The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1861-02-19 00:00:00

THE CHURCH IN DAI4CIER.

How often, at different times, and under varied efe4
°insistences has this cry been raised. It has ever and
anon been the watchword for those who aspired I.
represent the worthy lieges of Her Majesty in Puha.
insist; the toscin of alarm calling upon the supporta*
of tinie-lionourod institutions to rally round the standard
of a National Establishment, and the too-often reputed
by-word of those who are not only without the pale,
but opposed to the Church of England. But while from
without the enemies of the church have often dealt
severe blows which have tended to weaken in some
degree the superstructure and visible pert of this
glorious erection, they have never attempted 10
undermine and sap the foundation,; her inoompareble
, liturgy, and her articles they have not dared to aesail.
No . it has unhappily been left for her sons—thou
within her walls,* hi) should have been the first to deed
forth boldly in behalf of her interests, and guard as
with the keenest jealously, the sacred truths committed
to their keeping—to pro' agate those destractivs tenets,
which, if not speedily and promptly checked, may ia
future years undermine her very foundations,
and be the mesas of wresting, for • time
at lead, the on 'mend progress of true and vital
religion. To those of our readers who are at all con-
versant with the subject, we need hardly say we allude
to the so-called "Oaf urd Essays." Not from without
will the Church of England he obliged to surrender.
Ifer open and avowed enemy ph, can cope with, aid
need not fear the result. lint the writers to whom we
allude are I.er worst enemies—while they conform to
her endowments and live upon her revenue*, they are at
the Manse tins. seeking by all means in their power te
weaken sod prostrate her; and make her, not as she is
now, the ark of divine truth, but the temple of 'per-
verted religion—neither Clinatitn, Malieninied, nor,
even indeed, Pipe; but so latitudinarian, as to em-
brace some of the doctrines of the two latter without
the true and heart-purifyingtruthe of the former. We,,,
thankful to fiud that these shoat deistical works have
I been so unanimously and strongly condemned by the
leading clergymen of the metropolis, and that the atten-
tion oh the Bishop of London, and other dignitaries of
the Church has been called to the subject. We can-
not, in our limited space, only give an outline of the
tenets put forth by the seven writers of the Oxford
Essays; but this will give our renders an idea of the
dangerto the canssof truth w bleb sucheueruise reihtie the
Establishment are likely to do, if net at once eon-
deioned and silenced. The bnulogs Review in • recent
notice of this work save :—Dr. Temple leads off with
an essay on the education of the world. He seems I.
teach that every man is a law to himself ; that an 011iOf
and obligatory rule of belief is no longer a conclusive
directory, and that, 'hid revelation been delayed till
now, assuredly it would have been hard for usto rump
nisi, His divinity; for the faculty of faith has turned
ia-
wanla, and cannot now accept any outer nunifutatioes
of the truth of God." The whole drift of this intro-
ductory essay is to detach man •from the Bible as •
positive revelation and filed rule of faith and life, and
to give the reason authority to deal with it u Popes
have dealt with it, regarding it and using it •• •
"nose of was." It is no longer the master hat the
servant. . _

The second essay is by Dr. Wilhints., of St. David's
College, Lampeter. It is an advance on Dr. Temple's
in audacity as well as dogma. He proceeds te show
how every historic truth or miracle may be evaporated
into a transcendental myth. His predecessor having
unsettled the authority of the sacred record, he codes-
YoUIS to prov• that it is no reliable history but a
colle.dion of nista, metaphor., and even mistakes. He
actually alleges the destroying angel in Egypt MY
merely a host of BC(1011.1138, who cleverly entered lb.
houses of the Egyptians and slew the firstborn, while
weeping households were so stupid that they neither
resisted the murderous attack nor pursued the peace-
fully retiring Bedouins! All the glory of the easiest
jinesovet, and all the allusions to it, en the occasion of
the sublimeet rite of Christianity, are thus swept away,
and the Great Redeemer and his diaciples have raised
a sacrament, and made references, which have no
better foundation than a raid of marauding and blood.
thirsty Arabs. If Dr. Williams, state' • fact, the
auCtor ef Christianity and the apostles have assumed as
liter.' and authentic history what is not so. Mr.
Williams steadily, and, to all appearance, deli.
berakdy, saps the very foundations of • divine
revelation. Let his conclusions become the adop-
tion of the clergy of England, and the weekly
utterances of its many pupils, and the poor peasant will
no longer hare an anchorage ground for his heart, nor
a hope beyond life's Stormy day train which we can
draw down sunshine, and taate the earnest and an.
titivate the joys of the everlasting rest.
Baden Powell, less in so many words, but in tone of
thought, and feeling, and reverence, carries all revela-
tion out of the atmosphere of the !superhuman. He
lazes his ingenuity to its utmost strength in order to
peeve what we may fairly deecribe as a new way of
demonstrating an endless series of links, without a
staple in the throne of Deity, and an eternal succession
of fathers and mothers without • Creator-Parent.
The last and not the least mischievous paper is by
Profeeser Jewett. With him we admit the indefensible
strum which Ins been laid on isolated tents, but the
deity of the Redeemer, the atonement, justification,
regeneration and gaud works; the fruits of then,. and
a judgment to emu* and the resurrection of the body,
are great truths that crop up from all churches and
confessions, and have secured a eeturtstms it, nearly all
ages, such as renders them fixtures that cannot be
taken down. So frightened is the learned professor at
the danger of interpretation, that he practically and
substantially dissuades his readers from coining to any
definite apprehension of the meaning of eny part of the
Bible. He says discoveries may be made in Egypt or
Nineveh in geology or physiology, that will contradict
Ilium statements of the Scriptures, as ordinarily road and
underetood by mankind, and that therefore it is best to
leave it unexplained, so that we may adopt it to the new
discoveries at they arise. The essay is, throughout, an
! ingenious plea for shutting up the Bible as an unintel-
-1 BLOM' collection of obsolete writings, to which it is safest
to attach no weaning.