extolled the Articles and depreciated the Liturgy. While one extreme caused secessions to Rome, the other extreme caused secessions to the sects. While one extreme would carry the world back into a frigid medievalism, the other extreme would hurry the world into a wild individualism. Both rest on the error that between Faith and Sacraments, between Doctrine and Worship, between Articles and Liturgy, there is a necessary and eternal discord. Both are ruinous. Both have been tried. Both have failed. Now let the American Church, Protestant in her temporary aspects, Catholic in her Eternal Creeds, plant herself on the basis of her Liturgy and her Articles as forming one combined, harmonious, and perfect system! Let her embrace not disjointed portions but the whole truth. Let her not be content with pillar, or foundation, or dome of the edifice, but exhibit the entire Christian temple, in its completeness, its symmetry, and its glory. When, besides, she shows upon her altars the flames of a practical benevolence, animating to noble sacrifices and heroic enterprises, she may, without removing her doors or leveling her walls, expect the world to believe and enter.

We can scarcely forbear concluding our Article with the inspiring words of a learned and eloquent Bishop, which breathe the spirit of peace and truth, and will thrill with joy the heart of every loyal Churchman. In his recent address to his Diocesan Convention, he says:

6

"We meet, as always, in the unity of the visible Church, with its historic Ministry, Sacraments, and Worship; witnessing to Catholic truth in our organization, and ministering in its service by work and suffering. We meet in loyal recognition of our federate union in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.' We meet in the larger unity of the Anglican Communion, conscious that fourscore years have only confirmed the bonds and verified the integrity of our hereditary estate. We meet in descent legitimate, and without attainder, for all that is Catholic in the Church's faith, discipline, and worship, to hold it, or to vindicate it. We meet, members of a branch of the Church, which has never broken its succession, since Apostles went to British Isles, nor has ever yielded its autocephalous independence. Above all, it has never cast away any portion of Christendom by anathema or excommunication. As far as any act or fact of ours goes, we are in communion with the Christian world. We have simply held our Catholicity.

"A Radicalism broke out (easy enough to explain as the Church is sit

uated in the United States) which assailed the foundation in Apostolic Succession, its principles of Sacramental grace, the old forms and words of the Liturgy, the separation of its orders, its Catholic breadth of opinion, the integrity of the English Reformers, and claiming almost revolutionary changes by minatory projects of disunion and separation. "On the other hand, with more thoughtful origin and deeper work, but with suspicious facts and tendencies, Ritualism, so called, disturbed the Anglican Communion. It conflicted with established order, modified our worship and ceremonial, and introduced, without authority, practices, ornaments, services, and discipline, not hitherto recognized in the Church. of England or our own; especially a dogmatic symbolism of the Holy Communion, asserting what the Anglican Church had not thus defined, and which, perhaps, never had been defined except by the rationalizing terminology of the Church of Rome.

"I have no conscious sympathy with any of these extreme views, and have never allowed myself to be seduced or driven into partisan affinity with either. But I feel assured that the great truths they, on either side, contentiously put in opposition, are in living harmony and indissoluble unity. We all, however, appreciate that there may be material of conflict and lawlessness in a partial apprehension of them, and that each extreme view may find abettors and defenders.

"I cannot admit for an hour that there is any real antagonism between the historic Church, with its supernatural notes, and the free evangelism and deepest experience of the human soul. My whole ministry (poor illustration as it may be) has owed all its order to the full and unreserved belief and consciousness of what I thus state. The severest scrutiny to which I can subject myself— my past and my present fails to discover to me any conflicting change in my opinions or my teaching. Perhaps it is my shame, but things have changed around me far more than they have within me. I have utterly abnegated such terms as 'High' or 'Low,' where they are meant to imply discrepancy between Christ in the historic Church, and Christ in the human soul. No theological fact is clearer to me than that we put these in contrast where there is none existent, and all seeming opposition between them is our impotent handling of the word of God. When they express anything real, they express harmonious truth from a one-sided view. If we appreciated each aright, and in proportion as we do so, we should find that they return each upon the other, to constitute saintship as a gift, and saintship as an achieve'The individual believer in his own regenerate nature, will recognize in the Church his objective counterpart-bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh.'

ment.

