who zealously promoted the cause of education in Wessex, and composed many re'igious songs in baliad form and in the Saxon tongue. He is to be remembered us the first Englishman who cultivated classical learning with success. He died 709 A.D. The poetry of Cadmon, a lay brother of Whitby, the great St. Hilda's monastery in the north, enabled Biblical lore to spread among the common people of the lowest class. By casting the Sacred Story and the Creed of Christendom into the simplest vernacular speech, the Faith was brought home to the hearts of serf and shepherd. Learning flourished most in the schools of Northumbria, especially at Jarrow and York. It was at Jarrow that Bede, called the Venerable, passed his life (b. about 673 A.D.). He is the true father of English literature, and through his many treatises made accessible to his countrymen all the knowledge of his day, sacred and profane; the first theologian and the first cultivator of science the English race ever produced. From the school of York came in the next century (b. 735 A.D.) the famous Alcuin, who spent many years at the court of Charlemagne, and aided in the great educational designs of that enlightened emperor. In Alfred the Great Christianized England produced the perfect king. "Alfred was the noblest, as he was the most complete embodiment of all that is great, all that is loveable in the English temper" (Green's English People). The first in the line of ecclesiastical statesmen who have played such a large part in English history was St. Dunstan. As virtual ruler of Wessex from 950-979 A.D., he did much by his firmness and strict even-handed justice to fuse the English people into one

nation.

The Effects of Monasticism.-In the later Saxon period the glory of the earlier Church is obscured. The galaxy of saints and learned men who appeared at the period of the conversion of England and in the next age left few successors. Gradually a certain feebleness crept over the whole people which made them the easy prey, first of the Danes, then of the Normans. The cause of this was undoubtedly the abnormal development of monasticism. England, like all Northern Europe, was converted by monks,-those of the rule of St. Columba on the one hand, and of St. Benedict on the other. It was inevitable that monasticism should be strong, and it soon pervaded the whole of Anglo-Saxon life. Immense donations of land were conferred upon the monasteries, more than thirty kings and queens ended their days in the cloister, and from other walks of life an innumerable company. The grandest and most successful of all missionary agencies, monasticism becomes a heavy burden and a grave evil when it dominates the whole life of a nation. Asceticism, which has and ever must have its place, and that a most important place, in the Christian Church, is a fruitful source of

error and corruption when it is attempted to make it the only allowable form of Christian life. The strength of the nation forsaking the work of common life to serve GOD in the cloistered walls, and ultimately to avoid the burden of duty laid upon them, was putting an end to progress, both in Church and State. The condition of things is well expressed by Dean Milman: "The Anglo-Saxon clergy, since the days of Dun stan, had produced no remarkable man. The triumph of monasticism had enfeebled without sanctifying the secular clergy... It might conceal much gentle and amiable goodness; but its outward character was that of timid and unworldly ignorance, unfit to rule, and exercising but feeble and unbeneficial influence."

England and the Papacy.-It is important to trace, however briefly, the relation of the Church in England to the Papacy. We have seen, in reviewing the history of British Christianity, that the Britons seem to have had no knowledge of any kind of papal jurisdiction. It would seem to be equally true that in the early English (Anglo-Saxon) Church there was but little notion of the rule of Rome over other Churches as a matter of right and law. They by no means submitted to the Pope as possessing the headship and universal dominion over the Catholic Church. Yet none the less they owned his sway. It is a popular error to represent the Anglo-Saxon Christians as asserting independence of Rome and maintaining their rights as a branch of the Church. The simple truth is that the relation between Rome and England at that period did not rest upon a basis of claims and concessions; it did not wear a legal aspect. Such words as these indicate the prevailing sentiment: "Gregory, our father, who sent us baptism," "Though he be not an apostle to others, yet he is to us, for the seal of his apostleship are we in the LORD." Notwithstanding the fact that the greater part of England had first received the Gospel from Iona and Lindisfarne, there was, after the reconciliation and fusion of the two elements under the influence of Wilfrid and the wise measures of Theodore, a remarkable lack of any consciousness of an independent origin among the Christian people of England. They leaned to Rome as colonists to the mother-country, without thinking of raising any question as to what might some time be claimed as a matter of right. Their loyalty to the mother-Church was romantic and childlike. A pilgrimage to Rome was the dream of every Christian Englishman's heart. "From no other land did there flow into the papal exchequer such rich contributions." Yet practically the independence of the Church was little interfered with.

