the same revolting of heart, as the deluded heathen causes his children to pass through the fire to Moloch, or himself embraces the wheels of Juggernaut.

God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. He cannot compromise with man, and accept actions in the place of affections. It is not to the statute book of duties and penalties that the fond parent turns for a motive to pursue with unwearied diligence the best interests of a beloved child, and to promote to the full extent of his ability its well-being and its happiness. He finds, unsought for, an animating motive ever present he is impelled by an unfailing and resistless principle in the instinctive impulses of his own heart. Such alone is the principle of obedience to his commands which the spiritual and jealous God acknowledges. And were the whole conversation, so far as it can be subjected to the eye of man, to furnish a living exhibition of the divine law; were it conformed with more than pharisaic scrupulousness to every tittle of the statute; but were it destitute of the quickening principle, love; were there no complacency, no moral acquiescence in the law, no conformity of the will to the statute, it would be but the forbidden, and ever rejected, offering of a dead sacrifice. Even the profounder, and more delicate sensibilities of man recoil from the heartless offering of feigned affection from his fellow, and wither at the freezing embrace of this heartless corpse: and God is a heart-seeing and a jealous God. It is therefore of the very nature and essence of Christianity that the man who, when some vain or vicious pleasure suggests to the imagination, or presents to the senses, its temptation, accedes to it in heart and spirit; yet abstains from it in action, not because his renewed nature instinctively recoils from its base ingratitude and moral contamination, but simply because it is forbidden by a dreaded being and authority without him - God; because the curse of the violated law is attached to its commission, though by his abstinence he has avoided the additional guilt of sinning with a high hand against God, and the additional evil of entangling himself in the web of perpetual sin, yet he bears upon his conscience much of the guilt, and upon his soul much of the pollution, which the action committed was in itself calculated to produce.

Various as are the dispositions and pursuits of man, the object of search to all is one, happiness. The alone avenue to happiness Christianity professes, on the authority of God himself, exclusively to teach : and commences its discipline with this startling assertion, that poverty of spirit, meekness, self-denial, mourning for sin, and hungering and thirsting after righteousness, are the only solid and durable materials from which this spiritual temple can be built. Hence it follows that humility, purity, charity, are the objects, though unknown to man, of which his heart is in search for holiness is happiness; to know God is life eternal; to love God is anticipated heaven.

This great truth, the Gospel, without any compromise or reserve, places before the eyes, and boldly sounds in the ears, of a world sunk in sensuality and sin. And spiritually to see this, that is, experimentally to know it, is to receive a new and imperishable principle of spiritual life-is present salvation, is heaven commenced in the soul. For it is impossible to see this truth and not to act upon the conviction which it produces. Man's inferior nature may indeed rebel; the free movements of the spirit may be impeded by the assaults of the CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 37.

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spiritual adversary; but the governing principle has caught a glimpse of its sovereign good, of the object of its steady and unwearied pursuit from the first moment of its existence, in every state, and even in all its aberrations. It has tasted the food for which it hungered, which alone is congenial to its nature, and without which therefore it cannot be satisfied. Aud to talk to such a soul of the obligations to pursue this great end of its creation, even against the opposing force of principalities and powers, through life and death, persecution, and famine, and the sword, were as vain and needless as to talk to the ambitious man of the obligations which lie upon him to accept dignities placed within his grasp, to the acquirement of which his life has been devoted, and to which his soul ardently aspires: were to talk to man, the instinct of whose nature, the mainspring of whose every movement, is the pursuit of happiness, of the obligations which lie upon him to accept that happiness, when proposed to him, and recognized by him, for which his heart is unceasingly panting.

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But there are some who cannot discern this great truth in its spirit, and yet appear in some degree to act upon its letter; who seek, by obedience to the Divine law, the purchase of a reversionary heaven, whose dawnings have already broke in upon the spiritually enlightened soul, and whose first-fruits it has realized in keeping the commandments. Such may be conscientiously engaged in the work of saving their souls, as they would style it and so also is he who sinks, a voluntary victim, beneath the waves of the Ganges, or the wheels of Juggernaut. But neither the self-justifying Christian nor the self-justifying heathen is engaged in this work according to the Gospel plan-that plan which God, and the very nature of salvation, expressly declare can alone be successful. Neither has entered upon the right path. Neither has even seen the true object. Self is the god of their idolatry to both. And all these various schemes of salvation are but the manifold devices of the carnal mind to effect a work to which its intrinsic native powers are wholly inadequate, and which Christianity asserts that Gospel truths and Gospel motives alone, applied to the heart by the Spirit, are competent to effect.

