home awaiting us for eternity, with God, when time and the shows of time shall have worked out their function on us.

In these words is revealed the secret of the marvellous influence of the Koenigsberg seer. They manifest that clear spiritual insight in which faith and philosophy ultimately blend, and which makes Kant, notwithstanding the needlessly negative issues of his first Critique, a teacher at whose feet the present leaders of modern thought would do well to sit with humble and teachable minds. But it is not till we reach the Critique of the Practical Reason that we find philosophic justification for the above prophetic words, and the unfortunate want of concurrence in the results of the two critiques is, we think, due partly to Kant's imperfect apprehension, in the first critique, of the true nature and sweep of man's intuitive belief in causality, and partly to his unwillingness to acknowledge that the Ego has an immediate and valid knowledge of its own substantive and causal nature. The" shows of time," to which Kant refers above, are surely dependent on Him who is their true noümenal source, and if order prevails in this show, as it undoubtedly does, this is to be ascribed not to the action of our minds upon sensation (as Kant teaches), but to the action of the Eternal; and if we say that He, who is infinite intelligence and eternal love, must (as the Hegelians hold) maintain uniformity in the phenomenal world, we seem to be dogmatising about that which, by its very nature, transcends our cognition. Had Kant admitted this he would not only have brought his two critiques into harmonious relations, but he would also have escaped the paradox into which he falls, when in one passage he speaks of “the empirical in perception as, apart from the action of the understanding, a mere chaos of feeling," and in another passage says that "there is a certain pre-established harmony between pure form and empirical matter; the one could never be subsumed under the other, were they wholly disparate, wholly incommensurable." It is, indeed, impossible to believe that the sensational experience which constitutes our universe is a primeval chaos into which our mind puts order; rather is it a cosmos in which our mind finds order and beauty, and of which it by slow degrees learns the deep and divine significance.

As we have said, there seems to us very much in Kant's critique, especially in the Transcendental Esthetic, which should be regarded as a most important and permanent addition to

philosophical truth, and we think that for the appropriation of this element of truth Dr. Stirling's able volume furnishes most seasonable and effectual aid. And if some of our readers should, like ourselves, be unable to follow Kant with perfect satisfaction through the Transcendental Analytic, the strenuous effort to do this, under Dr. Stirling's guidance, will assuredly result in no small mental gain.

C. B. UPTON.

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

CANON

CANON FARRAR'S MERCY AND JUDGMENT.'*

YANON FARRAR here winds up the long controversy created by his sermons on Eternal Hope. It is marvellous how rapidly a revolution may be effected in relation to some popular religious opinions. A few years ago those who wished to entertain a hope that the mercy of God might reach beyond the grave, found it all but impossible. The Scriptures seemed to speak with the utmost plainness and decision as to never-ending punishment. The doctrine was found in creeds and liturgies, not indeed so much as an article of faith that had been defined because somebody had called it in question, but as one of those things assumed to be undisputed. Men of daring intellects like Origen had supposed restitution probable, or had at least expressed a hope that in some way unknown to them it might be possible. But had not the Church Catholic condemned Origen, and since that time has there not been an unfailing tradition that the never-ending punishment of the wicked was part of the Catholic faith? The great preachers of all churches, East and West, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Nonconformist, had guarded sacredly the doctrine of a never-ending hell in which the great majority of mankind were to burn for ever. It might have been argued that surely if ever a doctrine answered to the criterion of Vincentius Lirinensis it was this; and yet Dr. Farrar has brought weighty arguments to prove that its existence in Scripture is very doubtful, and that it has never been a necessary part of the Catholic faith.

This present volume takes the form of an answer to Dr. Pusey, and the result is that the two doctors of divinity, though representing entirely different, not to say antagonistic, theologies, are apparently more agreed than at first sight could have been expected. Men rarely understand those who differ from them, and, strange to say, Dr. Farrar finds it necessary, in the very first page, to say emphatically that he never denied "the possible endlessness of punishment." It is a subject on which he dare not dogmatise, a subject on which the Church has not dogmatised, and on which the Scripture writers speak, as they do on all transcendent

Mercy and Judgment. A few Last Words on Christian Eschatology, with reference to Dr. Pusey's "What is of Faith?" By F. W. FARRAR, D.D. London: Macmillan and Co. 1881.

subjects, in indefinite or metaphorical language. It is not against a dogma that he contends, but against an accumulation of errors, which constitute the current or popular belief.

