The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-06 00:00:00

The Religious Controversy of our Age.

Within the last quarter of a century an extraor-
fainary animation has been evidenced, now in this
country now in that, but more particularly amongst
ourselves, in the diffusion, the maintenance, and
the general development of Religious Controversy.
Belief and Unbelief, within the interval just named,
have been not only very frequently in direct colli-
sion, but all the while they have been assiduously and
energetically working, each in its own way andquite
irrespectively the one of the other. As illustrative of
the intensity of the intellectual warfare now more
especially alluded to, we would here very briefly
recall to mind a number of hitherto scattered, but—
us will be seen upon the instant, we conjecture,
when they have been once brought into juxtaposi-
tion —wonderfully significant particulars. The
Spectacle presented to view, indeed, upon our
taking the merest casual glance of retrospection
down the vista of this last past quarter of a century,
is one indicative of so great a ferment and agitation
of Religious Opinion in Western Europe, but more
especially in England, that it will be found to have
extended, upon the one hand, to the wildest extra-
vagances of fanaticism and, upon the other, to the
deadliest blasphemies of infidelity. Yonder, on the
right hand—raving, shrieking, foaming at the mouth,
as if in what is spoken of in Holy Writ as actual
possession by the devil—appear the Revivalists.
Yonder upon the left—cynically sneering at the belief
of millions upon millions, of many successive gene-
rations, of philosophic intellects as profound and
comprehensive as those of Blaise Pascal and Isaac
Newton, of hearts as pure and gentle as those of
Jeremy Taylor and Thomas a Kempis—appear that
over-abundant, self-sufficient throng made up of the
Deistical,Atheistical,Materialistic, so-called Logical,
soi-disant Rationalist writers of this Nineteenth
Century ! Scoffers at the day-dream (as it seems to
them) of Revelation—deriders of the fantasy of a
hereafter—mockers at the notion of a soul—men
tracing back the origin of the human race to an ape—
laughing to scorn the Divinity of Christ—denying
even the existence of a God.

Within the comparatively brief interval of the last
half century, indeed, what extravagances of all
kinds—old ones revived, new ones, bran new ones,
freshly invented—have we not witnessed ? The
mesmeric agency of yesterday has ripened into the
odic force of to-day. Materialism has been running
its career meanwhile cheek-by-jowl with a some-
thing-or-another, vulgarly known as. Spiritualism.
A Spiritualism so petty, and utterly contemptible,
and impish in its manifestations that its loftiest
achievements have been but as the fabled feats of
Puck or Robin Goodfellow.
Table-turning, spirit-rapping, tying and untying
knotted cords in the dark—writing in the name of
Shakspere and with the orthography of a kitchen-
maid—twanging the strings of a guitar with aerial
fingers about as musically dexterous as those of a
street banjo-player—behold ! the achievement's of
that preposterous science affecting to open up to the

world through the intervention of some illiterate
Medium, direct communication—visible, audible,
even (save the mark !) tangible communication—with
the awful Spirit-World.
Meanwhile, in the loftier regions of philosophy
what have not modern inquirers been resorting
to, as in the instance of Mr. Darwin—what have
they not been rising or falling to, what, at any
rate let us say, have they not been wandering to-
wards, by many devious tracks, as in such instances
as those of M. Comte, of Mr. Mill, and of Pro-
fessor Huxley. Mr. Darwin's theory is, after all, in
point of fact, nothing more than La Marck's theory,
the once famous Lamarckian theory redivivus—the
theory of development Mr. Mill's logic, again,
while it would lead his disciples to regard mankind
at large as little better than amiable repeti-
tions or reduplications of the Monster in " Franken-
stein," has resulted, in his own instance, in landing
him, from the outside sea of politics, as a bore of the
very first magnitude, within the walls of the British
House of Commons. Professor Huxley for his
part would fain indnce us, if he could, to re-
gard the whole universe as presenting to view
—as clearly as we can put it in words—a
maze of chemical and mechanical phenomena,
originating, as precisely as may be conjectured,
in the Unknown and Unknowable! M. Comte mean -
while having already, in his time, with the matchless
audacity of a French metaphysical theorist, subli-
mated all the philosophies and all the religions of
preceding ages—Christian, Pagan, Heretical, and
Schismatical—into his own transcendental creed,
science, dogma, or whatever else we may like to
call it—now familiarly known the wide world over
by the name, style, or title of Positivism.
As a little episode or interlude among the grander
and more audacious speculations of intellectual
giants like Auguste Comte and Stuart Mill, it may
be remembered, again, that while Thomas Carlyle
was oracularly issuing to his fellow-men his series of
" Latter Day Pamphlets" (whatever that title may
have meant), there appeared, to the shuddering
marvel of the ordinary run of believers, a terribly
cold-blooded deistical Dialogue demonstrative, or,
at any rate, designed to be demonstrative, of such
heartening truths (!) as these that human emo-
tions and human affections are nothing better
after all, than—let us say by way of homely illus-
tration—the electric thrill that can be produced upon
the palate, by bringing together the edges of a zinc
and silver disc placed the one above the other below
the tongue—a deadly deistical Dialogue, maintained
between Miss Harriet Martineau, that archetype or
highest exemplar of your strong-minded woman

