the senseless bigot. He has collected his facts with great care, and presented them with much pictorial powerand considerable effect. There is a dramatic cast about the narrative, which gives it much vividness and beauty.

Dr. Hamilton's lecture on "Bartholomew's Day" is very characteristic of himself. It is like one of Claude's pictures-soft, beautiful, and touching. We have read it with intense pleasure, not only for its own merit, but also for the evidence it affords of the sympathy of the English presbyterian church in our movement. Dr. Hamilton has not the liberation brand upon him, and perhaps his words will be heard where those of political Dissenters would not reach. We did not ourselves expect to find him speaking in a tone so decided as he here adopts, and greatly admire the strength of conviction which we find associated with the charity of a most loving heart. Surely his pages must set before Evangelical clergymen the iniquities of 1662 in a light they have not seen before. The pamphlet is one admirably adapted to circulate among lukewarm Dissenters who have been under the emasculating influences of the Evangelical Alliance. It may teach them that desire for Christian union does not imply an abandonment of principle. We give two extracts the first is on the exclusiveness given to the English church by the Act of the Uniformity:

"And although it took some time to acquire a sensation corresponding to this creed-although Tillotson and Burnet and Patrick could never bring themselves to feel as if they were more apostolical than their friends and neighbours Bates and Bradbury -still the proud and exclusive doctrine was asserted, and in due time the proud and exclusive spirit grew up. We all know what it is, and we all lament it. Taken in detail, and one by one, there are hundreds and thousands in the evangelical ministry who are among the most estimable of the sons of men, and in your intercourse with them individually and severally, they are pleasant companions, large-minded scholars, warmhearted Christians, fair and open disputants; but when they put on their canonicals, or

come officially tog er they stand in such awe of one another that generous impulses and modern sympathies are merged in a stiff and stately churchmanship, till, in the public mind, convocation has become the symbol for everything obsolete and unreal, and you can hardly persuade yourself that inside of the pasteboard colossus is many a paterfamilias, with his open kindly counten. ance-many a good Christian, with his honest English heart. 'Salute one another with a holy kiss.' The few sister churches which have thus been favoured complain that the hierarchical salutation is so statuesque and icy as to induce rigors and a shivering ague, and all owing to that false position assumed by the Act of Uniformity which relegates the Church of England to a cold and Alpine isolation when her proper home would have been where Becon and Latimer left her, where the best of her pastors loved to be found on the sunny plains of England, or beside the warmer hearths of its people, and in kindly contact with universal Christendom. This figment of clerical caste, or exclusive prelatical orders, or apostolical suc cession, which the Church of Engiand took on board when it turned out the Puritans,

is the magnetic disturber which makes useless the compass, and baffles the most skilful of pilots. Besides all the bigotry it creates on the one side, and all the bitterness and heartburning on the other, it gives to the old ship a steering so bizarre and bewildered

at one time back towards the enchanted shores of Popery, at another straight for the breakers of Rationalism-that looking at its unaccountable course, the spectator might be apt to imagine the helmsman asleep or 'half-seas over,' or he might fancy that a civil war had broken out on board, and that the mutineers and captain were in alternate possession of the tiller."-Bartholo mew's Day, 1662.

The second shadows the dangers of the Church of England:

"History will say, there lies the institu tion which understood neither how to retain its friends nor how to shut out its enemies. There lies the house which the martyrs built, and which Bartholomew Day left desolate. There lies the church which expelled the Puritans, and kept them out so long, that they would not come in again—the church which, by making the Puritans Nonconformists, made the people of England Dissenters; and which, thus forfeiting its State connection, and coming down to the general level, at last carried out its own idea of an undistinguished uniformity, leaving no dissent in England."-Bartholomew's Day, 1662.

The next on our list is " Troublesome Times," a simple touching story of the period, which we advise all our readers to get for themselves. A detailed examination of its merits we must reserve for our article of next month.

Of the obstructions to the Church in her great work "Dissent is amongst the foremost. It impedes

the conscientious and earnestminded pastor. It undermines his influence and counteracts his ministrations every day. It furnishes a rallying point for the disaffected and self-willed in all our parishes. It is a snare to both pastor and people tempting the one to conceal or compromise his church's creed, to lower its standard, and ignore its rule— exposing him to charges of unfaithfulness if conciliatory, and of bigotry if rigid; while it tends to beget in parishioners an indifference to truth. And though it has to be met, like all other hindrances, in the spirit of the Gospel, it is not less to be deplored. It has wrought, and is working vast and extensive evil, and imperilling to a fearful extent the faith, the loyalty, and the moral and religious life of our people." We invite our readers carefully to ponder these words, to analyze the charges which they contain, to consider the spirit which they reveal. They were not uttered in the heat and excitement of controversy they are not the foamings of some rabid Clifford, Bardsley, or Venables-they were delivered in St. Mary's, at Oxford, by the Bampton Lecturer, Archdeacon Sandford; they must therefore be treated as the grave and deliberate utterances of opinions cautiously formed and firmly held. Their author is a man who, in the same series of lectures, condemns the domineering spirit of

No. 8.-VOL. I.

