were the last words of the Judge, as he shut me out into the nisty morning air.

So I am still a bachelor, and likely to remain one, unless Cissy relents. Lady Anne has taught her children to call me Uncle; and although I have entirely ceased to take the same interest as formerly in Dunsey's intellectual development, she has nevertheless made me godfather to her son and heir. The godmother is Cissy. My uncle has died, and, in a sudden freak of old age, has made Tom his sole inheritor; he and Polly have accordingly left Australia, and are established at Burton Reach, where they have made themselves very popular in the neighbourhood. I often go and stay there from Saturday to Monday, and am received by Polly as if I were the Prince of Wales.

been declared and vindicated as supreme, not only in spiritual matters but also in things temporal. The enemy of the Pope, Louis XII., with his defiant motto, “ Perdam Babylonis nomen," was dead, and his successor had concluded a concordat with the Papal Power. As the members passed the threshold of that old church, said to have been built by Constantine, at the end of their twelfth meeting on the 16th of March, 1517, who could have predicted that seven months later, on the 31st of October, an arrow from a little town of Germany would wound the Western Church to the very core, and change the triumphant Queen, ruling in solitary grandeur over the nations, into a Mater dolorosa “weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted for her children, because they were not"? For on that 16th day of March the sky was clear and without any traces of clouds, and Leo X was all but an Elijah; and the one pro"What do you mean?" I asked, won- testing voice was drowned amidst the gendering how she could have heard of Cissy.eral hubbub of ecclesiastics, though that "Why, Tom and me coming into all the money!"

"I don't think any other man but yourself would have borne such a disappointment in so sweet a way," said Polly to me one day.

"I am rather glad than otherwise," I answered, indifferently.

"I daresay you have had worse troubles," went on Polly, looking up at me sympathizingly with her kind, shrewd eyes; I hope you are not fretting about a wo

man."

"Yes, I am, Polly."

"And she won't take you because you've lost the money!—if that is the case, you are well rid of her," said my little sister, flushing in her quick way.

voice came from the venerable Sorbonne, whose history dates from the days of Alcuin, and which has occupied all along a position in the history of Europe unparal leled by any other school or university.

On the last day of October, 1517, a young Augustine monk, professor at the newly founded University of Wittenberg, hitherto known for nothing else but his hatred of Aristoteles and the scholastic philosophy ("I am longing," he wrote, "to tear the Greek mask from off the face of that comedian, who has made such a fool of the Church, and to expose him in

"That is not the case, however; I pro-all his nakedness"), affixed a paper with posed to her long ago."

Did you now?" said Polly, calming down. "Well, if I were you I would ask her again women are so queer. Ishould not wonder if she took you, now that you have no expectations."

95 theses against the abuse of indulgences to the door of the church of the castle.

Ho, ho," said a pious monk after he had read them, "he is the man, he will do it — we have waited for him." In a few days they were known all over Germany; in a few weeks they had spread all over the

I have given up all hope." "Never give up hope! - try again," said Continent; some time afterwards they Polly.

From Fraser's Magazine.
WITTENBERG AND COLOGNE.

were sold in the streets of Jerusalem; the Reformation, as it is called, had commenced.

Martin Luther was a religious genius. There are times in the history of nations, when the moral or religious questions which form the substratum of the social and THE fifth Ecumenical Council had been political fabric are brought by an irresistiheld at the Lateran Church and brought ble impulse to the surface. Such a moto a conclusion amidst general acclama- ment called in Scripture language the "fultions. Never in the history of the Church ness of the time," had come in the sixhad there been greater reason for congrat-teenth century. The revival of learning, ulation than on the present occasion. The the awakening on all sides of centrifugal power of the successor of St. Peter had forces, contributed to the rapid spread of

