the healthful action of the church, may be for the moment impossible, but to feed the hidden springs of its life and soundness is not so. We may not reform the Liturgy, but we may exalt the Bible. This, thank God, is precisely the sphere in which all manner of practical ameliorations may be carried out, and the efforts of all right-hearted men may have free scope, without let or hindrance on any side, and without coming into collision with any of those great interests and prejudices which stand as insuperable barriers to all reforms of a more organic 'kind. In this good work every man, according to his measure and sphere, may bear a hand. Let us indicate one or two of the ways in which this may be practically done :—

:

1. Through the medium of the Elementary Schools. Never before was there such an opportunity as now for wielding this mighty instrument in behalf of the great principles of Bible and Protestant truth. In fact, till now, England never had a system of popular elementary education at all. That grand element of a nation's culture, which had been so nobly provided for by our Scottish Reformers, had remained an entire blank in the ecclesiastical system of our richer neighbours. It is not so now. For some years past the whole country has been astir with educational improvement; schools have been rising up in every village and rural neighbourhood; every where the school-house promises rapidly to take its rightful place, along with the church and parsonage, around the village green. In every case, at least within the pale of the Established Church, these juvenile seminaries are under the immediate inspection and superintendence of the ministers of religion. Now, this surely is the auspicious time for every friend of the Bible and the gospel putting forth all his strength in the blessed work of leavening the rising race with the life-giving principles of eternal truth. Now is an opportunity, never before enjoyed since the Bible was laid open in the vernacular tongue, of lodging the precious volume as a household book in the hearths and homes of England. Apart from the saving influence of the Word on the hearts of some, the very diffusion of a Biblical atmosphere throughout society thus effected, is a matter of immense importance, and will prove a powerful antidote to whatever is morbid and pernicious in the spirit of the age. This powerful engine doubtless will be, and is, largely abused. Puseyism here, as elsewhere, will eat as a canker into the vitals of the church; still, even amid a large admixture of error, enough of sound scriptural truth will still be taught, to prove a vast improvement over the state of utter ignorance that had previously prevailed. And surely, if the advocates of error are alive and active, this is only another reason for the friends of truth to be up and doing, scattering the precious seed broad

cast over this new and hopeful field. (2.) Through the Universities. We here particularly refer to that great and crying want of the Church of England-that of a regular and efficient system of theological training for candidates for the holy ministry. That this should still be a desideratum in the richest church in Christendom, and in the foremost kingdom of the Protestant world, might seem almost incredible, did we not consider how overwhelming for ages past has been the power of the status quo in every thing which relates to ecclesiastical affairs in England. Yet the fact is so. While the Church of Rome, since the Reformation, has exerted itself within its own borders for the removal of the then scandalous want of clerical education, things remain in the Reformed Church of England in a great measure as they were three centuries since. While students of law and medicine must pass through a certain definite curriculum of professional training, the candidate for the holy ministry is left to gather the knowledge necessary to fulfil his momentous functions very much as he may, tested only by the precarious ordeal of an episcopal examination, immediately before entering on holy orders. The calamitous consequences of this state of things, as seen in the events of the few past years, are melancholy, but surely not wonderful. It is to this cause, doubtless, that we are mainly to ascribe the phenomenon, unhappily so frequent of late among the English clergy, of men already engaged in the cure of souls, or even holding higher office in the church, yet entirely at sea on the most fundamental matters of the Christian faith, and so open to every wind of crude and wild speculation that is abroad in an age of transition and change. Surely this clamant grievance, now so generally admitted and deplored by the best friends of the Church of England, will not long be permitted to remain unredressed. Had this been done thirty years ago, can we doubt that some at least of those unhappy men who now swell the ranks of the Roman apostasy, or have sunk into the still darker abyss of Pantheistic infidelity, would either never have been numbered amongst the ministry of the Church of England, or would have been amongst her ministry still. (3.) Through the Pulpit. That the biblical element admits of great enhancement at once in fulness and in energy in this department, cannot be doubted. With all that is admirable and attractive in the spirit of English Church evangelism, we cannot help thinking that there is, generally speaking, a deficiency in that fulness and thoroughness of biblical instruction, and in that breadth of doctrinal exposition, which the exigencies of the times demand. There is often in English churches, and sometimes in the case even of the holiest pastors, a loose, superficial, perfunctory discharge of the great ordinance of preaching,

which could not exist with safety to the highest interests of religion in other sections of the church. In fact, the Church of England has always laid comparatively little stress on this ordinance. The element of worship has in a great measure overshadowed and thrown into the back ground the element of instruction. Men go to church mainly and primarily to pray, rather than to hear the Word of God. The cast of their best piety has all along been rather devotional, than strongly intellectual or doctrinal. So far, indeed, all this is well. We should never wish to see our English neighbours going to the other extreme, and coming, like many of us here in Scotland, to regard the whole business of the sanctuary as summed up in "sitting under" such a ministry, and "hearing sermon" in such a church. We are most willing to confess our own faults in this matter, and to admit that we too have fallen into an extreme equally indefensible, and in some respects equally per nicious with the other. But surely both errors may be avoided, and must be avoided, if the vitality and power of spiritual religion is to be increased among us. It is surely possible to have at once an impressive and enlarged service of praise and prayer, and a rich and powerful exhibition of truth, nor can either element long thrive in health and vi gour without the other. Doctrine without devotion will soon degenerate into a mere skeleton of lifeless orthodoxy; devotion without doctrine will wither into formalism, or sink into a feeble, drivelling sentimentalism. If worship constitute the holy fire upon the altar-hearth, then the preached Word is the sacred fuel that feeds that fire; and whether the flame itself be allowed to languish, or the needful aliment be withheld, or but scantily supplied, the result in either case is equally disastrous. We are aware that there has existed hitherto a practical obstacle to the assigning of that prominence to the ordinance of preaching in the English Church which its importance demands. We allude to the great length of the devotional services, and particularly at morning prayer. We rejoice, however, to learn that there is no reform more practicable or likely than that which would remove this difficulty,not indeed by curtailing the church services, the bare mention of such a thing would awaken an opposition altogether overwhelming, but by dividing them, assigning one portion to an earlier service, and reserving only the more essential parts for the usual forenoon hour. This is in fact only restoring the morning service to its original form and design, and has already, we understand, been partially carried out under episcopal authority, at least in one diocese of the church. Were this practical improvement becoming universal, we cannot help thinking, that the very clearing of the ground thus

