claim a respect and sympathy, which even in its sadly diminished form lasts but an evening, and disappears.

This way of treating the matter, however, though it may answer for an occasional comment, should not be the only one, even if it were the best. These claims, extraordinary as they may appear, are genuine and are advanced with sincerity. They must be opposed, then, with reasonings as complete, and remonstrances as grave, as those with which they are defended. At first the liberal minister of Religion looks at them with astonishment or amusement. And even when the movement really seems, from the amount of attention which it commands, to be something serious, he cannot for a long time bring himself to step upon such an arena. It is like setting himself deliberately to refute the science of the Alchymists, or the pretensions of Joanna Southcote. Nevertheless a sense of duty at length commands him to buckle on his armour, and he finds himself after the first onslaught engaged in a longcontinued rout. He pursues the enemy through strange regions indeed, through sequestered valley, and woody copse, but always finds him flying. At times he hides himself in the gathered leaves and brushwood of some old forest, but the pursuer finds that it is only the darkness which affords him shelter, and when that is penetrated, the foe is compelled to take to his heels again.

Thus it is with Mr. Madge and his Anglo-Catholics. His book is one continued rout. He absolutely clears the field before him, as he proceeds. No living form or spectre of an argument remains to turn upon his rear. The battle-field of these lectures is strewn with the dead. If any Dissenting Minister, or any liberal Layman, is troubled with AngloCatholics in his neighbourhood, and has not time to work up his Bede and Gildas, his Chillingworth and Hooker, his Burnet and Stillingfleet, for a reply, let him read Mr. Madge's Lectures: unless he have a passion for original research, he will find everything he can require in them. Indeed this is the character of the volume before us. It is essentially, though in the best sense of the word, popular. The author does not pursue his subject into any very remote antiquity, or draw upon patristic lore. He very properly takes contemporaneous statements as indices of the condition of thought with which he has to do, and refutes them either from the pages of able and trustworthy writers of the last three centuries, or from the resources of his own acute and penetrating logic. Thus he is fonder of Burnet than Bede, of Hallam than Eusebius, and of Hooker than Theodoret. The lectures were intended for

instruction, not for ostentation, "for the people generally, not for the learned particularly." The author's object was not to add another to original works of reference, but to bring the gist and marrow of those works in an intelligible, attractive and convincing form before those who desired clear and determined views on this much-bruited subject. This was his design, and he has eminently succeeded in it.

He first shows what the principles of the school, against which he contends, really are. He then discusses the nature and constitution of a Christian Church;-what was the Apostolic form of government, and whether any specific external polity is binding upon Christians universally. He canvasses the three orders of clergy-shows that so far from Bishop, Priest and Deacon being from the first distinct orders, Bishop and Presbyter were titles given to the same individual, and that as for Deacons indicating the third or lowest order, Paul and Apollos themselves were styled Deacons. The doctrine of Apostolical succession next comes under review. Our author shows that according to Scripture, so far from ordination being an exclusively episcopal function, Paul and Barnabas were ordained by three brethren of the Church at Antioch, called prophets and teachers, that is, the higher order received ordination from the lower that in fact, primitive ordination was nothing more than the invocation of the divine blessing on the election of a minister. Apostolical succession has no support from Scripture; there is nothing to support it, but the feeble analogy between Christ and his Apostles, and Aaron and his sons. It has no support from history; the first links of such a succession are wanting, those which connect the apostles themselves with the first known ordaining Bishop. On the worthlessness of this Apostolical succession, even if it could be proved, there is a striking passage :—

"The claims set up by the churches of England and Rome were also set up in times past by churches now branded with the name of heresy. This was the case with the Arian churches. These churches, it is well known, once prevailed to a considerable extent, and through many countries. As to their ecclesiastical constitution or form of government, they were episcopal, and had as fair a claim to the apostolic succession as any churches then in existence. But the orthodox party in spite of this claim, in defiance of the apostolic title possessed by their bishops, denounced them in the fiercest terms of condemnation. In the East the Greek Church also, which is at variance on points of faith with the Western Churches, has quite as good a claim as they have to the grace of the apostolic succession.' But this avails nothing with the orthodox believers. With them it forms of itself no bond of fellowship and union, presents no barrier to rejection and exclusion from the true Catholic Church of Christ. The Nestorian, the Eutychian, and other churches, all condemned by councils as heretical, present exactly the same title to the pos

session of apostolic orders. So that, according to the showing of these highchurch divines themselves, the simple fact of apostolic succession does not, on that account, imply the inheritance of apostolic endowments. For what reason, then, I ask, is the fact so earnestly insisted on, and so ostentatiously exhibited? It seems after all that there may be apostolic succession unaccompanied with apostolic gifts and graces. But if the apostolic orders be no security against the inroads of error, and no safeguard for the preservation of the truth, it ceases any longer to be a mark or sign of the true Church. Or, we may state the matter thus: On what grounds can one Church say to another Church possessing the same apostolic commission, we are certainly right, and you are as certainly wrong? I thought that the very object and design, the use and importance of these supposed apostolical orders, was to constitute the possessors of them, 'the hereditary witnesses of the truth.'* But if instead of being witnesses of the truth, they become witnesses of grievous and damnable errors, wherein lies the value, the efficacy of these 'orders?'"pp. 120, 121.

