LECTIONS ON THE CHURCH CONGRESS, A.D. 1874; The Sema Licew frenes "ESPECIALLY IN RELATION TO MODERN JUDAISM." is each man was selected for his unacquaintance with the genius of the in which he was to work."-MR. GLADSTONE on RITUALISM and L. Dr. A.. erjess was the fourteenth Church Congress. It was held at Brighton the week commencing with Monday, the 5th ult. According to ial announcement, the inauguration of that CONGRESS was not to ce before Tuesday, the 6th ult., but the inauguration had actually ace on the evening of the previous Monday, at the Brighton Town that most extraordinary man of this age, Deacon James Lyne, ts to be called by the whimsical appellation of "Father IgnaWe call him the most extraordinary man of the age advisedly, for We own that some of his peculiarities lay him open, in this artiunreal age, to the suspicion of insanity. But "if he is mad, to God"-we use a reported exclamation of George III. respectilar charge made against John Wesley-" he might bite all the ministers in the realm!" Mr. Lyne's lecture was announced title of "A Monk's Thoughts respecting the Church Congress." s much in the lecture which appeared to us as peculiarly groout on the other hand there was much in it, important and which the clerical members of the Congress, archbishops and luded, might with advantage lay seriously to heart. Let the few extracts from that earnest, impressive, and effective anticiugural lecture speak for themselves : howeve all of the and of cim i not think any thing could be more terrible for the powers of hell, rejoicing for the choirs of angels than a Church Congress,—an asof the Lord's household. There was going to be a Church Congress ", and the sanctified saints of Jesus Christ from every part of Engoming to take part in it. There was going to be a Congress of men ', presided over by the chief pastors of the national Church of this it mighty scenes would there be if it were only a real congress le of God. Oh! the crowds of people there would be upon their ping over the breaches in the walls of Zion! All the subjects that NOTICES TO OUR READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. All Letters, intended for the REV. DR. MARGOLIOUTH, to be addressedtill further notice-to Pelham Library, 151, Fulham Boad, THE Editor does not hold himself responsible for the expressed opinions of his correspondents. The Editor has but very little time for private correspondence, and this he applies to old and cherished friends. Several important articles, Literary Notices, Replies to Queries, &c.-some already in type-are unavoidably postponed. J. WHATKIN.-The late lamented Dr. Ewald, whose decease we mentioned in our last issue, was a Jew by birth; he was in no way related to the German Orientalist Heinrich Georg August Ewald, of Göttingen. J. D. B.-The reason, we believe, why a becoming Obituary Notice" of the demise of the late Dr. Ewald, did not appear in the Jewish Intelligence, is because of a wish said to have been expressed by the deceased, that nothing should be published about his life and work. INQUIRER.-We are told that the writer of the "Obituary Notice" of the late Dr. Ewald, which appeared in The Record, of the 10th of August last, was Alexander Crickmer Ewald, son of the deceased. WE have ready an article on The International Congress of Orientalists, but want of space compels us to postpone it, along with other important matter, to some future issue. P. I. HERSHON.-Your work came too late for any notice of it in this our issue. We may call attention to it at some future time. AN AGGRIEVED SUBSCRIBER, G. W., A FRIEND OF MISSIONS, A MATTER OF FACT CHRISTIAN, NO ROMANCER IN HOLY THINGS, NO ADVOCATE OF PIOUS FRAUDS, and many other correspondents after their kind, must address Brompton, S.W. We their complaints and remonstrances to the Committees of the respective societies, whose workings, appointments, &c. &c., &c., they, our correspondents, so severely criticise and censure. state, once for all-and we shall continue the statement as a standing notice for some months to come-we do not consider that it is part of our calling to reform abuses in the modus operandi of certain societies. HISTORICUS. THE BANISHED ONES FETCHED HOME is intended to unfold a double tale. The principal one is a true, bonâ fide, complete History of the Jewish people in this country, their expulsion by Edward I., and their re-admission by Oliver Cromwell; the secondary tale is an illustration of certain facts which have proved stranger than fiction. "Historicus," as "a hard-working student," should possess a little more Christian patience and sympathy, and learn to make allowances for authors, whose peculiar circumstances all the historical lore in the world will not help him to understand. SAMUEL SAMPSON. Your letter reached us when the last sheet was going to be worked off. It shall appear, D.V., in our November issue. All Communications and Books for Review to be addressed To the Editor of the Hebrew Christian Witness and Prophetic Investigator, Pelham Library, 151, Fulham Road, Brompton, S. W. The Editor will not, in any case, return rejected communications. No communication unauthenticated by real name and address-not necessarily for publication-will be noticed. We regret to find that this notification is still unheeded by some. LETTERS AND PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED in our next. The Hebrew Christian Witness AND PROPHETIC JNVESTIGATOR. AN ANGLO-JUDÆO CHRISTIAN MAGAZINE. No. 23.] .