to Europe, he re-united himself at Berlin with the English Church. He was a member of the Society of Jesus when he undertook his journey through Arabia, but has not found the connection, it seems, agreeable to his conscience of religious truth. Quite recently, we are informed, he has returned to the banks of the Tigris, to watch the fortunes of Arabia, to hear news of Telal, of Prince Sa'ood, and of the many friends he left on the green isles of the desert, the highlands of central Arabia.

Of the Wahhabees this is the story:

"Mohammed-ebn-'Abd-el-Wahhab, founder of the sect named after him Wahhabees, was born in Horeymelah, somewhat before the middle of the last century. Commerce led him to Damascus, where he fell in with some of the learned and very bigoted sheykhs of that town, Hanbelees like himself, or Shafi'ees, but alike opposed, whether to the prevailing laxities of the Nakshbundees and other northern free-thinkers, or to the superstitious practices of Darweeshes, Fakeers, Welees, and whatever else Persian or Turkish ideas have introduced almost everywhere in the East. The son of 'Abd-elWahhab was above thirty years of age, and in the full vigor of his physical and intellectual existence, a vigor much above the average standard. To the persevering doggedness and patient courage of his Nejdean countrymen, he added a power of abstraction and generalization rare among them; his eye was observant, and his ear attentive; he had already seen much and reflected deeply. But the lessons of the Damascene sheykhs aided him to combine once for all, and to render precise, notions that he had long before, it seems, entertained in a floating and unsystematized condition. He now learned to distinguish clearly between the essential elements of Islam and its accidental or recent admixtures, and at last found himself in possession of what had been the primal view and starting point of the Prophet and his first companions in Hejaz twelve ages before. . . . To him is the praise, if praise it be, of having discovered amid the ruins of the Islamitic pile its neglected key-stone, and, harder still, of having dared to form the project to replace it, and with it and by it reconstruct the broken fabric.

"This key-stone, this master thought, this parent idea, of which all the rest is but the necessary and inevitable deduction, is contained in the phrase, far oftener repeated than understood, 'La Ilah illa

...

Allah,' there is no god but God,'-a literal translation, but much Allah,'there too narrow for the Arab formula, and quite inadequate to render its true force in an Arab mouth or mind. . . . The words, in Arabia and among Arabs, imply that this one Supreme Being is also the only Agent, the only Force, the only Act existing throughout the universe, and leave to all beings else, matter or spirit, instinct or intelligence, physical or moral, nothing but pure unconditional passiveness, alike in movement or in quiescence, in action or in capacity. The sole power, the sole motor, movement, energy, and deed, is God; the rest is downright inertia and mere instrumentality, from the highest archangel down to the simplest atom of creation. Hence, in this one sentence, 'La Ilah illa Allāh,' is summed up a system which, for want of a better name, I may be permitted to call the Pantheism of Force or of Act, thus exclusively assigned to God, Who absorbs it all, exercises it all, and to Whom alone it can be ascribed, whether for preserving or for destroying, for relative evil or for equally relative good. I say 'relative,' because it is clear that in such a theology no place is left for absolute good or evil, reason or extravagance; all is abridged in the autocratical will of the one great Agent, Sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas;' or, more significantly still, in Arabic, Kema yesha'o,'-' as he wills it,' to quote the constantly recurring expression of the Coran.

6

"Thus immeasurably and eternally exalted above, and dissimilar from, all creatures, which lie levelled before Him on one common plane of instrumentality and inertness, God is one in the totality of omnipotent and omnipresent action, which acknowledges no rule, standard, or limit, save His own sole and absolute will. He communicates nothing to His creatures, for their seeming power and act ever remain His alone, and in return He receives nothing from them; for whatever they may be, that they are in Him, by Him, and from Him only. And, secondly, no superiority, no distinction, no pre-eminence, can be lawfully claimed by one creature over its fellow, in the utter equalization of their unexceptional servitude and abasement; all are alike tools of the one solitary Force which employs them to crush or to benefit, to truth or to error, to honor or to shame, to happiness or to misery, quite independently of their individual fitness, deserts, or advantage, and simply because He wills it and as He wills it.

"One might, at first sight, think that this tremendous Autocrat, this uncontrolled and unsympathizing Power, would be far above any thing like passions, desires, or inclinations. Yet such is not the

case; for He has, with respect to His creatures, one main feeling and source of action, namely, jealousy of them, lest they should perchance attribute to themselves something of what is His alone, and thus encroach on his all-engrossing kingdom. Hence He is ever more prone to punish than to reward, to inflict pain than to bestow pleasure, to ruin than to build. It is His singular satisfaction to let created beings continually feel that they are nothing else than His slaves, His tools, and contemptible tools also, that thus they may the better acknowledge His superiority, and know His power to be above their power, His cunning above their cunning, His will above their will, His pride above their pride; or, rather, that there is no power, cunning, will, or pride, save His own. But He Himself, sterile in His inaccessible height, neither loving nor enjoying aught save His own and self-measured decree, without son, companion, or counsellor, is no less barren for Himself than for His creatures, and His own barrenness and lone egoism in Himself is the cause and rule of His indifferent and unregarding despotism around. The first note is the key of the whole tune, and the primal idea of God runs through and modifies the whole system and creed that centres in Him.

