struck me in relation to the uses of fiction as a moral instrument, which, in the course of a pretty general reading, I do not remember to have encountered, and which I now beg leave to propose.

God, in his infinite wisdom, has so made us, that certain pleasurable emotions are awakened by, and attend upon, actual realized virtue ; that the performance of virtuous and noble actions is inducive of a feeling of gratification and self congratulation on the part of their author. This is, I think, part of the meaning of the Psalmist, when he says, "In the keeping of thy statutes there is a great reward;" for what greater reward can there be than the approving testimony of a good conscience? But the mere susceptibility of these emotions is not virtue; the degrees of that susceptibility in different characters are by no means the measures of their degrees of virtue. The virtuous man earns the enjoyment of these feelings always, and only, by sacrifice. Reality offers that enjoyment on the stern condition of this, the grand instrument of our earthly training. Fiction offers it at the cheap easy condition of a transient superficial self-identification with the hero or heroine of a common novel, a play, or a poem. In its offering so much of the reward of virtue, the enjoyment of generous, sublime, compassionate, nay, just emotions, apart from the act and the difficulties of virtue, lies, I conceive, the great evil of the mental dram-drinking of a reading too exclusively imaginative. Add the self-congratulation and self-flattery attending such emotions, which attending actual virtue is a good conscience, attending the unearned noble feeling of the sentimentalist is self-delusion. There must be less virtue, if her rewards can, in a larger measure, be had elsewhere than from herself.

Facts attest all this. The people most electrified by noble and tender emotions derived from scenes and fictions-or, in other words, the most novel-reading theatrical people in Europe-are the least virtuous of her great nations: I mean the French. They are a nation whose heads and hearts alike are dieted on fiction and fictitious scenes. The same holds true of individuals.

The most perfect character will have the largest capacity and susceptibility of these emotions, but will seek their satisfaction in a legitimate way. A certain degree of the enjoyments of fiction will send such a man to realities with a keener sense. The zest of shampooing lies in its offering so much of the reward of exercise without action.

A. K.

The above remarks appear to us correct and useful in shewing that the admiration of virtue is not virtue; that sympathy is not principle; but we must protest against any implication that the great mass of what passes for virtue, and excites sympathy, in plays and novels, is really virtue. It is often but splendid vice, even upon the principles of conventional morality; and it is oftener "sin," either gross or covert, when judged of by the word of God, which every Christian is bound to make the standard of his appeal.

PRACTICAL EFFECT OF ADMINISTERING BAPTISM AFTER THE SECOND LESSON.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

THE attention of the Church has been so much directed lately to the importance of administering the Sacrament of Baptism after the second lesson, that I do not intend to occupy your pages with any arguments on the subject; but, as there are some practical difficulties in carrying the plan into execution, I have thought it might interest some of your clerical readers to know the result of an experiment.

The population of our parish is 8,000, and all the baptisms take place at the parish church. They used to be administered after the morning prayers, on Wednesday and Friday, and after the afternoon service on Sunday. Under this system the sacrament was very little respected amongst the poor. The sponsors were often observed laughing and talking during the service: they used to come hurrying into church in their working dresses, and express the utmost impatience to have the tedious ceremony brought as soon as possible to a close; they were often hired for money, if not for beer, and the sacred character of the office was, in most cases, altogether forgotten.

We did what we could to prevent this, by preaching (which the guilty parties never heard, for they did not come till it was over); by reproving them at the font; and by circulating a short paper which was drawn up on the subject; but, with the exception of one or two instances, all was in vain. We then determined to try the effect of public baptism. We had the font placed in a conspicuous part of the church, and gave notice that all baptisms would take place after the second lesson on the week days, and on the last Sunday of the month, the old plan remaining in force on the other three Sundays: but this did not succeed, for the people, and especially the bad ones, did not like coming forward publicly, and avoided all the public days; so that baptisms rarely took place except on the early Sundays of the month, and none but the most respectable ever came forward on the last.

We then resolved strictly to act out the directions of the rubric. It was read in church, and notice given, that, for the future, baptism would not be administered except after the second lesson; that notice must always be given to the clergyman, either over night or before the beginning of morning service; and that parents were particularly requested to bring their children on no Sunday except the last.

Some little difficulty occurred at first. There was a measure of irritation produced by the idea that we had refused to baptize on other Sundays; but when the mistake was corrected, the irritation subsided. We had difficulty also in making the thing understood throughout our large parish, and for the first six weeks we had baptisms nearly every Sunday; but we have since adopted the plan of telling all the women when they come to be churched, and the difficulty has altogether ceased.

