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ejaculations, whether we utter them orally, or only pour them forth inwardly in the heart.

CHRISTIAN FIRMNESS.

Yonder rock in the sea-how bold

but

its front! It is washed by the tide, and beaten by the tempest blast; it remains the same both in calms and storms. Such solidity should

the Christian possess

determined

PEACE.

"The wicked are like the troubled sea;" the Christian alone enjoys true peace. As the sea shines and rests, when He that directs the tempest Jesus, who is e phatically his peace, bids it cease, so the believer in Christ securely reposes in the blessedness of redemption, imperfectly imaged forth in the "great calm "of the Sea of Galilee. The Lord "maketh the storm a calm. so that the waves thereof are still. Then" is the be

amongst infinite disputes, unbending in all matters of principle, ever actuated by a paramount sense of duty. liever "glad because" he is “quiet.”

PRISONERS OF THE DEEP.

The "mysterious main" shall give up its dead, its immortal deposits. The spoils of royal argosies, and the palaces of buried cities, cannot be restored; but the depths shall give back the brave and true, the lost and lovely, manhood, and youth, and beauty. "The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea. The sea shall restore its dead, the holy and the unholy.

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A CHECK TO PRIDE.

Human power, in the world of matter, is limited. Those "oak leviathans may appear completely to control the surges through which they plough their course; but, in truth, they are often ocean's toys: the workmanship of man's hands is wrecked upon the shore, or, like the snowy flake, melts into the yeast of waves. So, in the moral world, a man may seem to worldly minds to resist his Maker with impunity, but he will eventually learn that, to have lived proudly and rebelliously, is to have made shipwreck of the immortal soul.

THE OBEDIENT RESPONSE. The dimpled waves-how they answer "the breathings of the lightest air that blows!" So should the Christian, waiting in meek expectancy for the still small voice of heaven, obey that voice when heard, and answer to the gentlest whispers of the Holy Spirit, whose fellowship can fill the bosom, and irradiate the face, of the Christian, with serenity and joy.

HOPE.

Socrates has said, that, to ground hope on a false supposition, is like trusting to a weak anchor. Blessed be God for "the immutability of his counsel," the believer has " an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast." The waves may beat, and the tempest blow, but his hope is "a strong consolation." In the storms and trials of life, his mind is calm as long as his expectation of heaven is firm. Happy they whose hope, like a steady anchor, enters into heaven, and binds the soul to the throne of God!

THE HAVEN OF HEAVEN. Adhering to Christ, and glorying in His sufficiency, the believer shall enter the harbour of rest; not like a shipwrecked mariner, barely saved, clinging to some broken plank, and hardly escaping the raging waves; but like some stately vessel, with all her sails expanded, and riding before a prosperous gale.

THE UNITY OF PROTESTANTS. There are distinct billows, but the sea is one. Such is the unity of Evangelical Protestant Churches. It is not a forced conformity, like that found in polar seas, where eternal winter has locked up the waves in fetters; but rather like old Ocean's unfettered flow, as its waves rush in, in all their might and majesty.

HEAVENLY AND EARTHLY Joy. The harvest moon-how bright and tranquil in the canopy of heaven, how restless and inconstant as reflected in

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PRESENT POSITION OF CHRISTENDOM.-THE THREE FROGS. IN THREE PARTS.

A Gleaning from Elliott's Hora Apocalypticæ.

PART 3RD. WE have shewn that the spirit from the dragon's mouth is the principle of infidelity with its proper accompaniments of blasphemy and proud rebelliousness of spirit against rightful authority, alike divine and human. "By that sin fell the angels.”

THE SPIRIT FROM THE MOUTH OF THE FALSE Prophet.

