THE JUNIOR MASS-BOOK.

WHAT the theologians of the Tract School at Oxford have long been sighing for, as the breaking of a better day on the English Church, has suddenly burst forth with very startling effect in an unexpected quarter. We cannot indeed call it the dawn, which we know, when it does appear, brightens more and more unto the perfect day; it partakes much of the Aurora Borealis; sudden, surprising, and destined, we hope, to be evanescent. Indeed if it be not speedily extinguished before the better and ever-during light of divine truth, we must be content to give over at least one section of our Episcopate to the sheltering embrace of her whom the Tractarians delight to call " our venerated elder sister,” Babylon the Great.

Unless we had seen with our own eyes the "Communion Office" of the Episcopalians in Scotland, not even Mr. Drummond's last masterly publication* would have satisfied us. We should still have muttered a Can it be?' in the depth of our heart; and have surmised that surely some neutralizing, some qualifying item must somewhere exist. The fact of this "Office" being in common use in the North of Scotland, and being recently pronounced of primary authority in the Episcopalian Church in that country, as well as its being the prescribed form of communion at the consecration of a Bishop and at the

*The Scottish Communion Office examined, &c. Second Edition. Seeley and Burnside.

opening of a synod, bring it home to the conscience of every minister, if not of every layman, connected with that body. We, therefore, assured that a strenuous effort will ere long be made to re-model our English Communion Service by the same pattern, feel it a matter of most vital importance to drag it forward, and expose it without reserve.

We will just revert to Mr. Drummond's case, whose first two pamphlets we noticed in the reviewing department of our last Number; and who has since published two others. Personally, we do not know Mr. Drummond, nor are we acquainted with any mutual friend; therefore whatever we say of him is founded on the most impartial judgment, and from public documents on both sides. We are surprised and grieved at the lack of sympathy exhibited by the Christian press in England: we do not know why any should hold back from doing justice to a man who has not only most faithfully preached and laboured in the cause of our Lord Jesus Christ, but had the grace given him to SUFFER for His Name. We, at least, will speak out.

When a canon was framed, and carried into effect by the heads of the Episcopalian body in Scotland to silence Mr. Drummond's "irregularity" in supposing that because Paul told Timothy to "Preach the word, in season, out of season: reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine," therefore he was to do the same thing-When, seeing that they could find no fault in him except they found it concerning the law of his God, they made his too frequent and too public praying an excuse for getting rid of him; Mr. Drummond himself was as ignorant as we and our general readers were, of the existence

of this "Communion Office." He made a stand for the privilege, for the principle, of teaching and exhorting his flock, as his Master had given him both charge and example to do; and for this the alternative was left him of submitting to the utmost stretch of ecclesiastical tyranny, or dissolving the connexion with these rulers of the Episcopal body in Scotland; which he, as a Clergyman of the Church of England, ordained here, could very properly do. His congregation, however, dearly loving him, long knowing his value, and feeling that such arbitrary proceedings ought every where to be resisted by such as consider Christian liberty more than a mere name, rallied around him: they now meet in a hired room, until they shall have built him a church: and we trust they will experience nó farther delay in that excellent work than what is requisite for putting together the bricks and mortar. To suppose that they will not receive contributions from every quarter where a pious pastor's ministrations are valued, would be to do the Christians of England great injustice.

But, having so far submitted as to resign his charge, with the purpose of resuming it whenever the point of social prayer with his flock should be conceded, Mr. Drummond was told by an English Clergyman of the existence of a form in the service of the Episcopal community in Scotland, which proved, on examination, to be so grossly heterodox as to render it impossible for any man, maintaining a scriptural protest against Rome, to remain under the possibility of being required to join in it. In short, an idolatrous and therefore a blasphemous perversion of Christian truth: a plain, unvarnished, undisguised profession of the doctrine of Transubstantiation.

We have now before us two books: one is entitled "The Roman Missal for the use of the laity, containing the Masses appointed to be said throughout the year." This is the authorized standard of Popery, as used by the whole Romish community, all the world over: the original latin being in parallel columns with the translation. The other book is entitled, "The Office for the holy communion according to the use of the Scottish Church." Not that it has the most remote connection with the Scottish Church; but the party to whom this junior Massbook belongs are in the habit of calling themselves THE Church, in every place, according to ancient precedent. “The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, are these." This little book has a cover of very emphatic purple, while all its pages are bordered with scarlet lines: its title is in dazzling scarlet hue: its rubric is all scarlet in short it is so studiously "arrayed in purple and scarlet colour," as to put the simple, who believe that the description of the Woman seen by the Apostle John was given by inspiration of God to be profitable for our warning and instruction, very much on their guard.

We refer such of our readers as can procure the last pamphlet of Mr. Drummond, to that excellent exposé of the "Office;" we will merely give them the parallel passages relating to the pretended change of the elements in the Lord's Supper, as they occur in King Edward VI.'s revised liturgy: in our own Prayer-book, in Laud's service book for Scotland, in the Mass-book of Rome, and in this communion office. They are all taken from the Prayer of Consecration.

I. King Edward's Liturgy :-" Hear us, O merciful Father, we beseech thee; and grant that we, receiving these thy creatures of bread and wine, according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of his most blessed body and blood."

II. Our present Common-Prayer book:-the same words.

III. Laud's service book :- "Hear us, O merciful Father, we most humbly beseech thee, and of thy Almighty goodness vouchsafe so to bless and sanctify with thy word and Holy Spirit, these thy creatures and gifts of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the body and blood of thy most dearly beloved Son, so that we receiving them according to thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ's holy institution, in remembrance of his death and passion, may be partakers of the same, his most precious body and blood." &c.

IV. Popish Missal:—“Which oblation do thou, O God, vouchsafe in all respects to bless, approve, ratify, and accept; that it may be made for us the body and blood of thy most beloved Son Jesus Christ our Lord."

V. The communion office, as established in the present Episcopal Church in Scotland:- "Wherefore, O Lord, and heavenly Father, according to the institution of thy dearly beloved Son, our Saviour Jesus