higher tone of Christian policy would have concentered around him a powerful phalanx of moral strength, which he cannot command in his present anomalous course. Petitions are flowing in to Parliament from all parts of the country for church munition and extension. An admirable one was voted by the University of Oxford. Sir R. Inglis, who has had the honour of being in more estimable minorities than most men, has pledged himself to bring on the question after the Easter holidays; and though the plea of exhausted finances and the rivalries of party may possibly cause him to be outvoted, the very assertion of the principle, the senatorial inculcation of the national duty of affording religious instruction to all classes of the people, and devoting a portion of the public wealth to the service of Him who is the bountiful giver of the whole, are of great value and importance. We trust that Mr. M'Neile's proposed Lectures upon the duties and exigencies of our national church, will prove useful precursors to the parliamentary discussion. The House of Commons has very reasonably rejected Mr. Duncombe's absurd proposition for relieving Dissenters from the payment of churchrates; we say absurd, for rates apply to property, not persons, and no moral or statesman-like reason can be given to shew why nine houses in a street are to be rated, and the tenth passed over; and strange were it to profess to have an established church, and to give No. 10 a bonus to dissent from it; unless (as we suppose Mr. Duncombe wished) the exemption should lead some other of the numbers to qualify themselves for the boon. Is it not painful to evangelical Dissenters, that the chosen champions of their party in parliament should be such men as Mr. Duncombe and Mr. Gillon; and that they could find no more welcome editor for their "Patriot" newspaper than Mr. Hone, whose past notoriety should render him a little more modest in his new career as an "Evangelical Dissenter ?" The Irish Municipal Corporation bill is proceeding upon the principle settled at the coalition between the friends of the measure and Sir R. Peel's section of its opponents, that if the qualification were made sufficiently high, no further objection would be made to the principle of throwing open the corporations. The result no man can doubt; namely that in the great majority of towns the Romanists will have almost unbounded sway; and how that sway will be exerted may be judged of by woful experience. Ought not Great Britain to feel some alarm, and more disgust, when at this very moment it is openly announced that the whole question of Irish education is referred to the pontiff of Rome; and that upon the decision of that " foreign prince, power, or potentate," depends the moral, theological, and political training of the nominal subjects of Queen Victoria? Archbishop Whateley, Archbishop Murray, and Lord Melbourne, may indeed comfort themselves with the rumour that the pope thinks that the scheme at present in operation deserves his approval-which we are sure it does; and Dr. Murray and the Bishop of Rome are wiser in their generation than Dr. M'Hale of Tuam- but it is well that the people of England, once so jealous of foreign interference, should remember who is the real legislator for Irelaud. The nation is greatly indebted to the Bishop of Exeter, who has again brought before the House of Lords the disgusting, demoralizing, and blasphemous atrocities of Socialism, and procured an address to the throne for an inquiry into the subject. He was ably supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, and opposed by Lord Melbourne and Lord Normanby, as Secretary of State for the Home Department; but the motion was carried without a division, and the queen was advised to return a gracious reply. In the course of the discussion, the Bishop of London alluded to an execrable newspaper, the Dispatch, which is a vehicle for the most awfully profane and licentious opinions; and every religious, virtuous, and decent man or woman must hope and confidently expect, that after the exposition to which his lordship's statement has led, the city of London will reject with abhorrence Alderman Harmer, the proprietor of that print, at the election to its civic chair next year. No person who considers the spirit in which" tyrannical majorities" of popular assemblies are often wont to tread down right by might, will be surprised to learn that the House of Representatives of the United States of America, has passed a resolution that it will receive no petition respecting Slavery. The abolitionists are thus gagged and manacled; not a syllable of remark will be permitted; the most respectful and honourably subscribed petitions will be rejected without discussion; and a nation so jealous of its vaunted rights and liberties allows them to be thus grossly invaded, in order to suppress the appeal of justice, humanity, and religion, on behalf of many millions of fellow-beings within their own borders, writhing under the aggravated horrors of slavery. This tyrannical resolution is a befitting climax to the confiscations, floggings, tarrings and featherings, imprisonments, maimings, and actual murders, by which the friends of slavery have endeavoured to terrify and exterminate the advocates for abolition. "Let any abolitionist," said a member of the Senate, "come within the borders of South Carolina, and if we can catch him, we will try him [by Lynch law], and notwithstanding all the interference of the governments on earth, including the Federal, we will hang him.' "If chance," said another member," shall throw any of them into our hands, he may expect a felon's death." We have much more to say on this subject. ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. Clericus; Irenæus; Y. M. E.; Oxoniensis-H.; Philalethes; F. S.; O. C.; G.; F. P.; B. A.; J. H. T.; Anti-Schismaticus; E. H.; L. M. N.; E. C.; C. C.; and S. B. H.; are under consideration. We did not say, or mean, that Mr. Rogers "had puffed off his own book by putting his own words in the newspapers as advertisements, and then quoting them as the opinions of the Editors." What we said was perfectly correct; that some of the eulogies, such as those quoted from the Evangelical and Baptist magazines, and the Eclectic Review, were doubtless genuine editorial opinions; but that some others, though referred to in precisely the same manner, were not such. The paragraph in the Times occurs at the bottom of the last column of the fifth page, and in the very smallest print; which is not the place or manner in which "editorial" articles are exhibited. Yet Mr. Rogers speaks again and again of" the critique of the Times," (not in the Times) which he describes as more fair and more noble" than ours. We have not the sixteen other newspapers cited; but if he will procure a certificate only from the Editors of the Times, the Morning Herald, the Morning Advertiser, the Age, and Bell's Weekly Messenger, that they had actually read his work, and that the "articles were genuine editorial critiques,-not supplied by friends, "correspondents," or booksellers, for love or money,-we will take the others for granted. If they are all really editorial articles, the conductors, for their own sake, as well the author's, will readily grant such a certification when a doubt is cast upon the subject. We do not however believe that Mr. Rogers "puffed off his own book;" we intended no personal imputation. 66 F. C. quotes the following passage from Mr. Hartwell Horne's "Introduction," to shew that a correspondent in our last Number has introduced no new argument. "It is to be observed, that there is a great difference between the concurrence of nations in the division of time into weeks, and their concurrence in the other periodical divisions into years, months, and days. These divisions arise from such natural causes as are every where obvious, viz., the annual and diurnal revolutions of the Sun, and the revolution of the Moon. The division into weeks, on the contrary, seems perfectly arbitrary: consequently its prevailing in distant countries, and among nations which had no communication with one another, affords a strong presumption that it must have been derived from some remote tradition (as that of the creation), which was never totally obliterated from the memory of the Gentiles, and which tradition has been older than the dispersion of mankind into different regions." A correspondent in our present Number bas however justly remarked, that the Moon's quarters are very conspicuous phenomena. We are not sufficiently acquainted with the circumstances to discuss the proceedings of the Church Missionary Society's Missionaries in New Zealand in purchasing land; respecting which several correspondents have written to us; but we have confidence in the wisdom and right intentions of the committee, who have suspended their decision, till they receive further particulars in reply to their interrogations. BIBLE SOCIETY EXTRACTS. We always read the Society's Extracts with interest; but the plan proposed in the present Number for supplying schools with the Scriptures at a very cheap rate, is so important and seasonable, that strenuous efforts ought to be made to reimburse the Society, and to prevent any curtailment of its foreign operations. IN my last paper, I suggested a plain and practical test, by which to try worldly amusements. I proposed to contrast the character and conduct of those who conform to them, and of those who separate themselves from them. And, with this criterion, I would readily stake the cause upon the honest decision of every unprejudiced mind. But those who are thoroughly engulfed in this system of delusive pleasure will refuse to hear this reasonable appeal. Let me then turn to the compromising professor of religion, who would join, in unholy union, God and the world. In the midst of enjoyments which you plead that you deem innocent, but which a stricter class of Christians pronounces to be incom. patible with a truly Christian walk, you look abroad upon those who are living in gross and open sin; and you can form a true estimate of the nature of their pursuits; and of their insufficiency to promote the great and common object of man-happiness. You wonder, for instance, what infatuation can blind the man who wallows in gluttony, drunkenness, and sensuality, thus to shatter his constitution; to impair his fortune; to debase his nature; and eternally to ruin his soul; for the momentary gratification of a low and grovelling passion, whose insatiable desires are but increased by indulgence. You can thus form a right judgment upon the folly of all those who are beneath you in the moral scale. And why? Because your judgment is not warped by any prejudice in favour of their besetting sin: while the wretched victim himself, fascinated and deluded, can discern neither the heinousness of his sin, nor its utter inability to promote even his temporal comfort and enjoyment: and this, because his judgment is prejudiced by the love of this sin; because his heart has been depraved, his mind and conscience been defiled, and his understanding darkened, by those foul vapours which indulged sin never fails to raise in the soul. But while you can thus, to a certain extent, form a just estimate of every character beneath you in CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 28. 2 C the scale of morality, you are yourself living contentedly, and at ease, in practices and pleasures whieh a stricter and more serious class of Christians unhesitatingly condemns, as wholly incompatible with the genuine spirit of Christianity. Now let me ask you, with all solemnity-and remember that it is a question, in the true decision of which the best interests of your soul are vitally involved,—is it not possible that your judgment also, as well as that of the gambler, the drunkard, or the sensualist, may be warped by prejudices in favour of your own practice; and that you cannot, as you affirm, perceive that those practices are opposed to Scripture, only because that "sword of the Spirit" has lost its keen edge, in frequent, but unsuccessful, collision with a hardened conscience? May not that clearer light, in which the spiritual man, as Scripture tells us, "discerneth all things, yet he himself is discerned of no man," be that light by which the stricter Christian discerns, and passes a sentence of condemnation upon, those vanities which you deem innocent? And may not that clearer light be the result of a closer walk with God?