Dear Bro. Thomas, —I cannot help wishing for your “Second Visit to Britain,” and the second British edition of Elpis Israel. You were welcomed by many during your first stay, and I am sure that a second visit would be hailed as a new era in the history of “the Latter Days.” The truth is gaining ground here gradually, as an illustration of which I may mention that a congregation is now in course of being formed on the principles historically set forth in the Acts of the Apostles in such language as—“They that gladly received his word were baptised”—interpreting the word by Peter’s speech in the light of the commission, and the teaching of Jesus and the first preachers—as “the word of the kingdom,”—Matthew 13: 19; as “the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ,” which Philip gospelised, or announced as glad tidings, —Acts 8: 12, (see Greek.) we are made up mainly from three sources. First, wandering believers of the kingdom’s gospel who have been trying for sometime to get embodied. Second, some who have left the meeting in South Bridge Hall. Third, the majority of a meeting in High Street for some years conducted on what are called free communion principles, and who have for a considerable time believed and preached the gospel of the kingdom, and have been baptised. The number in all may be nearly thirty.

I remain in the One Hope Yours,

J. Cameron Jun.

265 High Street, Edinburgh,

March 18, 1853.

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Respected friend, —No. 6 of the Herald came to hand last week, and the long expected account of your visit to Plymouth contained in it. Knowing the deep interest you feel in the Kingdom, I shall endeavour to give you some information how matters stand in this place. You are perfectly correct in the definition of the Faith held by the church in Plymouth, of which Mr. Micklewood was the pastor. The crotchet of the non-restoration of Israel, Mr. M. has not yet got rid of. His motive for bringing you to this place was twofold; first, a hope that by your lectures he might increase his congregation, which would be very likely to increase his income; and secondly, a desire to hear your exposition of the Scriptures of Truth. But alas, the seed sown was to him, I fear, like unto that sown in stony ground. He still continues at the Central Hall as a member. He is at present engaged in the stationery business with another person; and has declined the offer of going as a pastor, because his present business would be more advantageous. And now, dear Friend, as to the “One Hope” in this place. Through Elpis Israel some of us here saw that we were not united to Christ; for our baptism was but a mere ablution, being ignorant of the things concerning the Kingdom at the time of our immersion. Mr. D. came to this place about two years since, and baptised four of us into the name of the Holy Ones; since which time we have baptised sixteen more; so that we now number twenty, who meet together twice on every Lord’s Day in a large room at Stonehouse to commemorate the dying love of our Blessed Master, and endeavour to edify each other by reading the scriptures, singing praises, and by prayer. Thus, respected friend, your “labour of love” was not entirely lost by your journey to Plymouth. There are several more who would join with us but the necessity of believing the truth before baptism is the rock of offence to them.

I look anxiously every month for the Herald; I have endeavoured to aid it all I can in this place but without success, —Elpis Israel and the Herald give great satisfaction here to those who hear them read.

Remaining your’s faithfully in Israel’s Hope I subscribe myself,

J.W. MOORE.

Plymouth, England, June 29, 1853.

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We take the following from “The News of the World,” a weekly published in London. If our readers have discovered anything like what it reveals in Bishop Paul’s dealings with the Reverend Messrs. Timothy and Titus, we can only say that we have not; and that we shall be much obliged to them for light upon the subject. Our opinion, or rather conviction, is, that an ecclesiastical system that sanctifies such extortion and mammonism, is an adulteress, and of that family of Harlots whose mother is “Babylon the Great.” How grossly dark must be the generation that with the Bible in hand can pronounce the Church of England a section of the Church of Christ!

Sir, —Your observation on the “Reform of the Ecclesiastical Courts” and all things connected with them, might well be extended to the notices of the grievances to which clergymen are at present subject from the secretaries of their respected bishops. I allude to the exorbitant fees, &c. paid to them for institution and induction into preferment, as well as for ordination. Now, perhaps, you have never seen a bishop’s bill to a clergyman, so I will give you a true copy of one or two, which I have now by me: —“Correspondence about stamp to presentation and agents charges about letters of orders, £2 2s; stamp for presentation, £20; the bishop’s fiat, £2 2s; institution fees, £5; bishop’s mandate, £2 2s; sequestration fees, £1 15s; certificates and mace, 13s 6d; stamp, £2 2s; license for public preacher, stamp, £44; archdeacon’s mandate, £2 2s—total, £42 2s 6d.”

