INTRODUCTION.

HOW CERTAIN TRAVELLERS FORSOOK THEIR GUIDES, AND HOW IT FARED WITH THEM.

A COMPANY of travellers were once journeying together towards a great city in the East. Their road lay through a dangerous country, and was rather intricate; but they had a good party of guides who seemed perfectly at home in it, and so they went fearlessly and steadily on. However, the way was far from being as smooth and easy as the travellers would have liked it to be; it led them sometimes through thorny brakes, and almost always was on an ascent, sometimes a very steep one. This did not at all suit the taste of some of the travellers, who began to complain, and to whisper to one another that they had very serious doubts whether this difficult, disagreeable road was the right one. "Depend upon it," said one, "these guides are taking us wrong and bringing us into all these difficulties, just to make themselves of consequence, and to make a demand upon us afterwards for more pay." "And, after all,” said another, "what do we want of guides? You see they have each a map of the country in their hands: if we had but that, we could find our way for ourselves just as well as they can tell it us, and much better." At this bright thought they were much delighted; and seizing several copies of the map, they knocked down such of the guides as attempted to offer any resistance, and set off across the country to find out the right road by themselves. But though they were all together in the same place at the moment when they did this, and although the copies of the map which they had seized were all exactly alike, yet, as soon as they began to move forward, they immediately took different directions, so that in a few minutes they were completely scattered. Some indeed steadily followed the few guides who survived,

and these kept close together, just as they had travelled on from the first; but of the rest scarcely any two chose the same path; one darted off in this direction, another in that, each all the while shouting out that he was right and the rest wrong; and what seemed most strange, each confidently appealing to the map he held in his hand in proof of what he said. Yet, as you have already heard, it was the self-same map, of which they all had good and perfect copies; but somehow or other, they each contrived to understand its lines and colours differently. Perhaps there was some key to it which they did not possess, or did not know how to use; but this is a part of their history which we are not going to inquire about to-day. I will only add, that when those travellers, who had remained faithful to the old guides, saw all this disturbance amongst those who had deserted them,-when they saw how some sunk into hidden pits and disappeared altogether, while the rest still kept on shouting and running hither and thither,—they congratulated one another very heartily that they had not been seduced into following the example of the runaways, whose chance of reaching the great city they thought not much to be depended on.

Now, is not the state of the people of this country at the present moment with reference to matters of religion very much the same as that of these runaway travellers with reference to their knowledge of the road in which they ought to travel? We are all agreed,—at least all for whom these pages are intended,—that God has revealed to man the way of truth; nay, we have our map of the road; there is a book in the hands of every one of us, which we are all agreed in calling the Word of God, and which, as some of us say, contains this way of truth so plainly, fully, and distinctly taught, that there can be no mistake about it; and yet as to what that way of truth is, we hold as many different opinions as did those travellers as to the right road. Moreover, in one very serious respect, we are far worse off than the travellers; there may be more than one road leading to a city; but there cannot-if God has really revealed any religion at all-there cannot be more than e religion that is true. Anyhow, two roads leading in

opposite directions cannot both end in the same place; and two religious doctrines which contradict each other cannot, by any possibility, both be true.

Yet we meet with such contradictions in doctrine at every step in this country, and that on points which are of real, living consequence to us all. To take only one instance: we most of us carry our little infants to be baptised; and any mother whose thoughts go deeper than the mere external ceremony, would naturally wish to know what good she may expect her child to receive from it. Let her ask her religious neighbours: some will tell her that the child is cleansed in this water from the stain of sin which he has inherited from Adam; others will say that this is quite a mistake, that the child gets no good at all, that it is a mere ceremony; others, again, will tell her that it is wrong to baptise her children whilst they are so young, she should wait till they are grown up and able to think and judge for themselves; and lastly, there are others who will not hesitate to assure her that they ought never to be baptised at all.

