the position of any Episcopal clergyman uncomfortable. Nothing can be clearer than the conclusion from our ordinal and our canon, that all ministries are invalid which are not derived through Bishops in the Apostolical succession. Here is an opinion placing us in practical antagonism to every modern Protestant organization. Can we sustain it simply from the Scripture? Must we not supplement the testimony of the Bible by the witness of the Church? If the Primitive writers are merely individuals expressing their unauthoritative views, how can we found our ecclesiastical order on their human opinions, where certainly, in questions of such momentous import, we need an inspired and infallible standard? Without the Church as interpreted through the Fathers we can neither defend our ordinal, nor our canon before Christendom.

And is the doctrine of the Regeneration of the infant in Baptism inculcated by Scripture? Can it be proved by a single text? Is the subject ever at all treated in the Divine Word? Can you for a moment defend the Baptismal Office separated from the testimony and authority of the Church? No clergyman relying on Scripture alone, can, from his heart, give thanks to God in the words, "We thank Thee that Thou hast regenerated this child by Thy Holy Spirit.”

And who can defend from Scripture, only, the Communion Office? However, we may assert that Priest means Presbyter, the word stands unexplained in the Prayer-Book to trace itself on the people. Nor in interpreting it can you pass by the office of Institution which supposes an altar, an offering, and a relation styled Sacerdotal. Is all this taught by the Bible alone? Does it appear in our Saviour's language when He enjoined the Eucharist? Can it be defended unless we receive the authority of the Church expressed in her ancient Fathers and Liturgies? Our Ecclesiastical Order and our Sacramental Offices cannot be sustained on the principle that the Bible is the only authoritative guide, since they involve questions of government, and of doctrine plainly not settled in the Divine Word. Bishop Hobart's school was consistent with itself, and with the Prayer-Book. If Puseyism, and Ritualism, and Romanism, are its logical sequences, our Liturgy, in its plain, natural, and intended meaning, is responsible.

We express here no individual opinion whether the Bible alone,

thing

or the Bible and the Church, are to furnish our authoritative standard. But, until this question is once more patiently investigated, and satisfactorily determined, we must be content to sow, and reap on a volcano. We may have fellowship of heart but not of opinion. Perhaps this is part of God's design. It may be His plan in His Church to make charity the bond of unity.

THIS memoir of Bishop Strachan proves that sturdy natures need part with none of their strength in the service of the Church. He was a Scotchman, whose father inclined to be an Episcopalian, and whose mother was a Presbyterian. Thus opposite streams of influence mingled in the current of his life. A blast of a quarry killed Mr. Strachan, and the character of his son was developed chiefly under maternal care. Nothing in the whole career of the Bishop of Toronto is more commendable and beautiful than his ceaseless devotion to his widowed mother, whom he supported until her death at a most advanced age. Filial affection shed a soft light over his stern nature as sunbeams brighten around a rock. His heart in rugged manhood was even more tender than in ardent youth. Mrs. Strachan made no claim to high culture. But she possessed gifts infinitely better than learning can bestow. She She had sterling sense. She had a mother's heart. She leaned on her strong son with trust, and pride, and love. Nor was her affection an idolatry. Nothing can be more tenderly beautiful than one of her faithful letters suggesting a peril to her aspiring boy with a mingled sense of his mental superiority and her own maternal right, which evinces a delicacy of nature, social conventionalities, and educational advantages never yet conferred.

was a true woman.

John Strachan was early thrown among Presbyterians. His associates were principally Presbyterians. His teachers were Presbyterians. He graduated in a Presbyterian institution. Dr. Chalmers was his intimate friend. We do not think this a disadvantage. There is perhaps no nobler body of men on earth than

*Memoir of the Right Reverend John Strachan, D. D., LL. D. First Bishop of Toronto. By A. N. Bethune, D. D., D. C. L. His successor in the See. Toronto: Henry Boswell. London: Rivingtons, 1870.

the Presbyterians of Scotland and America, and the Bishop of Toronto lost nothing in strength of principle and inflexibility of will by the peculiar influences of his youth, while his love of the Church was developed and tested by the very independence required for its emancipation from early prejudices and associations. John Strachan and Alonzo Potter show how undeserved the sneer which too frequently meets those who come to us from other communions.

The memoir before us is principally occupied with the career of its subject in Canada. As a teacher he was unrivaled. Some of the best minds in the province were shaped under his care. His discipline was rigorous, but it was fruitful in the noblest results. It invigorated the will. It stimulated the energies. It educated the conscience. It encouraged the affections. It made men. One of the best parts of Bishop Bethune's admirable book is that describing the Cornwall Grammar School. We commend it to the namby-pambyism of our own country. Its "black Mondays" in the United States would be bright omens of increased manliness among our youth, who are fast degenerating into the insidious. conceit that the chief end of their lives is to be pleased rather than disciplined by their seniors.

