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belonging to the class of exceptions rather than the rule; and they belong more properly to the casuist than to the theologian. Such points, however, are cursorily handled by Mr. Heurtley as the occasions arise; and his text is supported by numerous references to the fathers and the great luminaries of the English Church whenever any point of difficulty arises, or any disputable question can be settled by authority.

În reviewing this volume we have felt ourselves engaged in the same good work with the author, and we found that we so much coincided with him that our task as mere reviewers would have been soon got over, and would have consisted of nothing more than general commendation: yet we wanted to express our pleasure, and wanted to dwell on the very important question of justification by faith; and, therefore, we have made this volume our text-book for expressing the same doctrines in our own way. And thus, as truth is many-sided, yet in substance always the same, we may, in our way, contribute towards the further illustration and establishment of the truth, so clearly set forth and so powerfully advocated from the pulpit, in these Bampton Lectures.

Our writings are likely to fall into the hands of many who are engaged in secular affairs, and of others who are interested in the controversies of the day; and such persons we have borne in mind, endeavouring to place the question in that point of view which would be likely to engage their attention and fall in with their train of thought: while numbers of the clergy have not had an opportunity either of hearing these lectures or of procuring the volume, and for their sakes we have endeavoured to state the truth as correctly as we are able-hoping still that all those who have the means will procure the volume, the pleasure of perusing which will not be at all diminished by anything which we have written, or by the few extracts which we have made-extracts for elucidating nothing more than our own view of the question.

We are not fond of new discoveries in religion, whether they are called developments of doctrine, or accommodations to the altered circumstances of the Church. The faith of the Church is one-that faith our fathers held-and its purity mainly consists in its not being of this world, but leading to a separation from present and visible things; it looketh to the new heavens, and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. In spiritual as well as in natural things, the first command, with promise, is "Honour thy father and thy mother, that it may be well with thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

30

ART. II.-Truths and Fictions of the Middle Ages. The Merchant and the Friar. By Sir FRANCIS PALGRAVE, K.H. London: Parker.

THE "past" is a word fraught with deep meaning and interest: to the imaginative it suggests innumerable visions of varied forms; to the reflective, lessons of wisdom and materials for fecund thought: whilst, forming, as it does in that which it recalls, but one link in the great chain of eras that unites the first enunciation of God's mighty purpose of mercy to its final consummation, its chiefest use is to furnish in its contemplation grounds for wisely judging the present and anticipating the future.

It has been well observed that whilst the Almighty is most beneficent he is also most frugal, teaching his creatures, by that which may be known and read by all men of him in the works of his hands, that the exercise of true liberality depends upon provident care, and consists in the exact proportion of the supply to the necessity. All nature is pregnant with this truth: there is not a leaf that falls nor a flower that fades to waste: not a form that seems to perish that does not, in its ashes, contribute to the sustenance of life: there is not a drop abstracted from the ocean that does not yield a blessing; not a particle of inanimate matter that has not its distinct use, and that does not, in its place, help on the great work of reproduction. Waste and want are words indeed which have no place in the vocabulary of divine providence: there is no necessity for which there is not a supply-nothing which in the constitution of the supply has not its proper function. The seasons come and go, noiseless in their change and mighty in their operation; each has its work, to see that nothing be lost. What winter kills contributes to the nourishment of summer life; whilst the seed that falls in autumn and seems to perish revives in other forms in spring. Frugality and mercy are indeed twin sisters: their gracious labour is one of love: the one saves that the other may dispense: without provident care the necessities of nature never could be met, and from all that dies a new existence springs. "Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost," were the words of our blessed Lord, and they contained no mere passing admonition, but a great and glorious truth they were, in their place, a revelation of the mind of him who created nothing without a purpose, in whose sight nothing perished, and who has so wondrously ordered all things and their goings as that there should be neither loss nor

waste. They who dream of annihilation have neither eyes to see nor minds to understand, and it is only "the fool" who "saith in his heart there is no God;" for deeper and mightier truths even than that of the wondrous supervision of divine providence are taught in the decaying seed and substance. He who looks intelligently upon them sees a germ of future existence, and counts upon their resuscitation in forms of vigorous beauty. He knows that, "except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit;" and when he sees it die he looks in hope for the promised life. Thus, in all things which surround him, he learns not only that in their decay there is no waste, but that out of death comes resurrection life. Whilst he gives faith to the revelation of "life and immortality" which the Lord has "brought to light," he beholds in all that nature brings before his eye an unfailing evidence of the reality of that great event which shall some day pass upon the countless dead, and in the sure and certain hope of which, moreover, holy Church hath taught him to part for a season with those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.

