The Press.
London, England, 1854-04-08 00:00:00

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the Western Church was the practical one, on which the
Bast looked almost with indifference, the origin and motive
principle of human action—grace and free will. T'nur, from
Augustine to Luther and Jansennur, was the. interminable,
still reviving problem. Latin Christian literature, like
Greek, might have seemed already to have passed its
meridian after Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and, high
above all, Augustine. The age of true Latin poetry, no
doubt, had long been over ; the imaginative in Christianity
could only find its expression to some extent in the legend
and in the ritual; but, except in a very few hymns, it was
not till out of the wedlock of Latin with the Northern
tongues, not till after new languages had been born in the
freshness of youth, that there were great Christian poets ;
poets not merely writing on religious subjects, but instinct
with the religious life of Christianity,—Dante, Ariosto,
Tasso, Shakspeare, Milton, Calderon, Schiller. But not
merely did Latin theology expand into another vast and
teeming period, that of the Schoolmen, culminating in
Aquinas ; but Latin being the common language, the clergy
the only learned body throughout Europe, it was that of
law, in both its branches; of science, of philosophy, even
of history; of letters; in short, of civilisation. Latin
Christianity, when her time was come, had her great sera
of art, not only as the preserver of the traditions of Greek
and Roman skill in architecture, and some of the technical
operations in sculpture and painting, but original and
creative. It was art comprehending architecture, painting,
sculpture, and music, Christian in its fullest sense, as
devoted entirely to Christian uses, expressive of Christian
sentiments, arising out of and kindling in congenial spirits
Christian thought and feeling.
Such is the theme of his present labour—
such is the fitting prelude to his profound and
deeply-interesting performance. Nor shall we
omit the passage in the introduction in which
he sketches the Teutonic Christianity that is
to form the subject of his future continua-
tion :
Latin Christianity maintained its unshaken dominion
until, what I venture to call, Teutonic Christianity, aided
by the invention of paper and of printing, asserted its
independence, threw off the great mass of traditionary
religion, and out of the Bible summoned forth a more
simple faith, which seized at once on the reason, on the
conscience, and on the passions of men. This faith, with
a less perfectly organised outward system, has exercised a
more profound moral control, through the sense of
strictly personal responsibility. Christianity became a vast
influence working irregularly on individual minds, rather
than a great social system, coerced by a central supremacy,
by an all-embracing spiritual control, and held together by
rigid usage, or by outward signs of common citizenship.
Its multiplicity and variety, rather than its unity, was the
manifestation of its life ; or rather its unity lay deeper in
its being, and consisted more in intellectualsympathies, in
affinities of thought and feeling, of principles and motives,
in a more remote or rather untraceable kindred through
the common Father and common Saviour. Ceremonial
uniformity seemed to retire into subordinate importance
and estimation. Books gradually became, as far as the
instruction of the human race, a co-ordinate priesthood
No longer rare, costly, inaccessible, or unintelligible, they
descended to classes which they had never before ap-
proached. Eloquence or argument, instead of expiring
on the ears of an entranced but limited auditory,addressed
mankind at large, flew through kingdoms, crossed seas,
perpetuated and promulgated themselves Wan incalculable
extent. Individual men could not but be working out in
their own studies, in their own chambers, in their own
minds, the great problems of faith. The primal records
of Christianity, in a narrow compass, passed into all the
vernacular languages of the world, where they could not
be followed by the vast, scattered, and ambiguous volumes
of tradition. The clergy became less and less a separate
body (the awakened conscience of men refused to be con-
tent with vicarious religion through them) ; they ceased to
be the sole arbiters of man's destiny in another life : they
sank back into society, to be distinguished only as the
models and promoters of moral and religions virtue, and
so of order, happiness, peace, and the hope of immortality.
They derived their influence less from a traditionary
divine commission, or vested authority, than from their
individual virtue, knowledge, and earnest, if less
authoritative, inculcation of divine truth. Monasticism
was rejected as alien to the primal religion of the Gospel;
the fitmily life, the life of the Christian family, resumed
its place as the highest state of Christian grace and perfec-
tion.
This progressive development of Christianity seems
the inevitable consequence of man's progress in know-
ledge, and in the more general dissemination of that
knowledge. Human thought is almost compelled to
assert, and cannot help asserting, its original freedom.
And as that progress is manifestly a law of human nature,
proceeding from the divine Author of our being, this self-
adaptation of the one true religion to that progress must
have the divine sanction, and may be supposed, without
presumption, to have been contemplated in the counsels of
Infinite Wisdom.
The full and more explicit expansion of these views on
this Avatar of Teutonic Christianity must await its proper
place at the close of our history.
There is felicity of style in the foregoing
remarks ; but some of our readers, trained in
a less modern school of expression, will see
something faulty in the indeterminate juxta-
position of "original freedom" and "progress"
along with a fixed and positive revelation. A
note highly characteristic of the Dean of
St. Paul's peculiar manner is subjoined to the
passage :
It is obvious that I use Christianity, and indeed
Teutonic Christianity, in its most comprehensive signifi-

