who, with their senses about them, believed and were convinced that such adoration was common. Nor do we believe that, in a later day, Bishop Pearson spoke more strongly than the Reformers would have done in respect to the veneration of ancient times for the Saints when he said, in his fourth Concio ad Clerum, "If we cut off all intercession of angels and saints for us who are living on earth, and contending with the host of evil spirits; if we acknowledge no power at all before the throne of GOD, on the part of those who poured forth their lives for CHRIST; if all those who venerated their relics (reliquias) are rejected and scouted by us, and we call them idolaters, . . I know not what Church at all that can be with which it will be possible for us to hold communion." But to make the saints the dispensers of the grace of God, as the Pre-Reformation prayers too often did, is no doctrine of the Catholic Church, and the Reformers did well to shut out such a notion for the future, as far as lay in their power. We have now gone over all the principal matters connected with the Reformation of Doctrine in the sixteenth century, as in a. former article we considered the changes in the Church of England from a constitutional point of view. And we have only to ask in conclusion whether there is not ample ground for vindicating the position that was then taken up by her, without conceding one iota of that Catholic doctrine and practice which we believe to be her true inheritance ? We have a Mother to whom we owe not merely the respect which is her due because she is our parent; but who also claims our reverent and loyal love because she has in all things done her best to walk in the paths of orthodox holiness. God's good Providence guided her steps when unexampled dangers and temptations lay about her path: He restrained the officiousness of man, and cast it down when from the civil or the ecclesiastical throne it was interfering with the straightforward course in which He had bidden her to walk: He gave light and knowledge, even beyond their own consciousness of its possession, to those who were to strengthen her for her last and greatest stage of providential destiny and we have no reason to doubt that His hand is with her still to lead her safely through present and future difficulties. And the truth really is, that if we take diligent pains and a loyal heart to the reading of our ecclesiastical history in the sixteenth century, its lessons will give us a much better faith in the present stability and future destiny of our Church than many among us seem to possess, though not more than we think every one who is working in her ranks ought to have. : On another occasion we may, perhaps, add a short supplement to this Paper, corroborating what has been said above by documentary evidence. 1 Pearson's Minor Theological Works, ii. p. 54. THE CHURCH IN TURKEY. A Few Words on the Eastern Question. London: Ridgway. IN the brief pages of this anonymous political pamphlet, which proceeds evidently from a high diplomatic source, we have a vigorous summary of all the leading points in a question of the deepest importance to the Church at large. It treats of nothing less than a well-considered scheme for the ultimate disposal of the "sick man," (as the Emperor Nicholas designated the Turkish Empire)a scheme which would result in bringing him clothed and in his right mind within the precincts of that mystic temple whose inmost threshold he might haply one day pass in ages yet to come, a living convert to its faith. For ourselves we must confess we should have been almost con.tent if this scheme had done no more than suggest a termination to the effete existence of this corrupt and decaying power, which has caused the world to witness the hateful phenomenon of two great Christian states waging war with a third alike under the obedience of the Cross on behalf of an infidel race, the enemy of their common LORD. How strange in the courts of heaven (if ever the distracting tumult of this world could echo there,) would seem the hollow sophistry that spoke of the balance of nations, and the encroachments of a rival power, as a reason for supporting the existence of the false creed that so long has stained with a moral blight the fairest portion of the kingdom of GOD and of His CHRIST, and that at no less a cost than the practical apostasy which sent religious England and Catholic France to trample under foot the banner of the Christian Faith. Let men talk as they will, they never can prove this evil, good, and it is a marvellous revelation of the real value of the religionism of our day to see how coolly all that in the Church of CHRIST is counted right and true and plainest duty, is set aside for the paltry interests of this decaying world. The touchstone of worldly policy was tried upon these Christian governments who legislated upon Sunday travelling, and the due observance of les jours de fête; and their much vaunted religion vanished in the smoke of the first cannon that was pointed at their Christian brethren on behalf of the Moslem infidel. Pride on the one side of the channel, ambition on the other. These be the gods of spiritual Israel in the nineteenth century. But it is vain now, as ever, to linger on the past,—that bloodstained page in the world's history is closed, to be no more opened till the light of GOD's judgment shall flash upon it, and compel men to read its meaning rightly, and see what a fearful mockery of His power and righteousness is the doing of evil that good may come. The question now is, what is to be done with this sick man so tenderly nourished back to life with the best blood of England and France. The author of this pamphlet proposes a scheme with which in the main we entirely agree; but there are some minor points on which we cannot do so, simply because he is too acute a politician not to be aware that if he wishes to make his plan acceptable to the present European governments, he must hide his Christianity under a bushel, and propose such arrangements as shall at least in some degree place the Church and her interests in due subservience to the world and its policy. It is only however in matters of subordinate interest that he thus does homage to the spirit of the day. The grand object he has in view is one which if practically realized would do more to promote the temporal advancement of CHRIST's kingdom on earth than any change which has been recorded in the history of nations for a long time past. He proposes, in a word, nothing less than the restoration of the old Greek empire, the Christian empire of the East. Free Greece, small and insignificant as it is, is yet an independent Christian state, and just as in the days of old it was the centre whence the light of art and intellect flowed over a heathen world, so would he have it now the nucleus of a great Byzantine kingdom which should rise over the ashes of Mahomedan Turkey, and light up the lamp of truth before the altar of S. Sophia. If this be a dream, it is at least a grand and glorious one. Those who have known the Moslem faith, not as the morbid sentimentalism of some, and the obstinate perversion