whose inhabitants it would not be right to say"Unto you, God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you." This is the catholic church, acquiring that term with strict etymological propriety, because it extends over the whole world. When Jesus had in his own person established this society, he provided for its extension by a commission given to his apostles. They assumed the direction of the newly-constituted church. Their labours, first confined to Judæa, soon embraced more ample circuits. They preached in distant countries; and traversed sea and land to propagate their gracious message. "To possess such a proof in the history of our own church (says a late bishop of her communion*), and from the coincidence of British records with foreign testimony, to know that the church of Britain was coeval with the age of the apostles, is to build our faith on grounds most solid and interesting." But we are able to extend that proof to the individual labours of one of the apostles. We are indebted, there is good reason to believe, to the personal zeal of the great apostle of the Gentiles, St. Paul, for the first preaching of the gospel in these islands. The evidence for this assertion, given at length, would occupy too large a space, besides involving an historical detail, which I consider would not harmonize with the place and occasion. One of the earliest Christian writers relates that Paul preached righteousness through the whole world, even "to the utmost bounds of the west;" an expression which has ever been interpreted, by the most judicious authorities, to comprehend Britain. I quote the words of our oldest native historiant, who tells us that the gospel was preached in Britain before the sixty-first year after our Lord's ascension. His words are: "In the meantime, Christ, the true Sun, afforded his rays, that is, the knowledge of his precepts, to this land, shivering with icy cold, and separated at a great distance from the visible sun; not from the visible firmament, but from the supreme, everlasting power of heaven: for we certainly know that, in the latter end of Tiberius, that sun appeared to the whole world, with his glorious beams." I abstain, for the reasons assigned, from multiplying those convincing arguments which might be set before you from the old historians of the church, in favour of the fact that Paul himself, whose history is the most striking monument of the power of God's grace, and his writings the brightest light for the guidance of God's church, was the vessel in which was imported into the islands of Britain the most precious gift that ever lighted upon our shores. If we allow this to be established as a fact, then how gratifying the thought that the voice of him who, "being dead, yet," and evermore, "speaketh" to the churches, was once actually heard on these our shores: but, if we hesitate to admit it as a certainty, yet the evidence is most unquestionable, which shows that the British church was founded during the apostolic age, and by apostolic men, and by none so probably as St. Paul. I have referred to the origin of the church in this land, both because there is a very general indistinctness in the minds of our hearers upon the subject, which it is important to have cleared up for the general information of their minds, and also because you will be the better prepared to respond to the appeal I am making in behalf of church extension in these parts, if you shall see that the national Christian society-a section of which is the church of this diocese-is not to be referred to some three centuries ago, but has had its being from a period commencing a very few years after the Saviour left the earth; and if you shall draw from it the important inference which follows, that the ancient church in Britain-the church as it was in the first instance-was, in all respects, whether you inquire after her doctrine, her discipline, Bishop Burgess. + Gildas. or her worship, pure. That which I offered at the outset of this discourse as a reason for introducing these topics, that they are to many either unknown or out of sight, must be my excuse for repeating here what has already, perhaps, been stated with sufficient clearness; that, although we have heard of corruptions in the church, yet there was a time, as the very term "corruptions" implies-and would teach us, did we but reflect-when her truth was unvitiated. That time is indeed far up in the annals of antiquity (for God's pure gifts were soon debased by the touch of man's unhallowed hands); but the more remote the time, the higher is the point from which our church's pedigree dates its beginning. Whenever, therefore, we either claim your allegiance to the principles, or ask you to aid in enlarging the operations, of our national religious institution, we make an appeal in behalf of the ancient religion of Britain. Poetry. (For the Church of England Magazine.) "I say unto you all-Watch!" WATCH, for the time is short; Watch, while 'tis called to-day; Watch, for the foe is strong; Chase doubting from thy breast: Of heaven's eternal rest. Thy Saviour watch'd for thee, "Till from his brow the blood-sweat pour'd Great drops of agony. Take Jesus for thy trust; Watch, watch for