have been convicted. Yes, but at what price? Those bodies which retain that ably-drawn, but most extreme document are, at this moment, placed in the greatest possible difficulty. Their ministers sign propositions which not one in a hundred ever dreams of asserting from the pulpit. The ablest thinkers among them are becoming keenly conscious of the untenableness of a theory which makes Holy Scripture the sole witness and keeper of itself: and the charge that their confession and its kindred documents represent the Creator as a jealous tyrant;' that charge was made indeed by an unbelieving hand, but who, in these days, will assert that it was wholly without foundation?

Shall we turn to Italy or Spain? We may not draw from Dr. Döllinger's remarkable address at Munich all the inferences suggested by it to the Anglicanus' of the Times, but that it does deserve, under our present circumstances, a careful and thoughtful re-perusal. If we turn to France we see one of its ablest and most devoted laity barely escaping censure; while the greatest intellect among the Roman Catholics of Germany again reiterates his desire for union with the Lutherans.

That wish we share, that aspiration we re-echo, that day we believe is dawning, though our generation will not live to witness its meridian blaze of light. We are not latitudinarians; we do not think little of the differences on either side between ourselves and other bodies of Christians. But, nevertheless, the events of the last few years have made us doubt whether any differences, however serious, can be ultimately so strong, so attractive as the bond of sympathy which must exist between all who heartily accept the mystery of the Incarnation, who worship the same Lord and Saviour their manifested God. Above the tumult of discordant voices, above the halls where law rather than equity claims to reign, we seem to catch a glimpse of a banner, reared of old, the Labarum that confronted heathendom. It may be heathendom again that another generation will have to meet. Even now the assailants are seen to attack, not this or that distinctive feature of Rome, or Augsburg, Lambeth, or Geneva, but truths hitherto cherished by all-nay, the very assertion of such a thing as a dogmatic faith of any kind or sort. We are, indeed, most anxious that opponents, such as the authors of the paper on the Holy Gospels in a recent number of Fraser's Magazine, and the laychurchman who contributes to Macmillan's Magazine, should be fairly met, for they (though in some points, we think, seriously mistaken) at any rate deserve respect. The purely legal view, adopted by the Judicial Committee, has indeed, we must remember, been exercised in turn in favour of each of

two great parties in the English Church. To our eyes techni-, cality and determination to press every possible consideration into the service of the appellants seem to us, in the present instance, to have been extreme. That the Judgment on one point, at least, is very perilous to the souls of men we do most sorrowfully believe. But we will not yet despair, but that by prayer and watchfulness the evil thus wrought may yet be over-ruled to good, and turn to God's glory and to the good of His Church, not only in our country but throughout Christendom at large.

[NOTE TO PAGE 231, & Sqq.]

To the Editor of 'THE CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER.'

DEAR SIR, Many of your readers have probably observed a correspondence in the Guardian newspaper, in which I was led to admit that I had done injustice (though quite unintentionally) to the views of Ewald respecting our Lord. An article in the National Review (No. 1, for July, 1855) represented him as explaining away the miracle of Cana and the resurrection of Lazarus; and, strangely enough, the article "Lazarus," in Dr. Smith's new dictionary, tended, in part, to confirm the assertions of the National Reviewers. But the author of this article-the Rev. E. H. Plumptre-discovered that he was mistaken, and was hence induced both to acknowledge his own error, and to call attention, though in a courteous and Christian temper, to my equally erroneous statement. What Ewald really does hold may be gathered partly from Mr. Plumptre's letters in the Guardian, and still more from the following communication, which the writer kindly permits me to publish :—

'January 28th, 1864.

'MY DEAR SIR,—I am half disposed to make a guess at authorship, and address you in a much more familiar form, but I suppose I ought not, and refrain. Writing to you, therefore, as a reviewer only, I wish to thank you for the kindly tone of your letter in the Guardian, and to say that it encourages me to open a more direct communication with you personally on one point, about which, in that letter, you say that you are still in doubt, sc. Ewald's acceptance of the great miracle of the Resurrection.

'I should not have thought it necessary to take this step if the evidence which might terminate the doubt lay before you in the volume to which you would naturally turn-the "Christus und seine Zeit"—but it does not lie there. That volume ends in its narrative with the Burial, and the section which follows, and seems to complete the book-"Die Ewige Verherrlichung"—is hardly more than a bright bewildering mist. It was through reading that section, and looking on it as Ewald's substitute for the fact of the Resurrection, that I was led to take the view I did of his language as to the raising of Lazarus. 'In the following volume, however, of the history of Israel, the mist clears away, and there is an approach to a Confession of Faith ("Gesch. Isr." vi. p. 69). No fact in history stands on firmer ground than that Christ rose from the dead and appeared again to His disciples, and that this their beholding Him again was the starting-point of their new and higher faith, and of all their Christian activity. And it is just as certain that they saw in Him not a common man, no spirit or phantom rising, as in the legends that men tell, from the world of the grave, but the only Son of God, a Being of sovereign might and superhuman nature."1 This, I imagine, is the highest point he reaches. If he were asked as to the further mystery of the Incarnation, the answer, I fear, would be, that it was by the presence, the indwelling of the Divine Eternal Spirit in the man Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph, that He became the

1 See also". Christus," p. 502

Son of God. I should be glad to hear that there were the materials for a different answer in his book on the first three Gospels.1 I confess I cannot find them in the "Christus."

