There has been too much of tameness, and timidity, and extreme courtesy on the part of the Committee of the Parent Society, and their friends. They have not sufficiently attended to the truth conveyed by the French axiom of which Mr. Wilks reminds them, Qui s'excuse, s'accuse. We can readily account for this. With a division of sentiment in their own body, with spies and traitors in the camp, the Committee were in no condition to act with energy and decision. The formation of the Trinitarian Bible Society has been, in this respect, a happy circumstance: it has drawn off those whose friendship was always suspicious, and whose cooperation was an incumbrance. Of all the seceders from the Bible Society, almost the only individuals whose defection was a positive loss, and a source of unfeigned surprise and regret, have, in the most candid and honourable manner, acknowledged their error, and relinquished their objections. The Trinitarian Bible Society has had even a shorter career than we had predicted. It has anticipated the slow effects of decline by a fatuitous act of suicide. Even the Record, the official Record, 'cannot conceal,' and professes to have no wish to conceal, that the first attempt which has been made, by using separation as 'an instrument, to induce the British and Foreign Bible Society ' to yield the points in dispute,'-to make the Committee succumb, has signally failed'; failed for want of a small measure of that common sense in the Committee of the new Society, which is to be found in that of the old.' So says the Record. When confederates fall out, one is sure to hear them speak the truth of each other.

But not to insult over the fallen, we turn to the pamphlets before us, and transcribe with much satisfaction from Mr. Wilks's pages the following paragraphs.

But I have been too long entangled in these petty details. It is politic in the opposers of this invaluable institution, to turn assailants, to harass its friends with vexatious or exaggerated charges, and to try to keep them as culprits on the defensive, when they have a full right to appear in a far different attitude. I feel degraded at having been thus dragged through the mire for many a long and weary page; but I throw off the slough; I disentangle myself of these unworthy manacles. No, my Lord, we are not prisoners at the bar; the Bible Society is not fairly put upon a grave and elaborate defence against charges such as the above, and conveyed in such a spirit. To explain where there is reasonable ground for misunderstanding, is both a duty and a pleasure; and there is no degradation, but much propriety and Christian meekness, in the office: the honest doubts and difficulties of those who seek not party, but truth, ought to be carefully and patiently solved; but to be constantly replying to inflammatory charges, and made to plead as criminals before the bar of public opinion, because some bookseller, hundreds or thousands of miles off, happens to send

a wrong box out of his warehouse, notwithstanding the most explicit understanding and agreement, and for which wilfulness or negligence he is discharged; or because some common informer chances luckily to discover a mare's-nest, with a few addled Apocryphas in it, when the rest had been carefully extracted and crushed; and no man, say what he will, really believes that the Bible Society intended to hatch Apocryphas, or has not taken the utmost possible precautions against it, the best proof of which is just such a solitary mistake as the above; -to keep up such a running fire of snipe-shot to frighten the timid, where there is not a particle of real hazard; is neither truth loving nor reasonable. Our lively French neighbours know full well the force of the adage, that, in such matters, excuse is a species of self-accusation. But the Sackville Street declaimers count upon those minds which can catch a fact, but not embrace a principle; and persons of this order of intellect, after reading over a variety of exculpatory details, such as the preceding, are ready to say; "This may all be very true; but still there seem to be a great many ugly stories." Such persons are not able to take in the vast mass of transactions; to look at the aggregate history of more than a quarter of a century, and to bring out the fair result. It is the same in matters of private character; half a dozen exaggerated party-newspaper stories are quite sufficient to blast for a time, in public opinion, the most exalted reputation; but the good -man appeals to the uniform tenor of his life, as his evidence, and those who know it are satisfied. If he is to answer in print to every idle tale, and when it is answered and settled, and dead and buried, to be called again to reply to it, again and again, years after; and when, perhaps, the parties who best understood the transaction are dead and buried too, no character can be safe.' pp. 114, 115.

