-large charity and practical wisdom-that characterize the author's other works. One of its most valuable chapters-the sixth—is that which treats of "The great sin of great cities." THE GENTLE LIFE: ESSAYS IN AID OF THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. Second Edition. Sampson Low. 1871. THESE Essays are well adapted to the use for which they are intended. They consist of wise comment, founded on keen observation, upon incidents and conditions of human life, tempers, qualities, habits, &c.; and being written in a lively colloquial style, richly interspersed with quotation, anecdote, and allusion, are as entertaining as they are instructive. One sentence is selected in illustration :-" Men wrangle about religion, dispute about it, call names, worry their neighbours, and burn them; fight for religion, and lay down their lives for it; indeed, do everything but live up to it; very few of us even try to do that." VERSES. BY BARZORJI EDALJI MODI, B.A., late Fellow of Elphinstone College, Bombay. 1871. THIS little work, like the preceding, is not published, but may, we believe, be had of Mr. Speirs, Bloomsbury Street. The author is a Parsee, whose family name Modi (the bread supplier) was bestowed on one of his progenitors for services rendered to the English in one of their straits. Considerable personal intercourse with the almost youthful poet has left a most favourable opinion of his amiability and intelligence. His verses, which most concern the reader, are interesting, not simply for their poetical merit, but as showing the influence of English education and Western ideas on the oriental mind. In one of his poems, "India Three Thousand Years Ago," the author compares the ancient with the present religious state of India:"When Aryans, conscious of one God's control, Did ne'er lack-lustre forms of clay admire; To earth returned, but found in heaven its lasting goal." Lamenting over the darkness and superstition of that great race, which flourished before the existence of classic Greece and conquering Rome, and has long survived their decline and fall, he exclaims : "Raise, oh raise this fallen land,— : Turn the darkness into light, "Just as coral insects rise And to mortals' great surprise, Lift on high a living isle, So will India rise again; Britons are not come in vain." The first, the Hormejee prize poem for 1867, is on the solar system, and not only sings the triumph of science, as exemplified in the triumph of the Copernican system of astronomy over that of the "famed Ptolemy, great sage of ancient times," but lifts the voice of adoration to the Great Author of the universe, but to guess whose order and laws has made a Copernicus and a Newton immortal. "Almighty God, Who mak'st the planets shine, O Architect of the unfathomed universe!" The latest of these poems is an address presented to the Duke of Edinburgh, on his visit to Elphinstone College in March 1870. But we have given enough to enable our readers to judge of the talents of the author, and what is of much more importance, to bring him and ourselves into a nearer sympathetic relation. VIRTUE itself, though joined with outward competence, cannot give that happiness which contents the human heart, without love; but love is impossible without virtue-love, true human love-i.e. two hearts like two correspondent concave mirrors having a common focus, while each reflects and magnifies the other, and in the other itself is an endless reduplication by sweet thoughts and sympathies. COLERIDGE. 214 Miscellaneous. ATHANASIAN CREED. FOR Some months past a very active and earnest correspondence on the subject of this creed has been kept up in the Guardian newspaper. The correspondence commenced, we believe, in the Times by the publication of one or more letters in opposition to the continued use of the creed in the public services of the Church. It extended from the Times to the Spectator and other papers, but has found its chief place in the columns of the Guardian. Week after week letters of varying length and learning, some earnestly defending, others objecting, and others offering suggestions for the modifying of the harsher features of the creed, or discontinuing its use in the public services of the Church, while retaining it in the Book of Common Prayer, as one of the ancient creeds. This correspondence has enlisted some of the ablest pens of the Established Church-notably that of Canon Liddon—and has excited so large a number of competent writers that in more than one of its issues the Guardian announces "We have not been able to make room for one-third of the letters we have received on the Athanasian Creed." From the columns of newspapers the subject has found its way into the proceedings of Convocation. Here it has led to long and learned discussions, making manifest the variety of opinion which prevails in the highest quarters of the Church and the extreme embarrassment which is experienced from the changes of opinion going on among intelligent laymen in relation to this creed. In favour of the continued use of the creed, but recommending an explanatory rubric to remove the harshness of the introductory clauses, the Bishop of Lincoln spoke at great length and with his accustomed learning. On the other side, the Bishop of St. David's entered into a close examination of the several clauses of the creed, and cited Jeremy Taylor as an authority for its discontinued use in the services of the Church. The conclusion of his address is ominous as to the public use of this creed. "I do not feel," he said, "any great anxiety on this subject, because