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because they will understand it more thoroughly. Those passages, which the Great Enemy and his infidel emissaries delight to sever from their kindred truths, will refuse to be thus separated in the minds of those addressed; and the taunts and sophisms of the assailants of religion will fail to cast a shade over it, or extinguish its brightness. Then, what opportunities such exposition would afford for building the ramparts of the Truth around the minds and hearts of our people! Error after error, of every description, would be exposed and driven to the winds, and that without any effort after or manifestation of open controversy. The spear, though often hurled at a venture indeed, would strike the head of Romanism, or Infidelity, or falsehood in its various forms, at a moment when the visor was up, and the man ungarded. Our people would be furnished with many a shaft to assist ourselves in the arduous contest, and the war against error become not merely that of the priest, but of the people.

Such expository preaching also would often supply an entrance into the pulpit for important subjects which are now excluded from it. A spirit of over-refinement is, no doubt, among the evils of the day. With adultery, fornication, drunkenness, blasphemy and other immoralities, eating like a cancer into many of our parishes and our country, we perhaps are afraid to lift the veil, and to expose or condemn them. Is there not too much fear of man in this, too much dread of giving offence? When our young men go out into the world, can we say that we have warned them of all their danger? When our young women are plunged into the follies of life, have we been before hand with the world in the warnings we have given? Or is the weekly repetition of the Seventh Commandment, with perhaps some casual expression in our sermon, so finely polished and attenuated that its meaning is not perceived, considered by us as sufficient for our purpose? It may require a great share of moral boldness to stand up and call things by their right names; to imitate the conduct of Prophets, of Jesus, and his Apostles, in a Sermon upon some of these subjects; and we are infinitely far from sanctioning all approach to grossness and indelicacy. Whilst our Great Master rebukes the crimes, how far is He from giving utterance to a word which would call a blush into the most sensitive cheek. But continuous preaching will supply the occasion. The opportunity will be rather forced upon us than invited. And it will come to the hearer not as the prurient indulgence of a coarse taste, but as the honest exposition of the word of God.

This is no vain speculation. Large blessing has, in many instances, followed its adoption; and large blessings will, I believe, continue to attend it. It may not afford the same scope for human learning, human ingenuity, human eloquence, but we should preach "not ourselves, but Christ;" and as surely as we sink self and exalt Christ in our ministrations, so CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 212.

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surely will Christ exalt us, in making us the happy instruments of bringing many to the knowledge and reception of the Truth.-I will just mention one case which came under the writer's observation. A clergyman entering upon the charge of a country village, found a small church, almost without a congregation. His preaching was in a great degree expository: the people understood it, and appreciated it. He had not been there many months before the church was enlarged to hold double the number. The catechetical service in the schoolroom on the Sunday evening was crowded; and the Thursday evening expository lecture in the same place, was very well attended. The great majority of the congregation were poor labourers and their families, with several Romanists interspersed among them. After four years of labour, when the clergyman was called to another sphere of labour, he had the pleasure of knowing that his labour had not been in vain. The improved condition of these poor people fully bore out the views upon the subject which I thus venture to bring before my brethren.

IOTA.

THEOLOGICAL COLLEGES.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

SIR,-There is a subject which I think ought to be considered. I cannot reach the quarters in which the consideration of it might be of use; perhaps you can.

For some years past there has been a growing conviction that some definite Theological and Pastoral training ought to intervene between the general University course and the actual entrance on the awful duties of the Ministry. That conviction has originated, maintained, and filled Theological Colleges. I do not known how many exist, but in the Province of Canterbury I know of none possessing a public and authorized character but Wells, Chichester, and Cuddesden. I do not wish to assail, but I should hardly be satisfied to use them; and such is probably the feeling of your readers in general. The nature of their influences and the tone of their doctrine are well known. Men who would not willingly place themselves under that kind of direction, find no similar institution open to them to which they can resort. I cannot but put the question, whether it is right in itself—whether it is accordant with the character of the Church of England-whether it is fair to the rising generation of her ministers-whether it is safe for the interests of religion-that these most important and necessary Institutions should be all on one side? I could speak, of course, more strongly in accordance with my own convictions and with

those of most who will read my words: but I will only say, that this state of things is unhappy and unfair.

I am not one of those who rejoice in rival Institutions and rival Societies. Division and emulation grieve my soul. But no reproach of that kind can rest upon the demand that there should be somewhere in the Southern and Midland counties a Theological College free from the objections which are felt by so many in regard to those now existing, in substantial accordance with those views which first restored life and vigour in the English Church, and which may commend itself as a place of training to those students who are likely, in my opinion, to become the truest exponents of the Gospel, and the most faithful pastors of souls.

I almost tremble to mention a want in the present day, when the ready and familiar response awaits you, vocal with "Prospectus," "Committee," "Subscriptions," "Trustees." Neither such means, nor any other of a party or private nature, can produce what I ask for. We want an institution which, under the sanction of public authority, and the friendly shadow of the Church, shall add to its teaching those effectual and elevating influences of independence and permanence, sobriety and dignity, which are the attributes of the existing Colleges.-There are Dioceses in which such Colleges could as easily be raised as those of a different complexion have been raised elsewhere; and there are in them persons in authority who know, better than I can do, the need which exists to provide at the threshold of the ministry additional influences of a sound and effective character. Will these sentiments find no echo in the dioceses of Canterbury and Winchester?

