man is the same being that I remember such an engaging child at Edinburgh in 1810!'-Vol. i. pp. 374-376.

Here is Bunsen's notice of the Bishop of Exeter, and a characteristic notice of our liturgy :

"Tell mamma she must send me to some good Whigs: this journey has made me more a Tory than ever I was. To return to Exeter:-on Sunday the Bishop preached: people said it was done for my sake, as he preaches but four or five times in a year, and had lately done so. His sermon was a Bishop's sermon, argumentative and full: it contained matter for ten ordinary sermons. I told him so after church. I thank him for it the more, as it has left me a soothing impression: I should otherwise only have had before me the eloquent and sarcastic statesman. There is more

in him, I really believe. The service was beautiful, and moved me deeply. I know exactly now what I can adopt, and what are its defects.'—Vol. i. pp. 482, 483.

There is an anecdote of Lord Palmerston which does little credit to his prudence:

"If the ground swell was strong in the mind of Bunsen during this occasion, of experiencing the accustomed gracious kindness of the Queen and Prince Albert at Osborne, his return from thence in company with Lord Palmerston was attended by serious commotion of the elements without. In the boat which brought them to the shore, Lord Palmerston was requested to take the helm, as it would seem, to enable all hands to help in rowing through the unusually rough sea. Bunsen observed, that he had not been before aware of the necessary connexion he now observed between steering the vessel of the State, and steering a common boat; whereto Lord Palmerston answered, "Oh! one learns boating at Cambridge, even though one may have learnt nothing better." They landed in safety, but the train was gone. Lord Palmerston declared that he must return to London on pressing business, and must have a special train. The railway officials protested that the risk of collision was too great for them to undertake. Lord Palmerston insisted, "6 On my responsibility, then!" and thus enforced compliance, although every one trembled but himself. The special train shot past station after station, and arrived in London without causing or receiving damage, the directors refusing all payment from Lord Palmerston, as having transgressed all rules in order to comply with his desire, and considering themselves overpaid by the happy result, and their own escape from serious blame.'-Vol. ii. pp. 151, 152.

Bunsen always enjoyed while he criticised English life :

'I wish I could give you an adequate idea, what a power the intuition of English life exercises over me. Never have I felt it so easy and delightful to fly on my native German wings as in the elevating and buoyant atmosphere of English domestic and public life. At Munich I found, for the first time after many years, leisure and inspiration again for the highest speculative activity; but it is now only when the other pole of my existence has been electricised by England that I feel the new action which Schelling has given to my intellectual life. I wish I could now do something to embody this vita nuova in a worthy form.'-Vol. i. p. 494.

To which may be added his distinction between German and English thinkers :

'In the breakfast conversation my father spoke of the rarity of meeting with young men who really took the trouble of thinking seriously—which he said was the point in which the English are behind the Germans ;

whereas, on the other hand, when once an Englishman has been induced to think, and to reason upon his thoughts, he also possesses the "ethical earnestness" to carry out his result into practice, just as surely and necessarily, he said, as that anything swallowed into the throat reaches the stomach and becomes nourishment; meanwhile, the German is too apt to stop short at the theory.'—Vol. ii. p. 296.

The following lament over the death of Niebuhr is a double testimony:

'Could a father do more for a son than Niebuhr did for me? Whom have I to thank for my household happiness, for the blessing of home, never sufficiently to be estimated and acknowledged? Whom to thank for a position in the country towards which, in the days of common misfortune, my strongest wishes had been directed? And if these personal bonds of gratitude were not enough to attach me for ever to that great man's memory, who is there that I have honoured and admired like him, as the pattern of excellence and dignity of soul? All this passed through my mind while I glanced over your tale of woe. I sunk under grief as I have never sunk before; and when I roused myself to a consciousness of the loss experienced, it seemed as though it could not be a reality. To fancy myself without him-the fatherland without him--science, the world, without him—was what I could not take in, because it seemed intolerable. For so many years accustomed to do nothing, to decide nothing, without his counsel, or at least without considering what Niebuhr would say to it ?—what his judgment would be? The mainspring of the soul's consciousness seemed snapped through.'—Vol. i. pp. 366, 367.

