cils of the whole Anglican Communion, we, for our part, are willing to trust them to the uttermost, certain that they will always do more or less of good, and that they can never do any real harm. Indeed, the movement is, as we have already said, and here most emphatically repeat, "the most interesting and important movement seen in Christendom since the great schism between the East and the West," that is, for more than a thousand years. The Bishop of Rome pretended that the monarchical and despotic exaltation of his See was necessary to the preservation of the unity of Christendom: and the first fruits of this new theory of unity, proved to be the first great schism, and one which remains unhealed to this day. Unconvinced by this wonderful failure to secure unity, the Roman Pontiffs -now free from the counterpoise of the other four Patriarchs, and the immobility of the East-pushed on their advances of aggressive usurpation, growing worse and worse, until the outburst of the Ref ormation of the Sixteenth Century gave the second startling proof of the efficiency of the Roman theory and practice in preserving the unity of Christendom. Two such lessons, one would think, were enough to cure any error, however inveterate. Not so, however. Jesuitism arose, and with fatal ingenuity and perseverance has obstinately pushed the old error still further, until it has, in our own day, produced another schism,-the Old Catholic movement in Germany and Switzerland. Each fresh rupture has been followed bythe erection of doctrinal barriers on both sides, against any possible future reunion. The Papal claim has been proved by learned controversialists during all these thousand years past, to be a falsity, not a truth. The plausible, but shallow human logic which seems to demonstrate the necessity of the Roman theory in order to secure visible unity, is ground to powder by the onward rolling weight of history, fathering upon that prolific Papal lie all the broods of schisms that now curse the earth. The present humiliating position of that Pontiff, whose predecessor placed his foot upon the neck of the Emperor of Germany at Canossa, demonstrates that the Papal policy is a gigantic blunder, as well as a lie. At the very moment of reasserting, more pretentiously than ever before, all the boasts of all his prede cessors in the chair of St. Peter, claiming all power, temporal and spiritual: the poor old Pope is stripped of his temporal power, depends upon the dole of Peter's pence for his daily support, and can find, all the world over, not a single one of the Powers of Christendom ready to lift up so much as a finger in his defence. Germany and Austria are openly at war with him and his: and who cares? The other three great powers of the earth, Russia, Great Britain, and these United States, are utterly beyond his control, and are daily advancing toward the mastery of the rest of the world. France is divided against itself, and even the Legitimist fanatics there will not risk their political position by any true zeal in his God-forsaken cause. The great negative of Romanism has thus been demonstrated from every point of view, theoretical and practical. It remains to provide the positive answer, by showing how unity can be manifested in the ancient way, upon the ancient Foundation, by the brotherly love of independent National and Provincial Churches, without any absolute despot at the head to "ensure unity." Under a head, the Patriarch of Canterbury, who is made such by the voluntary and cordial recognition of all who trace their ecclesiastical lineage to the Church of England; not by his own assumptions or exaggerations; not by the cunning of diplomacy, or-like a pawnbroker— by the mean and heartless taking advantage of the distresses of the weak to accumulate power in the hands of the strong; but by the spontaneous and reiterated request of the various families of the descendants of the Anglican Church: what do we see? We see a gentle and fatherly "invitation" begin the work of visible coöperation. Even amid not a little of hesitation and timidity, we see the tendency to unity of action manifest itself spontaneously, and with growing strength. Without power to summon; without power to compel attendance, or censure for absence; without power to provide for the travelling expenses of those who come, or entertain them while they are present, as was more or less the case in the General Councils of old; without the slightest chance of rewarding the subservient or punishing the refractory: the Patriarch of Canterbury bids fair to show to a divided Christendom the true way to reunion and peace, through brotherly love, fidelity to the ancient and original Constitution of the Church, both in its authority and in its liberty, and a simple trust in the kingship of Christ in heaven, and the gentle guidance of the Holy Ghost the Comforter here upon earth. Even the serious drawback that the Archbishop and all the English Bishops are the nominees of ministers of State, instead of being freely elected by their own clergy and people; and that the Church of England herself is in union with the State (or rather, is more or less in bondage thereto) while all the other branches of the Anglican Communion are free, and some are pervaded by a most distinct nationality of their own: even this, strange