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It has seemed to me, my Lord, for several years past, and maintain it I must, notwithstanding some excellent friends of mine have often tried to smile me out of the notion, that we are approaching times resembling those of the middle of the seventeenth century, when God having revived his work in the midst of the years by the glorious Reformation, tares grew up with the wheat and produced a destructive harvest. Men began to declaim and to denounce; then arose new and visionary doctrines; prophecy was burlesqued under pretence of being interpreted; gifts and miracles were said to be revived; the millennium was at hand; the Bible was read in its terrors, and forgotten in its love; religionists made it a matter not of profane jest, but of fanatical boasting, that the praises of God were in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hands; nothing was good enough, scriptural enough, spiritual enough to suit the taste of the new declaimers except their own wayward fancies; they stood up in the senate, not in the meekness of wisdom and the spirit of love, bringing the principles of the Gospel of Christ to bear with manly sense and spiritual understanding upon the business of states and nations, but with wild denunciations, making religion, lovely as she is, appear to the vulgar eye absurd and insane, and preparing the way for that fearful re-action which ensued in the days of the Second Charles, when men took credit to themselves that they were only

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profligates and blasphemers, and not enthusiasts and fanatics. This spirit encroaches by little and little, but of late it has made alarming strides; and religion is becoming as polemical as it was in the worst era of the civil wars. Some good men, whose own hearts overflow with a spirit of Christian love, are yet gradually seduced by the apparent zeal and spirituality of the incursive party, above the steady course of more moderate spirits. Our religious institutions are to be shaken to their foundation, because some Balfour of Burley (I never read the fiction, but I know the historical fact) arises in solemn denunciation, and alarms weak spirits, who rush into the snare, and become mailed Covenanters, instead of humble, peaceful, and affectionate Christians. If this go on and prevail, the result will be, that what is true religion, as well as what is false, will be again scoffed at and put down; a senator will not be allowed to speak as a Christian, lest he should adopt the declamations of Cromwell and the wild Parliament, the remembrance of which to this hour has done much to make religion distasteful in scenes of public resort, and the general intercourse of life; licentiousness and infidelity will lord it over true devotion and scriptural piety, because men learn to connect these with wild eccentricity and extravagance. I think I see a portion of this spirit in some of the speeches and speakers who have assailed the Bible Society; it is too simple, too sober, too peaceful to please them; but I will not pursue the subject; my only word to really pious and judicious men is-BEWARE.' pp. 142, 143.

Mr. Noel's appeal breathes his own amiable spirit and does him the highest honour. We regret that we have not left ourselves room for some admirable sentiments which we had marked for transcription.

Art. VII. The Rectory of Valehead. By the Rev. R. W. Evans. 12mo. pp. 287. Price 6s. London, 1830.

THIS is a very singular and fanciful, but interesting production. The design seems to be, to illustrate the Author's notions of what ought to be the constitution of a Christian fa mily. These views are expressed in the following paragraph.

My father maintained that society in general, as established on the principles of our nature, and still more the church, as based upon the feelings superinduced by the Gospel, was like those perfect bodies in unorganized nature, which, however you divide them, and however far you carry your division, still present, though on a lessening scale, parts similar to each other, and to the whole. Thus, as in one case, we divide kingdom into provinces, province into districts, districts into families, each under their respective heads of king, governor, lieutenant, father, and each a model of the preceding; so, too, we may divide the universal church into national churches, national church into dioceses, diocese into congregations, congregation into families, each an epitome of the preceding, and collected under its proper head, under Christ,

under chief bishop, under bishop, under minister, under father. And as the subject maintains connexion with his king through the links of society above mentioned, so the individual with Christ through the corresponding bonds of the church. He cannot for a moment consider himself isolated and independent of the next link above him, his family, nor that family deem itself unconnected with the next superior bond, the congregation. From this view of the case he shewed what an important element a family was in both societies, natural and spiritual, and if in the former system it was reckoned by the heathen a portion so significant that he assigned to it peculiar deities and peculiar rites, what ought we to think of its value in the latter? In both cases it is the concentrated spot of those motives, the place where that bias and impulse is given, the cradle of those affections and principles which, from their intensity here, proceed beyond the threshold, arrive in proper vigour at the wider circles of public life, and there, uniting with the corresponding energies of other families, bind together the mass of society, so as to become solid as the congealed surface which originates from a number of centres, shooting forth their raying needles, and interlacing till they form one uniform surface. God has himself determined its importance in his church. For as in that he has declared his sense of its dignity and holiness, by appearing in it amid signs and wonders, with the blazing mountain, the host of Angels, the voice of the trumpet, and the sound of words, unendurable, from the terror which it inspired, so in this, in this lesser Zion, he has assured us of its sanctity, by manifesting his presence in it with a softening of his glory in beautiful accordance with the calmness of domestic life. Who has not felt his bosom burn within him when he reads of his abode in the house of Lazarus, and finds him weeping with those that weep, comforting the afflicted, and dismissing the penitent in forgive

ness?

