The Church of England layman is thus forced by his position to make himself a judge of his superiors. If he possess common sense, he must perceive the statements he hears to be contradictory, and is, therefore, compelled to judge between his teachers; consequently he is driven to choose his own teacher, and the doing of this destroys the root of subordination. Each individual layman in the Church of England is suffering as a member of that community, wherein the civil power oppresses the Church, and, so long as that oppression continues, he must bear his share of the consequences.

The want of power in discordant heads to exercise uniformity of discipline, if considered only with reference to punishment of offenders, is comparatively a trifling evil; by far the greatest consequence is the effect on the faithful. The ordinances of the Church are the instruments by which the hearts and spirits of men are trained into that holy habit of submission which constitutes the very essence of the man who is being educated for heaven. In the Church of England, however, he can receive no guidance, training, or discipline whatever. In the Church of Rome, the faithful man is so much overdirected, that his responsibility and conscience are destroyed; in the Church of England, he is not directed at all, so that his moral being is left to the chance guidance of circumstances, or to his own

insufficiency. This loss is felt and deplored by many who grieve without knowing a remedy, as is beautifully and feelingly expressed in the admirable sermons of Archdeacon Manning.

The recent attempt to revive some deference for the practices of antiquity, for the architecture consecrated to ecclesiastical uses, and for the rites and ceremonies which, although necessary for the due worship of God, have become obsolete through the indolence of the clergy in omitting to practice them, however right the end contemplated, has been of a radical, and, therefore, of a destructive nature. It has been an attempt from beneath, and not from above; it has been of the flesh, though of the enlightened and holy minds of the men: still it was not of the Holy Ghost. The issue has been increased disruption, and the bulwarks of the Church have been fearfully shaken. Many of the best in her priesthood have rushed into the Papacy, and some of the worst have been more envenomed in infidel antipathy to divine mysteries. It has brought out into manifestation the total death of ecclesiastical feeling that pervades the body of the members of the Church of England, although instances may have occurred of an opposite character in particular individuals.

The consequence of these divisions within the Church of England is, that every individual in

her communion is as much thrown back on mere personal religion, and out of the communion of the One Catholic Church, as the most rabid dissenter. The superior rank and education of the established clergy, contrasted with the coarseness and vulgarity of dissenters, induce the upper classes of laity to frequent the established churches rather than the chapels of their opponents; but the end proposed is, with most, to go and hear a sermon, not to go to worship and adore God, and exclusively so with the whole of the Evangelical sect.

As soon as the separation from Rome was effected, all zeal for God's service and glory seems to have died out, or taken the exclusive form of disputation. This is the necessary fate of all schisms: each party tries to vindicate itself, and to justify accusations against its rival. Where either party triumphs, the strife ceases; but not where two parties still exist. In Rome, little is heard of questions in dispute with Greeks and Protestants; but in the East and in Ireland the quarrels are as rife as ever. Hence amongst Protestant sects there

are continual broils, and rancorous denunciations of the Established Church, because by such means only can their position as dissenters be maintained. If they ceased to rail, they must cease to live: bitterness and evil speaking, wrathful accusations and fault-finding, are the breath of their nostrils, without

which they die. The greater part of the ecclesiastical buildings-all, indeed, except cathedrals and parish churches-were desecrated or destroyed at the Reformation. The population of the country has gone on increasing; but no corresponding provision has been made to supply the people with the means of public worship. The spirit which had formerly brought forth those noble monuments of ecclesiastical architecture, the cathedrals and abbeys, had fled, and could produce nothing that was not the reverse of noble, dignified, and sublime. The poor, who were before the most constant frequenters of public worship, were ultimately excluded by the stuffed seats of the wealthy from the parish churches in opulent towns. Whitewashed walls supplanted the decorative paintings in the House of God; and the spirit of the Reformation has, in one unvarying course, been developed as a spirit of destruction, without a capacity for asserting, building, or establishing any thing. The clergy, neither at the beginning nor at any subsequent period, had any other idea than that of removing what they deemed objectionable, and they vainly concluded, that by the mere process of denuding, the Church would stand out in virgin loveliness. They were like servants, who, finding some dirt and cobwebs on a picture of Correggio, should proceed to clean it by scrubbing-brushes and sand, in expectation of re

storing it to its pristine beauty. A beautiful but dirty picture, scrubbed with sand, is an exact likeness of the Christian Church after it came out of the hands of the Reformers. There is nothing in its rites and services that is wrong; they are simply defective or wanting in things which are essential to the Church, according to the mind, intention, and purpose of God, as declared in the Scriptures from Moses to the Apocalypse, and which the Spirit of the Lord in the Churches of Greece and Rome has laboured to develope.

In the early days of Christianity there was an idea to embody, there was an outline to fill up: there was an object which the spirit in men of all ranks, clergy and laity, collectively and individually, was labouring to bring into form. Whether the idea was perfect or imperfect; whether the means adopted to develope it were overcharged or misplaced, still there was an idea. Not only architects and builders of every degree, but painters so far as they were masters of their art, musicians who conceived the solemn chaunts, and poets who wrote the sublime hymns of Veni Creator, Stabat Mater, Pange lingua, and many others, all conspired with one accord to contribute their several talents, and lay them on the altar, to render the public catholic worship of God most worthy of His name. So far, however, as the Reformed Church was a new

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