In reading the biography of the most eminently pious and useful in different ages, one must have been often struck with the fact that almost all of them devoted a regular proportion of their income to the Lord in pious and charitable uses. We might mention many whose names are familiar, whose writings are venerated, and whose memory is precious, e. g., the Lord Chief Justice Hale, the Hon. Robert Boyle, Archbishop Tillotson, the Reve. Drs. Hammond, Annesley, Watts, and Doddridge, the Revs. R. Baxter, J. Wesley, T. Gouge, Brand, and R. Treffry, jun., together with the excellent Countess of Huntingdon, Mrs. Rowe, and Mrs. Bury. None of these gave less than one-tenth of their annual means or income, while several of them gave much more, and some of them gave all they had away, beyond the scriptural provision-" food and raiment." R. Baxter, that great and exemplary master of practical theology, says, in his directory on this subject, that on the whole he believes it is the duty of Christians generally, to devote some fixed proportion of their income to the Lord; "that the one tenth is as likely a proportion a can be prescribed, and that the devoting that amount to the Lord is a matter that we have more than human direction for." Whilst an able living expositor of Scripture says, "that he thinks it may be demonstrated, from the Scriptures, that no one believing them can consistently give less than a tenth of his income annually to the cause of God, however much more he may give." REGIUM DONUM. MOST of our readers are already aware that the Government are under a promise no longer to bring forth in the Budget any demand on the public purse in the shape of Regium Donum. Dissenters will, therefore, henceforth cease to be in a position to be insulted by Sir R. Inglis and others in the House of Commons, when they appear with petitions and protests against the application of public money for religious, or rather irreligious purposes. Their hands before were clean; but the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in conjunction with his government, succeeded always to exhibit them under a false or a gloved appearance; they can now however, hold up their face, and stretch forth their hands as men, not only apparently, but also really, in a right position, and lift up their voice in defence of principle. They are now in a position to appeal to their Irish brethren on the subject of the Regium Donum there. None need be told the extent of its prevalence and its mischievous operation throughout Ireland. The withdrawment of the Donum, at this moment, would go some way to extinguish a large number of the congregations-congregations deficient neither in numbers nor in wealth, but enfeebled by this opiate, which does greatly less to stimulate than to depress the benevolence of the people. Of the native benevolence and generosity of the Irish character we need say nothing. The Irish, in these respects, are second to no other people on the face of the earth; it is, moreover, settled that no portion of the Protestant world are more capable of doing justice to the voluntary principle. We appeal to our recent accounts of the doings of the congregation of Dr. Morgan, of Belfast, and, however elevated the position of that community in the scale of Christian generosity, they are not alone. Other congregations of the Presbyterian body present the most splendid examples of the same virtue. "COLLECTION DAY." SIR,-Under this title appears an article in your Glasgow, September 13, 1851. The Union Meetings. CONGREGATIONAL UNION OF ENGLAND AND WALES. WE have now to apprise our readers of the main facts connected with the recent Sessions of the Congregational Union, lately held at Northampton; and are happy to report, that, in point of interest, they were inferior to none of their predecessors. The numbers were greatly beyond our anticipation; we were hardly prepared for such a body of brethren, and still less for a hospitality so princely. The weather, upon the whole, was highly favourable; the locality was fraught with the most delightful associations; and, altogether, the meetings were an occasion of general rejoicing. The business was begun with devotional exercises, at King-street Chapel, now under the pastoral care of Mr. Nicholson, when the Rev. James Baldwin Brown delivered an Address, which we have now the pleasure of setting before our readers: THE RENEWING OF SPIRITUAL LIFE THE GREAT NEED OF OUR CHURCHES. THE first Independent preachers of Christianity were men who had seen the Lord. "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life; (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us ;) that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ." Jesus, the man whom they had known in many an hour of patient suffering, calm heroism, and tender communion with the friends whom he loved,-Jesus, the God, whom they had seen embosomed in the clouds of glory, and borne with triumphant pomp to the right hand of the Father, was the one engrossing object of their contemplation. No shadow of a cloud ever floated across the calm heaven of their conviction, that He who loved them with more than a brother's tenderness was seated by the Father on the throne of universal empire, and was ever concentrating all the resources of Omnipotence on the safety of their persons, and the furtherance of their work. Such men could afford to be independent. They could afford to affront à hostile