party, a meeting was held in a booth, at which Mr. Phillippo was deposed and Mr. Dowson elected in his stead. Disputes and litigations of a very costly and painful character were the consequence, and they lasted for nearly seven years. What Mr. Phillippo termed "the wicked and powerful conspiracy against the cause of truth and righteous" was defeated on evidence by the decision of the Vice-Chancellor. The Home Committee collected funds for the repair of the mission premises, whilst the cost of the suit were, for the most part, met by the generosity of his friend, Mr. Joseph Fletcher.

ness

Very much of the remainder of Mr. Phillippo's long life passed in ordinary channels. The cholera had ravaged the island in 1850, and had swept away 2,500 persons in Spanish Town alone. Mr. Phillippo was courageous and indefatigable in his attendance upon the sick and dying. By the Divine blessing, the cause of Christ steadily prospered in his hands. He was held in high respect by the authorities of the town and district, and was often consulted in the management of public affairs. In 1856-57 he again visited the United States and England in search of health; and, whilst here, ably vindicated the Jamaica Mission and the emancipated peasantry from various charges which had been unscrupulously levelled against them. A few years afterwards came on the great religious revival, of which he says that "it was like a tempest passing over, and with one blast purifying the atmosphere, and calling into new life a thousand beauties over the Christian landscape." We have not forgotten the Morant Bay outbreak and massacre of 1866; but, perhaps, it is not so well known that Mr. Phillippo, by his tact and energy, succeeded in preventing a similar tragedy at Hartland, only a few miles from Spanish Town, the intensely interesting history of which Dr. Underhill has recorded from Mr. Phillippo's own graphic pen. The years passed on, and byand-by we have to trace the course of "the aged pastor," and to observe his steady ripening for glory. In 1872 he sought retirement, but, on urgent request, retained the nominal pastorate till the completion of the fiftieth year of his ministry, at the close of 1873. His jubilee was fitly celebrated, although he was in broken health, occasioned by a fall from his horse. In the following year his wife, who had lovingly accompanied him "through the fiery trials of this world," was suddenly taken from him; but he still maintained his interest in the work at Spanish Town and the affiliated stations, until he could leave it in the hands of his successor, the Rev. C. B. Berry,

who had gone from Cullingworth, Yorkshire, to Jamaica for the purpose. On May 11th, 1879, the noble life of the great missionary peacefully closed.

We have thus crowded into a few pages, and with as much brevity as we could command, the leading facts of a history which Dr. Underhill has elaborately and graphically portrayed, and for which the Christian Church in general, and the Baptist denomination in particular, may well be devoutly grateful to God. Mr. Phillippo was no ordinary man, either as to the powers of his mind or as to the excellences of his character. He occupied a large and important sphere, which called into requisition faculties and virtues of a very high order; and in that sphere he shone with a brilliance almost unique for fifty years. We rejoice that the task of chronicling his life fell into hands so competent, and congratulate Dr. Underhill on the results of his toil. We need not bespeak for this beautiful, but wonderfully cheap, volume a large circulation. It is certain to be popular, and we pray that its perusal may give, as it is, without doubt, eminently fitted to give, a new impetus to the great cause of Christian missions, not only in the West, but also in the East, and in all parts of the world.

Dean Stanley's Christian Institutions.*

EAN STANLEY'S latest volume is more akin to his

Essays on Church and State" than to the various historical works by which he is most widely and favourably known. It is a series of studies on the more prominent institutions of the Christian Church, and is, we presume, intended both to define and vindicate the attitude of the Broad Church party in regard to them. Many of these institutions are ecclesiastical rather than Christian. They have secured for themselves a strong, if not a permanent, footing in large and powerful

* "Christian Institutions: Essays on Ecclesiastical Subjects." By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster. London: Murray.

sections of the Church. They are maintained as integral parts of the Christian religion by men of undoubted genius and piety, and are supposed to constitute the main sources of its power. The fiercest controversies have raged around these institutions, because theymore than any Biblical doctrine or ethical principle-are alleged to furnish us with the essential "notes of the Church" and the test of a valid Christian life. And yet they can plead in their favour the explicit sanction neither of Christ nor His apostles. He did not Himself establish them, nor were they known to the men whom He sent forth as His first and authoritative witnesses. They can only be honestly defended as necessary outgrowths or developments, as the inevitable creation of new conditions and needs, legitimate adaptations to circumstances which could not exist, and for which, therefore, no direct provision could be made, in the Apostolic age. This line of defence is not, perhaps, in itself unreasonable, though many of us regard the institutions which require it as perversions, rather than developments, of the Christian faith-the indications of a retrograde, and not of a progressive, movement.

