over the affairs of each individual pastor and church-whose power has been regarded as despotic, and whose authority has been in consequence renounced. This has resulted in a series of divisions in which claim has been laid to an increasing power of self-administration. But the best illustrations of the growth of this principle may be found in the English Establishment. Incongruities must inevitably arise when a religious institution looks for patronage and control to a secular power. For the spiritual energies of Christian men to be hampered by worldly appliances which have nothing to commend them but the hoar of ages-for the headship of the Church to be delegated to a sovereign who may be a Henry VIII. or a George IV. for religious questions to be submitted to the adjudication of worldly and often unsympathising tribunals-and for Christianity to be maintained by the pains and penalties of secular law-these are anomalies too painful to be ignored. No wonder that John Locke affirmed that "the Church itself is a thing absolutely separate and distinct from the commonwealth. The boundaries on both sides are fixed and immoveable. He jumbles Heaven and earth together, the things most remote and opposite, who mixes these societies, which are, in their origin, end, business, and in everything perfectly distinct and infinitely different from each other." "No civil power or legislation," said Bishop Warburton, “can be admitted into Christ's Church without making it a worldly kingdom." "Parliament," says the Archbishop of Dublin, "should have none other than civil functions. The Church of Christ should be legislated for none but its own members." Hence the energetic efforts made by an influential section of the Episcopal church to re-invest Convocation with real legislative and executive powers; and if this is opposed by the Evangelical party, it is not so much on constitutional as from fear of a preponderance of High Church influence in its councils. But the principle of self-support must eventually involve the practice of self-government. So long as men are dependent on the bounty of others, they may be content to obey; but no sooner do they labour for and contribute to the maintenance and extension of their own institutions, than they will desire some authority in the direction of their enterprises and the administration of their finances. Let colonial Episcopalians erect their own edifices, and maintain their own ministers, and they will naturally stipulate that they shall have the election of their own bishops from their own clergy. No wonder that Mr. Gladstone, as he watched the progress of Voluntaryism in the colonial churches, detected also the correlative truth. "I don't know," he said, " any single portion of the Church, widely extended as it is, and containing so many varieties of race, language, climate, and character-I don't believe there is a single portion of the Church in which great progress has not been made towards the establishment of the principles of self-government and selfsupport." Nor is this all. The connection of these two principles of selfsupport and self-control suggested to the mind of Mr. Gladstone a subject which, he says, may be considered still higher-the question of what may be termed Church discipline," and the application of which to individual congregations is a matter awakening widespread attention. "I have been thinking," said an intelligent Episcopal clergyman, not long ago, to a Congregational minister, "that the discipline of our Church is not so real as it ought to be. It is too vague and lax, and I have been endeavouring to rectify these evils in my own Church. I am becoming more discriminating in the admission of candidates to confirmation and communion, and I refuse to receive those who do not give me satisfactory testimony of their conversion of heart and consistency of life. And I find this very healthful in its influence upon us all as a Christian community, and fits us better for mutual association and action. We are thus not only formally, but really a Christian church." "Why, my dear Sir," was the answer, you are turning Congregationalist. Your ingenious theory, which you have been constructing on à priori principles, is the old method on which we have always been acting. I would not advise you to take out a patent for your invention, because it will only be believed to be a glaring plagiarism on ourselves." 66 To this topic Mr. Gladstone refers, drawing his illustrations from those fields of Christian enterprise in the colonies, where many an ecclesiastical problem is likely to be solved, and many a "pattern" found for the guidance of the Church at home. "I confess," he says, "I see with great pleasure and satisfaction a tendency in some of these colonies for the introduction of a real system of discipline among the members of the Church, not founded upon the action of secular power, but representing, the free inclination of the Christian minds of the people themselves. In point of fact, it seems to be a characteristic of those whom we call the savages of New Zealand, and of those converted from heathenism in India, that they do not understand belonging to a society in which there are no laws, no obligations, no means of preventing discontent, or repressing error. If in their own free will, therefore, they have established for themselves these rules-have placed upon themselves this yoke, not of arbitrary law, but of the law of Christian improvement, is there not in the fact something like a pattern for us at home?" In drawing this paper to a conclusion we would remind the reader that though its theme may be of especial interest to the Congregationalist, the questions we have treated are not sectarian. All denominations, willingly or unwillingly, are dealing with them. Thoughtful men of all ecclesiastical and political parties confess their growing importance. Scarcely a week passes during the Session but Parliament is reluctantly compelled to pass judgment upon some aspect of them. All intelligent Nonconformity is based upon them; all enlightened Episcopalianism is preparing for them, and in the degree in which it does so, ceases to fear the future. Meanwhile events are tending towards a crisis, and one which involves the very existence of Establishments. The Saturday Review, which expresses the opinions of the Broad Church party, claims the verdict as already given, and asserts that "the theory of a Christian state has been long since abandoned.” "No State-aid to religion," says the Times, "is the watchword everywhere except at home. cheerfully accept our position. Our Church is Voluntary, and we beg to congratulate it on its newly-acquired freedom." We The Literary Churchman, speaking for the