and a congenial male disputant, by name
Mr. Atkinson. It may be remembered, moreover,
by those who still retain any recollection at all of
that ephemeral publication—ephemeral even though
emanating partly from the usually vivifying intelli-
gence of Harriet Martineau—that the preposterous
non-sequitur arrived at, •as the result of that ques-
tionably philosophic argument, was happily hit off
at the time by the exquisitely paradoxical witticism
—expressive in point of fact of the whole drift of
the Dialogue—_

" There is no God—and Atkinson is His Prophet !"

Somewhere about the same time that Mr. Atkinson
and Miss Martineau were • thus confabulating in
a stage whisper (audible all over the land) about
the infinitudes that, according to them, were really
little better than a vacuum, and about the eterni-
ties that, contemplated through their judgment,
were of no more worth, when all had been said and
done, than the single throb of a pendulum—there
appeared a now famous book entitled " The Vestiges
of Creation." A book modestly given to the world
by an anonymous searcher into the Mysteries of
Comogony, a writer of most picturesque style and
of singularly vivid imagination, in regard to the prob-
lem of whose identity all sorts of conjectures were
for a long while indulged in—fastening at one time
on Lord Byron's daughter, Ada, the late Countess of

has been sentimentalised in point of fact through
the more recently published " Life of Christ," that
Vie de Jesus of the speculative Frenchman—has
been absolutely sentimentalised into a more familiar
profanity by the tender imaginings and emotional
eloquence of Renan.
And all the while the religious ferment going on
around was such, was so conspicuously manifested in
various ways amongst ourselves, that not only were
the Spirit-Rappers holding their seances with
the aid of their money-fingering Mediums in one
direction, while the Revivalists were holding their
frantic and fanatical assemblies in another,
but in various forms the devotional fervour
of the age was revealing itself, by new
and unaccustomed manifestations of ardour
in the popular belief, both within and without the
Church Establishment. What has since acquired
for itself the incongruous title of Muscular Chris-
tianity found at the very outset in the Rev. Charles
Kingsley and his sympathisers able, and, in many
respects, brilliant exponents. The philosophic
party looked to Professor F. W. .Newman
for guidance—whither it would, perhaps, be diffi-
cult to conjecture ! The gentle, heartening, cordial
influence of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, was
commemorated gently, cordially, hearteningly
by the now member for Lambeth in his first
and most delightful story, the book known to us all
as" Tom Brown's School Days." The "Religion
of Common Life" was, in another direction, des-
canted upon in a charming sermon by the Rev.
John Caird, thus virtually memorable as the
author of one sermon—for, while he may have writ-
ten many others, that one alone of his has attained
anything at all like popularity: so that we may
really in this way speak of him as virtu-
ally the author of one sermon, as Beckford was
the author of one romance and Hamilton of one
solitary speech in the House of Commons. The

