obliged to use the greatest caution in this rite, and often to perform it with but very few present; in which cases, the bread was privately sent to the absent, who preserved it in boxes, sometimes for years, or until they could obtain a new supply. It should be observed, however, that the practice had no reference to the doctrine of Transubstantiation, which they opposed with much vehemence, and which was totally inadmissible in this system.

The foregoing sketch presents a general view of their religious doctrines and practices, and suggests the leading features of their character and life. Their Dualistic errors were indeed justly odious to the Church; their rebellion against her authority ensured to them her implacable resentment; but, in addition to this, the thorough simplicity of their institutions contrasted with her own, their disrespect of saints, of relics and images, their bold reprehension of the ecclesiastical corruptions, and still more their alarming diffusion and rapid progress, aggravated the hatred of their adversaries to the very last degree. It was evidently growing to be a question of life or death with Catholicism, and the struggle was one of desperation. We have already followed their history down to about the year 1200, when they were at the height of their success. The general Crusade against the Albigenses marks the point of time at which their fortunes began to ebb. It was in the course of this terrible havoc, that the most inhuman of all tribunals, the Inquisition, was established; and the Cathari, for whom indeed it was originally designed, were the first to experience its cruelties. They were hunted out, with a purpose as staunch as death, and destroyed, in all countries where they could be reached, though the Crusade itself was directed chiefly on the South of France. When it began, this ill-fated region appeared a bright and sunny spot, like Goshen of old, while darkness lay around on all the face of the earth; when it closed, it seemed as if the night of ignorance and tyranny had settled down on the nations forever.

By about 1350, the Cathari had disappeared from all the countries of Central and Western Europe; and, from most of the places in these countries, at a much earlier date. But though exterminated by the sword and by the fires of martyrdom, or forced to recant, or dispersed into

unknown retreats, the influences they had sent abroad through Christendom could not disappear with them. Their doctrines indeed were suppressed, we mean in their definite form; Catharism, as a system, no longer existed, except in its native seats beyond the Adriatic. Many of its elements, however, were left behind, mingled like leaven in the sentiments of the common people throughout the regions in which the sectaries had taught and suffered for so long a time, and in which they had met at last with so cruel a fate. They had imparted a movement to religious inquiry, which went on when they themselves were gone. If we consider how their agency would naturally affect different minds, we shall have some notion of the thousand-fold tendencies to which they must have given birth. Some would naturally receive their doctrines implicitly and in the gross, others only in part; some would carefully reject their Dualistic principles, and embrace only the particular truths, or retain only their simple institutions and their views of morality; others, again, would be captivated chiefly with the absurdest parts of their system, and carry them out to the utmost lengths of extravagance and fanaticism; and some, having their attention once roused, would pursue an independent and original course of thinking. Thus their sentiments, in one form or another, entered into the great stream of human thought, and flowed onwards with it down the current of ages.

We are not sufficiently acquainted with the religious, and especially with the heretical, history of Europe, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to judge with positiveness of all the notions and practices which arose in that period, nor of the sources from which they came. But, in perusing the second-hand accounts to which we have access, we have long been impressed with the probability that many of the phenomena were owing to modes of thought which had descended among the common people from the times of the Cathari. In England, the appearance of Wickliffe was preceded by an extensive diffusion of radical opinions that had features in common with those of the sect; in Bohemia, the proscribed doctrines had overrun the country before the days of Huss and Jerome; in all parts of the continent, there were occasional outbreaks of the same principles under various modifica

tions; in Germany, the seeds of the old heresy had been evidently preserved among those classes from which the Anabaptists sprang. A thorough research would perhaps lay open the secret chain of relations and influences that connected the whole, directly or indirectly, with the part which the Cathari had performed. The truths they introduced along with their mass of errors, came forth successively in new and purer forms; and even their errors were employed by divine Providence to counteract others of a more prevalent, if not of a grosser kind.

H. B. 2d.

ART. XXVIII.

The Harmony of Opposite qualities in the Saviour's Character and Teachings.

