tions of Divine power-superhuman; while, as regards their purpose, he speaks in entire harmony with Mr. Birks, describing them as avowed credentials. Christ wrought miracles, "expressly declaring that He did them by the power of God, and in proof that God had sent Him." While referring to that Essay, we are glad to add another corroboration of Mr. Birks's views. Mr. Mansel denies that there is any violation of the laws of nature in the Scriptural miracles, and says that a special interposition of Divine power constitutes in itself a cause to which the unexpected effect may be truly ascribed.

Returning to the definition of miracles, we think that that which may be gathered from Mr. Mansel's expressions, being sufficient, is better, because more simple, than Mr. Birks's. A special interposition of Divine power,—a work wrought by a supernatural interposition of Divine power,-as an attestation of Divine authority, will, we imagine, include all the Scriptural miracles, whether those which would be classed by Mr. Birks as immediate, those in which men were employed as the agents of a higher power, or those in which the laws of nature were made to minister to the accomplishment of the purposes of Him whom they must needs obey.

We are not sure that we agree with Mr. Birks in his view of the miracles of the locusts, the plagues, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. We do not consider that "in these, foresight, and not power, is the really supernatural element." But neither does Mr. Birks, who says this, appear to mean precisely what the words express, for he speaks of a pre-arrangement of special conditions;" which certainly would be necessary, in order to bring the event to pass at the precise time appointed, and must have been supernatural.

In a later chapter (the seventh) Mr. Birks undertakes to prove that the Scriptural miracles, and the prophecies also, agree in character with their alleged design, as the credentials of a series of Divine revelations. These he discusses as capable of being established under the four heads of " a wise parsimony, general publicity, a consistent plan, and a moral purpose."

The whole treatment of the important subject of miracles may be of great benefit to many, proving to them the untenableness of the position that miracles are impossible, and showing their importance as credentials of God's messengers, and the impracticability of severing them from Christianity without destroying it utterly. The veracity of Christ is shown to have been pledged to the reality of His own miracles. This latter is a point to which Mr. Mansel also attaches grave importance. The chapters on the historical truth of the New and Old Testaments are of great value in days when Essayists are representing these portions of God's holy Word to be mythscunningly, or it may be clumsily, devised fables.

Prophecy forms the second tributary to the supernatural credentials of revelation. Mr. Birks's chapter on this subject is conclusive. He designedly takes in hand certain prophecies which have been individually attacked by sceptical writers; shows how entirely the critical discernment of the adversaries has been warped by prejudice, and how certainly prophetical were the passages they have attempted to set aside; and he expresses his wonder that those who maintain that the prophecies attributed to Daniel were a forgery of later days, still dare to call themselves disciples of Christ," seeing that the Lord Himself ascribed their authorship to Daniel the prophet. (p. 181.) Here the valuable Essay of Dr. McCaul, in Aids to Faith, corroborates all that Mr. Birks has written.

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On this important branch of the evidences, the supernatural, including miracles and prophecy, it may be useful to remind the reader that one indisputable miracle and one indisputable prophecy are enough to upset the whole argument of the sceptics. If, for example, Christ rose from the dead, and if there be prophecies which the Jews are now fulfilling, then the whole fabric of these objections falls down to the ground, for they pretend that a miracle and a prophecy are alike impossible things.

The inspiration of holy Scripture could not fail to have an important place assigned to it in The Bible and Modern Thought. Mr. Birks maintains that "the only true and safe definition of Bible inspiration must be of a positive kind. These books," he says, 66 are written by accredited messengers of God, for a special purpose, in order to be a standing record of Divine truth, for the use of mankind. They are thus stamped throughout with a Divine authority." (p. 198.) After important preliminary considerations, which may be a source of peace, quietness, and confidence to many a disturbed mind, the author discusses, in the tenth and eleventh chapters, the inspiration of the Old and of the New Testaments. Much as we should like the exercise, we must abstain from following him. Mr. Birks (and we have observed the same thing in more than one of the writers of the Aids to Faith) does not encumber the inquirer with a theory of inspiration, divided into so many degrees and classes, but is content to leave it where the Scripture itself has placed it. The whole Scripture, though it had various human writers, is due to one higher Author, the revealing Spirit of God. "This," he says truly, "is the great question really at issue between the Christian Church in all ages, and a limited number of modern critics, who aspire to represent the progress, and really herald the predicted unbelief, of these last days." (p. 251.) The chapter in which these words occur (the twelfth), on the Interpretation of Scripture, is directed against the errors propagated by such works as the seventh of the

Essays, Mr. Jowett's, and may be of great service to those whose minds have been unsettled by that mischievous production.

