of England; and her acquisitions in Tartary have an area equal to Turkey in Europe, Greece, Italy, and Spain."

That the Turkish empire can be resuscitated under Mahomedanism, as we have stated in a preceding number, we hold to be impossible; and, if possible, assuredly not desirable. Let England beware lest she be found fighting against God! If time can be gained, and the Christian populations can be organised, and prepared so as to form independent or confederate States-that, indeed, would be a glorious consummation; but the difficulties in the way of all such arrangements are formidable, if not insurmountable. Doubt and obscurity beset us on all sides; and the Eastern question still remains, under every point of view that we regard it, surrounded by peculiar difficulties and dangers. It involves, not merely a struggle for political power and territorial aggrandisement on the part of the great powers, but the hopes and pretensions of the rival creeds of corrupted Christianity. Under the abused name of "Christian zeal," Greeks and Latins struggle and contend for crypts and shrines, or for the privilege of placing a star in the chapel at Bethlehem! The most disgraceful scenes have long been of annual occurrence during the great Christian festivals; and the name of Christianity has been dishonoured before the Moslem by these superstitious fanatics who pollute the places they pretend to venerate.

The people of England have no sympathy with any of these contending parties. They exhibit all the superstition without any of the chivalrous spirit of the old Crusaders; but, unfortunately, the conflicting pretensions of these Greek and Latin monks are respectively espoused by the Russian and French emperors. Imperial ambition and lust of dominion veils itself under the specious pretext of religious veneration for the Holy Places. Thus while it would seem our wisest course to abstain from all intervention; yet, by some inevitable necessity, our intervention becomes imperative. Our position as an European power-nay, our national safety as well as that of our Indian empire-would be endangered by the vast aggrandisement which Russia would acquire by the acquisition of Turkey. The Turks are quite aware of this: they take it as a matter of course that England will put forth all her strength to aid them. There are some religious causes, too, which contribute to make them look to England especially to

mediate between the hostile religious pretensions which have been now successively brought forward by France, Austria, and Russia. England, as a Protestant, seems, in these matters at least, a neutral power. The Turks may be little skilled in the theological differences which divide Christendom, yet the contrast which the moderation and abstinence from all exclu+ sive and arrogant demands which England offers is not more favourable to her than that which the simplicity of her reformed Christian ritual presents to the superstitious and idolatrous rites of the Greek and Latin monks. The pure Deism of the Mahomedans, like the Jews, revolts at every appearance of idolatry or image worship. There can be no doubt, indeed, that the greatest obstacle to the spread of Christianity amongst the Turks arises from the corrupt and repugnant form in which it is presented to them; and there is consequently the strongest reason to believe that now, that the prestige of their political power is passing awayclosely identified as it has been with their religion—if the Gospel could be offered to them in its true strength and beauty, there would be every prospect of its being again triumphant throughout those regions where it was first preached. In considering the questions which have been raised relative to the holy places (and in which it is assumed that we have no interest) the important fact of our having established, in conjunction with Prussia, a few years since, an Anglo-Catholic Bishopric in Jerusalem, has been strangely overlooked. The reasons which led to that establishment must, we should suppose, not only remain, but derive additional weight from the vast increase of our commercial relations with the Levant. That this will be accomplished in God's appointed time we know, because it is clearly revealed to us; but the various agencies that He will employ in effecting this great work is as yet hidden from our sight. Will He first-as seems at this moment, indeed, to be most probable-employ the vast and savage hordes of Russia to overturn the empire of the Osmanlis, and form settlements in the fairest and most fertile regions of the earth, that in the sequel both conquerors and conquered may be brought into subjection to a common faith-that the former may be raised from a condition of serfdom as well as the bondage of a degrading superstitionand the latter released from the blasphemous delusions and sensual faith of their false prophet? Or will this shaking ruin hold together, and the peace of the world be preserved, till Turkey has become christianized, and the Gospel has been again glorified in the mode and spirit most accordant with the teaching of its Divine Founder?

These are questions which must at this anxious and momentous conjuncture fill the minds of reflecting men throughout Christian Europe. We do not pretend to offer a solution of them; but our suggestions are not unprofitable if they stimulate an anxious enquiry upon our part as to the line of policy which it behoves this great country to take in the momentous crisis which seems impending. That Providence has marked out a special line of action is evident. England cannot avoid interfering. We have seen that the very circumstances which appeared to remove her from this religious struggle (for such it undoubtedly is) are those which involve her in it. Neither collectively nor individually can man resist the purposes of God, "whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear." His word goes forth, and returns, "not void," but accomplishes all his pleasure. But, though man cannot resist, it is permitted to him to act in unison with the purposes of God. A great occasion presents. itself a career of national glory is opened at this time to England. She may stand forth the champion of eternal truth -the harbinger of glad tidings of great joy to the nations. They have already "heard what great things the Lord hath done for her" let them now feel what, through her, he hath done for them-let them see that it has not been for nought that armadas have been scattered and armies overthrownthat it was not to secure merely her own national existence that it was permitted to her to strike down the power of the great Louis or the still greater Napoleon. Let her give law to Europe and the world; but let it be the law that unites. justice and mercy. As the foremost Protestant power of the world, she is bound to consult the great evangelical interests of mankind. Her vast Indian empire must be governed for other objects than to enrich her adventurers, or even to enlarge her commerce. Her Colonies must share in the freedom and represent the institutions of the mother country. At home let justice be administered and the poor cared for: above all, let the Gospel be preached to them. Let the noble revenues which the piety of our ancestors bequeathed to the setting forth the glory of God be no longer perverted. Let not episcopal pride and sensuality be pampered by inordinate wealth, and the working clergy left to starve while they "minister at the altar." Let the apostolic Church of England and Ireland be unbound from its present degrading yoke: let her have free scope to enlarge her borders and become again the venerated Church of the entire people. Then will the land rejoice then, while worshipping the Lord. "in the beauty of holiness," will England go forth and fulfil

