faces, and Turkish versions, and delinquencies, peculations, quarrels, and party tricks innumerable, and nobody out of Sackville-street be the wiser. All this our good friends complain of, as not being the best way of conducting a society upon "scriptural principles," one of which principles is fairness, openness, and honesty; no secret trickery with shut doors and packed committees. But how could our good friends expect otherwise; when notwithstanding all the pretensions to scriptural principles and the declarations about prayer and purity, the whole of the proceedings at the formation of the society was conducted upon a direct, palpable falsehood. We speak deliberately, and we will prove it. It is stated in the resolution of the secret committee, that no persons were to be permitted to take a part in the proceedings, or " to speak or vote" but those who were "friendly to the objects for which the meeting was convened;" which objects, it is added, were "the formation of a Trinitarian Bible Society, composed of Protestant Christians." Now this we state in plain terms was untrue; for so far from these being the objects for which the assembly came together, they were not even known or heard of by them, till they were announced from the chair, with the addition that it was now too late for any person either "to speak or vote" against them. Mr. Perceval did not even affect, he could not in Christian honesty, to put the resolutions as matters of deliberation, or to ask seriously if there were any votes against as well as for them: indeed, how could he when he had twice told the meeting that no opposing voice or "vote" was to be allowed? when in fact if he had ordered the meeting to be cleared, as he did the house-of-commons gallery, the whole proceeding would have gone on in precisely the same manner. We repeat that the whole was conducted upon this deliberate trickery and falsehood. We appeal confidently to the two thousand persons said to have been present; we appeal to the committee themselves; we appeal to all who have read the circulars and advertisements of the provisional conclave; we appeal to the whole world, whether the meeting had the slightest knowledge that they were convened for the purposes. stated in the committee's secret resolutions, which were not even disclosed till the meeting was collected together, and with no more distinct knowledge than so many sheep in pens of what they were about to vote for. We can bring numerous witnesses, and among them several clergymen, to prove that they anxiously inquired what was to be the constitution of the new society, and were refused all information. Even the society's own account of the proceedings does not pretend to say that the resolutions were fairly and CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 362, honestly put to the vote; on the contrary, it expressly declares that no discussion or voting was allowed; and so palpable is this fact that it gives only the names of the movers and seconders, without venturing to add that the matter was understood, or intelligently and deliberately voted upon. We do not mean to say that the great majority of the meeting were not favourable to some alteration in the principle of the Bible Society: they undoubtedly were so, for they consisted chiefly of persons industriously collected for the purpose from among the very small number of those who take this view of the question; and whatever the secret committee had proposed, there being no time or permission at the meeting for deliberation, they would naturally take for granted in Christian confidence was right, and hold up their hands accordingly. All this may be true; but it is utterly untrue that the meeting was summoned for the purposes declared in the committee's secret resolution. They were summoned to exclude Socinians, and to propose prayer; but beyond this nothing had been announced; every thing had been kept inviolably secret; they were not summoned to call themselves a Trinitarian. Society, instead of a Bible Society; putting a part for the whole, as if no other doctrine were of the slightest importance; much less were they convened to expel Roman Catholics, as not being, according to Mr. Phillips's special pleading, Trinitarians, and this at a moment when every good man is most anxious to induce the Roman Catholics in Ireland to accept. the Scriptures. But allow that it was desirable to exclude Roman Catholics, still it was false to say, as the committee do, that the meeting came together for that purpose, and on that pretence to forbid any person to speak or vote against the proposition. It might with just as much truth have been affirmed that the meeting came together to petition against the Reform Bill or to elect the Cham of Tartary. And did the meeting also knowingly come together to pass resolutions rescinding the privilege which clergymen, dissenting ministers, and governors enjoyed in all former Bible societies, of attending and voting at committees ? Were they aware that they were resigning the whole management into the hands of a few self-constituted gentlemen, who are to debate and decide with closed doors, and to print what they like, and to spend the society's money as they choose, no clergyman, dissenting minister, or governor, however large his contribution or active his zeal, being privileged in. virtue of his office to be present or to examine the books, or vouchers, or correspondence? No; all this