measure to be afraid of what ignorant people choose to call party, is shallow selfopinionativeness, and a thing utterly to be avoided and despised. If the Church Catholic, for instance, had chosen to affect to draw some subtle distinction which never existed between its dogmas and the doctrine of St. Athanasius, and this for fear of being called Athanasians, (which, by the bye, was a nickname bestowed upon the Catholics,) such conduct would have been weak and delusive, and partaking of party-spirit, too, of the worst kinds: and so-and we trust not intentionally to misrepresent Dr. Biber, if we do, his unhappy style or our stupidity are to be blamed-we think that it was ill-judged and perhaps unkind to an individual, if not undutiful to the Church, to select a recent crisis as the very moment to preach a sermon quotable both ways, which had one sound and another meaning.

The second shall be "A Sermon in behalf of the Special Fund for Providing National Schools for the Manufacturing and Mining Districts, by the Hon. and Rev. John Grey, Vicar of Wooler," (Burns,) which is a very good sermon, and we select it, not for its special merits, which are, however, very considerable, but for other reasons. First, because it gives us an opportunity to urge the necessity of contributing to this Fund, raised by the National Society as a sort of humble confession of our frightful neglects towards our baptized brethren. If the rejection of the ill-judged government scheme of education had only produced this offering, of what in about three weeks amounted to some 60,000l., we should have been content to believe that the worse than heathen state of our manufacturing districts, in exposing which we have borne our part, was beginning to be known, and, far better, to be repented of by those who have the means to remedy it, and we cannot but think well of the National Society for permitting the rich, at this crisis of our fate, the privilege, by selfdenial, of expressing something like national humiliation for national sin, unparalleled in the annals of a christian country. But, secondly, we are bound, with whatever pain, to record our unqualified disapprobation of the mode in which this subscription is conducted. Subscription-lists are at the best but suspicious things, and, somehow, inconsistent with certain gospel precepts; but to rank ladies and gentlemen, peers and right honourables, as thousand-pound men, and five-hundred-pound men, down in due gradation of ranks to guineamen; to say to the one order "Sit thou here," proud, pompous, and admirable; and to the other order, "Stand thou there." poor, poverty-stricken, and crowded with the ignoble herd; this is unusually and significantly offensive. In good deeds, where perhaps the balance of self-denial is, like the widow's inite, in favour of the curate's guinea as compared with the rich man's thousands; the one, if they must be published and placarded, ought to rank with the other. The Church, as it recognises neither high nor low, rich nor poor, but only as in God's sight the dutiful and willing heart, the "cheerful" rather than the large giver, ought never to have permitted itself this unchristian classification.

We have been too long, by some unaccountable accident, in noticing a very admirable Sermon, entitled, "Christ's Ministers to give attendance to Reading, Exhortation, and Doctrine," by Leicester Darwall, M.A. (Rivingtons). Both the text and the notes of this pamphlet are very valuable.

64

Unity and Love Essential to the Increase of the Body of Christ," is the title given by the Rev. J. M. Wilkins, A.M. Rector of Southwell, to a very excellent and orthodox Sermon preached by him at the Bishop of Lincoln's last Visitation, and "published in obedience to the desire of the Bishop and Clergy," (Rivingtons).

MISCELLANEOUS.

[The Editor is not responsible for the opinions expressed in this department.]

A FEW QUESTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARTICLE ON THE "RUBRICS AND RITUAL OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND," IN THE QUARTERLY REVIEW FOR MAY, 1843. P.243.-"It is, for example, not seemly, if the matter be at all worthy of episcopal interference, as we think it certainly is-that a preacher should be enjoined to wear a white gown at one end of London Bridge, and a black gown on the other,—which must be the case till the Bishop of Winchester shall have adopted the Bishop of London's views, or," &c.

The Bishop of London has not enjoined preachers to wear a white gown. He says in his Charge, that he is hardly prepared to give any positive direction on this point. He states his opinion (which seems also to be that of the Reviewer) that it is certainly desirable that uniformity of practice should prevail in the Church at large.

Is it the case that the Bishop of Winchester has "enjoined preachers to wear a black gown?"

Pp. 243, 244.-" All Christians using the Apostles' Creed acknowledge themselves to be members of one holy Catholic or Universal Church, and so all who profess and call themselves Christians are, in this view of the matter, and according to the interpretation of our Liturgy, Catholics."

