damental idea is the exclusive Divine right fighting the battle of the Church with the of a three-fold ministry, without which the weapons of Puritanism. Laud and his supChurch can nowhere exist. Episcopacy is porters became, in their turn, the Church with it, not merely as with Hooker a valid theorists of their day, so strange are the expression of Divine order in the Church, reactions of history. To this poor inheritance but truly the Church itself. Government succeeded the late Oxford party, who marked by bishops and archbishops is not only a their succession by a zeal and ability worthy divinely-warranted polity, but a polity so of a better cause; but, once more, in the pecularly Divine, as to be of the very essence movement of thought, this extreme of eccleof the Christian revelation. Without Epis-siastical opinion is disappearing, and necescopal sanction, no rites of the Church can be sarily so. Reversing, as it does, the essential validly administered; apart from such sanc- nature of the Church-making it ritual intion they are not only deficient, but they are stead of moral-form rather than life; resting not at all. For all spiritual blessing and logically only on this pтоv εvdos, it is sacramental privilege are inseparably bound its inevitable destiny to sink, with the adup in certain forms rightly dispensed, and vancing tide of human reason, into the abyss this dispensation is only right, as it derives of all false theories. its authority from Episcopal ordination. But while Hooker is thus to be distinGrace descends in a definite external channel, guished from one extreme of ecclesiastical which is called apostolical succession, and opinion, he must equally be distinguished beyond this channel it does not circulate, or, from another. If not a High-Churchman in at least, we have no warrant for its doing so. any modern sense of these words, neither is What are called the "uncovenanted mercies he an Erastian, in the common acceptation of God," may prevail beyond the sphere of of that term. While no theorist in church Episcopal influence; but those Divine mer- government, he yet profoundly believed in cies, which are yea and amen in Christ, are the distinctive reality of that government, alone to be fouud within the consecrated and its Divine necessity, as a preservative shadow of this influence. This is the pure of Christian blessing and privilege. It is High-Church theory, whose logical termina- true that he acknowledges the Sovereign to tion is everywhere Romanism; and it is of be the supreme earthly head of the Church the utmost importance to discriminate be- of England, and with a view to this, maintween this theory and the mere assertion of tained, as the great argument of his concludEpiscopacy as a rightful form of Church ing Book, the identity of Church and State; government. The two views are divided by but, whereas Erastianism, * as commonly the whole circumference of reason, the one understood, makes the Church, in all things, representing theoretical ecclesiasticism in its most extreme shape; the other being merely of foundation. The misinterpretation of Hooker's one form of upholding the great truth, that principles and reasoning-and they are easily capable the Church is divinely warranted, in the study without any of the spirit of philosophy which of misinterpretation by those who approach their light of Scripture and of reason, to govern distinguished their author-combined with the mere itself as may be most suitable to the time tone of his language here and there, may have served and circumstances in which it is placed. to countenance the growing change of opinion which, This, the really catholic position, contro- and Saravia; but to this change the real meaning of even in his own day, we see represented by Bancroft verted by the Puritans of the sixteenth cen- his work, not only as it has been interpreted by us, tury in behalf of Presbyterianism, and ear- but by all without a preconceived theory to support, nestly maintained by all the early defenders is utterly opposed. The fact simply is, that Hooker, of the Church of England, is the while defending such truly philosophical principles very same which has been controverted by the Tracta- been well said-" owing to the vast extent of his as we have described, has the appearance, as it bas rians in our own day, on behalf of Episco- generalizations, and his constant reference of all pacy. Already, indeed, in the age succeeding that of Hooker, principles had changed sides ;* and the Anglican clergy were found things to a primal law of God, of conceding a Divine origin to regal and sacerdotal power; and thus (however unintentionally) he announces a transition to the less noble and philosophical doctrines which distinguished the leading Churchmen of the next period." (Tayler's Religious Life of England, p. 64.) * We are sensible of the inference that may be drawn from this, and has in fact, although more in *No term is really more ambiguous, but the poan implied than a direct manner, been drawn by Mr. pular acceptation of it certainly implies all that we Keble, viz., that Hooker's work contributed not a have attributed to it. The