empty its treasury, and leave it but a name in the past history of the Church of Christ. Now, upon examining the opinions of the opposers of the Church Missionary Society, we find among them considerable differences in doctrines; and various degrees of feeling upon each. But upon one point they are all agreed that point is a repugnance to the principles and profession of what is termed, in the present day, evangelical religion.' This repugnance is expressed in different manners, according to differences of character. It may be seen in some, as the deep-rooted hatred boldly blurted out; in others, as the bitter scorn sarcastically put forth; again, as the grave admonition of some, or the merry mockery of others;-the quiet warning-the decisive shunningthe exclusive dealing-the excluding of the poor from temporal advantages. In whatever form or shade of difference, a repugnance to evangelical religion' is somehow or other to be discovered in every active opponent of the Church Missionary Society; it may claim the 'semper ubique ab omnibus' impress of catholicity amongst them.'

Of course, we do not stop to refute, or even to deny, the charges of Mr. Dallas;-there is nothing in the moral or intellectual weight of his pamphlet which makes it necessary;-but we do indignantly accuse him of scattering firebrands in the Church, under cover of undertaking a holy cause; and we do this the more, because we believe that this has been too much the effect of the operations of the Church Missionary Society, (whose agent he is,) both at home and abroad. A short time past, some alterations in the rules of the Society gave good hope that there might be even a possibility of uniting with it, without breach of principle. Mr. Dallas teaches us that this hope has not been realized; but surely the Society cannot be ignorant that it is, in part at least, owing to the intemperate attacks of such men as Mr. Dallas on Church principles, whenever they can find an opportunity. Here, for instance, is an irenicum :

"Very few subscribers have been added to the list by the recent alteration, though it removed the shadow of an excuse under which so many have been wont to withhold their assistance, but it is not to be wondered at, that those who openly adhere to the system of the Tracts for the Times, should continue an active opposition; maintaining, in some mystified manner, that, in spite of the archbishops and bishops, the Church Missionary Society is not a Church Society. The notion which these persons entertain of the Church is so very different from that suggested by the 19th Article, that assuming their own definition, they can easily unchurch every thing rightly connected with the Church of England. In the point of view from which they see the Church, it would be much to be deplored if they could acknowledge the just claims of the Church Missionary Society. If we may take the received symbol of the moon to represent the Church, receiving her light from the Sun of Righteousness in heaven, and conveying it to the world during the night of his absence, we may assert that the Church Missionary Society receives the blessed beams from her at that part of her orbit from whence they are reflected to the earth at the full; and is enlightened by them to walk in the dark places of the earth, finding out God's elect amongst the heathen. The Tractarians see this same moon also, but it is from a different part of her orbit: they gaze upon her with a telescopic eye, at that point in which she obscures the rays of the Sun of Righteousness, instead of reflecting them. By their system, the Church is made to stand between us and Christ. With some, the eclipse may be partial; with some, central and annular; with some, total: but, with all who hold this system, the notion of the Church obscures the light of the Spirit by the opaque forms of external observances, which, in their true use and right position, were meant to be the medium

of conveying, and not of obstructing, the glorious light of saving spriritual truth."-Pp. 53, 54.

But the reader thinks that we have had too much of Mr. Dallas; and so should we, but that he represents a class of men who are so prominent in the proceedings of the Church Missionary Society, that we are bold to say that Society can never prosper until they are driven from its proceedings, either by the authority of the Society itself, or by the loud complaint of those without. We have two or three very grave charges to make against the Church Missionary Society, and this is the first, (although, serious as it is, not, perhaps, the most serious :) -that, throughout the kingdom, more harm is done, more division effected, a greater breach made in the peace of parishes, and even of dioceses, by the meetings of the friends of the Church Missionary Society, and by the speeches of their agents, than all the time intervening between the meetings can heal. And we may appeal to those who attend such meetings, whether it is not in the places where it is supposed that the shaft against " Puseyism" will strike an ecclesiastical superior, and one who is placed in charge over those who are addressed, that it is most recklessly hurled. Mr. Dallas's advertisement to his "Crisis" will throw a little light on this point, especially when viewed in connexion with what was recorded of his speech at Leeds. He tells us that, having delivered speeches, of which the substance was the same at Liverpool and at Leeds, some circumstances seemed to him to render it advisable that the detail of the subject should be carried out with more particularity at Leeds." Now, the "Crisis," with all its attacks upon Church principles, is, in substance, the speeches delivered at this meeting. If we ask Mr. Dallas whether the vicar of Leeds was not the innocent cause of all the additional matter about Puseyism, and remind him of the just indignation which his grossly personal attacks excited at the time, and of his most weak attempt to justify himself, in a pamphlet pretty extensively circulated by him soon after the meeting, perhaps he may be ashamed to deny the charge, and equally ashamed to admit it.