evermore: Watch, for thou soon must sleep With thousands gone before. Now, when thy sun is up— Now, while 'tis call'd to-dayO now, in thine accepted time, Watch, Christian, watch and pray! E. SCAIFE. Maryport. HYMN FOR THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE YEAR. III. ANOTHER year-another year Hath sped its flight on silent wing; And all that marked its brief career Hath passed from mortal reckoning. Yet, graven as with iron pen, O God, thy dreadful records stand: All thoughts, all words, all deeds of men, Unnumbered as the ocean sand. And are our sins, O Lord, our God, All gathered there in dark array ? Ah, no! a Saviour's precious bloodHath it not washed them all away? For all thy grace, and patient love, We land and bless thy holy name. Throughout another fleeting year, Still bear with us, and bless us still; O let us keep thy narrow way! Trin. Coll. Camb. HENRY DOWNTON, B.A. Miscellaneous. a turies, it has again remained until this day apparentl unvisited and unknown, except the slight notice which Seetzen obtained respecting it from the Arabs.Robinson's Biblical Researches. SLAVE ANTS; AN ARGUMENT FOR THE SOUTH. -The most remarkable fact connected with the history of the ants is the propensity possessed by certain species to kidnap the workers of other species, and compel them to labour for the benefit of the community, thus using them completely as slaves; and, as far as we yet know, the kidnappers are red or palecoloured ants, and the slaves, like the ill-treated natives of Africa, are of a jet-black. The time for capturing slaves extends over a period of about ten weeks, and never commences until the male and female ants are about emerging from the pupæ state; and thus the ruthless marauders never interfere with the continuation of the species. This instinct seems specially provided; for, were the slave ants created for no other end than to fill the station of slavery to which they appear to be doomed, still even that office must fall were the attacks to be made on their nests before the winged myriads have departed, or are departing, charged with the duty of continuing their kind. When the red ants are about to sally forth on a marauding expedition, they send scouts to ascertain the exact position in which a colony of negroes may BEERSHEBA.-We now felt that the desert was at be found; these scouts, having discovered the object an end. Descending gradually, we came out, at two of their search, return to their nest and report their o'clock, upon an open undulating country: the shrubs success. Shortly afterwards the army of red ants ceased, or nearly so; green grass was seen along the marches forth, headed by a vanguard which is perlesser water-courses, and almost green sward; while petnally changing; the individuals which constitute the gentle hills, covered in ordinary seasons with grass it, when they have advanced a little before the main and rich pasture, were now burnt over with drought. body, halting, falling into the rear, and being replaced Arabs were pasturing their camels in various parts, by others: this vanguard consists of eight or ten ants but no trace of dwellings was anywhere visible. At a only. When they have arrived near the negro colony, quarter to three o'clock we reached Wady es-Seba', they disperse, wandering through the herbage and wide watercourse, or bed of a torrent, running here hunting about, as aware of the propinquity of the W.S.W. towards Wady es-Suny. Upon its northern object of their search, yet ignorant of its exact position. side, close upon the bank, are two deep wells, still At last they discover the settlement; and the foremost called Bir es-Seba', the ancient Beersheba. We had of the invaders, rushing impetuously to the attack, entered the borders of Palestine! Here then is the are met, grappled with, and frequently killed, by the place where the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, negroes on guard. The alarm is quickly communioften dwelt! Here Abraham dug perhaps this very cated to the interior of the nest; the negroes sally well; and journeyed from hence with Isaac to Mount forth by thousands, and the red ants rushing to the Moriah, to offer him up there in sacrifice. From this rescue, a desperate conflict ensues!-which, however, place Jacob fled to Padan-Aram, after acquiring the always terminates in the defeat of the negroes, who birth-right and blessing belonging to his brother; retire to the inmost recesses of their habitation. Now and here too he sacrificed to the Lord on setting off follows the scene of pillage: the red ants with their to meet his son Joseph in Egypt. Here Samuel made powerful mandibles tear open the sides of the negro his sons judges; and from here Elijah wandered out ant hill, and rush into the heart of the citadel; in a into the southern desert, and sat down under a shrub few minutes each of the invaders emerges, carrying of retem, just as our Arabs sat down under it every in its mouth the pupa of a worker negro, which it has day and every night. Here was the border of Pales- obtained in spite of the vigilance and valour of its natine Proper, which extended from Dan to Beersheba. tural guardians. The red ants return in perfect order Over