the same premises it is inferred that each book in the Bible is equally valuable to the Christian, and that the only distinction between the Old Testament and the New is their difference of bulk. Hence the Old Testament, containing four times as many pages as the New, should be four times as much studied. We do not know that this proposition has been arithmetically stated by the Recordite School, but it is practically acted on. By a strange paradox, the very party which in its phraseology most magnifies the Gospel and disparages the Law, practically raises the Mosaic dispensation above the Christian. It is essentially a Judaizing party. The characters on which it dwells most fondly, the ordinances to which it clings most passionately, are the characters and the ordinances of Judaism. Its models of Christian life are the Jewish Patriarchs. Indeed, the religion of some members of this party seems to consist solely in love of Jews and hatred of Papists. Their favourite Society is that which professes to be founded for the Conversion of Israelites to Christianity, but which too often acts as a Propaganda for converting Christians to Judaism. It spends vast sums in sending emissaries over the country who diffuse Judaic views of Scripture, and proclaim the spiritual inferiority of the Gentile to the Jew. Those glorious prophecies of the restoration of Israel, and the blessedness of the new Jerusalem, which have their fulfilment (according to the teaching of St. Paul) in the destinies of the Christian Church, are applied by these propagandists to the carnal seed of Abraham, to the pawnbrokers of Monmouth Street, and the slop-sellers of St. Giles's. Nay, some of the most eminent leaders of the party seek even to revive the ordinance of circumcision; and their most popular said Increase and multiply,' and thereby had made Multiplication equivalent to Augmentation. Specimens of modern absurdity, quite equal to this, may be found embedded in that rich conglomerate, the Appendix to the 5th Edition of Professor Sedgwick's 'Discourse on 'the Studies of Cambridge.'

* Good old Mr. Romaine (a Recordite before the Record) came very near the arithmetical statement. His mode of reading the Bible was to begin at the first chapter of Genesis, till he reached the last of Revelations, and then to begin with Genesis again. Thus he read four pages of the old Testament for one of the New.

The faults of this society are not in its design, but in its management; and we must acknowledge that they are redeemed by one great merit, viz. its co-operation in the establishment of the Jerusalem bishoprick, the most truly catholic deed ev er done by the Church of England, whereby she has given the hand of fellowship to the Protestants of Germany on one side, and the Greek, Syrian, and Coptic churches on the other.

writer, the late Charlotte Elizabeth, published a pamphlet addressed to Bishop Alexander (the first English Bishop of Jerusalem), exhorting him to inforce the observance of this rite upon his sons.*

But the most conspicuous example of Judaizing tendencies in the party, is furnished by their Sabbatarian views. In defiance of the clearest expressions of Scripture-in defiance of the universal consent of all foreign churches, Catholic and Protestant-in defiance of the express declarations of the Reformers -but in accordance with the tradition of the Scotch and English Puritans-they teach that the Christian Lord's Day is identical with the Jewish Sabbath. Nay, they require that it should be observed with a stern severity unknown even to the Mosaic ritual. The effect of such an observance upon those who submit to it for conscience' sake, is, we freely own, most beneficial. Nor does it differ materially from that observance of the day which is the highest privilege of the Christian. Those who know how much we need every help to raise our thoughts above the turmoil of the world, will feel thankful that they are permitted to rest from earthly cares and amusements on the Sunday. They will be ready to exclaim with Herbert,'O Day most calm, most bright,

The fruit of this, the next world's bud,
The week were dark but for thy light.'

But the Puritans have always enforced this religious privilege of the advanced Christian, as if it had been a command compulsory upon all men. And they have enforced it, moreover, in its negative and prohibitory aspect; where they could, by penal laws; everywhere by damnatory denunciations. Thousands are thus alienated from piety, by associating it from their earliest childhood with a day of gloom and restriction, imposed upon them by arbitrary force. As one example among a hundred of the method pursued by this party to repel children from religion, we will quote the following hymn for Saturday night,' from a popular collection of devotional poctry:

'Haste, put your playthings all away,
To-morrow is the Sabbath day.

† Israel's Ordinances, a Letter to the Bishop of Jerusalem.' The Bishop was a Jewish convert, and the substance of the pamphlet is contained in the following paragraph. Call you what we will, my Lord, you are a Jew, a circumcised Jew. My dear Lord, bear with 'me, while I respectfully and affectionately put once more the query - why are not your sons also Jews?'

VOL. XCVIII. NO. CC.

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Come bring to me your Noah's ark,
Your pretty tinkling music-cart.
Because, my love, you must not play,
But holy keep the Sabbath day.
'Bring me your German village, please,
With all its houses, gates, and trees;
Your waxen doll with eyes of blue,
And all her tea-things bright and new.
Because, you know, you must not play,
But love to keep the Sabbath day.
'Now take your Sunday pictures down,
King David with his harp and crown,
Good little Samuel on his knees,
And many pleasant sights like these.
Because, you know, you must not play,
But love to keep the Sabbath day.'*

To such well-meant coaxing, the child replies bluntly, 'I 'don't like Sunday pictures, Ma; I like my doll.' And on being scolded for this, and taunted with the example of Samuel, if it is a very naughty child it exclaims, 'I hate that nasty little Samuel!' Whereupon a whipping terminates the controversy. A somewhat similar poem is sung in many Infant Schools, which should be entitled The Infant's Reasons for hating Sunday.' It begins thus:

'We must not play on Sunday;
But we may play on Monday,
On Tuesday and on Wednesday,
On Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
Till Sunday comes again.

