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truth, in other divisions of the empire, by giving native youth the same opportunity of becoming acquainted with it. On the question of promoting the spiritual welfare of the country, it is most gratifying to have a Governor-General who does not share in the morbid dread of taking any step in advance, simply because it will alarm the prejudices of the natives. feeling, though dying out, still still lingers to a considerable degree in the minds of some of the influential members of the Government. We We do not allow these prejudices to influence us in the matter of slaughter ing cows for our own benefit, though it is the greatest violation we could inflict on the religious sensibilities of the people, and we ought not to allow them to appal us in matters that concern the welfare of the people themselves.

We can assuredly introduce no improvements, and no innovations, which will not wound the prejudices of those among the natives who are anxious that everything should remain as it was in the days of Munro. If we are to be deterred from every measure of improvement because it would be repugnant to the views and interests of particular classes, we have no Vocation in India. To a certain extent the natives must be benefitted

in spite of themselves, and of their own narrow views, and the influence of our supreme and irresistible power cannot be more advantageously applied than in the promotion of improvement. In the hands of Sir John Lawrence we may be confident that this influence will be used most cautiously and judiciously --but it will not be neglected. He who was instrumental in saving the empire by crushing the mutiny, is not the man to expose it to danger, by any violation of the religious rights of the people. Though he is imbued with stronger religious feelings, of a truly evangelical cast, than any ruler of India since the days of Sir John Shore, yet we may be certain that the development of these views will be kept in a wise and due subordination to the duties of the Governor-General. We have as much confidence in his wisdom and moderation as in his liberal and Christian principles; and though he may not be able to satisfy the enthusiasm of some classes, all his measures will have a direct tendency to the social and religious improvement of the people, as far as the dictates of prudence will allow, and to disregard those dictates and transgress the limits of a sound discretion, would only be to put back the clock of improvement.

THE BISHOP OF OXFORD'S RECENT CHARGE.

MANIFOLD are the reasons by which our separation from the Church of England is justified, there are some that more than others touch the fundamentals of Christian truth. It is a commonplace of dissenting theology that the Bible alone is the source of all

Christian teaching, and its words the sole authority in matters of faith. We have regarded the Church of England as bound by formularies, her doctrines as pressed and limited by articles, her discipline as administered and coutrolled by courts unknown to the

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Primitive Church and enforced by Acts of Parliament. For all practical purposes she has set aside the Bible as her statute book, and substituted the word of man for the word of God.

Although the elements of Roman Catholic error have always been recognised as present in the ritual of the Anglican church, they were largely tempered by the evangelical piety of the churchmen of the last generation, and by the scriptural views of the Wilberforces, the Grants, the Newtons, and the Romaines, of her communion. The times in which we live have, however, seen a singular reaction in favour of Romish doctrine, and everything in the formularies of the Church of England that can be made to bear a sacerdotal and sacramental character has been sedulously improved, until many of the characteristic dogmas and practices of popery are openly taught and observed in our parochial cures.

By no one, among the holders of the Episcopal office, has so much been done in this direction as by the Bishop of Oxford. A few years ago a gentleman of no mean abilities left the Church of England for a dissenting communion, and became somewhat noted for his ex

treme views, especially with regard to the political relations of the community he had left with the state. In a short time he transferred his activity to the Church of Rome, and came into the neighbourhood of the writer. There he publicly announced that it was one part of his mission, to show, that the purest Evangelism and the warmest affection for the doctrines of the Cross, were compatible with a conscientious profession of Popery. We need not say that he failed to convince others of the accuracy of his views, or to induce many to

follow him in his obedience to the See of Peter. The Bishop of Oxford now appears to be attempting this impossible feat. From no bishop do we hear more thoroughly Evangelical discourses; from no Episcopal lips come sweeter sounds, commendatory of the Saviour's mercy and grace. And yet no occupant of a bishop's throne more loudly proclaims the supreme authority of the Church, or more strongly enforces her demands on the consciences and faith of her children. In no diocese are Romish errors more rife, or Romish practices more encouraged, than in that over which a son of Wilberforce rules.

