of objects for their energies,-sustains their character. On this account, paradoxical as it may seem, it is not far from the truth that our more laborious posts of ministerial duty are, on the whole, better filled than our lighter ones. The natural energy of the English character,—its tendency to be roused to work by the sight of work to be done, and even of difficulties to be encountered,—this, joined to natural benevolence, and acting upon even a low sense of duty, or estimate of the ministerial functions, will, in most cases, ensure a young man's setting to work in earnest in his parish. In this way have been formed many of our best and most highly-toned working men. By doing priestly work, they have become, in a continually increasing degree, such, in habits and character, as becomes Priests. On the other hand, those whose cures are not of sufficient extent to allow them to be ever doing the active work of a Priest, have a tendency at least to perform with less energy and effect that which they have to do, and, in consequence, to impair by degrees somewhat of the priestly mind and bearing. It is in cures of little occupation that habits of ease and secularity creep in, even upon those who are most bent upon avoiding them. It is here that the Priest of the Church of GOD is apt to decline into the mere literary man or country gentleman. It is, too, mainly among this désurré class of the Clergy, that sportsmen and frequenters of balls and races are found. I do not say that this rule is universal either way: laborious cures, unhappily, do not always render their occupants laborious men; a low estimate of duty, and consequent laxity of clerical manners, becoming often the habit of a neighbourhood. And again, there are numerous honourable exceptions to the undermining and secularizing effect of small cures, especially where a better tone has happily become prevalent in a particular locality. But the general tendency of things is, I think it will be admitted, such as I have represented. Those who have no lack of work are helped, and on the whole effectually, against declension from the priestly character; while those of less occupation are exposed defenceless to a peculiar, and too often fatal influence. But this is not as it should be: the Clergy ought not to be so dependent for their priestly character on the effects of their own work upon themselves. Doubtless, the energy will ever strengthen the habit: but it ought not to be in the direct ratio of it; it ought to own an independent source. Labour or no labour,-in spheres of little or much work alike,-our Clergy ought to be, in habit and tone, clerical and priestlike. They ought to have within them, from the very beginning of their ministry, and abiding unimpaired throughout it, some up-bearing principle, independent of their work and circumstances.

"What, then, shall this principle or habit be? how may this large proportion of our Clergy be rescued from this subtle temptation, against which they seem to have no protection in themselves? A mere spirit of work, we have seen, is not enough. What, then, can be done? Evidently, some favourable period must be seized upon for forming in them, by anticipation, so far as it can be antedated, the habit of mind which becomes Priests. No such period offers itself, except that which immediately precedes ordination. Of this period, then, I would have the Church avail herself by means of Theological Colleges. I would have her bring together her candidates for the priesthood on the eve of

their ordination. There let them be habituated, though it be for one short year at most,-a year of calm onlook at their coming vows and responsibilities,-to live, first of all, the life of the Prayer Book. There is more in this than is commonly supposed. Our Church, at any rate, has now for twelve or thirteen hundred years at least, plainly been of this mind, that the use of the Daily Office by the Clergy is the foundation-stone of the priestly life and mind. When she reformed her Services in the sixteenth century, mainly with the purpose of restoring them to the congregational use of the laity, she retained nevertheless, as a matter of course,- -as a thing which no general diffusion of the services could render superfluous, or alter the obligation of,-the rule that all Priests and Deacons should privately or openly,' say the Morning and Evening Office. The weighty reasons to be alleged for this rule, the great purposes which the ordinance serves, are briefly touched upon in the original Preface to the Book of Common Prayer; more fully, and with admirable force, by a forerunner in the work of revision, Cardinal Quignon. He thus enumerates them :

"Prima causa est, quòd, cùm cæteri homines suum quisque negotium agant, CLERICIS (ex eo vocatis quod sortis Domini sunt), hoc potissimum negotium divinis et humanis legibus est injunctum, ut DEUM habere propitium in commissum sibi populum cunctis rationibus enitantur; quod non solùm sacrificiis efficitur, sed etiam precibus. . . Altera causa est, ut qui reliquo populo exemplo esse debent virtutis et sanctimoniæ, assiduâ precatione DEUM alloquentes, à cogitationibus caducarum rerum subinde avocati, contemplationi divinarum assuescant. Tertia, ut religionis futuri magistri, quotidianâ Sacræ Scripturæ lectione erudiantur, complectanturque eum qui secundum doctrinam est fidelem sermonem, et potentes sint exhortari in doctrinâ, et eos qui contradicunt arguere.'

