upholds itself, while it mocks at and corrupts the very principle of human intelligence. We have done it, because this book is but a specimen of a large class of productions, especially of those which are prepared for the people, and which influence the character of the masses; and because it may also afford an idea of the style and subjects of those sermons which, at set times, on saints days and similar anniversaries, are preached by selected orators ad captandum vulgus.

Of course the holy coat became an object of prodigious veneration; and while, from the very reverence in which it was held, it has been but sparingly exhibited for popular worship, yet from time to time a favoured generation has sprung up, who for one moment in a life time have been permitted to gaze upon or even to touch it. In 1510, Leo X. granted a pardon for all who, after having truly repented and confessed, or formed the resolution of truly repenting and confessing their sins, should make a pilgrimage to Treves for the sake of the holy coat, and who should offer a small contribution, or pecuniary aid, for the exposition of the same. The same Pope further ordained that, with a view to religion and to the moral improvement of the Christian people, the holy coat should in future be exhibited every seven years. A fact this which our author considers a mighty corroboration of his argument. For what Pope would have ordained this periodical solemnity, and still more have granted an indulgence to such as with pious mind availed themselves of it, if he had not previously satisfied himself on irrefragable grounds of the genuineness of the relique ?-and does it not afford us a conjecture that in his day evidences even more conclusive than those which we have adduced, were in existence, which have been lost to us in some of those tempests of destruction which swept over the city of Treves, since the unfortunate outbreak of the so-called reformation?

"But enough! There can be no Christian man, to whom it is not a sufficient reason of belief, that the head of the divine Roman Catholic Church did believe, and along with him a great number of sagacious men."

The troubled state of Europe hindered obedience to the bull of Leo. The holy coat had itself to be saved by successive pilgrimages. It was restored to Treves in 1810, and in the course of the same year it was solemnly exhibited, and that so fruitfully (says our author) that, among the whole multitude continually congregating to the spectacle, "one saw none drunken, and heard of no thefts, and a blessed improvement in morals was universally observable.”

The exhibition recurred in 1844. The world had much changed in those 34 years-the Bishop of Treves and his advisers were not aware how much. The exhibition was accordingly commanded and proclaimed, and there was still superstition enough remaining even in Prussia, Belgium, and France (not to speak of the southern countries), to ensure the resort of one million one hundred thousand of the pious and penitent. Many however remained at home, displeased, disgusted, indignant, and of the Clergy some counselled their flocks to do so; a deep voice was ready to be awakened; yet men held their peace and smote their breasts in secret, sorrowing over the folly of the zealous and the mocking of the impious. But in another part of Germany the popish system had been preparing a bold and hardy spirit, whom oppression had provoked to madness, and through whom the voice of millions has uttered itself. His life, contained in the third of the publications under review, is a useful and most true glimpse into the melancholy and degrading discipline through which priesthood is to be arrived at in that Church, and one which we would especially recommend to those among our own Clergy, who feel any readiness to be beguiled by the smooth countenance, and the much fair speech of that venerable mother.

Johannes Ronge, a Silesian, born in 1813, after having the strength of his body and the vigour of his mind developed by a peasant's life, was educated at the university of Breslau, where he deliberately made choice of theology as his pursuit, and devoted himself to the priesthood. He was accordingly received into the seminary, his description of which, we must have the charity to suppose is not applicable "mutatis mutandis” to our colleges of Oscott and Maynooth.

"The confidence I had hitherto reposed in our spiritual teachers was soon expelled from my breast by a nearer survey of their mode of life, and replaced by the deepest horror and loathing, which seized me when I became aware how shamefully they abused religion for the purpose of degrading and subjecting the people to their will; when I saw by what a fearful veil of hypocrisy deceitful Rome surrounds us from our cradles to our graves; when I saw how the holiest ordinances are insultingly misused to crush the dignity of human nature. The disgraceful fetters galled me which till now I had not felt, and I perceived what many of my fellow sufferers endured, and all the more severely the less they dared avow the causes of their suffering... ....Their principal care and most consummate skill are constantly directed towards their servants-that is to say, to the inferior Clergy, and their education. The inferior Clergy are so securely bound in spiritual and external fetters, that, for the greater number, it is almost impossible to escape, The peculiar and appropriate armoury for their degrading

bonds is the college or seminary for priests. It is there that the youth who wishes to devote himself to the teaching of the people has the brand of slavery stamped deep and painfully upon him; it is there that he is condemned to holy idleness; it is there that his spirit is fettered and bound to blind obedience by superstitious dread and sacred statutes; it is there that he is inoculated in heart and soul with hypocrisy and selfish egotism; it is there that man is degraded to the condition of a slave, and becomes a passive tool. The pain, the torment, of this sacrifice is fearful, and nature instinctively revolts when she is robbed of her holiest rights-of the most valued gifts of the Creator. And yet the slave is silent, and all the more so, as the grave is deeper where his freedom and his dignity lie buried. It is but seldom that a despairing cry escapes from his inmost soul, and dies away in utterance amid the empty sounds of simulated prayer......... The young man who wishes to become a teacher of the people, must witness his open and upright manliness ruined; he must blindly obey, and submit himself to the most degrading oppression; for the first injunction laid upon him is unconditional obedience....... He himself, as the servant of a foreign power, is expected to assist in the oppression of the land which gave him birth.

