and contradictions, is based upon unsound philosophy and untenable ethics, does not rightfully apprehend the nature of God, of the universe, and of man, and does not unfold the highest wisdom nor point out for the race the summum bonum. Moreover, as Bishop Caldwell has shown:

It nowhere exhibits any sense of the evil of sin considered as a violation of law, as defiling the conscience, and as counteracting the ends for which man was created. It makes no provision for the reestablishment of the authority of the divine Lawgiver by the expiation of sin in such a manner as to render forgiveness compatible with justice. It teaches nothing and knows nothing respecting the forgiveness of sins.* Above all, the Puranic account of the life of the hero, as taught and believed at the present day, the influence of his popular worship upon his votaries, and the example of his devotees and priests all tend to sensualize and degrade, rather than spiritualize and elevate, man.

For these reasons one must confess, with M. Cousin:

Before this kind of theism, at once terrible and chimerical and represented in extravagant and gigantic symbols, human nature must have trembled and denied itself. Art, in its powerless attempt to represent being in itself, necessarily rose without limit to colossal and irregular creations. God being all, and man nothing, a formidable theocracy pressed upon humanity, taking from it all liberty, all movement, all practical interest, and consequently all morality.t

With what unspeakable comfort, then, does one turn away from Krishna and his cult to believe with Leckey:

It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world a character which, through all the changes of eighteen centuries, has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, temperaments, and conditions; has been not only the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice; and has exercised so deep an influence that the simple record of three years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the discussions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists. * Quoted in Krishna Described, p. 47, S. P. C. K. Press, Madras.

+ Quoted by Murray Mitchell, in Hinduism Past and Present, pp. 80, 81.

+ History of European Morals.

J. & beott.

EDITORIAL DEPARTMENTS.

NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.

MATTHEW ARNOLD, in his essay on Thomas Gray, wrote: "If Gray, like Burns, had been just thirty years old when the French revolution broke out, he would have shown, probably, productiveness and animation in plenty. Coming when he did, and endowed as he was, he was a man born out of date, a man whose spiritual flowering was impossible. The same thing is to be said of his great contemporary, Butler, the author of the Analogy. In the sphere of religion which touches that of poetry Butler was impelled by the endowment of his nature to strive for a profound and adequate conception of religious things, which was not pursued by his contemporaries, and which at that time, and in that atmosphere of mind, was not fully attainable. Hence, in Butler, too, a dissatisfaction, a weariness, as in Gray; 'great labor and weariness, great disappointment, pain, and even vexation of mind.' A sort of spiritual east wind was at that time blowing; neither Butler nor Gray could flower. They never spoke out." But Gladstone considers Arnold not a competent critic of Bishop Butler.

METHODIST LEAVEN IN ROMAN CATHOLIC MEAL. Not alone in Roman Catholic meal is the Methodist leaven. It is in that of all religious denominations. None are altogether destitute of it. The "Americanism" of the late Isaac Thomas Hecker is a useful but imperfect specimen of the Methodist leaven of which the Roman Catholic meal will present distinct traces for many days. This Americanism is not an evanescent phenomenon, but an abiding reality. Its trend is to freedom, progress, and felicity. In Roman Catholicism it finds no affinity, but rather impatient or sullen repulsion.

Hecker's parents were of German blood and birth-his father indifferent to the claims of all the Churches-his mother "a lifelong Methodist," and a very superior example of the hausmutter; dignified and generous, pleasant, witty, and full of humanities. To all the older members of the Jane Street

Methodist Episcopal Church in New York her memory is precious. In the best elements of personality Isaac Hecker was a duplicate of his revered and godly mother. In early manhood he touchingly expressed the truth when he wrote: "The good that I have, under God, I am conscious that I am greatly indebted to thee for. At times I feel that it is thou acting in me, and that there is nothing that can ever separate us." Yet she could not and would not embrace Romanism; nor could anything wean her from the simplicity and joyousness of her form of "Christianity in earnest." In later life her distinguished son loved to talk of his deep attachment to her, of his youthful freedom from excessive drinking, sensual impurity, profanity, lying, and dishonesty. He longed to understand "the mysteries of God and man, and their mutual relations." Personal responsibility for what one is and does, the right and duty of enjoying the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the witness of the Spirit, direct and indirect, to the facts of divine filiation and approval, and the necessity of intensely loyal cooperation with God, were specimens of the Methodist leaven that he conveyed into the Roman Catholic meal. "He never knew a merely arbitrary master." The first political doctrines he heard and discussed were kindred to those of St. Simon, or of the Social Democracy, "the object being the amelioration of the condition of the more numerous classes of society in the speediest manner." "To thinkers of this class the Christ was the "big Democrat, and the Gospel was the true Democratic platform."

