import of Mr. Maurice's theology, as to the principle which unequivo cally and individually pervades it. The practical operation of this principle is thus justly (we think) opened out:

It will at once be seen that the principle which we have been endeavouring to exhibit, overturns the whole of Christian theology from its foundations. God the Father is no longer regarded, in any proper sense, as the Creator of man, and the Moral Governor of a world of subject and guilty creatures. He is merely the Father of all men in Christ the Son. Mankind are His sons, not by adoption or by grace, but by nature. Their sonship, too, can never be disannulled or done away. They can never be, for a moment, separated from the Son. Their being is of Him and in Him, and, in Mr. Maurice's scheme, can neither be, nor be conceived of, apart from Him. Being thus necessarily and essentially one with the Son, and in Him united to the Father, no atonement, in the proper sense of that word, can be needed to bring nigh those who never can be far off; and no judicial condemnation can be pronounced on those who must ever be identified with the Son.

"The Son of God, on this scheme, is the Mediator between God and man, not in virtue of the covenant of grace, but because man's fall had rendered a Redeemer necessary, but from eternity, and in virtue of what may be called his natural relationship to both God and man. The Incarnation is not the ground of Christ's mediatorial exaltation, but merely a consequence and particular manifestation of that natural and aboriginal relationship. By His Incarnation the Son of God did but manifest that identity which had ever subsisted between Himself and man, exhibit the Ideal perfection of man's nature in His own person, and, by His example, show to all men how they should triumph over selfishness and evil. As the mediatorial reign of the Son does not, on Mr. Maurice's scheme, look back to Bethlehem and Calvary, so neither does it look forward to its consummation at the "Great Assize"-the Judgment Day. For the Son to doom and dismiss to punishment any sinners of mankind, would be for Him to doom and put away Himself. The Son is, indeed, the Judge, now and always; He will be such for ever. But He will never pronounce a final sentence on either the righteous or the wicked. And if there be no day of general judgment, neither of course will there be a Resurrection Day. This, we need scarcely inform our readers, is the plain teaching of the " 'Essays."

There is, indeed, sin, that is, selfishness; and there is a spirit of evil, Mr. Maurice teaches, which tempts to sin. But there is no "disease of nature," or corruption of the blood," to remove or remedy. There is no judicial sentence of God to annul or avert. God, indeed, disapproves of all that is selfish and unlovely in man, and wishes its removal. But he retains no indignation for a broken law; His only law-not legislative, but impulsive; not an objective rule, but a subjective principle is the law of love, seeking to do away with evil in us and in all. All pains and sorrows and sufferings, of whatever kind, here and hereafter, are not punishments, but fatherly chastisements, flowing from this law, and intended merely to amend and reclaim. No sooner, therefore, does the sinner relinquish his selfishness, than God's purpose is entirely accomplished. The pristine dignity of man is restored. Not at any time can man be so far from God as to be nearer to Satan. The Son of God is ever more intimately near to man than the spirit of evil. And when man sees how near the Son of God is to him, when he perceives how He is one with Himself, and lies at the root of His humanity, and how in Him he cannot but be one with the Father also, and embraced in the Father's love, then man gains his right place, and all is well.

What relation is to be assigned to the Holy Spirit in this theology, it is not easy to discover from what Mr. Maurice says on the subject. To us He appears to be put in the place of the Platonic or Neo-Platonic soul of all things. All distinctions are done away between the justified and the unjustified, the regenerate and the unregenerate. All men are equally justified in Christ, and all partake of the same regeneration which has come upon the world because of the appearance of the Son of God in human nature. The Church is but the world opening its eyes to the light which shines impartially around all, and to the privileges which are equally the right and possession of all. All men are alike, though not all equally

"inspired." There are none to whom the Spirit is given, as He is not given to the world. Pagan prophets and philosophers were moved by the same afflatus that stirred the souls of Hebrew Seers and Christian Apostles. What relic, then, is left of the Christian doctrine of the influences of the Holy Spirit? The only fit description of His power and working, on this scheme, is that of the Roman poet :

4.66

"Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus.

Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.
Inde hominum pecudumque genus, vitæque volantum,
Et quæ marmoreo fert monstra sub æquore pontus."

Eneid, vi. 726-729.'-Pp. 139–142.