the movement when once inaugurated, but and women in a state of degradation. they were not its origin or cause. The Hence Papal Rome trembled to her restlessness which had seized the intellect- foundations; she had become one great ual and political world did not make it- lie, and the hurricane that swept over Euself felt in the moral world except in Ger- rope gave her shock after shock. many. For the German race is the em- This moral idea, as seen in the life of bodiment of a great moral idea; their na- Luther, makes the great charm, the inture leaves them no rest till they have tense power, the exceeding fascination of penetrated into the origin of things, till his name. What are they to us, the theothey have investigated their essence. logical formulas in which the next century Luther was the greatest German that ever attempted to stereotype and to justify his lived, because he realized more than any movement, or, in other words, to undo the one the moral idea. A genius is ever the Reformation? Does the Church of the offspring, as used to be said, of a god and nineteenth century stand or fall by the one of the daughters of men - of heaven- dogmas of the German Reformer of the ly and earthly powers. Luther was a sixteenth century? What is it to us that child of his age; the wants and aspira- he made great mistakes, that he was oft tions of the times were, so to speak, con- exceedingly intolerant, that his Reformacentrated in his person; he articulated tion partook greatly of the character of a the word that had lain quivering, seeking political revolution? What is it to us in vain for utterance, on the lips of thou- that he gave to the State the power of sands and millions. But above all he was which he had deprived the Pope? The a German: his subjectivity, his boldness grandeur of his Reformation is, that it was in speculation, his intense moral earnest- a movement coming from the heart, not ness, his indomitable energy and perse- from the head; a cry of holy indignation, verance when once roused, characterized not of cool reasoning; a movement of him as a descendant of the men that had love, not of calculation. Spare us the disbrought old Rome to the verge of destruc- cussion about the material and formal tion. And being a genius, and not merely principles of the Reformation, but show us a man of talent, he had that divine afflatus, that man crouching in his cell, and finding that intense enthusiasm, that Holy Spirit, no word wherewith to express the famine which is ever the life-giving and life-pre- of his soul; praying, wrestling, suffering, serving principle, and the very absence of dying as verily a death as any of the old which is in itself death. martyrs; rising from his grave as he comes Looked at in this light it is not aston-in contact with the living Christ, and goishing that the Medieval Church should have collapsed like a house of sand built on the sea-shore by the hands of little children. The Church of the Middle Ages had been the grandest Church ever seen. Christianity, as its Founder intended it, was to be the religion for the world; the Church, which is the embodiment of Christianity, strove to be the Church for the world. That was a grand ideal. The Catholic Church was the light of the Middle Ages, the salt which kept the world from corruption. At the time of the Reformation the Church had ceased to be the bearer of the intellectual idea she was no longer a light; but the great reason of her fall was that she had ceased to be the salt of the world. The Church must be the highest embodiment of the moral idea if she is not this she is noth

ing. At the time of the Reformation her theology, her practices, her life, were utterly immoral; faithful to the traditions of Imperial, Pagan Rome, she had become nothing but the embodiment of brute force, which can only be maintained at the point of the bayonet, or by keeping men

ing on his way devoting every word and work of his life to the service of his Lord. On this moral basis, the absence of which is the only heresy, shall not the Reformation- that is, the historic evolution of the Church be at length proceeded with?

Colbert said, "Rome reculera ou elle cessera d'être chrétienne." She has not done so; she has shrunk from all reforms, and she stands at this moment before the eyes of Europe as the most rationalistic — taking the word in its real sense -and revolutionary Church of Christen lom. The coups d'Eglise are numerous, and they are far from being coups de maître. She has startled Europe by the publication of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and still more lately by the promulgation of the doctrine of Papal Infallibility.

All England has applauded to the echo the indignant protest wrung from the lips of faithful Catholics, which found their expression first at Munich, and afterwards at Cologne. The true Protestants amongst us are only too delighted when the Roman Church is in any way made out to be Babylon; some of us dream of a reconcilia

tion between the several branches of the other similar movements. Though they Church Catholic, whilst others hail the may say with Bossuet, "Sainte Eglise roCongress at Cologne as a reaction against maine, mère des églises et de tous les the spirit of intolerant dogmatism and moral stagnation, and an honest attempt at reformation. Like the Sorbonne, the University of Munich lifts up its protest; once more the School attempts to regenerate the Church.

