from her prison to her Master's side in the To-Morrow.

I can show you her grave out there in the hills,- -a short, stunted grave, like a child's. No one goes there, although there are many firesides where they speak of "Lois" softly, as of something holy and dear; but they think of her always as gone home; even old Yare looks up, when he talks of "my girl." Yet, knowing that nothing in God's just universe is lost, or fails to meet the late fulfilment of its hope, I like to think of her poor body lying there; I like to believe that the great mother was glad to receive the form that want and crime of men had thwartedtook her uncouth child home again, that had been so cruelly wrongedfolded it in her warm bosom with tender, palpitating love.

It pleased me in the winter months to think that the worn-out limbs, the old scarred face of Lois rested, slept: crumbled into fresh atoms, woke at last with a strange sentience, and, when God smiled permission through the summer sun, flashed forth in a wild ecstasy of the true beauty that she loved so well. In no questioning, sad pallor of sombre leaves or grey lichens: throbbed out rather in answering crimsons, in lilies, white, exultant in a chordant life!

Yet, more than this: I strive to grope, with dull, earthy sense, at her freed life in that earnest land where souls forget to hunger or to hope, and learn to be. And so thinking, the certainty of her aim and work, and love, yonder comes with a new, vital reality, beside which the story of the yet living men and women of whom I have told you grows vague and incomplete, like an unguessed riddle. I have no key to solve it with,-no right to solve it. Let me lay the pen abruptly down.

My story is coarse, unénded, a mere groping hint? It has no conduit of God's justice running

through it, awarding good and ill? It lacks determined concord, and a certain yea and nay? I know: it is a story of To-Day. The Old Year is on us yet. Poor faithful old Knowles will tell you that it is a dark day: that now, as eighteen hundred years ago, the Helper stands unwelcome in the world: that the air is filled with the cry of the slave, and of nations going down into darkness, their message untold, their work undone: that your own heart, as well as the great humanity, asks, even now, an unrendered justice. Does he utter all the problem of To-Day? I think, not all: yet let it be. Other hands are strong to show you how, in the very instant peril of this hour, is lifted clearer into view the eternal, hopeful prophecy; may tell you that the slumbering heaven and the unquiet earth are instinct with it; that the unanswered prayer of your own life should teach it to you; that in that Book wherein God has not scorned to write the history of nations we find the quiet surety that the To-Morrow of the world is near at hand.

For me, I have no prophetic insight, as I said before: the homely things of every day wear their old faces. This moment, the evening air thrills with a purple of which no painter has caught the tint, no poet the meaning; not a face passes me in the street on which some human voice has not the charm to call out love or power: the Helper yet waits amongst us; surely, this Old Year you despise holds beauty, work, content yet unmastered. Childsouls, you tell me, like that of Lois, may find it enough to hold no past and no future, to accept the work of each moment, and think it no wrong to drink every drop of its beauty and joy: we who are wiser laugh at them. It may be: yet I say unto you, their angels only do always behold the face of my Father in the New Year.

409

IF the Bicentenary commemoration has done nothing more, it has added some contributions of very high value to our Dissenting literature, and it is to be hoped that Nonconformist churches will profit largely by the increased light thrown upon their principles and their story. It is evident, at least, that they have among them men perfectly competent to hold their own against all comers. Solid reasoning, extensive research, logical acumen, and rhetorical strength have all been enlisted in the service, and the result has been most satisfactory. Many of the publications connected with Bartholomew Day itself are worthy of more enduring fame than they are likely to secure in the pamphlet form. Especially would we direct attention to two admirable sermons on "Bartholomew Day, 1662: its Sufferers and its Lessons," by one of the most faithful and consistent veterans in the ranks of Nonconformity, Rev. John Kelly, of Liverpool. They are thorough in every sense: clear and accurate in their statement of facts, distinct in the enunciation of fundamental truths, forcible in their argumentation and earnest in their appeals. Without anything approaching to violence they are marked throughout by a strength and decision which it is impossible to mistake. They are accompanied by an Address, delivered on the Monday evening following, which is a vigorous and unanswerable defence of the Nonconformist position from the attacks of those who have adopted the calumnies of Walker, and made them the basis of an assault on Dissent. Altogether, it would not be easy to find a more condensed and convincing review of the whole subject.

No. 11.-VOL. I.

We are concerned here, however, mainly with the larger works that have been called forth. And, first, are the two Prize Essays. We are not great admirers of the Prize Essay system, but if its results were always to call forth a work so important as this, we should alter our

views. A book more suitable to the crisis we cannot conceive. It is a manual which includes within small compass all the most important points of Dissenting principles and narrative.

