charge her proper functions.

She has her synods, diocesan and general, her constitutions and laws, and every arrangement complete for government and perpetuation. Disestablished, and in

some cases disendowed, to be sure, the colonial Churches are, and obliged to depend on the voluntary gifts and liberality of their members for support; but then, they are free from State control, can carry out their own plans for extension or improvement, and can discipline their own members, within reasonable bounds, without let or hindrance. If the colonies were to-day separated from the mother country, the Churches therein might miss, perhaps, the pecuniary aid they now receive from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and the occasional grants from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, but in all other respects they would scarcely know the difference. In British North America, in Australia, even in India, the Church is nearly as strong to-day as our own American Church was in 1835, more than half a century after our independence was secured; while in the West Indies, in South Africa, and in New Zealand, she is of healthy and vigorous growth. Surely, no one can doubt that these branches of the Anglican Church are destined to take an important part in deciding the spiritual condition of the future inhabitants of the globe.

In regard to the future condition and prospects of the Mother Church of England, there is now anxious solicitude in the minds of many. What has already taken place in the matter of disestablishment and disendowment in Ireland and in the colonies, are deemed but the mutterings, in the far distant it may be, but still the sure premonitions of the coming storm. But if these forebodings should not prove merely imaginary fears, we may be sure that He who has promised to be with His chosen ambassadors to the end of the world, will still protect and defend His Church amid all the changes to which she may be subjected. And we may be thankful, too, that these efforts which the English Church has put forth during the past half century, in behalf of her emigrant children, and of the heathen who have been thrown on her protection, have had a reflex influence on herself; they have taught her self-reliance and self-dependence; they have inspired her members with a more earnest zeal; they have brought before their minds the duty of giving more liberally for the maintenance of religious institutions, and for the spread of the Gospel, so that we have been startled by the large individual gifts which, in some instances, have been made for Church objects-the endowment of Episcopal sees in particular-and at the

aggregate of their contributions for the same; they have led her to seek for herself a better organization, in the revival of the ancient diocesan synods, and of the defunct powers of Convocation; they have prompted her to greater activity in looking after and caring for the masses of all but heathen at home, who now fill her crowded manufacturing towns and commercial marts; so that in England herself to-day the Church is much stronger in proportion to the whole population than she was half a century ago, and this notwithstanding the fierce opposition she has had to encounter at every step. In all this, God has evidently been preparing her for selfmaintenance and self-government. No one who has faith in God can have any fear as to the result. The Church may be deprived of her temporalities, but she will find herself more than compensated for the loss in the possession of enlarged spiritual powers. And for ourselves, we long to see the day when she shall have the liberty to discipline her own members, subject only to the rules in the Word of God and the canons of the Catholic Church; when she can designate for herself her own chief pastors; when her faithful laity can participate in her councils; when she can send forth her missionary Bishops, wherever they may be needed; when, at the earnest cry of her missionaries, from an island in the Indian Ocean, for one to superintend their labors, an Archbishop of Canterbury shall not feel obliged to wait until he receives, through the Foreign Office, the Queen's mandate for consecration, and finally be told that her Majesty will not be advised to issue such a document;1 but

'Looking at the matter from our own stand-point of American views and opinions, we should say that the decision of the British Cabinet in reference to the Madagascar Bishopric is correct, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury is wholly responsible for the failure to appoint a Bishop. The case may be briefly stated thus: The Queen no longer issues her letters-patent for the consecration of Bishops for the colonies, or any places beyond the sea; there is no good reason why Madagascar should be made an exception to this rule; and it may be that an appointment in this way would give to the Bishop who should be thus designated a character which in nowise belongs to him-that of an emissary of the British crown. We all remember what a hue-and-cry was raised in this country a few years ago about the Bishop of Honolulu, based upon this simple fact of his appointment by the Queen's letters-patent. But is the Archbishop of Canterbury a mere tool of the State, to exercise his spiritual functions only at the Queen's bidding? We deem it time that this most abominable view of the question should be discarded; and therefore, as said in this article, we hope the time is not distant when an Archbishop will be able, and ready, and willing, to exercise his purely spiritual powers without let or hindrance, without feeling obliged to ask the assistance, or consent, or advice even, of the temporal power.

can proceed at once to exercise those spiritual powers which have been committed to him by our Lord himself, and which, as no human government can give, so, neither, can it take away. We shall be sorry to see the English Church despoiled of her own property and her own rights, and we shall pity the government and the nation which shall invoke upon itself the judgments of God for such a sacrilegious act; but we shall rejoice to see her free from those trammels which now confine her, and able to fulfil unrestrained her mission to the nations of the world.

to its extinction in the nineteenth. don. 1874. Vols. i. and ii. octavo;

By William Harris Rule, D.D. Lonpp. xii. 367, 360.

