PREFACE. If we could hope that our pages, in the last twelve months, have fairly represented the progress of events and the course of opinion on religious subjects, we might flatter ourselves that we sat down to write a posthumous Preface to a volume of no inconsiderable value. Stirring as the times and impetuous as "the rush of thought" have been for a whole generation, yet it seems as if each year added to the excitement, and gave to speculative minds additional energy and greater daring. So rapid are the changes, that it is only in a periodical work that they can even be noted down. Yet they ought not to be overlooked. Some of them for good, and others for undoubted evil; but all of them, as the materials out of which those who come after us may gather lessons by our experience, deserve to be recorded. This is the service which periodical literature renders to society. Frivolous or grave, catholic or sectarian, scriptural or infidel, it serves at least this useful purpose; while it either aggravates what is bad, or gives firmness and purpose to the better tendencies of its own age, it transmits, with more accuracy than any other form of literature, to a future generation the features of the past. A religious periodical work undertakes a task second in importance only to that of the Christian ministry. Its aim is to a great extent the same; it is the edification of the Church of Christ, giving to that term a wide significance. At least it will not be denied that, if its influ ence for good is sometimes over-estimated by those who are interested in its success, it is scarcely possible to over-rate its power of mischief. Such reflections naturally force themselves upon us as we review the history of the Christian Observer for the sixty years which are completed with the volume we now close. That it may have betrayed many faults, is highly probable. But we believe that its purposes have been always honest; that its conductors have been christian men, of whom less cannot be said than that they proved themselves worthy of the confidence reposed in them by two generations of many of the best, the most learned, and wisest men of whom the church of England has had to boast. It has maintained, through storm and sunshine, the doctrines of the gospel, and enforced a higher tone of Christian practice than the world has ever been willing to receive. It has done something, too, in correcting those errors of judgment into which the best may fall; and in general literature, in our darkest days, Lord Byron confessed the power of its rebuke; and our best writers have never been reluctant to acknowledge the value of its approval. It has done something towards purifying the literary atmosphere, and has helped to restore a purer, as well as a more vigorous, tone both in the pulpit and in religious literature. Glancing over these sixty years now passed, we cannot fail to see that religion in the church of England has presented itself under several different aspects. Within the space of the Christian Observer's existence, we have witnessed four different conditions of the church of Christ in this land. It does not require any great exertion of the memory to bring before the mind's eye the position occupied, between the beginning of this century and the year 1820, by those members of the church of England who honestly received the doctrine of the Articles, and who carried out the preaching of St. Paul, of Augustine, of Luther, and of Bradford, Jewell, and Hooker. They were, as of old, "everywhere spoken against." They were a proscribed class. When political friendship had induced Lord Liverpool to select the brother of Lord Harrowby for a bishopric, the Primate of that day protested against the elevation of one who, he said, "had preached in a conventicle!"that conventicle being, in point of fact, St. John's chapel,-the pulpit of Richard Cecil and of Daniel Wilson. And this was the state of things during the whole of the first quarter of the present century. But it was discovered, after a time, that this policy was not prospering. The establishment of the Thornton and Simeon trusts, on the one hand, and the rapid growth of the Bible and Missionary Societies, on the other, showed that Evangelical religion was gaining ground even in spite of the disfavour with which it was regarded in high places. The appearance of Dr. Ryder, and soon after of two other names, which we need not mention, on the episcopal bench, marked the dawn of a new state of things, and between 1820 and 1835 the previous alienation between the "Orthodox" and "Evangelical" parties in the church seemed to undergo a change, and there were even signs of an approaching union. When the Church Pastoral Aid Society was founded by the Evangelical party, there were amicable approaches on the part of bishop Blomfield, and even of Dr. Pusey; and if one or two difficulties could have been surmounted, a fusion of "High" and "Low Church" might have taken place on the platform of that Society. No doubt worldliness had crept into the bosom of the spiritual church; and the old self-denying maxims of the Scotts, and Newtons, and Cecils fell into disuse. Wealthy men began to profess a sort of s, Lord ers have . It has and has h in the I to see If under server's hurch of o bring nning of urch of and who ́, and of ywhere political of Lord against cle!"e pulpit state of tury. ot pros sts, on ionary raining ded in of two bench, 20 and Evan there storal icable usey; ion of tform ritual tons, -rt of semi-Evangelical faith; luxury and ostentation increased, and a great lowering of the tone of Christian profession took place. But meanwhile the various societies for home and foreign missions expanded; and worldliness, though it increased, did not extinguish the inner life of Christ's church. A new policy seemed necessary to the great enemy of the truth; and, in fact, the " peace policy" was never anything more than a stage of transition. The third plan took its rise, ostensibly, from the alarm excited by the Dissenting movement consequent upon the Reform Bill of 1831. The church was thought by many to be doomed; and when Lord Grey, in the House of Lords, advised the bishops to "set their house in order," it was assumed that he meant to imply all that was expressed in Isaiah: "Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die, and not live." A small committee was formed in Oxford, for the defence of the Church in its peril; and, distrusting the support of the government, it was resolved not to aim at the maintenance of the "Establishment," but to advance with firmness the claims of " the Church." This was a fundamental error, and it le l straight to popery. The series of publications, called "Tracts for the Times," which emanated from the Oxford committee, soon grew more and more “meliæval," more "Catholic," and, at last, "Romish." One after another of their authors began to discern the logical termination of their main argument, and they honestly accepted the results. The great majority of those who prepared and sent forth the "Tracts" are now dead, or in the bosom of the church of Rome. Only some two or three have shrunk from the admission of the legitimate consequences of their own arguments-they have become silent, but have not relinquished their preferments. Still, as a living, prospering system, Tractarianism may be regarded as a thing of the past. Multitudes of Tractarians, indeed, remain, and propagate a semi-Romanism in their parishes. But their literature, so rife and so formidable twenty years ago, is now effete, or even apparently dead. All errors, however, when they pass their meridian of popularity, produce, not a return to truth, but a re-action to a corresponding error on the other side. The suppression of a living Christianity in France, and the triumph of an infallible church, led to a pestilential infidelity; and infidelity, ripening into rebellion, disorder, and anarchy, ended in the establishment of a new and more powerful despotism. The Tractarian writers of 1844-5 insisted upon the credibility of Roman miracles. A new Oxford party has risen upon their fall, denying the credibility of any miracles, scriptural or popish. The real animus was at first, and is still, a rooted dislike to evangelical truth. Not a few there are who, zealous Tractarians in 1845, are now zealous Rationalists. |