It must now be evident, we think, how little has been accomplished for the suppression of the so-called Ritualism by prosecutions directed against such matters as incense, lights, and genuflections. To attempt to repress the outward symptoms, while the disease itself remains as virulent as ever, is surely not sound practice. Cure the disease, and the symptoms will cease of themselves; suppress the doctrine, and the rites which are supposed to symbolize it will cease of themselves, or cease to have any significance. At present, a thorough-going Ritualist is a Proteus whom you cannot chain; forbid him lights on the altar, he places them as near as the law will allow; forbid him to 'cense persons or things,' he burns his incense in a stationary vessel; forbid him to kneel at a particular point of the service, he brings his knee within an inch of the ground, which he takes care not to touch; if he were forbidden vestments, he would no doubt twist his hood into some resemblance to a chasuble. And all the while such a man gives himself the airs of a martyr-a martyr with a turn for legal quibbling. Vestments and the like are accessories of worship, not the essence, and of this the Neo-Catholic party are perfectly aware. The man who, when he puts on a decorated travestie of the garb of old Rome, fancies that he is induing himself with sacrificial vestments,' is no doubt extremely foolish; but he is not so foolish as to suppose that he cannot sacrifice' in surplice and hood. A decision against the doctrine held by such men as Mr. W. J. E. Bennett, might perhaps have the effect of driving some earnest and hard-working, however mistaken, clergymen from the ministry of the Church of England; but the permanent healing of the sore is to be looked for in that revulsion of thought which has, we think, already begun. England is in the main, as Dr. Newman has more than once told us, thoroughly Protestant.

But this is not all. The Ritualistic movement-important as it is-is but a small matter compared with certain tendencies of thought, which, if less noisy and obtrusive, are, in the opinion of many competent observers, much more powerful and deadly. These tendencies are the subject of Bishop Ellicott's highly important essay on 'The Course and Direction of Modern Religious Thought.' The Bishop takes us back some forty years, to the time when 'sober thinkers were beginning to realise that the Church of England was something more than a religious community bound together by thirtynine ties of greater or less elasticity, and our liturgy something more than the fifth edition of a mid-sixteenth century document;' when the corporate life of the Church,' in union with the Head, was felt to be the needed teaching for the times, which was readily embraced by thousands. The first and most obvious tendency of this movement was to promote the study of the Primitive Fathers; but the eager interest excited by the discussion of vital questions in theology led ultimately to the formation of a new school of Scripture interpretation and to renewed enquiry into the nature of biblical inspiration. The most remarkable product of the school of Free Thought is found in the well-known Essays and Reviews,' the general tendency of which volume was opposed to the prevailing theories of inspiration, and to the finality of the authority of Scripture in matters of faith and practice. The authoritative was to give way to the intuitive, or at least to be powerfully modified by it.' And this book found a large acceptance; 'every intelligent reader felt his intellectuality delicately flattered;' it focussed the yet unconcentrated thoughts that had been slowly manifesting themselves' during several years. And contemporaneously with this renewed enquiry into the nature and office of the Bible, a quiet current of thought has been silently sweeping away much of the popular theology on the cardinal subject of the Atonement; we now seldom hear those

6

'shocking descriptions' in which the Lord's sufferings were made a ground of selfish complacency; the theology of gloom and wrath' has yielded to the attacks made upon it, and no very definite theory has taken its place. And again, the great questions as to the fate of those who are outside the visible Church of Christ, and as to the nature of eternal punishment, have assumed new prominence in modern teaching. More important still, questions are stirred relating to the Divinity of our Lord and Master which touch the very life of Christianity; we find only too frequently in the literature of our time 'lowered view's of our Lord's life and works;' an indisposition, in fact, to recognize more than a beautiful and exalted human nature in Christ.

