very much as if all the mediaeval religion worth mentioning was in the synagogue or anywhere but among baptized men are allies of whom we ought to shake ourselves clear the moment matters go deeper than the mere secular surface of things.

The manner in which Mr. Eugene Lawrence treats St. Louis of France, "noblest and holiest of monarchs," as Dr. Arnold used to call him, with hardly sufficient remembrance of an Alfred, illustrates our meaning. Louis, excellent as he was, had not an understanding of sufficient strength to lift him out of the limitations of his age. The essence of justice and benignity towards his Christian subjects, he was as harsh towards the Jews as it is said Luther afterwards urged the German princes to be. He banished them from France, burned their books, and cancelled one third of the debts owing them. He was right in regarding them, as things then were, as an unassimilable and therefore an irritating element in the state. But he can no more be justified in his bitterness toward them than Mr. Eugene Lawrence on a like ground can be justified in his extreme bitterness towards the Roman Catholics. Louis was abundantly worthy to be called a saint, but he does not attain to St. Bernard, that great protector of the Jews, of whom they gratefully say that "he has spoken good concerning Israel"; nor to the large benignity of Gregory the Great in their de fence, and the still larger of Gregory the Ninth, and of the Roman See throughout the Middle Ages, as attested by Neander. Of these services to the Jews, lamed as they were by the fierce barbarism of the age, Mr. Eugene Lawrence no doubt entertains a grateful sense. But Louis was not a Bernard or a Gregory, and our author pours out upon him the vials of his concentrated wrath. I cannot recall the precise terms of his objurgation, but let the reader imagine what might be said of Nero or Caligula, and stop barely short of it, and he will understand the feelings of Mr. Eugene Lawrence towards St. Louis the Ninth. The fact that Louis, in all the depth of his Catholic devotion, valued truth so much

above rite that against his weak and superstitious brother, Henry III. of England, he maintained the superiority of preaching to the mass, giving an example to Massillon afterwards; that notwithstanding his mediaeval saintliness he, unlike the foolishness of Edward the Confessor, did not scruple to live in real and fruitful marriage; that his unbounded devotion to the chair of St. Peter did not stand in the way of his becoming substantially the father of the Gallican liberties; that towards his Christian subjects, that is, the immense bulk of his people, he showed a sense of justice almost beyond public policy, restoring fief after fief unlawfully resumed by his predecessors; all these traits of Christian and of kingly worth go for nothing with Mr. Eugene Lawrence. But he has chosen an inopportune moment for attack, when all that is of Christ is increasingly dear to all who are of Christ. Louis is our brother, in whom we glory, and God forbid that we should ever listen tamely to a torrent of foul vituperation poured upon our brother by the advocate of those who, compared with him, are strangers and aliens. This gentleman is prudently silent as to Luther's equally fierce intolerance of the Jews. He is probably acting on the principle: divide and conquer. Shall we help him and his clients to our own confusion?

When Jews and their champions offer themselves as our allies against Rome, wisdom bids us remember that although the fierce hostility of the Middle Ages towards the Jews is largely giving way, among Protestant Christians at least, to a pitying and reverent tenderness towards them, not only as our brother men, but also as God's ancient and unforgotten people, whose receiving back is one day to be as life from the dead, yet the Jews themselves can by no means be satisfied with such a view of their relation to us, presupposing as it does for us at present an immeasurable superiority of spiritual standing over them, as resting still under the doom of national reprobacy. The present growth of religious indifference is by no means adequate to remove the sting which such a place in Christendom implies. The ebb of to-day

may be the flood of to-morrow; the turning of the channel is the only absolute assurance against the recurrence of the tide. Those Jews, therefore, and I believe that there are many such, who are fully set on accepting anything, atheism, nihilism, or whatever else could be imagined beyond that, if it were the alternative to accepting Christ, must have an intenser interest in the overthrow of the church than we, Christians ourselves, can easily bring before our minds. To suppose that they are concerned at Rome's deep corruption of the gospel in doctrine and fact would of course evince simplicity beyond the simple. For them the gospel could not be too soon or too completely corrupted into rottenness. A part, and a large part, of their burning animosity is doubtless owing to their burning wrongs. But none the less do they hate with consuming hatred that symbol of redemption which Rome, however unworthily, bears on her front, the memorial of the tragic crime and the tragic doom of a nation which was the organ of humanity in crucifying its God. Spiritually the Roman see is a decaying fortress, hastening to become a cage of unclean and hateful birds. But to external view it is still the citadel of Christianity. This overthrown, these malignant foes of Christ may well fancy that the subversion of all the rest will be mere matter of detail. The talk put by some scribbler into Bismarck's mouth to this effect might be put with very much better reason into theirs. It may be that this illusion will be one of the means used by God in overthrowing that haughty and unfaithful bishopric, which, always so deeply mixed with evil, seems, notwithstanding now and then a beneficial check, to be more and more losing all intermixture of profitable good. But it is not for us to join ourselves with those who hate Rome far more because she is called Christian than because her Christianity is almost hopelessly corrupt.

