right. with 1,280 priests, 2,092 monks and to God, the avenger of justice and members of religious orders, 1,590 nuns, and 547 ecclesiastical pupils. Exclusive of Jews, the number of inhabitants not acknowledging the Roman Church is 412. THERE are at present, in the Sacred College, one cardinal named by Leo XII., twenty-one by Gregory XVI., thirty-eight by Pius IX., one reserved in petto in the Consistory of 26th June, 1859, and nine hats vacanttotal seventy. The oldest of the cardinals is his Eminence Tosti, who is eighty-five, and has worn the purple twenty-four years; the youngest is his Eminence Milesi, forty-three, and has been a cardinal four years. POPE PIUS IX. erected in 1860 a new see at Fortellezza, in Brazil, an Apostolic Vicariate in California, and two Apostolic Prefectures. He has also reestablished the ancient bishopric of the Armenian rite, at NeoCesarea, in Asia Minor. THE Pope has delivered an allocution in the Consistory, in reply to those who have asserted that the Papacy is incompatible with civilization, and said, that, on the contrary, the Papacy had always contributed to the diffusion of real civilization. The Pope declared that he was only opposed to that pretended modern civilization which persecutes the Church, imprisons her cardinals, bishops, and priests, suppresses religious orders, despoils the Church, and tramples justice under foot. He deplored that the Concordat had been violated in the Kingdom of Naples. The Pope declared that he would spontaneously have granted concessions, and would have accepted those which have been advised by the Catholic Sovereigns, but that he could not receive the counsels and unjust demands of an usurping government. In conclusion, the Holy Father deplored the subversion of all authority, and promised forgiveness to all who had been misled. He confided, he said, the cause of the Church THERE has been established at Naples, says the Gazetta di Turino, a committee of priests, under the appellation of the "Union of the Ecclesiastics of Southern Italy." Their programme comprises, 1st, the creation of a journal aiming solely to instruct the people, and to propound reforms in discipline; 2d, a uniform system of preaching; 3d, gratuitous instruction in religious and political duties for all classes; 4th, assistance for the sick in the hospitals, and a method of assisting and succoring prisoners. NAPLES. The Italian government found 1,347,027 ducats in possession of the Conferenza des Missions, at Naples, and appropriated it as an ecclesiastical fund for future use. The Jesuits. The present General of the Order is Peter Beck, the successor of Rothaan. The whole number of the Order, according to recent statistics, published in Rome, is at present 7,144, being 2,292 greater than in the year 1847. One thousand are engaged in foreign missions, and there are 444 in the United States. The largest number is found in France and Italy. They have been expelled from Piedmont, Lombardy, Modena, the Marches, Umbria, Romagna and the two Sicilies. The General of the Order has addressed to Victor Emmanuel a protest against their recent suppression. After speaking of the suppression of the establishments of the Jesuits in 1848 in Piedmont, the General proceeds: "From the time of the Italian war last year, up to the present day, the Company of Jesus has lost three convents and colleges in Lombardy, six in the Duchy of Modena, eleven in the Pontifical States, nineteen in the kingdom of Naples, and fifteen in Sicily. Every where the company has been deprived of its estates and movables, in the strictest sense of the word. 1 Its members, about fifteen | Italian converts'; he is a Plymouthite, hundred in number, have been driven in respect to the church; he is now from cities and houses; escorted like professor at Bologna. Vastavini, of malefactors by soldiers from one town Bologna, is opposed to him on these to another; detained in public pri- questions; he holds service there on sons, atrociously ill-treated and in- Sunday for 30 or 40 persons. Cresy sulted; even prevented from seeking preaches in Reggio and Modena every an asylum in the bosom of some pious fortnight. The Gospel is also regufamily; and in many places not even larly preached in Asti by Minetti; in the white hairs of old age, nor the Arcola by Dassio; in Novi by Grosso; prostration caused by infirmity, were in Alessandria by Rosetti; in Novara respected." and Fassa by Tealdo; in Nizza by Techi; in La Spinetta by Carlino; to Protestantism in Italy.-As far as congregations varying from 15 to 50. the influence of Sardinia reaches, re- The Evangelical Italian church at ligious toleration is insured. The Turin, of about 60 members, is direct work of evangelization will probably ed by De Sanctis. That at Genoa is proceed with increased rapidity. The under the charge of Larzomarsino, Neue Evangelische Kirchenzeitung since Mazzarella was transferred to contains a series of valuable articles Bologna; it has about 150 members. on the present state and prospects of For three hundred years, since the this movement. The Waldenses in suppression of the beginnings of the valleys number about 22,000; reform, the word has not been prothe regular Sunday morning attend- claimed in so many places or to so ance on worship is 7,350; average of many persons. communicants, partaking of the sacrament, 7,650; 31 Sunday-schools. The station at Pignerol is another position of strength. At Turin there is a congregation of 1,600 Waldenses; MM. Bert and Meille, pastors. The Buona Novella, edited by Meille, advocates their views; 31,372 bibles and books circulated. At Alessandria there are two preaching places; in Voghera, 30 PORTUGAL.