scending, patronising flatteries of a human philosophy. The Word made flesh, and the teachings He uttered under the thorn, and the spear, and the other side the grave, to be raised by any process of man from "the twilight of the symbol to the full light of pure thought!" that "mystery of godliness," on whose fulness the ages waited,-that doctrine of love, before whose height, and depth, and amazing grandeur, the rapt vision of holy Paul sunk in blindness, to be "taken by the hand," and aided in its "ascent to a higher elevation," by a philosophy which, from out infinite confusions and tedious travails, has hardly staggered into a temporary popularity! Such is the modest offer of Eclecticism. What else is this than the lighted torch going forth to chide the obscurities of a noonday sun; or the miserable æronaut, whose audacity is the condition of successful ballooning, stepping forth from his paper car to help the stars along their eternal pathway!

"Taken by the hand and gently aided," welcomed as the menial is welcomed by the patron! Religion, or rather the religious symbol, has aforetime had this service done for it by philosophy. It is an old offer of civility; and there is old experience of its result when accepted, or even for a moment courted. Paganism itself has a story to tell. Philosophy in the guise of Plato's golden livery, but in the mincing gait and soft graces of the scepticism of Aristippus, undertook to justify to the popular apprehension, and to lead to a higher elevation, the Greek religious symbol; and soon it was hearsed and carried out for burial, a despised and lifeless thing. And so was it with the Roman symbol. It may be said, little harm was done. A plank seen on the shore, it is considered of small matter to throw away; but what shall measure its value to the wrecked and drowning man? They had some light not of earth, though it was only the wandering and splintered beam of a lost revelation; and it was just this that "pure thought" made as darkness visible. And the early ages of our own divine faith, what are they but so many records of what it cost God's servants to free it from this gentle patronage and proffered aid of human reason! The corruptions of mediæval religion were not more the result of human pride acting through the usurpations of a secular ambition, than of human pride seeking to extend unduly the reach of dialectical science, which was the philosophy of that period. The twofold Protestant struggle of the Reformation witnessed to this double process of disturbance in the church. So likewise is it now. The ages change, they bear away their freight of decayed empires; but the truth of God and the tendencies of man's nature remain. And if philosophy, especially in its later guise, do not again prove the fruitful source of ruin to the Christian faith,

it will be, not because the foe has altered in nature or spirit, but because God's own sentry ceases not, day nor night, to watch and to walk round about Zion. Its hidden and dissolving fires are near us; this day they roll beneath the orthodoxy of communions, who boast much of having planted together the school-house and the church. They have already ploughed deep their furrows over the American mind, and left their track to be traced by the ashes of spiritual death.

On the third and last bearing of this system, viz., that on the true type of human greatness, we have only space for a word, and with this we must for the present leave it. We call that the true type which God has revealed to us as true, and of which it is enough to say, that it begins and ends in humility, in dependence on a power outside the individual soul. But the type held up by this creed, as the goal after which mortals are to strive, begins and ends in pride and selfexaltation. It is a greatness, not of the soul that finds its rest, its home, and its joy in fellowship with Him who is the Way, the Truth, the Life; but of

"The soul that on itself retires for strength'

of the soul that stares gropingly into the unfathomable depths, and calls the limit of its own vision the bounds of the universe, that essays to comprehend and explain all, and makes the bounds of its own thought the measure of all life and being.

Verily, the old fables of Ixion on the wheel, and of Sisyphus toiling on the mountain side, are not without a meaning for Modern Philosophy.

ART. IV. 1. A History of the Church of Russia. By A. N. MOURAVIEFF, Chamberlain to his Imperial Majesty, and Under-Procurator of the Most Holy Governing Synod, St Petersburgh. 1838. Translated by the Rev. R. W. BLACKMORE, formerly Chaplain in Cronstadt, now Rector of Donhead, St Mary, Diocese of Sarum. Oxford: 1842. 2. Biblical Researches and Travels in Russia; including a Tour in the Crimea and the Passage of the Caucasus. By Rev. Dr HENDERSON. London: 1826.

3. The Present State of the Greek Church in Russia; or, a Summary of Christian Divinity. By PLATON, late Metropolitan of Moscow, with a Preliminary Memoir on the Ecclesiastical Establishment in Russia, and an Appendix on the Sects. By ROBERT PINKERTON. Edinburgh:

1814.

or

4. Dissertation on Subjects relating to the "Orthodox Eastern" Catholic" Communion. By WILLIAM PALMER, M.A., Fellow of St Mary Magdalene College, Oxford, and Deacon. London: 1853.

5. Sketch of the Religious History of the Slavonic Nations. By Count VALERIAN KRASINSKI. Edinburgh: 1851. 6. The Independent Eastern Churches. A Lecture by Joнn WILSON, D.D., F.R.S. Edinburgh 1845.

7. The Lands of the Bible Visited and Described. By JOHN WILSON, D.D., F.R.S. 2 vols. Edinburgh: 1847.

8. A Wayfarer's Notes on the Shores of the Levant and the Valley of the Nile. By CUTHBERT G. YOUNG, B.A. Edinburgh: 1848.

