indignation against, the rashness and folly of putting on a red cloak to walk in a field where we are warned there is a mad bull. But in the name of English freedom and Christian charity, in the name of all that we cherish of generosity and chivalry, let us look with the profoundest reverence, and gratitude, and sympathy on tender and delicate women devoting themselves to the service of God and the poor, with the sacrifice of their substance and their lives; bearing what the stoutest hearted men would shrink from; carrying comfort and blessing into wildernesses of sin and suffering created by our neglect; giving to us who are sitting in our comfortable studies and our refined drawing-rooms a glorious example how to take up our cross and follow our common Master. Let us leave to our bishops, not suggest to a mob, the task of watching over such institutions and guarding them from mistakes. Our sympathy, our reverence, and our gratitude will open to us the happiest mode of warning them from error, if errors are likely to be committed. experience even of failure in such attempts will be an invaluable lesson to ourselves. How many guns must be burst, how many ships dismasted as useless, before we can reach the best type of our cannon and our fleets! Experience is what we want. Let every experiment be tried, be carefully watched, accurately recorded, guarded against dangerous explosions. But let them be tried. It is evident that we are as yet much in the dark as to the right construction of the machinery of sisterhoods, which, nevertheless, we acknowledge to be of infinite value, even necessity. Let each new suggestion have scope and due freedom for its trial. Παθεῖν μαθεῖν. Even their failure will be our gain, and the errors of the first will become the wisdom of the last.

The

Another point to be remembered in the discussion of sisterhoods is that, although they are not identical with that re-establishment of deaconnesses in England which has been so ably urged by Dr. Howson, and discussed at the late congress at Oxford, (what a progress has already been made in the removal of prejudices on this subject!) still the one must run into the other. Deaconnesses regularly appointed and recognized by the Church, trained to their work, associated in ministrations of mercy, whether as visitors of the poor, or nurses, or teachers, and distinguished by a dress, however simple and unobtrusive, will naturally gather themselves under the shelter of a common home. They will be found among the numerous class of educated ladies who have small incomes and no family ties, and for whom families must be constructed. Deaconnesses must grow sisterhoods, and sisterhoods must also deaconnesses. That is, women brought together into any social form of religious life must be employed in practical business-like religious duties. A conventual system formed to train female minds to habits only of devotion, meditation, and prayer, is not and ought not to be contemplated. Mary and Martha are not cases in point. Our Lord's teaching applies to a contrast not between the practical and the meditative religious life, but between the religious and the secular, between the thirst for internal religious knowledge and religious affection and an excess of care and trouble for externals, however needed.

grow

They are not even simply human beings. Their pecularities as women must be consulted, carefully and reverently consulted, for all that is planned and done must be inspired by that exalted and exalting reverence for woman which is the chivalry of the Gospel. But they must be understood. If a wall is to be built, we must first know whether our materials are to be bricks or stones. May we venture to suggest a few features in the female character which must materially determine the form upon. which sisterhoods are to be constructed? I. Are not women essentially weak, so that they must cling together and lean upon some stronger arm? 2. Are they not naturally disposed to be jealous of each other? 3. Must not, therefore, the authority placed over them be vested in a man? 4. And yet does not the delicacy of their nature require a woman's authority immediately in contact

