It seeks to accomplish its end by one of two classes of means, by the class which has been from the beginning, which accompanied the introduction of the faith, and has ever moved contemporaneous with it, or by that which changes with the changing aspects of the world, and has its origin in the invention of the human understanding. If it adopt the first class, then in the work of restoring what is lost, or reviving what is dead, will it draw around itself the shadow of venerable authorities, and look anxiously to the recorded experience of the world, it will move along the path of ancient and positive revelation, and cling trustingly to the great objective guides which men have been forced to heed in widely different conditions of life, and stages of advance. But if it adop. the second class, it will attempt to restore and to revive, by inventive processes by a farther abandonment of old positions, and by framing new schemes, upon novel principles, schemes whose thoroughly modern air shall banish every remnant of antiquity It will labor to restore the old, or what is lost, by inventing the new or what has never before formed a part of the Catholic system. For criteria of judgment based upon the wisdom of successive generations, and constituting a sort of effluence from the reason of universal man, it will substitute the notions, the opinions, and subjective impressions of the individual understanding. For the voice of the collective past, and the original witness of primitive days, it will substitute the voice of a shifting present, and the testimony of the insolated intellect. This last has been the method by which Christian humanity, since the reformation has labored to reach oneness and completeness of life and doctrine. In saying this we make only a general statement which we are aware admits of many an important modification. This last method was not the method of the "judicious" Hooker. Though he lived at a time when of all others there was most to prune away as being useless, and most to revive as being dead, yet, he uniformly and tenaciously adhered to the traditional type of the faith, or that mould of life and doctrine which was framed by the associated wisdom and experience of the past, once forsaking this for the ideal type, or that framed by the separate, independent judgements of the private understanding. He sought for old, not new positions; and amid the fluctuating phenomena of the religious world, he was content to submit his reasonings and his notions, to the ancient formula, quod semper, quod abique, quod ab omnibus. And there was no other rejuvenescence of Christian truth, which he cared to labor for, than that which could be derived from the cleansing waters of apostolic founts. What, let us now inquire, was the stand point, whence Hooker was wont to look upon the phenomena of political society; what according to him is the nature of the state; how and to what extent is the life of the individual blended with the life of the mass. Ultimately there are but two ways of viewing the state. According to the one, it is the creature of man, and is human; according to the other, it is the creature of God and is divine. According to the one, it is a mere aggregation of individual units, subject only to self-enacted laws, and in which the will of a numerical majority is the Supreme authority. According to the other, it is in the last analysis an idea patterned after a form as holy and immutable as that of the family; an idea whose outward shape and dress may change with the accidents of human condition, and may be regulated by human judgment; but whose inner life and soul, are above, and may not be touched by these. It has an organic life independent of the several lives of which it is composed, or in other words it has a life, which, amid the perpetual flux of its component elements, preserves the principle of continuity and identity. It has a voice and a law; it has a will, supreme over those of a fluctuating, physical majority. This last was the view of Hooker. He believed the State to be as much an institution of Heaven as the family, and its discipline to be so ordered as to be at once only that of the family enlarged and transfigured, and a mode of probation of the faith and will of man: of the faith, because claiming an authority which would counsel submission under circumstances where the right to resist would be deferred only on the ground of duty to God, of the will, because subordinating through obedience, its depraved severalty and discordance to a principle of unity, working in a political form. He believed the State to be a divinely established mould for shaping human character, and the law of its growth to be organic, not operative: or in other words, he believed its growth to be the result of expansion from a fixed These two centre, not of a process of external accretion. modes of viewing the State are the tests of all statesmanship. They are the starting points of vast and complicated systems of practical legislation, which move toward the same end, indeed, but through widely different means. To say that a man who is at all great, adopts one of these in preference to the other, goes far toward deciding the particular cast of his greatness; for it shows his drift on one of the most important subjects that can engage human attention. : The third constituent element of Hooker's type of greatness may be seen by ascertaining his position in the sphere of philosophy and here we must necessarily be brief. By attributing