of ridicule to the Heathen. It would make Missionary success in future absolutely hopeless; and all such conception of the Church and Family of Jesus Christ' as might enkindle men's imagination and engage their love, once and for ever out of the question.

6

And again, what can be said of a scheme, which proposes to break up, in front of the deep and serried phalanx of Rome, the whole opposing army into a mere cloud of skirmishers; to abandon interior discipline and subordination, just at the moment when the enemy has concentrated all his powers in one man's hand; to create a multitude of independent and infinitesimal commands, -with endless chances of misunderstandings, of cross purposes, of jealousies, bickerings, and loss of all solidarity,'-precisely at the hour when the whole vast Roman communion has surrendered itself, 'perinde ac cadaver,' to the guidance of the General of the Jesuits; and has become travestied from a Church into a military 'company,' who march (it almost seems as if they cared not whither) at the word of Papal command. were indeed to throw away victory out of our hand, and to abandon those very 'spiritual weapons of our warfare' obedience, self-control, and unanimity by which alone the strongholds of darkness can be

overcome.

6

This

Happily, however, another alternative presents itself, from which almost all these fatal conditions of failure are absent; and that is, the Old-Catholic system of the Church. Here the watchword is not 'independence,' but unity.' Here each man and each congregation are called upon to sacrifice some portion of their private liberty, for the common benefit. The one normal type, both of organization and of ritual, is loyally maintained; but, at the same time, free play is allowed for local

preferences and national characteristics. Power, energy, and momentum are engendered-by clerical synods, and by mixed congresses, conventions, and conferences -among the lower orders of the Christian 'polity;' and edge, efficiency, and concentration are supplied by a graduated hierarchy, of which the uppermost ranks (archbishops and patriarchs) form centres and guarantees of unity, but are not invested with any considerable power; while the lower (bishops, rectors, &c.) are entrusted with practical and executive authority. According to this theory, as the Bishop of Rome is the Patriarch of the Latin Church (De Marca, de Concord. i. 2. 7), and the Bishop of Constantinople is the Patriarch of the Eastern Church, so the Archbishop of Canterbury is the Patriarch of (at least) the English-speaking Churches,—if he may not fairly claim the Presidency of the whole Teutonic Church, which owes its foundation mainly to English missions.

And if it be objected that this description idealizes, rather than depicts; the answer is, that in all such cases the highest and truest truth is not arrived at by mere statistics. There are always too many near-sighted people in the world, who 'cannot see the wood for the trees.' And as no one could love, or feel any enthusiasm for, or could even grasp as a conception, an 'Evangelical Alliance' presented from the side of its discordances, its mistakes in detail, the weaknesses and platitudes of its orators and defenders,-so in presenting the counter-portraiture of the Old-Catholic Church,' it is essential not to allow its beauty and effectiveness to be frittered away in detail, nor to claim men's admiration for a mere rough-hewn block of marble without describing the latent statue which at present (it may be) the sculptor's chisel has only half revealed. b

Without therefore for a moment denying, or wishing to conceal, the many great imperfections and shortcomings of that presentation of the Old-Catholic' system, which now exists in the National Church of England; and still less desiring to disparage or obscure in any way whatever the advantages that belong to certain Dissenting schemes and the eminent virtues and talents that adorn many who at the present day support these schemes; I have endeavoured in the following Lectures simply to accomplish three things:

First, I have aimed to show those (and they are neither few nor unworthy of attention) who are in despair at the present divided aspect of Christendom, that from the Apostles' time downwards there has never been an age of the Church without similar internal conflicts : that by certain well-tried methods and on certain wellknown principles, these dissensions may be successfully kept within bounds, and made to minister to the life and movement of the whole polity: but that, ill-managed and suffered to run beyond the just limits of reason and good sense, they are always liable to become a wasting fever instead of a healthy warmth, a conflagration instead of a means of motion, and may even reach at last the absurdity of nullifying, by mutual jealousy and friction, the very purposes for which the Christian society was instituted.

Secondly, I have laboured to present, as far as my knowledge would allow, materials by which my fellowChurchmen might be aided in forming an intelligent and candid judgment as to what precisely these Dissenting denominations, of which we hear almost to satiety, really are; what it is they do, and what they claim to teach; and why it is that, with an acrimony so absolutely unaccountable to us, who know what she really is, they

are now combining to bring the Church of England, if possible, to the ground.

Thirdly, my hope is if I should have the good fortune to find any readers among Nonconformists themselves to be permitted to point out some few indications, such as may at least awaken farther inquiry, of the wonderful and every way deplorable misapprehensions, which have clothed the Church of England to their eyes in colours absolutely foreign to her true character; have ascribed to her doctrines absolutely contrary to her meaning; and have interpreted her customs in a way repellent to the Christian common-sense of her own people. I do not disguise from myself, or from others, that these misapprehensions have arisen in great measure from the ineffective, and sometimes distorted, presentation of these things given by her own clergy; nor do I acquit her bishops and leading men in times past, and especially amid the confusions which inevitably followed upon the Reformation in the sixteenth century, of acting occasionally a most unworthy part and preparing the way for the present-contemptible, if it were not also treasonable-internecine war. But it is surely high time that these things were condoned. It is surely high time that religious men, and men who aim at truth, should take some pains, should welcome some self-denial, should be prepared (on both sides) to make some concessions and some acknowledgments of error,—in the interests, not of their own, but of their Master's cause.

For that cause is nothing less than the cause of Veracity, and Justice, and Charity, and Peace upon Earth. And it is threatened, now-a-days, by an imposing and accumulating force of all the Antichristian powers of ignorance, superstition, audacious intellectual pride, and an equally audacious intellectual despair,-a despair,

which would fain put out the eyes of men and cripple their limbs, lest they should undergo the dangers incident to walking alone, and should take upon them to dispense with artificial assistance.

Earnestly trusting that,-in spite (no doubt) of many unintentional mistakes which I have lacked the means of correcting, and of many slips and omissions and obscurities of which I am too painfully conscious, these Lectures may be kindly judged by those to whom they were originally addressed, and taken as at least an honest attempt at 'explanation' by others into whose hands they may come,-I will borrow, in conclusion, the words of one of our most eloquent and lucid writers in quite another branch of study: 'I speak with more than the sincerity of an advocate, when I express my belief that the case against us has entirely broken down. The cry for Reform which has been raised, is needless; inasmuch as we have long been reforming from within. .. And the critical examination of the grounds upon which these very grave charges. . have been brought against us, rather shows that we have exercised a wise discrimination in declining, for the present, to meddle with our Foundations 2.'

2 Prof. Huxley, Lay Sermons, &c. (Geological Reform), p. 279.