Bishops were chosen without the papal intervention, though sometimes that intervention was invited, as in the case of Archbishop Theodore. But in general all ecclesiastical appointments were in the hands

of the king. If we compare the position of the Church in the Anglo-Saxon period with that under the Norman kings, the difference does not consist in the greater devotion shown to the Papacy at the later epoch. The contrary is true. Doubtless the foreign ecclesiastics who poured into England at this time, filling its Sees and Benefices, brought with them the latest forms and observances which the Catholic religion had assumed, and a perceptible change of tone. But as regards the Papacy, we find that the common practice of the earlier period, which had rested only on custom, became express law. The dependence of the Church on the oyal power was strictly enforced. Prelates were practically chosen by the king. Moreover, William the Conqueror would allow no papal letters to be received into the realm without his assent. He met the demands of Gregory VII. with a stern refusal. "Fealty I have never willed to do, nor will I do it now. I have never promised it, nor do I find that my predecessors did it to yours." Such principles were maintained by William and his successors, not for the good of the Church, but to strengthen their own power. Yet the practical result was the comparative independence on Rome of the realm and Church of England, and at most periods a considerable jealousy of papal encroachments. It seemed to many noble and devoted men far more natural that the Church should lean on Rome than be subject to the tender mercies of a tyrant at home, and, very different from our view, they often identified the "liberties of the Church" with subjection to the Pope. Yet a deep, underlying feeling of independence resided in the English people. When the most powerful of Popes, Innocent III., deposed even so evil a man as King John, the bull might have remained ineffectual, so far as the main body of the people were concerned, notwithstanding the great encouragement which it gave to all his enemies, public and private. When the king yielded and knelt before the papal legate, "He has become the Pope's man; he has forfeited the very name of king," was said to have been the indignant outcry of his subjects.

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This was the highest point which papal aggression ever reached in England. With the growth of a strong national spirit came resistance, often renewed and gradually embodied in the laws of the kingdom, to the papal claims (1) of a right to exact pecuniary contributions, (2) of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, as exhibited in appointments to Bishoprics and other Benefices, and in appeals from English courts. "Constitutions of Clarendon," 1164 A.D., provided that elections of Bishops or Abbots should take place in the presence of the king's officers, and have the king's assent, and that no appeals should go further than the Archbishop without his consent, and to these measures the prelates gave their indorsement. In Henry III.'s time there was a rising throughout the kingdom against

the papal collectors, and the barons for their part refused to aid the Pope in his contest with Frederick II. It was at this time, says Green, "that the little rift first opened which was destined to widen into the gulf which parted one from the other at the Reformation." As Parliament rises into importance, the jealousy of papal aggression is exhibited from time to time in no uncertain tones. In the reign of Edward III. (1327-1377 A.D.) Parliament utters distinct protests against the corrupt and injurious interference of the Pope with the affairs of the Church of England, and supports the king against the Pope in the contest with Scotland. When a papal interdict was laid upon Flanders, English priests said mass in that country with bold defiance. Papal legates were threatened with stoning when they landed in England. In 1343 A.D. the Commons petitioned against papal appointments to vacant livings in despite of the rights of patrons or of the crown, and the king complained to the Pope of the appointment of foreigners, mostly suspicious persons," and reminds his Holiness that the successor of the Apostles was set over the LORD'S sheep to feed and not to shear them. The Parliament declared that they "neither could nor would tolerate such things any longer."

In 1351 A.D. the Statute of Provisors forbade any one to receive a papal provision or appointment; that is, a grant of the Pope superseding the right acquired by election, and conferring afresh the spiritual and temporal administration of See or Benefice. This practice had commenced in 1300 A.D., but had constantly been resisted. In 1353 A.D. the first of the celebrated statutes of "Præmunire" was passed, forbidding any appeal from the English courts, under pain of outlawry, perpetual imprisonment, or banishment from the land. Both these laws were reiterated at later periods. By the enlarged statute of Præmunire, passed in 1390 A.D., it was enacted that all persons procuring in the Court of Rome or elsewhere translations, processes, sentences of excommunication, bulls, instruments, or other things which touch the king, his crown, regality, or realm, should suffer the penalties of præmunire. "This act is one of the strongest defensive measures taken during the Middle Ages against Rome" (Stubbs). When Pope Urban V. referred to King John's submission and oath of fealty as the ground of his demands, it was declared by Parliament that John's submission had been made "without their assent and against his coronation oath," and they pledged themselves to resist such claims with all their power. That was the last ever heard of a papal over-lordship in the feudal sense over England. These statutes of Præmunire and Provisors remained the law of England, though allowed to fall into disuse when the policy of the Papacy avoided direct conflict, until in the hands of Henry VIII. they proved a weapon

