tionalistic unbelief. The struggles and strifes of the last thirty years have been the inevitable consequence." These sentences and others which we might quote indicate the stand-point from which the most of these Replies are written, as well as the spirit by which some of them are animated. The point of view is that of the lofty Church-of-Englandism which judges all re-investigation of the Evidences and the import of revelation to be both needless and presumptuous, which accepts the past discussions which its own theologians of an earlier time have prescribed as amply sufficient for the exigencies of the present, and which is disposed to denounce all recent speculations and earnest inquiries as rationalistic in spirit and dangerous in tendency. It is doubtless true that the Essays and Reviews are justly open to the severest censure and deserve a pointed rebuke for the flippancy of their arguments, the credulity of their unbelief, and the boldness, not to say the blasphemy, of some of their positions. But it should be remembered, on the other hand, that the book, in some sense, also represents thousands of honest inquirers who would fain have their traditionary faith reassured, and thousands more of honest doubters whose misgivings and difficulties cannot be ap peased by lordly assumption or churchly indignation. Prof. Jowett has said many ill-advised and dangerous things in his Essay on the Interpretation of Scripture and in his commentaries. That he should have been left to say and think them is in great part to be ascribed to the neglect of theological study and culture which has been so somnolently allowed in Oxford, in the very diocese of the Lord Bishop Samuel. But neither Prof. Jowett nor his friend will think themselves answered-certainly they will not be convinced nor satisfied by the counter Essay of Canon Wordsworth. The supercilious air and the contemptuous tone in which his true things are uttered deprives them of much of their effect, while the ignorant misconception of the real and important truths which occasioned the exaggerations and errors of Jowett is creditable neither to his knowledge nor his charity. A severe, but not unjust, critic of Wordsworth would find ample material for animadversion in his own bald puerilities of illustration and his narrow anti-Puritanism. To this reply the attention of the majority of readers will naturally be directed first, because of the superior interest and importance which pertain to the Essay which it is de signed to refute. It is rather unfortunate that the most import

ant, as well as the ablest Tractate of the original volume should be confronted by the weakest and most exceptionable in the whole volume of "Replies."

The other Essays are of unequal merit and interest.

The one

on The Education of the World is an able and sufficient answer to the well-meant, but strangely Paganized discourse of Dr. Temple. The single sentence which we quote is a grateful exhibition of a better spirit than that which is exhibited in some of the other Replies, as well as the expression of a wholesome truth.

"In conclusion, may the writer of these pages be allowed to express the hope that the controversy which the seven Essays have roused, will be conducted by those opposed to them not only calmly and temperately, but with a candid acknowledgment of those truths after which the Essayists are groping, and with which their very serious errors are weighted? Mere denials and protests do little or nothing; we must seek to disentangle the truth which they are misrepresenting, and to set it forth, if possible, free of their perversions."

The reply to the Essay of Dr. Williams on Bunsen by Rev. H. J. Rose is just, and well put in most of its positions, though it betrays some of the ignorance of German criticism and theology, which seems to be inveterate among the best advised of the English scholars.

The Essay on Miracles, counter to that of Baden Powell, contains many just and pertinent thoughts, but is scarcely equal to the exigencies of the argument or to those of the times. A passage from one of the notes is a little noticable, considering that it was written by the Margaret Professor of Divinity. "I am not acquainted with Coleridge's works: but judging from the use which Professor Powell and others have made of them, I cannot but think he has in this respect, through dread of one extreme, contributed to thrust the pendulum back with too violent a swing' toward the opposite." One is tempted to ask whether the Professor could not have contrived to beg or borrow a copy of the works of Coleridge somewhere in Oxford.

Perhaps the most significant of these Replies is that on "the idea of the National Church, (considered in reply to Mr. Wilson.)" It is not only an answer to Wilson's very latitudinarian views respecting comprehension and subscription, but it confesses distinctly the weakness of the position of the English Church from its relation to the State, and urges in a very honest and outspoken language the absolute and impending necessity that the Church can

not long continue to occupy its present attitude in respect to its connection with the State and the lack of discipline. We quote the following:

"Well will it be if the present controversy bring back honest minds to the principle impressed on the history of all Christendom from the Pentecost onwards -that the communicants of a church, with their baptized dependents, are the church. We being many are one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread.'* A departure from this point, towards any other comprehension,' is a departure in the direction of ultimate infidelity,-which only a lack of the logical power fails at once to detect. For the world's sake, no less than the church's, the sacred rites of our religion must, before long, be more discriminately used. The church cannot forever go on lamenting her 'lack of discipline.' The State cannot continue nominally to acknowledge our Christianity as Divine, and then browbeat it (as capriciously as Indians their idols when deaf to their prayers). This will never be tolerable to a people who, whatever they become, will not be Indian in superstition.

