hood, or by the title or the decorations of a Church. Or they are known by certain miraculous interpositions which are attributed to them. Or their deeds and sufferings belong to countries far away, and the report of them comes musical and low over the broad sea. Such are some of the small elements, which when more is not known, faith is fain to receive, love dwells on, meditation unfolds, disposes, and forms; till by the sympathy of many minds, and the concert of many voices, and the lapse of many years, a certain whole figure is developed with words and actions, a history and a character,-which is indeed but the portrait of the original yet is as much as a portrait, an imitation rather than a copy, a likeness on the whole but in its particulars more or less the work of imagination. It is but collateral and parallel to the truth; it is the truth under assumed conditions; it brings out a true idea, yet by inaccurate or defective means of exhibition; it savours of the age, yet it is the offspring from what is spiritual and everlasting. It is the picture of a saint, who did other miracles, if not these; who went through sufferings, who wrought righteousness, who died in faith and peace,—of this we are sure; we are not sure, should it so happen, of the when, the where, the how, the why, and the whence. -pp. 4, 5.

Are we sure?-sure that he ever worked miracles of any sort? when,- -as the author admits is frequently the case, we know nothing whatever about the Saint, beyond his name, and even that may be as chimerical as St. Longinus,-or St. Amphibalus,* whom these authors will persist in believ

*"St. Alban was converted to the Christian faith by Amphibalus, a clergyman, whom he had sheltered from his persecutors. Information having been given to the authorities as to the place where Amphibalus lay concealed, search was

ing to be a human being, though Bishop Lloyd would have taught them he was only a military cloak transformed by a blunderer into a clergyman and a

*

martyr. However, though we know nothing whatever" of the when, the where, the how, the why, and the whence," we may,—according to this new school,-without anything to go on but a name, and no proof that ever any human being to bear the name existed, set to work, and meditate and develope, and dispose, and form, till our fiction has grown into a saint, and we may call this " a portrait;" and we may say that our hero worked miracles, and describe them, and "put dialogues into the

made for him in Alban's house; upon which his host putting on his military cloak, submitted to be seized by the officers in his stead."-St. Augustine, p. 20. I find this absurdity perpetuated by Dr. Hook in his Ecclesiastical Biography-with the addition, that, in his life of St. Alban, the military cloak is improved into "the cassock usually worn by the priest." "Mais ce personage paroît chimérique;" says Moreri.

*Bishop Lloyd's words are as follow:

"The best is, that Hector [Boethius] had no need of his, or any other testimony, for he could not only make stories, but authors, too, when he pleased. And why not? as well as he could make a bishop out of St. Alban's cloak. It was, indeed, one Geoffrey of Monmouth, that first turned the cloak into a man, and so prepared it for Hector's ordination. The word 'Amphibalus,' which is Latin for a 'shag cloak,' and was used in that sense in the legend of St. Alban, our Geoffrey had the luck to mistake for a proper name, and so joined this 'Amphibalus' with St. Alban as his fellow martyr. Man or cloak, Hector brings this Amphibalus' into Scotland to King Crathlint, and there ordains it first bishop of the Isle of Man, and seats his Culdees there with him; so that belike they were the dean and chapter to St. Alban's cloak."-Church Government, ch. vii. pp. 150-1. Oxford Edition.

mouths of sacred persons,"-and we need never trouble ourselves to ask, whether our mental creations ever had any existence except in our own brains and yet no one shall dare to say, that we are deficient in love of truth, or reverence for holy things.

Who, for instance, can reasonably find fault with the Acts of St. Andrew, even though they be not authentic, for describing the Apostle as saying on sight of his cross, "Receive, O Cross, the disciple of Him who once hung on thee, my Master Christ"? For was not the Saint sure to make an exclamation at the sight, and must it not have been in substance such as this? And would much difference be found between his very words when translated, and these imagined words, if they be such, drawn from what is probable, and received upon rumours issuing from the time and place ?—p. 5.

"the Saint sure to make an exclaAnd if he did, why this

But why was mation" of any sort? rather than any other?

And when St. Agnes was brought into that horrible house of devils, are we not quite sure that angels were with her, even though we do not know any one of the details? What is there wanton then or superstitious in singing the Antiphon, " Agnes entered the place of shame, and found the Lord's angel waiting for her," even though the fact come to us on no authority ?—p. 5.

But who knows whether Agnes was ever brought into the place of shame? And if she was, and angels did attend her-is that any reason why she should see them?

And again, what matters it though the angel that ac

companies us on our way be not called Raphael, if there be such a protecting spirit, who at God's bidding does not despise the least of Christ's flock in their journeyings? And what is it to me though heretics have mixed the true history of St. George with their own fables or impieties, if a Christian George, Saint or Martyr there was, as we believe?—p. 5.

Yet surely, unless these authors were as ignorant as there is very good reason to believe them to be, they must have known how much has been said by respectable and learned Romanists of the necessity of reforming the breviary, and how little veneration they profess for St. George.

But give these authors their full licence to meditate and develope, and call their legends portraits— and what is the ideal of piety they present to our imitation? Gundleus, for example, a king, a husband and a father-deserts his family and his duties to live in the wilderness "an abstinent and saintly life:"

his dress a hair cloth; his drink water; his bread of barley mixed with wood ashes. He rose at midnight and plunged into cold water; and by day he laboured for his livelihood.-p. 7.

Such is their notion of piety, and such their reverence for truth.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED: THE REGION OF FAITH

ST. BETTELIN.

A SIMILAR example of this confusion of moral perception is found in this same volume, in the life of St. Bettelin (a person of whose history the author cannot venture to say that it is not "altogether fabulous") in a passage which, if one wanted to give a triumph to the infidel, might seem constructed for the very purpose.

And what the malice of foes has done to the bodies of the Saints, the inadvertence or ignorance of friends has too often done to their memories. Through the twilight of ages,—in the mist of popular credulity or enthusiasm,— amid the ambitious glare of modern lights, darkening what they would illustrate,—the stars of the firmament gleam feebly and fitfully; and we see a something divine, yet we cannot say what it is: we cannot say what, or where, or how it is, without uttering a mistake. There is no room for the exercise of reason—we are in the region of faith. We must believe and act, where we cannot discriminate; we must be content to take the history as sacred on the whole, and leave the verification of particulars as unnecessary for devotion, and for criticism impossible.—pp. 58, 59.

What can the infidel desire more than that Christians should confess, that they are in utter uncertainty as to the truth of the historical facts they believe; and that to have "no room for the exercise of reason," is to be "in the region of faith?" To