at this precipice? Is there any better guide to be found? If we leave Mr. Noel and Geneva, must we swallow Lord Denman and the Præmunire laws? Far otherwise; what endears the Church to her sons is, that the reality of a Divine guidance is the sure road opened to their feet. For what was the very purpose of that participation in man's nature which our Lord mercifully vouchsafed, but that in Him might be the commencement of that law of truth, which has been the perpetual inheritance of His servants. This it is, which distinguishes them from the rationalist, who looks to individual wit or illumination (for the two come in the end to the same thing), as well as from the Erastian, whose conscience is controlled by his ruler's sword. It would lead us too far afield to say anything in explanation of those well-known principles to which we advert, -enough that they leave room for individual conscience, and yet keep close to those great principles of the Faith, which alone supply a standing-place for the intellect. And these maxims, and this system, did our ancestors wisely and happily adopt in days of yore. To it they fastened the noble flag of British nationality, which it has borne so freely and fortunately through every quarter of the earth; and our complaint against the Russells and Palmerstons is only for their infraction of that happily-tempered law by which the free action of the Church was harmonized with the State's authority.

Such is the system which our author would abandon for the uncertain promises of a Puritanic Rationalism. Will his system have any success? Sooner or later we should not wonder if it gained partial influence. The course of the world seems to indicate that a democratic apostasy may not improbably be the error of the last days. Should such an issue await us, our author's arguments may perhaps have their weight, and his authority be cited. They may supply the same stair of descent towards infidelity which was offered by the successors of Spener to the hardier and more consistent Deism of Kant. Should such be the prospects of the world, we may no doubt anticipate a wide and popular avowal of the dogma, that every man's judgment is his own; that so long as he holds to it, he cannot really be in error; that each man's conscience is the voice of God, and that inward conviction is the only inspiration. God grant that neither Mr. Noel nor his children's children may witness the unlovely results of the system which he upholds ! But should it be indeed God's will that the one Catholic truth should suffer temporary eclipse, that the Judge when He comes should find faith obliterated, what more probable course can be imagined than a wide consent of men to those principles, which flatter their pride and offer small resistance to their passions? Mean

while, let a keen perception of present interests lead to such enforcement of temporal laws as may secure the worldly safety of the community; let knowledge continue to extend its mastery over the physical creation; let such a decency as the convenience of the moment sufficiently dictates be recommended by an increasing perception of the present happiness of men :-but with all this, let that true bond which unites all men to God, through the mediation of His Son, be forgotten; let those great principles, which only are able to regenerate the world, be abandoned by common consent, because not friendly enough to the liberty of mortals:-and what believer in the power and majesty of God, but must think such a state of things the more frightful, just in proportion as it is glossed over by the solemn plausibilities of life? For there would lie beneath it the deep yawning chasm of hell, which must in time swallow up and destroy the wretched delusion. For a time such a system might indeed prevail; men would flatter themselves by the thought of national improvement; the agreement of their claim to independence would be supposed to establish its truth; the presence and nearness of an unseen world would be laughed out of countenance, till at last the long-reserved anger of Heaven would burst forth in the thunders of the final doom, and the Being whose existence and laws they had forgotten, would reveal Himself too late to a rebellious generation!

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ART. III.-The Doctrine of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, in its relation to Mankind and to the Church. By ROBERT ISAAC WILBERFORCE, A.M. Archdeacon of the East Riding. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1848. THERE is a course and order in the learning of Truth by churches and nations, as well as by single minds. No doubt it is even more interrupted and varied by the different dispositions, powers, and circumstances of successive individuals, than by the different temporary impulses in one and the same. Still, such a course may be traced, and the marking of its several stages is of the utmost importance in judging of the state of religious opinion and controversy at any given time. In England, from the very nature of our institutions, there must be usually a number of parallel or interlacing lines of thought, and yet there may be a growth or decline in the knowledge of a particular Truth, which may pervade the mind of the Church, and materially affect the public opinion of the nation. And as there is a general advancement in any tolerably well-ordered individual mind, so is there likely to be advancement in the collective mind of a particular church, unless any of the essentials of faith are neglected and forgotten.

