the parties conform, and adopt the episcopal form, the clergyman will commence by saying, "I require and charge you both, (as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed,) that if either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony ye do now confess it." Is it not a serious and solemn thing for members of our churches, conscious of some impediment to their union, when this appeal is made, to remain silent? If they enter the registrar's office or the meeting-house, each must say, "I do solemnly declare, that I know not of any lawful impediment why I, A. B. may not be joined in matrimony to C. D." Is a prohibition by the laws of our country a lawful impediment? and if so, how can such a declaration be made, consistent with the commandment of Scripture to lay aside "all guile and hypocrisies," and "putting away lying speak every man truth with his neighbour?" Are we not to be followers of Paul? "Our rejoicing," says he, "is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world."

It appears to me, Mr. Editor, that there is such a thicket of deception, through which these parties must cut their way to attain their ultimate wish, as must prove very deteriorating in its influence on their general character, and which is altogether at variance with the simplicity that is in Christ.

These remarks are penned to elicit an opinion, whether parties thus marrying and acting ought to be made the subject of censure and discipline. In many churches such members are to be found, and the minds of many pastors are painfully exercised. Are any of your intelligent correspondents willing to guide their judgments?

RUSTICUS.

REMARKS ON THE ANGLO-HEBREW-GERMANICO

EPISCOPATE AT JERUSALEM.

THE extraordinary proceedings of the governments of England and Prussia, in setting up in the person of a Jewish convert a bishopric in Jerusalem, should be understood by all Protestant dissenters. The leading facts are thus stated in "The Jewish Remembrancer :"

"The friends of Israel have for some years desired, that, amidst the various hostile parties at Jerusalem professing the religion of Christ, the Church of England should also have a representative, who might appear as a messenger of peace, and exhibit to the Jews the pure and simple Christianity of the Gospel. Some earnestly desired, in addition to a sacred edifice and clergy for the celebration of Divine worship, the residence of a Jewish bishop, as being indispensably necessary for the spiritual prosperity of the mission to the Jews, and the adequate representation of the Church of England as a branch of the Catholic Church. They saw that without a bishop, friendly and edifying intercouse with the Eastern churches was hopeless, and the revival of the church of the circumcision impossible. What they scarcely ventured

to hope, God in his providence has been pleased to realize. The King of Prussia, looking with compassion on the state of Protestants in the Turkish dominions, desired to secure to them the same privileges and the same protection enjoyed by the Greek, the Oriental, and Latin Churches; and for this purpose sent a special envoy, Chevalier Bunsen, to propose to her Majesty's government a united effort at the Porte for the attainment of this desirable object. The Chevalier was also to request the co-operation of the Church of England in placing a bishop as the visible representative of the Protestant Church in the Holy City. It must be deeply gratifying to the friends of the London Society to know, that the whole of this glorious and all-important plan was suggested by the efforts which they have made to erect a church upon Mount Zion. Lord Palmerston, with a sagacity that does him honour, immediately perceived the advantages, political and religious, that would accrue from the execution of the plan, and its incalculable importance in reference to the civilization of the East. He therefore undertook the negociation with his usual ability and vigour ; and, by God's blessing, his Lordship's exertions have been so far crowned with success, that the principle has been acknowledged by the Turkish government. Permission for the building and establishment of the church at Jerusalem is guaranteed; and, if Lord Palmerston's efforts be followed up with suitable energy, the complete attainment of the object may be regarded as certain. Although continued difficulties have arisen, and various objections have been made, the Ottoman Porte has officially promised the English Ambassador that the Turkish authorities at Jerusalem are to be instructed forthwith not to oppose the erection of the church on Mount Zion in any way."

To accomplish this work the King of Prussia has devoted £15,000, yielding a clear interest of £600 per annum, and another £15,000 is to be raised at home, towards which the Society for the Conversion of the Jews has voted £3000. The salary of the bishop will therefore be £1200 per annum; and he will be invested with all the importance attaching to a British functionary who was borne to the shores of Palestine in the Devastation steam frigate! a fitting introduction, truly, for a minister of the Prince of Peace. The gentleman who has been consecrated to this work is the Rev. M. S. Alexander, a converted Jew, who has till this appointment held the office of Professor of Hebrew in King's College, London.