"On this reciprocal relation depends the health of the Church; and if we conceive a time when these factors shall have thoroughly permeated

one another, then will the Church have reached its highest earthly goal; it will have returned through the steps of its period of development back to the fullness of life revealed by the Apostolic Church as the model for all time."

SAINT PAUL.

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

By ERNEST RENAN, Membre de l'Institut, Author of "The Life of Jesus," "The Apostles," etc. Translated from the Original French by INGERSOLL LOCKWOOD. New York: G. W. Carleton, Publisher. Paris: Michel Lery Freres. 1869.

Let us examine the great central fact in the spiritual career of St. Paul. He was a man possessing strong natural sense, a mind thoroughly disciplined, and a heart intense in its hatred towards Christianity. While on an errand of deadly persecution, he affirms that he sees a sudden light, that he hears a supernatural voice, that he receives a Divine command. Supposing that the transient vision and the vanished words might be construed into a delusion, dazzled into blindness, he could scarcely mistake the protracted darkness which followed that overpowering splendor. Not only were his senses affected, but his mind revolutionized. He sees truth where he perceived falsehood. He loves what he hated. He seeks the society of those whose blood he had desired. More than this. He preaches as facts the Incarnation, the Death, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Mediation of Jesus Christ, now believed a God. His faith, his feelings, his activities, all revolve around these truths as their centre. They become part of himself. They enter into his entire life. They are interwoven with the texture of his being. Now falsehood mentally darkens, perverts, distorts. It is the poison of the soul. But here is a person who, asserted to be living amid illusions, believing illusions, following illusions, preaching illusions, dying for illusions, yet evinces a nature attaining its noblest possible development. He reaches a typical manhood. He is the admiration of the world. He is a model for all time. We behold him "frank in his humility as the sincerest penitent, and equally joyous over the all-prevailing faith unto salvation; steadfast in his adherence to his convictions, and at the same time cautious, considerate, and master of the finest and purest policy! full of enthusiasm, able to speak wondrously in tongues, and to rise to visionary and ecstatic states of mind, and yet unwearied in active practical labors; speculative and profound, and at the same time a man of the people, and a servant of the congregation; heroically strong and outspoken, and yet refined in feeling and taste as a virgin; eaglelike in his universal view and work, but not less considerate in his regard and care for the smallest details; an imperious and commanding character, and yet a most dutiful servant of the Church; a cultivated rabbinical theologian, and at the same time a modest workman at a trade." That a man so gifted, so educated, so sensible, so wise, so useful, so successful, should be converted by a falsehood against all his own interests, should profess a falsehood, should preach a false

hood, should glory in a falsehood, and, after having sacrificed all in life for a falsehood, should be a martyr for a falsehood, and that in regard to questions not of mere intellection, but of facts sensible to ear and eye and touch, is far more improbable than all the miracles he believed and performed and recorded. You cannot separate the supernatural in the creed of St. Paul from the precepts of St. Paul and the life of St. Paul. Admit his own statement of his conversion, and you have a complete key to his character, his conduct, his writings, and his entire career. Seek to eliminate the miraculous from his history and Epistles, and you are involved in difficulties multiplied and insuperable. This will be obvious in the difference between the clear, learned, consistent, healthful, manly work of Conybeare and Howson, and this obscure, superficial, disjointed, sickly, unnatural biography of M. Renan. To a man who has examined the questions relating to the canonicity of the Pauline Epistles, the introduction to this volume will be amusing for its assumption, painful for its weakness, and contemptible for its shallowness. Yet there is a certain felicity of expression in M. Renan, a vivacity, a cleverness, an originality, which give to his pages a fascination for thousands. He throws over his works a species of delicious and voluptuous haziness, like that which sometimes softens the gorgeous colors of a torrid landscape. The soul becomes lulled by the intoxicating breath of brilliant poison-flowers. Genius sheds over its creation a spell under which pictures of fancy are mistaken for arguments of reason. The birth-place of our Saviour is invaded, and the scenes of His career explored, for colors to decorate a work designed for a misrepresentation of Himself, His followers, and His work. An extract from M. Renan, occurring in a volume where we expect learning and argument, will, perhaps excite a smile by its sickly extravagance, but will at the same time show how unsuited the gifted, flippant, dreamy Frenchman is to treat the solemn and momentous subjects on which he has undertaken to enlighten the world and the Church. "The gayety, the youthfulness of heart breathed by these evangelical Odysseys were something new, original, and charming. The Acts of the Apostles, an expression of this first transport of the Christian conscience, compose a book of joy, of serene ardor. Since the Homeric poems, no work had been so full of fresh sensations. A breeze of morning, an odor of the sea, if I dare express it so, inspiring something joyful and strong, penetrates the whole book, and makes it an excellent compagnon de voyage, the exquisite breviary for him who is searching for ancient remains on the seas of the South. This is the second idyl of Christianity. The Lake of Tiberias and its fishing barks had furnished the first. Now a more powerful breeze, aspirations toward more distant lands, draw us out into the open sea." What a rhapsody! The grave, solemn, historic Book of Acts, narrating simple facts in the most prosaic style conceivable, without a start of surprise or a color of imagination, compared both to an idyl and an epic-two forms of poetry the most totally different! The error of judgment is only equaled by the error of taste. It would be a miracle if the pencil of the Apostate Renan did not draw a caricature of the Apostle Paul.

