friend to the constitution in Church and State, who should now propose to "let slip those dogs of war," the common informers, by omitting to apply to them their annual muzzle. It is true that many Dissenters enter into the feelings of the late Lord North, who regarded the acceptance of office by a Nonconformist, in reliance upon the annual Indemnity Act, as a species of mental fraud. But is this peculiar delicacy of the moral sense reasonably to be expected from Dissenters at large, who view the Test Laws as unjustifiable restrictions upon their rights as citizens, and who have more than once been told that the annual Indemnity Acts left them without any practical grievance? Can any case in the courts of law be pointed out in which it has been attempted to distinguish conscientious objections to the Test from inadvertent omissions of it? What then, practically speaking, becomes of the pretence, that these perpetually-suspended laws are "the main props and sturdy bulwarks of the fabric of the Church"? If Dissenters are the determined and insidious foes of the Church, which some of her friends would represent them to be, how unaccountable the policy of relaxing those fetters by which their consciences are supposed to be bound! 4. The repeal of the Test Laws in Ireland, so far back as the year 1780, and the non-existence of any similar law in Scotland for the protection of its church establishment, are circumstances of importance, to shew that the United Kingdom would gain something in the uniformity and equalization of civil rights by the total abolition of the Test in England. But In a paper inserted in the Monthly Repository, Vol. XVII. O. S. pp. 129–140, under the title of "The Nonconformist, No. XXIV.," it was attempted to shew that, according to the fair grammatical construction of the Indemnity Acts, they did not operate so completely to foreclose the attacks of the informer as was commonly supposed. The question has since been agitated before the Court of King's Bench, and the subjoined report tends to shew how strongly disposed are the Judges of the present day to extend, by a liberal construction, the remedial operation of those Acts. Can there be more cogent evidence of the practical obsoleteness of the Test? "In the matter of Steavenson and others. Scarlett moved for a quo warranto information against the Mayor and four Bailiffs of Berwick. These officers were elected on the 29th of September, in the last year; and were on the same day sworn and admitted into their respective offices. They all neglected to receive the Sacrament, and take the oath of allegiance, &c., within six months, as required by the 25th Car. II. c. 2; 16 Geo. II. c. 30; 1 Geo. I. st. 2, c. 13; and 9 Geo. II. c. 26. It will be urged, that they are protected by the last annual Indemnity Act. But that Act passed on the 27th of February last, and only applies to those who' at or before the passing of the Act,' had incurred penalties or disabilities. These persons being elected on the 29th of September, had not incurred any penalty or disability when the Indemnity Act passed, and cannot therefore be protected by it. "Campbell shewed cause in the first instance. The object of the Indemnity Act was to enlarge the time before allowed for receiving the Sacrament, taking the oath, &c., required of persons accepting certain offices and employments. The preamble of the statute certainly appears to be limited to such persons as had made default before the Act passed, but is capable of receiving a larger construction. The title is material, to shew a different intention in the Legislature: that is, An Act to indemnify such persons in the United Kingdom as have omitted to qualify themselves for offices and employments, and for extending the time limited for those purposes respectively.' The enacting part, too, extends to all those who, at or before the passing of the Act, have, or shall have, omitted, &c. That certainly is future, as well as past, and must extend to all that are in default before the 25th of March, 1824. "Per Curiam. There may perhaps be some obscurity in the words of this statute, but there is none in its title. It was manifestly the intention of the Legislature to extend the time for taking the oaths and performing the other acts required of persons filling certain offices; and this being a remedial statute, we should so construe it as to give full effect to that intention.-Rule refused."-See Barnewall and Cresswell's Reports in King's Bench, Vol. II. p. 34. where slept the defenders of the bulwarks of the Church when, in the session of 1817, an act of tardy justice to the loyalty and bravery of Nonconformist officers in the army, was silently performed by the very statesmen who, in the year 1807, took advantage of a similar attempt by the administration of Lords Grenville and Grey, to supplant them in their offices? The anomaly, in the situation of military officers in different parts of the empire, was indeed too prominently cruel and absurd to have longer existed; but let it not be forgotten, that the dread of a disaffected military power was the urgent cause of the original enactment of the Test Act, and ought, in reason, to outweigh the apprehension of a few Dissenters being elected to civil offices. And, lastly, when the free admission of Protestant Dissenters to the senate and the bar is contemplated, (to say nothing of the power of the press, upon which, fortunately, no test has been imposed,) must not every reflecting mind be convinced of the egregious inconsistency of holding up the Sacramental Test, even were it practically enforced, as an impregnable barrier to the Church Establishment, whilst it is left exposed to the attacks of the disaffected through channels so direct and influential ? We have thus hastily glanced at some of the prominent features of that case which Protestant Dissenters are enabled to make out, upon an historical review of the circumstances under which the Test Laws were passed, and in which they practically subsist at the present moment, independently of those