and also cannot rely on her foreign policy as a safe- ART. VIII.-LIGHTFOOT's St. IGNATIUS AND THE ROMAN PRIMACY Insignificant amount of Apostolic remains: the advantage and loss--Value of Bishop Lightfoot's edition of St. Ignatius; the story of the various Codices-The genuine- ness of the Epistles-Their personal interest, and the picture of the Saint: no Saint of later times more specially devoted to the Sacred Humanity-His belief in the Real Presence-He is the great doctor of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy-Dr. Lightfoot's admissions as to the Episcopate-St. Ignatius on the Unity of the Church; Dr. Lightfoot admits that he assigns a primacy of rank to the Church of Rome-Recently discovered early testimony to primacy of Roman Pontiff-A reply to Dr. Lightfoot's distinction between the Bishop and the Church of Rome: "the later Roman theory traceable back at least as far as the middle of the second ART. IX. THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY The story of its beginnings-The absence of paid labour in it-The scheme of promulgating Catholic literature not of recent date: old Catholic Defence and other Societies Elements of success in the Truth Society: its NOTES OF TRAVEL AND EXPLORATION Persian Life and Manners-Commercial Resources of Persia-The far North-West-Kamschatkan Volcanoes -Scenery of Formosa-British North Borneo-General Prjevalsky on Central Asia-Russian Influence in China -Discontent with Chinese Rule-English Travellers in She-In the Clouds-A Son of Hagar-Jess-Spring- haven-Lazarus in London-The Story of an African NOTICES OF CATHOLIC CONTINENTAL PERIODICALS Revue des Questions Historiques-Katholik-Stimmen aus Professor Creighton's History of the Papacy-Provost Consitt's Life of St. Cuthbert; Father Stevenson's Translation of V. Bede's St. Cuthbert-Father Sebas- tian Bowden's Translation of Hettinger's Dante-Life of Mother H. Kerr-J. A. Symonds' Catholic Reaction -Formby's Monotheism of Rome-J. H. Wylie's Eng- land under Henry IV.-Life of A. Rosmini-The Tournay Quarto Missal-Card. Hergenrother's Church History-Father J. Jungmann's Esthetik-B. Jung- mann's Dissertations in Church History-French Translation of Janssen's Germany-Father Bridgett's Ritual of N.T.-The Religious Houses of United King- dom The Catholic Year-book--C. F. B. Allnutt's Church and Sects-De Bonald's Pensées-Hazell's Cy- clopædia 1887-Charvériat's Bohême au XVI. Siècle- Some non-Catholic Scriptural Commentaries-Dr. Poole's Acts of the Apostles-Percy's Revenge-The Coiner's Cave-Thekla-The Miser of King's Court-Annunziata -J. Pym Yeatman's County of Derby-The Cornhill Magazine, 1886-The English Illustrated Magazine, 1886-Rev. J. P. Prendergast's Lecture on Catholic Ireland-Rev. H. C. Duke's King, Prophet, and Priest -Rev. E. L. Hicks' Henry Bazely-The Final Science -The Maynooth Cathechism-P. de Witt's Invasion of Holland-Miss Stokes' Completion of Didron's Icono- graphy-Macleod's Banking-Littleton's Translation of Reusch's Nature and the Bible-Dr. Farrar's History of Interpretation-The Castle of Coëtquen-F. Harri- son's Choice of Books-Schürer's Jewish People-St. Paul and St. Mark's Gospel-Bishop Stubbs' Lectures— Doyle's Baronage of England-Hodgkin's Letters of Cassiodorus-Lenormant's Book of Genesis-Phillips' Our Administration of India-Two volumes of "Sacred Books of the East"-Future Probation: a Symposium -Ashton's Legendary History of the Cross-Cox's First THE DUBLIN REVIEW. JANUARY, 1887. I ART. I.-MR. JOHN MORLEY. Mr. John Morley's Writings. In Nine Volumes. A New Edition. London: Macmillan & Co. SUPPOSE we may take Mr. John Morley's new and uniform edition of his principal writings to be in some sort his farewell to literature as a profession. The occasion is suitable for considering him as a teacher. Mr. Morley is emphatically "a representative man a representative man "-one of the ablest types of a school of thought not, perhaps, numerically very considerable in England, but assuredly very considerable in other respects. The history of the world may be said, with some truth, to be the history of the triumphs of minorities who knew their own minds. Now, the party-or, to speak more accurately, the sect —of which Mr. Morley is a leader, unquestionably does know its own mind. As unquestionably in him they have an exponent of whom they may be justly proud. Even those whose religious convictions and whose political opinions are the furthest removed from his, must confess and admire the high gifts which, with no aid from family or fortune, have raised him to a seat in the Cabinet and a commanding position among party leaders. And no one who has intelligently studied his writings can for one moment confound him with the sort of men of whom party leaders are usually made. A very able journalist-the late Mr. Hannaywhen some one accused Sir Robert Peel of having no principles, replied: "Oh yes, he has principles-as a horse-dealer has horses." The saying was monstrously unjust as regards that eminent man. But who can deny that it is only too applicable to a large and ever-increasing number of prominent politicians? There is the gravest reason to fear that at no distant date the designation of public man will be as little honourable as that VOL. XVII. NO. I. [Third Series.] B of public woman. "Est-ce qu'il