is true, he had previously said, that " the Committee of the National Society are desirous that the promoters of education throughout the country should have the same liberty of choice as to the constitution of their Schools, which has hitherto been conceded to them both by the Committee of Council and the National Society." It seems to me however, on the grounds urged in the Charge, and in the preceding Note, that this desire was unreasonable, and that the Committee of Council were quite right in disregarding it, though it was repeated in a letter from the late President of the National Society in November of the same year. Indeed it appears from the Correspondence between the two Committees, as publisht in the last Monthly Paper of the National Society, that the Committee of that Society have themselves changed their opinion on this point. For in their letter, dated the 5th of last July, they state that " Experience has convinced the Committee of the National Society, that it is important, — that the conditions on which the Parliamentary grants are made should be fixt and definite, in order to avoid negociations, which individuals are often not well qualified to conduct, at once from their position as applicants for aid, and because their want of familiarity with all the bearings of the subject, as well as other causes, has, in many instances, led, sometimes to imprudent concessions, and sometimes to demands at variance with the real objects of the applicants themselves." As to the liberty of selecting among the Clauses, it is plain, both from the Correspondence already cited, and from the Official Letters relative to the Management Clauses publisht by authority of the Privy Council, that the Committee of Council were always ready to concede this liberty to a considerable extent, where a valid claim for it could be made out. In many cases, as the Clauses were drawn up with special reference to Parishes under widely different circumstances, the transfer of them would have been an absurdity ; for instance, the application of the Clause drawn up 74 NOTE D. for " very small rural parishes" to a parish like Brighton or Marylebone. I have mentioned the dates of the Letters from the National Society, because one main ground of the complaints and irri- tation against the Committee of Council has been the notion that their conduct in enforcing the Clauses has not been open and straightforward. Such a notion^ with reference to such a body, could hardly have sprung up, except where a strong pre- judice was already existing. From the dates just referred to, we see that the Committee of the National Society was ac- quainted with the Clauses on the 12th of May 1846; and the documents printed among the Official Letters prove that they were the subject of a negociation between the two Committees in the course of that year. Yet Mr Wilberforce, whose Letter to Sir R. Inglis bears date June 1st, 1847, says (p. 19): "The Committee of Council have suffered the Church to go on to the present moment wholly unconscious that any change has even been contemplated : " and, then, after trying to shew that they cannot have weighed the importance of the innovation, he adds ; " I cannot but derive some satisfaction from this consideration ; because it enables me to believe that the measure, perhaps some- what indiscreetly urged forward by the overhasty zeal of some subordinate authority, has not yet received the full consideration of their Lordships. — Could I think otherwise, I must most sin- cerely lament that the Administration of England should have adopted, upon a subject so momentous as the education of the people of England, a course of jyroceeding which an opponent would stigmatize as stealthy and underhandy So again the Reviewer of that Letter, in the Christian Remembrancer for July 1847, in an Article which puts the worst construction on every measure of the Privy Council, says (p. 161): "The underhand and irregidar way in lohich this new condition has been imposed, appears sufficiently in this simple fact, that there is no public accessible document, of any sort or kind, which makes the smallest allusion to it. It has absolutely no existence except in the letters of Mr Kay Shuttleworth, the Committee's NOTE D. 75 Secretary, to this or that individual clergyman, who may happen to have obtained a grant of money for his school. The con- dition is only known to the individual : the Church, as a body, knows nothing about it." Where such statements found credence, one cannot wonder that a good deal of indignation was excited. But, though the authors of them did not intend to misrepresent the facts, the true state of the case was very different. From the series of letters now publisht, it appears, {Monthly Paper p. 11,) that the Committee of Council began in 1845, under the late President, to recommend certain forms of Trust-deeds to applicants for aid. The late President, I have been informed, was strongly urged to bring the matter before the House of Lords, for the sake of obtaining a definite decision on the point, but deferred doing so, probably from wishing to ascertain beforehand experimentally what forms would be best suited to the varying circumstances of particular parishes. In the following year, 1846, the forms recommended by the Committee of Council came under the notice of the Committee of the National Society; and a correspondence, interrupted by the change of Ministry, ensued between the two Committees, in which the Committee of the National Society declared themselves prepared to recommend the Clauses to applicants for aid, under the limitations already spoken of. In September of the same year, the Committee of Council, after adopting an alteration suggested by that of the National Society, state their desire, " that no doubt should exist that the National Society are prepared to employ their influence with the promoters of parochial schools, on all occasions, to procure the adoption of the Clauses : " and they are answered by a repetition of the same declaration, though with the same limitations. Thus the Clauses were a subject of negociation in 1846 with the Committee of the National Society, which has long acted as the organ of the Church in matters pertaining to education, and which declared itself prepared to recommend them to appli- cants for aid. Surely this was the proper mode of commu- nicating these Clauses to the Church, until the publication of the Minute, which was of course deferred till the permanent 76 NOTE E. form of the Clauses was conceived to be determined. Tlie long and tangled discussions which have arisen in settling that form, shew how injudicious it would have been to have issued a minute without such a negociation: and what complaints would have been vociferated against the arrogance of the Committee of Council in laying down such rules so hastily and inconsiderately, without consulting the only persons qualified to pronounce an opinion on the proper government of Church- schools ! As it was, the Committee of Council might well assume that the Clergy who applied to them for aid, would have been apprised of the Clauses by the National Society, who had promist to recommend them. Surely such words as stealthy and underhand are wholly out of place in reference to this conduct. I should hold indeed that grants made anterior to the nego- ciation with the National Society ought not to have been withheld in consequence of a refusal to adopt the Clauses. Whether this happened in any particular case through inattention or mistake, I know not. In that of his own Parish, Mr Wilberforce says (p. 21), "the Committee of Council, after some correspondence, conceded the points for which the local Committee felt it their duty to contend." Note E: p. 16. A wish was exprest at the Visitation, that I should introduce a few sentences on the benefits which the lay members of the Church would derive from taking a more active part in her various works. One reason for my not dwelling on this topic in my Charge, though I am deeply imprest with its importance, was, that I have often brought it forward prominently on for- mer occasions ; for instance, in my Visitation Sermon, Chrisfs Promise the Strength of the Church, pp. 342 — 345, in my first Charge, the Better Prospects of the Church, pp. 24 — 30, and in Note A to my second Charge, Privileges imply Duties. Here I will only add one remark. The staple argument used in behalf of the Game-Laws is, that they supply an inducement for the great landed proprietors to reside on their estates. What must be the worth of a cause, which is upheld by such an argument ! What must be the character of landed proprietors, who need such an inducement! Nay, what, in times like these, must be their condition ! Must they not be on the very verge of extinction ? if, with all the healthful and useful and delightful occupations enjoined upon them by the duties consequent on the possession of landed property, — by the duties of cultivating their lands, and all their varied produce, vegetable and animal, and of leading the way in all manner of agricultural improvements, so that the soil of England may be fitted for supporting its ever-multiplying population, — and by the duties of employing their manifold means of wealth and influence for bettering the physical and moral condition of the people on their estates, who by the very tenure of those estates are committed by God to their special charge, — if, with all these solemn duties, with all these blessed means and oppor- tunities of salutary and beneficent action, they can find no mo- tive, no pleasure, no Inducement for living on their estates, unless they are allowed to sink their human, moral nature into the similitude of beasts of prey. It may be that this similitude may allowably occupy a part in the microcosm, man. But that it should occupy the chief part in any man ! in any class of men ! and that these men should be called the aristocracy ! History never presented a more glaring instance of her bitter irony. In days like these, when it would seem that God were coming to judge the nations, one might think that such an aristocracy would surely be doomed ; were it not that, through His mercy there are better and nobler spirits amongst them, men who know their duties, and love them, and prize them as their highest blessings. God be praised that such men seem to be increasing in number every year ! May they still continue to increase ! Else the righteous sentence will ere long go forth, that they who reject the duties attacht to their lands, shall have their lands taken from them, that they who choose to be mere Esaus, shall forfeit their birthright and their blessing. 78 Note F: p. 18. The correspondence in which this negociation has been carried on, has just been publisht in the Monthlt/ Paper above referred to; and from the exceedingly concihatory spirit shewn by the Committee of Council, in complying with the requests addrest to them by the Committee of the National Society, I trust that the matter will soon be brought to a satisfactory settlement. At present the only point of difference seems to relate to the question of appeals from the decision of School-committees. The original Clauses, if a difference arises in any Parish be- tween the Minister and the rest of the Committee respecting the religious instruction of the scholars, grant an appeal to the Bishop of the Diocese, whose decision is to be " final and conclusive." In a letter from the Secretary to the Bishop of Ripen, publisht among the Official Letters, it is stated (p. 1 9) that " the correct in- terpretation of the power given to the Bishop — gives the Diocesan the authority to exclude any book against the use of which an appeal should be made on religious grounds, if that book were found by him to be inconsistent with the doctrine of the Church ;" and further, that, "if the teaching of the Master or Mistress were regarded by any member of the Committee as inconsistent with the doctrine of the Church, and that member appealed to the Bishop, the decision of the Diocesan would on this point also be final." On the other hand, in consequence of a request from the Com- mittee of the National Society in April last that an appeal be provided "in case of differences upon all other points, besides those involving the moral and religious instruction of the scholars, and in particular upon the selection, appointment, and dismissal of the schoolmaster and schoolmistress and their assistants," the Committee of Council, after some correspondence, proposed, as a Board of Appeal for such cases, "that the Lord President of the Council shall nominate as one arbitrator an Inspector of Schools, appointed conformably to the Order in Council dated NOTE F, 79 10th August, 1840; that the Bishop of the Diocese shall nomi- nate a second arbitrator from among the Clergy of his Diocese; and that these two arbitrators shall in each case select a third person to act with them, being a magistrate and lay member of the Church of England." A provision is added in case the first two arbitrators should not agree in the choice of a third; but the material point is the constitution of the Board of Appeal as already stated. There could not be a stronger proof of the conciliatory spirit wuth which the Committee of Council have acted throughout. For the Lord President, in the choice of the arbitrator he is to select, restricts himself to the body of Inspectors, who cannot be appointed without the concurrence of the Archbishop of the Province, and who are to be removed if that concurrence is withdrawn. Thus we have every security we can desire for the character of two of the arbitrators ; and these two are to choose the third. When such a Board of Appeal has been granted by the Com- mittee of Council, along with the reservation of all questions relating to religious and moral instruction for the exclusive juris- diction of the Bishop, it seems greatly to be deplored that the Committee of the National Society should have protracted the settlement of a negociation, which has been beset with so much angiy contention, by requesting that the local promoters of schools should be allowed, where a certain proportion of them wish it, to name the Bishop of the Diocese as arbitrator upon every point of difference. As the Committee of Council have definitively refused to comply with this request, I trust it will be withdrawn without hesitation at the next Meeting of the Committee of the National Society. An impression has indeed arisen, since the publication of the Correspondence between the two Committees in the Monthly Paper of the National Society, that the negociation has already failed and been broken off. This impression however, I conceive, has arisen solely from the accidental fact, that the correspondence, as there printed, terminates with the refusal of the Committee of Council to accede to the request concerning the exclusive 80 NOTE G. jurisdiction of the Bishop. Hence it has been inferred, somewhat precipitately, that the negociation is finally closed: whereas the real state of the case is merely, that, the last Letter from the Committee of Council being dated the 30th of August, and there having been no meeting of the Committee of the National Society in September, that Letter has not yet been taken into consideration. But, as October was also to elapse before the latter Committee would reassemble, it was deemed expedient to publish the correspondence which had taken place, in order that the Chm-ch at large might know in what manner the negociation has hitherto been carried on, and to what results it has led. The publication, I believe, has been very timely. Most persons who take an interest in the question, so far as I have had the means of judging, have had their views greatly modified by it ; and many who once lookt with alarm at the Clauses, have been convinced that in their present state they will not only be un- objectionable, but beneficial. Indeed there is good reason to hope that ere long all judicious persons will concur in the views exprest by Mr Gladstone, according to the report of his speech in the Times for August 1 9th : " To the general principle of the composition of the Committees of Management he gave his most frank and cordial support. — If they succeeded in making an arrangement of the kind indicated, it would be accepted, not as a compromise, or a choice between greater and less evils ; but a very great increase of valuable assistance would be given to the Church in the matter of education, and a very great benefit conferred on the whole of the people." Note G : p. 1 9. Those who congratulate themselves, — for there are some such persons, — on the notion that the negociation with the Committee of Council has been broken off, will doubtless maintain that the rupture has not arisen from any jealousy of the Laity, but from a desire to uphold the exclusive rights of the Episcopate. In point of fact however this amounts to the same thing. It NOTE G. 81 is merely a transfer of the same feeling from the lower degree to the higher, an effort to assume for the Hierarchy, what can no longer be maintained for the lower orders of the Clergy. The Bishops themselves, I should conceive, would much rather be exempted from the decision of such thorny questions as may arise concerning the appointment or removal of school-masters and mistresses. Surely too a magistrate in the neighbourhood would have greater facilities for investigating such questions, at least in parishes remote from the cathedral city, and, if judi- ciously selected, would be quite as competent to do so. On these grounds it seems to me that the Committee of Council are bound to persist in their refusal, because they are asserting an im- portant principle. In fact they are maintaining the cause of the Church, of the whole Church, against those who would sacrifice the rights of the Church to the Hierarchy. The chief motive, which induced the Committee of the Na- tional Society to urge the request we have been considering, — it would seem from their letter of July 5th, — was, that "a strong desire had been exprest by many members of the Society to name, in their Trust-deeds, the Bishop of the Diocese as arbi- trator upon any point of difference," and that " this arrangement would appear to be considered by some as the only one under which they can conscientiously submit Church-schools to the controll of Committees formed under any of the Management Clauses." But, though every conscientious scruple should be respected, so far that he who entertains it should not be sub- jected to any positive penalty or persecution, such merely per- sonal scruples cannot well be taken into account in legislative enactments. In these we are to lay down what we conclude to be right, on the largest, fullest view of the matter under con- sideration, without regard to individual whims and delusions. By complying with such, we seldom even attain the end of satisfying and pacifying those who hold them. We must not humour a spoilt child : we only spoil him still more, if we do. The likelier course to correct him will be by firm, steady, straightforward conduct, without noticing his caprices. When the great body of 82 NOTE IT. the Church have adopted the Management Clauses, and are ex- periencing their beneficial effects, the fanciful scruples, which usurp the name of conscientiousness, will vanish. Note H : p. 20. They who urge this argument forget that he who lays down a rule, binds himself primarily thereby. This is put very forcibly by the Bishop of Oxford, according to the report of his Speech in the Ecclesiastical Gazette. He is contending that, in having cer- tain Clauses to regulate the management of Schools, " we get a safeguard for the Church in dealing with such a body as the Privy Council." For what, he asks, is the fact ? " The fact is, that a number of schools in detail accept these Clauses without question, because they feel it of great importance to obtain money to build schools. What then is the Church to do? Is the Church to say, we will leave the question to be decided by the needy applicant for aid, in his particular parish, prest upon by a sense of the need of educating his children, hoping he shall be able to go in the right direction, trying to persuade himself that he gives up no principle? or ought we to say, we will see on what terms you can accept it, binding the Govern- ment on one side by these terms, and binding the management of the schools on the other, and thus affording protection against any possible abuses ? This is the practical question." After a careful examination of the whole Con'espondence be- tween the two Committees, it seems to me that there is no reason for hesitating to place full reliance in Lord John Russell's declaration in the House of Commons on the 18th of August, that " the Committee of Council have not the least wish to impose any terms which will give the Government further power of interference with these Schools." NOTES I. J. 83 Note I: p. 22. In the English Revieie for June 1847, in an Article on the Educational Minutes of August and December 1846, the writer says (p, 419): "We confidently assert, that there is no person in any degree, whether theoretically or practically, conversant with the subject, but must welcome these regulations with that applause which they deserve, unless he be totally devoid either of candour or common sense. For our own part, we have no hesitation in declaring our mature conviction, that they are the very best which could possibly be produced to meet the cir- cumstances of the case." Some sensible observations follow in pp. 425 — 427, on the great benefits which are likely to accrue to the English nation, and especially to the Church, from the regulations. The writer's object is to defend them against the ■Dissenters, and to shew the folly and sin of the Dissenters in impugning and rejecting them. Of course however his remarks will apply with still more force to the Church, who is to be the chief gainer by the regulations, if she allows anything less than an urgent duty and manifest necessity to draw her into breaking off that union and consort from which such blessings may fairly be expected. Note J: p. 25. The only objections I have heard of to this Bill, which appear to me of much weight, bear upon that portion of it which provides for a private investigation by the Bishop into the conduct of a Clerk under accusation. There are indeed many cases, which, it seems to me, would be best settled in such a manner, with an avoidance of much scandal and expense. The Act too provides that such proceedings shall not be instituted without the consent of the Clerk, and that sentence shall not be past upon him, unless "by some writing under his hand he confess the truth of the charge, and consent that the Bishop G 2 84 NOTE K. shall forthwith pronounce sentence upon him." Still it is appre- hended by many that fear of the Bishop, and of ulterior pro- ceedings, would induce some Clerks to give their consent, even when they felt themselves innocent. I should hardly think such a case likely to occur in these days: but others are of a different opinion : and in such a matter one is especially bound to distrust one's own judgement. Note K : p. 25. The only thing like authentic information that has got abroad concerning the intended Test of Heresy, as it has been called, is contained in a letter from the Bishop of Exeter to the Archdeacon of Exeter, which was publisht, apparently by himself, in the English Churchman. In this letter it is stated, that, at a meeting of the Bishops, held the day before, to consider the Clergy Offenses Bill, a Proviso was proposed to be added to the 3d Clause, enact- ing " that nothing shall be adjudged in any Court of this land to be heresy, or false or unsound doctrine, on any point treated of — in the xxxix Articles, that is not opposed to the doctrine of the Church of England, as there declared." This Proviso, it is further said, " was not adopted by the meeting of Bishops ; but it was announced that such a Proviso will be moved in the course of the progress of the Bill through Parliament." As the other Bishops present took no public notice of this announcement, we may infer that they hoped, whatever they deemed objectionable in the Proviso might be removed by private discussions : for the Bishop of Exeter, in a second letter, written three days after, adds, " that the Proviso— was not proposed by any Bishop, as himself favouring it, but was laid before us in order that we might consider it, as it would certainly be moved in the progress of the Bill through Par- liament." Or at all events they knew that it might be averted, as it actually was, by the dropping of the whole Bill. Probably too they were of opinion that the Church had already been suffi- ciently distracted by the previous controversies of last winter, one of which was still going on with some vehemence ; and hence they NOTE K. 85 might be unwilling to throw in new matter of contention. But the Bishop of Exeter's well-known inflexible love of truth w^ould not allow him to compromise it by any such pacific policy. As soon as he heard of the proposition, which was sure to kindle such a ferment in our Church, he immediately sent off a letter to the Archdeacons of his Diocese, publishing it at the same time to the whole Church through the English Churchman., in order that the Clergy might be roused to put forth all their energies in resisting this threatened anonymous innovation. By the Clergy of the Diocese of Exeter, the letter of their Bishop would naturally be regarded as a sufficient ground to act upon. But it did not seem to me to be a ground for our adopting any measures in this Archdeaconry, so long as we were left without a similar intimation from our own Diocesan. I thought it would rather become us to wait until the proposition was actually brought forward in some definite form, that we might know what we had to apprehend and to contend against. For the very fact, that it had been laid before a meeting of the Bishops, seemed to imply that its author was desirous of consulting their opinions, and would probably be ready to be guided by them, if not in withdrawing, at least in modifying it. Hence, in my communications with the Clergy of this Archdeaconry, I strongly urged their abstaining from taking any step till we had more precise information concerning the measure which was to be submitted to the Legislature. It may be replied indeed, that our prepossessions and prejudices in these days are so strong, as almost to unfit us for making use of the most precise information, even when we have it, and that therefore the vaguest serves just as well for us to form our judge- ments on. For instance, in a short article in the British Magazine for the month of May, subjoined to a reprint of the Bishop of Exeter's Letter, we find two objections urged against the announced Proviso, — first, that it would be very wrong to make the Thirty- nine Articles the legal Test of heresy, though they " may fairly be taken as a Test of erroneous and unsound doctrine;" — and secondly, that the measure would tend to lower the authority of the Creeds. From these objections one might suppose that the 86 NOTE K. objector can hardly have read the Proviso, its purport being that nothing shall be adjudged to be heresy, or false or unsound doctrine, but what is opposed to the Thirty-nine Articles ; that is to say, heresy when it pertains to points on which errour is deemed heretical, in other cases false or unsound doctrine. He would also seem to have forgotten that the Articles declare that the Three Creeds " ought thoroughly to be received and believed," a higher authority than they venture to claim for themselves. Besides many of the condemners of the Proviso, one may infer from their arguments, must have overlookt that important limitation in it, that its purpose is not to constitute the Articles the sole Test of heresy, or false and unsound doctrine, but merely " on any point treated of in them ; " on which, so far as they do pronounce, their decision would of course be held to express the judgement of our Church. So that the effect of the Proviso would probably be to leave our Ecclesiastical Law very much as it is already; since the practice of the Courts has ever been to take the Articles as the canon for determining what is heresy, or false and unsound doctrine, on any point treated of in them : and our other symbolical books would still be consulted as authoritative with a view to the right interpretation of the Articles. The discussions which have arisen out of this controversy, may doubtless be useful in clearing men's minds on the subjects under debate. I am merely deprecating those public proceedings, by way of remonstrance or petition or address, which ought to follow, instead of preceding these discussions. Such proverbs as Look before you leap are valuable prudential maxims, of extensive application even in logic and morals. One should hardly have expected however that assemblies of Clergy would have needed such advice. But the dizzying speed and whirl of our railways seems even to have infected sober men with a desire of darting in a trice from the beginning to the end of their journey. In the proceedings of the rabble this is not surprising : but we have also seen a deliberative Assembly, supposed to contain the wisdom and prudence of the most cautious and considerate people on earth, condemn an armistice off-hand, without examining the negociations NOTE L. 87 which led to it : and in this instance again the verdict of Philip drunk had to be reverst by Philip sober. May the Clergy at least learn from reiterated experience, if from nothing else, to beware of such precipitation ! The most terrible feature about the cholera is its suddenness ; and scarcely less pernicious are choleric decisions. Note L : p. 26. On these grounds I cannot but deplore that a large body of Clergy, — a number amounting, it is said, to seventeen hundred, and comprising a large proportion of the most zealous and devoted ministers in our Church, — should have signed a Petition calling upon the Legislature to pass some enactment equivalent to the Proviso spoken of in the last Note. Surely there is something very inconsiderate in such a Petition. Are the Petitioners willing to abide by whatsoever Parliament may choose to lay down concerning the doctrines of the Church? No, they will say: we merely want them to decide in this one case as we bid them. But they who call upon a tribunal to decide, thereby recognise the right of that tribunal to decide against them, as well as in their favour, and not in one instance merely, but in all similar ones ; and they preclude themselves from urging any objection against its authority. It was through such inconsiderate invitations and appeals, that the Papacy gained a large part of its exorbitant power. In the present matter the Petition is rumoured to have been occasioned by a particular case in which episcopal authority is supposed to have been abused. But, even assuming the abuse to have been flagrant, we have regular courts for the settlement of such questions, where the sentence will be preceded by a long and careful examination into its legal grounds. It betokens a morbid impatience, to turn away from these regular tribunals, and to call for a new law, when things are not going just as we wish. A like impatience, no less deplorable, it seems to me, has been manifested this year in the Petition to Government to send a Commission to our Universities with a view to reforming their constitution and practice. Not that these are perfect, any more 88 NOTE L. than other human institutions. There are several things in the practice of my own, the one I am best acquainted with, which I earnestly desire to see changed. But what assurance have I, that a Commission appointed by Government would recommend the changes I wish for ? It is far more probable that many of their recommendations would be in an opposite direction, adding, for example, fresh stimulants to emulation, which already is one of our chief banes. Nay, even if I had the power of determining their recommendations, I should deem it incomparably better that the alterations should be made by the voluntary act of the Universities themselves, by those who will have to carry them into effect. For that which we do willingly and on conviction, will ever be better done than what we do on compulsion. The true way of reforming a body is to labour to produce that con- viction in them which will lead them to reform themselves. The arm of the Legislature should not be called in, nisi dignus vindice nodus : but, like bad playwrights, we call it in at every petty difficulty. While we prate about the omnipotence of truth, and boast that the wheels of the world are now to advance self- moved, like those in the prophetic vision, by in-dwelling intellect, not through the impulse of outward force, never has there been a year in which people have so perpetually called in force to effect what ought only to be effected, and can only be effected well, by intelligent conviction. In other words, every one wishes to impose his own will upon others ; few place any trust in reason and right and truth. There are several cases indeed in which the sanction of Par- liament would be requisite, to give legal authority to changes in what is at present establisht by Act of Parliament. For in- stance, if any alterations were to be made in the Liturgy, — and there are some which almost everybody would admit to be ex- ceedingly desirable, — these alterations would demand the confirma- tion of the Legislature. Nor could that shameful clause in the Caroline Act of Uniformity, by which the Puritans were expelled from our Church, be modified, as it ought to be, without a like sanction. This obligation follows from our connexion with the NOTE M. 89 state. The right course however for those who feel the need of any such changes, would be to petition for the summoning of a properly constituted Ecclesiastical Synod, which ought to be the chief agent in all measures affecting the constitution of the Church. Note M : p. 30. I have been grieved to meet with what I have here termed a sophism, and what, the more I examine it, only seems to me more palpably such, used by my dear and honoured friend, the Bishop of St David's. He is one of the persons with whom, as I have said in the Charge, it has been painful to me to find myself differing on this momentous subject. In former years, when we were living in an almost daily interchange of thoughts, and when my mind derived inestimable advantages from the fulness of his knowledge and the imperturbable calmness and clearness of his judgement, our opinions on this question, which was then brought forward by the late Sir Robert Grant, coincided; and I felt a greater confidence in the correctness of mine from its being confirmed by his. Of course there should be nothing surprising in a wise man's changing his views on sundry important points, more especially of practical policy, in a period of sixteen years. Rather would it be an indication of want of wisdom, if he did not. In his speech in the House of Lords, the Bishop appears to impute his former opinion to the influence of those prejudices which have ever been entertained against the Jews, more or less, in every branch of the Christian Church. But as I cannot trace mine to any such origin, — as on the contrary it seems to me integrally combined with the result of all my reflexions on history and political philosophy, — and as I cannot reconcile my recollection of my honoured friend's opinions on this or any other topic with the notion of their having sprung from prejudice, — I feel constrained to stay behind, where we both were in 1832. The passage I refer to in the Bishop's Speech, as publisht by himself, stands in pp.21, 22. Having stated that "the old principle of the Constitution was one of absolute exclusiveness," 90 NOTE M. and that this principle " has been gradually relaxt, and at length absolutely discarded," he proceeds : " It is therefore not consistent with the real state of the case to represent this measure as an innovation on the Constitution ; on the contrary, if there is one thing which has been more clearly proved than another on this question, it is that the barrier which now happens to impede the admission of Jews into the Legislature is the mere creature of accident, — that it was not raised by the Legislature for that purpose, but for one totally different ; and it now remains for your Lordships to decide whether it shall have an effect which it was never intended to produce. And therefore, if your Lordships should reject this measure, it will be you who will be making an innovation upon the Constitution, and introducing a principle which does not now exist in it. The principle of this measure is in perfect harmony with the most essential principle of the Con- stitution. It is an indication of that elastic vigour, flexibility, and expansiveness, which are its glory and its strength." Now in this passage, as there are some rather startling pa- radoxes, so I seem to see several fallacies, proceeding in the main from the primary fallacy of assuming that the principle of the Constitution was something negative, instead of positive. Every positive principle does indeed involve a negation, by which it is limited and defined. The faith in One God involves the rejection of all gods but that One. The marriage to one woman involves the forsaking of all others. But if, in reasoning, we pro- ceed from the negative, instead of the positive principle, we may easily lose our way. The principle of our Constitution can never have been " one of absolute exclusiveness," except secondarily and derivatively : for the primary principle of whatever has Hfe in it, must be something positive. The absolute exclusiveness only became a principle of our Constitution, so far as it was neces- sarily consequent upon the espousal of the nation to that which it regarded as the one Faith of Christ's Church. If we start from this point, we shall take that view of the progressive expansion of the Constitution, which I have attempted to sketch in the Charge, and according to which our Constitution has been gradually NOTE M. 91 becoming more comprehensive, not by rejecting its primary principle, whereby it was united to the Christian faith, but by adopting a larger conception, under the irresistible pressure of events, as to the necessary constituents of the Christian faith ; until at length, in the eye of the Constitution, this became identified, so to say, with the reception of Baptism, and of the Apostles Creed. Looking at the matter in this light, we see that the principle of the Constitution has never yet been " abso- lutely discarded," as my honoured friend says, but has only been carried out more fully and completely. On the other hand it would be " absolutely discarded " by the admission of the Jews into the Legislature. For that would not be an expansion of the Christian principle of our Constitution, but the total abolition of that principle, and the substitution of its opposite, namely, that our Constitution is no way connected with any form of religion. Though this might not be directly exprest, it would be manifestly imphed in that act ; nor would it long continue latent, and merely implicit. Thus we need not be disturbed by the ingenious paradoxes, that this measure is not " an innovation on the Constitution," and that its rejection would be the innovation, and the introduction of " a principle which does not now exist in it." I grant, it has been clearly shewn, that the words by which the Jews are now ex- cluded from Parliament, were not enacted with a view to their exclusion. Nor did the Legislature ever think of setting up a barrier to keep them out, any more than it ever