The following bill was paid a short time since in the diocese of Chester: —

“Drawing and engrossing presentation to parchment, £1 1s; writing to patron, 3s 8d; ditto to London, 3s 6d; drawing and engrossing commission and declaration of conformity under seal to qualify you thereto, drawing and engrossing letters of institution, the like mandate of induction, paid for stamps and attending registrar to fill papers, and paid his fees on filling same, secretary’s fees, and postage, £9 9s 6d; Mr. Burder’s charge for getting presentation stamp, £11 10s 2d—total, £22 7s 10.” These fees differ in all dioceses. I met a clergyman the other day, who had just been presented to two small livings which always go together, but the bishop’s secretary takes very good care that he shall have double fees to pay; the net annual value of the one living is £130, the fees to presentation in this case were £80. The second living was worth £50 a-year, and the fees he paid for this poor little living swallowed up his first year’s income from it. Now let me show you how the poor curate is charged for ordination, and if you ever read the 135^{th canon, you will find that where £. s. d. are mentioned in explicit terms, if they do not produce a “tidy sum,” the bishop’s secretary at once throws canons overboard. The canon is thus headed: —“A certain rate of fees due to all ecclesiastical officers.” “Provided furthermore that no fee or money shall be received, either by the archbishop or any bishop, or suffragan, either directly or indirectly for admitting of any into sacred orders, nor that any other person or persons under the said archbishop, bishop, or suffragan shall for parchment, writing, wax, sealing, or any other respect thereunto appertaining, take above ten shillings under such pains as are already by law subscribed.” This one would think is about as plain and clear as it can be. Now I paid for orders as under: —Deacon’s orders with license, £4 7s 6d; priests, ditto, £3 3s—total, £7 10s 6d; and on a change in my curacy the other day I was charged £1 18s 6d. The Times friend, Mr. S.G.O., with his comfortable living of £500 a-year, who finds time to run up and down the country spying out for abuses among his clerical brethren, and not confining himself to his own country, but must needs visit the Sister Isle to see how she fares on this respect, might be of some little use if he would drop the Times newspaper a note addressed from his own home, on such abuses as these I have mentioned to you. —}

I am, sir, yours obediently,

Birmingham. CLERICUS.

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When parental discipline destroys filial love, it is bad. Veneration is a mixture of fear and love, and is created in every well-organised child by strict discipline and kindness on the part of the parent. But a parent who is always beating, always frowning, scolding, and commanding, and never coaxing and caressing a child, can only be reared, and, ultimately, disliked. Children can never be beaten into goodness, any more than nations can be persecuted into orthodoxy. They generally love their mothers best, because they are most indulgent; but at last they find that indulgence is weakness, and then they learn to disobey the old lady, as they call her. They fear the father, because he is stern and severe; and at last they dislike him, and avoid his society, for his want of sympathy. Were the weakness of both parents combined in one, they would make a virtue. The joint and cordial cooperation of the two sexes makes the best discipline for children; but we are sorry to say, that there is very little of that cooperation to be found. The mother is generally a shield from the father, and her opposition always increases his severity, whilst his severity increases her indulgence. Children cannot be well reared unless parents are well married.

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“Life only through Christ” is a great truth very conspicuously exhibited in the Scriptures. But what benefit to the mortal inhabitants of earth is the preaching of it unless the preacher demonstrates beyond all question from those Scriptures, how men may obtain life through Him; in other words, “what they must do to be saved.” He that affirms the abstract proposition of “life only through Christ,” but is ignorant of, or opposed to, “the Gospel of the Kingdom,” and therefore does not, and cannot, bring men to “the obedience of faith” expressed in the being immersed into Christ, is a mere beater of the air, gymnasticising for his own behoof, and the glorification of a crotchet.

EDITOR.

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“We should bring our religious conceptions into definite alliance with the real world, and with nature, and break up a little of those vague and powerless notions which place our religious expectations at a dim remoteness from whatever is substantial and affective. Let us rather persuade ourselves that the future and unseen world, with all its momentous transactions, is as simply natural and true as is this world of land and water, trees and houses, with which we now have to do.”—Physical Theory of Another Life, C. 17.

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Rev. H. Harbaugh in his “Heaven,” Philad.edit. 1851, p.61, says, “There seems something undesirable, if not repugnant to our hopes, in the idea that at death we are to be launched forth into a world with no other material substratum but ether, or something still more subtle or refined. It grates on the feelings of one familiar with Scripture representations of heaven, and sounds wild and unnatural to a deeply pious christian consciousness.”

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There is no meeting an age of inquiry except in the spirit of profound candour. Men dare not write or talk now as Sir William Berkeley of Virginia, wrote to Charles I. “I thank God, said he, “there are no free schools or printing, and I hope we shall not have then these hundred years. For learning has brought heresy and disobedience, and sects, into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the government.”—Edinburgh Review.

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“It is said that even Irenaeus declared the idea that the souls of the Saints pass immediately at death to Christ into Heaven, to be heresy.”—Harbaugh.

Is not this testimony a refutation of the objection so often urged against the doctrine of future life only by resurrection, that it is a new opinion?

Homer, though an idolater was certainly “orthodox” as the following passage from the Odyssey proves:

“The rest at last, where souls unbodied dwell,

In ever flow’ring meads of asphodel;

The empty forms of men inhabit there,

Impassive semblance, images of air!”

Alas for a “Theology” which courts such “blind guides” for support and sympathy!

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