the problem in hand is not the manner of writing treatises on science, or sketches of history, so as to attract the good, and benefit the wise; but it is this,-how shall we best raise the poor out of the dunghill, and set them with princes. Nothing short of this was Arnold's expansive desire, and such a desire was well worthy of filling all his mind, and wearing out his life. Unfortunately, however, he knew not, as we think, how to execute his idea. The same enterprise seized possession of Dr Chalmers thirty years ago, and has absorbed the best of his days and strength. But Dr Chalmers had read history,—if not the history of the Peloponnesian war, at least the history of his own country, and he knew how Knox proceeded when he would evoke a Christian people from a horde of sturdy beggars; and how Wesley went to work when he brought round the only Reformation in England, which ought to bear that high name. Accordingly, he began not with Bacon but with the Bible,—not with Penny Magazines, but with preachers, not with mechanic's halls, but with churches. haps Chalmers, after all, has not succeeded up to his calculation, any more than Arnold. Betwixt the disappointment of the one, and of the other, there is this difference, however, most palpable and broad-Chalmers failed in the erection of his apparatus— whilst Arnold failed through the unfitness of his principle. Had the scheme of Chalmers received justice, all experience vouched that the result would be most fruitful. But in regard to Arnold's projects, observation and history alike made it certain that the whirlwind would be the harvest sown by the wind.

Per

As falling within that department of Dr Arnold's character which we are at present illustrating, and likewise bearing upon the remarks we just have hazarded, it may be useful to quote his views as to the aspect of the times, and the probable events that are at hand. Arnold was no enthusiast, yet how strongly does his idea of the world's position and prospects approximate to what others have arrived at, on data, and from sources altogether different.

"I met five Englishmen at the public table of our inn at Milan, who gave me great matter of cogitation. One was a clergyman-the rest were young men, and apparently of no profession. I may safely say, that I never heard any conversation so profligate as that which they all indulged in the clergyman particularly. But what struck me most was, that with this sensuality, there was united some intellectual energy that they were not ignorant, but seemed bent on gaining a variety of solid information from their travels. Now, this union of vice and intellectual power seems to me rather a sign of the age; and, if it goes on, it threatens to produce one of the most fearful forms of antichrist which has yet appeared. I am sure that the great prevalence of travelling fosters this spirit." Vol. i. 81.

Still more significantly he writes on a subsequent occasion:"I believe that the day of the Lord' is coming, i. e., the termination of one of the great dives of the human race-whether the final one of all, or not, that, I believe, no created being knows, nor can know. The termination of the Jewish age' in the first century, and of the Roman 'age' in the fifth and sixth, were each marked by the same concurrence of calamities, wars, tumults, pestilences, earthquakes, all marking the time of one of God's peculiar seasons of visitation. And society in Europe seems going on fast for a similar revolution, out of which Christ's church will emerge in a new position, purified and strengthened by the destruction of various earthly and evil mixtures that have corrupted it."

Again,

"Times are coming when the devil will fight his best, in good earnest." And then, in anticipation of such a period, he exclaims,

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My sense of the evil of the times, and to what prospects I am bringing up my children, is overwhelmingly bitter. All in the moral and physical world appears so exactly to announce the coming of the great day of the Lord,--i. e., a period of fearful visitation to terminate the existing state of things, whether to terminate the whole existence of the human race, neither man nor angel knows-that not entireness of private happiness can possibly close my mind against the sense of it." Vol. i. pp. 81, 310, 313.

The Ecclesiastical opinions of Dr Arnold, to which we now turn, were, like all his other views, the studied and deliberate sentiments of his mind; and though, in various respects, they are neither enlarged nor profound, they deserve an honest investigation. It is, indeed, rather startling to find him, at the very outset, affirming, that after very close and ample researches into the whole subject, he is convinced that there is neither authority, nor ultimate reason to be pleaded on behalf of any form of church government whatever. But this he boldly and unqualifiedly pronounces, satisfied, we very much suspect, with his argument, because enamoured of his theory.

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In matters of doctrine, an opinion, however unimportart, is either true or false. But in matters of government, I hold that there is actually no right, and no wrong. Viewed in the large, and abstracted from the questions of particular countries, I hold that one form of church government is exactly as much according to Christ's will as another." II. 204.

In accordance with such an opinion as that now quoted, we find Dr Arnold, though by birth and profession an Episcopalian, giving free and earnest utterance to views which would all but make him a Presbyterian. True, he seeks to guard his expressions against such an inference, and would have us to believe that he has not taken a single step in the direction of Scotland or Geneva. But assuredly, if the main distinction between the church of Cranmer and the church of Knox, lie in the General Assembly, and order of eldership as possessed by the latter, and

rejected by the former, Arnold's convictions drew him much nearer to us than himself was aware. For let us mark how he writes.

"It delighted me to hear him speak decidedly of the great need of reform in the Church; and, from what I have heard in other quarters, I am in hopes that these sentiments are gaining ground. But the difficulty will always be practically, Who is to reform it? The clergy have a horror of the House of Commons, and Parliament and the country will never trust the matter to the clergy. If we had our General Assembly, there might be some chance, but as it is, I know no more hopeless prospect." Vol. i. 82. "It seems to me, a great point might be gained by urging the restoration of the order of deacons, which has long been in reality dead. In large towns, many worthy men might be found able and willing to undertake the office out of pure love, if it were understood to be not necessarily a step to the Presbyterian order, nor at all incompatible with lay callings. You would get an immense gain by a great extension of the Church-by a softening down that pestilent distinction between clergy and laity, which is so closely linked with the priestcraft system. According to the canon law, the deacon is half a layman." Vol. ii. 151, "Such," adds Mr Stanley, "was his desire to revive the order of deacons, as a link between the clergy and laity,—his defence of the union of laymen with clerical synods of clergy with the Legislature his wish for the restoration of church discipline which, he said, never can, nor ought to be restored, till the Church puts an end to the usurpation of her powers by the clergy." Vol. i. 227. "Then, as to the bishops, how decided is his language,-One thing I see, that if attempts be made to make the power of the bishops less nominal than it has been, there will be all the better chance of our getting a really good church government; for irresponsible persons, irremovable, and acting without responsible advisers, are such a solecism in government, that they can only be suffered to exist so long as they do nothing. Let them begin to act, and the vices of their constitution will become flagrant." Vol. ii.