We cannot pause to trace the principal events of Bishop Strachan's Episcopate. Its characteristics sprang from his past life as the harvest comes from its seed. The vigorous boy, the faithful pupil, the devoted son, the successful teacher, the active clergyman, matured by a species of inevitable growth into the strong, enterprising, indomitable, veteran Bishop. His experiences during the Canadian invasion which marked our last war with England, were more creditable to his Scotch courage than to our American gallantry. We commend that part of the narrative in which they are recorded as giving an amusing specimens of genuine clerical pluck.

The efforts of Bishop Strachan in the cause of education are above praise. His plans were large in their conception, practical in their nature, and successful in their execution. King's College, Toronto, is perhaps his noblest monument. But in all respects he was devoted to Canada, to his Diocese, to his Church. His single aim was duty. His strongest incentive was to do good. principle was God's glory. He fell at last, not like the old oak of

His ruling

the mountain, remarkable only for its fruitless majesty. Rather he resembled the ancient orchard tree, laden with its autumn burdens, and all whose juices had been employed to drop ripe blessings from its bending limbs.

WORDS AND THEIR USES.*

DISCRIMINATION in language is like taste in Art. It implies a capacity born in the man. Education may improve, but can never create the faculty. Addison and Irving possessed it in perfection. Yet neither was absolutely correct. Many of their pages are marked by rhetorical improprieties, and even sometimes by grammatical inaccuracies. Yet they had the musical sense, the exquisite discernment, the vivid fancy, and all that delicate organization peculiar to fine genius, which gave a constant charm to their style, so that criticism almost blushes in its dissection, like a modest woman compelled to view a beautiful body cut by a surgeon's knife. Richard Grant White certainly shows in the Spectator of Joseph Addison faults which are surprising in kind and in number, and yet his own pages compared with those he so unsparingly and yet justly censures are like a bed of cabbages next to a bloom of roses. The very first sentence of his book is inexpressibly awkward. He cannot make the slightest pretensions to elegance. He continually challenges contrast, and excites indignation by his stern but usually just criticisms of authors so immeasurably his superiors in grace and beauty of expression. This accounts for the severity with which his excellent book has been often treated, Many of his observations are original, instructive and valuable. They often show a mastery of his subject. The chapters entitled, "Big Words for Small Thoughts," "British English, and American English," "Style," "Misused Words," "Some Briticisms," deserve to be universally read and pondered. We think their perusal will be equally serviceable to John Bull and to Brother Jonathan. They show that the father has not much to boast over the son. They prove that among the uneducated the love of slang is always inveterate, and that the style and pronunciation of cultivated persons are very much the same every

* Words and their Uses. Past and Present. A Study of the English Language. By Richard Grant White. New York: Sheldon & Co., 498 and 500 Broadway, 1870.

where. We have all our lives heard as good English among the gentlemen and ladies of Ohio as we have ever heard among the gentlemen and ladies of New York.

Mr. White has, we think, like all critics, become injured by his vocation. He magnifies his office. He is excessive in his industry. He is often painful in his dissections. In seeking to confine words too strictly to the meaning suggested by their derivation he sometimes overlooks the inevitable law of use, and his criticisms would greatly deprive our language of its wealth and flexibility. His preference for Saxon is certainly unguarded. The genius of our English language adapts everything to itself, and its chief glory is its power to enrich itself from every tongue, and yet never lose its individuality.

But whatever may be the particular faults of Mr. Grant's book it is, as a whole, alike creditable to the author and to his country. IIe shows industry, judgment, independence originality, vigor. We overlook the inelegance of his style in the excellence of his suggestions. Perhaps no American could treat the subject better. This volume supplements admirably the capital work of Trench, and cannot fail to accomplish practical good in America.

It may be profitable to close our notice with Mr. Grant's deserved and pointed rebuke to our modern Dictionary makers.

"Open almost any Dictionary, the Imperial, Webster's, or Worcester's— but Webster's is the most superfluous and obtrusive in this respect, because it carries to the furthest extreme the vicious plan of vocabulary-making and definition introduced by Johnson-open it at random, and see how it is loaded down with this worthless lumber of words formed by joining milk and some other word together.* There are twenty-two, of which number are milkpail, milk-pan, milk-porridge, milk-score, milk-white; and yet milk-punch, milk-train, and milk-poultice, are omitted. Straw furnishes twelve compound words, so-called, of which are straw-color, straw-colored, straw-crowned, strawcutter, straw-stuffed, and even straw-hat. Yet in vain will Margery Daw look for straw-bed, or Recorder Hackett seek the word straw-bail. Of words, so-called, made by the union of heart with another,† there are actually sixtynine paraded, heart itself having sixteen meanings assigned to it simply, and eleven in established phrases. After being told that head, simple of itself, has thirty-one distinct meanings, we are presented with it in combination with other simple words thirty-seven times. Sea is repeated in combination with other words one hundred and fifty-seven times. Perhaps the most auda

"Joining together." Does Mr. White approve?

† Another? Does Mr. Grant mean another word or another heart?