special point of Erastus' little to the change. The same notion is favoured teaching, as has been often pointed out, consisted in by the admiration which James I. and Charles I. are the refusing of all right of excommunication to the known to have expressed of the Ecclesiastical Polity, Church. From this root-a vile enough one certainly and the story of James II. ascribing his adoption of -have sprung up all the deadly associations couRoman Catholicism to the impression made upon his nected with Erastianism, which is properly speaking mind by Hooker's Preface. The inference however, not a theory of the Church at all, but a No-Church while it has such apparent support, is really destitute theory. the mere creature of the State-a mere part living force of Christian education, and the of its general organization-Hooker simply gathering glory of Christian blessing that maintains, that there is no essential distinc- reside in them. tion between the two, so that, in a truly Of Hooker as a theologian, we have scarceChristian nation, they would be practically ly left ourselves room to speak; and yet indivisible. The one view absorbs the Church in no capacity is he greater. His mind, in the State; the other, more truly, absorbs indeed, has been sometimes supposed to be the State in the Church. The one presents eminently legal or political. His reputation a pure negation of all peculiar Church life as a Christian jurist and philosopher, has and authority; the other contains the most overshadowed his reputation as a theologian. positive assertion of both, by identifying But his real eminence consists not in the them with the national life and will, where predominance of judicial qualities of mind, these have become thoroughly Christian. The although these he possesses in high perfection, one, in short, says, there is no Church; but in the combination of these qualities Church prerogative is a mere political indul- with depth of Christian insight and profundigence; Christian privilege a mere civil ty of doctrinal comprehension. As a theoarrangement. The other says, the Church logian, no less than as a philosopher, he is represents the highest social order on earth; singularly comprehensive; embracing in his and, therefore, in the case of a Christian capacious view the double aspect of all renation, it is identical with the national order vealed truth, and with characteristic English and government. "A commonweal is one healthiness and ripeness of spiritual culture, way, and a church another way, defined, yet always preferring a complete and living they are not perpetually severed;" but, on aspect of a subject to any mere dogmatic the contrary, unite, and practically become exhibition of it, however dialectically clear one, at their highest point of development. and well-defined. A view such as this, elaborately defended by our author, and associated in our own day with the illustrious name of Arnold, is certainly not to be confounded with the so-called Erastian denial of the Church as a Divine institution altogether. In no respect does he appear to greater advantage, as compared with one whose illustrious name does not occur in any degree as a rival, but to whose teaching and influence his own was undeniably felt in his day, as it must be still more obviously felt in And as Hooker was strongly opposed to ours, to present a contrast. In mere robustsuch a mere negative view of the Church on ness of hard intellect, in critical acuteness the political side, he was no less strongly and logical power, and undeviating trenchant opposed to views essentially of the same skill of argument, Calvin out-matches negative tendency, though springing from Hooker; while in mere truth and intensity directly contrary motives. While honour of Christian feeling, the Genevan Reformer ing the right of private judgment and the is by no means behind; but he is certainly claims of the Christian reason, he was yet far behind in the geniality of that feeling, deeply at variance with whatever tends to and in the catholic freedom and elevation of make religion a mere personal matter, and his views. Recluse as both were in their the Church a mere arbitrary selection of habits, and ascetically laborious in their individuals, seeking the evidence of their lives-too much so not to have missed some Christian fellowship rather in the conscious elements of happy development in their own witness of their own internal nature, than in minds, and therefore of happy and harmotheir participation of common Christian be- nious sway over the minds ofothers-Hooker, nefits. All such views, which have since in his mental and spiritual growth, yet kept developed into Quakerism, and other extreme closer to life than Calvin, and therefore closer forms of Dissent, and which, no less really to truth. He saw and felt more clearly, than Erastianism, tend to destroy the Church that the force of human logic, terrible and in its corporate existence, and educative po- encompassing as it is, is no measure of the sition and value,-to make it a mere collec- realities of human existence, nor yet of the tion of special voluntary organizations, ad- possibilities of Divine