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REVIEW;

OING! The late esteemed C. Vince said, on one occasion in our hearing, "The Baptists are going to the Independents, the Independents are going to the State Church, the State Church is going to the Roman Catholics, and the Catholics are going to He did not finish the sentence, perhaps, not being certain as to the destination of the last-named.

Baptists, however, of late seem to be taking a shorter cut. Recently three ministers of that denomination have gone over to the Established Church.

Whether to rest there or journey farther cannot be told. Certainly there is no telling where such gentlemen may settle, if only the way be open, the flock large, and the fleece heavy.

The

On these perverts the "Baptist" says:— In our last number we briefly reported the secession from the denomination of the Rev. T. Greenall Swindill, pastor of the Sansome-walk Church, Worcester. time seems but short since we announced the retirement of his predecessor, Mr. Sturmer, and his entrance into the Established Church. The neighbourhood appears favourable to such changes. Mr. Nightingale, whose selection as the pastor of the church at King Street, Bristol, was so recent, is already transmuted into the senior curate at Tewkesbury, and Mr. Sturmer, we have no doubt, is justifying his new affection by the usual indifference to the old one. Mr. Swindill, we believe, gave no special evidence when at the Bristol College of

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either ability or disposition to defend our principles, but his accession to the Episcopalian Church will probably be regarded as another evidence of her stability and worth. We have no disposition to undervalue these conversions. They imply more than they express, and with the strain on our resources to create and sustain an efficient ministry these secessions should awaken serious reflection. The preceding paragraph of our last week's issue told of the death of Mr. John Ash Baynes, who, although faithful to Nonconformity to the last, spent his fine and well-trained powers away from our own denomination. His brother now edits the new edition of the " Encyclopædia Britannica," and we trust holds his father's principles, and adheres to his father's denomination. But one accomplished son gives more than fidelity to the State Church. He has become its devotee, and his hymns and character prove how very far he has departed from the simple faith of that denomination from which he in fact sprang. The same issue of the BAPTIST refers to the doings of the Pulsfords, now of the north. John and William are the children of our venerable revivalist, Mr. Pulsford, and both were educated at Stepney, under Dr. Murch. These are not alone-Gamble, of Clapton; Statham, of Hull; Rose, of Clifton, were trained at our schools of the prophets, and while we accord to each and all perfect liberty of action, we are compelled to call attention to these facts, as demanding more serious attention. A spurious Catholicity of spirit may tempt to silence, but honest and searching enquiry must make its voice heard, and those whose special duty it is to confirm the faith of our students, will, we hope, attentively regard these departments.

Yes, our Baptist friends may very well look to their pastor-making establishments. We appre

hend that in the days gone by, when Baptist pastors were made in the churches, and colleges for that purpose were not possessed, there was no trouble on account of their running to the Parliamentary Church. If not so polished and capable of competing in the lecture hall, they were true and firm, knew why they held to immersion and repudiated baby sprinkling. They were willing to stand with the few where the many were not right, and to suffer if need be in defence of principles. But the college system destroys all that; eats it out, root and branch. According to the foregoing extract, one of these gentlemen, while a student at Bristol college, gave no special evidence of ability or disposition to defend Baptist principles. Then, why was he sent out (lacking that disposition and deficient in experience) to be the pastor of a church? Can any countenance be found in the New Testament for fledglings of this sort, with or without special ability and disposition, taking oversight of churches?

The Baptist further says:

If not obtrusive, we would convey to the Baptist Church at Worcester our sincere sympathy, and express the hope that the sheep will not follow the shepherds into those folds which in former times they have been taught by them to avoid. Their beautiful chapel and still more beautiful neighbourhood should satisfy the aesthetic tastes of the most cultured minister, and the church and city should be a supreme attraction to a warm-hearted, indomitable servant of the Cross. We hope the diluted baptismal views of former instructors will make the members almost impatient for the stronger views of the BAPTIST.

And so it seems to run-beautiful chapels, æsthetic tastes, cultured minister, diluted baptismal views, ending in apostacy. And so it will be in the race upon which Baptists have largely entered for popularity rather that abide by the old ways and leave the results with God.

