ciple. All that was right in the Jewish dispensation continues right in principle still, with this difference, that the principle in many cases was then embodied in an imperfect and perishable form, whereas now it has become perfect in form, and therefore imperishable and unchangeable.

Some assert that there can be no progress in theology. With others, progress is their main battle-cry. There can be no progress in theology in respect of the facts on which it is founded. There may be, and for one, the writer entertains the hope, that there will be progress in the exposition of these facts for ever and ever; for what use would there be for minds made in God's image, if a time came when there was no more of God to learn? On the other hand, there can be no progress in theology made by entering into compromises with the spirit of the age, or by adjusting the doctrines of the Bible, so as to render them harmonious with current modes of thinking."-Pp. 364, 365.

We cannot close without expressing a hope that the suggestions thrown out in this important work will have an effect upon the theological mind of our day.

ART. V.-The Church History of the Celts as a Race.

St Paul's Epistle to the Galatians. A revised Text, with Introduction, Notes, and Dissertations. By J. B. LIGHTFOOT, D.D., Hulsean Professor of Divinity, Cambridge. M'Millan & Co. 1865.

ALTHOUGH many new publications have been given to

the world of late years, both by individual writers and by learned societies, bearing upon the history of all the chief portions of the Celtic church taken separately, it is remarkable that we are still without any work treating of the Christian history of the Celtic race as a whole, and constructed on the principle, that as the Celts, like all other great races of mankind, had their characteristic and well ascertained qualities and tendencies, the influences of these upon their Christian life and history must admit of being traced and pointed out. We highly and gratefully appreciate the recent labours of not a few Welsh, Irish, and Scottish historical antiquaries, who have thrown a great deal of new light upon the early history and condition of the Celtic churches of their respective countries; and every new contribution to the Christian history of the several Celtic nationalities is, of course, a welcome enrichment of the materials which are available for a comprehensive treatment of the ecclesiastical history of the Celts of all nations as a race. But none the less is any such comprehensive history as much as ever a desideratum.

Dr Lightfoot on the Galatians.

525

We have had a feeling of this deficiency in the ecclesiastical literature of Christendom for some time back; but the feeling has been greatly quickened by what has been quite recently achieved for a small but interesting portion of such a history, for what would form in fact its first and most characteristic chapter, viz., the Christian history of the Celts of Asia Minor-the Hellenized Celts of the province of Galatia. We refer to a commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians by Dr Lightfoot of Cambridge, and especially to the first two sections of his Introduction to the Epistle, in which he treats of "the Galatian people," and of "the churches of Galatia," and his first Dissertation, on the question, "Were the Galatians Celts or Teutons ?" In these parts of the work Dr Lightfoot has gone into the Celtic origin and idiosyncrasies of the Galatian church, and the strongly marked influence of these upon its ecclesiastical life and history, with much greater fulness, and to much better purpose, than has ever been done before. He has thoroughly mastered the whole erudition of the subject, as his numerous carefully verified references to ancient and modern literature shew. And without attempting, of course, in a work devoted to exegesis, to write the formal history of the Galatian church, he has at least sketched a most valuable and suggestive outline of it, indicating all the main facts, events, and characters which are anywhere preserved on record, pointing out almost all the available sources of information, and thus supplying material enough, not, indeed, for a narrative carried down continuously through the first four centuries, but enough for the interesting purpose of exhibiting the characteristic features and expression of the earliest of all the Celtic churches. That the Galatian people still retained many of their Celtic peculiarities even at the end of these four centuries of the Christian era, is as certain as anything in history. The testimony of Jerome puts the fact beyond question, for he had himself travelled through Galatia and visited its capital Ancyra, and in the introduction to his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians he informs us that he found the people still speaking a dialect of the Celtic tongue, the same substantially that he had heard spoken in the neighbourhood of Treves in Gaul. He is also careful to point out that the Galatian Christians of his own time bore a strong resemblance in several respects to their ancestors, the converts of St Paul, as described in his Epistle. For, as Dr Lightfoot observes, "there is a certain distinctness of feature in the portrait which the apostle has left of his Galatian converts. It is clear at once that he is dealing with a type of character

strongly contrasted, for instance, with the vicious refinements of the dissolute and polished Corinthians, perhaps the truest surviving representatives of ancient Greece, or again with the dreamy speculative mysticism which disfigured the half-oriental churches of Ephesus and Colosse." "It was the Celtic blood which gave its distinct colour to the Galatian character, and separated them by so broad a line even from their near neighbours. To this cause must be attributed that marked contrast in religious temperament which distinguished St Paul's disciples in Galatia from the Christian converts of Colosse, though educated in the same Phrygian worship, and subjected to the same Jewish influences. The tough vitality of the Celtic character maintained itself in Asia comparatively unimpaired among Phrygians and Greeks, as it has done in our own islands among Saxons, and Danes, and Normans, retaining its individuality of type after the lapse of ages, and under conditions the most adverse."

