was laid aside. The mournful news that Joseph John Gurney was dead was caught up by widows and orphans, by poor and by rich. There was scarcely one who did not feel that he had lost a friend.

The funeral day was ushered in by the tolling of the bells of various churches; and at an early hour the shops were closed, to enable all classes to take part in the simple ceremony of a 'friend's' obsequies. Many in carriages and on foot, amongst the latter number being a large proportion of children from the British schools, in which he had taken great interest, went out to meet the hearse. There was nothing in the procession to excite curiosity or to gratify a vulgar taste for a pompous show. The plain, unplumed hearse, the sober carriages, and the absence of all hired sorrow, all vain insignia of grief, showed plainly that love and real sorrow for the departed influenced the multitude. As the procession neared the city, the numbers swelled considerably. Every vacant space was occupied; but there was a solemnity and decorum in the spectators that told of their depth of feeling. One might almost have supposed that the spirit of the departed exercised its wonted influence in stilling, as it had often done before, the tumult and excitement of multitudes, and that he being dead yet spake.

The simplicity of such a funeral formed an appropriate close to this great man's life. When the cortège approached the burying-ground, the immense crowd outside were, by special arrangements of the police, prevented from accompanying it further, some thousands of persons being already congregated within. A band of gentlemen, linked arm in arm, stood on each side of the long narrow pathway leading to the tomb, along which the coffin was carried to its last resting-place by six members of the Society. During the whole ceremony, not one of the large multitude moved, and a profound silence was strictly preserved-so fitted for the solemn occasion of the committal of earth to earth and dust to dust. The company of mourners who followed were permitted to gather around the open sepulchre in perfect quiet, within an ample space allotted for their accommodation. A few simple and appropriate remarks were made, the coffin was lowered, and the nearest and dearest connexions with representatives of the whole population of Norwich took their last farewell of Joseph John Gurney. What funeral oration, what flowery panegyric, what storied urn or flattering epitaph could have been a nobler tribute than was the heart-grief of the thousands present at that unostentatious funeral! The tears of mourning multitudes watered his tomb. His memory is to this day embalmed in the affections of his survivors. His spirit has long ago ascended to Him who gave it; but to forget Joseph John Gurney were to forget a father and a friend; and many a child who has never seen his face on earth is yet taught his venerated name at the mother's knee, and its little heart is warmed to follow the path of that just man, which was as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.'

H. R. G.

Ruskin on Church Matters.

[About this time last year, there was to be seen among the book advertisements, the announcement of a pamphlet entitled 'Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds. By John Ruskin, M.A., author of "the Seven Lamps of Architecture."" For a time we, in our innocence, supposed that the work answered to its title, and that the gifted author of The Modern Painters' had stooped from loftier themes to enlighten the agricultural mind, on a very prosaic, however practical, topic. We suspect that, in some circles at least, a similar notion has kept these 'Notes' on the shelves of the publisher, when a less figurative title would have found for them thoughtful and greatly pleased readers. They in fact relate to some of the most important ecclesiastical controversies of the day, and form a not unimportant lay-contribution to our anti-puseyistic literature. Earnest and truthful, as is all that our author has written, these pages are refreshingly pithy, racy, and suggestive; and though the writer, in regard to some great truths, sees men as trees walking, and dogmatizes somewhat crudely on episcopacy and the separation of Church and State, yet his positions are in the main most sound, and such as are far more likely to meet with acceptance among Nonconformists than in his own Church. We cull a few passages, both because we believe they will be new to most of our readers, and that they may put themselves in possession of the whole.]

THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH.

THERE is, in matters of doctrine, no such thing as the authority of the Church. We might as well talk of the authority of a morning cloud. There may be light in it, but the light is not of it; and it diminishes the light that it gets, and lets less of it through than it receives, Christ being its sun. Or, we might as well talk of the authority of a flock of sheep-for the Church is a body to be taught and fed, not to teach and feed: and of all sheep that are fed on the earth, Christ's sheep are the most simple (the children of this generation are wiser): always losing themselves; doing little else in this world but lose themselves;never finding themselves; always found by Some One else; getting perpetually into sloughs, and snows, and bramble thickets, like to die there, but for their Shepherd, who is for ever finding them and bearing them back, with torn fleeces and eyes full of fear.

WHO ARE THE CLERGY?

I THINK I can hear certain people answering, That the clergy are folk of three kinds :-Bishops, who overlook the Church; priests, who sacrifice for the Church; deacons, who minister to the Church; thus assuming in their answer, that the Church is to be sacrificed for, and that people cannot overlook and minister to her at the same time; which is going much too fast. I think, however, if we define the clergy to be the 'spiritual officers of the Church,'meaning, by officers, merely people in office, we shall have a title safe enough and general enough to begin with, and corresponding too, pretty well, with St. Paul's general expression #goïoraμivos, in Rom, xii. 8, and 1 Thess. v. 13.

