the greater need the more earnestly to warn the young against its delusions. It may be that, in some sections of the Church especially, the neglect of the ethical side of Christianity has induced a feeling of antagonism to that dogmatic truth which has been presented, not too decidedly and too earnestly, but too exclusively, and without a sufficient regard to its practical issues. Christian teachers will do well to profit so far by their ob tions of the truth a greater completeness, and while resolutely holding fast by the doctrines they have received, to insist that the most convincing evidence of the Divinity of the doctrine is to be found in the beauty and holiness of the lives they fashion. portance of practical religion. The only danger is, lest in the protest against a faith without works, there should be an attempt to have works without faith, and, looked at from our point of view, this is the great defect of Felix Holt. Goodness, and goodness of a very high pattern, too, is described and commended; but though we find it most conspicuous in some religious men, we do not feel that it is the necessary outcome and natural result of their deep religious convic-servation of this as to give their exhibitions. On the contrary, we can hardly help receiving the free impression that their religion is regarded rather as an evidence of weakness than as the source of all their strength. Thus Rufus Lyon, the Independent minister, is a perfectly unique and striking portrait, as unlike the Chadbands and Stiggins of Mr. Dickens or the Vincents of Mrs. Oliphant as a portrait of Sir J. W. Gordon is unlike the wretched daub we sometimes see on the walls of a millionnaire, whose taste has not kept pace with the advance in his material wealth. His self-denying zeal, his passionate love for learning, his thorough consecration to his work, his singular simplicity of spirit and life, are very beautiful and are admirably drawn. Independents ought to be thankful to so accomplished a writer for the pains she has taken in depicting one of the class of men to whom they owe so much, and may reasonably profit by the kindly hints she gives as to their mode of treating such earnest workers. At the same time they will feel that there is a defect in the representation. The intense sincerity, depth, and beauty of Mr. Lyon's piety is fully recognized: but still we can hardly help feeling that the writer looks upon it as rather overstrained, as something which is quite as much fitted to excite our compassion as our respect, and the idea is strengthened by the mode in which Felix Holt deals with religious questions. In short, we must not conceal from ourselves the fact that, even with novelists most disposed to treat Christians and their work fairly, there is, for the most part, a deep-seated dislike of what they regard as mere dogma. They would have holy lives, and they do not see the connection between them and a pure Scriptural creed, and the error is so popular and so ensnaring that there is Felix Holt contributes some excellent additions to George Eliot's gallery of characters. Mrs. Holt, with her extraordinary ideas about Scripture and its interpretation, and her singular faculty of discovering some text to suit the purpose of the moment, talks almost as amusingly, if not quite as profoundly, as the illustrious Mrs. Poyser. "I was born," she tells the unfortunate minister who had listened to her interminable talk, "in the General Baptist conviction, and as for being saved without works, there's many, I dare say, can't do without that doctrine; but, I thank the Lord, I never needed to put myself on a level with the thief on the cross. I've done my duty, and more, if anybody comes to that; for I have gone without my bit of meat to make broth for a sick neighbor, and if any of the church members say they have done the same, I'd ask them if they had the sinking at the stomach as I have." Equally good in her own way is Lyddy, the sharp, shrewd, somewhat satirical, but thoroughly good Lyddy, Mr. Holt's devoted servant. Parson Jack, with his bonhomie, his absolute devotion to his family, and his equally complete indifference to principles, is one of the cleverest portraits of the book. It is but fair to remember, however, that the writer lays her scene more than thirty years ago, and that both clergymen and Dissenting ministers are widely different from what they were at that time. Parson Jack has few counterparts left, and there are fewer of the Debarry class than was the case in the last generation. As a picture of the times | ted in the pages of a periodical, edited immediately succeeding the Reform bill, by one so honored as Dr. Norman Macthe book is remarkably faithful and in- leod, to hold up to the admiration of the structive. Its greatest blot is the intro- young men and maidens of England. duction of Mr. Transome's strange, repulsive, and, in our judgment, most improbable story. A story from the pen of a clergyman of high repute, like the Rev. Charles Kingsley, and especially a historical tale, from the Regius Professor of Modern History, at Cambridge, might fairly be expected to be distinguished from the common ruck of the novels of the season, alike in artistic excellence and in Christian tone. We regret to say that so reasonable an expectation is certainly not fulfilled in the case of Hereward the Wake. As a story, it is dull and wearisome in the extreme; as a lesson on life, it is essentially defective and mischievous. There are, undoubtedly, materials