duty and service. For the future it is necessary to rely on the mercy and goodness of that Providence, Whose hand was humbly and reverently supposed to point to the work. He knows where there are funds available to complete it, and hearts willing to contribute them. If He wills that the work should prosper, that it should conduce to His glory, to the support of His Church, to the nurture of His little ones in innocence and truth, and to the sound instruction of his poor hereafter from funds procured by the education of the rich: the experience of what has been given already, will not allow a shadow of doubt, that all which is required will be supplied in its proper degree and time. And if on the other hand it contains the secret unknown seeds of evil, if it bears the impress of individual opinions rather than of the faith of CHRIST's Church, if there is in it a bias to religious errors, a precedent of mischief, a want of proper safeguards against either of those two forms of falsehood which beset to the right hand and the left, that true branch of the Catholic Church, our holy and blessed Mother the Church of England, then may He be pleased in His infinite mercy, to crush, extinguish, and blot out its memory, the sooner the happier and the better, that it may never rise up in the day of judgment to load its authors with a condemnation and a curse."

Passing on from this establishment, we would direct our readers' attention to, and enlist their sympathies in behalf of a noble plan, which has been set forth by the indefatigable Curate of Shoreham, Mr. Woodard. This plan is for the education of the middle classes. It did indeed rejoice us much to see that at length something was being done for a class of persons who have been too long neglected, and for whom no great efforts have ever been made, so as to knit them more closely to the Church of their baptism. Whatever be the cause, we must all confess with shame and confusion of face, that these have been given over by the Church. Generally speaking they are alienated from the Church, and that from no fault of their own. There has seemed to be no connecting link between them and the Priesthood; little sympathy, and no religious intercommunion. And yet not to take all care of them, is to be guilty of a most painful dereliction of duties. Recent events have shown beyond question, that if they are sound, we may hope to remain secure. The unanimous rising of the middle classes on the side of order and loyalty has proved to a demonstration, that when their sympathies are enlisted, they are prepared and ready to act.

Upon this neglect to which we have alluded we will quote from Mr. Woodard's "Plea for the Middle Classes :".

"Take London as an example. The Clergy scarcely think it

either their duty or interest to be on very free terms with even the most influential part of their trading parishioners. For this practice there may be excuses offered, and some undoubtedly reasonable ones, but it does not alter the fact that tradespeople, as a class, although by far the majority of the Church's children, and the most able to do her service in times of difficulty, are yet neglected by the Clergy. Some will say, "familiarity breeds contempt," and that the Clergy would lose their influence by any intimacy with such persons. If it be so, the fault must rest with us, in forgetting the dignity of our calling as ministers of CHRIST. However, without dwelling on the amount of blame which attaches to us, this fact remains, with all its solemn reality, staring us in the face wherever we turn, that the great mass of the people, the real life and strength of England, occupy so anomalous a position that they can never enjoy the fatherly and friendly ministrations of their spiritual guides. One of this class, a good and excellent Christian man, who gives donations in large sums to all Church objects, complained to me, that while the Clergy of his parish would visit the poor readily enough, and frequent the tables of the upper classes, no one had ever done him the honour to go further than knock at his door and ask for a subscription. Another, whose occupation is that of a printer and publisher on a large scale, stated that his Clergyman had never at any time been in his house, or offered to guide himself or family in any way whatever. The Clergy, however, are not alone to be blamed, and perhaps are to a great extent free from fault; for the evil has now proceeded so far that it is impossible to know how to meet it, or what to do. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a Clergyman in London would find it impossible to gain an entrance to the family of his tradespeople, and where he did succeed, it would put them out of their way, and cause them pain and inconvenience rather than any pleasure. This is the fruit of ages of neglect, which will not be remedied without great exertion and much patience. But the visible consequence is, that an unpleasant feeling exists between the Clergy and the mass of the people. They do not sympathise with each other; and so, when difficulties arise, they cannot feel alike or pull together. They have no thoughts in common, and the people could not possibly understand the genius of the Church, if ever so well inclined. The dreadful consequences which daily result from this coldness between Priest and people are too many to be numbered, and too great to be thought of without the deepest emotion by those who have the best interests of mankind at heart. These will suggest themselves to your own mind without any observations of mine; for who has not been struck with the

