release. He found that the converts already numbered 700; so, after a brief stay of three weeks, he again sailed homeward, and it was well that he did so. After his departure, an order arrived from the Danish Court, commanding his arrest and imprisonment; but it came too late, and Zinzendorff once more found himself safely at home at Marienborn. Shortly before the death of Frederick William I., Zinzendorff, hearing of his serious illness, wrote to him concerning his spiritual welfare, and a correspondence ensued creditable alike to the King and the Count. The following note from the King shows the spirit in which this correspondence was carried on : "MY VERY DEAR COUNT,-I have duly received your letter of the 15th inst., informing me that mine to you has given rise to certain doubts in your mind. You will gratify me by a candid statement of them, and by pointing out what you think is wrong in my profession I am ever your affectionate "FREDERICK WILLIAM." of faith. On the receipt of this, Zinzendorff lost no time in forwarding to the King an explanation of his views. Herrnhäag was fast becoming another Herrnhüt, with this great difference, that, not being Lord of Herrnhäag, he could not possibly exercise over it any great control, and the result was that it soon became unmanageable; but, fortunately for Zinzendorff, and probably for all parties concerned, the Lord of Marienborn became jealous of Zinzendorff, and endeavoured to exact from the settlers of Herrnhäag such unreasonable promises or vows, that one half the community soon left the place, and the settlement was broken up. In the autumn of 1741, we again find the Count in London, on his way to America, accompanied by his eldest daughter, who was about sixteen, and a few of the Brethren. They landed at New York; thence they traversed Pennsylvania; Zinzendorff's object being to ascertain the spiritual condition of the German colonists there. He found them split up into seven or eight different sects; so he at once set to work to allay asperity, and produce, if possible, some degree of Christian fellowship and charity among them. In the summer he made a missionary tour amongst the North American Indians, and, upon the whole, was kindly received. The following spring, we again find him in England, visiting a Moravian settlement in Yorkshire, which we believe is still in existence. The next winter we find him and his eldest son in a Russian prison; the confinement, however, was fortunately not of very long duration. A few years afterwards, the king of Saxony, observing the prosperous condition of Herrnhüt, and the peaceable demeanour of its inhabitants, revoked Zinzendorff's sentence of exile, and gave the Moravians his countenance. He had then been banished just ten years. In 1747, the Count was again in London, and had no great difficulty in getting an act passed, whereby the Moravians were freed from the obligation to take oaths, or to sit on juries, and were exempted from military service; the Prince of Wales taking great interest in the passing of the Act. In 1749 they obtained a second Act, in which the Unitas Fratrum was acknowledged to be "an antient Protestant Episcopal Church, which differed in no essential point of doctrine from the Church of England." The whole bench of Bishops supported the Bill. In London Zinzendorff continued to preach and discourse as he had done on the Continent. The assemblies were held in his own house, and afterwards in a chapel adjoining, which he purchased with the house. These meetings were numerously attended; and that, too, by many distinguished persons. But troubles soon began to thicken around the Count. His eldest son sickened and died; his beloved wife shortly followed her son to the grave; and Zinzendorff, now harassed with pecuniary responsibility which he found it most difficult to meet, and at the same time overwhelmed with grief, was fast losing his health and energy. In fact, he was no longer his former self. A year after the death of his first wife, the Count married again. His second wife was Anna Nitschman, a very religious woman, the daughter of David Nitschman. In her childhood she had been employed in tending her father's cows. What his aristocratic relations would think of such an alliance, we do not pretend to say; but the union seems to have added both to his own happiness, and to that of the little community at Herrnhüt, with whom he continued to reside till his death, which occurred three years afterwards, when he sweetly "fell asleep in Jesus," and his remains were followed to the grave in the little cemetery at Herrnhüt by more than two thousand Moravian Brethren, besides a vast concourse of others. We need scarcely make another remark. The outline we have given of the life of this good and really great man will, we hope, give our readers a slight idea of what Zinzendorff was. All we can give is the mere outline; and we refer our readers with pleasure to the work itself, which is as readable and interesting, and as full of incident, as any biography we have read for some time past. WYLIE'S AWAKENING OF ITALY, AND THE CRISIS OF ROME. [The following Review will be read with additional interest, when the reader is informed that it comes from the pen of a correspondent who holds an important official post in Italy.EDITOR.] The Awakening of Italy, and the Crisis of Rome. By the Rev. J. A. Wylie, LL.D. London: The Religious Tract Society. 1866. MANY believe that the year 1866 is to be the turning point of the Papacy-its fall, or its rising again. It is impossible, then, not to turn with deep interest to any book which professes to describe the "awakening of Italy, and the crisis of Rome;" and the interest is not a little deepened when it is an account from so masterly a pen as that of the author of the book at the head of our present article. This in a time, too, when those who claim to be followers and successors of St. Peter appear inclined to take the sword; and if they cannot call down fire from heaven, at any rate they seek to kindle a fire on earth again that shall devour their adversaries. At least such is the inference to be drawn from the recent murders at Barletta, in Southern Italy; while even at Brescia, in Northern Italy, a similar outbreak was in contemplation, and only hindered by the strong arm of the civil authorities. Yet it is cheering to feel assured that the mind of Italy is united, with very rare exceptions, in condemning such atrocities; which, however, appear only as the natural