'De Persona Christi,' on account of its assertion of a Presence other than local, with degenerating into a mere logomachy. 1

And Dr. Schaff himself calls it 'neither clear nor consistent; and charges it with being 'only a series of concessions and counter concessions, and a mechanical juxtaposition of discordant sentences from both parties.' But this which he imputes to it as a fault, is in fact the exact method of the ancient symbolical documents, and the only way by which the distinct and (to human apprehension) opposing sides of a dogmatic truth may be preserved without danger of falling into heresy. We have many examples of it. Here, for instance, in the Athanasian Creed:

'The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God;

And yet They are not three Gods, but one God'

The formula is in many ways a remarkable document, and with strong Catholic affinities. The phraseology of Art. vi., 'quod Deus sit Homo, et Homo sit Deus,' is borrowed from S. Augustine, and S. Athanasius has a phrase very similar. In Art. vii. it allows and asserts that the Blessed Virgin is rightly called the Mother of God-and this, in the true Catholic sense, i.e. secundum humanitatem-according to the teaching of S. Cyril. The Hypostatic Union is set forth even eloquently in Art. viii. All these facts are perhaps sufficient to account for Dr. Schaff's disparagement of the document.

Whether, therefore, the development of doctrine be in this. particular real or only apparent, we have in it certainly a serious attempt made to carry a step farther the chain of strictly logical doctrinal deduction, in agreement and harmony with the analogy and proportion of the Faith. But with this exception, and perhaps of the tentative but most important endeavours at Bonn in 1874-5 later developments have been partial and sectarian-too often actuated by individual fussiness and idiosyncrasy-and what we must call illegitimate. And it is observable that even the ablest champion of post-Tridentine novelties does not generally venture to derive them by

1 'Quâ in controversiâ forte plus est logomachiæ atque pertinaciæ, quam realis discriminis, nam aliquo sensu concedere possumus, realem communicationem proprietatum naturæ divinæ naturæ Christi humanæ factam esse, quatenus, ut dictum est, in naturâ illâ humanâ realiter et personaliter inhabitat, et est divinitas cum omnibus suis proprietatibus, quemadmodum realiter ignis est in ferro ignito, sed quemadmodum ex illâ ignis cum ferro unione recte quidem dicere possumus, ferrum hoc urit, ferrum hoc candet, non tamen recte dicitur, ferreitas urit, ferreitas lucet, quia ignis in ferro, non ipsa tamen ferri natura, ita agit.'—Theses Theolog. de Unione Duar. in Christo Natur.

direct process from the principles held by the Primitive Church. Perhaps he felt that it was beyond even his power to do so. It is mostly by attempting an indirect reductio ad absurdum of all alternative conclusions, backed up by an often repeated appeal to the authority of the Church, a Deus ex machina, which never fails any controversialist in a fix, that he tries to leave his reader shut up to the conclusion he desires. It is because it is, he seems to say; and any other is, you see, is quite as hard to believe; and if you throw in the infallible opinion of the Church, this particular is must be far easier than any other. Such an attempt cannot be too vigorously resisted. The authority of the Church can do much; but it cannot effectually bolster up an invalid syllogism, nor supply the gaps in a demonstration.

That the formal expressions of Christian theology have been gradually evolved is matter of undoubted fact, plain upon the face of history, and altogether unquestionable. Theology has undergone a development; but a development from germinal ideas in necessary and logical order. Because it is necessary and because it is logical, it needs no infallible Pontiff to guide its decisions, much less to originate them, with his sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas. If this evolution is slow, it is also unerring; because it is subject to the Divine and Providential guidance which was promised to it at the first. A generation may snatch a premature decision, in accordance with the passions of the hour; a Pope may mistake his self-pleasing fancies for eternal truths, and abuse his high position in order to force them upon the peoples he rules; a great temporal sovereign may throw his sword into the ecclesiastical scale, and sway the decisions of synods and assemblies by his irresistible power. But the generation and its tyrant pass away together; the next restores the balance, and reversing, or more probably disregarding utterly, the inequitable decisions, asserts the forgotten truth, and carries a little farther, or at least hands on to its successor intact, the majestic system of Christian theology.

Thus the great outlines of God's truth grow continually clearer. The constant brooding upon it of generation after generation of devout thinkers developes by degrees the remoter consequences of familiar truths, and rounds doctrines inch by inch into a perfect whole. Yet they are not altered, because they are more completely appreciated. It is the same truth, 'yesterday, to-day, and for ever,' which is the heritage of the Church in the nineteenth century as it was in the first. But the later ages hold it more perfectly and

explicitly, as the earlier embraced it with greater faith and fervour, although implicitly and in the germ. There are many difficulties to faith in these later days. We have fallen upon the times which were presaged from the beginning, when 'because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.' But it may be that in the watchful providence of God, since the burden of decision has shifted so significantly from the heart to the intellect, the complete intellectual appreciation of revealed truth is given in place of the childlike and fervid faith which was the heritage of the first ages of Christianity. And if so, we can see how timely is the gift.

ART. VI.-THE EARLY CELTIC CHURCH. Celtic Scotland: a History of Ancient Alban. By WILLIAM F. SKENE, Author of The Four Ancient Books of Wales. Vol. II. Church and Culture. (Douglas: Edinburgh.)