Rev. Mr. Maurice, elsewhere, by word of mouth,

enforced and endorsed most persuasively the
growing unbelief as to the Eternity of Punish-
ment. The Rev. Frederick Robertson, with the
air and nature of a knightly gentleman, charmed
his hearers, day by day, week upon week, year after
year, over the pulpit cushion, first in Cheltenham,
afterwards at Brighton, until he was prematurely
prostrated by consumption in that grave of his which
is still looked back to wistfully by a throng of loving
admirers. The Rev. Dr. Cumming, again, on his part,
while disdaining to " deal damnation round the
land" like so many an earlier Boanerges, as a means
for rousing an indifferent generation to some better
sense of the necessity there is for religious zeal,
certainly strove to—
" Fright the isle from its propriety,"
with the most pertinaciously reiterated and Moore's-
almanack-like predictions of the advent of the
Great Day of Retribution. As Solomon Eagle,
during the Plague of London, is related to have
gone about the streets stark-naked, carrying a
burning chaldron of coals upon his head, and cry-
ing aloud that the Day of Judgment was at hand,
Dr. Cumming, clad in sober broadcloth and
scattering from his hand shoals of prophetic pam-
phlets and sermons, went hither and thither all over
the country, during several years, until people got
tired of the monotony of his non-fulfilled pre-
dictions, announcing to us again and again the
same appalling catastrophe. So persistently in
point of fact, and pertinaciously did he persevere in
thus writing and in thus speaking —after the manner
of those whOm it has become the familiar slang of
our day to designate Sensationalists, that we have
a distinct recollection of having, but a very few years
since, seen the walls of the city of Bath placarded
conspicuously with a wonderfully consolatory
announcement to the effect, that for some . rea-
son, now forgotten, probably the unexpected en-
gagement of the popular preacher and lecturer
elsewhere—" The Last Day," meaning by that the
delivery of Dr. Cumming's then anticipated discourse
upon the subject, was unexpectedly nut off, or—as
the posters read at a little distance—
THE LAST DAY
UNAVOIDMILY POSTPONED !
Turning point blank from the Terrible to the
Humorous—we might almost say taking the one
step that proverbially separates the Sublime from the
Ridiculous—Mr. Spurgeon, in a very different mood
indeed from that within the range of Dr. Cumming's
philosophy, contrived somehow to charm others than
the Tozers who thronged around him by his extraordi-
nary combination of unctuous devotional enthusiasm
and racy facetiOusness. Accomplishing his object
after a very different fashion, again the Rev. Mr.
Boyd,better-known under his initial title(A. K. H. B.)
as a magazine contributorand miscellaneous essayist,
has enabled us to become pleasantly conscious
of how the more delicate, not to say the more
seemly and befitting humour of a clergyman,
discoursing through his pen rather than from his
pulpit, might cultivate in the interests if not of re-
ligion at any rate of kindly Christian fellowship,
the amenities of literature, of popular, even of
the lightest, of light literature. Finally, upon the
appearance of Dr. Colenso, the Bishop of Natal,
(bearing in his hands his Commentaries upon the
Pentateuch) we beheld a new and wholly un-
looked-for importance attached to the incre-
dulity of those who had been so long examining
with cynical and depreciating eyes the venerable
records of the Holy Scriptures. Examining one by
one the astounding arguments put forth by that
Right Reverend Arithmetician, who found in the
the person of a captious Zulu, a darker and wiser
Gamaliel, it was, as though we were watching the
researches of one who was complacently and with a
sublime self-confidence undertaking to measure
the depths of infinitude with a two-foot rule.
But, all the while, in the midst of this varied
and widely contrasting religious agitation, in the very
thick and throng of so much sincerity, affectation,
passionate enthusiasm, and frivolous pretence—out
of all this wonderful jumble of piety and profanity--
out of the astounding confusion of this age of
Mesmerism and Mormonism, of Spiritualists and
Revivalists, of systematic deriders of Revela-
tion and pretentious interpreters of the Apocalypse,
there has been growing ap, gradually, almost im-
perceptibly—growing up as some stately fir tree
might grow from among—
Agarics, and fungi, and mildew, and mould
pointing ever more and more directly heavenward
—a Religious Controversy of a very notable kind, a
Controversy in which the disputants are among the
most earnest, the most gifted, and the most honoured
we d
amongst
o pn o t theirioglrseea7t mass of contemporary Thinkers
and Believers. Into the merits of this controversy
here, of course, in any way, even
partially or indirectly, to 7 adventure.: Our intention,
our one wish in the matter, being simply to afford by
the sequential enumeration
ntly
sometimes, the works (books
pamphlets more f reque) that have
been elicited, now from one
side now from another—
some
more accurate notion of the growth and de-
velopment of this same controversy which has so
rapidly sprung up—now in one shape from an
apparently frivolous Taunt, now in another from
a purely incidental Comment—to its present (to
say the least of it) very appreciable magnitude.

