TO THE CLERGY OF THE ARCHDEACONRY OF LEWES. MY DEAR BRETHREN, ACCORDING to common rule, the publication of this Charge ought to follow that of its predecessors; and unhappily I am already three-deep in your debt. But, as the subjects treated of in this are of immediate practical interest, you exprest a wish at the Visitation, that it should not be kept back till a period, which you seemed to think almost as indeterminate and distant as the Greek Calends. You said, it ought to come out now, while the controversies, on which it speaks, and which it attempts to clear up and allay, are going on. With this your wish I have felt bound to comply, adding some Notes, where it seemed desirable to enter more fully into the argument on certain points of detail, than was practicable in the Charge. In this breach of order, I am only falling in with the fashion of the year, in which, in so many unforseen, unheard-of ways, the last has become first; in which too it has been exemplified, how that inversion of earthly order, which, we are told, will often have place in the Kingdom of Heaven, is the common practice in the Anarchy of Hell. To England, I have been led to remark in the Charge, and to the English Church, has been vouchsafed in divers respects an honorable precedence among nations. Let us bear in mind, that, while we all share in the honour and the responsibility of this precedence, ours will be the guilt and the shame and the condemnation, if she forfeits it and becomes last; and may God enable us to perform our part in upholding and preserving it! As the best means toward this end, let it be our continual aim to speak and to do the truth in love, in that love which delivers us from all false fear of man, as well as from every other temptation, and which strengthens us to speak and to act boldly, as in the presence of God. In this spirit I have desired to speak to you. You have requested to have my words in a more lasting form. To you then they are dedicated. Accept and adopt whatever may be good in them; reject whatever is evil; and may we be enabled, in all our intercourse with each other, to speak and to hear the truth more and more in the spirit of love! Your affectionate Brother, HERSTMONCEUX, November 17th, 1848. JULIUS CHARLES HARE. CONTENTS. The Duty of the Church in Times of Trial Reply to an accusation of garbling extracts On the proper restrictions to the Right of the Crown in On the negociations between the Committee of Privy Council and that of the National Society, con- On the typical use of natural phenomena in Prophecy... 133 NOTE Z. 144 NOTE X. THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH IN TIMES OF TRIAL. MY REVEREND BRETHREN, IF on some former occasions I have been almost opprest with the consciousness of the solemn responsibility lying upon those who are called to speak of the duties and prospects of the Church in these momentous times, what must be my feelings now? What are your feelings, my Brethren, when you reflect on the events of the last eight months? what have they been? if indeed you have ever found quiet leisure for gathering your thoughts to reflect on them,-if the press and throng and crash, with which they have succeeded one another, have not so swept you along and stunned you, as wellnigh to stifle the power of reflexion. For with such rapidity have they come forward one after another, so quick and sudden and complete have been their transformations, it has almost seemed as though, while our movements through space and our modes of communication have been so marvellously accelerated by the inventions of the last twenty years, a similar acceleration had been whirling the destinies of nations, and the whole course of the world along; so that, before we can adequately combine and arrange the various features of one prospect, it has changed into another, and again into B |