powerful in its infancy than it is in its old age." The very first year of the reformation the Assembly met, and at once proceeded to business as if it had already inherited the land. "It assumed a lofty bearing; it remonstrated with regents; it defied parliaments; it bearded kings; it claimed a jurisdiction independent of all civil control." Nor was it mere assumption; its strength warranted its ambition. It is not too much to say, that for many years the General Assembly was a more influential body than the parliament. What, then, was the secret of its strength? The question admits of an easy solution. It was essentially a representative body; much more so than the Scotch parliament itself. "Every man in the nation professing the reformed faith, who held a high office or a post of influence, was invited to attend. The regents, the king, the privy council, the nobility, the barons, had a seat and a vote when they chose to exercise them." It recognised no distinction between the laity and the clergy. In the first assembly of forty-one members, only six were ministers; and thus the jealousy of clerical influence, which in protestant countries has always been fatal to clerical conventions, had no room to play. There is a curious resolution in 1573, enacting that "the ministers shall sit without the bar ;" while "the whole nobility and council, with commissioners of provinces, towns, and kirks, having power to vote, shall sit within the bar." Thus, by a council of the church, were its own ministers placed without the bar, simply, it would seem, to give room to their lay coadjutors; and thus the voice of the assembly was, in fact, the voice of the people. The great lords represented their clans; the great towns, kirks, and provinces were represented by their commissioners; the church of Scotland became a spiritual republic, and the General Assembly its supreme court.

It was not till 1580, when Elizabeth had sat twenty years upon the throne of England, and our reformation was completed, that episcopacy was overthrown. Knox was now dead; he preferred the presbyterian polity, but he had never held that episcopacy, even diocesan episcopacy, was unlawful. Nor was he an enemy to liturgical forms. At first, indeed, the church of Scotland sanctioned a Book of Common Prayer, probably one of those of king Edward (though on this point as Mr. Cunningham shows, there is some doubt); Knox had it read to him in his dying hours. The church of England suffered much from the rapacity of courtiers and the facility of Henry VIII., in parting with the church's patrimony; but in Scotland the church was utterly despoiled and beggared, and a shameful poverty has been her condition ever since. The estates which should have endowed the bishoprics were now in the hands of the great landlords, and the bishops, who should have been supported out of them, were soon found to be an encumbrance; and the

assembly voted them down, first as needless, and then as unscriptural. We do not affect to deny that other motives of a purer kind had their share of influence; nor that the example of Geneva and other churches were of some weight. Still it is but too clear that when the people mobbed the bishops from town to town, and from kirk to kirk, or when the General Assembly voted them needless and unscriptural, the great nobles and lords of Scotland had strong reasons of their own for conniving at the madness of the people, and applauding the wisdom of the General Assembly.

From this period the church of Scotland presents, on the whole, but a gloomy page in history; she was torn by intestine factions, she was assailed by cruel enemies; she became a great political machine, and in the violence to which she was exposed and the violence with which she resisted, her spirituality, her virgin purity, was well-nigh lost. In England religion perished in the sunshine. In Scotland it perished in the storm. But she was and is our sister; so recognised in the famous act of 13 Elizabeth, and in the canon which contains the bidding prayer; and ever since the reformation, or, however, since the year 1604, on every Lord's-day in either university, as well as in many a cathedral, we have never ceased to pray for the welfare of the church of Scotland.

Episcopacy, it is true, she has lost. The insane violence of the Stuarts, in their attempts to reimpose it, are still rememmembered, with a degree of bitterness scarcely warranted after so long a time, by the bulk of the Scottish people. For the last twenty years there has been a gradual softening, and the national presbyterian heart has been a little thawed. They owe this to the large benevolence of Dr. Chalmers, who had the courage to protest against the bigotry which placed "black prelacy" in the category of things to be abhorred together with black popery." Still the national mind of Scotland is utterly averse to prelacy; and episcopacy, under the mildest form, is thought somehow to be one of the snares of Antichrist.

