cation, gifts, or graces, is qualified to take his part with edification. In a house which is so happy as to comprise several such persons, rotation in the service may be allowed-always reserving to the father, or head, his prerogative and responsibility of direction.

The constituent parts of family-worship, when fully observed, are, first, the reading of the Scriptures; secondly, the singing of praise to God; and, thirdly, prayer; and these may very properly follow each other in this order. But we propose to enlarge on these particulars below.

The length of the domestic service is worthy of attention. It was the fault of our forefathers to make it insufferably long. This goes far to destroy all good influence on the young, by creating weariness and disgust. "It is difficult," says Cecil, “to fix and quiet your family. The servants are eager to be gone, to do something in hand. There has been some disagreement, perhaps, between them and their mistress. We must seize opportunities. We must not drive hard at such times as these. Religion should be prudently brought before a family. The old Dissenters wearied their families. Jacob reasoned well with Esau, about the tenderness of his children, and his flocks, and herds. Something gentle, quiet, moderate, should be our aim."

The manner and spirit of the service should never be neglected. In every part it should be solemn, and fitted to repress all levity. Of course, every secular task or amusement will be suspended, and absolute silence and quiet will be enforced, even in the case of the youngest children, who thereby gain a most important lesson. The greatest simplicity should characterize every word, and every petition: those who have the greatest interest in the worship, are often little more than babes. But we would especially recommend a holy animation, as that which will arrest attention, and make way for pleasant memories. Here, again, we avail ourselves of the language of the Rev. Richard Cecil. Speaking of children and servants, he says: "Tediousness will weary them. Fine language will shoot above them. Formality of connection, or composition, in prayer, they will not comprehend. Gloominess, or austerity of devotion, will make them think it a hard service. Let them be met with smiles. Let them be met as friends. Let them be met as for the most delightful service in which they can be engaged. Let them find it short, savoury, simple, plain, tender, heavenly. I find it easy to keep the attention of a congregation, compared with that of my family."

PRAYER is the essential part of family worship, and therefore merits the first place in our consideration. It is not necessary to enlarge on those things which are common to all acts of prayer; these belong to another subject. That which concerns us is family prayer. This, its distinguishing character, ought never to be out of sight. It is the worship of those who are joined together by Providence as dwellers in the same house, and who now come to the throne of grace in their family capacity. This will give a tinge to the whole service, where it is conducted with life and discrimination. Many things may be proper here, which would be out of place in a promiscuous assembly, or even a small meeting. There is no domestic want, danger, sorrow, or dispensation, which may not be remembered. Special cases in the household will be faithfully and affectionately commended to God, but without that rudeness and irreverence

with which we have known vulgar minds to drag forward the circumstances, and even names of shrinking individuals. But our heavenly Father permits us to spread before him our minutest trials, and this is one of the principal blessings of domestic religion. What has been said of brevity, applies especially to prayer, as a part of family-worship. Few things are more hardening and deadening in their influence, than the daily recurrence of long and unawakening prayers. For these there is no necessity. For, while family prayer includes petitions for blessings far more wide than those of the family alone, it may be comprised within easy limits; and nothing will so much tend to this as earnestness and directness in supplication. The prayer should be by all means simple and intelligible; free from hard words and involved periods; because he who leads is putting words into the mouths of children. The best model is found in the brief and child-like petitions which we find in the Psalms and other parts of Scripture.

Family worship should be varied, otherwise the inevitable result will be formalism and tediousness. Indeed, the snare into which we are most prone to | fall, in this service, is that of sameness and routine. Daily changes in the condition of a family will infallibly work a corresponding change in the prayers, if they be sincere. Nothing will really secure this needful quality, but the "spirit of grace and of supplications," shed down from on high, which should, therefore, be most earnestly sought by every head of a household, with reference to this daily service; for which purpose no preparation can be so valuable, as attendance on the previous devotions of the closet.

The question has been much agitated, whether any forms of prayer should be recommended as a help to family devotion. The spirit of our Church-institutions, and our perpetual testimony, has been against the imposition of any prescribed form, and in favour of entire liberty in prayer. We are fully persuaded that the best of all prayers in the family, as everywhere else, are those which proceed, without book, from hearts which "God hath touched." And our unhesitating counsel to every one who essays this duty, is, that he cast himself upon the help of the Spirit, without any written form. Nevertheless, we are so earnestly desirous to remove every hindrance out of the way even of halting believers, that we would infinitely rather they should pray with a form, than that they should not pray at all. There are also persons of such diffidence, especially of the female sex, or in so peculiar a condition of society, that they feel themselves utterly unable to proceed without such assistance. Let such go forward, in the name of the Lord. Let them provide themselves with some suitable volume of family prayers. Such have been furnished by Jenks, Thornton, Hardman, and others. The work of Mr Jenks is by far superior to anything known to us of this sort, being warm, orthodox, and scriptural, and imbued from beginning to end with evangelical sentiments. But, in the use of this, or any other form, the greatest caution is necessary, in order to guard against that ritual coldness and emptiness which come from the abuse of the best devotional compositions.

