friar used to celebrate mass towards the end of the last century. There is no part of Ireland that is not rich in authentic stories of this kind, which ought to be interwoven with the history of the times, and without which it must lose much of the life-like colouring from which the records of every country derive their chief interest. We have visited with feelings as solemn and reverential, the secluded glen in the county of Antrim, where, within the last seventy years, Dr. M'Carton, the Catholic bishop of Down and Connor, met his clergy at midnight to deliver to them the instructions of Lent; and the summit of Slieve Donard, in the county of Down, in search of the chapel of St. Domangard, where, far away from all human habitations, great numbers of the faithful used to assemble during the sad days of persecution; as any of the places hallowed by their association with the more early and peaceful triumphs of christianity in Ireland. "Slieve Donard," says Mr. Reeves, (p. 207), "takes its name from Domangard, a Saint, who was born about the commencement of the sixth century.' He then quotes the following words from Colgan, (Acta. SS. p. 743), concerning the two chapels of that Saint, one of which was that we have just mentioned as being situated on the lofty and rugged summit of the mountain, to which the people resorted during the long and weary years of religious persecution. "Duæ ecclesiæ ipsi consecrata: una ad radices, altissimi montis mari ad orientem imminentis priscis Rath murbhuilg, hodie Machaire-Ratha appellata; altera in vertice ejusdem editissimi montis longe ab omni humana habitatione posita; quæ tamen etian sæviente dura, diraque hæreticorum persecutione, consuevit magno populi accursu, et continuis peregrinationibus, in honorem hujus magnifici servi Dei, multis ibi signis et miraculis corruscantis frequentari."

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* Mr. Hardiman has collected a great deal of scarce and curious information on the subject of which we have been speaking, especially with regard to the west of Ireland, both in his edition of "West Connaught," published by the Archæological Society, as already stated, and in his "Irish Minstrelsy."

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ART. IX. Sermons, Academical and Occasional. By the Rev. JOHN KEBLE, Vicar of Hursley, &c. Oxford: Parker.

THERE is not in the history of dogma a more lamentable contrast than is presented by the beginning and the close of the High-church controversy; for, as a controversy, it may truly be considered at an end. A few years ago a knot of ardent, zealous, learned, and devout Anglicans started the generous undertaking of raising the religious system to which they belonged to what they considered its becoming standard. They believed it to be debased, crippled, diseased; and they determined to restore it to soundness and health. They felt no confidence in the zeal of their rulers, though they deeply reverenced their office. They could hope but little from the apathy of their brethren; less from the coldness of their people. Yet they determined to overcome all these obstacles, to win over the bishops, to arouse the clergy, and to enlighten the laity. They resolved to bring back their doctrines and their worship, but still more the devotion and the piety of the nation, to ancient and pure models. It was a chivalrous and noble-hearted resolution, which could not but bring down many blessings on those who undertook it. And they never thought that it was to be carried into execution by folding up their arms, or biding their time, or rather the time of a possible Providence. They knew that they must work, if they wanted results; that they must begin by sowing seed, if they wished to gather fruit. And generously and vigorously they set to work. All was activity, energy, untiring industry. They employed every tried means of acting on the public mind; the press,-daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly; they sent out unperiodical tracts, serials, and libraries; they grasped such extensive schemes as the translation of all the Fathers, and even of the abstruse scholastics of the middle ages. They were busy at college, in convocation, in parliament, in society; and for a time it did look as if the Establishment was a-stir; and its long stagnant pool seemed moved by an agitation which might be healing. And so indeed it proved to those who early and boldly cast themselves into the perilous waters.

VOL. XXIII.-NO. XLVI.

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But all this subsided. In many respects the work proved vain, and it was abandoned as hopeless. Its principal agents received a blessed reward: for the grace which they wished to impart to others fell back copiously on their own souls; and they exchanged the barren earth, which they had laboured in vain to till, for the rich soil of the Church, which will yield them fruit a hundredfold. Those who remained behind, and on whom the task of leadership in "the movement" naturally devolved, have abandoned all to which they seemed pledged, have clearly turned their backs on those first principles which guided them; and from the briskness of an extraordinary activity have sunk into a studied inertness and a satisfied acquiescence, which they would fain persuade us is the truer way to the same end. Anything more pitiable and more distressing in minds with which one has felt sympathy, we can hardly conceive. For to a Catholic it presents the fearful thought of a grace lost, and the time of mercy allowed to escape, and the awful delusions fallen into, which keep men ever after in a hopeless darkness.

