Inspiration and Interpretation:

SEVEN SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD: WITH PRELIMINARY REMARKS:

BEING AN ANSWER TO A VOLUME ENTITLED

"Essays and Reviews."

BY THE

REV. JOHN WILLIAM BURGON, M.A.,

FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, AND SELECT PREACHER.

I CANNOT HOLD MY PEACE, BECAUSE THOU HAST HEARD, O MY SOUL, THE SOUND OF THE TRUMPET, THE ALARM OF WAR.

Oxford & London: J. H. and Jas. PARKER. 1861.

Printed by Messrs. Parker, Cornmarket, Oxford.

TO THE REVEREND

WILLIAM SEWELL, D.D.,

FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE: LATE PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD; AND LATE WARDEN OF ST. PETER'S COLLEGE, RADLEY.

My dear Friend,

Let me have the satisfaction of inscribing this volume to yourself. I know of no one who has more faithfully devoted himself to the sacred cause of Christian Education: no one to whom those blessed Truths are more precious, which of late have been so unscrupulously assailed, and which the ensuing pages are humbly designed to uphold in their integrity.

Affectionately yours,

JOHN W. BURGON.

ΔΕΙ ΓΑΡ ΚΑΙ ἉΙΡΕΣΕΙΣ ἘΝ ὙΜΙΝ ΕΙΝΑΙ, ἹΝΑ ΟΙ ΔΟΚΙΜΟΙ ΦΑΝΕΡΟΙ ΓΕΝΩΝΤΑΙ ἘΝ ὙΜΙΝ.

Ac si diceret: Ob hoc hæreseôn non statim divinitus eradicantur auctores, ut probati manifesti fiant; id est, ut unusquisque quam tenax, et fidelis, et fixus Catholicæ fidei sit amator, appareat. Et revera cum quæque novitas ebullit, statim cernitur frumentorum gravitas, et levitas palearum: tunc sine magno molimine excutitur ab areâ, quod nullo pondere intra aream tenebatur.—Vincentius Lirinensis, Adversus Hæreses, § 20.

PREFACE.

I am unwilling that this volume should go forth to the world without some account of its origin and of its contents.

I. Appointed last year, (without solicitation on his part,) to the office of Select Preacher, the present writer was called upon at the commencement of the October Term to address the University. His Sermon, (the first in the volume,) was simply intended to embody the advice which he had already orally given to every Undergraduate who had sought counsel at his hands for many years past in Oxford; advice which, to say the truth, he was almost weary of repeating. Nothing more weighty or more apposite, at all events, presented itself, for an introductory address: nor has a review of the current of religious opinion, either before or since, produced any change of opinion as to the importance of what was on that first occasion advocated.

Another, and another, and yet another preaching turn unexpectedly presented itself, in the course of the same Term; and the IInd, IIIrd, and IVth of the ensuing Sermons, (preached on alternate Sundays,) were the result. The study of the Bible had been advocated in the first Sermon; but it was urged from a hundred quarters that a considerable amount of unbelief prevailed respecting that very Book for which it was evident that the preacher claimed entire perfection and absolute supremacy. The singular fallacy of these last days, that Natural Science, in some unexplained manner, has already demolished,—or is inevitably destined to demolish[1],—the Book of Divine Revelation, appeared to be the fallacy which had emerged into most offensive prominence; and to this, he accordingly addressed himself.—It will not, surely, be thought by any one who reads the IInd of these Sermons that its author is so weak as to look with jealousy on the progress of Physical Science. His alarm does not arise from the cultivation of the noblest study but one,—viz. the study of God's Works; but from the prevalent neglect of the noblest study of all,—viz. the study of God's Word. His quarrel is not with the Professors of Natural Science, but with those who are mere Pretenders to it. Moreover, he makes no secret of his displeasure at the undue importance which has of late been claimed for Natural Science; and which is sufficiently implied by the prevalent fashion of naming it without any distinguishing epithet,—as "Science," absolutely: just as if Theology were not a Science also[2]!

It is not necessary to speak particularly of the contents of the next two Sermons; except to say that the train of thought thus started conducted the author inevitably over ground which was already occupied in the public mind by a volume which had already obtained some notoriety, and which has since become altogether infamous. Enough of the contents of that unhappy production I had read to be convinced that in a literary, certainly in a Theological point of view, it was a most worthless performance; and I recognized with equal sorrow and alarm that it was but the matured expression of opinions which had been fostering for years in certain quarters: opinions which, occasionally, had been ventilated from the University pulpit; or which had been deliberately advocated in print[3]; and which it was now hinted were formidably maintained, and would be found hard to answer. Astonished, (not by any means for the first time in my life,) at the apathy which seemed to prevail on questions of such vital moment, I determined at all events not to be a party to a craven silence; and denounced from the University pulpit with hearty indignation that whole system of unbelief, (if system it can be called,) which has been growing up for years among us[4]; and which, I was and am convinced, must be openly met,—not silently ignored until the mischief becomes unmanageable: met, too, by building up men in the Truth: above all, by giving Theological instruction to those who are destined to become Professors of Theological Science, and are about to undertake the cure of souls.... In this spirit, I asserted the opposite fundamental verities; and so, would have been content to dismiss the "Essays and Reviews" from my thoughts for ever.

But in the meantime, the respectability of the authors of that volume had attracted to their work an increasing share of notice. An able article in the 'Westminster Review' first aroused public attention. A still abler in the 'Quarterly' awoke the Church to a sense of the enormity of the offence which had been committed. It was not that danger was apprehended. There could be but one opinion as to the essential impotence of the attack. But the circumstances which aroused public indignation were twofold. First,—Here was a conspiracy against the Faith. Seven Critics had avowedly combined "to illustrate the advantage derivable to the cause of Religious and Moral Truth from a free handling, in a becoming spirit, of" what they were pleased to characterize as "subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language, and from traditional modes of treatment[5]." They prefixed to their joint labours the expression of a "hope that their volume would be received as an attempt" to do this. That their allusion was to the Creeds, Articles, Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments,—was obvious. Equally obvious was the un-becoming spirit, the arrogance and the hostility,—with which all those sacred things were handled by those seven writers.

Secondly,—"Essays and Reviews" attracted notice because six of its authors were Ministers of the Church of England. Here were six Clergymen openly making light of their sacred profession, and apparently worse than regardless of their Ordination vows. As an infidel but certainly in this instance most truthful as well as able Reviewer, remarked concerning the work in question,—"In their ordinary, if not plain sense, there has been discarded the Word of God, the Creation, the Fall, the Redemption, Justification, Regeneration, and Salvation, Miracles, Inspiration, Prophecy, Heaven and Hell, Eternal punishment and a Day of Judgment, Creeds, Liturgies, and Articles, the truth of Jewish History and of Gospel narrative; a sense of doubt thrown over even the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and Ascension, the Divinity of the Second Person, and the personality of the Third. It may be that this is a true view of Christianity; but we insist, in the name of common sense, that it is a new view. Surely it is waste of time to argue that it is agreeable to Scripture, and not contrary to the Canons[6]!"

This twofold phenomenon, which has shocked the public conscience and perplexed common sense, has been the sole cause of the amount of attention "Essays and Reviews" has excited. Laymen might have combined to produce this volume, almost unheeded. An obscure Clergyman might possibly have published any one of these seven papers; and with a rebuke for his immorality or his insolence, he would probably have been unnoticed by the world. But here is a combination of Doctors of Divinity; Professors; Fellows, nay Heads of Colleges; Instructors of England's Youth; Teachers of Religion; Chaplains to Royal and noble personages!

The Jesuitical notice prefixed to the book, (deprecating the idea that its authors should be held responsible, except severally for their several articles,) completed the scandal. As if seven men, each armed with his own appropriate weapon of violence, breaking into a house, and spreading ruin around them, could "readily be understood," (to quote their own language,) to incur each a limited responsibility!... Charity doubtless would have rejoiced to spread her mantle over any one or more of the number, "who, on seeing the extravagantly vicious manner in which some of his associates had performed their part, had openly declared his disgust and abhorrence of such unfaithfulness, and had withdrawn his name[7],"—with some expression of sorrow for the irreparable mischief which he had actively helped to occasion. But long before nine editions of "Essays and Reviews" had appeared, it became apparent that each of the living authors, (for one, alas, has already gone to his account!) has made himself responsible for the whole work[8]. Nay, there are some of the number who make no secret of their satisfaction at what has happened; and seem desirous only that their volume should obtain a yet wider circulation[9].

"Essays and Reviews," as already stated, with the turn of the year, experienced a vast increase of notoriety. The entire Bench of Bishops condemned the book; and both Houses of Convocation endorsed the Episcopal censure. A very careful perusal of the volume became necessary; and it proved to be infinitely weaker in point of ability, infinitely more fatal in point of intention, than could have been suspected from the known respectability and position of its authors. A clamour also arose for a Reply to these Seven Champions,—not exactly of Christendom. "You condemn: but why do you not reply?"—became quite a popular form of reproach.

It was useless to urge, in private, such considerations as the following:—To reply to a volume of 433 pages, each of which contains a fallacy or a falsity,—while some pages are packed full of both,—is a serious undertaking.—Besides, the book has been replied to already; for there is scarcely an objection urged within its pages which was not better urged, and effectually disposed of, in the last century. Nay, every good Review of "Essays and Reviews" has answered the book: for what signify the details, if the fundamental lie has been detected, and unrelentingly exposed? The man who plants his heel on the serpent's head, and refuses to withdraw it, can afford to disregard the tortuous writhings of the long supple body.—Again. These attacks are seven. Must seven men with "concert and comparison,"—with leisure and inclination too,—be procured to demolish this flimsy compound of dogmatism and unbelief? to disperse these cloudy doubts, and to analyse and repel these many ambiguous statements?—Once more. A fool can assert, and in a moment, that 'There is no God.' But it requires a wise man to refute the lie; and his refutation will probably demand a volume.—I say, it was in vain to urge such considerations as these. "Why does no one reply to these 'Essays and Reviews?'" was asked,—till, I apprehend, pens enough have been unsheathed to do the work effectually.

It struck me, in the meantime, that I should be employing myself not unprofitably at such a juncture, if (laying aside all other work for a month or two) I were to attempt a short reply to the volume in question, myself; and to combine it with the publication of the Sermons I had already preached; and which I had the comfort of learning had not only been favourably received by some of those who heard them, but had attracted some slight notice outside the University also. Accordingly, with not a little reluctance, in the month of February I began. The Destructive part of the argument, I determined to address to the younger members of my own College,—men with whom I live in daily intimacy, and on terms of private friendship; and whom, above all, I desired to protect against the influence of that "moral poison," (as the Bishop of Exeter describes it,) of which the world has lately heard so much. The Constructive part of the argument, I resolved to complete as opportunities might offer, in my Sermons. One such opportunity presented itself early in Lent; of which I availed myself to establish some fundamental truths relative to the Interpretation of Holy Writ[10]. By favour of the Vice Chancellor, the promise of yet another preaching turn was obtained. It appeared best to avail myself of the opportunity to consider the chief objections which have been brought against the Bible from the marvellous character of some of its contents[11]. An University Sermon preached exactly ten years ago, (on the Doctrine of Accommodation,) supplied an important link in the argument.... Thus the unscientific shape in which the present volume appears, is explained; and its want of exact method is accounted for. Let me add, that but for the forward state of what I like to regard as the Constructive part of the present volume,—(and which I am not without a humble hope will secure for the rest a more than ephemeral interest,)—I should have been slow indeed to undertake the distasteful task of answering a work of which I have long since been heartily weary.

II. And now, for a few words on the general question which has called out these "Sermons" and "Preliminary Remarks."

At the root of the whole mischief of these last days lies disbelief in the Bible as the Word of God. This is the fundamental error. Dangerous enough is it to the moral and intellectual nature of Man, when the authority of the Church is doubted: or rather, this is the first downward step. Not to believe that Christ bequeathed to His Church a Divine form of polity: not to believe that He set officers over His Kingdom, of which He is Himself the sole invisible Head: not to believe that He invested His Apostles with authority to delegate to others the Commission He had Himself conveyed to them; and that, by virtue of such transmitted powers, the Church has authority in the Ministration of God's Word and Sacraments: not to believe that He vouchsafed to His Church extraordinary guidance at the first, and that He vouchsafes to His Church effectual guidance still:—an utter want of faith in the Church and her Ordinances, is the first step, I repeat, in a soul's downward progress.

Next comes an impatience of Creeds. It has been falsely asserted by an Essayist and Reviewer that "Constantine inaugurated the principle of doctrinal limitation[12];" by which is meant that definitions of Faith date from the Council of Nicæa, a.d. 325: the truth being that the famous [OE]cumenical Council which was then held did but rule the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father: whereas elaborate Creeds exist of a far earlier date; as all are aware. Creeds indeed are coeval with Christianity itself[13]. What need to add that when the decree of the first [OE]cumenical Council concerning the true faith in the adorable Trinity has been set at nought, all other decisions of the Church are disregarded also?

That marvellous concrete fact, the Bible,—has next to be encountered. Unmethodical as it seems to be, the Bible arrests a man in his impatient course with many a significant History,—many an unmanageable precept. Much of its contents, it is true, are of such a nature that they may be glossed over,—explained away,—ignored,—set aside. The reading is doubtful: or there are two opinions, (perhaps twenty,) concerning it: or the language may be figurative: or the words are not to be pressed too closely: or a perverse logic may pretend to find in it agreeable confirmation, instead of stern reproof. Not a few places there are, however, which defy any such handling; stubborn rocks which refuse to yield a single trace of the wished-for vegetation, in return for the most determined husbandry. Nothing of the kind ever will or can be made to germinate upon them. They are absolutely unmanageable, and hopelessly in the way of the man who is determined to cast off restraint,—whether spiritual, intellectual, or moral. He is for being lawless; or at least, without law: but the Bible is unmistakably an external Law, and is opposed to him. The Bible is his enemy, and the Bible claims to be Divine.... What need to state that to deny the Inspiration of the Bible, and to undermine its authority, and to explain away its statements, becomes the next object of the unbeliever? It is precisely at this stage of his downward progress that public attention is excited, and public indignation aroused. The Church, (like its Divine Author,) may be outraged, and few will be found to remonstrate. The Creeds may be assailed, (especially "one unhappy Creed!"), and it is hinted that these are speculative matters, on which none should pronounce too dogmatically. But (thank God!) Englishmen yet love their Bible; and Common Sense is able to see that an uninspired Bible is no Bible at all. At the assault upon the Bible, therefore, as I said, an indignant outcry is raised,—as now.

Systematically to cope with such irreverence, such entire ignorance rather of all the questions at issue, from the pulpit, would be clearly impracticable. Men require to be taught "which be the first principles." They require to be educated in Divinity. And thus we come back to the fontal source of all the mischief of our own Day. We, in Oxford, give no systematic training to our Candidates for Holy Orders. We do not even attempt it. Nay, incredible to relate, we do not give them any training at all. And the fatal consequences of this omission are to be seen on every side. A youth no sooner gets through "the Schools," and graduates in Arts, than he inquires for a Curacy. During the three months, perhaps six, of interval, he makes himself sufficiently acquainted with the Alphabet of Divinity to enable him to satisfy the very modest requirements of the Bishop's examination; after which he finds himself at once actively engaged in the Bishopric of souls and the profession of Theology. It is probable that the realities of the Ministerial calling, and the eminently practical nature of such an one's daily life, will keep this man from error. Not so his—more, shall I say, or less?—fortunate fellow-student; who, by hard self-relying labour, having obtained distinction in the Schools, finds himself in the enjoyment of a fellowship, and straightway engages in the work of tuition. This man, whose fellowship is his "title" for orders, studies Divinity, or neglects it, at pleasure: and if he studies it, he studies it in his own way. He has read a little of heathen Ethics with great care; or he has trained himself to the exactness of mathematical inference. With the purest idiom of ancient Greece he has also made himself very familiar. He is besides a Master of Arts. What need to add that such an one is not therefore a Master of Divinity? possesses no qualification which authorizes him to dogmatize about any one department of Theological Science?

The plain truth is, (and it is really better to speak plainly,)—the plain truth is, that the offensive Sermons one sometimes hears from the University pulpit,—the offensive Essays and Reviews which have lately occasioned so much public scandal,—are the work of men who discuss that which they do not understand; profess that which they were never, at any time of their life, taught. Their method of handling a text is altogether unique and extraordinary. Their remarks concerning Divine things are even puerile. Their very citations of Scripture are incorrect. Their cool affectation of superiority of knowledge, their claim to intellectual power, would be laughable, were the subject less solemn and important. Speculations so feeble that they sound like the cries of an infant in the dark, are insinuated to be the sublime views of a bold and original thinker, who "has by a Divine help been enabled to plant his foot somewhere beyond the waves of Time!"—Doubts so badly expressed that they read like the confused utterance of one in his sleep, claim to be regarded as the legacy of one who is about to "depart hence before the natural term, worn out with intellectual toil[14]!" ... In a word,—Men who have never been taught and trained, but have grown up in a miserable self-evolved system of their own,—(with a little of Hegel, and a little of Schleiermacher, and a little of Strauss,)—cannot but trouble the peace of the Church. They deny her authority. (They are not aware of her claims.) They cavil at her Creeds. (They are not acquainted with their history.) They doubt the authenticity of the very Bible. (They know wondrous little about it.)—How did the Bible attain its actual shape? They cannot tell. How has it been guarded? They are careless to inquire. How does it come to us as 'the Bible,'—the Book of all books? It is best not to discuss a question which must infallibly bring forward the Church as "a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ[15]." Men are even impatient to publish their private prejudice that it is to be interpreted like any other book; that it is inspired in no other sense than Sophocles and Plato. "The principle of private judgment," (it is said,) "puts Conscience between us and the Bible, making Conscience the supreme interpreter[16]." "Hence," it is said, "we use the Bible,—some consciously, some unconsciously,—not to override, but to evoke the voice of Conscience." (p. 44.) "The Book of this Law," (as Hooker phrases it,) is dethroned; and Man usurps the vacant seat, and becomes a Law unto himself! God Himself is dethroned, in effect; and Man becomes his own god.

To cope systematically with all this from the University pulpit, as already remarked, is plainly impossible. The preacher must take up the question at some definite stage, and arrest the false teachers there. "That wicked,"—or rather "the lawless one," (ὁ ἄνομος, as he is called in 2 Thess. ii. 8,)—must be bound, hand and foot, somewhere in his career of lawlessness; and in these Sermons the threshold of the Bible has been chosen as the place for the conflict. My life for his life. I will slay or be slain on the very portal of Holy Scripture. With the young, you begin at the beginning,—"the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments;" and they must be further instructed in the Church Catechism. But the foundation cannot be laid afresh with the full-grown. It is idle to talk about the authority of the Church to men who do not believe in the Bible. It is useless to dispute about Creeds with men who know nothing of the origin and history of Christianity. Reserving the true method of teaching for those who alone are capable of being taught, we are constrained to argue with men of full age about the Inspiration and Interpretation of the Bible.—If in the ensuing Sermons the principles handled are so very elementary, it is because the available limits were so very narrow,—while the field over which Unbelief has spread itself, is so very broad.

III. When a few words have been added concerning the manner in which I have executed my task, this Preface shall be brought to a close.—If the style of the present Sermons,—considering the auditory, and above all considering the subject,—shall be thought by competent judges not sufficiently dignified in parts, I will bow to their decision without remonstrance. Everybody can divine the defence which would be set up; but perhaps it may not be quite a valid defence. A man feels strongly and warmly; writes fast and freely; is determined to be clearly understood: is weary of the dignified conventionalities under which Scepticism loves to conceal itself when it comes abroad. Perhaps some expressions which may be permitted in delivery, ought to be remodelled when a Sermon is sent to the press.

But with regard to the ensuing Preliminary remarks, I shall not so easily be persuaded to think that I am mistaken as to the style in which Essayists and Reviewers are to be dealt with[17]. Some respectable persons, I doubt not, will think my treatment of them harsh and uncharitable. I invite them to consider that we do not expect blasphemy from Ministers of the Gospel,—irreligion from the teachers of youth,—infidelity from the Professor's chair: nor are we called upon to tolerate it either. I have the misfortune to concur entirely with the verdict pronounced by the Bishop of Exeter on the subject of 'Essays and Reviews.' Let those who feel little jealousy for God's honour measure out in grains their censure of a volume, the confessed tendency of which is to sap the foundation of Faith, and to introduce irreligion with a flood-tide. Such shall not, at all events, be my method. Private regard, if it is to weigh largely with him who stands up for God's Truth, should first have weighed a little with those by whom it has been most grievously outraged. It may suit these Authors to wrap up their shameful meaning in a cloud of words; but their Reviewer avails himself of that Christian liberty to which they themselves so systematically lay claim, mercilessly to uncover their baseness, and uncompromisingly to denounce it. If I may declare my mind freely, punctilious courtesy in dealing with such opinions, becomes a species of treason against Him after whose Name we are called, and whom we profess to serve. Seven men may combine to handle the things of God, it seems, in the most outrageous manner; while themselves are to be the objects of consideration, tenderness, respect! I cannot see their title to any consideration at all.

It will be found, it is hoped, that when these writers have the courage to descend to argument, there I have gladly met them on their own ground, and sought to refute them: but to reason is no part of their plan. Unsupported dicta on every subject on which they treat: doubts promiscuously insinuated, but never once openly and honestly maintained: cool assumptions of intellectual superiority for themselves and their infidel allies: contemptuous allusions to the names which the respectable part of mankind agrees to hold in honour: foul imputations against the honesty of the Clergy:—this is all their method! The favourite cant of these writers is, that no one should shrink from free discussion, or fear the results of Criticism. Why then do not they themselves criticize? Why do not they reason? Charity herself after weighing these Essays carefully has no alternative but to assume that the Authors either have not the courage, or that they lack the ability, to descend to a free discussion, and risk all on a stand-up fight. A kind of guerilla warfare: half a dozen arrows, and a hasty retreat: such is their mode of attack! But this method, though it may occasion annoyance, is quite unworthy of an honest inquirer, and never can be decisive of anything. It is the cowardly expedient of men who shrink from scrutiny, and dread exposure. Nothing so easy, for example, as to repeat the old commonplace about "irreconcileable discrepancies" in the "Synoptical Gospels:" but why, instead, are we not told, which these irreconcileable discrepancies are? For my own part, I freely renew in this place the challenge I gave in my IIIrd Sermon[18]. Let any one of these Gentlemen publicly and definitely lay his finger on one or more of these contradictory statements in the Gospels, during term-time; and within a week I hereby undertake publicly to refute him in the Divinity School of this University: and our peers shall be our judges.

Gentlemen who come abroad in the fashion above described, have no right to complain if they encounter rough usage on the road. When Critics are clamorous for the "free handling" of Divine Truth, they must not be surprised to find themselves freely handled too. If free discussion is to be the order of the day, then let there be free discussion of "Essays and Reviews," as well as of the Bible. Six Clergymen of the Church of England who enter upon a crusade against the Faith of the Church of England must not be astonished if they are looked upon in the light of immoral characters, and treated as such. Accordingly, I have handled them just as freely as they have handled the Prophets, Apostles, and Evangelists of Christ.

I cannot therefore pretend to offer anything in extenuation of the style in which I have examined the statements of these Essayists and Reviewers. Perfectly sensible as I am of the gracefulness of highly courteous language in controversial writing, I will not so far violate my own conviction of what is right as to bandy compliments on such an occasion as this. This is no literary misunderstanding, or I could have been amicable enough: no private or personal matter, or I could have flung it from me with unconcern. No other than an attempt to destroy Man's dearest hopes, is this infamous book: no other than an insult, the grossest imaginable, offered to the Majesty of Heaven; an attack, the more foul because it is so insidious, against the Everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ. In such a cause I will not so far give in to the smooth fashion of a supple and indifferent age, as to pay these seven writers a single compliment which they will care to accept. The most foolish composition of the seven is Dr. Temple's; the most mischievous is Professor Jowett's: but the germ of the last Essay is contained in the first; the foolishness of the first Essay is abundantly shared by the last: while the evidence of correspondence of sentiment between the two writers is unmistakable. The most unphilosophical Essay, (where all are unphilosophical,) is Professor Powell's: the most insolent, Dr. Williams': the most immoral, Mr. Wilson's: the most shallow, Mr. Goodwin's; the most irrelevant, Mr. Pattison's. Not one of these writers shews himself capable of recognizing the true logical result of his own opinions: of drawing from his own premisses their one inevitable issue. Not one of them has had the manliness to speak out, and to say plainly what he means. They seem to deny the Divinity of Christ, and the Personality of the Holy Ghost: but how reluctant is a reader to believe that they really mean it! Quite inevitable is it that these clerical critics must choose between two alternatives. Either they hold opinions which make it impossible that they should retain Orders in the Church of England, and yet be honest men; or they have expressed themselves with such culpable inaccuracy and ambiguity, as shews that they are altogether incompetent to handle the Science of Theology.—Gladly would one give them the benefit of a third alternative: but I see not that any remains.