Though brief, it is not imperfect: though popular, it is not superficial, and its simple, unpretending character gives no idea of its actual worth.

The first Essay is, in the words of the adjudicators, "an able exposition of that form of ecclesiastical polity prescribed by Christ and His Apostles, and exemplified in the practice of the early churches." With great calmness, but with remarkable force does Dr. Angus set forth and defend the views of Dissenters on these points. He starts from the principle that churches are" independent associations of equals," establishing it by reference to the New Testament, pointing it. out as the characteristic of Christianity in opposition to both Jewish and Gentile notions, defending it against the charge that it must contribute to insubordination, and guarding it against the extreme notions of those who would confound equality with communism, forgetting that equality "lets men create differences, though itself creates none," and "that wherever the communistic principle is established, there inequality and consequent injustice has begun." No assertion, therefore, of the rights of individual Christians is intended to detract from the honour belonging

H H

to those distinguished by the eminence of their graces. "If men are Christians, their Christianity is their great glory, a glory they share with the poorest of their brethren,-and every natural gift is an honour, just so far as it is consecrated to the good of the whole. To give them more than this is to forget the dignity due to a Christian and to disown the equality for which we plead; to give them less is to deny the grace which is entitled, wherever we find it, to our reverence and love." Dr. Angus is not at all ignorant of the difficulties that may arise in the practical development of the principle he has laid down; but he would seek a remedy for abuses that are the result of imperfections in the men by whom the system is worked, not in a departure from the church polity sanctioned in the New Testament, but in a higher culture of the spiritual life of Christians. "Self discipline," (he truly says) "is the condition of all true progress, and the more difficult it is, the more essential." This is a point on which we need strongly to insist; both in civil and ecclesiastical life there is too prevalent a tendency to chafe against the evils necessarily associated with liberty, and to call out for that unity of purpose and promptitude in action supposed to be the fruit of despotism. It is forgotten that the very errors into which freedom may sometimes fall are part of a healthful discipline -that it is not good for communities, any more than individuals to be kept in a state of pupilage, even if a wise leader could always be secured, and that it is better for them to gain experience even from their own mistakes, than to purchase exemption from the evils attendant on their own ignorance or wilfulness by an abnegation of the first and dearest rights of their manhood. In churches, especially if there be a constitution that can plead Divine authority in its favour,

and the only objection to which is the evil resulting from the imperfection of the human agents, the right course is not to alter, and so debase the Divine ideal, but rather to arouse Christians to a truer conception of their own obligations, and to greater diligence in their efforts to rise to the stature of perfect men in Christ Jesus.

The voluntaryism of the Christian Church is the next point brought out by our author, and it is done with singular ability. We are the more glad of the attention devoted to this branch of the subject because of the atrocious misrepresen tation of the voluntary principle given in the last of the Cambridge tracts. With its loud professions of liberality it might have been expected that the "Broad Church" party would treat Dissenters with a fairness and courtesy they have not been wont to receive from other sections. This tract is sufficient to dissipate any such idea. The first part is written by a renegade Dissenter, and if it be a revelation of his true spirit, it is evident that Nonconformists have no reason to regret his secession from their ranks. He describes the voluntary principle as "the avowed and formal declaration of the supremacy of the will, the assertion of the principle of selfwill as the guide and director of each man, as the ultimate court of appeal.” How any man who would maintain the character of common justice in dealing with opponents could write thus, we are at a loss to explain. We assert the right of every man to ascertain for himself the will of God, but we assert just as strongly the duty of every man to submit himself to that will when he has arrived at an understanding of its requirements. We protest only against the assumption of any man or body of men to fetter the wills of their fellows, and in that protest we are justified, not only by Scripture and reason, but by the practice of the

Anglican Church, which came into existence only by the exercise of the right which is here so contemptuously ignored, while it is only by recognizing and appealing to it that her advocates can defend her position against the champions of Popery. We cannot, however, better present the truth in opposition to such a perversion than by quoting Dr. Angus's own words.

as a

"Not, of course, that any human will was their law, but simply that acts in which the will was wanting were no acceptable offering to God; they were even an abomination. Ethics might have taught men this truth, for that science maintains that there is neither virtue nor vice, unless there is volition.. At all events, religion teaches that, as a man is in his heart, so is he;' man proposes in his heart, so let him give.' These are its laws: the first of character, and the second of of holy activity. Christian voluntaryism, it cannot be too often repeated, is not the authority of selfwill, it is the willing submission of the heart and of the life to Christ, and the after-devotion of both to his cause" (pp. 18, 19).