to Hooker a position in this field of thought, we do not mean to imply that he occupied one in any way definite, or publicly expressed, or that he professed any consciously formed system. He had, as has every great soul, a certain philosophical tone, a bias toward some particular method of solving the ever recurring problems which gather about this mortal state. It is this, and this only, that we wish to come at. To which, then, of the great divisions of all philosophical systems did Hooker incline, to spiritualism, to mysticism, or to materialism? To the first, we reply, unhesitatingly. To show this, no labored proof is needed. It is enough to refer to a single fact; namely, his uniform recognition of the distinction between reason and the understanding-a distinction whose neglect has flooded the world with shallow metaphysics, and exposed to the cavils of scepticism the sublimest mysteries which the Christian Faith proposes for human belief. This distinction pervades every part of the works of the judicious Hooker. It is the informing, vital spirit. So thoroughly does it possess him, that he often, while engaged in strictly theological investigation, travels far back into the shadowy realms where Plato's genius wrought, and gathers about him those high mystical intuitions into the secret place of life and being, which have ever been at once the glory and the delight of earth's noblest spirits. Our space is too brief to say more on this point or to attempt to show how the comprehensiveness, the subtlety and dignity of the master mind of antiquity were revived in the genius of Hooker. They both walked along the shores of "that immortal sea which brought us hither" the one by the torch-light of wandering tradition, the other by the flaming splendors of the Christian dispensation. They both repeated through a heavenly rhetoric, the awful voices uttered there, and both have a presence in the world's story not to be put by. With Plato, Hooker believed that the living soul of man derives its light from a higher source than the dying body: that it is dowered with a stock of knowledge looking above and beyond this world,-ideas of truth, duty, order, goodness, which are the fundamental laws of its being, the luminous centres of thought, the very energy which shapes the impression of the senses, and bridge over the abyss between the regions of spirit and matter. And as this belief prepared Plato to recognise, in himself and also in all about him, an indiscriminate and transcendant power which he called, an energeia, so it prepared the mind of Hooker to recognise the same power working in bolder forms— in the world of grace-a power which Revelation has named the Eternal Spirit of Truth-and to receive in all their fulness, not only the doctrinal and preceptive teachings of the Divine Faith, but also the sacramental, or those which represent the Church on earth to be one vast sacrament, through which she works upon the souls of men, the third person of the Trinity. In one word, this belief prepared him to recognize, in Christianity, not only a doctrine and a precept, which mainly appeal to the logical faculty, and aim to convince, but also an energy, a force, spiritual in its nature, and of course transcending any mere intellectual conception,-a sort of preparation, we may add, which but too many of the theologians of past and present days have not had. It has been our aim, in what we have written, to bring together a few of the constitutional elements of what is believed to be the highest order of human greatness. The points alluded to have been used only as exponents, of a moral and intellectual tendency (for in this, not in specific acts, or thoughts, is character embodied)-of an underflow of soul, which is attuned to the moral order of the world, and times its movements by those of the divine forces which Heaven has vouchsafed to man for his regeneration—an underflow which, when it rushes up to human sight, issues in a type of greatness which is the blended result of genius, learning and piety-poised upon principles (some have been named) that lie at the very heart of natural and revealed truth. With this species of greatness-as a lofty representative of which, only, have we spoken of the venerable Hooker, we have no wish to compare a certain sort most in favor now. We will name a few of its features, and leave the inferences to the reader. It is inventive, eager for novelty of doctrine and life. It is aggressive, not satisfied with the powers that be, preferring the pride of independence, to the humility of obedience, measuring human advance, rather by the extent to which Rights are asserted and guaranteed, than by the extent to which Duties are performed, and shaping its path through the tumults and phrenzies of revolutions, rather than through exercises of faith and acts of submission. It is sceptical, doubting all, challenging proof for all, spurning mystery and wonder as aliens in the commonwealth of the soul. It is prudential, esteeming its chief glory to consist in adapting means to ends, in discerning the safe and the expedient, rather than the true and the just, with the spiritual hazards which attend them. Might we not say, in one word, it is "of the earth, earthy?" This is not the only sort of greatness the world now has, or appreciates,-far from it; but it is the kind which receives the largest share of popular admiration. NEW ENGLAND HOMESTEADS. BY E. G. B. There are happy, quiet homesteads, that smile 'mid light and shade, |