what they are. He pronounces them to be, for the most part, false in spirit, and consequently feeble in action. The human soul escapes them, for they do not ply it with the right instruments; and there is nothing in their own trusts and impulses to kindle a divine enthusiasm, an inexhaustible activity. This false spirit manifests itself in the usual conception of Religion as a means to an endsomething instrumental to man's safety and happinessman's safety and happiness thus occupying the first place in our regards as our goal and inspiration. This is to take Religion into the service of our Happiness-ourselves the principal object, Religion the secondary instrument. This is not to serve God, but to make God serve us. This is not to love God, but ourselves, and God for our own sakes. This is not the infinite aspiration and worship of the Soul, but the very definite homage and service of the selfish affections and desires. Religion, under this view, is not the life of the Soul, the sympathy of our harmonious nature with God, but a means for securing comforts, and warding off inconveniences and pains. Who can deny that there is truth in the indictment? Who can deny that an intense anxiety for personal safety is the main feeling which our British Churches are apt to generate? Can it be said that Religion, as represented by our Churches, is prominently the delight in, and pursuit of, spiritual excellence by our spiritual powers and sympathies, without regard to results of any kind except the resulting fellowship with God and with all goodness? Do not the Churches appeal systematically to selfish springs of action, to care for individual safety, rather than to spiritual affections, to the love of God, as all in all, both end and instrument?

"I apprehend that in our reading of God's message, man occupies the first place in our attention, God a subordinate one. The grand purport of it, as we receive it, cherish it, promulgate it, is human rather than divine-has respect to our safety more than to his rights-constitutes our happiness the goal of the gospel, and subjection to God merely a necessary mode of arriving at it. If the fact be so and perhaps they whose observation has been most careful and most extensive will be the readiest to corroborate the surmise it will materially serve our present purpose to ascertain its real significance, and trace its influence upon the spiritual condition of the British Churches. If I mistake not, it will be found the key

to a great deal that is now regarded as perplexing and mysterious. There is an essential difference, both in kind and in effect, between the contemplation of excellence itself, and the contemplation of the advantages that may accrue to us from it. The last is the too exclusive exercise of religious people in the present day :- the full moral power of the Gospel can only be realized by means of the first. It must be allowed indeed that our most vivid impressions of Divine excellence are produced by those illustrations of it which come to us fraught with blessings to ourselves—but it is not the less true that the point of contact between our souls and God, the ground whereupon we mingle our sympathies with his, and become absorbed into, and identified with him, is higher up than any desire of personal benefit can carry us. The Character of God, considered as such, of which Christianity is but a reflection, although the clearest and the brightest, may, and should be, the home, the ultimate place of repose, to our intuitions and affections. He who does us good is a worthier object of study and regard than the good which he does us. The message of love which discloses to us so much of the mind of him who sent it, and which, after all, is nothing less nor more than a fitting expression of himself, can hardly be imagined to have accomplished its highest ends, if the thoughts and emotions which it awakens in our hearts relate principally, not to what he is, but to what we gain."

The consequences of this unspiritual apprehension are most truly traced. Religion is separated from human pursuits, and put aside as a thing by itself. Business is not regarded as Religion. Religion is not regarded as the spirit of all occupation. Religion becomes a respectful recognition of God at proper times, for reasons of sufficient weight. "The response to the message of God's love is given back rather by the formal exercises of worship, than by the whole character of the man. There is evidence of concern for salvation-there is but little of deep sympathy with God." Religion consequently is regarded as an official matter, and is vicariously discharged, handed over to a distinct profession. Most men would regard themselves as not official but officious, intruders into sacred functions, if they were to make any direct efforts in their own persons for the extension of Christ's Kingdom. The Clergy are to perform all properly religious offices: enough for the Laity if they do not break the Commandments. Whatever spiritual gifts they may have of utterance and wisdom, -they yet might be women and under St. Paul's interCHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 48.

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dict, so rigidly are they compelled to keep silence in the Churches. "No man," "2 says our Author with earnest moral feeling, "contemplating with complacency the ever working and disinterested energy of Jesus, and rejoicing in it as an exhibition of character, could satisfy the yearnings of his heart by merely setting others to do the good which he might do himself. Were it possible to make over to another his opportunities of personal service, none would acquiesce in such an arrangement whose affections were in unison with the evangelic representations of God. That piety must be predominantly selfish, and must concern itself much more intently about benefit to be gained, than about loveliness of character made manifest, which is not impelled by its own instincts to make the diffusion of revealed truth its own individual concern. The genuine sentiment of subjective Christianity must needs be such as the words of Christ will most fitly express, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."And most justly is it added that personal hopes and fears, the more they are appealed to, are only the sooner exhausted; whilst the emotions that are awakened by the appeals of moral excellence, the more they are exercised, become more lively and intense.

