Christian frankness and put upon record, the present position of the Society and of the administration is condemned by all their past professions of conscientious adherence to the constitution. Two years ago, it was pretended that any publication bearing on the evils confessedly incidental to slavery, or even insisting on the duties of masters, is contrary to the Society's constitution, inasmuch as it is not calculated to receive the approbation of some evangelical Christians in the slave-holding states. But now the Executive Committee, not only in their volume on the "Enormity of the Slave-trade," (made up, in part, of purely political speeches and documents), but in the monthly issues of their "Messenger," are assailing the institution of slavery. Are such publications better calculated to-day, than they were two years ago, to receive the approbation of evangelical Christians (so called) in South Carolina and Mississippi? If not, where is that delicate conscience of the Executive Committee? Where is their scrupulous deference to the first article of the Society's constitution? Are they now violating their conscience and defying the constitution; or was their late scrupulousness a mere pretense? Have they changed their opinion about the meaning of that prohibition which, two years ago, was so binding on their conscience? If so, they not only owe it to themselves to announce distinctly the change they have experienced, (on the principle that "with the mouth confession is made to salvation"); but they owe it to their constituents, to the public, to truth, and to the God of truth, to recall and refute the arguments, recorded and stereotyped, which condemn, as a breach of trust on their part, the cause they are now pursuing.

For the present, then, and till the Executive Committee shall put itself right before the public, we are compelled to regard this inglorious inconsistency, on the part of an institution ever making the largest professions of zeal for vital godliness, as one item in the cost of circulating religious tracts under the system of that Society. Individually, the members of that committee are men of the highest integrity, but the system under which they are acting must be radically vicious or it would not produce such fruits.

ARTICLE XII.-NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

THEOLOGY AND BIBLICAL CRITICISM.

REPLIES TO "ESSAYS AND REVIEWS."*-This volume was re printed last of the volumes which the Essays and Reviews have called forth. The other two were noticed in our number for April. The school of English churchmen from which this proceeds is indicated by the circumstance that it is introduced by a preface from Samuel, Lord Bishop of Oxford, to whom the publishers "tender their thanks," "not only for the preface, but for advice and assistance also in making the necessary arrangements in producing such a volume." The preface does no especial honor, however, to the Bishop's knowledge, taste, or temper; nor, indeed, to his skill in writing the English language. It is, however, very brief indeed, for "diocesan arrangements compelled" the writer to postpone his designed discussion of the general subject, but it is long enough to show some signs of an uncharitable and intolerant temper, as well as some weakness of judgment. Some persons, he observes, see in the appearance of the new objections to revelation "a mere reäction from recently renewed assertions of the preeminent importance of dogmatic truth and of primitive Christian practice." "Much more true is the explanation, which sees in it the first stealing over the sky of the lurid lights which shall be shed profusely around the great Antichrist." "With such a wide-spread current of thought, then, the strong foundations of Church-of-England faith came rudely in contact. Her simple retention of the primitive forms of the Apostolic Church; her Ministry, and her Sacraments; her firm hold of primitive truth; her Creeds; her Scriptures; her Formularies; her Catechism; and her Articles; all of these were alike at variance with the new ra

*Replies to " Essays and Reviews." I. Rev. E. M. Goulburn, D. D.; II. Rev. H. J. Rose, B. D.; III. Rev. C. A. Heurtley, D. D.; IV. Rev. W. J. Irons, D. D.; V. Rev. G. Rorison, M. A.; VI. Rev. A. W. Haddan, B. D.; VII. Rev. Chr. Wordsworth, D. D. With a Preface by the Lord Bishop of Oxford; and letters from the Radcliffe Observer and the Reader in Geology in the University of Oxford. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1862. 12mo. pp. 438.

tionalistic unbelief. The struggles and strifes of the last thirty years have been the inevitable consequence." These sentences and others which we might quote indicate the stand-point from which the most of these Replies are written, as well as the spirit by which some of them are animated. The point of view is that of the lofty Church-of-Englandism which judges all re-investigation of the Evidences and the import of revelation to be both needless and presumptuous, which accepts the past discussions which its own theologians of an earlier time have prescribed as amply sufficient for the exigencies of the present, and which is disposed to denounce all recent speculations and earnest inquiries as rationalistic in spirit and dangerous in tendency. It is doubtless true that the Essays and Reviews are justly open to the severest censure and deserve a pointed rebuke for the flippancy of their arguments, the credulity of their unbelief, and the boldness, not to say the blasphemy, of some of their positions. But it should be remembered, on the other hand, that the book, in some sense, also represents thousands of honest inquirers who would fain have their traditionary faith reassured, and thousands more of honest doubters whose misgivings and difficulties cannot be appeased by lordly assumption or churchly indignation. Prof. Jowett has said many ill-advised and dangerous things in his Essay on the Interpretation of Scripture and in his commentaries. That he should have been left to say and think them is in great part to be ascribed to the neglect of theological study and culture which has been so somnolently allowed in Oxford, in the very diocese of the Lord Bishop Samuel. But neither Prof. Jowett nor his friend will think themselves answered-certainly they will not be convinced nor satisfied by the counter Essay of Canon Wordsworth. The supercilious air and the contemptuous tone in which his true things are uttered deprives them of much of their effect, while the ignorant misconception of the real and important truths which occasioned the exaggerations and errors of Jowett is creditable neither to his knowledge nor his charity. A severe, but not unjust, critic of Wordsworth would find ample material for animadversion in his own bald puerilities of illustration and his narrow anti-Puritanism. To this reply the attention of the majority of readers will naturally be directed first, because of the superior interest and importance which pertain to the Essay which it is designed to refute. It is rather unfortunate that the most import

