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THE
PRINCETON
OCTOBER,
REVIEW.
1 864.
No. IV.
/ — -
Art. I. — Francis Bacon , of Verulam. Realistic Philosophy , and its Age. By Kuno Fischer. Translated from the German, by John Oxenford. London, 1857.
We know of no better exposition of the merits and defects of the Baconian philosophy than this, and it is translated in a free, luminous, and philosophical style. We have no intention to criticise it, or even to sketch a summary of its contents ; those who have a taste for the subject, and have not entirely mastered it, ought to read the book. The merits of the Induc- tive method are proved by the immense additions it has made to the physical sciences since it has been brought into distinct practice. Its defects, as it was limited by Bacon and under- stood by his followers, may be seen in its influence on the mental sciences as developed or degraded by Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Bayle, Voltaire, Condillac, Holbach, Ilelve- tius, and others of the materialist school.
The natural order of the acquisition of knowledge is, first, that of the phenomena of physical nature around us, and after- wards that of our mental nature; and Bacon fell so far into this order that he unduly fastened the intellect to the leading- strings of physical nature, and restricted all human knowledge to our external experience, and allowed to the mind no inhe- vol. xxxvi. — no. iv. 74
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rent character, and no natural laws, tendencies, faculties, or capacities. This was an unnatural and arbitrary limitation of the sphere of inductive philosophy, for it confined all philoso- phical investigation to the objective aspect of knowledge, rejecting the subjective; and logical thinkers, accepting this limitation as a principle, found its sphere of operation con- tinually growing by their deductions, until it culminated in the blank scepticism of Hume. Our author traces the history of this with great skill and thoroughness.
Of course, the natural and untrained logic of mankind saved us from accepting the results of such one-sided investigations; and the moral and intellectual world still moved on, sustained by its faith in its God-given capacities to learn, and instinc- tively set aside, or simply ignored the demonstration, which it could not then answer, that there existed neither mind nor matter — beings to learn, nor things to be learned. Now, how- ever, we have no difficulty in seeing that all knowledge must result from — or we should rather say that it is — the relation of mind with things and facts, and other minds, and from their mutual adaptation to the production of knowledge; and that the mind is no empty tablet, or clean-swept threshing-floor, passively receiving the things and facts, or the impressions and inscriptions of them, which the world may chance to bring before it.
But, defective as this theory was, it admitted the mind’s receptivity, and therefore, that thus far, at least, it had inhe- rent character and capacity ; and inductive science, instead of arbitrarily limiting the mind to this, ought to have taken the hint which the admission gave, and applied itself to a more thorough investigation. We might as well expect the empty tablet to perform the work of the type-founder and the com- positor, and the threshing-floor to execute the functions of the mill and the bakery, as to expect the merely receptive capa- city of the mind to transform its sensuous individual impres- sions into will, sentiment, language, conceptions, ideas, and scientific systems. Even the passivity of the cannon-ball be- fore the exploding powder, is not so entire as to dispense with the form, weight, and texture of the metal that fit it for its purpose; a cotton ball would not answer there.
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Oar author does not attempt to show us the way out of the difficulties caused by this undue limitation put upon inductive philosophy by the followers of Bacon ; but he promises to do so in a future work, that is to be devoted to Kant and his fol- lowers. We shall await its appearance with much hope; yet not without some misgivings, derived from what he has already written, that his admiration of Kant may prevent him from perceiving the fundamental errors of his system. Meantime we venture on some suggestions, which some of our readers may receive as indicating the way in which the mind naturally sets aside the arbitrary limitations imposed by materialistic philosophers, without falling into the equally arbitrary abso- luteness of idealism.
We have nothing new to offer; but we may present old, and really very common thoughts, in a new aspect, and with more calculated purpose and distinctness than have been devoted to them heretofore. Our appeal is to the natural spontaneities of the human mind, and we shall call to our aid other natural spontaneities, animal, vegetable, and merely material; and in doing so we shall not distinguish between the methods of in- duction and analogy, because Bacon has not distinguished them, though many philosophers regal’d them as fundamentally different.
These natural spontaneities are everywhere observed, and thus they become elements of inductive philosophy in every branch of real science. In every department of nature we discover that there are certain well-defined tendencies or spontaneous activities, which are always in operation, pro- ducing the most minute and the most magnificent results; tendencies, and activities, of which science cannot discover the origin or cause, and which it must be content with ob- serving as facts, recording in history, and classifying into various branches, that they may be afterwards comprehended by philosophy.
It is one of these tendencies or spontaneous activities, called attraction or gravitation, that holds the earth together, bal- ances it in its perennial circles round the sun, and maintains the moving order of the universe. It is the basis of all mechanical science, enters as an element into all the laws of motion, and
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while it is freely used and applied by man, the safety of the world requires that he should have no power to suspend it. Analogous to this tendency are the attractions of electricity and magnetism, manifesting themselves in endless variety in the world’s activity, and submitting to human control and application, by means of the electrical battery, the magnetic telegraph, the compass, and the ordinary artificial magnet, and abounding, no doubt, in yet undiscovered and grander adaptations.
And at the very foundation of chemical science lies another of these spontaneous activities called elective affinity, being the tendency which particles of different kinds of matter have to combine so as to form new bodies. It manifests itself according to definite laws, very many of -which have been revealed by modern science, and only under proper conditions of different bodies, and is subject to great modifications under the influence of light, heat, and electricity, and had it no existence or no varia- bility, the world would be a barren waste, without vegetable or animal life.
Other familiar and beautiful examples of this natural sponta- neity are found in crystallization, or the process by which par- ticles of matter come together and cohere, so as to constitute bodies of a regular form, the form being infinitely various according to circumstances and conditions, but each involving in it a primary or ground form, that indicates the very nature of the body, and which is itself revealed by the cleavage or analysis of the mineralogist.
Let this suffice for indicating the spontaneities of inorganic matter resulting in mere inorganic products, countless in their magnitudes, varieties, and beauties. Rising in our observa- tions to the systems of organized bodies, we find these natural tendencies becoming still more obvious, various, beautiful, and mysterious. "We see them in the bursting seed, the descending root, the rising stem, the leaf, the flower, the fruit, and pervad- ing all and essential to the whole, the sap. Spontaneously the seed grows, according to its kind of plant or tree, if it be placed in conditions that allow of its development, however imper- fectly, according to its kind; if not, its tendency becomes a lost germ of the activities of nature, a bird without its mate?
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a soul without its body, an absolute without a relative. Sub- ject to the modifying influences of varying light, soil, position, and cultivation, the seed, in its growth, will take the peculiar form of its species, become dressed in the same foliage, adorned with the same flowers, bear the same fruit; the varieties pro- duced by cultivation not being regarded as affecting identity of species. All this is so familiar to us from our infancy, that it presents no mystery until we begin to investigate and reason. To reason it must ever remain a mystery how the splendour and fragrance of the rose and the lily, and the beauty and lus- ciousness of the peach and the pear are produced; for reason can never look beyond tendencies and second causes, so as to see the Great First Cause that moves and directs all things.
Again, we see this mysterious spontaneity in the climbing plant or shrub, directing its growth towards the object that it needs for its support, putting forth its tendrils to take hold of it when it begins to climb, and twining around it, every species in its own direction, from left to right, or from right to left. We see it in the sensitive plant, shrinking from the touch of rudeness ; the chickweed, folding its leaflets over the buds of its young flowers to protect them from the cold; the saracenia and Venus’ fly-trap, closing upon the insects that enter their flowers, and retaining and digesting them. These are sponta- neous activities that compel us to think of voluntary actions; although no one supposes that such is their character. They proceed not from their own reason, but from that of their Cre- ator. We might enlarge the catalogue of these natural ten- dencies of vegetable life indefinitely; but it is unnecessary.
Rising another step in the general classification of created things, we find these natural spontaneities increased in number and variety in the animal kingdom. No insect, fish, or reptile, bird, or beast, is without them. All the process of growth, the digestion of food, the formation of every part of the body, the circulation of the blood, respiration and perspiration, and seek- ing after food; all are spontaneous activities, not necessai’ily involving one conscious act of will. A similar spontaneity is at the foundation of all their other actions, though other prin- ciples, not now to be considered, may be connected with it ; their association in pairs, and flocks, and herds; their fondness
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for locomotion and rest; their construction of nests and lairs; seeking dens or burrowing holes; constructing honey-combs or ant-hills, cocoons or gossamers ; their care of their young, and providence for the future; all are founded on certain spon- taneous or instinctive tendencies, differing in all species, and yet analogous in all ; and even in the same species, presenting very wide differences according to circumstances, and which become still more wide under the influence of domestication. They have desires and aversions, love and hatred, hopes and fears, emulations, gratitude, and even love of property, of the home which they have selected, and of the stores which they have provided for the future.
All these tendencies are qualities inherent in the very nature of things; they are essential elements of the mineral, plant, or animal in which they are found, and which, without them, would not be what they are; they give to all things their place and name among the varieties, species, genera, and families that constitute the world. Whether all the germs of these natural tendencies have yet been developed, we know not; but we may be sure that science has not yet discovered them all. The influence of cultivation has developed many of them, which would, without it, have remained unknown to us. Let us briefly consider this.
Many latent tendencies of plants and animals have been developed by changing their circumstances, and many obvious tendencies have been suppressed in the same way. The ten- dency of the apple, pear, and plum tree to produce thorns is suppressed or reduced under the influence of cultivation, and their fruit greatly improved in beauty, richness, and variety. The wild rose and other wild flowers will scarcely bear com- parison with their cultivated progeny in their variety of form and hue and fragrance. The grains that are to us the staff of life, compared with their wild state, produce a thousand fold. The esculent roots which are so common in our gardens, and constitute so large a portion of our daily food, have all been changed in flavour by cultivation, and become adapted to the tastes of man, and his domesticated animals; the turnip has increased from ounces to pounds, the beet, the parsnip, and the carrot, from roots like a pocket pencil in size, often exceed
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the size of a man’s arm, and all are improved in quality and multiplied in variety. And so it is with the fowls and other animals with which man surrounds his home; they change in colour, size, shape, and qualities ; old tendencies are sup- pressed, and others before unknown are developed.
We have noticed these spontaneous tendencies with some de- tail; because it seems to us that the observation of them in mere inorganic or dead matter, multiplied in vegetable produc- tions, and again largely increased in animal nature, and con- tinuing still further to increase as we rise to the highest grades of animal life, constrain us to expect to find similar tenden- cies more fully and variously developed in man, who stands at the head of all known organic life. The most superficial observation shows that they do abound in our human nature, and it is of the utmost importance to admit that they constitute essential and fundamental elements of our moral and intellec- tual, as well as of our animal nature.
The mind can, no more than mere material nature, act at all without its antecedent tendencies to act given to it by its Creator. It has its fundamental character and functions allotted to it in the plan of creation, and these are the germs, forms, and tendencies of all its future development and activity, and it can have no others, unless derived from the same divine source. It cannot act, or think, or feel, without innate ten- dencies to do so, no more than the vegetable can grow, and flower, and fruit, without such tendencies. And whence these tendencies come, faith alone, and not science, can reveal to us. Science must confine itself to ascertaining and defining what they are, and how they act and grow. They may be called the instincts of our moral and intellectual nature.
We know that some have objected to have them thus denomi- nated; but in this we are guilty of no innovation. Very few writers on mental philosophy have failed to recognize that they have this fundamental character; some, as it were, instinctively, and many others by calculation and design. The analogy between the natural tendencies which produce the actions of men and animals, is too strong to avoid giving to them the same name, instincts. They must be distinguished by their adjectives : animal instincts, and rational instincts.
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Others would object to the term as applied to man, because there is a sort of necessity and infallibility about instinctive actions, which do not at all apply to man’s rational and moral activities. This argument has often been used by those who deny to man his moral sense, and refuse to admit that he has any innate moral character; yet its major premise is entirely unfounded. The natural tendencies and instincts of the lower orders of creation are not invariable in their manifestations, and do not necessarily follow internal law, irrespective of external circumstances and relations.
We may call the vital principle in vegetable and animal life a blind power of nature, acting necessarily under appropriate circumstances ; yet it by no means acts uniformly even in the same species. So far as we know, all vital tendencies are sub- ject to change, improvement, degradation, adaptation to cir- cumstances. This seems to be of the nature of life. The vital principle developes itself with a general resemblance in each species of vegetables and animals; and yet with endless special and individual varieties, so that, notwithstanding the supposed identity of nature or vital principle, we are not entitled to say that any two beings developed from it are alike in form or character.
The variety that arises from cultivation is still more worthy of notice in this connection; for if the comparatively limited natural tendencies of the vegetable and brute creation may, by cultivation, produce all the wonderful changes of character that are manifest to all who choose to observe ; if they develope new and better tendencies and qualities under favourable circum- stances, how much more is this to be expected of man, with his higher and more numerous tendencies. And if they become degraded and lose their good qualities from neglect of cultiva- tion, how much more shall man; since all his voluntary acts operate directly on Jus character, and only indirectly upon theirs.
The least amount of reflection must make it very apparent that there is a logical necessity to assume the existence of these spiritual tendencies as the basis of all mental develop- ment or growth, and that we are constrained to infer them from the moral and intellectual facts of our nature; for from
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nothing, nothing comes, and of nothing there can be no deve- lopment. Without vital tendencies there can be no growth, and without spiritual tendencies no moral and intellectual im- provement; they are the gifts of God, the divine foundations on which must be constructed all that man can, in any sense, call his own. He has no duties, functions, or capacities that are not founded on them, and dependent on their development. All his faculties are at first spiritual instincts, and act sponta- neously; and it is only after they have become considerably de- veloped that they become subject to reflection and self-control.
These instincts constitute the germs and early growth of all our affections of love, hatred, gratitude, imagination, hope, fear, emulation, curiosity, love of society, desire of property; none of which can be created by the will of man. It is only when we have learned enough about them to know how to regulate, restrain, and guide them in reasonable coordination, that we can truly be said to be rational beings.
All our reasonings, conceptions, and ideas, have our sponta- neous activity for their essential basis. The mind, before perception, is like a seed before it is affected by heat and moisture; it remains dormant in all its qualities; but it has qualities and tendencies that are sure to be developed by percep- tion. Perception is the first experience of the mind, as warmth and moisture are of the seed, and development follows in both cases. It is the mind’s spontaneous acquisition of the mate- rials of thought and reflection, which also are spontaneous acts of the mind, as the circulation of the blood and the sap are of animals and plants.
Spontaneously and instinctively the mind generalizes the gifts of perception, and coordinates the results of generaliza- tion ; and it is by the spontaneous memory of these natural processes that it learns their nature and value, and becomes prepared to make a rational use of them. It gets its start and its first experience in this way; but it cannot go far with- out the conscious aid of the rational will. The strong and systematic thinker is distinguished by the degree of volition exerted in attention and reflection. All our first acts of attention and observation are perfectly spontaneous, and not at all voluntary; and it cannot be otherwise, for we cannot
VOL. xxxvi. — no. iv. 75
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will to direct our minds to anything of which our minds have had no previous possession. And all our first acts of analysis and reflection, and indeed of every character, are equally spontaneous and instinctive; for it is as impossible for the will to choose methods of mental action, without a previous know- ledge of such methods, as it is to make choice of a road to be travelled, or of a trade to be learned, without knowing that there are roads and trades.
All this would seem to be plain matter of observation and experience, and therefore falls within the province of inductive science, though not much noticed by the school of Bacon, because the master had not thus applied his method. So far as we can see, these instincts seem to be a necessary part of our spiritual nature. If animal instincts are necessary for the support of animal life, and vital activity for its start, why must there not be intellectual instincts and spontaneity for the start and maintenance of intellectual life? Under circum- stances giving rise to perception, intellectual spontaneity must act. It must begin before it can be conscious of beginning, and before having any knowledge of itself. It must think before it can know itself — and we might almost say, before it can have a self to be known. It must form judgments before it can know its powers, and how they act. It must have expe- rience before it can know what experience is. It must analo- gize, analyze, synthetize, and hypothetize, before it can have any conception of these processes, or learn how to direct them.
There must be a spontaneous germination and growth of our spiritual nature, or an instinctive activity of it. There must be natural germs of thought, which are not created by expe- rience, but are the conditions of it, and exist before it. Habit and education cannot give them, for they are but forms of expe- rience, and depend upon it. When awakened into life, they are not moulded by experience, but it by them. Experience influences the essential forms of thought no more than warmth and nourishment influence the essential forms of vegetable and animal growth. Perhaps the first step in the process of mental germination is the waking up of the consciousness to attend to its sensations, and then perception comes in answer, as it were, to the interrogatories, what? when? where? whence?
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how? — all suggested by, and calculated to give definiteness to experience.
It is no valid objection to the instinctive origin of a mental process, that it does not develope itself in the earliest stages of human life, or that, in many minds, it is scarcely developed at all. Every herb and tree must arrive at some degree of matu- rity before it can develope its fruit-bearing tendencies. And so it is with man and the lower animals; their physical instincts are not all developed at the first, but at different stages of life. As we have noticed before, different tendencies are developed or suppressed, according to circumstances of climate, nourish- ment, and training. It must be, therefore, that many intellec- tual instincts cannot become manifest until, through other ave- nues, the mind is furnished with the materials on which they are to act. Perhaps a man might live half a lifetime within sight and hearing of the Falls of Niagara, without having ever experienced the wonder which they are calculated to excite. But let him stand beneath that frowning cataract, and view the huge chasm which it has worn in those old rocks, and think of the ages it has rolled down its mighty flood, and uttered its thunder-voice, and of the ages it will still continue to roll and thunder, of the oceans it has emptied over, and which it will still pour down that dizzy height, of the victims who have been swallowed up in its deep abyss, and of the terrible destruction that would follow if that rock barrier above him should sud- denly give way, and his hair may stand on end with awe and wonder. Not because he wills to wonder, but because he can- not help it; he may never before have experienced the senti- ment ; and it comes not from his will, but spontaneously from the very nature of the mental constitution which God has given him.
Take a very obvious illustration of the instinctive character of many of our most common actions, which shows that, with- out our instincts, we should be utterly helpless. There is no motion of our body that can be said to be entirely voluntary and rational. If we intentionally give our arm a certain motion, we will only the given motion, and not at all the spe- cial means by which it is to be effected; for it is done by nerves and muscles and bones of which we may be entirely ignorant.
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We cannot be said to will that of which we have no pre- vious conception, and most of us have no practical conception of the forces and machinery of bodily motion. If we were compelled to be still until we should obtain such a conception, we should never move at all. And we could never move effectively, if we had first to calculate the exact degree of nervous power that is to be transmitted to each muscle, and the means of doing it. How little rational and voluntary, there- fore, are even the motions of our body that we call voluntary. There is the same complication in most of our judgments, as any one will see, who will attempt to analyze the process and ascertain the elements of the instinctive bound of the mind, by which they are reached. In most of the practical affairs of life the mind springs spontaneously to its conclusions, and reserves its processes of reasoning for the office of leading others to the same results. To our mind, all this is very wholesome thought; for it shows our entire dependence on our Creator for all our faculties, and for all the germs of every thought and action and sentiment.
Like to our physical organs, all our spiritual instincts are complex in their character, and various in the performance of their functions. They are clusters of spiritual fibres, and need to be more or less analyzed in order to be understood. Like our physical organs, in their healthful and normal state, they always act in clusters, and those of one kind so fully and constantly sympathize with those of another kind, that it is very difficult to distinguish them so as to ascertain the functions of each. As no bodily act can take place without requiring the exertion of a thousand bodily fibres, which no scientific skill can so thoroughly investigate as to be able to attribute to each fibre its precise function and force in the production of the result; so no thought, or wish, or judgment can arise, without being complicated by mysterious and insoluble con- nections.
We do not know that we can have any innate or aprioral conceptions; for, so far as we can discover, all our knowdedge takes its start in our actual experience, and in our perception of concrete beings, things, and facts; but our mind naturally tends to generalize our experience, and thus to rise to concep-
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tions that are more and more abstract. Being started by expe- rience, it naturally reaches out after more experience; seeking is one of its essential functions : like the seed started in its growth by moisture, and pushing out its roots for further nour- ishment. Life, both physical and spiritual, is an abiding ten- dency and effort to appropriate, assimilate, and grow ; and therefore it must have inherent qualities and special tenden- cies continually reaching after new acquisitions and new arrangements of its acquisitions. Spiritual life naturally gropes or feels after new perceptions, and having obtained them, it naturally classifies, generalizes, analyzes, and system- atizes them, and therefore naturally creates for itself new experiences.
Primarily the mind receives the gifts of nature in their crude and concrete form, and then it naturally analyzes these acqui- sitions, and thus obtains all its abstract, general, and universal ideas and conceptions, expressive of all the actual relations of beings, things, thoughts, and facts. It is not sensation that gives it such conceptions, for such relations are only spiritually discerned, and the conceptions of them are spiritually formed. It is thus the mind forms the ideas of quantity, quality, order, goodness, justice, force, and such like. Even space and time, as conceptions or ideas, are formed in the same way. All are conceptions of actual things and facts, and therefore none of them are merely subjective.
They are not real things, but the real relations of things, or rather, the generalized conceptions of such real relations, so far as they are anything for us. Time and space are relations and conceptions of this character. Kant makes them mere subjective conditions of sensibility, and therefore only parts of the mind itself. But then they can express no truth as to external objects, if they can as to any objects ; but only a quality of the mind. They are no further objective than any other mental tendency or quality, and can express only rela- tions of parts of the mind to the whole mind. Truth being a relation of intellect to its objects, time and space, as mere con- ditions of sensibility, can express no relation between the mind and the external world; but only our own mental acts, and therefore no objective truth Hence the idealism of the Kantian
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school. But if we take into account the mind’s natural adapta- tion and tendency to form such conceptions, when the appro- priate facts are presented to it, then time and space become objective, and our conceptions of them are formed from real relations among objects, and are as truly suggested by or on account of experience, as any other general conceptions.
Kant supposes that the conceptions of space and time are not derived from external experience, because they are essen- tial conditions of such experience. Yet they are no more essential than the conceptions of quantity, force, order, good- ness, and such like, are in relation to other forms of knowledge. We must have such general conceptions before we can form any judgment in which they are involved ; yet none of them are given apriorally ; but they are all gradually developed out of our mental tendencies, under the influence of appropriate circumstances. It is not the conceptions themselves, but the tendency to form them, that are given anterior to and as con- ditions of experience.
Again, Kant supposes that these conceptions cannot be derived from external experience, because it can give us only general, and not necessary and universal truths, such as we have in the demonstrations of geometry. Yet the certainty of such demon- strations depends, not upon the origin, but upon the nature of the conceptions with which they deal. Time and space are the simplest of all our conceptions, and the simplest of all rela- tions of things and events, because they have no quality but their limits; and these we can take from nature, or form them by our imagination. In pure geometry they are mere concep- tions, treated of without any reference to real things ; and the conceptions being perfectly definite, so must be the science that depends upon them. There is no such definiteness in real things and facts and their relations, and therefore there can be no such accuracy and certainty in the science of them. Time and space absolute are nothing in reality, and nothing in the mind, but the general terms or frames in which we set all our limited conceptions of relative time and place. As relations, they are as real as any other relations of facts and things, and therefore are proper objects of knowledge; and our minds are so constituted that they naturally receive them.
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These are fundamental errors in the philosophy of Kant, and lie at the bottom of the vicious idealism or subjectivism into ■which his school has run. Others have adopted them, without running them out to their consequences. If Kant had applied his searching analysis to the human mind, in its progress from infancy to maturity, instead of applying it only to the matured mind, he would have been saved from such errors. He might, indeed, have insisted that space and time are involved in all growth, and that without them we can have no conception of growth ; and therefore they are aprioral conditions of all growth and life, and aprioral elements of all growing things. We admit inherent and aprioral functions and tendencies to grow, but no aprioral products of growth, though they may be essential to its conception.
Faith is a spiritual or mental tendency which is an essential element of mind, and of our conception of mind, the importance of which can hardly be overestimated, and we desire to appro- priate to it the most of what we have yet to say. Faith — not so much in its religious acceptation, as constituting our relation, to a divine and personal being — as in its more general, intel- lectual application, and as constituting our relation to all created things, or bringing us into intellectual relation with them. This kind of faith is associated with every act of our life.
Instinctively we believe in our sensations and in the world which they reveal to us; and without this instinctive faith we could not take the first step in knowledge. Without the belief and knowledge thus instinctively acquired, we can make no attainments in reasoning; for, without them, argument could have no existence, because it would be destitute of premises. Instinctively we believe in the narrations of others; and with- out this there could be no history, and no society — confidence in others being an essential and fundamental element of both. It is only after our instinctive belief has been violated by mis- takes or mendacity, that we feel called upon to test the evidence that is submitted to us; and even then all our tests are neces- sarily founded on other beliefs that are fundamentally instinc- tive.
Instinctively we believe in the faculties of mind and body that God has given us, and without this we could do nothing.
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We do not believe because we have tried them, but we try them because we believe in them ; and by this faith we grow, for by trying them we improve their capacity, and even enlarge our confidence in them, unless our trials of them are rashly adventurous, and thus unsuccessful. Failures in this way have often a most depressing effect by producing a morbid caution or timidity; as we often see the most thorough radicalism, when disappointed in its purposes, oscillate into the most rigid conservatism and formalism. A modest and duly cautious faith is always a growing one; while one that is audacious may degenerate into fickleness and pusillanimity, or into mere unreasoning obstinacy. Our faith in our capacities is naturally limited by our conscious inexperience, and by a knowledge of our weaknesses. It must be connected with our reason as well as with our impulses, and therefore with both acting together. We may yield to our impulses and subdue our reason, or to our reason and subdue our impulses; but we cannot avoid believing in one or the other, or in their combined action.
And rationalism could not take one step of progress without faith in another form ; that is, faith in the regular connection of events and principles, in the law of cause and effect. With- out such an instinctive belief there could be no argument ; for no consequences could be affirmed as the results of any given premises. We do not choose to believe in a cause for events, for we cannot help believing in it. We did not choose such a belief the first time it came into the mind; for it arose natu- rally and spontaneously, and may have been called into action many thousand times before it could be revealed to our reflec- tion that it is a law of our mental action to assume a cause for every event. Our natural curiosity involves this belief ; for, without it, it could never perform its function of asking, Whence comes this? It believes in a cause first, and then seeks what it is.
It is thus that the spontaneous act of faith takes the lead of all knowledge, and of the voluntary act of reasoning. We can make no rational attempt at analysis or synthesis, at induction or deduction, without a previous hypothesis which we seek to test or prove; and a hypothesis is always a mere formula of faith; we do not create it by any voluntary act, but merely
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accept it as a suggestion of faith, presented for our investi- gation.
We have already spoken of faith and reason as distinct por- tions, or rather functions, of our intellectual nature, and before we go further we m\y notice how they are usually distin- guished. A very common acceptation of reason is, that ele- ment of the human intellect which distinguishes it from the intellect of the brute; but it requires very little effort to use this definition in order to discover that it is too defective to be of any scientific value. It is sometimes called the director of the will; but this is inaccurate, for it implies that reason itself is or has a will directing tfye true will of the mind ; unless we understand by “director” merely the light which it furnishes to the will, and then it is equivalent to our knowing faculties generally.
Perhaps the most ordinary view is that in which reason is contradistinguished from faith ; and this view is involved in the term rationalism, as it is ordinarily understood. Rationalism professes to be reason in action without faith. It is therefore different from religion, for of this faith is an essential element; and it is opposed to religion in so far as it rejects faith as incompatible with its functions. In this sense reason is a voluntary faculty of the mind; it is the human will itself gathering up for itself the light by which it acts, and the materials upon which it acts, and by its own power, as inde- pendent human will, working out, by its own logical and scien- tific processes, its elements and systems of belief.
Surely such a reason as this can have no existence, and the rationalism that pretends to it is ignorant of itself. If there is such a thing as a superstitious faith, as undoubtedly there is, this is just as certainly a superstitious reason. If faith is sometimes bigoted, so also is reason. We can conceive of faith without reason; but what can reason be without faith? It is like substance without attributes, matter without form, and mind without thought, or any tendency to think. For conve- nience of thinking about them we may treat the mind, and certain forms of mental activity, as separable, when in reality they are naturally concrete, and not susceptible of analysis. And so it is with reason ; without faith it can have no exist- VOL. XXXVI. — NO. IV. 76
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ence. As the arm without the nerves, that give it power and direction, is nothing, much more is the reason nothing without faith.
Faith is the crystallizing force that attracts to a common centre all the elements of intelligence of which reason is con- stituted. When this force acts with all its normal and pristine purity, the progress of the intellectual formation is perfect. The more it is disturbed, the more abnormal or degraded are the results.
Faith furnishes all the materials on which reason operates, and which it classifies and arranges into scientific systems. We have already said that, without it, we can have no knowledge of the most usual things in life; it reveals to us our own existence and that of the external world, and it is only reflecting and erring reason that ever questioned these facts. Faith reveals to us the connection of cause and effect, and experience, observation, and reflection only enable us to define the various laws of this relation, to assign them their proper place in the midst of other laws. By faith we learn the lan- guage, and customs, and institutions of the family and of the country; and it is only a selfish and unsocial reason that leads us either in violating established social institutions, or in attempting, by agitation, to introduce others for which the public mind is not prepared. Agitation is a species of social force and not proper social influence, and it is not by it, but by education, that a people is to be trained to better institutions.
Reason, it may be said, proceeds by a regular and scientific process, founded on evidence and axioms. Granted; but what is light to us without the natural eye to receive it, and what is evidence without that natural faith that accepts it? Neither of these is the creation of reason. We have a natural tendency to believe in evidence, and this gives it all its value. Our faith may sometimes mislead us; but we have other faculties, which, if properly developed and used, will correct its tendency to error, just as our judgments of sight may be corrected by those of touch and taste, if we join the caution of experience to our actions.
And what are axioms but instinctive truths revealed to us by faith? No amount of reasoning can reveal them to us, for
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often they are the very ground on which reason erects its structures, and never the result of its efforts. Individual rea- soners sometimes undertake to deny or disprove them, but they never succeed to the satisfaction of any but themselves. The most thorough sceptic is forced to admit them as fundamental principles of his practical life, however he may attempt theo- retically to reject them from his religious or philosophic creed.
Whatever may be the power of our will, it is very far from having the entire control of the mind in reasoning. We do not depend upon our will for our mental activity, however this activity may be increased and directed by it. Reasoning is one of the natural forms of the mind’s activity, and it is only by observing this spontaneous activity in ourselves, or what it has grown to in others, that we know what reasoning is. And it is only by observing the degree of control that we can exert over our processes of reasoning, that we can learn what is the office of the will in this respect. That the will has duties to perform in relation to all our mental activities is plain enough; but it would require a whole volume of psychology to explain them. It is enough for our present purpose to say, that we instinctively perform all the processes of reasoning, and that by our will we may have such control over them that we may greatly improve or degrade our reasoning powers.
