ence of culture, and, more especially, by the gift of prudence, or they will greatly fail to attain the end which they contemplate, the spread of Christ's kingdom among the nations. They will otherwise degenerate into a well-intentioned but headlong and fierce iconoclasm, whose chief object is rather the wholesale destruction of idolatry than the replacement of that abhorrent system by a purer and truer faith. Now, as regards the element of culture, Anschar possessed in it one of the indispensable requisites for the successful prosecution of his missionary work. The early Benedictine training, broader and more liberal than in religious houses of the other monkish orders, and the association from early boyhood, partly with the sons of nobles, partly with the world that lay beyond the monastic gates, had unquestionably a large share in preparing Anschar, during his afterlife, on the one hand to deal wisely with kings and princes, and on the other hand to accommodate himself to the modes of thought then prevalent among the masses of his fellowmen. Scarcely anything, indeed, is so striking in the history of Anschar, as the way in which he seems to have moulded the inclinations of earthly rulers at his will, exercising over them an influence which resulted in their support of the gospel, and, without the sacrifice of any important Christian principle, by a sagacious adaptation of his own views upon indifferent matters to their judgment and decision, securing their approval of his great Christian schemes at last. The reverse of what is styled a courtier, he was still at home in royal palaces. From the imperial halls of the successor of Charlemagne, where was garnered up whatever social refinement the age possessed, he is seen passing to the rude barbaric splendour of the distant North, to the semi-savage courts of Denmark and Sweden, and to the wild companionship of the Scandinavian Vikings, future founders of new empires, the grandest that the world has known. And alike in court and camp, at the council-board of sovereigns, or on the open heath, proclaiming God's mercy to the heathen, he appears unmoved and calm, with a single object in view, the gaining over kings and peoples to the cause of the Redeemer. Nor should it be forgotten that the prudence of Anschar was equally conspicuous in the discharge of his missionary duties, properly so called,-in the mode he adopted of declaring the doctrines of the Cross, and dealing with the pagan multitudes among whom he laboured. The eversuggestive δεισιδαιμονεστέρους ὑμᾶς θεωρῶ of St Paul, those words in which, addressing his Athenian audience, the great apostle commenced a missionary sermon, than which no finer is recorded in the Scriptures,--was the text on which His Missionary Preaching. 467 Anschar may be considered to have preached all his evangelistic sermons, and the foundation on which he based the whole of his evangelistic work. Glowing with righteous hatred of idolatry, more especially the foul and bloody idolatry of northern Europe, he yet tenderly compassionated the souls of its victims, and strove in the gentlest but most earnest fashion to wean them from their fatal creed. Instead of inaugurating an iconoclastic crusade against the shrines of Thor and Odin, and hurling fiery anathemas at their misguided votaries, he strove in the first place to conciliate, and not to irritate; to recommend himself and his mission to the good will of a people who, in the sense in which the term was applicable to the ancient Athenians, might be denominated dodαoveσregor, or "too religious;" to δεισιδαιμονεστεροι, awaken the better impulses that lay dormant in their natures, and, without giving unnecessary offence at the outset, gradually to open up before them the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, and thus in the end surely, if slowly, to bring their souls to Christ. It is true that we have comparatively little direct evidence to shew that this was the usual style of Anschar's preaching, for the "Diarium" of the great missionary is unluckily lost, which would in all likelihood have elucidated the mode of address which he adopted when speaking for the first time to a heathen audience. But the indirect evidence is very strong,-so strong as to be quite convincing. That evidence is found in the whole character of the man, in the hints thrown out by Rimbert, and in the procedure of Vicelin, the second apostle of North Albingia, who, according to the church-historian Helmold, was Anschar's profound admirer, and who closely imitated his illustrious predecessor's example, both as regarded doctrine and practice. Vicelin gave especial prominence in his sermons to the simple fundamental verities of the Christian creed, chiefly expounding the divinity of Jesus, the pardon of sin through His atoning blood, and the resurrection to a final judgment. We may therefore with certainty infer that such, as a general rule, was the nature of Anschar's teaching among the German and Scandinavian pagans. Its propriety is sufficiently proved by the success which attended it; for in the course of a few years, large numbers of persons were brought, not in name only, but in reality, out of Satan's bondage into the liberty of Christ. Anschar has been often compared to Boniface, the celebrated missionary of the Germans; and there are doubtless many points of resemblance between them. Both possessed a fervent piety, an unconquerable faith, and a burning zeal for the diffusion of the Christian religion. Yet the charac ter of Anschar was, in some respects, the nobler and more beautiful of the two. Boniface was far less richly dowered with the gift of that impassioned imaginative faculty which lent its soaring wing to the soul of the northern apostle; the understanding, on the other hand, was in Boniface predominant, and, almost as a necessary consequence, he had in larger measure the earthly ambition which is incompatible with a complete and undivided desire after the glory of God in the conversion of the souls of sinners. Of ambition, indeed, Anschar was not destitute; but it was ever kept in due check by the pure and lofty aspirations that were the product of an opulent fantasy, intensified and purified through the inly-working spirit of the Redeemer. The defect to which we refer led Boniface not seldom into lines of conduct where human policy seemed exclusively to guide him, instead of the simple wisdom of holy writ. Anschar, again,-politic although he was by nature and by training,never sacrificed a jot of principle at the shrine of earthly expediency, and always exalted God's law as the supreme standard of his actions. Boniface, besides, a devoted papal partisan, preached and laboured in the