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Nominalist school, denied all reality to ideas, to genera and species, to the essential forms of things, and called them empty words, as Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley have since done. Between these two schools appears Peter Abélard, a brilliant genius, rendered famous by the love of the noble Eloïsa, but of whom, morally considered, the only good thing we have to say is, that this noble and true-hearted woman loved him, and never ceased to love him, between these two schools, came, we say, Peter Abélard, and denied the reality of ideas, against the Realists; and that ideas are mere empty words, against the Nominalists; by asserting them to be conceptions of the mind. Here was philosophy, at once, placed on the point of leaving the study of the deep significance of things, to take up the study of our own mental phenomena, and, therefore, of having for its subject henceforth, not ontology, but psychology, and for its problem, not, What is? but, What do we conceive, or think, we know? This philosophy of Abélard, this Conceptualism, nobly withstood by William de Champeaux, St. Bernard, and the orthodox clergy of the time, nevertheless virtually prevailed, and it has penetrated to the foundation in the system of St. Thomas, which is even yet the approved philosophy of the church. Now, the least reflection will suffice to show, that Conceptualism leads directly to the study of the phenomena of our own souls, our internal affections, and therefore to the neglect of the objective and eternal verities of things. The neglect of these objective. and eternal verities, in which lies the profound significance of the church, its dogmas, and ritual, could not fail to obscure, and finally to obliterate from the minds. of even the best instructed, that sense itself. After the prevalence of this philosophy, this Conceptualism, the last word of which we have seen in the Critic der reinen Vernunft, no great theologian appeared. Theology, in fact, ceased to be studied; attention was soon almost wholly engrossed with ancient heathen literature, and philosophy, properly so called, was pretty much forgotten. The theological works, which

appeared, were mere excerpts from older works, or attempts to dilute and adapt the older and profounder works to the modern delicate tastes and weak stomachs.

The church, regarded as an institution, a visible organization, taken generally, became, in consequence of this and other causes coinciding and coöperating, a mere rind, or external husk or shell, from which the inner substance, the meat, was lost, or, at least, in which no substance, or meat, was seen, or suspected to exist. This is strikingly true, when we come down to the last century. We take the Church of England; it has become a mere auxiliary of the police, or a provision for gentlemen's younger sons. The qualification for a bishopric was, proverbially, to have edited a Greek play. Its doctrines, practically considered, dwindled. down to a meagre rationalism, and an eminent prelate was able to declare Christianity to be only "a republication of the law of nature." The sacraments no longer signify any thing, and the whole ritual has become an empty form, which the fox-hunting parson thinks quite too long. The morals, the devotion, the inner spiritual state of the communicants, we have described in the foregoing article, when speaking of the moral and religious tendency of the school of Locke. In the German Church, matters are no better. There is more learning, more mental activity, more diligent study; but no profounder thoughts, no nearer approach to the original sense of Christianity. The tendency to rationalism is still stronger; rationalism is systematized and avowed; Christianity is stripped of all its mysteries; all that cannot find entrance through the narrow aperture of a rationalist's mind, whether in history, in doctrine, or in discipline, is pared off, and this is called rendering Christianity intelligible, comprehending Christianity!

In Catholic countries, things go no better, if so well. His Holiness is a respectable old gentleman who resides at Rome; mild and amiable in his manners; learned, polite; corresponds with the philosophers; writes a

