great influence in keeping down eccentricities, or checking the manifestation of disgraceful vices, though flagrant exceptions may occur to this rule.

The same is the case with country gentlemen, who form in each county a society of their own, as magistrates, as members of Parliament, as landowners, and leaders in social life. Indeed the laws and rules of what is conventionally called society, are an influence of this kind. Men are kept in decent and respectable behaviour, by the mutual obligation which they owe one to another, as members of the same class, exposed to the observation and criticism of other classes. It may be said that the moral standard in these cases is not very high, nor the selfdiscipline required very severe; but to judge accurately of what is really effected by this means, we should inquire whether there are not very many who break loose from this restraint, such as it is, and forfeit the privileges which their natural position might have given them. If we examine the history of all the great families of this country, we shall find that there are very many which afford instances in point, which have their domestic troubles; histories of near relatives, brothers and sisters too, who have lost caste, who have rebelled against the code of their family connexions, and have sunk in the world, as a penalty of their indiscretion. We do not say that instances of this kind are universal, or overwhelming in number, for this would not prove the point we are trying to establish, which is, that the discipline of society is a real and operating one, actually controls men and keeps them in order: the exceptions to this rule simply point out the existence of such an agency, without calling in question its success.

If we descend to the professional classes, we shall find that the influence of membership with different societies is more direct and powerful still. Each profession, whether the Church, the Army, the Navy, the Bar, and the varied branches of legal and medical practice, is an independent society, with rules to which every member is subject, under pain of professional loss of character. It were needless to particularize the omnipresence of this rule in the classes we allude to; the whole life of a professional man is made up of membership with societies, from school or the university, to the law-court, the circuit, the bench, the college of physicians, or the parochial system of a diocese. Liberty of action is effectually checked, in all these positions of life, by the desire which each one has to be respected within his sphere or profession. If you want to see wildness, unrestrained passion, or eccentricity, in its full swing, see the conduct of a man who is alone in the world, who has exiled himself from his rightful position, or has become, for one reason or another, a

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practical misanthrope. Man is so constituted that the influence of his fellow-creatures, in some close and perceptible, not only ideal, bond of unity, is absolutely necessary in order to give him shape and place in the world around him.

The

There has been one great instance of combination for a special moral object which requires our notice while on the present subject-we mean the Temperance movement. With all its features we do not agree; but that is not our point. principle of combination, under the influence of mutual vows on a question of personal conduct, has received in this movement a popular endorsement. Objections at one time were raised against it, on the ground that these special promises seemed to disparage our common vows taken as baptized Christians. This line of argument is quite inapplicable to great public questions; we think that special societies are of the greatest use in dealing with great special evils, and form part of the machinery to carry out, rather than supplant, our primary Christian vows. Practical questions must be dealt with in a practical way, and the chance of a public good should never yield before an ideal alarm at setting up system within system, which may perchance clash with each other. It certainly is an honourable spectacle, when all the world is complaining of the great vice of drunkenness, to see a large society established to oppose this evil; to see its members vow personal obedience to their rules of abstinence, and also promise to extend the cause of temperance. That excesses occur in such a movement, that temperance is made by some the whole substance of religion, or that nonsense is talked about alcohol-which seems almost to imply that Satan is dissolved, and has assumed a fluid personality-that arbitrary and somewhat tyrannical attempts should be made to enforce on others the regulations of their society; all this is only a natural result of human zeal. The general movement has been beneficial; the public have abundant means of protecting themselves against the eccentricities of the enthusiastic; and the principle of special associations, with reference to improved moral life, has been established as a popular influence of the day.

We now come to the subject of existing societies that have a definite religious object. By the word 'society,' as we now use it, we do not mean only the common machinery of a committee, secretary, and subscribers, who distribute certain funds, and have no other bond of union; but we mean to imply a corporation-a number of individuals who assist each other and promote their common object not only by donations of money, but by personal sympathy and personal character. That is a hard and dry way of belonging to a society, by simply handing over a guinea and taking no more thought about it. Money is very useful, and we

do not deny even its necessity; but religious works will never thrive on this alone; they require the living spirit of man's united zeal and care. It is indeed remarkable, with regard to all our great societies, that their recent increase both in funds, in general importance, and actual work accomplished, has been immediately connected with a much greater sense, than formerly, of a personal and friendly link between their incorporated members. Whatever societies, in any age, have been the true honest growth of the heart, have exhibited this social aspect. If we look to the few last generations, and the noble institutions we inherit from them in the way of hospitals and asylums, we find also that the social element has been carefully preserved in a way very congenial with the temper of the age that gave them birth-we mean, by an annual dinner. If we look, also, for an illustration of the same spirit in a more recent development, we cannot have a better instance than the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. A few years ago, when the Society had a very limited income, it was only known as the recipient of annual guineas, portioned out to certain missionaries by a monthly board, who were indeed trusted as an abstract body, but of whose sessions and details no one troubled himself to inquire. present position, however, of the Society is very different from this. It is a great centre of all missionary zeal; its meetings of various kinds are the occasion of bringing together a vast number of sympathising hearts, which stir each other up to the great work before them. It is a corporation in the real sense of the word, and we may easily trace its progressive usefulness to the greater appreciation of this corporate personal idea of the Society. Its board and committee meetings are now largely attended, and are the scene of most animated discussions; its public meetings pass on this personal interest in the work of missions to the main body of subscribers; while the Society has this year adopted the Anglican characteristic of the social as well as deliberative board; it even effloresces into occasional soirées, with such an admixture of the social proprieties, as an impartial review of the great usefulness of the Church's sisterhood to the maintenance of the Society's funds makes imperative, on the one hand, and the Committee think consistent with the dignity and propriety of the Society, on the other.

