the priest from his kind, and leaves him to deal with social interests of which he can have no experience, brings the penitent before him only in such forms as must end in mental debasement for the one, and tyrannical power for the other. The priest is neither husband nor father in the pure and legitimate sense of the word: all that he knows of the intercourse of the sexes is in connection with the baser and animal passions of our nature. Of the refinement and nobilities of love--of the sacred confidence of married life—of the humanizing influences of family intercourse, he knows nothing, or knows it only in the cold formulæ of an abstract science. The consequence is, as we have seen, out of the confessional, a body of men spending a whole life's study in concocting treatises concerning iniquities which married men never dream of; and, in it, defiling the minds of their penitents with the foulest queries. Again, we say, if we are to have Romish worship amongst us in its most flourishing form as the Pope and his Cardinal understand it-if we are to have Italian priests, an Italian confessional, and Italian practices in it-it is high time for every husband and father in the kingdom to bestir himself to resistance on behalf of those whom God has committed to him to honour, to cherish, and to support.

ART. X.-Memoir of the Rev. Edward Bickersteth, late Rector of Watton, Herts. By the Rev. T. R. Birks, M.A. London: Seeley. 1851.

IN the comparatively few instances in which our libraries will descend as an inheritance to our grandchildren, we are inclined to think that, as they run their eyes over the contents of the shelves before them, they will adjudge us often times to have set inordinately great store upon men of marvellously little worth, and far too frequently to have interested ourselves about characters that may appear to them to have had no particular characteristics. But the truth is, memoirs are the fashion of our days: they serve various purposes-they introduce many a very obscure family, in all its links and branches, into a nicely hot-pressed and cloth-bound octavo volume; and a very insignificant congregation, in a very small town, foists itself by this means into something like public notice. Cliques and parties are gratified equally with families, with the notoriety to which a well written ad captandum memoir is an introduction; and all sects-all denominations of Christians-resort to memoirs of their pastors and ministers as a most ready and cheap means of immor

talizing themselves. Hundreds upon hundreds of memoirs are the consequence: each sect and denomination striving to the utmost to exalt itself by showing forth its own peculiar excellence and holiness through the many pages of extracts of its late and lamented minister's diary and correspondence. To say that we are often wearied with what we read in these laudatory publications is to say but little : in page after page is to be found the self-same thought expressed in almost the same words. The writer of the diary had probably never more than one idea in his head, and it is next to impossible to make of that one a sufficient variety of subjects to interest the reader through four hundred pages. But weariness is not the only feeling they at times produce: sorrow frequently, disgust occasionally, is felt at the manner in which the most sacred subjects and the most holy of influences are introduced on the most trivial occasions, and for purposes exclusively personal and selfish and temporal. The Deity is implored to grant to the writer of the diary his darling wish-always with the same clause, however, that it may contribute to God's glory; but, through this transparent veil is too often seen the earthlymindedness and the mammon-seeking spirit of the writer"his words are of heaven, while his wishes are of earth." Diaries are good things in their way; and, when they truly detail the heart's daily communings with the word and the spirit of God-when they faithfully describe the soul's daily trials and experiences, its hopes, its growth in grace, and its consolations under all circumstances, all bereavements, all mercies, and all providences-they, no doubt, tend greatly to the soul's edification, and form a very useful index, at the concluding years of the writer's life, to its chief, or more stirring, or more exciting incidents. But to publish all such thoughts and spiritual exercises-such self-condemnations, with such self-glorifying and evident boastings-we cannot but consider it as in general highly unbecoming, and oftentimes injurious to the reputation of the writer, and, what is of far more consequence, injurious to the cause of true religion itself. And when the writer of the diary writes expressly for the future publication of his daily reflections on himself when he writes with the full knowledge that to the world will be revealed just so much and no more than he wishes to be revealed of his inward life and religious feelings-we account this in the simple-minded as the veriest vanity, and in the double-minded as sheer hypocrisy.

It would serve a good purpose, probably, to select some half dozen memoirs of religious persons, as they are called, and

from their several diaries to exemplify in a fuller manner than they intended their several characters, and to show the system upon which all such memoirs are compiled. It is a class of literature that is at present running very wild; and it would seem to be taken too much for granted, because it treats of the sayings and doings of men who have been taken from amongst us, that therefore their idolizers or their relatives may publish whatever they please concerning them, and without being in the least amenable to public opinion, or to good taste, or to criticism. We may on another occasion recur to this subject more fully, but at the present would speak only of the memoirs more immediately before us.

