the diabolical Voltaire, lives and dies and is buried as a faithful son of the Church. A Jansenist might not live in the French Court; but one who repelled that infamy, on the ground that he was an atheist, was good enough for the most Christian king.' That,' said his Majesty, 'is quite another affair.' He considered it comparatively a venial sin, and such was, practically, the estimate of French ecclesiastics, till the harvest of atheism came as the whirlwind.

"Before Him who tries and knows the heart, I protest that, with sorrow and pain, I have pursued an instructive parallel of history for comparison and contrast. The illustrious Bossuet, who maintained that England owed her civil disorders to her Reformation, has challenged such a review: he forces us to this overwhelming rejoinder. And, alas! so feeble and apologetic has been the temper of our times, such a surrender has been made of that lofty position of truth and fact which used to be sustained by our great divines, more especially by Bishop Bull, in reply to Bossuet himself, that I must be pardoned for trying to wake up minds and consciences to a just sense of our impregnable defences, and to becoming emotions of gratitude to Him who has given the unmerited blessings of our Catholic inheritance. Note, also, the fact that France, by refusing the example of England, escaped nothing that we have suffered, and gained nothing of the moral force which has so distinguished our race. Counting the Jansenists with the Huguenots-for both were Calvinists in effect-two-thirds of France, and certainly its noblest and most pious people, were Calvinistic. And are the massacres, the dragonnades, the revocations, the anathemas, and all the fiery persecutions with which France was desolated to be preferred to the theological breadth which welcomed a Baxter to our altars, and which gave a quietus to the Calvinistic school within the Church, by moral forces and the influences of the liturgy? Compare, also, the fact that the Code of Belief in France was made so narrow that not even a Bossuet and a Fénélon could live in the same communion, except by the condemnation and humiliation of one of the twain. Reflect on the fact that Christians so exemplary as those of Port Royal, conforming with all their hearts to their national religion, could not be tolerated in the pale of her Church, merely because of modern theological refinements and distinctions the most subtle, and then ask: Is this catholicity? Is this the everlasting Gospel? Is such religion that represented by the angel, who publishes it anew

in mid-heaven as the blessed plan of God for making one family of all nations, kindreds, and tongues?

"Alas! and it is with a sigh de profundis that I must say it, as if the embrace of charity had not been already rendered less and less inclusive to a degree sufficiently hostile to the human race, we have lived to see it made yet more restricted and narrow. In our days the whole school of thought and theology adorned by the genius of Bossuet, and made illustrious by so many adherents since St. Louis founded the defences of Gallicanism, is condemned and cast out from communion. The works of Bossuet himself are now heretical. A Döllinger, a Reinkens, and a Herzog, with such laymen as Schulte, are cast out and anathematized.. In short, the Syllabus has banished intellect, the Liguorian casuistry has banished conscience, the new dogmas have banished the last remnants of Catholic fidelity. If God seems saying to His servants that are left, 'Come out of her, My people,' Pius IX. has said as emphatically to all such: 'Begone ! ' Our Old Catholic' brethren have obeyed this command, and the feeble remonstrance of the few bishops that expostulated at the foot of the pontifical throne sustains their sense of wrong and outrage. How like the sabre's edge the way of salvation becomes! Again I ask: Is this the everlasting Gospel? Is this the testimony of Jesus, the good tidings to ‘all kindreds and peoples and tongues'?

"The inquiry is most pertinent to the time, the place, and this solemn occasion. The Church of this Dominion is placed, by the providence of God, here in a region where other missionaries have been before her, sons of that Gallican sister of whom it has been necessary to revive such painful memories. But why necessary? Because, if she is truly Catholic, and is here only to proclaim the everlasting Gospel, we are but schismatical intruders. And oh! that there were such a heart in her as to proclaim Christ only and the faith once delivered to the saints. She has wealth and many advantages. How gladly would we give place to her and become her humble helpers in evangelizing men! To her sons the mitres and the crooks; nay, more, to them the victors' palms and the crowns of glory, if only so it might be. Heroic, indeed, was that soldiery of Loyola that first pierced the wilds of Canada, obedient to the voice of their general, and 'passive as a corpse' in his hands. Better soldiers never served any commander; and, had they served only our Captain, Christ, who can doubt they would have stretched His empire over the Continent, and held it for Him to this day? But

look at their work! What heroism! What failure! Political power they have grasped at everywhere; but moral power over the nations' is not promised to such worldly wisdom. Let their own people be witnesses. From every Roman Catholic nation in Europe hey have been banished by their co-religionists; they were suppressed by Infallibility itself, at the demand of kings and peoples of the Roman Communion. Look at every country where they have been dominant. Look at Spain, at Brazil, at Mexico. Look at Italy itself. You behold a moral waste. Truly, God has uttered His voice, as of old: 'They shall not be planted, they shall not be sown.' 'Because they have cast away the land, because they have despised the Word, . . . their root shall be as rottenness, their blossom shall go up as dust.'

