POETRY.-Albert Pike described by Himself, 434. "Old Stars," 434. Morning, 478. Pere La Chaise, 479. The Last Day of October, 1862, 479. A Drifting Leaf, 479. Hope, 479. Harben's Love Song, 480.

66

SHORT ARTICLES.-Frogs in Coal, 449. Devotion to Science, 449. General Liprandi, 462. Cockney Criticism, 480. How to see the Exhibition in Ten Minutes, 480. News from the Styx," 480. A smooth Way of getting out of it, 480. Forgiveness of Injuries, 480.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL, SON, & CO., BOSTON.

For Six Dollars a year, in advance, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded free of postage.

Complete sets of the First Series, in thirty-six volumes, and of the Second Series, in twenty volumes, handsomely bound, packed in neat boxes, and delivered in all the principal cities, free of expense of freight, are for sale at two dollars a volume.

ANY VOLUME may be had separately, at two dollars, bound, or a dollar and a half in numbers.

ANY NUMBER may be had for 13 cents; and it is well worth while for subscribers or purchasers to complete any broken volumes they may have, and thus greatly enhance their value.

....

66

From The Quarterly Review. diminution of lawful authority in matters AIDS TO FAITH. spiritual. This was probably inevitable. [CONTINUED FROM NO. 965.] The isolated spirituality could not balance WE enter now upon a different branch of properly the great and neighboring weight of our subject. When we first drew attention the temporal power. The evil was increased to this subject we expressed an opinion ac- by the unavoidable mixture of questions of cordant with that which the Bishop of Ox- property with questions directly spiritual ford has stated in his preface to the "Re-through our system of endowments; and the plies to the Essayists." "Two distinct ever-growing jealousy of the law of England courses," he says, seem to be required as to freehold rights raised the danger to its the distinct, solemn, and, if need be, highest point. Soon after the Reformation atsevere decision of authority, that assertions tempts were made to remedy the evil. The such as these cannot be put forward as pos- abortive "Reformatio Legum" stands as an sibly true.... by honest men who are abiding record of such an effort. All such enbound by voluntary obligations to teach the deavors as these were utterly swept away by Christian revelation as the truth of God. the great flood of Puritan violence which soon . . . . Secondly, we need the calm, compre- afterwards broke forth upon the land. Nor hensive, and scholar-like declaration of pos- was the period of the Restoration in any way itive truth upon all the matters in dispute, favorable for the development of a well-conby which the shallowness and the passion sidered and impartial strengthening of the and the ignorance of the new system of un- spiritual authority of the Church. It was belief may be thoroughly displayed."* pre-eminently a time of reaction; and a reactionary time, full as it necessarily is of spasms and violence, is most unfavorable for the formation of those joints and bands of reasonable restraint which form the truest

irritation bred by the action of that spiritual revolution on the possession of endowments. There was first the remembrance of the many grievous wrongs which had been wrought in the ejection from their benefices of the best of the clergy, under the falsest professions, in order to install into them the ignorant and fanatical self-seekers of the Puritan predominance; and then there was next the natu ral but unhappy action of the spirit of retribution running into revenge, righting freely these past wrongs by new ejections. All this acted mischievously upon the mind of the Church, and made the question of the restoration of her civil rights, for which she had mainly to lean on the civil arm, rather than the maintenance of her doctrinal purity, the great object upon which her eye was fixed.

We have traced the discharge by several writers of the second of these duties. We now pass on to examine what has been done by authority to free the Church of England from any complicity in the strange and erroneous doc-protection of liberty itself. There was the trines of the essayists. Constituted as that body is, it is impossible that there should, under any circumstances, be within its pale the sharp, sudden acting of authority which may be found in other communions or in other lands. All our traditions are in favor of liberty; all are hostile to the authoritative repression of independent action, and still more, we thank God, of independent thought. Even when we were a part of that vast organic body, half spiritual, half civil, of which the Papacy was the head, the action of authority in all matters spiritual was feebler and more tardy in this land than in any other. Many were the concessions wrung by our spirit of national independence from the distant Popedom; many the acts of rebellious freedom at which that crafty power was compelled to wink, in order to preserve any dominion over the self-willed islanders. Our separation from Rome, and the full establishment of the apostolic freedom of our own Church from the usurpations of the see which had transformed a lawful primacy into a lawless tyranny, were accompanied an evil waiting as the inseparable shadow upon our many blessings-with a

Preface to "Replies," etc., pp. 9, 10.

