Episcopalians, Methodists of every shade and colour, were actively engaged in a crusade against the common enemy, and all of them appeared to work harmoniously together. But Catholics and Unitarians are not the only ones to be dreaded and disliked by a portion of the self-styled "religious world." In the midst of the evangelical ranks are jealousies and suspicions, not the less deep because they are not paraded on platforms. While the fever was at its height, an Episcopalian clergyman, of pre-eminent zeal for the Evangelical cause, astonished the members of his own Church, and confounded the great body of the spiritual agitators, by declaring, in a speech delivered at the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance, that he had narrowly watched the movement, and had found it to be so directed as to have become a hostile influence brought to bear upon the Established Church. We give his own words: "I say advisedly that this Revival movement has been so managed as to have become a proselytizing engine directed against the Church of which I am a member.' It is no wonder that the reverend gentleman, surrounded as he was by the advocates of the system which he thus denounced, was assailed by a clamour which almost prevented him from continuing his address; but his words were heard and have produced their effect. The clergy of the Church of England have ever since, as a body, stood aloof from the revival, and very few of the laity of that communion now speak of it otherwise than in terms of sorrow or derision. We copy the following from the Rev. W. M'Ilwaine's pamphlet, premising that the writer is a respected episcopal clergyman of high evangelical sentiments and pre-eminent for ministerial zeal: "Sufficient, perhaps, has been said of the evil consequences of this wretched system; there is one other on which my limits permit me to say but a passing word. It has been abused, to my own knowledge, to the vilest purposes of sectarianism and proselytism, properly so called. The ranks of those sects around us whose staple is extravagance and excitement, are at this moment recruited by the victims of the current and popular delusion." (M'Ilwaine, p. 16.)

So much for the "non-sectarian" character which at one time was loudly claimed for the movement by its advocates. It never deserved it. It was from the first bitterly, intensely sectarian, as against Romanism and Unitarianism; and it is now denounced as animated by a proselytizing aim, directed against that very Church whose ministers, coming from a distance to view the remarkable events of which they had heard, and unacquainted with the character and history of the men with whom they had to deal, became easy dupes to an artfully contrived system; and, through the medium of their reports, published in newspapers, pamphlets and magazines, were the chief instruments by which the delusion was spread throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

We must reserve for another paper what we have to say respecting the physical and moral (or immoral) results of the revival, so far as they have hitherto developed themselves. We shall conclude, for the present, with the following sentences from the pen of one of the most respected clergymen of the Evangelical persuasion in the north of Ireland, one who in a case of this kind is certainly not to be considered as prejudiced against any movement that could fairly or even plausibly claim to be a spiritual awakening. He says,

"And here let me be permitted to put persons at a distance on their guard against certain statements which have been sent on their rounds, through the public press, by means of Revival organs' and otherwise, respecting the work in progress. It would be a task as distasteful as perhaps needless to expose the large amount of fiction and fallacy which has thus got into circulation. It is really marvellous how persons in the rank of Christian ministers and others could so commit themselves. Painful as it is to do so, the public must be reminded that the character, circumstances and credibility of the witness ought, in every such case, to be fully taken into account. And how is it in this case? Without venturing to impugn the sincerity or truthfulness of many of those who have volunteered to undertake tours of inspection and to publish them, I must be permitted to remind those who have read these publications of the circumstances under which, as well as the persons by whom, they were written. First came forth a most marvellous and exaggerated statement of the Revival movement, by means of the public press and its organs. I say deliberately, a most exaggerated statement. Some specimens of it shall presently be submitted. Then, from distant parishes, and with minds so prepared to receive all the wonders narrated, came ministers of religion and others, to take a surface view of what was going on, and then to print and publish it. The qualifications, retractions and explanations to which some of these gentlemen have been already obliged to resort, are as humiliating as they are instructive. How could it be otherwise? Prepared to believe and admire all that was seen, they listened to every story and report, trusted every appearance, endorsed every 'convert,' and then proceeded to publish their respective tours. It has been my painful experience to detect the grossest misrepresentation in many of these reports. I have come into personal contact with many of these alleged converts, and regret to say that my experience of them, however sincere they may have seemed, led me to very different conclusions from those of their previous visitors. More melancholy examples of credulity on the one side, and ignorance, self-deception and superstition on the other, could hardly be imagined." (M'Ilwaine, p. 5.)

These are sensible and judicious remarks, and our readers will do well to bear them in mind. In substance they are fully borne out by the statements of several other writers, whose publications we have enumerated.

A REPLY TO SOME RECENT STRICTURES IN THE CHRISTIAN REFORMER ON AN ARTICLE IN THE NATIONAL REVIEW ON EWALD'S "APOSTOLIC AGE."

SIR,

WHEN a man gives his thoughts to the public, especially if they controvert received opinions, he must expect to have them challenged and criticised; and if the animadversions to which he is subjected, shew competent knowledge of the subject and display a fair and candid spirit, he has no reason to complain. It is only by such discussion that whatever truth his speculations may contain, can be more fully brought out, and the error involved in them be exposed and dissipated. Under ordinary circumstances, I should have been well content to let whatever I may have written, quietly produce its own effect of approval or rejection in the minds of readers, without engaging any further in its assertion or defence. I have little time and less taste for controversy. But the allusions in an article in your last number, signed "An Unitarian Layman," are so distinctly personal, and the imputations of various kinds contained in it are so fitted to leave a mistaken and even an injurious impression behind them, that, however disagreeable the task, I do not feel myself at liberty to allow them to pass without reply.