was kept a profound secret; the meeting never suspected it: they had no time for inquiry or R deliberation; they rushed carelessly into the net, and now those of them who are not thorough partizans complain that they were caught in it; and that the secret framers of the society have acted neither fairly, openly, nor according to "scriptural principles;" since it is a scriptural principle that he that is of the light cometh to the light, and that men never love darkness rather than light except when their deeds are evil. But though they have acted in an unfair and covert manner (poor Mr. Perceval little thinking that he himself was to be one of the first victims), they have acted, we must say, with excellent worldly policy; they have decided that no persons but their own thick-and-thin partizans shall witness the proceedings of their committees, which is a proof that they were not willing that they should be very closely scrutinized. The whole matter has been begun and concluded in a spirit which cannot be followed by the Divine blessing; and to state one half of what some of their own late warmest friends are now publishing abroad, would ruin their credit as an institution professing to be conducted on manly, open, and " scriptural" principles. It is too late in the day to hope to conduct a large society depending upon voluntary public contributions, by a handful of paid or party agents with closed doors. Already, as we have said, are some of the most zealous and conscientious promoters of the society complaining of the breach of good faith in the self-constituted conductors of the new institution; of the trick played upon the public meeting in entrapping them into an apparent approval of rules and regulations which they had never heard of, and the drift of some of which they could not at the moment suspect, especially the abrogation of the right of clergymen and dissenting ministers to attend meetings of the committee, (as if red and blue coats thought it an intrusion in black ones to interfere with the distribution of the Scriptures); and of their having adopted in secret conclave certain new tests not expressed in the printed rules, and which have not even yet been divulged to the public or to their subscribers; by virtue of which secret tests some of the leaders have already expelled a portion of their brethren, including Mr. Perceval himself, whom they induced to take the chair without apprising him of their secret intention, and then, when he had lent them his aid and the society was formed, expelling him from his office of vice-president. If any thing except their calumnies against the Bible Society could be more contrary to scriptural principles than another, it has been their conduct towards some of their own associates, with whom they sat in confidential intercourse for weeks and months, and without whose aid they could not have formed their institution; and then, the moment it was formed, plotting a secret regulation, and expelling them from their ranks. We shall not enter into matters of personal allusion; but as the new committee complain of the Bible Society's versions of the Scripture, we are obliged in honesty to say, that on looking over the names of the Sackville-street board we shall not have the slightest confidence in theirs, should they survive to produce any. We will not go beyond matters of notoriety; but as a specimen we find on the committee the name of a very pious and amiable layman, but whose name is no guarantee for the integrity of the sacred text, as he has actually attempted in print to foist a portion of the Apocrypha into the inspired canon just to suit some hypothesis of his own about prophecy, and for the same reason has corrupted the sacred text with a gratuitous boldness which no professed neologist has ever surpassed, or perhaps equalled. Our readers remember the remarkable passage, (Dan. viii.), where, in answer to the question how long should the vision be concerning the treading down of the sanctuary, it is answered "Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." This text is clear and explicit, and there is no authority of manuscript or citation to contradict it. But though it is the word of God, it happens to contradict the hypothesis of a member of this new Bible Society committee, and therefore without one word of parley it is forthwith mutilated and altered. Our readers are doubtless incredulous; but, to convince them, we quote the following passage from Mr. Frere's "Eight Letters on the Prophecies," published a short time before he was elected to the office of superintending new versions in the Sackville-street Committee. He says, "The year 1847 is farther pointed out by the vision of the ram and the he-goat, as the epoch when Jerusalem will be cleansed from the pollution of the Mohammedan superstition, as well as restored to political power. For a period of two thousand FOUR hundred years, reckoning from B.c. 553, when the vision was seen (vide marginal date, Dan viii. 1), ends in that year; and this I am fully assured was the correct and original reading of the period; for as the action of the vision begins, like all the other historical prophecies, from the time when it was seen, had it been only of two thousand THREE hundred years, it would already have terminated, and the sanctuary would have been cleansed A.D. 1747.” Was there ever so unscholar-like, neologian, and unchristian a corruption of a text to suit an