An Introduction to the Modern Classification of Insects; founded on the Natural Habits and Corresponding Organization of the different Families. By J. O. Westwood, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo.

Ward's Library. An Exposition of the Gospel according to John. By George Hutchinson. Reprinted from the Edition of 1657.

A New and Complete Concordance to the Holy Scriptures. On the basis of Cruden's. With a Preface by the Rev. David King.

Letter to Thomas Phillips, Esq., R.A., on the Connexion between the Fine Arts and Religion, and the Means of their Revival. By Henry Drummond, Esq.

Triplicity. In two volumes.

Travels in Germany and Russia: Including a Steam Voyage down the Danube and the Euxine from Vienna to Constantinople, in 1838, 1839. By Adolphus Slade, Esq., R.N.

The Inquirer Directed to an Experimental and Practical View of the Work of the Holy Spirit. By Octavius Winslow.

The Ecclesiastical and Political History of the Popes of Rome during the 16th and 17th Centuries. By Leopold Ranke, Professor in the University of Berlin. Translated from the German by Sarah Austin. 3 vols.

The Pictorial History of Palestine. By the Editor of The Pictorial Bible.* Part XI.

The Pictorial Edition of Shakspere. King Henry VI. Part I. Part 20. Continental Sermons; or Nine Discourses, addressed to Congregations on the Continent. By J. Hartley, M.A.

The Life of Thomas Burgess, D.D., late Bishop of Salisbury. By John S. Harford, Esq.

A Narrative of the Persecutions of the Christians in Madagascar; with details of the Escape of the six Christian refugees now in England. By J. J. Freeman and D. Johns, formerly Missionaries in the Island.

The Bible Translation Society of the Baptists shown to be uncalled for and Injurious: in a series of Letters to W. B. Gurney, Esq. By a Baptist. Letters on India: with special reference to the Spread of Christianity. By the Rev. W. Buyers, Missionary at Benares.

Narrative of an Expedition to the Polar Sea, in the years 1820, 1821, 1822, and 1823. Commanded by Lieutenant, now Admiral, Ferdinand Von Wrangell, of the Russian Imperial Navy. Edited by Major Edward Sabine, R.A., F.R.S.

A Brief History of the Rise and Progress of the Lancashire Congregational Union; and of the Blackburn Independent Academy. By R. Slate. Published at the request of the Pastors and Delegates of the County Union.

THE

ECLECTIC REVIEW

FOR AUGUST, 1840.

Art. I. 1. Lectures on the Church of England, delivered in London, March, 1840. By the Rev. HUGH M'NEILE, M. A., Minister of St. Jude's Church, Liverpool. 8vo. pp. 116. Hatchard and

Son.

2. Christianity against Coercion; or Compulsory Churches Unscriptural and Antichristian: a Lecture delivered on Wednesday, March 25, 1840, at the request of the Evangelical Voluntary Church Association, in Freemason's Hall. By GEORGE REDFORD, D.D., L.L.D. 12mo. pp. 47. Ward and Co.

3. Righteousness Exalteth a Nation: a Lecture on Church Extension (partly in reply to Mr. M'Neile), delivered in the Weigh House Chapel, London, on Friday Evening, April 24, 1840. By T. BINNEY. 12mo. pp. 40. Jackson and Walford.

THE

HE more zealous defenders of our Established Church have betrayed a great deficiency of wisdom for some time past. They have shown themselves bad judges of times and seasons. They have not known when to speak or when to be silent; and their speakings, when they have determined to make themselves heard, have been, for the most part, anything rather than the utterances of discretion. Some two, or perhaps three years since, there was a considerable disposition evinced by some Dissenters in England, to rest upon their arms awhile, and in some degree to suspend the mode of controversy which took them so often to Downing Street and St. Stephen's. These moderate men, as they were called, were far from concluding that the points at issue between us and the Church of England should be allowed to fall out of sight. They were, on the contrary, never more

VOL. VIII.

K

satisfied concerning the importance of those questions, and the duty of laboring to make the arguments for the better cause more and more familiar to our whole people. Still, if the friends of the hierarchy had known how to improve the signs of the times which were then sufficiently visible, they might certainly have made some return, though we cannot say for exactly how long, toward that state of dignified repose which had so long fallen to them, but which had been somewhat rudely broken in upon by recent events. Folly, however, came in the place of wisdom. Moderation was interpreted as weakness. The disposition evinced to prosecute the controversy with more calmness, deliberation, and circumspection, was eagerly proclaimed as the sign of exhaustion and defeat. The moment, accordingly, that should have been characterized by conciliation, was at once and eagerly seized as the most felicitous juncture for aggression. From that day the extravagancies of ecclesiastical intolerance and ambition. have been forced upon us with new spirit from all points.