But do "all who profess and call themselves Christians" use the Apostles' Creed?-Do not many reject all forms whatever?

of the Chris

It is said in the next page, "that the Church of England uses it " (the word Catholic) "as it was used in the earliest tian Church-as nearly synonymous with orthodox.'

ages

The

Is it meant by the Reviewer, that "all who profess and call them. selves Christians are ... according to the interpretation of our Liturgy," "orthodox?" Heretics call themselves Christians. Church teaches us to pray for heretics. Does she mean, then, by heretics-" Catholics". i. e. as the Reviewer shows, "orthodox" persons?

If the Romanists have used as an argument in favour of their corrupt communion the common application to it of the word "Catholic"-surely the name is even on this account "worth disputing about." If Archbishop Secker had lived now when we have to contend with Popery, it is probable that he would have claimed the title as the heritage of his own Church.

By this time we ought to know that words are not trifles.

P. 248.-The Reviewer criticizes the expressions of the Bishop of London's Charge, and in the course of his criticism says, or seems to say, that "a venial transgression" "might indeed be justified, or . . . something more than justified."

...

That an exact and conscientious performance of a prescribed duty" might be "justified," or even "more than justified," i.e. might

be commended, appears to me quite true, but I do not see how this can be said of a transgression.

The Reviewer thinks it inconsistent with "Common Prayer" that minister and people should all look one way in prayer, for his argument comes to this. He devotes some pages to this subject in the latter part of the Review. He has failed to make me see that the circumstance of the minister and people facing the same way, interferes with "common prayer." He advocates the custom of all turning towards the Communion Table while repeating the Creeds, but he should have shown how this does not interfere with a proper repetition of our "Common faith."

While the Reviewer is upon this subject, he says that the frontispiece to Bishop Sparrow's "Rationale" has been appealed to as "authority." He cannot here refer to the Bishop of London's Charge, for though he says that the Bishop treats the practice of worshipping towards the East" with a kind of indulgent countenance," (p. 278,) yet the Bishop does really say that he does not consider it to be the intention of our Church, that the officiating minister, when reading prayers, should turn to the East, with his back to the congregation. And when the Bishop speaks of Sparrow, he refers to his words, and not to the frontispiece to his book.

P. 258. The Reviewer places a Rubric, which he says (though I see it not) seems to imply one practice, in opposition to another Rubric which positively enjoins another. If the former Rubric only implies, we must take the clearer guidance of a positive injunction.

It seems to me to be a conclusive argument for the original practice with regard to the Church Militant Prayer, that its use is assumed in all the State Services. Besides, the direction that certain words are to be left out, "if there be no alms or oblations," implies that the prayer is to be used on such occasions.

The Reviewer argues against the "innovation" of using the first part of the Marriage Service in the body of the Church.

He says (p. 271), "We talk of leading a lady to the ALTAR.” So we do; and I suppose this expression must have originated in times when the bridegroom really did lead the bride to the altar, which, according to the custom which has generally prevailed of late, he does She is generally brought to the altar by some one else. cording to the practice reprobated by the Reviewer, she is "led to the altar" by the bridegroom.

not.

Ac

Has not the practice of reading the first part of the service always continued in some parts of the west of England?

The Bishop of London does not refer to this matter in his Charge. The following note is in p. 264, in which the Reviewer is speaking of the use of the gown in preaching:

"It may be worth remarking, that in the Roman Catholic church a like principle prevails: when the same priest performs the service and preaches, he takes off, before he ascends the pulpit, the peculiar vestment, (chasuble or cope,) in which he performs the rites, and assumes it again when he returns to the altar."

The use then of the same vestment during the whole of the morning service is not to be traced to popery. S. C.

THE INTERMEDIATE STATE.

