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added to the words " Church militant?" Even Mr. Palmer, who himself approves of prayers for the dead, is constrained to admit that the Church of England has banished them; he expressly mentions the very prayer in question, and also the funeral service, as instances of designed omission; and he even proceeds to shew, that as popery had connected purgatory with them, the rejection may be defended on the ground of expediency." Wheatly also, who opposed the practice, acknowledges that the words "here on earth" were a designed exclusion. Comber likewise, speaking of the same prayer, says: "Those prayers for the dead, which the Roman missal hath here added to this office, our Church hath prudently rejected, because they have no ground in Scripture, nor good foundation in the purest antiquity;" and he adds, that

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they can do no good to the wicked who alone need them; and are a disparagement to holy persons by supposing them in a state of misery."

The above is not the only theological or ecclesiastical subject which has been a subject of newspaper discussion; for indeed several of the most stirring questions of the day are closely connected with matters of religion; as the Lord's Day question; the Education question, whether in England or Ireland; the Irish Church question; and the gigantic question of National Church Establishments. This last has been recently urged upon the public in a volume by a statesman of high character and great ability, Mr. W. E. Gladstone. We rejoice to see that Mr. Gladstone has the courage to rise above the ranks of mere political conservatism, and to take up the question upon the sacred ground of Christian obligation. But we lament to say, that he has marred his object, and we fear seriously injured the cause he meant to defend, by occupying ground not tenable; placing the church of Christ upon the basis assumed by the church of Rome and in the Oxford Tracts; causing us to fraternise with the Greek and Latin, and to repudiate all the Protestant churches; so that a legislature, in seeking to promote the glory of God and the spiritual welfare of

the people by means of a church establishment, is not to go to the Bible, but to tradition; not to be guided by sound doctrine, but by assumed apostolical succession. We were glad to see that the Times newspaper, with a degree of theological and ecclesiastical acumen which we did not give its conductors credit for, has replied to Mr. Gladstone's arguments, which not only subvert the established church of Scotland, and the Protestant churches on the continent, but tend to raise a universal outcry against our own, as bigoted, exclusive, domineering, and persecuting. We have shewn, in a former paper, that no church so little deserves this character; and we defy Mr. Gladstone to adduce from her Articles, Homilies, or Prayer-book, any thing that favours his hypothesis.

We will venture to quote a portion of the strictures in the Times; not merely, however, for the sake of the remarks themselves, powerful, and, in the main solid, as they are, but as evincing what from the first we have urged, that the Oxford Tracts, instead of affording a rallying point of union, as their authors professed to hope they would, are a firebrand which, unless timely extinguished, will involve the Church of England, and with it all Christendom, in one wide conflagration. We will only add, that while with the writers in the Times we feel astonished that divines who so widely deviate from the doctrines of the Church of England can feel justified in remaining within her walls, and eating her bread, we do not concur in the personal attack upon the sincerity and honesty of Dr. Pusey, and many others who have adopted these unscriptural opinions. Some young men, of neither learning nor devotional habits, give evidence of having taken them up from sheer vanity to be thought somebody, and to be members of a higher ecclesiastical aristocracy than poor snubbed Protestantism can boast of; while we fear there are cases in which the most sordid selfishness has impelled a blustering hypocritical adoption of a system which is supposed to stand in favour in some influential quarters; but for the most part we believe the hangers-on to be sincere, though misguided, as we do not for a moment doubt the principals are. The following are the remarks in the Times :—

