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REPLIES

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ESSAYS AND REVIEWS."

BY THE

I. REV. E. M. GOULBURN, D.D.
II. REV. H. J. ROSE, B.D.
III. REV. C. A. HEURTLEY, D.D.

IV. REV. W. J. IRONS, D.D.
V. REV. G. RORISON, M.A.
VI. REV. A. W. HADDAN, B.D.

VII. REV. CHR. WORDSWORTH, D.D.

WITH A PREFACE

BY THE LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD;

AND LETTERS

FROM THE RADCLIFFE OBSERVER AND THE READER IN
GEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

anfc Honfcon:

JOHN HENRY AND JAMES PARKER.
1862.

_J ' J^- ^ ^n_

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essrs. ^rtrlur, CornmarKet,

ADVERTISEMENT.

TT is necessary to state that the seven Essays con
tained in this volume have, like those Essays to
which they are replies, been " written in entire in
dependence of each other, without concert or com
parison."

Each Author was, individually, requested by the
Publishers to write an Essay on a subject named,
with the especial object of replying to a given Essay
in the volume of " Essays and Reviews."

For the selection of writers, and for the choice of
subject assigned to each, the Publishers are respon
sible. Beyond this, each writer was free to exercise his
own judgment in the mode of treatment of the Essay :
nor was he guided in any way by what others had
written, or were writing, for the same volume.

This course of proceeding was not adopted without
due consideration. It was thought, firstly, that as
the " Essays and Reviews" professed to be written in
dependently of each other and without concert among
the Authors, so ought the " Eeplies" ; otherwise, it
might be objected that the latter volume was written
under advantages which did not belong to the former,
and therefore be refused the possession of the same
weight as that volume. Secondly, that the Authors,
unfettered by suggestions from Publishers or Edi
tor, would be enabled to treat their subjects more

ii ADVERTISEMENT.

thoroughly, to write more freely, and so more con
vincingly.

In most cases the Publishers are well aware that
such a course would be attended with danger, but
in this case they have such full confidence in the
several writers that they believe a supervision beyond
that of the ordinary details attendant in passing works
through the press would have been needless. They
feel fully assured that all the main arguments are such
as would be subscribed by all the writers, while on
unimportant and avowedly open questions any dis
crepancies, if there should be such, might be reason
ably allowed in a volume written on the plan thus
adopted.

The Publishers take this opportunity of tendering
their thanks to the several writers who so readily
accepted the task imposed on them.

To the Bishop of Oxford, not only for the Preface,
but for advice and assistance also in making the
necessary arrangements for producing such a volume.

To the Radcliffe Observer, and the Eeader in Geo
logy in the University of Oxford, they are also in
debted for two valuable letters. They insert them
in the volume because, although unreasonably, the
"Essays and Reviews" obtained the title of "The
Oxford Essays." In the volume itself it will be seen
that the waiters are selected partly from Oxford and
partly from Cambridge, as was the case in the volume
to which it is hoped the present will be found to be
a satisfactory and convincing reply.

OXFORD,
January 1, 1862.

CONTENTS.

Preface.

By the LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD.

I. The Education of the World . . i

By the Rev. E. M. GOULBURN, D.D., late Head Master
of Rugby School ; Prebendary of St. Paul's ; Chaplain
in Ordinary to the Queen, &c.

II. Bunsen, the Critical School, and Dr. Williams . ,55

By the Rev. H. J. ROSE, B.D., Rector of Houghton
Conquest, Bedfordshire.

III. Miracles . . 135

By the Rev. C. A. HEURTLEY, D.D., Canon of Christ
Church, and Margaret Professor of Divinity in the
University of Oxford.

IV. The Idea of the National Church . . 1 99

By the Rev. W. J. IRONS, D.D., Prebendary of St. Paul's,
and Vicar of Brompton, Middlesex.

V. The Creative Week . . 277

By the Rev. G. RORISON, M.A., Incumbent of Peterhead,
Diocese of Aberdeen.

VI. Rationalism . . . . -347

By the Rev. A. W. HADDAN, B.D., Rector of Barton-on-
the-Heath, Warwick shire.