ant, as well as the ablest Tractate of the original volume should be confronted by the weakest and most exceptionable in the whole volume of "Replies."

The other Essays are of unequal merit and interest.

The one on The Education of the World is an able and sufficient answer to the well-meant, but strangely Paganized discourse of Dr. Temple. The single sentence which we quote is a grateful exhibition of a better spirit than that which is exhibited in some of the other Replies, as well as the expression of a wholesome truth.

"In conclusion, may the writer of these pages be allowed to express the hope that the controversy which the seven Essays have roused, will be conducted by those opposed to them not only calmly and temperately, but with a candid acknowledgment of those truths after which the Essayists are groping, and with which their very serious errors are weighted? Mere denials and protests do little or nothing; we must seek to disentangle the truth which they are misrepresenting, and to set it forth, if possible, free of their perversions."

The reply to the Essay of Dr. Williams on Bunsen by Rev. H. J. Rose is just, and well put in most of its positions, though it betrays some of the ignorance of German criticism and theology, which seems to be inveterate among the best advised of the English scholars.

The Essay on Miracles, counter to that of Baden Powell, contains many just and pertinent thoughts, but is scarcely equal to the exigencies of the argument or to those of the times. A passage from one of the notes is a little noticable, considering that it was written by the Margaret Professor of Divinity. "I am not acquainted with Coleridge's works: but judging from the use which Professor Powell and others have made of them, I cannot but think he has in this respect, through dread of one extreme, contributed to thrust the pendulum back with too violent a swing' toward the opposite." One is tempted to ask whether the Professor could not have contrived to beg or borrow a copy of the works of Coleridge somewhere in Oxford.

Perhaps the most significant of these Replies is that on "the idea of the National Church, (considered in reply to Mr. Wilson.)" It is not only an answer to Wilson's very latitudinarian views respecting comprehension and subscription, but it confesses distinctly the weakness of the position of the English Church from its relation to the State, and urges in a very honest and outspoken language the absolute and impending necessity that the Church can

not long continue to occupy its present attitude in respect to its connection with the State and the lack of discipline. We quote the following:

"Well will it be if the present controversy bring back honest minds to the principle impressed on the history of all Christendom from the Pentecost onwards -that the communicants of a church, with their baptized dependents, are the church. We being many are one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread.'* A departure from this point, towards any other comprehension,' is a departure in the direction of ultimate infidelity,—which only a lack of the logical power fails at once to detect. For the world's sake, no less than the church's, the sacred rites of our religion must, before long, be more discriminately used. The church cannot forever go on lamenting her lack of discipline.' The State cannot continue nominally to acknowledge our Christianity as Divine, and then browbeat it-(as capriciously as Indians their idols when deaf to their prayers). This will never be tolerable to a people who, whatever they become, will not be Indian in superstition.

"Let men ponder well the theory, whether it be called 'Positivism,' or 'Multitudinism,' or this ideal 'Nationalism,' which 'philosophers' have propounded for them, as thinking the world is now ripe for it. Broad Christianity,' as if to put us to shame, has been held up as a glass before the mind of this generation; it is represented as demanded by the character and needs of the age. And yes,-this 'Multitudinism' is truly the only idea which will fairly account for the treatment which our religion has submitted to receive,-a theory of UNPRINCIPLE. The conscience of the church has been so frequently crushed, the free expression of her mind so restrained, that bolder thinkers than our statesmen have not hesitated at last (as has been seen) to put out as a theory for future action that which has, however unconsciously, been almost a theory of the past,---a Multitudinist' national church, of which 'public opinion' is to be the rule, and from which every creed and article may be withdrawn, and only such portion of the New Testament be admitted as each individual may approve as genuine, and interpret' to his own mind!

"Neither for the nation, nor for the individual, can it be safe to go on without principle."

The Essay on the Creative Week will attract much attention from its novel and bold hypothesis in respect to the six days work, which to certain minds may seem quite as neological and destruc. tive as some of the tenets of Prof. Jowett. We cannot afford the room even for a brief statement of this hypothesis, nor for any notice of the well meant and kind tempered Essay on Rationalism.

The volume of Replies is not only theologically valuable, but it is also psychologically instructive to those who watch with interest the developments and directions of thought in the English Church

* 1 Cor. x, 17.