vassalage in which christian men allow themselves to be held to character. This holds them in unconscious bondage to the world. Conventionality controuls them, rather than Christian principle. Under its influence, they continually sacrifice duty to a reputed respectability. It is not what they ought to do, but what will be thought of them, that is their governing consideration. Character is a high thing, doubtless; but, morally, to be above character is a higher. And it may be set down as certain that, unless a man is prepared to sacrifice his own reputation for prudence and right feeling, to abandon all worldly expectances, and to be forsaken, if it must be so, by every friend he has on earth, he has not that spirit in him which Christ so frequently insisted on as essential to His disciples. No one can assert that this spirit is common. It is quite possible for a man to have such respect for his own character as, in reality, to make a god of it, and to worship it, to the exclusion, practically, of the one true God of all worship. Every one, then, should take it as an axiom in Christian morals, that, unless he can subordinate even character to duty, he is no Christian.

Conventional morality, which is, generally speaking, only the world's finger-mark upon the pure page of Truth, is continually overlaying and obscuring the distinctions between the purely right and the expedient. Hence it comes to pass that the expedient gradually and imperceptibly supersedes the right in men's apprehensions, and rules, without their knowing it, their every action. It matters not, the world cares not one straw, what outward type of Christian profession men may take, whether the evangelical or any other, so long as their general course of conduct conforms with what is conventional. Conventional Christianity, we need hardly state, is that standard of Christianity which the world in any age has tacitly agreed to tolerate. It may be, and often is, totally different in one age or generation from what it was in another. We all know how very differently the evangelical system was spoken of and treated by men in general sixty years ago from what it is at present. It behoves all, therefore, who profess evangelical religion, to take good care that the conventional does not take the place of the true, and the ecclesiastical spirit (which is a widely different thing) substitute itself for the Christian. The monastic Orders are a warning to us in this respect. With much that was good in individuals of those Orders at the commencement, the spirit of the system soon superseded what was Christian, or overlaid it with such a thick coating of formality, that the fossilized self-righteousness which we now see in it was all that remained. Nothing is easier than for individuals to deceive themselves into self-satisfaction by a conventional Christianity. Because this attempered-to-the-age system of

life saves them from all practical difficulties, and from every kind of reproach injurious to their own character or interests, they will take to themselves the credit of being judicious and highly prudent men, forgetting that heart-discovering rebuke of the Great Master, "How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?" The world will ever be ready to confirm the deception; for "while thou doest well unto thyself, all men will speak well of thee."

It would be a great mistake to suppose that nothing of a positive kind can be learned from the history of the monks. There is a measure of truth in what the Count de Montalembert says of them, that "they had discovered the art of reconciling greatness of soul with humility, a tranquillized heart with an ardent mind, freedom and fulness of action with a minute and absolute submission to rule, ineffaceable traditions with an absence of all hereditary property, activity with peace, joy with labour, social life with solitude, the greatest moral force with the greatest material feebleness." (Vol. i. p. 77.) The incidental good effects of the system must ever be distinguished from the system itself. Little as we can agree in the view taken by the Count of the religious merits of the monastic institute, we must confess that it dwarfs our own generation of Christian men by the contrast. The Count de Montalembert has hit a blot in the character of our age. It cannot be denied that even men of professed Evangelical principles do not exhibit that high moral courage, that spirit of self-sacrifice, that superiority to the world's opinion, that readiness to brave all and to suffer all for Christ, and to achieve great objects, which their principles ought to inspire. In these points we may well take a lesson from the monks, unnatural and detestable as was the system of life which they established. If we have purer and better motives than they had, the proper effect of those motives should be to produce a higher, and not a lower, order of

actions.

Of the heroism that will dare, and the patience that can suffer, simply for duty's sake, we confess, more in sorrow than in a spirit of cynicism, we see too little in our own day. Christians are all for keeping on good terms with the world and with one another; and hence, as one eloquent writer, (John Ruskin,) who is not afraid to speak what he thinks, has truly said, "The world, unquestioned by itself or by others, mingles with and overwhelms the small body of Christians,-legislates for them, moralizes for them, reasons for them; and though itself, of course, greatly and beneficently influenced by the association, and held much in check by the pretences to Christianity, yet undermines, in nearly the same degree, the sincerity and practical power of Christianity itself." The just ground for sur

prise is, that professed Christian men can so delude themselves as to believe that they are true Christians, while they utterly ignore and disregard the principle which requires them "to lay down their lives one for another." This, whatever the monastic period may have been, is certainly not the heroic age of Christendom."

We have been so long accustomed to regard the monasteries as asylums for indolence and feebleness, for misanthropy and pusillanimity, for weak and melancholy hypochondriacs, and for men who could do nothing but fast and pray, that it is difficult to dispossess ourselves altogether of the idea. But whatever they were, they were not this; at least till, in later times, they became corrupted by what the Count de Montalembert terms the commende. The monks were, for the most part, made of stern stuff; and a life of resolute self-denial was probably much more frequently realized among them than modern thought is disposed to credit. Our own Ireland sent forth hosts of missionaries; and the monks of Ireland were, par excellence, the missionaries of the middle ages. In the recorded sentiments of such men as St. Columbanus of “ green Erin," as well as St. Benedict of sunny Italy, there is much noble and true christian feeling, mixed up with weak and puerile superstitions that greatly mar its beauty; so that while, in their system, there was everything to avoid, in their characters there was much to admire.