If it should be thought strange that one thinking so meanly of 'Essays and Reviews' should have produced a yet larger volume in reply to them, it must suffice to point out that the refutation of a fallacy is almost of necessity the ampler writing.—Or again, if it be remarked that by far the largest part of what I have written is directed against the hundred pages of Professor Jowett, the explanation is still obvious. For not only does that concluding Essay of his bring to a terribly practical issue the speculative doubts and difficulties which had been started by all his predecessors; (namely, doubts as to (1) the relation in which the Bible stands to Man;—(2) the nature of Prophecy;—(3) the reality of Miracles;—(4) the worth of Creeds and formularies;—(5) the authenticity of Genesis;—(6) the basis on which Revelation is by the Church of England supposed to rest;)—by proposing that we should henceforth regard the Bible as a book no otherwise inspired than Sophocles and Plato:—not only does Professor Jowett's essay discharge this fatal office; but his style is somewhat peculiar; and what he says, cannot always be effectually disposed of by a few words. Let me explain.

There is a certain form of fallacy of statement in which this Gentleman's writings abound, which calls aloud for notice and signal reprobation. He has a marvellous aptitude, (one would fain hope through some intellectual infirmity,) of connecting together in the same sentence two or three clauses; one or two of which shall be true as Heaven, while the other is false as Hell. The reply to such a sentence is impossible, without many words,—far more than Mr. Jowett's sentences commonly deserve.—Sometimes he strings together several heads of thought; of which enumeration the kindest thing which can be said is that it betrays an utter want of intellectual perspective. To unravel even a part of this tangled web so as to expose its argumentative worthlessness, soon fills a page.... But there is another kind of fallacy which the same gentleman wields with immense effect, and in the use of which he is a great master; which, because it was absolutely impossible to handle it fitly in the proper place, shall be briefly adverted to, here. I proceed to describe it not without indignation; for I am profoundly struck by the intellectual perversity, not to say the moral obliquity, which has so entirely made this vile instrument its own.

The fallacy then is of this nature. When Professor Jowett would put forth something especially deserving of reprehension,—some sentiment or opinion which he either knows, or ought to know, that the whole Church will resent with unqualified abhorrence,—he assumes a plaintive manner, and puts himself into an interesting attitude; sometimes even folds his hands, as if in prayer. He then begins by (1) throwing out a remark of real beauty, and so conciliating for himself an indulgent hearing; or (2) he goes off on some Moral question, and so defeats attention; or (3) he delivers himself of some undeniable truth, and so disarms censure; or (4) he says something of an entirely equivocal kind, and so leaves his reader at fault. Candour, of course, gives him the benefit of the doubt. It is not till the sentence is well advanced, or till it is examined by the fatal light of its context, that one is shewn what the ambiguous writer really was intending. A cloven foot appears at last; but it is instantly withdrawn, with a shuffle; and you experience a scowl or a sneer, as the case may be, for your extreme unkindness in inquiring whether it was not a cloven foot you saw?... Meanwhile, the learned Professor has gone off in alia omnia, with a look of earnestness which challenges respect, and a vagueness of diction which at once discourages pursuit and defeats inquiry. The fish invariably ends by disappearing in a cloud of his own ink.

It shall suffice to have said thus much. These pages must now be suffered to go forth; not without a hearty aspiration that a blessing may attend them from Him sine Quo nihil est validum, nihil sanctum; and that what was intended for the strength and help of those who want helping and strengthening, (I am thinking particularly of what has been offered on the subject of Inspiration,) may not prove misleading or perplexing to any.

Oriel, June 24th, 1861.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The reader is invited to refer to the passages cited in the present volume, at [pp. lxxxvii]. and [lxxxviii].

[2] See [p. 47] to p. 50. Also [Appendix (B.)]

[3] In illustration of what is meant, may be particularized a highly objectionable Sermon which Dr. Temple preached before the University some years ago, and which occasioned no small offence to many who heard it,—as all in Oxford well remember. It was almost as unsound as the same writer's Essay "On the Education of the World," which, to the best of my remembrance, it strongly resembled.—A printed Sermon by Dr. Temple may also be referred to, "preached on Act-Sunday, July 1, 1860, before the University of Oxford, during the Meeting of the British Association," entitled "The present Relations of Science to Religion."—Professor Jowett's handling of the Doctrine of the Atonement, needs only to be referred to.

[4] Page 80 to 82.

[5] "To the Reader," prefixed to Essays and Reviews.

[6] 'Neo-Christianity' in the Westminster Review, No. 36.—How true is what follows:—"The Bible is one; and it is too late now to propose to divide it. We shall only point out that the moral value of the Gospel teaching becomes suspicious when the whole miraculous element is discarded.

"We certainly do think that the Gospels assert a miraculous Incarnation, Resurrection, and Ascension; and that the Epistles teach Original Sin, and a vicarious Sacrifice. If this be doubted by our authors, it is sufficient for us to say that such is the impression they have created on all ages of Christians."

"We desire that if the Bible, or any part of it be retained as Holy Writ, it be defended as a miraculous gift to Man, and not by distorting the principles of modern Science. Let the Essayists be assured that there exists no middle course; that there is no Inspiration more than is natural, yet not supernatural; no Theology which can abandon its doctrines and retain its authority."

Lastly, with what sickening and almost Satanic power, does the same writer invite the Essayists and Reviewers to make shipwreck of their souls in the following terrible passage. And yet, who sees not that on their principles absolute and professed unbelief is inevitable? He says:—"How long shall this last? Until men have the courage to bury their dead convictions out of sight, and the greater courage to form new. All honour to these writers for the boldness with which they have, at great risk, urged their opinions. But what is wanted is strength not merely to face the world, but to face one's own conclusions. We know the cost. It must be endured. Let each who has thought and felt for himself, ask himself first what he does not believe, and then, if wise or needful, avow it. Next let him ask himself what he does believe, and pursue it to its true and full conclusions. Neither loose accommodation nor sonorous principles will long give them rest. It is of as little use to surrender the more glaring contradictions of Science as it is to evaporate discredited doctrine into a few vague precepts. That end will not be attained by our authors by subliming Religion into an emotion, and making an armistice with Science. It will not be obtained by any unreal adaptation; nor by this, which is, of all recent adaptations, at once the most able, the most earnest, and the most suicidal."

[7] The Bishop of Exeter to Dr. Temple.

[8] The Bishop of Manchester exactly expressed the general opinion, when he said,—"Nor will I for a single moment, however my personal feelings might interfere, conceal my deliberate conviction that every partner in that work is equally guilty."—(Guardian, Ap. 10, 1861, p. 341.) But the most faithful language of all came from the Bishop of Exeter in his crushing reply to an inquiry put to him by Dr. Temple. "I avow that I hold every one of the seven persons acting together for such an object to be alike responsible for the several acts of every individual among them in executing their avowed common purpose."

[9] A letter from Dr. Rowland Williams, which has appeared in the newspapers, contains the following language with reference to the American reprint of "Essays and Reviews:"—"I confess myself personally gratified that my own work, and that of my far more distinguished coadjutors, with whom it is sufficient honour for me to be included in the same volume, should have obtained the honour of a reprint in another hemisphere. Still more would I hail the circumstance as an auspicious token of the sympathy which should prevail between kindred nations, as regards subjects of the highest import, and as a sign of the prospects of Christian freedom beyond the Atlantic....

"I have not yet discovered any community or individual possessing the right to cast the first stone at those who interpret the Bible in freedom, and who subordinate its letter to its spirit, or its parts to its whole. Even if Holy Scripture were, as is popularly fancied, the foundation,—and not, as I believe, the expression and the memorial,—of Religious Truth in man, it would be absurd to render it honours essentially different from those which it claims for itself, or to make it a master, where it claims only to be a servant."

[10] [Serm. V.]

[11] [See Sermon VII.]

[12] Essays and Reviews, p. 166.

[13] See [p. clxxvii.] to p. clxxxiii.

[14] Mr. Jowett in Essays and Reviews, p. 433.

[15] Article XX.

[16] Essays and Reviews, p. 45.

[17] It should perhaps be stated that the edition of "Essays and Reviews" which I have employed is the Third (1860.)

[18] pp. 72-3.

CONTENTS.

SERMON I.

St. John vi. 68. Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of Eternal Life.

the study of the bible recommended; and a method of studying it described.

SERMON II.

Hebrews xi. 3. Through Faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God.

natural science and theological science.

SERMON III.

2 Tim. iii. 16. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.

inspiration of scripture.—gospel difficulties.—the word of god infallible.—other sciences subordinate to theological science.

SERMON IV.

St. John xvii. 17. Thy Word is Truth.

the plenary inspiration of every part of the bible, vindicated and explained.—nature of inspiration.—the text of scripture.

SUPPLEMENT TO SERMON IV.

SERMON V.

St. Matthew iv. 4. It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

interpretation of holy scripture.—inspired interpretation.—the bible is not to be interpreted like any other book.—god, (not man,) the real author of the bible.

SERMON VI.

Romans x. 6-9. But the Righteousness which is of Faith speaketh on this wise,—'Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into Heaven?' (that is, to bring Christ down from above:) or, 'Who shall descend into the deep?' (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) But what saith it? 'The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thine heart:' that is, the word of Faith, which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

the doctrine of arbitrary scriptural accommodation considered.

SERMON VII.

St. Mark xii. 24. Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the Scriptures, neither the power of God.

the marvels of holy scripture,—moral and physical.—jael's deed defended.—miracles vindicated.

APPENDIX.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS

ON A VOLUME ENTITLED

"ESSAYS AND REVIEWS:"

ADDRESSED TO THE

UNDERGRADUATE MEMBERS OF ORIEL COLLEGE.

My Friends,—I have determined to address to yourselves the present remarks; their subject, a volume which has recently obtained such a degree of notoriety that it is almost superfluous even to specify it by name.

With unfeigned reluctance do I mix myself up in this strife; but the course of events, when I first took up my pen, left me almost without an alternative. Far more reluctant should I be to seem to make yourselves the arbiters of Theological controversy. But in truth nothing is further from my present intention. As a plain matter of fact, you are called upon weekly, at St. Mary's, to listen to Sermons which indicate plainly enough the troubled state of the religious atmosphere; and which, of late, (too frequently alas!) have inevitably assumed a controversial aspect. The Sermons here published, (which form the constructive part of the present volume,) were preached expressly with an eye to your advantage, and were intended to warn you against (what I deemed) a very serious danger. It is only natural therefore that I should desire to address to yourselves the present remarks likewise. You are, naturally, objects of special solicitude to myself in this place,—you, with whom I live as among friends, and for not a few of whom I entertain a sincere affection. And in addressing you, I am not by any means inviting you to exercise your own theological judgment; for that would indeed be an absurd proceeding. I am simply seeking to instruct you, and to guide you with mine.

The case of "Essays and Reviews" is, in fact, altogether exceptional,—whether the respectability of its authors, the wickedness of its contents, or the reception which it has met with, is considered. That volume embodies the infidel spirit of the present day. Turn where you will, you encounter some criticism upon it. No advertizing column but contains repeated mention of its name. To ignore so flagrant a scandal to the Church, is quite impossible. I have thought it better, therefore, to encounter the danger in this straightforward way; and I proceed, without further preamble, to remark briefly on each of the Seven "Essays and Reviews," in order.

I. The feeblest essay in the volume is the first. It is not without grave concern that I transcribe the name of its amiable, and (in every relation of private life) truly excellent author,—"Frederick Temple, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen; Head Master of Rugby School; Chaplain to the Earl of Denbigh." Under the imposing title of "The Education of the World," we are presented with a worthless allegory, which has all the faults of a schoolboy's theme, (incorrect grammar included;) and not one of the excellencies which ought to characterize the product of a ripened understanding,—the work of a Doctor of Divinity in the English Church[19].

Dr. Temple's opening speculations are at once unintelligible, irrelevant, and untrue. But they are immaterial; and serve only to lug in, (not to introduce,) the assumption that the "power, whereby the present ever gathers into itself the results of the past, transforms the human race into a colossal man whose life reaches from the Creation to the day of Judgment. The successive generations of men are days in this man's life. The discoveries and inventions which characterize the different epochs of the world's history are his works. The creeds and doctrines, the opinions and principles of the successive ages, are his thoughts." [Alas, that the Creeds and Doctrines of the Church should be spoken of by a Professor of Divinity as the "thoughts" of men!] "The state of society at different times are (sic) his manners. He grows in knowledge, in self-control, in visible size, just as we do. And his education is in the same way and for the same reason precisely similar to ours. All this is no figure, but only a compendious statement of a very comprehensive fact." (p. 3.) "We may then," (he repeats,) "rightly speak of a childhood, a youth, and a manhood of the world." (p. 4.) And the process of this development of the colossal man, "corresponds, stage by stage, with the process by which the infant is trained for youth, and the youth for manhood. This training has three stages. In childhood, we are subject to positive rules which we cannot understand, but are bound implicitly to obey. In youth we are subject to the influence of example, and soon break loose from all rules, unless illustrated and enforced by the higher teaching which example imparts. In manhood we are comparatively free from external restraints, and if we are to learn, must be our own instructors. First comes the Law, then the Son of Man, then the Gift of the Spirit. The world was once a child under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the Father. Then, when the fit season had arrived, the Example to which all ages should turn was sent to teach men what they ought to be. Then the human race was left to itself, to be guided by the teaching of the Spirit within." (p. 5.)—So very weak an analogy, (where everything is assumed, and nothing proved,) singular to relate, is drawn out into distressing tenuity through no less than 49 pages.

The Answer to all this is sufficiently obvious, as well as sufficiently damaging; and need not be delayed for a minute.

That the Human Race has made considerable progress in Knowledge, from first to last,—is a mere truism. That, in the civilized world, one generation is the heir of the generations which went before it, is what no one requires to be told. Thus the discovery of the compass, of printing, and of the steam-engine, have been epochs in human knowledge from which a start was made by all civilized nations, without retrogression. But such facts supply no warrant for transforming the whole Human Race into one Colossal Man; do not constitute any reason whatever why the 6000 years of recorded time should be divided into three periods corresponding with the Infancy, Boyhood, and Manhood of an Individual.

To this theory, however, Dr. Temple even ostentatiously commits himself. It is the purpose of his entire Essay, to establish the fanciful analogy already indicated,—which is proclaimed to be "no figure" but a "fact." (p. 3.) But an educated man of ordinary intelligence, on reaching p. 7, (where the writer first discloses his view,) summons the known facts of History to his recollection; and before he proceeds any further, reasons with himself somewhat as follows:—

The Human Race had inhabited the Earth's surface for upwards of sixteen hundred years, when it was destroyed by the waters of the Flood. After that, the descendants of Noah peopled the earth's surface; a transaction of which the sole authentic record is to be found in the xth chapter of the Book of Genesis. Egypt first emerged into importance,—as history and monuments conspire to prove; having had a peculiar language and literature, Arts and Sciences, anterior to the period of the Exodus, viz. b.c. 1491. Meanwhile, the chart of History directs our attention to four great Empires: the Assyrian Empire, which was swallowed up by the Persian; and the Persian, which was merged in the Grecian Empire. The Roman Empire came last. [How Law can be considered to be the characteristic of all or any part of this period, I am at a loss to discover. Neither do I see any indication of puling Infancy here.] These four great Empires of the world had run their course when our Saviour Christ was born. God sent His own Eternal Son into the world; and lo, a change passed over the whole fabric of the world's polity. The old forms of social life became, as it were, dissolved; or rather, a new spirit had been breathed into them all. A new era had commenced; and a new principle henceforth animated mankind. That peculiar system of Divine Laws which for 1500 years had separated the Hebrew race from all the nations of the earth,—the Mosaic Law which had hitherto been the inheritance of a single family, isolated in Canaan,—was explained and expanded by its Divine Author. The ancient promises to Abraham and his posterity were declared in their application to be co-extensive with the whole race of Mankind by faith embracing them. Henceforth, the kingdoms of the world were proclaimed the kingdoms of Christ, and Mankind became for the first time subject to a written Law. The Laws of Christ's Kingdom, the doctrines of Christ's Church, henceforth become supreme. Thus, when a Christian Sovereign is crowned, the Bible is solemnly placed in his hands; and it is required of him that he promise, on his oath, "to the utmost of his power, to maintain the Laws of God." "When you see this Orb set under this Cross," (says the Archbishop, on delivering those insignia of Royalty,) "remember that the whole World is subject to the power and empire of Christ our Redeemer ... so that no man can reign happily, who ... directs not all his actions according to His Laws." ... No further change in the order of things is anywhere intimated. The Faith hath been ἅπαξ,—once and for ever,—delivered to the Saints. Forsaken, it may be: by many, (alas!) it will be forsaken before the consummation of all things: but it will not itself cease. Heaven and Earth shall pass away; but Christ's Word, never. Not one jot nor one tittle of the Law shall fail.... Such, in brief outline, is the World's true history,—past, present, future. Does it correspond with Dr. Temple's account? That may be very soon seen. He calls the human race a Colossal Man; and says that it passes through three stages,—Infancy, Boyhood, Manhood: and that during those three stages, it is governed by three corresponding principles,—Law, Example, Conscience. How does Dr. Temple establish the first?

The Jews, (he says,) were subject to Law from the period of the Exode to the coming of Christ.—We listen to the statement of a familiar fact without surprise: but we are inclined to express some stronger feeling than surprise when we discover that this is the whole of the proof concerning the infancy of the Colossal Man! Does this writer then mean to tell us that the Jews were all Mankind? If they were not the Colossal Man,—if, instead of being the whole Human Race, they were one of the most inconsiderable and least known of the nations,—an isolated family, in fact, inhabiting Canaan,—what becomes of the analogy? We really pause for an answer.... Such a theory might have been expected, and would have been excusable if it had proceeded from a Sunday-school-boy of fifteen,—who had read the Bible indeed, but who was unacquainted with any book besides; and so, had jumped to the conclusion that the Jews were "the World." But Dr. Temple is a Schoolmaster, and therefore must surely know better. If he is fanciful enough to regard Mankind as a Colossal Man; and unphilosophical enough to consider that History is capable of being divided into three periods,—corresponding with Infancy, Boyhood, and Manhood; and forgetful enough of the facts of the case to assume that mankind was subject to Law until the coming of Christ, thenceforward to be emancipated therefrom:—yet Dr. Temple ought not to be so unreasonable as to pretend that Canaan was coextensive with the World,—the descendants of Abraham with the posterity of Noah! This amiable writer is inexcusable for excluding from the corporate entity of the Human Race the four great Empires of the world, (to say nothing of primæval Egypt and mysterious India;) and for the sake of elaborating a worthless allegory, identifying the least of all people with the Colossal Man, who, (according to his own account of the matter,) represents the aggregate of all the nations.

Once more. The Mosaic Law was not given till b.c. 1491. But the world was then upwards of 2500 years old. Far more than one-third, therefore, of recorded time had already elapsed. How does it happen that the theory under consideration gives no account of those 2500 years; or rather, does not begin to be applicable, until they have rolled away?

Other inconveniences await this silly speculation. Thus, the Colossal Man, (who was under Law from b.c. 1491 to the Christian æra,) proves to have been a marvellously precocious Infant. He wrote the Song of Moses in the year of his birth. Nay, he built pyramids,—had a Literature, Arts, and Sciences,—ages before he was born!... While yet an infant, he sang with Homer, and carved with Phidias, and philosophized with Aristotle,—as none have ever sung, or carved, or philosophized since. Times and fashions have altered, truly; but these three men are still our Masters in Philosophy, in Sculpture, and in Song. Awkward fact, that the colossal Infant should have lisped in a tongue which for copiousness of diction, and subtlety of expression, absolutely remains to this hour without a rival in the world!

Again. At this writer's dogmatic bidding, we force ourselves to think of Mankind as a Colossal Man, who has already gone through three ages,—Infancy, Boyhood, and Manhood. Old Age is therefore to come next. When, (if it is a fair question,) may it be expected that the sad period of senile decrepitude will set in? What proof, in the mean time, is there, (we venture to ask,) that this period of decay has not begun already? Or does Dr. Temple perhaps imagine that the world is moving in cycles, (to adopt the grotesque speculation of his own first pages); and that after having run through the curriculum of Infancy, Boyhood, and Manhood, the Colossal Man, (escaping, for some unexplained reason, the penalty of Old Age,) is to grow young again,—shake his rattle and cut his teeth afresh? There is a childish vivaciousness, a juvenile recklessness, a skittish impatience of restraint, in this amiable author's speculations, which powerfully corroborate such a view of the case.

"The Childhood of the World was over when our Lord appeared on earth," (p. 20.) says Dr. Temple. But when at last he is compelled to introduce to our notice his Colossal Child (p. 9, bottom.) now developed into a Colossal Youth, he is painfully sensible that the Law and the Prophets, (his schoolmasters,) (p. 8.) have not done their work quite so well as was to have been desired and expected. Some apology is necessary, (p. 13, bottom.) Two great results however he claims for their discipline:—"a settled national belief in the unity and spirituality of God, and an acknowledgement of the paramount importance of chastity as a point of morals." (p. 11.) Not however that the Law or the Prophets had taught them even this. (p. 10, top.) "It was in the Captivity, far from the temple and the sacrifices of the temple, that the Jewish people first learned that the spiritual part of worship could be separated from the ceremonial; and that of the two the spiritual was far the higher." (p. 10.) At Babylon also the Jews first distinctly learned the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. (p. 19.)—The Law, to be sure, had emphatically said,—"Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God[20]." The prophets, to be sure, had protested,—"Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice[21]." The Law and the Prophets, to be sure, are full of intimations that "mercy and not sacrifice[22]" is acceptable to the God of Heaven, and that God's Saints well understood the Doctrine[23]; as well as that a belief in the soul's immortality was a part of the instruction of the Jewish people. But what is all this to one who has an allegory to establish?...

The facts of the case, in the meantime, sorely perplex the truth-loving writer. "For it is undeniable that, in the time of our Lord, the Sadducees had lost all depth of spiritual feeling, whilst the Pharisees had succeeded in converting the Mosaic system into a mischievous idolatry of forms." (p. 10.) "In short, the Jewish nation had lost very much when John the Baptist came." (p. 11.) The hopelessly corrupt moral state of the youthful Colossus, described with such sickening force and power by the great Apostle in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, cannot have occurred to Dr. Temple's remembrance, for he says nothing about it. Certain withering denunciations of "a wicked and adulterous generation[24];"—of "adulterers and adulteresses[25];"—"serpents," a "generation of vipers," which should hardly "escape the damnation of Hell[26];"—ought to have reached him with a reproachful echo; but he is silent about them all. Still less would it have suited the amiable allegorizer to state that just midway in the educational process, his Colossal Youth, "as if" the sins of Samaria and of Sodom "were a very little thing," "was corrupted more than they in all his ways. As I live, saith the Lord God," (apostrophizing Dr. Temple's Colossal Youth, in allusion to his character and conduct in the middle of his infant career,) "Sodom thy sister hath not done as thou hast done: ... neither hath Samaria committed half thy sins; but thou hast multiplied thine abominations more than they.... Bear thine own shame for thy sins that thou hast committed more abominable than they. They are more righteous than thou[27]!" "Ah sinful nation, laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters!... From the sole of the foot even unto the head,"—[these words, remember, are addressed to the Colossal Infant just midway in his career; and Heaven and Earth are called upon to give ear, "for the Lord hath spoken!" ... From the sole to the crown,] "there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores.... Your hands are full of blood[28]!" ... About all this hideous retrospect of what was going on at school, Dr. Temple is silent.

In like manner, the great fact that our Redeemer came to republish His own two primæval ordinances,—the spiritual observance of the Sabbath and the sanctity of Marriage,—is quietly ignored. A youth utterly degraded by sensuality[29], and blinded by unbelief[30], is a terrible picture truly. Dr. Temple therefore boldly gives the lie direct to History, sacred and profane; and insists that "side by side with freedom from idolatry, there had grown up in the Jewish mind a chaster morality than was to be found elsewhere in the world:" (p. 12:) that "in chastity the Hebrews stood alone; and this virtue, which had grown up with them from their earliest days (!!!) was still in the vigour of fresh life when they were commissioned to give the Gospel to the nations." (p. 13.)

Behold the Colossal Child therefore, now grown into a Colossal "Youth too old for discipline." (p. 20, bottom.) "The tutors and governors have done their work;" (p. 20;) and he is now to go through a distinct process of training. Three tutors are now brought in to give the finishing touches to the youth's education, and to inaugurate his new career. Rome, Greece, and Asia,—which for some unexplained reason never become (according to Dr. Temple) any part of the Colossal Man at all,—now come in; "Rome to discipline the human will; Greece, the reason and taste; Asia, the spiritual imagination." (p. 19.) The Law and the Prophets had disciplined the Colossal Child's conscience,—with what success we have seen. At all events, Moses and Isaiah are for infants: we have passed the age for such helps as they could supply. In a word,—"The childhood of the world was over when our Lord appeared on earth." (p. 20.) It was "just the meeting-point of the Child and the Man; the brief interval which separates restraint from liberty." (p. 22.) "It was time that the second teacher of the Human Race should begin his labours. The second teacher is Example:" (p. 20:) and "the period of youth in the history of the world, when the human race was, as it were, put under the teaching of example, corresponds, of course, to the meeting point of the Law and the Gospel. The second stage therefore in the education of man was the presence of our Lord upon earth." (p. 24.)

