ness, his love of right, his fear of wrong; his restraint over himself, his consideration for others, and his loving kindness. They saw that for every sorrow he had a sympathy, and a helping hand for trouble; that the only thing in which he could not restrain himself was a boundless liberality. So they aimed to do right, that by wrong-doing they might not give him pain; they could not bear to wound a heart at once so tender and so pure.

But those little knew, who saw him in his social hour, how firm he was, and bold; when duty called him, how unbending. Two examples of this may suffice. Before the coronation of George IV., the Cabinet of Lord Liverpool was forced to consider what they should do if Queen Caroline presented herself for admission into the Abbey, which they learnt was her purpose. They resolved to refuse her admittance; and, at the suggestion of Lord Sidmouth, they fixed on Sir Robert Inglis to meet her at the Abbey door, to intimate to her the decision of the Government, and to see it enforced. Lord Sidmouth assured them that there was no one in London who would do this so effectually, uniting so much courtesy with such unbending firmness. Fully did he justify the opinion; for when the queen alighted, Sir R. Inglis approached her, and told her, with a manner at once the most deferential and determined, that he had orders not to admit her, and that these orders must be obeyed. Having thus announced his purpose, he offered her his arm to conduct her back to her carriage, when she yielded and retired. The other occasion many will remember, as it occurred in the House of Commons. It was after the Reform Act had passed, when the new Parliament had met; and, after the heat of a long agitation, in the novelty of a new experiment, the heaving elements were still seething from the Late at night, on one occasion, after a long debate, an old county member, a baronet, arose and amused the House by remarks which were dashed with a coarse buffoonery, bordering on profaneness. Such remarks, made offhand with a touch of piquant humour, are always sure, in a mixed assembly, to raise a thoughtless laugh. But the member for the University of Oxford rose, and, in the midst of "Ohs!" and shouts, and uproar, rebuked the offender and appealed to the chair. The feeling of the House was with the culprit; the Speaker was silent; the impression ran against the interruption. Why this interference? The rebuke was needless, it was over precise, it was puritanical. But the rebuke told, and went home. The more men thought, the more they approved. They felt that the warning was needed-was timely as well as salutary; and served, among a new audience, at the outset of their Parliamentary history, to check for the future the licentious outburst of profane remarks. Then, as men reflected, they

recent storm.

began to admire; they felt that, among those six hundred men, there was probably not one who would have done as Sir R. Inglis did. Many regretted the allusion, but who would have rebuked it? Who was at once so prompt and so bold, with such a sense of duty and such courage, and the mingled courtesy and calmness that enabled him to chastise the offence and to hold his position?

What his intellectual gifts were, those who sat with him for many years in the House of Commons, and in committees of the House, can bear witness. He was not a man of eloquence; he had little imagination; his words were correct and easy, but not remarkable. He had none of the quickness which causes surprises, none of the variety which gives constant charm, none of the novelty which abounds in happy illustration, nor the rich and pure Saxon vocabulary which supplies to some of our orators the materials of power. In these points he was inferior; but he was of easy speech, of ready resource, and of a memory at once full and accurate. Those who thought, from the preciseness of his manner, that they might with impunity attack him, found out, sooner or later, their mistake. They often met a blow which staggered them, and was the more severe that it was unlooked for. Out of that beaming and benignant countenance there could come, ever and anon, vigorous sallies. We remember when Mr. Shiel, in the height of his celebrity, attacked, as was not unusual with him, the member for Oxford, and taunted him with his prudent silence on some of the religious controversies of the day. What was his opinion on the Tractarian dispute? Would he break silence, and tell them? But the prompt answer, with a request that Mr. Shiel would inform the House of his views on a controversy much older and of greater celebrity, that had long divided the Church of Rome, turned the laugh against the orator, and showed him that in the bland Tory he had met his match. Nor will his contemporaries soon forget how, in one of the Irish debates, O'Connell, attempting to relieve his Church of the burden which weighed her down through her treatment of Galileo, ventured on the ignorance of his audience, and made some statements, derived from fancy rather than history; but was on the instant brought to book, and shown to be hopelessly wrong in dates, in facts, even in the name of the Pope: supplying thus a proof, that so long as Sir Robert Inglis sat in the House, no one could safely venture to forget or misquote history.

But we must defer to another article some further particulars of Sir Robert Inglis's character.

DEVICES OF SATAN PECULIAR TO THE PRESENT DAY.

Ir may be freely conceded to be a dangerous practice to ascribe all things of which we disapprove in our fellow-Christians to the immediate temptations of the Church's great Enemy. To do so, is to take for granted that we are right in all our views, and that those on whose conduct we animadvert, are clearly and unquestionably wrong. Such references, therefore, to the workings of the Evil One, should be cautiously and sparingly used. But it would be, perhaps, a still greater error to eschew all such allusions, and to censure invariably all who use them. Such an entire abstinence would savour of a readiness to be "wise above that which is written." We are plainly told in the Gospels of one of Christ's Apostles, that "Satan entered into him." And if it be objected, that this was "the son of perdition," and not a true disciple, we may point to another of the twelve, of whose love to Jesus no doubt can exist, yet to whom his Lord on one occasion exclaimed"Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou art an offence unto me," thus plainly showing that from the lips of a sincere follower he heard, at that moment, the voice of Satan himself. And hence we may fairly argue, that the accents of the Tempter may now also be perceived, even falling from lips which shall one day join in the song of the redeemed. While, therefore, we would be cautious in the use of such reference, we would not fall into the opposite error, of deeming all allusion to Satan's temptations to be rash and unlawful.

