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she has left to our discretion; it is utterly distinct from that public worship which she has provided for the service of the congregation.

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And this theoretical view is entirely corroborated by practice. It has been, for several years, my own custom in the parishes under my charge, to hold these cottage readings; and their effect has uniformly been, to instruct the ignorant, and qualify them for an intelligent attendance upon public worship; to awaken the careless, and lead them from the cottage reading to the church service; and so far from preparing them for dissent, it has been the most effectual means which I could adopt for sheltering them from the inroads of such irregular instruction. It has always proved an attraction from, not an inducement to, secession from our church. I may safely say, that in my own experience the only exception to this general tendency of such habitual instruction has been in the case of those whom circumstances have kept from church against their own will, and who would, therefore, have had no other opportunity of receiving religious instruction.

Nor is this only my own opinion. I would refer now to one alone, amongst many testimonies. Such cottage readings were, for very many years, the continual practice, and, as he has often told me, the peculiar and most useful feature in his parochial plans, of that admirable man, the late H. C. Ridley, of Hambleton. They received the stamp of the deliberate and unqualified approbation of his well informed judg ment; and had your correspondent ever had the pleasure which I have enjoyed of attending him to them, of marking his pastoral simplicity, and hearing his plain and earnest, and detailed explanations of the word of God, and witnessed its effect upon his flock in their humble and instructed attention, he would have been led, I am sure, like myself, to believe that as there is no way, under God's blessing, more like to leaven a parish with sound Christian instruction, so could there be no weekly ministration more perfectly in harmony with the spirit of the Church of England, or any which had a more direct and stronger influence in attaching to her the reasonable, and, therefore, enduring affections of an evangelized people.

I am, your obedient servant,
Πρεσβύτερος ἐν κώμη,

WEEKLY LECTURES.

To the Editor of the British Magazine.

SIR,-As your correspondent, W. G., in No. 14, requests to ascertain the sentiments of his more experienced brethren, with respect to a weekly lecture in a school-room, or private house, I will, with all humility, by your favour, communicate mine to him.

There is one expression of your correspondent which I cannot pass unnoticed. He says, that clergymen adopting this practice "become dissenters." Query, from what do they dissent? Does their adoption of this mode of private instruction prove them to be at variance with the doctrines, or to have any scruples as to the discipline of our church? Above all, how does it make them (like dissenters) unauthorized dispensers of the word and sacraments, without that blessed sanction of their labours, a regularly transmitted apostolical ordination to serve in the Lord's vineyard?

In a parish with which I am connected, which contains considerably above 100,000 souls, and which, like every other manufacturing town, swarms with dissenters and godless men, who never attend any place of worship at all, there are ecclesiastical divisions, as there ought to be in all populous towns, for the purpose of defining the parochial limits of ministerial superintendence; and in one of these, containing between 5 and 6,000 souls, with only one church quite at one extremity of it, the officiating minister delivers one week-day lecture, in a room engaged for the purpose, as far as possible from the church. He commences with the collect," Blessed Lord, who hast caused," and the Lord's Prayer; then reads a portion of scripture, and expounds it; and concludes with the collect, "Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that the words we have heard," and the "Grace of our Lord."

In another district, containing between 10 and 12,000 people, with no church in it at all, a weekly lecture is given after the same manner exactly, in a large school-room, capable of holding between 6 and 700 people. The lectures are plain Church-of-England expositions of the word of God, the clergymen taking care to impress upon their hearers the truth, that they are intended, not as substitutes for attendance at church, but as subsidiary to a devout observance of the Sabbath day. To the lecture in the large school-room, only the parents of the children are ostensibly invited, but, of course, any that choose are permitted to attend. In some of the other ecclesiastical divisions, smaller meetings are held in private houses, where the clergy explain the Scriptures, with a short prayer.

Now, I know that very many clergymen (and I suspect your correspondent, W. G., is one) will strongly object to such a system as this. They will call it irregular, and even illegal, to preach in an unlicensed house-uncanonical, inconsistent with the formularies of our church— calculated to diminish the reverence for the Sabbath, and a respect for our incomparable Liturgy. I must confess I find a difficulty in answering these objections, because I can hardly comprehend what they mean. Do the objectors mean to assert that it was contemplated by the Conventicle Act to prohibit the ministers of the establishment from expounding the Scriptures in private houses or school-rooms, with prayers, by leave of the Bishop of the diocese? If so, the clergy would be liable to penalties for expounding the Scriptures and reading prayers to the children in the national schools. Will it be said that the free grace of the gospel is so exclusively tied to forms and places, that it can never be beneficially expounded but within the four walls of the established church, and in connexion with the whole liturgy?— and if this is not meant, where can the irregularity and impropriety be? In such districts as I have described, where there is either no church at all, or none that is accessible, the minister must adopt such means for the preaching of the gospel, or wholly abandon his people to dissent or infidelity. As for the objection, that the practice leads to an undervaluation of the Sabbath, the most conclusive answer that can be given is, that it is not found in experience to do so. By the diligent, affectionate use of such a means of grace, the minister becomes ac

