language used by Dr. Chalmers and I think also by Sir Culling Smith,--as assuming a power of judgment such as belongs to God alone,—and tending in practice either to a system of priestly tyranny, or to one of party and sectarian exclusiveness, most injurious to the spiritual welfare of the Church.

It is a grievance, according to Dr. Chalmers;-and your correspondent quotes the sentiment, I think, with admiration,—“ that before a man can forfeit the privilege" (of Church membership and access to the Communion), "there must be a corpus delicti,-some specific delinquency palpable enough for cognizance and condemnation by a bench of secular judges, at whose mandate the prostrate Church must receive into her inmost sanctuary men who, in her own judgment, though living without any gross or definable immorality, are yet living without God in the world." I have no doubt that many of your readers will sympathize with this language. I have heard other good and sensible men, besides Dr. Chalmers, speak in this manner,-yet it seems to me either extremely vague and incautious in its expression, or else in a high degree unjust and unchristian. It is the misuse of the invidious term " secular judges," which deceives so many. If it be meant that heathens should not judge in a matter pertaining to the Christian Church, no one, so far as I am aware, disputes it. If it be meant that Christians, whether judges or bishops, clergy or laymen, are sometimes rather worldly than spiritually minded, it is true, and to be lamented, but by no human power effectually remedied. If it be meant again that the courts of common law can only take cognizance of violations of that law, and that there are sins and vices which are not crimes, then such courts, acting on such a principle would be unfit to judge of the propriety of a Church appointment; but their unfitness would have nothing to do with their secularity, for courts martial, which I suppose are secular enough, can and do take cognizance not only of

But

crimes but of vices, and even of things so undefined as "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman." Dr. Chalmers himself does not appear to charge the civil courts with proceeding on such a limited view of their duty as to consider nothing but legal criminality in a question of Church membership. His complaint is that they require "a Corpus delicti, some specific delinquency; whereas the Church, or more properly the clergy, would exclude a man who was "living without any gross or definable immorality," because "in their judgment he was yet living without God in the world." That is to say, that the civil courts require at least "a definable immorality" before they will exclude a baptized Christian from the communion of his Church;-but Dr. Chalmers and his brother clergymen would exclude him, "because in their judgment he was living without God in the world." If a Christian man's "living without God in the world" be not indicated by so much as any "definable immorality,” by what power shall any human eye ascertain it? And are Christ's people, with no offence charged or chargeable against them, to be excluded from the Church because their brethren presume to judge, in spite of their baptism, in spite of their continued profession, in spite of their moral lives, that they are "living without God in the world?"

Let me not be misunderstood. I know that they may be so living;-I know that there are evils of the heart which may exclude many even eminent and useful members of the visible Church from entering into Christ's perfected Church or kingdom hereafter. Let Dr. Chalmers, let us all, be deeply aware for our own selves, that there is One who seeth not as man seeth, who trieth the very hearts and reins. But no less earnestly do I deprecate the pretensions of any human judge to invade the peculiar province of Christ the Judge of all;-it is for Him and Him aloue to judge of the heart by itself and not from its actions; but we even in His Church must

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require some specific delinquency:" some definable immorality," or else our judgment will not be spiritual as opposed to secular, but presumptuous, uncharitable and unjust, as opposed to what is wise and good and christian.

This fond desire after an unattainable spiritual purity in the Church on earth is the great error of many of the best men amongst the Dissenters. I call it without hesitation an error, both because it is I think contrary to Scripture, wholly at variance with the practice of the early Church, and considered both theoretically and in its practical results injurious to the interests of Christianity. St. Paul has no other idea of exclusion from the Church than as the punishment of open and scandalous sin;— "If any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one, no not to eat." It is well known that the words, translated "covetous," and "an extortioner," mean much more than these English terms: and signify rather "one who defrauds," and "one who takes by violence." All these are proveable and tangible offences, and as such are proper subjects for human judgment; with regard to these things and such as these the discipline of the early Church was strict, and that great strictness in such matters is by no means out of the reach of civil magistrates is shown (to take one famous example out of the general practice of the ancient world), by the severity of the Roman censorship. But the mischief of going farther than this, and of attempting to punish what is called "living without God in the world," consists in the opening a door to all uncharitableness and to all party prejudice,-feelings whose favourite weapon is vague and unproveable accusation. And again, from the vagueness of the charge of a want of spirituality, and the impossibility of really proving this against a man, people are apt to set up various imaginary criteria of the offence, according to their various tempers and prejudices;-even look and manner are held to be indications of a worldly mind; again, opinions

on all sorts of subjects are regarded as symptoms of the same thing, and thus a captious and narrow disposition is generated, and while worldly-mindedness is in vain attempted to be hunted out of the Church, other sins no less unchristian, such as malice, spiritual pride, and hypocrisy, are actually encouraged by the process.

A really strict discipline, such as the Christian Church once had, strict against open and proveable offences, but not pretending to judge the heart, is practicable and has been practised amongst large bodies of men, and even amongst an entire people. In proportion as public opinion is purified, discipline may rise with it; but public opinion in every Christian country would at this instant sanction a very considerable amount of discipline, if men would leave off confounding the Church with the clergy, and supposing that the legislation and government of the Church rest not with itself, but with one particular order of men amongst its members.

Dr. Chalmers's letter is full of this confusion, which indeed the unhappy constitution of the Scotch Church, in this respect agreeing unconsciously with the original and inherent error of the Romish, does but too much encourage. But we in England have no excuse for being so beguiled. The foundation of our Church is laid in the great principle that the clergy are not its rulers but the King the King, who is the representative of the whole. Church, and in whose supremacy the claims of popes, bishops, or presbyteries to be by divine right the rulers of Christ's people, have been by God's blessing both in principle and practice denied.

If a heathen government endeavour to invade the rights of the Christian Church, Christians should lay down their lives rather than abet such a sacrilege. But in England, -and would that it were so also in Scotland,-in any quarrel between the clergy and the government, it is begging the whole question to talk of it as a dispute between the Church and the State. It may be so indeed,

and then there is no doubt that the highest obedience of every Christian is due to the Church. But it may be also a dispute between the Church and the clergy; and then also our duty is the same, and the sacrilege and profaneness is not in the supreme government of the Church, but in its inferior officers; not in the Crown but in the clergy.

XV.-STATE OF THE POOR.

[From the Paper dated January 25, 1840.]

SIR,-I remember well that the year 1840 was fixed upon more than once by various persons, as a period which would be marked with great calamities. And in the course of the last summer there seemed to prevail, as I have heard, an indefinite apprehension over many parts of the Continent, as if some great change were at hand. Such forebodings, as we all know, are sometimes verified by the reality; but whether they may be so or not in this instance, the prospects with which the year 1840 has opened, are certainly full of reasonable alarm.

We see a slave rebellion breaking out,—or burning just below the surface, over a large part of the kingdom. I call it a slave rebellion, advisedly; for the words and actions of the Chartists show them to be slaves of the most degraded sort, and if we give them their right name it will teach us how to deal with them.

Slaves, Sir, by the curse of their unhappy condition, are in a certain degree morally mad. The ideas of freemen are not intelligible to them, while they go wild after some strange chimeras of their own; they plait their straw into the shape of a crown, and they fancy themselves to be kings.

It is for this reason that I call the Chartists slaves. When I hear them speaking against the institution of