stand how consolatory the religion of Catholicism must be to the dweller in the wilderness. When alone the forms of his faith must become infinitely expressive to his heart and his imagination; must often supply to him the solace of a human companionship. The Protestant believes that his God is present with him on the prairie and in the forest; but the belief is vague, dim, inarticulate; the Catholic, on the other hand, wandering among the great solitudes, stumbles on the little Cross by the way-side, and clasps it as he would clasp the hand of a brother. There is a wise and happy benevolence in such a creed, which we-who feel perhaps too strongly, that the Infinite dwells not in temples made with hands, who resent, perhaps too keenly, the separation of the secular and the sacred in a life whose every motive rests in God-are not entitled to rebuke or scorn. However inaccurate, when measured by the haughty policy of the triple crown, Dryden's eulogy may be reckoned

A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged,
Fed on the lawns and in the forests ranged:
Without unspotted, innocent within,

She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.

Yet had she oft been chased with horns and hounds,

And Scythian shafts; and many winged wounds

Aimed at her heart; was often forced to fly,

And doomed to death, though fated not to die

yet we need not hesitate to own that a Church which has endured for a thousand years must have addressed itself, not unwisely, to some very true and powerful emotions, "deep seated in our mystic frame."

These suggestions we put forth simply to enable the reader to approach this book by the Abbé Domenech without allowing his mind to be biassed by the natural associations of the Protestantnatural and reasonable enough, perhaps, when applied to the state of feeling existing among the priests and members of the Catholic Church in Europe, but false and misleading when applied to it as it exists in the wilderness. On the book itself it is needless to dwell at length here. It is merely the old martyr story transacted in a strange land. A nation embedded in ignorance and sin; the young missionary, simple, childlike, a noblehearted gentleman, striving with all his soul to take away the falseness and foulness of their lives, and to restore them to the likeness in which they were made; and doing all this without any thought of self, without any hope of worldly reward, under the habitual pressure of hunger, sickness, and nakedness.

These are some of our equivocal acquaintances -the least reputable among them being probably the unshaven, hungry-looking friar, who has scarcely enough of raiment to cover his dirt decently. Only the other day we met on his way to the House of Lords, and seated in the neatest brougham one sees in the Park, a bishop of the Catholic and Apostolic Church. The man is a good man; a hard-working, honest man; loved by his own Church, and not even obnoxious to dissent; but, somehow, the spectacle seemed like "a satiric touch" upon the words of the head of the

apostles" My kingdom is not of this world." One requires, indeed, to get away from these affluent priesthoods to the disreputable classes of the clergy-to impoverished Texan missions, and ragged Emmanuel Domenechs-to feel sure that that Divine life has not become quite a dead letter in this world. So that the clothes criterion, after all, does not work exhaustively. A man may occupy a decent position in the universe, even though his raiment and his rations, nay, even his opinions, are not quite à la mode. Perhaps, all things considered, the best society that has been organised of late is that "For the relief of those whom the world hates."

This is a lay-sermon; now, in conclusion, for the practical application. And yet what more can be said? Out of this thing of shreds and patches which we call life, out of these jarring discords and ravelled skeins, what web can be woven? No distinct pattern, we may be sure; no coercive creeds, no arrogant infallibilities. Those who require such must be disappointed. The wise are they who on their knees-" Stretch lame hands of faith, and faintly trust the larger hope."

There be delights, there be recreations, and jolly pastimes, that will fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious year as in a delightful dream. What need we torture our heads with that which others have taken so strictly, and so unalterably into their own purveying? . . . How goodly, and how to be wished, were such an obedient unanimity as this! What a fine conformity would it starch us all into! Doubtless a staunch and solid piece of frame-work, as any January could freeze together.

AREOPAGITICA.

THE Lay-Sermon we have just heard was meant to suggest a reply to the questionIn what spirit ought we to treat the Nonconformist? That is a question of social toleration

-a question that may and must be answered by each of us individually. But two questions still await consideration; in the first place-How is the State; and in the second place-How is the Church, to treat Nonconformity? Both are practically important, but the latter, it cannot be disguised, has become, and is daily becoming, more difficult, pressing, and embarrassing.

Mediæval devotion or ambition turned the

world into a huge spiritual camp. The State might then not inaptly have been represented with a sword in one hand, and a Bible in the other, like a fighting bishop. The Old and New Testaments formed, in a sense, the statute-law of Christendom. Every citizen was a soldier in this army. The heretic was a deserter, and desertion was punished with military rigour. The idea of a righteous dissent was unfamiliar and unwelcome. Freedom of belief, latitude of discussion, were incompatible with military discipline. So that a religious test naturally became the test of civil capacity. Unless a man believed in the Apostles' Creed, he was not qualified to serve-still less to command. And if not qualified to serve or to command, what was the use of him in this world? He was obviously quite out of place in it. There was no post which he could fill. So the State, in almost every case, undertook one of two things. The Nonconformist must be either converted (when to prevent a relapse he was commonly burnt in the end), or summarily ejected. A Dissenter was a traitor to the commonweal.

This mediæval unity presented an imposing spectacle. It was once of real use. When the church was contending against the barbarians, it animated missionaries and crusaders. A tolerant and sceptical society could never have exhibited the same union, strength, and passionate force. But when it ceased to be the form which a military and political church naturally assumed, when an artificial conformity was required from the members