confident anticipations entertained by many of the speedy approach of the personal reign of the Saviour on earth-one, among other features of resemblance, between the state of religious feeling in our own times, and that which existed previously to the Great Rebellion:-to the tracts published by a Society of learned and pious men connected with the University of Oxford, whose object is to recall the minds of men to the contemplation of primitive Christianity, and to bring back the Church to a closer resemblance to the form which it bore in its earliest ages.--It may be that they have in some instances exposed themselves to the charge of being influenced by too indiscriminate an admiration of antiquity, and of endeavouring to revive practices and modes of expression which the Reformers wisely relinquished, because experience had shown that they were liable to be perverted to the purposes of superstition. If, however, in the pursuit of a favourite object they have run into excess, let us not, on that account, overlook the good which may be derived from their labours. While we read their writings, our attention can scarcely fail to be directed to certain subjects especially deserving it at the present juncture-to the unity, for instance, and the authority of the Church-subjects on which we have so long been silent, that the very terms seem strange to the ears of our congregations, and the mere mention of them is almost regarded as implying a wish to invade the right of individual judgment. At a time, too, when we are told that the care of religion does not fall within the province of the civil Magistrate, and that Christianity itself ought to receive no especial favour at his hands, but only to share his protection in common with Mahometanism or Heathenism, it cannot but be beneficial to the Ministers of the Church of Christ to have their thoughts turned to that period of its history when it stood in the relation to the State to which they who maintain the opinions just described would gladly reduce it-when the civil power either persecuted or neglected it. In the self-denial, the disinterestedness, the patience, the meek but uncompromising fortitude of the first converts, we are furnished with the model which we must strive to copy, in case it should please God to place us under similar external circumstances. Let us humbly beseech him, my brethren, to infuse into our bosoms some portion of the spirit by which they were animated-of that spirit which caused them to regard the loss of every worldly possession, nay, of life itself, gain, if they could convert it into an occasion of manifesting their entire, their unreserved devotion to his service. |