"Yes, truly, here God has uttered His voice. 'Yea, and that a mighty voice.' When Wolfe scaled the Heights of Abraham, he pronounced a decree which forbade this northern half of the continent to be enslaved by superstition and degraded alike by lack of intelligence and by moral corruption. God's Providence has cast out from North America those who have made France what she became a hundred years ago; and He has brought those in who bear with them the inestimable blessings which are everywhere identified with English institutions and with the Anglican Communion. This God has wrought for us; but how humbling, in contrast, is the little we have achieved for Him. In this view of our position, how crushing are our responsibilities; how humiliating our cold and Laodicean spirit, our slow and yet unsatisfactory awakening to our duties. God forgive us, and accept our work this day, as the beginning of a new spirit of missionary effort in behalf of the everlasting Gospel. Surely our encouragements are very great; and, if our resources are comparatively small, oh! think of the forces of Truth, and remember Him who, in behalf of its earliest campaigns, could multiply the few loaves and fishes which were all the wealth of the apostolic company, and who soon multiplied the Apostles themselves into a great company of preachers. The promise is to us and to our children. Let us claim it for ourselves and others. No worldly resources can ever match that precious confidence which belongs to a Church that holds and proclaims the everlasting Gospel, for to such a Church Christ says: 'I have chosen you and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain.

"Surely, this confidence may be ours. Would we were less unworthy to claim it. But, 'ye see your calling, brethren.' I have demonstrated the preciousness and the power of this Anglican Communion, by the testimony even of adversaries. Such being her extraordinary endowments, and such her place in Christendom, what limit should there be to her endeavours to proclaim everywhere the everlasting Gospel? An eminent layman of the Greek Communion, who had visited England, once said to me: 'What bishops, what a clergy you possess! Nowhere can they be equalled. Such a body of highly educated men; such varied accomplishments; such forces for dealing with men as men, and for meeting the mind and thought of their times in every department of learning and science! The clergy of England are without peers in these respects.' If so, it is time we should cease from petty bickerings, and devote ourselves to the immense work which God has given us to do. Given such an inheritance as I have portrayed, what then are our opportunities and advantages? Has God made us a vigorous race, and given us a footing everywhere, with free course among all peoples and kindred and tongues? Has He endowed our people with a colonizing spirit, and sent them forth in swarms to found new nations? Has He imbued them with a restless activity, forbidding them to refrain from labour and enterprise? Has He given them a language strong and rich, and teeming with treasures of interest, and has He diffused this language through all the world? Is the wealth of nations tributary to theirs, and do they economize it under some irresistible impulse, for the benefit of all mankind? Are they sending forth swift ships over all seas, tunnelling the mountains, uplifting the valleys and depressing high hills, cutting the isthmus, speaking with electric voices, and by a network of fibres extending everywhere, investing man in some illustrative degree with the omnipresence of the Creator? And is the historic Church of such a people, incomparably rich in Holy Scripture, in versions enabling her to proclaim it to all kindreds and peoples and tongues, and in the means of so interpreting it as to bring all men to the unity of the faith and of the everlasting Gospel? In asking these questions, I have answered them. Great God, 'what wilt Thou have us to do?""

WE

FORERUNNERS OF OLD CATHOLICISM.

JOHANN MICHAEL SAILER, BISHOP OF RATISBON.3

́E have shortly sketched the lives of various learned men who desired a reformation in the Church before the movement which is called "Old Catholicism" had begun. That of Bishop Sailer is interesting, as showing how a deeply devotional character was affected in the same circumstances; and an outline of his uneventful but most useful life may not be unacceptable to an English reader.

Sailer was born in the village of Aresing, near Schrobenhausen, in Upper Bavaria, on the 17th of November, 1751. His father sent him at ten years of age, for education, to Munich, where he found a happy home in the house of Traunsteiner, a highly respected master, and had the advantage of excellent teaching, especially from Professor Zimmermann, who instructed the more advanced pupils in German literature-then in its classical age-not contenting himself with its outward history, dates, names, &c., but encouraging them to select the best passages, and to observe their hidden beauties. His scholars were afterwards remarkable for their general cultivation of mind and their command of language, compared with those who had not shared their advantages.

The tone of the school was deeply religious. Sailer's tender conscience soon saw nothing in himself but unworthiness and sin. After years of unhappiness and inward strife, intellectual difficulties were added to the others, and at the age of eighteen his troubles took the form of doubts as to the faith, which lasted many years; till at length, by the aid of an experienced mission-priest and guide of souls, the strife was ended, and peace of mind regained.

These inward experiences gave him afterwards an especial power of gaining the confidence of the young, and being their fatherly friend and adviser. He had no presentiment, however, of the especial work to which God had destined him, and, seeking only to secure the inward peace which he had obtained, he entered the Jesuits' College at Landsberg, on the Lech, in 1770, and passed his time there and at Ingolstadt in study and contemplation, and in complete retirement from the world. Sailer's contemplative character here found abundant and healthful nourishment in his serious 3 Life of Bishop Sailer. By the late Professor MESSMER. [Mannheim: Schneider.]