"the Church, and the narrowmindedness of the sects" in past times, singling out Sheldon among others, for special censure; deprecates a rigid adherence to nonessentials," and the "imperious and rough refusal" of all concessions; rejoices that "the doctrine of toleration is now better understood," and finds in the correspondence between the Bishop of Adelaide and Mr. Binney, whom he designates as "an eminent Nonconformist Divine" (although elsewhere he does not hesitate to quote a perverted representation of a sentence of Mr. Binney's spoken nearly a quarter of a century ago, as a manifestation of Dissenting violence), an evidence of the growth of a better spirit on both sides. Yet such a man can deprecate as " spurious charity" the demand for the omission of the word

schism" from the Liturgy, can justify the continuance of what he admits to be a prayer against fellow-religionists on the ground that "variances" and "emulations" are "enumerated in the Bible among the works of the flesh," and can speak of Dissent in the terms quoted above; apparently unconscious that he is furnishing another example of the very spirit he condemns in Sheldon and others, and trampling under foot that law of charity for which he professes so deep a reverence. If these be the calm and sober feelings of one, from whom such very different things might have been expected, how wide must be the gulf that separates the

parties in this ecclesiastical controversy. In one of the notes to the volume the testimony of Bishop Selwyn is quoted to show the desire of the great majority of the clergy to give up controversial bitterness. It may be so, but certainly Dissenters have not profited by such feelings. We remember hearing once of a man who said he did not like, after the fashion of some, to distribute his hate among different men, here a little and there a little; he preferred concentration of feeling, and therefore he hated only one man, but him he did hate with all the intensity of which his nature was capable. This, we are sorry to say, seems to be the type of the feeling cherished by many of the clergy towards Dissent, it is the abomination which they cannot endure, and if all other streams of "controversial bitterness are dried up, it is only that the flood poured in on these unfortunate adherents of such a system may be fuller, deeper, and stronger.

It is certainly somewhat amusing to see the pertinacity and fierceness with which we are attacked. Every week seems to call forth some new champion. It is scarcely possible for an archdeacon to deliver a charge without a fling at the "Liberation Society," the "Bicentenary," or some kindred topic; there can hardly be a gathering of Churchmen for whatever purpose, but the favourite subject must be ventilated; there is not a solitary journalist who does not feel himself called to break a lance in this grand passage of arms. Assuredly the phalanx which we have to encounter is sufficiently formidable in its appearance. Bampton lecturers and Quarterly reviewers, evangelical preachers and broad Church pamphleteers, historians of high repute, and lecturers of unenviable notoriety, form altogether a host of adversaries, before whom weak spirits might tremble. The most singular part of the whole is,

that all this zeal is called forth against a system which almost every assailant proclaims to be rapidly on the decline. Mr. Sowler comforted the hearts of the Church Congress at Oxford, by an assurance that the increased intolerance of Dissent was only "in an inverse ratio to the dimunition of Nonconformity in the country." The "Quarterly Review” finds the explanation of the Bicentenary celebration in the fact that the Dissenting cause is not prospering so much as it has prospered recently; and the enthusiasm of some of their adherents is beginning to wax faint. It is very intelligible that they should grasp at every available means for rekindling the fire they fear is dying away.' If this be the true state of the case, why this extraordinary agitation in the Church host? Why form Church Defence Associations; why send lecturers through the country; why tempt high officials, like the ViceChancellor of Cambridge, to lay aside their traditional dignity, and lend their sanction to the vulgar tirades that have been directed against Dissenters; why should archdeacons be in such a hurry to put on their armour, and rush to the fray; why should High and Low Church bury their old hatreds and begin that interchange of compliments which both of them feel to be so very awkward, if the foe be so contemptible, and if his strength be already on the wane? These signs indicate to us another feeling than that which finds expression. Children may sing in a dark wood to keep up a make-believe of courage, but all their shouting does not still their fears. So these loud and premature boastings affect us little so long as these formidable preparations for resistance give tangible proof of the real idea of our opponents as to the power against whom they have to contend.

For ourselves, we can only rejoice that these questions should be agitated. We never supposed that

we were going to secure a rapid and easy victory for principles that are opposed to so many powerful feelings and dominant interests. The panic displayed by some, and the reckless virulence of others, assure us that we have produced a deeper impression than we ourselves expected. Not only have we nothing to fear from discussion, but we feel that it places us in advanced position, and that it rests with ourselves to use it to advantage. Those who propose to commemorate the heroic deeds and sufferings of 1662 had little conception that they were about to rouse so fierce a storm. In their innocence, perhaps they fancied that the Bicentenary of Nonconformity would give no more offence than did the Centenary of Methodism a few years ago. They are certainly surprised, but not at all annoyed. It is something to draw attention to the great facts of our history, and secure a hearing for our principles. For mistake and wilful misrepresentation, for keen resentment of unwelcome truths plainly told, for unwillingness to recognize the evidences of strength and devotedness given in the efforts for the multiplication of our religious agencies, we are quite prepared. But after all the talk the fact remains patent to the view of all, that in the lapse of two centuries the Church of England has done nothing towards healing the schism of 1662; that her Act of Uniformity has not prevented internal divisions, nor availed to arrest the growth of external Dissent, that the persecuted Nonconformity of the Restoration times has grown to be the powerful thing we find it now, and that to-day instead of petitioning humbly for toleration or striving to work out some impossible plans of comprehension, it is boldly challenging the right of any Christian community to social and political ascendency. Two centuries ago it was trembling for its existence-a helpless outcast that

