his simplicity and trust, will be accepted of the Almighty God and His familiars; whilst he who for the sake of his health and his comfort and his base and mean wants, deals in demonworship and magic, will be rejected as evil and impious, and be left to the tender mercies of the devils he invokes, to the confusion and despair of diabolical suggestions, and to infinite evils. For Celsus himself owns that these demons are wicked, that they are covetous of blood, of the savour and smoke of a sacrifice and of the singing that evokes them; let their worshipper, then, beware lest they prove slippery in their faith to him, and lest the adorer of yesterday be abandoned or ruined in favour of the more ample offerings of blood and of burnt odours that are brought by the adorer of to-day. And let not Celsus accuse us of ingratitude. We know perfectly well what true gratitude is, and to whom we ought to be grateful for all that we possess; and we fear not to be ungrateful to the demons, our adversaries and our enemies; but we fear to be ungrateful to Him with whose benefits we are laden, whose workmanship we are, whose Providence has placed us in our varied lots in life, and at whose hands we look for life eternal when this life shall be ended. And we have a symbol of this our thankfulness: it is the bread that we call the Bread of thanksgiving-the Eucharistic Bread." This last sentence would read common-place to the infidel or the catechumen that might fall upon this answer of Origen to Celsus. They could not know what the faithful Christian knew, and what the writer himself knew and must have felt to his innermost heart, that these passing words were a veil that covered nothing less than the Tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament. The great central mystery, for well-known reasons, does not meet the eye in the pages of Origen, save in suggestive passages like this; but we Christians of to-day can pierce the mystery because we have its key, and can respond with our Catholic sympathies to a Catholic voice that speaks to us in veiled accents across the expanse of sixteen centuries. "For our citizenship," he concludes, we are no rebels or traitors. You say, quoting the words of an ancient

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King there is but one, whom Saturn's son hath established. We say with you, King there is but one; but in the place of Saturn's son, we put Him who 'raiseth up kings and deposeth them,' and 'who provideth a wise ruler in his season upon the earth.' The kingly power is from God, and by God's will we obey it; would that all believed this as we do. You exhort us to enter the imperial armies and fight for the state. But no men serve their country as the Christians do. They are taught

to use heavenly arms in behalf of their rulers, and to pray to heaven for 'kings and all those who are in high places;' and their prayers, their mortifications, and their self-restraint are of more avail than many soldiers set in array of battle. And beyond all this, they teach their countrymen the worship of the Lord of All, and there is no earthly city so little and mean but they can promise its citizens a heavenly city with God. You exhort us to enter the magistracy and protect our country's laws and religion. We have in every city an organization that is to us a second patria, created by the Word of God, governed by those who are powerful in word and sound in work; excuse us if we concern ourselves mainly with the magistracy of the Church. The ambitious we reject; those whose modesty makes them refuse the solicitude of the Church of God, these we compel to accept it. The presidents of God's State are called by God's will to rule, and they must not defile their hands with the ministry of human laws. Not that a Christian refuses his share of public burdens; but he prefers to reserve himself for burdens and for a service of a diviner and more necessary sort, wherein is concerned the salvation of men. The Christian magistrate has a charge over all men; of those that are within, that they live better every day; of those that are without, that they may be numbered among those who act and speak the things of God-service; serving God in very truth, instructing whom he may, he lives full of the divine Word and law, and so he is able to lead to the Lord of All every one that is converted and wishes to live in His holy law, through the divine Son of God that is in Him, His Word, His Wisdom, His Truth, and His Righteousness."

With this description of the Christian Bishop, we conclude our remarks on Origen. It will doubtless have occurred to most of our readers that we have too completely ignored the charges of heterodoxy that have so often been made against the name of Origen. But we do not admit that Origen was unsound in the Faith, much less that he was formally heretical. Although not unprepared to justify this conviction, we cannot do more at present than invoke the authority of a new and important contribution to the Origen-controversy, which was noticed in our last Number.* Professor Vincenzi, it is confessed by competent and impartial critics, has totally dissipated the notion that Origen denied the Eternity of Punishment. As to the other accusations, he

*In S. Gregorii Nysseni et Origenis scripta et doctrinam nova recensio, per Aloysium Vincenzi. 4 voll. Romæ, 1865.

