they thus returned in the shape of daily dole at the convent gate. The idea that the subsequent poor laws were rendered necessary by the dissolution of the monasteries, and as a substitute for this daily dole, has been long since exploded. The first compulsory provision for the poor1 was, in fact, made just before the dissolution even of the smaller monasteries, and was made to remedy the evils which had continued and increased throughout the very period of which we are speaking. With poor laws and dissolutions, therefore, we have nothing to do. The alternatives yet remained. These ejected peasants must either starve, or beg, or steal. If they begged, they were punished as vagabonds; and if they stole, they were hung without mercy for stealing. But the evil increased; still they stole and still they begged. At last, as we have seen, both thieves and vagabonds were hung. They were hung so fast, that there were sometimes twenty on a gibbet. Well may we ask what became of these poor ejected peasants. A partial answer may be found in the fact, that 72,000 persons, out of a population of four or five millions (i. e., a number equal to the then population of London), are stated to have died upon the gallows in the reign of Henry VIII. 2 No doubt these numbers may be terribly exaggerated, inasmuch as probably there were no data upon which a true estimate could be founded. Statistics are of modern birth. But however small the real number of thieves and vagabonds who were executed, the facts recently brought forward to explain away these figures, by showing that a very large proportion of those committed for trial escaped the severity of the law, whether by members of their own gang being upon the jury, by corrupt 1 The statute of 27 Hen. VIII. contains the first compulsory provision for the poor; and by a subsequent statute of the same session, the smaller monasteries were dissolved. 2 Utopia, Bk. i. 3 "There is not one year commonly wherein 300 or 400 of them are not devoured and eaten up by the gallows in one place and another. It appeareth, by Cardane (who writeth it upon the report of the Bishop of Lexonia), in the geniture of King Edward VI., how Henry VIII., executing his laws very severely against such idle persons (I mean great thieves, petty thieves, and rogues), did hang upwards of three score and twelve thousand of them in his time. He seemed for the time to have greatly terrified the rest; but since his death the number is much increased, though we have had no wars," etc.-Harrison's Description of Britain, vol. i., p. 186, 1586 ed. This passage is not inserted in some of the early editions. The appalling numbers hung for theft was a notorious fact. It is mentioned by Fish, in his "Supplication of the Beggars ;" and Bishop Latimer, in a sermon at St Paul's Cross, speaking of the statute compelling farmers to grow a certain quantity of hemp and flax, adds, "But it were all too little, were it so much more, to hang the thieves that be in England."-See Froude's Hist., vol. i., p. 7, n. See Froude's "History of England," vol. iii., pp. 406-425; and compare with the almost stainless and utopian picture presented in vol. i., chap. 1, of the "Social Condition of the People." License and Disorder-Cause and Remedy. 69 verdicts, or by a lax execution of the statutes, all this, we say, adds emphasis to our conviction, and closes the last door by which we could escape the conviction, that to a very terrible extent, license, and disorder, and crime, held a wild rule amongst the people, in the place of that peaceful self-control which alone can bring happiness out of freedom. But what, we may ask, should have been the remedy for all this? Was it the necessary result of external dislocations, or was there some element wanting, which, being there, might have conquered the consequent disorder into order and advantage? True freedom being utterly impossible except on the basis of individual self-control, it becomes an infinitely important question, "Upon what may that quality rest, and from what sources does it, or can it, derive its power in a national point of view?" A more universal education and extended intelligence would, no doubt, have furnished valuable materials, and, in some measure, tamed even the unemployed and half-starving peasant into greater obedience to the civil power, or schooled him into something of a sense of civil responsibility. But history has abundantly proved that the mere influence of civil responsibility, and the terrors of the law, are no firm basis upon which it can rest,-that the controlling influence of material civilisation and intelligence, of railroads, and telegraphs, and cotton-jennies, is but the controlling influence of selfish interest, and is dependent upon the haphazard of the temporary interests of selfish men coinciding with the interests of others, and the laws of morality. The power of self-control rests, and can permanently rest, alone on a true individual sense of moral responsibility, and further than this, the only power which can in the long run give that individual sense of moral responsibility; and therefore, that self-control is the power of an individual conscience. The priesthood of the dark ages held in spiritual bondage the English peasant of the age of which we are speaking, because it forebore from the people that individual sense of moral responsibility which alone, in the long run, can give the power of selfcontrol. In a word, Christianity was dislocated from its true relations to the peasant. It came to him as conferring a gloomy and despotic power to a priesthood, instead of as the harbinger of light and freedom to himself. It taught him responsibility to a priesthood, instead of to the Great Disposer of all things! We may indeed tremble when we look back upon the terrible underworkings of this dogma in each human heart, even before it forced itself above the surface. We have before hinted that physical hardship may be mixed in the cup of a nation, even in a very high national condition. Christianity teaches that in the world there must be tribulation; but true Christianity also teaches us the alleviation. It teaches to the man of misery and poverty, whose downward course must of necessity end in the workhouse, or in a narrower home, something which prevents even life's darkest picture from being utterly hopeless! Yes, brother (it says to him), faint not! look up! But the Christianity of the priesthood of the dark ages taught him no such thing! Its pompous Latin spoke no joy or hope in peasant ears. It put its cold hand upon the breast, and chilled the thrilling life-blood of its peasant votaries. And even now, in spite of advanced civilisation, wherever it still continues, it prolongs the darkness of those ages, and entombs a nation's happiness and hopes in it. Whatever was the secret motive, whatever was the potent guiding-spring of its policy, however deep and devoted its love and zeal, it stands eternally engraven upon the brow of the priesthood of the dark ages, that its religion was a religion for a priesthood, but no religion for the poor. Just as little Gretchen says of Mephistopheles— "Es