Edward Bickersteth was a man who needed no memoirs to lift him into notoriety: every county in England knew him well, and there were but few comparatively of the towns in the kingdom which had not seen him at times among them, and which had not heard him advocating with his accustomed zeal the cause of Christian missions and of religious associations. But England even was far too confined a field for his exertions, and to Ireland, therefore, he frequently went, and to Scotland at a time when travelling to the sister kingdom was at all times fatiguing, and oftentimes perilous. The whole world, however, was properly the field to which Edward Bickersteth looked for employment and occupation: his labours were everywhere seen or everywhere heard of-in every spot of the habitable globe where the Church Missionary Society had any influence. In India, Africa, and America, in Europe and Asia, the name of Bickersteth was as well known as any word of common acceptation among the Christian population; and great was the influence of that name among all to whom he was known in foreign countries, and more especially in our own. No name secured a more ready sale for a book than did his : no matter what was its subject, it was sure to run speedily through several editions to the mutual profit of both author and publisher. Not that Mr. Bickersteth was either an able writer or a clear reasoner, but he was a sincere man; and it was what he said, and not the manner of his saying it, that people cared about. Edited as these two volumes are-the first by Mr. Bickersteth's eldest daughter, and the second by that daughter's husband-they will secure to themselves very general attention, and will be received with much thankfulness by a very large portion of English Churchmen, and may be read with great profit by Christians of all classes and denominations.

Edward Bickersteth was a labourer in Christ's vineyard of no common character, of very uncommon zeal, and of very enlarged benevolence: he thought things possible which few even of his own most attached friends and warmest admirers could think of otherwise than as impossible: he thought the spirit of love, ȧyámn of St. Paul, could accomplish things as yet unaccomplished-could make all who name the name of Christ to love one another with a pure heart fervently. Not all his experience of Dissenters, not all their writings, not all their publicly-avowed hostile combinations against the Church, nor his platform meetings nor his private correspondence with them, could disabuse him of the charitable hope he would entertain that a truly Evangelical Alliance might be formed with them-that they would lay aside all their longcherished hostility to the Establishment-would readily forget all they had said that was bitter and sarcastic against the Church liturgy and the clergy, and would cordially unite with us in every work that had for its object the promoting of sound Christian knowledge in the world, and the extension and prosperity of the Church of Christ in all lands, and in all the parishes of our own. Nor did this hope ever leave him: he clung to it till his last hour: his own truthful spirit made him to trust implicitly to the professions made to him: he put the most charitable construction upon all that he heard and saw that had reference to the subject; and so much was his soul inclined to peace and good-will with all who called themselves Christians, and so sincerely did he believe that all who spoke and acted with him in this matter were as sincere as himself, that he could not resist declaring that there was such a manifestation of divine grace on the first meeting of the Evangelical Alliance-such a spirit of devotion in every prayer-such a spirit of praise and joysuch a heavenly and devout state of feeling among them, as to enable him distinctly and positively to say that the God of peace and love was with them throughout. In him, indeed, was verified, on this subject especially, as on many other subjects generally, that charity which hopeth all things, beareth all things, endureth all things, and he had much to endure in this matter that sadly grieved his own spirit; but that had little power to dim the brightness of his own hopes, and none whatever to chill his charity and love for those whom he ever delighted to consider and to call his brethren.

It was probably owing to the predominance of this feeling, to the general benevolence of his heart and of his thoughts towards others, that, humanly speaking, kept back Edward

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Bickersteth from breaking down much sooner than he did. His labours, daily and continually, mentally and physically, far exceeded those that could be undergone by ordinary men; and the multiplicity of the objects upon which he was incessantly engaged, and the minuteness of the details connected with them with which he was so frequently obliged to store his mind and to burden his memory, rendered his labours more than usually arduous, and the wear and tear of the intellect more than commonly speedy and destructive. But a spirit of love animated him to undertake and to carry on all that he did. The love of God and the love of his neighbour were with him the mainspring of all his movements: his delight was in doing good to all and in thinking charitably of all; and it might truly be said of him that his love towards God lightened all the labours he undertook for men. His life was a labour of love for the human race; and to promote the eternal happiness of the whole human family, he devoted all the powers of his soul, the faculties of his mind, and accounted no labours too great, and no exertions that could be made too arduous, to be withheld. In Edward Bickersteth, therefore, there would seem to have been a most happy combination of charity and zeal-neither in excess, but a very large measure of both-that enabled him throughout his rather lengthened life to do more for missions in the world—to do more for the furtherance of the Gospel among heathen nations-than hundreds of his contemporaries whose hearts were nevertheless with him, and whose contributions, liberally bestowed, powerfully assisted him.

It has often been said that no man in this country can be kept out of the place and rank he ought to occupy within it if he himself really cares to qualify himself for it. As a general rule there is, no doubt, much of truth in this statement; and we may cite Edward Bickersteth as an instance in confirmation of it. At the age of fourteen he was a clerk in the least intellectual department of the General Post-office; and such were its duties, and so monotonous were his employments, that at the end of a week he knew as much of its duties as when he left the office. To those who know what the man afterwards became it is a matter surprise that he should have remained so long, so little discontented, with such unimproving drudgery. That filial love, however, which characterised his whole life, was the main cause of his remaining so long without repining in an office which he felt was unworthy of him: it afforded him the means of existence, and he would do nothing that should cause his parents to feel any