But if the Celtic blood gave its distinct colour to the Galatian character, and made its strong, modifying effects visible, and almost palpable, in the Christian life and history of that branch of the widely-diffused Celtic race, why should we suppose that the same or like effects will not be traceable in other branches of it? Why should we not pass from the Hellenized Celts of Asia to the Romanized Celts of Europe? Why not follow the march of the gospel, first among the Celts of Gallia Cisalpina, then across the Alps into Gaul proper, the ancient seat and home of the race, and next across the narrow intervening sea among the Celts of Roman Britain? Of course Roman influences will be found stamping themselves upon the Christianised Celts of all these countries. We must not expect the Celtic churches of the West to resemble in all respects, or even in most respects, the Celtic churches of the East. The moulding, assimilating, plastic power of Rome upon the conquered races, was vastly greater than any ever put forth by the more exclusively intellectual and literary genius of Greece; and under that power, working steadily and strongly through a succession of centuries, we must expect to see broad differences in the form of Christian life emerge even among nations of the same origin and blood. Indeed, no small part of the interest and instruction of a comprehensive ecclesiastical history of the Celtic peoples of Europe would of course lie in the exhibition and explanation of these characteristic differences. But still, under all this appearance of diversity, there could not fail to be traceable an essential sameness resulting from identity of race and blood. The old Celtic nature might

Celts of the British Islands.

527

still be confidently expected to shew itself, cropping out amidst all the modifications induced by Roman civilisation or any other causes; and the Christian history of all the branches of the Romanized Celts in Italy, in France, and in Britain, could not fail to present many interesting features of affinity, as the effects of their ethnological unity. These resemblances will, of course, become additionally conspicu ous when we follow the progress of Celtic Christianisation, beyond the close of the Roman period, among the pure and independent Celts of Wales and Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland. The remote parts of south and north Britain were but slightly influenced by the Roman occupation while it lasted; and no small part of Scotland and the whole of Ireland could boast of never having been subjected to the Roman yoke. In these countries the Celtic peoples remained for a long time free from the admixture of all foreign blood, and the influence of race upon the development and formation of Christian life and usages, could manifest itself in the clearest and most decisive manner and degree. The only difference originating in such influences which could be looked for, was one arising from the ethnological distinctions which obtained among the Celtic races themselves. Mons. Amédée Thierry has shewn in his interesting Histoire des Gaulois that the Celtic population of ancient Gaul was divided between the two sub-races of the Gael and the Kymri; the Gael inhabiting the middle and east of the country, the Kymri, the north and the west; and this distinction, which Thierry rested exclusively or chiefly upon historical evidence, was soon afterwards confirmed by his countryman, Mons. W. F. Edwards, upon the evidence of physiological facts still conspicuous in the two strongly marked material types of the populations of modern France.* The same distinction extends to the Celts of the British Islands, and is equally recognisable at the present day. The Celts of Wales still call themselves The Cymri, cognate with the Celts of Britany or Armorica. The Celts of Ireland and Scotland are Gaels of the same sub-race as the ances tors of the present populations of the Cevennes and the east of France. And of course these different tribes of the same race were marked by considerable diversities of genius and custom, which went to modify considerably their resemblances and affinities in other respects. Thierry, indeed, is able to determine and express their differences as exhibited in the population of ancient Gaul, with a good degree of clearness and precision; and, in our own day, the distinc

* Des Caractères Physiologiques des Races Humaines Considérés dans leurs Rapports ave l'Histoire. 1839.

tions of national character among the Welsh, the Irish, and the Highland Scotch, are abundantly palpable, though, of course, these are not to be traced exclusively to difference of blood. It must be interesting then to mark in the Christian life and history of the Celts of the British Islands, during the centuries which intervened between the Roman occupation and the final ascendancy of Saxon and Norman influences over their church life, the traces of the effects of these tribal differences of blood, and to be able to account on this principle, in part if not in whole, for the minor ecclesiastical diversities which existed side by side with much more important ecclesiastical affinities, in the national churches of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.

The remarkable success of the beginning which Dr Lightfoot has made in this field of investigation, has awakened in our minds an earnest desire to see this beginning as successfully followed up, and has strengthened a surmise to which we had previously been led by some studies of our own, that such an undertaking would be at once practicable and remunerative. We do not mean to say that there are sufficient materials in existence to form a continuous and complete history even of any single section of the Celtic church, and still less of the whole. The very opposite is notoriously the actual state of matters. The example of the Galatian church in this respect holds more or less true with regard to all the others. Dr Lightfoot remarks that we have no more than "fragmentary notices of its career" when we look "beyond the horizon of the apostolic age." But it is all the more remarkable that even these fragments of its history are of such a kind as to "reflect some light on the temper and disposition of the Galatian church in St Paul's day"-so faithfully did it preserve its individuality of character for hundreds of years. "Indeed, to catholic writers of later date, the failings of its infancy seemed to be so faithfully reproduced in its mature age that they invested the apostle's rebuke with a prophetic import. Usque hodie," says Jerome, speaking of the Galatian and Roman Christians of his own day, "eadem vel virtutum vestigia permanent vel errorum, so that "it is not idle, as it might seem at first sight, to follow the stream" of Galatian history beyond the close of the apostolic age. This may well encourage us to push inquiry in the same field farther than Dr Lightfoot has done or was called upon to do; we shall at least find many historical notices of interest and value in all parts of the field to reward our labours; not copious and full enough, it may well be, to make up a history of the whole Celtic church of all lands, but at least numerous and significant

66