for the abilities, research, and motives of the author, and our conviction that, as a synopsis of the scientific branch of the controversy, his volume may be read with advantage by those whose opportunities may not have enabled them to consult the works from which it is compiled.

The Cloister-Life of the Emperor Charles V. By WILLIAM STIRLING, Author of "Annals of the Artists of Spain." Second Edition. London: Parker.

Ir is difficult for one living in the middle of the nineteenth century to imagine the feelings with which Charles the Fifth's abdication of his throne must have been regarded by Europe in the middle of the sixteenth century. The greatest monarch of his age, rich in the wealth of two continents, the warrior who, on his cream-coloured genet, had stood in the van when he led his knights against Moorish lances, or against the yet bolder spirits fighting for a nobler prize in the campaigns of Saxony,-the astute politician and far-sighted counsellor who could command resources where inferior minds could only see despair, -the generous and appreciating patron of the peaceful arts, whose name is linked with the "graver of the Vico, the chisel of Leoni, the pencil of Titian, and the lyre of Ariosto,"-this man, renouncing crowns and retiring from a world-wide fame to the secluded monastery of Yuste, and to the monotonous society and petty cares of monks, was certainly an event entitled, as much as most events that are recorded in history, to be regarded as a new thing in the earth.

The public life of Charles has long since been made familiar to English readers by the graceful pen of our own Robertson. He justly looked upon Charles as the connecting link between the age of chivalry and the age of the printing-press, between the age of illuminated missals and the age of Bibles, more influenced by the former, yet not insensible to some of the better influences of the latter; and the result has been what many have pronounced that historian's greatest work. But the cloisterlife of Charles has hitherto been little known, and even much that is recorded, derived for the most part from secondary sources, is inaccurate both in its general impressions and in its details. Mr Stirling has done what Robertson had left undone. From the pages of Siguença, the historian of the order of St Jerome, to which the monastery of Yuste belonged, and still more from the materials supplied by a mass of MSS, contained in the archives of the French Foreign Office, he has supplied us with authentic information in reference to that part of the emperor's life at which general history usually left him, and yet from which it was impossible not to wish that one could withdraw the veil. His elegant narrative, reminding us in some parts of the pictorial grouping of Macaulay, will upset more than one of the traditional and popular impressions regarding the monastic life of the abdicated emperor. If we think of gloomy walls and hair-shirts, and long vigils, and scanty rations, we shall bring up as incorrect a picture of the circumstances of the royal recluse as may be. A house pleasantly situated on the wooded brow of a mountain, and looking down into the beautiful valley of the

Vera, and a table furnished with all the delicacies that can tickle the palate of the dyspeptic and the epicure-eels brought by the weekly courier from Valladolid; partridges from Gama; sausages from Tordesillas, and other gifts which came from the neighbouring families so soon as they discovered the retired monarch's weakness, and which, as they were borne in on trains of mules, made the attached secretary, Luis Quixada, tremble at them as laden with so much gout and bile;-all these, mingled as they were with masses and melancholy, have more about them of the miniature palace than of the monastery.

The popular conception is quite as much at fault which represents the cloister-life of Charles as a long repentance for his abdication, and a longing to grasp again the reins of power. He was sincere in his abdication, misguided religious sentiment had some influence; his conscious inability, from growing weakness, to discharge the active duties of his vast empire, had more. But it was one thing to abdicate the name of royalty, and another to abdicate its cares; and Charles, unwittingly to himself, and against his own purpose, found that he had carried into solitude the same heart that had beaten within him in camps and councils. Beginning with attention to a few public affairs, his eye at length swept the whole troubled horizon of Europe; and the long despatches which his secretary was constrained to pen, told that it was one thing to have found solitude and another thing to find

repose.

