THE RENDING OF THE VAIL OF THE TEMPLE.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

As nothing which tends to strengthen our inward conviction of the truth of our most holy faith can be otherwise than valuable, I venture to offer the following thoughts, in the hope that, in your judgment, they may possess that tendency.

Of all the striking emblems illustrating various points in the Christian economy, none appears to me more beautiful than that of the rending of the vail of the Temple. In what happy contrast does it place the glory of the new dispensation with the shadows of the old! What a fruitful source of cheering and grateful meditation to the believer! How was the awful unapproachable mystery of the Holy of Holies cleared up by that simple and apparently unmeaning act. Before, (at least in our apprehension) how awful, and almost forbidding, the approach to the great and terrible God,' by the intervention of an earthly High Priest: but now,

* Henceforth no more

Man pays his offerings at an earthly shrine,
Nor needs the mediation of a man

To make his vows acceptable to God.

The type has passed away: He whom that type
But faintly shadowed, has accomplished all,

All that He left his glory to perform.

The work of man's redemption is complete,
'Tis finished!

By this new and living way
Access is open to the Throne of Grace;
The Jew and Gentile, whether bond or free,
The earthly monarch or the captive slave,
The chief of sinners or the weakest saint,

All are invited to come boldly there,

With a true heart, in faith's assuranee firm,

To worship God in spirit and in truth;

There, where our Great High Priest for ever lives,

The Mediator of his chosen race.

My object, however, is not to pursue this most interesting subject to its spiritual and animating fulness: I would rather invite some of your readers, who, from their office, can speak with authority,' to do this.

But, in pursuance of my chief object in offering this paper, I would ask if this subject does not contain a just internal evidence of the truth of Christianity.

1st, Is it conceivable that such an act as the rending of the vail could enter the mind of man? and

2nd, If it could and did, and supposing it in that case to be a fabrication, would the Evangelists, who forged it, have done so without one word of explanation of the emblem? Would they not rather have taken care that it should be pressed upon the attention of their followers? But not one word (that I am aware of) does either of them say in elucidation of it. It is left, by the Holy Spirit, to the Apostle Paul incidentally, though most beautifully, to explain it. I would humbly hope and pray that, if this be a just view of the circumstance, the Spirit of God may so impress it upon the minds

of others, that the effect hoped for in the opening sentence may be graciously and largely vouchsafed.

I may perhaps further remark, Does not this view also favour the authenticity of the Epistle to the Hebrews, (if indeed it needs favouring) for we can scarcely imagine that no part of Scripture would give any explanation of the event?

And now, may I be permitted to offer a few words in the way of application to the foregoing? How strongly does this subject condemn the Papist, and more than semi-papists, alas! among ourselves. For what was the vail rent? Was it for the object contained in the lines above? or, in other words, that

The mystic vail, that long concealed
The mercy seat from mortal sight,
Jesus has done away.

To faith our God is now revealed
Upon his throne, his people's light,
Beaming with mildest ray.

Or was it only to exchange it for another vail, which 'the Church' (our new high priest according to their code) is to substitute for it? And she is to tell us when tears, and prayers, and penances, have been performed in sufficient quantity to enable her to lift the vail-to give us a warrant for a trembling hope of acceptance at the stern justice-seat, when sin has been committed after baptism-and when has it not? But, Sir, what believer in the plain unvarnished words of the Holy Scriptures, who has tasted of the precious gift, and the beauty and glory of their sayings, would turn again to such 'weak and beggarly elements?' We can make allowance for the poor Roman Catholic; for the force of education, and the enchainment of mind under which he has laboured from infancy; but for one who has had the light and life, and liberty, and glory of Gospel truth impressed upon his mind, it does indeed amaze us. Would not St. Paul sorrowfully address them in his language to the Galatians-especially ch. iii. vers. 1-3, "Who hath bewitched you? ** Are ye so foolish, having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh ?"

I would, in conclusion, beg any one to read (in the Spirit) the passage alluded to from Heb. ch. x. (and how many others might be pointed out!) and compare it with all the sad, sad system of reserve, and sin after Baptism, and far worse dogmas 'whereunto they desire to bring us into bondage;' and then again to look at the picture, the lovely because true picture, contained in the well known lines of the poet Cowper :

"Oh how unlike the complex works of man
Heav'n's easy, artless, unencumbered plan.
No meretricious graces to beguile,
No clust'ring ornaments to clog the pile;
From ostentation, as from weakness, free,
It stands, like the cerulean arch we see,
Majestic in its own simplicity.

