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We doubt this; we would rather see a yearly meeting of delegates from all the churches for prayer for each other and the general church militant, and especially, that the spirit of unity, peace, and brotherly love, may be accorded to all Christ's true disciples throughout the world. The information must necessarily be extremely abridged and shallow. Far better for each to publish reports in full, and let these be interchanged and studied by the committees and members. The following paragraph we recommend to those among our own professedly evangelical brethren, who complain of all honest and open testimonies against flagrant and deadly errors as uncharitable and unjust; and who seem to think error, when they are pleased to regard it as conscientiously embraced, as entitled to quite the same deference and respect as truth.

"Still the question remains,-Whence have foreigners, while visiting the United States, received the impression which, by being promulgated in their writings, has led me to write this chapter. The answer is easy. While such is the prevailing respect and regard for each other among the members of our evangelical churches, they all unite in opposing, on the one hand, the errors of Rome, and on the other, the heresy that denies the proper divinity and atonement of Christ, together with those other aberrations from the true gospel which that heresy involves. Now it is this refusal to hold fellowship with errors of vital moment—it is this earnest contending for saving truth-that leads tourists in the United States, whom chance or choice has thrown into the society of persons opposed in their religious tenets to the evangelical churches, to charge us with uncharitableness. Hinc illa lachrymæ." P. 611.

Book VI., in fine, would of itself constitute a highly interesting volume. The student of church history will find much interesting. matter for study, and the ministers and members of all our churches may gather many instructive lessons from the perusal of its pages. There is something for all of us. The Episcopalian will see some, at least, of the causes of the low state in which, notwithstanding past state favour and endowments, the American branch of the Church of England was found at the close of the revolutionary war. Would that he might learn from it how useless an official a diocesan bishop is when he does not, or cannot, actually oversee his flock; that a careless clergy can never be transformed into wise and faithful pastors by the mere command of an ecclesiastical superior; and that where the parish minister is wise and faithful, and takes the word of God for his rule, to use the words we once heard fall from the mouth of an English prelate, at the conclusion of a charge, the bishop has little need to give, and the minister little need to receive, the counsels of any such superior. In fact, to the Great Bishop he is directly responsible for the souls committed to him, and to that Bishop it behoves him to look for wisdom and for strength.

ART. V.-1. Assemblée Générale de la Société Evangélique de Genève. Douzième Anniversaire. Genève, 1843. 2. Third Annual Report of the Foreign Aid Society. 1843.

London,

IN studying the past or present history of the Church of Christ, and examining with some degree of impartiality the great divisions into which it has been separated, the sentiment will naturally occur

-How often, when conflicts have arisen, have both of the opposing parties been right and both wrong,-both right, inasmuch as each held a portion of divine truth,—both wrong, inasmuch as each rejected a portion,-in either case that portion which the other had embraced. Hence fierce contests have arisen. The truth is in the centre; but the combatants, anxious to recede as far as possible from one another, have receded farther and farther from the truth, and in the end have landed in very serious errors. Let us apply this remark to what our fathers or ourselves have witnessed during the past or the present century, and we shall see the truth of it. There have been too great parties engaged in conflict with one another in the Christian world, to the one of which we shall, for the sake of distinction, give the name of Religious Liberals-to the other that of Religious Purists. The Religious Liberals have seen clearly the great doctrine of the true unity of the Church of Christ, and the obligations resting on all Christians to love and to acknowledge each other as brethren. But they have not equally realized the authority and the importance of all the truth that God has been pleased to reveal in his holy Word, and the bounden duty of men diligently to examine it, and, as far as it is discovered, firmly to maintain it. Hence there has often been an indefiniteness in their religious sentiments, a disposition to regard as of no importance serious errors into which other good men may have fallen, and to overlook important truths and points of duty. The ultimate effects of the predominance of Religious Liberalism have been, that reverence for God's Word has been greatly diminished, that serious errors of doctrine and practice have crept into churches, and Christians and men of the world have been too much blended together. The religious Purists, on the other hand, have felt in all its force the solemn obligation resting upon them to search out the whole truth which God has revealed, and to bow to it with entire submission of understanding, and to maintain it with uncompromising firmness. But they have exalted doctrines that were secondary and non-essential into the place of those which are primary and fundamental; and not satisfied with contending for what they believed to

