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The original meaning of the word heresy is choice. "It was long used," writes Dr. Waddington, "by the philosophers to designate the preference and selection of some speculative opinion, and in process of time was applied without any sense of reproach to every sect." The most fruitful source of speculative opinion is, and has ever been, religion; from the schools of philosophy to those of theology the term heresy passed by a very intelligible and simple process. The word is thrice used in the Acts to denote sect , and Paul himself when on his defence before Felix and in answer to Tertullus confesses that "after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers."

In process of time heresy came to have a bad meaning attached to it. It is easy to see why this should be so. We naturally prefer our own opinions to those of other people. We naturally prefer the society of those who hold our own opinions to the society of those who do not. Life is short, and we do not want to be always disputing. Life to most of us is hard, and it would be harder still if after a day's toil Paterfamilias had to discuss the three births of Christ, or His twofold nature, the AEons of the Gnostics, the Judaism of the Ebionites, the ancient Persian dualism which formed the fundamental idea of the system of Manes, or the windy frenzy of Montanus, with an illogical wife, a friend gifted with a fatal flow of words, or a pert and shallow child. We like those with whom we constantly associate. They are wise men and sound Christians. They are those who fast and pay tithes, and are eminently proper and respectable. As to the heretics--the publicans and sinners, away with them. Let their portion be shame in this life, perdition in the next. Thus it is heretics have got a bad name. Church history has been written by their enemies, by men who have honestly believed that a man of a different heresy to their own would rob an orphan, and break all the commandments. The Rev. Mr. Thwackem "doubted not but all the infidels and heretics in the world would, if they could, confine honour to their own absurd errors and damnable deceptions." The phrase "absurd errors and damnable deceptions," is one a real theologian might envy, or at any rate appropriate. In another sense also that hero of fiction is a type of the spirit in which orthodox people often have written on theology. "When I mean religion," cries Thwackem, "I mean the Christian religion, and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion, and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England."

Still the question occurs, What is heresy?

It is not difficult to say what it is not. The African Bishops on one occasion, in council in Carthage, decided that heretics were not at all any part of the Church of Christ, but this opinion was modified by a later council. "Heretics," writes Epiphanius, "are divided into two kinds: those who receive the Christian religion, but err in parts, who when they come over to the Church are anointed with oil; and those who do not receive it at all and are unbelievers, such as Jews and Greeks, and these we baptize."

Yet the Church of England is tolerant, to a certain extent, of heresy. The judicious Hooker writes, "We must acknowledge even heretics themselves to be a maimed part, yet a part, of the visible Church. If an infidel should pursue to death an heretic professing Christianity only for Christian profession's sake, could we deny unto him the honour of martyrdom? Yet this honour all men know to be proper unto the Church. Heretics, therefore, are not utterly cast out from the visible Church of Christ. If the Fathers do, therefore, anywhere, as often they do, make the true visible Church of Christ and heretical companies opposite, they are to be construed as separating heretics not altogether from the company of believers, but from the fellowship of sound believers. For where professed unbelief is, there can be no visible Church of Christ; there may be where sound belief wanteth. Infidels being clean without the Church, deny directly and utterly reject the very principles of Christianity which heretics embrace, and err only by misconstruction, whereupon their opinions, although repugnant indeed to the principles of Christian faith, are notwithstanding by them held otherwise and maintained as most consistent therewith." The Privy Council by its Judgment of "Essays and Reviews" has decided that a Churchman may hold heretical opinions.

In popular language, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, the Presbyterians are orthodox; the Quakers, the Methodists, Wesleyans and otherwise, are orthodox; for our purpose popular language is sufficient.

Heresy, says Tertullian, is the result of wisdom, real or assumed. He writes: "The philosophers are the fathers of the heretics." It is computed that there have been no less than five hundred distinct heresies. Happily for us, most of them are dead and buried in Greek and Latin folios, rarely read and still more rarely understood. The East was the land of heresy. Every day saw the birth of a new one amongst a people of subtle intellect and endowed with a language wonderfully contrived to express the most delicate and phantasmal forms of belief. We laugh at the schoolmen, at their barbarous Latin and incomprehensible disputations. No one now ventures to discuss how many angels could stand upon the point of a needle, but in the early ages of the Church the Fathers wasted their lives in disputations equally windy and barren of practical result. "Greek Christianity," writes Dean Milman, "was insatiably inquisitive, speculative. Confident in the inexhaustible copiousness and fine precision of its language, it endured no limit to its curious investigations. As each great question was settled or worn out, it was still ready to propose new ones. It began with the Divinity of Christ, still earlier perhaps with some of the gnostic cosmogonical or theophanic theories, so onward to the Trinity; it expired, or at least drew near its end, as the religion of the Roman East, discussing the Divine light on Mount Tabor." Extinct long ago are the questions to settle which Church councils were held, fanatic monks swarmed into Constantinople by hundreds from far away--Syrian, or Arabian, or African deserts--and armies took the field. Even a vowel might stir up strife and bloodshed. The enmity of the Homoousian to the Homiousian was as bitter as that between Guelph and Ghibelline, as that of Capulet and Montague; and only the pen of a Swift could do justice to the brawls

"Bred of an airy word."

The Bishops by this Act received arbitrary power to arrest and imprison on suspicion, without check or restraint of law, at their will and pleasure. Prisoners who refused to abjure their errors, who persisted in heresy or relapsed into it after abjuration, were sentenced to be burnt at the stake.

Fortunately for our readers, religious London is not thus minutely divided and subdivided. We have still absurd squabbles, that for instance whether Mr. Mackonochie was kneeling or only bending, being pre-eminently so; yet on the whole in Western Europe and among the German races the tendency is more and more to practical, and less and less to speculative life. In another way also may the comparatively speaking undisturbed orthodoxy of Western Europe be accounted for. For the orthodox there have been cakes and ale, and even the ass knoweth his owner and the ox his master's crib. Nothing so keeps men from religious speculation as a good endowment. In his "History of Latin Christianity," Dean Milman very significantly writes: "The original independence of the Christian character which induced the first converts in the strength of their faith to secede from the manners and usages, as well as the rites of the world, to form self-governed republics, as it were, within the social system; this noble liberty had died away as Christianity became an hereditary, an established, a universal religion." The poet asked, and he might well do so--

"What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year."