Lovelace, but eventually settling down, resolutely,
and we believe with reason, upon Mr. Robert
Chambers, the well-known publisher of Edinburgh,
as the real Simon Pure, the author of the Dis-
quisition.
Subsequently, indeed some considerable time after-
wards' the
and
speculations thus indulged in by
geological
if astronomical inquirers with a view
to the solution, if of some at least among
the countless
cluster of
the Physical Universe
were applied by a
regarded as orthodox
lnenkrb:f
it might
the Church Esta-
blishment, to the investigations °
rouf traobinel 0 1
ot g y .
human rea-
to the elucidation, by the sheermoreeitiosfe
larys_
soning, of some among the far
terics of the auguster and diviner science
Their labours in this way resulting in the
well-known " Essays and
,I:,eviews"—the AY rityerr of
which thereby immediately acquired for themselves
the title, still current, of Essayists and Reviewers. Dr.
Whewell at Cambridge and Sir David Brewster in
Scotland, might, if they so pleased, keep up the ball of
conjecture between them as to the existence or the
non-existence of other worlds peopled like our own
by intelligent beings. The Essayists and Reviewers
aimed higher than that and further than that—
immeasurably. They were bent upon looking
into the abysses of light without any fear at all
apparently of being blinded by the over-brightness.
Their endeavour was to sift and analyse to their very
uttermost the dogmas hitherto accepted with reve-
rent and believing confidence. The Eternity of

Punishment, for example, they were prepared to The Tat tnt--flung out, to all appearance quite at
argue out as a problem admitting of logical solution random. , by Mr. Kingsley, through the pages of
in many ways—among others, almost, it might be Macmillan's Magazine—resulted in Dr. Newman's
said, through the Theory of Probabilities. So reso- " Apol, ogia." The Comment—penned seemingly
lutely, indeed, and persistently were the pros with th, e utmost possible deliberation by Dr. Manning
and cons thus bandied to and fro between —ledto the production of Dr. Pusey's " Eirenicon"
them, that the solution of that awful problem was and of those other already numerous publications
at last to fall from oracular lips, from the lips of the which the appearance of the " Eirenicon" has very
keeper of the Queen's conscience (and of the con- rapidly and very recently elicited.
siences, we are to presume, of course, of her Majesty's Referring, for a moment, to the origin of the
lieges into the bargain), the occupant of the Wool- earlier of the -two famous works but just now
sack, the Lord High Chancellor of England ! mentioned, naa nely, Dr. Newman's " Apologia"—
Dignitaries of the Church might argue— (and reserving until afterwards a similar passing
Convocation might hold its sittings—Orders in reference to -the origin of Dr. Pusey's " Eireni-
-1 Council might be issued—but the Lord Chancellor con")—it should be remarked here at once that
spoke and Eternal Punishment was abolished, all the particulars as to the circumstances under
The rage thus setting in, the fashion it might al- which it was called forth are to be found in
, most be termed, of doubts the most astounding in re- a little pamphlet of 34 pages octavo, entitled—
gard to the validity of Revelation, advanced and ex- A Correspondence on the Question whether Dr.
113 anded. Herr Strauss of Tubingen found in M. Newman teaches that Truth is no Virtue—
, Renan of Paris a congenial disciple and an (Longman). A pamphlet written throughout
i impassioned successor as the biographer of with all the clearness and precision of that almost
% Him whom between 300,000,000 and 400,000,000 peerless master of our language. It comprises
%of Christians still to this day—in spite of M. Renan within it (this pamphlet)—besides a fragmen-
. and of Herr Strauss—regard with love and adora- tary passage quoted from • a Review of
tion as their Redeemer and their God. The Froudo's " History of England," in Macmil-
' cynical incredulity of Strauss, it may be said, lan's Magazine, a review signed C.K., and
_

written in reality by the Rev. Charles Kingsley—
ten letters, the purport of which was thereupon, at
the close of the Correspondence, set forth or
analysed in a few sentences of inimitable
humour, presenting to us, within the compass of
two printed pages, a perfect masterpiece of irony.
What, then, Does Dr. Newman Mean? A Reply
to a Pamphlet lately published. By the Rev.
Charles Kingsley. (Macmillan)—Was the bold and
lengthened, if not exhaustive rejoinder, issued with
all convenient speed, by the Rector of Eversley.
The original taunt had been—(who can have
forgotten it?)—that Dr. Newman was, so far,
like the Father of Lies, that he taught lying upon
system—inculcating that truth not only never had
been a virtue with the clergy of his Church, but
need not be, and, on the whole, ought not to be.
Challenged to make good these statements, by the
naming of page and volume in which any such atro-
cious opinions had ever been expressed by Dr. New-
man,the reverend reviewer, having failed to make good
his assertion, widened the field of argument and, by
so doing, led unconsciously to the production of what
observers on all sides recognised upon the instant,
and must always recognise, as a masterpiece
of subtle, refined, and profoundlyphilosophic intro-
spection. This same masterpiece being the—
Apologia Pro Vita Sua: Being a Reply to a
Pamphlet, &c. By John Henry Newman,
D.D. (Longman). —A work published origi-
nally in a periodical form at uncertain inter-
vals, until its instalments, eight in number,
including the appendix, amounted to the size of a
goodly octavo volume. Later on, upon its revision
in a second edition, this famous work, a work that
we are fain to regard as the magnum opus of the
Author of " Callista," of "Loss and Gain," and of so
many other notable, and some of them very noble
productions, including among these, the most
recent of them all, the haunting poem, en-

