toleration, and to reserve a corner for them too in his Pantheon, among the respectable company beforementioned. However Archbishop Whateley may feel about the companions his friend has chosen for him, we must confess to so much of the old English prejudice in favour of "character" as to be very little gratified with the names selected to represent the English nation in this matter; and we are only comforted by the reflection that the author who made such a selection, and overlooked so many greater men, has probably no more information on the subject than such as may be derived from the most superficial estimates of the progress of true toleration; and that although in this case so learned a man as Chevalier Bunsen, he can have read little more on the subject than such books as the Religious Tract Society provides for the captivation of the Protestant vulgar. When the stream of German philosophy is filtered, its apparent profundity is often very much diminished.

But the apparent drift of all this ad captandum laudation of sixteenth rate sectarian Englishmen is to instil into his readers the conviction that the "Christian soil which produced the civil and constitutional liberty of the nations of modern Europe," and from which these bright lights and champions of religious toleration, (proh dolor!) had their origin, is also about to produce another great developement in the way of a Bunsenic Church, founded on principles of the most absolute toleration; that is, a "Church" in which all sects that come up to, or down to, a certain standard are to be comprehended: the basis of which novelty in the ecclesiastical world is to be the principle of "Congregationalism," and from which the sacerdotal principle is to be carefully excluded.

We have no doubt there are many who share these opinions and expectations with M. Bunsen, in hope; many outwardly members of the Church, who if they do not go so far as this, believe that the change which they are working for in this direction is on the eve of a great success. There are many, also, who share

them in fear. We ourselves do neither. But the terms of the following passage will find a response in the hearts of those who agree with its opening words, the class first named :

"If we now turn to the Protestant Churches, the phenomenon of Puseyism in the Episcopal Church of England and the United States, only appears as a faint reflection of the hierarchic schemes of Rome, its prototype; while it is met by a Puritanic resistance of a thoroughly national type, and a universal aspiration after greater evangelical liberty. But to the praise of both parties, and still more to the honour of England, be it said, that the High Church clergy, where they have not gone over to Romanism, cannot be called enemies to civil liberty, any more than their theological opponents, the Evangelicals, can be accused of a leaning to a Russian Cæsaro-Papacy. After various fluctuations,

many of the most eminent men of both parties, are now agreed as to the propriety of admitting the laity to a share in the government of the Church, after the pattern of the reform that has taken place in the Episcopal Church in the United States. But on this point the clerical party displays all the blindness of its hereditary absolutism. It is willing, as it is said in the resolution passed this month by the majority of Convocation, to 'confer' the franchise on the laity, without dreaming that the latter can never admit that any such power resides in the clerical body. The consequences of this obstinate clinging on the part of the clergy to their imaginary right to government are seen in the indifference of the nation to their proposals. This hierarchical party demands from the crown the authority to draw up and propose for acceptance a reformed ecclesiastical constitution, which it has no more right to do than the old French provincial parliaments would have had to frame a scheme for a free constitution for France. As little does the right of acceptance, that is to say, of veto, appertain to them. Besides, the nation would never regard any constitution emanating from them otherwise than with great mistrust, after some of the leading bishops have openly declared that, in any case, they must reserve to themselves everything relating to doctrine (including of course the reform of the liturgy) as they alone possessed a Divine commission for such a work. No doubt they honestly believe that the Spirit was given to them in ordination for this purpose.

"The counter-current has hitherto exercised little more than a retarding agency. The laity and the parochial clergy are protected by the common law. The bishop can, indeed, canonically depose the latter, and exclude the former from the communion; but the injured party has his action of damages. Thus, for practical purposes the power of excommunication has entirely ceased, and the clergyman is too certain that a civil action will be entered against him by common law before a jury, to dare to maintain Church discipline.”—P. 234.

Such M. Bunsen considers to be the hopeful state of the English Church at the present time. There is a "universal aspiration after greater evangelical liberty;" only the "clerical party"—those, that is, who embody the phenomenon of Puseyism-only these in their blindness, stand in the way of lay-ascendancy. Not even a Bishop dares exercise discipline at the risk of being brought before a jury, and so Church Discipline is merely a theory in the English Church. We do not say there is not some truth in what is here alleged, but it is greatly exaggerated, as any observant person must

Nor can there be a greater misrepresentation than the suggestion that the "clerical party" in the Church of England are adverse to the free action of the true laity. It is this very "clerical party" which has been endeavouring for so many years, and has, we are thankful to say, in a large measure succeeded in doing so, -to rouse up the laity to a sense of their privileges and duties in the Church of GOD. It is they who have taught the laity to delegate their prayers no longer to a solitary clerk, but to take them upon

their own lips, and let their voices proclaim before God and man what they are in His Church. It is they who have called up a general spirit of activity in the laity-especially of almsgiving-so that noble works are being effected by their hands. And in this very matter of Synodical consultation, it is the clerical party, in what are looked upon as its strongholds,-the Colonial dioceses, which has opened the door for laymen to take their due part in the consideration of the Church's affairs. But nothing short of a total abnegation of spiritual power and authority will ever redeem the faults of the "clerical party" in the eyes of M. Bunsen and his followers. However, M. Bunsen thinks things are ripe for action, and adds a characteristic suggestion :

"The question is now whether it is still possible to convert this negative position of affairs," (the supposed subjugation of the clerical element) "into a positive one. To this end a mixed Royal Commission might be formed, composed of lay and clerical members, to draw up and propose a scheme of Church Government, in which the laity should find their place. That, if this be not done, the entire separation of the Church from the State will come to pass, and that by the instrumentality of a puritanic movement among the people, is already foreseen by many. Few, however, on the side of the Church, seem clear as to the mode in which this may be prevented, or so directed as to lead to beneficial results. When the due time comes, the problem will be solved according to the circumstances of the day, by the public spirit of this Protestant nation, without spasmodic commotion, and in the way most favourable to the interests of religion.”---P. 234.