It has thus come to pass that heresy in London and the country has been confined within narrow bounds. Whatever Churchmen may have thought, the creed and the public utterances of the Church have been orthodox. Popular dissent has followed suit--heresy has been avoided by some as a temptation of the devil, by others as an obstacle to worldly success, but no religious life can exist without it. In the religious world, as a rule, heresy is life, orthodoxy death. "Are you a Christian?" asked one well-known man of another. "When I am a good man," was the reply; but, say the orthodox, it is on his belief or rejection of dogmas that a man's Christianity depends. One cheering sign of the times is that the religious public is beginning to realize the fact, that it does not follow that because a man holds heretical opinions he will pick your pocket, elope with your wife, or make away with your silver spoons. It is well when people come to think that there may be something purer, higher, holier, than unreasoning uniformity of opinion or than a blind assent to scholastic terms and definitions. Mental stagnation is not Christian life, neither does sterile orthodoxy deserve the name. It was the recognition of this idea that gives to the Apostle John a special claim to admiration and regard. "If," says he, "a man say I love God and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?" It was under the influence of the same spirit that the Master rebuked the zeal of his disciples when they would have hindered one who was according to their own account doing good, merely because "he followed not us." The passage is worth transcribing. "And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name and he followeth not us, and we forbade him, because he followeth not us. But Jesus said, Forbid him not, for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name that can lightly speak evil of me; for he that is not against us is on our part. For whosoever shall give you a cup of water in my name because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you he shall not lose his reward."

Of the many definitions of London, perhaps the truest is that which describes it as several cities rolled into one. The rich inhabit Belgravia, the poor Bethnal Green. In Mark Lane on a Monday morning you might fancy, if you were to shut your eyes and listen to the conversation around, that you were in primitive East Anglia; on the contrary, in Chancery Lane, and all the places of resort contiguous, the talk is of writs, of issuing executions, of levying a distress, and of all those horrible processes by which law seeks to secure property from its natural enemies, poverty or rascality. Irish abound in Drury Lane, and in unsavoury Houndsditch the seed of Abraham congregate.

The traveller from the palatial West will perhaps shrink from leaving on his right hand Aldgate Pump, and plunging in the dark alleys and crowded lanes in which the Jews reside. Nor, if he be of a fastidious stomach, would I much blame him. In Meeting House Yard, for instance, I saw a pool of dark fluid, around which little pale children were playing, suggesting something very rotten in the state of Denmark. It is in this neighbourhood that the far-famed Rag Fair is held on the Sunday, and all the week there is more or less dealing in such articles as come under the denomination of "old clo'," respecting which it may as a general rule be safely affirmed that, whilst we may dispute the title of clo', as regards much there vended, there can be no dispute as to the appropriateness of the descriptive adjective. In the lanes and courts around us are names familiar to us from infancy. Lazarus keeps a second-hand book-shop, and Moses sells fried fish. You see a printing-office, with posters up; on those posters are Hebrew characters. In Duke Street there are a couple of book-shops, but the books are all or chiefly Hebrew. In this neighbourhood you can easily forget that you are in London at all. It is not the English tongue you hear; or, if it be, it comes to you disguised in such a foreign accent as to be scarcely intelligible. Through the mist and fog dark eyes, all redolent of the far-off East, flash on you; and now and then a tall figure in flowing robes, sad and solitary, stalks by; and you rub your eyes to be sure that you are not in a dream. This temporary delusion will be stronger if you visit this neighbourhood on a Friday evening just after sunset. In Whitechapel and Aldgate the gas is flaring, and a busy trade is carried on; in Leadenhall Street, in the offices of the great Navigation Companies or of the leading shipbrokers, clerks are busy writing, and weather-beaten skippers from Australia or the Cape or New Zealand are tearing about, if we may use a colloquial expression much in vogue, like mad. It is a contrast to pass from this busy scene into the Jewish quarter, where the shops are all shut up and where all is still. How is this? The answer is, it is the eve of the Sabbath, and the Jews are at their synagogues. There are three in this neighbourhood. The first and oldest is that of the Portuguese Jews in King Street, Duke's Place, erected in 1656. The first German synagogue, also in Duke's Place, was built in the year 1691, and occupied until 1790, when the present edifice was erected. This is called the Great Synagogue. The New Synagogue, as it is denominated, in Great St. Helens, is a very elegant and ornamental structure. The interior is very beautiful. In so dark and dolorous a neighbourhood you are not prepared for anything so fine. Very liberally must these ancient people have subscribed for the fitting worship of their God. From the ground spring up pillars highly decorated, and in the side are windows of a rich arabesque pattern in stained glass. The ceiling is semi-dome with octagonal coffers containing gilded flowers upon an azure ground; and the pavement, which is of polished marble, forms a perfect circle. The ministers of the Great Synagogue were considered the leading ones. It is not so now. Dr. Adler is the head rabbi. He has been long in office, and is universally esteemed by Christians as well as Jews. He is an old man, and as his English is that of a foreigner it is clear that in his public addresses you get an inadequate idea of his talents or attainments. This remark applied to most of the Jewish ministers in London. They were foreigners, and in speaking English did not succeed much better than we do when we attempt to speak German or French. Now two-thirds of the Jewish ministers are English.

