remember, in a conversation with the Rev. Adolphus | Sydow on this point, to have been struck with the insensibility to the distinction between the endowment of truth and of error, which circumstances had produced in his highly intelligent mind; and the wonder is repeated in the case of Chevalier Bunsen. He speaks without any protest, or any feeling of incongruity, of "the two National Churches"-so that, instead of being in a position for unfolding the constitution of the Church of the Future, it does not appear that some intelligent Germans have yet got hold of the grand distinction on which alone National Churches can be upheld-the principle of endowing the truth, and nothing but the truth, according to the Word of God. We wish we could sympathize with our author in the hope that an era of free love is dawning on the Church (p. 267). But we must confess that if that love is to take its outgoing in the direction of putting errors condemned by the Word of God not merely on a level with his truth, but above it, in point of State support, we cannot but say, "into their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united." We would predict that a period of disunion and disintegration awaits the Church of Prussia when such elements are still mixed up in its ecclesiastical constitution. If she has not discovered the antagonism that exists between Popery and God's truth, who is she that she should claim, or that any of her sons should claim on her behalf, to be the model of the Church of the Future? It is no doubt beautiful and catholic (although, on the whole, we judge it romantic) to hear our author speak of the Herrnhutters and Methodists as the embryo orders of the Church of the Future for missions to the heathen, and describing them and "other separatists" as the chrysalis of that Psyche which is only waiting for the mild air of spring to unfold her wings.

But we

deem it far more likely that these separatists will absorb the Church in Prussia than that the Church will absorb them, unless they be deadened and degenerate. The patriotism of the author, glowing and truly generous as it is, may shadow forth other results; and he dwells again and again on the picture which his native land will present when his National Church has become the model Church of the future. But it is a dream. Make that Church all that he wishes to-day; its corruption and decay will begin to-morrow. He asks with enthusiasm, "Have these three-government, congregation, and clergy-different interests?" We reply, they have not; but they have passions, prejudices, pride; and to commit them to any scheme that is not purely and perfectly scriptural, any plan moulded by human wisdom, is not merely dangerous-it is sinful. Are we not right in supposing that our author is pleading for Utopia where he says: "Neither State nor congregation need entertain with us any suspicion of assumptions on the part of the clergy-the government need fear no rude fanatical congregation-the Church need dread no insidious government, a stranger to the national faith;" in other words, there can never again be a Frederick on the throne of Prussia, who is an infidel himself, and the patron of our future Voltaires.

thus proceeds :-" My desire is, that we should mould into a more perfect form that which we already possess in the United Evangelical Church of Germany;" and in that portion of his book which contains his detailed application of his general principles, he speaks of 60 bishoprics for 60,000 parishes, containing about 10,000,000 of Protestants. This gives 100 parishes, or about 167,000 souls, for each bishop. He has Metropolitans besides, and Rural Deans, the former having the confidence of the king, and therefore allowed to wield his patronage—the jus magistatis in the Church of the Future. Now, on reviewing this projection, we own we have a difficulty in repressing the idea that it is meant for a practical joke; and yet, in sober earnest, Chevalier Bunsen would cashier English Episcopacy, Scottish Presbyterianism, and disintegrating Independentism, for this strange melange this cumbrous and anomalous system. He retains bishops, and yet prays, "God preserve us from dioceses like most of the Roman Catholic and English ones."

We cannot now advert to the author's views of Popery, Independentism, Presbyterianism, and other forms. After discarding English Episcopacy as "a fragment, its counterpart the Presbyterianism of Geneva, Holland, Scotland, as nothing better, Independentism as a mere disintegrating negation," he