It is not necessary to enter into the history of this movement, and space will not allow us to make more than a few remarks. The Von Moltke of the movement and its other leaders are well known, thanks to the exertions of numerous correspondents. It is curious that the second meeting, which was convened for the purpose of consolidating the movement, should have been held at a time when men's thoughts naturally revert to the sixteenth century. It is curious, too, to find German Protestants not only present at the deliberations, but lifting up their voices, and giving advice and encouragement. The awakening of German Nationality has had most likely something to do with this. The mighty impulse that made men forget the feuds and strifes of centuries, and join hand in hand for the defence of a common Fatherland against a common foe, may have been at work to inspire the hope that the theological hatreds and ecclesiastical divisions of past centuries may some day be buried in oblivion, and the United Fatherland have one bond the more in a United Church. If the Old Catholic Reformation can effect such a union, it will have supplied the element in which Luther's Reformation signally failed, viz. catholicity.

The movement of Munich priests presents, however, rather a contrast to that of Wittenberg. The resolutions at Cologne and the theses of Wittenberg have little in common. There is no doubt great moral earnestness amongst the leaders, but the movement is chiefly of an intellectual, theological character, and the atmosphere in which it lives is that of the class-room. The exceedingly conservative character of the movement, the moderation of its leaders, the intense care of avoiding anything like revolution or schism, the lawyer-like method in which business is transacted, the chief place given in the programme to organization-all these things distinguish it from the movement of Luther, and seem at first to open up fair prospects of success. But this seems doubtful when we look at the matter more closely. That the Old Catholics will not influence the Church of Rome is evident from the history of

fidèles, Eglise choisie de Dieu pour un r ses enfants dans la même foi et dans la même charité, nous tiendrons toujours à ton unité par le fond de nos entrailles," they will always be looked upon as schismatics, and will have to console themselves with saying, "Non schisma fecimus sed patimur." There remains, then, the alternative, to follow the example of the Old Catholics of Holland, a body of noble men who have kept aloof after having confined their protest to three points, and who are without influence upon Roman Catholics or Protestants, or to go on with vigorous reformation, that is to draw nearer to Protestantism, which is revolution. But of course the nearer the Old Catholics get to Protestantism, the more difficult it will be to conciliate the German Roman Catholics.

Moderate men are of some use in the world, but in a great crisis they are useless. The Church of Rome by her latest development is drawing near to a crisis; the Churches of the Reformation having proved signal failures are coming fast to a crisis. At such a moment we want an Elijah, not an Elisha; a Boanerges, not a Barnabas. Such a one will no doubt arise, when the fulness of time is come. Meanwhile we shall see, most likely, a good many reactions in the Romish Church, and more or less vigorous reformatory movements. But they will be powerless to avert the revolution which threatens us from all sides. "Hurrah, the dead ride quickly," says Lenore dead beliefs, creeds, confessions, systems, churches pass out of sight.

What then remains? The centre of the Reformation, Christ; the spirit of the Reformation, devotion. Truth remains, da кpíoev yehúsasɑ, moving on calmly and patiently, subduing the world. She has conquered; she is victorious. Let us have patience; she is eternal.

A. S.

From The Spectaior. THE APPROACHING TRANSIT OF VENUS.

AN important natural phenomenon vill occur before long, and there is some far that this country though the Government has been very liberal-will suffer serious discredit from the manner in which the phenomenon is to be observed. There is

Accordingly for many years the question has been discussed. No less than sixteen years ago it was announced that so Now, at length, however (we may say far as Antarctic voyages were concerned at the last moment, when the difficulties attention might be limited to the transit of Antarctic voyaging are considered, nay, of 1882. There seemed to be ample time, we may almost say, when it is too late), it as well for preparation as for such prelim- begins to be recognized that the mistakes inary reconnaissances as might appear pointed out had a very real existence. necessary. In 1861 these statements were Every one knows now that Antarctic voyrenewed more positively; and at last, in ages will not be made in 1882. It is also 1868, geographers and Arctic seamen were known that, whether the erroneous preinvited to give information as to suitable liminary inquiries were only rough first Antarctic stations, or rather as to the ac- approximations or not, no others have cessibility of those Antarctic stations since been made by British astronomers, which had been described as astronomically except those very inquiries by which the suitable. The geographers and Arctic errors in question were discovered (and seamen responded to the appeal. There certain corroborative researches published were gatherings at the rooms of the Astro- in the Nautical Almanac for 1874); and