thought of setting up a barrier to keep out an army of icebergs. But surely the words prove, that, at the time when they were enacted, the profes- sion of the Christian faith was deemed an indispensable qualifica- tion for a seat in the English Legislature. This was assumed, not as the result of argument, but as a recognised, irrefragable proposi- tion. Nor was there ever a time, until recently, when this proposition would have been seriously controverted. Note N : p. 33. In a very valuable pamphlet just publisht by Dorner, one of the first divines in the German Protestant Church, on the present con- dition and prospects of that Church, there are some remarks, which throw so much light on the argument maintained in the text, that I will insert a quotation of considerable length. " The Intimate connexion which has subsisted hitherto in Ger- many between the State and Christianity is come to an end. Our relation was not that of having a State-Church. A State-Church exists only where the State has identified itself with one of the Christian Churches or Confessions, as the true religion, and therefore confers privileges on this one, in contradistinction from all others. — A State-Church in this sense subsists in England and Ireland, in favour of the Anglican, — in Scotland, of the ancient Scotch Church. It is objectionable, because the various Christian Confessions or Churches are still engaged in a controversy, which no earthly power has a right to regard as decided, since it has not yet been decided by the judgement of History. On the other hand, that Heathenism and Judaism are only subordinate religious stages, History has pronounced. Therefore, when the German State, pro- ceeding hitherto on the assumption that the Christian religion is the one most in accordance with freedom, and looking at what the nations of Europe have become in the light of Christianity, entered into a closer alliance with Christianity, it only did what reason enjoined, not rejecting the teaching of that tribunal which utters its voice in History, — and building upon the principle, which had become an axiom of the European mind, that, among existing religions, Christianity was the only one which could satisfy it, or inspire it with confidence. Hence the same grounds which precluded a State-Church, have hitherto promoted the intimate and legally establisht union of the State with the Christian religion. In fact a State-Church has not even had a legal existence in Germany since the Reformation. The German Empire, in its highest Council, recognises the two Confessions, on NOTE N. 93 the relative superiority of which History has not yet pronounced its verdict, as entitled to equal rights. In particular provinces of the Empire, it is true, attempts were made for a time, both on the Protestant and on the Catholic side, to exercise the Jus reformandi in such a manner, that in each province the State and Church should coincide. But, even in this way, a State-Church was nowhere thoroughly carried out, unless perhaps in Bavaria and Austria, as Wirtemberg, Prussia, and other States prove : nor could it, being checkt by the supremacy over the provinces which belonged to the Empire, wherein the Christian Confessions were entitled to equal rights. At last too, when the German Empire was dissolved by the convulsions consequent upon the first French Eevolution, the sovereinty of the Emperor was transferred to the particular Princes in such wise, that almost every German State — comprised both Protestant and Catholic subjects. Thus, as the German Empire had previously admitted a union of Confessions, while the particular Provinces were tending more or less toward a State-Church, the States which survived after the dissolution of the Empire, entered in this respect also into the position and office of the Empire, in that each State, according to the Federal Pact, was bound to recognise and maintain the equality of the Confessions within its territory. Hence, since the Federal Pact, no one has a constitutional right to speak of a State-Church, even in the particular German States. — Yet the State had never till then revoked the favorable judgement, which had been enforced upon it by the power of History, as to the superior fitness of Christianity for the development of the in- tellectual freedom of its citizens in all ways. Consequently it still recognised its duty of supporting the Christian Churches, as the maintainers of the Christian religion, after its own fashion, and thus of promoting its own ends. Till then religion was not re- garded by the State as a mere private affair, which lay wholly out of its sphere, nor the Church as a private society, which it had at the utmost to watch over as a matter of police : but it declared by its laws, that religion generally, and the Christian religion more especially, remote as it may be from the power and office of the State to produce this by any means of its own, or to exercise a 94 NOTE N. positive, internal rule over it, yet has a side, whereby it is entitled to be regarded and respected as of public and national concernment. Till then the State acted on the assumption that the people at large and as a whole, the people that supplies its materials for building, as well as its master-builders and householders, is, and purposes to be, a Christian people, and consequently that, out of its free conviction, it gives a preference to laws and institutions, which, by their origin and their upholders, afford a pledge of a Christian spirit above all others, and that under such, though it may feel somewhat less like a cosmopolite, it feels more at home. " Our venerable John Gerhard has said, that ' those who would restrict a government, especially a Christian one, to the task of providing for the outward welfare and tranquillity of this life, deserve about as much attention as if they were to call a magis- trate a cowherd or a shepherd.' By this broad irony, this great man exprest the same truth, which that celebrated English- man, Thomas Arnold, has exprest in a more refined manner, when he censures the Independents for wishing to degrade government into a mere system of police. Gerhard's words are the more striking now, when the Materialism which aims at a soul-less, idea- less State, and which has no perception for anything beyond the interests of earthly prosperity and power, has advanced to such a pitch of unintelligence, that it regards the degradation of the State, the destruction of all its ideal aims, not as a loss, but as a progress in freedom, whereas it is only a progress in licentious- ness. — This dream is no better or worse, than the other that this materializing notion of a State is the newest, last, ripest result of the development of mankind, from v/hich the golden age is to take its start. Yet new it is not. It was brought forward in its purest form, and even with unction, and became current, at a time at the thought of which, if at anything, our modernest sages cross and bless themselves. For the doctrine that the State is a wholly profane and godless thing, that it is merely subservient to our temporal interests and wants, and that its legitimacy proceeds solely from power, from majorities, from will, or from cunning, was asf'^rted in the middle ages, in the very period of thickest darkness. NOTE N. 95 by the mouth of the Popes. The novelty is merely that we are now called upon to pick up as a jewel from the ground, what fell as a word of cursing from the High Priest at Rome, to count it a blessing, and to extoll it, every one of us, as a miracle-working charm, which is to heal all the evils of the age, and to plant a Paradise, less fugitive than the last, upon earth. " The higher, spiritual idea of the State is one of the most glorious acquisitions which we owe to the Reformation. The State, ac- cording to the Protestant conception, is not a godless, soul-less thing, but has somewhat of a divine dignity, and takes part, though within the limits of its idea, that is, as an institution of national law, in promoting all the objects of humanity. Hence it is not sur- prising that till recently, in spite of all the hostile powers which were visibly marshaling themselves against us, we hoped to pre- serve this higher idea of the State, at least in Protestant countries, from the ever spreading confusion and whirlpool of the age. But in vain. It was to become plainer and plainer, that the great flood of modern history, which began long ago in England, then diffused itself in North America and France, and is now hastening to its termination in England, as it seems to us, with the approaching separation of the Anglican State-Church from the State, was also to drag us irresistibly toward the same goal. The farsighted, if they tried to withstand this, could only regard themselves as Cassandras. — " Once already in the age before Christ, and immediately after Him, did the degenerate religion of the Jews, promoting the confusion of religions both at home and abroad, manifest itself as a corrosive, contributing, though false in itself, to the un- dermining of other religions, which had become falsehoods, and hastening their ruin. In our age again Judaism, having grown hollow, exercises a like corrosive power. In the Prussian Diet of ISl?, it was by the Jewish Question that the decisive breach was made in the establisht order of things. Among those who took part in the assault, very few were probably capable of surveying the consequences of what they were doing. There are many who joined in this work, without intending 96 NOTE N. thereby to overthrow the Germanic Christian State; some, who fancied they were promoting its welfare, whether from supposing that the Jews are already in fact Christians, or that they would have been so long ago, unless they had been har- dened and cast back upon themselves by their civil disabilities. This however would not of itself have carried the day. As- suredly the purpose of the Assembly was not to raise the Jews to a perfect equality, out of the notion that the unchristianizing of the State would be subservient and was necessary for the Christianizing of the Jews. The real question, if I see rightly, was very different. It did not turn on the Jews, those who have not degenerated from their determinate nationality, and their determinate faith. The Jewish Question served merely as an occasion and signal for a question of general principles. Is Christianity, now that full civil rights have been granted by the Federal Pact to each of the principal Christian Confessions in every German province, but have been no less decidedly withheld from those who are not Christians, still to retain this pre-eminence in our national legislation ? Or is the State, as such, henceforward to be indifferent about every existing definite religious Confession, nay, as to the existence of a religious Confession at all ? This was the real gist of the question. Had it merely related to the equalization of the Jews, with their peculiar faith, it would clearly have been impossible to avoid the previous question, whether the Jews, as a nation, felt any desire for this equa- lization, nay, whether their faith would even allow them to accept it. No, it was not the Jews, as a nation, clinging devoutly to the religion of their fathers, and who deserve no degradation for so doing, but who at the same time feel no wish for an equalization and national union, that excited the warm philanthropic interest, which magnanimously, without ever being askt, desired to Incorporate them in our national and political commonwealth. — No, let us confess it, the purpose was not to deliver Judaism, as such, from its Ghetto : but )nen bethought themselves that the Christian Confession, for very many who in name belong to the Christian people, had NOTE N. 97 become narrow and oppressive, yea, a Ghetto, out of which however they could scarcely step, without losing their civil, or at least their political rights. To come out, or to help others out, of this uncomfortable state, this state of falsehood, where a man's heart contradicted his name, and his faith belied his Confession, — to make civil and political rights independent of every Confession, — this was the point at issue in that memorable conflict. " The result of the conflict, it is known, was, that the highest political rights were still restricted to the Christian name; a concession to Christianity, the import of which was much dimi- nisht, when one saw what the Assembly regarded as Christianity. By the officers of the State and of the Church, the German people, as a v/hole, had hitherto been accounted Christian. Every one who was a member of the German nation, and not a Jew, was set down in tables, lists, registers, passports, as belonging to the Christian religion, and one or other of her Confessions, It is true, that, along with this official Christianity, the officers of the State and of the Church could not but perceive that a dangerous religious indifference or scepticism had penetrated through every religious community, — that many felt themselves inwardly destitute of a religious home, — and that these discon- tented persons, who previously had only existed insulatedly, were attempting to combine, in the press, in assemblages, in addresses, in sects, against the establisht order of things. But a hope was still cherisht, that these unconfessional elements might be supprest without a general rupture, and might be won over by a spiritual process, if our religious life, which had for years been gaining new strength, and our renovated theology were allowed to exer- cise their healing powers, and by devoted love to reclaim these spiritual wanderers. It was to be made manifest however, equally in Roman Catholic and in Protestant countries, that we were living under false assumptions, if we thought that this chasm between the outward and the inward could be healed without an open rupture. This became evident in Prussia on the 1 8th and three following days of March this year, and is equally so in the rest of Germany. Yes, so it is : and, in order to clear up 98 NOTE N. our present chaos, it is absolutely necessary to acknowledge frankly and openly that those were deceived, who imagined that the State, as such, was still aware, that, to be what it is, safely and permanently, it ought to be Christian. It was a gross lie, that the materials out of which the State seeks stones and archi- tects for its buildings, were a Christian people, or even one that paid homage to the principles of Christianity. So far was this from being the case, that our people, though bearing a Christian name, yet in the body of its representatives had even lost the comprehension of our precious institutions, of their advantages, and of their defects. How then could it defend them with spirit, with courage, with intelligence 1 or whence could it obtain energy for such a reform as could alone have prevented their ruin, if it had been an act of the national mind 1 No : these institutions of the Germanic Christian Commonwealth, every one, even the most shortsighted, must perceive, had long been de- voted to destruction. It was no peculiar plan or ill-will on the part of individuals that produced the crisis : the force of circum- stances, which had long been gathering around us from without, like a tempest, more and more rapidly, came upon us with an inevitable doom. " The complete civil and political equalization of all religious Confessions, which was proclaimed in the Address of the King of Prussia to his people and to the German nation on the twenty- first of March, — and which has already received its sanction from the German Diet, with reference to the elections for the Na- tional Parliament, — has effected a complete change in the previous order of things ; not by laying down that equal services or duties shall henceforward have equal rights, — for this would be mere justice, — but that all shall have the same rights without the same duties. Hitherto political rights resulted from the duty, which was regarded as axiomatic, of acting for the benefit of the people, including its Christian benefit, and for the institutions which minister thereto, to the best of our knowledge and conscience, in a Christian sense and spirit ; for instance, in matters of legis- lation and administration, in which Christian interests are so NOTE N. 99 deeply concerned. The obligation of this duty might indeed be contravened often enough in point of fact ; but it was an establisht principle, so long as he, who was to exercise political rights in our Commonwealth, had to declare himself bound to Christianity by a Christian profession. At present, on the contrary, all rights are given to all, without similar obligations. For those who are not Christians, are not capable of undertaking and discharging Christian duties ; yet they enjoy the same rights. Therefore, if the duties were still recognised, as of yore, they would be exempted from them, privileged. But in point of fact these duties are no longer recognised: the State, as it is at present, no longer expects them even from Christians. Hence we have no ground for complaining of an exemption and privilege granted to those who are not Christians ; nor have we to contend as to the principle that similar duties should have similar rights an- swering to them. This would not have produced any important changes. The momentous novelty is, that the State has been compelled to surrender its principles to the pressure, which, under the pretext of demanding an equality of rights for all, has in fact demanded its own emancipation from, and that the State, as such, should give up, what I have above described as an axiom of European civilization hitherto, and as a principle of our public conscience. Herewith it must be reduced to the necessity of abandoning a number of the highest tasks of mankind, in which it had hitherto taken part after its manner, and which are in- timately connected with the aims of the Christian Church. It is indeed conceivable that the State, even after this enonnous revolution, after this overthrow of institutions which have sub- sisted for fifteen centuries, might still retain its hold on those tasks, and, even in its present condition, desire to exercise the same kind of power over the Christian Church. But then the question would be, whether the State would not pass over from its present legally establisht position of indiiference toy^ard Christianity, into that of hostility toward it. I would not be misunderstood. I do not complain that the separation of the State from the Church has taken place. I do not deny that in the present condition of things 100 NOTE N. it was necessary. Still less would I plead in behalf of a compul- sory political Christianity, which would transform a moral or conscientious obligation into a legal one. On the contrary, when the abovementioned discrepancy between the outward confession of Christianity and the inward feeling was actually existing, and could not be removed by any spiritual remedies, as is now clear, I am quite content that the true condition of things should have become manifest ; and I give my hearty assent to that separation. Still I cannot regard it as a benefit in itself; readily as I acknow- ledge that, in the connexion between the Church and the State hitherto, there were many remains of their medieval or Byzantine confusion, which required to be swept away. What I deplore, is only, that the great axiom of our European political wisdom, the conviction that all men are bound to Christianity, to the true fear of God, has become extinct, or at least has been shaken to such an extent, in the German people, — that religion and Christianity have become for so many a mere matter of individual liking. The pulse of our Christian life has grown languid in the German people ; and therefore has a degenerate Christianity and Judaism become so frequent ; therefore have so many re- jected that axiom, and withdrawn, from the atmosphere, which formerly surrounded our domestic life, protecting and purifying it from childhood down to old age." The reader will of course bear in mind that Dorner is speaking throughout from his own national point of view, and, in what he says of Christianity, treats of it solely in its relation to the State, and as the most powerful instrument for the political and moral improvement of mankind. With this proviso, I think it will be perceived how nearly allied the questions which have been agi- tated in Germany, are to that which has recently been stirred in our own country, and how forcibly many of his remarks bear upon the latter. Through God's mercy we have been preserved from that dismal condition, into which he represents the German nation as having fallen, and the fruits of which we see in every newspaper. May God still preserve us from it, and from every measure which might lead us toward it ! from every measure which NOTE O. 101 might tend to weaken the Christian character of the Nation, to withdraw the Nation from its sole, exclusive allegiance to Christ ! Note : p. 84. That the recent Bill is merely a continuation of divers previous measures, is maintained, not merely by the Bishop of St David's in the passage quoted above, but also by Mr Gladstone in his Speech, and in the Preface to it, as well as by most of the other supporters of the Bill, both in and out of Parliament. That this view is fallacious, and where the fallacy lies, has been shewn, I trust, in Note M. Yet, unless one knew how ready we all are to adopt any argument which favours our cause, it would seem strange that anybody should overlook, what an enormous leap it is from our present position, where a profession of the Christian faith is required as indispensable for a seat in the Legislature, to one in which any person may enter it without such a profession. It is argued indeed that the transition from a Unitarian to a Jew is not very material, with reference to the Catholic faith. The Unitarian however, as such, and by the profession required of him, confesses, at the lowest, that Jesus is the greatest of all moral and religious teachers, that He had an immediate divine mission, that He came to bring life and immortality to light. He acknowledges the resurrection of Jesus as the first-fruits and the evidence of our resurrection. He takes the Gospel as the supreme code of all morality. Now that to which the State from its position is bound to look chiefly in every form of religion, is its moral aspect. As it has been well exprest by a German writer, Marheineke, " In the Church morality is contemplated as piety ; in the State, piety as morality," As the acceptance of the Koran, and the common relation to Mahomet, form a distinctive bond of union among all Mahometan nations and tribes, so is there a similar bond of union, in spite of all differences, however momentous these may be, whereby all persons accepting the Gospel for their highest, divinely inspired code, and attaching themselves to Jesus as the highest, divinely inspired 102 NOTE O. Teacher of mankind, are at once bound together, and separated from the rest of the human race. This gi-eat essential distinction has not been sufficiently attended to by the Bishop of St David's, when, in trying to reduce the difference between Unitarians and Jews to a minimum, he says (p. 10) that, in regard to the denial of the Divinity of our Lord, " they stand upon the same footing." This again, it seems to me, shews how easily we slip into fallacies, when we adopt the nega- tive scale in reasoning, when we class people by what they deny, instead of by what they believe. Even ecclesiastically, though the Church has been too apt to take the former course, the latter is that of Christian wisdom. As to the State, the concerns of which do not lie in the region of dogmas, or of our inward spiritual life, but in that of our moral life, surely there is an enormous interval between those who, by their profession, declare that Christ is their one Divine Teacher and Lawgiver, the Bringer of mankind out of darkness into light, and those who deny these His special claims and dignities, nay, whose distinct nationality rests upon that denial ; though certain individuals amongst them may be led by the influences of our recent philosophy and literature, which in many have almost undermined their peculiar religion, to allow that he was " a teacher of pure morality." The two modes of thought, at their extreme proximate limits, may be nearly con- tiguous ; and yet the difference between them may be of the utmost importance, as the Bishop of St David's himself admits just before : his admission however, if duly appreciated, it seems to me, would have shewn that his attempt to pare down the difference, though interesting in reference to the history of Jewish philosophers, is of no moment with regard to the practical question before us. Moreover, it is well observed by Mr Gladstone (p. 11), that " The law can only deal with what is tangible. A creed, in its sphere is tangible : it has a historical as well as a theological form and body. Even a name, in its own distinct sphere, is tangible too ; and Parliament may, if it thinks fit, legislate for names." For names are not mere names, even when they are used falsely. NOTE O. 103 While they are witnesses against him who uses them, they are also witnesses of the value of that which he dishonestly usurps. Much more is a name worth, when it is assumed in sincerity, as that of Christians is by Unitarians, when they who assume it hold it to be precious, and contend strenuously for their right to it. As the Legislature in all its acts is compelled to look at that which is outward, and as it has no test for ascertaining what spi- ritual reality corresponds to the outward appearance, it may, not unreasonably, feel itself warranted in taking the profession of a Christian faith, as the criterion for the eligibility of its members. Hereby, at all events, it asserts the Christian character of the nation, and, along with its Christian character, its Christian duties and obligations. It acknowledges itself to be bound by those Chris- tian duties and obligations. It acknowledges that the highest object of all national, as well as individual aim, is the establishment of the kingdom of Christ upon earth. Besides, there is another very weighty difference. The mem- bers of all our Dissenting bodies, who have become eligible to Parliament by the repeal of the various Test Acts, are Englishmen. The Jews are not Englishmen, but Jews. The former are united to us, not only by the profession of a common faith, and by the innumerable intellectual and moral and spiritual ties, which spring from that faith, even with every allowance for all its diversities ; but they are also bound to us by race, by numberless domestic and familiar and social links, by community of habits and customs and institutions, by the inheritance of a common ancestry, by sharing in the same national glory, by " speaking the tongue which Shakspeare spoke," by " holding the faith and morals which Milton held." All these common possessions we have ; and hereby we are trained for acting unitedly in the present, and for seeking common aims in the future. The Jews, on the other hand, are not connected with us by any of these ties. They have not associated with us : they have not intermarried with us. They have no sympathy with our English feelings : they have no portion in England's glory. Above all, they are far more closely connected \\ith the members of their race in other countries, 104 NOTE O. than with the English nation. They do not belong to the staple of England's strength and wealth. They are not rooted in her soil. They are not bound up with anything that is permanent in her. They might strike their tents tomorrow, and pass away, and would if they could better themselves by it. The one great object of their aim and pursuit is that which is most purely per- sonal to the outward man, and which can be transferred with the greatest facility from one end of the world to the other. They may be called the currency of the human race. It may be rejoined, that many of these defects have arisen from our institutions, which for a long time precluded them from taking a firmer root in our soil. Be it so. This might be a valid reason for repealing many of their minor disabilities ; but it is no reason for admitting them at once to the highest offices in the State. If in the course of two or three generations it should appear that the Jews, through the enjoyment of English civil rights, have been brought to amalgamate more with English habits and feelings, and to identify themselves with the permanent interests of England, this would, so far, be a strong reason for raising them from a lower step to a higher. But even on this civil ground at present they have no claim to higher privileges. When this amalgamation has taken place, which will hardly be without their imbibing much at least of the moral influence of Christianity, it will be for the statesmen of those days to consider in what manner the reli- gious character of the English nation shall still be upheld, along with the most conscientious discharge of every social obligation. A further important distinction, merely taking a political ground, is, that the various Dissenting bodies, being sprung from English blood, have a hereditary claim to share in the political rights of their countrymen : and this claim is all the greater, because they were deprived of it, many of them, in consequence of that most unrighteous enactment in the last Act of Uniformity, which drove their fathers out of the Church. For this national crime we were bound to make atonement. On the other hand, though the exclusion of the Romanists arose rather from the crimes of their own ancestors, the time was at length come, when it was NOTE O. 105 fitting that the great national wound, which had been bleeding for more than two centuries, should be closed. But our Jewish settlers have no claim of the kind. They came amongst us as aliens. They have traded amongst us as aliens, for their own personal ends. They have had the protection of the laws for themselves and their gains; and this has been an ample com- pensation for the share they have taken in bearing the burthens of the State. To me too, I confess, there seems to be no little force in the argument alluded to by Dorner, where he speaks (p. 96) of " the previous question, whether the Jews, as a nation, feel any desire for these political rights, nay, whether their faith would even allow them to accept such." Indeed this their faith, so long as they retain it, must needs preclude their ever becoming one in heart and soul with any other people. By this itself they are kept distinct and separate. Nor is it enough to answer, with the Bishop of St David's (p. 25), that " a similar remark would apply to many bodies of Christians, — who consider the Apostle's lan- guage. Here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come, as still applicable to their own circumstances, and who are pre- vented by their religious scruples from taking an active part in public life." For such scruples in individuals are no reason for withholding political rights from the great Chiistian body to which they belong ; nor do they give those who hold them a separate in- terest from that body. Whereas the faith of the Jews does. It is true, that at the court of Pharaoh, at that of Nebuchadnezzar, at that of Darius, they made great and excellent ministers. But then their religion and their moral code were in the van of the nations over whom they were set, while now they would be far in the rear. At all events this reduces the body, for whose sake the Christian principle of our Constitution is to be sacrificed, to little more than a knot of persons, whose lives have been spent, with no slight success, in picking up the dust of the river Pactolus, and who, in the very act of entering our Parliament, are, to a certain extent, sacrificing their distinctive faith and nationality, yet without adopting ours. I will not enquire what prognostics lot) NOTE P. may be drawn from this as to their fitness for exercising a legislative office. Note P: p. 34. I know not whether Dr Arnold ever exprest his opinion on the Jewish Question publicly, except in the Postscript to his Pamphlet on the Principles of Church Reform. In this he asserts that the founders of the Protestant Church of England considered the Church and the Nation as identical. " The Christian Nation of England was the Church of England; — the head of that Nation was for that very reason the head of the Church; — the public officers of the Nation, whether civil or ecclesiastical, were officers therefore of the Church ; — and every Englishman was supposed to be properly a member of it, — baptized into it, almost as soon as he was born, — taught its lessons in his early childhood, — required to partake of its most solemn pledge of communion, — married under its sanction and blessing, — and laid in the grave, within its peculiar precincts, amidst its prayers and most affectionate con- solations. And is it indifference or latitudinarianism to wish most devoutly that this noble, this divine theory, may be fully and for ever realized ? " It is objected to this doctrine, that it implies the exclusion of those who are not members of the Church from the civil rights of citizens, I think it does imply such an exclusion in the case of those who are not members of the Church of Christ : nor should I consider a Christian nation justified in forming a legislative union with a nation of Jews, or Mahometans, or Heathens. If the citizens of the same nation are in nearly equal proportion Christians and Heathens, the State in that country is not yet sufficiently enlightened to become a Church;'— and it is here that our Lord's words apply, that His Kingdom is not of this world. Christians have no right, as such, to press the establishment of their religion to the prejudice of the civil rights of others. Yet, if the two religions happened to be for the most part locally divided, it would be a reason why such a nation should separate itself into NOTE P. 107 two, and the Christian and Heathen portions of it form each a State distinct from the other. But when the decided majority of a country become Christians, so that the State may justly become a Church, then the Heathen part of the population ought to be excluded from the legislature, and encouraged, if it be possible, to emigrate to other countries, if they complain of not participating in the full rights of citizenship. At present in England, I should earnestly deprecate the admission of the Jews to a share in the National Legislature. It is a principle little warranted by authority or by reason, that the sole qualification for enjoying the rights of citizenship should consist in being locally an inhabitant of any country. But all professing Christians, of whatever sect, as being members of the Church of Christ, must be supposed to have much more in common with each other, as far as the great ends of society are concerned, than they have points of difference. Their peculiar tenets therefore need form no ground for their exclusion." The same principles, though without distinct reference to the Jews, were asserted in the Preface to the third volume of his Thu- cydides. " That bond and test of citizenship, which the ancient legislatures were compelled to seek in sameness of race, because thus only could they avoid the worst of evils, a confusion and consequent indifference in men's notions of right and wrong, is now furnisht to us in the profession of Christianity. He who is a Christian, let his race be what it will, let his national customs be ever so different from ours, is fitted to become* our fellow-citizen. For his being a Christian implies that he retains such of his national customs only as are morally indifferent ; and for all such we ought to feel the most perfect toleration. He who is not a Christian, though his family may have lived for generations on the same soil with us, though they may have bought and sold with us, though they may have been protected by our laws, and paid taxes in return for that protection, is yet essentially, not a citizen, but a sojourner : and to admit such a person to the rights of citizenship tends in principle to the confusion of right and wrong, and lowers the objects of political society to such as are merely physical and external. — It is considered in our days tliat 108 NOTE P. those who are possest of property in a country ought to be citizens in it : the ancient maxim was, that those who were citizens ought to be possest of property. The difference involved in these two different views is most remarkable." To some persons it may appear inconsistent, that so ardent a lover of freedom, so strenuous an advocate for the abolition of the civil Disabilities imposed upon the Dissenters and Romanists, — the writer of a pamphlet bearing title. The Christian Duty of conceding the claims of the Rommi Catholics, — should have taken what they will deem so opposite a course with regard to the Jews. In fact however it was for this very reason, because he was acting throughout on a clear, definite principle, because he felt that the concession of equal civil rights to all bodies of Christians was a Christian duty, that he was so earnest in resisting the misapplication of that principle, and the perversion of that duty, by extending them to the Jews. Politicians like Sir Robert Peel and Mr Gladstone, who did not act on a similar distinctly recog- nised principle, and with a similar conviction of Christian duty, but who, having resisted the removal of disabilities from Dis- senters and Roman Catholics as long as they could, turned round at length, under a conviction of the mere practical necessity of conceding them, may not unnaturally be less clearsighted with regard to the difference between the two cases. Having with- stood one concession and another till they were forced to grant it, they are merely going the same round again, when, having opposed the removal of the Jewish disabilities a few years ago, they are now strenuous in advocating it. How strong Dr Arnold's convictions on this point were, appears from several passages in his publisht Correspondence. The first occurs in a letter to me, written in 1834. " I must petition against the Jew Bill, and wish that you, or some man like you, would expose that low Jacobinical notion of citizenship, that a man acquires a right to it by the accident of his being littered inter quatuor maria, or because he pays taxes. I wish I had the knowledge and the time to state fully the ancient system of izupoiKOL, fxeroiKoi, &c., and the principle on which it rested ; that NOTE P. 109 different races have different vv^una, and that an indiscriminate mixture breeds a perfect coUuvio omnium rerum. Now Chris- tianity gives us that bond perfectly, which race in the ancient world gave illiberally and narrowly : for it gives a common standard of vont^a, without observing distinctions, which are, in fact, better blended." To a like effect he wrote to Sir John Coleridge : " The correla- tive to taxation, in my opinion, is not citizenship, but protection. Taxation may imply representation quoad hoc ; and I should have no objection to let the Jews tax themselves in a Jewish House of Assembly, like a Colony, or like the Clergy of old ; but to confound the right of taxing oneself with the right of general legislation is one of the Jacobinical confusions of later days, arising from those low Warburtonian notions of the ends of political society." Again in 1836 he wrote to Mr Hull: "\ want to petition against the Jew Bill ; but I believe I must petition alone. — I want to take my stand on my favorite principle, that the world is made up of Christians and non-Christians. With all the former we should be one ; with