vention there is no access to the banquet that He has provided for His children, that there "they may be inebriated with the plenty of His house, and drink to the full of the torrents of His pleasure, by approaching the Holy Sacraments which He has provided for all, without exception of rank or condition of life."*

But a grand object of Christ's coming was to reveal that which had been mystery, and to make still more complete the readiness of access to the throne of grace to every believer, without any intervention of man. Under sacramentalism men have not even the privilege that was enjoyed before the coming of Christ. What says the Royal Psalmist? (Ps. xxiv.) "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, and who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation." Direct from the fountain his blessings come; not through any celebration of tremendous mysteries, but direct from the

Lord.

It is in

The ceremonies of Judaism were not means of grace, but symbols illustrating and pointing to the truths of the Gospel. The grand triumph of the Christian dispensation is to reveal those truths, and to make still more manifest and the way of access for the human spirit to the Divine. immediate communion of the spirit of man with his Maker that man's highest good consists; and he is thus made to drink to the full from the river that "fast by the throne of God." Christ is the one High Priest of our profession. He offered one sacrifice for sins, and "for ever sat down on the right hand of a priest of good things to come, by

flows

God."

He was 66

Pastoral by a Romish Bishop in the Diocese of Hexham.

a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands;" but essentially spiritual; not typical, but in fulfilment of a type; not sacramental, for there is no passage in the Bible that warrants the idea, that the modified Jewish symbol is to be retained by Christians, and to constitute at once a symbol and a vehicle of the truth symbolised. The mind and spirit of man, not the outer integuments, or the organs of digestion, are the avenue for truth; and it is only as truth affects the understanding, and, through it, the affections, that grace can be received; a process which the priestly celebration tends rather to interrupt than to promote. God chooses to dwell, not in temples made with hands, but in the hearts of an obedient and loving people. He allows no human priest at any material altar to do that for His people which it is His sovereign will to do directly for them Himself, by His Holy Spirit. In the nature of things it could not be. He regards all such attempts of a human priesthood as officious and mischievous interference with His own high prerogative. He has made all His redeemed children kings and priests unto their God, to offer the spiritual sacrifice of loving praise, and holy, consecrated

lives. There is no need to fear that rationalism will prove the only remaining alternative to Popish in fallibility so long as these spiritual truths of the Gospel find a place in men's hearts. Whatever difficulty may be found in reconciling the school of modern rationalists with the life-giving truths of the Gospel, we need not fall back on that dogma in order to provide for the continuance of a living faith, and of vital godliness.

Salvation by forms is fatal to true piety; and modern rationalism and infidelity are, to a great extent, a re-action against its intolerable superstition

and tyranny. It will be found, universally, other things being equal, that exactly in proportion as sacer

dotalism and sacramentalism have a prominent place in any system of religion, so will the standard of morality be practically low, and tolerance will be given to vice and crime-crime too often perpetrated in the sacred but abused name of religion. From this state of things-irreligion, atheism, and infidelity in every form, arise as a natural consequence. It is the revolt of common sense, and common humanity, and common honesty, against hypocrisy, heartless ambition, and childish superstition. The abounding infidelity of priest-ridden France, Spain, and Italy, finds its full solution in this view of the subject. The great mass of the people have no idea of religion but the distorted and inconsistent caricature presented to them by the priests of a false system, and they form their ideas accordingly. Their religious faculties all but die out of disuse, and fatal moral obtuseness and perversion are the necessary consequence. Whatever of just and true, whatever of "lovely and of a good report," subsists in connection with such a system, is in spite of its natural tendencies, and not in consequence of them.

The true antidote, then, to rationalism, infidelity and atheism, is not the reassertion or the definition of the dogma of papal infallibility-a dogma against which all honest and independent minds must for ever revolt, and whose prospect of homage the growing intelligence of the world renders, every day, less-but that consistent, fearless advocacy of Scripture truth, and of the paramount importance of a holy life, the result of living faith and submission to the guidance and teaching of the alone infallible authority, which only God Himself, in Christ Jesus, can secure to the otherwise helpless spirit of man-and which He is always waiting to bestow. The Jewish system was essentially ceremonial and symbolic. Every one of

its

ceremonies typified a truth in the dispensation of

Christ, and an experience to be realised by the individual believer. But the Christian sacraments are founded on the presumption that one type foreshadowed another-one ceremony another. Thus the grand spiritual scope and meaning of the Christian dispensation has been lost sight of-its crowning glory has been shrouded. Thus mere childish performances have diverted the minds of the people from the great and solemn work of religion in their hearts-thus Christendom has been rent asunder, and subjected to the most horrible persecutions-thus the ostensible teachers of religion are even now disgracing their profession and scandalising the great mass of the people, by perpetual disputes about altars and chasubles and copes and altar cloths, and all the nameless details of a system which has for its basis a perversion into mere external show of every vital truth of the Gospel,— and for its superstructure a combination of the exploded forms of Judaism and Paganism, elaborately and ingeniously wrought, so as to delude the anxious soul of man by the prospect of a ready road to heaven, by which he is narcotised into a fancied security, under the supposition that priests and ceremonies can do for him all that is needful, without requiring of him the painful process of self-renunciation, selfdenial, repentance toward God and a holy life on earth, as a necessary preparation for a life of happiness in heaven. So far from the tendency of the best modern religious thought being in favour of the restoration or extension of the doctrine of Popish infallibility, it is towards the rejection of all sacramentalism, and the restoration in men's hearts of the simple, lifegiving truths of the Gospel. We want ministers, not priests-truths, not the exploded and therefore now childish ceremonials of an obsolete faith.

SAMUEL FOTHERGILL.

"AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MRS. FLETCHER."*

GRAPHY

THIS is a book of which it is safe to affirm that it will interest not only those who were privileged to know the subject of it, but also those to whom this admirable woman only becomes known by the volume itself. My own privileged knowledge in this case enables me to testify to the accuracy of the representation, favourable as it is, which, as a whole, the book affords of the character of this loved and honoured lady.

There is much in her interests and objects, social and benevolent, to meet the sympathies of Friends, and much in the unfolding and maturing of her character that is as teaching as engaging. The contents must not be largely anticipated in this notice,

but

a few extracts will indicate somewhat of the

charm and originality that remove this book so entirely out of the region of common-place, amid the multitudinous memoirs of our day. But, previously, a few points must be alluded to that were not likely to be prominent in a family record, and could not appear in an autobiography.

The impression she made upon strangers, even in

her

very advanced years, was not that of age. She was one of those who practically teach that age is so much less a period than a state, that some can be

Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher, of Edinburgh: with Selections from her Letters and other Family Memorials. Compiled Douglas, 88, Princes Street, Edinburgh.