of tremendous power, and hardly any new legislation was necessary, but simply the execution of laws already long existing, to complete the independence of the English Church. Whatever theories of the Papacy may have been held by many or few and acted upon from time to time in England, however far at some epochs the leaders of the Church may have committed themselves to Rome's extreme claims, history shows that the assertion of those claims was resisted whenever they came in conflict with the national spirit, that the general drift of English sentiment was towards independence, and that the steps needful to achieve that independence were almost all taken one hundred and eighty years before it was at last effected. While we may admit the subjection of the English Church to the Papacy in ways more or less defined and admitted through the Middle Ages, the facts show that such subjection was not looked upon as a matter of Divine right, and that the extremest claims of Hildebrand were not admitted. The Papacy had its part to play under Divine Providence, in aiding the Church to resist the tyranny of kings, and when that work was done its power ceased in England. Even Sir Thomas More and those who thought with him were not troubled at the rejection of papal control: their opposition was to the royal assumption of supremacy over the Church.

Conclusion. We may fitly conclude in the words of Dean Church: "The lesson of history, I think, is this, not that all the good which might have been hoped for to society has followed from the appearance of the Christian religion in the forefront of human life; not that in this willful and blundering world, so full of misused gifts and wasted opportunities and disappointed promise, mistake and mischief have never been in its train; not that in the nations where it has gained a footing it has mastered their besetting sins, the falsehood of one, the ferocity of another, the characteristic sensuality, the characteristic arrogance of others. But history teaches us this: that in tracing back the course of human improvement we come, in one case after another, upon Christianity as the source from which improvement derived its principle and its motive; we find no other source adequate to account for the new spring of amendment; and, without it, no other sources of good could have been relied upon."

Authorities: Bede's Ecclesiastical History (trans. in Bohn's Library), Irish Primitive Church, by Daniel De Vinné, St. Patrick's Confession (Mignè), Murray's Ireland and her Church, Bright's Early English Church, Archbishop Trench's Lectures on Mediæval Church History, Maclear's Conversion of the Celts, Maclear's Conversion of the English, Churton's Early English Church, Green's History of the English People, Stubbs' Constitutional History of England.

REV. PROF. W. J. GOLD.

Bull. The name given to the Letters of the Pope, whose authority, whether for temporary or constitutional purposes, is paramount. The name is taken from the leaden seal (Bulla) attached by a silken string (if it be a Bull of Grace) or by a hempen cord (if it be a Bull of Justice). This globular seal bears upon one side the representation of the Apostles SS. Peter and Paul, and on the other the name of the reigning Pontiff. The Bull is issued from the papal Chancery. There are also Consistorial Bulls; i.e., those issued by the advice and consent of the Cardinals in Consistory, by whom they are signed. The matter of the Bull may be of comparatively private nature, or it may relate to public matters of a nation, or of an order, or it may be binding upon the whole Roman obedience, or it may lay down certain constitutional principles, as did the famous Bull Unam Sanetam.

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Burial. While it was customary among the heathen, yet the whole surroundings accompanying the act of burial among Christians were so marked and so reverent, that they stamped the rite as Christian. Julian, the apostate emperor, 363 A.D., acknowledged that austerity of life, hospitality, and rever ent burial of the dead were the powerful influences that gave Christians the conversion of the empire. It had its motive in the faith in the Resurrection, and, therefore, the body that GOD would so care for as to bring again from its dust must be reverently laid away. To attack this loving care of the Christian for the remains of his loved one was a controlling cause why so many martyrs were burnt by heathen magistrates. honorable burial of our LORD'S Body by Joseph of Arimathea was the pattern upon which the Christian based his care of his dead. But in times of persecution it was not always possible to bestow this care, and interment was often very hurried. Yet when Polycarp was burnt, his bones and ashes were gathered up, without hindrance, by the brethren. To be buried beside the remains of a martyr was always accounted honorable. At first burials were made anywhere it was most convenient outside of the city, as burials within were illegal. But care was had to obtain, whenever possible, a cemetery of their own, and their right to it was generally conceded. At Alexandria they had them openly. In Rome, where the soil was such that subterranean burial could be carried out, the Christians dug out those underground galleries-already begun by the heathen-for burial purposes, and these catacombs became places of refuge of safe meeting as well as of burial, since the tunnels as they were dug out ramified so as to form an underground labyrinth. When peace came, churches were frequently erected upon the tombs of saints. The early Christians, whenever they could do so, made their burial rites contrast notably with those of the heathen. The body was kept unburied as long as convenient. It was decently prepared for burial by the

friends and relatives, not by hired persons, swathed in linen with decent orderliness. It was laid out either at the house or in the church. The watchers over it sang hymns and anthems. They buried in open day, with something of triumphal pomp, with hymns of hope and faith and scriptural anthems. When the grave was reached these hymns and prayers were renewed, and an address closed the service.

