dered the blessed Jesus the way of mercy will be laid open, and the offers of sovereign love will be made known. "Not this man, but Barabbas." Well let it be! Adhere to your choice, perverse seed of Abraham, for the corner stone must be laid in Zion, the prophetic declarations must be fulfilled, the sacrificial types and ordinances must have their clear elucidation in the perfect sacrifice to be presented on Calvary; the Son of God must pass through the flood of suffering: his soul must be enshrouded in darkness; the sword must awake against the Shepherd, and against the man who is God's fellow; he must die, that he may afterwards" revive and become the Lord of the dead and the living." It is impossible for the finite mind to calculate how much we his children, how much the world, the universe at large, are indebted to the sovereign grace and mercy of God for thus overruling the wicked intentions of men, in order to effect an eternal salvation. "Not - unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name be all the glory for thy mercy and for thy truth's sake," Our readers have, perhaps, been shocked by the depravity of the Jews in preferring Barabbas to Christ. We would urge you, however, to bear in mind that such guilty preferences are cherished and expressed even now. Men still despise Christ in his word and ministry. Their evil passions frequently impel them to pour odium on his name and insult on his cause. Every sinner, to whom the claims of Jesus are made known, and by whom they are rejected whispers, in such rejection, "Not this man." No! the world with all its pomps and vanities is his Barabbas. He gives to it the preference. His heart is enchained thereto. He will lavish his affectionate regards upon its transitory joys rather than render honour and homage to Jesus. We shall conclude our paper with an extract from an interesting essay on this subject by an American author, for the introduction of which we think no apology will be needed. "There might have been some apology for the conduct of the Jews, but no deficiency of evidence can furnish the shadow of an excuse for degrading Christ, and thereby virtually justifying the Jews' depraved preference. Ah! when I see men contending for another gospel, or substituting the form for the honour of godliness, methinks I hear them responding to the cry of the Jews," Not this man, but Barabbas." When I see the people opposing those scripture reforms which respect their temporal and eternal well being, and supporting those who, for their own private emolument trample on justice and humanity, methinks I see them fighting for Barabbas and crucifying Christ. So when I see men sworn to party, preferring an ignorant or unprincipled candidate to the enlightened self sacrificing patriot, I discern the workings of the same depravity which led the Jews to exclaim, "Not this man but Barabbas." Or when I see men captivated by the guilty splendours which environ the names of those the world calls great, while they evince no sensibility to the greatness of goodness, coveting the favour of an Alexander rather than of a Paul, of a Bonaparte rather than of a Wilberforce; sure am I that they differ not in principle from those of old who preferred a robber and a murderer to the Holy and Just One, the Prince of Peace. In short, this same depraved preference is evinced by every one, who, notwithstanding the admitted evidences with which christianity is accompanied, secretly wishes some other system less pure and self denying were true ; who prefers the pleasures of the world to the duties of religion, the god of this world to Him whose right it is to reign. Hence it is that so many prefer any version of *Religious teaching by example. By R. W. Dickinson, D.D., Collins, Glasgow. Christianity which favours self-indulgence instead of enjoining the selfdenial of the gospel; as of two places of worship many prefer to go where the preached word does not interfere with their worldliness, or urge them to turn from their besetting sins. But what insensibility to moral loveliness is evinced, when the character of the world is preferred to the image and example of Christ! How averse is THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ENGLAND Cannot date its origin nearer to the birth of our Lord than the year, A.D. 596, when Augustine, with other monks, commissioned by Pope Gregory I., arrived in England, and laid its foundation in the city of Canterbury; there, at that time, and by these agencies, the episcopal establishment of England commenced; but this was not the beginning of practical christianity in England. Before the civil influence of Rome had failed in these islands, the knowledge of Christ and his salvation had spread, in its unfettered and voluntary activities, over great part of Eng. land, Scotland, and Ireland. The buildings of Augustine, in Canterbury, commenced with the occupancy and repair of an old Roman church. The brethren from the island of Iona, in Scotland, had penetrated the kingdom of Northumbria, and established themselves in Lindisfarne on its eastern shore. The old Britons, as they retired before the Saxon powers, took with them the knowledge and love of Christ into their mountain-retreats in Wales, where the largest fraternity of christians, who, in this country, gave themselves up wholly to the discipline of mercy, was founded at Bangor-Iscoed. Much of the sympathy felt in Rome for the Saxons in England, was produced by representations of their sin and misery presented there by christian brethren in Ireland. The monasteries of Glastonbury and St. Alban's must have had an origin anterior to Augustine. Lucius, the king of Britain is said to have received christianity in A.D. 156. St. Alban, who gave his name to the monastery and the present city, suffered for the faith in 305, while Aaron and Julius suffered at Chester about the same year. It was also alleged as a chief point in the criminalities imputed to the Welsh, that they were so cruel and heathenish as not to preach the gospel to those Saxons by whom they had been expatriated. Christianity, therefore, had a deeply-rooted existence in England before Augustine secured its combination with the Saxon civil power. Bede expressly affirms that