so a school of the same style of architecture was built, with a teacher's house attached. A committee of management, consisting of seven subscribers, was appointed; the school was placed in connection with the National Society, but under rules, or rather conditions, of its own-of which the principal was, that the moral and religious instruction of the children was to be entirely in the hands of the clergyman; but that with regard to all other things, no act of either committee or clergyman was to be valid without the consent of the other. Donations and contributions poured in; the children flocked to the school; the rector visited, instructed, and superintended, in perfect agreement with the committee, and the village was in perfect peace. In order to extend the advantages of home instruction to the parish at large, a stock of books was presented to the library of the school, and the parishioners had the privilege of taking a volume to their houses-the parents of school-children at a smaller payment, and the general inhabitants for the sum of threepence a-quarter: the catalogue was submitted to the rector; the committee nominated a librarian; the people availed themselves of the privilege, and there was a perpetual tide of volumes of all shapes and sizes careering from cottage to cottage, and preventing many a visit to the beer-shop by the charm of the children reading tale, sketch, and history to their fathers after their day's work. The rector died. Another and another still succeeds, and no change occurred in the management of library or school. The successive incumbents were satisfied with the good fruits that were growing before their eyes; they professed themselves deeply grateful for the labours of librarian and school committee; and three reverend and honourable men had thus ratified the arrangement, and expressed their approval of everything that had been done. But when the fourth made his appearance the state of affairs was rapidly changed. He considered the whole parish lying in darkness, and that it had never heard the gospel before; and if he had restricted

this to the gospel with which he now presented it, the statement would have been perfectly correct. They had never heard that gospel before. He preached against brotherly kindness, social friendship, and unity, as more dangerous to the soul than positive sins. He preached against prayer, acts of charity, and humility, as rather hindrances than otherwise to the attainment of the enviable position of perfect security at which he himself had long arrived. He preached against all external demonstration of respect to holy names, and delighted his Socinian auditorsif any such there were-by his rigid want of reverence during the creeds. He preached against the distinctive characteristics of the Establishment as a sacramental and apostolical Church: he denied that she held the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, or attached either efficacy or importance to the celebration of the Lord's Supper. And having prepared the parishioners by these pulpit declarations, he proceeded to carry his theories into practice, and determined to weed the school library of all heretical and perilous teaching-understanding by this, everything that contradicted any of the statements which he had so often and so deliberately made. It unfortunately happened that every volume which dwelt on these subjects at all, did in a full and unmistakable manner contradict every one of his assertions. They were all composed by clergymen of the Church, or recommended by the great Church societies, and were written accordingly in keeping with the recognised doctrines and formularies to which the authors and patrons had sworn their assent. Nothing daunted by the array of honoured names on the opposite side, he ordered nearly a hundred volumes to be withdrawn from circulation, as containing Popish and unsound doctrine; and in order not to diminish the number of books, he supplied their place with writings more in accordance with his own views, principally the composition of dissenting ministers, and especially the preachers of the Baptist persuasion. The committee rejected the new volumes after an examination

of their contents, and reclaimed their own. He pleaded the clause in the rules which gave him the full "control over the moral and religious teaching of the school," which extended, he said, to the private reading of the parents of the scholars and the rest of the inhabitants, and he would allow no contradictions of what he said in the pulpit to be perused in any work whose circulation he could stop. St Dominic and Louis Napoleon were the great models he copied. An index expurgatorius and a censorship of the press were the only weapons he would condescend to employ. An appeal to the bishop produced its usual effect -many words and no decision. And at last, it was only after having succeeded in purifying the shelves of the school library that, out of his free grace and favour, he informed the parishioners of the reasons of his conduct. And if our readers will pardon us for this apparent deviation from our usual tract, we promise to be as short and clear as possible in examining these reasons; for we do not wish to dwell on the subject in its theological aspect-we merely introduce it as a strange development of the same spirit which animated Hildebrand-a spirit of domination and arrogance, against which it is wise to raise a premonitory protest. It is quite possible that assaults against intellectual liberty may be made from other quarters than Rome. The three first against whom this great reformer's zeal was raised, as teachers of false doctrine and contrary to the creeds and articles, were Bishop Wilson of Sodor and Man, Bishop Ken, and Bishop Jeremy Taylor. It would perhaps be charity to suppose that the insults to these excellent men arose from a total ignorance of their lives and characters, for no man of ordinary information could suppose that the author of the Sacra Privata had had a tendency to Rome; or that the inhospitable rejector of Nell Gwynne's company and the author of the Morning and Evening Hymns, who proved his adhesion to the Church by the sacrifice of rank and fortune, was adverse to the Establishment which he adorned with so many graces and such varied