'Measured by the standard of the Church's faith, this is, of course, heretical, distinctly the reproduction, modified by the change in our forms of thought and speech, of an ancient heresy, and it involves the rejection, on arbitrary critical grounds, of portions of the Gospel history.

'But looked on as the measure of truth which a man has reached, working his way out of the atmosphere of unbelief in which he had grown up, and throwing aside the "traditions of the elders" of German rationalism, looked on as giving proof of a reverential love for the holiness and majesty of Christ, and of unbelief in an actual revelation in Him, accompanied by supernatural energies, of the mind an 1 will of God-there is, I think, much to command our sympathy, much to make us judge ourselves, much to give us hope for him.

'The Writer of the Article on "Ernest Renan" in CHRISTIAN

REMEMBRANCER, January, 1864.'

'E. H. PLUMPTRE.

From this it will be seen that we were certainly wrong in classing Ewald with writers like Strauss and Renan, who altogether deny the supernatural. He is far removed from them, not only in temper, but in that he expresses a sincere belief in our Lord's miracles, and especially in the crowning miracle of the Resurrection. But, unhappily, Ewald does not yet appear to accept the mystery of the Holy Incarnation; and while, therefore, we fully recognise his immense moral and religious superiority to writers of the schools above named, we cannot but think that the arguments directed by M. Renan against Channing, on the score of logical inconsistency, are but too valid against the position of Ewald also. In a word, however glad we may be that, even by a happy inconsistency, men should believe in the supernatural, we still doubt whether any intellectual platform can be found between a pantheizing rationalism and the acceptance of the Nicene Creed. Regretting, however, to have done injustice to any one, and to have misled your readers in any degree, I take the earliest opportunity of correcting the above mistake, and of thanking Mr. Plumptre for his valuable communications.

I remain, SIR, yours obediently,

THE AUTHOR OF THE ARTICLE ON ERNEST RENAN.

1 I have since referred to the Drei ersten Evangelien, and find that Ewald's treatment of this question is as I supposed. The history of the Baptism represents one view, the older and simpler one, of the influence of the Divine Spirit on the mind of Christ; that of the Conception introduces another, later and more difficult, yet rising out of the true thought that the infinite greatness of His life could not have begun with the moment of the Baptism.-P. 171.

E. H. P.

501

NOTICE S.

AN able discourse on Genesis xxii. 1-14, by the Rev. Dr. Kay, the Principal of Bishop's College, has reached us from Calcutta. It is entitled, 'The Lord will provide; or, Abraham's Faith in God's Love.' Its great merit consists in its exposition of the way in which Rationalism creates a very large portion of the difficulties which it professes to find in Holy Scripture.

Those who are reading Aristotle's Ethics for the first time (and many more advanced students besides) will find most valuable assistance in a Paraphrase of the First Book,' by the Rev. H. W. Chandler, Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford (Rivingtons). It is executed in a masterly manner, and we sincerely trust that the author will receive such encouragement as may induce him to continue a work so worthily begun.

'The Priest's Prayer-Book,' edited by two Clergymen (Masters). We have no hesitation in saying that this ought to become a classical work in the Church of England. It is intended to bind, and is usually sold bound, up with the Oxford Ruby Octavo Edition. That edition is comprised in 174 pages; the Priest's Prayer-Book' takes up 144: the two therefore together make a most convenient pocket volume. There is scarcely any possible call which a parish priest could have, whether with regard to a collective number or to individual cases, which will not find the appropriate office here. With respect to the former: we have offices for a clerical meeting; for a missionary meeting; for a meeting of district visitors; for the reconciliation of a penitent, &c. With respect to the latter, we will take twelve consecutive examples. For a blind person; for a sick woman in childbed; after a miscarriage; for a sick child; after an accident; before an operation; in great bodily pain; for one insensible or deranged; for sleeplessness; after attempted suicide; for one who has lived carelessly; with an unmarried woman after childbirth. Then in the third part we have a kind of miscellaneous assistances. For example :Office for a night-school; office for a Sunday school; office for a Bibleclass; scheme for a cottage lecture; notes on confession, &c. And a very great amount of experience, combined with common sense, which characterizes the whole book, may perhaps be best exemplified by two of the cautions given with respect to the last head, that of all others viewed with most suspicion to Englishmen-' The natural director NO. CXXIV.-N.S.

L L