world, and say to it, "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye; for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." They could afford to say this, strong as they were in the confidence that the God of all power and riches was with them, and that all the resources of the world of spirit were being silently ranged on their side. The powers of the world to come made them very independent of all other powers. They knew well that One was with them who, at the last extremity, could make the rack seem a bed of roses, and the cross a throne of more than imperial splendour and power. Their apprehension of this was rendered intensely vivid by the personal communion which they had held with Jesus, the "God manifest in the flesh." As well might you persuade a man that the brother of his heart is a shadow, as persuade Peter, James, or John, that the Lord whom they had known on earth, and watched with aching heart and straining sight as he vanished in the clouds of glory, was the vision of Out a dream. "I know," not "what," but They put themselves cheerfully out of connection with all that the world, religious as well as secular, was working at in their time; they stepped calmly beyond the pale of worldly society, and made themselves a mark for its biting jests and scoffs; they became the very scum and offscouring of all things in the world's regard; but what matter? Was not Jesus and the whole world of spirit with them? Had he not said, "Fear not, I am with thee"? They knew what weight of Being that "I" represented; they knew what pressure those cords of love would bear; so they strengthened themselves in Christ to meet insult with silence, suffering with indomitable constancy, and organized opposition with most calm but persistent determination to do their work. Well they knew that though their voices might break discordant across earth's soft melodies, they were blending with that mighty choral harmony which floats ever, like incense, around the throne of Christ in heaven. These were Independent preachers of the Gospel,- -men not to be won to conformity of any sort except the highest: and the key of their position, the very citadel of their strength, was their faith-let us rather call it their knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord. There is no Independent preacher in any age without this. Let a man not pick up from his elders and fellows current notions about the truth, but let him touch, and taste, and handle it with the vital organs of his soul, let him have in the deeps of his own being, as they had, a witness that it is a Word of life-bread of the soul, by which, through vigorous assimilation, the spirit grows strong and Christ-like, and you have a sure guarantee of Independent teaching-the true Independence-a sublime dependence on the Highest. The mere independence of isolation man cannot achieve for himself. Conform he must to the types, be they higher, be they lower, to which he attaches his spirit. No intellectual exercise, no moral or mental effort will keep a man clear-eyed and simple-hearted about the truth, in the midst of the fearful temptations which abound to distort it or trim it to the fashion of the time; nothing can so keep him but a growing conformity, in the secret of his spirit, to Him who is the Truth, which conformity is nourished by intercourse, and ripened by love. Must we not say, dear brethren, if we speak honestly about it,—at least, let me say what is in my heart, out of which, and not out of the mere intellect, our words should come in such scenes as this, -that there is, in the present state and constitution of our Body, a terrible pressure of temptation on all who occupy the official position of Independent preachers of the Gospel, to be untrue, not so much in word (we may keep the very letter of the Bible), but in the hidden spirit of our minds, to the reality of the truth? I am not about to say anything upon the mooted question of an official ministry. It would ill become me here to obtrude an opinion, still less would it become me to disturb with discussion the solemnity of this hour. I pass, then, the subject of the temptations of ministers in other shurches, compared with our own, and wil not touch the question whether the emptation of a minister who is entirely dependent on his people, to lay himself out to please them, is not a more healthy form of temptation than that which besets a minister who is independent of his people, not to care for them at all. Of families, societies, churches, it is alike true, "The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and the stranger intermeddleth not with its joys." Let us keep to our own trials and struggles, for I hope we are aware of our danger, and watch against it. Every system, all organization, has its point of weakness. Spirit thus maintains its protest that while it dwells in form, and makes use of it, it is not included or limited by it. And is not our special form of trial-the thorn in the flesh which God has ordained, lest we should be exalted above measure by the ideal purity of our principles-the temptation to catch men, to please men rather than God? "By this craft we have our bread." It is no shame to us. I know of no craft so worthy of bread. But man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which cometh out of the mouth of God." And this relation which we sustain will prove very demoralizing to us, unless Christ be