none of the latter. I would thank the Parlia- ment for having done away with distinctions between Christian and Christian ; I would pray that distinctions be kept up between Christians and non-Christians. Then 1 think that the Jews have no claim whatever of political right. If I thought of Roman Catholicism as you do, I would petition for the repeal of the Union tomorrow, because I think Ireland ought to have its own Church establisht in it ; and if I thought that Church Antichristian, I should object to living in political union with a people belonging to it. But the Jews are strangers in England, and have no more claim to legislate for it, than a lodger has to share with the land- lord in the management of his house. If we had brought them here by violence, and then kept them in an inferior condition, they would have just cause to complain ; though even then I think we might lawfully deal with them on the Liberia system, and remove them to a land where they might live by themselves independent : for England is the land of Englishmen, not of Jews." About the same time he wrote thus to Archbishop Whately : 110 NOTE Q. " I have read your additional remarks on the Jew Bill, and grieve that there should be so much difference between us. — For the Jews I see no plea of justice whatever. They are voluntary strangers here, and have no claim to become citizens, but by conforming to our moral law, which is the Gospel. Had we brought them here as captives, I should think that we ought to take them back again ; and I should think myself bound to subscribe for that pur- pose. I would give the Jews the honorary citizenship, which was so often given by the Romans, — that is, the private rights of citizens, jus commercii et jus connubii, — but not the public rights, jus suffragii and jus honorum. But then, according to our barbarian feudal notions, the jus commercii involves the jus suffragii; because land forsooth is to be represented in Parliament, just as it used to confer jurisdiction. Then again I cannot but think that you over-estimate the differ- ence between Christian and Christian. Every member of Christ's Catholic Church is one with whom I may lawfully join in legislation, and whose ministry I may lawfully use, as a judge or a magistrate. But a Jew or Heathen I cannot apply to volunta- rily, but only obey him passively, if he has the rule over me. A Jew judge ought to drive all Christians from pleading before him, according to St Paul, 1 Cor, vi. 1 ," Note Q ; p. 35. Thus Mr Gladstone (p. 36), in replying to Lord Ashley, who had deservedly attacht great weight to the authority of Dr Arnold, says of the latter : " I apprehend that his view of this particular question stood related, not to the strength of his mind, but to its weakness. Most excellent and most able as he was, yet, like many other men of remarkable and rare ingenuity and of true enthusiasm, he had his own theory which he idolized, which it was the dream of his life to rear into actual existence, and with respect to which no experience could avail to undeceive him. He con- sidered that in a Christian country the State and the Church ought to be regarded as one, the State belonging wholly to the NOTE Q. Ill Church, and the Church belonging wholly to the State." Then, after giving a somewhat overstrained picture of this theory, the merits of which I cannot stop to vindicate or discuss, Mr Gladstone adds : " Dr Arnold's opinion, thcjt tlie Jews should be excluded from Parliament, was an opinion entertained by him, not with regard to their separate case upon its own merits, but rather, I think, as necessary to the integrity of this favorite, but very peculiar and arbitrary theory." Now in this reply, if it can be called such, the whole force of the argument lies in the assertion that Dr Arnold's was a " very peculiar and arbitrary theory." Else assuredly it would not be reprehensible, but the very contrary, in a statesman, that he did not look at the case of the Jews separately, " upon its own merits," but in connexion with the principles of the Constitution, as manifested and developt in its history. Indeed I know not how any statesman, how any man capable of thinking, can look at such a matter separately, " upon its own merits." At all events he who tries to do so is sure to flounder. Even Mr Gladstone himself does not attempt it, but considers the question with reference to certain general principles, which he conceives to be those of the English Constitution in the year 1847, having in that year come to the conviction that it will be for the good of the Constitution to vaccinate it with Judaism. But, though I am far from main- taining that all the consequences which Dr Arnold drew from his theory are quite legitimate and practically expedient, I think it is plain, that, so far as his theory is enunciated in the passages quoted in the last Note, it is no way peculiar or arbitrary. Some of the illustrations may be peculiar, but not the theory of the Constitution itself, except so far as he discerned clearly, what to others may have been more or less indistinct. For it is the only theory which explains and harmonizes the facts of our Constitution hitherto ; and it has been working, though often half unconsciously, in the minds of our statesmen, nay, what is far more, in the mind of the nation, for generations. Various public acts have been grounded upon it : and, even when it has been violated, the violation arose, not from a neglect of the principle, but from a 112 NOTE Q. mistake about its application. Moreover the passage quoted from Dorner in Note N, — and I might cite many from other German writers to a like effect, — shews that this same conception of the Christian State has been entertained, not solely by speculative thinkers, but by practical statesmen for centuries, and that it received a legislative enactment, primarily at the peace of Westphalia, and latterly in the Federal Act of the German Confederation in 1815. In fact, as portrait-painters are apt to introduce touches of their own features and characteristic expression into their representations of others, so Mr Gladstone's account of Dr Arnold's theory is tinged by certain reminiscences of his own. For he too once had a theory, which he workt out elaborately and with much ingenuity, and which might truly be said to be very peculiar and arbitrary. The facts of our Constitution repudiated it : the wheels of the world rolled over it and crusht it : and Mr Gladstone himself, when he took part in public life, and found facts too stubborn to bend to it, was forced to abandon his theory ; though at one time he may be said, in his own word, to have "idolized" it, and though it had been " the dream " of his youth " to rear it into actual existence." Thus, having found in his own case that a theory constructed without a due regard to facts will rather hamper than serve a statesman in actual political life, he seems to have contracted a notion that other theories must be like his own, well suited, it may be, for the flowing robe of the philosopher in his study, but a hindrance that must be thrown off by such as gird themselves for the real business of the world. Hence too we find him holding, as it seems, that each case is to be treated separately upon its own merits ; a course, which, if followed without reference to general principles, that is, to an intelligent theoi'y of the Constitution, is mere empiricism, and, as such, will grope about for whatever maxims, apparently favorable to its purpose, it can scrape together. Surely it should not require to be asserted nowadays, that in every intellectual operation there is a twofold process, the objective, and the subjective ; so that we are to examine each case, both as it is in itself, and NOTE Q. 113 also in its dependence on that portion of the general laws of being which bear immediately upon it ; and the right verdict of the judge- ment will be the reconciliation or identity of the two. In true philosophy, whether politics or w^hatever else be its subject matter, experience and theory coincide. Empiricism on the other hand is ever vacillating to and fro, and, feeling its own weakness, tries to prop itself up by the first hypothesis it can lay hand on. That Ar- nold had lookt at the case practically, as well as theoretically, we see from the warm interest with which he speaks on it. He was not a naan to be so much moved in behalf of a speculative crotchet. Yet this same objection to Dr Arnold's authority, — the weight of which on this point is all the greater, because his opinion seems to run counter to the ordinary current of his mind, — has also been alledged by the Bishop of St David's, along with others, which do not appear to me more cogent. Dr Arnold's opinion, that the Jews are to be regarded as aliens, he says (p. 23), " was evidently formed on the analogy of the Greek and Roman States, rather than on the existing circumstances of this country. In the history of those States he found a class, which seemed to corre- spond to the condition of the Jews ; and thus he was naturally led to adopt the views taken by the ancient writers of the posi- tion and relations of that class, and to apply them to the case of the Jews." To me, I confess, my friend here appears to have committed a hysteron proteron. Surely, if he had been less inge- nious, he would have seen that Dr Arnold's views on the position of the Jews in our country were derived from the actual position which they have ever held here, and which is analogous to their position in the other nations of Europe. In this position Dr Arnold would have retained them, barring what they have had to endure in the way of persecution : and in support of this opinion, as was natural for a man of a historical mind, he adduced a remark- ably happy parallel from the institutions of Greece and Rome, which had just been revivified by Niebuhr. The Bishop further urges, in derogation from Dr Arnold's autho- rity, that his opinions on this question arose from his favorite theory on the identity of Church and State, " And not only (he adds) did 114 NOTE R. they spring from a theory which few of your Lordships will be inclined to adopt ; but they are carried to a length to which you would hardly be prepared to go along with him : for, in his opinion, it would not be inconsistent with justice or humanity, if the Government of this country should think proper to transport all the Jews settled among us, — as was done with the Moriscoes in Spain, — to some other region." On the subject of Dr Arnold's theory I need not say more : but with reference to the last objection I feel bound to rejoin, that he is merely putting a hypo- thetical case, as may be seen in the concluding extracts in Note P. " If we had brought the Jews here by violence, and then kept them in an inferior condition, — even then, I think, we might lawfully deal with them on the Liberia system, and remove them to a land where they might live by themselves independent." Again : " Had we brought them here as captives, I should think that we ought to take them back again ; and I should think myself bound to subscribe for that purpose." Surely the hypo- thetical case greatly diminishes, or rather wholly removes the absurdity of the inference, by which my friend would impair Dr Arnold's authority, but which merely betokens his fervid love of justice. So prone are we to see just what we are looking for, that even the clearsighted Historian of Greece is led to turn into a gross absurdity, what is nothing but an expression of strict con- scientiousness : and even when printing his Speech, and adding Dr Arnold's words in a note, he did not perceive how he had distorted their meaning. Note R: p. 37. The Bishop of St David's,— to whom I refer so frequently, not only because he has publisht an authentic report of his Speech, strengthened by Notes, but also because one may feel pretty sure that whatever arguments can be adduced in favour of the Bill, will be made the best of in his pages,— says (p. S5): "The claim of the Jews to admission into the Legislature has never, I believe, been represented as standing on the footing of absolute. unconditional right, so as to involve, as was emphatically asserted, the principle of Chartism in its highest announcement. Any state- ments which may seem to go that length, must in fairness be con- strued with such a qualification as common sense requires, and the argument itself admits." Still, though the argument from right may not have been carried to such an extreme by the advocates of the measure in Parliament, — though none of them went to the length of the revolutionary fanatics in talking about the inherent inalienable, indefeasible rights of man, — yet the argument from right is sure to have such weight whenever it can be urged, that few advocates will refrain from straining it beyond its proper limits. Hence it was needful that the opponents of the mea- sure should shew how slightly this argument bore upon the question ; more especially at a time when all the dykes and embankments by which social order is preserved, have been burst, and visionary rights, which are little else than practical wrongs, are flooding and swamping the face of Europe. For, though natural rights, civil rights, and political rights, rest on very dif- ferent grounds, and have a very different validity, yet, inasmuch as they are all ranged under the name of Rights, the sanctity and universality, which belong to the first class, are often extended to the others. This confusion is pointed out by Burke in his Speech on the Petition for Relief from Subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles. "When gentlemen complain of the subscription as matter of grievance, the complaint arises from confounding pri- vate judgement, whose rights are anterior to Law, and the qualifications which the law creates for its own magistracies, whether civil or religious. To take away from men their lives, their liberty, or their property, those things for the protection of which society was introduced, is great hardship and intolerable tyranny: but to annex any condition you please to benefits artificially created is the most just, natural, and proper thing in the world. When de novo you form an arbitrary benefit, an advantage, preeminence or emolument, not by nature, but in- stitution, you order and modify it with all the power of a Creator over his creature. Such benefits of institution are royalty, 116 NOTE R. nobility, priesthood ; all of which you may limit to birth : you might prescribe even shape and stature." The exaggeration of expression, — for it does not affect the im- mediate argument in these words, — is no more than what is to be expected from an orator, who does not profess to treat abstract questions with philosophical precision : but that which may be wanting in this respect, is richly supplied by the excellent observations on the same topic in the Heflexions 07i the French Revolution. " As to the share of power, authority, and direc- tion (Burke there says), which each individual ought to have in the management of the State, that I must deny to be amongst the direct, original rights of Man in civil society. — It is a thing to be settled by convention. If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of con- stitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things." So dangerous is misty vagueness and ambiguity attacht to such a word as Right, whereby the passionate feelings excited by a violation of it under one sense, take fire at a supposed violation of it under another sense, that Burke's disentanglement of this knot was a great benefit, not merely to political philosophy, but to practical politics. When we take this correct view of the nature of political rights, I cannot see what there is inappropriate in the analogies, by which the denial of these rights, or rather privileges, to the Jews has been vindicated. The Bishop of St David's says, " that the fallacy of the comparison, — with the case of clergymen, of females, of minors, and of persons wanting the pecuniary qualification at present required by the law, — is so glaring, as to be characteristic of the spirit in which the question has been discust." This glaring fallacy, I confess, I cannot perceive. As a reply to an argument maintaining that the Jews, as native English subjects, have a claim of right to be admitted into Parliament, it is perfectly valid to urge that there are other large classes, who NOTE R. 117 are also excluded. The force of this argument rests solely on the fact of their exclusion, and is a complete logical refutation of tliat against which it is brought. What the grounds of the exclusion may be in each case, and whether they are all equally valid, is a different question. But it is of importance to simplify the discussion by getting rid of the other plea, so that it may turn wholly on the political expediency of the measure. For a ques- tion of expediency it is, like every other political question, of expediency on the highest grounds, in which the moral interests of the nation are to be taken into account, quite as much as its economical prosperity. This is implied in the denial of its being a question of abstract right. Moreover the political condition of the Clergy shews that it is not incompatible with the principles of our Constitution for a class of persons to be entrusted with the elective franchise, and yet to be themselves ineligible. Here again there is a clear analogy. We do not say that the two cases rest on the same grounds. The limited franchise may be expedient in the one case, inexpedient in the other. But we bar the argu- ment that there is any thing unconstitutional, or any inherent inconsistency, in such a distinction. Hence it appears that the saying of Lord Bacon, which Sir Robert Peel quoted in refutation of Dr Arnold's comparison between the condition of the Jews and the imperfect franchise at Rome, requires certain limitations. Speaking of a natural born English subject, in the argument on the Scotch Postnati, Bacon says, that " he is complete and entire. For in the law of Eng- land there is nil ultra; and therein it seemeth to me that the wisdom of the law is to be admired both ways, both because it distinguisheth so far, and because it doth not distinguish further. For I know that other laws do admit more curious distinction of this privilege ; for the Romans had, besides jus civitatis, which answereth to naturalization, jus suffragii. For although a man were naturalized to take lands and inheritance, yet he was not enabled to have a voice at passing of laws, or at election of officers. And yet further they have jus petitlonis, or jus honurum. For, though a man had voice, yet he was not 118 NOTE R. capable of honour and office. But these be the devices commonly of popular or free estates, which are jealous whom they take into their number, and are unfit for monarchies. But by the law of England the subject that is natural born, hath a capacity or ability to all benefits whatsoever ; I say capacity or ability : but to reduce potentiam in actum is another case." Had there been any Jews in England in Bacon's time, he could not have written thus. But the old colony was expelled under Edward I. ; and the later one only came in under Cromwell. Al- lowance too is to be made for Bacon's speaking as an advocate, and, as such, extolling that provision of the laws on which his clients grounded their claim. An advocate does not weigh his expressions in a jeweller's scales. For one may certainly question with Arnold whether superior wisdom is indicated by the absence of any qualification, except such as results from property, whereby the Enghshman's potential franchise becomes actual. How much too is the force of Bacon's authority on this question diminisht by his admission, that the distinction of franchise belongs to popular or free estates, though he thinks it unfit for monarchies ! For an absolute monarch may exercise his own discretion in the choice of his servants : and the more absolute he is, the more he will wish to see them all set on the same level. But when the persons elected by the people are to be the real government of the nation, all care should be taken to secure the judicious exercise of the elective franchise. Now so great changes have been wrought in the English Constitution since Bacon's days, that, what might then be rightly termed a monarchy, would now rather come under the head of " popular or free estates." Thus, while his authority with regard to the historical bearings of the question is of no importance, because he did not con- template the case, and, if he had, must have written differ- ently, as to its political aspect he may be conceived, if any- thing, to favour the scheme of having distinct franchises in a Commonwealth like ours. Nor, on the other hand, is there the slightest worth in the ar- gument that the rights of the citizens of London were violated by NOTE S. 119 the rejection of the person whom they had returned as their representative to Parliament. The citizens of London, like other people, have no absolute political rights, none but what are measured by their correlative duties. The right of election in all cases is restricted to those whom the Constitution pronounces to be eligible. Had they elected a minor, or a clergyman, the elec- tion would be invalid ipso facto ; and it would hardly have been contended that their rights were infringed by the disallowance of their choice. Even in France the election of Georges Sand would not be accepted as valid. It is true, the election of O'Connell was the immediate occasion of the admission of Romanists into the Legislature. But surely this was not a precedent to be copied. It is a sufficient disgrace to our Legislature, to have been reduced then to yield, under compulsion of outward force, what they had so long refused to concede on the plainest grounds of political expediency. So important a portion of the nation as the Ro- manists, had every equitable claim to be represented in our Legis- lature : but I cannot see that the Jews have any, except what they derive from the power of Mammon. In fact the recent case is much more like a parody of that precedent, than a parallel. Note S: p. 38. This truth, which was the principle of the political institutions of the middle ages, has been brought out into speculative distinct- ness by the recent philosophy of Germany. Thus Marheineke, in his recently publisht Lectures on Theological Ethics, says (p. 530) : "In the philosophy of Christian morals, the State can only be contemplated as it exists in the Christian Church, and consequently as the Christian State. Christianity did not produce the State : it found the State already existing, but first brought out its true idea and purpose. It is the same thing therefore, whether we speak of the true State, or of the Christian State. The Church and State bear the same relation to each other which our feelings do to their manifestation or realization. As this points to their having a common principle, so does it to the 120 NOTE S. difference between them. The State, like the Family, and the Church, is a moral institution. — In addition to the province of po- lice, and of law, that of morals also belongs to the State, inasmuch as they can only manifest themselves openly therein. — The State can- not produce art, science, or religion : it can only foster them, or, if it will not have them, suppress them. All their expressions, whatever they do, must be in the State : it founds and supports institutions for them : it takes cognisance of them and watches over them. — The moral principle of the modern State is that of Christianity, in that it necessarily implies a recognition of the infinite value of every human being. — The unity of the Church and State is not an external relation, a hypothetical adjunct: they are essentially connected ; and this their necessary inward connexion is their unity. They among whom no trace of piety or religious worship should be found, could hardly be a people, but merely wild hordes, just raised above brutes : that any State in the world however should exist without religion is impossible. It is by the Christian Religion, that the noblest feelings of nations, the moral institutions of States, the love of our family and of our country, public spirit and the desire of being useful, and the oaths which unite the people and their soverein, are sanctified; and it is the piety inherent in the State that recognises these ties and obligations. — Our moral life seeks to realize itself in the State, and organizes it into a structure, in which alone can any attain to full freedom of existence and consciousness. The King- dom of God includes these two provinces, the State and the Church, within it ; and thus the State is become an essential part in the Divine Economy. Therefore he who admires the wisdom of God in Nature, ought to admire the wisdom of God far more in the State ; seeing that the State surpasses Nature, which lies under unconsciousness and necessity, in the same proportion as she is surpast by the mind, which has wrought out its own world of reason and freedom in history. The last, deepest foundation-stone, on which the edifice of the State rests, is religion. The free spirit of truth is not satisfied with merely acting ac- cording to the letter of the laws. The true moral principles NOTE S. 121 of action lie in the spirit of religion, in the sanctuary of the conscience, in our feelings : and these are cultivated by Religion, in which our highest moral obligations find their primary source. — The Protestant Church cannot give in to the errour of the Romish, according to which the State in itself is a worldly, profane, unholy thing, hereby contrasted with the sacred, divine institution of the Church. Law and Justice, Truth and Morality, the main pillars of the State, are not unholy, profane things. Even when Christianity came into the world, the world was not altogether unholy, but was regulated on all sides by right and law, by order and morality, which Christ Himself and His Apostles declared to be divine institutions." With reference to the Jewish Question, by which Germany has long been agitated, from having such a number of Jews mixt up with her population, Marheineke, writing previously to the recent changes, says (p. 565) : " Only to the Jews, and to the various Christian Sects, as such, the State has no determinate relation. That is, they are merely tolerated : and this implies that their existence in a separate faith and community is an inevit- able evil : the State iriight be what it is without them. As subjects and citizens on the other hand, the sectarians stand on the same footing with all others. — It is an event of great importance that the Christain State has granted civil rights even to the Jews, who, while they belong to the same civil society, belong also to another people and faith. In comparison with the previous cruel oppression and persecution of the Jews, this is a great advance, whereby the human personality even of a Jew is treated with respect. The further question will be, whether it is possible for the Jew to continue standing at this point, or whether the Hving according to Christian laws and manners will not of itself be the surest, if not the speediest, mode of converting the Jews. This consummation would be a full justification of the wisdom of the State." His view, like that of almost all the wisest men in Germany, was that the most desirable plan would be to give the Jews common civil rights, but to restrict the higher political rights to Christians ; and he would have held, with them, that 1'22 NOTE T. the opening of the latter to the Jews would be a breach in the Christian character of the State. Note T : p. 39. That an irreligious, anti-religious spirit was dismally prevalent in France more than half a century ago, is notorious, and that it was not merely confined to the higher and more cultivated classes, but had spread through the whole mass of the nation. So is it that this spirit had produced its natural effects in de- moralizing the people. Efforts have indeed been made for the revival of Religion, both among the Roman Catholics, and by the Protestants ; and doubtless, when made in a right spirit, they have borne fruit. Much however that has been done in this way has been too exclusively intellectual, dealing with Christianity as a matter of philosophical speculation, or as the principle of beauty in poetry and the arts. Such views of Religion have little power even over those who hold them ; while they leave the body of the people gaping and gasping in the wilderness. On the other hand the intellect in France has been continually spawning with the worst abominations, which seem to have exercised a far more extensive influence. Indeed there is reason to fear that the French have little claim in these days to be called a Christian nation : and hence it would have been a mockery to make the profes- sion of Christianity an indispensable condition for a seat in their Legislature. With regard to Germany, the religious condition of the people was less generally known ; wherefore the atrocious outrages which have been committed there, have excited more surprise and horrour. Thus much indeed was sufficiently manifest, that various modes of Rationalism and Intellectualism had eaten away the very heart of Christianity in a large portion of those who uttered their thoughts in writing, whether treating of questions directly per- taining to theology, or in any other department of literature. But how far the poison had spread, beyond the precincts of the lecture-room and the literary saloon, how far the mind and heart NOTE T. 123 of the nation had been infected by it, we in this country had less means of judging ; except that it was natural to conclude that what had so long been gathering and spreading among the vipper classes, must also have reacht the lower. Of this I found a sad confirmation in Tholuck's Dialogues, publisht in 1846, where he says (p. 27): "It has recently been asserted, that, if the real body of the nation were to speak out, and did not lose their courage in the presence of the clamourers, the witnesses in behalf of our ancient faith would, even in our days, be far the most numerous. Now this I cannot venture to maintain. Our townspeople or tradesmen are undoubtedly a large part of the body of the nation : but among them the honest plan followed by the rationalist ministers since the year 1770, — of not attacking, but merely suppressing, all positive Christian doctrine, of not arguing against it, but merely misrepresenting it, — has produced the best fruits : for the ignorance of Christianity among the laity cannot be more enormous than it is. If such light chaff is borne along by the wind of the spirit of the age, there is nothing to surprise us. Rather, when one takes into account by what terrific representa- tions of priestly domination the people has been deceived, how our political opposition urges and drives on the religious, how delu- sively that watchword of many meanings. Freedom, sounds, and lastly what an ally unbelief has everywhere in the human heart, would it be a matter of surprise if the preaching of faith met with much general acceptation ?" From the same eminent divine I heard with deep regret two years ago, — in reply to a question whether he had observed any important change in the religious condition of his University during the many years he had been a teacher in it, — that, though a very great improvement had taken place in the students of theology, so that a number of candidates for orders were sent out every year animated with true Christian zeal and piety, the laity nevertheless seemed to become more and more alienated from Christianity, and the churches were emptier and emptier. In such a state of things, when a representative government was introduced, it would have been a monstrous anomaly to insist 124 NOTE T. that the representatives should make a profession of Christianity. It was on the Jewish Question, as we saw in the passage quoted from Dorner (p. 96), that this point was first tried, which gives us a direct personal interest in the matter. Last year, in the Prussian Diet, the higher political privileges were withheld from the Jews. But on the 21st of March this year the Prussian Government proclaimed the complete equality of all religious Confessions ; and the same principle, or rejection of all principle, has since been laid down by the Diet at Frankfort. Hence it concerns us to observe how this immense revolution is regarded by the most sagacious minds in Germany ; and with this view I will insert another extract from Dorner. " What every one without distinction, when he surveys the events which have happened in their connexion, must recognise as a necessity forced upon us by the course of history, and which under the premisses could not be averted, is acknowledged by the Christian to be a Divine ordinance, a Divine judgement : and it is the strength of the Church to look these things in the face. For she knows that for her there are no deadly, but only life-giving judgements. That falsehood in our relations, which so much encouraged sloth and hypocrisy in individuals, and a mechanical formalism in the State, now, having been judged, points the eyes of the Church, both the Protestant and the Roman Catholic, to a sin. Neither of the two has to reproach the other ; but each has to reproach itself: and she who does this the most honestly, will indicate the healthiest power of life for the future. The candlestick of the Church has not yet been overthrown ; but it has been lowered : it has been taken down from its high position, from which hitherto it gave light to all in the house, even in the house of the State. Christianity has been told that people no longer need its light, that the State hopes to get on quite as well with other lights, and will be guided according to circumstances by their illumination. To speak plainly, it has been conceded, if not to downright irreligion, yet to the principles of other religions which stand in hostile opposition to the Christian, that they may bear part NOTE T. 125 in legislating for and governing the German nation, in the same manner in which the Christian principle has done hitherto. That this should have happened, nay, that it should be re- latively an advantage, points to a great sin on the part of the Christian Church. The day is come, when living fruits were sought upon her tree, the fruits for the healing of the nations. But we, trusting in security and spiritual sloth to the Chris- tianizing power of infant baptism or of holy water, relying on all manner of spiritual traditions, on the moral and religious influence of decayed institutions, or, it may be, on the cunning fictions of an inexhaustible ingenuity, we have neglected to cherish the gift of the free creative Spirit of God in ourselves, and to seek the lost, to gather the scattered, in self-sacrificing love. When I speak of this as a sin of Christians, I mean not thereby to acquit the world, as estranged from the Church, of sin. But I feel no vocation in me to accuse the world. It did what it could not help doing : for it is swayed by the law, not of freedom, but of necessity. Besides, it knew not what it did. We on the contrary knew what we ought to do, and yet did it not. Therefore is the time come, when, according to St Peter (1. iv. 17), Judgement must begin at the house of God. He adds indeed. If it first begin at us, what shall the end be of those who obey not the gospel of God. If the Church however puts forth fresh leaves in her state of humiliation, stripping off the dead in the spirit of repentance, and enlivening the old and dry by a new divine power, drawing back from that entanglement with the world, which has surpast her strength, into a life of contemplation, ere long, I hope, the world too would be less withered : nay, much that is now dried up, would be snatcht as a brand from the fire. The nearest coming judgement on the godless, selfish, irreligious world would be the shaking and overthrow of that, which it too regards as an advantage, the foundations of all human order. Only let the House of God, now that judgement begins at it, be led to repentance. If the Church be, as it were, baptized and hallowed anew with the fire of the Holy Spirit, consuming whatever is impure in her, she will again prove herself to be that salt of the 126 NOTE T. worlds which resists its corruption and total dissolution. In the world too will the power of order and of government be strength- ened afresh by a revived esteem for the law, and by the public spirit of true patriotism, which seeks, not to rule, but to serve. And then that judgement will spare the world, in proportion as the world opens its heart to a new and deeper reception of Chris- tianity. Therefore I will not accuse the world, which cannot help itself. Rather do I wish that Christians may not be able to deliver their conscience from the feeling of punishment, from the feeling that God has in these days been hiding Himself from them, until, being impelled to search into their sins and their negligences, they find a fresh source of new courage and new strength in God. Instead of unprofitable complaints about what we have lost, instead of straining our faculties to reestablish what is tumbling in ruins, may we be brought to recognise that the chasm between our legal ordinances and institutions, and the spirit which prevails in the people, was actually existing, — that the German people, as a whole, does not pay homage to the principles of Christianity, and therefore that the hollow semblance ought not to be retained. That semblance has fallen away before God's judgement. The tnath has come to light. If we recognise the real state of affairs, without giving ourselves up to fictions, either of optimism or pessimism, the truth, sad as it is, may be salutary. — " It is true, the State has not yet proclaimed itself atheistic. It is true, our new federal code might without falsehood adopt this paragraph: the majority of Germans profess Christianity. But can we expect this? Nay can we even wish it? As a piece of statistical information, it would be idle and perplexing; as a similar proposition was in the late French Charter. As a legal statement, it is already precluded by the recent legislation in many of our particular States, and even of the National Diet. The absolute equality of political rights, without regard to any religious Confession, will probably be taken under the protection of our new Federal Constitution.