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INTELLIGENCE-COLONIAL CHURCH AND SCHOOL SOCIETY. 47

shippers to take the Bible in their hands, and in its light, and with the pages of history, and even the events of the days in which we live, before them,—to study Popery, and to find in it not a religious system of Christianity, but its gross counterfeit; not a Church like those of England or of Scotland, or of the other Churches of the Reformation, but a grand political combination, ever conspiring to exalt itself, and never satisfied but with the destruction of every real living branch of the one true Church. We honour men who give themselves, like the late Wm. Wilberforce, the late Michael Thomas Sadler, the living Lord Ashley, who, with a host of other great, good, and pious men, have laboured, and are labouring, for the social and religious regeneration of their fellowmen; and we could honour men who

give themselves, in their own sphere, to work out what they honestly imagine will prove to be of real and permanent commercial good to their country, but the latter must be taught to distinguish between things that differ, and to allow, without the sneer of a heedless indiffe

rentism to all vital truth, the protest of a nearly unanimous Protestant country against any national policy that shall allow or encourage, in the slightest degree, the renewed efforts and growing assumptions of Rome.

THE LATE QUEEN DOWAGER.

It is with the deepest feeling of affectionate respect to the memory of the late Queen Dowager Adelaide, that we record the strong but truthful opinions which her late Majesty held upon the subject of Romanism. According to an account just given to the public by the Rev. Erskine Neale, in his "Earthly Resting-places of the Just ;" and for which, we presume he has no insufficient authority, the late most deservedly lamented Queen Dowager thus expressed herself:"Some five months before her death, she said to a noble lady, for whom she had great regard,—' I have watched Popery, not from a distance, but close at hand, in my native land. I understand it well,-it can never be a quiescent religion. Pray be under no error on this point. It is, with us,

a religion ostensibly dormant; honest Romanists, if you press them, will own to you they have an ulterior object. And those who, like myself, have watched their intrigues in other lands, are well aware that they will never be content till they have a Roman Catholic King, Roman Catholic Bishops, and Roman Catholic Government. Yes! Yes! Popery is an exclusive religion, it must control all. If you will read my favourite Bridges, (an author greatly valued, and often referred to, by her Majesty,) you will gather readily, from him, how Popery enslaves body and soul.'

COLONIAL CHURCH & SCHOOL SOCIETY.

We have pleasure in recording that the new year, and we may add, the first year of the second half of this missionary century, has been commenced with an event of happy omen for our Church in the Colonies, in the union, under the above designation, of two institutions, deservedly dear to the friends of evangelical truth,— the Colonial Church Society, and the Church of England School Society

for Newfoundland and the Colonies.

When we contemplate the rapid growth of our colonies, both in extent and population, the continuous and augmented tide of emigration, swelled alike by individual necessities and national exigencies; and, above all, the desolating progress of Tractarianism, Popery, and Infidelity, and other soul-destroying errors, which have affected our colonies even more in proportion than the mother country, we cannot but regard this measure as one of the most satisfactory fruits of the present Protestant movement.

We rejoice to find that the new committee give no "uncertain sound." Their first published appeal, intimates that "The operations of the society are based on the principle, that all its agents,-whether clergymen, catechists, or schoolmasters, should be persons of decided piety, intelligently acquainted with and steadfastly attached to the great doctrines of the Reformation.' As the doctrine of justification by faith is the testing article of a standing or a falling Church,

so should this principle be the grand touchstone of our missionary societies. In the present case we have the avowal of men who understand and feel what they state, and who command the confidence of all the faithful in the land.

Our space would fail to describe on this occasion the field of usefulness which lies before this society. True, its message is not primarily addressed to the 100,000,000, or more, votaries of idolatry, with whom our colonial empire teems, but it is to our own countrymen, who, though few in number, as compared with the surrounding heathen, are paramount in influence-forming the leaven, which, for good or evil, is leavening the mass- -the pervading element, which is assimilating all to itself. The colonies are, indeed, the portals of the heathen world, and it is impossible that the missionary enterprize can continue to prosper, if the ungodliness of our nominally christian countrymen is to be permitted to make preaching and example antagonistic powers. Here then is a call on the whole Church to arouse and claim the colonies for Christ.

