of course, is lest in any church broad enough to take all in, essentials should be eliminated for the sake of a merely nominal unity. Catholic, in its true sense, our author emphatically claims to be. He calls the extreme party, which has not only been grossly maligning him ever since he published his first book, but also systematically writing him down," answering" each of his works by another on the same subject from an Ultramontane point of view,-"the sect," "the Pharisees of Catholicism." It is they (he urges) who are the real schismatics, elevating as they do non-essentials into things necessary for salvation. It is they who make the name of Catholic a cruel mockery, by importing into the faith a more than sectarian narrowness. One thing he clearly establishes in the volume before us, that "direction" and "auricular confession," are as different as possible from the public confession of early times, and that, if the extreme party make such confession an integral and essential part of Catholicism, they are sacrificing the church for the sake of a practice which was not authoritatively introduced till the tenth century. As to the "novel" form, it suits the age best (says our author); and "the book which did most to prepare the way for 1789 was a novel-Télémaque. I write novels because I am preparing an '89 in the church." Of course there is some professional bitterness in our author's constant attacks on monkery. The feud between seculars and regulars is of long standing. He is a secular; he takes care to give full praise to the "Sulpicians"-" the only independent body of clergy in France;" he quotes from the "Directeur spirituel désintéressé," of Camus, Bishop of Belley, the friend of St Francis de Sales, to shew that, then as now, "the holy fathers" had a weakness for rich penitents, then as now their plan was "to pick off the cream of the flock, and leave the caillé and petit lait (scald and skim milk) to the parochial clergy." "The old judicial confession, followed by a mere declaratory absolution, has given place to inquisitorial confession; the old form is preserved in the communion service, but we are carefully taught that this, for ages the only form in use, is powerless to remit sins." The chapters on the history of confession,-how it has grown, from the simple usage of Chrysostom's time, when there were sixty thousand male communicants in one day in the churches of Constantinople, to be the most dangerous invention which the genius of oppression could have conceived are very interesting, and must be doubly important to a Romanist who has been accustomed to look on this modern travestie of the old practice enjoined by St James as a really ancient custom of the church. Herein is seen the evil of that principle of development which gives so much scope for the introduction of error. But modern confession has evils peculiarly its own. Besides his history of confession, our author gives a chapter on "Erotic Theology or Machialogy" (illustrated by quotations from clerical manuals just published by authority) which may be necessary for his subject, but which the English reader could well have spared. The horrible system born of the unhealthy excitement and exhaustion of town life comes out in full ugliness when it is brought to bear on the unsophisticated mind of a country maid-servant. "Jeanette's confession" and its results form, on the whole, the most lively episode in the book. It is a shame to analyse a novel. The freshness is destroyed for those who mean to read it; those who do not, rarely get even the ghost of an idea of the way in which it is worked out. With a French novel there is, naturally, more excuse. The plot of the "Confessor" is very simple; though the story is not (as in some of our author's works) a mere peg on which to hang the arguments and discussions. There is more "sack," and not quite so much "bread," as in the "Maudit." Some of the characters are carefully worked out, and by no means want originality. Of course every author reproduces the same characters occasionally, though few are honest enough to bring them in, as Thackeray did, under the same names. Father Jérome, the evil genius of the story,

France. The Confessor.

855

is just the old monk over again-the disappointed curate, who took "regular" orders simply with a view to make himself a name, and ended by becoming an enthusiast. Yet we can never be reminded too often that enthusiasm may be, and often is, combined with the greatest possible meanness, and greed, and self-seeking Jérome, sincere enough in his way, has a wonderfully clear conviction that he is sent to preach the gospel to the rich, and that any conduct is justifiable which tends to enrich his order. The plot turns on the influence which this Dominican acquires over Madame Deville, wife of a retired country banker. This lady's object is to make the best of both worlds, now that her husband has bought a house in the Faubourg St Germain (for, Frenchman like, he retires to Paris). She is by no means insensible to the advantages of an entrée into high society, especially for her two marriageable daughters. So she takes counsel of her cousin, the child of a rich " roturier," who had bought her late husband and the title of marchioness de Sovinierès with a dowry of four million francs. The marchioness, nearly all whose fortune went to pay her old husband's debts, and to buy back his estates, thinks it will be very useful to know an honest business man who can recommend good investments. So she agrees to introduce her cousin among the creme de la créme, provided she will call herself de Ville, and take a director." This is de rigeur. Piety is the order of the day. "We are for the temporal power of the Pope; and every lady of rank has her 'director'-not a mere parish priest to hear confession once a quarter; that is all very well for the 'lower orders,' but a priest can't spare time enough for us. We want a man who can look after our consciences and manage our affairs into the bargain. I'll tell you some day how my Jesuit father managed to get an heiress, beautiful too and well born, for my scape grace son, just by sending him for a couple of years into the Pope's army." Madame Deville is very willing to imitate the grand monde in their views about confession. "How often do you confess?" "Every week, and I take the sacrament twice a week." "Then you've quite given up the world?" "Not a bit of it. I have my box at the opera, and I go to all the balls to chaperone two of my nieces. It's only those Jansenists who pretend that the two things are incompatible. The worthy fathers know how to manage it all; we are allowed to live according to our station. And then we belong to a lot of religious societies, where one meets everybody, and where directors and their followings are thoroughly criticised. Get a good director, that will be your safest passport into high society." So Madame Deville puts her conscience into father Jerome's hands; and father Jerome at once determines to secure her eldest daughter for a rather heavy personage, Hector de Chantonnay, a poor gentleman, brought up by the Jesuits, who makes his living by writing for the religious booksellers, and who undertakes to use the girl's dowry in setting up a newspaper in the Dominican interest as a counterpoise to the Jesuit Monde. If all depended on Madame Deville, the monk would have had very little trouble. She, poor woman, has been a thoroughly good wife for more than twenty years; and now, a little out of a spirit of opposition, is delighted to find her "director" at once going dead against her husband's wishes. It gratifies both her spirit of mischief, and her woman's love of independence, to act at last, as she thinks, for herself. Then, when he has proved her by making her get rid of some favourite servants "because they are not spiritually minded," i.e. decline to become the tools and spies of the holy father, he works upon her with all the terrors of l'enfer, and threatens her, as well as her daughter, with everlasting doom, if a rather liberal-minded suitor, who is beloved by the daughter, and has been accepted by the father, is not at once cast off. The younger daughter, a sort of sucking St Theresa, outdoes the Dominican in violence; and the poor mother nearly goes mad between them, and gets her eldest girl to promise (as the only way of saving her from insanity) that