titled, " The Dream of Gerontius "—has been re-

named : the "Apologia," now appearing as the—
History of my Religious Opinions. By John
Henry Newman, D.D. (Longman).—A Confidence
such as the world has seldom if ever had, one admit-
ting us to the core of the heart so to speak—to the
very sanctuary of the conscience—of a fellow mortal
the whole passion of whoselife manifestly has been a
hungering search after that very Truth the eliciter
of the " Apologia " inconsiderately declared him to
have absolutely repudiated.
The foregoing discussion, while, as must have
been apparent, it was in a manner purely acci-
dental in its origin, was also obviously and
essentially, from its very outset, one of a sim-
ply personal character. It rose into importance,
however, by reason of the genius of the man who
had been thus conspicuously arraigned at the Bar
of Public Opinion ; and who, while scattering into
nothingness charges that he, upon first hearing of
them, instantly proclaimed to be slanderous, signally
availed himself of the opportunity thereby afforded,
in the mere process of his self-vindication, of opening
to view for once that window in the human breast
which had been dreamt of and pined for by the
pagan philosopher. The bearing of the argument
involved in the first unconsidered taunt thrown out
by the Author of " Hypatia," and in the consequent
" Apologia pro vita sua " which that taunt elicited
with such astounding swiftness from Dr. Newman,
was only one which became wider and wider by the
sheer force of implication. The personality, in
other words, that had been dropped like a pebble
into still water, spread in its effect wider and wider
by implication upon implication. Insomuch that
the one apparently isolated accusation involving
within it, as it proved to do upon examination, a
whole congeries or ganglionic cluster of correlative
it might perhaps rather be said of congenital accu-
sations —accusations affecting, in truth, the character
of a whole church rather than the consistency of
an individual necessitated, in the repudia-
tion of that one first charge, the laying bare
of the entire inner history of the religious opinions
of the eminent man who had been thus assailed
without the smallest provocation. Hence, indeed,
the extraordinary interest, value, and importance
attached to the " Apologia" thus called forth by so
trivial an accident, by such a series of trivial acci-
dents-*—such accidents, let us say, as an incidental
illustration introduced almost parenthetically into
his argument by a magazine reviewer, an observation
pencil-marked in the margin of the magazine-
page by somebody or other (no one knows by whom)
and sent by this happily officious somebody through
the book-post to Dr. Newman's address at the Ora-
tory in Birmingham.
Another and a very different Religious Contro-
versy—already referred to by us as having been
kindled by a Comment of Dr. Manning's—we would
now briefly particularise. A controversy involving
within it no personalities whatever, and springing up,
almost we might say in the natural course of things,
certainly in no way either abruptly or unexpectedly.
The Workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church of
England. Bvo., pp. 45 (Longman)—A letter ad-
dressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., by Henry
Edward Manning, D.D., was the spark that fired
the train, was in plainer words, the calm, but potent
signal for the Religious Controversy that has since
then been aroused. It was a summons spoken, al-
most we might add, sotto voce, but it was one that
upon the instant awakened echoes far and wide,
echoes of which we are still hearing the reverbera-
tions. The Church of England a Portion:of Christ's
Holy Catholic Church and a Means of Restoring
Vital Unity : AN EIRENICON. By E. B. Pusey,
D.D. (Parker).—Was the answer vouchsafed,
after much consideration, to the newly-installed
Catholic Archbishop of Westminster by his friend and
associate of former days, the veteran Regius Professor of
Hebrew at Oxford. Ostensibly, it was addressed to the au-
thor of " The Christian Year." But, in talking to Mr.Keble
the author of the "Eirenicon" was unmistakably talking
at Dr. Manning. His pamphlet, or rather volume, of the
"Eirenicon" was formally offered, in point of fact, to the
public by the booksellers as—Dr. Pusey's Reply to Dr.
Manning ! An "Eirenicon" was the conciliatory and
poetical name given to it by its author, but it was
an Eirenicon flung with such a will into the op-
posing camp, the camp that it was intended (ac-
cording
to its own account) to win by conciliation,
rather than to conquer by force, that it was spoken
of by one of its ablest reviewers as a work that '
was—" to one an olive branch of peace ; to the other a
firebrand." Otherwise—as Dr. Newman himself has since
wittily expressed it—it is an olive branch hurled from a
catapult ! However regal dod, it was so far satisfactory, upon
all hands, as au utterance. The silence of a score years
was at length broken, It was a distinct declaration, or
manifesto, or what the Spaniards call a pronunciamonto.
Roused like a warrior at the sound of the trumpet, Dr.
Pusey answered the summons of Archbishop Manning, and
has thus fairly entered once more into the arena of Religious
Controversy—ready to give an account of the faith that is
in him—prepared to receive blows or to administer them—
being to that end, armed cap a pie, both defensively and offen-
sively. Ilistorical Notes on the Tractarian Movement. By
the Very Rev. Frederick Oakeley. (Longman).—ls the title
of a contemporary publication that has minutely related in
a compendious and popular form the various phases, the
growth and development, the commencement and the
conclusion of that period of extraordinary controversial
excitement which extended over an interval of two-and-
twenty years in its duration. The Tractarian Movement
(proper) had begun, in effect, as far back as 1833, and
was only in a manner brought to an abrupt oonclusion
in 1845. Then another movement of a congenial kind