with them? 5. Do they not throw their whole heart and soul into the two noble but unreflecting passions of admiration and love? 6. Are they not eminently objective, rather than subjective? 7. Are they not formed to feel rather than reason, and to execute rather than criginate? 8. Do they not, therefore, need specific direction far more than men ? 9. Will they not in love and duty brave and endure things from which the most heroic man would shrink? 10. When they are strict and severe, is not their severity far more cruel than man's? II. Is not the sense of weakness, of uselessness in the world, one of their great trials? 12. Have they not a keen ambition, and longing for power, and when they possess power do they not abuse it more than men? 13. Have they not a craving to be loved? 14. And has not this weakness been, in more than one instance, seized on by individuals incautiously admitted into sisterhoods, to obtain an undue influence over the head, and so to peril, if not to ruin, the whole institution? 15. Does not the necessarily confined sphere of their duties, the subordination of their social position, and the weakness and delicacy of their nature, busy them with the seemingly little things of life, petty difficulties, trifling interests, as they seem to men? 16. Is not this the secret of that tendency to gossip with which they are charged? 17. Can gossip exist without evil-speaking, and is this danger to be met by the imposition of silence, or by the elevation of the mind to higher thoughts and duties than our neighbours' faults. 18. Are they not more indifferent to food than men, but more dainty-a consideration which has been unduly neglected in more than one sisterhood, and with great mischief as the result? 19. Can we, ought we to extinguish their taste and interest in dress? Is not a woman's dress, like a soldier's uniform, matter of no little importance? 20. When great intellect and the instinct of ruling predominates in a woman, is it not an exception to the general constitution of nature? and can such exceptional minds be safely entrusted with the formation or administration of a practical system, which, to become permanent and universal, must be calculated for ordinary and average minds? We submit these twenty questions to those who understand the female character better than we do ourselves. Some other time we may try to point out a few of the practical applications of them to the internal organization of sisterhoods.

The Astronomy of the Ancients.

IR GEORGE LEWIS'S learned work has been already so frequently and so favourably reviewed, that we may assume it has also by this time been so extensively read as to render it unnecessary in this notice to occupy any space in giving a preliminary account of its contents. It would also be superfluous to waste time in mere commendations of an author so very well known for his erudition and critical acumen. We shall rather, therefore, pay him the greater compliment of criticising what he has written, in the same spirit with which he himself has heretofore dealt with "the credibility of early Roman History," or, in the work before us, with Egyptian and Babylonian chronology.

The author explains that he has not written his work as a scientific history of astronomy for scientific persons; and, in fact, it appears that he has merely investigated the ancient astronomy at all because of its intimate connection with ancient chronology, and because the latter is the foundation of history. Strictly speaking, then, this is not so much a history of ancient astronomy as another critical work on the Credibility of Ancient History, going back, on the present occasion, to a period anterior even to the time when Greek and Roman history was but fabulous and tra

*A Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients. By the Right Honourable Sir George Cornewall Lewis. London: Parker, Son, and Bourn. 1862.

ditionary. Although we have, therefore, in this work, a survey of the astronomical opinions of the ancients," it is curiously out of place; and, certainly, as far as it is a history, its credibility may be doubted with even greater reason in some respects and especially as regards the most early periods it surveys-than early Roman history, or the chronology of Egypt, Babylon, and-should we not add-China. In some sense we mean literally that the astronomical survey is "out of place;" for, in the résumé of The Astronomy of the Ancients, given by Sir George Lewis, he commences, not with the Babylonians and Egyptians, but with the comparatively recent Greeks and Romans. This first part of the book contains a collection of, perhaps, all the allusions to astronomical opinions, facts, or theories, which may be found in all the remains of Greek and Roman Literature from Homer and X Hesiod downwards, while in the latter part of the work we are taken back to the chronology of the more ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. In that portion, however, which is by far the largest of Sir George Lewis's work, we have little or nothing whatever about astronomy; and yet it is the only part of the book that is written, as it were, with a purpose, or in which the author appears to arrive at any practical conclusion. It is here we have the final cause of the whole, and a key to the common inquiry, What can have induced Sir George Lewis to turn his attention to astronomy? Sir George has really written his present work to show why he utterly discredits the puzzling historical traditions of the Egyptians and Babylonians. He regards them as unworthy of credit, because "the chronologies differ by thousands of years," and because they have no foundation but "the oral traditions of priests," and the supposed discoveries of modern Egyptologists, who, he says, have a method of reasoning which recognizes none of the ordinary rules of evidence," and "makes demands upon our credulity almost unbounded." In discarding the much-vaunted hieroglyphical discoveries of modern times, it is to be regretted that he does not go further, and tell us whether he has arrived at definite conclusions as to the probably real chronology of the ancients. But perhaps that would be asking too much. It is something to have pointed out, that what has appeared to be a reality is only a mirage. What is truly to be seen through the mists of antiquity is probably well left for future investigation. We may assume, however, since he rejects the modern faith in the immense antiquity of Egyptian dates, as being merely due to "Oriental exaggerations," like the 80,000 or 100,000 years B.C., also claimed by the Chinese for their "Celestial Empire," that he is inclined to revert rather to the now old-fashioned chronology of Scripture, and that he thinks we have little ground for believing in any chronology of the ancients beyond about 3,000 or = 4,000 years prior to the Christian era. Doubtless if any thing plausible can be urged on the other side against this orthodox judgment, Oxford or Cambridge will provide a champion, or they will belie the reputation they are beginning to acquire for defending the newest speculations with "a freedom of thought" which approximates to the "Oriental," alike in its latitude and tenuity.

