his hearers and wonders how he best may minister to them the truth for which they wait, that truth should be to himself the quickening power of the heart and mind which he is striving to concentrate into sympathy with each several soul.

That which has here been said in regard to the fruitlessness of unappropriated words in teaching is quite consistent with the due and reverent use of "those dogmatic formulas, those final, simple, exact expressions of truth, to which the Christian doctrine has been reduced by the united labours and careful thought of the learned of many ages, assisted by the HOLY SPIRIT present at the Councils of the Church and speaking in her as dispersed throughout the world." Such expressions, taken either from the Creeds and Catechism of the Church, or from the writings of those to whom, in various ages of her history, GOD has given the rare grace and power accurately and concisely to enunciate His Truth, may be conveyed, even in their exact and gem-like form, with the most sympathetic interest both in the teacher and in the learner. There need be nothing mechanical or stiff in the transmission of dogmatic definitions they will live and glow in the teaching in proportion as the lips which speak them are prompted by a heart which they have possessed and quickened. When was teaching more vivid, more throbbing with sympathy, than that of S. Athanasius, of S. Leo, of Dr. Pusey, or of Dr. Newman? The soul still lives even in their written words: and the clearcut outlines of such teaching are no more cold and dead than are the stars which quiver in firm yet tender brightness in a summer sky. It is not by being guided into exact expression that thought and feeling lose their freshness: what is fatal to all reality in instruction is the attempt to get on without any thought and feeling of one's own, and to save oneself trouble by dealing only in second-hand goods. The right and the wrong uses of Catechisms are admirably distinguished by the writer above quoted, in a passage in which he frankly describes and deplores the severance which their abuse in the Roman Church has made between the people and the clergy. cision and exactness in doctrinal formulas is," he writes, 1 Rosmini's Five Wounds of the Church, (Rivingtons, 1883,) p. 17.

"Pre

as

suredly a gain. The words convey truth, wholly and onl safe path is traced, by means of which teachers may impa the faithful the most recondite and sublime mysteries of the without much personal study. But is it an equal adva that the teachers of Christian truth should themselves be pensed from a close and laborious study of the truths they teach? . . . Is it not true that a teacher who merel peats what he himself does not understand, however sc lously exact may be his words, gives us a sensation as th his lips were frozen and scattered hoar-frost rather tha kindling rays of life over his listeners? . . . We must s these admirable compendiums of Christian instruction wha Apostle said of the law of Moses; 'it is holy, and just, good, if a man use it lawfully."

III. It remains that a few words should be said abou character and tone of doctrine conveyed in these outlines. It has been the steady (and, it is believed, successful) ai the writer simply and loyally to abide by the teaching of Church of England. And thus the book rests throughout the authority of the Bible, as it is interpreted by the formula of the Church, the Spirit-bearing witness and keeper of I Writ.

This is indeed the only aim which a member of the Ch can dutifully and consistently have in such a work. But also the one guide and principle of thought which is most in the end to win for the Catholic truth its due control minds and hearts. It is surely pitiable to see how often, by ineffectual and enfeebling policy of compromise in one sec of our communion, and by a wilful or frivolous craving a foreign novelties in another, the strong and noble teaching of English Church is distorted or disguised. We have recei by the wonderful goodness of GOD and the gracious protec of the HOLY SPIRIT, an inheritance of surpassing wealth beauty. The storms and confusion of the sixteenth cent have not deprived us of an Apostolic ministry in its three order our Sacramental system and doctrine has been guar 1 Rosmini's Five Wounds of the Church, pp. 17-20.