217.

If it be clear, from passages such as we have now quoted, that for Episcopacy in the abstract, or as a theoretical system, Dr Arnold had no peculiar favour; it is no less apparent, that his feelings towards the Church of England were anything but those of reverence and affection. Indeed, so adverse and contemptuous was his opinion of that gorgeous institution, that one is almost tempted to believe that he must have experienced regret at finding himself a member and a functionary of her communion. No son of the Covenants could wish for a more express and indignant testimony against the great Prelatical colossus of the south, than he will find in such extracts as the following.

"It is vain to deny that the Church of England clergy have politically been a party in the country, from Elizabeth's time downwards, and a party opposed to the cause, which, in the main, has been the cause of

improvement. There have been at all times noble individual exceptions, and for very considerable periods, in the reign of George II., and in the early part of George III.'s reign, the spirit of the body has been temperate. But in Charles the first and second's reign, and in the period fol lowing the Restoration, they deserved so ill of their country, that the Dissenters have at no time deserved worse." I. 426.

Again :

“The more I think of the matter, and the more I read of the Scriptures, and of the history of the Church, the more intense is my wonder at the language of admiration with which some men speak of the Church of England, which certainly retains the foundation sure, but has overlaid it with a very sufficient quantity of hay and stubble." I. 51.

And in alluding to some projects of ecclesiastical reform, he subjoins :

"What might he not do, if he would set himself to that work in the House of Lords, not to patch up this hole or that, but to recast the whole corrupt system, which in many points, stands just as it did in the worst times of Popery." I. 89.

Finally, as if unable to contain his indignation, he thus breaks out:

"Fanaticism has been the peculiar disgrace of the Church of England -a dress a ritual-a name-a ceremony-a technical phraseologythe superstition of a priesthood without its power-a system imperfect, and paralysed-not independent-not sovereign, afraid to cast off the subjection against which it was perpetually murmuring." II. 5.

Dr Arnold, it is well known, was one of the most strenuous and talented opponents that Puseyism had to contend with; and his view of that system, whether as it regarded its priestly domination, or its ritual phantasmagoria, was most accurate, whilst his denunciation of it was intensely vehement. The position he assumed in this controversy did painfully separate him from some whom he loved and honoured. But at every sacrifice, he was resolved to lift up a loud and unfaltering voice, against what he deemed to be the most pestilential heresy with which this land had been threatened since the days of Laud:

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Considering only the system of Newman, any mind that can turn towards their books and their system with anything less than unmixed aversion, appears to be already diseased. Their errors are the very essence of one of the two great divisions of human falsehood, against which the wisdom of God and man has most earnestly combated; in which man's folly and wickedness has ever found its favourite nourishment." II. 67.

It was unfortunate that the dread which Arnold cherished in respect of Puseyism, as a cunning and malignant system of

priestcraft, landed him in the antipodal error of a specious, but absurd Erastianism. We do not wonder at a mind such as his revolting from the Warburton theory of an Establishment, which really makes it little better than an ordained constabulary. But not satisfied with rejecting this weak and humiliating doctrine, Arnold rushes with impassioned vehemence to the other extreme, and advocates, as the only sound philosophy of Establishments, the utopianism of a modern theocracy.

'His idea,' says Mr Stanley, 'was not of an alliance, or union, but of the absolute identity of church and state.' I. 228. Or in the Doctor's own words :

"I can understand no perfect church or perfect state without their blending into one. I believe, farther, that our fathers at the Reformation were unconsciously led by God's providence to the declaration of the great principle of this system, the doctrine of the king's supremacy, which is, in fact, no more than the assertion of the supremacy of the church over the clergy, and a denial of that which I hold to be one of the most mischievous falsehoods ever broached, that the government of the Christian church is vested by Divine right in the clergy, and that the close corporation of bishops is the representative of the Christian church.” Further,

"A female reign is an unfavourable time for pressing strongly the doctrine of the Crown's supremacy. Yet that doctrine has been vouchsafed to our church by so rare and mere a blessing of God, and contains in itself so entirely the true idea of the Christian perfect church—the kingdom of God; and is so mighty to the overthrowing of that which I regard as the essence of all that is evil in Popery, the doctrine of the priesthood, that I do wish people's eyes might be opened to see the peculiar blessing of our Church's constitution." II. 234.

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Viewing the Church of England as connected with the Stuart kings, bear it no affection. Viewing it as proclaiming the king's supremacy, and denying the necessity of priestly mediation, you would perhaps feel less attached to it than I am." II. 267.

"The state, and not the church, is the perfect form under which Christianity is to be developed." II. 108.

It is not a little strange to perceive one with Dr Arnold's powers and advantages falling in with the speculations of Hobbes, and advocating a theory that every reformed church, save that of England, has carefully rejected. No doubt our author's constant intercourse with men such as Bunsen and Coleridge would have its effect in leading him into the perverse mysticism we have just quoted, and their ideas would be greatly reinforced by his own haunting dread of Newmanism. Perhaps, too, he might have derived a bias towards the speculations in which he loved to indulge concerning the incorporation of church and state, from his