was one of the main features of his character and of his mission. From the specimens which Merle D'Aubigné offers, his manner was coarse, and rather likely to irritate than to convert. What exact form the Spiritualists and Pantheists of that day assumed we are not informed; our curiosity is aroused, but not satisfied. Quinten, a monk, was their leader. His language appears to have been similar to that of the modern Pantheists: the Holy Spirit, he said, is our reason; and that Spirit teaches us that there is neither condemnation nor hell awaiting us. The soul is material and mortal. God is everything, and everything is God. Servetus appeared in Paris about the same time, and levelled his sarcasm against the doctrine of a Trinity. He invited Calvin to dispute with him; he consented to do so; but, probably from fear, Servetus did not appear. Calvin, however, read some of his writings, and was won over to admiration of the man, much as he abhorred his errors. "I will do all in my power," he said, "to cure Servetus. I will spare no pains to bring him to such sentiments, that all pious men may take him cordially by the hand." Calvin is far from deserving all the reproaches that have been heaped upon him on account of the death of Servetus, in which he had no direct share. But it would have been well for his fame if he had always been able calmly to draw the distinction, which ought never to be lost sight of, between the offender and his crimes. The appearance of Spiritualists and Pantheists at so early a period affords a subject for profound thought. Our own Reformers were chiefly troubled with the coarser forms of Antinomianism. There were a few atheists, but not enough to form a party; and a few visionaries, who would have died out if left alone. It was not till the troubled days of Oliver that Atheism and Pantheism became formidable; and then, strangely enough, they broke out in the restlessness and din of the popular army, and died out when the army was dissolved, to appear again in our own time in the most orthodox of universities-the comets of a system in whose firmament no erratic forms were supposed to glide. By what law are these phenomena of fearful import governed? Or is the moral atmosphere of the world charged with them; so that, when circumstances are propitious, they are certain to reappear? If this be so, there is surely something literal in the Scriptures which tell us that Satan" is the god of this world," "the prince of the power of the air," "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." Still, in spite of all its adversaries, it seemed as if the Reformation would struggle into life. It grew and prospered after this fierce baptism of blood; and notwithstanding the crudities in doctrine, the heresies, and the monstrous errors which assailed it-errors which are not heresies, only because they are totally free from any mixture of Christian truth; scraps of heathen philosophy, such as existed before a ray of light was shed amongst the Gentiles. Still it spread; it even seemed to gain leaders-men like the Admiral Coligny, who were capable of conducting the cause, hopeless in feebler hands, to entire success. Once more it was drowned in blood. As a national affair, the Reformation perished on St. Bartholomew's day, when Coligny, amidst thousands of Protestants, fell by assassins. Henceforward the hand of God has rested heavily on France. A brighter day may still await her; and we are firmly persuaded, from all that we can read of God's dealings with the nations of the earth, that whether France shall or shall not become once more the theatre of revolutions and of violence depends upon her treatment of the successors of the Huguenots. If they are again crushed, her last chance of happiness will have passed away. If they are cherished, peace and happiness may be her portion; and the Reformation, covering all her borders, may change a people of vast powers, but equal levity, into a chosen inheritance for Him to whom all the nations of the earth belong. INTUITION, OR REVELATION: CANON BOYD'S MISSIONARY SERMON. Intuition, or Revelation; a Discourse. By Archibald Boyd, A.M., Vicar of Paddington. London: Seeley & Co. 1864. THE individual clergyman who is honoured by the call of the Church Missionary Society to preach its Annual Sermon, is, certainly, in these days, placed in one obvious difficulty. He succeeds to more than sixty other eminent men, who have occupied the same pulpit, on the same annually-returning occasion; and yet it is not desired that he should place his feet in the very footsteps of any one of them. Rather it is hoped that he will try to find some path not yet