stations, and penances, and holidays, and anointings, keep up some sense of religion, base and corrupt though it be. But the soldier, like the heathen gipsey in a Christian land, is by profession a wanderer, has no stated and responsible pastor, and few men care for his soul. And it is an awful feature of this infidel age, that against these few the door of access is sometimes barred by the military authorities. In some instances, officers in command evade, or even directly refuse, to permit religion, except in its formal Sunday garb, to be introduced among those under their command, even by the parish clergyman, who, in the absence of a military chaplain, is, ex officio, chaplain to the Protestant portion of the detachment. This they do on the infidel principle of expediency, lest, if the men became anxious about their souls, differences of creed might bring in among them controversy and dissension. The same infidel spirit which systematically excluded Christianity from the East and West Indies, and wilfully abandoned them to their several modes of heathen superstition, has laboured also to exclude Christianity, in spirit and in truth, from our army, and has given it up to nominal religion, but real infidelity. Hence, unsophisticated by superstition, the mind of a soldier is, so far, a tabula rasa-a blank sheet, on which Christianity may, at once, endeavour to write its truths and duties; and when brought under the influence of vital religion, its experience is peculiarly simple and well defined.

The fact which I have stated is this :—that I have always made it a subject of careful inquiry, and have almost uniformly found, that the converted or awakened soldier was the son of a pious parent; or trained up in the way that he should go, by some pious pastor, teacher, relative, or friend.

This is indeed encouraging; still it is not to be denied, that, in this "work of faith and labour of love" to which we exhort, you may experience keen and cutting disappointment. God, in his providence, for the sanctifying purposes of his grace-to wean your affections more thoroughly from earth, or as the consequence and punishment of early life of careless indifference to religion; when you sought, in preference, the society of those who were ignorant of Him; when you cultivated your intimacies, and formed your connexions in that world which is at enmity with Him-may now permit you to be linked by the bonds of a natural or providential relation to an enemy of God; and thus refuse you to see of the travail of your soul, and be satisfied. The parent or child, the brother or sister, the friend that sticketh closer than a brother, the partner of your bosom, may baffle and disappoint your tenderest anxieties for their spiritual welfare, and for the salvation of their perishing souls. But these are the sufferings which conform you most nearly to the image of Christ. These are the trials which compel you to seek the deepest refuge in the Divine bosom. "Be not, then, weary in well doing; for in due time you shall reap, if you faint not." You shall reap a rich harvest of blessing, if not to the object of your tender and pious solicitude, at least to yourself. "If the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it; if not, it shall turn to you again." In the mean time, indeed, life may be full of sighs and tears. No matter-eternity is before you. In its realms of bliss, a cup of cold water to one of these little ones, in the name of Christ, shall in no wise lose its reward, much less the tears which piety has shed over a perishing

soul. But even in those deep waters, and amid all the tossings of life's troubled sea, there is in Christ an ark of refuge, which will bear the soul, not only in safety, but in present peace, even that "peace of God which passeth all understanding," and which the world can neither give or take away, until it lands it upon the shores of eternal and unalloyed felicity. The storm indeed may beat; the clouds may lower; the sighs of compassion may heave the breast; the tears of charity may bedew the cheek; but the storm will soon blow over; the clouds will soon vanish away; soon, a brighter sky will canopy a brighter and far lovelier scene; and those tears and sighs will prove but the mellowing showers, the refreshing breezes, which gave birth to the flowers of paradise.

J. M. H.

SIR R. HILL AND THE EXPELLED OXFORD STUDENTS.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

You say, in your last Number, respecting the six young men displaced from St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, in the year 1768, that the sentence pronounced upon them was "harsh, unjust, and disgraceful;" and this, notwithstanding you admit that they had "offended against ecclesiastical and academical discipline." Be pleased to consider whether your own remark is not "harsh, unjust, and disgraceful." Would you wish to see the Universities made conventicles and hot-beds of fanaticism? If not, why blame those who conscientiously discharged a very unpopular and irksome duty, in order to forefend such evils.

VIGIL.

We would not encourage in ourselves or others the use of unnecessarily strong words; but we must say, upon the maturest consideration, that the proceeding towards the St. Edmund Hall young men was inequitable, unacademical, un-English, and cruel. The offenders were youths of undoubted piety and irreproachable morals; they gave over, and promised not to repeat, the irregularity of expounding the Scriptures and praying in private houses, as soon as they were informed that it was contrary to the will of their governors; and they pledged themselves in future to conform strictly to academical and ecclesiastical discipline, which they said they were not till then aware they had been violating. Under these circumstances, a very slight punishment was amply sufficient to satisfy academical discipline, and the justice of the case; and indeed, as the young men had acted from mistaken ideas of duty-as their offence was not of an immoral character, such as gambling, or getting drunk; and as, so far from being contumacious, they had abstained from all cause of offence as soon as their proceedings were objected to, and, in point of fact, had not been guilty of irregularity for a long time previous to their being cited to have their conduct investigated a word of kind admonition, and even that softened by due allowance for their upright motives and commendation for their prompt obedience, would have been all that was requisite. But instead of this, the most severe sentence was peremptorily inflicted upon them, to the utter ruin of all their prospects through life; while numerous offenders of a very different class were allowed to pursue their anti-religious, anti-moral, and anti-academical courses, with lax scrutiny or inadequate punishment.

