cipated, the failure of Sir R. H. Inglis's motion for an address to the throne for church-extension; but the arguments on the side of a national church establishment, and of making it adequate to the necessities of the people, are so strong, so conclusive, so scriptural, that we trust the measure will be pressed in parliament, and throughout the land, from year to year, till the object is attained. The voluntary principle, important as it is, both as auxiliary to legislative provision, and in regard to each Christian's private responsibility before God and man, is, nationally speaking, infidel, and practically ineffective. Why do not the Dissenters, who have combined with infidels and Papists to prevent legislative church extension, supply our destitute districts with spiritual instruction, if their principle is equal to the task? If they can do it, and neglect it, great is their sin; and greater if they cannot, and yet oppose its being done by others. The National Education question has been arranged by her Majesty's government conceding that the archbishops shall be consulted upon the appointment of inspectors for church schools; that they may recommend candidates for the office; that no person shall be appointed without their concurrence, upon the withdrawment of which the appointment shall cease; and that the directions to the inspectors with regard to "religious instruction" shall be framed by them, and the "general instructions" be communicated to them before they are finally sanctioned. As these regulations exempt the church from any concurrence in what is evil in principle, the archbishops, we think, did well, under all the difficulties of the case, to agree to the arrangement. It was a great national calamity, that while schools were so much wanted, and pub. lic money was in coffer to be appropriated to them, it could not be touched by the friends of the church, because fettered with a scheme of obnoxious inspection; while dissent, restricted by no such scruple, was revelling in the public grants. To get over this difficulty by any well-considered plan, not involving a violation of conscience, was highly desirable; and the church has gained much in all respects, by the position in which the question now stands as contrasted with its former aspect. The original intention of her Majesty's government, we feel persuaded, was eventually to introduce the Central Society's scheme in all its ungodly latitude. This project has been quashed; and also, so far as the Church of England is concerned, the more insidious, but not less dangerous, general and special system; it being distinctly arranged that all Church of England schools are to be what their name implies. Thus far is well ; that is, the result might have been worse; but we cannot say that we are satisfied with the position of the question of public education taken as a whole. The Times newspaper, in lauding the present arrangements, states that the Church of England was perfectly satisfied with the original plan of distributing the public grants through the National and British and Foreign School Societies. We cannot tell how the voice of the church is to be collected in such a matter; but for ourselves, as our readers will remember, we protested from the first against that plan, as a breaking down of the principle of a National Church establishment, and we doubt not that a large number of our fellow-churchmen took the same view of the question; though churchmen were not to refuse aid, because grants were also made to the Dissenters, provided their own share was not accompanied by exceptionable stipulations. And if we were not satisfied with this beginning of evils, still less are we satisfied now that the anti-establishment principle has made a further advance; and the government recognizes, and takes under its regulation, Dissenting schools, as such. But as churchmen may have their own schools, and teach what the church requires, and the official inspection of them is to be under archi-episcopal control, their principles are not compromised by a vote of the House of Commons, or the proceedings of the committee of Privy Council, over which they have no control. As to that high satisfaction which we should derive from the consent of the Church of England in this, or any other measure, in its corporate capacity, it is not to be obtained without a revival of its convocation. The Queen is not the church or the church's legislator; nor are the archbishops ; or the bishops; or the National Society; or all together; and it would be Erastian to make a Primate (primus inter pares,) the solus as well as the primus în matters of regulation between church and state. We feel it right thus to assert the strict principle, for times might arrive in which it was needed; but with a good understanding between the bishops of each province and their Primate, and the clergy and their respective bishops, the plan, we trust, will work well. The Ecclesiastical Duties and Revenues Bill continues to excite much difference of opinion among the members of the Episcopal Bench, as well as among the clergy and laity of the church. We expressed at its introduction in 1836, and on other occasions, our jealousy of the principle of appropriating cathedral revenues to the augmentation of parochial benefices; and our conviction that, with a right exercise of patronage, and under improved regulations, they might be rendered of greatly increased utility to the church, and serve many important purposes within their proper scope; and we also noticed the injustice to those of the clergy who had deserved well of the church by special services, of depriving them of those honorary and pecuniary rewards which cathedral endowments professed to hold out to them-though the practice unhappily was not as good as the theory. As a whole, the appropriation to parochial purposes will be no very considerable relief; and we think it rather turns public attention from the real remedy, which is to raise new funds, not to divert old ones; "robbing Peter to pay Paul." We should be glad however to see a little more of paying back to Paul or Peter what had been