of others would represent it in this country, but as it is in its unspeakable corruption, pandering to the lowest passions of our fallen nature, can only hear of such a scheme with a thrill of feeling which is no mere enthusiasm, but the longing hope that a consummation is perhaps approaching for which the prayer of CHRIST'S Church should never cease to ascend. To think that over that Morning Land which God has made so beautiful, and man so dark with sin and error, the Sun of Righteousness shall rise once more, and in the city of Constantine the Conquering Sign be raised which alone can free His people from the bondage of Satan in which they have been held these many years, is indeed an alluring prospect. While, best of all, the grand old S. Sophia shall echo with the Christian Hallelujahs, and the mysterious Cherubim, that so long have looked from its high dome on the false worship which denies the Triune GOD, shall see at last the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice within the walls where once It gave daily life, and drew to Its shrine the inhabitants of many a distant land. Surely this is a blessed vision! To those who can shake themselves free from local prejudice and look beyond the great Western Power that too much obscures our horizon here, it will be no small addition to the joy of their hope to see that it is effected by the Church of CHRIST in its most venerable and unchanged aspect. This would be a very different mode of evangelizing the East from the efforts of Missionaries who can too often bring no power from the Church to make their work so much as possible; and although we give our hearty sympathy to the attempt now being made by our own Communion in this direction, yet we cannot but feel that it is essentially the province of the Greek Branch to carry the holy illumination to those nations that once were her own faithful children. Is it carrying this bright dream too far to think that perhaps in this great work it might be given to the Eastern Church to vindicate her position in respect to her western sister, and restore the equilibrium, and with it the unity of the Church at large, by proving that the severance came, as she maintains, from the Latin Communion, and that in her we have the unmoved, unshaken Vine planted by Apostolic hands for the healing of the Eastern nations, which has never ceased in all these stormy centuries to offer the same rest beneath her sheltering branches and to shed the sacramental life from her unfailing fruits? But it is of no such brilliant dreams that the author treats. More wisely, doubtless, he confines himself to matter-of-fact statements on the present state of the Ottoman Empire, and the simplest mode of settling the Eastern question, and he seems to prove clearly enough, without any allusion to the religious side of the argument, that, in this matter, the interest of the Church and the world do really appear to run side by side, and that the same step which would bring the life of God's Truth into that dying land would also produce the equitable balance of nations for which so much blood has been spent in vain. The author commences by proving in an able and logical manner the impossibility of maintaining the Turkish Empire in its present shape, and the futility of the various schemes which have been proposed for its improvement. We give the paragraph in which he sums up his argument on this point. "All hope must then be abandoned of recalling Mussulman Turkey to life, whether by reinforcing the Turkish element, by operating the fusion of the two inimical nationalities, or by leaving them in the midst of the chaos in which they live, to take the place which their specific gravity gives them. Europe has spent itself in vain efforts to combat this immutable sentence of fate, and as General Sebastian has said: 'It is embracing a corpse to keep it on its feet.' "All those who have any illusions on this subject, have seen them successively vanish. And we invoke on this point the sincere conviction of all the statesmen who have seen and studied Turkey on the spot; not that which figures in the carefully turned notes of diplomacy, but that which exists in the depths of their conscience. "There is another authority which we must quote before all others, and which will not be taxed with partiality. It is that of the Sultan himself, who, not long ago, in an official document, discloses the abyss yawning under his throne, and shows how much is real in the pretended. reforms, so much exalted by unskilful flatterers or candid optimists. "And to this testimony we may add another, which may be justly considered as more conclusive still, on the affairs of Turkey, than that of the Sultan. The eminent diplomatist, who with his rare perspicacity, and long experience, knows the East better than any one, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, on quitting that Turkey which he had made it a point of honour to regenerate, consecrating to the task almost the whole of his official life, said: 'I see that I have lost my time, and that Turkey will never enter into a plan of reform.' Lastly, the greatest man of modern times, for whose genius even the future had no secrets, Napoleon I., said in 1807: I had thought a moment that something might be made of the Turks, that they might be awakened from their apathy, and taught to save themselves. But it is an illusion. We must evidently finish sooner or later with this empire which cannot subsist, and better to-day than to-morrow.' -P. 24. It so happens that while these pages are passing through our hands, two facts have come to our knowledge which seems to show that the "to-day" of Napoleon has indeed arrived with the doom of Turkey-in the first place, a very interesting private letter from Syria has been shown to us which states that there is a universal belief pervading the whole of the Mahomedan population that the fall of Turkey is at hand, a belief which will work its own fulfilment through their conviction of the resistless power of "Kismet." The cause of this pervading despondency is so singular that we subjoin an extract from the letter in question : “There is a very curious prophecy in which the Mussulmen place great confidence, and which makes them believe that the last day of the Turkish Empire has arrived. There exists a very old manuscript, written long ago, by some old Sheikh or Doctor of the Law, as they call them, in which it is distinctly stated that the Turkish Empire will last until the two sevens shall have passed-that as soon as the first seven has passed its fall will commence, and by the time the second seven has passed its ruin will be completed. Now this is the 1277th year of the Hegira-the Turks, therefore, believe certainly that when the first seven shall have passed, which will be in 1278, i.e., the end of this year, the ruin of Turkey will begin, and that by the time the second shall have passed, i.e. in 1280, it will exist no more.' It is hard for us in Europe to understand how largely such a superstition as this is calculated to influence the phlegmatic Eastern mind; but the second fact to which we have alluded gives tangible |