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REVISION OF THE LITURGY.

baptismal regeneration. Opinions have thus been shapened to points. Truth and error have been made to stand out in bold relief, and the systems of interpretation, which for three hundred years have satisfied the most conscientious and faithful men, are beginning to crumble under them. That our veterans in the Church should shut their eyes to this fact is very natural. They are unwilling to see any imperfection in the mother who has cherished them; within whose shelter they have been permitted to preach the pure Gospel, and to win souls to Christ. They feel it to be their duty to remain at their post; and who would not encourage them to do so? They feel at the same time the necessity of harmonizing their teaching in the pulpit with the words they are directed to use at the font; and, in order to do so, they suppose the latter to admit of a less positive construction than that which appears on the surface, and they satisfy themselves that this is the fact. As far as they are themselves concerned they may go on quietly as they have done, they are conscientious in their belief, and it does not hurt their ministry; but they are not aware how it weakens the force of their arguments and puts weapons into the hands of the adversaries of scriptural truth. Many powerful and keenly discriminating minds are at work, and many plausible fallacies that were current some years ago, will not do now. We would therefore entreat our Evangelical brethren to take into consideration two results that may follow from things remaining as they are. Young men who may be really called of God to the ministry, may be deterred from entering the Church, from the fear of not being able to subscribe without circumlocution to every word of the Prayer-Book; and those who merely educated for the ministry, and especially those who are trained upon the Tractarian system, will rush into the Church, in order to maintain the very error, which is supported by the few words we wish to see altered.

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Whether Mr. Gorham's system of prevenient grace be right or wrong,

• See Mr. Spurgin's and Mr. Parker's Tracts.

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we will not pretend to say, but we grieve to observe that his attempt to make the Baptismal Service fit in with it, has thrown his noble defence of vital truth far into the background in the estimation of many strait-forward readers.

The words "prevenient grace," in reference to infants, act as an electrical shock, and repel many from a system which they feel to militate against Ezekiel xviii., in which God is represented as graciously vouchsafing to prove His method of dealing with mankind to be agreeable to our natural ideas of justice. Mr. Gorham's idea is probably founded upon Calvin's statement, that "baptism is the seal of grace already received;" but we would ask him whether, if grace in that statement is to be taken in the sense of regeneration, its application must not be rather to adults than to infants? We wish to speak humbly, but very great circumspection is required, lest, in these days of keen discussion, when we state a truth, we should in any degree misplace it. Nine points in a system of divinity may be perfectly well placed, but if the tenth leans too much either to one side or the other, the error is perceived, the truths are overlooked, the system is overthrown, and the great enemy triumphs! Oh, who is sufficient for these things? We may well pray to the Great Head of the Church, as a correspondent has suggested in your last number, that He will Himself raise up fit instruments for His work. We may feel sure that He will do so, if it be for His own glory; and the blessed time may yet come when we shall look back upon the false teaching that has for the last twenty years been troubling the Church, as a leaven, which has been permitted to work out and expose the errors which were overlooked at the Reformation, and to prepare the way for the resettling of the Church in the full clear light of the Gospel.

TRUTH AND PEACE.

Unless they may be taken in the general sense of admission into the gracious covenant of the Gospel.

+ Calvin's Ins. bk. iv. c. 15.

To the Editor.

Sir,-If the infidel proposition, that "the mind of a child is a blank sheet, upon which we may write good or evil," could be proved to be the truth, it would manifestly be our highest wisdom to surround children with every influence that could operate upon them in a beneficial manner, and "write good" upon their minds. How much more important then, does this duty become, when we are assured, on the highest authority, that we are naturally prone to every kind of evil; and all experience confirms the melancholy assertion. It is with reference to this fact of our nature, that I venture to draw your attention to a class of seminaries springing up in our midst, which appear to me to be pregnant with evil of the most alarming character. I allude to the Birkbeck Schools, some five or six of which have been lately established in London. The admirers of Mr. Fox's pet scheme of secular education, for which, with the usual liberality of such liberals, he wishes to tax the whole rate-paying community-may here see their favourite theory in the course of development; for the religious element is carefully excluded. The Bible is a forbidden book; Scripture history a forbidden study; man's responsibility to his Maker, his immortality, and the other great facts which lie at the root of Christianity, are matters of subordinate import to the ordinary routine of popular elemental education; or, rather, of no import at all. We cannot, perhaps, charge these schools with teaching positive infidelity; but they are certainly chargeable with teaching a negative infidelity, by studiously with holding everything of a religious character; and, by the mere fact of doing so, impressing the minds of the pupils with a contempt of, a dislike to, and a disbelief in that Word, "which is able to make us wise unto salvation." An "elocutionary reading of Shakspere," or a drainatic representation, or some trashy lecture, immediately after school hours, is considered the most desirable substitute for the Scripture lesson; "A man's a man for

