38

EXTRACTS FROM ARCHIDIACONAL CHARGES.

it into all lands, and spoken the words of might which in a little while should subdue the Empire to the Cross. At the very time when men, who gazed on the outer face of God's mysterious providence, deemed that the Church in this land was well-nigh spent, even already had the life that lay hid within her poured itself forth in a tide which, from its exuberance, they fancied that they saw divided. And whither has not that life already penetrated? Into what region of our land has it not channelled its resistless way? Every state, both of public and of private life, is filled with it. That which, a few years ago, was slighted and cast out, has re-asserted a dominion of truth and charity. The Church, which a little while back men thought to raze to its foundation, has sprung upward again into a mightier ascendancy over the hearts and wills of our countrymen; the eyes even of our adversaries are now open to look up and see themselves overshadowed and encompassed by its sway.

66

This, then, is no season for controversy--it is a time for deeds, and not words; we must do, and not talk, great things. All things about us are too living and real, too full of peril and of responsibility and of the judgment to come, to suffer us to be men of arguments, and replies, and rejoinders. In the bitterest age of controversy we may be safe, if we will; for there can be no fight where there is only one combatant. We have our safety in our own hands. Let each man speak the truth as he believes it: if we agree, God be praised; if not, let us speak it in love:'-quick tempers, keen tongues, sharp sayings, are not of God. He that, in shielding truth, wounds his own charity, is no 'good soldier of Jesus Christ.'

"The time is come-not for retaliation, nor for self-vaunting, nor for selfaggrandisement, nor for worldly greatness, nor for enrichment, nor for ease, nor for security, nor for settling down again, nor for dwelling at peace: for Christ's Church in England-it may be in the world-these things are all passed away. It is now the time for great toils, and greater masteries; for severe denials of self, and higher tokens of our Master's cross; for trials and for triumphs; for sacrifices and for successes; for the unfolding of energies we have never known, and for the endurance of a warfare we have never stemmed before.

"Men are asking us for controversial reasons to prove that our spiritual mother is a true and life-giving branch of the Catholic vine. But our arguments will prove nothing, if our lives be equivocal; let these give no uncertain sound, and we may hold our peace. Let us give something better than reasons; let us show unto them the fruits of the Spirit, and exhibit the note of sanctity, which is the broad seal of the living God.”—Manning.

6

"And what may be before us God knows; but thus much is certain with us, of His goodness, are still those healing powers, and that forecasting instinct, which alone can save this people from civil and social misery. Let it be our part, my reverend brethren, faithfully and earnestly, in our own spheres, to bring them to bear upon society around us. Let us believe in the true life of that heavenly system of which we are the ordained ministers; let us act as those to whom is indeed committed a dispensation of the grace of God;' not going back to dead forms of by-gone times, as if they were the life which, it may be, did once act through them, nor striving to force all things into channels through which in their season they have flowed, and which they now have left; but believing in the reality of the spiritual powers with which we are armed; believing in the true presence of Christ with us, and therefore bending all our strength, not to revive old customs, but to quicken spiritual life within our Church and nation. If we do this faithfully, we need not look back wistfully to older and it may be worn-out forms, and weep as if with them all life was departed from us. The same power which did then penetrate and quicken the earthly element around it, will enable us too, in our day, to fill with heavenly life every form of outer things by which we are surrounded on all sides. The Church has, through God's help, been giving clear proofs of its true being amongst us; yea, by every blessed mark of inner life, He in whom

is all her strength has graciously declared His presence with us. By the quickening of holiness within her borders; by the spreading of her arms abroad; by the restored affection of her children; by her increased colonial episcopate; by all of these and by many more encouragements, our Lord is bidding us arise in His might and do the work which he has set before us.

66

And, to aid us in bearing this great charge, suffer me, before I close, to suggest one or two hints for our own conduct, which, as always, so now in some sort especially, seem to be essential.

And first, my reverend brethren, let me say, that in times like these, we should be most earnest to cultivate a real union amongst ourselves. In separa tion there must on earthly grounds be weakness; and the blessing of the God of peace cannot rest on a divided house. And let us remember, that to secure this union, we must watch carefully against the causes of separation. On one of those causes (I mean, separate action in our voluntary associations for religious works), I addressed you at some length last year. For your kind consideration of the plan I then suggested, and for your willingness to try its working in the five rural deaneries in which we assembled to discuss it, I sincerely thank you. Practical difficulties in the way of its accomplishment convinced me that we are not yet ripe for the full blessing of such visibly united action, and, as you know, I therefore withdrew the plan. But I cannot regret that your attention was called to it, for it has, I think, tended in various ways to draw us all nearer to each other; to fill our minds with a greater longing for unity; and so, it may be, to hasten on the time when we shall, please God, have this privilege of evidently, and, in our very instruments of service, ‘minding all the same thing.'

