any one who will gather them. The last assertion may well be taken up first. So then there are really four such creatures, shapen as beheld in the vision, and there is really the head of a lion and a calf and an eagle prominently before the eternal throne; and there is a book with seals upon it, seals that have been broken; and there are golden vials there, full of incense. Moreover, the Lamb itself had seven horns and seven eyes. We will go no further. We shrink from it. But it is needful to go thus far in order to depict the strange recklessness-the audacity of comments such as this, which venture to say that these pictures represent what is now going on in heaven, in any such sense of representation as will upbear the doctrine before us, which requires a very literal, a materialistic handling of the description, without which nothing has been gained. Further, looking at the words about the Lamb most literally taken. Is it a victim now? Is it on an altar? What of the victim state has it? Nay, it is standing. Where? In the midst of the throne, ev μéo Toû Opóvov. Is it a sacrifice that is going on? This, which is symbolically a Lamb-which is also, ver. 5, "the Lion of the tribe of Judah"-" has prevailed" (víкnoe, "was victorious") to open the sealed book. It is a victorious one, who comes forth and does what no other is able to do; he takes the book from the right hand of Him that sat upon the throne; he opens the seals; he reigns gloriously, and receives the adoration of heaven. Is there even a hint of the sacrificed condition here? Nay, but he is described as a Lamb, and a Lamb as it had been slain, ús éσpayμévov. No doubt. Is not the doctrine of Scripture everywhere this, that the suffering and the death are the basis of the glory? It was because "He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross," that "God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name." (Phil. ii. 8, 9.) The "Captain of our salvation had to be made perfect through sufferings." (Heb. ii. 10.) was because "He was made a little lower than the angels by reason of the suffering of death," that "He is crowned with glory and honour." If the symbol of the Lamb had not been fulfilled, the symbol of the conquering Lion could never have found its place. The symbolical language of St. John is the true counterpart of the doctrinal language of St. Paul. Need this be dwelt upon longer? Yet it is their strongest, and their most popular argument. It is urged in theological treatises; it is set forth in every little fugitive tract; and thus it is that our people are content that Scripture should be handled.

It

A third argument from Heb. ix. 24, where Christ is said now "to appear (or to be manifested, èupavio0nvat) in the presence of God for us," we may be pardoned for declining to notice. What is there here of "the victim state "?

a

The real ground, so far as there is any Scripture ground at all, for the idea under consideration, must lie in the typical transactions of the great Day of Atonement, on which so much stress is laid in the Epistle to the Hebrews. It will suffice, without lengthened recital, to refer briefly to Heb. ix. 11, 12: "Christ being come a High Priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us." It is manifest that a certain typical analogy is here traced between the entry of the Jewish high priest into the holy of holies on the Day of Atonement, with the blood of a sacrifice which had been slain without, and the entry of Jesus into heaven after His sacrifice on Calvary had been offered. Mr. Carter's comment on this is to the following effect. This type "expresses the same truth,-of an ever-present continued offering." "And although," he says, "there may seem defect, because to offer the blood is not the same as to offer the person," yet he argues, that the blood of our Lord not being now separate from His person-the blood being glorified and part of and indeed the life of His person, can only be offered in His person. And so to offer His blood is to offer Himself, for it can only be offered in Himself, and thus offering His blood is in fact offering Himself. We do not wish to treat such a subject otherwise than with entire gravity. And yet, with grave surprise, one cannot help remembering that the conclusion to some arguments in Euclid is not Q. E. D., but "which is absurd." The faulty result reveals the faulty premises. Now let us examine this a little, for really this is almost the only Scripture doctrine or illustration which directly bears on our subject. Without entangling ourselves with the rest of the ceremonial of the Day of Atonement, we select this only. The High Priest, having offered in the usual place a bullock for a sin-offering, was to take its blood, together with a censer of incense, into the holy of holies. There, while the smoke of the incense veiled the mercy-seat, he was to sprinkle the blood once on the mercy-seat and seven times before it. After this, he was to go out, kill a goat as a sin-offering, and returning repeat the same ceremonial with its blood also. Now what have we here? There was no sacrifice in that holy place. The sacrifice had been completed beside the brazen altar. The life had been

taken the victim slain and offered. One thing more was done. The blood, "which was the life," was taken into the sanctuary before God, and thrown down before Him there, in witness of the completion of the offering. And so, in the words of the Law (Lev. xvi. 16, 17), the priest "made atonement for the holy place," and it was accepted.

The

So in the antitype which we are considering now. great sacrifice was without; finished upon Calvary, complete for ever. "He having offered one sacrifice for sin for ever sat down on the right hand of God." (Heb. x. 12.) Nothing more could be done, or needed to be done, on earth. No sacrifice was to be made in Heaven; for no sin was there, and no death is possible there. Upon earth there is the oua νxikov, misψυχικὸν, called "natural body" in our translation, the body animated by the yux; and, says the Greek Bible, the blood is the ʊxì, and the psychical body may die. In Heaven is the oμa πνευματικὸν, the body animated by πνεῦμα, spirit, and the spirit cannot die. The sacrifice cannot be, and the victim state cannot continue. That which can be in Heaven, that which carries out and fulfils the type, is this,-He who had been slain lives, and He appears not bloody now; not, as some have strangely fancied, carrying His blood with Him, though doubtless with the wounds of Calvary; and He appears and testifies before the throne, even as the High Priest testified on earth by the sprinkled blood, that the sacrifice was complete, atonement made, the sins of man borne, and reconciliation achieved. And then what? He takes His throne as King. On no altar does He lie prostrate--no victim state is His any more. He "reigns for ever and ever." "All power is given to Him in Heaven and in earth." "God, even His God, hath anointed Him with the oil of gladness above His fellows." "He is the head of all principality and power." He is "set at the right hand of God in heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the Church." These are the glimpses we obtain of Him in Scripture after the cloud "received Him out of sight." Here are no death, no suffering (that, indeed, all grant), but also no blood, no victim state, no sacrifice, no offering. Kingdom, sovereignty, majesty, glory inconceivable, immortality, incorruptibility-these are His. Yet we acknowledge (and it is our hope that enters within the veil to acknowledge it) that His High Priestly function is exercised there on the throne. We know that He is there within the veil, and that the sacrifice He offered before He entered constitutes our atonement, and that His presence there to plead it is a pledge that it is accepted before God.

