He did respect to the Temple, and kept the feast of the Passover. But He showed that the Temple foreshadowed His body; and, when eating the Passover with His disciples, instead of the Paschal Lamb, He broke bread, and blessed the cup of wine, saying to them, “As oft as ye do this, do it in remembrance of me; as it had been before, a prophetic type of Him. How, then, under the Christian dispensation, are religious emotions and impulses of our nature to find that expression and action which they demand? Surely it is not in deadness and folding of hands, that all ends—nor in monastic contemplation and seclusion. That experiment was tried long ago,—with sad failure enough. "Keep silence before me, oh islands, and let the people renew their strength." It is for renewal of strength that God would have us be still; and strength is for action, not for Buddhistic nihilism, or annihilation.

The answer is, that, not as was the Jewish system, pent up in a nationality, and thus needing forms to vent itself in, but now open to broad unbounded humanity-the Gospel enjoins not rites, but a life; making the second commandment the aid and exponent of the first. Benevolent action, instead of ceremonial; preaching the Gospel to every creature, instead of ritualism; and worship in the spirit as the Spirit gives utterance, instead of set forms of any kind that is the scheme of the Gospel. "In Christ, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth anything; but a new creature."

Does this leave no room for forms at all in worship or religion? None, sought or established for THEIR OWN SAKE, or for any virtue in them, or for any sacred obligation resting upon them. None but such as are unavoidable, as the living expressions of present feeling, or for the mutual recognition and maintenance of the simplest communion.

Remember, that the permission of forms-as of baptism, allowed by our Saviour, and the commemorative supper, customary among Christians in the days of the Apostles-is widely different from the ordaining of them. Much was permitted that was not ordained. While the principles of Truth were and are for ever unchangeable, the knowledge of it and acceptance of its simple purity were to be, as they have been, progressive. So Peter needed a vision to tell him of the admissibility of Gentiles into the Church. Paul made and kept vows and festivals-being all things to all men for his ministry's sake. Some things in Christianity were, I doubt not, more plain to George Fox, to Penn, and to Barclay, than to Polycarp, Tertullian, and Augustine, or other early Christian fathers. And we ought to know, upon some points of the practical application of Christianity, as slavery and capital punishment, somewhat more now than Barclay, Penn, or Fox.

And this leads toward our concluding thought. Friends, in the origin of our Society, were led by the Head of the Church to protest against and withdraw from not only the Papal Mass, but the Protestant sacrament also, and water baptism, in full view of their recognized admission at the beginning of Christianity. Because they were abused; understood as they should be by the few only; by the many, formalized; becoming the means of selfsatisfaction for the weak, and of hypocrisy with the bad; so as to be an evil rather than a good.

That even Roman Catholic ritualism may fail to press out with its weight the heart and soul of true devotion, we may be reminded by Thomas à Kempis. Hear him, writing of the Sacrament of the Supper:

"To look upon Thee, O Jesus, in Thine own Divine brightness, mine eyes would not be able to endure; nor could even the whole world stand in the splendour of the glory of Thy Majesty. Herein

Thou hast regard to my weakness, that Thou dost veil Thyself under this Sacramental sign. Him do I really possess and adore, whom the Angels adore in Heaven: I, however, for the present, and for awhile, by faith; but they by sight, and without a veil. As to me, I ought to be content with the light of true faith, and therein to walk, till the day of everlasting brightness shall dawn, and the shadows of figures pass away. But when that which is perfect is come, the use of Sacraments shall cease; because the Blessed, in their Heavenly Glory, need not any Sacramental remedy: For they rejoice without end in the presence of God, beholding His glory face to face and being transformed from brightness to brightness, even that of the incomprehensible Deity, they taste the Word of God made flesh, as He was from the beginning, and as He abideth forever."

To conclude: As it is our claim that no rites or forms of religion whatever, belong by their own right or of permanence to the Gospel dispensation, whose most essential feature is that it is spiritual,-depending upon nothing but Christ,-all convenient forms of expression, confession, or communion must in themselves be mutable. It is the very nature of all form to suffer mutation. We have seen that, in the succession of dispensations, from the patriarchal to the Christian. Reform is indispensable everywhere, and in all ages; because nothing is perfect on earth, and everything human and terrestrial is prone to decay. The silkworm and the serpent cast their skins, and the crab his shell. Our own bodies are not the same from day to day. The world passeth away-only the word of God abideth forever.

Our fathers were reformers; such was the burden of their mission, as it was that of Luther, of Paul, and, in part, of our Lord himself. Have we done with reform? Not till we have done with disease, with corruption, with death. Those fathers of whom I speak have left for us more than one guide-post among the paths of life. Let us not make of them

hitching posts. When Paul wrote to Timothy to hold fast the form of sound words which he had given him, the word used, which has been translated form, meant rather exemplar, or model; not literal or identical copy or form.

As to forms in religion, our dangers seem, in a word, to be threefold: of being blindly fascinated by those of others-of leaning instead upon equally broken reeds of our own—and of escaping from the forms without embracing the spirit.

Let us hear Tennyson's questioning on this, as to one of us:

"O, thou that after toil and storm

May'st seem to have reached a purer air,

Whose faith has centre everywhere,

Nor cares to fix itself to form ;

See, thou that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,

Thou fail not, in a world of sin,—

Perhaps for want of such a type."

Well asked is that question. Every one must answer it for himself. But it was in the olden semibarbaric warfare that men went out to battle clad in heavy armour from top to toe. Now, the soldier divests himself of all but the lightest equipment to enter into more fearful contests. So, let us remember, that the "whole armour of God" must be fitted upon the soul within. Our watchword, and the motto upon our banners, should be,-only Christ.

Philadelphia, U.S.

HENRY HARTSHORNE.

THE ECCLESIASTICAL ART EXHIBITION :" YORK, 1866.

OUR age delights in Exhibitions. Every department of art, every branch of manufacturing or agricultural industry seeks opportunities for displaying its achievements, in local or national Exhibitions. Adroitly availing themselves of this direction in the public taste, an Exhibition of Ecclesiastical Art was organized by certain active Ritualists, and attracted a multitude of visitors, during the late session of the Church Congress at York.

"Castlegate House "-the locality selected for the Exhibition--is not without its ecclesiastical associations. It stands within a stone's throw of Clifford's Tower, the scene of a fearful massacre of Jews in the reign of Richard I.; more recently, William Dewsbury and other sufferers for conscience' sake have been imprisoned in the adjoining buildings. Still nearer to our own times, the neighbouring Castle Yard has witnessed the triumphs of antislavery zeal in the return to Parliament of William Wilberforce, and Henry Brougham as the champions of the slave. On the opposite side of the street to Castlegate House," is the building occupied for five-and-twenty years by the girls' school of York Quarterly Meeting of Friends. The Meeting-house of the same Religious Society adjoins, and faces Friargate, recalling the existence in the middle ages of a Franciscan monastery on the same site.

Entering the building devoted to the Exhibition, the