zealous curate would make on the labours of the classes when he would desire (which he often did) the attention of the whole school while he explained what he said were the Church's principles on the matter of baptism. Several openly taught their classes the error of these principles, but with pain to themselves and confusion to the latter. And indeed they oftentimes consulted together whether it would not be better at once to resign so dubious a post as theirs; but a deep interest in the little ones, and the absence of any other school in the vicinity, determined them to stand fast in duty, and be constant in watchfulness and prayer.

CHAP. II.

"The world is a deadly enemy to spiritual attainment; you cannot too soon see the high importance of being less conformed to it, in all its vanities, vices, follies, and unprofitable waste of time, gifts, and talents."-Rev. Legh Richmond.

"AND now for church," said Hugh, as, after dismissing the school, he joined his sister Maria in their way to the ivy-grown edifice, from whose venerable tower the soft chimes of a bell called the villagers to meet beneath its holy roof.

"Now for

an hour or two of sweet communion with the Father of Spirits, through the mediation of his Son. By the way, Janet, I wish you would persevere in the example of standing up, instead of kneeling, at the doxology which closes the sermon."

"Oh! that fly in the ointment,"" interrupted Maria. "Commendable as the custom you enforce may be, why let it thus break up your enjoyment of spiritual communion? This is the necessary flaw in all advance of ceremonial prerogative; the creature forces its way in where the Creator should be all in all; and while we might be with Mary at the feet of Jesus, there we are, with wrong-headed Martha, cumbered with much serving."

"What I mentioned,” replied Hugh gravely, "is, with other like observances, necessary for a due respect to my Master. Why should we be slovenly in his service only? But I remember my pledge, and we will not dispute."

"We will not," she said, "but just remember one text, not to provoke, but to hush altercation. God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." "

They had now reached the church, and Hugh left them to retire to the vestry. The service was conducted in a very orderly, but unsatisfactory manner. Hugh was almost annoyed by the vigour with which many of the congregation entered into the spirit of the psalmody, and at the harmony, more loud than refined, which they produced. Moreover, only one or two turned with him to the east when reciting the creed, and he saw that not even yet had the simple folks solved the philosophical

cause of a difference in posture, when engaged in singing over the lessons, or rattling on at the prayers. But most of all they were displeased at the sermons of the new Curate. First of all, they were very short; next, they were read over in a very indifferent and careless tone, at least compared with the manner of their beloved Mr. Hanson; then again, the doctrine they declared " was so odd." "Hear the Church," he would reiterate, till they stared again at its vagueness and undefined sentiment; he never talked about conversion, never spoke to them as "dead in trespasses and in sins," but exhorted them with more affability than passionateness, to remember their baptismal covenant, to call to mind their privileges as regenerate persons, to frequent, as the great means of grace and justifying power the altar where Christ's blood and body are dispensed to the faithful; entreated them (here he did grow warm) to be firm against all heresies and schisms, all religious strifes and seditions, and to reject the persuasions of admonished heretics; to be liberal in alms-giving, to provide for the adornments of their own and other churches, and to esteem aright the solemn truths and consequent importance of a clear apostolical succession. "Beware, (he thus concluded the very brief sermon of this day,) beware of all who would point you to the age of Luther and his colleagues, as the age which saw the establishment of our National and Catholic Church. No, my friends, the Church is visible in all ages; history proves the truth of the Saviour's prophecy. He loved St. Peter too well, and his own people too well, to fail in that promise. For if one could prove our birth as a Church, as a branch of the only Church, in so late a date as that of the sixteenth century, we should at once be proved to be no Church at all, and should want all the essential features that constitute a membership of Christ's body. Where would be the holy bishop, whose title to episcopal office must be derived from the consecrating touch which first throbbed in the impress of Christ's own hands on his own bishops, and thence descended, with undiminished efficacy, through ages when the Church was sometimes on the billow, and sometimes on the quicksand, but never foundered with her cargo of undying souls? Without the presence of this episcopal seal, be sure, my dear brethren, that the appearance of spiritual society is a hollow deceit and libel on the truth. I will not deny men their apparent piety, or even their conscientiousness in their doctrines. But woe be to him that rends the Lord's body; woe be to him that builds with untempered mortar; woe be to him who rejects the holy institution, which is entrusted with the remission and the retention of sins. The statue may be very perfect, but it wants life and animation. The forgery may be very accurate, but the stamp of Scripture and tradition is wanting. 'Be not deceived; God is not

mocked' with a flimsy garment of human handywork. Be ye sure that ye are within the pale of the Church; them that are without, God will judge."

"Well neighbour," quoth an old villager, addressing another as they crossed the church-yard green, "We live in queer times. Is the Church in danger?"

"I know not, I know not," answered the other, "but though I can't say a word to disprove all our Curate tells us, I do feel it's not quite the thing. I feel it when I get home, neighbours. I used to have no end of things to think upon and pray about, when Mr. Hanson was here, and was glad to pass the hours in thinking them over with my Bible on my knees, and I did feel as how my very heart had been opened like, and something probing it very deep, and pouring in oil and wine at the same time. But," he added with a sigh, "they're all starvation Sundays now."