Let not this stage of Dr. Temple's allegory suffer by being stated in any language besides his own. "The world" had been a Colossal Child for 1490 years. It was to be a Youth for almost 100. "The whole period from the closing of the Old Testament to the close of the New was the period of the world's youth,—the age of examples: and our Lord's presence was not the only influence of that kind which has acted upon the human race. Three companions were appointed by Providence to give their society to this creature whom God was educating, Greece, Rome, and the Early Church." (p. 26.) Behold then, our Blessed Redeemer with His "three companions." (I reproduce this blasphemous speculation with shame and sorrow.) What kind of Example He was, Dr. Temple omits to inform us. But Greece was "the brilliant social companion;"—Rome, "the bold and clever leader;"—the Early Church was "the earnest, heavenly-minded friend." (p. 26.) We are warned therefore against supposing that "our Lord's presence was the only influence of that kind," (i.e. example,) appointed by Providence for the creature whom God was educating. In a word: "The world was now grown old enough to be taught by seeing the lives of Saints, better than by hearing the words of Prophets." (pp. 28-9.)

We come now to the conclusion of the allegory; and Dr. Temple shall again speak for himself. "The age of reflection begins. From the storehouse of his youthful experience the Man begins to draw the principles of his life. The spirit or conscience comes to full strength and assumes the throne intended for him in the soul. As an accredited judge, invested with full powers, he sits in the tribunal of our inner kingdom, decides upon the past, and legislates upon the future without appeal except to himself. He decides not by what is beautiful, or noble, or soul-inspiring, but by what is right. Gradually he frames his code of laws, revising, adding, abrogating, as a wider and deeper experience gives him clearer light. He is the third great teacher and the last." (p. 31.)

And now, it will reasonably be asked,—May not the head-master of Rugby write a weak and foolish Essay on a subject which he evidently does not understand, without incurring so much not only of public ridicule, but of public obloquy also? If his own sixth-form boys do not laugh at him, need the Church feel aggrieved at what he has written? Where is the special irreligion in all this?

I answer,—The offence is of the very gravest character; and in the course of what follows, it will appear with sufficient plainness wherein it consists. For the moment,—singly considered,—it is my painful duty to condemn Dr. Temple's Essay on the following grounds.

Whereas the Church inculcates the paramount necessity of an external authoritative Law to guide all her members;—Creeds to define the foundation of their Faith,—a Catechism to teach them the necessary elements of Christian Doctrine,—the several forms of Prayer contained in the Prayer Book to instruct them further in Religion, as well as to prescribe their exact mode of worshipping Almighty God: whereas too the Church requires of her ministers subscription to Articles "for the avoiding of Diversities of Opinions, and for the establishing of Consent concerning true Religion;"—above all, since all Christian men alike are taught to acknowledge the external guidance of the Divine Law itself contained in Holy Scripture,—and every Minister of the Church of England is further called upon to admit the authority of that Divine Law as it is by the Church systematized, explained, upheld, enforced:—notwithstanding all this, Dr. Temple, who has solemnly taken the vows of a minister of the Church of England, and writes after his name that he is Sacræ Theologiæ Professor, in his present Essay more than insinuates, he openly teaches that Man "draws the principles of his life," (not from Revelation, but) "from the storehouse of experience:" that we live in an age when "the spirit or conscience having come to full strength, assumes the throne intended for him in the soul." This "spirit or conscience" "legislates without appeal except to himself." "He is the third great teacher and the last." (p. 31.) The world, in the days of its youth, could not "walk by reason and conscience alone:" (p. 21:) but it is not so with us, in these, the days of the world's manhood. "The spiritual power within us ... must be the rightful monarch of our lives." (p. 14.) We, (he says,) "walk by reason and conscience alone." (p. 21.)

Now this is none other than a deliberate dethroning of God; and a setting up of Self in His place. "A revelation speaking from without and not from within, is an external Law, and not a spirit,"—(p. 36,) says Dr. Temple. But I answer,—A revelation speaking from within, and not from without, is no revelation at all. "The thought of building a tower high enough to escape God's wrath, could enter into no man's dreams," (p. 7,) says Dr. Temple in the beginning of his Essay, in derision of the Old World. But he has carried out into act the very self-same thought, himself; and his "dreams" occupy the foremost place in 'Essays and Reviews.' He teaches, openly, that henceforth Man must learn by "obedience to the rules of his own mind." (p. 34.) He is express in declaring that "an external law" is for the age which is past, (pp. 34-5.) Ours is "an internal law;" "which bids us yield,"—not to the revealed Will of God, "but,—to the majesty of truth and justice; a law which is not imposed upon us by another power, but by our own enlightened will." (p. 35.) In this, the last stage of the Colossal Man's progress, Dr. Temple gives him four avenues of learning: (1) Experience, (2) Reflection, (3) Mistakes, (4) Contradiction. By withholding from this enumeration the Revealed Will of God, and the known sanctions of the Divine Law, he thrusts out God from every part of his scheme; denies that He is even one of the present teachers of the Human Race,—explaining that the time has even gone by when Christ could teach by example[31],—"for the faculty of Faith has turned inwards, and cannot now accent any outer manifestations of the truth of God[32]." (p. 24.)—By this Essay, Dr. Temple comes forward as the open abettor of the most boundless scepticism. Whether or no his statements be such as Ecclesiastical Courts take cognizance of, is to me a matter of profound unimportance. In the estimation of the whole Church, it can be entitled to but one sentence. "We use the Bible," (he tells us,) "not to override, but to evoke the voice of conscience." (p. 44.) "The current is all one way,—it evidently points to the identification of the Bible with the voice of conscience. The Bible, in fact, is hindered by its form from exercising a despotism (!) over the human spirit; if it could do that, it would become an outer law at once." (p. 45.) Even if men "could appeal to a revelation from Heaven, they would still be under the Law (!!!); for a Revelation speaking from without, and not from within, is an external Law, and not a Spirit." (p. 36.) "The principle of private judgment puts conscience between us and the Bible; making conscience the supreme interpreter, whom it may be a duty to enlighten, but whom it can never be a duty to disobey." (Ibid.)—Even those who look upon the observance of Sunday "as enjoined by an absolutely binding decree," are reproached as "thus at once putting themselves under a law." (p. 44.) ... Dr. Temple has written an Essay which he calls "an argument," and for which he claims "a drift." (p. 31.) That argument is neither more nor less than a direct assault on the Faith of Christian men; and carried out to its lawful results, can lead to nothing but open Infidelity;—which makes it a very solemn consideration that the author, (whose private worth is known to all,) should be a teacher of the youth of Christian England. That drift I deplore and condemn; and no considerations of private friendship, no sincere regard for the writer's private worth, shall deter me from recording my deliberate conviction that it is wholly incompatible with his Ordination vows.

I forbear to dive into the depth of irreligion and unbelief implied in what is contained from p. 37 to p. 40, and other parts of the present Essay: but I cannot abstain from asking why does this author,—who, in all the intercourse of private life, is so manly a character,—fall into the unmanly trick of his brother-Essayists, of insinuating what they dare not openly avow? The great master of this cloudy shuffling art is Mr. Jowett. Even where he and his associates in "free handling," are express and definite in their statements, yet, as their rule is prudently to abstain from adducing a single example of their meaning, it is only by their disingenuous reticence that they escape punishment or exposure. Thus, Dr. Temple speaks of "many of the doctrinal statements of the early Church" being "plainly unfitted for permanent use;" (p. 41;) but he prudently abstains from explaining which of those "doctrinal statements" he means. He goes on to remark:—"In fact, the Church of the Fathers claimed to do what not even the Apostles had claimed,—namely, not only to teach the Truth, but to clothe it in logical statements ... for all succeeding time." He is evidently alluding to "the forms in which the first ages of the Church defined the Truth;" [i.e. to the Creeds;] of which he says, we "yet refuse to be bound by them." (p. 44.) He goes on,—"It belongs to a later epoch to see 'the law within the law' which absorbs such statements into something higher than themselves." (p. 41.) But the writer of that sentence ought to have had the manliness to explain what that "higher something" is.

Dr. Temple's estimate of the corruptions of the Papacy is of a piece with the rest of what I must be excused for calling a most unworthy performance. "Purgatory," &c. (he says) "was in fact, neither more nor less than the old schoolmaster come back to bring some new scholars to Christ." (p. 42.) (Is the Romish fable of Purgatory then to be put on the same footing as the Divine Revelation to Moses on Sinai?) It follows,—"When the work was done, men began to discover that the Law was no longer necessary." (Ibid.) (Is it thus that the head-master of Rugby accounts for, and explains the Reformation?) "The time was come when it was fit to trust to the conscience as the supreme guide." (Ibid.) "At the Reformation, it might have seemed at first as if the study of theology were about to return. But in reality an entirely new lesson commenced,—the lesson of toleration. Toleration is the very opposite of dogmatism." (p. 43.) "Its tendency is to modify the early dogmatism by substituting the spirit for the letter, and practical religion for precise definitions of truth." (Ibid.) "The mature mind of our race is beginning to modify and soften the hardness and severity of the principles which its early manhood had elevated into immutable statements of truth. Men are beginning to take a wider view than they did. Physical science, researches into history, a more thorough knowledge of the world they inhabit, have enlarged our philosophy beyond the limits which bounded that of the Church of the Fathers. And all these have an influence, whether we will or no, on our determinations of religious truth. There are found to be more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in patristic theology. God's creation is a new book to be read by the side of His revelation, and to be interpreted as coming from Him. We can acknowledge the great value of the forms in which the first ages of the Church defined the truth, and yet refuse to be bound by them." (p. 43-4.) ... Who so unacquainted with the method of a certain school as not to understand the fatal meaning of generalities, false and foul as these?

It may occur to some persons to inquire whether St. Paul, in a well-known place, does not affirm, (somewhat as it is affirmed in this Essay,) that "the heir, as long as he is a child, ... is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father?" And that, "Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son ... to redeem them that were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of sons?" Does not St. Paul also go on to reproach men for "turning again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto they desired to be again in bondage?" saying, "ye observe[33] days, and months, and times, and years[34]." It is quite true that St. Paul says all this: and I would fain believe that a puerile misconception of the Apostle's meaning has betrayed the misguided author of the present Essay into a notion that he enjoys a species of Divine sanction for what he has written concerning "the Education of the World." I may add that St. Paul also declares, (in the same Epistle,) that "the Law was our pædagogus to bring us to Christ.... But after faith is come, we are no longer under a pædagogus[35]." He further adds an exhortation to the Galatians, (for it is still them whom he is addressing,)—"Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage[36]."—St. John moreover, in many places, insists upon the spiritual powers and privileges of believers, in a very remarkable manner,—the same St. John, the same 'Apostle of Love,' who says of a certain Doctrine which 'Essayists and Reviewers' write as if they disbelieved,—"If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds[37]."

But it does not require much knowledge of Divinity to make a man aware that St. Paul's meaning and intention is as widely removed from Dr. Temple's, as Truth is removed from falsehood: or rather, that the Apostle is flatly against him. St. Paul is not bent on explaining what has been the Education of the World, but on pointing out in what relation the Gospel of Christ stands to the Law of Moses. He is reproving men who, having been converted to Christianity, were for lapsing into Judaism. Certain of the Circumcision had been striving, in St. Paul's absence, to bring his Galatian converts under the bondage of the Levitical Law; assuring them that the Gospel would avail them nothing unless they were circumcised and obedient to the Jewish ritual. Hence the Apostle's vehemence, and the peculiar form which his instruction assumes.

The Christian dispensation, (the scheme of Man's Justification by Faith in Christ,) is the fulfilment, (St. Paul says,) of the covenant which God once solemnly made with Abraham. The Mosaic Law, (which was not given till 430 years after the time of Abraham,) is powerless to cancel that earlier covenant of Faith. What was the use of the Law, then? some one may ask. It was a supplementary, parenthetical, superadded thing, which came in, as it were, accidentally, for certain assignable purposes. But now that the original covenant of Faith has at length found fulfilment in the person of Christ, it were monstrous (argues the Apostle) to revert to Judaism: which was a species of prison-house where we suffered bondage until Messiah came to set us free. We were as prisoners, says the Apostle. We were also as children, (who, anciently, from the age of six to fourteen, used to be consigned by their father to the care of a slave called a 'pædagogus;' who was neither qualified nor allowed to teach them anything; but whose office it was to conduct them to school.) So brought to the School of Christ, where learning comes by Faith, (such is his argument,) let men beware how they revert to the carnal ordinances of the Jewish Law.

How different a view of our true state is thus discovered, from that which Dr. Temple describes! A glorious liberty is in reserve for us indeed[38]: a precious freedom is ours already. But it bears no resemblance whatever to that lawlessness (ἀνομία ) with which Dr. Temple seems to be enamoured. It is the correlation of slavery, not of obedience. It implies emancipation from the Levitical Law, not from the sanctions, however strict, of the Christian Church. The Doctrines of Christ's kingdom are the Christian's crown and joy. His "service is perfect freedom," and imparts to life all its sweetness.—Not only, therefore, (according to St. Paul's view of the matter,) were men not released from school at "the meeting point of the Law and the Gospel," (p. 24,) but they only began to go to School then[39]!

How different a view of the Education of the World does the Holy Spirit,—does our Lord Himself—furnish, from that which Dr. Temple here advocates!... Fallen, in the person of Adam, and made subject to the penalty of eternal death, behold Mankind from the very first taught to believe that they should be ultimately redeemed by One born of woman. Under the image of a son who remained in his father's house, the favoured descendants of Abraham are set before us: while the rest of the world is pourtrayed in the person of another son, who goes into a far country, and there wastes his substance with riotous living. Not when grown into a colossal "youth too old for discipline," (p. 20, bottom,) but in the day of his dire necessity, and when he begins to be sensible of his utter need, behold the heathen nations, (in the person of the poor prodigal,) arising, and going to their true Father, and in the fulness of their misery asking for a hired servant's place in the household. Behold too God's mercies in Christ set forth by "the first robe," (that robe of innocence which when Adam lost he knew that he was naked!) and the ring, and the shoes, and the fatted calf! Lastly, in the embrace which the Father, (while yet the offending but repentant son is a long way off,) runs to bestow,—behold how God loved the World!

But Dr. Temple may say,—My parable relates to one person: that which you have quoted pourtrays two, and thus all parallelism is lost. (In other words, our Lord's picture of "the Education of the World" is altogether unlike Dr. Temple's!)—Take, however, a parable which ought to suit exactly; for in it mankind are exhibited in the person of "a certain man."

This individual is represented as one who, as he travels, is by thieves stripped, wounded, and left half dead. Such then, by nature, is the state of the human race! Priest and Levite, who "look on him," but "pass by on the other side," set forth the Education of the World (!) until Christ came. A certain Samaritan, who has compassion on the naked and wounded wretch, goes to him, binds up his wounds, pours in oil and wine, sets him on his own beast, brings him to the inn, and takes care of him:—this one is Christ. The stranger's pence, and his promise to repay at his second coming what shall have been over-expended,—set forth, I suppose, that ministration of Christ's Word and Sacraments which Dr. Temple exercises.... Let me dismiss the subject by remarking that I find no countenance given by Holy Scripture to Dr. Temple's monstrous notions concerning the Infancy, the Youth, and the Manhood of the Colossal Man.

Our Saviour Christ is indeed set before us in Scripture as our great Exemplar[40]; and St. Paul calls upon us to be followers, or rather imitators, (μιμηταί), of himself; even as he was of Christ[41]. But this walking by example, did not supersede the walking by precept; neither was it to endure, (God forbid!) (as Dr. Temple emphatically says it was), (pp. 26: 28-9,) only for about a hundred years: still less was "Example," (the second Teacher of the Human Race,) straightway to find itself supplanted by "the Spirit or Conscience" of Man,—"the third great Teacher, and the last." What need to say that until His Second Coming to judge the world, we shall have no Teacher but Christ,—no other way proposed to us to walk in, but that which the Gospel discloses?

Neither is it true that the world has been old enough, for the last 1800 years, to be taught by "seeing the lives of Saints," (a sentiment worthy of the weakest of Romanists!) "better than by hearing the words of Prophets." (pp. 28-9.) The Church of Christ will for ever listen to the blessed accents of that "goodly fellowship," until she beholds Him by whose Spirit they spake[42], coming again to judgment. True that the object with which she will all along inform her children, will ever be that they may become conformed to the model of her Divine Lord. But "sound doctrine[43],"—embodied in a "form of sound words[44],"—constitutes that παρακαταθήκη, or "deposit," which is her proudest inheritance and her greatest treasure[45]: and impatience of it is a note of evil men, and of a season at which Prophecy points her awful finger[46].... "Lawlessness," (ἀνομία,) is discoursed of by the Spirit with a mysterious earnestness which it seems to me impossible to survey without mingled awe and terror lest one may become oneself involved in the threatened condemnation. I allude of course especially to what St. Paul says in his second Epistle to the Thessalonians; the language of which, to be understood, must be studied in the original[47].

Conscience has her office, doubtless; and a most important one it is. Conscience is the very candle of the Lord within us. But, (as I have elsewhere shewn,) it were base treason to speak of conscience as Essayists and Reviewers speak of it. With them, it is indeed impossible to argue. They must first withdraw from the cause which they have betrayed; cease to profess the teaching which they disbelieve; resign their commission in a Church to whose Doctrine and Discipline they openly proclaim themselves to be opposed. I will not argue with them, while they presume to write B.D. and D.D. after their names,—hold Chaplaincies,—preside over Schools and Colleges,—profess to lecture in Divinity,—officiate at the altars of the Church of England,—by virtue of their sacred office, and by virtue of that only, are instructors of youth. They cannot, (if they are in the full enjoyment of their faculties,) they cannot imagine, for a moment, that, as honest men, they can remain where they are! They must either recal their words or resign their stations!

But speaking to others, it will abundantly suffice to point out that such principles as the present Essay advocates are incompatible with the profession of Christianity in any country, and in any age. If the spirit or conscience of Man is to legislate "without appeal except to himself;" (p. 31;) if men are to "refuse to be bound" (p. 44.) by the Creeds of the Church; if the very Bible is not to be looked upon as "an outer law:" (p. 45:)—how is sentence ever to be pronounced with authority? how are men to know what they have to believe? how are we to enjoy the guidance of any "outer law" at all? I do not ask these questions as a clergyman; neither am I addressing those exclusively who have been admitted to the Christian priesthood. Common sense, ordinary piety, natural reverence, seem to cry out, and ask,—If the Church have no "authority in controversies of Faith[48];" if the three Creeds ought not "thoroughly to be received and believed[49];" if the Bible is not "an outer Law;"—where is Authority in things Divine to be sought for? What can be worthy of credit? Where are we to look for external guidance on this side the grave?... Surely, surely, common sense is outraged when she hears it insisted that the written Bible is a Revelation speaking not "from without," but "from within!" (pp. 36 and 45.) Surely it must be admitted that it were mere atheism to pretend that Man's "spirit or conscience, without appeal except to himself," shall henceforth be the governing principle of Mankind!

Let me in conclusion do this writer an act of justice, (for which he will not perhaps altogether thank me,) even while with shame and sorrow I now dismiss his Essay. Unpardonable as he is for having written thus; and wholly without excuse for having suffered nine editions of his blasphemous allegory to go forth to the world without apology, explanation, or retractation of any kind,—although he labours under a weight of competent censure without a parallel, I believe, in the annals of the English Church[50]: notwithstanding all this, I am bound to say that if the unbelievers of this generation think they have an ally in the man, Frederick Temple,—they are very much mistaken. That so pure a heart, and earnest a spirit, will never work itself free of its present bondage,—I should be sorry indeed to think. (But O the mischief which the head-master of Rugby School will have done in the meantime!) His misfortune (or rather fault) it has been, that he has really never studied Divinity; nor, in fact, knows anything at all about it,—as a volume of his, lately published, sufficiently shews. Apart from his opinions (!), he is a thoroughly amiable man; and—(with the same proviso!)—an excellent schoolmaster; but when he ventures upon the province of Theology, he shews himself something infinitely worse than a very bad Divine.

II. On turning the first page of the review which follows, "by Rowland Williams, D.D. Vice-Principal and Professor of Hebrew, St. David's College, Lampeter; Vicar of Broad Chalke, Wilts,"—we are made sensible that we are in company of a writer considerably in advance of Dr. Temple, though altogether of the same school. In fact, if Dr. Williams had not been Vice-Principal of a Theological College, and a Doctor of Divinity, one would have supposed him to be a complete infidel,—who found it convenient to vent his own unbelief in a highly laudatory review of the principles of the late Baron Bunsen. Hear him:—"When Bunsen asks 'How long shall we bear this fiction of an external Revelation,'—that is, of one violating the heart and conscience, instead of expressing itself through them;—or when he says, 'All this is delusion for those who believe it; but what is it in the mouths of those who teach it?'—Or when he exclaims, 'Oh the fools! who, if they do see the imminent perils of this age, think to ward them off by narrow-minded persecution'!—and when he repeats, 'Is it not time, in truth, to withdraw the veil from our misery? to tear off the mask from hypocrisy, and destroy that sham which is undermining all real ground under our feet? to point out the dangers which surround, nay, threaten already to engulf us?'—there will be some who think his language too vehement for good taste. Others will think burning words needed by the disease of our time. These will not quarrel on points of taste with a man who in our darkest perplexity has reared again the banner of Truth, and uttered thoughts which gave courage to the weak and sight to the blind. If Protestant Europe is to escape those shadows of the twelfth century which with ominous recurrence are closing around us, to Baron Bunsen will belong a foremost place among the champions of light and right." (pp. 92-3.)

But even the Prussian infidel is not advanced enough for the Vicar of Broad Chalke. Bunsen, it seems, was weak enough to believe that the prophet Jonah was a real personage. This evokes the following singular burst of critical indignation from the Reverend author of the present Essay:—"It provokes a smile on serious topics,"—(a kind of impropriety which the Vice-Principal of Lampeter will not commit except under protest and with an apology!)—"to observe the zeal with which our critic vindicates the personality of Jonah, and the originality of his hymn, (the latter being generally thought doubtful), while he proceeds to explain that the narrative of our book in which the hymn is imbedded, contains a late legend founded on misconception. One can imagine the cheers which the opening of such an essay might evoke in some of our circles, changing into indignation (!) as the distinguished foreigner developed his views. After this he might speak more gently of mythical theories." (p. 77.)

For the most part, however, the Vicar of Broad Chalke is able to cite the opinions of Bunsen with admiration and approval. They are both agreed that the Deluge "was but a prolonged play of the forces of fire and water rendering the primæval regions of North Asia uninhabitable, and urging the nations to new abodes." (Of what nature this "prolonged play" was, is however left unexplained: while "the forces of fire and water rendering primæval regions uninhabitable," and "urging nations to new abodes," has altogether a Herodotean sound.) "We learn approximately its antiquity, and infer limitation in its range from finding it recorded in the traditions of Iran and Palestine, (or of Japheth and Shem), but unknown to the Egyptians and Mongolians." (p. 56.) (A delightful method truly of attaining historical precision in a matter of this nature!) ... "In the half ideal, half traditional notices of the beginnings of our race compiled in Genesis, we are bid notice the combination of documents and the recurrence of barely consistent Genealogies." (Ibid.) Praise is at hand for "the firmness with which Bunsen relegates the long lives of the first patriarchs to the domain of legend, or of symbolical cycle." (p. 57.) "The historical portion begins with Abraham." (Ibid.)—After this admission, it is instructive to observe how the learned writer deals with the narrative. The Exode was "a struggle conducted by human means." (p. 59.) "Thus, as the pestilence of the Book of Kings becomes in Chronicles the more visible angel, so the avenger who slew the firstborn may have been the Bedouin host, (!) akin nearly to Jethro, and more remotely to Israel." (Ibid.) (It is really hardly worth stopping to point out that by 'Kings' the Reverend writer means 'the second Book of Samuel:' and to remind the reader that the Angel is mentioned as expressly in Samuel as in Chronicles[51]. Also, to ask what 'the Bedouin host' could have been doing in Egypt previous to the Exode?) "The passage of the Red Sea may be interpreted with the latitude of poetry." (Ibid.) "Moses would gladly have founded a free religious society, ... but the rudeness or hardness of his people's heart compelled him to a sacerdotal system and formal tablets of stone." (p. 62.) Nay, Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac was an act of obedience to "the fierce ritual of Syria, with the awe of a Divine voice:" (p. 61:) while the Divine command, in conformity with which Abraham spared to slay his son, is resolved into an allegory. "He trusted that the Father, whose voice from Heaven he heard at heart, was better pleased with mercy than with sacrifice, and this trust was his righteousness." (p. 61.) Dr. Williams straightway shews us how we may tread in the steps of faithful Abraham. The perpetual response of our hearts, (he says,) to principles of Reason and Right of our own tracing, is a truer sign of faith than deference to a supposed external authority. (p. 61.) ... According to this writer, therefore, Genesis and Exodus are pure fable!

