warn his people against the futile and fruitless study of them? If the offensiveness of the doctrine be the reason for his silence, how may he hope the populace will so far overcome this privately as to indulge in a profitable home-study of it?

Shall the doctrine go into the creed as a dead letter, held there to keep up appearances? But it has always been the weakness, and sometimes nigh the ruin, of the church-ship that she has shown more port-holes than she has carried guns. An appearance is not a power when action comes, and an enemy soon learns the difference between paint and powder.

What shall be done with the doctrines? Appear and pretend to preach them while their substance is omitted? This is the policy of some. They resort to the language of diplomacy, and to the ambiguities of state papers. To say nothing of an old truth, and to reject its old creed-phrases, would create alarm. The old terms must be retained, but with new definition and neutralizing qualifications. No violence must at first be done to the surface of things. The terms must be kept up, but their original import kept back. And so as we have imitation granite, and oak graining in church architecture, we have the same in sermons. A fresco-painting shows the preacher as standing under Gothic arches in a Genevan pulpit in the days of Calvin. Like pulpit, like theology; — the old doctrines are only in fresco in his sermons. His oak and granite are only in appearance. Woe unto such when they are brought before councils. For some antiquaries, educated before veneers, paper-hanging, and fresco were in fashion, may break the surface in their examination, and so uncover the soft pine and mortar.

So it is that we have in some pulpits atonement without vicariousness, total depravity without anything in it offensive to God, the new creation without any direct and instantaneous and divine creating efficiency, election as God's acceptance of volunteers under the Captain of our salvation, future punishment as the unfortunate results of an injured constitution, and everlasting punishment as a continuance of unfortunate results, till a second or third, or more remote probation, has restored all offenders.

And still the question returns, what shall be done with the doctrines? This keeping up appearances is no final disposition

of them. A candid, independent, high-minded man will not long consent to this duplicity under the cover of words. This game at "hide-and-seek" between the pulpit and the pews under the changing guise of old phrases, and the discarded costumes of a past theological age, must in little time be played out. The second generation is sure to complete it; the first will usually do it, specially when the play is begun in the seminary. A shrug and a smile at the old catechism, dexterous engineering of a via media between Calvinism and Arminianism, a reduction of the creed, and an enlargement of fellowship beyond the radius of "the vinegar-faced evangelicals" then the Broad Church with no creed, and the work is done.

And yet the question comes once more, What shall be done with the doctrines? Though discarded from pulpit and pew, creed and church, they have the semblance, if not the substance, left in the Scriptures. The spell which even their form casts on the reader must be broken. And so select and hard passages are put on the rack of exegetical torture. Paul is made to groan all through the Epistle to the Romans. At the fifth, seventh, and ninth chapters he fairly cries out, as the wedge is driven farther by some fresh hand, between his words and his meaning. But he confers not with flesh and blood, and steadfastly gives one answer: "Though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed."

Meanwhile it is discovered somewhere in Europe - whether at Tübingen or Oxford is yet a question that the Old Testament is a miscellaneous and fragmentary compilation by unknown hands, and that the most obstinate passages in the New Testament are interpolations. So German neologists and their American neophytes class the Holy Scriptures with that vast collection of mythic and legendary lore that floats about in masses above the head of navigation on the stream of Time. So the doctrines not fit to be preached are finally disposed of, and, in result, we have Theodore Parker, as "the full corn in the ear."

These are the "children that will not hear the law of the Lord," the New-School men of Isaiah's day" which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto

us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits; get you out of the way, turn aside out of the path, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease before us." Here is New Theology in its rise, progress, and conclusion. To please the natural heart it begins with the suppression of certain doctrines, for the congregation "will not hear the law of the Lord;" and at last they say of the law and its expounders, "get you out of the way."

So have we the inclined grade, the sliding scale theological, for those who suppress certain offensive doctrines of God's Word. Here is the line of development, improvement, and progress in theology, for which juvenile preachers, and some older ones, are so ardent. The curves from the old lines are graceful, and the descent beautifully winding. The ecclesiastical history of New England for the last half century illustrates the entire line. We are not too young to remember sermons and reviews of them, and rejoinders on new light and old light, protracted sessions of councils, divisions in ministerial associations and churches, suspension of pulpit exchanges, and earnest litigation over church-property. The new theology of that day was constantly affirming that for substance of doctrine they were all agreed; that it was a mere question of policy whether or not to preach certain unpopular doctrines; that the conservatives were alarmists, opposed to independent thought and scholarly progress, and were striving to prevent a future. That future was not prevented, and so the new theology of that day has culminated in the "Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society," worshipping in Music Hall, Boston.

