Hogarth and the other hideous records of low life in the eighteenth century. The most loyal Anglicans in the present day are the first to deplore the total failure of religious life in their church, and the indolence of the clergy in those times. It is needless to repeat the history of clerical indifference, sinecurism, pluralism, and even vice. The highest offices of the church were part ve than worldly politicians. The best and most active-minded of the Anglican divines occupied themselves with writing dry logical or historical apologies for Christianity, of which it was justly said they proved the truth but hardly knew what to do with it when they had proved it. A fair type of them was Paley, who, as the Cambridge tutor said, "had the credit of putting Christianity into a form which could be written out in examinations." With such an establishment, bound hand and foot as it was, and precluded from self-reform by political and social influences, the leader of a great movement of spiritual regeneration was inevitably destined to part company at last. Wesley clung with all the desperate tenacity of early affection, and perhaps also of professional sentiment, to the church, whose orders he had received; but, the necessity was too strong for him, the old bottle would not hold the new wine, and, though unavowedly and perhaps half unconsciously, he became before the end of his life practically the founder of a new church. Not only was Wesley a churchman, and a very loyal one, but he was a High Churchman, and to the end retained a decided tincture of the ascetism belonging to the character. It was natural that before abandoning the Anglican system, or bringing himself to work outside it, he should prove to the uttermost the system itself. Luther, in like manner, proved Catholicism and Monasticism to the uttermost before he thought of striking into a new path. Wesley's movement, in its Oxford phase, in fact, was very nearly a prototype of that afterwards led by Dr. Newman. But Dr. Newman was a refined and eloquent intellectualist, who flattered the reactionary sentiments, both political and ecclesiastical, of the rich and fastidious, without, as we venture to think, any great force of practical conviction, and certainly without producing any extensiye change in the hearts of men. His logic at last forced him without his being prepared for it, or desiring it, to take a leap, his accounts of which are mere bewilderment, and which terminated his course as a religious leader. Wesley was originally a man of far more practical force and capacity than Dr. Newman, but happy circumstances also drew him away from his. Oxford seclusion, and from the genteel to the practical world and to the service of the poor. His visit to America, unlucky in other respects, was fortunate probably as the means of cutting him more completely adrift from the Oxford and High Church moorings of his youth. Mr. Tyerman is not aware of a fact which lends special interest to Wesley's connection with Lincoln College. That college was founded by Fleming and Rotherham, two Catholic Bishops who were great enemies of the Wycliffites, and who specially dedicated their foundation to the holy war against that heresy. The fellows of the college were specially enjoined by the statutes to devote themselves to the suppression of "the novel and pestilent sect which threatened all the sacraments and all the possessions of the church." One of the Fellows admitted under those very statutes was destined to do a good deal more than Wycliffe for the novel and pestilent sect. Voltaire owed his immense influence over his generation in a great degree to his longevity and to his long retention of his intellectual powers. His great antagonist had the same advantage, which, in his case, was all the more vital, Lecause he had not only doctrines to propagate, but a society to organize; had Wesley been weak and short-lived, with all his marvellous qualities and powers, Methodism might have been buried in his grave. As it was, he not only retained his intellectual faculties, and even his power of preaching, almost unimpaired to the age of 85, but underwent through life, in his career as an itinerant preacher and organizer of his church, in an age of difficult locomotion, exertions and trials of his constitution which may be almost literally called superhuman. He is on horse-back, with but an hour or two's intermission from five in the morning till nearly eleven at night. Five hours after he sets out again and rides ninety miles. At midnight he arrives at an inn and wishes to sleep, but the woman who kept the inn refuses him admittance and sets four dog at him. Again he rides five hours through a drench. ing rain and furious wind, wet through to the very soles of his feet, but he is ready to preach at the end of his journey, The frozen roads oblige him to dismount, but he pushes forward on foot amidst the snow-storm, leading his horse by the bridle, for twenty miles, though tortured by a raging toothache. At the age of 69, he encounters winter storms, wades mid-leg deep in snow, is bogged by the badness of the roads, preaches in the midst of piercing winds i the open air, delivers sometimes as many as four sermons a day, yet makes no entry in his journal indicative of failing health. The amount of preaching which he went