connection with those who have set them going, and maintained them in vigorous action; and even that the S. Paul's Mission College-only to be damped by a grudging promise of sanction during good behaviour. No, all the Bishop can see in the High Church Party is that earnestness in and out of Church, earnestness in ritual, earnestness in dealing with souls, which is so offensive to the shopkeeping classes of London; and to approve of which would be to forfeit the popularity his Lordship is aiming at. He does not say which is the real truth-that, but for these churches, religious life in London would have been all but extinct.

In fact, if the Bishop's conduct in private intercourse with the High Church Clergy had not already shown the hollowness of all his Lordship's professions of fairness, a careful examination of this subtle Charge would have done so. He has not a word of approval for all their great and real labours, while he patronises and magnifies the pretentious preachings of Exeter Hall, and everything else that can possibly be placed to the credit of those who are making much noise, but doing little efficient work. Finding that practical religion is not popular with the middle classes and the Press, his Lordship is trying to conciliate them by sacrificing the party in the Church which is confessedly the only practical one. We look, indeed, upon this Charge as a deliberate effort to tread out the embers of that religious spirit which was being raised up by the efforts of Churchmen when his Lordship came to the see of London. Ambitious of becoming a popular leader, the Bishop of London is willing to take any line which is most in accord with popular tastes. Desirous of uniting the remaining refuse of the old Evangelicals with the new Broad Church school against the Catholic party, he has put forth a most subtle and unscrupulous Charge as a bid for the place of Leader to a new anti-Church army.

We have hopes, however, that there is enough life remaining in the High Church party to withstand vigorously this new and dangerous party, whoever may be their leaders. And we wish, not utterly without hope, that the Bishop of London may come to know that there are higher objects of ambition even than those on which his Lordship's mind is set; and that the great position to which he has succeeded, may be occupied by far more worthy employments than that of putting an extinguisher on the zeal which has been aroused in the Diocese during the long Episcopate of his Lordship's predecessor.

It is worthy of notice, as showing the light in which the irreligious portion of the public regards the Bishop's Charge, that it furnishes the principal picture and two articles to Punch: from one of which we desire to put on record an extract; only adding, that we believe that it is the first time in the history of the Church that a Bishop of an eminent and important see has taken so undisguisedly, for objects, we must fear, of personal ambition, the livery of the world.

"Mr. Punch has too often been compelled, by a sense of duty, to delineate Bishops in undignified attitudes, situations particularly unbecoming of dignitaries of the Church. But the recent Charge of the Bishop of London has given Punch an opportunity, which he embraces with rapture, of drawing a right reverend prelate in a creditable position. . . . "The Bishop of London shall be the Magnus Apollo of Punch if he continues to behave as such, going on as he has begun, banishing and driving away strange doctrine and Puseyite puppies and jackanapes confessors after it, to the extent of his ability. His late Charge has given Mr. Punch very great comfort and satisfaction in that particular; besides which, it pleased him immensely by its earnestness, perspicuity, and complete freedom from slang."

The full-length portrait with which his Lordship is honoured by this respectable Jester is inscribed a "PROPER CHARGE!"

MANSEL'S BAMPTON LECTURES.

The Limits of Religious Thought Examined. John Murray, Albemarle Street; Parker, Oxford.

THE interest which Mr. Mansel's Lectures excited at the time of their delivery has already shown its permanent character by their rapid sale as soon as published-a sale, we believe, almost unprecedented in the annals of that department of literature. This of itself is a very encouraging sign, for it shows that there is a desire in the minds of men to grasp at real truth. Of course it is easy to sneer at a single volume as insufficient to overthrow extensive systems of philosophy. Men, when they are in earnest rise superior to these sneers. They know that a sharp blade may cut the largest tree down to the roots. However much its branches may have won the admiration of the crowds around, their foliage and their complex structure avail nothing for their preservation. A metaphysical upgrowth of thought may have surprised the world with its magnificence. If its spreading life is but the development of the fibres of falsehood, a single law of truth suffices to bring down the whole, and what seemed to tower on high with the majesty of eternal vigour, will shrivel and change colour and die in the puerility of human fancy, which it had never transcended. Thus may a student see a deathblow dealt at a vast system of philosophy, if truth be shown antagonistic to some fundamental principle, and he will be perfectly sure of the wide extent of the ensuing decay, although he may never have examined the details through which the vigorous life had seemed to spread. We say thus much in answer to an objection which applies not to any one refutation of

false doctrine in particular, but to all refutations, an objection which is especially influential with young and candid minds who are unwilling to surrender that which seems to possess intellectual power, unless the intellectual effort of the assailant be correspondent in detail as well as fundamentally antagonistic to the object which it is intended to overthrow. The best reply to all erroneous systems is that which regards not any showy, bulky configuration in which they may have grown up, but meets them all upon a common level, and lays them all low, so as to be afterwards cleared away piecemeal and without difficulty, by simply asserting some truth whose line of application cannot be transgressed. It is thus that Mr. Mansel has endeavoured to meet the philosophic speculators of modern religionism. He would keep philosophy from growing wild into phantasy, by applying the same moral principle which prevents true courage degenerating into recklessness.

"I dare do all that may become a man,

Who dares do more, is none."

Efforts whether of mind or body which transcend the faculties of man are simply foolish; they are not the less foolish because they may often be fascinating. We may even add that in spite of their folly, it is profitable sometimes to contemplate them. The exploits of romance may ennoble man in his outward conduct. The operations of daring and subtle minds may be valuable to after-comers, although fatal to the thinker. It is no token that philosophy is not appreciated, because limits of truthfulness are marked out for it. The investigation of those limits is a moral duty. To indulge a philosophical bias, regardless of those limits, is but the foolhardy impetuosity of a spendthrift. Great results may often be attained, but with all their splendour they serve but for a mausoleum where the mind of such philosophers may enshrine itself. It is a moral duty antecedent to all religious inquiry to determine the data upon which we have to proceed and the extent to which our means of investigation are available.

