given her expressly that she may educate the mind of the nation. Now to such assertions as these the answer was ready-"You are pretending to rest your scheme upon the Divine strength which has been given you. The truth is, you are availing yourself of all prescriptive prejudices, national habits, the maxims which belong to a worn-out society, the laws and encouragements of bigoted ancestors." We do not wholly deny the charge. All deep and ancient national feelings we venerate; the Church created them-the Church has been the means of preserving them; so long as they last, the Church has a right to avail herself of them. But now we have an opportunity of proving whether our unwillingness to throw aside the helps that God has given us, do indeed arise from our trusting in them more than in Him. Here are new societies rising up, thousands of miles away from England; the formation of the New World there is conducted by persons most free from all ancient notions, most eager for every modern improvement. The English State will have no great authority in these regions; what it has will probably be rather inconvenient than helpful. Here, on this new soil, under these disadvantages we say, let us make the experiment of our principle. Let us see whether a Church, constituted under an episcopacy, going forth in reliance upon the powers with which God has entrusted her, may or may not become the great instrument of education in those lands. You say that our system is obsolete; that it may have worked well in former days; that the world requires something else now. think that many of those who utter such sentiments as these, do themselves furnish the most lively illustration of an awkward and unhappy attempt to preserve a state of feeling which, being at first most narrow, is incompatible with the present wants of society, and cannot naturally be adapted to them. In the minds of the very best of them, we seem to ourselves to discern an earnest and venerable Puritanism, striving and striving in vain to ally itself to an age which requires indeed all the earnestness of Puritanism-all its strong sense of personality-but requires besides to know, that men are members of one body, and that they can only effectually assert their distinct position when they remember that they are such. These persons, feeling that the principle which they have derived from their education, and upon which their character has been formed, is not sufficient for them, strive to help it out with certain large and vague conceptions, borrowed from writers of our day, which fit them very ill; which they have adopted rather than realized; and which present an almost ludicrous contrast to the more original and genuine portions of their faith. Such writers are likely to be very

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popular in America, because America has, as we said, derived what is best and most solid in it from the same influence, and is now experiencing, in like manner, its imperfection. But they cannot teach us what is wanted for a colony arising in our day; that lesson, we believe, must be learnt from the maintainers of what they fancy is a by-gone institution. That same episcopacy which their ancestors rejected, but spread Christianity, and, through Christianity, freedom, civilization, literature, through Europe will, we hope and believe, go forth to educate the fifth continent of the world, to plant seeds there, from which a yet nobler and more glorious harvest may one day be produced.

Upon the faith of English Churchmen this result, under God, depends. An effort the most cheering of which our modern history can speakhas been made within the last two months for this object. The Bishop of London has asked for help to plant a Church on those shores, of which it shall not be said that it owes anything to State encouragement. We have no right or reason to expect that the plan will be discouraged by a Government, who are asked not to countenance, but to suffer the faith which they profess to establish itself. The companies which superintend the new settlements are still less likely to frown upon the attempt. They may care nothing for our opinions-they may believe them fanatical, but they are not likely to say that a body of cultivated and educated men, because they are called Bishops and Clergy, shall be allowed less advantages than other colonists. If, then, so noble a scheme for redeeming the character of England, and proving that she does not always send her sons forth to destroy Aborigines and corrupt the world, should fail, it will fail because we who are called Churchmen do not really believe that God has established a Church, and that he designs it to be the means of spreading light and truth through the earth.

SELWYN ON CATHEDRALS.

THE Bill respecting Chapters has not yet passed through the House of Commons. That it will be supported there by Conservatives as well as Whigs, there is little doubt. That both have plausible excuses for their votes it would be absurd to deny. The Chapters have been defended because they hold out encouragements to selfishness; because they tempt men to become Clergymen whom it might be good policy to pay for being anything else. The Chapters have been abandoned by some of the most revered and zealous of our spiritual guides. Assuredly these

are strong prima facie arguments. To those who never look below the surface they are irresistible; to those who are ordinarily obliged, by their position, to defend that unintelligible relic of another age, a Church, they are comfortable; on those who have learnt, by experience, the folly of giving up any institution till we know the meaning of it, they impose the necessity of inquiring whether these bodies ever had a purpose, or whether they are utterly incapable of accomplishing that purpose now. Writers on education are not perhaps bound to seek for an answer to these questions; but if an answer be given to them, and if part of that answer bears directly-the whole indirectly-upon the subject to which they have devoted themselves, they ought surely to know what it is. With this conviction, we have taken up Mr. Selwyn's "Attempt to Investigate the True Principles of Cathedral Reform,"* and propose to give our readers some account of it. We do not ask them to throw off any former opinions, that they may study it impartially. We do not ask them to believe that the members of Chapters have not neglected their duty, or that the instruction of the poor is not more important than general, or even than theological learning; or that it is not wise to reform the Church for the sake of conciliating the Dissenters: they may retain all these convictions; and if they do, we call on them, on the strength, not of Mr. Selwyn's authority, or even of his arguments, but of his facts, to uphold the Chapters.

In a former work, with which some of our readers may be acquainted, Mr. Selwyn endeavoured to show that the Cathedral Chapters are integral parts of our ecclesiastical polity; in the present he inquires into the office and scope of these institutions. The following brief statement respecting their early history, is an important introduction to the argument.

The existing Cathedral Churches of England had their origin in several different institutions of former times. The first of them was that which still subsists, though with considerable variations of form, in the Cathedrals of the Old Foundation. In these the establishment consisted of a Bishop, the Dean, and a large number of Canons, living together at the Cathedral city, and employed in the various offices of religion in the Church and Diocese. To this class belong the Cathedrals of Lincoln, Salisbury, &c.

