66 FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. "Room for the proud! Ye sons of clay, His chariot wheels before! Lo! with what scorn his lofty eye Room for the proud! But slow the feet Ah! where must now his spirit fly Who show'd it not before ! Room for the proud! In ghastly state 88 TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. Jerusalem, Jerusalem! enthroned once on high, Thou favor'd home of God on earth, thou Heav'n below the sky! Oh! hadst thou known thy day of Grace, and flock'd beneath the wing, And who art thou that mournest me? replied the ruin grey, Our day of Grace is sunk in night, our time of Mercy spent, Yet gaze not idly on our face, but, sinner, warned be, Who spared not his chosen seed, may send his wrath on thee! Our day of Grace is sunk in night, thy noon is in its prime, Oh turn and seek thy Saviour's face, in this accepted time! Y. CRITICAL NOTICES. ART. IV. Addresses, with Prayers and Original Hymns, for the Use of Families and Schools. By a Lady, authoress of "Devotional Exercises for the Use of Young Persons." London. Hunter. 1826. THIS is a praiseworthy attempt to supply a deficiency in our theological literature. All persons engaged in the religious education of the young must have felt the want of something more brief, intelligible and interesting than the majority of sermons for family reading. These Addresses, twelve in number, are not by any means all we want, but, as far as they go, they will serve a useful purpose, and, we hope, will open the way for further attempts in the same direction. Among them the first, sixth, and seventh are particularly calculated to impress. Here and there we have remarked a passage somewhat too speculative, as at p. 142, and rather too confident an assumption of a disputed and non-essential doctrine, as in the Address on "the Character of Christ;" but every family of young persons, where religious instruction is conducted on general Unitarian principles, will find this little book a valuable present. On the whole, it is perhaps superior to the Author's Devotional Exercises, which have been already favourably received by the public. ART. V. - Hints to Parents; with Exercises for exciting the attention and strengthening the thinking powers of Children, in the spirit of Pestalozzi's method. Nos. I. II. III. IV. and. V. Darton and Harvey. Price ls. each. TWELVE years have now elapsed since Mrs. Hamilton, in a very sensible and strong appeal to the patrons and directors of schools, endeavoured to shew how much the benefit of the Bell and Lancaster modes of teaching "might be increased by a partial adoption of the Hints to the Patrons and Directors of Schools, by Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton. Longman and Co. plan of Pestalozzi." That appeal, we are sorry to say, appears to have been made with little effect. It still continues too much the custom to teach children dogmatically, and to feed them with words without examination or development of the capacity for receiving them. It is yet too much our habit to deal in general ideas; we talk to children of right and wrong, of being good and being naughty; but if persons engaged in education would take the trouble to inquire, they would soon find that there is a most lamentable ignorance in their pupils with respect to the limits of good and evil, that while extreme and glaring vices which are of rarer occurrence, are, perhaps, marked out pretty distinctly in their minds as things to be avoided, the greatest confusion prevails with regard to the more common errors of human life. Mrs. Hamilton has well pointed out the absurdity of denominating elementary instruction in reading and writing, education: she shews that the improvement of moral perceptions is the point at which we ought to aim; she knew that it was necessary to arouse and cultivate the affections and faculties before this could be done; hence she recommends the Pestalozzian method in preference to any other. In the same spirit is conceived the little work now under notice. It is an appeal to mothers, to whom alone the office of superintending the infant years of children belongs; and it aims at impressing upon them the importance of paying attention to the exercise and development of the faculties, from the very earliest period at which the eye and ear of the child are directed towards outward objects. It is no new attempt to burthen the minds of children with an oppressive load of learning, but a gradually strengthening process by which all their powers will be enabled to acquire energy, readiness, and correctness. According to the Pestalozzian principle, a child is early led to make accurate observations on external objects, their number, form, and properties. The name is early associated with the thing. When an instructor receives a child thus prepared, how different is his task from that of him who finds his pupil's mind not ignorant merely, but torpid-who discovers after a long and laboured lesson, to his utter despair, that the whole has been rendered incomprehensible by the child's having appended a totally different meaning to some one word with which he set out! We know not the author of the "Hints to Parents," but they are evidently the productions of a person well informed on the subject of education, and deeply interested in the formation of the Christian character. In execution they are rather desultory and rambling-but valuable lessons may be learnt from them, and a reader who is really desirous of acquiring a knowledge of the author's aim, will find with a little exercise of patience that every lesson, exercise, or hint, however unconnected it may seem, has a bearing upon the same object. One grand good to be derived from examining such a little work as this, is, that it sets parents and teachers immediately to work. Many a mother, it is to be feared, conceives herself to be in a very satisfactory state, if she is holding herself in readiness to apply her moral and religious principles to the purpose of her child's instruction on what she deems fitting occasions. Now, according to Pestalozzi, she is thus grievously wasting time: the more constantly, vigorously and justly she cultivates the powers of her child in every direction, the more she is superseding the necessity for dry, moral instruction; she is leading her pupils to feel and think aright upon all points; and while connecting every object, every fact, every discovery with some correspondent emotion of gratitude, faith, and love, to the Supreme Being, she is establishing a habit and laying a foundation which cannot be overthrown. ART. VI-A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of London, at the Visitation in July, 1826. By William, Lord Bishop of London. 