only? And yet, in these days of manifold inquiry, doubt is likely enough to be awakened. It is not proposed, that the Church should change her law, and, if the Church would change it, she could not change the law of God, By the law of the Church, the Clergy are bound not to give communion to those openly living in an union contrary to God’s word, and which the Church of England has declared to be so. The Clergy then dare not give it, lest they make themselves partakers of others’ sins. The law probably would not protect them. But they must. obey God rather than man, And yet how probable would it be, that such a conscientious inability to give the communion to one so married, would awaken or strengthen the doubt, atleast in the woman`s soul. It is said to be hard that the children of such unions should not have civil rights. How much harder to ensnare people, by the sanction of a civil law, into s state of life from which, if conscience awakes, they have no escape, except by the separation of children, bound as such parents would be to each other by man’s law, but severed by God’s, their life, as long as they continue in it, a, daily sin, yet that sin not to be ended except by the severance of every tie, a lifelong widowhood, unconsecrated by death or by hops of re-union, a life-long consciousness of self-desecration. The yoke of Christ is indeed light, as compared with the destructive liberty of the world.
THE END.
Gilbert and Rivington, Printers, St. John's Square, London.