If we had not known cases where such a counsel was needful, we should scarcely add, that the true posture for family prayer is that of kneeling.

It only remains to be observed, that if the father of a family would make this service one of the great

est advantage, he must deem it worthy of being in his thoughts at moments when he is not actually engaged in it. He will seek to keep his mind in such a frame as not to unfit him for leading his children to God. He will look to his steps, lest his example should be in disastrous contrast with his devotional acts. And he will not consider it unimportant to seek from God special direction and strength for the discharge of a duty so nearly connected with the everlasting interests of his house.

Where any one feels himself called of God to establish daily worship in his house, he should act with solemn decision. In this, as in a thousand other affairs of life, the shortest method is the best. Instead of parleying with objections, or waiting for some happy conjecture, or seeking to prepare the way by gradual approaches, or timorously sounding the opinions of those whose place it is to submit, let him, in reliance on God, without other preliminary, and without allowing another sun to set, call his family together, state his purpose in the very fewest terms, and carry it into immediate accomplishment. The burden of months, or years, will have rolled away! That day will be remembered as one of the brightest in his calendar, and will probably open a new era of domestic profit and joy.

If this paper should fall into the hands of young persons and others, who live in families where God is daily worshipped, let them be affectionately exhorted to yield all possible encouragement to the service, by punctual attendance, by the most reverent attention and devout silence; and above all, by heartily joining in the devotions, so that the words spoken or sung may convey the sentiments of their own hearts. This is especially to be urged on the children of the Church, who ought to remember that in this service, their honoured parents are endeavouring, often with a deep sense of unworthiness, to discharge a part of the obligations which were recognised at the baptism of their children. Many, however, are the instances in which a father, advanced in years, needing repose, and trembling in voice and every limb, is left to wait till a late hour of night, for froward and profane sons, who, if the truth were known, would gladly come in at midnight, rather than be constrained to join in prayer. Let it be added, in conclusion, that filial affection will certainly lead the ingenuous son or daughter to repress every feeling of weariness or dissatisfaction in regard to the manner in which a parent conducts the worship of the house.

Review.

ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES OF THE AGE; Being Four Lectures delivered at Edinburgh and Glasgow, in January, 1848. London.

MR MORELL has done right to publish these lectures, if it were only to enable the reflecting public to judge for themselves how far the charges brought against them are well or ill founded. We have not seen the remarks on them which have excited his indignation, and we regret that he should be charged with dishonest insinuations. But we can assure him that the second and third of his Lectures were listened to with a feeling of anxiety, and something more; that the extent of this feeling was very

much in proportion to the attention which his audiences had given to such subjects; and that the apprehension and distress were the deepest in those who, from the study of his book on the "Philosophy of Europe," were the most disposed to listen to him with favour. We had earnestly hoped, however, that such impressions might prove to a large extent unfounded, and that when developed, as they would probably be, and illustrated to some extent, in their permanent form, the most dubious positions would admit of a favourable construction. Would that we could say our hopes have been fully realized.

Our pages are hardly the fitting medium for discussing the merits of a work involving the very grounds and authority of natural and revealed religion. Nor, if they were, could we attempt it while the book is yet wet from the press. The accomplished author would scarcely deem himself well taken up, if we were to dignify with the name of a discussion or review of his principles the few remarks which-after a glance at the Lectures, to verify what we heard, and at the explanatory Postscripts, to be sure that we understood them-we venture to set down. Such as they are, however, we make no apology for them.

We willingly do homage to the author's clearness and force of thought, the orderly way in which his ideas are laid out, the firmness and vivacity of his tread over the ample-shall we say, in some respects, awful-ground which he traverses, and the polish as well as warmth which characterize the volume. It contains much that is truly valuable, brought out with perfect transparency; and if there be portions of the work in which a painful obscurity is perceptible, it arises from that vagueness in his religious views which he regards as freedom from logical trammels, and from the imperfect development of some of his most pregnant reflections on the theologies of the Christian world.

