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juste milieu statement with which the article closes, concerning the best method of raising the principles of Dissent to the place in society to which they are entitled, will give little satisfaction to the members of the Anti-StateChurch Association. In the judgment of Dr. Vaughan (and we concur with him), Bishops and Deans and their subordinates are just now doing far more "than any amount of Nonconformist agitation could accomplish towards exposing the incongruities and absurdities of the boasted relations between the Church and State." The reviewer thus states the practical consequences of the move of Dissenters against Church and State:

"The result has been a multitude of defensive precautionary and aggressive measures in a voluntary shape, on the part of Churchmen, before which it would indeed have been marvellous if Dissent had not been greatly a loser. New churches, new normal schools, new school-houses, pastoral aid societies, and almost endless expedients, have in consequence been devised for the purpose of cutting off supplies from the camp of Nonconformity in every possible way, and of diffusing among the people a feeling favourable to the state of things by law established. Our cottages, the houses of our artizans, the garrets and cellars of our large towns and cities, all are brought under the most systematic inspection, and are made to be sensible not only to the great supposed care of the Church with regard to the spiritual welfare, but to the extent in which the temporal wants of the necessitous may be relieved by the largesses at her disposal."

Another mischievous result is attributed to the agitation for the separation of Church and State, which is very honestly stated:

"Our familiarity with strife abroad has rendered us less scrupulous of indulging in it at home. Our churches accordingly have become restless, disputatious, and the seat of not a little of that acerbity of temper which is natural to men who feel that they are losing ground, and losing ground, in the main, through their own folly."

There follows a brief article detailing the experiment made at Aberdeen to train outcast youth to usefulness and honour, and to prevent as well as cure crime by means of Schools for the Destitute. Some of the newest facts on this interesting subject we propose to give in our Intelligence department, now or hereafter. The article on "Zoroaster and the Persian Fire-worshipers" is a careful collection of all that is known on this interesting subject. If an article in the same candid and moderate spirit were written concerning an obnoxious home sect, to what suspicions would it not expose the "orthodoxy" of the writer! "English Society under James I.," is from the pen of the Editor, whose familiarity with the times of the Stuarts is so well known. Art. 5 is on "the Doctrine of Future Punishment." To this we turned with a feeling of strong interest, desiring to know the position taken by this Review on a subject on which the Congregationalists are confessedly divided and, we believe, rapidly advancing in religious opinion. The reviewer labours to minimize the facts of the case, while noticing two books by Congregational ministers (White and Dobney) against the Doctrine of Eternal Punishment, and one, Dr. Hamilton's, in its favour, the very plea and occasion of preaching and publishing which last notoriously was, the wide and widening prevalence of doubts or disbelief in the doctrine. The reviewer himself scarcely holds the doctrine, except in words, though he thinks he does. He thus replies to the moral argument against the eternity of torments:

"The question of the duration of punishment has no necessary connection with its amount or its severity. The true question is, cannot that amount of suffering, which Mr. White describes as so dreadful, be diffused through eternity without increasing it, as well as be concentrated in its burning torments within the compass of a century, or a millennium, or any definite period whatever."

This is not exactly the doctrine of the Fathers of Independency, with whom eternal torments meant real torments every moment, and not a certain amount diluted and diffused through eternity. All hail to every symptom of relaxing Calvinism! The Restorationist admits the eternity of punishment in the

sense defined by the British Quarterly, an eternal loss, never to be replaced, though not dooming to endless and objectless torture. Of Dr. Hamilton's book the reviewer says little, but his estimate of its merits seems any thing rather than flattering. We feared, when reviewing it, as we did somewhat closely and sternly in our pages, that we might be unwittingly guilty of disparaging its power over the orthodox mind. But here is the estimate of the highest Congregational authority, in which we find our own impression of the author and of his book written more damagingly to the latter than we ventured to express it:

