of the sacraments, the whole theory of worship, and the nature, constitution, duties, and prerogatives of the Church. Without stopping here to compare these systems, we only remark that there appears in the Catholic theology more of superficiality; in that of Evangelical Protestantism more thorough radicalism. The original man of Catholicism was holy by virtue of an added power, (dona supernaturalia;) that of Protestantism was holy by nature, (vere naturalem.) The fallen man of Catholicism. has lost only the added power; that of Protestantism lies in hopeless ruin.* The restored man of Catholicism can do something and merit something by this doing; that of Protestantism knows no possible merit of works. The triune God is equally the sole object of true worship in both these systems. Yet, while the Catholic worshiper finds Christ not the only Mediator, but invokes and adores the virgin and the saints, the Protestant worshiper sees in Christ Jesus the one Mediator between God and man. While the Catholic worshiper is looking outward toward the virgin, and saints, and images, and relics, and shrines, and, works of supererogation, and the cleansing fires of purgatory for means of salvation, the Protestant worshiper turns his thought inward to discover the attitude of the will, and to note and cherish a growing faith in the Son of God, and in the Holy Spirit, who is the promised sanctifier.

4. Another most important difference of these systems has reference to the grounds of authority and the right of private judgment; in other words, it respects the great question of freedom of thought and action.

As ground of authority in religious questions Catholicism says: Scripture, tradition, and the Church. "Tradition " has too often been the shibboleth of Rome. Its practice has been too much like that of Pharisaism in the Saviour's day-hiding the spirit and letter of the law under the traditions of men. Protestantism cries: "The Bible the word of God; this is the sole ground of authority, the source of religious enlightenment." Catholicism is ever looking to the past, and trying to press modern thought into the molds of bygone centuries. The genius of Protestantism does not propose to study the ancient Church and its pristine glory only, but to push forward the cause

*See Winer, Comparative Symbolik, ch. iv, v.

of God with all the appliances which the unfolding history of the race has placed at her command. Catholicism, like heathen art in its decrepitude from the time of Mark Aurelius, turns its weary eyes backward to find its golden age. Protestantism, like the earliest Christian art, is full of hope, and joy, and promiseprojecting the grandest triumph of its Christ on the sky of the future. Theoretically Romanism binds the consciences of men, individual and collective, by the will of one man, and cries, "Here alone is the oracle of God; here immolate your personality; passive obedience is a means of salvation." Protestantism proposes to bring the individual soul into the conscious. presence of the King Eternal, and says, "Here pay your active, willing obedience." Romanism has too often brought outward compulsion upon human mind as upon inert matter, to drive it hither and thither at pleasure. It has too often anathematized; it has hurled thunderbolts to frighten men to outward submission; it has abridged liberty; it has maimed, and shackled, and palsied the soul. Protestantism, like the Bible, and the God of its Bible, has come with reason, persuasion, and entreaty. It has come with threatening and with promise, with invitation and denunciation. It proffers illumination, guidance, and powerful incentive to lead the soul godward; but "it exhorts to an uncompelled, undamaged service of the man to God."* The wall of protection which the Almighty has thrown around every man's personality, and within whose sacred precincts he himself does not come unbidden, Romanism seeks to break down; Protestantism respects and guards. Romanism, like Jesuitism, its most powerful ally, treats man individual too much as a thing, a tool, a corpse, to be acted upon by external force, to be urged hither and thither at the will of another. Protestantism recognizes man individual as a spiritual force; he belongs to the realm of powers. Romanism dictates, excommunicates, and forces its dogmas upon its votaries. Protestantism proposes systems, expresses opinions, urges arguments, and gives a reason for the hope within it. It is not now claimed that the invariable practices of these rival systems are here described. That there have been instances of generous toleration within the Romish communion a L'Hopital and Lord Baltimore

*Isaac Taylor: "Loyola and Jesuitism."

abundantly witness; that bitterest intolerance has at times disgraced Protestantism, the Servetus affair must ever attest. Both communions have been at times unrelenting persecutors; both have invoked the aid of the civil power to suppress heresy; both have piled and lighted fagots to consume the unrecanting offender. Universal history utters its solemn warning against the danger of intrusting irresponsible power to any party whatsoever. Yet the conclusions of a writer who cannot be accused of concealing the short-comings of Evangelical Protestantism are forced upon us. "It can surely be no exaggeration to say that the Church of Rome has inflicted a greater amount of unmerited suffering than any other religion that has ever existed among mankind."* It is equally certain that in the indulgence of the spirit of persecution Protestantism has appeared more offensive than her rival, because it was in glaring contradiction to one of her dearest fundamental principles; while the violent suppression of heresy is not inconsistent with the teachings of the approved standards of the Catholic Church. Indeed, Romanism has manifested this spirit in a thousand ways, by cramping thought, by stifling investigation, and by putting shackles upon genius. The study of the literary policy of Rome, as found in her damnatory indexes and in the decisions of the Council of Trent, compels the conviction that the spirit of this Church toward literature and art is in the last extreme arbitrary and repressing.+