But, in addition to their charities, the Jews are alive to the importance of promoting religion and education. The Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge has now been in existence eleven years. Amongst its supporters are the Rothschilds, the Goldsmids, and the other wealthy Israelites whose charities are known all over England; but it needs, and let us add deserves, more efficient support. It has established a Sabbath school, where the present number of pupils is over 500, where instruction is given in reading, translation, and explanation of the Bible, translation of the prayers, religious and moral lessons, and Hebrew hymn-singing. It has established a synagogue in Union Hall, Artillery Lane, where lectures on the Sabbath are given. It has provided Scripture classes, and has published a series of Bible stories and Sabbath readings, of which half a million of copies have been delivered. The committee, when issuing the first number of their publications, stated that those papers would "have for their object to impress upon the Jewish mind proper notions of the principles and observances, spirit and mission, of Judaism, and by appeals to the reason rather than to sentiment, to develope and foster the most fervent conviction of the truths of our sacred religion." In the way of Bible distribution the Society has especially been active; until recently it was comparatively a rare occurrence to find a Bible in the houses of the Jewish poor. Where it was found it was of course the authorized Anglican version, which, says the report, "however great its literary merit, must be admitted to be faulty, and to contain numerous mistranslations adverse to the spirit of our religion." The version they circulated was Dr. Leeser's, and they anticipate the day when no poor Jewish home wherein parent or child can read shall be without a Jewish version of the Holy Scriptures. Under the auspices of the committee, a reply to Bishop Colenso was published.

The children are educated in a way of which Christians have no idea. The Jewish free school in Brick Lane, with its three thousand children, is a sight to see. There is, besides, an infant school equally flourishing, and no poor Jew is relieved unless he sends his children to school. In the visiting of the sick, in the care of the poor, all take their share. I believe a synagogue is a little commonwealth in which the rich help the poor, most frequently by way of small loans, and in which the strong take care of the weak. In these works of beneficence all take their share, the humblest as well as those of more exalted rank. The Jewish M.P. takes his place at the Board of Guardians. The Jewish Countess will not only give of her wealth, but will leave her stately home and seek out the abode of sorrow and distress. Charity is inculcated in the Talmud as the first of duties; and, if heaven is won by good works, the Jews are safe and sure.

The Jewish faith is contained in the Creed and the Shemang. Of the two, the latter is the more important. It is a declaration of the unity of God, the first utterance of the child, the last of the devout Jew as the watchers stand by his bedside, at the head of which is the Shechinah, or Divine presence, and at the foot of which, with outstretched wing, waiting for the last breath, hovers the angel of death. The Creed, which every Jew ought to believe and rehearse daily, but which they treat as Churchmen do their Thirty-nine Articles, is as follows:--

In the synagogue is the worship daily or weekly of the devout Jew performed, for the aim of that worship is to connect itself with the daily life. Dr. Arnold's idea of the Church and State being synonymous--an idea as old as the judicious Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity--is undoubtedly in its origin Jewish. The officers of the synagogue are a complete political as well as religious administration. A synagogue forms a little world of its own. A volume would be requisite to tell of the officers of the synagogue and of their various duties. There is among them no separation into lay and secular. The community consists of three kinds of members--the Cohen or priest, the Levite, and the Israelite. A minister must often support himself, but his ministry never ceases. To the last hour of his life he maintains his ministerial character. "The rabbis are men of great learning; and now in the Jews' College the students," writes a report just received, "have the advantage of a careful and systematic clerical education, and an equally valuable advantage, an example of piety and earnestness in their teachers."

The oldest synagogue in London is, as we have said, that of the Sephardim, in Bevis Marks. Let us go there first. All Jewish synagogues are alike; all the men keep their hats on, and wear a scarf round their shoulders, hanging down to their knees. At one time, in another respect, they were much alike--that was in the use of a service not understood by the people generally. All this is altered now. Within the last thirty years there has been a great change for the better. There are but few even of the poorest Jews who do not understand Hebrew.

"Siloa's brook, That flowed fast by the oracle of God."

Occasionally a Jew will rush in, seize a prayer-book, and, shutting his eyes, gabble on at a prodigious rate as if he had started late and had to make up for lost time, and his repeated bowing to all points of the compass is, to the spectator, of a very perplexing character. In this quarter the Jews, as regards appearance, are not very wealthy, nor have many of them very clean hands, nor, except on certain occasions, are the synagogues very well filled. Here you fail to recognise the swell Jews of Margate and Ramsgate, of Brighton and the Boulevards, the fact being that the rich Jews, like the rich Christians, have gone further west; yet the Montefiores belong to Bevis Marks, and the Rothschilds to the great congregation in Duke's Place. Such are the London synagogues, including, in addition to those we have already referred to, those in Fenchurch Street, St. Alban's Place, Maiden Lane, Cutler Street, Islington, Portland Street, Bayswater, and others. But the reader will ask, What of the ladies?--most of our churches and chapels would look intolerably destitute without them. The answer is, all the duties of their worship depend entirely on the males. The Jewesses are allowed to sit in a gallery. At Bevis Marks you see they are there, that is all. Whether they are white or black, whether they listen or not, it is impossible to tell, as they are concealed behind a lattice-work almost as impervious to male eyes as those behind which, on the night of a debate, our House of Commons hides our British fair. In other synagogues their gallery is open, and they can see and be seen.