* Then will Atheism itself be politically legitimatized in the new German Empire, and will * Dorner was writing at the beginning of April. NOTE T. 127 enjoy all the same rights with faith in God and in Christianity. Much is now said about oaths to the Constitution : but the new German State will not merely refrain from imposing an oath upon Memnonites, but also upon those who could not swear without hypocrisy, since they do not believe in God. Or shall we retain oaths at all ? Shall we not in this also follow the pattern of the French ? However this may be, at best one case is as possible as the other. The Church therefore has to consider whether it can continue on its former understanding with a State, which may perhaps before long be atheistic in principle, — whether she can receive mandates from it with regard to her own concerns, even should they be to her advantage. Moreover everything is not religion that anybody may call so. At least the Christian Church cannot recognise it as such. Supposing then that the State should still require some sort of religious confession, what- ever each person chooses, this in the eyes of the Church would not differ essentially from conferring a political legitimacy on downright Atheism. Or will our modern State engage to decide how far Pantheism, for instance, the worship of humanity, or of our own nature, is religion ? Therefore, under the new order of things, we shall have to take a politically legitimatized Atheism into the bargain. A professor of actual Atheism may not merely sit in the ranks of our highest legislators and administrators ; but, as such, he is just as much entitled as a professor of Christianity, and will have just the same right, to promote the interests of his own opinions, in discharging the duties of his office, for instance, by promoting atheistical institutions, and by oppressing the Christian Church. It may pain many an honest German heart, that the infinite majority who still believe in God, are allowing the infinite minority who do not believe in Him, to force a form of constitution upon them which they regard as godless^ and to destroy that form of constitution which they would otherwise deem the best ; that is to say, — since at this extreme point the only alternative is between victory and defeat, and an equality of rights is impossible, — that the minority should conquer, and the majority be conquered. Our confused notions of freedom and equality, and the decay of 128 NOTE T. the sober fear of God amongst us, have reduced us to such a condition, that the majority, although they beUeve in God, yet shrink, as from a wrong, from maintaining this faith in action, and from using the power of their superior numbers to estabHsh that form of constitution, which is connected with God and with religion, and proceeds from the axiom of the moral necessity of faith in God. Be it therefore the case, that, by the admission of Atheism to full political rights in the ancient holy German Empire, the majority are sacrificed to a spiritually diseased minority, and consequently that this measure is unjust, irrational, and perhaps also of brief duration, yet, at the present moment, that moral per- sonality, with which the Church had to deal in our ancient State, in point of principle no longer exists, but is extinguisht. If it be said that, in point of fact at least, the religious personality of our ancient State is still subsisting partially, and has not entirely waned away, — and if we are reminded of all those modes of action and institutions which the State has hitherto promoted and pro- tected, and which the Church also regarded as part of her estab- lishment, — which the modern State will perhaps still allow to subsist, for the sake of the Christian majority, even, it may be, under the guardianship of the Church ; I quite agree that such things are not to be thrown away, — for that there is a blessing in them ; and I am far from thinking that the Church ought to abandon her Divine Ideal, and to extend the rent into those re- gions into which it has not already penetrated. But the consequence from this is merely, that her aim must be henceforward, as hitherto, to awaken a Christian life in the people, not that she can continue in her former union with the State." This picture of the condition of Germ.any is gloomy indeed ; though it is a consolation to find there are teachers in the German Church, at this moment of her uttermost need, endowed with such clearness of Christian wisdom and faith. It may be contended that the analogy between the condition of Germany and that of England is one of contrast, rather than of similarity. This is true. Through God's mercy, in spite of all our failings, of all our shortcomings, of all our errours and controversies and NOTE U. 129 animosities, in spite of all our manifold accumulated sins, we are still a Christian people. The heart of the nation is sound. The preachers of infidelity have not been able to corrupt it. In all classes the professors of Christianity are an overwhelming majority ; and there has been a great increase, I believe we may say confidently, of real living Christianity in the last thirty years. But what does this prove? If the reason for abandoning the Christian principle of our Legislature, which exists so wofully in Germany, does not exist in England, why are we to abandon it ? If we are a Christian people, and if Christianity, while it has been declining elsewhere, has been gaining strength through God's blessing in England, why are we no longer to have a Christian Legislature ? Why are we to do that, which the Germans are doing under the compulsion of a dire necessity, but which their wisest men deplore, as the symptom at least of a most disastrous condition, as the breaking of a tie that has endured for a millen- nium and a half. Is it seemly thus to sweep away that to which antiquity has given such a sanctity, without any call of principle whatsoever, without any pressure of necessity, without any motive of expediency, rather in violation of the ancient principles of the Constitution, and in defiance of manifold ex- pediency, out of what really seems little else than a wanton spirit of dilettante liberalism ? Note U : p. 40. That the admission of Jews into Parliament will unchristianize our Legislature, has been asserted by the opponents of that mea- sure, and strenuously denied by its advocates. Indeed the Bishop of St David's speaks of this argument as a fallacy he is almost ashamed to advert to. " How often (he says, p. 1 7), has this objection been confuted by the simple observation, that the Legislature, after this measure shall have been past, — will remain Christian, exactly in the same sense, and precisely in the same proportion, as the country itself is Christian ! " To me, I con- fess, this argument, if it had been used by a less subtile reasoner, K 130 NOTE U. would have seemed a palpable fallacy. For surely one of the worst modes of determining the characteristic properties of any aggregate is to sum up the characteristics of what is so variable as the majority of its members. Bacon has said, with his pe- culiar felicity of illustration : " The inferring a general position from a nude enumeration of particulars, without an instance contradictory, is vicious: nor doth such an induction infer more than a probable conjecture that there is no repugnant principle un- discovered : as if Samuel should have rested in those sons of Jesse who were brought before him in the house, and should not have sought David, who was absent in the field." The Christian cha- racter of the English nation does not result solely from the fact that the majority of its members are Christian, but from the manner in which Christianity has ever been an essential principle in all its institutions. As a nation we are Christians, because we have a Christian Government, a Christian Legislature, and because that Government and Legislature have hitherto been bound indissolubly to the faith and Church of Christ. This being the case, the presence of a few thousand Jewish sojourners does not modify the character of the nation. Nor would it destroy that character, even if they were far more numerous ; as the character of the Athenian democracy is determined by that of the Athenian Demus, without regard to the fxdroiKui and the slaves, though these far outnumbered the citizens. A man with a wooden leg is a man, not because the majority of his limbs are of flesh and bone, but because he has the living principle of humanity in him. In our case too all the members are perfect : the wooden leg is merely an external appendage. On this point Mr Gladstone seems to me to come nearer the truth, when he says (p. 31): "I can well believe that to many, and I freely allow that to myself, it is painful thus to part with even the title of an exclusive Christianity inscribed upon the portals of the Constitution. Yet (he adds) to qualify this title, as we are now askt to qualify it, to sun-ender it as a universal and exclusive title, is not to deprive ourselves of such substantial Christianity as we may really now possess. Advantage is not NOTE U. lol unfairly taken in debate of a word : but when it is said that we unchristianize the Parliament, while it may be true in name, — and I would not deny it, — I must ask, is it true in substance?" Thereupon, to escape the inference which would be fatal to his cause, he has recourse to the same unsatisfactory argument, that the Christianity of the Legislature is to be determined, like that of the Nation, by that of the majority. Yet on the admission of the Romanists our Parliament ceast to be a Protestant Parliament. How comes it that the admission of the Jews is not to produce a like change ? That the Christian tone of our parliamentary debates must needs be lowered by the admission of Jews, was maintained with cogent force by the Bishop of Oxford in his masterly speech on the second reading of the Bill, a speech by which it is probable that the majority against the Bill was considerably augmented, and which, like his speech at the meeting of the National Society, was an important benefit to our Church. On this head it has been replied, that the entrance of a few solitary Jews could hardly exercise any material influence, and that we are not to suppose that more than half-a-dozen will be returned. To this argument, which compromises its own cause, so far as it rests on the ground that very few are affected by the exclusion, it is a suffi- cient rejoinder, that, according to the rules of all good breeding, the presence of a single individual, holding a different persuasion, will check the free expression of the sentiments from which he differs. Indeed the presence of one would be a stronger restraint upon a gentleman, than if parties were nearly balanced. But when we take account of the peculiar advantages which the higher class among the Jews possess for rising in the political world, and when we call to mind how these have been exhibited of late by the presence of two Jews, if not, as has been said, three, among the ten members of the Provisional Government in France, while several, I know not how many, have been acting a conspicuous part in the recent politics of Germany, we may doubt whether the number of Jewish members of Parliament would indeed be so very insignificant. 132 NOTE U. Moreover there is a further important consideration. It has been said, that the declaration by which religious Jews are ex- cluded from Parliament, has not availed to exclude avowed infi- dels, such as Gibbon and Bolingbroke. Now of course no decla- ration can exclude those who do not scruple to lie in making it. But is that a reason for rejecting all such declarations ? Is it ^ reason for rejecting the use of words, and the confidence in them, that some people follow Talleyrand's maxim of using them to conceal their thoughts ? At all events the declaration is so far effectual, that, if an unbeliever were to enter Parliament now, he would be incapable of avowing his infidelity. Every member of the Legislature is bound by his declaration to promote the interests of Christianity, or, at the very least, to refrain from injuring it, either in deed or in word. Should any be shameless enough to do so, the outcry which would be provoked, could not now be represt by a protest that We are not Christians here. But if this restraint, which the principles of our Constitution impose upon covert infidelity, were removed, — and, when Jews are admitted, I see not how any form of enmity to Christianity could long be excluded from our Legislature, any more than from the French and German, — it may be that some, which may now be latent, would find vent. How much there may be, I have no means of judging. In former periods of our history, we know, there has been much. Possibly there may be less at present. If so, let us be thankful. But at all events let us abstain from creating any encouragement, or any facilities, for its utterance or its increase. Some people indeed, taking up the slang of the day, may object, that the cause of truth and honesty can only be promoted by our getting rid of every kind of sham, and therefore that, if there be any latent unbelief in our Parliament, it ought to be uttered boldly and unhesitatingly. But what should we say to the Board of Health, if they were to order all the cesspools in the country to be uncovered, lest we should affect to be cleaner than we are 1 This whole mode of thought is utterly fallacious, from not duly recognising the great struggle in our nature. NOTE V, \V. 133 the constant presence of evil, which good at the utmost can only suppress, never wholly expell. Are laws useless, because they cannot eradicate the seeds of evil, but only repress their grosser manifestations ? Are manners useless, because they can only restrain the vicious from exposing their grosser vices in the sight of day ? 0, we need every check, every help, for our frail, tottering virtue : and all are too few. We all need them individually ; and we need them no less nationally. Nor are they falsehoods, or shams, but rather props and pillars of truth, which keep us from falling headlong into the snares of the Father of lies. We are not made to walk naked in heart and mind, any more than in body ; and if we did, we should be falser than we are. A't^wg has ever been a chief support of Truth, as of every other virtue. Note V : p. 47. Thus Horsley, in some interesting Letters on the prophecies concerning Antichrist, which were publisht in the British Maga- zine for 1834, says (p. 135): "I confess, I am not so well satisfied as you seem to be with that interpretation of Rev. vi. 12 — 17, which finds the accomplishment of that vision in the suppression of idolatry by the Christian Emperors. I think it cannot be understood of anything less than the final overthrow of Antichrist by our Lord at His coming. I admit, that darkness in the sun and moon, and a falling of the stars, are images in frequent use among the prophets, to denote the overthrow of empires, or the fall of mighty potentates. But in this passage of the Revelation these images are amplified to the utmost." Note W : p. 50. A fashion has grown up of late, to apologize for, and even to extoll, the former French Revolution, on account of the benefits, such as those mentioned in the text, which have resulted from it. But this is much as if a person were to fall in love with 134 NOTE X. a hurricane, because it purifies the air, without taking count of the desolation which it spreads around. Doubtless a pestilence too, in the order of Providence, has its purificatory power. In this manner the judgement of History will often reverse the judgement of contemporaries. Yet they are not inconsistent : only contem- poraries look at the agents, at their motives and characters ; History looks rather at the acts, and their consequences. Though man must not do evil that good may come. History recognises that good does come out of evil. This however does not justify the evil, or the evil-doer. Note X : p. 54. The Democratie Pacifique for the 9th of last April opens with an article entitled La Pdque de la France, which is a truly awful example of the extravagances of the modern revolutionary pan- theistic fanaticism. It turns upon the appointment of Easter Sunday as the day on which the members of the National Assembly were to be elected. " Par une remarquable coincidence le jour on la nation fran- caise doit exercer cette pleine souverainete dont elle a ete privee si longtemps, c'est le jour de Paque, le jour ou le Christ est ressuscite d'entre les morts. La France va faire ses paques; elle va communier dans une grande pensee de regeneration ; elle va celebrer le jour de la resurrection du Sauveur en rentrant en possession d'elle-meme, en manifestant sa volonte souveraine. Pour les Juifs, Paque 6tait la d^livrance, I'affranchissement du joug des Pharaons ; pour les Chretiens, Paque etait la resurrection, la victoire remportee sur la mort par I'Homme-dieu ; pour la France en 1848, Paque doit etre la glorification definitive du Christ, du peuple, de I'humanite. Quand Jesus fut ressuscite, il ne vecut que quarante jours sur la terre ; il n'y vecut que d'une vie incomplete, isolee, mysterieuse ; car la terre etait encore une vallee de larmes ; la terre etait soumise a la domination de Cesar, de Cesar qui avait crucifie Jesus. Le regne du Christ n'etait pas encore de ce monde, et la resurrection elle-mcme NOTE X. 135 n'avait pu triompher de Satan et de Cesar. La Paque chretienne n'etait done qu'un symbole, une figure, une promesse de la resurrection definitive. Ressuscite d'entre les morts, le Christ ne pouvait habiter d'autre sejour que les cieux, domaine de I'infini. II s'y elanga, le quarantieme jour aprds sa resur- rection ; et, dix jours apres, il envoya le Saint Esprit a ses apotres. Mais il leur promit de revenir sur la terre, dans toute sa puissance et sa gloire. Eh bien 1 malgre des efforts inouis le Christ n'a pu encore revenir sur la terre; il n'a pu ressusciter glorieux dans I'humanite; il est toujours sur la croix oii I'a attache Cesar, il y a dix huit siecles ; et le peuple, qui est I'image vivante du Christ, porte toujours sa croix d'indigence et de ser- vitude. France tres chretienne ! cette promesse ne serait- elle done qu'une deception ? Et si elle est une verite, le moment n'est-il pas enfin venu de I'accomplir ? France tres chretienne I n'est ce pas toi surtout qui a mission de ressusciter le Christ glorieux dans I'humanite ? N'est ce pas toi qui a ete choisie entre toutes les nations pour detacher le peuple de sa croix seculaire, pour inaugurer la paque definitive du genre humain, pour donner a la fois le precepte et I'exemple de la fraternite ? Non, non, la France ne sera point infidele a cette grande et sainte mission ; elle saura I'accomplir en revolutionnant, comme en organisant, en detruisant, comme en edifiant; elle saura trouver dans son ame des tresors de genie et d'amour, pour pratiquer et faire pratiquer au monde la fraternite universelle. Par la force de sa volonte souveraine la France fera descendre le Christ des cieux sur la terre. Apres quatorze siecles de batailles et de revolutions, ■la France a desormais vaincu Cesar ; elle a proclame la Repub- lique chretienne, et prepare le retour glorieux du Fils de I'Homme. Oui, ce retour glorieux du Christ, cette resurrection definitive de I'Homme-Dieu, nous y touchons. Qui pourrait en douter ? Les signes des temps ne se manifestent-ils pas de toutes parts ? Le genre humain tressaille d'espoir k I'idee que la crucification va finir, que la glorification va commencer. A cette heure meme combien de peuples ne donnent-ils pas leur sang pour cette idee ? derniers martyrs de la promesse divine 1 Eh quoi ! la France ne 136 NOTE X. vient-elle pas aussi de donner son sang, et n'eprouve-t-elle pas un frisson prophetique, en agitant encore la banniere ou elle in- scrivit cette trinlte sainte : Liberie, egalite, fraternite ? Et ce nouveau cri qu'elle fait entendre: Organisation du travail! n'est- il pas comma la voix de I'ange annongant au monde la Resur- rection definitive du Christ ? Oui, voici le jour de la resurrection ! Voici la paque de la France, qui sera aussi la paque de I'huma- nite I Oui, en I'an de grace 1848, il n'est pas un bon repub. licain, qui ne doive faire ses paques^ en votant pour la realisation de cette devise chretienne : Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite I Fran- cais ! Venez, venez tous communier dans une meme pensee de regeneration socials; votez tous pour I'assoeiation integrals et universelle, pour I'organisation de la vie nouvelle dans la com- mune, dans la nation, dans I'humanite ; elisez ceux qui savent, qui veulent, et qui peuvent mener a bien cette grande oeuvre de charite, d'egalite, et de fraternite, et vous ressusciterez le Christ glorieux ! Venez done a cette communion sainte, dans laquelle vous creerez et recevrez en meme temps le pain de vie, et par laquelle vous rendrez a jamais le Christ vivant en vous et dans le monde ! Approchez-vous de I'urne du scrutiny pleins de confiance dans les destinees de la France, et de I'humanite ; ap- prochez-vouz de cette sainte table ou vous recevrez et donnerez la divine eucharistie, ou, en conferant le pouvoir a ceux qui ont deja le savoir, vous puiserez vous-memes en eux une force nouvelle !" I have not transcribed this mass of wild and profane nonsense for the sake of the disgust which it must needs excite in every soberminded English Christian, but because it is desirable that the Church should know what enemies she has to combat with. For the sentiments here exprest are not the ravings of a solitary madman. In one form or other they are diffused, I am afraid, far and wide, and are exercising no slight influence ; and there are men, who would otherwise shrink from crime, yet who would not be slow to commit it for the sake of realizing their extravagant visions. The very fact, that Easter Sunday was appointed for the election of the National Assembly, had itself a national signi- ficance ; and various indications shewed that this significance was NOTE X. 137 connected in the minds of many with delusions approximating, more or less, to those exprest in the Democratie Pacifique. The pantheistic view has ever been apt to regard our Lord as a type of humanity, both in His nature, and in His history : and doubtless there is a portion of important truth mixt up with this errour, the truth which is exprest scripturally by the union between Christ and the Church. Moreover, as ever happens, when numbers of people, who are not lying to their own hearts, are carried away by any delusion, there is also an important political truth conveyed, however vaguely and distortedly, in the extravagant language we have been quoting ; a truth which it would seem to be the special calling of our age to bring forward in its power and majesty. They who talk in this manner about Christianity, are persuaded that Christianity has something to do, not merely with our individual hearts and consciences, with our domestic relations, and our duties to our immediate neighbours, but also with the political life of nations, with our widest social relations, with our agriculture, our commerce, our trade, with our courts of justice, our Parliament, the councils of our Kings, with all the functions of Government. Their views on these subjects are very dim, very confused ; but they feel that they have got hold of a truth here, and that this truth has never yet been duly recognised, explicitly and in act, though in principle it has ever been implied by the union of the modern State with Christ- ianity. Still, they feel, it has never exercised more than a small portion of that mighty healing power, which it ought to exercise on all the political and social relations of mankind. They feel that, in this great region of life, the purpose of Christ's coming has never yet been accomplisht. And who will dare to say that it has ? Even if the saving and healing influence of Christianity on the moral and spiritual lives of individual Christians had been a hundredfold deeper and more extensive than it ever has been, surely we should still have to admit that this improvement by itself would not be enough ; nay, that there must be something very unsatisfactory and hollow in it, unless it were manifested by a corresponding improvement in our political and social life. Of 138 NOTE X. course it would be so ; and the miserable condition of the latter is an irrefragable proof of the superficialness of the former. Can we wonder then, if there are persons, who, being earnestly desirous of seeing their fellow-creatures happy, when they look round and discern the enormous mass of misery in the world, the abject wretchedness and degradation under which such vast swarms of human beings are continually suffering in Christian countries, in countries which have been lying for eight or ten centuries, or even more, beneath the light of Christianity, are moved to ask, Was it for this that Christ died ? was it for this that He rose again ? Is this thefidfilment of the blessings which were to wait ujjon the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven ? To such questions we can only return the same answer as the French Socialists, No. Surely it behoves us to say to them. We recognise all these evils quite as much as you do ; we deplore them quite as much ; we agree with you in thinking that they shoidd not he allowed to continue., and that it is the prime duty of every Christian society to employ its utmost wisdom and energy in talcing care that such evils shall not arise within its territories, or that, if they should arise, they shall be removed and extirpated. Besides we hold as firmly as you can do, that it is the proper work of Christianity, — and a work which no other power can effect, — that it is the work of Christian wisdom, and of Christian temperance, and of Christian diligence and perseverance, and of Christian love, to prevent all such evils, to check and abate them, to remove and extirpate them. Only we also see other evils, of which you appear to take little or no count, evils still greater, still more widely diffused, still more terrible and crushing, still more obstinate in resisting every effort to ewe them, the sins, the vices, the fraud, the greediness, the blighting selfishness, the reckless self- indulgence, the deadening Ucetitiousness and intemperance, the falsehood, the utter godlessness, which spread witheringly, not through one class of society merely, but through all, which are ever breeding new forms of misery, and which baffl,e all attempts to relieve them. These are the real causes and sources of all our national, of all our political, of all our social evils. These too, and all the other NOTE X. 139 forms of sin, tchich sjiriny out of our want of faith, out of our estrangement from God, are the evils from which Christ especially came to deliver mankind, by His blessed Passion and Resur- rection ; and, until mankind rise out of these evils, the work of His Passion, the work of His Resurrection will be incomplete. Moreover it is only by repressing these more terrible fontal evils, that the evils which flow from them can he effectually abated. The work of Governments is indeed mainly to relieve and repress the latter. They have no power of contending against the former. They leave that to Religion, in Christian countries to Christianity, which alone has the real power. But for this very reason no change, which merely affects the form of a Government, can deserve to be glorified with the sacred name of the Resurrection. A change worthy to bear that name must take place in the inner world of man's spiritual nature. Now this, which is the main point, the all in all, in the Christian view of Christ's work, is almost entirely left out of account in the French speculations concerning it. The authors of them forget sin. They forget that Christ came to deliver us from our sins, from the burthen of our own sins, not merely from the oppression inflicted upon us by those of others. They seem wholly to forget that they themselves, and that all human beings, have a sinful nature, which we have all made far worse by giving way to it and indulging it, and from which we need to be delivered, before we can in any way become partakers in the blessings of Christ's Resurrection. They appear to fancy that the only evils of much importance in the world, are those which are caused by the vices of kings and their ministers, and that if these are removed by the destruction of the authorities which have bred them, the whole world will become brimfull of happiness in a trice, — Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity will dance over the earth, — and all nations will be swallowed up in a deluge of Love. The childish visionariness of the notions broacht by men, who might otherwise be deemed intelligent, is quite portentous. All the lessons taught by the history of the world, — all the lessons written in characters of fire and blood by the events of their own former Revolution, — 140 NOTE X. all the lessons which every man ought to learn by looking into his own heart, — are thrown overboard, as a ship will throw its cargo overboard, when a hurricane is sweeping it along. No wonder then that the deep and momentous truths, which are imprest upon us by the ordinance that the long penitential season of Lent should come before the joyous Resurrection of Easter, are wholly lost sight of by this newfangled religious sentimentalism. These French mockers and perverters of Christian truth fancy that they shall rise again, that they shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, without repentance, or so much as a thought of it. They fancy that they shall become sharers in the blessedness of Christ's Resur- rection, without entering in any way into the communion of His sufferings. But these things cannot be. They tell us that they shall bring Christ down by the soverein will of the people to reign upon earth. Just as reasonably might they talk of dragging down the sun from the sky, to serve them instead of fires, by the soverein will of the people. In fact this is their main delusion, — this is the idol they worship, — the will of man, the will of the people, which everybody, as was seen continually in the former Revolution, and as we have seen daily this year, identifies with his own will. I do not mean, that political institutions are altogether indif- ferent, and can produce no effect upon the moral character of the people. Fi-ee institutions, as they afford ampler opportunities for the action of certain manly virtues, tend to foster them, in a condition of society where the germs of them are already exist- ing. This however must be a work of time, of years, nay, of successive generations. It cannot manifest itself at once, by a magical change. Universal suffrage is not a Harlequin's wand, — though the French seem almost to regard it as such, — by which a nation of sordid, unprincipled rogues, as they declare themselves to have been under the Government they have expelled, can be transformed into a nation of disinterested, magnanimous heroes. So far from it, that, in its action upon corrupt hearts, it can only supply free scope and licence for the exhibition of their cor- ruption ; just as the enfranchisement of slaves, who have not been NOTE X. 141 previously prepared for freedom, is much like the letting loose of wild beasts, and sets all their vices running riot. The thoughts thus called up constrain us to remember that a twofold Resurrection is spoken of, not only a Resurrection to life, but also a Resurrection to condemnation. Nor can we forget that, when the former Revolution broke out, then also, as at the first outbreak of the present, A golden palace rose, or seemed to rise. The appointed seat of equitable Lavr, And mild paternal sway. — Prophetic harps In every grove were ringing, War shall cease. Did ye not hear that conquest is abjured? Bring garlands, bring forth choicest powers to deck The Tree of Liberty Se joyful, all ye nations, in all lands Ye that are capable of joy be glad. Henceforth whate''er is wanting to yourselves. In others ye shall promptly find, and all Be rich by mutual and reflected wealth. The poet adds, " Scorn and contempt forbid me to proceed." When a poet in some future generation is looking back upon the events of this year, will he not have to speak of the bursting of our bubble in the same bitter language ? At all events, as the past must ever be our criterion for judging of the present, when we call to mind that the nation which is enacting this Revolution, is the same which enacted the former, and that, though its cha- racter must no doubt have been considerably modified by the events of the last sixty years, yet there are scanty traces of its having gone through that preparatory discipline, which is indis- pensable for the ResuiTection to life, we cannot but feel an awe- stricken foreboding, lest this Revolution also, like the former, should bear much more of the character of the Resurrection to condemnation. For what is the test whereby we are to judge whether a man, or any body of men, — and this will apply to a nation also, — are partakers of the blessings of Christ's Resurrection ? If we are risen with Christ, we must seek those things which are above \ we must set our affections on things above, not on things on the 142 NOTE X. earth. Now is there the slightest indication of anything hke this, in the recent acts of the French people, or of their leaders ? Even allowing their rulers, their speechmakers, and their writers, to be thoroughly sincere and in earnest, are not the very highest objects, which they even profess to aim at, things on the earth? not even moral excellences, not even those heroic qualities which the legislators and reformers of the ancient world endeavoured to cultivate ; but mere physical comforts and indulgences. They do not seem to have a notion of anything beyond. If we take St Paul's next test, that they who are risen with Christ, must mortify their earthly members, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate desires, evil lusts, and covetousness, is there a spot upon earth where the whole people are more remote from all such mortification than at Paris ? Do we not know, from every account of French society, from the loathsome exposures in their courts of justice, and from the pestilential effluvia of their literature, that they do not even regard such mortification as desirable, that they do not think of aiming at it, that they rather eschew and scorn it ? Nay, has it not been boasted of, as the peculiar glory of the new era, that it will lead to the emancipation of the flesh, that is, to the abolition of every sacred bond by which the licence of the flesh is represt; in other words, to the unrestrained indulgence of every animal passion, of every brutish appetite 1 What hope then of anything like a Resurrection can be grounded on such a foundation ? There are three steps or stages, along which we must mount, or rather be raised by the Spirit of God, into the fel- lowship of Christ's Resurrection ; and these are markt by the more and more complete subjugation of and deliverance from that sinful nature, the rising out of which is the true idea and purpose of the Resurrection. These three stages are self-controll, self-denial, self-sacrifice. He who has ascended these three steps, which none can mount, save through the help of the Holy Spirit, — he who is enabled to live in the exercise of these three powers over himself, not occasionally and by fits and starts, but habitually, — is risen out of his carnal nature; and this world of death has no dominion over him. Miserably few however and poor are the tokens of these spirits NOTE X. 143 perceivable in the revolutionary proceedings of the French, while the opposite vices are rank and rampant. But, without these three Christian graces, there can be no national renewal, or regenera- tion, or Resurrection. Without these, we must still continue under the bondage of self, under the yoke of our will, of our own passions, children of Death, and not children of the Resurrection. Without these, there can be nothing more than a caricature of those blessed heavenly realities, such as Satan is fond of enacting at times, when, to gain his own purposes more securely and com- pletely, he puts on the form of an angel of light. But this delu- sive phantom lasts only for a while : when it is most showy, the hoof may be discerned by those who have eyes to look for it ; and ere long the whole monster is disclosed in all his hideous deformity. There is indeed, as I have acknowledged, a germ of truth hidden in this bloated French delusion, namely, that Christianity has never yet exercised the power which she ought to have exercised, — and which she would have exercised, unless men's vices had con- tinually unnerved her arm, and thwarted and checkt her efforts, — on the political and social condition of mankind. Some blessed fruits have indeed sprung from her influence, among which 1 will only mention one of the most blessed, — the position which women now hold, especially in Protestant countries, when compared with their position among the Heathens. But even in this, as in all our other social relations, many things are still very defective and wrong, in consequence of our unbelief and hardness of heart, in consequence of our not having made a right use of the blessed privileges which God has placed within our reach, in consequence of our having all sought our own gratification, our own ease, our own pleasure, instead of the glory of God, and the good of our fellow-creatures. This we have all done, high and low, rich and poor, learned and simple, in England, as in all other countries. Hence have these calamities befallen the other nations of Europe. Hence too have we been threatened with somewhat similar cala- mities ; the danger of which we must not suppose to have past away, until their causes are effectually removed. Through God's 144 NOTE y. mercy we have hitherto been signally preserved ; and through that mercy we shall still be preserved, if we give heed to the warn- ings which we are receiving from all sides. When other nations are boasting of rising again, we should recollect that we also are called to do so, not indeed in the same way, but in a better and surer. That we may fulfill this our high calling, let us not for- get or neglect the penitential offices which must precede it. Let us all, high and low, acknowledge all those sins against the gi-eat law of Christ, whereby the social and political improvement of our nation has hitherto been so grievously impeded. Let us make the confession continually to ourselves, to each other, to the people, to God, stirring up ourselves and each other and the whole people to cast away those sins, by endeavourhig earnestly and diligently to do what we have hitherto left undone. This will be the right preparation for a true political Easter. let us here in England bear ever in mind, — we are less excusable than other nations if we forget it, — that, without a moral regeneration, there can be no political regeneration. The history of all nations, Heathen as well as Christian, teaches us this. As Christians, we know further, that the only sure and lasting source of a moral regeneration is a spiritual regeneration. A political regeneration without these is a mere phantom, a dream, a mist, a castle in the air, a palace among the clouds, from which anon will issue lightning and thun- der. Let us all strive assiduously to attain to these three modes of regeneration. In no case have we ever striven enough ; mostly we have shamefully neglected it. But let all classes beware of being led astray by the notion, that we can advance in the course of our political regeneration by acts destructive of our moral and spiritual regeneration, by acts which outrage the Conscience and violate the sanctities of Duty. Such acts can only lead to the Resurrection of condemnation. Note Y: p. 62. The quotations I have inserted above from Dorner, shew with what feelings the political events of this year are viewed by the NOTE Y. 145 leading minds in the German Protestant Church, as a warning to repent, to set their house in order, and to be more diligent in the discharge of their duties. Ecclesiastically they are regarded as a special call on the Church to frame a constitution for herself and thus to complete the work, which, through the compulsion of outward circumstances, was left unfinisht at the Reformation. In this spirit Kling, one of the most eminent among the younger German divines, says in the Monthly Journal of the Evange- lical Church in the Rhenish provinces for the month of June : "We are still in the midst of the movement. The sword of dissension and insurrection is still waving here and there ; and opposite interests are engaging in a fierce conflict. We are still threatened on more than one side with a bloody war ; and what internal disorders and convulsions this might produce we know not. The new order of things is only beginning to