The result has been, that we have never once had to complain of improper conduct. The regular hirelings, who used to present themselves again and again, have never appeared since the change. We have procured several copies of the Baptismal Service, on boards, as published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the sponsors generally make the responses with great attention.

Many persons have expressed their admiration of the service; which, they say, they never heard before. The congregation generally like the change, and there is a larger attendance at church on the last Sunday than on any other in the month. There are, however, exceptions; but while one has expressed a dislike, twenty have expressed their pleasure, and none their disapproval.

I ought, perhaps, to state that we take care not to add to the length of the service: the voluntary is omitted, and the sermon shortened, so that the congregation are never detained above the usual hour.

The number of baptisms has rather increased than diminished. We were afraid that the publicity and the inconvenience of being required to give public notice, would induce some of the parents either to leave their children unbaptised, or to take them to the Dissenting chapels. This has been the case in one or two instances, but the general effect has been the very opposite, as you will see by the following table. Children baptized in September 1837, 11; October, 15; November, 6; December, 13; Total 45. In September, 1838, 12; October, 24; November, 12; December, 10; Total 58.

On the whole, then, I think we may conclude that the blessing of God has rested on the change, and that if clergymen are satisfied as to the principle, there will be no real difficulty in carrying it into effect. I remain, sir,

NOT A PUSEYITE.

We wish our reverend correspondent had not adopted this signature; for though the word is often used, for brevity sake, in conversation, it is not correct; seeing that Dr. Pusey was not the originator of the opinions alluded to, though he is one of their most zealous and able modern abettors. The epithet has never appeared but once in our pages, and then not by adoption, but in protesting against the classification of the Dublin Quarterly (Romanist) Journal, which affected to divide the members of the Church of England between Dr. Hampden and Dr. Pusey. It is often difficult to find words at once correct and inoffensive to designate sects, (for a sect we scruple not to say the divines of the Oxford Tract school are,) and we are not bound to adopt their own laudatory nomenclature of "Apostolicals," "Catholic Christians," and so forth; but still we should not wish, in our solemn contest with them, to be personally offensive.

We have, however, a yet stronger objection as connected with the subject of our correspondent's paper, since it seems to imply, what we are sure he did not mean, that a due attention to the rubrics of the Church might be confounded with the system of the Oxford Tracts; whereas one of our oft-repeated charges against the Divines alluded to is, that they violate the spirit, and sometimes the very letter, of the Anglican ritual; as, for instance, in their bowings and crossings; their deacon's stole, with St. Andrew's crosslets; and their habitual and significant recurrence to the words altar, sacrifice, the sacrament of the altar, and so forth, which our reformers rejected as redolent of Popery.

The divines of the Oxford Tract school borrow their phraseology, their arguments, and often their very quotations, from popish writers. Of this last practice, an instance just occurs to us worth noticing. In our paper on the stealthiness of the writers of this school, we exposed one of the most gross frauds which ever disgraced the least scrupulous of Jesuit writers. We allude to the forged title-pages to the "Tracts of the Anglican Fathers;" as to wit, "The Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, a sermon set forth by the most reverend Father in God, Thomas Cranmer; reprinted from the first edition of his Catechismus of 1548;"

whereas there is not a syllable of the sort in the Catechismus; but a marked rejection of such language; the title from which the above professes to be "reprinted" being simply "A Sermon of the Communion of the Lord's Supper." We pointed out much more of the same fraudulent character in the headings, notes, and advertisements of this work, which have been blazoned forth to the deceiving of many persons, who could not believe that such artifices of controversy could be practised by honest men.

We will now exhibit an instance of the manner in which these divines collect arrows from popish quivers.

The Roman Catholic bishop, Milner, in his " End of Controversy," speaking of the "real presence," quotes Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, among other Protestant authorities, in support of it. Tom Moore (as he is familiarly called), in his "Travels of an Irish Gentleman in search of a Religion," gives the same quotation on the same subject; a proof that he quotes second-hand from Milner; for the extract is made up of two fragments of sentences, one of which will be found at p. 286, and the other at p. 289, of vol. II. London Edit. 1830, of Hooker's Polity. There is a note at page 46 of No. 3 of the “Tracts of the Anglican Fathers -The Blessed Sacrament, &c.-by Cranmer," PRECISELY THE SAME AS MILNER'S, with a little addition; and a few asterisks, as a line of demarcation between the Two passages. The writer of this Tract must have studied Milner better than Hooker. Are there Jesuits among us in disguise? Perhaps our readers may wish to see the passages which Milner, Moore, and the 'Apostolicals" have thus fraternally united in splicing together to make a bowsprit for their common bark. We reprint them as they stand in these Anglican Fathers, flanked with a re-quotation from the Tracts for the Times, and a Popish ode from the Lyra Apostolica, beginning, "Whene'er I seek the Holy Altar's rail," &c.