11 CONTENTS.

VII. On the Interpretation of Scripture . . 409

By the Rev. GHR. WORDSWORTH, D.D., Canon of
Westminster ; Proctor in Convocation, &c.

Appendix.

I. LETTER from the Rev. ROBERT MAIN, M.A., Pembroke

College, Radcliffe Observer . . . -501

II. LETTER from JOHN PHILLIPS, M.A., Magdalen College,
Reader in Geology in the University of Oxford . -514

PKEFACE.

rpHE volume which is here placed in the reader's
hands seems to me to need neither preface nor
recommendation. The importance of its subject, the
gravity of the occasion which has called it forth, the
weighty names in the catalogue of its writers, all
combine to demand for it the full attention which
preface or recommendation might solicit for an ordi
nary volume. Nevertheless, yielding to the request
of those who had combined to produce it, I had pro
mised to contribute a preface to it : and having done
so, I desired to enter at some length into the general
subject towards which these several essays converge,
and to the mode in which it had been dealt with here.

Diocesan engagements compelled me to postpone my
work to an approaching period of comparative leisure.
But at this moment my contribution is called for, and
rather than delay the publication of the work, I have
resolved to furnish it at once, reduced to the narrowest
dimensions ; and even before I have been able myself
to read any of the following Essays.

It is then of the general object only of the work
that I can speak. As to which let me say, — first,
that its object is not so much to reply directly

b 2

IV PREFACE.

to error, as to establish truth, and so to remove
the foundations on which error rests; secondly, that
the publication of this volume is no admission that
new or powerful arguments against the truth have
rendered necessary new arguments in its defence.
Eather, the re-statement of old truths of which it
consists is a declaration that the fresh-varnished ob
jections which have called it forth are neither new
nor profound. Further, there is no allowance here
that the views which have called it forth are open
questions or fair subjects for1 discussion between
Christians, still less between Church of England
men. Its scope is to shew that the objections to
which it refers are old objections, the urging of
which must of necessity, with our limited faculties,
be possible against all revelation; and that, as such,
they have been often put forth, repeatedly answered.
Such difficulties are to be set at rest in any mind
rather by strengthening the deep foundations of the
faith, than by the laboured refutation of every sepa
rate, captious, and casuistic objection in which re
pugnance to all fixed belief of dogmas, as having
been directly communicated by God to man, is wont
to vent itself.

That such objections to revelation should appear in
this day, and should clothe themselves in the fresh
garb which they have assumed, will not seem strange
to thoughtful minds. Not, indeed, that it is other
than a very narrow philosophy which would con
ceive of them as a mere reaction from recently re-

PREFACE.

newed assertions of the pre-eminent importance of
dogmatic truth and of primitive Christian practice,
or even from the excesses and evils which have,
as they always do, attended on and disfigured this
revival of the truth. To attempt to account for these
phenomena by such a solution as this is to fix the eye
upon the nearest headland round which the stream
of time and thought is sweeping, not daring to look
further ; and so to deal with all beyond that nearest
prospect as if it were not. No ; this movement of the
human mind has been far too wide-spread, and con
nects itself with far too general conditions, to be
capable of so narrow a solution. Much more true is
the explanation, which sees in it the first stealing
over the sky of the lurid lights which shall be shed
profusely around the great Antichrist. For these dif
ficulties gather their strength from a spirit of lawless
rejection of all authority, from a daring claim for the
unassisted human intellect to be able to discover,
measure, and explain all things. The rejection of the
faith, which in the last age assumed the coarse and
vulgar features of an open atheism, which soon de
stroyed itself in its own multiplying difficulties, in
tellectual, moral, civil, and political, has robed itself
now in more decent garments, and exhibits to the
world the old deceit with far more comely features.
For the rejection of all fixed faith, all definite revela
tion, and all certain truth, which is intolerable to man
as a naked atheism, is endurable, and even seductive,
when veiled in the more decent half- concealment of

vi PREFACE.

