knew not God." Nor can it ever know Him thus. That law which regulates the true advance of a Christian people is a law of the soul--it has its penalties for thought, while human laws punish only the act. Let us not mistake. The measure of man's goodness and the measure of man's "innocence" are to be found, not in himself, but in his Creator.

To those who advocate such frivolous pastime for immortal beings at such a period, and who yet claim the appellation of Christians, we may well exclaim, as they stand on their giddy height

Beware, O Christian Wise-man, lest thou hence
Do fall, and soil thy Princely Eminence!
Though Cardinal thy virtues all be found

For thee, 'tis well to build on solid ground.

Better a thousand times the truth in a barn-in the mouth of a child-in the wilderness from the lips of the rough seaman— than the treacherous ministrations of too many of our highly-educated teachers, whose only god is CASTE.

It is worthy of remark, that while not a few of the Romanizing priesthood of our Church and their stanchest adherents advocate Sunday music, the sound-hearted portion of the Establishment, the Presbyterians, and the whole of the Dissenting congregations throughout the length and breadth of the land, heartily oppose it. Here, then, we have classed on the one side Papalists, AngloCatholics, and men of no religious profession; and on the other ministers and congregations holding the principles of Ridley, aud Latimer, and Jewell, and acting up to the spirit of the Christian revelation. These parties are diametrically opposed to each other: the practices of the one have ever eventuated in degrading, those of the other in exalting, our country.

"The Romanist press inveighs against our country for hallowing the Sabbath-day. Why? Because they have raised to a level with the Sabbath the ordinances of men. In Catholic countries Good Friday is far more solemnly observed than the Sabbath day, and saints' days are more decorously kept."

Across the Channel we see the majority of a nation, in true heroic guise, selecting this peaceful day for taking heaven by storm, with drums beating and colours flying. Such is the model some would propose for a reflecting people like the English. And are things more rationally ordered by the supreme authorities of the National Church? Is this grave body-the depositary of the piety of the sixth Edward and the

Dr. Cumming: Apocalyptic Sketches.

sound judgment of Jewell-exempt from the taint of this artistic Caste of Religious Taste? Alas! what a pitiful exhibition of vital religion is drawn forth from man's crowded ark of Christianity! This is not a question between two sections in the Church—it is a question between false religion and TRUTH. Grave "law lords" sit in judginent upon an appeal upon which the spirit of true religion throughout the world looks down with pity and with grief.1

The Christianity of this great country is degraded to the patternbook of the clothier; and the adjustment of coloured cloths is elevated to the sublimity of the religion of rainbows. In foreign lands, as in our own, reflecting minds survey such scenes with surprise and compassion, and are apt to see in the grey tresses of legal sacerdotism, an incongruous weaving of law and gospel-a sort of artistic material, new in the spiritual world, for the clerical surplice—

Where woven from their wigs, is seen
Dame Liddle's spotless crinoline.

Has not the world had enough of this cultivation of symbolism? "It is a fact," says Dr. Cumming, "that Pugin was converted by his architectural taste from being what is called a Protestant, to be what he is, a real Roman Catholic."

Let us ever remember that the Christian is not a captive, to be led forth in the chains of floral garlands at special seasons, to swell the pomp of the church militant; nor is he to be paraded at fixed times, and gifted, at the sacerdotal will, with the afflatus of local holiness. The Christianity of a certain class of men requires something very grand and very substantial to be thankful to God for,

Some o'er good dinners only say their grace;

Some mumble something with an earth-prone face;
Some rise half up, while all the others sit,

And gravely shut their eyes a little bit.

Alas! it is to be feared that to a certain section of devotees, St. Paul's " own hired house," where he preached for "three whole years," would be a very shabby temple.

Our modern Christianity becomes so weary with Sunday meditation, that a little visit to the Museum comes to be reputed a species of moral and tasteful pilgrimage to the holy shrine of man's intellectual Loretto: the benefit to be derived is equal to the purity imbibed from its Italian prototype. Then, again, as the Italian hand-organ is an "innocent recreation" for nursemaids and children, there is really no reason why a brigade of these diligent

1 Their late decision permits party-coloured changes of altar-cloths.

practitioners and musical devotees should not perform alongside of the Sunday band. Both would be hired by private parties, and both would be for "innocent recreation." It is clear that, if Sunday bands receive remuneration, the poor Italian organist should not be debarred from his gains also. In truth, no more mischievous deed has been for a long time wrought with a high hand than the musical consecration of the parks by the High-Caste Bishop Bull. Is this, we ask, the atmosphere of reflection? or is it the sounding stream that bears man irresistibly along, like some heathen ablutionist, upon its current of fictitious holiness? Alas! for the musical ignorance of the great tent-maker and the fishermen of Galilee ! No Sunday band had these benighted Christians to aid them in the harmonious regeneration of corruption! Our second-hand statesmen manage things better.