Dr. Farrar discourses of four points which he regards as accretions to the Catholic faith. The first is that the fire of hell is corporeal, and its tortures physical. That this was believed not merely by ignorant or popular preachers, but by learned theologians, is shown by a long list of quotations from Fathers, schoolmen, and modern theologians, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. Yet the nature of the sufferings of hell has never been defined; whether they are mental or physical is a mere scholastic question. The second accretion is that the vast majority of mankind are doomed to endless torments. It has been said that on this question Lacordaire changed the faith of the Roman Catholic Church. The Church itself was never committed to any belief on the subject. But in the time of Massillon the number of the saved was believed to be small. Now many eminent theologians of the Roman Catholic Church believe in the ultimate salvation of the vast majority of mankind. It is, however, certain that this has not been the general opinion of the theologians of any church.

The third supposed accretion is that there is no such thing as a terminable punishment beyond the grave. A termination to punishment is found in the Purgatory of the Roman Catholics, which, however mixed up with many things that are "Romish," may yet be identified with the intermediate state which is a doctrine of the Early Church. On the present, as well as on the first two, there is a verbal agreement between the two doctors; but under this agreement there is a difference, which, it appears to us, Dr. Farrar has too anxiously ignored. Dr. Pusey denies any further probation, and only admits a purification; agreeing here with Dr. Newman, who said, in a letter to Dr. Plumptre-" What we cannot accept is . . . that man's probation for his eternal destiny, as well as his purification, continues after this life." Dr. Farrar makes it indifferent whether there is a purification or probation; and so it would be if all were to undergo the purification, and so perhaps be finally saved. But if it is not a probation, it cannot be extended to all, as only those souls pass into Purgatory which are not good enough for Paradise, but which are yet among the saved. And this runs into the next question, which is, that "the supposition of the necessarily endless duration of hell for all who incur it," is also an accretion to the Catholic faith. Dr. Farrar persuades himself that on this point he is at one with Dr. Pusey, because he believes that "the soul which never repents to the end will suffer to the end," words which evidently imply that probation continues; while Dr. Pusey and Dr. Newman merely allow a purification, which extends only to a certain class. Dr. Farrar seems from the first to have been under an illusion as to the charity of the Roman Catholic Church. Its hell is as terrible and as endless as the hell of President Edwards or Mr. Spurgeon, and as many go into it. It is only the souls of the faithful which are admitted to the purgatorial purification, and these,

it is commonly understood, are only to be found within the pale of the Church.

Dr. Farrar is at issue with Dr. Pusey on a multitude of details, such as the meaning of the words usually translated "eternal," or "everlasting," the meaning of "Gehenna," which, he maintains, was not an endless hell, but a place of terminable punishment,-the judgment of the Fathers, whose universal consent Dr. Pusey claimed as on his side. But against Dr. Pusey's list of names and quotations Dr. Farrar sets another, equally, if not more, imposing. The chapters on Origen and the Councils by which he was condemned, are of special interest. The idea of final restitution has been represented as first broached by Origen, but immediately condemned by the universal Church as heretical. Dr. Farrar shows, on the contrary, that four Ecumenical Councils and several Synods were held after Origen's death without any condemnation of him or his theory. If his doctrine of the restitution of man was ever declared heretical by an Ecumenical Council (which is held to be very doubtful), it was not till three hundred years after his death, and the Council was one that "goes for very little, being by no means a creditable assembly." JOHN HUNT.

THE

DR. LECHLER'S JOHN WICLIF.'

the

HE re-issue of Dr. Lechler's Life of Wiclif in its English dress,* gives us an opportunity of congratulating historical and theological students that a work of its various, and in some respects unique, merits should be introduced to this country. It is remarkable how seldom the attempt has been made by Englishmen to furnish a biography of the great schoolman. Only two works of this sort deserve mention; one was published in 1720, the second in 1828. The latter is, of course, standard biography by Dr. Robert Vaughan, who collected every fragment of manuscript evidence in regard to Wiclif that he could lay his hands on, but who, curiously enough, ignored almost entirely Wiclif's Latin writings. It is in this direction that his book departs most widely from that now before us; for Dr. Lechler has explored, with indefatigable pains, the rich stores of Wiclif literature, contained in near forty manuscript volumes-the plunder of the Bohemian monasteries—in the Imperial Library at Vienna. Every page of the work bears witness to the exhaustive knowledge of these documents-hitherto hardly opened-which the venerable author possesses. Nor has he failed to make use of the select English works of Wiclif, lately edited by Mr. Thomas Arnold (whom, we may notice, Dr. Lechler does not, in the German, signify by the title of Reverend," a title added by the translator, and hardly com *John Wiclif and his English Precursors. By Professor LECHLER, D.D. Translated from the German, with additional Notes, by PETER LORIMER, D.D. New edition, in one volume. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co. 1881.