Inscribed above the portal from afar,
Conspicuous as the brightness of a star,

Legible only by the light they give,

Stand the soul-qnick'ning words, BELIEVE AND LIVE."

PILGRIM III.

ON THE SERVICE FOR JANUARY 30.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

As January 30 will not recur on Sunday till the year 1848, there will be time enough before that coincidence to reconsider whether the Service for King Charles the Martyr should, or should not, be used on Sundays. I will therefore offer no remark to your reply last month to my inquiry, except that, in looking at some old Prayerbooks, I find a comma after "used," which seems to separate the service from the fast; but the sealed books are the standard, and should be referred to. I only wish in all cases to keep to the rubrics.

SURRIENSIS.

** Without referring to the sealed-books, we readily make SURRIENSIS a present of the comma. We have occasionally referred to copies of the sealedbooks when we wished to ascertain a reading, and we have a strong impression that we once turned to this rubric, and found a comma after the word "used;" but if Surriensis thinks it worth while to ascertain the point, he may find a copy among the Records in the Tower of London, and another in the cathedral of his own diocese ; and we can testify that at both those places, and generally in offices and libraries containing documents of reference, a proper introduction for an adequate object will ensure courteous attention. But the matter does not rest on a comma :-for the Act of Parliament, the facts of the case, the uniform practice of the Church, and the concurrence of all our ritualists, decide the question. No ritualist indeed (that we are aware of) discusses the matter, because no doubt had been raised about it; nor would there have been any query now, but for the mistake of an almanaccompiler. Probably the ambiguity of the punctuation, where the meaning is clear, led to the dropping of the comma, it having no business there; though, if it be in the sealed-books, there is no authority for altering it. But the sealed-books are not faultless, either in the punctuation, or always in the text; and the only wonder, considering the magnitude of the work to be performed, and the short time allowed for effecting it, is that we have upon the whole so excellent an exemplar. On the 25th of March 1661, Charles the Second, upon his Restoration, appointed twelve Bishops and ten Presbyterians, with nine assistants on each side, to consider the objections raised against the liturgy with a view to such alterations as might be thought desirable. The commissioners met several times at the Savoy, but to little purpose. Mr. Baxter's proposition for a "bran-new" liturgy of his own— and such a liturgy!-was a piece of ill-judged effrontery which nearly closed the door to conciliation. The Convocation met on the eighth of May; but it waited the result of the conferences of the Savoy commission before proceeding to the revision of the Prayer-book; so that it did not begin that work till the 21st of November; and on the 20th of December the task was completed. This rapidity may seem wonderful, when it is remembered that the alterations amounted, as Archbishop Tenison computed, to more than six hundred; many of them, however, being slight or only verbal changes,* or items

* One of these verbal alterations in the Marriage Service, may shew the amount of many others. We have heard clergymen remark that ignorant persons, in repeating the connubial pro

mise, are apt to say "Till death us two part;" instead of "Till death us do part ;" and they wish that the expletive "do" were omitted. The old reading was "Till death us depart,” (that is,

of one class; but some of them were of importance; and had been the subject of frequent discussion. But the process was much abbreviated by the Episcopalians of the Savoy commission having specified what they wished to suggest or were willing to concede; a printed Prayer-book thus corrected being laid before the Convocation, most of the members of which must have long studied the subject and made up their minds. The book, as subsubscribed by the members of the upper and the lower houses of Convocation, in both provinces, was presented to Parliament, and was cepted; the secular legislature not adding to, or subtracting from, what the Church had agreed upon, but merely giving it the sanction of civil authority. (We mention this, as so much is said about the Church of England being only an Act-of-Parliament church.)

ac

On the eighth of March 1662, the Act of Uniformity having passed, by which the revised Prayer-book was nationally acknowledged, and directed to be procured in every parish before the feast of St. Bartholomew of that year, the Convocation gave directions for printing it, and appointed Dr. Sancroft supervisor of the press, and Scattergood and Gillingham correctors. Great pains were taken to make the impression accurate; and the sealed copies were amended in the margin with a pen wherever a mistake was discovered; but still it was impossible that no slight typographical error should occur; and most futile were it to hinge a heavy matter upon a comma in a rubric (and that moreover in a service then first introduced, and therefore not revised in the same manner as the old offices). Some of the actual changes made in the sealed copies by the pen of the correctors, we could never account for. For instance, in the Act of Uniformity which is prefixed to the book, the word "subscribe" occurs very often; but in one place (Sect. X.) where the typographer has printed, as throughout, "subscribe," the correctors have crossed out the word, and written in the margin "subscrible." Again, in Sect. XXVII., where the printer has given correctly "And that the same," meaning the Welsh Bible, the correctors have written in the margin "And that the some," which is nonsense. We suppose that these were clerical errors in the manuscript roll; and that the correctors of the press did not think themselves warranted in allowing the printer to amend them; yet in no Prayer-book which we happen to have examined do we observe these notable sealed-book marginal readings followed, as in strictness they ought to be. In the general Thanksgiving the print has the word "may" before