On Saturdays service commences there at ten and terminates at one. Let us go there. As you enter, of course you face the ark. On each side benches, well cushioned, are placed. On the right of the ark is a pulpit. In the middle is the raised platform for the readers and the rabbi, the Rev. Mr. Marks. There is a gallery facing the pulpit, in which is an organ, an innovation of which the orthodox do not approve, as it implies Sabbath labour, and there is another innovation I dare say equally shocking. Actually in the side galleries appropriated to ladies you can see them. People of an uncharitable turn often insinuate that so many young men attend at such or such a church that they may see the ladies. I don't think the fact that you can see them in Margaret Street Synagogue adds materially to the male congregation. Yet Hebrew maidens, some of them, have been and are beautiful as any whose names have come echoing down to us along "the corridors of time." However, if the Christian stranger should let his eyes wander thitherward he is to be forgiven. Hebrew is a difficult tongue to follow if you are ignorant of it, and, save where there is no singing, which is very fine, the reading of the prayers is not very impressive. Nor do the gentlemen around, all wearing black hats and silk scarfs over the coat, appear to be much impressed. They sit with their prayer-books in their hands, in appearance as calm and unmoved as real West-end Christians of unquestioned respectability. At a certain interval the ark is unlocked, the roll of the law is taken reverently to the platform, where it is uplifted on all sides that all may see it, and then, when the reader has finished, it is borne back and deposited in the ark as formally and reverently as it was taken out. After a little while, as you begin to weary, one of the individuals on the platform leaves it. He wears a black gown and bands, he ascends the pulpit and preaches with his hat on; that is the Rev. Mr. Marks. He is thought much of by the younger and more educated Jews. As a preacher, much is to be said in his favour: he is short, he delivers himself well, his style of address is popular, and he gives many an Old Testament lesson. He demands of Abraham's descendants Abraham's faith in God, and obedience to Him. The Christian, of course, misses much. We worship a Messiah who has come; the Jews still, with sad and weary eyes, look onward, waiting His advent. Wherever civilization and science go hand in hand, wherever humanity reaps "the long results of time," whether in the old world or the new, wherever the great Caucasian race multiplies and nourishes, there, more or less, is there a living faith in the mission of Christ as a Divine teacher, as the comforter of human sorrow, as the healer of human woe, as the model for all to follow who aspire upwards to heaven and to God. In Europe there are 280 millions of Christians, and but very few of Jews. Everywhere they are an immense minority.

"The cedars wave on Lebanon, But Judah's statelier maids are gone."

Yet, after all, there is a danger. If rationalist principles prevail, and the Old Testament be a series of myths or allegories, why still retain the ritualist law in all its strictness? and if that goes the whole system goes. Pious Jews find all society against them; its spirit, its customs, its literature, all hostile, if not to their nation, at any rate to their faith. In too many cases they perceive that those who forsake the religion of their forefathers are but little the better for doing so. They find that those who begin by laughing at rabbinical absurdities end by despising the Word of God. A Hebrew infidel, an infidel among the Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption and the glory and the covenants, writes a Jewish author already quoted, "is indeed a frightful and portentous phenomenon," and thus the more sensitive and conservative amongst them shrink from in any way modifying their ritual in accordance with what is termed the spirit of the age. Christians have no idea of the earnestness of spirit, of the striving after conformity to the law of God, of the devout Jew, or of the great and grand truths which he extracts from observances or forms in which they can see no meaning. The Jew is fond of pleasure, fond of show, fond of jewellery and gorgeous dress, and on his Sabbath rarely exhibits a very devout appearance; nevertheless his religion requires daily observances from his birth upwards, which can only be carried out by means of a living faith. In the first place his religion is an expensive one, and he must pay in various ways very heavily for its support. It is true many of the observances required have become obsolete, but on the Sabbath he has much to go through at home, as well as to attend at the synagogue and to abstain from all worldly occupations. After the third day of the month every strict Jew either alone or with a number of his co-religionists must make the salutation of the moon. Then every month has certain days to be kept, especially in October, their new year, on the first and second days. It is believed that the destiny of every individual is determined on this month by the Creator Himself; that those whose demerits preponderate are sealed to death, those whose merits preponderate to life, and those whose merits and demerits are equal are delayed until the day of atonement. The first ten days of their new year are ten days of repentance, during which the Israelites are to repent and confess their sins, pray to the Almighty to write them down in the book of life, and grant them a happy new year. On the seventh day every one has a branch of willow procured under the superintendence of the officers of the synagogue, and all repair there with branches in their hands. The last of these days is the Day of Atonement, and is religiously kept by every Jew. On the 15th is the Feast of Tabernacles, on which the Jews are expected to live in booths, but in this country the rule is not strictly observed. In April is the most important of all the festivals--that of the Passover and of unleavened bread, when the doors of the house are left open for all, even the very poorest of the poor. In June is held the feast of Pentecost, to commemorate the giving of the law. The synagogues on that occasion are decorated with flowers, and in their houses the tables and floors are also dressed with flowers, sweet briar, and other fragrant herbs. A conscientious Jew must have a life of intense labour and self-denial, nor can he evade his duties nor impose them on another. How welcome to them of old must have been the Master's kindly words, "Come unto Me all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, and ye shall find peace unto your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." To appreciate these words aright you must fancy yourself a Jew, weighed down to the earth by the daily routine of painful ceremonial and the rigid requirements of inelastic law.

In the dark ages of Christianity, when the zeal and purity of the early professors and martyrs of the new creed had died away; when Constantine, anxious to fix his throne on a permanent basis, entered into an alliance with priests and bishops, not satisfied with the humble position assigned them in the Church, only by courtesy at that time to be called Apostolical; there was a revival of an old abuse, or rather, of a Pagan principle--the alliance of Church and State. Dr. Arnold, the truest Churchman in modern times, believed that the national conversions to Christianity, which then became the fashion, were productive of immense evil. This is the opinion long held by Dissenters, and latterly by an increasing number of independent inquirers. If so, Constantine was an arch-heretic; for surely, when Christ had taught that His kingdom was not of this world, it was heresy to disbelieve it, and, in the very teeth of such a declaration, to introduce an ecclesiastical system founded upon compulsion, ignoring altogether the Divine power of Christianity, and assuming that it could only be maintained by the sword and pay of the State.