quainted with people that he could come in contact with in no other way; he is brought into frequent communication with them, generally known throughout the district, and they are consequently better inclined to confide in him, and place their savings in his hands, to be deposited by him in the funds of the Provident Society; and, as they feel that the minister takes some interest in them, they begin to take some interest in the establishment to which he belongs, and instead of continuing indifferent to its forms and offices, acquire a taste for them which they never felt before. Surely this is human nature. The heart of man is not so radically corrupt as always to return evil for good, and abuse the affectionate zeal of an established minister in his anxiety to raise their souls to Christ, to purposes of spiritual pride, by regarding it with exultation as " a conversion made to their own system, and a departure from the forms of our incomparable Liturgy;" especially when it is no departure at all. If the Liturgy were used in the school, or house, then, I think, the practice might be irregular, then it might depreciate the value of the church-service on the Sabbath day. The preaching of the gospel, and the use of the Liturgy, are not so inseparably joined together by God that man must never put them asunder; and such lectures as I have described are simply expositions of the Scriptures by clergymen who can get at their people in no other way, accompanied by a short prayer to the Almighty that he will be pleased to bless them with his all-powerful aid. If they are uncanonical, all I can say is, that the sooner the canons of the church are altered in this respect the better, for without such means the cause of the church in large towns is lost irrecoverably. Your obedient servant,

PRESBYTER.

NOTICES AND REVIEWS.

Discourses on some of the Principal Objects and Uses of the Historical Scriptures of the Old Testament, preached before the University of Oxford. By E. Hawkins, D.D., Provost of Oriel, &c. Oxford: Parker, 1833. 8vo. pp. 153. In the first discourse Dr. H. argues, after the great body of divines, that the object of the Old Testament is to give, not a civil, but a religious, history. In the second, that one of the great uses of this history is to shew man his need of redemption and sanctification, by setting forth a fearful proof of human guilt and weakness. He thinks that one of the leading purposes of the writers was to set forth the sins of the most eminent persons mentioned—that the history is characterised by a studious endeavour to do this, (a statement which, with deference to Dr. H., appears to the reviewer overstrained,) and that it also is so constructed as to shew the guilt and weakness of mankind in masses under every distinct mode of trial, so as to prove man failure under all, and that he required a redeemer and sanctifier. But, as Dr. H. thinks that people are apt to overlook God's love to man, his next discourse endeavours to shew that the Old Testament is especially calculated to exhibit that love, and that we are bound to read the Old Testament constantly, and search for marks of it, in order that we may not fall into the error alluded to. The fourth lecture

undertakes to shew that the Old Testament displays an extraordinary Providence acting over the Patriarchs and the Jews, though it began to fail about 500 years before the Jewish Church was replaced by the Christian. As far as the reviewer understands Dr. H., he says that the history displays the Providence of God over those who were gradually deserting the truth, or those who were in training for the reception of all truth; and that in either case it was necessary to make God's Providence more palpable than it now is, and that one visible means was making it more retributive, though it was never exactly so. Is this not rather a narrow view? In p. 94, Dr. H. mentions as instances, that God's Providence was not exactly retributive, Joseph, who was tried by undeserved afflictions, and Jacob, who, however favoured of heaven, yet laboured under great misfortunes. Surely Joseph's trials, God's open assistance of him, and Joseph's consciousness of it, (Gen. xl. 4, 8, xli. 16, 25, 32, 38, 39, xlv. 5, 7, 8,) are as clear proofs of a palpable interference of Providence as any in the Bible, although not of retribution. And as to Jacob, though in one sense favoured of heaven, yet surely it is open to any one to say that his calamities were retributions for the serious sins which he committed-his deceit of his father and fraud on his elder brother. Dr. H., in speaking of the case of Pharaoh, seems to think that there are but two ways of explaining this case, viz., either not taking the words used to imply literally compulsion, which is his own solution, or the shifting the hardening from the will to the understanding, which he rightly deems unsatisfactory. But he will find in Sherlock on Providence, quite a different, a more scriptural, and satisfactory solution than either. Dr. H.'s practical application of the doctrine of an extraordinary Providence in old times to ourselves is the showing that there is a Providence now, viz., that this life is a state of trial-that the course of nature is always the same, which is arranged for rewarding virtue and vice in this life-and that there may be interpositions even in the present condition of things. But these Dr. H. justly thinks would be more rare, as the present dispensation is more spiritual, that especially the presence of God's Holy Spirit to the Christian heart is a new privilege, and that the promises and threats of the gospel have respect to a future time, not to present good or evil. Dr. H. is extremely severe, in conclusion, on all who attempt to apply the facts in the Bible, which demonstrate an extraordinary Providence, to a dispensation like ours, of a nature so different from the Jewish, and says, that those who, from these examples, think that judgments will follow bad conduct now, as many preachers did, in cholera sermons, contravene the acknowledged fact that the Providence over Israel was extraordinary. Still all these restrictions, he says, do not destroy the use of the Scriptures, because they teach as a fact what prophets and apostles teach as a doctrine, viz., that there is a protecting Providence, only that a change has taken place in the manner of administration; and, as Providence now acts less visibly, though more effectually and generally, the Christian more needs the demonstration of an actual Providence given him by the Old Testament. Not being fortunate enough entirely to apprehend Dr. H.'s views in this discourse, the reviewer has thought it just to give a longer account of it. In the fifth discourse Dr. H. points out the value of the Old Testament, as affording proofs of God's faithfulness. The books of the Old Testament should be looked on not as one, but as separate. The events told in one fulfil promises made in a former one. And the records here given of God's faithfulness, not only as to great dispensations, but as to promises to individuals, are consoling to the Christian. Again, as so much of the Jewish dispensation consisted in temporal rewards and punishments, their annals are expressly fitted to illustrate God's faithfulness. The recording examples of faith, too, (under inferior advantages to ours,) as is the case in the Old Testament, is of great consequence and use. In the last lecture Dr. H., after justly protesting against the overstraining of every thing in the Old Testament, as significant of Christianity, goes on to shew how fully and entirely, neverthe