THE PRESS.

cane, from national episcopal churches, like that of
England, which aspires to maintain the doctrines and
organisation of the apostolic, or immediately post-apostolic,
ages, onward to that dubious and undefinable verge where
Christianity melts into a high moral theism, a faith which
would expand to purer spirituality with less distinct
dogmatic system ; or that which would hardly call itself
more than a Christian philosophy, a religious rationalism.
I presume not, neither is it the office of the historian, to
limit the blessings of oar religion either in this world or
the world to come ; " there is one who will know his own."
As an historian I can disfranchise none who claim, even on
the slightest grounds, the privileges and hopes of
Christianity : repudiate none who do not place themselves
without the pale of believers and worshippers of Christ, or
of God through Christ.
This note smacks too much of the "li
beralised " theology which prevails in some
of the continental schools. Assuredly it
never can be within the province of a histo-
rian (or of any other human being) "to limit
" the blessings of our religion either in this
" world or in the world to come; " nor is it
within the ability of any writer to enfranchise
or "disfranchise." To register, to indicate, and
to recount, are faculties very different from
those grand privileges which the Dean of St.
Paul's would seem to claim for the historian.
The passage is hazy in its logic and nebulous
in its rhetoric, and is too sentimental for our
sober English school of thinking. It shows
too much toleration of those Rationalistic and
Unitarian thinkers who, with self-righteous-
ness in their hearts and Christianity on their
lips, have scarcely even a nominal right to be
counted by a historian amongst the supporters
of the religion of the Cross. But, in saying
this, we admit that in a work of this nature
we are not too rigorously to expect dogmatic
accuracy in every passage. Turning from these
considerations, we will proceed to exemplify
the general ability that characterises every
chapter. The aspect of Christianity after its
first five centuries of struggle is well portrayed
as the author approaches the narration of the
conversion of the Teutonic races :
Christianity within the Roman empire might seem en-
dangered in its vital existence by these ungenial inward
dissensions. Its lofty assertions that it came down from
heaven as a religion of peace—of peace to the individual
heart of man, as reconciling it with God, and instilling the
serene hope of another life—of peace which should in-
corporate mankind in one harmonious brotherhood, the
type and pre-establishment of the sorrowless and strifeless
state of beatitude—might appear utterly belied by the
claims of conflicting doctrines, on the belief, all declared
to be essential to salvation, and the animosities and bloody
quarrels which desolated Christian cities. Anathema
instead of benediction had almost become the general lan-
guage of the Church. Religious wars, at least rare in the
Pagan state of society, seemed now a new and perpetual
source of human misery—a cause and a sign of the weak-
ness and decay, and so of the inevitable dissolution, of the
Roman empire.
But Christianity had sunk into depths of the human
heart, unmoved by these tumults, which so fiercely agitated
the surface of the Christian world. Far below, less observed,
less visible in its mode of operation, though manifest in its
effects, was that profound conviction of the truth of the
Gospel, that infelt sense of its blessings, which enabled it
to pursue its course of conversion throughout the world, to
bring the Roman mind more completely under subjection,
and one by one to subdue the barbarian tribes which began
to overspread and mingle with the Greek and Latin popu-
lation of the empire. For Christianity had that within it
which overawed, captivated, enthralled the innate or at least
universal religiousness of mankind ; that which was suffi-
ciently simple to arrest by its grandeur the ruder bar-
barian, while, by its deeper mysteries, it led on the philo-
sophic and reflective mind through unending regions of
contemplation. It had its one Creator and Ruler of the
universe, one God, one Redeemer, one Spirit, under
which the ancient polytheism subsided into a subordinate
hierarchy of intermediate beings, which kept the imagi-
nation in play, and left undisturbed almost all the
hereditary superstitions of each race. It satisfied that
yearning after the invisible, which seems inseparable from
our nature, the fears and hopes which more or less vaguely
have shadowed out some future being, the fears of retri-
bution appeased by the promises of pardon, the hope of
beatitude by its presentiments of peace. It had its ex•
quisite goodness, which appealed to the indelible moral
sense of mankind, to the best affections of his being ; it
had that equality as to religious privileges, duties, and ad.
vantages, to which it drew up all ranks and classes, and
both sexes ( slaves and females being alike with others
under the divine care), and the abolition, so far, of the
ordinary castes and divisions of men; with the substitution
of the one distinction, the clergy and the laity, and perhaps
also that of the ordinary Christian and the monk, who
aspired to what was asserted and believed to be a higher
Christianity. All this was, in various degrees, at once the
manifest sign of its divinity, and the secret of its gradual
subjugation of nations at such different stages of civilisa-
tion. It prepared or found ready the belief in those
miraculous powers which it still constantly declared itself to
possess; and made belief not merely prompt to accept, but
creative of, wonder, and of perpetual preterhuman inter•
ference. Some special causes will appear which seemed
peculiarly to propitiate certain races towards Christianity,
while their distinctive character reacted on their own