We have no intention to go into this important question, but will revert to the subject of Astronomy, which gives the title to Sir George Lewis's learned work. It is curious to observe the delicacy of the layman, contrasted with recent writings of some of the clergy who have professed their assent and consent to the 39 Articles of the Church, as regards all reference to the Scriptures touching matters of human knowledge. This may be regarded, perhaps, as what is called an error on the safe side; but we profess we think Sir George Lewis has carried this delicacy too far. We know the bitterness that is easily imported into polemics when they touch religion; but we consider that therefore it is the more incumbent upon men of a truly philosophical spirit to show an example to a petulant age how matters of science or history should be discussed. Besides, we know not how our author could bring his logical mind to quote Hesiod, Homer, and Virgil, as exponents in any degree of the mind of "the

ancients" on astronomy, and omit all notice of the many astronomical allusions to be found in the far more ancient Jewish Scriptures. But this introduces us to a very deep subject, nothing less, namely, than the origin of human knowledge. For let us ask, How can we account for the astronomical puerilities of the ancient Greek and Roman mind as they appear in the works of their poets, contrasted with the superior, and we may almost say scientific, knowledge of the same things, implied in the astronomical allusions throughout the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, except upon some hypothesis of a truer tradition-taking the lowest possible view of the Scriptures, and regarding them simply as Jewish writings-somehow retained among Abraham's descendants, but lost among the Greeks? To say nothing of the cosmogony of Moses-for to speak with honest plainness we know not now whether those who would fain be orthodox are expected to believe with Mr. Rorison-and under the auspices of a bishop of high reputation (who, alas! in these too busy days has neither time to read what he condemns as heresy, nor what he sanctions as a defence of truth!) that the first chapters of Genesis are mere "poetry," with day and night divisions instead of stanzas! or as the less heterodox Mr. Goodwin maintains, as words which ought not to be tampered with, if they be a revelation of God;-let us glance at some of the other references to the earth and the heavenly bodies to be found in Scripture, and see how they contrast, taking them as mere expressions of the popular astronomy of the Israelites, with the extracts from profane poetry furnished to to us by Sir George Lewis.

Not only do we find in the Scriptures a total absence of anything like the absurdities of the mythological fables of the Greeks or Hindoos regarding astronomy; but when we even discard these, as perhaps never soberly believed, in all their literalness, by any but the lowest grades of mind even among those where the myths were current, and have regard merely to the notions which may have been entertained as probable physical truth; the contrast is marked between what is contained in Scripture and in profane poetry. We say this, though we do not go so far as Sir George Lewis appears to do, and consider that every allusion in a poem to the earth and stars should be taken literally as proving what was the popular belief respecting their real constitution. Some of his quotations, which speak of "the earth as a level plain surrounded by the ocean," are, perhaps, rather indications of a limited geographical knowledge than astronomical opinions at all; and indeed, some of the other quotations given, as opposed to that opinion, are evidently geographical arguments and not astronomical, as he appears exclusively to regard them. We know that others among the ancients-who may also have regarded the earth as a level plain-believed the sea to be in the middle with land all round, and hence the very name of the "Mediterranean This view also, doubtless, depended upon local position and limited geographical knowledge; and really when men did not know what was beyond the water or the land on this or that side: of them, what else-apart from mere speculation—could they possibly profess to know as rational beings? True, the form of the vault of heaven, the circular appearance of the earth when viewed from elevated positions or from the sea or on level ground, the extension of the apparent horizon equally to the same distance beyond any place to which one might travel in any direction, might all suggest to thoughtful minds the rotundity of the earth and its hanging upon nothing. And, in point of fact, in the very earliest traces given by Sir George Lewis of the deliberate thoughts of men on these subjects, such are indeed the conclusions arrived at. It is not in Homer or Hesiod or Virgil, or the writings of any "poet," nor even in those of general writers on miscellaneous subjects, that one should expect to find the astronomical views even of contemporaries; but only in the works of those who treat of the subject specially. Even in astronomical works the language cannot always be confined to expressions in accordance with the theoretical views of the writers. Not merely do we find them ever and anon making use