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she will give up her lover. And now Jerome at last overreaches himself. He has gone down to preach a "mission" close to the Deville's country seat, and coming in once when M. Deville is gone away for a few dayspoor man he is generally away; and no wonder-he gets into the library, and tells Madame she ought to weed it of the irreligious works. Now there is on a visit at the Deville's, young Count Savinières, the Marchioness's nephew, who she hopes will marry one of the daughters, she does not care which. He is in love with Marie, and thinks the only way to free her from the monk's influence, is to disgust her thoroughly by an exhibition of his overbearing insolence. So he at once catches up Jerome's idea, and says, Why not now?" Yes," says the father, “no holier work than put bad books out of the way of doing mischief." "Burn them, father (suggests the Count), as they did in the good old days." So the monk sits in a great chair, the Count gets upon the library ladder, and calls out the names, sentence is passed, and the condemned are actually burnt. Marie is delighted at first; but by and by she sees the director has made a false step. The whole scene is a little forced and unnatural; and so is that in which the matterof fact de Chantonnay, who has made up his mind to get a rich wife, destroys his chance by bringing Mademoiselle Deville and her lover together, and setting everybody right with everybody else, except, of course, his patron, father Jerome, who is naturally furious at the way in which his plot has failed. He writes a brutal letter to poor Madame Deville, charging her with half-heartedness, and consigning her to the hell of the lukewarm. The whole party is taking a turn in the garden when the letter arrives. Mamma walks away to read it, and incontinently jumps into the pond. She is got out raving mad, and is left in that state at the end of the book. Jerome's letter is picked up; and the reading of it gives the finishing touch to Marie's enlightenment. She and the Count are to be married at her sister's wedding; the Count warning her decidedly that he will never let his wife confess to any one: "No one shall ever stand between my wife and me; we have seen enough of the misery which this spiritual hood-winking is sure to cause." All that the monk has succeeded in doing is in "killing out the faith of two really religious people, the Count and Marie." Let us hope that, in the hands of good hard-headed M. Deville, and his friend the Abbé Courbon (a broad churchman in the good sense of the word, "set on the same lines" as Julio in the Maudit, though not so fully finished), these young people get at last to see and feel the truth, apart from the errors with which monkery has so hopelessly adulterated it. They are a type, these two, of the rising intellect of France. If they are to be Christians at all, it must be in a "church of the future." As the Abbé Courbon says (in the closing paragraph of the book), "This 'direction' will be the death of confession altogether; it would be the death of Christianity, were not Christianity immortal. It is for those who believe in Christ, who hope for a bright future of love for the vast family of man, to put together again those stones of the sanctuary which the imprudent hands of zealots have scattered, and to construct therewith a building which shall serve as a shelter for the whole human race." Such is the Abbé***'s hope for the future. It is (as we said) a right glorious hope. When we read continually in the daily papers fresh proofs that the Pope is wholly in the hands of the Jesuits; when "our own correspondent" says the confessional was so worked this last Easter, that forty people were clapped in prison for possessing heretical books, on information derived from their wives, or daughters, or sweethearts, we must doubt whether the hope is not the delusion of a generous mind; nay, we feel disposed to cry out (like that girl in Browning's powerful poem, who had unwittingly betrayed her lover to the Inquisition)," It is a lie-their priests, their Pope;" and to believe (like our forefathers) that no good can ever be done, till a clean sweep is made of Rome and all her belongings.

Germany.-Tischendorf on the Gospels. 857

Leipzig:

Wonn wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst. v. C. TISCHENDORF. (When were our Gospels Composed? By C. Tischendorf.) Heinrichs.

