of his young Catholic Queen, Henrietta Maria, had resumed their habits of effrontery; and while the king was at chapel on one occasion, a popish lord who was seated not far from him in an adjoining gallery was heard to talk more loudly than the chaplain prayed; whereat the king was so moved that he sent him this message, "Either come and do as we do, or I will make you prate farther off." (Ibid. ii. 339.) The hat having asserted its supremacy for so many generations, we are not surprised at its continuance during the Puritan reign which followed, nor that the frontispiece adorning the collected farewell sermons of Manton, Baxter, and other nonconformists who went out in 1662, should represent the congregation as adhering to their favourite fashion. to the very last gasp. This date however, viz., that of the Act of Uniformity, seems to mark the era of its discontinuance, at least during the hour of actual service; although the liberties of speech and other freedoms taken at church by "The Knight" when Mr. Spectator wrote, plainly enough show that the fashionable superstition of our own day had not laid its claws on the England of Queen Anne. Samuel Pepys' Diary has the following:-" 17th November, 1661. To church, and heard a simple fellow upon the praise of church-music, and exclaiming against men's wearing their hats on in the church." This was just after Charles II.'s restoration; and a few weeks later, a reporter from Taunton, describing the first service in St. Magdalen's church after the ejectment of Mr. Newton and Joseph Alleine, exultingly adds :-" The Mayor and aldermen were all in their formalities, and not a man in all the church had his hat on, either at service or sermon; which gave the gentry of that county great satisfaction."-(Stanford's Life of Alleine.) Two principal inducements operating at that time to bring about as a common result this abandonment of the hat in church must have been first, the fear of being suspected of Quakerism, and, secondly, and still more cogently, the prevailing fashion of wearing monstrous perukes, which were imported from France along with the second Charles; for the head being thus already oppressed by an unnatural burden, there were physiological as well as ecclesiastical reasons for discarding the crowning calamity of a cocked hat. Indeed, there can be little. doubt that our ancestors wrought their physical systems considerable damage by the immoderate use of Lombardy felts, and afterwards of wigs. Perhaps a hundred years hence we shall have abandoned headgear altogether, and have ceased to live in fear of sunstroke. Our concluding testimony on this point will be drawn from John Wesley's journal, which in fact belongs to the succeeding century, and carries us into Germany where, for aught we know, vestiges of the old practice may still be lingering. Visiting the so-called Protestant church. of Meissen near Leipsic in 1738, Wesley writes :-"The minister's habit was adorned with gold and scarlet, and a vast cross both before and behind. Most of the congregation sat, the men generally with their hats on, at the prayers as well as the sermon; and all of them stayed during the Holy Communion, though but very few received. Alas, alas, what a refo rmed country is this." Meanwhile, in Wesley's own dear native country, though vitality had fled the churches, decorum had become an established sentiment fortified by legal enactments. A man might carry into church as ridiculous 76 a mass of powdered horse-hair as was ever bought and sold for ten The practice of uttering audible tokens of approval during sermon is one of long standing. Ecclesiastical history furnishes an early example in the life of Cyril of Alexandria, "St. Cyril," as the Romanists call him, as the illustrious guardian of the honours of the mother of our Lord. One of his noisy partisans, we are told, was Hierax, who was in the habit of loudly applauding Cyril's pulpit efforts at Constantinople. Perhaps this habit of his was distasteful to outsiders, for we further learn that on his mingling in a theatre brawl, Orestes the prefect of the city ordered him to be whipped. In the Stuart times in England, the congregation's approval was testified by what was called " John Milton alludes to this when he tells us how rare a matter it was to humming." hear a truly edifying sermon in any of the great churches. The preachers, he adds, "who are most hummed and applauded there, would scarcely be suffered the second hearing in a grave congregation of pious Christians." (Apology for Smectymnuus.) There can be little doubt that one of the city preachers whom Milton here had in view must have been Dr. Richard Holdsworth, the rector of St. Peter's-Poor in London, who, during his brief hour of popularity (before the wars) was generally greeted with an unusual share of this humming, but who, it is also fair to add, made continuous efforts to suppress it. It is related of him that while he was once preaching in Mercer's Chapel, the humming of the audience became so offensive that he was compelled to stop more than once, using these words, "I pray you remember the text." Now the text happened to be a passage in the Acts, descriptive of the idolatrous homage paid to Herod, and the penalty which thereupon ensued; and by this method therefore