fellow ?" Is a dream made up of illusive images, false objects and pursuits, false hopes and false fears? -so is the life of a man of the world. Now he exults in visionary bliss, now he is racked by disquietudes created by his own fancy. Ambition strains every nerve to climb to a height that is ideal, till, with all the eagerness of desire, grasping at the summit, she seems to feel herself half dead by a fall that is as much so: since neither, if a man be in power, is he really and in the sight of God the greater; nor, if he be out of power, is he the less. Avarice flies with fear and trembling from a poverty of which there is no danger, and with infinite anxiety and solicitude heapeth up riches that have no use. And while pleasure is incessantly shifting her painted scenes before the fancies of the gay, infidelity oftentimes seduceth the imaginations of the serious and contemplative into the airy regions of abstraction, setting them to construct intellectual systems without one just idea of the spiritual world, and to delineate schemes of religion, exclusive of the true God and his dispensations. Thus doth man walk in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain, like one endeavouring to win a race in his sleep, still striving after that which he cannot attain unto; so long as he expects to find a solid, substantial, and durable comfort in any thing but the kingdom of God and his righteousness.-Bp. Horne. PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD.-I beseech you, then, brethren, that ye be not beguiled into any acts of willworship for departed believers, whether with a view to the indulgence of your own feelings, or the hope of increasing or securing their bliss and peace. Such thoughts are discountenanced by scripture, discouraged by our church in her liturgy, and prohibited in her homilies; nor can they plead the general voice of antiquity in favour of their apostolical origin and use. They have not one, therefore, of the various supports upon which religious doctrines and practices are made by different classes of Christians to rest. Prayer for the dead is the mere imagination of divines intruding into things which man has not seen and God has not revealed, and then proceeding to draw such practical consequences as they conceive must naturally follow from what they have conjectured to be true. There is neither piety, nor wisdom, nor safety, in such a course. Secret things belong unto the Lord our God, and not to us; and in us it cannot be an act of reverential piety to endeavour to pry into the depths which he has reserved unto himself as his own peculiar province. For we may be sure that, in his infinite goodness, he hides from us only those matters which it would make us neither better nor happier on earth to know. The matters, therefore, which it is thus his glory to conceal, we never can suppose that we conduce to his glory, or manifest our own wisdom, by seeking with a vain curiosity to penetrate. Neither can it be safe to indulge our imagination upon points in which we have no sure guidance of inspiration to keep us in the truth. Error is ever pregnant with evil, and, when we build our faith upon human probabilities alone, and regulate our devotions by feelings which we choose to call unerring instincts, there is no end to the foolishness of doctrine and practice into which we may fall.-Rev. C. Benson. He that expects God's pleasure from day to day will neither faint nor fret that his suit hangs long in the court of requests; such storms as proceed from murmuring cannot break through a solid roof. Says Habakkuk-A great thing will the Lord bring to pass, but not presently; for "the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie; though it tarry, wait for it, because it will surely come." Many diseases will never be cured well unless they be long in curing; and many deliverances will never be thoroughly settled unless they be long in preparing; and many mercies are hid, like seed in the ground, and will be long growing.-Bp. Hacket. PRAYER*. Lo! where the king of day in glory bends PATIENCE. That which is a sure companion, and most intimate to humility in prayer, is patience. It breaks not away in a pet, because it is not answered at the first or second asking; that is disdainful and arrogant. It holds on, and attends, and cries till the throat is dry, "I waited patiently for the Lord." And there must be "patient continuance in them that seek for glory and immortality." Faith is the foundation, of prayer, and, to continue the metaphor, patience is the roof. The winds blow-look to the foundation or From "Poetical Reveries'; by M. Alphonse de la Martine." the building will fall. Rain and storms will descendTranslated into English verse, by the rev. H. Christmas, M.A. but, if they light upon a roof that is close and com- Second edition. Parker. 1839. A graceful version of producpact, they run aside and are cast upon the ground. tions by a very celebrated poet.-Ev. Lets fall her veil, when nature, calm and still, And offers up, in all unrivalled lays, Of the far darkness: these are but the fume Miscellaneous. POPERY." I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow." Thus saith in her heart the 66 mystic Babylon of the Apocalypse, speaking to herself as one in authority and security, while "she glorified herself, and lived deliciously." Elsewhere it is said of I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-coloured her, beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns," and "drunken with the blood of the saints. The seven heads are" declared to mean (in one of their twofold applications) seven mountains, 66 on which the woman sitteth. The ten horns are ten kings, which" are said to "give their power and strength unto the beast." She is also described as upon many waters ;" which are, or signify, sitting "peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues ;" and further, as being "that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth." Rome is here pourtrayed; Rome on her seven hills; Rome in the plenitude of her power and the security of strength; Rome in all the intoxication of her pride: but not pagan and imperial Rome, though blasphemous, and persecuting, and pompous, and abominable, and domineering, and once throughout the civilized world supreme. A slight study of the Apocalypse must show the anachronism and palpable inconsistency in many respects of an interpretation which would apply this fearful description to ancient Rome. Rome has been blasphemous since she was pagan; and persecuting after she invoked the meek and compassionate Saviour of mankind; and pompous long after her imperial splendour had faded away; and abominable while all her many temples were Christian; and domineering while her ruler called himself servant of the servants of God ;" and supreme throughout the civilized world, when the terror of her arms had become but a record in the pages of history. And when and how has Rome accorded with the portraiture 66 given of her by the inspired pen of blessed John? Since she became the seat of the papal supremacy, and since the papacy sat in the temple of God; in other words, since her bishops assumed that authority in the Christian church which in the main they still claim, though moderated in some respects by capacity to resist in others, and by inability to enforce in themselves. It matters not as to the precise era when this became the case; it is sufficient that it has been, and still is so, and that once it was not for during the first four centuries, though the progressive rise of the papacy may be traced, yet it was not then seen "seated in the temple, and showing itself as God. The mystery of iniquity doth already work (says the apostle); only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken ont of the way, and then shall that wicked be revealed."