already spoken in this Review.* The tide of public opinion, and apparently the whole stream of progress, were flowing in the other direction. At the Reformation the Church of England clung to the civil ruler as its only protector from the tyranny of Rome. The King was Christ's vicar. The Pope was Antichrist. At the Revolution this doctrine was found untenable. The divine right of kings refuted itself. The second James took the side of "Antichrist," and the Church went its own way in giving allegiance to the Prince of Orange. The principle of the old State Church of England died out with the Nonjurors. The Highest Churchmen were then the most consistent State-Churchmen. Now times have changed. It is the High Churchmen who are impatient of the government of the State. It interferes with the development of their idea of a hierarchy. The civil power, represented by the Court of Arches and the Privy Council, is the ultimate judge of the doctrine of the Church.

In discussing the Church and State connection we admit at once that it is not a conclusive argument against it to say that it has been accompanied hitherto with many and great evils. No system is perfect, and with great advantages we must expect some evils. There have been eras in our history when the whole tendency of the State connection has been apparently to drive all earnest religion out of the Church, and to uphold all manner of iniquity within. The past may, however, be full of instruction for the future, and that evils have been may be the pledge that they shall not be again. It might, indeed, be argued with some fairness that neither the Nonconformists of 1662 nor the Wesleyans of the last century were driven out by the State. They were the victims of parties stronger than themselves. The sin of the State lay in its indifference; and this, it is to be feared, ever will be its sin. We have seen the end of pluralities, and ere long we may see the end of the sale of presentations. Unfortunately we cannot say of advowsons; and so long as that remains there can be no check on illegal or secret treaties about presentations. We cannot surely be wrong in fixing on the present mode of disposing of benefices as the root-evil of the State Church. Dean Stanley has but little to say even in favour of a disinterested patronage, except that it is preferable to the tumults which accompany popular elections. To this he adds the consideration that if the clergy had the election of the bishops, men of liberal tendencies would never be elected to the episcopate. As to the evils of popular elections, they might be very few if definite laws were made by which congregations were to be guided in the choice of

See an article on "The Churches of England," April, 1870, and a notice of Dean Stanley's Essay on "The Connection of Church and State," June, 1868.

ministers. It is here that we come upon the strength and the weakness of the argument for our freedom within the National Church. When a man gets a living,-let it be by purchase, presentation, or simony,-the power which a bishop has over him is merely in name. The bishop is compelled to institute, and he cannot suspend without an expensive process in law. But a clergyman without a benefice is completely at the mercy of either bishop or incumbent. A few weeks ago, to our knowledge, a clergyman, not unknown as a theological writer, agreed to take charge of a small parish not far from London. After an interview with the bishop, his lordship refused to sanction the agreement made with the rector, and ostensibly for no other reason but that the clergyman was a writer who advocated a theology of which the bishop did not approve. The clergyman had no redress, no court of appeal. He might have gone to the Prime Minister and complained that an arbitrary and impulsive man had been placed over a great diocese, for the duties of which he evidently wanted capacity. The Prime Minister could only have answered that the appointment was made by his predecessor, for whose acts he was not responsible. We do not find in any of Dean Stanley's arguments that he ever takes into his calculations the fact of the existence of curates. The " Parvique Cures" are Church animalcules, not to be discerned without a glass that magnifies. This would be pardonable if curates were, as the theory implies, merely apprentices to Church work. But it is different when we know that they are really the working bees of the Church, that their number is more than a third of the whole clergy, and that, on an average, a man is from twelve to fifteen years in orders before he gets a living. Here, then, is the actual price of our freedom-a benefice by purchase, or a quiet tongue in our heads for nearly twenty years of the best part of a man's life. Of course the exceptions are many. Dean Stanley, Bishop Temple, Archbishop Tait, and others whom we could name, were never either purchasers of preferment or subjected to a long and ignominious silence. They began life with the prizes of the public schools and the great Universities, which must ever be beyond the reach of the many, and from their very nature attainable only by a few.

One of the essays in this volume is on Subscription to the Articles, both in the Church and the Universities. It is not proposed to set aside the Church's formularies, but only not to enforce subscription, because that in fact no man now believes every statement of the Articles. Those who enter into the life of the Church, and receive the substance of its teaching, will cling to it voluntarily. Those who do not will drop off. And here we have the Dean's answer to the Westminster and Quarterly Reviews, when they urged the moral

preferments. There is a Where this progress is

The forms in which

obligation of the essayists to resign their spirit of progress at work in all Churches. normal; it implies imperfection in the past. religion expresses itself in different eras must be subject to change. The old must ever be giving place to the new. Some dogmas which we should now willingly set aside are the incarnations of the devout feelings of the saints of other days. What a figment to us, as indeed it was to Richard Baxter and John Wesley, is the doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness! Yet how precious was the meaning it had to Tobias Crisp and John Saltmarsh, to James Hervey and Augustus Toplady!