We have also shewn that the spirit from the mouth of the beast is the direct principle of Popery, based on its antichristian dogma of the Pope's being Christ's vicegerent on earth. The only real difficulty in the case seems to be that of assigning to the third spirit, or that which issued from the mouth of the false prophet,— a distinct independent character; whereas the two horned beast (Rev. xiii. 11,) was before described as very much the organ, agent, and instrument, as well as chief supporter, of the beast, its principal. It might, however, seem supposable, from the new name now given to this agent in the prophecy, viz., the false prophet or apostate priesthood, that a certain larger measure of independency and distinctiveness of character than before might now attach to it. And with a great proportion of the Romish hierarchy and clergy, this has become the fact; and the spirit of self-exaltation with which they have gone forth for the Church of their ministrations,with its rites, sacraments, authority, dogmas, and traditions,-to the disparagement and even supercession of Christ's own word, worth, and Spirit, in the things of salvation; at first, in the fifth century, so as to propose for an earthly antichrist in Christ's place; and afterwards on re-organization in subserviency to Rome, so as to form his chief support,-marks it as a fit antitype to the symbol.

If Rome and its Popes have sent forth in their bulls and ordinances, their vicars apostolic and bishops, and the missions and money of the propaganda, their voice of Popery,—the Romish clergy have, as a body, taken

it

up; and themselves, even as if with personal interest and ambition in the matter, adopted the cry, and urged the cause forward, and while mainly supporting the Popery of Rome, have yet had a certain political independency, if not religious peculiarity.

This independency attaches to the Spanish, Portuguese, and French clergy; to the latter more especially, as members of the Gallican Church; a Church proud of its liberties, and not ultramontane in principle, but rather regarding general councils as the seat of the infallibility of the Church, not individual Popes. Yet do they all so hold, like as at Constance, to the superstitions and false dogmas of the apostacy, as to speak but one of the tones of the western false prophet,— the voice of a modified papacy.

We are now forced to look nearer home, and to ask whether, since independency to a certain degree, and distinctiveness of voice, is thus apparently required, in order precisely to satisfy the emblematic intimations respecting this spirit in the text,we may not among ourselves too have seen that which has answered to it?

What if the high sacerdotal and sacramental system which has of late been rampant in our own country, should be in part the very voice from the false prophet in the text? Can this be the case? Is it really the voice of the unclean spirit, apocalyptically prefigured, as issuing like a frog out of the mouth of the false

prophet, that has been resounding these eight or ten years from the banks of the Isis? This is a grave question.

Certainly, if at the first, there was much in it that to a discerning ear and eye seemed suspicious, there were indications also apparently of an opposite character. When the infidel revolutionary spirit swept like a flood across our land, and the Popish spirit, combining and fraternizing therewith, swelled the torrent, the Oxford primary movement was against, not for it. And hence in fact much of its early strength. It was looked on by the friends of order, religion, and the Church, in times of fearful peril and agitation, as an ally of conservatism; and doubtless its early supporters, there, were not a few, that at the time so intended it, and foresaw not whither it would lead them. When a spirit of delusion goes abroad, its plans are not at once fully developed; and thus its agents and instruments are often at the first led blindfold. Satan may come in, we know, even as an angel of light. But the development has now at length been sufficiently clear and unequivocal. The avowed desire and object is to re-appropriate from Popery the doctrines which our Reformers rejected,―to set up a Popish rule of faith, a Popish doctrine of apostolical succession, a Popish view of the Church and sacruments, a Popish doctrine of sacrifice in the Eucharist, available for the quick and dead for remission of sins; a doctrine on transubstantiation, purgatory, invocation of saints, &c., &c.,-and even on the Papal supremacy,-doctrines in most of these instances consistent with the Tridentine statements; and only not Popish, because the scheme does not reach all the extravagancies practised in the Romish communion. The theology of the Oxford school takes its stand, not on the primitive age, as is often untruly asserted, but on that of the fourth and fifth centuries, when the Church was greatly corrupted, and which the apocalyptic visions designate as that of the first marked deve

See the sealing of the 144,000.

