mant must the popular religion of the day be, which can receive Simeon for its most bright and shining light, its expositor of the true spirit of Christianity, and its representative in an ancient and noble seat of learning. We cannot but imagine that his own friends feel this. Now that the attractions of his personal presence are departed, we are confident they feel an effort in their wish to maintain his memory. Thus previous enthusiasm about him must rather sink down for want of satisfactory evidence. Why have these memoirs been delayed for eleven years? We will hazard a suggestion. The faults of Simeon struck his friends with a force they little expected, as soon as they calmly surveyed his life, and examined his papers. There is an appearance of effort and a tone of apology throughout the work, which augurs its having been a hard task. Passages and expressions also occur which strongly incline us to think that much has been omitted, in order to make the book as inoffensive as possible. This is our suggestion-we will also venture on a prophecy. We do not look forward to Simeon's memory or his designs being long-lived. Egotism always invites this fate; and if it does not always receive it, it receives it sufficiently often to remind us of a certain justice which operates, on this head, even in the present order of things, and course of nature. 419 ART. VI.-1. A Third Statement of the Real Danger of the Church of England, &c. By the Rev. W. GRESLEY. London: Burns. 2. The Colonial Church Chronicle, No. II. August, 1847. London: Rivingtons. IT is one of the more hopeful signs of the times, that the Church's action is beginning to tell in various, and sometimes unexpected quarters. Her interests and claims are, perceptibly, making themselves more and more felt. Statesmen, for example, find themselves constrained to recognise them, in mere fairness, as a large element in the body politic. Even on this lowest view, it is felt that they must allowed for and dealt with. Like the mercantile interest, or any other interest,' they do work, and are represented; they have a stake in the country. One minister comes into power on the strength of them; another, warned by his predecessor's fate, sees it to be his truest interest to give them at least fair play. How far such a standing falls below that which the Church should rightfully occupy in the machinery of the State, it is needless to point out: it is something that she is, in any degree, recovering that standing for herself. If we look, again, to the department of literature, we find that, besides the vastly increased stores of directly theological matter constantly issuing from the press, the Church has been enabled, to a remarkable degree, to infuse a leaven of her own into the ordinary pabulum of a book-devouring age. The amount of indirect theologising that has crept into almost every species of book-writing, is truly astonishing. Works of fiction, of travels,-on the arts, architecture especially,-antiquarian researches, all may be visibly seen to have what has been happily called a growing religiosity' about them;--the Church is more the standard or the réλoç of such productions than heretofore. The Novel finds a rival in the Tale' of deeper import; -a History of Art must be a History of Christian Art, if it would catch the ear of the day;-the traveller who can bring home tidings or statistics of the Church in other lands is surest of readers;-the architecture of Greece and ancient Rome is chiefly delighted in as a noble vestibule to the glories of Gothic; -antiquarianism, to give a zest to its drier details, must throw in no inconsiderable dash of ecclesiology. Other indications of the same kind might be enumerated. ་ Now, slight as many of these symptoms are, their number and uniformity renders them not inconsiderable. Equability is a sign of healthy progress. When we see, not a solitary wave here and there, but the whole line of waves whitening a higher point upon the beach, we know that the tide has really risen. The operation of the Spirit, both in the Church at large and in particular Churches, is, it has been well noted, floodlike : It is calm, equable, gradual, far-spreading, overtaking, intimate, irresistible. .... It gives no tokens of its coming;-secret, successful, and equable, it preserves one level, it is everywhere.... And here and there it is the same, for by one and the same agency the mighty movement goes on bere and there and everywhere, and all things seem to act in concert. . . . The characteristics of the Spirit's influence are, that it is the same everywhere, that it is gradual, that it is thorough.... He leavens each rank and pursuit of the community with the principles of the doctrines of Christ.'1 The degree which the steady rise, thus indicated, has attained, cannot well be subjected to any process of measurement. Nor is it necessary that it should be so measured. The Διϊπετὴς Νεῖλος fertilized the broad fields of Egypt with his heaven-descended' streams, equally well before there was a Nilometer to register his annual height. Nor would it be well, perhaps, that we should be too solicitous about ascertaining the mark attained from time to time by 'the river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God.' Yet occasions there are which, occurring from time to time, furnish, approximately at least, an index and a register of the aggregate of the Church's advance upon the world about her. Some of these are of a kind at first sight most unlikely to furnish any such statistics. Thus they rank among those Tap' úróvοav developments of the Church's life which we have spoken of. Time was when Chancellors of Universities were elected without causing any great ruffling of the surface of things:-or, however, that the Church, as such, could have any particular interest in the selection made for the office, was never dreamt of. In a well-known recent instance we have seen the interest of such a contest hinging entirely on the question of the importance to be attached to Episcopal