casionally on the public services of the church. On one of Mr. Goyder's visits to her, she was so excessively weak and was sinking so fast that, "I feared, (said he,) even the sound of my voice might disturb her tranquillity; but upon seeing me, she rallied, and appeared as it were to come back from the very gates of death, to tell me the joy, the conslation and support she felt in the doctrines of the New Church." "Oh! Mr. Goyder, (said she,) if I never see you again in this world, I wish you to know that I die in the full belief and faith of the New Church!" She has passed from death to life. May we all be prepared for that change which awaits every member of of the human family. T. G. He On the 11th Feb. 1842, at Cheltenham, Mr. THOMAS YOUNG, Sen., departed from the natural into the spiritual world, in the 68th year of his age. first became acquainted with the heavenly doctrines of the New Dispensation in London, between thirty and forty years ago. He continued stedfast in them through good report and through evil report, and to his latest moments they proved "the joy and the rejoicing of his heart." Nor did he allow his zeal to slumber; for through his instrumentality several persons became worthy receivers of the New Church verities in Cheltenham, where for some years public worship was celebrated, until the removal of their leader to a distant field of labour occasioned the services to be suspended. He was distinguished for his peculiar equanimity of temper, and for the cheerful patience and fortitude with which he bore the trials and temptations of the regenerate life. He lived in the esteem and respect of all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance. Throughout his last sufferings, which were very severe, occasioned by an inflammation of the lungs, he was never heard to murmur or repine. More than once he expressed his in.. creased conviction of the folly of trusting to a death-bed repentance, observing, that had he not made previous prepara DIED, at Bath, on the 4th of March, 1842, in the 59th year of her age, HANNAH, the beloved wife. of Mr. WILLIAM RILEY, Coach-smith, of that city. She was brought up in the Baptist persuasion, and for a long time after her husband had received the doctrines of the New Church, through the preaching of the late Rev. Joseph Proud, in York Street, London, she continued to be unfavourable to any change in her religious opinions. Often did she try to persuade her husband to give up all thought of the New Church Doctrines: but where is the person, who, having once seen their beauties, and felt their power upon the heart, can give them up? Mr. Riley persevered in the even tenor of his way, and she became more reconciled to his views. One day he found her reading one of Swedenborg's works, and he said to her, "Well, my dear, I am glad to see you at that work !" (for she had said she would never read any of his books.) She replied, "I thought I would just look at it; for if you can see these doctrines to be true and beautiful, I see no reason why I should doubt them! thought, therefore, I would read and judge for myself." From that time the works of the New Church were her greatest delight, and continued so to be till the day of her death. The writer of this has had the pleasure of her acquaintance for more than 25 years, and can bear his testimony to her being the affectionate wife, the sincere friend, and the real Christian. T. G. "Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo. Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna: Jam nova progenies cælo demittitur alto."-VIRGIL, Ecl. iv. Roll round again; and mighty years, begun From their first orb, in radiant circles run. A golden progeny from heav'n descends."-DaYDEN. To the Editors of the Intellectual Repository. GENTLEMEN, THROUGH the kindness of a clerical friend, the Divine Providence. has lately favoured me with the perusal of Dr. Pusey's Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, on the present Crisis in the Established Church. According to my custom, on reading any remarkable work, I have made extracts from it; and they fully bear out the views I have always entertained with regard to the mission of the far-famed men of Oxford. Those views I have already stated in the Repository. Ever since I became acquainted with their writings, in their bearing upon fundamental points of doctrine, common to all Protestant Churches, I have been fully persuaded that they are unconscious instruments, in the hands of the Lord, towards the establishment of his holy city New Jerusalem. All I have since seen and observed has tended to strengthen my convictions; and, had I required any additional confirmation of the correctness of my opinions, this Letter, a composition of a peculiarly solemn and impressive character, would have been decisive. It is evident, indeed, from the learning, ability, and depth of thought, apparent in the Tracts, and other more voluminous compositions of the like tendency, as well as from their extensive and increasing influence, that the writers are no ordinary men, and are destined to effect no ordinary changes; insomuch, that even those who know nothing of what these writers are really doing, but who, NEW SERIES. No. 30.-VOL. 3. DD nevertheless, see in them the restorers of primitive doctrines too long degraded and neglected, acknowledge them as the modern reformers of the Church of England. And such, beyond question, they are. For although the important truths they have proclaimed, are sadly alloyed with no small portion of bigotry and error derived from our original connexion with Babylon, they are yet so completely subversive of the detestable and soul-destroying doctrine of justification by faith alone; such able champions are these dauntless men in the cause of charity and good works as no less essential than faith to everlasting salvation, and so powerfully do they advocate self-examination, repentance, and, in a word, the vigilant regulation of the affections by the precepts of the gospel, that all to whom these things are dear, and who feel how scandalously they have been banished from modern theology, cannot but regard those who now claim for them their proper rank in the plan of salvation, as the best friends of religion, and, so far at least, the true followers of the apostles. But if the career of the Oxford Tractarians is so interesting to their admirers within the pale of the Old Church, how much more so must it be to us of the New? We not merely know that they are effecting a mighty, and, on the whole, a beneficial change, but we further perceive what that change will ultimately be. They themselves feel that the tide which is carrying them on with irresistible force towards an unknown shore, is not of any human raising, and that they are actuated by " the