forthcoming to similar objections against Christianity. His persistent treatment of religion as the mere addition of sanctions to a righteousness which it does not recognize as desirable in itself, misses the mark as wholly as similar accusations against himself would do. Pleasure for self and pleasure for others, pleasure for self in the pleasure of others, and pleasure for others in the pleasure of self, have all their part in both systems. And they are more vivid in the Christian, even though we admit them to be neither absent nor unreal in that of evolution.

The advantages which Christian ethics possess over those of Mr. Spencer seem to us to come chiefly under two great heads. One is regard for the design of the Creator, and the other is the Moral Ideal. As to other matters there is much in common. He cannot, as we have seen, show us anything in his system which distinguishes it from ours; nor do we pretend to conceal the immense benefit we may derive from his knowledge and his wisdom. But on these two points our ethics differ.

Yet neither regard for the design of the Creator nor yet the moral ideal are consistently absent from Mr. Spencer's system. The appendix to vol. ii. of his present work contains an interesting correspondence with Mr. Llewellyn Davies, in which the latter writer declares his belief as follows:

'The Unseen Power is gradually creating mankind by processes of development, and the human consciousness is so made as to be responsive to the authority of this Power; justice is the progressive order which the Maker is establishing among human beings, and it is binding upon each man as he becomes aware of it, and is felt to be binding because he is the Maker's creature.'

Mr. Spencer, before criticizing his correspondent, remarks that there is a curiously close kinship between the view thus stated, and certain remarks of his own in First Principles, § 34, and the Data of Ethics, § 62. This latter passage runs

thus:

'If for the Divine will, supposed to be supernaturally revealed, we substitute the naturally revealed end towards which the Power manifested through evolution works; then, since Evolution has been and is still working towards the highest life, it follows that conforming to those principles by which the highest life is achieved is furthering that end.'

In reviewing the Data of Ethics we ourselves quoted this passage as involving a surrender of Agnosticism, since a power which can reveal its ends in nature and work through

evolution cannot be called unknowable. We still maintain the argument. But, as we have above proved at length, Mr. Spencer never makes an ethical use of any knowledge we may possess of the ends of the unknown Power. Our motives are found, according to him, in our likings more or less purified. But to Mr. Davies, as to every Christian thinker, the will of the Creator and the end which he pursues distinctly appear in the field of conscience as motives overpowering a thousand doubts, preferences, and speculations by the commanding proof which His known will gives of what is righteous, what is best for society, and what is best for ourselves. And if the end of the Unknown Power can in any way be known to us, as Mr. Spencer allows that it can, whether is it more fitting that it should operate thus immediately and mightily upon every creature who is conscious of it, or that it should be relegated back like a Roi Fainéant into absolute ineffectiveness?

With regard to the Moral Ideal, Christians have it in their Master. Mr. Spencer will assert that some barbarians imitate Him a great deal better than His own servants. Be that as it may, He is their ideal, and His life is a real existing fact. Mr. Spencer's moral ideal consists of an adjustment of organism and environment which has never yet taken place, and will not be realized until we shall have lain for ages in our graves. Which is the more powerful? which the better adapted to human nature, trained through all its history to live with men, while none but philosophers have learnt to live with ideas? High-minded and instructive as Mr. Spencer's work is, it will have little effect in comparison with a chapter from the Gospels.

ART. VI.-ST. MARY THE VIRGIN, OXFORD. A History of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford. The University Church. From Domesday to the Installation of the late Duke of Wellington, Chancellor of the University. By the Present Vicar. (London, 1892.)

It was a happy inspiration which led its 'present vicar' to write the history of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford. The task, upon the narrowest estimate of its bearings, is one of no ordinary difficulty, for the great University Church affords a striking illustration of the continuity of the Anglican Com

munion, and it touches at numberless points the national history through the course of nearly a millennium. The elements of interest are many and varied, embracing, as they must, questions archæological and architectural, glimpses at educational changes and scraps of university history, notices of the modifications of Christian teaching which arose as generations passed on, and of the famous men through whom Oxford has become illustrious. To handle materials requiring for their lucid treatment considerable and diversified stores of learning so as to present a clear, well-balanced picture, and to draw from a multitude of facts their truthful and occasionally subtle conclusions, demand alike a well-furnished mind and a mature judgment. There is still, despite the multitude of books which have appeared on the history of the Church of England, ample room for any well-digested scientific record which shall bring out with adequate wealth of detail and with a firm grasp of leading Catholic principles the unique development of the Anglican branch of the Church Catholic; and a monograph like that before us is a valuable contribution to such a record.

If Mr. Ffoulkes has not succeeded in producing an ideal history of an English parish church it is because his pen is too frequently tempted into digressions, pardonable in themselves, but injurious to the unity of presentation; and because the theologian in him at times so far supersedes the historian as to introduce long epitomes of sermons that break up the thread of his narrative. Our criticism is not that Mr. Ffoulkes unduly magnifies his office. With the high rank he claims for St. Mary the Virgin in his opening paragraph we are not disposed to quarrel.