steht ihm an der Stirn geshrieben Dasz er nicht mag eine Seele lieben." We have thus endeavoured to sketch the leading features of the social condition of England during the period immediately antecedent to the dissolution of the smaller monasteries. We have confined our remarks very much to that antecedent period, because the events which followed in quick succession upon it, ushering in the great Protestant Reformation, formed, as we have said, a kind of watershed which opened out new channels and gave a fresh direction to the hopes and destinies of the nation, and we were anxious to secure our picture from any tinge which might otherwise have been derived from their influence. And now, in conclusion, let us ask, what is it that in the course of the last three centuries has given to the British people that amount of self-control which tempers the freedom it enjoys? It is not the effect of sanguinary laws, nor is it wholly attributable to the political experience which it has passed through, or the material civilisation to which it has attained. The great secret is to be found in the fact, that Christianity has been placed more in its true relation to the people; that Christianity has become embedded like stiff knee timber in the sides of the constitution of our country; that the influence of her ten righteous men has made itself felt, and, to a very large extent, commanded the whole tone of public morality, so that, by the silent power of quiet example, it has proved a little leaven which, in some measure at least, has leavened the whole lump. Our freedom rests upon the basis of our Christianity, and our liberty is controlled by Christian conscience. Biblical Interpretation—Epistles to the Corinthians. 71 ART. IV.-1. The Epistles to the Corinthians; with Critica. Notes and Dissertations. By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, M.A., Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford, and Canon of Canterbury. Second Edition. London: Murray. 2. An Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. By CHARLES HODGE, D.D., Professor in the Theological Seminary, Princeton. London: Nisbet. 3. The Resurrection of Life: an Exposition of First Corinthians XV.; with a Discourse on our Lord's Resurrection. By JOHN BROWN, D.D., Senior Minister of the United Presbyterian Congregation, Broughton Place, Edinburgh, and Professor of Exegetical Theology to the United Presbyterian Church. Edinburgh: William Oliphant and Sons. 4. Life in a Risen Saviour: being Discourses on the Argument of the Fifteenth Chapter of First Corinthians. By ROBERT S. CANDLISH, D.D. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black. Ir is a remarkable fact, that the oldest book in the world is the very book in regard to the meaning of whose contents the world has not yet had time to make up its mind, or to come to any common or even tolerably harmonious understanding. The Bible, beyond all comparison, has been more read and more misread than any other written composition. The re proach, not of Protestantism, but of our common professing Christianity, is the great diversity of sects and interpretations which seek shelter under the one language of Scripture, and pervert every page, if not every sentence of it, to different and opposite meanings. Nor is this due to the remarkable singularity which distinguishes the Bible from every other book,-the singularity, that it is the only book in the world the author of which is God. We might not perhaps be able à priori to anticipate in what way, or to what extent, the circumstance that the Bible contains the eternal thoughts of Jehovah embodied in human speech might affect the ease or the difficulty of interpreting it. But the fact has shown that the mind of God can be uttered in human language without altering or affecting its meaning or its laws as found upon our lips; and that the words which contain in them the burden of uncreated wisdom, and the revelation of Divine truth, are words which men may both speak and understand not less easily than if they had been their own. The highest and strictest views of inspiration are consistent with the doctrine, that the inspired volume is to be understood in the same way, and to be interpreted by means of the same methods, as any human composition might be understood or interpreted. The very fact that Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Power have devised and provided the means whereby the thoughts of God in heaven may be conveyed to the mind of man on the earth, is itself the best of all guarantees for the attainment of the object contemplated by the revelation,-namely, that it come to us in a shape to be understood. If it be a communication from God, it must be intelligible to man; and there can be no sufficient cause in the written Bible itself for the diversities of meaning that have been attributed to it, for the opposite interpretations that have been imposed upon its text, and for the melancholy, yet too patent fact, that there is no truth in Scripture so clear that it has not been disputed, and no sentence so plain that it has not been variously rendered and understood. If there were needed a monument and evidence of the fatal tendency of the human understanding to darkness and error, they would be found in the treatment which men have given everywhere, and at all times, to the revelation of God embodied in human speech; and in those unnumbered misinterpretations of its language and perversions of its meaning by which they have so often succeeded in resisting the omnipotence of Scripture truth, and in turning to foolishness that Divine Word, the entrance of which giveth light, and maketh wise the simple. There are certain familiar and fixed principles of interpretation applicable to all human language, whether oral or written, which make its meaning to be definitely and accurately understood in the communications of men with each other, and which are no less applicable in the revelation made by God to His creatures. No doubt there are important limitations of these principles, which must be taken into account when they are applied to interpret the Bible, not necessary to be attended to in the case of other books. To these limitations we may have occasion afterwards to advert. But there is nothing in these to interfere with the great principle, that the same laws of interpretation that fix with certainty and define with clearness the sense of other books are available for the Bible also, and able to regulate with no less precision and effect the inquiry as to the meaning of its text. Words have the same sense in Scripture as in any uninspired book; there is no greater latitude in the use of terms in the one case than in the other; singly and in combination, they are subject to the same laws of interpretation in both instances; language has no exemption from the ordinary rules of construction when found in the Bible, any more than when found in human compositions; and there is no uncertainty of meaning or irregularity of use, as respects its application, which is not also experienced in written or oral communications between man and |