The application of these principles to our discussion is simple and manifest. All agree that freedom is the indispensable condition of art development and progress. Religious art, especially, languishes in the absence of liberty. The fixedness of type, and the centuries of stagnation while art was under the ecclesiastical control of the East, is an instructive example of this truth. We have already mentioned that this authority bound religious art in fetters for nearly a thousand years. This does not imply that the artist is not to consult tradition. To him, as well as to the religionist, is tradition invaluable, since by this means there is noted an historic progress and development. For this very reason, however, must the artist equally with the religionist and the scientist, the individual as well as the

* Leckey: "History of Rationalism," vol. ii, p. 46.

See Mendham: "The Literary Policy of the Church of Rome Exhibited."

"*

"To ascribe to tra

Church, remain unshackled by tradition. dition, or to any, even a classical rule, an absolutely binding value, would be as senseless as to prevent a tree from further growth because it had hitherto been vigorous. On the contrary, because growth is the very law of the tree, it must continue to grow if it would not wither and rot.' Just so because artists have created art forms, must they continue to create them under the largest freedom if they would avoid falling into a stiff, cold, and fatal mannerism. We do not mean by freedom any wild, unrestrained, or arbitrary exercise of power; this is license, not liberty. In political and social life liberty does not mean lawlessness; but living in accordance with the laws of our nature, modified only by the necessary limitations. of society. So the artist must ever work under law in order to the exercise of his highest freedom, but this law cannot be imposed from without; it must be an impulse springing from his own native and distinct individualism. This law must not be to him an external, written canon, which he feels bound to observe, but a part of his own untrammeled, undamaged self. Since art, then, is an essentially organic process in the development of human civilization, it must have a freedom of adjustment to the shifting circumstances; and there only can it be a factor and true index of civilization where, unrestrained by external authority, it can embody in its works the changing spirit of the centuries. This is the peculiar doctrine of Protestantism; and by so much does this form of Christianity promote and stimulate the highest art culture.

5. In the examination of the opinion that Protestantism has been lacking in æsthetic susceptibility and has been indifferent to the patronage and encouragement of religious art, it has been seen that at the beginning of the sixteenth century there was in the bosom of the Catholic Church a fearful moral degeneracy which tended to destroy all capacity for high art; that the wonderful revival in art which was then witnessed was not due to the fostering spirit of the Romish Church, but depended on influences foreign to this Church; that the comparative sparseness of art works, especially architectural monuments, in Northern Europe was not owing to an indifference to, or hatred of, art, but to extreme poverty, to *See Horwicz, Esthetik, p. 210.

wasting wars, and to the seething agitation of more absorbing questions; that the leading Reformers, so far from being rudely iconoclastic, were themselves warm lovers of art, and were only striving to save the worshiper from temptation to idolatry; that in some respects, as in architecture, sacred lyric, and sacred music, Protestantism has demonstrated an equal, if not superior, creative power; that while both systems stand almost equally closely related by history and practice to the encouragement of Christian art, their diverse views of anthropology and soteriology have caused them to assume different attitudes-Catholicism inclining more to the real and the objective, Protestantism to the ideal and the subjective; and, finally, that Protestantism, by its declaration and defense of the doctrine of individual responsibility and individual freedom, has thus recognized the only true conditions of a high and progressive Christian art.

ART. V.-MOHAMMEDANISM AND THE NEGRO RACE.* THE following article was originally written by its author for the "Methodist Quarterly Review," but was intercepted in England, published in "Frazer's Magazine," and then sent in a copy of the Magazine to us for republication. We had a right to object to the discourtesy of thus reducing us to a second-hand position. But as Professor Blyden was himself innocent of this discourtesy, and his article furnishes matter which our readers would unquestionably desire to have before them, we present it in our pages. We may here add that Mr. Blyden's articles formerly published in our Quarterly have attracted attention by the richness of their scholarship and their grace of style. One of the notes appended to this article indicates the fact that he claims a purity of Negro blood, and insists that the word Negro, which he proudly claims to be legitimate, honorable, and needing no euphemistic substitute, is entitled to an initial capital N. We fully agree with W. II. Seward, that "no man is fit to be President who spells [or pronounces] Negro with two g's."-ED. METH. QUAR. REVIEW.

To students of general literature in Europe and the United States, until within the last few years, the Orientals most celebrated in religion or politics, in literature or learning, were known only by name. The Oriental world, to the student

*The author of this article, a Negro of the purest African blood, is Mr. Edward W. Blyden, Principal of the Presbyterian High School, Liberia, West Africa.Ed. Fraser's Mag.