he understands the supper at which Our Lord washed the feet of the disciples to have taken place on the Wednesday evening. -(Vol. i. p. 50.) Nor do we suppose that his view of the true interpretation of the Apocalypse will be very generally received in this country. It appears to us to mix up the realistic and the symbolical in a way which is scarcely admissible. In p. 3, vol. i., Dr. Döllinger rather evades the difficulties connected with our Lord's Baptism. S. John records the words of the Baptist, cap. i. 31-33 compared with Matt. iii. 14. The Baptist declares that he knew Him not, and this declaration he repeats with emphasis. S. Matthew records that S. John forbad our Lord coming to his baptism. The sign from heaven was not given till after the baptism: on this point the Evangelists are all agreed. The author says that "John felt an immediate presentiment that this and no other was the object of universal desire, the long-expected Messiah." This, however, is far from the impression that any one would derive from the harmonized narrative. S. Matthew iii. 6, supplies the real key to the difficulty. S. John demanded confession of sins, and that this confession was a very distinct act, the narrative of S. Luke assures us. When our Lord therefore came and was examined as to this penitence, S. John with amazement found in his own cousin the expected Messiah. His exclamation, "I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me?" bears all the marks of a sudden surprise. The baptism took place, and then the promised sign was vouchsafed.

We have merely indicated some of the points on which two opinions may very fairly be entertained. The book is throughout most interesting, and betrays in every page a master's hand. It is written, too, with an amount of candour and largeheartedness which is truly refreshing. In the spread of this spirit lies the hope of a future Re-union of Christendom. We have ourselves endeavoured to be candid, and to state our own difficulties, and this course we know our author well enough to feel assured will meet with his approval. In his Church and the Churches Dr. Döllinger took every pains to do us justice, and yet after all his representation of the English Church was a caricature. This was quite certain to be the case, seeing that he took as his main authorities the writings of discontented men suddenly aroused to a sense of her defects, and who wrote with the freedom of Englishmen on what they wished to see altered. No foreigner can understand us in this matter. All social, political, and religious questions are discussed with a freedom in this country which would not be elsewhere allowed. But assuredly the great English establish

540 Döllinger's First Age of Christianity and the Church.

ment was in its real working as unlike Dr. Döllinger's representation as Mr. Gladstone in the pages of Punch is to the same statesman speaking in the House of Commons. Besides, the evils which caused so much discontent a quarter of a century since, have either altogether disappeared, or are at least so far mitigated as to very much alter the face of things. To a wonderful extent the Church of England has recovered the masses who had then disowned her communion. She is not sinking nor settling on her lees, but is as active as she has ever been; and as a mass her clergy are as zealous in winning souls as any national clergy in Christendom.

So that with all our candour we shall do nothing whilst we stand apart. Numberless points we misunderstand with all our wish to understand. Dr. Newman has given an explanation of the decree of the Immaculate Conception, which was actually new to the entire English clergy, who had tried to understand it. Dr. Pusey has made a mistake as to the doctrine of original sin, and of extreme unction as taught by the Roman Church, and this quite unintentionally. If we misunderstand Roman teaching Roman Catholics equally misunderstand us. All the writing in the world will not enable us to come to a perfect understanding: only we do claim to be treated with equal candour to that which we extend to others. We do say that there are two sides to the question, and we desire that all that is to be said on each side shall be fairly and impartially weighed.

One word, ere we conclude, as to the admirable and scholarly manner in which Mr. Oxenham has translated this work, and set it before the English people. It is so presented in the most clear, un-involved and flowing prose, as that one could hardly imagine it to be a translation at all, being perfectly free from foreign idioms or un-English peculiarities; while the few additional notes of the translator are pointed and valuable.

[The paper on "The Political Aspect of the Re-union Movement" is unavoidably postponed.]

FRAGMENTA VARIA.

No. XVI.-NOTES ON THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF RE-UNION WITH THE EASTERN CHURCH, BY THE REV. C. F. LOWDER.

Efforts for promoting unity with the Eastern Church have been revived in late years, and with great hopefulness, because with some practical results. The history of the Patriarchate, for which we are indebted to our greatest Eastern Liturgiologist, to our sorrow but to his own great gain now removed from amongst us, his edition of the great Liturgies, and the labours of others in the same direction, have tended to draw closer the bonds of sympathy between two great divisions of the Catholic Church, the Eastern and Anglican. Our common position in respect of the Roman Communion, the reverence naturally felt towards the most conservative portion of the whole Church, that which has apparently lost less than any other of the faith and discipline of Apostolic times, which seems to reproduce the mind and times of S. Chrysostom, S. Basil and S. Cyril with the greatest fidelity; the political circumstances which are connected with the position of the Orientals, and in which England has so deeply interested herself, though alas! in an antagonistic direction, all tend to attract a deeper interest to this most important question. Attempts indeed have been made before and failed, but it is not the character of Englishmen, much less surely of English Catholics, to allow such a reason to deter them from further efforts.