So that, it depends upon the immediate appointment of a Royal Commission, whether the Church and State of England are to continue in union or to be separated. And not only so, but on the decision of a Royal Commission, as to a new form of Church government,-not merely a new system of Church Discipline, as we at first read it, but an actual supersession of the government of the Church by Diocesan Episcopacy; and a substitution for this ancient, but we must presume, worn out system, of a new one "from the mint of Bunsen," in which the laity "should find their place." The question whether or not the laity shall be admitted to Convocation sinks into utter insignificance by the side of this novel and gigantic proposition. Whether or no Bishops shall sit in the House of Lords is a point of the smallest importance now. The "venue," as the lawyers say, is removed out of such minor and trifling grounds and judicatures; and the "public opinion" of this "Protestant nation" has now to decide at once whether the Apostles shall any longer sit on their twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of the spiritual Israel without lay coadjutors by their sides or over their heads, or not. Probably the Episcopal Office is to be made a sort of under-secretaryship; or the occupants of the Apostolic

throne are to be Registrars of the acts of others more efficiently representing the "congregation," that is, the "public." And Chevalier Bunsen really hopes that this is about to be done, as doubtless do such of his followers hope as are "anxiously waiting the advent of the Church of the Future!" They hope so, and think they have good reason for their hopes, for why?

"The fever of Puseyism which had infected the younger half of the clergy, and a part of the University students (!), together with the ladies belonging to the upper classes, is already on the decline. The realities of life are dispelling it."

e;

That is to say, the young Tractarian curates are getting older and wiser, the Puseyite undergraduates are no longer on our side the High Church young ladies defend the Church no more, for as to the few who did, the "realities of life"-marriage and the nursery we must suppose, are diverting their attention, and "Puseyism" has thus lost their elegant and interesting advocacy. And as for others,

"The arduous conflict waged with Russia, with its solemn aspects for religion and humanity, its lessons and its rebukes, and its illustrious examples of self-devotion among those who are not members of the Established Church, (as in the case of the heroic and highly-gifted Florence Nightingale),"

We are compelled to pause that we may ask, if Miss Nightingale has turned Independent, that she thus wins the admiration of Chevalier Bunsen? We had always taken her for a good English Churchwoman. But this Dissenting heroism and self-devotion is so great a novelty, that with good reason it

sun.

"has awakened all who are worth anything from their dreams. Mediæval phantasms vanish before such realities as the mist before the Thus, in Pitt's time, the fever of Jacobinism was healed by the realities which called out a national and military spirit; thus, in the spring of 1848, the broad practical common sense of the middle classes proved the safeguard of the nation from the delirium of communism and socialism. Thus here, too, reality will deliver the English from the sacerdotal puerilities of Puseyism."-P. 235.

We have been thus profuse in our extracts, because these sentences seem to us fairly to condense into focus the rising hopes of many religious politicians, at the present time; and although the realities of the war have come to an end, and the devoted heroine of Scutari is on her way home, while there is not a "sacerdotal puerility" the less in consequence, we have little doubt that strong hopes are entertained by certain parties that a few more family appointments to the bench of Bishops-a little judicious care of

"Dowb" in the "religious department" of the Home Office, will have its effect, and banish Church principles from the face of every Diocese.

Never were expectations more contrary to the lessons taught by the past. Bunsenism has had its opportunity before, in days happier for it even than Palmerstonian, and has proved singularly unfortunate in the selection of its ecclesiastical champions. Lord John Russell has spent his life in making triumphant practical mistakes, but perhaps the oddest mistake he ever made was in his attempt to initiate a Bunsenistic revolution in the Episcopate, in the very year referred to in the last quotation. Church and State came into collision that year about an appointment to a certain See in the west of England; such a contest it was-so energetic on the side of almost the whole Church, and so fiercely waged by the representatives of the State-that lookers-on thought there must surely be some one worth a collision involved in the discussion. By one of those unconstitutional acts for which constitutional statesmen are so famous, the apparent victory, at least, remained on the side of the State; and many supposed that Bunsenism, or Arnoldism, or Russellism, or-which was more the point in question at that time, the original of all these, Blanco Whiteism, having chosen its special champion, was going to enter the lists in earnest, and crush down with one mighty intellectual blow, all the "sacerdotal puerilities" of the opposite side. But the practical result which has attended this great effort of the school in question will occupy a singularly small page, in proportion to its antecedents, in the volume of modern Church history in England. High Churchmen must candidly confess now, that-the principle of the thing apart -their fears respecting the consequences of this initiatory episcopalization of the Bunsenistic theories were considerably greater than they need have been. The theorists in question used so much force and discourtesy towards earnest Churchmen-Bishops, priests, deacons, and laity alike,-that few thought otherwise than that their hopes were strong; that something great, from the Bunsenistic point of view, something terrible from our own, would certainly come of this appointment, so vigorously persisted in. can only rejoice, and take it as a good omen for the future, that history will be able to prove these anticipations wrong by showing how remarkably little has come, or is likely to come, out of that appointment, for anything that can yet be seen,-in the intellectual warfare between the Church of the present and the Church of the future. We can boldly hope, looking back only on the past ten years, that, whatever spirit possesses the ruler of the State engine, it will never be permitted to do any lasting damage to the sacred constitution of the Church of England.1

1 It is worth notice, that the now recognized political extinction of Lord John Russell seems to date from the time when, against the solemn warning of eleven