weaknesses, must make us earnest in prayer for grace for future needs; and while we feel our own entire dependance upon a higher strength than our own, we shall realize in its fullest degree the necessity for praying that God would both direct the bishops and pastors of His flock to the right men, and also would endue the men chosen with a large measure of His Spirit. Perhaps, if the Ember Seasons were properly kept, no bishop would feel disposed to choose any other seasons than those marked out by the Church for the purpose of holding any ordination; or if he saw good and sufficient reasons for departing from the usual times, he would desire that, in hist own diocese at least, the exceptional time might be marked as a special season for prayer. It might be suggested, as not foreign to the general purpose of this paper, that, where a young man enters upon his duties in a parish where there is a resident incumbent, the incumbent and curate should meet together at least once a week for mutual conference on parish affairs, for reading, and for united prayer. Such meetings would have the effect of uniting in closer bonds two fellow workmen; they would give an opportunity to the elder to breath into the younger a spirit of zeal and love, and unquestionably the knowledge of such meetings would give greater confidence to the congregation in the teaching of their pastors. Again, if at such times we humbled ourselves before God, and offered our prayers for a blessing upon the labours of the Church's ministers, we might reasonably expect that God would open our minds to see what are our defects: He might and would give us wisdom to take the right course to get those defects remedied; and if these deficiencies were such as lay beyond our reach, we might fairly expect that He, in His good Providence, would bring about the desired good. To grow in spirituality is to grow in real usefulness; and unquestionably the more nearly the Church approaches to what she claims to be, the leader of the country in religion, the more likely will it be that a general movement should be made to put right some of the evils complained of in the earlier part of this paper. If there were more real spirituality,-that is to say, a better acquaintance with the character and mind of God, a clearer insight into the mysteries of His truth,-there would be a depth and a richness in preaching which would leave no room for complaint of monotony or dulness. What we want, then, is a deeper, louder, more earnest cry coming forth, not from one or two here and there, but from every minister, from every parish, from every congregation, for a large and full pouring out of the Spirit of God. The Church calls on us to take heed that that cry regularly ascend for a blessing on those entering the ministry. Let us beware of neglecting that call. In conclusion, we cannot forget that all our work is vain without the Spirit of God. No sermon preached, no visit paid, no word spoken, can be of profit, unless the Spirit be present to touch the heart and move the affections. We cannot exaggerate the importance of prayer for a blessing upon the ministry. We believe that the cause of religion is very much bound up with the spirituality of the clergy. If the one decays, it cannot be expected that the other will prosper. In pleading, therefore, for more united prayer, we are pleading for the interest of the whole church, and not for ourselves only; we are pleading for the good of generations yet unborn; we are pleading for the very existence of the national church in this country; we are pleading that the church may be found equal to the task to which God has called her. This plea will not and cannot be in vain. A prayerless church, however perfect its machinery, however good its endowments, however exact its ritual, is powerless for good. A praying church encompassed with weaknesses, encumbered with difficulties, surrounded by open enemies or false friends, has within itself a power that will surmount and overcome them all. We of this day may go to our graves without seeing our hopes realized, or our reasonable expectations fulfilled; yet if we have been filled with a spirit of prayer, we shall have left behind us a seed which must and will bear fruit to eternal life. A COUNTRY CLERGYMAN. DR. C. J. VAUGHAN'S UNIVERSITY SERMONS. The Book and the Life: Four Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge, in November, 1862. By Charles John Vaughan, D.D., Vicar of Doncaster. Macmillan and Co. 1862. THESE Sermons, like everything else of Dr. Vaughan's, have much good and wholesome and fervent writing in them. But we are not able to find space to notice all the praiseworthy University sermons which come before us; and must state at once the reason which induces us to take up the present volume; and the exception which we are compelled to make to the approbation which it for the most part deserves. We feel the more bound to do so, because the fault which we must charge upon it may be supposed by some to be nothing more than a fair enlargement and expansion of some thoughts of our own, given to the public in our December Number. In the last of these four sermons, Dr. Vaughan thus alludes to the recent offence against the peace and purity of the Church, committed by bishop Colenso : "We may be forgiven for regarding this occurrence as a serious calamity. It is not that thoughtful and well-educated men are likely to be fatally or seriously staggered by it. They may feel, as they ought to feel, that the position assailed is one which the Church of Christ, as a body, never occupied; that the theory of a direct inspiration (in the common meaning of that word) of every verse and clause of the Bible is one which no true friend to the faith ever put forward; that matters of science, matters of common history, still more, matters of numeration, of chronicle, and of genealogy, are nowhere in the Bible claimed as proper subjects of Inspiration, strictly so called; that, impossible as it is accurately to define in such compositions the limits of the divine and the human, yet unquestionably both elements enter largely, and must do so, into the result: that, as we are sure that God does nothing in vain, and would not therefore inspire a knowledge which was either within the reach of human investigation or without the range of human profiting, so we may more safely speak of an inspired man than of an inspired thing; may rather