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We are well aware that, after the most gross attacks, in which every thing short of the name of the object of attack is mentioned, it is not uncommon to hear a disclaimer of all intentions to be personal. But of all people in the world, your hackneyed speakers at such meetings must know the sound of personal feeling, when it is stimulated into applause by a pungent period. And do they stop, when they find that what they accidentally let fall, is doing mischief? Do they check the rising sectarianism, and allay the bitterness of unlawful reprobation of authorities? Surely none will for an instant. accuse them of such weakness.

Well, then, we presume that one who adheres, through evil report and good report, to Church principles, is not really expected to appear either on platforms, or among the noisy applauders, while such things are said against him; especially when not the person only, but the office, through him, is attacked. And yet, if we may believe

Mr. Dallas, it is nothing but a hatred of evangelical religion, that keeps consistent Churchmen from joining the Society!

It is true, indeed, that the Society can hardly be said to be accountable for every harsh speech that its friends, or even its emissaries, may utter; although such injudicious advocates are accountable, morally, and ought to be practically, to the Society and to the Church, for the evils which ensue from such displays of party feeling. But what do we find where this Society is mistress? What do we find, for instance, in the Society's Missionary College, at Islington ? Is the Church or the individual most exalted there? and does the system really tend to the promotion of a form of religious feeling, which can be called wholesome? Of the extempore prayers and expositions of the Principal we say little; because there may be some guarantee in his experience and qualifications of soberness at the least; and yet, surely, it is not the way to direct a set of young men to grave and reverential habits, to let them see constantly that the prayers of the Church are postponed to extempore unauthorised addresses to the Almighty. But what shall we think of the way in which the pupils themselves are encouraged to acquire habits of extempore prayer, as if prayer were an accomplishment, and not a solemn service; a display of acquired powers, and not a present sacrifice to God; as if a capacity to address the throne of grace without premeditation, were a part of the furniture of a missionary mind? What, we ask, shall we think of the prayer meetings of the students in the library, at which the tutors are not present, and when the students take the chair by turns; of the chairman's lecture and extempore prayer; of the prayers which follow, (all extempore,) from other students, at the chairman's call? Will the reader be surprised to hear, that even personal piques have been known to give a colour to prayers thus offered? And will any, officially connected with the Society, tell us what would be the consequence, if student should venture on a lecture in which the Church Catechism and the third chapter of St. John's Gospel should be made to teach the same doctrine? Would a student be expelled, or only receive some lighter chastisement, who should venture to put together the words of our blessed Lord, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," and those of the Church, in which she thus describes the inward and spiritual grace of baptism :-" A death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness: for being by nature born in sin, and the children of wrath, we are thereby made the children of grace:"-what, we ask, would be the punishment within Islington academy, for a firmly avowed conviction, that our blessed Lord and the Church are here teaching the same truth; viz. the doctrine of regeneration in holy baptism?

But we pass to other matters.

Mr. Dallas has laboured, in his Appendix, to remove from the Church Missionary Society the odium of having continually, from its neglect of ecclesiastical order, proved a trouble and a hindrance,

rather than an assistance, to the bishops of the diocese in which its missionaries are employed. Exercising, as it does, hyper-episcopal powers, and only very lately having become, even in profession, a body responsible to any ecclesiastical authorities, it must have often clashed with the colonial bishops; and though it has lately added to its code of laws, one which should seem to preclude the possibility of any very gross infringement on the bishop's authority, we shall find presently, that the hopes which we might have gathered from the publication of such laws, are altogether delusive.

We must enter somewhat at length on the case of the Rev. W. J. Humphrey, which is contained in a mass of documents of a public nature, and involving public principles, though Mr. Humphrey has shown his personal forbearance, in printing them for private circulation only. We may add, that many parts of them are already before the public in divers forms, so that it would be affectation to treat the correspondence as still private.