grace. And, accordhering together under local accident and ingly, while accepting, as all Protestant conventional impulse, overlooking those as- theologians of his time did, the general system sociations and influences which bind it, under of doctrine known under the name of Calvinwhatever diversities, into a vast historical ism, he at the same time contended strongly institute-a consecrated community life against the rigorous following out of this all such views were utterly alien to his sym-system, along pathways where the intellect pathies. No one, on the contrary, ever of man merely stumbles in darkness, and more vividly or sacredly realized the grandeur into results against which his moral instincts. of such associations and influences, and the rise up in unconquerable rebellion. These pathways did not deter Calvin, nor these presents very felicitously the harmony of results shock him, carried along as he was Faith and Works-the divine circle of salby the inexorable march of a reasoning_fa- vation-which in our dialectical statements culty which subdued all before it. But we necessarily break up and analyze into its Hooker's more poetic and concrete nature, parts, but which is really one in life, and gentler temper, and really larger reason, only in its living totality, represents the shrunk from such cold audacities of logic; truth of God.* and in order to be more truly rational, he was content to be less ratiocinative. Besides such special points of controversy, in the main external to his great work, The very first controversy in which Hooker enters at large, and with characterHooker engaged, arising out of the sermon istic expansiveness on the highest Christian which he preached at St. Paul's Cross, con- doctrines, in the course of his Fifth Book; cerned the limitations which he felt impelled and the reader who would fully appreciate to place upon the Calvinistic doctrine of his mingled learning and wisdom as a theoPredestination; and the prime source of logian, his reverence and yet his penetration, argumentative difference between him and his profundity and yet his caution, must Travers sprung out of the same doctrine. It study his disquisitions on the doctrines of is not worth our while now to advert to the the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Sacraspecial character of these limitations,* or to ments. If in any respect we feel a want of weigh their polemical value. This may be sympathy with these disquisitions, it is in small, as for our own part we are not indis- the excessive deference which they some- . posed to admit, but they serve sufficiently times manifest to the mere authority of to indicate Hooker's theological bias. This Christian antiquity-the quality which conbias however is fully seen, and his practical stitutes to Mr. Keble their chief charm. and comprehensive wisdom most impres- Viewing him altogether, Hooker must sively manifested in his series of Criticisms always remain one of the greatest names of on the Lambeth Articles.t the past; great as a theologian, yet more Hooker's views on Justification, defended than a theologian; illustrious in the annals at length in his discourse on this subject, of the Church of England, yet still more which will repay careful study, shows the illustrious in the general annals of philososame tendency to reaction against the ex-phy and literature. He possessed and has treme doctrines of the Genevan school. embalmed in his work that living soul of There was no point perhaps which both the truth and power of lofty eloquence in its Swiss and German reformers were disposed expression, which only get fresh glory as to insist upon in a more one-sided manner ages gather, and amid whatever changes of than this, and naturally so in the first excess opinion remain strong, and admirable as of the reaction against the Popish doctrine ever. Throughout life, save the few years of works. There was no point certainly on he spent in the Temple, a retired student which they felt more sensitive, as to any op- and hard-working parish priest, he has made position offered to their opinions. This may his name memorable in English history, be forcibly seen in Calvin's treatment of and his genius one of its proudest boasts. Osiander, in the Third Book of the Institutes; where, with a singularly intense, we had almost said, savage keenness, he assails the divine of Königsberg, and his views on this subject, which, however exaggerated and false in some respects, really pointed to a deeper and more comprehensive truth than that which Calvin opposed to them. Hooker, with his peculiar tendencies, was strongly alive to any Antinomian extreme that might lurk in the mode of stating the doctrine of Free Grace; and accordingly, while specially repudiating the Romish view of infused righteousness, and clearly distinguishing between justification and sanctification in re, he betrays great jealousy of any supposed separation between them in tempore. He ART. VII.-I. Report from the Select Com- 2. 3. 