אתם עדי "Ye are My Witnesses."-Is. xliii. 10. NOVEMBER, 1874. [NEW SERIES. REFLECTIONS ON THE CHURCH CONGRESS, A.D. 1874; "ESPECIALLY IN RELATION TO MODERN JUDAISM." "Thus each man was selected for his unacquaintance with the genius of the method in which he was to work."-MR. GLADSTONE on RITUALISM and RITUAL. TH THIS was the fourteenth Church Congress. It was held at Brighton in the week commencing with Monday, the 5th ult. According to the official announcement, the inauguration of that CONGRESS was not to take place before Tuesday, the 6th ult., but the inauguration had actually taken place on the evening of the previous Monday, at the Brighton Town Hall, by that most extraordinary man of this age, Deacon James Lyne, who elects to be called by the whimsical appellation of "Father Ignatius." We call him the most extraordinary man of the age advisedly, for so he is. We own that some of his peculiarities lay him open, in this artificial and unreal age, to the suspicion of insanity. But "if he is mad, "Would to God”'—we use a reported exclamation of George III. respecting a similar charge made against John Wesley-" he might bite all the Christian ministers in the realm!" Mr. Lyne's lecture was announced under the title of "A Monk's Thoughts respecting the Church Congress." There was much in the lecture which appeared to us as peculiarly grotesque; but on the other hand there was much in it, important and eternal, which the clerical members of the Congress, archbishops and bishop included, might with advantage lay seriously to heart. Let the following few extracts from that earnest, impressive, and effective anticipatory inaugural lecture speak for themselves: "He did not think any thing could be more terrible for the powers of hell, or more rejoicing for the choirs of angels than a Church Congress,-an assemblage of the Lord's household. There was going to be a Church Congress in Brighton, and the sanctified saints of Jesus Christ from every part of England were coming to take part in it. There was going to be a Congress of men and women, presided over by the chief pastors of the national Church of this land. What mighty scenes would there be if it were only a real congress of the people of God. Oh! the crowds of people there would be upon their knees weeping over the breaches in the walls of Zion! All the subjects that had been selected for mention or discussion were very excellent and good, intensely interesting and most deeply exciting to the feelings of Christians; but unless the secret of the Lord lay at the bottom of every one of them, and unless they were handled by men full of the Holy Ghost and of power, very likely there would be wrangling, disputing and discord. . . "The spirit in which they ought to gather together at such a meeting as the Church Congress. In a spirit of loyalty, not to the Church of England first, much as they might love her, it was in the spirit of God they ought to meet. It was a spirit of love and holiness. The spirit of saints, whose conversation was in heaven, who knew that they were redeemed by the blood of Christ. If that were the spirit of the Church Congress, what speeches would there be. Each speaker would speak as a living member of Christ. He would speak with the tenderest sympathy for the weakness of his brethren, remembering that he had weaknesses also, and they would thus make even outsiders declare, 'Behold, what a good and joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity.' Did they recognise what kind of men they were who met together at this meeting. He had seen a very grand list of powerful names, but should they see that they were men whose names were in the book of life? That was the question? If the blind led the blind, they would both fall into the ditch. If men got up to speak at the meeting of the Lord's household who did not know the Lord's secret; if the Spirit had not revealed to them the man Christ Jesus, their speeches might have a logical ring in them, but they would have no power for the glory of God or the real benefit of His holy Church. The men who called themselves churchmen, who stood up in this unbelieving atheistical age, with the eyes of the whole world upon them with curiosity, hatred, ridicule, or jeering, ought to be inspired men. They ought to be men, who can say, they know the spirit of their Father speaketh in them. Jesus Christ had given them the promise, and was it presumptuous to rely upon it, 'It is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father.' The men at the Church Congress, who undertook to introduce religious questions and speak upon them, ought to spend the greater part of their time the day before upon their knees in their closets before God. There was going to be a celebration of the Sacrament in the morning, and there was going to be sermons preached, but let them pray for a