The monastic life of Charles, cutting him off from human sympathies and influences, appears to have extinguished that tolerant spirit in religion which had never been warm in his bosom at the best, for we find him regretting that he had not put Luther to death when the great Reformer was in his power, and enjoining upon his successor, as a religious duty, the extirpation of heretics. His performance of his own funeral obsequies, though fancifully described in many points in the high-wrought narrative of Robertson, has a gloomy and imposing splendour about it, even in the more subdued narrative of Mr Stirling. But, after all, what was it but a drama well got up. In truth, the closing months of the emperor's life present one of the most impressive lessons which history ever taught the world of the emptiness and misery of a merely ceremonial and outward religion,-a lesson which acquires its deepest emphasis from the rank and material resources of the dying man, and from his nearness to that world of realities in which the fictitious dignities of earth and the hollow devices of formalism are alike worthless. How striking the contrast between the religious retirement of this great chief of the sixteenth century, mechanical and melancholy in its services, trembling in its very hopes, and that joyful decade of life lighted up by evangelical light, which had begun to be enjoyed by one of the great intellectual chiefs of our own age when he was summoned away to the perfect light and the purer joys of heaven!

GERMAN RELIGIOUS PERIODICALS.

PART of the plan contemplated in this Review is to supply a digest of at least the most important religious periodicals of Germany. To accomplish this object, it will be necessary to limit our attention to journals which on the one hand possess an evangelical tendency, and on the other hand a character more strictly theological. We shall accordingly omit, as not falling within our plan, that class of religious publications of which the aim is simply edifying, such as the Christenbote of Burk, and the Hausfreund of the venerable Gossner; though it may not be without interest to notice that, for the success of this most useful class, in the atmosphere of Germany, it has been found essential to raise the historical element into great prominence, and to combine along with the edifying the history of the kingdom of God. This is the more worthy of remark, because the more scientific labours of the man who, beyond all others, contributed most to revive evangelical theology-we mean Neander-were from first to last conducted on an historical foundation. On the other hand, we shall also omit, as altogether hostile to our Christian aim, journals not evangelical in tone and bearing. Such periodicals, for instance, as the Tübingen Zeitschrift, emanating from the school of Baur, we shall utterly dismiss from our attention. For, though they excite surprise, -perhaps no small part of the vain ambition of their authors,-and though they spread alarm like that which any incendiary can raise, they glory in an Ebionism of so low a type, that they are neither evangelical nor Christian in any sense of the word. In this country they would be set down as simply Socinian, or rather as flatly Infidel.

At the outset of our labours in this department, it may be proper, in a preliminary notice, to sketch the character and bearing of the foreign journals. That they may neither be blindly deferred to as authorities, nor disdainfully rejected, nothing is more requisite than an intelligent acquaintance with their peculiar tendencies. With many excellencies, they have each their errors. Nor are those errors always slight or harmless. We should be the last to say that it is safe in the perusal of these German works to take any thing on trust,-for every thing is to be tested by the true touchstone, or to leave even a Christian mind in the thicket of their speculations without a warning that he may lose his way, if not trained to exercise an independent judgment, or if not possessed of that instinctive spiritual tact which can separate the kernel from the husk, or, in Scripture language, of " senses exercised to discern both good and evil."

Hence we cannot conceal, that while we esteem this part of our labours an incumbent duty in the present state of theological science, we enter on it with no small feeling of anxiety and no slight sense of our responsibility; for the best theological authorship of Germany is

of a mixed kind. On the one hand, it is not possible to ignore her activity, when we call to mind the influence which she already exercises, and which she seems in a larger measure destined to exercise, on the whole compass of Protestant theology. On the other hand, a generous recognition of all she has of good must be balanced by a faithful guardianship of the truth at home. It will be our aim, then, while attempting to give the spirit of the foreign journals, to refrain as far as possible from all unnecessary circulation of their errors. We shall endeavour to be just to the evangelical theology of Germany, without causing any injury to the cause of truth at home. We may learn much from Germany, and be enriched by the spiritual truth which her struggles have taught her to unfold; and no one church can say of any other church on which the living Spirit of God breathes, "I have no need of thee." Already many have been furthered by her learning, and have found valuable treasures in her mines. Any blind unquestioning deference to Germany, indeed, would be a spirit wholly unworthy of the higher spiritual elevation of this country. But if the theological mind of this country, starting from our own position and from our own point of view, is induced to run a similar career of exegetical inquiry or historical research, we may reap an inestimable blessing from the impulse. The great Master will receive his own with usury, not by one depending on another, but by every church and nation trading with the talent for it

self.

I.-ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PROTESTANTISMUS UND KIRCHE.