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But, apart from such gloomy considerations, the fact is so; and the work before us gives us melancholy evidence of it. Its sermons reach over a long period of time, but with them we have no inclination nor intention to deal. We mean to confine our remarks entirely to the Preface on the present position of English churchmen.' It is indeed a remarkable document, and may be considered as embodying the last theory of High-churchism, and the principles by which its guides mean to rule it. A movement we can no longer call it, for the theory, if it must have a name, should have one descriptive of stagnation, not of motion; the Dead Sea, not the flowing stream, must be henceforth its symbol. The object of Mr. Keble's Preface may be briefly stated in his own words.

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"A dutiful person in the English church, we will suppose, has in some way been made aware of the sayings and feelings of good Roman Catholics concerning her; and with the fact, that some of those sayings meet with more or less countenance in antiquity; or he has come to be greatly impressed with the sanctity and other attractions undeniably existing in the communion of Rome, and the thought begins to haunt him, What if her exclusive claim be true? What if it should prove, that as yet I have been living without the pale of Christ's kingdom?'

"How is he to deal with such misgivings? Shall he suppress them with a strong hand, as he would impure or murderous thoughts?"-p. 3.

Mr. Keble assents to this proposal; and after supporting it by some arguments, proceeds as follows.

"For reasons like these, a person would not seem blameable, perhaps we might well judge his course the most reasonable of any, who should bring himself to reject all scruples concerning our church with a strong moral abhorrence, as he would any other evil imagination. But it is not every one, perhaps, who could bring himself to do so; and many, moreover, being more or less answerable for others, may be bound in charity to consider the special matter of their misgivings, and to be provided with some sufficient solution of them; sufficient, I mean, to direct a simple man's practice, not necessarily sufficient to silence an acute man's objections."-p. 5.

Here, then, we come to the real subject to be treated: how is an Anglican to act, who, troubled by doubts, in himself or others, finds it necessary to face them? Mr. Keble proposes the remedy, based upon Butler's Analogy; consisting of a series of general motives that shall stifle all enquiry, pacify all scruples, and make the anxious one sit down contented in the very slough of his despond. It supersedes all investigations of doctrine, all weighing of claims, all thought of the past, primitive or mediæval, fathers or councils, examples of holiness, or saintly teaching; it extinguishes all hopes of a higher standard and of a greater perfection; it substitutes for all these a conviction of optimism in the actual position of the individual and of all around him, which forbids his stirring a step for fear of breaking the charm. The English churchman, of a peculiar caste, is to consider himself as put exactly in the right place, and there he must stay without thinking of moving, lest he contravene a providential disposition. Our impression, upon reading this theory, was, that we could not better describe it than as a dogmatical quietism, in which all action of the mental powers is to be suspended in the individual, and his religion is to consist in the passive acceptance of as much or as little doctrine, as much or as little practical observance, as the peculiarity of his situation allots him for his portion. But, before en

*

* We have since been informed, that Mr. K. has occupied himself with the works of the French quietists. If so, we need not be surprised at the judgment to which he has come.

tering upon a more detailed examination of Mr. Keble's theory, we must observe, that his preface is written. throughout in that kindly, mild, and humble tone, which makes us respect and even love the author, while we deprecate his views. We should, indeed, be sorry to set down one word which could be interpreted as harsh or unfriendly; and still more shall we regret, if any phrase of ours should appear to insinuate a suspicion of his uprightness and sincerity.

We object in limine to the use made of Butler's mode of reasoning from the analogy of nature in a matter of this kind. Wherever the argument is directed to draw the mind from a lower to a higher step in religious progress, we may admit this process. But when once we are at the highest point, and have to determine between two sides of a question, purely dependant upon a manifestation of a Divine decision, analogy can have no voice, except as further illustrating and strengthening what by other means is known to be true. For example, an infidel may have his objections to revelation removed by proving that they equally apply to natural and selfevident truths; or, by analogies from nature, &c. The Jew may have his difficulties on the New Testament answered by analogies from the Old; and the person who denies any church government, may be brought to respect it and find it by analogies from both. But a mystery like the Trinity, or a gift like the Eucharist, is so out of the sphere of all human conception and human interpretation, that the attempt to bring in analogy as first and fundamental proof, would be at once profane and absurd. Once prove them, and illustrations may be found in the speculations of philosophers and the longings of the human race. Now, the method proposed by Mr. Keble is to bring the reasoning by analogy into the dominion of pure faith, and make a series of doubtful and doubting possibi lities become the groundwork of action in a matter of eternal import. Throughout, his reasonings are couched in such expressions as, "may it not be?" "is it not possible?" and he himself is sensible of this. For he says:

"Possibly,' 'perhaps,' why should it not be so,' these and other like forms of speech sound strangely cold and unmeaning to young and ardent spirits," &c.-p. 10.