only do professional men, the clergy, lawyers, and doctors of the different districts send their sons to the Queen's Colleges, the wealthier traders and shopkeepers following their example, but even small farmers and artisans have stinted themselves to procure for their sons, or in some instances even for themselves, the benefits of a collegiate education and the honour of an university degree. There have even been instances of working men laying aside their tools for a portion of each day to attend the necessary lectures, and, while still in the receipt of weekly wages, qualifying themselves for a place in the Honour list of graduates. In 1876 the Government sent down a Commission to visit the three Colleges, and to report on their working. One of the Commissioners was that earnest Churchman, Mr. Osborne Gordon, of Christ Church, one of the most accomplished scholars and most experienced tutors of Oxford, and now a member of the University Commission. Another was Dr. Allman, who, in the higher branches of science, has made himself an eminent name as a professor at Edinburgh. And not only did they present a report in which they described the instruction given in all the Colleges as 'most excellent and most successful,' but, in private conversation with Sir M. Hicks-Beach, then the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who quoted their panegyric in a speech which he addressed to the University in the autumn of the past year, they expressed to him, he might almost say, their astonishment at the results of their investigation, and at the progress which had been made in the education of the students far beyond anything that they could have conceived to be possible in such comparatively new institutions.' In proof of the veracity of these gentlemen, students of the Colleges, after completing their course, have gained scholarships in colleges at Oxford or Cambridge, and have subsequently obtained places in the list of wranglers, or in the first class of the classical tripos; while in Civil Service competitions, both at home and in India, they have been as successful as, if not more so than, the pupils of any other single institution in the three kingdoms. The Queen's University, which serves as the fountain of degrees for the Colleges, as is well known to all who interest themselves in Irish affairs, has been, still is, and no doubt still will be, fiercely opposed, both in and out of Parliament, by a section of the extreme Irish or Roman Catholic party among the Irish members. Although it is far from being unanimously disapproved of by the Roman Catholics, Cardinal Cullen and Archbishop McHale, as might be supposed, have little love for the institution; but the University is warmly countenanced by several of the most eminent men of science among the Roman Catholic laity; while Roman Catholic judges are found in the Senate, and on the Boards of Visitors. There is, we all know, much still to be done in and for Ireland as in all other questions, so in that of education; but, if the diffusion of culture and the softening of party and religious animosities are essential towards fostering civilisation and refinement, contentment and prosperity, we think that their supporters can well claim, even from those who can allege well-founded objections to a system of higher education based upon a secular basis, to make allowances for the sad peculiarities of Ireland, and to give not only a fair, but a friendly trial to the Queen's University and Colleges in connexion with the new scheme of intermediate education. In particular, the Church of Ireland has hitherto been afraid of stretching out its hand to pluck advantages which circumstances have brought within its reach, and it is accordingly with no small pleasure that we have heard that S. Columba's College, the flourishing centre in Ireland of Church-like publicschool education, is prepared with a stout heart and wellfounded expectations to brace itself up for the prizes promised in the Intermediate Education Act. ART. V.-CREEDS AND THEORIES OF 1. A History of the Creeds of Christendom, with Translations. 2. A History of the Christian Councils, from the Original Documents, to the close of the Council of Nicæa, A.D. 325. By the Right Reverend CHARLES JOSEPH HEFELE, Bishop of Rottenburg. Vol., I. Translated by W. R. CLARK, M.A. Vol. II., A.D. 326 to A.D. 429. Translated by HENRY NUTCOMBE OXENHAM, M.A. (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1871 to 1876.) 3. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. By JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D., of the Oratory. New Edition. (B. M. Pickering, 1878.) CREEDS may be viewed as the expression of the Church's mind, as Liturgies are the expression of her feelings of devotion. There is a stage, accordingly, in the history of Churches, when their activity takes a doctrinal direction, just as at another (and probably an earlier) period, it finds its satisfaction in the elaborating of stately liturgies and significant ritual. At such a stage, the intellectual consciousness of the time-what the Germans call the Zeitgeist-occupies itself with the facts and reasonings upon which the Church has itself been founded. It looks at them in the character of intellectual truths, abstract or concrete, and sets itself to collect and to define, to systematise and to complete them. Such a period will be a symbolising or creed-making age, and will show itself evidently as such, to attentive examination. The fact is one which has not escaped attention, and the theories which have from time to time been proposed, in order to provide a philosophical explanation of the phenomena which such periods present, would seem to be attracting to themselves at the present time a considerable degree of attention. A complete view of the case must of course include both the divine and the human factors which combine to produce the total result; but on the present occasion we propose to limit ourselves to one side only, and to examine, so far as our space permits, the human side alone of that historic process by which the symbolic doctrinal statements of the Church of Christ were successively shaped. And (by way of preface to the specific subject afforded us by Dr. Schaff's industrious work) we will first examine the logical nature of the process by which a creed is thus produced and set forth and finally adopted, and to which, in point of