new life, which has, from above, been infused into the church” (p. 109). would not," says the Doctor," shrink from any blame which any may deserve; but when there is a general stirring, as there now is through the whole of Christendom, it would be a superficial view of it to trace the workings in any part of the church, to any particular set of men or writings; we did not set the tide in motion, by which we have been ourselves carried onwards; we have felt that there is a higher hand than ours which has raised the waters and ruleth them; we are but one slight item in the vast sum, one link in the chain of causes and effects, whereby He is working for His church what He willeth." And, as this tide has been raised, as he truly asserts, by no human power, so neither by any human power can it be arrested in its progress. I always considered the isolated attempt of the Bishop of Oxford to suppress the Tracts to be as vain as it was injudicious. It was clear that he was taking the ready way to defeat his own object, as the event has proved; for the silence of Mr. Newman, through that organ of his sentiments, has served only to stimulate curiosity in the careless, to excite inquiry in the serious, and to cause the stream, "We of us dammed up in one place, to overflow its banks in another. Octavos, and the pages of the British Critic, are the enlarged channels through which it now sweeps along in conscious power. Accordingly, the learned Doctor tells the Primate:- "It is too late for any mere check. It is not by any warning as to any of our supposed tendencies, or by cautions as to any particular statement, or by silencing any one or more of us, that things can be stayed. When the whole ocean is stirred from its depths, to what end to stay, if we could, a single wave?" Great, most assuredly, as the Doctor observes, is the alarm; nor is it confined to the establishment; the Methodists have commenced their "Tracts for the Times "-the sound of the war-trumpet is heard on all sides-the opposing hosts are getting under arms, and the dark and frowning masses of the Philistines are setting themselves in array against David :-" men's hearts are failing them for feur, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth." Meanwhile, the New Church, " told before" of these things, looks calmly on, and instead of alarm, derives new courage, new hope, new strength and security, as the conflict becomes warmer. With the clear unclouded eye of a skilful general, viewing, from an eminence, the various movements of a vast army in an extensive battle-field, she has no difficulty in foreseeing their results, and on which side victory will declare herself. But though our allies cannot be supposed to understand the object sought for, in its full extent of importance, yet, such is the intolerable state of things in the religious world, and so plain the signs of the consummation of the age, and the coming, in some sense or other, of the Lord, that even they are fully sensible that they are living in "the last days," and that the second advent is at hand. In one place, Dr. Pusey alludes to "the struggle which is being carried on everywhere," as "the characteristic contest of the last times;" and, in another, conducts the reader to the inference, that he ought, "in the dim estate of these last times," to "look the more for the Coming of the Lord to his temple." He is well aware, that the Christain Church has fallen, and must be raised; nay, is about to be raised, and that, by the Lord's hand, through human instrumentality. Nothing," says he, "is as it should be; but everything, we may trust, is set in a course whereby it may, hereafter, become such." Who, on reading these words, does not call to mind the Lord's declaration :-" Behold, I make all things new?" But the Doctor, not considering it sufficient, as, in truth, on such an occasion it would not have been, to deplore the state of the church in general, comes to particulars. I need not indicate, by any precise denomination, the 66 large class of preachers to whom he alludes in the following passage, wherein he concisely exposes their miserably defective system of doctrine, while, with a noble candour, becoming a Christian and a lover of truth for its own sake, who can always best afford to be just towards an opponent, he gives them full credit for all that is, in any degree, useful in their ministrations: "We acknowledge," says he, 66 as far as it was true, the value and power of the popular system in its warnings against the world, its urgent calls to conversion, its pointing to our blessed Lord as the author and finisher of our faith. But we felt it to be in part defective, in part erroneous; it laid the foundation, but too often neglected to build thereupon; it spoke of the Cross, but not of bearing it; it shrunk from inculcating judgment to come according to our works-the value of good works, of self-discipline—and mercifulness." These are grave charges, but they are not more grave than true. It was high time, assuredly, that divine truth should interpose, and vindicate its native dignity. For what could be the effect of such deceitful handling of the Word, such unwarrantable suppression of God's counsel, such absolute killing of the Scriptures, but to encourage hypocrisy by the substitution of "a sad countenance" for a penitent heart, and self-delusion for self-knowledge? I am far from imputing intentions of this sort to any man or set of men; my quarrel is with the doctrines themselves and their obvious tendency-a tendency equally dangerous whether we suppose them to proceed from infatuation or design. The suppressio veri is not less injurious than the insinuatio falsi; and we know that an apostle has lamented the consequences sure to arise from "a zeal without knowledge." Good, unguided by Truth, is but another name for a blind Polyphemus dealing aimless mischief-willing, it may be, but unable to effect any beneficial purpose,-" He who walketh in darkness, knoweth not whither he goeth." But whence has sprung all this false teaching, and that war of injured Faith against it, which was certain, sooner or later, to be declared? One chief cause of it, if not the primary one, has been the taking of doctrines upon trust-the slavish prostration of reason before the blind and tyrannical dicta of mere human authority. One good effect, therefore, of the present agitation will be to unchain the human intellect and provoke examination; the result cannot be doubtful. For the simply-good will see, as by the light of day, that (to borrow the language of Bishop Watson) "many doctrines have been imposed upon the Christian world as doctrines of the gospel, which have no foundation whatever in Scripture ;" and that, "instead of defending these doctrines, it is the duty of a real disciple of Jesus |