would have set in with such a mighty force as no mere professional agitators could have resisted. But though the troubling of the waters has continued, and indeed increased ever since, it is now no longer Bethesda and an angel, so much as a troubled sea of perplexity and storm, of which the spirit is anything but angelic, that confronts our at last anxious Church-stronger, indeed, in some respects, than she has been for long years, fully awake at last to her own infirmities, and nobly desirous of having them healed, but rightly hesitating to plunge into the turbid waves of political and social agitation that seem to mock her very anxieties and distresses.

The day of easy comprehension has apparently gone by. Nonconformists, however, do not seem to know exactly what they want. They do evidently want admission to Church of England burial-grounds; hankering after such admission, not because church-yards are consecrated, they tell us, but because churchyards are parochial. They do not recognize the word parochial in an ecclesiastical, but only in a local, a territorial, a township sense. And it is probable that their ministers, with a vast majority of their laity, desire, and aim also, at an admission into our churches as well as into our churchyards. There is an inconsistency in their desire, which is worth passing notice. It means either a lurking desire for comprehension, or an evident inconsistency. For the very shape of our churches is a standing rebuke to their nonconforming principles. It is true that the Puritans found no insurmountable obstacle in this fact of Episcopal Church architectural arrangement; and it is equally true that, by making idols into hat-pegs, and fashioning them with the chisel into other useful purposes, so as not needlessly to wound and harden the feelings of their worshippers, we of the Church of England could make temporary use of the idol temples of Hindoos and Heathen. But still inconsistency is inconsistency, even when Puritans are chargeable with it; it is true, however, that, at present, in most cases they destroy and hurl contempt rather than appropriate; whereas Church of England men neither covet nor agitate for the possession of either temples or tabernacles. Either, therefore, there is in most Nonconformists, assuredly there is in many, a lurking desire, in some kindly and in some unkindly, for standing room in the National Church, without giving up too much that they love; or else there are many inconsistencies, over and above their growing love for High-church music and architecture in their chapels, to be by Nonconformity accounted for.

A more pleasing evidence of the more or less latent desire to be “comprehended” was evidenced on the part of the Nonconformist minister who lately preached in a church in the dig. cese of Ripon. I do not in the least defend the action of the estimable clergyman who invited that manifestation. That is a matter wholly apart from my present subject. I simply set down the compliance of the Nonconformist minister, and his great willingness to take advantage of the clergyman's invitation, as an important and significant fact on the side of the possibility that, if Nonconformists could get Comprehension on liberal terms, they would choose to agitate for that in place of Disestablishment.

Another fact, on the same side, is, I should also imagine, the friendly spirit in which the Methodist body in Ireland have met the advances of the Irish Church. Here, again, we are met with the opposite-seeming fact, that it was after the Church had been disestablished that this spirit was evidenced. But who shall say that it was not rather disestablishment acting upon the Church, than disestablishment acting upon the Methodists? And who can deny that, if the Established Church had made as conciliatory an advance as has been so wisely made by the disestablished Church, there might have been an even greater readiness to strive for incorporation ?

Again, there is, among Nonconformists of the more thoughtful and less polemical bias, a decided advance towards what, with an evil perversity, is so often called "churchmanship,” in regard to discipline, sacraments, and other such points. There is strong evidence of this in a recent Dissenting publication called “ Ecclesia," of which the very title utters its indirectly confessed yearning for what Nonconformity had, it was thought, consciously and voluntarily sacrificed. And there is a growing number of what may be almost called “Ritualistic Dissenters," who certainly do not make so much, as of course they could not, of Apostolical Descent as of what they would perhaps designate Apostolical Dissent; but who are evidently moving away from their old moorings at no snail's rate of progression; retaining mostly the Evangelical doctrine, indeed, but not the Evangelical, least of all the nonconforming signs and nanifestations that formerly marked them.

And with respect to the more demonstrative signs of a growing and almost fierce thirst for disestablishmeut, several qualifying circumstances should be taken into account. There is the persuasion, intensified by what Mr. Gladstone lately said to Mr. Miall about not disestablishing, or rather, about the difficulty of disestablishing, the Church of England, growing down into the nonconforming perception that the Church of England is making giant strides into real nationality, and that it may become, in a few years, impossible to dislodge her foot, without her own voluntary action, from its place next the Throne and State. But for the rise and partial spread of Ri

tualism, which, being itself Romanistic dissent, and because it has weakened the Church by internal division, has been a great and skilfully used gain in dissenting hands, the Church would probably have by this time tided over the rocks of disestablishment, and been making good headway towards the port of orthodox comprehension. And it may yet do so; but the very possibility intensifies the efforts of Nonconformists towards disestablishment.

And there is also a certain pride, natural and not wholly unbecoming, in agitating for a levelling down rather than a levelling up equality. At a clerical meeting some years ago, held not far from the metropolis, that great centre of information and civilization, the discussion turning upon how to comprehend and get back again the nonconforming population, one of the speakers said that, for his part, he saw no obstacle whatever. “Let them come,” said this gentleman, “by all means; I would receive any number of them to-morrow." But, surely, that attitude will never either comprehend or be comprehended. It is Roman, not Anglican. The very chiefest difficulty is how to invite, without arousing jealous susceptibilities,-how to give, without giving from a height,-how to smooth down the way of approach, so that “cap in hand” could never be applied to any Nonconformist body or individual coming to join us.

