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ART. V.-Diary in France, mainly on Topics concerning EducaBy CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH, D.D., London: F. and J.

tion and the Church.

Canon of St. Peter's, Westminster.
Rivington. 1845.

It does not always happen that the public have particular cause to be thankful to literary friends, who having been favoured with the private and confidential perusal of a manuscript, advise its publication; the general experience on this subject, we believe to be decidedly the contrary way. This rule, however, like every other, has its exceptions, as the little volume before us proves; for we have seldom seen so many interesting topics of information, and so many "aids to reflection" brought together within so narrow a compass, as are here presented to us by Dr. Wordsworth, under the modest title of a "Diary." Diary." If, indeed, any should open it with the expectation of finding in it a miscellany of trivial nothings, such as tourists' diaries are generally filled with, and which but indifferently serve the purpose of helping to kill the time of idlers who have no money to spend upon the road, they will be egregiously disappointed. The author does not condescend to inform us in what manner, and under what attendant circumstances of annoyance or exhilaration, the outer man of a reverend Prebendary of Westminster accomplished the process of locomotion across the channel, into the self-besieging metropolis of the "grande nation;" nor is it possible to collect from his narrative which of the restaurateurs of the Palais Royal comes most nearly up to that standard of the Apician art which, right or wrong, common fame assigns to the precincts of a cathedral close. He who embarks for France with Dr. Wordsworth, must make up his mind to travel in company of the divine, of the zealous and practical churchman; he must not expect to see or hear any thing but what bears directly upon the great interests he has at heart; like a man who is full of his subject, the doctor has eyes and ears only for those facts in which the destinies of the Church, and the moral and intellectual prospects of the rising generations in France are involved. Accordingly, he lands us in the very first page at Dieppe, not on the quay, not in the custom-house, not in an hotel, as other travellers are wont, but in a school kept by five sœurs de la Société d'Ernemont, of whose 300 pupils, their

training and instruction, and their preparation for their première communion, he gives us a full and particular account. And as the first page, so is the entire volume, a picture of France as it would reflect itself upon the mental retina of a benevolent and pious Christian, and of a truly Catholic Churchman.

Such a picture cannot fail to be interesting at any time; but it is doubly so at the present moment. In France, as with ourselves, and, in fact, in every other part of the world where any life is stirring, there is at this time a great ferment in the public mind; men are drawn up in battle-array to contend for mighty interests, no longer with the bayonet, scarcely even with the shafts of political partizanship, but with the weapons of religious and philosophical discussion. Statesmen, or, as we should rather say, the men into whose hands the government of states has fallen, may, if they please, bow down before the Baal of materialism; they may overlook with contempt, or in ill-disguised alarm keep at a distance, the higher and eternal interests of man; they may determine to know of no other kingdom than the kingdoms of this world, and of no other principle of action than the rule of worldly expediency; but they cannot stem the mighty tide of intellectual and spiritual life which is rising on all sides around them in the hearts of the nations, and which will soon lift them off from the shifting sands on which they have unwarily taken their stand, and sweep their dishonoured names into the fathomless gulf of merited oblivion.

A new era is evidently breaking in upon the world. Time was when the rulers of the earth had it in their power to control the opinions of their subjects, especially on religious questions; when they could make choice of this or that form of Christian doctrine and of Church discipline, and decree that such should be the faith, such the religious system of the nation. That time has long passed away and by insensible degrees the principle of private judgment, of individual conviction, which lay at the root of the reformation in the sixteenth century, has succeeded in supplanting the principle of submission to authority, whether temporal or spiritual, or mixed of both. In the ultra-protestant communions, especially in those of Germany, the cradle of the Protestant principle, the fruits of this tendency are banefully apparent in the spread of a popular rationalism, which far outruns the wildest aberrations of the literary and scientific rationalism of the preceding age; the extensive schism which is at this moment rending the Roman Catholic Church of Germany, and the seeds of which are ripening elsewhere towards a similar result, shows that the unity and infallibility of which the chair of St. Peter boasts itself the representative, are not proof against the newly-aroused

power of thought in the masses; and in our own pure and apostolic branch of Christ's Church, recent events have made it but too evident, that even her moderate pretensions to authority the most legitimate, are but little regarded by a generation which, without being very scrupulous as to its real qualifications, or the intrinsic lawfulness of the claim, ascribes to itself the ability, and insists upon the right, to think for itself.

For a long time the ruling powers contented themselves with opposing to this dangerous tendency of the public mind, a determined adherence to the ancient order of things; an attempt which the French revolution proved to be fraught with dangers still more fearful, the opposing barriers tending only to increase the violence, and to accelerate the velocity, of the torrent. By the terribleness of this lesson, and by the natural desire to avoid the calamities of so extreme a conflict, the ruling powers have been led in some measure to yield to the force of circumstances, and to make concession after concession, in the hope of seeing peace and quietness re-established in the earth. In this hope they have been, and they will continue to be, disappointed; their influence is disappearing more and more rapidly in proportion as the popular mind gains in independence and self-sufficiency; so much so, that the most devoted admirers, the stoutest champions of the ancient order of things, have almost every where retired from the contest in utter despair. Unhappily, those who have succeeded them at the helm of affairs, have not yet learned to understand their position, and the nature of the duties which it imposes upon them. They perceive indeed, very correctly, that the maintenance of an ecclesiastic ascendancy, such as has hitherto been exercised by state establishments, is altogether hopeless; and they have, too hastily, rushed to the conclusion, that in order to save themselves from being drawn into the conflict between truth and error in which the public mind is so hotly engaged, their wisdom, their interest, and (such is the logic of the present day) therefore their duty is, to assume an attitude of neutrality, and to let the representatives of the different doctrinal schools and ecclesiastic systems fight it out between them. A position, however, so unmanly and so undignified, brings its own punishment to those who are weak and foolish enough to place themselves in it; national contempt is the just reward of governments who prove themselves so unworthy of their name and so unequal to their high trust; their neutrality is not respected, and their voluntary resignation of the influence which they still might have it in their power to exercise, entails upon them the degradation of becoming the tools, unwilling and reluctant though