Man naturally believes, and naturally reasons. There must, therefore, be both a legitimate faith and a legitimate rationalism, and either may be one-sided and bigoted. Faith may shut its eyes against reason, or reason against faith. Reason may deny to faith more or less of its legitimate functions, and faith may do the same with reason. True faith and true reason exist together in the same mind when each is allowed to act its proper part. In the early period of life, all the acts of the mind are acts of faith, and necessarily so, because it must lay up a considerable stock of facts and of mental skill in the spontaneous use of its faculties, before it can apply itself to any voluntary and calculated control and direction of them. At first, perhaps, it merely notices, as a whole, the concrete scene around it ; afterwards analyzes it into its several parts of things and acts ; afterwards gradually generalizes these acquisitions when they have become familiar; then begins to
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discover the fitness of familiar language to express these gene- ralizations; then commences to require and to learn language for its own purposes, and thus to fix its acquisitions ; and then to rise to higher and broader, and to more spiritual generaliza- tions and their corresponding language, until the amount of its stores, and its skill in handling them, prepares it first for spon- taneous, and afterwards for intentional and voluntary reflec- tion upon them. Looking thus at the growth of mind and of mental skill, its analogy to the growth of the body and of phy- sical skill, will very naturally suggest itself; and this may con- tribute to the illustration of the subject.
This, we trust, will be recognized as, at least, a rude ap- proximation to accuracy in the expression of the actual process of mental growth ; and it is to be hoped that it will not be long until its accuracy will be improved by carefully taken, recorded, analyzed, and generalized observations of the mind, begin- ning with its earliest infancy. We have said enough to show that there is, and must be, a very large amount of intelligence, spontaneously received and assimilated, before there can be any calculated or intentional reflection upon it, or Reasoning upon or by means of it.
It is in this way, also, that the mind receives the common opinions, maxims, customs, and sentiments of the family and of society, and thus grows into fitness with the people with whom it is to associate. These are the common social atmosphere which it continually breathes, and from which it has no dispo- sition and no power to escape, though by the aid of higher minds, communicating a higher education, it may acquire both. But it must at first accept this social atmosphere before it can reason about it and learn its fundamental principles, and how to use them in any better way. It is thus that laws, customs, and opinions become acquisitions of faith, and then a higher faith directs the mind to the investigation and discovery of the principles out of which they grow, and enables us to correct their growth by improved training and education.
And this suggests to us how ignorant and unjust are the cen- sures which we usually pass upon the conduct of children, and upon people of other ages and places of the world. Their con- duct may be the natural product bf their capacity and circum-
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stances, and they are not answerable to us for it, except so far as they are under a law that is binding on us and them in com- mon. Yet this does not forbid the training of our children even so far as to compel their submission to the order of the family; for their conduct may be wrong, even though not consciously or intentionally so, and we must correct it, even though we do not understand the principle from which the wrong proceeds. And thus, according to the maxim — “ignorance of law excuses no man,” — we correct the crimes of adult persons in society, often regarding only the evil of the deed, and not of the intention ; as we correct the vicious growth of a tree without understanding its principles. It is by such treatment, and by the natural consequences of wrong doing that children and grown persons are taught to reflect upon and respect the laws and order of nature, and of society, and its rights. If we understood these things, we should know how to look upon and correct most of the disorders of society without indignation and excited censui'es; yet, in our ignorance, this sentiment seems to be a necessary spur to the vindication of our social rights. In the conditions in which it arises, it is natural and spontaneous, as all other sentiments are, and not at all a matter of intention or volition.
We all grow up by degrees to the knowledge that we have, and of course, in the early stages of our growth, our knowledge is very defective; but this is not saying that it is wrong, for it may be exactly adapted to our age and circumstances. Our natural instinct of imitation, which is necessary to our social nature, draws us into conformity with society, without any intention of ours ; and thus we share in all the erroneous cus- toms and opinions of society, just as we do in the defects of its language. It is expected of a child or of an ignorant person that he will speak in such a way of day and night, of the action of a pump, of the falling of stones and rising of balloons, as to show that he is totally mistaken in his views of the laws that rule in these phenomena: even intelligent persons may employ the same forms of speech if the usages of language require it, though he knows that, in their form, they express a false theory. The knowledge of a* child is not adequate to the higher aims of science, but it is adequate for him, and fits bet-
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ter in his imperfect system than the scientific truth would do. He can use his defective knowledge as a basis on which to con- tinue his intellectual structure, and he may some day compre- hend the truth as men of science do. But if he is to do nothing and know nothing until he obtains perfect truth, he will never know nor do anything at all.
A child is not to be censured for not knowing all that is taught in the Bible, and all that the most accurate hermeneutic skill can draw out of it concerning spiritual and divine things; for it is not his time to know so much yet. If he has faith, in the sense of spiritual life or vitality, aspiring after higher and higher principles, and especially after the highest spiritual principles, he is growing towards it, and will ever grow. Our want of charity for those who, by reason of their youth or of unfavourable circumstances, are not so intelligent or so correct in their conduct as to satisfy our standard, is most generally chargeable to our forgetfulness of the steps by which we have ourselves risen. Perhaps the best teachers of every branch of human knowledge, and conduct, and duty, are those who best remember the inner and outer difficulties which they had them- selves to overcome.
We grow by faith, and not by law. Faith is the inner prin- ciple of all spiritual life, and when it is the faith of Christ, it is the inner principle of true religious life. Law is one of the outer circumstances, in the midst of which faith produces growth, and also the expression of the general form of the actual attainments of society, or of its accomplished growth ; and, to be right, the principle and the form, as received and comprehended, must be adapted to each other. If we impose on children the outer forms of life, that belong to mature age, we stint and distort their growth, and make it artificial and dis- ingenuous. If no regimen can be admitted but the most perfect rules of conduct that can be conceived of for the holiest intelli- gences, then the higher our views of legal perfection, the more unfit should we be to govern those who are in the first stages of human progress; and the best trained intellects would be totally unfit to govern ignorant or barbarous people, however fit to teach them. If they are to rise to the higher degrees of human cultivation, they must pass through the lower ones. They
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cannot comprehend your highest generalizations in morality and religion, any more than they can those of philosophy and mathematics, -without having experienced the special facts out of which these generalizations are formed.
God, in the absoluteness of his perfections, is entirely beyond our comprehension; but we may gradually catch glimpses of those perfections by observing the finite manifestations of them, and get them still more clearly by his direct revelation of them. Yet the knowledge of the child cannot be like that of the mature man in this respect, and we must not require that it should be. Let all things be adapted to their place and func- tions. We do not feed swine on pearls, nor put new wine into old sacks; and let us not attempt to force a ripe and indurated hull upon a growing nut. The faith of a child is often better and more hopeful than the knowledge of the man ; and it is always so when this knowledge is, by a bigoted rationalism or a bigoted faith, wrapped up in unyielding forms, which give no freedom of action to the vital principle of the soul, of which true faith is an essential element.
Faith and law, soul and body, spirit and letter, are essential to each other; the former being the substance of which the latter is the approximate natural expression. The latter cannot be produced without the former, nor the former comprehended without the latter. We must receive them together, before we can analyze and learn them ; and if the former changes, so will the latter, as the human countenance changes with the growth of intelligence and virtue, or of fatuity and vice, and with all the changes of temper in our daily life. There is, therefore, a true Christian and philosophic progress, which expects a con- stant change of form, in consequence of a continued growth in intelligence and virtue ; but this progress operates as quietly, regularly, and naturally, as the growing seed. 'Opposed to this, on one hand, are the disorderly radicals, or reforming rationalists, who mistake their own moral and social theories for law, and endeavour to agitate them into authority, and to amend the world by subjecting it to them, in a fixed and ungrowing uniformity. And opposed, on the other hand, are the conservative rationalists, who trust only in our present human law, for the growth and preservation of society. Both
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alike mistake the true functions of law, and are ignorant of the inner social principle of growth; and have no trust in the natural law of social progress which God has ordained as an element of our humanity. The former would tear away the protecting and nourishing pod, before the seed is ripe; and the other would bind it up, to prevent the seed from scattering according to the free laws of growth, with wastefulness and disorder.
There is another form of rationalism, equally ignorant of our human spontaneities, which is very often introduced into the family training, to the great injury of the future prospects of the children, and which opposes all control of the conduct of children, until they are able to understand the reasons of the duties required of them, or to perform them freely, out of filial affection. Children very soon learn that coaxing and reason- ing do not at all interfere with their having their own way, and thus this mode of training very naturally results in teaching children, among their first lessons, that the wishes of their parents are of no consequence. Indians teach their children better, when they turn them loose to attend to themselves, without this pernicious training, which teaches only disrespect. Children are much better taught by their fellows at school, who instinctively compel them to respect the rights and feel- ings of others, and to submit to the order and common customs of their little society.
Reason children into submission to authority! Why, they must first have submitted to authority before they can know what authority or submission is; and they must also have experience of, and much reflection upon, the blessings of sub- mission, before you can have any argument to enforce it which they can possibly appreciate. Authority exercised, they can understand, in so far as they feel it as a power above them controlling their actions; and feeling that it is above them, they cannot suppress the sentiment of respect or reverence, more or less crude, that naturally belongs to the perception; and this is a real gain. A proper training is not at all commenced until they have felt the necessity of submitting to authority; and this step in their education is among the most important of their lives. Until it is taken, their development continues to
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be purely selfish; and if parents cannot bring them to it ■wisely and steadily, the sooner they commit their children to the boys and girls at school the better for them.
And what parents can act on pure rational principles, or know what they are? None of us know enough about human nature, in all its stages, to know how to deal with it rationally. Parents have, therefore, their mental instincts, that are a better guide than any light furnished them by the ordinarily limited extent of their science of education. Our instincts tell us that parents know better than their children what is proper for them, and therefore mere instinct teaches the parent to insist upon and enforce his will. Let not this be laid aside because sciolists are heard to say that there ought to be no training that is not guided and accepted by reason. The training must be done, and if we have not reason enough to guide us, we must go by our mental instincts, as the next best course. If we carefully follow and observe their lead, and study the character of children, and train ourselves to modera- tion, and kindness, and good sense, we shall gradually learn for ourselves and our children what is the reason by which we are to be guided. Until we obtain this light of reason, we must act upon our spontaneous promptings, under the restraints of good sense and caution.
We have the life of faith and that of law well illustrated in the history of the Jewish people. It is very evident that they were much degraded by idolatry at the time of their delivery from Egyptian bondage ; and their forty years of desert life, with its adventurous freedom and its miraculous teachings, seem to have been necessary to awake in them that degree of faith which they needed in order to insure their future growth, and to enable them to master all the difficulties they were to encounter in settling themselves in the promised land. Their subsequent history is the measure of their comprehension of the principles of the Mosaic institutions. We cannot doubt that those institutions were adapted to their customs, but so far modified as was necessary to give adequate expression to the divine spirituality then begun to be revived among them. The mistake is often made of supposing that, because of their divine origin, they must be absolutely perfect, whereas their
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wisdom could be shown only by their relative perfection, or their adaptation. They are not fit for man in all circumstances, but only for a people with the inner principles and outer cir- cumstances then constituting the life of the Jewish people. But the divine principles which they contained — the unity, spirituality, and perfections of God revealed in them — the high ideas that were presented of our moral, social, and reli- gious duties, and the promises of the future; these were the objects to which their faith was directed — and by this faith they were to grow, and did grow. But when this faith died out under the indurating formalism of an irreligious priesthood, they ceased to grow, falling away first into a superstitious idolatry, and afterwards into a bigoted rationalism that ex- cluded all faith containing any real vitality, in the sense of a growing principle. They had a life of form, analogous to the crystal’s growth in size and hardness, which resists dissolution; but not the true life, of which the mustard-seed, with its grow- ing and aspiring tendencies, is a genuine analogy. They had a legal “form of knowledge and truth,” but no more than the Samaritan woman could they understand the symbol of the water, that should become in them a well of water springing up in everlasting vitality.
Pharisees and Sadducees were alike materialists in this, that they rejected that spiritual faith which is the life-principle of human progress; they admitted for man the growth of the crystal and the coral reef, by accretion; but not that of the tree, with its blossoms and fruit — and especially not of the divine in human nature, with its beautifying and elevating principles communicated by the Holy Spirit. In vain did the prophets of God warn them against their formalism, reject their sacrifices, purifications, and tithes, and call them to under- stand the principles expressed by their institutions, and to observe justice, mercy, and faith, and to a life and growth born “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
All forms of natural religion which are suggested by human reason, founded upon our dim and undefined faith in divine things, or wherein this is the prevailing element, seem naturally to run into this formalism, because their faith is misdirected,
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and fixed on objects too gross to excite any true reverence, or too impalpable to reach the intelligence, and thus attract the affections of men. And it is only when the object of faith is a holy, all-wise, and almighty sympathizing God, re- vealed to us through his Son, manifest in the flesh, and dying for us, that we obtain a definite, yet living and growing faith, having an object sufficiently intelligible to attract our love. “We love him because he first loved us,” and because we can perceive that he did so. This true faith requires no hierarchical mag- nificence, imposing rituals, solemn ceremonies, mysterious tradi- tions, or grand legal unity, to supply its defect of principle; for its very simplicity of principle demands simplicity of form.
Now, if minerals, plants, and animals must have natural tendencies and instincts according to their several natures, in order to be what they are, then surely man must have natural tendencies that incline him to a complete fulfilment of his des- tiny. If the tendencies and instincts of plants and animals are susceptible of improvement, much more so must be man’s. And if the infant has spiritual instincts by which it gradually appropriates to itself the common knowledge and principles which Providence casts in its way, and thus gradually enlarges the province in which its activity may exert itself, surely there must still be natural tendencies that urge it to occupy that territory. These tendencies may be almost always too weak to resist the lower tendencies of human nature, and to over- come the difficulties that lie in the way ; but, with the blessing of God, they will have power enough.
Faith is the vital principle of all these tendencies, and it has a natural germ in every human heart. If we are destitute of faith and trust in any given line of action, we must fail. If we do not believe in our natural craving after food, we must die. It is because we trust to our natural desire for knowledge that we ever attain any intelligence; and it is only when we trust to our natural desire after the highest spiritual gifts that we can ever make any advance towards them. We call this a natural desire, because man, however degraded, has still some remains of it.
“Seek, and ye shall find;” but how can we seek without a previous faith that there is something to be sought after ?
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And God assures to us this faith, for the world is full of adap- tations to man’s physical, moral, and intellectual nature; and, grow as he may, their variety will never he exhausted. Natu- rally we look upward in search of goodness and intelligence superior to our own, and faith is our natural aspiration towards their attainment. And this faith in beings higher and holier than ourselves is always attended by a sentiment of reverence, varying in degree from the ordinary respect felt for our equals up to the profound awe with which we recognize the divine. This is worthy of special attention. Every complete impres- sion of any act, event, thing, or being, is at least double in its nature, consisting of the intellectual act by which the object is recognized, and the sentiment that naturally follows such recognition. Thus, the sight of an object that is sublime, or beautiful, or ugly — or of an act that is cruel, ungenerous, or mean, raises a corresponding sentiment; and it is this that makes virtue attractive and vice repulsive to us. All our sen- timents rise in this perfectly spontaneous way, depending on the judgments which the mind forms of its objects; and hence the great importance of careful reflection in the formation of our judgments, and of being on our guard to exclude from our mind all thoughts that excite corrupting and misleading emo- tions. If we recognize in another any excellence to which we have not attained, the natural sentiment of a generous heart is reverence, or at least respect, and a desire to imitate it. But it may be envy, and a desire to degrade that excellence to a level with ourselves. If we have cultivated or indulged a habit of selfishness in all our calculations and conduct, the represen- tation or judgment that we form of an excellent man, will likely be that he stands in our way, or that we compare badly with him; and then our natural sentiment will be envy. Our judg- ments are the sources of our sentiments, the very springs of our inner and outer life, the cords of all the moral harmonies of the soul; and it is when we allow the tempters and the moral and political charlatans of society to play upon them at their pleasure, that we are sure to lose all proper self-control, and become the slaves of social excitements and seductions.
Faith, in its highest and most general spiritual sense, is the judgment of the mind concerning things above us — “things
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unseen” — and reverence for, and desire to reach them, are its naturally attendant sentiments. And this reverence is the very blossom of the tree of life ; it gives to faith its upward look and hopeful aspirations after the unseen excellencies that it feels to be above it. This reverence may be in excess or in deficiency, and thus be timid and superstitious, or rude, im- pudent, and audacious; but it must exist wherever there is faith enough to “look at things which are not seen.” There can be no more important sentiment belonging to our spiritual nature, and we must endeavour to correct its excess or defi- ciency by exercising, with measured and reflecting caution, the faith out of which it flows.
But we have gone much further than we intended in elabor- ating these views; perhaps further than our readers care to follow us, and we must stop. We need not go back upon what we have said in order to convince our readers that the Inductive Method does not unduly bind philosophy to the leading strings of material nature, so as to exclude all the mental knowledge that is to be derived from our internal experience. It does take nature as it finds it, because that is a main object of its study; but it also studies how far nature may be improved by man. And especially does it, or may it, study human nature, and find wherein and how it may be improved. Life and growth are essential characteristics of this method. It operates by appropriation, digestion, and assimilation, like the plant or animal. From the concrete gifts of nature it rises to the highest classifications, and from its most obvious laws to the highest principles. And in the performance of this work, the mind of man, also an object of philosophy, is continually growing and developing its natural tendencies, and always urging philosophy upwards, and always forbidding it to be complete. There can be no aprioral philosophy to fix or mea- sure the destiny of man, except in the mind of his Creator.
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Art. II. — The Russian Church.
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The foundation of the great Russian Empire was laid by Ruric, a Varangian knight, about the year 862. He reigned first at Ladoga, and afterwards at Novgorod, which was then a large and opulent city.
To Vladimir, a descendant of Ruric, belongs the honour of establishing Christianity among the Russians ; which event took place near the close of the tenth century. There had been instances of conversion at an earlier period — some even in the royal family. But Christianity was not permanently established before the year 986. The circumstances of its introduction are thus stated by Karamsin, in his learned His- tory of Russia.*
In the year above mentioned, there came to Vladimir envoys or missionaries from the different religions of the known world. First came Bulgarian Mussulmen from the region of the Volga. “Illustrious Prince,” said they, “wise and prudent as thou art, thou knowest neither law nor religion. Believe in our religion, and honour Mohammed.”
“What is your religion?” said Vladimir. “In what does it consist?”
“We believe in God,” they replied,” and believe what the Prophet teaches: — Be circumcised; abstain from pork; drink no wine ; and after death, from seventy beautiful wives select the most beautiful.”
Vladimir listened to them for the last reason ; but he did not like circumcision, or abstinence from pork, and least of all, the prohibition of drinking: for drinking was then, as now, the great delight of the Russians.
Next came the representatives of Western or Roman Catholic Christendom. “The Pope begs us to tell you,” said they, “that though your country is like our own, your religion is not. Ours is the right. We fear God, who made the heavens and the earth, the stars and the moon, and every living crea- ture; whilst thy gods are of wood and stone.”
* In eleven volumes, 8vo.
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“What does your law command?” asked Vladimir.
“We fast, to the best of our power; and when any one eats or drinks, he does it in honour of God, as taught the apostle Paul.”
“Go home,” said Vladimir. “Our fathers did not believe in your religion, or receive it from the Pope.”
Next came some Jews, who lived among the Khozars. “We have heard that the Mohammedans and Christians have tried to persuade you to adopt their religion. The Christians believe in him whom we have crucified. We believe in one God, the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob.”
“In what does your law consist?” asked Vladimir?
“Our law requires circumcision; prohibits pork and hare; and enjoins the observance of Saturday.”
“And where is your country?”
“At Jerusalem.”
“And what is Jerusalem?”
“ God was wroth with our forefathers : he dispersed us, for our sins, throughout the world; and our country has fallen into the hands of strangers.”
“What!” said Vladimir; “do you wish to teach others — you, whom God has rejected and dispersed? If God had loved you and your law, he would not have scattered you abroad. You wish, perhaps, that we should suffer the same.”
Another agent now appears on the scene. He is not a bar- barian, as before, but a Christian philosopher from Greece. “We have heard,” said he, “that the Mohammedans have sent to induce you to adopt their belief. Their religion and their practices are an abomination in the face of heaven and earth, and judgment will fall upon them, as of old’ upon Sodom. We have also heard that messengers have come from Rome to teach you. Their belief differs somewhat from ours. They celebrate the mass with unleavened bread; and, on this account, as well as others, have not the true religion.”
Vladimir then added: “I have also had Jews here, who said that the Greeks and Germans believe on him whom we cruci- fied. Can you tell now why he was crucified?”
“If you will listen,” replied the philosopher, “I will tell you all, from the beginning.” And so, commencing at the creation,
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he detailed to the king the principal events of Jewish and Christian history. He described the true faith; spoke of the future reward of the righteous, and punishment of the wicked ; and showed to the king a tablet on which was painted the scene of the last judgment. He showed him the righteous, who, filled with joy, were just entering into paradise; and also the sinners who were going into hell.
The king was moved, and heaving a sigh, exclaimed: “ Happy are those who are on the right, but woe to the sinners on the left!”
“If you wish,” said the philosopher, “to enter heaven with the just, you must repent and be baptized.” But the king, on reflection, concluded to wait a little, that he might be more thoroughly instructed in religion. So he loaded the philoso- pher with presents, and sent him away.
The next year Vladimir sent for his nobles and elders, told them what he had heard, and asked their advice. Their reply was as follows: “No one, 0 Prince, talks evil of his country’s religion, but each one praises his own. If you would know the exact truth — you have wise men here — send them to examine the faith of each, and the manner of their worship.”
The Prince accepted their advice, and sent out his ambassa- dors. On their return, they reported unfavourably respecting the Mohammedan and Popish religions, but were delighted with what they saw at Constantinople among the Greeks. They happened to be present at one of the high festivals in the mag- nificent church of St. Sophia, and were placed in a situation to see all to the best advantage. The incense smoked, the chants resounded, the Patriarch appeared in his splendid vestments, and (what affected the envoys more than all) the deacons and sub-deacons came forward in dazzling robes, with white linen wings upon their shoulders. These, they were told, were angels, who had come down from heaven to take part in the service. “We are satisfied now,” said the Russians; “we need no further proof. Send us home, that we may make report.”
And they did report, in terms the most ecstatic. “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on the earth. We cannot describe to you all that we have seen. We seemed to be in the very presence of God. We shall never forget so much grandeur
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and magnificence. Whoever has seen so imposing a spectacle can be pleased with nothing else.”
Still Vladimir was not more than half convinced. He was besieging the city of Cherson, in the Crimea, and made a vow that, if he succeeded he would be baptized. At the same time, hesent to the Greek emperor, Basil, demanding the hand of his sister Anne in marriage. He obtained his bride, was bap- tized at Cherson, and gave orders for the general baptism of his people at Kieff. The great idol, Peroun, was dragged over the hills at a horse’s tail ; was unmercifully scourged by two thousand mounted pursuers, and then thrown into the Dnieper, where it was pushed along the stream until it went down the rapids, and finally disappeared in a spot long afterwards known as the Bay of Peroun. The whole people of Kieff were bap- tized in the same river, some sitting on the banks, others plung- ing in, and others swimming, while the priests read the prayers. “It was a sight,” says Nestor, “beautiful to see, when the whole people were baptized, and each one, after baptism, returned to his house.” The spot was consecrated by the first Christian temple, and Kieff became, henceforward, the Canter- bury of the Russian Empire.
The Greek church, being thus established in Russia, has been the religion of the empire ever since. Like the religion of Rome, it is one of dead formalism, exhibiting little of the life and power of the gospel. Like Romanism, too, it has been an intolerant persecuting church. And yet, between the two, there are some important differences. The Greek church owes no allegiance to the Pope of Rome, but is governed by Patri- archs, much as the whole church was, after the days of Con- stantine. Among the Greeks, the clergy are not only permit- ted but required to marry previous to ordination, though they are not allowed to marry afterwards, or to be married more than once. The Greeks have no images in their churches, but are extravagantly, even fanatically, attached to pictures. They reject purgatory, and administer the communion in both kinds, giving it even to baptized infants.
There are other minor differences between these two churches, which have been the occasion, at times, of violent disputes;
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such as those respecting the procession of the Spirit, and the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist. But a more import- ant difference, practically, than any other, relates to the circu- lation of the Scriptures among the people, and the use of their respective liturgies in the vernacular tongue. This is per- mitted among the Greeks; and this rendered the conversion of the Russians more easy, and without doubt more thorough, than would otherwise have been possible.
I have spoken of the attachment of the Greeks to pictures. Among the Russians, both in the earlier and later periods of their history, this attachment is carried to an almost ridiculous extent. “It is,” says Dr. Stanley, “the main support and standard of their religious faith and practice. It is like the rigid observance of Sunday to a Scotchman, or the Auto da Fd to a Spaniard, or like fasting to a Copt. Everywhere, in public and in private, the sacred picture is the consecrating element. In the corner of every room, at the corner of every street, over gateways, in offices, in steamers, in stations, in taverns, is the picture hung, with the lamp burning before it. In domestic life it plays the part of the family Bible, of the wedding gift, of the birth-day present, of the ancestral portrait. In the national life, it is the watchword, the flag, which has sustained the courage of generals, and roused the patriotism of troops. It has gone forth to meet the Tartars, the Poles, and the French. It has been carried by Demetrius, by Peter, by Suwarrow, by Kutusoff. A taste, a passion for pictures, not as works of art, but as emblems, as lessons of instruction, is thus engendered and multiplied in common life, beyond all example elsewhere.”*
On this same subject, Macarius, a Syrian traveller of the 17th century, remarks: “The Muscovites are vastly in love with pictures, regarding neither the beauty of the painting, nor the skill of the painter; for with them a beautiful and an ugly painting are all one. They honour and bow to them perpetu- ally, though the figure be only the daub of children, or a sketch upon a leaf of paper. Of a whole army, there is pro- bably not a man but carries in his knapsack a gaudy picture,
* Lectures on the Eastern Church, pp. 411, 412.
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in a simple cover, with which he never parts ; and whenever he halts, he sets it up on a piece of wood and worships it.”*
Passing from common life to the church, the same pecu- liarity presents itself. In the churches of Moscow, for exam- ple, “ from top to bottom, from side to side, walls, and roof, and screen, and columns, are a mass of gilded pictures ; not one of them of any artistic value, not one put in for the sake of show or effect, but all cast in the same ancient mould, or over- cast with the same venerable hue, and each one, from the smallest figure in the smallest compartment to the gigantic faces which look down, with their large open eyes, from the arched vaults above, performing its own part, and bearing a relation to the whole.”
Vladimir I., the founder of the Russian church, has been canonized, and is called a saint; but he seems not so well to deserve the title as Vladimir II., who came to the throne in 1114. His wife was Gytha, a daughter of Harold, king of England. The details of his life can be understood only through the obscure and fragmentary records of his time ; but his general character may be sufficiently gathered from his dying injunctions to his sons.
“ 0 my children, praise God, and love men. For it is not fasting, nor solitude, nor monastic life, that will secure your salvation, but only doing good. Forget not the poor, but nourish them. Remember that riches come from God, and are given you only for a short time. Do not bury your wealth in the ground ; for this is against the precepts of Christianity. Be fathers to orphans. Be judges in the cause of widows, and do not let the powerful oppress the weak. . . . Never take the name of God in vain; and never break the oath you have made.”
“ Be not envious at the triumph of the wicked, and the suc- cess of treachery. Fear the lot of the impious. Do not desert the sick, or fear the sight of a corpse, for we must all die. Receive with joy the blessing of the clergy, and do not keep thyself away from them. Do them good, that they may pray to God for you. Drive out of your heart all the suggestions
* Travels, vol. ii. p. 50.
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of pride, remembering that we are all perishable — to-day full of hope, to-morrow in the coffin. Abhor lying, drunkenness, and debauchery. Love your wives, but do not suffer them to have power over you. Endeavour constantly to acquire know- ledge. Without having quitted his palace, my father spoke five languages — a thing which wins for us the admiration of foreigners.
“In war be vigilant; be an example to your soldiers. When you travel through the provinces, do not suffer your attendants to do the least injury to the inhabitants. Entertain always, at your own expense, the master of the house in which you stop to rest. 0 my children, be not afraid of death, or of wild beasts. Trust in Providence; for this surpasses all human precau- tions.”
Thus counselled a Russian prince in the 12th century. What prince or potentate, since that period, has given better advice to his children.
The monks are, and long have been, a numerous and power- ful body of ecclesiastics in Russia. Some of them reside in convents, following the rule of St. Basil; but others, notwith- standing the severity of the climate, are anchorets of the wild- est and most fanatical stamp. Even the Stylites, or Pillar saints, who never reached the west of Europe, are found in the heart of Russia. The following account of them is by English travellers of the 16th century: “There are certain Eremites who go stark naked, save a clout about their middle, with their hair hanging long and wildly about their shoulders, and many of them with an iron collar or chain about their necks or waists, even in the depth of winter. These the people take as pro- phets and men of great holiness, giving them the liberty to speak what they list, without any controlment, though it be of the very highest himself.” “One of this class, whom they call Basil, took upon him to reprove the old Emperor, Ivan IY., for all his cruelty and oppression of the people. The body of this hermit lies in a sumptuous church, built on purpose to receive it, near the Emperor’s house in Moscow, his iron collar and chain hanging over it, and him have they canonized for a saint.”*
* Fletcher’s Russian Commonwealth, p. 117.
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Another, who lived at the same time, is thus described by Mr. Horsey. “ I saw this impostor or magician — a foul crea- ture. He went naked both in winter and summer, enduring the extremes both of heat and frost. He did many things through the magical illusions of the devil, and was much followed and praised both by prince and people.” He was a means, at one time, of saving his native town of Plescow. When Ivan IV., surnamed “ the Terrible,” came there with the design of murdering all the inhabitants, the hermit rebuked him in the most solemn terms. At the same time he pointed to a black thunder cloud over their heads, and threatened the Emperor with instant destruction, in case he, or one of his army, touched so much as a hair on the least child’s head in the city. Ivan trembled and retired, and the city was saved.
The monasteries in Russia are very numerous and strong. Standing, for instance, on the walls of the Kremlin, and look- ing over the city of Moscow, the eye rests at once on the towers, of vast monasteries, which, at regular intervals, encircle the outskirts of the whole city, each encompassed with its embat- tled walls, and forming together a girdle of gigantic for- tresses.
About the year 1223, commenced the onslaught of the Mogul Tartars, under the descendants of Genghis Khan and Tamer- lane, upon the domains of Russia. The war continued, with various success, for two hundred years; and it is of the Lord’s mercies that Christianity was not entirely obliterated. It is said to have been through the influence of the clergy and the monks, that the Tartars were finally defeated and driven from the country. The most sacred of the Russian convents is that of “the Troitza,” or the holy Trinity, founded in the year 1338. It is situate about sixty miles from Moscow, in the midst of one of those interminable forests which cover all the uncultivated parts of Russia. It is as much a fortress as a monastery, and is visited by pilgrims innumerable, from all parts of the empire. In this wild and uncultivated spot, near the close of the fourteenth century, lived the renowned hermit, Sergius. It was his prayers and blessing which encouraged the desponding Prince Demetrius to renew his attack upon the Tartars near the river Don. Two of his monks accompanied
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Demetrius to the field. They fought in coats of mail drawn over their monastic garb, and the enemy was repulsed.
