The first requisite is a belief in the supernatural and sacramental character of the act of common worship; that is to say, a belief that the act itself is a means of union to our Lord, because it is a means of union to His one body, the Church. The faith with which we believe in a special and plenary communication of Him in the Holy Eucharist, that faith is to be extended in its degree to every act of common worship as such, and independently of the particular things prayed for and obtained. We place ourselves thereby in communication with an ordained channel and medium of blessing and benefit; or, to express it otherwise, in an actual atmosphere of spiritual light and air. As certainly as to be in heaven were a blessed thing for the very thing's sake, and simply because it were to be in the light of God's immediate Presence; so surely, though in a lower degree, is public worship a blessed estate, simply because it is an outer court, as it were, of that Presence. Another prerequisite is the recognition and habitual sense of our continuity and oneness with the whole Catholic Church. The body with which we worship is vast, in time, and space, and number: in time it reaches back to our first fathers 'Apostles, Patriarchs, all have place along the sacred line;' in space it extends wherever a true branch of the true Vine has reached; in number it is ten thousand times ten thousand, and our voices but feebly swell a chorus which rises from all saints in all times and lands: a view of which the Te Deum is the best exponent. But the sense of continuity with the earlier Church, and of oneness with the existing one, is also greatly maintained by a consideration of the identity, for the most part, and in all essential particulars, of our services with those of the universal Church for many hundreds of years, and almost from the beginning. This identity has been successfully contended for by our Ritualists, especially by Mr. Palmer. Amid all the differences of doctrine which exist between us and other branches of the Church, there is a cheering and comforting unity as to the great leading lines of our manner of common worship. This, therefore, is another feeling which we should allow to enter as largely as possible into our acts of public service.

We have followed Mr. Freeman's example in dwelling somewhat fully on the spiritual and ethical aspects of the problem which is propounded to the English Church in the inquiry, How ought we to train our Clergy? The truth is, that a firm hold upon spiritual things, a combination of soundness, strength, and fervour, is the great thing we want; and we firmly believe that the Church herself, if her ordinances had fair play, is fully equal to imparting all this. They have not fair play; the Clergy do not go to her school as they ought; they are not made beforehand to yield themselves up as disciples of her

institutions.' And in making a period for their formation, we must be careful for this one thing at least, whatever else we leave undone, that she shall have such a period of fair play and full influence as is her right. This done, however, there is of course very much to be done beside; so much, indeed, that the danger is, as we have already intimated, of attempting too much, and so doing everything perfunctorily and nothing as it should be. The vast variety of subjects into which theology divides and subdivides itself is enough to distract and confound him who for the first time enters upon the study of it. Scripture interpretations and criticism, boundless; sacred and ecclesiastical history, interminable; sacred ethics and casuistry, ad infinitum; Fathers and Councils, hugely voluminous; controversial studies, intricate to bewilderment; ritual, a wide field for expatiating on. These are but a few of the departments of study which present themselves as rivals for attention. It is here, then, that system and simplicity, guidance and selection, are of infinite value to the young theologian; it is a far happier and more favourable condition for him, to yield up his own unformed judgment as to choice of subjects and line of study to that of others. Much must be left untouched for the present-untouched, yet not necessarily uncared for; its place may be shown him, its relative importance assigned, the best sources and guides for pursuing it in future indicated. And if, after all, the knowledge which can by possibility be conveyed and imbibed in the period of preparation must of necessity be fragmentary, and in some degree imperfectly held, yet under higher teaching it need not be disconnected or wanting in real unity. This is the very thing which a practised theologian can do, and a learner cannot, namely, perceive and trace the connexion between all the parts of sacred knowledge. Those who have seen anything of the state of mind in theological matters which the ordinary run of our graduates bring from the University, will admit that, with many excellent elements in it, it presents on the whole, in this regard, an aspect not very much unlike a chaos; and as the process of the formation of a theological terra firma goes on, the analogy continues to hold in this respect, that the several patches which here and there appear, are not, to the conception of him who is the subject of the process, in any way connected with each other. Those only who are familiar with the whole range of the subject can assure and convince the student that what he learns so Tоλvμeрs is really one whole that a real unity, though to him as yet submerged and invisible, subsists between ethics and ritual, between catechisms and Church history. And for want of having this proved, the student is apt to study without point, without a distinct idea of

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whither his path is taking him he labours under the same discouragement as boys at school do, who must in the first instance learn rules and facts without an idea of what the use of them is. The educated, though still untheological student, is under no such invincible necessity of taking his early steps in the dark; he can apprehend relations and interdependencies when pointed out to him, though he would probably not have discovered them for himself. Here, then, the digitus monstrantis has its signal use. Neither, of course, is such guidance available, merely for the intellectual satisfaction or for the encouragement of the beginner in sacred studies: it is also the most effectual preservative against injurious and often fatal deviations from the track within which true doctrine runs. Truths and facts in divinity come before the learner's eye apart from those limitations which are the divinely provided correctives of apparently inevitable inferences from them. When a great truth first comes upon the spirit in its power, to suppose any limits to it seems to be a starting back from the homage it claims as true. This is of course a fruitful, though surely a compassionable source of many an error and heresy. Thus, one large class of errors arises from forgetfulness that the kingdom of nature is from the same Hand as is the kingdom of grace, and that the former therefore is sure to be so cared for by the common Author of both, that its provisions shall not be forgotten or swallowed up in those of the latter. From the moment God was made Very Man, a large and varied play of the influences of these two great kingdoms upon each other commenced, to last, as it should seem, or certainly to have results which are to last, throughout eternity, yet without any actual extinction of the great fundamental elements or axioms of either. To pare ' away,' in Hooker's words, from the one or the other element, 'the Divine or the Human in our Lord, was the fault or the 'misfortune of the old heresies: to conserve to each its pro'prieties, without attempting in all cases to explain the resulting fact (as, e.g. to reconcile Christ's restrained knowledge, as man, with his perfect knowledge as God), was the great 'work of faith, a work proceeding upon Scripture and con'current creed, wrought out by the faith of the first ages.' And what was natural then is natural now the same confronting of the same phenomena of the two mighty realms of Being hurries the will into the self-same errors in kind; only the stage of their manifestation is lower. Driven away by clear and unanswerable resolutions as to the matter of fact of the original Revelation, from the subject of our Lord's Person, doubt and question have betaken them to the region of man's position, as members of His kingdom. And is there one whit

