administered by them. If so, then, we have a right to expect that all the children baptized by them grow up from their infancy in innocence and purity, and exhibit, by their decided piety and virtue, the most convincing proofs that they are indeed "children of God, members of Christ, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven." While, on the other hand, we should expect to see those children, whose unhappiness it is to have been baptized by other ministers, rising up, from the first dawn of understanding and volition, in impiety and vice, and exhibiting all the marks of the seed of the wicked one. But when we look on the children of church people and those of dissenters, it is difficult to perceive the superiority of the former. In all that relates to propriety of conduct and indications of piety, the latter are, at least, the equals of the former. 2. With respect to the Lord's supper. It was intended to nourish the faith, and to strengthen the peace and holiness of those who rightly receive it. It might be supposed, then, that the most superficial observer would be able to detect a mighty difference between the spiritual advantages of those who receive this sacrament at the hands of the clergy, and those of the persons who are so unfortunate as to receive it at the hands of any other ministers; that the former, every time they receive it, would make a fresh and extraordinary advance in the comfort and purity of the Gospel, while the latter were left utterly impoverished and comfortless, or visited with some providential chastisement for presuming to receive so sacred a thing from an unauthorized and unhallowed dispenser of it. But we look in vain for this difference; yet, alas! we do not fail to see and hear of numbers departing from the altars of the Church of England as unsanctified and worldly as they approached. III. If the national clergy are the only authorized and qualified ministers of the Gospel, it may be expected that those who attend their ministry will be more intelligent, holy, and zealous Christians, than those who do not enjoy its advantages. The end of preaching the Gospel is to make men enlightened, sincere, and devoted Christians. We are entitled to expect, then, if the clergy possess the only warrant to preach the Gospel, that the attendants at the Church of England will better understand the Gospel, and better exemplify its spirit and precepts, and be more zealous for its diffusion, and more separate from the vanities of the world, and more exact and faithful in discharging all the duties of life, than those who worship elsewhere; and that the latter would be remarkable for their ignorance, irreligion, and immorality. But fact disappoints the expectation. If there is one portion of the community more industrious, sober, and moral than another, it is the dissenting portion. The inmates of our gaols and prisons have sometimes been classified, and it is surprising to see how few of them were dissenters. And if we would look for an intelligent acquaintance with the peculiar doctrines and precepts of the Gospel, it is equally notorious and melancholy how little of it is to be found in the large majority of church people. And whatever zeal and liberality for Scriptural education at home, or the diffusion of the Gospel abroad, any of these may now be showing, be their motives more or less pure, it is undeniable that they did not awake to this duty, till aroused by the zeal and efforts of dissenters. And as to abstinence from worldly pleasures, had it not been for the patronage of church people, they would ere now have become nearly obsolete; and, to the credit of dissenters, it has, I think, been generally cast upon them as a reproach by their neighbours, that they are too narrow-minded and rigid in their notions of moral propriety to indulge much in the gaieties of others. IV. If the clergy of the Church of England are the only ministers of the Gospel whom God acknowledges and honours, it is plain that those who are intruders into this office cannot be expected ever to do any good; that is, to be useful as ministers. There is no possibility of succeeding in this ministry without the special influences of the Spirit of God. Men may preach the Gospel for ever, and adopt whatever means they please for the conversion of their fellow-men, but, without this blessing, all their labour will be in vain. And God will assuredly withhold his blessing from those who presume to preach in opposition to his will. Has God, then, withheld his blessing from the ministry of all in this land but those within the pale of the Church of England? Happily, this is a question not difficult to answer. If we look at home, we can point to a mighty host, who have been "brought from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God," by the ministry of dissenters. What, indeed, would have been the moral condition of England at this day, had it not been for their zealous and self-denying labours? About a century ago, the population of this country was covered with almost incredible darkness on the grand facts of the Gospel revelation, and steeped in corresponding worldliness and immorality, so fearfully had the many thousands of the national clergy come short of the only end of their appointment; and in this condition it might have continued to this hour, if another ministry had not arisen to arouse and enlighten it. If the Spirit of God has rested with special unction any where, it has been on the labours of men whose ministry has not been recognized by the national clergy. And when we look abroad, we see the same gracious testimony vouchsafed to their labours. In missions to the heathen, in efforts to evangelize the most barbarous and savage tribes, they have been eminently successful. But if the clergy of the Church