this juncture the boat gave a grind, and we were aground in the middle of the Guadalquivir. Mrs. S. turned very pale, and her alarm was not diminished on hearing her son rap out various energetic English expressions directed to the boatmen. I, however, told her there was no danger of our being drowned in so shallow a stream; a consolation which I felt not myself, having read that it was formerly navigable for large ships 200 miles higher up. In a short time, by dint of pushing and pulling, and one of the men getting out of the boat, we were shoved off and continued our voyage. It was not difficult to arrive in sight of the convent, but a landingplace could not be found. The banks were every where abrupt; not high enough to be picturesque, but just too high for a lady to reach terra firma by a jump. At length_the sailors made choice of a part where they asserted there were steppingplaces, although I could discover no difference between one portion of the shore and another. Mrs. Smuggins, whose natural protector had instantaneously reached the top of the bank by two bounds, and was reconnoitring the country, seemed to rely upon me with all that irresistible dependence peculiar to her feeble sex. I had placed my right foot on a break of the earth in the bank, which was perpendicular, or nearly so. Finding myself thus in a firm posture, with the other foot on the edge of the water, I offered one hand to the lady, while, with the other, I grasped the root of a stunted shrub. Mrs. S. stood on the side of the boat, which had been pushed as much as possible against the ground, otherwise it must have yielded to her weight; and, taking my hand, she made an effort to ascend, putting one foot near to mine on the ground, and the other on a projecting clod which I pointed out. I then mounted another step, and placed a foot on the top of the bank, urging Mrs. S. to make an effort to follow, and pulling her hand with my whole force. Thinking us safe, the boatmen had ceased to pull the boat shoreward; and it had, consequently, left its place and was veering round, when, at so unpropitious a moment, the clod gave way under Mrs. Smuggins's upper foot, and she operated a descent which, although gradual-as she had to pull me after her part of the way -ended in her reaching the surface of the water. I had slipped and slipped, until I was at the extreme edge, and still held her hand; and her garments being buoyed up by the wave, and forming an extensive circle around her, she appeared by no means uncomfortably poised on the cool element. She exhibited the panting effect usually observed on entering cold water; but I thought her seat must be the more refreshing and agreeable, since such had been her state of alarm during the half minute of her suspension beneath the sole support of my hand, that the perspiration now stood on her cheeks, and rendered her gloveless hand scarcely tenable. Mrs. Smuggins did not, however, view her position in the same light, but exclaimed at length, in much agitation, that she felt something. "Never mind that," I replied, to tranquillise her; "it can but be a fish!" 66 Oh, horrors!" she screamed. "What! food for the fishes ?" But this degrading fate was averted, as also the glut it would have occasioned in the Seville fish-market, by the aid of the men who had taken to the water, seeing the lady's danger, and come to her rescue. I then called to the youth to return, that we might make the best of our way home. I cannot express to you, my dear Grubley, how tired I have been of this place ever since that excursion, and it is probable that I shall be hundreds of miles from it when next you hear of me. RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT IN GERMANY." IT is now not much more than a twelvemonth since the attention of men in this country was first called to the present religious movement within the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. Since that time the movement has advanced with great rapidity, and has assumed such an aspect and revealed such a condition of men's minds, as must fix the anxious regard alike of spiritual and of civil rulers, and command the notice of every Christian heart and of every intelligent mind. Its first originators, indeed, have been allowed to fall into comparative obscurity. Some have prudently confined themselves to the care of the particular flocks which have chosen and installed them as pastors, while others, such as Ronge and Dowiat, have been permitted to amuse themselves with an idle and unproductive crusade. These two men have entirely let themselves down from the dignity of the priestly character, and, assuming that of the demagogue or agitator, have worshipped and burned incense to the people. As the constituted authorities were naturally unfavourable to them, or, at the most, neutral, they have seldom been permitted to hold their assemblies in churches or halls, and, in consequence, the so-called Second Refor mation has become in their hands a business of dinners and noisy toasts, of crowds and vivats. Indeed one of the most remarkable features of the movement is, that no leaders have appeared; no man of wisdom, energy, character, or commanding talent, who could offer himself as a centre round which the zealous multitudes might gather and organise themselves. The Lutheran reformation un avoidably favoured the developement of individual self-sufficientness. It did so in two ways. 1st. By its possessing within itself no regularly transmitted priesthood. 