that owing to the want of such men as Newman and his coadjutors among the fellows and tutors in Oxford, a generation of clergy must be sent out into the world who will be less inclined to wish for reunion. He seems to us to underestimate the united action of a great number of causes, of which the rise of the Tractarian school in Oxford, though perhaps the most important, was only one and many of the others are surely in more active operation than ever.

How great a change has already been effected in the religious tone of the more thinking classes in England, the very sermons before us are a striking proof. F. Christie is a keen observer, placed in a position which enables him to judge of this better than most men; and he has given us a series of sermons, hardly a word of which would have been intelligible to the educated Protestants of thirty years back. The objections he answers, the data he assumes, the hopes, wishes, and fears he imputes to his audience, would alike have seemed a dream. Who can say what England will be thirty years hence, if during that time the progress of men's thoughts and convictions be as great, and in the same direction, that it has been during those which have just passed by? But upon this it is vain to dwell, for the present, not the future, is ours.

Galway Academical Papers. Published for S. Ignatius College, Galway. Part I. The Public Academy of Christmas, 1868, "On the Spirit of a Language." Part II. The Public Academy of Shrovetide, 1869, "On the Oratory of Demosthenes." Dublin: Kelly, 8, Grafton Street.

E have read with interest these two pamphlets, which together only cost eightpence. They bear strong marks of really being what they profess to be, the exercises of boys of the higher classes of a Catholic college, defending different views of the subjects which their year's studies have brought before them. The plan itself is an excellent one, as leading boys not merely to construe their author, but to think about what he says; and the execution is highly creditable, both to the boys and the college. It shows, for instance, that the attention of the boys who were reading Demosthenes had been called to the criticisms upon him made by Lord Brougham and Grote. The spirit of a language, again, was a happy subject among boys of their age, in these Western lands, in which the study of foreign languages has always been the chief instrument of education. This discussion ends with a graceful tribute to the Bishop of Galway and the rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, before whom it was held :-"You have not come here to-day to receive instruction from schoolboys. You have come that you may see and encourage our efforts to become what you have so long been, to follow the example you have given us, to become acquainted with what men should know, in order to be able to do what men should do." A notice is prefixed that the speeches were bona fide "prepared for oral delivery," and that they are generally published as they were delivered.

Discourses on some Parables of the New Testament. By C. B. GARSIDE, M.A. London: Burns, Oates, & Co.

IN

N our last number we gave some account of Mr. Garside's treatment of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The volume also contains those of "the Sower," and "the Ten Virgins." The Sower is treated in five sermons. In the first Mr. Garside considers the Person and office of the Sower, our Divine Lord and Saviour; in the second the "wayside," on which the seed is sown ; in the third "the birds of the air," which devour it ; in the fourth the stony ground; in the fifth the ground in which lay hid the seed of "the thorns." We have been struck in these with the same merit which we pointed out in our author's treatment of " the Prodigal Son": that is, that the sermons are strictly practical, pointing out actual dangers, actual temptations, and actual duties; and yet the Parable is not merely put as a sort of motto to introduce the thoughts of the preacher, but, after reading the sermon, we feel that we understand the meaning of the Parable better than we did. We have always been inclined to think that it would be well if custom did not so imperatively require that a sermon should have a text. Sermons are clearly of two kinds; one which explains a text of Scripture-one which develops some thought which the preacher wishes to enforce or explain. The latter we have known an author thoughtfully compose with much labour, and then remember that he had to find for it an appropriate text. In such cases it would perhaps be better, and especially it would be a more reverent treatment of Holy Scripture not to put a text before it at all. There are preachers (Father Faber was a notable instance) who are not afraid of this. How often have we seen him mount the steps of the pulpit of the Oratory, and begin his sermon without any preface except the sign of the Cross and the invocation of the Holy Names. But there are not very many who venture to follow his example; and then it sometimes happens that a sermon in itself full of thought and instruction has no real connection with the text prefixed to it. The other class is that in which the preacher takes a difficult text to explain its context and meaning, or one peculiarly striking to enforce its lessons. This class is, no doubt, specially suitable to England in controversial addresses; because the poor have generally been taught to place so large a part of their religion in studying the letter of the Holy Scriptures, and are very often so wholly ignorant of their meaning. For instance, how many believe that the Calvinistic system is taught in S. Paul's Epistles, really because they have received from their earliest childhood a "tradition of men," which told them that Calvin's doctrine was what S. Paul meant to teach, in isolated texts the meaning of which would be clear if considered in their context. But these commentaries are hardly sermons. The characteristic of Mr. Garside's sermons is that, while not thus running into commentaries, they do so much explain the Parable that a man can hardly read, and can hardly have heard them with attention, without feeling that he knows its meaning better than he did before, and