In a recent charge the Bishop of Oxford has surpassed all his other utterances, and we are now boldly told that without the Church we can have no Bible. The grand, universal, fundamental doctrine of the Papacy-the Supremacy of the Church over the Word of God itself, is broadly asserted. The authority of the Bible, its claim on our faith and obedience, are challenged as baseless unless the Church verify it. Here are the Bishop's words :

"We should be unable to maintain the Divine authority of the Scriptures if we gave up the Divine authority of

the Church.

The two were absolute correlatives. In the Church's sense of the word we could have no Bible if we had no Church; for the Church was its witness and its keeper. The Church

was and must be before the Bible. It must receive the Bible; it must propound the Bible to each separate soul as the Word of God. The external evidence which proved the Bible to be the Word of God must, from the nature of the case, precede the internal evidence. The Book, as a book, must come to a man as a witness of the Church before it was capable of reAnd ceiving an inward confirmation.

how did the Church fulfil this office, unless of a truth God was present? Unless the Divine breath inspired her judgment, how could she discern the truth or settle the canon of the inspired Book? How could she, without this power, fulfil any part of her charge for God's glory and man's salvation? Unless God was with her, how could her intercession be real, or her praying anything but a disguise? How, unless the Divine spirit was ⚫ really present, acting upon each separate part, regenerating, converting, renewing, purifying, strengthening, and saving, how could any of the means of grace be anything else than a delusion ?"

Two monstrous errors are contained in this short passage :— First, that the Bible has no existence, and no authority, except as the Church has determined. Secondly, that the Church possesses Divine authority.

It is by a sophistical use of the words "Church" and "Bible," that the Bishop endeavours to hide the fallacy of his reasoning. What, then, is the meaning of these words?

The Bishop's entire charge has reference to the duties which, in the present state of the nation, the Clergy of his diocese should be careful to discharge. They are addressed as members of the Church of this realm, the Church of England by law established. The Bishop dilates gratefully on the progress the "Church" has made; on the advance of "Church education." He treats on the causes which deter University men from taking orders in the "Church;" on the usefulness of sisterhoods and their congruity with the institutions of the "Church." He rejoices in the increase of synodal action in the "Church," and enjoins upon his Clergy the observance of the holidays of the "Church."

In

other words the Bishop everywhere has in view the "Church of England," the community of which he is a mitred Prelate and Bishop.

But then this "Church of England" never was, and never can be "before the Bible." History inexorably teaches that the Bible canon was formed long before the Church of England was born. "We could have no Bible if we had no Church," the bishop says. And again"The Church was, and must be before the Bible." If then, by the "Church" he means the Church of England, these assertions are historically false, and none can know it better than the Bishop himself.

But the bishop will probably say that he means the Church of Christ, as formed by the apostles, of which the Church of England is a direct and worthy successor. Shutting our eyes to the vast abyss the bishop must leap to cement the Church of England with the "church" of the apostles, we are still at a loss to understand how the "church" was before the Bible in such a sense as to give existence to the Bible's teaching, and determine its authority. Here again we meet with another sophism. The Bible, according to the bishop, is the Word of God; the two terms are correlatives; they are interchangeable. But again, according to the bishop, the Bible is a book. Now, it is quite conceivable that the Bible, as a book, may not have existed until after the Church of Christ was formed; and equally so that the Bible, as the Word of God, existed before the Church. For on what was the church founded but on the "Word of God," as preached by Christ and His apostles? And this Word of God was known, believed, and loved, before it came to be recorded in written forms.

The Bible is the Word of God because it is the record of what was spoken and done by God. The Church of Christ was founded before evangelists wrote or apostles penned their epistles to the churches they had established; but it was built upon the "Word of God," and came into being by its inspired utterance. The "Word of God" was before the was before the church; but the record of what Christ did and said, and what apostles taught, is subsequent to her foundation. By confounding the Bible as a book with the word of God preached by Christ and His apostles, the bishop has most fallaciously given pre-eminence to the church, as if the church was herself the fountain of that life by which she herself lives.

But, further, it is not true that the church, as a church, is the authority on which the Bible must be received as the Word of God. In any corporate sense, we are not dependent on the church for the evidence of the authenticity of Scripture. Its several parts come to us as testified by individuals, by men who wrote as men, and not as mouthpieces of the entire community of the faithful. Our readers

never

have only to open any book on the canon of the New Testament, and they will find that ancient witnesses to its genuineness are adduced as speaking with church authority, but solely as competent evidence of what they individually knew respecting the question in hand. If we are referred to the Council of Nice as authenticating by its votes the present canon, it is enough to say that the Nicene fathers simply recognized a canon already existing by the common consent of Christian men, and whose testimony is of no further value than as a corroboration of evidence of an earlier date.