In the Lecture on Tradition our author unveils the ground of its necessity to the Church: for in tradition alone can many of the tottering doctrines of the Church find their support, and an appeal to tradition requires a clergy, who shall be the depositories of it. We quote some appropriate passages on this point from a previous lecture. The Rev. W. J. E. Bennett is introduced as saying,

"If we are satisfied that Scripture is Scripture-that is, that our Bibles, as we possess them now, do contain God's real word-if in this we are satisfied, then let me mark out to you a few things, which I do not think you could, or any Christian could, have found out for himself in that Bible,—things which I do not imagine would have been articles of our faith so peremptorily pronounced as they are, had there not been such a thing as tradition or the teaching of the Church; for instance, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Is it possible, my brethren, do you think, that you or I, or any one, be he ever so gifted with the powers of man, could have deduced and invented for himself this most wonderful and mysterious doctrine out of the Bible?"-Lectures, p. 113.

So other of the Tractarian writers speak of the Personality of the Holy Ghost, the doctrines of original sin, and the atonement. These are tremendous concessions from orthodoxy. What more can we want to satisfy us of the correctness of our views as deductions from the Bible? What further need have we of witnesses; behold we have heard their confessions!

The remaining lectures are occupied with the consideration of the sufficiency of Scripture, the right of private judgment, the state-connection of the English Church, and the essential prin

"The treasure of sound doctrine," says Mr. Keble, "is guarded by the grace of the apostolical succession."-Tradition, p. 42. If so, then it follows that the Arian as well as the Athanasian clergy of former days, the Greek and Romish as well as AngloCatholic doctors of the present day, are all the guardians of sound doctrine, for they all alike boast of possessing the apostolic succession.

ciples of Christian Catholic Church. We bid farewell and godspeed to this most useful and spirited volume with a concluding extract from the Sixth Lecture.

After quoting a number of historical and contemporaneous facts, in proof of the masterdom exercised by the State over the Church of England, and a number of querulous acknowledgments on the part of the Anglo-Catholics of this their condition, our Author asks;

"Of all these passages taken together-what are we to think? One is almost tempted to ask, is it possible for them to have been written by persons who are really members and ministers of the Church of England? Could a stronger bill of indictment against that Church have been drawn up by its bitterest opponents? If the English Church be in this state of degradation and debasement; if it be thus dragged at the chariot-wheels of the State; if it be thus manacled in all its limbs and hampered in all its movements; why not burst asunder the bonds of its oppression, and assert its freedom and independence?"--p. 256.

"If the Anglo-Catholic divines really think that they are spiritually descended from the Apostles, and that by virtue of this descent they are authorized and entitled to rule and govern the Church, it is on their part nothing less than a gross dereliction of principle, or a melancholy instance of pitiable weakness, to bow before the shrine of human greatness, and surrender to the Civil Magistrate the authority and the trust which they solemnly declare Christ delegated solely to the successors of the Apostles.' Let them give up the notion of divine right, of apostolic succession, of an authoritative priesthood, or cease to act in a way that puts all such claims and pretensions to shame and confusion. Connected with the State, and aided by its powers and wealth, it is well-well for freedom, humanity and justice, that the Church should be ruled and governed by the State. Separated from it, and resting on her spiritual character alone, her clergy may take the guidance and direction of her affairs in their own keeping, and advance what pretensions they please. Their dream of apostolic descent may be innocently indulged in, as far at least as other churches and communions are concerned, however it may inflate their own vanity, or flatter and aggrandize their own self-importance. As long as the State will throw its broad shield of protection alike over all, religious liberty is safe; and, proudly as the ministers of the Anglo-Episcopal Church may boast of their apostolic descent, that boast, when all temporal power has been taken out of their hands, will excite no alarm, and may, peradventure, be the occasion of some little amusement."-pp. 269, 270.

ART. IV. POVERTY AND ITS REMEDIES.

ONE of the worst effects of deeply rooted and wide spreading social calamities is the insensibility and hopelessness which they tend to engender, in regard both to themselves and to their cure. The bulk of men but too easily learn to look with calmness on sufferings which are constantly under their eye, and he whom these sufferings move to consider whether they admit of a remedy, is too apt to be overpowered by the very magnitude of the evil, and to sink eventually into quiescence if not despair. We are all prone to feel, and many to argue, that evils must be because they are, will continue since they have ever been; and consequently that as they defy remedial appliances, so to attempt their cure would be little else than a species of social Quixotism.

The mistake involved in this too prevalent state of mind is the desire which it evinces of some signal and imposing reward of benevolent effort. We wish to stay the evils of society at a blow. And if we cannot produce a reformation no less entire than sudden, most of us are apt to sink at once into inactivity if not hopelessness. This unhealthy love of the grand and stupendous is among the most effectual hindrances to those who are benevolently inclined. The thirst for individual distinction generally ends in disappointment, and disappointment brings disgust. The benevolent enthusiast soon finds reason to think that in spite of him the world goes on in its old course, and he therefore speedily withdraws from a career where he fancies his toil is unrepaid, because it has not realised the fond visions he had formed.

But having begun his work in a dream, he quits it under a delusion. "My toil is unrewarded," he affirms, and straightway leaves the plough unworked. And so is every one likely to do, who is not content to work as a day-labourer in the vineyard of benevolence, thanking God for so good a sphere of occupation, and disregardful of his own rank therein; and glad, if he is unable to produce a harvest, to bring to maturity the humblest root. If evils are not removed, it is something for humanity, for ourselves and for God, that they are abated. We may not have the power to convey to a place of safety and comfort, the exhausted and dying traveller on whom we light in the arid desert of social life; shall we therefore keep from his parched lips and craving eye the cup of cold water which we hold in our hands? We cannot put an end to poverty, but have we not each the