very near and very dear to our spirits,—unless the breath of his praise be the music which we pine for, and the sound of his footsteps the echo which we most joyfully hear. But if the living Lord be to our spirits what he was to the man who counted all things but loss that he might win Christ, our very temptation becomes the instrument of our work. Our dependence becomes the seal of a tender and trustful relation on the one hand, while our Independence becomes the instrument of a mighty spiritual power on the other. The staple of our ministry must be the fruit of loving acquaintance with the Master, -a record of real transactions between the soul and Christ. What we have seen, felt, and handled, and that alone, let us talk about, as the staple of all our ministrations; and entering often behind the veil, deep into the recesses of our own spirits, which range in far-off regions of the unseen world, let us bring forth ever fresh and living tidings of the realities which are there. There Jesus lives,-the Man, the Friend, the Brother,-the same as when, with human lips, he spoke face to face with his elect Apostle, attended him through his whole career with sleepless vigilance, and nerved his heart, not to suffer, but to exult in sufferings, because the Lord stood by him to strengthen him when the hour of his death agony drew near. He loves to companion such spirits as Paul's through their pilgrimage; he prizes their love, confidence, obedience, and faith as the most precious fruits of his work. Oh! who will not vow from this time to know more of him as he loves to be known,-not as the object of pompous adoration, or orthodox discourse,but as the Friend who loves with human tenderness and sympathy; to whom the confidence and devotion of one brave and strong man's heart are worth more than a universe of star-crowned worlds? There has been for generations a fearful evaporation of meaning from the Divine name. Our larger, and no doubt truer intellectual conceptions of the nature and the name of Deity, have marred somewhat that strong homely apprehension of his nearness and interest in all human affairs which characterized the Hebrew Church. Anthropomorphism is not the worst sin which we can commit in dealing with the nature of God. God has come to dwell for us in the region of the highest intellectual abstraction. Such fierce battles have been fought in the Church as to the nature of the Divine existence, and the words and phrases in which it may be lawfully conceived and set forth, that we are afraid to speak or think of God save in words set and chosen, and consecrated to the special service by long use. The faith of the Hebrews was homely, but it was hearty and loving. They were not so much afraid of conceiving of him as one like unto themselves, but they were very honestly afraid of not thinking of him heartily at all. To them he was the tutelar Deity, loving them as he loved not others, with a love moreover which lacked not the characteristics of human passion. They thus conceived of him as having a personal interest and stake in their national credit and advancement, while they felt a kind of domestic sympathy and interest in all his manifold and beautiful works. This element gave to their literature that feature which was at once its distinction and its glory. This zeal for the God of her people drew from Deborah her flashes of indignant passion; this tuned the harp of David to many a tender and many an impassioned strain. It was in this faith that the heroes of that people "subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, vaxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again; and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trial of cruel mockings, and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheep-skins, and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the world was not worthy.)" Christ appeared not to abolish, but to expand the faith of a simple and primitive people, and extend it to all nations of the world. He rent the veil of their holy place, and the glory above their ark grew dim. The Divine existence withdrew itself beyond the bounds of even intellectual vision. The universe became then the holy place of Deity, and the Shekinah thenceforward was to be man. Let us accept the lesson. Let us make the grand intellectual conceptions of Deity which Christ has enabled us to form and cherish vivid with the human interest imparted to the Divine character and works by the man Christ Jesus. My earnest desire is to say a few words to-night that for some of you, at any rate for myself, may deepen the sense of our need of much personal, much not formal and official, but earnest and vital intercourse with our Master, about the realities of the inward life, about the daily becoming of our spirits, about the struggles and sufferings, not just connected with our office as ministers, but with our souls as men; and then, with Christ to support us, we too, like those first teachers, can afford to be Independent Ministers of the Gospel, and shall do the very greatest work that is being done in our times. But is it an easy thing to bring ourselves thus into direct communication with our Master? Have we simply to say I will, and it is done? Alas! do not false Christs and Anti-christs beset the doors of our hearts as they beset the doors of the Church in the earliest time? Shadows of what our carnal apprehensions would have Christ to be to us, rather than images of what he is. Have we not all, as the Jews had, a natural and fleshly idea of the work which we should like Christ to do for us, and the functions we should like him to discharge?