the nation of the southern Picts had, by the preaching of Ninias, forsaken the errors of idolatry, and embraced the truth long before A.D. 565, when Columbus laboured in Scotland, Ireland, and Britain. This was thirty-one years before the arrival of Augustine, and respecting the character of that christianity which so extensively preceded his arrival in these realms, we have from the same author the following statements, Hist. b. iii. c. 4. "This island [Iona] has for its ruler an abbot, who is a priest, to whose direction all the province, and even the bishops, contrary to the usual method, are subject, according to the example of their first teacher, who was not a bishop, but a priest and monk; of whose life and discourses some writings are said to be preserved by his disciples. But whatsoever he was himself, this we know for certain, that he left successors renowned for their continency, their love of God, and observance of monastic rules. It is true they followed uncertain rules in their observance of the great festival, as having none to bring them the synodal decrees for the observance of Easter, by reason of their being so far away from the rest of the world; wherefore, they only practised such works of piety and chastity as they could earn from the prophetical, evangelical, and apostolical writings. This manner of keeping Easter continued among them for the space of 150 years, till the year of our Lord's incarnation, 715." That this opinion respecting Easter, &c., was not the mere result of separation from the world, but a conviction to which they submitted in conscience against the opinions enforced by papal Rome, now rising into power, is clear from the fact that, when Colman, abbot and bishop of Lindisfarne, was encountered by Wilfrid, the agent and speaker of Agilbert, bishop of the West Saxons, though Oswy, king of the Northumbrians, submitted to Rome lest he should at last be excluded from heaven, Colman, being a followerer of Columba, in A.D. 664, vacated his bishopric, and retired rather than conform to the decree when strengthened by royal authority. Bede, b. iii. c. 25. The points of difference more immediately claiming submission on the part of christians resident in Britain before Augustine came, are defined in his own words delivered at a synod or conference holden in Gloucestershire about A.D. 599. "You act," he says, "in many particulars contrary to our custom, or rather the custom of the universal church, and yet, if you will comply with me in these three points, viz., to keep Easter at the due time; to administer baptism, by which we are again born to God, according to the custom of the holy Roman Apostolic church; and jointly with us to preach the word of God to the English nation, we will readily tolerate all the other things you do, though contrary to our customs." Bede, b. ii. c. 2. The answer to this proposal, recorded by Bede on the same page, proves, on his own showing, that the point of difficulty with these ancient men of God was, not so much in the things proposed, as in the subjection demanded of them. It is clear that there was some diversity of creed respecting the nature of baptism, as well as the time of Easter. It would seem that this must have involved the opus operatum, since Bede calls the Roman baptism," the baptism of salvation," which Augustine brought us: while their not preaching mercy to the Saxons might have been excused in the British people, until the Saxons had restored to them their lands, and ceased to shed their blood. But the fact is, that in the hands of Augustine the gospel became a means of asking greater subjection from a people already maddened with oppression, and the subjection was enforced by corresponding means. "Augustine, in a threatening manner, foretold, that in case they would not join in unity with their brethren, they should be warred upon by their enemies; and if they would not preach the way of life to the English nation, they should at their hands undergo the vengeance of death." There was a spirit in the prediction worthy of its author, and the cause he meant to serve. These British Christians, monks and priests, terms which indicate organization aud church society, were brethren in the Lord, for so they are addressed and denounced; but two hundred of these brethren, Bede says twelve hundred, from the monastery of Bangor-Iscoed, were, in the battle of Chester, deliberately slaughtered by Ethelfrid, the orthodox king of Northumbria, because they were found praying for the safety of their suffering countrymen. Thus rose the English hierarchy; inverting the law of martyrdom, she was baptized in blood-not at the termination, but at the beginning of her earthly career; and, moreover, the blood in which she was baptized, was not her own. By this means dissent from the Church of England has, with her own finger, dipped in her dreadful trade, been written, in that fearful colour, on the British soil; and handed down from generation to generation, a terrible inheritance of English people; both wher Augustine, at its rise, employed the power of kings to subjugate his brethren, and when, with three-fifths of the nation's wealth at his command, Wolsey out-shone his monarch, and justly provoked the re-action by which he fell. Under all the forms this sacred domination has assumed, whether Saxon, Danish, Norman, monarchical or repub. lican, papal or protestant, its burning fetters have provoked, by the anguish they inflicted, protestation, resistance, dissent, in various forms, civil and sacred, internal and external. The civil resistance provoked by hierarchial encroachments are traced in England, in no department with greater clearness than in the repeated laws enacted for restricting the accumula- | 9 Geo. II. was passed into law. During tion of property in mortmain, and in the danger which thence accrued to the prerogative of the Crown. The former began sixty years before the Norman Conquest, and continued to the 9 Geo. II. c. 36, which was passed in A.D. 1735-6. "In deducing the his tory of which statutes, it will be matter of curiosity to observe the great address and subtle contrivance of the ecclesiastics, in eluding from time to time the laws in being, and the zeal with which successive