to which I lately adverted, the following extract from the Dublin Review, which I give as I find it, deserves notice. The writer says, that the number of serious Roman Catholics who go out of their mind, is far smaller, in proportion, than of other classes: but statistics of this sort always require ample examination and confirmation, before a wise man will place any confidence in them. The other observations are as follows:

A mind well disciplined in our religion can scarcely ever fall a victim to mental disease, unless it arises from the irresistible pressure of positive physical causes. Cases of this kind are wonderfully few, in comparison with the number of those that are produced by imaginary woes; by mere want of power to resist the temptations to evil; . . . by the state of nervous excitement to which uncertainty as to salvation often gives birth; by the absolute want of any substantial light for the intellect to turn to, when its path becomes clouded by misfortune; and by the destitution of all resource when the poor, hunted, wearied stag falls trembling in its agonies on the ground.

'For the more deeply seated maladies of the intellect, those that are traceable chiefly to the wants of the mind itself; to fears connected with future stages of existence; to the absence of any firm reliance upon modes of faith which . . . are destitute of the great charm of truth; the medical practitioner has no remedy whatever. All cases of this character belong to the Divine. It is he who must administer to minds affected by diseases of this class; diseases much more numerous than many persons suspect or will easily believe: and we will take it upon ourselves to assert, that it is in the bosom of our Church alone, are to be found the ministers, who can really afford substantial relief in all such maladies as these, or indeed, in any of the intellectual maladies arising from other than mere physical causes.

The soothing language of our Church spoken by her clergy, generally men mild in their demeanour and most conversant, from their practice in the Confessional, with the human heart, having no object to promote save the eternal welfare of those committed to their guidance, would seldom fail of finding its way even to that reason wandering through the labyrinth in which despair, grief, misfortune, passion, disappointed ambition, ill-requited affection,

jealousy, or remorse may have involved it. The very grandeur of our public worship . . . would of itself dissipate from the oppressed bosom a thousand woes.' May, 1841, pp. 361-371.°

In connection with the class of subjects I have been discussing, as an illustration of the sympathy which deep and poignant feelings of repentance are themselves likely to receive in general amongst us, let me ask whether there are not multitudes, even of the more religious, who, on hearing of the practices adopted by individuals in Roman Catholic countries and sanctioned by the Church, of scourging themselves, or walking barefoot in penance for sin, will not at first experience a feeling far more nearly akin to contempt, than is any of which they are conscious on hearing of some serious sin? As though, not the commission of grievous sin, but the avenging it on ourselves, were really unworthy our Christian illumination.

In conclusion, a brief allusion may be made to two further and very important purposes, which are answered by Sacramental Confession: viz. that those whose pursuits are mainly intellectual, are saved by it, in some degree, from the evil tendencies to which, as I said, in the second chapter, (p. 35,) such men are peculiarly liable; and secondly, that the great encouragement held out to making, from time to time, a general confession of their whole past life, is of the utmost benefit in deepening and realising repentance for past sin. It is hardly necessary to observe that the English Church has taken no measures for securing either of these benefits.

4. The topics on which I have now touched, will suggest to the reader's mind a vast number of similar particulars, which it is not necessary individually to rehearse. My object has been, to shew the miserable failure of that system.

A friend of mine was told by an eminent London physician whose practice has been in cases of insanity, that he considered its chief causes in England to be, 1, the unsettled state of religion, and, 2, the pressure of our commercial system upon weak minds, both from the ruin in which it sometimes involves whole families, and from the constant strain upon the faculties in the endeavour to get on.

which has oppressed our Church and nation a long three hundred years, in performing one of the two fundamental and essential duties incumbent on every Church; and that duty too, which is the necessary basis and condition for the other: I mean, the duty of moral and religious discipline. What has been the result in these our days of this most sinful neglect, I am spared the invidious task of reciting at length. Holy men in our Church (including some in their number whose deep attachment to her no one can dispute) have lifted up their voice in solemn admonition and complaint; they have deplored the absence among us of so much as an appreciation of even the most obvious and striking features of the saintly character; the low and carnal standard of religion which has prevailed; the positive discouragement offered to those who are impelled, by aspirations within them, towards a higher mark. Most humiliating facts indeed if true; and I see not how their truth can be doubted. The task I have here undertaken then has been wholly of a subordinate character: theirs has been the responsible office of protesting loudly and zealously against the spirit they have found predominant; I have humbly endeavoured to specify those defects and corruptions in our system, which will have amply sufficed to produce that spirit. sense indeed what I have said may be considered to corroborate their conclusions: for taking my stand on facts which no one can dispute, I have endeavoured to shew à priori that certain results must, to a practical certainty, follow; and these are the very results, to which, as matters of their own experience, these writers had drawn attention. The reasonings then here contained may strengthen their testimony to facts they conceive themselves to have observed; while that in turn adds increased probability to the justice of these reasonings.