LETTERS ON THE SPANISH INQUISITION. A rare work, and the best which has ever appeared upon the subject. By M. Le Comte Joseph Le Maistre. Translated from the French, with a preface, additional notes, and illustrations, by T. J. O'Flaherty, s. E. C. Second edition. Boston. 1850. One vol. 12mo.; pp. 178.

FRANCISCO MOYEN; or, The Inquisition as it was in South America. By B. Vicuña Mackenna. Translated from the Spanish, with the author's permission, by James W. Duffy, M.D., Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and of the University of Chili, etc. London: Henry Sotheran & Co., 136 Strand. 1869. 1 vol. 8vo. ; pp. vi. 225.

ONE

NE of the worst habits of Romanism, in our view, is its spoiling, by misuse, words otherwise innocent and even excellent. For example: What better or dearer word is there to a Christian, when thinking of his religion, than the word Jesus? And the word Jesuit, or follower of Jesus, ought as naturally and sympathetically to be one, in a sense, and a very significant sense, too, as precious as its original. And yet, when one has read the history of these followers of Jesus in the Church-of-Rome style, and seen how in that community they have made the Name of Him who called Himself and showed Himself to be the Truth, a sanction for studied

and systematic equivocation, he is satisfied that by none, even of his enemies, has that Name been more essentially dishonored. Jesus spake nothing but the truth. A Jesuit, when the interests of his Society or his Church requires, speaks truth also; but, alas, it is technical truth, concealing or glossing over actual falsehood. To tell a technical truth and a virtual lie, is a chef-d'œuvre among Jesuits. So that it is not at all a wonder that they hated Walsingham more than all the rest of the Ministers of Queen Elizabeth put together. It is said by old Tom Fuller, as quoted in Aikin's history of this queen, "The Jesuits being outshot in their own bow, complained that he out-equivocated their equivocation; having a mental reservation deeper and further than theirs" (Aikin's Q. E. ii. 230).1

And as the word Jesuit has been perverted and dishonored in the Church of Rome, so has been the word Inquisition. This, etymologically, is as harmless as the other is pious; and yet it has become a synonyme for all that is terrible and implacable, so that Mr. Southey, in a moment of exasperation, in his controversy with Charles Butler, did not hesitate to denounce it, as "hell plucked up by the roots." Inquisition is a word of Latin derivation, and is as unpeculiar as possible on the pages of Cicero, who uses it simply in the sense of search or inquiry. Perhaps we might say inquest—a word familiar enough to those accustomed to the action of a coroner's jury, or a grand-jury; which are merely bodies that inquire into, and pronounce on, certain facts or supposed facts, submitted to them for examination and an opinion. And, strange as it may seem, we have ourselves encountered a Roman Catholic-whose only fault was, that he was a Gnostic Roman Catholic, i. e., a knowing one-who, with refreshing coolness, declared that the Inquisition was a grand-jury, and nothing else. It held secret sessions, as does a grand-jury. It did not confront an accused person with the witnesses against him, as does a grand-jury. And so the Inquisition was a bugbear; it was a grand-jury, and nothing more!

Alas, to what will not sectarian blindness, voluntary blindness, commit a man! Does a grand-jury give a verdict which affects a man's reputation, and do nothing more? Aye, the Roman Catholic would cry, it is exactly so. The Inquisition might distress a man a little-pull him, squeeze him, scorch him somewhat, as other courts in olden time did-to get the truth out of the reluctant and

'The quotation is from Fuller's "Worthies in Kent;" and is strengthened, rather than weakened, by its introduction upon the pages of Miss Aikin.