experience proves, seldom wins respect or influence amongst his fellows. But is it not for lamentation that the gravest questions are left to such incompetent men? The religious future of England at the disposal of such "statesmen as Lord Robert Montagu! Even a decent self-respect should make all Englishmen feel that we want as legislators at the present time men of the most cultivated minds, and of the most cautious habits of induction. We need the ripest and richest scholarship of the nation, the most practical and discriminating wisdom in the land, to ascertain and apply the true principles of government to this, as to all other questions. But how are we to obtain them? If Nonconformists are indifferent about the fitness of candidates to deal with the rights of Christians, and with the relation of Churches to the State, who are we to expect to bestir themselves? The Bishops and clergy of the dominant sect? Or are the landowners, and the hangers-on of the aristocratic upholders of things as they are, to rouse themselves, that Christ's Church may be set free from the trammels of the State? It is our deliberate conviction that the settlement of this great question is made in God's providence, to depend upon the faithfulness of the Nonconformists to their principles, and their dutiful, but constitutional, assertion of the crown rights of Him who hath said, "My Kingdom is not of this world." We are by no means insensible to the many influences which combine to repress all zeal in this direction. They are, beyond doubt, unworthy and contemptible for the most part; but they are strong notwithstanding. By all means let argument and persuasion be used to the utmost to show Nonconformists their errors; but since these may chance to be met by arguments more weighty on the side of Nonconformity, recourse is had, in the smaller towns and rural districts more especially, to other and more effective weapons. Customers leave the shop of Dissenting tradesmen, and the most studied slights are put upon them for their Dissent. As an illustration we may mention a case which came under our notice a short time since. A notice to make a Church-rate was posted on the door of the parish Church, in a small market town, and a godly man who was a bookseller and stationer in the place, but withal a sturdy Nonconformist, resolved to attend the Vestry and oppose the levy of a rate. He did so with good temper and considerable ability. But he became a marked man from that day forward; and soon afterwards he received a message from a noble lord, of immense wealth and influence in the neighbourhood, who sometimes bought small parcels at his shop, that if he continued to act in a similar manner, his lordship would withdraw his custom forthwith. Our friend returned for answer: "tell Lord that a crust of bread satisfies hunger, and a common pump gives me all I ever care to drink, and that I have confidence in God to secure me both." It came to our knowledge that the nobleman in question soon after said to a batch of his chums-"I can do nothing with that fellow, for he's content with bread and water. There's no chance of doing anything with him." And so, after a while, he found his way back again to the shop. But our readers will feel that it is not every tradesman who is as independent in spirit as our friend, and they will admit that the power of wealth is great to hold principles in check. Unhappily for the country, it must be acknowledged that those who pretend to be ministers of the Gospel par excellence, have taught the public by their own conduct that principles are secondary to clerical promotion and social rank. When the Gorham case was decided, how many of the clergy resigned their benefices rather than connive at the denial of sacramental grace in baptism? None but the few who found a home for themselves in the Papal communion? Drs. Pusey and Neale, Messrs. Keble and Denison, and their numerous following, retain their benefices in the Church to this day. And now that the Privy Council have decided in the celebrated case relating to the "Essays and Reviews," that the Inspiration of the Scriptures is an open question, so that any clergyman may deny the Inspiration of any part or parts of any book of Holy Scripture, provided he do not deny the canonical authority of that book-now that the clergy may affirm or deny Justification by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and may assert or deny the eternity of final punishment, not a man amongst them gives any sign of quitting a sect which has no longer any settled form of doctrine to teach the people. Mr. Keble says that this judgment, when viewed in relation to the case of future punishment, is "even more shocking and calamitous than what we [i.e., his High Church friends and himself] have before had cause to complain of from the same most inadequate tribunal; "—that it is worse than the decision in the Gorham case, worse than that of Dr. Lushington in the Court of Arches, preliminary to this Appeal, whereby among other things it is made lawful for a clergyman to deny the prophetic character of the Old Testament;"-and that "it surpasses both in its direct and most disastrous tendency to corrupt and ruin the souls for which Christ died:" -but he is Vicar of Hursley still! He declares that "the effect of it will remain, not only as a scandal and reproach to us throughout Christendom, and as a provocation to restless and fretful spirits, otherwise inclined to separate from us; but still more frightfully in ways we shall not know of, until we have to measure the amount of the mischief by the souls which it shall have helped to ruin :" and he publishes a Litany to be used "in the present distress," but gives no sign of sacrificing everything for the sake of the truth! Nothing can be more pernicious in its tendency than conniving at the corruption of the truth; and in spite of the Oxford Declaration signed by thousands of the clergy (" for the love of God" forsooth!) it is notorious that the doctrines which the clergy may lawfully teach to their flocks must be learnt from the decision of the Committee of Privy Council, and not from the vague language of their newly-framed "fortieth Article." These gentlemen who have signed the Declaration, hold their livings and other preferments by virtue, among other things, of submitting to the Ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown; and the common sense of their countrymen demands that that supremacy be honourably, and not in a non-natural sense, acknowledged by them. And as they are too wise in their generation to call it in question in set terms, the conclusion is inevitable, that they admit the Queen to be Defender of the Faith, equally as it is set forth by their definitions, and by the statements of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson. They are like showmen in a fair who answer the natural enquiries of their patrons as to which is which by saying "As you please, my dears; you pay the money, and take your choice" The mischief does not end here. The authority of the Bible has already been lowered amongst the students in our Universities, and some of the upper classes in this country. There is no reason to believe that this evil will be circumscribed by its present boundaries. As the Tracts for the Times diffused their influence throughout the country, so may we expect scepticism to spread on every hand. It is the natural recoil from superstition: and as the clergy have the chief direction of national