sea.

of words implying "the earth to be a level plain,” and alluding to the sun's "rising" and "setting," in accordance with the natural appearances of things; but sometimes language still less in accordance with their real opinions may be found. For instance, in a highly specuFor instance, in a highly speculative essay by Professor Kelland in Macmillan's Magazine for January of this year, entitled, "The Yard Measure applied to the Stars," may be found the following sentence with reference to the stationary sun :-"But the sun wanders among the stars and rolls round the earth, and thus seems to defy the efforts of the measurer." This almost matches any extract given by Sir G. Lewis from the Greek and Latin poets. When we come to Thales, however, and leave the poets, we at once have a theory of the earth no longer childish. But before Thales what do we find? And this suggests another question, How did Thales obtain-or did he devise-his notion of a round earth suspended in space? Now, it is believed that he learned this theory in Egypt; in short, that he merely transferred to Greece a tradition of astronomical truth retained elsewhere, which not even the subtlety of the Grecian mind enabled it to discover of itself. This consideration throws us back once more upon the further inquiry, whether the Egyptians accomplished of themselves this intellectual feat, which the acute Greeks could not achieve, or whether the Egyptians, also, merely acquired their knowledge as a tradition? We cannot further pursue this question, though it ought to be considered by all who will go deeply into the matter; but will resume the limited consideration of the supposed astronomy of the Greeks, before they were thus enlightened by "the wisdom of the Egyptians," and, judging from the astronomical allusions found in their poets, contrasted with similar allusions in Scripture.

We may return to the subject of this book.

The Great Liberal Party.

HE "Great Liberal Party,"-monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademtum, has been minutely dissected by the author of The Present Position. He has used a sharp knife and a steady hand, and has cut clean and deep. In the process the whole structure and composition of the thing has been laid bare. The result is not pleasant or flattering to the national pride, either of governors or governed; but as it is a good thing for a people to know a little now and then about the impostures practised upon them under pretence of patriotism, and for the English people in particular, to know what curious things are perpetrated on their behalf in the name of "civil and religious liberty," the author has done good service, and deserves to be read not only for the ability, but for the usefulness of his book.

The Egyptians themselves, on whose early monuments are found all the signs of the zodiac, acknowledge that they derived their astronomy from the Chaldeans. These signs evidently correspond with the imagery in Jacob's dying blessing, and the Hebrew tradition is that he spoke of them as the appointed cognizances of his twelve sons which were borne on the standards of Israel in the wilderness; and the twelve signs and other constellations are connected with prophecies relating to the coming of the Messiah, and traced back by the Jews even to Seth and Adam. The Chaldeans attribute their astronomical science to Oannes, supposed to be Noah. The Arabs and Brahmins, among whom astronomy was early cultivated, probably derived it from Abraham, through Ishmael and the children of Keturah. The Greeks, as we have seen, traced their first real astronomical knowledge to the Egyptians. The Romans are thought to

have received theirs from the Etrurians; and they theirs from Assyria; and Hesiod even, who mentions some of the constellations by the names they now bear, is said to have made use of Assyrian records. The mythological fables applied to the constellations are supposed to be corruptions of the true traditions of the divine prophecies which are really recorded and prefigured in the names given to the groups of the stars.

[The substance of this note is extracted from a most learned and interesting work, called Mazzaroth (Rivington's), now passing through the press, the first part of which came accidentally into the writer's hands while writing this article.]