(what is far more important) without taking with him the recollection of some important lesson so much connected with its words, that he can hardly hear them again without the thought of it coming back into his mind. Such, for instance, is the third sermon of this series, in which the "birds of the air," that steal away the seed, are explained to be "evil thoughts," which come in flights to carry away the seed, buried in the mind by the Divine Sower. After explaining how thoughts may come into the mind without sin, and that there are "birds of the air," which fly near to but do not eat up the good seed, Mr. Garside continues :

"Nevertheless, whilst we make every proper and just distinction, and whilst we fully admit that we must not confound temptation with sin, and vividness of imagination with real consent, there still remains the fact that genuine sins of thought are committed by Christians with a frequency and intensity of guilt of which God alone knows the full measure. They are committed by the young, in the first gambols of their ever active fancy; in whom also curiosity has the force of a passion, inciting them to indulge in thoughts about sins, which as yet, perhaps, they have not dared to carry out into action. They are committed by the old, in whom a guilty course during their earlier years has planted the sad habit of a polluted imagination, which seems to taint with unhallowed associations everything that passes through its gates. There is no class, no sex, no age, free from the danger; there is no place where evil thoughts will not try to intrude: before the Holy Tabernacle, and in the very act of Communion, it is possible for them to be entertained. We know too well that souls have perished when within an inch of eternity. Men in the face of imminent death, with a distinct knowledge that in another hour they must stand naked before their God, thus hanging by a hair over the great abyss, have deliberately consented to an evil thought, and been therefore carried away into instant damnation " (p. 173).

The fifth sermon, on good.

"Three Enemies of the Soul," strikes us as especially

It is curious to compare these sermons with those of Protestant preachers, with whom this parable is decidedly a favourite subject. We doubt whether there is any one of them who does not consider that "the Sower" is "the preacher," and "the word" his sermons. To a Catholic it seems quite natural that "the Sower" should be, as Mr. Garside says, the Incarnate Son, and the Seed the Divine truth; that is, first Himself, and then His Gospel. This is, in truth, only one example of what we everywhere see, how in Protestant systems, even though they are the systems of good and earnest men, man and nature are in truth everything; in the one Catholic system God is all in all.

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The three sermons on the parable of the wise and foolish virgins are headed, "The Dignity and Responsibility of the Christian ;" Naturalism and Unreality;" and "Preparation and Presumption." We have left ourselves little room to speak of them. On the whole, we think them the most interesting in the volume. We will content ourselves with one short extract. Mr. Garside considers the sleep from which both wise and foolish were suddenly awakened by the cry which announced the near approach of the bridegroom, to be death; the time when they had waited before they fell asleep to be this life; and hence he derives a definition of this life-it is

"the tarrying of the Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ." And then, speaking of the shortness of this time, and the sudden and unexpected termination of it, he remarks, what we think must have struck all whose duties have called them to attend on the dying

"Even after long illnesses it may be said that death comes on a sudden. Men become used to sickness. They are often so completely engrossed with their wants, so distracted with their pains, so eager to watch the signs of improvement, so pleased with the affectionate attentions of their friends, that at length the idea of death almost passes away. They have been so long ill, that they have forgotten that this state cannot last for ever: hence they are startled, bewildered, and incredulous when a friendly voice says to them, in the midst of tears, 'Prepare to die, for ye cannot survive the night.'