I am a strong believer in the ultimate triumph of truth and justice; and my firm belief is that the more light is thrown on the origin and the contents of the Athanasian Creed the fewer will be found to be its claims to that place which it now occupies in the public services of the Church; and to that I must add my conviction that, whenever the laity of the Church come to have s voice in this matter, from that time the use of this creed in the public services of the Church will become more and more rare; and my hearty wish and hope is that that may soon be the case.' The statements, that " except every one do keep [this faith] whole and undefiled without doubt he shall perish everlastingly ;" and "which, except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be saved," are a source of greater embarrassment than the doctrinal assertions of the creed, self-contradictory as they appear. The progress of religious thought of late years has set in so strongly in opposition to sentiments of this kind that their longer maintenance is impossible. The great effort and anxious desire of nearly all seem to be to explain these words in such a manner as to weaken their force and modify their harshness. This the Bishop of Gloucester would accomplish by a colla tion of ancient copies and a revised translation; and others by explanatory rubrics or the removal of the words altogether from the creed. On the subject of an explanatory rubric the Bishop of Peterborough said, "I have the most rooted aversion to such a document as an explanatory rubric to a creed. Such a rubric appears to me almost preposterous and inconceivable, for the very idea of a creed is that it is a definite statement of doctrine put forth to be received and assented to by the members of the Church. A creed should therefore be certain and definite in its statements, especially if it contain threats and warnings of solemn and awful penalties to such as disbelieve or deny them." What now is the position of this creed in this respect? Let the president, the Archbishop of Canterbury inform us. "But we do not-there is not a soul in this room who does nobody in the Church of England takes them in their plain and literal sense." The Church Athanasian Creed was said, there were visible signs and manifestations as to the repugnance with which it was heard. The question simply came to this: "Is it wise, is it right, to put a creed or confession of faith into the mouths of worshippers, to be publicly recited in church, many articles of which ninetenths of the congregation cannot and do not pretend to understand?" HELL. is, therefore, in the unpleasant position read, notwithstanding the rubric, and of having creeds which her ministers again in many congregations where the must perforce read in public, while it is perfectly notorious that large numbers if not the majority of these ministers do not believe them, at least not in the plain and obvious meaning of the words in which they are written. And in the case of the laity of the Church, the numbers, especially of the educated portion, who demur to the use of this creed is still greater. Of its reception by the laity the Bishop of Manchester gave an example in his address to the convocation of the province of York. "He had," he said, "charge of a parish of two hundred souls, farmers and labourers; and the squire, the one really intelligent man in the congregation sitting down below him, used to do as George III. was said to have done when the creed was recited, retained his seat. As regarded the farm labourers they repeated it after the clerk, but he doubted very much whether it lifted them one whit higher either morally or spiritually than they would have been with the more familiar language of the Apostles' Creed." More remarkable, however, than the speech of the Bishop of Manchester was that of the Bishop of Ripon. Dr. Bickersteth ranks with the evangelicals and might have been expected to stand out strongly against the rejection of the creed. So far was he from taking this position that he seconded the Dean of Chester's motion for discontinuing its use, and in the course of his speech remarked :-" Personally, he regretted that the question had ever been raised; he regretted that circumstances should have forced it upon their consideration to determine what was to be done with the Athanasian Creed, and whether or not they should continue its use in the Church of England. But it was impossible to ignore the fact that men's minds were very deeply stirred upon this question, and it was also impossible that they could shut their eyes to the fact that there was a very deep and strong feeling pervading part of the clerical and lay members of the Church, which should make them consider whether or not they were justified in still enforcing the use of that creed. As proof of this he might mention the fact that there were congregations so strong against this creed that it was seldom or never says Father We have noted in the above article the changed sentiments which are taking possession of the minds of protestant communities on the state of the finally impenitent. These changes do not seem to affect the teachings of the Papacy on this subject. In the Manchester Examiner and Times of 16th March, under the title of "Dogmatic Teaching about Hell," a series of extracts is given from a little book entitled "The Sight of Hell." It is by the Rev. Father Furniss, C.S.S.R., is printed permissu superiorum, and is recommended to be used along with the Catechism in Sunday schools as part of a course of religious instruction. We