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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

586

Man s Mental Instincts.

[October

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.

Man's Mental Instincts.

587

1864.]

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

588

Mari’s Mental Instincts.

[October

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?

Mans Mental Instincts.

589

1864.]

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

590

Man's Mental Instincts.

[October

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

Maris Mental Instincts.

591

1864.]

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.

592

Maris Mental Instincts.

[October

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

Man's Mental Instincts.

593

1864.]

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

594

Man's Mental Instincts.

[October

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?

595

1864.] Mans Mental Instincts.

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.

596

Matt 8 Mental Instincts.

[October

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-

1864.]

Man's Mental Instincts.

597

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

598 Man's Mental Instincts. [October

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.

1864.]

Man's Mental Instincts.

599

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.

600 Man's Mental Instincts. > [October

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

1864.]

Man's Mental Instincts.

601

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

602 Man's Mental Instincts. [October

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

Mans Mental Instincts.

603

1864.]

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

604

Mans Mental Instincts.

[October

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-

Man's Mental Instincts.

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1864.]

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-

606 Man s Mental Instincts. [October

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

1864.]

Man's Mental Instincts.

607

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

608 Man's Mental Instincts. [October

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

1864.]

Man's Mental Instincts.

609

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

VOL. xxxvi. — no. iv. 77

610 Man's Mental Instincts. [October

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,

Man's Mental Instincts.

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1864.]

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 ?

612

Man's Mental Instincts.

[October

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

Mari’s Mental Instincts.

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1864.]

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.

614

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Art. II. — The Russian Church.

/■< S . Z> , ' - ■ ) J ^ •/ 1

f ». » • i-yx f C" f’ ■ ■ ^ / ■ f p-/i 1 / ^ / > c

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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615

1864 ]

“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,

616 The Russian Church. [October

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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1864.]

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;

VOL. xxxvi. — no. iv. 78

618

The Russian Church.

[October

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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619

1864.]

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.

620

The Russian Church.

[October

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.

The Russian Church .

621

1864.]

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

622

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[October

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.

The Russian Church.

623

1864.]

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.

624 The Russian Church. [October

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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1864.]

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

VOL. xxxvi. — no. iv. 79

626 The Russian Church. [October

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.

The Russian Church.

627

1864.]

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

628

The Russian Church.

[October

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,

Modern Philology.

629

1864.]

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

630

Modern Philology.

[October

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,

Modern Philology.

631

1864.]

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

632 Modern Philology. [October

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,

Modern Philology.

633

1864.]

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

634

Modern Philology.

[October

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

1864.]

Modern Philology.

635

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

636 Modern Philology. [October

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

Moral Philology.

637

1864.]

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.

638 Modern Philology. [October

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

Modern Philology.

639

1864.]

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

640 Modern Philology. [October

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

Modern Philology.

641

1864.]

•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

642

Modern Philology.

[October

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-

1864.]

Modern Philology.

643

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

644

Modern Philology.

[October

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

Modern Philology.

645

1864.]

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

646 Modern Philology. [October

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,

Modern Philology.

647

1864.]

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

1864.]

Modern Philology.

651

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

1864.]

Homiletical Commentary.

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.

1864.]

Homiletical Commentary.

657

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.

83

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

Homiletical Commentary.

659

1864.]

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

660

Lange s Theological and

[October

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.

1864.]

Homiletical Commentary.

661

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.]

662

Lange's Theological and

[October

•/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-

1864.] Homileticai Commentary. 668

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

664 Lange s Theological and [October

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. ]'

VOL. XXXVI. — NO. IV. 84

666

Lange's Theological and

[October

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.]

1864.]

Homiletical Commentary.

667

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. —

P. S.]

Homiletical Commentary.

669

1864.]

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

Homiletical Commentary.

671

1864.]

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.]

Homiletical Commentary.

673

1864.]

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

4

674

Lange s Theological and

[October

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,

Homiletical Commentary.

675

1864.]

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.’'

1864.]

Homiletical Commentary.

677

(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.]

678

Lange s Commentary.

[October

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.

679

1864.]

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

680 Whedon and Hazard on the Will. [October

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

1864.] Whedon and Hazard on the Will. 681

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

86

VOL. XXXVI. — NO. IV.

682 WJiedon and Hazard on the Will. [October

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.

Whedon and Hazard on the Will .

683

1864.]

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

684

Whedon and Hazard on the Will. [October

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

1864.]

Whedon and Hazard on the Will.

685

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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Whedon and Hazard on the Will. [October

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

Whedon and Hazard on the Will.

687

1864.]

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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Whedon and Hazard on the Will . [October

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

1864.]

Whedon and Hazard on the Will.

689

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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Whedon and Hazard on the Will. [October

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-

1864.] Whedon and Hazard on the Will. 691

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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Whedon and Hazard on the Will. [October

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,

Whedon and Hazard on the Will.

693

1864.]

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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Whedon and Hazard on the Will. [October

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.

1864.] Whedon and Hazard on the Will. 695

"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

696

Wliedon and Hazard on the Will. [October

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.

Whedon and Hazard on the Will.

697

1864.]

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

VOL. XXXVI. — NO. IV.

698

Whedon and Hazard on the Will. [October

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. . . .

Wheclon and Hazard on the Will.

701

1864.]

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

702

Wliedon and Hazard on the Will. [October

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

Wliedon and Hazard on the Will.

703

1864.]

\ 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.]

Short Notices.

705

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

706

Short Notices.

[October

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.]

Short Notices.

707

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.

708

Short Notices.

[October

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

Short Notices.

709

1864.]

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.

710

Short Notices.

[October

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

Short Notices.

711

1864.]

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.

712 Short Notices. [October.

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.