birth of our LORD, of the type of Cicero and Cæsar and Cato, a sceptical spirit, which led speedily to the practice of suicide and divorce and luxury and impurity of all kinds-such as Horace and Juvenal continually declaimed against.

The history of these old faiths, in one sense, is a sad one. Nevertheless we may infer that they served a purpose in the providential ordering of the world, and severally helped those who were willing to be guided by them in their passage through the world. At the same time they were intended to testify to the fact of their own insufficiency as guides of conduct or as formulating faith. They were all, as the Apostle expresses it, things that might be shaken, and having fulfilled their destiny they were removed in order "that those things which cannot be shaken may remain." Further, if we look to the immediate cause of their failure, we shall find it in this feature common to all of them, that the priestly class was always confined to the performance of certain external functions, and was not charged with the responsibility of teaching. Such systems failed naturally to satisfy the mind of inquirers; so that there speedily grew up a contest, overt or secret, between faith and intellect—thus, in the East, in India and China, in Egypt and Persia, there arose new forms of religion, superseding the earlier creeds, destined also in their turn to be overthrown. And even among the Israelites it is observable that the order of the priesthood, though "the priest's lips were to keep knowledge," was in due time supplemented by an order of prophets, whose duty it was to stir up the hearts of the people. The term prophet, it should always be remembered, meant essentially one who was authorised to speak in the name of GOD, the mere foretelling of future events being only as it were an accidental accompaniment to his office. In the Christian dispensation the danger referred to, we know, is guarded against, by the fact of CHRIST being in His own Person, Priest, Prophet, and King of His Church, and by the law which embodies those three functions in the Christian ministry for all time, so that religion with us does not consist in certain functions of ritual, but in informing the mind and regulating the heart as well; and it is the province of those who are entrusted with the sacred vocation (the ministry being no longer confined to certain tribes or families) to teach and to instruct and to admonish. So it was that in heathen lands philosophy and learning tended to destroy faith, whereas in Christian lands the greatest intellects have been glad to lay their offerings "at the Apostles' feet," and if for a time a different state of things seems to

prevail at the present moment, it is only, we believe, because some fail to perceive how their discoveries, or supposed discoveries, fit in with the doctrines of the faith; and it will be the work of the Church to reconcile all apparent contradictions, and to harmonise them with her time-honoured creeds and traditions.

Mahometanism and the primitive religions of Scandinavia and South America do not fall within the object of this paper.

THE OLD PRAYER BOOK.

"TWAS old, and worn, and tattered,
"Twas faded with use and age,
And Time's rude hand had scattered
The brightness from leaf and page.

The clasp of gold hung broken,
The leaves from the cover fell,
Like parting words half spoken,
The wail of a last farewell.

Neglected, lone, unheeded,

In the chancel pew it lay,

For no one cared to read it,

Or bent o'er its leaves to pray.

And no one cared to own it,

So there in that sacred spot,

The dews of age upon it,
It lay unseen, forgot!

The rosy light that summer

In her loving beauty weaves,
Oft stole with gentle glimmer,

And gilded the faded leaves;

And seemed to lurk and hover
In many a nook unseen,

And gemmed the time-worn cover
With the hues that once had been.

Ah! tender memories hallow

Each faded and tattered leaf!

O'er each falls life's dim shadow,

The traces of joy and grief.

And visions bright steal o'er me,
A child's face hovering there,
Conning the sacred story,

Lisping his earliest prayer.

And now-a mother laying
Her brow on the open page;
And now-the old man praying
For strength in the time of age.
Bright visions, fair yet fleeting!
Death's angel hath wandered by,
And stilled the young heart's beating,
And hushed the pale mother's sigh.

And Time, whose finger chilling,
Mars all that is sweet and fair,
Rests, though with hand unwilling,
On the faded "Book of Prayer."

EVERETH HOPE.

Reviews and Notices.

Curiosities of Superstition, and Sketches of some unrevealed Religions, by W. H. Davenport Adams. (Masters and Co.) Within the narrow compass of one small volume the author of this attractive work has succeeded in massing together a vast amount of information on subjects that are generally very much out of reach for ordinary readers. He gives us outlines more or less complete of most of the Asiatic creeds, Buddhism, Magianism, Brahmanism, the Hindu Mythology, and Confucianism, and the obscure religions of Malays, Dyaks, and of various savage races of Asia. Then he passes on to the weird faiths of Africa, among the serpent worshippers, the Zulus, Polynesians, Fiji islanders and Maories, and finally touches on the superstitions of the North American Indians, the Eskimos, and the Scottish in former times. He does not profess to give more than a brief and sometimes very incomplete sketch of these strange efforts of the untaught human soul, to feel after GOD, if haply they might find Him, but he does enough to prove in almost every chapter the existence of that instinctive consciousness of the Being of GOD which has been the characteristic of the human race in all ages of the world, and which lies at the root of even the most hopelessly erroneous forms of worship. Mr. Davenport Adams touches on this truth in the first pages of his work. "No doubt," he says, "there existed in the human mind, from the very beginning, something, whether we call it a suspicion, an innate idea, an intuition, or a sense of the Divine. What distinguishes man from the rest of the animal creation is chiefly his ineradicable feeling of dependence and re

liance upon some higher power: that consciousness of bondage, from which the very name of 'religion' was derived. 'It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves.' The presence of that power was felt everywhere, and nowhere more clearly and strongly than in the rising and setting of the sun, in the change of day and night, of spring and winter, of birth and death. But although the Divine Presence was felt everywhere, it was impossible, in that early period of thought, and with a language incapable as yet of defining anything but material objects, to conceive the idea of GOD in its purity and fulness, or to assign to it an adequate and worthy expression." Further on, he refutes with considerable power the arguments of some of the free-thinkers of our day, who have vainly attempted to place several of the eastern religions on a level with Christianity.