It is truly delightful at times to take off the eyes from the direct view of the painful splendour of the universal church, and to contemplate it through this soft and attempering medium, the perception is then accompanied with those vigorous and elementary feelings of love and warmth of heart, which are too apt to become vague in attempting to comprehend the vast proportions of the other. Let us for a moment indulge in the contemplation.

In the venerable head of the family we acknowledge its bishop, its centre of unity, source of faith, object of obedience. Of him the flock is both naturally and spiritually born, and fed with the necessaries of this life, and of the next. His blessing confers the good of the world being, and of the world to be, and his cursing is a condemnation both now and hereafter. He is ever in his diocese, every day, yea, every hour, visiting and inspecting his flock, encouraging the obedient, chastising the froward, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, comforting the mourner, instructing the ignorant, interceding in prayer. He has, too, his priesthood in the elder members of his family, who assist and relieve his labours by their attention to the younger, who surround, as faithful stewards and ministers, his chair in his administration, and his altar in his devotions. Oh! high indeed is his claim, lofty his privilege, and tremendous his responsibility to the church of God. It

has likewise its appropriate liturgy, expressive of its peculiar circumstances, and holds its appointed days of fast and festival, commemorative of the various events with which God has been pleased to visit it. Nor wants this little church its catalogue of saints: such, perhaps, is some gentle, affectionate member, possessed of the blessed privilege of winning all hearts, whose modest talents were unweariedly exerted in healing the sores of domestic contention, into whose ear was poured the secret of the grieved and burdened heart, and from whose lips were expected and received the words of advice and of comfort, to whose piety they seemed to feel indebted for the blessings which visited them, in whose existence all appeared enwrapt as in their joy, their prop, and their stay, the bitter example of whose calmness and resignation they were doomed to witness through long and protracted sufferings, whom at last they laid in the grave, premature in years, but mature in godliness, whose existence among them seems now as the visit of an angel whom they had been entertaining unawares, whom they cannot persuade themselves even now to suppose that they have utterly lost, but conceive to hover about its once beloved abode, and shed a hallowing protection upon its inmates.

Nor, alas! is wanting its catalogue of martyrs, of those who spent with unwearied toil, and wrung at heart by being continually foiled by some whom they love most dearly, in their unceasing endeavours to keep together their little community, and maintain it against the inroads of a pitiless and profligate world, and gallantly bearing up to the last, bound, as it were, to the stake, fell at length, and sank into an untimely grave, rejoicing and blessing their crucified Master in that he had imparted to them strength and courage for the combat, and confident in hope of what to men seemed hopeless, namely, that he would in his own good time put the finishing crown to what, under his assistance, they had begun.

Nor is it exempt from the failings of its great model, for it comprehends the bad with the good, the hypocrite with the faithful, and it too has its schismatics and heretics; it too has those who despise its salutary control, spurn its paternal restrictions, and assert their liberty by fomenting dissensions within, and, finally, drawing off a party in open revolt from beneath the fatherly roof, set up a separate and rival household, and bring the whole family into disrepute before a cruel and unthinking world.

Holding these opinions on the constitution of a Christian Family, the good Rector was accustomed to express himself with feelings of exceeding awe upon his double responsibility as father and minister, and would repeat again and again, as continually lying upon his mind, the passage of St. Paul, where he observes that the person who is inefficient in the management of his own household, is also unfit for government in God's church, He was unceasing in urging upon others the sanctity of home, the sin of undervaluing that which has more than once comprised the whole church of God." pp. 12-18.

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We have accordingly, in the chapters of this domestic history; -the family liturgy; the external communion of the family; the first member sent out into the world; the annual meeting