The whole of Scripture, in the hands of this Doctor of Divinity, undergoes corresponding treatment. They who "twist Prophecy into harmony with the details of Gospel history, fall into inextricable contradictions." (pp. 64-5.) "The Book of Isaiah, as composed of elements of different eras," can only be accepted with a "modified theory of authorship and of prediction." (p. 68.) In the prophecy of Zechariah are "three distinct styles and aspects of affairs." (Ibid.) "The cursing Psalms," (!!!) he informs us, were not "evangelically inspired;" (p. 63;) and yet we are constrained to remember that the cixth Psalm (specially alluded to) is evangelically interpreted by St. Peter[52]. The true translation of Psalm xxii. 17, (learnedly discussed, long since, by Bishop Pearson,) is not "they pierced My hands and My feet,"—but "like a lion;" (notwithstanding that Pearson has shewn that the substitution of vau for yod in this place is one of the eighteen instances where the Scribes have tampered with the text[53]; and notwithstanding that this modern corruption of the Hebrew, as every one must see, makes the place almost nonsense[54].)—Is. vii. 14 does not refer to the miraculous birth of Christ, (p. 69,) (although St. Matthew is express in his assertion that it does.) There is, it seems, an elder and a later Isaiah, (p. 71.) The famous liiird chapter does not refer to Christ; but either to Jeremiah or to "the collective Israel,"—(p. 73,) (although it is at least seven times quoted, and expressly applied to our Saviour, in the New Testament[55].) Daniel, we are assured, belongs to different ages; and it is "certain, beyond fair doubt ... that those portions of the book, supposed to be specially predictive, are ... a history of past occurrences." (p. 69.) That "the book contains no predictions, except by analogy and type, can hardly be gainsaid." (pp. 76-7.) ... (If any of us had dogmatized as to Truth as these men do as to error, (remarks Dr. Pusey,) what scorn we should be held up to!) ... The Reverend author insolently adds,—"It is time for divines to recognize these things, since with their opportunities of study, the current error is as discreditable to them, as for the well-meaning crowd, who are taught to identify it with their creed, it is a matter of grave compassion." (p. 77.) "When so vast an induction on the destructive side has been gone through, it avails little that some passages may be doubtful; one perhaps in Zechariah, and one in Isaiah, capable of being made directly Messianic; and a chapter possibly in Deuteronomy foreshadowing the final fall of Jerusalem. Even these few cases, the remnant of so much confident rhetoric, tend to melt, if they are not already melted, in the crucible of searching enquiry." (pp. 69-70.) ... Our Doctor of Divinity, having reduced the prophecies "capable of being made" Messianic, to two,—breaks out into a strain of refined banter which is altogether his own, and which we presume is intended to stand in the place of argument. "If our German, [viz. Bunsen,] had ignored all that the masters of philology have proved on these subjects, his countrymen would have raised a storm of ridicule, at which he must have drowned himself in the Neckar." (p. 70.) A catastrophe so fatal to the cause of true Religion and sound learning may well point a paragraph!... But we must write gravely.

The absolute worthlessness of unsupported dicta such as these, ought to be apparent to all. It is useless to reason with a madman. We desiderate nothing so much as "searching enquiry," (p. 69,) but we are presented instead with something worse than random assertion. If the writer would state a single case, with its evidence,—we should know how to deal with him. We should examine his arguments seriatim; and either refute them, or admit their validity. From such "free handling," the cause of sacred Truth can never suffer. But when, in place of argument and evidence, we have merely bluster,—what is to be said? Pity and disregard are the only reply we can bestow; or our answers must be as brief as the calumny which provokes them. "How," (asks the Regius Professor of Hebrew,) "can such an undigested heap of errors receive a systematic answer in brief space, or in any one treatise or volume?"

"If any sincere Christian now asks, is not then our Saviour spoken of in Isaiah; let him open his New Testament, and ask therewith John the Baptist, whether he was Elias? If he finds the Baptist answering I am not, yet our Lord testifies that in spirit and power this was Elias; a little reflexion will shew how the historical representation in Isaiah liii. is of some suffering prophet or remnant, yet the truth and patience, the grief and triumph, have their highest fulfilment in Him who said, 'Father, not My will but Thine.'" (p. 74.) I have transcribed this passage to illustrate the miserable sophistry of the author. It is foretold by Malachi that before the great and terrible day of the Lord, Elijah is to come back to Earth[56]. John Baptist came in his "spirit and power[57]," but was not Elijah himself. How does it follow from this that Isaiah may have prophesied merely of qualities and not of a person? The only logical inference from his words would surely be, that Elijah is yet to come[58]!—Dr. Williams adds,—"We must not distort the prophets to prove the Divine Word incarnate, and then from the Incarnation reason back to the sense of prophecy." (p. 74.) Was not then the Divine Word incarnate?

The theory of one who writes like an open unbeliever concerning Divine things is really not worth developing: and yet, as I am examining an Essay which seems to be entirely built upon such a theory, it may be desirable, in this instance, that the deformity of the writer should be uncovered: especially since Dr. Williams writes such very dark English, that, until some of his sentences are translated, they are barely intelligible.

Anticipating that his doctrines may "alarm those who think that, apart from Omniscience belonging to the Jews, (!) the proper conclusion of reason is Atheism;"—(in other words, that the rejection of a belief in the inspiration of Prophecy will eventually conduct a man to the rejection of God Himself;) the Reverend writer declares that "it is not inconsistent with the idea that Almighty God has been pleased to educate men and nations, employing imagination no less than conscience, and suffering His lessons to play freely within the limits of humanity and its shortcomings." (p. 77.) (In other words, that what Scripture emphatically declares, and what men have for thousands of years believed to be inspired predictions of future events, are none other than the effusions of a lively imagination, or the suggestions of a well-informed conscience.) "The prophetical disquisitions," (p. 77,) therefore, are subject to error of every imaginable description; and possess no higher attributes than belong to any ordinary human work by "a master's hand." (p. 77.) "The Sacred Writers acknowledge themselves men of like passions with ourselves, and we are promised illumination from the Spirit which dwelt in them." (p. 78.) We may not think of the Sacred Writers as "passionless machines, and call Luther and Milton 'uninspired.'" (Ibid.) "The great result is to vindicate the work of the Eternal Spirit; that abiding influence which underlies all others, and in which converge all images of old time and means of grace now: temple, Scripture, finger, and Hand of God; and again, preaching, sacraments, waters which comfort, and flame which burns." (p. 78.) It follows,—"If such a Spirit did not dwell in the Church, the Bible would not be inspired, for the Bible is, before all things, the written voice of the congregation." (p. 78.) Offended Reason, (for Piety has no place here,) has not time to reclaim against so preposterous a statement; for it follows immediately,—"Bold as such a theory of Inspiration (!) may sound, it was the earliest creed of the Church, and it is the only one to which the facts of Scripture answer." (p. 78.) ... What reply can be offered to such an outrageous statement, but flat contradiction? What more effectual refutation of such a 'theory' (?) concerning Scripture, than simply to state it?

Let this miserable but conceited man yet further map out the nature of his own delusion respecting Prophecy. He applauds the wisdom of one who "accepts freely the belief of scholars, and yet does not despair of Hebrew Prophecy as a witness to the Kingdom of God:" (p. 70:) (that is, of one who, like Bunsen, altogether disbelieves in prophecy as prophecy, and yet is bent on finding something of an Evangelical character in the prophetic writings.) "The way of doing so left open to him, was to shew pervading the Prophets those deep truths which lie at the heart of Christianity, and to trace the growth of such ideas, the belief in a righteous God, and the nearness of Man to God, the power of prayer, and the victory of self-sacrificing patience, ever expanding in men's hearts, until the fulness of time came, and the ideal of the Divine thought was fulfilled in the Son of Man." (p. 70.) In other words, Christ was nothing more than the fullest development and impersonation of the best thoughts and feelings of the (so-called) prophets! He "fulfilled in His own person the highest aspiration of Hebrew seers and of mankind, thereby lifting the ancient words, so to speak, into a new and higher power; and therefore was recognized as having eminently the unction of a prophet whose words die not,—of a priest in a temple not made with hands,—and of a king in the realm of thought, delivering his people from a bondage of moral evil, worse than Egypt or Babylon." (pp. 74-5.) "A notion of foresight by vision of particulars, or a kind of clairvoyance," (p. 70,)—(such is this Doctor of Divinity's notion of the gift of prophecy!)—he deems inadmissible. "Literal prognostication," (p. 65,) is his abhorrence. He would eliminate the Messianic passages altogether. (pp. 65-6.) That Prophecy was miraculous, was a dream of the Fathers, (p. 66.) Even the notion that Prophecy is "a natural gift, consistent with fallibility," (p. 70,) Dr. Williams rejects as an unwarrantable addition to the "moral and metaphysical basis of Prophecy." (p. 70.) Bunsen was for admitting that addition. "One would wish," (says the Vicar of Broad Chalke,) "he might have intended only the power of seeing the ideal in the actual, or of tracing the Divine Government in the movements of men. He seems to mean more than presentiment or sagacity: and this element in his system requires proof." (pp. 70-1.) ... This, from a Doctor of Divinity! a Professor of Hebrew! the Vice-Principal of a Theological College! a shepherd of souls!

We are left to infer that "the Fall of Adam represents ideally the circumscription of our spirits in limits of flesh and time:" (p. 88:) that Christ is "the moral Saviour of mankind;" (p. 80;) and that Salvation from evil is to be attained by the conformity of our souls to a "religious idea" which was "brought to perfection" in Christ. (p. 80.) This "religious idea" "is the thought of the Eternal." (Ibid.) In other words, "Salvation from evil" is "through sharing the Saviour's Spirit." (p. 87.)—We are further left to infer that "Justification by faith means the peace of mind, or sense of Divine approval, which comes of trust in a righteous God:" (p. 80:) that "Regeneration is a correspondent giving of insight, or an awakening of forces of the soul: Resurrection, a spiritual quickening: Salvation, our deliverance, not from the life-giving God, but from evil and darkness." (p. 81.) ... And this from a Clergyman who has just subscribed, "willingly and ex animo," the three Articles in the 36th Canon!... After such specimens of Divinity, we are scarcely surprised to find that the fires of Hell γέεννα "may serve as images of distracted remorse:" (p. 81:) that "Heaven is not a place[59], so much as a fulfilment of the love of God." (pp. 81-2.) The very Incarnation, (which he calls "the embodiment of the Eternal Mind,") (p. 82.) is spoken of as if it were a myth. "It becomes with our author as purely spiritual as it was with St. Paul. The Son of David by birth is the Son of God by the spirit of holiness. What is flesh, is born of flesh; and what is spirit, is born of Spirit." (p. 82.) Rom. i. 1-3 is quoted in support of this, which I cannot but regard as blasphemy: for if it does not mean that our Saviour was not, in a true and literal sense, the Son of God at all, it is hard to see what it can mean.—As for the following account of the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, it shall only be said that it sounds like a denial of the Catholic doctrine altogether. "Being, becoming, and animating; or substance, thinking, and conscious life, are expressions of a Triad which may be also represented as will, wisdom, and love; as light, radiance, and warmth; as fountain, stream, and united flow; as mind, thought, and consciousness; as person, word, and life; as Father, Son, and Spirit." (p. 88.)

The nebulous is a striking peculiarity of the style of the Vicar of Broad Chalke[60]. He informs us that "in virtue of the identity of Thought with Being the primitive Trinity represented neither three originant principles nor three transient phases, but three eternal subsistences in one Divine Mind.... The Divine Consciousness or Wisdom, consubstantial with the Eternal Will, becoming personal in the Son of Man, is the express image of the Father; and Jesus actually, but also Mankind ideally, is the Son of God." (pp. 88-9.) Since this has "almost a Brahmanical sound" (p. 89.) even to the Vicar of Broad Chalke, we are content to pass it by in mute astonishment. He proceeds: "Both spiritual affection and metaphysical reasoning forbid us to confine Revelations like those of Christ to the first half century of our era; but shew at least affinities of our faith existing in men's minds, anterior to Christianity, and renewed with deep echo from living hearts in many a generation." (p. 82.) Was our Saviour then a fabulous personage,—a virtuous principle,—and not a Man?... "Again. We find the evidences of our canonical books and of the patristic authors nearest to them, are sufficient to prove illustration in outward act of principles perpetually true, but not adequate to guarantee narratives inherently incredible or precepts evidently wrong." (pp. 82-3.) Are then the sacred "narratives" "inherently incredible?" or the Divine "precepts" "evidently wrong?"—These are, we presume, among the "traditional fictions about our Canon" (p. 83.) at which the Theological Professor sneers. "Hence we are obliged to assume in ourselves a verifying faculty,"—(p. 83,) and so, Dr. Williams and Dr. Temple shake hands[61]. An instance of the exercise of this faculty is immediately subjoined. "The verse 'And no man hath ascended up to Heaven, but he that came down,' is intelligible as a free comment near the end of the first century; but has no meaning in our Lord's mouth at a time when the Ascension had not been heard of." (p. 84.)—"The Apocalypse" in like manner, to "cease to be a riddle," must be "taken as a series of poetical visions which represent the outpouring of the vials of wrath upon the City where our Lord was slain." (p. 84.) ... (Is it possible that a Minister of the Gospel of Christ can speak thus concerning the Divine record?) ... "The second of the Petrine Epistles, having alike external and internal evidence against its genuineness, is necessarily surrendered as a whole." (p. 84.) (Can a man solemnly sign the vith Article, and yet so write?)—"A philosophical view [of the doctrine of the Trinity] recommends itself as easiest to believe." (p. 87.) The "view" expressed in the Athanasian Creed is we presume that which is stigmatized as "one felt to be so irrational, that it calls in the aid of terror." (p. 87.) The Reverend writer does not name the Athanasian Creed, indeed. It is not the general fashion of Essayists and Reviewers,—from Dr. Temple to Professor Jowett,—to speak plainly. But common sense asks,—If Dr. Williams does not allude to the Creed in question, what does he allude to? And common honesty adds,—How is such an allusion to that formula consistent with subscription to Art. viii.?

The Sacrament of Baptism, (he says,) has "degenerated into a magical form," (p. 86,) since it has "become twisted into a false analogy with circumcision,"—(twisted, at all events, by St. Paul[62]!)—and it is merely an "Augustinian notion" that "a curse is inherited by Infants."—How, one humbly asks, does the Reverend writer reconcile it to his conscience not only to have signed the ixth Article, but to employ the Baptismal Service, and to teach the little ones of the flock their Catechism?

On reaching the last page of the present Essay, one is irresistibly led to remark that if a single word could convey an adequate notion of the author's manner, that word would be Insolence. When Dr. Williams would express difference of opinion, he has recourse to violence and bluster: when he would patronize, he is sure to make himself unspeakably offensive. But he seldom agrees with anybody, even with disciples of the same school with himself,—as Messrs. Bunsen and Arnold, Coleridge and Francis Newman. Professor Mansel is "a mere gladiator hitting in the dark," whose "blows fall heaviest on what it was his duty to defend." (p. 67.) Dr. Pusey receives a menacing intimation of what his Commentary must not be. Davison's reasoning labours under the inconvenient defect of an unproved minor premiss. (p. 66.) The majestic memory of Bp. Pearson is insulted by this vulgar man, and the fairness of his citations are impeached. (p. 72.)—Bp. Butler is declared to have turned aside from an unwelcome idea (!), literature not being his strong point (!) (p. 65.)—Justin, (p. 64,)—Augustine, (p. 65,)—Jerome, (pp. 65, 71,)—Anselm, (p. 67,)—all come in for a share of the Vice-Principal of Lampeter's contempt. Even the Apologist of Essays and Reviews is constrained to admit that "anything more" unbecoming "than some of Dr. Williams's remarks we have never read, in writings professing to be written seriously[63]."

But faults of mind and manner, however gross, do but disqualify a writer for being the associate of men of taste and good breeding; and blemishes of style are, at least, venial. Not so easily to be excused is the deplorable spectacle of a Minister of the Gospel, a Doctor of Divinity and Vice-Principal of a Theological College, lending all his critical powers, (which yet seem to be of the most indifferent description,) in order to undermine the authority of God's Word. He has been asked,—"Do you unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament?" and he has answered,—"I do believe them." He has been asked, "Will you be ready, with all diligence, to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's Word?" and he has made reply,—"I will, the Lord being my helper." He has solemnly declared his trust that he was "inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon himself this office and ministration."—Yet this is the man who explains away Miracles, denies Prophecy, and idealizes Scripture; the man who disparages the formulæ he uses daily, mutilates the Canon, and evacuates the most solemn doctrines of the Church!

I have now said as much as I think necessary concerning Dr. Williams's Essay. The entire refutation of such a tissue of groundless assertions and unfounded statements, and unscholarlike criticisms, and unphilosophical views,—would fill many volumes. It is to be feared also that, to him, the result would not be convincing after all. To have stated in brief outline, as I have already done, the leading positions to which he commits himself, ought to suffice. The mere exhibition of such principles (?) ought to be their own abundant refutation.... God give the unhappy author repentance of his errors!—And will not men believe that in the pages of the present Essay is to be seen the lawful development, and inevitable result of the opinions advocated in every other part of the present volume? I perceive scarcely any essential difference between the views of any of these seven writers. All are moving along the same fatal road; and are simply at different stages of the journey. But they conduct themselves wondrous differently in their progress, certainly; Dr. Williams being immeasurably the most offensive of the seven,—the only one who, besides seeming blasphemous, can truly be called vulgar.

III. The third Essay in the present volume is by "the Rev. Baden Powell, M.A., F.R.S., Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford,"—a gentleman with whose labours I shall deal briefly and gently for two reasons. His assertions admit of summary refutation; and he has already, (alas!) passed beyond the limit of earthly Criticism. I desire to add concerning him, that in the private relations of life he was a friendly and amiable person.

The solemn circumstance already adverted to, would have kept me silent altogether. When a writer is no longer able to defend himself, it is ungenerous to attack him: and at a time when he knows far more wonders than are dreamed of by any one on the Earth's surface, it seems unbecoming to stand reasoning over his grave about an "antecedent probability." But I am addressing not the dead, but the living,—to whom, in the pages of 'Essays and Reviews,' Professor Powell "being dead yet speaketh."

He entitles his contribution,—"On the Study of the Evidences of Christianity:" but, as often happens with performances of the like nature, the title of his Essay gives a wrong notion of its contents. It ought to have been called "The Validity of the Evidence from Miracles considered," or rather "denied."

There is nothing new in the present attack on the Miracles of Scripture. The author disposes of them by a single assertion. "What is alleged," (he says,) "is a case of the supernatural. But no testimony can reach to the supernatural." (p. 107.) The inference is obvious.—Again: "an event may be so incredible intrinsically as to set aside any degree of testimony." (p. 106.) Such an event he declares a Miracle to be; and explains that "from the nature of our antecedent convictions, the probability of some kind of mistake or deception somewhere, though we know not where, is greater than the probability of the event really happening in the way, and from the causes assigned." (pp. 106-7.) This merely amounts to asserting that the antecedent improbability of Miracles is so great as to make them incredible. The writer does not attempt to establish this point. "The present discussion," (he says,) "is not intended to be of a controversial kind; it is purely contemplative and theoretical." (p. 100.) And yet, he cannot suppose that the Universal Church will surrender its convictions and reverse its deliberate judgment, at the merely "contemplative and theoretical" suggestions of an individual, however respectable he may happen to be. Against his mere assertion, we claim a right to set the result of Bp. Butler's careful investigation of the same subject:—"That there certainly is no such presumption against Miracles, as to render them in any wise incredible: that, on the contrary, our being able to discern reasons for them, gives a positive credibility to the history of them, in cases where those reasons hold: and that it is by no means certain that there is any peculiar presumption at all, from analogy, even in the lowest degree, against Miracles, as distinguished from other extraordinary phenomena[64]."

Professor Powell's objection against Miracles is, in fact, practically that of the infidel Hume; who asserted "that no testimony for any kind of Miracle can ever possibly amount to a probability, much less to a proof." He argued that Miracles, being contrary to general experience, are incapable of proof. He maintained also, (with Spinoza,) that Miracles, being contrary to the established laws of Nature, imply, in the very character of them, a palpable contradiction. This latter position seems to be identical with that adopted by Professor Powell.

In a certain place, this author finds fault with "the too frequent assumption ... of the part of the ... Advocate, when the character to be sustained should be rather that of the unbiassed Judge." (p. 95.) But what are we to think of the judicial fairness of one who is not only Advocate and Judge in his own cause; but who even turns the Witnesses out of Court; and will listen to no evidence,—on the plea that it cannot be trustworthy; or at least, that it shall be unavailing?—"I express myself with caution," (says Bp. Butler, with reference to arguments against the credibility of Revelation,) "lest I should be mistaken to vilify Reason; which is indeed the only faculty we have wherewith to judge concerning anything, even Revelation itself: or be misunderstood to assert that a supposed revelation cannot be proved false, from internal characters. For it may contain clear immoralities, or contradictions; and either of these would prove it false. Nor will I take upon me to affirm, that nothing else can possibly render any supposed revelation incredible. Yet still the observation is, I think, true beyond doubt; that objections against Christianity, as distinguished from objections against its evidence, are frivolous[65]."

That a certain occurrence or phenomenon "is due to supernatural causes," Professor Powell maintains is "entirely dependent on the previous belief and assumptions of the parties." (p. 107.) He forgets that he grounds his own denial of the possibility of a Miracle, on nothing stronger than "the nature of" his own "antecedent convictions." Thus, the question becomes merely a personal one between Mr. Baden Powell and the Apostles of Christ. The reasonableness of the "antecedent convictions" in the one case have to be set against the reasonableness of the "antecedent convictions" in the other. Either party, (according to this view,) has its own "previous belief and assumptions;" which, in the one case, are known to have produced conviction; in the other, they are unhappily found to have resulted in a rejection of Miracles. But then it happens, unfortunately, that in the case of the Apostles and others, conviction of the truth of our Lord's Miracles was based on knowledge, and experience of a matter of fact: in the case of Professor Powell, disbelief is founded on certain "antecedent convictions" only: namely, "the inconceivableness of imagined interruptions of natural Order, or supposed suspensions of the Laws of matter." (p. 110.) He is never tired of repeating that "in an age of physical research like the present, all highly cultivated minds and duly advanced intellects (!) have imbibed, more or less, the lessons of the Inductive Philosophy; and have, at least in some measure, learned to appreciate the grand foundation conception of universal Law:" (p. 133:) that "the entire range of the Inductive Philosophy is at once based upon, and in every instance tends to confirm, by immense accumulation of evidence, the grand truth of the universal Order and constancy of natural causes, as a primary law of belief; so strongly entertained and fixed in the mind of every truly inductive inquirer, that he cannot even conceive the possibility of its failure." (p. 109.)

I gladly avail myself of a page from the writings of a thoughtful writer of our own, who, half a century ago, reviewed the very errors which are being so industriously reproduced among ourselves at this day,—certainly not with more ability than of old:—"Let us examine a little farther into the weight of the argument derived from the supposed immutability of the Laws of Nature. It has constantly been the theme of modern Unbelievers, that the course of Nature is fixed, eternal, unalterable; and that nothing which is supposed to violate it can possibly take place. Now, we may readily allow, that the course of Nature is unalterable by human power; nay, even by the power of any created being whatsoever. But the question is,—Are these Laws unalterable by Him who made them? Proof of this is requisite, before the argument from the immutability of the Laws of Nature can have the least force. We may safely assert, however, that proof of this is absolutely impossible.—'Facts,' it may be said, 'daily passing before us, warrant us in supposing its laws to be unchangeable.' Perhaps so. But if a thousand or more facts have occurred, since the Creation of the World, in which those Laws appear to have been over-ruled, or suspended, is such a conclusion then warrantable? Even if there had never been a single instance of a Miracle recorded, since the Creation; yet the conclusion would not be just or logical, that no such thing is possible. But with such a multiplicity of instances to the contrary as are already on record, it is no better than a shameless assertion, in direct opposition to the evidence of men's senses and experience. Nay, more; the argument is atheistical. For, either God made and ordained these Laws of Nature; and may, consequently, at His pleasure, unmake or suspend them: or else, these laws are self-framed, and Nature is independent of the God of Nature; which is saying, in other words, that the material Universe is not governed by any Supreme Intelligence.

"This latter opinion appears, indeed, to be the tenet of all who resort to arguments of this kind, in opposition to the credibility of Miracles. Thus it is said, [by Hume,] that every effect must have a cause; and that, therefore, a Miracle must have a cause in Nature; otherwise, it cannot be effected.—But, is not the Will of God, without any other agency, or predisposing cause, sufficient for the purpose? When God created the World out of nothing, what pre-existing cause was there, except His own omnipotent Will to produce the effect? Why then is not the same Will sufficient to work Miracles?

"'But,' says another Sophist, [Spinoza,]—'God is the Author of the Laws of Nature; so that whatever opposes those Laws, is necessarily repugnant to the Divine nature: if, therefore, we believe that God may act in a manner contrary to those laws, we, in effect, believe that He may do what is contrary to His own nature; which is absurd and impossible.'

