and a Wesley?—or wipe from his memory the more recent imposing secession in the North? Is there, in the sons of the English Church, no spark of that spirit which kindled into high and holy resolve in the breasts of a Chalmers, a Candlish, a Guthrie, and others? Nor need the fear of results detain them from taking this momentous step, when the time in their opinion, has come; for a free Episcopal Church, with its ceremonial, its liturgy, and a purified ministry, would be a popular institution, would attract to itself both wealth and intelligence, and neutralize a large portion of the Nonconformity of the realm.

But we have not so much to do with the duties of others, as with those which are incumbent on ourselves. In looking then at the strange features which spread themselves around us, it becomes us rightly to estimate their gravity. No one with the slightest pretensions to true religious sympathies can be a listless spectator of the great ecclesiastical drama which is passing on every hand. If there be those who are disposed to regard it as a dreamy thing, as a transient and passing pageant, they may trace their mistake in the interest it has awakened, and in the glee it has occasioned among the avowed enemies of evangelical truth; that its stage, its characters, and its scenery, are not unreal but substantial, is indicated by the delight with which these parties prognosticate that the age of what they call bigotry is on the wane. Certainly if we look at society through the medium of the Endowed Church, with its rampant rationalism on the one hand, and its equally assertive sacerdotalism on the other, with the mixed elements which fill up the intervening ground, and observe at the same time what is passing with out, we must infer that the tendency

of the times is to laxity of principle, to an utter repudiation in the instance of religion of all that is positive, definite, and abiding, and to the ushering in of a day of indiscriminating indifference. If the recent sale of livings, the bartering of the souls of men under that highest sanction in the kingdom, with the late decision of the Privy Council, fail to shock the moral sensibilities of the nation, we must have already made most ominous strides towards general torpor and death. There is, moreover, a presiding secular spirit obtruding itself upon us in relation to spiritual things. A forgetfulness of propriety, of becoming reserve, and of an appropriately dignified demeanour with regard to them has been considered hitherto as belonging exclusively to the lower strata of Dissent, to that fanatical class which has been regarded as the dregs of secession. This unenviable notoriety is no longer confined within such limits, but the most solemn verities are beginning to be treated in high places with a flippancy which would be unbecoming far inferior themes. The most awful mysteries of our faith are bandied about by ecclesiastical notabilities, and by the potentates of a political hierarchy, with a total disregard of true refinement, to say nothing of the absence of the profound reverence which they claim. The pages of the newspaper are now and again rendered the vehicles of unseemly strifes, and of embittered discussions, on subjects which fill the thoughtful mind with indescribable awe. Commercial advertisements and great Christian dogmas are found in juxtaposition, the exchange and the eternal destinies of men jostle each other and take a common level. There is a sort of spiritual vandalism abroad, before whose withering touch all that is sacred shrivels and dies. The Goths have rent the veil, and

thy shoes from off thy feet, the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." The times which pass over us, either for evil or for good, do not spend their influence on themselves; they survive their date; they send their undulations on to succeeding years. They determine the characteristic features of unborn ages. Who can calculate the effect of the occurrences we are deploring, on the youth who throng our Universities and who are destined to be the statesmen, the judges, and the preachers of the next generation? Who can guage their influence on the literature of our age, and on the modes of thought which may prevail in our families and our homesamong those, that is to say, who are to determine the complexion of coming times?

It is obvious, then, that on the one hand there is a subtle agency at work, which seeks to plant among us empty and fruitless speculations to the utter subversion of all dogmatic instruction, and that there is another which aims to merge personal responsibility in priestly interposition, and to lull us to sleep beneath the shade of a blighting superstition. These are the two extremes to which the unwary and the thoughtless have from time immemorial been at once attracted and impelled,

and which have assumed a somewhat prurient notoriety in our day. It would be bootless to attempt to measure their respective declivities, or to indicate the depths of disappointment and dishonour to which they separately conduct, but it is enough for us to know that these are the two gaunt presences which confront us, which we have to meet with a steady eye and a determined will, with which we are to hold no dalliance, and to admit no compromise, but to resist each with an unfaltering voice, in the language of the Great Master:"Get thee behind me Satan, thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.'