separate, dispart;) but in the list of "Exceptions" tendered to the commissioners, it was said that this word was "improperly used," and the commissioners conceded to propose its being altered to the present reading. The heads of the alterations in the Prayerbook may be seen in the Preface to the book itself; and various particulars in the chief comments upon it, as Nicholls, Wheatly, Shepherd, and Bishop Mant; or in the historians of the day, as Collier, Burnet, and Kennet; or in numerous works on the Savoy Conference; as "The Humble Petition of the Ministers," (Lond. 1661); "Account of the proceedings of the Commissioners of both Persuasions," (same date); and "Petition for Peace, with reformation of

the Liturgy," (same date). The Convocation did not adopt all the "concessions" which the episcopal commissioners were willing to admit ; as for instance changing "with my body I thee worship" to " with my body I thee honour;" and in the Burial Service omitting the words "sure and certain." Some of the "exceptions" merited grave consideration; but others were frivolous cavils; as for example praying for "all that travel by land or water, &c." which it was proposed to turn to "those that travel, &c." The meaning was in effect the same; and as to the objection that "we thus pray for pirates or for Guy Fawkes," the Scripture enjoins prayer for all men, and the worst men most need it.

"shew;" but the correctors have crossed it out with a pen, though the grammar seems to require it. Some of our Prayer-books adopt the printer's text, and others the correctors' amendment. In the Psalms, which profess to follow "the great English Bible set forth and used in the time of King Henry the Eighth, and Edward the Sixth," there are many variations in the sealed-books from that translation; and in our current editions there are variations both from that translation and from the sealed-books. In all this there is nothing more than was almost inevitable; nor do all the errors and various readings amount to more than a very insignificant, and (in itself) unimportant fraction; but as the sealed-books are the legal standard, we notice the matter, as Surriensis happened to allude to those books.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF ENGLISH RITUALISTS:-BINGHAM, WHEATLY, NICHOLLS, &c.

For the Christian Observer.

THERE is some good and some danger in the attention which has of late been directed to ritual matters. There is good, because the Church services which have been handed down from the early ages, though they became mixed up, as they flowed along the stream of time, with many impurities, were, at their fountain head, among the most evangelical and devout effusions of faith and piety, and were in the main the words of Holy Writ itself: good also, because our own Anglican offices embody the best portions of the ancient forms, and are, as a whole, probably the most comprehensive, scriptural, spiritual, and edifying liturgical series which any church ever enjoyed, and because it is of great importance that our clergy should thoroughly comprehend their spirit, and adhere even to their minuter observances, not only for the sake of due order and regularity, but for the welfare and stability of their flocks, and the confutation of gainsayers; for though "a little learning" may lead to cavils, an enlarged and clear view of inspired scripture as the standard, and of church history, ancient and modern, as an instructive comment on it, will shew the great value of such a liturgy as that of the Anglican communion, with its accompanying decent and useful rites and ceremonies. Yet, on the other hand, there is danger lest questions of ritualism should come to take the place of the weightier matters of God's law. There is danger of formalism, pharisaism, the neglect of scriptural truth, and the eating out of true godliness and spirituality; and there is the opposite danger of causing the weak in the faith to revolt from what is good and useful in itself, on account of its being blended with superstition and false doctrine; just as the semi-papistical notions of such men as Archbishop Laud caused the nation to recoil into Puritanism, and thus deprived it of the blessings of the Anglican Church.

It was in the anticipation of these two opposite classes of evils that we, many years ago, suggested the propriety of the institution of a liturgical professorship in our Universities; not in order that our academical youth might waste their zeal, as too many are now doing, in disputing about ceremonials; but that having acquired just and large views of ritual questions; and having traced the history of the visible church from the earliest ages in all its phases; they might come to see the just value of forms, so as rightly to discern between the