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BUNSEN'S CHURCH OF THE FUTURE.

Die Verhaftung der Kirche der Zukunft.

Von C. C. J. BUNSEN. Hamburg. 1845. (The Constitution of the Church of the Future. By C. C. J. BUNSEN.)

[The work is preceded by a translation of a correspondence between Chevalier Bunsen and Mr. Gladstone respecting the Jerusalem Bishopric, which correspondence is given in the original English at the conclusion of the work.]

JUDGE Buller was a remarkably popular man at the Bar. Though strict in court, as became "the Hanging Judge," he was anything but rigid in private. In those post-prandial digladiations in which the successful lawyer sharpens his wit, when quirks and quiddities and other pellets of the brain succeed to the real concertation of the Courts,--no man was more successful. But the man of mirth must not let himself be laughed at. Buller found it difficult to clude the charge, which his watchful associates were desirous to fix on him, of having failed egregiously in an attempt to plant an irreclaimable part of Dartmoor. In vain did he stoutly maintain that his pines and laurels were growing to admiration. Nobody believed him, and the current report was, that round a house which he had built not a stick would grow. "At length," said one of his assailants, "let us put it to the proof. When the circuit comes into your neighbourhood, we will come and dine with you." He agreed. The light just served them to look out as they drove up, and as Buller met them triumphantly at the door they were obliged to confess that they never saw more promising plantations than he pointed out to them.

The lawyers for once were silenced, but great had been the talk of the country neighbours at seeing dozens of wagons go by during the preceding day full of boughs of firs and of young trees cut off by the roots, which no sooner appeared than they were stuck in the ground where plantations had vainly been attempted. And miserable was the sight next morning when this new edition of Birnam Wood began to fade away for want of its proper nourishment, and left Dartmoor to the awful majesty of its ancient desolation.

The same scheme which Judge Buller accomplished so felicitously in the physical is contemplated, to judge by the work before us, in the moral world. We have here the plan of a perfect Church, beginning with its own name, and finishing with the details of all its offices, and the Chevalier Bunsen is not only prepared to plant it full-grown in the earth, without allowing one of the boughs he

has cut off to lose its umbrageous honours, but unlike Judge Buller he feels confident of its permanent existence. One thing only he forgets, that when GoD had made man of the dust of the earth, He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Now it is this one thing only which is wanting to the fair edifice of the Chevalier, and this one deficiency not all the arts nor the arms of his countrymen can supply. His Church is a fair structure, but who is to give it life? For the Prussians men and not GOD, and their horses flesh and not spirit."

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We know not how we can better describe the purpose of the work before us than by quoting the words in which Görres, eight years ago, described the purposes of that party, in which the Chevalier Bunsen is a leading spirit :-"The Pietists adhere to Christianity. They know well that it is the only ground on which a durable State can be built. But they understand Christianity in their own way, as it is exhibited amidst the pines of the North. To be consistent, they should hold to Lutheranism; but because the ruling family adheres to the Reformed Confession, and because this Confession, bordering more on religious anarchy, has become the preponderating one, for these and other reasons they have sacrificed strict consistency, and made the union of worship, which they had found, in a measure prepared, the foundation of their building. On this ground, which has not been levelled without considerable violence, they have now attempted, taking the example of England, to build a sort of Episcopal Church, and to underprop the new edifice with Bishops, created by Cabinet order, till they can manage to restore the ruins of the old Presbyterian foundations, and to raise them about it into a firmer support. Then as much is to be borrowed from the Catholic Hierarchy, from its Liturgy, its sacramentals, and even its external ordinances, as is convenient, and even something from its Church discipline, but so as not to violate the liberty of Protestants. Around this restored Church, declared the domestic chapel of the State, the edifice of the State is then to raise itself, first the royal state apartments with their appendages, -then the lodgings of the nobility,* &c. &c."

We repeat that we can hardly describe better the work before us than by calling it a commentary on the prophetic words of Görres. And we should scarcely deem it worth while to call the attention of our readers to a scheme so utterly illusory, were there not certain signs abroad which show that we ourselves are not wholly unaffected by what is passing, and that a set design exists to make German influences and example a means of liberalizing the English Church. But for this, Chevalier Bunsen might stick in his fir-trees for the amusement of his coming guests, and we should have no wish to anticipate the withering despondency of the morrow.

And to this course we should be the more inclined, because we Athanasius, von J. Görres, p. 102.

cannot but recognize in him much which is pure, deep, and Christian. He is evidently one of those persons, who would have profited by a Catholic training and a Christian impulse of the European mind. His character and history are so well known, that we need make no observation, but that his earlier life has in all respects corresponded with his present position. Born in Waldeck, a small state to the eastward of Westphalia, A.D. 1791, and having designed, after his education at Göttingen, to devote himself to the study of Sanscrit, and to visit the East, he spent some time under the tutelage of De Sacy in Paris, and then repaired to Florence, where he was to meet the companions of his intended journey. But while his companions delayed, he was introduced by Brandis, since a distinguished Professor at Bonn, and the Editor of Aristotle, to the notice of the historian, Niebuhr, then Prussian resident at Rome. Brandis was Niebuhr's Secretary of Legation, Bunsen became his private secretary, his friend, and his successor. His residence at Rome led to his being consulted by the late King of Prussia, respecting the new Liturgy, which that Prince introduced partially in his dominions, and which he went apparently to seek at Rome; not however, in the Vatican, but on the Palatine Hill. It is needless, of course, to speak of the disputes occasioned by the Archbishop of Cologne, Drosti zu Vischering, of Bunsen's consequent removal from Rome, his settlement at Bern, and in England. In this country, with which he is connected by his marriage with a countrywoman of our own, his participation in the Jerusalem Bishopric, has been fatal and ominous-fatal by the dispensations to which it has given occasion, and ominous by the anticipation of future attempts.

