But the theory of that Church, as a lawful and sovereign government, and not as a voluntary organization, while making it not only hateful and false, but unintelligible, to that Protestantism which it at once despises and hates, has kept it true to one condition of a spiritual empire, which it seems the very genius and destiny of Protestantism to overlook. Its relations are (in theory) authoritative and direct with every soul of man or child that comes within its reach. And, in virtue of its theory, there is no toil or sacrifice which it will not impose on its agents, to bring every soul within its reach. Mr. Parkman's admirable narrative has brought fresh home to us the devotion of the Jesuit missions among the Indians in Canada, two centuries and a half ago. Mr. Parton's interesting sketch shows how the same spirit is at work, with equal enthusiasm of devotion, but without the same frightful hazards and sufferings, in our American cities. The instructive thing to see is how it stakes out the territory, and plants itself as a local institution on the soil; as fast as the growth of population will allow, how it establishes new parish-limits and erects its local church, and gathers its group of ecclesiastical agencies, its charities, and its schools. Not the costliest Protestant structures, or the most elaborate Protestant ritual, sustained by the generous pride of the wealthiest commercial classes, can rival the incessant growths of that munificence which flows from a million secret sources. But even this is not so striking as the fact that Catholicism plants itself deep down among those levels of population which it is the despair of our voluntary organizations to reach effectually. Wealth, splendor, and pride may come to that Church from the adhesion of the cultivated and rich; it knows, doubtless, how to reap valuable harvests from the devotion of proselytes in the higher ranks of life. But its true strength - especially in republican America, where votes are counted, not weighed-lies just in the lowest level of all, the deposit of that tide of emigration, whence come all the gross ignorance, all the hopeless poverty, all the helpless pauperism, with most of the crime, and of the blind, bitter partisanship in politics, which most perplex and baffle us. Just where our social science fails, and our republican

theory breaks down, the Roman Church finds its opportunity. Where Protestantism sees at best only outside objects of its charity, Romanism sees subjects of its spiritual empire. Where Protestantism deals with individuals as individuals, unorganized and dispersed, Romanism deals with them as a mass, to be trained as willing recruits, and drilled into an effective army. Confident in that alliance, it has already threatened to break up our system of common education, and compel its own children within lines of priestly discipline, in schools controlled by the interests of its own polity and creed; it has already elicited (as in New York this year) lavish appropriations of public money for the support of its own peculiar charities; it already declares, with a positiveness that no rival could emulate, its absolute assurance that the structure reared on that foundation is to be the one all-embracing, all-controlling Church of the future.

Nothing, it would seem, is more certain, than that the course of three centuries can never be retraced, or civilized society be placed again at the control of a spiritual absolutism, or that the freedom bought at so great a price is ever to be surrendered. Nothing, it would seem, can we rely on more securely, than the clear, hard intelligence, educated by long scientific training to a cool and scornful challenge of dogmatic mysteries; or the stubborn temper of republicanism, which at once scorns and defies the domination of a priesthood. Here and there, one may be found to barter spiritual liberty for spiritual peace. Despair of finding truth-or, still oftener, a shrinking from the apparent drift of science - may win one to the service of an ideal catholicity, which has always been so fair, but alas! so false a dream. And some may seek, in an authority so venerable and august, a counterpoise to the moral recklessness and defiant scepticism of modern life; or accept it as the only force subtile and strong enough to control the ignorance and the passion that sway the currents of a rude democracy. But these are not motives which an honest mind seeking truth, or an honest heart loving freedom, can acknowledge. And when that church, whose authority means the submission of reason to faith, professes through its latest

order of apostles to welcome all truth that science can teach, and to be in alliance with the truest liberties of the republic, it is impossible that the strange profession should not sound false and hollow. The hostility may be cunningly disguised; but the warfare between "Reason and Rome" is one in which there can be no discharge. At least, if there is truce or compromise, something must be abandoned on both sides. If the circle of that Church is to widen, so as to admit the infinitely varied and rich elements of modern life, which have been developed outside its pale, that new and magnificent catholicity it will then exhibit will indeed be a solution of the religious problem, as much beyond its present dream, as it is beyond the comprehension or hope of that multitude toiling more humbly, but not less faithfully, in their narrow, sectarian lines.

