heavenly country." Elaborate directions are then given for the proper application of this consecrated oil to sick persons; and the conclusion of the whole matter is, that "the cottons shall be reverently burned by the priest." And this is the Popish mummery and the inane buffoonery which thousands of resolute men and insidious women are striving to bring in as part of the common religious life of England! They call it "the glory of Catholic worship; " we call it the lowest degradation to which God and man can be dragged. 66 This conspiracy against the purity and strength of both our religious and national life has been gradually extending for the last forty years. Who is to blame for allowing it? The Quarterly Review says: We feel bound to say, with whatever regret, that the gravest blame attaches to the authorities of our Church for the manner in which they have disregarded the growth of so palpable a corruption among the clergy." And again, from the same article, "Such is the system which has been allowed, by the culpable neglect of the bishops, to get to such a head in the Church of England." We do not feel over sorry for the bishops, for though they receive blame from all parties, yet there can be no doubt they have been guilty of dignified indifference, and even supine neglect. Aroused by recent disclosures, they have been stung into a little more vigorous speech and action; but it seems to us that the evil lies too deep for episcopal interference, and the battle will be too sore for mere wordy protests, or enthusiastic meetings. Both Houses of Convocation have condemned the system; and the Society of the Holy Cross has thereby been requested to withdraw its filthy book from circulation; the Bishop of Manchester has declared that he will neither license nor ordain any man holding sacerdotalist views; seventy peers of the realm have written a letter of urgent appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury; the Church Association has held a great anticonfessional meeting in Exeter Hall; the Times has led the whole of the independent press in denouncing the conspiracy in terms stronger and weightier than any we can find in the Rock or the Record; these things have been done, and yet we cannot hope that the evil has been stayed. The men who defy the judges will laugh at the bishops; and the drum of the Church Association will be answered by the trumpet of the Church Union. Two things must be done, and done speedily. First, Disestablishment must strip these conspirators of their adventitious social supremacy, and take from them the vast advantage of national endowments; and, secondly, the schools of the nation must be rescued from their control,—the sacerdotal treason must not be allowed to pervert the children. These men are seeking to restore the days of moral and political slavery-let it be ours to preserve our hard-won freedom; and, in this warfare against that supremacy of the priest which is the degradation of the nation, let us consistently maintain those great principles of truth and life on which our Free Churches are built, and on which the true greatness of the nation must ever rest. There are signs that the long-suffering of the nation has come to an end, and we must fan the excitement and keep alive the controversy, until the honour of Christ and of our country is finally vindicated. HY ARRIES HE? DURING the Franco-Prussian war, it will be remembered, the body of a German officer was found on one of the battle-fields, with a letter in his hand from his little daughter, open at the words, "Why are you so long away from us, papa? Why do you not come home to mother and me?" "Prone on the battle-field Helpless he lies. Joy of the mother's heart, Light of her eyes, Slain in the strife. What's in his stiffened hand? Letter from home; Mother and children all Say to him, Come; Morn, noon, and night; Haste from the fight. Why does he tarry so, Are they not dear to him Ah, who will answer give- Wails of the widow rise War's dread alarm. EDWIN CLARKE, DEATH. DEATH to many-nay, to all-is a struggle and a wrestle. We have many friends that it will be hard to leave. I care not how bright our future hope is, it is a bitter thing to look upon this fair world and know that we shall never again see its blossoming spring, its falling fruits, its sparkling streams; and to say farewell to those with whom we played in childhood or counselled in manhood. In that night, like Jacob, we may have to wrestle; but God will not leave us unblessed. It shall not be told in heaven that a dying soul cried unto God for help, but was not delivered. The lattice may be turned to keep out the sun, or a book set to dim the light of the midnight taper; or the room may be filled with the cries of orphanage and widowhood; or the Church of Christ may mourn over our going: but if Jesus calls, all is well. The strong wrestling by the brook will cease; the hours of death's night will pass along one o'clock in the morning-two o'clock-three o'clock-four o'clock in the morning. The day breaketh. So I would have it when I die. I am in no haste to be gone. I have no grudge against this world. The