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The horrible persecution of the Covenanters would disgrace the annals of New Zealand; we should detest the advocate who excused, and abhor the cause which needed, them. Mr. Cunningham treats the subject with a degree of candour honourable to his judgment; and yet with an indignation not less honorable to his affections and his heart. England is deeply guilty in the whole affair; it is, without exception, the most shameful passage in our history. We know not whether it ought to be accepted in mitigation of our shame, that the persecution was more political than religious, or that although the scheme was formed in London, its diabolical cruelties were wreaked by the hands of Scotchmen on each other. If the Cameronians would have confessed king Charles, their

confession of Christ would never have made them martyrs. If the infamous Claverhouse, and his infamous dragoons, had not been inflamed with the personal resentments of a hostile faction, their fiendish cruelties would scarcely have been perpetrated. This is the law of civil commotions: no feuds are so malignant as those which disturb a family; no wars so bloody as those between two neighbouring tribes; no persecutions so unrelenting as those with which the dominant party wreaks its vengeance, when the sword has once been drawn upon its own countrymen. Irritated pride adds fury to revenge; the apprehension that the sufferer may, in his turn, retaliate, steels the heart against remorse and pity.

Mr. Cunningham brings down his history to the end of the last century, and closes it just as a brighter day streaked the horizon of his church. He does not write with the force or th feeling we should have expected upon the decay of religion in Scotland. He speaks too quietly of the wretched spectacle when Edinburgh crowded-not as in the days of Knox, to the High Church, to listen to rude, vehement, and real eloquence on sacred subjects; but to the playhouse-to applaud the trashy tragedy of Douglas, written by a minister of the gospel; and when the infidel Hume and the free-thinking Lord Kames, walked arm-in-arm in the Canon Gate with Robertson and Dr. Adam Fergusson. The moderate party were now gaining ground in the General Assembly, and under its baneful sway pure religion and undefiled had well-nigh perished.

NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

On Party Spirit in the English Church. By the Rev. Sanderson Robins, M.A., Vicar of St. Peter's, Isle of Thanet, and Rural Dean. London: Bell and Daldy. 1860.—It would be impossible, we should think, for the most infelicitous of writers to pen an essay on party spirit in the church, without laying down some useful and many just, and, in their place, important principles. A schoolboy could not wish for a happier subject for his theme. He would be sure to hit the mark sometimes; and if he missed it, the failure would never appear to be very serious. Mr. Sanderson Robins is no schoolboy. He writes well. His essay contains many truths which in their place are of great importance, and the subject is brought before us in an agreeable and entertaining, if not in a powerful manner. But, after all, the question forces itself upon the reader's mind, Why was this essay written? What good purpose will it serve? Our answer is, that, upon the whole, it will answer no good purpose, unless it be with those cantan

kerous, peevish spirits, who delight not only to differ from their neighbours, but to put the worst construction on their neighbours' motives, and the best, of course, upon their own.