The whole tenor of the Christian's life is one continuous struggle between that which is apparently substantial and that which is actually visionary. Surrounded by the light of earth, he is to walk by that of heaven; realities are to be invisible, and invisibilities real. He must view the concrete grossness of his physical being as a passing mist, and feel that all its relations with intellect, and all its wealth of taste, are absolutely impotent by their treasures to carry out the great ransom of his immortality. To his dismay, man has to learn from Christianity, that the most exquisite mental beauty, attended by her loveliest offspring, cannot pass beyond the clay tenement which she inhabits, nor the soil upon which her tabernacle has been reared. Intellect cannot purge immortality, any more than the son can create the parent that begat him, States may bestow upon man their homage to dignify his existence; -on him nations may pour out their honours, with a view to fertilize the blood-stained soil of patriotism, even as multitudinous rills are sent forth to vivify the wastes of creation;-for him music may shed its light over the night of time, and art may pour its golden rays upon the evening of his existence ;-nay, he himself may be the living shrine of all that mind can contain, and all that art can glorify, and yet be less exalted, less dignified, less secure, than the Temple penitent, who smote upon his breast with "God be merciful to me a sinner!" The first is the child of Caste-the last is the offspring of Christianity. How does God look down upon this intellectual process of man to do Him honour? What! honour God merely with the intellect, when He requires the homage of the soul? Was it to redeem intellectuality that the Eternal Divinity descended into man? Was it not to ransom the kindred essence of immortality? A worship of heathen intellectuality Jehovah must behold with righteous indignation. To be exalted,

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271

man must first be humble: he must be the "little child"1 before he can be the king.2

Englishmen there is a time coming when all will have a decisive opportunity of testing the power of the painted materialities of man's holiness; of proving the value of those visors and robes, the theatrical properties of corporate holiness, which, hired out and transferred from iniquity to iniquity, would invest superstition with the features of Christ. Yes! at the hour when you shall be clearest for judgment, but feeblest for strength, then summon to your bed-side the idols of man's "Church." Bid the acolyte bring forward the jewelled covering of a Papalized eucharist; let the might of science usher into the chamber of gloom the massive altar; hither hasten the sacerdotal procession, and with them bring those modern saviours of a ruined world, the sacred candlesticks, and bid their twinkling tapers light thy gloomy steps through the Valley of the Shadow of Death into the presence of thy God. Thy reason scorns the cheat, and revelation utters its anathema on thine idolatry of sense. The very fact that Christianity requires of man more than man of himself can effect-that it demands the tribute of a spiritualized existence, towards which he can offer nothing more pure than impurity, nothing more free than slavery-demonstrates the inadequacy of intellectual pomp and an æsthetic worship to raise man from a degradation which is emphatically a degradation of the soul. In a land where revelation is the professed gauge of Christianity, it is a common idea, which betrays a heathenism of apprehension little to be expected, that devotion is raised by what is courteously termed the "solemnities of music ;"3 that it can discourse to assembled masses in all the eloquence of holiness; and that it is as well able to raise the soul to God as God's message delivered by God's ambassador. What an ingenious special pleader is fallen humanity! It will produce you authorities from ethics-from the conventionalities of life-from right reason -and even from revelation, when the Caste-god is to be enthroned. For those who virtually make a religion for their Maker by making a religion for themselves, all reference to the inner life of the Christian is unwelcome. It is to this test, however, that we must come, or ours is not Christianity. Say, then, immortal spirit-for

1 "Except ye become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven."

2 "He hath made us kings and priests."

3 66 Organs, or instruments of music in the public worship of God, were not introduced until the ninth century A.D. From the firm protest of the monks, you would suppose them fierce puritans, or excited Covenanters, speaking against it.”—DR. CUMMING: Apocalyptic Sketches.

religion demands not the response echoed from thine earthly shrine is this thy mode of being alone with thy God and holding hallowed converse? Does not the Christian more truly hold conI verse with his FATHER, when he has "entered his closet and shut to the door"? Here is a test of the reality of the communion between heaven and earth-between the immortal soul and its immortal Maker. Here is nothing to deceive or falsify the judgment. Here, in silence, no music excites the intellectual being, nor treacherously usurps the sovereignty of the soul. The communion is of the spirit, and not of sense; the one is of Christianity, the other is of Caste.

There is a special object for which the Romanizing party is striving to exalt the taste of our countrymen. Once get the people of England passionately to follow taste, and you will soon have them following their artistic teachers wherever they choose to lead. English travellers to Italy and Rome are particularly exposed to this peril. Taste is a treacherous guest. The tiger is beautiful; but he loves blood. Go near enough to stroke him down, and you will soon be in his jaws. Your taste will assuredly lead to his tasting you.

If an excessive love towards husband, wife, or child-the dearest of ties-be denounced by God as standing between Himself and His creature, how much more must an overweening passion for architecture, painting, or statuary, be, under similar conditions, the object of His sovereign displeasure! These become the lymphatic toxica of the life spiritual.

We

Papal Europe presents England with an instructive lesson. have only to look around, and observe in every Sunday-despising country, the press in fetters and the despot strong. The moral of this may be read by the pure politician; the Christian has it engraven on his heart. It is the slave consoling himself for his slavery by drunkenness.

Let the statesman, let the free citizen, let the patriot well ponder on this important axiom, that liberty of speech, liberty of free action, liberty for a free press, never have, never will, and never can exist, where they rest not upon the solid basis of CHRISTIANITY. It is a childish, a vain chimera, to attempt to unite true freedom with contempt of Christianity; and he is guilty of that contempt who does not, as far as in him lies, carry out practically and honestly, not the half, but the whole of its teachings. If once the pure intellectualist leaves the fortress of Revelation, he must be prepared to meet many a "strong man, mightier than he," who will inevitably "strip him of his armour, wherein he trusted." Man is a "prisoner of hope," and his only safety is in falling back upon the "STRONGHOLD.