accomplishment. And as to Jeremy Taylor, there is something positively painful in the spectacle of a presumptuous individual, “most ignorant of what he's most assured," criticising the author of the Golden Grove, and condemning as unorthodox the great writer who, by his Holy Living and Dying, has done more to sanctify our lives and solace our deathbeds than any other of our classics, secular or theological. We will not do more than quote a short passage which he gives as condemnatory of the first of the culprits named. In a short and very clearly worded explanation of the Church Catechism, called The Principles and Duties of Christianity, and published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Bishop Wilson writes as follows:

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Q. Did Christ ordain two Sacraments only as generally necessary to salvation? A. He ordained no more; and these are sufficient to bring us into, and keep us in, covenant and favour with God; for by Baptism we are admitted into the church of Christ, and have all the bless

ings of the gospel made over to us ; and the Lord's Supper is the standing means weakness or temptation we have departed of reconciling us to God, when through from Him."

After stating that the command of be duly observed is not to be neChrist to be baptised where it may glected on any account whatever, the questioner proceeds to ask—

"What is signified and assured to us by this outward sign in baptism?

"A. That as the body is washed by water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, so is the soul thus de

dicated to God cleansed from all its sins by the blood of Christ; the person bap

tised is made a visible member of Christ's Church, and hath thereby a right to many great and precious promises.

"Q. What are the promises and blessings which by baptism we have a right

salvation, and call on the name of the Lord. And when I approach the sacramental table with an honest and true heart, desiring to obey the commands of Christ, and to show His death till He come,' let me not have any superstitious fears in respect thereof;-knowing that where the Lord hath made a feast, and hath commanded me to attend it in re

membrance of His mercy to me, the wilful disobedience of absenting myself from His supper will draw on me a greater and far more heavy punishment. Let me, then, truly and earnestly repent of my sins, have a lively faith in God's mercy through Christ, with a thankful remembrance of His death, and be in charity with all men. So will I draw near with faith, and take this holy sacrament to my comfort; and so shall this ceremonial act, done in remembrance of Christ, be the means of amendment and godly comfort here, and of my eternal happi

ness hereafter."

The Cottager's depreciatory view of the mysteriousness of this commemorative feast would attract the hostility of the opposite camp, and would be hooted at by the medieval owls who do not perceive that the sun has risen high into the zenith since they went to their roost in the abbot's barn, when St Thomas of Canterbury was a Judge in Israel. It would also have been contumeliously anathematised by the Reverend Ichabod Kettledrummle and Stick-in-themud-by-reason-of-sin Glubb, Esq., M.P., in the year 1653, as trusting too much in man's devices, but from any conscientious member of the Church of England we cannot conceive a syllable of disapproval. Yet the whole volume is condemned on account of a short sentence on the old subject of baptism. A mark is placed opposite Meditation number four, and here is the unpardonable passage. The subject is the History of Naaman. "We are all of us," says the meditative Cottager, "infected with a disease far more dangerous than that of Naaman; with sin, the leprosy of the soul. Christ hath opened in His gospel, by baptism, a fountain for the washing away of that sin; and He hath made atonement for it by the shedding of His own blood. He inviteth us to accept deliverance, to be cleansed, to be made whole. Oh, may I not despise the call! but

fly to the fountain of living watersthe fountain that is opened for sin and uncleanness-the fountain that cometh from the house of the Lord, lest my leprosy cleave to me for ever."

We may thus gather that any recognition of the efficacy of sacraments, or of the duty of partaking in themand further, that any recommendation of moral conduct as a proof of obedience to the Founder and Fulfiller of the moral law, are at once fatal to the volume containing them. And nobody in all the parish of Fairleas is to read what the great luminaries of their Church have said on the most interesting and sacred of her articles of belief. And yet the regard of the inquisitor for the souls of his parishioners is limited, it appears, to the period of his incumbency. Put away the works, he says, of Taylor, Ken, Wilson, and the rest-as long as I am minister among you: they contradict my doctrine; but when I am gone, replace them in the library, scatter them among the people. Poison the wells and water-brooks as much as you please when I have no further interest in the cattle, but while I am manager (and shearer) of the flock, let me give them drink only out of my own tank.

