denounced the sins of apostate Churches with more sternness than St. Paul. Yet, he could do this with the most tender concern for those whom he rebuked and tell men, even weeping, that they were the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end was destruction.

THE BISHOP OF OXFORD ON MISSIONS.

THE most eloquent living prelate of the Church of England delivered, in October last, at Manchester, on the eve of the Church Congress, a speech which will have been read with interest wherever the newspapers of this country circulate. For his vigorous advocacy of the spiritual interests of those who have gone forth from the land of their fathers to settle themselves on the extreme borders of civilization in our colonies, and likewise for his distinct and earnest pleading of the cause of missions to the heathen, we heartily thank God. He will have gained the attention of thousands who would utterly disregard the ordinary advocates of such enterprises, however forcibly, piously, and wisely they might speak. He has placed the duty of sustaining missions in a clear point of view, and claimed the fulfilment of it in a manner to which many a conscience may be expected to respond. He believes, however, perhaps too fondly, that we have passed the time when that duty requires to be proved, and that what is now wanted is to arouse men to the fulfilment of what they already know to be right. Let us here interpose, what we trust the bishop entirely feels, that the awakening most needed is not that which is produced by human eloquence, but the result of the speaking of the ever blessed Spirit of God to the mind, the conscience, and the heart. At the same time, we know and value the power exercised by that marvellous gift of God, by which some and the bishop of Oxford pre-eminently, in our day-can clothe fervid thoughts in appropriate language, and move the hearts of multitudes, not so much to admire and wonder at the man, as to go forth and do the deeds to which his eloquence calls them.

Before proceeding to the discussion of the great work itself, the bishop gave distinct and apparently deliberate, expression to his views of the principles on which the home efforts of the Church, for the promotion of missions, ought to be conducted. He condemned the system, for which he invented the word society-ish; and commended a different system, under which the contributors of the money reduce their control over its expenditure within the narrowest possible limits. It is here

only that we differ from the bishop; and as the subject is of great importance, we think it right, with all respect and courtesy, to examine his positions, and to show, as we think it easy to do, that they are fallacious.

We should premise that we have no knowledge of the bishop's speech except such as we obtained from the "Times," and the Manchester newspapers. But it appears to have been carefully reported, and we may assume that we have it in a form substantially correct.

The bishop stated that he had no wish to urge the merits of one society by depreciating others. He would say to anyone who would not join with him in using what he believed to be the best instrument,-"Go and use another, and do it heartily, and give it your prayers and self-denial; only do not be an idler and make-believe in the work. Do not use, as an excuse for doing nothing, the miserable pretext that you cannot join with this man or that man, and that everything is not squared exactly as you would have it." But unfortunately the bishop was led eventually, in his own earnestness, to do the very thing which he declared it to be wrong to attempt. He depreciated every agency but that of which he was the advocate. He proceeded to tell his audience that, if any of them had come to the meeting expecting to hear from him that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was the advocate of any particular notions in the Church of England, he must disappoint them. He said,—

"It is because I believe it to be the organ of no peculiar opinions in the Church of England, that I think it has one special claim. Mark, I pray you, how the relation of the Society to the Church is maintained. Supposing a Society, in the main within the Church of England, wished to stamp upon its missionary work some peculiar character of its own, and not the character of the common Church, how can it be done? It must be done by forming a committee of management, who, instead of being left to assuine naturally the colour of the Church at large, shall be obliged to assume peculiar distinctiveness of colour within that common body of the Church. The committee so selected would be able to carry out its purpose in this way. It would select, as the missionaries who went out to do its work, men of the same colour as themselves. They would be instructed to select for their use books the very covers of which bore upon them the very same tint and hue, and so there would be one pervading hue running from the book to the missionary, from the missionary to the book, and, if possible, from the book and teacher to the convert. Now the tendency of all that is to cultivate party feeling within the Church at home; to make that peculiar hue which has been adopted the substitute for the general Catholic truth of the whole body of the Church, and so by degrees to become one-sided, or what I may call society-ish, if I might venture to invent a word. So, instead of the great object of those who are banded together being the spread of the

Church of Christ throughout the world, it will be the property of the particular society, and the spread over the earth of that particular tint and hue."

Now we are amongst those who firmly believe that distinctive or "peculiar opinions" (we do not like the term) are held by the Church of England. We can conceive nothing more definite than the Thirty-nine Articles are, on all the points to which they relate; and there are no doctrines of vital importance of which they do not maintain a very distinct view. And since it may happen that these "opinions" may be held in a general way, without being the foundation principles of the faith and teaching of those who are ordained, it is not only defensible, but wise, to seek some further security, beyond that of ordination, that such are the principles of those who are to represent the Church of England, and to teach as its ministers, in the colonies, or amongst the heathen. What if a man should be a standard-bearer in the army of the Church, and yet be untrue to her colours? Hence, we cannot agree that that is the best constituted society which might indiscriminately accept ordination as a qualification for employment, and ask no questions about doctrine, or (as the bishop expresses it somewhat inaccurately) "peculiar opinions."