goes through them one by one and confutes them, without admitting anything whatever in the genuine works of Origen to be theologically unsound, "excepting a few points on which the Fathers of his age were as doubtful and uncertain as himself, since the Church had not then defined them."* Thirdly, he undertakes to prove that S. Jerome was completely mistaken, through no fault of his, with regard to the merits of a controversy in which he played so memorable a part; and, lastly, he maintains that Origen was never condemned by Pope or Council, discussing especially the alleged condemnation by the Fifth General Council. Under shelter, then, of the authority of a work that comes to us with the approval of the Roman censorship, and which on two separate occasions has been warmly praised in the Civiltà, we cannot be wrong in waiving, at least, all discussion, in articles like the present, on the alleged errors of Origen. What has been said, though it has left the greater part of his work unconsidered, may perhaps have served to draw attention to one who is in some respects the greatest of the Greek fathers. He did not live long after the completion of the Contra Celsum. As he had been the Faith's champion from his orphaned boyhood to his old age, so he merited at least to suffer as a martyr for the Truth he had served so long. His tortures in the Decian persecution did not immediately cause his death, but they hastened it. He died at Tyre in 253 or 254. The cities where he taught are now mere names. Alexandria is a modern Turkish town, Cæsarea is a heap of broken columns and ruined piers, Athens is the capital of a pitiful nation of mongrel Hellenes, Bostra and Petra are tombs in the deserts of Arabia. But two things are not likely to grow less in their greatness or to lose the vividness of their importance, the Faith of Christ and what Origen has done for it. In another region of the world, and in cities with names that are different, yet with histories as grand as belonged to the cities of the East, unbelief seems to be bringing back a condition of mind, to encounter which the Catholic writer will have to put himself into the circumstances of those ancient giants who met and overthrew scientific Paganism in the second and third centuries. Faith, and what is Faith, and why men must believe, occupied Clement and Origen. The same questions are occupying the thought of our own day; and many a hint may be gathered

"Dummodo tamen nonnulla exceperis, quæ pariter apud Patres coævos adhuc dubia manebant et incerta; quippe nondum ab Ecclesiâ definita.”— Vincenzi, ii. 524.

and many a suggestive argument started, by those who will take the Alexandrian stand-point and look at Faith as it is looked at in the polemical works of the great Alexandrian school.

ART. IV.-JAMAICA.

1. Report of the Jamaica Royal Commission, 1866. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. Part I., Report. Part II., Minutes of Evidence and Appendix.

2. Papers relating to the Disturbances in Jamaica.

Presented to both

Houses of Parliament by Her Majesty. Parts I., II., III. Feb. 1866. 3. Jamaica and the Colonial Office. Who caused the Crisis? By GEORGE PRICE, Esq., late Member of the Executive Committees of Governors Sir HENRY BARKLY, Sir C. H. DARLING, E. J. EYRE, Esq., of the Legislative Council of that Island, and late Custos of the Precinct of St. Catharine. London Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, Ludgate Hill.

4. Jamaica in 1850. By JOHN BIGELOW. New York and London: Putnam. WHEN we touched in our last number on the state of the

We were in daily expectation of the Report of the Royal Commissioners, and it seemed absurd to give any judgment without the opportunity of using materials for forming it so important, and obtained with so much trouble and cost. Unfortunately our present condition is that of the man who prayed for rain, and was carried away by the flood. The documents before us amount to more than two thousand folio pages, almost all of which are closely printed in double columns. Nothing could be more fortunate than this for gentlemen charged with cruelty or mal-administration. It screens them as effectually as the forms of the House of Lords did Warren Hastings. Let who will condemn them, the question is ready, "Have you made yourself master of the papers laid before Parliament?" and as no man can ever really profess this, the accusers are likely to steal out one by one, if not condemned by their own conscience, at least unable to stand the ordeal. An examination of the documents, however, will suggest that some opinion may be formed upon the most important subjects connected with the late troubles, without wading through the whole of this mighty ocean of print. The Report" of the Commissioners is not unmanageable in bulk; and every one must feel that (making all allowance for human frailty) they are more likely to come to a trustworthy conclusion than men in England by a mere

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study of the evidence upon which it is founded. At least, they were able (as they themselves suggest) to form, by their observation, some judgment as to the credibility of the different witnesses.

It may be necessary to explain to many of our readers that the Report itself contains a vast deal more than the summary of "conclusions" which has gone the round of the newspapers. It fills a Blue Book of forty-one folio pages. The Times and other supporters of the view of colonial affairs just now in fashion are fond of assuming that it confirms what they all along asserted. How far this is the case, and how much the cause of truth and justice has gained by the labours of the Commission we shall see.

The Times asserted in its numbers for Nov. 17th and the following days, "Enough is known to show that this has been a most dangerous conspiracy; and that, had it not been for the premature action of some of the rebels, the whole island might have witnessed scenes like those of Morant Bay. The rising presents the usual character of negro outbreaks. One might fancy it a record of some slave insurrection in days long gone by. There is the same secrecy, the same wide ramification of the plot, the same ferocity of purpose, setting before itself the gratification of revenge, rapine, and lust; and (singularly enough) the same hatred towards the Mulatto race; the only difference is, that, in this case, the leader was a man of property and position. Mr. G. W. Gordon was a black member of the Legislative Assembly, and a man of considerable property. This man appears to have been a prime mover in the rebellion, and it is said that a plan of operations has been found in his handwriting. However that may be, it is certain that in the attack on the Court-house he was deeply implicated. Though a member of the vestry, and accustomed to attend the meetings, he was purposely absent from the one which was to be interrupted in so disastrous a manner. not to be supposed that a man like Gordon would be ignorant of the risk he was running; but the history of insurrections often gives instances of such men-half knave, half fanaticwho enter into conspiracies in the desperate hope of winning power and revenge."

It is

As to the crimes committed in the (supposed) rebellion, the Times told us "the plot had evidently been well hatched. There appears to have been no special animosity against particular men: the intention of the blacks was to destroy the whole white population; no age or profession appears to have been given immunity. In short, it is impossible not to give credit to what is the universal opinion of the respectable inhabitants