ness of living. But the Gospel itself, though going to sea in dark and stormy weather, never was lost. The helm was never out of the hands of the Head of the Church, nor was the true course ever for a moment lost. Through all the disasters of the voyage, there has been no essential departure from that course which is to end in the haven where the Church would be. But how little of the proper course of the Church is to be traced in such a history as Dr. Milman's!

Still later than his work, that of James Craigie Robertson, named at the head of this article, appeared in England. Two large octavo volumes have been published, bringing the history of the Church to A.D. 1122. We regard this as a very valuable publication, which, though without the erudition and the poetical style of Milman, is conceived and executed with a higher and more gospel spirit. Mr. Robertson is calm and impartial. Though he has read the original sources for himself, yet he is much indebted to Neander and to Milman too. We hope his work will be continued. Much as we find to commend in it, it is lacking in some things of importance. It gives us but little of the history of the doctrines of Christianity as developed in the controversies which disturbed while they quickened the Church, and still less of the power of the divine faith of Christians in their private or public relations. We wish to see the Church, not only in its political and secular relation, nor merely in its territorial advance through the toils of faithful missionaries, but the purity and divine efficacy of the faith. Amidst corruptions which ordinary histories bring sufficiently to view, there were ever to be found those. who had not bowed the knee to Baal. They were for the most part out of the range of the eye of general history. Christianity does indeed show power over the social and civil institutions of the nations, and does to some extent influence the policy, even of those in high places of authority, who yet do not wholly bow to its demands, but its own sphere where it spreads its richest treasures of light and purity and peace, is in private and domestic life.

In some volumes of the new edition, in crown octavo, of the Encyclopedia Metropolitana, (published in London, not yet complete, by Richard Griffin and Company,) are works on

Church History by English writers. The first of these volumes is that by Bishop Hinds, on "Early Christianity," another on the "History of the Christian Church in the Second and Third Centuries," by Professor Jeremie; a third continuing the history from the fourth to the twelfth century, by Rev. I. M. Guilding, Rev. I. B. Carwither and others, and a final one, bringing it down to 1858, by Rev. Alfred Lyall, Bishop Hampden, Rev. I. E. Riddle, and others. The authors represent different types of Churchmanship, from that of Archbishop Whately, seen in his familiar friend, Bishop Hinds, to that of the extreme Oxford one of Rev. Henry John Rose. Of course the coat woven by such hands has more than one color. Bishop Hinds' volume is the largest in proportion to the ground he goes over, and presents very important questions as to the Primitive Church, with some views to which we can not subscribe. Professor Jeremie's volume is small, and runs over too much ground to be satisfactory. The last of the volumes condenses a great amount of information, and is generally written with impartiality and candor, a commendation which does not so properly belong to the latter portion, which touches on recent and yet existing controversies.

Besides the Church Histories already mentioned, as coming from the pens of English Churchmen, there are smaller works from the same class of writers, among which is Mr. Palmer's very small compend in which the author views important questions from the position of the Tracts for the Times. The most noticeable is that of Mr. Hardwick, (now Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge.) His volumes profess to be only "manuals." They are written carefully, and demonstrate the author's acquaintance with the best sources of information. But, of course, being small crown octavo volumes, they can be only outlines of history. The volume on the Reformation, is, we think, the least valuable of the two which are before us. The author does not enter very heartily into the questions on which the Reformation turned, and for that reason, even in regard to the great event as it affected his own national Church, lacks warmth or fervor in his narrative of the upheaving events and contests which overthrew the

Papacy in England, and fixed in the hearts of Englishmen the evangelical faith of the Thirty-nine Articles and of the Homilies and Liturgy. However, his volumes are worthy a place in every good library. We think this author has been more successful in some publications directly growing out of his present duties as Christian Advocate. We refer to what he has given to the press under the not very happily chosen title of "Christ and other Masters." This work (which has come forth. in four, not volumes, but parts) is intended to exhibit the contrast between our Lord's teaching and the various forms of paganism and theosophy which have appeared or now exist in the world. It is in a measure historical, and, without belonging to the class of proper histories of the Christian Church, falls under the head of a historical view of the religions of our race. Under the head of Church Histories originally written in English, it is hardly necessary to name the work of Dr. Jarvis, of our own Church, because it is only the introduction to what death prevented his completing. The English histories generally pursue the chronological order of events. The authors prefer that to what is considered the more systematic or scientific arrangement preferred by modern German historians. We are yet in want of a Church History from an English pen. Though not true now in the sense in which it was said at the time, by I. H. Newman, yet there is some ground for asserting that the only Church History written in English, is from the pen of Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The scholarship and the ability for composition the Church of England could furnish at almost any time. But the interests of controversy have pressed too heavily on the minds of many who have studied the history of the Church, and they have contented themselves too much with entering only those portions of the field on which the battles of controversy were fought. Why should we not have in Church History a Hume or Hallam or Macaulay?

