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Bishop Hobart declared, 'If I had gone from America to Aberdeen, and seen nothing but Bishop Jolly, as I saw him for two days, I should hold myself greatly rewarded.' To be sure he made the most of his time, and 'interviewed' the old man in true American fashion of enthusiastic interrogation. Another introduction, which seems to join the old world and the new together, was that of the Rev. Walter Farquhar Hook, then an inimitable young man' in Bishop Jolly's eyes, while Mr. Hook received impressions he could never forget' of a union of the most extensive learning with the most unassuming modesty.' He had come north to preach at the consecration of Bishop Luscombe, whom the unestablished Scottish Church was able to send forth to preside over the scattered Anglican congregations on the Continent. One more description we must take from Mr. Robert Chambers, in 1826:-

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'In a plain two-story house, such as is common in Scotch towns, having a narrow wooden stair ascending to the upper floor, which was composed of two coom-ceiled apartments, a but and a ben-in one of these rooms the beautiful old man, for he was beautiful, sat in his neat old-fashioned black suit, buckled shoes, and wig as white as snow, surrounded entirely by shelves full of books, most of them of an antique and venerable cast. Irenæus or Polycarp could not have lived in a style more simple. The look of the venerable prelate was full of gentleness, as if he never had an enemy, or a difficulty, or anything else to contend with in his life. His voice was low and sweet, and his conversation most genial and kindly as towards the young and unimportant person whom he had admitted to his presence. The whole scene was an historical picture which the writer can never forget, nor remember without pleasure'—(p. 121.)

In his seventieth year Bishop Jolly was induced to publish A Friendly Address on Baptismal Regeneration, as a vindication of the doctrine of his Church from some attacks that had been made on the system. And two years later he put forth Observations on the Several Sunday Services and Principal Holy Days, the work by which he has been principally known, and which was in fact the substance of his weekly instructions for twenty years past. The copy for the press was made by his excellent friend and curate, the Rev. Charles Pressley, a man like-minded with himself, who was the very staff of his old age. In 1830 followed a book on The Christian Sacrifice in the Eucharist. Probably Bishop Jolly was the only author on record whose principal works were produced between his seventieth and eightieth years. There he sat, in his upper room, always ready to give some

word of wisdom or sympathy in time of need, and aiding with his prayers those who bore the stress of work.

Bishop Gleig in the meantime lived as ever a far more active life. He was always arrayed point-device in episcopal dress, and was noted for his powers of conversation and for the good stories he told. Many of those repeated by Dean Ramsay came from him. But he was throughout earnest in his work, until infirmity began to increase upon him, and attacks of deafness and giddiness began to disable him. It must have been rather an awkward scene when, at one of the Synods, Bishop Torry having roared into the ear of the Primus his view of the case, the old man ejaculated, all unconscious that he spoke aloud, 'Stark nonsense!' and when Bishop Sandford shouted into his trumpet the other side of the question, the comment was, 'Starker nonsense still!'

Deafness made him resign his parochial cure and beg for a coadjutor, designating a very suitable person; but the other Bishops had decided not to admit the principle of such nomination of coadjutors, who were almost sure to be continued in the diocese, thus preventing freedom of choice. This was a great mortification to the aged man, and the constant writing which his infirmities made necessary became an increasing burden. In 1837 he resigned the Primacy into the hands of Bishop Jolly, and soon after symptoms of softening of the brain began to appear.

His old age was carefully tended by his son and his stepdaughter, while not only silence but darkness closed in upon him, and he was entirely confined to two rooms, as one scarcely belonging to this world, though he for two years survived his contemporary and colleague.

Every one has heard of that peaceful passing away of Alexander Jolly, left to his slumbers in his lonely house on June 28, 1838, and found, with his hands crossed on his breast, and a napkin spread over his face, which he had for years kept under his pillow for the purpose. Yet there is something equally touching and consoling in Mr. Gleig's description of his father in the seclusion of his final decay :

'Often on going into his room I found him on his knees, and as he was very deaf I was obliged to touch him on the shoulder before he could be made aware that any one was near him. On such occasions the look which he turned on me was invariably that of one lifted above the things of earth. I shall never forget the expression : it was at once so holy, and yet so bright and cheerful.'

Finally, he slept away his life on March 9, 1840, as tranquilly as an infant.

We cannot read these two lives, alike in aim and in holiness, yet so utterly unlike in character and in detail, without thinking of the great saying, 'Wisdom is justified of all her children.' Both alike devoted themselves to their Church in the days of her peril and persecution, both lived to see her raised up and enabled to begin that great work which has increased so much since their death. There have been those who have viewed the Scottish Church as a mere feeble exotic planted by the State, and who would deny to her the claim to be the true offshoot of the one stem. Yet if growth, holiness, vigour, and wisdom be tokens of life, we cannot deny them to the Church which has numbered among her prelates a Leighton, a Jolly, a Gleig, and a Forbes, and which is the immediate parent of the mighty American Church, and of the young Church of Madagascar. Moreover, she has conquered and conciliated the goodwill of a nation once bitterly prejudiced and hostile. Little more than a century ago it was often unsafe to have a congregation of more than five. Even in the recollection of the elder ones of our own generation, marriage and burial services were necessarily said at home for fear of provoking insult; whereas now churches are multiplying, and ordinances used as openly as in England. Moreover, the Scottish Church has been taking up much of that work among the lost and degraded, which Calvinism has a tendency to forget and drop. Once, the Church might have been reproached with the absence of the poor, except in those Highland and western places, and in Aberdeen itself, where the continuity never was lost. In S. John's chapel, Edinburgh, the first effort at church-building after the penal laws were relaxed, there is absolutely no provision for the poor, nor even for servants; but now, in the chief cities, the Church is doing her Master's work among the poor, the outcast, and the sinner, and gathering in those unsought by other shepherds. Surely the two centuries of the Scottish Church present a history to be wondered at with thankful gladness.