And should we not, my brethren, guard against a too indiscriminating sympathy with the aesthetic spirit of the times? Society, like individuals, has its impulses, its moods, and its antipathies. These are so silently occasioned and formed, that we are unable to detect the process; they slide into and supersede each other so subtilely, and are so gradually taken in through the interstices and pores of social life, that almost all we know of them is, that they exist; and so Protean are they, so transient comparatively is their stay, that we. can trace them only in their relics. Whether from the restless activity of great animated masses, from a freer intercourse with foreign nations, from the spirit of ingenious enterprise, or from these and other causes combined, it is not requisite to decide, but it is clear that the present age offers no exception to the rulethat it differs, that is to say, in its superficial features, from those which have preceded it. But change does not necessarily intend improvement, nor a love of ornament indicate refinement. Esthetic tendencies do not always bring with them corresponding conceptions, any more than intellectual proclivities necessarily in

volve mental power. It would be difficult, I think, with all our progress, to detect any very marked advancement in true taste, either in the architecture, the fashions, or the manners of the day. The tone which prevails in general society has shown. itself in religious communities-and among others, in our own-in the altered style of our chapels, the modes of our worship, and the tendencies towards the imposing and ornate. If we admit that in these respects we have taken a step in the right direction, is there no danger, my brethren, of our going too far-of the spirit of competition and the passion for display impelling us too fast? May we not bound forward in this direction with a force which will entail and demand a corresponding recoil? Are we in no danger of falling into the gross notion, of drinking in the far too common, but very subtle feeling, that human artifice commends itself to the Divine complacency?-that material grandeur comports with the spiritual essence? -that garnished temples are pleasing to God? An error which we must admit, pervades all superstitions. "But where is. the house that you will build unto me," saith the Lord, "and where is the place of my rest?" May we not go on till the forms of our worship endanger and overlay its spirit, till screens and vestments, and intonations, and chants, become substitutes, instead of auxiliaries, to the intelligent devotion of the sanctuary, and so call down the rebuke, Bring no more vain oblation"? Is it altogether certain that we may not adapt our religious houses and services to the cravings of novelty until we appeal through them to the imagination rather than to the understanding, and render them channels of agreeable excitement, rather than sanctifying means of grace? Is there no danger of the sword of the Spirit

itself losing its edge while brandished amidst so much that is incidental and artistic? While giving all proper attention to the tastefulness and commodiousness of our places of worship, and to the order, impressiveness, and decorum of their sacred engagements, we will not forget, brethren, that we have nothing to do with an age when all was typical, whether buildings or ceremonies, or sacrifices, from the golden bell and the pomegranate that adorned the robe of the priest, to the Urim and Thummim which glistened on his breast, from the altar before which Solomon stood spreading forth his hands towards heaven, to the gorgeous temple itself, beneath whose vaulted roof he poured forth his sublime prayer;-but the rather we will bear in mind that whether we convene in the lowly cottage or in the well-appointed sanctuary, we

come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to the innumerable company of angels, to God the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling which speaketh better things than the blood of Abel."

It is incumbent on us to nourish as wisely as we can in the youth of our congregations a profound reverence for the Word of God.

The most artful, and certainly the most successful way of getting rid of evangelical truth, is to weaken the influence of the book which contains it; this, therefore, has always been the policy of the free-thinking school. "If," say these men, "you wish to dispose of the unction about which the saints talk, break the vase which holds it, for whatever impairs the power of the Bible strengthens the cause of rationalism." They attempt their work of demolition by setting the Scripture at variance with nature and with science, by calling in question

