indeed, a final separation of the evil and the good, and the consignment of the finally impenitent to the power of Satan, without remedy; but there is nothing like a judicial dealing and reckoning with men; and even the final doom of the wicked, though he sometimes calls it by the name of punishment, can in strict consistency be only, after all, the expression of God's holiness and wrath against sin, and not the penal execution of a judicial sentence of condemnation.

It is thus apparent that Hofmann's deviation from the Evangelical doctrine of the Atonement is not a mere incidental error, but an essential flaw that runs through his whole system. The difference is not an accidental and trifling one, but an all-pervading and irreconcileable divergence in first principles. The grand leading principle of the Evangelical doctrine of the Atonement, and, indeed, of the whole Evangelical theology, is that God deals with men in a judicial manner, and governs them by a moral law, sanctioned by rewards and punishments; and the leading principle of Hofmann's system is just a denial of this. This is the grand question at issue; compared with this principle we care little for precise definitions of substitution, or identity, or equivalence, if the principle of a moral government by law is admitted, the whole is admitted; if that be denied, all is lost. This is the real issue to which the question must come in the controversy, in this country as well as elsewhere; all else is of minor and subordinate importance. Hofmann's theology is, we think, eminently characteristic of the present mode of theological thought. Both its excellences and its defects are just exactly those of the modern mode of viewing such questions. We think that all that is excellent in it can be adopted and brought out at least as fully in the orthodox theology as in any other, and that we do not need to give up anything essential in our timehonoured creed, in order to appropriate these excellences ourselves. They should certainly not be left, or allowed to be, the exclusive property of a looser or less sound doctrine. And in its defects this theology just exhibits the tendency, that is too common in the present day, to deny or overlook the legal in a one-sided devotion to the personal element. And such a system as that of Hofmann is, we think, not unworthy of the study of those who are interested in this great controversy in our own land. It exhibits substantially the views of Maurice and his school, but stated and defended with much more fulness, thoroughness, and consistency, and we may add, in some respects, with a nearer approximation to the truth, than is commonly done among ourselves. We see the opinions of this school, as it were, magnified and brought

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out more thoroughly in all their bearings. It is always satisfactory, too, to hear the utmost that can be said in favour of any system of error, in order to come to a thoroughly fair and firm conclusion, and we do not know where we could point to a more able, acute, and plausible defence of that form of theology to which we refer, than is contained in the Schriftbeweis of Dr. von Hofmann, of Erlangen.

J. C.

ART. VII.-Pagan Rites and Romish Ceremonies.

La Magie et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquité et du Moyen Age; ou, Etude sur les Superstitions Païennes qui se sont Perpétuées jusqu'a nos Jours. Par L. F. ALFRED MAURY, Membre de l'Institute. Paris. 1860.

The Two Babylons; or, The Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and his Wife. By the Rev. ALEXANDER HISLOP, of East Free Church, Arbroath. Third edition. Edinburgh. 1862.

ROM the earliest ages, a love of the marvellous, and a disposition to associate the unknown with the supernatural, have been inherent in human nature. Men at first could account for but little of what was daily taking place around them; and in order to explain those natural phenomena of whose causes they were ignorant, they devised fantastic, imaginary, superhuman causes; whence arose the numberless fables of the heathen mythologies. But, even in the earliest times, there were some individuals wiser and more curious than their fellows, who had discovered by observation and experiment the properties of many of the substances around them. Unfortunately, however, these ancient experimental philosophers, instead of imparting their knowledge to their more ignorant companions, generally made use of it to impose upon their credulity or excite their fears. In this way, they succeeded in obtaining a great ascendency over the minds of their unenlightened and superstitious countrymen, who gradually came to look upon them as superior beings, in direct communion with heaven, through whose instrumentality alone could the will of the gods be ascertained, their wrath appeased, and their favour conciliated. They appalled the vulgar by mysterious sounds and appearances which their chemical and mechanical knowledge enabled them to produce-such as earthquakes, thunder, rain, lightning, voices proceeding from statues, and phantasmagoria of various kinds-and easily

succeeded in making them believe that these results of natural magic were really caused by supernatural interference. The priesthood, who, among the nations of heathen antiquity, were almost the only possessors of this scientific knowledge, kept it jealously and strictly confined to their own order, and thus engrossed the wealth and power which popular superstition willingly conceded to the favoured servants of heaven. These, indeed, were the tribute of ignorance to knowledge, but they were also the wages of successful imposture. All the sciences were then occult; and had it depended solely on the pagan priesthood, they would have been so still. But vulgar ignorance and credulity, and the selfish efforts of a privileged class to take advantage of these feelings, were by no means put an end to by the overthrow of paganism. The Roman Catholic priesthood did, indeed, do much to mitigate and control the rapine, and ferocity, and disregard for any law but that of the strongest, which characterized the dark ages that followed the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. But they, at the same time, like their heathen predecessors, practised largely upon popular ignorance, and introduced from the pagan mythologies many of their superstitions and sacred rites; which, disguised under a thin veil of Christianity, even now prevail in Roman Catholic Christendom. It may not be uninteresting to inquire how these offshoots from heathenism were first engrafted upon Christian worship, and to point out some of those pagan rites which can still be clearly traced in the ceremonial observances of the Romish Church.

