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familiarity with holy things, which makes us turn with a shudder from so many modern collections of hymns, there is simply nothing.

Account for it how we will, there is the simple fact. Perhaps it may lead us to think somewhat differently of those whom we are in the habit of setting down in the mass as little better than heathens. We cannot conclude this article better than by giving an extract or two from these Christmas broad-sheets.

"The Saviour's Garland, a choice Collection of the most esteemed Carols," published about ten years since, so far as we can learn, has the usual long narrative ballad, which begins: "Come, all you faithful Christians That dwell upon the earth,— Come celebrate the morning

Of our dear Saviour's birth:
This is the happy morning,—
This is the happy morn
Whereon, to save our ruined race,
The Son of God was born."

And after telling simply the well-known story, it ends:
"Now to Him up ascended,
Then let your praises be,
That we His steps may follow,
And He our pattern be;

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That when our lives are ended
We may hear His blessed call:

Come, souls, receive the kingdom
Prepared for you all.'"

Another, "The Star of Bethlehem, a Collection of esteemed Carols for the present year," opens its narrative thus:

"Let all that are to mirth inclined
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done,
In sending His beloved Son.

Let all our songs and praises be
Unto His heavenly Majesty;
And evermore amongst our mirth
Remember Christ our Saviour's birth.

The twenty-fifth day of December
We have great reason to remember;
In Bethlehem, upon that morn,

There was a blessed Saviour born," &c.

One of the short pieces, by no means the best, we give whole:

"With one consent let all the earth
The praise of God proclaim,

Who sent the Saviour, by whose birth
To man salvation came.

All nations join and magnify
The great and wondrous love
Of Him who left for us the sky,
And all the joys above.

But vainly thus in hymns of praise
We bear a joyful part,

If while our voices loud we raise,
We lift not up our heart.

We, by a holy life alone,

Our Saviour's laws fulfil;
By those His glory is best shown
Who best perform His will.

May we to all His words attend

With humble, pious care;

Then shall our praise to heaven ascend,
And find acceptance there."

We do not suppose that the contents of these Christmas broad-sheets are supplied by the same persons who write the murder-ballads, or the attacks on crinoline. They may be borrowed from well-known hymn-books for any thing we know. But if they are borrowed, we must still think it much to the credit of the selectors, that, where they might have found so much that is objectionable and offensive, they should have chosen as they have done. We only hope that their successors, whoever they may be who will become the caterers for their audiences, will set nothing worse before them.

ART. VIII.-TRACTS FOR PRIESTS AND PEOPLE.

I. Religio Laici. By Thomas Hughes, Author of "Tom Brown's School-Days."

II. The Mote and the Beam: a Clergyman's Lessons from the Present Panic. By the Rev. F. D. Maurice, Incumbent of St. Peter's, Vere Street.

III. The Atonement as a Fact and as a Theory. By the Rev. Francis Garden, Sub-Dean of her Majesty's Chapels Royal.

IV. The Signs of the Kingdom of Heaven: an Appeal to Scripture upon the Question of Miracles. By the Rev. John Llewelyn Davies, M.A., Rector of Christ Church, Marylebone.

V. On Terms of Communion:

1. The Boundaries of the Church. By the Rev. C. K. P. 2. The Message of the Church. By J. N. Langley, M.A. VI. The Sermon of the Bishop of Oxford on Revelation, and the Layman's Answer.

1. A Dialogue on Doubt.

By J. M. Ludlow.

2. Morality and Divinity. By the Rev. F. D. Maurice, Incumbent of St. Peter's, Vere Street.

VII. Two Lay Dialogues. By J. M. Ludlow.

1. On Laws of Nature, and the Faith therein.

2. On Positive Philosophy.

London, Macmillan, 1861.

IT is curious to remark the different effect of excitement from danger to the State and from danger to the Church. The former calls into action, even under absolute governments, generous and uniting passions, before which the lines of party disappear, and the spirit of forbearance and self-sacrifice rises to the ascendant. The latter, even in a free country, seems at once to awaken every dormant ecclesiastical egotism, to widen every difference, to intensify all dogmatism, and hoot down the catholic and charitable temper. In critical moments for the nation, Parliament knows how to suspend its inner conflicts, and take its measures with reticent dignity. In critical moments for the Church, her Councils and Convocations break into a Babel of contention, where only one thing is certain,--that new truth and gentle wisdom have no chance, but must leave the game to the wrangling of schoolmen, the chatter of popular preachers, the decorous spite of the scholar, and the arts of ecclesiastical diplomats. The recent panic occasioned by the volume of Essays and Reviews presents in general no exception to this