But, in the next place, we are fully satisfied that the system which the bishop accepts as the best, is liable to become, in the most intense degree, the organ of particular opinions. It may fail to provide for the door being held open for all shades and hues in any one of its spheres of benevolence. It may rather be the means of closing it against every tint but one. For example, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel makes the colonial bishops its agents. Whatever may be the "colour" of the bishop, or even his particular "tint," that may be, and commonly is, the "tint" of the whole ecclesiastical body which he administers. The Society, by its regulations, enables him, so far as its action extends, to bring this to pass. The only question is, how far the colonial bishop may be disposed to admit "opinions" above or below his own? He may be willing to allow no margin of difference. If we may use the common distinctive titles of the present day, to signify what we mean, we say that the "instrument" which the bishop of Oxford selects as preferable to all others, may be, and generally is, the crgan of different "opinions" in different dioceses, high, low, broad, or neologian, according as its agent or representative, the colonial bishop, may be of any of those complexions. Whatever Order may have to say about this, Truth can scarcely be content with it; nor can it be properly pleaded that a system which strengthens this tendency really promotes the diffusion of "the general Catholic truth of the whole body of the Church." At the same time that we thus

write, the facts which constrain us to do so fill us with sorrow. If genuine Church of England doctrine were the gladly received doctrine of all Church of England men, we should hold our peace. We should cease to be "society-ish." But it is too patent to demand proof, that a bishop may, on the one hand, accept the Communion Office of the Episcopal Church in Scotland; or, on the other hand, repudiate Moses, and stultify St. Paul. Under such circumstances, it demands no remarkable amount of penetration to see that an instrument constructed on the bishop of Oxford's model, may, by its own deliberately made bye-laws, become the narrowest possible organ of private or particular opinions; while another instrument, which takes means of excluding erroneous and strange doctrine from its agency, and of securing the teaching of the Church's principles, may be neither more nor less broad or narrow than the Church herself. By aid of the former, a colonial bishop may boast that he effectually keeps out of his diocese all clergymen who are not of his own "particular opinions;" under the other, there might be various "tints," but they would be all of the Church's "colour."

This power of securing a favoured "tint" will generally be most effectively exercised where the supply of clergy is chiefly of colonial growth, and where, consequently, there is nothing whatsoever to prevent the bishop's individual "opinions" becoming tests of the candidates for orders, and pre-requisites to their admission into the sacred ministry.

We have distinguished the word "opinions" as being the expression selected by the bishop of Oxford. We regret that he did not employ a term more accurately descriptive of the thing intended, such as might have been doctrines, or truth, or convictions, or principles. To treat the matter really meant as mere matter of opinion, is to overlook the intense importance of many of the questions involved in our unhappy controversies. Inspiration, the atonement, justification, conversion, the real presence, are not mere "opinions;" they have to do with the vitals of Christ's religion.

We have spoken of the "instrument," which is not “societyish," as leaving the bishops in the colonies without any restrictions as to its agents, with regard to all who have received holy orders at their hands, who constitute, in point of fact, the very great majority of the colonial clergy. But we have looked in vain for any recognition of this fact in the bishop's speech. Did he omit to notice this material feature of the case, or did the reporters slumber while he explained and defended it?

What he did say in defence of the system which he judged to be best would be of considerable weight, though by no means conclusive, if the supply of clergy for the colonies were

chiefly derived from England; which, however, is far from being the case. He commends his "instrument" for having adopted a plan which provides against its spreading over the earth any particular tint or hue. We think we have shown that it may happen to lay on, with a heavy hand, the deepest green in one part of the earth, blue in another, crimson in a third, yellow in a fourth, and, alas! the most murky lead-coloured shadow in a fifth. But he shall speak for himself, or for his selected instrument, to whose really weakest point he gives such prominence as its strong recommendation:

"It has said it is not safe to commit to a shifting committee the great task of judging of the fitness of the missionaries who are to go out to preach the everlasting Gospel. It therefore has divested itself of call it patronage, or responsibilities, or what you will-it has divested itself of the work of settling who is fit to go and who is not, and it has committed the work of choosing to the chief rulers of the Church in your own Church at home. It leaves it to the two archbishops of the two provinces, and to the metropolitan bishop; because, by a long tradition, as I think, of misunderstandings, it is supposed that the Bishop of London is a sort of oecumenical bishop throughout the earth. But, however, from that misunderstanding has come this good result, that the Bishop of London is joined to the two Primates, and with them appoints the clergymen who every year act for the Gospel Propagation Society as a body, who examine all the missionaries who are sent out to distant parts of the earth (clergymen or schoolmasters) with the single exception of any man whom colonial bishops, being in England, select to take back with them to their own dioceses. Even the colonial bishop, if in his own diocese he requires a man to be sent out, has to send that man to be examined, as to his fitness for the work, to this committee appointed by the two Primates and the Bishop of London. And so, if it is possible for a human society to have divested itself of every opportunity of cultivating or increasing party spirit in the Church, the Gospel Propagation Society has done it. It has identified itself, as far as possible for a human instrument to do it, with the Church, as that Church lives, and feels, and prays, and acts here at home throughout all the dioceses in this great country."

In this paragraph the speaker beguiles away our attention from the great stream of supply, and fixes it on a rivulet which has almost run dry as regards many of the colonial dioceses. But even there the examination which he commends may be perfectly fair and wise, without affording the slightest check to the selection of "tints." Who that knows anything about examinations for Holy Orders, as they are and ever must be conducted, will for a moment dispute that the commissary of the colonial bishop may take care to present those only for inquiry who, on the one hand, will pass that ordeal, and, on the other, be imbued with the colonial bishop's shade of colour. We thank the Bishop of Oxford for having led us to look