conceive of a man full of the Holy Ghost writing out of the abundance of his heart, even as he spoke and acted in daily life, but with a providential guidance preserving him from error in divine things, and causing him to write that which should be profitable, in a religious sense, for his people and for all time, than of a page flooded with a heavenly radiance, or a pen moving involuntarily under an impulse given to it from above. Supposing this, supposing that inspiration wrought rather in the living man than in the lifeless page, and only prescribed the exact form of the utterance when prediction of events undiscoverable by man was its topic and its purport, my faith in all that is the real meaning of a Revelation will not be shaken by any admixture, were it proved to exist, of imperfection in the narration or in the calculation; I shall infer from any such imperfection, when it is proved to exist, that in that particular God designed not to overbear the human by the divine; I shall look for the moral of the story, I shall ask its religious intent, I shall draw from it its spiritual lesson, I shall correct my idea of inspiration by the proof of its facts, distorting nothing, disparaging nothing, yet demanding proof of all; and I shall be able still to echo with unwavering confidence the blessed words of St. Paul, All Scripture (and he spake of necessity of the Scriptures of the Old Testament) is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable-for what use?-for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; and with what final object ?-that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." (pp. 107-109.) We cannot, as we have said, let this pass, inasmuch as it appears to contain a principle which is nearly destructive of the authority of the Scriptures. If "the theory of a direct inspiration of every verse and clause of the Bible is one which no true friend to the faith ever put forward,"-if "matters of science, matters of common history, still more, matters of numeration, of chronicle, and of genealogy, are nowhere in the Bible claimed as proper subjects of inspiration, strictly so called,"—and if "admixtures of imperfection in the narration or in the calculation" are to be supposed to exist, and that without making any difference in "our faith in all that is the real meaning of a revelation,"-then we fear we shall have approached very near to that which is the watchword of the foes of our faith in the present day; the notion, that "the Bible is not the word of God, but contains within it that word." A principle which, to all practical purposes, is as utterly destructive of the notion of a revelation from God. A book which is not simply and entirely divine, but has within it, somewhere, that which is divine, commingled with much that is human, can be no "light to our steps or lamp to our path," can be no rule of life, or standard by which we shall hereafter be tried. And if the Bible is thus to be practically dethroned, it matters little whether the mischief be accomplished by profane ribaldry, or with a simulated, or even a real, reverence. We, of course, entirely acquit Dr. Vaughan of any conscious or purposed affront to God's word; but we are bound to state explicitly the nature of the evil we desire to shun. To admit the existence of errors in history, errors in science, errors in numeration, in the word of God, is practically to bring its authority into doubt, by making it partly infallible and partly fallible, partly dictated by "the Spirit of Truth," and partly disfigured by untruths. In a word, such a notion of God's revelation as this is one utterly perplexing and bewildering, leaving the inquirer in the midst of a host of unsolved doubts and difficulties. Yet, as we have said, all this, of which we are complaining, may be supposed to be merely an expansion of the idea, that there is in the Bible both a divine and a human element. We perceive and admit the danger, and it is this danger which has induced us to notice Dr. Vaughan's publication. In the present case, as in many others, a truth may, by the alteration of only a few words, be turned into one of the gravest of errors. The "human element" of which we spoke, in our review of Dr. Colenso's work, seems to us to be clearly exhibited in the opening verses of St. Luke's gospel. The evangelist commences with these words:: "Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us," "it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed." We believe that the Spirit of Truth watched over every syllable that fell from St. Luke's pen, and that nothing but what was true was written by him. This preliminary statement, then, is fully and entirely true; is not simulated; is no fictitious or coloured representation. But no one can read it without feeling that the writer was no mere "organ-pipe," through which a divine and all-powerful Spirit breathed words of His own. This, then, is what we mean by a divine and a human element. And in this way, we believe, it came to pass that two different men, under the superintendence of one Holy Spirit, threw one narrative into two such different forms as the following: "Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. "And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in."Matt. xxvii. 3—7. "Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. "And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood."-Acts i. 18, 19. Both these statements are true; the one, in fact, does not contradict the other.* Yet, how often has it been said, "There is a manifest discrepancy." Yet we have here only what we find in many other histories: two human beings, truly and honestly stating one transaction in two different ways. What, then, is Inspiration? We may regard it as something above human comprehension or human description; but in its effects it is that which produces a revelation from God to man, true in all its parts; true in its purport, and true in its expression; and entirely obligatory on those to whom it is sent. all similes and illustrations descriptive of its character, we *Land, in civilized countries, does not pass from one to another like bread, or cloth. There is a contract, which may be termed a purchase; then the preparation of writings; then the sealing and payment. Judas, probably, took the first step; and the priests com. pleted the transaction. As to the manVol. 62.-No. 301. ner of death, the land round Jerusalem I |