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her majestic mission to the nations as the hand-maiden of truth and Christian civilization. Such we believe to be her great mission; and, when we see "light in her dwellings" while darkness is all around her, though we may mourn over her short-comings, we still venture to hope, and are sanguine to believe, that she will perform it.

ART. VI.-History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century. Vol. V. The Reformation in England. By J. H. MERLE D'AUBIGNE, D.D. Translated by H. WHITE, B.A., Trinity College, Cambridge, and Ph. Dr., Heidelberg. Carefully revised by Dr. MERLE D'AUBIGNE. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd. 1853.

ENGLAND, even in the worst of times, has never submitted patiently to the Papal yoke, under which the continental nations have been constrained to groan in hopeless servitude -partly indebted for this exemption to her insular situation, and still more, as we think, to the spirit of her people-in which opinion we are glad to find that Dr. Merle d'Aubigné coincides. We also agree with him in thinking that England has been more largely benefitted by the Reformation than any of the other Protestant States; nor can it be too often inculcated that an adherence to the principles of the Reformation is the foundation of our national prosperity, and is, as it were, the palladium of our liberties-truths which it is especially necessary to enforce at the present time when a spurious liberality on the one hand and Romanizing tendencies on the other are threatening to rob us of all the distinguishing characteristics of the Reformation.

In tracing the history of the Reformation in England, it is requisite to begin at a much earlier period than the sixteenth century; for as Christianity was planted in Britain almost as soon as it reached Rome, and long before those corruptions of the faith and still more those arrogant pretensions which are especial characteristics of the Papacy had arisen, so these recollections or traditions of an earlier and purer age have operated imperceptibly, but no less surely, throughout the whole course of the religious history of Britain.

The work before us accordingly begins by, noticing the fact that the faith of ancient Britain was not derived through Rome, but came direct from the East- -a fact which is attested in many ways, and especially by Augustine's controversy with the British bishops, who followed the Eastern Church in the observance of Easter and several other re

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spects, and who refused to comply with the Roman practices which Augustine endeavoured to force upon them. The Saxons who had invaded Britain were the special objects of Augustine's missionary labours; and, as they were converted from heathenism, the type of their Christianity became Roman or that of the seventh century-the earlier and purer faith of the first and second centuries finding refuge in the mountains of Wales or among the Culdees of Scotland. Yet the Saxons themselves never became the abject slaves of Rome; and when, after the time of William the Norman, all the various races of inhabitants became combined as one nation of Englishmen, their religion became modified by their nationality, and was characterised by a spirit of independence, arising out of the consciousness that each individual has of his own personal interest, and personal responsibility :

"When England became reformed, a puissant individualism joined its might to the great unity. If we search for the characteristics of the British Reformation, we shall find that, beyond any other, they were social, national, and truly human. There is no people among whom the Reformation has produced to the same degree that morality and order, that liberty, public spirit, and activity, which are the very essence of a nation's greatness. Just as the Papacy has degraded the Spanish Peninsula, the Gospel has exalted the British Islands. Hence the study upon which we are entering possesses an interest peculiar to itself" (19).

It is of little consequence to determine by whom the Gospel was first planted in Britain, though the tradition that Joseph of Arimathea founded the Church of Glastonbury rests on better foundation than that of St. Peter having founded the Church of Rome. This fact is certain that, before the end of the second century, Christianity had taken root in Britain, and had even spread into regions inaccessible to the Roman arms- "Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca Christo vero subdita" (Tertullian contra Judæos, lib. vii). And Patrick, born about A.D. 372, in the Christian village of Kilpatrick near Glasgow, his father being a deacon of the Church in that place, preached the Gospel in Ireland. Columba, about A.D. 565, settled at Icolmkill or the island of Columba's cell, and from thence made missionary excursions in all directions; and a Bishop of Bangor of nearly the same name, Columbanus, set out from Bangor, A.D. 590, with twelve other missionaries, to preach the Gospel to the Burgundians, Franks, and Swiss, before the time when Augustine first began to preach to the Saxons in Kent, who up to that time, A.D. 596, had