WHAT SHOULD BE THE OFFICES AND AUTHORITY OF THE CLERGY?

I HAVE hitherto referred to the Bible for an answer to every question. I do so again; and behold, the Bible gives me no answer. I defy you to answer me from the Bible. You can only guess, and dimly conjecture, what the offices of the clergy were in the first century. You cannot show me a single command as to what they shall be. Strange, this; the Bible give no answer to so apparently important a question! God surely would not have left His word without an answer to anything His children ought to ask. Surely it must be a ridiculous question-a question we ought never to have put, or thought of putting. Let us think of it again a little. To be sure, it is a ridiculous question, and we should be ashamed of ourselves for having put it. What

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should be the offices of the clergy? That is to say, What are the possible spiritual necessities which at any time may arise in the church, and by what means and men are they to be supplied; evidently an infinite question. Different kinds of necessities must be met by different authorities, constituted as the necessities arise. Robinson Crusoe, in his island, wants no bishop, and makes a thunderstorm do for an evangelist. The University of Oxford would be ill off without its bishop; but wants an evangelist besides; and that forthwith. The authority which the Vaudois shepherds need, is of Barnabas, the Son of Consolation; the authority which the city of London needs is of James, the Son of Thunder. Let us then alter the form of our question, and put it to the Bible thus: What are the necessities most likely to arise in the church; and may they be best met by different men, or in great part by the same men acting in different capacities? and are the names attached to their offices of any consequence. Ah, the Bible answers now, and that loudly. The Church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the corner-stone. Well; we cannot have two foundations, so we can have no more apostles nor prophets; then, as for the other needs of the Church in its edifying upon this foundation, there are all manner of things to be done daily;-rebukes to be given; comfort to be brought; scripture to be explained; warning to be enforced; threatenings to be executed; charities to be administered; and the men who do these things are called, and call themselves, with absolute indifference, deacons, bishops, elders, evangelists, according to what they are doing at the time of speaking. St. Paul almost always calls himself a deacon; St. Peter calls himself an elder, 1 Pet. v. 1; and Timothy, generally understood to be addressed as a bishop, is called a deacon in 1 Tim. iv. 6, forbidden to rebuke an elder in v. 1; and exhorted to do the work of an evangelist in 2 Tim. iv. 5. But there is one thing which, as officers, or as separate from the rest of the flock, they never call themselves; which it would have been impossible, as so separate, they ever should have called themselves; that isPRIESTS.

THE LAITY.

ALTHOUGH the Protestant laity do not often admit the absolving power of their clergy, they are but too apt to yield, in some sort, to the impression of their greater sanctification; and from this instantly results the unhappy consequence that the sacred character of the layman himself is forgotten, and his own ministerial duty is neglected. Men not in office in the Church suppose themselves, on that ground, in a sort unholy; and that, therefore, they may sin with more excuse, and be idle or impious with less danger, than the clergy; especially they consider themselves relieved from all ministerial function, and as permitted to devote their whole time and energy to the business of this world. No mistake can possibly be greater. Every member of the Church is equally bound to the service of the Head of the Church; and that service is preeminently the saving of souls. There is not a moment of a man's active life in which he may not be indirectly preaching; and throughout a great part of his life he ought to be directly preaching, and teaching both strangers and friends; his children, his servants, and all who in any way are put under him, being given to him as especial objects of his ministration. So that the only difference between a church officer and a lay member, is either a wider degree of authority given to the former, as apparently a wiser and better man, or a special appointment to some office more easily discharged by one person than by many; as, for instance, the serving of tables by the deacons; the authority or appointment being, in either case, commonly signified by a marked separation from the rest of the church, and the privilege or power of being maintained by the rest of the church, without being forced to labour with his hands or encumber himself with any temporal concerns.

Bible Illustration.

FOR SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHERS.

(Condensed from a Communication to the 'Athenæum,' by Miss Fanny Corbeaux.).

THE METEREOLOGICAL PHENOMENA OF THE EXODUS.

THE direction of the wind which parted the Red Sea at the Exodus has always occasioned a difficulty in our comprehension of the account. It is very unnatural-it is, in fact, incomprehensible, only because it seems absurd that in indicating the means which produced the effect, the historian should have assigned a means which would not have that effect. For, as the general direction of the Arabian Gulf is nearly north by south, it is not by an east wind that the average level of the sea, at its northern extremity, could be sufficiently lowered to enable the people to pass across a shallow place usually regarded as impassable on foot, even at low tide. wrought in that locality only by the physical instrumentality of a powerful wind Such a physical phenomenon could be blowing steadily for several hours from a northern quarter.