Burial rites must vary very much with the circumstances and with the development of the people, but the simpler and plainer a Christian burial can be conducted the better it is. Two chief things should be made prominent, the faith in the future Resurrection and the loving care which for CHRIST's sake we should show the dead. The history of the Order for the Burial of the Dead is simple and clear. It has little relation to the ancient offices, taking from the Sarum use the first two opening sentences, and adding the third. The corpse was to be carried either to the church or the grave at once, apparently customarily to the grave. Then the noble anthem, "Man that is born of woman," was recited. Its use here was peculiar to the English Prayer-Book. It was to be said either by the priest alone or together with the clerks. The priest was to cast the earth upon the body in the first Prayer-Book (1549 A.D.); this was changed to the present use in the second PrayerBook (1552 A.D.). The sentence of committal, as also the final prayer, expressed a strong hope in the blessedness of the deceased. In the first Prayer-Book, if the body was borne to the grave at once, the Psalms cxvi., cxxxix., cxlvi., were to be recited in the church afterwards, together with the Lesson (1 Cor. xv. 20 sq.), and then the suffrages and a final prayer were recited. The second Prayer-Book apparently, after

the anthem, "I heard a voice," ordered the Lesson to be read at the grave, and then, with the Kyries and the LORD's Prayer, closed with the final prayers nearly as in our Prayer-Book. The Prayer-Book of 1662 A.D. rearranged this material into the present order, which, with important verbal changes, we follow. These verbal changes consist in an entire omission of any reference to hopes especially for the deceased, the dropping of the Kyries, and the continuous recital of the two Psalms (xxxix. and xc.), whereas the Gloria is placed at the end of each Psalm in the English PrayerBook.

This order for the Burial of the Dead is unapproached in simple and severe grandeur and lofty faith and perfect harmony with only what is revealed to us in Holy Scripture. Its clear proclamation of the RESURRECTION, its freedom from all that men may wish to believe, however naturally, yet without clear warrant, its solemn lesson to the living, make it a most noble office. And yet no office in the Prayer-Book has so many of its rubrics systematically violated, in ordinary cases at least. Comparatively little watchfulness is used to observe the rubric as to those who can have the office read over them. The anthem shall be said or sung while the corpse is made ready for the grave, not after it is placed. It is not incumbent on the minister to recite it by himself. The purpose evidently is to have the choir or the assembled friends recite it. This is true also of the other anthem, "I heard a voice." Then the minister alone should recite the LORD's Prayer. Much of the impressiveness and solemnity of this beautiful office is lost by these infractions of the rubric.

Burse. The case for the fair linen cloth with which the elements are to be covered when all have communed.

Cabala. The mystic theosophy_ of the later speculative Jewish schools. Its contents are much older than its written documents, which apparently date from the tenth century, though these are attributed to a much later age. The Cabala is based upon a mystic and allegorizing arithmetic, which is arbitrarily applied to the doctrine of the nature and attributes of GOD. It had its uses, doubtless, in counteracting the grosser anthropomorphic teachings of the Talmud, beside which it seems to have flowed in a parallel and distinct channel, though probably the Rabbi of the Talmud was also a master of the Cabala. It may indirectly

have had a great influence in the allegorizing tendency in the interpretation of Holy Scripture, which overreached itself in the Church. The tendency to a mystical interpretation has always been very great in both the older Jewish, and in the Christian Church, based, indeed, upon the sanction and example of our LORD and of St. Paul, but running to a most absurd excess. Cabala has many points of contact with Gnosticism. It was essentially pantheistic. That it should have some points of agreement with Christian doctrine is to be anticipated, yet they are very few. It supplied Philo, probably, with the idea of the Logos

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which prepared the way for understanding the revelation of the Word of God. It seems to hold to a triple condition of our soul, the intellectual, the moral, and the spiritual energy of our life. The freedom of will in fallen man is asserted.