The

But there is much to be learned, on the subject of religious association, from other facts and thoughts beside the self-congratulation in which we may be allowed to indulge in reflecting upon the recent progress of our Church societies. We will not say here that it is right to be taught by enemies, for we will not call any religious body, whose example may afford us instruction, by so harsh a name; but we have certainly to learn much

practical wisdom from sects and parties which do not agree with ourselves, or even endeavour to undermine the influence of our own Church.

No Church or religious body has made more use of Societies than the Church of Rome, though the last to yield any particle of central authority. Whatever may be said of the Roman Church, it certainly possesses energy and perseverance. Its general organizations and allowable adjuncts are of a practical and working kind. How were the lawless tyranny, the universal ignorance, the barbaric manners of Medieval Europe, conquered and subdued? By societies or monastic orders scattered over the country, to accomplish, by the force of combination and mutual sympathy, what a scattered parochial clergy would have no chance of doing in the midst of such constant disorder. Again, how was trade encouraged and our commercial system first planted; how was security first given to the industry of our forefathers? It was by the system of guilds, by forming each trade into a religious company. But pass on to another stage in the history of that Church, one of corruption and indulgence, of abuses and declension of all kinds. What is wanted at such times? An exciting spur, some foreign material to act as leaven, something to raise a commotion and heave up the mass into activity and briskness. It was this province which seems to have been undertaken by the Society of Jesus. This Society has ever preserved its independence, whether sanctioned or not by the powers of the day; and has been one of the wonders of the world on account of the determined unwearied nature of its exertions. We only think of it now as an instance of the power of religious association, and therefore may safely and without suspicion talk freely of what seem to be its practical characteristics. There is undoubtedly some very strong link in the Jesuit system, which binds men's souls together. They have (as Father De Ravignan says, on the Life and Institute of the Jesuits, translated by Seager) an end and a mean. The end is the glory of God and the salvation of souls; the mean is obedience. Is the natural heart of man so warm, so spiritual, so persevering, that we have but to propose these two ideas in order at once to fire up his best energies for generation after generation? The force and strength of the Jesuits do not rest on so general an appreciation of what is good and holy. There is a secret about what is so simply called the mean, and so characteristically interpreted obedience; and in that secret lays the moral power of the Jesuits. It is this which Richelieu discerned, when he called the Constitution of the Company of Jesus, the chef-d'œuvre of genius. Under the simple word obedience there is concealed the most vigorous, and, to our

moderate views even on the subject now before us, extravagant development of social influence. For what is all that long severe training, that stern subjection to rule? It is well described in several passages from the above-mentioned quarter. Speaking of the first entrance into the Company, we see in every word, that, under the idea of bringing the soul into direct communion with God, the enormous influence of man is in reality the engine most trusted.

'What strikes him from the time of his entrance, is the profound peace which reigns in the religious abode. The aspect of those silent walls, the collected gait of those who inhabit them, the sound of the steps which make a noise as in a desert, the order, the poverty, which is every where met with, the kind reception and the obliging manner of the good brother who introduces, the gentle gravity of the father who receives, a certain sweet and pure air which one breathes, a presence of God more intimate, as it seems, and more familiar,—everything in this abode, when for the first time one enters it as a stranger coming from far and beaten by the storms, everything there makes one feel an impression which one can hardly define, but which must be named the impression of God. An unknown principle, a beneficent spirit, solaces one's pains, repairs one's forces, and gives the foretaste of a new and happy life. In fine, one has around one nothing but open and pious hearts, serene brows; the conversation which rarely interrupts a long silence, is ever simple and fraternal, the mutual relations free, joyous, easy.'-On the Life and Institute of the Jesuits, p. 29.

The power of bringing one soul under the dominion of others is worked into an elaborate and exquisite science. There is an alternation of study, and again of profound retreat where all study is forbidden. Freedom and liberty are most temptingly held forth as the pride of the noviciate's condition, but prolonged internal meditations are at the same time required as the surest means of uprooting all former ideas of existence, and of bending an independent judgment. This is called 'being torn from the illusions of the world.' The following passage is, however, well worthy of being quoted on the subject:

:

It

'The work of the noviciate is glorious: the noviciate is that labour regenerative of the mind, which delivers as much as possible to the divine grace the entire possession of the faculties, forces, and habits of the soul. It is a sort of creation, a powerful transformation which must emancipate the religious liberty from the innumerable shackles with which it was embarrassed by the interests, views, affections, and passions of nature. is the forge in which the iron is softened in order to take again a new existence; it is the file which clears away the rougher parts, which takes away the rust, which prepares the instrument, and delivers it useful into the hands of the workman. At that time is impressed a direction which replaces in the man all the merely human directions, by the sole ambition of the divine glory and of the eternal salvation of all.'-Ibid. p. 32.

This whole method of effecting the mean of obedience is thus summed up; and who can read it without perceiving, in this harsh and violent excess of its use, a most admirable testimony