We have quoted these passages to give a general idea of the work before us. Perhaps it would have been more read if it could have been condensed into one volume; but there was so much matter with an equal claim to preservation, and in a long life-all spent in study and action-so much passed that a wife would not willingly let die, that in this record of a mind so prodigiously voluminous we do not doubt that the task of selection and exclusion has been a painful one, and carried to the utmost limits conscience and affection would permit. One omission we regret, the absence of all contemporary description of Bunsen in the maturity of his fame and powers. There are accounts of him in boyhood, and here and there an adoring, descriptive line. Dr. M'Cosh also writes at length of his visit to him in retirement; but we want to know the impression he made upon casual observers in society. To have him brought before us, in voice, manner, deportment, a very few lines from an able hand, not one of the family group, and permitting itself in a candour which would not be compatible with a daughter's or a wife's duty and reverence, would have shown us the man more distinctly than we now see him.1 What he was to his friends and congenial intimates we know from the

1 Since our words were in type a friend has chanced to send us a reminiscence, just of the sort we desire. He writes, "I never met Bunsen but once at that two hours' breakfast," which he speaks of in the extract from his diary, given in the Guardian. He was full of life, wonderfully exuberant and overflowing, and of course took a large share of the conversation, because his great quickness of thought

extraordinary testimony of Arnold, which some of our readers may recall:—' I could not express my sense of what Bunsen is 'without seeming to be exaggerating. . . . He is a man in whom 'God's grace and gifts are more united than in any other person 'whom I ever saw. I have seen men as holy, as amiable, as able; 'but I never knew one who was all these in so extraordinary a 'degree, and combined with a knowledge of things new and 'old, sacred and profane,-so rich, so accurate, so profound, 'that I never knew it equalled or approached by any man;' and again: 'You met Bunsen, and can now sympathise with the all but idolatry with which I regard him.' That he was thoroughly understood by his wife, and his mind open to her, we believe. She knew him in some points better than he knew himself, as when after his recall from London (in 1854, when he was sixty-two), where he had spent thirteen years of official life, he proposes a life of retirement which she knew would be intolerable to him; but if there were any weak points open to her, we cannot desire to know them from her pen.

His death took place at Bonn, from an affection of the heart of some standing, in November 1860, in his seventieth year, three years after leaving England. The scene is given in loving detail, as a fitting and consistent close to such a life. He departed in great composure of spirit, and, if the vagueness which hung around his faith was not cleared, it seems to be lost in a glow of charity, piety, and devotion. To his wife he committed the charge of writing his life: Write yourself 'the history of our common life. You can do it; you have it in your power, only be not mistrustful of yourself.' This is a solemn charge upon what he believed a solemn, important task. The task has been faithfully performed, and it records one of the busiest existences that the brain of man ever worked through. But to minds of this order is given temporary weight and fame alone. While they live they are powers in the world; lasting fame is the tribute to a concentration of thought, such as was foreign to Bunsen's nature, and impossible to his ambition for universal knowledge and influence.

suggested one point after another, and he was anxious to follow everything up. He had a way, too, of collecting replies and objections from the countenances, or incipient objections of the others, and holding up his finger to the person who seemed to be about to interrupt him-which meant, I know what you are going to say, and I will notice it presently. So he continued flowing on in one stream until the subject came to a pause. But it was a thoroughly natural vivacity, and he took immense interest in other people, their views and opinions. The subject of the Eucharist came up, I remember, and he was arguing from a particular view of it— a high view-but modified in some way which I do not recollect. He had a quick eye, as well as tongue, and seemed to watch faces round the table, if I remember, as he was talking: not from any conceited wish to see the impression he was making, but because he wished to be in a kind of communication with all the party. On the whole, one's impression was favourable. I think he very much coincided with the idea of him his diary and letters give.'

69

ART. IV.—An Explanation of the Thirty-nine Articles. By A. P. FORBES, D.C.L., Bishop of Brechin. Oxford: Parker. 1868. 2 vols.