The alleged discrepancies of the Bible, and the difficulties. raised by some men's views of modern science, occupy full sixty pages, in which no question is shirked, and no grave objection left without a satisfactory refutation. The relation, also, between the authority of the Bible and the claims of conscience is treated with a vigorous and masterly hand. The proper functions of conscience are maintained, while the word of God is established as a law before which it must bow, and by which it is to be regulated. This is an able refutation of that chief position in Dr. Temple's Essay.

We regard this volume as a valuable contribution to our controversial theological literature. Its usefulness will not be confined to the period of the present struggle. Its very tone is seasonable and helpful, for it is pervaded by a thoroughly fearless confidence in the certainty of God's truth, and the distinctness of the evidences of its revelation to man. Surely we may render thanks to Almighty God that in a day of peril, as well as alarm, He should have brought out this and so many other able champions to maintain His own cause! The enemy was coming on like a flood, but the Spirit of the Lord has raised up a standard against him.

CORRESPONDENCE.

DR. VAUGHAN AND THE CONGREGATIONAL UNION.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

SIR,-Twenty-three years since, I communicated to one of your predecessors the following extract from a work of Dr. Vaughan's (see the Christian Observer for 1838, page 432), where, speaking of Dissenters,

"The great charge against us, so far as I am able to ascertain, is, that we are aiming at nothing less than the destruction of the Established Church. Now, it is not denied that the principles of Congregationalism are opposed to the existence of any civil establishment of Christianity. But it is one thing to be persuaded that a nation might have chosen a wiser course than it has done, and another to fall into a justly censurable mode of proceeding in order to correct a prevalent error. It may be strictly lawful that there should be no Established Church, but in the state of society existing in England it may be far from expedient. The whole question, though truly one of principle, is also one to be determined, in a great degree, by circumstances. While the social system of England shall be what it is, and while the prevalent feeling in favour of an Established Church shall be what it is, there

ought, as I conceive, to be such a church. The Dissenter may say that the State, in this respect, is exercising a power which it ought not to have assumed; but so long as the State is not so persuaded, it should not be expected to relinquish the policy which has naturally resulted from a different consciousness of duty. Principle, on this great question, may be of as much monent to the Churchman as to the Dissenter. And if there are Dissenters who, having looked to the monarchy and to the court of England, and to the prepossessions, on this subject, of the persons who constitute the upper and even the lower House of Parliament, and have expected to see these parties concur in anything approaching towards an extinction of the State Church, such expectation must surely have been indulged in some of those delusive moments when the passions do not allow the understanding to perform its proper office."

When I forwarded the above passage from the learned doctor's work to the Christian Observer, I thought it did him great honour as an eminent Dissenting minister, and spoke well for his Christian candour and forbearance; but on reading Mr. Bull's letter in your January number (page 72), I was surprised to find the same Dr. Vaughan leading the assaults of the Congregational Union upon our church Establishment amidst the gibes and cheers of its unrelenting enemies. The opinions formerly entertained by this gentleman are more in accordance with the spirit of the gospel and with Christian charity than the oration so much admired and applauded at Birminghain. Advancing years generally teach moderation; and Christian men, as they draw nearer to that bar where they must answer for every idle word spoken, do commonly gracefully retire from the strife and contentions of the world. Dr. Vaughan, however, in his maturer years, does not appear, in his hostile dealings with the Established Church of his country, to regard the Apostolic injunction, "Let your moderation be known to all men."