Constantine's empire has vanished, but his Church remains; and it speaks to us, as Dean Stanley says, in the only living voice which has come down to us from the Apostolic Church: the State Churches of Europe, including even the pretentious one at Rome, are but its children. It is the pattern and model for them all. Greek was the original tongue of the early Christians. It was at Antioch, a Greek city, the birthplace of Ignatius, of Chrysostom, of John of Damascus, that they were first called by the name which now denotes the noblest form of human development. In the Old World or the New, the Councils to which Churchmen in all ages have referred, as of equal, or almost of equal, authority with the Bible, were Eastern. In them the Pope of Rome was considered but as a Bishop in the midst of his equals. The great fathers of the Church wrote in Greek. Dean Stanley says, the earliest fathers of the Western Church, Clemens, Irenaeus, Hermas, Hippolytus, did the same. St. Mark first preached his Gospel at Alexandria. St. John established a school at Ephesus, and Polycarp at Smyrna. The very word theology, as Dean Stanley remarks, arose from the peculiar questions agitated in the East. If there be such a thing as apostolical succession, the Greek Church has it. To this day, the English Church owes much to the East; the direction for holding of Easter is of Alexandrian origin, and on every Sunday, in the "Kyrie Eleison," the "Gloria in Excelsis," in part of the "Te Deum," and the prayer of St. Chrysostom, English Churchmen borrow from the service of the Church of Constantine. In Queen Elizabeth's time it was enacted that the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon were equally judges of heresy as the High Court of Parliament with the assent of the English clergy in their Convocation. No wonder, in these days, when Churchmen are prone to rely on Church claims rather than on Bible teaching--when, of little faith, and timid as to the future, they trust rather to hazy traditions than to living truths--no wonder the Greek Church has become to them an object of special reverence; that they long to form a union with it. Though proud of its superiority, it regards them as little better than Roman Catholics--Roman Catholics as a Greek once said to the writer, without the Pope.

The oldest creed we have is Greek. The pious forgeries of our Church historians are enough to make a candid inquirer a thorough sceptic as to all they say; but we may still give some credit to Eusebius of Caesarea, the father of ecclesiastical history. He tells us he read his creed before the Council of Nicaea. It was the same, he said, that he had learnt in his childhood from his predecessors, during the time that he was a catechumen, and at his baptism; and which he had taught for many years as a presbyter and bishop. It had been approved of by the Emperor Constantine, and would have been carried had not there appeared a probability of its being accepted by Arius and his partisans--a consummation which, in the opinion of the majority, would have had a disastrous effect, would have promoted union, would have saved many from the sin of schism, would have allowed the energies of the Church to have been directed to the conversion of the world rather than to internal squabbles, would have relieved Constantine from the stain and guilt and shame of having recourse to the sword to repress religious opinion. The Council of Nicaea cared for none of these things; all they wanted was victory, and so the earliest Christian creed was rejected by the Church. It was as follows:--

"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things, both visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, the only begotten Son, the Firstborn of every creature, begotten of the Father before all worlds, by whom also all things were made; Who, for our salvation, was incarnate, and lived amongst men, and suffered and rose again on the third day, and ascended to the Father; and shall come in glory to judge the quick and the dead; and I believe in one Holy Ghost. Believing each of them to be, and to have existed, the Father only, only the Father and the Son, only the Son and the Holy Ghost, only the Holy Ghost."

Well does a living writer remark, "Such as the Greek Church became on the extinction of Paganism, such, or nearly such, she seems to be now. Her missionary work has been narrow, her moral influence and control at home small, and though she has preserved a rigid continuity of doctrinal form, the principle of an ever-expanding and all-absorbing vitality has been wanting; in great cities her prelates have too frequently been the slaves of wealth and power, of courtly intrigue and political faction; in the desert her monks have become dreamy and unpractical anchorites. No lands reclaimed, no centres of agriculture and civilization created, no literature preserved, no schools founded, no human beings raised to a higher sphere of social action and duty, are to be set down to the account of the Greek Church. She is a fragment of old Byzantine civilization, as rigid and angular as the mosaics that still adorn and seem to frown down from the walls of her churches."

If we may quote the Eastern Church, the Roman Catholic Church is the greatest heresy of modern times. In the Encyclic Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs, the Papal system is referred to as "the chief heresy of the latter days, which flourishes now, as its predecessor, Arianism, flourished before it in the earlier ages, and which, like Arianism, shall in like manner be cast down and vanish away." "I die in the faith of the Catholic Church before the disunion of East and West," were the last words of Bishop Ken. Under the Stuarts, in solemn conclave the Anglicans accused the Romanists of idolatry. In the opinion, then, of the oldest Church, the only Church with an indisputable apostolical succession, and in the opinion of some of England's greatest Churchmen, the Church of Rome is an heretical one. Such is the conclusion to which also we are driven by the very slightest historical inquiry. Lady Herbert wonders that an Anglican Churchman can go to Jerusalem and not become a Romanist. Why, as the priest takes you from one sacred station to another, shows you where the Saviour fainted beneath the load of the cross, where Saint Veronica wiped His face with her handkerchief, where the print of the Saviour's foot yet remains,--when we all know that the Jerusalem of the Saviour's time is some eighty feet below the surface, and that all these assertions are absolutely false, you feel indignant, and, if you have the smallest iota of intellect left, after listening to the priestly legends, return a considerably sounder Protestant than you went. In like manner, history leads you to a similar conclusion as to the Roman Church. History, with an impartial pen, tells us how the Roman heresy sprang up, and grew, and reigned in every land. History robs Romanism of all its terror and of all its power. We see it, with plain, unblinded eyes, to be a heresy gradually enlarging its claims in accordance with the increasing ambition of its prelates, and the increasing credulity of its devotees. Gradually, as the memory of apostolic teaching and preaching passed away, the Church of Rome, after the fall of Jerusalem, continued to advance among the western Churches certain vague assertions of authority. In proportion as its clergy asserted their claims, other changes of an unscriptural character were made. First of all, the doctrine of baptismal regeneration was asserted; then a mysterious veneration began to attach itself to the celebration of the Lord's Supper; the sign of the cross was held to be vital to the expulsion of the devil; and prayers for the dead became common. A great step was gained when the doctrine of the celibacy of the clergy was enforced; when Gregory the Great, as the Romanists may well call him, inculcated purgatory, and pilgrimage to holy places; instituted the Canon of the Mass, and added splendour to the ceremonies of the Church, and claimed the power of the keys for the successors of St. Peter. On the foundation thus raised it was easy to base the most astounding claims; whether you are asked to believe that the Church of Loretto flew through the air from Syria to Italy, or, as in our time, the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, and the immaculate conception of the Virgin. After a certain point gained, the rest is sure to follow. Give up the Bible, believe in the priest, and the Roman heresy is the natural result.

