patible with the position of a Catholic layman). Indeed, it would be difficult to point out a department of his subject about which Dr. Lechler has not learnt all there is to learn, or which he has not illustrated with a fulness of reference and solid quotation hitherto unapproached.

The strength of such a work, and the fruit of such researches, should appear less in the actual biography than in the treatment of Wiclif's theological system. It is, however, to be deplored that Dr. Lechler has not chosen to digest Wiclif's system in the order of the thinker's mind, on the lines of his great Theory of Dominion. He has simply arranged and compared the scholasticism of Wiclif with the scholasticism of Luther, and docketed it with the nomenclature of justification, sanctification, and all the curious vocabulary of the reformers. In fact, Wiclif is seen by Dr. Lechler exclusively as a "Reformer before the Reformation." He has no interest for him otherwise. His metaphysics are passed by perfunctorily; and in his theology it is only the points of alliance and the points of difference that receive copious treatment. It is evident, however, that "contact" and "divergence" fail entirely to express Wiclif's relation to the later reformers. His world is another world than theirs, and the whole grasp of his mind held in by totally different conditions. We can only appreciate the great teacher justly when we have erected the fabric of his theological system as be built it; afterwards we may fairly lay this system beside that of Huss, of Luther, or of Calvin. It is unjust and uncritical to cut it into fragments, shaped after the pattern of the Reformation, and estimate the bits according to their likeness or unlikeness to this criterion. It may be added, moreover, that this was not Dr. Lechler's declared intention; only, writing as an Evangelical divine, he saw no other way open to him, he could not conceive a quasi-evangelical system differently arranged from his own. He has advanced before most writers of his school, in so far that he has laudably attempted to regard Wiclif as he stands in relation to the general course of religious thought in the later Middle Ages; but the survey, considered as a philosophical exposition, loses its lucidity and unity in consequence of the same primary defect.

John Wiclif and his English Precursors is far from covering the same field as the original, Johann von Wiclif und die Vorgeschichte der Reformation. It is, in fact, only a translation of three parts of Dr. Lechler's first volume. We lose the valuable summary of the opposition to the Catholic Church in Continental Europe from the Waldenses ɔnwards; and we have nothing so compact and thorough in English. But more than this, the entire second volume, with the history of Wiclif's followers, the Lollards, the Hussites (including an elaborate biography of Huss), and all the other streams of religious opinion that tended towards the gulf of the reformation, is entirely omitted. This is much to be regretted, since Dr. Lechler is at his best as an historian. He is learned, laboriously accurate in detail, entirely conscientious; and his narrative is throughout orderly and clear, above the measure of most German books. In the actual biography of Wiclif there is room for littie but praise.

True, the man does not stand before us in Dr. Lechler's pages with that life and vigour which the extent of the author's resources might have enabled him to infuse into his personality. What Dr. Lechler has done, and done most successfully, is to furnish the student with every available material out of which to create for himself a portrait of the great doctor; and, except in the “systematic" chapter, this material is well arranged and critically balanced. For convenience the English book cannot compare with the German. The notes have been relegated from the foot of the page to the end, sometimes of a chapter, sometimes of a section; and the numerical references to them have been misplaced in an incredibly careless way. We have not found a single chapter in which they tally beyond the first few pages; and in some, for page after page, there are nearly five false references in each, and conversely there are actually notes left standing which relate to a portion of the German omitted in the translation. In a work of which the peculiar value consists in its reliance on manuscript evidence, this inaccuracy is unpardonable. Otherwise Dr. Lorimer has produced a creditable translation. The style cannot be called scholarly or careful, but the translator rarely perverts the sense of the original, and only becomes confused in philosophical passages. Generally he is clear and readable. He has also done good service by adding some notes on Wiclif's life at Oxford. In these he has succeeded in giving a high probability to the supposition that Wiclif was never at Merton, and that, from the beginning down to his appointment as Warden of Canterbury Hall, he was continuously a member of Balliol College. We hope that the success of the work, which its substantial merits should warrant, will encourage Dr. Lorimer to make his part of it more accurate; perhaps it is too much to hope that he will increase it, if not by the rest of the introduction, at least by the subsequent history of Lollardry, and the most interesting fortunes of the church-opposition in England.