No one who contemplates the signs of the times can fail to remark that Nationality is fast becoming a new element in controlling or disturbing the nations of the earth. In many countries, as well as in our own, people of different origins, habits, and sympathies have been commingled and kept together, more, perhaps, by the force of pressure than by internal affinities. Austria is a great political conglomerate; its emperor rules over Germans, Sclavonians, Italians, Magyars, and several other tribes; and all who are acquainted with the history of the past five years of that empire are aware of the results-commotion on the one hand, and oppression on the other; uneasiness goaded to rebellion by bonds, imprisonment, exile, and death, and at length a fixed habit of revolt, as soon as the despairing can entertain a momentary hope. The Magyars cherish their nationality with the force of a passion. The Sclaves, it is well known, deem the time not distant when they are likely to become the leading nation of the earth, if that day have not already arrived, Italians are a-tiptoe throughout their lovely but oppressed peninsula, for a similar development. In brief, if war is ever to ravage the continent of Europe again, nationality will, without doubt, form a new element in determining the sides which men are to take, the aims which they are to cherish, and the terminus at which they are to seek repose. Heterogeneous combinations on the one hand, or unnatural insulations on the other, seem about to be dissolved, to give place to the natural relationships which link man to man.

The

Should these things happen, the Religions of the nations will also be remodified and recast. In many cases, violence has been done to the consciences of men. They have been constrained to adopt one class of opinions, or to reject another, at the command of their rulers, or under the dread of death; but if men be set free from such coercion-if, in the upheav

ings which may be at hand, they be left at liberty to choose, new creeds will be adopted or old ones resumed, not always at the dictation of truth, but in harmony with revived nationalities. Italy is one obvious example. Its present superstition would be discarded perhaps by some millions of Italians, though the substitute which they might adopt would not, in many cases, be better fitted to elevate man, or prepare him for immortality, than the beliefs which at present debase them. No one can fail to notice, that amid these revolutions and remouldings of the future, the Greek Church, and the nations that hold its creed, are destined to act some important part, or perhaps a decisive one. And yet few things can surprise us more than the ignorance which prevails regarding that vast section of Christendom. We are familiar with the creed of Rome; we are not ignorant of the superstitions of Brama, of Boodh, and the grand Llama; we have refutation upon refutation of the Mohametan apostasy; the African fetish and the Indian faquir are household words with us: but by many in the West the history, the doctrines, the practices, the very existence of the Greek Church are unknown or unheeded.

And the marvel here is augmented by the extent of that church, which so many practically ignore. Its hordes extend from the dreary Siberia to "Araby the blest," from the Sclavonic tribes in the far West of Europe to Turkey in Asia. Exclusive of the sects deemed heretical, it appears from recent statistics, that nearly 66,000,000 of the inhabitants of the globe hold its doctrines and practise its superstitions. Of these, 50,000,000 are in Russia; about 12,000,000 are in Turkey; under 3,000,000 are in the dominions subject to the Emperor of Austria; and the rest are distributed over different portions of the East or the Levant; altogether, they form not less than a fourth-part of professing Christendom. And "still our wonder grows" when we remember that that church is established in Russia, and is the only one that is allowed to wield any influence there. It is well known what strides that nation has made in self-aggrandisement in modern times. Her acquisitions from Sweden have made it a comparative speck on the map. Her share of Poland is an empire, being nearly equal to Austria. In Persia, again, she has a territory equal to all England. In Turkey, she has a kingdom equal to that of Prussia proper. In short, since the year 1770, the dominions of the Czar have been doubled in extent; and the Greek Church is dominant over a large proportion of that vast territory. There can be no doubt also that Russia has designs upon the Ottoman empire, and would absorb it tomorrow, if she could; and there also the zeal of her auto

crats for proselytising would speedily appear. In view of all these considerations, we deem it advisable to devote a portion of our present Review to a brief statement of the history, creed, and present condition of the Greek Church.

Its history, at least in its salient points, may be shortly sketched. It was in the year 324 that the first Roman emperor who bore the Christian name founded Constantinople, and that city was destined long to sway or largely to control the destinies of the world. Like Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome, it became a centre of Christian influences, and soon acquired an ascendancy over all the others, with the exception of the last. The plots and struggles which led to that result furnish one of the most humbling chapters in the annals of human weakness and priestly ambition. Constantinople and Rome, however, with their rival dignitaries, were at length declared to be equal in rank; and pride, thus gratified, was quiet for a season. But lurking jealousies still rankled; suspicions were easily fomented; and the limits of the Eastern and Western jurisdictions, the Arian controversy, disputed settlements and wars, all helped, for long dreary years, to prevent communion between the two sections of which Constantinople and Rome were respectively the head. The decrees of councils, the edicts of emperors,-for example that of Zeno in 482,were all in vain. The Pope of Rome at last excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the East and the West seemed to be hoplessly severed. Centuries rolled away amidst these contentions. The subject of image-worship augmented the antipathies, and widened the breach. Council was once more pitted against council, and the wrath of man seemed to have cast off all restraint, in proportion as he corrupted the worship or swerved from the Word of his God.

But keen as these contentions had been, they were soon superseded by a controversy which was destined to sever the Eastern and the Western Churches for many generations, and even till the present day. From whom does the Holy Spirit proceed? Is it from the Father alone, Patre? or is it also from the Son, Patre Filioque? The Greeks asserted the former, and held it with most dogmatic tenacity. The Latins clung as closely to the latter, and thus the two words, " Filioque," became a battle cry. They divided the East from the West far more completely than the Bosphorus divides Europe from Asia, and the times when the salvation of man was suspended on an -the difference between ὁμοούσιος and ὁμοιούσιος, — were revived. The charge of heresy was bandied from church to church, and a gulph was opened which no power or policy has yet been able either to bridge over or to fill. Excommunication on the one side led to high-handed retaliation on the other. From age