The characteristic difference between the religion of the spiritual and of the carnal mind, lies essentially in the motive to obedience. Of one the animating principle is fear, of the other, love. The one is forced into the path of duty by the lashes of an excited conscience, the other is gently led by the Spirit of God. The one, in a spirit of bondage, seeks, by the heartless performances of an extorted and unwilling obedience, to appease the wrath of a powerful and incensed enemy; the other, in a spirit of adoption, presents the free-will offering of a grateful heart, a voluntary tribute of affectionate attachment to a reconciled father, an amiable and beloved friend. The object of the one is to escape the horrors and torments of a material hell at which he trembles, and, did his heart speak out, would gladly compromise for an annihilation. The object of the other is the attainment of a spiritual heaven to which his soul aspires, and which he feels is secured to him in the promise of immortal life. The mind, we said, is what it contemplates and aspires after. And therefore the carnal mind, with all its stings of conscience, and all its horrors of God, the only fountain of happiness, is misery: with all its hesitating glances, its faltering and trembling steps into eternity, and all its instinctive shrinkings from immortality, is death. The spiritual mind, with all its breathings

after God, and all its longings after immortality, is life: with all its calm communion with God, its aspirations after spiritual happiness, and all its submissive resignation and complacency in the will of God, is peace.

But let us not, by these promises of" life and peace" which the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost given unto us infallibly fulfils, seduce any carnal mind to seek, in the fancied service of God, a selfish and carnal enjoyment which religion cannot and would not confer. Christ crucified is not the minister of a temporal dispensation. And though undoubtedly Christianity, in its pure and strict morality, its regular discipline, its diligent habits, and its amiable conversation, wears a favourable aspect even upon man's temporal prosperity, yet we can promise to the Christian no peculiar exemption from the ordinary troubles and trials of life. But there are deeps in the vast ocean which the waves and storms that harrow up the shallow rivulet cannot disturb. The Christian's peace lies deeper than the troubles of life can penetrate, than the eye of the carnal mind can discern. His worldly affairs may be unsuccessful, the prospect gloomy, the horizon all around overcast; but to the godly there ariseth up light in the darkness; and God can put gladness into his heart more than if corn and wine and oil increased. From a dying bed he may look around upon a weeping, unprovided, unprotected family; but his sinking heart can rally to the promise, and then rest upon the faithfulness of God. Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive, and let thy widow trust in me. He may follow to the grave the friend of his bosom: but there he has launched upon the ocean of eternity, amply provided for the voyage, all that could be the object of his imperishable affection; soon himself to follow to those mansions of rest where sorrow and parting shall be no more. More painful still, friends may live only to wound his heart by base ingratitude. But even here God can hide him privily by his own presence from the provoking of all men; and keep him secretly in His tabernacle from the strife of tongues. And even when every link which connected him with the present scene has been severed, and upon the monument of buried hopes the memory of the past and despair of the future stand as sentinels, to bar the access of all earth-born happiness-even then God knows the secret avenues to the heart, and can bring in peace, and hope, and joy.

But it is not to be concealed that Christianity adds its own intrinsic and peculiar sufferings to the ordinary troubles of life. That the path to heaven which a crucified Saviour trod should be without suffering; that the old man should be crucified with Christ, and mortified that an infant principle should struggle into life, and win its painful way through a host of difficulties and temptations, and opposed by all the power of a wily adversary; and that all this should be effected without a conformity to the sufferings of Christ, appears wholly inconceivable. And therefore all should examine well the soundness and reality of that religion which has been borne smoothly down the current of the world, and upon the full tide of a carnal nature. But shall this bold assertion prove a stumbling block in the way of religion? The Christian knows it cannot. The soul that loves Christ feels support and consolation in a conformity with Christ, even in His sufferings. The spirit truly is willing, though the flesh be weak. Nature, as is said of our Divine Leader, may

sometimes sink beneath the cross; but onward! onward! even unto Calvary is the language of the regenerated soul. In his deepest humiliations, his hottest conflicts, his bitterest sufferings, the Christian remembers that the struggle can be but short; that the battle has been already won; that the victory is certain; that he pursues a routed foe. He scales the battlements of heaven in the train of an invincible and triumphant Leader, to take possession of an inheritance purchased and prepared for him. He remembers that the great Captain of his salvation leads him on, and ever shields him; that the prize of victory is an unfading crown of glory-the stake eternity. J. M. H.

THE ANGLICAN PRIEST NOT A "SACERDOS."

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

Wakefield, 17 Oct. 1840.