blessing on those sermons, and if they were written sermons, and if they had been written with any other view than the glory of Jesus Christ, without reference to party, let them pray that those sermons might be cast into the fire, and that they might preach in dependence on the Spirit that had been promised. . . "He would humbly suggest that the object must be the extension of a living faith in the one atonement of the God made Man. All other subjects must be but radiations from this glorious centre, or the Congress would end in talk, or something worse than talk. Jesus Christ must be not only the Chief and acknowledged end, but He must be so determinedly thrust forward, that men, no matter what they might be, would declare, These men seek Christ, and Him crucified." "He was not religious that he might be saved; he was religious because he was saved. He did not go to Church or frequent the sacraments that he might be saved, but because Jesus Christ had perfected the work of His salvation by the sacrifice upon Calvary. After referring in detail to one instance in which he had been misjudged, he continued to state that the power of a real Church Congress would be to turn the world in Brighton upside down, and there was a great deal of the world in Brighton, although there were many Churches and many Christian Ministers. This Church Congress was to turn it upside down, but it could only be done by acting as Paul and Silas had done at Thessalonica. "If they were determined to win the victory, they must win it in the way the first Christians won it. It was not by bringing their differences before a gaping, mocking world. It was not in this way they would win the victory.' If Mr. Lyne is a maniac, there is certainly wonderful Christian method in his madness, and we repeat the royal exclamation to which we have alluded-" Would that he might bite all the Christian ministers in the realm!" We think that our readers will agree with us that, judging Mr. Lyne by what he said respecting the essential characteristics of a Church Congress, that he is not mad, but speaketh forth the words of truth and soberness, and is thoroughly acquainted with the genius of the method in which he works. The Church Congress, as programmed, was preceded by services on Tuesday, the 6th ult., at St. Peter's, with a sermon by the Lord Bishop of Ely; and at St. Nicholas, with a sermon by the Lord Bishop of Salisbury. We attended the former sanctuary, and thus had the privi lege to listen to one of the most masterly discourses on the overruling power of God, in the growth and development of His Church on earth, that we have ever heard. The illustrations which the right reverend preacher adduced from ecclesiastical and secular history were happily chosen and forcibly applied. Bishop Woodward did ample justice to his model, the late Bishop of Winchester. Yet we cannot conceal from our readers that our gratification was not unalloyed by disappointment. The Bishop of Ely chose for his text, on the occasion, a sentence from Isaiah xlii. 16:-" I will lead them in paths that they have not known." As a motto for his discourse, the divine text was a happy choice. If the Bishop had, in the first instance, explained that his text and context had reference, primarily, to ISRAEL'S FUTURE-as the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah incontestably maintain-but that it was legitimate to apply the promises to the Church of God during this dispensation, our gratification would have been without alloy. But the eminent preacher did not do that. In a few introductory remarks to his interesting essay, he repeated the hackneyed but untenable assertion that the promises had reference to the return of the Jews from Babylon. We confess that the adoption of the crude opinion by so keen a student of history not only disappointed us, but greatly surprised us. The Congress was fairly inaugurated on that afternoon, under the dome in the Pavilion, by an address from the President, the Lord Bishop of Chichester; but, owing to the terrific crush, we could not catch one word in twenty. It is inconceivable to our understanding why so many tickets were issued to so many juvenile young ladies, whose presence could not possibly minister to edification. We were wedged in the vicinity of several young girls, whose giggling and laughing and chatting conduced to anything but to promote the spirit which should pervade so solemn a meeting. It may be a pleasant gratification to the Brighton Committee to be able to announce that they issued more tickets than were hitherto disposed of; but a ready reckoner will soon point out that no provincial town has at this time of the year such a number of very young girls, whose minds are bent upon sight-seeing in one aspect or another, as Brighton can muster. Let us hope that the managers of next year's Congress will profit by the mistakes of this year's Committee. The subject which interested us most in connection with this year's Church Congress was that which was programmed "Foreign Missions, especially in relation to modern Judaism, Mohammedanism, and other Oriental systems of religion." This manifold theme came under treat |