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so early sacrificed his life in the missionary enterprize; but a quenchless zeal for the cause of his divine Master sustained him to the last, and all the solicitude which he manifested was for the infant church formed by his instrumentality.

This afflictive dispensation produced the deepest feeling among all who took any interest in the mission. On the following morning, a native wrote, 'Sad news in the town; the shepherd is away! The poor missionary is reported dead.''-pp. 275-277.

The little flock which had been gathered by the apostolic labors of this excellent man met together the day after his funeral, to take into consideration their bereaved circumstances, and the entry made in the minute book of the society will best explain the views which prevailed amongst them. The entry is as follows:- 'I met the class on purpose to know 'whether they would continue in the profession they had recently entered into, or desire to return to their former ways, in consequence of the death of their missionary. They said, they would remain in the new profession; for though the missionary was dead, God lives. We commended our souls ' in prayer to God, and separated at ten o'clock.'

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Our limits prevent our proceeding further; and we take our leave of Mr. Beecham, with a hearty recommendation of his volume to our readers.

Art. III. The Shield of Dissent; or Dissent in its bearings on Legislation, especially on the Lord's Day, National Education, Public Documents, Religious Taxation, &c., with Strictures on Dr. Brown's Work on Tribute. By EDWARD SWAINE. London: Snow.

THE terms DISSENT and DISSENTER, always grating enough

to a churchman's ear, are become in these days perfectly appalling. What sensations may be produced by the martial appendage to the already odious name, which our author has thought proper to adopt, it behoves not ourselves to conjecture. The policy or wisdom of such a combination of terms may very fairly be questioned, though we shall content ourselves with merely alleging its utter destitution of any definite meaning, till explained by the author in the preface. The title prefixed is adopted simply to convey the idea that dissent wears no sword, but fears no attack so long as aggression confines itself to weapons that are spiritual.' We do not intend to pick a needless quarrel with the author; but if he means to say, that dissent is something that always restricts itself to the defensive-then we beg leave to observe, that this definition neither agrees with the idea conveyed by the term, which is hostility to something previously supposed, neither does it agree with the

author's dissent, which is declared hostility to the principle of an Established Church; nor does it accord with the conduct and admitted principles of dissenters of the present age, which appear in an honest and open warfare against the political and religious error involved in an establishment. We wish, however, to dismiss the title. But at the admission, involved in these remarks, we can imagine the scribes, whose vocation is to write down dissent, or, as they would say, is properly defensive of the church, exulting in a direct acknowledgment of what they have often alleged that dissenters are wickedly bent upon destroying the church-and that here, in their own Review, is the open avowal of their determination. Pause a little-hear before you strike, and understand us before you take either shield in defence or sword in assault.

We disclaim hostility against the church as a section of the great christian family. It pains and grieves us to be unjustly and pertinaciously charged with intentions altogether foreign to our object to be reproached and criminated as we daily are, in almost every church publication, and at every public assembly of the clergy, with attempting to destroy the church-to be told that we have combined with infidels and papists to overthrow that form of christianity which, in the minds of our opponents, is illogically and unfairly identified with the Establishment. All this we have openly and repeatedly declared to be false and unjust. Our opponents, however, persist in confounding these two things, which we aver are essentially distinct; they refuse to discriminate; they resolutely urge and repeat their impeachment of our motives; they vent their criminations in every possible form, and, with the utmost violence and vituperation of language; though they know that we are as devoted friends to the cause of uncorrupted christianity, and the evangelization of the land as themselves; though they know and dare not deny the validity of the distinction we make between the Church and the Establishment, upon which the whole of the controversy hinges; and though they adopt and use the same distinction themselves whenever it suits their convenience. Now this distinction we must be permitted to press upon them. They must not be allowed to overlook it. It is wholly and simply one between an end sought and the means of attaining it, or between a system of truth and the human manner of its extension-between a place to be reached by a journey and the method of travelling to it-a distinction so plain and palpable that a child may comprehend it, and every child ought to understand it; though learned and christian men, who ought always to be candid men, seem quite incapable of appreciating it, whenever it would be advantageous to dissenters to allow it, or convenient to themselves to sink it.

They must however allow us the liberty to state, whatsoever is said to the contrary, and whoever may say it, that, so far from being enemies to the religion of the Protestant Episcopal Church, we believe it to be substantially the religion of the Son of God. We are identified with them to the full amount of all that constitutes the Gospel and the laws of Christ. Nothing shall ever induce us to assume an attitude of hostility to their religion, or to themselves, while acting as christian men ought to act, under the guidance of the New Testament. We beseech them, as they love that religion common to us both, not to embitter our differences, unavoidable as they unhappily are, by captiously and uncandidly confounding our opposition to some of their means of promoting christianity with opposition to christianity itself. We affectionately entreat them to do us the bare justice, which our common christianity teaches, of restricting their descriptions of our hostility to those matters to which we ourselves restrict it; and not to extend it to other matters with which it has no more to do, than a question as to the most eligible mode of defending our common country would have to do with the patriotism of those who might honestly take opposite sides upon some particular measure of defence.