"We have not space to do justice to the able lectures of Dr. Hamilton; rich to prodigality in great thoughts, noble sentiments and splendid illustrations. To some minds, we imagine, the reasoning on the duration of future misery will appear the least satisfactory part of the work. But even upon this subject, Dr. Hamilton has done great service to the cause of truth,-service of a kind which could have been done so well by few beside. We did not expect a course of reasoning logically conducted from its premises to its conclusion, with close concatenation of its several parts, for that is not the manner of our author. If to reason be to present truth, so that it shall appear most reasonable to the observer, Dr. Hamilton must be admitted to possess great power of this order. He demonstrates, like the anatomical demonstrator, by shewing the thing clearly and distinctly before your eyes. So he will convince many. But if he fail in the reasonable statement and first demonstration, he fails irrecoverably. The tactics of the logician are not to his taste. He has no reserve of premises and corollaries, acute distinctions, closely united ratiocinations, ingenious deductions, summaries of probabilities, arguments à priori or à posteriori. These are weapons which he does not handle dexterously. Generally he does without them more execution than most men do with them. Yet, while we greatly admire the power which can compress an argument into a sentence, so that it shall appear incontrovertible as it stands alone, having neither dependence on the preceding thought nor connection with the following, we sometimes could wish that this great and independent thinker would occasionally condescend to listen to the instruction of logic, whose discipline, however severe and offensive it may be to men of genius and lofty thought, is sometimes as salutary to them as it is to the slowest and most stupid drudges of its school. A well-adjusted and compact chain of reasoning Dr. Hamilton never constructs; but he forges links of the best tempered metal, and leaves plodding logicians, metaphysicians, mathematicians and hoc genus omne, to combine them into the concatenation of philosophical argument."

The reviewer is very indignant at the statement of Mr. White, "that some able ministers, whose views are upon the whole evangelical, have secretly doubted or denied the truth generally received by their brethren." The reviewer seems to think that orthodoxy is a coat of mail, which is useless unless it be perfect and entire. One rent, one weak point, will mar all. Orthodox views on future punishment are, he believes, especially needful. He evidently trembles for Messrs. White and Dobney, and wonders that they remain where they are.

"The fact," he says, "is undeniable, however it may be explained, that in this country the instances are very few in which the doctrine of the everlasting duration of future punishment has been renounced, without the surrender of other important articles of the evangelical creed."

The reviewer's attempt to modify the moral argument against eternal torments by alleging that suffering is not necessarily infinite because it is endless, will by sterner Calvinists be regarded as a heretical concession, and, according to his own dictum, the reviewer may be told that his unsoundness on this great article endangers other important articles of the evangelical creed. Art. 6, on the Public Men of France, closes with a remarkably condensed and able description of Louis Philippe. Art. 7, on "the Christian Ministry-how to amend it," is plain-spoken and, we are disposed to think, unduly desponding. The reviewer's remarks on the Christian ministry relate to three pointsNumbers, Qualification and Prospects. The reviewer states that, in England, America and Germany, there is an extraordinary and alarming falling off in

the number of candidates for the ministry.

Nonconformist colleges have increased, but there is no corresponding increase of students.

"Where the accommodation is limited, the college may be tolerably filled, especially if the standard of admission be low, and the term of residence comparatively short. But other establishments are obliged to content themselves with something much below the number they could well receive, while some are all but empty, or on the verge of extinction."

As to Qualifications, the reviewer admits that there has been improvement during the past thirty years, yet doubts whether the increase of the efficiency of the pulpit is proportioned to the improvement which has in the same period taken place in any other department. The reviewer's Prospect is gloomy in the extreme. He fears that the Christian elements of society will be every where distanced by the Antichristian or the merely secular elements. We suspect the only cure is for him to widen his definition of Christianity. The progress of events may be antagonistic to orthodox churches, yet not hostile to religion itself. We have no faith in the cure proposed by the reviewer. It is not by mere material organization, such as the consolidation of several small churches into a large and powerful one, and by increasing the pecuniary rewards of pulpit service, that the tendencies and character of an age are to be stopped and changed. Yet there is much truth in the reviewer's statement, that the laity of our Nonconformist churches are, in many cases, grossly deficient in their pecuniary duty to their pastors. Of the six or seven thousand Dissenting ministers in Great Britain, the reviewer states that about three-fourths belong to the class of the inadequately sustained, men whose income lies below the average of from one to two hundred pounds per annum; and he speaks of them as "sufferers to an extent highly dishonourable, we will not say to the liberal feeling, but to the sense of honesty in many of our churches."

