thirty were spent in the retirement of Nazareth. The holy calm and leisure of His Spirit breathes even through the course of His active ministry. "He shall not strive nor cry, nor cause His voice to be heard in the streets. A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not quench." He was never too much occupied to attend to one imploring petition. He had time to sit on Jacob's Well, and to pour forth to the solitary woman who came to draw water the sublimest discourse on Worship which has ever been given to man. The Mount of Olives was the scene of His midnight prayers, as well as at times the couch for His weary head; the quiet road from Jerusalem to Bethany was hallowed by His evening walks. The waiting for His Father's time was a conspicuous element in His life. His first miracle was not performed immediately the prompting was given, though that prompting was from the lips of His believing mother. The suggestion of His unbelieving brethren, that He should go up to the feast and there show Himself to the world, was calmly met by the reply, "My time is not yet fully come.'

We have in our Great Exemplar (we would speak it reverently) the pattern of a perfectly balanced mind, ever true to the constraining or restraining finger of His Father's will. And what is the lesson to us? Surely not that we bemoan that we have not "the tongue of men or of angels," to preach to the multitudes in thrilling words (how few are to be trusted with this power!); not that we lament that our daily duties lie in a narrow round, confined chiefly to the common business of life or to the domestic circle; not that we sorrowfully say, "Because I am not the hand (or the tongue) I am not of the body.' No; rather may we continually, like loving children, ask, "What wilt Thou have me to do?" and then accept the answer with filial submission.

The highest Christian life is to do our Lord's will with a single eye to His glory; to speak or to be silent, to go or to stay, "to be full or to be hungry, to abound or to suffer need; everywhere and in all things" to have no will but His.

When a soul is thus entirely at the Lord's disposal, He will work in it not merely “to will," but also "to do of His good pleasure."

"The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him;” but in due time it will be revealed in the life, and manifested by its fruits in the meek and gentle spirit, in the patience under provocation, in the tender thoughtfulness for the poor and afflicted, in the cheerful sympathy with the young, in the calm submission to sickness and bereavment. These are in many as certain indications of the higher Christian life as more conspicuous service.

But the absolute dedication of heart of which we have spoken is inconsistent with any choice for ourselves as to the position we should occupy in the Church of Christ. Whilst we are all called to evidence our faith by the fruits of the Spirit, we must not urge the cowardly plea, "I pray Thee have me excused," from any call of the Lord. "Follow thou me is the one universal yet individual command, and our ready response should be, "Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth." To all who have thus presented themselves as "a living sacrifice," the solemn injunction, and the glorious promise attached to it, are still going forth, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."

MARY E. BECK.

A LETTER ON OCCASION OF MR. GLADSTONE'S EXPOSTULATION, BY JOHN HENRY

RECENT

NEWMAN, D.D.

No one surely can rise from the perusal of this letter, now scarcely less famous than the "Expostulation" which called it forth, without, as it were, a rubbing of the mental eyes, in doubt whether it is indeed an intended defence of one, who professes to be a successor of the Galilean fisherman one of the first disciples of Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth in Galilee. Indeed, without the aid of J. H. Newman's doctrine of "development "-taught us so fully thirty years ago-it were impossible to identify the "claims" of Pope Pius IX., as set forth in this letter, with the teaching of Jesus Christ. Grant that doctrine, and all things become possible. So indeed the Pharisees found, more than eighteen centuries ago. What a very insignificantly minute development it was—who could object to it?—that tradition of the fathers (literally elders), "Wash your hands before you eat bread." So eminently in accordance with the spirit of the divinely-appointed ceremonies given fifteen centuries before!

There stands the command:-Touch a carcase of an unclean beast, you are unclean until the even; bear the carcase, or part of it, you must wash your clothes, and be unclean until the even.

How natural a development that if you go to the market and-perchance unknown --come in contact with some defilement, you should take the slight pre

caution against defilement by a baptism of the body, or at least of the hands.

But the disciples wash not. Why? Was it on their own motion? Certainly not. If they washed not, it was because the Teacher taught them to do it not. And why did the Teacher so teach? Evidently just because it was a tradition of the fathers. And He told them, and He tells to us, and to all ages, to what taking up with the traditions of the fathers leads. "Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition." That is the ultimate result of the doctrine of "development' development by the teaching of the traditions of the fathers.

And so we find it in this letter. We cannot turn over many pages, without coming across passages at least as different from the spirit of the life recorded in the Four Gospels, as the tradition on the subject of Corban was from the Fifth Commandment.

We cannot occupy the space necessary to examine in detail a letter of 130 pages; and must content ourselves with a few quotations to show the "development" of the Christianity of the first century, into the Roman claims of the nineteenth.

We find, on page 22, the following :

"I go on

...

to contemplate the Christian Church when persecution was exchanged for establishment, and her enemies became her children. As she resisted and defied her persecutors, so she ruled her convert people. And surely this was but natural, and will startle those only to whom the subject is new. If the Church is independent of the State, so far as she is a messenger from God, therefore, should the State, with its high officials and its subject masses, come into her communion; it is plain that they must at once change hostility into submission.

"As regards the Roman Emperors, immediately on their becoming Christians, their exaltation of the hierarchy was in proportion to its abject condition in the heathen period.

Grateful converts felt that they could not do too much in its [the hierarchy's] honour and service. Emperors bowed the head before the bishops, kissed their hands and asked their blessing. Constantine would not sit till the bishops. bade him. He set the example for the successors of his power, nor did the bishops decline such honours."

Why not? Were these successors of the Apostles? Men who let emperors bow down to them, and emperor's wives serve them at table? Are they the successors of the Apostle who lifted up Cornelius with the words, "Stand up; I myself also am a man?"

Is the Church that "defied her persecutors" really the embodiment of those who professed to hear the teaching, "Love ye your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you?"

If she did indeed "so rule her convert people, as she defied her persecutors," as J. H. Newman says she did, her rule must have been very different from that of Him who said, "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls: for My yoke is easy, and My burden is light."

What a 66 development" is this! If this is the result of the teaching of the fathers, the Pharisees were most moderate in their development by tradition.

But, stranger still, J. H. Newman tells us all this, not only without disapprobation, but evidently with approval; for, a few pages further, we find that this recital of the past is only a prelude to a justification of the like in the present. But we must not anticipate; on page 23 we read :

"Laws were passed in favour of the Church; bishops could only be judged by bishops, and the causes of their clergy were withdrawn from the secular courts, Their sentence was final, as if it were the Emperor's own, and the governors of

T