regimen. So, again, in the most important, perhaps, of the recent parliamentary elections, that of Members for the University of Oxford, and in some measure in others, the old questions which agitated the minds, and swayed the votes, of our fathers or our younger selves, fell off to the right and to the left, and 'Pro Ecclesiâ Dei' was the one countersign which told friends from foes, and ultimately proved the watchword of victory. In both these instances, the views and feelings which led to such remarkable results were the growth of the last few years. A wonderful growth, certainly, in the time:-but, be it remarked, a bona fide growth, still. It was no 'cry,' in 'Coningsby's' sense, 'got up' 1 Sermons on Subjects of the Day. for the occasion, that wrought these effects. They were no hastily-collected elements that went to the making up of Lord Powis's minority, or of the majority which returned Mr. Gladstone. In those unimportant-looking figures stood expressed the results of much heart-work going on silently and without observation, for many a day, in men and households and parishes; of changes gradually, perhaps painfully wrought;-of convictions slowly yielded to, but now at length closed with firmly, and for ever;-of earnest, yet sobered longings for peace to the Church's walls, and prosperity to her palaces. All these now found an unwonted vent, a rarely-offered opportunity of doing battle in a fair field for the good cause. A world of pent-up life-blood, stored in a thousand separate, though not severed vessels, rushed to the one heart at the call, and astonished men by the vitality it gave evidence of. But occasions such as these, however legitimate for putting forth the Church's recovered strength, and however satisfactory as evidences of it, are none of her choosing. She would fain register her peaceful triumphs in other characters than those of election majorities. And with her revived energies, and resumption of her too long disused functions, come high days of concourse and gathering, of her own. Of one of the most recent and most interesting of these, it is our more especial purpose to speak at present. The consecration of four Bishops to the newly-founded Colonial sees of Melbourne, Adelaide, Newcastle, and Cape Town, is, in every point of view, a most important event. A newlyfounded Bishopric is a кτñμa έç àì. It is the top and crown of the gifts which a mother-country can give to her dependencies. It confers a self-governing principle, far transcending all charters and constitutions. The State is chary of erecting her dependencies into perfectly-constituted polities: the sense of avтaρкɛía on their part might be dangerous to her hold over them. Not so the Church. She loves to raise her daughter Churches to like privileges with herself. The spiritual powers of reproduction which she has freely received, her joy is, or ought to be, freely to give. It is, indeed, to our shame that we should ever have left such immensely distant portions of our Church's domain dependent for the supply and renovation of spiritual life on the home-fountain. Together with a more worthy appreciation of that life, has come to us a sense of the unkindness, to say the least, of withholding from others the originating principle of it. A mortal youth I saw Nigh to God's altar draw, And lowly kneel, while o'er him pastoral hands And when he rose up there, He could undo or bind the dread celestial bands. 'When Bread and Wine he takes, And of Christ's Passion makes Faith speaks, and we are sure Is more than angels' bread to all whom Christ will own.' 6 6 It Lyra Innocentium, IX. 10. Surely, to the spiritual eye, nothing can exceed in grandeur the spectacle of sending forth to other lands the awful gift which alone can work such wonders as these in the region of the unseen. Not without a deep significance are they in whom that gift resides, with power of communicating it to others, cailed in Scripture the Angels' of the Churches. For, besides their ordinary functions as ministering spirits,' they are ever and anon entrusted with an especial charge, to launch new worlds into the spiritual universe; and there is a holy joy belonging to the high occasions on which these delegated creative functions are exercised, nearly allied to that which was in the beginning, 'when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.' With some such feeling came together a band of men whose hearts God had touched,' on the day of the consecration to which we have alluded. was, on all hands, allowed to be an occasion not easily to be forgotten. Men came away from it with thoughtful hearts, and spoke of it to others, with glistening eyes, as those who had been permitted to see the desire of their heart beyond all expectation. Not merely the purpose for which the gathering took place, but the circumstances accompanying the ceremonial, were symptoms full of hope and promise. It was no ordinary congregation that assembled on that festival of St. Peter, and in the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, at Westminster. We do not mean in point of numbers, for these were necessarily limited by the capacity of the building. Yet this very circumstance served to illustrate the spirit in which those came that did come. For though there was no lack of officiating Bishops, their hands were weary ere they had completed their holy work of administering to the ceaseless tide of communicants that flowed for hours towards the altar. The office of the Archbishop was almost one continued act of consecrating, additional elements being required far beyond all expectation; a circumstance, by the way, so far to be regretted, that our Liturgy, as is well known, gives very unsatisfactory directions for such additional consecration, the words of Institution being alone directed to be repeated. Surely,' says an eye-witness, surely there has not been such a communion seen in this our 'day, nor, as we believe, for ages in the Church here in England." 1 Colonial Church Chronicle, No. II. August 1847, Pp. 44, 45. |