It is difficult now to imagine the excitement created by the publication of Tract XC. The storm which began in the University of Oxford extended over the whole country, and the commotion was all the greater, inasmuch as the tract, so far as it went, was unanswerable. It had literally shattered to pieces a favourite idol. Up to that period ultra-Protestant theology had been in the ascendant. It was the inherited teaching, endeared by sacred associations, and identified with the clear dogmatic teaching of the Church. The Articles, it was assumed, were especially the symbol of this teaching: they had inaugurated it, expressed it emphatically, and, so long as they continued the standard of doctrine, all who raised their voice for opposing and long-forgotten Catholic truths were but mere traitors. We can well imagine the surprise and indignation with which the country learned that all this was a delusion; that this ultra-Protestant teaching had been imported into the Articles, was not really found in them. Yet this was the net result of Tract XC. In truth, the ultra-Protestant gloss put upon the Articles was the result of sheer ignorance. Neither the historical circumstances under which the Articles were originated, nor an accurate theological examination of their contents, could justify it; and the revived study of theology was sure, sooner or later, to put an end to it. Dr. Pusey has told us how, as the writers of the "Tracts for the Times' became more acquainted with antiquity and the Fathers, these glosses were gradually and independently laid aside. So far had this process advanced in his own mind, that he could feel nothing but surprise at the excitement occasioned.

Looking back to that time from the point to which we have now attained, our feeling is one of surprise at the moderation of Tract XC. It practically left ultra-Protestantism in possession of the citadel. All that it protested against was the exclusion of Catholicism. The position it took up was to this effect: that, by the providence of God or the moderation of the framers, the Articles were so worded as not to exclude the Catholic view. They might be drawn up in the Protestant interest, they might primarily be the expression of that view; but they had certainly not expressed it in such wise as to exclude its opposite. In the literal and grammatical sense,-and to that alone the subscribers were held, they were not inconsistent with Catholic belief. Since those days the study of theology has advanced further,

and we are better able to form a right judgment. The result has been that the Articles have assumed a different light. We are gradually giving up those depreciating sayings which were natural to the Catholic party, so long as they believed that on the whole the Articles made against them. One thing is now very evident, that, whatever be the merit or the demerit of the Articles, they at least are not Protestant. In fact, it may now be maintained that not only are they not repugnant to Catholic truth, but they are irreconcilable with any other system. They are essentially and fundamentally Catholic; and all that can be said by way of depreciation is, that they are rough and defective in statement, and that Catholic theology, as exhibited in them, presents us with one or two wounds, the result of overcastigation.

In estimating the fundamental character of the Articles, there is one fact which strikes us, and which has thus been stated by the Bishop of Brechin :

-

"There is no one Christian confession that they absolutely make for. They cannot satisfy the pure Calvinist (however often they are ignorantly claimed for them, even by so great a writer as Möhler), for not one of the five points of Calvinism is expressly stated in them, and some, such as Perseverance and the Indefectibility of Grace (Art. XVI.), are actually contradicted. They cannot be said to symbolize with the Confession of Augsburg, inasmuch as they give no countenance to the crucial doctrine of Luther, justification by mere imputation, or by that faith which believes itself justified. The High Church party have never concealed their depreciation of them in comparison with the lex supplicandi, lex credendi of the Book of Common Prayer, while they are silent on, if not contradictory to, many of the Shibboleths of modern Evangelicalism. The name or idea of sensible conversion does not occur from beginning to end; neither is there mention of the renouncing of our own merits as the formal cause of our justification, or of assurance, as the end to be sought for in the spiritual life. The Articles give no countenance to the idea that if a man dies happy (as the saying is), he is safe.’—Vol. i. p. 10.

But we believe the case may even be put in a stronger way. It has hitherto been mostly the custom to look at the statements of the Articles in a disjointed way. They have been taken as so many sentences to be interpreted literally and grammatically, each by itself. Men have not looked enough at the theological bearing of each separate statement—at what it excludes, and what it implies in other departments. The more systematic study of theology has tended to correct this mode of judgment. Theology is now better understood, as a whole, and the student is able to appreciate better the background of each separate statement. It is in this point of view that the exclusively Catholic character of the Articles is most strongly and clearly made out. A good illustration of what we mean is supplied by the Sixteenth Article. We have there a statement to the effect that there is