is the one oblation of CHRIST, which was once offered when CHRIST made upon the Cross a full, perfect, and sufficient Sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. As He offered it then, once for all, to obtain remission of sins, so now does He offer it in perpetual memory to apply by His Intercession what He then obtained, that His Church receiving the creatures of bread and wine, in the rite which He instituted, may become partakers of His most Blessed Body and Blood, participating, that is, in the victory over sin and death, wherein His glorification consists. The continued application of this one oblation-the perpetual oblation -in glory, above; in mystery, below-of That which was offered upon the Cross in suffering, in order to obtain the blessings of that propitiation which the original suffering effected, is a very different thing from the doctrine against which the 31st Article is directed. We must observe that it speaks of "the Sacrifices of Masses" in the plural number, a phrase which is sufficient to indicate that the carnal separation of the Eucharistic oblation from the Sacrifice of the Cross is the object of attack, as substantially independent, and not their substantial identification under two forms of offering. There is a paper upon this subject, which is ably drawn up in Mr. Murray's Catena of Authorities with regard to the Altar and the Eucharistic Sacrifice, recently published; and we cannot refrain from quoting the testimony of another recent and learned writer, Mr. Robert Owen, in his "Introduction to Dogmatic Theology:"

"It would be an unreal and nugatory exhibition of the doctrine of the Catholic Church, touching the Eucharist, that should pass over in silence the fact of its being universally regarded as a representative and commemorative Sacrifice. It will at once be objected, that there is no direct testimony of Scripture in its behalf. But this, if any, is eminently a case of interpretation of the effect, purport, bearings, analysis, in a word, of the mind of Scripture. And if the consent of Christian antiquity be worth anything at all, it must surely tell here; for there is no point of doctrine so undisputed in the first ages of the Church, so

universally admitted by all sects and parties. . . Nor did it imply an obscuring of the grand central truth of CHRIST's one and only oblation of Himself and Atonement fully accomplished on the Cross, if the rite appointed by Him to perpetually commemorate that Atonement, derives a borrowed lustre from that great fact which it serves to exhibit. The term sacrifice is applied to the Eucharist only in a derivative sense, not terminating in itself, but going on to that mystery of CHRIST's true and proper sacrifice of Himself once for all offered, but which is here most solemnly pleaded and sacramentally exhibited." -P. 417.

We can scarcely think that the three Bishops, upon more mature deliberation, will put themselves in opposition to the whole tenor of Patristic Theology. We should, indeed have wished that

the same feelings of self-restraint would have operated in them, which have influenced their brethren of Moray and S. Andrew's, "to withhold for the present all expression of opinion." It is less to be wondered at that persons calling themselves "LayMembers of the Episcopal Church in Scotland," should have come forward to swell the outcry against a doctrine, whose bearings they probably do not at all understand. Their memorial is singularly unfortunate, in that it speaks of Bishop Forbes' Charge as inconsistent with "that Protestant Faith which they profess." tainly the Calvinistic doctrine of the Eucharist is not coextensive with Protestantism; and Lutherans profess at least to believe in the Real Presence, and the existence of an altar as much as we do! Bishop Forbes' letter to Lord Wemyss is dignified and becoming; and we heartily sympathise with the remonstrance, which has been largely signed, imploring the College of Bishops

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"To discourage all unauthoritative definitions of doctrine or confessions of faith; and to refrain in future from putting forth extrajudicial opinions or rules of discipline, tending to curtail the liberty the Church has allowed, and to create universal misunderstanding, in which the mutual relations of Bishops, Presbyters, and Laity, may receive serious detriment, and the real work of the Church in the perfecting of souls be proportionably obstructed."

MEMOIR OF M. H. M. BROWNLOW.

Jesus the Good Shepherd. A Short Memoir of Melise H. M. Brownlow; with a Sermon, preached on occasion of her death. By her Brother, the Rev. W. R. BROWNLOW, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge. London: Masters.

It is not without pain that we bring ourselves to say more respecting this little volume than that it contains the well-written narrative of a good young lady's uneventful life, and a very touching account of her placid and hopeful death. If we had thus characterized it, and added no more, we should have done ample justice as far as the literary or biographical interest of its pages is concerned. The adjuncts of its publication prevent us from noticing Miss Brownlow's memoir in this cursory manner; and they also bring the book before us in a way which will furnish an ample excuse for the course we are about to take by inviting, in fact, a public criticism of what might otherwise seem sacred to the reserve of a limited circle of interested readers. The brother of Miss Brown

low edits the letters which form a large portion of her memoir: and he states that "having often felt the difficulty of recommending books containing the experience of devout women," it appeared to him that his sister's letters, with a few remarks to connect them, were of such a character as to meet the difficulty, and "might be safely placed in the hands of any child of the English Church." The editor of those letters has therefore placed them, and his own affectionate remarks' which connect them, on the footing of a quasi-devotional book for general circulation; and as such we shall be justified in offering a criticism of the memoir' of his sister, which we should willingly have withheld had it been put forth merely as a little record for friends and relatives of one whose words and memory they regarded with interest and love.

We believe Mr. Brownlow will be far from being dissatisfied if we say that this publication is put forth with the object of spreading some peculiar notions which are entertained by Mr. Aitken and his followers. It is meant to find its way quietly into families, and there impress the daughters of the household with a strong feeling as to the necessity of a sensible conversion; to put them upon seeking such a consciousness of a "changed heart" for themselves; and to stimulate them towards promoting the same work among their female acquaintances. If we could go with Mr. Brownlow in his doctrinal premises we might possibly sympathize with him to some extent in the mode which he has thus adopted for carrying them to practical results; but we are unable to do so; we are, on the contrary, strongly impressed with a conviction of their error, and we, therefore, think it right to warn our readers against using this little work for any such purpose.