fruits of a party which desires to create a reaction against the present liberal Government. And if an archbishop and other clerical dignitaries are implicated in the foul deed, men will say this too is the natural fruit of Rome's teaching, which cares little for a moral or spiritual religion, but cannot endure that any should oppose themselves to her arrogant claims of being the only true Church, out of which there can be no salvation. Still by no means are the Italian priesthood, as a body, to be confounded with these bigots. For it is very certain a large proportion of the priests lament the bondage of Italy beneath the yoke of Papal Rome, which, as it tends to gag the mouth of the true patriot, so it is utterly incompatible with liberty and civilization. The events of Barletta, no doubt, will be for the furtherance of the Gospel. The comments upon them in the Italian press prove that Italy is awakening. And no Christian soul, no British heart, who thoughtfully contemplates the state of reli gion at home, but must cast an anxious gaze on Italy (as Dr. Wylie describes it) : "The meeting place of earth's idolatries, where the greatest system. of error now on the earth, the most subtile in its adaptation to the human heart, the most specious in its assumption of Christianity, and the most skilful in its intertwinings with society and human life. Here is a system that combines in itself whatever is peculiar to, or of greatest power in, the other systems-the infidelity of the North, the sensuous mysticism of the East, and the fetichism of the South." (p. 18.) The world generally is deceived by the specious phrase and boast of Rome, Semper eadem-which indeed is true, but in the sense of its Protean powers of assimilization to the age or country where it is found, one thing in Italy, another in England, another still in Ireland or in France. "There is, therefore, no more important question at the present hour than this, What progress is Italy making towards her emancipation from the yoke of the Papacy?" To this question Dr. Wylie endeavours to reply. Thus in Chap. iii. we have "the general aspects of Italy's awakening" described truly as from the life. If it were true two years ago, it is true at the present hour in a great measure. "He who undertakes to describe Italy, attempts to paint chaos. The nation is at present in a state of dissolution. The old ties are all but disrupted, and the new ones have not yet grown. There is no common faith in the country. True the people are all Catholics, or style themselves so; but every man believes as much or as little of Catholicism as suits him. "In short, Catholicism in Italy is not a creed which is to be believed by each man in particular; it is a creed which is professed by the nation as a whole. "Further, there is at this hour no common action in Italy. Within certain limits every man does what is right in his own eyes. Each man has his creed, which is very much of his own training, the dogmas composing it being selected without much critical examination of the grounds on which they rest, or any great care as to whether they will hang together." (pp. 20, 21.) "It tends further to increase the dissolution of this land, that no one man has risen up to rally the nation round him. Where is the man with intellect sufficiently powerful and with soul sufficiently large to thrill the Italians with his voice, and calling them out of the slough of petty intrigue, of personal vice, and of sordid, selfish enjoyment, to breathe into them the unconquerable resolve of being a free and united nation. We look in vain for such a man." And if this is true in the political life, it is even more strikingly true in the religious. Here and there one stands up, and as a meteor flares across the spiritual firmament for a moment, only to disappoint highly raised expectations of friends, who perhaps judge too partially and too hastily. Where is Passaglia now? Where is Gavazzi, who appeared on the British stage some years ago, astonishing all by his amazing oratorical powers? We might name others. But it has been Italy's lot, in all ages hitherto, to have had many such children, and to have been disappointed in her hopes of lasting results in every case. And even now we cannot agree in hoping for real benefit from the lectures of one who can at the same time bring himself to translate into his native tongue the life of the infidel Strauss, as Professor Oddo (p. 241); nor yet can we hope much from such appeals as those of De Boni :—" If to worship in the temple of nature will not content you, if you cannot account good works the best prayers, if the love of justice and liberty will not suffice, then pray with the Vaudois, worship with the Evangelici; but at least abandon the sepulchre, come out into the light." (p. 141). Such appeals may come from one who is at the same period a translator of Rénan's wretched work, the "Life of Jesus," or from a president of a Mazzinian meeting, but are not exactly of that clear tone which becomes the Gospel trumpet. It is likely that if Dr. Wylie were to revisit Italy again this year, the information he would receive from his friends would lead him to change the opinions he has expressed on these and some other matters. But the truth is, that Italy is only awakening, and not awakened: : "One half of the nation is alive; the other half is dead-is yet in its tomb. Italy reminds us of the picture Milton has drawn of the lion in the act of springing into life: 'now half appeared: The tawny lion, pawing to get free His hinder parts: then springs, as broke from bonds, So with Italy. The head and upper parts of the nation are risen ; but the lower extremities stick fast in the mire, and hard indeed will be the task of extricating them from the ignorance and barbarism of ages." (p. 23.) But this is not all. The Italian lion is so very willing to accept aid from the British lion, or it may be that John Bull allows himself to aid in making certain violent unsystematic efforts to raise the lower part of the animal, that there is great danger of a dislocation of the spine, if not separation of the upper parts from the lower, of the Italian body national. The efforts of the Evangelici partake too much of the character of a class movement, or more strictly partisan warfare, and are too often, rightly or wrongly, confounded with the efforts of the Republican party. While we write, we read in the Record of April 16th, of a meeting at Pisa, where it was resolved to request |