The Dean of Westminster has peculiar advantages for the discussion of theological questions, from the variety and the accuracy of his knowledge. He reads all kinds of books. He is not only, as we all know, an eminent classical and Biblical scholar, but he is familiar with all the European languages which possess any literature. He has travelled much, and has had the friendship of the prelates and scholars of the Greek and Roman as well as of the Protestant Churches. To these advantages he has added an appreciative study of all the religious parties at home, and their relations to the State Church. He understands General and Particular Baptists, New Connexion and Association Methodists, New Light and Old Light Seceders, and we verily believe he could distinguish between a Burgher and an Anti-Burgher. This capacity for a wide survey enables him to compare, to analyze, to trace the working of the same principle under different forms, and to detect inconsistencies, not merely in arguments, but what is of more importance, in tendencies. At the time of the "Essay and Review" mania, the High Church zeal for everlasting punishment in a material hell was very vehement. In the essays on "The Church and the World," the representative High Church volume, Dean Stanley finds a hope expressed that there may be a limit to future punishment. A favourite dogma of the High Church party is that Christ's human nature was so unlike ours that it excluded all imperfections of knowledge. But Dean Stanley finds John Keble singing

"Was not our Lord a little child,

Taught by degrees to pray,
By father dear and mother mild
Instructed day by day?"

After the judgment on "Essays and Reviews," when it was discovered that the Church of England taught no definite doctrines concerning inspiration or everlasting punishment, Cardinal Wiseman wished to make some capital out of this for the Church of Rome. He called mechanical inspiration and everlasting punish

ment the "vital doctrines," the "sacred deposit," committed to his Church. Dean Stanley immediately answered that the Cardinal spoke only as a private theologian, for the Decrees of Trent have made no "definition of the extent of inspiration or of the limits of the Divine mercy." In another place, where he is dealing with the Bishop of Capetown's argument for a "concurrent testimony" of the early Church, the Dean says a "concurrent testimony" may be found in remote times for the "Immaculate Conception," certainly for the celibacy of the clergy. The Apostolical canons, on which the Bishop of Capetown grounded his judgment against Dr. Colenso, direct that a clergyman who marries after taking orders is to be deposed, and the Council of Nicea enjoins the same punishment for every bishop, presbyter, or deacon who shall be promoted to any higher place in the Church than that which he holds.

The chief significance of Dean Stanley's Essays is that they are a contribution to the new theology, or what he calls the theology of the nineteenth century. The chief objection to this theology is that it is but a stepping-stone to something beyond. We do not know what is to be the next form it will assume. This position is accepted. The old theology posited infallibility, and then reasoned downwards. The new begins with ascertained facts, and builds upon them. The doctrine of progress implies that the full truth is a goal to be reached, and not a point from which we start. The old theology assumed what the Bible ought to be; the new asks what it is. To invent ways for God is one of the failings of the human mind. We are now to begin to learn God's way. Popes, councils, and creedmakers in all ages have spoken as if their "little systems" embraced the whole of truth. Experience of their failures gives us wisdom. We begin to learn that we are but children in the school of Christ, and that our capacities are but small. We recall the forgotten words of Jesus-His parting words to His disciples, as full of meaning in our day as they were then-"I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now."

Present-Day Papers on Prominent Questions in Theology. Edited by the Right Rev. ALEXANDER EWING, D.C.L., Bishop of Argyll and the Isles. London: Strahan & Co.

THE Bishop of Argyll, in editing these papers, takes up a very decided position on the side of progress in theology. The names of the authors are not given, but the papers are well written, clear in argument, reverent in tone, and all aiming definitely at one object. The Bishop, in a brief preface, strikes the keynote of the volume. He tells us that for centuries the very meaning of revelation has been misunderstood. In its primitive aspect it meant giving of light. It was something to interpret or supplement nature. But it has come to be regarded as another mystery, to be received not because it is light illuminating darkness, but on account of the authority by which it is imposed. "So much,' the Bishop says, "is this the case, that one of the most illustrious of the apologists of revelation grounds his arguments for its credibility on the fact of its containing mysteries analogous to those of nature." We never understood Butler to mean that the difficulties in revelation were in themselves arguments in its favour. The object of the Analogy was to obviate objections. If we find some things in revelation which we do not understand, we are not to be surprised, for there are things in nature beyond our comprehension. Butler's argument has a meaning. He does not always use the word revelation in the same sense in which it is used by the Bishop of Argyll, but Bishop Butler, in the main, was on the same side as Bishop Ewing. He would have agreed to the definition of revelation, that it is "no additional mystery, but the explanation of mystery-an explanation commending itself to our conscience and reason, and operating by them;" but he would have added, that connected with these things explained, there were others unexplained and hard to be understood.

The first paper in this volume is a reprint from William Law's "Spirit of Love." The subject is the "Atonement," which is explained not as a reconciling of God to man, but of man to God. All the popular ideas of substitution satisfying Divine justice, and meriting redemption for man, are renounced. To be at one with God is to be restored to our original rectitude, to be put right in our relations to God. It is not a work done for us externally, but a work done