Perhaps we have never less need of caution in this respect than when we are characterizing attacks on God's own word. An inspired writer exclaims-"Thou hast magnified Thy word above all Thy name !" and we can scarcely err, when we stigmatize every attempt to impair the authority or the influence of that word, as unquestionably instigated by him who began his first temptation by the insidious question-" Yea, hath God said?"

This class of temptations seems more rife in the present day than in any former period of the Church's history. Never before was the Bible so widely circulated; never before were such wonders wrought by it, as have been seen in Madagascar and elsewhere. It can be no matter of surprise, therefore, to find the efforts of the Enemy redoubled, his darts re-sharpened, his objections to the truth of the Divine Word rendered more artful and more insidious. Hence the necessity for a brief and rapid survey of those objections-a survey sufficiently succinct to be easily read and retained in the memory; and yet

furnished with the simplest answers; so that these difficulties, when started in the course of daily life, may come upon no reader by surprise, or gain the advantage of an unguarded moment. Such a survey we shall now attempt to take, embracing all the ordinary objections to the credibility or autho rity of Scripture which are now commonly heard in every-day society; and pointing out the simplest solutions of the difficulties so brought before the mind.

I.

Foremost among these difficulties is one only recently pressed with any force or earnestness :-That we have not, in fact, any document to which we can point, as being what we call "The Word of God." This preliminary question is put in two dif ferent ways::

1. We have an insidious suggestion of a number of points. still in dispute, which, when credulously admitted and pondered, seem to leave the mind in doubt as to whether there be, in reality, any such document as we had supposed, when we had spoken, in time past, of a Bible-a word of God. In this way, very calmly and persuasively, does Dean Stanley speak, in his recent paper on "The Theology of the Nineteenth Century." He begins by remarking, that "in the early ages there was a real desire to know what the Bible was-what books it contained. That desire almost ceased in the cessation of mental activity at the fall of the Roman Empire. It was revived partially at the Reformation, but it attained its full force at the close of the last century and beginning of this." How gently and inoffensively is the idea here insinuated into the mind, that although in our Sixth Article we have a most positive and distinct statement of what the Bible contains, we do not, in fact, know anything with certainty about it; but have still to enquire, in almost total darkness, What is the Bible?

But this general idea of doubt and uncertainty is soon amplified into many particulars. The following questions rapidly follow each other, without any answer being supplied :

"What is the ancient text of the New and Old Testament?" "How far does it differ from that which is put forth as the received text in our Authorised Version ?"

"What are the consequences to our theological studies from the acknowledgment of the famous variations now finally recognized in the chief manuscripts of the New Testament?"

"What is the effect on our sermons of our becoming fully acquainted with the defects of our translation?"

Next comes a bold assumption, tending in the same direction-i.e., to lead us to doubt whether the books of the Bible are really what they appear to be.

"The composite origin of the Psalter, of the Pentateuch, of

Zechariah, of Isaiah, of the Chronicles, and of St. Luke:-how slowly, yet now, in principle, how universally acknowledged."

What is the meaning of acknowledging a fact "in principle"? But one half of what is here quietly assumed is not "acknowledged" at all. Who, except the German Rationalists and their followers, have ever acknowledged "the composite origin" of the Pentateuch, of Isaiah, of Zechariah, or of St. Luke's Gospel? The assumption is both reckless and insolent.

But let us pause for a moment, and see what a cloud of doubt and suspicion rises up out of the Pit, and strives to obscure the light of the sun of Divine Truth. It is here assumed or insinuated:

That there is a doubt what the Bible really contains; and how much of what we commonly call "The Bible," really deserves that name.

That, even when we have ascertained what books do actually belong to the Bible, there will remain the question of " various readings." So that even when we have admitted a Gospel into the Canon, we shall next have to consider how much of that Gospel was really written by St. Mark or St. Luke, and how much was foisted in, afterwards, by uninspired persons.

That, in addition to all this, there will remain the question of" the composite origin" of many books. For that it is argued, that all Isaiah's prophecies were not written by Isaiah, nor all Zechariah's by Zechariah, nor all the Pentateuch by Moses, nor all St. Luke's Gospel by St. Luke. In fact, on this view, the Bible consists of a number of gathered fragments, which still need to be carefully examined, in order that we may learn what ought to be in the book, and what ought not; and the grounds on which some parts are to be admitted, and other parts rejected.

Such is the position taken up, by a dignitary of the Church -by a man who must have repeatedly subscribed those Articles of the Church of England which distinctly recognise "Holy Scripture" as "the Word of God," and declare that "Holy Scripture" to be "those canonical books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church." He thus acknowledges a thing to be certain and unquestionable at one time, and then proceeds to represent it as uncertain and doubtful at another! It is not, therefore, surprising, that a layman, who has probably never subscribed the Articles at all, should state the case still more strongly. Accordingly, Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, in two or three sentences, distinctly sets aside the Bible altogether, saying,

"Mr. Keble tells us that, by the common law of the Church, it is laid down that the whole Bible is to be taken to be true, when fair criticism has ascertained what it is. This, of course, involves the admission, that the authorised version as it stands is not entirely true. Hence the common law of the Church is