abstract principles of natural right to which an appeal is seldom made with success in the courts of worldly policy, and of those grave objections to the profanation of the most solemn and endearing rite of the Christian religion, which ought, long ago, to have prompted the substitution of some other test of allegiance to the Church, if indeed her kingdom is so essentially allied to the concerns of this world. To the serious and judicious friends of the Church Establishment we would confidently appeal, whether experience have not evinced that her peaceful ascendancy is best secured by enlarging the bounds of toleration, and thus diminishing the motives to jealousy and dislike in those who are without her pale; and whether, in this age of progressive light and knowledge, her downfal would not be most assuredly sealed by demonstrating her existence to be incompatible with the free participation of social rights and privileges by those who are without as well as those who are within her pale? Should we be asked, whence this solicitude for an object which, according to our own shewing, is attained substantially, though not in theory-we answer, 1. That if our only object were to rid the statute book of every trace of religious proscription, and to assimilate in this respect the theory and the practice of our Constitution, it would justify considerable effort and zeal on the part of those, both in and out of the Church, who are jealous for the honour of our laws, as compared with those of other empires, less distinguished in other respects by the freedom of their institutions, and who are anxious that the laws of England, the focus of British dominion, should not be degraded by a reference to those of Ireland, Scotland, Hanover, or Canada. 2. That our argument does not go the length of maintaining, that Nonconformists are under no practical restriction or grievance on account of the Test Laws, but merely that the non-enforcement of them has long deprived the friends of the Establishment of all plausible pretence for regarding these half-repealed and more than half-suspended enactments as necessary to the safety of the Church. The right possessed by every freeman of a corporation of arraigning the most popular candidate for its offices, on the score of a neglect to take the Sacrament, is alone sufficient to repress the wishes of a large portion of the Dissenting community to tender their services to the public in that way; and the public stigma which the laws in question affix to the profession of other religious principles than those of the Establishment, is imperfectly wiped off by acts of partial Repeal and annual Indemnity, which have been necessitated by public convenience rather than conceded as the boon of an enlarged liberality. 3. It is neither wise nor fitting that the dreadful penalties of the Test Act should be suspended from year to year over the heads, not of Dissenters merely, but of the real and nominal members of the Church, who, encouraged by the practice of nearly a century, fail to comply with the law, but who are thus placed perpetually at the mercy, not of the combined Legislature, but of each and every branch of it. What might be the consequences of any sudden panic which should seize the Noble Lord on the Woolsack, and his half-dozen attendant spirits, whilst the annual Bill was gliding as usual through the forms of the House, it is awful to reflect. Were all our rights equally revocable at the will of King, Lords, or Commons, we should have little to boast on the ground of security under such a triple tyranny. We are not now impugning the original policy of Acts of Indemnity at a time when the remains of a disaffected party still looked to the exiled Stuarts as their legitimate sovereigns; but the entire extinction of that race, and the complete settlement of the present dynasty, have established abundant grounds for an act of perennial release, in lieu of an annual indemnity. But we must desist from pursuing the subject for the present; opportunities will, we trust, speedily occur of calling the public attention to it in other points of view, and of fulfilling our pledge of unceasing warfare against these and all other obstructions of that social union and Christian brotherhood which so far transcend the doubtful, if attainable, blessing of uniformity in external profession. EVENING HYMN. WHEN twilight shades come darkening on, And meditate on Thee. When day's distinctions all are gone, All shrouded by night's canopy, 'Tis doubly sweet to be alone, And meditate on Thee. For then the idle world's parade, Its fame, its follies, fade and flee ; There peace communes with Thee. Then welcome be the evening hour, And blest the season and the power REVIEW. ART. I.-A Critical Essay on the Gospel of St. Luke, by Frederich Schleiermacher. With an Introduction by the Translator, containing an Account of the Controversy respecting the Origin of the Three First Gospels since Bishop Marsh's Dissertation. London, 1825. THE author of the work which stands at the head of this article was scarcely known even by name to English readers before the appearance of this translation, but the high reputation which he enjoys among his countrymen would sufficiently justify us in calling their early attention to the first work of his, which has been rendered accessible to those who are not conversant with German literature. We may, perhaps, be excused if we preface our examination of his Essay with a few particulars of the life and writings of this eminent man. Dr. Schleiermacher is a native of Silesia, and we believe passed through the earliest stages of his education in a seminary of the United Brethren, but withdrew from this connexion when about twenty years of age, and went (in 1787) to complete his literary and theological studies at the University of Halle. He received ordination in 1794, and after filling some subordinate stations in the church, came to Berlin in 1796, as preacher at the great infirmary of that city, and began his career as an author by a translation of the last volume