the tidings of his steadfast faith and patience triumphing over difficulty and prejudice; his unwearied activity; his confirmations in distant settlements; his visitations through the bush; and, latterly, of the personal hardships to which he has been subjected, by the sudden metamorphosis of his diocese into the gold mine of the world. The last intelligence we have seen of him was given by a picture in an Illustrated Newspaper, which represented him preaching on the fork of a tree to the golddiggers of Mount Alexander. That picture must have touched the hearts of many of his Cambridge pupils, as they remembered the happy English home which he had abandoned for such a destiny. Who shall say that faith is dead, when such fruits of faith are living? Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

We deny, then, that the old Evangelical party is effete, while it still brings forth children so worthy of their spiritual ancestry. Yet at the same time we must confess that its strength and vigour is relatively if not positively diminished, and that its hold upon the public is less than it was in the last generation. This may be accounted for partly by a certain narrowness and rigidity in its teaching, which has increased as its traditional doctrines have become more fixed and technical; partly by the almost inevitable tendency of the human mind, while contending for truth, to insist that her shield must have both sides of the same colour; partly also from that neglect of theological learning*, with which all parties in the Church are chargeable, and for which the blame must rest, not on one or the other party, but on the universities and the nation. This neglect, and especially the want of critical study of the text of

The Evangelical party has been too much devoted to practical work to think much of Literature. Yet its chief literary organ, the 'Christian Observer' was at first very ably conducted by Mr. Zachary Macaulay. And it has now, after a long interregnum of dulness, recovered something of its original character. At present, moreover, the party may boast of numbering among its members one of the most learned writers of the day, Mr. Goode, who in his own line of controversial theology is probably unsurpassed. One reason of the neglect of learning in the Church, is that such men are not encouraged by Cathedral Preferment, which would set them free from parochial cares to follow their true vocation. It is a singular and not a creditable fact, that Mr. Goode and Mr. Horne, two of the most eminent contributors to our scanty stock of theological literature, should both be suffered to remain incumbents of London parishes. We see, indeed, from the Clergy List, that Mr. Horne does hold a Prebend of St. Paul's, one of that class called the laudatur et alget Prebends, worth eleven pounds per annum. The Canonries are in the gift of the Crown.

Scripture, has paved the way for the extravagances of the extreme party which calls itself by the same name, and is by the public often confounded with the old Evangelical body. The disgust but too justly excited by the eccentric offspring, has alienated some reasonable men from the sober-minded parent. This exaggeration of Evangelicalism, sometimes called the Puritan, sometimes, from its chief organ, the Recordite party, we shall now endeavour to describe.

Its distinctive doctrines are derived from those of the Evangelical school, by pushing each of these to extravagant consequences. Thus from justification by faith the Recordite infers the worthlessness of morality; on conversion by grace he builds a system of predestinarian fatalism; from the sole supremacy of Scripture he derives the dogma of verbal inspiration. Under the first head, he teaches not only that faith is the sole source of virtue, but that its genuineness must be tested not by the works but by the feelings; and faith he defines, not as a spiritual affection, but as an assent to the single proposition I believe that I am saved.' This, at least, is the definition adopted by the more logical members of the party; but the majority, repelled by its monstrous consequences, substitute a circular definition, which makes faith to be the belief that one is justified by faith.' True believers are those only who can pronounce the Shibboleth of the sect; and this is the sufficient criterion of conversion. Hence results that worst of formalisms, the substitution of a form of words for the worship of spirit and of truth. Even at the hour of death, when other delusions are dispelled, this reigns triumphant. The dying sinner, if his blanched lips can mutter the prescriptive phrase, is dismissed undoubtingly to paradise. The dying saint, if he has not rehearsed the formula, is consigned to an uncovenanted doom. No matter though his life have been spent in the labours of an apostle-though his last words breathe trust and love-his case is considered doubtful, if not desperate, if he has not recited the magic words 'I believe that I am justified by faith.' To prove that this is no exaggerated view, we quote the judgment of the party, (as expressed in their chief organ) on the death-bed of Arnold. Did he' (says the critic) even in death, rest intelligently and clearly on that fundamental 'doctrine, [justification by faith] on which Luther declared the Gospel turned, and whosoever denieth which is not to be 'accounted, in the words of Cranmer, for a Christian man. WE CANNOT SAY. IT DOES NOT APPEAR.' * To appreciate

* Record,' Feb. 3. 1845. The article goes on to express a charitable hope that Arnold's faith secured his personal safety. But con

fully the superstition of this, it must be remembered that Arnold was a conspicuous defender of the doctrine of justification by faith; so that the doubt of his salvation is caused by his failing to go through a certain verbal form in his dying agonies. What heathen incantation, what negro fetish-worship, can be more unspiritual than this idolatry of a Shibboleth?

The same formalism which leads to this rigid enforcement of a peculiar phraseology, leads also to a superstitious fear of ethical exhortation. If a preacher of the School ventures to enforce morality at all, he does it in a style the most timid and hesi tating; and begins by apologising to his hearers for seeming to limit the freedom of the Gospel, and by explaining that his object is not so much to exhort them to holiness, as to convince them of helplessness. If he begs them to abstain from evil, it is only because the commission of sin will cloud the clearness of their 'assurance.' Moreover, he is careful to destroy all the cogency of his expostulations, by explaining that sin cannot affect the safety of a believer, for the sins of believers are forgiven even 'before their commission.' On the other hand, if a man be not a' believer,' his virtues are nothing better than 'splendid sins.'* Hence the very ideas of right and wrong have no meaning beyond the limits of the sect; and within its boundaries they would have as little, but that man's conscience is stronger than his logic. Thus the very preachers who proclaim the imputed 'righteousness' of the most sinful believer, seldom proceed to the conclusion of the Antinomian, Let us continue in sin 'that grace may abound.'