It was from this same convent, at a later period, that an influence went forth to confound the Tartars. When Ivan III. wavered, as Demetrius had done, it was by the remonstrance of Archbishop Bassian, a former prior of the Trinity convent, that the king was driven to take the field. “Dost thou fear death?” cried the aged prelate. “Thou too must die, as well as others. Death is the lot of all men ; none can escape it. Give these warriors into my hand, and, old as I am, I will not spare myself, nor turn my back upon the Tartars.” Aroused by this appeal, Ivan returned to the camp. The Tartars fled without a blow, and Russia was delivered.
As the invasion and expulsion of the Tartars form the first great crisis of Russian history, so the invasion and expulsion of the Poles constitute the second. “We are so much accus- tomed,” says Dr. Stanley, “to regard the Russians as the oppressors of the Poles, that we find it difficult to conceive a time when the Poles were the oppressors of the Russians. Our minds are so preoccupied with the Russian partition of Poland, that we almost refuse to admit the fact that there was once a Polish partition of Russia. Yet so it was; and neither the civil nor the ecclesiastical history of Russia can be understood, with- out keeping in mind that long family quarrel between the two great Sclavonic nations, to us so obscure, but to them so ingrained, so inveterate, so intelligible.”*
The Poles were at the time here referred to (A. D. 1605), as they now are, Roman Catholics; and the wars between the two countries served to intensify the hatred of the Russians, not only against the Poles in particular, but against the Catholic religion everywhere.
In this struggle, as in the last, it was the church that saved the empire; and the monastery of the Trinity saved them both. When the Sovereign and the Patriarch had both disappeared before their enemies, the convent Troitza still stood erect. Its fortifications again served a noble purpose. Its warlike tradi- tions revived in the persons of its warlike monks. As Deme-
* Lectures on the Eastern Church, p. 449.
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trius had formerly received his blessing from Sergius, so the Prince Pojarsky was sent forth on his mission of blood by Dio- nysius, a successor of Sergius. In a little time, Moscow was retaken, and the empire was saved.
It was at this time that Demetrius, the only remaining scion of the stock of Ruric, disappeared, and the dynasty of Romanoff was established. Philaret, once a humble parish priest, but afterwards Patriarch of Moscow, was the father of Michael Romanoff, and the founder of this illustrious house.
For several hundred years, the sovereigns of Russia had borne the title of Dukes; — Dukes of Kieff, of Vladimir, and of Moscow. But in 1538, under Ivan IV., they assumed the more pretentious title of Czar; which is but a contraction for Cesar. The Czar of Russia is a sacred character. His coronation is a solemn event, preceded by fasting and seclusion, and occurring in the most sacred church in Moscow. In the form of investi- ture, he is not a mere passive recipient, but is himself the most active performer. On his knees, in the midst of the assembled multitude, he recites aloud the Confession of the orthodox church, and offers up a prayer of intercession for the empire. He places the crown upon his own head; and entering through the doors of the innermost sanctuary, he takes from the altar the elements of bread and wine, and communicates with the bishops, priests, and deacons.
The city of Moscow was founded in the year 1147, and is, beyond all others, the sacred city of Russia. It has a hold upon the religious mind of Christendom greater, perhaps, than that of any other city, if we except Jerusalem and Rome. Like Rome it is a city of innumerable churches, of everlasting bells, of endless processions, of tombs and thrones, of relics, treasures, invasions, and deliverances, as far back as its history extends. Then the Kremlin, with its crested towers and impregnable walls, unites within itself all the elements of the ancient reli- gious life of Russia. Side by side stand the three cathedrals of the marriages, the coronations, and the funerals of the Czars. In the last of these, lie the coffins of the Czars, and twice every year a funeral service is performed for them all. Hard by are two convents, half palatial and half episcopal, while over all stands the double, triple palace of the Patriarch and the Czar.
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I have said that the first who assumed the title of Czar was Ivan IV., surnamed “the Terrible,” about the year 1538. His character was made up of strange inconsistencies, sometimes intensely religious, according to the fashion of the age; at others, intensely savage and cruel. Sometimes he would retire, for weeks together, to a monastery which he had built for him- self at Moscow. He would himself ring the bell for matins at three o’clock in the morning; and during the services, which lasted seven hours, he would read, and chant, and pray, with such fervour that the marks of his prostrations would remain long after on his forehead. In the intervals he would go down to the dungeons underneath the convent, that he might see, with his own eyes, his prisoners tortured ; and always returned with a face beaming with delight. On one occasion, he is said to have nailed the hat of an ambassador to his head. On another, he drove his huge iron walking-stick thi’ough the foot of a man whose attention he wished to secure. Indeed, during the last half of his reign, he was little better than a madman. Yet so venerable was his office, that he seems to have been loved by his people, as well as feared, and to have been regarded with high honour when he was no more.
Next in honour to the Czar was the Primate or Metropolitan. He was, at the first, subordinate to the Patriarch of Constan- tinople, but became, at length, independent ; and, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, was himself constituted the Patriarch of Moscow. The Patriarchate was abolished by Peter the Great, who could not brook a rival near him; but whether Patriarch or Primate, the honours paid to the head of the Russian Church are much the same. “ When he leaves the cathedral,” says Dr. Stanley, “it is with difficulty that he can struggle through the crowd, who press to devour his hand with kisses, or to lay a finger on the hem of his garment. And when he drives away in his state-carriage, every one stands bareheaded as he passes, while the bells of innumerable churches and chapels join in an ever increasing river of sound.” .
But neither the grandeur of the office, nor the enthusiasm of the people, has ever raised the Primates of Russia to a level of political importance with some of the prelates of Europe.
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There has been no Hildebrand, or Becket, or Anselm, among them. One of them (Philip) fell a martyr to the barbarity of Ivan the Terrible. For administering a merited reproof to this monster of cruelty, he was dragged away from the cathe- dral and put to death.
Perhaps the most remarkable of the Primates of Russia was the Patriarch Nicon, who l’eceived the mitre about the middle of the seventeenth century. He introduced some important changes into the service of the church, and well deserves to be called a reformer. He set himself with stern severity to root out some of the more flagrant abuses of the Russian hierarchy, especially the crying evil of intemperance. In his own person, he exhibited a new type of pastoral virtue and liberality. He founded hospitals and alms-houses, relieved the wants of the poor, visited prisons, and, with a promptitude of justice rare in the east, released the prisoners, if he found them innocent. Through his intervention, the seclusion of the female sex was partially broken up ; so that the Empress, who had never before entered a church but in the night, now appeared there publicly by day. The baptisms of the Latin church, of which the validity is to this day denied by the Greeks, were, by his sanction, first recognized by the Russian church.
Nicon also showed himself the friend and patron of educa- tion. The printing-press was introduced, and Greek and Latin were taught in the schools. The study of the Bible was encouraged, and a new and more accurate translation was attempted. But the greatest change which he effected — one at that time without example in the east — was the revival of preaching. From his lips was first heard, after many centu- ries, the sound of a living, practical sermon. Archdeacon Paul has given us several examples of his discourses, which he com- plains of as tediously long. On one occasion, when the Czar was going forth to war, “the Patriarch blessed him, and then raised his voice in prayer for him, reading a beautiful exor- dium, with parables and proverbs from the ancients ; such as how God granted victory to Moses over Pharaoh, and to Con- stantine over Maximianus and Maxentius, adding many exam- ples of this nature, with much prolixity of discourse, moving on at his leisure like a copious stream of flowing water. When he
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stammered, or made mistakes, lie set himself right again -with perfect composure. No one seemed to find fault with him, or to be tired of his discourse, but all were silent and attentive like a slave before his master.”*
Still, we cannot hold up the Patriarch Nicon as an object of unqualified admiration. His manners were rough, and his measures not unfrequently harsh and repulsive. “He was,” says Archdeacon Paul, “ a very butcher among the clergy. His janissaries are perpetually going round the city, and when they find any priest or monk in a state of intoxication, they carry him to prison, strip him, and scourge him. His prisons are full of them, galled with heavy chains and logs of wood on their necks and legs, or they are compelled to sift flour day and night in the bake-house.” The deserts of Siberia were peopled with dissolute clergy, whom Nicon had banished there with their wives and children.
For a loDg time the Patriarch Nicon and the Czar Alexis lived together on terms of the most intimate friendship. “They appeared,” says Mouravieff, “as one and the same person in all acts of government, passing most of their days together, in the church, in the council- chamber, and at the friendly board. To unite themselves still closer by the bonds -of spiritual rela- tionship, the Patriarch became godfather to all the children of his sovereign, and they both made a mutual vow never to desert each other on this side the grave.”f
But at length the nobles, who were displeased with the rigor of Nicon’s government, and envious at the favour shown him by the Czar, contrived to separate the two friends, and to alienate Alexis from him. The breach, once opened, gradually in- creased; all intercourse between the two was broken off; and in a burst of indignation, the Patriarch resigned his place. He afterwards assayed to recall his resignation, and recover not only his office, but his place in the affections of his sove- reign; but it was too late. He was formally deposed, degraded, and imprisoned; and though, after the death of Alexis, the sun of the royal favour once more shone upon him, he lived not to enjoy it. He died on his journey from the Siberian prison,
* Macarius’ Travels, vol. ii. pp. 59, 76.
f Hist, of Russia, p. 215.
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and was buried in the convent of the New Jerusalem, which himself had founded.
Peter the Great was a son of Alexis by his second wife, and came to the throne of Russia in 1696. Of the perils of his early years — of his romantic journeys and residences in foreign lands, to copy their manners, acquire their learning, and make himself acquainted with their arts — of the leading events of his life generally, it is not necessary here to speak. It is chiefly as a civil and religious reformer, and in his connection with the church, that he claims our notice at the present time. While abroad in foreign lands, Peter conversed with their ecclesiastics, attended their meetings, and made himself acquainted with the different forms of Christian faith and worship. Still, he con- tinued faithful to the church in which he had been baptized; although in several particulars he attempted a reformation.
In the year 1700, he adopted the European calendar, com- mencing the year in January instead of September. He abol- ished the office of Patriarch, as before stated, substituting in its place a Synod of Prelates, to be presided over by himself, or by his Legate. He abolished the Strelitzes or Janissaries, who had been constituted to be the sovereign’s bodyguard, but who had virtually controlled the sovereigns, and been a terror to them, through long ages. In place of these, he organized a new army on the German model, entering the ranks himself, rising through every grade of office, and requiring his nobles to do the same. Finding Russia without ships, he laid the foundation of a navy, working himself in foreign shipyards, and employing Venetian and Dutch shipwrights to build his vessels. By his sword he also opened ports for his ships, both in the Black Sea and in the Baltic, and with incredible labour founded the city of Petersburg, and made it his capital.
To raise a revenue, he introduced a general taxation, tax- ing, among other things, the beards of his subjects, and their long-tailed Tartar coats; and as the Russians did not care to part with these appendages, they became a fruitful source of income. He encouraged and regulated the press, caused valua- ble translations to be made and published, and established naval and other schools. He fostered commerce, requiring his people to trade with other countries — a course which, up to
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this time, had been sternly prohibited. He dug canals and built factories, established a uniformity of weights and mea- sures, framed a new code of laws, organized tribunals, and built hospitals. He set himself sternly against all impostures and pious frauds, insisting that divine honours should be paid to God, and not to holy pictures and relics, and that no false miracles should be ascribed to them.
It is not to be supposed that these numerous innovations in the customs of a semi-barbarous people were acquiesced in without opposition. Peter encountered a strong resistance, more especially in his change of the calendar, his abolition of the Patriarchate, and his attack upon the- beards and the long coats of his people. The separatists, called Rascolniks and Starovers, caused themselves and their sovereign a good deal of trouble; but Peter’s intercourse with foreign nations had taught him toleration, and the great body, not only of his people but of his clergy, were prepared to follow him.
The character of Peter has been variously estimated. That he had talents, shrewdness, an indomitable perseverance, and an iron will, there can be no doubt; but then he was badly educated, and early contracted pernicious habits which could not be controlled. “I wish to reform my empire,” said he on one occasion, “but I cannot reform myself.” One of the darkest spots upon his character was the execution of his first- born son, on a charge of treason, but with the intent, probably, to put him out of the way.
Peter’s second wife, Catharine, who succeeded him on the throne, was raised from a low and ignominious life ; but she had great influence over him in his later years, and this influ- ence, it may be hoped, was for good. He became temperate and simple in his habits, while his time was devoted to unwearied labours in the service of his country. After a very painful illness, which he endured with calmness and resigna- tion, he died on the 28th of January, 1725.
Peter was the first of the Russian sovereigns who assumed the title of Emperor. His eleven successors, though by no means bis equals in vigour and in power, have in general adopted and carried out his plans of reform; and, in so doing,
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have transformed a rude and semi-barbarous people into one of the great powers of Europe and the world.
Alexander I., who died in 1825, was perhaps the best of the Russian emperors. He industriously sought the good of his people, favoured the circulation of the Scriptures among them, and is supposed to have been a truly pious man. His namesake (Alexander II.), the present Emperor, is thought to resemble him in some respects. Like him, he favours the cir- culation of the Scriptures ; and he has commended himself to the consideration of all good men by the emancipation of mil- lions of serfs.
One of the prelates of the Russian church is distinguishing himself, at the present time, by his untiring missionary labours. I refer to the Archbishop of Kamtschatka. Not in cars and steamers, but in rough canoes, and on reindeer sledges, he traverses the long chain of Pagan islands which uiiite the Asiatic and American continents, and is leading many of the besotted natives to a knowledge of Christian truth. Long may he live to pursue successfully these labours of love, and may many others be raised up to copy his example, and to call him blessed. And may this latest branch of the ancient oriental church, divesting itself of formality and superstition, and bringing forth much fruit unto holiness, yet prove itself to be a living branch of the living vine.
/% ft”- AS . ,a..v - ^ - 0. J,
Art. III. — Modern Philology. Its Discoveries , History , and Influence ; with Maps , Tabular Views, and an Index. By Benjamin W. Dwight. First Series, 8vo, pp. 360. Second Series, pp. 554. New York: Charles Scribner, 1864.
Nothing in the nature of man is more wonderful than the har- mony between his physical and spiritual constitution, and the influence exerted by the one upon the other. The soul is shut up in this material casing, excluded from all direct contact with anything external. The bodily organs are its only medium of communication with the world without; and in fact the soul
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appears to come first to the consciousness of its own existence through the impressions thus received. It is most interesting to observe how these organs are contrived to accomplish not only the physical ends which they are designed to answer, but in addition, to meet the wants of the soul, promote the develop- ment of its latent powers, and give expression to its hidden workings.
The organs of speech and hearing, for example, are purely material instruments, constructed with reference to the laws of sound, as created and propagated in the subtle medium of the atmosphere. The inferior animals have similar organs for the production of sounds or the utterance of cries which accomplish ends suited to the wants of their being. But it would have been impossible to imagine, prior to experience, what extensive and varied uses they could be made to subserve on behalf of man. ’lyith a slight modification adapting them to the utter- ance and ready perception of articulate sound, intelligent and intelligible speech has become possible. Without this, man would have been consigned to perpetual and hopeless imbecility. His intellectual powers and capacities never could have been unfolded. His creation would have been a failure. But, by a signal instance of far-reaching spiritual consequences suspended upon a simple mechanical contrivance, possessed of this, man becomes man. The development of reason, civilization, art, and science, are the sublime sequences.
When in early infancy we began to learn the meanings and use of words, and to make our first rude attempts at their pro- nunciation, our education was begun, and in the most effective manner. We were learning to think, for speech implies thought. Language is not learned by rote. The process of its acquisition is not the mere retention in the memory of so many arbitrary symbols of thought put together by equally arbitrary rules. It is not as when a horse or a dog is trained by forced association to connect a given sense with particular sounds, or as when a parrot is made mechanically to imitate them. A child is taught to speak by awaking the faculty of language in his soul. The utterance of an idea or of an emo- tion becomes intelligible to him only as it excites the same within him. The effort to comprehend what is said to him,
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exercises and strengthens his mind. Every one who ap- proaches him, though it be but to interest or amuse him for a moment, becomes his teacher. IIoAvever simple and childish the expressions used for his entertainment, they are yet the offspring of another mind. They contain the forms of thought cast in the mould of maturer powers, and they can only be understood by the exercise of thought. The very notion of language involves classification, comparison, reflection. The power of abstraction is called into exercise. It becomes neces- sary to refer individuals to the species to which they belong, to distinguish between acts in themselves considered, and the various circumstances of time, mode, and person, to separate qualities from substances, to conceive of the different degrees of the former and the relations of the latter, to perform all those mental operations, which are involved in a correct appre- ciation of whatever belongs to the derivation, inflection, and collocation of words. The most cursory review of what is implied in the acquisition of a language, and of the processes of thought necessary to accomplish it, will reveal how large a stock of ideas must be amassed, what an insight must be gained into their several relations, and what an amount of mental power and discipline must be acquired.
The use of language further demands besides the ability to understand what is spoken, the ability to speak ourselves. The former renders the mind active, by compelling it to echo and repeat to itself the thoughts of others ; the latter requires it to originate and express its own. The impulse to communicate to others what is passing within us, is instinctive and strong, and this not only when required by some necessity, or by the desire to compass some particular end, but without any more definite motive than the pleasure of saying what we think or expressing what we feel. And this impulse is of incalculable advantage in the unfolding of our powers. He who never speaks, will think but little. The fountain must be allowed to flow out, or it will cease to flow altogether. A person must utter his ideas if he would come into the complete mastery and possession of them ; he must put them into a form intelligible by others, if he would arrive at a full comprehension of them himself. In intellectual things the law is of rigorous application. He that scattereth
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increaseth; and withholding tendeth to poverty. The mind must give off light and heat, or it can never be warmed and illu- mined itself. We have no clear conception even of our own inward states until we are roused to contemplate them, and put them into a definite and objective form by translating them into words. Notions which we have never sought to express in this precise and tangible manner may float vaguely and indis- tinctly in the mind ; but they will not be relieved of this dim and misty character until they are interpreted in language either by others or ourselves. Language is the vehicle of thought as well as the medium of its expression. It is by it that we communicate with ourselves, as well as with others.
This intimate connection between language and our inward exercises discloses a fresh measure of the influence which it has upon the development of the human mind. It not only, as we have seen, gives its earliest stimulus to the power of thought, by teaching the child both to reproduce the conceptions of others and to express his own, but it supplies the permanent mould in which his thoughts are cast forever afterwards. We came into being surrounded by those who are in the constant and familiar use of language, to whose consciousness it has not the charac- ter of arbitrary symbols, representing something different from themselves, or of formal rules determined by some external standard. It is interwoven with every operation of their minds. It is their souls’ natural and spontaneous outgoing. They know no difference between the expression they utter and the thought they entertain. One is not only the precise coun- terpart of the other ; but they are, as far as consciousness can judge, identical. Language is simply outspoken thought, the mind unfolding itself. Now, as we possess the same mental and physical organization with those by whom we are sur- rounded, disposing us originally to the same inward exercises and the same mode of expressing them, as we learn to think in the first instance by thinking their thoughts, and are thus sup- plied with a medium by which our thoughts may in turn be. made intelligible to them, it is a matter of course that their language becomes ours, not merely adopted as the expression of thoughts independently conceived, but wrought into the whole texture and framework of our souls. It gives law to our mental operations,
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determines the form and flow of our thoughts, becomes itself our inner nature, gives a bent to our powers which they ever inflexibly retain. Language is consequently not to be re- garded as something wholly external to the soul, which it uses as a convenience. It is not even something foreign, which has been obtruded upon it, and to which it submits from sheer necessity. It is something precisely conformed to its nature, spontaneously adopted as soon as it is proposed and understood, because it offers the legitimate and only possible unfolding of the faculties originally implanted within it. It becomes thus a part of its constitution, a law of its life, a power in the soul, ever present, ever active, guiding all its motions. It is as evi- dent and uniform in its operation upon the human mind as gravitation is upon matter. We are made sensible of one as of the other, not by a direct perception of the forces themselves, but by beholding their effects.
Every living language has its seat in the minds of those who speak it. When it has lost its present hold upon their souls, and is found only in past utterances and in written documents, it is petrified and dead. While it lives, it exercises a constraint which is felt in the fashioning of every sentence, in the choice of every word and inflection. With all the free variety in the sentiments conveyed, and an unlimited range in the mode of conveying them, there is yet a general submission to the control of this inward power. There is a constant uniformity in the phenomena, from the observation of which the grammarian deduces his rules, and the lexicographer the meanings of words. But the law of the language is anterior to all grammars and dictionaries, and independent of them. They who have seen neither, will use words and inflections with unfailing precision, even where delicate shades of difference are involved; and this, though they might be able to give no other reason for employ- ing this word rather than that, or this form in preference to another, than that it is to satisfy an inward feeling. These distinctions are felt to exist, and they spontaneously determine the choice of words and forms, even though the philosophic student of language may find himself sorely puzzled to explain, in a complete and satisfactory manner, the grounds upon which they are based, or even to define exhaustively their VOL. xxxvi. — no. iv. 80
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precise limits and character. It is an inward law, not delib- erately submitted to, and as the result of reflection, but the impress of the language under which the mind was trained, and its habits of thought formed.
Language may be said to be the body of which thought is the soul, a body from which it can no more emancipate itself, and whose character can no more be changed by a direct voli- tion than the human soul can either free itself from the clay tene- ment in which it dwells, or alter its nature. There is a limita- tion in both cases, no doubt, from the material form to which the spirit is bound: its actings are restricted by fixed laws and modes of operation. How far this is an evil and how far a good, it is not for us to determine. Higher orders of spiritual intelligences may not be encumbered by these restrictions, because they do not need the aid which material forms supply. It is enough that they are indispensable to us, constituted as we are ; they are a necessity imposed upon us by our very nature. To attempt to rise above these limitations is but to destroy ourselves. Disembodied spirits and thought unfettered by language both undoubtedly exist ; but we can form no more distinct conception of one than of the other in our present state of being. These material aids have been our helpers in all that we know of activity; and for us to refuse to use them, because something higher is possible, though beyond our reach, is to cease to act altogether.
It hence results that every language is possessed of organic unity and completeness. It is not an accretion but a growth, the product of a living spirit, the expression of an inner law. It must accordingly have that oneness which belongs to every living body and which consists in its being pervaded by its own distinctive vital force. This reaches to every part, how- ever minute, and is everywhere the same, just as it is one vitality which animates each of our bodies. The same blood circulates through the whole down to its most insignificant portions, and every microscopic molecule of that blood has something about it by which it can be recognized as belonging to a human being. So in language there is one principle, one abiding law, which has impressed itself on every part, and binds in one all its endless ramifications from root to topmost bough. We
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have not the means of demonstrating this in detail, in regard to any particular language, because it only becomes subject to our inspection as it reveals itself in the phenomena of actual speech. So viewed it may present a fragmentary appearance ; for it has its spring in what is accidental and occasional. What is actually spoken, depends upon the need or the impulse of the moment. And the sum of these occasional utterances, so far as we can gather them and pass them in review, may be chargeable with chasms and seeming incoherencies because the links that unite them are missing. But this cannot be true of the language in its proper sense. For it comprises not only the sum of all that is spoken, but of all that could be thought or spoken by the people of whose intellectual life it is the per- manent and necessary law. And as this is a unit and pos- sessed of a specific character, which distinguishes it from the life and spirit of every other people on the globe, so must each language have its governing animating principle, in which its individuality consists; which is indestructible and invariable so long as the language lives and remains the same. The materials of which the body of a language is composed may have been gathered from the most diverse quarters, and when regarded in their original form may have been of the most heterogeneous description. But as they are wrought into this new organism, they are forced to undergo an assimilating and vitalizing process, which reduces them to a harmonious whole, informs them with a common life, and sets each in organic relation with the rest. Thus our common English tongue is based upon the Anglo-Saxon, and has drawn from the Celtic, the Latin, the Greek, the Norman, and other sources, and yet it is an independent language, not a repetition of any of its predecessors, nor a confused and heterogeneous mixture of them. It has as distinct a life of its own, governing every part and impressed upon its varied elements, as if all had been drawn from a single source or had been created expressly for its use. On the other hand, modern Italian is composed of almost the identical elements of the ancient Latin. The great bulk of its words are the very same, or have merely undergone slight phonetic modifications. But so diverse a spirit has been
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infused into these elements, that the entire grammatical struc- ture is changed, and the languages are totally distinct.
This view of the languages of the world suggests a basis for estimating their various worth. The ideal type of language is that which shall in the completest manner fulfil its proper end ; which shall give to the human faculties, so far as this falls within its province, the development best suited to their nature, opening to them the amplest range, and laying the least constraint upon their free expansion and legitimate working; and which shall at the same time supply the most faithful and adequate representation for every diversity of spiritual. states and exercises. It is, in brief, that which shall be best fitted to unfold and to express the soul of man. Approximation to this ideal standard is the test of excellence in languages. They make their approaches to it from various quarters and by every conceivable route; and one of the most curious things in their comparative study is the tracing out of the diversity of methods employed to attain a common result with their respec- tive merits and demerits. Each language has its own stock of elemental sounds, chosen from the entire sum of those which the human organs are capable of uttering, the Oriental bring- ing in his harsh and difficult gutturals, the Hottentot his pecu- liar click, and the Chinese converting that scale of tones, which in other languages indicates the varied emotion of the speaker, into a constituent part of the signification of words. The mellow flexibility of the Sanscrit, linking its words of various length by their significant terminations expressive of nice modifications of thought, is unknown to the immovable Chinese, who speaks in rigid, uninflected monosyllables, placing, as it were, his un- wrought conceptions side by side without elaboration, and unfitted together. Relations which the classic tongues subor- dinate and cast into the shade by making of them mere depen- dent syllables attached to the radical word, are in modern languages brought into greater prominence, and more variously expressed by means of auxiliaries and particles. Clearness and logical order is promoted in some languages, as in English, by a uniform sequence of words in the sentence; the freer col- location admissible in Latin allows of nicer shades of emphasis and more delicate touches of feeling. The modern Armenians
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think habitually in an order the reverse of ours. This is so precisely true, that the arrangement of the words adopted in their translation of the Bible, will in many instances be yielded by reading the verses of our common translation backwards. And one of the difficulties in the way of acquiring a fluent use of that tongue is this necessity which it imposes of inverting the accustomed style of thought, by requiring the introduction of all the attendant circumstances first, and holding back the main proposition to the very last words of the sentence. The compound words and complex sentences of Indo-European tongues have no counterpart in the Semitic languages, which are more simple and intuitional, but, at the same time, less energetic and less rigorously exact. And in the necessity imposed upon all languages of adapting a limited stock of roots to the expressive unlimited number of ideas, there is endless room for the play of the imagination or of the logical powers, in suggesting the harmonies and relation of things in the same or separate spheres; so that, as has been truly said, every lan- guage embodies a particular conception of the universe.*
To this diversity in the original and fundamental character of languages may be added that arising from the various grade of their development and the truthfulness with which this has been conducted. Language, as the organ of thought, may be compared to the human body in its influence on the mind. The degree to which the body promotes or retards intellectual activity, and is the faithful exponent of the states of the soul, is dependent not only upon its original physical constitution, but also upon the measure of its growth and its healthful con- dition. There are capabilities in every language reaching indefinitely beyond the expansion it has actually received. The same unlimited power of progression inheres in it as in those faculties of the soul where it has its seat. It will unfold by its own law, adhering strictly to that course upon which it has set out; but even in its most imperfect state it has its points of contact with the highest forms of thought to which the soul can rise, and it may be made by a legitimate expansion
* So liegt in jeder Sprache eine eigenthiimliche Weltansicht. — Wilhelm, von Humboldt.
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to take them in. The soul lifts itself from thought to thought, not by the sudden admission of ideas unconnected with any enter- tained before, but by climbing a ladder, so to speak ; each fresh idea giving it a new position from which to step to the next. The grandest and most exalted ideas possible to the human mind are so connected by intervening steps with its feeblest and most rudimental conceptions, that it can thus proceed either by its own inherent force, or by the help of teachers from one to the other. And in like manner, if a language can convey the rudest and simplest ideas, it thereby proves itself to possess an expansibility corresponding to that of the mind itself. One of the important functions performed by great thinkers, poets, philosophers, and orators, is this unfolding of their native tongue, bringing forth to the popular consciousness its hidden stores of wealth, revealing elements of power and beauty which were not previously known to have existed in it. By making it the vehicle 'of thought never so well expressed before, by conducting speculations into realms yet unexplored, by touch- ing'the springs of feeling with unprecedented skill, by the gen- tleness of soft persuasion, the majesty of sublime description, the force of withering invective or of solemn argument, they touch the instrument with master hands and its latent powers are evoked. So the progress of civilization, refinement, and learning enriches language by enlarging the circle of ideas which must in this manner find expression. In all this there is no change of the native characteristics of a language, or of the measure of its inherent adaptedness to be the vehicle of thought, but only a further elaboration or a finer finish of material which already existed.
Besides the various extent to which languages may be un- folded, we must take into account the character of the develop- ment itself, if we would estimate aright the nature of their influence. If each of them contains its own conception of the universe, and impresses this upon the minds into which it is received, it becomes a question of great moment whether this conception is coincident with truth. Does it waken right ideas and proper notions in the soul? Is it a pellucid medium through which things are seen clearly and in their true rela- tions, or a murky, foggy atmosphere, by which objects are
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dimmed and distorted? Or, worse than this, is it charged with moral miasma, breathing pestilence and deadly disease, instead of healthful invigoration and life? Contact with pol- lution necessarily breeds defilement. To receive into the mind a language soiled with foul ideas, to grow familiar with vice under palliative and honourable names, and to know only the caricatures of virtue, nicknamed by those who hate her, and would make her an object of offence, is to debase the soul, and to blind or corrupt its moral sense. It is difficult to form an estimate of our indebtedness to the truth which there is in lan- guage, and the correct ideas which we have gained from finding them there expressed. We can scarcely image to ourselves the difference in judgment, character, and feeling between two minds, whose ideas and modes of thought were imbibed respec- tively from a Christian and from a Pagan language. All know the embarrassment under which missionaries have laboured in China, growing out of the lack of any tolerably exact transla- tion for the name of the Supreme Being — any term for God, which would not, to the mind of a native, convey a pantheistic notion of the object of worship, or suggest one of the false deities to which they are accustomed to pay their adoration. There is no such idea in the minds of the people as is suggested to us by the simple utterance of the name God; they have no notion of the spirituality, infinity, eternity, holiness, and glo- rious perfections which we have associated with it. Their language contains no term to express it. So it is with all ideas peculiarly Christian; the languages of the heathen do not contain them, and hence the difficulty of conveying these ideas to their minds. An entirely new class of notions and associations must be waked up within them, different from any they have ever had, and which there are no terms capable of conveying to them. It requires a slow process of elaborate training to eradicate or correct that concatenated system of false notions which is thus far the only thing that has ever entered into their thoughts. The language needs to be chris- tianized as well as the people; the work of transformation in the latter cannot be complete and thorough until the former shall be reached and purified. The fountains of thought are poisoned, , and their streams are laden with death. The words
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must be purged of these false ideas and degrading associations before the natural flow of thought can be pure and true.
