will say he would like to be cured; but he may not like to try the remedy. He may be suffering from the toothache, and yet not agree to have the tooth extracted.'

"That is what I mean,' said Madeline, quickly. 'I should like to feel that I had got rid of some of the bad things, and then I should be more sure that I was willing-that I was fit for the blessings. Because you know, papa,' she added, in a faltering voice, I am not at all fit for the Holy Communion, and I must go to it if I am confirmed.'

But, my dear Madeline,' said Mr. Clifford, the getting rid of these "bad things," as you term it, is to be the business of your life. Confirmation and the Holy Communion are to be your great assistants in this business. If you throw away the help, what are you to do ?'

'I might pray and read the Bible,' said Madeline.

"God tells you to do something more,' replied Mr. Clifford. 'He will not accept us if we perform only half our duties.'

"And I must go,' said Madeline, whilst the tears which had for some time been gathering, flowed slowly down her cheeks.

"Mr. Clifford suffered her to cry silently for some moments; at length he said, 'You are frightened, dearest.'

"Yes, so very frightened sometimes,' said Madeline, in a broken voice; 6 and, рара, I think I should be glad not to go; that shows how bad I am.'

"Then if I were to tell you that you should never go,' said Mr. Clifford, you would be contented?'

66 Madeline started. · Oh! papa! no. I could not bear it.'

"And God does not wish you to bear it,' replied her father. 'He is willing-more willing than you can imagine-to receive you; to love you, and bless you, and make you happy. He asks for no fitness except that which you have yourself just this moment acknowledged. You may go to your Confirmation, you may even kneel to receive the Holy Communion, conscious of all your faults, all your imperfections, yet with the same confidence in His love as you feel now in mine. And Madeline, my child, by and by, years hence if it should please God to spare your life-you will see all this fully, you will be thankful and happy then, that you were not suffered to give way to doubts and scruples now. Religion will be all in all to you.'

"As it is to you,' said Madeline.

"A momentary shade passed over Mr. Clifford's countenance; yet it was but momentary: a quiet, bright smile followed it, and he looked in his child's face and said, 'Yes, Madeline, as it is, I trust, now, all in all-the one great joy-the one unchanging reality.'

Now this is the kind of tone which, though not to the

same extent, seems to destroy the general truth, and disturb the finer influences of a mind writing from this school of thought. The constant self-examination inculcated, and the pressure of external laws hemming the mind in on every side, and ever driving it back upon itself to lament afresh its own weakness, tend far more to create mere dread of sin, and the feebleness of expected failure, than to produce the love and faith that sustain the mind by calling it forth from the vision of its own poverty to the inspiring image of a purer strength. Fear of sin is only the sign of awakened conscience, quiet courage is the token of a living faith. And this defect in the delineation of character is particularly hurtful in works whose effort it is to exhibit the natural beauty and power of Religion, by drawing into contrast the religious and irreligious life. The effect of artificial force and contortion of mind is so repulsive, that men will never believe that that is the truest faith which produces it. The whole purpose of fictions like these is lost, if they fail to represent Religion as the loftiest principle of conduct, if it appears to form only characters that are below the highest. The ultimate foundations of belief are shaken, as soon as a man imagines that he can conceive a higher character than that which it is the aim of his faith to generate-that he would not himself willingly become, what he believes that a total surrender of his mind to its influence would tend to make him. The origin and condition of all Faith is in reverence for the highest, and what is most able to elevate us to this, we take as our standard of what is spiritually true, obviously assuming that He who gives us our purest insight, must afford us also the means of lifting ourselves up to its purer level. And a faith is for the most part then first fervently embraced, when we see that it is that and that only by which those whom we most revere are what they are. Now it cannot be doubted that men will see something deficient in the strained and anxious life produced by a predominance of fear of sin, above the active principles of the soul. No Faith can ever be universally held that is not seen to restore the freedom of spontaneous life, while giving a new and far higher power. The theological system of the Anglican Church does not attempt this. While its morality is for the most part severely pure, its spiritual resources do not seem sufficient

to restore power and ease to the soul whose moral anxieties they awaken so deeply; and from apparently inherent feebleness in the active part of their spiritual nature, the noble moral germs of their system seem to yield only a very morbid and ghastly life. Indeed this weakness is most distinctly shown, we think, in the evident desire to throw up personal judgment in favour of external law as a guide and discipline to their own hearts. There can be surely no greater sign of a feeble and morbid nature than the satisfaction thus found in utterly ignoring one's own faculties the moment they are discovered to be diseasedimmediately_abdicating in favour of any external offer to guide us. Just as a sick man sometimes finds a weak delight in submitting himself scrupulously to any advice that is importunate, in placing himself absolutely at another's disposal, so the Anglicans seem to find an unhealthy comfort in prostrating sick hearts to the sway of an external law. It relieves their responsibility and yet employs their wills. It is a comfort to renounce faith in themselves, where weakness is known, and transfer it to a law that they may believe without question. They feel their submission to it as a kind of spiritual regimen for the affections, a gentle tonic to the will. There is this tone not unfrequently to be found in these volumes. It is shown for instance, in the following passage, which is introduced indeed by a profound truth, but quite misses its application:

