much now-a-days of the submission of our understanding to the dictation of our spiritual instructors, and to the superior wisdom of antiquity, as though the surrender of our own judgment, and the blind adoption of primitive usages, were only another name for Christian faith. Let it be at least recollected, that the humility prescribed by the Gospel extends to every portion of the human race alike; to the teacher no less than to the pupil. But the humility which is attempted to be taught by the dictation of uninspired men, inculcating their own theories as portions of Holy Writ, if it encourages the prostration of the understanding on the one part, is no less favourable to spiritual tyranny and dogmatism on the other. It lowers the scholar by attempting to deify the teacher. This tendency, which has been more or less visible in all ages where tradition has been in any degree set up as a co-rival with Scripture, has ever been strongest at those times when momentary excitement has given an artificial value to human theories at the expense of the sober wis

dom of revelation.

In Sulpicius Severus's curious account of the monks of the Thebaid, we read some singular illustrations of the extent to which, under the notion of submission to legitimate spiritual authority, the fanatics of that period carried their voluntary humiliation. Thus we are told of one novice who, being ordered by his ghostly superior, as a proof of his obedience, to walk boldly into a blazing oven, whilst heating for the purpose of baking bread, did so, and was rewarded, as we are of course told, by coming out uninjured. Another had the unpromising task imposed upon him of watering unceasingly for the space of more than two years, a dry branch of storax capriciously stuck into the burning sand, at a distance of two miles from the Nile, by the president of his monastery. It is consolatory to find that in the course of the third year his faith had its recompense, by the plant acquiring sufficient strength to be able to dispense with his further attendance.

Such are the strange caprices to which

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human superstition, when left to draw its own conclusions on the subject of the divine worship, has a tendency to betake itself. When, indeed, they are considered in this extreme point of view, there is no tolerably cultivated human mind which does not at once perceive their absurdity, and their total want of congeniality with the spirit of the Gospel. But, as has already been observed, it is through many progressive stages and gradually deepening shades that we arrive at this their utmost point. Every human invention which we set up in rivalry to the written word, every form of worship, however originally innocent, or even expedient as contributing to the decorum of our public ceremonies, partakes, in some degree, of the same character, the moment that it ceases to be considered as a form, and is elevated, as is too often the case, into an article of faith. We cannot safely extend the spirit of Scripture, any more than we can, by mere human authority, add to its letter. The boundary is one which, if we choose to draw the line at

the right place, we cannot possibly mistake. But if we once pass beyond it, and amid the thickening crowd of fanciful theories begin to ask ourselves which we shall adopt as necessary, which discard as superstitious, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to say where we are to stop. One suggestion will lead to another. Every admission once made will be succeeded by some unanswerable consequence, until the whole of our religion will become a fantastic dream, and revelation disappear under an accumulation of extraneous notions.

It is, however, let me again repeat, with no feeling of hostility to the authorized ceremonials, or to the decent splendour of religious worship, that these remarks are written. Very far from it. Religion can, no more than social order and the authority of secular government, be maintained under the existing constitution of our nature, without such external forms and established associations as call forth the reverence of the mind, and oblige it to submit itself unresistingly to the

dictations of good order, sound sense, and enlightened discipline. God, we are told, is the author of order, not of confusion. Did we possess no other sanction for the establishment of Church government with its attendant ceremonials, this one would be sufficient, as binding upon the conscience of every wellintentioned Christian. The authority of the spiritual is, at all events, as sacred as that of the secular magistrate, when exercised in discretion, and with reference to the will of Him from whom all power is derived. The language of the 20th Article of our Church appears to reach that precise point, short of which none but the self-willed and arrogant would wish to stop, and beyond which none but the advocate of spiritual despotism would desire to advance. Forms and ceremonials there must be. But they can, by any possibility, exist only in concurrence with a feeling of deference to those who bear legitimate authority, and a predisposition to conform to those usages which a wise antiquity, or the common consent of our enlightened Christian