18 FEBRUARY 1899, Page 14

THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH. To TEE EDITOR Or THE

" SPECTATOR '1 SIB,—In the heat and tension of the present crisis, when party enthusiasm tends to make us forgetful of something far greater—Christian charity—may I call attention to the words of Frederick Robertson, which, however familiar to many, are not allowed too large a place in our dealings with one

another ?

In the midst of party strife, it may be that to some of us "he being dead yet speaketh." And it is interesting to find him saying, as early as the year 1850, that "no one who can read the signs of the times can help perceiving that we are on the eve of great changes, perhaps a disruption of the Church of England." He goes on to say :--

" We congratulate ourselves that the days of persecution are gone by ; but persecution is that which affixes penalties upon rims held, instead of upon life led. Is persecution only fire and sword ? But suppose a man of sensitive feeling says, The sword is less sharp to me than the slander : fire is less intolerable than the refusal of sympathy ! Now let us bring this home; you rejoice that the faggot and the stake are given up;--you never persecuted—you leave that to the wicked Church of Rome. Yes, you never burnt a human being alive—you never clapped your hands as the death-shriek proclaimed that the lion's fang had gone home into the most vital part of the victim's frame ; but did you never rob him of his friends ?- gravely shake your head and oracularly insinuate that he was leading souls to hell?—chill the affections of his family?— take from him his good name? Did you never with delight see his Church placarded as the Man of Sin, and hear the platform denunciations which branded it with the spiritual abominations of the Apocalypse ? Did you never find a malicious pleasure in repeating all the miserable gossip with which religious slander fastened upon his daily acts, his words, and even his uncommuni- cated thoughts ? Did you never forget that for a man to work out his own salvation with fear and trembling' is a matter difficult enough to be laid upon a human spirit, without in- truding into the most sacred department of another's life— that, namely, which lies between himself and 99d, Did you never say that ' it was to be wished he should' go to Rome,' until at last life became intolerable,—until he was thrown more and more in upon himself ; found himself, like his Redeemer, in this world alone, but unable, like his Redeemer, calmly to repose upon the thought that his Father was with him? Then a stern defiant spirit took possession of his soul, and there burst from his lips, or heart, the wish for rest—rest at any cost, peace anywhere, if even it is to be found only in the bosom of the Church of Rome ! "