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whether the report be true, that it has recently been the practice of the Society to correct (I speak not of mere verbal corrections, but of alterations of sentiment) the good old tracts of our fathers? And if so, whether he thinks it right to send into the world the tracts so corrected as expressing the sentiments of those whose names they bear?

Before I close this letter, I beg to observe, that I rejoice as cordially as any individual whatever in the extent of unquestionable good which is ef fected by the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, by means of the distribution of Bibles and Prayer-books, the support of charityschools, and their missions in India. But my warm and unqualified approbation of these objects ought not to blind me to the real merits of the question which has been agitated in your pages; namely, whether a society, one of whose objects it is to disseminate tracts, be not more liable to perversion and abuse than a society which is restricted by its constitution from circulating any other work, in one case, than the pure text of the Bible; and in another, than the Articles, Homilies, and Liturgy of the Church of England. I am, &c.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

X.

SHOULD you think it worth your while to bestow any farther attention on Mr. Norris's book against the Bible Society, it would be but justice to an individual that you should admit the following informa

tion.

At the 66th page of Mr. Norris's Appendix to the second edition of his work, there is a note attached to a speech of Mr. Eyton's, in which he accuses a 66 young divine," ," whose name, he says, he will omit on account of his connections (but whom he so describes, that all his friends may recognise him,) of having bor

rowed a sentiment from Mr. Eyton, and having declared his conviction, at the meeting of the Hackney Auxiliary Institution, that the opposers of the Bible Society "were acting under diabolical influence." Now, in justice to the gentleman alluded to, I must assure you, that he never uttered a sentiment capable of such a meaning, without the most shameful perversion, and that he does personally declare his abhorrence of it.

The passage in his speech which has been thus perverted, was to this purpose: "That he had no doubt, if union had been preserved among Christians after the period of the Reformation,effectual attempts would long ago have been made to communicate the blessing of Divine Revelation to the heathen world; but that the prince of darkness, in order to prevent such a blessed effect, had immediately begun to sow the seeds of discord among them; and that he had done so on the old principle of "Divide et impera.'

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Judge, sir, how little he was aware that such a simple truth should be turned into so horrid a declaration as Mr. Norris has made of it. I can assure you, also, that there was nothing in his whole speech which the most sober-minded Christian would condemn as "raving enthusiasm." He declared his unfeigned attachment to his own church, and said he could with joy support the Bible Society, because it did not even call upon him to dissemble that attachment. I could send you the whole of what he delivered, if necessary. It is of no consequence, except as vindicating an individual from a most unjust mirepresentation, which, if believed, might injure him in the estimation of some who know him.

Surely, Mr. Norris has no right to vent "his spleen" upon individuals, without first ascertaining that he is in possession of what they actually said. I am, &c.

JUSTUS.

REVIEW OF PUBLICATIONS.

The Obligations and Reward of a Minister of the Gospel. A Sermon, preached at Durham, August 2, 1814, at the Visitation of the Hon. and Right Rev. Shuté Barrington, LL.D. by Divine Providence, Lord Bishop of Durham. By the Rev. CHARLES THORP, M. A. Rector of Ryton, Chaplain to the Right Hon. Earl Grey. Published by the Bishop's command. Durham, Andrews: London, Rivington. 1814.

It would be difficult, we think, to name any occasion more interesting in its nature and design, than that of an episcopal visitation. Were the great purpose, to which this part of our ecclesiastical constitution is directed, kept steadily in view by the different parties concerned; how deeply impressive would be the scene presented by an assembly of clergy, convoked in the presence of their diocesan, to render to him an account of their respective spiritual charges, and to be reminded of the important duties and solemn obligations of their ministerial office! Could we have witnessed on such occasions the proceedings of a Leighton, a Beveridge, or a Hopkins; could we have heard their anxious inquiries into the state of the several flocks over which the Holy Ghost had made them over seers, and the words of weighty admonition, which fell from their lips, we should doubtless have been carried back to the days of apostolical simplicity, and perhaps have discovered some faint image of that awful scrutiny, wherewith the Great Shepherd of the sheep will one day try the fidelity with which all his subordinate pastors have discharged the sacred trust confided to them. Happy indeed would it be for the church of Christ, if, anticipating the transactions of that day, all orders of

the clergy were duly impressed by a sense of the dread responsibility which attaches to their office and character-if, with an union of paternal tenderness and sacred authority, our dignitaries were always seen in. tent on admonishing, instructing, stimulating the inferior members of their body, and the latter were every where conspicuous for their zeal to edify the people by wholesome doctrine and a holy conversation! But though we have too frequent occasion to deplore the secularity and inattention to the duties of their high vocation, which appear in the different departments of the hierarchy, and to lament that the pulpit and the press should be employed, even by those who minister at the altar, to propagate error, to disseminate prejudice, and inflame animosity, we have also the gratification of remarking the increased fidelity and earnestness with which the distinguishing truths of Christianity are proclaimed in the discourses, and enforced by the lives of our ecclesiastical brethren.