Mr. Thomas Mozley, formerly a pupil of Cardinal Newman's, and afterwards his brother-in-law, has published two volumes of Reminiscences chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement, (Longmans.) If we were asked what object he had in the publication, we should say that it was threefold. First, to write a book that would sell, and of course it is well known that all books of gossip find a ready sale. Secondly, he wished to say something for Dr. Newman. And thirdly, to put his own conduct in the best light he could. Certainly some personal explanation may reasonably be thought needful, when we find one of Dr. Newman's most confidential friends holding such strange views on the Trinity and on the Sacraments as are here propounded, and yet spending the last fifteen years of his life in charge of a Living. This of course may be his misfortune, but he was bound, we think, to tell us how this came about, instead of covering the twenty-five years previous under a mere mystifying paragraph, which does not even tell us that in 1843 he gave up his living and removed to London, but only says that he "accepted the offer of employment in a quarter that was then supposed to be friendly not only to Newman but to his party." Why all this circumlocution? we ask: apparently to veil a very important fact, viz, that he then ceased to exercise his Ministerial Office, and undertook to be a regular writer for the "Times" newspaper, and continued the work apparently for twenty-five years. This seems to us thoroughly to account for his moral deterioration, and we do not think it honest to conceal the fact. His own solution of the charge seems to us much less to his credit, viz, that he did not believe what he wrote and said, as editor of the "British Critic" for Newman from 1833 to 1843, that it was not his real self, but just an assumed character. We might demur to many of Mr. Mozley's sketches of individuals, but would require more space than we can command.

The last volume of The Fathers for English Readers, (S. P. C. K.,) is on S. John of Damascus, "the last of the Fathers" as he is commonly called. The author is the Rev. J. H. Lupton, Sub-Master of S. Paul's School. The subject is obviously a difficult one to deal with, as S. John Damascene was the great advocate of what is called Image Worship, against the overbearing Emperor Leo the Isaurian. But Mr. Lupton has, we think, done substantial

justice. S. John's chief work was a summary of Theology, in which Mr. Lupton considers that he was the progenitor of the marvellous philosophical system of Scholasticism. Mr. Lupton should have stated that it was from this Treatise that a formula was found to reconcile discordant views at the Bonn Conference, a fact which redounds not a little to the credit of the author as a Theologian.

The Oxford University Press has just published, by arrangement, a new edition of Mr. Maskell's "Monumenta Ritualia." It would have been a great pity that they should have been allowed to remain out of print. Newman's "Parochial Sermons," and Robert Wilberforce's "Doctrine of the Incarnation," and "Five Empires," had been already republished, and beside these we do not know of any other book by those who have left us that would be worth being reproduced.

Miss Lucy Phillimore has published some Papers on the Sunday Schools of the Church, (Walter Smith,) which will be found to contain many useful hints for Clergyman and Schoolmasters.

Whatever Mr. Carter writes is worth reading. So we are not surprised that the volume which he published some years since on The Divine Revelations, (Masters,) has come to a second edition. It is now called "Spiritual Instructions on the Divine Dispensations," and is a review of all the Revelations which it has pleased GOD to make of Himself in successive ages from the era of the Creation.

Correspondence.

[The Editor is not responsible for the opinions of the Correspondents.] To the Editor of the Churchman's Companion.

Queries.

PORT-DE-GRAVE, NEWFOUNDLAND. SIR,-Will you kindly allow me to plead through your columns for help in raising a small sum to enable the Rev. J. Harvey, of Port-de-Grave, Newfoundland, to complete his church? The following extracts from a letter of his speak for themselves.

"I came to my present parish thirty years ago. There are but few who can render much help, indeed, with but few exceptions, all are fishermen; still they do what they can. Their earnings are small,-from £20 to £30 for the summer, and sometimes £10 or £15 in the spring. When I say that in six years the church people of Port-de-Grave (900 in num

ber) contributed £1,000 towards their new church, you will agree with me that they were not backward in giving. I received about £200 more from other quarters. I am very anxious to build a chancel, and could do so if I could obtain £30 more. I am sixty-eight years of age, and have a large family, and am therefore unwilling to advance or borrow the amount necessary. Had I kept up correspondence with many I met during my last stay in England in 1875, it is probable that my few wants would have met with a ready response, but my eyesight has for a long time been failing, and I do not care to use my pen frequently."

Mr. Harvey asks also for a silver Communion service. I hope to collect