sufficient for the construction of an interesting historical romance out of the records of that period of transition and disorder which followed the Norman Conquest, and there were heroic deeds done in resistance to the invader's power worthy of the artist's utmost skill: but Mr. Kingsley has sacrificed all such advantages in his desire to depict the achievements of a rude savage, and exalt him into a hero. Mr. Kingsley writes in his "own Broad Church way," as Mrs. Oliphant has it. He is a muscular Christian, and of course the heroes whom he loves to honor belong to the same illustrious school; but, unfortunately, each new creation exhibits degeneracy. There was something very touching about Amyas Leigh; and Tom Thurnall, if less attractive and with faults less to be excused, considering the times in which he lived, had still a noble and generous nature; but we are at a loss to see what to admire in Hereward, except mere physical courage and daring. He was a coarse drunkard, who sullied the glories of his victories by his revellings and excess; he was a cold-blooded sensualist, who abandond a noble-minded and long-suffering wife, who had sacrificed her all, country, friends, treasure, personal comfort, and imperilled her very life for him: he was a recreant even to the country which he professed to serve; yet this is the man, forsooth, whom Mr. Kingsley is permitNEW SERIES Vol. V., No. 1. From first to last the tale is a glorification of simple brute force, unrelieved by any high genius, and undirected to any grand patriotic object. And this, we suppose, is muscular Christianity! Let us say at once that we are not insensible to the importance of some points of his teaching. We have no sympathy with the namby-pambyism and sentimental dreaming, both in religion and politics, against which Mr. Kingsley has always so earnestly protested. We believe that an ascetic contempt for the body is as unchristian as it is unphilosophical, and that an attention to physical law, and to the cultivation of that health and vigor which may render us capable of rendering good service to God and man, is essential to the completeness of our religion. But we do not, therefore, conclude that great strength and prowess, capability of endurance or gymnastic skill, are necessarily religious, or that athlete and Christian are convertible terms. We do not believe that in the present condition of our humanity, the world is ever to be governed on any rose-water theory; and, unfortunately, we do not see any signs of the dawn of that era of universal peace and charity, whose advent some sanguine prophets were a few years ago so fond of predicting. But, on the other hand, we cannot regard war as anything but a terrible calamity; nor can we exult in deeds of sanguinary violence, often as purposeless as they were cruel. Mr. Kingsley's teachings were, undoubtedly, a reaction from an opposite extreme, and to a certain extent commanded our sympathy; but the vehemence of his own feelings, unrestrained by those correcting influences which we might have supposed would have exercised great sway over him, have carried him to lengths from which we should have hoped that, as a man of taste and refinement, not to say as minister of the Gospel of Peace, he would have recoiled. Some of the chapters in the present tale would have been admirably suited to the columns of journals which chronicle with a special gusto every detail of those horrible prize fights, the interest in which these apostles of mus 5 rage, his marvellous prowess, and his love of English liberty. The feeling with which the anthor regards him is to be judged from the concluding passage relative to this fierce, ungoverned, sensual hero. "They knew not that Hereward was alive for evermore, that only his husk and shell lay mouldering there in Crowland cular Christianity have done much to revive, but are singularly out of keeping with the professed aim and established reputation of Good Words. We have only to compare this extraordinary rhapsody with some of the tales that have appeared in the same journal, with, for example, the editor's own less elaborate but equally manly and far more health-choir, that above them and around them, ful story of the Old Lieutenant, with Mrs. Craik's Mistress and Maid, or with Alexander Smith's novelette in the same volume, to be made thoroughly conscious of the intellectual as well as moral inferiority of this Hereward. If, indeed, it had to trust to its own intrinsic literary merits, the book would have fallen still-born from the press, and even now with all the prestige derived from Mr. Kingsley's great name, we doubt whether it will find many readers. The legends and traditions about white bears, Cornish giants, the mare Swallow, the magic armor, the sword Brainbiter, and all the rest of it are not particularly entertaining, and the idea of their being light reading must be regarded by most novel readers as a very sorry joke. Mr. Kingsley would, probably, tell us that he never intended to represent Hereward as the type of a Christian hero; that, on the contrary, he distinctly points out how much of the old savage and heathen element there was in his character; that he is described as having "never felt the influence of that classic civilization, without which good manners seem, even to this day, almost beyond the reach of the white man," and still more as "godless, skeptical of Providence itself," and withal strongly tainted by a dark superstition. Still, he is throughout