MR. SAMUEL SMITH, M.P., ON ANGLICANISM AND THE CHURCH OF ROME.—The annual Conference of the Congregational Union of North Wales concluded at Buckley, Flintshire, on 13th March. Mr. Samuel Smith, M.P., who presided at the principal public meeting, said it had been deeply impressed upon him of late years that Protestants had been almost criminally silent as to the ground of their conviction. He had been alarmed and startled by the large number of secessions to Rome, and if they were to maintain their position as a Protestant nation they would have to take considerably more pains in instructing their people in the grounds of their belief. It was only beginning to be known that immense propagandism was being carried on in the interests of the Church of Rome by the Anglican clergy. A great many of these men, after having proselytised people, went over to the Church of Rome, and carried their converts with them. They familiarised members of the Church of England with nearly every article of the Romish faith. They captured young men and women in the guise of Anglican clergymen, undermined their Protestant views and principles, and led them to believe that salvation was in sacraments, and not by faith in Christ; and finally, that these sacraments could only be duly administered by one having the Apostolic succession as the priests of Rome claimed to possess. The seed was being sown in schools, private and elementary, and amongst thousands of English people, and the crop would tend wholly to the advantage of the Church of Rome. Every one possessing historical knowledge knew that entire subjugation to the claims of Rome meant moral stagnation, decay, and decline. Nations had invariably risen when freed from the yoke of Rome, and fallen when subjected to it.
WAR IN THE EAST.—Since our last issue, strained relations between Greece and Turkey have resulted in open war. The frontier regions of Thessaly and Epirus are now scenes of strife and bloodshed. Time was when these very lands beheld the bloodless triumphs of another Captain, even He that rode the white horse of gospel grace, conquering and to conquer. But the doating idolatries of a degenerate Christianity—hearts void of true faith, and churches full of images—provoked the Divine Justice to deluge the whole region of eastern Christianity with the desolating abominations of Turkish Mohammedanism. The Turkish conqueror took Constantinople in 1453. His dominion then spread westward over the classic and Biblical lands of Macedonia, Thrace, and Greece. During the crisis of Luther’s contest with the Papal power, the Turk was the brooding terror of Europe, and was on the point of taking Vienna. The fear of him paralysed the arm of the great powers so that they could not do the things they would against the infant reformation. During the last two centuries and a-half the Turkish empire has been decaying. The atrocities in Europe and Asia which have characterised the present Sultan’s rule have made his name execrable, and the decree of heaven has doubtless gone forth for the sure if slow destruction of this inhuman power.
A STRONG MORAL DOSE FROM THE “BRITISH WEEKLY.”—Speaking of the late Professor Jowett of Oxford, a Broad Churchman who signed the thirty-nine Articles without the least loyalty to the evangelical scheme of doctrine therein set forth, the editor says:—”He seems to us to have spent his life in a course of open and flagrant immorality. These are strong words, but there are many signs in his biography that he and his friends felt them to be justified. He was the purest of men. He was singularly free from littleness or weakness; but he was a priest of the Church of England. He signed her articles. He ministered at her altars. He was continually repeating her creeds. In these creeds he did not believe. He regarded them as extinct superstitions. To a certain extent he indicated this in his writings, but he was careful to guard himself so far as to keep his official position. Beyond that he would not go. We are aware that the whole problem of subscription is very difficult, and ought to be treated with large charity; and yet we are persuaded that the better Christian mind will awaken to the sense of the wickedness of a man standing up in the house of God, to recite creeds and express convictions which he himself has totally rejected. So long as this is done, it is needless to talk of truth or honour or religion. Imagine St. Paul signing creeds which he not only did not believe, but vehemently disbelieved, standing up to recite them before the people, writing in his private diaries the record of his contempt for them, and letting as much and just as much of the diary escape as would keep his income and his place safe.” These are strong words, but in penning them how did the editor manage to forget the parable of the mote and the beam?
SIGNIFICANT TESTIMONY OF HERBERT SPENCER, A PRESENT-DAY HEATHEN PHILOSOPHER.—”By no alchemy,” says he, “can you get golden conduct out of leaden instincts.” He is speaking, we think, of the various schemes of social improvement propounded from time to time. Some cry up imperialism, some democracy, some extol education, and another party pronounces the case hopeless unless we reinstate the Pope as the universal shepherd of the nations. But the philosopher, seeing more deeply into the matter, pronounces the futility of all these schemes. However the social cards be shuffled, there appears a flaw at the foundation of every arrangement. For it is golden conduct we want and it is only leaden instincts we have to work by. Here then is a rigorous problem, and how the philosopher proposes to solve it, we know not. The same problem, however, was stated long ago in another form by One who knew the case better than Herbert Spencer. “Either make the tree good and his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt—a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” But this teacher came not only to state the problem, but to solve it, and so when He finished his work of humiliation and suffering, and had sat down on the throne, He said “Behold I make all things new.” Which words had a glorious fulfilment on the day of Pentecost when He sent forth His renewing Spirit, and changed three thousand leaden hearts into hearts of gold. Therefore, though it is profitable for philosophers honestly to state the gravity and desperation of the world’s case, it is not well for them to deny the glory of Him—the long promised Saviour—who came with infinite resources in Himself to undertake the remedy, and who has promised to make new heavens and a new earth wherein righteousness shall dwell for ever.