THERE are great differences among men, in respect of comprehensiveness of character. We often see a person who appears to be the embodiment of one thought, or one passion. So narrow and intense is his life, that you can readily tell what he will do, and almost prophesy what he will say, in any circumstances, even in a peculiar emergency. There is only one side to his soul; it can show but one phase, and take but one attitude; and any fair description of him will seem to be a caricature. One person of this class may be ruled by the passion for money-getting, and never can be betrayed into momentary generosity of hand or lip; another is incarnate pride; another is concentrated foppishness; another is organized gossip; another is the slave of some special study or profession.

And, on the other hand, there are some persons whose characteristic quality it would be hard to tell. They are many-sided men. Their resources are rich and deep; they have great practical wisdom; and when they pronounce a judgement, it is from thorough insight, and

when they act, they do not reveal any chronic peculiarity, but suit their action to the circumstances which called it forth. All great genius, such as Shakspeare's and Homer's, has this many-sidedness. The best judges can never agree whether they excel in pathos, or humor, or sublimity, or description; nor can they determine what kind of characters they draw most powerfully. It would give any man fame if he could excel in any one line of literary excellence as they easily excel in all.

The greatest practical men, such as Cæsar and Washington, are equally comprehensive. Who can tell the distinguishing trait of Washington's character? His virtue is the poise of many qualities; he turns a new phase as we view him from different points; and all we can say is, that many moral elements, by their marriage, make up the pure patriot, the wise statesman, the courageous, humane, disinterested and unstained soldier.

And, in the Saviour's nature we discover a most wonderful breadth and complexity. The narratives of his life embrace but a small portion of his deeds and conversations; but they show plainly that all forms and phases of virtue blended in his character. Indeed, the richness of his nature shows itself in seemingly opposite qualities, jarring opinions and discordant acts; so that, if many of Jesus' sayings, deeds, and characteristics should be put abstractedly before us, we should be apt to say that they could not be harmoniously united, so as to compose a simple and symmetrical life. And yet this union shows the fullness and power of the Saviour's nature. In his short career, he swept the whole orbit of duty, and shed light along every segment of its curve.

In the first place, we may notice the two-sidedness of which we speak, if we study the relations of Christ with respect to formalism and spiritualism. The New Testament teaches us, that piety is a spirit, is of the heart, that it must not be confounded with formal rites of devotion, that "the true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and in truth." Ultra spiritualists, antagonists of all forms, Anti-sabbath men, come-outers, all shelter themselves behind the words and examples of Jesus. And to this extent, that a mere form of devotion is not necessarily worship, and that a person can possibly be pious without

joining in the consecrated and customary rites by which men seek to foster and express their piety, the language and spirit of Jesus will permit any one to go. But these protests against the excesses of formalism do not fully portray the Saviour's position. They give us only half the truth. The Saviour's example, when we see the whole of it, is against these ultraists. We find that he was baptized, that he had such respect for the solemnity and propriety of that rite, as to insist on receiving it from an humbler hand. He observed the ritual of the Passover, and engrafted upon it another form, which he perpetuated by an affectionate command among his first followers. And notwithstanding his insight into the spirituality of devotion, it is written that, "as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath-day." Superior as he was to any preacher he could hear, we must believe that the chants, and psalms, and spirit of the place were delightful, beneficial, and almost necessary to his nature.

So, too, Jesus taught that it is the inward light which illumines us, and that he who believeth "hath the witness in himself." Yet he frequently appealed to his miracles. as convincing and authoritative proofs of his Messiahship, and bowed with deep reverence before the written Scripture, for he supported his own threatened virtue, and silenced Satan, with "It is written, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."

Christ, too, went through corn-fields on the Sabbath day, and took occasion to perform many merciful miracles on that day, when he knew that the sensibilities of the ritual Jews would be shocked by his freedom. See, therefore, it is said, how Jesus walked rough-shod over the superstitions of his age; and a class of men, now, find warrant in this phase of his ministry for the most rabid hostility to Sunday-laws, and the most freely uttered contempt for the notion that one day should be accounted more sacred than another. But look at the reverse side of the picture. Christ was a formalist. As if with the intention to balance his character upon this point, his biographers have recorded his driving the money changers out of the court of the temple. Gentiles, we know, were permitted to worship in the outer court of the temple, and the Jews had no ob jection to the traders occupying those spaces, and selling