the rest of their fellow-countrymen, and drawn together into Christian settlements. Such, therefore, or similar to it, is the work in Ireland. In Down, in Dingle, and in Achill, there are Protestant settlements, as like to these Christian villages in India as two things can be. The parallel between POPERY and PAGANISM is in nothing closer than this, that both set the mark of the beast upon the right hand and the forehead of all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, that no man might buy or sell save he has the mark." 1 Such faithful ministrations were usual in the time of James II. They were common in London and in the two universities. The effects were severely felt by the Romanists, for the people, being now permitted to read the Scriptures, discovered that the peculiarities of Popery were not to be found in the sacred volume, but that they rested only on the traditions of men. The following excellent observations are worthy of deep attention : "In all our remarks on the present ineffective state of the Church of England in this metropolis, we have ever insisted on the paramount necessity of a style of preaching that should address itself to the heart and understanding of the people. Without such a style, and without a consequent persuasion that the preacher believes and feels what he says, learning, orthodoxy, scriptural and ritual lore, morality, philosophy, and good taste, will produce not conviction, but sleep, and will drive away those who desire a more real faith and a more wakeful worship." 2 And again :"When a man's soul is in his work, especially such a work as the salvation of souls, he will rather require to be drawn into needful recreation and rest than to be kept at his post and compelled to keep time. But such are heaven-sent, not the gift of universities and schools. Most clergymen enter their profession with an inadequate idea of its requirements; and, unfortunately, their first impressions on this point are more apt to be weakened than strengthened and defined." These are noble sentiments and worthy of the premier of the British press. 6 "Tell me," writes another, "if this is not a season when this high and mighty Church of England-which, in its upper ranks at least, liveth in luxury,' and is perhaps dead while she liveth,' -might not afford to waive certain differences with the dissenting body, and say, 'My brethren, the harvest is ready, but the labourers are few join us in the great battle which, as soldiers of Christ, we are all bound to fight against sin and crime.'” 3 1 Church of England Quarterly Review, April, 1855, p. 366. APPEALS THROUGII THE PRESS. 389 Remark again the tendency of a second letter:-" Walking as I frequently do in the sublime nave of Westminster, I, for one, should not feel that it was more chilly and more useless from knowing that it was occasionally occupied by an earnest preacher, and by thousands of attentive and profiting people. The spectacle, week by week, beneath the majestic dome of St. Paul's and the timehonoured vaulting of Westminster Abbey, of an earnest and able preacher, and crowds of hearers, calling themselves by many names, and yet all Christians, is too inviting to be unrealized, at least in imagination. If the Church of England is the church of the people, and not of a section, will it not think on these things?" 1 Well and nobly written are the following remarks, showing how Caste should be abolished in the Establishment, in order that the National Church may attain that conformity with Christianity which may once more invest the Establishment with the primitive influence of the great CHRISTIAN CONGREGATION :— "A fuller and more friendly intercourse, in private and in public, with foreign Protestant Churches, with the Scotch Presbyterian Establishment, and with English orthodox dissenters, is the plain and imperative duty of English churchmen."2 : Finally all the great regenerating movements among the masses have been effected through the instrumentality of the Christian AMBASSADOR. St. Paul, and Apollos, and the early missionaries of Christianity; Wickliffe, Cobham, Luther, Farel, Wesley, Whitfield, in later times,-all these, and many others of the same stamp, have been the true instrumental sources whence light, and life, and conviction, have gone forth to irradiate and rouse to action the dulness of formalism and the torpor of ritualists. By this agency, whole communities have been elevated morally and physically, while all other powers have been impotent to exalt, to purify, or to ennoble. Let us never forget, that, however closely man is brought into communion with the Deity by prayer, the approving sentence, "Behold he prayeth," can only be pronounced over him that repenteth. The great Baptist's mission of "Repent ye," preceded the communion of saints. The present is essentially the era of the Christian ambassador, and all things, alike in the East and the West, demonstrate the rapid fulfilment of the sublime apocalyptic vision of the holy seer, who discerned the "ANGEL flying in the midst of heaven, having THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people." 3 "Times," March 17, 1857. 2 Church of England Quarterly Review. 3 Revel. xiv. 6. 390 CHAPTER III. THE GREAT PURITAN; OR, THE DEFENDER OF THE FAITH. "The present age should profit by the salutary lessons bequeathed it by the past. We require a better Christianity; one more free, more evangelical, more extensive, more spiritual, more enlightened, more moral, and more emancipated from every political bias. May God grant it to us!" D'AUBIGNE'S VINDICATION OF THE PROTECTOR. THE historian and the man of sense will hold cheap the bigot who prates lightly of PURITANS. They made a Papistical hierarchy quail before them; and, if it must be so, the same spirit yet lives to put down the theatrico-hierarchical Caste that has wormed its way into the Establishment. No course could be more detrimental, none more deadly, more utterly ruinous to the National Church, than that system of double-faced hypocrisy, connived at by certain members of the episcopal bench, by which whole masses of the people have been driven into the arms of Dissent. people of England, as Christians, can recognize (as we have already observed) no such thing as "the two great parties who have always existed in the Church." They demand not Caste, but Christianity, and they