be the whole truth of God, they have regarded as aliens from Israel other religious bodies whom God was employing as some of his most powerful instruments for carrying on his cause in the world. In consequence of the predominance of Religious Purism, good men have been almost entirely separated from the Church Universal, insomuch that no one could ever have discovered from their practice that they had received a solemn command from their dying Lord that they should love their brethren even as he loved them. The tendency of the English mind-generous, unsuspecting, social, ardent, but too apt to take up its opinions suddenly, to hold them somewhat loosely, and to yield to a culpable good nature—is towards Religious Liberalism. The tendency of the Scottish mind—more reserved, more slow and accurate in forming, and more tenacious in maintaining its opinions, more disposed and better fitted for controversy, more jealous of what is new-is towards Religious Purism. Now, the person who reads the Word of God, resolved not to be influenced by the peculiarities of either party, will soon discover that both duties are recognised and enjoined,-the duty, on the one hand, of loving and of acknowledging as brethren the rest of the followers of the Lord Jesus,—and the duty of reverencing, and of maintaining and defending whatever God has revealed. These two duties therefore cannot be incompatible with one another. Differing, as Christians have done in all ages, still do, and must do, as regards constitutional tendencies and mental capacity, and degrees of knowledge and of grace, until the everlasting morning breaks, ́and the shadows of ignorance and sin for ever flee away, it is foolish to expect that they will ever perfectly agree in their views of divine truth; and if their differences in respect to some of their sentiments are to constitute a ground of alienation and separation, there can be no hope of general Christian union and co-operation till time shall be no more. It is evident therefore that the Scriptures must contemplate the exercise of mutual affection and forbearance on the part of the various Christian bodies towards one another, notwithstanding their shades of difference-must contemplate that each shall maintain firmly what he believes to be contained in the Divine Word, and yet prove by his conduct that he regards other Christians whose views do not entirely coincide with his own as brethren in Christ. Now, we trust that this is just the state of mind to which the Church of Christ in this and other lands, conscious of thickening dangers and collecting enemies, is approaching. It has had ample and painful experience, from the days of the Reforma tion down to the present time, of the evils which spring from the predominance of either of these views to the exclusion of the other. We trust that the time is approaching when both shall be united, and both shall be seen to harmonize with one another.

Such, then, are the principles on which must be founded any co-operation and interchange of Christian feeling between the various religious bodies, whether in this country or on the continent. We are not at present exhibiting the precise limits to which even Christian men may go,-the very point at which their errors become of so serious a nature that it becomes necessary, in some very decided manner to show our strong disapprobation,-nor discussing the peculiar circumstances under which it may be necessary, for a time at least, to stand aloof from men who yet hold, to appearance, from the heart, the great fundamental principles of the Christian faith, but are only sketching the broad general ground of union and co-operation. Now the people of God, who hold the great cardinal principles of Christianity, are found either in larger or smaller numbers in most of the Continental countries where the persecutions of Rome have not entirely extirpated the Protestants, as in Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Piedmont, Prussia, Bavaria, Bohemia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, &c. In these countries, the two great divisions are those who adhere to the Lutheran and those who belong to the Reformed Church, the former of whom, residing as they do for the most part in countries where the German language is spoken, have been more deeply and generally imbued with neology; but among both of these bodies, and in all these countries, many men of true piety are to be found-men who are the only representatives of our common Christianity in the countries where they reside, the only persons to hold forth the glorious doctrines of the Gospel amid the darkness around. In several of the nations we have referred to, men who are well known all over the Christian world, and who represent considerable bodies of Christians, are to be found, with whom a correspondence might be originated, while a little inquiry would enable us speedily to discover men of intelligence and of piety in them all. Of the subjects which would furnish the materials of such a correspondence, it may seem almost needless to speak. Of course the letters which would be written would contain an interchange of affectionate feeling and interest, and mutual encouragement to hold fast, and firmly to defend and zealously to spread the great principles of our common faith. Then, too, in return for the information communicated respecting the state of religion in our own Church, and its difficulties and dangers, and its plans of usefulness, we should expect to learn the religious condition of the Continental Churches, the leading errors which were springing up around them, and the opposition or the persecutions to which they were exposed, and the successes which were attending the preaching of the Gospel, and their new enterprises for spreading the Redeemer's kingdom. Especially might we obtain full and minute and authentic information of the progress

and of the machinations of that great common enemy, Popery, which already is evidently preparing to crush and tread down all the followers of Christ wherever it has the power. And such information would give to our brethren scattered all over the Continent a definite place in our minds, would call forth our affection towards them, and lead us often to offer up our prayers with that distinctness and fervency which would be likely to draw down the blessing from on high.

The importance of maintaining such intercourse with Continental Christians, and not with them alone, but with the Evangelical bodies generally in this land and in other parts of the world,—is increased tenfold by a consideration of the grand peculiar errors of the times-errors that are rising with portentous strength and rapidity over a large portion of the world. At these times when any very dangerous error is becoming widely disseminated, the Church of God is peculiarly called upon to lift up a loud and distinct and energetic testimony against it, and to unfold and illustrate and defend the opposing truth. Apply this principle to the existing state of the professing Church, and it becomes evident that it is the true nature and real unity of the Church Universal, the body of Christ,— as opposed to the Popish unity, which is maintained on the Continent, and the Puseyite unity, which is maintained in Great Britain-it is, we say, this true nature and real unity of the Church, for which all Christians are called especially to contend. It is, however, the nature of the doctrines of Christianity that they have a practical bearing and tendency, and cannot be cordially received into the heart without powerfully influencing the conduct. There are certain corresponding duties that arise out of these doctrines, to overlook which is practically, and in the eyes of the world, to deny the doctrines. This being the case, it is evident that there is needed not only a great verbal or intellectual, but also a great practical testimony against the unity of Romanism and Puseyism, and in favour of the true unity of the Church. Now we are satisfied, after calmly considering the subject, that it has been the absence of this practical testimony that has to so lamentable an extent destroyed the moral weight of the verbal testimony afforded by many of the evangelical clergy of the Church of England. After reading in pamphlets or in newspapers many of the attacks of Evangelical Episcopalians directed against the Tractarian notion of the Church, we have remarked the two following things: First, That it has been comparatively seldom that the great Scriptural principles respecting the Church have been fully and fearlessly unfolded, and pressed home in all their practical consequences. Thus, for instance, the Puseyites have maintained that their ministers were the only successors of the Apostles, therefore the only persons who

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