rule. Every party in the Church, every "denomination" beyond it, has endeavoured to turn the excitement to account, and make sectarian "capital" out of it. The Romanist takes the phenomenon as a fall of the mask from Protestantism: the Anglican, as proving the need of tradition in aid of Scripture: the Comtist, as an instalment of Positivism: the Evangelical, as betraying the cloven foot of "Neology:" the Unitarian,—affectionately embracing in their Oxford dress the daring heresies which he has frowned down in his own household, -as a homage, if not to his doctrines, at least to his method. To the "religious newspapers" the book was as great a godsend as a Garibaldi expedition or an American civil war to the Times in the long vacation. They have discussed it according to their nature. They are the modern receptacles of such debates as in other times found their centre in ecclesiastical assemblies. In their columns it is, that, in our days, a Nicolas of Myra must plant his fist in Arius's jaw: there, that an Athanasius must rage, and a Eusebius truckle: there, that the orthodox shout is raised to expel some obnoxious Theodoret: thence, that peaceable folks keep aloof, like Gregory Nazianzen from "the concourse of geese and cranes." They necessarily take the measure of every theological phenomenon from their own special and exclusive point of view; and, unless from the conflict or balance of opposite exaggerations, leave its true proportions no chance of coming out.

The

The Tracts for Priests and People form, in their whole tone and spirit, a marked exception to this disputatious partizanship. Proceeding from a well-known band of associates,the oi Tepi Maurice, they are not a manifesto in the interests of a school;-not a pious parody and coarse caricature set up as an altar-piece ;-but a serious, manly, and large-hearted exposition of Christian faith, in its direct relations to human life. In religious depth and moral earnestness, in sympathetic appreciation of the doubts they would relieve, and in a certain openness to truth all round, they stand out in favourable contrast from the mass of literature on this cause célèbre. writers, both clerical and lay, are free from the opposite disabilities of the men of mere thought and the men of mere action. Susceptible, like all persons of liberal culture, to the problems of the hour, they yet are not enclosed in any scientific clique or academic officina, where questions are got up and intellectual formulas hammered into shape; but are immersed in the real life of the world where these things appear in the working;where distributed scepticism ferments in the actual character of the young and thoughtful, preying upon the spirits, unnerving the will;-and where, if class is separated from class, it is

not from political injustice, not from social inhumanity, but from the want of a common reverence uniting all in God. Greatly to the honour of this set of Churchmen it may be said, that no school, born so deep in the dim recesses of philosophy, ever emerged so soon into the light of action, or took on itself so faithfully the yoke of labour: it is truly a paradoxical paternity, by which Coleridge, with his subtle intellect and flabby will, becomes the father of a "muscular Christianity." The double interest which his representatives thus acquire in the religious problems of the day, by mental inheritance and by moral experience, gives to their words a peculiar weight. They are not intellectual cowards, afraid to face any real lights of knowledge, or to scrutinise the passing shades of doubt. Nor are they indifferent spectators of the mere play of thought among the thinkers; but in contact with its human results, nearer than less genial counsellors can be to the confessional of its struggles and its sorrows. In many respects, the Tracts speak in a way not unworthy of this advantageous position.

The characteristic theology of these writers has great resources for dealing with the wants and questionings of religious minds. Itself the product of a spiritual experience, which swept in Coleridge through all latitudes, and in Mr. Maurice has traversed no small arc, it is cognisant of dangers, and aware of safe and quiet channels, where a less searching survey fails to show them. The higher interpretation which it gives to most of the distinctive words and formulas of Church doctrine delivers them from many oppressive difficulties. The well-known explanation of the word "eternal," which lifts it out of the sphere of time, completely transforms the whole "heaven and hell" theology; wipes out the contrast between the present and the future life; and turns "salvation" into a spiritual emancipation, whether now or then, from whatever is contrary to God. We need not say how many gross pictures, at this single touch, vanish into air; how sentient pleasures and pains retire in shame before a more solemn reckoning; and how the suspicion falls to the ground at once that religion is but self-interest with a long look-out. The pravity of human nature returns within the limits of credible fact, when it is no longer "the sin of being born," but is construed into the inherent repugnance of Self to higher and rightful claims: and when, further, those higher claims themselves, as revealed to the soul within and embodied in the moral constitution of the world without, are resolved into the Personal communion with us of the Son's Divine Humanity, it becomes a matter of course to refer all our evil to ourselves, and all our good to what is beyond us. And if indeed there be this supernatural life underlying the natural,

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