should refrain from giving a victory to a party of whose inability to defend the doctrine of our Lord's Godhead let Geneva be witness-where it is forbidden to preach that doctrine from the pulpits." After a series of other remarks offering prudential and other reasons for leaving things as they are, Mr. Wood goes on to say, "This brings me to the real point at issue. It is doctrine that is involved in this controversy, and it is worse than useless to blink the matter. I say advisedly, that to make any alteration under present circumstances in the existing law of the Church of England, as to ceremonial, would be to all intents and purposes to cast a slight upon the doctrines which that ritual typifies. The world at large does not condescend to refinements. It knows that ritual has been associated with doctrine. It knows that its promoters have used it with that intention; it knows that its assailants have attacked it because they said it meant doctrine. And I would ask, what can be their conclusion when they see that ritual is forbidden, but that it is forbidden because the doctrine which it typifies is not the doctrine of the Church of England? What other conclusion can be arrived at by Catholics abroad? What other conclusion can be arrived at by our own people at home? No, I will not believe that anything so disastrous to the cause of reunion, so apparently fatal in the eyes of foreign Catholics to our claims to catholicity on the points in question, so cruel to the souls of our own people at home, can be allowed to be carried out." Ritual is thus the symbol of doctrine and the doctrine it symbolizes, a bond of connection with Rome and a ground of hope for reunion with the Papacy. Unquestionably this is the ground of opposition on the part of the evangelical sections of the Established Church. They see that the most strenuous efforts are being made to destroy the Protestant character of the established religion, and they are anxious to stay its progress. But how are they to accomplish it? Neither legal decisions nor Acts of Parliament have power to enlighten the conscience or convert the will. Nor will the urging of charity, apart from truth, heal the afflictions of the church. Her standards and ritual need revision, and the present state of parties is not favourable for extensive changes. Both parties tremble at their prospect, which, however, they

feel to be inevitable. The very possibility of this revision of doctrine is urged on the attention of the Evangelicals, by Mr. Wood, as a ground of caution and forbearance. "I would most earnestly urge him (Lord Shaftesbury) and all others, whether in Parliament or Convocation, who think they are doing right, in their attempts to force on legislation, however little they may believe our assertions, however much they may be convinced of the justice of their own opinions, at least to ask themselves whether there is not reason to suspect a cause which numbers among its supporters those who, like the 'Pall Mall Gazette,' openly assert that the fundamental doctrines of Christianity require revision; and, I suppose I shall not be accused of saying anything extreme, at least in the estimation of this meeting, if I assert that, after such an assertion as that, there can be no possibility of illusion as to the nature of the ally they have got on their side."

The second of these meetings was a special meeting of the English Church Union, held in one of the smaller assembly rooms of the Freemasons' Tavern, and said to have been inconveniently crowded. The chair was occupied by the President, the Hon. Colin Lindsay, who "took occasion to explain that the Union was not, as seemed to be supposed, an association for the specific purpose of aiding the Ritual movement. Its purpose was to maintain the doctrine and discipline of the English Church, and to defend those suffering under persecution or aggression. It was because they considered the ritual which was now attacked to be part of the Church of England that they had taken up the question." The principal resolution at this meeting was moved by Dr. Pusey. It was of similar character to the one proposed at St. James's Hall, and, after considerable discussion, was adopted by the meeting.

But the most remarkable of these meetings was the meeting of the " Church Association," held on Tuesday and Wednesday, the 26th and 27th of November, at Willis's Rooms, "to defend the menaced faith of the Church of England." At this meeting resolutions condemnatory of the doctrines and practices of the ritualistic party were passed, and one resolving to raise a guarantee fund of £50,000., to enable the association to