very agreeable letter to Voltaire, and can find it in his heart to reprove the arch-infidel for nothing but the false quantity of one of his verses. The more active of the educated classes are, openly or secretly, hostile to the church, and its dignitaries smile upon, and even fraternize with, the philosophes. Bergier and others, who defend it, do so in an apologetic tone, and on infidel principles. Theology becomes a branch of physics, and God is demonstrated by the telescope and scalpel, at least, till a Laland exclaims, "Je n'ai jamais vu Dieu au bout des mes lunettes.' Then a portion gave up God, and the remainder held their peace. In our own country, the outward form varies, but the spirit is the same. No theology, no profound philosophy, at best only passable psychology with a Jonathan Edwards; the church is not recognized, hardly even in name; to speak of its unity and catholicity is a scandal, and to intimate that Baptism and the Eucharist. mean somewhat, are not signs without significance, is to confess one's intimate relations with the Scarlet Lady of Babylon. So completely has all sense of the profound things of the church escaped us, that we define it, "a voluntary association of believers for religious purposes"; look upon the Eucharist as merely commemorative of departed worth; and perceive no shocking absurdity in hearing it asserted by the most numerous denomination amongst us, that the only proper subjects of Baptism are they who have already been regenerated! No wonder, then, that the great mass marvel why the church is here; are puzzled to make out what business it has to be here at all; look upon it as an old and useless ruin, respectable, perhaps, in the eyes of a few antiquaries, but serving only to harbour bats, owls, ravens, and other birds of ill omen; and to encumber the site which could be advantageously occupied by a cotton-mill, or a neat twostory dwelling-house, painted white, and ornamented with green Venetian blinds, or at best by a lyceum, a school-house, an anatomical or a chimical laboratory.

Now against this state of things, throughout all

The adver

Christendom, a reaction has commenced. sary, who, if possible, would deceive the very elect, has gone the length of his chain, and can no further; Michael descends again to chain the old serpent, the Dragon, that drew after him a third part of the stars of heaven; the man of sin is arrested; the sacred central fire, which was smothered, and which seemed for a time to the superficial to be extinguished, but which never ceased for a moment to burn in the heart of the church, is growing intenser, and begins to expand, and send its vital warmth towards the extremities, which for so long a time have been so cold and lifeless; churchmen begin to feel that they have wasted their substance in riotous living, that they have been feeding on husks, and are well-nigh starved; and, blessed be God! the memory of the long forgotten home returns, and they remember that in their Father's House there is bread enough and to spare, and they say to themselves, "We will arise and return to our Father's house." They remember that they have a Father, which for a long time they had forgotten. They feel that they need not be the lone, starving wanderers in a far country, fatherless, and desolate, which they have been. There is yet a HOME for them. The tendency is now everywhere to return, and find again this long deserted home. This is a glorious tendency, full of significance, and of hope. It is this tendency, which is represented by the Oxford divines; this is the significance of PUSEYISM. This is the significance of what a shallow Radicalism calls retrograde movements, now to be seen throughout the Christian world, in every communion, from the Roman down to our own Unitarian; and this is wherefore we hail these movements with hope, with joy, and with thanksgiving.

But it is precisely here, that we begin to feel a serious embarrassment. We would return home; where is this home? Of these numerous buildings I see, which is my Father's dwelling? The tendency, we have said, is to unity and catholicity, and that, not merely in a

refined metaphysical sense, but in the sense of outward form and institution, as well as of inward spirit and feeling. The tendency is no longer to Quakerism, the only respectable tendency. the religious mind has felt since the disruption of the church in the sixteenth century. Men cannot feed on air, or live in utter nakedness. They demand unity and catholicity of faith, polity, and discipline. Then, amid all these rival institutions, these fragmentary churches so-called, into which the body of our Lord has been broken, which is the true Catholic Apostolic Church? This is the question, and it is one, disguise it as we will, which cannot but embarrass, for a time, the sincere and earnest inquirer. Here I am, I have run through nearly the whole circle of the sects, in pursuit of a home, seeking rest and finding none. The tendency of the age, the Christian Welt-geist, has, at length, taken fast hold of me; I have come to believe in the one Holy Catholic Apostolic Church, and to see and feel the need of a one temple, and a single altar, to which all the tribes of Israel may repair. But where shall I go? With which of the numerous communions shall I seek fellowship, as the condition of being in the true church, and, therefore, in the way of salvation? The Roman communion? and, by so doing, declare it to be my solemn belief, that salvation is absolutely unattainable in the Greek Church, the Arminian Church, the Anglican Church, the Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Congregational Church, the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church? No. I cannot do this. Say, then, the Anglican, or any one of the others, and the same question follows. If I can be saved without joining one of these communions, then no good reason can be assigned, why I should seek to join any one of them; if I can be saved in any one of them, then is there no just ground for preferring one to another. But, in joining any one, I do say, if I know what I do, that I not only prefer one to all the rest, but that I hold that it, of all, is the only one in which salvation is possible, and that out of that there is no salvation I cannot, therefore, seek fellowship with one,

for me.