a'that," or, "A good time coming," or some lyric of similar character, the most fitting strain to displace the simple hymn of prayer or praise, which may be heard daily ascending from our National and British Schools.

Perhaps, some one may be tempted to ask if these things are true. Unfortunately they are. The means of verifying these statements are unhappily too numerous. One of these schools is situated at that focus of infidel Socialism, the National Hall, Holborn; another is in most suspicious proximity to, though I believe not identified with, the notorious Hall of Science, in the City-road; a third, at Islington, I am told, is to be separated from the parent stock; what for, I do not know, but certainly not because a course of Unitarian lectures are in progress of delivery at the same room. The others are in different parts of the metropolis.

We may be told, that as these schools give only secular instruction, there can be no bias imparted to the pupil's mind in favour of one form of religion more than another; and that religious instruction may be received at that Sunday school which the pupil or his parents may prefer. But we ask, humanly speaking, what prospect of moral good in the mind of a boy, have we, from any Sunday school, when that boy has been exposed all the week to a course of training calculated to blunt and extinguish every spark of religious feeling? Will he be likely on the Sunday to reverence that Book which in the week he was told was inferior to "Robinson Crusoe"? or to consider its expounder in any better light than a fanatic or a deceiver?

The press

Surely, sir, when we consider the kind of men that are likely to be formed by the training they receive as boys, in these Birkbeck Schools, we must feel called upon to oppose the progress of the evil. and the pulpit have the power to shew the character of these institutions, that unthinking parents,-misled by the specious advertisements put forth with all the pompous march-of-intellect cant of "moral training," "laws of

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THE LAND OF PROMISE; a Topographical Description of the Principal places in Palestine, illustrated. By JOHN KITTO, D.D. 12mo, pp. 328. Religious Tract Society.

THIS is an exceedingly useful and interesting Book, and one which will be found to afford valuable help for Sunday school teachers and other instructors of the young, in their illustrations of Scripture. Such persons will find in Dr. Kitto's volume many facts and historical notices of the

principal places in Palestine, that will not fail to supply them with more extensive, later, and more condensed information upon the history of the Land of Promise, in its past and present condition, than any little work we have met with.

The book is divided into seventeen chapters, each taking some distinct portion of the Holy Land,-such as, Jerusalem, the Jordan, Hebron, Gaza, &c., &c. We wish we could transfer to our pages more than one or two of the interesting descriptions and ancient reminiscences given by Dr. Kitto, of many spots of sacred memory; and, as in this case, we often lament that we cannot afford our readers a specimen of the beautiful engravings with which our modern works are made at once attractive and doubly useful.

Our readers may judge of the utility of the work by the following extract from the chapter on "the Jordan :"

