mental connections, and in his advancing age has devoted himself more exclusively to religious activity. He takes a leading part, we believe, in church administration, but his mind is of too active and comprehensive an order to be restricted to the affairs of his own community. His eye ranges afar. He looks as from some lofty post of observation upon the condition of Christianity in the world, but more especially in his own country, and profoundly "meditates" on the work it has to do, and the opposing forces it has to encounter. He watches the progress of the strife, marks whither the tide of battle is rolling, and in this work announces the results of his observations.

To learn what a veteran like M. Guizot thinks on the actual condition of Christianity, and the great questions which affect its progress, is both interesting in itself, and may shed some light on the perplexed state of things in our own country. He is struck, first of all, with the growing earnestness and the more clearly defined position of all parties in relation to Christianity. "Beliefs become firmer beliefs; opinions hostile to them receive fuller developments.” "Between the adversaries of Christianity and its defenders the discussion grows each day in importance and gravity." "A noble work of progress, a hideous work of destruction, are in operation simultaneously in men's opinions and in society. Humanity never so floated between heaven and the abyss." Perhaps the most hopeless state of society is that of utter indifference. Let stagnation prevail, and instead of growth and beauty there will be a desolate and lifeless scene. John Foster mentions a Turkish fort, constructed of mud. On this material the cannon-balls of a besieging army could make no impression; they simply disappeared in the mud, and the fortress remained unmoved: a fit illustration of the futility of reasoning with the utterly indifferent as with the utterly ignorant. In an awakened state of society, on the contrary, when its moral as well as its intellectual sensibilities are aroused, there may, and will, be resistance to the Truth; her advance may be disputed at every step, but the opportunity is also given for those conquests she is sure, in the end, to achieve.

In these "Meditations" a chapter is devoted to each of the following topics:-The Awakening of Christianity in France in the Nineteenth Century; Spiritualism; Rationalism; Positivism; Pantheism; Materialism; Scepticism; and Impiety, Recklessness, and Pexplexity.

În discussing the "Awakening of Christianity," &c., M. Guizot takes as his starting-point the failure of that memorable and fearful experiment made for all time by revolutionary France-the attempt to abolish Christianity. It was soon found that Atheism could be no resting-place. The "Theophilanthropism," which was to supersede Christianity, disappeared as a dream of the night. The wild orgies which supervened, the sea of blood into which the nation seemed to be dissolving itself, rendered the restoration of Christianity clearly necessary to quiet and control the agitated elements of society. "The strong hand of Napoleon again solemnly set up in France the religion of Christ crucified and Christ risen; and in the same year the brilliant genius of Chateaubriand again placed before the eyes of his

countrymen the beauties of Christianity. The great politician and the great writer bowed each of them before the cross. The cross was the point from which each started-the one to re-construct the Christian Church in France, the other to prove how capable a Christian writer is of charming French society and stirring its emotions" (p. 2). Napoleon was, doubtless, gifted with clear and far-reaching perception, and what he saw was, in all probability, something more than the blank which had been made by the attempted abrogation of Christianity: it was that the Christian religion could not be abrogated; that it had an indestructible life, which would certainly and soon again manifest itself; and he but gave practical expression to the feeling which was moving at the heart of the nation. Lamartine, writing of this period, says "The theocratic reaction was prompt and universal, as it ought to have been. Impiety does not fill the heart of man. A faith destroyed must be replaced by a faith. It is not given to irreligion to destroy a religion on earth. The earth cannot remain without an altar, and God alone is strong enough against God." In re-establishing Christianity, therefore, Napoleon was only giving proof of his superior sagacity. To those who have had the interests of Christianity most deeply at heart, it has been matter of regret that she has had so much of imperial patronage. The purple of Constantine could add nothing to a beauty which was already Divine; whilst the worldly associations into which she has thus been brought have dimmed her native lustre and crippled her energies, and often dragged her into the dust of deep humiliation. And some of the most able and eloquent Protestant writers of France of the present day, as M. E de Pressensé, regard the step taken by Napoleon as an untoward incident as the revolutionary fever was subsiding, Christianity was rapidly recovering its power, "spontaneously regenerating itself;" and if it had been left free and uncontrolled, it would have risen by its own strength, and exerted a far greater influence than the action of Napoleon permitted it to do.