alienated from him; as in the Farnham rectory case, and there are many others of a similar kind; but viewing the spiritual necessities of the nation in the aggregate, there is no effectual remedy, but by large and continued endowments from the public purse. Mr. Hume's Sabbath-descerating motion has failed, as was to be expected; but the boldness of the attempt exhibits the peril which impends over our privileges as a Christian nation, if the religious part of the people do not bestir themselves to frustrate the machinations of papists, infidels, and men "of no particular faith." The motion only prayed for throwing open the British Museum, and the National Gallery, and this only during the hours in which the sale of beer and spirits is legalised. But if the Sabbath violating principle were once conceded, consistency would require that all other places of public amusement should be opened; nor could a distinction be reasonably maintained between a free national exhibition, as the Tower of London, and a private speculation, as a theatre. Then as to the cunning plea for the British Museum from the gin-ship; sound argument would say that the latter should be closed, not the former thrown open; that one sin should be left off, not another committed to keep it in countenance; but the cases differ widely, even upon Mr. Hume's own principles; for the sale of beer and spirits is vindicated by its advocates on the ground that they are necessaries of life; but men and women would not starve for lack of sight-seeing. Mr. Hume's hope, and the nation's danger, lie in the ungodliness and wide-spread scepticism which inundate the land; and of which the rcent decision of the majority of the three or four thousand members of the Zoological Society to persist in keeping open their Gardens on the Lord's Day, is a painful sample. If persons in the station of the larger portion of the members of that Society thus deliberately perpetrate so great a sin, for a trifling gratification, which most of them might enjoy occasionally, if they wished it, on some other day, can it be wondered at, if the poor, instead of regarding national regulations for the observance of the Sabbath, as their special protection and privilege, come to consider them as restrictions, burdensome to themselves, but which the rich may violate with impunity? ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. T. W. M.; Z.; Phoenix; H. B.; E. G. K.; Commiles; A. B. K.; J. B. ; W. B., and Consistency; are under consideration. We observe by the Bible Society's Monthly Extracts, under our cover, that the Society has sustained an enormous loss by its cheap issues; and it is likely to sustain a far greater in carrying out its gigantic proposal. But the money is admirably bestowed; and the issues, by the Divine blessing, will effect incalculable good; and most diligently ought the friends of the Society to exert themselves to make up the deficiency, so that the heathen may be no losers by this munificent and much needed home supply. Erratum.-Page 388, line 25, for fiends read Druids. THE STRONG MAN ARMED. (Luke. xi. 21, 22.) For the Christian Observer. THE parable of the strong man armed," to be properly understood, should be considered with its context, from the fourteenth to the twenty-fourth verse. The occasion of its delivery we find in the fourteenth verse, and in the parallel passages of St. Matthew and St. Mark, which throw much light upon it. Our Lord had just cast out a blind and dumb devil; and so complete and immediate was the cure, that "the blind and dumb both spake and saw." "The people," simple and unprejudiced, " were amazed, and said, Is not this the Son of David?" But others scribes and pharisees-whose worldly minds prejudiced them against our Lord's holy doctrines; and who were therefore unwilling to admit the truth of miracles which stamped upon those doctrines a Divine authority, pretended that they were dissatisfied with their evidence, and "tempting him, asked of him a sign from heaven," as more removed from the possibility of collusion and imposture. This our Lord refuses: not because he would withhold the fullest evidence, to satisfy every rational doubt or conscientious scruple; but because he knew that it was "an evil heart of unbelief" which led them to demand it: that the defect was not in the obtuseness of their understandings, but in the hardness of their hearts; and, therefore, that if he were to pluck the sun from the firmament, convert the moon into blood, and cause the stars to fall from heaven,-if he were to reverse every law of nature, all this might astound, but could not satisfy them, because it could not strike at the hidden root of their objection, by purifying their hearts,—" If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” Our Lord replies, "This is an evil generation: they seek a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet,"—that sign of which Jonah was a type; the death and resurrection of Christ. Others, unable to deny the miracles, attempted to account for them; and thus furnish the strong attestation of enemies to the fact of their performance. "He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the prince of the devils." This charge our Lord repels with two argu3 U CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 33. ments. The one, addressed particularly to his opponents: "By whom do your sons cast them out?" The other, general; shewing the absurdity of supposing a compromise between two interests so palpably opposed as His and Satan's: "If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand?" It has ever been Satan's plan to counteract God's purposes by counterfeiting them; and in the guise of an angel of light to bring in his kingdom of sin and darkness. We do not find, that even among the most savage and ignorant heathen, he has persuaded any people to deny a God: but he has substituted some idol in the place of the living and true God, as the object of adoration to all but the regenerated Christian. The power of casting out devils was not only bestowed upon the apostles and the seventy, but either bestowed upon, or at least permitted