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in this solitary island of the Atlantic, that an ordinance was promulgated by the government to prohibit this evil. We conclude our notice of this interesting little book with the following extract, on the influence of sisters :

"If she have brothers, their happiness depends much on the little maiden's conduct and bearing towards them. Born to rule by a secret and gentle influence, incalcu lable may be the good or evil which she may effect on them, whatever may be her disposition. We have seen and experienced, that it is in a sister's power to make home happy. How delightful to a youth to be greeted by a sister's smile, when returning from his daily studies or occupation, and how interesting to see sisters win their brothers by that kind and affectionate attention which seldom fails to be reciprocated on the brother's part. It is the inattention of sisters to the comfort and domestic enjoyments of brothers, which often drives the latter out to seek for that recreation elsewhere, which they cannot find at home. Sisters form, in a great measure, the manners of their brothers, whose polite assiduity, and kind efforts to please, will soon be displayed in a corresponding attention."-pp. 60, 61.

The author of the little volume entitled "Female Writers," though & highly instructed and even learned lady, seems not, on this account, as some might be ready to suppose, less able to form a just estimate of the female character. Hence she well understands what Madame de Stäel

"Shewed so beautifully in Corinne,' that the highest female talents may be brought to bear on the duties of domestic life. She exemplified the truth in her own conduct. Her affectionate devotion to her father is well known; but this was not all. She not only educated her children without the aid of a governess, but managed her fortune and regulated her expenses with singular prudence and exactness; ever considering it as little less than an insult to be told, that it was beneath a person of her eminence to attend to pecuniary matters."

This book, entitled "Female Writers," has much pleased us; though we confess that the title would have led us to expect a somewhat different work; since it is, to a very considerable extent, like the rest, neither more nor less than a book on the mental powers, education, and influence of women. Still, there are parts of the work which are quite in keeping with the title. It claims more for women than the work of Mrs. Ellis, while it is less dogmatic, and more philosophical in its estimate of the female character than that of Mr. Parsons. It does not regard woman as a merely relative being, nor does it claim for her an entire parity, in all respects, with man. The author repudiates the doctrine of Mistress Mary Astell, the Madonella of the Tatler, and of her successor, Mary Wolstonecraft, and, therefore, no doubt, also, the doctrine of the St. Simonians, that there is a perfect mental equality in the sexes. She holds "with Paley, that the sexes are equal in rights, (that is, in all essential rights,) nearly equal in faculties; and, with Leighton, also, that females are ordinarily the weaker." The subject, however, as the author adds, cannot be thus

summarily dismissed, as we must inquire, "in what does the inferiority of woman consist, and how does it betray itself?" To discuss these points is beyond our limits, and we must refer our readers to the book itself, which we have read with considerable interest. Our authoress, however, thinks that even women of the strongest minds have not the power of "close attention and patient research;" that men have "greater energy of character, and greater power of determination;" that women "do not sufficiently reason, nor weigh reasons ;" and these are the principal points of "defect, if defect it be," which she appears to think attach to the female powers.

In the chapter on the "Disadvantages of Female Education," the following obstacles are alleged to the early training and development of the female faculties: that "women are too much under the influence of one another for the improvement of the higher powers of their minds;" that "the spirit which animates the education of women is a servile spirit ;" that in female education, "undue weight is given to opinion-what will people think-what will people say?" that "the time devoted to the mental culture of woman is too short." In some of these points our authoress takes higher ground than Mrs. Ellis; who, perhaps, errs somewhat in making woman too "relative" a being. Perhaps the fair sex have sometimes thought that Milton does so too. The author of the present work is acquainted with the classic tongues, or, at least, with Latin; and if women are to be literary, she strongly recommends their studying this elegant and stately language; and we confess we agree with her. She has given us some interesting pages on the "Women of Ancient Times," and on "Some Women of Learning," of modern date.

