AMERICA.

Duties of Church Members.-The resolutions of the American Church courts have occasionally a direct, purpose-like character about them, which it would surprise slow professors here to meet with. Take, for instance, the following answer of the Presbytery of Indianapolis to the question

"What is the duty of a Church session, when a member is able, but unwilling, to do anything for the support of the gospel?"

"Whereas The Word of God plainly makes this the duty of every member of the Church, from its first organization

therefore

"Resolved-That, in the judgment of the presbytery, it is the imperious duty of every member of the Church to contribute to the support of the gospel, as God has prospered him; and also, it is the duty of every session to use every proper effort to induce such delinquent member to discharge this very important duty. Further:

"Resolved-That, while the support of the gospel at home is the duty of every member of the Church, they should be required to contribute according to their circumstances to the Boards of the Church, particularly to the Education, Foreign,

and Domestic Missions.

"Resolved-That if any member of the Church disregards the faithful admonitions of the session in regard to the duties above stated, he be subjected to discipline as any other offending member."

It is easier perhaps to applaud a resolution of this sort, when passed by a presbytery at a distance, than ourselves to act on it at home; but there can be little doubt, that on the grounds stated, it is more than defensible: "Freely ye have received, freely give." (Matt. x. 8.) "Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God which he hath given thee." (Deut. xvi. 17.) "Whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" (1 John iii. 17.) It is of course impossible, as a general rule, to decide the amount which Church members ought to give for religious purposes. But there are hundreds, we fear thousands, of instances in which they give nothing, and many more, in which, beyond all doubt, they give most inadequately. To remonstrate and deal with such parties is not only lawful, but imperative. Not that we would have any man give, or be asked to give, "grudgingly' or of "necessity;" but that we deem the refusal to give willingly" a feature of character altogether inconsistent with the existence of living and healthful Christianity. He who does not desire and pray for the maintenance of a preached gospel around him, and its diffusion over the earth, cannot be a Christian; and he who restricts himself to wishes and prayers, because to do more would require labour or money, only proves that if he could make anything by his prayers he would not give them for nothing. We are quite aware that, in speaking thus, we touch delicate ground, and that enemies, who seem to think freedom from being called on to give money more desirable than freedom from being compelled to commit sin, may seize upon our words for the purpose of showing how exacting and compulsory our notions are as to the support of the gospel. But the delicacy of the question, or the probability of perversion, should not deter us from facing and considering it, when called to do so. The excessive delicacy which is so prevalent among certain parties with regard to asking money for gospel purposes betokens a state of feeling altogether unscriptural and unworthy, and so far from being respected or sympathized with, ought to be unsparingly denounced. Paul knew nothing of it, nor yet did the prophets.

A Missing Bishop.-Considerable curiosity was excited some time ago in the States regarding the fate of the Romish

been subjected to punishment and penance of some sort for alleged tendency towards liberty of opinion and action. He was invited to Rome, to receive, it was said, the apostolic blessing, but met with so very warm a reception, that he has never been able to get away again. Repeatedly have the Protestant newspapers asked their Romish contemporaries as to the cause and place of his detention (it having been rumoured that he was confined in one of the cells of the Vatican), but without eliciting any reply. A letter, however, has at length appeared bearing to be written from Rome, the author of which affirms that the bishop was never in a dungeon, or under restraint of any serious kind, and continues in the following style :

"It is not at all unfrequent to meet a bishop who willingly or unwillingly resigns his see. Dr. Hynes was compelled by circumstances to give up the vicariate of Corfu and Zante, and was in a Dominican convent at Rome longer than Bishop Reze, and at the same time. Still he has been afterward sent to Demarara, and is there now a most zealous vicar apostolic. From Rome, at the conclusion of his business, Bishop Reze went to Naples, and thence on a visit to his family in Germany. He is undoubtedly living either with his family or in some religious institution in Germany, as many a learned and holy, bishop has done before him. He is naturally fond of retirement, and cannot, in his present circumstances, like much to appear before the public. Let us take for granted, what is certainly not true, that on account of some demeanour, or to prevent public scandal, Bishop Reze has been billeted on some convent from which he cannot absent himself without forfeiting his allegiance to his superiors and breaking his connection with the Catholic Church. This is nobody's business but his and ours. He took an oath of obedience to the Propaganda before he came to America, in gratitude for having (like your humble servant) got his letters and his oats from that institution for a great number of years. He understood very well, at the time, that if he did not know how to behave himself in public, he would be ordered to go and say his prayers in some snug little corner out of the way, and that he would be obliged to do so. I have no doubt he would be extremely thankful if the officious gentlemen of the Protestant press were not to drag him before the public."