-The struggle between Italians held service; there are small this kingdom and Rome fourteen bands in Casale, Castelnuova, and years ago, upon the rights of the Quazzora. At Courmayer, in the crown over the East Indian bishopAosta valley, M. Curie preaches to rics of Goa, Diu, and Damas, has some 75 converted Roman Catholics; operated against Romanism in the he is aided in his work by Mr. Gay. popular mind. The doctrine of the At Genoa, a Waldensian church was Immaculate Conception has called built in 1858, ministered to by forth protests sustained by citations Bruschi; the congregation number from the Bible and the Church about 160. At Leghorn and Pisa, Fathers. Finally, the effort made M. Bibet has collected flourishing three years ago to introduce the Siscongregations; at Leghorn, about ters of Mercy, with their Lazarist 200 attend service. The Waldensian Father. Confessors, failed, and the theological school is now established newly-awakened fear of the Jesuits at Florence; it has 6 students. M. has led to the formation of a Society Concourde labors in the schools. Noceto and Stephen Malan have preached in Milan. Mazzarella, formerly of Genoa, is one of the ablest and most influential men among these A Madrid paper asserts that thirty thousand tracts and other works defending Protestant doctrines had been printed at London in the Spanish language, and that sixty smugglers had undertaken to introduce them into Spain. which seeks to spread the Scriptures and exhorts to a diligent use of the same as the best means of averting the danger. So says the N. Evang. Kirchenzeitung. THE AMERICAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW. No. XII. OCTOBER, 1861. ART. L-THE HOMERIC DOCTRINE OF THE GODS.* By WILLIAM S. TYLER, D.D., Professor in Amherst College, Mass. NAEGELSBACH'S Homeric Theology has been a standard work ever since it was given to the public in 1840, and it still remains the most systematic and complete treatise on that subject with which we are acquainted. It is only necessary to look over his copious index of seven sections, divided and sub-divided, classified and arranged with the help of all the letters of the Greek and Latin alphabet, as well as the Arabic numerals, to see the exhaustive, German fulness and methodicalness with which he has treated the Homeric Olympus. And when we pass from the index to the work itself, we are * Die Homerische Theologie in ihren Zusammenhange dargestellt von CARL FRIEDRICH NAEGELSBACH, Professor am K. B. Gymnasium zu Nürnberg. Nürnberg. 1840. Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. By the Right Honorable W. E. GLADSTONE, D.C.L., M.P. for the University of Oxford. In three volumes. Oxford: at the University Press. 1858. Vol II. Olympus: or, the Religion of the Homeric Age. pleased to find that this large promise is amply fulfilled; that while the classification of topics exhausts the subject, the copious illustrations constitute a complete resumé of passages pertaining to the religion of the Greeks in the heroic age. Mr. Gladstone's Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age is a more voluminous work, more suggestive, and more practical, but less scientific and complete. Borrowing freely from the German scholar, and readily acknowledging his obligations, the English statesman adds little to the materials, and omits many of the facts with their illustrations, but inquires with more eager curiosity into the origin of the religions ideas and usages of the early Greeks, and with the faith and reverence as well as the practical wisdom befitting a leader of the gov ernment in the leading State of Protestant Christendom, looks at every topic in its relations to Christianity and the Bible. Of course, the minute accuracy of the German professor is not to be expected in the Chancellor of the English Exchequer. Still the work of Mr. Gladstone adds another to the many enduring monuments which perpetuate the fame of that country whose greatest statesmen have always been, at the same time, her best classical scholars. Passing from these authors to the subject of which they treat, it is our purpose to confine our remarks, at present, to the Homeric Doctrine of the Gods, reserving the Doctrine of Sin and Expiation, and the Doctrine of a Future State, for future articles, should time and opportunity permit. When we speak of the Homeric Theology, or the Homeric Doctrine of the Gods, we do not mean to imply that Homer had any such doctrine, or theology, clearly defined and sys tematically arranged in his own mind, still less, that his poems were intended to be a catechism or a creed for the instruction of coming generations. Homer never preaches or delivers lec tures. As his life and character can only be gathered from his works, so his religious sentiments are nowhere stated in form or didactically inculcated, but are every where presup posed in the plot, implied in the incidents, uttered and acted by his heroes and minor personages. Indeed it is not his own theology or his own opinions on any subject that he has given us; but, wholly objective, living only in his characters, he has perpetuated the living image of their religious ideas and usages. And these ideas and usages he has re-presented to us under all the varieties of individual opinion and experience, with all the self-contradictions that belong to false systems of religion, and with all the contrast between theory and practice, creed and conduct, which imperfect men always exhibit in real life, sometimes further exaggerated by a palpable but not readily measurable difference between the imagination of the poet and the people, and the traditions which they have received from a purer and more pritnitive age. To discriminate between these differences, and to reconcile these contradictions, is sometimes not a little difficult. Still, beneath them all there is an underlying system of religious doctrine, which characterizes and more or less controls the men of the Homeric age; and Homer, with all his contradictions, was the Bible of the Greeks for many generations. An eye-witness to events cotemporaneous with the earliest prophets and kings of Israel, a faithful voncher* for manners and customs and a state of society strikingly similar to those which existed among the Hebrew patriarchs, the primeval and in their estimation inspired bard, teacher, and historian of a people second only to the Jews in their influence on the education and development of mankind, Homer, and especially the theology of Homer, cannot but be a study of deep interest to the Christian who, with no narrow or one-sided view, sees one and the same hand, the hand of God, in the history of the whole human race. 1. Number and Classification of the Gods. The reader of the Iliad and Odyssey will discover at once that the doctrine of the Divine Unity, which, according to the Scriptures and according to the most reliable history and the soundest philosophy also, was once universal, has already dis * Such F. Schlegel takes to be the meaning of the word "Oμngos, a voucher for heroic life and times; though, with the inborn skepticism of a German, he still doubts whether any such man as Homer ever lived. |