mystical style, and to originate in the notion that every baptized person, even though a hardened profligate, an avowed infidel, a sacrilegious scorner, ought to be addressed personally as possessing, though he knows it not and heeds it not," the mystery of life within ;" that he does not require to be justified by faith, but is already justified in baptism, though he never had faith; and is to be urged to come back to a state from which he has receded, not to enter upon a state which is new to him. We should be glad to learn that we are wrong in seeming to discern some cloudiness of statement, caused by an under current of hypothesis that a man may be really what practically he is not; that the address to a wicked baptized person is not to be constructed upon the ground of his awful condition as not being in a state of acceptance with God, but upon the ground of his being in that state of acceptance, but not being in his life what an accepted person ought to be. He is to be addressed as a believer, even if he I should avow that he is an unbeliever, or should shew by his life that he is so. He is to be told that" Christ has slain sin in him; and that "the sin is no part of himself," even though he loves and follows it; that God is reconciled to him even though he has never been reconciled to God, that he is pardoned, though he never sought pardon. The question turns upon this, whether we are to say to a wicked man, Be reconciled to God for God will be reconciled to you; or Be reconciled to God, for God is reconciled to you; whether we are to regard the atonement of Christ only as having removed the obstacles interposed by the truth and justice of God to reconciliation with fallen man, but as not " becoming individually available till the sinner is led by the Holy Spirit to embrace it; or whether God is really reconciled to the sinner while he continues in his sins. If the Archdeacon intends only, what he once says, "that the message is that God is waiting to be at peace with them," he speaks Scripturally; but waiting to be at peace is not being at peace. Besides this, he sometimes refers to the covenant entrance by baptism into Christ's holy church; and sometimes to the whole family of man; so that we cannot clearly ascertain the extent and limitation of his meaning. But whether the obscurity to which we have alluded originates in our misapprehension, or is the effect of a latent hypothesis, this does not influence the main object of the discourse, which is to exhibit the Gospel as a ministry of reconciliation, and the duty of setting it forth without mystery or reserve. We will now quote the writer's own words : "The apostle's brief delineation of our office is, that it is a ministry of reconciliation, committed to us by God.' And mark what this follows-it follows the declaration, that God has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ:' that He, that is, through Christ Jesus, is on His part reconciled unto the human family; and that all we need, to be made ourselves new creatures' in Christ Jesus, from whom all old things have passed, like some evil dream, away; and to whom all things in themselves, and in God, and in the world round them, have become new,-is, that we should indeed draw nigh with reconciled hearts unto Him, through Christ our Head-that we should see our true place in God's redeemed world, and claim each one for himself his title to it-that we should live and be, what our covenant-entrance into Christ's Church has so eminently made us, 'a kind of first fruit of God's creatures.' So that the ministry of reconciliation committed to us is this:-not that we should reconcile God to man, for that has been done upon the cross of Christ; but-that we should reconcile man to God that we should bring our brethren to claim this their proper place :-to be in heart and desire, and in the truth of the inner man, reconciled to their God, and at peace with Him. And thus is it again expressed in the following verses, wherein it is repeated, that 'God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them;' this, that is, being done already and that he hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation; this being still to be done, and by our means, who, as ambassadors for Christ,' are to bear the message, and even to pray our brethren that they 'be reconciled to God.' So that the leading idea of our ministry is, in fact, to be the bringing home to men's hearts the power and truth of Christ's atonement. The want of believing this, and acting upon it, is the great evil that we are to redress. The folly and the sin of men consists in this, that though Christ has come into the world and redeemed it, they are still afar from God, and afar therefore from peace lost in foolish and hurtful lusts.' This, then, is to be our message to them, that God is waiting to be at peace with them; that He is a Father in Jesus Christ, yea, the Father of their spirits. The message will run out into numberless details of a blessed revelation and a holy life: but this is its especial burden; it is the 'word of reconciliation.' This is what must open hearts: this is what must be first, middle, and end. When we look at ourselves, it must be as reconcilers, healers of conscience; and therefore preachers of Christ. When we look at our people, it must be as those who need reconciliation as the root of all things. We dare not lower down this