to say, does not seem to interfere in the slightest degree with the Catholic unity thus manifested to the world. The English rite is different from the Scottish, and both from the American, and now the Church of Ireland is making changes of her own: yet identity of rite is thus clearly shown to be not necessary to unity, once more demonstrating the folly of the Roman attempt to secure unity by extinguishing all but the Roman rite. From Europe, America, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Isles of the Sea, the Bishops assemble of their own free will, discuss with independent freedom, and vote at last with moral if not always with entire unanimity and the final authority of each act depends on its voluntary reception by each separate portion. With the beautiful example thus set, what is to hinder a full reunion with the Oriental Church, on the comprehensive principles so broadly and strongly laid down at Lambeth in 1867? What is to hinder the voluntary adhesion of one body of Old Catholics after another? What is to hinder one portion of the Roman Obedience after another, as the overstrained cord of absolutism snaps and liberates them one by one, from following the universal law of love and mutual attraction? The organic power of brotherly love, in building upon the Ancient Foundations, will thus be brought into the most positive contrast with the destructiveness of despotism in digging them down: and the reunion of Christendom will loom up through the clouds and mists and storms of this changing world as a coming Reality, and no longer appear, in the eyes of wise men, as only the delusion of a golden dream. A THEOLOGICAL DEFENCE FOR THE REV. JAMES DEKOVEN, D.D., Warden IT may be a sad defect in us, but we are utterly unable to contemplate the importance of the Eucharistic controversy from the stand-point of these treatises, or from that taken by the Church of Rome. The theories patronized by such authorities seem to expend their whole power of inquiry and analysis, not upon the Adminis trator of the great Eucharistic Sacrament, but upon the thing administered; upon the res Sacramenti, rather than the auctor Sacramenti. Now, if the authorship of the near or the distant administrator of the Sacrament be in it, so that it thereby becomes thoroughly his transmission-becomes virtually the act of the great Originator himself then, metaphysically and philosophically speaking, the instrument, the vehicle, or whatever else any one may choose to call it, through which that Originator operates, is of exceedingly small consequence. If, instead of using clay to anoint the blind man's eye, Christ had used one of a hundred other unguents, which might have been summoned at an instant's bidding, from this world or from Paradise, His virtue would have passed none the faster and none the slower than it did by and through the clay, and flashed light none the more and none the less effectually upon darkened eyeballs. The full divinity of His virtue passed once through the hem of His garment; and again rode on the air, when He said, "I will; be thou clean." So what the elements of the Eucharist are, metaphysically and philosophically considered; through what changes soever they may pass or not pass, or by what unknown and imperceptible alchemy Christ may give them a double or a triple nature for His own mysterious purposes, is to us a matter (if the double superlative can be admissible) of the supremest unimportance. We should as soon think of inquiring whether the Bush in which God appeared to Moses, in the shape of lambent fire, were some common bush of earth, growing by the wayside; or a graft from the Tree of Life which St. John saw luxuriating in celestial regions. We should as soon think of inquiring whether the Pillar of a Cloud, in which God was half-visible for the protection of His people in their flight from Pharaoh, were ordinary nebulous matter; or an importation from the firmament of the third heaven. Indeed, it is to us, as students of Church History, one of the greatest wonders of the ever curious issues such history presents, that Christendom should so often, so very often, be looking at the elements of the Eucharist, and waste so much time in questions about them, when the real, the natural, and essential question is, Who uses, gives, or sanctions the use or gift of those elements? If Christ uses or gives them no matter how remote He is, whether in the sun, or in the Sun of suns-if He uses or gives them through the hands of descending angels, or through the hands of mortal clay, then they are His gifts, His own gifts, His own personal gifts, as much as the bread and wine were which He lifted from the table in the upper room of Jerusalem, and commended to the lips of His Apostles. And more, they are as Divine gifts, and as Divinely endowed gifts, as those of the first Eucharistic celebration. The first Eucharistic celebration, also, was neither more nor less than the thousandth, or the ten thousandth. Qui facit per alium facit per se, is as true for Christ's action through the Eucharist, be it in itself considered what it may, and be His earthly administrator who he mayas true for such action, as for His sending the Apocalypse "by His Angel, unto His servant John" (Rev. i. 1).1 1 The principle contained in the Latin maxim is recognized in the New Tes |