scrutinized as if it claimed infallibility, and positive injury might be done to influence if such a hasty expression were stereotyped, as it were. I could not undertake to correct such sermons weekly; I am glad to forget all I say as soon as possible, and, consequently, I should not like to be answerable for such.

Add to this, that often one at least of the Sunday discourses is insufficiently prepared, the expressions utterly unstudied beforehand, the thing itself poor and jejune and worthless. I should not like to own it, though, as all but the general impression dies with the half-hour of its delivery, it may be well enough as a collection of hints and germs of thought. I think the knowledge, too, that what I said was being taken down in this way would hamper entirely the freeness of expression. As it is, I try to speak unshackled by any attempts to please, to form sentences, and to deprecate disapproval-I do not think I could be free were this done. For myself, I would far rather that all should perish except, as I said, the impression the moment after delivery. I preserve few records myself except on a few occasions-I can scarcely bear to read over any thing I have said. It would be a relief to me to know that no trace subsisted, except a few hints for my own use, and for future development of the thoughts touched upon.

I do earnestly trust that this may not seem discourteous. Of course I do not pretend to express strong disapproval if any one should still be determined to proceed. But in reply to your kind question, I have no hesitation in saying that it would give me real pain if the plan were adopted. Believe me, most sincerely yours,

F. W. R.

APPENDIX III.

As a specimen of Mr. Robertson's teaching of his class of candidates for Confirmation, and of his explanation of the doctrines of the Church of England, the following may be interesting. The notes on the Commandments are too broken to be of use; and of those on the Sacraments, the few which remain have been so largely embodied in his sermons that they are here omitted. The same might be said of the questions and answers here given on Baptism, were it not that the subject is considered in a new light, and that the opinions form so radical a portion of his teaching, that, wherever he expresses them, I am inclined to insert them:

Q. Why then do you say that I am so made in baptism?

A. Being made, I mean-declared to be.

Q. Explain what you mean.

A. As soon as a king dies his successor is king. Coronation declares the fact, but does not make him king. He was one before, but it corroborates, declares, affirms, seals the fact by a recognized form used for that purpose. Q. Illustrate farther.

A. At mid-day, at sea, after the observation of the sun's altitude has been taken, the following form takes place: The commander asks what is the

She

hour? The reply is, 12 o'clock. He then rejoins, make it so! No act of his can literally determine mid-day; that is one of the facts of the universe, but that authoritative declaration in a most important sense does make it 12 o'clock-it makes it 12 o'clock to them; it regulates their hours, their views, the arrangement of their daily life, their whole course. So Baptism by authoritative revelation declares a fact, which it can not make to be a fact, but to all practical purposes makes it a fact to us; for, without such a declaration, it would be as if it were not. Again, in the ceremony of marriagemarriage is a spiritual fact; the mutual consent of two persons in holy wedlock. Based upon the precedent fact, the Church pronounces the marriage to be completed. Forasmuch as M. and N. have consented, etc., I pronounce, etc., etc. The Church does no pretend to create the union. only notifies it in her own language; but observe how that notification, being authoritative in a very important sense, makes it! Suppose a ceremony, which was not authoritative, performed by a mock priest; or ratified only by the breaking of a coin between the parties. No one would venture to say that a fact had not taken place, recognized by the eyes of God: which the parties themselves could not without sin undo, yet, because destitute of authority, the marriage is invalid as a social contract. (In Scotland, however, its true validity is maintained.) Could we say that the giving of the ring was nothing? That the words of the priest are nothing? Are they not every thing to realize and give sanction to the union? So does baptism— pronouncing the fact in God's name to exist, make that real on earth, which in itself real before, was unreal to those to whom the ratification had not been shown.

Q. Tell me some of the prevailing opinions on this subject.

A. The Roman Catholics, and those who hold their views on this subject, believe that at baptism a magical change takes place in the infant; that he is changed from a child of wrath into a child of grace. For instance, as in the "Arabian Nights," on the pronunciation of certain words, human beings were changed by magicians into the forms of beasts and birds, etc.

Q. What is one of the evils of this, besides its falseness?

A. That on the commission of sin in after-life we are taught to believe that we are fallen from the grace of baptism, and that every step must be retraced in penitence and tears.

It puts a drag upon life and hope, quenches energy, and prevents the looking onward and upward.