This affair has called forth loud congratulations amongst Episcopalians, and good Mr. Stewart, of Liverpool, sets it forth as a topic for special thanksgivings in the annual concert for prayer on the first of January, 1842. There is doubtless much that is interesting and romantic in the enterprize; but when all the facts of the case are considered in the light of the New Testament, it will occasion more apprehension and regret than satisfaction and thankfulness.

That Palestine is to every Jew who holds to the faith of his forefathers an object of intense interest, cannot be doubted; and therefore, whatever can be done to bring the Jews resident in that land to Christ, should be attempted; because, as it forms the centre of sympathy to all the children of Abraham who are scattered abroad, so from thence will quickly spread the intelligence of opinions adopted, and changes wrought amongst the dwellers in Jerusalem. It is this

fact, rather than the number of Jews who are resident in the holy land, that justifies the appointment of Jewish missions there. The whole Jewish population of Palestine does not at the present time exceed 10,000, while in the single city of Jassy there are more than 20,000.

Jerusalem has been a missionary station of the Society for the Conversion of the Jews, for several years, and a Mr. Nicholayson, a Jewish convert and a clergyman of the Episcopal church, has, with two or three others, laboured there with learning and diligence, but without any remarkable success. If such a missionary has done but little, an Anglo-Hebrew bishop at Jerusalem is, in my humble judgment, likely to accomplish still less. The Jews daily mourn that their holy city is trodden down of the Gentiles, and sigh for the day when Messiah the Prince shall restore its desolate places, and give back to that haughty people all the glories of their proudest days.

Amidst their sorrows, one of their own nation appears, who has renounced the faith of his fathers, whom they will regard as an apostate, and whose rank, wealth, and honour they will consider as the price of his apostacy. They will see that the resident consul of Great Britain pays him all imaginable deference; they will hear English travellers call him "my Lord;" and his ample stipend, his many charities, and his prelatical state, may move some unprincipled Jews to renounce their religion for the sake of worldly emolument; but if there be any truth in human nature, the bosom of every patriotic Jew who longs for the restoration of Israel, will burn with indignation at the presence of a man who has been stilted up from the office of reader in a little synagogue at Plymouth, to be the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of the United Church of England and Ireland in Jerusalem: it will assuredly be felt as an insult, and will form a fearful hindrance to the progress of spiritual religion amongst that most sensitive and jealous people.

So much for the policy of this appointment in reference to the Jews. But the principles on which this mission is to be conducted deserve also to be thought of.

The apostle Paul in that edition of Christianity which he gave to the churches of Christ which were in Judea, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, laboured to transfer their affections, which still lingered around the altars, the temple, and the priesthood of their fathers, to that "house which is not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." The religion

of the Gospel, as Archbishop Whately has expressed it, is "a religion without priest, altar, sacrifice, or temple," for, "the sacred writers did not omit the mention of these things, and leave it to the discretion of each church to introduce them or not; but they plainly appear to have distinctly excluded them."*

* Whately's Kingdom of Christ, p. 98.

If on any spot under heaven it be desirable to divest Christianity of the doctrines and observances that are taught by the commandments of man, Jerusalem is that place. Bishop Alexander may be blessed with that spiritual discernment, which will enable him to see this. But though his doctrinal opinions may prove as evangelical as those of Scott, or Simeon, yet he must observe the rubric, and ordain priests, consecrate churches, and set up altars, as if the Apostle and High Priest of our profession had not for ever superseded these, by the consummation of his own mediatorial work. These things may be modified and glossed over by ingenious explanations; but it is a fearful disadvantage for a teacher to have the documents of his church opposed to his doctrines. But this is not all. Imagine the church of St. James at Jerusalem, built and suitably adorned-the folio edition of the Book of Common Prayer lying, it may be on the reading desk. Some intelligent Jew, who can read English, enters, and having often witnessed with indignation and disgust, the idolatrous practices of the Greek and Roman clergy in the church of the sepulchre and other "holy places," he is anxious to see whether the worship of the Anglican church is more like that of the people of God. Suppose he should open the volume on the calendar for May, "The invention of the cross" meets his eye! What, he would say, does the church of England believe in that lying story! * And then turning over the leaves he sees, in quick succession, "Epiphany," "Lent," "Good Friday," "Easter," "Whit-Sunday." "Ah!" he would exclaim, "these are the very festivals that have been long celebrated here with riot, and excess, and superstition, and idolatry." What can the Hebrew bishop say to his inquiring brother? If he censure the rites and ceremonies, the imposture and folly, practised by the Greeks, Arminians, and other Oriental Christians, what comes of "the friendly and edifying intercourse with the eastern churches"—which is anticipated? if he vindicate the observance of these "days, and months, and times, and years," as he is bound to do, then where is primitive Christrianity, where is that spiritual kingdom to which every Jewish inquirer should be specially directed?