Judaism and Neo-platonism were the two principal sources from which Christianity borrowed many of the beliefs and practices of the ancient religions which it superseded. The Jews believed in sorcerers and diviners, in spells and talismans; and in the later period of their history, added to their own superstitions many others derived from Babylon and from Greece. They believed false gods to be not mere human imaginations substituted for the true God, but spirits of darkness, and servants of Satan, and they gradually constructed a vast system of demonology, in which figured not merely names framed in their own language, but many besides borrowed from the heathen mythologies. This system, which was in existence at the time of the appearance of Christianity, was gradually, to some extent, adopted into it; and the early Christians attributed to the agency of demons the miracles and prodigies attributed by the pagans to their gods. Polytheism they reduced to the worship of fallen angels and infernal powers; and they imputed to the malignant influence of evil spirits, not only the wicked impulses and criminal acts of men, but also all kinds of error and imposture-such,

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for example, as the pagan religions. The gods of Egypt and Assyria, and Greece and Rome, they held to be demons; and thus it not unnaturally happened that, with this demonology, many of the superstitions of the Jewish and heathen. religions came to be engrafted upon Christianity, the earlier converts not being able wholly to free themselves from the influence of the beliefs in which they had been educated. Thus, many of them continued to believe in the virtues of enchantments and amulets, in the evocation of the dead, in the power of demons to assume a thousand different forms; and, though they condemned all sorts of magic, astrology, and divination, they did not the less believe in their reality. At a later period, many of the rites and doctrines borrowed by the school of the Neo-platonists from the philosophy and mythology of Greece and of the East, and by them reduced to a system, produced a further unfavourable effect upon the purity and spirituality of the Christian religion, which not all the severe edicts of the Christian emperors against the professors of the pagan philosophy and the practitioners of magic, nor the sanguinary punishments inflicted upon them, were sufficient to counteract. As an official religion, polytheism was indeed overthrown, its temples beaten down, its idols prostrated, its philosophy proscribed, its gods degraded to demons. But in spite of all this, it has left enduring traces, distinctly visible in our own times, in many of the religious beliefs and ceremonies of Roman Catholic Christendom.

In Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy, a number of popular superstitions and familiar customs sought to disguise themselves under a semblance of Christianity, in order to escape the proscription which threatened every relic of Paganism. The feasts which once celebrated the worship of the heathen divinities were transferred to Romish saints. The bright and joyous character of these celebrations recommended them to the people, while the name of the saint satisfied the scruples of the orthodox. Italy, and especially central Italy, still retains in her religious worship many remnants of these borrowed robes of Paganism. The popular worship of the Madonna at Naples, for example, is undoubtedly derived from that of Vesta and Ceres. The famous procession of the Madonna del Arco, where the pilgrims return dancing the tarantella to the sound of loud and joyous music; where each of them has the head adorned with ivy and flowers, and waves a thyrsus decorated with chaplets and bunches of filberts; where some ride in cars garnished with foliage; and where all are given up to a mad hilarity; is neither more nor less than a remnant of the rural festivities by which

the Pagans celebrated the worship of Ceres Libera, and of Bacchus or Liber, her spouse. The lamps which burn in each Neapolitan cottage before the image of the Virgin, are but a relic of the adoration paid to the divine Lares. These venerated images are transmitted from father to son, and are regarded as the palladium of the family. In every emergency their succour is implored, their protection is counted upon more than that of God, and they even veil them when they meditate a bad or dishonourable action, which they fear might offend them. The Italian custom of honouring by a special worship the saints of particular churchesas our Lady of Loretto, of Santa Maria in Area Coelo, of Santa Maria Maggiore-is also borrowed from the Roman polytheism, which celebrated at certain periods the feasts of the divinities of particular temples. Thus the feast of the Miraculous Conception of the Virgin is held on the 2nd of February, at which period also the ancient Romans celebrated the Miraculous Conception of Juno; and the modern feast of All Saints is held on the day of the old Festuuo Dei Mortis. In Sicily, the Virgin has taken possession of all the sanctuaries of Ceres and Venus, and the heathen rites practised in honour of these goddesses have been, to a great extent, transferred to the Mother of Christ; while many of the gods of Greece and Rome have been replaced by saints, who are held to possess the same influence as that imputed in classic times to their heathen prototypes. Thus, in Italy, St. Anthony has taken the place of Consus or Neptunus Equester-the god of the circus and the race-course-and is considered the patron of horses. Aïdoneus of Epirus has become St. Donat, the Deu Pelina has become St. Pelino, Felicitas Publica has been transformed into St. Felicita; and in a crowd of other instance that might easily be cited, the name and attributes of some heathen divinity have descended to a Romish saint.

Many practices borrowed from Paganism were in use in the Roman Catholic Church during the whole of the Middle Ages, and not a few of these have remained even to our own times. The principal means of divination in heathen antiquity was the interpretation of dreams and incubations, the flight and songs of birds, the observation of the stars and other celestial phenomena, and the inspection of the entrails of victims offered in sacrifice. Divination by fire, water, rods, and arrows, was also employed. The greater number of these practices were retained by the Romish Church during the Middle Ages, and many others were added. Thus divination was practised by the Bible, fasting, and the Mass. The sign of the cross, holy water, and the Agnus Dei, took the place of talismans, charms, and incantations. The judgment of God