THE FREE CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAGAZINE.

JANUARY, 1877.

1877.

THE New Year comes to you between two companions-the Past and the Future. With the Past you are more or less familiar; with the Fature your relations are doubtful and mysterious.

The Past has spoken to you in tender, solemn tones. Like the strokes of the passing bell, it has checked the swift current of business and toil, has tempered the warmth of your festivities, and has added solemnity to your thoughts and devotions.

The Past, however, is not done with when it has gone. Its recollections remain with you. It leaves many legacies of memory: some precious, all useful. Of all its features this, however, stands out as the most affecting and impressive-it is unalterable. It has gone before you to God, and no power can change it.

It is remembered in connection with this declaration: "God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil" (Eccles. xii. 14). What an aspect this gives to every event of your past life! God does not change its character, but He is pleased in mercy, by Jesus, to "put away sin," and to "remember your sins and iniquities no more." There are many things in respect to which you may praise Him, but the chief is this—that He says: "I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins;" and you may say to Him: "Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people." So it is with those who part with the year in the faith of Jesus; you stand between the Past and the Future-forgiven.

The Future is a veiled friend, whom the new year will not at once introduce. He is shrouded behind the present, and will only appear when the present has become the past, and he himself has changed. You deal now with the present, the present only. Yet in this what privilege and power are hidden! You are like a painter standing before the outspread canvas, waiting to give each touch of the pencil. The year's work will be

what you make it—a chef d'œuvre or a daub. You stand before the year as a sculptor before a block of fair marble. Every stroke that falls on the head of the chisel may go to make a figure of a demon of darkness or one of an angel of light, just as the thoughts of the soul are transferred to the material stone. So the life of every day--its thoughts, its words, its deeds, will tell, and the sum of your existence will reveal the beauties of a holy life orthe deformities of a sinful one.

Begin the year, then, with a divine ideal, a holy purpose. Let every motive, thought, word, action, be "in the light." Then, if you complete the year on earth, your work will stand out as a year of witness for Jesus. If your purposes are broken off, your accomplished work will reveal them, and whilst men alone feel what is manifest, God will approve both that and what was in the heart. The only safe and happy course is to walk with God; to be hand in hand with Jesus. What joy and confidence these words inspire-"Lo! I am with you alway."

The present writes history thus" He hath been mindful of us ;" and utters sure prophecy thus "He will bless us."

So, dear readers, in view of the Cross and the spoiled Tomb, and more as from the steps of the Throne, we repeat to you the old greeting, "A Happy New Year!"

"I am Thy Servant."

BY THE REV. J. B. FIGGIS, M. A., BRIGHTON.

J. S.

"TRULY, TRULY," says David, "I am Thy servant." Can we say the same? Can we say it truly? Can we say it with truth?

Do we not say, in effect, just the opposite? "Lord, make me safe, make me happy, make me good; bear my sins, carry my cares, comfort my sorrows; but let me keep the control, let me have my wish, let me have my way: not Thy will but mine be done." Surely our actions and our attitude, if not our utterances, often speak like this; yet we call ourselves God's servants! What would you think of your servants if they were not to do as you told them, but as they thought; not as you meant, but as they were minded? You would think that they were trying to change places with you, would you not? That they were making you the servant and themselves the master? How often we wish thus,--to change places with Christ, so as to get from Him everything and to give Him nothing for we do give Him nothing till we give Him our will.

And yet we are the people that pray daily: "Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven." Fancy Gabriel wanting his own way and Michael grumbling at his position. "As it is done in heaven." No, indeed, not even as it is done in earth. The flowers serve God submissively, the birds obey God implicitly; and yet Christ never died for the flowers, God never gave His Son for the birds. Think of this, ye murmurers and disputers, and become dutiful as they. But you have better patterns than the birds and flowers; you have better patterns than the angels and archangels. You have Him whom God so often called His "Servant," and who came down from heaven not to do His "own will but the will of Him that sent " Him. And

what is more much more-you have in Him not merely a pattern but a power; a Being prepared to come down again, to come down into you and possess you with His own Spirit of obedience, and to say in you (as He once said for you)," Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God."

Once you are possessed of His presence you will be able and willing to say, "TRULY, TRULY, I am Thy servant.

Priestism at West Hackney.