SATURDAY,

Christianity, and through them, perhaps, on that of the
world.
The account of the Teutonic races, of the
spirit of their religion, and of their incorpora-
tion with Christianity, is perhaps the most
highly-finished portion of the first volume.
For didactic value, possibly the able disser-
tation on the Justinian code, with its vigorous
analysis and fulness of statement, will obtain
most approval. For biographic interest, the
account of Pope Gregory the Great is most
popular and generally attractive. We have
marked for extract several passages, but we
will close our present citations with the ac-
count of Pope Gregory:—
Times of emergency call forth great men—men at least
if not great in relation to the true intellectual, moral, and
spiritual dignity of man, great in relation to the state and
to the necessities of their age ; engrossed by the powerful
and dominant principles of their time, and bringing to the
advancement of those principles surpassing energies of cha-
raider, inflexible resolution, the full conviction of the wis-
dom, justice, and holiness of their cause in religious affairs,
of the direct and undeniable sanction of God. Such was
Gregory 1., to whom his own age and posterity have as-
signed the appellation of the Great.
Now was the crisis in which the Papacy, the only power
which lay not entirely and absolutely prostrate before the
disasters of the times—which had an inherent strength,
and might resume its majesty—the power which was most
imperatively required to preserve that which was to survive
out of the crumbling wreck of Roman civilisation, must
reawaken its obscured and suspended life. To Western
Christianity was absolutely necessary a centre, standing
alone. strong in traditionary reverence, and in acknowledged
claims to supremacy. Even the perfect organisation of
the Christian hierarchy might in all human probability
have fallen to pieces in perpetual conflict : it might have
degenerated into a half-secular feudal caste, with hereditary
benefices more and more entirely subservient to the civil
power, a priesthood of each nation or each tribe, and gra-
dually sinking to the intellectual or religious level of the
nation or tribe. On the rise of a power both controlling and
conservative, hung, humanly speaking, the life and death
of Christianity—of Christianity as a permanent, aggres-
sive, expansive, and, to a certain extent, uniform system.
There must be a counterbalance to barbaric force, to the
unavoidable anarchy of Tentonism, with its tribal, or at
the utmost national, independence, forming a host of small
conflicting, antagonistic kingdoms. All Europe had been
what England was under the Octarchy, what Germany was
when her emperors were weak ; and even her emperors
she owed to Rome, to the Church, to Christianity. Pro-
vidence might have otherwise ordained it, but it is impos-
sible for man to imagine by what other organising or con-
solidating force the commonwealth of the Western nations
could have grown up to a discordant, indeed, and conflict-
ing league, but still to a league, with that unity and con-
formity of manners, usages, laws, religion, which have
made their rivalries, oppugnancies, and even their long
ceaseless wars, on the whole to issue in the noblest,
highest, most intellectual form of civilisation known to
man. It is inconceivable that Teutonic Europe, or Europe
so deeply interpenetrated with Teutonisrn, could have been
condensed or compelled into a vast Asiatic despotism, or
succession of despotisms. Immense and interminable
as have been the evils and miseries of the conflict between
the southern and northern, the Teutonic and Roman, the
hierarchical and civil elements of our social system, out of
these conflicts has at length arisen the balance and har-
mony of the great states which constitute European
Christendom, and are now peopling other continents with
kindred and derivative institutions. It is impossible to
conceive what had been the confusion, the lawlessness, the
chaotic state of the middle ages, without the mediaeval
Papacy ; and of the mediaeval Papacy the real father is
Gregory the Great. In all his predecessors there was
much of the uncertainty and indefiniteness of a new do-
minion. Christianity had converted the Western world—
it had by this time transmuted it ; in all except the Roman
law, it was one with it. Even Leo the Great bad some-
thing of the Roman dictator. Gregory is the Roman alto-
gether merged in the Christian bishop. It is a Christian
dominion, of which be lays the foundations in the Eternal
City, not the old Rome associating Christian influence to
her ancient title of sovereignty.
The commencement of the foregoing pas-
sage has too much pleonasm; and the chief
literary fault that we have to remark in this
work is the want of conciseness in parti-
cular parts where Dean Milman's fluent pen
becomes too diffuse. From the peculiar struc-
ture of his style his tendency is to the ex-
pansive, and he should, therefore, be on his
guard against tautology. But such faults
are not of frequent occurrence, and they could
be easily amended in the second edition.
The incidents of the following extract will
always have great interest for all English
readers :
But a mind of such force and ability as Gregory's could
not be permitted to slumber in the holy quiet of a mo-
nastery. He himself began to comprehend that there were
higher religions avocations and nobler services to God.
He was still a monk of St. Andrew when that incident
took place which, by the divine blessing, led to the con-
version of our Saxon ancestors. The tale, though often
repeated, is too pleasing not to find a place here. In the
market-place of Rome Gregory saw some beautiful and
fair-haired boys exposed for sale. He inquired from whence
they came. From Britain." " Are they Christians ?"

