the Church gives him the open Bible and says "Read it, study it, and preach your own honest thoughts about it; and with the other hand she gives him her list of dogmas and says "But mind you are always to come to a conclusion in exact conformity with these doctrines." The slavery in which our Clergy is bound is simply infamous; and it is not to be wondered at that at the present moment hardly a single Bishop or Clergyman can be found who heartily and entirely obeys the law in matters of doctrine.

You know how it is with the Ritualists who have burst through every anti-Romish doctrine in the Prayer-book. You know how it is with the Broad-church School, which is merely a vast number of Clergymen more or less independent and determined not to be bound by the fetters of dogma. But perhaps you do not know that the Evangelical or Low Church party is an open offender like all the rest. When they first arose, they were justly branded as heretics, for their open repudiation of the doctrine of predestination or election as laid down in the xviith Article. For the most part they are Arminians and not Calvinists, and exactly to that degree have no more legal right to minister in the Church than either of the other Schools, not to mention other deviations from orthodoxy. And can anything be more demoralizing, or more likely to produce dissensions and strife than for a law to remain unrepealed which cannot impartially be put in force? I do not hesitate to say that not ten clergymen could be found in all the Church whose doctrine was legally in conformity with the existing standards. Dean Stanley goes further still and says that there is not one. "All would have to go out from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the meanest curate in the wilds of Cumberland." If then the clergy are legally bound to suppress the honest convictions at which they may arrive by reflection and higher knowledge, whenever those convictions came into collision with the dogmas of the Church, how can we wonder that the intelligence of the country has been utterly estranged from clerical teachings and clerical modes of thought?

Add to this the misery of listening to a man when you are quite uncertain whether or not he is speaking his honest mind? Is it worth while to go to Church-even only for the sermon-if we cannot be sure that the preacher believes what he says? Now the worst of the present state of things

is that not only must there be a number of insincere preachers speaking what their hearts deny; but when a really honest man is giving both his real belief on any orthodox doctrine and in an orthodox manner, you cannot trust his sincerity; for aught you know he may be saying all this because he thinks he is bound to say it though he disbelieves it all the while. In fact you cannot trust the sincerity of any preacher until he begins to be unorthodox, and to put himself in peril by departure from the legal dogmas, and not till then does he give any guarantee of his sincerity.

I say, in the interests of any faith, and of all shades of orthodoxy whatever, this is a most cruel position in which to place a preacher. It is as unfair to every phase of orthodoxy as to every phase of independent thought. It adds a new element to the prevailing disaffection, for while the intelligent are repelled by the revolting dogmas, the pious and devout are outraged by the impiety of their preacher being insincere.

I much fear that if the Bishops were asked to consider the feasibility of withdrawing all fetters on the free expression of honest thought by the clergy, they would promptly meet it by the objection "Then heresy would be more rife than ever. And our fundamental truths' would vanish altogether." For their own sakes, I say I fear this would be their prompt reply. Translated into a little plainer English it means this, "These doctrines of ours have not a permanent and vital hold on the minds and hearts of the clergy, and they can only be maintained by legal enactments; if they were not artificially protected in this way, the Clergy so little believe them that they would never preach them unless forced to do so, under threat of pains and penalties. Our fundamental truths do not commend themselves to our Clergy, and would be soon obsolete and forgotten if we were to allow the Clergy to think for themselves in matters of religion, and to proclaim to their people what they really believed."

If this confession is really in the hearts of the Bishops, the sooner and more widely it is made known, the better for the Church and the nation; we shall then be all brought face to face with the essential ground of the alienation of the Laity, viz., that the dogmas which the clergy are now bound to teach, are not only at variance with the intelligence of the country, but are secretly disbelieved and repudiated by the Clergy themselves,

If this be not true; if liberty would be followed by an exactly opposite result; if the Clergy released from compulsion set to work with new zeal and devotion to preach the "fundamental truths "-and this time to hearers who could no longer doubt their sincerity-I can imagine nothing more congenial to the interests of orthodoxy, or more likely to restore the "fundamental truths" to the position of veneration and acceptance which the Bishops admit they have lost. If, I say, this should happen, it becomes the first duty of those who are the guardians of those fundamental truths to give them this chance of revival without delay. But if those truths should be in greater danger than ever of being entirely disregarded and superseded when the legal restrictions which enforce them are removed, then the now alienated Laity are, I think, more likely than ever to stand aloof from the Clergy and may even carry their estrangement into open hostility, and break in pieces with their own hands what the bishops and Clergy will not mend. It is a serious dilemma, but the problem is not insoluble, the wise alternative is only too patent and accessible.

What does the present law pretend to accomplish? To preserve these "fundamental truths," and to establish uniformity of doctrine throughout the Church. Does the present law actually secure these results, or is it not an utter and shameless failure? Can any Babel be worse than the Church's present confusion of tongues? Could any agglomeration of sects present more incongruous varieties of doctrine and ritual than the Church of England under the benign blessing of its Act of Uninformity and its 39 Articles? Surely confusion and strife could not be worse than they are now, heresy could not be more rampant, nor "fundamental truths" more neglected or despised.

But again I must say, do not blame the Bishops and Clergy for this state of things so long as you send representatives to the House of Commons who never move a little finger to ease the bondage of the Church, or to give a chance for honest truth to be heard. The lay people of this country, if they chose to do it could insist upon this present Parliament wiping out by a simple stroke of the pen those statutes by which the liberty of the clergy is so cruelly fettered and themselves made ridiculous in the eyes of all enlightened men. We are not so unreasonable as to ask Parliament to discuss

a single theological opinion, only to express in a most simple and straightforward manner this dictate of common sense : "Clergymen shall no longer be prosecuted for preaching their honest belief in matters of religion." If the "fundamental truths" are what they are said to be, they may well be left to take care of themselves; but if not-if they are only a poor pretence of truth and do not rest on the Rock of Reason and Righteousness-well, surely the Bishops and Clergy will be the first to bow before the unpalateable fact, and to direct their zeal for the welfare and enlightenment and "salvation" of mankind into more fitting and wholesome channels.

CARTER & WILLIAMS, General Steam Printers, 14, Bishopsgate Avenue, Camomile-street E.C

The Gospel of Adversity.

A SERMON,

PREACHED AT ST. GEORGE'S HALL, LANGHAM
PLACE, MARCH 28, 1875, BY THE

REV.

CHARLES VOYSEY.

66

PSALM, CXXVI, 6, 7.-" They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that now goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him."

NE of the last lessons we thoroughly learn in the school of life is to believe in the real value of early

discouragements, difficulties, and disappointments. The language of childhood and boyhood is the very opposite of the language of our manhood. While age and experience lead us to say "It is good for man to bear the yoke in his youth," the ignorance and inexperience of early life led us to say, "It is not good for man to bear the yoke at all."

In times like ours, when prosperity has spread over a larger area, and those who were once only prosperous have now become luxurious; it is more than ever difficult to persuade people to believe in the wholesomeness of disappointment and adversity. The very air is filled with the worship of earthly comfort, and little boys and girls grow up under the firm conviction that they are always to have their own way; and that happiness, no matter how hollow or shortlived, is to be the goal of their pursuit. It is the apotheosis

of success.

Rev. C. Voysey's sermons are to be obtained at St. George's Hall, every Sunday morning,orfrom the Author (by post), Camden Ilouse, Dulwich, S.E. Price one penny, postage a halfpenny..