Third Series. RELIGIOUS AND ECCLESIASTICAL. I am sure the mind ne'er lives Perhaps 'tis its obscurity? No, sir! but its purity: Commanding every virtue, and denouncing every vice, It claims from man's unworthiness tco great a sacrifice. Strive to be a perfect man, Do the utmost good you can At least refrain from doing evil- When you doubt-abstain.-ZOROASTER. To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the rat of rams. 1 Samuel xv. 22. The abstinence from evil is better even than doing good.-Sentences of ALI, son-in-law and fourth successor of Mohammed. To obey is best, And love with fear the only God.-MILTON. DOXOLOGY For Days of General Thanksgiving. (Written on the Recovery of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.) Praise, praise ye God the Father, And praise ye God the Son, So now and evermore, The God of endless Mercy 22nd February, 1872. I have examined many collections of Doxologies printed at the end of hymn-books and similar works, without being able to find one in the same metre as Bishop Heber's Missionary Hymn, James Montgomery's "Hail to the Lord's Anointed!" and many other of our best hymns. I should be glad if the above Doxology could be generally adopted. Perhaps the Benchers of the Middle Temple (of which honourable and learned Society H.R.H. the Prince of Wales is a member) will set the example? In "righteousness and holiness" may God preserve our Queen!* That She should have all virtues can with perfect ease be seen. Do we-her subjects-need them? No more than do our dogs; Enough for us Church-furniture, Church-mountebanks, Church-togs With these our age complacently to dismal Hades glides Ignorance, sloth, vice, want and woe-triumphant on all sides. (1869.) The Old Testament proclaims, "It is the will of God that man shall be righteous;" the New Testament proclaims, "It is the will of God that man shall be holy." The things thus proclaimed are surely religious truths; and I believe no sane man can conscientiously say that he doubts either of them. Is it possible that they have in our day sunk into a general "neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission?" It is well observed by Coleridge, that "truths the most awful and interesting are too often considered as so true that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded I am lost in astonishment when I contemplate the "questions," as they are called, which are debated by * See the Litany. the different religious parties, and respecting which they become furious. Vestments, intonings, processions, altar-cloths, rood-screens, and genuflections are made to be matters of the utmost importance, and all the while the really great questions are in abeyance. It reminds me of children playing at marbles on the slopes of a volcano, which has already given sure signs of an approaching eruption.-Sir ARTHUR HELPS. We have had thirty years of unexampled clerical activity among us. Churches have been doubled; theological books, magazines, reviews, newspapers, have been poured out by the hundreds of thousands, while by the side of it there has sprung up an equally astonishing development of moral dishonesty, From the great houses in the City of London to the village grocer, the commercial life of England has been saturated with fraud. So deep has it So deep has it gone, that a strictly honest tradesman can hardly hold his ground against competition. You can no longer trust that any article that you buy is the thing which it pretends to be. We have false weights, false measures, cheating, and shoddy everywhere. Yet the clergy have seen all this grow up in absolute indifference; and the great question which at this moment is agitating the Church of England is the colour of the ecclesiastical petticoats.--J. A. FROUDE. It may be that the sacred NAMES of Christ and Christ ianity, Used as mere steps to power and pelf are wrongs to all humanity; It may be that in better times the ablest patriotism I simply wish our Clergy would not worship Ritualism, SWARTMOOR HALL, ULVERSTONE, September, 1871. Swartmoor Hall (now a farm-house) was formerly the residence of George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends. It had previously been the residence of Mr. Justice Fell and his family. While the judge was on circuit, Mrs. Fell and her daughters were converted to Quakerism by the preaching of Fox; and the judge, on his return home, though at first very angry, became himself almost a convert. After the judge's death, Fox married his widow, who appears to have been the most strict and austere of Quakeresses. The many good and great works of the Society of Friends are well known, and its little book on "Christian Doctrine, Practice, and Discipline" (which anybody may buy for a shilling at the Friends' Book Society, 12, Bishopsgate-street Without), contains, apart from the peculiar tenets of the Society, and in addition to historical matters of great interest, more E |