—and is it not in anguish and bitterness of soul that we find that he is not just that to us which we had hoped, but something higher, something which touches the springs of our being more closely, something which it costs us infinitely greater effort, self-denial, even anguish of spirit to receive? All our worst tempters are not shapes of darkness with their names burnt black into their brows; shapes like angels are ever tempting us to relax the strain of our spirits; and images, idols, born of our own fondest musings and imaginings, are ever busy, striving to thrust out the real, the living Christ, from our hearts. Most men shrink from going often behind the veil of their own spirits; the effort is too hard, the work too stern. We love to live in the pleasanter region of thought and emotion, if our thoughts and our feelings travel mainly in the right direction, and respond readily to the call of Christian duty, we are prone to conclude, as of course, nor trouble ourselves to search into it, that it is well with us within. But there may be much coldness and deadness in the very centre of life, while thought and emotion, lying nearer to the warm surface, remain sensitive and responsive; and perhaps those whose thought and feeling are kept ever in lively action about the realities of Christian truth, are under sad temptation to dismiss as needless the question what manner of spirit they are of in the inmost centre of their souls. "Out of the deeps have I cried unto thee," said the Psalmist; and to this statement of a spiritual fact every spiritual man, especially every spiritual minister of Christ's Gospel, will respond. But it is of essential importance to us to determine out of what depth the cry is gone forth. Is it the cry of those lighter thoughts and emotions whose surface is easily stirred and easily laid at rest again, or is it the cry of the spirit within us-that spirit from whose silent depths gush forth the sweet and the bitter waters of our lives-which stamps its character on all our most meaning actions and expressions, and busily with its shaping hand, is moulding for us a life and a destiny? Is it the cry of this spirit within us for the sympathy, friendship, fellowship of the living God? Men do not naturally love to entertain this question. It costs much to open up the deeper springs of will and action, to work those veins which lie buried far beneath the surface of our lives. Let no man venture to say, "I will live henceforth not from the surface, but from the centre of my being. I will seek there as far as I can penetrate into the recesses of my character the renewing of the Holy Ghost," without counting well the cost of it. We have none of us yet explored the whole meaning of that word, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me." And who has not been made to feel, in his truest moments of experience and knowledge of himself and of God, that he had been tempted to set up an image compounded of current customs, traditions, and expectations, and to call it Christ. Το live moreover a life of routine service to this image; and while appearing to be very earnest and active in spiritual duty, suffer a decay of the true inward life. At least he who addresses you, young though he may be, has been made to feel how much may be made to pass, both with himself and the people, for the reality of Divine truth, which has taken shape rather from the creed and conscience of other men than from whatever portion of the spirit of the Father he may at any time have felt working within himself. There is a certain mould and form in which piety is expected not only to express itself, but also to think and feel, which too much frightens revelations of fresh living experience out of our pulpits, if it does not frighten them out of our hearts. I suppose that every spiritual man could understand, though at a distance, Paul's experience, and feel that he had seen and known, in communion with Christ, things unspeakable, things not to be conceived in phrases nor expressed in words, and that what may be conceived and uttered is strange enough, if honestly spoken, and would come on many spectres which haunt us like the cock-crowing at the dawning of the day. Yet this is what men are asking for. They are thirsting for fresh tidings from the spiritual world. Not a fresh Gospel, as some vainly dream, but fresh assurance of the substance and life of the old Gospel,-fresh witness from spirits who have been there, that Christ is there, behind the veil, thinking, willing, hoping, loving, waiting, working, as a man might in that veiled world. If we can give more of this to our hearers,-more of what we have felt, seen, handled, in the inner sanctuary of our spirits, of Christ the Word of life, I do not think that we shall hear so much of the unbelief of this generation, nor complain longer that the tide of human interest drifts by our pulpits, in search of that in which it may feel there is more of the glow and the warmth of our common human life. Again I say, that it is easier, far easier for us all, even those who are most in earnest, to talk about living in fellowship with the Lord of life, than to do it. It is easy to say that we are so living, and partly to believe |