TRACTS FOR THE TIMES.
THE REFORMED CHURCH.
All the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the House of the Lord was laid. But many of the Priests and Levites, and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men that had seen the first House, when the foundation of this House was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice.—Ezra iii. 11, 12.
Some remarks may, perhaps, be profitably made on the following well known lines in Herbert's Church Militant, in which the text above quoted is applied to our own period:
The second Temple could not reach the first,
And the late Reformation never durst
Compare with ancient times and purer years,
But in the Jews and us, deserveth tears.
Nay, it shall every year decrease and fade.
Till such a darkness shall the world invade
At Christ's last coming, as His first did find;
Yet must their proportions be assigned
To these diminishings, as is between
The spacious world and Jewry to be seen.
Surely there is a close analogy between the state of the Jews after the captivity, and our own; and, if so, a clear understanding and acknowledgment of it will tend to teach us our own place, and suggest to us our prospects.
1. It is scarcely necessary to notice the general correspondence between the fortunes of the two Churches. Both Jews and Christians "left their first love," mixed with the world, were brought under the power of their enemies, went into captivity, and at length, through God's mercy, were brought back again from Babylon. Ezra and Nehemiah are the forerunners of our Ridleys and Lauds; Sanballat and Geshem of the disturbers of our Israel. Samaria has set up its rival temple among us.
2. The second Temple lacked the peculiar treasures of the Temple of Solomon, the Prince of Peace; such as the Ark, the visible glory of God, the tables of the Covenant, Aaron's rod, the manna, the oracle. In like manner the Christian Church was, in the beginning, set up in unity; unity of doctrine, or truth, unity of discipline, or catholicism, unity of heart, or charity. In spite of the heresies which then disturbed the repose of Christians, consider the evidences which present themselves in ecclesiastical