The subject of the memoir appears to have been a young lady of average abilities, with a little more than the average power of giving a literary and didactic turn to her correspondence with relations and schoolfellows. Little mention is made of her family-excepting the brother who edits her letters,but we gather from the tone of her early life that she was brought up in the cheerful happiness of a country parsonage where moderate wealth assisted to shut out the temptations brought by care; and where general religious propriety, if not a decided training in holiness, went far to keep her beyond the reach of ordinary sins. A lot like this is one which, though not without its dangers, demands a great measure of thankfulness. It is a hard task to undo the mischief caused to the heart even by the mere knowledge of sin; and it ought to be gratefully remembered by all who have had experience of such a position in life as that we have indicated, how much the circumstances of that position anticipate the difficulty by keeping the heart pure. Sinful Christians may be converted into saints, but sanctity is the normal condition of Christian childhood. Not indeed demonstrative holiness, though it is very common to represent the Christian lives

of children as if they were full of ostentatious piety. As light is perceptible only by its contrast with darkness, so it is only the knowledge of sin that can turn the unconscious intuition of holiness which is the characteristic of holy innocents into that conscious and deliberate choice of it which is the characteristic of holy penitents. Such knowledge of sin seems never to have fallen to the lot of Melise Brownlow, and we venture to hope there are many like her who reap the fruit of a thus guarded childhood; who never make familiar acquaintance with sins in later life because they never came to the knowledge of them in those early days when they might have been dangerously seductive; and the record of whose lives, had they been taken out of this world at a like early age, would have been as comparatively unsullied, even in the "book of remembrance," as it may well be believed is that of the young person of whose memoir we are writing.

Now the editor of Miss Brownlow's letters has very evidently penned his first page or two under the full conviction that she was a very good child, that he has no reason to doubt what others have told him to this effect, that he can trace no incidents in her early life which show that she stood in need of strong repentance; but that, on the other hand, the system to which he adheres requires that every individual Christian must pass through a stage of conscious conversion, before they can be really good and holy persons, and so the subject of his pages must also have gone through this process. Feeling sure from then having opportunity of personal observation that his sister's latter life gave good evidence of her piety, he has contrived his record of her early years to fit in with his system, by representing her childhood as being full of religious perplexities, which show that she was not then converted. "Religious tendencies," he says, "are often observed in children which come to nothing afterwards, because they have been merely impressions, and the child's will has not really been given up to God;" as if any impression could go so far towards drawing a child's will to GOD as that xapaxtǹp with which it was sealed when brought into union with Him Whose Will was and is wholly given up to His FATHER. Her biographer considers that his sister's 'religious impressions' were more fruitful, but the fact is, that like most intellectual children, Miss Brownlow even as early as her ninth year was puzzling herself with little metaphysical speculations, as we call them in persons of mature age, and these innocent subtleties are no instances whatever of "religious tendencies," and no proof at all of that for which they are cited-a progressive approach to that climax of conversion which his school seem to consider the only starting-point of true holiness. His affectionate memory tells the story of these early days more truly when left to itself: "I can recall her, as she seemed to me all through her girlhood, a quiet, gentle, innocent child; loving her home and all its inmates with a

deep affection which shrank from itself lest it should offend; anxious to please us all, and grateful for everything that was done for her;" such a child as the grace of God given in Holy Baptism had made her; such an one as all Christian children are sure to be on whom no evil "impressions" are made through the circumstances in which their childhood is placed. We dwell on this point because we wish our readers to see how wholly dependent upon "conversion" the spiritual life is made by the theologians with whom Mr. Brownlow sympathizes, so that the simple and unconscious sanctity of a Christian child is accounted nothing more than a 'religious tendency' which leads the subject of it from an unconverted to a converted condition; as if the converted sinner was necessarily in a higher spiritual state than even those who-for anything that can certainly be said-are yet as they were made in their new creation. "without fault before the Throne of GOD."

The Memoir possesses no interest whatever as a narrative of incidents, merely recording in a few words that there were the ordinary little varieties of life offered by school and visits to friends. Let us pass on to the letters more immediately bearing on her spiritual condition during the two years and a half which preceded her death.

Mr. Brownlow has the following passage respecting his own experience :

"After I had been about six months a deacon, it pleased GOD of His infinite mercy to show me that it was vain for me to expect to bring others to Him, until I had myself been made to realize my own lost state, and had fled for refuge to that blessed SAVIOUR Who is come to seek and to save that which was lost.' Not that I ever doubted for a moment my need of CHRIST, or His power and willingness to save me; but it appeared to me that a deeper work of repentance must be wrought in me before I could venture to claim as mine the benefits He had purchased for me on the Cross. I could not believe that now was the accepted time, and that my miserable condition was the very ground on which I might plead the favour of Him Who receiveth sinners. Letter on the Necessity of Conversion,' giving the experience of a brother clergyman who had been delivered from uncertainties similar to those which perplexed me, was by GoD's blessing of great service to me, in helping me to see that peace with GOD through faith in JESUS CHRIST was attainable; and also that the Fathers of the Church had always taught what my heart told me was necessary for me, but which I had ignorantly conceived to be inconsistent with the teaching of the Church."-Pp. 15, 16.

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This "Letter" he appears to have sent to his sister; and at the same time some letters of his own had reached home, which seem to have been written in such a state of mind that Miss Brownlow was not permitted by her parents to read them. The 'Letter on

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