and this realm it is necessarily united with the State by its hierarchy being appointed by the Sovereign, who is its temporal head; its sacred fabrics are upheld by a legal impost, which constitutes it the church of the people; but I learn for the first time that a high churchman considers it the duty of the State to provide that dissent be perpetuated among our children' according to the traditions received from their parents.'"'-(p. 16.)

The main objection, however, which is felt to Dr. Hook's plan, is, that it is substantially the same with that propounded in 1837 and 1839, and so generally opposed, in those years, by Churchmen of all classes, and even by many Wesleyans and Dissenters. It proposes to leave Christianity altogether out of the State education; permitting, however, the ministers of religion of all classes, to come in for one evening in the week, besides Sunday, for the purpose of giving "religious instruction." Mr. Burgess thus exposes the fallacy of this scheme.

"The plan you have given to the world is precisely that which was proposed by the gentlemen of the Central Society of Education in 1837; the exponent of that plan was Mr. Simpson of Edinburgh, a very excellent person and an able writer. The arrangements, as I stated,' he says, before the committee of Parliament, must be this-the secular education and the religious shall be placed in different hands, the secular teachers, as well infant as advanced, shall confine themselves to natural knowledge and its inseparable concomitant, natural theology, and shall not be permitted to meddle with revealed religion either perceptive or doctrinal, which shall be taught, and its relation to natural knowledge demonstrated, by the proper religious teacher-the pastor,-the children of each sect having the benefit of the instruction of the pastor of that sect; for this instruction, Mr. Simpson says, a part of one day in the week besides Sunday would suffice-you added a part of a second day in the week. This gentleman, observe, did not propose religious instruction to be withheld, but regularly given, only not in the secular school. A storm burst upon the Church and country at this proposed scheme of national education; the alarm was sounded in every parish, and throughout the land; both among churchmen and dissenters the cry was heard, To your tents, O Israel.' It was said that the secular instruction would receive all the attention, and that religion would be thrust into a corner; pictures were drawn of the various denominations coming to the general school to select their pupils for religious instruction, and a Romish priest was seen walking off with one child, and a Socinian preacher with another; sometimes a dispute ensued whose should be the living child, until at length when the hurly-burly' was over the whole scene appeared to vanish, and the school was left without any religious instructor at all. The committee of council on education next devised what they thought a modification, and these were the careless people, among whom the notion first prevailed that religion may be treated as either general or special.' General religion, that is, such as all sects and parties would agree in, was to be given in the secular school: but the peculiar doctrines of each sect were to be inculcated in different corners of the room. This improved scheme fared no better than the other; it was by many considered the worse of the two, but now, at the end of eight or nine years, the old exploded plan has been renewed in a letter addressed by the Vicar of Leeds to the Bishop of St. David's!"(pp. 18-20.)

And again,

"Let us take a scene at one of those government schools on a Wednesday 1846.

4 A

afternoon: you have allotted two class rooms for religious instruction, and you say to dissenters and churchmen, divide et impera. The minister of the Established Church is made comfortable enough; he has a room to himself, with Bibles on the shelves,' and he introduces a few copies of the Catechism and Prayer Book, obtained on the subscriber's terms from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; but would you turn the Roman Catholic priest, the Independent minister, the Wesleyan, the Socinian teacher, and maybe the Jewish rabbi, into the same room? They all arrive at the secular school at the some hour upon pain of public censure for a neglect of duty, and they all make their selections of the subjects which they contend ought to belong to their sect; but you must at least give each of them a room, the Bible on the shelf for the Socinian, to be provided by the State, must be Belsham's translation, for the Roman Catholic priest the Douay version, and maybe for the Independent the most recent varioruin edition of Dr. Conquest. And if all these various operations are to be carried on under the same roof, I know not to what building we could more appropriately apply the title of Harmony Hall! But you may rest assured that after a little time the minister of religion would cease to appear on the Wednesday, and soon grow slack on the Friday, and the religious teaching would be finally left to the secular master; let him transfer himself into some of the rooms which you call the school of religion, and the thing is done. I am persuaded the clergy of our Established Church will never co-operate in such a scheme, and that such separation of secular and religious instruction will never be tolerated by the Orthodox Dissenters.'

"I cannot better describe the confusion that must ensue by your arrangement, than by adopting the language of a writer of the present day, whom you are bound to respect. To expect from an heterogenous mass of lukewarm friends and open adversaries, of professing churchmen and avowed dissenters, of enthusiasts, furious in their zeal, and cold calculating politicians; from a combination formed by an unholy and unhallowed mixture of the orthodox with heretics; of those who adore and those who blaspheme the blessed Trinity, the one and only God,-to expect from such materials as these to distil the pure blessing of Christian unity and concord-this has, by experience, been found to be a hope as wild and vain as that which led his dupes of old to seek for gold in the crucible of the alchymist.'' And yet this same writer would bring all these heterogenous materials in and about our elementary school, the very place where our last hopes are fixed of laying the foundations of that unity whose absence you deplore.-(pp. 25—27.)