'Its history,' he says, 'cannot be written without reference to the city within which it stands, to the famous university that so long taught and still worships in it, to the famous college, to which, almost as soon as colleges were founded in Oxford, it was impropriated, and in ecclesiastical and even mundane revolutions, to the world at large. Our oldest and finest cathedrals are thrown into the shade by it, for the benefit it has been to this kingdom, both in Church and State. But its own history must not be thrown into confusion by these references, which must therefore be kept in check, and not occupy too much space' (p. 1).

We may have occasion hereafter to question whether the writer has throughout observed the rule of proportion here indicated, but the reader will be ready to pardon its transgression in consideration of the ample store of information contained in Mr. Ffoulkes's pages, and of the generous spirit

which pervades them. It is rare to find an author who combines so strong a grasp of Catholic truth with so kindly an appreciation of schools of thought which differ from his

own.

The praise which we so. readily bestow on the matter and spirit of the volume before us we are altogether unable to accord to its style. The book bears many marks of hurried writing, and its composition is rugged and confused. The writer constantly adds one thought or detail to another until his sentences resemble some of the Protozoa which can be broken into a score of fragments, each of which is in itself a perfect animal. Take the following passage as an example:

'Bari, for Englishmen, had then and has still a special interest as being the place where St. Anselm met the Greeks in council A.D. 1087, and was adjured by the reigning Pope, Urban II., in these words: "Anselm, our father, our master, where are you?" to come to the front and refute them, which his own theologians could not-and he made the speech, afterwards recast by him and published as a tract on the procession of the Holy Ghost, which immediately became standard, and is standard still' (p. 26).

Such a method of stringing half a dozen facts together is rather inelegant than faulty; but what can be said for such slipshod and incorrect phraseology as that of which we give the following examples?

'The opportunity no sooner came within his reach than it was seized in a grasp that would never let it slip, till the colophon had been placed on works, which by the blessing of God-which was always the spirit in which he planned them-should live' (p. 49).

'While there, they could not have failed to visit the palace where this great saint of Oxford as well as of Lincoln resided, whenever he could spare time, called Stowe Park, and been shown over the localities in its grounds that he had been known to frequent' (p. 52). Upon the martyrdom of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer Mr. Ffoulkes observes: How they suffered, as Mr. Froude paints the scene, no meaner description of it is needed' (p. 218). Comparing Cranmer and Newman, he avers: Both did the work that Divine Providence designed each of them to do' (p. 224). The ordinary reader will regard the information as not a little mixed which tells him that

'till the Sheldonian Theatre was erected, the exercises of the Act, answering to our Encænia, were performed at St. Mary's, for which (the exercises, we presume, not the University church) temporary scaffolds and galleries were put up, to be taken down when all was over, and other costs incurred for repairs' (p. 294).

It is yet more startling to read (the reference is to Newman's sermons, and the Oxford Tracts commencing with him and ending with him ') that 'in their leanings towards Rome they simply reflected the genius loci, which is inherent in Oxford and far older than him' (p. 470). This latter solecism is, however, possibly a misprint.

But the climax of involution and obscurity is perhaps reached in a sentence which we quote in full, and which shall be our last example of the author's style:

'Walter Herby,' he writes, or Herdeby, as Tanner writes him in one place, but, by a slip of the pen, supposes another person of the same name, further on, to have written the sermon, who profited by the Arabians in his day, was an Augustinian friar, who studied at Oxford in the reign of Edward III., was famous for his erudition and for his lectures on the Old and New Testament' (p. 150). Even with the aid of the author's punctuation, which we have faithfully copied, we confess ourselves incompetent to unravel the meaning of this unique paragraph.

It is in no carping spirit that we note these blemishes in a volume so replete with learning as the work before us. They afford a remarkable illustration of the degree to which one who has amassed considerable treasures of knowledge can disregard all concern about the manner in which he should set them before the general reader. Without accepting unreservedly the French dictum that the style is the man,' so flagrant a neglect of the art of composition is passing strange in a scholar of our great classic university. In so hurried an age as our own we look for finished and artistic work from those who have opportunity for learned leisure on the quiet banks of the Isis, and it is disappointing to find ourselves groping painfully amidst a bewildering labyrinth of words. The lack of discrimination which causes a writer to overcrowd his pages with a multitude of superfluous details is a serious drawback to the crisp and lucid handling which is essential when a great variety of subjects has to be treated within somewhat narrow limits.

The French adage already quoted is largely confirmed by the contents of Mr. Ffoulkes's volume. His diffuse, invertebrate style corresponds with the heterogeneous collection of ill-digested and extraneous matter gathered within his history. Subjects which, if discussed at all, should have been relegated to appendices are incorporated in the body of the work, and break very awkwardly the continuity of the narrative. It is only the slenderest thread of connexion which can be traced between the church of St. Mary and either schemes for