he has taken a deep interest in these, and that he has endeavoured, according to his measure and in his sphere, to bear a part in them, may be gathered from the titles of several of his occasional writings given above. Of his course, as a whole, in this point of view, we must speak with approbation. Throughout, it has been that of a conservative reformer, seeking to build the improvements of the present on the foundations of the past, and looking rather to the infusing of fresh life and energy into old institutions, than to sweeping and radical changes on the existing order of things. The conservative element, indeed, is in him, as in most English churchmen, in great excess, and leads him to shrink with an oversensitive alarm from any thing like fundamental change, or the application of abstract principles to the remodelling of old institutions. His whole philosophy leads him to regard the very life of nations and churches as so bound up with the order of things which has grown up in the course of ages, that he would shrink apparently from the hasty removal even of a proved and hurtful abuse, lest in cutting off too rudely the excrescence from the body you should inflict a fatal wound on the body itself. Hence his main reliance is on what he calls seminal reform, in opposition to radical, which he is disposed very much to regard as synonymous with destruction. His whole views, too, of ecclesiastical affairs are most injuriously affected by the fundamental heresy of the identity of the church and the Christian state, which he holds in common with so many of the leading minds of England, and which, so long as it holds sway, must more or less obscure the true nature and glory of the church as a spiritual body, and hinder the application of broad and fundamental Scripture principles to the regulation of its affairs. Practically, however, and so far as he has gone, his endeavours have been in the right direction. In several recent questions, as that of education, the necessity of a distinctively spiritual court of appeal for the trial of doctrine, and that great and pressing want of the English Church, an ecclesiastical synod, representative not of the clergy only, but of the church in its true Bible sense, he has spoken with a decision and with an enlightened breadth of view most uncommon among evangelical churchmen, and which, were his soundness more thoroughly trusted on other points, would render his position and influence at this moment one of the most hopeful signs of the times. We have only to add, that, as a parish clergyman, and as the official head of his own archdeaconry, our author's career seems to have been most exemplary, and his exertions in behalf of every good and holy work throughout the diocese to which he belongs, worthy of all praise.

In endeavouring now to form some estimate of the ultimate bearing of the theological tendencies which we have had under review, as affecting the highest interests of religion and Christian truth in this land, our feelings partake of a mixed character. If viewed only as one element thrown into the general stream of evangelical Christian thought, and likely more or less to modify and to be assimilated by it, we could regard it with hope rather than with alarm; considered as a whole theology, or the dominant and pervading element in any theology, we should deem it meagre and unsatisfactory in the extreme. The course of such a system, we sorely fear, would be a rapidly downward one. With so little solid substance of positive doctrine to sustain it at best, it will be very apt, in course of time, to dissolve into mist and thin air. A religion of Christian consciousness in one age is likely to degenerate in the next into a religion of antichristian negation and of spiritual death.* Little as it seems to bear of the parent's likeness, rationalism is the legitimate child of mysticism, and in course of time, by right of hereditary descent, succeeds to its place. Abhorrent, from the first, of all clear enunciation of doctrinal propositions, it ever runs the hazard of losing hold of propositions, and these the most vital and soul-saving, altogether; and thus the fire of faith and inward life, which constitutes the whole essence of this system, unfed by the fuel of holy truth, inevitably languishes and expires. We speak, at present, of a case in which this element shall be entirely dominant and unchecked by other counteracting influences. As regards our own land, and the interests of Christianity generally in the coming age, we would earnestly hope for better things. Looking back over the history of evangelical religion, especially in this country, since the period of the Refor mation, we find that it has already passed through several great epochs, at each of which successively it presented certain very marked characteristics, which continued dominant or exclusive for a time, and then gradually sunk down and blended with other elements. First, we have what might be called the theology of law, the massive and masculine system of the Puritanic age. The inviolable rectitude of God; the immutable sanctity of law; the infinite evil of sin, expiable only by an infinite satisfaction; the unbending and inexorable demands of right and duty-such were the master ideas of a religion which gave a stern seriousness to the visage,

We are aware that the whole course of theological thought in Germany, since Schleiermacher, may seem to contradict this. Undoubtedly, the whole tendency of things since his time has been from a religion almost entirely subjective to a higher and broader platform of doctrinal truth. But in this matter there is both an ascending and a descending course, of which latter we have a terrible example in the transition from the old Reformation orthodoxy to the abyss of rationalism.