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He alludes in his preface to "the nature of the platform on which he stood" (as a lecturer at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution and the Glasgow Athenæum,) as preventing the propriety of applying the principles maintained specifically to the subject of Christianity, and the present state of different sections in the Church. "Were it indeed so, the more the pity. But, so far as we are aware, there is nothing in the constitution and rules of such institutions, at least in Scotland, which precludes the fullest and freest "application to Christianity" of the philosophical principles which may be advanced by the lecturers, apart from sectarian peculiarities. however, Mr Morell felt himself precluded from making the Christian application of his principles, the Christian bearing of them was all too manifest to those who heard him; and as this, if it was not principally in his eye when he lectured, is at least most prominent in the additional developments which he has now given, we suppose we shall be excused for restricting our few remarks to this point.

If,

The fundamental error (grov Vides) of Mr Morell's speculative method we take to be, an attempt to separate the two faculties of the mind which he terms the intuitional and the logical, and so to subordinate the latter to the former as-for the settlement of all questions affecting the relations and the destiny of man-to put it out of court. According to Mr Morell, Religion is a thing of intuition; theology, a thing of logic. The former is fired, the latter fluctuating: the one is catholic-being just the religious

sentiment in the breast of every man; the other is as infinitely varied as the scientific development of that sentiment which every man, by the action of his own logical understanding, may happen to have arrived at. In this sense, "the Bible is a book of religion, not of theology." It is intended merely to "brighten our own intuitions, and impregnate our religious consciousness with its own peculiar Christian element." And to put his meaning beyond doubt, he adds, "Here, then, lies the germ of all theology. It has to be drawn forth (whence, does the reader suppose?) from the deeper and spiritual nature of man, by the action of the understanding upon the divine elements there infused" (that is in the nature of man). The paragraph concludes with this statement: " Accordingly, theology can never be a thing absolutely fixed; it is, or should be, always the reflection or symbol of the Christian consciousness of the age." (Pp. 91, 92.) This "Christian consciousness" is an expression very frequently employed by our author, and just means the religious sentiment, in a Christian form, but entirely apart from every Christian dogma. The grand evil that afflicts the Christian world he takes to be the mixing up of any dogmas whatsoever with this Christian sentiment. "The man, (says he) whose theology was imagined least complete, (that is, who either has formed no doctrinal conceptions at all, or rejects what are regarded as essential) has in all probability the fullest amount of divine idea descending all bright and living from the infinite Creator of truth." And he concludes a long postscript on this subject in the following strain:—

"Not until we stand upon the unity of our religious consciousness, and HOLD LOGICAL STATEMENTS [that is, all doctrine, in the ordinary sense of that term] WITH A LOOSER HAND-not until we are drawn closer and closer to the centre of the catholic Christian intuitions of the pious, shall we escape the deadening influence of sectarianism; and, one heart imbuing another with its true religious life, all march onward together to that common goal of our earthly and heavenly communion, where the darkness of the understanding shall be eternally illumined by the fire of holy love." (Pp. 96, 97.)

On these and similar passages, running through the whole volume, we submit the following remarks:

1. However distinct the intuitional and the logical faculties, to attempt to separate them in their exercise is preposterous, and so far as it can be actually done, fraught with mischief. We believe, as thoroughly as Mr Morell does, in the intuitional faculty. We believe that the religious capacity of our nature has its root there; and that, without this faculty, no logical processes could ever force on us the faith of God, or kindle the religious sentiment. But leave this intuitional faculty to its own unregulated exercise, without the aid of the logical faculty, and what will it achieve for us, in a religious sense? What notion, for example, does any man form of GOD by sheer intuition? What a thin and sickly affair is this said "religious sentiment" or "consciousness," this "divine idea," unclothed in any logical form, without the exercise of the logical faculty to give it objective actuality! It is just a puff, an airy thing, a vapour, unworthy the name of a religious principle, certainly it is not living faith in a living God.

2. To say that "the Bible is a book of religion, not of theology," if it be not nonsense, is false in the sense for which it is advanced. To be sure, the Bible is not the Westminster Confession of Faith, nor the Thirty-nine Articles, nor the Creed of Pope Pius IV.