effected, would, of itself, tend to give a new expansion to the office and work of preaching in the Church of England, which could not but be fraught with the best results in the solidity and energy of spiritual religion within her pale.

We might have referred to other points, but the above may suffice as examples of the practical bearings of our present subject, and as serving to show, that we are enunciating no mere barren truism in holding forth the Bible as the one allsufficient antidote to the poison of a pernicious ecclesiasticism. The practical ameliorations we have adverted to are surely not Utopian. They belong entirely to the region of administrative reform, and have nothing whatever to do with organic change. They come precisely within the scope of what has been called "seminal," in contradistinction from "radical" reform, and are in themselves such as we believe will commend themselves to the church's best friends, as salutary and necessary; and yet, if fully carried out, and zealously wrought by soundhearted churchmen, who can doubt that even such partial ameliorations as these would mightily contribute, with the blessing of God, to strengthen whatever is sound and true in the English church and nation, and to counteract whatever is noxious in the tendencies of the times? *

In fine, let all true friends of the Bible and the gospel be up and doing; let them be instant in season and out of season, striving with all their might to deepen and broaden the foundations of an enlightened, spiritual, Biblical Christianity throughout the land. Let them labour to make England what Scotland once was in some degree, a land of Bibles, and of solid Bible godliness. Let the spirit of the eternal Word pervade her schools, reign supreme in her theological halls, fill with living and life-giving energy her pulpits. Let it be the preserving salt of all her institutions, the atmosphere of all her society, the leaven of all her literature, the light of all her cottage homes. Let the learned masters in Israel, too,

We need scarcely warn our readers against mistaking the above suggestions for a scheme of church reform. Were it so, we frankly admit that we should be laying ourselves open to the charge of having brought forward one of the most meagre and "peddling" measures of the kind ever yet promulgated. On the contrary, our object has been to indicate some of the ways in which, pending the question of reform, the presently pressing evils might be in part counteracted by measures of a purely administrative kind. Had our purpose been different, our remarks would, of course, have taken an entirely different direction. The immediately practicable is one thing, the speculatively desirable is another. For the same reason, we have refrained from any reference to the question of the application of ecclesiastical authority to the purging out of the evil leaven, as there seem to exist at present insuperable obstacles in the state of the law to the effective use of that authority to meet the present crisis,obstacles which, in a great measure, tie up the hands of the most faithful bishop, as well as the most remiss. To meet this state of things, important legislative reforms seem absolutely necessary; and, pending these and all other prospective changes, the sound-hearted portion of the church must meanwhile look about them for means of counterworking an evil which they cannot for the moment remove.

contribute their share in the good work, by vindicating afresh, according to the exigencies of the times, the divine authority and infallibility of the Word, and throwing up new bulwarks around the citadel of the faith. Thus gradually shall an atmosphere be diffused throughout the land in which Popery and Puseyism cannot breathe. The fires of apostolic and reformation times shall be rekindled once more; and then, too, may we hope that the same mighty agent, which has been the source of new life, will, in course of time, also manifest its purifying energy, by purging away the dross of holy things, and consuming the encumbering rubbish that has gathered round the foundations of the house of God.

ART. V.-1. History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Spain in the Sixteenth Century. By THOMAS M'CRIE, D.D. Edinburgh: 1829.

2. The Spanish Protestants, and their Persecution by Philip II. By Senor DON ADOLFO DE Castro. Translated from the original Spanish. By THOMAS PARKER. London: 1851. 3. History of Religious Intolerance in Spain.

Translated from the Spanish of Senor DON ADOLFO DE CASTRO. BY THOMAS PARKER.

London: 1853.

4. Letters from Spain. By Don LEUCADIO DOBLADO. London: 1822.

5. Gatherings from Spain. By RICHARD FORD. London: 1846. 6. Memoir of a Mission to Gibraltar and Spain.

W. H. RULE. London: 1844.

7. The Practical Working of the Church of Spain. FREDERICK MEYRICK, M.A.

Oxford: 1851.

By the Rev.

By the Rev.

8. Religious Liberty Abroad: A Letter to the Right Honourable VISCOUNT PALMERSTON. By JAMES THOMSON. Lon

don: 1851.

9. Spain, its Position and Evangelization, &c. By JAMES THOMSON. London: 1853.

IN no country in Europe did the cause of the Reformation gather around it disciples more illustrious for rank and learning, or, in the first instance, give greater promise of success, than in Spain. Even in the darker ages that had preceded the Reformation, there had always been men to keep the torch of truth dimly burning, and to testify with more or less of boldness against the surrounding degeneracy. And when the trumpet of the Reformation was sounded by Luther in Germany, there were prepared hearts in Spain quick to hear it,