4. Report of the Committee of Management of the Royal Association for Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland, for the year 1855-56. Report of the Council of the Art-Union of London, for the year 1856. Catalogue of the First Exhibition of the Art-Manufacture Association in the National Galleries. Edinburgh, 1856. *See Keble's Pref., p. 102, also Eccl. Polity, vol. THE trick of giving piquancy to our artiii. p. 215. cles by spicing our commonplaces afresh, Keble's Preface, pp. 102-106. Chap. xi. *Vol. iii. p. 508. But to enunciate the problem was easier than to hit upon the solution, and for our own part we felt far more confident that we had established the permanent necessity of a support for science and learning, beyond what immediate public sympathy could yield, than that we had been successful in sug and serving them up to our readers in the traced out this principle, and exhibited its form of startling paradoxes, is not, we be workings. We treated it neither as a fact lieve, one of the charges most commonly to be deplored, nor as a fault to be eradicatbrought against the North British Review. ed, but as a sound and permanent condiWhatever our critics may have to say of us tion of progressive society, and one for in other respects, we find that they generally which, consequently, it is the duty of those give us credit for letting our opinions shift who watch over our social arrangements to for themselves, without clearing the way for make provision. them by any great amount of this, or any other sort of rhetorical trumpet-blowing. But seeing it is possible to run counter to received opinions not in semblance only but in substance, and seeing farther, that, the majority being almost as fallible as the minority, it is possible to do this on the side of truth as well as error, so there are para-gesting the form in which that support could doxes of more kinds than one, and there is be most readily and efficiently extended. one at least, the odium of which we trust we That it must spring indirectly from that have not been slow to encounter. It was in very same public by whom it could not dithe belief that we had this ultimate defence rectly be supplied, was clear enough in a to fall back upon, that, with the alarming country where the centre of sovereignty is prospect of being written down as vendors of the general will; and therefore it was, that, the whimsical for whimsicality's sake, plain still holding to the public, we appealed from before our eyes, we have more than once its sympathy to its faith,-from its underasserted, in the face of a generation by standing to its reason. We called to mind which popularity is regarded as the only that, in the community as in the individual,, conclusive test of merit,-that whatever is there is, at all times, an under-current of HIGHEST in the productions of mind, must of perception, higher and nobler than has yet necessity be unpopular. It was by no means come to the surface in a conscious form, an necessary that the converse of this proposi- intuitive recognition not only of the exist tion should be true, and that whatever was ence of problems to be solved, but a misty unpopular should therefore be high, for it foreshadowing of the means of their solution, was possible to dip below as well as to rise which far outstrips the operations of the above the popular level, to shoot beside as understanding. Whence this involuntary well as to shoot over the common mark; foreboding of the dawn proceeds, and by nay more, folly being commoner than wis- what mysterious process it works its way, dom, and failure than success, we were free from the hazy regions of unconscious sentito admit that, within the domain of presump-ment, into the noon-day of intellectual pertion, the odds were wofully against the wan- ception and logical enunciation, we shall derer from traditionary paths. Still our never know. proposition remained unshaken in its truth, and uncircumscribed in its range, and we felt warranted in asserting it, not of mankind in one stage of progress, but of mankind in every stage of progress, so long at least as there was a stage unattained, that is But whence this feeling came, and what to say, so long as man continued to be man. was the form of its operation, were alike Nor, paradoxical as it might seem, and lit- immaterial for our purpose. That it existed tle palatable as might be some of the conse- and could be acted upon was enough, for we quences which it involved, did it appear to could go to the generality and say to them, defy an explanation entirely consistent with "Surely it is not incredible that what, ordinary modes of thinking:-for populari- though still dim and vague, is in process of ty being but another name for public sym- becoming clear and definite to you, may pathy, as no man can sympathize with what be still clearer and more definite to your he does not feel at all, so no generation in foremost members, seeing that, to the eye the mass, can sympathize with what only of the spirit as to that of the body, the disthe longest spiritual feelers of its foremost tant is dim, and the near alone is sharply members have yet come in contact with. defined. If you have got the length of feelIt was in the region of speculation, ab- ing that, in such and such directions there is stract and