Causes of the Decline of Christian Life in Syria. 473 ship. For example, on the occasion of a death, Ephraem was wont to compose a piece appropriate to each special instance, and which, as the case might demand, lamented the premature decay of the flower of infancy and youth, the mysterious removal of the head of a household, or the descent into the tomb of ripe old age, each instance suggesting fitting Biblical topics and consolations. The great variety of this class of his writings shews us that every opportunity was embraced of turning the sorrows of the bereaved to the best account-his Syriac pieces on death, as far as published, amounting to eighty-five. Great public events were in a similar way suggestive of materials for public worship. Several homilies exist, written in the times of pestilence, from which Syria suffered so much. And this freedom to adopt new modes of teaching was not confined to occasional services, it evidently pervaded the ordinary performance of divine worship. Putting all these signs and motives of vigorous life together, we are at no loss for a reason why, in the fourth century, the Church at Edessa flourished. But, as time rolled on, system and mechanical routine gradually took the place of spontaneous movement; age by age custom became stronger in its influence, and at length assumed the office of a supreme arbiter in the Church. Some centuries after Ephraem his successors were satisfied with his thoughts, and ceased to put forth their own. Imperceptibly, yet surely, like the gathering frosts of winter, conventionalisms and Church laws bound all free aspirations in their icy chains, until the Syrian Churches became what they now are. The times changed, but men did not change their modes of action with them. The language of Ephraem ceased to be a living one, and yet continued. to be the vehicle of the hymns and liturgies of the Church. No active spirit appeared, to accommodate the utterances of Divine truth to new and different circumstances; and even if genius had conceived the design, it was immediately repressed by the doctrine that what was new could not be sanctioned because it was irregular. When we read the works written by modern travellers who have visited these Churches, we learn that they now pride themselves on their orthodoxy and zeal for ecclesiastical forms and traditions, or maintain the direct succession of their ministers from the apostles. A sorry substitute for the want of apostolic life and doctrine! It seems that no restoration of earnest Christianity can be expected among these ancient Syriac Churches, until the barrier of conventionalism is thrown down, and their religious teachers labour among them as Ephraem did at Edessa, adapting their teachings and operations to existing wants and circumstances. Various efforts have been made by the Episcopal Churches of VOL. XIX. NO. XXXVIII. 2 н the West to vivify their brethren in the East, but it is plain that too much attention has been given to their antiquities, and too little to their practical religious wants. If it is true that a superstitious attachment to that which is old, has led to the low state of these communities, it must be desirable to correct rather than cherish that feeling, and to move stagnant thought by opening up new channels. In this way the American missionaries among the Nestorians in Persia, referred to by Mr. Badger, have acted, and apparently with signal success. The Bible is translated into their modern tongue; modern religious books are distributed; schools established, and the gospel preached in the living language of the people. Mr. Badger's work, we may add, is deeply interesting throughout; but he is, in our opinion, much too hard on the American missionaries, and disposed too little to value their labours, because they are not Episcopalians. We presume the lively volume of Mr. Curzon has been seen by most of our readers. It contains valuable information concerning the Eastern forms of Christianity, and humorously, yet affectingly, describes the living death of the Syrian and other monasteries in these regions. We conclude with an expression of hope, that the field to which we have introduced our readers, may soon be occupied by diligent labourers. Dr. Burgess, in particular, has devoted himself, apparently amid many difficulties, to a department of literature in which he has few companions. He is an enthusiastic Syriac scholar. His book is a real contribution to our knowledge of the Christian life and literature of the East in the fourth century; presented too in a manner well fitted even for popular reading. In these hymns and metrical homilies of the Edessan teacher-many of them fit utterances of the tenderest and liveliest emotions of a Christian,—we see vividly how Christianity, after its three centuries of tremendous struggle, had conquered its way to the world's heart, and became the moving principle of their life to thousands in the regions of Syria. We are grieved to think, with Dr. Burgess, that there are some good people among us who look with suspicion, at least, on literary labours like his,-fitted as these labours are to remove exclusiveness by an incursion among past and distant forms of religious thought and worship. Surely those who tremble at the resuscitation of an Ephraem or a Chrysostom, cannot be easy among the more daring foes of these irreverent days. In truth, every historic light struck out between the time we live in and the time of the humiliation of the Son of God, throws some part of its radiance on the great objects presented in the New Testa ment, and may help us to grasp these more firmly as historic facts. The Grenville Papers. 475 ART. VII.-1. The Grenville Papers, being the Correspondence of Richard Grenville Earl Temple, K.G., and the Right Honourable George Grenville, their Friends and Contemporaries, now first published from the Original MSS. formerly preserved at Stowe. Edited, with Notes, by WILLIAM JAMES SMITH, Esq., formerly Librarian at Stowe. 5 vols. 8vo, pp. 2325. London, 1852. 2. History of England from the Peace of Utrecht. By LORD MAHON. Vol. v. chap. x. Who was Junius? London, 1851. 