its historic records, by magnifying the few blemishes which time and transmission may have occasioned in its renderings, by denying its inspiration, by arraigning its mysteries at the bar of reason, and by covering it with human glossaries. It might be allowed, I think even by such persons, that we are not so much overdone with information respecting subjects of the highest interest to rational and accountable creatures, touching things which lie beyond the range of sense, or the scope of trained and cultivated intelligence, or with regard to the secrets of an unexplored future, as to wantonly dispense with any helps which have come down to us from the past, or as to lightly set aside a volume which brings to us great thoughts adapted to awaken solemn musings, and to inspire animated hopes! Instead of trying to supersede it, good taste, true selfinterest, and enlightened benevolence, would conspire to lead us solicitously to retain it, and so far from rejoicing in extinguishing it, to mourn at the thought of being deprived of its light. It is a bad sign when men can deface or pull down a venerable, stately, and chaste fabric without a sigh! But we venture to defy their assaults. Their predecessors have tried it before them-coarse hands have attacked it, polished weapons have been hurled at it-the common herd have insulted it-the schools have risen up against it. "Essays and Reviews may be multiplied, and may carry, if they dare, their teachings to their legitimate issues; but there stands the Bible still, and there it will abide, unscathed, unshaken, unsullied! Though a scratch or a fly-speck here or there may slightly deface the productions of a Raphael or a Titian, the genius of the great masters will gleam through notwithstanding, and, after all its avowed enemies or false friends may

do, the inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures will shine through all, with matchless and unabated splendour; the faithful guide from heaven will still remain with us, "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, majestic as an army with banners." Let us, brethren, as aforetime, give its leaves broadcast to the winds; let us tell its simple story to the child, and propound its deep philosophy to the sage; let its beams penetrate the hovel, and give an unwonted radiance to the palace; let us commission it to every clime, and render it into every tongue; let us fearlessly invite towards it scrutiny and research, and confidently laugh at the pestilential breath of malignity and hate, for "not one jot or tittle of my word shall fail." If it would not savour of arrogance or presumption, I would appeal to the Denomination to which I belong, to rise as one man, and, amidst the times which are passing around us, swear renewed allegiance at the shrine of inspired truth!

There is reason to fear that the opinions we deprecate have found acceptance in Nonconforming circles; that they have in some instances tainted the teacher and captivated the hearer; but it is difficult to imagine a greater calamity overtaking us than their unimpeded diffusion. The professed Christian Church has always had those about it who have advocated a historic rather than a confiding faith-such a faith as that we have in Alexander, in Julius Caesar, or in Attila-while those have not been wanting who have magnified a theoretic beyond a living experimental belief,-a belief akin to that we may have in Faber's Theory of Prophecy, in Harvey's Theory of the Blood, or in Newton's Theory of the Heavens-while a third class have vaunted an assumptive instead of a practical belief, choosing to forget that "faith without works

is dead." But now we are threatened with the destruction of theories themselves, with the overthrow of the very structure of our religion, and are invited, by professed Christian instructors, too, to adopt premises, which if conducted to their legitimate consequences, will land us in the infidelity of a Bolingbroke and a Hume. Happily, however, the dispensation under which we live, while it provides for a stated ministry, recognizes no priesthood, so that the influence of the pastor is rather moral than official, and is made to depend more on his fidelity than on his position. The Christian fellowship, not the officers whom it may elect, is the guardian of the truth. To the Church, not to its instructors, the keys of the kingdom are trusted, nor can they, permit me to say, be in safer hands. Men who have received evangelic truth, who appreciate its sacredness, and know its incomparable worth, are its best protectors; others may run about the walls of Sion, but it is theirs to guard its citadel. It is, therefore, for the churches of Christ to fulfil their mission, and not to betray their trust by tolerating equivocal and unscriptural teachings in their midst. "The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully."

become patent to intelligent and thoughtful men, who may have regarded it with a too lenient eye, its influence will be more restricted still, since its tendency is to substitute for earnest Godliness a kind of gaseous inflation, and to distend with unhealthy humours rather than to give muscle and sinew to the frame. As a Denomination, our wisdom and strength lie in resisting it, in encountering it by the faithful, plain, persevering, affectionate preaching of the great doctrines of the Cross. We might, without impropriety, call to encourage and to cheer us, the shades of our fathers, the character and deeds of our predecessors in the faith and patience of Christ; men of ripe faculties, of manly mould, and of apostolic zeal, "of whom the world was not worthy." But we the rather repair to the fount of evangelic law, and to the example of inspiration itself,-to one who writing to early believers says, “And I, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit, and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."

We, my brethren, as a section of the visible Church, are but slightlyif at all-affected by this malady; but if our pulpits are to occupy the place which belongs to them in this great conflict, and effectually to resist the insidious and cankerous encroachments of error, it is obvious that weighty obligations rest on those on whom has devolved the training of the rising ministry of