High Church party, and alluding to the Divorce Bill, says, "The animus of the majority in both Houses of Parliament during the discussion on this bill shows, in no uncertain way, how little good the Church has to expect from the State, and gives a note of warning which we cannot heed too soon, that she must turn in upon herself and her God; realizing more than ever the integrity of her union with her Lord, the loftiness of her mission, and the meekness, and yet the independence, of the attitude she ought to assume, and the courage and fortitude with which she should work and endure in this time of severe trial. Everything foreshadows that at some day, perhaps not distant, the State and the Church will occupy very different relations towards each other than they now do. . . . . We do not say that any great disruption is likely to ensue, least of all in our own day; but we think that little by little the links that bind the two will be broken, until thorough independence becomes the ultimate result." "There is one question," said the Press,* "a large and vitally important question, which is more than 'looming in the distance.' Statesmen do not like to talk of it, or to think of it; for it is a hard and thorny question. But, whether they shrink from it or not, the controversy draws nearer and nearer; and it will hardly be possible for the most cautious politicians to avert an open struggle for many years longer. That question is the continuance of the union of Church and State. . This, unlike other questions, is not fading away, but coming daily more into the light. We know that many statesmen shrink from the very mention of such ques tions as these, and trust that such a controversy may not be forced on in their time. But this is a delusive hope. The tide is hurrying us forward; and it will be our wiser course to take soundings, and find out whither we are going, rather than to drift blindly on, till we get upon a sand-bank, or strike upon some dangerous reef." But we must conclude. Of the direct results of the labours of Congregationalists another shall speak. Sir J. P. Kay Shuttle worth, in his work on Education, says: "The Congregational Dis senters have ever been friends of freedom, defenders of the rights of the minority, and missionaries to the benighted villages of England, to the wild valleys of the Welsh mountains, or to the turbulent colonists of its mines, and to the regions of darkness and death, * April, 1858. where typhus and cholera find their victims in our towns. They comprise a large and influential portion of the middle classes; they claim to be descendants of the Puritans, who, whatever were their own errors, were stern and successful champions of the English Reformation, and have left a deep trace, not only in the history, but in the institutions, the manners, observances, and character of the nation. They have just cause to point to their own independence of the State, as the first conspicuous triumph in this country of religion unaided by traditional authority, by the power of a foreign hierarchy, or the protection of domestic princes. They embody principles of self-government, of which our race and country have in civil affairs exhibited the most successful examples, and they are at least sincere and earnest in their endeavours, after a primitive and apostolic simplicity in their discipline and ceremonial. Communions having these high claims to respect, comprising not less than 4,000 congregations, and 1,500,000 of members, representing 2,250,000 of the population, must wield no small influence on opinion." If, however, our argument be true, the indirect influence of Congregationalism has been far wider than its own immediate results. The light that is breaking over other and distant fields of Christian activity is pointing radiantly to this as their common centre. By the testimony of impartial witnesses and incontrovertible facts, the twin principles which mark its polity are rising to supremacy in the Christian Church. And though this paper was not written to inflate denominational pride, nor to lend any sanction to those who turn their liberty into licentiousness, still it may serve to encourage those who, amid success and failure, amid good report and evil, have laboured to vindicate the integrity of the action of essential and scriptural truths. Already they have survived the pampering ease of royal patronage and the fiery baptism of persecution. Stronger to-day than ever, their future is pregnant with hope. Let all who love them show a more sacrificial spirit in their maintenance, and a gentler majesty in their own self-administration. And when other Christian denominations have plodded and struggled upward to a perfect liberty, and conscious of the labours and sacrifices with which it has been won, exclaim, "With a great price obtained I this freedom," the Congregationalist may gratefully acknowledge that he has enjoyed these privileges, not by purchase but by heritage, and may respond, "But I was free-born." ERRATUM. Page 414, for, he rejects a competent Creation, read, Creator. 434 Brief Notices. EXPOSITORY LECTURES ON ST. PAUL'S WE referred to these lectures in a This notice will suffice own SUMMER IN THE SOUL; or, Views and Experience. By Henry Ward Beecher. Edinburgh: Alexander Strahan and Co. WE are ignorant of Mr. Beecher's physique, but we have no hesitation at all in pronouncing him a man of healthy organization, having the and daily grace of a good direc the "mens sana in corpore sino," a dangerous competitor at cricket, & i a formidable companion in mouñ'.......a climbing. Everything about him s healthy and robust -only a physic.ly perfect man could write in so ge, s. a way with so pure and rich ez ment of all the exercises of the sp as of the body. T Mr. Beecher may have finely-ste nerves, but commend us to such a physical inheritance as his! He has sometimes been called the Auene Spurgeon; but of English prescher he oftener reminds us of Mr. Bane with perhaps a pinch of Spargeva coarser humour thrown in. ́ H» L.. the same masculine breadth thought, the same genial est mates of various and contrasting qualities, the same generous appreciation of ail for a of good, the same hearty enjoyi of the humorons, the same hp outlook into the future, the si utter scorn of wrong and little rese, as our great Nonconformist preacher, only with a richer exuberance of illustration and a greater raciness of anecdotes. He has less self-restrai less fastidious taste; he oft--z verges on broad farce, and oftener therefore sins against our higher endture. He is more of a Luther ti z a Melanethon, of a Latimer rather than cf John Howe. THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRover MESSES. SMITH, ELDER, AND |