'Still, whilst I thankfully acknowledge our increased union, there is much left for us to do, if we would really be as one. There must be amongst us much cultivation of personal intercourse, much readiness to bear, for the sake of the common bond, with the varieties which must spring from the necessary variations of individual character. Above all, there must of course be a hearty adoption of the doctrines, and a steady observance of the practices, of our Church. Personal impressions must not lead us to tamper with this truth, or to humour that article. We must not venture at our own will to omit this sentence from the service, or accommodate that feature of our apostolical communion to the inclination of sectarians around us. We must neither ape the formalities of Rome, nor diminish one jot of our firm belief in the true grace of Christ's holy sacraments. We must be honest Church-of-England men in our belief and in our practice.

"Suffer me, my reverend brethren, to add, that if united action be indeed a thing of moment, it becomes us especially to guard against the introduction of new causes of disunion, which may add fearful bitterness to those which, alas, before existed, and widen breaches which we fondly hoped were closing up. Of these, there must be always danger proportioned to the vigorous acting of religious feeling. For, unless the individual will, so quickened, is at the same time softened and restrained by a deep humility, it will ever be breaking forth into some peculiarity of tenet or some eccentricity of conduct; and these will soon become, even in the best men, new causes of ruinous disunion in the Church. That such dangers now beset us, I am sadly and unwillingly convinced. Surely it must be so, if there has been amongst us a tendency to introduce into our sacred offices peculiar customs, uncommanded in our rubrics, unsanctioned by our fathers, unpractised by our brethren in the Church. Such conduct must, of necessity, put unity in peril. For if they be points of moment, then, with no commission to warrant our so doing, we gravely censure others: if they be trifles, then, for the sake of trifles, we wantonly disturb the Church's peace, and provoke a mischievous reaction. And if, at the same moment, there is seen an inclination to depreciate all that is peculiarly Anglican; to exalt what, to say the least, borders upon those impurities of faith and practice, which, through God's grace, and the strength of their manly Saxon hearts, our forefathers cast off,-then is our danger greater still. But it is greatest, my

reverend brethren, if there be growing up on any side a hankering after those corruptions of the faith which issued of old in the papacy itself; a longing for a visible personal centre of union as the condition of the unity of Christendom; a shrinking from the simple boldness of statement, which marks the declaration of the gospel of God's grace throughout the inspired epistles; a tendency to confound that faith, which alone justifies, with the crowning grace of charity, in the burning brightness of which faith should issue; if there be a studious inculcation of that which, in this most mistaken sense, some unhappily have learned to speak of as 'the great doctrine of justification by works;' if there be, lastly, a disproportioned care for the outer parts of our religion, combined with any inclination to depreciate its individual spiritual life in every heart in which it dwells;-surely, if there be but a suspicion of these things, there is ground for watchful caution upon our parts: a caution which should act, not in leading us to reject what we suppose are the peculiar views of others; (for all mere negative religion is a poor thing at the best;) still less in making us willing to suspect, with party readiness, those who differ from us, or to impute to them lightly, with party bitterness, such fearful errors; but in leading us to embrace for ourselves, with a more earnest hold, and to exhibit to others, in a sharper outline, that positive and substantial form and body of Christian truth which will be our safeguard from errors on each side, and which, of God's mercy, is so well set forth in our own articles and liturgy.

"Marked, indeed, was the training by which the holy men who have left to us this precious legacy were fitted for their work; bitter was the struggle through which they for themselves discovered their deliverance from the body of this death;' scorching were the fires of personal suffering through which they were brought out into the large room which we, of God's goodness, have so peacefully inherited; and thus was there a broad impress of reality stamped upon their views of doctrine; whilst, by God's special mercy, they were kept clear from material error, on the one side, by their acquaintance with Puritan excesses, as, on the other, by their knowledge of the deep corruptions of the Papacy. With them, my reverend brethren, let us hold fast, with thankful hearts, the clear, simple, well-marked character of old Church-of-England piety. Yes, my reverend brethren, may this, through God's grace, be wrought deeply into each one of us; may we ourselves be indeed dwelt in by His grace; may we be men of earnest prayer, men of a large and unsuspected charity to all; may the cross of Christ be every thing to us ourselves; may we bear stamped upon our lives the marks of a holy, courageous, humble, self-denying faith; that, having borne meekly His blessed yoke for our hour of service, we too, being washed in His precious blood, may enter into His rest, and be found indeed amongst His saints at His coming."-Wilberforce.

LITURGICAL MEMORANDA FOR JANUARY, 1843.

WE have the pleasure to recommend to our readers the fourpenny almanack (The Churchman's Almanack), published by the Literature and Education Committee of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. It gives the Sundays, &c., in red letter, with the daily and proper lessons, and much miscellaneous useful matter. But the most complete manual is The Churchman's Calendar, Edited by the Rev. F. E. Paget, and published by Burns. It notes more especially the days of Fasting and Abstinence, and has a useful appendix, from which we shall this month extract our notice of the Calendar for January, as we extracted one

last month from a paper of Bishop Doane's, though St. John's Day and Innocents' Day were unfortunately misplaced.

Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord.

1. NEW YEAR'S DAY.-This Feast was instituted at the close of the twelfth century. It was not observed before, because it fell on the Calends of January, which was celebrated among the heathen with profane revellings." As at Christmas," observes Bishop Sparrow," Christ was made of a woman like us in nature, so this day He was made under the law: (Gal. iv. 4.) and for us took upon Him the curse of the Law; being made sin for us, and becoming