like. Such historic persons fare badly when represented by valet historians; by these they are levelled with their own valets, and placed on the same plane, or it may be even a little lower than the plane, of these sagacious judges of human character. The Thersites of Homer, who rails at kings, is a permanent figure of all ages.

The grand conclusion to which all Hegel's speculations on history and politics tend is, that the actual world is as it ought to be; that the true Goodness, the universal Divine Reason, is, at the same time, power, bringing itself into actuality. "This Goodness, this Reason, in its most concrete conception, is God." God governs the world: the matter of his government, the realising of his plan, is universal history. "In the clear light of this divine Idea," says Hegel, "which is not mere idea, all outward seeming falls away, as if the world were a senseless, perverse accident." But we must leave the consideration of a subject, which is rapidly and dangerously coming into notice, under the labours of inferior minds, and which connects itself plainly with the developments of the Church. This we suppose to be the only one of Hegel's works which would endure. translation into English.

We cannot contemplate with gravity some of the speculations found in modern German works. The very language becomes barbarous. On sacred subjects, it is horribly like the wildest ravings of the Hindus. Mathematics and physics are mixed up with theology: thus Oken is represented as saying, "God can come into time only as radius." "The line is a long nothing, the superfices a void nothing, the sphere a thick nothing; in fine, something is only nothing endowed with predicates all things are nothing with different forms; God is a rotating ball; the world is the rotating God."+ We must not smile at this, lest we incur a censure for our AngloSaxon shallowness. The same theosophist tells us that God before he created the world was darkness, and in the first act of creation became fire. We wonder no longer at the honour bestowed on Jacob Boehm. As Hegel declared that such things cannot be expressed in French, so we are sure they can be neither comprehended nor tolerated in English. Our language suffers a dreadful violation in the attempt. Germans in passing through Pennsylvania often smile at the changes wrought in their own language. We wish our neighbours would confine their emendations to the German; but our vernacular also suffers; and we have from the same prolific land such mongrels as "surrogate," "stand-point," "world-religion," "ground-proof," "extra-anthropological," and the like. Our ears have already become familiar with the me and the * Michelet, ii. 430.

* Werke, ix. 40.

not-me. Copying Bardili and Herbart too closely, we may arrive at Pferde-ich, the "Horse-me.' "The experience of beasts," says he, "has also the categories, only they cannot maintain them." The shield against all raillery is the immanent conviction of transcendental Germans that they are the depositories of all knowledge. To them, Germany is the world. In their catalogues of works on theology recommended to students, there is in general an ignoring of all English ones. "Prussia," said Sietze, "is a giant-harp, strung in the garden of God, to lead the chorus of the world." This beats Jonathan's talk of "the great nation." None have been more ready than we to give honour to Germans for their great contributions to learning, criticism, and history; for their evervarying and barbarous metaphysic, we owe them no thanks. While we write, some new dream is doubtless supplanting the old one. It is pleasing to observe that the great image is less strong, and that the feet and toes, part of potter's clay and part of iron, indicate that the kingdom shall be divided.

In the foregoing sketch of Hegel's life, we have put a constraint upon ourselves, and following his ardent admirer, have set forth at length his great abilities. To give an abstract of his system, we have not attempted. Even Morell, who, if any one, could have done it, has failed to furnish to English readers an intelligible view of the whole. To his epitome, however, we would refer as the best extant. One closing word as to the proclamation in Germany of banns between Hegelianism and evangelical Christianity. At a first view, it might appear that the great philosopher, and his adherents of the extreme right, were deeply concerned for the interests of spiritual Lutheranism. They use its terms, de industria, and have the name of God, of the Holy Trinity, and of the Spirit, continually in their mouths. A little study suffices to show, that to every one of the familiar phrases of religion they have annexed notions of their own. This is the most dangerous mode of bringing in heresy and infidelity. The very words of the Westminster Catechism may be rehearsed from a professor's chair, and then explained to mean the exact reverse of their true import; this adds perfidy to falsehood. We do not charge it on the Hegelian divines, but employ it as an apt illustration. As a celebrated theological innovator of New England used to say of his novel expositions of the quinquarticular controversy, that he was "only taking the bearskins off Calvinism;" so Strauss, while he is offering Christianity a holocaust in Hegel's temple, calls it a simple "cutting away of the extra fat of the church-dogma." If we must choose, let us have an open enemy. Like Ajax, we pray for

* Streitschriften, Heft iii. p. 59.

conflict in the light. Socinianism, about Boston, already affects half the language of the church: it will probably be her next finesse to return to the whole Athanasian creed, with private meanings of her own.

ART. IV. Essays on Various Subjects. By his Eminence CARDINAL WISEMAN. In three volumes. Vol. ii. London: Dolman. Pp. 494.

THE true spring of the English Reformation, and of whatever was new and distinctive in the religious life of the church and nation since that time, was the Word of God. As at Wittemberg, as at Zurich, as at Geneva, as at St Andrews, so was it emphatically here. The Bible reopened wide before the world, and re-enthroned within the Church of God,-that was the grand distinctive work of the men of that age, and their priceless legacy to all succeeding times. This was the one fulcrum on which rested the mighty lever that heaved the whole medieval world from its foundations,-this the trumpetblast, at whose voice whole nations awoke and gathered together for a holy war, "because of truth, and meekness, and righteousness." It was the old seed of the eternal Word that was sown again broad-cast over the world, and sprung up over many lands in a fresh harvest of Pentecostal life and power. The English Reformation,-like every other true refor mation, whether in individual souls, or in nations and churches at large, was no mere organic change, hatched in cabinets or shaped in conclaves of bishops and doctors, but a living fire kindled in men's hearts by the same hand which sixteen centuries before had sent "fire upon the earth."