A FREQUENT CONTRIBUTOR.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Essays on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, the Unity of Worlds, and the Philosophy of Creation. By the Rev. BADEN POWELL, Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford.

THE appearance of these Essays, from an Oxford Professor, and one of the three selected adjudicators of the Burnett Prize Essay, is a feature of the times which, as Christian Observers, we ought not to pass by in silence. They are doubtless the indication of a style of thought, borrowed mainly from M. Comte's "Positive Philosophy," which has gained ground of late in scientific circles, and which wears, it can hardly be denied, a sinister aspect towards the cause of revealed religion. We are well aware how cautious

we should be in raising an alarm with regard to supposed aggressions on the Bible by the progress of scientific discovery. We know how plausible is the appeal to the case of Galileo and the Inquisition, and the decree of the Pope against the Earth's motion, to prove, without any further inquiry, that all such suspicions are only absurd bigotry, masked under the guise of zeal for religious faith. But it is quite conceivable, that false alarms may be so often repeated, as at last to create insensibility to real danger. Ignorant zealots may have raised such frequent outcries, whenever the progress of science has interfered with their own hasty prejudices, that at last enlightened Christians may look on with a stoical and unnatural calmness, when the foundations of Christianity are assailed by a sap and mine, thinly disguised under the phrases and forms of philosophical and scientific inquiry.

It is our serious and deliberate conviction that the Essays before us are open to this very grave charge. We by no means impute to Professor Powell a direct purpose to damage Christianity. On the contrary, we give him credit for sincerity in his profession of desire to free its cause from incumbrances which bring it into jeopardy, and to place it out of all danger of collision with scientific theories. His intentions His intentions may be very good, though, considering the paradoxical nature of his creed, his supercilious tone towards those who differ from him is highly offensive. But we believe that he saves his faith in Christianity by the total sacrifice of logical consistency, and that the principles which form the staple of his work, as they are identical with those of Hume and Comte, are wholly incompatible, in their own nature, with a real faith in revealed religion, or even in the dominion of God, as the Moral, no less than the Natural, Governor of the universe.

The work consists of three Essays, amounting to five hundred pages. The First amplifies some previous statements of the Professor on Necessary and Contingent Truth, and on the Connexion of Natural and Divine Truth :

"The subjects," he says, "of the primary grounds of inductive reasoning, and the theory of causation, have long since appeared to me to be involved in much confusion of thought, which has been rather increased than diminished by some recent discussions, from which we might have hoped for greater enlightenment, and which appears to me to be the source of many unhappy difficulties and objections connected with the so-called doctrine of Final Causes."

The Second Essay has grown out of the controversy kindled by the famous Essay on the Plurality of Worlds; and the Third professes to be a "calm and philosophical analysis," and is, in reality, a thorough-going and zealous defence, of the theory of Development, which excited such keen discussion when first popularly unfolded in the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation." The Professor's admiration of that work is as fond and deep as if he were himself its author. He claims for it a highly religious character; and asserts that "no charge can be more utterly and

palpably unjustifiable than that of an irreligious tendency against a work, in which almost every page is replete with expressions of the most devout homage to the Divine power, wisdom, and goodness." So widely do judgments and moral instincts differ. For ourselves, we remember closing the book with the impression that we had never traversed so dry and sandy a desert, where every step seemed to remove us farther and farther from the regions of faith, and the conscious, living presence, throughout all creation and providence, of a living God, the Father of Spirits, the Holy One of Israel.

A complete analysis of these five hundred pages would carry us far beyond our limits, and tire the patience of our readers. We should have to discuss a dozen hard metaphysical problems, and unravel some score of fallacies; and perhaps, after all, give a very imperfect impression of the nature of the evil which lurks behind the writer's philosophical theories. We may briefly sum up his creed in these propositions: that science and revealed religion have no point of contact whatever; that the first chapter of Genesis is proved wholly false, as a record of creation, by modern discoveries; that the Old Testament has no connexion with real Christianity; that the four Gospels are tainted with Jewish prejudices, which are first completely cast aside in St. Paul's Epistles; that the Gospel itself relates exclusively to the spirits, and not at all to the bodies or natural souls, of men; that the Apostles do not assert, but strongly deny, the doctrine of a material resurrection; that distinct acts of creation are mere dreams of superstition, which are banished by the light of inductive philosophy; that our system grew out of an original nebula, which contained, inherent within it, not only the power of condensing into a sun and planets, but of evolving successively all the forms of vegetable and animal life which are now existing on the earth, or which geology reveals; that the assumption of any fiat of the Creator, to originate any new species, is superstitious, and opposed to the first maxims of inductive inquiry; that man himself, so far as his animal nature is concerned, is part of the same great system, and was evolved in due course, by some unknown law of derivation, from the lower species of animals; that the rational spirit, however, is a creation of a higher kind, which forms the exclusive subject of Divine revelation; that the Bible includes a large amount of physical falsehood, and laws adapted to the ideas and capacities of a grossly ignorant age, founded on a cosmogony now known to be untenable, with physical influences and temporal retributions; all of which have no connexion with the pure, spiritual truth, affecting the spirit of man exclusively, which forms the essence of the Christian revelation.

To sum up the whole in one word, the theory of the Essay is a marriage between the Gnostic Christianity of the early Doceta and the Positive Philosophy of Comte, Lewis, and Martineau. A little sound logic would forbid the banns; and as the parties are unequal in stature, and unlike in disposition, a speedy divorce

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