One of the most able of the German periodicals, whether we regard its vigorous logic or its powerful writing, though moving rather in the sphere of the church than in that of strict theology, is the Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche, already in its twenty-third volume. Its leading spirit is Dr Harless, the commentator on Ephesians, who, before the ultramontane Government of Bavaria removed him from his chair, was associated as Professor at Erlangen with Höfling, Thomasius, and Hoffmann, the other conductors of the journal, and authors of valuable works. Since Harless became Professor and Pastor at Leipsic-(he is now Vice-President of the Landes Consistorium at Dresden)—this journal has become the organ of the more enlightened Lutheran party, who still remain in connection with the state. It is a journal which, with a love to the church of Christ rarely met with, and beautiful to behold, treats almost all the questions connected with the practico-ecclesiastical interest, the offices and office-bearers of the church, its constitution and government, the power of the keys, the word, the sacraments from every point of view, the development of Lutheran doctrine, the cause of its confessions, and pastoral theology. It does not canvass every theological question or every theological work that may appear, but rather aims at guiding the practical church activity of the Lutheran party. With regard to its standing-point, Thomasius expressed it thus in 1845: "What we want is twofold-first, a FIRM AND SURE BASIS, then a living organic PROGRESS on the ground thereof. Now, this basis is for us the confession of that church to which we ourselves belong, and in the doctrine of which we find the expression of our own faith on the substance of the divine Word. On this confession we stand with the full conviction of our heart, BECAUSE it is built on the foundation

beside which no other can be laid; because it confesses the faith of which we know from the Holy Scripture, and from our own experience, that it justifies and saves. On that account the essential principle of this confession is, at the same time, for us the basis of theology. Theology is to us, in general, nothing else than the scientific investigation, justification, development, and delineation of the one divine truth which in Christ has appeared to the world, and of the one faith on this truth which we share in common with our church. But we thereby know ourselves so little in contradiction to the demand which we make upon theology and its representatives for a living PROGRESS, that we are sure of being able to meet it only in this way. For as in all departments of science, so here, a true progress obtains only when we start from a firm basis and build on a good foundation. If this is not done, men build a house upon the sand, the fate of which may easily be guessed beforehand. In this way the Christian church has won its system of doctrine: in this way it will extend it further. In our confession, however, we find not merely that basis, but at the same time in and with it the germs of such an organic progress. To go forward on this way, we need a PROFOUND knowledge of ecclesiastical attainments, as entering deeply into the divine Word, out of which the confession of our faith has grown up, as well as into the spirit of its doctrine, which is the expression of the great experiences of the glory of this Word; we need discretion, trial, holy earnestness; and it seems to us that, in these respects, not a few of those who speak and boast most of their progress are greatly wanting." These are golden words, full of promise, and they express the sentiments of those from whom theology has most to hope. On all the great doctrines of the Reformation, there could not be a bolder, more vigorous, or learned defender. But when we turn to another side, we are often astonished at its sentiments. The powerful manner in which it has withstood the attempts to separate the school from the church, and the energetic course of argument and action which it has summoned forth, may be understood. But we are often at a loss to understand how its manly advocacy of justification through imputed righteousness by faith alone can well consist with those high church views to which it elsewhere gives expression. It must be added, however, that it is entirely Lutheran, though not at all intemperate in tone. We grieve to say that the traditional dogma of the Lutheran Church-its weakness and reproach-that the king is Summus Episcopus, finds a defender in this journal. They maintain that magistrates, as representatives of the Christian community, are præcipua membra ecclesiæ, and that it was the glory of the Reformation to put the Christian magistracy, existing by divine appointment, in its proper light. They set forth that as the Christian magistrates stood foremost at the Reformation in the cause of truth, it was only natural that they should take the management of ecclesiastical affairs into their hands. This may be an explanation, but it is no defence; and with an amount of mistaken zeal, not easily explained in devoted men, they will not, at least in the present mixed condition of the church, oppose the chief episcopate, even when invested, as it is in Bavaria, in a Popish monarch, because, forsooth, he exercises it through a Protestant authority. We must add, that with all their zeal for the doctrines of the Lutheran confession, they often allow a morbid jealousy for the confession, when it