From this part of M. Guizot's volume it is evident that, even with all the encumbrance and rubbish with which Popery overlays Christianity, it has manifested no small power in France. Within the last fifty years it has built thousands of churches, and originated charitable associations and institutions of many kinds, which appear to be zealously supported. As the vital force of Christianity enabled it to rise again from the grave into which Atheism had flung it at the Revolution, so the same vital force enables it to work in the grave-clothes with which Superstition has bound it. It is evidently, indeed, difficult to keep the French mind within the rigid bounds which Popery prescribes, It has an activity not easily repressed, and which occasions no small amount of trouble both to its political and its ecclesiastical rulers. Gifted, eloquent, earnest men occasionally arise, anxious "to drag France out of its rut of incredulity and irreligion, and at the same time to extricate Catholicism from its rut of impolicy, its alliance with absolutism," and to promote at once Christian faith and liberal institutions. Rome rebukes and condemns them, and they manifest a spirit of submission which shows how absolute is their faith in her authority, but they nevertheless

exert an influence which is widely felt. The Catholic Church in France has evidently taken large strides in the direction of liberty— liberty of conscience as well as civil and political liberty, showing that her religion is not altogether a dead letter; a fact so unpalatable to the Pope that he endeavoured to stop the rising tide by the publication of an Encyclical so lately as December, 1864-a document which displays the wiliness, the assumptions, the hostility to the ideas and influences of modern civilization, and the hatred to liberty, which are the essential spirit of the Papacy. M. Guizot thinks, however, that these fulminations are becoming ineffective in France, a mere imbecile policy a fact which gives a hopeful character to the future of even Catholic France. As in Italy, it has not been found possible utterly to exclude the Gospel; and as the germs of what is in reality Protestantism are in many places springing up, so, as these germs are being widely scattered in France, from this good seed of the kingdom there may in the end be a glorious harvest.

Turning to the position of Protestantism, we find a touching reference to the "two centuries of persecutions and of sufferings, of which we cannot, in these days, read the accounts without mingled sentiments of astonishment, indignation, and sorrow. Faithfully should men guard the memory of such outrages; they would be infinitely better than they are if they had always present to their minds the vivid pictures of the iniquities and woes which fill the page of their history; and evils would not so soon recur if they were not so soon forgotten." A lesson applicable to the Catholic revival in England. The bitterness with which Protestantism is spoken of by the promoters of the ritualistic movement, which is essentially a Romish one, betrays the old persecuting spirit, which favouring opportunity might develop into the dread shapes of inquisitorial terror with which our forefathers were but too familiar.

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After its own bitter experiences during the French Revolution, the Catholic Church was glad to be again permitted to exist, and Protestantism was placed in a position of liberty which was felt as a taking possession of the promised land." It was still a liberty far from perfect; and the activity which now displayed itself in Bible colportage, and the circulation of religious tracts and books, and other kindred forms, had to encounter many obstacles. "The activity of the Protestant societies created uneasiness in bishops and priests, who strove, not merely to counteract their influence, but to interfere with their liberty of action. Mayors of towns, judges of the peace, sometimes, too, magistrates and judges of more elevated rank, lent their aid to these exceptionable proceedings." Happily, these and other unfriendly influences have been unable to arrest the progress of the work. Statistics are not given by our author, but the number of Protestant pastors is many times over what it was twenty or thirty years since. The congregations must, on the whole, be in proportion, whilst many associations and agencies are putting forth unremitting efforts to promote the temporal and spiritual interests of the population.

In connection with this awakening, M. Guizot has some striking remarks on the sources of its power. To regard religion in the light of a great political institution, or a moral police force, useful in

merely restraining and controlling society, is utterly to misconceive its nature and origin, and to rob it of its inherent dignity. It is the Divine truth of Christianity, its adaptedness to meet the need which men have for God, and their thirst for truth in their relations to

him, which gives to it its power. "Had the labourers in this great work spoken only of the social utility of Christianity, they would never have made the conquest of a single human soul."