interests of the Romish pontiff; he sought to save souls, but he also sought to extend the dominion of the Papacy. Anschar, although, like his contemporaries, obedient to the church's outward head, shared in the freer notions of papal prerogative which were current at the court of Charlemagne; and, unlike Boniface, administered, in many instances, the affairs of his diocese in perfectly independent fashion, and without consulting the Pope at all. In these various respects, then, we think that the result of a comparison between the two will clearly prove Anschar's superiority. On the whole, it may be affirmed, in conclusion, that the northern apostle-to employ again our introductory words -was one of the greatest missionaries of medieval times. He was great in character, great in labours, great in ultimate success. Si monumentum quæris circumspice. The fruit of his heroic efforts is seen, at the present moment, in Germany and Scandinavia. That Christian seed which he planted ten centuries ago in the north of Europe, has sprung up, in the providence of God, into a vigorous and stately tree. Long blasted by the blight of Popery, but clothed with fresh foliage at the epoch of the glorious Reformation, it now lives and flourishes, and gives promise of yet better life during the years that are to come. For, although North German Christianity is still marred by the rationalistic element, Danish Christianity by traditionalism, and Swedish Christianity by spiritual deadness, the blessed Plymouthism and Dr Whately. 469 breath of religious revival is blowing through the churches of northern Europe, and rare piety and zeal distinguish many of their pastors and a large proportion of their people. Let the universal church of Christ embalm in grateful memory the name of him who there first proclaimed the gospel-one worthy to take high rank among the heromissionaries of all ages and all lands. And let it also ever remember the lesson which, along with others, the life of Anschar is so well fitted to teach-the lesson, namely, that in the gloomiest period God never leaves himself without a witness, and that there was spiritual light and fruit in those maligned old centuries, utterly black and barren as they may seem to some who have but too little knowledge of the church's annals, but too little Christian liberality, and, we will add, but too little belief in the perennial work of God's Holy Spirit-during all times, even the darkestin the hearts of the children of men. J. J. ART. II.-Plymouthism and Dr Whately.* The Abolition of the Law: an Essay. By RICHARD WHATELY, D.D., bishop of Dublin. Dublin: Hodges, Smith & Co. Arch A Scriptural Inquiry into the True Nature of the Sabbath, the Law, and the Christian Ministry. London: G. Morrish. Law. IT London: W. H. Broom. is usually in intensely religious times, when the human mind is deeply stirred by the most important of spiritual problems, that theological errors of a particular type appear in the Christian world. The history of such opinions shews that they recur with a curious periodicity, at comparatively long intervals; and after a strangely disturbing course, rolling, like hidden and dissolving fires, under the orthodoxy of great communions, they pass away, usually leaving their track to be traced in the ashes of spiritual death. It is usual with the smooth doctors of this class of error, who are not without that "enormous, sacred self-confidence," which Carlyle represents as not the least of George Fox's attainments, to profess a very deep concern for a more perfect *The following paper, from the pen of an esteemed minister of the Irish Presbyterian Church, in so far as it relates to the Antinomian heresy, possesses a general and permanent value; and in regard to the statement of facts given at the close of the article, we entertain no doubt as to its substantial correctness as applied to the locality of the writer, as it accords with our own experience in other localities, both at home and abroad.-ED. B. and F. E. R. realisation of the Christian life; and, accordingly, much of their speculation goes by the name of higher truth, and presumes to reveal a fuller gospel, and a straighter road to peace. They generally affect an extreme Biblical exactness, and a concurrent dislike for theological systems; they revive old crotchets as new truths, and clothe familiar doctrines with a mystical haze, and describe their system-if such it may be called-as the latest result of a thoroughly spiritual insight into Scripture. They have a bold and familiar way of dealing with divine things; they are at war with all commentators; they despise antiquity and usage, and regard the Luthers, and Calvins, and Edwardses, as mere babes in Christ; they have large ideas of Christian liberty, low ideas of sin, disparaging views of law. Their idea of a church is a society of men who give such positive evidence of conversion as satisfies all the rest, and they almost consider it a greater sin to doubt their own salvation, than to break any one of the ten commandments. They traduce all religious feelings and affections, and are at war with devotion and godly men. They have little of that warm exuberance which other Christians feel under the beams of positive Christian truth, it is dominated in them by a colder and prouder element; and the spirit of their whole system is so different from that of ordinary believers, as to necessitate, for its proper development, a new language, new hymns, new prayers, and we had almost said-a new Bible. It is hardly necessary to say, that we refer to that Antinomianism which has been the pest of revived Christianity ever since the days of the apostles. Its first appearance challenged the attention of the New Testament writers. was the monster, as Melancthon remarked, that lurked and lay hid in the church of his times. "May God in His mercy save us," said Luther, "from a church where there are none but saints." The reformer was one day at dinner, when a letter was handed to him, affirming that the law should not be preached in the churches, because we are not justified by it. He was deeply moved, and said, with a touch of anger, "Such seducers are come already among our people while we live; what will be done after we are gone?" It was a townsman of Luther's, John Agricola, a timid, vain, vacillating man, whose name has been chiefly identified with Antinomianism in the sixteenth century. He published theses denying that any part of the Old Testament was intended as a rule of life to Christ's disciples, and maintaining, in opposition to Luther in his Commentary on Galatians, that the law was not to be preached for the purpose of bringing sinners to repentance. These theses were |