£20 to £50. Where the balance-sheets are to be seen is not stated, nor is the total of each week's contributions given; but we have, instead, a strenuous protest against unprincipled imitators who-in the words of the cheap tailors-"are guilty of the untradesmanlike falsehood of representing themselves as the same concern":

In reply to numerous inquiries, we desire it to be distinctly understood that we have nothing whatever to do with the American Christian Army, or the Christian Army, or the Gospel Army, or the Christian Mission Army (neither at Ripley or Castleford).

And we will not be held responsible in any way for the debts or doings of either of these societies, or any other imitation.

We have no connexion with persons styling themselves the Hallelujah Army in Ireland or elsewhere, and invite information of persons stating they are in connexion with us.

The interests of the Presbyterians are cared for in the "Weekly Review," a four-penny journal of moderately Liberal politics which dates from the spring of 1862. As a matter of course, the greater part of the space in this paper is occupied by the doings of the body in whose name it speaks, but some portion of it is reserved for leading articles and for occasional poetry of a somewhat advanced type of Protestantism. There is a fine intolerance about some of these productions which is very characteristic of the country of John Knox, while the terminology is exactly what might be expected amongst people who have put what they call "Sabbath-keeping" in the place of almost all religious duties, and who have substituted the hearing of polemical sermons for the duty of Christian worship. The spirit of the following piece of verse is worthy of the Covenanters themselves :

BRITISH LAW MUST CONTROL OUR PAPAL PRIESTS.*

If any Papal Cleric be inclined

To show his canine teeth, no man, I hope,
Would urge our Government to tell the Pope
That such a snarler ought to be confined.
What! shall we miserably creep behind
The Papal petticoat, and scream Ahoy!
Good mother, rid me from that naughty boy!"
For shame, is that the measure of your mind!
Our ruling men must manage our affair,
And not go whining to a foreign priest;
When any double-dealing knave will dare
To violate our statutes in the least,
Let him be put beneath the judge's care,
And dealt with so that truth may be increased.

"Weekly Review," March 12, 1881.

The expression of these lines might perhaps be improved, but there is no possibility of misunderstanding the spirit which dictates them, and that spirit, it is lamentable to say, pervades the entire paper.

The Unitarian "Inquirer" is a paper of a very different type. Its tone is almost ostentatiously tolerant, and there is a superciliousness about its leading articles which, to the nonUnitarian mind, is sometimes intensely exasperating. At the same time it must be admitted that there is an air of culture about the paper, which is by no means frequently to be met with in the organs of the dissenting sects.

Of the other religious papers-so-called-it is not necessary to say much. Quakerism boasts a couple of organs in the weekly press-the "British Friend" and the "Friend-but neither of them presents any very salient features. The Hebrew community are also represented by two newspapers, the "Jewish Chronicle" and the "Jewish World," two journals which serve, if they serve no other purpose, to prove that the people of what it is the fashion. to call "the ancient faith" have hardly altered in about two thousand years, and that there are amongst them a quite sufficient number of those qui negant esse resurrectionem. These papers are, however, of very small interest as compared with those which describe themselves as "unsectarian," and which are carried on in the interests of the dissenting sects. A writer in " Macmillan's Magazine" recently described these organs at some length, and it would be difficult to add much to his account of them. The "Christian World," the "Christian," the "Christian Herald," and the "Fountain," appear to be written by dissenting ministers of the lower type-and what they are Mrs. Oliphant has told the world once for all in her inimitable novels, "Salem Chapel and "Phoebe Junior"—for the edification of the young ladies and gentlemen of a "serious" turn of mind, who serve behind the counters of the shops in provincial towns, and who form the back-bone of the congregations of the dissenting chapels in the provinces. The stories which they contain are somewhat dull, and the articles which adorn them are not, as a rule, of a kind to attract people of refined taste, but there is an abundance of sectarian spite and jealousy, which, it is not unfair to suppose, makes up for deficiencies in other respects. Two points only remain to be noticed. The first is, that these papers appear, as a rule, to live by the advertisements of quack medicines, quack tea, quack jewellery, and quack pictures; the second, that the most widely-circulated of all-or at all events the one which professes to enjoy the widest circulation-is given up to speculations on the prophecies of the Old Testament and the Apocalypse. Of these matters it requires a certain sense of humour to speak

with temper. When, however, we find a "clergyman of the Church of England "whose name, by the way, does not appear in the "Clergy List "-complacently predicting the destruction of the world as imminent on the strength of his reading of certain passages in the prophecies of Daniel, and talking with similar complacency of the "followers of the Scarlet Woman of Babylon," our laughter is apt to have a rather sardonic quality about it. Nor, in view of the fact that those who believe in the peculiar theology of these journals are amongst the most devout of Sabbatarians, is it possible to regard with entire complacency the trivial circumstance that one at least of them is openly sold on Sundays within the walls of that "Temple" of which its editor is the hierophant.