Having associated Mr. Kingsley with Mr. Maurice as one of the principal representatives of the Coleridgean theology, we shall say a few words as to the fact of his Neo-Platonism. From his Lectures on Alexandria and her Schools, is cited by Mr. Rigg (p. 240) the following passage, in which he defines the Christian' Neo-Platonist principle, which he adopts as the basis of his theology:

6

The Logos, the Divine Teacher in whom both Christians and heathens believed, was the very archetype of men, and he had proved that fact by being made flesh, and dwelling bodily among them, that they might behold His glory, full of grace and truth, and see that it was at once the perfection of man and the perfection of God; that which was most Divine was most human, and that which was most human, most Divine. That was the outcome of their metaphysic, that they had found the Absolute One; because One existed in whom the apparent antagonism between that which is eternally, and that which becomes in time, between the ideal and the actual, between the spiritual and the material, in a word, between God and man, was explained and reconciled for ever.'-Alexandria and her Schools, p. 123.

The radical idea of Neo-Platonism is evidently here, and the readers of Mr Kingsley will readily call to mind how thoroughly it permeates both his sermons and his novels, in both of which he speaks with less caution and obscurity than Mr. Maurice, although he is sometimes borne by the fervour of his better feelings to use language scarcely consistent with it.

The purpose of our paper is now answered, and we shall bring it to a conclusion. It is not necessary for us here to state how much we admire, on the one hand, the gigantic intellect of Coleridge, or, on the other, the blended genius and benevolence of Kingsley and Maurice; nor is it needful for us now to characterise at length the valuable work of which we have made such free use; on the latter point let it suffice to say that, in our judgment, Mr. Rigg's book, which contains, besides his chapters on Coleridge, Maurice, and Kingsley, a most genial and discriminating critique on the late Archdeacon Hare, and a very vigorous repulse of Mr. Jowett, is highly valuable, and has rendered to the ordinary reading public a most important service. Our object, however, has been not critical, but explanatory. We know that many persons are fascinated with the theological writings of Mr. Maurice, and we do not wonder at it. The causes of this fascination lie on the surface. But, as they themselves are conscious, they do not understand him. We only want them to know what it is that the glittering lan

guage of Mr. Maurice means, and what, if they really take him for their instructor, they are to believe. Our space has not permitted us to deal with the subject at a length at all commensurate to its importance, and we can only hope that those who feel an earnest interest in it will avail themselves of the more extended and most able, yet candid, discussion of it which the volume we have drawn from contains.

Tom Brown's School-days.*

We have to congratulate our readers on the growing seriousness, and not less on the growing frankness, of our literature. And, with regard especially to the frankness, let it not be forgotten how much we all owe to those who have led the van in the new warfare of outspeaking, whatever may have been their errors! But, not to step aside, it is a great mark of our progress in this particular that the tide of openness has come to Children's Land, or at least to the enchanted shores of Youthtime. When it has reached the pulpit, and the religious' literature addressed to the poor (tracts, and such like) we shall say it is at high-water mark. Meantime, rising it is, and we may see as from a tower the end of all,' if we only choose to look.

The six months now closing have witnessed the publication of two of the very best books ever written for the young; both of them having this infallible mark of goodness in class books-that they may be read with enjoyment and profit by other readers than those to whom they directly appeal. The first, Morning Clouds' (Longman), is avowedly didactic, and might be called a confessional for young ladies in their early embarrassments of mind and heart; while it is admirably adapted to console, counsel, and cheer the hesitating and doubting, of both sexes and all ages. It is, however, we regret to add, written with such delicacy of tone, and such a presupposi tion of culture and aspiration on the reader's part, as must greatly interfere with its general usefulness. It is by a Churchwoman, and a 'real lady,' as the companion volume which forms the subject of this paper is by a Churchman, and a 'real gentleman.'

For some time past, our literature has shown strong signs of a revolt against the priggish intellectualism and vapoury optimism which soon after 1830 swept all before it. The popular topic now-o'-days is the cultivation of the manly virtues '-physical pluck, hearty (not to say jolly) social feeling, personal honour, tenderness to the weak in general, and women in particular; and the Manichæists (Mr. Kingsley will please to pardon us) are getting the better of the Optimists. True, their

Tom Brown's School-days.' By an Old Boy. (Dedicated to Mrs. Arnold, of Fox How.) Macmillan and Co.

doctrine is a little vague, and their wild and unsyllogistic manner a little suggestive of Tennyson's

Hold thou the Right-define it well,

For fear divine Philosophy

Should push beyond her mark, and be
Procuress to the lords of hell'—

but it tends to the introduction of genial, sterling, flesh-and-blood human sympathies, in lieu of the same poet's 'mealy-mouthed philanthropies, which