THE extreme difficulty of extracting pure historic truth from the annals of the past is now well understood, and there are many of whom we have been wont to speak as our distinguished historians who might with more accuracy have been termed our eminent romancers; but it has been hardly so fully recognised that the theological prepossessions of the chroniclers have made this difficulty exceptionally great in respect to the history of the Church. This has been eminently the case with the early Church of the British Isles, whose history has become a sort of store-house, whence writers of every denomination have sought to draw evidence in support of their conflicting tenets, and their efforts have naturally been greatly facilitated by the mingling of legend and fable with a modicum of truth which characterises the ecclesiastical records of those distant days. The author of Celtic Scotland, well known as a learned and conscientious historian, has set himself to gauge the extent of the perversion of history which has thus arisen, and his object in the well executed volume before us has been to free the history of the early Celtic Church from the many fallacies which have distorted it, and to present her as she really was, independent of all theological bias or prejudice. Mr. Skene has brought to his work a

perfect acquaintance with the old Irish, Welsh, and Gaelic dialects, as well as with the French and Latin of those days, which has opened to him the writings of the earliest chroniclers, together with all that could be learned from the connection between ancient and modern nomenclature; while his accurate topographical knowledge has compelled rocks and stones to speak to him, and the existing features of many a landscape to reveal to him hitherto undiscovered traces of the past.

The volume we are considering, though a substantive work in itself, is the second of three books into which Mr. Skene has divided a general history of Celtic Scotland-the subject of the first, already published, having been History and Ethnology, and that of the third, hereafter to appear, Land and People. That now before us, on Church and Culture, is independent of the other volumes, but the information contained in them naturally casts light on many points of ecclesiastical history which must have remained obscure to historians with a less complete grasp of the subject as a whole. The most striking characteristic of the book is its absolute impartiality. There is not a trace of any partizan religious bias in the whole book. It simply gives in clear, unexaggerated language every detail which has approved itself as authentic, and then leaves the true fabric of the ancient Celtic Church to shape itself out, as it were, from the rugged mass of facts thus brought together, without any manipulation of the author's.

The picture thus presented to us of the earliest stronghold of Christianity in Northern Britain is not only singularly striking, but, bearing on every line the stamp of truth, it is also suggestive of possible solutions to many of the ecclesiastical problems of the present day. We shall endeavour to place before our readers a slight sketch of the general aspect of the primitive Church which seems to grow under our eyes in the pages of this book, though our limited space prevents our giving an adequate idea of the picturesque details with which the volume abounds, or the weird beauty of many of its scenes.

The first ray of light that pierces the gloom of the far-off ages comes to us in the white vision of the Candida Casa, a church of stone, built, with an adjoining monastery, by S. Ninian, in the year 397, for a district christianised by him, which extended along the north shore of the Solway Firth. Well did the name given to that church by the rude natives themselves-Candida Casa-and that by which S. Ninian designated the town on the west of Wigtown Bay, where he placed it Leukopibia— express the contrast of the pure

Christian light it represented with the darkness of the surrounding paganism. 'It is difficult for us now to realise to ourselves,' says Mr. Skene, what pagan life really was-its hopeless corruption, its utter disregard of the sanctity of domestic life, its injustice and selfishness, its violent and bloody character;' and there is no doubt that, prior to the introduction of Christianity, this passage describes the condition both of Scotland and Ireland.

In clearing the ground for the history of the Celtic Church by a brief summary of the forms of worship it was destined to supersede, the author entirely demolishes the popular theory of a so-called Druidical religion.

"The paganism,' he says, 'which characterised the Irish tribes and the nation of the Northern Picts exhibits precisely the same features; and all the really ancient notices we possess of it are in entire harmony with each other in describing it as a sort of fetichism, which peopled all the objects of nature with malignant beings, to whose agency its phenomena were attributed, while a class of persons termed Magi, or Druadh, exercised great influence among the people from a belief that they were able, through their aid, to practise a species of magic or witchcraft, which might either be used to benefit those who sought their assistance or to injure those to whom they were opposed. How unlike this is in every respect to the popular conception of what is called the Druidical religion will be at once apparent. The process by which this monstrous system has been evoked was simply to invest these same Druadh with all the attributes which Cæsar and the classical writers give to the Druids of Gaul, and to transfer to thèse northern regions all that they tell of Druidism in Gaul; to connect that with the stone monuments - those silent records of a remote age, and possibly of a different race, which have outlived all record of their time-and to assume that the stone circles and cromlechs, which are undoubtedly sepulchral monuments, represent temples and altars. Add to this some false etymologies of terms which are supposed to contain the name of Bel or Baal, and we have at once the popular conception of the Druidical religion, with its hierarchy of Archdruids, Druids, Vates, and Eubates, and all its paraphernalia of temples, altars, human sacrifices, and the worship of Baal.'

The personified powers of 'nature' thus worshipped by the great nation of the Northern Picts were looked upon by the Christian Church as demons. An ancient tract contained in the Leabhar na h-uidhri states that the demoniac power was great, and so great was it that they--that is, the demonsused to tempt the people in human bodies, and that they used to show them secret places, and places where they should be immortal, and it was in that way they were believed, and it is