"The Jordan is the only river of any importance in Palestine, and the only one to which there are frequent allusions in Scripture. The chief incident in the Old Testament history of the river is the miraculous separation of its waters before the ark of God, to open a passage whereby

the hosts of Israel might enter the Promised Land. At the moment the feet of the priests, bearing the ark in advance of the host, touched the brink, the waters coming down from the upper part of the river stood still,' or the current was stopped, and rose up in one heap to a great distance from the city called Adam, hard by Zaretan, while the lower waters that were going down to the Dead Sea, (called in the narrative of this great miracle in Josh. iii. the 'Sea of the Plain,' and 'the Salt Sea,') ran quite off, being separated from the upper stream; and as the passage took place over against Gilgal, it would seem that the whole portion of the river between that point and the head of the Dead Sea was left clear. The manner in which the passage took place appears from the sacred narrative to have been this;—The priests, bearing the ark, at the distance of two thousand cubits from the host, marched onward, and, in full confidence in the Divine promise, proceeded as if to enter the river; but no sooner did their feet touch its waters, which then overflowed the banks from the melting of the snows shore to shore, to the extent probably of in Lebanon, than the stream divided from

about seven miles. The bed of the river, in the part immediately above the Dead Sea, has a firm, pebbly bottom, on which the armies of Israel might pass with convenience as soon as the waters had been cleared before them. The priests entered first, and stood in the mid-channel with the ark, until the entire host had passed over. They seem to have been so placed that the people passed, not on each side of them, as they stood there, but only below them, that is, between them and the lake. The ark of God was thus interposed between the people and the suspended waters, that the most faint-hearted might feel assured of their safety from the gathering waters, which, stayed by the Almighty arm, rose high above them. It must have taken a con

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siderable time, many hours, for so vast a multitude of men, women, and children, with baggage and cattle, to pass clear over; and the constancy which, during that time, the priests manifested, bears high testimony to their faith. When all were over, the priests also went up with the ark out of the channel; and no sooner had they left it than the suspended waters returned to their place, and the river overflowed its banks as before. When the river is in this state, about the time of the vernal equinox, the breadth of the stream is said to be nearly two hundred fathoms, and its greatest depth fourteen feet. This gives some idea of the immensity of this miracle, in the greatness of the body of waters which must have gathered above, and been kept suspended there, while the chosen people went over. The passage of this deep and rapid, though not wide river,' says Dr. Hales in his Analysis of Chronology, 'at the most unfavourable season, was more manifestly miraculous, if possible, than that of the Red Sea; because here was no natural agency whatever employed; no mighty wind to sweep a passage, as in the former case; no reflux of the tide, on which minute philosophers might fasten, to depreciate the miracle. It seems, therefore, to have been providentially designed to silence cavils respecting the former; and it was done at noonday, in the face of the sun, and in the presence, we may conclude, of the neighbouring inhabitants. It struck terror into the hearts of the kings of the Amorites and Canaanites west of the river, whose hearts'melted, neither was there spirit in them any more.'' Josh. v. 1.

"The matter of the 'overflowing' of the Jordan at that time of the year has lately been examined by Dr. Robinson. He remarks: 'It has generally been assumed that the Jordan of old, somewhat like the Nile, regularly overflowed its banks at the spring, covering with its waters the whole of the lower valley, and perhaps sometimes large tracts of the broad Ghor itself. It seems, however,

to be generally admitted that no such extensive inundation takes place in the present day. It is therefore supposed that some change must have taken place; either because the channel has been worn deeper than formerly, or because the waters have been dispersed or diverted. But although at present a smaller quantity of rain may fall in Palestine than anciently, in consequence, perhaps, of the destruction of the woods and forests, yet I apprehend that even the ancient

rise of the river has been greatly exaggerated. The sole account that we have of the ancient rise of its waters, is found in the earlier Scripture history of the Israelites, where, according to the English version, the Jordan is said to 'overflow all its banks' in the first month, or all the time of harvest.' But the original Hebrew expresses nothing more in these passages than that the Jordan was 'full (or filled) up to all its banks,' meaning the banks of its channel; it ran with full banks, or was brimful. The same sense is given by the Septuagint and the Vulgate.'

"It is scarcely correct to say that this is the only text which implies or expresses the overflowing of the Jordan. Indeed, while this passage is, by itself, open to the more limited interpretation suggested, there are others which demand more certainly the wider application. Thus the lion, (and by implication other ravenous beasts,) is described as driven from its coverts on the banks by the 'swellings' of the river, (Jer. xlix. 19; see also xii. 5;) and this would hardly be possible unless the channel were not merely filled, but overflowed, so as to inundate the thickets which lie above the inner channel of the river. As animals hiding in the jungle of this river have been mentioned, it may be added, that in all probability the bears which slew the youths who mocked Elisha at Jericho, came out of the same coverts. These coverts still afford shelter to wild animals; but not either to the lion or the bear. The lion has long disappeared from all parts of Syria, though it is now found upon the lower Euphrates; but wild boars are still found there, and the tracks of the leopard have been seen.