8vo. pp. 40. Rivingtons. EPISCOPAL Charges have descended from the stately quarto to the modest octavo; and this change has been ac * Selon Rousseau, il faut attendre et guetter le moment favorable pour placer l'instruction, pour inculquer la moralité -selon Pestalozzi, le moment est toujours là, ce moment embrasse tout la durée de l'enfance. companied by another of greater moment, namely, a lower tone in the assertion of ecclesiastical claims and the condemnation of dissent. The word schism, which used to stand forward in capitals in every page of a bishop's address to his clergy, is now rarely used, and never with its ancient offensiveness. It is perceived by our mitred orators that in the present state of society the Church of England can retain her hold of the people's affections solely by reason and charity; and certainly the use of these instruments of subjection are unspeakably more likely to retain the multitude in quiet submission, than fulminations against spiritual rebellion and woes on the heads of the abettors of heresy and separation. The The Bishop of London's Charge has suggested these reflections: it is sensible, temperate, and charitable. greater part of it is taken up with matters belonging only to the diocesan and his clergy; on these we have no dispo sition to remark: but there are some passages relating to the Roman Catholics and the Protestant Dissenters which are interesting to the general reader, and which we point out with the more satisfaction because they indicate that improvement in the spirit of episcopal charges to which we have adverted. The Right Rev. Prelate naturally refers to the controversy now in agitation between the Churches of Rome and England. He states fairly the points of difference between the two communions. He traces the Reformation to the conviction in the mind of the nation" of the necessity of separating from a communion which required the sacrifice of liberty and truth by the acknowledgment of an usurped power, and the profession of a corrupt faith." P. 11. He accounts for the silence so long maintained on the controversy; owing to which the people had become indifferent to the question and ignorant of its true grounds, aud some were led to imagine that a change had been insensibly wrought in the religion of Rome, and that in fact it had become more humble in its pretensions and more catholic in its spirit. This conclusion, he says, is now proved to be erroneous, and the Romish Church is avowedly unchangeable and intolerant. For this reason the Bishop calls upon his clergy "to resist an usurpation which would despoil them at once of" their "faith," their "liberties," and their "sacred character." But this, he adds, is not to be done "by retaliating misstatements, invectives and calumnies, or crudely asserting an unqualified right of private judgment, but by reference to primitive antiquity" and the Holy Scriptures. (Pp. 17, 18.) We know not whether his Lordship means to concede that the Protestant ground of "the right of private judgment" cannot be maintained by the Church of England in controversy with the Church of Rome. Some of the Romanists have fought with signal success on this arena, and almost driven the Church-of-England men to occupy for a moment the Unitarian position. We must, however, give the Right Rev. author the benefit of his qualifying epithet "crudely," which in some degree saves his Protestautism. Against the pretensions of the Church of Rome, be maintains for himself and clergy a "mission from Christ" (p. 19); but the Nonconformist would remind the Bishop that he can prove his "mission" only through the Church of Rome, which stoutly denies that she has parted with the least drop of her holy unction to the apostate Church of England. Of the Dissenters, his Lordship says, pp. 19, 20, that "the great body" (a bishop would not have used such a phrase in such a connexion in former times!)" shew no symptoms at present of particular acrimony against the church -that many are unsound in the faith, indisposed towards spiritual authority, and actuated by passionate zeal for their own tenets; but many there are who differ little from" the clergy" in doctrine, entertain a respect for the church, and have too much of real piety to thwart the views of the clergy, when they tend to the public good." We are glad to see this tenderness towards the soi-disant orthodox" Dissenters; but even they, as far as they are Dissenters, must be unsound in the Bishop's faith, and opposed to all episcopal authority; though certainly neither they nor the "heterodox" Dissenters would as a body thwart the clergy in any honest scheme for the public good. Their complaint is, that the clergy give them so few opportunities of co-operation in such schemes. We were a little alarmed when we found the Bishop recommending, p. 20, that the "motions" of infidels "should be jealously watched," fearing that he was about to appeal to the vigilance of the Attorney General, or the justice of peace or the constable; but our apprehensions were relieved by the explana tion that infidel motions should be " repressed in their commencement by sound reason." By nothing else assuredly can unbelief be put down. The Bishop indulges in the conclusion of his Charge, p. 39, in an auticipation of the ultimate triumph of his church over superstition, enthusiasm, and infidelity, and, as the consequence or the means, we suppose, of such triumph, of her "gradually throwing off the dross which is generated by human corruption is her own bosom"-to all which we, Dissenters as we are, cordially say, So BE IT. .ART. VII.