Mr. Humphrey having been already employed by the Society in Travancore, was nominated by them, and licensed by the bishop of Madras, to the missionary charge of Myaveram. Bringing to bear upon his highly responsible duties a mind already practically acquainted with the subject of missions, and with the way in which Christianity is likely best to be recommended to the heathen, Mr. Humphrey had scarcely commenced his labours, when he was prepared to offer to his ecclesiastical superior a plan of proceedings which he might have thought himself happy to have effected. We shall make free use of his most striking letter to the bishop of Madras, in stating his case.

Comparing the results of missionary labours with times long past, and even with those of Swartz, Mr. H. hints at the very reasonable conclusion, that there is something radically wrong in the present system, or its details; and not unnaturally-we will venture to add, not unwisely-he reverts to those primitive times in which the Church really did evangelize the world, for his principles and his models. He cannot help seeing that, surrounded with heathenism. in its most luxuriant form and vigour, with a very small assembly of Christians to serve as a nucleus, he is just in the very same condition with many a missionary of primitive times; and being sanguine enough to hope that there are means of effecting the same results, he looks for those means, in an adaptation, at least, of the same principles.

Yet he is no independent speculator who forgets his allegiance to his own Church, in his study of primitive forms. On the contrary, he finds his attachment to the Anglican Church strengthened by the coincidence of principle which unites it with the early church. But here he shall speak for himself.

"If I might, without intrusion, I would just set down in words the train in which my thoughts ran when I reached this place. What is my object at Myaveram? To plant an offshoot of the Anglican Church. What is the

Anglican Church? A branch of that one holy and apostolic body, called the Church Catholic, which has existed in all times, and is fitted for all places; but was purest at the times nearest its formation by Christ and his apostles. How are the principles of the Anglican Church proved to be those of the early church? From its formularies. It retains for doctrine, the holy Scriptures, the three Creeds, the two Sacraments, in all their fulness of blessing and meaning. It has services for all the chief events of a man's life. It retains the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, for Sundays and Saints'-days, in nearly the same state as a thousand years ago. It retains a daily morning and evening sacrifice of prayer, and praise, and teaching, wherein, if its members could or would attend, they would, in the course of a year, have nearly the whole of the Old Testament brought before them once, the New Testament thrice, and the Psalms twelve times.

"For discipline and government, it expressly traces its connexion with the early Church, in that it derives its three orders, of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, from the Apostles' times. In requiring three, or at least two, Bishops to consecrate another Bishop, according to ancient custom. In guiding its canonical or polemical judgments by the first four general councils."-Letter, etc. p. 6.

If Mr. Humphrey finds it necessary to modify, in some measure, the ceremonial of our Church to suit the circumstances of a missionary, it is not such a society as the Church Missionary Society that ought to throw the first stone. He does, in fact, suggest some little modifications in discipline and ceremonial, adhering all the while most strictly to the rule of our Church concerning ceremonies, set forth in the preface to the Common Prayer, and in the 34th Article. And, first, he desiderates discipline; and next to this, or rather as a part of it, a separation between avowed heathens, catechumens, and communicants, which the present circumstances of the Church in England do not demand, and for which therefore we have no provision.

"Surely," he says, "it was not intended that unbaptized Christians should enter Christ's temple with as little ceremony as if walking into a toddy shop, and listen to the prayers, and thus get initiated into all the Christian mysteries, without the preparation of fasting and prayer, which our Church plainly deems a pre-requisite; (see Office for Adult Baptism.)"—P. 6.

"None can say that Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. True, but then, do we expect prayers which are intended only for Christians ripe in the faith, should prove like the preaching of Peter; or do no evils result from throwing thus the precious things of Christianity before swine? That this was not the custom of the early Church, is plain from Justin Martyr, quoted by Palmer, (Compendium of Ecclesiastical History, pp. 52–57;) and the very form of our Churches at home points out the same thing, which is, of course, more connected with our present practice."-P. 7.

Long as they may seem, we are obliged to give the following proposals verbatim, because they are the foundation of all the persecution which Mr. Humphrey has experienced, and from which even the bishop's arm has not been able to shield him. Thus, then, he writes for his lordship's approval or dissension-as principles to guide him in his labours.

1. "As a fundamental principle in intercourse with, and preaching to, heathen to be careful only gradually to bring before them the mysteries of the Christian scheme, pressing on them chiefly repentance and faith, in order to their right initiation into the Christian Church; this to include carefulness about the kind