Experience proves that the Church is better in the hands of the law than under the government of any clerical body. There have been two notable occasions in the history of the Church of England when Convocation had real power. One Iwas at the Restoration. To Convocation was committed the revision of the Prayer Book. Instead of preserving peace by removing the things to which the Puritans objected they made conformity more difficult than it had been before. To the High Churchmen of the Restoration we owe the expulsion of the Puritan party from the National Church. It is true they had themselves come out of tribulation, but they need not have been vindictive in the hour of their triumph.

After the Revolution men of milder disposition filled the high places of the Church. An effort was made by them for the reconciliation of those who had been driven out by the hard measures of the Restoration time. The wise and moderate Tillotson proposed to the king to take in hand the business of comprehension. To avoid, as he said, the reproach that the Church of England was a Parliamentary Church, he proposed that the work should be done by Convocation. The bishops were mainly with the archbishop, but the Lower House inherited the intolerant traditions of a past age. They defeated the scheme. Tillotson learned wisdom and confessed his mistake, saying that hitherto he had believed that the clergy were capable of managing their own affairs.

The Lower House of Convocation afterwards made itself ridiculous by its quarrels with the Upper House. Its unhappy existence was prolonged till the reign of George I., when it passed censure on a very inoffensive sermon by the great Bishop Hoadly, for which Convocation was silenced, and, as Bishop Burnet expressed it, prevented doing further mischief. The universal history of clerial assemblies, in the exercise of what they call their divinely appointed jurisdiction, has rarely shown much of the spirit of Christianity. They have always been hostile to that spirit of progress which animated St. Paul when he burst the bonds of the narrow Judaism of the earlier apostles. Dr. Jortin once said that the Council of Jerusalem was the first and the last assembly of the clergy over which the Holy Ghost presided.

There are other reasons why the Church of England should be governed by the law. One is that Convocation, as now constituted, cannot be said to represent the Church, certainly not the laity of the Church. It consists largely of deans and archdeacons, not chosen by the clergy, and certainly not by the laity. A proper representative body would be an elected

convocation. Every parish should be represented, and there should be a layman for every clergyman. But even then there must be, as in Nonconformist bodies, a final appeal to a civil tribunal. There must be no bishop's veto at any stage of the proceedings.

The Church of Scotland is often mentioned as an instance of a Church connected with the State, and yet possessing full power of self-government. There is no appeal from the General Assembly, except on the plea that the proceedings have not been fairly conducted. A Lord Commissioner representing the State sits with the Assembly, though, as the Report says, his powers are undefined, yet his presence there is a witness that whatever liberty of government the Church has, it has from the State. Lawyers have refused to review the judgments of the Assembly on the ground that it was supreme in its own sphere, that is, the ecclesiastical. The Church claims this independence on the ground of an inward and spiritual power given by Christ to meet together to manage its own affairs, the necessity of such meetings being first represented to the magistrate. In the constitution of the Church of Scotland the civil magistrate has a share in the government so far as that the courts meet in his name, and that they are his courts for ecclesiastical purposes. But he is supposed not to interfere with their independence. This position the Church claims to have been ratified by the Act of Union of 1707, in the instrument of which it was said, 'that the Presbyterian government and discipline were to remain. and continue unalterable.' It is doubtful if the document justifies the claim to the extent that it has been understood by some lawyers. A similar provision was made as to the Church of England. But the words in the one case need not mean more than that the Church of Scotland was to remain Presbyterian, and the Church of England in the other was to retain the form of government by bishops.

It cannot be said that the Courts of the Church of Scotland have shown the same forbearance and impartiality which have been shown by the judges of the Court of Arches or the Privy Council. Of late years, indeed, there has been a large development of liberality among the clergy. Norman McLeod once said that Campbell of Row, and those who suffered with him, would have been more leniently treated had they been tried forty years later than they were. The case of the founders of the Secession is a good illustration of the kind of justice which a spiritual court may administer when there is no appeal. The Assembly had passed an Act which partly sur

rendered the right of popular election of ministers, which had been secured to the people, on the restoration of the Church, under William of Orange. Ebenezer Erskine, as Moderator of the Synod of Perth and Stirling, preached against the Act before the synod, saying that it robbed Christ of His supreme right as Head of the Church. For this he was rebuked by a vote of the synod. An appeal was made to the General Assembly, who ratified the censure. Against this censure he and three other ministers protested. The language of the protest was declared a treasonable insult to the Court, which, rising in indignation, appointed a commission, before which a retractation was to be made. This the protestors refused to make, and by the casting vote of the Moderator they were declared to be no longer ministers of the Church of Scotland. An appeal to a civil court would have calmed the ecclesiastical fury, and saved the secession or schism which followed.