"The reasoning turns upon the supposition that God is actuated by an absolute necessity of His Nature, and not by his Will: or, rather, that He hath neither Will, nor Intellect. Otherwise, it were easy to perceive, that in suspending the operation of His own Laws, God cannot be charged with doing anything contradictory to His own nature; since He may justly be supposed to have as good reasons for departing from those Laws, as for framing them: and as we know not why He framed them in such a manner, and no otherwise; so He may have the best and wisest reasons for the suspension of them, which it is not for us to call in question. To speak of the Supreme Being as actuated by a kind of physical necessity, and not by His Will, is to confound the God of Nature with Nature itself; which is the very essence of Atheism, and never can be reconciled with any just notions of the Deity, as a Being of intellectual and moral perfections[66]."

It is by no means inconceivable, therefore, that the great Cause of Creation, and first Author of Law should interfere at any given time in the established Order of Nature. Moreover, it is irrational, on sufficient testimony, to disbelieve that He has sometimes so interposed. To deny that this is conceivable, is to make God inferior to His own decree; to pronounce it incredible that the Lawgiver should be superior to His own Laws. "The universal subordination of causation," (p. 134,) we as freely admit as the Professor himself: but then we contend that everything else must be subordinate to the First great Cause of all. Worse than unphilosophical is it to argue as the Professor presumes to do, concerning the Most High; but unphilosophical in the strictest sense it is. For it is to reason about Him, (the finite concerning the Infinite!) as if we understood Him; we, who can barely decipher a little part of His works! A few more remarks on this subject will be found in my viith Sermon.

We are anxious to know if the whole of the case is really before us. A few more extracts from Professor Powell's Essay seem necessary to do full justice to his view of the matter:—"All moral evidence must essentially have respect to the parties to be convinced. 'Signs' might be adapted peculiarly to the state of moral or intellectual progress of one age, or one class of persons, and not be suited to that of others.... And it is to the entire difference in the ideas, prepossessions, modes, and grounds of belief in those times, that we may trace the reason why Miracles, which would be incredible now, were not so in the age, and under the circumstances, in which they are stated to have occurred." (p. 117.) ... "An evidential appeal which in a long past age was convincing, as made to the state of knowledge in that age[67], might have not only no effect, but even an injurious tendency, if urged in the present, and referring to what is at variance with existing scientific conceptions; just as the arguments of the present age would have been unintelligible to a former."

"In a period of advanced physical knowledge, the reference to what was believed in past times, if at variance with principles now acknowledged, could afford little ground of appeal: in fact, would damage the argument rather than assist it." (p. 126.)

"It becomes imperatively necessary, that such views should be suggested as may be really suitable to better informed minds, and may meet the increasing demands of an age pretending at least to greater enlightenment." (p. 126.)

There is nothing in the additional suggestions thus thrown out which in reality affects the question at issue. Certain antecedent considerations were before insisted on, which (it was said) "must be paramount to all attestation." (p. 107.) These have been disposed of. The writer now tells us that he does not question "the honesty or veracity of the testimony, or the reality of the impressions on the minds of the witnesses." (p. 106.) It remains to inquire therefore to what natural causes, events which were once thought miraculous, may reasonably be referred; since the so-called Miracles of the imperfectly-informed age of our Lord and His Apostles will not endure the scrutiny of the present age of scientific enlightenment.

But this, unless it be a proposal to open the whole question afresh,—to examine the Miracles themselves,—to consider them one by one,—to inquire into their exact nature,—and to investigate their attendant circumstances,—is unmeaning. For we cannot, as reasonable men, dismiss a vast body of august events, differing so considerably one from another, with a vague inuendo that there was probably "some kind of mistake or deception somewhere, though we do not know where:" (p. 106:) a hint that natural events may have been regarded as supernatural by an unscientific age, (which I believe was Schleiermacher's view:) and so forth. The two miraculous Draughts of fishes,—the Stater found in the fish's mouth,—the stilling of the Storm,—might perhaps, by a little rhetorical sophistry, in unscrupulous hands, be so disposed of. But the Creative Power displayed on the two occasions of a miraculous feeding of thousands,—the giving of sight to a man born blind,—the calling of Lazarus out of the grave where he had been for four days buried;—these are transactions which resist every attempt of the enemy to explain away, as unscientific misconceptions. They may be powerless to produce conviction in some now, as they were powerless to produce conviction in some then: but they cannot be set aside by an insinuation. There could not have been any mistake when the Five Thousand were fed with five loaves, and twelve baskets full were gathered up; or when the Four Thousand were fed with seven loaves, and fragments enough to fill seven baskets remained over[68]. There was no room for deception in the case of the man born blind; for that case immediately underwent a judicial scrutiny[69]. Lazarus bound hand and foot with grave-clothes required that the bystanders should "loose him and let him go[70]:" but from that moment, neither supposed scientific necessity, nor antecedent considerations, nor the ordinary course of Nature, nor any other creature, will avail to bind him any more!

This may suffice on the subject of Professor Powell's Essay. On the great question itself, I have said something in my Seventh Sermon, to which the reader is requested to refer.—The performance now under consideration abounds in incorrect statements, while it revives not a few exploded objections; but I have considered the only points in it which are material.

Thus the author assumes "that, unlike the essential Doctrines of Christianity, 'the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,' those external accessories, [Miracles, for example,] constitute a subject which of necessity is perpetually taking somewhat at least of a new form, with the successive phases of opinion and knowledge." (p. 94.) But, (waiving for the moment the impossibility of severing the Doctrines of the Gospel from the miraculous evidence that our Lord was a Teacher sent from Heaven[71]), it requires no ability to perceive that although "opinion" should alter daily, and "knowledge" increase ever so much, yet, events professing to be miraculous, being plain matters of fact, are to-day exactly what and where they were many centuries ago. Physical Science may pretend (with Paulus) to explain them on natural principles, truly; and while she does so, the world is sure to give her a patient, even an indulgent hearing. But then she must let it be known what she proposes to explain, and how she proposes to explain it. She must be so indulgent also, as to listen while we, in turn, shew her on what grounds we find it impossible to accept her Theory. "The inevitable progress of research," (says this author,) "must, within a longer or shorter period, unravel all that seems most marvellous; and what is at present least understood will become as familiarly known to the Science of the future, as those points which a few centuries ago, were involved in equal obscurity, but are now thoroughly understood." (p. 109.) Such a vaticination as regards Miracles, is, to say the least, premature; and until it can appeal to incipient accomplishment, it must be regarded as nugatory also. I am not aware, that as yet one single Miracle has been struck off the list; yet Miracles have now been before the world a long time, and they have not wanted enemies either.

To begin Divinity with a discussion of the "Evidences," we do indeed hold to be a beginning at the wrong end. At the same time, all of Professor Powell's opening remarks, in which he insinuates that the Church would bar, or would stifle discussion concerning the evidences of Religion, are obviously untrue. No scrutiny of Christian Miracles, however rigid, is stopped by the admonition that such narratives "ought to be held sacred, and exempt from the unhallowed criticism of human Reason." (p. 110.) We do not, by any means, "treat all objections as profane, and discard exceptions unanswered as shocking and immoral." (p. 100.) Neither does the Church think herself "omniscient and infallible;" (p. 96;) though she holds Omniscience to be an attribute of God; and Infallibility, of the Bible. But she deprecates in the strongest manner vague insinuations and unsupported doubts of the reality of her Lord's Miracles, sown broad-cast over the land; and she is at a loss to understand how the "difficulties" of any, can be in this manner "removed;" (p. 96;) except by a process analogous to that which would cure a malady by taking away the life of the patient. We are not in fact at all disposed to admit that "Miracles, which in the estimation of a former age were among the chief supports of Christianity, are at present among the main difficulties, and hindrances to its acceptance," (p. 140,)—although Professor Powell and Dr. Temple say so.

This Essay in fact is full of incorrect, or objectionable statements. Thus Professor Powell asserts that since "evidential arguments are avowedly addressed to the intellect, it is especially preposterous to shift the ground, and charge the rejection of them on moral motives." (p. 100.) And yet it is worthy of notice that our Lord Himself assures us that the reception of Truth depends on our moral, rather than on our intellectual condition. "How can ye believe," (He said to the Jews,) "which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only[72]?"

This writer reasons also with singular laxity and inaccuracy. After quoting the dictum that "on a certain amount of testimony we might believe any statement, however improbable," (pp. 140-1,) he scornfully adds;—"So that if a number of respectable witnesses were to concur in asseverating that on a certain occasion they had seen two and two make five, we should be bound to believe them!" (p. 141.) Does he fail to perceive, (1) that mathematical truths do not come within the province of probable reasoning, and (2) are not dependent on testimony?... Again, "The case of the antecedent argument of Miracles is very clear, however little some are inclined to perceive it. In Nature and from Nature, by Science and by Reason, we neither have nor can possibly have any evidence of a Deity working by Miracles;—for that, we must go out of Nature, and beyond Science." (pp. 141-2.) Very true. We must go to Scripture. We must have recourse to testimony. This is precisely what we are maintaining.... But,—"Testimony, after all, is but a second-hand assurance; it is but a blind guide; testimony can avail nothing against Reason." (p. 141.) True. But this, if it is intended as an argument against the reasonableness of admitting the truth of Miracles, is a mere petitio principii.... Again. "It is not the mere fact but the cause or explanation of it, which is the point at issue." (p. 141.) Admitting then, as the learned author here does, that when Christ said "Lazarus, come forth," "he that was dead," (though he had been buried four days,) "came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes[73];"—admitting these "facts," I say,—what other "cause," or "explanation" does the reverend gentleman propose to assign but the supernatural power of the Divine Speaker?

Far graver exception, however, must be taken against certain parts of Professor Powell's labours, which betray an animus fatally indicative of the tendency of such Essays and Reviews as these. Witness his assertion that "it is now acknowledged that 'Creation' is only another name for our ignorance of the mode of production;" (p. 139;) and that a recent work on the Origin of Species "substantiates on undeniable grounds the very principle so long denounced by the first naturalists,—the origination of new species by natural causes;" (p. 139;) and that the said work "must soon bring about an entire revolution of opinion in favour of the grand principle of the self-evolving powers of Nature." (p. 139.)

One object of the present Essay is to insist that since Miracles belong to the world of matter, "we must recognize the due claims of Science to decide" upon them. We are reminded that "beyond the domain of physical causation and the possible conceptions of intellect or knowledge, there lies open the boundless region of spiritual things, which is the sole dominion of Faith:" (p. 127:) and that "Advancing knowledge, while it asserts the dominion of Science in physical things, confirms that of Faith in spiritual." (p. 127.) It is proposed that "we thus neither impugn the generalizations of Philosophy, nor allow them to invade the dominion of Faith; and admit that what is not a subject for a problem, may hold its place in a Creed." (p. 127.)

But the fatal consequences of this plausible fallacy become apparent the instant we turn the leaf, and read that "the more knowledge advances, the more it has been, and will be acknowledged, that Christianity, as a real religion, must be viewed apart from connexion with physical things." (p. 128.) That "the first dissociation of the spiritual from the physical was rendered necessary by the palpable contradictions disclosed by astronomical discovery with the letter of Scripture. Another still wider and more material step has been effected by the discoveries of Geology. More recently, the antiquity of the Human Race, and the development of Species, and the rejection of the idea of 'Creation' (!) have caused new advances in the same direction." (p. 129.) ... From this it is evident, not only that the object of Science in thus taking the Miracles of Scripture into her own keeping, is (like an unnatural step-dame) to slay them; but that downright Atheism is to be the attitude in which men are expected to survey that "boundless region of spiritual things" which is yet proclaimed to be "the sole dominion of Faith!"

Faith, on the other hand, does not object to the constant visits of Science to any part of her treasure. She does but insist that all discussion shall be conducted according to the rules of right Reason. Vague insinuations about "a progressing Age," (p. 131,)—"new modes of speculation," (p. 130,)—"the advance of Opinion," (p. 131,)—and so forth, are as little to the purpose, apart from specific objections, as sneers at "the one-sided dogmas of an obsolete school, coupled with awful denunciations of heterodoxy on all who refuse to listen to them," (p. 131,) are unsuited to the gravity of the occasion. Faith insists moreover that a divorce between the miraculous parts of Scripture, and the context wherein they stand, is simply impossible. The unbeliever who boldly says, "I disbelieve the Bible,"—however much we may deplore his blindness and pity his misery,—is yet intelligible in his unbelief. But the man who proposes to believe the narrative of the Exode of Israel from Egypt, (for instance,) apart from the supernatural character of the events which are related to have attended it; who believes the history of the Gospels, (holding the Evangelists to have been veracious writers,) yet rejects the Divine nature of the Miracles which the Gospels relate; and proposes, after eliminating from the historical narrative everything which claims to be miraculous, to make what remains of that historical narrative, the strength and stay of his soul in life and in death:—that man we boldly affirm to be one who cannot have studied the Bible with that ordinary attention which would entitle him to dogmatize concerning its contents: or else, whose logical faculty must be so hopelessly defective that discussions of this class are evidently not his proper province.

Finally, we are presented in this Essay with the same offensive assumption of intellectual superiority on the part of the writer, which disfigures the entire volume. "It becomes imperatively necessary that views should be suggested really suitable to better informed minds." (p. 126.) "Points which may be seen to involve the greatest difficulty to more profound inquirers, are often such as do not occasion the least perplexity to ordinary minds, but are allowed to pass without hesitation." (p. 125.) (And this, from one of those "profound inquirers," one of "those who have reflected most deeply," (p. 126,) who yet cannot get beyond a resuscitation of Hume and Spinoza's exploded objections to the truth of Miracles!)—Butler's unanswerable arguments, (for the allusion is evidently to him,) are spoken of as "a few trite and commonplace generalities as to the moral government of the World and the belief in the Divine Omnipotence; or as to the validity of human testimony; or the limits of human experience." (p. 133.) And yet the author is for ever informing us that his hostility to Miracles "is essentially built upon those grander conceptions of the order of Nature, those comprehensive primary elements of all physical knowledge, those ultimate ideas of universal causation, which can only be familiar to those thoroughly versed in cosmical philosophy in its widest sense." (p. 133.) "All highly cultivated minds, and duly advanced intellects," are supposed to find their exponent in Professor Baden Powell. All other thinkers have "minds of a less comprehensive capacity," "accustomed to reason on more contracted views." (p. 133. See also p. 131, top.) Is this the modesty of real Science? the language of a true Philosopher and Divine?

Finally, after all that has gone before we are not much astonished, but we are considerably shocked, to read as follows:—"The Divine Omnipotence is entirely an inference from the language of the Bible, adopted on the assumption of a belief in Revelation. That 'with God nothing is impossible' is the very declaration of Scripture; yet on this, the whole belief in Miracles is built[74]." Now, it happens that 'the whole belief in Miracles' is built on nothing of the kind: but the point is immaterial. By no means immaterial, however, is the intimation that the Divine attribute of Omnipotence is a mere inference from the language of Revelation,—the very belief in which is also a mere "assumption." If belief in Holy Scripture is to be treated as an assumption,—without at all complaining of the unreasonableness of one who so speaks,—we yet desire that he would say it very plainly; and let us know at least with whom we have to do, and what we are expected to prove. We do not complain, if any one calls upon us to shew that a belief in the Bible cannot be called an assumption; but it makes us very sad: and when the challenge comes from a Minister of the Church, we are unable to forbear the remark that there is something altogether immoral[75] in the entire proceeding. On the other hand, to find ourselves involved in an argument on questions of Divinity with one who believes nothing, is in a manner absurd; and provokes a feeling of resentment as well as of pity.... What need to add that life is not long enough for such processes of proof? "He that cometh unto God must believe that He is!" We cannot be for ever laying the foundation. The building must begin, at last, to grow. And when it has grown up, and is compact as well as beautiful, it cannot be necessary to pull it all down again once or twice in every century in order to ascertain whether the strong foundations be still there!

IV. The next performance is mainly directed against faith in the Church, as a society of Divine origin. "The Rev. Henry Bristow Wilson, B.D., Vicar of Great Staughton, Hunts," claims that a National Church shall be regarded as a purely secular Institution,—the spontaneous development of the State. "If all priests and ministers of religion could at one moment be swept from the face of the Earth, they would soon be reproduced[76]." The Church is concerned with Ethics, not with Divinity. It should therefore be "free from dogmatic tests, and similar intellectual bondage:" (p. 168:) hampered by no traditional Doctrines; pledged to no Creeds: but, on the contrary, should be subject to periodical doctrinal re-adjustments. "Doctrinal limitations" (i.e. the Creeds) "are not essential to" the Church. "Upon larger knowledge of Christian history, upon a more thorough acquaintance with the mental constitution of man, upon an understanding of the obstacles they present to a true Catholicity (!), they may be cast off." (p. 167.) "In order to the possibility of recruiting any national Ministry from the whole of the nation, ... no needless intellectual or speculative obstacles should be interposed." (p. 196. So at p. 198.)

To all this, the answer is very obvious. Viewed as an historical fact, the Church is not of human origin. The Church is a Divine Institution. That a Priest of the Church, charged with a cure of souls, should desire her annihilation,—the reversal of the facts of her past History,—her reconstruction on an unheard-of basis, without even Creeds as terms of communion with her,—and so forth; all this may suggest some very painful doubts as to the objector's honesty in continuing to employ the formularies of that Church, and in professing to teach her doctrines;—but it can hardly be supposed to have any effect whatever on the question at issue.

Foreseeing this, Mr. Wilson begins by asserting,—(for to insinuate is not for so advanced a disciple of "the negative Theology,") (p. 151,)—"the fact of a very wide-spread alienation, both of educated and uneducated persons, from the Christianity which is ordinarily presented in our Churches and Chapels." (p. 150.) "A self-satisfied Sacerdotalism, confident in a supernaturally transmitted illumination," may amuse itself in trying to "keep peace within the walls of emptied Churches:" (p. 150:) but the day for "traditional Christianity" (p. 149.) has gone by. We may no longer ignore "a great extent of dissatisfaction on the part of the Clergy at some portion, at least, of formularies of the Church of England,"—especially at the use of "one unhappy creed." (p. 150.) There has been "a spontaneous recoil" from some of the old doctrines: a distrust of the old arguments: and a misgiving concerning Scripture itself. "In the presence of difficulties of this kind, ... it is vain to seek to check open discussion." (p. 151.)

Why then does not this man proceed openly to discuss? is the obvious rejoinder. Instead of vaguely hinting that either the Reason or the Moral sense is shocked by what people hear "in our Churches and Chapels,"—why has not this writer, first, the honesty to withdraw from the Ministry of the Church of England; and next, the courage to indicate the particular doctrines which offend? To say that "the ordinances of public worship and religious instruction provided for the people of England" are not "really adapted to the wants of their nature as it is," (p. 150,) is a very vague and unworthy style of urging an objection. Why does not the reverend writer explain wherein the Doctrine and Discipline of the English Church are not really adapted to the actual wants of Man's nature?

Let every unbeliever however be allowed to state his difficulties in his own way. Mr. Wilson's difficulties certainly take a very peculiar shape. The increased Geographical knowledge of the present generation has evidently disturbed his faith. "In our own boyhood, the World as known to the ancients was nearly all which was known to ourselves (!). We have recently become acquainted,—intimate,—with the teeming regions of the far East, and with empires, pagan or even atheistic, of which the origin runs far back beyond the historic records of Judæa or of the West, and which were more populous than all Christendom now is, for many ages before the Christian era." (p. 162.) Such a statement is soon made; but it ought to have been substantiated. I take the liberty of doubting its accuracy.

But granting even that the heathen world "for many ages before the Christian era" was more populous than all Christendom now is:—what then? This fact "suggests questions to those who on Sundays hear the reading and exposition of the Scriptures as they were expounded to our forefathers, and on Monday peruse the news of a World of which our forefathers little dreamed." (pp. 152-3.)—And pray, (we calmly inquire,) Why are the Scriptures to be read or expounded after a novel fashion, even though our geographical knowledge has made a considerable advance? To this, we are favoured with no answer. The "questions" suggested are, we presume, the same which are contained in the following sentence. "In what relation does the Gospel stand to these millions[77]? Is there any trace on the face of its records that it even contemplated their existence[78]? We are told, that to know and believe in Jesus Christ is in some sense necessary to Salvation. It has not been given to these. Are they,—will they be, hereafter,—the worse off for their ignorance?" (p. 153.) ... "As to the necessity of faith in a Saviour to these peoples when they could never have had it, no one, upon reflection, can believe in any such thing. Doubtless they will be equitably dealt with." (p. 153.)

These last seven words, (which scarcely seem of a piece with the rest of the sentence,) we confess have always seemed a sufficient answer to the badly-expressed speculative difficulty which immediately precedes; a difficulty, be it observed, which does not depend at all on the popular advancement of Geographical knowledge; for it was urged with the self-same force anciently, as now; and was met by Bp. Butler, almost in the self-same words[79], upwards of a hundred years ago. But Mr. Wilson to our surprise and sorrow proceeds:—"We cannot be content to wrap this question up and leave it for a mystery, as to what shall become of those myriads upon myriads of non-Christian races. First, if our traditions tell us, that they are involved in the curse and perdition of Adam, and may justly be punished hereafter individually for his transgression, not having been extricated from it by saving faith,—we are disposed to think that our traditions cannot herein fairly declare to us the words and inferences from Scripture; but if on examination it should turn out that they have,—we must say, that the authors of the Scriptural books have, in those matters, represented to us their own inadequate conceptions, and not the mind of the Spirit of God." (pp. 153-4.)

I forbear to dwell upon the grievous spectacle with which we are thus presented. Here is a Clergyman of the Church of England deliberately proposing the following dilemma:—Either the Prayer Book is incorrect in its most important doctrinal inferences from Holy Scripture; or else, the Authors of Holy Scripture itself are incorrect in their statements. The morality of one who declares that he finds himself placed between the horns of this dilemma, and yet retains his office as a public teacher in the Church of England,—it is painful to contemplate. But this is only ad hominem. The Reverend writer's difficulty remains.

And it seems sufficient to reply:—It is not we who "wrap up the question," but God. As a mystery we find it; and as a mystery, we not only "can," but must be content to "leave it." Further, it is not "our traditions," but Holy Scripture itself which tells us that "by one man Sin entered into the World, and Death by Sin; and so Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned[80]:"—that "in Adam all died[81]:"—that "we were by nature the children of wrath, even as others[82]:" and the like. Scripture, on the other hand, as unequivocally assures us that God is good, or rather that He is very Goodness. We are convinced, (in Mr. Wilson's words,) "that all shall be equitably dealt with according to their opportunities." (p. 154.) Moreover, he would be a rash Divine who should venture to adopt the opinion so strenuously disclaimed by Bp. Butler, "that none can have the benefit of the general Redemption, but such as have the advantage of being made acquainted with it in the present life[83]." ... How, in the meantime, speculative difficulties concerning the hereafter of the unevangelized Heathen are affected by the fact that our population now "peruse the news of a World of which our forefathers little dreamed," (pp. 152-3,)—it is hard to see. Equally unable am I also to understand how the discovery that a larger number of persons are the subjects of this speculative difficulty than used once to be supposed, can constitute any reason why Scripture should not still be read and expounded on Sunday "as it used to be expounded to our forefathers."

We have been so particular, because whenever any of these writers condescend to be argumentative, we are eager to bear them company. No wish at all have we, in the abstract, to stifle inquiry; no objection whatever have we to the principle of free discussion. And yet, as a clergyman, I cannot discuss such questions as these with a Minister of the Church of England, except under protest. I deny that these are in any sense open questions. To dispute concerning them,—εἰ μὴ θέσιν διαφυλάττων,—one of the disputants must first, at least, resign his commission. It is simply dishonest in a man to hold a commission in the Church of England, under solemn vows, and yet to deny her doctrines. An Officer in the Army who should pursue a similar line of action, would be dismissed the Service,—or worse.—Under protest, then, we follow the Rev. H. B. Wilson, B.D.

Next come three other specimens "of the modern questionings of traditional Christianity," "whereby observers are rendered dissatisfied with old modes of speaking:" (p. 156:) viz. (1) St. Paul "speaks of the Gospel 'which was preached to every nation (sic) under heaven,' when it has never yet been preached to the half[84]." (2) "Then, again, it has often been appealed to as an evidence of the supernatural origin of Christianity, and as an instance of supernatural assistance vouchsafed to it in the first centuries, that it so soon overspread the world:" (p. 155:) whereas "it requires no learning to be aware that neither then nor subsequently have the Christians amounted to a fourth part of the people of the Earth." (Ibid.) (3) So again, "it has been customary to argue that, à priori, a supernatural Revelation was to be expected at the time when Jesus Christ was manifested upon the Earth, by reason of the exhaustion of all natural or unassisted human efforts for the amelioration of mankind;" (pp. 155-6;) whereas "our recently enlarged Ethnographical information shews such an argument to be altogether inapplicable to the case." "It would be more like the realities of things, as we can now behold them, to say that the Christian Revelation was given to the Western World, because it deserved it better and was more prepared for it than the East." (p. 156.)—The remedy for the first of these difficulties (says Mr. Wilson,) is, "candidly to acknowledge that the words of the New Testament which speak of the preaching of the Gospel to the whole world, were limited to the understanding of the times when they were spoken." The suggestions of our own moral instincts are rather to be followed, "than the express declarations of Scripture writers, who had no such knowledge as is given to ourselves of the amplitude of the World." (p. 157.)