It is to the wider diffusion of this spirit, that the aim of Mr. Thorp is directed in the sermon now before us, to which we have sincere pleasure in calling the attention of our readers. With a truly laudable zeal for the best interests of the church of which he is, we doubt not, a conscientious and exemplary minister, he has availed himself of the important opportunity afforded him, to urge upon his fellow-labourers in the sacred vineyard, a serious consideration of "the obligations and reward of a minister of the Gospel." We trust his faithful appeal was not made in vain :-it certainly is calculated to excite a salutary compunction and alarm in the breasts of such as might have neglected the duties of their calling, and to promote an increase

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of earnestness and circumspection in the most unblameable of his clerical associates.

His text is highly appropriate to the occasion and to his purpose; 1 Tim. iv. 16. "Take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine; continue in them for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee." After briefly adverting to the urgency which the exhortation here given derives from the frequency of its occurrence in all the apostolic exhortations, in the last charge to the church of Ephesus, in the Epistles to Timothy, and to Titus also," he proceeds to a view of its importance from considering the nature of the ministerial work, and the dif. ficulties attending its execution. On the first of these topics he expresses himself thus :

"The scope and design of the Christian ministry is of the noblest kind. It is no other than to carry on to its perfection that stupendous dispensation of grace, which has been from the earliest time the object of God's providential care, and for the accomplishment of which our Lord was pleas ed to divest himself of glory, to suffer, and to die. Its concern is not with the fading visions of time, but the unchanging realities of eternity. We are not charged with the present welfare and affairs of men ; with the conduct and interests of states and empires, (though they are indirectly, if not im. mediately, affected by the influence of our ministry) but we have a greater care than any of these. Our business is with the immortal soul, which, proceeding from God, and liappy only in union with him, is in danger, by reason of its pollutions, of a fatal, an eternal separation from the source of life and good. It is here we are to work; it is here we are to form a spiritual dominion; to introduce the saving principle; to turn the eye from darkness to light,' the affections from the power of Satan unto God." p. 8.

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We are very sure that every faithful Christian pastor will most feelingly concur with Mr. Thorp, in the comment which he makes on this short survey of the scope of the Christian ministry, that "the name

of such an occupation as this may not only rouse our vigilance, but alarm our fears," and that those who are best qualified to carry into effect the noble design they are engaged in, are the oftenest "led to ask in profound abasement, Who is sufficient for such things?" Who, indeed, that contemplates the grandeur of man's original elevation, and the depth of his present debasement, the infinite distance between sin and holiness, the terrors of hell and the joys of heaven, is not filled with awful apprehension when he regards himself as the instrument of effecting so mighty a change as the Gospel proposes to accomplish, in the moral condition of man; of bringing back an apostate creature into a state of allegiance to his Creator; of restoring the sinner to the likeness and favour of his God; of translating him from the society of devils and accursed spirits, to that of "an innumerable company of angels; and to God the Judge of all, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant,' from the dismal heritage of eternal darkness and wo, to the enjoyment of unspotted purity and unclouded happiness in the realms of light and peace ? Who that meditates upon the glorious display of the Divine perfections, exhibited in the wondrous scheme of human redemption, and considers what he himself is who has undertaken to be the minister of reconciliation, the ambassador and representative of Christ; does not feel himself in a situation similar to that of the prophet, when he " saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filling the temple," and almost exclaim, in the language of unaffected humiliation, "Wo is me, for I am undone, be. cause I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips!" and under an overwhelming sense of his unworthiness and insufficiency, pray that some seraph might, as it were,

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be commissioned to touch his lips with a living coal from off the altar of God? We feel ourselves, indeed, utterly incompetent to represent, according to its first dimensions, the magnitude of the design proposed in the ministry of the Gospel. We

can only offer up our earnest prayer to Almighty God, that he would be pleased to awaken and keep alive in all his consecrated servants, a deep and affecting conviction of the importance of their work; and at the same time animate and support them by the amplest assurances of his readiness to impart that strength and sufficiency which none but himself can supply.

Our clerical readers will also agree with us, in acknowledging the justice of the following observations on the "difficulties which present themselves in the prosecution of this momentous work."

"Of these," says Mr. Thorp, "the first, perhaps the greatest, is the latent but rooted prejudice which subsists in the unrenewed mind against our message. The truths we have to teach are not of the nature of matters of speculation and inquiry, which want only their proper evidence to be acknowledged and received. We are not in the situation of the advocate, whose arguments are effectual, because the cause he pleads is one in which the judge is no way interested; we speak, where the person who is to decide is himself a party to the question, and where the strongest feelings of a proud and corrupted nature are brought into play against us, and our unwelcome tale. Hardly are men induced, but under the influence of a superior Power, to acquiesce in the humbling and distasteful doctrines, which search the sinner's heart, and bring him mourning, and in repentance, to the cross of his Redeemer. Hardly are they stayed from 'shutting their ears, like the deaf adder,' against the pro

*We would particularly recommend to the attentive perusal of all who are unacquainted with it, a most excellent and impressive address, "On the Discourage ments and Supports of the Christian Ministry," by the Rev. Robert Hall, already reviewed in this work.

phet of better tidings, refusing to hearken

to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely!"

