ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS.

Otago Witness, Issue 65, 14 August 1852, Page 2

ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS.

(From the Hampshire Journal.)

UNWELCOME DAYLTGIIT. '■ And add thy name, O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams."

Day is breaking. Silently, but very perceptibly, the new morn of intelligence advances. Things made for the night, and well-beseeming it, lose their comeliness as we lose our need of them. Candles are blown out and put by in dark closets. The gas lights which were but now the glory of our streets, " pale their ineffectual fires," until the lamplighter in merciful remembrance of what they have been, turns them off, and hides their humiliation. Many a scene, got up by human ingenuity and taste, and through the dark hours looking as brilliant

as the banqueting chamber in the palace of Oberon, undergoes a change of appearance like that of fine linen under a microscope — its colours are dim, its coarseness is obtrusive, its blemishes are revealed. Aye! and many a beauty returning home at dawn from the assemblies of gaiety in which her charms were held to be peerless, would do well to veil her face, and conceal from over-curious passengers those proofs, alas ! too palpable in the blush of morn, that art has been taxed for the supposed benefit of nature.

Day is breaking. Cock-roaches had better withdraw ! And you, ye little intruders, whose presence no one welcomes, and whose midnight revels the cleanly are not apt to encourage on their premises ; perhaps, for your own sake? the less you linger after daylight the better. No doubt you have homes where you bring up those " large little families" of yours upon anything but a vegetarian diet, and to these, wherever they may be— generally an impenetrable mystery to housekeepers — it certainly were safer for you to retire. Night is departing — depart you likewise I

"We noted some of the signs and proofs that the age is a thinking one, and that its thoughts are mainly occupied upon realities. Myriads are engaged in studying the laws of Nature, and in turning them to practical account. IVtyriads more, if not actually pursuing the investigation, are catching from those who do those habits of keen observation, and that disrelish of mere appearances and assumptions, which invariably precede any large acquaintance with the works of God. It bodes ill for pretences of all sorts, when men's intellectual exercises are carried on chiefly in a region of visible and tangible facts. The material universe has upon it, everywhere legible, the impress of divinity. There wants no Act of Parliament to settle its claims, nor to guard its honours. Nothing is labelled there with sonorous titles — no promise is there put forth that is not more than made good. "Work is done done to perfection, whether the eye of man heeds or neglects it. Everything is systematic, orderly, true. There is 'power, but it is not noisy. There is wisdom, but it is always reserved. There is beneficence, but it makes no parade. There is grandeur, but, withal, wondrous condescension. No exaggeration— no flattery. Courtly, but companionable. Worthy of .profoundest homage, but doing, without hesitation, most menial service. Human minds canhot abide long in this region — cannot frequently come in contact with these moral manifestations of physical science — without acquiring a faculty for detecting imposture, and nourishing into strength a natural distaste for it. The smell of a tap-room is not pleasant after an early walk over the mountains— nor are heel-taps of porter grateful to him who has just freshened and purified himself by bathing in a limpid stream.

Nevertheless, it is to intelligence thus generally sharpened, thus conversant with reality, thus braced and vivified by companionship with truths, that our State-ecclesiastics offer their miserable semblances of divinity. They fancy, too, and some folks who seldom look beyond their noses, agree with them, that they are making head-way. Romanism believes itself to be prospering on the continent — Anglicanism thinks it is making progress in Great Britain, and Priestism everywhere congratulates itself upon a renewal of its strength. Hollow — hollow, we say — hollow as a drum. Apostolical succession, sacramental efficacy, prelatical sanctity, clerical assumptions of dominion over men's faith, and all the old-world trumpery which modern Churchmen have re-laquer-ed — does Charles James of London, or Henry of Exeter, suppose that society believes in such trash ? What ! men whose business is with truths solider even than they seem ; is it imagined that they rely upon the asseverations of ecclesiastics touching their own necessity and influence in relation to the things of the soul and of God ? No, no ; the public may not very audibly denounce these pious fictions of the prelacy, but they have little faith in them. Belief rests very much more upon certain facts than upon mystical dogmas. For every one man who regards the bishops of the Church of England as representing the holy apostolical synod of Jerusalem, there are at least a hundred who believe them to be very rich, very grasping, not particularly honest, and by no means void of worldly ambition — elected to office by a sham, most unblushingly arranged and perpetrated under the very eye of Heaven — and invested with honours and privileges which they of Galilee would have repudiated with high-souled scorn. — For every one man who credits the self-glorification of Oxford and London, there are hundreds who receive as true the revelations of Horsman and Hall. And for every one man who trembles before the winking Madonna at Rimini, there are thousands who, in their hearts, curse the Pope and his Cardinals as incorrigible tyrants, and whose

spirits will leap forth in a shout of irrepressible joy, when the throne of the sovereign pontiff, as it will be, is hurled to the dust by outraged humanity. Day is breaking, and the Establishment remains. — Yes ! but how ? Having its roots in the religious convictions of men ? No, but in their dread of change, their sense of •worldly convenience, their love of respectability — poor guarantees for its stability when the stormy winds of revolution begin to howl ! Impostures cannot bear such light ; and it is very commonly known that the State Church is not what it pretends to be. Care to destroy it is not very widely awakened as yet. But faith in it is gone. Everything is conspiring to extinguish the last spark of that. It is an unreality in the midst of an age that gets to be every year more and more anxious for the real. It is a tree, the roots of which have been killed. It is a stage-scene surprised by early day. It is a weed which the sunshine withers. The institution, viewed externally, may appear unchanged — look at it in men's thoughts and hearts, and how many years' purchase is it worth ?

The Church by Act of Parliament, like a decayed tooth whose nerve is destroyed, will be gradually got rid of by life— surrounding life — the life of active minds. It may hold its place some time longer, but every day's use will loosen it. The country cannot feed on knowledge of any kind, without being painfully reminded of its unsoundness. The services of the dentist may be declined, but with no hope or wish of saving the dead incumbrance. That, it is generally felt, must go at last — but not necessarily by a wrench. Meanwhile, it is treated very tenderly, as loose teeth often are — is vised as lightly as may be, and is spared any rude shocks. — Gold ligatures are used to fasten it, and newly invented enamel to preserve it. But all is in vain. For as surely as vitality casts out dead matter, and light reveals what is worthless, so surely will the expanding intellectual life of the nation get rid of what it cannot assimilate nor quickcn — so surely, where sympathies are already destroyed, bodily extrusion will follow. Either the truthful thinking of the people must be stopped, or the State Church, as a sham amidst realities, will be presently put aside as a useless anomaly. ■ .