We need add little now to show that this ideal of the Church of the Future, as we understand it, is vulnerable at a hundred points. It is essentially Erastian, even while its author says, "the spheres of the State and the Church are entirely different and separate." The king and his ecclesiastical minister of State have powers which the New Testament no where confers.* It admits even the dreaded Independentism, by making the people in some cases rulers. It retains patronage in full vigour, and in unchallengeable power. Before a man can take part in calling a minister, he must, among other things, be a contributor to the building and repairing of the church. Now, surely, it cannot commend the discernment of any author to hear him, with the Bible on his study table, eulogizing such an institute as the chrysalis of a future Church, possessed of all that is pure, free, evangelical. Again, on the one hand, it is not right to slur over the gross laxity long tolerated among the ministers of the Prussian Church; nor, on the other, to mutilate Presbyterianism, and then reason against it; in short, a system in which the spiritual is evermore inter-penetrated by the temporal or the civil power, is one which only fond partiality can defend. Instead of being regarded as a model, we view it as a beacon. Bunsen exults in the hope that no further proof than his plans and arguments is needed to show that "the day of Clergy Churches and State Churches is over and gone, and as certainly that of sects and separatists;" and then he exclaims, "Of this Church of the Future, we say that in her all, just or unjust, reasonable or unreasonable, jealousy must disappear;" in other words, a specific for regenerating a whole nation, and turning it into an Eden, is discovered. Our author believes that the vision is a reality, for he is an earnest impassioned man; but he is gazing on a mirage-he is propounding an ideal destined never to be realized by a Nation, though it will by the Exxλna.

It is true, Bunsen deserves our highest eulogy for his constant aim at the good of the Christian people, and the rearing of a Church for them, his endeavour to overthrow sacerdotalism, and bring into vigorous

Can it sound otherwise than strange to read-" In Berlin is the directory of spiritual affairs under a minister of State" (p. 133); or, again, referring to the synods, it is said, each Synod "watches over the maintenance of sound doctrine and discipline in churches and schools. Causes of complaint brought to light by this examination, are to be laid before the State courts (p. 140).

To close, What will be the fate of this volume? By some it will be regarded as "a protest against Episcopacy;" by others, Ian unconditional recommendation of it." These opposite views were actually taken of the author's letters to Gladstone, and the same conflicting opinions may be formed of this work, because the author does not take the golden thread of scriptural simplicity to guide him through the labyrinth which he has attempted to thrid. At the same time, it will help on the reaction which, for some years, has been begun in Germany. The author says, "that the dead Rationalism of the eighteenth century which. . . . could claim nothing for its own, but an understanding which dreamt not of the depths of mind and spirit, has borne its own corpse to the grave, except where it has been preserved as a mummy, and cherished as a dead household god by certain Governments;" and in this all that love our kind will exult. We mingle our felicitations with his, that the work of faith is advancing, that truth is in progress, that love, the queen of all the graces, is plying her many labours, "not in secret orders and foreign societies, sneaking about in silence, but of public brotherhoods, and free sisterhoods, whose motive is Christian love, and whose object is the comfort of their poor and oppressed brethren in the faith." That may be the path along which, in the wise overrulings of God, the right constitution of the Church of the future is to be made patent to the Churches of the present.

GERMANY, ENGLAND, AND SCOTLAND; or, Recollections of a Swiss Minister. By J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNE, D.D. London.

WE doubt not that we shall best consult the wishes of our readers, in dealing with this volume, if, instead of presenting them with any lengthened criticism of our own, we lay before them a selection of the reminiscences and impressions of the distinguished author. Merle D'Aubigné is one of the few men who, when they speak, can command a hearing from Christendom; and as, in this volume, he speaks chiefly of ourselves-about three-fourths of the book being devoted to Scotland-we have an additional call, as well as an irresistible inducement, to listen.

Germany occupies the first sixty pages of the volume. D'Aubigné, although a Genevese by birth, and for many years by residence, is no stranger to Germany. He spent six years (from 1817 to 1823) in that country-first as a student, and afterwards as a pastor; and he tells us that he "can never revisit it without again feeling himself among the friends of his best years." He was himself withered for a time by its Rationalism, but God having a work for him to do, delivered him. He draws here a rapid, but true and even thrilling sketch of the progress of Rationalism from the rationalismus vulgaris

of Paulus and Wegscheider, to the philosophic infidelity of Hegel, thence to the mythical gospel of Strauss, and ultimately to the Atheism of Stirner. And he presents us with many interesting and important views of the religious and ecclesiastical condition and prospects of Germany. A detailed reference to these we must, for the present, postpone,wishing rather in this paper to give an outline of his statements re| garding the people and churches of Britain.