The Present Position of the Liberal Party. By the Author of Miriam May and Crispin Ken. Saunders, Otley, and Co., 1862.

The book is "liberally" abused. This is a tribute to its truth and power. In one respect, indeed, the author has laid himself open to attack when he might have avoided it. He has written so rapidly and down upon his subject, and with such scanty revision, that he is here and there obscure. This remark applies to one or two of the earlier chapters. But this is of the less consequence, both because it is partial only, and because of the construction of the book, which deals in its several chapters with the several heterogeneous elements out of which "the great liberal party is compounded; and as each chapter is complete in itself, the reader can walk in and out of the book at pleasure, just as if there were no other chapters than the one he is reading. He will find in every one of them more than enough by way of information, and comment, and amusement to make him glad that he has read; and he will dip and dip again, till he has taken up and digested and assimilated the entire book. It is good sound food, and very well and piquantly served up: but here and there the cook has not taken quite pains enough to make some ingredients find their way smoothly and easily over the palate.

If we may advise touching the way of reading this book, we should say begin with chapters iv. v. vi; then go on to x. xi. xiv: after these a discursive dipping; rather a synthetical than an analytical process. But it should all be read, because it is a real whole; though some change may be made for ease and satisfaction in grasping its contents, in the order in which the parts are taken.

The

Horace tells us that if you pull a great poet to pieces you will find the several pieces, language, matter, style, thought, creative and imaginative power, fit into one another better than into anything else, and make one harmonious and beautiful whole. But what is true of a great poet is not necessarily true of a "great party; especially is it not true of "the great liberal party.' whole is not harmonious, neither before nor after the disjunctive process. Rather is it a monstrum ;-it is true it is ingens; it is the great liberal party; but horrendum, a misshapen and distorted a thing that it is a miracle how thing ghastly and alarming to look upon; informe—so the parts ever came together or grew into one another, so as to be parts of the one and the same body: and then its single eye; the one thing there was of light about it— Virgil had some experience of the results of the policy of care for the people-this is gone,-cui lumen ademtum. a great liberal party in his day, and sung of it very aptly when he sung of Polyphemus.

There is a compensation in things. Now we have lived to see the worst war of ancient or modern times-the States claimed to be first among the nations, whether of worst under each and all of its aspects. The once United the Old or of the New World, especially in what has misappropriated to itself a very high and honourable name. It is really shocking to think what modern "liberality” is, and above all other American "liberality," or liberalism, compared with what it should be to answer to its name. Well, the Americans being sunk in liberalism, and having drained all its poison to the lowest dregs, thought they were going to out-top the world-"to whip creation"-to use two words of that choice phraseology which has been the only thing to make men sicken at and be ashamed of the English language. All at once the bubble burst, and the very small amount of public virtue and morality existing among their public men was not proof against the trial forced upon them by the downfall of their hopes. So came this unnatural, aimless, and brutal war. In its beginning without one single excuse; in its progress revolting, and breathing nothing so much as the worst spirit of vengeance and extermination. Then men said and now there are very few in England who do not say it-see what "liberalism" does for a people. It makes them to be so wholly without compass or pilot that when a great trial comes upon them there is nothing in them to command, but everything to alienate the respect and the sympathy of mankind. then the American butchery-for it does not deserve the name of war-be a dreadful visitation upon humanity at

If

large, there is at least this compensatory lesson to be learnt from it, that it is not the "liberal party" among a people, however great, which is its best friend. The English people have been apt scholars. They have gotten a wonderful amount of learning in the last twelve months. The "liberal" market is not considered to be safe. The scrip is at a heavy discount. It is terrible to think at what price the true value of this stuff has been ascertained; but no man in his senses will say that even this price has been too high, having regard to the historical importance of exposing unmistakably to the world the real character and extent of American imposture.