shape itself; and its rudest outlines are lying indistinctly before our eyes. What consequences it may produce with regard to the Church, how our ecclesiastical life will stand in reference to this overthrow of all our social relations, is still very obscure: and we only know thus much, that, come what may, the Lord, to whom all power is given in Heaven and on earth, and who has promist to be with His own, with those who believe in Him and love Him, unto the end of the world,— that He, the Faithful and True, who is tlie same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, will not leave His promise unfulfilled, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church, which is built on the faithful confession of His name, — that His kingdom shall endure, although the mightiest thrones should fall, and though all order, firmly as it may have seemed to stand, should be subverted. — But we should by no means fulfill our duty as evangelical Christians, if we were merely to look on at the course of affairs, and calmly await what each coming day may bring forth, merely mindful to preserve a Christian temper of mind and to discharge the immediate ordinary duties of our special call- ing. An extraordinary crisis demands extraordinary activity A Christian must not content himself with complaining of revolution- ary designs, of the manner in which the people are deceived by /L 146 NOTE Y. self-seeking, ambitious, vain men. He is bound to exert himself, ac- cording to his station, as a free citizen, in all openness and sincerity, be it only by his presence and his vote, and, where he has an oppor- tunity, by an honest and reasonable discussion with his well dis- posed fellow-citizens, so that such evil-minded enterprises may be brought to shame, and that our free deliberations may produce a good result, or at least the best which under existing circumstances is possible. — Thus, by taking part in public affairs, with that simpli- city which includes wisdom, and that wisdom which includes sim- plicity, he will win confidence ; and while he hopes and trusts in the Lord, who rules the hearts of nations as well as of princes, who can bring good out of evil, can perfect that which is defective, and can mould our new frame of things, even though at first it should have a less righteous and godly character, nay, one dangerous and hostile to Christian truth and goodness, for the furtherance of His kingdom, — while he thus hopes for good, and comes forward trustfully, so far as he can and may, to meet those with whom he is brought into contact, in that love which believes all things and hopes all things, he will also be listened to with confidence ; and, if he knows how to catch the right moment, his faithful and intel- ligent testimony in behalf of truth, of religion, and of the essential religious and moral groundwork of all civil and social prosperity, will find acceptance. Thus he will be able to act for that which he regards as the highest of all things, and that too more effectually and widelier, than would otherwise have been possible. A time when everything is loosened and torn up, is a time for sowing : then is the earth unusually receptive for all kinds of seed, good and bad. — Only herein our conduct should be guided by an honor- able adherence to the state of things brought about by that Divine Providence, without which nothing takes place ; so that we must never even think of forming a party for the restoration of that which has been overthrown and destroyed, but must fix our aim solely on acting for the cause of justice and order and the public good in the new frame of our civil life, on turning whatever possi- bilities for the bettering of our social relations may lie therein, with all diligence and prudence, into realities, and on doing our utmost NOTE Y. 147 to engraft our new institutions with those religious and moral princi- ples, which are the foundation of all lasting security and of all true prosperity. This however is not to be effected merely by the word of doctrine, of reproof, of exhortation, of admonition, but still more by our conduct, by the spirit of truth and honesty, of love and uprightness, of humility and modesty, of self-denial and affection- ate confidence, of seriousness and mildness, manifesting itself in all that we do and leave undone. In proportion as it is thus seen and felt that we are not seeking our own good, but that of others, and of the public, that we are ready, in all disinterestedness, to serve and help every one according to his need and to our ability, and that, while we disapprove and condemn whatever comes from an impure source, and boldly resist violence and evil, we can at th' same time bear with weakness, and endeavour to be mild and gentle, — in the same proportion will a word of doctrine and ad- monition, of warning and reproof, proceeding from us, find recep- tion ; and the testimony which we bear to the Gospel by our actions, may also find utterance in words. More especially will it produce a good impression, and one advantageous to the cause of truth, if we take a lively and loving interest in everything which relates to the removal of our present distresses, and of those social mis-relations which are a main source of them ; if therefore, with all good faith and unwearied zeal, according to our gifts and our position, we strive with word and deed, in our own circle, that those who are able and desirous to work may obtain that employ- ment which is necessary for the support of themselves and of their families, — and that that unchristian and inhuman state of things, the source of so much discontent, bitterness, and, it may be, of the utter disorganization of our social system, may come to an end, that state of slavery, in which a number of our fellow-Christians and fellow-men are degraded into mere instruments for the en- riching of a few, where the many are sacrificing their toil, their health, and their intellectual and moral well-being, to the greedi- ness, the pomp, and luxury of the few ; a state of things which, being sinful in itself, must in its turn produce sinful enterprises, and involves an infinite mass of disasters. To bear witness 148 NOTE Y, against this state of things, on every proper occasion, with all caution, that we may not afford an encouragement for wanton tumults, and to strive that love and equity may become preva- lent in all these relations, is a holy Christian duty. The fulfil- ment of it is now facilitated by our having such loud-preaching examples before us, that, as it was won, so is it gone ; now that the Lord God is proclaiming so irrefragably, by the voice of facts, how perishable all earthly riches are, how that which seemed to stand unshakably will suddenly crumble, how the most enormous wealth may be changed in a moment into poverty and want, how wretched and miserable is he who has no other treasures than this worthless, unrighteous mammon. But, as it is right and our duty to speak out boldly on this side, so does it behove us on the other side — The more the Evangelical Church, in the midst of this perturbed and needy generation, devotes itself to the welfare of the lower classes, trustingly, hopingly, lovingly, and tries to enter into their wants, the fairer prospects open themselves that Evangelical Christianity will become a power in the present and the future, and that the name of Her Head shall be glorified in this age. — How, in the most difficult circumstances, to which ours will hardly exhibit a parallel, the Evangelical Church, by the faithful, self-sacrificing activity of love, and by a wise adaptation to necessity, without compromise of conscience, may maintain herself, and acquire new power, has been set before us in the bright example of that man of God, Oberlin. This example would re- tain its force, even if the Evangelical Church were to be stript of all the dignity and influence which it possesses with the Christian State, or had to surrender them voluntarily in consequence of the State's abandoning the principles of Christianity. — If our Church is to act at present with that energy which is absolutely necessary, all appearance of her dependence on the State and the Govern- ment, of her being favoured and supported by political power must vanish : she must shew that, without all political aid, she has in herself the power to overcome the world, and thus to glorify the name of her Lord before the whole world. One might doubt and deem it questionable whether the Church ought of herself to take NOTE Y. 149 any step for the abolition of her present relation, if the State con- tinues to call itself and to act as a Christian State. But every scruple vanishes, when the State gives up its Christian character : and this it does, when it renders the enjoyment, not merely of civil, but also of political rights, wholly independent of every religious Confession, hereby declaring that even those who are not Christians, that Jews, nay, avowed atheists, are qualified for ma- gisterial offices and functions, not excepting the highest, so that such a person may even become Minister of Public Worship. Such however is already our condition in several German states, among others in Prussia. Therefore is it necessary that we should hold ourselves ready betimes for a great decisive step, that we should maintain the honour of our Church with all determination, re- solved for every sacrifice, however great it may be. We must assemble without delay, and consider the sacred wants of this age on all sides, that, with a clear consciousness of all the difficulties which beset us, and of the great work we have to perform, we may unite to establish the independence of our Church, in the way of order and legality, not with violence and defiance, but, as be- comes the Evangelical Church, with all humility, calmness, and modesty, yet, for this very reason, with a firmness which cannot be seduced from its well-weighed resolutions by any earthly interest, by any lure or threat. We in the Rhenish provinces and in Westphalia, who already possess an ecclesiastical Constitution must lead the way, calling however immediately on all our brethren, in every Province of our narrower, and every State of our larger country, to act along with us, and seeking in union with them whether God will not give us His grace, so that a German Evangelical Church may be built up, even as we have begun poli- tically to build up a united German nation. Let us beseech Him to pour out His spirit upon us and our people ; and let us use all diligence, that we may accomplish a good work, well-pleasing to Him, not with any reactionary aims, in opposition to our new political constitution, but only desiring from our position, with all love, truth, and devotedness, to help the princes and the people in gaining a permanent form for that which has any positive worth ; 150 NOTE Y. SO that, in this new order of things, that which is God's may be rendered to God, and Truth and Love may meet together, Right- eousness and Peace may kiss each other. Let us proceed to work then in Jesus name. If He is with us, all will turn out well. To Him I commend our cause : it is also His. He is faithful and mighty over all. He will do it, and accomplish it." These principles and views have not found expression merely in the writings of individuals, but in the proceedings and resolutions of several Conferences held by the leading members of the Church in the Rhenish provinces, lay as well as clerical. Should the Christian wisdom and meekness and faith, which have found utter- ance in the passages I have quoted from Kling and Dorner, — and I might add others from other writers animated by a kindred spirit, — be allowed to guide these councils, we might look forward with joyful, thankful hope to a time when our sister Church in Ger- many will rise out of her present humiliation in greater vigour and power than has ever yet been vouchsafed to her. At all events there is much in these extracts, from which we too, even now, may learn our own duty ; and if we do so we shall be better prepared for meeting whatever dangers may await us. Moreover we too, if the Christian character of our Legislature is subverted by the ad- mission of Jews, shall have to strive more urgently than we have ever yet done, to gain a properly constituted Ecclesiastical Synod. " The State (says Dorner, — and his words would in that case apply to us) with which the Church has hitherto been so closely connected, no longer exists : a State of another character has occu- pied its place. Hence it can no longer be a question whether the Church shall continue in its present relation to the State. The State has already solved the question. By the same act, by which it made religious indifference its central principle, it also discarded the Christian Church from its heart. Discarded by the State as she is, she has no longer the power to regard what has been done as not done. Instead of wasting her strength in such idle fictions, she will descend to the condition of outward humiliation now assigned to her in comparison with her former eminence, but will seek, — and this is her privilege and her strength, and the honour still left NOTE Z. 151 to her, — with God's help to turn this calamity into a blessing. Let her therefore gather her powers together, being set free from all those complexities and entanglements, which her previous relation to the State has caused, not without a perturbation of her inward nature. Let her convert this dismissal by the State into a true freedom before God, in her dependence on her Head, Christ. Let her remember the Apostolical saying. All things are yours, and Luther's, A Christian is a Lord of all things through faith. But let her not forget, as she has too often done hitherto, the second part of our Reformer's precious Treatise concerning the Freedom of a Christian, that The Christian is a servant of all things in love; studying above all to preserve love toward the poor, and to kindle it to a more glowing heat toward those classes, who, through their moral and religious debasement, accusing us as the cause of it, have become the unhappy, involuntary instruments of God's judgement against us. Let her embrace the whole body of the nation, more than she has ever yet done, with her love and care, from that position which has been forced upon her, and for which she has to set herself in order." Note Z : p. 64. In some of these latter Notes, I have been illustrating the feel- ings and principles, which ought to regulate our conduct here in England in these times of trial, by shewing what the wisest men in Germany regard as the duty of the Church in a condition of far more terrible trial. I will add two more extracts of the same kind. The first shall be from the Preface to the new Volume of Nitzsches Sermons, where, after stating that he had preacht at Berlin on the morning after the fatal night of the 18th of March before a very small congregation, but that, in doing so, he had rather prayed than preacht, as became such an awful moment, he adds : " The time into which we have been plunged unawares, and which is compelling us, by the most painful strokes from the rod of a great Master and Teacher, to learn the alphabet of all civil and legal order anew, must needs call the preacher also to his work 152 NOTE Z. His outward position may seem changed and periled. The flood of our political life, which has too long been represt, and here and there vainly staved back, and which now is rushing over us all the more vehemently, may soon spread over the Church and our Universities and their constitution. So long however as we have hearers, — and our Churches will rather grow fuller than emptier, — the essential groundwork of our efficiency will not be altered. There is nothing new, the Scripture says, under the sun. The word of God is not astonisht by any of the things which have hap- pened, and are daily happening. Very simple truths, which we have long misheard, will now, without our having any cause for onesided complaints, or for merely desiring the restoration of times gone by, be confirmed and illustrated by these events, and will be received as they never were before, in those tempers of mind which they have produced. The mischievous cupidity of selfishness, under the name of zeal for the public, has almost deprived us of that oath-hallowed inviolable centre, which must needs exist and be acknowledged, if a large mass are to act together for a great end, and to have a secure starting-point and goal. It has almost de- prived us of the religion of social love. For this we have all to do penance, even such as may be able to trace the course of that spirit of errour, to which the Lord has given us up. "We must point more than ever to that common enemy, who has not flesh and blood ; and we must teach those who are called to the Kingdom of God, to put on and wield their true civic arms. For certain though it is that Providence will again shape this chaos into order, yet the work will still fail time after time in our hands, unless we seek in the fear of the Lord for the beginning of that wisdom, which looses and binds, which clears away and builds up. During this season of penitence and of the Passion, the tone of which must still pre- dominate for a long time in our Sunday exercises, we may employ this evil time for unspeakable blessings ; and they who proclaim the old and the new commandment, may go before all in that action and suffering which are requisite for carrying them into effect." I know not how I can close these Notes more appropriately than NOTE Z. 153 with the conclusion of Dorner's admirable Pamphlet. After unfold- ing his plan for the convocation of a general Synod of the German Evangelical Church, in such a manner as might be consistent with the establisht forms of their Ecclesiastical Law, with a view to the consolidation of the various Provincial Churches, whether holding the Lutheran or the Reformed Confession, into a United German Church, he says ; " If this plan, which would secure the rights of evangelical freedom in a legal manner, with a faithful adherence to that which is already establisht, cannot be adopted, or if there be an unwillingness to follow it, then, for the moment, I see nothing else than the necessity of our acting for ourselves, with all the dangers, though transient ones, of anarchy and confusion. But I do not fear this. On the contrary I hope in God that our German princes, especially the Evangelical ones, will know how to act greatly in this great and solemn time in which we live. The ancestors of many of these princes took a glorious part in the Reformation in the sixteenth century. The illustrious descendants of these ancestors will be in their stead, when we are carrying out the second act of the Reformation, the Constitution of the United Evangelical Church. And as their noble ancestors did not ask, what shall we gain by affording protection and help to the Gospel? but, in a pure, princely spirit, did what was good and right, so their sons will not ask, what increase of power and dignity shall we obtain if we help in establishing the independence of the Evangelical Church, and in building up a United EvangeUcal German National Church ? but will seek and find their reward in this good and great work itself, and in the thanks of posterity, who will bless their names, and rank them with their glorious ancestors of the age of the Reformation, still living in the hearts and mouths of all men, "Are such thoughts of too lofty a flight ? Is the hope too bold, of having a German National Church faithful to the Gospel ? 0, I know well in what a glaring contrast to this the real condition of Evangelical Christianity in Germany stands, and that too, not so much by reason of her sufferings, as of her guilt. Nor will I take my place among those, who, hovering to and fro between 154 NOTE Z. fear and levity, would turn away their eyes from this guilt to new visions of imaginary dignity and glory. But while I do not conceal the hard struggles from myself, which we shall at all events have to wage, and which, I believe, are near, yet I also know that out of that true mourning, which now especially beseems every Christian congregation or synod, new life and new joy may spring up, through Him who can heal our wounds and take away our sins. I hope that the hearts-blood of the humble and brave, the free and faithful Evangelical Church is still beating, through God's grace, in the veins of many. Therefore have I ventured to take up my word. The best of what I had to say has long been lying in many a faithful evangelical spirit, and has even been uttered in part years ago by better men than I am. It seemed necessary to me however, that it should now be uttered again, and in a more urgent tone, since our need has meanwhile become more urgent, and many a noble evangelical mind is in want of the conso- lation and encouragement arising from some distinct prospect of hope, as an object to be aimed at. Many too are raised above themselves by great times and enterprises, and are taught to think more mag- nanimously. On the bights a purer air breathes, free from that party turbulence which has almost brought our Church into an anarchy like that of the Corinthian. that many would mount into this clearer region, leaving behind what comes from below, and entering with a pure spirit upon the sacred virgin ground of these hights, to devote themselves here to the work of this new time, for God's sake, as a service to God ! May we all receive a consecra- tion for this great new age, the baptism from above with the spirit of humility and of courage, of love and of knowledge I Then may the days perhaps come, when the Evangelical Church, looking back on her present hours of distress, will say, Thou hast shewn me great and sore troubles ; hut thou hast quickened me again and brought me wp Aom the dei^ths of the earth. We went upon the sea, and saw the works of the Lord. He commanded and raised the stormy wind which lifted up the waves, so that we mounted up to the heaven, and ivent down again to the depths, and our soul was 7ndted because of trouble. We reeled to and fro, and staggered like NOTE Z. 155 a drunken man, and were at our ivit's end. But, ivhen we cried to the Lord in our trouble, He brought us out of our distresses, and made the storm a calm, so that the waves were still. Then were ive glad because they were quiet ; and He brought us to our desired haven. Therefore will we praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men. We will exalt Him in the congregation of the people^ and praise Him in the assembly of the elders. — " But, whatever may be appointed for us, we believe in the Holy Ghost, who broods over the waters of chaos, in a holy Christian Church, and a Communion of Saints, which will maintain its visi- ble existence upon earth in an evangelical form also, and in the German nation. We believe in the living Lord and King of the Church, Jesus Christ, who can still the waves; and in the Father who has promist to the Son that He shall reign till all enemies are put under His feet. So then may the Triune God establish thee, thou beloved Evangelical Church, as a whole, and in all thy members, inwardly and outwardly ! May He help us to accomplish the second act of the Reformation, by constituting the general Evangelical Church, so that thou mayest continue in the unity of faith and the power of the Spirit, what thou oughtest to be, the vanguard of Christianity upon earth. Spread out thine arms toward all thy brethren, who seem to be faithless toward thee, if so be thou mayest even now win them in the battle of love. But continue to be thyself ; continue true to thyself. Seek no show of unity without the substance, without the hereditary treasures of the Evangelical Church." Dorner calls on his friends Nitzsch and Miiller, to whom his Pamphlet is addrest, to say Amen to the prayer. Assuredly in England also there are hearts that will join fervently in that Amen. LONDON : Printed by S. & J. Bentley, Wilson, and Fley, Bangor House, Shoe Lane. THE TUUE EEMEDY EOE THE EYILS OE THE AGE : A CHARGE TO THE CLERGY OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES, DELIVERED AT THE ORDINARY VISITATION IN 1S49 ; WITH NOTES, ESPECIALLY ON THE EDUCATIONAL, MATRIMONIAL, AND BAPTISMAL QUESTIONS. THE TRUE REMEDY FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. My Reverend Brethren, Another eventful year has rolled over our heads since our last meeting, a year which has again been filled with fierce, distracting struggles in the chief nations of Continental Europe. These struggles have been raging with little cessation or intermission, although the powers of destruction have no longer been sweeping everything before them with the same irresistible, un- resisted force. The paralysis by which the holders of authority in nation after nation seemed on a sudden utterly numbed, has past away ; and they have been shewing that the strong have not altogether become as tow, that the might of armies is still a reality, that discipline and honour, fidelity and loyalty still retain their thrones in the hearts of soldiers, and that insti- tutions, which have been rooted for centuries, and have grown with the growth, and strengthened with the strength of a nation, will not perish and vanish at once, "like the baseless fabric of a vision." Attempts have been made to modify old institutions, and to establish new ones, in such a manner that the rights of the Past and of the Present shall be combined in them ; and THE TRUE REMEDY the friends of order and of law, the soberminded lovers of their country, have recognised that these are the only institutions which can stand the onset of the Future. These attempts however have produced little effect as yet: for the throes of a nation do not subside in a moment ; and when the labour has been violent and convulsive, years must elapse ere that which is born of it attains to form and comeliness. A stable edifice of national peace and prosperity cannot be erected and cemented without a long period of anxious thought and patient action and persevering energy and self-sacrifice. Meanwhile another throne has fallen. At the very time when the temporal thrones, which had been cast down by the successive shocks of the revolutionary earthquake, were beginning to lift themselves up again, a spiritual throne, which had exercised a far wider and longer and deeper and more awful sway than any . other, fell to the ground, as rapidly almost as a falling- star. It fell ; and its temporal power was wrested from it. The city, which for more than two thousand years had been the centre and head of a vast empire, under one form or other, stript itself of that empire, and tried to rise out of it into the higher dignity of free- dom. What will be the results of these efforts we know not, even with reference to their immediate object. Far less can we estimate what the effects will be on the large portion of the Christian Church which bows to the authority of that spiritual throne. Nor shall I waste your time in trying to divine what they may be. For this, which is always a hazardous, and mostly an utterly idle enterprise, is so more manifestly than ever now, when the strangeness of a result seems almost FOR THE KVILS OF THE AGE. 3 to bring it more nearly within the range of probabi- lities, in the region of politics, as well as in that of the mechanical arts. It is true indeed that, when we look back on the events of the last two years, we may discern how they all exemplify the providential govern- ment of the world, and prove that the destinies of nations are not regulated and decided mainly by those physical forces, to which politicians are wont to ascribe the highest importance, but far more by moral powers. The further we search into the concatenation of these events, the more clearly do w^e perceive that they have been determined by moral causes, which in truth alone deserve the name of causes : and even when the appa- rent temporary effect has been the triumph of what seems to be the worse party, this, if traced to its source, will be found to have sprung from divers sins of commission, and more and worse of omission, on the side of the better party, who have been vanquisht. But, as in private life it is always impossible to tell beforehand whom the stroke of wrath will visit, and under what form, so, with regard to nations, seldom can we make out which has already filled the measure of its iniquities, and on which the bolt is about to fall: and this difficulty is hightened, when the march, or rather rush of events has become so rapid, that, even as we are beginning to speculate concerning some new critical change, another has already come to pass, and has transformed the aspect of afiairs. You may tell me, my Brethren, that the purpose of our meeting on this occasion is not to consider and discuss the affairs and the condition of Europe, but of the English Church. This is true : but, in saying what B 2 4 THE TRUE REMEDY I have said, I have not been induced solely by the momentous character of the events, which have given so intense an interest to the news from abroad during the last year and a half. My main purpose was to remind you of the wonderful contrast between the con- dition of England during this period, and that of the principal nations on the Continent of Europe. Doubt- less you have often thought of this already, and have meditated upon it, and have lifted up your hearts in thanksgiving to Him who has so graciously pre- served us safe and unharmed, when the neighbouring countries have been strewn with wrecks. Even a year ago the contrast was such, that it could not fail to strike every observant mind. But during the last twelve- month it has been still more conspicuous, the internal condition of England having been more than usually tranquil ; so that the few turbulent persons, who wisht . to trouble that tranquillity, merely covered themselves with shame and ridicule; and this too notwithstanding the scantiness of the last harvest, which at other times might have furnisht an occasion for much discontent, as it was the cause of much inevitable distress. In fact our tranquillity has been such, that, as in every country there are always a number of restless spirits, who never feel at ease unless they have something to contend and quarrel about, while multitudes would find their life lie heavily upon them, without some outward stimulant, divers factitious grievances have been devised, as it were, to keep the people of England from sinking into torpour through lack of sufficient excitement. Among the questions which might almost seem to have been mooted for this purpose, — so difficult is it FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. O to find any other more reasonable, — is the Bill which was brought into Parliament for the sake of effecting the admission of Jews into the House of Commons. Of the other objects aimed at by that Bill, I will not speak: but since its main end was to destroy the essentially Christian character of our Legislature, I am deeply thankful, — and I feel sure that there cannot be many among you, my Reverend Brethren, who do not join in this thankfulness, — that the House of Lords has again preserved our Constitution from this violation of its fundamental principle. On this subject I spoke to you at considerable length last year ; and in publishing my Charge I added a number of Notes, examining the various arguments, or substitutes for arguments, by which this great change was recommended. For a great change, a momentous change it is, inas- much as it overthrows what for a thousand years has been an essential principle of our Constitution ; although those who cannot look beyond immediate outward re- sults, and who measure everything thereby, argue that it will be of little importance, since it will only intro- duce some half a dozen Jews into the House of Com- mons; a kind of estimate scarcely more correct, than if it were contended that the poisoner's crime was very slight, because he had only infused half a dozen drops of Prussic acid into his potion. This year again I have read the various debates and discussions on the Bill with my best attention ; but, as I have not been fortu- nate enough to find any argument, which did not seem to me completely refuted in the examination of those brought forward last year, I will not take up your time by going through them in detail. There is a fallacy 6 THE TRUE REMEDY however, — for it does not deserve the name of an argu- ment, — which is continually urged with no little cla- mour, — and which, for this very reason, that it has no logical consistency, exercises a greater influence on such persons as have never cultivated their faculties of reasoning and discrimination, — about which therefore I will say a few words. The exclusion of the Jews from the Legislature is called an act of persecution ; and the advocates of that exclusion are termed bigots. Now this is just as rational, in other words just as foolish and absurd, as if we on our part were to assert that those who are in favour of their admission, are destitute of religious principle, and enemies of Christianity. The question is not a religious, but a political one. The use of these words however, the imputation of that which in these days almost everybody holds in abhorrence, nor more so than it ought to be held, adds weight to argu- ments which otherwise would kick the beam, and gains a host of zealous and noisy converts for a cause, which has little else to attract one. For who in these days would be willing to be esteemed and called a bigot? many bigots as there may be among those who are tlie loudest in denouncing bigotry. Who does not shrink with disgust from the very thought of persecution? un- less it be that which is carried on by his own party in the way of backbiting and malice and calumny and slander ? But what is persecution ? It is the infliction of pains, of injuries, of sufl'erings, on persons because of their religion : and its motive or excuse, whereby the persecutors seek to justify their acts to their own consciences, and in the face of the world, is, that FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 7 these pains and injuries are to compell those on whom they are inflicted to forsake their errours, and to embrace the truth. That sucli an excuse is a mere pretext/ a blind to deceive themselves and others, — that persecution is ut- terly unjustifiable and a crime, — and that its real ground is the tyrannical arrogance of a dogmatical will, which would enslave men's minds and consciences, — will in our days be generally acknowledged. Moreover, as it is a crime, so, like all crimes, is it an act of perverse folly, which, instead of forwarding, defeats the very end it professes to have in view. For, while on the one hand it is impossible that persecution should pro- duce any religious conviction in the understanding, — seeing that there is no logical power in stripes, no strength of argument in pains and penalties, — it must needs repell the heart and revolt the conscience from doctrines which are enforced in so monstrous and hate- ful a manner. Hence the persecution of the Jews in former ages was a crime. For into the region which lies between a man's conscience and God, his neighbour may not intrude, with any other weapons than those of loving persuasion. But it is a blundering confusion of terms to designate the non-admission of persons to certain political privileges by the name of persecution. To common civil rights indeed all the inhabitants of a country may justly lay claim. But political rights pertain to the State, not to individuals. No person can prefer any claim to them, as of right, except those on whom they are conferred by the State, through the organs of its legislative will. Not of course that the Legislature of a State is to act arbitrarily in be- stowing those privileges. It should be determined by O THE TRUE REMEDY moral grounds, as well as by those of political expe- diency; which indeed, when rightly apprehended, in- clude the others ; inasmuch as the moral wellbeing of a State, the consistency of its ordinances and institu- tions with the principles of justice, is ever the primary element in its political welfare. Hence the exclusion of the Jews from the Legislature may be impolitic, as weakening some sinew of strength, or blocking up some source of prosperity : or it may be at variance with that rule of equity which ought to guide a State in the distribution of its honours and privileges. These are questions admitting and deserving a calm discus- sion according to the highest principles of true policy. But to call that exclusion persecution is mere empty blustering, and an attempt to win opinions by putting out false colours (a). Nor are they who maintain the propriety of that exclusion to be called bigots for so doing, but to be argued with on political grounds, and to be convinced, if that be possible, on political grounds, that their view is erroneous. Let me illustrate this by the analogy of private life. We may suppose a person maltreating or oppressing another on account of some difference in religion. This would be persecution, and is condemned in our Lord's speech to the disciples who desired to see fire called down on the Samaritan village. Or a person may re- fuse on a like ground to exercise the common courtesies and charities of neighbourly kindness. This would be narrowminded bigotry, and is rebuked by our Lord's conversation with the Samaritan woman, and by His healing the Samaritan leper, and the Syrophenician damsel. But if a man is unwilling to employ a member FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 9 of a different religion as a servant in liis household, or if he thinks himself bound to withhold his heart and his hand from such a person, surely this is not persecution, — nor is it bigotry, — but a wise and righteous regard for peace and unity, and a recognition that the highest relations of our nature ought to have the chief place in determining our practical conduct. There may indeed be cases, where we may seem compelled to put aside these considerations, under the constraint of imperious circumstances : but he who does this lightly, and without a strong reluctance, proves himself the slave of worldly impulses : his wisdom is iirl'yeio'i, If we can silence this clamour and sophistry about persecution and bigotry, — if we can get rid of the influence which delusive notions about persecution and bigotry, on the one hand, and about toleration and religious liberty, on the other, and the fear of being taxt with such antiquated perversities as the former, and the selfcomplacency experienced in coming forward as champions of the latter, are exercising among the sup- porters of the Jews, — on the field of calm political argument, it seems to me, we must carry the day. There is no moral necessity whatsoever, there is no political necessity whatsoever, there is not even the slightest ground of political expediency, for sacrificing that primary principle of our Constitution, which, as till very lately it rendered the profession of Christianity indispensable for the discharge of any civil or political function in England, still makes that profession essential for the members of our great Legislative Council. So too was it in all the Christian nations of Europe, all of 10 THE TRUE REMEDY them rightly believing that the holding of the same faith, the faith whereby men are bound together in the bonds of brotherhood and mutual selfsacrifice, is the best pledge for national unity and peace, and for that strength which springs out of unity and peace. Now surely, my Brethren, we may boldly assert that this was no vain delusion. Surely we may assert that it is a priceless blessing for a nation, when all its members are united together, not merely by unity of blood, by unity of government, by unity of laws and institutions, but when to all these and every other bond of unity is added that which is the crown of all the others, that which animates them all with a central life and pervading spirit, unity of faith, unity of religion. Yet our modern statesmen seem to have lost sight of this cardinal truth. They seem to regard a nation as a mass of men aggregated within the same limits, rather than as a body of men organized by the same principles of life : and hence, in the paper constitutions which were fabricated last year on the Continent, the primary object was to bind together a number of unconnected, insulated units into a bundle, without respect to their differences and peculiarities. Whereas the great problem of ancient political wisdom, and still more of that higher Wisdom which overrules the counsels of men to the working out of its own purposes, has ever been to organize the individual members of a nation into one body, in which each shall discharge its peculiar functions, according to its peculiar gifts and qualities, by the action of a central principle of life ; and this can never fulfill its purpose efficiently, unless it be something higher than any merely human principle, unless, in addition to all other lower principles FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 11 and interests, there be the supreme principle and interest of a unity of faith, of religion. This idea was seeking its realization during the middle ages, not merely in each several European state, but also in the whole Commonwealth of European nations, in the whole body of Christendom ; which, not in con- sequence of any human wisdom or scheming or plotting, — man merely spoilt the work and hindered and baffled it, — but through the operation of the Divine Will mani- festing itself in the course of history, was bound into one body of nations through the unity of the Church. And when, owing to the corruptions of the Church, the unity of Christendom was dissolved, — when the Church, seeking earthly and worldly and carnal objects for itself, its own outward wealth and aggrandizement and power, abandoned its appointed office of being the principle of spiritual life, which was to animate the whole European Commonwealth, and to transform it into the Kingdom of God, — from that time forward the national unity in the several members of the great European Common- wealth has also been grievously disturbed and troubled. From that time forward the State began to connect and identify itself, not with Christianity in its wide, truly catholic sense, but with some peculiar form of Chris- tianity, a form whereby others were excluded. Thus the State ceast to be coextensive with the nation. The highest offices and functions of the State were confined to a certain portion of the nation, the members of the Establisht Church : and it is only of late years that this disproportion has been rectified in England by the readmission of all Christians to all the offices and privileges of the State. 