message; we dare not dream of preparing the way for it by moral teaching: we know that it in its simplicity-it, as with the power of God it addresses itself to the wounded conscience, is the great moral healer, the great restorer of man's peace and holiness. "And see how this view of the central idea of the Christian ministry is confirmed: "First, by the express language of Scripture in other places. "Let any one, well acquainted with the New Testament, recall the numberless passages in which the ministry of the apostles is briefly described as 'preaching through Jesus the resurrection ;' as preaching Christ unto them,' preaching the Gospel,' 'preaching to him Jesus; through this man preaching the forgiveness of sins;' 'preaching peace to them which were afar off and to them that were nigh; 'preaching peace by Jesus Christ;' and then he will see how completely this view of the ministry agrees with what is there recorded. It needs indeed a strong power of glossing over simple words to resolve this multitude of similar expressions into any thing so unlike their natural meaning as to make them merely say that the apostles taught that new code of morals, and impressed those responsibilities which the teaching of Jesus Christ involved. This is most unlike the simplicity of Holy Scripture. The natural inference which any plain man must draw is this, that the apostles came to menas lost, through separation from God; that they believed this separation to be their curse and their misery; that they knew they had a message to deliver, whereby this separation might be done away; and therefore, that in straightforward simplicity, they at once began to preach to men this blessed message of our only Lord's atonement. "And if this view thus evidently agrees with the plain sense of Holy Scripture, see next how it agrees with experience. "The whole history of the Church teems with examples; for never has there risen up any man amongst his brethren to press simply upon them as a reality this message of reconciliation, without the power of his words over their consciences being clearly manifest. There may have been many other points of weakness in his teaching, but this master-truth has prevailed. This it is which gave St. Augustine such a hold, not only on his own generation, but upon every succeeding age of the Church, from his time even unto this. This was the strength of the worthies of our own Reformation; as well as of him who, from his cell in Saxony, roused the slumbering heart of Christendom: and this, wherever it is present, is still seen to be the secret of a truly efficient ministry. One remarkable example of it, in the northern missions of the United Brethren, has been often mentioned. There was it shewn that, in the torpor of the polar regions, man's heart was to be guided by the self-same springs as those by which the apostles had moved it of old by the lake of Gennesareth, and on the mountains of Judea; that the wounded conscience must be healed by the simple message of atonement, if the man was to be touched and the heart renewed; that there is already in every man's heart a voice of judgment condemning his sins; and that what is needed therefore to give practical reality to its power, is to shew that there is an appointed deliverance by which men may escape from that judgment which they fear," This nature and this struggle are in every unrenewed man amongst our flocks. O, then, how can we doubt for a moment as to the true mode of addressing them! Reason with them on morals, and you vex the already wounded conscience, until it festers anew. Prepare them for your message, and you trifle with their utter misery nay, that sin and that misery has prepared them for it. Preach unto them Jesus and the resurrection;' the Saviour and life from the dead: bring them the word of reconciliation;" shew them in the thick darkness around them, the form of God as of a gracious Father; a hand stretched out in mercy, not in wrath tell them that the struggle within is between the sin which Christ has slain and the conscience God has implanted; that the sin is no part of themselves; that it may be, that it shall be, cast out from every one that believes in Christ; and you do indeed heal the broken heart; and you teach the soul that was bemoaning itself with a who shall deliver me from the body of this death?' to take up the song of triumph, and indeed to thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.'" 66 Now, granting this assertion to the full, what does it prove? Nothing, we may see at once, unless it can be shewn that the bearer of a message has the same discretionary power with him who sends it. The infinite wisdom of our God determines what shall be 'revealed, 'and what be covered:' but we have no such discretion; we are simply bearers of a message, and woe unto us if we mar its clearness, through any fancied rule of acting as our Lord has done. So that all such analogies are set aside at once our rule is, not what we think we gather from God's doings, but what we know that we receive from God's command; about which there can be little question. For even when reserving much Himself, our blessed Master taught us that what He had spoken in the ear, we were to proclaim on the house-top;' that the time was coming when parables should no more wrap up the truth, but when He, through us, should 'shew' men plainly of the Father;' when His apostles should