It is not within the limits of my present design to discuss the controversy which has lately arisen respecting the use of this Service-how far, for instance, new rubrics, or a Service for non-communicants, or the restoration of discipline, would alleviate or remove the scandal now complained of.

But one question does come within the scope of this treatise, and it is this:-Seeing that we must have an Order for Christian burial, and seeing that this order, if it is to be Scriptural, must have for its key-note the Resurrection of the body-has God given to us any indication of His will respecting the principle on which such a Service should be put together; whether, for instance, we are, in the composition of it, to assume that the dead person will rise to the Resurrection of life, or whether we are to deviso, if possible, a Service which will suit the cases of the righteous and the wicked alike?

Now, I think that God has given us a very plain indication of what His will is with reference to this matter.

He has given to us, in the writings of the Apostle of the Gentiles, two very striking passages on the doctrine of the Resurrection of the body. (1 Cor. xv.; 1 Thess. iv. 14-18.) One of these we have incorporated into our own Service, and it is a very full, precise, and dogmatic discussion of the matter. It is difficult to conceive of any Service for the Burial of the Dead, which could recognise the Resurrection of the person buried, without embodying in itself one or other of these Scriptures. And

the incumbent of the parish. And how is discipline to be exercised on the remains of those who have dwelt in large cities where the churchyards are closed, and the dead are buried by such utter strangers as the chaplains of cemeteries?

in both of them the Resurrection of life is the only one set forth, the Resurrection of damnation not being in either even remotely alluded to.

The fullest of these two passages was written for the sake of a Church which contained unworthy members; for in the height of his argument for the Resurrection, St. Paul had to check himself, and to pause, as it were, and to say to them, "Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God."

And yet in writing to so mixed a Church-having in it unreproved fornicators and incestuous persons-the Holy Spirit withheld the Apostle from bringing in the Resurrection of condemnation.

Our Service, then, in recognising only the Resurrection of life, is in strict harmony with this marvellous chapter, which speaks of no other.

If our Service is read over those respecting whose future we can in reason entertain no hope, so the Apostle's words on the Resurrection of life reached those who, whilst they continued as they were, could have no part in it.

At other times, when the sinner can hear us, we must speak plainly enough of sin and its consequences-of Christ coming in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God; but not when the sinner himself cannot hear us, and his kinsfolk, or weeping children, c distracted widow, can.

CHAPTER X.

CHURCH PRINCIPLES AND ANTIQUITY.

WHILST the Church of England upholds the paramount authority of the Holy Scriptures, she explains these Scriptures in accordance with interpretations which she finds in the very earliest Christian writers, rather than with interpretations struck out at any later period. Her whole Service-book is framed on a model to be traced to the remotest times.

I purpose now to consider whether she has Scripture warrant for this. In order to ascertain this, it will be needful to direct attention to the publication of the New Testament.

We have the several books of the New Testament bound together in one volume, as if it had all been published at one time: whereas nearly three-quarters of a century elapsed between the first proclamation of the Gospel and the writing of the last book of the sacred Canon. It was upwards of seventy years before any single Christian teacher or local Church could possibly possess the whole New Testament in its present form.

If, in addition to this, we take into consideration the fact, that every book then had to be copied out in manuscript, and if we also remember the very imperfect state of communication in those days, we shall be compelled to admit that a century, at the least, must have elapsed before the volume of the New Testament formed the

text-book of Christian instruction, as it does at the present time. How, then, were the Christians of Apostolic times instructed in Divine truth? Evidently by the oral teaching of the Apostles and subordinate ministers.

The earliest in point of time of all the books of the New Testament is the First Epistle to the Thessalonians; and in this Epistle the writer takes it for granted that the persons to whom he wrote had been instructed in all Christian truth; for in this Epistle there is scarcely any doctrinal teaching.

Similarly, in writing to the Corinthians, he speaks of them as "enriched in all knowledge;” and yet this must have been from oral teaching, for they did not possess even one of the four Gospels. We know this, because the Apostle tells them that the account which he gave to them of the institution of the Eucharist had been received by him directly from the Lord, and so could not have been derived from any one of our present Gospels.

The Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians were published not earlier than A.D. 61.

The Second Epistle to Timothy was certainly not published before the year 67; and this Epistle, the latest of all St. Paul's writings, contains a remarkable passage, which proves that, at that date, what he had taught orally was accounted by him to form the principal part of his teaching; for he writes to St. Timothy, giving him an express direction to adhere to, and to transmit to others, his (St. Paul's) oral teaching. "The things," he says, "which thou hast heard of me before many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also." (2 Tim. ii. 2.) It is evident that the Apostle cannot refer here either to his own Epistles, or to any of the then published Gospels.

He can only refer to what was not at that time committed to writing.

The Gospels and Epistles of St. John were not written till the year 96. Let the reader consider for a moment what our New Testament would be without the Gospel of St. John; and yet two generations of Christians, far beyond any succeeding generation in both knowledge ana love, were without it.

It is abundantly clear from this, that any Christian, living even so late as a hundred or a hundred and twenty years after Christ, had received but a very small proportion of his religious knowledge from our present New Testament.

He had received the same doctrine, and from the same source, but not in the same written form, for he must have received the bulk of his religious knowledge through the oral teaching of the Apostles, or through the "faithful men " to whom they had committed their teaching. And all this through the special providence of God, for God might have ordered it far otherwise. He might have given a volume, containing nearly all the contents of the present New Testament, on the Day of Pentecost; in which case there would have been, from the very first, no room for oral teaching or tradition; but, instead of this, the volume which He has given to us is composed of twenty-seven separate documents, published in different parts of the world, during the course of above three-quarters of a century.

This is the reason why we of the Church of England defer to antiquity and early Patristic teaching, without making anything except the written word our standard. If there yet exist the works of any Christian authors who lived just after the times of the Apostles, who enter at all fully into Christian doctrine, and have no motive for misrepresenting the teaching then current amongst Chris