-An Essay on the Perpetuity of Baptism, with an Appendix on Infant Dedication. By R. Wright. 12mo. pp. 62. Liverpool, printed and sold by F. B. Wright; sold by D. Eaton, and Teulon and Fox, London. Is. MR. WRIGHT has been employing the leisure which he has obtained by his retirement from Missionary labours in scriptural investigations. Amongst other subjects he has examined the question of the Perpetuity of Baptism, lately raised with so much zeal and even ea. gerness by some of our Antipædobaptist brethren, He commenced his inquiries a Baptist; he has concluded them with the conviction that baptism is not a Christian institution. The following is the author's own "Summary View” of the argument: "1. Baptism was not a new institution, first brought into practice, when John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, Matt. iii. 1, muck less during the ministry of Jesus and his apostles; for Proselyte baptism already existed among the Jews, who received converts to their religion from among the Heathen by baptizing them. 2. What John administered was Proselyte baptism; it was not a Christian ordinance, and was only intended, like the whole of John's ministry, to prepare the way for the ministry of Christ, and the introduction of the gospel dispensation consequently, John's ministry and baptism were alike in their duration, both temporary. : "3, No proof cau be produced from the New Testament that baptism was instituted by Jesus Christ, during his personal ministry. It was evidently Proselyte baptism, such as previously existed among the Jews, that was adminis, tered by the disciples of Jesus at that time; and, being previously practised both by the Jews and by John the Baptist, it could not be regarded as a new institution. The adoption of baptism at that time no more proves it to be a gospel ordinance, than the conformity of our Lord, or of his disciples, to any other Jewish rite,-for instance, to the Jewish passover,-proves such Jewish rite to be a gospel ordinance. "4. There is no proof that our Lord, after his resurrection from the dead, instituted baptism as an ordinance to be practised by his church, after that church should be completely formed and established. The direction which he gave to the apostles of the circumcision, to continue to baptize the Proselytes they made, related to the plan they were to adopt in collecting converts to form into churches, not to what was to be done in those churches when actually formed. The commission which includes baptism related to what was to be done in introducing the gospel dispensation, not to what was to be done after it was fully introduced. "5. It was Proselyte baptism only that was practised by the apostles during their ministry. All the persous of whose baptism we have any account in the New Testament were Proselytes, from either Judaism or Heatheuism, to Christianity, and chiefly the former. Not a single instance can be found of the baptism of a person who had been brought up in the profession of Christianity, and lived in the previous enjoy ment of its privileges; nor can a precept or direction, any more than precedent, be found for the baptizing of such persons. "6. It appears an undeniable fact, that Paul had no commission to baptize, and that the gospel of the uncircumcision committed to him, to preach to the Gentiles, did not include baptism; though he received that gospel by revelation from Jesus Christ, Gal. i. 12. Had baptism been properly an ordinance of the gospel, of universal and perpetual obligation among Christians, surely Paul would have been commissioned to baptize, baptism would have been included in the gospel as committed to him, and he would not have thanked God that he had baptized so few persons, giving as the reason, that Jesus Christ sent him not to baptize, but to preach the gospel, separating the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles from the Jewish mode of receiving Proselytes by baptism. "7. The writer of this Essay entered on the examination, an old Baptist, expecting to find that baptism was instituted by Jesus Christ, though some doubts had forced themselves upon him as to its perpernity, and he was anxious to have those doubts removed, either by finding proof of its designed perpetuity, or by being convinced that it was not intended to continue beyond the apostolic age; he is not aware of any thing in the New Testament, which has a bearing upon the subject, that he has not carefully examined; and he closes the examination with a full conviction that baptism was never instituted by our revered and honoured Lord and Master; but merely adopted by him as a proper mode of receiving proselytes during his personal ministry, and that of the apostles of the circumcision, and that we have no authority from the New Testament to baptize those who have been brought up in the profession of the gospel, nor any other persons in the present day. Thus by the force of what appears to him to be clear and decisive Scripture proof, he is constrained to relinquish what he has for many years regarded as an ordinance of the gospel, and to avow a change of opinion on a subject which he was ever ready to defend, on all proper occasions, so long as it appeared to him consistent with truth and duty to do it; and he hopes never to be too old to subject all his views in religion to the test of Scripture, and honestly to avow what he believes to be consistent with the New Testament.”—Pp. 50-54. Such of our readers as feel interested in this question will of course read this little Essay; and we venture to say that whatever be their judgment upon the question at issue, they will be pleased with Mr. Wright's frankness and Christian integrity, and with the simplicity and kind-heartedness in which this recantation is written, so different from the manner of some other recantations, and also of some other writings upon the subject of baptism, which are fresh in our memory. |