Q. In what other way is this rite regarded?

A. Dissenters, Evangelicals, etc., hold that grace may, or may not, be given at baptism; it is a perhaps.

Q. What results from this?

A. Uncertainty-self-consciousness-education on a wrong basis. Uncertainty! The child does not know whether it is, or whether it is not, God's child. Parents do not know whether to regard it as the child of God or of the devil. It is taught to look to itself, and not to God, for the attestation of the fact; hence come morbid feeling, egotism, self-retrospection, uncertainty. One day a child happens to feel well and cheerful; consequently the sun is bright to him, he has good thoughts, is happy in God. The next day the sky is overcast-he feels languid he can not use the cant terms of the professions, else he would call himself " a castaway," a child of wrath. Q. Does this view involve falsehood and contradiction?

A. Yes; we are taught that we become God's children by believing that we are his children!

Q. How can you believe a thing that is not true, until you believe it? A. This is reasoning in a circle. I see no way out of the difficulty in which this view involves us.

Q. So, according to them, baptism may be nothing-may be a falsehood? A. Evidently; and I now understand the evils that must result in education from this false view.

Q. How should a child be brought up?

A. It should be educated as God's child; not on a perhaps. You are “a child of God, a member of Christ, an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." It should be brought to enter into the full meaning of the glorious privileges it was put into possession of at its baptism.

Q. Why are god-parents necessary?

A. In the baptism of an adult two things are necessary-1st. He must be accepted by God. 2d. He must declare his belief in that; but, in the case of an infant, only one thing is necessary-God's acceptation of him.

Q. Are sponsors absolutely necessary?

. A. No; but most desirable. Take, for instance, a club, or a society. A man wishes to enter; he can not do so until he is proposed and seconded by two of the members, who answer for him that he is fit to become a member. In the same way it is necessary, for the sake of order, that the Church should require a guaranty, to guard itself against the introduction of improper persons; it is an ecclesiastical institution to keep it from confusion. In adult baptism the person is required to declare his faith; but as the infant can not express faith, repentance, love, charity (having as yet none of these feelings), in infant baptism sponsors are appointed to speak for them, and at Confirmation the children take these vows upon themselves.

Q. Why are we bound by their promise?

A. Because those obligations were on us from our birth. If they had promised I should be brought up as a nun, or a sailor, or bound to any particular trade, of course such promises would not be obligatory upon me; but my god-parents only declare that to which I am bound by an eternal obligation; they impose on me no new obligation.

Q. If they had not promised, would you not be bound to keep God's commandments?

A. Of course; though not done for him by the child's consent, sponsors make promise of what, by eternal laws, he is bound to do hereafter.

Q. Is this essential to the validity of baptism?

A. Not essential, but desirable, as I have shown before.

Q. Why is it desirable?

A. As an ecclesiastical act.

Q. What is the earthly use of baptism?

A. To mark Christians from those who are not Christians. Without godparents, the Church would have no guaranty that its members would be brought up as Christians; just in the same manner, those men in a club who propose a new member promise that he shall not disgrace a society. The promise in either case is made implicitly, if not explicitly.

Q. Suppose, if hereafter the child turns out badly, how far are the sponsors guilty?

A. If they had every reason to believe that his parents would bring him up well, they need scarcely inquire further; but if they did not know enough of them, and if the parents were careless, then the sponsors are to blame. Sponsorship was evidently instituted to serve very different purposes from what it does at present; the titled and rich are chosen, instead of Christian people, who would do their duty.

Q. What does the Church show?

A. The Church is a society of people existing on earth, to destroy evil, and keep its members in God's ways. This great society is continually replenished by fresh members-an ecclesiastical necessity essential for the existence

of a church.

Q. What is a state of salvation?

A. Saved already! you are God's child. Born so naturally, you may be ignorant of great principles, you may live below them, and refuse to avail yourself of that which is yours. This is a revelation from God that you are such. The inheritance is yours! If you will not claim it, you may forfeit your rights, you may live as children of the world, of the flesh, and of the devil.

Q. What is to be said to such an one, who is living forgetful that he is "God's child?"

A. You are baptized. St. Paul looked on all such as Christians. Heb. iii. 14, "We are made partakers." 2 Cor. xiii. 5, "Know ye not that Jesus Christ is in you, if ye be not reprobates?" "Know ye not that your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost ?"

Q. What is the meaning here of the word reprobate?

A. Castaway.

Q. What does this great and beautiful doctrine of God prevent our doing with regard to others? What distinction does it forbid us to make?

A. It forbids us to say we are God's children, and you are of the world. No! erring, ignorant, if you will, but God's child, nevertheless, and our brother, though living below his privileges. 2dly. It destroys the possibility of vanity and exclusiveness; there is an end of all spiritual pride, for there is no merit of our own.

Q. How is this truth taught by Christ?

A. The beginning of His prayer represents it-" Our Father." The universal Father. This simple, small word contains the essence of Christian faith. Q. We talk of resisting "the world, the flesh, and the devil;" what do we mean by the flesh?