*

lopment of the apostacy. It has selected for its primary and fundamental doctrines that the sacraments are the only, and (in the case of baptism) the necessarily effectual means of communicating Divine life to man, as well as that respecting the priesthood of their apostolic succession, as its only and its ex opere operato conveyancers; a doctrine which is destructive of personal spiritual religion, and which supersedes the grace and Spirit of Christ, who is Himself directly and individually the illuminator and quickener of each dead soul. It further teaches the necessity of reserve respecting the atonement, and doctrines respecting justification, through which Christ was and is virtually superseded in his character of the atonement; doctrines also concerning the mediation of living priests, and of departed saints, through which He is equally superseded in His character of the Mediator for sinful men. It refuses to receive as the one rule of faith and practice the written word and commandments of God, by the addition of another rule of faith and conductthat of its own traditions and the commandments of men. It supports in no equivocal manner the papal pretensions and authority, inculcating the reverence due to the Pope of Rome, admitting his universal primacy, deploring the schism from him made at the Reformation, longing for reconciliation with him, even though it might have to be effected in the garb of penitence, warding off from him, with the partiality of filial devotedness, all application of the prophecies of the beast, antichrist, and his harlot Church on the seven hills. The Tractarian school avows its allegiance to Ecumenic General Councils (not exclusively that of Trent) even as to that which speaks the voice of God's Spirit, and possesses the Spirit's infallibility,-wresting the words of the Article of our Church, which was drawn up expressly against it, in order to force on them a sense not

*

See Palmer's "Aids to Reflection," "I should like to see the Patriarch of Constantinople and our Archbishop of Canterbury go barefoot to Rome, and fall upon the Pope's neck and kiss him, and never let him go till they had persuaded him to be reasonable."

PRESENT POSITION OF CHRISTENDOM.

necessarily unaccordant with this doctrine, and both excusing and expressing desire for the re-enactment of those penalties of excommunication and death, with a view to the enforcement of the Church's decrees, which the false prophet, described in Apoc. xiii., inspired the beast's image to enact against all recusants or disobedient, in enforcement of its dogmas. It professes its bitter enmity against the anti-papal witnessing of Protestantism, and the Reformation of the sixteenth century,-that act which, in a manner too clear to be mistaken, the Apocalyptic vision notes as done with Christ's direction and blessing, to the horror of the beast's adherents, specially of his false prophet; it avows the "unprotestantizing" of the national Church to be its object, and one worthy of all hazards, as a matter of life and death; unchurches the foreign Protestant Churches; and as to the new song of the Reformation, the holy and glorious doctrine of justification by faith alone, shows that it not only does not understand it, but abhors and rejects it, as the idol of the Evangelic school. Nehushtan," they say of it, "a piece of brass" worthy only of being broken to pieces.

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We need say no more to establish the distinct spirit of the false prophet of the apostacy, in its own proper and generic peculiarity of character.

The time of its issuing forth is in most exact correspondence with the prophecy.

It was when the drying up of the mystic Euphrates had made a certain progress in the Apocalyptic figurations, that the spirit of the false prophet was seen to issue forth.

It was in the year 1833, after the Turkman power had dried up in Greece, Moldavia, Wallachia, Algiers, and other countries, for years overflowed by it, that the first of the Oxford Tracts issued from the press.

The emission of the false prophet's spirit was cotemporary with that of the spirits from the mouths of the dragon and of the beast. The Oxford movement has been accompanied by a most remarkable and almost simultaneous outbreak from the spirit of

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infidel democracy and the spirit of direct avowed Popery.

Its mode of speech has well answered to the symbol of a frog, under which the spirit of the false prophet appeared to go forth. While, on the one hand, its unceasing emission of voice in conversational or more formal discussions,-from the pulpit and from the press,-in tracts, sermons, essays, reviews, romances, novels, poems, children's books, newspapers, in music too, and paintings, and church decoration and architecture,with what is unsound in doctrine, for the most part skilfully mystified, the false mixed up with the true, and burlesques and false picturings of evangelical religion intermingled with as false but fair-drawn picturings of the religion of the apostacy, if not of that of Rome,-making incessant but delusive appeals to the better and the worse feelings of our nature, to our taste, imagination, affections, ignorance, prejudices, and even right feelings and desires, whereby it has been carrying on its avowed plan of ecclesiastical agitation,—exhibit no inexact counterpart to the incessant and resounding coaxatio of the prophetic symbol.