hypothesis? And this is a gentleman especially selected as a conservator of the sacred text, which the old Bible Society are slanderously and falsely. accused of having perverted. Will any thinking man yield his conscience to a secret committee that selects such ma nagers? And here we may notice an argument which we are surprised has never been alluded to in the matter of rejecting one or another sect from Bible Societies. The vigilance of all sects and parties has been the chief means, under the superintending providence of God, of preserving the Bible pure. Its enemies as well as its friends have thus served its cause. The Jew cannot object to the integrity of the prophecies of the Old Testament, though they condemn himself, for his own fathers were their conservators. So in the Bible Society's versions, it cannot be said that they were unfair in consequence of the exclusion of any one sect. If the plans now proposed had been early carried into operation, or were even yet carried into operation, it might justly be said, a century hence, that there had been a plot to get up unfair transla tions. The popish priests will easily persuade their people that the jealous exclusion of Roman Catholics from Bible Societies is with a view to corrupt the text, and make it speak Protestantism where they think it favourable to Popery. No such suspicion can rest upon the British and Foreign Bible Society's proceedings; for though there has never been a Socinian on the committee, there is no jealous exclusion as to membership, nor shutting out either clergymen or dissenting ministers from the committee; so that if any thing unfair had been done there were always witnesses enough at hand, and of all colours, to complain. It can be no subject of pleasure to any Christian mind, that the janglings and divisions which we have alluded to should have occurred in the new society. They were indeed what we predicted from the first would occur, and what must inevitably go on, till the whole machine falls to pieces; for it has no coherency, like the British and Foreign Bible Society, which adopts a plain intelligible principle; the only bond of union in the new institution being the opposition of its members to the system of the old one. But though the event was predicted and inevitable, it only adds another illustration of the frailty of human nature, and it were better for the peace of the church of Christ that it had not happened; and that, if a new society was formed by secession, the seceders should at least have not begun so soon to quarrel among themselves, and to banish some of their own most zealous and excellent friends. : The aggrieved members have indeed one, remedy in their hands, namely, that if, in the general splitting of parties, fifty of them can agree to require the committee to call a public meeting, it must be done, and the whole matter be reconsidered. Or will they prefer pocke ting the affront and going on quietly? or, if they can nei ther return to the old society nor uphold the new one, form a third, with new rules and tests to their own mind? Those cler gymen, dissenting ministers, and liberal contributors who can submit to the new society's humiliating rule of exclusion, and contentedly yield their conscience and subscriptions, and those of their flocks, to be managed for them in a close committee, instead of seeing with their own eyes and hearing with their own ears, as in the old-fashioned Bible Societies, may go on a little longer with the institution which assumes to itself the character of being conducted on "scriptural principles. " We have omitted to mention another part of the constitution of the new society, which utterly prevents its offering any guarantee for the integrity of its versions, should it ever procure or publish any, or for the general impartiality of its proceedings; namely, that there is a studied omis sion of the old society's rule which provided that the committee should consist of a mixture of churchmen and dissenters. In the new society there is no such provision, and the omission is fatal to the whole character of the institution. The churchman has no guarantee (for all checks are systematically removed) that the ma chine may not fall into the hands of Dissenters, and its versions, if ever it should attempt any, be made to speak any particular set of tenets which the conductors for the time being choose. Can any conscientious clergyman join such a society? a society in which next year there may not be a single clergyman, or even a single churchman,on the committee? Our readers may be assured that we are not exagge rating in this or any other of our remarks; for the society's own code of rules is before them stitched up with our last Number. There is not, we repeat, the slightest security for the Church of England; the word "clergyman" or member of the Church of England is never once men. tioned in the rules; and a clergyman has no right, as we have seen, to attend the committee from his office in virtue of his being a member. He is to pay his guinea, and the secret committee are to do what they like with it; and if his flock ask him what pledge he can give them that their money will be properly bestowed, and that abuses will not find their way into the society far greater than those alleged against the old institution, he can only answer that he takes for granted all will be right. He has no confidence in the great body of religious persons of all