He is a great admirer of the English character. He says:

If the German feeds upon the ideal, the practical is the characteristic of Great Britain; I say, Britain, because most of what I say here of England is applicable to Scotland also. Reality, action, business, bear sway in the politics, the industry, the commerce, and, I will even say, in the religion of the English. Yet this practical tendency which characterizes England is not selfish, as might have been expected. The large scale on which the people work gives a certain scope and grandeur to the imagination. The habit which the English have of falling into parties, and of looking at themselves constantly as a nation, is opposed to a narrow selfishness; and a more elevated sentiment struggles with this vice in a large portion of the people.

I observed in England one thing, that the people talk much less of liberty than we do on the Continent, but practise it more. The young men, who play so important a part in Germany, and even in France and other countries, do not so in England. It is not for want of spirit in the English youth -they have even rather too much; but it is confined in the preparatory sphere of schools and colleges, and does not display itself in public business. Influential institutions satisfy this people. The young men know that their turn will come, and they wait quietly. Among a people deprived of public institutions, vigour is often misplaced; it is forced forward in youth and exhausted in riper years. In England, on the contrary, it is disciplined in youth and exerted in manhood. On the Continent, paternal authority is much shaken; in Britain, the parents, generally speaking, know how to keep their children at a respectful distance; and this is a great element of strength for a nation. When the Bible would pronounce a threat against a people, it says, "I will give them children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.” (Isa. iii. 4.)

The opinion which he gives of the aristocracy is also very favourable; the more so, probably, from the contemptible character, or worse, of the general aristocracy of the Continent. He fadvocates the organic reform of the Church of England-reform in her universities, especially by giving the study of theology a prominent place in the curriculum-and reform in her Government, by elevating the position of the clergy, and freeing the Church from the abjectness of its present slavery. He says:

If Evangelical England is to be rebuilt, she must be set up anew upon the living rock of the Divine Word. She must cease to cultivate almost exclusively in her universities the classical languages and the mathematics; and in order to form theologians, some attention must be paid to theological science. England, in this respect, is far behind the Churches and universities of the Continent.

To the convocations once belonged, saving the king's prerogative, the government of the Church. But in 1717, at the time of the Jacobite troubles, the debates having displeased Government, the convocation was dissolved; and now it no longer exists. It is true, that whenever a new Parliament meets, the elections again take place; the convocation assembles at Westminster; a Latin sermon is preached; after which the convocation recognises what the last Parliament has enacted concerning ecclesiastical affairs, and draws up an address to the king or the queen; after this it adjourns sine die. Thus the Anglican Church meets to take off its hat and make a low bow to those who have taken away all its power-and then the mutes disperse. It is the shadow of a body, which have the shadow of a jurisdiction, holds the shadow of an assembly, and then all these shadows dissolve and vanish under the antique arches, and among the pillars, statues, urns, and tombs of the Gothic abbey.

injury of the other. Perhaps, on the contrary, among the mass of the preachers, the former element is too predominant. Our readers may be interested in his sketches of "Scottish orators:"

I will not mention all the admirable orators whom I have heard in England and Scotland; the list would be too long. But if I must give the names of the lions of eloquence, I would point in Scotland to Chalmers, whose profound intellect and ardent heart are displayed through the medium of a diction of fervid, I would even say, of Scottish energy-Chalmers, whose lips utter flames and fire, so that in spite of an accent so strongly provincial as to be almost unintelligible to us, the foreigner loses not one of his expressions, for the soul of the orator reveals what his organ seems to conceal-Chalmers, who fearlessly throws himself into the most difficult subjects, because wherever this great orator bends his steps a ray of light springs up, and makes all clear-Chalmers, the most powerful soul that ever was made subservient to the most lucid and vigorous intellect. I would next name Dr. C- ; at first grave, severe, abrupt, letting his sentences fall with a certain monotony, appearing torpid, almost asleep; then all at once bursting like a shell amidst the assembly, moving heaven and earth, and leaving all his auditory crushed and shattered by the thunders of his feloquence. I would name also the Rev. T. Gsmiling, jesting, scattering flowers around you, and then soaring like an eagle from these gay parterres, among which you thought he would leave you, and carrying you with him to the highest heavens.

