EXAMPLE OF ELIJAH.

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ing, with any knowledge of the Gospel, can deliberately repose his confidence on such a piety, and believe himself insured into salvation by organic Church life, and participant in the efficacy of prayer by belonging to a Church that has an established liturgy?

It were worth while for such a person to question with himself what could the Apostle James have meant, in referring all believers to the example of Elijah, as an incontrovertible proof that any believing soul, coming to God in the confidence that He is the rewarder of all who diligently seek Him, shall be likewise directly answered. Why did James take pains to remind us of the fact that Elias was a man subject to like passions as ourselves, except for the purpose of establishing the fact, that it is a universal rule, irrespective of churches and of persons, that God does hear and answer prayer, if presented in sincerity and faith? The case of Elias was a great precedent, interpreting this rule-first, because Elias was a man, not an angel, nor a Church; second, because he was a man of the same passions and infirmities as we are, and not a perfect man, and neither heard nor answered on account of his perfection or his prayer-book, but on account of God's mercy and his own faith. So shall any man of like passions be heard and answered.

Moreover, it were well to ask what would that personal piety be worth which was not distinguished by a belief in the immediate efficacy of prayer? Can there be such a thing as true prayer without something of that belief? If the Lord Jesus has taught His disciples to pray, believing that they shall receive those things for which they ask according to the will of God, and has even based the

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acceptableness of their prayers on that belief, then the disciple who has not that belief is destitute of an essential ingredient in the spirit of prayer. Perhaps Lord Mahon meant what the Duke of Wellington was wont to call fancy-prayers; that is, extempore prayers, without the prayer-book. Probably Lord Mahon, as a good Churchman, would not have ascribed presumption to Wesley if he had prayed only out of the prayer-book; would not have accused him of fanaticism for imagining an immediate efficacy in those prayers. It was only his prayers, Wesley's, which it was presumptuous to suppose were attended with immediate efficacy!

And it would seem from such a scheme, that even if the prayers in the prayer-book are assumed and offered by individual members of the Church, it is presumption in any one to suppose that they can be answered as the prayers of the individual, on the exercise of the individual's desires and faith; such a thing as an answer is only to be expected on the ground of the right of the Established Church to present the supplication; and only through the mediation of the Church. The Church and the prayerbook in such a case are but the Pope and the Priest "writ large;" and there is as effectual a barrier interposed between the soul and Christ, as there is by penance and the confessional, instead of prayer.

A singular conception is the true historical conception of a religion established by the State, a religion simply and solely of prescribed forms and prayers, with a decent morality attached to them, together with a security against all enthusiasm. A conservative religion, protecting the community from being tormented with dreadful agonies

A FATAL DELUSION.

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and pangs, by the assurance of being personally stereotyped into Heaven by reliance on the proxy of an accepted liturgy, efficacious on account of an organic Church-life, imparted through it to the soul of every worshipper! How inestimable the favour of a sound religious currency established by law, as genuine and infallible as the notes of the Bank of England; an experience superscribed and minted, as the Church and Cæsar's appointed coin, the possessors of which shall defy all pangs and agonies, passing into the Kingdom like the Iron Duke, by virtue of the prayer-book under his arm! The holders of such coin look down with pity and contempt on an experience like that of John Bunyan, for example, as being the fever of a burning enthusiasm, from which the true Church happily exempts and defends her children.

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'Very many persons have been tormented with dreadful agonies and pangs" by the undignified and cruel system of a personal experience of religion introduced by John Wesley; agonies and pangs under the conviction of being lost sinners, which might all have been avoided by trusting in the Church, the prayer-book, and the sacraments. Alas, what a frightful delusion is this! And what multitudes of immortal beings, as capable of reasoning in regard to their eternal destiny as Lord Mahon, and with the sacred Scriptures before them, are at this very day staking their all for eternity on the assurance that they are safe from perdition by the sacraments and the Church! With reference to just such a delusion prevailing in the Jewish. Church, our blessed Lord told the Jews and His own disciples, that the children of the kingdom, they that trusted in the Church and in their belonging to it, should be cast

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into outer darkness, where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth. The Pharisee, belonging to the kingdom, ridicules the prayer of the humble Publican, God be merciful to me, a sinner!-and rejects with contempt the idea of the fanaticism that would ascribe immediate efficacy to such prayer. Poor Mr Teedon, the schoolmaster! To think that Cowper should be reduced to such humiliation of mind as to beg an interest in such a Christian's prayers, and venture to hope for an answer to them!

It is an impressive and illustrative anecdote which is related of Archbishop Secker on his sick bed, when visited by Mr Talbot, Vicar of St Giles's, Reading, who had lived in great intimacy with him, and received his preferment from him. "You will pray with me, Talbot," said the archbishop, during their interview. Mr Talbot rose up, and went to look for a prayer-book. "That is not what I want now," said the dying prelate; "kneel down by me, and pray for me in the way I know you are used to do." The man of God readily complied with this command, and kneeling down, prayed earnestly from his heart for his dying friend the archbishop, whom he saw no more.

We can see no reason why Mr Teedon might not offer as earnest and acceptable prayer for Cowper as Mr Talbot for Archbishop Secker. And if the archbishop needed such prayer when dying, and was not insane in asking for it, the poet also might have need of it living, and his seeking for it was not necessarily a proof of insanity, but the reverse.

IMAGINARY SUBMISSION.

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CHAPTER XXVII.

Impressive lessons from Cowper's imaginary despair-God does not require any to be willing to be damned; but eternal separation from God is damnation-Mistake of mysticism and poetry-Cowper submissive to God's will, but not willing to be separated from Him— Cowper's gentleness-False remark of Leigh Hunt in regard to Romney's portrait of Cowper.

THE spectacle of Cowper's misery and helplessness beneath the despotism of an imaginary despair, conveys a most vivid and impressive lesson of the necessity of spiritual joy for active usefulness. Hope is not only the anchor, but the impulsive power of the soul. Hence we see the error, even in Madame Guion, of a mysticism that seeks to rise to an unreal exaltation, an imaginary and impossible elevation, not only not enjoined in the Word of God, but forbidden by the principles of true piety. One of her pieces, translated by Cowper, contains the following stanza, supposed to be the language of a soul brought to such a point of absolute self-renunciation as to be willing that God should depart for ever. And this is imagined to be the ineffable point of acquiescence, to which God, in hiding His face, would bring the soul that loves Him. Translated

from poetry into plain prose, it is the requisition that a man be willing to be damned; that is to say, it is submission