commenced, though not one that could, strictly speak-
ing, be accurately defined as any longer tractarian. The
Tracts had for some time ceased altogether by reason
of their repudiation collectively and still more by reason
of the express condemnation (authoritatively)—upon the
dictum of the abdomidal Board—of Tract Ninety. Another
and a perfectly congenial movement, we say, was there-
upon in 1845, so to speak evolved or superinduced out
of the old and now historical movement, which was con-
ducted so assiduously, as we have seen, during a period of
two-and-twenty years by the Tractarians. Appearing
companionably with the "Notes " of the Rev. F. Oakeley,
there has been recently issued moreover from the press
with the readily-granted consent of Dr. Newman himself
a reprint from the stereotyped Fourth Edition of
Tract Ninety; on Certain Passages of the Thirty-nine Ar-
ticles. By the Rev. J. H. Newman, B D., 1841. (Parker.)
A reprint preceded by a Historical Preface of peculiar
interest, penned during last Advent (1865) by the Rev. E.
B. Pusey, D.D.; and followed up by a letter addressed to
Mr. Justice Coleridge in 1841 by the Rev. John Keble,
—one who is honoured and, by very many, beloved
also as the author of " The Christian Year,"— a com-
munication widely circulated at the time (privately)
but never before published. Aided by the combined
light thus afforded, in one direction by the vivid
retrospect of Mr. Oakeloy, and in another by the
lucubration (illustrative of the bearing of Tract XC)*
penned in 1841 by Mr. Keble, and in 1865 by Dr. Pusey
himself—the reader of to-day can now appreciate more
accurately than might otherwise have been practicable,
the force, influence, and tendency of that even yet
bolder religious argument of now-a-days, the original
source of which may be traced back to the movement set
on foot so many years ago by the Tractarian Controver-
sialists. Stepping into the lists, as it were, and
there accepting the gauge which had been flung
down to him in all knightly courtesy by his archi-
episcopal ] challenger, the Regius Professor of He-
brew at Oxford forthwith frankly responded to Dr.
Manning's summons, as we have seen by the publication of
his "Eirenicon"—to which formal declaration of his
opinions, of more than his opinions—of his dearest hopes
and fondest aspirations—he has received already in his
turn many and some among them very notable, replies.
The Leading Topics of Dr. Pusey's Recent Work. By the
Very Rev. Frederick Oakeley, M.A. (Longman)—assumes,
in a manner by right the foremost place among the answers
thus vouchsafed to Dr. Pusey, not only rapidly, but in very
truth con amore, for it is especially noticeable that there is
no sign in any way discernible upon either side of anger or
even irritation in the development of these recent discus-
sions. It assumes this foremost place, moreover not
only by right of priority, but also and in a particular
manner by reason of its being in some sense the vicari-
ous answer given to Dr. Pusey's "Eirenicon" by the
Challenger himself. It was, in point of fact, according to
the very announcement upon the titlepage, that "Eirenicon"
itself "Reviewed in a Letter addressed (by permission) to
the Most Rev. H. E. Manning, D.D.," by Canon Oakeley.
It is true that at the bottom of the very first page of this
pamphlet in reply to " The Eirenicon," the author took
great care to premise that the dignitary of his Church
to whom it was addressed, had in it no other responsi-
bility than such as might be implied by the fact of its
-having thus appeared with his knowledge and approbation.
Still, the responsibility was thus implied by the very inti-
mation of its appearing under those circumstances. And
hence (so far) the reply of Mr. Oakeley was virtually the
anticipatory response of the Archbishop himself, was at
any rate the indication beforehand of what • since then
have been Dr. Manning's own avowed opinions and senti-
ments in regard to the drift and tendency of "The Eireni-
eon." The Register's Review of Dr. Pusey's Work: Reprinted
in Bvo. pp. 36 (George Cheek) —ls, in many respects, worthy
of remembrance and of preservation among the brochures
issued from the press, now by one, now by another, of the
more noteworthy disputants. And it is worthy of
this consideration not merely by reason of its intrinsic
value as a candid resume of the arguments advanced
by Dr. Pusey in his doubtless well-meant but wholly
and utterly impracticable project for the negotiation of
a compromise. For, after all, it really does amount to that
—to the suggestion of a compromise where a compro-
mise is clearly altogether out of the question! But
it is of yet further importance and value in the furtherance
and development of this remarkable Religious Contro-
versy, because of its having elicited—this able review
of the Eirenicon in the Register--two very important let-
ters from Dr Pusey himself, in further illustration of the
eagerness of his hopes in regard to the Reunion of the
Churches : and together with these two letters, others also
from Dr. Newman and Canon Oakeloy. A correspondence
that altogether imparts to this pamphlet-reprint of the criti-
cism a very appreciable value and importance. Two other
answers, however, have yet more recently been accorded to
" The Eirenicon" which have not failed to eclipse in
interest and attraction all other criticisms or commen-
taries, especially such as were purely anonymous.
A Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., on his Recent