The importance of a proper medium for the spread of great ideas may be illustrated by the conduct of the Most High him- self, in his providential preparation of a language to be the bearer of the facts and doctrines of the Christian revelation. The most polished and refined nation of antiquity was first engaged in the service; the master-pieces of literature which they elaborated are still the admiration of the world. The Greek thus wrought out became, in a literary sense, one of the most noble and cultivated of tongues. As the language of a Pagan people, however, it needed a thorough purgation. This was effected by causing it to circulate for centuries in the Jewish mind, until it was charged with ideas, and breathed a life drawn from the Old Testament, and from the divine train- ing to which the people of Israel had been subjected for ages. The new idiom thus created by the transfusion of Jewish thoughts into the tongue of classic Greece, then stamped into uniformity and permanence by a special literature of its own, was finally wrought into its New Testament form by the lips and pens of apostles, trained by Christ himself in the new truths which he came to communicate.
The question may naturally arise here, whether a language shall ever be produced corresponding to its true ideal? The process, thus far, has been one of division and subdivision; each people has laboured at the problem in their own way; each striven to evolve a form of speech adequate to all their wants as a vehicle of thought and a medium of communication, and with the greatest possible variety in the result. Can it have been the design of Providence that this division should exist for the sake of an ultimate re-union? — that the partial elements of good wrought out in a disconnected manner among the various nations of the earth should be brought together, and, from their combination, result a language which may be regarded as elaborated by the entire race of man? — which shall contain within itself every valuable product of the expe- rience of mankind in this particular, an instrument in the highest degree adapted to excite and to convey the legitimate workings of the human mind? Such a scheme would accord
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•well with the analogy of history. The present civilization of the most enlightened nations is not the result of their own unaided efforts, nor can it be traced back to any single source. Every great historical people has had its special mission — some predominant idea to develope or exemplify. This task it has performed not for itself alone, but for the benefit of the race; its gathered stores being poured into the common treasury of mankind. If it is thus with other intellectual products, why not with language?
This, too, accords with the present lines of progress. The isolations and mutual hostilities which have driven nations asunder, or kept them so, are yielding, and shall continue to yield, to the bonds of amity and reciprocal intercourse. Diver- sities of language must thus be reduced, as well as other differ- ences; and the rather, as the curse entailed upon the world at Babel is one of the most formidable barriers to intercommu- nion. It was designed to sever a combination which aimed to arrest Heaven’s decree for peopling the earth, but may not be permitted to stand in the way of such a combination as the peopled earth is, in the purpose of God, destined to form. Languages and dialects, of limited extent and minor conse- quence, are already melting away. Others will do the same. The leading languages of the earth are daily extending their limits, and are, besides, becoming more and more necessary beyond their proper bounds as mediums of intercourse. May it not be possible that the whole earth shall again be “of one language and of one speech”? And is it an unwarrantable stretch of fancy that such a consummation may be shadowed forth by the prophet, when he predicts a day as coming in which there shall be “ one Lord, and His name one” ?
From considering the influence of language upon man, we now turn to the counter-influence of man upon language. We have thus far contemplated it chiefly as a power resident in the mind; we shall henceforth have to deal with it in its objec- tive form, as uttered whether in writing or in speech. The operation of language and of thought is reciprocal. We have seen how language gives birth to thought and continues ever after its permanent vehicle. It is itself likewise born of thought and perpetuated by it. It is the creation of the mind, its spon-
vol. xxxvi. — no. iv. 81
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taneous product, flowing forth from it as naturally and inevi- tably as rays from the sun, and bearing as indelibly upon it the impression of its source. The clothing of individual concep- tions and mental states in particular words and sentences is in a sense voluntary, for the mind frames them agreeably to its own idea of fitness. But the general laws which underlie all these particular utterances are not a matter of reflection or choice; they are determined by the constitution of the soul itself. The languages of men unfold the mind of the race, in even its most latent and unobserved workings; the study of language is therefore a most important aid to the mental philosopher, it puts into his hands a key which will unlock more effectually than any other the inmost recesses of the soul. Its evanescent and shifting states are here wrought into permanent and tangi- ble forms. The phenomena submitted to the student’s observa- tion are indefinitely multiplied ; and the best opportunities are afforded for examining into their real character.
Since language is thus a mirror of the mind, it follows as a necessary consequence that the speech of no two men can be absolutely identical, neither can the speech of any two be totally unlike. On the one hand, every man’s utterances must bear the impress of his own individuality, he will have his own characteristic style of thought and of expression. And on the other hand, the community of nature which belongs to all, must reveal itself in the character of their thoughts and in the mode of their expression. There is a sense, therefore, in which all the languages of the earth are one. Beneath the superficial differences of words and forms, and special gram- matical rules, there are certain great facts and principles which belong alike to all, which have their root in that mental organization and those fundamental laws of thought which inhere in all men. There is a limit, accordingly, beyond which the diver- gencies of language cannot extend ; a bond which holds all in unity and harmony, in spite of every appearance of distracted confusion.
Between this limit of possible divergence and the other limit of possible approach, conditioned respectively by the generic unity and the individual diversity of men, there is every vari- ous grade of agreement and of difference. There is no more cer-
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tain or delicate test than language affords, of the measure of the community which obtains amongst the several portions of the human race. Thus the different degrees of consanguinity between the members of the great human family are here exhibited. Affinities between the languages of different na- tions betoken the affinities of those nations. The English spoken in this country, the French in Canada and Louisiana, the Portuguese in Brazil, the Spanish in the rest of South America and Mexico, indicate the quarter from which the body of early settlers came. Ancient authors inform us that Car- thage was a colony of Tyre; the identity of their languages declares the same. That the builders of the pyramids were ancestors of the Copts can no longer be doubted, since the hieroglyphic inscriptions, which, though a puzzle to the an- cients, have yielded to the persevering labours of modern students, resolve themselves into Coptic. The book of Gene- sis, which would be invaluable had it no other merit than that of being a repository of the early history of our race, records that Nineveh was founded by a colony from Babylon; in strict accordance with this is the testimony of the monuments recently exhumed upon the site of the Assyrian capital. These have brought to light, together with the civilization and manners of that great empire, its language, which had been lost for ages; and now that the mystery of the strange charac- ter in which its inscriptions are written has been uncovered, this is found to be kindred to the Babylonish.
We have thus a means of tracing the course of the various currents of population from the beginning, and determining the migrations of tribes and races long before they are men- tioned in authentic history. The primitive branches into which mankind were divided, as they spread abroad from their original centre to cover the world, can still be distinguished by the several families of languages which arose amongst them, each having a clearly defined type of its own, which is pre- served in all its subsequent divisions and ramifications. And whatever doubt there may be as to the exact limits of these grand divisions as they shade off almost imperceptibly into one another, the leading facts are perfectly apparent and quite unmistakable. The various strata of human population became
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thus as easy to be separated and to be recognized as the strata of rocks which compose the crust of the globe. Here we find a broad belt of nations speaking affiliated tongues; these must all have sprung from the same stock gradually overspreading the soil. There is a language, as the Turkish, interjected into a body of others entirely dissimilar, like a mass of granite per- forating a bed of limestone; this testifies of ancient convul- sions, the irruption of a conquering horde from some distant quarter. Again, small remnants of ancient strata are found, like the Welsh and other fragments of the old Celtic, cropping out through more recent layers, identifying the early tenants of the soil. Or, as in the Caucasus, with its wonderful medley of tongues, heterogeneous fragments may be found dropped without any order or system here and there, like erratic boul- ders fallen from the avalanches of nations which in various ages have swept past that wild inhospitable region. And even loose sands driven by the winds from clime to clime, such as the gypsies of the old world wandering in scattered bands without a settled habitation, may thus be recognized in spite of their disintegration and the foreign materials which they have accu- mulated, and assigned to their proper home. And if the vexed question of the origin of the aborigines of this continent is sus- ceptible of a satisfactory solution, it is most probably to be looked for in a careful scrutiny of the native American tongues.
Language may not only teach us the origin of nations and enable us to trace each back to its respective /Source, but it reveals their several ages. It contains a scale of chronology not absolute indeed and fixing precise epochs, but relative, exhibiting the order in which the events in question occurred. The greater the divergence between branches springing from the same stem, the closer to the root will the point of departure be; and the greater their contiguity, the more recent must their separation have been. Families of languages divide themselves into subordinate groups, the individual members of which are more closely allied to each other than to any mem- ber of the affiliated groups. Each of these groups must repre- sent an offshoot of the race to which they belong, which separated first in a body, and afterwards, as they spread further, again
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diverged. Now language may be interrogated as to the rela- tive ages of these different groups, in what order they severed themselves from the parent stem, and also in what order the several members of each group attained to a separate exist- ence.
And further still, it may indicate successive eras in the life of the same people, mark the stages of their literature, and assign their intellectual products each to its proper date. Successive steps are plainly distinguishable in the language of England, viz., the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, the old English of Henry III., the English of Chaucer, and that of modern days. And it is easy to perceive, that if some writing of unknown date were now to be discovered in one of the libraries of that ancient kingdom, an important criterion of its age would be gained by ascertaining which of these periods in the English language it represented. What has just been imagined in relation to our own tongue has actually been done in the case of others. The epochs of Hindoo literature and of the sacred literature of the Zoroastians rest upon well defined criteria of this very nature; and whatever doubt may overhang the question of the absolute age of these various writings, there can be none as to the order of their production. Attempts have also been made in both these cases to go beyond this, and to establish not only a relative scale of measurement, but a fixed point of time from which to measure. Monuments of known date exist in both India and Persia; in the former, nearly contemporaneous with the expe- dition of Alexander, in the latter, belonging to the period of the Aclnemenides. These fix the character of the two languages at those dates respectively; now if it were only possible to recog- nize the same stage of each language in its literary remains, their date would be absolutely settled.
If to community of descent be added other bonds of connec- tion, this increased intimacy of relationship will have its coun- terpart in a closer approximation in point of language. While those sprung from the same race speak tongues which, though distinct, belong to the same family or group, those who together form one people, with a consciousness of their unity, occupying one country, subject to the same government and the same laws, with a common literature and free intercourse among
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themselves, but severed geographically, as well as politically and socially, from other states around them, will speak one language peculiarly their own. Hence the boundaries of nations do commonly mark the limits of languages, as Spain and Portugal, France and Denmark. And nations which once existed, but have, like Germany, been broken into fragments, or like Poland, parcelled amongst larger states, may still, in some instances, be traced by the prevalence of their proper language. The petty states of Greece, whilst they maintained their independence, had each a separate dialect; but when Philip of Macedon united them under a common government, their dialects too were fused into one; and when the conquests of his illustrious son extended his empire over Asia, the Greek language everywhere followed. At the foundation of Rome, several distinct though related tongues were spoken by the various tribes which peopled Italy; but as the sway of Rome extended, her language supplanted all its rivals. The assimi- lating power of the dominant language of a people is shown in a most remarkable degree in our own country. The people, the government, and the literature are English ; and the vast numbers who have emigrated from other lands of Europe, or have been brought from Africa, or have even been attracted from Asia, make no more impression than rivers pouring into the briny ocean make upon the constitution of its waters. Settling together in large communities, as the Germans, or brought in by the cessions of extensive territory, as the French in Louisiana, and the Spanish in Mexico, they may maintain, for a while, a sort of separate existence, and hold fast to the relics of their former nationality, like rivers which at their junction sometimes appear to flow side by side for a considera- ble distance without a complete mingling of their waters. But this isolation cannot long be maintained. The pulses of a people’s life must be felt in every artery of its body, and what- ever is not its proper expression and outgrowth must gradually yield.
If there be not sufficient vigour in the national heart to effect this result, every addition will be a source of weakness, not of strength. Instead of being compacted with the body as an organ in vital union with the rest, bound together in sympathy,
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acting in concert, knowing but one interest, obedient to one impulse and a common will, it becomes a dead weight and an incumbrance ; or rather a foreign body, with a unity and life of its own, bound by outward constraint to another with which it has no real fellowship. A schism is thus effected which only waits the occasion to develope it into disorganization and ruin. It was thus with the great Asiatic empires; it was thus with the old Roman empire. This is one of the notorious causes of the peril of Austria at this hour. The distinct languages spoken within its domain prevent its population from being blended into one homogeneous mass. They form so many lines of demarcation and division, which have sundered it in feeling, and will, in all probability, ultimately lead to its political dis- memberment. Its Italian provinces are partly lost already, and the rest detest its sway; while Hungary looks hopefully towards that emancipation for which it has thus far vainly struggled. On the other hand Italy, though disunited at pre- sent, and split up into different states, feels, nevertheless, the drawings of a common tongue. And the enthusiasm with which Sardinia and her noble ruler are everywhere openly hailed, or secretly regarded, induce the hope that neither despotism nor priestcraft can long avail to crush the popular will, which has made itself heard in such unmistakable tones; the hope, that they who speak the language of Dante and of Petrarch will yet salute one another as brethren and fellow-citizens, and a united Italy be more than a romantic dream.
The political power of language has long been understood by the wily government of Russia. It has been its steady policy, through the medium of the national church, to extend the Russian language and letters, and extirpate all others. This process was going forward in the Danubian principalities prior to the recent Crimean war. And in pressing his ambitious designs upon his feeble neighbour in the south, the Czar counted largely upon the lack of coherence in Turkey in this very respect. The disintegrating power of a multiplicity of tongues lent essential aid in the reduction of the rebellious tribes of the Caucasus. Could the concert of action possible with people of one speech have been effected among those brave and hardy mountaineers, and could their redoubtable
648 Modern Philology. [October
chieftain have had the opportunity which he would then have possessed of infusing into them his own desperate energy and hatred of the invader, he might still be in his native fastnesses, defying all the armies that could be brought against him.
The minor diversities which exist in nations speaking a com- mon tongue, likewise reproduce themselves in language. Hence the provincialisms of a widely extended country, if its several parts be not bound together by the utmost frequency of inter- course; and these, in more secluded localities, and with a popu- lation that rarely stirs from home, lead even to distinct patois and dialects, as in various chunties of England and France. The same thing appears in distinct classes or professions, form- ing a sort of community of their own, with their peculiar tech- nical expressions and slang phrases. The dialect of college life, with its chum , and fizzle , and rowl, &c., may illustrate this. The sailor has his dialect; so has the prize-ring, and the degraded poor of our cities, each of which would be, in many points, unintelligible to the uninitiated.
These divergent tendencies would exhibit themselves far more than they do were it not for the harmonizing and uniting influence of a widely circulated literature. This acts as a sort of balance-wheel, preserving regularity of motion, and pre- venting any material deviation. It is a fixed and permanent standard, conformity to which on the part of all secures a close approximation to one another. Hence, among well edu- cated people, the provincialisms and patois just spoken of are unknown. Hence, too, the dialects of savages, who have no written literature, are liable to such constant and serious change. An expression figuratively used to-day, becomes the ordinary phrase of to-morrow ; descriptive epithets are adopted in place of appellatives previously employed; so that in a very short time their vocabulary may undergo a total change. Accordingly, every inconsiderable tribe of Indians has its own distinct language; and no matter how frequently they might divide and subdivide, the result would be the same. The speech of the separated portions would speedily become mutually unintelligible. It is this which occasions such serious difficulty in defining the limits of groups and families of languages spoken by roving and barbarous tribes. The uniform and
1864.] Modern Philology. 649
consistent type "which characterizes the affiliated tongues of enlightened nations is unknown amongst them. No check remains upon the utmost possible divergence.
It has been seen how the inward relationships created amongst men by lineage and by political association are, in their several shades and varieties, reflected in language. The same is the case, likewise, with the slighter and more casual correspondences produced by contiguity and intercourse. These do not, like the more influential causes already referred to, affect the essential structure of a language, but lead rather to the borrowing of individual words and phrases. And the extent to which this transfer takes place, and the general character of the instances in which it is found, affords an indi- cation of the nature and amount of the influence exerted by one people over another. Commerce and trade, while effecting an exchange of commodities, transport the name as well as the thing; and hence the current names of articles often tell us whence they were originally brought. Thus the words them- selves declare that tea came from China, myrrh from Arabia, cherries from Asia Minor, quinine from Peru. We have thus a means, independently of any direct statements of ancient authors, of arriving at some knowledge of the trade which was maintained between the several nations of antiquity, the re- moteness of the regions to which it extended, and the character of the goods in which they respectively dealt. The native names of Asiatic products found in Greek and Latin authors bear as explicit testimony to the existence of a traffic between the East and West, as do the coins of Greece and Rome found scattered as far even as India. Whatever obscurity may rest upon the tradition of Cadmus and his alphabet, the names of the Greek letters point to Phoenicia as the land of their origin. The figures with which the mathematician performs his calcu- lations, and the merchant keeps his accounts, are, (if the results of the most recent investigations shall prove to be correct,) proved to be a gift from India to the world, by being traced back to forms which, in the language of that country, are the initials of the numerals from one to nine. The multitude of Greek words which found their way into Latin, is a perpetual monument of the literary preeminence of Greece, and the VOL. xxxvi. — no. iv. 82
650 Modern Philology. [October
crowds of Romans who resorted thither for instruction, plea- sure, or gain. The scientific terms now in vogue which have their roots in Arabic, remind us that the Arabs were once the teachers of Europe.
The careful accuracy with which language receives the im- pression of the human mind in all its phases, and especially as affected by the various grades of relationship or intercourse subsisting amongst men, has been cursorily exhibited. It remains to add that it reproduces with equal distinctness and preserves with a like tenacity the great facts of man’s inward and of his outward life, the ideas which have prevailed and the events which have occurred.
The language of any people presents in a compact form the limit and range of their ideas. The conceptions which they entertain find expression in their words, and whatever is lack- ing in the former will be betrayed by a corresponding gap in the latter. We may thus deduce the measure of a people’s enlightenment and civilization. Gather their language and you discover what they are. If this could be done fully in the case of any nation of ancient or modern times, it wmuld afford a perfect picture of their condition.
The same thing holds with races as well as with individual ■nations. If the languages of the same group or family be com- pared together, whatever is common to the whole must have be- longed to the original stock from which all alike have descended. It is thus possible to determine a circle of objects and ideas with which the primitive ancestors of these several tribes and na- tions must have been familiar. If the process be carried further •still, and a comparison be instituted between all the languages -of mankind, we shall arrive at those ideas which are common to the entire race, and which must therefore be grounded in our eommon nature. And we shall thus hear the world, as with one voice, uttering its protest against atheism and a dreamy intan- gible idealism, and expressing its faith in the great truths of a distinction between right and wrong, moral accountability, and the existence of a world to come.
Ideas and philosophies once prevalent, but which have since passed away, may here be rediscovered. They have here erected to themselves a monument recording to after ages that they
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have lived. The words by which they were once expressed no longer suggest to the popular consciousness the meanings which they were originally designed to convey. They are like fossils imbedded in the strata of our current speech, witnesses of a former life, remains of extinct species, the shell or skeleton out- lasting the animating principle to which it owed its particular organic form. Or they may be compared to broken columns of an ancient architecture wrought into some modern edifice, which by their peculiarity of style still betray their real origin. Thus our current designation of the days of the week is a stand- ing proof that they who so named them were idolaters ; yet no one in speaking of Sunday thinks of it as dedicated to the sun, or in speaking of Monday has any idea of paying homage to the moon. No one is ever charged with giving credit to astrol- ogy, and believing that the stars control the destinies of men, because he uses such words as disaster, lunacy, mercurial, mar- tial, saturnine ; and yet the existence of these words is evidence that this belief did once prevail.
Past events and customs no longer observed may, in like manner, leave their record in language. The Saxon names we give to living animals, while the same animals slain for food bear Norman names, are echoes of the Norman conquest and of the exactions for their table levied by the lordly conquerors from the subject peasantry. The word September suggests to us that what is now the ninth, was once the seventh month of the year; and February tells us of the expiation customary as the year was closing, Bank reminds us from what small beginnings our great moneyed institutions have arisen, when fiscal transactions were- conducted upon a bench in the street, which bench was broken in cases of failure and its owner de- clared bankrupt. We still speak of calculation, though the process so denominated is no longer performed by meanp of pebbles ; of ballots, though little balls are not now used ; of the exchequer, though the table with its checked cover is gone ; of candidates, though they are not robed in white; of manumis- sion, though the forms of Roman law are dispensed with ; of the pound sterling, in spite of the diminution of its weight; and of the chancellor, though the lattice work has been taken away.
We extend a cordial welcome to the interesting and instruc-
652 Modern Philology. [October
tive volumes named at the head of this article, whose contents we have had in mind throughout the train of remark in which we have indulged. The science of language, as at present understood and prosecuted, has sprung up so recently, and has been developed with such amazing rapidity, that those who have not had their attention specially directed to it are scarcely aware of its existence or claims. And yet it has already attained such dimensions, established such relations with other branches of inquiry, and is withal possessed of such intrinsic interest and importance, that no educated man can afford to be ignorant of its methods and results.
We know of no work accessible to English readers in which 80 satisfactory a view of this subject can be obtained in so brief a compass and in so attractive a form. The general scholar will find it an admirable compend of just the informa- tion that he seeks, while they who desire to enter upon the comparative study of language with more thoroughness and in fuller detail, will do well to begin with the careful perusal of these volumes, for the sake not only of their masterly outline view of the whole field and the skilful presentation of first principles, but the copious hints and suggestions which will prove an invaluable guide in the further prosecution of their inquiries. And even those for whom philology in its broader aspects has few charms, if they desire to understand the mechanism of our own language, at least upon its classic side, and possess the results of the latest and best investigations, conducted upon a solid scientific basis, instead of the crudities and random guesses current in most of the accessible authori- ties, will feel that the article on Comparative English Ety- mology, with its satisfactory analysis of more than three thou- sand six hundred words, is worth the cost of the entire work.
1864.]
Lange s Commentary.
653
Art. IY. — A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures , Critical , Doctrinal , and Homiletical. By Dr. John P. Lange, Pro- fessor of Theology at the University of Bonn, assisted by a number of Continental Divines. Translated into English, with Additions, original and selected, by Dr. Philip Schaff, in connection with a number of American Divines of various denominations. New York: Charles Scribner. Yol. I., con- taining the General Introduction and the Gospel of Matthew. By Dr. Lange and the American Editor. 1864.
It is an argument of no mean force for the divine origin and character of the Bible, that it has been the subject of more discourses and commentaries than any other book or class of books, and constantly invites new investigation, with the pro- mise of a plentiful reward. Fathers, schoolmen, reformers, and modern critics, German, French, English, or American, have dug in its mines of truth, and brought forth precious ore for the benefit of their age and generation, and the long line of commentators will never break off until our faith is turned into vision, and we shall know even as we are known.
Exegesis has its history, like every other branch of theolo- gical science. It has its productive and its digestive periods, its periods of rise and decline. Prominent among the produc- tive epochs are three : the age of the fathers ; the age of the reformers; and the age of modern critics and scholars. The first laid the foundation of Catholic, the second that of Evan- gelical theology, the third makes respectful use of both, but is more critical, scientific, and liberal in its character and method, and seems to open new avenues for the future and ever deepen- ing development of Christian theology.
The patristic exegesis of a Chrysostom and Theodoret, Jerome and Augustine, is, to a large extent, the mature result of a victorious conflict of ancient Christianity with Ebionism, Gnosticism, Arianism, Pelagianism, and other radical heresies which stimulated the fathers to a vigorous investigation and defence of revealed truth. The exegetical works of Luther and Calvin, and the other reformers, breathe throughout a polemi- cal spirit against the peculiar dogmas and traditions of Itoman-
654 Lange's Theological and [October
ism. So the modern evangelical exegesis of Germany has grown up on the battle-field of Christian truth against the gigantic foes of rationalism and infidelity.
If Germany should succeed in the end in thoroughly routing the most scientific and most powerful forms which heresy has ever assumed, it will achieve as great a work as it did by the Reformation of the sixteenth century. For now the very foun- dations of Christianity are called into question, and the life of the Saviour itself is turned into a myth. Inspiration is denied, and the sacred writers dissected and criticised like any profane author of ancient Greece and Rome. Never before has the Bible been assailed with so much learning, acumen, and perse- verance as during the last fifty years in Germany, and within the last few years in England. Never before has it been sub- jected to such thorough and extensive critical, philological, historical, antiquarian, and theological investigation and re- search. But never before has it been more zealously and thoroughly vindicated, and defended with the help of all the means which the latest advances of classical and oriental philo- logy and antiquarian investigation have made available. The productivity of the German mind in the critical, exegetical, and historical field has been intense and prodigious during the present century. It is almost impossible to keep up with the ever-multiplying commentaries on almost every book of the sacred canon, but more especially on the Gospels, the Life of Christ, and the Epistles of the New Testament.
In view of this immense activity still going on, it is high time now, and a very favourable juncture, such as rarely occurs, for the publication of a large and comprehensive com- mentary, which should, from a truly evangelical point of view, present the best and most valuable results of this last creative period of exegesis, and make them available for the practical benefit of ministers and intelligent laymen, thus forming a bridge between the scientific divines and the congregation of the people.
Such a Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament is the one which is now in course of prepara- tion and publication under the editorial supervision of the Rev. Professor Dr. John Peter Lange, in Bonn. It is intended to
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655
be a Theological and Homiletical Commentary, a treasure- house to the pastor, and an exegetical library in itself. The idea originated with the publishers, and the execution was intrusted to a distinguished divine, who is peculiarly qualified for such a work. Dr. Lange is undoubtedly one of the ablest and best men whom Germany has given to the world. He com- bines a rare variety of talents as a divine, a philosopher, a preacher, and a poet. But he has more than talent, he is a real genius, of extraordinary fertility of mind, and abounding in original and fresh ideas. For the more sober class of minds he is somewhat too imaginative and fanciful, but this feature is not so prominent in his later works, and his fancies are always pious, suggestive, and edifying. He is a profoundly spiritual Christian, evangelical and orthodox in all the fundamental arti- cles of faith, yet liberal and truly catholic. He has written a considerable number of works, poetical, theological, and lite- rary. He was one of the earliest and most successful oppo- nents of Strauss, and was elected professor in Zurich after the defeat of Strauss in 1839, as the one best qualified to represent the opposite side. Several years ago he was called to a pro- fessorship in Bonn. He is a moderate Calvinist, (German Reformed,) but without any sectarian exclusiveness. His most important works are a system of Christian Dogmatics, in three volumes, and a Life of Jesus Christ, of which an English trans- lation, in six volumes, has just been published by Messrs. Clark in Edinburgh.
These previous labours, especially the comprehensive and profound work on the life of Christ, gave him the best prepara- tion for the Commentary, to which- he is now devoting his whole time and strength, and which will long survive him as the most valuable and useful work of his life. He has associated with him a number of German, Swiss, and Dutch divines, dis- tinguished for sound theological learning, pulpit eloquence, and practical evangelical piety, as Dr. van Oosterzee of Utrecht, Dr. Lechler of Leipzig, Dr. Gerok of Stuttgart, Dr. Moll of Konigsberg, Drs. Auberlen and lliggenbach of Basel, Dr. Kling, Dr. Fronmiiller, and others.
The publication of the work commenced in 1857, with the first volume, containing the General Introduction, and the
656 Lange's Theological and [October
Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. It has since gone forward without interruption. The New Testament is nearly completed; the Epistle to the Romans, and the Epistles and Revelation of John being the only books still wanting. The Old Testament has likewise been taken in hand by a number of contributors, but will not be completed for a number of years. The first and pioneer volume of the Old Testament department, embracing a General Introduction and Commen- tary on the Book of Genesis, prepared by the editor, has just appeared. In the General Introduction to the Old Testament, Dr. Lange discusses, in eighty-two pages, under suitable head- ings, in a very fresh and original manner, all the usual histori- cal, critical, and hermeneutical questions, closing with a brief sketch of Biblical Theology in systematic form ; the practical exposition and homiletical use of the Old Testament; the organism, with a valuable excursus on the so-called offensive passages of the Old Testament, as foci of the glory of the Old Testament religion. The last essay is especially valuable at the present time, as it furnishes the biblical student with excel- lent weapons against the Colenso school, and other modern attacks on the Old Testament. Dr. Lange is very ingenious in transforming the offences into “ foci of glory;” and if he is not everywhere satisfactory, he is always fresh, suggestive, and edifying.
The Commentary of Lange and his associates is a threefold Commentary — critical , doctrinal , and homiletical. These de- partments are kept distinct throughout, which makes the book much more convenient for use.
1. The Critical and Exegetical Notes * explain the words and phrases of the text according to the principles of grammatico- historical exegesis. On all the more important passages the different views of the principal commentators, ancient and modern, are given ; yet all mere show and pedantry of learn- ing is avoided. The main object is to clear up every difficulty as briefly as possible, and to present the most valuable and permanent results of original and previous exegetical labours, without the process of investigation itself, in a condensed form for convenient reference. These exegetical notes are based on
* Exegetische Erlauterungen.
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Homiletical Commentary.
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a new translation of the text, which precedes them in larger type. The different readings are given in foot-notes, but only as far as they affect the sense, or are of some particular interest. In general, Dr. Lange follows the critical editions of Lachmann and Tischendorf.
2. The Doctrinal and Ethical Ideas or Thoughts * present, under a number of heads, the leading theological truths and principles cohtained in, or suggested by, the text. In the Gospels these doctrines are viewed mainly from the christological point of view, or as connected with the person and work of the Saviour. The reader will find here a vast amount of most valuable living theology, fresh from the fountain of primitive Christianity, and the contemplation of the divine human person of Christ, who stands out prominent throughout as the great central Sun of truth and righteousness.
3. The third department is headed, Homiletical Hints or Suggestions ,f and is of special importance and use to the preacher for preparing sermons and biblical lectures. It con- tains a rich variety of themes and parts, and mediates between the chair and the pulpit, the scientific exposition and the prac- tical application of the word of God. It shows the inexhausti- ble wealth and universal applicability of the Scriptures to all classes and conditions of men. These “hints” are by no means intended, however, to supersede, but only to stimulate the labour of pulpit preparation. Under this department the authors give not only their own homiletical suggestions, but also judicious selections of older and more recent practical commentators, as Quesnel, Caustein, Starke, Lisco, Gerlach, and Heubner.
From this sketch it will be seen that the plan of Lange’s Bibelwerk is the most comprehensive of any recent commentary, German or English, and views the Bible under every aspect, showing it to be truly a diamond, which shines and sparkles which ever way it is turned. It is a very important feature,
* In German, “Dogmatisch-ethische Grundgedanken;” in the Gospels, where the christological element preponderates, they are called “Christologisch- dogmatische Grundgedanken.”
f Homiletische Andeutungen.
VOL. XXXVI. — NO. IV.
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658 Lange s Theological and [October
as a matter of convenience and economy of time, that the three departments are not mixed up, but kept distinct throughout, so that the reader can easily find just what he wants at a particu- lar time, without going over a mass of irrelevant matter.