and an iron strength to the arm of the most heroic race of men that have trod the soil of Britain. This forms the grand substratum, the primary granitic foundation, of our British theology and has entered ever since, more or less, as an essential element into whatever has been "strong and holy" in the religious life of our land. By and by that strong race passed away, and the stern earnestness of that great age was followed by a sad reaction of utter frivolity and religious apathy. The eighteenth century dragged its weary length along amid a winter of cold scepticism and intellectual inanity, till at last the breath of a new spring began to stir over the land. The old witnesses arose again, but with a spirit and a bearing greatly changed. It was an age now of personal earnestness. It was the spirit of Baxter, rather than of Owen or of Howe, that had returned to the earth, and the salvation of the individual soul had become all in all. With a comparatively slight theology, and with little care of public affairs, civil or ecclesiastical, it confined itself to its one blessed business, and walked up and down the land, surrounded, like its Master of old, by hanging crowds of patients, as a physician of souls. "Awake, thou that sleepest," "Flee from the wrath to come," "Repent, and be converted," "Now is the accepted time,"-such were the thrilling war-cries of that great evangelistic campaign of which Wesley and Whitefield led the way. That spirit is not yet extinct, and we trust never will be. It enters more or less deeply into the soul of every true minister and every living church as a spirit of conversion and of religious revival, and gives point and intensity to all their labours in behalf of individual souls. As a dominant system, however, the old Methodism passed away, and by a gradual transition gave place to another and not less interesting phase of the great evangelic principle. By and by the movement became more tranquil, genial, practical; addicted itself to quiet ways; submitted to rule; became domesticated in parsonages and rural homewalks of quiet usefulness; found its way even to metropolitan churches and university pulpits. It was, in short, the most winning form of quiet, loving, sunny piety that ever visited the earthnot heroic in its spirit, or massive in its mould, but warm and true of heart, and abounding in all the fruits of righteousness through Jesus Christ. Dwelling mainly on the love of God, the Saviour's grace, the fulness of the covenant, the glory of the cross, it has been as a tree planted by the waters, sheltering many with its shadow and refreshing them with its pleasant fruit. It was the theology of the affections, and of practical piety. It still lives, and long may it do so, to bless the land. May the benignant spirit of Venn, Simeon, Richmond, Bickersteth, linger still in the midst of us, and may their mantles fall on a

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long line of worthy successors throughout many generations. It cannot be doubted, however, that the distinctive era of the old evangelism is passing away. It is no longer, as a few years ago, the dominant religious principle of the age. The evangelical life which it awakened is fast passing into other channels, or becoming modified more or less by other influences. A strong current has set in in behalf of views of truth which had been cast somewhat into the shade during the previous age, and threatens for the time to give them a too exclusive and hurtful prominence. The person of Christ as the head of a new humanity, and the one spring of spiritual life to all his members the direct communion of the soul with him, through the intuitions of the spiritual reason, and the affections of the heart (theologia pectoris)—these, to the disparagement often of every thing in the shape of definite doctrine, are the master principles of a theology which, since the days of Schleiermacher and of Coleridge, has been steadily on the advance amongst us. In short, the mystic element, which has ever been more or less present in every living form of Christian piety, has risen to the ascendant, and struggles to absorb every other principle into itself. What then? Shall it indeed absorb every thing? and shall the whole heritage of precious truth won for us by so many struggles, and handed down with ever-increasing clearness of definition and fulness of spiritual discernment from age to age, pass away and give place to a vague, unsubstantial, dreamy pietism-without an authoritative Bible, without a positive creed, or with the naked article of Christus in corde as its all in all? We cling to a better hope. We cherish the confidence that this now ascendant element will be itself absorbed by a mightier power; that what is good and true in it will be assimilated by the general body of living evangelical thought, and thus blend as a not unuseful element in that great stream which has already received so many tributaries, and which will roll on in an ever-swelling tide through all ages to the utmost ends of the earth.

and

ART. VIII.-Sir William Hamilton's Attack on the Apocalypse. IN our article on BENGEL, in last Number, we had occasion to advert to a characteristic attack on the Apocalypse by Sir William Hamilton. But as we could not tax the patience of our readers, at the close of an already extended paper, with a detailed exposure of the paragraph in question, we had to

content ourselves with expressing our astonishment at so discreditable a statement from the pen of one who, assuming a complete mastery of the literature of theology, had stepped forward to enlighten the ignorance of a cleric, and our indignation at so reckless a style of writing on sacred things. We now proceed to furnish what we were then obliged to withhold; trusting that the following pages, besides justifying the rebuke which we presumed to administer to the distinguished baronet, may do some small negative service to that majestic book, which has had the rare misfortune to suffer equally from the assaults of its enemies and the embraces of its friends, but whose acknowledged obscurities are more than counterbalanced by the surpassing richness of those large portions of it which speak to every heart, and the unmatched splendour which invests even its most mysterious scenes.

The following is the statement of Sir William Hamilton to which we refer:-"How could Mr Pearson make any opinion touching the Apocalypse matter of crimination against Semler and Eichhorn? Is he unaware that the most learned and intelligent of Protestant [of Calvinist] divines have almost all doubted or denied the canonicity of the Revelation? The following rise first to our recollection. Erasmus, who may in part be claimed by the Reformation, doubted its authenticity. Calvin and Beza denounced the book as unintelligible, and prohibited the pastors of Geneva from all attempt at interpretation; for which they were applauded by Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon, [and our countryman Morus, to say nothing of Bodinus, &c.] Joseph Scaliger [of the learned the most learned], rejecting also the Epistle of James, did not believe the Apocalypse to be the writing of St John, and allowed only two chapters to be comprehensible; while Dr South [a great Anglican authority] scrupled not to pronounce it a book (we quote from memory) that either found a man mad or left him so."-(Discussions in Philosophy, &c., p. 506.) *

This assault upon the Apocalypse was altogether gratuitous. Sir William had a sufficiently good case against his opponent"the Rev. George Pearson, Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge"-who, to show "the danger of abrogating the religious tests and subscriptions which are at present required from persons proceeding to degrees in the universities," had launched out in his pamphlet into a crude enough statement of the errors which have been broached by German

The words enclosed in brackets have been added, in 1852, to the original statement as it appeared in the Edinburgh Review; showing that, though the paragraph has been carefully revised, it has in no respect been corrected, and that Sir William Hamilton, after the lapse of nearly twenty years, is in theological matters as careless of his reputation for accuracy as ever he was.