12 THE TRUE REMEDY Unfortunately however, when persons are earnestly engaged in striving against an errour, the negative spirit is apt to run away with them. For it is far easier to perceive that which is erroneous and injurious in laws and institutions, than to discern and appreciate the good, which, though defaced and perverted by those errours, penetrates through the whole body of the nation, and manifests itself by a number of beneficial influences in the common relations of society. Hence the political party who had for half a century been contending against the practice of excluding any denomination of Christians from public offices and dignities, and whose efforts were at length successful, being deluded, many of them, by their success, have now slid on blindly into the mere absolute negation, that it is wrong, that it is bigotry, that it is persecution, to connect political privileges in any way with a man's religious profession ; so that, as far as the law is concerned, it should oppose no impediment to the election of a body of Mahometans and Bramins and Buddhists, or of a body of avowed infidels and atheists, as the Legislature of the English Nation. It is to be hoped indeed that the people of England will not elect such representatives ; but they are to do just as they please : the law is to stand neutral, and not to interfere with the exercise of each man's absolute will. If a person chooses to vote for a Jew, let him : and why not for a Gypsy ? Why should not the Gypsies take their seat in the Parliament of the English Nation ? If every other qualification is to be abolisht, why should that of property be retained ? Unless it be held that, while the worship of every other god is a matter of indifference in the councils of FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 13 nations, there is one god to whom they are always bound to pay homage, even Mammon. To this chaotic, anarchal condition has our political wisdom been brought in the middle of this nineteenth century. In France and Germany this principle, or rather denial of the primary principles of policy, has been openly proclaimed, almost in so many words, at the head of their recent Constitutions : and though our statesmen shrink from the explicit avowal of such a doctrine, there is no other that will render their po- sition logically tenable. In fact the politicians of France and Germany are much more easily justifiable than our own. For they have the imperious neces- sity of circumstances driving them along, a necessity to which, when it does indeed press upon a politician, he must needs give way. They cannot uphold a Chris- tian state, because the nations are no longer Christian. Owing to the dismal decay of Christianity among them, to the growth of vast multitudes who are wholly alienated from Christianity, even from its very profession, and to the existence of very large bodies of Jews as a main element of the population, the attempt to estab- lish a Christian representative body would perhaps be too widely at variance with the actual condition of the two nations. But the case is otherwise with us. The Jews are not an important element in our nation, but a small and insignificant one in point of number, and might almost be past over in taking the account of our population ; although there are individual Jews who rank among the richest natives of the land. This however is no way incongruous with the character of sojourners or denizens, who in divers states have often 14 THE TRUE REMEDY possest great wealth, along with no civic franchise, or merely a low one. Therefore, whatever other nations may do, let us not forget that our peculiar calling, as declared in those grand words of Milton's, which I quoted to you on a former occasion, is not to learn from other nations, but to teach them how to live : and surely this should especially become us in regard to those political insti- tutions, which we have been enjoying and working out for centuries, while with our neighbours they are newly imported exotics. Seeing that God has so mercifully preserved us, — seeing that we may say boldly, — though with a humble, contrite acknowledgement that we say it not by reason of any merits of our own, but merely through the grace of Him who enables us to say it, — that we are, so far as outward profession goes, a Chris- tian nation, holding fast that profession moreover in these days as strongly perhaps as in any former ones, — why should we follow an example recommended by no consideration of principle, repugnant to all the doc- trines of sound political wisdom, an example set us by nations acting under the constraint of calamitous circumstances, from which we are happily exempt ? M^ yivOLTO. The part too which the Jews have borne, according to the most trustworthy accounts, as leading agents in exciting and fomenting the recent insurrections and revo- lutions, especially in Germany, — although I do not mean to lay stress on this fact, and would rest my argument entirely on the general principles of polity, — is a proof that a body of aliens, having no sympathy with the moral feelings and interests of the people FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 15 among whom tlicy are settled, a body therefore witli whom personal gain must almost necessarily be the paramount motive, are little likely to promote the wellbeing of a Christian nation. Therefore, although the current of popular opinion, which seems to have wholly lost sight of the higher principles of political wisdom, and to be almost incapable of looking beyond the grosser results of economical expediency, has set in strongly in favour of this measure, flattering itself with the notion that it is abolishing the last remnant of the legislation of our bigoted ancestors, let us not abandon the hope that the minds of our statesmen may even now be awakened to a clearer apprehension of the true principles of our Constitution, as well as of all sound policy, and that the House of Commons may thus at length be moved to reject this wanton infringement of those principles, from which we have hitherto been preserved by the conservative wisdom of the House of Lords. Another controversy, which has been carried on during the last year with a vehemence very disproportionate to the importance of the points immediately contested, is that occasioned by the provisions which the Committee of Privy Council have thought right to require, with the view of securing the permanent efficiency of schools aided by a grant out of the National Treasury. On this matter also I spoke to you at considerable length last year ; and I examined the various bearings of the controversy, both in my Charge and in the Notes ap- pended to it. I will not lead you over the same ground again, although in this case too, it seems to me, little more than a restatement of the former arguments would IG THE TRUE REMEDY be needed to convince a candid mind that the real nature of the dispute has been grossly exaggerated and misrepresented by the mists which party-spirit has con- jured up. Yet the interests affected by this wearisome and distressing controversy are of such vast moment, that I cannot pass it by in silence. Last year I indulged a hope that the long negociation would have been brought before this to a satisfactory close. For the Committee of the National Society, in their letter of July 1848, acknowledge " that the State, in giving assistance, has a right to demand ample se- curity for the efficient management of Schools," and express their conviction " that it is important that the conditions on which the Parliamentary grants are made should be fixt and definite." Hence, the propriety and desirableness of rendering these conditions obligatory having been set forth so clearly by the Bishop of Oxford in his Speech, and by the Bishop of Salisbury in his Charge, it seemed warrantable to expect that this, which had been a main topic of complaint, would now be abandoned, if not wholly, at least by all fair and reasonable opponents. Besides, in the correspondence betv^-een the two Committees, that of the National Society and that of the Privy Council, the latter shewed so conciliatory a spirit, and such readiness in altering and modifying whatever was objected to, as to afford ground for hoping that all real difficulties would soon be removed. So too, I fQ.el convinced, they would have been, but for the agitation which has been maintained so pertinaciously, with a captiousness often quite fri- volous and vexatious, mainly through some of our so- called religious newspapers, which in this, as in other FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 17 matters, have proved themselves the perpetual firebrands of the Church. Even in the month of August last year the points of difference between the two Committees had been reduced almost to a minimum. Let me remind you what this was. For in the heat of a controversy we often forget what it is about, each party being apt to associate a number of its favorite notions and prepossessions with the matter for which it is contending, and on the other hand to tax its opponents with a multitude of the errours it is most averse to. Now the immediate point at issue during the last twelvemonth, the only point which has seemed to form a barrier to an amicable adjustment, has related to the problematical cases in which a minority in the Committee of Management in a school shall appeal against the decision of the majority. To whom is this appeal to be made ? Who is to exercise jurisdiction in such cases? That they will not be very frequent, after the system has once settled down into a course of regular working, we may infer from the rarity of appeals in Colleges and other like institutions. Still it is necessary that an authoritative tribunal should be establisht, before which appeals may be brought. The Committee of Privy Council have laid down from the first that, wherever a dispute arises concerning any matter connected with the religious instruction in a school, the qviestion shall be referred to the Bishop of the Diocese, whose decision is to be final, even to the dismissing of the master, if the Bishop deems his religious teaching objec- tionable. For other cases, in which the religious teaching of the school is not immediately concerned, the Committee of Council have establisht a Court of Appeal, consisting of 18 THE TRUE REMEDY a Clergyman of the Diocese, to be named by the Bishop, — one of the Inspectors of Schools, who cannot be ap- pointed without the concurrence of the Archbishop of the Province, and who are to be removed, if that con- currence be withdrawn, — and a Magistrate of the County, a lay member of the Church, to be selected by the other two arbitrators conjointly. It w^ould not be easy to devise a Court of Appeal likelier to decide such questions judiciously and justly, nor one more favorable to the best interests of the Church. Yet the reluctance to accept this Court of Appeal is the one point which for more than eleven months has prevented the bringing of the negociation to an amicable conclusion. The Com- mittee of the National Society, although they accepted this Court of Appeal generally, yet demanded that in particular instances, where it was desired by the founders of the school, the appeal should in all cases be to the Bishop. This request is conveyed by them in their letter of July 5, 1848; and after a year's correspondence it is still brought forward in nearly the same words in a letter of July 28, 1849. This, I say, has been the one main point of diffe- rence. For almost every other request made by the Committee of the National Society has been acceded to, under certain modifications, by the Committee of the Privy Council : and the former Committee, in their letter of the 9th of August, last year, state that, " if this point be conceded, they will have the satisfaction of believing that the hostility which has been mani- fested against the regulations of the Committee of Council will be in a great degree removed, and that general cooperation maintained, on which the promotion FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 19 of education in the country must mainly depend." These last words express what great interests are at stake, what a mighty object is to be accomplislit by the amicable termination of the negociations between the two Committees. Yet its accomplishment is de- layed, month after month, and year after year, by the protraction of these frivolous differences. These two Committees, — one of them representing the State of England, while the other may be regarded as in this matter representing the Church of England, — have been kept from coming to an amicable agreement, in a matter in which the education of the English people is so deeply concerned, by this miserable straw. A Mem- ber of the Committee of the National Society said to me, that he had felt inclined, at one of the Meetings when this question was discust, to propose that the Society should buy a solar microscope, to discover the point in dispute : yet this almost indistinguishable minim prevents the cooperation of two such bodies, where their cooperation would be of such inestimable value for the welfare of the Eiiglish Nation and Church. It may be urged that the fault lies with the Committee of the Privy Council, who ought to have conceded this point also. But it is not seemly for a body which re- presents the Government, to alter its laws and rules, except where there is some plain ground of principle for doing so : nor ought the Church to reqviire such a step from the Government, unless there is such a ground. Now the Committee of Council has provided from the first in the fullest manner for all cases in which the religious principles of any party in the Church can be 20 THE TRUE REMEDY involved, by laying down that appeals in all religious questions shall be to the Bishop exclusively : and it would not be acting becomingly in changing its well- considered rules, and introducing exceptions, for the sake of humouring an unreasoning and irrational prejudice. Besides it was asserting the important principle that lay- men may and ought to exercise jurisdiction in such matters, without being placed under the tutelage of an ecclesiastical authority. On the other hand the Committee of the National Society, in clinging so tenaciously to this point, may be supposed to have acted, not so much from a con- viction of its real importance, as from the persuasion exprest in the words quoted above, that this concession was the only thing likely to remove the hostility to the regulations of the Committee of Council. That this hostility was very strong they knew from their corre- spondence : nor can we be much surprised that it should be so, when we consider how assiduously all manner of suspicions and jealousies have been propagated, week after week, and month after month, by our religious newspapers, which to a large part of their readers are the chief, if not the only sources of information as to what is going on in the Church. Thus alone, — through the influence of these misrepresentations, which are swal- lowed unhesitatingly by many, and which few take the trouble of sifting and examining, — can we account for the extraordinary display of violence at the recent Annual Meeting of the National Society ; where the arguments of the speakers, and the tone and spirit of the hearers no less than theirs, would have led one to suppose that the question at stake was, whether the FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 21 English people should have a religious, or a merely secular education, and whether that education should be under the controll of the State, or of the Church, — where too we were exhorted with impassioned declamation to take warning from the calamities of France and of Germany, — while the real point at issue, as I have already said, was little else than whether the appellate jurisdiction with regard to secular matters should be entrusted to the Bishop, or to the excellently constituted tribunal men- tioned above. At that Meeting 1 was not present ; but every report I have read or heard of the proceedings has filled me with sorrow and shame. Some of you, my Brethren, may have witnest them ; but none of you, I feel assured, can have taken part in that tumultuous and turbulent expression of hostility to the Committee of Council. The wonder is, that any Christian gen- tleman, still more that any Christian minister, should have done so. Yet, while it was too plainly shewn that the hostility is very widely diffused, it nowhere appeared that there is any reasonable ground for it, unless in the earnestness and diligence with which the Committee of Council endeavour to improve the education of the English people (b). Indeed that hostihty itself appears to me to be utterly inconsistent with the relations which ought to pre- vail between the ministers of Christ's Church and the Government of a Christian land. At all events it is wholly inconsistent with the Apostolical precepts and practice. Doubtless our duty is still to shew, when- ever a real occasion arises, that our hearts are fixt to obey God, rather than man. But we should not be hasty in catching at such occasions: we should beware of imagining %% THE TRUE REMEDY or fabricating them : we should keep guard against our natural proneness to assume that our own will is one and the same with God's will, and that whatever will or opinion is opposed to ours, is fighting against God. The Christian mode of exercising jealousy and suspicion is not toward others, but toward ourselves. If we bore this rightly in mind, and were careful to act accordingly, if we tried to find out the good side in the conduct of the Committee of Council, — and it would not be difficult to discover abundant evidence of their active interest in the improvement of our national education, and of their sincere desire to act in unison with the Church for that end, — our differences would have vanisht long ago; we should be working amicably together ; and a double blessing would rest upon our work. It is not from the Apostolic times, nor from the early ages of Christianity, but from the corrupt period of an Antichristian usurpation, when the spirit of the world had set up the abomination of desolation in the temple of the Most High, that we have inherited the notion that the Church must always be looking with jealousy and suspicion on the State. As justly might it be asserted that a husband and wife must always be looking with jealousy and suspicion on each other. It is true, the State may wrong the Church, may op- press her, may betray her: so, as terrible experience has often shewn, may one party in the holy bond of mar- riage wrong and oppress and betray the other. But in both cases, as indeed in all, jealousy and suspicion are far likelier to attract than to avert the evils, with the imagination of which they are ever tormenting themselves ; whereas nothing has greater power to FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 28 preserve us from tliem than hearty confidence and active goodwill. I have said more than once that the only question at issue between the two Committees during the last twelve- month has related to the tribunal by which the appellate jurisdiction is to be exercised. It is true, the Committee of the National Society have still continued to recom- mend, — for instance in their Letters of the 17th of March, the 12th of May, and the 26th of July last,— that the Management-Clauses should not be made compulsory, and that the local founders of schools should be at liberty to do as they like with regard to adopting them or not. A like demand is urged in the Resolution of the Annual Meeting. But verily, when we consider the conduct of that Meeting, we can hardly attach much more weight to its Resolutions than to those of any other mob. Nor is it at all surprising that the Committee of Council in their recent replies should have taken no notice of these reiterated recom- mendations, a compliance with which would have stultified the whole negociation. No progress can be made in any discussion, if the argument concerning the fundamental positions is to be continually revived. After the Committee of the National Society had admitted, in the words already quoted from their Letter of July 1848, that " the State, in giving assistance, has a right to demand ample security for the efiicient management of the Schools," and that " experience had convinced them that it is important that the conditions on which the Parliamentary Grants are made, should be fixt and definite," surely the Committee of Council had a right to assume that these points might thenceforward 24 THE TRUE REMEDY be regarded as settled, and to decline renewing the controversy about them. Else the negociation might have been protracted till the year 2000, without ad- vancing a step. I will not repeat the arguments by which I have tried to shew in my last Charge that the Committee of Council are thoroughly justified in impos- ing certain conditions on the receivers of their grants, and in rendering those conditions obligatory. The Committee of the National Society have themselves acknowledged that the State has this right, and that it is desirable the conditions should be fixt and definite. Nay, not only has the Committee of Council a right, but an imperative duty, to demand such conditions as shall seem best calculated for securing the permanent efficiency of the schools to which the money of the State is granted. They are not doling out alms at will from their own purses, but are responsible to the State for the manner in which they discharge their trust. It is strange how entirely this consideration has been over- lookt in the complaints made so loudly against them. They have been treated as though they were acting arbitrarily, instead of ministerially. Now, though a private founder of a school might be content to leave it under the exclusive controll of the minister of the Parish, a body responsible to Parliament would clearly be liable to censure, if they did not insist on some better security than that which is dependent on tlie chances of individual character. The minister's interest in the welfare of his school is indeed paramount to that of all other persons ; and in the present state of public feeling we may reckon with tolerable certainty that he will not entirely neglect the duties hereby FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 25 pi*escribed to him. But there have been numbers of cases, —and I fear there are still not a few, — in which the pledge thus afforded has been forfeited. Nor is it in- vidious to provide against such a possibility. For what nearer and dearer interest can there be, than that of a husband in the welfare of his wife, or of a father in that of his children ? Yet the wisdom of experience has laid down that their property should be vested in the hands of Trustees, lest the husband or the father should waste it. Doubtless, as the Committee of the National Society say, in their Letter of March last, " it would have been a great advantage if Management-Clauses could have been so framed as to be adopted by general consent." Such unanimity however, which at all times may be deemed a vision belonging rather to the Isles of the Blessed than to the British Isles, would seem to be wholly un- attainable at a time when party -spirit is running so high with regard to every question affecting the Church. When a matter of grave moment becomes the subject of negociations between bodies representing coordinate powers, the only procedure from which one can anticipate a satisfactory arrangement, is, to consider what is right and fair and expedient, both generally and under the peculiar circumstances of the case, without turning aside to enquire what shall be done to conciliate this man's prejudices, and to humour that man's caprices. Hence the proper aim of this long negociation has been to shape the Management -Clauses in such a manner, as may seem fitted to answer their special purpose of securing the permanent efficiency of our Schools, without furnishing ground for any reasonable objection. If they 26 THE TRUE REMEDY can be brought into a form in accord with reason and justice, we may trust that these excellent allies will ere long silence clamour and quell prejudice. May we not hope that this end is no longer very remote ? The recently publisht Volume of the Minutes of the Com- mittee of Council contains amended forms of the Management-Clauses, corrected in compliance with most of the suggestions made by the Committee of the National Society, who have shewn exemplary care in watching over the interests of the Church, though perhaps with too much indulgence to the prejudices of its individual members. These amended forms, I trust, will help to remove whatever objections may have been entertained by any reasonable person ; so that we may proceed with undivided energies in our great work of building up the people of England in all useful and godly knowledge, without wasting more time in quarreling about the materials out of which the edifice is to be built, or the persons by whom they are to be conveyed (c). Another question, which, though it had already been stirred in former years, has excited a much greater and more general agitation in the last twelvemonth, is the proposition to alter the Law of Marriage by legal- izing a marriage with a wife's sister. In the agitation on this question I have not felt called on to take part ; nor have I invited you, my Reverend Brethren, to do so, in the way of petitioning the Legislature, or other- wise. For it is a question on which, — may I confess it in days when hardly anybody requires more than a minimum of thought or knowledge to make up his mind on the most difficult intellectual and moral problems ? FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 27 — I have not seen my way clearly to any satisfactory conviction. It was easy indeed to perceive that the vehemence and heat displayed in divers quarters during the discussion were not the qualities to facilitate a wise legislative decision. It was easy to perceive that a large part of the arguments adduced, even of those on which the chief stress was laid, were utterly strengthless to support the conclusions rested upon them. But, in a matter of such great moral and social importance, the cause of truth must not be allowed to svifFer from the injudiciousness or intemperance of its advocates. For instance, the main argument of all, that which has been drawn from the injunctions of the Levitical Law, has seemed to me wholly untenable ; and that too, without any need of enquiring how far, and in what parts, and in what manner and degree, the Levitical Law is to be regarded as still binding upon Christians, after our having been expressly releast from it by the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem (d). For, although it might be argued with much plausibility that the prohibition in the 16th verse of the 18th Chapter of Leviticus, in which a man is forbidden to marry his brother's wife, should be extended to the analogous case of a woman's marrying her sister's husband, if there were no further provision in the Law, bearing more directly on the latter case, yet, when, two verses afterward, we find a special prohibition against a man's marrying his wife's sister, to vex her, beside the other, in her lifetime, all the rules of interpretation enjoin, that the latter law, which speaks expressly of the case under consideration, should take precedence in determining it. Moreover, when a ^5 THE TRUE REMEDY prohibition is distinctly defined by a special limitation, all rules of interpretation dictate that, if the limitation is removed, the prohibition loses its force. When the Fourth Commandment forbids our doing any work on the seventh day, even if it did not expressly enjoin our vi^orking on the other six days, everybody would un- derstand that they were not included in the prohibition. In like manner, when the law in the 18th verse of the 18th Chapter of Leviticus enacts, TJiou shall not take a ivife to her sister to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other, in her lifetime, it is plain that, inasmuch as the law limits the prohibition to the lifetime of the first wife, it does not purpose to extend the prohibition beyond her death. Else the prohibition would have been exprest generally and absolutely. Had the in- tention of the lawgiver been to prohibit the marriage of a wife's sister altogether, even human wisdom would never have taken a course so sure to defeat its pur- pose, as to lay down a rule forbidding it solely in one particular case (e). Hence some of the strenuous champions of the existing law have tried to evade the force of this verse, by con- tending that it is a Hebraic mode of expressing that a man must not take a second wife in addition to the first during her lifetime, in other words, that it is a prohibition of polygamy. But to this it is sufficient to reply, that the Jews themselves did not understand this verse in such a sense : nor did they conceive that polygamy was prohibited by the Law. On the contrary not only was polygamy sanctioned by the unreprehended practice of the Jews, from the time of Abraham down- ward; but its legality is expressly implied in the book of FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 29 Deuteronomy, xxi. 15, and in that of Exodus, xxi. 10 (F). Nor ave we to be over-ruled and fettered in the in- terpretation of a passage like this by any alledged consent of the Church. For in the first place there is no such consent, as may be ascertained without much trouble (g) ; and even if there were, surely we should have the fullest liberty to reconsider the interpretation, and to examine into its validity, more especially as it relates to a point with regard to which neither the Fathers, nor the early Councils, had the slightest advan- tage over us : since it will hardly be pretended that they were guided in this matter by any lost apostolical tradition. In fact Basil's argument on the subject, while it recognises the true sense of the 18th verse, is a mere attempt to evade its force, no way more successful than our modern ones (h). The indolent and ignorant will indeed ever attempt to bar and forclose all en- quiry, which might disturb them in their self-complacent repose, by exclaiming that the point has already been settled for us, and that our only business is blindly to follow certain imaginary leaders : but the frequency and loudness of such exclamations, and the mischief which they bode to the Church, render it still more our duty to stand fast in this respect also in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free (i). Thus I cannot resist the conclusion, that, so far is Scripture from jirohibiting the marriage of a wife's sister altogether, the very mode in which the prohibi- tion of such a marriage is exprest, with a limitation to the first wife's lifetime, implies an allowance of the marriage after her death. 