friends without reminding them, that they appear to us to have looked upon the convents as mere inns, where nothing more than a knock at the door was required for admission, and a purse to ensure a welcome. Under such circumstances, it would be clearly in vain to expect information respecting the condition of these ancient institutions of Catholic Christendom, beyond perhaps a passing comment upon the diet of the brotherhood. Who but a tourist of the 19th century could pass through Syria, and owe so much to the monastic bodies, and yet experience an entire vacancy of mind of mind upon the subject of monasteries, as an institution of Christendom worthy a traveller's notice? Our travellers, it is true, give proof of a slight return of animate life on the topic of some few flagrancies, in which they have learned that the monastics have scandalized their order and profession. (We think a little more gratitude for the kindness. and hospitality shown them, might have inclined them to have omitted this part of their story.) But on the details and character of monastic life in the East they maintain a profound silence. The only fair account we have met with of its state occurs in Mr. Waddington's volume, in which he bears testimony that were St. Basil, their founder, to come to life again, he would find his children still maintaining the old rule and character. He spent a pleasant visit at a convent on one of the islands of the Strophades, and, professing himself to have little faith in monastic excellence, he avows himself' strongly persuaded that the holy persons 'who surrounded him, are not only free from the ordinary vices of 'humanity, but also that they live in the possession of many good 'principles, and in the exercise of many feelings not common to 'the mass of their countrymen.'-P. 190.

Why should not our travellers have something equally pleasant to relate of the hospitable convents, to which they were often indebted, not merely for a pleasant holiday relaxation, but for shelter and protection, except that, under the blight and perversion of popular Protestant sentiments, the very name of monk is cast out as evil, and no Protestant seems to have an eye for anything belonging to a monastic order, except their failings and scandals? We are not the champions of the Oriental monastic orders; rather it is now time to bid adieu to our Syrian friends, recommending their successors to take warning, not by any means to forget the spectacles, which a traveller should ever carry with him; and if any feel at all tempted to write a book on his return, we beg him not to be deterred from taking pains to convince himself of the dignity of the task he undertakes, by the very indifferent example which the majority of his predecessors have here bequeathed to him.

534

NOTICES.

'Die Verfassung der Kirche der Zukunft. Praktische Erläuterungen zu dem Briefwechsel über die Deutsche Kirche, das Episkopat und Jerusalem. Von C. C. J. Bunsen, der Philosophie und der Rechte Doctor.' Hamburg, 1845. (The Constitution of the Church of the Future. Practical Illustrations to the Correspondence on the German Church, the Episcopate, and Jerusalem.) The lateness of the period at which this work has issued from the press will allow us to devote to it but a small portion of our space. The text of the whole is the correspondence with which it commences, consisting of a few letters which passed two years ago between Chevalier Bunsen and Mr. Gladstone, on the subject of the Bishopric at Jerusalem. We have no desire to enter again upon this question, which has been already discussed in this Review; and we will therefore only state, that the opinions expressed in that article are now fully substantiated and confirmed. Clear proofs are afforded of the fact, that, whether designedly or not, the scheme itself, to use Mr. Gladstone's words, 'was understood and explained in contrary senses in Germany and England, respectively.' The 'Statement published by Authority,' and the 'Geschichtliche Darlegung,' are clumsily at variance with each other; and Mr. Bunsen's explanation, that Mr. Abeken, the author of the latter, wrote 'not for the English, but for the Germans,' is, Mr. Gladstone justly observes, no excuse for the fact, that he laid before them 'a view of the English Church, and the proceedings of the Primate and 'the Bishop of London in relation to this bishopric, which seems not only 'quite at variance with the real project itself, but also utterly fatal to whatever life or reality, whatever of hope for any others or for ourselves, there may be in our episcopal constitution.'

