to the North-west corner of the Table, and so to turn his back upon the people while consecrating the elements. This alteration was made by the pen in the printed books; and so it was copied out in the MS. book; but ultimately the word "part" was erased, and the original term North “side” was adhered to. The outcry at the present day by the extreme Ritualists in favour of the “sacrificial position” of the celebrant, with the back to the people, is a sufficient proof of the triumph which would have been claimed if this proposal had been carried.

But perhaps the enquiry will have arisen in the minds of our readers, whether the Settlement of 1662 did not, on the other hand, also include concessions made to the High Church or Laudian party, so that it was a fair compromise between the two parties in the Church. We have endeavoured to collect all such counter concessions to be set against the lists recorded by Bishop Kennet and Dr. Cardwell.

It has been observed that, in 1662, the elements were, for the first time, called “consecrated elements” in the Rubrics, and that the word “oblations” was added in the Prayer for the Church Militant. But as the primary meaning of the word “consecration” is that of dedication to the service of God, no party can object to its employment. The word “oblations,” in the Prayer for the Church Militant, was introduced with the proposal to "offer up,” as well as to place the elements on the table; and further, with the insertion of a Prayer of Oblation before the distribution of the elements. When this action and this prayer were rejected, the term “oblations,” in its natural sense, can only be referred to the offerings of the people, whether as alms for the poor, or contributions for religious purposes.

As far as we have been able to discover, the claim of the Sacerdotalists to any support from the Settlement of 1662 rests upon these and a few such equivocal words! They are, in fact, but as dents upon a shield, the evidence of a blow successfully parried.

We trust that this review will sufficiently confirm the assertion that we have made, that the signal providence of God preserved our Book of Common Prayer during the ordeal which it passed in the Convocation and Parliament of 1661-2. Its Evangelical and Protestant character was in no degree impaired : in several important particulars, it was strengthened. Let the friends of Protestant and Evangelical truth, therefore, rally round the Book of Common Prayer so signally preserved to us in its genuine integrity. If there be still some sentences in the occasional services which are objectionable to some, let us wait for the result of the Rubrical

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revision before we agitate for a Liturgical revision. If, through the good providence of God, the attempt to unprotestantize the Church can now be quashed, and the general peace of the Church be restored, we shall be in a better position to discuss all other questions which may be raised among the true friends of the Church of England for making it more than ever a blessing to the nation and to the world at large.

The late decision of the Privy Council will be a most powerful help to such an adjustment of Ritual questions as these articles have advocated. It gives great encouragement to the Ritual Commission to proceed in the course they have hitherto pursued. It will prove an effectual breakwater against the floods and storms which arise at the first effectual check to ritualistic fanaticism. Calmer days will follow, when, we trust, the final report of the Ritual Commission, and the good sense of the Church, may sanction a scheme of Rubrical directions, so as to preserve the Protestant standard of 1662 inviolate. For effecting this we need nothing which can properly be called new legislation. It will be enough to make some of the existing rubrics more definite and stringent in the sense which fairly belongs to them; to modify others which are uncertain, and to omit those which may have become inoperative; and further to define more accurately the limits within which variations of practice were and always have been allowed by the Church, and where the discretion is lodged of making such variations within those defined limits.

The following considerations encourage the confident hope that such measures will be accepted by the Church :

First.—The effectual suppression of all “counterfeiting of the Mass,” and “making the Lord's Supper as like the Mass as possible ;” will so far destroy the charm and the danger of the new system of Ritual, that it will pass away with the fleeting fashions of the day.

Secondly.-Great hopes may be entertained of the effect which will be produced by a revised Ritual, in which nothing can be alleged as obsolete, or as disregarded by common consent. Hitherto, doubt and uncertainty have hung over the authorized standard ; when these are dissipated, and essential uniformity is exacted from all parties, all parties will be interested anew in the maintenance of uniformity.

Thirdly.—The hands of the bishops also will be strengthened by clearing away doubts respecting the authorized standard, and especially by the more distinct recognition of their power of interpretation assigned to them by the Preface to the Prayerbook.

Fourthly.-The method already proposed by the Commission in their Second Report, of giving to aggrieved parishioners a

Vol. 68.-No. 374.

prompt and inexpensive remedy, if extended to all deviations from the letter of the Rubric, would prove a wholesome check both upon the bishops and the clergy against their neglecting to maintain essential uniformity.

These considerations, together with the analogy which may be drawn from the success of the settlement of 1662, justify a confident expectation that, by the blessing of the Great Head of the Church, the anticipated Rubrical revision may insure the pacification of the Church, and the restoration of uniformity in all such matters as may be deemed essential.

VOICES FROM THE WATCH-TOWER.

No. II. “Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.” (Isa. xxi. 6.)

“WERE there not ten cleansed ? but where are the nine ?” (Luke xvii. 17.) If we consider this passage for a few moments, we shall perceive three things in it which deserve special notice. These are : The lepers and their disease; the cleansing; and the difference between the nine and the one.