It is not a collection of theological dogmas, any more than beauteous Nature is the Linnæan Botany or Lyell's Geology. But as Nature has a system, so has the Bible. There is an objective theology in the Bible, to be traced out just as we trace out the system of nature, or as we get at any honest man's meaning by a natural interpretation of what he writes. But

3. Mr M. evidently sits very loose to the Bible as an authoritative revelation from God. He speaks at times of its inspired truth and its Christian element, and seems to do it high homage, if we take his language as conveying what we should understand by it. But he makes it all too evident, that, as a revelation of objective truth, the reception of which is designed to form the common bond of Christian brotherhood, he does not believe in it. We have already seen that he takes its proper use and design to be, to appeal to our spiritual nature, to brighten our highest intuitions, and to impregnate our religious consciousness with its own peculiar Christian element; and that "theology has to be drawn, not from the Bible, but from the deeper and spiritual nature of man," thus impregnated. But on the page preceding the one we have quoted from, he says, perhaps more plainly still:—

"It has been generally supposed that the data of all Chrising has to form its system out of them by the ordinary process tian theology are given in the Bible, and that the understandof induction. This principle of forming a theology we regard as radically and totally unsound. For, First, We do not (for many reasons which cannot now be stated) hold with the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, a doctrine highly necessary to the above theory; nor do we believe that single passages are to be trusted when taken away from their organic position in the whole body of inspired truth. Secondly, Even supposing we could rely upon individual passages, yet our theology must mainly depend, not upon the literal induction of the words, but upon the spiritual sense we attach to them, upon the religious intuitions they may serve to expressin a word, upon the whole state of the religious consciousness in the interpreter." (Pp. 90, 91.)

And, as an example of this, having shown that the very proposition, "There is a God," may express nothing common to any two men-which he applies to all Christian doctrine-and having concluded that there may thus be "an infinite number of theologies in the minds of men who abide by the very same terms," he sums up thus: "To construct our theology, then, by a simple process of induction from the Bible, we regard as an attempt equally impracticable and absurd." Good reader, imagine not that the "verbal inspiration," which Mr Morell rejects, has any thing to do with the question agitated among orthodox divines, as to the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures; or that he is simply taking up some theory like those of Doddridge or Henderson, in preference to that of Haldane and Carson. To the Scriptures themselves he attaches no value, save as they "serve to express”— or haply to "brighten our own religious intuitions, and impregnate our religious consciousness." What he calls "the whole body of inspired truth," is just this vivifying element pervading the Scriptures, but entirely apart from the historical facts, and the authoritative statements of objective truth, which it is ridiculous to deny that the Scriptures contain, though they constitute, in Mr M.'s opinion, no part of religion. In short, it is substantially Immanuel Kant's moral theology, as expressly distinguished from, and designed to supplant, historical and doctrinal faith in the Scrip

tures.

4. If any one should think that we have possibly misunderstood Mr M.'s drift, we have, alas! too good

the Ideal of Individualism, while broadly contrasting with conventionalism and other enormities, offers a distinct succession of points, one after another of which must be reached if the culminating glory of all is to be reached." (P. 222.)

We turn with horror from this most pestilent and miserable production, which, Mr Morell coolly tells his readers, few can read as a whole without being wiser and better men. "As a whole," you will say -mark that. Yes, we have marked it; and we say this is the spirit of the whole. And though we deny not that it contains a few striking things, we have no hesitation in ranking it, even among intellectual productions, low down, and, for its pretensions, ridiculously so. But it is with Mr Morell's commendation of it, as indicative of his own general views, that we have alone to do. And in this view, what can be more sad? If his promised "Philosophy of Religion" be based on the principles, or have aught in common with the principles of this book, we trust it will never see the light. It will benefit none, and only fill those, whom his former book led to take an interest in his productions, with profound grief and utter disappointment.

Notes on New Books.

Notes of a Tour in Switzerland in the Summer of 1847. By BAPTIST W. NOEL.

London.

Mr Noel's notes are written with spirit and intelligence. The scenes to which he takes us, we have already and recently looked upon in the company of Heugh, and Alexander, and Cheever; so that he has not presented us with much that is positively new. But (and this is not a little), we have, in his company, greatly enjoyed another visit to them all. There is vigour and freshness in Mr Noel's style, and an ease and elevation about his whole deportment, which have charmed and chained us; while the information which he gives, as to the religious condition of the various localities which he visited, is abundant and valuable. The book is, of course, of so fragmentary a nature, that we cannot present our 'readers with a connected summary of its contents. But its character will be understood by a few specimens of the passages which we have marked during its perusal. The two most valuable features of the work appear to us to be the history of the Free Church of the Canton de Vaud, and the frequent illustrations which occur of the character of Continental Popery. The former is clear and succinct, and cannot be read without a feeling of deep interest and sympathy, and, we may add, indignation. Mr Noel speaks very strongly of the corrupt and degrading Erastianism of the National Church. He says:

"Christian ministers are servants of Christ, to whom they must give account of their stewardship, and therefore should not allow any unauthorized persons to exercise control over their ministry.