THOUGH a constant reader of your Magazine, yet I am one of those who look upon the Oxford Tracts, &c. &c. as inculcating the genuine doctrines of the Church of England-indeed I cannot imagine, if there be any meaning in words, how any unprejudiced reader can peruse the Oxford Tracts for the Times, and fail to come to the same conclusion as I have done; and not myself only, but also an immense number of other clergymen who I should think are capable of deciding and understanding what the doctrines of their church really are. Indeed it is my opinion that a majority of the clergy are what is nick-named "Puseyites;" and we have also the testimony of their opponents that they are fast increasing in numbers and influence. All this I rejoice to behold; and it is my belief, that so far from there being a taint of Popery (properly so called) in the Oxford Tracts, they are if anything rather too much opposed to the Church of Rome. I for my part love the Church of Rome, and would willingly make nearer approaches to her than the writers of the Oxford Tracts appear desirous of doing; but you must not therefore suppose that I am a Papist. No, Sir: while I love the Roman Church, I cannot say that I love Romish errors-I cannot acquiesce in the Popish doctrines of Transub. stantiation, Purgatory, Saint Worship, &c. &c.; neither do the writers of the Tracts for the Times inculcate these doctrines: On these and other subjects they merely advocate the pure and genuine doctrines of the English Church as by law established. Supposing, however, what is not the case, that these Oxford Tracts, &c. were opposed to the Church of England, I should still conscientiously esteem it my duty to adhere to them, even though I should be thereby necessitated to desert and renounce the Establishment: which indeed would then be only a pretended or sham church, and consequently it would be my duty, not to "hear" but on the contrary to disregard it.

The object of this my letter, however, is to point out only one error into which you and some others have fallen. I allude to what is contained in your last Number respecting the word "Priest," which word you say ought not, according to the Church of England, to be expressed by the Latin word" Sacerdos," but only by "Presbyter." Now this I beg positively to deny. The word "Presbyter" may indeed in Latin Prayer-books be more frequently used than "Sacerdos ;" but, Sir, if you refer to the Latin version of the Thirty-nine Articles, you

will there find the word "Sacerdos" expressly sanctioned, as well as the word "Presbyter." Now I would remark that like as one clear text of Scripture is sufficient to establish any doctrine as Scriptural, so in like manner one single sentence in the Prayer-book or Articles, &c. is sufficient to prove any doctrine to be that of the Church of England; and should even the word "Sacerdos" be sanctioned in no other place except in the heading of the 32nd Article, this I contend is quite sufficient to prove the use of that word to be right, according to the views of the Anglican Church. The authorized Latin version of the 32nd Article runs as follows: "De Conjugio SACERDOTUM." -"Episcopis, presbyteris, et diaconis nullo mandato divino præceptum est, ut aut celibatum voveant, aut à matrimonio abstineant," &c. &c.

Hoping you will insert this (if possible) in the next Number of your Magazine, allow me to subscribe myself, yours truly,

SACERDOS ANGLICANUS.

We laid aside the above, as the date will shew ;-not certainly because we were afraid to exhibit it, but because we thought that our readers would lose nothing by its pretermission. We are induced however, upon re-consideration, to publish it, first as a characteristic specimen of numerous letters which we receive from divines of the Oxford Tract class; and, secondly, on account of the criticism on the word "Sacerdos."

With regard to the first point, while the discreet leaders of the Tractarian Sect are vehemently protesting that they do not wish to bring us nearer to Rome-nay, so far from it, that their system is the only adequate safe-guard against Popery; we find their disciples "carrying out their principles, and enabled, by standing on their shoulders, to look farther than their instructors. The Papists, it is notorious, are eulogizing these tracts—not indeed as perfect, but as an excellent beginning of better things, and as fatal to the whole Protestant Reformation; and are already boasting of converts who found in them a half-way house, at which, having made a pause for consideration, they saw they could not finally stop; but were obliged in truth and honesty to complete the journey to Rome. Dr. Spencer went over, very consistently, to Popery, from having imbibed the doctrines of the late Mr. Sikes and Dr. Vaughan of Leicester, which were similar to those of the Tracts. Mr. Froude was rapidly tending the same way, when his early death cut short his career. Like our Wakefield "Sacerdos" he seemed to think his discreeter Oxford Tract friends" rather too much opposed to the Church of Rome," and "would willingly have made nearer approaches to her " than they

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appear desirous of doing❞—a very modest phrase, as if indicating that the desire may be in advance of the appearance. It is an indubitable fact, that several young ladies, and some young gentlemen, have lately found their way to the mystical Babylon, vià Oxford-not that we accuse the University for the delusions of individuals and have consistently added the Breviary to the Tracts for the Times, as indeed they had been taught to do, even before their final defection. The recent case of Mr. Biden is so illustrative of the process, that we will give the substance of the narrative as published in the Times newspaper by "A Graduate of Oxford," who describes himself as holding Dr. Pusey's opinions, and wishes to shew that their leading his friend to Popery was not the fault of the principles, but of some untoward concomitants. He says:

"There has appeared in some of the newspapers an account (copied from the