In these callow days the singularly thoughtful youth was a theosophic dreamer, a communicant with spirits, whose inward anxieties culminated in prolonged fits of nervous depression, and in the concomitant exhaustion which so frequently baffles the medical skill called in to its relief. These experiences tended to prepare his tired soul for the sacrifice of mental independence and even of moral freedom. If the oblation were not complete it was because the prevenient grace of God and the qualities fostered by Methodist associations intervened.

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In 1843 Hecker joined the community at Brook Farm, Mass., and wrote, "I know that I have passed from death unto life, received the 'light, love, and life God is always giving,' and became more and more a mystic of profoundly pious, but also at times of scarcely intelligible type. In his troublous perplexity and restless desire his attention was called

by writings like the Oxford Tracts to the spectacular unity and uniformity, discipline and order of the Roman Catholic Church. Universal brotherhood seemed to be its distinguishing mark— its religion binding all things, natural and supernatural, together. Whether things were as they appeared to be he does not seem to have inquired. He was like Luther before he had seen the real Rome-the head of Medusa was hidden by the masque of Minerva. Nevertheless, it was with candor that he said: "The Catholic Church alone seems to satisfy my wants, my faith, life, soul." Surrender to it was abject, and resultant doubts were inevitable. "These may be baseless fabrics," he wrote, "chimeras dire, or what you please. I may be laboring under a delusion."

The month of August in the same year saw the young man once more at his home in New York, with more knowledge than when he left it, but with little or nothing more of sound wisdom. For nine months or more he had subsisted on a very simple diet of grains, fruit, nuts, and unleavened bread, with only pure water to drink, being persuaded that "a gross feeder will never be a central thinker." The doctrine of Christian perfection, scientifically expounded by the Methodist Episcopal Church, at one time drew him powerfully toward its communion. He went to the Rev. Dr. Morris D'C. Crawford, and said: "I have read in the Bible 'If thou wouldest be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast;' now, that is the kind of Christian I want to be." The answer is reported to have been; "Well, young man, you must not carry things too far. You are too enthusiastic. Christ does not require that of us in the nineteenth century." After further conversation Dr. Crawford is said to have "told him to give up such ideas and study for the ministry." Methodism has lost more than one man of uncommon genius through lack of trained ability to show that all who worship God "in spirit and in truth" (John iv, 23, 24); who seek to know the Lord's will in order that they may do it (1 John ii, 20, 27; iii, 1–3); who reverently fear the Lord and keep his commandments, are accepted with him (Acts x, 34, 35); infallibly guided and guarded against fatal error, and constitute portions of that one Church of God whose members are "distinct as the billows, but one as the sea." The Church has one Lord, one faith, one baptism; but diversities of form as numerous as those of the flora which fill the earth with varied beauty, fragrance, and

fruitage. Romanism is narrow, and suffocating to freedom of spirit.

Hecker received the Catechism of the Council of Trent as containing an adequate exposition of the entire system of doctrine and morals known to revealed religion, was baptized by Bishop McCloskey on August 1, 1844, and used the language of ardent Mariolatry on the following day. The rapturous joy of absolution was followed by emotional dryness and desolation, by nervous shocks, addresses to his guardian angel, intimate fellowship with glorified saints, and complete abandonment to what he believed to be the divine will. In company with Clarence A. Walworth, an Episcopalian, and James A. McMaster, a Presbyterian pervert, he sailed to Belgium with the resolve that all his future should be identified with the worship and service of God in the Roman Catholic Church. In preparation for this he submitted to constant mortifications, to wash and clean dirty stairways, to endure whipping twice a week, and to observe all religious or monkish rules. Despite all such training he maintained fearless independence of thought, as McMaster did of action. The first became a member of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, the second a bellicose editor of the religious press. In January, 1851, he returned to America as a missionary to preach penance and the conversion of sinful Catholics to a good life. With work akin to this he had been familiar in attendance upon Methodist evangelism. Sorrow for sin, loathing of sin, trust in God's promises, assurance of pardon through faith in Christ, joy of salvation, and fellowship with the Holy Spirit, together with contempt of wrong and devotion to the right, were the results he sought to work out. He made an unusually popular preacher and effective moral instructor. Honest and earnest, he also used the press to compass his objects. Questions of the Soul and Aspirations of Nature were literary compositions designed to facilitate his undertaking. This prospered so that the erection of a house which should be the center of the work for English-speaking subjects became a necessity. Hecker was deputed in August, 1857, to lay the scheme before the General or Rector Major at Rome. Arriving there on the 26th he was expelled from the Congregation on the 29th for violation of his vows of obedience and poverty. This expulsion, however, was ignored and practically nullified by the pontiff. On the 6th of March, 1858, the American band of five missionary fathers