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"When we are happy enough to secure a hearing, and raise a wholesome appréhension in the breast, we have other mischiefs to encounter: we have to draw the attention from a present, and agreeable, to an uninviting and distant object; to lead those who are absorbed in things which are seen and temporal, to things which are unseen and eternal;' to wrestle with the powers of the world, which, ever and anon offering its favour of a new, and unknown authority. pleasures, incessantly solicits regard, in It is our aim to break the chains of a strange and deceitful master, whose spells are wound about the heart; to bring the wanderers home to their righteous Lord, from whom they are estranged, and whose rule and converse they dislike We call them to sacrifice the cherished objects of misplaced but strong affection; to fix their attachment on pleasures as yet untasted and unfelt, which, however exquisite or ample they may be, the natural man is wholly unprepared to relish; and though the joys we have to offer, are confessedly superior to those empty and unsatisfying delights, on which they are accustomed to dwell,-too great indeed they are for the eye to see, the ear to hear, or the heart to comprehend them ;-they have little influence on the unhallowed spirit which knows them not, and has no desire to possess them." pp. 9-11.

We were particularly pleased with the sentence which concludes these observations :—“Let us go to the our own bosoms, and learn strength of this indisposition to Divine things, and the skill and care requisite to the task of subduing it.' Ib.

We do not hesitate to say, that these few words, dictated, we doubt not, by the genuine convictions of Mr. Thorp's own heart, contain in them a reference to the grand secret of ministerial usefulness, viz. a minister's acquaintance with himself. Without this, vain are all qualifications, however numerous, however brilliant. Though he speak with the tongue of angels, he will not speak to the hearts of his hearers, unless he have been made to feel the

infirmities and temptations incident to him in common with his depraved fellow-mortals, he stands in a peculiar manner exposed to the assaults of the great enemy of souls, who is well aware, that when the shepherd is betrayed into negligence or infidelity, the sheep become a much easier prey to his devices.

desperate malady which sin has introduced into his own soul and theirs, and be able to testify the sufficiency of the cure proposed in the Gospel, and its suitableness to their case, from happy experience of its efficacy in his own. How shall he rouse the unawakened sinner, or reclaim the wanderer, who is himself lulled in security, and unconscious of the "Nor is mere freedom from offensive number and extent of his own devices," Mr. Thorp adds, "sufficient to saflections from the path that leads to heaven? How shall he bind up the

broken-hearted, and comfort them that mourn in Zion, who knows not what it is to be affected by a sense of sin, and disunion from the source and centre of all perfection, and all bliss? Let him who would discharge to any purpose his commission as minister of the Gospel, study deeply "the plague of his own heart ;" its alienation from God; its indisposition to converse with spiritual and eternal objects; its attachment to those which are visible and tempo. ral; its unfaithfulness to salutary impressions; its pride, self-deceit fulness, and hypocrisy. By such communion with himself, and habitual instant prayer for Divine illumination and grace and strength, he will be qualified, and not otherwise, to address the denunciations of God's holy law to sinners slumbering on the brink of eternity, and to apply the promises of the Gospel to the penitent, humble, sincere believer in Christ.

Mr. Thorp proceeds to view the apostolic admonition given in the text, as deriving additional weight from a consideration of the more personal and private difficulties which attend the Christian minister's discharge of his sacred functions. In the front of these, he places the obligation imposed on him, of manifesting a superior sanctity of character throughout his whole deportment and conversation. He justly observes, that besides the

tisfy the call of duty: we are to aspire to high degrees of moral excellence; to a holy superiority over the allurements of sin; to exemplary sanctity of life and conversation; and to such a demonstration of the spirit and righteousness of Christ, as may not only secure us from the reproach of those who watch for our halting, but excite in the brethren a laudable ambition

to follow the footsteps of their Saviour, and
maintain in all things a character becoming
their honourable profession, and their ex-
alted hopes. 'Be thou an example to the
Holiness in the priesthood is not only a
flock, in faith, in purity, in conversation.'
moral duty, but an essential part of their
sacred calling; an instituted mean of sal-
vation; the comment on the doctrine,
died to save, is committed to our hands,
The guardianship of souls, which Christ
and we are bound to consult continually
the safety of our precious trust, avoiding
not only what is in itself unlawful, but what
might in its abuse lead to evil, lest by any

means we become ministers to sin."
12, 13.

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The topic here insisted on by Mr. Thorp, is indeed big with importance, and demands the most serious attention of all who are either about to enter on the sacred office or are already engaged in it. Our limits do not allow us to enlarge upon it; one should think, indeed, that it needed but to be stated, in order to be felt, and (did not lamentable experience too often prove the contrary) that it could not fail of inspiring the clergy of every rank with an awful sense of their need of constant vigilance, jealous self-inspection, and earnest prayer. We cannot, however,dismiss this part of the subject, without just remarking, in addition to what Mr. Thorp has so well

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