THE IDEAL OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

BY THE REV. W. G. Ward.*

In the middle of the 16th century, the coasts and islands of the Adriatic were occupied by the Uscocks,+ an association of bandits from all parts of the Levant. They presented a perfect model of the aspirations of modern philanthropists and poets, they possessed that "unity" and "moral strength," which the men of "heart and genius" in our age sigh for and revere; they were united and heroic, (by crime and despair,) they did not form a state at all, but remained a fleet and army-of malefactors; but the age was backward, they were not duly esteemed, and the penalties of law were among the chances to which they were exposed. Amongst this people the forms and rites of religion were not neglected, but sedulously observed. These men would have been horrified at the character of infidel. Thus, then, crime may coincide with religion, and the observance of its forms may blind to deeds from which the uninstructed conscience of men and nations would recoil. But such a religion, is it a religion? How then are we to

* Published by James Toovey, St. James's Street. 1844.

This word in Slavian means "he who has leapt over;" meaning one that has passed within a city of refuge, an outlaw. In the etymology of this word is to be found the explanation of the death of Remus. Remus had desecrated the bounds of the city of refuge sacrificed by a brother's hand, his blood was the first cement of that great structure, which so soon afterwards became the depositary and the treasury of laws.

See Carlyle's "Hero Worship," and works passim; see Discussions on "German Unity," "Scandinavianism," "Pansla

vism," &c.

Only as

discriminate between piety and fanaticism? Christ has taught us-by the fruits. Brought to this test what was the religion of the Uscocks? Brought to this test, what is the religion of England? These outlaws, however, had no Prelate-no State Church-no Church revenue-no schism-no Bible or Missionary Societies, they had no Exeter Hall, tract distributors, nor anti-slavery associations. England has exhibited, indeed, more zealous religion, but she has practised blacker deeds.

The dyes of guilt are to be rated not merely by the infraction of law, but by the amount of inducement. The Uscocks took to piracy, as a body, after having been individually trained to the practice and excluded from society. It then became a condition of existence-dignified on the one hand by danger, and sanctioned on the other by the necessities of their wives, children, and aged parents. The law of their state forbad not their guilt, and suffered not by its perpetration. England has broken the laws of God and nature not less than the Uscocks. Our acts have been unennobled by danger, unprompted by necessity, unattended by gain, unsanctioned by our national laws. The bond of our constitution requires not crime,is broken by it. By so much then is our guilt blacker than theirs. On the other hand, while sending our armies and our fleets around the world to violate the laws of our country, of human nature and of God, we are sending forth Missionaries to preach peace, we are printing by millions the Bible in every tongue. By so much are we more religious than they-that is, by so much the more hypocritical or fanatic. We bandits and pirates! We are Christians, we are the sons of faith, and preach it to all men. Politics have nothing to do with religion, we are religious and not political. So reasoned not the Uscocks. They turned to religion for absolution from crimes of which they were conscious. We turn to religion to seek blind

ness and impunity. Not quoting scripture as Satan does, we pervert it as false teachers do, and say-The fruit is known by the tree.

Nor are the sentences of the times put forward intelligently to deceive, they are spoken in earnestness. The acts that they do, they understand not; they suppose that armies are made to fight, and navies to destroy, and governments to command them, and they look upon themselves, where they injure others, not as the actors, but as the sufferers; they are an ignorant and a foolish people, not willingly evil but judicially blind. England at the present moment presents united at the same period a larger amount of the active desire to do good, and a larger activity in perpetrating crimes, than have ever been presented severally by any nation before, far less conjointly by any one nation at the same time. But while there are many to profit by laxity and indifference, there are none to appeal to conscience and enlighten it.

Good dispositions avail not to rectify evil conduct, so long as men think they can be religious and neglect the affairs of the State, that is the law of God; while the two are dissevered, the very earnestness of desire to obey the will of God, serves to prolong the outcast condition of the nation and the darkness of each of those struggling to see his way. Revolted at the conduct of those who manage worldly affairs, they withdraw in disgust, and say "these things do not concern us, we live for another life, our duties as our hopes are not of this world, let us try then to pray within the sanctity of the tabernacle, to live in the spiritual life of our own breasts, to recover the saving power of our own souls from amidst a troubled and an ungodly generation; let us look to the hoping nothing of the life around us :”—and thus is the remaining conscience of the nation withdrawn from the conduct of the nation, and the men who deplore its errors, sink into fanatics: and raising on high the Cross,

chaunt prayers, to men whose hands are bathed in blood, and who lie not under mere unrepented sins-but unconscious transgression.

Suppose now a ray of light to break in upon this judicial blindness, and to shine on this desire to do good in minds pre-eminent; how sudden might not be the revulsion in the condition of England, and how changed the fate of the world?

We are led to these observations by some passages in a work which has just appeared, by Mr. Ward, one of the leaders of that portion of the Church of England, which has turned its attention to the past as a means of rectifying the present. Though but a few lines in the midst of hundreds of pages, they furnish Pisgah glimpses of a better land; they present the consciousness that there is something to attend to in the conduct of nations, and that it is a part of the Church's duty to understand and enforce the laws.

To the past every sane man who is in doubt must turn: tradition is a guide more sure than doctrine-is a protection against it. We rejoice that there should be such thoughts in England, and particularly that it should be in the Church itself that they first appear. But such a path entered upon, immediately divides-on the one hand leading upwards to the rugged sublime ascent of simplicity and duty, on the other to a deeper depth of corruption vailed in forms and ceremonies. In reviving the dogmas and the habits of the early church, may they discipline themselves to imitate the conduct of the early fathers who understood the present; who enjoined upon those who named the name of Christ, the putting away of iniquity; who did so in regard not only to familiar intercourse, but in respect to nations and to princes; who used the conscience of the swineherd, to check the lawlessness of the monarch, and by the individual

reached the heart, and arrested the hand of the community. They knew that in keeping aright the conduct of that community, they established justice in all humbler concerns, and made faith possible, and profession not a lie. They knew that it was vain and idle, aye hateful and sacrilegious, to suffer crimes, because all were criminal, and to speak of justice, of truth, or faith, to a nation of murderers and outlaws. Do we want less to-day,-and does infidelity, the child of crime, less demand priests and prophets?

The Christian Church rose to pre-eminence and power because it taught these things; and if the Church, and if the nation have fallen, the one into contempt, and the other into corruption, it is because long centuries have rolled by since the voice of the Church was heard bearing messages to the rulers of the earth from the God of Justice, and denouncing against nations the spiritual and temporal penalties attached to their crimes. It was the Christian Church that established laws amongst nations, its ministers were professors of jurisprudence as well as preachers of faith. To restore the Church, means to understand these functions and use this power. Then may the talents they have received and the zeal with which they are endowed be turned to the honour of God and the profit of man. England may be converted again to the faith of Christ, and saved from the doom that is coming on her deeds and her infidelity.

"If our Church," says Mr. Ward, "has been so incredibly supine and indifferent to her very principal duty, as guardian of, and witness to, morality, that of carefully training her children one by one in holy living, it is not to be supposed that she would have taken any pains in the performance of other duties incumbent on her. When the most grave and serious doubts have been entertained, whether the principles (!) on which our Indian Empire has been acquired, and on which it is retained, are justifiable on