Eirenicon. By John Henry Newman, D.D. Bvo., pp. 159.
(Longman).—May be described as a direct response, as the
other (afterwards to be particularised) may ba defined as
an indirect response to "The Eirenicon," or reply simply by
implication. From Dr. Newman's answer to Dr. Pusey we
have already quoted the remark that the latter's " Eireni-
con" was, after all, but little better than:an olive branch
flung from a catapult. According tan expression put forth
in the current number of .Macmillan—a magazine which
still, by the way, very shabbily persists (in spite of the
Apologia)in paradoxically taunting Dr. N ewman with a sort
of honest unveracity—the Rejoinder,to "The Eirenicon" is
as a shaft from a silver bow ! In style it is as perfect as
anything that Dr. Newman has ever written. Its main
purpose might be described as a vindication, not simply of
its author, but of the whole mass of his co-religionists
from the charges known, in their fearful aggregate, as the
imputation of Mariolatry. Those charges, numbering them
all up, one by one, in language painfully clear and distinct
—and so numbering them up manifestly with a very shud-
der of abhorrence—Dr. Newman sweeps aside as accusa-
tions that are to him simply incomprehensible and revolt-
ing. "Sentiments such as these," he says, " I never knew
of till I read your book, nor, as I think, do the vast ma-
jority of English Catholics know them." Nay, more—
" They seem to me," he exclaims, " They worn to me like a
bad dream!" So repugnant does he declare them to be to
his very soul and conscience. The Reunion of Christendom:
a Pastoral Letter to the Clergy, &c. By Archbishop Man-
ning, Bvo. pp. 113. (Longman)—ls the indirect, or implied,
response to Dr. Pusey's " Eirenicon" already referred to as
having emanated from the successor of Cardinal Wiseman as
head of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in England—from
that very dignitary, in point of fact, to whose courteous, oven
it might be said, courtly challenge to Dr. Pusey the production
by the latter of his "Eirenicon" is directly attributable.
This same Pastoral of Archbishop Manning's, by the
way, is in truth quite manifestly the mere application or
enforcement of the views set forth by the same eminent
hand—only it should be added with more elaboration,
and it might even be said With more deliberation, in
that work of his immediately preceding it The
Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost,
or Reason and
Revelation. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westmin-
ster (Longman) -A Treatise that, regarded simply in the
light of a theological exposition, assumes to itself a
weight and an importance that even here in England are
ungrudgingly recognised and admitted. It is but another
evidence, though probably among them all by far the most
remarkable, of the industry, of the enthusiasm even, with
which Archbishop Manning manifestly has undertaken to
acquit himself of the responsibilities devolving upon him
in his capacity as Cardinal Wiseman's successor, as the
hierarchical head, that is, of the Roman Catholic body hero
in England. Not very long prior to the demise of his
predecessor, he had discussed in a wholely uncompro-
mising spirit no doubt, but with singular precision and
distinctness in the enunciation of his views, one of the
most delicate and complicated problems of our day,
a problem still requiring a definitive solution either
one way or other in the very heart of Christendom.
The Temporal Power of the Pope, by H. E. Manning, D.D.
(Burns)—Was the title of the recent disquisition, in which
that same most delicate and complicated problem was
calmly, and by reason of its very calmness, almost, it might
be said, irritatingly taken into consideration. However alien
to English hearts were the sentiments, or rather the con-
victions, therein expressed, it was impossible not to re-
spect convictions so outspokenly and uncompromisingly
avouched. We who, as a lettered community, had
come long since to know by heart, as it were, that magni-
ficent eulogium of Lord Macaulay's—all things considered
perhaps the noblest passage ever penned by that great mas-
ter of English rhetoric—the one beginning " There is
not and there never has been," and ending with the world-
famous allusion to the New Zealander, taking his stand
upon a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the
ruins of St. Paul's—can surely comprehend quite readily
the entertaining of 'views such as those articu-
lated by Dr. Manning in his bold and almost defiant
treatise, a treatise that if for no other reason assumes its
place, by right of its lucidity, side by side with the well-
known and far subtler treatise ,6 Du Pape," penned many
years previously by the hand of the Count Joseph Do Maistre.
The See of Peter. T.W.
By
Allies, M.A. (Burns)— A
work of which a third Edition has but just now been pub-
lished, undertook upon a very different, though upon an
entirely congenial system, to insist upon the recognition
of the claims of the Roman Primacy, as tho Rock of
Foundation, as the Centre of Unity, and as the Source
of Jurisdiction. Even hero, in this reissue of Mr.
Allies' work, in relation to the Roman Pontificate, we
have that writer's views also upon the " Eirenicon,"
views set forth in a letter to Dr. Pusey, ostensibly in the
form of a Preface to the Third Edition of this same book
on the "See of Peter" penned by the author of the still more
comprehensive work relating to the kindred theme of "The
Formation of Christendom."