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Let men ponder well the theory, whether it be called 'Positivism,' or 'Multitudinism,' or this ideal ‘Nationalism,' which 'philosophers' have propounded for them, as thinking the world is now ripe for it. Broad Christianity,' as if to put us to shame, has been held up as a glass before the mind of this generation; it is represented as demanded by the character and needs of the age. And yes, this 'Multitudinism' is truly the only idea which will fairly account for the treatment which our religion has submitted to receive,-a theory of UNPRINCIPLE. The conscience of the church has been so frequently crushed, the free expression of her mind so restrained, that bolder thinkers than our statesmen have not hesitated at last (as has been seen) to put out as a theory for future action that which has, however unconsciously, been almost a theory of the past,---a 'Multitudinist' national church, of which 'public opinion' is to be the rule, and from which every creed and article may be withdrawn, and only such portion of the New Testament be admitted as each individual may approve as genuine, and interpret' to his own mind!

"Neither for the nation, nor for the individual, can it be safe to go on without principle."

The Essay on the Creative Week will attract much attention from its novel and bold hypothesis in respect to the six days work, which to certain minds may seem quite as neological and destructive as some of the tenets of Prof. Jowett. We cannot afford the room even for a brief statement of this hypothesis, nor for any notice of the well meant and kind tempered Essay on Rationalism.

The volume of Replies is not only theologically valuable, but it is also psychologically instructive to those who watch with interest the developments and directions of thought in the English Church

* 1 Cor. x, 17.

that has been brought to light by the agitations occasioned by the publication of the Essays and Reviews.

TRENCH ON THE EPISTLES TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES IN ASIA.*— Like all Dean Trench's books this volume is full of pleasant and profitable reading. The deeply religious character of the author, his various reading and elegant taste, together with his general soundness of judgment, make everything which comes from his pen worthy of perusal, and leave a sweet impression behind. We should not call him the most reliable of interpreters, nor is this work very strong meat for the theological students to whom in the shape of lectures it was first communicated; but few men can make passages of Scripture so interesting as this gifted writer can, and we hope that he will live and write for years to come.

Upon one point of leading importance in the interpretation of the Epistles to the Seven Churches we must express our dissent from his views. We refer to the angels of the churches, whom he decides to be bishops. "What can the angel be but a bishop? -a bishop, too, with the prerogatives which we ascribe to one." We are well aware that this explanation is adopted by many, and are quite willing to concede that it is more natural or rather less unnatural than that opinion which finds the collective presbytery in the angel, and than that other which regards the angel as the messenger" of the church in any sense whatever. But we think that the view of Trench-even were we to admit that the Episcopal idea had already unfolded itself in any part of the church when this book of the Apocalypse was written-cannot be maintained on exegetical grounds. In short, let a person be prepared, with our admirable author, to hold to so early a preeminence of one pastor and teacher in a church over the rest, we cannot find that view supported here.

For in the first place the proprieties of the symbols seem to be against it. The star is something celestial, standing apart from the candlesticks. How then can the Divine poet of the Apocalypse have conceived of it as a presiding officer in and an integral part of a church?

Secondly, the seven stars are explained-the mystery in them is

Commentary on the Epistles to the Seven Churches in Asia. Rev. II, III. By RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D. D., Dean of Westminster. New York: Charles Scribner, 124 Grand Street. 12mo. pp. 312.

disclosed-by saying that they are angels of the churches. The sacred writer has given us an interpretation of what he means in simple language. How then are we entitled to take the word angel in a sense unknown to this book and to the whole of Scripture besides? The Apostle would not have explained his symbol by this word, unless he intended to have it understood in its ordinary sense; otherwise he would interpret a symbol by words which required an interpretation more than the symbol itself.

And again, what can an "angel' of a church mean, if applied to a presiding officer over a church? It is most unnatural to apply it to a bishop as presiding over a church, as an angel over one of the elements. If the idea of presiding was prominent in the Apostle's mind, he would have used a word better fitted to express his thought. It must then have been taken in the ordinary sense of messenger. But from whom is the messenger? From the church plainly, as it would be forced and unnatural to make an angel of a church a messenger sent from Christ to the church. To whom then is the messenger sent? To Christ? But this is equally forced, no hint of any such thing being contained in the

context.

We conclude then that "angel" here takes the same sense which it has through this book in multitudes of places. The angel of the church is the angel presiding over the church, or better, the notion of the church itself embodied in an angelic nature, the representation or recapitulation of the church.

Dean Trench goes so far as to separate the angel from the church, as having his own distinct responsibilities and sins. Thus he says "the Laodicean angel and the church which he was dragging into the same ruin with himself," (p. 265); and again, "the angel of Ephesus had more of Christ than he" [the angel of Pergamum] had, (p. 164). To us this appears almost absurd. The style itself, by passing over to the second person plural, shows the contrary, as in the words "Behold the Devil shall cast some of you into prison." Until we take the position that in these words to the Seven Churches they alone as communities are addressed, we must maintain either that the angels or bishops alone do all which is praised and blamed, or else that there is an identity of feeling and action in all cases between the bishops and the churches, which to say the least is improbable. When our excellent author asks (p. 77) "how could holy angels be charged with such delinquen