education, we may reckon upon witnessing the effects of their teaching in this form. Have they counted the cost of this disparagement of the Bible? And have they weighed well the results of their success? For with the depreciation of the Bible something more is connected than the weakening of Protestantism; the power of Christianity itself is crippled, and its Divine authority is trampled in the dust. The Very Rev. Dr. Faber (who has but recently passed away from amongst us) thus wrote in a preface to the Life of St. Francis, of Assisi : "Who will say that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the great strongholds of heresy in this country? It lives on the ear like a music that can never be forgotten-like the sound of giousness about him whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible." It is, therefore, an awful responsibility which they incur, who, without just cause shown, tamper with that authority which has made, and can yet make, the man of God perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. And it becomes proportionally important that all who receive the Scriptures as given by inspiration of God should watch against the insidious influence of those who would treat them only as the voice of devout reason, and the voice of the congregation. Indifference at such a time, and upon such a topic as this, is little short of treason against God. To whom, then, should England look at the present crisis in her religious history, but to the Nonconformists of this country, and especially amongst them, to the Baptists? We at least do not recognize Apostolic traditions (so-called), for which we have not the sure warranty of Apostolic writings; and on this account we occupy a vantage-ground which gives us preeminent opportunities to serve our generation by the will of God. Our position is thus sketched by a high authority in the "Christian Remembrancer" for April, 1864, and we commend his description to our readers :: "We know that of all Dissenting sects Anabaptists are those who alone give some trouble in replying to their arguments. We imagine that there are not many clergymen who, in arguing with a Baptist parishioner, have not been told: 'Well, sir, granting that it was the custom in what you call the Primitive Church to baptize infants (not that there is a word about it in the Bible), I have been told by our minister that so it was to give them the Sacrament. Was that so or not according to your belief?' And who could deny that it was?' 'Well, then, I have heard you say in your sermons that when our Lord is speaking to Nicodemus about being born again, He is speaking of bap- The writer says nothing, it will be observed, about the other half of the Church, which, according to him, "the dear Lord has allowed to go. wrong." The conclusion, then, to which we are led by this review of the state of things around us is, that it is of the highest consequence that the members of our churches should be well grounded in their principles as Nonconformists, and should prepare themselves by a careful study of the New Testament for that assertion of the spirituality of Christ's kingdom, which they can, with unquestionable consistency, make in the presence of their fellow-Christians and all men. And, above all, as it is our privilege no less than our duty to maintain the sufficiency and authority of Holy Scripture in all things pertaining to godliness, let it be our ambition, by constant study of those Scriptures under the promised guidance of the Holy Ghost, to become manifestly the epistles of Christ before all the world. For the religious future of England, and of the world, is involved in the holiness and the unbending integrity of those who know and love the truth as it is in Jesus. DEMONOLOGY.-No. II. DEMONIACAL POSSESSIONS. Is the human family influenced in any way by the existence of demons? Do they possess any power over the minds, or bodies of men, and if so, of what character, and to what extent? These are questions to which the perusal of our previous paper would naturally give rise, and which we shall now endeavour to answer. To the temptations of Satan to which the Christian is constantly exposed; to "his devices" by which he endeavours to ensnare, and ruin the souls of men; to the power which he wields as "the God of this world;" to his workings in "the children of disobedience;" to his "going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour; " to these and kindred points we shall not refer; not because they are unimportant, but because all are familiar with them, and they are continually referred to, from the pulpit. To what may be termed the material rather than the spiritual operations of the hosts of hell, to the influence exerted by demons on the bodies rather than the souls of men, our present inquiry will be directed. In this part of the subject, as in the preceding, speculation will as far as possible be abstained from, and information be sought simply from the Word of God. The first point claiming attention in considering the agency of demons, is that of demoniacal possessions. Every reader of the New Testament must be impressed by the constant mention of parties into whom demons had entered, or who were possessed of a devil, or demon. These parties seem to have been for a time, body and mind, given up to the power of the demon, or demons who had entered their bodies, and who used all their members as they pleased. Peter in his address to Cornelius, and his friends, said that Jesus, "went about doing good, and healing all who were oppressed of the devil." Acts x. 38. The Canaanitish woman falling at the feet of Jesus cried unto him, saying, "Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David, my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil (or demon.)" Jesus told her that the demon was gone out of her daughter, and it is stated that when she came to her house she found that the devil was gone out. The most graphic and instructive account of possession is found in the fifth chapter of Mark's Gospel. "And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any inan tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones. But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, and cried. with a loud voice, and said, "What have I to do with thee, Jesus thou Son of the Most High God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not." For he said unto him, "Come out of the man thou unclean spirit." And he asked him, "What is thy name?" And he answered, saying, "My name is Legion: for we are many." And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country. Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, "Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them." And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea (they were about two thousand); and were choked in the sea. And they that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in the country." Some persons have endeavoured to account for the demoniacal possessions of the New Testament by natural causes, and to prove that those who are said to be possessed by demons were simply under the influence of some disease, as for example, epilepsy. It has been stated that persons in epileptic fits have manifested all the symptoms of the demoniacs of the New Testament, have displayed similar physical power, and have delighted in torturing their own bodies. If such be the case it would, we contend, be much more reasonable to suppose that such persons were possessed by |