Time lost now, is doubly lost, for the enemy and the spoiler is actively at work. While Protestants have been apathetic, Romanists have been making the British dependencies the great arena of papal aggression. Countenanced, yea, supported, by Government, Rome has parcelled our colonies into forty-six dioceses, in which a countless host of bishops, priests, monks, and nuns, are ready to " compass sea and land to make one proselyte." They form congregations and colonial governments under the priests. They introduce their followers as teachers in Government schools, and, by and by, they are found to be virtually Romish seminaries. No expense is spared to complete their missionary establishments, which are sometimes incommensurately large. To Western Australia, for instance, the population of which hardly exceeds 3,000, the Propaganda has sent a bishop, several priests, monks, sisters of charity, and other emissaries, making in all thirtyfour individuals, although it is be

lieved there was scarcely a member of the Romish Church in the whole colony, their intention and hope being to pervert the Protestants. Such is Rome's estimate of the sphere of missionary exertion presented by the British colonies.

In further illustration of this subject, we are tempted to introduce the following extract of a letter recently received from the favoured Protestant Diocese of Melbourne.

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Popish emissaries are going forth, and, I understand, more still are coming from Maynooth, and yet there are comparatively none to unfurl the banner of the Cross, and invite poor dying sinners to come to the water of life. The Romanists are straining every nerve to get the upper hand in this celony. They have obiained from the Government a

grant of land just close to our Church; laid the first stone of their Church, on and, about three weeks ago, their bishop Sunday, after performing Mass in a tent. They brought from Melbourne a band of music, which marched quite close to our church, playing lively tunes to disturb our devotions, but they did not accomplish their purpose, for I felt the presence of the Lord was with us; and we had, that day, a larger congregation than usual."

Such extracts might easily be multiplied, but for the present we pause. Having been led into this line of remark by the absorbing topic of the day, we hope we have said enough to prove that the battle of Protestantism has yet to be fought on colonial ground. It is a comfort to know that the Colonial Church and School Society will not tamper with this evil by half measures; but that it will send forth agents anointed with an unction from on High, and equipped from the armoury of the blessed Reformation. To such a society, and in such a work, we can only hope and believe that union will be strength.

To CORRESPONDENTS, &c. We hope in our next number to insert a communication from "C. A.," on the "Order of Deacons."

It would oblige us if any correspondent could give us an accurate statement relative to the present creed, orders of ministry, services, and ceremonies, at present in use among the followers of the late Rev. E. Irving.

LONDON: J. H. JACKSON, ISLINGTON GREEN.

THE CHRISTIAN GUARDIAN,

AND

CHURCHMAN'S MAGAZINE.

FEBRUARY, 1851.

THE CHURCH AND ITS MINISTRY.

We are constantly complaining of the difficulty of obtaining pious men for the work of the ministry. True, we have a goodly number; and wherever they are labouring, their efforts are telling upon the parishes in which the great Head of the Church has appointed them to work. Yet the field to be tilled is very large, and the labourers must be greatly increased before even the seed can be sown, or the golden grain can be gathered in its multitude of sheaves into the garner of the great Husbandman. We hear repeatedly that we are to "pray the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth more labourers into His harvest;" but are we ourselves doing all we can to search out and receive the fit, and the willing, and the heaven-sent labourer? We have what are sometimes called our schools of the prophets, the Universities of the land; and from these we are thankful to allow that many a prophet of God has come forth, to lift up his voice like a trumpet to warn of transgression and danger, and to point out FEBRUARY 1851.

the One Offering and the One Refuge from the wrath to come. From them, too, has come forth many a prophet's son, upon whom the mantle of the father has descended, and who has taken up the work of the ministry in the spirit, and with the power of the man of God who has been gathered, or is entering, to his rest. But the faithful watchman of England's Israel cannot be blind to the fact, or dumb in acknowledging it, that these schools of the prophets do not send forth anything like the number of fit labourers for the field of the gospel ministry that we require. A glance at some of the pages of the Clergy List will tell us this.

Men who know the truth, who love it, and whose hearts' desire is that others should know and love it too, have only to turn their eyes into the state of many of our parishes, and they will tell us a sad tale of blind and dumb shepherds, and of consequently wandering and perishing sheep. The sons of our gentry and of our clergy-men go to the schools of the prophets; they pursue the ordinary routine of

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university life and study, and come forth, in far too many instances, mere professional ministers, whose choice of such an occupation has been decided by far different motives from those which should determine the selection of the ministry of the Word. We have but too much experience to doubt the accuracy of this statement. With such men as these,-and they form too large a proportion of the recognized labourers, how can we wonder that so little, comparatively, is done for winning souls to Christ? It has happened, doubtless, that God, who ties not His blessing to any means or channel, may have arrested a sinner through the instrumentality even of an unenlightened minister. We know this to be the case, in which the same man was the unintentional, unconscious means of leading three or four to seek for, and to find the truth as it is in Jesus; but we are not to argue or to act from exceptional cases; and if we desire to do our part in accomplishing the number of the elect, and hastening Christ's kingdom, we must look well to the fitness of the men who form the important body of our church ministry.