"Our readers are doubtless aware, that within these two or three years a number of clergymen at Oxford, being disgusted with the supposed abuses and divisions attributable to the Protestant doctrine of private judgment in matters of religion,' have fallen back upon

the Reformation as the instrumental cause of these evils, and in their anxiety to deprecate and neutralize the indefeasible right of every Christian conscience to exert its best ability in ascertaining the meaning of Scripture, they have deliberately adopted some of the very worst figments of Popery, which, with the large ecclesiastical funds intrusted to them for the dissemination of the Protestant faith, they are industriously propagating through the entire kingdom, by means of certain stupid and perfidious pamphlets, entitled Tracts for the Times.' These men, be it observed, as ordained clergymen of the reformed church of England, are swore to its entire canons and Protestant faith! If they are of opinion, as positively affirmed by themselves, that our noble church is too Protestant for their conscientious convictions, let them show their conscientiousness by resigning the emoluments which they now employ for her disparagement; and let them openly join the Romish confederacy at once, in favour of whose claims to genuine Christian Catholicism they are labouring might and main in the very heart of the Protestant garrison. But as long as, with their present anti-Protestant sentiments, they persist in retaining Protestant benefices and obligations, their pretences to conscientiousness can deserve nothing but unmitigated contempt. Until they purge their consciences from the guilt of compounding them for filthy lucre's sake, we must sternly deny to Dr. Pusey and his associates the smallest credit for moral integrity in their innovations. Their reputation shall not stand them instead of bona fide character. Their professed condemnation of certain corruptions in the Romish apostacy shall not excuse them for their passionate and infatuated defence of her pretended Catholic integrity. The infamy of perjury, as identified with the violation of their Protestant vows, is adhering to them in its most odious form; and as long as they continue to devour and desecrate the shewbread of England's church, we shall not cease to denounce these Oxford Jesuits as meanly endeavouring to effect within our Establishment what the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Spencer is more honestly striving for out of it. It is time for us to speak out upon this subject. It is fit that our slumbering and unsuspecting country should be made duly sensible of the insolent and audacious advances which Popery is now making and avowing against their civil and religious liberties."

"It is quite clear to us, from many

passages in Mr. W. E. Gladstone's recently published volume, that that able and accomplished person is deeply, and, we fear, irrecoverably contaminated with these new-fangled Oxford bigotries: and, after having successfully enthralled such a mind as his, their progress must be looked to with jealousy and alarm by every sound Protestant in the kingdom."

We rejoice to see that the plan of commercial or middle schools, which we adverted to in our last Number, is being zealously taken up in various parts of the kingdom; and we doubt not that every diocese will follow the example. The meeting at Lichfield was attended by numerous persons of rank, station, and high character in the neighbourhood; but we select it for notice for the sake of adverting to the important address of Sir R. Peel, who said that it is a great defect in our ecclesiastical institutions that they have no connexion with religious instruction in conformity with the principles and formularies of the Church of England. He thought it better to accomplish the object of national education, if possible, by voluntary efforts, rather than to solicit the aid of authority; for it is in vain, he said, to expect the assistance of her Majesty's government; but, he added, "If the clergy and laity of the Church of England will unite, and resolve to use their voluntary, energetic efforts, they will assume a position, which they have the power to do, of establishing a system of Christian education independent of any government, and of defying any attempt that may be made to proscribe any institution in connexion with the Church." They ought, he said, to avow explicitly that they demand not merely religious education, but education in connexion with the doctrines and discipline of the Church of England. He considered this avowal better, than by compromise or sacrifice to attempt a system that must end in failure and disappointment. We feel convinced that these views are solid. Sir R. Peel, we presume, did not mean that the legislature ought not to aid the work, but only that it will not. The duty and necessity of nationally connecting popular education with the Established Church we are glad to see admitted by this eminent statesman. We do not disparage any thing that can be truly called " religious education;" we honour the conscientious determination of the British and Foreign School Society to secure the habitual reading of the Word of God in every school; and, as a voluntary

society, its members have a good right to say that they will go so far and no farther; but the agent of the Society, when pressed hard before the Parliamentary committee, was obliged to admit that a school strictly neutral in regard to the subject matter of religious instruction, even if it were desirable, is not attainable; you cannot furnish the wine without some vessel; and what do our readers suppose is the test, or code of articles, or church, or synod, or pope, to which the Lancasterian plan, according to its own officer's exposition, would refer the weighty matter of Biblical exposition: in short, of moulding the religious opinions and practices of the nation; and which is to supersede all well-considered and well-defined confessions of faith; all creeds, catechisms, and the oral and written instruction of the ministers of Christ ? Let that responsible individual reply to the question.