"When

TISCHENDORF is well entitled to be heard upon the question were our Gospels written ?" He begins his brochure by stating that not the doctrine but the Life of Jesus is the centre point of contemporary religious inquiry, and for that life we have scarcely any authorities but the four Gospels. Modern unbelief relies upon the want of early testimony for their existence. All allow that in the latter half of the second century these gospels were acknowledged. Those who acknowledge the genuineness of the gospels, must find it their duty to bring forward all existing proofs of their being received at an earlier period. The writer thinks that this has not been hitherto fully accomplished. He takes the following method to establish this position. Is the testimony of those who, in the latter half of the second century, establish the genuineness of the four Gospels, to be restricted to their time? Irenæus refers to Polycarp, and through him to John and others who had seen the Lord, and whose testimony was in all respects harmonious with the written Gospels. But this plainly shews that the Gospels, and that of John especially, against which the Negative school particularly directs its attacks, could not have come into circulation shortly before the time of the bishop of Lyons. Tertullian bears testimony to the Gospels being received by the churches founded by the apostles. Theophilus of Antioch, soon after the middle of the second century, composed a Harmony of the Gospels, and also, from the testimony of Jerome, a Commentary on them as a whole. In his work to Antolycus are quotations from Matthew, Luke, and John. Tatian also composed about the same time a Harmony. These works necessarily imply that the Gospels had long enjoyed general reception in the churches. Tischendorf next merely alludes to the testimonies of Athenagoras, Dionysius of Corinth, and Ignatius, and next remarks upon the quotation from 1 John in Polycarp's epistle. This is direct proof for the Johannite Gospel, as both writings must stand or fall together. Baur makes the quotation an anonymous sentence, which might as well first be written by Polycarp as by John. Helgenfeld and others deny, for its sake, the genuineness of the epistle of Polycarp. Next comes Justin Martyr, whose first apology (A.D. 188), and Dialogue with Trypho, somewhat later, make use of Matthew certainly, and very probably of Mark and Luke. Writers of the Negative school suppose that he quoted the Gospel of the Hebrews, or a supposed Peter-Gospel. The differences from our present readings in the Gospels on which this hypothesis is founded, admit, however, of being accounted for by his using earlier readings, which have been superseded by later alterations of the text. Again, the mention of Christ as the Logos, the record of the answers given by John the Baptist to his questioners, and his mention of the new birth, shew Justin's use of the Gospel of John. The martyr's phrase for the gospels, "Memorabilia of the Apostles," points to a general reception of these writings as inspired and canonical.

From orthodox Tischendorf passes to heretical testimonies, and shews that the terminology of Valentinus is based upon John's Gospel. Ptolemy, one of the disciples of that heresiarch, quotes Matthew several times, and John once. Heacleon, contemporary with Valentinus, wrote a commentary on John. The Ophites at the same time made use of the same Gospel for their views. The Montanists in all likelihood took their notion of a Paraclete from the same Gospel. Basilides, who lived under Hadrian, quoted, as Hippolytus shews, both Luke and John. Marcion at first received our Gospels, as Tertullian shews. Celsus, at the middle of the second century, makes use of Matthew and John especially, and boasts that he made use of the writings of the Christians, so that it cannot be said he referred to traditional statements. Tischendorf next refers to a department of literature to which, in our time, he has himself greatly contributed to draw attention again, the New Testament Apocrypha. Of these he particularizes the Proteuangelium of James, the Acts of Pilate, and the Gospel of the Infancy by Thomas. Justin Martyr makes use of the first, and this shews that the canonical Gospels must have been long written before such an apocryphal work could have been circulated. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke, on which this Proteuangelium is founded, must have been in general reception in the last decades of the first century. Justin and Tertullian refer to the acts of Pilate, and that what they contain from it coincides with what we find in the existing manuscripts, is proof against the supposition that the book was composed at the end of the third century or later. This Jewish Christian treatise in its composition, early in the second century, shews that the Gospel of John, on which it is founded, must have been sometime earlier written. The Gospel of the Infancy must have been composed about the middle of the second century, and speaks to a gap for imagination to supply, as the existing and received Gospels gave no account of that period of our Lord's life. In the recently discovered Sinaite Codex, the whole Greek text of the epistle of Barnabas was for the first time found, and therein the quotation from The writers of the Matthew, "many are called but few are chosen."

Negative school try to shew that this is not from Matthew, but from the fourth book of Esdras, but without evidence. The conclusion reached from all evidence is, that the church gave general recognition to our Gospels in the latter part of the first century, and from that time no one of the four was considered as of higher authority than another. Tischendorf next considers apart the testimony of Papias. He makes no reference to the Gospel of John, and this has been used by Strauss, Renan, and others, as testimony against the apostolicity of that Gospel. But he refers to the First Epistle of John, and his silence about the Gospel is of no consequence, as it was not disputed in his time.

Tischendorf concludes his treatise with remarks upon the text of the Gospels. The Sinaite codex, of the date of the middle of the fourth century, harmonizes with the old "italic" version, and the earlier Syriac, as recently brought to light from a Nitrian manuscript. Both of these versions are to be ascribed to the middle of the second century.