Further than this it seems likely to be mischievous. Mr. Sanderson Robins, to have written usefully on the subject, should have shown, in the first place for this is all important-the difference be tween a firm adherence to the principles of a party, and what is gene rally understood by a party spirit; for the world, and the church too, are apt to confound the one with the other. Let us give an example, and we will take it from holy writ:-"We know," says St. John, "that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness." Now, we will undertake to say, that if this sentence was written in any other book than the Bible, it would be decried as a striking illustration of party spirit; we will not undertake to say that it is not so regarded even now by some who profess a certain reverence for the Bible. The whole question turns upon two pivots, the knowledge and the animus of the writer; if St. John knew that he spoke the truth, and if he spoke it with a desire to save the world from everlasting misery, then, apart from revelation, a more catholic, a more benevolent, a more philanthropic sentiment never fell from the lips of man. Mr. Sanderson Robins thinks it the greatest unkindness to censure a fellow-Christian severely on points on which we think it the greatest kindness to express the strongest dissatisfaction with his conduct. "Take an extreme case, in the revival of obsolete or unauthorized vestments or ritual. A clergy man provokes unseemly strife, and does irremediable mischief. We may think him very deficient in prudence, and common sense, and christian charity, but we have no right to say he inclines to the Roman church. Even copes and crucifixes have no necessary connection with popery, as every one knows who is acquainted with the German Lutheran communities." We think, upon the contrary, that it would be an act not only of duty, but of christian charity, to remonstrate with such a one, to tell him that he was in great danger of misleading souls for whom Christ died,--that he had already departed from the simplicity of the gospel,-and that already, most likely, the seeds of popery had begun to take root in his own soul. This, of course, would expose us to the charge of littleness of mind and party spirit; and it would be for us to examine well our own hearts to ascertain whether we had brought these accusations from a good motive or a bad one. If we found that pride and censoriousness had not prompted us, but rather concern for an erring brother and those he might mislead, we, for our own part, after the experience of the last five-andtwenty years, should feel but slight concern, however loud the cry of party spirit were raised against us. In short, we are persuaded that it is part of that cross which the true followers of Christ are now more than ever called upon to bear, and that he who will not bear it must be unfaithful to his Lord.

We chanced in the autumn to spend a few weeks at a wateringplace on the Kentish coast, and one Sunday morning we enjoyed a delightful walk to a village church, as it happens, in the Isle of Thanet. The church was well filled, the prayers devoutly read, the responses audibly made, the psalms sweetly sung. But what shall we say of the sermon ? We had scarcely left the church when

we were overtaken by a Lincoln's Inn barrister, not altogether unknown in courts of Chancery. After the first greeting, his exclamation was "I have just been saying to my wife, what an aimless sermon!" Perhaps no words could more exactly have hit off its character. There was much truth in it, and truth of the highest moment; but the lines did not converge to a point; when the hearer had been told of the necessity of having an interest in Christ, the question naturally arose, how am I to secure that interest? and the preacher had dealt with this in a desultory manner, and when he began to generalise, the congregation began to fall asleep. What was wanted was precisely that which would have stamped him as a party man. He did not fully and explicitly teach the way into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. He spoke of prayer, contrition, and the ordinances of the church as means of grace; but the work of the Holy Spirit in applying the atoning sacrifice, was feebly dwelt upon. Had Mr. Kingsley or Mr. Maurice been present, while we saw something to admire, they would have found little to condemn. We respect Mr. Sanderson Robins both for his gifts and piety, and we ask him to consider whether his book is calculated, in such times as these, to promote or to injure the cause of God's truth in the church of England? We will venture to add, that he may learn something from the incident we have related,

"For the tale we tell,

Has for once a moral."

Lights of the Morning; or, Meditations for every day in the Ecclesiastical year. From the German of Frederic Arndt, Minister of the Berlin Parochial Church. Advent to Whitsuntide. With a Preface by the Rev. William C. Magee, D.D., Prebendary of Wells, and Minister of Quebec Chapel, London. London: Bell and Daldy, 1860.-This little volume, Mr. Magee remarks in his preface, supplies what seems to be rather a want in our religious literature—a book of meditations, which sets the reader thinking, instead of only telling him how the writer meditated, or how he ought to think and feel. Original and suggestive thoughts, expressed in striking and somewhat quaint language, arrest and engage the attention; while through it all there runs a vein of deep spirituality and of simple and fervent piety, which speaks it the production of a devout as well as a thoughtful and original mind.

We subjoin an appropriate meditation for the new year :—

"January 1. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for

ever.

"The new year cannot have a more glorious commencement than by the name the church has given to its first day, which is called Jesus's day. Jesus is the centre of our faith, the first and last of our thoughts. He is the Bible, for it testifies of Him. He is the world, for through Him and for Him it was made. He is time, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He is the new heart, for true life begins with the baptism of the new birth, and is complete in the stature of the perfect man. After Jesus, we call each year, the year of our Lord,' because there is no other whereby we can be saved. He alone gives our years their true signification; our new year's wish