consequence of allowing him in the still more uncertain vanity of perpetuating his prejudices. The law of England trusts to individual probity, or affection, as the best safeguard against every other hostile influence;--why should such motives be insufficient in this case also? Such motives do indeed fail ;there are exceptions to their power; people do occasionally disinherit their relatives, for purposes miscalled charitable, as well as for purposes of mere pride, or anger, or malevolence; but depend upon it, that no positive legal restrictions can prevent such anomalies as these. They do not prevent them now as a matter of fact.

Besides, we have our remedy. Undue influence, if proved, invalidates a will at once; so does mental incompetency. Doctors' Commons and the Court of Chancery take very good care that no man shall leave his property away from his relatives, for whatever purpose, unless he does so willingly and knowingly, in his sound mind, and unbiassed by any undue solicitation or corruption. This is as it should be, and this is enough. It is seldom that pecuniary bequests to charities, made in improper derogation of the rights of relatives, are not, or might not be, set aside through these means;-devises of land would be in no worse case, if the Act of George II. were repealed, than bequests of money thus are now.

--

And for party spirit,-if the danger of encouraging gifts to sectarian purposes be urged as a reason for prohibiting gifts to charity altogether, it can only be said that our faith in the cause of truth must indeed be weak, if we are obliged, in order to bolster it up, not indeed to have recourse to penal restrictions and disabilities directed exclusively against error, but (something even worse than this) actually to give up and proscribe with the error all support of truth itself. For the sake of truth, we proscribe truth; and that we may not maintain error, we give up the support of its triumphant and ever-enduring antagonist.

Another reason, however, against death-bed gifts, is slightly touched upon in the debates of 1736, and also in the evidence now before us. It is wrong, so it is said, to permit death-bed gifts to be encouraged, for they are apt to be made on a mistaken principle of their saving and inherent merit. Now here again we must remind our readers that gifts by will are not necessarily gifts made on the point of death; and therefore that this argument, even if there be any thing really in it, does not justify us in ruling that all testamentary gifts to charity are necessarily to be proscribed. But suppose it did;-what then? Is it, or is it not to be justified, that when our poor are starving, and there is no one to help, and when the one only permitted source of assistance is individual bounty;-that if a man mix up with such an

act of bounty, hopes or fears, which are, so far as he is concerned, wrong and unfounded, we should therefore fling back his gifts in the face of him or his representatives, because he trusted, peradventure, that he was doing over-righteously, and thereby, perhaps, perilled his own soul? What is it to us that the donor hoped, as it is phrased, superstitiously? Is it for us to pry into his motives? Let it be enough that there was no personal advantage, no solicitation, no corruption. Doctors' Commons, and the Court of Chancery, generally look pretty well to this. If a testator is not in his sound mind, or is under undue influence, his will is, and always would be, invalid. What more can be wanted than this? Surely all the rest is between the donor and his own conscience. The lawgiver looks not to the dead, but to the living. The sincerity of the alms-giving can be known only to Him who knows the sincerity of the repentance whereof those alms purport to be the fruits. Who shall decide on the sincerity or efficacy of a death-bed repentance? We repeat that we are no advocates of a death-bed charity. But surely it is unwise, surely it is cruel, surely it is wrong, that cold and deadening legislation, which is to proscribe altogether acts of testamentary charity, lest peradventure they may not have been pure from every stain of self;-and is to cut off from the dying man all power of giving at all, lest perchance he may dream that his gift, even then, is not too late, and that it is as real a token of denial, as if it had been made when he was in life and strength.

Charity,' says Bishop Taylor, with its twin daughters, alms, and forgiveness, is especially effectual for the procuring God's 'mercies in the day and the manner of our death. "Alms deliver 'from death," said old Tobias; and, "alms make an atonement for 'sins," said the son of Sirach. And so said Daniel; and so say all the wise men of the world. And in this sense also is that of St. Peter. "Love covers a multitude of sins ;" and St. Clement ' in his Constitutions gives this counsel, "If you have any thing in your hands, give it, that it may work to the remission of thy sins: for by faith and alms sins are purged."

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Now alms are therefore effective to the abolition and pardon of our sins, because they are preparatory to, and impetratory of, the grace of repentance; and are fruits of repentance; and therefore St. Chrysostom affirms, that repentance without alms is dead, and without wings, and can never soar upwards to the 'element of love. But because they are a part of repentance, and hugely pleasing to Almighty God, therefore they deliver us from the evils of an unhappy and accursed death; for so Christ delivered his disciples from the sea, when He appeased

6

'the storm, though they still sailed in the channel: and this St. Jerome verifies with all his reading and experience, saying, "I 'do not remember to have read, that ever any charitable person 'died an evil death." And although a long experience hath ob'served God's mercies to descend upon charitable people, like the dew upon Gideon's fleece, when all the world was dry; yet for this also we have a promise, which is not only an argument ' of a certain number of years, (as experience is,) but a security 'for eternal ages. "Make ye friends of the mammon of un

righteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." When faith fails, and chastity is useless, and temperance shall be no more, then charity shall 'bear you upon wings of cherubim to the eternal mountain of 'the Lord!

*

'I do not mean, this should only be a death-bed charity, any more 'than a death-bed repentance; but it ought to be the charity of our 'life and healthful years; a parting with portions of our goods then, when we can keep them; we must not first kindle our 'lights when we are to descend into our houses of darkness, or bring a glaring torch suddenly to a dark room, that will amaze • the eye, and not delight it, or instruct the body; but if our tapers have, in their constant course, descended into their grave, crowned all the way with light, then let the death-bed charity be doubled, ' and the light burn brightest, when it is to deck our hearse!"