contest the validity of these doctrines in the law courts. Speaking on the doctrine of the Holy Supper, Dr. Miller, of Greenwich, said "I am one of those who hold that the Lord's Supper is to the faithful people of Christ a sure and effectual means of grace. I hold that whoever goes there in faith does really partake in his heart of communion with his Lord. But I most distinctly deny. and abhor every approach to the notion that the elements are anything more than the simple bread and wine which they were when placed upon the table." The plea for liberty put forward by the other party is thus disposed of:-"I would not come from Greenwich to this room to object to a clergyman preaching in his surplice, or to other trifling matters. But when these vestments become symbols of the most fundamental errors of the Church of Rome, then these trifles become fearfully magnified and of great importance, and we must not be led away with the cuckoo ery that we are abridging a man's 'liberty,' when that 'liberty' means to rob us of our Protestant church." The resolutions proposed at this meeting led to many statements and discussions of distinguishing doctrines of the Church of England. On these discussions the "Guardian says "Their exhibition of blundering ignorance, silly childishness, confusion of thought, want of mastery over ideas and expression, want of recollection of the most ordinary facts and data, reckless over-statement, and innocent unconsciousness of what they had to prove, was pitiable, and, in men with a character for talent, almost past belief." These are severe words to be spoken by the leaders of one party respecting the leaders of another in the same religious community. They indicate the approach of the end. When men charge one another with ignorance and folly, when they cease to treat each other with Christian courtesy and forbearance, when they express only contempt for one another's cherished religious convictions, every internal ground of unity is overthrown, and nothing but the pressure of external authority can preserve peace or unity in the same community. This is seen by the "Guardian," and is thus expressed in a leader of November 27th:-"It seems to us inevitable that a settlement of some kind must be come to, and that

it must be a legal settlement. In the present temper of the public mind, and with the peculiar character of the question itself, we cannot conceive that any other can be thought of. The Ritualists, if they have their faults, are Englishmen like the rest of us. They are alive to the authority of the law, and they have boldly put their claim on law. They must not complain if they are taken at their word. If eminent counsel differ, the next step is a judicial decision; if the judicial decision discloses a state of law which was not perhaps expected, and which either one party or another finds unsatisfactory or mischievous, the next appeal is to the legislature."

CONGREGATIONALISM AND POPULAR EDUCATION.-At the close of the autumn session of the Congregational Union an important meeting was held under the presidency of Mr. Baines, M.P., on the subject of Government aid to public day-schools. Mr. Baines, at the commencement of the present system of State aid to the day-schools of the church and other religious denominations, was the leader of the strong opposition raised against the Government system and in favour of voluntary education. Availing himself of the columns of the "Leeds Mercury," one of the most influential newspapers of the north of England, of which he is the principal proprietor and editor, he applied himself with great ability and indomitable perseverance to maintain the views he had adopted, and which were generally entertained by the congregational body, of which he is a distinguished member, on this subject. Dr. Vaughan, one of the ablest and most influential ministers of the body, at that time editor of the "British Quarterly Review," took the other side of the question, and recom mended a modification of the Govern ment plan and the reception of th Government grants. The Governmen of the day were quite willing to mak reasonable concessions; and the syste of inspection in day-schools, not belong ing to the Church of England, was an has since been confined to the secula education of the children. Efforts we: made to meet the educational wants the age by voluntary subscriptions. training school was established fo teachers, and day - schools establishe in different parts of the country. T experience of twenty years has shov

the impossibility of competing with the Government system. Many of the schools established have been given up; others have accepted the Government grants and admitted the Government inspectors; and the public opinion of the country has so unmistakably adopted the principle of Government aid and superintendence that resistance is no longer possible. "The grants," said Mr. Baines, have been accepted by the National Society and Church of England Schools, by the British and Foreign School Society, by the Wesleyans, by the Roman Catholics, by the Unitarians, by the Society of Friends, by the Nonconformists of Wales, by the Established Church of Scotland, by the Free Church, and by a considerable and increasing number of schools belonging to the congregational bodies. Under this mixed system of voluntary action and State aid we see that the country has more numerous schools; more commodious and healthy school - buildings; ampler and better school apparatus; more highly-trained teachers; more competent assistant teachers; and, above all, a system of school inspection by able inspectors, which, with the recently adopted principle of payment by results, tends to stimulate exertion and prevent abuse." The result has been the relinquishment of the ground hitherto held by Mr. Baines and the leading members of his communion, and the acceptance, in a modified sense, of the Government assistance.

