important difference between hostility now and twenty years ago. The theology of that Journal was then administered by a Scotch Presbyterian, who never spoke of the affairs of the Church without perpetrating some such egregious blunder as that of attacking (as) some of our readers will remember) Dr. Buckland as a Tractarian, or "an Oxford New Light," as the High Church School was then called. Now they select their ablest writers and reviewers from Oxford's own sons, who consequently know full well what they are about, and add ofttimes the rancour of personal hostility to an acumen which knows where to find the best market for its productions.

In another note, with characteristic tenderness for individuals, Mr. Barter touches on the gainsaying which has been produced, and the sad discouragement to truth which has arisen, from the short-sighted and inconsistent course pursued by that class of persons of whom Dr. Hook may be regarded as the type. It is a subject on which we will not trust ourselves to speak, but will simply quote Mr. Barter's words :

"It has been also most melancholy to witness the falling off in many, who were at one time apparently most zealous and efficient in the cause of truth. Some have left us entirely, and have gone over to our adversaries: some, as if overborne by the multitude, or stunned by the clamour of their opponents, and hopeless of furthering the cause with which their names are identified by any exertion of their own, have committed it to Providence, and held their peace; whilst others, having made great concessions to the popular feeling of the day, still declare themselves to be stedfast in their defence of the truth, and as much to be depended on as ever, in the conflict between the world and the Church. Of this class Dr. Hook has the most to say for himself; but all that he can advance in his own favour falls short of establishing a valid defence of his consistency. With regard to some of his changes for the worse, I am obliged to say a few words; for they are likely to lead many astray, who are inclined to set much by his authority. Dr. Hook formerly used against the Romanists the arguments which are found in the first 'Tracts for the Times,' proving their novelties to be false, because opposed to the general teaching of Scripture as well as to that of the Catholic Church; now, in common with ultra-Protestants, he declares that we should combine to oppose Papal aggression, on the principle of holding the doctrine of justification by faith only, against the Roman Catholic doctrine, as he calls it, of justification by inherent righteousness. This is a strange position for Dr. Hook to take up, but it is no less unsound than strange. There is, indeed, a false doctrine of justification by inherent righteousness, connected by the Roman Catholic with the saving merit of our own works, with works of rogation, and the sale of indulgences; and against such heretical teaching our Church protests in the strongest terms. There is also a false doctrine of justification by faith only, on which the ultra-Protestant founds his tenets of instantaneous and indefectible grace, assurance,

supere

and unconditional salvation. These doctrines are perfectly irreconcileable with each other, as well as with the teaching of GOD's holy Word. But there is likewise a true doctrine with regard to both these points, and these true doctrines are perfectly consistent with each other we are justified by faith because it unites us with CHRIST; and those who love CHRIST, and keep His commandments, are justified by inherent righteousness, for it is CHRIST that justifieth, and He dwelleth in them. I repeat, therefore, what I have often said before, that no point of real importance is of necessity involved in this controversy; and that it is, when conducted on ultra-Protestant principles, equally useless and interminable. But there is one conclusive objection against such a strife of words: after all, we are only setting up the opinion of Luther against Bellarmine, or of one man against another, and thus sanctioning the principle of all heresy and schism; whereas, by bringing the opinions of either to the test of Catholic truth, we are doing all we can to hold fast the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and to advance the sacred cause of unity.

"No one appreciates more fully than myself the difficulty of Dr. Hook's position at Leeds-in the midst of Romanizers, who have acted most unjustly towards him, and assailed by every species of dissent. Had he really maintained without flinching the teaching by which his ministry in the Church has been generally distinguished, no clergyman would have lent more practical aid to the cause of truth. But, in addition to the change of principle which I have already noticed, he has lately put himself forward to defend the admission of Jews into Parliament, and a projected system of godless education; he also leaves us in doubt whether he does not consider the sin of schism to be consistent with the greatest personal holiness of character. says that the opinions which he now puts forth are to be found in his former writings: his consistency, however, cannot be defended by such references if he now gives to doctrines of a popular cast that prominence which he never before assigned them, he speaks in a new character, not as the Dr. Hook of former years."-Pp. 50–52. ·

He

Mr. Barter does not so much as allude to the terrible flood of rationalistic, and practically infidel, Theology that is being poured upon us by our own clergy-as Donaldson, Jowett, Rowland Williams, and (we are compelled to add in the same category) Alford.

The root of the evil is now much more deeply seated. The earnest religious spirit, which existed of late in the Church, has been well-nigh suppressed-partly doubtless owing to the follies of some High Churchmen; but chiefly by the combination of Bishops and other authorities in the Church and Universities, with the worldly acts and ungodly passions of the irreligious, and of those who professing to be "evangelical" (like Mr. Daniel Wilson and Mr. Miller, and a host of others,) have made common cause with them. This unholy alliance, as we have again and again predicted must be the case, has now pretty well succeeded in stifling the religious spirit in England. (2) And then unhappily just at the

moment when the Church is thus denuded of her strength, the State has succeeded in perfecting a system by which she bids fair to buy up all the available talent of the age for her service. Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell were the first in recent times who attempted to influence the Church by the disposal of Ministerial patronage. The blunders which they committed are matters of history. Sir Robert Peel with a better knowledge and wider principle, sought out the ablest men from Oxford to fill the subordinate places of his government. Since his time the principle has been very widely expanded. The whole Education department of the Privy Council, with its inspectors and clerks and secretaries, is worked for the purpose of establishing a system rival, if not yet antagonistic, to the Church. The Commissariat and other war departments have been filled largely in the same manner. And now at length we have Boards of State Examiners established in our Universities-all of whom have been selected on strictly antiecclesiastical principles,-whose business it is, or will shortly become, to look out the most capable agents for the State, which is necessarily becoming less and less Christian, from among those who a few years since would certainly have filled the ranks of the Clergy. Had this occurred in better times, it would have been a good augury for the Church; but coinciding as it now does, with the loss of zeal and energy which has just been referred to, it seems to us a most alarming symptom, and one which will require to be met by some very strenuous exertions on the part of those who hold and value Catholic Truth.