"Take, therefore, unto yourselves, and to all the flock over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers. Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves, for they watch for your souls as they that must give account. Ye are bought with a price, be not ye the servants of men. If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.'

But the Vaudois pastors are the servants of the State, who must please the State or lose their salaries; and being dependent on the State for the maintenance of their families, are in a thraldom unbecoming the servants of Christ. subjection of the Vaudois Christians to the State is dishonourable to Christ; is discreditable to the national pastors; must multiply bad ministers and cripple good ones; is noxious to

The

every congregation; prevents the progress of relation in the canton; and is condemned by the plain declarations of the Word of God."

The illustrations with which he meets of the corruptions and devices of Popery are, as might have been expected, deplorable. We give a few.

A PRAYER-BOOK.

"On the road I picked up a little book, called 'Parochial Hours,'' According to the usage at Rome, printed at Annacy, by Burdet, printer to the clergy, 1830.' It had been dropped, doubtless, by some villager, on her return from mass. In the second page of the prayers I found these words, Holy Virgin-St Joseph-my good angel-my patron N., obtain for me grace,' &c. Then, page third, came to the ten commandments, in which the second is omitted. Then comes a confession of sin to St Michael, St John the Baptist, &c., with a prayer to them to pray to God for the penitent. Then comes a prayer to God, to grant to the petitioner, through the merits and prayers of the blessed Jane Francis de Chantal (a lady who was enthusiastically attached to St Francis of Sales), ' to surmount all obstacles.' At the confiteor the supplaint is directed to say Holy Virgin, Angels of Heaven, Saints and Lady Saints of Paradise, obtain for us the pardon of our sins.' Among the subsequent prayers are the following expressions: -I salute thee, august Queen of Peace, thrice Holy Mother of my God, and pray thee, by the sacred heart of Jesus, thy Son, Prince of Peace, to appease his wrath, and to obtain for us from him the peace so much desired.' Great St N whose name I have the honour to bear; thou to whom God confided the care of my salvation when, by holy baptism, he adopted me for one of his children, obtain for me by your intercession,' &c. I run to thee, Mother of Virgins: disdain me not, O Mother of my Jesus; hear my prayers; accord me the grace which I ask of thee, and be propitious to me with thy Son.' So close the prayers of the book.

6

"These Catholic priests, blind leaders of the blind, know not how they wrong our Saviour in making their devotees think that a penitent believer must have recourse to human intercessors to appease his wrath.' He came to seek and save the lost. He has said, 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Him that cometh to me, I will in nowise cast out." When others would turn from the guilty penitent, he intercedes for him. If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. For we have not an High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.' And these priests have taught their deluded followers to imagine that a penitent believer cannot secure his favour nor appease his wrath, except through his Mother, or some St Dominic, or St Francis, or St Anthony, or St Gervasius, or St Agnes. As well might we expect that the sun would not shine on us unless a creeping mist requested him to do so; or a father would not give his child bread unless he was solicited by a toad. These pretended intercessions of questionable saints with the Redeemer to forgive penitent believers, whom he has already loved and forgiven, are an abomination.

A VILLAGE SAINT.

"Beneath the great altar of the church of the village of Saxeln or Sachslen lie the bones of Nicholas Von der Flue, a hermit while he lived, canonized when he died, and now venerated under the name of Bruder Klaus. He was born at Sachslen, 21st March 1417, and died March 22, 1487. When about fifty years old he deserted his wife and family, that he might vegetate in a hermitage, where, according to the popular belief, he lived for twenty years without other food than the wafer of the Eucharist, which he received once each month. Popes Clement IX. and X. beatified him; and pilgrimages are still made in honour of his memory. In 1725, John Henry Tschudi, having spoken irreverently of his twenty years' fast, of a work which he published, the work was burned by order in the Government of Unterwalden, and a price was set upon his head. It is always dangerous, as Machiavelli said, with reference to poor Savonarola, to be a prophet without the aid of the Government; so it seems, from Tschudi's case, dangerous to question the credentials of a saint, when the Government aid the Pope in beatifying him. Many miracles, therefore, which no one ventured to deny at the hazard of hanging or burning for their temerity, are recorded of Bruder Klaus, of which the following may be taken as specimens.