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meet this move on the political chess-board in the best way

she could.

She may have moved a queen when it would have been wiser to move a pawn; but this is no reason why her opponent should lose her temper, nor is it fair for outsiders to condemn this move unless they feel sure that they understand the game better than the players themselves. The relation of England to the Greek question is very different from that of France. France has no protectorate over Asia Minor, no entangling alliance with Austria, no responsibility for the reformation of the Turkish Government by moral suasion. She has only to consider her own interests or her own sympathies. She believes it to be for her interest to cultivate the friendship of the Greeks and to browbeat the Turks, and the sympathies of the people coincide with the policy of. the Government. In England there is quite as much sympathy for Greece, and, as an abstract question, it is for the interest of England to favour civil liberty and the development of the kingdom of Greece; but the Government has, wisely or unwisely, assumed other obligations which it is not easy to reconcile with the demands of Greece and the policy of France. It is apparently the object of Lord Salisbury to compromise these conflicting interests in such a way as to partially satisfy the aspirations of Greece, and at the same time to make the-impression upon Turkey, and perhaps upon Austria also, that their interests have not been neglected. Compromise is supposed to be the basis of diplomacy, the foundation of the English Constitution, the in hoc signo of British policy; but with all its advantages it has this great disadvantage that it pleases no one. Neither Greece nor Turkey will feel any gratitude towards England, but both will unite in those hearty execrations with which we are already too familiar in the streets of Athens and Constantinople. This is a result which will be satisfactory to France, and there seems to be no reason to fear that any permanent disturbance of the friendly relations of the two countries can result from the Greek question.

AN EASTERN STATESMAN.

CONTEMPORARY BOOKS.

I.-CHURCH HISTORY, &c.

(Under the Direction of the Rev. Professor CHEETHAM.)

E hail with pleasure in the Memoirs of the Life and Episcopate of George

WR Augustus Selwyn, D.D., by the Rev. H. W. Tucker, M.A. (London: W. Wells

Gardner, 1879), an adequate record of the labours of England's greatest missionary bishop. Nothing in the whole history of missions is more striking than the way in which young George Selwyn, in the full vigour of mind and body, handsome, accomplished, popular, a cherished member of the best society in England, with every prospect of rising to a distinguished position in his native land, at once accepted the call to go forth into the midst of barbarism, English and native, on the other side of the world. He, if any one, may fitly be called a soldier of Christ, for he was every inch a soldier; the instinct of obedience and of command was equally strong in him; he felt it natural to be "a man under authority, having soldiers under him." When Mr. Ernest Hawkins proposed to go to Eton to sound him as to the New Zealand bishopric, one who knew him well said that that was not the way to proceed with him; the proposal must be made to him directly and officially. It was so arranged, and he at once accepted the official call as a word of command; "whatever part in the work of the ministry the Church of England," he wrote in reply, "may call upon me to undertake, I trust I shall be willing to accept with all obedience and humility." This was the key-note of his whole life; he was an officer of the Church, and he must do his duty; from that nothing would induce him to turn back. The soldier-like spirit appears in his words on quitting Eton-"I thought that, should I refuse to the bones of those who fell in Walcheren would rise up in judgment against me.' And when he was again in England after years of arduous work, he would fain rouse on behalf of religion the " spirit of obedience to authority which has already sent our fleets and armies to every part of the world." The Governor of New Zealand at the time of Selwyn's appointment thought it absurd to send a bishop where there were no roads for his coach. No doubt one of the stately bishops of the last century would have found himself out of place in a rough colony; but Selwyn was a bishop of a new type; a bishop who could visit his diocese walking, riding, swimming, or sailing; who could make himself at home in a Maori hut, or, if need were, in a pig-stye (ii. 178). The interest of the memoirs is in the record they supply of the untiring energy, the organizing power, the peculiar influence, the unfailing sense of duty, the devotion to his Master's service, which characterised the good bishop's career. He saw at once what the earlier missionaries do not seem to have seen, that if the Maoris were to be made real Christians they must be educated; their habits of thought and social condition must be changed. Hence the untiring efforts which he made, not only to bring to the knowledge of the natives the redemp tion through Christ, but to educate them in English arts, and in the honour and purity which characterise the best Christians in Europe; he would fain have a new