Allow me, in the first place, a word or two about Ewald himself. Your correspondent seems to think it "a matter of little moment what Ewald may have thought or written on the subject of the resurrection of Christ ;" and words of my own are cited from the article in the National Review to detract from his authority, and make it appear a loss of time for any English reader to give himself the trouble to learn the opinions of such a man. In criticising his work, it was a simple act of literary honesty to notice the defects of temper and judgment with which this eminent scholar is undoubtedly chargeable. But the words which I have used in speaking of his extraordinary merits, ought in fairness to have been quoted along with those in which I have felt it necessary to employ the language of censure. Ewald is one of the most religious of the great philologists of Germany, full of reverence for the Scriptures and for the character and work of Christ. It is rather his distinction among his class. I have not scrupled to say of him: "Everywhere we recognize the fervour and earnestness of his spirit and its elevated moral tone, the vast extent and minute exactness of his philological attainments, the depth and richness of his critical resources, the readiness and fertility of his combinations, and his comprehensive grasp at once in its broadest features and smallest details of the national life of Judaism." (Nat. Rev. for July, p. 119.) Whatever your correspondent may think, I venture to assert that it is not unimportant for any one who would keep pace with the pro

gress of theological ideas, to learn what so profound a Hebraist has thought on any point of Hebrew belief; and I feel confident that I shall be borne out in this assertion by all who have sufficient knowledge of the subject to qualify them to offer an opiuion. Ewald, like some great scholars of our own country, Wakefield, Warburton and Bentley, is too conscious of his vast intellectual wealth and strength; and this renders him at times haughty and contemptuous in his bearing towards other men, and fills him with an overweening conceit of the value and justness of his own theories. But there are few from whom so much is to be learned. His very errors and extravagances, rich as they are in learning and in thought, are more pregnant with instruction for those who understand how to use them, than thousands of worn-out truisms that go unquestioned through the world.

Let me take this opportunity of expressing my obligations to your correspondent for pointing out to me the very faulty construction of a sentence of mine (written, it is true, when my mind was somewhat exhausted by a long term of academic labour, but not therefore excusable), in which two quarrelsome its, not able to settle their rival claims, leave us in doubt, like some other disputants, which is right and which is wrong. I must put an end to this unhappy litigation by deciding, once for all, that "its" with "final result" belongs to the "history of the Hebrew people," but that the second "it" is nevertheless entitled to take up the "final result" as its own. I fully acquiesce in the propriety of your correspondent's seasonable interposition.

Before proceeding to the main subject of this discussion, I wish to dispose of one or two personal matters. I am charged by your correspondent with vagueness of statement and with not writing intelligibly. No man is more aware than myself of the great imperfection of my style. But with regard to its "confused obscurity," some who are pretty good judges of English composition have remarked to me, that whatever objections in other respects the offending article may lie open to, its language is perfectly clear; and an earlier critic (C. R., October, p. 578) has observed, that "its positions, even when vague, are throughout intelligible." As to vagueness, may not your correspondent's charge be retorted on himself? After reading over repeatedly what he has written in p. 708, I confess I do not understand him. I cannot find in the passages there quoted or referred to, the shadow of a ground for the accusation-that I am even unconsciously unjust and unfair, that I assume unbecoming airs of originality where there is nothing new, that I "undervalue the wisdom of our ancestors" and fall into the "more serious error of understating it." Your correspondent must be under some hallucination. He is fighting with a phantom of his own creation, and sees in my pages what is only the reflection of some strange idea that has got possession of his mind. I have carefully looked

over these pages again, and I say deliberately, without fear of contradiction from any unprejudiced reader, from any one who is not determined to find what he has already pre-conceived, that I have not written a single word to justify any one of the three charges here alleged. I have called it "a great mistake to treat Christianity so entirely as an isolated event a fact sui generis— in the course of human affairs." I call it so still; and I appeal to the great mass of works on the Evidences and the History of the Scriptures current and popular in this country, in proof of the fact that Christianity is still generally regarded in that light. When the present learned and accomplished Dean of St. Paul's published many years ago a "History of the Jews" based to a large extent on the opposite view, he found to his cost what hostility his work excited. It perhaps lost him a bishopric. He has written his "History of Christianity" in the same enlightened spirit, but I see no evidence that the general feeling of the Christian public has yet undergone any material change. I think, therefore, I was fully justified in making that statement; but I have nowhere claimed for it any novelty or originality. Ewald, indeed, has handled the history of Christianity in a manner so strikingly his own, that it might perhaps be said of him that he has the merit of placing many old facts in a comparatively new point of view. But I cannot find that I have anywhere asserted this. On the contrary, I have most distinctly classed him with some others. I have said that he takes "a broader view than is often the case." Your correspondent observes, with a solemnity almost ludicrous, "that good and able men," "long before the day of Ewald and his reviewer," have dwelt on the connection between the Jewish and Christian dispensations, and on the relations of both to the general condition of mankind. Does he really suppose me ignorant of so notorious a fact? Does he imagine that, because my subject did not require me to mention particularly the labours of such men, I therefore undervalued them, as furnishing in their time and place important contributions to the formation of theological opinion? I say contributions, because I do not allow, that on a subject which is essentially progressive, even the best works can do more than contribute to knowledge. Your correspondent surely does not mean to insinuate, that in prosecuting our inquiries we are to be precluded from embracing any new views which commend themselves to our reason and are supported by irresistible evidence; and that in deliberately adopting them, we thereby cast a slight on what we have already learned from earlier instructors. Yet I am hardly able to put any other interpretation on a sentence which is almost as involved and obscure as one of mine already referred to, which he so properly condemned. He reminds me that "I might have known, and must have forgotten, how in schools of instruction which were open to me, the connection between the