It is of the utmost importance to keep this fact distinctly in view in every question which concerns the history, the principles, and the destinies of the Reformed Church of England. Thus alone can we understand its true genius, and the real source of its strength. We must remember that in its real essence and living spirit, it was not an institution, but a birth; and that not as one that should spring, Minerva-like, full-grown and full-armed, from the brain of a Henry or a Cranmer, but "begotten" within the womb of earnest hearts, by the incorruptible Word of God. In point of fact, the movement was not only in its sources deeper, but in its date far anterior to those personal interests and political exigencies to which the malice of adversaries has striven to trace its origin. Latimer is already thundering forth his thrilling sermons from his pulpit

at Cambridge; Bilney is already poring in secret over the sacred page, or flits from house to house on errands of mercy amid the poor of the gospel flock; already are Protestant martyrs rotting in Oxford dungeons; already is John Tyndale skulking in foreign cities, and fleeing from town to town with the halfprinted sheets of his English Bible; already are bales of Bibles and Testaments arriving contraband at the harbour of the Thames, and eagerly bought up, passed from hand to hand, and devoured by greedy thousands;-thus already is the holy fire kindled, and is spreading far and wide,-years before the name of Cranmer had been heard in history, and while Henry VIII. still holds his place as the foremost champion of the Papal system. Henry, in short, for his own ends, availed himself of the Reformation spirit, not created it; and Cranmer and his coadjutors (a noble task in its place, but still not the highest) only gave form, and shape, and authoritative sanction to a principle which already existed as a living and triumphant power in the land, and which, with them or against them, must have still gone on conquering and to conquer.

Thus emphatically true it is that the Bible and the Bible. alone is the religion of Protestants. The Bible, speaking directly home to the individual heart and soul, and interpreted and applied by the living Spirit of God,—the Bible, the one test of truth, the one source of authority, the one spring of spiritual life and health,-the Bible, the one oracle of the living God, and mightiest instrument of his grace, that was the new wine which everywhere burst the old bottles of traditionary forms and dogmas, and which demanded the creation of new institutions to receive and conserve it for the use of all succeeding time.

This the Reformers in a great measure accomplished. Besides clearly enunciating in public deeds and formularies the principle of the sole authority of the Word of God, they endeavoured so to remodel the outward framework of the church as to give free scope to its operation. Whatever was manifestly contrary to its dictates, or palpably antagonistic to its spirit, they unsparingly removed. Here, however, they paused. In all other respects things were permitted to remain in great measure as they were. Unlike our Scottish Reformers, who with axe and mattock fairly cleared the ground, and dug their foundation anew for their new structure, our mitred and surpliced neighbours of the south were content to build on the old foundation, and work according to the old model; or rather, they left the shell of the old edifice standing, and only remodelled and refitted it as they thought best for the new inmate it was to receive, and the new purpose to which it was to be applied. We are not undervaluing the work of the English

Reformers. On the contrary, no one who remembers the state of things as they found them, and that in which they left them, and who takes into account the circumstances in which they did their work, can deny them the praise of having executed their task with a firm and an earnest hand. Let any one compare the Latin matins and vespers of the old ritual, with the vernacular morning and evening service; still more the pompous mass, with its endless bowings, crossings, genuflexions, kissings, turnings, unintelligible mutterings, and meaningless dumb-show, with the simple and scriptural majesty of the communion office; and let him call to mind the circumstances in which these men had to work, under the influence of old prejudices, a despotic court, and a divided people, and his wonder will be, not that they accomplished so little, but that they accomplished so much. Still the general contour and framework of the body ecclesiastical remained in many respects unchanged. Though no true Romish devotee could have beheld that new temple without tears, yet there was much about it to remind him of former days. The episcopal and archiepiscopal thrones of the old sees; the majestic minsters and abbey churches of the old worship; the white-robed bands of prebendaries, canons, and youthful choristers, chanting as of old their matins and even-song; the Kyrie Eleisons, the litany, and the chanted psalm; the stone font and the altar rail; the glories of the stained window, and the pealing anthem; the feasts and fasts, and solemn commemorative days, in all this, albeit animated by another spirit and counterbalanced by other elements, there was much to revive in imaginative and susceptible minds the faint image at least of the gorgeous system that had passed away, and make men feel that the England of Edward and Elizabeth, all changed as it was, was still the England of Henry VII. and VIII. These things, indeed, occupy not now the place they did before. They form not now the essence and substance of the national religion. They are recognised and treated as the dress and drapery, not the living body of the church. Still they are there there in palpable form and presence. They stand forth before the eye as the marked features that go to constitute the distinctive visage of the Reformed English Church, and must continue to modify more or less the thoughts, feelings, ideas, and religious life of her members in successive generations. In short, from that moment and ever since, there have been two principles continually present and at work within the bosom of the Episcopal communion, and more or less acting and reacting on one another. The one is the Biblical, the other the Ecclesiastical, the one the Evangelical, the other the Tradi tional,-the one magnifying the Gospel, the other magnifying