In calculating the amount of Roman Catholic influence and activity, we must remember that in their churches and chapels service is always being performed; and that thus one Romanist place of worship for all practical purposes may often be considered as equivalent to a dozen Protestant places, especially where the incumbents are of the class of old-fashioned clergymen who have a relish for port and what used to be considered a gentlemanly religion. For instance, let us see what is the round of services at the cathedral, Blomfield Street, Moorfields. On Sundays and holidays there is mass at seven, eight, nine, ten, and high mass at eleven. At three there is catechism, at four baptism, and on Wednesdays and Fridays at eleven A.M.; vespers, sermon, and benediction at seven. On week-days mass is performed at half-past seven, eight, and ten. On Thursday, rosary, sermon, and benediction at eight; on the other evenings of the week rosary and night prayers at that hour. On the first Friday of the month there is sermon and benediction in honour of the Sacred Heart; on the second Friday of the month the Way of the Cross. There are the confessions, sometimes twice a day; and the Confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament, of the Sacred Heart, of Holy Angels for Children. Then there are the Societies, such as the Holy Family Total Abstinence Society, Holy Family Provident Society, Benevolent Society for the Relief of the Aged and Infirm Poor, and the Night Refuge for Homeless Women of Good Character. Nor is this the only way in which Roman Catholic influence is felt in this district. On good works the Roman Church has ever laid great stress, and thus we find from the centre in Blomfield Street the priests have specially assigned to them Newgate Prison, Old Bailey; Debtors' Prison, Lower Whitecross Street; St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Metropolitan Free Hospital, Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital,--an amount of exertion incompatible with spiritual ease and worldly enjoyment. I mention this to show that you are not to judge by what you see; attendance at any particular time is no criterion as to the state of the Catholic community. You may depend upon it that it is always much stronger than it seems. Those present are but a tithe of the Romanists in any particular locality, and the admirable organization of their priests peculiarly fits them for aggressive purposes. I believe they are most successful in the low neighbourhoods, in the guilt gardens, in which a great metropolis like ours abounds. Their charities in London are very extensive. There is a Catholic Poor School Committee, a Westminster Diocesan Education Fund, an Aged Poor Society, an Association for the Propagation of the Faith, a Society of St. Anselm, for the Diffusion of Good Books. The Associated Catholic Charities, for educating and apprenticing the children of poor Catholics, have six schools in London. The Immaculate Conception Charity assists the clergy in providing for children whose faith or morals are exposed to imminent danger through the death or helplessness of their parents. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, whose chief object is visiting poor families at their own homes, has sixteen branches in London, besides a large Orphanage, at this time containing eighty boys, and a Catholic Shoeblack Brigade. The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul have an establishment in Westminster. The oldest Roman Catholic charitable institution is the Benevolent Society for the Relief of the Aged and Infirm Poor, founded in the year 1761. During the six winters the Providence Row Night Refuge for Homeless Women and Children has been in existence, 92,194 nights' lodgings, with suppers and breakfasts, have been given gratuitously. The only condition requisite for admission is that the applicant be homeless and without food and money. Such are the charities in London of the Roman Church.

As regards the pulpit, the Romanists are not wise in their generation. In London, where oratory can do so much, they fail to provide themselves with a grand and effective preacher. They have no Father Hyacinthe in London. Surely Italy might have sent us a Roman Catholic Gavazzi. Ireland supplies us with orators in abundance, but where are her eloquent priests? Cardinal Wiseman was florid and heavy. Archbishop Manning is more than sixty years old; and oratory, unlike wine, does not improve with age. His position, his talents, his zeal, incline you to hear him with respect, nothing more. As I have listened in some of the fine old cathedrals of the Continent to fiery priests, thundering away to crowded and attentive audiences, it has often occurred to me that it is just as well we have no such preachers in London to bring the Roman Catholic Church into fashion; to make it the sensation of the hour; to do for it what Irving did for Presbyterianism when he drew around him to the Scotch Church in Hatton Garden all the beauty, the fashion, the genius, the intellect of his day.

Dissent, however, has not been taken into account. It is rarely a Dissenter becomes a Roman Catholic. It is impossible, if he understands his principles, that he should. To too many it is the Church of England that leads to that of Rome.

The peculiarity of the Church of England, that by which it is distinguished from orthodox Dissent, is the priestly character of its claims, and its intolerance of other sects.

The "Tracts for the Times" tell us "that the Bishop is Christ's representative, and the priests the Bishop's, so that despising the clergy is despising Christ." "A person not commissioned may pretend to give the Lord's Supper, but it can afford no comfort to any one to receive it at his hands; and as for the person who takes it on himself without a warrant to minister in holy things, he is all the while treading in the steps of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. It is only having received this commission that can give any security that the ministration of the Word and the Sacraments shall be effectual to the saving of your souls. The Dissenters have it not."

The Dean of Chichester writes--"Our ordinations descend in a direct unbroken line from Peter and Paul. Unless Christ be spiritually present with the ministers of religion in their services, those services must be vain. But the only ministration to which He has promised his presence are those of the Bishops, who are successors of the first commissioned Apostles, and the other clergy acting under their sanction and authority."

The Bishop of Winchester says--"We believe that we do possess, as we cannot see that others do, Christ's direct commission for our ministry, and a certainty and fulness, therefore, of His presence and of His Sacramental working, which, to say the least, may be lacking elsewhere. If we do not hold as much as this we must dissent from the plain language of our own Ordination Service." The Bishop also denies that it is a superstitious theory that "the clergy can convey to the soul by a material intervention some spiritual influence in an occult manner."

The Rev. E. Blenkinson, in the "Church and the World," a book presented to Convocation by the Bishop of Oxford, says the Protestant bodies have "cut themselves off from the participation of the one Spirit as living in the Church and flowing through the Sacraments, which are the veins and arteries of the body." The last utterance on the subject is that of the Bishop of Ely, who places the first and undisputed General Councils as of equal authority with Scripture. The Catechism teaches Baptismal Regeneration. The clergy also tell us that they are called by the Holy Ghost, that the Bishop has conferred on them spiritual graces by the laying on of hands. This is the theory of the Church of England. In accordance with this in time past, it drove out the Evangelicals on Bartholomew Day, and has at any rate till our time prosecuted Broad Churchmen for heresy.