go,

Eton and a younger St. John's College at the Antipodes. A very remarkable work, which arose out of his contact with the many languages of the Pacific, is less known than it deserves to be. Captain Marryat's code of signals, by which ships of different nations interchange ideas through the universal language of numbers, suggested to the sailor-bishop one part of his plan; a passage of Cicero added to it the further conception of bringing together into one view all words having the same general meaning. He classified all the words in the Bible under about 250 heads, and to each of these heads assigned a number, so that it might be conveniently referred to. That in the midst of his ever-moving life and his pressing labours he should find time for so laborious a work is a signal testimony to his vigour and steadfastness.

Nothing is more remarkable than the readiness with which, when he left New Zealand, he accommodated himself to the widely-different conditions of his new episcopate. Perhaps at Lichfield he sometimes longed for the "free air" of an unestablished Church; but while in New Zealand he steadfastly resisted any encroachment of the Colonial Government, in England he was very far from wishing to separate Church and State, and he had but little sympathy with those who deliberately break the law of the land under the plea of obeying the Church. Whether in New Zealand or at Lichfield, he is always the obedient officer of the Church-the actually existing Church of England, not the imaginary body to which some pay allegiance-learning "in whatsoever state he is, therewith to be content." On the whole, the first Metropolitan of the Pacific Islands compares not unfavourably with the first Metropolitan of Germany, the English Boniface.

66

Mr. Tucker has done his part well, except that he here and there expresses his own opinion rather unnecessarily. As he is not a Constitutional lawyer, nor writing a Constitutional history, he is in no way called upon to describe the Public Worship Regulation Act as a flagrant breach of the Constitution." He should have contented himself with describing Bishop Selwyn's attitude towards it, which he has done very fairly. With regard to the unfortunate Maori war, we do not of course blame Mr. Tucker for looking at it with the bishop's eyes; yet it is only fair to remember that many of those best qualified to judge believed that the war was forced upon Governor Gore Browne by Wiremu Kingi; "that chief's conduct," wrote the Duke of Newcastle (Despatch to Sir G. Grey, August 25, 1863), "from first to last, seems to me to have been inconsistent with any degree of submission to the Queen's sovereignty over New Zealand." The New Zealand House of Representatives passed a resolution in the same sense; the Chief Justice-presumably a man capable of forming a fair opinion-held the same view. And the New Zealand authorities were pretty well agreed as to the misery which would befal the natives if, the Queen's authority not being upheld, they were left to their old tribal feuds and animosities. But, whatever opinion we may hold as to the origin of the war, our admiration for the bishop's noble conduct in it is in no way diminished.

Bishop Selwyn said of Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, "there are few points, if any, on which I differ from the Bishop of Lincoln." They are, in fact, representatives of the same school, the school which we may conveniently call the Old-Anglican, as contrasted with the Neo-Catholic or Ritualistic. This school is earnest in contending for the authority of Scripture while reverencing primitive antiquity, accepts the Reformation as a benefit, and is keenly hostile to the claims of the Church of Rome. Bishop Wordsworth, for instance, is quite clear that the Lady of the Seven Hills, in the Apocalypse, is papal, and not pagan Rome. He is probably the most learned representative of this school, certainly the most productive of literature. He, almost alone among the men of this degenerate age, recalls the days when the writings of a theologian who reached his three-score years and ten might be expected to fill several folio volumes. It has been given to few men to complete so great a work as his "Commentary on the Bible;" and this represents but a part of his literary activity; travels, scholarship, lectures, biography, correspondence, controversy, poetry—all these are included in his writings. And none of his works are light or ephemeral; all are learned, careful, and scholarly. The volumes which lie before us (Miscellanies, Literary and Religious, by Christopher Wordsworth, D.D., Bishop of Lincoln. London: Rivingtons, 1879) might have been called, if the bishop had been disposed to parody Professor Max Müller, " Chips from an Anglican Workshop," for they contain the various smaller works thrown off at intervals in the course of his busy life. We have here the excellent little treatise on the Pompeian Graffiti, or wall-scribblings; notes of tours in Greece, in France, and in Italy; papers called forth by the Vatican 3 D

VOL. XXXV.