The greater portion of the volume is connected with the Disruption and the Free Church. He visited Scotland in the month of May 1845, when the two Assemblies were sitting, and he came in contact with the leading men of both. He has evidently taken much pains to acquire a thorough knowledge of the character and details of the ten years' struggle which preceded the Disruption. He has also studied, with manifest care and minuteness, the religious history of Scotland from the Reformation downwards; and in the latter half of the volume he narrates the whole with fulness and facility, interspersing the narrative with his own eloquent and earnest commentary.

First come his personal reminiscences. His references to the Establishment and its Assembly will sufficiently explain his sentiments regarding them:

When, after having seen the Castle and the Parliament House, we arrived at the church in which the Established General Assembly was sitting; "As you were presented to his Grace this morning," said my friend, "we will go to his platform." I should have preferred a more modest place, but it was impossible: a door immediately opened before us, and we were admitted to our seats-I on the right, and my companion on the left of the throne of the Lord High Commissioner. The platform in which I was seated rises majestically over the Moderator's chair, as if to represent the superiority of the State over the Church. The Commissioner's throne is placed under a rich canopy of crimson velvet. Behind him stand two little pages, with powdered hair, in full court dresses of scarlet; in the back-ground were several officers in waiting. The Marquis of Bute, who was in an adjoining room when we arrived, entered almost immediately after. Below the throne was the Assembly, besides the ministers, the elders, and a few advocates in their gowns and wigs, representing the courts of law, which now exert so great an influence over the Established Church. As for the audience or spectators, they were very few in number, scattered here and there in the nave; and in the galleries there were none.

"Rari nantes in gurgite vasto."

At the sight of so much grandeur, and at the same time so much coldness, one could not help inquiring whether this Assembly, which had in its favour the pompous representation of power, possessed also the cordial sympathies of the people. However, was told that in the evening there were more spectators present. After having for a short time listened to their debates, the subject of which I do not remember, I rose, made a low bow to his Grace, and retired.

He explains the reason of his declining to address the Established Assembly. First, it was to the Free Church that he had been deputed; and then, further, he perceived that such was the state of the public mind in Scotland, that he must absolutely make a choice. "Besides," he asks, "what could I have said in the Established Church? It would have been against my conscience not to speak in all sincerity; and yet my remarks would have been out of place before so august a body." He then turns to the Free Assembly, remarking:

On passing from one Assembly to the other, we feel that the State and its power, the nobility and their influence, are with the Established Church; and certainly this is something. The Free Church has on her side the people and their enthusiasm; but let us not forget that among this people there are to be found influential merchants and manufacturers, enlightened lawyers, respectable magistrates, and nobles belonging to the most illustrious houses of Scotland.

in Tanfield, and which many of our readers will reThe description of the meeting which he addressed member, is one of the most graphic passages in the volume. We can give but parts of it.

They could not certainly do us greater honour than appoint Chalmers to introduce us. The thought of hearing once more this venerable old man, whose life had been so full of action and of power, and whose voice (a fact before unheard of in the history of the Church) had, as if endowed with magie power, twice covered the whole of his country with temples consecrated to the Lord; perhaps also the thought of saluting the foreigners, had drawn together an extraordinary concourse. The Free General Assembly meets in a plain, modest, but vast building, formerly destined, I believe, for a manufactory, situated at Canonmills, at the foot of a hill on a picturesque road leading to the sea, towards Fife. The hall is low, which renders the atmosphere stifling; but it is very spacious. Under its bare rafters and rude beams, which form a strong contrast with the desert magnificence of the Established Assembly; with no throne, no Lord High Commissioner, no powdered pages-was assembled, on the evening of the 18th of May, an immense auditory enthusiastic for the Church and for liberty.