R. LANE POOLE.

DR. STOUGHTON'S HISTORY OF RELIGION IN ENGLAND.

R. STOUGHTON'S half-dozen handsome volumes comprise, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which he has occupied one-fifth of the nineteenth in compiling. They are rich in learning, broad in conception, generous in temper, and agreeable in style, and will, undoubtedly, command a conspicuous, perhaps an enduring, place among standard works of reference. No one else has brought together so much matter from out-of-the-way and special sources for the illustration of the

* History of Religion in England, from the opening of the Long Parliament to the end of the Eighteenth Century. BY JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D. Six Vols. New and Revised Edition. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1881.

story of English religion in the days of the Commonwealth, of the Restoration, and of the Revolution. Yet Dr. Stoughton has not escaped the penalty which must be paid by every writer who undertakes to treat of one department of human thought and action to the exclusion of the rest of the complex whole. The events and the personages of the stirring drama which he unfolds are alike incomplete in the account he gives of them. Indeed, no period could have been selected in which it is more impossible to separate the religious from the political movement, than that which Dr. Stoughton has made the subject of his labours. You cannot write adequately of the Caroline Anglican and Puritan without writing much about the Cavalier and the Roundhead. You cannot unfold the causes which led to the successive predominance of Presbyterians, of Independents, and of Episcopalians, without dwelling on the rights of Parliaments and the claims of kings. And thus Dr. Stoughton has had at every page to solve the problem, how far the discussion of contemporary politics was essential to the clear exposition of matters ecclesiastical. On the whole, we think, he has decided with tact and judgment; but it would not be true to say either that he had painted full portraits of the chief characters on his canvas, or that he had avoided all confusion in narrative. The edge of the story is jagged. We have sudden gaps. Narratives are begun and left unfinished; the first move towards the arrest of the five Members is related; the rest of the narrative is dropped. The famous Conference at Uxbridge is left sitting. We visit Charles I. in the Isle of Wight, and see him removed to Hurst Castle; but we next meet him on the scaffold. The threads of the history are so many that Dr. Stoughton drops this one and that unconsciously from his hand. We often wander down lanes which turn out to lead nowhere at all.

But to say this is only to say that Dr. Stoughton has not accomplished an almost impossible task. A graver defect in his book is the comparatively slight insight it gives us into the popular religious life of the period as distinguished from its ecclesiastical politics. It is true that the material for a full account of what religion was in the hearts of the people is not to be got from State papers or Parliamentary journals. It must be caught from the books, the letters, the news-sheets of the time; and even these cannot be made to yield it in any abundance. It is true also that Dr. Stoughton goes far towards making good the defect by the admirable sketches of a multitude of preachers and pastors which cover some of the most delightful pages of his volumes, and are ingeniously gathered from all kinds of sources. But we cannot always assume "like priest like people," and a great history like this should give us something more; and it is as a great history that Dr. Stoughton's work deserves to be judged.

And now we have said all that can fairly be alleged against the excellence of Dr. Stoughton's remarkable achievement. For the rest, we can use no language but that of praise. Dr. Stoughton deals with the most profoundly interesting period of English history in its most profoundly

interesting aspect. And his work does not fall short of the proper interest of its theme. Perhaps the most striking merit of the book is its conspicuous fairness-fairness on a field where, as the historian justly observes, neutrality is impossible. "No reader," says Dr. Stoughton, "Who has any fixed theological opinions, can examine the Church systems of that age without feeling sympathy with some one of them, mingled with disapprobation in reference to others. The theologian is constrained to take a side as he studies this exciting history. A passionless neutrality is absolutely impossible. At the same time, a student is chargeable with injustice who does not carefully strive to ascertain the defects of his own party; and he also is wanting in charity if he be not ready to acknowledge the moral and spiritual excellencies of persons whose opinions were different from those which he himself entertains" (Vol. II., p. 407).