"Does the master explain the Scriptures to the children in your schools?— He interrogates them as they read daily upon the plain and obvious grammatical meaning of that text.

"According to his own understanding of the text?-It must be so.

"Are the children subjected to any examination as to their reading of the Scriptures? They are, certainly; they read the Scriptures, and the master questions them upon what they read; he questions them upon the text as it stands. Some of the Unitarians object, on the ground that, by this method, doctrines which are usually denominated the orthodox doctrines brought out."

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Supposing that this master, a sincerely religious man, when teaching a child, saw that that child was wrong upon a point that he, the master, deemed essential to salvation, would the master allow the child to continue in his error, or would he set before him what he believed to be true ?—I cannot tell what the master might do under such circumstances. All the essential doctrines in the Bible are plain and obvious.

"But what would be the view taken by the directors of the British and Foreign School Society, if they found that the master did set right this child

upon a point which he thought essential to salvation? They would hold it to be his duty to confine himself to the simple teaching of the Scriptures."

We are very far from finding fault with the society as a voluntary institution; but when its plan is put forth in Lord Brougham's Bill, and supported by the Evangelical Dissenters, for general education at the public expense, we are constrained in conscience to oppose it as unjust, impracticable, and not at all calculated to secure, upon a national scale, a truly religious training. It is, as we have many times said, a Procrustean scheme to reduce the nation to the exact stature of Evangelical dissent. The society acts as a committee of "triers," as they were called in the days of Oliver Cromwell. The master must teach exactly what they suppose the Bible teaches. What they do not consider "plain and obvious" is to be viewed as not "essential;" and if in the honest exercise of his judgment he should think otherwise, he would be dismissed from his station. This is proper in a voluntary institution; but who are to be the triers for the nation; and what is to be their own creed? National religious education could not be conducted upon such a basis. The legislature must either leave religion entirely out, or connect it, subordinately to the word of God, with a creed, and an established order of ministers. If you in any way take cognizance of the theological opinions of the master; if you refuse him because he is a Deist or Socinian, you so far set up a test; and why, when you abandon the principle of a National Church, prefer one man's test to another's? The master must either be allowed to teach Popery, Socinianism, nay "Socialism," infidelity, or whatever he pleases; or else there must be some creed, some church, some tribunal of theological reference.

We are obliged to omit several articles which we had written on the cornlaw question; the poor-law agitation; the Tipperary trials, &c. ; but we earnestly recommend our readers to refer to the paper on Ireland in our No. for last June, where there is an affecting account of Mr. Austin Cooper.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

C. C. C.; E. D.; J. M. H.; H. L. W.; E. W.; A CHURCHMAN; PHILOSYNTOMOS; A SUBSCRIBER; ZENAS; INCERTUS; E. H.; MEDICUS SURRIENSIS ; NEMO; A. B.; J. H.; CLERICUS SUBURBANUS; W. N.; PHILOTECNOS; F. S.; DIDYMUS TERTIUS; S. H.; are under consideration.

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TH

SAUL'S CONVERSION.

(Continued from p. 72.)

For the Christian Observer.

HE pathetic appeal and remonstrance which we considered in my last paper, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" drew from the prostrate persecutor the anxious inquiry, "Who art thou, Lord ?” It was the language of ignorance, or rather of uncertainty; for while it inquires of Christ, it calls him Lord. But it was not the language of self-satisfied ignorance, of contented scepticism, but of earnest, anxious inquiry. God, who moves in various as well as in mysterious ways, when performing the miracle of conversion, sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, sometimes with heart-rending convictions and awful terrors, sometimes by gently opening the softened and prepared heart to receive the heaven-descending dews of Divine grace, had advanced Saul by a rapid stage in his heavenward course when he brought the furious and self-satisfied persecutor, half doubting, half convinced, to inquire after Christ; and to make that inquiry of Christ himself, in humble and submissive petition. In reply, our Lord reveals himself to Saul in that character in which he ever presents himself, when he would convince and humble, soften and evangelize, the soul;-not as a triumphant and glorified, but as a suffering Saviour as a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; despised and rejected of men-bearing our griefs, and carrying our sorrows-a partner by sympathy in all the sufferings of his people— crucified afresh by their sins-"I am Jesus whom thou persecutest!"