The work is mainly designed for ministers and students of theology, and is sufficiently learned to give the reader the assurance that he is everywhere on safe and solid ground, and under the guidance of a master who has gone* through the whole tedious process of critical research. But it gives the results, and not the process itself, and presents the building in its beautiful finish, without any of the scaffolding. It is also sufficiently popular in its whole tone to be accessible to intelli- gent laymen and teachers of Sabbath-schools, if they should at all desire to refer occasionally to a work of such dimensions.
The spirit of the Commentary is truly Christian and evan- gelical, and falls in very well with the reigning theology of our American Christianity — certainly far better than most German works of the kind, not excluding Olshausen and Tholuck, whose Commentaries have become so widely popular among us. We do not know an exegetical work which is so well adapted to commend itself to all the evangelical denominations of this country. It is altogether free from sectarianism, and avoids all polemics, except against skepticism and rationalism, and occasionally against Romanism. And yet it is by no means loose and latitudinarian, but most decided and positive in all the fundamental articles of our Christian faith and practice.
Upon the whole we do not hesitate to call Lange’s Bibelwerh the most useful Commentary on the Scriptures which ever appeared in Germany, or in England and America. There are, indeed, single commentaries on separate books, and also com- plete commentaries on the whole New Testament, which are superior in a particular feature, critical or practical, but there is none which combines so many excellencies and elements of long-continued usefulness. It is more particularly the pastor s commentary. It is almost an exegetical library in itself, and has already taken rank among those indispensable works which are constantly consulted as safe guides and intimate friends. The work has already been a decided success, and is selling
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extensively not only in Germany, but in all parts of Europe and in the United States. The German booksellers of this country sell a larger number of Lange’s Bibeliverk than of all other German commentaries combined. Six parts of the original have already gone through two or three editions.
A work of such sterling and permanent value should by all means be made accessible to the theological and religious public of Great Britain and the United States. Several years ago a translation was seriously projected by Ur. Schaff, then at Mercersburg, in connection with several others, and the pre- liminary arrangements were made with Mr. Scribner, of New York, as publisher. But the Presidential election of 1860, and the consequent Southern secession and rebellion, led to an abandonment or indefinite postponement of so extensive and expensive an undertaking. In the meantime Mr. Clark, of Edinburgh, commenced to issue translations of the first three Gospels of Lange’s work, which introduced it to the English public, and created a taste for the whole.
In the spring of 1863 the original plan was resumed by Mr. Scribner as publisher, and Dr. Schaff as editor, and mea- sures were at once taken to carry it into execution. A number of distinguished biblical and German scholars of different evan- gelical denominations, most of whom are already known as successful translators of German works, were secured, and are now at work on most of the volumes already published in Ger- man. Dr. Schaff assumed the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and moved to New York in January last, to devote himself more fully to this task. Dr. Shedd, of Union Theological Seminary, New York, has in hand the Gospel of Mark; Dr. Yeomans, of Rochester, (the able translator of Dr. Schaff’s History of the Apostolic Church,) commenced the Gospel of John ; Dr. Schaffer, Professor at Gettysburg, (the excellent translator of Kurtz’s Sacred History,) has already finished about one-half of the Commentary on Acts. The Epistles to the Corinthians were assigned to the Rev. Dr. Poor, of New- ark ; the Epistle to the Hebrews, to Dr. Kenrick, Professor of Rochester University, and reviser of the Edinburgh translation of Olshausen; the Catholic Epistles to Rev. Dr. Mombert, of
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Lancaster, who translated Tholuck’s Psalms; the Epistle to the Galatians to Rev. Mr. Starbuck, recently assistant Pro- fessor in Andover Theological Seminary; the Epistles to the Thessalonians to Rev. Dr. Lillie. Several other distinguished divines, most of them in connection with Theological Semina- ries, will probably take part, sooner or later, as the translation is expected to extend also over the Old Testament; and it is likely that the Commentary on Genesis, which has just appeared, will be one of the first to be translated and pub- lished.
The American edition will faithfully reproduce the whole of the original, without abridgment and alteration, in idiomatic English, and contain such additions, original and selected, as promise to be of special interest to the American reader, and to give the work an Anglo- German character, or to make it a repository of the most valuable results of Anglo-American as well as German Biblical learning. But these additions are to be carefully distinguished from the original by brackets and the initials of the translator. Each contributor assumes the entire literary responsibility of his part of the work. Instead of giving a new translation, the Authorized English Version, according to the present standard edition of the American Bible Society, is made the basis; but the more literal render- ings required by the Commentary, or new and generally approved readings, are to be inserted in brackets, and justified in Critical Notes, immediately after the text, with reference to the principal ancient and modern translations in the English and other languages.
The first volume of the American edition, containing the General Introduction to the Bible, and the Commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew, prepared by Dr. SchafF, is now nearly finished, and will probably be ready for publication in Novem- ber, or at all events, before the close of this year.
To give the reader a clear idea of the forthcoming American edition of this Exegetical opus magnum, we present a specimen, selecting a difficult and important section of the sixteenth chap- ter of Matthew.
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The Church as confessing Christ , the Son of Go'd.
Matt. xvi. 13 — 19.
(Parallel passages — Mark viii. 27 — 30; Luke is. 18 — 21.)
When Jesus came into the coasts [parts, rd ysprf\ of 13 Cesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I,1 the Son of man, am ? And they said, 14 Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some Elias [Elijah]; and others, Jeremias [Jeremiah], or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I 15 am ? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the 16 Christ [the Messiah], the Son of the living God. And 17 Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona [Bar Jonah, son of Jonah]:2 for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which [who] is in heaven [the heavens]. And I say also [And I also, 18
Revision of the Text.
1 Yer. 13. — The pers. pron. ft in Cod. C. after \eyourn, [in the text. rec. before the verb], is wanting in Cod. B. [and in Cod. Sinaiticus] and in several ver- sions, and is omitted by Tischendorf [and Tregelles and Alford] ; Lacbmann retains it, but in brackets. The insertion is more easily explained than the omission. — [If we omit pA, we must translate with Campbell and Conant : Who do men say that the Son of man is? Or with Alford, who retains the grammati- cal anomaly, if not blunder, of the author. Vers.: Whom (rk) do men say that the Son of Man is? Tcv viov tcu avfi/u;rcu is equivalent to I in the correspond- ing sentence below, ver. 15. Some who retain pi in the text (Beza, Cleri- cus, etc.) translate: Who do men say that I am? the Son of Man? i. e. Bo they believe me to be the Messiah? But this does not suit the form of the answer, and would require either an affirmative Yea, or a negative No. In the received text >roy i j!cv to u 3-sou must be regarded as opposition to /A, and is so rendered in the E. V.— P. S.]
2 Ver. 17. — \Bar (“l?) is the Aramaic or Chaldaic word used by Daniel in the prophetic passage, vii. 13 (“/ saw . . . and one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, etc.), for the Hebrew ben (is) son. In the Author- ized E. V. it is retained as the patronymic of Peter, as Matthew retained it in Greek, Rap 'lava ; Jerome in Latin, Bar-Jona; Bengel, de Wette, and Ewald, in their German Versions, Bar-Jona; while Tyndale, Cranmer’s, and the Geneva Bibles, also Luther and Lange translate it into the corresponding ver- nacular. Compare similar compound names: Bar- Abbas, Bar-Jesus, Bar- Nabas, Bar-Sabas, Bar-Timoeus, Bar-Tholomceus. The translation depends on whether the name is here simply the patronymic, or whether it has an allego- rical meaning, as Olshausen and Lange contend. In the latter case it must be translated son of Jonah, or Jonas. See Lange’s Exeg. Notes, and my protest- ing footnote on ver. 17. — P. S.]
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•/Aya>dk, say] unto thee, That thou art Peter [ ITerpo^'], and upon this rock [ Tthpakf I will build my Church [ixxfaj-
3 Ver. 18. — [2u u IIst/isc, x*'< in) nkpu, — one of the profoundest and
most far-reaching prophetical, but, at the same time, one of the most contro- verted sayings of the Saviour, the exegetical rock on which the Papacy rests its gigantic claims (but not by direct proof, but by inference and with the help of undemonstrable intervening assumptions, as the transferability of Peter’s primacy, his presence in Rome, and his actual transfer of the primacy upon the bishop of Rome), under the united protest of the whole Greek Catholic and Protestant Evangelical Churches, who contend that Christ says not a word about successors. Leaving the fuller exposition to the Exegetical Notes, we have to do here simply with the verbal rendering. In our Engl. Vers., as also in the German, the emphasis is lost, since rock and Fels are never used as proper names. We might literally translate: “Thou art Peter, and upon this petress;” or: “Thou art Stone, Rockman, Man of rock ( Felsenmann ), and upon this rock;'” but neither of them would sound idiomatic and natural. It is per- haps remarkable that the languages of the two most Protestant nations cannot render the sentence in any way so favourable to the popish identification of the rock of the church with the person of Peter; while the Latin Vulgate simply retained the Greek Petrus and petra, and the French translation: “Tu es Pierre , et sur cette pierre,” even obliterates the distinction of the gender. The Saviour, no doubt, used in both clauses the Aramaic word (hence the
Greek K»$ac applied to Simon, John i. 42; comp. 1 Cor. i. 12; iii. 22 ; ix. 5> xv. 5 ; Gal. ii. 9), which means rock, and is used both as a proper and a com- mon noun. Hence the old Syriac translation of the N. T. renders the passage in question thus: “ Analh-hu Kipha, v’all hode Kipha.” The Arabic transla- tion has alsachra in both cases. The proper translation then would be: “ Thou art Rock, and upon this rock,” etc. Yet it should not be overlooked that Mat- thew in rendering the word into Greek, no doubt under the influence of the Holy Spirit, deliberately changed the gender, using the masculine in the one case and the feminine in the other. He had, of course, to use Xlhpos in address- ing a man (as Maldonatus in loc. correctly remarks : Petrus, quia vir erat, non petra fcemineo, sed Petrus masculino nomine vocandus erat ) ; but he might with perfect propriety have continued : in) rcurqi nZ nkpu, instead of ini nains t? n’np-j. (which change Maldonatus less satisfactorily accounts for simply on the philological reason that the masculine nirpos el Atticum et rarum est). The masculine nkpos in Greek (in Homer and elsewhere) means generally only a piece of rock, or a stone (like the corresponding prose word \idc;), and very rarely a rock. (Meyer, however, quotes for the latter signification a passage from Plato : ’Z:av<pw nfrpo t, one from Sophocles, and one from Pindar) ; but the feminine nkpu always signifies rock, whether it be used literally or metaphori- cally (as a symbol of firmness, but also of hardheartedness). I would not press this distinction, in view of the Syriac and in opposition to such eminent
commentators as Bengel and Meyer, who, like the Rom. Cath. commentators, admit no difference of the terms in this case. (Bengel : hoec duo, nkp-x et n'npcis slant pro uno nomine, sicut unum utrinque nomen Kepha legitur in Sgriaco.” But it is certainly possible, and to my mind almost certain, that Matthew expressed by the slight change of a word in Greek, what the Saviour intended in using, necessarily, the same word in Syriac, viz., that the petra on which the Church is built by Christ, the Divine architect and Lord of this spiritual temple, is not the person of Peter as such, but something more deep and com- prehensive ; in other words, that it is Peter and his confession of the central mystery of Christianity, or Peter as the confessor of Christ, Peter in Christ, and Peter, moreover, as representing all the other apostles in like relation to Christ (comp. Eph. ii. 20; Rev. xvi. 14). Nor should we explain ver. 18inde-
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aca] ;4 and the gates of hell [hades]5 shall not prevail against it.® And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of 19
pendently of ver. 23. It is very significant that, while the believing and con- fessing Peter here is called rock, the disobedient and dissuading Peter immedi- ately afterward (ver. 23), with surprising severity, is called for the time being Satan, the enemy of Christ. If the papacy has any claim to the rocklike nature of Peter, it has certainly also fallen at times under the condemnation of the Satanic, anti-christian, and denying Peter. Let us hope that it may imitate Peter also in his sincere repentance after the denial. Bengel : Videat Petra romana, ne cadat sub censuram versus 23. — Comp, the Exeg. Notes below, and the translator’s History of the Apostolic Church, | 89, p. 351 sqq. — P. S.]
4 Ver. 18. — [All the English versions before Queen Elizabeth, except that of Wiclif (which reads chirche), translate hex hsaia by the corresponding English word congregation ; but the Bishop’s Bible substituted for it church, and this, by express direction of King James, was retained not only here, but in all the passages of the N. T. in the revised and authorized version of 1611. Among German translators and commentators, the Roman Catholics, (Van Ess, Ar- noldi, Allioli) render htioWa by the term Kirche ( church ) ; while the Protest- ant translators and commentators (Luther, John Friedr. von Meyer, Stier, de IVette, Ewald, H. A. W. Meyer and Lange) render: Gemeinde ( congregation ). The Greek ixxxw ria, from ixx.a\w, to call out, to summon, occurs 114 times in the N. T. (twice in the Gospel of Matthew, but in no other Gospel, 24 times in the Acts, 68 times in the Epistles, 20 times in Revelation,) and corresponds to the Hebrew blip. It is not to be confounded with the more spiritual and compre- hensive term kingdom, of God or kingdom of heaven, so often used by our Saviour. It means generally any popular convocation, congregation, assembly, and in a Christian sense the congregation of believers called out of the world and conse- crated to the service of Christ. It is used in the N. T. (1) in a general sense, of the whole body of Christian believers, or the church universal, Matt. xvi. 18; 1 Cor. xii. 28; Gal. i. 13; Eph. i. 22 (and in all the passages where the church is called the body of Christ)-, 1 Tim. iii. 15; Heb. xii. 23, etc. ; (2) more fre- quently in a particular sense, of a local congregation, as in Jerusalem, in Anti- och, in Ephesus, in Corinth, in Rome, in Galatia, in Asia Minor, etc. ; hence, also, it is often used in the plural, e. g., at isKMo-iai t its 'Amt, 1 Cor. xvi. 19; eti tKKMcriai tJv Rom. xvi. 4; the seven churches, Rev. i. 4, 11, 20, etc. The Saviour himself makes use of the word only twice, viz. : in our passage, where it evidently means the church universal, which alone is indestructible, and in Matt, xviii. 17, where it can be understood only of a local church or con- gregation ( tell it to the church). John never uses the term except in his third epistle. The word church is properly no translation of hutoo-i* at all, but has etymologically a different meaning, being derived from the Greek itopxtx.ov, i. e. belonging to the Lord, through the medium of the Gothic, whence also the cog- nate terms in the Teutonic and Slavonic languages, the German Kirche, the Scotch kirk, the Swedish kyrka, the Danish kyrke, the Russian zerkow, the Polish cerkiew , the Bohemian zyrkew. (Leo, Ferienschriften, Halle, 1847, de- rives the word from the Celtic cyrch or cylch, i. e., centre, meeting place ; but this would not explain the introduction of the word into the Slavonic nations, who received Christianity from the Greek church.) The word church is now used both in the general and in the particular sense, like tnnKstria, and in addi- tion to this also in a third sense, viz., of a building, or house of worship, (Eusebius Hist. Eccl. ix. 10, calls the meeting-houses of the Christians ttvciax a eixtia). As regards the English translation of tKiooiaia, a number of modern commentators advocate a return to the term congregation throughout the whole N. T. But it is neither possible nor desirable to expel the term church from the English Bible, which has long since become the full equivalent of the Greek < KsKsaia.. We might use church, where the word signifies the whole body of believers, and congregation, where a particular or local assembly of Christians
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heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt hind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
is intended. But even this is unnecessary. The Geneva Bible also employed the term church in a few passages, though not in ours, where it seems to me to be more appropriate than congregation. — P. S.]
5 Ver. 18. — [riuVai acfiw, in Hebrew biit'd ''’(ISld shaare sheol, Isa. xxxviii. 10, an alliteration. On hades, as distinct from hell, compare the Exeg. Notes below, and also the Grit. Notes on xi. 23, p. 210. — P. S.]
6 Ver. 18. — Oil Kiair^uxci/iriv from K'-mayvuj rive;, prcevalere adversus
aliqucm, comp. Isa. xv. 18, Sept. Tyndale, the Bishops’, King James’, and the Douay Bibles agree in translating: shall not prevail against it; the Lat. Vul- gate: non prcevalebunt adversus earn; Luther, de Wette, Ewald, Lange: fiber- udltigen; Meyer: die Obermacht haben ( behalten ). I prefer the prevail of the Authorized Vers, to overcome (Geneva Bible) as expressing better the idea of ultimate triumph over long-continued passive resistance. The term must be explained in conformity to the architectural figure which runs through this whole passage : — gales, build, keys. Hades is represented as a hostile fortress which stands over against the apparently defenceless, yet immovable temple of the Christian Church, to which our Lord here promises indestructible life. ( Eccle - sia non potest deficere.) The gates of hades, or the realm of death, by virtue of the universal dominion of sin, admit and confine all men, and (like the gates in Dante’s Inferno with the famous terrific inscription) were barred against all return, uutil the Saviour overcame death and “him that hath the power of death” (Hebr. ii. 14) and came forth unharmed and triumphant from the empire of death as conqueror and Prince of life. Hades could not retain Him (Acts ii. 27, 31). The same power of life He imparts to His people, who often, especially during the ages of persecution and martyrdom, seemed to be doomed to destruction, but always rose to new life and vigor, and shall reign with Christ forever. Comp. Rev i. 18: “I am alive for ever more, and have the keys of death and hades;” aud 1 Cor. xv. 2<3 : “The last enemy that shall be destroyed, is death.” This interpretation of the figure appears to me much more appropriate than the usual one, which takes hades here in the sense of hell, and assumes an active assault of the infernal armies, rushing, as it were, through these gates and storming the fortress of Christ’s Church. To this interpretation 1 object: (1) That gates are not an active and aggressive, but a passive and confining power; (2) that hades, although closely related to geen- nah or hell and including it, is yet a wider conception, and means here, as elsewhere, the realm of death ( das Reich der Todten), which swallows up all mortals aud confines for ever those who have no part in the victory of Christ over death, hell, and damnation. — P. S.]
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL NOTES.
Yer. 13. Into tbe parts of Cesarea Philippi. — The cure of the blind person at the eastern Bethsaida (Mark xiii. 22) had taken place before that. Civs area Philippi, formerly called Paneas (Plin. H. N. v. 15,) from the mountain Panius, dedicated to Pan, in the immediate neighbourhood. The town is supposed to have been the ancient Leshem, Josh. xix. 47 ; Laish, Judg. xviii. 7 ; and Dan — “from Dan to Beersheba.” It lay near the sources of Jordan, at the foot of Mount Lebanon, a day’s journey from Sidon, in Gaulonitis, and was partly inhabited by heathens. The town was enlarged and beautified by Philip the Tetrarch, who called it C cesarea ( Kingston ) in honour of Caesar Tiberius. The name Philippi was
1864.] Eomiletical Commentary. 665
intended to distinguish it from Ccesarea Palestince (Robinson, Palest, ii. 439 ; also, vol. iii. sect, ix.) Tradition reports that the woman with the issue of blood resided here. Her name is said to have been Berenice. Agrip- pa II. further embellished this city, and called it Neronias in honour of Nero. The modern village of Banias, and the ruins around it, mark the site of the ancient city.
■Who (not whom) do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?— How do
men explain the -appearance of the Son of Man? Meyer: What do they understand by the designation, Son of Man? De Wette: I who am a humble, lowly man. But this completely misses the peculiar import of the expression, Son of Man.
Yer. 14. Some say. — “ The reply shows that, in general, He was not yet looked upon as the Messiah:” Meyer. But according to the representa- tion of the evangelist, we must rather infer that Christ’s enemies had by their calumnies succeeded in lowering the popular estimate concerning him.
John the Baptist. — See ch. xiv. 2. This, for a time, had been the opinion of the courtiers of Herod. — Elijah, — as the precursor of the Mes- siah. Such was the view professed by those whom fear of their superiors induced to deny His claims to the Messianic office, while, from a desire of not.entirely surrendering the expectations which had been excited by His appearance, they still regarded Him as a prophet. — Jeremiah. — Of course, in the same sense as Elijah, — not in the sense of literally revisit- ing the earth, nor in that of implying the doctrine of the transmigration of souls [metempsychosis].* The opinion of these persons concerning Jesus was evidently lower than that of those who regarded Him as Elijah. (Mark xv. 35; John i. 21). The one party referred especially to what might be designated as the reformation inaugurated by Jesus, while the other had regard to His denunciations of the corruptions of the times. — Or one of the prophets. — According to the lowest view, He was repre- sented by discouraged friends as one of the old prophets. Three points are clearly brought out in this conversation : 1. That, to a certain extent, Jesus was still generally acknowledged by the people. 2. That the faith of the majority had been lowered and misled by the influence of their superiors, so that diverging opinions were now entertained regarding Him. That this inconsistency and wavering led to a decreasing mea- sure of homage.
Ver. 15. But who say ye that I am? — This was the decisive moment in which the separation of the New Testament from the Old Testar
ment theocracy was to be made. The hour had come for the utterance of a distinct Christian confession.
Ver. 16. Simon Peter. — Peter answered not merely in his own name,
* [Some, however, no doubt believed in a bodily resurrection of Elijah or Jeremiah. The latter was accounted by the Jews as the first in the prophetic canon. See Lightfoot on Matt, xxvii. 9. — P. S. ]'
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but in that of all the disciples.* — Thou art the Christ, — i. e. the Messiah Himself. And this, not in the sense in which carnal Jewish tradition- alism held the doctrine of the Messiah, hut in the true and spiritual import of the title — the Son of the living God. The latter expression must not be taken merely in a negative sense, as denoting the True God in opposition to false deities ; it must also he viewed in a positive sense, as referring to Him whose manifestations in Israel were completed in and crowned by the appearance of His Son as the Messiah.- This, however, implies Sonship not only in a moral or official, but also in the ontologi- cal sense. Thus the reply of Peter had all the characteristics of a genu- ine confession — being decided, solemn, and deep.
[The confession of Peter is the first and fundamental Christian confes- sion of faith, and the germ of the Apostles’ Creed. It is a confession, not of mere human opinions, or views, or convictions, however firm, but of a divinely wrought faith, and not of faith only ( I believe that Thou art), but of adoration and worship ( Thou art). It is christological, i. e., a confes- sion of Jesus Christ as the centre and heart of the whole Christian system, and the only and all-sufficient fountain of spiritual life. It is a confession of ’Jesus Christ as a true man [Thou, Jesus), as the promised Messiah (the Christ), and as the eternal Son of God ( the Son — not a son — of the living God), hence as the God-Man and Saviour of the world. It is thus a confession of the mystery of the Incarnation in the widest sense, the great central mystery of godliness, “ God manifest in the flesh.” — Compare also the excellent remarks of Olshausen (in Kendrick’s Am. ed., vol. i. p. 545 sq.) and Alford, who, following Olshausen, says in loc.: “The con- fession is not made in the terms of the other answer : it is not ‘ we sag,’ or ‘ I sag,’ but ‘ Thou art/ It is the expression of an inward conviction wrought by God’s Spirit. The excellence of this confession is, that it brings out both the human and the divine nature of the Lord : o Xp/^r;? is the Messiah, the Son of David, the anointed King ; o wot too GbJ toZ £w>tc? is the Eternal Son, begotten of the Eternal Father, as the last word most emphatically implies not ‘ Son of God’ in any inferior figurative sense, not one of the sons of God, of angelic nature, but the Sou of the living God, having in Him the Sonship and the divine nature, in a sense in which they could be in none else. This was the view of the person of Christ quite dis- tinct from the Jewish Messianic idea, which appears to have been'(Justin Mart. Dial. p. 267) that he should be born from men, but selected by God
* [This is the correct view, already nlaintained by the fathers, e. g. Chrysos- tom, who, in Horn. 54, calls Peter in this connection the mouth of the apostles, to ttom* tZv (error TiXay : by Jerome, Petrus ex persona omnium apostolorum pro- Jitetur ; and by Thomas Aquinas, Ipse respondet etpro se etpro aliis. Some Rom. Cath. commentators, as Passaglia and Arnoldi, for obvious reasons, maintain that Peter spoke only in his own name. But the Saviour addressed His ques- tion to all the disciples, and they certainly must have assented to Peter’s con- fession of faith, which they had from the time of their calling, and without which they could not have been apostles. Comp. John i. 42, 46, 50, also the remarks of Dr. Schegg, a Rom. Cath. Com. in loc. (vol. ii. p. 349). — P. S.]
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for the office on account of his eminent virtues. This distinction accounts for the solemn blessing pronounced in the next verse. ZZnot must not for a moment be taken here, as it sometimes is used (e. g., Acts xiv. 15), as merely distinguishing the true God from dead idols : it is here emphatic, and imparts force and precision to wot. That Peter, when he uttered the words, understood by them in detail all that we now understand, is not of course here asserted, but that they were his testimony to the true Hu- manity and true Divinity of the Lord, in that sense of deep truth and reliance, out of which springs the Christian life of the Church.” Meyer, indeed, takes tou simply as the solemn epithet of the true God in opposition to the dead idols of the heathen ; but there was no reason here for contrasting the true God with heathen idols, and Peter must have meant to convey the idea, however imperfectly understood by him at the time, that the Godhead itself was truly revealed in, and reflected from, the human person of Christ in a sense and to a degree compared with which all former manifestations of God appeared to him like dead shadows. He echoed the declaration from heaven at Christ’s baptism: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” and recognized in Him the essential and eternal life of the great Jehovah. — P. S.]
Ver. 17. Jesus answered. — Also a confession, decided, solemn, and deep; being the divine confession of the Lord in favour of the Church, which had now confessed His name, and of her first witness. — Blessed art thou (comp. Rom. x. 9), Simon, son of Jonah.* — Meyer denies in vain the antithesis between this address and the new title given to Peter. Different views have been taken in reference to this antithesis. 1. Paulus explains it: Simon, or obedient hearer, — son of Jonas, or son of oppres- sion. 2. Olshausen: dove, with reference to the Holy Spirit under
the figure of a dove. Thou, Simon, art a child of the Spirit. 3. Lange ( Leben Jem, ii. 2, 469) : Thou, Simon, son of a dove (which makes its nest in the rock, a figure of the Church), shalt be called a rock (the rock-like dwelling-place of the dove, i. e., of the Church). f With this antithesis the other in the same verse is connected. According to the flesh, thou art a natural son of Jonah ; but according to this revelation of the Spirit, a child of the Father who is in heaven (referring to his regeneration, and
* [According to Lange’s version. Comp, my critical note above — P. S.]
f [I confess that this allegorical exposition of the term appears to me as far- fetched and improbable as that of Olshausen. Bar Jona has nothing to do with a dove, but is a contraction for Bar Joanna (Chaldaic), t. e., Son of John, as is evident from John xxi. 15, 16, 17, where Christ addresses Peter: h'/ua* ’lad mo. But there may be in this use of the pati-onymic an allusion to the title Son of Man in ver. 13, which would give additional emphasis to the counter confession, in this sense: That I, the Son of Man, am at the same time the Messiah and the eternal Son of God, is as true as that thou, Simon, art the Son of Jonah; and as thou hast thus confessed Me as the Messiah, I will now confess thee as Peter, etc. If the Saviour spoke in Aramaic or Chal- daic, as lie undoubtedly did on ordinary occasions and with His disciples. He used the term Bar in ver. 17, from Dan. vii. 13, the prophetic passage from which the Messianic appellation Son of Man was derived, so that Bar enahsh ( Son of Man) and Bar-Jonah would correspond. — P. S.]
668 Lange's Theological and [October
consequent faith and confession. [Similarly Alford: The name “Simon Bar Jonas” is doubtless used as indicating his fleshly state and extraction, and forming the greater contrast to his spiritual state, name, and bless- ing, -which follow. The name 'Ziy.w ’lava, Simon, son of Jonas or Jonah, is uttered when he is reminded by the thrice-repeated inquiry, “Lovest thou me?” of his frailty, in his previous denial of his Lord, John xxi. 15, 16, 17.— P. S.]
Flesh and Blood. — Various views have been taken of this expression. 1. Calvin, Beza, Neander, De Wette, refer it to our physical nature in opposition to the smO^a. To this Meyer objects, that our physical nature is termed in Scripture only trig, not <rafe «*/ <*![«<* (in 1 Cor. xv. 50, “flesh and blood” should be literally understood). 2. According to Lightfoot and Meyer, it must be taken (with special reference to the fact, that the Rabbins use &“Tl “TO 3 as a kind of paraphrase for Son of Man, including the accessory idea of the weakness involved in our corporeal nature), as simply denoting weak man, equivalent to nemo morialium (as in Gal. i. 16). 3. We explain it: the natural, carnal descent, as contrasted with spiritual generation. John i. 13: e'i mx udrav, olS'i in Btruflurm trapxht, x. r. x. This appears still further from the connection between the expressions, “flesh and blood” and “ son of Jonah,” and from the antithesis, “ My Father who is in heaven.” Hence Gal. i. 16 must mean: When I received a commission to preach to the Gentiles, I conferred not with my Jewish nationality; and Eph. vi. 12: In reality, we wrestle not with beings of human kind, but with the powers of darkness, whose representatives and instruments they are ; and 1 Cor. xv. 50 : The kind which is of this world (of the first man, who is of the earth) shall not inherit the kingdom of God ; but we must enter it by a complete transformation into a second and new life which is from heaven. Accordingly, the antithesis in the text is between knowledge resulting from natural human development, or on the basis of natural birth, and knowledge proceeding from the revela- tion of the Father in heaven, or on the basis of regeneration.
Hath not revealed it —but my Father. — A difficulty has been felt, how to reconcile this declaration with the fact, that the disciples had at a much earlier period recognized Jesus as the Messiah (John i. 42, 46, 50). 1. Olshausen holds that this confession of Peter indicates a much more advanced state of knowledge: o vios rev 0m, roZ fZvra. 2. Neander thinks that all earlier revelations had more or less proceeded from flesh and blood. 3. Meyer suggests that the text refers to that first acknowledg- ment of Jesus as the Messiah, in consequence of which the disciples came and surrendered themselves to Him.* 4. In our view, the new element
* [Not exactly. In the fourth edition of his Com. on Matt. p. 320, Meyer assumes that Peter, although long since convinced, with the rest of the disci- ples, of the Messiahship of Jesus, was on this occasion favoured with a special divine revelation on the subject and spoke from a state of inspiration. “ Daher ,” he says “ist dvixaruf nicht auf eine schon beim erslen Anschliessen an Jesum erhaltene Offenbarung, welche den Jiingern geworden. zu beziehen, sondern auf Petrus und eine ihn auszeichnende besondere wr:xdruf; zu beschranhen. —
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in this confession lies, first of all, in its ethical form. It was no longer a mere knowledge (or recognition) of Christ. While the general knowledge of the Jews concerning the Messiah had retrograded and degenerated into discordant and self-contradictory opinions, the knowledge of the disciples had advanced, and was now summed up and concentrated into an act of spiritual faith in Peter’s confession, which, in view of the hostility of the Jewish rulers, may be characterized as a real martyrdom (f**prvfU). Another new element lay in the view now expressed concerning the Mes- siah. On all the main points, the Jewish and traditional notions of the Messiah had evidently been thrown off, and a pure and spiritual faith attained from converse with the life of Jesus. In both these respects, it was a revelation of the Father in heaven, i. e., a heavenly and spiritual production. The new life was germinating in the hearts of the disciples. — De W ette regards this passage as incompatible with the earlier acknow- ledgments of the Messiah; while Fritzsche, Schneckenburger, and Strauss talk of a twofold period in Christ’s ministry : the first, when He was a dis- ciple of John ; the second, when He attained to consciousness of His Mes- sianic dignity. But these critics have wholly misunderstood this nar- rative.
