one to another." (Art. xxviii.) But, in addition to this, and still more eminently important than this, it was ordained for a continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ. It was expressly intended to show forth the Lord's death till He come; and thus abundantly proves, as Mr. Scott so forcibly observes, "that the doctrine of the atonement is the most essential part of Christianity; and an habitual dependence on a crucified Saviour the grand peculiarity of the Christian character." The author "quotes without mistrust" those parts of the Gospel of St. John which seem not to interfere with his notions. He misapplies the discourse in the sixth chapter to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; as if he had never heard that not only the generality of Protestants, but the most modest Roman Catholics, deny that the Saviour is there speaking of the Sacrament at all. "What Christ meant by life," he tells us, "it is not now difficult to discover. It is that healthy condition of the mind which issues of necessity in right action. This health of the soul we know Christ regarded as consisting in a certain enthusiasm of love for human beings as such..... Men cannot learn to love each other, says Christ, but by eating His flesh and drinking His blood. The union of mankind, but a union begun and subsisting only in Christ, is what the Lord's Supper sacramentally expresses." (p. 175.) And in this manner he explains away all the meaning and all the force of the Saviour's language, and puts upon it a signification completely opposite to its evident meaning. "St. Paul in many passages declares that Christ is his life, and his very self. It is precisely this intense personal devotion, this habitual feeding on the character of Christ, so that the essential nature of the Master seems to pass into and become the essential nature of the servant, loyalty carried to the point of self-annihilation,— that is expressed by the words 'eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ."" (p. 176.) So that the appointed memorial of the Saviour's one oblation, once offered upon the cross for the sins of the whole world, has nothing whatever to do with the remission of our sins; and to feed upon Him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving, is not thankfully to plead His precious death for the life of our souls, but to "feed on the character of Christ"! "Besides," says Lord Bacon, "the causes of error common to all mankind, each individual has his own dark cavern or den, into which the light is imperfectly. admitted, and in the obscurity of which a tutelary idol lurks, at whose shrine the truth is often sacrificed." The writer is evidently involved in most deplorable darkness as to the person and office of Christ. His notions about the brotherhood of mankind, and the enthusiasm of humanity, are the idols that he has set up to be worshipped there; and before the shrine of these he does not hesitate to sacrifice all the distinctive and

vital truths of the everlasting Gospel. We admit freely "there are peculiar temptations which assail the thinker "; and we entirely agree with Butler, when he says, "There is no absurdity in supposing that the speculative difficulties in which the evidence of religion is involved may make even the principal part of some persons' trial." But to apply such language as this, or anything like this, to our Lord in the days of His flesh, we conceive to be extremely improper; while the conclusion of the chapter, if intended obliquely to intimate the divinity of His person, is so darkly hinted and irreverently expressed, that it can only give pain to the religious sensibilities of every true Christian. What can he feel but indignation and pain at such a sentence as this?" Such is the temptation of moral reformers such as Christ; and if Christ was humble, he resisted the temptation with exceptionable success." (p. 178.)

The Sixteenth Chapter is entitled "Positive Morality." Here the writer as completely fails in expounding the Law of Moses as before he had done in unfolding the Gospel of Christ. He tells us at the close what is the main scope and drift of the whole. "While the new morality incorporated into itself the old, how much ampler was its compass! A new continent in the moral globe was discovered. Positive morality took its place by the side of the negative. To the duty of not doing harm, which may be called justice, was added the duty of doing good, which may properly receive the distinctively Christian name of charity." (p. 189.) There is not the slightest ground for the distinction here drawn. Positive morality is as surely enjoined by the law of the Ten Commandments as negative prohibitions are enforced by it. The Old Testament does not proclaim one law, and the New Testament another. In both it is one and the same law; that law which is holy, just, and good; in which all the saints of old so greatly delighted; which is still written by the Spirit of the Living God in the hearts of all true believers; and the sum and substance of its requirements is unchangeably this: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself." The writer seems to confound the moral law with the ceremonial law. The former, as the transcript of the Divine perfections, cannot be abolished; the other was to answer a particular purpose, and then, when that was accomplished, to pass away. Neither does he distinguish between what was commanded and what was tolerated. He tells us, "The hard-heartedness of the primitive nation had given way under the gradual influence of law, and peace, and trade, and literature." Such things as these may polish the manners, but they do not soften the heart. Civilization is not morality. The civilized Jew of the Augustan period was not certainly, in a moral point of view, better than his remote ancestor who crossed over Jordan, and came into

the land of promise. The writer also does not consider how much of human tradition, in the days of our Lord, had been added to what was of Divine appointment. However highly what our author loves to call "the new enthusiasm of humanity had been excited in him," it was impossible for any man to require a higher standard for his practice than that which he possessed in the law of the Ten Commandments, rightly understood and properly explained. Did the writer really mean what his words declare, when he speaks in such disparaging terms as these of Moses, the man of God, who conversed with the Lord face to face, and of Isaiah, whose hallowed lips were bathed in fire? "No one who had felt, however feebly, the Christian enthusiasm, could fail to find, even in Deuteronomy and Isaiah, something narrow, antiquated, and insufficient for his needs." (p. 185.) Among those who will be condemned at the last, he tells us, "it is the unprofitable servant who has only done what it was his duty to do." Had he forgotten what the Saviour Himself declared to His disciples:-" So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do." (Luke xvii. 10.) The concluding sentence of the chapter refers to the announcement of the Saviour's birth and the multitude of the heavenly host. This is done far more in the sneering style of Gibbon, than in the reverent language of one who trembles at the Word of God.

