fulfilled this design till Christ came, and then as a nation signally failed. "Thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." They might be no longer a peculiar treasure, or a kingdom of priests. But like as God had selected Abraham from the rest of the world, lapsed or lapsing into idolatry, so He now made a new selection from the Jewish nation, just before it was rejected and removed. As the result of our blessed Lord's redeeming work, finished on the cross and acknowledged by His resurrection and ascension, the Christian Church arose. The three thousand converted on the day of Pentecost by the power of the Holy Ghost attending the Apostle's preaching, were joined by continual accessions from the Jewish people, both in Judæa and throughout the then civilized world, and afterward by innumerable converts from heathenism. To this body, the Church of Christ in the Apostle's days, might be justly applied the words,-"Ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people, for all the earth is Mine, and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation;" for God had borne them on eagles' wings, and brought them unto Himself out of all nations and kindreds and tongues. Nay, these words are distinctly applied to the Christian Church by the voice of inspiration itself; for who can doubt that the Apostle is referring to this very passage, when, addressing the Christian converts (1 Pet. ii. 9), he says,-"Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood (i. e., a kingdom of priests), a holy nation, a peculiar people;" and why, but for the very purpose for which Israel was exalted, "that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light."

6. The Christian Church, then, is emphatically "a kingdom of priests unto God," for the benefit of the whole world. It is "His peculiar treasure" for conveying to all nations the unsearchable riches of Christ. It is His light in the world's darkness, reflecting what it receives from Him; His instrument for the accomplishment of His gracious purposes to the human race. In accordance with this view, we may assuredly say, that the Christian Church established in our land is a body of priests to the whole nation, and to as many others as its light and influence may reach. In like manner, a Christian congregation in any particular place is a body of priests to that place. And inasmuch as congregations and churches are composed of individual members, it follows that every Christian who is a true member of that congregation is a priest unto God within the sphere of his influence. "Unto Him who hath ... made us kings and priests unto God." (Rev. i. 6.) This is his dignity and his duty. And if the love of Christ be in his heart, the law of Christ on his lips, and the resemblance of Christ in his character, he is really such. He shines for God. He bears

testimony for God. He offers up daily the incense of intercessory prayer. He embraces opportunities of winning men to Christ. And while doing this as an individual, he is also ready to unite with his fellow Christians, both of the congregation to which he is attached, and those of other congregations and churches in all wise and lawful combinations for the support, extension, and prosperity of Christ's religion at home and abroad. He feels concerned in the fortunes and successes of the Christian Church thoughout the world. If we may be allowed a liberty with the heathen poet, we might make him say, -Christianus sum,

Christiani nihil a me alienum puto."

And why? Because he feels himself to be one of "the royal priesthood," "a member of the holy nation," one of the communion of saints shining as lights in the world. Surely, then, it behoves every one baptized into the Church of Christ, and professing to be His, to judge himself by this standard: "Am I living, acting, interceding, as a priest of God?" Are any likely to become better, holier, wiser for seeing my example, and coming within the reach of my influence? Do I make known what I know? Do I recommend to others what I know to be good and safe for my own soul? Do I condemn what I know to be evil? Do I share with others what I enjoy? Do I set a high value on my membership with Christ's Church? Do I offer prayers, supplications, and thanksgivings on its behalf, and for all men? Do I cheerfully labour, patiently suffer, and selfdenyingly give to sustain its efficiency, to increase its agency, and to further its usefulness in all good works?

We think that a minister of the Gospel might with much benefit present the matter to his congregation in some such terms as these. We are a body of priests unto God for the spiritual welfare of this neighbourhood. Every time we ascend the steps of this Church for divine service, we are testifying against the sabbath-breaking and indifference to religion which surround it, and inviting the negligent to come hither. Every time we stand up and repeat the Creeds, we bear witness against infidelity, irreligion, and latitudinarianism. Every time we kneel and say the Lord's Prayer, the Litany, and such like petitions, we are interceding as a body of priests unto God for the unholy world around us, as well as for the good estate of the Catholic Church." Every time we lift our voice in praise to God, we acknowledge-what so many forget-that He is the author and giver of all the blessings which men enjoy, and deserves their homage. By all these public acts, as a people worshipping God, we admonish the thoughtless world that there are higher objects of desire than eating and drinking, earth-born pleasures and worldly prosperity; greater necessities

than those of the perishing body. And if any would estimate the importance and advantage to the world of such a public and united testimony, let him think what the world would be without it.

But, in conclusion, how is this Christian kingdom of priests to be qualified for their dignity and duty? The qualification is the same as in the case of Israel: "If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant." How many, alas! in the Christian Church have never yet obeyed His voice, "Come unto me," but are still living to themselves, without any distinct reference to His will, without even inquiring what His will is. They are not keeping the covenant made at Baptism, and renewed at Confirmation. These are not really priests unto God, but such only in name. There are many such, in religious families especially; and those who are really the priests of God should often and fervently intercede with God on behalf of such lifeless members of his Church. And there are questions which they too should often put to themselves. Am I obeying as diligently and unreservedly as I ought the voice of God? Am I keeping His covenant, by realizing more and more fully its blessings, and by fulfilling its obligations? If brought to Him on eagles' wings, am I striving to draw nearer still, that by closer communion with my Saviour I may be a more faithful and successful priest unto Him? Do I delight in His service, ready to do and suffer for His name's sake, feeling most happy when I am "offering up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ?" Ever be it remembered that, if we would serve God, we must first receive from God; and that it is when our faces are fully turned to the Sun of righteousness that they will most brightly shine.