preach in His name among all nations repentance and remission of sins.' "2. But, again, we are told that there is a want of reverence in speaking openly and often of our Lord's atonement. God forbid that any one should thus sin against the marvellous goodness of the Lord. But how can it be irreverent to speak of the Lord Jesus, the Mediator between God and man, and yet reverent to speak of the awful majesty of the Father? and yet this is not forbidden us; on the contrary, we are told to prepare men for hearing of the atonement, by awakening in their minds a due sense of the terrors of the Lord a direction which destroys, therefore, the objection to support which it is urged. "3. Again we are told that Christian antiquity did not so. Now there is a right reverence for Christian antiquity, which let no man withhold. But he that makes it into an idol, debases and dishonours what he seems to exalt; and he does make it into an idol, who sets it up above any light or any truth which God has given to his Church. Let it be our wisdom, indeed, as we have opportunity, to catch every ray which shone upon the earlier times; but if there be light, as doubtless there is, ever flashing out, according to the Church's need, from the great gift of living truth in God's Holy Word, let us not lose this, through a wilful refusal to believe that it is light, unless we find it expressly visible amongst them. But, further, we maintain that the clear and unclouded declaration of these great gospel-truths was the use of the best antiquity. Not to speak of him whose great care it was so to preach, that he could take to witness those amongst whom he had ministered, that he had not shunned to declare unto them all the whole counsel of God;' look to somewhat later times, and from amongst many, take now but the single instance of St. Augustine. It is impossible to crowd any discourses more entirely full of reiterated statements of this blessed message than he has done, in almost every line, his sermons to the common people. He had known enough of the struggle of his own heart, and handled too carefully the consciences of others, not to know that to this golden key alone the inner recesses of man's soul will open. And surely his was the practice of the whole earliest Church, which gave to every baptised person, as their own inheritance, the rich revelations of the Word of God, and the creeds of the Church, which taught every such an one, in Christ's words, with the full assurance of filial adoption, to address, nothing doubting, a reconciled God as 'our Father which art in heaven.' And this runs through all their writings. There is less formal statement, perhaps, of truth; less describing of religion; there are even many confused expressions; but withal there is very much of the reality of a healthy reconciled piety. "Follow, then, boldly their example. Look upon every soul committed to you as instinct with this great lifemystery. Believe that every one has a conscience to speak to a deepseated want of something far higher and greater than any of the miserable substitutes with which, in his ignorance of his true rest and peace, he has been striving to satisfy his soul. Lift up before him the cross: let all your ministry be the bringing him as a sinner to a Saviour's blood: let this be the very front of your address: let it fill your own soul when you deal with his: and as the rivers of the south,' the hardened hearts shall, of God's mercy, turn again.' Settle it in your inmost conviction, that just as far as you are enabled to bring out before men this one central idea of Christianity, just so far do you, in God's name, command the homage of their souls; that in it is the strength of Moses' rod-of the prophet's voice; that when it strikes, the rocks must melt; when it speaks, the streams must distil; that it is the satisfaction of that after which men's hearts have all along been thirsting; that there is a deep wisdom in simply acting on this word of God. Keep ever in view, as you look out upon your flock, the true cause of man's wretchedness, and its only cure separation from God, to be done away through the blood of Christ. "Carry this out, as you would have your ministry prosper. Resolve, in God's strength, that against the whispers of earthly wisdom you will ever close your ears; against the representations of false delicacy you will ever harden your face; against all substitutes of man's invention, for this pure and simple gospel, you will ever testify, as did the saints of old against the calves of Bethel; that this, and this only, you will know amongst your people,Jesus Christ, and Him crucified."" "It is not a mere effect upon the feelings at which you are to aim; it is on the whole character you are not, as some object, to preach the atonement, to the exclusion of holiness:' you are to bring out the atonement as the spring of holiness; to shew men how they may, and how only they may, become holy, as having been made nigh by the blood of Christ,' and so being dwelt in richly by Him, through the Spirit. You are to press on them holy sacraments as the tokens of reconciliation, as the instruments of consequent grace; you are to make them love the Church, because it is Christ's redeemed flock, His very body mystical; you are to shew them Christ's atonement, as the very pith of sacraments; Christ's atonement as the cause and instrument of a renewed life. You must speak