We fear that we have almost exhausted the patience of our readers; still the book is of so mischievous a tendency, and is perverting so many, that we must beg to be heard once more in a concluding paper, which will be inserted next month.

PLYMOUTH BRETHRENISM: ITS SPIRIT, PRINCIPLES, AND
PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES.

Of all the crotchets in the world, the most mischievous are religious crotchets. When any of these get possession of the mind, it is almost impossible to dislodge them, because they take up their seat in the conscience, and to the obstinacy of nature brought into religion they add the obstinacy of prejudice. Were the persons so possessed content to keep their peculiar opinions to themselves, in obedience to the apostolic injunction, "Hast thou faith? (that is, any private persuasion of thy own), have it to thyself before God," no one would have any right to call them in question; but when a small sect, which is but of yesterday, rises up, and asserts that the whole Christian Church

has been in error from the very times of the Apostles,—that every existing system of worship is essentially wrong, and that unless Christians separate themselves from all existing bodies of brethren in Christ, they are sinning against Christ, then is there just ground for controverting their own lofty claims. This is precisely the position taken up by the "Plymouth Brethren," as they are named. It is not the Church of England only, according to them, but every professed Christian brotherhood, Dissenters as well as Churchmen, who have gone clean away from the true model of the Church, and from true apostolic worship. All are wrong, only in different degrees, and they only are right.

Such arrogant pretensions as these, to use a strong term, ought, as a matter of course, to have some very strong, and clear, and decisive evidence to go upon before they are admitted. Have they any such evidence? Is it quite clear that the spirit in which "the Brethren," as they are pleased to term themselves, act in religious matters, is the spirit so often insisted on by the Apostles? Can decisive proof be adduced that their own doctrines are so perfectly sound that they ought, without question, to be accepted? Are the practical results of their system such as Christ Himself has led us to expect in His

followers?

These are the questions we propose now to discuss; for they are becoming questions of serious moment, in consequence of the insidious activity of this new sect.

The first thing to be observed with regard to "the Brethren " is, that their spirit is essentially sectarian and schismatical. The very first act that they insist upon in their disciples is separation from all other communions. Nothing can justify this but some fundamental error in doctrine in all other churches; some error that endangers the salvation of those who receive it. But no such error, so far as we can discover, is alleged against the Church of England, nor against what are termed the orthodox denominations of Dissenters. It is admitted by "the Brethren" that there are true Christians, holding the Faith in uncorruptness, in all these; only they must "come out," (that is their favourite expression,) and join them in their "assemblies," and worship God precisely in their way, or they are dishonouring the Lord Jesus. Their plea for this is unity," and their method of accomplishing it is division!

Now, if there be any one thing more condemned than another by the Word of God in the true brethren in Christ, it is “division," or schisms and separations. These are on no account to be made, even in churches where great irregularities exist, as in the Corinthian Church. The members of that church are exhorted, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate

(2 Cor. vi. 17), but this was not from the church to which they belonged, but only from the unbelievers and idolaters around them. Where Christ is preached in the fulness and completeness of His salvation, and the fundamentals of the Faith are held, and no sinful act, such as the worship of an idol, is required, there Christians are to keep "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." A sectarian spirit, whether in the Church of England or out of it, or in any Church that holds the faith once delivered to the saints, is wrong— essentially wrong. It is the direct opposite to the Spirit of Christ, which is a uniting spirit through the plastic influence of love.

The reason why a sectarian spirit is, in all cases, to be abjured, and not indulged, is obvious enough. If every Christian is to be at liberty to separate from his brethren, on the ground of minor differences of opinion, and new societies are to be formed to gratify each man's private fancy, there can be no such thing as a Church at all; there may be sects, constituting a many-headed monster; there may be combinations or persuasions, but nothing worthy of the name of a Church. The very word Church implies something comprehensive, not exclusive. Call it "the Assembly," (the Brethren's term for it,) if you please; but an "Assembly" certainly does not mean the Pharisees alone, to the exclusion of the publicans and sinners, who may be wishing to draw nigh to the Saviour, to confess their sins, receive pardon, and wash His feet with their tears.

What above all proves that the Plymouth Brethren are essentially sectarian in their spirit, is the fact, that they have already split into three or four sects among themselves, on the ground of some slight differences of view, and are more bitter towards each other even than they are towards the Established Church. We were not long ago on a visit at Cheltenham, and in that place alone we heard that there were three divisions of the Plymouth Brethren, each at variance with the other. What an example of their boasted "unity"! The one object of them all seems to be to draw away the best Christians out of all other communions, and to affiliate them on to themselves. And when they have once drawn them away to become their disciples, they often succeed in infecting them with the same narrow proselytizing spirit as they are possessed with. It is no longer in humble good works they employ themselves, such as "visiting the widows and the fatherless in their affliction," or in seeking to bring the lost sheep to Christ, that they may be saved, but in unsettling the minds of believers upon doubtful questions, and making them dissatisfied with the religious worship to which they have been accustomed. Their zeal in making proselytes, indeed, almost rivals that of the Pharisees of old. It is not conversion, but perversion, they set their minds