Yer. 18. But I also say unto thee. — The expression shows in a striking manner the reciprocity existing between Christ and His disciples. Their confession solicits His confession.*
Thou art Peter. — Tlerpos, in Aramaic, itS11!?, the stone, or the rock ( see Meyer). The Greek masculine noun arose from the translation of the name into Greek; the name itself had been given at an earlier period, John i. 42. It was now bestowed a second time to indicate the relation- ship subsisting between Peter and the Ecclesia, rather than to prove that Peter really was what his name implied (Meyer). From the first this name was intended to be symbolical; although its real meaning was only attained at a later period in the history of Peter. But at the same time the words of Jesus imply the acknowledgment that his character as Peter had just appeared in this confession. [It should be observed that in John i. 42 (in the Gr. text, ver. 43) we read: “Thou shalt be called (jojiSjiVj) Cephas,” but here: “ Thou art («) Peter.” — P. S.]
And on this rock. — For the various interpretations of this passage, see Wolf’s Curce. We submit the following summary of them: 1. The term “rock” is referred to Christ Himself. Thus Jerome, f Augus-
* [Maldonatus : “ Et ego. Elegans antithesis, Orcece etiam efficacior: wfy* Si, bed et ego dico tibi ; quasi dicat; lu, qui homo es, Filium Dei vivi me esse dixisti, ego vero, qui Filius Dei vivi sum, dico te esse Petrum, id est vicarium meum [?], quem Fdium Dei esse confessus est. Nam Ecclesiam meam, quce super me cedificata est, super U etiam, tanquam super sccundarium quoddam fundamenlum cedificabo." — P. S ]
f [This needs modification. Jerome, in his Comment, on Matt. xvi. 18 (Opera, ed. Vallars., tom. vii. p. 124), explains the passage thus: “ Sicut ipse lumen Apostolis donavit, ut lumen mundi appellarentur, cceteraque ex Domino sor- titisunt vocabula: ita et Simoni, qui credebat in petram Christum, Petrilar- gitus est nomen. Ac secundum metaphoram petrce, recte dicitur ei : jtEdificabo
670 Lange s Theological and [October
tine,* Chemnitz, Fabricius, and others.f — 2. It is referred to Peter’s confession. Thus most of the Fathers, and several of the Popes,
ecclesiam meam SUPER te.” The last words [super te) show that he refer- red the petra not only to Christ, but in a derivative sense also to Peter as the confessor. So in another passage ( Ep . ad Damas. papam, Ep. 15, ed. Yal. i. 37, sq.) he says of Peter: ‘■‘■super illarn petram cediftcatam ecclesiam scio.” Jerome also regards the bishop of Rome as the successor of Peter, but advo- cates elsewhere the equal rights of bishops, so that he can be quoted only in favour of a Roman primacy of honour, not of a supremacy of jurisdiction. Comp, on Jerome’s views concerning the papacy the second vol. of my General Church History, now preparing for the press, g 61, p. 304, sq. — P. S.]
* [/. e., Augustine in his later years ; for at first he referred the petra to the person of Peter. He says in his Retractations , i. cap. 21, at the close of his life : “I have somewhere said of St. Peter that the church is built upon him as rock. . . . But I have since frequently said that the word of the Lord : ‘ Thou art Petrus, and on this petra I will build my church,’ must be understood of him, whom Peter confessed as Son of the living God ; and Peter, so named after this rock, represents the person of the church, which is founded on this rock and has received the keys of the kingdom of heaven. For it was not said to him: ‘ Thou art a rock' [petra), but ‘ Thou art Peter' [Petrus)-, and the rock was Christ, through confession of whom Simon received the name of Peter. Yet the reader may decide which of the two interpretations is the more proba- ble.” In the same strain he says* in another place: “Peter, in virtue of the primacy of his apostolate, stands, by a figurative generalization, for the church.
. . . When it was said to him, ‘ I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,’ &c., he represented the whole church, which in this world is assailed by various temptations, as if by floods and storms, yet does not fall, because it is founded upon a rock, from which Peter received his name. For the rock is not so named from Peter, but Peter from the rock [non enim a Petro petra, sed Petrus a petra), even as Christ is not so called after the Christian, but the Christian after Christ. For the reason why the Lord says, ‘ On this rock I will build my church,’ is that Peter had said : 1 Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ On this rock, which thou hast confessed, says he, I will build my church. For Christ was the the rock [petra enim erat Christus) upon which also Peter himself was built; for other foundation can no man lay, than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Thus the church, which is built upon Christ, has received from him, in the person of Peter, the keys of heaven, that is, the power of binding and loosing sins.” (Aug. Tract, in Evang. Joannis, 124, § 5.) Ambrose, too, at one time refers the petra to Christ, as when he says in Luc. ix. 20: “ Petra est Christus," etc., but at other times to the person of Peter, as in the famous morning hymn quoted by Augustin [Hoc ipsa petra ecclesice Canente, culpam diluit), and again to his confession, or rather to Peter and his confession. Comp, my Church History, vol. ii. p. 304. A similar appa- rent inconsistency we find in other fathers. The reference of the rock to Christ was also advocated by Theodoret, ad 1 Cor. iii. 11, the venerable Bede in Marc, iii: “ Petra erat Christus (1 Cor. x. 4). Nam Simoni qui crede - hat in Petram Christum, Petri largitus est nomen;" and even by Pope Gre- gory VII. in the inscription to the crown he sent to the rival emperor Rudolph : “Petra [i. e., Christ) dedit Petro (Peter), Petrus (the pope) diadema Ru- dolpho." — P. S.]
f [Especially Calovius in the Lutheran, and quite recently Dr. Words- worth in the Anglican, and (evidently under the influence of Wordsworth’s arguments) Dr. Jos. A. Alexander of the Presbyt. Church (although the lat- ter, as usual with him in critical passages, does not finally decide). Dr. Wordsworth rests his laboured defence of the later Augustinian interpretation mainly on the difference between nerf o;, stone, and mv-fu, rock, which he thinks (referring to Lightfoot and Beveridge) had a parallel in the Syriac Cephas or
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Leo I.,* Hubs in the Tractat. de ecclesia, the Articuli Smalcald. in the Append., Luther J Febronius, and others. — 3. It is applied to Peter him-
Kepha (doubtful) ; on the fact that in the 0. T. the title Rock is reserved to God Almighty (2 Sam. xxii. 32; Ps. xviii. 31; lxii. 2, 6, 7, etc.); and on the admitted equality of the apostles. He thus paraphrases the words of the Saviour: ‘“I myself, now confessed by thee to be God and Man, am the Rock of the Church. This is the foundation on which it is built.’ And because St. Peter had confessed Him as such, He says to St. Peter, ‘Thou hast con- fessed Me, and I will now confess thee ; thou hast owned Me, I will now own thee ; thou art Peter, i. e., thou art a lively stone, hewn out of, and built upon Me, the living Rock. Thou art a genuine Petros of Me, the divine Petra. And whosoever would be a lively stone, a Peter, must imitate thee in this thy true confession of Me the living Rock ; for upon this Rock, that is, on Myself, believed and confessed to be both God and Man, I will build My Church.’ ” This is all true enough in itself considered, but it is no exposition of the pas- sage. Everybody knows and admits, that in the highest sense of the term Christ and He alone is the immovable (divine) Rock of the Church, the foun- dation (9-s on which the apostles built and besides which no other can be laid, 1 Cor. iii. 11; comp. 1 Cor. x. 4 («T/>a) ; Matt. vii. 24, 25. But it is equally true that in a subordinate sense the apostles are called the (human) foundation on which the Church is built, Eph. ii. 20; (imnufopDibivn; hr) <r? S'£(«£A<» aTroon-ohaiv kui TrfoinrrZv, k. t. a) ; Rev. xxi. 14 (fny.irj'A J'ZJ'atx, x. t. a.). Now in our passage Christ appears not as rock, i. e., as part of the building itself, but under a higher figure as architect and Lord of the whole spiritual temple; and the mixing of figures in one breath as this interpretation implies, would be a plain violation of rhetorical taste and propriety such as we should not for a moment think of in connection with our Saviour. Again, the antana- clasis (t. e., the rhetorical figure of repeating the same word in a different sense) is conclusive against this explanation. The demonstrative tWtii must refer to rrnpt, which immediately precedes ; for there is not the least intimation that the Saviour, after having said: “ Thou art Rockman,” turned away from Peter, and pointing to Himself, continued: “ and on this rock (i. e, Myself, \rd ijuxorZ) I will build My Church.” On the contrary, He immediately continues: “ And I will give to thee,” kui JZcrai a-ct, which can, of course, mean nobody else but Peter. This interpretation of Augustine and Wordsworth destroys the rhetorical beauty and emphasis of the passage, and can give us no advan- tage whatever in our controversy with Rome, which must and can be refuted on far better grounds than forced exegesis. — P. S.]
* [This reference to the fathers is too indefinite, and hardly correct as far as Leo and the popes are concerned. The majority of the fathers, Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Leo I., Gregory of Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, etc., vary in their interpretation, referring the petra sometimes to the person of Peter, sometimes to his faith or confession, and sometimes (as Jerome and Augustine) to Christ Himself. (Comp. Maldo- natus, Comment, in quatuor Evangelistas, ed. Martin, tom. i., p. 219 sq., and my History of the Christian Church, vol. ii., 61 and 63, pp. 302 sqq. and 314 sqq., where the principal passages are quoted.) But this inconsistency is more apparent than real, since Peter and his faith in Christ cannot be separated in this passage. Peter (representing the other apostles) as believing and con- fessing Christ (but in no other capacity) is the petra ecclesice. This is the true interpretation, noticed by Lange sub number 3. b). Comp, my Critical Note, No. 3, below the text. But the confession (or faith alone cannot be meant, for two reasons : first, because this construction assumes an abrupt transition from the person to a thing, and destroys the significance of the demonstrative and emphatic t uuryi which evidently refers to the nearest antecedent Petros; and secondly, because the church is not built upon abstract doctrines and confes- sions, but upon living persons believing and confessing the truth (Eph. ii. 20;
672 Lange s Theological and [October
self, (a) In the popish sense, by Baronius and Bellarmin, [Passaglia,] as implying that Peter was invested with a permanent primacy;* (b) with reference to the special call and work of Peter as an Apostle. By thee, Peter, as the most prominent of My witnesses, shall the Church be founded and established: Acts ii. and x. So, many Roman Catholics, as Launoi, Dupin, — and later Protestant expositors, as Werenfels, Pfaff, Bengel, and Crusius. Heubner thinks that the antanaclasis, or the con- necting of Peter with s«t px, is in favour of this view. But he [as also nearly all other commentators who represent this view] combines with it the application of the term to the confession.! — 4. It is applied to Peter, inclusive of all the other Apostles, and, indeed, of all believers. Thus Origen on Matt. xvi. 18: “Every believer who is enlightened by the Father is also a rock.” — 5. In our opinion, the Lord here generalizes, so to speak, the individual Peter into the general wrp x, referring to what may be called the Petrine characteristic of the Church — viz., faithfulness of confession, % — as first distinctly exhibited by Peter. Hence the words of
1 Pet. ii. 4-6; Gal. ii. 9; Rev. xxi. 14). Dr. Jos. A. Alexander, however, is too severe on this interpretation in calling it as forced and unnatural as the Roman Catholic. It undoubtedly implies an element of truth, since Peter in this passage is addressed as the bold and fearless confessor of Christ. — P. S.]
* [The Romish interpretation is liable to the following objections: (1) It ob- literates the distinction between petros and petra; (2) it is inconsistent with the true nature of the architectural figure ; the foundation of a building is one and abiding, and not constantly renewed and changed; (3) it confounds priority of time with permanent superiority of rank; (4) it confounds the apostolate, which, strictly speaking, is not transferable but confined to the original per- sonal disciples of Christ, and inspired organs of the Holy Spirit, with the post- apostolic episcopate ; (5) it involves an injustice to the other apostles, who, as a body, are expressly called the foundation, or foundation stones of the church ;
(6) it contradicts the whole spirit of Peter’s epistles, which is strongly anti- hierarchical, and disclaims any superiority over his “fellow-presbyters;”
(7) finally, it rests on gratuitous assumptions which can never be proven either exegetically or historically, viz., the transferability of Peter’s primacy, and its actual transfer upon the bishop, not of Jerusalem nor of Antioch (where Peter certainly was), but of Rome exclusively. Comp, also the long note to § 94 in my History of the Apostolic Church, p. 374 sqq. — P. S.]
f [So also Olshaosen: “Peter, in his new spiritual character, appears as the supporter of Christ’s great work; Jesus Himself is the creator of the whole, Peter, the first stone of the building;” De Wette: “irri rxvry rij nfa-px, on thee as this firm confessor;” Meyer: “on no other but this (rxurs) rock, t. e., Peter so called for his firm and strong faith in Christ;” Alford: “Peter was the first of those foundation-stones (Eph. ii. 20; Rev. xxi. 14) on which the living temple of God was built: this building itself beginning on the day of Pentecost by the laying of three thousand living stones on this very founda- tion;” D. Brown: “not on the man Bar-jona; but on him as the heaven-taught Confessor of such a faith;” and more or less clearly, Grotius, Le Clerc, Whitby, Doddridge, Clarke, Bloomfield, Barnes, Eadie, Owen, Crosby (who, however, wrongly omits the reference to the confession), Whedon, Nast. I can see no material difference between this interpretation and Lange’s own sub No. 5, which is only a modification or expansion of it. I have already remarked in a former note that this is the true exposition which the majority of the fathers intended, though with some inclination to the subsequent Romish application of the promise to a supposed successor. — P. S.]
J [Die petrinische Bekenntnisstreue. — P. S.]
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Jesus only refer to Peter in so far as by this confession he identified him- self with Christ, and was the first to upbuild the Church by his testi- mony. But in so far as the text alludes to an abiding foundation of the Church, the expression refers not to the Apostle as an individual, but to Trirp* in the more general sense, or to faithfulness of confession. That Peter was here meant in his higher relation, and not in himself, appears from the change of terms, first mrpo;, then 7rirp*.; also from the contrast in ver. 22; while the fact that his distinction conferred no official primacy is evident from this, that the same rights and privileges were bestowed upon all the Apostles: Matt, xviii. 18; John xx. 23; Eph. ii. 20; Rev. xxi. 14. That he himself claimed no preeminence appears from his First Epistle, in which he designates Christ as the corner-stone, and Christians as living stones, 1 Pet. ii. 5, 6 (as themselves Peters, or related to Peter). Lastly, that he knew of no successors in the sense of the Papacy, is proved by his exhortation to the presbyters not to be lords over God’s heritage (the x.\»poi, 1 Pet. v. 3.)
My Church. — Here the mukho-U of Christ appears for the first time in distinct contrast to the Jewish congregation, bflJJ. Hence the passage refers not simply to a community of believers, but to a definite organiza- tion of this community (compare what follows on the keys). Accordingly, the passage alludes to the Church as the organized and visible form of the ft*? iKiiet tA chp-i'/lv. The Church is not the kingdom of heaven itself, but a positive institution of Christ, by which, on the one hand, the king- dom of heaven becomes directly manifest in the world by its worship, while, on the other hand, it spreads through the world by means of its missionary efforts. The Church bears the same relation to the kingdom of heaven as the Messianic state under the Old Testament to the theocracy, the two being certainly not identical.
The gates of hades (underworld). — De Wette: “ Here, equivalent to the kingdom of Satan.” But this is not the scriptural conception of hades or sheol. Throughout the Bible hades means the kingdom of death ; which is, indeed, connected with the kingdom of Satan, but has a more comprehensive meaning. Hades is described as having gates; it is figura- tively represented as a castle with gates (Songviii. 6; Job xxxviii. 17; Isa. xxxviii. 10; Ps. evii. 18). These gates serve a hostile purpose, since they opened, like a yawning abyss of death, to swallow up Christ, and then Peter, or the Apostles and the Church, in their martyrdom. For a long time it seemed as if the Church of Christ would become the prey of this destroying hades. But its gates shall not ultimately prevail — they shall be taken ; and Christ will overcome and abolish the kingdom of death in His Church (see Isa. xxv. 8; IIos. xiii. 14; 1 Cor. xv. 15; Eph. i. 19, 20). Of course, the passage also implies conflict with the kingdom of evil, and victory over it ; but its leading thought is the triumph of life over death, of the kingdom of the resurrection over the usurped reign of the kingdom of hades. — Erasmus, Calvin, and others, refer it to the vic- tory over Satan ; Grotius, to that over death ; Ewald, to that over all the monsters of hell, let loose through these open gates ; Gldckler, to that over VOL. XXXVI. — NO. IV. 85
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the machinations of the kingdom of darkness (the gate being the place of council in the East); Meyer, to the superiority of the Church over hades, without any allusion to an attack on the part of hades. The idea, that the Old Testament sxxxxo-/* would fall before the gates of hades, is here evidently implied ( Leben Jem, ii. 2, p. 887).
Yer. 19. The keys of the kingdom of heaven.— Luke xi. 52; Rev. i. 18, iii. 7; ix. 1; xx. 1. It is the prerogative of the Apostles, either to admit into the kingdom of heaven, or to exclude from it. Meyer : “ The figure of the keys corresponds with the figurative expression oUJoy.>iiTa> in ver. 18 ; since in ver. 18 the 'muMo-ia., which, at Christ’s second appearing, is destined to become the fizo-iMU rZv oupavlv [as if this were not already its real, though not its open character, which at Christ’s second coming shall only become outwardly manifest !] — is represented as a building. But, in reference to Peter, the figure changes from that of a rock, or foundation, to that of an oum^t ; or, in other words, from the position and character of Peter to his office and work.” But evidently the antithesis here pre- sented is different from this view. Peter is designated the foundation- stone as being the first confessing member of the Church, though with an allusion to his calling ; while in his official relation to the Church he is represented as guardian of the Holy City. Hence the expression, rock, refers to the nucleus of the Church as embodied in Peter; whije the keys allude to the special office and vocation in the church.
[Alford: “Another personal promise to Peter, remarkably fulfilled in his being the first to admit both Jews and Gentiles into the Church; thus using the power of the keys to open the door of salvation.” Wordsworth applies the promise in a primary and personal sense to Peter, but in a secondary and general sense also to the Church, and especially the minis- ters who hold and profess the faith of Peter, and are called to preach the gospel, to administer the sacraments, and to exercise discipline. Augus- tine: “Has claves non homo unus, sed unitas accepit ecclesice.” — P. S.]
And whatsoever thou shalt bind. — A somewhat difficult antithesis, especially with reference to the preceding context. Bretschneider, (Lexi- con): “The expression ‘ binding ’ means to bind with the Church; and ‘ loosing,’ to loose from the Church.” But this is to confound ideas which are very different. Olshausen understands it of the ancient custom of tying the doors. But the text speaks of a key. Stier regards it as in accordance with rabbinical phraseology, taken from the Old Testament ; binding and loosing being equivalent to forbidding and permitting, and more especially to remitting and retaining sins. But these two ideas are quite different. Lightfoot, Schottgen, and, after them, Yon Ammon, hold that the expression implied three things: 1. Authority to declare a thing unlawful or lawful. Thus Meyer regards i »«v and xuw as equivalent to the rabbinical and to forbid, and to permit. 2. To pronounce an
action, accordingly, as criminal or innocent. 3. Thereupon to pronounce a ban or to revoke it. But as the Lord here speaks of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, He can only have referred directly to the last-men- tioned meaning of the expression, though it involved the first and second,
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as the sentence of the Apostles would always be according to truth. A comparison of the parallel passage in Matt, xviii. 18 confirms this view. There Church discipline is enjoined on the disciples collectively, to whom precisely the same assurance is given which in the text is granted to Peter alone ; while in John xx. 23 the order is reversed : the expression, remit- ting sins, being equivalent for loosing, and retaining sins, for binding. The whole passage forms a contrast to the ecclesiastical discipline of the Pharisees, Matt, xxiii. From the evangelical character of the New Testa- ment ministry, it seems to us impossible to interpret the expression as meaning to forbid and to permit, according to the analogy of rabbinical usage. To bind up sins, as in a bundle, implies coming judgment (Job xiv. 17 ; Hos. xiii. 12) ; while, on the other hand, sins forgiven are described as loosed (LXX. Isa. xl. 2). Both figures are based on a deeper view of the case. When a person is refused admission into the Church, or excluded from it, all the guilt of his life is, so to speak, concentrated into one judgment ; while its collective effect is removed, or loosed, when he is received into the Church, or absolved. The object of this binding and loosing is stated only in general terms. No doubt it combined all the three elements of the power of the keys, as the non-remission or remission of sins (Chrysostom and many others), — viz.: 1. The principle of admission or non-admission into the Church, or the announcement of grace and of judgment (the kingdom of heaven is closed to unbelievers, opened to believers.) 2. Personal decision as to the admission of cate- chumens (Acts viii.). 3. The exercise of discipline, or the administra- tion of excommunication from the Church (in the narrower sense, i. e., without curse or interdict attaching thereto). In the antithesis between earth and heaven, the former expression refers to the order and organiza- tion of the visible Church ; the latter, to the kingdom of heaven itself. These two elements then — the actual and the ideal Church — were to coin- cide in the pure administration of the Apostles. But this promise is limited by certain conditions. It was granted to Peter in his capacity as a witness, and as confessing the revelation of the Father (Acts v.), but not to Peter as wavering or declining from the truth (Matt. xvi. 23; Gal. ii.).
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL IDEAS.
1. At first sight it may seem an accident that the first announcement of the Church as distinct from, and in contrast to, the State — while the ancient theocratic community combined both Church and State — should have been made in the district of Caesarea, which owned the sway of so mild a monarch as Philip. At any rate, the event was one of uni- versal historical importance, and may be regarded as the preparation for the feast of Pentecost.
2. In what passed between our Lord and Ilis disciples we are led to observe, — (1) The contrast between human opinions of religion and a confession of faith prompted and evoked by the grace of God : — in the for-
676 Lange s Theological and [October
mer case, fear, dejection, uncertainty, and discordance; in the latter, courage, frankness, certainty, and unity. (2) The indissoluble connec- tion between true confession and a life of revelation and in the Spirit, or regeneration; (3) between a common confession and the formation of the visible Church; (4) between the confession of the Church to Christ and Christ’s confession to the Church; (5) between the character of the first believing confessor and his official calling.
3. In the text, Peter is presented to us in a two-fold relationship: (1) As Peter; (2) as receiving the keys. The former designation applied to him as the first believing confessor, the first member of the ikhkho-U, to which others were afterwards to be joined. Hence it referred to his practical life as a Christian bearing witness to Jesus, rather than to his official position iu the Church. This spiritual character formed the basis of his office in the narrower sense, the main purport of which was to arrange individual believers into a community, and, by organizing a visi- ble Church, to separate between the world and the kingdom of heaven. As being the first witness to Jesus, Peter, so to speak, laid the founda- tion of the Church: (1) By his confession on this occasion; (2) by his testimony, Acts ii. ; (3) by his admission of the Gentiles into the Church, Acts x. ; (4) by being the means of communicating to the Church the dis- tinguishing feature of his character — fidelity of confession.
4. On the fact that the Church indelibly bears not only the character- istic of Peter, but of all the Apostles ; or that all the apostolic offices are unchangeably perpetuated in it, comp. Com. on ch. x, (against Irvingism); and SchafPs History of the Apostolic Church, § 129, p. 516, sqq.
5. In its apostolic nucleus, its apostolic beginning, and its apostolic depth and completeness, the Church is so thoroughly identified with the kingdom of heaven itself, that its social determinations should in all these respects coincide with the declaration of God’s Spirit. But this applies only in so far as Peter was really Peter — and hence one with Christ, or as Christ is in the Church. That there is a difference between' the Church and the kingdom of heaven, which may even amount to a partial opposition, is implied in the antithesis: “on earth” — “in heaven.”
6. The present occasion must be regarded as the initial foundation, not as the regular and solemn institution, of the Church. The promises given to Peter still relate to the future. For the strong faith which prompted his confession was rather a prophetic flash of inspiration (the blossom), than a permanent state of mind (the fruit). This appears from the fol- lowing section.
7. In this passage Peter is represented as the foundation-stone, and Christ as the builder; while in 1 Cor. iii. 11, Christ is designated the foundation, and the Apostles the builders. “ The latter figure evidently alludes to the relation between the changing and temporary labourers in the Church, and her eternal and essential character, more especially her eternal foundation; while the figurative language of Jesus applies to the relation between the starting-point and commencement of the Church in time, her outward and temporal manifestation, and her eternal Builder.’'
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(From the author’s Leben Jem, ii. 2, p. 886). Richter ( Erklarte Hausbibel, i. 157) : “The Church opens the way into the kingdom of heaven. Christ built on Peter and the Apostles, not his kingdom, but his Church, which is one, though not the only, form in which Christianity manifests itself.” Hence Olshausen is mistaken in regarding the bucxWa as simply tanta- mount to the finrlKtia. r ou 0ku.
[Wordsworth observes on the words: they shall not prevail; “That these words contain no promise of infallibility to St. Peter, is evident from the fact that the Holy Spirit, speaking by St. Paul in Canonical Scripture, says that he erred (Gal. ii. 11-13).* And that they do not contain any promise of infallibility to the bishop of Rome is clear, among other proofs, from the circumstance that Pope Liberius (as Athanasius relates, Historia Arian. 41, p. 291) lapsed into Arianism, and Honorius was anathemized of old by Roman pontilfs as an heretic.” — P. S.]
8. For special treatises on the supposed primacy of Peter, see Heubner, p. 236 ; Danz, Universalworterbuch, article Primat; Bretschneider, Sys- tematise Entwicklung, p. 796, etc.
9. On the power of the keys, see Heubner, p. 240; the author’s Positive Dogmatik, p. 1182, — the literature belonging to it, p. 1196; Bed. Kirchl. Vierteljahrsschrift, ii. 1845, Nr. 1; Rothe, Ethik, iv. 1066. [Compare also Wordsworth, Alford, Brown, and the American commentators, Barnes, Alexander, Owen, Jacobus, Whedon, Nast on ch. xvi. 19. — P. S.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL HINTS.
The Church of Christ founded under the sentence of expulsion pro- nounced on Christ and His Apostles both by the Jewish Church and the State: 1. Its preparatory announcement, ch. xvi.; 2. its complete and real foundation (Golgatha) ; 3. its solemn institution and manifestation, • Acts ii. ; comp. ch. iii. and iv. and Ileb. xiii. 13. — The decisive question, “ Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” — Difference between opinions about Christ and the confession of Christ. — The first New Testament con- fession of Christ, viewed both as the fruit and as the seed of the kingdom of heaven: 1. The fruit of the painful labour and sowing of Christ; 2. The germ and seed of every future confession of Christ. — The confession of Peter an evidence of his spiritual life: 1. In its freedom and cheerful self- surrender; 2. in its decidedness; 3. in its infinite fulness; 4. in its gen- eral suitableness for all disciples. — Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God: 1. In His nature; 2. in His mission; 3. in His work. — The joy of the Lord at the first-fruits of His mission. — The Confession of the Lord to His Congregation: 1. How it will continue to become more abundant even to the day of judgment. (Whosoever shall confess Me,” etc.) 2. What it imports. (The blessedness of Simon in his character as Peter.) — The
* [But this was only an error of conduct, not of doctrine ; and hence proves nothing against the inspiration of the apostles nor the pretended infallibility of the pope. — P. S.]
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Son of the living God acknowledging those who are begotten of the Father as His own relatives and brethren. — The life of faith of Christians ever a revelation of the Father in heaven. — Genuine confession a fruit of regen- eration.— The rock on which Christ has founded His Church, or Peter in a spiritual sense, is faithfulness of confession ( Bekenntnisstreue ). — Fidelity of confession the first characteristic mark of the Church. — Relation be- tween Christ, the Rock of the kingdom of heaven, the corner-stone of the everlasting Church, and the rock-foundation on which His visible Church on earth is reared: In the one case, the Apostles are the builders, and Christ the rock and corner-stone; 2. in the other case, the Apostles are the foundation, and Christ the builder. — Only when resting on that rock which is Christ will his people become partakers of the same nature. — How the Church of Christ will endure for ever, in spite of the gates of Hades. — The old, legal, and typical Church, and the new Church of the living Saviour, in their relation to the kingdom of death: 1. The former is overcome by the kingdom of death ; 2. the latter overcomes the kingdom of death. — Complete victory of Christ’s kingdom of life over the kingdom of death. — First Peter, then the keys; or, first the Christian, then the office. — The power of the keys as a spiritual office: 1. Its infinite impor- tance : announcement of the statutes of the kingdom of heaven ; decision respecting the admission and continuance [of members] ; or, in its three- fold bearing — (a) on the hearers of the word generally, (6) on catechu- mens, and (c) on communicants. 2. The conditions of its exercise: a living confession, of which Christ is the essence ; readiness to bind as well as to loose, and vice versa, the ratification of the kingdom of heaven.— The keys of the prisons of the Inquisition, and of the coffers of Indulgences, as compared with the keys of the kingdom of heaven, or, the difference be- tween the golden and the iron keys. — The confession of faith kept as a secret from the enemies of Christ. — The preparatory festival of the New Covenant.
Starke : — It is useful, and even necessary, for preachers to be aware of the erroneous fancies which are in vogue among their hearers on the sub- ject of religion. — Cramer: Every man should be able to give an account of his faith, John xvii. 3. — The discordant thoughts respecting the person of Christ. — Majns: The just must live by his own faith. — Osiander: Be not vacillating, but assured in your own minds. — Jerome : Quemadmodum os loquitor pro toto corpore, sic Petms lingua erat Apostolorum et pro omni- bus ipse respondit. — The other two confessions of Peter, Matt. xiv. 33; John vi. 68. — If we acknowledge Christ aright in our heart, we shall also freely confess him with our mouth, Rom. x. 10. — The divine and human natures combined in the person of Christ. — Blessedness of faith. — To know Christ is to be saved, John xvii. 3. — Quesnel: True blessedness: 1. It consists not in the advantages of birth, nor in natural gifts, nor in riches, nor in reputation and dignity ; but, 2. in the possession of the gifts of grace through Christ. — Hedinger: All true faith is the gift of God. — Osiander: If the truth of God is mixed up with human fancies, it does
Whedon and Hazard on the Will.
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more harm than good. — Let no one hastily talk of the good which he has received, hut let him first make experiment of its reality, Eccles. v. 1.
Gerlach: — The Christian Church possesses this power of the keys, not in its outward capacity or organization, hut in so far as the Spirit rules in it. Hence, whenever it is exercised as a merely outward law, without the Spirit, the Lord in His providence disowns these false pretensions of the visible Church.
