fanaticism. These things all concur in guiding me towards its Ministry as my life's work. On the other side, there is a scruple. I do not understand, or I do not like, the use of certain words in the Baptismal Service, or in the Ordination Service, or in the Athanasian Creed, or in the Burial Service. Some of these things appear to me to be liable to the imputation of a tendency towards Romanism, others towards unreality, others towards uncharitableness. I know that many good men have not so viewed them. Perhaps I may hereafter view them differently. In the meantime, let me take into account my whole case. On the one side, there is what I cannot but regard as a call from God to do His work. On the other, there is a scruple. I must weigh the one against the other. Is the case such that the negative must outweigh the positive? Is the case such that the Bishop to whom I apply for Ordination will refuse me, or ought to refuse me, knowing all? Is the case such that my hands would be tied, my mind fettered, or my lips sealed, in the exercise of my ministry? Or can I appeal to God who knows my heart, that my desire is to do Him service in any station of life to which He calls me, and can I, in choosing this-choosing it with the

knowledge of some difficulties and some objections-throw myself upon the belief that it is His will for me, and go forward in His Name ?

In such a balancing of conflicting alternatives lies the chief duty as well as the chief perplexity of life: out of it, we may well believe, will issue that which is right and good, that which would not result from a more one-sided or a hastier judgment. Happily it is the testimony of those who have had experience in youth of painful scruples, that a life of healthy activity is generally rewarded by their eventual disappearance.

II.

On the Rubric of the Burial Service',

Two principles must be firmly maintained in dealing with the great question before us.

I. A Christian Burial Service must express the hopes of a Christian concerning the dead. It must embody the language of our Lord and of His Apostles; it must breathe the comfort of the 11th Chapter of St John's Gospel, and of St Paul's well-known words in his Epistles to the Thessalonians and the Corinthians; it must carry forward the thoughts of the sorrowing to the promised Resurrection to eternal life; and it must presume that the person over whom it is used is interested, as a Christian, in the revelation of this future.

2. Every man must be taken on his profession, whether in life or in death. Every

1 Published in April, 1864, under the title of Rubrical Modification not Liturgical Change; A few Words on the

Burial Service.

member of the Christian community must be treated, till death and in death, as a partaker of the Christian hope, unless positive cause can be shown why that hope should be denied him. The time of judgment is not yet. Let both grow together until the harvest. Fudge nothing before the time: and when that time comes, He that judgeth is the Lord, not man2. The gift of discernment of spirits is withdrawn from the Church: while it was hers, it hindered not the baptism of Simon the sorcerer, nor the continuance in Christian communion of Diotrephes or of Demas. A Christian profession, not sentenced as a falsehood, entitles every man, as to Christian Communion, so also to Christian Burial.

Nevertheless, a Church which has practically lost, like our own, the use of Discipline, lies under serious difficulties in the resolute maintenance of these principles.

The experience of many Parochial Clergymen records instances in which pain, and something worse than pain, attended the reading of the Burial Service over the body of a deceased Parishioner.

It may be that, in some cases, a clearer view of the meaning of a Church, or of the office of its Ministers, would have mitigated

1 Matt. xiii. 30.

2 I Cor. iv. 4, 5.

this feeling. In such instances, a painful misgiving as to the condition of the departed, arising from defective proofs (in the life or on the deathbed) of Christian faith and consistency, may yet be compatible with the ministerial duty of reading beside the open grave the words of hope and consolation.

But it is otherwise when a life of notorious vice has been terminated by a death without repentance or in the very act of sin. With the population of a Village gathered in the Churchyard to see what the Minister will do, in the interment of an habitual drunkard or adulterer, a Clergyman has sometimes found himself in the painful alternative of either breaking the Law, or giving great occasion to the enemy to blaspheme1. The course frequently taken in these cases, of asking the assistance of some neighbouring Clergyman ignorant of the facts, is one which, however natural as an escape from a miserable dilemma, can scarcely commend itself to the deliberate judgment as honourable to the system which compels its adoption.

There is a strong and growing conviction. that some modification of that system is due not more to the consciences of the Clergy than to the interests of the Church itself.