At this juncture, then, it is very good to have some parallel account of liberalism in England; some connected comment upon it, founded on facts and documents. The things in the two countries are very like one another; but there is a considerable difference too, originating in, and growing out of, those very institutions which liberalism holds to be its particular vocation to destroy. It is a thankless and not a very wise proceeding to direct all your efforts to the overthrow of those very things which confer upon you all the little respectability you may possess. But so it is with "liberals" all over the world, and so it will be to the end of the chapter. The author of the Present Position has helped largely and powerfully to a truer understanding of the case as it stands between "the great liberal party and the English nation, and we all owe him our best thanks.

Schleiermacher.

HE name and merits of Schleiermacher, as the interpreter of Plato, are generally known in this country. His theology is read by some amongst the students of German literature. The recent translation of his letters has introduced his name to a wider circle, and gained for him new admirers. It is, therefore, necessary to know whether he is a safe guide in religion. Men of opposite opinions in Germany make him the beginner of a new era in German theology, or even the author of the happy movement from infidelity towards faith. Some of the new school of Divinity amongst ourselves regard him with admiration as a perfect exemplification of the possibility of being a devout Christian without believing any one article of the Catholic faith. That he was a great man must be acknowledged by all who know the high position he took in Germany, and held for so many years. He was at once philosophic and imaginative-a sentimentalist and a sophistic dialectician—a profound student and a shrewd and practical patriot-an agreeable companion, equally acceptable to the diplomatist and the man of learning; the friend of Perthes the plodding bookseller, and of the genial Heinrich Steffens, that enthusiastic philosopher of nature and zealous asserter of consubstantiation. A man so endowed was naturally constituted to exercise a great influence in his day and generation. To understand his religious inAluence it is necessary to remember his early training. His parents, anxious to preserve him from the infidelity of the day, placed him first at the Moravian school at Niesky, and subsequently at their seminary at Barby, to be prepared for the Moravian ministry. But Schleiermacher was naturally of a sceptical turn of mind. At the age of eleven, as he tells us, he had had doubts concerning the Deity of our Lord and His vicarious sacrifice; and at Barby, where, notwithstanding the vigilance of the directors, the literary periodicals of the day found an entrance, his original doubts were revived and irrevocably fastened in his mind. In a letter to his father he declares that he cannot believe that Jesus is the Only-begotten and Eternal Son of the Father, and that he rejects the doctrine of His vicarious sufferings. This confession, of course, terminated his studies at Barby, and caused his removal to Halle. But that peculiar mental constitution which made him take pleasure in the devout sentimentality of the Moravians caused him ever to retain the impression received

amongst them, and that impression was subsequently one cause of his success as a preacher and a divine. That his success was great is undoubted. But that Schleiermacher was the sole or even principal author of the return of so many Germans to the Catholic faith can only be believed by those who think that nothing great in religion or theology can be effected except by a scientific divine, a professor at a university. When Schleiermacher appeared, Germany was like the land of Israel in the days of Elijah. It seemed as if all had forsaken the Lord. But there were some thousands left scattered in various regions who had never bowed the knee to the modern Baal. The university of Tubingen was orthodox in the worst times. Bengel had many followers all over Germany, even in his apocalyptic calculations. In Elberfeld and the Wupperthal, in Bavaria, in Prussia proper, in Silesia, there were to be found among the clergy zealous defenders of the Unveränderte Augspurgische Confession, or of the severest doctrines of Calvin. Amongst the laity also were many pious believers in the Faith once delivered to the saints, as, for example, the old Landgrave of Hesse, the devout and self-sacrificing Baron von Kottwitz, Matthias Claudius; and, in Berlin itself, the venerable and devoted Bohemian preacher, Jenicke, kept alive the spark of faith amongst the middle-classes, from the days of Frederick the Great to our own times. When, therefore, the most awful calamities of war and the hard hand of a foreign tyrant fell heavy upon Germany, and crushed its pride, and filled every house, from the palace to the cottage, with sorrow and mourning, and made men seek for consolation which cold infidelity could not bestow, they turned towards those pastors who had something to offer, and went back to their Bible and their old German hymn-book. Then those who had remained faithful in the general apostacy had the joy of seeing their fidelity rewarded by the return of many an erring soul. This was just the time when Schleiermacher's voice was heard, proclaiming the necessity of religion for the educated classes. Neology had left the German heart desolate. Calamity had made it contrite, aud conscious of its desolation. Schleiermacher came to tell them how they might be religious without believing the Bible, without renouncing their philosophy, and without returning to the creeds, which they had rejected long ago, and, as they thought, for ever. In his celebrated Orations on Religion there was nothing to offend the prejudices of the age. Religion is represented as a sentiment, an affair altogether personal and subjective. He did not ask for faith in Scripture, nor in the Confessions of the Universal Church. He rather protested against it by declaring that such faith was not religion. He did not make Christianity specially prominent, nor exclusively the true religion; but one amongst many. He even suggested the possibility of another and more perfect revelation. He praised Spinoza as "full of religion and the Holy Ghost," and called upon his readers "to join him in offering a lock-of-hair to the manes of the holy, despised Spinoza." Of him, he says, "The infinite was his beginning and end. The universe his only and eternal love. In holy innocence and profound humility he mirrored himself in the eternal world, and beheld that he himself was the eternal world's most loveable mirror !!" (whatever that means). In conformity with this eulogy he so mystifies his readers between God and the universe, and by his objection to a personal God, that their impression is that Schleiermacher's religion was Pantheism, and this opinion is shared alike by scientific divines of the opposing schools. Kahnis and Karl Schwarz both declare outright that he was a Pantheist. Such an advocate, pleading for such a religion, was likely to plead successfully with the educated irreligious of that day. Indeed, his work had a presage of success in the private Imprimatur of two accomplished Jewesses, to whom the author previously communicated his manuscript. What pleased them was not likely to offend the prejudices of other rejecters of Christianity. It also was sure of being favourably received by the Romantic school, then a large and energetic party in Germany, being recommended by Frederick Schlegel their acknowledged head. The wonder was how Schleiermacher,

