roar of tattooed warriors wielding the murderous tomahawk. It has arrested and tamed marauding hordes of the wilderness, making them fling away their beads and their gongs-ay, and their paint and their feathers, which only tended to make nakedness itself more hideous. It has pierced into the crassest heathen intellect, and roused into action its slumbering faculties, and quickened them into spiritual activity. It has melted into contrition the most obdurate savage heart, and enchained its wayward roving desires and imperious impulses-ay, and purified and regulated them too, with a fascination and a power vastly transcending anything that hope ever imagined or fear conceived. In a thousand instances it has made the thievish honest, the lying truthful, the churl liberal, the extravagant frugal. It has in a thousand instances converted the cruel, unfeeling heart into kindliness and goodwill; it has turned discord and frantic revelry into the harmonies of sacred song. It has wrought its way into the darksome caverns of debasing ignorance, and illumined them with the rays of celestial light; it has gone down into the dens of foulest infamy, and reared altars of devotion there; it has mingled its voice with the raging tempest. It has alighted upon the gory battle-field, and poured the balm of consolation into the soul of the dying hero. It has, on an errand of mercy, visited the loathsome dungeon, braved the famine, confronted the pestilence and plague. It has wrenched the iron rod from the grasp of oppression, and dashed the fiery cup from the lips of intemperance. It has strewn flowers over the grave of old enmities, and woven garlands round the altar of the temple of peace. These are but a few of the mighty achievements which follow as a retinue of splendour in the train of that blessed Book which circulates all over the world.-Dr. Duff at the Bible Society's Meeting.

THE ENGLISH LITURGY.

Christopher North (Professor Wilson) says, in Blackwood's Magazine: "I tremble to speak of your ritual; the liturgy looks to be that which the old churches are-the work of a fine art. A poetical sensibility, a wakeful, just, delicate, simple taste seems to have ruled over the composition of each prayer, and the ordering of the whole service. The whole composition of the service is copious and various. Human supplication, the lifting up of the hands of the creature, knowing his own weakness, dependence, lapses, and liability to slip-man's own part, dictated by his own experience of himself is the basis. Readings from the Old and New Volume of the Written Word are in

grafted, as if God audibly spoke in His own House; the authoritative added to the supplicatory. The hymns of the sweet singer of Israel, in literal translation, adopted as a holier inspired language of the heart. The ritual of

England breathes a divine calm. You think of the people walking through ripening fields on a mild day to their church door. It is the work of a nation sitting in peace, possessing their land. It is the work of a wealthy nation, that, by dedicating a part of its wealth, consecrates the remainder-that acknowledges the fountain from which all flows. The prayers are devout, humble, and fervent. They are not impassioned. A wonderful temperance and sobriety of discretion; that which, in worldly things, would be called good sense, prevails in them; but you must name it better in things spiritual. The framers evidently bore in mind the continual consciousness of writing for all. That is the guiding, tempering, calming spirit that keeps in the whole one tone-that, and the hallowing, chastening awe which subdues vehemence, even in asking for the infinite, by those who have nothing but that which they earnestly ask, and know unless they ask infinitely they ask nothing. In every word the whole congregation, the whole nation prays, not the individual minister, the officiating divine functionary, not the man. Nor must it be forgotten that the received version and the Book of Common Prayer-observe the word Common-expressing exactly what I affirm―are beautiful by the words, that there is no other such, English, simple, touching, apt, venerable-hued as the thoughts are-musical-the most English that is known, of a Hebraic strength and antiquity, yet lucid and gracious as if of, and for to-day."

WHAT IS MILLENARIANISM?

The question of the Millenium has at all times excited much attention in England amongst the religious public; and the present unsettled state of the political world tends to swell more and more the ranks of the students of prophecy. There is a general feeling that we must look out for mighty changes. In the different spheres of religion, philosophy, literature, and politics, the old landmarks seem fast disappearing, and we have entered upon the transitional state which is to lead to a new order of things.

It is quite natural that in the midst of such upheavings of the spiritual world everywhere, the thought of the millenium should at once occur to many sincere Christians; and the publication in Paris of a work on the subject, by M. l'Abbé

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Lescœur, in the year 1868, excited considerable attention. is a decided opponent of millenial theories, but he states his objections with Christian courtesy.

First, what is millenarianism? The opinion held by chiliasts, or millenarians, on the personal reign of our Lord Jesus Christ, before the final judgment, may certainly claim antiquity in its behalf. It was, in fact, the natural expression of the politicoreligious ideas entertained by the Jews. They could not give up their hopes of a national restoration of Israel; and, taking in a literal sense the prophecies of Isaiah in connection with certain Rabbinical traditions, they looked forward to a Messiah who should destroy the power of the Romans, and deliver the chosen people of God from the despotism of the masters of the world.

As a matter of course, the converts to Christianity who came from the synagogue preserved, under their new faith, strong chiliastic sympathies: many, however, of the neophytes won over from heathenism also entertained these notions,-Saint Augustine, for instance, though he subsequently found good reasons to alter his views in that respect.