The bitterest opponents of this theory are the Evangelicals. It is a singular and noteworthy fact, that the theology dearest to the hearts of the people is that which teaches in the plainest manner the literal inspiration of the Bible, the doctrine of Original Sin, of Predestination, of everlasting damnation, of a Devil ever thwarting the designs of a benevolent Deity, and seeking whom he may devour. Yet the character given by Dr. Arnold of the Evangelical clergy is still true, and accounts for the little influence they have in educated circles. Another fact also becomes increasingly prominent: their readiness to swallow their words, to quietly accept whatever may be offered them by their opponents apparently merely for the sake of position in society. Every now and then a crisis occurs in the history of the Church. If Baptismal Regeneration, for instance, be ruled to be permissible they must leave, and then when the time comes for them to arise and become martyrs, they quietly pocket their principles and remain. Of course they plead their greater opportunities of usefulness, as if religion were better served by dishonesty than by honesty,--as if the cause of God were better advanced by falsehood than by truth,--as if position as regards society were of more importance than the man's consciousness of independence and honourable life. For the ritualist or the Broad Churchman it is no difficult matter to remain in the church in company with the Evangelical; but they, in accordance with his theory, are teaching soul-destroying errors; yet he remains with them, and is, according to his idea, a partaker in their sins.

The characteristic of our day is the Broad Churchmanship, which rejects the common theology as a prejudice well fitted for certain times, but unworthy of credence now. Of this party are the ablest men in the Church; all who are disgusted with the childishness of ritualism--with the narrowness of orthodox formulas, turn to them, and hail them as the regenerators of Church and State. Such men as Dean Stanley and Mr. Maurice are a power in the land. They walk hand in hand with the poets and men of science of our time. In their teaching is gathered together much that is best and truest in the wisdom of the past. The difficulty of their position is that they are tied down as strongly as they can be to orthodoxy, and half their strength is wasted in the effort to show they have a right to be where they are. Nevertheless it is quite true that there can be no honest faith without honest doubt; that we fight our fears and gather strength; that as we know more, we feel how outworn is the old creed of Christendom. Sir J. D. Coleridge tells us the Articles are Articles of peace--that is, for the sake of uniformity a minister may make statements which he cannot believe. But a man who cannot trifle with words is denied all this liberty; he is tied hand and foot. The State gives him moral prestige, supremacy, wealth, on certain conditions. The Dissenter is free; the wildest ranter has a liberty which an Archbishop may sigh for in vain. Such is the law. A State Church such as is desired by Broad Churchmen is an impossibility. And yet in spite of the rival and differing parties in the Church, and in spite of the fact that Churchmen themselves are longing to be free of the fetters of the State, I know not that the Church of England, as regards London, was ever stronger than now. The layman has little sympathy with Church squabbles: he goes to church feeling that in doing so he is not committed to any form of belief or worship. Dissent requires some sort of faith as preliminary to fellowship. In the Church you avoid all this: the Puseyism of the pulpit seldom extends to the pew. Then, again, there is a natural yearning in all minds after national union in religious as well as political matters. The higher class of Dissenters display this feeling in an extraordinary degree. Their chapels are built like churches--they cling to the steeple which the stern old Puritans considered an abomination--the meeting-house has ceased to exist. Day by day Dissent gets rid of all its characteristics--its ministers assume a clerical appearance--they adopt the Prayer-book as their model--they now listen to read sermons and read prayers. Of late years their leaders have grown rich and respectable, and anxiously disclaim all connexion with the loud and exciting form of worship that has attractions for the ignorant. You may safely assume that the teaching of modern Dissent is indirectly in favour of the Establishment. Dissenters tell us they have modified their customs in order to retain their hold upon the young of the wealthy classes. But they cannot be retained by means like these. It has almost become a proverb, that in the third generation they will pass through the chapel to the church. Half the great mercantile houses of London and the empire were founded by Dissenters whose sons, as they have grown rich and cultivated, feel more and more the awkward isolation of Dissent. Increasingly this feeling is spreading among Dissenters, and the Church, if it were wise--its history is a career of blunder upon blunder--would have laid its plans to recover such. All the levers of society have been at its disposal. The Establishment rolls in wealth; there is no other Church in the world so wealthy; the aristocracy are bound to support it. Literally, there is in our land no career for a Dissenter. Dissent is a stigma in society. Even men who have no religious predilections would scorn the name of Dissenter. The schools, the universities--all have wealth and honour for those who will conform; and for those who conscientiously refuse to do so--exclusion and disgrace.

Annual Value. No. Present. St. Bartholomew the Great, ?680 40 Smithfield St. Anne and Agnes, St. Anne's 626 25 Lane St. Michael le Querne, Foster 300 closed Lane St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish 230 18 Street St. Nicholas Cole Abbey 270 closed St. Bennet's, Paul's Wharf 254 6 St. Nicholas Queenhithe, 260 11 Thames Street Allhallows, Bread Street 382 3 St. Martin Pomray, Old Jewry 410 1 St. Margaret, Bread Street 287 3 St. Peter le Poor, Old Broad 1725 20 Street St. Martin Outwich, 1100 6 Bishopsgate Street St. James, Mitre Square 300 20 Allhallows with St. Bennet, 650 9 Lombard Street ?7074 162

In the City there are 105 churches, parochial and district, and in the City the superiority of the Church over Dissent is manifest. The Jews, the Greeks, the Roman Catholics, the Wesleyans, the Baptists, the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians altogether have but twenty-six chapels in the City.

The Bishop of Winchester's Fund, also known as the South London Church Extension Fund, is a similar effort to supply the spiritual need of that part of London which belongs to the diocese of Winchester.

THE DEAF AND DUMB AT CHURCH.