2ndly. By the principle which it recognised, that faith and religious knowledge ought to be the result of individual investigation and research, and not of teaching as a transmitted or an inherited faith. Its only band was the subscription of a formula, the inefficiency of which became very early apparent; and hence, in process of time, the ill-constructed fabric fell to pieces, overwhelming in its ruins more than the outward constitution and influence of a church. Few of our readers are ignorant of the antichristian and haughty character that prevails in the literature and science of Germany. The German people are characterised not so much by the pride of birth, or of wealth, or of arms, as by the pride of thought. Science and philosophy have an invincible charm for them, and these instruments they apply with equal freedom to Livy and the Pentateuch, to the Gospels and to Justin Martyr. There is no check of reverence, no trembling at the Word of God. Accordingly philosophy for a time reigned alone. Bare reason possessed the chair and the pulpit. The times of the Porch and the Academy seemed to have returned, only with the materials of the Gospel and with the instrumentality of the Church. Wherever the Bible and the hymn-book carried the knowledge of letters, and in Germany that is alike with the Popish Mission der Deutsch-Katholiken, von G. G. Gervinus. Heidelberg, 1845. The Mission of the German Catholics, by G. G. Gervinus. Dr. Theiner's Beitritt zur Deutsch-Katholischen Reform. Weimar, 1845. Dr. Theiner's Adhesion to the German Catholics. Ob Schrift? Ob Geist? Verantwortung gegen Meine Ankläger, von G. A. Wislicenus, Pfarrer in Halle. Leipzig, 1845. Letter? or Spirit? Reply to my Accusers, by G. A. Wislicenus, Pastor in Halle. Bekentnisse von Uhlich. Leipzig, 1845. Confessions of Uhlich. Neue und doch alte Feinde, von Johannes Ronge. Dessaw, 1845. The Last Enemies the same as the First, by John Ronge. and the Protestant population, there a proud philosophy entered and sat down. It lifted up its voice at every street-corner, and glided like a serpent into every bosom. And what has it done? There is no sacred thing which it has not profaned, there is no veil which it has not rent in twain, there is no shrine which it has not polluted, there is no honourable thing which it has not made vile. "Goethe and Schiller," says Gervinus with triumph, "Voss and Jean Paul, Winkelman and Wieland, Forster and Lichtenberg, have cleared all the barriers of dogmatical Christianity, and the educated portion of the people have followed their example, every man according to his best ability." With a limitless faith in the future history of man, and in the inherent power of self-developement that pervades the species, it is not to be wondered at that mere progress should with them be the grand idea. Whither that progress at any given moment may be tending is less clear, and, in the estimation of its worshippers, of no great consequence; for history, read with the eye of science, shews that the species has advanced through all changes and circumstances, toward and untoward. The individual or the nation may have gone down, but the great human family has been carried steadily forward to its maturity. They feel, and the business of the day is to declare it, that they have already attained (in Germany) a point of developement to which the Reformation, nay, all history, nay, Christianity itself, was only an introduction. The new reformation has been the great subject of the year that is past, and a year in the present state of the world is worth a quarter of any former century. Where we at this moment write, in one of the busiest of the free imperial cities, it is the universal subject. By priest and peasant, by scholar and merchant, in the clubs and cafés, the German Catholic Church is the constant topic of discussion. An entire new literature has sprung up; and Buonaparte and the Kaisers, Goethe and Schiller, have yielded their place in the print-shops to Ronge and Kerbler. Scarcely have the anxieties of a rather troubled monetary period, and YOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCVIII. those of a deficient, or at least a doubtful harvest, been able to command their share in the labours of the periodical press. Since the synod of Leipzig, which rather rashly and prematurely announced a creed, conferences have been held in Stuttgart and in Berlin, in which all northern Germany has shared, and all southern Germany sympathised. In these the chief idea has been to widen the popular basis; even the state-andschool question has been broachedfor the church-and-state question was virtually answered long ago, and is now passed