APRIL 8, 1854.

" They are still Pagans." " Alas! that the Prince of Dark.
ness should possess forms of such !ovelineas! That such
beauty of countenance should want that better beauty of
the soul ! " He asked of what nation they were. " Angles "
was the reply. " Truly," he said, " they are angels! From
what province?" " That of Deira." " Truly they must be
rescued de ird" (from the wrath of God). " What is the
name of their king?" " "Yea," said Gregory,
" Alleluia must be sung in the dominions of that king."
To be the first missionary to this beautiful people, andwiu
this remote and barbarous island, like a Christian Caesar,
to the realm of Christ, became the holy ambition of Gregory.
His long• suppressed humanity burst forth in this new
channel. He extorted the unwilling consent of the Pope :
he had actually set forth, and travelled three days' journey,
when he was overtaken by messengers sent to recal him.
All Rome had risen in pious mutiny, and compelled the
Pope to revoke his permission.
We have examined both the second and
third of these volumes, and their merits sustain
our characterisation ; but the whole work is of
too great importance for us to discuss in one
notice, and we may return to it again for fur-
ther comments and extracts. Its literary
merits will secure for it general attention, as
they enhance the author's reputation ; but we
should not be surprised if particular inductions
in it failed to obtain the approval of a severer
school of theologians than that to which the
accomplished writer belongs.

PROPRIETIES OF LITERATURE.
The Autobiography of William Jerdan. With
his Literary, Political, and Social Reminis-
cences. Vol. IV. London : Hall, Virtue,
and Co. _ _ .

THE memoirs of Mr. Jerdan, desultory in their
nature and disappointing in their style, are
brought to a conclusion in the fourth volume.
As the work has been published by piecemeal,
and as it has for some time been before the
public, we are spared the necessity of criti-
cising it; and we are not sorry to be relieved
of that task in the case of a veteran journalist
whose age and misfortunes call for kindly
treatment. We shall avoid, therefore, com-
menting at all upon this work, especially as it
has been ushered into the world under "pecu-
liar circumstances." But we cannot omit
saying a few words on a social question of
considerable importance--namely, the assumed
right of literary men to make money by intro-
ducing personal details about the company in
which they mixed, while ostensibly mixing in
that society as private gentlemen.
In all that relates to himself we admit the
right of a literary man or an artist to record
the leading features of his own life, and put
money in his pocket by the sale of his auto
biography. But, though he may have a right
to be his own Boswell (and the exercise even
of that right is not without its perils), he
must take special care that he does not act as
the unsolicited biographer of his contempo-
raries. Sincerely desirous to see the profession
of letters respected, we feel that the calling of
literary men will justly be rendered obnoxious
to social prejudices if authors presume to go
into society with notebooks, ready to retail to
the public, for their personal gain, what they
may have heard and seen during " private "
intercourse. If it were required to make the
profession of literature disreputable, nothing
more would be needed than to sanction the
practice of letting loose upon society a pack of
unauthorised recorders of the sayings and
doings of eminent persons speaking and act-
ing on the supposition that no reporters were
present. Talebearers are in some respects
worse than talemakers. Facts of a purely per-
sonal nature when repeated are often far more
injurious than the tales of the fictionists, who
invent but do not record their stories. Mr.
Greedy Gossip, or Mrs. Tittle Tattle, accept
ing our invitations with a profusion of thanks,
and sitting to our tables while they are think-
ing all the time of Paternostenrow and making
our conversation marketable, are far greater
nuisances and infinitely more dangerous than
garrulous old Major Longbow at the mess-
table, or chattering Tom Rigmarole at the
club.
Of the peril to public character resulting
from diaryrnongers we have a most remarkable
instance in the case of Moore's Diary, singularly
exposed by that gallant nobleman whose decease
took place a few days since, the late Marquis 5
, of
Londonderry. Under date of June 6,182 a
calumny of the foulest kind was preserved by