they be, not of the strongest, nor of the wisest, but of the most violent and the most unscrupulous, of the contending parties.

From this miserable position, to which all the governments of Europe have sunk, or are fast sinking down, nothing can restore them but a right apprehension of their duty, under the altered circumstances of the world in which they are set to rule; which is, to believe in the truth, to embrace it, to profess it, and, while allowing by a free toleration the fullest scope to the exercise of the so-called right of private judgment, to throw the whole weight and authority of the governing power into the scale of the pure faith, and the holy discipline of Christ's Church. Instead of being shackled and depressed, as the Church now is, through a pitiful affectation of neutrality on the part of the governments, the Church must have free scope given her to develop her own resources, and not only so, but she must have their sincere goodwill, their efficient support. When this shall be felt and acted upon, then, and not until then, will the authority of the temporal powers again become respected, and their influence prove a blessing to the nations. In the nature of things it cannot be otherwise. However obsolete the notion may be in the opinion of many, it is nevertheless eternally true, that the powers that be, are God's ordinance; and being so, they can neither command the respect, nor promote the welfare of mankind, except by acting in accordance with God's truth, and seeking to fulfil their high destiny by zeal in his service and for his glory. The most consummate skill in the management of political parties, the most signal success in the financial administration of a country, cannot compensate for the absence of the true principle of all human government, which is to recognise the divine commission of the rulers of the earth, and to discharge the duties of that commission in obedience to the dictates of the divine law.

Happy the nation to which the opportunity of doing so is still open; in the midst of which truth is as yet standing as a mighty and flourishing tree, with its roots struck down deep into the national life, and its fruitful branches spreading widely over the land. But the opportunity is a golden one, and should not be neglected; for nations, like individuals, have their time of acceptance, their period of probation, which being allowed to pass away unprofitably, they sink into a state of irretrievable moral and spiritual decay: "That which beareth thorns and briars is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing." Of this fearful truth, which we cannot but devoutly wish and pray that the rulers of our land may take to heart ere it is too late, the present condition of France furnishes a most instructive example. It is impossible to

conceive a state of things more painful in its present aspect, or more calculated to create just alarm with regard to the future, than that which is exhibited in the volume before us with so much ability, and with a fidelity of representation to which we can the more confidently bear witness, as we had visited Paris with the express view of making our observations on the state of religion in France, only a month before the time when Dr. Wordsworth was there, and our recollection of what we saw and heard exactly coincides with his report; for although our introductions brought us acquainted with different men from those with whom he conversed, the arguments ran much in the same style, and the impressions which we received were precisely the same.

Among the persons to whom Dr. Wordsworth had access, the most remarkable were, Mr. Auguste Bonnetty, one of the Directeurs of the Université Catholique, and the Annales de la Philosophie Chrétienne; Mr. Jules Gondon, one of the Rédacteurs of the Univers; the Abbé Jager, professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Sorbonne, and author of the volume "Le Protestantisme aux Prises avec la Doctrine Catholique, ou Controverses avec plusieurs Ministres Anglicans, membres de l'Université d'Oxford1;" Dom Guéranger, abbé de Solesmes, the head of the Benedictine Order, and author of the "Institutions liturgiques ;" and the Abbé Bautain, principal of the College at Juilly. The account which Dr. Wordsworth gives of the various discussions which he had with these and other French ecclesiastics, respecting the points of difference between the Roman and the Anglican Churches, is highly interesting. The leading point in them all, that upon which we too found that we were always thrown back, upon whatever other topics the conversation might originally have turned, is the supremacy of the Roman See, as the divinely-instituted centre of Catholic Unity. Upon this ground the French ecclesiastics generally take their stand, for the twofold purpose of assigning it as their ultima ratio for holding a variety of matters which on the evidence of Scrip

1 Of this curious volume, the first of an intended series, which was not, however, continued, we had the good fortune to procure a copy during our visit to Paris. We had great difficulty in getting it from the publisher, who said he did not think he had a copy left, and sold us the one produced as "his last." Dr. Wordsworth too, it seems, was told that it was "out of print." As the book is not one likely to run through an edition in a short time, and as it was discontinued after the appearance of the first volume, we suspected at the time that there might be some other reason for withholding it from further circulation; and we are confirmed in this opinion by a passage of the advertisement, in which the abbé apologises for the publication of a religious controversy, in which he had to do with opponents "backed by one of the first universities in Europe," and in which he confesses that he fell into various "inac curacies" which he had afterwards to correct. Possibly it might be thought that the victory was not so decidedly on the side of Rome as to render the circulation of the argument among Roman Catholic inquirers altogether expedient.

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