money for the humble funeral was not forthcoming. Ultimately the Duke agreed to defray it, and he expended altogether three hundred thalers in payments on behalf of Lessing. Goethe was in the act of starting for Wolfenbüttel to pay his tribute to the great mind he had so much admired, but had never met in the flesh, when the tidings of death stopped him. 'Ah !' was Goethe's exclamation, Lessing is dead! In him we lose much, very much; far more than we have an idea of.'

This verdict, uttered on the spur of the moment, has been fully confirmed. Lessing's glory has not waned, for it is a glory of sterling substance. Not a shred of tinsel entered into his nature or his doings. At all points he was genuine and thorough, in his comprehensive nature and his multifarious works. That more perfect productions subsequently came from others in particular lines, does not detract from his claim to capital eminence. That, notwithstanding genuine poetic fibre, Lessing was surpassed by Schiller and Goethe as a poet. and a dramatist, is beyond question. No more can it be disputed that as a mere philosopher he was surpassed by such systematic metaphysicians as Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. Lessing's greatness lies in the fact. that, while never sinking into a specialist, he struck out abiding types in various lines, and that, above all, his mind acted on the whole breadth and length of German thought and letters with the beneficent force of a vivifying genius. In considering Lessing as a man of letters and a thinker, two qualities especially command recognition. First, the genuinely spontaneous universality of his nature it embraced effectively the widest range of subjects, and the widest. range of vigorous expression, from verse and drama to technical learning and keen criticism. Secondly, the unfailing thoroughness and sincerity of his action in all things and on all subjects he took in hand. No trace of subterfuge exists in anything done by Lessing. He never sought to screen his mind behind a mask. Time will enable people to distinguish what we have in our minds from what we have said,' is the self. convicting confession dropped from D'Alembert, when writing to Voltaire from under the full blaze and favour of Paris freethinking salons, in apology for the deliberately ambiguous language studiedly adopted in the Encyclopédie,' with the view of smuggling into circulation views it was deemed expedient not to broach in full. Such double meanings the poor and unprotected Lessing scorned; his nature never bent to underground devices; it never practised duplicity; and it is because his labour on

all occasions was so honest and so earnest, so free from affectation and from artifices of any kind, that his writings have proved abidingly pregnant, and his creations bear a stamp, the freshness of which time cannot easily efface.

ART. II.-1. Reports of the Executive Committee of the Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control, for 1875, 1876, 1877, and

1878.

2. The Church Defence Institution. An Association of Clergy and Laity for defensive and general purposes. Reports for 1874, 1875, 1876, and 1877.

3. Dissent in its relation to the Church of England. The Bampton Lectures for 1871. By George Herbert Curteis, M.A. London, 1872.

4. The Congregational Year Book, 1878. 5. The Baptist Hand Book. 1878. 6. Charges delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Llandaff. By Alfred Ollivant, D.D., Bishop of Llandaff. 1869-1875. 7. A Charge delivered to the Clergy at his Primary Visitation. By William Basil Jones, D.D., Lord Bishop of St. David's.

have long since been numbered. Immediately upon the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, politicians began to count the utmost continuance of her existence, which even such warm-hearted supporters as Wilberforce deemed not to be worth many years' purchase. Subsequent changes, which lowered the borough franchise and admitted a vast addition to the electoral burgess-roll, were accompanied by lugubrious vaticinations and exultant prophecies of the Church's doom. The disestablishment of the Irish Church awakened hopes and fears which had only so much more ground in reason, as injudicious friends and crafty foes tried to make out that the causes of the two Establishments were identical, and that the fall of the one inevitably involved that of the other. More recently a certain impulse has been given, and eagerly seized upon by 6 Liberationists, ' in the contemptuous assurance of the Liberal leader of the House of Commons that, without having deeply studied the question, he did not object to disestablish the Church of Scotland, if by so doing he could further the interests of his party. Once more the advanced section of the Radicals, the only political body identified with the assault upon the Church, assure themselves and the world that the extension of the county franchise will necessarily result in the election of a majority hostile to the Establishment, and will ensure the triumph of the latest form of Chartism, embodied in Free Church, Free Land, Free Education, and Free Labour. The failure of the past is to be atoned for by more complete organization; and the main body of Liberationists, reinforced on either wing by a contingent of philosophical Positivists, and by the Agricultural Labourers' Union, is to march onward to victory under the control of the Birmingham Liberal Association. Such is the programme now put forth, with all the confidence of tone with which the experience of half a century has made us sufficiently familiar. Never was a party, in hunting phrase, more given to holloaing before they are out of the wood. The whole question, if we are to believe Liberationist tracts and orators, is settled. As a matter of argument it is threshed out, and waits only the declaration of the terms which the victorious enemies of the Church will graciously accord to her. Even these, as we shall see presently, are not withheld. It may be politic to assume so bold an air. Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better. It is in any case desirable to understand the present position and actual strength of Aggressive Nonconformity, the alliances which it courts, and the objects at which it aims.

We may learn something of its competency to deal satisfactorily with a question of the first importance, which involves the most profound problem of political ethics-namely, the true place, the proper functions, the just relations, and the exact limits, of the spiritual and secular powers, with their almost innumerable lines of intersection and complication-from the spirit with which we find it entering upon so delicate a task. We may cast some light upon the probable consequences to the Church itself of disestablishment and disendowment, from the present condition of the principal voluntary denominations in England; and we may gauge the almost certain results to the country at large, from the avowed aims of Liberationists and the example of other lands. Two startling paradoxes, to which we can only advert, meet us at the outset. First, that those who would repudiaté all so-called national endowment for religion should have recently become converts to the necessity of a gigantic national endowment for education. Secondly, that in the day when ultramontanism invades every province of free thought and every function of the State, men with any pretension to statesmanship should advance the proposition, that the religion of a people should be looked upon with indifference by its rulers.