So is it also with the history of man-the events of the past are pregnant with moral life for the future. Every one of them has had its use in the social system and has proved a seed of fruit for the harvesting of other generations. It is our part to use the knowledge which they bring to the fulfilment of its rightful purpose, neither wasting it in the creation of pleasing visions or recreative fancies, nor passing it by as too cumbersome for the hastier progress of modern energies. History stops us in our course through life to point us to the paths which our fathers trod and the deeds which they did; and then come hope and wisdom to lead us onward and teach us how to avail ourselves in our forward course of what we have seen. To stop not at the bidding of the one, or to loiter where we are stopped, is alike unwise-in other words, no knowledge of the past or reflection on its history can be profitable which does not furnish us with elements of moral strength and wisdom for the future. The fulfilment of man's destiny is in progression, the proper development of which, like the unfolding of a flower, is manifested in the varied forms of great and primary principles, increasing in beauty as they approach the term which God has appointed to them for the bearing of the fruit ordained to each. No man can properly fulfil his place, and do the work allotted to him in the present, who does not with two-handed strength and skill hold the past and the future-the past for the wisdom which it

gives, and the future for the hope which it contains. No man is fitted for the active and practical duties of life who dwells with the dead; nor can he, on the other hand, deal wisely and kindly with those around him, if he blot the memories of those who have gone from his mind, boast in his ignorance of their virtues, or be careless of the sources of their failings; whilst for the foundation of every solid edifice, whose uses are for other generations, the deepest lessons are to be learned in the contemplation of the structures which our fathers built. There are many, however, who in our days mistake the musings of poetry for the reflections of wholesome philosophy; who, in their contemplation of the past, sit down and weep over the visions which they bring to being till all strength for action is gone: there are others, again, who despise the uses of poetic thought, and have no sympathy but for utilitarian materialisms. To them the past has neither a charm nor a lesson; to them the future is nothing but a speculation; they are, as the word goes, "practical men," who neither know nor care for any thing beyond present realities, who judge all the spiritual phenomena of humanity by hard statistics, and measure hearts and minds by a coarse arithmetic of profit and loss. Neither the one nor the other are fitted for the exigencies of the times, which require, for the supervision and right understanding of all which they produce, a deep acquaintance with the spirit and mind of man, in whatever form they may have been developed-in whatever way it is possible that they may yet be manifested.

There is no lack of learning in the age in which we live. It is, indeed, wonderful how the secret sources and springs of ancient knowledge have been traced out and laid bare to the gaze of all-how the customs, modes of thought and habits of life, ways and works of our ancestors, have been placed, as it were, on a stage of exhibition, that all who choose may become conversant with them. From the mysterious days of swarthy Egypt, with all the wonders of her occult science, down to the age when the mail-clad warrior gloried in his strength, or the merchant prince in his argosies, is now reduced to the form of a familiar tale; and books of elementary knowledge deal as unceremoniously with centuries, and treat as knowingly of their events, as the smaller histories of our school-boy days dared to do with the subject of the French revolution or the geography of the provinces. Etruscan monarchs, the mighty contemporaries of the shepherd king of Israel, have been gazed at for a single moment in their tombs, in all the glorious panoply in which they were laid to take their sleep for ages:

the wanderings and sufferings of God's ancient people have been deciphered in what they have written in their way: the very grain which the builders of the Pyramids have handled is growing in many parts of Europe; the food of which they ate, the chairs on which they sat, the costumes which they wore, all may behold who choose; whilst, with the days of Norman William and his rapacious host, the polished Saracen and the stern crusader, the stately knight and mitred abbot, the wilely scrivener, the cowled monk and burly friar, we are now as familiar as with our kith and kin a few degrees removed. The imagination has, indeed, but little to do in recalling a vision of the past: knowledge has furnished her with all the material she can need, and that so abundantly and minutely as well nigh to render her own legitimate occupation of mental creation useless. She has only to produce some of the many forms with which the memory is stored-to bring about them the appliances of scenery and dress-to abstract from them the coarser and sterner elements which tell of discomfort and oppression if she be in no truthful mood, and retain such as speak in all their rude development of high resolve and kindly feeling and she will have at once before her for her contemplation a pleasant picture of other days and their doings, wanting nothing but life to make it a reality.

After all, however, the picture is but a picture—a representation of life and not life itself: it is the vision of what has been, but which will never be again: of an age which, having fulfilled that part of God's great purpose allotted to it, has passed away and become as the sced to the plants—the germinating principle of other forms-in which, though the fruit of the past is seen, the past itself, as it was, will never be reproduced. It is a great error to think otherwise, and yet it is the error of the day-the error into which many gentle minds have fallen, wasting the energies which present exigences so much need in fruitless efforts for the revival of that which, in its past form, is for ever dead; or spending them in melancholy mournings for that which ought not to be mourned for. The matter which perishes has fulfilled its purpose and obeys, in its decay, the law of its being; whilst the spirit that was created to survive is still existent, though in some form which, for lack of discernment, we do not readily recognize. It is not God's purpose to reproduce the past, but out of the past to bring forth the future: this we may learn from the contemplation of that which is within our own experience. The man is the same as he who was the child; but, once attaining to manhood, it is impossible that he should be ever a child again.

VOL. XX.-D

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