less, the Christian scheme is developed in the Old Testament, and how important an use of the Old Testament this is.

In a discourse in the appendix Dr. H. discusses the exact value of the Mosaic Sacrifices, and decides it to be this, that they cleansed the Jew from uncleanness, even in moral cases, so that he might worship God without sin, and procure actual forgiveness for all offences against the ceremonial law, except presumptuous ones. The trespass offerings, which procured remission for moral guilt, are, Dr. H. allows, an objection to this scheme; but he observes that the system of divines will not always exactly fit the different dispensations of God. Where this occurs, it would seem to be a pretty considerable objection to the systems in question. Dr. H. will find, on examination, that a good deal of his argument in this sermon is, in fact, assumption-an assumption that the meaning of the word to cleanse from sin, is to remove ceremonial uncleanness only.

The reviewer has given so full an account of Dr. H.'s work, that he can find no room for general remarks. He thinks that Mr. Miller's invaluable Bampton Lectures take a sounder view of the subject of the second discourse than Dr. H.'s, which is somewhat overstrained. The fifth and sixth discourses are very pleasing, and likely to be very useful.

THE BIBLICAL CABINET, OR HERMENEUTICAL, EXEGETICAL, AND PHILOLOGICAL LIBRARY. Vol. III. Titmann's Synonyms of the New Testament. Edinburgh: Clark. 1833. 12mo. pp. 265.

THE plan of this work has already been explained and spoken of with commendation, and such commendation is justly due to those who try to direct men's thoughts to sound criticism of the Holy Scripture. That particular branch of study is at a far lower ebb than it ought to be, especially in this country; and in Germany the really great scholars have too much confined themselves to profane authors, not throwing the light of their accurate critical knowledge on Holy Writ. Yet among the works of German writers are to be found some most valuable treatises, and the projectors of this work will do a great service, and deserve general encouragement, if by setting such matter before the public, they excite a stronger taste for a pursuit so truly important. In Titmann's Synonyms there is a good deal of valuableand sound remark, which deserves to be known, and it was quite right to translate the work. But Tittman's scholarship is not always accurate. For example, in p. 119, on rò ev povoŬvtes (Philipp. ii. 2) he has built a great deal of theory on a critical error. He conceives rò v to express what is really exprest by ev without the article. So that he must be used with caution, but yet ought to be used. Such a book, if it did nothing else, would do good by leading to careful research. The publishers, who are about to translate some Commentaries, would do well to give the public the Commentary on St. John by the other Tittmann, a very sound and excellent treatise, which would go into two of their very cheap and portable volumes. For Gesenius and Dathe, unless most carefully expurgated, there can be no wish. Pareau, which they are about to give us, is a valuable book, and so will be the collection of tracts from the excellent Storr, Knappe, and Nösselt.

Introductory Lecture on Political Economy, delivered at King's College, London, with a Syllabus of the Lecture. By the Rev. R. Jones, M. A. London. Murray. 1833.

THERE is very strong reason to congratulate King's College, and the country generally, on the appointment of Mr. Jones to the chair of Political Economy, a remark which will need no confirmation among those who have read his invaluable treatise on Rent; a work, by the way, which is quite full of more

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