"Islam is, in its essence, stationary, and was framed thus to remain. Sterile like its God, lifeless like its first Principle and supreme Original in all that constitutes true life, for life is love, participation, and progress, and of these the Coranic Deity has none, it justly repudiates all change, all advance, all development. To borrow the forcible words of Lord Houghton, the 'written book' is there the dead man's hand,' stiff and motionless: whatever savors of vitality is by that alone convicted of heresy and defection.. Islam is lifeless, and because lifeless cannot grow, cannot advance, cannot change, and was never intended so to do; stand-still is its motto and its most essential condition; and therefore the son of 'Abd-el-Wahhab, in doing his best to bring it back to its primal simplicity, and making its goal of its starting-point, was so far in the right, and showed himself well acquainted with the nature and first principles of his religion."

For the story of the religious revolution which followed, and for many details illustrating Arabian history and life, which we had marked for extraction, we must refer the reader to the volumes from which we have already so freely quoted, and which we regard as among the most curious and important of recent contributions to our knowledge of the outlying regions of religious belief and practice.

ART. III. -DR. NEWMAN'S APOLOGIA.

Apologia pro Vita suâ. Being a Reply to a Pamphlet entitled, "What, then, does Dr. Newman mean?" By JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, D.D. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

1865.

IF, in re-publishing this book, the Messrs. Appleton had ventured to leave out that part of it which is filled with the details of Dr. Newman's controversy with Mr. Kingsley, perhaps the author would have been displeased, but his book would have been vastly bettered by the deed. Not that we blame the Doctor for his evident intention not to leave one stone of Mr. Kingsley's argument upon another; not that we can help admiring him for doing what he does in such a thorough-going and remorseless way; not but that the details of this controversy give us two very interesting chapters and a very sharp appendix, although the interest is of such a sort as generally attaches to a foot-race or regatta, and the sharpness smacks too strongly of contempt for us to greatly relish it; but because we think it quite too bad that any thing so reverent and tender and so beautiful as is this Apology should be introduced and ended with matter, in the main but little relevant, and surely not harmonious. We say, but little relevant, because, if this book is to be read and re-read, to live and be admired, it will not be for any controversial matter it contains, but for the singularly bold and graphic picture which it gives us of a life in almost every way remarkable; and those parts of it which deal with Mr. Kingsley, and his charges against Dr. Newman and his Church, contribute nothing toward the fuller understanding of that life which is not revealed in the Apology itself in a far better way. Certainly, we shall not reverence Dr. Newman any more because they have been written, although we may admire him for his legal skill; because, if they prove any thing but this, it is that Dr. Newman can be very angry when sufficiently provoked. But of this too we have an inkling in the body of the work. It

may be that the Doctor's vigorous onslaught upon Kingsley will delight a larger audience than the almost rhythmic march of his own story; but it will be an audience of a very different sort, and, when it is all asleep or dead, as it will be very soon, the generation of men who would like to read this history of a great man's theological experience should not be obliged to enter it through such an endless propylæum, or leave it through such heaps of lumber and débris.

We must confess that we are glad, that Mr. Kingsley's charges, at least so much of them as was entirely personal, have been successfully rebutted. We hope that we have listened candidly to the evidence upon both sides. At first thought, it would seem a great deal harder to do so now than it would have been five or six years ago; for then we loved Charles Kingsley, and thanked God every day for his “Hypatia" and "Saints' Tragedy." How generously he clasped hands with the Reformers of the time in " Alton Locke "! and, in "Two Years ago," how good it was for those of us who fought with our pet demon on this side of the world to hear his "Sursum Corda"! "Yea, to the Lord we have lifted them up," and he has filled them full of wonder and thanksgiving. But Kingsley is not with us any more; and it would be only natural if we heard of his discomfiture more calmly now than if it had been then. But, at second thought, is it not plain that we can judge between him and his antagonist more fairly now than ever, because our wholesome dislike of him will scarcely more than balance our natural distrust of any thing that comes from Dr. Newman's side of the house? Between a Roman Catholic and an English rebel-sympathizer an American Protestant ought to judge impartially; and, when we say that we are glad that Mr. Kingsley's charges did not take effect, it is not because Mr. Kingsley made them, but because we should hate to believe that Dr. Newman is so radically dishonest as in his dealings with America his opponent has proved himself to be.

But, when Dr. Newman agrees to be responsible for the whole method of that church into which he has at length drifted, he assumes a burden much too heavy even for him to