The Word of God, then, was "before" the church. From it the church derived her existence; on that word she is built; it is her law, and the source of her life, and owes none of its authority or saving power to that which was born of it. It is an error of the greatest magnitude to advance the church to a pre-eminence above the Word of God as recorded in the Bible.

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But the second heresy of the Bishop of Oxford is no less subversive of the supremacy of the Word of God. He claims for the church "divine authority." leaves us in no doubt of the fulness of this power, for he affirms her to be "inspired." The "divine breath inspired her judgment." He intimates that she possesses a power of intercession with God, that she enjoys the real presence of the divine Spirit to give efficiency to her ordinances and rites. shall not attempt to combat this frightful claim to inspired infallibility. We thought such arrogant pretensions were confined to Rome; but here they are put forward not merely on behalf of the entire church of the faithful, but for the Church of England-the church of our Henrys and Charleses, the church of the Reformation and Restoration.

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And for what purpose does the Bishop of Oxford thus affront the Protestantism of England, and the faith of Christian men in the inspired truth of the New Testament? Chiefly to resist the advancement of those blessed and saving truths, the assertion of which has led to the separation of so many of the godly from the communion to which he belongs; but also, as he vainly thinks, to stem that torrent of scepticism which has its principal affluents in the bosom of that community which he affirms to be

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"inspired." It is no fault of ours if we name in one breath, as allies in the presentassaults on the Christian faith, infidels and churchmen-sceptics of the Colenso type, and churchmen of the bishop's. Both attempt to destroy our faith in the Bible. Reason and the "church go hand in hand to the attack-the Bible is inferior to both. If the churchthe Church of England-is the sole arbiter of the Bible's authority, of the Bible's meaning, against the assaults of infidelity, alas! for the Word of God and the salvation of men! No wonder that the lifeblood of the Church of England is poisoned at its fountain, and that the halls of her universities echo with an internecine strife. Infidelity and scepticism have ever found their allies in the Vatican; and the Church of England is setting before the world another

illustration of the fact that church principles, as they are called, or in other words, the fundamental thesis of Rome, the supremacy of the church over the Word of God, by whatever church adopted, inevitably gives birth to frightful heresies, and to the utter subversion of the gospel of Christ.

As day by day the principles put forth by the Bishop of Oxford penetrate the teaching of his church-and there is no doubt that they are everywhere spreading, "eating as doth a canker"—the dissent which he so diligently seeks to repress as more harmful than beer-houses, or cottages in which decency of conduct is impossible, will have given to it a stronger life, and the grounds of separation must become more plain and more imperative on all who love the gospel of Christ.

THE NEW JERUSALEM.
A Scripture Study: from Rev. xxi. 9—xxii. 7.

BY THE REV. S. G. GREEN,
PERHAPS no popular interpretation
of Scripture is more generally ac-
cepted than that which identifies
the New Jerusalem of the Apo-
calypse with the heavenly state.
Our favourite religious poetry con-
stantly recurs to this idea. One
of the oldest English hymns, found
in an abridged and altered form in
almost every collection of Psalmody,
is that which begins-

Jerusalem, my happy home!"

Sir Roundell Palmer ("the Book of Praise") gives 14 out of 26 stanzas of this hymn in their original form. The learned editor adds, "The original hymn is contained in a MS. quarto volume, numbered 15,225,, in the British Museum, the date of which seems to be about 1616. The hymn itself

B.A., RAWDON COLLEGE. while the translation of Bernard's Latin hymn on the same theme is even more pathetic and beautiful :

"To thee, O dear dear country, Mine eyes their vigils keep." In the language of our most exalted religious feeling, we speak of "entering the gates of pearl," of" walking in the golden streets." For the ceaseless happy activity, the bright and perfect knowledge of the celestial world, we have no higher description than the emblem, "There snall be no night there;" and when (which is entitled, A Song by F. B. P. to the tune of Diana), is probably of Queen Eliza beth's time." See also Dr. Bonar's edition of Dickson's New Jerusalem, Edinburgh, 1616.

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