n'est pas tout naturel que vos convictions tournent avec votre intérêt? Elles ne changent pas pour ça: elles se déplacent: voilà tout." So observes the clever American lady in "Rabagas." But Mr. Morley's convictions are of another order. They are held with an intensity of belief and an earnestness of purpose which breathe in every page of his writings. They are the very springs of his intellectual life. Nothing more honourably distinguishes him in an age of political Pyrrhonism than the depth and sincerity of the faith that is in him. I propose to inquire what that faith is. And I shall answer the inquiry, as far as possible, in his own words. My task will be little more than to tabulate from his writings his own account of his beliefs and aims. The necessity for doing this arises from the fact that Mr. Morley, with the one exception of his work on "Compromise," has not systematically or consecutively expounded his views. In an article in his "Miscellanies" he observes how dexterous Robespierre used to be in presenting his case. "First, he said everything important at the exact moment, when he had brought the minds of his hearers into the state most fitted to receive it. Second, he insinuated gradually and indirectly into their minds ideas which would have aroused opposition if they had been expressed more directly." This is also Mr. Morley's favourite method. And he has pursued it with great skill and with abundance of success. "Com He is well aware, as he has told us in his book on promise," that "it is not easy to wind an Englishman up to the level of dogma." But that is his avowed end. And he has displayed quite remarkable astuteness in his choice of means. What, then, is the dogma which Mr. Morley has embraced, and which he desires to recommend to his countrymen? It is, in fact, the way of thinking about human life and its conditions which the French emphatically express by the words "The. Revolution." Mr. Morley observes, very truly: "The greatest problem that ever dawns upon any human intelligence that has the privilege of discerning it, is the problem of a philosophy and a body of doctrine: " because that problem really embraces all other problems. He knows well-no one better-that the supreme issue of the present day is not merely political or social, but religious. "It has been justly said," he writes, "that at the bottom of all the great discussions of modern society lie *Vol. i. p. 47. † P. 6. "Rousseau," vol. i. p. 86. the two momentous questions, whether there is a God, and whether the soul is immortal." * Now, the answer which Christianity gave to these questions was, until a century ago, generally received throughout Europe. Everywhere religion was publicly professed, and in it men found the main sanction of law, the great foundation both of the public and private order. "At the heart of the Revolution," as Mr. Morley tersely expresses it, "is a new way of understanding life." He accepts the formula, "Révolution, Révélation." In a passage worth presenting at some length he draws this out: Christianity is the name for a great variety of changes which took place, during the first centuries of our era, in men's ways of thinking and feeling about their spiritual relations to unseen powers, about their moral relations to one another, about the basis and type of social union. So the Revolution is now the accepted name for a set of changes which began faintly to take a definite practical shape. . . . towards the end of the eighteenth century. . . . . While one movement supplied the energy and the principles which extricated civilization from the ruins of the Roman Empire, the other supplies. . . . amid the distractions of the various representatives of an obsolete ordering, the only forces to be trusted, at once for multiplying the achievements of human intelligence stimulated by human sympathy, and for diffusing their beneficent results with an ampler hand and more far-scattering Faith in a divine power, devout obedience to its supposed will, hope of ecstatic, unspeakable reward-these were the springs of the old movement. Undivided love of our fellows, steadfast faith in human nature, steadfast search after justice, firm aspiration towards improvement, and generous contentment in the hope that others may reap whatever reward may be-these are the springs of the new. There is no given set of practical maxims agreed to by all members of the revolutionary schools for achieving the work of release from the pressure of an antiquated social condition, any more than there is one set of doctrines and one kind of discipline accepted by all Protestants. Voltaire was a revolutionist in one sense, Diderot in another, and Rousseau in a third; just as in the practical order, Lafayette, Danton, Robespierre, represented three different aspirations and as many methods.+ arm. The Revolution, he goes on to tell us, "emphatically belongs" to the "class of great religious and moral movements." It is, in fact, for Mr. Morley, a new and a better Gospel, and he delights in decorating it with the terms consecrated by the usage of the old. Thus, in one place he speaks of the Philosophes of the last century as "our spiritual Fathers that begat us." || Elsewhere he styles Hume, Rousseau, Diderot, "the fathers of "Rousseau," vol. i. p. 4. |