school in their parish, endowed or not endowed, they would visit it at reasonable times; but they would neither sink the clergyman in the schoolmaster, nor would they devote their best hours to raising funds for secular charities, or attending committees for secular objects. We of later years have tried the opposite plan; and we are told that we must try it still and push it further. It is time that the Evangelical clergy at least, whatever others may do, should resist the unreasonable clamour. We have already paid the penalty in part; and the retribution is a righteous one. Those who have been the loudest to complain of our delinquencies as parish priests are the loudest to complain of our mental poverty as Christian teachers. The selfishness of our congregations defeats itself; it recoils both on them and upon their pastor. They would have him to be a sort of spiritual police through the week, and yet an able minister on the Sunday. The demand is unreasonable. They would have us to be the agreeable guest and the domestic chaplain, and yet the wellread divine and the always fresh and interesting preacher. They must learn to forego the one or the other of these spiritual luxuries. Their very kindness is unkind; still more so is our compliance. Our fathers in the ministry were not exposed to this temptation; and had they been, they would not have submitted to it. In other respects, the charges levelled against the Evangelical clergy now are sufficiently answered when the proof of their truth has been demanded. One of them, we perceive, is what amounts to an imputation of Arianism, "Why is it that in so many of our most popular churches, in those filled confessedly by our most spiritual congregations, the name of the Father is not heard after the sermon begins?-that the blessed Spirit Himself, the Lord and the Giver of life, is, if alluded to at all, most generally designated by the neuter pronoun, and spoken of merely as a mysterious influence exercised by the Lord on the hearts of His converted and elected people?" We will venture to ask, in reply, why it is that neither our author nor her prompters-for the charge is by no means new-have ever had the courage to mention one of these popular churches, or to tell us where one of these spiritual congregations may be found? The accusation is painful to us only because it displays in those who make it a careless indifference about truth, which amounts to falsehood; falsehood the less pardonable, because the truth might be known so readily, and because the misrepresentation, if believed, would create, as it is meant to do, a deep prejudice against the faithful ministers of Christ and the cause of divine truth. If there be any difference between the early and the later Evangelical school, it is rather in favour of the latter. It was about the year 1820 that it began to be

felt that the work and personality of the Holy Spirit, though always recognised, had scarcely been allowed their full importance in the ministrations of the clergy. They were the men of 1810, Simeon, Scott, Daniel Wilson, and above all the rest, Haldane Stewart, who drew attention to a defect which few had noticed; for, in truth, they had always insisted on these doctrines, and had all along incurred the charge of fanaticism in consequence. But now they began to feel that they ought to be made still more prominent. Associations were formed throughout the country for discussion and special prayer upon this very topic. Many courses of sermons were preached upon it. Invocations of the Holy Spirit in prayer, and hymns addressed directly to Him, became more frequent. And, in short, if there be any difference between the later and the earlier school of Evangelical preachers, it is that the grace of the Father in sending His Son for us, and the grace of the Holy Spirit in carrying on the work of sanctification in us, are rather more fully exhibited, not more distinctly, for that were impossible, by the latter.

In a large body of men, consisting of many thousands, who are compelled to appear before their parishioners once at least every week, and in general much oftener, as public teachers, there is room, of course, for great variety. And ordinary candour, or rather common sense, should lead every critic to make due allowance for the inexperience of all young preachers, and the necessary want of vigour and even of accuracy in many old ones. The same men, though long trained, will sometimes be unequal; and now and then, no doubt, from ill health, from want of preparation, or simply, as Paley expresses it, because "his hand is out," an able minister delivers an indifferent sermon, defective, it may be, in doctrine, and feeble in its application to the conscience. We have this infirmity in common with our fathers of 1810, as they had it in common with the best of men. If it be desired to draw a fair comparison, let any divine of that date be chosen (Simeon or Venn, for instance), and let it be shown in what single point of doctrine the Evangelical preachers of 1860 have swerved from their honoured predecessors.

In the same spirit of detraction, our author runs on through other charges; all of them exaggerated, most of them untrue. Not that we charge her with intentional falsehood, no more than we charge a parrot with lying, when it repeats the lie it has been taught. Amongst the exaggerations, we place the statement, that "no Evangelical minister can now name the Holy Catholic Church, except in repeating the creeds; or dwell on the meaning and importance of baptism, and the supper of the Lord, except when compelled to do so by the rubric, without

being slandered as a Romanist in disguise." On each of these points, serious errors are abroad; from which we remark, by the way, Mr. Phillipps did not escape; and it is therefore necessary, when we speak either of the Catholic church, or of the Sacraments, to guard ourselves with a precision which was neither known nor wanted by our fathers in the Gospel fifty years ago. Amongst the impudent untruths which have been so often repeated that they are at length believed, none is more glaring than "that the Bible, in evangelical teaching, has long been substituted for the Holy Ghost, and is now often put in the place of Christ the Word." Why not charge us, as the poor Jews of York and Norwich were charged six hundred years ago, with roasting a child at Easter? The scandal would be a savoury morsel, and the falsehood no greater. Most of the other charges are of little importance, if true; but their truth is on a level with those to which we have replied.