The chapter on "Letter Writing" contains a favourable specimen of the author's powers, in the comparison which she has instituted between Madame de Sevigné and Lady Mary Wortley Montague; but it is too long to quote. She gives the Countess of Pembroke's letter to Sir Joseph Williamson, secretary of state, as an example, the contrary of the ordinary epistolary correspondence of women, which is generally regarded as diffuse and wanting in point. Sir J. Williamson had, in those palmy days of aristocratic power, presumed to nominate a candidate for the borough of Appleby. The countess appears to have been a match for him. She thus writes:-"I have been bullied by a usurper; I have been neglected by a court; but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man shan't stand. Anne Dorset, Pembroke and Montgomery."

The following quotation must close our remarks. We will, however, add, that the whole tendency of the book, in a religious point of view, is admirable.

"Mrs. Hemans was most emphatically a lady-poet: elegant in mind, refined in thought and sentiment; she loved what was beautiful herself, and the strains of her

light-breathing harp inspire the love of it to others. She was no Amazon in litera. ture, but a tender, a delicate, a sensitive woman. There was nothing masculine either in her mind or in her influence; the very delicacy of her organization was one source of her talent. She was an Æolian harp, which responded to the breathing of every mind. Alas! the harp was too finely strung, and the strings were shivered by the rude blasts of the world, before the time. She was a fragile bark, tossed on the rude billows of life's ocean, feeling every shock with tenfold violence; and, buffeted by every wind and every wave, hers could not be a tranquil voyage to a more tranquil home. The plant of southern climes, exposed to the wild winds of winter, droops and fades; the bird, which might expand its wings, and soar and sing beneath the summer's sun, shrinks from the autumnal blast. We do think of Felicia

Hemans tenderly, affectionately,

'As of a wanderer, whose home is found,

As of a bird, from its chain unbound.'

The song is ceased; the harp is broken; yes, even according to the words which she herself said might be her epitaph :

:

'Fermossi al fin il cor che balzò tanto!'"

Three Sermons on the Church, Preached in the Parish Church of St. James, Westminster, during Lent, 1842. By Charles James, Lord Bishop of London. Second Edition. Fellowes.

(Continued from page 697.)

THE Bishop's two last Sermons constitute a professed answer to the questions-"What form and proportions did the apostles give to the great spiritual building which their Divine Master had commissioned and empowered them to construct, furnishing them with no precise directions, but leaving them to the guidance of the Holy Spirit?-and how far are their example and authority, in the constitution of the visible church, binding upon the whole of that perpetual corporation, of which Jesus Christ himself is the Head?" The author proceeds to show that the promise, "I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," "implies a constant and unbroken succession of Gospel ministers, from the time when the apostles received their first commission to the final period of the church's destiny;" and that "the institution of church government, and a continued succession in the Christian ministry, were absolutely necessary to the continuance of the church itself, and to the effectual discharge of its functions." these positions we offer no objection, nor are we aware that, in themselves, they can be reasonably denied. Nor do we except against the alleged necessity of the pastoral office being performed by men "specially commissioned, divorced from the ordinary business of life, separated from their brethren," the work they have to do being one which "cannot be done in a slight and perfunctory manner, at spare moments, stolen from the pressing engagements and occupations of the world." Indeed, we have often doubted the propriety, on the

principles and views of the New Testament, of pastors employing their energies in any other way than as shepherds of the flock; and whether their devoting a large proportion of their time to literary and scientific pursuits and undertakings, and following these in connexion with the object to which they have professedly devoted their whole souls in the engagement between them and their flock, be not something like a desecration. We wish, here, to be understood, as speaking particularly of secular authorship, or scientific researches, which we fear, in the case of ministers, are seldom so productive as to entitle these soul-absorbing pursuits to the plea fairly claimed for the tent-making occupation of the apostle Paul, in which he engaged from no other motives than that of not being chargeable to the poor followers of Christ, who were unable to remunerate him for his services. Add to which, that some secular occupations may much less engross the mind, and absorb its energies and affections, than the above. This, however, has nothing to do with Dr. Blomfield's inference from the fact, of the necessity of a clerical or ministerial order of men.