This is only one point among a thousand that might be selected; but it is a very important one; and even if it were the only point on which there was a difference of opinion, it would be extremely puzzling to any who trouble themselves to think about religion at all. What shall we say, then, when we consider that there is not a single doctrine upon which there is not a similar variety of opinions; when we are not even agreed on the one great doctrine which, one would think, must concern the very foundation of our religion: I mean, as to whether our blessed Lord Jesus Christ is God as well as man!

Now this is so strange a state of things, that one cannot help asking whether it was always so; whether the Christian religion made its first appearance in this country in that motley dress and with that discordant voice which it now has; or, if not, how it became such as it now is among us? in other words, we would ask two plain and simple questions: first, How did England become Christian? and, secondly, How did it become Protestant ?

I. HOW DID ENGLAND BECOME CHRISTIAN ?

Thirteen hundred years ago—that is, five hundred and fifty years after our Lord's birth-England was a heathen country. I do not mean to say, that there was not a single Christian in it: there were a few; but those few had been driven into the mountains of Wales and Cornwall by the Angles, or Anglo-Saxons, our forefathers, from whose name we are now called English. These Angles were pagans, and they were not the first inhabitants of this country, but had come over from their own land, Germany, on pretence of helping the native people, the Britons, against their enemies the Scots. This they really did at first; but afterwards they turned their arms against the Britons themselves, and, step by step, conquered the whole island, making a dreadful slaughter of the people, and driving such of them as were left into those parts which I have mentioned. Whether these few Christian natives were afraid to come out and shew themselves, or whether they were not very zealous about their religion, I cannot say; any how it is certain, that, from some cause or other, they did not exert themselves to convert the heathen people who had conquered them. The whole of England, excepting only Wales and a part of Cornwall, lay in utter heathen darkness and ignorance, in the year of our Lord 596.

One day, however, early in the spring of the following year, there landed on the coast of the island of Thanet, in Kent, a company of venerable men, about forty in number, clad in long black habits, with one at their head, whom they seemed all to reverence and obey; and as soon as they were landed, they sent messengers (whom they had brought from France as interpreters,) to the king of the country, telling him that they were come from Rome, the bearers of glad tidings, which, if he would but hear them, would bring him to never-ending happiness after death. The king, whose name was Ethelbert, seems to have guessed immediately what this meant; for, though he was himself a heathen, he had yet heard of the Christian religion, because he had a Christian wife, called Bertha, a princess from France. Therefore he sent a courteous message to the strangers,

praying that they would remain in the island where they had landed, and where he gave directions that they should receive all hospitality, and promised soon to visit them.

Accordingly, after a few days, the king went to the island with a great company of people, and invited the strangers to a conference, sitting in the open air; for, from some superstitious fancy, he was afraid of meeting them under a roof. They came then into his presence, one of them bearing a silver cross for their standard, and another a picture of our blessed Lord; and all with one voice singing litanies, and praying to God for their own salvation and that of the people to whom they had come. Then, at the king's command, they sat down; and their chief, who was called Augustin, preached, by means of his interpreters, the gospel of Christ to the king and all his nobles; and the king made him a kind and wise answer, that the words he had spoken seemed of blessed promise; but that they were new to him, and that he could not leave his old religion for a new one, without understanding the reason of the case; since, however, he could not doubt but that the reverend strangers really believed themselves what they desired to teach him, and had nothing in view but his own good and that of his people, he would not injure them, but rather receive them with due hospitality, and in no way hinder them from preaching the faith.

And he certainly did receive them with princely hospitality, for he set apart for their use a large mansion in Canterbury, which was the capital city of his kingdom, and provided for them maintenance, giving them at the same time, as he had promised, full liberty to teach and to preach. They went, therefore, to the city of Canterbury, carrying before them, as at their landing, the cross and the picture of our Lord, and chanting with one voice this prayer: "We pray thee, O Lord, of Thy great mercy, that Thy fury and Thine anger may be turned away from this city, and from Thy holy house; for we have sinned. Alleluia."

When thus established in Canterbury, we are told that they led an apostolic life, in fastings, in watchings, and in continual prayer; and preached the Word of God to as many as they could reach, despising the things of this world, as