For the rest of the day Maria kept a reserved silence, arising in part from her desire not to mar the smooth course of a day of peace, and in part from a sense of depression at the tone of the sermon to which she had, in the morning, been an unwilling listener. She seriously resolved within herself how far she was doing right in foregoing the religious advantages of an evangelical ministry at home, and being here the auditor to expositions which grated against her most cherished opinions, for the sake of spending some time with an old school-mate, for whose reestablishment in the truth her soul most heartily yearned. Maria was shortly to be married to a clergyman in the northern part of Yorkshire, and she hardly expected to be able again, at least for some considerable space of years, perhaps to enjoy a pleasant sojourning with Jane Scott, with whom she had conned over so many a task on the school-forms, and talked and laughed many a gay summer day, and wandered forth amid hawthorn brakes and golden corn-fields, listening to the light-hearted lark, as he carolled forth his happy numbers in his sunny flight, or plucking the wild convolvulus and sweet harebell from the roadside bank. Her uncle, Colonel M'Crie, was expected on the morrow at the parsonage, and him she determined to consult on the propriety of remaining where she was. Having lost her father at an early age, her uncle, who was single, and lately returned from India, very readily agreed to take up his quarters with her mother and herself at Clapham, where they had always resided. It was while Colonel M'Crie was absent for the second time from England, that Maria, then in her fifteenth year, lost her beloved mother. She was, at the eager solicitations of Janet, invited to spend an unlimited time in the family of Mrs. Scott. It was two years before the Colonel returned, and she then rejoined him at the old house at Clapham. Between that season and this an intimate correspondence, both by

letters and personal visits, had been kept up between the two families, and Hugh Scott was an especial favourite of the Colonel's, who was not, however, as yet aware of the extent to which his protégé had fallen from the liberty of the Gospel.

The following morning the three inhabitants of the parsonage were severally engaged in visiting among the poor and sick of the village having previously agreed to meet at the churchyard at one o'clock, for the purpose of taking a walk in company to an adjoining hamlet. When they did so, Hugh said to his sister, "I am afraid, Janet, that I shall not be able to be here this afternoon to receive Colonel M'Crie, as I am engaged to meet Mrs. Williams and her nephew at Canterbury to-night, at the musical festival, which positively I had forgotten till this morning."

"Oh!" replied Janet, "I am sure Colonel M'Crie will quite readily forgive your absence; the coach will set him down very safely at our own door, and you know," looking at Maria, "he is not a man who fondles that empty-headed thing, ceremony."

"Very, very far from it," said Maria; "I am sure my uncle would be annoyed at keeping you away from any engagement. I am only sorry, Hugh," she added, "that the present one is of such a nature."

"Then I am at once cut off from the hope I had held of asking Miss M'Crie to accompany me. I assure you I had intended so doing, and sincerely wished to introduce you to Mrs. Williams, the aunt of my college friends, the Maxwells."

"And can you positively see no harm in attending a musical festival?"

66

Hardly with puritanical spectacles!" replied the young Curate. I do believe worthy John of Geneva himself would have had to frame a new syllogism before he could with reason denounce so harmless an amusement."

"Alas! Hugh," she answered, "what class of persons shall you meet at such a place? Doubtless many worthy and estimable for their moral deportment and generous spirits, but is it the place for the Christian pilgrim to throw by his staff and scrip, and perchance to lose his scroll?"

"There is no unclothing of Christian principle in such a place," said Hugh. "The Christian who cannot pass unscathed through so innocent a pastime, must be a broken reed indeed."

It is

"We are all broken reeds," replied Maria, "and the very terms you use in speaking of this amusement betray your inward consciousness that it is a temptation. And how do you reconcile this with your daily petition in the Lord's prayer? when the believer goes out of the way that the lion meets him. Satan cannot break through to the path that is hedged up with thorns; but let the wanderer turn aside from the straight road of statutes and privileges, and then, mounted though he think

6

himself on a firm foundation against the time to come, then it is that there is a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse-heels, so that his rider falleth backward."

"I quite agree with you," said Hugh, "as to the duty of avoiding temptation. But carry your red-hot theory of seclusiveness to its full extent, and you open another deluge on the world, to cut off every enjoyment, every occupation, every delight, and in short, every anti-Genevan denizen thereof."

"Yes," interposed Janet, "and will you at last counterdict all private music parties, and even the playing off one's rondos in one's own family circle?"

"Even so, even so," continued Hugh, laughing, "shut up your piano-forte, my good sister, bid Anna break her worldlyminded guitar, and even my steady old flute, farewell—a long farewell to all thy melody!"

"It is very possible to make any serious subject appear ludicrous by a little over-charging and exaggeration," answered Maria mildly. "I know many would think to pin me down at once in my uncharitable censorship and pharisaism by asking, Where is the harm of attending a concert? I am ready to own it is not so bad as that of frequenting the theatre, with its gay, giddy crowds, its blasphemous ribaldry, its artificial morality in small doses, its dissolute mercenaries, and its countless scenes of consequent crime, misery, and death. But I reject the assumed harmlessness of even a well-conducted concert. As good dear Legh Richmond says, it is opposed to, and inconsistent with, all principle of non-conformity to the world. How do our devotions flourish, after the flush and excitement of such a scene? Its results, you will not deny me, are in some measure disastrous to the well-being of the soul."

"We should beware," Hugh rejoined, "of letting the subject so usurp our attention as to wound our private meditations with God. Surely the heart that is set on hopes above will soon again buckle to the things it loves best."

"Not so surely as you seem to intimate, Hugh," she answered. "Remember, with one step in retrograde, all that ground is lost; as an old writer says, when the world in any of its guises appears to us temptingly glorious, let us suspect it for one of Satan's discoveries. The carnal mind is the mind which has no deep relish for spiritual pleasures, not necessarily the grossly vile and depraved disposition; and yet this carnal mind (this negative rather than positive characteristic) is declared to be enmity against God. Let us not despise his sacred gifts by a leaning to earthly vanities. They are all fading flowers-all water-froth —all a dying vapour. Lord, teach us so to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

ووو

"And is not God pleased," said Janet, "to witness the gifts with which he hath endowed some of his creatures, so cultivated VOL. VII.-February, 1845. E