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His Church to absolve all those who truly repent, and has bidden us to confess our sins to our fellow men, the elders of the Church, acting in His Name, that we may be healed.

This leads to one consideration of great importance. If Confession is thus essential to most persons for the recovery of spiritual life, how very necessary must it be for most-may we not say, for all?-who enter upon the work of the ministry, and are themselves to be the channels of spiritual life and health to others! There are some persons who look upon Confession as desirable in exceptional cases where some crime has been committed of more than usual enormity. We would rather say, Confession is the natural means of approaching GOD, if persons would lead lives of more than usual strictness. Confession, unless originating in the motion of the HOLY GHOST, Would be void of contrition, and therefore an enforced practice of Confession probably involves any Christian population in a fearful amount of sacrilege. Those, however, who really feel the call of the HOLY GHOST inviting them to stricter lives, those above all, who feel His Voice calling them to the work of the ministry-must surely feel the necessity of doing so with the utmost possible purity, and if GOD has provided in His Church a means whereby we may be cleansed, it is in the use of that means that we must seek cleansing. If the gift of Absolution is not a sham for the deception of diseased imaginations, it is a reality for the cure of diseased consciences. If it is the one, let it be cast away altogether. If it is the other, must it not naturally be used with thankfulness by all who are conscious that the burden of their sins is intolerable. Why should we go on sinking under an intolerable burden, when God has sent spiritual officers to restore us, and help us bear the burden in fulfilment of the law of CHRIST? Mere Confession to a fellow-man for the sake of human sympathy in sorrow, is apt to ensnare many in self-importance, and even self-righteousness. Confession to a fellow-man as bearing the authority and commission of CHRIST, able to absolve the truly penitent sinner by the power of the HOLY GHOST, takes us out of the weakness of human counsels to the throne of God. It makes us realize our nothingness, for how can Confession merit pardon? It makes us realize GOD's omnipotence, for by His Word we are healed. Nothing therefore, is so calculated to strengthen the life of faith, to elevate the soul to CHRIST, to maintain a continual remembrance of God's Presence, to invigorate resolutions for the future by a healthy knowledge of the past,-nothing, we may be sure will so effectually promote the spiritual health of most menas the careful and habitual practice of Confession, with faith in the absolving power of GOD.

CHARGE OF THE BISHOP OF CARLISLE.

1. A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Carlisle at the first Visitation of the Hon. H. Montagu Villiers, D.D., Lord Bishop of Carlisle. 1858. London: Nisbet.

2. A Charge to the Clergy and Churchwardens of the Diocese of Salisbury, at his Triennial Visitation, in August, 1858. By WALTER KERR, Bishop of Salisbury.

THE popular mind, which is amused from time to time with gigantic cables, dental electricity, the removal of the public schools, and such like minor topics, seems steadily fixed on subjecting the candidates for office to competitive examination. The abuse of both military and civil patronage has been limited by this new demand. The Lord John this, and the Honourable Albert that, will for the future have at least to submit to an examination before they can cut a pen in the Board of Works, or assume the scarlet in a line regiment. Surely in time the furor will extend to the hierarchy, and we shall have, if not a board of examiners to guarantee the fitness of a presbyter for a vacant bishopric, the public opinion of the Church pronounced in some way on the eligibility of the aspirant for the episcopate. We are tiring, and we trust that practical men are every where tiring, of the indecent monopoly of offices of the highest trust by men of less than the average amount of learning, decency, and administrative ability. It is bad enough to see the pulpit occupied by one whose very physical defects hinder him from intelligible utterance. It is worse to see a Bishop's or a Dean's son, with hardly sufficient sense of decorum to keep him from being a perpetual scandal, posted from benefice to benefice, intrusted with the care of souls before he has hardly realized the truth that he himself has a soul for which he must one day give account. It is far from edifying to witness the sordid calculations made by the members of a Chapter on the avoidance of a living in their patronage: to listen to schemes how Mr. Canon D. may best secure ten pounds a year more to his second son, and still have a prospect of speedily jobbing a larger living in favour of his elder boy. It is a public scandal to hear in quiet country market towns and in village cattle fairs how the son of the Archbishop has refused the living of B., and how his son-in-law is now staying at the country inn engaged in calculating incomings and outgoings, rent-charge and curate's stipend, and making up his mind whether it is worth his while to leave A. for B. It tends to no public benefit, however fruitful it may be of private advantage, to know that the densely-peopled and wealthy benefice of with its large responsibilities and its thousands of souls, cannot be