It is this last point to which Mr. Mansel particularly addresses himself. The former would have involved a consideration of the matters of revelation. Mr. Mansel confines himself to reviewing the capacities of man as a recipient of revelation. The data of revelation may very far transcend those capacities. They may involve ideas far beyond the limits of thought. Those ideas, however, which faith may thus delight to contemplate, are too sacred to be given up for dissection into the hands of philosophy. We can only think about them as surpassing thought. It is, for instance, by an over-daring philosophy that the doctrine of the Real Presence has been dwarfed into the earthly measure of transubstantiation. Mr. Mansel has not attempted to inquire by what laws it was possible for human thought to grasp heavenly ideas by the intervention of the data of revelation. He has only shown that

the difficulties which follow upon the acceptance of those data are a result, not of the data themselves, but of the limited capacity of the recipient, and that they consequently follow along with any philosophical effort of the religious mind which may seek to grapple with kindred subjects independently of those data. He has indeed at the outset, thrown out an expression of censure against what he denominates dogmatism, namely, an excessive tendency to argue upon the contents of revelation. This we regret. The scholastic theology, even if it were granted to be as overstrained as it is supposed to be by men who have never studied it, is too majestic a structure to be treated in this off-hand manner, as if it ought naturally to fall by the same laws as a rationalistic philosophy which ignores revelation. The allusion was probably made for rhetorical purposes. To have made this allusion is unworthy of the calm, philosophic spirit of the remaining discourses. We believe that Mr. Mansel in making it did really infuse an element of weakness into his argument. The application of his principles to dogmatism requires that the data of revelation be considered.

In having made this somewhat trenchant allusion without entering upon that inquiry, he leaves his reader with an impression that philosophy, when based upon revelation, is as impossible as it is when it claims to be anticipative of revealed truth. This impression is what has led some, not superficial, thinkers, to say that this book is calculated to drive the reader into infidelity. The fabrics of merely human thought are swept away. Nothing seems to be left behind as an object of admiration, nothing to exercise the philosophical powers of the devotional intellect. The philosophy of the Absolute is exhibited in its folly, but the reality of devotional meditation is not asserted in such a manner as to fill the void.

Mr. Mansel shows the speculative weakness of reason in things Divine, but does not bring forward the reasoning power of faith. There are, indeed, some very beautiful passages, in which the superior beauty of the teaching of revelation is contrasted with the vain imaginations of philosophy. Something more, however, is wanted. If we are precluded from certain ideas of the limits of religious thought, we are incapable of receiving a revelation on those points. If we can receive a revelation at all, we can receive an accurate revelation. If we cannot meditate,—or, to use another word, if we cannot reason upon revealed truth to some degree, and at least within certain reverential limits,—we cannot think about it, nor accept it into our minds. We are therefore as if we had not had it. It may indeed be our duty, to use a conventional phraseology which GOD has put into our mouths, but we must use it as it were by rote, and with a consciousness that, as far as it gives us any idea at all, it is untrue. The statements of revelation must have the full meaning which the mind of man can truthfully deduce by reason out of them, or they are so far untrue. Their inner life,

their mutual relations, may evade the researches of the most earnest students; just as in natural science we can only chronicle phænomena, and predict the recurrence of what we have already known, but cannot fathom causality, nor determine beforehand the results of chemical combination. We may reason upon the facts which we read in nature, although many of nature's hidden principles elude us. We may reason on the contents of revelation, although retaining still a consciousness that we know nothing yet as we ought to know,

"State contenti, umana gente, al quia:

Che se potuto aveste veder tutto,

Mestier non era partorir Maria.”—Purg. 3.

That we cannot reason out the causes of things does not interfere with our duty to reason upon the truths which are revealed. They are not the less real in their human aspect, because they have a Divine reality which transcends human insight. This, we think, is what Mr. Mansel has failed adequately to express, and for want of which he has incurred the charge of establishing a law which is as fatal to himself as to his opponents. The attack upon dogmatism in the first lecture-where, by the way, the word seems to be somewhat equivocally used, now for a system of dogmatic theology, now for a counterpart to revelation such as it has been attempted sometimes to frame by reason-this attack seems to imply that the Incarnation is an adaptation of truth to human necessity, not a real manifestation of GOD in the flesh as the Truth. If God the SON is a person really Incarnate, we may truthfully regard our personality as a real image of GOD. If we are to regard the revelation of GOD as regulative only, adapted to supply a rule of our conduct, but not essentially and completely truthful, so as to admit of the most searching analysis which devotional meditation can apply, we lose the real unity of Person in which the Manhood and the Godhead are enjoined. In a very striking passage, Mr. Mansel exposes the fallacy of all theories by which it is attempted to exhibit the Godhead as superior to that personal image of Himself which He has stamped upon our nature.

"The origin of such theories is of course to be traced to that morbid horror of what they are pleased to call Anthropomorphism, which poisons the speculations of so many modern philosophers, when they attempt to be wise above what is written, and seek for a metaphysical exposition of GOD's nature and attributes. They may not, forsooth, think of the unchangeable God as if He were their fellow man, influenced by human motives and moved by human supplications. They want a truer and juster idea of the Deity as He is, than that under which He has been pleased to reveal Himself; and they call on their reason to furnish it. Fools, to dream that man can escape from himself,-that human reason can draw aught but a human portrait of GOD! They do but substitute a marred and mutilated humanity for one ex