to, others also: for we find the apostles reporting to our Lord, We saw one casting out devils in thy name :" and for their forbidding of whom our Lord rebuked them. Doubtless Satan too, in order to bring suspicion upon our Lord, not only caused these evil spirits to testify that Jesus was the Christ, until our Lord forbade them; but also caused them to come out of those whom they possessed, in obedience to the incantations of sorcerors and magicians : for our Lord himself declares, that in the last day many shall say, In thy name we have cast out devils; to whom he will answer, I never knew you. But the Jews considered all who cast out devils as engaged in a good work; and therefore our Lord appeals to their own principles, and asks, If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore shall they be your judges. But our Lord's casting out of devils stood on far different grounds from that of their sons. Our Lord's was designed to confirm the holy doctrines which he taught: and was in itself the liveliest type of the gospel, whose object it was to eject Satan from the soul of man : to destroy the works of the devil,-sin, and its inseparable attendant, misery to turn men from darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan unto God. To suppose then that Satan could, on any motives, co-operate in this, which was a direct assault upon his very existence : could enter into collusion, in order to bring in an interest which could rise but upon the utter ruin of his own, was palpably absurd. “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation: and a house divided against a house falleth. If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand?" Our Lord then draws from His miracle this manifest conclusion; that since Satan would not willingly yield in such a cause: since Satan's power was superior to any power of man, though even the finger of God could overcome him, this miracle evidently proved that Jesus was the Messiah; and that therefore the kingdom of God-the Messiah's kingdom-was come upon them. Nor, if Satan could not co-operate with Christ, as little could Christ compromise with Satan. If it were absurd to suppose that Satan could assist in bringing in a kingdom of perfect righteousness, in which all, even to the horses' bells, should be stamped with "holiness unto the Lord;" equally absurd would it be to suppose that Christ could compromise the full demands of holiness, to secure the co-operation of Satan. Holiness is the essence of God's nature: and therefore as soon could virtue and vice, light and darkness, amalga mate, as there could be concord between Christ and Belial, God and Mammon: "He that is not with me," our Lord adds, "is against me : and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth." This declaration should be attentively considered, not only for its own importance, but also because it may appear, on a superficial view, to contradict another declaration of our Lord's, " He that is not against us is on our part." But, upon attentive consideration, not only can these be fully reconciled, but made to unite in enforcing a most important practical principle. The declaration before us was drawn from our Lord by the question of a compromise and collusion between Him and Satan. This he declares utterly impossible, " He that is not with me"-wholly and decisively in my interest—" is against me." The other declaration was drawn from Him by the report of the apostles, "We saw one casting out devils in thy name, and we forbade him because he followeth not with us." To this our Lord replies, "Forbid him not." He is engaged in my cause, and in my name: and he that is not against us is on our part." The important practical principle which the two declarations unite in teaching, I conceive to be this, that where the question is a compromise with sin, or the world, we should set our faces as a flint, and say, "Get thee behind me, Satan :" that as regards the essential truths of doctrine, and holiness of heart and life, he who enters upon the borders of the enemy has apostatized from God. But that within the pale of the gospel kingdom, we should be careful not to rend the body of Christ for any scrupled forms, or unrevealed doctrinal subtleties : that if on these points we cannot conscientiously agree, we should at least differ in a spirit of charity: that where the common enemy is concerned we should make common cause: that we should "bid God speed in the name of the Lord" to every one who, in simplicity and godly sincerity, is spreading the vital and essential truths of the gospel, the Saviour's name, and the interests of holiness; and forbid him not, merely because "he followeth not with us." In fact, the one declaration is designed to guard the holiness of the church: the other, if not its unity, at least its godly quietness: and if it cannot maintain the unity of the body, at least to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. To illustrate the relation between Himself and Satan, as respects the church, our Lord delivered the parable of the Strong Man armed. In it Satan is designated by the title, a strong man, to indicate the power which he possesses relatively to man. As an angel he excelled in strength and though despoiled of his original purity, and fallen from his original uprightness, there is nothing in Scripture which would lead us to suppose that the energies of his nature have been diminished. He is "a roaring lion; chained indeed, but not impotent his prey is man; whom yet he cannot touch, except man wilfully ventures within the prohibited bounds where Satan is unchained; and where he frets and rages, because this puny powerless victim is withheld from him. But such are his powers of seduction, that, like the snake which fascinates, then destroys, its victim, he has lured the world to throw itself into the arms of its deadliest foe; so that Scripture now styles him the prince and the god of this world: which lieth in the wicked one. He is armed too with those fiery darts of temptation which appeal to, and lay hold upon, the corruptions of man's fallen nature: while the experience of six thousand |