by as frivolousand a so-called emancipation or enfranchisement of the female sex has been gravely propounded. In the meantime a certain sort of worship has been carried on. The pulpit and the altar have not ceased, but the pulpit has become a stage for the orator who is thrust into it, who bows his head to the audience, because they are the representative of that universal humanity which is his god; while the altar is but the convenient place where Christian worship may be parodied, and the holy sacraments profaned. They who know the heart of a Roman Catholic priest, must be aware what an entire overthrow all his faith and sentiments must have sustained ere he can look upon the altar with any eye but that of worship, or proclaim from his place that the holy sacrament is no longer a mystery. Yet so thoroughly are men loosed from their former anchorages, that it is affirmed of Dr. Theiner, the best man whom the New Reformation can boast of, that he has consented even to the principle that the holy Eucharist shall not be celebrated on other than holy days, except at the request of some individual who desires to partake of the communion. While such things were going forward, Rome has been silent, contenting herself with excommunications. With these her children have grown too familiar, and they have learned to despise them. They whose faith and allegiance have not been shaken, shrink from the rude blusterings of a popular gale, and are withdrawing themselves from public places and from mixed society. Such Protestants as have any faith or fear of God remaining in them, all the At professionally orthodox and correct clergy, and especially that small body of earnest men who have sprung up in later years, and in whom one may see that the spark of Christianity has been preserved amid the ashes of a forsaken altar, sympathise with the Roman Catholic clergy, and stand aloof from men who would gladly reach to them the hand, and persuade them that they are embarked together in a common cause. first, indeed, the well-meaning and charitable, and the more meditative among them, indulged the hope that this reformed body, springing up within the bosom of the Romish Church, might, by a moderate and patient course, have subsisted in the midst of the corrupt mass till it should have gradually purified the whole and absorbed it. Germany offered advantages for such an attempt, such as could be found in no other country. Daily intercourse, frequent intermarriages, had created innumerable shades of transition between the Catholic and the Reformed. Jealousy of a foreign central authority was strong even among the higher clergy. The questions resulting from mixed marriages, and those secret uneasinesses which priestly influence and priestly arts occasion, had made Popery seem the great troubler of domestic happiness. Men saw their wives, their sisters, and their mothers, defrauded of their right to the sacraments, if they allowed their husbands to exercise a natural power over their children's education. The abuses and wickedness, not of the confessors, but of the prescribed confessional, had driven thousands away from the holy communion. A quiet and orderly change would have been, by the mass of the population, hailed as a deliverance. Would the civil governments, therefore, it was thought, only have energy and unity enough to hinder the reformers from being meddled with; would the reformers themselves only proceed with quietness, with tolerance, and conciliation, what blessed results might be looked for! Ay, and had the thing not been a creature of the time; had it not been from the first as a movement entirely popular; had not the movement been its own master, awaiting its own time for casting up a master for itself, a deus ex machina from the midst of its own ebullitions; had there been any one to hold the balance, or any balance to hold; had it not been early laid down as a principle, resulting from the philosophy of history, that the good must be attained only through a series of blunders: had these things not been so, the muchdesired quiet and orderly change might possibly have been brought about. But thus things were, and well-meaning and meditative men were deceived, because they knew not the time nor understood the signs of it. Events overtook their slow steps of meditation, and hurried past them like the wind. Of Our readers may suppose that the orthodox Protestant clergy might have been able to exercise a salutary influence in the midst of this social change. We scarcely believe that they could; for, leaving out of sight the fact of their being an almost invisible minority, they do not know how to place themselves in a position whence they can do any good. ecclesiastical organisation they are entirely ignorant. They deny it on principle. The clergyman is regarded as no more than the organ of the people. His priesthood is but the representation of their priesthood. Whatever power or sacredness he has, they have conferred, and they can revoke. He presides at their public worship and dispenses the sacraments, not because he has more right