ibility of man. She teaches the necessity of inward spiritual grace-but without undervaluing the outward visible signs Christ appointed as means for obtaining grace. She insists upon justification by faith; she also inculcates the necessity of good works. She holds in due respect the office of Presbyter, but restricts it to its proper functions and retains also the Apostolic orders of Deacon and Bishop; yet also after Apostolic rule making her Bishops equal, not as does the Church of Rome, permitting one to lord it over the others; and thus of other truths. Now these seeming paradoxes, this apparently contradictory system, is strictly Scriptural and a sure sign of Catholicity. Each man may here find just that truth which best fits his own mind or state of feeling, for different truths will appear of varying importance to different minds. The Church has room for all; she allows each one to dwell chiefly on that truth which best suits his needs-only she presents to him the correlative truth and forbids that he shall go beyond certain fair limits in setting forth his favorite doctrine, requiring also that he shall have charity for those who hold the other side of the same truth, and allow to them the liberty he claims for himself. To make our meaning clear, let us take the subject of Public Worship. The Church has one form for all, so that she may insure a sound and pure worship to her people. But the man of æsthetic tastes is permitted to adorn that worship with music, and outward gesture, and ornamental surroundings of architecture, or things of beauty, only he must pause at the point when these would show forth false doctrine, or by their undue preponderance obscure or hinder the true spiritual worship which gives them their value. On the other hand the man who cares chiefly for emotional religion may make his worship as plain and bald as possible, only he must retain so much of external form as to comply with our Lord's commands regarding the visible signs, and in some degree worship with body as well as spirit. An understanding of this principle would greatly tend to harmonize the Church. Thus we see that every one who holds at all to "the faith once delivered unto the saints" can find a place in the Church, and sufficient freedom therein to set forth his own peculiar views, only with charity for others.

Again, under the influence of this Catholic principle the Church lays down no narrow rules for admission within her fold, puts the candidate through no inquisitorial course of investigation as to his private feelings or beliefs. Her terms are Scriptural-Repentance, Faith, and Charity, that is all demanded; nor even in regard to these are definitions of man's devising laid down. The faith required is simply a belief in all the articles of the Apostles' Creed, and in God's promises; the repentance, a declaration of renunciation of sin, and sincere intention to lead a new life. She requires of her Laity no belief in abstruse doctrines, or fine drawn definitions of mysteries. Of her Clergy, indeed, as a necessary safeguard of the faith committed to her, she requires. a more definite confession, but even for them she allows a very wide liberty of interpretation, and while as a matter of discipline she demands conformity to her forms and rubrics, yet she lays down no strict definition of the meaning of the words that are to be used, those words being for the most part Scriptural; and consequently the same forms have been used with good conscience. by men differing very widely in the interpretation they put upon them. To some of narrow minds, who would have every one else think as they do, this may seem a defect in her. To us it is a proof of true Catholicity, and a matter for deep thankfulness, that the Church does thus make herself the mother of us all. As Bishop Cummins said in 1867:

Are not these facts evidence that the system of the Prayer Book is the system of the Bible? This is the boast, this is the honor of our Church. Let her willingly submit to the ignorant reproach that men of every creed can find in her something to favor their views, whilst she shares this reproach with the word of God. It is this fact which fits her for universality; in this fact is found her chief power.

And now in conclusion we ask in all kindness, was there ever a more unmeaning and unnecessary Schism than this of 1873? We have said nothing of the motives of those who commenced it. We have avoided carefully any mere personal allusions, save such as are drawn from printed documents; We have refrained from using facts which have been put into our hands, for We have no wish to excite, but rather to allay, all angry feeling. We have examined this movement solely by its own published testimony; and are forced to the conviction that never in the history of

the Church has there been a Schism with less excuse than this. They have left a Church which in all respects is the same now that it was when they voluntarily sought its ministry; a Church clearly, on the testimony of their leader, Scriptural and Apostolic in Authority and Discipline, in Doctrine and Fellowship; a Church so Catholic that it has tolerated every shade of orthodox opinion, in which they had fullest liberty to teach their own views of the faith. They have cut themselves off from all this, and for what? To establish a new sect, for it is nothing else, which disavows any Apostolic authority for its ministry, which leaves out important Apostolic teachings, which narrows the Apostolic faith by putting upon it private interpretations, which in fact is based upon the sect principle, that in it all members must think alike. For such poor results as these they have risked committing the sin, strongly denounced by St. Paul, of Schism. And the name of their leader, the first Bishop who has thus brought Schism into our Communion, will be ever remembered in the American Church, "but so remembered that every good man would prefer to such a memory, the kindness of the world's complete forgetful

ness.