Council of 1869, and by the Congress of Old Catholics at Cologne; tracts on the Inspiration of the Bible and its Interpretation; on the use of unfermented wine at Holy Communion, called forth by a teetotal objection to fermented wine; on art in connection with religion, called forth by the proposed decora tion of a cemetery chapel; on Cremation and Burial-in which the bishop shows himself, we think, a little over-timid with regard to the effect on the popular mind of reducing the human frame to ashes; on Religion in Science-a sermon preached in the church at Colsterworth, Sir Isaac Newton's birthplace; on the religious use of classical studies; on the spread of infidelity and the need of a learned clergy; on the destiny of Mohammedanism, à propos of the "Turkish Question;" on ecclesiastical legislation and jurisdiction; on diocesan synods; on clerical non-residence; on the sale of Church patronage and on simony; on marriage and divorce, and on marriage with a deceased wife's sister; on clerical celibacy and on sisterhoods and vows; on English cathedrals; on the Church of England, past, present, and future; on the continuity of the Church of England; on capital punishment; and we have besides a Pastoral to Wesleyan Methodists; a collection of maxims for the use of the Theological School at Lincoln; and the "Holy Year," a series of hymns following the course of the ecclesiastical calendar. It is, of course, impossible within our limits to criticize so varied a series of works, but this we may say of their general character. Not one of these works is slight or careless; not one of them has the air-like so many modern collections of Miscellanea—of being written simply for amusement or to attract notice; even in his travels the bishop thinks of edification. We may say that the publication of every paper in these volumes has been dictated by a sincere wish to do good; to defend some truth which is assailed, or to bring into light some truth which is in danger of being forgotten. And a life of literary activity of this kind is, in its own way, not less admirable than that of a missionary. To maintain truth in the old centres of Christianity is a work not less important than to propagate it in distant lands.

There is not much resemblance between Christopher Wordsworth and Frederic Ozanam, but probably this sentence, "He had always a great horror of becoming simply a man of letters, and nothing else," would apply to one as well as the other; for both would regard the maintenance of truth and the good of mankind as the proper end and aim of their work. Frederic Ozanam, his Life and Works, by Kathleen O'Meara (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co.), gives an interesting account of a very interesting person, one of those cultivated French Roman Catholics who are earnest in defence of the faith without confining their thoughts and studies to the narrow round of partisan manuals which satisfy the more bigoted members of their Church. He was a Roman Catholic of unswerving faith, and yet had in matters not of faith the curiosity and flexibility of a true Frenchmen. It was Ozanam who, with some half-dozen friends as poor as himself, founded the society of St. Vincent de Paul, as a practical answer to the St. Simonians, who reproached the Catholics with doing nothing for the welfare of the people. He was still under thirty when he began to lecture on foreign literature at the Sorbonne as M. Fauriel's deputy, and only thirtyone when he became Professor on Fauriel's death-the youngest Professor that had ever been appointed there; and certainly his works on the "Civilization of the Fifth Century," and on Dante and the Catholic Philosophy of the Thirteenth Century," entitle him to a high place in French literature. Yet even in Ozanam, a naturally candid man, we can see that his religious views placed him in some respects at a disadvantage; he was unable to look fairly at theories which did not square with his conception of Catholicism; he always saw the heroes of his own faith in a rosy light of imagination; while in those who differed from him-as, for instance, in Jouffroy -he always thought he detected" sophistry and false science." Still, the decided bias and eager temperament which sometimes perverted his views of history add something of interest to his life, and probably it would be difficult to find a man who more earnestly endeavoured to live up to his conception of duty, or one more beloved by his friends than Frederic Ozanam.