But the attempt to conceal the wide difference which exists between the constitution of the English Church as it is, and as the Prussian manifesto would have represented it, was as unsuccessful in Germany as in England: the fears which the scheme aroused were heightened by the mission of Uhden and Sydow, and the liberty of Protestantism was supposed to be in imminent danger. To allay these apprehensions, the letters which had passed between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bunsen were printed at Hamburg for private circulation: and we are not surprised at what the latter tells us, that his share in them gave rise to much uncertainty and misconception among those into whose hands they fell. Here, therefore, he furnishes them with a very full and explicit description of his 'Ideal of a Christian Church,' adapted more especially to the exigencies of the Prussian kingdom; and we may accordingly at last form an accurate opinion of the sort of Church to the establishment of which the Bishopric of Jerusalem was intended to be the first step. It is to be a Catholic Church-catholic, that is in Mr. Bunen's sense of the word, which is identical with the late Dr. Arnold's, of whom he speaks in terms of the most unqualified admiration; and as the passage in which his name occurs, places Mr. Bunsen's estimate of the Anglican Church in a very clear light, we will quote it at length. He

is vindicating the right which every national Church would have to confer episcopal consecration, so by courtesy to call it, if there should be any difficulty in obtaining it from other consecrated bishops :

6

Christianity would not be of divine nature, if its continuance were 'annexed to levitically-privileged persons; and the community would not have received the Spirit which was promised, if it depended upon the will ' of any class of men external to itself to give it a right in the historical 'Church of Christ, and a seat on the thrones in the kingdom of God. Nay, 'to what purpose would the Eternal Word have become man, to what pur'pose would Christ have suffered the death upon the cross, if that curse of 'the law, and of external statutes, was not to have been taken from us, ' and mankind relieved from the miserable elements of the world? It would 'be necessary, according to our conviction, to re-write the gospel and the ' apostolical letters, and to distort the whole history of the Church, in order 'to be able to deny these things; and the great men of the 16th century, who evidently were led by the Holy Spirit, were unanimous on this point: ' and it is one of the most striking proofs of the divine spirit which was in the Reformers, and in their whole race, that no one has more thoroughly ' and more eloquently vindicated the rights of the community in this respect, than Jewel, an English bishop of that period; and a generation 'later, Hooker, the defender of the Episcopal Church of England, in the 'last of his eight books on Ecclesiastical Polity. To obscure this truth, ' and gradually to establish its reverse, was required the ruin of the two following generations of the age of the Reformation, in bloodshed, in per'secution and oppression of enemies, in lamentable disputes among theo'logians,—was required that hideous 17th century which buried the 16th, ' and allowed the memorial of its own disgrace to be erected by the 18th. But, on the other hand, it is a truly consoling phenomenon, that, in the present century, no one has comprehended so vividly the truth of 'the general priesthood of Christians, no one has so strongly, impressively, and clearly maintained it against the pretensions of the Clergy-Church as-again a clergyman of the Episcopal Church of England - Arnold. 'That truth was the centre of all his Christian meditations and inquiries, 'the deep and firm foundation of his religious convictions. The spirit of 'this venerable apostle of the free Church of the Future is gone to its 'home, before he had completed the work of his life-the book of the Church. He is taken from us before the severe fight had thoroughly com'menced on both sides.'-Pp. 302-304.

It is therefore the well-known catholicism' of Dr. Arnold to which the Bishopric of Jerusalem was to be the first step; and Dr. A. himself boasted at the time, that his idea of a Catholic Church was carried into practice in 'the protestant Church of Jerusalem-a Church, that is, including persons using a different ritual and subscribing different articles."1 It is thus more fully described in the present work :

'Its form renders it by no means impossible that, with a political consti'tution which gives equal political rights to all recognised Christian con

1 See CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER, No. XLVIII. p. 132.

'fessions, and civil toleration to all sects and religions that are not immoral, 'that is, dangerous to the State, there should yet be several larger Church' communities side by side, in which the national conviction more especially 'manifests itself. In the old state there could only be One Church, which then was the State Church. In the new, there can, and there will be, for 'the most part, in the West at least two, in the East at least three, national Churches, as soon as liberty of conscience is the principle of the constitu'tion.'-P. 108.