PURITY OF HEART.-It is not so very difficult to present to the world an excellent life, or at least one which will escape its bitter criticism. The most searching human eye sees, at most, but a little way into even the most transparent life, so much of it unavoidably takes place out of sight. But after all, what does the good opinion of the world amount to? It may be a pleasant thing to enjoy; but we can well afford to reckon it inferior to some other things, of which the world takes no very large account. Who, for instance, in making up his estimate of a man, ever thinks of including a pure heart. It is seldom even thought of, much less named. In the list of items which compose the sum of a reputable life, as usually made out by men, it would certainly be placed low down towards the end. Yet with God it would perhaps be placed first in the list which determines our standing with Him. Purity of heart is the royal letter which commends to the great Shepherd. He counts it of the first importance; with men it is

otherwise. We look mostly at the casket; God looks at the gem within. The dogs may lick the sores of poor Lazarus as he lies at the gate; but the heart, pure though it beats feebly within, attracts the angels. The world cannot judge the heart. The cause is too sublimated and delicate. Of the height and weight of the body the world can take notice; but God has denied to it an eye to penetrate to the heart. The sanctuary of the soul is His mystic fane, which no created foot may enter. He goes back to the primal motions of life, to the very fountainhead which sends out the stream. We sit upon the bank and amuse ourselves with the beauty of the passing current. Let us not be deceived. Let us judge wisely here. It is the toilet of the inner man which demands our chief care. The decorations of the outer need not trouble us much. If our heart be pure, God will stand to vindicate us in the last day. This will be enough. Whether the world flatter or censure now, should cause us no grief. With a pure heart, we have nothing to fear; without it, we have nothing to gain.

DR. DOLLINGER has been criticising Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet on Vaticanism, and says:-"The whole Church consists now of a Sovereign and 180 million servants, whose first business is blind obedience, and whom one single act of persistent disobedience of one Papal command, or the rejection of one Papal doctrine, consigns to eternal damnation. And so that 'universal episcopate,' which the greatest of the Popes, twelve centuries ago, rejected with abhorrence as a Satanic presumption, has been, in plain words and without any attempt at concealment, made the foundation of the Church constitution, and so overthrows the ancient building. which Gregory the Great characterised and disclaimed as an attribute of Antichrist is now taught in the Catechism to children as the chief article of their religion; and the bishops, who voted for this in Rome, and so cast away their old ecclesiastical dignity as a worn-out garment, have returned home as Papal prefects."

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Observer, April 1, '76.

A CHURCH OF THE RIGHT KIND.

SOME

OME one—we know not who, and it matters not-has directed the types thus to admonish us concerning the church. In order to meet the necessities of the age, a church must be thoroughly evangelical. Its mission is not to make men philosophers, although it teaches the best philosophy; nor to make scientific explorations, although it is the best friend to science; nor to organize governments and write constitutions, although its inculcations lead to the wisest political economy. But to baulk profligacy, to dethrone superstition, to emancipate spiritual bondage, to break in twain the prison bolts, to soothe human pain, to turn the human race on to the high pathway to heaven-this is the church's mission, and failing in this, it fails in all. It may be a brazen candlestick, or a bronze candlestick, but not a golden candlestick. But mere outward proprieties will not make a useful church. There are scores of churches where there is no discord in the music, and no breach of taste in the preaching, and where the congregation, like the Amalekites that Gideon saw, sleep in the valley like grasshoppers for multitude. Splendidly executed anthem and solo roll over the cultured tastes of gaily-apparelled auditory, and the preaching may be like the pathos of Summerfield, or the thunder-clap of & George Whitfield. Upholstery may bedeck to utter gorgeousness, and chandeliers flash upon a fashionable congregation in which you see not one poor man's threadbare coat, and yet that church may be a ghastly sepulchre, full of dead men's bones, an ecclesiastical ice-house. I arraign and implead formalism, and coldness, and death, as the worst of all heterodoxy.

Again, religious enterprise must be a characteristic of every church that would do its duty in our day. Invention and discovery have quickened the world's pace. The age, no more afoot, is on wheels and wings. Quiet villages have been roused up by the hum of machinery, the clang of foundries, and the shriek of steam whistles. We rise, after a short night's sleep, and find that the world has advanced mighty leagues. The pulse of the world beats stronger, the arm of industrious achievement strikes harder, the eye of human ingenuity sees further, the heart of Christian philanthropy throbs warmer. The earth shakes under the quick tread of scientific, moral, and religious enterprises. In such a time, a torpid, lethargic, timid church is both a farce and a folly. If it march not when God commands it to march; if it strike not when God commands it to strike, if, when the mountains round about are full of horses and chariots of fire, it shrinks back from

the conflict, God will mark it for ruin. One enterprising church! How many tracts it might scatter! How many hungry mouths it might feed! How many poor churches it might help! How many lights it might kindle! How many songs it might inspire! How many criminals it might reclaim! How many souls it might save!

Oh, my brethren, the field is white to the harvest? Men with the sickles come on and lay to the work! In this age of the world, with so many advantages, and so many incentives to work, a dead church ought to be indicted as a nuisance. There is a great work to do. In God's name do it. "Why stand ye here all the day idle?"