to do so than any other man who is present, but because for order and decorum's sake they have appointed him to exercise that function. In no respect does he represent to them any thing but themselves. This much, indeed, we have met with, that when a clergyman has been outvoted by his lay congregational council, and compelled to permit his church to be used for the occasional services of the German Catholics, he sighs and smites his breast, and says, "My church has been desecrated." But of standing in the name and place of the Lord Jesus Christ, of speaking with authority as the messenger of God, of doing God's work, and believing that God does his work by their hands, of addressing men's conscience more than their reason, speaking from faith to faith, and calling not for philoso phical persuasion but for childlike obedience, of all this the orthodox Protestant clergymen know nothing. Nay, the truth which they do know is but sparingly brought to the pulpit; for, 1st, the consistory would not long permit it; and, 2dly, the clergyman is unwilling to diminish his congregation-his publicum, as he calls it-and so to curtail his opportunities of doing good. The consequence is that the chief excellency of their sermons is rhetorical. The clergy preach, and the people, where an able man happens to be, crowd to hear; but especially when the middle classes assemble, it is as at our modern tournaments, to see the beautiful armour, the glittering of the swords, the handling of the spear, and the helm striking fire-sparks under the blow of the champions. And to satisfy this empty craving, the earnest spirits of the few are disappointed; for the many are attracted by rhetorical flourishes merely, amid which the most that can be done is to insinuate from time to time a gentle plea for what they consider an antiquated and expiring religion. The rest of the clergy offer a still more sorry hinderance to the corruption of the popular mind; for not only do they hold the same principle of which we have above spoken, but they go still further. According to them, whosoever possesses faith must attain to it through his own investigation and inquiry. He begins as an unbeliever. Inherited or derived faith, or the faith of a son or a disciple who believes because his father or his master has taught him, is looked upon as superstition. The end of education is, therefore, in their hands, individual perfection and developement to such a degree as to make every man a microcosm sufficient to himself. Gervinus speaks of this class of persons somewhat in the following strain. "Our clergy have long occupied a defensive post, they are no longer a school of prophets, not even a propaganda, nor workers out of a reformation. And they know well enough that their modern dogmatic system is separated by a mighty chasm, that can never again be filled up, from that which Luther taught, and which must even yet be taught to that lowest class of the people in whom the times of Luther are still lingering. Speculation and philosophy, researches in history and mythology, have taught them to discover in the Christian dogmas, yea, even in those which at first sight may seem to mock an intelligent man's reason, certain profound truths, unfolding to the freest thinker wonderful depths of that human spirit which has been present and operative alike in all religious and in all historical myths. But these are facts which our clergy, however much they may use them for satisfying their own inquiring minds, will on no account offer to the common man, in place of those mysteries which they have been accustomed to preach in order to answer his rude thoughts about the marvel of his being. They, therefore, in the terms which they employ, imitate, as far as may be, their predecessors of the sixteenth century, though their philosophical orthodoxy can no more become one with that of Luther, than times present can blend and become united with times gone by." To guide the New Reformation, as it has been called, no commanding leaders have appeared. In defect, therefore, of any individual person, the history of whose proceedings might be the history of the movement, and to whose writings one might look for an exposition of the principles on which it is to perfect itself, we must hearken to the voice of those who for the time have taken up the task of giving utterance to the popular mind, who have laid hold of the banners of the gathering host, and point to the object towards which the spirit that is in the masses is urging them. The present temporary leaders are men of the philosophical and literary class, accustomed to view all things as mere subjects of study, and far removed from the business of the world and the experience of human life. With such as these the wings of speculative thought are not clipped by suggestions of a mechanical or matter-of-fact nature. To them war or revolution is but a subject of abstract interest. It is not a thing of worldly loss, of suffering, blood, and death. They see a picture, and nothing more. It brings to them no personal terrors; at the worst, it |