the hero of the story, towering with all his vices above his compeers as the noble English champion. His brutal deeds are recorded without shuddering, if not even with a sort of grim satisfaction, and the impression is certainly conveyed that, though his coarseness, and drunkenness, and, above all, his disloyalty to his wife, were deserving of keenest censure and punishment, yet his feats of daring, accompanied though they were often by barbarous cruelties, were so worthy of admiration, that if his great offences were not to be condoned, yet they were to be treated with leniency because of his dauntless cou and in them, destined to raise them out of that bitter bondage, and mould them into a great nation, and the parents of still greater nations, in lands as yet unknown, brooded the immortal spirit of Hereward, now purged from all earthly dross even the spirit of freedom, which can never die." What may be the exact meaning of this wild rhapsody we do not profess to determine; for we are certainly at a loss to find any interpretation by which it can be reconciled either with Christianity or common sense. It appears to us a poor parody on the song of the American War "John Brown is dead, But John Brown's spirit is marching on." But in this there was some sense, for John Brown, by teaching and example, had kindled a spirit of enthusiasm and reverence for the rights of humanity, of resolution to break the chains of the slave, and overturn the power of the oppressor, which directly led to the election of Abraham Lincoln. But what is the spirit spoken of by Mr. Kingsley, which in one clause appears to be the "immortal spirit" of Hereward himself, "purged from all earthly dross" (where, how, and when we are left to conjecture), and in the next the spirit of freedom. In either case we equally object to the implication contained in the passage, in the one on theological and moral, in the other on historical, grounds. We should be sorry, indeed, to believe that the spirit of English freedom was incarnated in such a wild, lawless Berserk as Hereward, as we are certainly unprepared to indorse the theology which teaches that such a life as his was followed by an immortality of blessedness. But, perhaps, we are going too far when we attempt to extract any serious or rational meaning from such a piece of idle rodomontade and bombast. On one point, however, we are bound to be clear. Such teaching may be very attractive to a certain class of young men; its high-sounding words about virtue and purity, and self-restraint, and fearless courage in vindication of the right, may deceive the unwary, but Christian teaching it is not. It insists upon one class of virtues to the depreciation and neglect of others quite as necessary, and it ministers to the growth of a spirit in decided antagonism to a Gospel whose highest blessings are reserved for the meek, the merciful, the peace-makersits tendency is to justify the strong in their aggressions upon the rights and privileges of the weak. Its only logical outcome, however Mr. Kingsley may fail to perceive it, is to establish the most devilish of all maxims, that "might is right;" from first to last it fosters that "pride of life" which is "not of the Father, but is of the world." Broad Churchism has found another and more formal exponent in the anonymous author of Beyond the Church, who has undertaken to satirize the different parties within the Established Church, in order to justify the course of one who ultimately breaks loose from all his moorings and drifts away into a state of religious independence which abjures all dogma and renounces fellowship with every sect, but still seeks to maintain a life of consistent practical godliness. The novel is one which deserves careful attention, as a very significant specimen of the kind of thoughts and feelings at present fermenting in the breasts of many young men. As a story, it is not particularly clever. Indeed, the plot is not the essential part of the book, being constructed manifestly for the sole purpose of introducing certain characters necessary to the working out of the ulterior idea the writer has in view. There is a great deal of smartness, to say the least, in the hits at some of the church parties, and in the sketches of University life a vividness, truthfulness, and power which must produce impression. But it is in its keen and cutting sarcasms on the inconsistencies that mark respectable religionists, in its portraitures of clerical character, in its bold and daring comments on Christian dogma, that the power of the book consists. Before he became a free-thinker, the hero, a young Oxonian destined for the Church, had been a free-liver; but when the deepening earnestness of his character led him to examine the foundations of the faith, and, as the result, to doubt as to the rightfulness of subscription, he soon found that his father, a rector of the old port-wine and foxhunting schools, would not treat these vagaries of opinion with the same tolerance which he had previously extended to his breaches of the moral law. With caustic and not altogether undeserved bitterness, therefore, he complains, at a time when his refusal to take orders had clouded all his earthly prospects, led to his expulsion from his father's house, and exposed him to universal obloquy-"I find that while I was a mere heathen and cared nothing about religion, no one was shocked, or said a word; since I have begun to try, and think, and act aright, all my friends reproach