which may end in death. If a Christian be not permitted to remain alone, if he must necessarily be in relation with his brethren from being a member of a particular church,neither is it permitted to a church to remain single, it ought to be in union with the Church universal. To whom then, upon the Continent, will the Church of England stretch out her hand. Let me speak with Christian liberty. It must be either to Geneva or to Rome. I mean not the cities so named, but the systems which these names represent; the Gospel and Papacy. If any imagine that it is possible for the Church of England to give the hand of fellowship to a middle system, a mixture of truth and error, of Scripture and of tradition, they are mistaken. The two first mentioned are, it is my persuasion, the only consistent systems, and it is necessary, ultimately, to embrace the one or other. Besides, to what other would they have recourse? A certain tractarian doctor went to Russia in order to make advances to the Greek Church. And what was the result? Have the attempts made at Jerusalem been more fortunate! In the nineteenth century as in the sixteenth, England should stretch out a sisterly hand to the evangelical doctors, C Christians, churches, and societies of the Con- Now my lord, the excellent Society over which you preside, accomplishes the duty so necessary to be performed. It is the link which connects the Christians of your church with the evangelical Christians of Europe. Your archbishops and your bishops are too much occupied at this critical time to have leisure to correspond as Thomas Cranmer did, with the one or the other of our doctors of the Reformed Churches. Besides, progress has been made since the sixteenth century. Liberty and publicity have made great strides. Our communications must be of another kind than those which subsisted between Cranmer and his Continental friends. If in the sixteenth century it was chiefly the Continent which aided England, by sending there some of its most illustrious doctors,-in the nineteenth century, on the contrary, it is chiefly England which should come to the help of the Continent. The greatest reproach that unitarians and latitudinarians can bring against the revival of evangelism in Switzerland and France, is, that it is of English origin. This assertion is not quite true. If a principal of life had not remained in our churches, British influence would have effected very little. But even were it not so, we should not shrink from such a reproach. If in the sixteenth century God employed men, some of whom came from Switzerland and Germany, to disseminate the truth in Great Britain, why in the nineteenth century should He not employ men from England and Scotland to disseminate this same truth upon the Continent? The revival on the Continent, it is alleged, in condemnation of it, is of English origin? In the first century was not the revival of Europe of Jewish origin? There is no longer either Jew, or Greek, or Englishman, or Frenchman, or or Scot, or Swiss: Christ is all in all. The truth which saves souls, which creates and maintains churches, comes neither from Switzerland nor from England; it cometh down from on high, from the city of the living God. But if the Continent has much to receive now from England, England may still receive some thing from the Continent. It is impossible to fix an observing eye upon your people and your church, without perceiving that there is still something to do, in order that the truth and the life which is in Jesus Christ be developed there with power, and penetrate to the heart of each of its members, even to the most remote districts and churches. O, well-beloved brethren, we know that you are not of those who say, "I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing." (Rev. iii. 17.) One reformation is not sufficient to save for ever a church. There is, through the power of sin, a constant process of deformation; there must then be, through the power of the Spirit, a perpetual work of reformation. Woe be unto us if we glory in the reformation of the sixteenth century, and do not understand that there must be a renewed reformation in the nineteenth. In that case, while building the tombs of the prophets, we should be witnesses against ourselves. (Matt. xxiii. 29, 31.) Yes, my lord, there must now be a reformation in England, effected by the Word and by the Spirit of the Lord, as there must be one in the church universal, among the congregations of every people and every tongue,-episcopalians, presbyterians, con gregationalists, established, free, without excepting a single Christian congregation upon earth. Far from me the thought that such a reformation in England should come from without— from the Continent. Doubtless there is a certain influence which may be exercised by one church over another; but the influence which is to be decisive and essential must be found within the church itself. Foreign influences over |