It would be disingenuous and uncandid in us not to admit the excellence of many of the monks. There is hardly any person or book from which something may not be learned; and in reading or reviewing such a history as that before us, the endeavour, both of reader and reviewer, ought to be, to gather as many useful lessons as possible for the correction of their own conduct. The points most worthy of imitation in the monks, and in which they are a rebuke to the present generation, were, the honour they put upon manual labour, their noble superiority to the shame of external poverty, and their readiness to lay down their lives for each other. It was they who, after our Lord's example, taught the dignity of toil. We admire the monk who bent down and kissed the hard hands of the ploughmen, to show his tender respect for the noble marks of labour. We admire, too, the monk who said, "I am ready to die for justice." While, as to poverty, so far from being ashamed of it, they gloried in it, as conforming them the more perfectly to the earthly condition of Him whom they professed to take as their example. In all these respects, they put many real Christians of the present day to shame.

There is no opinion more injurious to the simplicity, the strength, and integrity of the Christian character, than the opinion, now so general, that dignity lies in worldly great

ness, in some one or other of its forms. Hence all are aspiring after high place or distinction, usually at the cost of principle. True dignity consists, not in going up, but in voluntarily going down. And this is a truth which cannot be too much impressed upon the minds of men in the present day. The man who can voluntarily, and by his own act, put himself below others, does, in reality, put himself above others, however high they may be. This at once invests him with a noble independence, and renders him superior to those worldly influences by which others are held in thrall. Would that Christian men, in our day, could more generally act thus: spurious prudence, and cowardly compromise, and the snares of ambition, would then be at an end. We have come to treat toil as a degradation, and poverty as a shame, simply as poverty, instead of putting honour upon what is low; forgetting that it is by putting honour upon what is low, not upon what is high, we really exalt ourselves. In these particulars the monks have certainly shown us a more excellent way; and we shall all do well to remember that fine saying of St. Bernard's, "The friendship of the poor constitutes us the friends of kings; but the love of poverty makes kings of us.'

One caution only is needed before we close our remarks upon "The Monks of the West." Many of the inmates of monasteries were, doubtless, sincerely good, though misled, men; but we must be careful not to conclude that, because there were good men living under the monastic system, therefore the system itself must be good. Christianity, as a system, would be good, even if every one who professed it were bad. Monasticism, as a system, would be bad, even if all who practised it were good. Its genius is essentially evil. It is an outrage upon nature, and a libel upon the Creator. Upon the fair face of Christianity it was an unsightly fungus, at which we now look with wonder. How it could have grown there, is a curious problem; but having been removed at the Reformation, we hope it may never re-appear. Viewed in its history, it is a standing proof of the subtle hallucinations of superstition, and of the mischievous folly into which religious man will fall whenever he presumes to be wiser than his Maker.

LIFE OF THE REV. J. SORTAIN, OF BRIGHTON.

Memorial of the Rev. Joseph Sortain, B.A., of Trinity College, Dublin. By B. M. Sortain. Nisbet & Co. 1861.

THE name of Sortain is associated with Brighton in the recollections of no inconsiderable number both of churchmen and dis

senters. For nearly thirty years he occupied a sort of neutral ground on which they met. To say that he was a dissenter without being a sectarian, would be to do him scanty justice; nor would it express our meaning. He was a dissenter upon principle-the highest principle; for the points on which he differed from the church of England were so few, and the sacrifices he made for them so many, that, as we read this memoir, we feel that his conformity, much as we might have desired it, would have deprived him of one chief ground of our respect. There seems to have been nothing controversial in his nature; he lived in a turbulent period for the church of Christ; but his calm and gentle spirit allowed him to take no distinguished part as an assailant of any of the various forms of error which arose within the church of England or beyond its pale. He was made for friendship, and his intimate friends appear to have been selected, with a disdainful indifference to the claims of party, from churchmen or nonconformists; and he had the happy lot, not only to be equally esteemed on both sides, but to have had in an equal degree the confidence of both. Such a mind, it must be evident, could not have been a commanding one. It belongs to good men who pass thus happily through life, amidst the applause of all parties, to be loved rather than revered. Their fame, and, what is more important, their influence, does not long survive them. Those foot-prints which they impress upon the sands of time are soon effaced. They found no school; they lead no great revolutions in the world of thought; they accomplish no great reformations in the church of Christ. The heroic element is wanting, and yet their piety may be sincere and their virtues many. This was the case with Mr. Sortain; and his talents, if not of the highest order, were beyond the average of those even of distinguished men.

Joseph Sortain was of Huguenot ancestry. He was born at Clifton, in 1809, and baptized in the parish church by Mr. Hensman, the revered and now patriarchal incumbent; but his father held office as the treasurer of Lady Huntingdon's chapel at Bristol; and this circumstance decided the son's condition through life. At his birth he was solemnly dedicated to God by both his parents, and to His service in the ministry; with this design he was educated, and his parents gave the preference to the ministry of the Established Church. But as he was placed under the care of Dr. Ryland, at the Baptist College at Bristol, and then removed to Cheshunt College, which is managed by Lady Huntingdon's trustees, it followed almost of course that he should become a minister in Lady Huntingdon's connexion. His parents would have removed him from thence to the University of Cambridge; but his scruples had now gained strength, and he was entered at Trinity College, Dublin, the English universities not being then open to dissenters.