The belief in Predestination, which we have mentioned as the second article of their faith, does not indeed belong distinct

cludes with warning its readers against adopting his opinions lest they should perceive, when too late, the truth of the closing words of 'Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress," then I saw that there was a way to hell "eren from the gates of heaven, as well as from the city of de""struction."'

The Recordite party justify this assertion by appealing to the 13th Article, which declares that works done before grace have the 'nature of sin.' But this proposition, if interpreted in the Puritanic sense, would contradict the inspired declaration, that the prayers and alms of the heathen Cornelius were acceptable to God (Acts x. 4. and 35.). The true meaning of the Article is only that Divine Grace and Human Goodness are coextensive; so that where there is no Grace there is no Goodness, and, conversely, that wheresoever there is Goodness there is Grace. Thus the virtues of Socrates are not denied, but only ascribed to their true source. Whereas in the Puritanic view (which unhappily was adopted by some of the continental Reformers) they are denied to be virtues at all; and thus the very foundations of all religious evidence, the axiomatic ideas of morality, are cut away.

ively to them. It is shared by many sects, not only of Christians but of heathens. Greek philosophers and Turkish mollahs have adopted the same solution of the same insoluble problem. It would be the extremest presumption peremptorily to deny the theoretical truth of that solution; nor is it less presumptuous peremptorily to affirm it. The question is left undecided by Scripture, and cannot be decided by Reason. But, whatever may be thought of fatalism as a speculative theory, it is evident (as Butler has taught us) that men must act as if such a theory were false. Hence it would seem to follow that exhortations meant to influence action, should not put it prominently forward.* This rule is systematically violated by the most popular preachers of the Recordite party, who obtrude their own views of these impenetrable mysteries as certain truth, and deduce consequences from them which shock the elementary ideas of morality. They address their hearers as divided into two classes by an impassable, though invisible, line of demarcation. Those on one side are predestined from eternity to salvation; those on the other are doomed before their birth to reprobation.+ The Church' consists of the former only, though many of them are now living in vice; for they will all, sooner or later, receive that 'effectual 'calling,' which will irresistibly compel them to come in. The notion of a Visible Church is (according to these preachers) a falsity all who do not belong to their Invisible Church' are without the pale of salvation. Hence their opposition to those parts of the Anglican liturgy which teach that all who profess and call themselves Christians' are admitted to all the privileges of the Catholic Church. The majority of their fellowChristians are collectively stigmatised as the world which lieth ' in wickedness.' And so great is their horror of this Christian world, that, being compelled in the course of the Sunday Lessons to read the declarations that God loved the world,' and that our Lord came to save the world,' some of them have been even known to interpolate an explanation on the spot.§

* Archbishop Sumner's work on Apostolical Preaching' contains some excellent remonstrances against preaching predestination. If all who profess to look up to him with veneration would follow his advice and example, there would be but few Recordites.

†The word reprobation' is however seldom heard; and the doctrine, though always implied, is seldom distinctly preached.

A clergyman of this party in Devonshire was not long since suspended by the Court of Arches for refusing to read the Baptismal service without mutilation.

§ Within the last few years there was a clergyman in Leicestershire who used to read such passages thus: God so loved the elect,' 'I came 'not to judge the elect, but to save the elect,' &c.

From the same theory they derive conclusions concerning the Divine attributes which are peculiarly offensive to the human conscience. For this very reason they delight in proclaiming such tenets, because they consider their rejection a proof of man's natural hostility to God. They assert (for example) that the sole object of the Creator and Redeemer was, not to promote the happiness of his creatures, but to increase his own glory. It would be blasphemous to state the consequences of such a view in its bearing on the axiomatic truth that the perfection of man is to be sought in a moral resemblance to God.` Hence, also, they infer that it is the highest attainment of Christian grace to delight in contemplating the execution of Divine vengeance on the wicked.*

The third cornerstone of the Recordite creed, is the dogma of Verbal Inspiration.' The Bible is regarded, not as a collection of books written by men under Divine guidance, but as a single book, dictated in every word and letter by God himself. This theory, avowedly opposed to the prima facie evidence of Scripture itself, is maintained by the à priori argument, that if we once introduce the slightest uncertainty into Scripture, we are left without any sure guide at all; the precise ground on which Romanists defend Papal infallibility. In accordance with this assumption, every casual allusion in Scripture to a fact of history, geology, or astronomy, however unconnected with religion, must be literally and infallibly accurate. By these dogmatists (says Bishop Hall) 'every point of heraldry in the sacred genealogies is made matter of no less than life and death to the soul.' Hence they are compelled to resort to the most arbitrary and unscrupulous misinterpretations, either violently wresting Scripture to make it accord with facts, or denying facts which they cannot reconcile with Scripture. From the principle which they assume, the condemnation of Galileo for affirming the earth's motion, follows as an inevitable consequence. From

* We were once listening to an eloquent preacher who enforced this doctrine, and quoted the standard illustration of Agag-We must attain, my brethren, to the same grace with Samuel, who hewed Agag "in pieces before the Lord;' when a friend at our side whispered, with great energy, 'I have attained it, I have attained it: I could chop the preacher into mince-meat with pleasure.'

† Hall's Occasional Meditations.

The earliest instance we have met with of this theory is mentioned in Montucla's History of Mathematics. When first the true doctrine of the Multiplication of Fractions was taught, a Spanish friar wrote against it, alleging that it was heretical to assert that Multiplication by a Fraction diminished the Multiplicand, because Scripture had