give from the selections from this work an extract, the mildest we can select. Some of the extracts are far more horrible :— "St. Frances of Rome, Furniss, "lived a very holy life. Many times she saw with her eyes her angel Gabriel at her side. It pleased Almighty God to let her see many other wonderful things (Brev. Rom.). One afternoon the Angel Gabriel came to take her to see hell. Now look into hell and see what she saw. Look at the door of hell. It is red hot like red-hot iron. Streams of burning pitch and sulphur run through it (Isa. xxxiv.). The floor blazes up to the roof. Look at the walls, the enormous stones are red-hot; sparks of fire are always falling down from them. up your eyes to the roof of hell; it is like a sheet of blazing fire. Sometimes when you get up on a winter's morning, you see the country filled with a great thick fog. Hell is filled with a fog of fire. In some parts of the world torrents of rain come down which sweep away trees and houses. In hell torrents, not of rain, but of fire and brimstone, are rained down. Lift "You may have seen a house on fire, but you never saw a house made of fire. Hell is a house made of fire. The fire of hell burns the devils who are spirits, for it was prepared for them (Matt. xxv.). So it will burn the soul as well as the body. Take a spark out of the kitchen fire, throw it into the sea, and it will go out. Take a little spark out of hell, less than a pin-head, throw it into the ocean, it will not go out. In one moment it would dry up all the waters of the ocean, and set the whole world in a blaze." Can we wonder if teaching of this kind is to be regarded as descriptive of the lot of the wicked, that thoughtful men reject utterly the doctrine of the Church respecting hell? Such teaching is monstrous. It outrages every sense of truth and justice; it is an utter perversion and falsification of the teaching of the Word upon the subject, and its pernicious consequences are wide-spread. It leads to the rejection of all belief in a place of future punishment, and men become indifferent and regardless of the fearful consequences and certain miseries which spring from a life of evil, and disinclined to listen to truthful and rational views upon the subject. CHURCH FINANCE. senting communities, however, where the greatest attention is given to this subject. Entirely dependent on the voluntary contributions of the members of their Churches for the support of their public worship, and the extension of their Church organizations and uses, they are necessarily led to desire as perfect and efficient a means as possible of raising funds for religious purposes. This question has of late years assumed new and very important aspects. It is becoming a question not merely of the amount contributed, but of the manner in which it is contributed, and of the principles, if any, which are at the root of the contributions. Some are probably taking up this question of increasing the incomes of Churches, and widening the range of their operations, from merely sectarian motives. But it is due to others to recognise a high pur pose and a manifest desire to bring the financial affairs of Churches to the test of truth and Christian prudence, and to place them on a basis of agreement with the recognised principles of the Word of God, and the practices of the early Christian Church. Under the Jewish dispensation was a formal law; under the Christian dispensation is liberty; but this liberty is not without obligation to contribute to the support of religious worship, and the promotion of the uses of the Church of God. All our possessions are the gifts of the Lord, and our devotion of a definite portion of His gifts to His service ought to be regarded as a privilege, and discharged as a duty. To bring even Church members to so regard this question is a work of time, and needs instruction. Efforts to promote this instruction are being vigorously made in the Congregational and other Churches. These, however, are mainly connected with the introduction of some peculiar systems which are regarded as superior to those in common practice. One of the questions which the necessities of Christian Churches, and the growing wants of the increasing population of the country is forcing on the attention of religious communities, is that of Church finance. The spectacle of a richly endowed Establishment tended, in the deadness of the past century, to paralyze all efforts to raise money for religious purposes. The quickening of the spiritual life, and the interest excited in the religious well-being of the masses of men and women who are without knowledge of God, or of the commonest rudiments of religious faith and life, have led to increased attention In connection with this general subto this subject. The Establishment, ject of Church finance a number of whose ample endowments are lavishly publications have recently issued from expended on a comparatively small por- the press. They are intended for extention of her clergy, while hundreds of her sive circulation, and are connected with hard-working incumbents and curates a movement for the establishment of are left to struggle with very straitened weekly contributions which has made, incomes, feels the same need of increased and is still making, considerable proworldly means as other religious com- gress. We give an extract from one of munities to enable her to provide for these which will show somewhat the her growing wants, and to extend her spirit in which this subject is apinfluence in the country. It is in dis- proached. The tract from which we |