This was not all. The temper of the whole nation was one of reaction in favor of authority. Churchmen who had been faithful to the crown when it was trampled in the dirt under the feet of the Independents, would naturally suffer in the highest degree from the general epidemic; and the very loyalty of the Church led to its unduly exalting the throne, for which it had so severely suffered.

The Revolution of 1688, which in so many | forth-struggling, we might almost say, into directions strengthened and enlarged our being, against the ordinary laws of ecclesiliberties, tended only, from all its compli- astical parturition, it yet manifested at once cated operations, to weaken the free action of the Church as the spirituality of the realm. Nor, as we may find occasion to show hereafter, has recent legislation had any other tendency.

the formal slavery and the real freedom of the ecclesiastical element in our mingled constitution; our essential agreement, in spite of minor differences, on all matters concerning the fundamentals of the faith; and our No reasonable man can shut his eyes to common-sense view of the foolish attempt the benefits which have resulted from the to substitute the dreamy nebulosities of usedstruggles which make up this long history. up German speculation for a simple adherThe character of the Church of England re-ence to the language of the formularies, the sembles greatly that of men who, with wills letter of the creeds, and the plain teaching and understandings naturally strong, have of the Bible. been brought up under no very fixed or defi- The effect of the publication of this docunite rules of education, and have developed ment was great and timely. The mind of in that comparative freedom of firmness, an the Church was only, perhaps, too much quiindependence, and an individuality, with eted by it, and disposed to be prematurely which more correct rules of early training contented with what had been done as suffi must have interfered. For there is in her a cient for the occasion. Amongst the parmarvellously tenacious grasp of fundamental tisans of the essayists it produced a vast truth; an intelligent consent, amidst differ- amount of indignation. By one of the warmence on details of a multitude of minds, as est and most eloquent amongst them it was to the leading articles of the faith; and ear- described as "a document which, whilst nest, common-sense religiousness, which Cambridge lay in her usual attitude of magcould probably have been bred no otherwise nificent repose, about a month after the apthan under the full and free action of her pearance of the Quarterly, startled the world; existing constitution. But it is an inevitable one without precedent, as we trust it may be correlative of these advantages that the ac- without imitation, in the English Church." tion of authority within her body, when at It was "the counterpart of the Papal excomlast it is called for, should be slow, sporadic, munication levelled against Italian freedom, and somewhat feeble. We must not, there- filled with menaces borrowed from the anfore, expect, perhaps we need not very pas- cient days of persecution," etc. All this irsionately desire, that the rise of any error ritation was but a testimony to the real within her communion should be followed at weight of the condemnation, and not less so once by the meeting of the authoritative was the curious attempt of the same writer synod, the thunder of an anathema, and the to lessen its authority by representing the lightning shaft of summary excommunica-venerable Bishop of Exeter as not having tion. All this is illustrated in the history joined with his brethren in their censure. of the "Essays and Reviews" controversy.

When, shortly after the publication of our former article, public attention had been called to the subject, and the minds of thinking men thoroughly roused to its importance, the first action of authority was the appearance of a document, bearing first or last, we believe, the signature of every bishop of the United Church, and condemning many of the propositions of the book as inconsistent with an honest subscription to her formularies. This was, in our judgment, a mode of action highly characteristic of the temper and spirit which we have attributed to the Established Church. Somewhat informal in its conception and in its putting

There is an audacity which reaches almost to pleasantry in the attempt of the reviewer to claim the present Bishop of Exeter as one who, when the defence of the foundations of our belief was the question at issue, could conceive it to be the course of faithfulness to the duty of his great station to "protect," in the reviewer's sense of the words, “the cause of free and fair discussion from the indiscriminate violence of popular agitators."† This is really very much like expecting the great Athanasius to have deemed it his special vocation to protect the heretic Arius from the agitation and violence of the Catholic Church. But bold as this attempt would Edinburgh Review, No. 230, p. 469. † Ibid.

have been in any one who knew only the | of public, notorious, proclaimed complicity principles and character of the Right Rev. in an act which I am unwilling again to