While expressing ourselves thus, we have no desire to question, what public opinion has certainly conceded, that Chevalier Bunsen is a good and estimable man, of Christian temper, and of large acquirements. In these respects the present volume will not derogate from his respectability. It has no signs indeed, of learning, and such a mis-statement as that respecting the Alexandrian Church, (p. 308,) shows his views of history to be hopelessly biassed by his prejudices. But there is a kindly and an earnest tone about the volume, which it is impossible not to recognize with satisfaction. We fear that few of our ambassadors, with all the advantages they possess as members of a pure branch of the Church, have given sacred matters such deep attention, or would speak of them with such interest. We wish the pen of our Ambassador at Paris had been as well employed. The simple design to organize a compli cated system with sixty Bishops in the Prussian kingdom, which this work draws out in detail, indicates decided views respecting the importance of the Church, and the necessity of exhibiting it on an adequate scale. We recommend the Bishop of Oxford, when he next makes one of his eloquent speeches on the augmentation of

the Episcopate in the Lords, to have Chevalier Bunsen examined as a witness. We fancy that he would have small tolerance for the fixed number of twenty-six, to which Lord Stanley and Lord Grey would doom the English Church, and still less for the notion which has been whispered in other places, that a few Bishops with the aid of Archdeacons, can do the necessary work, and that it is not desirable to make the office too common. Such things sound ill from those whose profession is, that Episcopal blessing is a means of grace. It is well that those who from forming an imperfect estimate of the duties of a chief Pastor, have discovered that a great duty can be left undone by a few men as easily as by many, should observe the estimate formed by a dispassionate observer of the Bishop's duties. Prussia contains something less than ten millions of Protestants, in six thousand parishes, with nearly six thousand clergymen. (pp. 165, 240.) The number of sixty Bishops would give each one hundred parishes, with one hundred and sixty-seven thousand souls for his charge-a number of each kind less than that of each of our Archdeaconries. For with twenty-six Bishops, we have twice as many parochial divisions as Prussia, and three times as many clergymen.

The sees, M. Bunsen proposes, with his usual good feeling, to fix where Romish Bishops are not located. "To fix Bishop against Bishop in the same spot were unbrotherly." (p. 239.) We find none therefore at Treves, Munster, or Cologne. The largest places being thus excepted, those which remain might really be cared for by their spiritual supervision. "It is absolutely necessary that the Bishops, without in the least interfering with the office of the usual pastors, should not only know them all personally, but be familiar with the peculiarities of every parish. From the true idea of Bishop, it is inseparable that the whole Diocese under his care should look on him as one whose business is to teach and care for souls. GOD PRESERVE US FROM DIOCESES, LIKE MOST of the Roman Catholic and ENGLISH ONES." (p. 237.) [Our author may have heard perhaps of Bishops who took their clergy for reporters to the newspapers.]

It is a part of our author's system to attach disproportionate importance to those territorial limits, which separate different nations. To this principle he has recourse as an excuse for the surrender of that undivided universality which Scripture assigns to the Universal Church. Let it be observed in passing, that those who employ this expedient are in fact resting on a developement, by which the plain letter of Scripture is superseded. Yet Bunsen sometimes rises above this low corporative spirit, and even takes in the world in his thoughts. "It is a thought dear not only to men, but to many other hearts, that an union of evangelical Churches, extending beyond the limits of states, may be held forth as a higher gleaming into the future." (p. 310.)

The following passage also tends in the same direction :

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The Episcopal office is by its constitution the natural, and in a certain degree the only organ of a fruitful intercourse, and brotherly co-operation in different national Churches. It is the personal embodying of the Church's consciousness in the higher sphere of ecclesiastical life, and so far forth is it the witness to the unity of the faith and of the Church's catholicity. In practice also it is the natural exhibition of the unity of different national Churches, in their historical capacity as limbs of the great body of CHRIST, i.e. of redeemed humanity." (p. 306.) We are glad also to trace in this book a just appreciation of the importance of a proper ritual and some measure of reasons for worship. To this M. Bunsen's attention to the Prussian "Agenda" may have led him. "The teaching of a Church," he says, "is in practice understood according to its constitution, much more than its constitution by its teaching. Forms, manners, and actions which occur in public worship, and which constantly recur and affect all members of the society, together with the constitutional activity which is exerted in government and administration, has overthrown the most powerful system of doctrines." (p. 81.) This true perception of the paramount importance of the devotional usages of a nation leads him to a remark, which however fallacious the assertion which suggests it, is yet cheering. He considers that our Articles are with him in that depreciation of the means of grace, which forms the main portion of his works.

This we wholly deny, for the assertion of our Articles that we are justified by faith only, is explained in the Homily to which the Church refers us to mean, that we are justified only through the merits of CHRIST, not that the principle of justification by faith implies the abrogation of all other requisites to men's salvation. M. Bunsen cannot avoid confessing that the English people are possessed with a belief in the necessity of something more than that bare act of the individual mind to which he would refer us. This different spirit he attributes to what he is pleased to call "the one-sided constitution of their Church and its imperfect Liturgy." (p. 127.) We have often had occasion to thank GoD for the safeguard which this Liturgy supplied against those domestic enemies who are less honest than M. Bunsen. The Catholic-minded members of the Church of England desire, what it seems but fair to grant them, that the Church of this land may either be plainly understood to be the ancient Church, which has come down by succession from the Apostles, or that such preten sions may be openly abandoned. That such pretensions are implied in our service books, M. Bunsen is an impartial witness. We have a right then to demand that the Archbishop who has earned so much praise from Dissenters by writing against this article of our faith, should make it plain that our belief is erroneous. Why have in our ordinal what not only encourages error at home,

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