only fault I have to find with this world is that it treats me too well. But when the time comes to go, I want to be ready-my worldly affairs all settled. If I have wronged others, I want then to be sure of their forgiveness. In that last wrestling, my arm enfeebled with sickness and my head faint, I want Jesus beside me. If there be hands on this side of the flood stretched out to hold me back, I want heavenly hands stretched out to draw me forward. Then, O Jesus! help me on and help me up. Unfearing, undoubting, may I step right out into the light, and be able to look back to my kindred and friends, who would detain me here, exclaiming, "Let me go, let me go! THE DAY BREAKETH!” -Talmage. CHURCH NEWS. ANOTHER session of the British Parliament has ended. The high imperial representatives in Church and State have met, have sat, and have now gone to spend their vacation in “killing something" grouse, partridges, pheasants, foxes, and fish, at home; or, failing adequate interest in these, then bears, wolves, or elephants abroad; they are now diligently "killing something." And what they have done during the session except kill time it would be hard to say. Church and State affairs have been left very much as they were twelve months ago. Ritualism still flourishes, and Nonconformists are still excluded from burial in their own parish graveyards; and the only consolation left us is the only new statutes of importance written on our rolls seem to be for-the nurture of oysters and crabs, and for the destruction of the Colorado beetle. The fact is, and probably would be undisputed by men of any party, that if our imperial legislators had simply passed the budget, and then gone to bed last February, and not woke up till grouse-shooting began. again, the country would have been just as well governed, and would have been spared many anxieties and humiliations. Thus, left to themselves, in ecclesiastical affairs, things have not mended much. The Ritualists are demanding the co-ordination of Convocation with Parliament; on the other hand, a body of ninety-six peers have protested against the introduction of auricular confession into the practice of the clergy, and have expressed their "deep indignation at the extreme indelicacy and impropriety of the questions that are put to married and unmarried women and children," with their belief that such a system would be "fraught with the most fatal consequences to the Church," and would dissolve the confidence that had subsisted between the laity and clergy; but priestism and sacerdotalism are too sweet to be relinquished on account of such considerations. And so the relations of Church and State continue to be strained more and more, and will continue till the inevitable rupture takes place. The nature of the English Church Establishment in the East Indies is frankly explained by a recent writer in the Guardian. He says: "The Government of India professes the strictest religious neutrality. It pays, nevertheless, a staff of chaplains to administer to British residents, because by serving in India they would otherwise lose the religious privileges enjoyed in England. To superintend the chaplains, bishops are appointed, who, like the former, are Government servants, paid by the Accountant-General's office." That is to say,the people of India are taxed to provide Episcopalian worship to rich English residents. Turning from the one extreme of opinion to the other, we are glad to notice a remark of Mr. John Morley. That gentleman is known to be one of the severest of contemporary critics of the doctrines of Christianity; but he well remarks in a recent essay that "Science, when she has accomplished all her triumphs in her own order, will still have to go back, when the time comes, to assist in the building up of a new creed by which men can live." Side by side with the professed unity and uniformity of Established Churchmanship, we have the real oneness of Evangelical Nonconformity. According to an estimate recently made by an able statistician, there are probably 25,000 places of worship of all kinds belonging to Evangelical Nonconformists in the United Kingdom, including the Independents, the Baptists, the various bodies of Methodists, and the various bodies of Presbyterians; and, says Mr. Henry Richard, M.P., "I venture to say that if a member of any one of these joined in the religious services of any other of them, he would find substantially the same doctrine preached, and substantially the same forms of worship observed, and would find himself not a stranger or a foreigner, but belonging to the same household of faith. And this concord is brought about by no Act of Uniformity, by no creed or ritual prescribed and enforced by law. While this approximation has been going on among so many branches of the Christian Church, there is only one religious body, that has become and is becoming more and more alienated from all other bodies, and that is the Established Church of this country; and this in my opinion is one of the saddest and most sinister results of the union of the Church and State, that it raises an artificial barrier to separate |