The Altus of St. Columba.

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which has fourteen, each chapter consists of twelve lines rhyming, two and two. Setting out with praise of God, as He is in Himself, the author of the Altus proceeds to praise the Most High in connection with special classes of his worksthe angelic world, the material cosmogony, and those things which shall be hereafter. The material of the hymn is largely drawn from the metaphors found in various passages of the Bible in the Vulgate rendering, coloured by the theological and physical conceptions of the medieval Celtic Church. the latinity of the rhyming lines is crabbed and clumsy, so the science is crude, and the theology confused. When the writer describes the Last Day his lines have a faint ring in them of the Dies Ira, although we suspect few competent to form a judgment will indorse the sentiment of the editor that some of the capitula in the rugged Altus would not suffer by comparison with that splendid hymn.

As

The chapter upon Heaven is almost entirely taken from the passage in the second of Genesis describing the Paradise home of our first parents, supplemented by a passage from the twenty-eighth of Ezekiel. Purgatory is referred to as the dwelling of those whose knees oftentimes bendeth prayerfully at the name of the Lord Jesus, but who could not unroll the book written within and without, and sealed with seven seals, -a conception which the editor acknowledges is less defined and definite than the beliefs which have obtained in later days. The coincidence between the contents of the opening chapter and the Athanasian Creed, both in respect of teaching and of wording, is pointed out in the notes, and is certainly remarkable, bearing, as it does, striking testimony to the theology of the Celtic Church in the sixth century.

As supplying a good specimen of the hymn, and of the editor's skill in paraphrasing, while at the same time furnishing us with a good doxology, wherewith to bring our labours for the present to a close, we extract the following:

"The Most High, the Father of all, the Antient of days, and Unbegotten, without origin, without beginning, and without limit, was, is, and will be for ever and ever; with whom is co-eternal in everlasting glory of Godhead the Only-Begotten Son, who also is the Christ and the Holy Spirit. We set not forth three Gods, but say that God is one, still holding ever the faith in three most glorious Persons."

CHARLES G. M'CRIE.

ART. IV.-Prospects of the Present Religious Reaction in the German Church.

THE HE Lutheran Church in Germany, and to all appearance religion with it, came down at the close of last century before the pen of the critic, and, in the eye of public opinion, as fairly as the tree falls before the axe of the woodman. This signal victory has imparted to infidelity in that country & stamp of superiority and flush of assurance which distinguish it from the unbelief in other lands. The usual tone of the British infidel is a remonstrant grumble, like that of a subject tribe which has succumbed in the struggle with one more powerful, when the bitterness of defeat is mingled with a certain respect for those who have proved themselves stronger. German critics recognise this when they ascribe a certain honesty and sincerity to the British sceptic in contradistinction to the Frenchman. The former feels the necessity of giving credit to the strength of the argument against him. The French infidel never knew Christianity otherwise than as a league between the Most Christian King and Jesuit priests for sacrificing the lives and liberties of nations to their nefarious interests, according to which the great and noble were indulged in the most infamous vices while still the favourite sons and supporters of the Church; hence he is animated with fiercest scorn, contempt, and hatred as against a flagitious superstition, and knows no aim so commendable as to seek its utter extirpation. He knows no good in it, and would fain stamp upon its neck as upon a poisonous reptile, against which there is no security as long as it breathes. Two things saved England: the onslaught of Deism was made at a time when there were men qualified to meet it, and when there was sufficient religious knowledge and discrimination in the people to appreciate on which side the victory lay. It was a stand-up fight in the end of the seventeenth century and first half of the eighteenth between infidelity and truth; but the infidel was put down by fair weapons, baffled, and driven off the field-a victory which has insured a quiet on this side of 150 years. Never was there more labour and ingenuity brought to bear against the

gospel than by Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Herbert, Woolston, Toland, Tindal, Chubb, and Priestley, not forgetting the arch-deist Hume; but in God's good providence there were champions at hand who were more than a match for them, and, mark this, which certainly was not of less consequence, the people had still so much interest and intelligence in the question as to ratify the decision in favour of the truth for generations. In Germany all was different. When infidelity made its assault there it wrought with the ease and celerity of a law of nature. The gospel disappeared before it like a thing of darkness that could not stand the free exercise of the intellect. Scarcely had the "Wolfenbüttel Fragments" appeared, than, as if the trumpet of Gideon had sounded, the tents of the establishment began to tremble. In all circles men began to whisper that the arguments against the resurrection of Christ (not a whit more acute than those which had been silenced in England) were unanswerable. The ministers of religion began to pass over to the side of the enemy, either preaching in hypocrisy a religion they privately ridiculed, or openly declaring their disbelief of the faith of which they were the salaried servants. There were no champions found equal to the occasion, and the adversary, from the heights of literary and intellectual vantage, flouted the weak defences of those who sincerely mourned over the desecrated temple. A number who had fancied themselves impregnable in orthodoxy felt their faith melt away under the trial, as Schleiermacher relates of his own uncle Stubenrauch, who had long been his monitor to recall him to the soundness. of the Creed.