Divorce the feeling from her mate, the deed**-

'philanthropies' which begin to stink in the nostrils of all sincere men and women. This is a great benefit, and we would wish most cordially to acknowledge it, here and everywhere. The modern philanthropic cant, that in our age a man goes for what he is worth, and is measured by a true standard, &c., &c., &c, covers a most loathsome social lie. Alas! in our priggish pride of taking a man for what he is worth, we have forgotten to love him for what he is. Every day's newspaper contains some striking illustration of this. It sickened some of us, not long ago, in the heart-breaking story of John Markham, wrongly convicted of stealing a carpet-bag. If the railway functionaries had regarded John Markham as a man and a brother, instead of as a respectable-looking passenger, they would have taken more pains, and he would have been cleared of suspicion. And is there not a God who will punish for these things? Dear friends, he is punishing. What means his scourge of war, again and again uplifted over us, but to wake us up from our hide-bound pedantries, by flaunting the great facts of our common nature in our faces, and making a million hearts beat as one, in view of the intrinsic 'worth' which, in sight of sorrow, and suffering, and death, is seen to belong to every human creature? It is this same intrinsic worth which men like Carlyle and Kingsley have been trying to bring home to our minds, each in his own way, Carlyle with his pantheism, and Kingsley with his personal God and personal devil, in all they have written; and many of us have doubtless read them, within these three or four years, with anointed eyes. It is this intrinsic worth (as distinguished from the relative worth which is the real inspiration of your mealymouthed philanthropist') that constitutes the afflatus which breathes through the greater part of Tom Brown's School-days.'

Tom Brown's School-days,' while it consists of memoirs of a Rugby boy, will disappoint those who open it expecting to find a portrait, or even a sketch, of Arnold, from the schoolboy point of view. Something of him of course there is; and grateful admiration expressed without stint. Such admiration, doubtless, we ourselves should have expressed had we been an old Rugbæan, and written a similar book. As it is, however, we are profoundly convinced that

* Readers who may turn to 'Morning Clouds' on our recommendation will find some pellucid writing on the dangers of sentimental optimism.

there was a 'crick' in-we will not say the conscience, no, nor the intellect of Arnold, but in the join of his intellect and his conscience, and that his astounding scheme of submitting abstract questions to practical tests has bewildered, and in the end perverted, ten doubters for one whom it has led aright. This we cannot dwell upon: our business is to give old and young boys an idea of the contents of "Tom Brown's School-days,' occupied, as the volume almost wholly is, with Tom Brown, and not Arnold.

Tom Brown opens with an exceedingly happy discourse on the great BROWN family, in which resides the strength of the country we love and are ready to fight for in case of need, which God forbid. Here you have, in fine force, the sociality, and combativeness, and crotchetiness, and help-lame-dog-over-stylativeness of the typical BROWN of Britain :·

Much has yet to be written and said before the British nation will be properly sensible of how much of its greatness it owes to the BROWNS. For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way, they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. The BROWNS are a fighting family. One may question their wisdom, or wit, or beauty, but about their fight there can be no question. Wherever hard knocks of any kind, visible or invisible, are going on, there the Brown who is nearest must shove in his carcase. And these carcases for the most part answer very well to the characteristic propensity; they are a square-headed and snake-necked generation, broad in the shoulder, deep in the chest, and thin in the flank, carrying no lumber. Then, for clanship, they are as bad as Highlanders; it is amazing the belief they have in one another. With them, there is nothing like the BROWNS, to the third or fourth generation. "Blood is thicker than water," is one of their pet sayings. They can't be happy unless they are always meeting one another. Never were such people for family gatherings, which, were you a stranger or sensitive, you might think had better not have been gathered together. For, during the whole time of their being together, they luxuriate in telling one another their minds on whatever subject turns up, and their minds are wonderfully antagonist, and all their opinions are downright beliefs. Till you've been among them some time and understand them, you can't think but that they are quarrelling. Not a bit of it. They love and respect one another ten times the more after a good set family arguing bout, and go back, one to his curacy, another to his chambers, and another to his regiment, freshened for work, and more than ever convinced that the BROWNS are the height of company. This family training, too, combined with their combativeness, makes them eminently Quixotic. They can't let anything alone which they think going wrong. They must speak their minds about it, annoying all easy-going folk, and spend their time and money in having a tinker at it, however hopeless the job. It is an impossibility to a BROWN to leave the most disreputable lame dog on the other side of a style. Most other folk get tired of such work. The old BROWNS, with red faces, white whiskers, and bald heads, go on believing and fighting to a green old age. They have always a crotchet going, till the old man with the scythe reaps and garners them away for troublesome old boys as they are. Failures slide off them like July rain off a duck's back's feathers. Jem and his whole family turn out bad and cheat them one week, and the next week they are doing the same thing for Jack; and when he goes to the treadmill, and his wife and children to the workhouse, they will be on the look-out for Bill to take his place.'

After which, you accompany Tom Brown to White Horse Vale, Berkshire, where he was born. He shows you over the neighbourhood, reminds you of the Alfred and Charles legends, and finally taking