There is no doubt that Rome has a thorough system of surveillance over all her priests. Among the other uses of the Jesuits, they serve most efficiently as spies. Accordingly it is said to be no uncommon thing for a priest, who has been blundering in any way, and seems likely to persist in his blunder, or not able to remedy it, to be either summoned to Rome, or sent off without warning or reason assigned, to some distant sphere, there first to do penance, and if at all refractory, to be thoroughly broken down, and ultimately to resume his labours in another field, with the benefit of the experience thus acquired. We heard some time ago of an Irish priest, who because of his apparent friendliness with the Protestant incumbent, was despatehed on a few days notice to Canada. The case of this Bishop Reze is doubtless one of a similar kind.

Calls.

Dumfries Free Church.-Rev. James Munro of Rutherglen, December 27.

Glasgow, Renfield Free Church.-Rev. John Bonar of Aberdeen, January 6.

New Church Opened. Dundee, Chapelshade Free Church. - By the Rev. Samuel Miller of Glasgow, January 2.

Induction.

Montrose, Free St. George's Church.-The Rev. John Laird, late of Inverkeillor, December 28.

Printed and Published by JOHN JOHNSTONE, 15, Princes Street, Edinburgh; and 26, Paternoster Row, London. And sold by the Booksellers throughout the kingdom.

favourable to health and longevity; and that filth and intemperance have an opposite tendency; and thus, he says, it is shown to be the divine will that man should be cleanly and temperate. We by no means dispute the conclusion of Mr. Combe; for we believe that the express commandment of God " requireth all lawful endeavours to preserve our own life and the life of others." But if we were at liberty to deny this truth, Mr. Combe's argument would proceed but lamely. Supposing he were to deal with one who avowedly preferred "a short life and a merry one" to length of days, who felt strongly inclined to dissipation, and was reckless about the duration of his life the argument that temperance must be the will of God, because it leads to longevity, would be but a feeble one. The "creed of the modern men of science," as given by our author in the words of Sedgwick, might be more likely to excite his ridicule than to command his assent. "If the will of Providence," says Mr. Sedgwick "be manifested by general laws, then must a violation of these laws be a violation of his will." "Very good," may the drunkard say; " but if these laws can be violated by any creature, surely they are not violated by me. If I shorten my life by the dissipation which I love, and my neighbour lengthens his by the abstinence which I hate, we fulfil the laws of nature each in his own way. It is as much the law of nature that I shorten my days by intemperance as that he lengthens his by a different course."

prove their ignorance, Mr. Combe mentions that they "resorted to fastings, humiliations, and prayers, as practical means of obtaining direction in all the serious affairs of life." And, in the same spirit, he condemns the Queen's proclamation, enjoining a fast last year, because "it proceeds on the assumption that the physical and organic laws of nature are actually administered in our day, in special reference to the moral and religious merits of the people." "Nevertheless," he adds, " science has destroyed this belief in a large portion of the public." The man who says so, proves that he knows almost as little of science as of religion. Strictly speaking, the uniformity of the laws of nature is not a matter of science at all. It is the subject of the intuitive perception of the human mind, and the business of science is merely to discover, enumerate, and classify the various events which stand in the relation of cause and effect to each other. But never did genuine honest science affirm that the laws of nature were exempted from the control and direction of their Author. Never did it view the marvellous results which those laws were, from time to time, evolving, and then dictate the inscription, "Hic DEUS nihil fecit." Men of intelligence and piety in the nineteenth century may perhaps be a little more cautious in at tempting to interpret the designs of Providence than they were in the seventeenth. But if Mr. Combe believes that their convictions of the reality of a particular providence are abandoned, he is sadly uninformed on the subject. We could refer him to various authors, whose names stand considerably higher than his own in the scientific and literary world, whose opinions have been given with great force and clearness in opposition to his notions. We might mention Dr. Olinthus Gregory, whose letter on the subject is worthy of a serious perusal;* Robert Hall, who, in his Review of Gregory's work, administered a castigation to the witty and worldly-minded clerk Sydney Smith, which Mr. Combe should ponder and profit by; and Dr. Wardlaw, whose sermon on the subject is a judicious statement of the truth revealed in Scripture for the instruction of all ages, It would be very ridiculous in Mr. Combe to set aside the judgment of such men as altogether unworthy of his regard; and to confute them is beyond his ability. But, in truth, every Christian worthy of the name, every one who believes that Jesus Christ spoke truth when he said, "Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find," practically condemns the doctrine which Mr. Combe upholds, and in every petition which he presents to God, renounces the principle which Mr. Combe maintains.