Dr. Paley has clearly expressed the distinction upon which we now repel the charge of being enemies to the church- A ' religious establishment,' he says, is no part of christianity; "it is only the means of inculcating it. Amongst the Jews the ' rights and offices, the order, family, and succession of the priesthood, were marked out by the authority which declared the law itself. These, therefore, were parts of the Jewish ' religion, as well as the means of transmitting it. Not so with 'the new institution.' This is perfectly just, and we have only to beg the advocates of establishments, either to refute the statement or candidly to admit and recognize it, in all their defences of the Church of England system, and in all their attacks upon the fundamental principles of dissent. Attention to this important distinction would greatly tend to lessen the acrimony of debate, and to promote candor, equity, and charity.

If a religious establishment is no part of christianity, but only the means of inculcating it, then it is perfectly possible, perhaps reasonable, for us to differ concerning this establishment, when we are perfectly agreed about christianity itself— or to be cordially one as to the end, though we may disagree as to the means of attaining it. Moreover it should be borne in mind, that these means about which we disagree, are merely human inventions-the devices of civil and ecclesiastical legislation, and no part of divine christianity: consequently it is most unjust to identify the establishment with the church, as though they were convertible terms, and thence proceed to

impeach the enemies of the establishment, as if they were enemies to christianity. We entreat, therefore, that dissent may not be charged with hostility beyond the real bounds and limits of its hostility. For all that christianity obviously is and teaches, we profess ourselves one with those, whom, in reference to that other part of their system which is not christianity, we are bound in conscience, as we judge, openly and manfully to

resist.

There is another important matter upon which we may here be allowed to make a few observations. It relates to the spirit in which this controversy should be conducted. The controversy itself is inevitable. We cannot, we dare not give it up. The honor, the success, and, in some respects, the essential truths of christianity are implicated in it. Yet, because it is a controversy with some who are truly christian men, it is a painful sacrifice of feeling to maintain it. But truth, reason, and conscience, bind us to protest against measures adopted and maintained by them, no doubt with honest intentions, but which involve, as we conceive, an open and direct violation of the gentle spirit and divine principles of christianity. Yet we wish always to remind ourselves and others, that if we must withstand, both for conscience and the truth's sake, it ought to be in love, and not in the spirit of worldly or political partizans. If we must argue and expostulate with each other upon these matters, let us do it as christian men and brethren, the servants of a common Master, equally bound by the laws of truth, candor, and charity.

We have often availed ourselves of suitable occasions to testify our respect and Christian affection for all those ministers and members of the Established church who deserve the name of pious, and whose chief anxiety is directed to the spread of the gospel, aware, however, that there is a large body both of laity and clergy who deserve respect on no such ground. We repeat on the present occasion our unfeigned regard for all those members of the Establishment who adhere to the unadulterated doctrine of the Reformation, and maintain the truth as it is in Jesus without the supplements of tradition, and who are laboring in their own way to evangelize the people by the old gospel of the apostles, and not by the gospel according to Oxford and Dr. Pusey. We believe them to be true ministers of Jesus Christ. We acknowledge the worth and importance of their labors in the ministry of the word of life. We wish them 'God speed!' There is nothing in the principles of dissent that forbids the most full and frank expression of christian fellowship with such men. We wish they were at liberty to make common cause with us against the common enemy. We regret to see them engaged against that enemy with muffled

hands and weapons. We lament that their bondage should be self-imposed. There is nothing that obstructs complete and efficient Christian union with them but this human establishment, which is no part of Christianity. We long to see them extricated from their trammels, freed from the unseemly charge of persecuting their brethren in the faith, for the sake of supporting that establishment, and released from the painful inconsistency of owning as brethren in their own fellowship open heretics and papists, plain traitors to the faith of Christ, and subverters of the glorious reformation. They must not wonder at us if we even express our pity for excellent men whose awkward, perhaps galling, association in an establishment compels them one day to hear and sanction principles in their own Church which, in Irish papists, their consciences compel them the next day to execrate and condemn as inventions of the father of lies and destructive to men's souls. Doubtless all such good men painfully feel, without any hint from us, these bitter fruits of an ecclesiastical establishment-these natural consequences of allowing the civil power to intermeddle with spiritual affairs. Let those who repudiate the principle of stateinterference with the Christian church, and who perceive the painful dilemma in which such worthy men are placed, bind themselves always to speak of them with all the tenderness possible, and which their obvious embarrassments require.

Mr. Swaine has borne his testimony against an Established Church in a spirit that is as frank and kind as it is fearless. But his intention is less to deal with the general question than with some mistakes, as he thinks, in the reasonings of brother Dissenters. He deems it wrong to resist church-rates, and to plead conscience as the reason. While the principle of an establishment is a part of the constitution, the principle of Dissent, he thinks, requires that it should be upheld by Dissenters as well as by all other good subjects. Duty to civil governors, he alleges, requires this according to New Testament doctrine. Therefore, the only blow he would aim is at the root, and the only advice he offers is, Strike at the bond which unites the Church with the State. His little tract is adapted to serve the cause of the rate exactors and discourage resistance. The great cause of dissent, he thinks, has only been retarded by recent efforts in this way. We certainly do not agree with him. He is quite wrong in affirming church-rates to be a law. No law exists which authorizes a rate to be made, if the parishioners agree by a majority that they will make none. The constitution gives them the liberty of saying no; and Mr. Swaine has not proved that to use this liberty is a breach of Christian duty. We do not agree with him in some other matters, but this is not the place to answer him. His peculiar notions have engaged

VOL. X.

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