blessed by one of power and capacity for such a charge because the Bishop's first cousin is still unprovided for. Such is the way in which trust property is misapplied by ecclesiastical trustees. The world may be callous to the wrong, or smile at the ingenuity of those who filch the goods of the Church for the benefit of their families, but however past traditions may have bleared the eye to the sin, yet such an abuse of patronage held as a trust and not as a possession, is a crime even according to human laws, of the same kind and not less in degree than that for which London bankers are now labouring amongst London felons.

The abuse of Church patronage, which we trace in Crown appointments, is one of the indirect results of the Reform Bill. The influence lost to the Crown and aristocracy by the disfranchisement of all save a few Whig boroughs, is now attempted to be maintained through presentations to benefices and the higher offices of the Church. The Church has witnessed like abuse, and suffered from the same spirit before. When the authority of the Crown and feudal aristocracy was diminishing by the breaking up of the feudal system, successive sovereigns clung with tenacity to power, and were able to maintain their hold by means of the ecclesiastical fiefs. The result however was not so much really to strengthen the throne as to endanger the Church. Plantagenet and Bouchier, Neville and Pole, were numbered amongst the prelates of the Church; but in the end an indignant nation rose, and but for Divine Providence, would have swept away that which had been made the mere engine of state oppression. We have abundant proof that the same spirit is at work in our own days. When a recent statesman enabled the Church to use the moneys of the Church for the creation of new parishes, he stipulated that the churches thus erected and endowed solely from the moneys of the Church, should yet increase the patronage of the Crown. Sir Robert Peel's Act was obviously intended not so much to enlarge the heritage of the Church as to strengthen the position of the Monarch. This policy, fatal as we believe it to be to the Crown itself, was narrowed by the late ministry into an attempt to secure Whig domination. The houses of Clarendon, Ashburton, Langdale, and Chichester, each endowed a cadet out of the revenues of the Church, but it is surely beyond the credulity of the most inveterate partizan to think that the mitres of Carlisle, Gloucester, Ripon, and Norwich, were bestowed with any regard to the piety, learning, zeal, or discretion of the fortunate but needy scions of the peerage. It was not even the aristocracy offering her sons to the Church and to the service of GOD; it was the Church made to buttress the diminished strength of the aristocracy. In the end, this and kindred abuses of patronage are supposed to have hastened the fall of the late Ministry. The fruits however of the abuse remain. It has given us prelates singularly unfitted for the