That grand leading element of the diffusive power of Christianity, the passion for saving souls, is represented with great power and beauty. "They had another principle of force as well-a force born and developed in the bosom of the Christian religion, and in that alone; they had the passionate desire to save human souls. Men are not-they never have been-struck as they ought to have been struck with the beauty of this passion, or with its novelty in the moral history of the world, or with the part that it has played among Christian nations. Before the era of Christianity, in times of Asiatic and European antiquity, pagans and philosophers busied themselves about the destiny of men after the close of their earthly life, and with curiosity, too, did they sound the obscurity; but the ardent solicitude for the eternal welfare of human souls, the never-wearying labour to prepare human souls for eternity-to set them, even during this existence, in intimate relations with God, and to prepare them to undergo God's judgments-we have in all this a fact essentially Christian, one of the sublimest characteristics of Christianity, and one of the most striking proofs of its Divine origin. God constantly in relation with mankind and with every man, God present during the actual life of every man, and God the arbiter of his future destiny; the immortality of each human soul, and the connection between his actual life and his future destiny; the immense value of each human soul in the eyes of God, and the immense import to the soul of the future that awaits it: these are the convictions and the affirmations all implied in the one passion alluded to, the passion for the salvation of men's souls, which was the whole life of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which passed, by his example and by his precepts, into the life of his primitive disciples, and which, amidst the diversities of age, people, manners, opinions, has remained the characteristic feature and the inspiring breath of the genius of Christianity: breath which animated the men who in our days laboured, and with success, to revive Christian faith amongst the Protestants of France!"

It appears that a portion of the Protestant Church is recognized by the State, while, as in England, there are also dissenting churches. In an admirable sketch of M. Vinet, as one of the leading spirits of this great evangelical revival, M. Guizot gives prominence to his own views on the union of Church and State, contending for the expediency of such an alliance, under certain circumstances, at least, and that an Establishment and Dissent may exist side by side, and be a mutual stimulus. In advocating this opinion he reasons, we think, as a statesman rather than as a theologian. We think, too, that he both overrates the advantages which the Christian Church has derived from State alliances, and underrates the evils to which they have given birth. He speaks of the entire separation of Church and State in the United States of America as having been the

spontaneous consequence of the condition of men's minds, and of the position of society, but it was in reality the result of a severe and protracted struggle; and the result has not merely been salutary, as M. Guizot admits it to have been, but in many ways, and in the highest degree, advantageous. He says, that in England the union of Church and State is for the Christian religion a potent principle of life, of force, and of durability. This must surely be regarded as a strange opinion, in view of what we actually see-that a Colenso can enforce the payment of his salary, although he labours to destroy the faith he should have defended; that the Establishment shelters a Broad Church party, which casts into the shade the doctrines of evangelical religion; a High Church and ritualistic party, the marked tendency of which is in the direction of Popery; that there is neither uniformity of doctrinal teaching nor any power to enforce it. As to the brotherly harmony which he thinks may exist between an Establishment and Dissent, although Dissenters should wish it, to expect it seems at variance with all history and all experience. Even now we read of an earnest wish on the part of the Church to prosecute one of its clergymen for officiating recently in a dissenting pulpit. In short, to refute M. Guizot's view, it would be almost sufficient to give the expressions he uses in stating it. Of M. Vinet he says: "Justly struck and afflicted by his own experience of the inconveniences of a strict bond between Church and State, disgusted at the servility and falsity which frequently are-sometimes on the part of the State, sometimes on the part of the Church-its results, he concluded that in all cases all alliance between the two conditions of society is radically vicious, and he declared their entire separation a general and absolute principle, the sole reasonable and just system, the sole efficacious guarantee of truth and of liberty in spirituals or temporals." We greatly admired Vinet's work "On the Manifestation of Religious Convictions, and the Separation of Church and State," when we read it some years ago, and instead of thinking that "his usual comprehensiveness of view and independence of thought have abandoned him" on this subject, we think that his views are more comprehensive and profound than those of his eminent critic, and that they do honour alike to the vigour of his reasoning and his faith in the religion of Christ, as a self-sustaining and self-propagating power,

ANCIENT EGYPT.

CHAPTER II.

PHYSICAL FEATURES-THE NILE-NATURAL HISTORY.

THE physical qualities of Egypt are little less remarkable than its ancient institutions and its civilization. The country is now generally divided into two parts-Upper and Lower Egypt, the latitude of Cairo being regarded as the boundary line. Formerly, however, it was divided into three parts-Upper Egypt, Lower Egypt, and Middle Egypt. It is comprised within a great valley in the northeastern part of Africa, extending from the shores of the Delta to