The church-extension scheme of the north, was then made to spread itself southward. The fame of Dr. Chalmers was put into requisition for this object. Plans the most unjust, oppressive, and preposterous on that subject, were gravely propounded, day after day, in our metropolis. The intellect of all men opposed to these plans,—that of the gravest philosophers and the most profound statesmen not excepted,-was blown upon by the reverend orator in a manner, and with a tone, which seemed as though meant to proclaim to the very stars that nothing more than the breath of his eloquence could possibly be needed to scatter all opposition as the chaff, to be no more heard of for ever. It is true there was a strange disparity between the might of all this pretension, and the weakness of the orator's own performance. It was, indeed, not a little amusing to perceive how small a man on such topics it really was, who had assumed these airs of lofty scorn in reference to our country and our times—our 'age of little men and little measures'! If loudness and boldness could have done the work, done it surely would have been; but these are qualities which have no necessary alliance with wisdom of any kind, and in this connexion it soon became apparent, that the tendency of our divine to pour scorn on the capacities of other men, was in strict proportion with his inability to take any just measurement of his own. But who cared for that? Did he not denounce voluntaryism as a novelty, as a vulgar fraud, and its abettors as a mixture of the driveller and the rogue and should not a man be applauded for that? Aye, verily and applauded he was, as though voices, no less than gunpowder, were meant to send roofs into the air! We can assure our friends of the Established Church, that there were some pious' Dissenters who witnessed this display of moderation, and were very much

edified at the sight. Since the first exhibition in Hanover Rooms, the spirit of that scene has been everywhere manifest. Not only are church-rates to be upheld, but efforts have been made to enforce that impost on grounds, which, if acted upon consistently, would annihilate every vestige of popular freedom, and substitute the despotism of the throne in its place. Our people are everywhere liable to be slandered, insulted, wronged, and plundered if they venture any show of opposition to this exaction. Not content with her hard measure to Jones of Llannon, it appears to be the determination of our amiable mother, that the blood of John Thorogood shall be also upon her skirts.* With the more rigorous enforcement of church-rates, has come the bolder announcement, and the wider diffusion of the Oxford Popery; the arrogant pretences of the clergy on the matter of popular education; the insolent crusade on the subject of church-extension; the manifest disposition to pursue a retrograde course on all questions affecting the equal rights of British subjects; and lastly, this second aggressive movement from the Hanover Rooms, the results of which we have before us in the published lectures of Mr. M'Neile.

Now has the Church of England gained anything by this policy? We think she is beginning herself to see that she has not. Her opponents have been challenged, not merely to an examination of her outworks, but to a scrutiny of her very foundations; and all this with the advantage of appearing to act purely on the defensive. As the result, we speak with confidence when we say, that we consider the principles opposed to all stateestablishments of religion, as having made greater way upon the popular mind in this country during the last three years, than during any similar space of time in our history. Our comparative indifference to the temporary fate of public questions has been an indifference in appearance only. The principles which make our grievances what they are, were never so well understood by us as now; and we were never more free from misgiving as to their ultimate efficacy to sweep away every vestige of barbarism of which we complain. This confidence, too, we owe, in great part, to the necessity which has been laid upon us to prosecute this great controversy, and to prosecute it to its very root. It is prejudice, proscription, and injustice, not religion,

* It cannot be published too widely, that, admitting it to have been the act of John Thorogood to have placed himself in the Ecclesiastical Court, by pleading the invalidity of the rate-there still rested with that court the option to take the goods of John Thorogood, or to send him to prison. In choosing the latter alternative, and persisting in it, that court has hitherto pursued the course of a wanton torturer, and should John Thorogood die under its hands, the guilt of murder will be there.

truth, or humanity, that may be in danger from discussion. We mean, then, to say, that during the last two or three years the praise of self-government belongs to Dissenters, much more than to their opponents, and that the result has been an unprecedented advance of Dissenting principles.

In some respects, perhaps, this more cautious policy has been indulged too far; and we must confess that we know not how to exonerate the body of Deputies from the charge of a criminal negligence in not having adopted means to secure a complete and effective reply to the lectures of Mr. M'Neile. Having taken this duty upon them in the instance of Dr. Chalmers, it was natural for our churches to confide in the same body to make a similar arrangement in the present case. We hear nothing, however, of any such arrangement as having been made, nor have we heard anything of the reasons which have been thought sufficient to justify this unexpected course. We only know, that if nothing further be done, an occasion for vindicating our principles and practice, and of instituting a free examination of those of our opponents, much more favorable than is likely soon to occur again, has been lost. Bodies which do not the work expected from them, are in such cases worse than useless, as they naturally prevent others from doing it. We do not scruple to say that we think our old organizations had better be altogether broken up, if they are not found capable of moving with the promptitude and energy required by the altered spirit and circumstances of the

times.

Mr. M'Neile's lectures are six in number, and we scarcely need remind our readers that they were delivered, in common with those of Dr. Chalmers, in the Hanover Square Rooms, under the direction of the Christian Influence Society. The first lecture is occupied, for the greater part, with discussions concerning the nature of the church of Christ. Preliminary, however, to this discussion, our author informs us, that he means to demonstrate the fundamentally scriptural' character of the Church of England, and expresses his conviction that the present perilous position of that Church, is to be attributed mainly to the real or apparent abandonment of this high ground of defence on the part of her advocates. But the writer does not proceed beyond his third page, without involving both himself and his readers in no little difficulty by his assumption of this ground; for it seems that easy as it is to show the scriptural character of the Established Church as a whole, there is scarcely a part of it about which Churchmen themselves should be expected to be of one mind. It is, it seems, the glory of her articles, that they may be signed equally ex animo by the Calvinist or the Arminian; and a great beauty of her system in other respects, that while all who would minister at her altars must profess to approve of every thing contained in