THE CHURCH-PLANTING AND
DEVELOPMENT.-No. V.

THOUGH each of the articles under this heading commenced at a different startingpoint to those of the others, they have all terminated on the Day of Pentecost. In the present instance there is still another departure, but the terminus will be the same.

CITIZENSHIP.

The risen Saviour, before leaving His Apostles, commissioned them, after an interval, to preach the Gospel to every creature, with a view to enlistment, under His banner, for blessing and service in His Church, then shortly to be organized.

No one of the four Gospels gives the full wording of that great commission, and the whole must be studied in order to its complete comprehension.

"Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures; and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning in Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things. And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." (Luke xxiv.)

These words were addressed to the Apostles immediately before the Ascension. They were to tarry in Jerusalem for the promised baptism in the Holy Spirit, and then and there they were first to preach repentance and remission of sins. They were to begin there and then; and the events of that day are afterwards spoken of as "the beginning."

How strange that some people so miss the way as to insist that the Apostles merely continued to preach as the Saviour and themselves had done during His ministry on earth! With them that Pentecost was no beginning, but merely a continuation. Why, everything had

about it an element of newness. There was a newness in repentance--the change of mind was more comprehensive, and the apprehension of Christ widely different to what it was during His life; the preaching was not only, as before, Jesus the Son and Christ of God, but Jesus slain for our sins and raised again for our justification. The Baptism associated with that repentance was new, and never before administered; and the Remission was new, for it was complete, calling for no yearly remembrance. Sins were not merely put aside, or pretermitted, but remitted, set loose, discharged, never to be seen again. That repentance might be thus available, it behoved Him to suffer and to rise from the dead. Glory be to God in the highest!

"Then Jesus said unto them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." John xx.

These words were addressed to the Apostles a few days before those already noticed. What plenitude of authority! "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you." They were indeed and alone (excepting Paul, afterwards added) His Ambassadors. They alone were thus commissioned and sent. "Receive ye the Holy Spirit," not as intimating immediate reception, but pointing to the outpouring and baptism of Pentecost. "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted." Wonderful announcement! But only to the Apostles. All the tribes of so-called Christian Priests, with their absolutions, are but usurpers and shams. Their pretended remissions are like their priesthood-a delusion and a snare. We repeat, this duty belonged only to the Apostles, the men who were to sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, who were not to have, never had, and could not have successors.

On

But how have they power to remit sins? Actually, as did the Saviour? No! None can forgive sins but God. Declaratively, as that term is used by so-called Low Churchmen? No! How then? Legislatively. It was theirs to announce the law of pardon, and what they "bound on earth was bound in heaven." Pentecost the Christ had been rejected and slain. No one knew whether there was remission for the guilty race; nor, if so, upon what conditions. The Apostles gave the new law, proclaimed remission for those who would receive the Christ and be constituted His citizens; and they retained their sins upon all who refused to trust in Him. To their teaching, then, on Pentecost, and subsequently, we must go for full presentation and illustration of the law of pardon,

Observer, April 1, '76.

"And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." (Mark xvi.)

These are part of the words spoken almost immediately before He was received up into heaven. The Apostles only were present, and to them alone do they apply. The salvation promised on the conditions named is not the final salvation, or entrance into the future and everlasting kingdom, but salvation from the condemnation resting upon them consequent upon the sins of the past life-in other words, remission of sins, justification, adoption, translation into the kingdom of God's dear Son. The three leading terms stand in order

We neither presume to change that order nor admit the right of others to do so.

The "damnation" (better condemnation) is not predicated of all who do not believe, but of those only who have the means of believing. The condemned spoken of are those only who have the Gospel, and access to evidence of its truthfulness, and who reject it. Infants are not included as subjects for the preaching and baptizing; and had they been thus embraced, the damnation of all dying in infancy would have been certain, as they cannot believe. Baptism without trust is nothing worth.

"All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, unto the end of the world." (Matt. xxviii.)

Certain changes are needful in the translation of this passage, but only such as are universally admitted. All power is given unto me" should read "All authority." "Go teach all nations" requires "Go disciple all nations"—that is, make disciples out of all nations. "Baptizing" should be "immersing." This point, however, is only named in passing, as we do not now inquire as to the action of baptism. "In the name of the Father" should read "into the name;" and "To the end of the world" to the "end of the age." Read the foregoing commission with these changes in translation, and you have the exact meaning of the Saviour's words.

They were to make disciples out of all nations; that is, by preaching and teaching those facts and truths the belief of which is essential to translation into Him and to membership in His Church. They were to baptize, not the nations, for no nation has ever been baptized; nor yet all of the nations they could lay hands on The pronoun them does not agree with the noun nations, the one being neuter and the other