'We must not laugh on Sunday;
But we may laugh on Monday,'
&c. &c. (as before).

We may laugh (on Monday) at these absurdities, but the results of such folly are often no laughing matter. The child is father of the man; and a childhood thus trained too often fathers a manhood of impiety. Yet it is not on those who can be constrained, whether by force or by persuasion, to Sabbatise, that the bad effects are most serious. The real sufferers are the working millions, whom Nature, shut out by steam-engine and spinning-jenny during the week, draws forth upon the day of rest, to refresh their lungs with purer air, and their eyes and hearts with gazing on the unspoiled works of their Creator. Religion is too often known to these multitudes in the Puritan form

'Rhymes for my Children', by Mrs. Duncan.

alone. They have been taught by their spiritual guides, both Episcopalian and Dissenting, that it is 'Sabbath-breaking' to look upon green fields and running brooks; and that Sabbath-breaking is as great a sin as drunkenness or fornication. Thus their Sunday pleasures, in themselves so innocent, are turned into guilt. Being placed under the ban of religion, they become reckless of her restraints. As they are Sabbath-breakers already, they think they may as well be drunkards too. And when, upon the wings of steam, they have left the smoky town far behind, they vary their excursions by a visit, not to the rural church (whither, by wiser treatment, they might easily have been won), but to the road-side ale-house. Thus the masses are brutalised and degraded by the attempt to raise them prematurely to a high degree of spiritual advancement.

Such are the main points in the theoretical system of this extreme school. We must remember, however, that a man may agree in some of these opinions, and yet be no genuine Recordite. To make him such, he must combine his creed with the proper amount of ignorance and intolerance, and must enforce it in a damnatory spirit. Of this latter quality a few specimens will suffice, out of the ample supply afforded by the recognised organ of the party. Take the following as a sample of the mode of silencing an opponent: Of all this we may 'say to Mr. Gresley, as Christian says to Ignorance in Pil'grim's Progress, the working of which faith, I perceive, poor Ignorance, thou art ignorant of. As to this person going on 'to describe the errors of men of Evangelical principles, the propriety of such criticisms from such a quarter is that of a man blind from his birth discoursing on the 'ocular mistakes of those who have sight." In the same spirit the Crystal Palace question is thus settled: It is surprising that any animal, with a head of a higher order than a Chimpanzee, should pronounce it innocent to open a place for 'public worldly amusement on the Sabbath.' The same paper, after lamenting the fact that all English railways run trains on Sunday, denounces the shareholders as follows: The 'consciences of the shareholders and directors appear to be 'seared. We are tempted to ask, where can such men live? What religion do they profess? Are they Jews? Are they 'Infidels? Do they ever enter a church.'‡

This intolerance, however, proceeds not from a bad heart, but

• Remarks on Mr. Gresley, reprinted from the 'Record' newspaper, p. 18. Record, Dec. 6. 1852.

Record, Nov. 19. 1852.

6

from lack of knowledge and feebleness of mind. Dr. Arnold has justly described their literary organ as 'a true specimen of the party, with their infinitely little minds, disputing about anise and cummin, when heaven and earth are coming together around them."* And he defines an Evangelical' of this class to be a good Christian, with a low understanding, a 'bad education, and ignorance of the world.' The only objection to this definition is that their ignorance is not limited to worldly affairs, but extends impartially to things sacred and profane. It cannot, indeed, be fully understood except by those who have had the privilege to sit under' thirty or forty Recordite preachers. Yet, from time to time, specimens are brought before the public, which cast a light upon the depths below. Our readers probably have not forgotten the amusement excited by the singular mistake of one leader of the party, who denounced Lord John Russell from his pulpit, as the author of Russell's Modern Europe.' We have ourselves heard a chief pillar of the same school explain the Descent into Hell to mean the Incarnation; and this blunder was repeated in several sermons. To give instances of their misinterpretation of Scripture, their desperate dislocation of text from context, and the cruel wrongs done to grammar in the struggle, would be an instructive task. But we abstain from undertaking it, lest we should unintentionally connect ludicrous images with holy

words.

Such ignorance is often accompanied by a want of taste equally deplorable. This shows itself conspicuously in the grotesque buffooneries of platform oratory. But its most painful manifestation is the irreverence with which even the most sacred names and persons are treated in the pulpit. For the reason above given, we will not dwell upon this topic. As an example of our meaning it will be sufficient to mention the single fact, that a leader of the party lately travestied the solemn language wherein Scripture proclaims the coming of the Lord to judgment and applied it (by changing the word King into Prince) to describe the visit of Prince Albert to Liverpool.‡

*Arnold's Life, p. 225.

+ Ibid. p. 221.

The following is the advertisement of the sermon referred to:"EVERY EYE SHALL SEE HIM, or, Prince Albert's Visit to Liverpool used in illustration of the second Coming of Christ. A Sermon, by the Rev. H. M'Neile, London, Hatchard.' An adaptation of the passage of Isaiah (xxxiii. 17), Thine eye shall see the King in His beauty,' is introduced into this sermon, where Prince is substituted