persuasions watching over each other's movements in an open committee that keeps no secrets; but he has perfect confidence in the little secret knot of untried gentlemen debating in a close chamber and with inaccessible books, who, for any thing he can know to the con trary, may have other objects in view than the mere circulation of the Scriptures. The Dissenters,also, shun the institution, as not affording to them the slightest guarantee should the managers choose to exclude them from Christian fellowship, as some of the friends of the new society have shewn symptoms of wishing to do from their 66 not being within the covenanted mercies of God." The Society of Friends are already of necessity excluded by the rules; in short, the whole is one miserable stinted system of partizanship and exclusion. Our view of the whole matter may be expressed in one melancholy sentence: That the enemy of souls, who ever watches an opportunity of sowing tares among the wheat, seeing the damage done to his empire by the diffusion of the word of God, and having failed in his first plan of subverting the Bible Society from without, has now grown wiser, and determined to subvert it from within; for he cares not what garb he assumes, if only he can effect his designs; and if he can effect them by the mistaken scruples of good men, rather than by the outrages of the wicked, double is his triumph. VIEW OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. A DAY of national humiliation before God having been appointed by those who hold under Him the temporal and spiritual government of the realm, we know not in what way we can better introduce our monthly sketch of passing events, than by alluding to some of those subjects which may aptly form topics of prayer and serious meditation on that occasion, including several which may also be touched upon with propriety from the pulpit. Our limits oblige us to pass over much that we had wished to urge, on the nature, scriptural sanction, and beneficial effects, of public acts of humiliation, including prayer and fasting; the latter of which ought not to be a mere formal observance, but an appropriate token of true sorrow and contrition. We may, however, the better spare our remarks upon these points, having devoted considerable space to the prayers and exhortations which were used in the days of our forefathers, and which are scarcely less applicable at the present moment. In perusing those venerable documents we perceive humbling acknowledgments of many of those very sins which are also at the present day among our prominent national transgressions; and the mention of this may be useful on the coming occasion in various ways. It may shew us that sin is the great universal disease of every age, every country, and every heart, and that it exhibits itself for the most part in the same hateful characteristics, notwithstanding all the changes and boasted improvements of successive ages. It may further lead to discrimination; so that, in setting forth the peculiar sins of the present day, we may know their bearings as contrasted with former periods, and thus not waste words in vague common-places, instead of coming directly home to the business and consciences of the men of the present generation, shewing them both those sins of which the guilt is theirs in common with all the fallen children of Adam, and those which more peculiarly beset them at the present moment; those which are in a great measure new, or revived with aggravations; for these specific offences form a most important and humbling topic of fast-day meditations. The above contrast may further be useful, to shew in what respects there has been any marked reformation, and what are the peculiar blessings as well as the sins of the present day; for let it not be that in our humiliation we should forget the mercies of God as well as his judgments, for the contrast of these with our personal and national delinquencies is eminently calculated, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to soften the hard heart, and to bring the careless sinner a weeping penitent to his Saviour's cross. And lastly, the retrospect is useful to shew us the forbearance of God and the aggravations of our national sins; for it is no excuse that our forefathers were guilty of some of the same offences; on the contrary, does it not enhance our guilt, that, after so much previous warning and so many national vows, we continue in the same evil path, and with new aggravations? So far, therefore, from such a review extenuating our offences, it displays the more their heinousness. Let not then the ministers of Christ heed the scoffs of the scorner, when he says that their reproofs are only the usual round of fast-day declamations; for the more these despised declamations have been repeated, the greater the guilt and the danger; for he that being often reproved hardens his neck, shall suddenly perish, and that without remedy; and the brighter the light, the guiltier the neglect. At the same time, we repeat, such a review will prevent those exaggerations which only lead to a recoil; the facts of the case will be set forth with scriptural honesty, but also with truth and sobriety, and the countervailing mercies and hopeful features wilt not be forgotten. It would not become the gratitude we owe to God, if we did not thus commemorate the good with the evil; and we should wish in our further remarks that this should be borne in