"And surely this practice is the master-key, as of various other kinds of excellence in the priestly office, so especially of the maintenance, under all circumstances, of the priestly habit of mind. For it brings the flock daily before the mind in the most solemn manner, and so is a daily bond of union with them, and opportunity of doing them good. There may or may not be a congregation to be found to join in this service with the Clergy; but whether there be or not, their own position towards their flock is equally recognized and realized by their personal use of the office. They are Priests, performing every day of their lives a proper priestly function. Surely they cannot, maintaining this practice, easily forget themselves into mere secular men. Those who have much other clerical work will be rescued by this daily dividing of themselves betwixt the mount and multitude,' from the risk of merging the Priest in the mere man of business; they will have a point of view, daily taken up, from which every detail of labour will wear a heavenward aspect while those whose danger is from the absence of calls upon their activity, will receive a daily moulding after the mind of CHRIST' one which insensibly enlightens and elevates; which gives a distaste for unbecoming pursuits, and administers a caution in the use even of indifferent ones."-pp. 27-37.

"Less important, yet not without considerable effect in determining the character of the clergy, is the prevalence among them of a theological habit of mind."

Entertaining no Utopian views as to the extent or variety of topics which may be advantageously traversed by the student in the brief period which can be snatched, at best, for more immediate preparation, I yet think that in retreats designed for the purpose, two things may be done for him in the matter of study. He may acquire a habit of diligent and painstaking theological reading, such as he might never after have leisure or favourable circumstances for forming;-and he may catch such incidental glimpses, at least, of the great world of theological knowledge, as may effectually animate him to future research, and direct his steps in conducting it. Nor can it be doubted, that such habituation to the real and masculine pursuit of theology, would insensibly impart a heightened tone to the aspect presented to the world by the clerical body.

"There is, again, such a thing as taking a theological view of men and things, as distinguished from taking a merely moral or philosophical one. This will be best illustrated by what we observe in other professions. The legal or the medical practitioner, to be a successful one, is ever, consciously or unconsciously, noting and classifying, from a professional point of view, the phenomena which come before him; as may be seen, for instance, by the immense knowledge of the world which can be brought to bear upon the elucidation of legal questions. And just so, he whose science and pursuit is practical theology, should have his point of view, clearly taken and held, from which all that meets his eye in the world of morals and action is seen running up into axioms of the kingdom of grace, into articles of the creed or dicta of inspiration. Until he can so handle the materia of his sacred art, he may be a moralist or a metaphysician, but he is scarcely a divine. If then it be admitted that there is some need of fuller developement, at least, of this habit and faculty among us, and that this may perhaps be one secret of our weakness, any likely means of removing it will deserve the thanks of the clergy of the future."

Having made so large extracts from this most valuable letter, we will now conclude with simply expressing a very earnest wish that it may be extensively perused not only by candidates for Holy Orders, but also by any Bishops who may be thinking of establishing Colleges for the Education of Clergy. It is not mere acquaintance with parochial work that we want, but the Priestly tone of mind and habit of life.

398

ANTICHRIST AND THE BABYLON OF THE

APOCALYPSE.

(Continued from page 339.)

We had intended to commence this portion of our critique with an examination of Dr. Wordsworth's authorities. But, before attempting this task, we must complete that division of our argument which was left unfinished in the last month's number, that the subject might not engross an undue proportion of its pages. Two topics out of four which seemed to call for especial observation, were disposed of. We proceed to those which remain.