In London there are two thousand persons born deaf and dumb. To the sweet music of speech, whether in the way of conversation or lecture, grave or gay, or song however sacred and Divine, they are insensible. It follows almost as a natural consequence that they are mute, that from their lips can never come the thoughts that breathe and words that burn. It is almost impossible for us to measure adequately the greatness of their loss or the depth of their desolation. How in some degree to make it up to them, to raise them in the scale of being, to teach them to think, and feel, and learn, and to enable them to communicate to others the results, is certainly not one of the least praiseworthy of the many praiseworthy Christian efforts of our day. With this view two courses of action have been followed. A Jewish school has been established at 44, Burton Crescent, where the system of teaching by articulation and lip-reading is pursued. For some time a similar system has been in successful operation in Rotterdam. As to the merits of the system a warm dispute has been for a considerable time in progress in America. Its advocates tell us that when these results shall have been made known, and the attention of the philanthropist and man of science shall have been directed to them, the days of the old system of dactylology, or communication by the aid of fingers, will be numbered. They ask, triumphantly, What parents will be content that their children shall continue to communicate their thoughts and wishes by the aid of signs, when it can be proved to a demonstration that 999 deaf mutes out of every 1000 possess the faculty of speech, and that such faculty can be successfully utilised? Mr. Isaac tells us, that at Burton Crescent, after only eighteen months' instruction, a deaf child who had never previously uttered a clear sound, recited a verse of the National Anthem in a way that brought tears into the eyes of many hearers. The questions are put by the teacher in audible language; and the deaf mute, by aid of lip-reading--another marvel of the system in which the eye does duty for the ear--comprehends every question, and gives answers audibly and distinctly. The Association in aid of the Deaf and Dumb, of which the Rev. Samuel Smith is the able and indefatigable secretary, are, however, doubtful of the new system--and certainly lip-reading seems liable to give facilities for great misapprehension as to the speaker's meaning--and prefer to continue the system which the society was organized in 1840 to teach, and under which it has worked more or less successfully ever since. Under this system has sprung up a deaf and dumb church-going public. On Sundays there are five or six places opened for such in London; on Tuesday evenings there are two, the principal one being held in the fine old church of St. Lawrence Jewry, near the Guildhall--one of Sir Christopher Wren's churches--in which are monuments to Wilkins, the learned Bishop of Chester, and Archbishop Tillotson, whose lot was no peaceful one, and of whom it is worthy of remark that in the language of Jortin he broke through an ancient and fundamental rule of controversial theology, "Allow not an adversary either to have common sense or common honesty." Poor Tillotson, you see, never got over the disadvantages of Dissenting training.

"God reveals Himself in many ways,"

and that He may be met with even among the deaf and dumb.

A SUNDAY IN JAIL.

In this necessarily short paper it is not our intention to describe the general arrangements of a place which we fear to too many of its inmates can have but few terrors. There are homes outside of filth, and want, and degradation; where, morning, noon, and night all that is decent, that is tender, or true, or pure is crushed out of man, woman, and child; where you can scarce believe man was made in the image of his Maker, that he is a little lower than the angels; where you feel that rather than have company with such you would associate with the beasts of the field, or dwell in some lonely isle "far off amid the melancholy main." To such, such a place as Holloway, with its cleanliness, and fresh air, and wholesome food, educational advantages, and considerate attendance, must be simply--in spite of its drawbacks of the treadmill, &c.--a millennium; and the question arises whether we have hit on the most effectual mode of making the dread of jail an incentive to the criminal class to keep out. Another question also suggests itself: Is it right thus to tenderly treat dishonesty, when honest poverty in our midst undoubtedly fares so bad? Here, however, that subject cannot be discussed, neither can we touch on that other question, at this time strongly agitating the aldermanic mind, as to the propriety of allowing prisoners to have a religion of their own, and to be attended by their own religious ministers--a question the majority of the court evidently think absurd, for, as Alderman Cotton observed--and our readers must remember Alderman Cotton aspired to the honour of a seat in Parliament,--"if every dissenting sect were to apply for facilities for the celebration of their religious services, what would become of them? They should have to give the Baptists a pool to bathe in, the Mormons a harem, and the Shakers a circle in which they might make their dance." Of course, then, when I write of a Sunday in Holloway jail, I write of a Sunday where the services--there are two, morning and afternoon--are Protestant, and Protestant according to the Church of England. As the worthy chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Owen, is now about to preach, let us accompany him. We follow him up a flight of stairs, and are at church and in jail. To most of us it is to be hoped the sensation is a novel one.

In a small gallery, under which is the clerk and in the middle of which is the pulpit, we take our seat. The chaplain, of course, is seen by all. A red curtain, which we are requested not to remove, hides us from the congregation. However, we can see them nevertheless. On the right of the preacher, partitioned off so as to be seen by none but himself, are the women prisoners; on his left, in another recess, are the boys, little lads for whose offences against society others and older ones are certainly more responsible than themselves. Before us, in rows gradually ascending, are ranged the male adults--pale, melancholy-looking men, who form the principal portion of this sad community. While they are seating themselves let us note the cheerful, neat appearance of the place. Not a speck of dirt is anywhere visible. You might, to use a common but expressive form of speech, eat your dinner off the floor. The wooden ceiling is very light and airy; the windows are plain and plentiful; the walls are bare, but of snowy whiteness. Underneath is the communion-table, and once a quarter such as the chaplain considers truly penitent are permitted to partake of it. Some dozen officials, in uniform, on raised seats, are ranged in different parts of the chapel, and when all have taken their places the service is commenced by singing, in which generally the wife of the chaplain--a lady not unknown in the literary world--assists by instrumental performance. This part of the service is especially remarkable. The prisoners are fond of singing. There is weekly a class for this purpose, and they enter into it with all their heart and soul. Of course the tunes are very simple and old-fashioned, such as we used to hear, but they are sung with a fervour of which few outsiders can have an idea. One could not help thinking of Longfellow's lines:

"Loud he sang the Psalms of David, He a negro and enslaved."

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