me." There is also considerable justice in the description of the way in which the clergy deal with the formularies to which subscription is required. "He found that each guest read and interpreted the carte differently; then generally each selected his own favorite, or if he could not find it, called some other by that name, and then vowed it was in the carte. He found that many never looked at the bill of fare, but ate at random-that some said all dishes were to be found at the Church's banquet, if you only know where to look; others that many viands were actually noxious and indigestible, and ought to be expurgated. So the end was frequent disputes and quarrels, and the unhappy carte being flung at the head of some guest." No doubt the author here hits the weakest point of the Anglican Church: but if he wanted to reconcile men to the existing state of things, he could hardly have done it more effectually than by conducting his hero into a state of mere negation in reference to all distinctive beliefs. The book abounds in sketches of the clergy of different classes, professedly taken from real life, and giving us, if we are to accept them all as genuine, a considerable insight into the penetralia of Anglicanism. But such artists are apt to overdo their work, and it is so here. The fiercest enemy of the Church of England will hardly believe that the Rector of Easimore, who had as much religion as a Zulu and as much feeling as a stone, is really a sample of a large class; or that | Waterloo will be always a matter of inthe generation to which he belonged has teresting inquiry. The settlement of only disappeared to make way for an- Europe which resulted from it, has inother of whom the Rev. Cyril Ponsonby deed gradually yielded to time; Imperial is a fitting representative. The sketch France, Emancipated Italy, Constitutionof Marbecke is clever enough, and is, al Belgium, the Crimean war, a United we fear, only too truthful an exposure of Germany, and a vast shifting of contithe spirit that animates too many wield- nental alliances, show that its effects have ing considerable influence at Oxford. not been permanent; but it closed a long The whole tone of the book, however, is era of revolutions, and set lasting bounds irreligious; and the episode of Mr. Har- to a colossal despotism. Moreover, in a court, if not absolutely immoral, decided- military point of view, it suggests perhaps ly low in tone and loose in principle. more important problems than any conFordyce loses all faith in the Christian test recorded in history; it confronted system properly so called; he becomes a and placed in terrible antagonism the zealous devotee of science, and an ear- greatest military reputations which modnest worker for the social and sanitary ern times at least have beheld; and, havimprovement of the poor; for, "most im- ing opened with fair prospects to the portant of all, he perceived how that a mighty commander who was the assailman, desirous of benefiting the lower ant, it terminated in the space of four orders, must commence by improving days in his utter ruin and that of his army. their social and sanitary condition be- A drama at once so pregnant with interfore preaching heavenly truths to their est to the student of the art of war, so minds, and that science must be the grand in its scenes, and so tragic in its pioneer of Christianity." And this is the issues, will always arrest the attention of point to which the cold indifference of our race; and probably to the latest genone class of the clergy, the Romanizing eration mankind will dwell on the daring puerilities of another, and the loose, illogi- spring which Napoleon made upon Bluchcal, often unchristian, if not positively er and Wellington, on the movements anti-christian liberalism of a third, are driving a large number of thoughtful young men. We like neither the spirit nor the teaching of the book; we are not captivated by its smart cleverness, but we accept it as an exhibition of the operation of some of the mighty influences which are at present hindering the progress of evangelical truth among us. And this, perhaps, is one of the main uses of such books in general. They are a kind of barometers whose indications we must study with thoughtfulness and care, if we would know what currents of feeling are stirring the popular mind, and be prepared to meet them with wisdom and effect. that led to Ligny and Quatre Bras, on the mortal struggle of the 18th of June, on the brilliant march that decided that, day, and on the train of mistakes and false purposes that, notwithstanding the heroism of the French, produced the final and complete catastrophe. Our remotest descendants will be attracted to the plains of Belgium in 1915 with the same sympathy which attracts us to the battle-fields of Zama and Pharsalia. In the descriptions given of this great conflict, the vanquished nation, in our judgment, has certainly gained a victory over its conqueror. General Kennedy indeed, who, like a true soldier, has little respect for any accounts of the campaign, except those of military eye-witnesses, says justly that the narrative of Napoleon, though marked with the stamp of his brilliant genius, overflows with falsehood and misstatement, and we much prefer the report of the Duke, though that is necessarily meagre and imperfect. But we can not exclude from our consideration those historians who, though not specta tors, have studied and elucidated the subject; and, taking the list, the French, we |