an air of probability upon the history and the prospects of the world, which he so methodically lays down for our instruction. What then, in few words, is the history, and what are the prospects, of our globe which he would have us believe in as something not only speculative but approaching to the definite and certain? With regard to the past, he invokes geology to prove that the earth already has passed through many eras of a gradually progressive nature, separated from each other by convulsions, but springing up each time more perfect than before. So far there is nothing fresh or new in his remarks, but we confess to have been rather startled by the announcement that during these geological eras the world was governed by that angel of God, who afterwards fell and became the serpent of Eden, or the devil. The great progress indeed which was made in the earth, and the unfolding glories of its inner nature as each period of change come over it, were the very cause of Satan's fall. Inflated by the dignity of his viceregal authority, he aimed at the independence of his kingdom, and therefore was cast out. On the fall of Satan, God, Mr. Faber at once most boldly concludes, created man to be his successor, and thus he accounts, on the common principles of jealousy, for the intense hatred of Satan against our own race; a feeling which he possesses a certain power to gratify during the present state of the world.

But now for the future. As changes have taken place in the world, the traces of which are perceptible, Mr. Faber concludes that the future change foretold in Scripture will only be of a similar kind. Forthwith, therefore, he rushes into an exact and methodical account of what will take place at the last day from the influence of fire; he defines with the greatest perspicuity what will be the order of events at the second advent. The well-known passage of S. Peter, descriptive of the new heavens and the new earth is made to substantiate whatever Mr. Faber's own imagination may depict to be the future residence of man. The whole earth he conceives will be burnt, or changed by the influence of fire into a sublimated state, after which by ordinary chemical laws certain dense particles will be precipitated into the form of a crust or shell. During this process the saints will 'meet the Lord in the air,' and then return with Him to occupy the exterior of this shell, as their future heaven. Was ever heathen dream more gross and material than the picture thus broadly asserted to be the ascertained hope of our new and spiritual life?

The most painful efforts, however, which Mr. Faber indulges in, while speculating on the future, are those which relate to Satan and his angels, including of course the lost of mankind.

Mr. Faber is sternly methodical in this part of his subject,

almost as though he were engaged in an epic poem. Satan, indeed, plays no small part in the whole theory which he enunciates; for, as being the prince of the powers of the air, all his history is inalienably linked with that of earth. We have already stated, the imagined connexion between Satan and the past ages of the world. We are not, then, if we adopt this theory, to suppose that when the serpent stealthily crept into the garden of Eden, he had hitherto been a stranger to the earth. He had long known it; he had long dwelt on it; his recollections penetrated far behind that dark era of chaos, which immediately preceded the Mosaic cosmogony, and brought to his fallen state the grievous memory of better and happier times. Hence his natural malignity against man, who was created to supplant him. Struggle after struggle followed, and too many have fallen in his snares, but yet man was destined at last to triumph. When the Redeemer of the world Himself became man, then was Satan's grand effort to regain once more his kingdom; and when the Cross at length was upraised from the earth for the death of that Holy Victim, who had come down from heaven and taken upon Him our nature, then it almost appeared that Satan's day was at hand, that his hour of triumph had arrived. In Mr. Faber's rather quaint language, he found himself, however, 'considerably mistaken;' his liberty forthwith received a check, his head was bruised; though still he possessed a power to wander over the earth, leading all those astray, from their allegiance to the true God, whom he could tempt with his snares.

Such then being the condition of Satan and his host in the present age of divine dispensations, we have next to contemplate his future actions, and also his eternal portion. During the Millennium, Mr. Faber supposes him to be literally bound in the Domdaniel caverns of the earth, from which at the end of that period he is once more released, to enjoy a brief but terrible despotism; till at last, the final catastrophe dissolves the whole earth, ends his power for all ages, and leaves him in the eternal punishment, which is allotted to him by divine justice. And where is the dungeon in which Satan, with his evil hosts, and with all lost mankind, are to be for ever confined? Here Mr. Faber gives us the complement of Burnet's wild speculations, and presents us with what might not unjustly be termed Telluris Theoria Diabolica.' Mr. Faber, while engaged on this most awful topic, seems to revel in the wildest horrors of a diseased imagination, with Miltonian zest; made all the more striking by the cool and technical method of his descriptions. After stating, as we have already said, that the fire of judgment will remodel the earth into a large hollow shell, through which there will never more be an opening between

the exterior and interior, he proceeds to make accurate calculations about the capability of this interior to form for ever the penal abode of the lost. Let the following passage suffice to illustrate this part of the subject:—

If, then, there should be even no enlargement of our Planet's diameter in the process of its renovation, when the Shell of the New Earth occupies the position of the Shell of the Old Earth; still, as now, that diameter would be eight thousand miles. Taking this measure as the basis of our calculation, let us suppose the Shell of the New Earth to be of the uniform thickness of a thousand miles. On such a supposition, we shall have an interior hollow Space of six thousand miles in diameter. Hence, if we ascribe a diameter of two thousand miles (which is a trifle less than the diameter of the Moon) to an Ignited Central Nucleus: we shall finally have a circular Space, of two thousand miles in every radiating direction, between the Central Nucleus and the Interior Face of the Shell.

'Thus ample will be the lurid Space even on the present conjectural reckoning. But the probability is, that our Renovated Planet will, in its diameter, be very considerably enlarged. We have, indeed, no reason to believe, that a single particle of new Matter, either has been, or will be, added to our Globe, since its original creation out of nothing: yet, if the specific gravity of the whole be diminished by an enlargement of the lurid Space between the Fiery Central Ruin of the Old World and the circumscribing Shell which will constitute the New Earth of the Blessed, this Shell itself being diminished proportionably either in thickness or in material solidity; a fearfully sufficient amplitude of room will be provided for the Infernal Prison of the Damned.