A PAPER, signed "Thomas Hugo," dated from the Rectory, Stoke Newington, and addressed to the congregation of the Parish Church of West Hackney, has been put into our hands. It is professedly a warning against an announcement which appears to have been made in the parish that a building to be called Christ Church was about to be erected, in which Church services were to be held and the doctrines of Evangelical truth preached. We can imagine that to a rigid Anglican like Mr. Hugo, such a movement would be very displeasing; but it is seldom that we have read anything-coming from the hands of a professed minister of Christ-so offensive to good taste and Christian feeling as this precious morceau. Allowing for the warmth of a temper that seems to have carried him beyond all prudence, we can hardly imagine a gentleman writing in a style so scandalously unfair and with such scurrilous abuse. We know nothing of the promoters of this proposal to erect an Evangelical Church at West Hackney, although a writer in the Rock speaks of it as a "Free Church of England," but we are quite sure that something ought to be done to protect the Church people of West Hackney from the priestly arrogance and pretentious claims to sacerdotal power put forth by the Rector. A medieval monk could not have written in a more bitter and uncharitable spirit. The paper breathes Romanism in its worst phase, and every passage glares with the most imperious priestism.

Gilbert Wright, the Gospeller.

A TALE OF THE LOLLARDS.

CHAPTER I.-THE VILLAGE OF STUDMORE AND THE MONKS OF GREYLEYE.

ENGLAND four hundred years ago was a very different country from the England of to-day; but four centuries have wrought but little change in the scene associated with our tale. The quiet Hampshire village of Studmore has not even to this day been invaded with the iron tramp of modern civilization. Across the moor, almost hidden among trees of mighty girth, it seems to have escaped the keen eye of speculators. It is but five miles from the railway station, yet the white stone cottages with their thatched roofs retain all their picturesque beauty and primitive inconvenience. If great great grandfathers of past generations could rise from their resting-places in the churchyard, they would find but little change. The old farmsteads in which they lived and kept hospitality are there; the very oaks under which they made sport, and danced with the village maidens, are yet spreading out their branches over the same spots, and look fresh in their verdant spring leafage, as if they had no thought of old age or death. The lanes and grassy avenues, narrow and twisted and skirting the stiff corn lands of Studmore are as cool now in summer, and as muddy and impassable in winter, as they were in the days of the second Edward; those high hedge-rows, not so common then as now, but much valued by the swains of Studmore as love screens, are still the nestling homes of early primroses, and violets, and nodding daffodils; and the sweet spring perfume of those lovely old-fashioned lanes would call back to those great great grandfathers pleasant and tender memories of plighted faith and gentle wooings in the merry May days of their youth.

Yes! it is a pretty English scene, and not without its historical interest. Rising amidst that cluster of trees, over the clear trout stream that glistens like a streak of molten silver, and runs so smoothly along the southern boundary of the village, you see staring out from the dark foliage the ruins of an old tower of grey bare-withered stone. It is a lonely weird-looking place, forsaken by all save bats and owls; even the confiding ivy has refused to hide with her generous tendrils the grim decrepitude of this gaunt and forbidding ruin. In the village some say that the place is haunted, and strange legends are told in whispers over the winter firesides of Studmore peasantry, about the dark doings at Greyleye Priory in the latter days of monastic rule.

And at the time when our story begins-that is, in the spring of the year of grace, one thousand four hundred and thirteen, when Henry the Fifth was king-this power was in full sway. Prior John and his twelve monks of Greyleye were the rulers of all the social life of Studmore. The influence of centuries of unopposed priestcraft had brought wealth and power to the monks. Yeomen who had tilled their lands with honest labour, and had scraped together a little store of worldly goods as dowers for daughters and widows, and portions for sons, had often been led to change their wills at last, and had left larger portions to the monks out of gratitude for liberal absolution, and for the remitted penalties of sins that had weighed heavily on their souls in the hour of death. Squires and yeomen, and even peasants. scarcely emancipated from the serfdom of ancient custom-hardworking and poor, were nevertheless taught, according to their varied means, the sacred duty of pleasing God by ministering to the temporal necessities of the saints at Greyleye. By cunning and superstition, and all the machinery of priestism, under the pretended blessings of confession, absolution, and mass saying, the monks had, bit by bit, managed to add to the domain of the Priory the best lands of Studmore, had increased their rent roll with some fee form or quit rent from almost every cottage in the village, had filled their coffers