Reverting, however, to the Pastoral in which Arch-
bishop Manning has • descanted at length, not upon
the Formation, but upon ,4 The Reunion, of Christen-
dom," we would here observe, in conclusion, that if any-
thing could possibly tend to dissipate this strangely
cherished daydream of Dr. Pusey's (enunciated in the
" Eirenicon") and of so many others besides Dr. Pusey
and his own immediate followers—the daydream that
is to say of a compromise being effected between
two churches, one of which admits of no possibility

of any compromise whatever—it must certainly be this
same Pastoral of Dr. Manning's upon the hypothetical
"Reunion-of Christendom." Its influence can hardly fail
to'prove, in a great measure, repressive, almost, we had
said, repellant. Its argument throughout is not only, in
common parlance, as plain as a pike staff, but as rigidly
unyielding and as poignantly pointed. It says virtually—
On our part there can be no concession—lt is idle talking
about compromise—Truth is one, is indivisible, magna est
et prevalebit. The Reunion of Christendom is avowed in
truth by Dr. Manning to be among his own most cherished
aspirations ; but it is a Reunion, he takes occasion
to intimate quite plainly, that must bo gained other-
wise than by means of any compromise whatever. We
will receive you with open arms—he here says as
plainly as words can express his meaning—We will re-
ceive you with open arms, but you must come to us ; wo
cannot meet you half way. That is so far the plain
and honest English of Dr. Manning's Pastoral on The
Reunion of Christendom. It is a declaration in truth
so plain, 'so honest, so directly to the purpose, that
we may surely hope to hear henceforth somewhat less
about these fantastic and utterly impracticable suggestions,
which, according to the day-dreamers who throw them out,
are to lead through a nicely-balanced series of compro-
mises or of coneessions, now on this side, now on that,
to the Reunion of Christendom, or, in other word; to
the halcyon epoch of the Millennium. That supreme re-
sult or ultimate climax of the Christian Dispensation is
hardly, we take it, to be arrived at after the manner in
which a quotient is worked out in the calculations of an
arithmetician. KapX.