Finally; Mr. Burgess thus gives a last blow to the whole scheme, in a passage which must, we imagine, decide the whole question in the mind of any serious and well-principled man.

own.

"The fatal error of your scheme, as it appears to me, is in the limited functions you would assign to the schoolmaster, forgetting that the master is the school, religiously, morally, and literally; it is the master who must form the mind of his scholar, and he can only fashion it after the model of his If you have an unbeliever in Christianity for your master, it is in vain you will bid him be neuter on the subject of religion; that very neutrality would serve his purpose: if he professes to believe, and his neutrality can be depended upon, I would not give much for his Christianity; for the language of the Christian, in every condition of life is, we cannot but speak forth the things we have seen and heard.' If ever the time should come when the teachers in our elementary schools should be forbid to touch on the subject of religion, or enjoined, upon pain of dismissal, to give no motives to morality, nor to religion a creed, we may prepare for an age of continental infidelity, and it will be small consolation to reflect that the plan for unchristianizing

1 Speech of Dr. Hook at the meeting of the National Society.

our population was first introduced by a high churchman, thinking to do a service to his country. Security, my dear Sir, must be taken, not only for the master's competency to teach grammar and arithmetic, but for his religious and moral principles. If the teacher in the secular school is forbid to teach either perceptive or doctrinal religion,' why is he to be trained in church principles or in any principles at all? Morality and religion will not be in his line; he may be an infidel, and yet you expect his practice to be worthy of a guardian of youth. The children may look to him who is their companion and guide for everything but instruction in righteousness; and to supply the almost daily lack of a thought for God (for of course there are no prayers in the secular school), you give us the chance, or if you please the certainty, of a lesson in Christianity twice a week from any one who may choose to take out a license to preach and to teach. I am truly sorry, that in your eagerness to extend education, you have compromised before the world its greatest blessing, and that you should have been beguiled by those specious accounts brought over to us of continental education: it is this very plan of separating the secular school from the religious instruction, which has rendered the educational schemes of Monsieur Guizot and other philosophic statesmen abortive. The instruction given in the primary schools of France, which costs that nation about £700,000 a year, is worthless, it inculcates no fixed principle either of morality or religion; in Switzerland it makes men democrats and infidels; in Austria it is reduced to a political Catechism, inculcating submission to the House of Hapsburg; and yet because they give us, in the form of a statistical table, the proportion of one in ten, or one in eight, we are to consider ourselves as the most ignorant of all nations." -(pp. 27-29.)

I heartily wish I could induce you to reconsider this great subject; it will be a calamity if we lose your co-operation in extending the blessings of a religious and moral education for our poorer brethren; it will grieve many of those friends, who, like myself, admire your activity, talents, and zeal, if you throw the weight of your name and influence into the scale of a Godless Education. Let us keep our schools as they are in principle, and let our teachers be Christians, if not members of the Church to which we belong; let them be considered by the scholars as their examples in practice and as their instructors in the Holy Scriptures, interpreted for them in the Articles and formularies of the Church; and to this end let us seek for more ample means from the State to increase the number of our Normal schools, and to improve the existing national and parochial schools, by asking for inspection and good books. And let us not be jealous if the Dissenters establish good schools also. But do not let us talk of two schools for the same responsible being-secular and religious! What God hath joined together let not his ministers, at least, put asunder; our dissenting brethren will have the same assistance as ourselves from the State, and they will be more satisfied to have the religious instruction of their children arranged after their own manner in this way let education for the people be extended and improved, and then the clergy will be found ready to co-operate with the State, and the benevolence of our congregation will flow in an increasing stream.”—(pp.

30-32.

SHORT NOTICES.

A NEW TRACT FOR THE TIMES; An Answer to the question, "Which do you consider the worst error of the Church of Rome, and how do you prove it to be so?" By the Rev. G. R. HINGSTON, B. A. London: Longman. 1846.

THIS is a Prose Essay, selected by the Rev. Dr. Singer, and the Rev. R. McGhee, from various competing productions-for the Prize of the Dublin Theological Society, in its session, 1845. The subject of the Essay is, "Transubstantiation: its falsity and fatal characteristics,"

We feel some hesitation, both as to the expediency of selecting a doctrine as "the worst "" of all the errors of the Church of Rome-and also, as to the justice of this selection. But we are bound to admit, that Mr. Hingston has furnished us with a very valuable treatise; and one which, in our days, and on this subject, has not been exceeded.

