and his burden light to those whose faces are set resolutely Zion-ward, yet the daily renunciation of ourselves for Him, and the daily crucifixion of the flesh, with the affections and lusts, are the appointed, the indispensable conditions. Every day will bring along with it circumstances which render a partial obedience easier to the flesh than a total. There are the active duties as well as the contemplative. In prayer,

if we are serious, we find refreshment and comfort; if less so, at least we find the ease which results from the sense of duty performed ;the requirement is to some so pleasurable, and to all so easy, that thus far we may be very ready to comply. But thus far we have not proved our discipleship. "Hath the Lord as great delight in burntofferings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice." Not that God will accept our duties without our prayers-prayer itself is a duty, an important one ;prayer itself is an act of obedience, and if omitted, would render our services as imperfect as Saul's;-prayer is indispensable to procure that grace, without which our endeavours would be fruitless, or stifled in their birth. But prayer is not all duty, nor is it the highest duty. All its value depends on the use we make of the grace we receive, and the sincerity with which we are seeking to be doers of the word. The same remark applies to all the acts of Christian devotion, whether public or private. The word of God doeth good to him that walketh uprightly, and the prayer of a just man is his delight. But the Gospel is hid to them that are lost; and "he that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be an abomination."

We, my brethren, in professing ourselves Christians, profess the glory of God as our object and our motive. May he grant that we may have grace and guidance, steadily and sincerely to keep this object in view, and by our mutual prayers for each other, with the mutual reflection also of duties performed, build each other up in the way of righteousness and salvation! But, this being our profession, how careful should we be lest partial insincerity, scarcely suspected by ourselves, deprive us of our duty and of our reward! God leads us forth to the battle, and we cheerfully advance against his enemies and ours. But have we duly considered the terms of our commission? Are we sure that, while we have zeal to God, it is a zeal according to knowledge? Are our means, our endeavours, such as He would approve? Let us remember, that if a man strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned except he strive lawfully. The laws of our warfare are laid down in our Bible, and the weapons placed in our hands. If we fight not according to the terms of command, and if we fight not with the weapons wherewith we are intrusted, we must not hope to gain the victory, or to share the triumph. These considerations are most important in directing our conduct; but they may be very readily and satisfactorily used. No Christian, well read in his Bible, and sincere in his intentions, can lightly fail to know what God requires of him. This once known, let him not travel out of the path which the word of God has marked out, in the vain hope that he can promote the Divine glory better than by the fulfilment of the Divine will. Let him not say, "I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have

the

gone way which the Lord sent me;" for though this may be true in part, still, if the whole command of the Lord has not been obeyed, where it was plain and express, such a man's Christianity is imperfect; and even though we go the way which the Lord sent us, though we seek heaven, not by our own merits but by the blood of Jesus, still, if we seek not in obedience, our faith is dead and vain, and our devotion fruitless. Once knowing the will of God, let us, with all meekness, readiness and confidence, submit ourselves thereto; assured that no other way, however apparently pleasant, can guide to aught but confusion and perdition; while this, whatever courage and stability it may require to tread it, will be found, amidst all its difficulties, a way of pleasantness, and a path of peace, infallibly conducting to glory and

to God.

Ꮎ .

MISCELLANEOUS.

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

MR. EDITOR,-A friend lately asked my opinion of an article in the last number of the New Monthly Magazine; and while the work was in my hands, I was tempted to extract the following passages.

P. 502. In Worcestershire Colonel Lygon, aided by a great company of pluralist parsons.

Ibid. Despite of... the great company of preachers.

Ibid. In Essex.

voted for Mr. Tyrell.

all the clergy of the county, faithful to their principles,

...

...

P. 504. Lords Althorp and Milton had nothing to oppose. to an intriguing clergy.

Ibid. The nation is decided for reform,-the churchmen of Cambridge are decided for the rotten boroughs. . . . The nation will not forget this favour. . . . If churchmen are against the people, they cannot be surprised if the people are against them. . . . In the University of Oxford the anti-national party prevailed without a struggle. .. The College of Dublin was not behind her English sisters in testifying her animosity to the people.

...

P. 505. We see their (the Beresfords') unrelaxing animosity to the people, in the conduct of the primate. ... Armagh, a borough belonging to that prelate, and always at the service of some individual whose principles make it dangerous for him to show his face at a popular meeting.