While the author's own partiality for the Independents is nowhere disguised, neither Anglican, nor Presbyterian, nor even Catholic can lay to his charge any injustice towards any section of the Christian Church. It is in the spirit of the paragraph just quoted that Dr. Stoughton writes from first to last.

It is impossible within the limits of this notice to include any quotations which would adequately illustrate Dr. Stoughton's method. It is the personal sketches that are the brightest ornament of the book. While, in a religious history, Cromwell or William III. can only stand half revealed, with ecclesiastics of all shades we make a really intimate acquaintance. Baxter goes in and out familiarly, now visiting his parishioners at Kidderminster, now-in his godly simplicity-thinking to move the Bishops at the Savoy Conference. Philip Nye, the preacher, but politician before he is a preacher, turns up now and again through many volumes; and in him we understand the more restless spirit of Independency. The group of the Cambridge Latitudinarians prepare the way for the milder prelacy of the eighteenth century. Dr. Owen breathes the spirit of the milder Independency at Oxford; Philip Henry exhibits the sweet, brave life of the faithful Presbyterian pastor; George Herbert shows what piety Episcopalianism can nurse and cherish; Sancroft illustrates how not all men of large and liberal mind could adjust their conscience to the Revolution.

Be the student Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Independent, he will do well to study in this excellent book the virtues and the vices, the strength and the weakness of his ecclesiastical progenitors. Be he none of these, he will learn from Dr. Stoughton much of that complex play of human motive which produces history, and he should acquire from these volumes, not only a larger information, but a larger sympathy with forms of Churchmanship other than his own.

R. A. A.

PROFESSOR BARTH'S RELIGIONS OF INDIA.'

HIS recent addition to Trübner's valuable "Oriental Series" is an attempt to give in one octavo volume a reliable and reasonably full sketch of the history of religious thought in India.* When we recollect that India is about as large in extent, and contains as numerous a population, as Europe does exclusive of Russia-and when we further recollect how much older is Indian than European civilisation-we shall be able to estimate the difficulty of the task. But its importance is equal to its difficulty. Religious opinion in India has run precisely the same course that it has in Europe; it sprang from the same sources, and rests on the same basis; it has been modified by the same causes, and in the same directions; no phase of it is unrepresented by a similar phase in Europe; and though this last is also true of the religious history of some other places, nowhere so clearly as in India has the process of development retained throughout, and even down to to-day, the evidence, and the remains of its earliest stages. To give, therefore, an accurate sketch of this parallel development of religious thought cannot fail to be of the utmost value for the right understanding, not only of the Indian religions, but also of religions in general, and of the European religions in particular.

M. Barth's manual, which is dedicated to Dr. John Muir, of Edin. burgh, begins, of course, with an account of the religious beliefs so wonderfully preserved for us by the memory of Indian priests in the Vedic hymns. Not that M. Barth considers the literature so preserved to us to contain within itself evidence of the whole beliefs of the Aryan tribes in the valleys of the Punjab at the time when they were composed. "I am far from believing," he says, "that the Veda has taught us everything on the ancient, social, and religious condition of even Aryan India, or that everything there can be accounted for by it. . . . The hymns do not appear to me to show the least trace of popular derivation. I rather imagine that they emanated from a narrow circle of priests, and that they reflect a somewhat singular view of things. . . Outside of them I see room not only for superstitious beliefs, but for real popular religions, more or less distinct from that which we find in them. On this point we shall arrive at more than one conclusion from the more profound study of the subsequent period. We shall perhaps find that, in this respect also, the past did not differ so much from the present as might at first sight appear-that India has always had, alongside of its Veda, something equivalent to its great Sivaite and Vishnuite religions, which we see in the ascendant at a later date, and that these anyhow existed contemporaneously with it for a very much longer period than has, till now, been generally supposed." This is all very true, and very important. In fact the Vedas do not represent, as they are so often said to do, a

*The Religions of India. By A. BARTH. Authorised Translation by Rev. J. Wood. London: Trübner. 1881.