For my own part, I see not how Mr. Wilson's proposed remedy meets the case; unless he means to say that in the time of St. Paul the Gospel had been literally preached to the whole World as far as the World was then known. If not, it is clear that recourse must be had to some other expedient. Instead then of the "candid acknowledgment" required of us by the learned writer, may we be allowed to suggest to him the more prosaic expedient (1st) of making sure that he quotes Scripture accurately; and (2nd) that he understands it?... It happens that St. Paul does not use the words "every nation under heaven" as Mr. Wilson inadvertently supposes. The Apostle's phrase, πάσῃ τῇ κτίσει, in Colossians i. 23, (as in St. Mark xvi. 15), means 'to the whole Creation,' or 'every creature;' (the article is doubtful;) in other words, he announces the universality of the Gospel, as contrasted with the Law; and he explains that it had been preached to the Heathen as well as to the Jews. Our increased knowledge therefore has nothing whatever to do with the question; and the supposed difficulty disappears. The two which remain, being (according to the same writer,) merely incorrect inferences of Biblical critics, need not, it is presumed, be regarded as insurmountable either.

Following Mr. Wilson through his successive vagaries of religious (?) thought, we come upon a succession of strange statements; the object of which seems to be to cast a slur on Doctrine generally.—The doctrine of Justification by faith "is not met with ... in the Apostolic writings, except those of St. Paul." (p. 160.) [A minute exception truly!].—"Then, on the other hand, it is maintained by a large body of Theologians, as by the learned Jesuit Petavius and many others, that the doctrine afterwards developed into the Nicene and Athanasian, is not to be found explicitly in the earliest fathers, nor even in Scripture, although provable by it." (p. 160.) [Would it not have been fair, however, to state what appears to have been the design of Petavius therein[85]? and should it not have been added that our own Bishop Bull in his immortal "Defensio Fidei Nicænæ" established the very reverse "out of the writings of the Catholic Doctors who flourished within the first three centuries of the Christian Church[86]?">[ "The nearer we come to the original sources of the History, the less definite do we find the statements of Doctrines, and even of the facts from which the Doctrines were afterwards inferred." (p. 160.) "In the patristic writings, theoretics assume continually an increasingly disproportionate value. Even within the compass of our New Testament, there is to be found already a wonderful contrast between the words of our Lord and such a discourse as the Epistle to the Hebrews." (pp. 160-1.) [What a curious discovery, by the way, that an argumentative Epistle should differ in style from an historical Gospel!] "Our Lord's Discourses," (continues this writer,) "have almost all of them a direct Moral bearing." (p. 161.) [The case of St. John's Gospel immediately recurs to our memory. And it seems to have occurred to Mr. Wilson's also. He says:—] "This character of His words is certainly more obvious in the first three Gospels than in the fourth; and the remarkable unison of those Gospels, when they recite the Lord's words, notwithstanding their discrepancies in some matters of fact, compels us to think, that they embody more exact traditions of what He actually said than the fourth does." (p. 161.) [In other words, the authenticity of St. John's Gospel[87] is to be suspected rather than the worthlessness of the speculations of the Vicar of Great Staughton!]

The object of three pages which follow (pp. 162-5.) seems to be to shew that in the Apostolic Age, Immorality of life was more severely dealt with, even than erroneousness of Doctrine. Except because the writer is eager to depreciate the value of orthodoxy of belief, and to cast a slur on doctrinal standards generally,—it is hard to see why he should write thus. Let him be reminded however that our Saviour makes Faith itself a moral, not an intellectual habit[88]; and, (if it be not an uncivil remark,) what but an immoral spectacle does a Clergyman present who openly inculcates distrust of these very Doctrines which he has in the most solemn manner pledged himself to uphold and maintain?

And thus we come back to the theme originally proposed. "A national Church," we are informed, "need not, historically speaking, be Christian (!); nor, if it be Christian, need it be tied down to particular forms which have been prevalent at certain times in Christendom (!). That which is essential to a National Church is, that it should undertake to assist the spiritual progress of the nation and of the individuals of which it is composed, in their several states and stages. Not even a Christian Church should expect all those who are brought under its influence to be, as a matter of fact, of one and the same standard; but should endeavour to raise each according to his capacities, and should give no occasion for a reaction against itself, nor provoke the individualist element into separation." (p. 173.) Of what sort the Ministers of such a "chartered libertine" are to prove, may be anticipated. "Thought and speech, which are free among all other classes," must be free also "among those who hold the office of leaders and teachers of the rest in the highest things." The Ministers of the Church ought not "to be bound to cover up, but to open; and having, it is presumed, possession of the key of knowledge, ought not to stand at the door with it, permitting no one to enter unless by force. A National Church may also find itself in this position, which, perhaps, is our own." (p. 174.)—What a charming picture of the duties and the method of that class to which the Vicar of Great Staughton himself belongs!... The writer proceeds to set an example of that freedom of inquiry which he vindicates as the privilege of his Order; and without which he is apprehensive of being left isolated between "the fanatical religionist," (p. 174,) (i.e. the man who believes the truths he teaches,) and "the negative theologian," (i.e. those who, "impatient of old fetters, follow free thought heedlessly wherever it may lead them.") (Ibid.) "The freedom of opinion[89]," (he says,) "which belongs to the English citizen should be conceded to the English Churchman; and the freedom which is already practically enjoyed by the members of the congregation, cannot without injustice be denied to its ministers." (p. 180.) Let us see how the Reverend Gentleman exercises the license which he claims:—

The phrase "Word of God," (he says,) is unauthorized and begs the question. The epithet "Canonical" "may mean either books ruled and determined by the Church, or regulation books; and the employment of it in the Article hesitates between these two significations." (p. 176.) The declaration of the sixth Article simply implies "the Word of God is contained in Scripture; whence it does not follow that it is co-extensive with it." (p. 170.) "Under the terms of the Sixth Article one may accept literally, or allegorically, or as parable, or poetry, or legend, the story of a serpent-tempter, of an ass speaking with man's voice, of an arresting the earth's motion, of a reversal of its motion[90], of waters standing in a solid heap, of witches, and a variety of apparitions. So under the terms of the Sixth Article, every one is free in judgment as to the primeval institution of the Sabbath, the universality of the Deluge, the confusion of tongues, the corporeal taking up of Elijah into Heaven, the nature of Angels, the reality of demoniacal possession, the personality of Satan, and the miraculous particulars of many events." (p. 177.) "Good men," we are assured; (the Inspired Writers being the good men intended;) "may err in facts, be weak in memory, mingle imaginations with memory, be feeble in inferences, confound illustration with argument, be varying in judgment and opinion." (p. 179.) [A "free handling" this, of the work of the Holy Ghost, truly!... It would, I suppose, be deemed very unreasonable to wish that a catalogue of facts misstated,—of slips of memory,—of imaginary details,—of feeble inferences,—of instances of logical confusion,—and so forth, had been subjoined by the Reverend writer. I will only observe concerning his method that such "frank criticism of Scripture" (p. 174.) as this, is dogmatism of the most disreputable kind: insinuating what it does not state; assuming what it ought to prove; asserting in the general what it may be defied to substantiate in particular.] It follows,—"But the spirit of absolute Truth cannot err or contradict Himself; if He speak immediately, even in small things, accessories, or accidents." (p. 179.) To this we entirely agree. Where then are the "errors?" and where the "contradictions?"

We cannot "suppose Him to suggest contradictory accounts:" [not contradictory, of course; because contradictories cannot both be true:] "or accounts only to be reconciled in the way of hypothesis and conjecture."—(Ibid.) Why not[91]?

"To suppose a supernatural influence to cause the record of that which can only issue in a puzzle, is to lower indefinitely our conception of the Divine dealings in respect of a special Revelation." (Ibid.)—Why more of a lowering puzzle in God's Word than in God's Works[92]?

Mr. Wilson proceeds:—"It may be attributed to the defect of our understandings, that we should be unable altogether to reconcile the aspects of the Saviour as presented to us in the first three Gospels, and in the writings of St. Paul and St. John. At any rate, there were current in the primitive Church very distinct Christologies."—(Ibid.) Queer language this for a plain man! I, for my own part, have never yet discovered the difficulty which is here hinted at; but which has been prudently left unexplained.

It follows:—"But neither to any defect in our capacities, nor to any reasonable presumption of a hidden wise design, nor to any partial spiritual endowments in the narrators, can we attribute the difficulty, if not impossibility, of reconciling the genealogies of St. Matthew and St. Luke; or the chronology of the Holy Week; or the accounts of the Resurrection: nor to any mystery in the subject-matter can be referred the uncertainty in which the New Testament writings leave us, as to the descent of Jesus Christ according to the flesh, whether by His mother He were of the tribe of Judah or of the tribe of Levi."—(pp. 179-180.) I, for my part, can declare that I have found the reconcilement in the three subjects first alluded to, as complete as could be either expected or desired. The last part of the sentence discovers nothing so much as the writer's ignorance of the subject on which he presumes to dogmatize.

Presently, we read,—"It may be worth while to consider how far a liberty of opinion is conceded by our existing Laws, Civil and Ecclesiastical."—(p. 180.) "As far as opinion privately entertained is concerned, the liberty of the English Clergyman appears already to be complete. For no Ecclesiastical person can be obliged to answer interrogations as to his opinions; nor be troubled for that which he has not actually expressed; nor be made responsible for inferences which other people may draw from his expressions." (Ibid.)—Surely such language needs only to be cited to awaken indignation in every honest bosom! "With most men educated, not in the schools of Jesuitism, but in the sound and honest moral training of an English Education, the mere entering on the record such a plea as this, must destroy the whole case. If the position of the religious instructor is to be maintained only by his holding one thing as true, and teaching another thing as to be received,—in the name of the God of Truth, either let all teaching cease, or let the fraudulent instructor abdicate willingly his office, before the moral indignation of an as yet uncorrupted people thrust him ignominiously from his abused seat[93]!"

The remarks just quoted serve to introduce a series of views on subscription to the Articles, which, if they were presented to me without any intimation of the quarter from which they proceed, I should not have hesitated to denounce as simply dishonest[94].... The Statute 13 Eliz. c. 12, is next discussed with the same unhappy licentiousness; and the declaration that "the meshes are too open for modern refinements." (p. 185.) ... I desire not to speak with undue severity of a fellow-creature: but I protest that I cannot read the Review under consideration without a profound conviction that, (speaking for myself,) I have to do with one whom in the common concerns of life I would not trust. The aptitude here displayed[95] for playing tricks with plain language, is calculated to sap the foundations of human intercourse, and to destroy confidence. If plain words may mean anything, or may mean nothing,—then, farewell to all good faith in the intercourse of daily life. If Articles "for the avoiding of Diversities of Opinions, and for the establishing of Consent touching true Religion[96],"—such Articles especially as the IInd., "Of the Word or Son of God, which was made very Man;" and the Vth., "Of the Holy Ghost," (which the Rev. Mr. Wilson calls "humanifying of the Divine Word," and "the Divine Personalities,") (p. 186,)—may be signed by one who, even in signing, resolves to "pass by the side of them," (p. 186, line 6,)—then is it better at once to admit that no Logic can be supposed to be available with such a writer; that he places himself outside the reach of fair argumentation; and must not be astonished if he shall find himself regarded by his peers simply in the light of an untrustworthy and impracticable person.

The last stage of all in this deplorable paper is an application to Holy Scripture itself of the tricks which the Vicar of Great Staughton has already played, so much to his own satisfaction, with the Articles. "We may say that the value of the historical parts of the Bible may consist, rather in their significance, in the ideas which they awaken, than in the scenes themselves which they depict." (p. 199.) To a plain English understanding, (unperplexed with the dreams of Strauss, and other unbelievers of the same stamp,) such a statement conveys scarcely an intelligible notion. But we are not left long in doubt.

"The application of Ideology to the interpretation of Scripture, to the doctrines of Christianity, to the formularies of the Church, may undoubtedly be carried to an excess; may be pushed so far as to leave in the sacred records no historical residue whatever.... An example of the critical Ideology carried to excess, is that of Strauss; which resolves into an ideal the whole of the historical and doctrinal person of Jesus.... But it by no means follows, because Strauss has substituted a mere shadow for the Jesus of the Evangelists, that there are not traits in the scriptural person of Jesus, which are better explained by referring them to an ideal than an historical origin: and without falling into fanciful exegetics, there are parts of Scripture more usefully interpreted ideologically than in any other manner,—as for instance, the history of the Temptation of Jesus by Satan, and accounts of demoniacal possessions." (pp. 200-201.) "Some may consider the descent of all Mankind from Adam and Eve as an undoubted historical fact; others may rather perceive in that relation a form of narrative into which in early ages tradition would easily throw itself spontaneously.... Among a particular people, this historical representation became the concrete expression of a great moral truth,—of the brotherhood of all human beings.... The force, grandeur, and reality of these ideas are not a whit impaired in the abstract, nor indeed the truth of the concrete history (!) as their representation, even though mankind should have been placed upon the earth in many pairs at once, or in distinct centres of creation. For the brotherhood of men really depends," &c., &c. (p. 201.) "Let us suppose one to be uncertain whether our Lord were born of the house and lineage of David, or of the tribe of Levi; and even to be driven to conclude that the genealogies of Him have little historic value; nevertheless, in idea, Jesus is both Son of David and Son of Aaron, both Prince of Peace, and High Priest of our profession; as He is, under another idea, though not literally, 'without father and without mother.' And He is none the less Son of David, Priest Aaronical, or Royal Priest Melchizedecan, in idea and spiritually, even if it be unproved whether He were any of them in historic fact.—In like manner it need not trouble us, if in consistency, we should have to suppose both an ideal origin, and to apply an ideal meaning, to the birth in the city of David, (!) and to other circumstances of the Infancy. (!) So again, the Incarnification of the divine Immanuel remains, although the angelic appearances which herald it in the narratives of the Evangelists may be of ideal origin, according to the conceptions of former days." (pp. 202-3.) "And," lastly,—"liberty must be left to all as to the extent in which they apply this principle!" (p. 201.)

To such dreamy nonsense, what "Answer" can we return[97]? Such speculations would be a fair subject for ridicule and merriment, if the subject were not so unspeakably solemn,—the issues so vast, and terribly momentous. We find ourselves introduced into a new world,—of which the denizens talk like madmen, and in a jargon of their own. And yet, that jargon is no sooner understood, than the true character of our new companions becomes painfully evident[98].... He who believes the plain words of Holy Writ, finds himself called "the literalist." He who resolves Scripture into a dream, and the Lord who redeemed him into "a mere shadow," (p. 200) is dignified with the title of "an idealist." "Neither" (we are assured) "should condemn the other. They are fed with the same truths; the literalist unconsciously, the idealist with reflection. Neither can justly say of the other that he undervalues the Sacred Writings, or that he holds them as inspired less properly than himself." (p. 200.) "The ideologian," (who is the same person as the "idealist;" for the gentleman, at this place, changes his name;) "is evidently in possession of a principle which will enable him to stand in charitable relation to persons of very different opinions from his own." (p. 202.) "Relations which may repose on doubtful grounds as matter of history, and, as history, be incapable of being ascertained or verified, may yet be equally suggestive of true ideas with facts absolutely certain. The spiritual significance is the same of the Transfiguration, of opening blind eyes, of causing the tongue of the stammerer to speak plainly, of feeding multitudes with bread in the wilderness, of cleansing leprosy; whatever links may be deficient in the traditional records of particular events." (Ibid.) ... I will but modestly inquire,—What would be said of us, if we were so to expound Holy Scripture in defence of Christianity?

But it is time to dismiss this tissue of worthless as well as most mischievous writing;—even to exhibit which, in the words of its misguided author, ought to be its own sufficient exposure. Do men really expect us to "answer" such groundless assertions, and vague speculations as those which go before? A Faith without Creeds: a Clergy without authority or fixed opinions: a Bible without historical truth:—how can such things, for a moment, be supposed to be[99]? What answer do we render to the sick man who sees unsubstantial goblins on the solid tapestried wall; and mistakes for shadowy apparitions of the night, the forms of flesh and blood which are ministering to his life's necessities? If the Temptation, and the Transfiguration, and the Miracles of Christ be not true history, but ideological allegories,—then why not His Nativity and His Crucifixion,—His Death and His Burial,—His Resurrection and His Ascension into Heaven likewise? "Liberty" (we have been expressly told,) "must be left to all, as to the extent in which they apply the principle" (p. 201.)—Where then is Ideology to begin,—or rather, where is ideology to end? "Why then is Strauss to be blamed for using that universal liberty, and 'resolving into an ideal the whole of the historical and doctrinal person of Jesus?' Why is Strauss' resolution 'an excess?' or where and by what authority, short of his extreme view, would Mr. Wilson himself stop? or at what point of the process? and by what right could he, consistently with his own canon, call on any other speculator, to stay the ideologizing process[100]?"

"Discrepancies in narratives, scientific difficulties, defects in evidence, do not disturb the ideologist as they do the literalist." (p. 203.) No, truly. Nothing troubles him; simply because he believes nothing! The very Sacraments of the Gospel are not secure from his unhallowed touch. "The same principle" (?) is declared to be "capable of application" to them also. "Within these concrete conceptions there lie hid the truer ideas of the virtual presence of the Lord Jesus everywhere that He is preached, remembered, and represented." (p. 204.) ... Do we ever deal thus with any other book of History? And yet, on what possible principle is the Bible to be thus trifled with, and Thucydides to be spared?—I protest, if the historical personages of either Testament may be resolved at will into abstract qualities, and the historical transactions of either Testament may be supposed to represent ideas and notions only,—then, I see not why the Vicar of Great Staughton himself may not prove to be a mythical personage also. Why need Henry Bristow Wilson, B.D.,—who, (as "literalists" say,) in 1841 was one of the 'Four Tutors' who procured the condemnation of Tract No. 90, on the ground that it 'evaded rather than explained the Thirty-nine Articles;' and who, in 1861 writes that "Subscription to the Articles may be thought even inoperative upon the conscience by reason of its vagueness;" (p. 181.)—why need this author be supposed to be a man at all? Why should he not be interpreted "ideologically;" and resolved into the principle of disgraceful Inconsistency of conduct, and "variation of opinion at different periods of life?"

V. In the present crusade against the Bible and the Faith of Christian men, the task of destroying confidence in the first chapter of Genesis has been undertaken by Mr. C. W. Goodwin, M.A. He requires us to "regard it as the speculation of some Hebrew Descartes or Newton, promulgated in all good faith as the best and most probable account that could be then given of God's Universe." (p. 252.)

Mr. Goodwin remarks with scorn, that "we are asked to believe that a vision of Creation was presented to him by Divine power, for the purpose of enabling him to inform the world of what he had seen; which vision inevitably led him to give a description which has misled the world for centuries, and in which the truth can now only with difficulty be recognized." (p. 247.) He puts "pen to paper," therefore, (he says,) in order to induce the world to a "frank recognition of the erroneous views of nature which the Bible contains." (p. 211.) The importance of the inquiry, he vindicates in the following modest terms:—"Physical Science goes on unconcernedly pursuing its own paths. Theology, (the Science whose object is the dealing of God with Man as a moral being,) maintains but a shivering existence, shouldered and jostled by the sturdy growths of modern thought, and bemoaning itself for the hostility it encounters." (p. 211.)—A few remarks at once suggest themselves.

I cannot help thinking that if any person of ordinary intelligence, unacquainted with the Bible, were to be left to obtain his notion of its contents from "Essays and Reviews," infidel publications generally, and (absit invidia verbo!) from not a few of the Sermons which have been preached and printed in either University of late years,—the notion so obtained would be singularly at variance with the known facts of the case. Would not a man infallibly carry away an impression that the Bible is a book abounding in statements concerning matters of Physical Science which are flatly contradicted by the ascertained phenomena of Nature? Would he not be led to expect that it contained every here and there a theoretical Excursus on certain Astronomical or Physiological subjects? and to anticipate, above all, an occasional chapter on Geology? Great would be his astonishment, surely, at finding that one single chapter comprises nearly the whole of the statements which modern philosophy finds so very hateful; and that chapter, the first chapter in the Bible[101].

But the surprise would grow considerably when the conditions of the problem came to be a little more fully stated. Has then the actual history of the World's Creation been ascertained from some other independent and infallible source? No! Are Geologists as yet so much as agreed even about a theory of the Creation? No! Can it be proved that any part of the Mosaic account is false? Certainly not! Then why all this hostile dogmatism?—To witness the violence of the partisans of Geological discovery, and the arrogance of their pretensions, one would suppose that some Divine Creed of theirs had been impugned: that a revelation had been made to them from Heaven, which the profane and unbelieving world was reluctant to accept. Whereas, these are Christian men, impatient, as it seems, to tear the first leaf out of their Bible: or rather, to throw discredit on the entire volume, by establishing the untrustworthiness of the earliest page!

One single additional consideration completes the strangeness of the picture. If our account of the Six Days of Creation were a sybilline leaf of unknown origin, it would not be unreasonable to treat its revelations as little worth. But since the author of it is confessedly Moses,—the great Hebrew prophet, who lived from b.c. 1571 to 1451, who enjoyed the vision of the Most High; nay, who conversed with God face to face, was with Him in the Mount for thrice forty days, and received from Him the whole details of the Sacred Law;—since this first chapter of Genesis is known to have formed a part of the Church's unbroken heritage from that time onward, and therefore must be acknowledged to be an integral part of the volume of Scripture which, (as our Lord says,) οὐ δύναται λυθῆναι,—"cannot be broken, diluted, loosened, explained away;"—since, further, this account of Creation is observed to occur in the most conspicuous place of the most conspicuous of those books which are designated by an Apostle by the epithet θέοπνευστος, or, "given by inspiration," "filled with the breath," or "Spirit of God;" and when it is considered that our Saviour and His Apostles refer to the primæval history contained in the first two chapters about thirty times[102]:—when, (I say,) all this is duly weighed, surely too strong a primâ facie case has been made out on behalf of the first chapter of Genesis, that its authority should be imperilled by the random statements of every fresh individual who sees fit to master the elements of Geology; and on the strength of that qualification presumes to sit in judgment on the Hebrew Scriptures,—of which, confessedly, he does not understand so much as the alphabet!

It is even amusing to see how vain a little mind can become of a little knowledge. Mr. Goodwin remarks,—"The school-books of the present day, while they teach the child that the Earth moves, yet assure him that it is a little less than six thousand years old, and that it was made in six days." (p. 210.) (I am puzzled to reconcile this statement with the author's declaration that "no well-instructed person now doubts the great antiquity of the Earth any more than its motion." (Ibid.) Would it not have been fairer to have named at least one of the school-books which perpetuate so wicked a heresy?) "On the other hand, Geologists of all religious creeds are agreed that the Earth has existed for an immense series of years,—to be counted by millions rather than by thousands; and that indubitably more than six days elapsed from its first Creation to the appearance of Man upon its surface. By this broad discrepancy between old and new doctrine is the modern mind startled, as were the men of the sixteenth century when told that the earth moved." (p. 210.)

But begging pardon of our philosopher, if all he means is that more than six days elapsed between the Creation of "Heaven and Earth," (noticed in ver. 1,) and the Creation of Man, (spoke of from ver. 26 to 28,)—he means to say mighty little; and need not fear to encounter contradiction from any "well-instructed person." True, that an ignorant man could not have suspected anything of the kind from reading the first chapter of Genesis: but this is surely nobody's fault but his own. An ignorant man might in like manner be of opinion that the Sun and Moon are the two largest objects in creation; and there is not a word in this same chapter calculated to undeceive him. Again, he might think that the Sun rises and sets; and the common language of the Observatory would confirm him hopelessly in his mistake. All this however is no one's fault but his own. The ancient Fathers of the Church, behind-hand as they were in Physical Science, yet knew enough to anticipate "the hypothesis of the Geologist; and two of the Christian Fathers, Augustine and Theodoret, are referred to as having actually held that a wide interval elapsed between the first act of Creation, mentioned in the Mosaic account, and the commencement of the Six Days' work." (p. 231.) Mr. Goodwin therefore has got no further, so far, than Augustine and Theodoret got, 1400 years since, without the aid of Geology.

But we must hasten on. The business of the Essayist, as we have said, is to undermine our confidence in the Bible, by exposing the ignorance of the author of the first chapter. "Modern theologians," (he remarks, with unaffected displeasure,) "have directed their attention to the possibility of reconciling the Mosaic narrative with those geological facts which are admitted to be beyond dispute." (p. 210.)—And pray, (we modestly ask,) is not such a proceeding obvious? A "frank recognition of the erroneous views of Nature which the Bible contains," (p. 211,) we shall be prepared to yield when those "erroneous views" have been demonstrated to exist,—but not till then. Mr. Goodwin must really remember that although, in his opinion, the "Mosaic Cosmogony," (for so he phrases it,) is "not an authentic utterance of Divine knowledge, but a human utterance," (p. 253,) the World thinks differently. The learned and wise and good of all ages, including the present, are happily agreed that the first chapter of Genesis is part of the Word of God.