We advanced slowly, headed by Dr. Chalmers, as it was necessary for the dense crowd to open and allow us a passage. Some one was reading at that moment a report of the Committee for the Propagation of Christianity among the Jews; but the instant Dr. Chalmers appeared, a general movement interrupted the reporter. The audience rose, shouted, clapped their hands, stamped, and waved hats and handkerchiefs. I can speak of this, for I shared not in these acclamations; I had arrived only the day before, and nobody knew my face. The moment some powerful expression, some "winged word," strikes the Assembly, it acts like a waterspout falling on a calm and quiet sea. The waters move and rise; the waves roll onward and rush together; now falling, and now dashing furiously upwards. A Scottish Assembly it is a living body of extreme sensibility, which will start is no corpse that nothing can move, as our own too often are; at the slightest touch. Yes: these multitudes feeling so deep an interest in the debates of the Church, for the cause of the people of God, is a spectacle which even the world does not present, when political debates are in progress, and the earthly interests of nations are at stake. Neither in the Houses of Parliament in London, nor in the Palais Bourbon in Paris, is to be seen anything like what is witnessed in the Canonmills at Edinburgh. Let us, therefore, respect these noisy exhibitions, however extraordinary they may appear to It is right that the Church should somewhere show to that world which so often sneers at her, that she is able to feel more enthusiasm for the cause of Christ, than the world does for social and material interests.

us.

D'Aubigné then proceeds to a discussion of what he terms "The Scottish Question;" and his deliverance regarding it is full, forcible, and explicit. He sets out with this general statement

The Free Church has remained stedfast to the characteristic principles of Scotland. The Moderate party, the present

He then states, in the form of propositions (taken substantially from the catechism by Mr. Gray of Perth), the Scottish doctrine of the Church and its government, remarking, "This doctrine appears to me to have all the exactness of a theorem." He adds, We protest against the insinuations and the accusations to which Scotland has been more than once subjected, from the wise men of this world, even on the Continent. No; the great principles maintained by this Church are not those of a narrow Puritanism, a political agitation, a desire of subjecting the State to the Church, or the intrigues of an ambitious clergy. Scotland has received a vocation from God, and this vocation she is fulfilling. The principles she maintains rest upon the most venerable statutes, the most ancient laws of this nation; nay, upon the Word of God itself. These priuciples are the right, the strength, the glory of Scotland. They pervade her whole history, the struggles of her fathers, the constitutions of her people, the scaffolds of her martyrs, her revolutions, her restorations, and all the great events in which her annals abound. They run through them like a reviving stream, whose waters carry in all directions fertility and life. "This controversy," says Gillespie, "rises to the heavens,

and its summit is above the clouds."

....

The essential cause of the Disruption was the duty of maintaining the spiritual independence of the Church, of preventing the civil power from deciding in religious matters; and that duty is one which most incontrovertibly flows from the constitution of that Church, and from the tenet of the kingship of Christ, which she has been commissioned from God to declare openly in the Church. The Church of Scotland cannot yield this point without proving unfaithful to her calling, without sacrificing the very principle of her existence.

D'Aubigné repeatedly asserts the Free Church to be the true Church of Scotland, and in proof, enters upon a review of the leading points in her history. The periods of the first and second Reformations, the Covenants, the Restoration, the "Killing time," the Revolution, are successively and most graphically traced, and the identity of the Church's testimony displayed. We have neither time nor space to follow him in his review. Suffice it to say, that his words everywhere are strong and decided, and such as to leave no doubt as to his meaning. He then comes to the period of the Union, denounces in earnest terms the "flagrant iniquity," by which shortly afterwards patronage was restored. "It is true," he says, "that more than a century has elapsed since the deed was done; but an old iniquity is still more flagrant than a new one; it is increased every year by the injustice which refuses to redress it. Such injustice is a crevice in the armour of a people: in spite of all they do, this defect becomes more and more apparent, neutralizing every movement. Sooner or later the consequences will be seen. They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."" He proceeds to trace the rise and progress of Moderatism. Having referred to the admission into the Church, at the Revolution, of the three hundred "prelatic worldly and persecuting" curates, and to the rise of Arminianism, he says

