Saviour. Truly a forlorn hope, and yet all that we can express. For about two hundred years after the Conquest, for six average generations of English life, all opinion is hushed, not a finger is raised, there is one common prostration. Great activity prevailed in the "Church," total torpor in the kingdom of Christ, save where some undercurrent carried forward the waters of life without the music or sparkle of their daylight flow. This age is also characterized by that which, at first sight, would appear to be directly connected with our subject,-namely, the erection of costly edifices for the worship of God. These noble structures were raised by the offerings of piety for purposes of Christian service. Beautiful are the Romanesque buildings of the Norman epoch, beautiful the transition tracery of the Early English; gracefully diverging from the stiff patterns of Greece and Rome, and yet reminding of both,-plastic yet solid, poetical in detail, solemn in mass. In proportion as they are now adequately restored to us by the conscientious travail of the architect, it becomes apparent that they were never intended, and can never be applied, for the services of a simple Scriptural worship. The voice of the preacher, the ear of the listener, the eye of both, are all bereft of their offices. There is no congruity whatever between these dark, solemn temples, and the religion whose denomination they bear. Daily, for a thousand years, in some of their lofty naves has there reverberated the echoes of sentences in honour of the Redeemer, but, during the greater portion of the time in a sealed language, and during all the time in an obscure method. The stately ceremonial, the imposing procession, the swelling organ, and ringing voice, have been repeated until the very atmosphere is full of memories; but never, for ages, was the free, glorious Gospel proclaimed, so that all in the temple could hear "all the words of this life;" never, to the apprehension of the multitude, did the music of God's own message of forgiveness for Christ's sake reverberate through their "long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults." Doubtless, at all times there have been some faithful, persevering ones, who have penetrated the sevenfold envelopes of medieval ceremonial, and seized the kernel of truth within; but there is no instance recorded, of any powerful work for God originated through the medium of the dim revelations of doctrine enfolded in the Romish ritual. The chapels attached to the few Plantagenet mansions now left- -e. g., Haddon Hall—are so much smaller than the dining-room, that they could never have contained even the half of the denizens of the castle. They are evidently adapted only to the performance of the offices of the Church, and of individual devotions at a few shrines there set up. Very rarely in the dark ages do we read of pious clerks or missionary chaplains; very rarely do we find traces of godly faith in the deep bays of the drawing-room, or arbours of the pleasaunce. Some witnesses for the truth there were, who held with marvellous and marvelling faith to the creed of Romanism, and yet lived in humble confidence in Jesus as the only Saviour. They died and left no sign, nor had they any following. Popular writers have been much in the habit of darkening the sombre aspect presented by the faint spirituality of the Middle Ages. It is unjust to decry it altogether. The scarcity of Holy Scripture, the paucity of Gospel teaching, the absence of Gospel sympathies, the obscurity in which the doctrine of justification was involved;— these cannot be denied. But the eclipse was never total. Here and there a pilgrim may be discerned with his face Zionward, "striving to enter in." The men were better than their ritual; the pulpit, which in later times has, it is said, been corrected by liturgies, was then in advance of them. The sermons of mediæval preachers abound in large quotations from Scripture,—not always well applied, but always treated as absolute authority. They thus testify for preachers and hearers that the facts of Holy Writ were common knowledge. Undoubtedly, there is in these compositions more of superstition than of sense, more of allegory than plain speaking; but, amidst all their defects, there were sentences which enabled men to discern the blessed truths of the Gospel of salvation. The honour of God is not promoted by representing Romanism, either before the Reformation or since, as a condition of unmitigated religious perversion and ignorance. Gross darkness and extensive corruption prevailed, but yet there was to be found "faith on the earth." Wherever found and whenever, the latter asserts its own substantial identity. The truth-bearers are always in strict alliance with each other, though they neither know of nor desire the union. No Babel can ever confound that language. St. Bernard strikes the key-note for the whole choir when he sings: "O Jesus! Thy sweet memory Can fill the heart with ecstasy; Never was sung a sweeter word, Nor deeper aught the heart hath stirr'd, What hope, O Jesus, thou canst render We dare not conclude, that of the multitude of worshippers successively entering the portals of medieval churches, each giving a passionate glance at the crucifix, and kneeling before the altar of the patron saint, there were absolutely none who found their way to the Saviour. We do trace in the dim records unmistakable proofs that there were a few, at least, who regarded with faith "The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world;" we will not give up the hope that there are many jewels yet to be recovered from the dust of the * "Jesu dulcis." Song," p. 163. Translated in "Voice of Christian Life in crowded sepulchres, around the ancient fanes throughout our beloved country. “As evening's pale and solitary star But brightens while the darkness gathers round, Is fairest seen in darkness most profound.” The Roman Breviary displays a symbolical connexion between the appointed order of daily service and the facts of our Lord's life on earth. Each service is associated with one of those mysterious acts and sufferings which constitute the historical groundwork of our faith in the atonement. This arrangement, which must have appeared to some persons to be utterly without significance because purely artificial, yet has to others been a source of grateful sympathy and a means of spiritual refreshment. So thousands of minds have been excited to lofty thought or fervent devotion by the utterance of the grand invitatory services at Matins, the urgent ejaculatory prayers at Prime, the Scripture lessons and collect at Vespers, and the hymn at Compline. But biography shows that in the great majority of instances these services have been an unprofitable weariness, whilst to the mass of the people they have been mere dumb show. The Crusades, which for two hundred years occasioned so much excitement and action, and which have left so many traces of their influence in arts and arms, appear to have had no effect whatever on spiritual life. Beyond the fact that some of the few warrior pilgrims who returned, founded |