school when we grew older. But then like a wicked boy, I heard his good advice, and would not take it, but on the contrary I still ran on in my own wicked courses, in which if it had pleased God to call me, my soul must have been lost for ever. But instead of calling me to death, which I most righteously have deserved, it has pleased Him to open my eyes, and I now find that I have been travelling on in the broad path which leads to destruction ; and if it pleases God to spare my life till the first Sunday of the next month, I shall come to his holy table-to the holy communion of the body and blood of our Saviour.

• Dear father, be so kind as to tell those dear gentlemen that as I know there were many in the school who were very fond of me, and who might not be against taking a little of my advice, to tell them that I love them, and wish them all well, to bid them to fear God, and always let Him be their Guide, to pray to Him, that He may give them His grace, which I am convinced is the only thing that will make them happy, to obey their parents, pastors, and masters, to love one another, and to shun bad company.

• I could not think myself comfortable, or worthy of receiving that holy sacrament until I had made the above humble confession of my guilt. I have now entered as teacher to a Sunday School, where I hope to be more true' to my profession, than I was at the National School.'

It is scarcely possible to conceive a more striking fulfilment of the promise of scripture, placed at the head of this article. To hear such sentiments expressed with such earnest sincerity from one who is yet but a mere lad, is most encouraging to all who have to struggle with the carelessness and unruly dispositions of boys. It bids us confi. dently hope that the hour of reflection will come, when the seed cast upon the waters, but never overlooked by the great husbandman, will bring forth its fruit to everlasting life.

Those who are interested in the above statement will best fulfil the wish of the contributor, by providing that it be read to the bigger boys of any neighbouring National School. Thus may some perhaps be induced to consider, while it is yet time, that it is in their own power to make the recollection of their school hours bright with the conviction of duties performed, and improvement gained—that if they fail to do so, conscience will take care in her own good time to recal the bitter memory of neglect and disobedience.

ONE OF THE CLERGY OF Kentish Town.

THE ANXIOUS INQUIRY : “ WHAT MUST I DO TO

BE SAVED?".

AS TREATED BY THE WRITERS OF THE OXFORD TRACTS.*

It seems hardly possible that any person can suppose that the amount of difference between the system of Oxford divinity, and that which has been hitherto regarded as the doctrine of the Anglican Church, and of her Reformers, and standard Divines, is little else than a difference of words, or is not, in sober and solemn verity, a difference of vital importance to the interests of Christian truth, a difference upon grand primary questions, involving all that was so nobly contended for by the martyrs of the Reformation, and all that is precious to the sinner in the Gospel of Christ.

One thing is certain. To the divines at Oxford at least, the difference between their system of faith, in regard to the way of justification, and all the hopes and consolations and duties and ordinances connected therewith, does seem of most radical and fundamental importance, however it may seem to others. On no one subject of all their voluminous writings, has so much labour, care, learning, diligence been expended, as upon that of justification. Justly considering it as the corner-stone of their system of divinity, according to which everything else must be conformed, Mr. Newman has devoted a whole volume of elaborate lectures to the establishment of the pecliliar views of his school on that head. Dr. Pusey has done the same. The close and exceedingly earnest volume of this writer on Baptismal Regeneration, is substantially a treatise on Justification, these two, in Oxford Divinity, being one ; ' different aspects of the same divine gift. They are perfectly right. The difference is at least as great as they represent it. Their mode of representing the way of salvation is indeed - another gospel' to us; another to the Church to whose doctrines we are pledged. The whole ground-work on which they teach the sinner to rely for justification and acceptance before God, is the very reverse of that which we have learned from the Scriptures, and which our fathers have declared unto us. Their righteousness, on which their hope of acceptance is based, is their own, as much as their intellects are their own. That on which we rely for all hope of present mercy or final acceptance is exclusively the righteousness of Christ. To them justification consists in being made personally holy. To us, it consists in being accounted righteous through the obedience and death of our Redeemer. They satisfy the law by their own obedience ; we have no hope of its fulfilment and satisfaction in our behalf, but as it received its full demand in the obedience of our Surety. While professing to have no idea of any merit but that of Christ, they look to it, not for direct acceptance with God, but for the power of divine grace to enable them so to work and walk, that in themselves they shall be acceptable. We, entirely rejecting such a scheme, as equivalent to a righteousness of works, and believing it

* Slightly abridged from the concluding observations of Bishop M'Ilvaine's invaluable work on Oxford Divinity, compared with that of the Roman and Anglican Churches.