There is one point, however, in this curious bill of indictment, to which we plead guilty without any sense of shame. "Evangelical religion is, as one well said, a thoroughly feminine form of religion, and in this respect is quite adapted for those domestic purposes for which the world specially needs it." If it did not sustain this character, if it were not a feminine form of religion, it would not be the religion of Jesus Christ. They who preached it would not be the true followers of him, of whom it is expressly recorded, that "the women ministered unto him;" "that he loved Lazarus, and Mary and Martha, his sisters;" and that, nailed to the cross, His last words expressed His sympathy for His mother's sorrow, and His concern for her future comfort. The religion of the Gospel called in a woman, with her husband, to assist in the conversion of an Apollos, "expounding to him the way of God more perfectly." It made a widow's house the refuge of the Church, when prayer was made for an apostle in chains and in a dungeon. A woman gave hospitality, at one and the same time, to the greatest of Apostles, and the very first of bishops. Women were fellow-helpers with Paul; and John, speaking by the Spirit, dedicates a letter to the Elect Lady whom he loved in the truth. The primitive Christianity seemed to haughty Scribes and wondering Philosophers a truly feminine form of religion; and, no doubt, they scorned it the more on this account. strange thing now is, not that the offence should still be felt, but that it should be so keenly resented by a woman! The religion, however, which works well at home, or "is quite adapted for those domestic purposes for which the world needs it," must be the purest, deepest, strongest, of all those influences which God, in providence or grace, has brought to bear upon mankind. Home, if not the temple of the living God, is the den of devils. Here the fiercest passions revel;

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here the highest conquests of grace are achieved. It requires more than a martyr's courage in thousands of God's children to bear up at home against the daily trial of cruel mockings in vulgar life-the contradiction, the ill-concealed contempt, or the studied, courtly rudeness in higher classes. Here it is, when grace reigns, that its noblest triumphs are displayed. In the privacy of home no human eye confronts the sinner, no fear of public opinion compels him to throw around him, however loosely he may wear it, the cloak of decency. Here he can display every evil temper, and indulge every unhallowed lust. A religion which is adapted for domestic purposes, which purifies the household and makes it the abode of holiness and love, is, we may rest assured, that form of godliness which Christ approves. Our author, however, does not approve it; one reason is, "it fiercely denounces the world in the opera and the ball-room," which certainly few other religionists profess to do. If she can show us that these, and especially the former, are consistent with the command, "Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world;"" for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride of life, are not of the Father but are of the world," we will venture at once to promise, on behalf of the Evangelical clergy, that "the fierceness" of their denunciations shall be toned down to more dulcet strains. So it is, however; evangelical religion, all-powerful at home, "is feeble everywhere; proposition which the reader will of course admit. A little preliminary drilling will, however, be required. It will be necessary that he at the same time unlearn all that books, all that experience, nay, all that our modern philosophy, German or English, spiritual or political, has ever inculcated. He must believe that society is not made up of individuals, or states of families, or that public opinion is the result of education; nor must he allow that the most abiding education, and that which leaves its deepest traces on the man in the most important years of his life, was carried on at home; the result of parental discipline was the effect of a mother's teaching and a mother's prayers. All this being granted, he may begin at length to see his way to the conclusion, that a religion which is powerful at home may be impotent abroad.

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Evangelical religion is again upon its trial under circumstances to which it has been long a stranger. has borne itself well in poverty and shame; how will it bear the caresses of the great and wealthy, and the respect of the wise? It is, no doubt, a new discipline; but if it be of God, we have nothing to fear for the result. The prophet was equally unharmed in the lions' den and in the palace of the king of Babylon. The temptations were of a different kind, no doubt; but the same grace was sufficient for

each emergency. So it will be with Evangelical religion, if it be of God. New trials-for prosperity is a grievous trialwill elicit fresh graces, or else the lamp of God will be removed; and with the loss of spiritual life in the Evangelical body, the Church of England will be finally undone. The form of religion cannot be the true one which melts away in the sunshine. We are to be "instant in season" as well as 66 out of season." We are therefore to expect favouring gales as well as rude blasts of wind, even from the world without. Paul, with all his afflictions, was "courteously entreated" by men in power sometimes; it did him no harm, for he knew how to abound" as well as 66 how to suffer want;" and our Lord Himself was once received with hosannahs in the city where He had come up to die. The religion which cannot bear prosperity is but a feeble sapling, and needs the sharp pruning of the master of the vineyard.

But we are not afraid. Indeed, many things indicate that the present gleams of sunshine may soon be obscured. The church, the true church of Christ, God's spiritual believing people, have many conflicts yet before them. But neither of this are we afraid. It was noticed in our late campaigns that the youth of the noblest families sacrificed their ease with as much indifference as the private soldier, and bore up with as much cheerfulness as though nursed in poverty and inured to all its hardships. The soldiers of the living God will not be wanting to their Great Captain when the battle is joined, whether on fields of snow or on plains withered by the scorching sun; for they fight not in their own strength, but in that of Him whose watchword to one and all of them is this: "My grace is sufficient for thee."

MIRACLES NOT INCONSISTENT WITH GENERAL LAWS.

IN our employment of machinery upon almost every department of human labour, we are undesignedly imitating the method of general laws so largely adopted by the great Creator Himself. When, instead of the hand, we use a machine, we substitute the agency of some general principles in lieu of the direct operations of the living person. These principles become second causes; and it is precisely the substitution which occurs in any province of the government of God, where we find a general law apparently taking the place of His immediate and personal interference. There is an