And this is the charity that we are to fling back in the face of the giver! This is the charity which we, with a fourth of our population almost in a state of heathenism, and without hope of help except from it, are expected to probe and to test in its secret springs and motives, lest, perchance, we should find anything there that may taint the gift, and having found, or fancied, the plague-spot, may cut off from the living the bounty of the dead! Again we ask, is there anything in such a reason as this that can justify us in putting disabilities and discouragements upon free and voluntary beneficence?

On the whole, then, the case is this. We have a great want, an admitted one; an appalling, imminent, and most overpowering evil. ONE means alone of meeting that evil falls in with the temper of the times, or presents the slightest prospect of being practically successful. We find that means and source of succour hemmed in and fettered round by legal restrictions and disabilities, the growth of other times and the creatures of other circumstances. We find individual bounty discouraged and proscribed by law. We find it subjected to subtle and refined distinctions,

Holy Living and Dying, vol. iv. p. 382.-Heber's Edition.

to intricate conditions, to heavy disabilities. We find one subject of its action, viz. land, marked out for peculiar prohibition. We find one mode of its operation, viz. the testamentary one, with respect to land, proscribed. We find this; and we find no reason that can be alleged for these restrictions, save these two-viz.: 1. That land ought to be constantly capable of alienation,—and, 2. That testamentary gifts ought not to be made to the detriment of relatives. We find that the first of these reasons is beside the purpose; for that land may, by will, be made the object of private bounty, and yet be perfectly capable of alienation. We find that the second cannot be supported, for that the law of England does, as a matter of fact, allow testamentary gifts to be made every day, with perfect freedom, and without any reference whatever to the rights of relatives, who are constantly disinherited for strangers.

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Can we resist the conclusion? Can the Act of the 9th of George II. maintain its ground? Sooner or later it must surely go; and, for our part, we cannot help thinking that simple repeal would be most beneficial. An Act to enable charity trustees, 'with the consent of the Court of Chancery, to sell or exchange their lands in certain cases,' might accompany this repeal; but we are persuaded that simple repeal would be both abstractedly the best course, and the one most likely to succeed. Let Lord John Manners try it. His noble efforts, already made in this cause, are worthy of every sympathy, and of every success, and we feel convinced that he must ultimately succeed. But simple repeal, we are persuaded, has the best chance. Sir James Graham, and the other opponents of this most necessary reform, confine themselves, for the most part, to objections to the form and mode of the proposed alteration. Let Lord John Manners then avoid these objections, by proposing a simple repeal. No provisions could probably be framed for effectually securing relations against disinheritance,—and there is, indeed, no more reason why this should be attempted in the present case than in any other. Relatives may be disinherited now, and whatever conditions and provisions might be introduced for preventing such a consummation in this one single case, would only give a handle to the opponents of charity. Sir James Graham has, even now, no more to urge for the Act of Geo. II. than that it is better to give in life than on the point of death-a conclusion which everybody will grant to him. But in order that charity, even in life, may flow unimpeded, this law must be repealed. We repeat, that it cannot last long. It cannot stand against the accumulating pressure of our religious and temporal destitution. Let its opponents then persevere. Its days are numbered!-Sooner or later it must fall!

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ART. III.-1. Die Reformatorischen Bestrebungen in der Katholischen Kirche. Von DR. ANTON THEINER. Altenburg. 1846. (The Reforming Tendencies in the Catholic Church. By DR. ANTON THEINER.)

2. Zur Rechtfertigung der Deutsch-Katholischen gegen Klagen Römischgläubiger. Von DR. H. E. G. PAULUS. Karlruhe. 1846. (Defence of the German Catholics against the Accusations of those who hold Romish Doctrines. By DR. PAULUS.)

3. Die Mission der Deutsch-Katholiken. Von G. G. GERVINUS. Heidelberg. 1846. (The Mission of the German Catholics. By G. G. GERVINUS. Translated from the German. London. 1846.)

4. Notes on the Rise, Progress, and Prospects of the Schism from the Church of Rome called the German Catholic Church. By SAMUEL LAING, Esq. Second Edition. London. 1846.

ON the 6th of July, 1844, a circular notice was issued by the Bishop of Treves, Dr. Arnoldi, stating, that in consequence of the urgent request of the Clergy and believers in the diocese, the holy relic preserved in the cathedral, being the coat without seam worn by our Saviour, would be exhibited for six weeks from the 18th of the following August, in order that the wish of all who have the pious intention of making a pilgrimage to 'Treves, to behold and venerate the holy garment of our Divine 'Redeemer, may be fulfilled, and each may gain the entire ' remission of his sins, granted by Pope Leo X. under date of 26th January 1514.'

Mr. Laing has very justly observed, that the veneration for relics springs from a nobler source than ignorance or super'stition; and accordingly it has been the common practice in all ages, and among the followers of all religions, to preserve memorials of past events, or relics of those whom we have loved. and lost, and to contemplate them from time to time, with pious veneration. Indeed, it would be difficult to believe that man to have a faithful and affectionate disposition who does not treasure up some such memorials, however worthless in themselves, and make them the means of bringing more sensibly before him every circumstance connected with the departed, and of strengthening and renewing the love and reverence which he feels. Such, too, was the custom which Christians in very early times adopted with respect to relics of saints and martyrs, and which