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we should subjoin His commentary, "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath-day."

In the Sermon on the Mount, the Fourth Commandment is omitted. Why is this? The Sabbath was strictly kept by the Jew. He broke his oaths, his marriage vow, was guilty of envy, covetousness, without scruple; but abhorred idolatry, and kept the Sabbath. These remarks on Idolatry and the Sabbath were not needed in a discourse addressed to the multitude. In our Lord's conversation with the rich young ruler, no mention is at all made of the Sabbath, nor indeed of duties to God, only those to man; probably duty to God is all involved in the enigmatic words, "Thou callest me good; there is none good but One, that is, God."

I think that the teaching of our Lord left the Divine appointment of the Sabbath where the Law of Moses placed it. This is the basis of our Church's observance of the day. There remains the difficult task of pointing out the dangers besetting this subject in the present day.

I. There is some danger of making the day a day of burden, and not of rest. This will befall only serious-minded people, and may lead to the Galatian error, that righteousness is to be found by the Law. "They have begun in the spirit," and, though not seeking to go on in the flesh, do not "stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free."

II. It is a dangerous practice which others adopt in disregarding the day. The Christian is under grace, and free from the letter. The Saviour said, "Take up thy bed and walk" therefore we are at liberty to do as we please on Sunday. The spiritual condition of such is exactly that which calls for the Law, which may, in God's time, prove (for some) a guide to liberty. It holds towards such the advantages which the parent's reason does to the child; man intellectual, moral (it may be), must obey the laws, till he gain that inward health of spiritual life which will enable him" to walk in the spirit."

Yet, too often classes widely distinct are mixed up, and treated to the same doctrine; the lawless are addressed as "under grace," and good men, themselves spiritually-minded, do not discriminate the carnality of their hearers and friends.

No definite rules can be laid down for Sabbath observance. Parents, above all, should judge for themselves, and bear in mind that a restraint may be needed by way of example to a young family, which is not called for where none exists. It is plain that avocations and pleasures which develope carnal feelings, are not in accordance with the day. The Law is, "Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day," and every individual must decide whether his observance fulfils it or no.

But why was a Sabbath appointed? For man. Then as long as man is such as God made him in this world, Sabbaths will exist. So the long centuries past testify, and our present experience confirms our sense of the benefit it confers, a day is once in seven given us, that man may rest from his avocations, and, in every grade and position of life, enjoy a whole day in stricter preparation for that nobler life which is his destiny for eternity.

GILL'S PAPAL DRAMA.

The Papal Drama. An Historical Essay. By Thomas H. Gill. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.

WE give the scope of this very remarkable book in the Author's own words. "I do not profess," he says in the Preface, "to write the history of the Roman Church; I do not profess to write a minute and detailed history of the Popes; but I do profess to tell, with some fulness and comprehensiveness, the story of the Popedom; to follow it from its origin to the present time, through all its changes, revolutions, triumphs, and disasters; to linger over its most striking personages, and its most important passages; to set it forth in its twofold character as a spiritual and a secular power; and to consider its relation to other powers, its place in history, and its part in the great drama of human affairs."

This promise is entirely redeemed by the Author, who brings to the accomplishment of his great design an amount of industrious learning and research, and manifests an historical genius, which, in combination with a style of considerable power, stamp his book as a remarkable production. The Author, while "striving after," and we will say exhibiting, throughout his long and elaborate historical review, "strict accuracy in the statement of facts, and perfect fairness in the estimate of character, yet lays no claim to the impartiality of religious indifference." He looks upon the Popedom as the supreme corruption of Christianity, and as such he deals with it throughout his volume.

In the presence of the proofs of minute and exact learning which the Papal Drama everywhere reveals, it was needless for Mr. Gill to assure us that historical studies had "formed the chief employment and delight of his life."

After a striking and elaborate enumeration of events and influences favourable to the Reformation, Mr. Gill thus finely sets forth its true origin :—

"But it was not restored learning, it was not rekindled genius, it was not reinvigorated reason, it was not the newborn power of the press, it was not its own accumulated vices and corruptions, before which the Papacy went down over half Christendom, which constituted the great assailing force which dealt the crushing and confounding stroke. These all came up at the right time, and did good service, as auxiliaries in the great battle. The onslaught was more mightily made; the stroke was more divinely dealt. The victorious and irresistible assailant was a soul deeply stirred and divinely inspired, possessed by an intense yearning, and filled with a quickening truth, eager to be rid of the crushing burden of sin, and finding full deliverance only in the free grace of God. The Reformation has been spoken of, not altogether wrongly, as the insurrection of reason against authority, as the assertion of the right of private judgment in matters of religion, as the general emancipation of the intellect: the Reformation was all this, and something likewise far diviner. It was the re-enthronement of God's truth; it was the reproduction of a vital principle of Christianity, long hidden and buried under a heap of false dogmas and idle observances; it was the restoration of the soul to its right place in things spiritual, the renewal of direct communication between the spirit of man and the Spirit of God. The Reformation brought with it the negation of much; but it began with the most positive, profound, and glorious of all conceivable affirmations, that salvation is from the Lord, that divine life flows into our hearts directly from the Divine Being. It brought low the Church of Rome by magnifying the Word; it deposed the Pope through half Christendom, by re-enshrining faith in the living God. Luther was no subversive speculator, no discontented priest, but a sin-stricken soul, who, weary of dead works, had turned to living faith, and, after trial of man's absolution, had won forgiveness from God's free grace. He never sought directly to emancipate the intellect; he did not at first seek to overthrow the Papacy; but he sought to bring Christendom back into personal and living contact with the living God, and to pour into other souls the fire of that potent truth which had kindled his own. The Reformation was in truth a baptism of fire, a coming down of the Holy Ghost upon Christendom."