through, besides all the work of governing his Church and that of writing a good many books and tracts, would kill any preacher of the present day. This wonderful strength was partly the gift of nature, but it was preserved and confirmed by most carefu attention to health-early rising which ensured sound sleep, extreme temperance in diet, abstinence from stimulants, even from tea. Mr. Wesley's mother also deserves gratitude for a system of bringing up her children directly opposed to that of most American and Canadian mothers, who seem to think it the first of maternal duties to ruin the stomachs, and with them the constitutions and the tempers of their children. The immense fruits of Wesley's healthiness and longevity are a lesson to all who affect to disregard physical health and to be indifferent to the length of life provided it be useful, as though the usefulness of a life did not, in great measure depend upon its length and upon the exercise of the mature powers. At the same time there was nothing about Wesley of the muscular Christian; if he took great pains to keep his body sound it was not for the sake of bodily soundness, much less of athleticism, but for the sake of a sound mind and of the great objects which that mind was to serve. The amount of persecution and mal-treatment undergone by Wesley and his principal disciples was astounding. We might fill columns with details culled from these pages. The lower orders in England at that time were neither Christian nor civilized till Wesley diffused among them Christianity and civilization with it. They baited a Methodist preacher as they baited bulls or badgers. The soldiery were, perhaps, a shade more brutal than the mass of the common people, as Hogarth's March to Hounslow indicates, and it is a signal proof of the power of Methodism that it should have numbered among its earliest and sincerest converts soldiers who faced death at once like Christians and heroes at Fontenoy. No one acquainted with the manners of the time will be surprised to learn that magistrates and clergymen, in some cases, abetted the persecutions. Beau Nash tried to turn the vulgar intruder out of his realm of Bath, but was confronted by Wesley with a tranquil firmness before which the despot of the world of pleasure ignominiously recoiled. From the bishops, who, though appointed by political influence, and of the "Greek play" type, were superior to the mass of the clergy, Wesley does not seem to have met, on the whole, treatment which, considering the irregularity of the movement, could be called unkind. Bishop Lavington, of Exeter, who seems to have been a great blockhead, as well as a bad man, took a more hostile course and received severe chastisement at Wesley's hands Sympathy in high ecclesiastical quarters was not to be expected. As we have said before, the final independence of Methodism was unavoidable. The least agreeable passages in the life are those relating to Wesley's love affairs and his marriage. These incidents are dark specks in a life of uncomnon brightness. After all, however, the sum of the matter is that a man like Wesley living a life of wandering labour without a settled home, was at once most sure to crave for domestic happiness and most certain not to find it. His lingering Oxford fancies about ecclesiastical celibacy add just another shade of absurdity to these affairs, and this is as much as can be said. Wesley's opportunities of observing female character in society had been so limited that he is not much to be blamed for having been taken in by the detestable woman who, in an evil hour, became his wife, and whose temper was such, that a friend going into the room one day, actually found Wesley on the floor, and Mrs. Wesley with locks of his white hair in her hands. The biographer does not shrink from doing his duty with regard to these incidents. Nor has he any reason for shrinking. Wesley was the founder of Methodism, but he was not its origin, nor is he its life. The size and cost of Mr. Tyerman's work, even in the smaller and cheaper edition, will prevent its being ever very popular; but it will take its place in our book-cases as the most complete and authentic account of the origin of one of the most important movements in history. CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY and Modern SCEPTICISM. By the Duke of Somerset. New York: D. Appleton & Co. The appearance of the Duke of Somerset in the field of religious polemics has probably caused considerable surprise. The head of one of the greatest Whig families, the Duke has hitherto been known, and very favourably known as the active and hardworking head of the department. During more than one Administration he was First Lord of the Admiralty, with credit to himself and advantage to the country. The greater part of the vessels now forming the iron-clad navy of England were built under his auspices. Since the formation of Mr. Gladstone's Government he has played the part of an assiduous, honest and somewhat acrid critic. Though he now writes theology it is still as a politician, with a politician's object and in a politician's style. He observes that for many years past, religious questions have incessantly interfered with the social and educational improvement of the community, and that the disturbance seems to be increasing. A politician, he