In sober truth the array of forces hostile to the Church is formidable enough. Romanist, Presbyterian, Nonconformist, Secularist, all are welcome allies in this campaign, and of late a further accession of strength has been gained from the adhesion of some Ritualistic leaders. The Radical press throughout the country-only too often, in the case of local newspapers, first in the field or in sole possession, and therefore largely supported by Conservatives and Churchmen; the periodical literature of the party, from the leaflets of the Liberation Society, through all the ranges of its magazines, Baptist, Independent, and miscellaneous, up to the pages of the Fortnightly,' 'Nineteenth Century,' and 'British Quarterly' Reviews, and down to those of the 'Sword and Trowel '; the London weekly organs of hostile denominations, such as the Nonconformist,' English Independent,' 'Freeman,' 'Baptist,' and Christian World,' as well as those of advanced democratic allies, like the English Labourers' Chronicle ';—all these, added to the living voice of a vast army of Dissenting ministers throughout the country, form a powerful Propaganda, whose movements are marshalled and directed by the Liberation Society and its various agents. Life is kept up by local conferences, by visits from travel

classes the State Church has of late years seemed to gain ground, but it is as an outwork of political conservatism, not as an organ of spiritual life.'-A Canadian view of the English State Church, pp. 1, 2.

66

Cathedrals are not, in any sense of the word, missionary colleges; there is no diligent preaching of the gospel from them; they do not instruct the youth in letters; they do not support the poor of their neighbourhood. Mismanaged as their revenues have been in the past, and gross as was the misapplication of their funds, they might, with an ordinary degree of Christian zeal, energy, and common rectitude, have still answered a useful and even noble purpose. Now, however, a heavy languor lies over nearly all cathedral cities, ecclesiasticism reigns in the place of religion, and the grossest immoralities find in that stagnant air a cause and an encouragement.'-The Cathedral Bodies and what they cost, pp. 1, 3.

There is probably no body of men in the world who, so far as outward evidence goes, care less for the furtherance of religion than the English Bishops.'-Plain Truths about the Bishops, p. 3.

It is notorious that many persons are living in adultery because of their inability to pay the fee demanded by the clergyman.'-The Poor Man's Church, p. 4.

The clergy identify themselves with simony. The Bishops make no objection to it. Men of unperverted truthfulness would choose to minister without taking such an oath, notwithstanding the status and emolument to which it leads.- The House of Merchandise, p. 5. 'The want of success in the highest degree, so painfully evident amongst the clergy, is traceable in a great degree to the low and secular relationship from the outside that thus exists between pastor and people.' -Ib. p. 7.

'Of course if any community chooses to found its claim for superiority to all others on the fact that the scum and the chaff, the non-worshipping, the profane, the debauched, the imprisoned, are her peculiar heritage and glory, and constitute her preponderating spiritual strength, she will find no rival for the honour among those decent and holy Churches of Christ which are called sects.'-Results of Disestablishment, pp. 3, 4.

To ravin like a wolf, and to plunder like a freebooter, has been the peculiar prerogative of the Church of England.'-Ib. pp. 5, 6.

'There is no sect so schismatical, so unbrotherly, so insultingly unfraternal, as the Episcopalians. Her canons remain to this very hour the very quintessence of bigotry: their spirit is, to put it plainly, infernal.'-1b. p. 7.

The English peasantry, when they have any definite convictions, are Methodists, and their chosen place of worship is the little

'Does the establishment conduce to religous instruction? No, flatly No; if religious instruction mean a teaching of the people the principles and practice of a pious worshipping of God, as their Maker, their Preserver, and as à Being to whom they are to be answerable for all their actions in this world: flatly No.' -William Cobbett on the Church Establishment, P. 3.

almost continued history of oppression and 'It is a Church whose history has been an of sympathy with oppression. It has been the most intolerant and persecuting Protestant Church in the world.It isn't Respectable, P. 2.

'While State Churches violate the rights of conscience and impose heavy pecuniary burdens and inflict other evils, they have failed to advance the cause of religion, and by their false representations of its character have led men to regard it with suspicion and disgust. Englishmen! how long will you allow common sense to be outraged, conscience to be violated, injustice to be done, your hard earned money to be misapplied and wasted, and Christianity to be caricatured, by the existence and working of a State Church? '-Ought there to be a State Church? p. 2.

'Do you wish for a reduction of taxation, the burden of which presses so heavily on the people? Then bear in mind that the State Church in England and Wales alone holds property worth several millions a-year! Now these ecclesiastical funds-even after paying the incomes of the present incumbents, as long as they live, and compensating the holders of ecclesiastical property (to which there would be no objection)-would pay off part of the National Debt, or enable the government largely to reduce the taxation of the country.'-A Question that concerns Everybody,

p. 2.

These elegant extracts, which we have purposely given at some length, but which might be very largely extended, will enable our readers to form their judgment of the temper and spirit of Liberationism. No need for us to characterize either the quotations themselves or the passages which we have printed in italics, every one of which asserts or suggests a calumny, whose bitterness is only equalled by its mendacity. These are not the hasty utterances of excited orators carried away by the enthusiasm of a public meeting; they are the deliberate expressions of a great association, issued with the avowed purpose of inducing the nation to strip the Church of a large part of the revenues she now enjoys, and gratui tously thrust by millions into the hands of men whose passions they are well calculated