MARCH, 1842.

to be precisely that of the law in which St. Paul so earnestly desired that he might not be found, do look directly unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, not only for the Holy Spirit to make us meet for the presence of God, but for all the righteousness on which the title to that presence must be founded. Thus, as to the nature and essence of the medicine whereby Christ cureth our disease,' we are as wide apart as two opposite descriptions of remedy can make us.'

Precisely as complete as is the change required by this system in all our ideas of the sinner's only ground of reliance for acceptance with God, is the transformation it demands in all that we have been taught, by the standards of our Church, of the way of applying the only remedy in the Gospel, for the sioner's ruin. Justifying faith is literally nothing in this system but a name, a pretence to something which it is not. According to the old way of the apostles, faith is every thing in the application of the righteousness of Christ; as faith was every thing in the coming of blind Bartimeus to have his eyes opened by the power of Christ. It was Christ that opened his eyes. But the blind man's faith was that which alone brought down upon his dark eye-balls those benevolent and wonder-working hands. Such precisely is the agency of faith, in bringing the soul to Christ, and in obtaining that wedding garment of his perfect righteousness; an agency so essential, so peculiar, so solitary; not as if any but a living faith could thus avail, but that while, as a living faith, it contains within itself the whole essential life of all love and active obe. dience, it comes not to Christ with the price of that love and obedience wherewith to recommend the penitent soul to God's acceptance ; but renouncing all thought of itself, and of the love it practically works by, holds out the empty hand of a poor, miserable, worthless beggar, crying, mercy to unrighteousness, only through the righteousness of Christ's obedience and death for sinners.

But no such peculiar office has faith in the application of the Gospel remedy, according to the new divinity of Oxford. There, when a sinner who was baptized in infancy, applies to know, “ what he must do to be saved,” he is told that he has been already spiritually and savingly regenerated and justified ; that he has been made “ the temple of the Holy Ghost ; ” has had “ the indwelling of God," “the Shekinah” of the Holy One, abiding in him and investing his soul “ with the only wedding garment; "that, in his baptism, all original sin was taken away from him, and he received “ an angel's nature, and was made pure and spotless before God.