There are, alas! too many societies in our own body to which this rebuke is applicable. What ought to be the feelings of an affluent layman in negociating with a candidate for a vacant pulpit, when he offers to a well-educated man, whom he desires to be both his religious instructor and the associate of his family, a salary less by one-half than he would give to a clerk, taught perhaps at his own charity-school, and not much exceeding what he pays to his butler!

There are, besides, three articles on the Currency, on Dumas, the French novelist, and on Chemistry and Natural Theology, but we have neither space

nor desire to comment on them.

Oxford Protestant Magazine, February, 1848.-We have not given to this timely and spirited periodical, the conductors of which continue with dogged courage to beard the lion of Tractarian intolerance in his den, the degree of notice to which it is well entitled. The present No. contains a great deal of curious information respecting the past and present proceedings of those most reckless gentlemen, the Oxford Jesuits, more commonly known by the name of Puseyites. The principal articles are, a continuation of the very telling "Hints toward a History of Puseyism," "Mr. Newman as he was and is," "An Apology for the Bishop of Oxford," "The Oxford Credit System," and a review of "Coquerel's Christianity," &c. The "History" relates to the years 1838-9, and notices the Puseyite denunciations of the present Bishops of Durham and Norwich, on their elevation to their respective sees, for having subscribed to Rev. W. Turner's Sermons. We were not aware, till we read the statement in this Magazine, that the Oxford persecutors were restrained from further proceedings against the two obnoxious Bishops, by the fact transpiring that the Queen, the Head of the Church, was even in a worse condition than these two heretics. Little did Dr. Carpenter know, when he gained the permission of Queen Victoria to dedicate to her his Harmony of the Gospels, that this Royal recognition of the "common Christianity," which an Unitarian shares with other believers, would so seriously disconcert the plans of the Oxford

junta. Having stated the fact, the writer makes the following comment, creditable alike to his head and heart, and for which we desire to tender to him an expression of respectful gratitude.

"At the risk of being misunderstood, or even reproached, let it be said here, that the spirit and temper and the language of the ostentatiously orthodox towards Unitarians, is such as should cover every right-minded believer with shame and humiliation. Such orthodoxy is worse than heresy; it certainly is so if we accept the definition of one who declared that the great and destroying heresy was a want of charity, a want of patient love, towards those whom we conclude to be in error. It ought to be the occasion of thankfulness and rejoicing, that such a man as was Dr. Carpenter, and such a man as is Professor Norton, of Boston, by their Biblical labours and devout habits of mind, by their reverence for apprehended truth, have elevated the tone of the Unitarian body, and, as we trust and believe, have led thousands to venerate the character of the Saviour, and, though with faltering voice, to pray to the Father through the Son and in His name. Shame to us, and deep dishonour to our Lord is it, when, with unchristian spirit and Samaritan hate, we cry out upon Unitarians, and brand and persecute as Socinians those who speak of them in the spirit of charity! Surely to such is the question addressed, Who art thou that judgest another man's servant?"-P. 594.

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The article entitled "An Apology for the Bishop of Oxford" is a justly severe rebuke of Dr. Wilberforce for his conduct to Dr. Hampden. The writer wields a treble-knotted scourge, and every blow leaves its mark. The punishment is severe, but not excessive.

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"To err is human;' and this error was not merely a human error, in the general sense, but it was an error of the Wilberforce modification of humanity. WILBERFORCE was a good, great man, devout, tolerant, philanthropic. But WILBERFORCE sometimes spoke, and spake conscientiously, against the Minister, and then gave his vote for him. Though moral qualities and religious convictions are not, cannot be transmitted, yet, undoubtedly, mental peculiarities are. WILBERFORCE did not, could not, transmit his evangelical opinions and large Christian charity to his children, but his constitutional peculiarities, or idiosyncracies, reappear in them. He was evangelical; his children, taught of Oriel College, may anathematize evangelical opinions and scorn evangelical men, and yet exhibit the flexibility, the sensitiveness, the impulses, of the emotional tendencies, all characteristic of their parent. *** Wilberforce son is not Wilberforce parent; and yet he is Wilberforce of Wilberforce, naturally considered; and he is consistent with himself. We speak not now of the Bishop's theology, which we could fairly, and not according to the Corpus model, elucidate, and shew to be unscriptural, if orthodox;' but we speak of Mr. Wilberforce, the biographer. He who shewed WILBERFORCE not to be a Low CHURCHMAN and PURITAN, rejecting from his very soul the abhorrent doctrine of baptismal regeneration; he who, as the biographer of WILBERFORCE and the historian of the moral war against the traffic in human beings, could make CLARKSON a dim and indistinct figure in the great epic; he who could do this is one who naturally would fail to attain the moral attitude of an open retractation and frank confession;-such an one would be tempted, and yield to the temptation, to palliate and qualify, and even to attempt to lessen, the magnitude of the old and confessed offence, by new disparaging suggestions of a different character. And this did our own Bishop. In effect he says, 'True, I have discovered on examination that you are not a heretic, though I did try and solemnly condemn you as such, and was about to bring you to a further trial; but then your style is not so transparent as it might be, and your choice and use of terms do not exactly please me! Thus the inquisitor who condemned unheard became the hypercritical schoolmaster: for fire and faggot we have birch and ferule: the sublimely wicked sinks into the broadly ridiculous."