At the time when Saint Augustine wrote, millenarianism had dwindled away into insignificance. We must notice, however, that the Church never pronounced any condemnation of it; and if the Judaizing doctrines of Cerinthus and others were the subject of formal censure, it was because of the gross and sensual views mixed up with them. So long as chiliasm remained within the bounds which it preserves in the writings of Irenæus, for instance, it was considered as an opinion which might be held consistently with orthodoxy; and Saint Jerome, whilst refuting it, did not dare to condemn it.

M. l'Abbé Lescœur endeavours, in the first place, to ascertain from the books of the New Testament what is the true idea of the kingdom of God. He shows that its character is essentially spiritual, and that even the passages of the Apocalypse, which are most habitually quoted by the champions of chiliasm, are conclusive against them.

If such is the case, as indeed it is, we may assert, à priori, that millenarian views were never widely spread in the Church, even during the first centuries of its existence, and that these views, far from being sanctioned by the successors of the Apostles, constituted a great obstacle to the diffusion of their teaching. Now, history most thoroughly shows the truth of this à priori supposition. All the Judaizing sects which were excommunicated by the Church, such as the Ebionites and the Nazarenes, held millenarian views; so did the Montanists, to whom Tertullian belonged for some time.

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M. l'Abbé Lescœur gives us a short account of the principal divines who, during the early ages of Christianity, maintained the notion he is criticising-viz., Papias, Irenæus, Nepos, Lactantius. Respecting the first two, the quotations made from their works prove, indeed, that they were very clear and explicit in the statement of their views; but they could not at the same time help acknowledging that many Christians, whose doctrine was known to be sound, did not believe in the temporal reign of Christ before the day of judgment. Irenæus protests against the opponents of chiliasm, and yet he is compelled to say of them, qui putantur recte credidisse. Then, what weight can be ascribed to the vagaries of a Papias, of whom Eusebius confesses that "he believed certain new tenets which were very much like fables," and that "he was a man of very poor understanding."

The question now suggests itself, Were millenarian opinions ever condemned by the Church? We have already said that they remained uncensured so long as they did not overpass the moderate utterances given in the writings of the authorities quoted above; and that the otherwise high respect which surrounded the persons of men like Justin Martyr and Irenæus served as a kind of shield even to the doubtful views they might entertain on certain points of faith and of discipline. M. Lescœur, however, says that the dreams of the millenarians have been implicitly censured at various epochs of ecclesiastical history, especially during the fourteenth century, à propos of two sermons of Pope John XXII. That prelate having asserted that the souls of the just cannot enjoy the beatific vision of God until the resurrection, and that in the meanwhile they only behold the humanity of Christ, this proposition, condemned by the Sorbonne, then retracted by its author, was finally declared to be unsound in the bull Benedictus Deus, which the next Pope, Benedict XII., published on the 29th of January, 1336. The general councils of Florence and of Trent confirmed this decision. Now, as M. Lescœur remarks, if the souls of the just enter, immediately after death, upon the enjoyment of the beatific vision, the doctrine held by Irenæus, Justin Martyr, and Papias, falls at once to the ground.

M. Lescœur concludes his very able book by a parallel description of the two sets of views which obtain, and have obtained, respecting the condition and prospects of the world. It is not in our age alone that desponding notions of society have been widely diffused, and that the final consummation of all things has been predicted as imminent on account of the perverseness of mankind, the decline of moral principle, and the growing indifference to all that is good. See what history tells

us of the state of public feeling when the Roman empire was sinking below the horizon, and when the barbarians, swarming from all quarters, threatened to overthrow civilization itself. See what an overwhelming and unaccountable gloom spread over the whole of Europe when the year 1,000 began, and when churches, schools, monasteries, cathedrals, resounded with eloquent warnings of impending calamities. One hundred years later Norbert ventured to announce the apparition of Antichrist for the generation then living; in the fourteenth century, the Dominican, Ferrier, proclaimed that he himself was the prophet of the last judgment. If we come to our own days, we find no doubt a great deal of wickedness rampant in the world; but are we worse than the contemporaries of Nero and those of William the Conqueror? Has the Word of God lost its power, and is there no hope of extending the kingdom of Christ? Let us cast away such mistaken ideas, which are too often the excuse of careless and indolent people; let us adopt the more cheerful views of those who, like Lacordaire and many others, think that the brightest days are in store for the Church. -Review, in the Churchman, 1868.

THE FIRST CAUSE.

Even the Stagyrite proclaimed that "every thing which is moved must be referable to a motor, and that there would be no end to the concatenation of causes, if there were not one primordial immovable motor."

POPULAR IMPROVEMENT.

While the world is impelled with such violence in opposite directions; while a spirit of giddiness and revolt is shed upon the nations, and the seeds of mutation are so thickly sown, the improvement of the mass of the people will be our grand security; in the neglect of which, the politeness, the refinement, and the knowledge accumulated in the higher orders, weak and unprotected, will be exposed to imminent danger, and perish like a garland in the grasp of popular fury.-Robert Hall.