even to the end of the world. If I derive my official authority through a stream of human hands, then I do not derive it immediately from the Lord himself, as I firmly believe to be the case: It may be a fact, and an interesting one, that our orders are traceable to apostolic succession; but it is the same kind of interest as attaches to a venerable building, or anything else ancient, not therefore one whit the better for its purpose, but only more venerable. But then you may say how differs the Church from a sect? This question I answer on entirely different grounds, viz., from consideration of the duty of unity among Christians and the sinfulness of those who break that unity needlessly. By unity I do not mean conformity; nor by breaking unity do I mean having a different form of Church government: but by unity I mean unity of spirit, true charity, and Christian love; and by the breach of it, the kind of hatred which modern English Dissenters show to the Church of this land. With regard to conformity, I should endeavour to judge fairly of the objections which the sects have, and see whether they are sufficient to justify their position. Certainly not, I should say, in the case of Wesleyans, Baptists, &c. Then, if not, their separation is unchristian; in fact, as every one knows, the majority of separatists just split from us because they want, in the natural vanity of the human heart, to set up for themselves, and are averse to any obedience to constituted authorities. With Quakers and some few others I believe the case to be different; then they come under the former head, and all Christian kindness and absence of hostility ought to be manifested mutually. You will see that my ground is what would be called by many that of unlimited private judgment. I own it, but I look on it in a very different light. I view it as the Scriptural ground of churchmanship, which represents to us no undeviating form of government nor universal pattern of church ministry, but tells us that the Holy Spirit shall guide into truth those who walk in love and seek His guidance. In Christ Jesus episcopacy is nothing, and non-episcopacy is nothing, but the new creature; and in whatever way the spiritual temple of the Lord may be best reared under the various circumstances which His providence has appointed, in that way would I humbly acquiesce, whether episcopacy or presbytery, or whatever else it be called. I find my own place and office in the Church of England. She appeals 1 This absolute non sequitur from a man of Alford's mind is almost surprising. to the written Word, and gives me therefore the great warrant that I am in the way of the Spirit, whose witness that Word is; and she oppresses no man's conscience, but sends us to God's word to see whether these things are so. If she did the con trary, if she oppressed the conscience, commanded me to adore baker's bread, or bow to the day's work of a stonemason, I would as unscrupulously leave her and become a Dissenter as I now gladly adhere to and minister in her communion. I think I but as well as I could. Do write again, and never scruple to have now answered your questions, I am afraid not satisfactorily, ask or impart anything which you think requisite. P.S. What I said about leaving the Church of England is only to be understood as referring to the extreme case of her commanding what God forbids. Remember this; for I believe otherwise all dissent to be in its nature wrong." The first volume of his Greek Testament was given to the world in November, 1849, and for several months the criticisms upon it in all the leading reviews and papers brought it prominently before the world. While his name was thus becoming known to an ever-increasing circle of readers the great sorrow to which we have already alluded came upon him, and in August, 1850, after a little more than a week's illness, his eldest and only remaining son was taken from him, while the little family party was seeking health and refreshment at that loveliest of Devonshire villages-Babbicombe, just above Torquay. Back to Wymeswold and to work, he strove by time to heal the Wound; but the loss of the boy of whom he naturally hoped so much was, his widow tells us, a sorrow which he never wholly threw off, and cast a shade over the whole of the remainder of his career. Eight and even nine hours a day he continued his literary labours, and his letters and diary show how fully conscious he was of the importance of his researches in their bearing upon Scriptural interpretation. In 1851 we find him making acquaintance with Stanley, then Canon of Canterbury, and visiting the "Great Exhibition;" while it is also worthy of note that he preached on May the 9th in the same year at Quebec Chapel, which he describes as "the resort of Portman Square people; a fashionable congregation, with a staff of professional singers in the gallery"! The year 1852 brought with it his father's death; and in 1853 he accepted the incumbency of Quebec Chapel, where for the present we leave him. TINTERN I SAW thee when the day was near, And rosy flushed the waking Wye. I saw thee when thy place was lone Leaf-laden 'neath an ashen sky, I saw thee in the moonlit night A hidden song of calm delight; Ah! sweet thy seeming change to me And changeless flows the hallowed Wye. A. LE G., 1872. THEATRES, AND THE OPERA. IN THE CORN," &c. THEATRES and the Opera; I would offer some thoughts about these. Now we would shrink from being in the least degree ascetic, and what is called Pharisaical, unallowing, or the professor of a sour and forbidding religion. We would avoid with much pains that "Certain cast about the eye, A certain lifting of the nose's tip, In scorn of all that is beneath the sky," which are Hood's marks of that unamiable and unlovely being, the "self-constituted saint." With him I would say freely, "I do enjoy this bounteous, beauteous earth, And dote upon a jest Within the limits of becoming mirth; No solemn, sanctimonious face I pull, Nor think I'm pious when I'm only bilious." Still there is surely another extreme, namely, that which would allow everything and deny nothing to Christ's young disciples; the false complaisance which will leave the King's uniform at home when His soldiers go out into the world lest the loud and inconsiderate laughter should be at all (whether wholesomely or not) checked, and lest any shade, however salutary, should come over its broad parching glare. That false Over-fear of making religion distasteful to the world; of giving Worldly men a disgust towards God's service; that dread of at all deserving the character with which the world mockingly invests the professor, whose lack of love and abundance of selfcomplacence proves him to be really as worldly as the rest, only that he has made a world-idol out of his caricature of religion: "Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise." For fear of such often just sarcasm and offence-giving, there are some who do, I say, allow, yea, sometimes even countenance, that which should be uncompromisingly forbidden and avoided. And I think that theatres and operas do come under this category of poisonous plants which are simply and absolutely to be shunned. But many a kindly man, ay, many a one not by any means wholly a stranger to religion, would think this an excess of strictness. At least, many would demand reasons which I do not often find given by those who would concur in this sweeping censure. Generally they denounce these amusements, but not by bringing against them particular counts. And very often these denouncers are such as find no temptation, cannot even understand there being any in the vanities which they condemn. Let me, then, take a different course, and try in no unkindly or vague way to point out what are the poison-signs in these showy and attractive flowers. I will first reply to my good-natured defender of them. He argues, "I can't see the harm of going now and then, once in a way, and taking the children: of course, I know that there is an immense deal of vice and immorality connected with such places, but how does this concern us? We go and have our pleasure and come back again without having seen or joined in any of the evil. We have but thrown a little poetry and jesting, a little colour and beauty, into the dull sameness, the hum-drum, the sad and subfusk hue of life." And I think that such a defence would be quite sufficient condemnation, if no other counts of indictment were brought forward. For I hold this to be an inviolable maxim for every one of Christ's soldiers,-"Never to blend his pleasure or his sport" with that which is at all the occasion to others of falling, which fosters sin in them, or ministers to them temptation. And it being granted that these places are very hotbeds of immorality and vice, shall we Christians contribute to the keeping open pest-pit because, forsooth, we believe that we are ourselves out of reach of the clutch of the miasma? Vice and immorality! ay, there is little doubt about their thriving well upon the breath of the theatre. Look, as after the performance you enter your carriage or your cab, at the waiters in the streets about the doors. But, you urge, this evil exists and will exist independently of theatres. I know it too well. Still, only the Great Day of revelation will tell us how many, how very many (I |