When we reflect on the past history of our country, and on the conduct of the enemies of the Church of England in the seventeenth century, we anxiously ask, What are the Congregational Union driving at? What manner of spirit are they of? The destruction of the church in those days was followed by the downfall of the monarchy; and it is the fixed opinion of the members of the church in the present day that a like result would probably, if not necessarily, take place on the abolition of our ecclesiastical Establishment. "Laud led the way to the scaffold, and king Charles soon followed him," says Mr. Hine in his bi-centenary tract, "Our Ejected Ministers." Surely, whatever may have been the faults of these unhappy men, and I am not prepared to justify their conduct, their cruel fate must necessarily excite the commiseration of all who profess and call themselves Christians, unless party spirit has blinded their judgment and deadened their feelings. The friends of established churches and of the parochial system certainly have more right to claim the Nonconformist divines of 1662 as agreeing with them in principle, than have the Independent Dissenters. Right-minded churchmen of the present day can appreciate and acknowledge the conscientiousness of the ejected ministers, as being for the most part Presbyterians, in withdrawing themselves from an episcopal Establishment, and can compassionate the hardships many of them underwent. It cannot be forgotten that Mr. Hine's highly eulogised "real king" had "to

wade through slaughter to a throne;" and if he did not "shut the gates of mercy on (all) mankind," there was neither mercy nor justice shown to the adherents of the fallen monarchy, or liberty and toleration allowed to the members of the Episcopal church under his rule. Witness the "hard measure " dealt to good bishop Hall and the other bishops, and to the suffering clergy generally, who at this time were silenced on pain of imprisonment or banishment, to whose sorrows you drew attention in your last number. Mr. Evelyn, in his memoirs, says, "I went to London to receive the B. sacrament, the first time the Church of Engd. was reduced to a chamber and conventicle, so sharpe was the persecution." "25. Dec. I went to London with my wife to celebrate Christmas day, Mr. Gunning preaching in Exeter Chappell. Sermon ended; as he was giving us the holy sacrament, the chappell was surrounded with souldiers, and all the communicants and assembly were surprized and kept prisoners by them, some in the house, others carried away. In the afternoon," Mr. Evelyn says, "came Col. Whaley, Cofle, and others, from Whitehall, to examine us one by one; some they committed to the marshall, some to prison. When When I came before them they tooke my name and abode, examined me why, contrarie to an ordinance made that none should anie longer observe the superstitious time of the Nativity, I durst offend, and particularly be at common prayers; but after many frivolus and ensnaring questions and much threatening, and finding no colour to detaine me," he says, "they dismissed me with much pity of my ignorance." Bearing all this in mind, we may well ask, how it is that "that great Englishman, Oliver Cromwell," that "real king," and that "thorough man all over," should have become the great idol of modern Dissenters, who boast themselves the principal champions of" civil and religious liberty." I fear that the spirit of late displayed by the Congregational Dissenters argues but ill for religious peace amongst us, or for the furtherance of "unity and godly love." Let us imagine that the persevering enemies of our Establishment have accomplished their purpose, and, to use the language of Mr. Miall, have "scattered it to the four winds of heaven," how are our small country parishes to be provided with a resident ministry? When "the village preacher" is removed, his " modest mansion" sold, and his income applied to secular uses, will the poor cottagers be regularly summoned on each returning Sabbath by the "church-going bell" to meet in their ancient parish church for the purposes of praise and prayer, as their forefathers have done through many past generations, or will they be dependent for religious service on the casual and occasional visits of some itinerant, perhaps illiterate, preacher from a neighbouring town? I have often regretted that greater numbers of the clergy did not associate with their dissenting brethren in evangelical alliance, and meet them on the platforms of the Bible Society; but it is not in human nature that they should do so, except as a matter of painful duty, while open war is waging against their church, and their own motives and conduct are impugned. Mr. Bright, another determined adversary of the Church of England, in his speech at Rochdale on the American difficulty, stated that Mr. Lincoln, as the elected president of the United States by universal suffrage, occupied a post of higher honour than any hereditary monarch whatever,