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"In the New Testament, the most memorable occurrence connected with the Jordan is the baptism of the Saviour there, by John, with its wonderful incidents; when the Baptist, as he bare record,'' saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him,' (John i. 32;) and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,' Matt. iii. 17. John the Baptist testified of him saying, 'Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world;' adding, 'I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptize th with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God,' John i.

REVIEWS-ZION'S KING.

29, 33, 34. Thus wonderfully began at the Jordan the public ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, to be terminated by his crucifixion, death, and resurrection, as an atonement to the justice of God, thereby 'to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness,' (Dan. ix. 24;) and to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus,' Rom. iii. 25, 26.

"The place of this baptism is not known. It is described as being at 'Bethabara beyond Jordan.' But both this name, and that of Enon near to Salim,' where John subsequently baptized, are now unknown. The pilgrims who repair yearly at Easter to Jerusalem, proceed also to the Jordan to bathe. The place where this takes place is over against Jericho, probably at, or not far from the point where the Israelites crossed the river. We are aware of no evidence for or against this being the spot of our Lord's baptism; but it is not impossible that the question may, in no long time, be determined by the discovery of the very names, which would fix the site. The ceremonial of bathing takes place at the time of the year when the river is at the fullest, agreeing certainly

with the time when the Hebrews passed the Jordan, and probably with that of the baptism of our Lord."

ZION'S KING: the Second Psalm expounded in the light of History and Prophecy. By the REV. D. PITCAIRN, Author of "Perfect Peace," &c. post 8vo. pp. 444. J. H. Jackson.

To the watchful observer and discerner of times and events, there seems to be a foreshadowing of days coming upon the earth, full of distress and perplexity to the world, but full of hope and joy to the waiting believer in Jesus. Amid the present joyous gathering of the nations, and the day-dream of peace on earth and good will amongst men, in which people of the world, and some too ardent christian spirits, indulge, there is, we believe, an under-current strongly working all through the world, which will sooner or later disturb the present false peace and

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rotten security of man. All that man fondly calls into being, and rests on with satisfaction as his work, is built upon the sand, and when the storm of fiery trials shall come, that will precede the second coming of the Lord Jesus, all that is not built upon that Rock of safety must be swept

away.

All this is strikingly declared in the magnificent Psalm of history and prophecy, of which the volume before us is a safe and deeply interesting exposition. We say safe, because we are painfully aware how greatly the interpretation of the prophetical parts of Scripture has been unwisely attempted, and the study of prophecy discouraged by the rash and speculative views which many good men have set forth. Mr. Pitcairn is emi

nently cautious, and in every part of his work has, we feel assured, sought only to write as guided by the spirit of wisdom and of prophecy.

After giving us the authorized version of the Psalm, the author has added a new translation, which throws the subject into that dramatic form in which the solo and the grand cho ruses stand in a much clearer light than in our own version.

"1.Why do the nations tumultuously rage?

And the peoples meditate a vain thing? 2. The kings of the earth stand in array, And the rulers take counsel together, Against JEHOVAH and against His Anointed.

3. 'Let us break off their fetters,

And cast away their cords from us.' 4. Sitting in the heavens He will laugh, JEHOVAH will hold them in derision. 5. Then shall HE speak against them in HIS wrath,

And in HIS anger strike them with dismay.

6. Yet have I installed My king Upon мy holy hill of Zion.

7. I will proclaim the decree of Jehovah; He said to me, My Son thou art: This day I have brought thee forth. 8. Ask of me;

And I will give the nations, thine inheritance,

And the extremities of the earth, thy possession.

9. Thou shalt beat them with a rod of iron,

Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a

potter's vessel.

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