cannot recognize this where the rights of the Christian congregation are superciliously ignored, and the principles, doctrines, and practices of the old Popish Church of England are still in full force. These they wish clean cleared away. The As Christians, they wish preaching, not pagan mumbling; praying, not a sing-song lullaby in a Protestant Church; and if that Church is to continue national, it must represent the national mind. It is on this principle that the acquittal of the seven bishops as stanch Protestants in the days of James II., and the appointment in our own Papalizing days of bishops as stanch as their predecessors, rest upon the same footing. These men, like "The two parties we have referred to have always existed in the Church of England with as much uniformity, and apparently under much the same conditions, as the Whigs and Tories, the Liberals and Conservatives of the political world. Politicians very often modify their creed, or at least their practice, from the moment they step into office; in fact, the necessities of government will not allow everything to be retained, or everything to be given up. Much the same-from an equal necessity-takes place in the Church, and toleration is expected even in bishops."-TIMES. THE ANGEL OF THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL AND THE ACTOR. 391 their ancestors, are hailed throughout the length and breadth of the land, alike by sound-hearted churchmen and generous dissenters; for both instances are PROTESTS: they struck then, as they now strike, a vigorous blow at the paganized superstitions within and without the Church of England. They do more to Christianize the people of our land, more to give them stability and true dignity of character, than the appointment of a whole bench of bishops, however learned in patristic lore, the canon law, or the lives of the saints. England thirsts for the blessings of religion; but it is not the religion of man, but the religion of God. The purer, the more Christ-like, is the standard of the National Church ;the less she raises her priest, and the more she exalts her Christ ;— the more the ANGEL OF THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL prevails over the ACTOR OF THE SANCTUARY,-the wider will her influence extend; the deeper will she strike her roots; yea, the more deeply will they strike into the soil of the nation's heart: the tree will be vigorous and shoot forth mighty branches bearing goodly fruit, and under it the nations of the earth will find a welcome shade. On the other hand, the more she yields to hieratic claims and to debasing superstitions;-the more she is a dealer with the lacemercer, the jeweller, the chandler, the brazier, the milliner;-the more she degrades herself to be the laundress of ecclesiastical childhood,—the more deeply will she be detested as the treacherous handmaid, instead of the NURSING MOTHER; the wider will be the secessions from her tainted body, and the stronger will be the national disgust. Are Englishmen so wanting in perception as not to be able to distinguish the painted stone orange, with its chilly coldness and its rigid incompressibility, from the real, juicy, generous, and full-flavoured fruit of nature? Let it never be forgotten by Englishmen, and by English statesmen, that all the grand eras of Britain's glory have been in connection with her CHRISTIANITY; apart from this, she has become the drivelling slave of foreign despots, or the corporate proprietary of an Italian pagan Caste. "Then," says Macaulay, came those days never to be recalled without a blush; the days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices; the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds; the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed with complacent infamy her degrading insults and more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government which had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the anathema maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place worship was paid to Charles and James-Belial and Moloch; and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race accursed of God and man was a second time driven forth to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a byword and a shaking of the head to the nations.1 "When the Dutch cannon startled an effeminate tyrant in his own palace; when the conquests which had been won by the armies of Cromwell were sold to pamper the harlots of Charles ;—when Englishmen were sent to fight, under foreign banners, against the independence of Europe and the Protestant religion, many honest hearts swelled in secret at the thought of one who had never suffered his country to be ill used by any but himself. It must, indeed, have been difficult for any Englishman to see the salaried viceroy of France, at the most important crisis of his fate, sauntering through his harem, yawning and talking nonsense over a despatch, or beslubbering his brother and his courtiers in a fit of maudlin affection, without a respectful and tender remembrance of him before whose genius the young pride of Louis and the veteran craft of Mazarin had stood rebuked; who had humbled Spain on the land, and Holland on the sea; and whose imperial voice had arrested the sails of the Libyan pirates and the persecuting fires of Rome." 2 "Had Cromwell's spirit animated the English government in our days," says D'Aubigné, " the iniquity of Otaheite would never have been committed; and we should not have seen the priest-party in France inveighing, on the one hand, against the three northern powers for annihilating the independence of Cracow, and, on the other, making war upon a people who have never known a master, and who, as regards moral power and political and religious life, are certainly far superior to the Cracovian citizens. The energy with which this little nation has held in check, for several years, the people who consider themselves the first in the world, is a pretty clear proof that it deserves to be independent. "The priest-party of France, by protesting against the occupation of Cracow, and by provoking the assault on Otaheite, has had the unenviable honour of furnishing the civilized world with the most notorious example in modern times, of that blindness which strains at a gnat and swallows a camel.'" 1 Macaulay's Essays, i. 47, 48. 2 Ibid. 182, 187. |