The difficulty may be partially met by the suggestion, that the expression corresponding to the Hebrew Dm, ruah kadim, is frequently used at the present time in the East to denote a violent, destructive, or parching wind, without any particular regard to the quarter from whence it blows. guide,' says Dr. E. Robinson, as well as our other Arabs, called the wind which we had yesterday, Our (Bibl. Res. vol. i. p. 305.) If we could obtain a reasonable amount of evidence "Shurkiyeh," an east wind, although it blew from the south.' that the ancient Hebrew usage of ruah kadim admitted of a corresponding idiomatic extension in meaning, the difficulty would be wholly smoothed away as far as regards the Hebrew text of the account of the Exodus.

The various ways in which this expression is found translated as a parching wind by the Septuagint, is of the greatest assistance in this examination. There are eight instances of this-viz. Job xxvii. 21; Jer. xviii. 17; Ezek. xvii. 10, xix. 12; Hos. xii. 2, xiii. 15; Jon. iv. 8; and Gen. xli. 6, 23, 27; where ears blasted with the kadim,' are simply rendered oraxves aveμóplopo—' wind-blasted

ears.

The root originally denotes what is in front,' 'before,' and applied to the sea would mean a wind blowing in front of, right against the course of the tidal current. If the Hebrew word is employed figuratively, in a moral sense, this notion is kept in view. Of this there are two instances,-in Job xv. 2, and in Isaiah xxvii. 8. If the Hebrew word is used either literally or figuratively in relation to its effects on vegetation, the same idiomatic usage is kept up; viz., describing it by its effects as the burning-up or parching wind. Seventy have deliberately cast aside the local qualifications of the wind they have invariably adopted as equivalent to the Hebrew kadim (front or east) the Where the Greek name of the south wind, vóros. There are five instances of this singular anomaly,-viz. Exodus x. 13, xiv. 21, Job xxxviii. 24, Ezekiel xxvii, 26, and Psalm Ixxviii. 26.

Hence we learn that in Palestine the wind called vóros by those who spoke Greek was notorious for producing the same physical effects as those ascribed by the Hebrew writers to their kadim. naturally have become the Greek equivalent of kadim (east or front wind) in Thus, vóros (south wind) may very the Septuagint.

There is a peculiar confirmation of this in Psalm lxxviii. 26. In this passage, which is a direct allusion to this very phenomenon of the Exodus wind,-the Seventy have not only rendered kadim in the first verse of the distich by vóros,

according to their wont, but, what is still more extraordinary, they have actually chosen another word, aßàs (moist), to render the Hebrew teman (right hand, or south). Thus, by a double series of tokens, it is made manifest that in their peculiar usage of vóros the Seventy cannot ever have intended a wind blowing from a particular quarter (the south), but a wind notorious for particular physical qualities.

By this examination we are spared from any further misunderstanding of the Hebrew historian's meaning in his reference to the Exodus wind, and of that of the Seventy in their version of it. According to its radical signification, the wind which sent out the waters was a fronting wind, blowing against the tidal current, and thus coming from the north;-according to the idiomatic usage of the term it was a tempestuous and parching or drying-up wind, since it produced that effect on that occasion. And if we have not understood them, it is because we hastily judged them by a single passage, instead of deliberately comparing them with themselves.

Lotices of Books.

The Half Century: its History, Political and Social. By Washington Wilks. London: Gilpin. Pp. 344.

We know of few works which we could recommend to the earnest study of thoughtful men before a just and able history of the past half century, for if a knowledge of history is indispensable to a proper understanding of the causes and relations of events, a knowledge of modern history is peculiarly so to any understanding of present occurrences. As well might one attempt to interpret the mystery of the Cross without a history of Man, as seek to attain to a perfect knowledge of the men and things surrounding him without the aid of the key furnished by an acquaintance with the events of the past generation.

Mr. Wilks has attempted, in the book which lies before us, to write the 'inner life' of the nation during the last fifty years, to review the circumstances of its social, intellectual, and political progress, and to draw therefrom such lessons as they may well and powerfully teach;-in this, however, forgetting or ignoring Bacon's judgment, that it is the true office of history to represent events themselves, together with their counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man's judgment.' It must be at once apparent, that for all historical purposes, such a work as this must be written at a great disadvantage in our own day; and if the book before us pretended to discuss and settle disputed questions and events, it would necessarily be a failure. So far as we are able to judge, however, the writer of the 'Half Century' has neither the ambition nor the hope in his present performance to take rank with the greater historical authorities. If he has, he is doomed to inevitable disappointment, for a writer who starts with the avowed intention of constructing a theory of national life' from the events of his age cannot expect to be regarded as an unprejudiced authority, in matters either of social or political history.

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The author has divided his work into three sections: the first including the period from 1800 to 1815; the second from 1815 to 1830; and the third from 1830 to 1850. What a life has the world passed through in these three