organization and government. Men readily see difficulties in the way of any enterprise, when they do not wish well towards it. It certainly will not be hard to agree upon the mode of doing this work, when we shall have agreed upon the actual want of the work itself. The existence of the kind of work which women may do, may we not say, which women ought to do, is undeniable. Every large town and city affords its own variety; and we cannot deny that much, very much of the work, is now undone. And yet, there are women, who can do it, and wish to do it; the sympathy to encourage them, and a knowledge of the best methods of guiding and employing them, are sadly wanting. It is to awaken attention to the subject, that we have written; and if we shall but excite in earnest Christian minds a spirit of enquiry, and lead to its more complete development by others, we shall not have written in vain. No time is more fitting for this enquiry than the present, when so many of our countrymen are sick and wounded in camps and hospitals, and so many of their families left fatherless and friendless. No such opportunity has arisen in our generation for the practising of the golden rule of Christianity; and women now, if they will faithfully do the work, which is awaiting them, may be imitators of them who were last at the Cross and first at the Sepulchre, and may share with them the Saviour's benediction at the last.

ART. IV.-GRACE: THE CHURCH: THE SECTS.

It is an admitted fact of Divine Providence, that Spiritual gifts are vouchsafed to men outside the Church. Not only is this true as it respects individuals, but it is true of individuals organized into religious Societies which are not of the Church, that they are permitted in Divine Providence to do, at least to some extent, the work of the Church. Men are converted under sectarian ordinances, live religiously under the same, and die in Christian hope.

How then is all this to be explained? It assuredly is not to be explained by denying the facts, or by seeking to explain them away. To say that the Christianity of such a holy liver as Joseph John Gurney, or as Dr. Chalmers, is not a real Christianity, is to say that which is equally unwise and uncharitable. We doubt not, for a moment, that the religion of these good men would have been of a far higher and fuller order, had the grace given them been developed in them in connection with the higher gifts of the Church; but to insinuate that their religion was not that of a true and substantial Christianity, would be a dangerous error. The essence of the Christian religion in a man, consists in the devotion of his being to the Lord Jesus Christ: by every sign whereby we can judge in the case, pious Friends, Methodists, Presbyterians, have the feeling. They love the Saviour; they love His Word; they love those who love Him; they labor to do His will; they give to His cause, (many of them in a way which ought to shame the Church,) they could die for Him, and they do die trusting in Him. This is, assuredly, Christian religion. How do they come by it, seeing the Societies of which they are members are not of the (hurch? These organizations are, all of them, human contrivances, and therefore, once for all and forever, they are not of the Church.

We hold the Church to be the channel of Grace to men, and, with certain qualifications, indicated in Scripture and acknowledged in Providence, the sole, certainly the only authorized

channel of Grace to man. When our Lord Jesus breathed upon His Apostles, then and there was constituted the alone Organization, in virtue of which the Truth and Grace of Redemption are continued among men ; and when, soon after, at Pentecost, the Eleven met the brethren, and the Holy Ghost came down, then and there, and, once for all and forever, was completed and consummated the Christian Church, as respects its Divine Organization. There was, doubtless, by Inspired direction, soon instituted an orderly subdivision of Ministry, which we still retain,—but the essence of the whole matter resided in those upon whom the Saviour breathed. Without them, or their successors, to the end of time, that Divine and Inspired organization, which is the Church, cannot be. And without that very and identical Church, the Truth and Grace of Redemption cannot possibly remain in the world. If, at any moment, the Church had failed, then, ipso facto, the gates of hell had prevailed. Of the three elements under which the Church was made manifest at Pentecost;-the Spirit of the Lord, believing people, and sent Apostles,—no uninspired man may say, that any one is more or less necessary than another, in order to its actual and continued existence.

Believing, as Churchmen do, that thus and so the Bible teaches, and not otherwise, by concession, no not for an hour, we may be legitimately required to make some explanation of the facts spoken of and admitted, that Grace is, nevertheless, given to individuals, and to Societies of men, which are manifestly schismatical in relation to the one Divine Organization, which is the Church.

