7 NOVEMBER 1863, Page 2

The energies of the same great journal have recently been

devoted to a precautionlay undermining of Dr. Stanley's theological character, lest, perchance, there should be any danger as to the Dublin Arch- bishopric. It has inserted a series of articles on his heresies, many of them of a very obscure nature. Dr. Stanley is guilty of thinking that David's lament over Jonathan is " a lay, a battle-song, a dirge, such as we have in our own early literature. . . . It is not a psalm or hymn, the name of God hardly occurring in it." This the Record thinks very shocking. If David is to be supposed to have written an " In Memoriam " Mre Tennyson, Tennyson might possibly be supposed to write psalms like David, and then where should we be ? But it has worse things against Dr. Stanley than these. He has just come back from Italy and bad an " interview with the Pope," and he " would be a very fit medium for any political attempt to bring about. a hollow con- cordat with Rome, by the sacrifice of the Irish branch of the Irish Protestant Church." But then there can be little danger of the Arch- bishopric ; even Dr. Stanley would not climb the branch and then cut it away beneath him, unless he has much more simplicity than the Record. The Record feels a little anxious, but winds up with obscure grandeur. " Nor are we to be disheartened, although the Great Enemyshould be able to marshal against the authority of God's Word all the intellectual as well as all the moral strength of a world in which Satan still maintains his usarped dominions." We are surprised to see the Record attributing " moral " strength to Satan's allies. We agree, indeed, that the Record is generally pitted against the moral strength of both World and Church, but doubt whether it is seemly and pious to assume that " God's Word " is in the same predicament.