30 THE TRUE REMEDY Thus far, I think, 1 can see my way clearly on this very difficult and painful question, — thus far, but no further. The untenableness of the Scriptural argument seems to me quite manifest : but when we look at the matter independently of that argument, as a great social and moral problem, in its connexion with the most intimate relations of family life, it becomes full of perplexities. With regard to the higher classes in- deed, according to our views of the proprieties which are to regulate the familiar intercourse between the sexes, the present state of the law may justly be esteemed a great blessing ; inasmuch as it enriches us with a double portion of that pure, passionless love, which prevails between brothers and sisters, by bringing a wife's sisters into the selfsame relation as our own, and enables the sister of a deceast wife to undertake the part of a mother to her bereaved children, without any violation of decorum ; which she could not do, if the possibility of her marriage with her brother-in-law were not precluded. But, when we are treating a question by which all classes are equally affected, we should do our utmost to divest ourselves of our aj)tness to look at things solely from our own point of view : and we should examine the whole matter scrupulously in its bearings upon every class, especially on the most nume- rous, whom in all legislation we ought primarily to consider ; though the almost universal practice till of late years was to take little, if any, account of them. Now with regard to the middle and lower classes I do not feel qualified to pronounce a confident opinion. Certain facts, implying that the present state of the law has been injurious among the middle classes, are FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 31 brought forward in the Report of the Parliamentary Commission : but these facts have been disputed, and are hardly authenticated sufficiently to be made the basis of a novel legislation on so momentous a subject. That the law, as it now stands, must needs be injurious among the lower classes, there are strong grounds for assuming: this is the ground taken by the weightiest advocates for a change ; and if it can be made out satisfactorily, it ought to be almost conclusive. But it is not easy to establish this assumption by any substantial body of determinate facts (j). It may be argued indeed, and with much reason, that we exceed the proper sphere of human legislation, when we lay down restrictions in such a matter, beyond those which rest on some express Divine prohibition, or on some manifest law of Nature. If this argument is to be rebutted on any grounds of social expediency, the expediency must be evident, and must embrace all classes. For to impose injurious restrictions on the lower classes, for the sake of some benefits to the higher, would be an immoral tyranny. Were it not for this, the bias of my mind would incline strongly to maintain the existing law, with its sanctions of ancient usage and moral opinion, and whereby we are made partakers of great blessings, rather than fly to others which we know not of, while it is impossible to estimate the mischiefs of a change. At the present period of the Session it is clear that the Bill must at all events be postponed till another year, when it will probably be brought forward again. On such a matter precipitate legislation would be utterly unjustifiable ; nor should a change be enacted so long t>J2 THE TRUE REMEDY as the moral feeling of the nation is plainly against it. In the mean time the discussion will doubtless be car- ried on. May this be done with the calmness and gravity befitting a social and moral question of such deep moment, under all the light that can be drawn from the word of God, and from the manifestations of His will in the laws of Nature, as well as from the evidence of history and experience ! This may help us to the attainment of a right conclusion, toward which we shall not advance a step by casting anathemas on such as differ from us. Here also the Spirit will lead us to the truth : but then we must submit to be led, and not persist in following our own prejudices and likings. The two controversies of which I have been speaking, are the only ones by which our Church has been much disturbed in the last twelvemonth, at least the only ones which have excited much interest in this Diocese (k). When we think of the points on which they have turned, of the questions which were at issue, and then call to mind what struggles and conflicts, even for life or death, have been waged by the Church as well as by the State in the chief nations on the Continent of Europe, we have indeed reason to lift up our hearts in wondering adoration and praise to Him who has thus graciously preserved us in peace and tran- quillity, while calamities of all kinds have been rushing, like a sweeping flood, over the heads of our neighbours. How long this protection may be extended to us, we cannot tell. Of this however we may feel assured, that, whatever term may be granted us, it will not be more than we need for the mighty task set before us. FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. S3 If the Heathens themselves could feel the intense con- trast betvi^een the shortness of human life and the grandeur of the work appointed for it, — if they, whose views were almost bounded to the earth, could exclaim, under a depressing consciousness of their weakness, ^rs longa, vita hrevis, — what should be the feelings of a Christian, whose vision has been enlarged to take in an infinite expanse on every side, — who has been brought to discern the infinite depths of sin, whence mankind are to be raised, and the infinite highths of holiness, whither they are called to ascend, — who has learnt that his labour is not to cleanse the Augean stable, but the heart of man, his own heart and the hearts of all his brethren, by letting in the purifying waters of the Gospel upon them, — that his vocation is not merely to build up a fair, harmonious structure of stones, or of colours, or of words, but of human hearts and souls, a living structure to the glory of God, a structure which will never be completed until the whole race of man are gathered into it ! Surely the Christian, when he bethinks himself of his Master's command, to go into all the earth, and to preach the Gospel to every creature, and to teach them to observe all the things that He had commanded, — when he considers the extent of his work, how all the earth is to be its basis, how every crea- ture is to be gathered into it, and to what perfection it is to be carried, how they are to be taught to fulfill all righteousness, — surely the Christian above all has reason to exclaim, Opus longum, vita hrevis. And this cry would be one of overwhelming despair, if he did not also know that for this infinite work he has an Almight}^ Helper, and moreover that, — while the works of other D 34 THE TRUE REMEDY men, though they may endure for centuries, or per- chance for millenniums, must crumble away at last and perish, along with the earth, if not much before, — his work, if it be rightly wrought, in Christ, through His Spirit, to the glory of God, will outlast the earth, and endure for ever. Even with reference to national greatness and pros- perity, how different is the Christian statesman's field of labour, from that which lay before the Heathen ! How it spreads around him, and stretches out before him ! How the objects of interest thicken and press on every side of him ! How his aims are multiplied, and be- come nobler and grander ! Instead of restricting his view to material wealth and prosperity, to the strengthening of the government, to the upholding of the classes invested with authority, to the maintenance and augmentation of his country's honour and power among her neighbours, he has higher ends to embrace, even the moral condition of the whole people, and of every single member of it. The very lowest ought to be as dear to him, as precious an object of his interest and care, as the highest. On the other hand with what fresh powers is he fur- nisht for his otherwise unapproachable work, by having the help of the Church, by being able to call in her aid for the moral culture of the people, her divine sanction for all his human ordinances ! It is, we may not doubt it, by the closer and closer union of the State with the Church of Christ, so that the essence and spirit of Christian life shall be diffused through the whole body politic, — it is by the operation of Christian wisdom and Christian love, manifesting themselves in all the institutions and ordinances of the State, in all its FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 35 legislative and administrative measures, — thus, and thus alone, is it, that the State, in these critical times, the most critical in the history of the world, will be able to encounter and overcome the dangers which beset it on every side, above all, that deep, inherent, abysmal danger, which lies within itself. All the me- chanical and material means of wealth and power have multiplied, and are continuing to multiply : the masses of our population are growing vaster every day ; and, as they are mighty to build up, so are they no less mighty to cast down : education is increasing their powers, which may be marshaled against order and law, as well as in favour of them : all the elements of our modern strength and greatness, as has been seen in divers examples, may burst their bonds in a moment, and crack and spht into a wreck almost chaotic : but still there is a Power mightier than they, a power which can keep them in order, can discipline and organize them into a united, living body, even that same Power which said in the beginning, Let there he light, to the elements in their primeval darkness and confusion, and which separated them and united them into a harmonious universe, and which gave them their laws that they cannot pass, and which turned disorder into order, war- fare into peace, strife into unity. This too is the only power in these days, which can bring the discordant, tumultuous elements of national strength into order, and keep them in order. Outward force will not do so any longer. The national consciousness has been awakened in every people. All classes feel that they have rights; and this lesson they cannot be untaught: but it may be made a profitable lesson by the D 2 36 THE TRUE REMEDY acknowledgement that they have rights, if we teach them the corresponding lesson, that they have duties. It was indeed a potent and awful truth, which was uttered in the last century, grossly as it was misappre- hended and perverted, when people began to speak of the Rights of Man. For every man has rights, has claims upon his neighbours. God gave them to him in the beginning. Christ came to restore them to him. He restored them to him, when He taught us the meaning and extent of the Law of Love. He restored them to him, when He died on the Cross for him. He restored them to him, when He called him to be a member of His Church. Even he who is destitute of every social, of every civil, of every political right, has rights. His very destitution, his helplessness gives him a higher claim, a higher right, upon Christian com- passion and help and love. If there had not been this mighty truth in the proclamation of the Rights of Man, and if this truth had not been so dismally forgotten for centuries, nay, almost from the first, in the practice of all states, and of all classes of men, the proclamation would not have produced such a convulsion. It tried to force its way into the world through the whirlwind and the earthquake and the fire, because the still, small voice of the Gospel had not been heeded. So too will it continue to do. The whirlwind and the earthquake and the fire will break forth again and again, until the still, small voice of the Gospel is listened to, and be- comes the ruling voice in the councils of nations, as well as in every individiial heart. In my Charge last year I made some remarks to a like effect, when speaking of the revolutionary Trinity FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 37 which at that time was set up on higli as the great object of worship to infatuated masses of men : and I tried to shew how all those three ideas were perversions and corruptions of great Christian truths, which, because they had not been uttered as they ought to have been during so many centuries in the ears of all people, were forcing an utterance for themselves in violence and crime. So is it with the great truth of the Rights of Man. So are there important truths, truths of the deepest interest for the welfare of mankind, which are seeking an utterance in the wild extravagances of Socialism and Communism. If we do not teach a child to speak intelligibly and intelligently, the spirit within him ^vill seek utterance in rude, vmcouth, inarticulate cries. It is the same with nations. Hence, if there were no higher constraint, the necessity of self- preservation would constrain us to teach them the true meaning of their own thoughts and feelings, to teach them what they are, and what they are called to be, and to train them for those rights and for that freedom which Christ came to bring to them. It may be thought by some that Communism and Socialism, and the other delu- sions of the last year are passing away, and that a time of quiet is coming, when things may again go on in the old course. This however cannot be ; nor is it to be wisht : nay, it is to be deprecated above all things. When a spell, which has held nations in subjection, has once been broken, it cannot be renewed under the same form. A people who have learnt that they have rights, wdll not sink back into torpid contentment under the yoke of arbitrary force. Force must no longer be arbitrary : it must be grounded on reason : its fitness 38 THE TRUE REMEDY must be recognised by those who are to submit to it. Else they will throw up barricades, and keep it out : and the government that is excluded by barricades from the hearts of its people, cannot long subsist. It may cast down one barricade by force ; but another will immediately start up : and though this too be cast down, another and another and another will still rise up behind. There is only one way to cast them down effectually, — by the magic power of Christian love. When approacht by that power, the builders of the barricades will themselves be the foremost in demolishing them. What I have been saying, though the form of the words is taken from recent events in other countries, applies no less forcibly to England. For we too, although we have been so graciously preserved during the last year, are nevertheless in a very critical, a very perilous condition. Our enormous wealth itself, our power, our material prosperity are themselves the ele- ments of our danger, and require moral powers no less mighty to keep them from manifesting their apt- ness to become engines of destruction. Hence the business of our Government, the business of our Legis- lature, the business of our Church, the business of its ministers, the business of all its members, is to make a right use of the interval granted to us by sowing the seeds of peace and goodwill : and this can never be done effectually, unless, both in our individual and in our national capacity, we begin and end all our works by consecrating them to the glory of God. So far as we may trace up events to human, secondary causes, we owe the tranquillity and prosperity of the last year to the various measures which have been adopted FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 39 during the preceding thirty years for the good of the lower classes, above all to the increast labours of the ministers of the Gospel, and to the improvements in our National Education. Doubtless too the repeal of the Cornlaws has had much efficacy : I am not speaking of it as a measure of political economy, but merely as a boon conceded to the people, which they regarded as such, and which thus led them to repose confidence in the givers of it : nor can one think without trembKng what the consequences might have been, if the cry for cheap bread could have been used during the last winter as an incentive to tumultuous discontent. In like manner, I have been informed on the best authority, the Bill for shortening the hours of labour has exercised an enormous influence in con- vincing the formidable masses of intelligent artisans who are congregated in our large towns, that their rulers and governors do really care for them, and take thought about them. In the beautiful Tale, which has recently given us such a living picture of the condition of our great manufacturing towns, this is the truth set be- fore us with admirable skill, how much the inevitable distresses occasioned by causes over which man has no controll, are aggravated by the separation of the various classes of society, by their want of sympathy with each other, by their incapacity of understanding each other, — and how, on the other hand, Christian love and fellowship would wellnigh heal all wounds, and reconcile all antipathies, and unite those who are now divided, and make them bear one another's burthens. Nor is this lesson without use to us in our agricultural parishes, though I trust we do not need it so much : indeed we 40 THE TRUE REMEDY should be far more inexcusable if we did. This how- ever is the great work we have to perform, all of us in our several ways : we have to bear our part, in our several spheres of action, in uniting the English people together into one body, with one animating soul, by the bonds of Christian love. This is a work almost infinite in extent, spreading its ramifications through every form and mode and rank and region of hfe. In all of them it is much needed, in every rank and class ; yea, it is needed more or less in every individual heart. Of this work the most important part is that which falls to our por- tion, my Reverend Brethren. For Christian love cannot find place, except in a heart that has already been brought to Christ : and this is our special ofiice. But in order that every Englishman may grow up in heart and mind a loyal and dutiful member of a Christian nation, we have all much to do, laymen as well as clergymen, you, my friends, who are Churchwardens, as well as we, who are especially called to preach the Gospel. You too are all called to preach the Gospel, not indeed in the pulpit, but by your lives, in your homes, among your families, in your fields, among your labourers, among your fellow-farmers, among your friends. Let all your words be seasoned with Christian salt. Let all your deeds be sweetened by Christian love. By your conduct in your several parishes, you may do much, not merely for the upholding of order and decency, but even for morality, yea, even for godliness. The task before us is almost infinite, both in extent and in its multitudinous ramifications : but God has FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 41 not left us without means for it. I am not referring merely to that Divine help, w^hich is always granted, in one way or other, to faithful, earnest prayer : we are also enricht with human means, such as are ever sent, when God purposes to manifest Himself by working- some great change in a nation. One is continually hearing enumerations of the wonderful elements of our wealth, such as have never been paralleled or approxi- mated to in the whole history of the world, — enume- rations in which thousands and millions stand for units, — of our manufactures, in all their forms, of our mechanical structures, of our exports and imports. But are these the highest elements of a nation's wealth ? Surely there is another element much higher and more important than all these, though it is seldom taken into account, one, of which all these are merely the produce and effects, one, without which all these would be of little worth, — even our men, the energy, activity, diligence, perseverance of the English people. Our men are not the produce of our material wealth ; but our material wealth is the produce of our men ; though in turn it serves in divers ways to elicit and stimulate the faculties whereby it is produced. Nor is this energy confined to those who are employed in accumu- lating the elements of material wealth : they who do so, mostly accumulate it mainly for themselves : and he who labours chiefly for himself, has no feature of moral greatness in his character. Nor will such men elevate a nation, but rather, unless there are nobler spirits among their companions, degrade her. When a nation however can shew men who manifest similar energy and activity and diligence and perseverance in 42 THE TRUE REMEDY labouring, not for themselves, but for others, for scien- tific or moral truth, for the melioration of their brethren, then it is indeed rich in God's noblest earthly gift. These too are the true heroes among men : for, while selfishness debases every character, and renders it mean and groveling, in proportion as it rises above selfish- ness, does it become noble and heroic. Many of you, my Brethren, must have read with delight how these features of character have been manifested of late years by Englishmen in divers ways, — by one, for instance, in disinterring the ruins and monuments of the primeval Assyrian city, which have been brought to light after lying for more than two thousand years buried in the sands of the desert, — by another, in redeeming a mise- rable, opprest race from its fierce tyrants through the mere influence of energy and integrity and kindness, by means of which he, a single, solitary man, has subdued ferocious and treacherous tribes : and my heart could not but glow with joy and thankfulness when I was told a short time since by an intelligent friend, who has returned recently from Australia, and had traveled through a large part of Asia, that the work which has been going on in Borneo with such a rich promise of blessing, is only a sample of what is going on in all parts of the earth under the influence of English energy and uprightness. Surely, my Brethren, we have reason for thankfulness, that we live in an age when such powers are given to the sons of men, and when England is made so mighty an instrument in the civilizing of the barbarians, as she is also in the still more blessed work of Christianizing the Heathens. Nor are these powers and energies all drawn away from FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 43 US by the allurements to activity held out by forein countries. A number of enterprises and institutions for the good of our own country have risen up of late years, and are continually rising up, at home, in various parts of England : and the weaker sex too has been allowed to shew that, under the influence of Christian grace, it can become the stronger in self-devotion. The wants of the nation are enormous ; the misery and degradation, moral and physical, wliich are spread over various parts of the land, are appalling. As in the vision of the prophet, who is commanded to lift up his eyes and look into Jerusalem, so every enquiry into the moral state of England carried on of late years, whithersoever it has been directed, has only served to reveal new abominations. At the same time however God has been graciously pleased to send His servants amongst us, to contend against these abominations ; and, vast and terrible as our wants are, attempts have been made with more or less vigour in divers quarters to relieve and remove them. Against one of our main wants, the deplorable ignorance of the Lower Classes, the Church has now been contending, vvdth gradually increasing earnestness and energy, and with a growing appreciation of her right objects and aims, for more than thirty years : and she will be enabled to do so with ampler means and more hopeful prospects through the help of the State, if she does not allow her means to be curtailed, and her prospects to be blighted, by idle jealousies and suspicions. Another want, which has been deeply felt for several years, is that of a better education for the Middle Classes, 44 THE TRUE REMEDY for whoin the Church has never provided adequately, in part by reason of their immense increase subsequent to the period of her productiveness in the way of insti- tutions : and, while this increase has been going on, several causes have combined to restrict our Universities and Public Schools almost entirely to the various sec- tions of the higher classes. This want has several times formed a matter of discussion at the Meetings of our Diocesan Association ; and strong wishes have been ex- prest that something could be done to relieve it. We have even appointed a Committee to ascertain whether we could not make a beginning, by establishing some sort of school for the Middle Classes in connexion with the Church, and under her immediate sanction. But the want of means, which checks our Association in so many ways, has hitherto prevented our doing any- thing for this end : nor did it appear likely that we should be able to obtain special subscriptions for the education of a class, who, it might be urged, ought to bear the expenses of their own education. Indeed this seems to be a work in which an individual would be likelier to succeed than an association ; as in truth almost all the great works wrought upon earth have been wrought by individual energy, or rather by the grace of God stirring in some man especially set apart and consecrated, as a Nazarite, for the task. Hence it is with the utmost pleasure and thankfulness that I have hailed the beginning of such an undertaking, entered upon with a full appreciation both of its im- portance and of its difficulties, but at the same time with an assurance that in these days, as in the days of old, every difficulty may be conquered, under God's blessing, FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 45 by Faith and Hope and Love. I am thankful that our Diocese has given birth to such an undertaking : I will not say, our Archdeaconry : for, though Shoreham is within our limits, it is just on the borders ; and the work may thus be esteemed common to the two Arch- deaconries, as it richly deserves the cordial, loving support of both, nay, of every one who wishes well to the English nation and Church. The projector of this institution does not confine his views to our Diocese ; but, as the want which he wishes to remedy spreads over the whole of England, his desire and purpose is, that, under God's blessing, similar institutions should be establisht in all parts of England (l). Let it not be said that this is impracticable. How can we dare to pronounce that it is so ? It is by attempting what seems to be impracticable, that we extend the sphere of the practicable. Shall we be content to leave our civil engineers in the exclusive enjoyment of the honour of achieving what a few years since would have been deemed physical impossibilities ? Surely a like privilege is granted to those who act in faith, with the assurance of God's help, in the moral w^orld. When Augustin came to England, when Boniface went to Germany, when the Apostles entered on the Divine mission which they received upon the Mount of the Ascension, they all set themselves to accomplish what the natural understanding pronounced to be impossible. But Faith recks not of possibilities and impossibilities ; for it knows who has declared that nothing shall be impossible to it. In the present instance, if we could awaken a general conviction of the urgent need of a better scheme of education for the Middle Classes, and 46 THE TRUE REMEDY if this conviction were followed by a general desire to carry it into act, the work would not merely be possible, but easy. According to the best judgement which I have had the means of forming on the management of the College at Shoreham, it appears to be excellently conducted, with an attention to the moral and religious culture of the pupils such as is hardly to be found in other schools. Indeed the staff of masters, which is framed on a scale of an ordained clergyman for every five and twenty boys, and which at present exceeds that ratio, supplies the means of exercising a personal superintendence and influence on each several boy scarcely possible else- where. Of course in this, as in other institutions, practice may be expected to suggest divers improve- ments : but even as it now is, when I consider the grand object it has in view, and the spirit in which it is undertaken, when I look to the evils it is so well fitted to remedy, and to the blessings which may without presumption be hoped from it, I cannot hesitate to recommend it earnestly to your hearty encouragement and support. Here let me add a remark, which the calamitous prevalence of party-spirit in our Church seems to call for. Do not allow yourselves to be alarmed, my Reve- rend Brethren, if you see certain names, which you may be accustomed to regard with suspicion, among the strenuous supporters of the Shoreham School. The object of that Institution is admirable, and of paramount importance. There is no greater want at this day in England than that of a good education, a good secular, and a good moral and religious education, for the Middle FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 47 Classes, an education whereby they may be trained to be loyal and dutiful and useful members, both of the State and of the Church. Hence it is not to be wondered at, if persons, who are always active in pro- moting every good work, and who feel the urgent need of this, should come forward among the foremost to aid it. Surely too they ought not to be excluded from the privilege of taking part in it. But the work is not a party-work ; nor has it been undertaken with any- thing of a party-spirit. It is a work in which all parties ought to unite cordially and zealously. It is a work which ought to be precious in the sight of every one who desires the good of the English nation and Church. Alas, that in these days this should be no security against its being eyed with jealousy and suspicion, against its becoming an object of virulent abuse, or even of persecution ! as we have seen in such a deplorable ex- ample, in which neither purity and holiness of life, nor an entire self-devotion to a work of love toward those w^ho were perishing in the most abject moral degrada- tion, could preserve a weak, helpless woman from the rancorous assaults of party-spirit. This is the misery and the curse of our Church. Divide et impera, — as I have said on a former occasion, and as one has almost daily calls to repeat, — is ever Satan's favorite maxim : and it is by exciting intermi- nable divisions amongst us, that he retains his empire in England, and prevents our overthrowing it. O, if we could but unite with all who love the Lord Jesus, with all who are zealous for His honour, with all who desire to forward His great and blessed work in the redemption and salvation of His people, if we 48 THE TRUE REMEDY would join with them heart and hand in fighting against Satan by every good work whereby his empire can be shaken, — assuredly, under God's blessing, and with His strength, we should shake it : yea, in time we should overthrow it ; we should east his throne to the ground. Were a forein army invading our country, and were we called to repell them, should we stop to enquire whether he who called us were a Whig or a Tory, whether our fellow-soldiers were to be Conservatives or Liberals ? and, if we found that they were not all of our own party, should we refuse to fight by their side ? Nay, should we not richly deserve to be shot, if we abandoned our post for any reason of this sort ? Would not Whigs and Tories, Conservatives and Liberals, all join in the one all-important work of driving out the invader ? So ought all Christ's servants and soldiers to unite in the warfare against Satan, in whatever way it is to be carried on. We are to fight against Satan, and not against each other, which in fact is fighting for him, and against Christ. This is one of the terrible mischiefs of our party nicknames. They make us fancy that we are at variance with our brethren, even when we have the selfsame purpose, the selfsame end in view ; and the arch - deceiver beguiles us, like the French and Austrian armies at the siege of Anglers, " to shoot into each other's mouth." O, my Brethren, that we might but cast away these nicknames, and look at our brethren, each one of them, as they are in themselves, according to their own conduct, not according to the party we suppose them to belong to, that we might look at the work they are engaged in, according to its manifest purpose, and might help them FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 49 heartily whenever that work is a good one, a work plainly designed for the glory of God, and the benefit of His people. Surely we may do this without any improper compromise of our own principles. The Whig and the Tory, who fight side by side in the same regiment, may each retain whatever is true and valuable in their own peculiar views, which they may afterward do their best to carry out : they have only to discard their animosities and their jealousies, which they are much better without. Else, in sacrificing their country for the sake of their party, they are traitors to both, and sacrifice their party too. In like manner should we be much bet- ter without our jealousies and animosities ; unless indeed, as is not seldom the case with those who take the most violent part in religious controversies, these are all that we have. Yea, even those who have no- thing else, would still be better, if they were rid of these racking mischiefs. Better for them to fall back into their native insignificance, than to be raised out of it by flaring up for a moment, like a fire among the thorns. There is a vast need of institutions at this time in England, for all manner of purposes, for all the works of Christian love, in proportion as those works have brancht out, through the manifold ingenuity of man, in various directions. We have a great many already; fresh ones are springing up every year. As soon as thoughtful benevolence discovers a new want, attempts are made to relieve it. Can it be desirable that each of these institutions should have a party colour ? that there should be one belonging to one party in our Church, and another to the opposite ? Is not this the E 50 THE TRUE REMEDY sure method of embittering and perpetuating opposition, by carrying it into all the relations of social life ? Nay, would it not be necessary to extend the subdivision still further? Should not each branch of each party have its own separate institution ? Or, seeing that every one has certain individual peculiarities of opinion, whereby he is distinguisht from all others, the euthanasia of this system v/ould be for every single man in England to establish a series of charitable institutions, in which he should be ready to confer all good on all such as agreed with him, but to which no one would come, because there was nobody who had not some difference to keep him away. It was not by stickling, each for his own separate opinions, that the Apostolic Council at Jeru- salem pacified the first controversies in the Church, and prepared themselves for their mighty work of bringing the world to Christ, but by giving each other the right . hand of fellowship, and by adhering to that which was morally essential, while diversity and freedom in lesser things were fully allowed. In fact, by refraining from supporting institutions establisht for a godly purpose, because they are supported by the members of an opposite party, we do all we can to give them the very bias we complain of ; whereas, if we took part in them heartily, we should correct that bias. In this manner is the whole work of the world carried on, not by single forces, but by manifold combinations of oppo- site forces. Nor does harmony arise from the incessant repetition of a single note, but from the union of divers notes. I have spoken thus strongly on this point, though 1 have often spoken on it before, because it is by these FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. 51 miserable and hateful divisions that God's work upon earth, the work for which Christ came down, and lived in the form of a Man, and died on the Cross, has been hindered age after age. Tlu-ough them the Church has been rent in pieces, and has become an object of reproach and scorn to the unbeliever and the Heathen. Through them that holy Body, which the soldiers would not break, and the unbroken integrity of which was of such deep meaning as to have been typified for a millennium and a half in the Paschal Lamb, has been broken in all parts of the world, as though it were the body of Dagon. Through them the saints have been persecuted, and their labours have been baffled. Through them Satan is upheld from age to age on his tottering throne. Nor have these hindrances often been more powerful, and more mischievous, than at this day in England, fostered and stimulated as they ever are by our reli- gious newspapers, which draw their bloated life from feeding on the morbid humours in the Church, and which therefore are ever busy in fomenting and exasperating them (m). After I have detained you so long, you will not desire that I should protract my Charge still more by talking about the ordinary parochial duties of the Churchwardens. Of these I have spoken frequently on former occasions ; and the remarks which I made then are, most of them, applicable still. The restorations and improvements which I recommended in my earliest Charges, are still needed more or less, in many of our Churches, though several of them have been gradually effected in some. This reformation has been carried on during the last year in several parishes with a very b'Z THE TRUE REMEDY commendable spirit. The greatest work of the last year in the way of church-building has been the opening of the beautiful and noble church of St Paul at Brighton, the architect of which has shewn that he has been thoroughly animated with the spirit of the great architects of the Middle Ages. Valuable improve- ments have recently been effected in the parishes of Balcombe and Catsfield, where the churches have been in great part rebuilt on a larger scale. From both these churches the nuisance of pews has been in great part removed, from the latter entirely; and the congregations assembled in them are no longer broken up into knots, but have assumed the appearance of a single body. The same change, I understand, is shortly to take place in the fine church of Icklesham, in which many improvements have already been made. So, I trust, will it at Winchelsea, where important works have been undertaken for the restoration of the church, wellnigh the grandest and most beautiful in the Archdeaconry. The beautiful little church of Bishopstone, which is quite an architectural gem, but which was grievously disfigured by all manner of in- cumbrances, has also been restored. The church of Lindfield, that of Framfield, that of Warbleton, and that of Jevington, have also been greatly improved. Thus a better spirit has been spreading from parish to parish : most of the w^orst abuses have been removed : and ere long, I trust, no house of God will be left in this Archdeaconry, the aspect of which will not betoken that it is regarded with reverence and love by the people. From my not dwelling more on these points, you will not infer, I hope, my friends, that it is less FOR IHE EVILS OF THE AGL. 53 desirable now that you should attend to them, than it was ten years ago, — excepting so far as the works, which were then most needed, may already have been acconiplisht, — or that, because I have been exhorting you to the fulfilment of higher and more important duties, you may therefore deem that you have an exemption, at least for the time, from the lower and less important. On the contrary it is commonly found that they who are the most active and faithful in the fulfilment of their highest duties, are also active and faithful in due measure in the fulfilment of the lowest ; as conversely they who are faithful in the lowest, are mostly so in the highest. It implies a morbid vision in the eye of conscience, when it can only discern large objects, and has no sight for small ones. There is one subject however on which I must say a word, before I conclude. I have been speaking of a number of moral evils, against which we have to con- tend ; and it has appeared that the only effectual mode of contending against them is with the manifold weapons of Christian love. In like manner, you all know, a terrible physical evil is now spreading destructively through various parts of England, and is even said to have invaded our own county. At all events we must not expect to escape its attacks. In every village we may be exposed to them : and we are the more likely to be so from having such a long line of sea-coast, which has been remarkt to be especially visited by its ravages. It is a disease too, against which medical skill has been more than usually powerless. Yet here also infinite good may be wrought by the same remedy, wherewith alone we can encounter all other e\ils 54 THE TRUE REMEDY successfully, by Christian faith and love. In tliis mode of resisting it we may all bear part along with the physician, each of us in our several parishes, ministers and churchwardens, clergymen and laymen. Let us take advantage of this occasion by increast diligence in exercising all the offices of Christian love toward all classes of our brethren. It is well known how sickness, in the case of individuals, is often con- verted into a special means of grace. In like manner, through the transmuting power of Christian love, as the most precious fruit of human nature regenerated through Christ's Incarnation and Passion, may this deadly pestilence be converted into a great national blessing. It may become a warning to many to forsake their sins : it may lead many to a more earnest repent- ance : it may move many to turn with greater entireness of heart to God. So too may it be the means of soften- ing the hearts of many toward their brethren : it may render many more active in ministering to them : and in this manner, by manifesting Christian love toward the helpless and needy, shall we win a rich harvest of love in return. Hereby, if we make a right use of this calamity, we may be enabled to counteract the numerous causes of division which have arisen out of the eager pursuit of outward wealth, fostered by the selfish maxims of an antichristian Political Economy ; and in spite of Satan, in spite of man, the hearts of the English people may be drawn together. Thus, whithersoever we look, whether on the light, or on the darkness, whether on our national prosperity, or on our national distresses, whether on the miseries and helplessness of our brethren, or on the grace and FOR THE EVILS OF THE AGE. O.) lovingkindness of our Heavenly Fatlier, and of Him who vouchsafed to become our Brother, we seem to hear a multitude of voices, crying to us in various tones, in the words of the dying Apostle of Love, Little children, love one another. NOTES. Note A : p. 8. This is the light in which the question was put on the hustings, when Baron Rothschild was reelected member for the City of London in July last. Much vehement and effective declamation was employed in urging the electors "to contend against the last remnant of religious persecution," and for the immortal truth, that conscience should be free, that man's re- lations toward the Supreme Being shall be a thing apart from all human interference, that religious persecution shall cease for ever. It is thus, by political scarecrows, by phantoms drest out in grand, flaunting generalities, that senates and popular assemblies are beguiled. People like to believe that they are the champions of some great principle, especially when it does not cost them so much as a moment's thought. Nay, even Lord John Russell, when he brought forward his Bill on the 19th of last February, appears, according to the report in the Times, to have rested his cause on this sole argument, that the non- admission of the Jews into the Legislature is " a pure and un- mitigated act of persecution, — of the same nature as the violent persecutions which in former days were carried on by the fagot and the axe." When a minister is lying under such an extra- ordinary delusion, it is not to be wondered at that he should be desirous of completing the work, to which he has devoted so much of his life. May we not hope however, that, where the fallacy is so gross and palpable, somebody will arise in our Parliament with sufficient clearness of thought to scatter it, and to preserve us from the evils with which it threatens us ? 