Let us give one extract, which, though selected from the author's secondary and subsidiary proofs, will be worth remembering :

"The error of this doctrine is clearly discerned, as well as its evil consequences displayed in the several kinds of defects' put forward by the Roman Missal as possible to occur in it.-These we will now notice.

"These defects are said to be of three kinds,-in the Matter-the Formand the Officiating Priest; I should quote briefly on each of these points from the Roman Missal de defectibus, &c.-'The Mass Book restored,' (as its title states,) by the decree of the Holy Council of Trent, and edited by command of Pope Pius V., published at Antwerp, A.D. 1594.'

"Of the Defects of the Bread.'

"If the bread be not wheaten, or if it be wheaten, but mixed with any other kind of grain, in so great a quantity, that it does not remain wheaten bread, or if it be in any other way corrupted, the Sacrament is not performed.'

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'Again, as to the Wine.'

"If it be altogether sour, or altogether putrid, or made of bitter or unripe grapes, or mixed with such a quantity of water that the wine is corrupted, the Sacrament is not perfected.'

"As to Defects of Form.'

"Defects may take place through the medium of the form, if anything be wanting to its perfection,—that is, any diminution or change in the words of consecration of the body and blood.'

"Defect of' Intention.'

"If any one does not intend to consecrate, but to practise a delusion, likewise if any wafers remain through forgetfulnes on the altar, or if any part of the wine or any wafer lie hid when he only intends to consecrate what he has, likewise if any one have before him eleven wafers, and intends only to consecrate ten, not determining which ten he intends, he does not consecrate, because intention is requisite.'

"Now the more fearful effect of all the above views, I reserve to the concluding part of our argument; therefore let us at present dismiss each of them with one remark:

"Can any one believe a doctrine necessary to salvation, and as such revealed by the wise and good Jehovah, the actual mode of obeying which is attended with so many accidents and casualties, and such an almost certainty of imperfection. Here a professedly infallible Church asserts a point of belief the most essential in her whole code,-wherein the Deification of the host which she binds her people to worship as God, may be nullified by the dishonesty or mistake of a miller or a baker!

"So also respecting the Wine; the person worshipping is necessitated to watch its original production in a country thousands of miles away, and still further to follow it through the various stages and journeys, and processes and hands it passes, before it reaches, suppose, some retired and humble village in the extremity of the county of Cork, and if there have been the least possibility, as there always is, (nay it is even a proverbial probability) of adulterating it without the priest's knowledge, his salvation is rendered uncertain.

"Likewise regarding the Form: is it not awful to imagine the perfection of this Sacrament, on which eternal salvation is believed to depend, to be contingent altogether on the memory, and correctness of the language of a human being?-the least transposition of a word destroys the efficacy of the sacrifice; can in any case the hopes of the poor deluded victims of such a system rise above a tantalizing uncertainty ?

"As to the doctrine of Intention, what surety has either the priest himself or the people that the change has in any case occurred? The priest by this doctrine is prevented himself from knowing that he has been properly ordained! for if intention was wanting in the bishop who administered orders, his ordination was invalid, and all his ministrations of each of the seven sacraments had no force.-[See Con. Trid. Sess. vii. Can. ii.] Again, how can the people know that he has the intention to consecrate the host when he appeared to do it? Oh! surely it is not required to add to the statement of these facts any reasoning beyond their own expressive conclusiveness, in order to exhibit this as an unstable foundation for a poor anxious soul to rest its eternal hopes upon. Oh! how cloudy, misty, and glimmering any false light this wretched scheme emits when contrasted with those distinct and simple words of lustre and beauty and comfort, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,'' Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out,'-' Where remission of sin is there is no more OFFERING for sin,'-' ,'-' Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more,'-'Therefore being JUSTIFIED BY FAITH, we have PEACE with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand,'— For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.' "-(pp. 38-40.)

The important use made of these points, will be seen in another passage, the only other we shall offer to our readers:

"What is Idolatry? It is neither more nor less than the giving to any thing, the work of men's hands,-or to any creature, or any being, but God, that worship which is due to him;-it is defined by Isaiah ii. 8, they wor ship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made.'

Now of this sin, even upon Roman Catholic principles, the worshipper must be guilty, whenever through any of the defects of matter, form, or intention above stated (p. 38), no Transubstantiation takes place; this we have already seen. In such case the adorer of the wafer worships not the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the Saviour, but the mere bread and wine thus defective; this, observe, is the declaration of the Church of Rome, not mine. Is this, or is it not Idolatry? Surely if (as asserted by the Council of Trent),