Among recent German Church Historians, the first place will be yielded to Neander. We regard his work as the most important contribution ever made to the history of Christianity. The plan of it, its extent and fullness, the immense reading of

which it is the fruit, the calm and gentle temper distinguishing its style, and the philosophical treatment of the whole matter, have never yet been surpassed. And yet with this commendation, we could never consent for ourselves, or for students of theology, or for general readers, that he should be the only guide to a knowledge of ecclesiastical history. It is not that we distrust the author's competency as to information or learning, for here he stands preeminent, nor that we distrust his integrity and candor, nor doubt his piety. But in the first place, as the German mind is now influenced, (we do not say constituted,) we presume a German in Germany could hardly write a Church History that would fill the wants of an AngloSaxon mind, especially of a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church. A great change has been and is yet going on in the German mind in reference to religion. Neander himself is an illustration. Born a Jew, and by education and taste a Platonist, he was in the way of being borne off on the current, so strong at the time, of rationalism or neology in his native land. The good hand of God, as we believe, staid him, and he was led to a point in the way to the evangelical faith, far in advance of the great scholars, such as Schleiermacher, who had shaped his course in an early stage. But he did not es cape wholly from the anti-evangelical influences to which he was exposed. He evidently saw the Catholic faith, and relished the religion of the Apostolic age. But his defect, as to this particular, we understand to be a want of consistency or we may say of faithful pertinacity in holding by it. It does not seem to have been the polar star by which, through the long nights of ecclesiastical history, he steered his way. He is too yielding in the matter of the faith. No man can be true and firm to the faith once delivered to the saints, who does not hold the full inspiration of the text of the Bible. Neander's error as to this, does not appear so directly in his Church History as in his Life of Christ. But its indirect influence must be felt every where. No one point, in regard to evangelical religion, is more fixed and clear, and to be held more simply and firmly, than the proper, miraculous inspiration of the text of the Bible. Yield this point, and the whole faith of a Christian is adrift, and whither he may go will depend upon his

idiosyncrasy, or the incidents of chance associations, or the temptations from minds around him. We believe Neander was on the way to a fixed position in regard to the full Christian faith, but he had not fully come up to it. Some of his immediate pupils have gone in advance and reached a position of more safety, as to the faith, than himself. We must confess for ourselves a preference of even the severe features of the literal Athanasian creed, over the more liberal and seemingly more charitable terms of a less definite formula. Neander held for himself, we believe, sincerely the orthodox faith of the Trinity and the Incarnation, but he does not appear to have held it on such a fixed ground as can not be moved. His liberality had none of the coldness of mere rationalism. It was the result rather of gentleness of mind, and of an imperfect freedom from the trammels of the school in which he had been trained. He shows in his history warmth of heart toward piety wherever found, and lively sympathy with the persons who were honestly engaged on the side of the truth. He writes not at all in the spirit of a merely secular historian. He delights not to paint the corruptions and the selfishness of men in the Church, but traces, with genial pencil, the features of Christian spirit and life to be found in the peaceful days of the infancy of the Church, or in the more troubled times of Augustin and Ambrose, in the midst of the activity of the early, Popes, distinguished for missionary zeal, as the first Gregory, or in the stormy times of Anselm, or in the midst of the intol erable corruptions which called forth the reactionary but sadly misguided zeal of Gregory VII. He can find sparks of genuine Christian movement in the missionary labors of Boniface, the apostle of Germany, and in the sometimes rude lives and efforts of the missionaries who propagated religion under Papal sanction in Scandinavia, and among the rough Sclavonic tribes. Neander appreciates and sides with the Christian spirit, under whatever repulsive outer garb it may be found. Perhaps he errs at times in supposing its existence when others would think the proper fruits of it were not demonstrated.

We think the author in his attempts to trace the line of development in doctrines steps sometimes beyond the boundaries of proper history. He thinks he sees the thread of con