Nor does He appeal merely to the affections, to gratitude and love, to hopes and fears for the future, but also to the calm and sober judgment of reason and experience as to the present wages of sin. He reminds him of the laborious drudgery and present unprofitableness of the service of Satan, the God whom he ignorantly worshipped. "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks" anticipates, in spirit, the Apostle's own inquiry, "What fruit had ye, then, in those things whereof ye are now ashamed." It is the voice of pity appealing to the instinct of man's nature, which would not deliberately purchase future misery at the price of present wretchedness; but is everCHRIST. OBSERV. No. 15. S

decoyed along the broad way which leadeth to destruction, by some phantom of present imagined good. But whenever the sinner has been brought, by whatever check, whether of providence or of grace, to pause in his career-to look in upon himself, and to subside into calm and serious thought, he sees, with the flashing conviction of experimented truth, that he has taken upon him no easy yoke and light burden; and that whatever he may shrink from, in the untried ways of Christ, Satan's ways are not ways of pleasantness, nor all his paths peace. He soon perceives, that in fighting against God in his providential warnings, his checks of conscience, his strivings of spirit, he has entered upon a work not more basely ungrateful to the best of benefactors, and fearfully dangerous to his own eternal interests, than fatal to his present real happiness. He soon feels that to embrute his higher nature by sensuality in its grosser forms, by gluttony and drunkenness, impurity and uncleanness,-that to make the soul a mere drudge to the body, a pander to those sensual lusts and covetous desires whose insatiable appetites increase by indulgence, and crave and famish in proportion as they are fed, is but to hire himself to that citizen of the far country who feels no pity for the wretched prodigal, but sends him famishing into his fields to feed swine. If fame be the idol before which he bows, he, at such moments, perceives that to serve ambition, whether in the field, the cabinet, or the study, is to sell himself to be a tyrant's slave-aye, the slave of many tyrants. He feels that he who would flutter away his ephemeral life in the summer sunshine of worldly gaiety, and "pleasure falsely so called," and float into moral annihilation upon the surface of levity and folly, cannot secure even his base and pitiful object, but must wade through many a scene, and many an hour, of weariness, depression, and gloom-scenes, too, and hours, even more and more frequently recurring as he advances on the road of life, and whose "wilds immeasurably spread seem lengthening as he goes." He painfully feels that to struggle against the iron grasp and galling fetters with which Providence, in wisdom and love, would restrain him from his own undoing, is to contend with Omnipotence-is" to kick against the pricks:" and that to stab conscience is to commit the worst suicide, is to wound mortally his own happiness and peace.

This tender remonstrance, this affecting appeal, disarm the rebel; they soften and humble his proud and stubborn heart. He puts forth the uniform voice into which converting grace moulds the sinner's cry, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" This was the first lesson which the convincing Spirit, when he descended for the first time with evangelical power on the day of Pentecost, taught to the first disciples in the school of Christ. It was the first voice to which the mingled hopes and fears of the jailer at Philippi gave utterance. And whether as expressive of the legal spirit of the awakened and convinced sinner, like Saul " trembling and astonished," before evangelical truth and saving grace have brought him to the foot of the cross, there enlightened, converted, calmed his soul, and "purged his conscience from dead works to serve the living God,"—or whether as expressive of the devoted gratitude, the entire self-resignation, the loving and cheerful submission of the regenerated heart, it is the first, the unvarying voice of the true disciple of Christ, in every stage of his probationary course, from the first throes and quickenings of his spiritual life, till death be swallowed up in victory.

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