The object of a trial for doctrine or ritual is to determine what the doctrine or ritnal of the Church really is, and what variations the law may admit. The business is purely legal, and lawyers are better fitted to settle it than bishops or clergy of any kind. They are, so to speak, a neutral party, outside the body in which the difference has arisen. When the Nonconformists differ about their creeds, or the interpretation of chapel deeds, the civil courts decide for them, if they cannot among themselves settle the difference. What these courts do for the Dissenters, courts appointed for ecclesiastical purposes do for the Church of England. The subject is removed from the strife of parties, from clerical partiality and prejudice, and brought into the calm atmosphere of a legal investigation. No one could fairly object to the decision of a civil court, except on the principle that those who are against reason are so because reason is against them.

JOHN HUNT.

ART II.-Mr. Arnold and his Discourses in

America.

Discourses in America. BY MATTHEW ARNOLD. Macmillan and Co.

WE have heard of a kind of wine produced on Bowen Hills, Brisbane, which always sympathizes with the vine; even if the wine has been bottled for three years, at the time of the

rising of the sap in the plants from which the wine was made it will become turbid, or sick, lose its sparkle, and its bright ruby red; but when the vines are once more at rest, then it again becomes clear and most excellent to drink. This might be taken to suggest, by figure, a characterization of the sensitive genius of Mr. Matthew Arnold. Though he may seem to become sick and turbid, sub-cynical, and inclined to light fashionable chaff and banter when he digresses into the wide fields of social and moral discussion, the moment he returns to the freer atmosphere of literature and poesy, his nature at once resumes all its sweetness, clearness, and fine tone. Volume by volume, as his later prose works have appeared, we have been furnished, as it were with new illustrations of this fact. The more we dwell upon it, the more we are inclined to regret that Mr. Arnold's retreats into the region of poetry, as a singer, have for many years been so short and intermittent. That, nevertheless, is the true home of his genius. In that sphere, whether as poet or critic, he is always true, delicate, full of touches that attest the final insight and sincerity of the seer. It is different when, in his own playful but bitter mood, he condescends to poke fun at Mr. Bright, or is fain to excite a smile by dwelling wittly on the gambols of the young lions of "The Daily Telegraph."

Then some thought of the superfine blasé man of the world-of the frequenter of clubs and polite circles in town is inevitable. The game is surely not in his case worth the candle. When read in the light that changes bring the shadow that death casts between the subject and the critic-how empty, how forced, how futile, how trumpery even seem these once sprightly escapades! They remind us of the glitter of the crystal and gold amid the remnants of a feast, when the guests have departed, and the lights burn low, and the twilight of morning is stealing in to emphasize the barrenness of artificial display. There is irony in the brightness, a mocking poverty in the disorder amid the grace. When Death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never Our tenderness that we repent of, but only our severity.' That Mr. Arnold's severity was cloaked in the language of playful satire, did not lessen the wounds it made, but intensified them, as the poison on the arrow. Can Mr. Arnold himself read over now, with any sense of satisfaction, his offensive innuendoes concerning Dean Alford, Lord Shaftesbury, Mr. Miall, and many others? If he can answer in the affimative he is less of a true man, and more of a cynic and blasé club man than we believe he is. If this be so, then he imparts to his writings, however great their immediate effect

within certain circles, a solvent element which must war against their claim to permanency. But at all events

Not there, O Apollo,

Are haunts meet for thee,

But where Helicon breakes

Down, in cliff, to the sea.

In the volume which he has just given us under the title of 'Discourses in America,' we cannot help thinking that we see signs of a reluctant penitence, of a veiled contrition which, if we are correct, is as touching as it is significant. In the outset of his lecture on Numbers,' placed first in the volume, we find this passage:

There is an honourable patriotism, which we should satisfy if we can, and should seek to have on our side. At home I have said so much of the character of our Society and the prospects of our civilization, that I can' hardly escape the like topic elsewhere. Speaking in America, I cannot well avoid saying something about the prospect of Society in the United States. It is a topic where one is apt to touch people's patriotic feelings. No one will accuse me of having flattered the patriotism of that great country of English people on the other side of the Atlantic, amongst whom I was born. Here, so many miles from home, I begin to reflect, with a tender contrition, that perhaps I have not-I will not say flattered the patriotism of my own countrymen enough, but regarded it enough. Perhaps that is one reason why I have produced so little effect upon them. It was a fault of youth and inexperience. But it would be unpardonable to come in advanced life and repeat the same errors here.

And then Mr. Arnold proceeds to unfold his conception of the possible future greatness of America, in its vast resources, its numbers,' and the chances which these very numbers yield for the preservation of the remnant' which is the saving health of nations. In his own delightful manner he cites expressions from Plato and from the Old Testament prophets, and, with an unexpected mixture of subtlety and simplicity, brings them to bear on the present position of the United States. In numbers' alone is no hope; in 'numbers' there is hope only as a medium for the remnant who hold forth and illustrate in daily life that sense for conduct which was so strong among the Puritans. In urging this, Mr. Arnold only urges in other terms what Mr. Bright has said, in his own way, over and over again, in favour of the United States.

Property and intelligence cannot be trusted to show a sound majority themselves; the exercise of power by the people tends to educate the people. . . You are something more than a people of fifty millions. You are fifty millions mainly sprung, as we in England are mainly sprung, from that German stock, which has faults indeed; but of which, as my