The following reference to Lord Macaulay is a good specimen of the Author's style :

"His Protestantism was political rather than spiritual. He walked mainly by sight. His masterly and magnificent outline of the Papal perils reveals at once its strength and its weakness. The greater reasonableness of the Reformed doctrines, and the superior condition of those countries which embraced the Reformation, assured him of the truth of Protestant Christianity; and yet the long duration of the Papacy somewhat oppressed his imagination, and suggested the possibility of its perpetual duration. A profounder reading of history and of daily life, a deeper insight into God's ways with men and nations, would have reduced this oppressive wonder into transient astonishment, and converted this long duration into a trial of faith. . . . . The steady declension of the Popedom during the last five cenVol. 65.-No. 346.

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turies, a declension not less visible and remarkable than its escapes and revivals, might have assured him of its final doom, and corrected the extravagance of his famous compliment to the stability of the Roman Church,-'She may still exist in undiminished vigour, when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.'

"Such a disposition of events is exceedingly unlikely. It is to be expected that a system like Romanism, in such accordance with the weakness and evil of human nature, may, under some degrading metamorphosis, as some subaltern form of spiritual corruption, lurk on, the survivor of more than one existing state and nation. But it is a matter of not less reasonable expectation, that the English polity will outlive the Roman polity, that a state, founded in a considerable measure on respect for divine law and human rights, will outlast a system based on the political and spiritual degradation of mankind, and now tottering beneath the weight of its ineradicable and accumu lated vices. It is not unlikely that England, while still holding her place among the nations, with eye undimmed and arm unshortened, will rejoice over the downfall of that Papal power which she has so heartily abhorred, so steadfastly withstood, and from defiance whereof her might and majesty have so largely flowed.

"The English language, so mightily wielded against the crimes and corruptions of Rome, may be yet more gloriously tasked to set forth her overthrow. English genius, so loftily upborne in love of truth and freedom, and in abhorrence of their foremost foe, may soar over her ruin in a still sublimer flight. It may be given to an English historian, in tracing the wonderful course of the Popedom throughout, from its obscure beginning to its ignominious end, to exhaust the romance and complete the philosophy of history; and the fall of Babylon may enrich English poetry with its not least mighty and majestic song. And a traveller from still imperial England may sojourn in Rome when she has ceased to be the City of the Popes, and may behold in St. Peter's, whether a gorgeous ruin or a secularised building, whether the seat of still inferior rites or the abode of purer worship, no longer at least a Papal temple."

But it is not only the skill with which a vast range of historical research is brought within a moderate compass, and presented in a most available form, that is admirable in the Papal Drama. The style, the tone, and spirit of the book are deserving of praise. The style is, in general, elevated, vigorous, close, and clear. If there are occasional redundancies of expression, which would be better avoided, these are the excesses of conscious power and vigour. Among the most noticeable features of the book are the power and distinctness with which personal character is set forth. It abounds in portraits of men of the times, impartially and accurately drawn. To the general reader this is one of its greatest attractions.

The unity of action essential to every perfect drama, and

so remarkably characteristic of the Papacy, is strikingly shewn forth through all the changes and vicissitudes of its long career. Each of the five acts, into which Mr. Gill divides the Papal Drama, represents a distinct period, and a fresh evolution of Papal history. The first act embraces the gradual transformation of the bishops of Rome into pontiffs and princes, from the first distinct recognition of supremacy by the Emperor Phocas (606) to the acquisition of the Italian Principality in the middle of the eighth century. The second act carries forward the history to the full development of Papal pretensions under Gregory VII., in the middle of the eleventh century. The third act is occupied with the Papacy in the fulness of its strength and splendour, from Gregory VII. to Boniface VIII. (1073-1303). The fourth act comprehends the decline of the Popedom from the arrest of Boniface VIII. by Philip the Fair of France, to Luther's burning of the Bull of Leo X. at Wittenberg (1303-1520). The story of the Popedom from the Reformation to the rise of the kingdom of Italy, occupies the fifth act,—an act unconcluded as yet,-and of whose later scenes we are the awe-struck witnesses. This view of Papal history is followed by a sketch of the relations of certain states and nations-France, Austria, and England-with the Papacy; and that unity of action, so conspicuous in the leading character, is exhibited also in these other actors in the great drama. There is no portion of the book more striking and original than the exhibition of France as the oppressive protector and exacting eldest son of the Roman Church throughout their connection of eleven centuries. Never has the strength and continuity of English Protestantism been more vividly set forth than in the chapter entitled "The English State and the Romish Church," though many readers will perhaps be still more interested in the view of English literature, from Piers Ploughman to Macaulay, as a sustained and magnificent utterance of anti-papal feeling.

We value this book the more, because it proceeds from the pen of a layman. It is a learned work. The writer has made himself thoroughly acquainted with his subject, and the references to his quotations show that his reading has been extensive. Few, we suspect, though well practised controversialists, have so profound an acquaintance with the highest authorities on both sides. The spirit, too, is good. "Whilst striving," says Mr. Gill, "after strict accuracy in the statement of facts, and perfect fairness in the estimate of character, I lay no claim to the impartiality of religious indifference." One thing only we regret; that a writer, otherwise so admirable, should have allowed himself, when he becomes impassioned, to write in a style half prose, half blank verse. Our

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