The following brief sketch of the doctrine and ritual of the Catholic Apostolic Church, we take from Dr. Schaff's "Creeds of Christendom;" "The modern Apostolic Church believes and teaches that the Lord, who will soon appear in glory, has graciously restored, or at least begun to restore his one true church, by reviving the primitive supernatural offices and gifts, which formed the bridal outfit of the apostolic age, but were soon afterwards lost or marred by the ingratitude and unbelief of Christendom. It claims to have apostles, prophets and evangelists for the general care of the church, and angels (or bishops), presbyters (or priests), and deacons for the care of particular congregations. All officers are called by the Holy Ghost, through the voice of the prophets, except the deacons, who are chosen by the congregation as its representatives. They form a more complete hierarchy than that of the Episcopal or even the Greek or Roman Churches, whose bishops never claim to be inspired apostles, but only successors of the apostles."

Irving, and those associated with him, and the Catholic Apostolic Church as such, may be viewed as adopting and carrying out to their fullest extent ideas which in a more partial and crude form are found in many excellent people belonging in various Christian associations. We do not mean to treat either themselves or their convictions with disrespect; and will only suggest whether faith in a revival in modern times of the apostolic gift of healing, with such a strong view of the certain efficacy of prayer in peculiar exigencies, as if the Divine Father had placed his own sovereignty in the control of events at the disposition of his human child, may not belong to that same general mistake in conceiving the supernatural in its relation to the natural of which in the foregoing pages we have given examples.

ren.

Quite at the opposite extreme from The Plymouth Breth- those last noticed, as respects ritual ideas, are the Plymouth Brethren, with whom in this particular may be associated the Friends, or Quakers.

3 Vol. i., p. 909.

It is a species of mysticism, when the externals of Christianity are undervalued, in the interest of what is interpreted as essential to the spiritual life. At best it is a disturbance of that just balance of external organism with inward spiritual exercise which in the New Testament is made so clear; and so far as this, comes under the designation we employ. The only church recognized by the Plymouth Brethren is the spiritual body of Christ. They will not use the word "church" in any other relation, but call their societies simple "gatherings." They do not ordain their ministers, holding that the ministerial call must be from God alone, and that "preaching and teaching belong to those who have the gift of the one or the other;" they themselves being judges. In Christian doctrine they make much of the personal presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit, and of those spiritual exercises which they regard in the light of special communications of the Spirit. They dwell much, also, upon the eschatology of Scripture, particularly the second advent of the Lord, which they hold as personal and pre-millennial. Mr. George Müller, of Bristol, England, was at one time their most noted representative man. We do not know how far his "Life of Faith " may seem to the reader a correct and safe account of the relations of prayer to effort and service. It is at all events a view liable to mystical extremes, in which the place of the supernatural in the ordinary affairs and experiences of life is, to say the least, over-estimated or misconceived.

Mysticism as an Ele

Faith.

Such manifestations of the credulous ment in Thought and instinct as are seen in the Spirtualism of these present times, and in that noxious sect, the Mormons, although with a mystical tinge, is too much a pure superstition to be entitled to a place here. In concluding this paper we will say that the feature we have been considering of the religious history, and the intellectual history as well, of mankind, is one peculiarly deserving of study. The mystical element in its safer and truer manifestation, has played a great part, alike in religion, in literature, and in philosophy. In religion it has supplied an element of

resistance both to rationalism and to formalism; in philosophy to materialism; while in literature we seem to trace more or less of it in the poet's higher inspiration and in that spirit which in other forms of literary production contends against the prosaic and the common-place. Whoever would make the unreal to be as the real, the unseen as the seen, either for himself or for others, must bring into service something at least of that element, so difficult to define, which in its exaggerated forms finds its home and native air in the cloudland of dream and revery. We must not, in the history of human thought and faith deny to the mystic his own influential place. At the same time we shall do well to remember, in estimating these historical phenomena, that there is a misleading extreme in religion over against that of rationalism; that even religious fervors may need the curb; that to believe too much is quite as possible as to believe too little; and that if Reason may often intrude mischievously upon the sphere of Faith, so also may Imagination.

XIV.

MODERN SKEPTICISM.

SOME sixty or seventy years ago, the poet Thomas Moore, in one of his letters, remarked that at that time for a person to avow himself an unbeliever in Christianity was to lay himself open to general suspicion, and almost shut himself out from the best society. It would scarcely be extravagant to say of our own time, that if certain appearances are to be trusted as they are not wholly-one might think it a discredit to a person not to be an unbeliever. It is quite certain, at least, that within the period of only a little more than half a century, such changes have occurred in the tone of public sentiment as regards this matter, that the profession of atheism itself no longer, as it once did, brings in question a person's whole character, or makes him distrusted as one who, having abandoned the very fundamental principle of morality as well as religion, may be presumed capable of anything. This change of tone in public sentiment with reference to skeptical or infidel teaching in general is no doubt due in considerable measure to the fact that such teaching has of late been put so much in connection with what are claimed as the most advanced positions in philosophy and in science. Names which have become distinguished in these two departments of human inquiry stand in association with even atheistical ideas, and thus these ideas receive an endorsement which, if it does not make them respectable, at least relieves them of the odium under which they so justly suffered.

Now, it is a question which we cannot help asking ourselves,

what this change in the tone of public sentiment, and this apparent growth and spread of infidelity may portend. Are the foundations really giving way? Or is the present simply a period of transition through which human thought and faith are advancing toward ground that shall be more assured and safe than even any they have heretofore held? Some help toward an answer to this question may be gained from even a brief and outline study—which is all that can be here attempted of the history of modern skepticism, in its origin and the processes of its growth.

New Thing.

While it is undoubtedly true that the Modern Skepticism no age of free thought introduced by the Reformation has afforded peculiar opportunity for a development of the skeptical tendency in human nature, it is also true that the very existence of this tendency requires us to look farther than simply to the fact of intellectual freedom for an explanation of the phenomena of skepticism as we find them. In a normal condition of human nature we must suppose that the spirit of inquiry would be active, just as we see it now. Associated with this we may assume a certain measure of doubt, at least that hesitant attitude of the mind which precedes assurance and conviction. There is, therefore, nothing abnormal, or essentially wrong in doubt, or in hesitancy to accept asserted truth while the evidence is still incomplete. The wrong and the evil manifestation of this principle in human nature is where the attitude of the mind is such as refuses to evidence that which is its due, and so creates predispositions that give to error and falsehood undue advantage. Back even of this are moral causes by which even this prejudiced condition is itself superinduced. A healthful condition of the moral nature would leave the intellect free to deal with all matters of belief on such terms as would ensure right conclusions within those limits which are fixed to the human understanding.

Its Genesis in Five Stages of Development.

Skepticism strictly understood is more an attitude of doubt than one of positive unbelief. In the present study of the sub