have been written late: and it is possible that "the Inspired writer, whoever he were, had nevertheless lost the tradition which, in a better and purer age, had distinguished the two names," Sion and Jerusalem (!).

Now this illustration is sufficient to show that the mystic method of explaining Holy Scripture is not without its peculiar danger, and that its too exclusive adoption has a tendency to allow men unconsciously to tamper with the integrity of God's Revelation, and subordinate Divine Truth to human fancy. That such a tendency however will be kept in reverent check by Mr. Neale in his Commentary we confidently hope and trust.

We have only to repeat, that we cannot consider it other than fortunate-may we say providential-that the two works we have noticed, dealing with the same all-important subject, undertaken by men in many respects so dissimilar and approaching their subject from such different sides-works, therefore, calculated to balance and correct one another, and supply each other's deficiencies -should be appearing simultaneously.

GOD'S HEROES AND THE WORLD'S HEROES.

God's Heroes and the World's Heroes: being a Third Series of Historical Sketches. By JOHN HAMPDEN GURNEY, M.A. London: Longmans.

MR. GURNEY seems to think that the age (in spite of peace societies and Manchester schools) is in danger of giving its sympathies to a mere "bull dog courage," and esteeming none as heroes, save those who have fought and bled. To counteract this tendency, he has produced this little volume, in which he has attempted to disabuse the national mind of this foolish notion, and to set before the world those whom they are to recognize as true heroes, and those whom they are to reject as charlatans and impostors. If the danger exists, it says little for the wonderful power which education, as we are told, has in elevating the moral faculties, and enlightening the moral sense, and less for the high Christian religious feeling, which we are also told pervades the great English nation so thoroughly, entirely and pre-eminently.

The result of Mr. Gurney's labours is a very readable interesting volume, and we are bound to say, conceived and written in a much more liberal spirit, than usually characterizes clergymen of the school to which Mr. Gurney belongs. It is true as has been noticed elsewhere, that all, who he is certain, are God's heroes, belong to one particular class, though in that particular class his

sympathies are widely diffused. And it provokes a smile,-(it is so ludicrously absurd that though angry we cannot refrain from laughing,)—to find this honourable appellation denied by implication, to the Duke of Wellington, or the heroes of La Vendée, and given to the Rev. Elijah Lovejoy, an American newspaper editor. Nor is this a captious criticism. Mr. Gurney's own words are plain :

These prefatory remarks will show what I mean by God's heroes. I shall select some specimens from different ages and countries as my principal subject, after giving one chapter to fighting men of the vulgar sort, and another to a few nobler spirits who have fought with no selfish aim, and whose victories have really made mankind their debtors." -P. 5.

The highest praise he can render to great soldiers, is "that they have fought with no selfish aim, and made mankind their debtors,' but among God's heroes they may not be numbered.

Now whilst we are quite willing to surrender Alexander, Richard Cœur de Lion, Charles XII., Frederick the Great, and most unreservedly of all Napoleon, as mere world's heroes, as men whose great powers of mind were directed only to ends of personal aggrandizement, who fought for no grand principle, and were engaged in no great struggle for right, we must protest most energetically against restricting GOD's heroes to any one order of men, and must claim a right to assert a positive conviction that such a man as Wellington has done more for GOD's cause throughout the world, the cause, i.e., of right, of truth, of justice, than all the Buxtons, Stephens, Macaulays, and other second-rate puritans, whom Mr. Gurney delights to honour.

a

A man who fights for GoD and God's cause, is God's hero ; man who fights for self is the world's hero. We are far from denying that Howard was a hero; however we might hesitate to apply that name to some well-meaning but feeble men, whom Mr. Gurney places in the category of heroes, and we do not wish to assert that the camp is the only nursery of heroes. But we join issue with Mr. Gurney, in his practical denial that the camp can produce God's heroes. We aver without fear of contradiction, that in the noble band of peasants, who made that manful stand against the tyranny, the infidelity, and immorality of the French Revolution in La Vendée, there burnt as much singleness of aim, as much zeal for GoD, as much love of the Redeemer, as much selfdenial, self-forgetfulness, as much heroism, real Godlike heroism as in any missionary who has done God's work, in a more peaceful

way.

In a similar way, who will deny that Wellington was a hero of the highest mould? If ever a man did God's work upon earth, in chaining, checking, and finally crushing that gigantic power,

nation, and in rescuing Europe from the most cru ing tyranny under which it ever groaned, it was t he was fighting on GoD's side, he was doing G distant peninsula, keeping at bay the hosts of army after army tossed themselves against that "b could advance no further. It was doing GOD's wo even one land, that godless host, whose march country they visited, was marked by oppression and cruelty. It was doing God's work to struggle evil, and those who struggle with, and conquer heroes, in spite of Mr. Gurney. And a wider rang Mr. Gurney's, could not fail to have noticed, how a which make up great missionaries, are found in Courage, endurance, self-devotion, self-control, the manding, and the power of obeying, are as essentia the other. And as the very nature of a soldier's calli the culture of those qualities, so when the grace of that culture, there is produced the most perfect c courage and gentleness, daring and endurance, un sacrifice and tender regard for the weak, the help pressed, which human nature is perhaps capable Strange as it may seem, the germs of the saintly more traceable in a good soldier, than in any other ea and the annals of Christendom abound in instances in the hard and rough school of arms have attained of saintliness, and been enrolled among its worthies. the triumphs of the Gospel, that it has made the cam becoming a nursery of saints.