And again :

"Christian churches are largely voluntary. They condemn compulsory service and compulsory gifts, not holding, as some think, that men are free to do as they please in Christ's church, but only that every religious act, to be acceptable, must be the willing offering of the heart. Christ's law is our guide, and our love to Him the motive and the measure of our obedience. Herein Christian churches are not so much a protest against necesity and compulsion as a plea for willinghood and love" (pp 71, 92).

In insisting on the spirituality by which every true Church should be characterized, Dr. Angus is equally candid in confessing the practical difficulties attendant on the application of his principles.

The actual often does not correspond with the ideal; there are many in the purest communities who are not converted men, but the inference that every attempt to realize the ideal should be abandoned is unwarranted. We must, however, be careful here not to confound the accidents of our system with its essence. The principle of Independency is simply that a Church is an association of believing men. In accepting this, we do not give our approval to the various modes adopted by different churches to ascertain the Christian character of those seeking to enter its fellowship. Even if a Church were to decline all investigation into individual experience, accepting a candidate's own profession of faith as satisfactory, it would not thereby violate this principle, so long as it distinctly taught that every member was received only on the belief that he was a converted man. This is in direct opposition to the idea of the Established Church, which does not insist on this spiritual character, but throws open its doors to all baptized men. It is necessary that we keep the distinction indicated clearly in view if we would do justice to the system. It does not claim to have found out an infallible mode of preserving Christian purity-it only professes to set forth the Divine ideal of a true Church. The complaint against the National Church is not merely that it admits unworthy men, but that it sets forth an utterly false notion as to the qualifications for membership. The mistakes committed by Independent churches, on the other hand, do nothing to invalidate their principle; they prove that their discrimination has been defective, but certainly not that no discrimination should be made. Dr. Angus's remarks here are very pertinent and suggestive.

66

It is admitted that on this question churches have made mistakes. They have forgotten that

in all that is essential to the Christian life, men are very much what they really wish to be. They have kept inquirers waiting whom they ought to have welcomed; they have insisted upon peculiar types of piety, rather than upon the reality of it; they have preferred talkativeness to quiet penitence; they have applied tests that are at once too lax and too rigid, and so have hesitated to receive some whom Christ long since received, while they have kept out the diffident and thoughtful. All this may be admitted; the process, moreover, of determining on character is always an anxious and a difficult one; it involves responsibilities from which most men would willingly be free. But, nevertheless, whatever the imperfections of this work, and whatever the difficulties, it must be done. Without it there can be no intelligent Christian effort, and no satisfactory Christian fellowship. The Church will soon cease to be a holy brotherhood, and Christian men, who have refused to ascertain the piety, and to judge of the character of their brethren for church purposes, will be compelled to ascertain and judge for their private comfort. If we be Christians we must have Christian intercourse; and Christian intercourse there can be none, unless it be based on mutual knowledge, and sympathy, and love; that is, on the exercise, by individual men, of the very insight and discernment now claimed for the Church (pp. 42, 43).

We regret that want of space prevents us from analyzing more fully the other parts of this Essay, the best on the subject which has appeared for many years. The same reason compels us to speak briefly of the excellent summary of the early history of Independency, by Dr. Waddington. The Doctor is an Independent antiquary-he takes pleasure in searching out the records of obscure men and churches who laid the foundations of our civil and

religious liberty, and his careful research has thrown much light on the beginnings of Protestant Dissent. The second chapter of this sketch contains much information that will be new to most readers. It shows how Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity makes the first breach in the ranks of English Protestantism, compelling many who had hitherto been Puritans into Separatists. It records the formation of the first church of this character of which we have any record in 1567, under Richard Fitz, in the Bridewell prison, where the pastor and his deacon, Thomas Rowland, afterwards died. It rescues the memory of Robert Harrison, a man of singular constancy and zeal, from the unjust neglect into which it has fallen, especially when compared with the notoriety attained by his colleague Browne. It traces with great clearness the course of the persecution carried on for so many years by Elizabeth and the prelates. After reading the sad details here given, few will hesitate to adopt the notion so graphically brought out by a recent speaker that Elizabeth had no bosom, she was all back.

We cannot profess to follow Dr. Waddington through the history, but we must direct attention to his able vindication of the Pilgrim Fathers by pointing out that they were essentially distinct from the Puritans who founded the colony of Massachussetts. Puritans and Separatists are too frequently confounded, but the latter alone had left the Established Church, and were honourably distinguished from the others (as Bancroft testifies) by the fact that " they were never betrayed into the excesses of religious persecution."

Mr. Bayne's Introduction to the Historic Documents, issued by the Bartholomew Committee, is a striking review of the whole Puritan movement by one who has thoroughly appreciated its true signi