had neither "local habitation nor name," building hopes on royal declarations and statesmen's promises; to-day it lifts up its head among the mightest influences in the land, and is able to hold against all comers, the position which by doing and suffering it has won for itself. Two centuries ago haughty prelates and selfish politicians deemed they could blot out its name for ever; they branded it with reproach, hunted it out of their cities, cast it into loathsome dungeons, and loaded it with heavy fetters; to-day they exult if they can show that it has not yet attracted to itself one-half of all the Christian worshippers in England, apologize for the paucity of attendants at their services, by pleading the effects of rain in thinning the ranks of Conformists, and vindicate their right to be regarded as the Church of the nation by claiming as their own the millions who are living in practical Heathenism.

It is not very wonderful that Dissenters should desire to bring out the facts, and point the lessons of this story, and of the contrast between "now" and "then.' The wiser men among their opponents are giving up the absurd notion, at first so dogmatically set forth, that they have nothing to do with the men and events of 1662. Amid all the diversities of opinion on some questions between the old Nonconformists and the present Dissenters it is, at least, clear that the present position of Dissenters, is, to a large extent, the consequence of the ejectment. The case is very fairly put by Mr. Langley in the last of the Cambridge "Tracts for Priests and People :' "The retrospect of these 200 years, full of the memories of difficulties overcome, of triumphs hardly earned and nobly sustained, of political power and social prestige manfully fought for and won, of trials, disappointments, schisms turned into motives

for renewed energy and prayer; all these things have changed the Nonconformist of to-day from the reluctant representative of the voluntary system into the ardent and enthusiastic champion of the voluntary principle." These words describe correctly the change that has taken place. We do not claim the Nonconformists, therefore, as adherents of our great principle, but we do quote the whole story as setting forth the evil of all State interference and the mighty strength of Christian willinghood. Nothing, therefore, can be more natural than that we should take advantage of this Bicentenary year to honour the men whose nonconformity we inherit, to review our own progress and call forth new energies, in order to greater advance, and so to illustrate anew the power of that "voluntary principle," to which our Dissent Owes its present strength.

We have no desire to fight over again the old battles on this subject. Enough, perhaps, has been said as to the amount of agreement between the Nonconformists of the 17th and 19th centuries. Mr. Lathbury is constantly reiterating his point that we have no relation to the "ejected" -that the "silenced" men alone are our progenitors: so too, the "London Review" is very desirous to ascertain the exact numbers of the Nonconformists, and, forgetful of the declaration of Coleridge (a most competent and unprejudiced judge), as to the comparative trustworthiness of Calamy and Walker as authorities, labours hard to reduce the numbers of the one and sustain those of the other. To us these are points of very secondary moment. Whether we are to celebrate the sufferings of two thousand or two hundred-of the silenced only, or of all, cannot at all affect our action. The lower you reduce the original number the more remarkable is our growth, and the more

signal the testimony to the vitality of our principles. Of course, too, we are well aware that our closest affinities are with the silenced men, and we have no occasion to be ashamed of the descent. To them, at least, the charges so freely directed against the ejected do not apply. apply. They (as Mr. Lathbury tells us) "had not held livings. They had gathered churches out of parishes. They were not guilty of taking possession of the property of others." We do not see, therefore, that our Bicentenary would lose any of its interest, or that we should incur any reproach if we were to accept the conclusion Mr. Lathbury has taken such pains to establish.

But however indifferent we may be to such questions, we cannot suf fer the atrocious treatment of the "ejected" by the "Quarterly" reviewer to pass with impunity. For egregious bad taste, for ignorance of historic facts, and for bitter feelings, this writer is scarcely sur passed by any of his party, and these qualities are all the more offensive because of the pretentious style that pervades the article. We have not space to follow him through all his assertions, but a few illustrations will sufficiently indicate the character of the whole. We are told that "since the whitewashing of Alexander Borgia and Tiberius, the canonization of the Puritan intruders is a flat and insignificant achievement ;" and as to admiration of their heroism, or pity for their sufferings, it is said that "it would be as reasonable to ask us to sympathize with Bonner in the prison or Robespierre at the guillotine." The band of Nonconformists embraced some of the holiest and best men that England has ever known-men whose name is still a watchword to the Church, and who are deserving of admiration alike for the fervour of their piety, the wide range of their learning, and the abundance of their