the Doctor reminded them how inappropriate to the occasion was the applause which saluted a mere man. disappointed a vast crowd who were pouring in to hear him, by simply On another occasion he rebuked and reading the Common Prayer, and then dismissing them with a homily. [Dr. Holdsworth was one of those who suffered deprivation on account of his royalism. See his life in Walker's Suffering Clergy.] In September 1650, while Cromwell's miners were at work under Edinburgh castle, one of the newspaper reporters writes thus:“ His Excellency, with his officers, met in the High Church in Edinburgh, forenoon and afternoon, where was a great concourse of people. Many Scots expressed much affection at the doctrine preached by Mr. Stapleton, in their usual way of groans." (Mercurius Politicus. October 3 to 10.) The explosive utterances to which the Welsh are still so prone on similar occasions are jubilant rather than groaning; and it was not without pleasure that we lately met with the following instance of the contagion having reached London. It was on the occasion of Dr. Cairn's missionary sermon, delivered at Bloomsbury Chapel in the spring of 1875. "His enemies will he clothe with shame, but upon himself shall his crown flourish," was the text for a scholarly discourse, which concluded with a brilliant eulogy of the fathers of the Baptist Mission, such, perhaps, as no Baptist would have dared to utter, but which, coming as it did from a minister of another branch of the church, was felt to be a graceful tribute. The Doctor's eloquence made the congregation forget the decorum due to a religious service, and it was obviously by self-control that murmurs of applause were for some time restrained, till the barrier at last quite breaking away, the audience gave vent to their enthusiasm in a general cheer and in hand-clapping. This is a refreshing sign of the times. But there are many barriers yet which require breaking down before the formalities of time, place, office, and routine, shall give way to the world-wide energies and allpervading charities of Pauline theology. Too long, quite too long, has the Devil held the schools of rhetoric under his control, and so managed the matter that the sublimest ambition of the sons of God should systematically exhale in the delivery and audience of sermons, hymns, creeds, and litanies, and be chilled by that pharisaic decorum which consists in playing through life the part of a dummy ;-" offering no chance" as old Dr. Beecher* once expressed it, "for the soul of the ministry untrammelled to take fire and cry like the Tyrolese, 'In the name of the Holy Trinity of Heaven, let all loose.' "An untrammelled ministry." Yes, here is the want. Is it not equivalent to an untrammelled Christianity? untrammelled either from within or from without-a ministry which goes to college where "the humanities" are not eclipsed by traditional dogma, yet a ministry which refuses to be bribed by the amiable classes who desire to do all their Christianity by proxy. The late Thomas Lynch in one of his imaginary conversations makes a Dissenter observe,-" The difference between us and the Churchman you must admit is often but this, that he wears his chains outside, and we wear ours within." (And in one respect too there is a strong resemblance, namely, that both parties imagine themselves free.) Another of Mr. Lynch's interlocutors then worthily remarks:"I wish to dissent from no man, except that I may agree with a better; and from no church, except to agree with Christ's." "Let me be free. I can be so among the Dissenters I know, though too few of the modern Dissenters are so. Let us not then conform even to the Nonconformists." (Letters to the Scattered, p. 380.) Who then is the untrammelled man, and in what does true consecration consist? It is not enough that we have ceased to discover "loveliness in lawn-sleeves, or beauty in a bouncing bishop." Emancipation from one form of thraldom may possibly enough leave us in the power of another more ignominious still. The only means, as it seems to us, for waging successful war with the prejudices around us would be a carrying out, and making fair trial of, the Protestant motto, "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." This is a harder task than many suspect, and proxyism, • The father of Ward Beecher and Mrs. Stowe. ever at hand, comes in with her ready and seductive aid. Now, the mission of the RAINBOW is to challenge all who profess and call themselves Christians to adopt the standard of Pauline manhood to which these words invite. JAMES WAYLen. BIBLE DOCTRINE AND SPECULATIVE THEORY. N some introductory observations to an article, headed "The Transfiguration," in the RAINBOW, for October, pp. 450, 451, the writer refers to the aversion which many Christians have to speculative theories in matters of religious belief; and offers some "apologetic remarks" in favour of such speculations. I am one of those who regard speculative theories in matters of religious belief, as at the best of little consequence, and as too often false and injurious. Had we not the Holy Scriptures we might indeed be excused for trying to guess at the unrevealed, and form conjectures as to the probabilities or possibilities of human destiny; though even in that case speculation