In this brief survey of the Church's prospects, we have taken no account of the Evangelical element among us, because, though still in possession of the great majority of Town Pulpits, it has long since ceased materially to influence the rising generations at the Universities.

1 The former is said to have given a living to a very obscure and not very creditable Clergyman on his own request, having confounded him from similarity of name with a popular Dissenting minister.

561

STANLEY ON THE EPISTLES OF S. PAUL.

The Epistles of S. Paul to the Corinthians, with critical notes and dissertations. By A. P. STANLEY, M.A., Canon of Canterbury. 2 vols. London: Murray.

MR. STANLEY is generally understood to have commenced his criticism upon S. Paul's epistles, as part of a plan in combination with Mr. Jowett, whose work we reviewed last month; but the character of the annotations is very different. A variation in the Greek type employed in the two works prevents our regarding them as one whole, and certainly the minds of the two authors as leaving their impress on their works are of a mould altogether opposite. It is not indeed that we can congratulate Mr. Stanley upon having caught the bearing of S. Paul's Epistles upon Catholic Theology much more felicitously than Mr. Jowett, but while the Professor of Greek rides roughshod over S. Paul's arguments upon the neighing colt of a pietistic philosophy, with Mr. Stanley the Christianity limps, and the philosophy fails. In truth it is difficult to conceive what was the imagined purpose of the book. The effort to realise tableaux vivans of the Church of Corinth, and of S. Paul along with his amanuensis, had been already much more successfully carried out by Messrs. Conybeare and Howson. We can hardly imagine that even our author's parental affection can find much to admire in the critical notes; and the bits of paraphrase with which each section concludes can only be of value as evidencing the extreme beauty and vigour of S. Paul's own words by the comparison. That this result must ensue from every attempt at paraphrase, any one who has ever tried to handle them thus will be soon convinced. We believe that there are few exercises from which a theological student will derive more profit than from trying to draw out paraphrastic expositions of S. Paul's arguments. Nothing more readily brings the conviction of their Divine Inspiration. The mind quickly perceives how by developing one chain of argument more clearly, we lose other features of the teaching which were implicitly contained. Still, the exercise is a very serviceable one, and paraphrase is one of the best forms of commentary; but really those which are given to us here are little better as likenesses of the original than grotesque daguerreotypes. We can thoroughly understand some minds wishing to eliminate all that was sacramental, but we had not expected the effervescence of a few years back, when the sermons on the Apostolic age (weak as they really were) attracted such large audiences round S. Mary's pulpit, to subside into anything so stale and commonplace as the portraiture of S. Paul's

reasoning which is here presented to us. A brief analysis is prefixed to each epistle, but we must say that this part also is very superficially and profitlessly done. There is no appearance of the analyzer's having done more than jotted down the subjects which accidentally occur, in the order of their respective paragraphs. Evidently he did not at all contemplate any continuity of mental atmosphere as influencing the author whom he was studying. Indeed the most graphic part of the two volumes, is that which describes S. Paul and his amanuensis getting their letter ready, and it was not likely that a production arising from the joint labour as here delineated would be other than rambling and disconnected :—

"It was written, we must remember, with the exception of the few last lines, not by the Apostle's own hand, but by an amanuensis; and it was written not in his own name alone, but in that of Sosthenes also -whether the successor of Crispus as president of the Corinthian synagogue or another of the same name cannot be determined; at any rate, it is evident from the mention of his name in this conjunction, that he must have been a man of great consideration and well known to the Corinthian Church. This then is the group which we must conceive as present, if not throughout, at least at the opening of the Epistle. There is Paul himself, now about sixty years of age, but with his powers of body and mind still unbroken, although bearing traces of his constant and recent hardships; his eyes at times streaming with tears of grief and indignation; the scribe, catching the words from his lips and recording them on the parchment scroll which lay unrolled before him. Possibly Sosthenes was himself the scribe, and if so, we may conceive him not only transcribing, but also bearing his part in the Epistle, at times with signs of acquiescence and approbation, at times, it may be, interposing to remind the Apostle of some forgotten fact, as of the Baptism of the household of Stephanas, or of some possible misapprehension of what he had dictated."-I. 24.

Now this picture is dramatically conceived, and in many respects doubtless true, but every one must at once see how entirely humanitarian it is. Not only does it seem to speak in the words quoted in the second introduction, "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto;" but all idea superior to man is left out. Had an early painter been committing this subject to canvas, he would doubtless have added to the group, some representation such as the Mystic Dove, to imply the co-operation of the Divine SPIRIT, or possibly both he who dictated and he who wrote, would have been seen upon their knees, with a Cross upon the table before them, casting its sacred shadow over the roll of the parchment. Such treatment as this, would have embodied the idea that prayer was the strength of Apostolic preaching, that the Cross was the one object occupying his mind, that he was a minister, not of a dead letter, but of the living Spirit. We do not expect the author of these volumes to furnish us with any such details of symbolism, but we do demand of a Christian