Heubner: — In order to be decided, and to become our own faith, we must publicly profess it. — How little value attaches to the opinions of the age on great men !*■ — The independence of Christians of prevalent opin- ions.— Peter’s confession not his faith only, but that of all disciples, John vi. 68. — Peter’s confession the collective confession of the Apostles. — See what value Christ sets on this faith. — It is impossible for any man, even though he were an apostle, to impart faith to another. This is God’s prerogative.
* [Not, How much great men are influenced by the opinions of the age, as the Edb. trsl., misled by the German wie viel (which must be understood ironically), reverses the meaning of the original, thus making Heubner contradict himself in the next sentence. Heubner alludes to the confused and contradictory opinions of the Jews concerning Christ, ver. 15, and then contrasts with them the firm conviction of faith in Peter, ver. 16. Great men, during their life- time, meet with the very opposite judgments at the bar of ever-changing popu- lar opinion, and they are not truly great unless they can rise above it and qui- etly pursue the path of duty, leaving the small matter of their own fame in the hands of a just God and of an appreciating posterity which will judge them by the fruits of their labour. — P. S.j
Art. V. — The Freedom of the Will as a Basis of Human Responsibility and Government ; elucidated and maintained in its issue with the Necessitarian Theories of Hobbes, Edwards, the Princeton Essayists, and other leading advo- cates. By D. D. Whedon, D. D. New York: Carlton & Porter. 1864.
Freedom of Mind in Willing; or, Every Being that Wills, a Creative First Cause. By Rowland G. Hazard. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1864.
These works agree in being occupied with some preliminary discussions in regard to the nature of the Will, Liberty, and Necessity, and then in being devoted mainly and avowedly to the refutation of Edwards’s famous treatise on this subject. However successful or unsuccessful these attempts, they are
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certainly renewed testimonies of the highest order to the mighty power and adamantine logic of that great work. Volumes upon volumes have been published against it by the acutest of its adversaries; yet they appear not to have demolished it so thoroughly but that the representative advocates of the con- trary scheme regard themselves as called upon to do the work over again, in order that it may be done effectually; that the book, in short, may be so put down as to stay down. Within not far from a quarter of a century, besides numerous elaborate criticisms in the Quarterlies, through which so many of our ablest thinkers address the public, we call to mind no less than five solid volumes, wholly or chiefly in review of Edwards on the Will, and all, with one exception, adverse. Surely there must be some strength in a fortress which, having survived all other assaults from the Old world and the New, for nearly a century, followed by the fierce bombardment of Tappan and Bledsoe here, still abides to challenge the cautious sapping and mining of Hazard, along with the furious and desperate storming of Whedon.
In truth, these very assailants contribute to its tenacity of life, not merely by promoting its continued notoriety and fame, and bearing witness that it still exerts an influence and convic- tive force which require to be neutralized, but by furnishing evidence, more and more cumulative, of the futility of all replies to its fundamental positions and crucial arguments. This is none the less, but all the more so, notwithstanding any flaws which may be detected in some of the many lines of argument of which Edwards’s inventive logical mind was so prolific, and the still greater infelicities of language which occasionally obscure or enfeeble his sharpest distinctions and reasonings with seeming ambiguity, or even contradiction. For, in spite of all this, the main pillars of his argument stand unmoved and impregnable. The blemishes to which we have referred, developed by a century of incessant and relentless criticism, no more impair their massive and unyielding solidity, than the seams, and clefts, and fissures of the rock impair the firmness and perpetuity of the everlasting mountains. And they are shown to be all the more moveless and impregnable by the manifest impotence and absurdity of the attacks of the
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mightiest assailants. Let candid and thinking men, for exam- ple, study the answers which these volumes offer to Edwards’s argument for the anterior certainty of volitions, from the divine foreknowledge and providence; from the case of God, angels, and glorified saints in heaven, and the irreclaimably obdurate in hell; and can he help feeling the' weakness of the cause which is driven to such staggering efforts for its defence, or the strength of that fortress against which no stronger assault can be made? We think the real effect of such works, notwith- standing all their elaborate, boastful, and defiant plausibilities, is at length to work a conviction in honest minds — nay, in the minds of their warmest admirers — that there is something not easily overthrown in this great treatise of Edwards, and other cognate works of the great divines of the church, after all.
We have adverted to the unfortunate effect of certain ambi- guities and infelicities in Edwards’s terminology. It will facili- tate our work if we point out some of the more conspicuous and perplexing of them. It is proper to observe, however, that, for various reasons, the terms relating to this subject have an inherent ambiguity, against which few, if any writers, can fully guard by qualifying adjuncts ; and further, that it is not strange that a century of the ablest friendly and adverse criticism should have detected imperfections of this sort, which the author, with all his marvellous keenness, overlooked. The most important instances of this sort which now occur to us, although not confined to him, were,
1. The ambiguous use of the word will. In his formal defi- nition of it, Edwards makes it include, after the manner of the schoolmen and older writers, all the active or non-cognitive powers of the soul, comprehending not only the power of voli- tion, but of sensibility, desire, and affection. But his argument impliedly or expressly takes will in the narrower sense in which modern writers usually take it, as the mere power of volition, or of carrying out, in choice and purpose, the prevailing desires and dispositions of the soul. With this latter sense of the word, his argument is clear, cogent, and unanswerable; with the former, it runs into confusion, and is open to abundant criticism.
2. The word motive is subject to similar embarrassment. Sometimes it denotes the inward desires which determine the
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volition, sometimes the object of choice, sometimes both — “whatever excites the mind to choice.” The doctrine that the will is as the strongest motive, is true, if by motive be meant those inward states and activities of the mind which determine its choices. It is not true, if by motive be meant anything exterior to the mind, as some of the circuitous phraseology of Edwards and others, at times, suggests. ; To this circumstance many of the most plausible criticisms upon his work owe their power.
3. Another word is necessity. Edwards, in common with many others, adopts, or permits himself to use, this word, to denote the certainty of the connection between the choice or volition and the antecedent desire or inclination which prompts and determines it. This use of the word necessity, although often adopted by both parties in this controversy, so that the advocates of contingency or contrary choice insist in calling their opponents Necessitarians, and are allowed to do so with- out sufficient protest against it, is nevertheless improper and injurious. Define and explain as we will, words ever tend towards their natural and normal import in the minds of read- ers, and even of the writers themselves, who so explain and define them in a “non-natural sense.” While it is true, and shown by the irrefragable demonstration of Edwards, that there is the aforementioned certainty of volitions, and that it is con- sistent with their freedom, the word necessity constantly sug- gests the idea of an outward constraint or mechanical force incompatible with liberty. This word ought, therefore, to be banished from these discussions, and certainty should be substi- tuted in its place, being the essential point in issue.
4. Another equivocal word in this controversy is good. The doctrine of Edwards and other writers is, that “ the will is as the greatest apparent good.” Some restrict the .word to denote happiness, or the means of happiness, in which case the maxim is not true. Eor men undeniably choose the right, and other objects, as well as happiness. But if good be used for what seems at the moment of choice most desirable, the maxim is true, a^d is abundantly demonstrated to be true, by Edwards, as well as by the most intimate consciousness of every free- agent.
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5. Another term -which, as used by Edwards and others, frequently causes misapprehension, is self-determination. What Edwards demonstrates is, that the will does not determine itself irrespective of the intellect, feelings, and desires. This is true. But it is equally true, that the will is not determined by forces ah extra. It is determined, or determines itself in its free act- ings, according to the desires of the mind. And since one view of the will given by Edwards is, that it is no separate agent, but only a faculty or activity of the mind, the “ mind willing,” it may he truly said that the will so defined, i. e ., the “ mind willing” determines itself according to its own inclina- tions. In his crushing assaults upon the self-determination of the will independently of the antecedent state of the soul, he has not always sufficiently guarded against the interpretation of those, who charge him with wholly denying all self-determi- nation of the soul, even according to its own pleasure, in volition.
These explanations and qualifications at once eliminate the most vulnerable parts of Edwards’s work, and dispose of a large portion of the plausible reasonings against it, found in the pre- sent, and other attacks upon it. This remark applies particu- larly to Mr. Hazard’s work, on which we will offer a few brief remarks, before touching Dr. Whedon’s volume, which will occupy our chief attention.
Of Mr. Hazard’s antecedents we know nothing. All our knowledge of him is through this carefully wrought volume, which shows him to be an earnest and candid thinker, not wanting in metaphysical acumen and speculative insight. He makes an occasional side utterance that ought not to be over- looked. He evidently has a tender side towards idealism and monism. Although “ admitting for the purposes of argument the existence of matter as distinct from spirit,” he says that “all the sensations which we attribute to matter are as fully accounted for by the hypothesis that they are the thought, the imagery of God, directly imparted, or made palpable to our finite minds, as by the hypothesis of a direct external substance in which he has moulded this thought and imagery.” Pp. 5 — 8. “We do not even know that the movement of our own hand as a Sequent of our volition is not a uniform mode of God’s action, and not by our own direct agency.” P. 365. Such declarations
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show that the author is not wholly free from an idealistic and even pantheistic drift.
Again, he gives a strange definition of knowledge, in the fol- lowing terms: “ Of knowledge, obviously an important element in all intelligent cause, I will further remark, that I deem the term, in strict propriety, applicable only to those ideas, or per- ceptions of the mind, of which we entertain no doubt, and that it is applicable to such, even though they are not conformable to truth; for if we cannot say we know that of which we have no doubt, there is nothing to which we can apply the term and it is useless.” P. 18. Again, “the knowledge of each individual as to what is morally right for him is infallible.” P. 159.
We think that two great errors lurk, if they are not per- fectly obvious, in these extracts. The one is, that men may know what is untrue. This subverts the nature and essence of knowledge, which consists in the cognition of what is, and not of unrealities. What has no existence is not knowable as existent. What is not a possible object of knowledge cannot be known. It may be a matter of belief, it may be a delusion, but it cannot be known. The view in question really oblite- rates the distinction between truth and error. Belief of the one is just as certainly knowledge as the other; but error is, in fact, only a form of ignorance. And surely ignorance and knowledge are not identical. Such a system, by depriving knowledge of the element of certainty, placing it on the same footing as error, really destroys all foundations, except those of scepticism, and these it lays firmly and immovably.
This is all the more conspicuous, as we see the author carry- ing out this principle into the sphere of ethics, theoretical and applied. He says, “ the knowledge of each individual as to what he thinks right, is for him infallible." This we under- stand to erect each man’s conscience or moral judgment into an infallible rule or standard of righteousness, no matter how perverted or defiled that conscience may be. This is among the most mischievous and superficial popular fallacies. No errors of moral judgment are excusable, or can excuse crimes committed in conformity to them. A woe is upon them who call good evil, and evil good; who put light for darkness, and darkness for light. Does the fact that Paul “verily
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thought he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth” — that many think they “do God service” in persecuting his people — justify these crimes, or are such moral judgments “infallible” or excusable? Such a view ob- literates all moral distinctions, all immutable righteousness, together with the supreme authority of God and his word. It is doubtless true that a man sins if he disobeys his conscience; but it is also true that he sins in doing what is wrong, even though it be enjoined or approved by conscience. A man whose conscience is misguided, is in a fearful dilemma. If he obeys his conscience, he sins, for he does what is wrong in itself; and a bad conscience can never make wrong right. His intention is good, but his act is evil. On the other hand, if he violate his conscience, he does what he believes wrong. His intention is therefore evil, though his act, aside of such intention, be good. An act, to be good in every aspect of it, must be good as to matter and form — good in itself, and good in the intent of the doer; and no delusion or blindness of con- science can make good evil, or evil good. The true solution of the difficulty is, that it is every man’s duty to enlighten his conscience, as he may, by the candid and earnest use of the means within his reach; to know the right, and to do it. This he may do if he will. For, “if any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.”
With regard to Mr. Hazard’s arguments about the will, and Edwards’s Inquiry concerning it, we think they are almost entirely obviated, or shown to be irrelevant, by the explana- tions we have attempted, and a due estimate of the ambiguities and infelicities of language we have endeavoured to point out. The point in issue is, whether the will acts contingently, for- tuitously, and independently of the antecedent states and activities — the views, preferences, and inclinations of the soul — or under their influence; whether the mind determines its volitions in accordance with them, or uninfluenced by them ; and whether antecedent certainty of volitions, thus arising from the previous bias of the mind, consists with their freedom and responsibility? To this latter question, Edwards, Calvin, Augustine, and their followers say, yes. Their adversaries say,
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no. This is the simple issue, however it may have been some- times obscured or misstated.
Now, on this issue, Mr. Hazard, notwithstanding so many of his excerpts from Edwards, which he dexterously manipulates into targets easy to hit and shatter, really supports the former side — the side of those he evidently deems his adversaries, whatever counter doctrines and implications he may casually put forth. And this is true, not in the same sense as it is true of Dr. Whedon and other controvertists of that side, that they occasionally acknowledge the truth they assail, either inadvertently or by constraint. It is the main doctrine of his book. Its counter utterances are the exceptional ones. Mr. Hazard, however, appears to suppose that this doctrine, that the mind controls its own volitions according to its previous judgment and preference, (or as he, by an extraordinary mis- nomer, calls this antecedent of volition, choice , which is no other than volition itself,) establishes contrary choice in the sense denied by the Edwardean or Augustinian school. In our view, on the other hand, it utterly overthrows this dogma. But first, of the proof that he maintains as we allege, and then for its consequences.
First, he asserts not that the “will, but that the mind, the active being, determines its own volition, and that it does this by means of its knowledge; and further, that the choice which it is admitted in most, if not in all cases, precedes the effort, or act of will, is not, as Edwards asserts, itself an act of will, but is the knowledge of the mind that one thing is superior to another, or suits us better than other things ; this knowledge being always a simple mental perception, to which previous effort may or may not have been requisite; and that every act of the will is a beginning of a new action, independent of all previous actions — which, of themselves , nowise affect or influ- ence the new action, though the knowledge acquired in or by such previous actions, being used by the mind to direct this new action, may be to it the reason of its acting, or of the manner of its acting; and that in the use of such knowledge to direct or adapt its action to the occasion, or to its want,” &c. Pp. 233-4.
Here, it will be observed, that the mind determines its own
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volition “by means of its knowledge,” which knowledge is “ choice:” a perception that “one thing is superior to another, or suits us better than other things;” that the use of such know- ledge is to “ direct” volition, and “ adapt it to its wants.” How could it be more clearly stated that volition is directed, made certain by the antecedent apprehensions, preferences, or in his queer phrase, “choice” of the mind? And is this any the less so, though it is said in the same breath, that “ every act of the will” is the “beginning of a new action indepen- dent of all previous actions?”
Mr. Hazard speaks of “adapting” the volition to the “waat” of the soul. “Want” figures largely, but none too largely, in his system. He says, “Intelligence in acting, then, must have an object. The object of its action must be an effect which it wants to produce. The mind acting intelligently, will not make an effort or will to produce an effect which it does not want to produce. Every volition, then, must arise from the feeling or perception of some want bodily or mental; otherwise there is no object of action.” P. 53. “Its want furnishing an object of action, and its knowledge enabling it to determine what action, are all that distinguish the mind from unintelligent cause or force. . . . The want does not, generally, arise from a volition. We may want, we do want, without effort to want. The mind could not begin its action by willing a want, unless there were first a want of that want.” Pp. 56, 57.
How could language more explicitly enunciate the doctrine that the acts of the will are guided by our desires or wants, and the dictates of intelligence, as to the best means of gratify- ing them? Nay, it is plainly and rightly taught that volitions without such stimulus and guidance are impossible. Indeed, one of the author’s definitions of will is, “ the mode in which intelligence exerts its power.” P. 249. “The mind directs its act of will by means of its knowledge, in which act being thus self-directed, it acts freely.” Pp. 402, 403. It would be diffi- cult, in briefer terms, to state the truth, that freedom in voli- tion supposes it directed and made certain by the antecedent apprehensions and desires of the mind. This involves the whole for which the class whom they style Necessitarians contend. All Mr. Hazard’s reasonings in regard to the formulas of
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Edwards, that “the will is as the greatest apparent good,” as the “last dictate of the understanding,” as the inclination, preference, desire, &c., end in proving that the acts of will are determined by the mind through its wants and intelligence, and not by forces ab extra. This is well enough in its place, but, with regard to the question at issue, it is ignoratio elenchi. The thing to be proved is, not that the mind determines its volitions; but that it does not determine them in virtue of, and in accord- ance with, its antecedent states. Just the opposite of this is what Mr. Hazard proves, and his whole analysis of the will requires — although he appears at times to think, that proving the mind’s direction of its own volitions proves the power of contrary choice, in opposition to that to which the will is freely guided by the intelligence and wants of the soul. Yet he says, “if there be of necessity a connection between this decision and effort, this only proves that the mind is of necessity free in such effort; and to assert the contrary, is again like saying that freedom is not free because it is of necessity free.” P. 382. Thus it appears that even necessity may connect the act of will with the previous judgment or “decision” of the mind, without impairing its freedom.
But this is still more clearly and decisively brought out by the author in reference to the divine actions and volitions. “I have already alluded to the fact, that this uniformity of the action of Supreme Intelligence, as observed in many cases, may arise in part from the perfect wisdom by which it determines its acts without the necessity of experiment. The same remark applies in some degree to the action of finite will, which, with finite wisdom, knowing or ascertaining by experience or otherwise the best modes in certain cases, will adopt them whenever such cases arise; and this gives some appearance of reason for the application of the law of uniformity and necessity in cause and effect to the mind.” P. 378. This is a sufficiently emphatic tes- timony, that the certain and uniform direction of volitions, in accordance with an antecedent state of mind, no way militates against their freedom and moral quality.
Yet, notwithstanding these declarations of the formal doc- trine of the book, the author is so possessed with the doctrine of contrary or contingent volition, and with the conviction that
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he has unanswerably proved it, that he gives up the doctrine of God’s foreknowledge, which he has the candour (unusual with this class of writers,) to concede and evince is undermined by such a theory of the will. To this we shall again recur. Meanwhile we pass to the work of Dr. Whedon, who is now, we believe, acknowledged primus inter pares among the ex- pounders and champions of Methodism in our country.
His book contains one of the most ardent and searching dis- cussions of the subject that have yet appeared. Bold, adven- turous, inventive, eager, he threads every argument of his adversaries, presses on with burning zeal, and stops not till he appears to himself to have demolished all opposing theories, and completely worsted their supporters. Dr. Whedon is in his way a strong man. He betrays a force of intellect, an earnestness of conviction, and energy of will, which eminently fit him to lead other minds, and quite explain his polemical primacy in his communion. Amid much that is crude, he is never tame, feeble, or timid. He moves with a great momen- tum, which, indeed, is all the more crushing to himself when, with equal blindness and boldness, he dashes against the ever- lasting rock. He deals sledge-hammer blows, and, alas! too often with a fatal recoil upon himself. He is so radical and destructive in his principles, that he is altogether suicidal.
Before presenting to our readers the proofs and illustrations of these characteristics, as shown in his arguments, we feel called upon to notice some exhibitions of them in his language. We do not remember any respectable book, for a long time, so deformed with barbarisms of obsolete and new-coined words, whose inherent ugliness is not palliated by any valid plea of necessity. We have no taste for word-criticism, much less would we make a man an offender for a word, however illegiti- mate, if it be a solitary or nearly solitary instance. We accord the fullest liberty of introducing new terms, whether derivatives of our own, or importations from a foreign tongue, to more fully articulate new phases of thought, of which a correspondent growth of language is the mysterious but normal exponent. But on none of these grounds can we sanction the introduc- tion of such terrific vocables as volitivity , impressibilities , free- wilier, uni8ub8tanceism, impellency , non- differentiation, begin- vol. xxxvi. — no. iv. 87
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ningless , volitionate, freedomism, freedomistic, mustness , excep- tionlessly, necessitarianly, uniformitarian, alter nativity, un- compulsorily, adamantinized, unimpededly , and much more the like.
The radical principle of this book is, that freedom of the will is the power to choose either way, in such a sense as to pre- clude any previous “fixing” of the choice, or securing or making it certain that it shall be in one direction rather than the other. The author denounces all antecedent “fixation” of choice, so as to render it certain to the exclusion of the con- trary, as incompatible with liberty, and involving a necessity subversive of freedom and responsibility. Edwards’s definition of liberty, as the power of doing as we please, he utterly scouts and derides. P. 28.
“A man may do as he pleases and yet not be free, both because his antecedent please is necessitated, and because he is limited and circumscribed to the course with which he is pleased. Power both pro and contra, power to the thing and from the thing is requisite for the liberty of a free agent. Power, then, to the volition and from the volition, and to a reverse volition must exist, or the agent is not free in the volition. It is an error to call an agent volitionally free, unless he has power for either one of two or more volitions.” Pp. 34-5. If we “put forth a volition which is under neces- sitation to be what it is from previous volition, responsible free- dom ceases. . . . The same necessitative result follows if we suppose the volition is as some fixed antecedent, whether such antecedent be a ‘choice,’ an ‘inclination,’ a ‘wish,’ or a ‘please.’ For if each and every antecedent in the series, however long the series be, is fixed by its predecessor and fixes its successor, the whole train is necessitated, and the putting forth of the last volition, the one in question is ante- riorly fixed. And a volition whose putting forth is anteriorly fixed to a unitary result is not free.” P. 30.
There can be no mistake as to the meaning of all this. If the volition be previously fixed and made certain, and the non- existence of the contrary insured by any antecedent whatever, be it outward or inward, even by the will, choice, inclination, ■wish, pleasure of the soul, this destroys its freedom and ac-
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countability. And that there may be no possible chance for misconstruction here, he puts it in a great variety of forms. He tells us : — “ The fact that the will is drawn or secretly attracted, so that the volition goes forth eagerly and of itself, as the soul does of itself by its own spontaneous power go after happiness, renders the necessity none the less absolute. Around the faculties of the soul a circumvallating line of causa- tion is still thereby none the less drawn because it is delicately drawn and finely shaded. The resisting power at the spring of the will may be as completely annihilated by a seduction or fascination as by a rude impulsion. Causation securing effect, which Edwards maintains must rule at every infinitesimal point to secure us from atheism, as truly secures this so-called free forthgoing of the soul as the steam-power secures the move- ment of the car. No fine word-painting will change this necessity to freedom.” Pp. 30-1.
No language could more plainly declare, that whatever secures a given volition, to the exclusion of the contrary, destroys its freedom. The choice being as certainly secured as the move- ment of a car by a locomotive, is no more free than the move- ment of that car. Any “seduction” or “fascination” which obtains such mastery as to render certain the free choices of the will, destroys their freedom and their merit or demerit. Even the grace of God, with irresistible sweetness drawing us, that we should run after God, according to this, destroys our freedom. Hence the phrase, “ To secure the certainty of a free act, is absurd, because contradictory.” P. 227. “Is a previously decreed volition any more responsible than a pre- viously decreed intellection or muscular spasmodic action? . . . . God may as well secure my damnation without anything volun- tary, as secure it by securing the voluntary. Securing my volition in order that he may secure my voluntary sin and con- sequent condemnation, is about the poorest piece of sneaking despotism that one could attribute to an omnipotent evil.” P. 210.
If all this, and a vast deal more of the same sort in this book be so, then there is no security for the continued fealty of a single saint on earth or in heaven for another hour. And not only so, there is no certainty that God, or angels, or glorified
f
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men, will not swerve from purity, “make a hell of heaven,” and devastate the moral universe !
Indeed, the author puts the premise for this dread conclusion in such strong and explicit terms, as amount almost to the direct assertion of it, in the following, as wrnll as other passages.
“Freedom is as much contradicted by a law of Invariability, that is, a law by which all will does obey the strongest motive, even though able to do otherwise, as by a law of Causation. If the invariability be formulated as an anterior fact, strictly absolute and universal, pervading all actual and possible cases, then, by the law of Contradiction, the counter exception becomes impossible. Thus it is claimed by some thinkers that though the Will possesses power for choice against the strongest motives, yet that choice ivill never be used. If that never is an invariability, as truly in itself universal as the law of causation, the usance of the power of counter choice is impossible. It is incompati- ble with an absolute universal contradictory fact, and cannot take place, — and that the reverse of which cannot be, is a necessity. A power which cannot be used, a power which is not in the power of the agent for act, is no adequate power in the agent at all. It exists in words only, and can be no satis- factory basis of responsibility.” Pp. 38, 39.
By no possible torture can this and much more the like, be strained into consistency with the certainly immutable holiness of God, the future stability of the angels and saints in heaven, or the perpetual impiety of devils and lost men in hell. And what shall be thought of that scheme which must be false, unless heaven may apostatize and hell be converted ? Other porten- tous consequences of it are too obvious, and have been made too prominent in discussions upon this subject, to be overlooked, even by Dr. Whedon himself. It is clearly incompatible with the foreknowledge and providence of God. It enthrones contin- gency or chance. It overthrows original righteousness, original . sin, and efficacious grace. The reasonings by which it is sup- ported, applied to undeniable facts, tend towards Universalism, and, as we shall see, are pushed by the author himself full far in that direction. Indeed, it subverts' and utterly vacates freedom itself. For the idea that a choice should be free, and at the same time contrary to the pleasure of the agent, is a contradiction,
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utterly opposite to all normal consciousness, and wholly incon- ceivable. And if a free choice be according to our pleasure, then it will be such as that pleasure prompts, and no other — free as to the manner, free in choosing as we please, and, therefore, certain as to the event. This is the undeniable fact with regard to all the most perfect free agents in existence. This doctrine, therefore, maintained professedly in the interest of freedom, in reality subverts it. Let us notice some of the ways in which Dr. Whedon deals with such objections to his scheme.
A careful examination of his book will show,
1. That he wavers in the maintenance of his great principle already brought to viewr, and, at times, apparently gives it up.
2. That he appears at times to accept, and at times to disown many of the logical consequences we have just attributed to it.
3. That consequently his reasonings in support of these shift- ing positions are often confused and contradictory.
1. In regard to his great principle that the rendering of choices certain or invariable by any antecedent ground or influ- ence, destroys freedom and responsibility, the following are among the passages that evince the difficulty of firmly adhering to a doctrine so monstrous.
“Habits are uniformities of action which maybe said to groio upon us by repetition. They are uniformities of volition , too : and they are often performed with so little deliberation as to bear a resemblance to instinct. Positively , habit arises by the influence of the same recurring motives for the which Will will act. Those motives are brought up by the laws of intellectual association of time, place, objects and causation. Natural im- pulses seem to spring up in the being, physical and psychical, sug- gesting the usual volition. Meantime, negatively , counter-motive and counter-thought are gradually more perfectly and constantly excluded. No other than the given way is imagined or enters the mind. And thus the volitions move, as in a passage way w'alled upon either side. The wrall is an amalgam of blending freedom and necessity.” P. 168.
Again: “The motive may be so permanent and strong as to create a firm reliability that the subordinate volitions will accord. Indirectly, the counter motives may be excluded, so as to leave the mind completely shut up to the positive motive,
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and a necessitation be superinduced. Men, thus, may be so absorbed in their plans as to cease to be free alternative agents ; but they seldom or never thereby lose their responsibility.” P. 169.
And yet again : “ So largely and effectively do the disposi- tions, the habits, and the standard purposes influence the voli- tions, both by position and impulse, and by excluding counter courses from the view, that the agent, however intrinsically and by nature free , is, to a great extent, objectively unfree.” P. 170.
Still further : “ Thus, if we have rightly traced the process, is constituted character. Upon a basis of corporeal, physio- logical, and mental nature, are overlaid a primary superstruc- ture of dispositions blending the native and the volitional, and a secondary formation of generic purposes wholly volitional, and formed by repetition into a tertiary of habits; and thus we have in his mingled constitution of necessitation and freedom an agent prepared for his daily free, responsible action.”
P. 171.
Once more: “But of the sin which appropriates the sin of our nature, our axiomatic principles require us to affirm that it is free and avoidable; yet, back of that freedom, we admit that there is a necessity that insures that, sooner or later, the free act of appropriation will be made. It is in this fact that the freedom and the universality of this fall are found to be recon- ciled.” P. 339.
Conclusive as are these passages to the effect that volitions may be rendered antecedently certain and uniform, without impairing their freedom and responsibility; conclusive, there- fore, against the main doctrine of the book, we cannot forbear a single other quotation: — “A character may be formed with a mind so wholly circumscribed within a circle of sensual feel- ings and conceptions, selfish and corrupt maxims, sordid pur- poses and habits, that the complete inventory of the thoughts is depraved, and no honourable or truly ethical volition is within the catalogue of possibilities. Of such a character it may be said, without our being obliged to define whether it be a case of necessity or reliable certainty, that he cannot will nobly or rightly.” P. 172.
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"What language could more decidedly express a complete surrendry of the author’s distinctive doctrine? He goes fur- ther than the bulk of his adversaries, who only contend for a “reliable certainty” in choice, as flowing from the antecedent states of the mind. Any “necessity” beyond such certainty they disown, while in the extracts preceding, our author ap- pears to maintain it. At all events he admits, at the least, such certainty, and calls it necessity. What, then, does all his vehement denunciation, with which this volume is freighted, amount to? Why should he, with such stupendous labour, erect this huge fabric, only to strike it down with a few strokes of his pen? Much more of the same essential force might be taken from his discussion of the power of motives, and else- where ; but it is needless. It hardly helps his case, however, to tell us, that “ for a volition to arise from the influence of motives, is not the same as to be the effect of motives.” P. 159. A cause resting on such a distinction is not less thin and tenuous than the distinction itself. Does he not more than affirm, in these quotations, what he elsewhere so strenuously combats when. put forth by his opponents, viz., freedom in the manner and quality of some actions, along with certainty, and even necessity, as to the event? Also, that the “direc- tion” of choice, under given outward motives, is determined not by the bare natural faculty, but by the moral state”? Do not these passages abundantly teach that choice may be free and responsible, without the “property of choosing the exact contrary of what, in the whole, appears most eligible and de- sirable?”*
* Perhaps we ought not to leave unnoticed here a small bit of small criti- cism on ourselves, in the following terms: — “With a crude philosophy the Princeton Essayist, like other necessitarians, assumes that the mind must be completely occupied with one ‘bias,’ which excludes all coexistent contrarie- ties. “Will any one pretend that it is conscious of a power to choose contrari- wise, its ruling inclination or pleasure being and continuing to choose as it has chosen?” P. 254. “What is meant by a ruling inclination’s choosing, or a pleasure’s choosing, we pretend not to say.” Pp. 373-4. Really, does Dr. Whedon need to be told, what is so obvious to all but captious critics, that the mind’s inclination and pleasure to choose, import simply the mind inclined or pleased to choose ? — that it makes choosing an act of the' mind, according to its inclination or pleasure, and not an act of the pleasure or inclination
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Dr. Whedon, in these extracts, has certainly shown how, in the lowest phase of character, freedom — and what he calls necessity — blend. In the following, among others, he quite soars to the grand Augustinian formula, that “on the highest point of moral elevation, freedom and necessity coincide.”