would be of little value. But God has not thus left us in ignorance: in the Holy Scriptures he has made known to us his feelings and purposes toward the sons of men, in relation to this life and that which is to come. He has told us how we may worship him with acceptance; and how, though guilty, we may find favour in his sight, yea, even become partakers of the divine nature. And to those Scriptures we are shut up for all information on such matters. So far as God has revealed the unseen and the future, we may learn and know, but beyond that we are in utter ignorance,-whatever be our attainments in, so-called, natural science, logic or letters. Where God has been pleased to draw aside the curtain of his council-chamber, we may reverently look and learn, and, thereby, well be content. So thought one who had been favoured more than many. "Secret things belong unto the Lord, and things that are revealed unto us and to our children." But we are reminded that any doctrine of the incarnation, "any theory of the atonement, or any view of inspiration" is "but a speculation.' Well, be it so. What though all such human doctrines, theories, and views were sent to oblivion ? All they contain, worth having, is contained in the Bible, unadulterated, unmixed by human speculation and philosophy. "On such conditions, theology would become impossible." Is it so? Are theology and speculation inseparable? Is it impossible to systematise the utterances of God by prophets, apostles, and the Word made flesh, on any matter he has spoken to us, unless we add thereto our own speculations in respect to those things on which God has been silent? If so, then by all means let us be content with "the facts," and let the fancies go. Taking theology, as it is, and has been, I confess that my acquaintance with it strongly inclines me to coincide with the verdict, that its existence depends on "speculation;" ay, and speculation of such a nature as, in many instances, perverts the Word of God. So much so, that it would be an easy task to supply lengthy passages for the RAINBOW with examples of: "The Bible versus theology." Once, the writer of these paragraphs took advantage of an opportunity afforded him at the close of a theological examination on one of the abstruse doctrines of theology, of expressing his astonishment at the nomenclature employed throughout. The doctrine in hand was alleged to be scriptural, and yet to all appearance its advocates were unable to express it in the language of Scripture. This, the preceptor admitted, but added, "There is not a doctrine of Christianity which can be expressed correctly in Bible terms." I suppose by Christianity" he meant "Systematic theology." The confession is surely startling enough, for it is not easy to conceive of a stronger evidence of a theory being unscriptural than the fact that it is impossible to express it correctly in the language of Scripture. 66 The apostle Paul exhorts Timothy to "avoid foolish, and unlearned -rather untaught (àraidevrovç)—questions, knowing that they do gender strifes" (2 Tim. ii. 23), and surely those are untaught questionsuntaught in the Bible at least, which cannot be correctly expressed or taught by Bible words. This is the crucial test to which we should put all speculations, professedly scriptural. I do not mean that we should at all times confine ourselves to the use of terms employed in the Bible, in setting forth, or pleading for the truths taught there; by no means; but this I do maintain that if a doctrine, or opinion, be taught in the Bible, it is, and can only be, learned from the language used there: and if a man tells me, that a given proposition is scriptural; and is yet unable to express the ideas contained in that proposition, in the unaltered words of Scripture, I must conclude, he has made a mistake. This seems to one a safe course to follow in these trying times, when so many conflicting and distracting theories are abroad, regarding "the ways of God to men." Often has the inquiry been put to me by young earnest minds : "How am I to know which of all the deliverances given by religious teachers regarding the purposes of God toward man is the true one, for they ALL profess to be scriptural ?" What could I answer, but "Search and see." The Bible gives a uniform testimony. These conflicting theories differ from each other, because they put different meanings on the language of Scripture; and have invented terms of their own. Read the Bible, as the revelation of God's will, and follow its teaching implicitly, and you shall not go astray. But a writer, said to be "one of the most conservative and cautious of modern divines," has averred that "speculation, especially in such times as the present, speculation derived solely from Scripture, and restrained within reverent bounds will, probably win back more souls to the Catholic faith from among modern thinkers, than any other form of Christian teaching." "Speculation-derived solely from Scripture," must indeed be scriptural, and it must be so derived from the words of Scripture, and therefore you will be able to express it in these words. if so, why call it speculation? These are the true sayings of God; not the vehicle of a "speculation." But With due deference to this, "divine," I must insist that if "the |