How the supposed Space, between the solid Centrical Nucleus and the inferior Side of the Circumscribing Shell which acts as an enormous arch, will be occupied, must, to a certain extent, be a matter of conjecture. It is, however, probable (and the probability may seem to be confirmed by SCRIPTURE), that this vast Space will be filled with liquid fire, forming a sort of circumambient Ocean to the Continent of the solid Centrical Ignited Nucleus. Such may be, what in SCRIPTURE is styled, more than once, the LAKE of Fire and Brimstone: a fiery DELUGE, as our great poet speaks, fed . with ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.'-Pp. 257-259.

With all the respect that is due to Mr. Faber's talents and personal character, can we describe him as otherwise than a melancholy enthusiast, when after having written such passages as the foregoing, he concludes the book in which they appear, with the following solemn words?—

As I approach the confines of another state of existence; as the blossoms of the grave have now long whitened my head; I sensibly feel my footsteps strengthened, my hopes elevated, and my consolations increased, by that definiteness which God has so graciously imparted in his HOLY WORD. On the verge of Eternity, I have the sensation of a sure footing: and I trust, that it makes me a better man, to have ascertained definitely the LOCALITIES of what, through Christ's Merits, may be my Future Progress, instead of plunging into Regions of Unknown Space with no antecedent clearness of conception.'-P. 423.

Let it not be supposed, from the tone in which we have criticised the work before us, that we condemn all speculation on the things which are unseen. Scripture plainly leads us on

to the subject, and by its prophetical announcements would seem to give its sanction to the reverent consideration of a future state. Nor, again, do we think that the investigations of physical science are to be without their influence in any judgments we may form. The laws of analogy also must have their force, and it is natural that we picture the scenes of a heavenly condition in some measure from the better parts of our present experience. It is an allowable, and indeed, a happy thought, that our future state is not to be one of entire change from all our present associations, but that the brighter elements of the present world, those, which in the beginning were pronounced very good, will survive the last fiery trial, and be our companions in eternity. To believe otherwise would deprive the present world of half its charms and all its glory, for it would drive us to the conclusion that all matter was in itself evil. God created the world with far too many signs of His greatness impressed upon it, for us to believe that the inherent powers of beauty and of increase, which all things contain, are to be wasted and destroyed: it is no mere common-place or unreal sentiment that the beauties of nature, nay, the flowers of the world, whether literal or figurative, are a foretaste and a type of heaven.

What, however, we do most seriously object to is, turning such speculations into little better than a burlesque of holy and unknown things. On subjects which are meant to be shrouded in mystery, or only approached in the dim religious light of a well-ordered and deeply poetic fancy, it is simply ridiculous to assume the dry technical language of exact description. We cannot therefore acquit the author of such random speculations as are contained in the book before us, from the charge of lamentable irreverence. Little, indeed, was it his purpose to write otherwise than with becoming dignity on the topics which he undertook; but in this fact we only see another instance of a very common failing in active-minded men, viz., that they are often wholly unconscious of their true vocation. The study of religious speculation belongs to the higher class of poetic minds, and is only tolerable when thus treated. It is needless to add that Mr. Faber, however estimable he was, whatever talents he possessed, was not thus qualified for the task. The result therefore will be deemed, we think, a painful failure in the estimation of thoughtful and considerate persons.

332

ART. III.-1. First Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners, appointed Nov. 10, A.D. 1852, to inquire into the State and Condition of the Cathedral and Collegiate Churches in England and Wales. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. 1854. With an Appendix.

2. Cathedral Reform. A Letter to the Members of his Diocese, from WALTER KERR, Bishop of Salisbury, &c. London: Rivingtons.

It must be confessed, that the Reformed Church of England has hitherto exhibited but an imperfect conception of the uses of religious corporations. Whether it be the marriage of the clergy, or the domestic turn of the national mind, or whatever other cause, that hinders the development among us of the collegiatenot to say cœnobitical-life, it is certain that our ideas of clerical efficiency have been almost exclusively connected with parochial and pastoral ministrations. Valuing our Reformation on its retention of capitular establishments, which the ultra-Protestant movement would have swept away as little better than monkery, we have been always at some loss to know what to do with them. Pious people often tremble for the spirituality of a favourite clergyman when honoured with a Cathedral preferment; and every one is on the watch to prevent dignities which are tolerated-perhaps justified-as parts of a system which must adapt itself to all grades of society, from encroaching too far on the more important avocations of the Christian priesthood. Nor is this altogether a modern jealousy. It is an inheritance perhaps from the days of the Reformation, when the corruptions of religious houses, regarded by eyes which longed-as Bishop Fisher told the House of Lords-for the goods more than the good of the Church, precipitated a catastrophe, little likely to leave the public mind in an impartial frame towards collegiate institutions. The traces of it are evident in the Canons of 1603, drawn up under Bancroft with the avowed object of sustaining Church principles. While enjoining a variety of directions for the due performance of parochial duties, these Canons are almost silent on the subject of Cathedral reform. An order for the use of copes' seems but poorly seconded by directions to celebrate Holy Communion upon principal feast days,' and so as for every member of the foundation to receive four times yearly at the least.' Beyond this, the most that seemed then expected from Cathedral Chapters, was that some of their number should assist the bishop in examining and

! Canon xxiv.