parliaments have pursued them through all their finesses: how new remedies were still the parents of new evasions; till the legislature at last, though with difficulty, had obtained a decisive victory." Blackstone, vol. ii. p. 268. These laws, especially from 9 Hen. III. to 9 Geo. II., simply unfold the fact that where power and wealth become the objects of human exertion, men will do their utmost to obtain them, whether the instruments employed be civil or sacred. That church polity which in the three propositions, before cited, was by Augustine proposed to the Britons, and advanced by the slaughter of his brethren at Chester, became so powerful a means of increasing wealth, that even the Saxons were obliged to restrict it, and it never came within its present limitations, until the this interval, the accumulation of estates brought the ecclesiastics into a position not only equal to the statesmen of their time, but also into one in which they could contest the point of superiority in power with the king himself. Thus John was made to abdicate, and receive his kingdom again as a fief of the see of Rome. The great conflict between Becket of Canterbury and Henry II., was on this question, whether, in the case before them, the king or the bishop should be the superior. The monarch was made to feel that Jerusalem was to him a burdensome stone. Having lost its spiritual character, and taken a wrong position, the essential doctrine of holy scripture became, in her hands, destructive to regal authority and civil repose. The supremacy of Christ, presented in the person of an inflated and worldly preacher, was incompatible with regal prerogative; and hence the conflict, however varied in its form, never ceased until Wolsey, by straining it too hard, broke the cable of his church, and Henry VIII., to guard against further ecclesiastical wrongs, assumed the supremacy; and becoming head of the church, to guard against future encroachments on his own prerogative, appropriated that of his Redeemer.- Charles Stovel. POETRY. A SONG FOR MERRY HARVEST. BY ELIZA COOK. Bring forth the harp, and let us sweep the fullest, loudest ́string; A song for merry harvest; and the one who will not bear His grateful part, partakes a boon he ill deserves to share. The buoyant soul that loves the bowl may see the dark grapes shine, Who prizes more the foaming ale may gaze upon the plain, REVIEW. SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT; edness to Tittman's book, but feels being the Substance of a course of GOOD books of synonyms are always valuable. They help us in a way that is equally beyond the intention, as it is beyond the limits, of the word books of any language. In reference to our own tongue, and the advantage Eng. lishmen may derive from the careful study of synonymous words, Dr.Whate ley aptly remarks, that "the more power we have of discriminating the nicer shades of meaning, the greater facility we possess of giving force and precision to our expressions. Our own language possesses great advantages in this respect; for being partly derived from the Teutonic, and partly from the Latin, we have a large number of duplicates from the two sources, which are for the most part, though not universally, slightly varied in their meaning. These slight variations of meaning add to the copiousness of the English language, by affording words of more or less familiarity, and of greater or less force." The scholars on the continent have felt the value of such books of synonyms; but it is a remarkable fact that "all the more important modern languages of Europe, have better books devoted to their synonyms than any which have been devoted to the Greek." Vömel published a small volume in 1822, but it is little better than a school book. Pillon afterwards sent forth another, which was translated by the late T. K. Arnold. Both these are anything but full or complete; "while the references to the synonyms of the New Testament are exceedingly rare in Vömel; and though somewhat more frequent in Pillon's work, are capricious and accidental there, and in general of a meagre and unsatisfactory description." Tittman has, however, dedicated a book expressly and exclusively to these synonyms. Mr. Trench honourably acknowledges his indebt himself bound to declare that "it sometimes travels very slowly over its ground; the synonyms which Titt man selects for discrimination cannot be estimated always the most interesting, nor, which is one of the most important things of all, are they always felicitously grouped for investigation; he often fails to bring out in sharp and clear antithesis the differences between them; while now and then the investigations of later scholars have broken down the distinctions which he has sought to establish.” Mr. Trench, conscious of all this, has himself ventured into the field. He has an established reputation for ripe scholarship, close and accurate habits of thought, and reverence for the word of God; and comes, therefore, well qualified for his self-imposed work. What he gives in this admirable little volume, he tells us "is the result of enough of honest labour, of notices not found ready at hand in Wetstein, or Grotius, or Suicer, in German commentaries, or in lexicons, (though I have availed myself of all these) but gathered one by one during many years." It seems hardly necessary to speak about the special value of a work like the one before us. A fine passage in Homer may lose its force, or a brilliant sentence in Plato may be shorn of its splendour, from an ignorance of the exact shade of meaning in which certain words are used. But how small is the loss here compared with that which must be felt by those who are unacquainted with the which are the vehicles of the very mind of God." Here, if anywhere, it is certainly desirable that we should not miss anything; for these words to those who receive them aright are the "words of eternal life." Now a book "words like that of Mr. Trench will materially assist the student as a book of reference; for the synonymous words here grouped, will give him a more tho rough and intelligent appreciation of the delicate variations of meaning, to express which, the inspired writers changed their terms, and will assist |