mutually opposing forces in our nature, which had to fight it out between them, or in the fact, that there were two sets of differing, but not necessarily opposed, forces, which were to work, not in mutual conflict, but in common subordination to a higher power than both, the power of the Will? To us, believers in one wise and good creating Power, it is impossible to conceive of so absurd a thing as a nature formed for the express purpose of fighting with itself as impossible as it would be to conceive of the human race being created for the perpetual purpose of mutual warfare, and the ultimate purpose of one-half destroying the other half. Society is to work by apparent and often real conflict to a harmonized issue; and our nature is to be worked as an integer into an integral result. We can only believe in a nature of harmonious powers. The harmony indeed must disappear, if each power endeavours to play the concert by itself and not in subjection to the guiding time of the leader. But if the Will be on the seat of direction, not one single tone of our nature but is necessary and harmonious in its own place and measure. There is no such thing, in such a case, as eradication, or destruction-subordination is everything. This may be

regarded as substantially St. Paul's doctrine. In the conflict of natural forces, so terrific when left to themselves, which he powerfully and truly describes, salvation is of grace—that is, of the Will, elevated by divine influence, or the grace of the Christian guidance and teaching, into the possession of authority. To this, man in his whole nature, spiritual as well as material, is subject: and his spiritual tendencies, so far from being the ones to be entrusted with exclusive and undirected sway, require direction themselves, as much as the material.

However, the Manichean view, though formally repudiated as a heresy, has essentially entered into all the ecclesiastical arrangements of fasting and self-mortification from the third century downwards, and still feebly survives to our own ime in the revived usages of a portion of the Established Church. On this theory we may begin with the position of the Anglican Faster, but we cannot stop with anything short of Symeon on his Pillar. We maintain the conduct of the Stylite, which almost all our Protes

tant writers condemn as fanatical and absurd, to have been the most complete logical issue of the principle-to be the only truly respectable and perfect manifestation of the tenet, that the more the claims of the body can be reduced, the better for the spirit, and the higher it must rise. If ridicule should attach to anything conscientious, it should fall on the distant approaches to, not on the unique and complete realization of, this principle in its simplicity. We believe that the Stylite has solved a great problem, in an unsurpassed spirit of heroic consistency. We feel too great a respect for this his service to the world

* Old Mosheim, of course, has no sympathies with Symeon and his austerities. He says "Of all the instances of superstitious frenzy that disgraced the age, none was held in higher veneration, or excited more the wonder of the multitude, than that of a certain order of men, who were called Stylites by the Greeks, and Sancti Columnares, or Pillar-Saints, by the Latins. These were persons of a most singular and extravagant turn of mind, who stood motionless upon the tops of pillars, expressly raised for this exercise of their patience, and remained there for several years, amidst the admiration and applause of the stupid populace. The inventor of this strange and ridiculous discipline was Symeon, a Syrian, who began his follies by changing the agreeable employment of a shepherd, for the senseless austerities of the monkish life." Milner does not even mention him. He thinks a short account of Anthony quite enough for the whole class. He is willing, however, to allow that their influence was not wholly evil; but thinks "that it is not worth while to trace its (monasticism's) progress particularly, nor to recite any of the ridiculous frauds, abuses, and superstitions, which were connected with it. Self-righteous formality made rapid strides in the Christian world; one single observation, however, of an author who has recorded much of this trash with much complacency, will deserve to be transcribed." He then quotes the observation of Sozomen that "most of these monks lived to a good old age, which acted favourably on the reception of Christianity"- —as a long-lived system, we sup

pose.

"Symeon Stylites, who, strange to say, obtained by his extravagances the title of Saint, and the veneration of all Christendom, for more than 1,000 years. This great hero in the ranks of auto-martyrs-if we may so term the men who sacrificed their existence to suffering," &c.-Stebbing's History of the Christian Church-in which, however, is found a fuller account of the penance of Symeon, than Mosheim and the other historians condescend to furnish.

Priestley refers to Symeon in a characteristic manner, but for a theological purpose: Among the letters which were written on this occasion, and which have been preserved, there is one of Simeon Stylites, a monk, who is said to have lived many years on a pillar, exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather, and to have been highly respected in this superstitious age on that account."

Gieseler joins in the same calm condemnation. "But amongst the people the Anchorites were held in the highest repute; for they carried their folly the farthest, and vied with each other in inventing new modes of self-torture. Simeon is thought to have reached the climax in this art," &c.

