himself. In his eye we were
all morally dead; all virtue was gone clean out of us; the Church was in
darkness and in the valley of the shadow of death. Nor had Dissent one
ray more of Gospel light. Under the mask of patriotism he saw the
grovelling soul of the placeman; in the love of liberty the desire of
licence; in the rulers of the land a lamentable lack of understanding; in
the people a blind, senseless, untaught mass. Drummond was such a one as
Tennyson describes:--

"Thou shalt not be saved by works;
Thou hast been a sinner too.
Ruined trunks on wither'd forks,
Empty scarecrows I and you."

Thus did he perorate with the thinnest of voices, and gentlest manner, to
a House of which, for many sessions, he was the delight and puzzle, all
the while he was a member of the Irvingite Church.

A great claim is set up by this Church. Like Aaron's rod, it is to
swallow up all the rest. So great is its hatred of sects, it forms a new
one. While calling itself the holy and Apostolic Church, it makes no
exclusive claim to the title. It acknowledges it to be the common title
of the one Church baptized unto Christ. It claims to be no body of
separatists from the Church of England. The members recognise the
continuance of that Church from the days of the Apostles, and of the
three orders, bishops, priests, and deacons, by succession from the
Apostles. They have no sympathy with Dissent in any of its forms. That
is schism, and is to be condemned accordingly. They meet in separate
congregations, but they are not open to the charge of schism, on the
ground of their meeting being permitted and authorized, so they say, by
an ordinance of paramount authority which they believe God has restored
for the benefit of the Church. At once their ecclesiasticism strikes the
most superficial observer; the idea of the Church, that it is a mere
assembly of believers, is rejected by them on every occasion and in every
way. Their great glory is that the Apostolical order exists and is
manifested in them.

Their special teaching is something more. It is often asked, Are the
days of Pentecost gone never to return? Have miracles ceased from among
men? Cannot signs and wonders be still wrought by the Holy Ghost? As a
rule, the Church answers this question in the negative. It teaches that
the age of miracles is past; that they are no longer necessary; that in
the fulness of time the Divine will was made know