-of an emancipation of the soul from the love of those vanities?—of a surrender of the will to the Divine guidance: a submission of the understanding to the teaching of the Spirit of God?-of a still silence of the passions: a recollection of the dissipated affections: a state, in which the soul adopts, as it were, the language of the prophet child, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth!" and is answered by that Spirit which guideth into all truth: that unction from the Holy One by which he knoweth all things: by which he "knoweth of the doctrine," or of the precept, "whether it be of God?" May not you, like the drunkard, or the sensualist, awake, when it is too late, from this stupor of moral death; and feel the frightful conviction flash upon your newly opened eyes, and rankle for ever in your soul, that, in striving to compromise between religion and the world, you have been endeavouring to serve two masters whose interests are wholly incompatible; and whose commands are, at every point, in direct opposition? May you not learn, by sad experience, the truth of our Lord's merciful but unheeded warning, "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon? To every Christian professor, then, we would urge an entire separation from worldly amusements, as he values his own soul: because the spirit of the world-its principles and affections; tastes and tempers; objects and pursuits; ends and means; in short, its whole spirit, is not the spirit of the Gospel-of Christianity-of Christ : and because a drinking into that spirit intoxicates his soul; spoils its relish for simple, innocent, and spiritual enjoyments; renders irksome to him the offices of charity: and utterly unfits him for the right discharge of those relative duties, which, under the penalty of his vengeance, God has indissolubly bound upon his conscience. But we would also urge this upon the Christian professor, as he values the souls of others. We would beseech him not to strengthen the hands of the great enemy: not to deceive the ignorant: to entrap the wary to encourage the timid sinner: to determine the wavering to sanction, by his presence, and by the weight of all that the world may deem amiable and religious in his character, practices and pleasures which he sees daily, and inevitably, leading thousands into sinful excesses to which he would not himself dare to pursue them. We would solemnly urge him to beware of those tremendous judgments which must burst upon the devoted heads of those who have brought a religious character, or a religious profession, to sanction irreligious practices; and thus become the main pillars which prop up an ungodly system: who have been playing the hypocrite with a jealous God; and coquetting with His rival, the world, beneath the heart-piercing eye of Omniscience: who have been seducing, by their example and authority, into paths of everlasting perdition, their weak brethren "for whom Christ died :" who have been compromising between God and the world-and the stake at issue, immortal souls : who have used the watch-word of Christianity but to creep in, unawares, among the people of God, and to betray the cause: who, in the garb of religion, have been doing Satan's work; and making "Christ the minister of sin!" : There are some, whose general pursuits and dispositions are not hostile to religion, who yet mingle, to a limited extent, in the amusements of the world: but who, whether from constitutional temperament, or clearer views of moral truth, are averse from carrying matters to an extreme of dissipation; and who think that to object to this "golden mean " is unreasonable and scrupulous is carrying religion into extremes: is being "righteous overmuch." Such persons appear to forget, that it is impossible once to open the flood-gates, and suffer the current of dissipation to flow, and then to arrest its progress at a given height. They forget that they are themselves, by their character and example, the main pillars of a system of iniquity into which they would shrink from entering deeply, yet which, but for the sanction, and the partially restraining influence, of their presence, would soon be crushed beneath the weight of its own enormity: and that, therefore, they are as responsible for every excess, and for every crime, into which the profligate extend and follow up their " innocent amusements," as they would themselves, in a court of justice, pronounce that criminal to be, who was a party, by his voluntary presence, to a murder, while yet he left to some more hardened or intrepid villain the perpetration of the act. The principle upon which such persons act is plainly this. They view worldly amusements simply in the degree to which they themselves conform to them, instead of looking onward to their inevitable consequences, and thus, to the complicated iniquity of the system into which, by a partial compliance, they cast themselves, and which by their character and influence mainly contribute to support. And being defective in their views of the holiness of God, and of the extent and spirituality of the Divine law, they will ask, for instance, and often I am convinced with perfect sincerity, what can be the great harm of an "innocent, occasional game of cards," merely for amusement to myself, or perhaps accommodation to others, and at which I neither lose my money nor my temper? Now not to consider this at all as a Christian: not to dwell upon the consideration, that the spirit which could find pleasure in a single game of cards is not the spirit of Christianity and that-with reverence be it expressed-our Great Model, whose tastes we must acquire in this life, if we would dwell with Him, and enjoy Him, in eternity, would have shrunk from a single game of cards, or a single ball, or a single fox-hunt, or a single horse-race, as from a single murder-not to dwell upon this class of motives, but to view the question in a merely moral light, I answer, you are probably participating in this amusement with persons to |