-Rev. R. W. Sibthorpe, 1828. BISHOP JEBB.-The life of such a man was one continual preparation for meeting the divine will concerning him. But it should not pass unrecorded, that when it pleased God thus suddenly to visit his faithful servant (by an attack of paralysis) he was found, within as without, in that state of preparation which our blessed Lord himself (Luke xii. 35, 36) has specially recommended and enjoined. For several days before the shock he had been engaged in the study (with him an early and favourite study) of bishop Hall's contemplations; and on the evening of the attack the book lay open upon his study-table ready to be again taken up had he returned in health. Accordingly, when first able to collect his thoughts, they flowed naturally in their usual channel. During the remainder of his continuance he gave himself wholly, at his waking hours, to hearing passages of scripture read suited to his present state, to meditating, or making short reflections upon them. One night, finding himself disturbed from sleep by uneasy dreams, as is usual (at times) in sleep procured by anodynes, he desired to have something suitable on a religious subject read to him. My brother proposed a psalm, and was about to begin the beautiful and appropriate 103rd when the bishop said, "Read the psalm that has who saveth thy life from destruction'" (that is, ps. ciii. 4). He listened with the deepest interest and emotion; called for bishop Horne's Commentary, which gave him much satisfaction, and immediately after settled into a calm slumber, which lasted through the night. In the morning he told agreed was far more effectual than any thing they the physicians of his anodyne, which they cordially could have prescribed. At another time expatiating, in their presence, upon the matchless beauties of scripture, he called for the 104th psalm, and, pronouncing it the sublimest ode that ever had come from the mind or pen, even of inspired men, desired that it might be read aloud. The effect none, who had the happiness to be present, can easily forget; his animated eye seemed to nod a comment on each verse, and to impart his own feeling of the divine original. None caught the spirit more fully than his two medical friends; while one of them, Dr. Carroll, a Roman catholic, could not refrain from expressing the mingled pleasure and edification with which he ministered at the bed-side of a protestant Christian bishop.-Foster's Life of bp. Jebv. ( London: Published by JAMES BURNS, 17 Portman Street, Portman Square; W. EDWARDS, 12 Ave-Maria Lane, St. Paul's; and to be procured, by order, of all Booksellers in Town and Country. PRINTED BY JOSEPH ROGERSON, 24 NORFOLK STREET, STRAND, LONDON. EXETER CATHEDRAL". EXETER appears to have been the capital of the Damnonian Britons. It was not, however, till several centuries after the introduction of Christianity that it was constituted an episcopal see. In 1050 the diocese of Cornwall, or St. German's, was united to that of Devon, the seat of which was then at Crediton, and the chair of the bishop was fixed at Exeter. Leofric, the last prelate of Crediton, was the first of Exeter. The grant of Edward the Confessor consolidating the sees, is yet extant. CHURCH OF ENGLAND OF THE UNITED "Winkles's Cathedrals," and " Britton's History and Antiquities of Exeter Cathedral," have been consulted. VOL. XII.NO. CCCXXXI. AND IRELAND. [London: Joseph Rogerson, 24, Norfolk-street, Strand. PRICE lad. : continued by other prelates, have brought this cathedral to the size and grandeur which it now displays. Quivil's chief enlargement was towards the west. The towers already mentioned were originally a part of the western front but the bold design was formed and successfully executed of converting them and the intervening space into a transept or cross aisle, and placing a nave before it. He raised considerably the roof, and also carried From this prelate, during the incumbency of on in some degree the works of the choir. many successors, the building of the cathedral gradually though slowly advanced. The but it was not till nearly a century later, nave was completed about the year 1350; under bishop Lacy, that all the decorations of the interior of the church were finished. The church of St. Peter's monastery was the new cathedral. This monastery had been founded in 932, by king Athelstan, for monks of the Benedictine order; who were more than once obliged to fly in consequence of the devastations of the Danes. But their privileges had been finally confirmed by Canute in 1019. Of the original monastery no part remains, nor of that which, built upon its ruins, became the first cathedral. This was doubtless of very limited dimensions; far inferior to that erected by bishop Warelwast, who commenced a building in 1112, which appears to have been completed by bishop Marshall in 1206, "accord-interdict divine service to be celebrated; so ing to the plan and foundation which his predecessors had laid." The present two massive transept towers are of Warelwast's "Having demanded the keys of Exeter cathedral (their mother church), and taken them into their own custody, they presently church. In 1280, bishop Quivil succeeded to the episcopal chair. In his time those extensive alterations and additions were begun which, that for the space of three quarters of a year the holy liturgy lay totally silenced. The pulpit was open only to factious, schismatical their exhortations treason; so that the people preachers, whose doctrine was rebellion, and might hear nothing but what might foment their disloyalty, and confirm them in their dience. Having the church in their possesunnatural revolt from their duty and obesion,... [they spare] no place, neither the L During the civil wars this fabric, like many others, suffered much. An extract from the "Mercurius Rusticus" will show of what nature the injuries were; it is, howstatements made in it are, though true in the ever, proper to warn the reader that the main, most probably exaggerated:- |
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