of Blair's Sermons, and afterwards of those of Fawcett. As a pulpit orator he soon became distinguished by his astonishing command of extemporaneous language, as remarkable for precision, purity and elegance as extemporaneous preaching commonly is for the opposites of these qualities. The bent of his mind is eminently philosophical, and during his first residence at Berlin, the study of philosophy, especially of ancient philosophy, appears to have engaged his attention more than biblical criticism. In conjunction with Frederic Schlegel, he had projected a complete translation of the works of Plato, whom he enthusiastically admired, but his colleague having abandoned the task, Schleiermacher undertook it alone, and, between 1804 and 1817, published in five volumes nearly all those parts which contain the speculative philosophy of Plato. The successful execution of such a task required a profound thinker and an accomplished scholar, and by the union of these qualifications in an extraordinary degree, Schleiermacher is admitted to have given to Germany, what no other modern literature possesses, an adequate representation of the wisdom and eloquence of the founder of the Academy. In 1804, he removed to Halle, as University preacher and professor of theology; but he had not long exercised his functions here, when the calamitous results of the war between Prussia and France first drove the professors from their homes, and afterwards occasioned the dissolution of the University. In the interval between this event and the establishment of the University of Berlin, he appeared as a public lecturer in that city, and was soon appointed to one of its churches. The period of calamity and oppression through which his native country passed, till the failure of Napoleon's expedition to Russia, afforded to Schleiermacher a noble opportunity for the display of his patriotic energy. When the progress of events indicated that the time drew near which would call the youth of Prussia again to struggle for freedom, not even the presence of the French oppressors could prevent him from employing his eloquence from the pulpit in cherishing their patriotic ardour; nor is there probably any private individual who can claim a larger share in the excitement of that spirit which enabled Prussia at length to throw off the yoke, and conducted her armies to the heart of France. When the hour of danger was passed, and the public voice began to demand from the King the fulfilment of those promises of a free constitution by which the people had been encouraged to rise, Schleiermacher was again found among the boldest and most powerful of the advocates of freedom. He drew up the remonstrance which the theological faculty of the University presented to the King, against the arbitrary dismissal of De Wette, who, in a letter of which the Government had possessed itself by the treachery of a neighbouring state, had endeavoured to console the mother of Sand. He has also animadverted on the attempt more recently made by the King of Prussia to introduce into the united churches a liturgy drawn up by his Majesty himself, with the assistance, it is said, of one of his major generals. These instances of inflexible spirit and independence have made him, as might be expected, so obnoxious to the Court, that nothing but its fear of depriving Prussia of the benefit of his abilities and reputation has saved him from being sent to share the exile of De Wette, if not the prison of Jahn.* As an academical teacher, Schleiermacher has been chiefly celebrated for his lectures on philosophy and morals. The uninterrupted flow of perspicuous and forcible language, in which, almost extemporaneously, he carries his hearers along with him through his subtle and profound investigations, is even more wonderful than the animated stream of his pulpit eloquence. The work which we are now about to examine is, with the exception of a letter attacking the genuineness of the first Epistle to Timothy, published in 1807, the only specimen which has been given to the world of his ability as a biblical critic; but it bears decisive marks of the learning, the acuteness, and, we think too, occasionally, the over-refining subtilty which are the characteristics of Schleiermacher's mind. The anonymous translator of this Essay has prefixed to it a very valuable introduction extending to more than one hundred and fifty pages, in which, after endeavouring to vindicate those who pursue researches into the origin and composition of the gospels, from the charge of "sapping the inspiration of Scripture," he proceeds briefly to point out the principal objections to * Jahn is said to have been the first volunteer who took up arms when the King of Prussia retired to Breslau, and called on his people to come forward in defence of their country, and he distinguished himself greatly in the war of emancipation. He was chiefly instrumental in establishing the Turnplätze or Gymnasia, as a means of training the youth of Prussia to manly activity, and preparing them for the field. After the war, Jahn fell under the displeasure of the government, for the freedom with which he demanded the fulfilment of the royal promise; the gymnasia were closed as nurseries of democracy, and Jahn himself sent to a fortress, having been found with two daggers in his possession, with which it was supposed that he meant to assassinate all the sovereigns of Germany. An anecdote of him may be added to the list of "great effects from little causes.' The French, when they took Berlin, carried away the bronze Victory from the Brandenburgh Gate. Jahn one day passing under it, called a boy to him, and asked him what was become of the Victory, and on his replying, that the French had taken it away, but that he did not trouble himself about the matter, gave him a smart box on the ear and bade him in future "trouble himself about the matter." The story soon spread through Berlin, and no one from that time passed under the Brandenburgh Gate without thinking of the Victory and the means of its reinstatement. |