in an unbroken history and unsullied purity: the grace of ordination and the powers derived therefrom have been transmitted to us as they were received from our LORD. And while we thank Almighty GOD that He has guarded us from the losses which have marred the heritage of Protestant communities abroad, we may well be hardly less thankful that we have escaped the acquisitions which have deformed the doctrine and practice of the Church of Rome. We have no fear or difficulty in appealing to the great canon, "Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus :" but unless it be "a leaden canon" it will hardly be bent to conform with the Papal decrees of 1854 and 1870, and the refusal of the Chalice to the laity. While these and the like innovations upon the teaching of the Primitive Church encumber their doctrinal system, the Roman clergy can never easily invite plain-minded men to a free study of the Bible and of Church History. It is the unique strength of our communion in the West that, with all our hindrances and difficulties, with all our weakness of discipline, and with all the troubles that our sins have brought on us, we still can believe that in that twofold study lies the strength of our position. Mr. Gladstone, in 1876, defined, in speaking of the Historical School of Religious Thought, the elements of this strength, the grounds and consequences of this belief. It is the belief" in an historical Church, constitutional rather than despotic, with its faith long ago immutably, and to all appearance adequately, defined :" the belief of those who " are not to be induced, by the pretext of development, to allow palpable innovations to take their place beside the truths acknowledged through fifty generations." Of this scheme and conception of Christianity Mr. Gladstone truly says that "its respect for history and mental freedom, and the general moderation of its views of ecclesiastical power, have, under the Anglican form, in some way enabled it to maintain, and in recent times even to strengthen, its hold upon a large portion of the most active, and the most self-asserting, among all the nations of the Old World." It is this consciousness of a continuous life, this confidence, humble yet undoubting, that she has not

1 Reprinted in the "Gleanings of Past Years," Vol. iii. pp. 107, 1II.

"stumbled in her ways from the ancient paths"1 that gi the Church of England her hold upon the vigorous mind are willing to be also reverent in the present day: on this her hope that she may, by GOD's grace, through all the res ness of modern thought, through all the strife of tongues keep her place in the best life, the strongest energies, of land: this is the motive and sustaining power of her ever w ing missions: this is the secret principle of that yet higher which she dares not relinquish, which De Maistre expresse her, "Si jamais les Chrétiens se rapprochent, comme to y invite, il semble que la motion doit partir de l'Eglise d'A terre."2

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With such a heritage, with such a hope, English Church should surely be ashamed to cast covetous glances at th tractions and novelties of other systems, or to trifle with superficial characteristics of a Church which, while they their Bible, their Prayer Book, and their history, they i believe to be deeply in error. With Orders derived in a tinuous tradition from the Gift of Pentecost: with Sacram administered by a clergy thus empowered: with “a for ordinary worship possessing, whatever its defects otherwise, advantage which the rest of the Western Church has reckle thrown away; the advantage of having come down to her i unbroken succession from primitive days;"3 with these prer tives the Church of England surely has a right to expect f all her members something more grateful and enthusiastic t is consistent with flirtation with the errors she condemns, Platonic affection for a community which refuses her a plac the Catholic Church, denies the validity of her Orders, occasionally repeats her Baptism. If this book shall bring to recognise more worthily the privileges of an English Cath and to render more heartily the tribute of reverence and af tion which is due to the Church where GOD has given them means of grace and hope of glory, it will have done enough 1 Jeremiah xviii. 15.

2 Considérations sur la France: ch. ii., quoted by Curteis on I sent, p. 33, note 49.

3 Freeman's "Principles of Divine Service," Vol. i. p. 161.

satisfy the hope and to reward the labour with which it has been compiled. In the essay quoted above, Mr. Gladstone points out that it is, in the popular sense, the great weakness of the historical school that its position lies essentially in a mean : that it "accepts the basis of religious belief in much the same fashion as we have all to accept those of Providential guidance and moral duty in practical life. It acknowledges the authority of the Church, but cannot, so to speak, lay its finger on any means whereby that authority can, at any given moment, be fully and finally exercised. It allows Holy Scripture to be supreme in matters of faith; but it interposes more or less of an interpretative sense in controverted subjects between the Divine Word and the individual mind." A scheme of doctrine thus balanced and restrained will indeed always be at a disadvantage in times of eager and impatient controversy, and in the judgment of those whose mind labours under the necessity of satisfying their emotions. The exact truth, carefully stated, and guarded religiously by a reverent silence where definition is impossible, will always seem cold and uninteresting by the side of exaggerations far more easily understood and more apt for the exercise of rhetoric and vehemence. But it is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth which will persist throughout the rise and fall of the innumerable fashions in the world of thought, and persisting will prevail: it alone will steadily lay hold upon the minds of those who can appreciate the dignity, the divineness of patience and reserve, who have discerned that the purest truth is not generally that which lends itself most readily to the impetuosity of the natural man. For in every age may be traced the foreshadowed fulfilment of the prophecy that many shall run to and fro, but knowledge alone shall be increased in every age we see how all things come to an end, save only "that commandment which is exceeding broad." FRANCIS PAGET.

The Vicarage, Bromsgrove,

Advent, 1883.