mind, that we may not seem to draw an overcharged picture of modern offences, so as to disparage the good providence of God. We are not forgetful of the improvements introduced by education, our ameliorated legislation, the humane exertions on behalf of every class of sufferers, down to the outcast slave; the circulation of the Scriptures, the increase of pious and devoted clergymen, the building of so many new temples to God's honour, and the abatement of many individual enormities against which our fathers were called to protest. But with all these alleviations, there is, alas! a fearful load of public guilt accompanied by awful symptoms of the Divine displeasure. The first particular which painfully engrosses the national feeling, is that alarming distemper which was the immediate occasion of appointing a day of humiliation. There is much difference of opinion respecting this malady, not only in the popular mind, but among the best informed members of the medical profession. Discussions of this kind are beside our present purpose: it may be, that on the one hand alarm, and in some cases cupidity, have exaggerated the danger, while on the -other, the fear of commercial evil has affected to scoff at it; and it is also true that some of our eminent physicians deny its existence altogether in the character of the specific disease which has desolated the East: but the large number of deaths in the North cannot be overlooked; nor can it be denied that the government have most reluctantly felt it necessary to declare the metropolis itself infected; or that, by order of the king in council, the prayer which deprecated it has been altered to an admission of its presence, and petitions for its removal; or that a day of fasting and penitence has been publicly appointed; or that both houses of parliament have recognised its appearance among us, as a visitation of Divine Providence, and urged every human precaution against its propagation. In all this there is surely much that calls for seriousness of spirit, and a penitent improvement of the visitation, that we may not despise the judgments of God, but turn at his rebuke, and find favour from his mercy. The disease, whatever it is, continues to be the opprobrium of science, and, whereever it has appeared, has shewn how completely are life and health and all things in the hands of God. We are not alarmists; but it is never unseasonable, and at such a moment as the present it is peculiarly befitting, to urge upon men to be ever ready, with their loins girt and their lamps burning, knowing not at what hour the Bridegroom may come. But we shall not dwell at present upon this topic, im portant as it is, since both the press and the pulpit have urged it in a variety of appropriate forms; and as we purpose noticing in an early Number some of the publications, new or reprinted, which have appeared upon the occasion. Among the latter, are Shaw's "Welcome to the Plague," and Vincent's God's "Terrible voice in the City," which are too well known to need our recommendation. Both these were published at the time of the Great Plague; and one or both were reprinted at the time of the alarm, about 1720, when the plague was raging at Marseilles; at which period, also, was published an anonymous, and we presume fictitious, narrative, lately reprinted by the Rev. J. Scott, which, if not written by De Foe, was, we suspect, the basis of his well-known romance of the Plague, published three years after. But whether truth or fiction, it will at the present moment be read with interest, and we should hope not without profit. Archdeacon Hoare, also, has a series of discourses in the press on the present visitation. The next important topic which occurs to us, is the state of political excitement in this and other countries, and the grievous animosities arising out of it. At the moment we write it has somewhat abated; but the reform bill is about to pass the last reading in the House of Commons, and it may again occur. We urge, we implore, all who really wish to obtain the blessing of God upon the approaching day of humiliation, to abstain as much as possible from matters of political allusion and party warfare. We are not ignorant of the danger and the temptation in this respect; and it was probably one reason why the government felt reluctant (we must think guiltily reluctant) to set apart a day for national abasement, lest it might be diverted to wrong ends; that not only would radicals and infidels scoff at it, but that some of the ministers of Christ might desecrate it by political invectives, which, whether deserved or not, no government could be expected to court. If we quarrel every other day in the month, let not the fast-day be thus dishonoured; and who can say, but that, if we keep a due check upon our spirits on that occasion, while bowing down before our Father in heaven, he may render it the commencement of a new era of public peace and harmony? We have large faith in the blessings afforded to suppliant nations. The Bible abounds in instances to that effect. The wide-spread prevalence of infidelity and profaneness, and the public neglect of God, are features of the times so awful, that they cannot escape the notice of the most careless observer. We do not say that such things were not in former days; but the present century has added fearfully to their aggravations and unblushing publicity. There is, we rejoice to say, a large extension of true |