I was once called to visit a sick man, and I saw at a glimpse that his spirit would soon pass away. I heard the echo of the midnight cry in the distance, but he did not. He looked me full in the face, and said, 'Why do you think I am dying? If you would give me a cordial I should live for years. I do not believe that I am going.' I exhorted him to prepare for the last; but, finding I could not convince him of his nearness to death, and he only grew more excited, I left him for a little while, that he might think quietly upon my words. When I returned he was already before his Maker. The cry had arrived whilst I was absent: 'Behold the Bridegroom cometh; go thou forth to meet him.' And he had gone."

The Church of England Communion Service: its Nullity and Profanity. By PELAGIUS, Patriarch of the British Church, Archbishop of Carleon, &c., &c. London. No publisher. Printed by Spottiswoode. 1869.

RUTH enforces from us the confession-very unusual in a journalist— that this shilling pamphlet fairly puzzles us. We have no guess who Pelagius may be, what opinions or school he represents, or what can be the object of his pamphlet. It is not his dignity which puzzles us,

"For we are now no niggards of respect

To merit's unauthenticated forms."

Time was, indeed, when it used to be taken for granted that a man could attain to high dignities only by the grant of some one higher than himself The King used to be "the fountain of honour" in the State, and in the Church the King of kings. But " nous avons changé tout cela." Henry and Elizabeth first took upon themselves to be the fountain of spiritual as well as temporal dignities and jurisdictions, and by a just as well as natural consequence, the truth has long been understood, that what they conferred upon their creatures each man might with equal validity confer upon himself. We have now a gentleman, this instant we forget his name, who by his own grace and favour has been made "Bishop of Iona," and Mr. Lyne has

appointed himself Father Ignatius, Abbot and Superior of the Benedictine Order, and invested himself with the power of excommunicating. We freely admit that both of these gentlemen have quite as much spiritual jurisdiction as the excellent Dr. Tait. Why then should not some other old friend have given himself the name of Pelagius, and the dignity of Archbishop and Patriarch, although we have not been so fortunate as to hear of it. Indeed, the fashion has lately been extending to temporal as well as spiritual dignities. Mr. Bugg has dispensed with the Queen's letters patent, and made himself Norfolk Howard; and a lady, equally excellent no doubt, though we have not the honour of her acquaintance, has created herself "Countess of Derwentwater." We have not yet heard, but it is quite possible that she has raised herself to yet higher dignities. Pelagius then may be some well-known clergyman or layman. But what fairly puzzles us is, his object. We see what he denounces; but what is it that he wishes us to accept? Our first impression was that the writer was some Catholic, exposing, under a feigned name, the unquestionable fact that the Established Church is, on its own principles, merely a heretical body. But we soon came to passages in which he speaks of the one Church of God in terms which no Catholic could allow himself to use even under an assumed character. Since we gave up this theory we have been reminded of the Nonjurors in the last century, some of whom maintained that all the Churches, sects, and bishops in Christendom, Catholics and Protestants alike, were heretics and schismatics except themselves: meaning by "themselves," not even the body of the Nonjurors, small as that was, but one or two gentlemen who had separated themselves from that body. This is, to say the truth, very much the tone of the pamphlet before us, and in this way so strikingly illustrates the natural and legitimate working out of Anglican principles, that we should still be inclined to think that was the object with which it was written, if we could in any way get over the difficulty we have already mentioned. As it is, we venture to think that there must have been a new Church set up within the last few days, of the existence of which we have not yet happened to hear. We would suggest whether it is not possible that of this new Church, Pelagius (by whatever name men may hitherto have called him) may be (we do not mean represent) the whole clergy of all grades, and Mr. Ffoulkes the whole laity. We have heard nothing to bear out this theory; but it has been suggested by finding that Pelagius has adopted Mr. Ffoulkes's crotchet, about the sacred words in the creed relating to the procession of the Eternal Spirit. However this may be, we can recommend the tract before us as illustrating the natural, logical, and inevitable effects of taking for granted the first principle of Anglicanism, which was accepted by the Nonjurors whom we have already mentioned, and by poor Mr. Ffoulkes. That principle is, that the Church in primitive times had authority to define points of faith, and actually used that power; but that in the nineteenth century it has no such power, and that each individual Christian is allowed, and therefore bound, to examine for himself the history of the primitive Church, for the purpose of deciding what his creed ought to be. Of course this, no less than the maxim, "the Bible and the Bible alone," makes the private judgment of each individual

it