The patrons naturally preferred these Arminian clergymen to the Evangelical ministers, finding among the former men more compliant, more indifferent, and more accommodating as to the moral law. Thus laxity in the essential doctrines of Christianity went along with laxity as to the liberties of the Church, and the two qualifications united, thenceforward formed the distinctive characteristics of what afterwards received the name of Moderatism. Every period has its peculiar danger. After having had to sustain in the sixteenth century the hateful and perfidious struggle against Popery, and in the seventeenth the violent and cruel one against Prelacy, the Church of Scotland was now to be enfeebled in the

age and Moderatism.

Scotland submitted to this unlawful act. In the beginning of the eighteenth century her fatal slumber had commenced. The Church had been losing her senses by degrees, and the mephitic vapours of Moderatism, ascending to her head, had deprived her of the consciousness of her own existence. This lethargic influence had increased from year to year, and she fell into a long and dead sleep.

Yet a few generous voices still made themselves heard. The spirit of early times-the spirit of Knox, of Melville, of Welsh-was not yet extinct. Thus, when a dead calm falls upon the sea, destroying all life and motion, light airs from time to time gently swell the sails of the ship, until at last every movement of the air ceases, and the disheartened sailors can no longer work the vessel. In like manner, a few vivifying breezes still came, from time to time, to reanimate Scotland, lying still and motionless in the dead calm of the Moderate party.

Then sketching the secession, and a number of the grosser intrusions which followed, he comes to the regime of Principal Robertson, whom he characterizes as "a stranger to the internal wants of the people of God, and to the life of faith." "The reign of Moderatism," he says, became more and more absolute. Robertson himself was soon outdone, and after having destroyed the liberties of the Church, men were found willing to abolish even the doctrines of the Word of God."

44

Evangelical Christianity had almost expired in Scotland, and absolutism, error, and lethargy had subdued the free and living country of Melville and of Knox.

Then commenced a period of transition, which separates the dismal times of Robertson from the glorious epoch of Chalmers.

He introduces "Chalmers' period and the Veto" with these startling and emphatic words :

Robertson had buried the Church of Scotland: Chalmers raised her from the dead. Or rather, the power of darkness had prevailed under the illustrious name of the historian of Scotland and of Charles V.; the power from on high was made effectual under the illustrious name of the great theologian, the great philosopher, the great philanthropist of the nineteenth century.

And shortly afterwards he says,—

and yet remain attached to the traditions of that of RobertWe can only add, that to live in the period of Chalmers, son, is a most singular and revolting anachronism.

Having indicated the powerful evangelical influence of Chalmers, Thomson, and M'Crie, and the rapid revival of religion which followed within the Established Church, he comes to the passing of the Veto, and expresses it as his opinion that Parliament done a great deal more"-by abolishing Patronage was bound to have legalized it. "They ought to have altogether--" and, therefore, it was still more incumbent upon them to do less." This, however, was not done. A powerful opposition was raised on the part of "politicians," "lawyers," and "patrons." D'Aubigné adds

If we may believe the prevailing sentiment in Scotland, there was yet a fourth class, which was one of the most influential. There were men opposed to the gospel. Perceiving that the Veto Act, which they had at first regarded merely as a liberal measure, would favour the pre-eminence of evangelical principles in Scotland, these men turned against it. The resurrection of the ancient Presbyterianism, with its faith, its vitality, its decision, its strict morality, its Christian works, and its independence, alarmed the world. Life has always terrified the dead.

The Auchterarder case is then detailed. Referring to the order issued by the Court of Session to the presbytery to ordain Mr. Young, the following remarkable statement occurs, the perusal of which