After what is evidently intended to be a showy sketch of the past history of our planet,—"we pass" (says Mr. Goodwin) "to the account of the Creation contained in the Hebrew record. And it must be observed that in reality two distinct accounts are given us in the book of Genesis; one, being comprised in the first chapter and the first three verses of the second; the other, commencing at the fourth verse of the second chapter and continuing till the end. This is so philologically certain that it were useless to ignore it." (p. 217.) Really we read such statements with a kind of astonishment which almost swallows up sorrow. Do they arise, (to quote Mr. Goodwin's own language,) "from our modern habits of thought, and from the modesty of assertion which the spirit of true science has taught us?" (p. 252.) Convinced that my unsupported denial would have no more weight than Mr. Goodwin's ought to have, I have referred the dictum just quoted to the highest Hebrew authority available, and have been assured that it is utterly without foundation.

After such experience of Mr. Goodwin's philological "certainties," what amount of attention does he expect his dicta to command in a Science which, starting from "a region of uncertainty, where Philosophy is reduced to mere guesses and possibilities, and pronounces nothing definite," (p. 213,) has to travel through "a prolonged period, beginning and ending we know not when;" (p. 214;) reaches another period, "the duration of which no one presumes to define;" (Ibid.;) and again another, during which "nothing can be asserted positively:" (p. 215:) after which comes "a kind of artificial break?" (Ibid.)

For my own part, I freely confess that Mr. Goodwin's final admission that "the advent of Man may be considered as inaugurating a new and distinct epoch, that in which we now are, and during the whole of which the physical conditions of existence cannot have been very materially different from what they are now;" (p. 216;) and that "thus much is clear, that Man's existence on Earth is brief, compared with the ages during which unreasoning creatures were the sole possessors of the globe:" (p. 217:)—these statements, I say, contain as much as one desires to see admitted. For really, since the fossil Flora, and the various races of animated creatures which Geologists have classified with so much industry and skill, confessedly belong to a period of immemorial antiquity; and, with very rare exceptions indeed, represent extinct species,—I, as an interpreter of Scripture, am not at all concerned with them. Moses asserts nothing at all about them, one way or the other. What Revelation says, is, that nearly 6000 years ago, after a mighty catastrophe,—unexplained alike in its cause, its nature, and its duration,—the Creator of the Universe instituted upon the surface of this Earth of ours that order of things which has continued ever since; and which is observed at this instant to prevail: that He was pleased to parcel out His transcendent operations, and to spread them over Six Days; and that He ceased from the work of Creation on the Seventh Day. All extant species, whether of the vegetable or the animal Kingdom, including Man himself, belong to the week in question. And this statement, as it has never yet been found untrue, so am I unable to anticipate by what possible evidence it can ever be set aside as false.

In my IInd Sermon, I have ventured to review the Mosaic record sufficiently in detail, to render it superfluous that I should retrace any portion of it here. The reader is requested to read at least so much of what has been offered as is contained from p. 28 to p. 32. My business at present is with Mr. Goodwin.

And in limine I have to remind him that he has really no right first to give, in his own words, his own notion of the history of Creation; and then to insist on making the Revelation of the same transaction ridiculous by giving it also in words of his own, which become in effect a weak parody of the original. What is there in Genesis about "the air or wind fluttering over the waters of the deep?" (p. 219.) Is this meant for the august announcement that "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters?"—"On the third day, ... we wish to call attention to the fact that trees and plants destined for food are those which are particularly singled out as the earliest productions of the earth." (p. 220.) The reverse is the fact; as a glance at Gen. i. 11. will shew.—"The formation of the stars" on the fourth day, "is mentioned in the most cursory manner." (p. 221.) But who is not aware that "the formation of the stars" is nowhere mentioned in this chapter at all?

"Light and the measurement of time," (proceeds Mr. Goodwin,) "are represented as existing before the manifestation of the Sun." (p. 219.) Half of this statement is true; the other half is false. The former idea, he adds, is "repugnant to our modern knowledge." (p. 219.) Is then Mr. Goodwin really so weak as to imagine that our Sun is the sole source of Light in Creation? Whence then the light of the so-called fixed Stars? But I shall be told that Mr. Goodwin speaks of our system only, and of our Earth in particular. Then pray, whence that glory[103] which on a certain night on a mountain in Galilee, caused the face of our Redeemer to shine as the Sun[104] and His raiment to emit a dazzling lustre[105]? "We may boldly affirm," (he says,) "that those for whom [Gen. i. 3-5] was penned could have taken it in no other sense than that light existed before and independently of the sun." (p. 219.) We may indeed. And I as boldly affirm that I take the passage in that sense myself: moreover that I hold the statement which Mr. Goodwin treats so scornfully, to be the very truth which, in the deep counsels of God, this passage was designed to convey to mankind; even that "the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, who only hath immortality, dwelleth in the Light which no man can approach unto[106]."

"The work of the second day of Creation is to erect the vault of Heaven (Heb. Rakia; Gr. στερέωμα; Lat. Firmamentum,) which is represented as supporting an ocean of water above it. The waters are said to be divided, so that some are below, and some above the vault.... No quibbling about the derivation of the word Rakia, which is literally 'something beaten out,' can affect the explicit description of the Mosaic writer contained in the words 'the waters that are above the firmament,' or avail to shew that he was aware that the sky is but transparent space." (pp. 219, 220.) "The allotted receptacle [of Sun and Moon] was not made until the Second Day, nor were they set in it until the fourth." (p. 221.) Surely I cannot be the only reader to whom the impertinence of this is as offensive, as its shallowness is ridiculous! In spite of Mr. Goodwin's uplifted finger, and menacing cry,—"No quibbling!" I proceed with my inquiry.

For first; Why does Mr. Goodwin parody the words of Inspiration? The account as given by Moses is,—"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters[108]." But surely, to make the "open firmament of Heaven" in which every winged fowl may fly[109], is not "to erect the vault of Heaven,"—"a permanent solid vault,"—"supporting an ocean of water!"

The Hebrew word here used to denote "firmament," on which Mr. Goodwin's indictment turns, ("rakia,") is derived from a verb which means to "beat." Now, what is beaten, or hammered out, while (if it be a metal) it acquires extension, acquires also solidity. The Septuagint translators seem to have fastened upon the latter notion, and accordingly represented it by στερέωμα; for which, the earliest Latin translators of the Old Testament coined an equivalent,—firmamentum. But that Moses by the word "rakia" intended rather to denote the expanse overhead, than to predicate solidity for the sky, I suspect will be readily admitted by all. True that in the poetical book of Job, we read that the sky is "strong, as a molten looking-glass[110]:" but then we meet more frequently with passages of a different tendency. God is said to "stretch out the heavens like a curtain[111]," "and spread them out as a tent to dwell in[112]:" to "bind up the waters in His thick clouds[113]," and "in a garment[114]," &c., &c.[115] It is only needful to look out the word in the dictionary of Gesenius to see that spreading out, (as of thin plates of metal by a hammer,) is the only notion which properly belongs to the word. Accordingly, the earliest modern Latin translation from the Hebrew, (that of Pagninus,) renders the word expansio. And so the word has stood for centuries in the margin of our English Bible.

The actual fact of the case,—the truth concerning the physical phenomenon alluded to,—comes in, and surely may be allowed to have some little weight. Since expansion is a real attribute of the atmosphere which divides the waters above from the waters below,—and solidity is not,—it seems to me only fair, seeing that the force of the expression is thought doubtful, to assign to it the meaning which is open to fewest objections.

But "the Hebrews," (says Mr. Goodwin,) "understood the sky, firmament, or heaven to be a permanent solid vault, as it appears to the ordinary observer." This, he adds, is "evident enough from various expressions made use of concerning it. It is said to have pillars[116], foundations[117], doors[118], and windows[119],"—(p. 220.) Now, I really do not think Mr. Goodwin's inference by any means so "evident" as he asserts. If Heaven has "pillars" in the poetical book of Job, so has the Earth[120]. The "foundations" spoken of in 2 Sam. xxii. 8, seem rather to belong to Earth than to Heaven,—as a reference to the parallel place in Ps. xviii. 7 will shew[121]. Is Mr. Goodwin so little of a poet, as to be staggered by the phrase "windows of Heaven," when it occurs in the figurative language of an ancient people, and in a poetical book[122]?

For the foregoing reasons, I distrust Mr. Goodwin's inference that "the Hebrews understood the sky to be a solid vault, furnished with pillars, foundations, doors, and windows." But whether they did, or did not, it is to be hoped that he is enough of a logician to perceive that the popular notions of God's ancient people on this subject, are not the thing in question. The only fact we have to do with is clearly this,—that Moses has in this place employed the word "rakia:" and the only question which can be moved about it, is (as evidently) the following,—whether he was, or was not, to blame in employing that word; for as to the meaning which he, individually, attached to the phenomenon of which "rakia" is the name, it cannot be pretended that any one living knows anything at all about the matter. A Greek, Latin, or French astronomer who should speak of Heaven, would not therefore be assumed to mean that it is hollow; although κοῖλον, 'c[oe]lum,' 'ciel,' etymologically imply no less.

Now I contend that Moses employed the word "rakia" with exactly the same propriety, neither more nor less, as when a Divine now-a-days employs the English word "firmament." It does not follow that the man who speaks of "the spacious firmament on high," is under so considerable a delusion as to suspect that the firmament is a firm thing; nor does it follow that Moses thought that "rakia" was a solid substance either,—even if solidity was the prevailing etymological notion in the word, and even if the Hebrews were no better philosophers than Mr. Goodwin would have us believe. The Essayist's objection is therefore worthless. God was content that Moses should employ the ordinary language of his day,—accommodate himself to the forms of speech then prevalent,—coin no new words. What is there unreasonable in the circumstance? What possible ground does it furnish for a supposition that the etymological force of the word,—or even that the popular physical theory of which that word may, or may not, have once been the connotation,—denoted the sense in which Moses employed it? Is it to be supposed that when a physician speaks of a "jovial temperament," he insinuates his approval of an exploded system of medicine? Do astronomers maintain that the Sun has a disk, or the Earth an axis? that the former leaves its place in the heavens when it suffers 'eclipse[123]?' or that the latter has a superior latitude, from East to West? To give the most familiar instance of all,—Do scientific men believe that the sun rises, and sets?—And yet all say that it does, until this hour!... Why is Moses to be judged by a less favourable standard than anybody else,—than Shakspeare, than Hooker, even than Mr. Goodwin? The first, in an exquisite passage, bids Jessica,—

"Look how the floor of heav'n
Is thick inlayed with patens of bright gold."

Did Shakspeare expect his beautiful language would be tortured into a shape which would convict him of talking nonsense?—But this is poetry. Then take Hooker's prose:—

"If the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; ... if the Moon should wander from her beaten way[124]," &c.

Did Hooker suppose that heaven is "an arch," which could be "loosened and dissolved?" or that "the way" of the moon is "beaten?"—But this is a highly poetical passage, written three centuries ago.—Let an unexceptionable witness then be called; and so, let the question be brought to definite issue. I, for my part, am quite content that it shall be the philosopher in person. The present Essayist shall be heard discoursing about Creation, and shall be convicted out of his own mouth. Mr. Goodwin begins his paper by a kind of cosmogony of his own, which he prefaces with the following apology:—"It will be necessary for our purpose to go over the oft-trodden ground, which must be done with rapid steps. Nor let the reader object to be reminded of some of the most elementary facts of his knowledge. The human race has been ages in arriving at conclusions now familiar to every child." (p. 212.) After this preamble, he begins his "elementary facts," as follows:—

"This Earth, apparently so still and stedfast, lying in majestic repose beneath the ætherial vault,"—(p. 212.)

But we remonstrate immediately. "The ætherial vault!" Do you then understand the sky, firmament, or heaven to be "a permanent solid vault, as it appears to the ordinary observer?" (p. 220.)

"The Sun which seems to leap up each morning from the east, and traversing the skyey bridge,"—(p. 212.)

"The skyey bridge!" And pray in what part of the universe do you discover a "skyey bridge?" Is not this calculated "to convey to ordinary apprehensions an impression at variance with facts?" (p. 231.)

"The Moon which occupies a position in the visible heavens only second to the Sun, and far beyond that of every other celestial body in conspicuousness,"—(p. 212.)

Nay, but really Mr. Philosopher, while you remind us "of some of the most elementary facts of our knowledge," (p. 212,) you write (except in the matter of the "leaping Sun" and the "skyey bridge,")—exactly as Moses does in the first chapter of Genesis! What else does that great Prophet say but that "the Moon occupies a position in the visible heavens only second to the Sun, and far beyond that of every other celestial body in conspicuousness?" (p. 212.)

Enough, it is presumed, has been offered in reply to Mr. Goodwin, and his notions of "Mosaic Cosmogony." He writes with the flippancy of a youth in his teens, who having just mastered the elements of natural science, is impatient to acquaint the world with his achievement. His powers of dogmatism are unbounded; but he betrays his ignorance at every step. The Divine decree, "Let us make Man in Our image, after Our likeness[125]," he explains by remarking that "the Pentateuch abounds in passages shewing that the Hebrews contemplated the Divine being in the visible form of a man." (!!!) (p. 221.) A foot-note contains the following oracular dictum,—"See particularly the narrative in Genesis xviii." What can be said to such an ignoramus as this? Hear him dogmatizing in another subject-matter:—"The common arrangement of the Bible in chapters is of comparatively modern origin, and is admitted on all hands to have no authority or philological worth whatever. In many cases the division is most preposterous." (p. 222.) That the division of chapters is occasionally infelicitous, is true: but is Mr. Goodwin weak enough to think that he could divide them better? The division into chapters and verses again is not so modern as Mr. Goodwin fancies. Dr. M'Caul, (in a pamphlet on the Translation of the Bible,) shews reason for suspecting that some of the divisions of the Old Testament Scriptures are as old as the time of Ezra.

To return, and for the last time, to Mr. Goodwin's Essay.—His object is, (with how much of success I have already sufficiently shewn,) (1) To fasten the charge of absurdity and ignorance on the ancient Prophet who is confessedly the author of the Book of Genesis: (2) To prove that a literal interpretation of Gen. i., "will not bear a moment's serious discussion." (p. 230.) I look through his pages in vain for the wished-for proof. He has many strong assertions. He puts them forth with not a little insolence. But he proves nothing! At p. 226, however, I read as follows:—"Dr. Buckland appears to assume that when it is said that the Heaven and the Earth were created in the beginning, it is to be understood that they were created in their present form and state of completeness, the heaven raised above the earth as we see it, or seem to see it now." (pp. 226-7.)

But Dr. Buckland "appears to assume" nothing of the kind. His words are,—"The first verse of Genesis seems explicitly to assert the creation of the Universe: the Heaven, including the sidereal systems,—and the Earth, ... the subsequent scene of the operations of the six days about to be described." (pp. 224-5.)

"This," continues Mr. Goodwin, "is the fallacy of his argument." (p. 227.)

But if this is "the fallacy of his argument," we have already seen that it is a fallacy which rests not with Dr. Buckland, but with Mr. Goodwin. He proceeds:—

"The circumstantial description of the framing of the Heaven out of the waters proves that the words 'Heaven and Earth,' in the first verse, must be taken proleptically."—(p. 227.)

But we may as well stop the torrent of long words, by simply pointing out that "the heavens," (hashamaim,) spoken of in Gen. i. 1, are quite distinct from "the firmament," (rakia,) spoken of in ver. 6. The word is altogether different, and the sense is evidently altogether different also; although Mr. Goodwin seeks to identify the two[126]. And further, we take leave to remind our modern philosopher that no "circumstantial description of the framing of the heaven out of the waters," is to be found either in ver. 6, or elsewhere. And this must suffice.

The entire subject shall be dismissed with a very few remarks.—Mr. Goodwin delights in pointing out the incorrectness of "the sense in which the Mosaic narrative was taken by those who first heard it:" (p. 223:) and in asserting "that this meaning is primâ facie one wholly adverse to the present astronomical and geological views of the Universe." (p. 223.) But we take leave to remind this would-be philosopher that "the idea which entered into the minds of those to whom the account was first given," (p. 230,) is not the question with which we have to do when we are invited to a "frank recognition of the erroneous views of Nature which the Bible contains." (p. 211.) "It is manifest,"—(in this I cordially agree with Mr. Goodwin,)—"that the whole account is given from a different point of view from that which we now unavoidably take:" (p. 223:) and, (I beg leave to add,) that point of view is somewhere in Heaven,—not here on Earth! The "Mosaic Cosmogony," as Mr. Goodwin phrases it, (fond, like all other smatterers in Science, of long words,) is a Revelation: and the same Holy Ghost who gave it, speaking by the mouth of St. John, not obscurely intimates that it is mystical, like the rest of Holy Scripture,—that is, that it was fashioned not without a reference to the Gospel[127]. But we are touching on a high subject now, of which Mr. Goodwin does not understand so much as the Grammar. He is thinking of the structure of the globe: we are thinking of the structure of the Bible. But to return to Earth, we inform the Essayist that it is simply unphilosophical, even absurd, for him to insist on what shall be implied by certain words employed by Moses,—(of which he judges by their etymology;) and further to assume what erroneous physical theories those words must have been connected with, by his countrymen, and so forth; and straightway to hold up the greatest of the ancient prophets to ridicule, as if those notions and those theories were all his!

"After all," (as Dr. Buckland remarked, long since,) "it should be recollected that the question is not respecting the correctness of the Mosaic narrative, but of our interpretation of it:" (p. 231:)—"a proposition," (proceeds Mr. Goodwin,) "which can hardly be sufficiently reprobated." But I make no question which of these two writers is most entitled to reprobation. For the view which will be found advocated in Sermon II., (which is substantially Dr. Buckland's,) (p. 24 to p. 32,) it shall but be said that it recommends itself to our acceptance by the strong fact that it takes no liberty with the sacred narrative, whatever; and receives the Revelation of God in all its strangeness, (which it cannot be a great mistake to do;) without trying to reconcile it with supposed discoveries, (wherein we may fail altogether.) I defy anybody to shew that it is impossible that God may have disposed of the actual order of the Universe, as in the first chapter of Genesis He is related to have done; and probability can clearly have no place in such a speculation. I would only just remind the thoughtful student of Scripture, and indeed of Nature also, that the singular analogy which Geologists think they discover between successive periods of Creation, and the Mosaic record of the first Six Days, is no difficulty to those who hesitate to identify those Days with the irregular Periods of indefinite extent. Rather was it to have been expected, I think, that such an analogy would be found to subsist between His past and His present working, when, 6,000 years ago, God arranged the actual system of things in Six Days.—Neither need we feel perplexed if Hugh Miller was right in the conclusion at which, he says, he had been "compelled to arrive;" viz. that "not a few" of the extant species of animals "enjoyed life in their present haunts" "for many long ages ere Man was ushered into being;" "and that for thousands of years anterior to even their appearance many of the existing molluscs lived in our seas." (p. 229.) I find it nowhere asserted by Moses that the severance was so complete, and decisively marked, between previous cycles of Creation and that cycle which culminated in the creation of Man, that no single species of the præ-Adamic period was reproduced by the Omnipotent, to serve as a connecting link, as it were, between the Old world and the New,—an identifying note of the Intelligence which was equally at work on this last, as on all those former occasions. On the other hand, I do find it asserted by Geologists that between the successive præ-Adamic cycles such connecting links are discoverable; and this fact makes me behold in the circumstance supposed fatal to the view here advocated, the strongest possible confirmation of its accuracy. At the same time, it is admitted that in every department of animated and vegetable life, the severance between the last (or Mosaic) cycle of Creation, and all those cycles which preceded it, is very broadly marked[128].

Mr. Goodwin's method contrasts sadly with that of the several writers he adduces,—whether Naturalists or Divines. Those men, believing in the truth of God's Word, have piously endeavoured, (with whatever success,) to shew that the discoveries of Geology are not inconsistent with the revelations of Genesis. But he, with singular bad taste, (to use no stronger language,) makes no secret of the animosity with which he regards the inspired record; and even finds "the spectacle of able, and we doubt not conscientious writers engaging in attempting the impossible,—painful and humiliating." He says, "they evidently do not breathe freely over their work; but shuffle and stumble over their difficulties in a piteous manner." (p. 250.) He asserts dogmatically that "the interpretation proposed by Buckland to be given to the Mosaic description, will not bear a moment's serious discussion:" (p. 230:) while Hugh Miller "proposes to give an entirely mythical or enigmatical sense to the Mosaic narrative." (p. 236.) He is clamorous that we should admit the teaching of Scripture to be "to some extent erroneous." (p. 251.) He "recognizes in it, not an authentic utterance of Divine Knowledge, but a human utterance." (p. 253.) "Why should we hesitate," (he asks,) "to recognize the fallibility of the Hebrew writers?" (p. 251.)

With one general reflexion, I pass on to the next Essay.—The Works of God, the more severely they have been questioned, have hitherto been considered to bear a more and more decisive testimony to the Wisdom and the Goodness of their Author. The animal and the vegetable kingdoms have been made Man's instructors for ages past; and ever since the microscope has revealed so many unsuspected wonders, the argument from contrivance and design, Creative Power and infinite Wisdom, has been pressed with increasing cogency. The Heavens, from the beginning, have been felt to "declare the glory of God." One department only of Nature, alone, has all along remained unexplored. Singular to relate, the Records of Creation, (as the phenomena of Geology may I suppose be properly called,)—though the most obvious phenomena of all,—have been throughout neglected. It was not till the other day that they were invited to give up their weighty secrets; and lo, they have confessed them, willingly and at once. The study of Geology does but date from yesterday; and already it aspires to the rank of a glorious Science. Evidence has been at once furnished that our Earth has been the scene of successive cycles of Creation; and the crust of the globe we inhabit is found to contain evidence of a degree of antiquity which altogether defies conjecture. The truth is, that Man, standing on a globe where his deepest excavations bear the same relation to the diameter which the scratch of a pin invisible to the naked eye, bears to an ordinary globe;—learns that his powers of interrogating Nature break down marvellous soon: yet Nature is observed to keep from him no secrets which he has the ability to ask her to give up.

In the meantime, the attitude assumed by certain pretenders to Physical Science at these discoveries, cannot fail to strike any thoughtful person as extraordinary. Those witnesses of God's work in Creation, which have been dumb for ages only because no man ever thought of interrogating them, are now regarded in the light of depositaries of a mighty secret; which, because God knew that it would be fatal to the credit of His written Word, He had bribed them to keep back, as long as, by shuffling and equivocation, they found concealment practicable. It seems to be fancied, however, that that fatal secret the determination of Man has wrung from their unwilling lips, at last; and lo, on confronting God with these witnesses, He is convicted even by His own creatures of having spoken falsely in His Word[129].—Such, I say, is the tone assumed of late by a certain school of pretenders to Physical Science.

What need to declare that to the well-informed eye of Faith,—(and surely Faith is here the perfection of Reason! for Faith, remember, is the correlative not of Reason, but of Sight;)—the phenomenon presented is of a widely different character. Faith, or rather Reason, looks upon God's Works as a kind of complement of His Word. He who gave the one, gave the other also. Moreover, He knew that He had given it. So far from ministering to unbelief, or even furnishing grounds for perplexity, the record of His Works was intended, according to His gracious design, to supply what was lacking to our knowledge in the record of His Word.... "Behold My footprints, (He seems to say,) across the long tract of the ages! I could not give you this evidence in My written Word. The record would have been out of place, and out of time. It would have been unintelligible also. But what I knew would be inexpedient in the page of Revelation, I have given you abundantly in the page of Nature. I have spared your globe from combustion, which would have effaced those footprints,—in order that the characters might be plainly decipherable to the end of Time.... O fools and blind, to have occupied a world so brimful of wonders for wellnigh 6000 years, and only now to have begun to open your eyes to the structure of the earth whereon ye live, and move, and have your being! Yea, and the thousandth part of the natural wonders by which ye are surrounded has not been so much as dreamed of, by any of you, yet!... O learn to be the humbler, the more ye know; and when ye gaze along the mighty vista of departed ages, and scan the traces of what I was doing before I created Man,—multiply that problem by the stars which are scattered in number numberless over all the vault of Heaven; and learn to confess that it behoves the creature of an hour to bow his head at the discovery of his own littleness and blindness; and that his words concerning the Ancient of Days had need to be at once very wary, and very few!"

VI. By far the ablest of these seven Essays is from the pen of the "Rev. Mark Pattison, B.D., Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford." It purports to be an Essay on the "Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750;" but it can hardly be said to correspond with that description. In the concluding paragraph, the learned writer gives to his work a different name. It is declared to be "The past History of the Theory of Belief in the Church of England[130]." But neither the title at the head, nor the title at the tail of the Essay, gives any adequate notion of the Author's purpose.