Now, we might perhaps cavil at one or two points in this representation; in particular, we think that the Bishop has not sufficiently discriminated between the yearning of earnest Christians for something better than the vague and blurred outlines of popular Christology, and the reluctance of some men of the world and men of science to acknowledge the Divinity in the Man. But, on the whole, there can be no doubt that he has fairly sketched the present tendencies of religious thought; it is true that the most vital questions are stirred, and that there is a general uneasiness and unsettlement of thought. Then, what has he to tell us of the causes and the cure of our malady?

In brief, he thinks that our unrest is occasioned mainly by the fact that the religious thought of the day is cramped by a theology which no longer answers to its needs; the forms which were adequate for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries fail to satisfy the nineteenth; we have outgrown them; the age which has known Kant, and Hegel, and Schelling-even if it has known only to reject-cannot, if it would, be satisfied with theories belonging mainly to the transition period which lies between Occam and Descartes; the Thirty-nine Articles, excellently adapted as they were for their original purpose, have exercised a distorting influence on English theology. But on this point we prefer that the Bishop should speak for himself:

"The truth is, we have far too much neglected the study of systematic theology in this country. Our two really great dogmatic works-those connected with the honoured names of Pearson and Jackson-show clearly enough what English learning, and especially what English moderation and good sense, can do in this difficult province of theology; but neither of these great works can be considered sufficient for the necessities of our own times. What we have had since their time have been

treatises on the Articles of the Church, of more or less merit and usefulness; but, in the first place, the writers of these treatises have had phy, and have rarely, if ever, touched upon no knowledge whatever of speculative philosothe difficulties felt by modern thinkers; and, in the second place, there has been no attempt even so to re-arrange the Articles and the comments on them as to preserve something like an orderly and systematic development of Christian doctrine. The truth is, our Thirtynine Articles, as the Patriarch of Constantinople has but lately felt, cannot be considered They never professed to be so. as a carefully-constructed Confession of Faith. They are Articles of singular wisdom and moderation, specially designed to conciliate and to dijudicate; but to use them as they have been used, both by writers and students, as a sort of body of divinity when, as our Oriental critic justly observes, they leave almost untouched several and to expose them to much of the undeserved momentous subjects, is simply to misuse them, contempt with which they have been treated by modern religionists. A true and intelligent system of Christian dogmatics would follow the line of doctrinal connexion marked out in the Nicene Creed (the most scientific of our Continental theologians have returned back again to the relations and ramifications of the old paths), and would place our Articles in the proper positions, which such a course would prescribe.'*

With these weighty words of Bishop Ellicott, keen to discern the signs of the times, we altogether agree: the theology of the Articles, taken alone, is imperfect and ill-proportioned, while the Nicene Creed embodies the great, old, ever-new truths of Revelation in the noblest form. The age of Athanasius, of Basil, of the Gregories, of Chrysostom, an age when the most active and important portion of the Church still spoke the language of the Gospels, and had a more vivid sense of the continuity of Christian life-in Antioch for instancethan was possible for mediæval thinkers; an age exercised by philosophic and theosophic speculations not altogether alien from our own; this age is really more in harmony with our own time than that of Luther and Calvin. There must be-as the Bishop well says-a speculative theology of some kind; for speculation is, after all, but the effort to feel out the links which connect great truths, to set forth their sequence, to answer more fully the questions suggested by our own widening experiences or the drift of the times in which we live; we have to ask ourselves of what kind this speculation shall be; whether the theology of a transition period, like that of the Reformation, when the new wine was fermenting in the old bottles of

*The Church and the Age,' pp. 75, 76.

1870.