In one

If our Church has been so incredibly supine and indifferent to her very principal duty, as guardian of, and witness to, morality, that of carefully training her children one by one in holy living, it is not to be supposed that she would have taken any pains in the performance of other duties incumbent on her in that capacity, but which are of a less

vitally momentous character. Accordingly, to choose one from a multitude of cases,-when subjects have been discussed so closely connected with right moral action as the question, to what extent the duty of a barrister towards his client supersedes his general duty to society;-the very idea seems never to have occurred to any of her authorities, that it is a matter with which, as a national Christian Church, she has any concern or interest. Or to turn our thoughts into a different channel; when the most grave and serious doubts have been entertained, whether the principles on which our Indian Empire has been acquired, and on which it is retained, are justifiable on grounds of Christian morality, or whether we are not, as a nation, daily committing a grievous sin in our demeanour towards the subjects of that Empire; any such conception, as the duty of a national Church to protest (if so be) against a national sin, seems never to have practically found admittance into the mind of either Church or nation. It is very questionable indeed on which side the surprise would be greatest, the Church-authorities, or the Stateauthorities, if a proposal were gravely made, to begin a solemn inquiry, with the view to an Ecclesiastical decision on this great question. I must guard myself against being supposed to have any bias, which way a fair inquiry would be likely to terminate; for I really have none: but the doubt has been felt in many a Christian mind, and affords therefore matter for illustration, on the general blindness which prevails to the very existence of so important a part of the Church's duties. Nor can it be either expected or desired that she should turn her thoughts to such questions, while her apathy remains unshaken, on duties so incomparably, I may with truth say so infinitely, more momentous, as those on which the present chapter has been hitherto occupied.

In like manner, since the origin of every science has ordinarily been the practical requirements of some art, it was not to be expected that a Church which has taken so little pains in teaching her children the art of holy living, should have given herself any particular pains to cultivate the corresponding sciences. Accordingly few English clergy

men, I suppose, have so much as heard the name of moral or ascetic theology; and as to mystical theology, since it has been for some time past the common belief in England that Saints and saintly men do not exist in the later ages of the Church, it is hardly to be supposed that attention would have been given to the investigation of principles, for the religious discipline of these holy men.

5. Let us now turn our thoughts to the other primary duty of a Church; the preservation of orthodox doctrine. And here at first sight my task might seem easier; for although, as is natural, members of our Church are very unwilling to admit that we are inferior to earlier times in cultivation of the inward life, they almost make it matter of boast that we are less zealous than Christians of a former age in laying stress on what they would call the more minute peculiarities of the Gospel Creed. Every one knows how languidly a charge of Sabellianism or Nestorianism is responded to by the religious world;' and how general the opinion, that belief in these heresies is perfectly consistent with spirituality and heavenly-mindedness. However, one doctrine there happily is, which is still maintained among us as essential, as placed beyond the sphere of lawful compromise or concession: I mean, of course, the doctrine of our Blessed Lord's Divine Nature. It will be well then to base the present inquiry on an examination of this particular; of the faithfulness with which the Church of England has really guarded this most precious deposit; for we shall thus measure the value of her system by that very test which the advocates of that system would most desire. I am not of course really conceding, that Nestorians and Sabellians can possibly believe the doctrine of the Incarnation; but only arguing ad homines' against religionists of the day, that we may see whether they can defend their position on the very ground they have themselves chosen. The wellinstructed believer will indeed enter upon this inquiry, with the decided anticipation of an adverse result; for where there is no provision for ensuring a strict life or a sensitive conscience, the very soil is not supplied, in which alone a sound faith can firmly plant its roots: while on the other hand,