Suggestions to the Churches.

261

porters. In the West Indies and Australia the energy of ministers and missionaries like the late Rev. James Cox has cast mountains of difficulties into the sea.

Foreign nations are not idly contemplating this great reform, and everywhere it is the Church which moves in the van of action. As far back as 1852 the German Congress of Inner Missions recommended personal abstinence (from spirits), the institution of temperance societies on Christian principles, and further restrictions on the sale of intoxicating liquors. This year the same body has eulogized the conduct of a distiller who abandoned his business and diverted from the still a field of corn to supply the wants of a neighbouring town.

III. The suggestions we can offer must be traced in the barest outline.

Every Christian should settle for himself his personal duty; and this complied with, he will be ready to unite with others in circulating that information which is to interest and convince them. Temperance men of each Christian denomination might wisely join together for the purpose of supplying every minister and officer, if possible every member, in that particular body, with publications calculated to enlighten and persuade.

Congregational temperance societies, with the minister or some officer at their head, are an excellent expedient for concentrating and consolidating religious influence; and as an accompaniment or outrider of these, Bands of Hope should be formed and placed under able control.

Ecclesiastical meetings and bodies may very properly be addressed, to secure, not so much a favourable resolution as a friendly discussion. The introduction of the subject should be made to assume as practical a form as possible. In Young Men's Christian associations there will rarely be an aversion to its judicious presentation.

Church action and regulation will always rise to the level of the prevailing church sentiment; and the creation of that sentiment till it becomes predominant and constant is the work ever to be done and doing.

It seems to us that the position on which the churches of this country are likely to be soonest agreed is the incompatibility of the traffic in drink, particularly the retail traffic, with a Christian profession. The operations of the United Kingdom Alliance will forward this change. The liquor business is not one that can bear to be looked at and into; and in proportion as a public demand is raised for its legal prohibition will it be more difficult for the most leniently disposed church authorities to keep silent and inert. A traffic concerning which cause is shown why society should not tolerate it, cannot long rely on the sufferance of the Vol. 2.-No. 7.

T

Church

Church, unless the liquor venders are disposed to accept the precedent of former times, when the shelter of the sanctuary was extended to those offenders who were denied the protection of the civil law. Nor can we doubt that the appeal of the Alliance addressed to the body of British citizens will receive, the better it is understood, a loyal response from Christian men, loyal above all others and all else to duty and conscience. Churches cannot act as political associations; but their members, having political responsibilities, can and ought seriously to weigh and vigorously to discharge them. Except by a small class, who view civil government as an evil not to be sanctioned by believers, and a class as small whose zeal for voluntaryism has run away with them, Christians recognize the obligation of suppressing public nuisances by the popular will constitutionally expressed; and we cannot but believe that the majority of these will approve, as soon as understood, the principles of the suggested Permissive Bill. Of one thing we are sure-that whether strong drink is to be abandoned as a beverage, or drinking customs are to be abolished in the workshop and parlour, or the drink traffic is to receive its reward according to Act of Parliament applied populariter, our power with the Christian Church will correspond with its possession of that charity which looks towards God and man, never ceasing to please the one and bless the other. It was Milton's impeachment of the 'severest' and 'holiest of his contemporaries, that none of them would surrender his sack,' or 'rich canary," to insure the certain abolishing of so great a sintho' it be fetched from places that hazard the religion of them who fetch it, and though it make his neighbour drunk out of the same tun.' How is this indisposition, still so prevalent, to be overcome? By charity! And by charity we mean not a puling, windy-worded sentimentality which is vox et præterea nihil ; not a time-serving spirit which attacks weak abuses and kneels to strong ones; not a temper of shrinking softness which fails to do aught effectually lest some should be troubled and offended; but the charity which is valiant for God's honour and man's salvationthe charity which, being taught by philosophy truly so called, knows how to act ever for the best-the charity which, like the cherubim seen by Ezekiel, is full of eyes, and, like them, emits the gladdening light and consuming lightning-the charity which bears in one hand the olive-branch, symbol of peace to the nations, and in the other hand wields the axe which is to be laid at the root of every corrupt tree, that it may be hewn down and cast into the fire. Let us conceive to ourselves this Divine Genius standing before the liquor traffic, the upas-tree whose branches stretch to the ends of the earth; and let us ask how long the suspended blow would suffer it to cumber the social soil and poison the atmosphere of the world? And what Christian charity, if omnipotent, would not endure, the Christian Church cannot too soon employ its mightiest energies to overthrow.

ART.

Revolutions of Race in England.

263

ART. V.-Revolutions in English History. By Robert Vaughan, D.D. Vol. I. Revolutions of Race. London: J. W. Parker and Sons.

DR.

1859.

R. VAUGHAN has many qualifications for writing history. He has, throughout a long course of years, devoted himself to its study; and, while yet a young minister at Kensington, was appointed Professor of Ancient and Modern History in University College, London. His literary contributions to this subject have evidenced his possession of extensive and accurate knowledge of the past, discriminating acquaintance with the works of the most reliable, and even of the most credulous historians of ages bygone, a profound philosophy able to analyze facts and events and to draw sound conclusions from them, and lastly, though by no means least, a Christian principle which is essential to the formation of an historian, as giving him the true key to the interpretation of events, and to the illustration of the providential government of the world. His clear and admirable style, which is at once characteristic of his mind and the result of high cultivation by a thorough study of English literature and long practice of the art of composition, and of conducting one of the ablest of our quarterly reviews, makes him fit to communicate in a most intelligible and interesting manner to the minds of his readers the thoughts and information wherewith his own mind is stored. His Monograph of Wycliffe' is a performance which illustrates what we have advanced as to his claims. It was published thirty-one years ago, in two volumes, and contained picturesque descriptions, full information, eloquent disquisitions,-written in a spirit so catholic that you could not have detected a dissenter in the biographer of that great light of the English Church. Dr. Vaughan prepared himself for his task by a thorough investigation of all that related to Wycliffe, both of the localities where the Reformer had been, and of the writings which he had left behind him, and which were scattered over the public and private libraries of England. His life of the Reformer was the most authentic and readable that had been presented to the public. After the lapse of a quarter of a century, Dr. Vaughan made new investigations, and with increased erudition and maturity of judgment recast the whole work, which may now be regarded as the classic biography of Wycliffe.' Eminently creditable to the learned author, but by no means so to the dons of Oxford and of Cambridge, is the fact that a dissenting divine has produced the standard memoir of John de Wycliffe, the rector of Lutterworth, the Lecturer of Theology and Warden of Canterbury Hall at Oxford, and the translator of the Bible into the English tongue. Other historical works have pro

