stream, to be of the same religion with their superiors. Thus, at Rome, in Diocletian's time, they were Pagans; in Constantine's, Christians; in Constantius's, Arians; in Julian's, Apostates; and in Jovinian's, Christians again; and all this, within less than the age of a man"!

With such facts as these before us, we feel no great confidence in the stability of our own nation in the pure Reformed Faith. It is usual to hear people say, boastingly, "The heart of the middle classes is sound; there is nothing to fear;" but, for our part, we very much fear that these classes will be stedfast only so long as it suits their convenience. What, indeed, do we not already witness? Is there no revived superstition among us as a nation?-no setting up of idol altars?—no patronizing of idolatrous priests?-no doating delight in the work of our own hands?-no childish fondness for manycoloured vestments, and the other gewgaws of a visible worship? Three years and a half of drought and famine failed to cure the Israelitish people of their infatuation in going after idols: and probably neither the cholera, nor the cattle plague, nor any other visitation of Heaven, will cure the English people of their now adopted religious indifference.

Where lies the secret of all this mischief? Ought we to be afraid to speak the truth? There is an unreality about the religion of our age. The world, always lynx-eyed in looking at religious profession, sees this, and therefore treats religion in others as a pretence; mocks at it; makes it the object of scorn and contempt in newspaper articles and reviews. We have put dogmas in the place of doctrines, and declined into a religion of externals, as if where there was the form of godliness there must be the power. Correctness of opinion has been substituted for self-denying action. Decencies and proprieties form the substance of our religious life. Thousands among us are religious only because it is respectable to be so. It is easy enough thus to follow Christ, without carrying His Cross. Others there are who, not having the life of real religion in them, and yet wishing to satisfy themselves that they are religious, adopt the forms of it, reintroduced, under the most approved ecclesiastical fashion, as prescribed, with the venerable sanction of age, by that mistress of millinery, the Church of Rome.

What a rebuke to all this it would be if Elijah could step in among us, as he stepped in of old before the startled Ahab. In him we see nothing but reality. "Elijah," we read, "prayed earnestly that it might not rain ;" and what, in his zeal to have idolatry checked, he prayed earnestly might come to pass, came to pass. With him there was no playing at religion; no solemn trifling; no childish dressing up in many-coloured vestments

to impose upon the weak and the womanish. Such things never find place when there is godly simplicity, and earnestness of purpose founded in deep principle. The spirit of religion must have departed before there can be the decking out of the dead. Elijah arose to condemn such falseness, and to assert for Truth its rightful homage. In him was stern honesty of purpose, carried out in honesty of performance. He never rested till he had brought back the Israelitish nation to their God in the spirituality of His worship. Who shall say that such a man would be out of place among ourselves in the present day?

"Elijah the Prophet" supplies a favourite subject for men to write upon. A short time since we had an epic poem, by Mr. Moon, upon this theme; and now we have "Twenty Expository Lectures" upon the prophet's history, by an unknown author. These Lectures lay claim to no originality of thought, or attractiveness of style. They are professedly written with "great plainness of language," suited to a country congregation, to whom they were originally addressed. The most that we can say of them is, that they contain a good deal of indirect information, the result, apparently, of careful research, and are filled with profitable remarks, though expressed in a loose and feeble manner. The writer's misuse now and then of "will" and "shall" too plainly betrays his country. His "unadorned observations," as he modestly terms them, fit his book for the parochial library, and for ordinary readers. He has not overlaid the prophet of the desert, as Dr. Krummacher has, with flowers that ill become the stony rugged grandeur of his Gothic figure.

Men of thought, and of refined taste, are the best judges, we suspect, of what is best suited to ordinary unthinking people. For this reason, works like the one before us, of humble pretensions, written in a simple unstudied style, are not to be severely criticised, still less condemned as useless. They will, in general, find more readers, and do more good, than more laboured and elevated productions. To be able to write what the most uneducated shall understand is no mean gift.

As a specimen of our author's style, we will here quote a passage, not only for the sake of its plain speaking, but because it speaks something which some of the clergy in our day would do well to take admonition from :

"We may here remark, that very little is known of the labours of God's faithful ministers; for they proceed quietly and steadily in their work: perhaps only too happy to pass unnoticed. Some persons give them credit for doing nothing, because they are only employed in the common, and ordinary, and noiseless duties of their vocation; or because they are not engaged in committees, or in some grand philanthropic schemes, or scientific operations, or amusing their people

Vol. 65.-No. 341.

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with musical concerts, or dancings, or muscular exercises; which would attract the observation of the public, or be thought worthy of being blazoned in newspapers. But let not God's ministers be moved by such unkind remarks and ungenerous insinuations. Let them not neglect the humble and unobtrusive duties of their sacred office, not be tempted to engage in such worldly devices or flaring projects as are foreign to the holy and spiritual nature of the ministry which they have received of the Lord Jesus, in order to catch the applauses of the men of this world, or to escape the censures of the unreasonable part of mankind; who, while they demand that ministers should discharge the duties of their own peculiar office in a first-rate style, expect them also to do a great variety of things of a secular nature. Let not young ministers be beguiled by such people; let them labour most assiduously in their proper vocation, but let them leave to others all such things as tend to secularize the mind, or in any way to divert them from the special duties of their calling. Let them not hesitate to say firmly with the apostles under similar circumstances, 'It is not reasonable that we should leave the Word of God and serve tables.' Let others do these things: 'but we will give ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.' (Acts vi. 2, 4.) We will mind our 'Orders,' which say, 'Give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.' Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to all." (1 Tim. iv. 13—15.) [pp. 314, 315.]