The author has, however, omitted to treat of the gravest and most important question, the first that would naturally arise, and which it would be impossible to obviate or get rid of. In the 400 pages of which his work consists, he enters into the minutest details respecting the functions of bishops, preachers, and deacons, (for all these he would have,) and their relations to the temporal authorities, but, with the exception of the vague expression recognised Christian confessions,' he gives not the smallest hint or intimation what degrees of difference of creed are to be compatible with the bond of Church union, nor how a restriction within those degrees is to be preserved or enforced. Until this question is settled to the satisfaction of the people of Prussia, it is, we imagine, of little use to inquire whether they will submit to be governed by bishops appointed by the monarch, and consent to an organised system, which would strengthen and consolidate the bureaucracy, already so unpopular in that country. But there is good reason for believing that the mass of the people, as well as the entire body of the clergy-pietist as well as rationalist—would be unanimous against the introduction of even such an episcopacy as is essential to his scheme-an episcopacy which neither seeks nor recognises the gift of apostolical succession. They would one and all adopt the words recently used by one of the most learned and moderate of their professors of theology: 'We cannot recognise this aristocratic form of ' ecclesiastical polity as best corresponding with the essence of Christianity, as most conducive to the development of Christian life and Christian 'improvement; more especially, we cannot recognise it as one most fitted 'for German Protestantism."

In conclusion, we have only to remark, that the sneers in which the author indulges against English writers, who have exposed the fearful indifference to doctrinal truth as well as religious ordinances existing throughout Protestant Germany, are unworthy of his character, and will neither refute the grave objections which have been brought against the published works of German divines and philosophers, nor disprove the concurrent testimony of every Englishman who has been in that country.

Very few more important works on its particular subject have appeared than Professor Willis' Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral,' (Longman.) It incorporates the very curious and valuable history of the burning and repair of the Cathedral in 1174, by the Monk Gervase, a contemporary of S. Thomas à Becket, as well as sufficiently connected extracts

1 Dr. Neander's Reply to E. H. Dewar, British Chaplain at Hamburg, p. 7. Berlin, 1845.

from the work of Edmer and others. But remarkable as are these genuine materials of history, we are disposed to rank Mr. Willis' own contributions at a value quite equal to them: his technical skill, and the great powers of criticism and comparison, with which, like another Cuvier, he has assigned dates and builders to every part of the metropolitan Church, require at our hands especial commendation; while at the same time there is so little parade and affectation, that, with the assistance of the beautiful and wellcut drawings, and the careful ground plans, any reader of common attention can master the whole subject. And yet, with all this praise, and we mean it to be very high, shall we own to an important blank? At first we thought that the title selected by Mr. Willis, the Architectural History, had precluded him from hinting, that this great collection of stone and timber, called a Cathedral, which in one form or other has lasted on the same spot for fifteen hundred years,-that this great congeries of material forms-had any purpose or meaning. Indeed there is a distressing passage in the preface which indicates this aim, or rather lack of aim. 'The mission of 'Augustine . . . . has, for my purpose, no other result worth noticing, than the recovery of the ancient Christian Church at Canterbury, the work of 'Roman believers. . . The murder of Thomas à Becket only concerns me as 'the cause of the removal of the pillar and vault, which originally occupied 'the scene of his death,' &c., p. xii. If this, then, were the learned Professor's 'purpose,' we own to be greatly disappointed and dissatisfied with it. Such is both unphilosophical, to our minds, and irreligious: unphilosophical, as it would be to write the natural history of the creature man, just omitting any recognition of his soul; irreligious, because we see the greatest danger in building or restoring, or even in visiting God's houses, as though they were only so many castles, or Etruscan tombs, or vitrified forts. There is a tendency in other countries as well as this, to take this cold wretched antiquarian view of Churches. There were some awkward disclaimers of any religious object in the sittings of the recent 'Ecclesiological section,' at Winchester; and, even though the noble president phrased it Tractarian, or Anti-Tractarian,' the bias remains the same. Let us be sure that, if we do not become more religious by our knowledge of Churches and Christian art, we shall grow the worse for it things dedicated to God, involve a mystery and a secret, which, if we fail to read aright, like the fabled enigma of heathenism, it will tear us to pieces. Churches are not so much structures, not so much fabrics, as witnesses of that faith which moved mountains. It were better for us not to know so much about Churches, as to know it only as knowledge. And here, to say the least of it, Mr. Willis' history is defective: his predecessor, Gervase, wrote a technical and architectural treatise, yet he did not forget the 'religiosity,' as somebody queerly styled it, of his subject. Indeed we are afraid that we must go further, and charge Professor Willis rather with a wilful than a forced omission, of what we consider the sole value of Ecclesiology. Speaking (p. 101) of Cranmer's procuring a royal letter for taking away and defacing the images and bones of supposed saints,' in which, by the bye, the remains of such as S. Alban and S. Edmund were committed, for the sake of religion, to the flames; Professor Willis says,