Had we met with this production, isolated, in the pages of a Review, we should have probably passed it by as the work of a clever man, who, after amusing himself to some extent with the Theological literature of the last century, had desired to preserve some record of his reading; and had here thrown his random jottings into connected form. There is a racy freshness in a few of Mr. Pattison's sketches, (as in his account of Bentley's controversy with Collins[131],) which forcibly suggests the image of an artist whose pencil cannot rest amid scenery which stimulates his imagination. To be candid, we are inclined to suspect that, in the first instance, something of this sort was in reality all that the learned author had in view. But we are reluctantly precluded from putting so friendly a construction on these seventy-six pages. Not only does Mr. Pattison's Essay stand between Mr. Goodwin's open endeavour to destroy confidence in the writings of Moses, and Professor Jowett's laborious insinuations that the Bible is only an ordinary book; but it claims a common purpose and intention with both those writers. Mr. Pattison's avowed object is "to illustrate the advantage derivable to the cause of religious and moral truth, from a free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language, and from traditional methods of treatment[132]." We proceed therefore to examine his labours by the aid of the clue which he has himself supplied. For when nine editions of a book appear in quick succession, prefaced by a description of the spirit in which "it is hoped that the volume will he received,"—it seems a pity that the author should not be judged by the standard of his own choosing.

We are surprised then to find how slightly Mr. Pattison's Essay fulfils its avowed purpose. The learned author does not, in fact, directly "handle" the class of subjects referred to, at all: or if he does, it is achieved in a couple of pages. And yet it is not difficult to point out the part which his Essay performs in the general scheme of this guilty volume. With whatever absence of "concert or comparison" the authors may have severally written, the fatal effect of their combined endeavours is not more apparent than the part sustained by each Essay singly in promoting it.

While Mr. Goodwin demolishes the Law, and Dr. Williams disbelieves the Prophets; while Professor Powell denies the truth of Miracles, and Professor Jowett evacuates the authority of Holy Scripture altogether—while Dr. Temple substitutes the inner light of Conscience for an external Revelation; and Mr. Wilson teaches men how they may turn the substance of Holy Scripture into a shadow, evade the plain force of language, and play fast and loose with those safeguards which it has been ever thought that words supply;—Mr. Pattison, reviewing the last century and a half of our own Theological history, labours hard to produce an impression that, here also "all is vanity and vexation of spirit." He calls off our attention from the Bible, and bids us contemplate the unlovely aspect of the English "religious world" from the Revolution of 1688 down to the publication of the 'Tracts for the Times,' in 1833[133]. "Be content for a while, (he seems to say,) to disregard the prize; and observe the combatants instead. Listen to the historian of moral and religious progress," while he depicts "decay of religion, licentiousness of morals, public corruption, profaneness of language, a day of rebuke and blasphemy." Come attend to me; and I will draw the likeness of "an age destitute of depth or earnestness; an age whose poetry was without romance, whose philosophy was without insight, and whose public men were without character; an age of 'light without love,' whose 'very merits were of the earth, earthy.'" (p. 254.) "If we would understand our own position in the Church, and that of the Church in the age; if we would hold any clue through the maze of religious pretension which surrounds us; we cannot neglect those immediate agencies in the production of the present, which had their origin towards the beginning of the eighteenth century." (p. 256.) Let us then "trace the descent of religious thought, and the practical working of the religious ideas," (p. 255,) through some of the phases they have more recently assumed. You shall see the Apostles tried on a charge "of giving false witness in the case of the Resurrection of Jesus;" (p. 303;) and pronounced "not guilty," by one whose "name once commanded universal homage among us;" but who now, (!) with South (!!) and Barrow, (!!!) "excites perhaps only a smile of pity." (p. 265.) You shall be shewn Bentley in his attack on Collins the freethinker, enjoying "rare sport,"—"rat-hunting in an old rick;" and "laying about him in high glee, braining an authority at every blow." (p. 308.) "Coarse, arrogant, and abusive, with all Bentley's worst faults of style and temper, this masterly critique is decisive." (p. 307.) And yet, you are not to rejoice! "The 'Discourse of Freethinking' was a small tract published in 1713 by Anthony Collins, a gentleman whose high personal character and general respectability seemed to give a weight to his words, which assuredly they do not carry of themselves." (p. 307.) [Why, the man ought to have been an Essayist and Reviewer!] ... "By 'freethinking'" he does but "mean liberty of thought,—the right of bringing all received opinions whatsoever to the touchstone of reason:" (p. 307:) ture: a right which no man dares any longer exercise under pain of excommunication!] "Collins was not a sharper, and would have disdained practices to which Bentley stooped for the sake of a professorship." (p. 310.) [O high-minded Collins!] "The dirt endeavoured to be thrown on Collins will cleave to the hand that throws it." (p. 309.) [O dirty Bentley!] And though "Collins's mistakes, mistranslations, misconceptions, and distortions are so monstrous, that it is difficult for us now, forgetful how low classical learning had sunk, to believe that they are mistakes, and not wilful errors," (p. 308,)—yet "Addison, the pride of Oxford, had done no better. In his 'Essay on the Evidences of Christianity,' Addison 'assigns as grounds for his religious belief, stories as absurd as that of the Cock-lane ghost, and forgeries as rank as Ireland's 'Vortigern;' puts faith in the lie about the thundering legion; is convinced that Tiberius moved the Senate to admit Jesus among the gods; and pronounces the letter of Agbarus, King of Edessa, to be a record of great authority.'" (p. 307, quoting Macaulay's Essays.) All this and much more you shall see. Remember that it is the history of your immediate forefathers which you will be contemplating,—the morality of the professors of religion during the last century,—"the past history of the theory of Belief in the Church of England!" (p. 329.)

The curtain falls; and now, pray how do you like it? I invite you, in conclusion, to "take the religious literature of the present day, as a whole; and endeavour to make out clearly on what basis Revelation is supposed by it to rest; whether on Authority, on the Inward Light, on Reason, on self-evidencing Scripture, or on the combination of the four, or some of them, and in what proportions." (p. 329.) ... After this, you are at liberty to proceed to read 'Jowett on Inspiration,'—with what appetite you may!

Such is the impression which Mr. Pattison's Essay is calculated to leave behind. That he had no wicked intention in writing it, no one who knows him could for an instant suppose: but the effect of what he has done is certainly to set his reader adrift on a dreary sea of doubt. Discomfort and dissatisfaction, confusion and dismay, are the prevailing sentiments with which a religious mind, unfortified with learning, will rise from the perusal of the present Essay: while the irreligious man will study it with a sneer of ill-concealed satisfaction. The marks of Mr. Pattison's own better knowledge, (sufficiently evident to the quick eye of one who is aware of the writer's high theological attainments;)—the indications of a truer individual judgment, (discoverable throughout by one who knows the author's private worth, and is himself happily in possession of the clue by which to escape from this tangled labyrinth:)—these escape the common reader. To him, all is dreary doubt.

I must perforce deal with Mr. Pattison's labours in a very summary manner. The chief complaint I have to make against him is that he has altogether omitted what, to you and to me, is the most important feature of the century which he professes to describe,—namely, the vast amount of lofty Churchmanship, the unbroken Catholic tradition, which, with no small amount of general short-coming, is to be traced throughout the eighteenth century. To insinuate that the return to Catholic principles began with the publication of the 'Tracts for the Times,' (p. 259,) in 1833, is simply to insinuate what is not true. But Mr. Pattison does more than 'insinuate.' He states it openly. "In constructing Catenæ Patrum," (he says,) "the Anglican closes his list with Waterland or Brett, and leaps at once to 1833." (p. 255.)—Now, since Waterland died in 1740 and Brett in 1743, it is clear that, (according to Mr. Pattison,) a hundred years and upwards have to be cleared per saltum: during which the lamp of Religion in these kingdoms had gone fairly out. But how stands the truth? At least four "Catenæ Patrum" are given in the "Tracts for the Times[134];" not one of which is closed with Waterland or Brett. On the contrary, in the two former Catenæ (beginning with Jewel and Hooker) the names of these supposed 'ultimi Romanorum' occur little more than half way!... "Les faits," therefore, (as usual with 'Essayists and Reviewers,')—"les faits sont contraires."—It would be enough to cite Bethell's 'General View of the Doctrine of Regeneration in Baptism,' which appeared in 1822; and Hugh James Rose's 'Discourses on the Commission and Duties of the Clergy,' which were preached in 1826. But the case against Mr. Pattison, as I shall presently shew, is abundantly stronger.

In short, to exclude from sight, as this author so laboriously endeavours to do, the Catholic element of the last century and the early part of the present, is extremely unfair. There had never failed in the Church of England a succession of illustrious men, who transmitted the Divine fire unimpaired, down to yesterday. Quenched in some places, the flame burned up brightly and beautifully in others. As for the 'Tracts for the Times,' they speedily assumed a party character: and by the time that ninety-seven of them had appeared, the series was discontinued by the desire of the Diocesan,—who was yet the friend of its authors. The Tracts do not all, by any means, represent Anglican (i.e. Catholic) Theology. They were written by a very few men; while the greatest of those who had materially promoted the Catholic movement out of which they sprang, (not which they occasioned,) were dissatisfied with them; would not write in them; kept aloof; and foresaw and foretold what would be the issue of such teaching[135]. And yet, 'Tracts for the Times' did more good than evil, I suppose, on the whole.

The truth is, that in every age, (and the last century forms no exception to the rule,) the history of the Church on Earth has been a warfare. Mr. Pattison says contemptuously,—"The current phrases of 'the bulwarks of our faith,' 'dangerous to Christianity,' are but instances of the habitual position in which we assume ourselves to stand. Even more philosophic minds cannot get rid of the idea that Theology is polemical." (p. 301.) And pray, whom have we to thank, but such writers as Mr. Pattison, that it is so? I am one of the many who at this hour are (unwillingly) neglecting constructive tasks in order to be destructive with Mr. Pattison and his colleagues! So long as Infidelity abounds, our service must be a warfare. 'The Prince of Peace' foretold as much, when He prophesied to His Disciples that it would be found that He had "brought on earth, a sword." As much was typically adumbrated, I suspect, (begging Mr. Jowett's pardon,) when, at the rebuilding of the walls of the Holy City, "they which builded on the wall, and they that bare burdens, with those that laded, every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon. For the builders, every one had his sword girded by his side, and so builded[136]." May I not add that the unique position which the Church of England has occupied, ever since her great Reformation in respect both of Doctrine and of Discipline three centuries ago,—is of a nature which must inevitably subject her to constant storms? An object of envy to 'Protestant Europe,'—and of hatred to Rome;—exposed to the hostility of the State, (which would trample her under foot, if it dared,)—and viewed with ill-concealed animosity by Dissenters of every class;—admitting into her Ministry men of very diverse views,—and restraining them by scarcely any discipline;—allowing perfect freedom, aye, licentiousness of discussion,—and tolerating the expression of almost any opinions,—except those of Essayists and Reviewers:—how shall the Church of England fail to adopt 'the bulwarks of the faith' for one of her current phrases? how not, many a time, deem 'dangerous to Christianity' the speculations of her sons?... Nay, polemics must prevail; if only because, in a certain place, the Divine Speaker already quoted foretells the partial, (if not the entire,) obscuration even of true Doctrine, in that pathetic exclamation of His,—"When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find the faith upon the Earth[137]?" ... In the face of all this, it is to confuse and mystify the ordinary reader to draw such a picture of the last century as Mr. Pattison has drawn here. As dismal a view might be easily taken of the first, of the second, of the third, of the fourth, of the fifth century. What Mr. Newman once designated as "ancient, holy, and happy times," might very easily indeed be so exhibited as to seem times of confusion and discord, blasphemy and rebuke. A discouraging picture might be drawn, (I suppose,) of every age of the Church's history. But in, and by itself, it would never be quite a true picture. For to the eye of Faith there is ever to be descried, amid the hurly-burly of the storm, the Ark of Christ's Church floating peacefully over the troubled waters, and making steadily for that Heavenly haven "where it would be." ... Yes, there is ever some blessed trace discoverable, that this Life of ours is watched over by One whose Name is Love; whether we con the chequered page of History, Ecclesiastical or Civil; or summon to our aid the story of our own narrow experience. From the fierce and fiery opposition, Good is ever found to have resulted; and that Good was abiding. Out of the weary conflict ever has issued Peace; and that Peace was of the kind which 'passeth all understanding;' a Peace which the world cannot give,—no, nor take away. There are abundant traces that in all that has happened to the Church of Christ, from first to last, there has been a purpose and a plan!... No one knows this better than Mr. Pattison. No man in Oxford could have drawn out what I have been saying into a convincing reality, better than he, had he yielded to the instincts of a good heart, and directed his fine abilities to their lawful scope.

The character of the last dismal century, Mr. Pattison has drawn with sufficient vividness: but that century armed the Church, (as we shall be presently reminded,) on the side of the "Evidences of Religion;" and if it taught her the insufficiency of such a method, the eighteenth century did its work. Above all, it produced Bishop Butler.—The previous century, (the seventeenth,) witnessed the supremacy of fanaticism. It saw the monarchy laid prostrate, and the Church trampled under foot, and the use of the Liturgy prohibited by Act of Parliament. The "Sufferings of the Clergy" fill a folio volume. But this was the century which produced our great Caroline Divines! From Bp. Andrewes to Bp. Pearson,—what a galaxy of names! Moreover, on the side of the Romish controversy, the seventeenth century supplied the Church's armoury for ever,—Stillingfleet, who died in the year 1699, in a manner closing the strife.—The sixteenth century witnessed the Reformation of Religion, with all its inevitably attendant evils; an unsettled faith,—gross public and private injustice,—an illiterate parochial clergy:—yet how goodly a body of sound Divinity did the controversies of that age call forth! The same century witnessed the rise of Puritanism; but then, it produced Richard Hooker!—What was the character of the century which immediately preceded the Reformation,—the fifteenth?... A tangled web of good and evil has been the Church's history from the very first. The counterpart of what we read of in Eusebius and Socrates is to be witnessed among ourselves at the present day, and will doubtless be witnessed to the end! But then, in days of deepest discouragement, faithful men have never been found wanting to the English Church, (no, nor God helping her, ever will!) who, like the late Hugh James Rose, "when hearts were failing, bade us stir up the gift that was in us, and betake ourselves to our true Mother." Mean wilee, such names as George Herbert and Nicholas Farrar, Ken and Nelson, Leighton and Bishop Wilson, shine through the gloom like a constellation of quiet stars; to which the pilgrim lifts his weary eye, and feels that he is looking up to Heaven!

When the spirit of the Age comes into collision with the spirit of the Gospel, the result is sometimes (as in the earliest centuries,) portentous;—sometimes, (as in the last,) simply deplorable and grievous. The battle which seems to be at present waging is of a different nature. Physical Science has undertaken the perilous task of hardening herself against the God of Nature. We shall probably see this unnatural strife prolonged for many years to come;—to be succeeded by some fresh form of irreligion. Somewhat thus, I apprehend, will it be to the end: and the men of every age will in those conflicts find their best probation; and it will still be the office of the Creator, in this way to separate the Light from the Darkness,—until the dawn of the everlasting Morning!

It is not proposed to enter into the Rationalism of the last century, therefore; or to inquire into the causes of the barren lifeless shape into which Theology then, for the most part, threw itself. I have never made that department of Ecclesiastical History my study: and who does not turn away from what is joyless and dreary, to greener meadows, and more fertile fields? It shall only be remarked that when the Credibility of Religion is the thing generally denied, Evidences will of necessity be the form which much of the Theological writing of the Day will assume. Let it not be imagined for an instant that one is the apologist of what Mr. Pattison has characterized as "an age of Light without Love." (p. 254.) But I insist that the theological picture of the last century is incomplete, until attention has been called to the many redeeming features which it presents, and which are all of a re-assuring kind.

Thus, in the department of sacred scholarship, who can forgot that our learned John Mill, in 1707, gave to the world that famous edition of the New Testament which bears his name, after thirty years of patient toil? Who can forget our obligations in Hebrew, to Kennicott? (1718-1783.) Humphrey Hody's great work on the Text, and older Versions of Holy Scripture, was published in 1705.—Bingham's immortal 'Origines' began to appear in 1708; and William Cave lived till 1714.

In the same connexion should be mentioned Bp. Gibson, who died in 1748, and Humphrey Prideaux, whose 'Connexion' is dated 1715. Pococke died on the eve of the commencement of the last century (1691); but so great a name casts a bright beam through the darkness which Mr. Pattison describes so forcibly. Archbishop Wake died in 1737. Warton, the author of 'Anglia Sacra,' died at the age of 35 in 1695.

Survey next the field of Divinity, properly so called; and in the face of Mr. Pattison's rash statement that "we have no classical Theology since 1660," (p. 265,) take notice that Bp. Bull, one of the greatest Divines which the Church of Christ ever bred, did not begin to write until 1669, and lived to the year 1709. This was the man, remember, who received the thanks of the whole Gallican Church for his 'Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ,' (i.e. his learned assertion of our Saviour's Godhead[138];)—the man whose writings would have won him the reverence and affection of Athanasius and Augustine and Basil, had he lived in their day; for he had a mind like theirs. Bp. Pearson did not die till 1686. Bp. Beveridge wrote till his death in 1707. Fell, the learned editor of Cyprian, died in 1686: Stillingfleet lived till 1699. Wall's History of Infant Baptism appeared in 1705. Wheatly, who led the way in liturgical inquiry, was alive till 1742; and Bp. Patrick was a prolific writer till his death in 1707. May we not also claim the excellent and learned Grabe as altogether one of ourselves?

Such names do not require special comment. They are their own best eulogium, and present a high title to their country's gratitude. The name of Prebendary Lowth, (the author of an excellent commentary on the prophets,) reminds us that there was living till 1732 one who fully appreciated the calling of an Interpreter of God's Word[139]. Bishop Lowth his son, in his great work, (1753,) recovered the forgotten principle of Hebrew poetry. To convince ourselves what a spirit existed in some quarters, (notwithstanding the general spread of the very opinions which 'Essayists and Reviewers' have been so industriously reproducing in our own day,) it is only necessary to transcribe the title-page of S. Parker's excellent 'Bibliotheca Biblica,' a Commentary on the Pentateuch, 1720-1735; 'gathered out of the genuine writings of Fathers, Ecclesiastical Historians, and Acts of Councils down to the year of our Lord 451, being that of the fourth General Council; and lower, as occasion may require.'—That learned man designed to achieve a Commentary on the whole Bible on the same laborious plan; but his labours and his life, (at the age of 50,) were brought to an end in 1730.—Dr. Waterland, born in 1683, and Dr. Jackson, born in 1686,—two great names!—died respectively in 1740 and 1763.—In 1778, appeared Dr. Townson's admirable 'Discourses on the Gospels.' The author lived till 1792. Pious Bp. Horne (1730-1792) has left the best evidence of his ability as a Divine in the Introduction to his Commentary on the Psalms. Jones of Nayland is found to have lived till 1800. Bp. Horsley, a great champion of orthodoxy of belief, as well as an excellent commentator, critic, and Sermon writer, lived till 1806. Not seven years have elapsed since there was to be seen among ourselves a venerable Divine, who was declared in 1838, by the chief promoter of the 'Tracts for the Times,' to have "been reserved to report to a forgetful generation what was the Theology of their Fathers[140]." Martin Joseph Routh, died in 1854, after completing a century of years. In 1832 appeared his 'Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Opuscula.' His 'Reliquæ Sacræ' had appeared in 1814. The work was undertaken so far back as 1788. The last volume appeared in 1848, and concluded with a Catena of authorities on the great question which was denied by the unbelievers of the last century, and is denied by the 'Essayists and Reviewers' of this[141]. Here then was one who had borne steady witness in the Church of England to what is her genuine Catholic teaching from a period dating long before the birth of any one who was concerned with the 'Tracts for the Times.'

More ancient names present themselves as furnishing exceptions to Mr. Pattison's dreary sentence. From Abp. Potter and Leslie, down to Abp. Laurence and Van Mildert,—how many might yet be specified! We have not hitherto mentioned Abp. Leighton, who died in 1684: Hickes, Johnson, and Brett, who survived respectively till 1715, 1725, and 1743: the truly apostolic Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man (1663-1755,)—a name, by the way, which deserves far more distinct and emphatic notice than can here be bestowed upon it; and Nelson, the pious author of 'Fasts and Festivals,' who died in 1715. We had good Iz. Walton, till 1683, and holy Ken till 1711. Richard Hele, author of 'Select Offices,' (which appeared in 1717,) is a name not forgotten in Heaven certainly, though little known on Earth; while Kettlewell and Scandret begin a Catena of which good Bishop Jolly would be only one of the later links. Meanwhile, the reader is requested to take notice that there were many other excellent Divines of the period under consideration, (as Long and Horbery;) men who made no great figure indeed, but who were evidently persons of great piety and sound judgment; while their learning puts that of 'Essayists and Reviewers' altogether to the blush.

But I have reserved for the last, a truly noble name,—which Mr. Pattison, (with singular bad taste, to say no worse,) mentions only to disparage. I allude to Dr. Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham; whose 'Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature,'—remains, at the end of a century, unanswerable as an Apology,—unrivalled as a text-book,—unexhausted as a mine of suggestive thought. It may be convenient for an 'Essayist and Reviewer' to declare that "the merit of the Analogy lies in its want of originality." (p. 286.) There was not much originality perhaps in the remark that an apple falls to the ground. Whatever the faults of the Analogy, that work, under God, saved the Church. However "depressing to the soul" (p. 293.) of Mr. Pattison, it is nevertheless a book which will invigorate Faith, and brighten Hope, and comfort Charity herself,—long after the spot where he and I shall sleep has been forgotten: long after our very names will be hard to find.

Let me turn from this illustrious individual, to one whose very name is perhaps unknown. One loves to think that there are at all times plenty of good men, who are doing God's work in the world, in quiet corners; but whose names do not perhaps rise to the surface and emerge into notice, throughout the whole of a long life. Conversely, how many must there be, the blessing of whose example and influence has extended down from the surface, (where perhaps it was acknowledged and appreciated by all,) until it made itself felt by the humblest units of a lowly country parish!... The obscure village of Finmere, (in Oxfordshire,) was so happy as to enjoy for its Rector, from 1734 to 1771, the Rev. Thomas Long, M.A.,—"a man," (says the Register,) "of the most exemplary piety and charity." He presented to the church twelve acres of land, "charging it with a yearly payment of fifteen shillings to the Clerk, as a recompense to him for attending on the Fasts and Festivals; and ordering sixpence to be deducted from the payment, for each time the Clerk failed to attend on those days,—unless let by sickness." About ten years ago, there was found in the hands of a labouring man at Finmere, a solitary copy of a printed "Lecture," by this individual, "addressed to the young persons" of the village, (1762,) which begins as follows:—"I have usually, once every three years, gone through a course of Lectures upon the Catechism; but considering my age and great infirmities, it is not very probable I should continue this practice any longer. I am willing therefore, as a small monument of my care and affection for you, to print the last of these Lectures," &c.... What heart so dull as not to admit that men like this, (and there were many of them!) are quite good enough to redeem an age from indiscriminate opprobrium and unmitigated contempt?

Shall we omit, after this enumeration, to notice the singular fact that Discipline still lingered on,—even the discipline of public penance,—until within the memory of aged persons yet living? Merchants in the city of London wore mourning during Lent, within the present century. It is only within the last thirty years that formulæ expressive of reliance on the Divine blessing have been expunged from bills-of-lading, and similar printed documents. In the beginning of the period discoursed of by Mr. Pattison, (viz. in the year 1714,) the excellent Robert Nelson, in "An Address to Persons of Quality and Estate," proposed as objects for the generosity of the affluent, such institutions as the following:—"the creating of Charity Schools,"—of "Parochial Libraries in the meanly endowed Cures throughout England,"—of "a superior School for training up Schoolmasters and Schoolmistresses,"—and of "Colleges or Seminaries for the Candidates of Holy Orders." He suggested that there should be "Houses of Hospitality for entertaining Strangers;" "Suffragan Bishops, both at home and in the Western Plantations;" "Colleges for receiving Converts from Popery." Some of Nelson's suggestions read like vaticinations. He points out the need of Ladies' Colleges,—of a Hospital for Incurables,—of Ragged Schools, (for what else is a school "for the distressed children called the Black-guard?"),—and of Houses of Mercy for the reception of penitent fallen women.—Is it right to speak of a century which could freely contemplate such works as these and carry into execution many of them[142], without some allusion to the leaven which was at work beneath the dry crust of Society? the living Catholic energy which neither the average dulness of the pulpit could quench, nor the lifeless morality which had been popularly substituted for Divinity could destroy?

We are abundantly prepared therefore for Mr. Pattison's admission that "public opinion was throughout on the side of the defenders of Christianity:" (p. 313:)—that, "however a loose kind of Deism might be the tone of fashionable circles, it is clear that distinct disbelief of Christianity was by no means the general state of the public mind. The leaders of the Low-Church and Whig party were quite aware of this. Notwithstanding the universal complaints of the High-Church party of the prevalence of infidelity, it is obvious that this mode of thinking was confined to a very small section of society." (p. 313.)