Thus the persuasion gradually pervaded the mass of the people, which has never again been dissipated, that Christianity is not what it professed to be, God's own plan of salvation, but that all it proposes, and more, can be attained by the due cultivation of the intellect. This has imparted to infidelity in Germany that tone of cool and haughty superiority which is more unfavourable to the gospel than the rabid ignorant fury of France. The gospel is treated as a weak and inferior thing, that is useful for controlling the masses who cannot rise to the level of philosophy. It is revolting to hear the pompous man of letters declare that he is far from discouraging devotion in the females of his household, as supplying for them what

they lack in mental culture. This has wrought an incurable confusion of ideas in regard to religion. It has spread the impression, which is all but universal, that the great men of science, of poetry, and of letters are, ipso facto, to be numbered as religious, whose sanctity it is a heresy to question. While the Scripture teaches that "if ye live after the flesh ye shall die," public opinion asserts that those who throughout life avowedly did nothing but the will of the flesh and the mind, nevertheless inherit eternal life.

Again, this same spirit gives birth to endeavours to keep out of sight, or treat as unessential, those truths of the gospel to which the pride of intellect is most apt to take exception. It is practically conceded that the disciples of science and art have a piety and morality of their own, and are not to be judged by the common standard. Who can but think of the "miry places" that were not healed even by the living waters that went forth from the sanctuary! When we put the question how such a result has been produced in the land of the Reformation, we find that certain radical faults were admitted into the constitution of the Lutheran Church, which, unless purged out (and they never have been), made such an issue inevitable.

For one thing, we see the rationalism appear in the fountain-head which at last burst forth with such pestilential rage. We call it rationalism when a favourite principle or position is maintained with a high hand, and the Word of God is browbeaten and twisted to conform to our opinion. When we say Luther was guilty of this, we are no more sinning against his saintship than we sin against Moses when we teach, after Scripture, that he was guilty of unbelief, and failed in a certain instance to sanctify God's name; or in blaming Gideon when he made an ephod which became a snare to him and his house. We take nothing from Luther, and are quite tolerant of the interpretation which finds in him the angel that was seen flying through the midst of heaven to preach the everlasting gospel to them that dwelt on the earth (Rev. xiv.). But, for all that, we find him guilty of smiting the rock, not once or twice, like the man of whom it is so often recorded he did as the Lord commanded him, when, instead of listening to the sense of the Word, he sought to force it to confirm the doctrine for which

Luther's treatment of Scripture.

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he was a zealot: and his example became a snare to the Church which bears his name. It was in the interest of his peculiar doctrine of consubstantiation, and the ubiquity of Christ's human nature, that he perverted the passage, Acts iii. 21, where, instead of "whom the heavens must receive," he in defiance of all grammar sets "who must receive the heavens;" and where the pernicious influence of his example appears in that he leads in his wake not only the common herd of interpreters, but even Bengel. Here even his partial Lutheran follower Meyer forsakes him. In such an instance we trace the same

want of reverence for the Divine Word in which rationalism has its root. We will not say much of the grossest and best known case under this head: we mean Luther's reckless sally against the canonicity of James, in his anxiety for the safety of the great truth of justification by faith alone. Yet this showed the man and his spirit what opposed his views, even if it were Scripture itself, must give way. Although he soon perceived that this step was all too offensive and had to be retraced, yet his retractation was virtually a form, for he never accepted the truth which the Epistle of James was designed to teach, viz., that our faith is to be tested by the life, and that faith without works is to be reckoned as dead. The same zeal for faith as all in all carried him on to a series of wanton transgressions against the authority of the Divine Word. Thus his jealousy against the employment of the motives set before believers to enforce diligence in the work of holiness, led him to mistranslate Gal. vi. 9, where, in place of "in due time ye shall reap, if ye faint not," he sets, "ye shall reap without ceasing;" he could not endure the condition "if ye faint not," from his doctrine that faith must certainly and inevitably lead to the desired harvest. In the same way he mistranslates Psalm 1. 23, "to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I show the salvation of God;" he did not like this condition of a good conversation, and omits the clause altogether. It may seem a small matter, and yet it is a proof of want of tender reverence for the Word, that in Romans iii. 28 he arbitrarily entered the word "alone" in the text, to give a more palpable support to his view, making it to say "a man is justified by faith alone" -a transgression of which the Roman Catholics have not failed to take advantage. Once more, having become disgusted