There is, in truth, in Mr. Combe's reasonings, a curious confusion between the laws which God has ordained in the material world, and the will of God regarding the duty of man as inferred from these laws. That the will of God ought to be obeyed, will be denied by no one who acknowledges the existence of a God. This is equally true, whether that will be clearly and directly revealed, or laboriously inferred from the course of providence. But whether Mr. Combe is uniformly successful in discovering it in his own way, is abundantly questionable. Granting that his inferences are in many cases correct, there are intimations to be obtained from the course of nature, on which he seems not to have opened his eyes. Here is his account of the law of life:

"The organism of man is calculated to act for threescore years and ten, and during that period to afford enjoyment to the intelligent and sentient principle resident within it. But Divine Wisdom has appointed certain conditions, on the observance of which the organism will continue successfully to perform its functions, and on the infringement of which it will either become impaired, or altogether cease to act. These conditions are, to a great extent, cognizable by the human intellect, and constitute the terms on which the boon of health and life is presented to man; it being left in his option to accept and fulfil them, or to reject and infringe them, as he pleases, only, certain consequences are pre-ordained to follow cach specific course of action; and these he must abide by, whether he will or not." (Relation, p. 19.)

Mr. Combe has a long discussion, founded on the bills of mortality, the report of the Registrar-general, &c.-all ending in this conclusion, "That an intimate knowledge of the structure, functions, and laws of the vital organs of the body, is apparently the true key to the right understanding of the order of God's secular providence in dispensing health and life, and disease and death, to individuals." Without being hypercritical as to expressions, we should have thought that the doctrine substantially contained in this passage was familiar ever since medicine was a study-familiar to Sydenham, and others, even in the seventeenth century. But granting the conclusion to be altogether original, what use does Mr. Combe make of it when he has got it? He finds that cleanliness, temperance, and abundance of good diet, are Letters on the Evidences, &c. No. xix.]

We do not know whether Mr. Combe would consider the man of eighty a transgressor, but at least the man who dies at sixty must be considered a sinner; his sin is greatly aggravated if he expires at thirty, and the child who dies in infancy must be deemed a hopeless criminal.

The boon of life for seventy years was offered, on terms which it was in his option to accept or reject, and he threw away sixty-nine of the years that he might have retained. Did not the absur

dity of the conclusion remind Mr. Combe that his proposition was utterly false as regards men individually? He knows that the child comes into the world tainted, and, it may be, with the springs of life poisoned, by the vices of its progenitors; that in infancy it still frequently pines away, the victim of vices in its parents over which it has no control; that through their vices it is exposed to dangers which it can no more avert than it can arrest the planets in their orbits; and if the child of misery and sin survives to receive instruction, is it not bitter mocking to tell him that the world is "not intrinsically disordered and out of joint, but still such as God made it, and that it reflects his wisdom and goodness in all its parts? Is it not adding insult to his suffering to say, that he has received the boon of "an organism calculated to act and afford enjoyment for threescore years and ten," and that he has only to accept the terms and enjoy the benefit?