LOTHAIR was a handsome young English lord, a marquis, we imagine, though we are not sure of the fact, of enormous wealth and wide landed possessions; left an orphan, with scarcely a relation in the world, under the care of two guardians. Even this forlorn condition was rendered still more dreary by the fact that the guardians quarrelled over their ward. The one, Lord Culloden, was a stern Scotch Presbyterian peer, who hated anything ritualistic, and abhorred the idolatry of Rome. The other, Cardinal Grandison, had gone over from the Anglican to the Roman Catholic faith, and thus intensified the quarrel. For a long time neither had seen the young nobleman, who was within a year of being of age when we first make his acquaintance. But their place, so far as business was concerned, was admirably filled by Mr. Putney Giles, Lothair's family solicitor, a man of such capacity and contrivance that, we say at once, if it be ever our hard fate to die at an early age, and leave our only son a marquis with fabulous wealth, we shall make it a point, before we leave this wicked world, to find out Mr. Putney Giles, or some one exactly like him, so that he may fill to our heir the same position which he filled so admirably for Lothair. Nay, we are not at all sure that we shall not make him solicitor and guardian in one, and thus save our child the dangers which must ever beset a ward whose guardians are so jealous of one another, that they can fulfil few of their duties to the being they were created to cherish and protect.

At the time when we first know him, Lothair was at Christ Church, to which favoured school of learning and larking he had been sent by a decree of the Lord Chancellor, in spite of his uncle and guardian, Lord Culloden. There he had learned to love Bertram, the eldest son of a duke, who, as we are never told what his dukedom was, we must call the Duke of Dash. In due time he is invited to Brentham, one of the duke's palatial abodes, and there it is that we first catch sight of our hero. The duchess had been his mother's friend, and, of course, takes some interest in him, though she had never seen him but once since his birth. She is naturally curious as to what he may be like, this desolate nobleman, who, from the fabulous extent of his possessions, we are almost inclined to call throughout the story the Marquis of Carabas. The verdict of the ladies after

mony,' or, in vulgar English, made his first bow, is very much in his favour; they think him good-looking, and 'not at all shy.' In the latter part of this opinion we quite agree, for Lothair had not been more than a day or two at Brentham, when he took the duchess on one side and boldly proposed for the hand of the Lady Corisande, a daughter of the house, who had not yet been presented. At the same time Lothair informs the duchess of his desire that his father and motherin-law should allow him to live with his bride at Brentham, where it was so delightful; and, when they were tired of living there, they should move off to one of his palaces and live with him. At the same time he tells her that he is full of philanthropy, and is ready to build at once thousands of cottages for the labourers on his estates. Whether the duchess thought Lothair might get tired of living with his father and mother-in-law, as we are sorry to say is the wicked habit of most men, or whether she fancied they would get tired of living with this unfledged philanthropist, we cannot say. The fact was that she, like a dear prudent mother, told the suitor that the Lady Corisande was too young, that they had neither of them seen anything of the world, and so could not know their own minds. More than this, she forbade him to mention the matter to her daughter; an injunction which Lothair, with a docility and power of selfrestraint which at once made him distinguished in our eyes, actually obeyed. So all ye young men and lovers, who are forbidden by mamina to breathe another word of love to her daughter, or to ask her opinion after you have spoken to her parents, follow Lothair as your model, and be content to give up, as he did, perhaps for ever, the object of your affections.

to

This, so far as we can gather, was about a year before Lothair came of age. That event was, of course, an object of the greatest interest, not only to Lothair himself, but to his guardians, and most of all, perhaps, Mr. Putney Giles, his solicitor. After Brentham the scene passes to London, when Lothair is within eight months of his majority, and in London we are introduced to Cardinal Grandison, and several other ecclesiastics, Monsignori, and priests, who are the satellites of that great Papistical luminary, and revolve in rather a bewildering way round his person; so that, in fact, they are as perplexing to an ordinary observer as Jupiter's moons or Saturn's luminous ring. The cardinal lives in a mansion in Hexham Square, full of clerks and clergy; he is up