G. P.

DR. NEWMAN'S "APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA.”

Apologia pro Vita Sua. By John Henry Newman, D.D.
Longmans. 1864.

THIS work of Dr. Newman is a reply to an attack by Professor Kingsley, which we have not seen, and into the merits of which we do not care to inquire. It may have been harsh, reckless, and unmannerly, and, as the accused party describes it, "a lie which was the nearest approach to truth possible for its author." Or it may have been little more than the natural expression of an upright mind, in reviewing a course fairly open to public criticism, and hard to reconcile with plain English notions of honesty and truth. We have small sympathy, we confess, either with the assailant or the assailed. But the auto

biography of one who was formerly the mainspring of the Tractarian movement, and has now been, for twenty years, a Romish proselytizing priest and father, must have a deep interest for thoughtful minds, wholly independent of the controversy which occasions its publication. A star, burning like a lamp, has fallen from our ecclesiastical firmament, upon the rivers and fountains, so that many have died of the waters, because they have been made bitter. We have here a kind of trajectory of its downward course. The review is melancholy, but it ought to be instructive. We propose to examine it with the care, candour, and seriousness which its importance demands.

John Henry Newman, the subject of this biography, was born just at the opening of the present century, so that he had reached his fifteenth year at the close of the wars of Napoleon, when the long European peace began. From a paper written in his college days, he has given us a few brief but suggestive anecdotes of his early boyhood.

"I used to wish the Arabian Tales were true: my imagination ran on unknown influences, on magical powers and talismans. . . . . I thought life might be a dream, or Ì an angel, and all the world a deception, my fellow angels, by a playful device, concealing themselves from me, and deceiving me with the semblance of a material world. . . . Reading, in the spring of 1816, from Dr. Watts' Remnants of Time, entitled The Saints Unknown to the World,' to the effect that there is nothing in their figure or countenance to distinguish them, &c., I supposed he spoke of angels, who lived in the world, as it were disguised. . . . I was very superstitious, and for some time previous to my conversion (when I was fifteen) I used to cross myself on going into the dark. . . . . When I was at Littlemore, I was looking over old copy-books of my school days, and I found among them my first Latin verse book, and on the first page a device which almost took away my breath with surprise. Between 'Verse' and Book' I had drawn the picture of a solid cross upright, and next to it is what may indeed be meant for a necklace, but what I cannot make out to be anything else than a set of beads suspended, with a little cross attached. At this time I was not quite ten years old.... When I was fourteen, I read Paine's Tracts against the Old Testament, and found pleasure in thinking of the objections contained in them. Also I read some of Hume's Essays, perhaps that on Miracles; so at least I gave my father to understand, but perhaps it was a brag. I recollect copying out some French verses against the immortality of the soul, and saying to myself something like this, 'How dreadful, but how plausible!""

These recollections by Father Newman, the Oratorian, of his own early boyhood, illustrate afresh the saying of Wordsworth, "The child is father to the man." The picture has its attractive, and also its dark and dangerous, side. Here are none of the lineaments which predict a light and reformer of the Church of the living God. There is no deep sense of sin, no cry for pardon, no

yearning for pure truth, no communing, in early years, with the grand realities of the Word of God. There is indeed a distrust of sensible things, and that craving after the unseen and wonderful, which usually marks imaginative minds, adapted to leave a strong impress upon their fellows for good or evil. But there may also be seen, in full activity, the love of paradox, instincts of unreasoning superstition, and a premature playing with the sharp edge-tools of infidel speculation, while revelling in the dreams of a fancy restrained by no conscious homage to the lessons of revealed truth. This boy of fourteen reads and admires "Paine's Age of Reason," and "Hume on Miracles," and also crosses himself devoutly whenever he goes into the dark. He copies out verses to disprove the immortality of the soul, and also suspects himself to be possibly an angel in disguise. He is smitten by the hypothesis as plausible, though dreadful, that his fellow men have no souls, and are like the brutes that perish; and still he has a private fancy that they may be his fellow angels, playfully concealing themselves from his view, and deceiving his senses with the appearances of the outward world. Even thus early, truth seems to have formed no element in his conception of celestial goodness. They are good angels, not devils, whom his fancy invests with the Scripture attributes of the seducers of the last times, "deceiving and being deceived." In all these brief recollections there are the germs of a strong idealism, but no trace of an instinctive yearning, in his fresh boyhood, after reality and truth; no sign whatever of moral earnestness, of self-knowledge, of selfdistrust, of an inward thirst that could only be slaked by resorting to the pure fountains of God's revealed promises.

The negative character of these first reminiscences of his childhood is indeed painfully conspicuous. During this most impressible season of life, no single fact or doctrine of the Bible scems to have left any clear trace in his recollections. Like most intelligent children, he has a great love for the Arabian Nights, puts a cross and rosary in his Verse-book, has a faith in talismans, and crosses himself in the dark. But neither miracle, nor parable, nor doctrine of the Old Testament or the New, so far as this record is any guide, had stamped itself on his understanding or his heart. At the age of fifteen, he reads a passage of Dr. Watts, perfectly plain to any child of ordinary Scripture knowledge, and distorts it into a wholly absurd and unscriptural fancy. So far the prototype whom he most nearly resembles is not the youthful Timothy, but the Colossian deceiver whom St. Paul describes, with "a voluntary humility and worship of angels, intruding into things he hath not seen, vainly puffed up in his fleshly mind." There are present and active in his boyish experience, a lively fancy, fondness for paradox, superstitious instincts, and a pleasure, not unmixed with intellectual vanity,