This is sound advice. We have often felt very much shocked to see the kind of announcements placarded on walls of the performances undertaken by ministers of religion. Only the other day, on a placard headed "Penny Readings," we saw it announced that a popular London clergyman, of known Evangelical profession, would, on a certain evening, in a public room named, read portions of Tennyson's "Enoch Arden !" If this is not degrading the sacred office, we know not what is. Without going so far as to assert that "Enoch Arden" is an immoral poem in its intention, we have no hesitation whatever in saying that it is immoral in its tendency, knowing, as we do, the very lax notions entertained of the marriage bond by the large class of persons to which "Enoch Arden" belonged, namely, the labouring poor. To their loose notions in this respect, the poem gives a sort of sanction. How wrong then must it be of any clergyman to help to give currency to such a work among the labouring classes by reading portions of it for their amusement! What is this but trying to catch the gales of vulgar popularity to fill the sails of the Church, and steering it out into the open sea of religious indifference! Certainly no evangelical savour is to be found in Tennyson's writings; his Christianity, if he has any, is "muscular," and not spiritual. Popular he may be with the worldly; but why should he be made popular with the religious, through the accorded coun

tenance of Evangelical clergymen? The singleness of aim exhibited by Elijah is the best rebuke to such men.

If such a man as Elijah the Prophet could rise up among us in the present day, what a disturbing element he would prove! Some dignitaries of the Church would, beyond doubt, be filled with consternation. No evil practice, in high or low, would go undenounced. How to silence him, since he would scorn all preferment, would be a puzzle. Nepotism, simony, the idolatry of success, the judicious moderation, so much approved, that holds the balance "halting" between opposite opinions, the homage everywhere paid to wealth and worthlessness, the sanction given to religious indifference, the corruption of moral principle that pervades almost every class of the people in bribing and being bribed, the love of worldly grandeur that sacrifices everything for dress and ostensible state, the prevailing substitution of the outward for the inward, the sensuous for the spiritual in religion, the tendency there is to abandon our national protest for Truth, and to return into friendly alliance with the apostate Church of Rome-these, and other like evils, would be smitten as with a lightning flash, and condemned as with a voice of thunder, if the dauntless and indomitable spirit and power of Elijah were in some living man to rise up in our midst. But alas ! we can entertain no such hopes! We live in an age of indecision-of religious indistinctness, when no one dares to ask his neighbour what are his principles, because each one has so little confidence in his own. Men wish to be Christians now in a general way, without avowing or holding any particular doctrines. They are ready to forgive others their confessed heresy for the sake of what they think their admirable practice. It matters not what men believe :

"For modes of faith let differing bigots fight,

His can't be wrong whose life is in the right."-(Pope.) Thus, under the cover of indifference dignified with the name of charity, and of cowardice cloaking itself over with the name of benevolence, and of faithlessness misnamed liberality of sentiment, the world, unchallenged by itself or by others, mingles with and overrules too many real Christians; reasons for them, moralizes for them, legislates for them, to the undermining and overwhelming of all high Christian principle, none daring to provoke persecution, or to face the desert in which he dwelt.

We need not inform our readers what was the lot of Elijah. It is doubtless a most painful and trying thing to be condemned to a life of strife and contention. Our own natural feelings would prompt us all to wish to escape it. But Duty is ever a stern Thing. It takes no denial, except to our own condemnation. Want of sympathy is even more overcoming,

as Elijah found it, than opposition. Nevertheless opposition must be faced, not fled from; duty must not be evaded, but dared and done, if, like Elijah, when we leave this troubled earthly state, we would leave it in a chariot of fire and with horses of fire.

PRAYER-BOOK REVISION: LORD EBURY'S AND OTHER
DEPUTATIONS TO THE ARCHBISHOP.

SEVERAL deputations have recently waited upon his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the subject of Prayer-book Revision. One of these was headed by Lord Ebury, praying for a moderate revision. The other, representing a larger body, deprecated all change; chiefly on the ground, that if the door were once opened, it might be impossible to close it again; and that it were far wiser not to agitate the question, than to raise objections which it would be difficult to set at rest. We have a sincere desire to do justice to both parties. Let us first attend to the suggestions of Lord Ebury and his friends. We will then consider the objections raised on the other side. Lord Ebury confines himself to suggestions offered at the Savoy Conference in 1641. The Parliament, we may observe, was now a loyal and dutiful body. It was elected in 1640; and, as Mr. Hyde, afterwards Lord Clarendon, tells us, had but one Presbyterian member. The rest were well affected.

"They advised that the Psalms, Sentences, Epistles, and Gospels should be printed according to the new translation; that fewer Lessons should be taken from the Apocrypha; that the words, 'With my body I thee worship,' should be made more intelligible; that the immersion of the infant at the time of baptism should not be required in cases of extremity; that some saints, whom they call legendaries, should be excluded from the calendar; that the Benedicite' should be omitted; that the words, which only workest great marvels,' should be omitted; that deadly sins,' as used in the Litany, should be altered to 'grievous sins; that the words, 'sanctify the flood Jordan,' and 'in sure and certain hope of resurrection,' in the two forms of baptism and burial, should be altered to 'sanctify the element of water,' and 'knowing assuredly that the dead shall rise again.' To these, and other changes of a like nature, they added, 'That the rubric with regard to vestments should be altered; that a rubric be added to explain that the kneeling at the Communion was solely in reference to the prayer contained in the words, 'preserve thy body and soul;' that the Cross in baptism should be explained or discontinued; that the words in the form of Confirmation declaring that infants baptized are undoubtedly saved, should be omitted; and that the form of Absolution provided for the sick should be made declaratory, instead of being authoritative."