Greatly perturbed in mind, and totally unable to comprehend a figurative allusion, or see a single inch into a millstone, though it were made of Koh-i-noors, the sage now betook himself to the perusal of the light and imaginative literature contained in the parochial library. He could not believe that any animal of the feline species ever wore boots, and therefore must have considered the narrative of a certain puss which hid its claws in wellingtons a mere tissue of lies and dangerous deceits. Lost in the infinity of surprise at the audacity of any author requiring his belief in the actions of a person not bigger than his thumb, who yet showed, on proper occasions, courage worthy of a giant, and encountered more surprising adventures than Bruce of Abyssinia, who was nearly seven feet high, he must have looked on the unhappy Tom as the enemy of mankind in disguise, and likely to pervert the minds of his parishioners.

But still greater must have been his surprise when he rose to a higher and more modern class of stories, and gazed with lack-lustre eyes in search of the meanings of the sacred allegories of the Bishop of Oxford, or Mr Adams, or Mr Monro. One of these did really find itself on a wellearned shelf of honour in the library of the school. The Shadow of the Cross was a deeply-thumbed volume, and many young hearts had been raised to higher thought by its Christian aspirations, and older ones soothed and cheered by its spiritual comforts and consolations. "This is flat burglary," exclaimed the reverend Dogberry; "for, fourthly, if there's a shadow, there must be a cross; and if there's a cross, argal there must be Papistry; for, sixthly and lastly, there is no cross except in Catholic countries; and, thirdly, and to conclude, all Catholic countries are grossly superstitious; and there may be some secret meaning in it which would be very danger ous if any of us could find it out." It is the plainest of allegories, and inculcates the simplest of truths in the most transparent of styles; and, with the Rocky Island of Wilberforce, and the King of the Golden River of Ruskin, has long taken its place as an admirable specimen of the difficult art of teaching by parable. The passage objected to is contained in the beautiful opening of the volume, which we cannot refuse ourselves the pleasure of quoting. It strikes the key-note to the whole story.

"A thick darkness was spread over the earth; and as I stood on the top of a lofty mountain, the only object that I could see was the sun, which had risen in the far east with a wonderful glory. It was as a ball of clear and living fire, and yet so soft and chastened was its ray, that while I gazed my eye was not dazzled; and I felt I could love to look upon it for ever. Presently, as it shone upon the mists which rested on the earth, they became tremulous with light, and in a moment they floated by, and a scene of life and beauty was opened to my view. I saw a spot of ground so rich and fertile that it might well be called a garden. The sweetest flowers were growing wild in the fields, and the very pathways appeared to sparkle with rubies

VOL. LXXXV.-NO. DXX.

and emeralds: here were, too, the most luxuriant orchards, and cool groves of orange-trees and myrtles, and the breeze of the morning was playing among their branches. Now, as I watched the butterflies that fluttered over the flowers, and the lambs sporting on the smooth grass, and as I listened to the song of it was some scene of enchantment which the nightingales in the woods, I fancied I saw, it was so very full of happiness and life. Everywhere, at the extremity of the view, my eye rested on a clear narrow stream. I could trace neither

mountain from which it rose, nor ocean into which it fell; but it glided round and round in an endless circular course, forming, as it were, a border of silver to that lovely garden on which the sun was shining. The morning light ever kept adding fresh beauty to each tree and flower on which it fell; but the brightest and clearest rays were those which were reflected by this narrow stream; and at this I wondered, the rather be cause on the other side of the ring of water all was still wrapt in a thick gloomy fog; and though I gazed long and lovely children were continually and earnestly, I saw nothing. Young crossing the narrow stream. There was

no other way of escaping from the land of darkness to the land of light. Their garments became white as snow by their passage through the water, and sparkled with a dazzling brightness as the sun first shone on them. I observed, too, that each child, as he entered the garden, held a little cross in his hands. Now, when I reflected how many millions might still be wandering in the dark and gloomy region beyond, on his cheering warmth, I could not help whom the glorious sun would never shed thinking how happy the children were to have found thus early the narrow stream; and I said in my heart, 'Surely this lovely garden was made for them, and they will live in it for ever.' While I was musing thus, it seemed that, in answer, a still soft voice came floating on the breeze, and said, 'It is indeed for such children as these that the sun is shining, and for them that the mists have been cleared away; but none of the beautiful things in the garden belong to them; they are waiting here as strangers till their Father shall summon them home; and when they go hence, they can take nothing away with them but the little crosses in their hands and the white garments which they wear.' 'Who then are these children,' I asked,' and what is the name of the garden, and when they are taken from it, whither

M