It was on the eve of Queen Victoria's Coronation that Bishop Jolly died. Who would have predicted that, ere the close of the reign then commencing, sixteen Bishops, from England, Scotland, and the Colonies, should meet to dedicate a cathedral in Edinburgh itself, of beauty and splendour almost unrivalled in the island, and with services of elaborate magnificence? Though the means have been provided by two noble-hearted women, yet the gift has been accepted with exultation by the whole country; and in the city where a woman's ignorant prejudiced violence once gave the signal

for revolt against all ritual, a woman's munificence has prepared a fitting house for prayer, and even for full harmonious praise. What can we do but remember another Restoration, and say, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the LORD of Hosts'?

ART. VIII.-RENAN'S L'ÉGLISE CHRÉTIENNE.

L'Eglise Chrétienne. Par ERNEST RENAN. De l'Académie Française et de l'Académie des Inscriptions et BellesLettres. Paris. Calmann Lévy, Editeur: ancienne Maison Michel Lévy Frères. Nouvelle édition. (Paris, 1879.)

SIXTEEN editions of the Vie de Jésus in sixteen years have accustomed the public mind to M. Renan's utterances, and volume after volume of the Origines' of Christianity, as the series is called, appearing in due course, no longer startle us, yet do not fail to interest thoughtful readers. The Life of Jesus was soon followed by The Apostles, Saint Paul, The Antichrist and The Gospels. We have now The Christian Church; and we are promised the seventh and last volume 'to appear shortly,' Marcus Aurelius.

A philosophical view of the whole range of M. Renan's speculations on the 'phenomenon ' of Christianity can hardly be taken till the last volume is before us; and we almost doubt whether Marcus Aurelius can be the last, if the relations of Christianity and classic heathenism are to be fairly estimated. There is, thus far, a psychological distinctness, however, which separates M. Renan from all our other historical critics, and which is recognized at once. Starting, as he did, with a poetical intention of doing some justice to the character, position, and aims of our Blessed Lord, as the embodiment of an 'enthusiasm of humanity,' he soon found certain matter-of-fact human surroundings of the Christian idea, which had to be dealt with somewhat more exactly. The literature, too, which rapidly accompanied the Gospel of the 'prophet of Galilee' seemed to be unexplained by any dim exposition of enthusiasm of humanity;' and still less were the corporate institutes which sprang up, on so many sides, as the work of Christ's disciples, and the controversies

which pervaded them, to be at all accounted for thus.

His.

original theory is therefore gradually lost sight of by M. Renan, and criticism in his later volumes has, for the present, greatly taken the place of the philosophy put forth at first with so light and confident a tone.

We have now to do with the 'sixth volume,' the present literary instalment, entitled the Christian Church, which is. supposed to be presented to us in its historical position at the opening of the second century.

At the death of Trajan (117) began a new era for the Roman world. The empire, its religion and laws, had reached a crisis, at which reform and consolidation could not safely be delayed; and Hadrian took the task resolutely in hand, accomplishing on the whole a greater change than any other ruler between Augustus and Diocletian. He visited all the provinces and interested himself personally in all the necessary public works. The various nationalities which constituted his vast dominion were a kind of personal study for the Emperor. Their religions and customs were examined, and a noble toleration extended to all. But though a friend of Epictetus, Hadrian had no high standard of morals or religion. Nevertheless he made a liberal allowance for recognized local habits everywhere, as the practical standard of social manners. He inaugurated, certainly, a better politico-social system in Rome, from the palace to the forum, from the forum to the family, which in fact made the access of Christian ideas more possible than hitherto; while under him the codification of the whole Roman law went steadily forward.. Restored superstitions at the same time were able to regard the Emperor as a patron; and the Jews themselves for a while hailed him as friend-(though they were cruelly undeceived at last).

Hadrian had also a more than superficial acquaintance, through Aquila of Sinope (if we may trust the stories of the Talmud), with the faith and institutions of Christianity; and the Imperial fairness towards Christians is acknowledged in the Apologies,' and the popular animosity only is there the chief subject of complaint. No attempt apparently had been made by Christianity, from S. Paul to Quadratus of Athens, (and after him Aristides), to challenge the definite notice of the empire; and so the times of Hadrian would, by these apologetic appeals alone, seem to show a fresh starting-point for the Christian Church.

But the Christian literature here is scanty. M. Renan would fix the first appearance, at this time, of the Gospel of