responsibilities they have assumed, and too ignorant to be conscious of their lack of knowledge and discretion. We do not speak, we do not complain of men of strong and decided views having been appointed, we allude not to the theological leaning of individuals. The Church has always been subject to the action of conflicting minds. In no part of the Catholic Church is there the possibility of freedom from this. Providentially even master minds have rarely impressed the mark of their influence upon the action of the Church. Yet surely it is possible for men of a strong bias to a particular theological creed to treat with forbearance and courtesy those who diverge somewhat from the traditions of the present dominant school. Neither individuals nor the Church for instance can be advantaged by a diocese being reduced to the state of the present diocese of Carlisle, where Bishop and Dean seem disposed to rival each other in the oddity of their performances and the ungentlemanly, unchristian tone of all their public acts. The legal question connected with Mr. Close's proceedings is at present sub judice, and we forbear to touch upon it; the rude, overbearing tyranny is not disputed, and concerning that there appears to be no contrariety of opinion. Happily, though in theory the Dean is the Archdeacon of the cathedral city, he is not accustomed to deliver Charges, otherwise we should doubtless have been favoured with ex cathedrá dicta on Church anthems, Gothic architecture, Tractarian heresies, much concerning the deference due to Deans, and but little of the amenities due from the head to the members of the cathedral Chapter. Custom, however, which hinders a Dean from indulging his bitterness of spirit in an official Charge, imposes upon the Bishop once in three years the duty, and temperament and ignorance too often combine to dictate the topics and to give a tone to his episcopal Charge. We cannot conscientiously assert that we are surprised at the Charge which the Honourable Montagu, Lord Bishop of Carlisle, has just delivered to his clergy. Those who have watched the career of Dr. Villiers, the loose, swaggering, unedifying life at Oxford, and the boisterous vulgarity of his London incumbency, will feel that this manner of life was not the best preparation for that gentleness, and charity, and knowledge which beseemeth a Bishop of the Church of CHRIST. In part, from the poverty of the benefices in the diocese of Carlisle, but we fear we must add in part from the past neglect of its Bishop, this diocese, including the counties of Westmoreland and Cumberland, together with a portion of Lancashire, has sunk into a state of clerical and lay apathy and immorality below that of any other part of England. We are most of us familiar with the sketch given of its condition by the late Mr. Conybeare in his paper on "the Mountain Clergy" in the Edinburgh Review. Here is a diocese especially requiring much apostolic zeal, much self-denial, much Christian charity, and much of that gentleness which S. Paul points

out as needed in a Bishop of God's Church. How far any one of these qualifications is to be met with in the present Bishop of Carlisle we are unable to say. It is whispered indeed within the diocese, that far more is spent upon the stables at Rose Castle than upon assisting the impoverished clergy; and the present Charge certainly betrays a grievous lack of those qualities which are supposed to mark the Christian gentleman and the large-hearted pastor. In part perhaps this may be attributed to the same haste, which has prevented the correction of those grammatical blunders which are tolerable in vivá voce addresses, but which are usually avoided in printed Charges.

The Charge, after touching upon quasi-secular matters, such as the proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Commission, and the vexed question of Church rates, goes on "to matters of a more purely religious character." There was one such matter which required, at the present moment, a discreet and judicious treatment. By the aid of newspapers at this dull time of the year, the public has been lashed into a small amount of frenzy by the use of the name of "Confession." We say name rather than thing; since it is evident, from the nature of the charges against some, and the haste with which "Country Vicars" and "London Incumbents" have made the outcry the fitting moment for confessing that they never visit their people, that every act in the nature of pastoral visitation and supervision, every acknowledgment of fault made by a school child, every utterance of heartfelt contrition for sin, is included by newspaper "Anxious inquirers" under this word "confession." Here, at any rate, was the opportunity for wisdom and honesty, -for charitable forbearance as to the actions of others, and advice as to the fulfilment of this, the most delicate, the most necessary, and the most burdensome part of ministerial work. We are sorry to say that, disregarding all this,-that, putting out of sight the fact that the alleged questioning is denied by men whom even their persecutors acknowledge to be of blameless life and of unspotted integrity,-forgetting that the whole matter is now before the legal tribunals of the country, and that Mr. Poole is only awaiting the termination of the long vacation to clear his character from the "aspersions" of Messrs. Westerton and Baring,-throwing all these considerations to the winds, with a lamentable want of English honesty and gentlemanly dealing, Bishop Villiers rushes precipitately to endorse the filth imagined by Mr. Baring, and adds the weight of his office-we say not character-to the foul charge; and is "thankful that we appear to be clear of the filthiness1 of the confessional."

And now the importance of the charge may be understood.

1 We wonder if the Bishop is in the habit of speaking in the same terms of the art of the Surgeon and Physician. We should have thought that it was the disease that was "filthy," and not the cure of it.

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