Mr. Walter Besant's Life of Gaspard de Coligny, Marquis de Chatillon, which forms a volume of The New Plutarch (London: Marcus Ward and Co.), supplies an interesting account of the famous Admiral de Coligny, who was once the leader of the Reformed party in France, and perished in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. It is a deeply-interesting recital, and Mr. Besant is no doubt right in saying that with Coligny perished the hope of the Reformation succeeding in France. But in truth it seems to us doomed from the first; even under more favourable political circum

stances, we can hardly imagine the Protestantism of Coligny or of Calvin becoming the religion of the French nation. It drew to itself some of the best men in France, but it was too narrow, too reasonable, too little emotional or impressive, to move the people at large. Even in Coligny, a man who passed his life in the great world, we see the faults which stunted the Reformation in France. Of Mr. Besant's work we have to say, that it is extremely well and brightly written; the first English life of Coligny is worthy of him. The only fault we have to find with the author is, that his touch is rather too rapid; it would have added to the interest of the book if he had introduced fewer persons, and treated those whom he did introduce at somewhat greater length.

We have to notice a new edition (Pickering, London) of the late Archdeacon Churton's Early English Church. It is a convenient manual of the Pre-Reformation history, by a scholar and divine of the old Anglican school. It was first written when English writers had hardly abandoned the custom of describing the religion existing in England from Gregory to Warham as mere superstition and imposture, and it represents the beginning of the reaction against that view. Not that the archdeacon was by any means favourable to Rome; he had the old English dislike for Popery, which he regarded as having been introduced into England by the fault of the Civil Government. In that view, we think, he was wrong, but the book is, on the whole, both a fair and an interesting epitome of early English Church History.

Heroes of the Mission Field, by the Right Rev. W. Pakenham Walsh, D.D., Bishop of Ossory (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1879), consists of a series of sketches of eminent missionaries of various communions, principally, however, of that of the Pre-Reformation Church. Beginning with "Apostolic and early missions during the first three centuries," it brings before the reader, in succession, vigorous and well-written sketches of St. Martin of Tours, A.D. 347-397; Ulphilas, the Apostle of the Goths, A.D. 341-388; St. Patrick, A.D, 432-493 and his followers; St. Augustine in England, A.D. 596-605; St. Boniface in Germany, A.D.. 716-755; Anschar, the Apostle of the North, A.D. 826-865; Adalbert, Missionary and Martyr amongst the Sclavonians, A.D. 983-987; Otto, the Apostle of Pomerania, A.D. 1124-1139; Raymund Lull, Philosopher, Missionary Martyr, A.D. 1291-1315; Francis Xavier, Missionary to the Indies and Japan, A.D. 1541-1552; Eliot, the Apostle of the Red Indians, A.D. 1646-1690; Hans Egede, the Apostle of Greenland, A.D. 1721-1758; and Christian Frederic Schwartz, A.D. 1750-1798. Thus, with the exception of the three last, a Congregationalist and two Lutherans, the latter employed by the Church of England, the whole belong to the Eastern or Western Church, and all did their work before the Reformation, except Xavier. The selection shows the breadth of sympathy and catholicity of spirit which pervades the volume, and is perhaps more likely to interest the general reader than illustrations of the missionary spirit chosen more largely from recent times. Many to whom modern names of missionary heroism are familiar will be pleased to meet fresh and genial glimpses of others of whom they may not yet have an equal knowledge. Bishop Walsh has done his work carefully, and with a judicial calmness of estimate which gives it a greater value than less discriminating writers secure. While there is a fine glow of Christian feeling there is a temperateness of judgment, and the sketches though necessarily brief are evidently the result of careful investigation of authorities. The Bishop's object, as stated by himself, "has been to exhibit the progress of the Christian Church from a missionary standpoint, and to show how the various nations and people of Christendom received their knowledge of the Christian faith." The desire not only to diffuse missionary information, but to enlist or increase the sympathies of a larger number in Christian missions, he tells us, has been his highest ambition in executing his task, and we cannot but think that it will be attained in not a few cases. Themistocles kindled his enthusiasm by looking at the trophies of Miltiades, and the heroic spirits of the rising generation may well rouse theirs by reading the doings of the heroes recorded in this volume.

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