Some Church-writers have sought to make explanation of the spiritual phenomena of Schism, by considering the entire state of Christendom, at present, as the Body of Christ divided, and attributing a measurable vitality to the disjecta membra, each according to its own proportion. But this is, manifestly, destructive of all Scriptural and Primitive teaching. The Bible gives us no reason for supposing, that any portion, severed from the Body, can retain its vitality, as such, any more than the branch severed from the tree, or the arm from the body.

Others have sought to make out a well defined theory, as it respects the division and distribution of Spiritual gifts. They would say, that the gifts of Priesthood are strictly confined to the Episcopal channel, but that the gifts of Prophecy, that is, speaking for God, are not so confined, but are freely given outside the Apostolic line, as shown in the converting and edifying preaching and writing found in the midst of Dissent. And when we consider not only the nature but the design and ends of the Church, that Christ is not only the Way, but the Truth and the Life, that mere Order cannot save this, that, and the other Branch of the Church from extinction, and has not done it, though the Church herself shall not decay,-we say that there is more to be said in favor of this view than of the former one. This supposes the gift to be given to the possessors as individual believers; the other, that they accrue to them in virtue also of vitality remaining in their schismatic organizations. The objection to the theory is, that the Prophetic gift (the authority, that is, to preach the Gospel and teach religion) was given to the Apostles, and is no less a part of Priesthood, than is Absolution or Consecration.

Altogether the best way of getting along with the difficulty is, to hold no positive theory on the subject, except that the Church, that is, that religious and Divine and Inspired organization, which has for the necessity of its being, that it shall be based upon Apostles,-is the alone Pillar and Ground of revealed truth among men, and the alone authoritative teacher thereof. We may then in safety look at the apparent exceptions in Divine Providence-freely acknowledging the presence of the Spirit, wherever we behold the fruits of the Spirit, and at the same time only the more religiously and the more thankfully holding the Head. We thus, with a salutary wonder, acknowledge all Spiritual gifts outside the Apostolic line, whether near the Church or remote from it, as a simple mystery of Divine Providence, and receive in such acknowledgment the reward of our Faith. We know, in the essentially analogous case of the former Covenant, that the supernatural gifts and favors of God were not confined by God to the chosen nation; yet it was not the less true, that, in

connection with the call and existence of the Theocracy, Grace was to be sought by those for whom the Theocracy was ordained. The two, who were found prophesying in their tents while Moses ordained the Seventy, may have prophesied truly, yet they had no authority to prophesy. Those found by the Seventy sent by our Lord, casting out devils in His name, did so effectually, but not with authority. They were not to be forbidden, nor were they to be acknowledged. We have express Scripture for knowing, that Christ can be preached even of schism, and the same Scripture informs us that schism is sin.

That there should be Grace, therefore, outside the Church, is no more than what, from the whole course of Divine Providence, we should expect, and its phenomena are, palpably, of the nature of exceptions which prove the rule. It is universally the case, that by how much a man is a thorough Churchman, by so much does he find the less difficulty in receiving the facts. There is no theory in the world which can so cordially accept these facts, as the theory which holds, that the Church is the Fullness of Him Who is the Fullness of God, and that that Church is seen of men, only as it is made manifest in the continued line of those upon whom the Lord breathed His own power and Grace for its foundation. By how much the more firmly a man believes the Scripture that God is good, by so much the less disturbance does his faith receive from the apparent oppositions of Providence-even so, by how much the more heartily does a man believe that the Church is the sole authorized channel of Grace, by so much the less is this his faith disturbed when he sees men, outside that revealed Order, living lives and dying deaths which nothing but the › Spirit of Christ can enable a man to do. It is not their human system which so lives and so dies; that, inasmuch as it is such, is mere schism, and all schism is sinful-but it is the individual who has thus received Grace, notwithstanding his uninspired system. That a man can be the recipient of Grace, while (not wilfully) under a schismatic system, is no more a mystery, than that a man can be a recipient of Grace, while (not wilfully) under any other habit of evil. We wish, here and throughout, to be understood as speaking of the systems of schism, and not of individuals. We distinctly recognize