(c) The third point to be noticed is the exceedingly hard measure dealt out by our author, to the Monastic Orders, who are supposed, (as has been said) in conjunction with the Papacy, to be the second Beast of the Apocalypse. Doubtless, in this particular, we English of the present generation were, for the most part, nurtured in a school of prejudice, as unwise, as it was narrow-minded and uncharitable. But a re-action has taken place, a re-action so deep as to penetrate our most valuable books of history, so extensive as to influence the publications even of the Religious Tract Society. The value of these Orders in feudal times, their kindness as landlords, their successful subdual of the soil, their sanctuaries against the lawlessness of lay barons, their services to literature, especially in the preservation of the manuscripts of Holy Scripture; these and innumerable other benefits arising from their institutions have been brought before our notice in the most varied forms and by writers of the most widely different schools of thought. Nor has it been passed by that, whatever they at last became, they were at first in an eminent degree reformers of many practical abuses :2 and if reforms are to be condemned, because, after a season, they lose vigour, what shall be said of those reforms headed by Luther in Germany and by Calvin at Geneva?

That re-action has certainly, like most others, been in many quarters somewhat excessive. We at least can have no wish to see the faults into which these bodies fell, unduly extenuated, much less concealed from view. Had they preserved their first warmth and earnestness, Tintern and Rievaulx would even now perhaps have been preserved from the hand of the spoiler. But as little can we desire to cherish the miserably false and partial statements

1 See "The Dawn of Civilization" and "The Middle Ages" on their list of small books.

2 See Sir J. Stephen's Francis of Assisi versus fin.; and likewise his "Founders of Jesuitism." Essays in Eccl. Biog. Vol. I.

which were in vogue before the commencement of the re-action to which we have alluded.

When some future Hallam or Sismondi shall indite a history of the literature of this century, he will doubtless have occasion to chronicle this remarkable alteration of tone with reference to the monasteries of the middle ages. He will allude perhaps to the intention of Southey to have written a history of those Orders; he may find room for reference to Thierry, Comte and others of that class, whose admiration, however well deserved, yet springs from questionable grounds; he will make more favourable mention of some delightful volumes of Neander (despite occasional Germanisms), as his life of S. Bernard and "Light in Dark Places ;" he will remind his readers of Maitland's " Dark Ages," and possibly of Sir J. Stephen's brilliant sketches of Franciscans, Jesuits and Benedictines; and assuredly he will not forget that a great English poet, the laureate Wordsworth, has dedicated to the praises of the monks some of the most graceful as well as truthful of his sonnets. But the foremost place will undoubtedly be assigned to that distinguished Protestant writer, the philosophic statesman who for many years so largely swayed the destinies of France. The lectures of M. Guizot first brought forward the medieval church as a mighty instrument of civilization, as the chief witness and protectress against feudal violence and barbarism; not, as used to be said, its nurse and parent. And nowhere are the beneficial effects of the monasteries more fully recognized or more vividly pourtrayed. But our literary historian will be compelled to admit that there were books, which not only attempted to check any excesses of recoil arising from the past fury of anti-monastic writers, but which actually reproduced certain theories of the 16th and 17th centuries, holding up these Orders to the deepest reprobation of mankind. He may instance, as a proof of his assertion, certain lectures of another Wordsworth, not the sweet singer of Rydal Mount, wherein the preaching orders are said to combine with the papacy to form the second beast of the Apocalypse. p. 279.

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Deep indeed, upon this hypothesis, must be the guilt and responsibility of writers like Dr. Maitland and M. Guizot. They have been employed in representing these Orders as originally instituted with a view to the glory of GoD, and as composed of men who, with whatever alloys arising from corruptions in the Church, from the spirit of their age or from personal defects, were yet benefactors to the human race, the channels of many rich gifts of heavenly love and mercy to their fellow creatures: whereas according to Dr. Wordsworth, these societies deserve nothing less than the anathema of every Christian man.

(d) An important topic yet remains, namely that of religious persecution. Its bearing upon the matter in hand will be seen presently.