It is the object of the present paper to contribute a few facts to this important inquiry, to consider the difficulties which they suggest, and the course which may best be adopted for overcoming them. In a political point of view, "The Eastern Question" forms a very serious element in the consideration of the prospects of Unity with the Oriental Church. England has taken up a political position in defence of the Turkish Empire, more strictly than any other nation, in order to

maintain the balance of power. France, while doubtless anxious to restrain any increase of influence to other great powers, has also in view the aggrandizement of the Roman Church, both for a religious object and as a powerful means of advancing her own interests. Russia, however, has always made the Eastern question in a special manner her own, and has endeavoured to appropriate to herself the privilege of defending the Eastern Christians.

The obvious feeling of an English Catholic with respect to the political position of his country in this question must be of shame and regret that a nominally Christian power should be considered, and really be, one of the great instruments of propping up an essentially infidel kingdom, that her authority and prestige both national and commercial should be employed for such an unchristian purpose. Nor will our alarm at this unnatural phenomenon be diminished, when we find that the agents by whom her policy is more immediately carried out are led to forget that they are representatives of a Christian country, and consider that the whole question is a mere matter of worldly policy. A great deal has doubtless been effected through the influence of our representatives in Constantinople for the amelioration of the religious and political condition of the Christians in the Turkish dominions, yet at the same time we must not forget that the same authority, by the circumstances in which it is placed, has been led to recognize the Porte, not merely in a national but also in a religious point of view. It has been remarked that with whatever prejudices ambassadors have gone to Constantinople, as against the religious influences of the Turks, they have invariably ended in promoting that influence. The Turkish character in its better aspect has a certain charm for those who are not really Catholics. It is only the doctrine of the Incarnation, really and intelligently held, that can teach men to appreciate the actual inferiority of the Mahometan to the Christian faith. To a Protestant mind, undogmatic and vague in its apprehensions of the Truth, there is nothing so revolting in the Mussulman religion when presented in its most specious and attractive garb. The religious Turk, who frequently lives above the principles of his religion, and has imbibed much of the higher as well as the more civilizing influences of the Christianity which exists around him, has a high idea of the superintending providence of the Deity, and moral responsibility, and the law of his Prophet is to him a far more real religion, i.e., a tie of obligation, than the Gospel is to many professing Christians. His stated times of prayer

religiously observed, his fasts and festivals, his rules of diet, are to him real obligations, and a Protestant without any tangible dogmatic rule for himself, but such as his own private judgment adopts out of the Bible, cannot but acknowledge that a man who really lives under a rule like the Turk is so far living up to a higher standard than himself. A great change has taken place among the Turks; polygamy is decreasing in face of the superiority of European civilization, the expense of the establishment of a Harem, the discord in many families, and the greater domestic comfort of a single wife and family; the Turkish woman is being drawn forth more from her isolated and degraded position; the veil in a figurative as well as literal sense

is becoming thinner and thinner. Turkish Pashas and men of position marry European ladies, who naturally introduce more and more of European habits into their families; children are sent to Paris, Vienna, or London for their education; European tutors or governesses are placed over those at home. The governors of provinces are themselves fostering education and encouraging schools for their Christian as well as Mahometan subjects, so that the great advance which Turks have made in late years presents their religion in a much more favourable point of view and less in an antagonistic attitude towards Christianity.

So much on the Turkish side of this question. On the Christian side unhappily there are very many circumstances which must arouse feelings of regret and shame. Christians are still suffering under the depressing influence of ages of oppressive persecution and degradation; the examples of their infidel rulers of past times, the venality and corruption which abound in the highest places, from the Pasha to the petty official, and are too often imitated by the Christian Archbishop and the country Pope; and the licentiousness which has eaten into the very core of Eastern life have been too powerful antagonists to the uneducated condition of the Oriental Church. The very conservatism of her character makes it very difficult to apply the necessary remedies for the many evils which past ages have fostered. Education, though valued and richly enjoyed by many of the bishops and priests, has made but slow and imperfect progress among the great body of the clergy. It will we fear be very difficult to get a large and intelligent view of the question of reunion taken by the great body of the Eastern clergy. This makes it the more necessay to address ourselves to the more learned and eminent bishops, with whom we must be prepared to find that both political motives in respect of the secular authorities, and feelings of caution in respect to those placed under their authority, will have great weight and make it very difficult for them to move. despotism exercised by the Czar over the Russian Church, and the infidel tyranny of the Sultan over so large a share of the remainder of the East gives Easterns a very exaggerated idea. of the influence of Parliament over the Church of England. It is of course perfectly true that we have quite enough to endure from the State, but we mean that it is very difficult to make an Eastern understand the force of public opinion, and that if we can only influence public opinion, then Parliament must go with us. We were lately presented by a priest of the Greek Church, who was then a missionary in Hungary, with a pamphlet in which he proposed an accommodation of the Eastern and Western Calendar, assuring us in his simplicity that if we could only come to an agreement about this, all other

The