fact, the Ecumenical Creeds are, as a general rule, due. We shall avail ourselves, in so doing, of the materials which have been laboriously brought together and classified in the works named at the head of this page. This work of the investigation of doctrine with a view to its definite statement seems to us the special function of the devout intellect in the Church; and we may regard it as certain that the course of such a process is providentially guided and its issue shaped by God the Holy Spirit. For our present purpose the religious truths with which the collective intellect of the Church has thus to deal may be considered under two classes-facts and inferences. With the facts of sacred history, when once received as facts, the Christian intellect has but little actively to do. Certain of them were originally matters of revelation, but for later generations they all alike rest on testimony inspired and uninspired. The Christian thinker has but to hand them on as he has received them, without increase or diminution. They are a fixed quantity in almost all the Creeds, which embody them with little or no important variation, as may be seen to advantage in any of the tabular views given in Dr. Schaff's work. But the facts are not facts only; they are also the groundwork of what we have called the class of inference-truths, and with regard to these the case is different. A practical consensus of opinion exists as to the chief facts of Gospel history among the great majority of Christians; it is with regard to the inter-relations of the acknowledged facts, to the necessary inferences from them, to the practical methods for giving them effect in the world, that the divergence of minds finds its points of departure. It may be thought, and, indeed, it has often been said, that here is a great danger for the Church. Unquestionably experience has proved this to be the case; and it may be charitably supposed that something like this was what a famous putter-forth of daring paradoxes, Mr. J. A. Froude, meant by a dictum which even for him was irreverent, that while God gave the Gospel, the father of lies invented theology.' A cavil so flippant and so shallow cannot be too severely condemned, but it is possible that the writer had this notion at the bottom of his sneer. The lamentable consequences of this doctrinal divergence have, in fact, been experienced, and are visible in the state of division and estrangement in which the several sections of that once undivided body now exist. It may be thought, further, that the danger was one that might have been avoided, if a complete and detailed Creed embracing both facts and dogmas had been given to the Church by revelation or Apostolic authority. The germ of such a 'form of sound words,' which the Apostles themselves were accustomed to set forth, may indeed be discerned, as is well known, in more than one part of their writings; but it is a characteristic of most of these to be rather memoranda of facts than expressions of doctrinal truths. And it is clear, that to impose a detailed Creed from above, would have been to avoid one danger by introducing another. 'The certainty of mental and spiritual immobility is far worse than the danger of disagreement. Mohammedanism shows the fatal effects of a Creed stereotyped from the first and incapable of change: and we can hardly fail to find a warning in the spectacle of the blight of mental feebleness and stagnation which lies to this day upon every nation that has accepted the Korân as its unchangeable law. And, furthermore, the revelation of such a Creed would have been con trary to the entire analogy of the Divine dealings with the human race. We hold, therefore, that the sanctified intellect has rightly and legitimately the share of activity which history shows that it unquestionably has exercised, in the gradual evolution of the Divine Thought from the earliest and least differentiated forms; from the dimness of implicit reverence to the clearness and sharp definition of explicit belief. Thus Dr. Newman well says as to the general idea of the evolution of doctrine: 'Unless, then, some special ground of exception can be assigned, it is as evident that Christianity, as a doctrine and worship, will develop in the minds of recipients, as that it conforms in other respects, in its external propagation or its political framework, to the general methods by which the course of things is carried forward. 'Again, if Christianity be an universal religion, suited, not simply to one locality or period, but to all times and places, it cannot but vary in its relations and dealings towards the world around it—that is, it will develop. Principles require a very various application, according as persons and circumstances vary, and must be thrown into new shapes, according to the form of society which they are to influence. Hence all bodies of Christians, orthodox or not, develop the doctrines of Scripture. Few but will grant that Luther's view of justification had never been stated in words before his time; that his phraseology and his positions were novel, whether called for by circumstances or not. It is equally certain that the doctrine of justification defined at Trent was, in some sense, new also. The refutation and remedy of errors cannot precede their rise; and thus the fact of false developments or corruptions involves the correspondent manifestation of true ones. Moreover, all parties appeal to Scripture,that is, argue from Scripture; but argument implies deduction-that is, development.' It is, further, quite according to the analogy of the Divine dealings with men, as shewn in the history of the Jewish nation, that the formation of doctrine should be a gradual process, and that its development should be traceable. For it is unquestionable that the Messianic idea grew age after age among the prophets, not simply by accretion, but by orderly and organic development. This will become clear if we compare the germ of the Messianic portraiture, say, in Deut. xviii. 15, with its complete description and multiplied detail in the prophecies of Isaiah. Or again, we may take that which is in some respects an even more remarkable instance, we mean the belief among the Jews in the immortality of the soul. To derive this, as some critics do, ab extra, is a mere begging of the question; so that we are thrown back on the supposition of a development of primitive ideas by the |