The revival of medieval Christianity, inaugurated by the Tractarians at Oxford half-a-century ago, has produced results which few could have anticipated. The theology of the Reformation has been contemptuously discarded by clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The ecclesiastical system of Rome, which our forefathers so sternly repudiated, has been eagerly welcomed as the one means of saving us from the perils of infidelity and the desolating power of Communism. The doctrines and practices of Roman Catholicism -on every point except, perhaps, the supremacy of the Pope-have been openly proclaimed and passionately defended within the precincts of the Established Church; and the work of Rome is being done, and done too efficiently, by men whose very position naturally pledges them to oppose it. The Ritualistic party in the English Church has recently met with severe legal defeats, but we are greatly mistaken if we imagine that its leaders will thereby be silenced or their influence destroyed. Certain forms of ecclesiastical millinery may have to be cast aside, and certain theatrical displays be forbidden, but the Romish doctrines may still be preached, and all that is most characteristic of its scheme of salvation be persistently maintained. Sacerdotalism is not yet destroyed in the Episcopal Church, Sacramentarianism still survives, the superstition of the Real Presence

has not received its death-blow, and auricular confession is still practised. Our struggle with Anglican Ritualism is far from ended.

The conflict is one in which Dean Stanley has for many years taken a prominent part. The school to which he belongs is at the opposite extreme to the Ritualistic; and, if the influence of the latter should ever gain the ascendancy, the Broad Church would speedily find its occupation gone. It is, perhaps, impossible for devotees of the modern theology to oppose the dogmas of Romanism with the thoroughness and fervour of the Evangelicals, but they can never look upon them with favour, or cease to regard them as detrimental to the social and religious progress of mankind. Dean Stanley has rendered us good and loyal service. He has, in accordance with the prominent bent of his mind, pointed out a soul of good in things evil; and, though the advocates of those things evil (as we regard them) will set little store on the soul of good as it is here preserved, we, at any rate, should have the wisdom, while rejecting the evil, to cleave firmly to the good.

He is, in our view, far No one can paint more

The essays of this volume are thoroughly characteristic of their author, abounding in vivid historical portraiture, brilliant re-setting of familiar facts, and powerful reproductions of the forms of ancient life. We see on every page the fruits of patient and persistent industry, a willingness to investigate the most trivial points, and to penetrate to the most recondite and obscure sources of information. This fulness of knowledge is always allied with a large-hearted charity. Dean Stanley's methods are far from perfect, but he is surely one of the most genial of controversialists. greater as an artist than as a philosopher. beautifully or group more skilfully. His pictures are never too highly coloured. Their brilliance is subdued and chastened; every line is exquisitely finished. But admirable as are Dean Stanley's descriptive powers, we do not regard him as equally successful in his endeavour to investigate the causes of the phenomena which he so graphically portrays, nor does he always lay hold of the principles which underlie the movements whose external features he invests with the force and freshness of life. His view is also more limited than he imagines. Its very intensity interferes with its breadth, and, while he is eager to look all round, he is too apt to look simply for that which he wishes to find. The soul of good, which so delights Dean Stanley in heretical doctrines and superstitious rituals, is, if we may so express it, some reflection of his own creed, an echo of his own voice. There are

certain moral and spiritual principles of whose transcendent importance he is fully convinced. Proofs of their presence he can find everywhere—in the elaborate ceremonialisms and ritualistic excesses of Rome, in the rigid adherence of the Baptists to the acknowledged command of Christ, in the mysticism of the Quakers, in the paintings and inscriptions of the Catacombs. It is doubtless a good thing to bring into prominence the traces of our spiritual kinship. The fault we have to find with Dean Stanley is that he is apparently content with these points of agreement, and is prone to dismiss whatever he has not himself previously received. He does not give sufficient weight to the points on which others differ from him, or test them by a rigorous and independent process. We have not the slightest doubt that the early Roman Christians held all the articles which he names, but they held a great many more, as the paintings in the Catacombs manifestly imply-articles "which are defended by modern theologians and attacked by modern sceptics," and without which, as it seems to us, even the ethical principles of the Gospel would lose their coherence and their power. Valuable as Dean Stanley's researches are, their worth would be increased if his aim were less limited, and he were to allow the existence of a good which he may not hitherto have discerned, and which may possibly not harmonise with every article of his creed.

There are many respects in which we heartily sympathise with Dean Stanley and gratefully appreciate his work. There is, for instance, no subject on which more mischievous exaggerations have prevailed, and more unmitigated nonsense has been spoken, than the authority of Councils. The Council of Constantinople formulated a creed which has been adopted by the Roman, the Anglican, and the Lutheran Churches, and to the bulk of which our readers would heartily assent; not, however, because the Council promulgated it, but because it is, to a large extent, the reiteration of the plain dogmatic affirmations of the New Testament. Let any one who believes in the authority of these assemblies read Dean Stanley's bold and accurate portraiture of the Councils of Constantinople and Ephesus, of the miserable strife and enmity which preceded them, the ambition of rival ecclesiastics, the violence of the mob; the factions flying at eath other's throats; the yell of the assembled episcopate, "the bishops showing their tusks "— to quote Gregory's forcible phrase" as if they had been wild boars."