A. The flesh means all the desires that come through the channel of the senses, such as gluttony, idleness, love of ease, etc. In a desert island, we should be subject to the desires of the flesh.

Q. Are we to destroy, crush, crucify those desires?
A. Not to destroy, to ennoble them.

Q. When we say

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'we are fallen," what do we mean?

A. We mean that our will is disordered, that it does not take its proper place. There is within us a mob (as Plato has described it), a host, a crowd of smaller passions all striving for the mastery. Take, for instance, a watch with the regulator broken; all the wheels must go in disorder.

Q. Why is this view of our nature an important one?

4. Because if we look upon the desires as to be extirpated, we shall go out of the world with monks and hermits. This produces asceticism. Monks and hermits taught that the powers of the body were to be destroyed in order to insure the destruction of the lusts; or, rather, the way in which they set about it effected the ruin of the physical energies-such as starvation, loss of sleep, constant flagellation, etc. There is no goodness in the extirpation of feeling.

Q. When are the baser parts of our nature ennobled ?

A. When they are under the rule and guidance of our higher nature"This I say, then, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh." Let Christ rule in you, and then these "baser parts" will be sanctified. Take, for instance, woman and her sphere. She ministers to the grosser wants of our nature, preparing food, keeping the house clean, and many such offices, which, if they were done to gratify mere brutal appetites, would be mean and low, but if done in love, the services are transformed by the higher spirit into something divine. The cup of cold water given in Christ's name, is the spirit of love and tenderness and pity. Think of all these minor services as ruled and directed by love, by self-denial. Beasts, when ruled by the

higher mind of man, become noble; they remain bestial if not ruled. We are commanded, "Glorify God in your body." This was a root-thought of St. Paul's; you will find it almost everywhere in his writings; he has seized that great idea, "Let the baser and the meaner feelings be ennobled by the higher." Let us understand this thoroughly, otherwise we shall take false views of human nature. Eating and drinking are not wrong. "Whether

ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God." The lusts of the flesh are not to be crushed, otherwise we shall form wrong conceptions of our nature. Q. What is the world as distinguished from the flesh?

A.*

Q. What are the dangers of the world?

A. Its spirit, tone, and temper working on us to do that which is contrary to the spirit of Christ.

Q. Are the world's maxims always the same?

A. In the days of chivalry, the world had a peculiar code of honor, and they made offenses against that code all in all. Pride was thought nothing of-not reckoned as sin; but if a man was a coward he was disgraced.

Q. How in this instance would the Christian and the man of the world be at issue?

A. If a man, for the sake of conscience, refused to fight, he would be condemned by the world, and pointed at.

Q. In our day, what is the worldly spirit, par excellence?

A. The love of money, the wish to get on in the world; the result of this is, in trade, false maxims, worldly ways of advancing, which are opposed to the Christian spirit of justice and fair-dealing.

Q. Again, what is the spirit of the world in the London season?

A. The love of pleasure-frivolity-money-love of waste of time, etc. Whatever is opposed to the spirit of Christ is the spirit of the world. To render homage to rank and wealth, when in connection with what is false and unworthy and mean. Making these worldly distinctions the chief ends of our being, instead of renouncing the world, when it is opposed to the spirit of Christ.

Q. We have now seen what the lusts of the flesh and the world are; what is it to renounce the devil?

A. His works are the sins of our higher nature, spiritual offenses-such as envy, pride, anger, malice. The solitary sins are those of the flesh and of the devil. The world's spirit does not recommend envy, or intemperance, or sloth. All the sins which attack our higher nature, which might come to us as spirits, if we had no bodies at all, and which assail us as solitary spirits, are sins of the devil.

Q. Distinguish them from sins of the flesh and of the world.

A. To rebel against God; to bow down to wrong. They appeal to our pride, to our ambition. Our Saviour's answer was-"Get thee behind me, Satan!" In the estimation of the world these are not condemned. Pride is admired. We are most ashamed of confessing our meaner sensual sinsgluttony, etc., etc., the slavery to our lower passions. When we yield to them, we sink to a level with the brute; but when we yield to the sins of our higher nature, we are then on our way to become devils-vitiating that which should lead to the highest in us.

Q. Let us consider now "all the articles of our Christian faith." How many creeds are there in the Church of England?

A. Three-the Apostles', the Nicene, and the St. Athanasian.

Q. Why is a correct faith necessary to salvation?

A. Because what we believe becomes our character, forms part of us, and

*No answer-but see Sermon XIII. (Second Series).