import. Yet, in truth, these transitions had become so familiar to him that, in passing from what was most spiritual, he was hardly conscious of the change. He kept the communication between this world and the next so freely open-angels ascending and descending-that he blended the influences of both, of things temporal and things eternal, into one consistent whole:

FROM HIS JOURNAL.

Saturday Evening, June 11.-The day after to-morrow is my birthday, if I am permitted to live to see it-my forty-seventh birthday since my birth. How large a portion of my life on earth is already passed! And then-what is to follow this life? How visibly my outward work seems contracting and softening away into the gentler employments of old age. In one sense, how nearly can I now say "Vixi;" and I thank God that, as far as ambition is concerned, it is, I trust, fully mortified. I have no desire other than to step back from my present place in the world, and not to rise to a higher. Still there are works which, with God's permission, I would do before the night cometh, especially that great work, if I might be permitted to take part in it. But, above all, let me mind my own personal work, to keep myself pure, and zealous, and believinglaboring to do God's will, yet not anxious that it should be done by me rather than by others, if God disapproves of my doing it.

"What a midnight epitaph! How ominous and how unconscious! How tender and sublime! He woke next morning, between five and six, in pain. It was angina pectoris. At eight o'clock he was dead!”!

THE OXFORD CONSPIRATORS.

On the character of no party does history throw so full and clear a light as on the high-church party of the Church of England-the party of the Oxford conspirators. Unlike the political Tories, who are only analogously like the Tories of the Revolution, by being as much in the rear of the existing generation as the old Tories were in the rear of theirs, these church Tories have stirred neither actually nor relatively; they are the very Nonjurors and high church clergy of King William's, and Anne's, and George the First's reign reproduced, with scarcely a shade of difference. Now, as then, this party is made up of two elements-of the Hophni and Phinehas school, on the one hand-the mere low worldly clergy, careless and grossly ignorant-ministers not of the gospel, but of the aristocracy, who belong to Christianity only from the accident of its being established by law; and of the formalist Judaizing

"Edinburgh Review," lxxxi. 198.

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fanatics, on the other hand, who have ever been the peculiar disgrace of the Church of England; for these high church fanatics have imbibed, even of fanaticism itself, nothing but the folly and the virulence. Other fanatics have persecuted, like the Romanists, in order to uphold a magnificent system, which, striking its roots deep and stretching its branches wide, exercises a vast influence over the moral condition of man, and may almost excuse some extravagance of zeal in its behalf. Others, again, have been fanatics for freedom, and for what they deemed the due authority of God's own word. They were violent against human ceremonies-they despised learning-they cast away the delicacies, and almost the humanities of society, for the sake of asserting two great principles, noble even in their exaggeration entire freedom towards man, and entire devotion towards God. But the fanaticism of the English high churchman has been the fanaticism of mere foolery. A dress, a ritual, a name, a ceremony; a technical phraseology; the superstition of a priesthood without its power; the form of episcopal government, without the substance; a system imperfect and paralyzed, not independent, not sovereign-afraid to cast off the subjection against which it is perpetually murmuring. Such are the objects of high church fanaticism, objects so pitiful that, if gained ever so completely, they would make no man the wiser or the better; they would lead to no good, intellectual, moral, or spiritual; to no effect, social or religious, except to the changing of sense into silliness, and holiness of heart and life into formality and hypocrisy.

Once, however, and once only, in the history of Christianity, do we find a heresy-for never was that term more justly applied-so degraded and low-principled as this. We must pass over the times of Romanists-we must go back to the very beginning of the Christian church, and there, in the Jews and Judaizers of the New Testament, we find the only exact resemblance to the high churchman of Oxford. In the zealots of circumcision and the ceremonies of the law-in the slanderers and persecutors of St. Paul-the doters upon old wives' fables and endless genealogies-the men of "soft words and fair speeches"-of a "voluntary humility," all the time that they were calumniating and opposing the gospel and its great apostle in the malignant fanatics who, to the number of more than forty, formed a conspiracy to assassinate Paul, because he had denied the necessity of ceremonies to salvation-"the men of mint, and anise, and cumin," who cared not for judgment, mercy, and truth-the enemies and revilers of the holiest names which earth reverences, and who are condemned, in the most emphatic language, by that authority which all Christians acknowledge as divine-in these, and in these alone, can the party which has headed the late Oxford conspiracy find their perfect prototype.

THE WORLD OUR COUNTRY.

But here that feeling of pride and selfishness interposes, which, under the name of patriotism, has so long tried to pass itself off for a virtue. As men, in proportion to their moral advancement, learn to enlarge the circle of their regards; as an exclusive affection for our relations, our clan, or our country, is a sure mark of an unimproved mind; so is that narrow and unchristian feeling to be condemned which regards with jealousy the progress of foreign nations, and cares for no portion of the human race but that to which itself belongs. The detestable encouragement so long given to national enmities the low gratification felt by every people in extolling themselves above their neighbors should not be forgotten amongst the causes which have mainly obstructed the improvement of mankind.

Exclusive patriotism should be cast off, together with the exclusive ascendency of birth, as belonging to the follies and selfishness of our uncultivated nature. Yet, strange to say, the former at least is upheld by men who not only call themselves Christians, but are apt to use the charge of irreligion as the readiest weapon against those who differ from them. spirit of that Revelation which taught emphatically the abolition So little have they learned of the of an exclusively national religion and a local worship, that so men, being all born of the same blood, might make their sympathies coextensive with their bond of universal brotherhood.