It is in view of such facts, the growth of half a century, that we urge our plea for keeping in place and in sight the ancient metes and bounds. We believe in the compass and chain, as well as the catechism, of our childhood. And the early law grows on our reverence: "Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor's landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance."

We shall not attempt a judgment of this voluminous writer as an art-critic. Executing the office of a reformer, under the commission of a brilliant genius, and an honest, fearless heart, very likely he has knocked in pieces some things which were not "guilty of death," in swinging his hammer of Thor so stoutly among the idols. He is crotchety, say the routinists; irreverent, say the worshippers of the old divinities of the Vatican galleries; self-conceited, say the copyists; self-contradictory, say the men who do not comprehend how an untiring student should revise any of his opinions in a score of years. It would be strange if something of this were not true. Yet, instead of being written down by unfriendly pens, the author of the "Modern Painters," and "The Stones of Venice," has compelled the thinking world to read and ponder what he has had to tell it on a much misunderstood and abused subject, as only the higher styles of mental power can compel an audience to listen whether it please or no. He has put his name, and not a few of his ideas, into the currency of contemporary intellectual interchanges, as a rich accession to the pure coinage of the community. There is no need to vindicate the genuineness of the metal, or the sharp and clear finish of the die which stamps it. Mr. Bayne has rendered any further writing of this kind a work of supererogation. The "grandiose mediocrities," who awhile ago were in the habit of reducing the "Oxford Graduate's" pretensions to a mere cunning trick of word-painting which anybody with a dictionary could imitate, have spoken their pieces and left the platform with a not very gracious bow. But, passing this, that which now particularly concerns us is the religious suggestiveness of Ruskin's literary productions.

We are not aware of the specific relations of this gentleman in the English Church, of which, we presume, he is a member; but conclude that he does not affiliate with the "Attitudinarians," from his manifest distaste of theatrical contrivances and stage-effects in general; nor with the "Latitudinarians," as the

papers have reported him to be a warm admirer and generous sustainer of the popular Calvinistic preacher, Spurgeon. As to what the "Westminster Review" sneeringly calls the third division of the Establishment the "Platitudinarians,” — meaning by this jingle the Evangelical Episcopalians who preach the Gospel according to the Creed, the Litany, and the Thirty-nine Articles of their own Prayer-Book, we certainly should think no less of this full-brained Englishman did we know that such were his spiritual tastes. But to the purpose of this paper, it is not important further to push this inquiry. We value his christianity more than his churchmanship.

Fascinating as is Ruskin's rich and glowing Elizabethan style in unrolling the treasures of art-knowledge and in descriptions of natural objects, and of the creations of genius, his massive composition culminates in the fine transitions frequently and so unexpectedly occurring from these trains of thought to some grand or beautiful illustration of religious truth lying in the range of easy association therewith, when once suggested. This is one of the surest tests of the original thinker, that he is continually starting in our mind ideas which otherwise would not awake there: but the moment we catch them, they seem so apt that we marvel we had not always seen and enjoyed them. Ruskin's mind is eminently of this quality. We shall give various proof of it, confining our selections to the five volumes of the "Modern Painters," not because these are peculiar in this respect, but because we have studied these the most thoroughly, and they contain more than enough material—a literal" embarrassment of riches"-for our present consumption.

At the outset, we accept a frank confession of his own pen as a modest and sincere witness that his strong religious sentiment is not a vapid sentimentalism. We have had enough of the devout poetry of undevout devotees to excite a natural suspicion of what may be named an out-doors piety, although there is such a thing of rare and sterling value. But Ruskin's devoutness is not of the Tom Moore, or Byron, or (may we say it?) "Autocrat" school; does not exhale its odors in a well-turned sonnet, or an occasional hymn of almost suffocating sweetness does not break any such alabaster box, not very