worn by the tread of any of his predecessors. Conscious of this, and aware of the difficulty of finding any one of the ordinary topics of Missionary Sermons which had not been discussed by previous speakers, Mr. Boyd has taken the prudent course of looking abroad into the world, and inquiring, what is the chief cause, at the present moment, of that remaining deadness to the work of Missions, which is perceptible among some professed Christians? It is a fact, obvious to every one's remark, that while Highchurchmen and Low-churchmen are now vying with each other in the endeavour to send the message of peace to every corner of the earth, there is a third section of the Church-a section which has taken to itself the name of "broad"—which in this matter adopts the narrowest view, and which deems, or appears to deem, the Christian faith to belong to only two or three families of the human race; while, for the vast and almost countless tribes of the Asiatic and African continents, it is neither suitable nor necessary. We may be accused of misinterpreting or misstating the views of this section of the Church on these points; but we can hardly be in error in stating that, as a party, "Broad-churchmen" have taken little interest in Missions. Passing in review the names of those who are generally regarded as their leaders, we cannot call to mind a single occasion on which such men as Dean Stanley, Mr. Kingsley, Mr. Maurice, Mr. Llewellyn Davies, or Professor Jowett, have ever shown any interest in the cause of Missions. And if we are asked to account for this backwardness, we must confess our belief, that none of these gentlemen could, honestly and willingly, ascend a pulpit and expound and enforce, in the plain English sense of the words, the all-important declaration of St. Peter,-"Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." (Acts iv.) A system which opposes and denies this fundamental statement has lately come abroad, and shown itself in the world. In England, it partly shrouds its features under the misty and obscure phraseology in which Mr. Maurice so much delights; and we have to detect it under the guise of a dislike to Mr. Mansel's argument, that "man cannot, by searching, find out God." But in America, where establishments and endowments are almost unknown, and where no man has any inducement to conceal his real meaning, the theory stalks abroad without any covering, and boldly declares that neither Scripture, nor Creeds, nor even Christianity itself, can be deemed to be of essential importance; for that man everywhere has an intuitive faculty, an "absolute religion," which teaches him all that is really necessary concerning God, and a future state, and a moral rule of life. Such was the doctrine openly propounded by Mr. Theodore Parker; and that it finds favour in certain quarters in England, is evidenced by the fact that two different editions of Mr. Parker's collected writings are now issuing from the London press. This theory is plainly antagonistic to all missionary effort. Mr. Boyd observes, with equal truth and force, that— "If the philosopher in times past could think or feel himself into truth, the whole apparatus of Christianity was a well-meant but splendid mistake. If the human mind has this independent power within itself, pastors and congregations, texts and homilies, are out of place. If a man has but to read the heavens and the earth, himself and his fellow men, to attain to 'glory, honour, and immortality,' then our missionary solicitudes are weaknesses, and our missionary efforts but idle expenditures of thought and labour." (p. 5.) He therefore selects this question as a fit one to be publicly considered on the anniversary of the Church Missionary Society. It was hardly possible to compress the argument into the limits of a sermon; but in committing that sermon to the press, Mr. Boyd has added several paragraphs, and some copious notes, which, together, expand the discourse into a volume of nearly an hundred pages. He deals with the question in a different manner from that adopted in the Mansel and Maurice controversy. The point contended for by the Bampton Lecturer was, that "man cannot, by searching, find out God." The argument used by Mr. Boyd is that derived from experience, that "man, as we find him throughout history, has never, by his own mere searching, found out God." The preacher finds it broadly asserted, in works of high pretence and some popularity, that by a certain faculty, called "Absolute Religion," man knows God-knows an immortality to come-knows a certain rule of right and wrong. With this assertion he grapples; asking, as he has a right to