6

6

ceeded from the pen of Dr. Vaughan. He has published 'The History of England under the Stuarts,' in two volumes, and in 1838 The Protectorate of Cromwell,' in two volumes. In 1849 two volumes of Essays on History, Philosophy, and Theology' were issued. These were a selection from his numerous contributions on all subjects to the British Quarterly and other reviews. He is well known to the religious world as the author of the following works :-The Christian Warfare,' published in 1832; The Age of Great Cities,' in 1842; The Modern Pulpit viewed in its relations to the State of Society,' in 1842; The Age of Christianity,' in 1849; The Causes of the Corruption of Christianity, in 1852, &c. In 1858 he prepared, amidst much sorrow, "The Memoir of Robert Alfred Vaughan,' his distinguished son. When we consider the laborious profession to which our author has been devoted, whether as a preacher or as a professor, the above list represents a life of great literary industry, and a mind of ample stores and commanding powers.

Having retired from academic labours, and ripened by long study and experience and the wisdom of years, Dr. Vaughan has devoted himself to the task of writing a History of England viewed from new stand-points. He does not, indeed, aim at composing a History of England in the ordinary sense of these words; but believing that it is reasonable that Englishmen should be more interested in what has been special to their country, than in details which might have had their place in the history of any one among a large family of states,' he has attempted to answer the question, What is it that has made England to be England?' My object,' he says, 'is to conduct the reader to satisfactory conclusions, in relation to this question, by a road much more direct and simple than is compatible with the laws to which the historian usually conforms himself when writing the general history of a nation.' He has for this purpose made the Revolutions' which have occurred the central points around which he clusters his facts. These national changes have made England what it is. The word is meant to comprehend the great phases of change in our history, due place being assigned to the great cause in regard to each of them. Down to the close of the fourteenth century, change among us comes mainly from the conflicts of race. Under the Tudors, the great principle of revolution is religion; under the Stuarts, that principle gives place considerably to the principles government. The first question to be settled was the question of race; the next concerned the national faith; and the next the future of the English Constitution.'

of

To the first of these Dr. Vaughan has devoted the volume just published Revolutions of Race;' and which we propose to introduce to our readers. The design is an admirable one, and the

execution

execution is worthy of the object, as it is of the fame of the author. The volume is written in an agreeable manner, and exhibits a keen criticism, a profound learning, a sound philosophy, and an intelligent faith. Dr. Vaughan may not have the analytic power of Niebuhr, the ease of Hume, the eloquence of Gibbon, the pretence of Robertson, the charm of Prescott, the philosophy of Guizot, the rhetoric of Macaulay, or the fulness of Froude; but he has a cultivation capable of appreciating all the graces of those historians, and an ability of producing a style peculiarly his own, flowing and continuous,' to use the words of Cicero, with a certain equality in its course distinct from the brevity of the judge, or the sharpness of the advocate; and equally remote from the authoritative and sententious manner of the moralist or the preacher.' The volume before us is divided into five books-the first entitled 'Celts and Romans; the second, Saxons and Danes;' the third, Normans and English;' the fourth, English and Normans; and the fifth, Lancaster and York.' These bring us down to the dawn of the Reformation in the sixteenth century.

6

Britain was inhabited at least four centuries before the Christian era. Its people were then known to the maritime and commercial nations of the world, and ships sailed from Phoenicia to the Cassiterides, supposed to be the Scilly Islands, for the purpose of importing tin to their own lands. Carthaginian, Greek, and Roman authors of an early date refer to these islands of the West; but our best knowledge of our earliest ancestors in Britain is derived from the last of these. From them we learn that when Cæsar landed in Kent, about half a century before Christ, there were various nations inhabiting this land. The Silures resided on the banks of the Wye, the Ordovices and Dimetae in Wales, the Damnonii on the banks of the Ex, the Belgæ in Hants and Wilts, the Canti in Kent, the Trinobantes in Middlesex, the Iceni and Cortanni on the east coast, and the Brigantes in Yorkshire and Lancashire. It has often been debated, 'Of what race were these communities?' Cæsar regarded them as Celts from Belgic Gaul, and subsequent antiquarians confirm this opinion. Some, however, suppose a pre-existent race of Celts, but the evidence is too fragmentary and uncertain to be available for history.'* Physically

they

The Gaelic clans of the Highlands were also Celta. But their language, and their geographical position, seem to shut us up to one of two conclusionseither that they must have come into that part of Britain from Ireland, or that they were the remains of an aboriginal race which had been forced into those. mountain fastnesses, into the Isle of Man, and into Ireland itself, by the pressure of subsequent invaders. There are some difficulties in the way of the latter supposition, but evidence upon the whole seems to preponderate in its favour. The Gaelic tongue is not British. Its only affinity is with the Irish. The word Aber in Welsh, as in old British, denotes the estuary of a river, or any outlet of weters.