The fringes only of a great subject are here imperfectly dealt with. Great mysteries are near us and around us; but we protest against artificial mysteries. We plead for clear thinking, and plain honest expressions. We long for a return to the old, sound English theology, and for a manly, straight

forward grasp of Holy Scripture. Let us recognize plainly, and express reverently but distinctly, what God has revealed and let us pause there. Theology is sick almost to death with stilted phrases, with unhistorical assertions, with sacramental theories which find no counterpart in the realities of actual life, with metaphysical distinctions which palter with truth. May God's own Word, and wholesome sense and reason vivified by God's own Spirit, breathe upon it once more, or we shall be strangled by superstition and unbelief.

PERRENS' CHURCH AND STATE IN FRANCE.

L'Eglise et l'Etat en France sous les Règnes de Henri IV. et la Régence de Marie de Médicis. Par F. T. Perrens. Ouvrage couronné par l'Académie Française. Two Vols. 8vo. Paris, Durand.

M. PERRENS, already known by several works of considerable merit on the history of France, has lately published two most interesting volumes, in which he attempts to describe the relations between the Church and the State amongst our Gallican neighbours under the reign of Henry IV. and the regency of Marie de Medicis. The subject is a very important one, and it is only a remarkable episode in the narrative of a strife which is not yet ended. The pretensions of the Court of Rome to rule supreme in matters temporal as well as spiritual had more than once called forth energetic remonstrances on the part of the French nation at the time when Louis IX. occupied the throne; and M. d'Haussonville has quite recently devoted much time and care to the elucidation of another act in that momentous drama, we mean the discussions so long and so bitterly conducted between Napoleon and the Pope, Pius VII. Gallicanism, in fact, is a chapter of ecclesiastical history, which begins almost with the establishment of the French Monarchy; it covers a wide field, and offers an endless number of incidents to the careful student. M. Perrens has selected one of the most interesting.

Those of our readers who are acquainted with continental history during the early part of the seventeenth century, may remember the complicated negotiations resulting from the twofold marriages of the Dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII., with Anne of Austria, and of the Princess Elizabeth, his sister, with Philip of Spain. This alliance, so serious from its political consequences, taxed to its utmost the ingenuity of the Court of

Rome, and led to a diplomatic correspondence, the originals of which still exist. It was whilst writing the history of this transaction that M. Perrens conceived the idea of discussing separately, and with considerable detail, the Church and State question in France during the eventful period beginning with the accession of Henry IV., and closing at the time when Cardinal Richelieu assumed the direction of affairs. He saw that both the letters of the French Ambassador De Brèves at Rome, and of the Nuncio Ubaldini in Paris, were full of allusions to the conflicting claims and grievances of the two powers; the avowed intention of the Holy See to revive the schemes of Hildebrand, and the equally positive resolution of Henry to assert the temporal independence of the Crown, occupied the thoughts of the two diplomatists as much at least as the matrimonial arrangements, and would naturally afford plenty of materials for a separate work. M. Perrens has, we think, well deserved of serious readers for the care with which he has treated this interesting subject, and the fresh light he has thrown upon a singularly momentous epoch in the history of France.

We

The first volume opens with an introduction on the origin of that theory of Church government generally known by the name of Gallicanism. It would have been almost impossible to understand clearly the merits of the controversy between De Brèves and Ubaldini, unless we knew something about the Pragmatic Sanction of Louis IX. and the Concordat of Francis I. must be familiar with the political views of Philip the Fair to appreciate the merits of the Nuncio's grievances; and the despatches analysed by M. Perrens require at every page, by way of comment, a reference to the decisions either approved or expressly maintained by Raoul de Presles, Nicolas de Clémangis, and Gerson.

Time will not allow us to quote any extracts from the prefatory chapter of the work we are now noticing; we may observe, however, that M. Perrens has well shown how Pope Gregory VII. overshot the mark by his arrogant behaviour, and how he himself helped to destroy the prestige he was endeavouring to extend and to consolidate.

"It is," says he, "the aim and the result of education to emancipate, sooner or later, the pupil from the authority of his tutor. In proportion as they reach the age of puberty, young men become impatient of the paternal yoke. If the father is wise, he loosens the reins by degrees, and abandons all his rights in succession. Now this is precisely what the Holy See did not do. Its excuse is, that it had not over the nations the superiority of age, and it could not know exactly when would strike the hour of a majority which no law can fix. Its misfortune is that, in proportion as the Pope was a man of genius, his admiration for the doctrines of Gregory VII.