The rapidity and extent of its diffusion, forces on us the idea of supernatural influence. Dr. Pusey (sad that such a man should be identified with such a system) has himself strikingly sketched this,-its rapidity of diffusion, the wonder of its human originators at the fact, and their conviction of some higher power assisting it:-not however reflecting, whether this might not be a bad spirit, rather than a good; and so only illustrate the fulfilment of the prophecy.

Can the rapid and wide-spread reception and popularity of doctrines, so startling, so dangerous, so unwarranted, be accounted for on any principle but that of an assistant spirit of infatuation?

One of our learned and respected prelates,* irrespective of prophecy, has ascribed the movement to precisely such an agency as the symbol in the text signified. He has avowed his belief of its being the work of a

The Bishop of Chester.

spirit of evil; acting to stop and mar the good that was before in progress in the Evangelic revival in England, and the Evangelic missions abroad. The question under the present extraordinary circumstances of the christian world and Church, especially in England, cannot but recur solemnly to many a mind;-What is to be the end of these things? And while the hopes are high, of the infidel democrats, so too of the Papists, and of the Tractarians, and the latter especially boast of their progress, and anticipate triumph,—there are not a few of a very different spirit, who fear that these anticipations may prove true, and England again become a kingdom of the Paрасу. On considering the word of prophecy, however, I am led to a more hopeful view. For I do not see in what follows of the Apocalypse any notice of the reunion of that tenth part of the great city which was separated at the Reformation; the only further prophecy concerning the Papal Babylon being its tri-partition, under some great earthquake or revolution, previous to its final destruction by fire. Thus, on the whole, my trust is, that England and its beloved Church may be saved from the deadly plot laid against them; a greater discernment and decision of action on the side of truth and religion, given to our rulers in Church and State; and the extraordinary delusion may pass away that has led aside many most respected and eminent individuals to sanction Oxford in appearance, who have in heart all the while been of a spirit quite alien from that of Oxford. In which case, not England, but rather France, may be expected to prove the chief secular

power employed by the three spirits, to head their project of gathering the kings of the earth to the battle of the great day of God Almighty. Signs are not wanting even now, which show the active tendencies of France towards such a position, in its foreign policy and proceedings. Nor indeed are signs wanting in its ecclesiastic policy at home. There is a curious heraldic fact confirmatory of this view, that three frogs were the old arms of France.

However this may be, the time is most critical,-the subject, heartstirring; and it calls aloud on each individual for self-examination, watchfulness, and prayer. In the very fact of these being now brought upon the scene all together, visibly before the eyes of men, those three spirits of the dragon, the false prophet, and the beast, that for eighteen centuries have successively or together withstood the Gospel, an intellectual interest is given to the times we live in, very extraordinary. How much greater their spiritual interest! The solemn warning voice which follows the text, "Behold I come as a thief; blessed is he that keepeth his garments, that he may not walk naked and his shame appear,"-suitable as it is to every age of the Church, appears now doubly so; when the spirits of delusion are thus abroad, the night thus far spent, and the cry (raised by so many as almost to answer to the voice in the text) proclaiming that the day, -the day of Christ's coming,-is at hand. Watch, it says, especially to His ministers and watchmen of the temple; for His coming is near; and He expects His servants to be awake at their posts, and looking out for His appearing!

DR. M'NEILE AND THE DEAN OF BRISTOL. "To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and strangled in the birth by a cowardly imagination."-Jeremy Collier.

It would be with great unwillingness that we should so often address ourselves to the consideration of the question of Liturgical Revision, if we did not feel that we must not, and dare not,

relax in our efforts, in what we consider a pressing necessity.

We do marvel indeed at the continued apathy of Evangelical Churchmen; we do pity the timid and tem

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