1 Wilberforce on the Incarnation.

less danger of fatal miscarriage in the apprehension of divine truth in this region than in that which exercised the faith, the humility, and the reverence of the earlier ages? Let councils and decrees, articles and confessions, give the answer. Here, then, there is room enough for the chair of an Athanasius, and need enough for schools of Divinity. Between the rationalist, who does away with the kingdom of grace in man, and the mediavalist, who would make that kingdom to override and obliterate the laws of the kingdom of nature and fact, there are infinite shades of error. And into some of these varieties there is danger of the young theologian's running at the present day; it is difficult for him to hold with that even balance which a deeper acquaintance with Divinity can alone ensure, the great psychological truths which define the estate of regenerate man.

There are many other points of interest upon which we might have dwelt; but we feel the less concern at passing them by, that the whole subject is quite too wide to be exhausted in a single effort or a single discussion. The pamphlet to which we have so frequently referred, has pointed to a great work to be done, and to beginnings of fair promise which have been made towards its accomplishment. A few more endeavours of the same practical sort would be worth volumes of speculation. We will, therefore, do no more than draw attention to a view of the subject, which at the present day, judging by the professions that are abroad, ought to call forth an immediate response. We have attained, namely, to a recognition of such a thing as a conscience, a duty, and a mission, appertaining to the Church as a body, as distinguished from the conscience, duty, and mission of individuals. Such is our profession. Now, it is a point made good in this pamphlet, that the Church, our Church, has, besides the positive loss and evil from time to time sustained by her having neglected to train the Clergy, been, in virtue of the same negligence, betraying a conscientious trust imposed on her,viz. that of transmitting true doctrine in the true way, or in other words, has not been safely transmitting it at all. Surely, if there be a call on the energies of our day, on the efforts of Churchmen, on the responsibility of Bishops, it is this. We rejoice to know that more than one of the Bishops, since the sending forth of this 'Plea,' has shown himself alive to the duty which it dwells upon. And of one thing we are perfectly satisfied, that until the due training of the Clergy be taken up in right earnest, Synodical action, though in a chosen Diocese here and there it may be a blessing, will in most cases be an experiment from which we could expect no blessing, because, not having wisely sown, it were a marvel, indeed, if we should profitably reap.

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NOTICES.

Tales of a London Parish,' (Masters,) come out under Mr. Bennett's imprimatur. This alone would make us look at the publication cheerfully : our feeling is not diminished when we find that they are by one who has, in Tales of Kirkbeck,' made friends among his or her readers. There is power and occasional pathos in these tales; they show a kind heart, and sympathy, and considerable command over language. As compositions, that is, in the way of invention, they are not remarkable; and we must at once say, that we have very many difficulties before we can recommend works of this character. We have doubts whether the ordinary routine of parochial visiting should be made the framework of stories. The first of this class of books, written, perhaps, before some of its imitators quitted the nursery, the late Mr. Wood's Death-bed Scenes,' has hardly been equalled. This was a real, if not always a judicious, book; the present Tales' are to our apprehension, singularly unreal: it is not a fact that London, or any other Clergymen, find their flocks sending for them, and addressing them, as the Priest:'-'celebrating the mysteries,' and other phrases of the like kind, introduced for emphasis or ornament, shock some minds-repel others. It might be well-we are not going into the matter that the Clergy did constantly make the sign of the cross, extend the hand in benediction, &c. &c.; they ought, perhaps, to be always in oratories and cassocks, reading S. Chrysostom; but it is very undeniable that they are not. Why then make these facts in a story which do not exist in actual life? What an unreal, make-believe, play-world this is, and to be filled with such solemn subjects! Our author represents a common class; writes apparently without experience of the scenes described; draws not after life, but after simulated feelings. We should say for ourselves, that the scenery is suggested by the outside, not drawn from the inside, of a London parish. To take a very slight incident-gin-shops are not let in lodgings. Again: the Scotch and Irish language, which we find in these tales, is a tongue as like that of Scotland and Ireland as it is like Cherokee. Let any of our readers who know what the poor are, say whether they ever heard a Scotch, or any other, needle-woman, discourse in this ballad-metre style: 'I didna greet, I didna sough, but it seemed as 'tho' a' the bluid in my body stood still a bit, and then rushit like a swollen 'burn into my heid,' (p. 225.) Again, when it is required to give the furniture of an atheist's room, Historic Doubts'—we only remember Whately's famous tract of that name-is included. All this may be ignorance; but it is, under some conditions, mischievous.

'Cousin Eustace,' (Cleaver,) is by the same writer, and seems, as far as we have examined it, to contain a sound and useful popular commentary on the Prayer Book. It is to be recommended.

The Memoirs of the Rev. Edward Bickersteth,' (Seeleys,) have been published by his friend, Mr. Birks. It is, in many respects, a valuable work; valuable as in the petenda, so in the fugienda, which it displays