Appendix to Thucydides, vol. i.

It is astonishing how, amid all his public duties, Dr. Arnold found time to maintain such an extensive epistolary correspondence; and I think it would be difficult if not impossible to find so many wise and practical remarks upon men and things, in religion, literature, polities, &c., in the letters of any other English author, as are to be found in his letters. From them I select the following-detached, indeed, but most suggestive and instructive sentiments:

THE ENCOURAGEMENTS AND DISCOURAGEMENTS OF THE
SCHOOLMASTER.

To Sir J. Pasley-1828.

Since I began this letter, I have had some of the troubles of school-keeping, and one of those specimens of the evils of boy

Read "Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, D. D., by Arthur P. Stanley, M. A.” 2 vols. a most interesting and instructive work.

The diligent and pious teacher, who properly instructeth and traineth the young, can never be fully rewarded with money. If I were to leave my office as preacher. I would next choose that of schoolmaster, or teacher, for I know that, next to preaching, this is the greatest, best, and most useful vocation; and I am not quite sure which of the two is the better; for it is hard to reform old sinners, with whom the preacher has to do, while the young tree can be made to bend without breaking.”—MARTIN LUTHER.

nature which make me always unwilling to undergo the responsibility of advising any man to send his son to a public school. There has been a system of persecution carried on by the bad against the good; and then, when complaint was made to me, there came fresh persecution on that very account; and, likewise, instances of boys joining in it out of pure cowardice, both physical and moral, when, if left to themselves, they would have rather shunned it; and the exceedingly small number of boys who can be relied on for active and steady good on these occasions, and the way in which the decent and respectable of ordinary life (Carlyle's "shams") are sure on these occasions to swim with the stream and take part with the evil, makes me strongly feel exemplified what the Scripture says about the strait gate and the wide one-a view of human nature which, when looking on human life in its full dress of decencies and civilizations, we are apt, I imagine, to find it hard to realize; but here, in the nakedness of boy-nature, one is quite able to understand how there could not be found even ten righteous in a whole city. And how to meet this evil I really do not know; but to find it thus rife after I have been years fighting against it, is so sickening that it is very hard not to throw up the cards in despair, and upset the table. But then the stars of nobleness which I see amid the darkness are so cheering, that one is inclined to stick to the ship again, and have another good try at getting her about.

NEED OF INCREASED FAITH.

To an old pupil at Oxford-1833.

I believe that the one great lesson for us all is, that we should daily pray for an "increase of faith." There is enough of iniquity abounding to make our love in danger of waxing cold; it is well said, therefore, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me." By which I understand that it is not so much general notions of Providence which are our best support, but a sense of the personal interest, if I may so speak, taken in our welfare by Him who died for us and rose again. May his Spirit strengthen us to do His will, and to bear it in power, in love, and in wisdom. God bless you.

TRUE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL.

To his sister Susannah-1830.

No one seems to me to understand our dangers, or at least to speak them out manfully. One good man, who sent a letter to the Times the other day, recommends that the clergy should preach subordination and obedience. I seriously say, God forbid they

should for, if any earthly thing could ruin Christianity in England, it would be this. If they read Isaiah and Jeremiah and Amos and Habakkuk, they will find that the prophets, in a similar state of society in Judea, did not preach subordination only or chiefly, but they denounced Oppression, and amassing overgrown properties, and grinding the laborers to the smallest possible pittance; and they denounced the Jewish high-church party for countenancing all these iniquities, and prophesying smooth things to please the aristocracy. If the clergy would come forward as one man, from Cumberland to Cornwall, exhorting peaceableness on the one side, and justice on the other, denouncing the high rents and the game laws, and the carelessness which keeps the poor ignorant, and then wonders that they are brutal, I verily believe they might yet save themselves and

the state.1

INTERCOURSE WITH THE POOR.

To J. C. Vaughan, Esq.-1835.

I am glad that you have made acquaintance with some of the good poor. I quite agree with you that it is most instructive to visit them, and I think that you are right in what you say of their more lively faith. We hold to earth and earthly things by so many more links of thought, if not of affection, that it is far harder to keep our view of heaven clear and strong; when this life is so busy, and therefore so full of reality to us, another life seems by comparison unreal. This is our condition, and its peculiar temptations; but we must endure it, and strive to overcome them, for I think we may not try to flee from it.

TORYISM.

To A. P. Stanley, Esq.-1835.

Of one thing I am clear, that if ever this constitution be destroyed, it will be only when it ought to be destroyed; when evils long neglected, and good long omitted, will have brought things to such a state, that the constitution must fall to save the commonwealth, and the church of England perish for the sake of the church of Christ. Search and look whether you can find that any constitution was ever destroyed from within by factions or discontent,

How would the pure, independent, Christ-like spirit of Dr. Arnold indignantly rebuke those clergymen of our own country, who recently have exhorted obedience to a most iniquitous law--a law that has been so oppressive to a large portion of our population, and is so in conflict with the “higher law" of God. Is he in any true sense a minister of the " gospel" (ɛvayyɛλɩov, “good news" to man) who virtually takes sides with the oppressor against the oppressed. and throws the weight of his influence in favor of what degrades and brutalizes his brother man? Sed, indeed, and most promotive of infidelity is it when the mass of unrenewed men feel that the teachings of their own natural conscience are higher than many of the sentiments they hear from the pulpit!