This is the ugly dilemma in which Dr. Alexander is placed; to please the Oxford doctors, he must fraternize with "the successor of St. James" -the Greek bishop of Jerusalem, and thus tacitly approve of all the mummery of that communion, a step that will infallibly damage his mission to the Jews; or, on the other hand, he must take simple views of the kingdom of Christ, and then have to explain away the ceremonies and services of his own church, which the authority of man, and not the commandments of Christ, has set up. Poor Dr. Alexander will have a sad life of it, and if I do not greatly underrate his calibre, by the perusal of his farewell sermon, he is sadly wanting in that mental power,

*Those who would understand the character of this old wive's fable may consult "Ancient Christianity," No. 7, pp. 277-316.

high scholarship, and simple Christianity, which are requisite for a man who is fairly to represent the Protestantism of Europe to the Oriental world. But a Jew bishop is a rara avis in terris, that will serve for a wonder and a clap-trap, and the dignitaries of the Anglican church are brought into such a position, that they can now condescend to accept the empty approbation of the ignorant, unreflecting multitude.

Let us now look at the Germanic part of this strange appointment, The Allgemeine Zeitung makes the following statement:--

"As two parents in their love towards their child, enter into a more exalted union, even so the evangelical churches of Prussia and England, hitherto divided, have in this filial church (Tochter Kirche) of Jerusalem tendered to each other the hand of true union. It is not contemplated, indeed, that the English Church should abandon her institutions for those of Prussia, or the Prussian hers for those of England; but the two churches, by their recent act, have mutually recognized, that, in their relations to each other, their constitutional forms are the non-essential; the union in spirit, the essential; and their conviction of the existence of this true union they have practically manifested by the establishment of a filial church, in which the nomination of the ecclesiastics shall be vested alternately in Prussia and England; in which the Augsburg Confession and the Thirty-nine Articles are recognized as founded in an intimate community of faith; in which the rites of the English and Prussian Churches are to be accepted as the simultaneous expression of one and the same evangelical Christianity."

Now, if this be an accurate statement, I will venture to predict that this strange jumble will occasion no small confusion before its close. I find that besides consubstantiation the Lutheran church retains practices and ceremonies such as no other Protestant church tolerates within its pale-namely, a form of exorcism in the celebration of baptism: the use of wafers at the Lords supper: the private confession of sins: the use of images, of incense, and of lighted tapers, and a crucifix on the altar. Are these "rites" then to be accepted at Jerusalem? Doubtless they would find many advocates at Oxford, and our evangelical brethren who are "deeply sensible of the honour put upon them in the selection of a beloved and respected member of their own body to fill the episcopate," have need to look to it, that under the name of Lutheran rites they do not become entangled with these popish nostrums, these inventions of men.

Then, again, the Lutheran church rejects the opinion that Christ ordained distinct orders in the Christian ministry, and only appoints a minister to superintend a given district as primus inter pares. With a considerable infusion of popular government in their ecclesiastical affairs, are the Prussian Protestants to be favoured with the blessings of a restored succession of Bishops, regularly descended from the apostles? I wish not to be suspicious, or to judge uncharitably, when there appears much that is liberal and praiseworthy, but I honestly think there are grounds for my suspicion.