66

"I wish that men would more give themselves to meditate in silence what we have by the Sacrament [of the Holy Eucharist], and less to dispute of the manner how. This is My Body,' and 'this is My Blood,' being words of promise, which we all agree that by the Sacrament Christ doth really and truly in us perform His promise, why do we vainly trouble ourselves with so fierce contentions, whether by consubstantiation, or else by transubstantiation, the Sacrament itself be first possessed with Christ or no? A thing which no way can either further or hinder us howsoever it stand, because our participation of Christ in this Sacrament dependeth on the co-operation of His omnipotent power, which maketh it His Body and Blood to us, whether with change or without alteration of the element such as they imagine we need not greatly to care or inquire."Hooker's Eccl. Pol. book v. ch. Ixvii. 3 and 6.

It were quite superfluous to lengthen this note, in order to shew that Hooker did not teach the "real presence" and the "sacrifice of the altar." If our readers will refer to sect. 67 of his fifth book, they will see how exceedingly unfair it is to try to make the world believe that Hooker was of the Altitudinarian school, when the contrary is notorious; and is admitted even by Mr. Keble himself. In that section he expressly says, "The real presence of Christ's most blessed body and blood is not to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament;" that is, as our Church expresses it, "in the heart by faith, with thanksgiving." He adds, "I see not which way it should be gathered by the words of Christ, when and where the bread is his body, or the cup his blood; but only in the very heart and soul of him which receiveth them." Again, he says: "There is no sentence of Holy Writ which saith that we cannot, by this sacrament, be made partakers of his body and blood, except they be first contained in the sacrament, or the sacrament converted into them."

ON GOD'S GRACE BEING FRUSTRATED BY MAN'S

UNFAITHFULNESS.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

HAVING for the last two or three years been a reader of the Christian Observer, and having also been much edified by the tone of your remarks on different subjects, I am induced to trouble you with an observation on a part of one of the quotations which you made in your Number of last month (December), from the Rev. Mr. Nicholson's Essay. Mr. Nicholson says, "A ministry essentially defective in qualifications involves the loss of souls, and thereby a frustration of the grand design of its institution."

Are God's purposes to His people frustrable by man? and if any of those whom Christ died to save are lost by the unfaithfulness of ministers, will He see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied? Can it be that the salvation of one soul hangs on the faithfulness of the minister? Is not this at variance with our Church Article?

And yet faithfulness is all-important, as without it the means of grace cannot be duly administered to either saints or sinners. I doubt not you possess the power, and also the will, if within the sphere of duty, to explain this subject. Should it occupy too much time, or be otherwise objectionable, I beg you to dismiss it, and in the exercise of that "charity" which "beareth all things" to forgive also this intrusion.

INCERTUS,

The question so candidly put by our correspondent would open up the whole subject of grace and means, God's sovereignty and man's responsibility; the ultimate relations of which no human understanding ever grasped. In quoting Mr. Nicholson, we imagined that he only meant in substance what is intended in such passages as the following: "We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain." He "hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation." "Woe be to the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture." "If thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity." “Through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died?" "What knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband," &c. "Take heed to thyself and unto the doctrine; continue in them, for in so doing thou shalt save thyself, and them that hear thee."

Here then we read of God's grace being frustrated; of his sheep being destroyed; and of those perishing for whom Christ died; and all this by reason of man's unfaithfulness; and our church, in accordance with such declarations, says, in the service for the ordination of priests, " Have always printed in your remembrance how great a treasure is committed to your charge; for they are the sheep of Christ which he bought with his death, and for whom he shed his blood; the church and congregation whom you must serve, is his spouse and his body; and if it shall happen the same church, or any member thereof, do take any hurt or hindrance by reason of your negligence," &c.

The ultimate bearings of such questions, we have said, cannot be traced by human intellect. The ruin of mankind through a federal head and representative; a vicarious atonement; the free, and we cannot suppose deceitful, offer of mercy, combined with the fact that some have not the will to embrace it, and that God only can give that will, and must work with us when he has given it;