• But,' answers the enquirer, • I have sinned. Ever since I became capable of knowing good from evil, I have had to confess, as in the language of the Church, that I have erred and strayed from God, as a lost sheep, and there is no health in me. My enquiry is not, what I was when an infant, but how I may become what a singer must be before he can see God in peace. What must I do to be saved from the condemnation of my past and present sins ?' Oxford Divinity answers, by enquiring, whether his sins belong to the class of mortal or venial. They are ' sins after Baptism. It is an immense matter for the enquirer to settle in his mind, if he would drink of the consolations of this divinity, to which class his sins belong. If they have all been venial- that is, if they have not been mortal, then they say to him, “ go in peace, thy sins be forgiven thee.” The virtue of your Infant Baptism remains. Faith which proceeded therefrom, whether you have ever been conscious of its operation or not,-faith, as the symbol and representative of Baptism, has not lost the life which it received in Baptism, since nothing but mortal sin can slay it. Therefore the cleansing from all sin, as well actual as original, which Baptism conveys, still abides. You are still regenerate and justified ; the cross is still erected within you; still have you “ an indwelling God; ” “ the righteousness of the law is fulfilled ” in you, and so are you accepted in God's sight. • But,' answers the enquirer, .My conscience cannot be satisfied in this way. What is my faith? I am no infidel, indeed. I receive the Christian religion as true. But I have never considered why. I receive it. It has come to me as a sort of inheritance. It is the faith of the Church in which I was baptized, and that is about all the reason I have known for retaining it. Experience of its power, internal evidence from its effects, I know of none. Besides, I am ignorant of its great and peculiar doctrines. There is the death of Christ, as set before me in the cross which is erected in the Church, and marked on my forehead. I really do not know any thing about it, except what that naked cross can tell me. I have heard of something called the atonement, as a great doctrine of the Gospel, but what it means I know not. Certain Protestants say, that I must look unto Jesus, embrace his cross by faith, put all my trust in what he did for me, and that, without this, I can have no peace with God; but this I have never done; Christ has never been directly in my thoughts when I have sought to be reconciled to God. I have attended church, kneeled and bowed, and made the sign of the cross ; I have kept my eye very much upon the image of the cross, over the altar, and have regularly taken the Holy Supper, and led a good moral life; I have not been profane, nor licentious, por a bad neighbour: I have fasted when directed by the church, and kept her feasts, and given alms to the poor ; but still I have not been directing my mind, and heart, and trust, at all to what Christ did for me on the cross; and for a very good reason, because I do not know what he did ; and yet you tell me that because I have i committed no deadly sin, I am still as entirely clear and justified before God, as I was when baptized in infancy, though I daily confess that I have erred and strayed like a lost sheep.' "Yes,' answers Oxford Divinity. Your case is uncommon. We do not often meet with a person so ignorant of what Christ did for us on the cross. But that does not hinder you from having a true and living faith. •ExPLICIT faith in the atonement is not necessary to justification. You believe the church, and whatever the church declares. In this way, you may be considered as believing in the atonement, not waiting to know what the church teaches in regard to it, nor presuming to ask why she teaches it. Thus you have an implicit faith. And this knowledge is enough to enable that faith to act as the representative of your baptism, and as sustaining the justification which your baptism communicated. Distinct reference to the cross of Christ is not required of your faith. A cross was erected within you at your baptism. Look to that, and all will be right. You have had a living faith ever since you were baptized, even in

your unconscious infancy. All you have to do is just to go on in the course you have so well begun; not to destroy by mortal sin, that • divine gift,' that glorious · Shekinah of the Word Incarnate,' that

angelic nature' which you received in baptism, and are now ennobled by. We must remind you, however, that all depends upon the accuracy of your knowledge of the difference between sins that are mortal, and sins that are not mortal. A mistake here is fatal. One mortal sin is death to all your baptismal blessings, and hopes, and dignities, and gifts. Consider well, then, whether you have ever committed a MORTAL sin.'

• But how shall I know ? (says the enquirer,) Give me some rule by which to judge.'

• A rule which shall so accurately guide you in all circumstances (says Oxford Divinity, of necessity,) that you shall be at no loss to determine, in each particular case, whether the sin was mortal or not, and especially a rule by which you shall be able so to determine as to all those sins which it is now impossible for you to remember, we canpot furnish you. Nothing but a general detinition can be given, subject in its application to circumstances.' *

• But (answers the enquirer,) I have now been living some sixty years. How can I call up all my sins, with all their circumstances. and bring them to the trial of a rule so general, and thus ascertain of each sin, out of those of every day and hour of my life, whether it was of one class, or the other? And yet on this all my consolation from my baptismal justification depends !!

• True, (answers Oxford Divinity,) we do not pretend to any better consolation. To enable you to know your precise state before God, so that you may bave anything better than an uncertain hope, is not our profession.'

Well then (says the enquirer,) the safest way is to believe the worst; that during my sixty years of sinning and confessing, in the midst of so much responsibility, required of God to love Him with all my heart and strength, and my neighbour as myself, I have, by thought, word, or deed, by omission or commission, committed, at