DOMESTIC.

INTELLIGENCE.

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The present appears to be a transition age in the character of their ecclesiastical architecture amongst Protestant Nonconformists. We hail with great satisfaction the evidences of a purer taste beginning to prevail amongst the English Unitarians. At the present moment, several important societies amongst us are building or preparing to build new chapels. We have procured from a trustworthy source a minute description of the chapel at Gee Cross, which is rapidly hastening to completion, and will probably be opened for public worship in the course of the spring. The munificent liberality of the Gee Cross congregation in the construction of their new place of worship deserves warm commendation. Of the original chapel and its founders we are authorized to announce the publication in this Magazine of an historical sketch from the pen of the venerable minister of the place, the Rev. James Brooks.

The style of architecture adopted in this chapel is that commonly called "Gothic,' or more correctly "Pointed." Our readers are probably mostly aware that from the period of the commencement of this style in the 12th century to that of its decline and almost total disuse in this country in the 16th, it was almost perpetually undergoing change, the different varieties being usually classified under three heads, called the "Early," "Decorated" and "Perpendicular" English. The style or variety exhibited in this chapel is that which prevailed in this country towards the close of the 13th century. It partakes partly of the character of the Early English, and partly of that of Decorated, or it would perhaps be more correct to call it an example of the first development of the latter, generally distinguished from that which immediately succeeded by the term Geometrical, from the fact of the forms which impart to it its peculiar character consisting chiefly of geometrical figures.

In plan and general arrangement this building is in all respects similar to a country parish church of the "olden time." It consists of a nave with north and south aisle, which together constitute the body of the chapel, a chancel

at the east end, which, we believe, is to the Lord's Supper and the celebration be set apart for the administration of of Marriages, and at the west end a Tower and Spire, the highest point of which reaches to a height of 145 feet from the ground. On the south side of the body of the chapel is an open Porch, which is to form the principal entrance. The nave is six bays or divisions in length, and measures 71 feet, 6 inches, by 40 feet, 8 inches inside. It is divided into centre and side aisles by two rows of 5 clustered pillars, from which spring 6 moulded arches, supporting a wall and what is technically called a "clerestory," in which are two rows of small coupled windows placed immediately over the arches below. These clerestory windows are therefore situated between the roof of the aisles and that of the central division, which is of course raised considerably above the other. The aisles have in each bay a window of two lights, with simple tracery in the head, and the bays are separated by buttresses of a bold projection. The walls are kept low, as being more in keeping with the character of a country structure, and have no parapets, the roofs finishing with simple eaves gutters, and external spouts to carry away the water. At the west end of each aisle is a window nearly similar to those above mentioned, and at the east end of the south aisle is a window of three lights, with the head tracery of a somewhat richer character. This window is to be filled with stained glass, embodying a representation of Faith, Hope and Charity.

The chancel is two bays or divisions in length, and is lighted by two lofty windows with simple tracery on the south side, and by a large richly traceried window of five lights at the east end. This window, which forms the central feature in the interior view, seen from the tower end, is filled with stained glass, each of the five lights between the mullions containing a full-length figure -the centre one a representation of our Saviour-the two to the right representing Peter and Paul-the two to the left, Matthew and John.

On the north side of the chancel, in the recess formed by it and the east wall of the north aisle, is the vestry, having an entrance from the outside, without passing through the chapel,

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