The second class of institutions from which our present Cathedrals are derived, was one which is said to have been almost peculiar to the English Church, the Conventual Cathedrals. These consisted of Monks, with a Prior as their chief, who together formed the Chapter, and enjoyed some of the same privileges as the Chapters of the before-mentioned Cathedrals, such

By Rev. William Selwyn, M.A., Canon of Ely, and Rector of Branstone. Part ii. Deighton, Cambridge; and Parker, London.

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as that of electing the Bishop, &c. There were eight of these Conventual Cathedrals, attached to as many Bishopricks; among them Canterbury, Winchester, Ely, &c.; and these were all formerly constituted as Cathedral Churches, a Dean and Chapter taking the place of the Prior and Convent by King Henry VIII.

Lastly, there were Monasteries unconnected with Bishopricks, which were by the same King formed into Cathedral Churches, and incorporated with the newly-erected Episcopal sees. To this class belong the Cathedrals of Oxford, Peterborough, &c.

Now of all these institutions he affirms that they were designed to be instruments in the propagation and maintenance of the Christian faith. That this was their object, that they fulfilled it, that they were the great means of evangelizing the country; he shows from the early historians of England, supporting their testimony by that of Selden, who can as little be suspected of an ecclesiastical bias as of deficiency in antiquarian learning. Mr. Selwyn's inference from this evidence is thus stated :

I conclude therefore, on the whole, that the sphere of the Cathedral is coextensive with that of the Bishop; that as the Bishop is bound by his office to provide, as far as in him lies, for the spiritual culture of his whole field, so the Cathedral Chapters are his legitimate coadjutors and fellow-labourers in this good work; that they are the instruments by which he may multiply his efforts and extend his influence from the centre to the verge of his Diocese; that, so long as any part remains uncultivated, any sheep without a shepherd, the Bishop and his Cathedral Clergy are the primary agents by whom the wanderers are to be brought into the fold, and the barren waste reclaimed. In a word, that as is the Bishop, so are the Cathedral Chapter, debtors to the whole Diocese, until the Church of Christ be planted and established in strength and energy, through all its quarters.

We may then lay aside, as partial and incomplete, those plans of reform which would tend to make Cathedrals merely Colleges for devotion and study; to assimilate them to parish churches; to confine the operations of Cathedral Chapters to the celebration of Divine worship and the maintenance of the fabric. Cathedrals have a higher and nobler office than any of these, an office which includes them all, and many other purposes besides, of essential importance to the welfare and good government of the Church.

A person who read this passage might be tempted to wonder at the strange use of language in our day. Mr. Selwyn, who imposes these vast duties upon himself and upon his brethren-who meditates this extensive plan of practical reformation, is called a supporter of existing abuses. Those who are content (their own life interests being safe) to see their country despoiled of revenues, which the piety of past ages has devoted to its instruction, are called liberal and disinterested lovers of improvement. But we have no time to make such observations as these; which, indeed, are sufficiently obvious without our suggestion. What we have to do is, to show that, if our author has large general views, he is also ready to carry them out into detail.

The first office which he assigns to the Cathedral is that of maintaining a daily public worship. That this was one of the original intentions of their founders, he has of course no great difficulty in proving; and the majority of our readers will perhaps agree with us, that he has as little in maintaining the wisdom and seemliness of such an arrangement. Hence he deduces these two principles of Cathedral reform :

First, That the number of Canons in each Cathedral should be sufficient to insure the dignified and solemn celebration of Daily Worship, and to furnish an ample and honourable attendance at all the more solemn services of the Church.

Secondly, That regulations should be adopted to secure, as far as may be, the appointment of such men to Cathedral Canonries as may be fitted, by their intellectual endowments and spiritual character, to set forth the glory of Almighty God, by their ministrations in the Cathedral Church of the Diocese.

But Mr. Selwyn feels most strongly that the existence of the sublime Cathedral worship in the midst of a city which is full of an ignorant and demoralized population, is an anomaly. He affirms, then, that the next office of the Chapter was to provide for the spiritual wants of the Cathedral cities. He quotes the following passage from Bede, in proof that they were intended to perform this duty :-" Ubi datam sibi mansionem intraverunt, cæperunt apostolicam primitivæ ecclesiæ vitam imitari, orationibus videlicet assiduis, vigiliis ac jejuniis serviendo, verbum vitæ quibus poterant prædicando." The Cathedral Clergy were, in short, a body of home missionaries, devoting themselves mainly to the great towns in which they were established, and paying also occasional visits to the surrounding villages. This chapter concludes with this cheering prophecy :

Let us hope that we may see the day, when the population of our cities shall be as well and thoroughly cared for, in spiritual concerns, as the smaller parishes of the rural districts; when, in the efficiency of her pastoral ministrations, and in the excellence of all her parochial institutions, her schools, her libraries of religious knowledge, her systems of collecting contribtutions for purposes connected with the Church, for the propagation of the Faith at home and abroad, the Cathedral city shall be a model to all other parts of the Diocese; that she shall be indeed "a city set upon an hill, and be able to say to the Parochial Churches, which, in the language of Hooker, are her "daughters," her "spiritual and heavenly colonies, on all their occasions of doubt and difficulty,

ANTIQVAM EXQVIRITE MATREM.

We now come to a very important part of Mr. Selwyn's book, in which he undertakes to establish these propositions. That the Cathedral Chapter was from the first ages of the Church regarded as the Bi