In immediate connection with this subject, we would have referred, had space permitted, to our author's allusions to Ireland. We do not allude at present to that most marvellous of all his discoveries, that the miseries of that country are to be ascribed to the "purely religious teaching" to which it has been subjected. (Remarks, p. 14.) At other times he refers to those miseries as the result of centuries of misgovernment; a long crusade against the course of Providence" on the part of England. We are not careful to examine his statements minutely; but, taking them as we find them, do we not see one race or generation suffering and degraded by the crimes or the follies of another, and those crimes and follies visited on the heads of the descendants of the offenders? Are we not led, by studying the “order of God's providence," to see that he deals with men not merely as individuals, but also as families, as races, as kingdoms? Mr. Combe speaks with contempt of those fast-day sermons in which "the potatoe failure was ascribed directly to sin; and, stranger still, not to sin in the owners of the fields who suffered the loss, but in their rulers, or in somebody else over whose conduct the suffering peasants had no control;" and yet he himself speaks of the eight millions sterling drawn from the people of England to relieve the starving Irish as a part of the retribution due, not for the sins of those who paid the penalty, but for those of their rulers, or of other parties, from Henry II. downwards, over whose conduct they had as little control. We look into the course of God's natural providence as well as Mr. Combe, and when we see, on the one hand, resplendent manifestations of the wisdom, power, and goodness of the Creator, and on the other hand suffering infancy and degraded races, we are constrained to think that the world is somewhat out of joint; thatit s not, in all respects, such as God originally made it; that it is a fallen world, after all. Our study, therefore, of the order of God's secular providence, would lead us to recognise the doctrine of the fall of man, and to hail the doctrine of redemption-doctrines which it is the express object of Mr. Combe to exclude. For it is abundantly plain that, in pleading for a national system of purely secular education, he is actuated, not more by a regard for science than by an antipathy to the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. He quotes the propositions in the Shorter Catechism referring to the fall, and states that "these representations are not only speculatively erroneous, but constitute positive and important impediments to the progress of divine truth;

(Re

they tend to blind the intellect, and mislead the moral and religious sentiments of the people, and thereby to retard their advance in practical religion, wisdom, and virtue." (Relation, p. 27.) In another place, he speaks of the attempts of some religious persons to blend their doctrinal tenets with secular affairs, and remarks, that "they do not succeed. In point of fact, they place doctrinal disquisitions in juxtaposition with secular knowledge, without uniting them, and for the simple reason, that, as taught, they are incompatible. The sectarian world, especially the Calvinistic sects, must view nature in a light widely different from that in which they now regard it, before they shall be capable of blending religion and mundane interests harmoniously together." marks, p. 24.) In Germany, he tells us, " evangelical religion, as it is understood in this country, has already fallen, in consequence of long-continued investigation and discussion; and it is probable that, in a few years hence, only a bold and good spirit will be wanting to shake the theological fabric in this country to the ground, as has already been done in Germany." (Remarks, p. 28.) From all which we think, we may reasonably infer that the system which Mr. Combe is pressing on the country is one by which he believes that what is termed evangelical religion will be supplanted and exterminated, and something different set up in its place. The something is not yet fully developed or embodied in a sect, but we may call it Combianism. And what is Combianism? We cannot tell very distinctly. But what he would have to be taught is something "against which all sects" (that is, all Christian denominations), "raise the deadly cry of Infidelity." (Relation, p. 38.) He says, indeed, that the cry is raised against practical Christianity and the laws of nature. But this, if taken literally, would be merely a glaring and senseless falsehood; and, therefore, we understand him to refer to what he himself terms practical Christianity and the laws of nature-that is, Combianism. Now, if all sects call it Infidelity, we suspect there is some reason for the cry; and if it be not Infidelity, we would recommend to Mr. Combe to state positively what it is. We confess that we have received an impression from the perusal of his pamphlets, that there is a degree of reserve and stratagem about his argument which is not very creditable either to his candour or his courage. There is a profession of respect for the Bible, with an utter contempt of its authority-a verbal regard for Christianity, with a dislike of all that distinguishes Christianity from Deism. There is an expressed aversion to the Calvinistic sects, which exhibits him as seeking shelter in the ranks of the anti-Calvinists; while he must be quite aware that, to religious Arminians, his views must be as repulsive as to their Calvinistic opponents. If Mr. Combe feels wronged by the imputation of Infidelity, let him state plainly and manfully wherein his religious opinions differ from those of the Infidel.

In the meantime, let it be observed that secular education, in Mr. Combe's argument, does not imply the exclusion of religion from school education, but only the substitution of his own religion for orthodox Christianity. He has a scheme of secular religion, which he would so interweave with ordinary instruction in the facts and laws of nature, as to form a discipline for the mind, with which the doctrines of Christianity would be incompatible. So far his object is plain enough; and we would ask the Christians of