to say that he has helped us to a reductio ad absurdum; he has rather given us a reductio ad extremum. He has shown us exactly what the Manichean theory, and the Church doctrine of fasting and self-mortification founded upon it, are when practically fulfilled. He alone of men has shown to what an extent it is possible to neglect all the requirements, and violate all the laws, of the bodily frame, and live. He alone of men has shown with how much pain, with how little nourishment, rest, and comfort, a human creature can continue to exist. The world consists chiefly of moderate people, and the aversion to anything thorough, logically complete, and consistent to the core, is nearly universal. We live upon lies, because we will not carry them out far enough to discover that they are lies. In England we always stop short in the evolvement and application of our theories. As soon as they threaten opposition to common sense, to prudence, to moderation, we pause-retaining them just up to that point-false indeed in themselves, but with their falseness undiscovered. The German writers on philosophy and theology excite the indignation of the English mind, because they will not do this. Englishmen would admit and accept with relish and delight many of their principles of criticism and of thought in their initial stages, in their uncompleted and moderate condition: but when these writers proceed to unfold the fruit to which the germ that we have been cherishing must lead, we close our eyes in fury and horror. We had rather hold in our hands the fair blossom, and keep it a blossom for ever, than find out its true nature, by having its ashapple put into our hands. For this reason it is, that Calvin's theology has never had any more than an exceptional hold of our national mind. His stern logic compelled him to certain stern conclusions from which, because they were legitimate deductions from his premises, he did not shrink. Thus he placed Christ himself among the damned.* He knew what he was about: he knew that

* "Nihil actum erat, si corporeâ tantum morte defunctus fuisset Christus : sed operæ simul pretium erat, ut divinæ ultionis severitatem sentiret, quo et iræ ipsius intercederet, et satisfaceret justo judicio. Unde etiam eum oportuit, cum inferorum copiis æternæ mortis horrore, quasi consertis manibus luctari."—" Ergo si ad inferos descendis se dicitur, nil mirum.” “ Ut sciamus non modo corpus Christi in pretium redemptionis fuisse traditum,

his system necessarily involved these conclusions, and that it must fall to the ground if they were denied. But we, with our characteristic good sense and illogical and inconsistent prudence, are only "moderately Calvinistic." That is exactly characteristic of us. We will not go on far enough to discover that our ground is false. We pause at the moment when the light of detection is going to dawn upon us. We will not let our theory carry us beyond what is stronger to us than any theory. And so we cherish our falsehood unconscious of its nature; hold the snake in our bosoms, but never suffer it to grow so warm as to become vital and bite. A pity but that we sometimes did-we should then fling it away, and know a snake again when we saw it.

We believe (according to the theory we have explained) in natural Lents and natural Fasts, not because the flesh is in itself evil and to be crushed into utter subjugation, or its desires as far as possible annihilated, but because the flesh and its desires do not constitute the whole of our nature, but have to take their place among moral and spiritual things, and social duties, and to be under the direction and control of an enlightened, Christianized Will. This is the reason which prevents our belief in ecclesiastical and conventional lents and fasts. These, when natural and genuine, vary with the duties and circumstances of the ever-varying lot of individuals: when ecclesiastical and prescribed, are often necessarily unnatural and forced, in defiance of all actual duties and conditions. The natural is the real fasting; the ecclesiastical is a playing at fasting. At the call of duty we fast from rest, sleep, pleasure, food, society. But while the Lent of one man may be in Lent, the Lent of another may be at Easter or at Christmas. How is the mother watching and praying by the bed-side of her sick child to choose the Church's time for her Lent? The employment-lacking ladies and gentlemen in easy circumstances who at present in England abstain from ham and eggs at breakfast during five or six weeks in spring, and send down ample orders to the kitchen on the eve of the conclusion of that trying period, play at

sed aliud majus et excellentius, pretium fuisse, quod diros in animâ cruciatus damnati ac perditi hominis pertulerit."

Lent. A great majority of their neighbours are keeping the same lent all the year round. We should be far from saying, since there are so many wealthy, objectless people in England, that this would be a bad way of practising some self-denial, if the substantial breakfast did not come back again with such an unfortunately anti-spiritual degree of gusto about it afterwards. But even, notwithstanding this accompanying evil, we regard these trifling acts of selfdenial as so much more respectable and religious than an unbroken course of indulgence in material comfort, that until the true doctrine of fasting be reached, we are not indisposed to look with a species of intermediate respect upon these efforts after a life which shall not be by bread alone.

Viewed by the light of the Manichean theory, however, all modern fasting, including Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Budhist, is child's play-the only man, or at least hero, among Fasters is Symeon Stylites. If this earth be evil; if the body and the body's wants be base; if the religious man abjures by his profession all creature-comforts; if pleasure, and wealth and worldly distinction, and refinements in taste, and intellectual culture, are things below the consideration of a true Christian-if heaven, as well as being our home, is our all, and the soul, as well as being the most worthy, is the only worthy, part of our nature; if entire self-sacrifice be the rule of the Christian life, and it is wrong to have anything, or to enjoy anything ourselves, which another might wish or want, or which we could dispense with; if this be the proper aim of the believer who desires to attain entire Christian perfectionif of life, and earth, and body, and intellect, and comfort, and pleasure, and worldly success and honour, it becomes the Saint to say, "They are naught, they are naught”—if the soul should fix its contemplation as far as possible exclusively on God, and regarding the present bodily state as nothing, fasten all its aspirations, the whole of its hopes, and fears, and desires, on the future world—(and in truth much of the Pulpit-language and exhortation, and much of the private religious talk prevalent in religious circles, seems to amount to a declaration of this, or to be a mere conversational and predicatory excitement, and a huge hypocrisy) then we must commend to the attention of the