"Conscience," says our authoress (Margaret Percival, vol. ii. p. 344), “is a safe guide when it tells us what we ought not to do; but it may err fatally when it would teach us what we are to do Conscience is in each man's breast. A good man utters a hasty word, and his conscience accuses him bitterly. A bad man ruins his neighbour by slander, and his conscience is silent. Is there no law by which both shall be judged, except conscience? I would warn you earnestly, solemnly, upon this subject, because conscience is the plea upon which the most fatal crimes have been committed. God has given to man a law of perfect Holiness and Truth; if our consciences agree with that law we are safe; if they do not, the disagreement is in itself a sin, for which we shall surely be called to account, according as we have had it in our power to learn the Truth." And again-"There is one rock, and one only, on which to rest-external Truth."

It is true that Conscience is a safer guide in forbidding actions, than in suggesting them. And the reason of this is clear. Conscience is simply a selective faculty which marks for us the better and the worse among our existing tendencies and affections. Of course, then, when it tells us that any one principle is inferior to another from which we might act, it absolutely forbids the lower, but does not absolutely assert that the higher is the highest, or even high enough to produce actions which will be beneficial to the world. For instance, it may tell a man, in any case, that to think for others' pleasure is nobler than to think for his own, and the obligation becomes peremptory upon him not to prefer selfishly his own enjoyment; but it does not assert that he must consult for the enjoyment of others,— though that is the indirect consequence, if he has no higher principle in his mind,—for it might tell him that he ought to consult more for their good than for their enjoyment, and forbid a generous impulse where generosity might injure. It will reject Selfishness in favour of Compassion, but not warrant the latter unless no principle still higher could be imagined which might direct our conduct. And thus it happens that its permission is often an unsafe guide to action, though its veto is absolute, for with men of narrow moral experience there may be many unsuggested or unimagined principles of action which do not enter the mind, and whose entrance would be the immediate signal for conscience to veto one not previously rejected; and where this is even possible or likely, judgment would keep us quiet till we had learned by observation or experience, whether we had indeed got the principal data for deciding well. "A good man may utter a hasty word, and his conscience accuse him bitterly," because the higher principle of conduct is present with him still. "A bad man ruins his neighbour by slander, and his conscience is silent;" and it is so, because in bad cases the higher principles of action are seldom even imagined as possible

and where it is so, the guilt lies not with the present but with the whole past life, whose constant sin had exiled higher affections from his soul. But why on this account we should be exhorted to give up internal, in favour of external law, is surely beyond the comprehension of any

one but an Anglican clergyman. The desire as we have said, seems to be, to lean on something that cannot give way, or turn out selfish and weak within: but to accept external Truth as surer, only because it gives relief to a mind sick with self-analysis, is merely a symptom of the disease. The only test of truth is within us, and whether its suggestion be external or internal, it alike wins its authority from its acknowledgment by our souls. The true reason of the extreme value which is set by this party on the externality of divine law seems to be an extreme reaction from the excessive self-examination which their system promotes. It is a relief no doubt to leave the world of self-deception that personal scrutiny reveals, and bow to a law absolutely outside the affections, and not exposed to their sophistry. But each of these habits tends to increase the weakness which the other causes. A too constant inquisition into the state of our hearts, haunts us with conscious self-distrust, and fills us too much with a self-recollection, in the escape from which alone we can find the highest strength. And again, the habit of looking outside us for direction, makes us doubly giddy when left to our own resources, with no rule to guide us, and no confidence in the suggestions of our own sinful heart. This is exactly the system to exaggerate the defects of balanced and yet not powerful minds: it destroys all the natural boldness of a religious heart, all the free affection that is never drowned in misgivings, nor wholly employed in scrupulously obeying rules. In the Romanist system, this defect is relieved by the enthusiasms it encourages and inspires; even spiritual ambition gives the soul an object beyond itself that adds elasticity to its purposes, delivers it from tremblings, pours into it strength. Like Ambrose and Athanasius, the Roman Church has a will to rule, and a spirit to conquer, and personal frailties cannot subdue the souls inspired with her stern devotion to a cause of glory. But Anglicanism has cast off the fanaticism that makes Rome strong, and retained the discipline which only hearts of fire could bear: and so all her most powerful children leave her for the more awful faith of the Catholic, or the sweeter liberty of dissent.

It is a great pity that the writer who could enter into, and explain so well as in the following passage, the nice