says, would gladly avoid touching these thorny subjects, but religious teachers never cease from intermeddling with politics. "The Church of Rome, as in olden times, pours imprecations on our heads; and the Roman Catholic clergy, in the United Kingdom, administer the same balm in a more inconvenient form. The Established Church distracts us with so many doctrinal disputes In and perplexing doubts that we almost wish she would slumber again, as she did during the greater part of the last century. The non-conformists appear to be exasperated, and threaten to upset, from the village school to the cabinet, unless they are to have their own way." The Duke accordingly proposes to administer a sedative to the Protestants at all events, and it is impossible, notwithstanding the gravity of the subject, to abstain from smiling at his business-like and almost grim fulfilment of his intention. Within the compass of 182 pages he has condensed, besides a preface, index and introduction, no less than thirty-nine chapters, each treating of a distinct branch of the inquiry, the whole being writ ten in the terse, incisive style of an official précis. The bulk of the work is on the sceptical and destructive side, presenting against the existing forms of historical and dogmatic Christianity critical arguments mainly derived from writers of the Tubingen school, to which the Duke's intensely practical mind naturally inclines rather than to the more speculative and imaginative theories of Strauss and Renan. The constructive part of the work is comparatively limited and weak. The Duke, however, believes that he has preserved to Faith one unapproachable sanctuary-faith in God. "Here at last the natural and supernatural will be merged in one harmonious universe under one Supreme intelligence. affliction and in sickness the thoughtful man will find here his safest support. Even in that dread hour when the shadows of death are gathering around him, when the visible world fades from his sight and the human faculties fail, when the reason is enfeebled and the memory relaxes its grasp, Faith, the consoler, still remains soothing the last moments and pointing to a ray of light beyond the mystery of the grave." The Duke also looks forward to "better days," when irrational dogma and sectarian distinctions having been eliminated, there will emerge a purely rational Christianity common to all Protestants, when the clergy will again become the teachers of the people, when the open Bible will irresistibly lead to the open Church, and the Church will without any violent commotion become the Church of the whole Protestant people. From the ascendancy of such a Christianity he expects inestimable benefits, moral, social and intellectual, as well as religious. It would be idle to attempt to discuss within the compass of a review the multitudinous questions raised by the critical portion of the work, which states, with apothegmatic brevity, almost every objection made by a certain school of sceptics. The Duke is well read for a layman, and a man of business, but he is not profoundly learned, or qualified to appear as an original and independent inquirer. He is hard headed, but he is wanting in intellectual compre hensiveness, in largeness of sympathy, and generally in those qualities which are most essential to an appreciation of what are commonly called the moral evidences of Christianity. On the other hand, he is transparently honest, and his rank, though it can lend no weight to his arguments, is a sufficient guarantee that his aims are not those of a mere religious agitator or a political demagogue. The doubts to which he gives expression are, it would be idle to deny, widely prevalent among the most intellectual classes, and disturb breasts far different from those of the sensual or scoffing sceptics of former generations. It is too true, as the Duke says, that “ while our clergy are insisting on dogmatic theology, scep‐ ticism pervades the whole atmosphere of thought, leads the most learned societies, colours the religious literature of the day, and even mounts the pulpits of the Church." There is but one rational, but one effective, but one Christian way of dealing with such doubts. It is the way indicated by Bishop Watson in his reply to Gibbon: "I look upon the right of private judgment in every concern respecting God and ourselves as superior to the control of human authority. Never can it become a Christian to be afraid of being asked a reason for the hope that is in him, nor a Protestant to be studious of enveloping his religion in mystery or ignorance. or to abandon that moderation by which she permits every individual et sentire quae velit et quae sentia: dicere-to think what he will, and to speak what he thinks." A higher than Bishop Watson had taught the same lesson before. The apostle who doubted the Resurrection was answered not with unreasoning anathema, but with convincing proof. "Reach hither thy finger and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless but believing." THE LIFE OF JESUS, THE CHRIST. By Henry Ward Beecher. Toronto James Campbell & Son. The world is now full of Lives of Christ, each of which is, in fact, the shadow of the writer projected across the Gospel. M. Renan's Life of Christ is the shadow of a French philosopher, not without a touch of the