A second charge entered by our Author against the British Churches is that they substitute Law for Love. Men are not put upon their honour. Their gifts and their sacrifices are not free-will tributes of sympathy and love, but exactions of duty, and so instead of doing as much as they can to satisfy a deep inward affection, they do as little as is compatible with outward law and reputation. And this is another consequence from Religion regarded as a means to an end; for economy of instrumental power

is obvious wisdom.

A third charge made by our Author against the British Churches is the stress laid upon logical propositions, to the neglect or injury of the spirit of faith. This is so important, and so clearly stated, that we must permit him to speak in his own words :

"The facts and doctrines of the Scriptures, like the forms and laws of the material Universe, constitute but a medium of expression, whereby the uncreated, invisible, and eternal Spirit, makes the

spirits of men cognizant of what he is, as the archetype of all conceivable excellence. Nature, Providence, the Gospel-each may be regarded as a dialect of speech in which the perfect and absolute Ruler makes himself audible—or as windows opening in different directions, through which we may gaze upon varied aspects of the same character-or as figure, attitude, and countenance, by which he gives intelligible and expressive utterance to the purposes of his heart. Substantially they answer their main end when by their means, whatever may be the incidental mistakes we fall into in respect of the significance of particular details, we get at the general bearing of God's mind and will regarding us, and suitably respond in admiration, affection, and confidence-and they fail of it when whatever may be the accuracy of the acquaintance with themselves, we discern little or nothing of the glorious truth which they are intended to embody . May there not be learned orthodoxy, or an accurate view of the logical forms of revelation without even a glimpse of their divine significance, or a single pulsation of heart in unison with what God meant to convey to the soul through their instrumentality? And may there not be also a fervent and affectionate sympathy with the design and tenour of the gospel, in connexion with considerable misapprehension in relation to particular theories or doctrines? . . . I gather from God's method of revealing himself both in his works and in his word, that an eye for the divine in them is of greater value than an accurate perception of their form or letter, and that to exercise and nourish the faculty of spiritual insight is a better thing than to gain assent to the fairer side of a controverted dogma. Now it appears to me that the British Churches invert this order. The objective in Christianity has been too exclusively regarded-the subjective, overlooked and even discouraged. As in some schools, a great deal of propositional knowledge is imparted, when the powers of the mind are neither elicited, exercised, nor trained, so in the Churches just thoughts are more eagerly insisted upon than just habits of thinking-and orthodox conclusions have engrossed the Zeal, no small part of which ought to have been devoted to the culture of the faculties by which they are to be apprehended and assimilated. Letter, which has its own sphere, and that not an unimportant one, has usurped the place of spirit-and overweening concern for what men shall believe has produced a carelessness as to the cause and character of their faith.-The evil breaks out in many unsightly symptoms. Various modes, more or less refined, of trespass upon the right of private judgment-worse than futile attempts at uniformity of religious opinion-denominational divisions and rivalries—waste of energy which needs to be economized-Zeal for proselytismpolemical rancour destructive of all charity—and a fruitless diversion

of effort from what most imperatively demands it, are a few of the grievous phenomena in which the mistake becomes visible to the world."

A Religion of the qualities described, inherently weak, can have no power to conquer the worldly and self-seeking elements indigenous in man. It is not far enough removed from their own nature to lift the soul above them, and accordingly under the names of the Aristocratical Sentiment, the Professional Sentiment, and the Trade Spirit, Mr. Miall proceeds to specify the vulgar sins and diseases to which such a Religion is constitutionally liable. The life being of an inferior type, and the disease in the blood, these blotches show the earthliness and poverty of its nature. Its feebleness exhibits itself on all occasions of exposure to strong external temptations, to the spirit of the world. By the Aristocratic Sentiment our Author means the tendency to value a man according to the circumstances of his worldly lot, and this disposition, directly anti-spiritual and anti-Christian, he charges upon the British Churches. That the World judges in this way there can be no doubt. The following are the indications that the Church has too much sympathy with the World. Some late schemes of which Mr. Miall is cognizant for raising the respectability of the Congregational Churches, so as to adapt them to the taste of the higher classes: the disposition to treat as a desecration, and unbecoming, all spontaneous utterance or administration of Religion: the taste for Foreign Missions, where the distance conceals the vulgarity of human wretchedness and invests it with romance, and the little contact with the degraded heathen at home: the invidious distinctions between rich and poor in the arrangements of our places of worship: the etiquette of preaching, the didactic style, fastidious coldness, and absence of colloquialism, engendered by the habit of considering only the so-called respectable and refined: the carefully preserved lines of demarcation between the banker or merchant and small tradesman, and between the tradesman and the labourer, within the sanctuary as out of it, so that we seem to have used the Apostle James against himself, and borrowed hints from him for the indulgence of the class spirit which he denounces. To