do, whether any traces of this "absolute religion" are to be found in history. He examines man apart from Revelation, in philosophic heathenism, in semi-civilized heathenism, and in barbarous heathenism; and he nowhere discovers this knowledge of God, of immortality, and of a just rule of right and wrong, which is boldly asserted to be innate in all human beings. The result is obvious: this intuitive or absolute religion is a fiction. It may be found in books, as an "imagination of man's heart;" but it exists nowhere else. Part of Mr. Boyd's review of the state of man, past and present, will, we suppose, pass without contention. Few or none will assert, that in barbarous and savage life, in New Zealand, or Dahomey, or Caffraria, we have ever found in exercise this "absolute religion,"-this knowledge of God, of immortality, and of a just code of morals, which is stated to be innate in every human being. The assertors of "intuitive religion" will take their stand, if anywhere, on the shadows of truth which are found in the Greek and Roman philosophy. The old fiction, that to Plato and Socrates the Bible could teach nothing of any moment, will be revived; if the advocates of intuition deem it worth while to contest Mr. Boyd's positions. And hence it is needful to remark beforehand an obvious disadvantage which attaches to the Christian side of the argument, when the battle has to be fought on the ground of philosophical heathenism. In any contrast which is attempted to be drawn between Christianity as we know it, and heathenism as it existed in ancient Greece or Rome, the two parties can hardly be placed on level ground. The whole truth can be spoken of the one, but the whole truth can hardly be spoken of the other. As a matter of fact, our notions of the real condition of Athens and Rome in ancient days, are notoriously imperfect. They must necessarily be so. Historians take their views too often from a few of the best heathen writings; and those, too, written by men who practised very little of what they wrote; and then tacitly compare these writings with the facts of the worst common life of their own day." "No one dares to picture to himself, or to realize in his mind's eye, the awful state of common social life in the glorious periods of Greece and Rome. No one ever dares to try to do so. It is easy to slide over the smooth surface of their literary and intellectual works, without looking into the deeps of iniquity beneath, or bringing it before the mind as real." "The first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans is the nearest approach to such knowledge that can be endured." "A true picture no one dares to give, or can."* Hence, a decent silence, a tacit suppression of what it would be inconvenient to notice, becomes the rulethe almost universal practice. To explain what we mean by a single instance: no English clergyman, we apprehend, could ever allude to such occurrences as those described in Gen. xix. 4-11, without unfeigned horror and detestation. Yet English clergymen have felt no difficulty in translating and publishing dialogues of Plato which contain such passages as the following: Αλλὰ τόδ', οἶμαι, ἦν δ ̓ ἐγώ, οὔκετι σοι δοκεῖ. Το ποίον; Τὸ φιλῆσαί τε καὶ φιληθῆναι ὑπὸ ἑκάστου. Πάντων, ἔφη, μάλιστα καὶ προστίθημι γε τῷ νόμῳ, ἕως ἂν ἐπὶ ταύτης ὦσι τῆς στρατείας, καὶ μηδενὶ ἐξεῖναι ἀπαρνηθῆναι, ὃν ἂν βούληται φιλεῖν, ἵνα καὶ, ἐὰν τις του τυχῇ ἐρῶν ἢ ἄῤῥενος ἢ θηλείας, προθυμότερος ἢ πρὸς τὸ ταριστεῖα pépew;† and in characterizing such dialogues as full of "wisdom and beauty," as "most interesting, most beautiful, and most complete," as "full of matchless beauty and inestimable worth!" This, however, it may be said, was an oversight, or a merely customary concession to the peculiar habits and manners of the Greeks. But what shall be said of that which is a prominent feature of that famous dialogue? How could two English students, as a preparation for the ministry of the Church, ever bring themselves to edit and propose for universal admiration, as of "inestimable worth," a work which gravely proposes to treat men and women as cattle-to regulate their intercourse precisely as the intercourse of animals kept for breeding is regulated, "so that no one shall have a wife of his own," ," and so that "the parent shall not know his child, nor the child his parent;"|| adding, too, the less shocking but still revolting proposal, that "the women must strip for their gymnastic exercises-exercising naked in the schools with the men!"§ Thring's "Education and School,” pp. 70-81. + De Repub. V. c. 14. § Ibid. 452, 457. Davies and Vaughan's Translation of Plato's Republic. Preface. |