"It is expressly asserted by Clement, a companion of the apostles," says the Bishop, "that such provision was made by them;" i.e. provision for the future government of the Christian church. Our readers will readily conjecture that this is a prelude to the conclusion that apostolical succession (in the Romish sense) and episcopacy, as we have it in England, are essential to the church of Christ. But we think the Bishop of London will find no support in Clement of Rome, for those exclusive and sectarian views of the church, which he insists on so strenuously at the end of the third discourse. In the document to which the Bishop refers, (probably the earliest of uninspired antiquity,) Clement says that "the apostles constituted the first-fruits of their ministry bishops and deacons of those who should believe." In other passages of the same epistle these bishops (émoкÓTOL) are called presbyters, (peoẞurépot,) according to the usage of the New Testament, which makes them identical. (See Acts xx. 28.) It is remarkable, too, that although this letter of Clement was written to the Corinthians at a time when there was a "schism," or internal quarrel among them, and expressly to promote their reconciliation and brotherly love, no allusion whatever is made to any superior presbyter under the name of bishop, according to the phraseology of later times. In this long and friendly (not authoritative and priestly) letter, the Corinthian Christians are indeed exhorted to listen to the just claims of the "presbyters," who were over them as pastors; but whose authority would have been so much violated as that of the Bishop of Corinth, had there been one? Why, then, did not Clement exhort them to listen to the bishop, rather than the presbyters, on this remarkable occasion of disorder in the church? Clearly because there was no such officer as was known subsequently under the name of bishop, of a distinct order from the

presbyters. Candid churchmen admit the fact. Waddington, referring to "Hinds's Early Church," and speaking of the church of Corinth, at the date of Clement's epistle, says, "Its government had been clearly presbyterial, and we do not learn the precise moment of the change." But why, if there was no bishop at Corinth, in the ecclesiastical sense of the word, did not Clement (who must have known it) exhort the Corinthians at once to conform themselves to the "apostolical institution of episcopacy?" Evidently because this companion of the apostles, and excellent and holy man, was of a different opinion from the Bishop of London, as to the necessity of episcopacy; and we shall be quite within the limits of truth and candour, if we affirm, at the least, that Clement never for a moment imagined episcopacy, that is, the three orders, to be of Divine right, and essential to the government of the church of Christ. How Clement should have wholly overlooked the one supreme authority, we repeat, if such there were, while he argued from the power with which the presbyters themselves were invested ;- -or if there were no such one supreme authority, how he should have failed to insist on its being immediately constituted, provided the apostles had made it essential, we are at a loss, on the Bishop's own principles, to conject ure. Had his lordship quoted the passage from Clement, in which he states that the apostles provided for the future government of the church by ordaining "bishops" (or presbyters, as they are also called by Clement,) "and deacons of those who should believe," it would have been seen that this was done “with the approbation of the whole church” (συνευδοκησάσης τῆς ἐκκλησίας Táons.) How far the Church of England, which the Bishop pronounces to be so closely after the apostolical model, gives any opportunity for the Christian assembly to approve of the candidates for ordination, every body is aware; and we respectfully suggest to his lordship, on behalf of the pious members of the Church of England, that he is bound in justice to show by what authority the bishops of that church deprive the communicants of this apostolical right—a right, we say, which even the inspired apostles gave to the flock. We ask, how dare the so-called successors of the apostles to withhold that right? Can his lordship inform us, or will he maintain the prudent course of holding his peace on this awkward subject?-but, be it remembered, a subject which an omen from Scotland seems to say may, some time or other, perhaps soon, be mooted in England. It is unquestionable, that since the corruption of Christianity, bishops have presumed to claim, in reference to the selection of the candidates for ordination, a power superior to that of the inspired apostles. If any dependence is to be placed on the first uninspired Christian writer, whose works have reached us, the apostles had regard, in their appointments, to the views and feelings of the members of the church, or the body of believers in the given locality, and this practice has been preserved in dissenting

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