And as in the individual mind advances are made by the strong apprehension and frequent contemplation of objects related to a particular idea, so in a community single truths take firm hold on a number of minds, and carry them through the various stages of enthusiastic advocacy, persevering maintenance, reflection, comparison, and combination, to an enlarged view of some portion of the faith. As in the one case, so in the other, the first notions formed are disproportionate and crude; and as in some single minds, and in separate and partial acts of almost every mind, so in some portions of the general mind, aberration is the final result; yet the average upshot is improvement, since minds, though fallible, tend to truth when they have its materials. And in a Christian Church, so long as it is true to its principle, and really aims at thinking according to Holy Writ, and with the Church Catholic from the beginning, we may confidently reckon on the aid of a Higher Power, overruling the imperfections of men, as of old It overruled the misapprehensions of Judaizers, and no less dangerous

Gentilizers, to the right fixing of the Catholic faith and practice.

How far any such influence may extend to communities of Christians to which their constitutions forbid us to give the name of churches, it is too early in the course of history to define. But it may at least be allowed as probable, that there are portions of them which are preparing, amidst the decay and corruption of the rest, for reunion with the Catholic body, by an advancement at once regular and consequent in its procedure, and supernatural in its origin and maintenance. Much more may, in the same way, be affirmed of those who, continuing within the pale of a Catholic communion, take up any particular point of religious belief with a disproportionate earnestness, so as to form themselves more or less into a party, and to incur the danger of degenerating into a sect. A portion of such a party will often be led on into secession, and either join itself to some existing sect, or form a new one, like Wesley and his companions, for itself. But another portion will advance in due time to that stage of improvement in which it is able to reconcile its own enlarged views of its favourite doctrine with the traditional belief of those who have not shared its excitement, and perhaps to infuse new life into the general body, by communicating to others its now true, rational, and consistent views of Divine truth, and the impulse of its practical energy.

Such has been the history of the Evangelical movement in England. It originated in a strong religious impulse, partly traditional, partly reactionary in consequence of the cold formalism which prevailed in the last century, and partly arising from a few powerful and energetic minds, amongst whom the late Mr. Wilberforce held a distinguished place. It was, on the whole, real Christian truth to which these men recalled the attention of all who would listen to them, though in several instances tinged with Calvinistic error, or with a general dislike of order and authority, and in all needing the addition of some elements of thought and of doctrine, the truth and importance of which were thrown into the background by their circumstances. And this movement, as every one knows, has had its seceders, some finally lost to the Church, others parted for a while, but only to return with a firm conviction of her authority and truth. It has had its wild enthusiasts, its clever theorists; it has had its cautious, steady, and improving Churchmen; it has risen to occupy high places in the hierarchy; and in some minds, finally, it has admitted and combined with all the true and holy impulses that could be gathered from extended study and extended sympathy. In them it attains a kind of Euthanasy, and, so to speak, Apocatholicosis, such as appears in

Archdeacon Wilberforce's treatise on the Doctrine of the Incarnation.

Those who can remember with any degree of sympathy the struggles of the Evangelical mind twenty years ago in the trammels of a narrow system, will readily discern in that treatise the traces of its author's education. The principles he assumes, the cravings of the soul which he feels it needful to satisfy, are just those which might be expected from one who had learned Christian truth in the Evangelical school, but who could not be satisfied with anything short of its full proportions, and whose earnest thought would not fail to detect a deficiency where any important doctrine had been omitted.

All thoughtful minds long for a kind of completeness of view, and will satisfy themselves in one way or another. But some are so superficial, that they will readily take up with a single idea, which they perhaps dignify with the title of the leading idea of Christianity,' and present it repeatedly in all varieties of illustration. Many such were to be found in the school in question, who would ring endless changes on the notions of legal fiction and vicarious punishment, and dwell with uncontrolled exaggeration on the utter depravity of human nature, the impossibility of obedience, and a sort of stoical paradox, which equated in an overwhelming condemnation the heaviest and the lightest guilt. But those who looked closely and practically to their own hearts and ways felt that some further truth was needed to give them an intelligent apprehension of what is revealed of the ways of God toward man. More than this was needed to afford that sequence which we justly expect in theology, and without which we know not what we worship. And especially in that great article of man's salvation, the doctrine of the Atonement, was there a strong under-current of thought, searching every way for some outlet from the barriers by which it was pent up, and unable to find free course except by that opening which leads directly into the full stream of Catholic Truth. In vain did idle declaimers declare all other doctrines unimportant; in vain did even sober and orthodox divines propound schemes of the Gospel which an Arian might subscribe, and a few able teachers insinuate, on the other hand, theories that declined toward the moral teaching of Socinianism. Those who had been nourished with the sincere milk of Holy Scripture were convinced that there was in the Atonement a real mystery, and one of which we were meant to have a deeper sense than any of these statements or theories could give, and that it was certainly connected with those cardinal points of faith for which the Church had striven and suffered in ancient times. They felt that it was indissolubly connected with the Divinity and