mit of moral excellence. They would begin with what they think is practical and close at hand, and leave all that we cannot see for subsequent speculation, if any care to speculate about it.

Now, we do not say that a great and specious fabric of society may not thus be built up, if not at present, yet some time or other. The truths which Christianity has taught are mighty, even in this lower world; and by the very constitution of things, not only godliness, but the outward social life prescribed by godliness, in its degree, hath the promise of the life that now is. Rome gained her greatness, if S. Augustine is right, as the reward of her steady pursuit of the secondary aim of human virtue, honour amongst men. The philosophical secularist will, of course, make an absolute inherent worth the attractive principle in good actions, but the masses will be moved by the praise of men, where they are not for a moment led by a self-forgetting sentiment. The results may be great and striking, and may even have some permanency, until human passions find the way again to interfere, and break up the ill-cemented work; for such, we believe, it must ever be, while the love of God, the faith in a Redeemer, the trust in a Sanctifier, and the hope that lives through death are wanting.

But to these minds the Church appears to offer nothing comparable even to this not yet very realizable dream. They see nothing in her but dull Sundays, and hot churches, and dry sermons, and full-fed incumbents, and unintelligible dogmas, and denunciations of eternal perdition on all who doubt or dissent. Let the Church flourish ever so much, they see nothing more, except more sermons, more prayers, more processions, more carving and gilding, more priests, and more exclusiveness. It will be well for the Church to look to herself, and see what she is doing, that men may know whence she comes and whither she tends. She must do one of two things, if not both. She must exhibit before all men a life above the world, which may be in a few, exercising its influence on the many; or she must have a good and real universal life in the world for her acknowledged members, her communicants. Without one or both of these conditions, she can have no hold upon society in these days; she cannot do her work, cannot maintain her ground against the rising tide of public opinion. In England, at least, she will sink into a mere department of worship, and her buildings will be sold in the market as a kind of proprietary chapels, without check or scruple. There is yet hope for her in the improved Christian education of her laity, and the improved clerical education of her clergy. But these must be carried out into their results in active life, if their legitimate effect is to ensue.

The

law of the state tends to be less moral, and to leave many things to private feeling. Points which have been guarded by law heretofore, will now be open to private judgment. But on some of these the Church has not only traditions, but principles or rules of divine authority, in the application of which she ought not to relax. Usury is not easily defined, but the liberty now allowed by the law certainly embraces instances which offend against the divine and moral law, and against the principles acknowledged by the Church. There are but too strong symptoms of a tendency to relax the law of marriage, in a way which the Church ought not to sanction with her blessing. The recent Poor-law may be an improvement in State legislation, but it is not the proper law of the Church for her faithful members. It may be well for her that she is thus put on her trial, if she will but rise to the emergency, and put forth the strength that is in her. Yet the magnitude of the task is enough to appal the stoutest heart, when we consider the means and instruments with which she has to work.

Now, we cannot admit that any amount of actual failure on her part will prove that she is wrong and her adversaries right. It has been so from the beginning, that God's work has prospered in the few, while its success with the many was very imperfect. It is certain that the Church offers the means of perfection to those who will strive to enter in at the strait gate; but the many prefer the broad way, let it lead where it will. The many may prefer a liberalised establishment, Theology toned down till it subsides into Unitarianism-the morality of public opinion and communion with all heretics. It will not follow that all this is not antichristian. It will not follow that the truth will not even yet prevail, and reign long and prosperously before the final apostasy. We have heard of a Hindoo reading himself into Christianity through a series beginning with Voltaire, and continuing through a host of infidel writers. Every positive form of infidelity or heresy is an imperfect development of some separate truth which has escaped from the Church, and been nurtured alone under circumstances favourable to such a partial growth. And even the negative thought of Antichristianism brings the otherwise untaught mind into a certain kind of contact with Christian ideas. A seed may take root where it is most rudely thrown, and the grain may be deposited in a fertile soil by the very bird that gathers it up from the wayside. Nations may repeat a process which has been exemplified in individuals, and faith may grow by a na-tural reaction out of infidelity.

Unbelief has its difficulties, which tell upon those who behold it triumphant; and there is no more likely way to the lasting

triumph of faith than a temporary triumph of the contrary principle. It is, however, a dear-bought experience that drives men back to faith from infidelity; and we do wrong to make up our minds to that course as the necessary and inevitable progression of society. Rather, even if it actually occurs, faith wins its renewed victory through those who refuse to give way, and show to an ungodly world the standard of a divinely supported courage, and of a belief steadfast amidst the wreck of Christian institutions. The moral of a brief review of the course of this world is, certainly, the immense importance and responsibility of every step that is taken, and that especially in a critical period, and on the most critical ground. England is still the field where acts leave the most durable impress on institutions and on national character, and where seeds of principle have the greatest chance of growing to an important and extensive development. Ideas thrown out or actualised in England, spread their influence through her colonies and through the United States of America; and her intercommunion of thought and life with the countries of Continental Europe is daily becoming closer. It may not improbably be true that the 'Oceanic Mission,' which is to unite the earth in one, is in a great measure confided to her; and although there seems no human probability, at this moment, that her Church can spread itself effectually throughout the whole range of her language or her empire, yet we know not what may be accomplished by even a few years of vigorous action, when once she has a powerful central spring at work.