to his eyes in business of the Church; but as soon as Mr. Putney Giles is announced he has time for him, and is ready to receive a statement of the guardianship accounts. Those estates, stretching from county to county, and from kingdom to kingdom, those woods and fields, and ports and rivers, were evidently as much an object of interest to the cardinal as Lothair himself. He expresses a wish to see his ward, from whom, by the quarrel with Lord Culloden, that Scotch guardian-in-the-manger, who would neither see his ward himself, nor let his rival see him, he had been so long estranged. Mr. Putney Giles was equal to the occasion. Lothair was going to have the great condescension to dine with him and Mrs. Putney Giles that very day; would his Eminence be of the party? There was only one objection to this, and one which, from our experience of cardinals, we should have thought a vain one-the cardinal never dined. His own account of himself was that he never even ate or drank-but, as he must have lived on something, we believe his diet was biscuits and soda-water-but he would come in the evening. If you wish to know how it was that a marquis like Lothair dined with such a low-lived person as his solicitor, we must tell you that Lothair had been led to visit his lawyer that very day, and for a very legitimate purpose, seeing that he had some expectations. He wanted to borrow some money, not for himself, however, but for a friend. He had, in fact, exceeded his ample allowance, and put himself under what he called an everlasting obligation to Mr. Putney Giles, by accepting a loan from that gentleman. 'How can I ever repay you?' was his question. By dining with me and Mrs. Putney Giles,' was the answer; and that was how such a swell as Lothair went to dine with such a snob as Mr. Putney Giles. You must remember, though, that Mr. Giles is not called a 'snob' by name. Far from it. It is only left to be inferred that it is such an unusual occurrence in the lives of our golden youth to dine with their family solicitor, that it is absolutely necessary to borrow money from him before he can attain to that honour. Our experience of life, we must confess it, is very different. We have known many lords who would only have been too happy both to borrow from their solicitor and to dine with him every day; but, then, they were not Lothairs, nor were their solicitors Mr. Putney Giles.

Be that as it may, Lothair dined that day with Mrs. Putney Giles, and met very good company. Both his host and hostess were radiant with happiness. One would have thought that to have a Marquis for their

guest at dinner, and to receive a Cardinal in the evening, was the end and object of all existence. When the dinner was over the Cardinal came. He was treated, we are bound to say, much more properly than is the ordinary lot of Lions. His only object was to see Lothair, and he saw him, and had a long talk with him in a back room, while the crowd of receptionists actually stood aloof, and did not throng round them to stare at a live Lord and a real Cardinal. After his object was attained, and he had made acquaintance with his ward, the Cardinal, as we think very unhandsomely, retired by a back door, perhaps by the back stairs, and fled the mansion of Mr. Putney Giles. Nor did Lothair remain much longer. He stayed behind only to fall into the clutches of a parasite, who fastened on him with the true instinct of that inferior animal, and sadly interrupted a reverie into which Lothair was falling on a lovely female face which had caught his eyes among the visitors of Mrs. Putney Giles.

When the ascetic Cardinal left the abode of Mrs. Putney Giles, he betook himself to the palatial residence of Lady St. Jerome, a charming woman of his own persuasion, whose gushing and enthusiastic nature was ever ready to secure a convert to the true faith by any means, for with her as with many others like her, Protestant as well as Catholic, the end always justifies the means. The end of these conspirators, the Cardinal, Lady St. Jerome, Monsignori Berwick and Catesby, Father Coleman, and others, was the conversion of Lothair to the Roman Catholic Faith. The fine intellect of the Cardinal had perhaps often dwelt on the good that he might do, if he could bring this strayed sheep with all its golden fleece into the true fold. Until he had known Lothair personally, and seen him face to face, this was a mere idle speculation, a dream of great gain to the Church; but the sight of his ward gave life to his hopes and fancies, and he determined that the attempt should be made. We are wrong perhaps in calling this band of Roman Catholics conspirators at the outset, but whatever they might have been at first, the nature and instinct of Popery soon showed themselves, and as the lion's cub returns to blood and rapine, so all these pious catlike ecclesiastics and devout women were soon bent on one object alone, the reconciliation of Lothair to the church of his forefathers, and the appropriation of his property to the use of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. For this purpose he was introduced to Lady St. Jerome, and her lovely niece, Miss Arundel, a young lady with violet eyes, and a most mysterious