But the chief reason why we wrote so strongly was not merely that the punishment was vindictive, but because the proceedings were conducted with manifest injustice. We know not how to exhibit this more clearly and briefly, than by transcribing Mr. Sidney's narrative; and we do so the rather with a view to the grave inquiry, whether the time has not arrived to expunge from the academical records this most unjustifiable sentence. We ought however to observe that, strictly speaking, neither the University nor St. Edmund Hall was responsible for the misdeed. With regard to the latter, its Principal, Dr. Dixon, zealously defended his young men against the charges of their ill-tempered and crotchety tutor; and the investigation was not conducted before him, or the sentence pronounced by him; or by a domestic tribunal; the proceedings being instituted before the Vice-Chancellor, as Visitor, who summoned to his aid, as his assessors, the Margaret Professor of Divinity; the Provost of Queen's college, with which St. Edmund Hall is connected; and the Public Orator and Senior Proctor; but these individuals were not the representatives of the University; nor do we see what the University had to do with the matter. The Visitor and his assessors expelled the youths from the Hall, and as a matter of course they were no longer members of the University; and even if the University had wished to oppose the sentence, it was, we conceive, powerless to do so, it having no right to interfere in such an affair with any of the private societies which compose it. Popularly speaking, the proceedings were disgraceful to the University; for the perpetrators of the wrong were among its most elevated and influential officers; and we fear that they were abetted by not a few of its members: but still it was not a University act; it was the act of a few individuals, holding indeed official stations, but not on that account empowered to exercise this jurisdiction; nor do we doubt, if the question had really come before the University, that some friends of justice and judicial regularity would have been found, to have prevented such breaches of both as this accusation and sentence exhibited to the astonished gaze of the nation. Our deliberate opinion is, that if the suffrages of the Fellows of colleges, and of the whole body of the Masters of Arts and higher grades, had been collected, they would have preponderated against those of the Vice-Chancellor and his assessors; and sure we are, that if they would not then, they would now; for small indeed is the number of those who in the present day would sanction such proceedings.

The gravamen of the charge was, that the young men were what was vaguely called "Methodists;" but both the accusation and the sentence embraced indictments which the tribunal had no right whatever to take cognizance of. We will mention distinctly three.

First, the charge of having been "originally brought up "to plebeian occupations. If plebeian extraction, or having been originally brought up to plebeian occupation, were a disqualification for becoming a member of the University, why was not this urged at their entrance or matriculation? But it could not be urged; for the University acknowledges no such disqualification; it has a column, as have the colleges and halls, for "Pleb. Fil.," as much as for "Gen. Fil." or "Cler. Fil.," or higher titles; nay, it makes its boast, that its precincts are open to students of every rank; and we constantly hear it iterated as the just praise of our civil, academical, and ecclesiastical institutions, that a man may rise in them from the lowest to the highest walks of society; nor would even the writers of the Tracts for the Times complain, because Oxford found Wolsey the son of a butcher, and left him a cardinal. At this very moment there are distinguished individuals filling high stations in every department of life, and not least in the Church—aye, and in the Universities-who were "originally brought

up to" plebeian occupations. It was therefore grossly unjust to make a count of indictment, that some of the young men had been guilty of plebeian employments before going to college; for if this was a disqualification, why were they admitted? Mr. Higson, their tutor and chief accuser, if he matriculated them, could not plead ignorance of their "conditio"; nor could the Vice-Chancellor ; for the former must, upon his oath of fidelity to the University, have inquired into, and truly reported, it to the latter. "Una cum Matriculando,” `says the statute book, "accedat ipsius Tutor, qui fide suâ datà Universitati, conditionem Matriculandi (utrum scilicet nobilis, equitis, doctoris, armigeri, generosi, an plebeii, filius sit), Vice-Chancellario bonâ fide prodere tenebitur; quod si Tutor recusaverit, tutoris munere ipsi interdicatur." If therefore the ungenerous, unacademical, and unjust charge of low occupation had been at all relevant, the tutor ought to have been ejected from his tutorship for presenting the young men for matriculation. To take their fees and caution-money, and to allow them to pass a portion of their terms, and then to bring such a charge against them, was base and unjust. When a youth originally intended for plebeian pursuits, is enabled to overcome his disadvantages, and to find the means of obtaining academical education, it is highly to his honour; and to make it, years after, a ground for his expulsion, would be, if possible, more contemptible than unjust. But we are reasoning upon what will not bear the weight of an argument; for no person would for a moment maintain that the son of a yeoman, or tradesman, or even of a mechanic or labourer, can be, or ought to be, excluded, as such, from the University of Oxford; or that—to take an instance most honourable to the individual-the learned orientalist Lee could have been expelled from Cambridge, or from his professorship, or from his well-deserved prebend, or from holy orders, because he once handled the plane and mallet while pondering upon radicals and serviles. The adduction of such a charge into the accusation, was unjust and base; and the Vice-Chancellor and his assessors ought to have refused to hear any evidence upon it; and its adoption by the judge in pronouncing sentence vitiated the whole proceeding; for whatever weight it had in influencing the decision, was contrary to academical law. Had the court been deciding whether a candidate for a fellowship at All-Souls college was "Bene natus, bene vestitus, et mediocriter doctus," as its statutes require, the topic would have been germane; but in the case before them, it could only have been introduced with a view to prejudice the cause of the young men, and to expose them to ridicule. The unjust judges doubtless enjoyed their joke and their triumph, but no manly or honourable mind would envy their mirth, or wish to share their feelings.