Calendar. A table of the order of days in the year, such as is prefixed to our PrayerBook. The earliest tables of this class were very ancient, being civil as well as ecclesiastical. There is, however, combined with this calendar ecclesiastically a catalogue of the saints whose commemorations fall upon fixed days in the civil year. Our own calendar is a most admirably simple and clear arrangement for practical use. The follow ing outline gives but the chief points. A thorough discussion would require a volume. The word calendar is derived from the Old Latin caleo, to call, from the custom of having the Pontifex announce to the people, called together, the holy days. Later the practice of posting in public places the proper holidays came in; hence the title calendæ, and in late Latin calendarium. The division of days was necessarily solar; that of weeks by Divine law. The months were originally lunar. Now it is remarkable that these three modes of marking time have no common divisor, yet are constantly commingled. It causes a great deal of embarrassment, and yet there is no means of making a change. By intercalations and arbitrary enactments points of time for new eras can be arranged as it was by Julius Cæsar or by Pope Gregory XIII. (1582 A.D.), or restorations effected as the several rectifications of the calculation for Easter; but these three incommensurable measures of time are unalterable.

To us the week is practically the most important, but as it is incommensurable with the 365 days 6 hrs. 48′ 46′′ of the actual solar year, there must be some mode by which we can connect the two without con

fusing them. This was simply done by using the first seven letters of the alphabet for the days of the week, marking the 1st day of January as A, and so on. The letter for the 31st of December is A. Now as Sunday does not fall yearly in the same place, each letter becomes in its turn the Sunday letter. If Sunday fall on January 1, as it will in 1899 A.D., then A will be the Sunday letter. Again, if there be a leapyear, as the day intercalated falls between the 28th of February and the 1st of March, the Sunday letter with which the year begins, as, for instance, in 1896 A.D., E, will fall back, as in the date just given, to D, for the Sunday letter being E, and the 29th of February lettered D, as also March 1 is lettered D, the intercalated day is as it were a dies non in the calendar, but carries back the Sunday letter. So that the 23d of February being E in 1896, the eighth day after is March 1, which is lettered D, and this will be the letter for the rest of the year. Whenever the Sunday letter for any year

is found, the date of any given day of the week can be readily found in the calendar by this simple contrivance.

The rule to find the Sunday letter for the remainder of this century is very clear, and is thus given in the first of the Tables for finding Easter-day: "To find the Dominical or Sunday Letter, according to the Calendar, until the year 1899, inclusive, add to the year of our LORD its fourth part, omitting fractions, divide the sum by 7, and if there be no remainder, then A is the Sunday Letter; but if any number remain, then the Letter standing against that number in the small annexed Table is the Sunday Letter.

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"NOTE. That in all Bissextile or LeapYears, the Letter found as above will be the Sunday Letter from the intercalated day to the end of the year."

But it was a small part of the work to arrange the Dominical Letter. A more difficult work was to adjust the proper time for the celebration of Easter. Since Easter was the Christian Feast standing in historical relation to the Jewish Passover, it was necessarily governed by similar rules. Then Easter, as did the Passover, depended on the full moon, or, rather, on the fourteenth day of the moon. The Council of Nice, 325 A.D., laid down four postulates concerning it:

I. That the 21st of March must be taken as the day of the vernal equinox.

II. That the full moon happening upon or next after the 21st of March is to be taken for the full moon of the month Nisan.

III. That the next Lord's Day next after that full moon is to be observed as Easter Day.

IV. But if the full moon fall on a Sunday, the next Sunday is to be Easter Day.

But these are calendar, not astronomical full moons, since the lunar cycle being 29.5305 days, the equation proposed by the golden cycle of Meton of alternate twentynine and thirty days was not accurate enough after a lapse of time, and this slight error every nineteen years was sufficient to produce a serious inconvenience after a time. It was with some trouble that the corrections were effected. The Paschal term is that period within which the moon can pass through her lunation before and immediately after the vernal equinox. The Paschal moon is new at the earliest on March 8, so that it is full on the 21st (both days being counted), that is, fourteen days after. But should the full moon fall after the 21st, the latest date is April 18, since from March 8 to April 5 is twenty-nine days, and April 18 is the latest full moon, so that the latest Sunday on which Easter can fall is April 25. Easter-day, then, may fall on any Sunday between March 22 and April 25, both inclusive, immediately after a full moon. Since, then, the calendar date of the full moon may