On the whole, a survey of the so-called religious press of England is not flattering to the national pride. Amongst the organs of the Establishment may be found the representatives of the half dozen sects into which that body is divided; but in no one is it possible to discover that Catholic spirit which it was the hope of the Tractarians of 1830 to revive. The Low Church party appear to delight in journals whose actual raison d'être is their opposition to the Catholic faith, and which in their violent Protestantism not unfreqently lose sight of the decencies of controversy. The papers which represent the interests of Protestant dissent are not much wiser or less virulent; whilst some of them are, as a matter of fact, examples of what journalism should not be. Yet these are papers of the widest circulation; and it is to their readers and supporters that is now committed the final decision of all matters concerning the real government of the country.

ART II.-THE EXTENT OF FREE WILL.

E need not, we hope, remind our readers that our present succession of articles has for its purpose the establishing securely on argumentative ground-particularly against contemporary Antitheists-the Existence of that Personal and Infinitely Perfect Being, whom Christians designate by the name "God." Hardly any premiss (we consider) is more effective for this conclusion, than the existence of Free Will in man, as irrefragably proved by reason and experience. We have accordingly been proceeding of late with a series bearing on this particular theme. We drew out, in April, 1874, our general line of argument on the subject; and we examined

successfully (pp. 347-360) all the objections against Free Will which we could find adduced by Mr. Stuart Mill and by Dr. Bain. Dr. Bain replied to this article: and we rejoined in April, 1879; adding some supplementary remarks in October of the same year. Dr. Bain briefly returned to the controversy in the Mind of January, 1880, and we answered him in the April number of the same periodical: nor (as he informs us in a most courteous private letter) does he intend to continue the controversy further. In the April number of Mind there also appeared an elaborate criticism of our whole argument, from the pen of Mr. Shadworth Hodgson; which we answered at length in our number of last October. Mr. Hodgson briefly replied in the Mind of last January, and we are quite willing to leave him the last word for the present. More than one Catholic of weight has expressed to us a wish that we would press on more rapidly with the general chain of our Theistic argument; and we would defer, therefore, our reply to our last opponent, till the chain is completed. Meanwhile we can desire nothing better, than that fair-minded and impartial thinkers shall judge for themselves, how far anything now said by Mr. Hodgson tends to invalidate the arguments we had adduced for our own conclusion.

The ground we have taken up (as our readers will remember) has been this. Determinists maintain, that the same uniformity of sequence proceeds in the phenomena of man's will, which otherwise prevails throughout the phenomenal world; that every man, at every moment, by the very constitution of his nature, infallibly and inevitably elicits that particular act, to which the entire circumstances of the moment (external and internal) dispose him. We have argued in reply, that, whereas undoubtedly each man during far the greater part of his waking life is conscious of a "spontaneous impulse," which is due to his entire circumstances of the moment, and results infallibly therefrom-he finds himself by experience nevertheless able again and again to resist that impulse. He is able, we say, to put forth at any given moment what we have called "anti-impulsive effort;" and to elicit again and again some act indefinitely different from that to which his spontaneous impulse solicits

him.

Here our position stands at present; and it contains all which is necessary, in order that the fact of Free Will may possess its due efficiency in our argument for Theism. Nevertheless, in order to complete the scientific treatment of Free Will, a supplementary question of great importance has to be con

This paper was appended to the DUBLIN REVIEW of July, 1880.

:

sidered a question, moreover, which Dr. Bain expressly challenged us to face. During how large a period of the day, in what acts, under what conditions, is any given human being able to exercise this gift of Free Will? And we are the rather called on not to shrink from this question, because the very course of reasoning which we have been obliged to adopt against the Determinists,-unless it be further developed and explained-might be understood (we think) to favour a certain tenet, with which we have no sympathy whatever: a tenet, which we cannot but regard as erring gravely against reason, against sound morality, and against Catholic Theology. The tenet to which we refer is this: that my will is only free at those particular moments when, after expressly debating and consulting with myself as to the choice I should make between two or more competing alternatives, I make my definite resolve accordingly. This tenet is held (we incline to think) more or less consciously by the large majority of non-Catholic Libertarians; and even many a Catholic occasionally uses expressions and arguments, of which we can hardly see how they do not imply it. Now we are especially desirous that Catholics at all events shall see the matter in (what we must account) its true light. Our present article then may in some sense be called intercalary. We shall not therein be addressing Determinists at all, or proceeding in any way with our assault on Antitheism; except of course so far as such assault is indirectly assisted by anything which promotes philosophical unanimity and truth among the body of orthodox believers. It is Catholics alone whom we shall directly and primarily address; and indeed-as regards the theological reasoning which will occupy no very small portion of our space-we cannot expect it of course to have any weight except with Catholics. But we hope (as we proceed) to deal with each successive question on the ground of philosophical, no less than theological, argument. Nor will our philosophical arguments imply any other controverted philosophical doctrines, except only those which we consider ourselves to have established in our previous articles. We consider, therefore, that our reasoning has a logical claim on the attention-not of Catholics only-but of those non-Catholics also, who are at one with us on the existence of Free Will and on the true foundation of Ethical Science. Still (as we have said) our direct and primary concern will be throughout with Catholics.

The tenet which we desire to refute (as we have already

*We purposely avoid the word "deliberating," because it has led (we think) to much confusion of thought.