with such sentiments, ever produced any inclination for the simple Christian faith. But this difficulty vanishes when we remember that in his sermons, and dogmatic divinity, he continually speaks of the convictions of sin, the neces sity of redemption,-of Christ as the Redeemer, and of the blessedness of the change from a state of nature to a state of grace,-that he treated religion as a matter of personal experience, and affirmed that the believer could give an account of the inward change from the irreligious to the religious state.

His style of preaching also was attractive and impressive. He was philosophic, but also eloquent and fervid. He never wrote his sermons, but studied them mentally, and sketched merely an outline beforehand. His mind, therefore, worked during the delivery; and the ideas, issuing forth hot and fresh, went to the hearts of those accustomed to the embarrassed manner of preachers who wrote their sermons and then learned them by heart. Thus Schleiermacher met both the intellectual tastes and the religious wants of the times, and soon became popular with all classes. Those who had deserted public worship went to hear Schleiermacher. Statesmen, military men, professors, university students, and sentimentalists, male and female, thronged his church. Many were through his preaching convinced of sin and of the necessity of redemption. They interpreted what he said about the Redeemer by the help of their hymn-books, and took all literally in the old-fashioned sense. But when this awakening from godlessness or infidelity was effected, and the subjects of the change began to think, and to study the long-neglected New Testament, they gradually discovered that Schleiermacher meant something altogether different from what they had conceived-that his Christ was not the Christ of the Gospel-his redemption not that which was purchased with the atoning blood of Christ. They found that though sometimes he spoke orthodoxly of miracles, at other times he explained them away-especially the cases of demoniacal possession, which he treated as insanity-denying altogether the existence of the devil. Then they left him and sought out some despised pastor who believed in the Bible. Theological students who attended his lectures, in which there was less reserve than in his discourses ad populum, found him out sooner. publication of his Glaubenslehere fully revealed his meaning, and exhibited his religion as something altogether different from the Christian faith. His faith is not that embodied in the Creeds, and does not come from the hearing of the Word of God, but from personal feeling. The Old Testament he rejects as Jewish, and thinks that the doctrine of the Christian Church will never be right until it is altogether got rid of as alien to Christianity. The New Testament, in his eyes, is not an inspired Record of Divine Revelation, but a collection of writings of individuals, who merely give their own views of facts, and record their own opinions and feelings. Their writings are, therefore, of no authority when they disagree with the internal religious sentiment. On this internal sentiment his whole religious system is based. According to this theory man feels that he is a creature dependent upon God. He also feels his sinfulness, and that of the human race. Somehow or other he hears of Christ, through the Church or through tradition, and feels that He is the Saviour he needs. Through Him an internal change takes place. He is delivered from the feeling of sin and guilt, and translated into a feeling of communion with Christ. This is redemption. The consciousness of this change is faith. But then the words God, Christ, sin, redemption, Redeemer, are all used in a sense of his own.