No commentator on Scripture of any note has ever doubted that leprosy was a type, a visible representation, of man's great disease-sin. It was a terrible and mortal malady; it was “a living death;" it made a man a burden to himself, and a pest and nuisance to all around him. It was a constantly growing sore, an inward rottenness and decay; and it defiled, and often corrupted, all that came in contact with it; insomuch that a person as yet uninfected, and who knew its deadly character, would above all things desire to avoid all proximity to it.

All this is true of man in his natural state. In Christian lands, our view is obscured by the cleansing, partial or entire, which has been experienced by thousands of the people, and which leavens and civilizes the whole community. But if we look at countries where the Gospel is unknown, we there see the leprosy in all its power and all its loathsomeness. We see in Dahomey the soil soaked with human blood—with the blood of victims massacred in time of peace. In one island of Polynesia, we see a missionary ferociously slain by men to whom he had offered no injury; in another we see the messengers of the Gospel threatened with death, because they loathed the feasts of cannibals. Everywhere, and alike in all ages and in all climes, man, without the Gospel, is a ferocious, sanguinary, and lustful creature; who indulges, without restraint, in all the lower and merely brutal instincts and inclinations, and slays, without feeling or remorse, every creature that stands in the way of his sensual desires. A mere human creature, in an uncivilized state, is as loathsome and as dangerous a being as walks the face of this earth. Leprosy is not more terrible than his disorder.

But it may be said, that all this condition of loathsomeness, of last, and of blood is owing to a want of knowledge and of eivilization. How is it, then, with the most polished specimens of heathenism? We find here merely a better dress thrown over the same noisome corruption within. “No one," says a eompetent judge, “dares picture to himself, or to realize in his mind's eye, the awful state of common social life in the glorious periods of Greece and Rome. No one ever dares try to do so.”* Even to take an external or outdoor view, think of 80,000 of the masters of the world, in imperial Rome, gathered together to see men and beasts slaughter and mangle each other. Think of delicate and highbred ladies, nurtured in all the softness of the highest civilization, crowding to see an aged bishop, or a woman as well born as themselves, torn limb from limb by the lions! Or the same ladies, sauntering after dark in the luxurious gardens of the imperial palace, illuminated by the blaze created by a number of poor Christians, who had been smeared with pitch, and were thus expiring in flames, as lamps to light the paths of the gay and joyous visitors. But take the single and still more signi. ficant fact, that the most civilized and polished race of all, the Greeks, with their philosophers, jurists, historians, poets, and artists, actually perished from off the face of the earth, by the natural operation of the leprosy of a sin which was consuming them. To this one tremendous fact it is needless to add anything.t

What leprosy, then, is in the bodily frame,- poison cor.

rupting, eating away, and slowly destroying; and making the victim both loathsome in himself and perilous to others,--such is sin; and where the remedy, the Gospel, has not come, but poor human nature is left to suffer under the pestilence, there we see it as it was seen in Noah's days, when “the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” (Gen. vi. 11.)

We pass on, then, to the next point,the cleansing. In the case described in St. Luke's gospel, we hear, at first, only of a simple petition to Jesus, “ Have mercy upon us !” Apparently, it had reference to nothing but their bodily affliction. Jesus commanded them to go and show themselves to the priests; “and as they went, they were cleansed.” In the case of nine of them, we must suppose that they received what they asked, bodily healing, and nothing more. For one only, out of the ten, turned back, and fell down and gave Jesus thanks. From the commendation bestowed upon him by Jesus, we may surely gather, that he had received both bodily and spiritual cure; and that the difference between his condition and that of his fellows, was vital and essential.

That difference lay in this,—that they had been relieved from their terrible bodily ailment, but had received no further benefit; while in him the Spirit of God had wrought saving faith. They found themselves cured, and went their way, showing no care, no thought for their deliverer. But the eyes of his mind had been opened, as well as his disease removed. “He turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at Jesus' feet, giving Him thanks.” We may hope that this poor Samaritan was a saved man; while of the others we only know, that they were cleansed from their leprosy; but showed not the least interest in, or thought for, Him who had so rescued them. - We have often thought, that we have here a vivid picture of what is now going on around us; and that it must have been intended to be such a picture. Thousands surround us on every side, who have been healed of their leprosy, but who never think of giving glory to God.

What is it, then, to be healed of the leprosy, and yet not to be saved? What was it to the nine ? Christ had healed them : Christ had, in a moment, taken away their disease; they were restored to life, and to the society of their fellow-men; and yet it is to be feared that they may be found, at last, at His left hand, when He returns to sit in judgment on the whole human race.

Thousands and tens of thousands are to be seen in England, who are just like these nine lepers. They have received an external-a bodily cleansing. A man of the upper or middle classes in Turkey or Persia, in China or Burmah, at this day,