Disestablishment, owing to these and other causes, seems the more probable side of the alternative that approaches “hull up," and with increasing speed, to our Church. The nonconformist papers — and it has become a solemn duty (would it were always a pleasure !) to read these journalssay scarce anything whatever of Comprehension, filling their columns with such bitter and implacable attacks upon the “State-Church,” that a village-blacksmith friend of mine, to whom I lend the Record, has given up his nonconforming paper while keeping firm hold of his nonconformity for the present, and tells me he is “utterly tired, dead-sick of it, from beginning to end.” But it all does its work, hits its mark with deadly effect, makes statesmen believe it speaks the mind of whole bodies of earnest men, heartens up the despairing, and from behind its omne ignotum pro magnifico hedge, may become no small part of an ultimately successful disestablishing onslaught.

But the conclusion of this paper can only be a repetition of its commencing question, which it is necessary Churchmen should look fully and frankly in the face. Perhaps in meeting another question as fully and frankly, viz., the question “ Which is best ?” more light may come from the clouded horizon.

But then come forth the questions, “ Best for whom?” “Is either right?" and the others that were enumerated and suggested at the commencement of this letter. So inextricably, however, are all these questions woven together, so impetuously do they all flow down, tributary fashion, into the swelling stream of Change, that the discussion of one becomes a discussion upon all. Lift up “best” into “best in the interests of true religion, best for the nation's true advancement, best as a preparation for, and hastening towards, the Redeemer's reign ;” and we simplify matters to a very practical issue.

But the pro and the con are still perplexing. Disestablishment might possibly (and that is all) take away more and more of the worldly spirit in some, and of temptations to the indulgence of a worldly spirit in others, who stoutly defend the principle of Establishment, but who would be numbered, at all events, in the body of Anglican Episcopalians; but disestablishment would also minister food, or rather fuel, to that worldly enviousness and covetousness that seems so powerfully to sway the invading army of nonconforming foes.

The one use to be made of the issues that are before the Established Church would seem to be, to concentrate our energies, whatever may be the nonconforming differences and inconsistencies, upon one settled programme for defence, and to keep to our line. If, indeed, Nonconformity would make up its mind as to which side of the alternative it wants, the Church might, free from all uncertainty, be able to say, “ Comprehension then be it;" or, “Let Disestablishment then be the plainly understood ground we are to contend upon.” But since Nonconformity does not quite know whether it wishes Mr. Spurgeon to preach in St. Paul's, with, in this particular case, not only very “proper safeguards,” but very necessary safeguards, or to have part of the ecclesiastical income of St. Paul's, or (socially and politically) to pull down St. Paul's altogether, it is time for Churchmen to unite together, and by choosing a “platform”-the word, though objectionable, is expressive for themselves, to force a platform upon their be. siegers. Ritualists would naturally unite against the Church with Independents, Baptists, and Roman Catholics.

May it not be—nay, is it irreverently presumptuous to believe that the Head of the Church leaves the question to be decided by good men of all diversities of discipline-hinting, by this Divinely permitted liberty, that whichever way of spreading Gospel Truth, whether by Establishment or Ďisestablishment, Comprehension or Subdivision, seems best to the devout intelligence of good Christians, He is waiting to bless, and willing to sanction?

And that being so, might not a Conference of Churchmen

ing, by died by good men the Church lea presumptuous t

meet together, and after trying, in the first place, to extract from representative Nonconformists a statement of what they aim at; then, in the next place, agree upon a united line of either acquiescence in, or resistance of, the demands of outspoken Nonconformity, if such a statement could be obtained. Possibly such a statement might not be forthcoming-Mr. Baldwin Brown might be of a different opinion from Mr. Newman Hall, for example ?

Such united action might be effectively entered upon, I think, after a calm and deliberate consideration of the alternative that forms the subject of this paper.

S. B. J.

The Anglican Doctrine of Absolution popularly explained. By the

Rev. C. H. Davis, M.A., of Wadham College, Oxford ; Chaplain of the Stroud Union, Gloucestershire. London: The Christian Book Society. 1870.

The substante society. 1870.

The substance of this Essay on the Doctrine of Absolution, as held in the English Church, appeared originally in the form of a Sermon on St. John xx. 21-23, preached by the Author before the University of Oxford, and subsequently published at the request of some who heard it.

Mr. Davis observes with justice, that in the consideration of these words we must remember that they were spoken to Jews who were acquainted with the phraseology of the Old Testament Scriptures; and he refers to the case of the priests, who were said to cleanse and pollute the leper (Lev. xiii. 8, 13), and to that of the prophet Jeremiah, who was set to “throw down,” and to “build," to “root out," and to “plant” (Jer. xxi. 1, 10), with reference to nations and kingdoms, as illustrations of that well-known form of oriental speech in accordance with which a person is said to do that which he either pronounces to be already done, or foretells as about to be accomplished. The words themselves require to be understood, and, as a matter of fact, are understood, alike by Protestants and Romanists, as being spoken, not absolutely, but conditionally.

The Romish interpretation of the words, moreover, not only requires certain conditions, as that of confession, on the part of those who need absolution, and whose sins are supposed to be remitted as a judicial act by the priest; but it is manifestly faulty as regards the retention of sins, the intervention of the priest being, according to the Romish creed, not only unneces