The

As we have already seen, Schleiermacher's God is not a personal God, nor Creator of the world; for he found it difficult to comprehend a beginning of creation. He is not the God of the Old Testament, for that is totally rejected; nor the Triune God, for the Trinity is absolutely denied. Christ is not the Eternal Son of the Father; for, according to Schleiermacher, He had no existence until He was born, like other human beings, of two human parents, Joseph and Mary. His union with God is the result of

Re

the original law in the production of the human race, according to which God provided that humanity should be capable of this degree of perfection. The eternal provision was realized in the Son of Mary and Joseph; and, therefore, Christ is the archetypal man, was always conscious of the Divine presence, and sinless, and His mind conformable to the Divine mind, but still a creature like ourselves. Redemption is not a deliverance from the curse of the Law, from death and hell, but the change above indicated. Christ's death was not an atoning death, nor His sufferings vicarious. Scripture testimony on this point is simply rejected, not explained away. Christ's resurrection is doubtful, and faith in it not necessary to redemption. The accounts of His ascension are also doubtful, and the ascension not an article of faith. There will be no second Advent, no general resurrection, no general judgment. Even personal immortality is doubtful, and the common belief in it the mere offspring of selfishness, a desire for the continuance of self. The Holy Spirit of the Old Testament is not the same as the Holy Spirit of the New Testament, and could not be, for the latter, being the pervading principle (esprit de corps) of the Christian Church, could not exist when there was no Christian Church. Sin is not the result of the fall of Adam, which is only a myth, nor a transgression of the Divine Law, but the dominion of the lower part of our nature over the higher. demption the dominion of the higher over the lower. Such is an outline of Schleiermacher's system. Self is the foundation of the whole; and what self does not feel necessary is not to be believed. As self fabricates the whole system of faith and doctrine, self also originates the principles of morality. Marriage, therefore, according to Schleiermacher, is a mere human institution-in fact, the voluntary union of two individuals, which if on trial they find not agreeable, or if one of them finds a more agreeable consort, they may terminate by divorce. The use of a public liturgy is lawful to him who does not believe what it expresses; and, therefore, when the use of the Prussian liturgy, in 1830, was made compulsory, he defends the acceptance of it by himself and the Rationalists, on the grounds that, first, not he who reads, but he who imposes the liturgy is the responsible party; secondly, that they who read it use the words in their own sense; and thirdly, that in the constant repetition of the same words the readers at last attach to them no ideas at all. This is the man whose principles are beginning to make way in England. It is already matter of common report that in some churches his doctrine of the atonement, and his denial of the second Advent, of the general resurrection and final judgment, are preached to the wondering ears of our people. But, of course, that is the affair of the chief shepherds, the bishops. It is necessary, however, for the clergy and laity to know who and what that mighty genius is who is now lauded and praised by those who ought to know better. He is not an Arian; for the Arians acknowledged our Lord's pre-existence. He is not a Socinian; for the true Socinians acknowledged the Divine authority of Scripture. He is not a Deist; for they believe in a personal God and immortality. As the eulogist of Spinoza, the denier of a personal God, the doubter of personal immortality, and the confounder of the ideas of God and Universe, he comes nearest to the Pantheists; and such, as we have seen, is the judgment of two German divines, who must understand his language better than we can pretend to do.

Thirty Years' Musical
Recollections.*

R. CHORLEY'S book would undeniably have been a great deal better worth reading if some of its facts had been less open to question, and its writing to criticism. We do not mean to say Thirty Years' Musical Recollections. By Henry F. Chorley. London: Hurst and Blackett,