P. 506. The ecclesiastics appeared in great force at the hustings (of Drogheda); no fewer than forty of that estimable order supported the vacant declaimer, who presumes to talk of himself and Burke in the same breath. Nor has the University of Dublin done herself any disparagement by preferring such a person as Mr. Lefroy to the Irish Solicitor-General. The former is the natural representative, by his dulness and his bigotry, for a constituency of churchmen and pedants. Old metaphysics and scholastic theology are just the studies to make anti-reformers and illiberalists. A little more useful knowledge and practical christianity (if by any means they could be infused into our colleges) would materially improve their politics, as well as their minds and morals.

All these passages are from the first article, entitled "The late Elections; they are followed up in another article, entitled "Will the Lords pass the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill?"

66

P. 513. "When reason is against men," to quote Hobbes' 'quaint antithesis," men will be against reason," is more frequently predicable of the Barons of Britain than perhaps any other equally numerous body, the Church of course excepted.

Ibid. The monkish bigots of Cambridge.

P. 514. As the noble and right reverend members of their Lordships' House are, after all, but human beings, and, as such, less likely, as a body, to be influenced by an abstract love of truth and right, than what they deem a sense of their own interests and privileges.

P. 515. From such a doctrine (that reform is not necessary), and from such an advocate (the Duke of Wellington), there is but little ground for apprehension,--the rather as, except in the Bench of Bishops, there are but very few of even the Duke's late subs who are hardy enough to stand godfather to it.

P. 518. They (the moderate reformers) count on the Bishop.' Bench to a man, on the votes of the anti-reformers of every shade and party, &c.

P. 519. The evangelical party will also vote for the Bill, as a means of revolutionizing the Bench of Bishops,—and, indeed, the Church at large; that is, of confining the Lords spiritual to their clerical duties, if they have any, and of making the non-resident pluralist contribute a little of his superfluity to the support of the working clergymen, with whom at present it is short commons and primitive christianity, in the regard of stipend.

Ibid. Of the right reverend Bench we will not say more than that it is the sincerest wish of the bitterest foes of the Church of England that the Bishops may vote in a body against the Bill.

From the "Soliloquy of an Ex-Member."

P. 526. The country rector of my parish, especially about Whitsuntide, or during the venison season, has often plainly hinted to me that I was a good

man.

From the Appendix.

P. 251. It is melancholy to find the Church, which should be ever on the side of purity and morality, leagued, in too many cases, with the boroughmongering system. The two English Universities, and that of Ireland, have allied themselves at once imprudently and scandalously, with the enemies of the people. The Universities, and the ecclesiastical institutions, and the feelings of the Church, as a body, may fairly enough be judged of from their conduct. Besides, the clergy came forward, in a great majority of the contested elections, with numbers and zeal, on the anti-reform side.

P. 242. Were we enemies to the Church we should devoutly pray that they might still continue in their course of blind unyielding bigotry; but we respect the Church, though we cannot be blind to its defects, and would earnestly desire to see its foundations laid deep in the affections of the people, and not in the sand which every wind and tide has power to influence.

I have not selected these passages as a thesis for a discourse on parliamentary reform,-for the discussion of which I consider any place more suitable than the pages of the Christian Remembrancer. My object in drawing them together, in their naked deformity, is to demonstrate the spirit in which advantage has been taken of a late occasion to incite the public mind against the Church and the Clergy. Who may be the conductors, or the readers, or the purchasers of the New Monthly Magazine, I profess not to know; of their temper and disposition, these accumulated extracts leave too little doubt: but as

there are men who will loathe a dram, though they cannot refuse the temptation of a drop, I am willing to hope that, when the poison of these extracts is condensed, in a form separated and detached from the context, the bane may be counteracted, and made the antidote of its own pernicious operations. Nothing less than a paroxysm of spleen could move a public writer to betray so many signs of morbid acrimony in so few pages; and he must either suppose the readers of his work to be as splenetic as himself, or they would take no pleasure in this reiteration of vulgar abuse; or assume their general carelessness and insensibility to be such as a less repeated attack would not move, and that there is an object which renders it necessary to stimulate them to a certain point. These remarks proceed, as I apprehend, not from the dissenters, but from a more formidable party, of which the dissenters are the dupes, and which, in the pride of indifferentism, affect to be of no religion, and are in fact above, or rather below, all religion. Their obvious design, on the present occasion, is to separate the clergy from the people, under the false and insidious pretext that the clergy are opposed to the people; and to make their conduct in the late elections, and especially in that of the University of Cambridge, the ground of a charge against the whole ministry of the Established Church.

