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circumstances, ordinary interests, actual business. The Church is to tell men, that if God was a Redeemer of old, He is a Redeemer now; that if He was the Judge of kings, priests, nobles, in old times,-if He called them to account for their cruelties, punished them for their superstitions, reproved them for their exactions,He does so still. The Church is to tell men, that if God in other days took cognizance of the bag of deceitful weights and of the sins of the employer who kept back by fraud the wages of the labourer, He does so still. The Church is to teach men, that society exists for the sake of the human beings who compose it, not to further the accumulation of the capital, which is only one of its instruments. The Church is to declare, that any civilization which is not based upon this godly principle, will come utterly to nought; that all the real blessings which have flowed from it, have proceeded from the acknowledgment of this principle; all the curses which have accompanied the growth of wealth and luxury, from the forgetfulness of it. The Church is to declare, that the spiritual and eternal kingdom which God has prepared for them that love Him, is about men now, and that they may enter into it; and that His government of this spiritual and eternal world does not make Him less interested for the earth which He has formed for the habitation of man, in which He watches over him and blesses him, and which He desires that he should till and subdue, according to the command which He gave him on the creation-day.

To bring these truths practically home to the minds

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and hearts of human beings, is, it seems to me, the great function of a Church. And this function, I believe, the Church of England has in some respects a special call to perform, and can, if she will, perform most effectually. For the very causes which lead to some of her greatest dangers, are signs to her of the work which God means her to do, and which, if she trusts in Him, He will enable her to do. The religious men, and the irreligious men too, of her own community, complain of her as earthly and secular. She is in most imminent danger of becoming all that they accuse her of being. She has stooped to rank and wealth, and trampled upon the poor; she often does so now. She has fancied that her strength lay in her revenues; she is still beset every day and hour with that temptation. But, on the other hand, every circumstance in her position teaches her that she is not merely to be a preacher about the world to come; that she is to be a witness for God's righteous dominion over the world that is. The relations with the State which Romanists and Protestant Dissenters taunt her with, are relations of infinite peril, of infinite responsibility. She has abused them to immoral purposes. She is bound to use them for the most glorious and holy purposes. She is bound to feel that she is set in high places, and has a voice to reach all classes of society, not that she may utter cant phrases about religion and the Church, in the ears of those who think that these phrases signify the maintenance of their possessions, by what are called 'religious sanctions;' not to preach servility to the lower classes;

PREFACE TO THE FRESH EDITION

but to sell all by words and acts, that they are members of one body; that they exist in their diferent relations as servants one of another, in His immediate presNOT, under His awill eye, who became the servant of all, and died for a

This is a function which a 'religious world' can never discharge, never even tries to discharge. A reEgions world is a society by itself, witnessing for itself, for its own privileges, for its difference from the rest of mankind. It acknowledges no vocation from God; it has no living connexion with the past; it is subject to all the accidents and mutations of public opinion. Yet it has no hold upon human life in any of its forms. It treats politics, science, literature, as secular; but it dabbles with them, pretends to reform them by mixing a few cant phrases with them, is really affected by all the worst habits which the most vulgar and frivolous pursuit of them engenders. It trembles at every social movement, at every thought which is awakened in human hearts, at every discovery which is made in the world without. But it does not tremble at its own corruptions. It can see its members indifferent to all the precepts of the Bible in their daily occupations as shopkeepers, employers, citizens; yet if they put the Bible on their banners, and shout about the authority of the inspired book at public meetings, it asks no more; it boasts that we are 'sound at heart;' it congratulates itself that spirituality is diffusing itself throughout the land. Meantime, each of its sections has its own Bible. The newspaper or magazine, which keeps that section in conceit

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with itself, and in hatred of others, is to all intents and purposes its divine oracle, the rule of its faith, the guide of its conduct. For this religious world is an aggregate of sections, a collection of opinions about God and about man; no witness that there is a living God, or that He cares for men. Its faith is essentially exclusive, and so is its charity; for though it devises a multitude of contrivances for relieving the wants of human beings, nearly all these seem to proceed upon the principle, that they are creatures of another race, on behalf of whom religious people are to exercise their graces; not creatures who have that nature which Christ took, as much sharers in all the benefits of His incarnation and sacrifice, as their benefactors* are.

There has been a consciousness for many years past among the members of the English Church, that they are not meant to be mere portions of a religious world; that they utterly belie their high vocation, when they act as if they were. We must be churchmen,' we have said; we must claim a calling from God, and a connexion with the past; we cannot acknowledge 'ourselves to be mere nominees of the civil

power; we cannot admit that we have merely formed a set of 'opinions, or established a certain fellowship, for our'selves.' But in the endeavour to escape from this position, and to find a more safe and tenable one, we have, I fear, shown how much the low notions

* And He said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so.' Luke xxii. 25, 26.

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and habits of a religious world are cleaving to us. Trying to be something more than a sect, we have exhibited much of the narrowness of a sect; nay, those who exult in what they call their feelings of brotherhood to all Christian people, have been able to represent us as narrow and exclusive beyond all others. So far as I can see, the English Church must either lose itself in the mass of sects, and perish when the sentence, of which there are so many precursory tokens, so many trumpets of warning, goes forth for their destruction; or else must sink into a portion of the popedom,—and bring down upon itself a portion of that judgment which miserable sufferers in the dens of Naples and Rome join with the saints beneath the altar, in invoking against a power which has usurped the name of Christ, and counterfeited the government of the Father, for the support and propagation of fraud and cruelty,—a power which no visitations of God have been able to teach wisdom and righteousness; unless we believe that our peculiar standing ground has only been given us, that we may be witnesses of God's blessings to mankind, that we may claim the members of all sects as portions of God's great family, that we may bring the members of all churches to understand, that when they lose their Pope, they only exchange a reality for a phantom, the government of a present High Priest and King for that of an usurping vicar.

But when we speak of a church taking up a position, what do we mean? Must we wait till the English Church recovers what we hear so much about in