these swelling hills the flocks of the patriarchs to their nest, bearing with them their living burdens. once roved by thousands; where now we found only a On reaching the nest, the pupa appears to be treated few camels, asses, and goats. Beersheba is last mentioned precisely as their own; and the workers, when they in the Old Testament, as one of the places to which emerge, perform the various duties of the community the Jews returned after the exile. The name does not with the greatest energy and apparent good-will: they occur in the New Testament; nor is it referred to as repair the nest, excavate passages, collect food, feed then existing by any writer earlier than Eusebius and the larvæ, take the pupa into the sunshine, and perJerome in the fourth century. They describe it as a form every office which the welfare of the colony large village with a Roman garrison. It is found as seems to require; in fact, they conduct themselves an episcopal city in the early ecclesiastical and other entirely as if fulfilling their original destination.notitiæ referring to the centuries before and after the From Newman's Familiar Introduction to the HisMohammedan conquests; but none of its bishops are tory of Insects. any where mentioned. Its site was in like manner long forgotten; and the crusaders assigned this name to the place now called, Beit Jibrin, lying between Hebron and Askelon. About the middle of the fourteenth century, sir John Maundeville, and also Rudolf de Suchem and William de Baldensel, passed on this route from Sinai to Hebron and Jerusalem; and all of them mention here Beersheba. The two latter say it was then uninhabited, but some of the churches were still standing. From this time onward for five cen London: Published by JAMES BURNS, 17 Portman Street, Portman Square; W. EDWARDS, 12 Ave-Maria Lane, St. Paul's; and to be procured, by order, of all Booksellers in Town and Country. PRINTED BY JOSEPH ROGERSON, 24 NORFOLK STREET, STRAND, LONDON. THE CATHEDRAL OF CHRIST-CHURCH, OXFORD. THE principal interest belonging to the cathedral of Oxford arises out of the circumstances, that it is part both of an ancient monastic foundation, and of a modern protestant establishment-that it is a chapel to a noble college, and connected with many distinguished personages and events. Cardinal college, Henry the Eighth's college, and Christ-church-the several names which this church has held, grew out of two dissolved monasteries of black canons-the abbey of Oseney and the priory of St. Frideswide. Early in the eighth century, a convent was built and endowed by Didan, called by some viceroy, by others duke, and even king of Oxford, all evidently erroneous titles. He probably was one of the earls of Mercia. Frideswide, his daughter, with twelve other noble virgins, devoted themselves to monastic seclusion, and were established in a convent dedicated to St. Mary and All Saints. In this sacred retreat, Frideswide became the object of the attention of Algar, a Mercian prince, from whom she escaped to Benton or Benson, or Bensington, about ten miles from Oxford, where she was for some time concealed from Algar; but at length, being discovered, she went back to Oxford, followed by her lover, and, beginning to despair of safety by her own exertions, she fervently implored the protection of heaven; and the purity of the fair votary was defended by an awful miracle. On entering the city, Algar was struck with blindness, which severe visitation brought him to a sense of his impiety. With great contri VOL. XII.-NO. CCCXXVI. PRICE 1d. tion he implored Frideswide to intercede for his restoration to sight, which the virgin granted, and her prayers were so effectual that his blindness was removed as suddenly as inflicted. Frideswide afterwards lived in a solitary and religious manner at Thornebyry, called subsequently Bensey, remarkable for her sanctity; and where (according to legendary story) a spring, gushing from the earth at her invocation, attracted for many centuries the credulous and superstitious. Such is the legend of St. Frideswide, believed by our ancestors, and even by those in the present day whose credulity supersedes their rea son. Very little is recorded respecting this monastery subsequent to the death of Frideswide, except many superstitious stories and miracles, for the purpose of augmenting its revenues. Didan, the founder, his wife Saffrida, and his daughter Frideswide, were buried within the walls of the church. The priory was burnt, and its inmates massacred in November, 1002. King Ethelred II. began to rebuild it in 1004, and the present church is referred by some authors to that era. The date of the dedication to St. Frideswide is uncertain: in some charters of the reign of Henry I. it is styled the "Church of the Holy Trinity in Oxford;" but we find that in 1081, as Wood states, or 1188, according to others, the relics of the saint were removed from an obscure part of the church to one more suitable to their importance; "at which solemnity, the king, bishops, and nobles being present, were then and after divers miracles wrought, both on clerical and laical people, causing thereby the fame of [London: Joseph Rogerson, 24, Norfolk-street, Strand.] F |