secular cast of mind of the great bulk of the population? Even their religion takes that form. They have no idea of the Church as a divine institution; never once think that they have any share in her fortunes; could not be brought to understand the privileges secured to them when they were admitted into the Church by Baptism; test all the acts of the Church by the same rule by which they try their secular affairs, viz. that of success; think all payment for religion unendurable, and expect a competent return for all subscriptions and donations of charity in the shape of influence by right of voting or otherwise. And for the injury done them, what can be greater than this? Once baptized, they are left to themselves; they never receive any intelligible dogmatic teaching. They have no arguments whereby to sustain their minds in times of temptation. The religious instruction they received at school may have been of the very worst kind, or, at best, of such an indefinite character that, in after life, they could make no use of it. Even the Holy Scriptures have not been made familiar to them, and the helps to their interpretation not so much as alluded to. When are they then to learn even the Apostle's "first principles"? They start without knowledge; they enter on the duties of life without any rule except that which is given them by the world around them. They rush heart and soul into the bustle and cravings after this world's goods; they practise the conventional arts of their calling, unconscious of any harm even where it exists. If they have any qualms of conscience, or plan of religion, it is rather an effort of outraged nature to throw off a burden and an inconvenience, than any settled choice of truth. And how can it be otherwise? They began without a guide; they have gone on without one. The world has been against them. The system in which they were born was the most inimical to the practice of the precepts of the Gospel. They have no standing ground so as to be able to resist the form into which the world around moulds them. Their life and death is a sad spectacle, and yet infinitely better than could have been expected; but they go to their graves with the bitter (though silent) complaint, "No man cared for my soul." You will think this, perhaps, an exaggeration, but it is not so. The middle classes may be as virtuous as any other class, and indeed, as being shielded from the dangers of the two extremes, by far the most virtuous, (though this now is very doubtful,) yet the Church must ever feel herself open to reproach, while she leaves untrained and uninstructed the most numerous, influential, and best disposed body of the community; and till she provides some remedy whereby they may be retained as her dutiful, and intelligent, and faithful sons.'

Here we must leave the subject, purposing to return to it next month, when we shall enter into the details of the Shoreham and Harlow plans.

W. B. F.

ENTIRENESS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.*

"CHRIST our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast."-1 Cor. v. 7.

My subject is the "Entireness of Holy Scripture," in the treatment of which, I pray not to follow my own private judgment, but to be guided by the same SPIRIT, though not in the same form of inspiration, as the holy writers.

The Old Testament is not contrary to the New, but the New is its continuation. Yet both Testaments have been wellnigh set aside.

The whole of Christianity has been comprised in a few texts, torn with irreverent violence from S. Paul's epistles, and applied with still more daring force to this favoured person, or that. Hence faith has become the mere fancy of individuals, and the whole weighty matter of salvation has been reduced to some popular cry, such as "justification by faith," or "the Bible, and nothing but the Bible, is religion."

By such wilful mutilation the Church has already had her ancient landmarks removed. She has lost her divinely ordained temporalities; and by the same error she is in the way to lose her spiritualities also.t

*This sermon, referred to at p. 377, is published at the unanimous request of the Clergy present at the Dedication Feast of S. John Baptist, Harlow.

The temporalities of the Church are lands and houses the gift of man, and they are alienable; the divinely appointed temporalities are tithes and offerings, the gift of GOD, and they are inalienable.-ED.

I mean to prove that our LORD came not to destroy but to fulfil, and that not one jot or tittle of the divine word is to pass away. I shall begin with general remarks, and go on to illustrate the subject by setting before you the Jewish rites, as the types and shadows of the Christian Sacraments and ordinances.

The blood of bulls always was, and is now, a shadow. That is a strong truth. The falsehood consists in making it a substance. The Old Testament looks on, in type and figure, to the very end of the New; and the New looks back for reference and record, for proof and evidence to the very beginning of the Old. Each throws light on the other, and both together form one well-toned picture of truth. The Gospel is in Genesis, the Law in the Apocalypse. All Scripture is given by inspiration of GOD, and woe be to him who would put it asunder. The true Jew saw the promises afar off, and his hope became evangelical; the true Christian sees the commandments very near, and his faith is practical. The best sermon ever delivered to man, the Sermon on the Mount, carries the commandments into the very heart. They remain, as they were, in the letter; but they receive a new spirit. The Law is not abolished, but becomes spiritual. It stands against murder in its ancient distinctness; but our LORD carries it on against malice, and even anger without cause. The law, too, against adultery is as express in S. Matthew as in Exodus; but the Gospel makes it a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

There is, too, in the original language of the New Testament (noticed in a recent publication*) that peculiarity, which is significant of a blending rather than of a rending of the two parts of Scripture. It is not pure classical Greek, but Syriac, I might almost say, Jewish. It is full of the dialect and idiom of the Old Testament language. Though the style of different writers is various, yet a Hebrew turn of expression pervades the whole. This is a strong hint to us to consolidate the Bible; so far from making one part contrary to the other, it makes the whole of one speech in the main. At least, it shows that the new covenant was introduced, not on the abolition but the foundation of the Old. The Epistle to the Hebrews proves this especially. But only take some of the incidental expressions of S. Paul, and they mark the tendency with perhaps more force than a set discourse. The text is an instance. "CHRIST Our Passover is sacrificed for us." But I need not depend on casual expressions. I have the Apostle's direct injunction to remember the ancient pattern under the New dispensation. "Brethren, I would not have you ignorant that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud, and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same * Christian Remembrancer, Art. Greek Text.