THE EPISTLE OF ST. PAUL TO THE ROMANS. By J. P. LANGE, D. D., and the Rev. F. R. FAY. Translated from the German by J. F. HURST, D. D. With additions by P. SCHAFF, D. D., and the Rev. M. B. RIDDLE. New York: Charles Scribner & Co., 654 Broadway. 1869.

How interesting the situation of the Church when St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Romans! The Imperial City, first a prophetic scourge of idolatrous nations, was now enthroned on their ruins, and preparing by the unity of a vast empire for the universal diffusion of the very Gospel it was persecuting. Amid the splendor of her palaces and the pomp of her pageants, a despised community in a retired precinct was scarcely deemed worthy of notice, unless marked by some popular ebullition for exile, or for torture. Yet this society, composed chiefly of slaves and artisans, was organizing a power destined eventually to conquer the city, the empire, the world. It was evidently composed of both Jewish and Gentile elements in frequent antagonism. To reconcile their differences, by showing them a common humiliation in Adam and a common redemption in Christ, was the chief aim of the Apostle. Jews and Gentiles are proven alike under sin, alike justified by faith, alike under the obligations of an evangelical obedience. This seems the key to the Epistle. But in its development how admirably St. Paul touches prejudices, improves circumstances, administers rebuke, imparts encouragement, utters warning, at once humbling the ancient Jewish pride and the modern Gentile exaltation, — while he unfolds the whole theology of a subjective piety! We agree with the editor of this most learned and admirable work that "the Epistle to the Romans is the Epistle of the Epistles, as the Gospel of John is the Gospel of the Gospels. It is the heart of the doctrinal portion of the New Testament." At the same time we should remember that it ought to be supplemented by the Epistle to the Hebrews. The one presents the subjective, the other the objective side of our holy religion. The one shows us that condition in ourselves which procures our justification; the other lifts us above to our exalted Saviour. The one points to the propitiation of the cross; the other directs to the priesthood of the throne. The one exhibits as the centre of our faith the completed oblation on earth, and the other, as the inspiration of our hope, unfolds the perpetual intercession in heaven. While holding with Dr. Schaff that the Epistle to the Romans, explaining the great doctrine of a penitent believer's justification through faith in his Saviour, is "the bulwark of the evangelical doctrines of sin and grace against the obscuration of the Gospel," we fear that this cardinal truth, separated from sacraments and duties, and cheering views of our exalted Priest and Intercessor, often degenerates into a mere subjective and sentimental piety. Nowhere is the admirable equilibrium so beautifully preserved as in our own Articles and Offices. But while guarding this tendency to exalt faith in an undue proportion, and make the foundation of the Gospel also its superstructure, we most cordially commend the vast erudition and industry displayed in this valuable commentary. If the arrangement is cumbersome, the learning is priceless.