With regard to the crime alleged against some of the young men, of having been too illiterate to be entered at college, if it were so, the parties who admitted them were alone to blame. The candidates were not their own examiners; and if they laboured under any disqualification, they ought to have been rejected; but to admit them, to take their money, to keep them on the books, and then months or years after to send them away in disgrace, as persons who ought never to have been there, was a proceeding diametrically opposed to justice and common decency. This item therefore being included in the sentence pronounced upon them, vitiates it; for so far forth as the judge, in decreeing their expulsion, was led to award that punishment upon the ground that they were illiterate before their admission, he was punishing them for what the laws under which he acted did not regard as criminal.

Nor was it less unjust to make a count of the ecclesiastical misdeeds of the young men before their coming to Oxford. It is the usual suggestion of our

prelates, when dissenting ministers apply to them to know if they can obtain holy orders in the Church of England, to enter themselves at one of the Universities; and if, after the academical course, and three years' due probation, they are found in all respects qualified, there is no bar to their ordination. But what would be said, if, at the end of a year or two, the college tutor of one of these gentlemen should libel him before the Visitor of the college, as a person who ought to be expelled, because before he entered it, he had been guilty of ecclesiastical irregularities?

We will now insert Mr. Sidney's narrative; only repeating, that in protesting against what was unjust, and blaming what was vindictively severe, we do not make ourselves responsible for the conduct of the young men, or the spirit or arguments of some of their defenders. The discipline of the University had been violated; there is no question upon that point; the only question is, whether those who undertook to vindicate it discharged their duties rightly. We assert that they did not do so wisely, temperately, equitably, or statutably, but quite the contrary; and that their proceedings ought to be expunged from the academical records. They are not, we presume, to be found in the University books, as the Vice-Chancellor was acting only as Visitor of a particular society; but if they are, they ought to be erased, in order that the University may not be implicated. If they are on the books of St. Edmund Hall, we submit to the authorities of that society, to consider whether they ought not to bring the circumstances under the scrutiny of their Visitor, that he may give such directions upon the subject as he may think proper. His decision we think must be, that the young men had committed faults; that the Visitor had power to expel them; that with his exercise of that power, whether mercifully or not, or wisely or not, or even justly or not, the present Visitor had nothing to do; but that the accusations above enumerated, and the introduction of them into the sentence, were contrary to justice, and to the laws and usages of the Academy, and ought to be obliterated as furnishing an evil precedent. There is a clear line of distinction in this matter. An equity judge could not unhang a man who had been wrongfully hanged; but he could set aside a precedent which was manifestly contrary to law and justice. As long as the proceedings in question remain on the books at Oxford as an authoritative decision, it may be argued against any man as a cause of expulsion, that his father originally intended him for a tradesman, or that he had once been a Methodist, or that he was not a ripe scholar when he entered; all which is as just, reasonable, and academical, as if Mr. Vice-Chancellor and his assessors had said, because he is six feet high, or has a long nose, or red whiskers—or at least once had.

The following is the substance of Mr. Sidney's account :

"The originator of the various accusations brought before the authorities, was a Mr. Higson, tutor of St. Edmund's Hall, and the persons accused were six students of his own College. This individual professed a sudden alarm at discovering that there were in that society several enthusiasts,' who ventured to talk of regeneration, inspiration, and drawing nigh unto God!' In a state of great ignorance, or at least forgetfulness, of the prominence of these terms in the Book of Common Prayer, he went, apparently much excited, with the charge now mentioned, to Dr. Dixon the Principal, who quietly observed that he could see no cause to consider these gentlemen as enthusiasts, for having adopted expres sions that were Scriptural, and authorized by the offices of our own Church. Mr. Higson was much dissatisfied with the answer of Dr. Dixon, and determined to proceed further against the youths whose opinions he had denounced in vain to the head of his own hall. How far he was an instrument in the hands of others does not fully appear; but it is very certain that his efforts were acceptable to men of high station at Oxford. He began to make most assiduous inquiries relative to the objects of his complaint, and at length brought distinct articles of accusation CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 22, 4 F