99 1

EDWARD B. BOGGS.

'Dr. Hawks.

THE POPE AND THE BIBLE.

Lessing in a famous picture has represented John Huss, attired in a plain gown, with one hand on his breast and the other pointing to an open Bible, standing in the simple majesty of truth, to make his bold protest before the proud ecclesiastics of the traditional Roman Hierarchy. The artist here has caught and fixed the very genius of his times. Nay! his picture seems a painted prophecy of the mighty battle this moment raging between the Bible and the Pope about a question even more stupendous than that so ably and so eloquently argued by Mr. Gladstone. That distinguished statesman has indeed demonstrated in an argument which stirs all Christendom, that the claim to Papal infallibillity as set forth by the Vatican Council, is inconsistent with civil allegiance, and even subversive of civil government. Rome has given her reply to his masterly reasoning. She asserts that in the case of the Protestant, as well as of the Catholic, conscience prescribes a limitation to the obedience of the subject. The State may enjoin laws to which both may refuse conformity. But in the answer of Rome lurks a subtle sophism. There is a wide difference between the Romanist conscience and the Protestant conscience. They are educated by different methods and subjected to a different control. The Protestant conscience takes the Bible for its guide, while the Romanist conscience, since the Vatican Decree, must henceforth, on pain of excommunication, be submitted wholly to the Pope as God's sole oracle, and infallible interpreter of Divine Truth.

The question of civil allegiance is one which we may safely leave with the statesmen of our times. That which more nearly concerns the Christian is vastly wider in its scope and influence. It becomes just now interesting for him to inquire what the Scripture itself decides in a controversy which reaches down to the very roots of the greatest political and religious struggle of our age.

Is the Bible the Book of the people? May each man possess a copy of it? Can he be his own interpreter with the best lights in his power? In seeking his salvation in the Divine Word shall any ecclesiastical authority come absolutely between him and his God? More particularly, shall the Pope, as the head of the Church, fix for him, infallibly, and without appeal, whatever pertains to faith and morals, embracing thus the whole circle of individual, and social, and political life? Around such inquiries gathers all that is sacred in duty, valuable in existence, or solemn in eternity.

The Old Testament Scriptures were unquestionably made familiar to the Jews by every method practicable in their times. Moses enjoined them to teach his commands to their children, talking of them in the house and by the way, to bind them as signs on the hand, to make them as frontlets between the eyes, to write then on the posts of the house and on the gate. When the Israelites crossed Jordan they were to inscribe their law on a stone as a public testimony. The Priest was a teacher of the people, and to his functions, after the time of Samuel, were added the authorized instructions of Prophets educated usually in the school of their order. Josiah and Ezra each restored the observance of the law and read it to the congregation. Then, after the captivity, in addition to the stately and gorgeous symbolic service of sacrifice in the temple, arose through all the villages and towns and cities of Judea, the simpler rites of the Synagogue, characteristically a teaching institution, and which by promoting among the people a familiarity with divine truth, forever after prevented a return to their old idolatries. Thus narrow as was the spirit, and local as was the mission of the sacred nation, and rigid, and severe, and uncatholic as was its language, it was yet by every provided method instructed in the writings of the old Testament.

But the Christian Church had a wider aim. Its field was the world. All nations with their diversified tongues and customs and governments were to be brought under its sway. Our Saviour came from the people. The Apostles sprang from the people. The parables, the narrations, the discourses, the epistles of the New Testament are plainly addressed to the people. It is emphatically a popular book. Its very language, the pliant Greek, so different