concrete, and of that profounder truth which you know not, why not believe sort of knowledge which furnishes specula that others who have outstripped you in the tion with its material, that we formerly race may have crossed the frontier of the "Was von Menschen nicht gewusst Wandelt in der Nacht." promised land, and be already in a condition | a little in its way when first proposed to to put into your hands the heavy clusters such a public as that of Edinburgh. But of its spiritual grapes, may be able to tell the case which they endeavoured to meet was you the truth plainly ?" an urgent one, and the projectors probably derived their chief aid from the already general feeling that either something new must be done for Art, or its cultivation abandoned as an impossibility in modern society. The Scottish Academy had been in existence for several years, and there was annually exhibited a supply of pictures, not very nu So we reasoned as regarded Learning and Philosophy. Now, when we turn to the region of Art, still keeping our attention directed to its highest forms, we find, in the documents before us, not only the most unequivocal evidence of the same want of direct sympathy, and consequently of support; but, what is far more precious, the most elabo- merous or of very high quality possibly, rate details of an institution by means of which it has been found possible to supply these defects by taking advantage of that indefinite longing for the beautiful, in purer and severer forms than those in which they could as yet appreciate it fully, which in their better moments swells the great generous breast of the public at large. "Sweet are the paths, oh! passing sweet, By Esk's fair stream that run; It was whilst wandering along these paths, they tell us, and sitting, and smoking perhaps the Calumet of Contemplation, under trees, beneath the shade of which poets had sat and smoked before,-in a scene as rich in pleasing memories as in present charms, -that two of our fellow-townsmen schemed out the first Art-Union that was established in Britain. but still vastly beyond the demand; and the most hopeless part of the whole matter was this, that as the quality of the commodity improved, the demand invariably dimin ished. Never more than £300, sometimes as little as £35, had been expended in the purchase of pictures exhibited by the Academy, and these trifling sums had been paid. generally, for pictures of the very lowest class. If anything was aimed at beyond a clever imitation of a familiar scene, the picture was certain to remain in the artist's possession. In such days of "moral driz zle" a far saner man than David Scott might well have caught the disease of which he died. Nor was there hope of improvement in Edinburgh from what was taking place elsewhere. The Royal Academy of London was the oldest, the richest, and the most influential institution for the encouragement of Art in this country, and on art and artists it had conferred unquestionably many benefits. Still, even in the centre of its operations, in the metropolis itself, the position But it was not in the leafy glades of Haw- of the artist, from the days of Sir Joshua thornden, nor in the heads of the gentlemen Reynolds downwards, had continued to be a to whom we have referred, that the first idea struggling one. If he painted portraits deof such an association sprang up. It origi-cently, he was sure to derive a large and nated in Paris, in the stirring and suggestive steady income from a community so vast days of Napoleon I. From France it passed over to Flanders, where, nourished perhaps by the artistic traditions of the land, it seems more than anywhere else to have taken root and flourished; and latterly it had been introduced into Prussia by no less distinguished a personage than Alexander von Humboldt. and so wealthy. Even if he varied the monotony of copying commonplace faces by copying commonplace scenes, or representing familiar occupations or popular customs, he might still, on a more limited scale, find both encouragement and support; but as he rose in the scale of artistic endeavour, down went the sympathy and interest of his counAll this was no doubt known to Mr. trymen. To train him to excel in the Glassford Bell, and his companion Mr. Hill, higher walks of his profession, was in such in 1834, as well as it is known to us at pre- circumstances a very questionable kindness; sent. But though the merit of invention and still such was the professed object of the did not belong to them, that of suggestion Royal Academy of London, and of the Acaand adaptation was unquestionably theirs, demies which had been formed after the and the still greater merit of persuading their same model in Edinburgh and Dublin. In countrymen to lay aside the suspicions with the latter capital, the private patronage of which they usually regard every institution that has a Continental origin. Even the appeal which their scheme seemed to make to gambling propensities must have stood not art was at a lower ebb than in either of the others; and what as yet was peculiar to Dublin, though perhaps it was ominous of what was about to take place elsewhere, was, |