And this, it must at length be clear, cannot come from any device or skill of man's intelligence, but from the guiding of "that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to each man severally as he will." For its conditions it demands the largeness and freedom of science, the courage, the moral earnestness, and the patience of faith. Above all, it will not be had by selecting a part only of the influences that are at work, and arbitrarily ruling out the rest. Christianity, if it is indeed the truth of the universe; religion, if it is indeed a key to the riddle of the universe, must be as generous and wide in its temper as the life of which it offers the interpretation. If it is a sufficient refutation of the pretensions of Rome, that it repudiates and holds accursed the largest thought and the noblest life of the last three hundred years, it is no less the refutation of our popular creeds, that they recognize truth as divine only inside their own narrow pale. A true science and a true scholarship are in their very nature unpledged and free. The laws of nature, the science of history and language, the study of what have been called the "ethnic religions," the absolutely untrammelled interpretation of the records of faith, all these are to bring their contribution. The visible churches of Christ embrace at best not half, very

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probably not a third, of our own population; and they must, before very long, find the limits of their propagandism. The recognized dogmatic beliefs of Christendom are accepted by certainly not a half of the active and dominant intelligence of the day. What of the rest? Is it to be shut out from the circle of Divine providence, or of Christian hope? It is little likely that the next generation will see our existing systems of Christian belief, interpret them as generously as we will, relatively stronger or more widely accepted than now. These beliefs are but provisional at best: we take them subject to revision and correction. So with the present results of scholarship and science: they are but provisional; we take them, subject to revision and correction. Their true synthesis and reconciliation must come about by slow steps, and through long periods. For the result we are not responsible; for the steps that lead to it we are. And the true meaning of liberal Christianity is to work at its immediate task, in the light of its present faith, trusting in the Spirit of truth that the result it seeks shall come about at length, by the co-working of every honest mind, and every true life, under the guiding of that Infinite Intelligence which alone can see the end from the beginning.

ART. VIII. REVIEW OF CURRENT LITERATURE.

THEOLOGY.

THERE is a society of literary and scientific Israelites in Paris, whose praiseworthy work it is to gather and criticise the monuments of Hebrew learning; to harmonize these, as far as may be, with the spirit of the nineteenth century; and to reconcile an enlightened Judaism with an intelligent appreciation of the religion of Jesus. They believe, and they try to show, that the doctrine of Jesus was the doctrine of the Jewish people, of their Scriptures and of their traditions; and that a wise science justifies Jewish ideas. From time to time they publish learned works in defence of this plan.

The latest of these is the solid octavo by Rodrigues,* one of the most beautiful issues of the press of Lévy. In this volume the verses of the Sermon on the Mount, as Matthew reports it, are taken up one. by one, and are shown to be similar to, if not identical with, earlier Jewish utterances in books of the Bible, in the Apocrypha, or in the traditional words of the Jewish Rabbins. Every moral teaching of the Saviour's discourse is paralleled by some psalm, or proverb, or aphorism, or story of earlier date. Rodrigues denies that to an educated Jew there is any new thing in the Sermon on the Mount. Indeed, he would go farther, and maintain (as we have more than once heard intelligent Jews) that there is nothing absolutely new or original in any point of the authentic discourses of Jesus.

It is impossible to deny that this theory has a great deal in its favor. Every careful student of the Old Testament will be more and more brought to the conclusion, that the words of Jesus that he came "not to destroy, but to fulfil," are literally true. He will be surprised to find that many things which he thought especially Christian were acknowledged and taught in the law or prophets as clearly, if not with as much emphasis, as in the books of the New Testament; that the doctrine of God's fatherhood is Jewish, that the doctrine of man's brotherhood is Jewish, that the doctrine of spiritual as better than formal righteousness is Jewish, that the doctrine of forgiveness is Jewish. Jesus was not the first to interpret humanely some of the harsher sentences of the ancient code. If any thing is clear in his history, it is that he was in his childhood and youth a diligent student of the Scriptures of his nation, and more familiar with these than many of the Rabbins themselves. It may be doubtful whether he had heard in the schools all the Rabbinical sentences which Rodrigues cites; and in fact, as they are taken from the Talmud, it is not absolutely certain that they were uttered by the earlier Rabbins. But those which are evidently taken from Jewish utterances would naturally suggest the rest. The originality of Jesus was in his life, and not in his words. The equivalent of the last two verses of the sermon, as Rodrigues gives it, is, "Now, when Jesus had finished these sayings, the multitude were astonished by the vigorous and concise form of his teaching. For he taught them the Law and the Prophets after the manner of the son of Sirach, of Hillel, and of Shammai; reproducing

Les Origines du Sermon de la Montagne. Par HIPPOLYTE RODRIGUES. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1868. 8vo, pp. 202.