3. Quarterly Review, December 1851. Junius. THE valuable manuscripts so long known under the name of the Grenville Papers, and so anxiously looked for by the politician as well as the historian, have at length been published. They relate to a period of great interest in the history of England, that exciting and instructive period in which Junius wrote and America rebelled; but though they throw much light on many vexed questions which then agitated the public mind, they have left Junius in the same shroud of mystery with which he had been previously enveloped. The correspondence contained in these volumes extends over a period of more than thirty years, commencing in 1742 and terminating in 1777. It consists chiefly of letters to and from Richard Grenville Earl Temple and his younger brother the Right Honourable George Grenville, the two eldest surviving sons of Richard Grenville, Esq. of Wotton, by Hester Temple, sister and co-heir of Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham of Stowe, to whose peerage she succeeded in September 1749. She was created Countess Temple a few weeks afterwards, and died in October 1752, being succeeded in the title and in the estates of Stowe and Wotton by her eldest son, Richard Grenville. Besides these two distinguished individuals Richard Grenville had three sons, James, Henry, and Thomas Grenville, and one sister, Hester Grenville, who was married in 1754 to William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, and was the mother of the late William Pitt. The three younger brothers had all sat in Parliament. James and Henry, who held high offices in the State, died, the one in 1783 and the other in 1784, and Thomas, Lord Mahon, while composing the 5th and 6th volumes of The History of England from the Peace of Utrecht, published in 1851, was allowed, by Mr. John Murray, to whom they belong, to peruse and make use of these papers. who was a captain in the navy, was killed in the action off Cape Finisterre, in May 1747, while in command of his Majesty's ship Defiance. Earl Temple, the most distinguished of this family of politicians, and, as a claimant to the honour of Junius, now more than ever an object of public interest, was born September 26, 1711. He was educated at Eton, and after travelling for upwards of five years in France, Switzerland, and Italy, he returned to England at the time of the general election of 1734, when he was chosen representative of the burgh of Buckingham. In subsequent Parliaments, previous to his succession to his mother's title in 1752, he sat for the county of Buckingham. In 1736 he married Miss Anne Chambers, one of the daughters and co-heirs of Thomas Chambers, by whom he obtained a considerable accession of fortune. In 1755, when his brother-in-law, William Pitt, was dismissed from his office of Paymaster of the Forces, Earl Temple had an opportunity of shewing the generosity of his nature, by pressing upon him, through his sister Lady Hester Pitt, the acceptance of a gift of £1000. The letter in which this offer was made, and those of Lady Hester and Mr. Pitt which followed it, are written with much taste and feeling. This little incident, as Lord Mahon has stated, is the origin of the charge frequently made against the memory of Pitt, that "when expelled from office he consented to accept a pension of £1000 a-year from the Crown." When Mr. Pitt became Secretary, in November 1756, Lord Temple was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, and in the following year he became Lord Privy Seal. At the close of 1758 he was made Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, and in 1760 a Knight of the Garter. During the greater part of Mr. Pitt's administration Lord Temple took an active part, and in the conduct of the war, by which Mr. Pitt was so much distinguished, he received from him the most powerful aid throughout the long and frequent illnesses with which he was afflicted. When Mr. Pitt quitted office in 1761, on the question of war with Spain, Lord Temple resigned his office of Lord Privy Seal. His brother, George Grenville, however, adhering to the policy of Lord Bute, remained in his office of Treasurer of the Navy, and thus occasioned that unfortunate estrangement with Lord Temple and Mr. Pitt, with the last of whom it continued for many years. Lord Temple now became an active and energetic opponent of the administration of Lord Bute; and in consequence of his having encouraged and patronized the celebrated dema * Lord Mahon's History of England, vol. iv. p. 85. gogue John Wilkes, by appointing him Lieutenant-Colonel of the Buckinghamshire Militia, he was dismissed from the Lord Lieutenancy of Buckinghamshire, in May 1763. When his brother George became First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1763, he continued in opposition till 1765, when a reconciliation took place. The reconciliation was effected through the Honourable Augustus Hervey, in May 1765, and the two brothers ever afterwards continued upon the most affectionate terms. Although Lord Temple was several times invited by the King to give his aid in forming a ministry, yet he never again accepted office. In 1766, when Mr. Pitt was summoned by the royal mandate from "farming, grazing, haymaking, and all the Lethe of Somersetshire," to form an administration according to his own pleasure, he summoned Lord Temple from Stowe, and offered him the headship of the Treasury. In his interview with the King on one day and with Mr. Pitt on the next, his manner was far from conciliatory. He suggested to the King" the exclusion of the present men," and he demanded from his brother-in-law an equal share of patronage and power. Pitt, however, resolved to exercise the supreme power, and Temple retired to Stowe, "indignant, as he himself wrote, at the idea of being stuck into the ministry as a great cypher, at the head of the Treasury, surrounded with other cyphers, all named by Mr. Pitt." The ministry was formed "without the Grenvilles," and Pitt, now Earl of Chatham by his own request, was bitterly estranged from his distinguished relative, to whom he had been so deeply indebted when ill health prevented him from discharging the duties of his office. When Lord Chatham, on the ground of ill health, resigned, in 1768, a reconciliation took place between him and Lord Temple, and with the exception of the taxation of America, in which he supported the views of George Grenville, they acted togetheron all political questions while in opposition. During the lat ter years of his life Lord Temple retired from politics, and devoted himself to the embellishment of Stowe, where the remains of his taste for architecture and landscape gardening are still to be seen. Lady Temple died in 1777, and from that time he associated chiefly with his nephews and nieces, and more particularly George Grenville, junior, who succeeded to his title and estate, and who had recently married the daughter and heiress of Earl Nugent of Gosfield Hall. While driving in the park ridings at Stowe, he was thrown from his Lord Mahon's History of England, vol. v. p. 238. |