58 NoteB: p. 21. The sad accounts of the proceedings at the Meeting in June, which I have heard from a number of persons present at it, are confirmed in all essential features by the article on the subject in the Guardian. That Journal, the chief organ of the party which has so long been carrying on an unremitting warfare against the Committee of the Privy Council, in a sort of apology for the conduct of the Meeting, says : "As the majority was overpowering, so their feelings were strong and keen. Their mind was made up. They came to express their deep and firm conviction ; and they did express it unmistakably. Sir Thomas A eland's good humour and acuteness. Lord Harro why's noble bearing, high tone, and debating tact, Mr Puller's legal argument, — all fell powerless upon the meeting; indeed, had some difficulty in getting heard at all. No personal disrespect was intended. The very notion of a set of gentlemen treating such men as Sir Thomas Acland and Lord Harrowby disre- spectfully is of course absurd. But the majority of the meeting had thought and read about the subject of it for two whole years ; and they longed to express their thoughts in voting. They were prevented from voting last year ; they were all the more eager for it this. — And surely it is unreasonable to complain if a large body of educated gentlemen, with strong convictions on a most important subject, the result of years of deliberations, were some- what impatient of anything or anybody who delayed them from expressing what they so deeply felt." Now such impatience, it has usually been deemed, is by no means symptomatic of strong, deep, deliberately formed convictions, but much rather of blind, hasty, angry prejudices ; and therefore it has mostly been found the characteristic of a mob, which cares little for logical; if it can muster numerical force Nor is this common opinion refuted by the behaviour of the multitude who cried " with one voice about the space of two hom'S, Great is Diana of the Ephesians !'■> NOTE C. 59 It is true, one is a good deal snqrised to hear "of a set of gentlemen treating such men as Sir Thomas Acland and Lord Harrowby disrespectfully." But it has often been seen that a multitude, even when it is made up of persons who on ordinary occasions may deserve the name of gentlemen, is apt to degenerate into a mob. Note C : p. 26. The hopes exprest in the Charge have been baffled ; so far at least, that the Committee of the National Society, in their recent letter of the 11th of December, have broken off the cor- respondence with the Conmiittee of Council on the subject of the Management- Clauses. The only reason assigned for this act is "■ the resolution finally adopted by the Committee of Council to exclude from all share of the Parliamentary grant for education those Church-Schools, the promoters of which are unwilling to constitute their Trust-deeds on the model prescribed by their Lord- ships." Hereby the whole negociation, which has been carried on by a continual interchange of epistles for more than three years and a half, since the 12th of May 1846, is entirely stulti- fied. For the aim of that negociation has been to frame the Clauses in such a manner as that no member of the Church should have any reasonable ground for objecting to them. The Committee of Council have shewn a very conciliatory spirit in altering and modifying the Clauses in compliance with the wishes of the National Society, as far as they felt justified in doing so : but from the first, and throughout, they have declared that they deemed it indispensable to require the adoption of some deter- minate Trust-deeds, with Clauses to secure the permanent ef- ficiency of the Schools. On the other hand, though the Com- mittee of the National Society in the first instance urged their desire that " the promoters of education throughout the country should have the same liberty of choice as to the constitution of their schools, which had hitherto been conceded to them," Go NOTE C. yet, after their recognition in their letter of July 1848, referred to in the Charge, " that the State, in giving assistance, has a right to demand ample security for the efficient management of schools," and " that the conditions on which the Parliamentary grants are made should be fixt and definite," surely the Com- mittee of Council were warranted in assuming that the nego- ciation was thenceforward to proceed upon this basis, namely, that the Clauses, when all reasonable objections to them were removed, should be regarded as obligatory on all receivers of a Parliamentary grant. That the Committee of Council were justified in requiring proper Management-clauses, nay, were bound in duty to insist on them, I have argued in my last year's Charge, as well as in this : and the Committee of the National Society themselves here acknowledge it. The same conclusion is forced upon us by the statement which Archdeacon Sinclair, in his recent Charge on National Education (p. 12), gives of the results from the original practice of the National Society to avoid interference with the constitution of Schools. " The result (he says) is, that nearly all the older National Schools have School- committees, which, I regret to add, are often impracticably large, and in the mode of their election too democratical. Nor was proper care always taken to uphold the influence of the parochial clergyman. Many points were overlookt, which ought to have been provided for. Sometimes the Trust-deed contained no provision that the School should be in union with the National Society; nor that the clergyman should preside at the meetings of the managers ; nor that the managers themselves, nor the subscribers who elected them, nor even any of the teachers employed, should be members of the Church ; nor that an appeal on any disputed point should be made to any tribunal ; nor even to the Bishop in respect to religious instruction. I do not pretend to say, that all these, particulars were overlookt in every case ; but many of them were frequently past over : and I suspect that there are very few Trust-deeds of some years standing, in which all these par- ticulars were attended to. — It has been said that the evils arising NOTE C. (jl from the inexperience of parties in the country have gone still further, and that some schools have actually been lost to the Church by falling into the hands of Dissenting managers and trustees. But, after frequent enquiry during eight years, I have discovered scarcely any cases of this description ; and in one or two the School supposed to have been lost has been afterward regained." Still, however few these cases may have been, they prove that the neglect to frame proper Trust-deeds left an opening even for this perversion of the original purpose of the School : and when we remember what ample opportunities Archdeacon Sinclair, in his office of Secretary to the National Society, had for the fullest information on this matter, his statement surely proves that the continuance of such neglect, after its evil consequences have thus been pointed out, would be very reprehensible. Nor can one well see on what ground of principle the Com- mittee of the National Society deem themselves justified in requiring that the Committee of Council should dispense their grants of public money, without demanding any security for their being properly applied to effect the purposes for which they are granted. They themselves, in voting their own grants^ have always demanded that the applicants should bind themselves to adhere to their Terms of Union : and in this very letter, in which they complain that they cannot cooperate with the Committee of Council, because, in so doing, they " must be prepared to set aside the general principle of local freedom," they declare, in the next sentence, that " they shall continue to vote grants according to their charter," provided the promoters of schools " constitute their schools in a manner consistent with the Society's Terms of Union." Their acting thus has never to my knowledge been found fault with : indeed it is the only rational course on which they could have proceeded. As the Bishop of Salisbury says in his Charge for 1848 (p. 14), " Thos.e who require that all parties should be allowed to claim a share in the public money, and at the same time to constitute their schools according to their individual fancies, — take up a gi-ound incapable of being maintained in dispassionate argument." The only question for a reasonable man must needs be, not whether there should be any conditions at all attacht to such grants, but whether the conditions are such as seem best calculated to secure the great object of the grants. Now the Terms of Union imposed by the National Society are proved by Archdeacon Sinclair's statement to have been utterly inefficient for their profest purpose ; and most of the above-mentioned defects in them appear to be remedied in the Management-Clauses. This however is hardly an adequate reason for rejecting the latter. It is worth noting moreover that the Terms of Union themselves do not speak of any appeal to the Bishop, except in matters " respecting the religious instruction of the scholars." So frivolous and futile is the cry about the propriety of allowing an appeal to him in all cases. In my last year's Charge I spoke of the complaints which had been raised against the Privy Council for making a difference between the Church and the various Dissenting bodies, in not requiring similar Trust-deeds from the latter; and I argued that this distinction was not a privilege conceded to them, but the. contrary. In fact, if, as we are bound to hope, the Church, as she increases in power, absorbs the Dissenting bodies into her bosom, such legal deeds would then prove obstacles to her obtaining possession of their schools, even when they wisht to resign them to her, and would thus tend to perpetuate division. However this ground of complaint, it appears, from the Minutes of the Committee of Council for 1848-9, has no real existence, inasmuch as a correspondence has been carried on since 1847 with the Wesleyans on the subject, and latterly with the Romanists also ; and the form proposed to the Wesleyans seems to have been adopted. Still, it may well be, that the decision of the Committee of the National Society to break off the correspondence has been forced upon them by the difficulties of their position. Being the representatives of a voluntary Association, they were subject to the evils which ever encompass the government of such bodies ; and Falstaff's principle, of doing nothing on compulsion, is so NOTE D. 63 inveterate in the English character, that it lias achieved another triumph, even to the great detriment of the education of the people. As it is, the promoters of schools are left to follow their own discretion, which, it appears from Archdeacon Sinclair's statement, has mostly proved sad indiscretion ; and we are ex- posed to the evils which the Bishop of Oxford described so forcibly in his speech at the Meeting in 1848, and which the Committee of the National Society have also exprest their apprehension of, when, in their letter of July 1 848, they say that experience has convinced them that it is important " that the conditions on which Parliamentary grants are made should be fixt and definite, in order to avoid negociations which individuals are often not well qualified to conduct, at once from their position as applicants for aid, and because their want of familiarity with all the bearings of the subject, as well as other causes, has, in many instances, led sometimes to imprudent concessions, and sometimes to demands at variance with the real objects of the applicants themselves." It must have been with great pain that they found themselves constrained to abandon the prospect of providing a security against these evils. Note D : p. 27. These questions concerning the obligatoriness of the Levitical Law are of much too wide a scope to be treated in this Note. But, as so much stress has been laid on the Levitical degrees throughout this controversy, on the assumption, which has been regarded by many as irrefragable, that the table is still binding upon Christians, I will quote what Jeremy Taylor says in his elaborate argument on the point, in his Rule of Conscience, Book II. chap. ii. Dividing the Mosaic Law into the Cere- monial, the Judicial, and the Moral, he shews, in consonance with our seventh Article, and with the voice of the whole Christian Church, that the Ceremonial Law has been abrogated, and is void. He then proceeds to prove the same thing with 64 NOTE D. regard to the Judicial Law, which corresponds to what in our Article is termed "the civil precepts thereof;" and of which we declare that it is not of necessity binding on any common- wealth : and in this portion of it he includes "the prohibition of marriage in certain degrees." " Though the instances of this law (lie says, Rule III.), proceeding from the wisest Lawgiver, are good guides to princes and commonwealths, where the same reasons are applicable in like circumstances of things, and in equal capacities of the subjects, yet it is wholly without obli- gation." After mentioning a couple of instances, he adds, " The thing in general is confest ; — but then why it should not be so in every particular, when it is confest to be so in the general, I do not understand ; since there are no exceptions or reservations of any particular in the new law, the law of Christianity. But in two great instances this article hath difficulty. The one is — concerning the degrees of kindred hindering marriage; which being taken express care of in the judicial law, and yet nothing at all said of them in the laws of Christ, are yet supposed to be as obligatory to Christians now, as to the Jews of old. Of these I shall now give account, because they are of great use in the rule of conscience, and with much unquietness and noise talkt of, and consciences afflicted with prejudices and authority, with great names and little reasons." How aptly do these words describe the controversy of the last year ! In treating on our immediate question, he says, " all those degrees, in which Moses law hath forbidden marriages, are sup- posed by very many now-a-days, tliat they are still to be ob- served with the same distance and sacredness, affirming, because it was a law of God with the appendage of severe penalties to the transgressors, it does still oblige us Christians. This question was strangely tost up and down upon the occasion of Henry VIII's divorce from Queen Catherine, the relict of his brother Prince Arthur ; and according as the interest of princes uses to do, it very much employed and divided the pens of learned men ; who, upon that occasion, gave too great testimony with how great weaknesses men, that have a bias, do determine NOTE D. 65 questions, and with how great force a king that is ricli and powerful, can make his own determinations. For though Christ- endom was then much divided, yet before then there was ahnost a general consent upon this proposition, that the Levitical degrees do not, by any law of God, bind Christians to their observation. I know but of one Schoolman that dissents : I mean Paludanus ; or, if there be any more, I am sure they are but very few, Vel duo, vel nemo. But the other opinion Defendit mimerus, junctaeque urnbone phalanges.'''' In this statement our great divine goes beyond the warrant of facts. How far he may do so, I have not the means of ascertaining : nor is it very material. His authority is at all events sufficient to prove that the obligatoriness of the Levitical Degrees is far from being universally recognised. In fact, the practice of the Church, so far as we can trace it, that is, from the fourth century downward, appears rather to have been to assume that the principle which ought to determine what per- sons should be prohibited from marrying, is that laid down in Leviticus xviii. 6, — None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, — and that it rested with her to evolve that principle into its consequences, with the help of the clue afforded by the Levitical table itself. This seems to be Dr Pusey's own view {Evidence, No. 423, 429, Preface, p. xxv.). In so doing, the Church gradually advanced from one restriction to another, until men's hearts and souls were surrounded, in this as in other things, by all manner of nets and gins. For the Judaic spirit had taken possession of her, as it ever will do of religion, when the primacy of Faith is set aside. Thus Touch not. Taste not, Handle not, miserable rules, which ^:)eri5^ with the using, became again the order of the day. It is argued indeed by Dr Pusey, in the Preface to his Evidence (p. xxiv.), that, if marriages disapproved of in the Mosaic law are not held to be on that account contrary to the Christian law, we must " suppose that the Jews, the carnal people, were under a more strict moral law upon this subject ; that the Law set forth in this a higher standard of attainment 66 NOTE D. than the Gospel." In this argument however the very point at issue is taken for granted, namely, that the prohibition has a moral ground, and sets up a higher standard of morality. Now man, in all ages, has been apt to deceive himself into be- lieving that he can ascend to a higher stage of moral attainment by the steps of outward observances. Thus the Church, during many centuries, followed the Eastern Gnostics in assuming that celibacy is a higher state than marriage, in direct contradiction to the Divine ordinance for the multiplication of mankind, and to the declaration that it is not good for man to be alone. Whereas those who have best apprehended the spirit of the Gospel, have ever recognised this pervading distinction between the earlier dispensation and the later, that the former, as dealing with the nonage of the chosen race, when under tutors and governors, cai-ried out its principles into a multitude of technical details and regulations ; and that Christianity, as addressing itself to those who are no more servants, hut sons, merely enunciates the principles of our moral and spiritual life, and leaves it to the wisdom of the Church, that is, of every Christian community, or to the conscience of individuals, to unfold the consequences of these principles, according to the exigencies- of each particular case. Thus, to look merely at the Second and Fourth Command- ments, both of which have the deepest moral and spiritual character, we find that the Jews, the carnal people, were under a far stricter law with regard to them, than Christians ; although it is the Gospel, and not the Law, that, in regard to these also, sets forth the highest standard of attainment, to which this freedom is itself essential. The higher love and adoration which the Christian has to pay to God, do not require that he should be prohibited from exercising his imagination in works of sculpture : nor is the higher Christian sanctification of the Lord's day as incompatible as the Jewish with all manner of work. Hence it is no way inconsistent with the order of Grace and Truth, that the idea of marriage, which has been elevated by Christianity to a far higher sacramental sanctity, should no longer need to be fenced round by the same outward prohibitions. TSIOTE U. 67 This was overlookt by ]\Ir Keble wlien he wrote, in liis Tract Against Profane Dealing with Holy Matrimony, tliat " we are sure from our Lord's own saying about divorce, that as in respect of the Law generally, so especially in respect of the Law of Marriage, He came not to destroy hut to fulfill, i. e. to perfect and make it stricter. This would be enough^, if we knew no more, to shew us that it is safer and more loving toward Him to retain the Levitical restrictions, than to annull them, and, if either of them be doubtful^ to accept the severer alternative." Such are the notions of Christianity drawn from the divinity of the Fathers and the Schoolmen : but they are utterly alien from that of the Apostles, as appears, not only from the whole teaching of St Paul, nio less manifest in the Epistles to the Romans and the Corin- thians, than in that to the Galatians, — but equally so from St Peter's vision, and from the decrees of the Council of Jerusalem. Moreover, even if it were admitted that the abstinence from marriages of affinity implied a higher moral standard, it indicates much confusion with regard to the proper province of civil legislation to suppose that such matters lie within it. That which is evidently noxious to the social system, to order, to peace, to the security of life and property, civil legislation has to prohibit: but it has no business to usurp the office of the moral teacher. Morality is to be instilled and inculcated, not enforced. In fact the primary condition of a moral act is, that it must be free. It is true, when a marriage is repugnant to the moral sense of mankind, and is proved to be so by what has been termed a horror naturalis, expressing itself by the voice of those nations whose moral sense has been the most culti- vated, it will then rightly be the object of a legislative interdict : and in determining this point great attention is due, as Jeremy Taylor teaches, to the Levitical table, as indicative of the Divine Will with regard to a peculiar state of society. Still the Chris- tian Church, or, its equivalent in such matters, the Christian State, has full authority to regulate them after a careful conside- ration of this and the other indications of the same Will discernible in the laws of Nature, and in the general opinions of F 2 bo NOTE D. mankind. Proceeding upon these grounds, Taylor says : " The ascending and descending line cannot marry, but are forbidden by God in the Law of Nature : so mothers-in-law and their husband's children : and brothers and sisters are, by the laws of all the world, and for very great reason, forbidden, but not by the Law of Nature." On this point, it seems to me, a pro- founder enquiry would have led him to an opposite conclusion, namely, that marriages between brothers and sisters are contrary to the Law of Nature, inasmuch as they violate the law that marriage should be a union of diversities, and that sexual love should be totally different in kind from that which we bear to the members of our own family ; while the permission of them would utterly destroy the peace and purity and sanctity of family life. Were it not for the horror naturalis with which such incestuous unions are regarded, and for the con- viction that they are contrary to Nature and to the law of God, the facilities resulting from daily domestic intercourse would tend to render every family a sink of corruption ; and the rapid degeneracy and extinction of mankind would soon avenge the infringement of the primary laws of our social relations. " But (Taylor continues), for all other degrees of kindred, it is unlawful for them to marry interchangeably, when and where they are forbidden by a positive law, but not else : and therefore the marriage of uncles and nieces, or aunts and nephews, be- comes unlawful, as the laws of our superiors supervening make it so, but was not so from the beginning, and is not so by any law of Christ." Yet here again the degeneracy consequent upon marriages between those who are near of kin, bears witness that such marriages are contrary to the right order of Nature. The want of any such result on the other hand con- stitutes an essential difference between marriages of affinity and marriages of consanguinity. It is probably owing to this that Taylor, in his long discussion on prohibited marriages, takes no notice of that with a wife's sister. He must have lookt upon it as one to which there is no objection of moment, except its being forbidden by the positive law of the land and of the Church. 69 Note E : p. 28. The prohibition in the 18th chapter of Leviticus against a marriage with a brother's wife is the main stay of those who contend that a marriage with a wife's sister is contrary to Scrip- ture. This argument is plainly put by Jewel, in a letter pub- lisht in the Appendix to Strype's Life of Parker, No. xix. " Albeit I be not forbidden by plain words to marry my wife's sister, yet am I forbidden so to do by other words, which by exposition are plain enough. For when God commands me, I shall not marry my brother's wife, it follows directly by the same that He forbids me to marry my wife's sister. For between one man and two sisters, and one woman and two brothers, is like analogy or proportion." To this argument the complete answer is that suggested in the preceding Note, namely, that, since the abrogation of the Levitical Law, though its moral principles are of perpetual force, its particular precepts are no longer binding, except so far as they are re-enacted by the laws of a Christian nation. This is the ground commonly taken by writers on ethics, who look at the question without any special bias to warp their judgement. Thus Dr Whewell, in his Elements of Morality (§. 1042), treating on the question whether a man may marry his deceast wife's sister, says, " Though much argument on the subject has been drawn from the law of Moses, such argument is of no direct force; since — one Nation is no Rule for another; and the habits of society, and the relations of families, on which the Rule ought to depend, were very different among the ancient Jews, and in our own country at present. So far as the Jewish law has been the basis of the Rule hitherto received, it has weight ; since an existing Rule is entitled to great respect." This is the truth discerned with his own eaglesighted clearness by Luther, and exprest in his noble letter to Barnes, when half the universities of Europe were perplexing their consciences 70 NOTE E. in ransacking the Schoolmen to find excuses for complying with the desires of a licentious king. "Quod vero allegant, esse contra jus divinum, ducere uxorem fratris mortui, Levit. xviii., respondeo primum : si volunt legem Mosi sequi, et nos sub istum legisla- torem trudere, id efficient, ut Rex in hoc casu teneatur non solum retinere Reginam ductam, sed^, etiamsi ducta non esset, omnibus modis ducere, et fratri suo semen suscitare ; quandoquidem frater demortuus non reliquit liberos ex eadem uxore, ut habetur clare et expresse Deut. xxv. Quod si unam legem Mosi cogimur servare, eadem ratione et circumcidemur et totam legem servare oportebit, ut Paulus arguit Galat. v. Nunc vero non sumus amplius sub lege Mosi, sed subjecti legibus civilibus in talibus rebus, quemadmodum et Abraham et Nahor et Aaron ante Mosen erant, qui et ipsi ducebant uxores filias fratris sui in gradu a Mose postea prohibito, et Jacob duas sorores etiam contra Mosen, qui postea eas nuptias suo populo prohibuit. Ideo lex ilia, quae prius non erat, et post Christum iterum desiit, ut positiva, non ligat Regem, nee exigit repudium." Ed. De Wette, vol. iv. p. 296. Dr Pusey indeed says (Preface, p. xxvii.) : " I can hardly think that any one, free from a strong preconceived opinion, could study, as the word of God, the 18th chapter of Leviticus, and not think, as the Church of England has laid down, that the prohibition of the marriages therein contained is part of the unchangeable law of God." Just before too (p. xxv.), he insinuates that one of the witnesses, a clergyman, who had exprest his opinion that the Levitical prohibition was "part of the mo7'al law of a peculiar people under peculiar circum- stances," must have forgotten the declaration in our seventh Article, that " no Christian man whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral." It seems clear however that our Article here refers solely to the Ten Commandments, which were usually designated by the name of the Moral Law, as, to go no further, appears from Jeremy Taylor's fourth Rule: "The Ten Commandments of Moses, commonly called the Moral Law, is not a perfect Digest NOTE E. 71 of the Law of Nature." And even with regard to these, our Church, Avith all others, allows that we are warranted in dis- tinguishing between what w^as of temporal and what of eternal obligation. That every unbiast reader will not take the same view with Dr Pusey, is sufficiently proved by the authorities already cited for the opposite opinion. Indeed it would require strong arguments to shew that the 18th chapter of Leviticus is to be severed from the rest of the Book, and to have a totally different character ascribed to it. Nor, though we are told that it is a presumptuous tampering with God's word, to make a dis- tinction among the prohibitions in this chapter, and lay down that some are of less permanent obligation than others, does there seem to be any material difference between such a procedure, and that which separates this chapter from the rest of the Book. As to the fear which Dr Pusey expresses (p. xxiii.), that to deny the binding force of the Levitical degrees " would involve nothing less than an almost universal relaxation of every restriction upon marriage, however near in blood or kindred;" for that we shall "have nothing to fall back upon but the Divine law, — written in the fleshy tables of the heart," the characters of which " will be filled up and illegible where the written law does not continually clear them," and which will not "be heard within the heart, when desire or strong will clamours against it;" he seems to forget that, in this as in other matters, each individual is not to be left to follow his own will and judgement, but that his conduct will be deter- mined by the laws of the Christian State, which itself will be regulated by the conscience of the Christian nation. In the formation of this conscience regard will ever be paid to the various indications and declarations of the Divine Law, or to whatever is regarded as such ; and when positive ordinances find a response in the conscience of the nation, it is compara- tively easy to enforce them ; but, when this response is wanting, they cannot maintain themselves long : they will be undermined by the encroachments of the sceptical reason and the self-relying will. 72 NOTE E. Now that the Levitical prohibition of a marriage with a brother's widow rests upon very different grounds from most of the denunciations against incestuous unions, with which it is associated, is plain from the fact that, under certain circumstances, as is well known, such a marriage is expressly enjoined (Deuteron. XXV. 5.). For surely we cannot believe that a marriage, which, it is contended, had been declared by the Divine Legislator to be a moral abomination, should be commanded by the same Divine Legislator in another place for the sake of preserving the regular descent of property. What should we say of a man who in this way did evil that good may come, committing a heinous offense with the view of perpetuating an inheritance in his family 1 And can we ascribe such conduct to the Judge of all the earth ? Shall not He do right 1 Shall He do what in a man would be an abomination ? There is a frightful perversion of all moral principle in the argument used by many of the advocates of the existing law, that God has a right to revoke and alter and violate His own laws. Of mere physical laws this of course is true ; but not of metaphysical, nor of moral. The same outward act may indeed be moral in one case, immoral in another ; as killing an enemy of your country in battle is not murder. Here the frequency of the act has graven the distinction on language : but in other cases it may happen that the moral tact of language has not been sufficiently cultivated to recognise the difference. Still we may be sure that it exists ; and if we seek for it diligently, we shall discover it, and shall be delivered from the horrible necessity of imagining that the God of holiness and righteousness can act capriciously in his dealings with His creatures, and violate the essential laws, which, proceeding from Him, are the light and the life of the moral universe. Positive ordinances will indeed always be subject to modification : and as the con- science becomes more discerning, moral distinctions, which before were latent, will come into sight. Thus practices were allowed to the Israelites in their hardness of heart, which were afterward pronounced to be incompatible with the higher Christian idea of marriage. But in the present case it is observable that, wlien NOTE ¥. 73 a question deduced from the practice of marrying a brother's widow was proposed to our Lord, He did not by any word declare, or even imply, that such a practice was reprehensible. Much stress has indeed been laid by some persons, whose zeal has outstript their knowledge, on the word abomination, which is sup- posed to be applied to all the marriages enumerated in the Leviti- cal table : but such persons may be advised to look into other parts of Leviticus, for instance, into the 1 1 th chapter, where they will see that the term had more of a ceremonial than a moral force, and that a number of things were called abominations, which morally were altogether indifferent, and which therefore were cleansed summarily in St Peter's vision. To the argument drawn from the verses which speak of the sinfulness of the Canaanites in doing the things prohibited in our chapter, Grotius {De Jure Belli ac Pads, Lib. IL c. v. § 14), replies conclusively : " Nee difficilis est responsio — de peccato imputato Cananaeis et finitimis populis. Potest enim locutio universalis restringi ad praecipua ejus capitis, ut de concubitu cum masculis, — cum parentibus, cum sororibus, cum nuptis alienis, in quorum irpocbv- Xcucrjv — additae sunt leges caeterae. Nam de singulis partibus ne intelligatur, argument© esse potest interdictum de non habendis eodem tempore in matrimonio sororibus duabus ; quod in commune datum olim humano generi fuisse, Jacobi pietas, qui contra fecit, credere nos non sinit." Note F: p. 29. On the manner in which the Jews have understood the pro- hibition concerning the marriage of two sisters, the Testimony of the Chief Rabbi, Dr Adler, given in the Appendix to the Report of the Commissioners (No. S5), is conclusive. The mar- riage of a widower with the sister of his deceast wife (he says) " is not only not considered as prohibited by the Divine Law ; but it is distinctly understood to be permitted; and on this point neither the Divine Law, nor the Rabbis, nor historical Judaism, leave room 74 NOTE F. for the least doubt. As regards the Divine law, — the meaning of the text is obviously this. Polygamy, which in ancient times was tolerated among the Israelites, is hereby limited in one instance, the legislator interdicting matrimonial alliance with a wife's sister, during her (the wife's) lifetime, lest the law of nature should be reverst, and those in whom she has planted mutual love be converted into rivals and enemies. To avoid however giving rise to any misapprehension as to the extent of this prohibition, the Legislator has worded it differently from all the preceding prohibitions, by superadding such explanatory clauses as should render it evident that the aforesaid alliance is forbidden only during the life of the sister. — Hence we may easily account for the omission of the prohibition — in the 20th chapter of Levi- ticus, the forbidden marriages therein mentioned being confined to those which are tvholly and for ever interdicted. As to the objection to the permission of the marriage of a widower with the sister of his deceast wife, raised by those who urge that the same degree of affinity is prohibited in the instance of a brother's wife, if she have any offspring, besides such objection being almost unworthy of notice, when compared with the clear and explicit words of the text, it must yield to this consideration, that such marriages are probably also permitted for reasons which are grounded in nature. For, if we consider the love which the wife bears her sister, the wish which a dying mother must have to see one related to her by the nearest ties of blood succeed her in her important functions as wife and mother, and the attachment of surviving children to their aunt, who is most likely to resemble their departed mother in disposition and ap- pearance, we cannot doubt that the marriage with the sister of a deceast wife is not only proper as regards the latter, but must be greatly conducive to the welfare of the children, and promotive of domestic happiness; a reason which cannot be pleaded in the case of a brother's wife. The rendering adopted by the Caraites, one wife to another, is not only destitute of all authority, and discordant with the spirit of the sacred language, but quite contrary to the truth ; inasmuch as Polygamy, which would thereby be prohibited, was formerly permitted, as may be proved from innumerable instances. And all the Rabbis too — concur in this view of the question ; for in examining their opinions from the Mishna, (Jebamoth iv. 13) downward, to the Shulchan Aruch, Eben Ezer (Sect. 15, § 2G), we find that they prohibit marriage with a woman after the divorce of her sister, but expressly permit it after her death. The same conclusion must be arrived at by searching the Jewish Commentators, from Philo (see his Special Laws of Moses, p. 303) down to Zunz ; so that, to the best of my knowledge, not a single opinion can be met with throughout all the Rabinnical writings, which would even appear to throw any doubt on the legality or propriety of the marriage of a widower with his deceast wife's sister." It is little better than trifling, to answer, as Mr Keble does (p. 23), to such testimony as this, with regard to the simple meaning of a law, exprest in half a dozen words, which surely ought to be intelligible to the people it was designed for, — " What Christian would follow the Talmudists in such matters ? they being the very interpreters, of whom our Lord said, Except your righteousness exceed theirs, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, — the blind guides who taught men that they were not answerable for evil thoughts, — that they should love their neighbour, but might hate their enemy, — that, if they said Corban, it would excuse them from helping their parents." In other words, because the Judges in James the Second's time wrested the law, therefore the consentient interpretations of our lawyers for ten or twelve centuries is unworthy of attention. Yet the matter in question is no way connected with the great pervading errour of the Jews : nor is there the slightest intimation in the New Testament that the Jewish lawyers were in errour on this point ; though, had their practice been a perversion of the law, opportunities for reprehending it would easily have occurred. On the other hand Selden, looking at the question with judicial calmness of judgement, and with a mind strengthened and trained by all manner of learning, says [De Jure Naturali et Gentium Juxta Disciplinam Hehraeorum, lib. v. c. 10), that the 76 NOTE F. Talmudists held it unlawful to marry " uxoris sororem sive uteri- nam sive germanam, dum ilia superstes, tametsi fuerit repudiata : nam de uxoris sorore, jam demortuae, nunquam dubitarunt, cum verba legis de uxore sint, Dum ipsa adJmc vivit." — He had said previously (v. G), " Haeresis habita est, nee toleranda, Saddu- caeorum opinio, qua binas simul haberi jure uxores negabant, ex lege ilia male intellecta, Uxorem sorori suae non accipies in ejus afflictionem. — Caeterum de sororibus binis, idque dum in vivis tantum fuerit utraque, locus ille passim Magistris capitur." This too w^as a main object of his Uxor Bbixdca, to defend the views of the Talmudists against " stupenda et Christianis quasi inaudita Karaeorum seu Judaeorum Scripturariorum de incestu dogmata." The opinion ascribed to the Talmudists in the first passage by Selden, that the prohibition against the marriage of two sisters extended during the whole life of the first, even though she should be divorced, is that exprest by Philo, in his Treatise on the Laws connected with the Seventh Commandment (p. 303' Ed. Mang.). IldXiv ^vo dSeXcpac ayeadai tov avrbv ovk e-KLrpi'Kei, ovT iv rw avTU), ovr iv Siacpepovcn yjoovoig, Kav rv^rf rig i]v •Kpoiyi)fJitv dir£(>3(yp.EV0Q. Zoj(TTfc ydp kri rfjg avvoLKovaT)c, e'ire Koi d-Kt]Wayixivr]c, idv T£ ■yrjptvarj, idv te kuI Irepw yajurid^, rrji' d^eX6i)y ovy oaiov viriXafiey £7rt ra Tfje rJTV^rjKviae Trapep^effdai, TTpodiSderKiot' ravTCic rd avyyeviKa SiKaia [xij Xveiy, [xrjS" e7rij3aiv£iv TrraicrfiafTi rjjc ovtw tjywfxivyjg Kara yevoQ, fxriF ivafipvvaaQai \ca\ evTpv(pa.v dspcnrevOfxii'Tjv vtto tCov fj^Spwv iKeivrjg, Kal dvrt- depaizEvovaav avrovg' iyeipopTai ydp eV tovtwv ■)(^a\ETrai ^rjXo- TVKiai, ical SvffiraprjyoptjToi