Morley, were proposed at this meeting, but ultimately withdrawn, and the following adopted :-"That this meeting considers religious instruction as of inestimable value in the training of the young; but it believes that that instruction will be best reconciled with the rights of conscience and civil justice if left to the free action of the supporters of schools, and not required by public authority, and desires that the aid granted for the education of the poor shall be granted impartially for the ascertained results of secular teaching, in harmony with the views of the Royal Commission of 1858, which recommended to add to the schools already admitted to public grants any school which shall have been registered at the office of the Privy Council, on the report of the Inspector, as an elementary school for the education of the poor." This places no difficulties in the way of receiving the grants, and opens the way for the educational efforts of this large and influential community on the ground of equality with the Established Church. A mistaken principle leads them to draw a subtle distinction between the reception of money for secular and for religious education, but this distinction will be dissolved in practice. The schools will fulfil all the present requirements of the Government. They will be emphatically religious in their general tone, and it is encouraging to observe the earnestness and almost unanimity with which the leading men of the community repudiate the idea of sectarian education. If the sentiments expressed at these conferences may be taken as an indication of the general feeling of the body, the Bible will be taught, but rarely indeed the Assembly's Catechism; indeed this celebrated catechism, we were told a short time ago by an intelligent and zealous member of the body, is fast disappearing from their Sunday-schools.

To complete the work of this meeting, another meeting was held in London, on the 20th of November, under the presidency of Mr. Samuel Morley, the chairman of the Congregational Board of Education. Prior to this meeting, Mr. Morley and Mr. Baines had presented a memorial to the Lords of the Privy Council, on the subject of the changes of sentiment going on in the Congregational body, and had received an answer, in which they were informed that the Lord President was 66 prepared to recommend the Committee of Council to receive the name Congregational, Baptist, Independent, or Calvinistic Methodist, as sufficient to dispense with the necessity for any question or inquiry extending beyond the sanitary condition and secular instruction of schools applying for aid from the Parliamentary grant.' A series of resolutions, prepared by Mr. Baines, and expressing also the opinion of Mr.

THE FUTURE OF HUMAN CHARACTER. Under this title, two thoughtful essays appeared in a recent number of the "Spectator" newspaper. The first discusses the dark side, the second the bright side of prospective promise in modern civilization. In the eager conflicts and rapid changes of opinion and action going on at the present day, in the unsettled faiths and crumbling theories everywhere conspicuous, it is natural to look to the prospect before us, and for

the sincere and earnest seeker after truth to endeavour to read the signs of the times, and anxiously to inquire, "Who will show us any good?" The progress of the sciences, the multiplied means of pleasurable excitement, of bodily ease, and of self-indulgence with which they supply us, and the hundred other facilities for either rational progress or inglorious decline so abundantly spread before us, are all exerting an insensible, yet powerful influence on the age, and as seeds sown into the soil of humanity, preparing the way of a future harvest of hope or of despair. It is common to regard the development of modern intelligence as a sure sign of human progress. In the main it is so, but it is far from being an invariable and certain progress. There is a possibility that knowledge, separated from faith in God, may lead to the pride of self-intelligence and contempt for the truths of spiritual wisdom. "There are those who are already beginning to say in their heart, There is no God,' not because they know so little, but because they know so much of their own little knowledge. They are perhaps, as the Psalmist calls them, in one sense fools, but certainly they are not fools for want of education, or of all sorts of accomplishments." They see the definite character of many scientific teachings, and are bewildered with the uncertainties of moral and religious utterances, in which they lose intellectual faith and lapse into indifferentism and doubt. We have entered upon 66 a new era," which is at present full of hopes and fears, of light and shade, of opening truths and shadowing errors. It is an age distinguished by benevolent aspirations and concentrated selfishness, of rare virtues and deep depravities. Complexity of every kind is the great condition of the new life, shades of thought too complex to yield up definite opinions,-shades of moral obligation too complex to yield up definite axioms of duty,-shades of insight too various to yield up definite sentences of approval or condemnation for the actions of others." Is not this complex condition of society a fulfilment of the words of Jehovah by the prophet? "It shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear nor dark; but it shall be one day, which shall be known to the Lord, not day nor night: but it shall come to pass that at eventime it shall be light."