But, I ask, do the facts sustain the charge ? In Northamptonshire, where Mr. Cartwright polled 2,019 votes, and Lord Milton 2,135, there was such a division, the public opinion of the county was so nearly balanced, the support given to both parties was so strong, as to be beyond the efforts of "an intriguing clergy." In Essex, 1,518 single votes were recorded in favour of Colonel Tyrell, of which but 183 were those of clergymen; so far are "all the clergy of the county," a county containing considerably more than 400 parishes,from being subject to the alleged imputation: and I am justified in saying that there was a large body of the laity with whom a large body of the clergy concurred, and that over these men the clergy could exercise no improper influence, especially in a contest in which the minds of the people were prepared to refuse their votes to the Parson's man. In the University of Cambridge the clergy naturally possess a numerical majority in the convocation; and this majority was, I think, considerably greater than the majority in the poll book. In the University of Oxford it is not usual to change the Members; but it may be recollected, that at the time of the election of Sir R. H. Inglis, the gentlemen who supported him were not, at that crisis, of the anti-national party; the voice of the people, which is now so highly cherished, was with them, though it was then despised, and held to be a "vox et præterea nihil.”

But I am not content to dwell upon the misrepresentation of facts, from which it is inferred "that if the clergy are against the people, they cannot complain if the people are against them." If the constitution has invested the clergy with the right of voting in elections, are they not as free as other men to use this privilege? Are they alone to have no discretion in the choice of their representatives? Are they, above all men, to bow the knee to the will of the minister,-to be subject to the arbitrary and insolent dictation of the press,--and to "be infected with every epidemical phrenzy of the people?" It is a

question in which I will not express what I think or what I feel; but in opposition to the effusions of the radical press I have pleasure in reciting the sentiments of a writer whose knowledge of the law and history of the constitution will hardly be called in question. Mr. Palgrave, in his letter to Mr. Spring Rice, on the means of reconciling Parliamentary reform to the interests and opinions of the different orders of the community, and in conformity with the principles and precedents of the Constitution, suggests,―

The number of the representatives of the two Universities should be increased, because, at present, there are no other bodies in which all the constituents can be said to be gentlemen. They are either persons directly connected with the aristocracy, or educating for those liberal pursuits which lead the lower and middling classes into the higher and highest classes of society. Hence the value, and deservedly, placed upon the representation of the two universities. For the same reason, consider whether it may not be desirable to bestow the same privilege upon the Inns of Court, the Colleges of Physicians and of Surgeons, and the clergy of London, Southwark, and Westminster, to whom, united for parliamentary purposes under the name of the "Three Faculties of London," the right of parliamentary representation should belong.... The three united faculties, whatever may be the political character of their representatives, will never return any man by whom the tone of Parliament can be lowered; whether they vote for government, or for the opposition, or for neither, good will equally result from their presence in the assembly. I consider these bodies, like the Universities, merely as the machinery for bringing in men, belonging to the aristocracy, of respectability and talent. An elective franchise cannot be given to men of science or men of literature, upon a qualification of acquirement or knowledge; but eminence in science or in literature would afford a proper ground for a candidate canvassing the votes of a community which would not include any person destitute of education or acquirements.-Pp. 18, 19.

This is the language of an educated gentleman, far removed from the low ribaldry concerning the dulness and the bigotry fit for "a constituency of churchmen and pedants." The obloquy which it is attempted to excite against the clergy for what has been done, is further applied with a view of intimidating the Peers, and especially the Bishops, in what remains to be done; and on this point there is a most remarkable coincidence of sentiment between the different writers who address themselves to the different classes of the community. The writer who takes upon himself to offer Friendly Advice to the Peers is not perhaps ambitious of being placed in the same rank with the conductors of the New Monthly Magazine or the editor of the low journal, called Bell's Life in London; but in the Advice, and in the New Monthly Magazine, there is the very same profession of respect for the Church, the same insidious hypotheses, and the same practical excitement of the dangers, which are ostensibly deprecated and the New Monthly Magazine and Bell's Life in London agree to a word in anticipating a reckoning with the Church. I transcribe the passages as I find them:

If, indeed, the right reverend Bench should unhappily pursue the course now repented of at the University, if they should set themselves in hostile array against the whole nation's wishes, then indeed would our fears wax great,-not for the fate of the reform bill, but for the fortunes of the English Church; and we verily believe the Establishment, with all its imperfections and even abuses;