Again :

"Then the time was skilfully divided between attendance at cercmonies and the repetition of lip prayers, for from five to six hours daily. Five hours of prayer daily-and such prayer!-for young men of twenty four years, designed to be the salt of the earth! Rome uses devotion as a means of enslaving men. I tried by every means to escape from the debasing feeling, from the reproach of conscience, that I had done nothing. After the breviary prayers were concluded, there were only about three hours left daily for private study, and the spiritual work was to be performed in the midst of twenty youths who had no further examination for office to undergo, and who besides were otherwise finished! It was with horror that I contemplated the possibility that my moral strength might be weakened by the influence of idleness and dissimulation..... Miserably diseased in mind and disposition, I left the seminary in 1840."

He then proceeds to describe his experience in the condition. of a parish priest: during which the struggle of conscience and reason increasingly continued, and he cherished a secret resolve to burst his fetters, and to tear off "the mask of holiness from the hypocrisy of a thousand years."

"This, my resolve, was only strengthened by contemplating the fate of my colleagues, some of whom were greater sufferers than even I. A few were snatched away by early death; they sank mute, and cheated of their lives, into the grave. And yet their fate was envied by others, who glided through the world like mummies, in the springtime of their days, and hourly, slowly, faded into death. Some rush, to deaden feeling, into drunkenness and other vices; or sink into insensibility, and passively vegetate from one day to the other." (pp. 33-34).

In consequence of a violent and unjustifiable attack upon Rome and its habitual policy, he was called in question, deposed, and ordered to resort to the seminary to undergo the exercitia spiritualia. This order, which was, indeed, an order to submit to imprisonment for life, he disregarded, and became a teacher in the small and recent settlement of Laurahütte, where the iron manufacture has gathered together a population of labourers.

Thus prepared for his work, this simple priest, unable to bear part in the deception practised upon men in the proclamation regarding the holy coat; indignant at the hypocrisy of his brethren in the priesthood, and at seeing his countrymen befooled; again went out of his way, and addressed to the Bishop of Treves that powerful letter which all our readers must have had frequent opportunities of perusing. That letter was printed and read in every corner of Germany. It met a response in every corner. It became, or rather it was found to be, a voice speaking forth that which had silently been in the hearts of millions. The secret absence of unity that lurked through all Popish Germany was at once revealed by the rash act of a single ill-treated youth. Ronge was speedily excommunicated. He made his appeal to the German people, and published a letter of still more questionable propriety than his first. This second letter was addressed to the whole active secular priesthood and to all the flocks. Canonical obedience was cast aside. The sword was drawn, and the scabbard thrown away. It was no longer the garment of Treves that formed the subject of his indignant exclamations, but Rome itself. Here and there pastors and their flocks, goaded to impatience by the violent addresses of Ronge, burst the bands of their Christian unity, and announced their independence of the Pope. Confessions of faith were published by each embryo congregation. In Saxony, manifestoes, inviting all to spiritual insurrection, were struck off in large impressions; and, before the police could interfere, were sold and dispersed irrevocably to all cities and villages where the German speech is known. And so a new thing came into being. In a period of time, so short that it can be reckoned by days, the new thing has taken root, and got for itself a place and an influence from the Rhine and the Danube to the Baltic.

But now came the difficulty. Who shall give the thing form and prescribe its bounds? It has in itself no unity, and cannot be entrusted with its own development. On the other hand, if it receive no constitution, it will die away, and disappear with the transitory popular sentiment. Ronge is, after all, nobody. He

has no authority; no power-save that which every man is born to that of his word and his pen. A general council is impossible even a council of the whole German Church can scarcely be hoped for. But a representative assembly of the new congregations may be convened, who may thereby give to themselves a name and a provisional uniformity. This suggestion came from those in Berlin who had followed the movement: by them was published a call to form such a representative assembly; and it is expected that Berlin will be the ultimate capital and gathering-place of the future rulers of the new body. In March last, twenty-three deputies met at Leipsic: they represented the bodies formed at Berlin, Brunswick, Breslau, Dresden, Elberfeld, Leipsig, Magdeburg, and several lesser towns. Professor Wigard, of Dresden, presided. Certain constitutional rules were decided upon. It is proposed and intended that the council shall re-assemble, at the end of two years, in Berlin; but that thereafter it be convoked every fifth year. Each congregation is to have one vote in the council, but may send as many representatives as it shall think fit. When the deputies of the major part of the congregations, at any given time existing, have come together, the council may be lawfully constituted, and proceed to business. Its decisions shall become valid when sanctioned by an approving vote in a majority of all the congregations, and these shall give their decisions within three months after the dissolution of the general council. The minority, however, have a right to hold their own opinion, and shall not be liable to excommunication for rejecting the decisions of the majority.

A formidable and instructive difficulty presented itself in the selection of a name. The following were those proposed :Apostolic Catholic-Christian Catholic-Universal ChristianFree Catholic-German Catholic. The last, which is purely self-contradictory, and the only thoroughly absurd one among them, was the one agreed upon, though, for local reasons, some were permitted to assume the name of Apostolic Catholic.

Certain general rules, for the constitution of individual flocks, have been determined upon; but the details were left to the flocks themselves, the plan adopted by that of Berlin being printed by authority of the assembly, and offered as a model or specimen. The clergy are to be created by popular election, and to be introduced to their charge without any rite of ordination, by the congregational senate, who are themselves a body annually elected by the flock. The afternoon of Sunday is to be occupied in catechizing, or in hearing expositions or

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