THE practical consideration which we propose to give to our subject, has been suggested by the objections which, as far as we are able to know them, have been brought against the sermon of Mr. Morris not long since. It seems that a mere expression of hope, on his part, that the murdered Laud still intercedes for his beloved Church, is a notion full of terror to some people in these days. We believe, indeed, that the persons who disliked Mr. Morris's statement were on the lookout, as sailors say, for squalls, and that a predisposition was the main cause of their malady; still there must have been something more than this, which induced them to fix upon the passage in question as a vulnerable point in their adversary. They must have seen something in it which they did not like, and this something must either have been the opinion that the saints departed intercede for the saints on earth, or an indistinct idea that the admission of such a notion is inseparable from the abuse of it, and that to believe that departed saints are praying for us, is necessarily followed by our prayers to them. Now, we can hardly imagine the objectors to have been so utterly unreasonable as to entertain the latter opinion, forgetting that the fact of the ministry of angels is generally admitted, although men are not induced thereby to pray to them, any more than to any other gracious means of good, animate or inanimate, by which God works out the designs of His providence. We do not believe this of them, and therefore we are inclined to attribute their objections to an habitual fear of contemplating the nature and probable occupations of the intermediate state, as if to think of it were unsafe, and to speak of it presumptuous, except in that vague and erroneous manner which is too popular amongst us, and which, if it leaves any impression upon the mind of the hearer or the speaker, strengthens a mistake which makes some parts of Scripture a dead letter to them, and the burial service of the Church a form, into much of the spirit of which they cannot enter. We are confirmed in this opinion by the remarks which we have heard on Mr. Morris's sermon: for one friend of ours, who has become a woman of most catholic feeling and practice, but who has never had this subject brought before her, was shocked and hurt at the very thought of such intermediate occupations; and thus, through never having received any instruction upon the subject, she was liable, at any time, to have her confidence in her pastors, and in the Fathers of the Anglican and of the Catholic Church shaken, if not destroyed. In fact, from an idea that the subject is unpractical, and altogether uncertain, a doctrine which is expressed in the Prayer-book has been very generally excluded from our pulpits; and it is only a very short time since a clergyman, after preaching an excellent sermon on the parable of Lazarus and Dives, in which throughout he made the one the denizen of heaven, and the other of hell, informed us that he had done so deliberately, under the conviction that the doctrine of a middle state was not an intelligible or useful truth. To us it seems a rash thing to

speak thus of any doctrine of God, especially of one so prominent as was this in the minds of the apostles, and of all the martyrs and holy doctors who succeeded them; and which supplies some of its most cheering strains to the subdued triumph of our Burial Service. We earnestly wish, therefore, to call the attention of our readers, especially the clerical part of them, to the practical bearings of this doctrine. It will be necessary, in so doing, to state the truth as it is, with some of its evidences, combating only the notions popular with us, and not, except indirectly, the far worse and "most distressing" doctrine of the Romish communion.

I. The first of these popular errors is, the notion that the soul sleeps after death-an opinion which seems to have been broached about the time of the Reformation, and to have become more general since.* Now, we are not only prepared to find some truth in this, as well as in every doctrine, but are ready to admit the whole of the assertion that the dead sleep. So spake Daniel, when he foretold " that many who sleep in the dust of the earth' should awake: so, also, our Saviour, "He is not dead, but sleepeth." "David fell on sleep." S. Stephen, when he had breathed his dying words, "fell asleep." Thus, the Catholic Church believed and felt in her purest days, and thus our own Church adopts the word into her Service, feeling that she is consistent with herself, although elsewhere she asserts the conscious blessedness of the deceased.+ We make no question, therefore—we can make no question-that the dead sleep; but how?-in a state of unconsciousness? in a sleep of spirits?

How, then, could Lazarus and Dives feel, and think, and speak, and, as the Gospel tells us, while yet the world was rolling on, filled with saints and sinners like them? How, then, did the Lord receive the spirit of S. Stephen? Wherefore did S. Paul "desire to depart and be with Christ," which was "far better than his conscious heaven of privileges, and of angelic and divine society on earth? How did the spirits in the Apocalypse call anxiously for the coming of their deliverance, "How long, how long?" Again, on such a supposition, we must believe the Church to have been in error from the first. The church of Smyrna writes of Polycarp, that "with the apostles and all the just he rejoices, and glorifies God the Father." (Sec. xix.) S. Clement says of Paul, that he "has gone to the holy place." (1 Epist. Sec. 5.) And Polycarp of Ignatius, Zosimus, Rufus, and others, and of Paul and of the rest of the apostles, that they are "in the place which is due to them with the Lord, with whom also they were fellow-sufferers." (Epist. Sec. ix.) Thus, also, S. Ambrose, "The glorious company of the apostles praise thee, The noble army of martyrs praise thee!" Tertullian also writes, "What then shall we do in the mean time? Shall we be asleep? Souls do not sleep," (De animâ, cap. ult.) If the reader

*Calvin wrote his Psychopannychia against the German Anti-Pædobaptists, who held this doctrine.-See Wall, vol. ii. p. 344. Oxford Edition.

+ Collect in the Burial Service: "Them that sleep in him." t Wall, vol. ii, p. 347.