of England had alone authority to undertake this work of mercy, God would have frowned upon the intruders for intermeddling with it, and denied them his aid and countenance. But the Church of England was neither the first to enter upon it, nor, considering the vast amplitude and variety of her means, has she been the most honoured in it. The West India islands, South Africa, the South Sea islands, India, China, and other portions of the globe, bear witness to the honour which God has put on the ministry of Baptists, Wesleyans, Independents, and Presbyterians. And I rejoice to know, that the Church Missionary Society can point to New Zealand, India, and other places, where her agents have been honoured also. And we must not forget Tinevelly, where, perhaps, more than in any of her stations in the whole of Hindostan, her efforts have been crowned with success. But it is instructive to mark who was the missionary chiefly instrumental of that success. It was Rhenius, a Lutheran, who had none but Presbyterian ordination, and whose services that Society engaged, while the present lofty pretensions of the English clergy were unknown, or confined to a comparatively small number. In short, with such characteristics as have thus been shown to belong to the ministry of the national clergy in general, its really possessing an exclusive title to the attention and reverence of the people of this land, would be one of the greatest shocks to common sense, one of the severest trials to an enlightened and rational faith, one of the greatest mysteries in the moral government of God, which the world ever presented. March 7th, 1842. JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA. F. "He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus, and laid it in his own new tomb."-MATT. xxvii. 58, 60. Precious burthen, see him bearing, Mark his silent grief—lamenting, That dear body, wounded, torn, Silently, with heart o'erflowing, Sacred act:-Disciple blest. Thus entombed; behold him bending, Peckham. J. S. HARDY. THE ADVENT. Among innumerous worlds There moved a little star, Sin had shadowed o'er its light That dew-like on the web of night Gleamed tremulously far ; To that a God came down, Quenching his Godhead's crown, Wrapping life-giving light in mean mortality. When sang the morning stars Watching old Chaos flung away From the lifted eyes of new-born Day, But when a Saviour's birth Was heralded on earth, Up rose a thrilling hymn piercing Eternity. Over the shadowy plain, It swept, the mercy-singing choir (Endless as heaven's own light,) Echoes of hope that smiled Upon man sin-defiled, And rose through all the earth at that strange melody. Rapt prophets through past time Had sighed that hour to see, E'en where the city slept, And the child Jesus wept The first unconscious tears of his humility. There is a stream that flowsThat flowed ere Time began, Gladdening God's city,-and for ever The waves of this undying river Murmur "Good will to man," And sitting on its shore Angels sing evermore How the Eternal Mind dwelt with humanity. When weary time goes down And hides his grey forsaken head, Of young Eternity, That song of joy shall sound Heaven's echoing confines round Making of love divine a deathless memory. N. V. REVIEWS. The Theology of the Early Christian Church, exhibited in Quotations from the Writers of the First Three Centuries. By James Bennett, D.D. The Congregational Lecture for 1841. Eighth Series. 8vo. London: Jackson & Walford. "THE Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; he shined forth from Mount Paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints; from his right hand went a fiery law!" Such was the scene witnessed by the recorder of it, at the head of two millions of people, in a region of high and frowning precipices, whose summits, first clothed with the thickest darkness, then glowed with vivid lightnings like a burning fiery furnace, from whence a voice was heard, distinct from the inarticulate sounds of the tremendous phenomena which solemnized the occasion-the voice of words. It was the great Author of nature, throwing a heightened sublimity over a part of his own creation, by some new and extraordinary tokens of his presence. It was the voice of God, proclaiming his will to a race isolated by dreary deserts from the other large families of mankind, and giving, through the mediation of their leader, the elements of that religious and civil constitution, under which, upon Sharon's plain, by Jordan's stream, among the vineyards of Heshbon, and in the city "beautiful for situation," they, or their posterity, were afterwards to live. To the communications engraven on the tables of stone, written in the book of the law, and amplified in succeeding ages by inspired judges, psalmists, and prophets, the attention of the people thus favoured with a precious freight of Divine truth was repeatedly and impressively called. They were to hearken, to observe, and do, on pain of blasting upon their fields, murrain among their cattle, pestilence in their homes, and an enemy within their borders. They were to be as conscious of the verities of heavenly birth, as though the hand and brow of each Jew, together with the gates of his city and the posts of his house, bore their imprint. The fathers to the children were to make them known. They were not to subtract or to multiply, in relation to the oracles of God. There was the risk of a penalty in either case, of which a fearful sample was afforded in the instance of the men of Bethshemesh, who presumed to tamper with sacred things. From the day when Moses declared on the skirts of the wilderness, "Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you," to the period when Malachi closed the canon of the Old Testament, with the threatening against the despising |