On her acting as a body depends, humanly speaking, the question, whether the unitary influence, which almost confessedly amongst all thinkers is allowed to England at this time, shall assume the Unitarian or the Catholic character. Liberals in the Church are nearer than they think to the former; a perpetual negation of mystery, authority, and sacramental agency, will soon lead into its lowest, coldest, and dreariest flats. The latter is the proper work of the Church of England as such. Her place between Romanism and Presbyterianism, and united with both now in a triple establishmentfor Romanism is acknowledged by the State-is most favourable for promoting a mutual understanding amongst Christians, and for discovering the common ground on which they can meet, without sacrificing their faith. And the great liberty of private action as yet subsisting in England, (though yearly diminished by democratic enactments, which place the conduct of the individual often most vexatiously under the control of the majority, or the noisy minority,) is favourable to any such action of the Church, through semi-official organs or organ

izations, as may extend her influence over the moral life of the community.

Every Church institution that tends to exhibit and strengthen any truly Christian form of life, or to organize any Christian. aims and efforts in an effectual manner, works powerfully toward the consummation which every good Churchman ought to desire. And whoever will look back a few years upon the state of England in this respect, may easily satisfy himself that we have learned much as to the duty of legitimate and authorised organization, and the danger of desultory and self-willed movements. Still what we have learned of things that ought to be, is far more than what we have yet accomplished; and we must confess ourselves as yet to live in a semi-barbarous and confused order of things, if order it can be called where there is no order. But the field is open before us, though under the jealous supervision of a Government which will scarce let anything be done decently and in order, lest we should seem to be enforcing that order on some imaginary dissentients, and which always protects private rights in opposition to any useful public reformation that is not called for by a popular cry. Patience and perseverance will succeed, in spite of the democratic prejudice, that no man is to be compelled to do right except by Act of Parliament. Real moral improvements will win their way, and good works will find at last their meed of approval, and the encouragement that is necessary for their success. Education will be maintained on the basis of religion in spite of each man's determination to oppose every man's religion but his own, and the determination of many to have none rather than that of the Church. Even the loss of privileges long enjoyed by the Church, and reasonably due to her, may in some cases conciliate minds that have long been alienated; and joint works begun or long carried on in a merely secular spirit, may at last be brought under the influence and sanction of religion. These changes are not greater than what our own day has seen, and the times seem daily to favour the possibility of quicker and quicker change. One thing is certain, whether in our victory or our defeat, our humiliation or our glory-Great is the truth, and will prevail.'

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ART. IV.-God in Christ. Three Discourses, delivered at New Haven, Cambridge, and Andover. With a Preliminary Dissertation on Language. By HORACE BUSHNELL, D.D. London: John Chapman.

6

THE title which we have ventured to affix to the present article is one which frequently arrests the course of the uplifted paper-knife, and causes it to pass, per saltum, to pages which promise a less dry and repulsive subject of study, As, however, the discussion of such themes is thoroughly germane to the purpose of this Review, and as the thinkers who give attention to them are precisely those who prove most influential in guiding and affecting other minds, the dedication of a certain amount of our space to the consideration of this branch of divinity can hardly be censured by the majority of our readers, and may possibly, we trust, prove welcome to the few. If Theology be rightly defined as the science which treats of God, and of His creatures in so far as they are related to Him,' it will not be difficult to show the intimate connexion of its various branches with Dogmatic Theology, which may indeed be justly regarded as being in some sense the root and basis of the rest. The other leading divisions of Theology are Devotional, Moral, Liturgical, and Exegetical. Devotional Theology is, from its very nature, the least conversant with books, the most immediately concerned with the believer's inward life and personal experience. Yet, that aid may herein be derived from the wisdom and spirituality of others, is evident from the abundance of books of prayer and meditation, and the popularity among religious people of books which treat of the inward life, such as Scupoli's 'Spiritual Combat,' or Bishop Taylor's Holy Living and Dying.' Such works, though they refrain from any direct discussion of dogmas, are yet compelled by their very nature to assume them. A Christian uttering in private or in public such supplications, for example, as the opening suffrages of the Litany, must needs, if he is to pray with the heart and understanding, and not with the lips only, believe the Church's doctrine of the Holy Trinity; if, with Jeremy Taylor, he meditates on the Practice of the Presence of God,' he will not stay to combat, even in thought, the Pantheistic notions of a Soul of the Universe, but take for granted the existence of a living, personal Jehovah; if he contemplates, with pious awe and sorrow,

1 Holy Living, chap. i. sec. 3.