Personal piety ought to form the grand basis on which to rest the desire and the fitness for the ministerial office. This wanting, natural endowments and the most extensive acquirements are as nothing. God may be pleased, after ordination, to give sight to the spiritually blind pastor, and to make him an efficient labourer in His service; but he that seeks to teach should first be taught himself, and be able to communicate to others of that free gift of which by grace he himself is a partaker.

While, therefore, we receive, with thankfulness to God, from Oxford and

from Cambridge, and from the other learned bodies in our land, men of God, whose hearts are filled with His love, and whose heads are stored with His knowledge, both human and divine, we mourn over the stream of unfit, and we must say ungodly men, who pass from our halls and colleges into the churches of the land, to speak and teach professionally a system of divinity which may have been put into their heads, but which has found no entrance into their hearts and lives.

As we said at the outset of our meditation, we are complaining of our scanty corps of efficient men, but are we ourselves free from blame? Do we not limit the Holy One of Israel, by attempting to select for ourselves who shall be His instruments, and by refusing, or placing barriers of human framing before, those who are qualified by God's own hand to become “able ministers of the New Testament." We know that the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, and that if He gives the inward call to minister for Him, the man who receives that call will obey it, and find some door of utterance opened, and some field of labour pointed out, wherein he may exercise a ministry which is not limited to church walls and church pulpits; but a Church which so narrows her system as virtually only to admit to her ministry, men who are taken from particular classes and trained in her own peculiar academic system, does, we think, not only deprive herself of most valuable and extensive help in the ministerial work, but also lays open her practice to the charge of limiting the Spirit in the choice of His own ministers.

We quite believe that the ministry ought to consist of men thoroughly

THE CHURCH AND ITS MINISTRY.

educated in all essential points for their peculiar work; but while we are quite certain that our university system does not afford, as it should do, the proper training for the pastoral work, so are we equally certain that we do not lay hold of the men, and educate those who are the best qualified to act upon the masses of our countrymen.

We desire seriously to view this subject with reference to the following considerations :

1. The present mode of admission into the ministry of the Church of England.

2. The order of the Diaconate, and the propriety of dividing this branch of the ministry into two classes.

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and out, and do the work of an evangelist, in season and out of season, amongst all classes of the people committed to their care.

Surely some remedy more efficient than the preparation for what is somewhat curiously called the Voluntary Theological Examination, maybe found for the wants of which we are speaking. Either the time which those who meditate the assumption of the pastoral work spend at our Universities, should be less taken up by the acquirement of human learning, and there should be a peculiar and recognized course of study for those whose calling is to be of entirely a sacred character; or the term of their residence there should be abridged, and they should afterwards enter another place, where the education and discipline should be altogether of a character to fit them for their future work.

With respect to the first consideration, we shall have the evidence of thousands of ministers themselves, as to the qualifications with which they entered upon their pastoral and parochial work, fresh from the education acquired at the University. A few months may have intervened between their degree and the solemn act of ordination, sometimes spent in assiduously preparing for their work, more often in hastily reading up the books required by the Bishop; but even in the best instances, the preparation is crude and the effect transient; and the more minister too often finds himyoung self possessed of much knowledge for time and the world, but far too ignorant of that of which he is to be a teacher of others.

Our pulpits, and the pastoral efficiency of the majority of our young, and even of our middle-aged clergy, testify to the truth of this. They begin to be learners when they assume the office of the teacher; and as to the real, spiritual exercise of pastoral visitation, how few know how to go in

It is God who makes men to be able ministers of the New Testament, but it is ours to use the means most naturally pointed out to attain the same all-important end. Our Bishops, by a singular and almost Median rule, refuse ordination after the age of thirty, or we should be tempted to suggest that a somewhat riper age than three or four and twenty would afford time for theological study, and the attainment of fitness for the pastorate, than that given under the present system.

We cannot, however, enlarge upon this point, and we therefore pass to the second consideration,—the office of the Deacon, in its duration, the class who are admitted, and the men who might be admitted into this the initi atory order of the christian ministry. It cannot, we imagine, be questioned, that in our own Church at least the

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