This Kulturkampf in Europe, and especially in Germany, of which we hear so much, is a perfect illustration of what I have said. It is largely a revolt of right reason and natural manliness and morality against the intolerable tyranny, the

pervading falseness, hypocrisy, and uncleanness of Rome. But there is also covered up in it a revolt against Christ, against God, against morality, and against civilization. We learn that Jewish editors are foremost leaders of this contest, and we might have expected it, whether we give to it the higher or the lower interpretation. The appeal said to be made by the nihilists to Jewish youth throughout the world to become agents of their frightful scheme shows that they know where to look for helpers. This mysterious race seems to have been chosen exemplarily out of mankind to exhibit to what heights it can be raised, and to what depths it can descend. The incarnation of God has taken place within it, and why may not the incarnation of the devil? And if the devil would fain overthrow Rome it must be because even in her there is too much that reminds him of Christ. There are Jews unquestionably, and many of them, who, like that excellent rabbi of St. Louis, hold Jesus as higher than Moses, and would doubtless rather own him as the Messiah than say a word to his dishonor. The more rapidly the zealots of hatred unfold the malignity that is in them towards the Redeemer the sooner will these purer souls be gathered into the purified church. Meanwhile they are ready to show by every emphatic act and word that they consent not unto the counsel and deed of the children of Caiaphas. Nor must we be understood as implying a belief that Mr. Eugene Lawrence has the slightest complicity with the remoter and fouler designs which we believe ourselves justified in imputing to a part of the Jews, and which are confirmed by the activity shown by the Jews of Europe in various places in helping to put down any Christian teachers. who show signs of really taking the gospel in earnest. He would doubtless part company with them long before they reached the end of their intent. But that he is ill qualified, notwithstanding the genial beauty of his later philo-hellenic articles, to assume the part of a champion of any form of Christianity is shown by his entire failure to apprehend the principle of spiritual independence, whose development by

the Roman church has done more for the liberties of mankind, as is said by John Stuart Mill, than all the pyres kindled by her have done against them. I have read a great number of his articles, and can draw no other conclusion from them than that he regards it as a high crime in a Christian church to enforce its own principles of morals. within its own bounds, upon its own members, by its own appropriate sanctions, independently of the views or policy of the state. It is not enough for him that the church shall not presume to wield the sword of the state; she must forbear to wield the sword of the spirit when the state forbids it. His treatment of the case of the Brazilian bishops is a notable example of this. And the positions taken by so copious a contributor to so deservedly influential a journal, indirectly sustained by so powerful an ecclesiastical good will, are worthy of attentive examination.

The church of Rome is well known to be implacably hostile to freemasonry. Mr. Eugene Lawrence sneeringly says that the feeble intellect of Pius IX. had conceived this extensive association to be dangerous. Its civil dangerousness was not especially the point of the pope's opposition; it was its incompatibility with the gospel. Our author will hardly venture to call Arnold of Rugby a feeble intellect, and he says, in substance, "I cannot esteem freemasonry lawful for a Christian, for it unites me in a close brotherhood with those who are not in a close sense my brethren." Mr. Eugene Lawrence is well aware that whole Protestant denominations, the Quakers, the United Brethren in Christ, the Reformed and United Presbyterians, and vast multitudes in most of the other churches agree exactly with Pope Pius respecting freemasonry. He has a just confidence in the breadth of that aegis which a certain powerful church would stand ready to extend over the defender of masonry. But as that church alone is hardly competent for the overthrow of Rome, he will be wise to spare sneers and gain allies. Certain Brazilian bishops by papal direction disfranchised ecclesiastically certain church societies having freemasons