“We may suppose a free being born under conditions of free moral self-development, to be self-wrought to a state of high perfection. So has he trained his own nature by dropping all evil indulgences, that all evil propensities are lost; and so has he formed his taste to good, that none but motives of good can reach him. His habits are so perfected thereby that tempta- tion ceases. He does right without effort, and ultimately can no more do wrong than I can enjoy the central heat of a fiery furnace. The merit of virtue does not cease when its power is so perfect that its contest is over. Admitting the agent to he now necessarily right , his effortless virtue is none the less meritorious because it has become spontaneous. The merit of his virtue does not cease as soon as he has perfected it.” Pp. 329-30.
We have italicised these last few sentences, because they are so momentous, and so clearly concede the great principles of the Augustinian psychology, which this book is written espe- cially to overthrow. Generally, the italics and capitals found in our quotations are the author’s.
II. We now call attention to some of Dr. Whedon’s admis- sions, more or less explicit, of the consequences which, in our view, result from his theory. 0
In regard to the possibility of a lapse from holiness on the part of God, Dr. Whedon uses the following language: — “The rectitude of God’s actions is what we may call perfectly proba- ble, and certain, practically reliable as any physical necessity, without admitting that the nexus is the same or equally irre- versible, and strictly admitting the power of contrary choice.” P. 314. Deliver us from modes of thinking which can describe the rectitude of the divine acts as probable, even though it be enough so to be “practically reliable;” but not “equally irre- versible” with the nexus between physical cause and effect,
abstractly, or otherwise than as the mind acts according to them? That we have assumed what he here ascribes to us, is an entirely gratuitous assump- tion of Dr. Whedon.
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nay, wholly at the mercy of a strict power of contrary choice ! Is it on such a foundation that our faith in God’s immutable perfection rests? Is a probability, a mere practical reliability, which is less irreversible by the power of contrary choice than the causal connection between the law of gravity and the fall- ing of an apple — that anchor of the soul which is furnished by the oath and promise of Him for whom it is “ impossible to lie” (Heb. vi. 18), and who cannot “deny himself”? 2 Tim. ii. 18.
Dr. Whedon says further: “ God is holy in that he chooses to make his own happiness in eternal Right. Whether he could not make himself equally happy in Wrong, is more than we can say.” P. 316. Again: “And how knows a finite in- sect, like us, that in the course of ages the motives in the universe may not prove strongest for a divine apostasy to evil?” P. 317. The saints in all generations, from the babe in Christ to the “ great Apostle,” know full well the utter and eternal impossibility of these dread contingencies. Otherwise, how could their “hearts be fixed, trusting in the Lord,” even as “Mount Zion, that shall never be moved”?
Dr. Whedon excludes the acts of men and angels from the sphere of God’s purposes and providence. He says: “The Divine plan, as embraced in God’s predetermination, is a scheme strictly embracing only the Divine actions.” P. 293. Such a position needs no comment here. It of course follows inevitably,* that if the actions of creatures are outside of God’s plan and purpose, they are outside of his foreknowledge. Indeed, the utter inconsistency of this scheme with the fore- knowledge of God is so obvious and demonstrable, that it rarely fails to loom up in discussions on this subject. The argument is simple and conclusive. If God has eternally foreknown the actions of free-agents, then there has been an eternal antece- dent certainty what they will be. And this antecedent cer- tainty was inconsistent with their being otherwise. There is no evading this. And if so, such antecedent certainty is com- patible with freedom. It is of no avail to say that foreknow- ledge does not, determine or make certain the action. If it does not make, it proves them certain eternal ages before their occurrence. For what is not in itself certain cannot be an
88
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object of certain knowledge. This, of course, proves a Divine purpose or decree that they shall come to pass. For there is no conceivable ground, before their occurrence, of these actions passing out of the category of things possible to be, into those things that shall be — that is, from mere possibility to positive futurition — but the Divine purpose. But not to dwell upon this, whether it be true or not, the above argument for the absolute unfrustrable antecedent certainty of volitions abides impregna- ble. And among the most remarkable confirmations of the stringency of this argument, are the efforts of adversaries to parry it — especially those contained in the two volumes under review.
Dr. Whedon begins by telling us that “ God’s foreordination must be viewed as being preceded by his foreknowledge.” P. 266. There is no precedence of either, both being alike co-eternal. But that a determination should be known before it is from some source determined — i. e., fixed what it shall be — is a simple contradiction. Dr. Whedon tells us again and again, that “the freedom of an act is not affected by its being an object of foreknowledge.” Of course not. But what does this prove? Nothing, surely, except that Dr. Whedon is mis- taken in his idea of freedom as inconsistent with any antece- dent fixing, and consequent certainty of the choice, to the exclusion of the contrary.
Says our author: “ If that agent in a given case be able to •will either of several ways, there is no need of a present causa- tion to make it certain which he will do. The agent, by his act in the future, makes all the certainty there now is. It is by and from that act solely thus put forth that the present will he of the act exists. He will put forth his act unsecured by any present inalternative making or securement. Whichever act he puts forth it is true that he will put forth; and that now unmade will put forth is all the certainty there is. It is by that putting forth solely, that the present will be is true. All the certainty there is, that is, all the will be about it, depends upon, and arises solely from the act of the free agent himself. It is simply the uncaused will be of an act which can otherwise be. Certainty, therefore, is not a previously made, caused, or manufactured thing.” P. 282. This is a total denial that out
1864.] Whedon and Hazard on the Will. 699
of several acts possible to be, that one which is certain to occur, and is foreknown as certain to occur, has any certainty not created by the act itself; of course, any certainty anterior to the act, and, therefore, any possibility of being foreknown. This effectually subverts the Divine foreknowledge. It is quite in keeping to tell us on the same page, that “no argument can be drawn from the prophecies of holy Scriptures, to prove the predetermination of human actions.” We are hardly surprised after this to be told that, while foreknowledge must know the right fact, it is unnecessary that “the fact should accord with the foreknowledge,” p. 288; or that Dr. Whedon should “deny that between the foreknowledge and the agent-power the con- nection is necessary or indissoluble,” p. 284; or that foreknow- ledge “can be true in full consistency with the existence of a power to make it false,” p. 285; or finally, that “God’s fore- knowledge neither makes the event necessary nor proves it so.” P. 288. We have had enough of Dr. Whedon’s dissolving views on this subject. We now turn to Mr. Hazard’s more logical and manly course — in admitting the inexorable conse- quences of his doctrine, and giving up the Divine Omniscience. He says:
“ An event foreknown by infallible prescience must be as certain in the future as if known by infallible memory in the past, and to say that God foreknows an event, which depends on the action of an agent, which acting without his control, may, of itself, freely and independently produce any one of several different results, or none at all, involves a contradic- tion. I am disposed to yield to the argument of Edwards all the benefit of any doubt on these points; ... to admit that what is certainly foreknown by Omniscience must certainly happen, and that, if God foreknows the volitions of men, then they cannot will freely. . . . though God having the power to determine could foreknow all events, he may forego the exercise of such power, and neither control nor know the par- ticular events which are thus left to be determined by the action of the human mind.” Pp. 385, 386. Of course, when we assent to the argument that foreknowledge is inconsistent with free- dom, it is only in their false meaning of the word freedom as a
700 Whedon and Hazard on the Will. [October
something incompatible with previous certainty. And this remark applies to analogous quotations from Dr. Whedon.
Mr. Hazard, however, gives up the Omniscience of God in behalf of his superficial conception of freedom, only to entangle himself in still more formidable difficulties in regard to God’s providence and government of a universe, the most moment- ous events and highest actions in which are wholly unforeseen. We cannot follow him here. Surely none can study his toil- some and futile attempts to meet these difficulties, without being more firmly convinced of that great truth, the rejection of which involves plunge upon plunge, from deep to deep, till, beneath the lowest, they reach a lower still, in this abyss of absurdities.
We cannot conclude without touching a single other topic. We said that the reasonings employed in support of the doctrine of these volumes point logically towards Universalism, and that Dr. Whedon pushes them full far in that direction. This is a grave allegation. We will briefly give our reasons for it.
The docti'ine of these volumes is simply that the previous fixation, or securing the certainty and invariability of volitions by any antecedents whatever, destroys freedom, responsibility, merit and demerit. But it is undeniable, and is, as we have seen, freely admitted by Dr. Whedon, that such certainty and invariability of sinful choices in mankind are established from the beginning of their moral agency, at least until regenera- tion, by their antecedent state. What is the inevitable conse- quence of such premises? Why, surely, that men are neither culpable nor punishable for their sins, and will not suffer on account of them. Hence salvation is a matter of justice. The atonement is uncalled for and needless, or if it be on any account needful, it is a simple discharge of justice to injured man, rather than a vicarious satisfaction of the demands of Divine justice upon the pardoned sinner. Says Dr. Whedon, p. 341, “ Without losing its intrinsic character of stupendous grace, the atonement becomes a justice — a theodice. It blends in with the terrible elements of our fallen state, and forms an average probational dispensation, in which the Divine Admin- istration appears not merely absolutely just, but practically equitable, and mercifully reasonable to our human reason. . . .
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And thus we see that without the Redeemer no equitable sys- tem of probation for fallen man is a possibility.” This surely makes the atonement, whatever of grace it may contain, a mat- . ter of justice to mankind. But let us look further into the author’s applications of his principle.
He says, “Although there is not a perfect equation of the means and advantages among all mankind, yet it may be affirmed that no man is condemned to everlasting death who has not enjoyed full means and opportunity for salvation , and has (not ?) wilfully rejected them by persevering in a course of conscious sin.” P. 345. Thus, by a single dash of the pen, he acquits and shields from perdition all the heathen whose enormities Paul so graphically depicts (Rom. i.), declaring them “without excuse,” and that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness.” For all this, it remains infallibly true, that the “wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.”
Our author then proceeds to put the most degraded and abandoned part of Christendom on the footing of those who die in infancy, as to their prospects of salvation, in the follow- ing manner:
“ Within the bosom of Christendom there is an immense class adult in years, but apparently entitled to the moral immu- nity of infancy; geographically Christian, but with as little access to a true Christianity as the most distant heathenism. Heathenism in Christendom ! . . . In the dregs of our large cities it is impossible to say what numbers there are whom we can hardly decide whether they are to be assigned to the infant or idiot dispensation, or to heathendom. Each man is, in a de- gree, by himself a dispensation. But what is the ultimate destiny? Precisely the same, we reply, with that of the infant.” Pp. 346-7. “ The application of the same liberality
of interpretation which would save .the visible church in Christendom, would save the invisible church in heathendom. He is a saved heathen who lives as nearly up to the light he has as does the Christian, who is finally saved to the light he has.”
“ Truly that severity of Christian judgment, with which
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many judge the unfavoured peoples, would leave us little hope of the Christian church.” Pp. 350-1.
“Bold assertions in missionary speeches and sermons, that all the world without the pale of Christendom is damned in mass, never quicken the pulse of missionary zeal. On the con- trary, they ever roll a cold reaction upon every feeling heart and every rational mind. Our better natures revolt, and, alas ! a gush of scepticism is but too apt in consequence to rise in the public mind.” P. 357. All this could quite as plausibly be said of the doctrine of eternal punishment — indeed of the very sufferings and woes that shroud the earth — and of the very permission of sin and suffering itself. Quite as plausible and stirring an appeal could be made to the merely human sensi- bilities, as to the consistency of these undeniable facts with the righteousness and benevolence of God. But whither- does all such declamation logically tend? Clearly in the direction of Universalism, of Infidelity, of Atheism. And what strength the missionary cause will have, if the heathen are believed by the Christian community to be as really in a state of salvation, without the gospel, as with it, may be learned from the mission- ary operations of Unitarians and Universalists.
We have now shown what we meant, in saying that the reasoning of this book tended towards Universalism, and are pressed full far by the author in that direction. With this we bring to a close the few criticisms for which we have time, out of the many that these works, especially that of Dr. Whedon, invite. Its superficial plausibility, its vaunting and supercili- ous tone, its pretensions to philosophic depth and subtlety, enlisted in support of a loose latitudinarianism, have very natu- rally secured for it laudations enough to challenge a close examination. It is due, therefore, to the cause of God and truth to call attention to some of its weaker and more danger- ous points. In doing jthis, we have perhaps treated our readers more largely to extracts from the author, than to our own comments upon them, both because we have desired to do full justice to him in letting him speak for himself, and because we fully believe Dr. Johnson’s saying, “No man was ever written down except by himself.” We have no fear of the result of these periodical attacks upon that view of the freedom
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\ of the will, which, in our judgment, alone corresponds with con- sciousness, with all fact, with the representations of Scripture, and the great articles of the Christian faith, as shown in its standard symbols. A system which teaches that volition is not voluntary,* and its supporters cannot uphold without contra- dicting it, which involves either the possibility of future apos- tasy in heaven, or the denial that God, holy angels, and glori- fied saints are free agents; which, to be consistent, must deny either the universal apostasy of our race, or the sin and guilt thereof; which staggers in regard to the foreknowledge of God, vacates his decrees, and militates against the possibility of his universal Providence; whose broad liberalism makes such alarming strides in the path which terminates in universal sal- vation; will gain nothing by challenging renewed attention to its deformities. The foundation standeth sure. The Lord still reigns. He doeth all things after the counsel of his own will. His throne is for ever and ever. It is impossible for him to lie. His counsel shall stand. Therefore his saints surely and for ever trust him.
“In heaven and earth, and air and seas,
He executes his firm decrees,
And by his saints it stands contest That what he does is ever best.”
* “Both the elder and the younger Edwards, as well as jubilant Dr. Pond, were guilty of the oversight, of calling volition a voluntary act.” — Whedon, p. 78. See also p. 22.
( 704 )
Correction by the Hon. Stanley Matthews.
Cincinnati, August 15, 1864.
Rev. Charles Hodge, D. D.,
Editor of Princeton Review.
Bear Sir — In the July Number of the Princeton Review , p. 554, commenting, in your article upon the General Assembly, on the report on the subject of slavery, you impute to me the following declaration : “that every man is bound to presume that the laws and the measures of the government are right and binding. They may be otherwise, but the private citizen is not the judge.”
From the quotation marks, I infer that the language is extracted from some newspaper report of my remarks.
I beg leave to state that I did not use any language to that effect, nor give expression to any such doctrine. What I did say was simply that every citizen was bound to presume that the laws and measures of the government were legal — consti- tutional— valid as civil obligations. This is a very different proposition. An enactment entirely legal and valid as a civil obligation may yet be of such a character as not to give rise to the moral obligation of obedience. On the contrary, there may be a moral obligation to disobey it. But there being no such moral obligation supposed, I simply contended that, as a matter of law, every measure of the civil government is pre- sumed to be legal, and that it was the duty of all citizens so to regard it, until the proper tribunals should have decided other- wise.
I trust you will do me the justice to make the correction in the next number of the Review.
Respectfully, your friend,
Stanley Matthews.
1864.]
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SHORT NOTICES.
Expository Lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism. By George W. Beth- une, D. D. In two volumes. New York: Sheldon & Co., 335 Broad- way. 1864. Yol. i., pp. 491, Vol. ii. 535.
It is a wise ordinance of the Reformed Dutch Church which requires its pastors to lecture regularly on the Catechism from the pulpit on the Sabbath. Originally this was required to be done every Sabbath, the Catechism being divided into fifty- two parts, so as to furnish a topic for every week. In this country the rule has been modified so as to require one lecture a month, which secures the Catechism being gone over once in four years. In this way the doctrinal instruction of the peo- ple is secured. These volumes contain the lectures of the late eminent Dr. Bethune in discharge of this duty. They are what they profess to be, popular expositions. At the same time they contain much sound instruction, presented in a clear and simple manner, in the polished style for which the distin- guished author was remarkable. They constitute a popular body of divinity. Besides an Index, the last volume contains a list of the Commentaries on the Heidelberg Catechism, fill- ing more than twelve pages.
The Early Dawn; or, Sketches of Christian Life in England in the Olden Time. By the author of “Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family.” With an Introduction, by Professor Henry B. Smith, D. D. New York: M. D. Dodd, 506 Broadway. 1864. Pp. 397.
Few works have been more deservedly popular, both in this country and in England, than the “ Chronicles of the Schon- berg-Cotta Family.” The simple announcement that this is a new work from the same author, written on the same plan, will be enough to secure for it a cordial and extensive welcome.
The Hawaian Islands: Their Progress and Condition under Missionary Labours. By Rufus Anderson, D. D., Foreign Secretary of the Ameri- can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Boston : Gould & Lincoln. New York: Sheldon & Co. 1864.
The title and the author of this well-constructed volume will secure for it the eager attention of all interested in missions, and the propagation of the gospel. This attention will be richly rewarded. Dr. Anderson having recently visited the vol. xxxvi. — no. iv. 89
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Sandwich Islands, on a tour of official inspection in behalf of the American Board, was, of course, under the necessity of embodying the results of his observations in a report to that body. In pursuance of this object, he happily soon adopted the plan of a volume, giving a complete history of the past operations and achievements of Christian missionaries, and of the present condition, prospects, and perils of Christianity in these islands, in which modern missions have done their most perfect work, and wrought their most signal triumphs. All these topics are treated in a thorough, instructive, and enter- taining manner. The information in regard to the present efforts of “ Reformed Catholics,” and “Roman Catholics,” to possess the land, and proselyte the people, are especially valu- able. We rejoice that the venerable author, after preparing the “Memorial Volume” of the American Board, has been spared to leave this additional precious legacy to the church. We hope it is but the precursor of others.
Report of the Punjab Missionary Conference , held at Lahore, in December and January, 1862, 1863: including the Essays read, and the Dis- cussions which followed them ; also, Prefatory Remarks and other Papers; closing with a Comprehensive Index of the Subjects Discussed, and a Glossary of Urdu Words used by the Writers and Speakers. Edited by the Committee of Compilation. Lodiana: Printed at the American Presbyterian Mission Press, the Rev. A. Rudolph, Superin- tendent. 1863. Sold by Robert Carter & Brothers, 530 Broadway, New York.
Many of our readers will remember the Missionary Confer- ence, some years ago, in New York, under the auspices of Dr. Duff, at which various questions of moment connected with missions were vigorously discussed. Subsequent conferences of a similar character have been held at Calcutta, at Benares, at Octacamund, at Liverpool, and now at Lahore. These confer- ences have come to be established institutions, to meet the ever new and exigent questions developed by the growth of missions, and their manifold surroundings and relations. We have, in a former number, presented an extended account of the Liverpool Conference, which showed the importance of the questions dis- cussed at these meetings, and the ability of the papers and debates thus drawn forth. The present volume is replete with reports of masterly discussions of vital and perplexing ques- tions, which cannot fail to be appreciated by all interested in missions. The topics treated in this volume — some of them by missionaries and martyrs of our own church — are : Preaching to the Heathen; The Hindoo and Mohammedan Controversy; Schools; Missionary Work among the Females of India; Itine- rations; Lay Cooperation; A Native Pastorate; Sympathy
1864.]
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and Confidence of Native Christians; Inquirers; Polygamy and Divorce; The Hill Tribes; The Sikhs; Vernacular Chris- tian Literature ; Inter-Mission Discipline; an Indian Catholic Church. Many of these dissertations are elaborate and search- ing, while the accompanying debates are often powerful and luminous. We look for great good from these missionary con- vocations. Both this and Dr. Anderson’s volume are valuable contributions to missionary literature.
The Days that are Past. By Thomas James Shepherd, fourth pastor'of the Philadelphia (N. L.) First Presbyterian Church. Philadelphia : Lind- say & Blakiston. 1864.
Mr. Shepherd has here given us a complete history of the church of which he is pastor, from its first planting, half a cen- tury since, until now. It includes careful biographical sketches of its three distinguished former pastors — James Patterson, Daniel Lynn Carroll, and Ezra Stiles Ely — names that will not soon be forgotten. Sketches of leading men in the eldership are also interspersed. Pastors cannot do a better work than to make such contributions to our ecclesiastical history. The author would done well to have made the title of his book more indicative. The cream paper and fine typography are great luxuries.
A Treatise on Homiletics. Designed to illustrate the True Theory and Practice of Preaching the Gospel. By Daniel P. Kidder, D. D., Pro- fessor in Garrett Biblical Institute. New York: Carlton & Porter, 1864.
It is undeniable that the Methodist ministry, as a class, have in their own way and sphere had great success as preachers. It will scarcely be questioned that they have excelled among the Protestant clergy, especially in Britain and America, in gain- ing the ear of the humble and less educated classes, to the gospel message. This is no mean praise. To the poor the gospel is preached. The church that gathers them in has one eminent token of the Divine favour. It is no less undeniable that the tones and style of Methodist preaching, exceptions apart, have thus far failed to lay a powerful and extensive grasp upon the educated and intelligent classes. It is obvious, therefore, that this preaching, as a whole, is marked by great merits and great defects, which it will be of the highest advan- tage for preachers in that and other communions to study; that Methodist preachers may thus amend their defects, while others learn from them whatever is worthy of imitation. This text book on Homiletics, by an eminent Methodist Professor in that department, is well fitted to promote both these results.
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It is, in the main, characterized bj learning, judgment, and taste. The author gleans his materials, illustrations, and authorities, from all ages and branches of the church. ' He brings them to bear in illustrating the merits and faults of the prevailing modes of preaching, in his own and other commu- nions. As might be expected, he favours preaching without reading or memorizing, but insists on the most diligent prepa- ration. The ai’guments, however, for and against the different styles of preaching are presented with great fulness and fair- ness, and may be studied with profit by all concerned. The book is an unquestionable acquisition to our homiletical lite- rature.
Life and Times of Nathan Bangs, I). D. By Abel Stevens, LL.D., author of the “History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century called Methodism.” New York: Carlton and Porter. 1864.
Dr. Bangs was certainly a representative man of the Method- ist Church for the last half-century, the principal period of its growth and development in our country. Few contributed more to advance and mould this vast communion. He was foremost in the self-denial of pioneer evangelization in our ever- receding frontiers. He occupied the leading Methodist metro- politan pulpits. He was one of their most trusty, expert, and effective polemics. He was second to none as a debater and counsellor in ecclesiastical meetings, and the great organiza- tions of his church. He was in all respects a leader among his brethren; and eminently qualified to be so. Although a vehemently anti-Calvinistic polemic, he was of genial tempera- ment, and not destitute of catholicity. He grew moi’e mellow and large-hearted with age, and became able to appreciate bet- ter the merits of other communions, while he also saw and sought to correct faults in his own. He has left his impress on his church and generation, and deserved a fit biographical memorial. He could not have found a better biographer. By his previous studies as the historian of Methodism, and his facility and tact as a writer, Dr. Stevens was peculiarly quali- fied for the task which he has admirably executed.
Life, Times, and Correspondence of James Manning, and the Early History of Broion University By Reuben Aldridge Guild. Boston : Gould & Lincoln. New York: Sheldon & Co. 1864.
Dr. Manning, the first president of Brown University, was also prominent and influential as a Baptist divine. His life, therefore, not only involves the founding and early history of that institution, but, in some degree also, of the Baptist deno- mination of Christians in this country. This book is a rich
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repository of facts in regard to all these subjects, which were on the verge of hopeless oblivion. The author’s industry and judgment are shown, not only in the amount and value of the facts so brought to light and preserved, but in their arrange- ment, and in the exhaustive tables of contents at the beginning, and the index at the end of the volume. Dr. Manning was eminent as a divine, scholar, and educator. He was one of the early distinguished graduates of Princeton College, after which Brown University was largely patterned.
The Voice of Blood in the Sphere of Nature and the Spirit World. By the Rev. Samuel A. Philips, A. M., Pastor of the Reformed Church, Car- lisle, Pa.; author of “ Gethsemane and the Cross,” and “The Christian Home.” Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston.
In this work, the author first analyzes the voice, its struc- ture, functions, capabilities, as a material organ of the spirit; then the blood in which is the life; then blood as the voice which utters mighty truths and testimonies; then “the voice of accusing blood from the ground,” beginning with the blood of Abel; the “voice of typical blood from the altar,” compre- hending the Jewish sacrifices; “the voice of atoning blood from the cross;” “the voice of martyr-blood from the church;” of “sacramental blood from the Christian altar;” of “pleading blood from the mercy-seat;” of “witnessing blood from the judgment throne;” of “avenging blood from hell;” and, finally, of “glorifying blood in heaven.” These topics are treated in a fervid and impassioned style which seldom flags, and with a florid exuberance of diction and imagery, which would suffer nothing by judicious pruning. The reader, how- ever, is never wearied by dulness, even if sated with luxuri- ance of metaphor and soaring phraseology. Without endorsing every sentiment, we find the work evangelical, earnest, and quickening.
The True Penitent Portrayed, in a Practical Exposition of the Fifty-first Psalm: To which is added the Doctrine of Repentance, as declared in Acts xvii. 30. By E. C. Wines, D. D., author of “A Treatise on Rege- neration,” “Adam and Christ,” &c. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication.
These momentous subjects are here elucidated by Dr. Wines, in his usually clear and instructive manner. This is an impor- tant service at this time, when the tendency is so strong to deal with all sorts of subjects but the spiritual and experimental; and to handle these loosely and superficially, and on all other sides except simply the spiritual and experimental.
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Satan’s Devices, and the Believer’s Victory. By the Rev. William L. Par- sons, A. M., pastor of the Congregational Church, Mattapoisett, Mass. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. New York: Sheldon & Co.
Much scriptural truth, closely implicated with Christian experience, and which is widely losing its hold of the faith, and recognition, in the experience of Christians, is brought out in this volume. That Satan is a real person, of prodigious power, malignity, craft — constantly tasking his stupendous faculties in compassing the destruction of Christ’s kingdom, and the eternal ruin of souls — is what multitudes deny, and still greater multi- tudes ignore. The reality as well as the form of Satan’s devices is ably set forth in this volume, which displays con- siderable vigour and freshness of thought and style. The writer evidently think's for himself, and has no distrust of his own opinions. He makes his mental philosophy quite con- spicuous enough for such an experimental work, while his opinions, psychological and theological, have generally an orthodox tone; yet his views on some subjects are not alto- gether ripe and well-balanced. Although he has thought with more or less freedom upon them, he has not yet thought him- self through. Surely no well-poised Christian or ethical 'guide will try to induce another to promise to do, he knows not what, as a condition of spiritual peace. Pp. 38-40. But notwith- standing any such exceptions, the drift of the book is sound, instructive, and edifying.
Christian Memorials of the War; or Scenes and Incidents illustrating the Religious Faith and Principles, Patriotism, and Bravery in our Army. With Historical Notes. By Horatio B. Hackett, Professor of Biblical Literature in Newton Theological Institute, author of “ Illustrations of Scripture,” “Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles,” etc. Boston: Gould it Lincoln. New York: Sheldon & Co. 1864.
The title of this book and the name of its author are enough to evince its power to fascinate, while it instructs and edifies the reader. Among the wonderful manifestations which relieve the darker horrors of the war, is the unanimity of Chris- tian people in its support, because the ends sought by it have the most earnest approval of the Christian conscience; and the manifold illustrations of moral and Christian heroism, and other virtues, which it has furnished. This book is a collec- tion of the most brilliant examples of all this, arranged in logical and luminous order.
Letters on the Ministry of the Gospel. By Francis Wayland. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. New York: Sheldon & Co. 1863.
Of course Dr. Wayland could not write and publish a book on such a subject without giving many weighty counsels
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and judicious suggestions as to the sources of ministerial power and usefulness. These we find in abundance in this little work. And yet we think the author exaggerates the degene- racy of the pulpit now, as compared with the past age — at least, taking the whole country and church into view — what- ever may be true of the region or communion most familiar to himself. He is too sweeping in his condemnation of written sermons. His counsels are shaped to the ecclesiastical polity and usages of the Baptist and Congregational churches.
Our Board of Publication have issued, in a beautiful style, a number of excellent books adapted to Sunday-school libraries and family reading. We subjoin the titles of a number of these interesting volumes.
Irish Stories. Good and Bad Men. Little Irish Girls’ Holiday, &e. Pp. 287. Johnny McKay ; or the Sovereign. Pp.'216.
Cherry Bounce; or the Wise Management of Human Nature. Pp. 180. Uncle Alick’s Sabbath-school. By Maxwell. Pp. 180.
Teddy, the Bill Poster ; and how he became Uncle Alick’s right-hand man. By Maxwell. Pp. 216.
Valley of Decision ; or Divine Teachings in a Boarding-School. A true narrative. By Mrs. H. C. Knight. Pp. 79.
Amy’s New Home, and other stories for Boys and Girls. Pp. 216,
Die School Days of Jennie Graham. Pp. 180.
Emma Herbert; or Be ye Perfect. Pp. 179.
Charlie Evans ; or the Boy who could not keep his Temper. Pp. 107. Sunshine for Gloomy Hours. Pp. 216.
Hatty Winthrop. Pp. 106.
Frank Netherton; or the Talisman. Pp. 252.
Loving Words. In two Sermons to Children. By Rev. Adolph Monod, of Paris. Translated for the Presbyterian Board. Pp. 96.
Early Dawn; or Conversion of Annie Herbert. Pp. 143.
Susie’s Mistake, and other Stories. By Marian Butler. Pp. 216.
Norah and her Kerry Cow; or the Bible the Best Guide. Pp. 144.
Outside and Inside, and other Tales. By Frank Stanley. Pp. 216. Frederick Gordon; or Principle and Interest. Pp. 180.
Kitty Foote; or the True Way to Peace. Pp. 180.
Frank Eston; or the Joy of Believing in Jesus. By Mrs. Caroline L. Blake. Pp. 144.
Willie Maitland; or the Lord’s Prayer illustrated. Pp. 144.
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The Cap Makers. By the author of “George Miller,” “Blind Annie Lori- mcr,” &c. Pp. 180.
Nannie Barton. By the same author. Pp. 288.
The Little Sea Bird. By the author of “ Mackerel Will,” &c. Pp. 180. Norali Neil; or “The Way by which He led thee.” Pp. 179.
Aunt Harriet’s Tales about Little Words. By II. B. McKeever, author of “Jessie Morrison.”
The Brazen Serpent; or Faith in Christ illustrated. By Joseph H. Jones, D.D.
Life and Light; or Every-Day Religion. By the author of “ George Miller,” “ Blind Annie Lorimer,” &c.
Homes of the West, and How they were made Happy. By the author of “Johnny Wright,” “Words of Wisdom,” &c.
The foregoing are recent additions made by the Presbyterian Board of Publication to its excellent “Series for Youth.” They fully sustain its character. Our Board cannot well overdo in its efforts to provide reading, at once useful and entertaining, for our families^nd Sabbath-schools, our children and youth.
We have received several works too late for notice, among which are the following publications of the “Presbyte- rian Publication Committee, 1334 Chestnut street, Phila- delphia.”
The Shepherd of Bethlehem. King of Israel. By A. L. 0. E. Pp. 440.
Stories from Jewish History, from the Babylonish Captivity to the De- struction of Jerusalem by Titus. By the same Author. Pp. 178.
The Communion Week. A Course of Preparation for the Lord’s Table. By the Rev. Ashton Oxenden, of Pluckley, England. Pp. 88.
The American Presbyterian Almanac for 1865. Pp. 48.
The Soldier’s Scrap-Book. By the Rev. B. B. Ilotchkin. Pp. 60.
END OF VOL. XXXVI.