We protest then against the impression conveyed b that the only heroes really entitled to be called GOD'S be men employed in that particular part of the Chu which we call missionary, or in urging domestic refo authors of the anti-slavery movement. We would our boys learn, that in whatever position of life it GOD's providence to call them, they can witness for H their degree, be more or less His heroes. We do not b any good is done, by painting soldiers as necessarily least only to be tolerated. We hold that to decry th calling as unlawful, or to separate it so totally from Go Mr. Gurney does, is to forget that among the books Scripture, the soldier's commentaries have found a place one of the types of Him Who is the perfection of human soldier, as if to teach us, that the Incarnation can embrac ings and degrees of men. As priests have followed in th the great High Priest, as kings have laid their crowns a 1 Vide Mr. Gurney's book, p. 215.

of the King of kings, so have men of war, amid all the tumult and licence of a camp, fought manfully for the "Captain of our salvation." He is "all things to all men, that He may gain some ;" and the very name of the Church militant, the language of our Baptismal dedication, the metaphors drawn from military doings in the New Testament, (not to mention the many instances recorded in Holy Writ, of good earnest pious men among the soldiery of Rome,) should rather lead us to adopt a more manly tone, and not to limit the higher excellencies of the spiritual life, to the more peaceful occupations. The qualities formed by military discipline, are essentially Christian qualities, and as it is a sure sign of a nation's decline, when she cannot fight her battles with her own sons, but is driven to hire mercenaries, so would it be a sure symptom of decay of true, honest, manly, religious feeling, if our young men began to fancy that unless they were preachers, they must either be on the world's side, or in some unintelligible vague and undefined middle position between the world and GoD indeed, but certainly not on God's side. We certainly do not hope to see the day so fervently longed for, by the popular fanatic, when "the statue of Napier shall be thrown down and that of John Wesley erected in its place." And it is because, in spite of much to interest us in Mr. Gurney's book, we detect something akin to this speech, we have entered this protest. We are not less sensible than he is of the merits of such men as Wilberforce and Howard and Clarkson, but we do not wish our young men to think that only Wilberforce, Howard, and Clarkson can be God's

HEROES.

But putting aside this radical defect, we are bound to say, Mr. Gurney has handled his heroes with great liberality and success, and we do not remember any Protestant minister, who has done such justice to the greatest of Rome's saints, S. Francis Xavier, as Mr. Gurney. He was indeed a hero, a hero of the loftiest kind, whom it is almost presumptuous in us to praise. Missionaries or not, priests or not, whether soldiers, lawyers, physicians, merchants, tradesmen, artizans; we can all learn of this great missionary.

Mr. Gurney thus describes his end, and the passage will give a good idea of his style and mode of handling his matter. It will also bear out what we have said of the author's elevation above many shibboleths and traditions of his theological school, and contains a useful hint to his favourite protestant missionaries.

"There is something strangely affecting in seeing so great a man,— his heart swelling with lofty aspirations and vast designs, thus teazed and thwarted by one of the world's petty despots who was deaf to reason, incapable of any generous emotion, but absolute in his own domain. But the wanderer's toils were almost over. China had his latest thoughts and prayers, but never saw his face. A few more

struggles to get free and fly to her rescue, and then his ardent spirit found rest in a congenial home. Pereyra might not embark in his own ship; but the Governor would not brave public indignation by laying hands upon the saint. When she sailed, therefore, for Sancian, a small island off the coast of China, opposite Macao, he went on board, and made large offers to a Chinese merchant to land him on some lonely part of the coast, and leave him to his fate. This plan was thwarted by the Portuguese traders. Then came the rumour of an intended embassy from the King of Siam to the Emperor of China, and to Siam his thoughts were turned, as a roundabout way, but the only possible one, to the land which he longed so intensely to reach. It was God's will, however, that he never should reach it; fever seized him, and he sank under it. His progress, at times, when he was among Christian settlers, had been like a march of triumph; at Portuguese ports his arrival had been hailed by salutes of cannon as if he were of royal blood; but on that inhospitable shore, where he passed for a troublesome intruder, he lay down unhonoured, almost untended, to die. When he could not bear the rocking of the vessel in which he was embarking, he was carried to the beach, and would have perished on the sands beneath the keen blast of a merciless north wind, if one faithful attendant had not found for him the poor shelter of an open cabin. Better to die thus, in the full assurance of hope, after a life of faithful and devoted service like his, than in a royal sleeping chamber with no record on high save that of mercies ill-requited and years spent in vain.

"Xavier numbered only forty-seven years, of which his missionary life comprised eleven and a half. Had the latter reached to half a century, even then to have travelled so far,-to have done so much,— to have left the stamp of his virtues on spectators of every grade scattered through so many lands,-to have taught Christianity in its simplest elements to so many thousands who loved him like a father,— would have been one of the rarest prodigies that history presents to us. Roman Catholic writers, not content with the real marvel of his saintly life, have spoiled the narrative by foisting in miracles which he never wrought, and to which he never pretended. Protestant writers, too, have been afraid to tell out the plain truth respecting one whose virtues are suspected, because he was a brother to Jesuits, and one of the Pope's most loyal subjects. How much of real faith and godliness there was amongst all the baptized persons whom he reckoned as his spiritual children, who shall tell? But one thing is certain, that their sincerity was tested by persecution in after days, and many of them were found faithful even to martyrdom. That he baptized too easily, and reckoned up converts too fast, we cannot doubt. On the other hand, the extreme caution exercised by protestant missionaries, and the close sifting and long probation of candidates for Baptism, does not seem to correspond with Apostolic practice."-Pp. 265-267.