One of the great difficulties which attends this newly-awakened condition of the intellect is "to reconcile the old Divine liberty of life in God with the new human liberty of life in science.” Religion, according to popular conceptions, teaches us to regard every event in life as "the direct issue of a Father's will;" science shows all things to be subject to fixed and unalterable laws. "Harmonise as we will, under our present lights, the personal life in God which our Lord revealed fits very awkwardly into the grooves of the scientific conception of order; and every generation, as it accumulates fresh illustrations of the scientific method, is more and more embarrassed how to piece them in with that far grander and nobler personal discipline of the soul which hears in every circumstance of life some new word of command from the living God. We do not affirm, for we do not in the least believe, the two modes of apprehension to be inconsistent. We do say that to help us in reconciling them we seem to need some new act of revelation;-that He who taught the old personal, unscientific world how to live in God, should yet reconcile for us the floods of new light He has poured upon our understandings and outward life with the greatest of his lessons, taught to a very different age by the shores of Galilee, and in the darkness of Gethsemene. If progress go on as heretofore, without any new light from the Divine side, the old, strong, simple, ethical, and spiritual conception of life may die away, and there may grow up in its place a spurious compound of misty science and feeble sentiment, out of which no strength can come." The great want of the age, then, is an increase of spiritual light, to harmonise the teachings of revealed truth with the disclosures of modern science. In the language of Robinson, the pastor of the pilgrim fathers, "We want more light to break forth from the Word of God." The light of the natural sciences has come from a closer study and deeper insight into the book of nature. The light of spiritual truth, which shall reconcile spiritual wisdom with all genuine scientific truth, and be a light moving at the head of all human progress, must come by a correcter knowledge and deeper insight into the genuine teaching of the written Word of God. And

for the attainment of this insight there needs for the Word as for the Works of God, a law of interpretation. This law is already revealed to the world, though the world, and many who see its need refuse to receive it. It is the law of correspondence so abundantly demonstrated and illustrated in the writings of our illumined author.

SUNDAY CLASSES FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF CHILDREN OF MEMBERS IN THE DocTRINES OF THE NEW CHURCH.-The last General Conference adopted a resolution recommending all the societies of the New Church to establish and encourage classes for the instruction of the children of members in the Heavenly Doctrines, and expressed a wish that the matter might be brought before the church in the pages of the Conference Magazine. The subject is not new. At various times it has been brought before the Conference, but beyond recommendations and inquiries in the president and secretary's circulars, no active course has been adopted. It has been left to individual action, and too often to the care of those who have felt little responsibility respecting it. This is deeply to be regretted. The education of our own children in the doctrines of the church is of vital consequence, and the means recommended by the Conference-Sunday classes and pastoral instruction-are of the highest importance, and deserve the serious consideration and hearty adoption of every society. Judging from appearances, many of our societies have not been alive to the benefits likely to arise from their adoption, and the church has consequently suffered from the loss of the children of its members, who, for want of proper care and training in childhood and youth, have gone out from amongst us. While we have redoubled our missionary efforts, and established and endowed schools for the instruction of the children of strangers, we have been unfaithful to our own, and have suffered them to grow up to mature age without adopting auy plan for systematically teaching them the doctrines of the New Jerusalem.

If the history of any of our oldest societies were minutely analysed, our neglect in this important subject would become so apparent, and its results so startling, that we should cease to wonder at our want of progress. Let any one

take a glance at the baptismal register of the society to which he belongs, and trace the history of any given number of children from the font, when they were dedicated to the Lord, and their parents exhorted to instruct them in the truths of the New Church, up to their maturity, and thence onward through the subsequent periods of their lives; and after allowing for removals by death and other causes, how very small indeed will be the proportion who have remained with us as intelligent and consistent members. We cannot help thinking that if the same amount of zeal had been exercised towards all who have been baptised into the New Church in this kingdom as has been bestowed on the children of strangers, the results would have been very different. Instead of any languishing or falling off in numbers, our societies would from their internal growth have doubled themselves, and by branching off would have formed other societies, and increased the real power of the church.

It is now too late to regret the past, but not to improve the future, by endeavouring to act faithfully towards those whom our Heavenly Father has given us to train for His kingdom. And when the General Conference recommends that means be adopted for the religious instruction of the children of members, it is the duty of the members of the church to give such recommendation all the attention that its importance demands. All who earnestly desire to see real progress in the church should at once commence the buildingup of the Holy Jerusalem by the religious instruction of the children within their own families, societies, and circles. I do not deny that the schools connected with some of our societies have been beneficial in their results, but I would earnestly impress upon the minds of the members of the New Church, that the duty to our own children is of so much importance that everything should bend to it. Where practical, it is, no doubt, well that we should have regard for our neighbours' children by establishing schools for their instruction; but where this is done at the expense of neglecting our own, we need not wonder at our want of true success. If both cannot be accomplished, and well accomplished, our simple duty is to devote our whole attention to the children of our own