the questions will be acknowledged to be of the highest importance, when it is considered that one of them affects the lives and amelioration of human beings; that another possesses a material influence on our behaviour towards animals; that another has reference to the unity and stability of our Church at home; another to the education of the rising generation; and that another deeply concerns our policy and charity towards the differing millions of a Church in Ireland-a Church which we should endeavour to conciliate before we can hope to convert, and to win over at the same time that we may have cause firmly to admonish; for it should ever be a prevailing axiom among Christian men, that, gratitude and praise for their superior advancement in religious truth should render them always desirous of gently alluring others to their own position of happiness and peace.

How the case of the Church of England stands may well be gathered from the Works of Archbishop Bramhall, Bishops Hall and Beveridge, and other divines; and it is impossible to conceive that the moderation of the Anglican Church will ever be abolished for the

setting up of either extremes that have ever possessed and agitated the various minds of men. Only let every clergyman know and feel in his heart, in accordance with the words of a popular writer of the day, that “ any Christian spirit working kindly in its sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness." Yes, you who have small parochial gardens to work in, you can find time to handle the learned and charitable pen-and you who are labouring in the places of our dense populations, you who have more anxious and onerous and perilous duties than an Oberlin or a Neff ever knew, you will have no moment idle in your eventful and most useful career.

Clergy of the Church of England! take this as a suggestion kindly offered to you, and ever to be present in your minds amid all your zeal, and throughout every period of your good endeavour, that it is by its MODERATION that your CHURCH will stand. Before you would petition for the revival of her Convocation, and thereby tear her with debate and difference: sit down and think upon it. Before you plead openly for an entire separation between Church

and State, and thereby disregard the ventilating air of public opinion, and unprejudiced deliberation sit down and think upon it. Before you would venture the bringing in of obsolete ceremonies and dresses, which have no essential service in themselves, and rather tend to alarm your beloved and loving congregations : sit down and think upon it. Before you would desire to amend your liturgy, for can that need amendment of which Bishop Newton speaks, "He must be very wandering whom it will not fix: he must be very cold whom it will not warm and he must be either a very good or a very bad man whom it will not improve:" sit down and think upon it. Before you become novel and ultra-opinionistic in your preaching, Lord Campbell observes, in his Lives of the Lord Chancellors, &c. of England, when speaking of the famous Constitutions of Clarendon, "One of the articles shews that the right of sitting in the House of Lords, now belonging to bishops, and greatly prized by them, was originally forced upon them at a time when they thought it an indignity to sit in any assembly except by themselves, as a separate order." The very opposite of this is the case now, for the bishops are desirous of amalgamating themselves with the honourable laity of the realm, and shewing to the world that the laity and the clergy combined do form the Church of Christ, and that both should make the laws which appertain to its government and discipline.

Before

exalting dogmas and debasing the good life: sit down and think upon it. Oh sit down and think upon these things, not as members of parties and denominations, but as calm and reasoning ministers to the great Christian world, and you will, perhaps, prefer to go on with the Church as she is; to give full scope to her energies as a humane Total Abstinence from all Vice Society; to wend your way perseveringly and courteously among the haunts and habitations of the poorer members of your flock; to plead for them before the faces of their richer brethren; to be ever ready to lighten the sorrowful sympathies of all classes; mindful always of good Bishop Latimer's words, "To whom will God give the Holy Ghost? To lords and ladies? To gentlemen or gentlewomen? No, not so: he is not ruled by affections-he hath not respect unto personages. Poscentibus,' saith he: unto those which call upon Him, being rich or poor, lords or knights, he is ready to give unto them when they come to Him."* And thus doing, the usefulness and affectionateness of your Church will ever continue to be recognized and acknowledged gratefully; and every cir

*Latimer on Prayer.

cumstance that would tend to her weakness will be deplored and averted. Oh ! be zealously affected in these matters, but avoid, as writes Bramhall,* "That preposterous zeal, which is like hell, hot without light, maketh errors to be essentials, and different opinions different religions, because it will not distinguish between the good foundation which is Christ, and the hay and stubble that is builded thereupon."

It cannot be concealed that the growing question in England is now, and will be more so, "What is to be done to retard, or modify, without resort to injudicious appeals to human prejudices or passions, the increase of the Roman Catholic views of the Christian religion in our nation-an increase cherished by the liberal tone of the Legislature, and by the voices of the electoral body of the realms of Great Britain and Ireland?" Whatever is effectually done will be brought about by the efforts of the learned and discreet clergy of the Church of England; and may the golden words of Bishop Smalridge be always borne in mind, who, when speaking of Religious Ceremonies, saith, “There are very many and very strong reasons why we should reverence the

* Bramhall's Works, vol. II. p. 312.