of God's judgments, of His righteous law, of His holy anger, even of eternal torments, as ever remembering the blessed atonement, and ever, through and with them, bringing it before the sinner's eyes. It must be their strength against temptation, their restoration from falls, their hope of pardon, their means of obeying, their inner life here, their staff in death, their sure glory hereafter." Archdeacon Wilberforce, we repeat, has given the key to the whole question, by shewing that the Gospel is a ministry of reconciliation; and his adduction of Scriptural authority and example, with his references to historical facts and his brief reply to objections, exhibit the outline of the whole argument. But if the reader would see this doctrine of "Reserve" discussed more fully, and with great ability, he will do well to refer to the publications of Mr. Bird and Mr. Le Mesurier, which are devoted expressly to the subject. We have dedicated so many pages to the inquiry, both in this Number and on former occasions, that we fear our readers might not approve of our at present devoting to it, even if our limits permitted, so much space as would be requisite to do justice to the matters contained in these two publications, as well as in others which we have from time to time inci dentally noticed; but if any person feels himself perplexed by the unscriptural sophistries of the Oxford Tract writers, or has occasion to counsel those who are so, he ought not to omit to inform and fortify his mind by the candid, Christian, Anglican, and satisfactory refutations of Mr. Bird and Mr. Le Mesurier. But the best prophylactic against the virus of Oxford Tractism, is the new volume of Mr. Frowde's anti Protestant, and anti-Scriptural, self-sufficient conceits and dogmas. We thought, when we read some of his flippant remarks upon the reformers and the reformation in the former volume, that " one small pill is a dose ;" but the dose is strengthened to nauseousness in the new volume. VIEW OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 66 CHEERFULLY do we unite in the national gratulations upon the Royal Nuptials; and in the tributes of respect to the much-esteemed Protestant prince with whom our sovereign has been united in holy bonds; and earnestly do we pray that a marriage so acceptable to her majesty's subjects, as well as cemented by the mutual affection of the parties, may, by the mercy of God, be a source of abundant happiness to themselves and a blessing to the nation. The perilous circumstances of the times, as well as the youthfulness of our gracious Queen and her welldisposed but necessarily inexperienced partner, render fervent " prayers and intercessions," as well as giving of thanks" (1 Tim. ii. 1, 2) a duty peculiarly incumbent upon all the faithful of the land. In the Cambridge address, there was a well-timed and beautiful allusion to Prince Albert's descent from "those illustrious ornaments of the house of Saxony, through whose effectual aid and generous devotedness to the cause of pure religion, the great champion of the Reformation was mainly enabled, under Divine Providence, to triumph over his adversaries, and to establish the Protestant faith upon a firm, and, as we humbly trust, an immoveable foundation; and her Majesty was pleased graciously to respond to this "historical recollection. A large portion of the time of the House of Commons has been worse than wasted in the discussions upon the privilege question. After imprisoning the sheriffs, the house has condescended to seize upon an attorney, his son, and his stipendiary clerk; while it dares not touch judges, advocates, or jurors; and all this to vindicate a claim to publish libels, which the courts of law declare to be an illegal act. The whole difficulty arises from a prior assumption, namely, the right of the house to print what may be libellous for its own use; for between such a circulation and technical publishing there is no moral difference. The common sense and justice of the matter are that the Houses of Parliament should print or publish what they think fit; and that the parties whose statements they issue should be protected by law, if their averments can be shewn to be true, or to have been given with intended fairness and honesty; but that if carelessly or maliciously false, they should be amenable to punishment. Under such a law Stockdale would not not have gained a farthing damages, as there is no question about the character of his book. After a protracted debate the House of Commons has rejected, by the small majority of twenty-one, Sir J. Buller's motion affirming want of confidence in her Majesty's ministers; but the facts exhibited in the debate, the state of parties in the House, and public feeling throughout the country, prove that "confidence" is not felt, though it is not technically negatived. Mr. Macaulay twitted Sir R. Peel by asking whether the bigoted portion" of the church and conservative party feel perfect confidence in him? It were well if Sir Robert would learn a salutary lesson from the taunt. He has not acted up to the high requisitions of his position. He has not duly carried out the principles which affect Lord Melbourne's administration in a religious aspect. He has truckled to fallacious principles of worldly expediency, instead of rising to the high standard of Christian duty. We are unwilling to adduce proofs; but we must say that a |