Parisian coiffeur. Ecce Homo is the shadow of an English Broad Churchman; and so with the rest. Dr. Dio Lewis, in "Our Girls," says : "A great many people rather fancy a dyspeptic, “ . ghostly clergyman, and can hardly bring themselves to listen to a prayer from a preacher with square shoulders, a big chest, a ruddy face and a moustache The ghost, they think, belongs in some way to the spirit world; while the beef-eating, jolly fellow is dreadfully at home in this world. "The ghost exclaims Jerusalem, my happy home, Oh how I long for thee, Our curiosity, however, as yet remains, to a great extent, unsatisfied. The present volume does not present the problem in its full force, since it embraces only the early part of Christ's Life and Ministry, con|cluding with a discourse delivered on the shore of the sea of Galilee. Over this period of the Life Mr. Beecher is able to throw a congenial hue of cheerfulness and even of joyousness. "It was the most joyful period of his life. It was a full year of beneficence unobstructed. It is true that he was jealously watched, but he was not forcibly resisted. He was "The other, like Mr. Beecher, enjoys a good dinner, a nimble-footed horse, a big play with the children and the dogs, seems joyous in the sunshine, and, wretched sinner, does not sigh to depart." And here is an account of one of Mr. Ward maliciously defamed by the emissaries of the temple, Beecher's sermons : "Henry Ward Beecher last Sunday evening, in discoursing on death, said that it was no evidence of special Christian grace to be willing to die. It was far better to be willing to live and do the duties of life. In the course of his address he mentioned that his brother Charles, who was always in a dying nood, once congratulated their father, old Dr. Lyman Beecher, on the fact that he couldn't live much longer. Umph," said the old man, "I don't thank any of my boys to talk to me in that way. I don't want to die. If I had my choice, and, it was right to choose, I would fight the battle all over again." Old Dr. Beecher, as his son adds, 'was a war horse, and after he was turned out to pasture, whenever he heard the sound of the trumpet he wanted the saddle and bridle.'" 66 Mr. Ward Beecher, in fact, like his rival, in ability and popularity, Mr. Collyer, of Chicago, is a preacher of "The Life that now is." His sermons are not so much religious discourses as lectures on the formation of character and the rule of conduct in the present world, with as little as possible of the "ghost" in them, delivered in a good platform style, enlivened with plenty of references to mundane interests, and not unfrequently seasoned with a humour broad enough to make the congregation laugh. | We were very curious to see what sort of a Life | of Christ would be produced by the projection of this shadow across the Gospels. What would Mr. Ward Beecher make of that part of Christ's history and teaching, not the smallest part in bulk or importance, which belongs so emphatically, not to the life that now is, but to that which is to come? What would he make of the closing discourses, the agony, the passion, the resurrection? How would all these and the character revealed through them be made to harmonize with the robust philosophy of the Ply mouth Church and the hygienics of Dr. Dio Lewis? We confess that we opened the book more with the hope of finding an answer to these questions than in the expectation that the great popular orator would be able to throw much light on the deep problems of theology, which, in connection with the Life of Christ, are pressing on all minds and hearts. but he irresistibly charmed the hearts of the common people. Can we doubt but his life was full of exquisite enjoyment? He had not within him those conflicts which common men have. There was entire harmony of faculties within and a perfect agreement between his inward and his external life. He bore other's burdens but had none of his own. His body was in full health; his soul was clear and tranquil ; his heart overflowed with an unending sympathy. He was pursuing the loftiest errand which benevolence can contemplate. No joy known to the human soul compares with that of successful beneficent labour. We cannot doubt that the earlier portion of this year, though full of intense excitement, was full of deep happiness to him." "Besides the wonder and admiration which he excited on every hand, he received from not a few the most cordial affection and returned a richer love." "It is impossible not to see from the simple language of the Evangelists that his first circuits in Galilee were triumphal processions. The sentences which generalize the history are few, but they are such as could have sprung only out of joyous memories and indicate a new and great development of power on his side and an ebullition of joyful excitement through the whole community. And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee; and there went out a fame through all the region round about. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.' (Luke iv. 14—15).” We are not so sure that the simple language of the Evangelists will bear the sense which Mr. Beecher has put on it, and which he tries to fix and intensify by his italics, as we are that Mr. Beecher's own words express the joyous excitement of a successful popular preacher with a body in full health. A slight turn is given throughout to the Gospel teaching in favour of muscular, or at least, of robust Christianity. Thus the comment on "Blessed are the poor in spirit" is "Not poverty of thought, nor of courage nor of emotion, -- not empty-mindedness, nor any idea implying a real lack of strength, variety and richness of nature,—was here intended. It was to be a consciousness of moral incompleteness. the sense of poverty in this world's goods inspires men to enterprise, so the conscionsness of poverty of As manliness might be expected to lead to earnest endeavours for moral growth." And in reference to the baptism of Jesus by John, it is said: "That which repentance means in its true spirit, namely the rising from lower to higher moral states, Jesus experienced in common with the multitude; although he had not like them any need of the stings of remorse for past misconduct to drive him upwards. Repentance is but another name for aspiration." As a set of Essays on the Life of Christ from this special point of view, the work has unquestionable merits. The style is fresh and vigorous, though occasionally marked by what seem to us faults of taste, among which we should be disposed to number certain touches of rhetorical woman-worship, such as "there was no circle of light about His head except His mother's arms." The effort to give human colour and vividness to the Life by painting the local scenery and surroundings, appears to us to be carried to a considerable length; but this is the fashion of the day. The most successful passage in the work in a strictly biographical sense is, we think, that in which a conception "not of Christ's person, but of his personality," is educed fairly enough on the whole from what the Gospels tell us directly or by implication of his personal habits, bearing, look and gestures; though here again there is a tendency to exaggerate the social aspects of the character and to give the quality of "free companionship," an undue prominence and significance. This work like Ecce Homo is totally destitute of the critical basis necessary to give any work on the subject a permanent value. The critical questions are totally ignored. The Gospels are taken without scrutiny as "the collective reminiscences of Christ by the most impressible of his disciples," and the miraculcus element is accepted, we might almost say, swallowed in the lump, the author sheltering himself rather ominously under the saying of Joubert "State truths of sentiment and do not try to prove them. There is danger in such proof; for an inquiry it is necessary to treat that which is in question as something problematic: now that which we ac custom ourselves to treat as problematic, ends by appearing to us really doubtful." The tremendous mystery of the incarnation is encountered; but an attempt to find, obviously for a practical purpose, a middle passage between conflicting theories ends as might have been expected, in a purely arbitrary solution. Renan, Pressensé, the author of Ecce Homo, and Mr. Ward Beecher, all men of more or less ability, and all working upon the same materials, with which all of them are thoroughly familiar, bring out four widely different Christs, each deeply coloured, as we before said, with the individuality of the writer. Other writers again, especially those of the Ascetic School, bring out from the same Gospels a Christ totally different from the four. The natural inference seems to be that the attempt is chimerica!'. You may have Diatessarons and Harmonies of the Gospels, you may have commentaries and sermons on Christ's acts and discourses, you may have topgraphical and antiquarian illustrations of the Gospel History. But as to Lives of Christ-there is a life of Christ in the Gospels and there will never be ar other. LITERARY NOTES. C as the studied depreciation of the other. The mantie of a satirist is, at best, a dangerous legacy; that of Gifford has made uneasy the shoulders of his sucess He cannot exactly imitate the savagery of the el ter ONTEMPORARY poets, are not, it appears, to have it all their own way. We have already noticed a criticism in the Contemporary Review on "The Fleshly School of Poetry. The paper was originally published under a pseudonym, but ulti-prophet, but the mission of both is substantially the mately acknowledged by Mr. Robert Buchanan. On that occasion Mr. D. G. Rossetti was the chief object of attack; but in an article in the last number of the Quarterly, Messrs. Swinburne, Rossetti and Morris are pilloried together as the chief exemplars of "The Latest Development of Literary Poetry.' In the previous number, the same critic, if we mistake not, treated his readers to a comparison between Byron and Tennyson, in which the laboured eulogy pronounced upon the one was as palpably factitious same to assail every assertion of nascent talent the current age. Critics of this stamp are always bord too late. If Gifford had lived in the Elizabethan period and the living critic had adorned the reign of Queen Anne, all would have been as it should be. Falling, however, upon evil times their mission way and is, to take up their parable against the fee degeneracy around them. Into the controversy in tween the Quarterly and the so-called "Literary school, we have neither space nor inclination to enter. |