pantheism. The human soul in its greatness and in
its weakness crying after God, cannot bear to be told
that God is nowhere, but can be cajoled by the artful
concealment of the same lie under the assertion that
God is everywhere, for that everything is God. The
dull horror of annihilation is got rid of by the notion
of an absorption into the infinite, which promises to
the spirit an unlimited expansion of its powers, with the
misty hope of retained individual consciousness. Nor
in this system is all former belief to be cast away at
the rude assault of an avowed infidelity ; on the con
trary, it is to be treated with the utmost tenderness.
It is not even stated to be false ; in a certain sense it,
too, is allowed to be true ; for there is nothing which is
wholly true or wholly false. It is but one phase of the
true — an imperfect, childish, almost infantine phase, if
you will ; to be cherished in remembrance like the
ornaments or the delights of childhood, only not to be
rested in by men ; to be put away and looked back
upon, as early forms which, as soon as the Spirit
which had of old breathed through them revealed it
self in rosy light, dissolved, like the frost-work of the
morning beneath the full sunlight of noon. On this
theory the facts of the Bible may be false, its morals
deceptive, its philosophy narrow, its doctrines mere
shadows cast by the acting of the human mind in its
day of lesser light : and yet, on the other hand, it is
not to be scorned; it is to be loved, and honoured,
and revered as a marvellous record of the God-
enlightened man in his infancy, in the comparative

PREFACE. Vll

obscurity of his intellect, in his youthful struggles,
and reachings forth after the truth ; only it is not to
fetter his now ripened humanity. The man is not
to be swathed in the comeliest bands of his infancy.

Thus no prejudice is to be shocked, no holy feeling
rudely wounded, no old truth professedly surrendered.
Bather, mighty revelations are to be looked for amidst
the glowing feelings with which the past is fondly
recognised and the future eagerly expected. Thus the
pride of man's heart is flattered to the utmost ; thus
the old whisper, "Ye shall be as gods," disguises
itself in newest utterances ; thus in the universal
twilight all the fixed outlines of revealed truth are
confounded; the forms of Christianity are dissolved
into nothingness, and the good deposit of the faith
evaporated into a temporary intellectual myth, which
has played its part, done its work, and may be per
mitted quietly to disappear amongst the venerable
shadows of the past.

Such a state of the human mind may be traced with
more or less distinctness, during this century, every
where in Christendom. It may be seen speculating
in German metaphysics, fluttering in French litera
ture, blaspheming in American spiritualism ; or it
may come, as it has come amongst ourselves, with
dainty step and faded garments, borrowed from one
school or another of stronger unbelievers, as it was
supposed that our less prepared minds could endure
the revelation.

The conflict between such a system and all true

viii PREFACE.

Christianity must be certain and complete. For dis
guise it as you will, it is simple unbelief. Pantheism
is but a tricked-out Atheism. The dissolution of Be-
velation is the denial of God.

With such a wide-spread current of thought, then,
the strong foundations of Church-of-England faith came
rudely in contact. Her simple retention of the primi
tive forms of the Apostolic Church ; her Ministry, and
her Sacraments ; her firm hold of primitive truth ; her
Creeds ; her Scriptures ; her Formularies ; her Cate
chism ; and her Articles ; all of these were alike at
variance with the new rationalistic unbelief. The
struggles and strifes of the last thirty years have been
the inevitable consequence. The passionate re-assertion
of the old truths, with all the evils which have waited
on that passion, as well as all the immeasurable good
which has been the fruit of the re-assertion, — all of
these have been themselves the consequence of the
widely-acting influence to which the human mind has
of late been subjected. Short-sighted men have looked
at these things with their narrow range, and believed
that the scepticism which on the one side has been
evolved in the struggle, was the fruit of that energetic
assertion of the truth which was itself but one conse
quence of the unbelief with which it was striving.

As well might they believe that the causes of the
existence of some naked promontory which has had its
sharp and rocky point defined by the great current it
has long breasted, or of that mighty ocean-like flow
which sweeps against it, are to be found in the bois-

PREFACE. IX

terous waves which roar down the lower stream, and
fleck with foam the agitated waters of its troubled
bosom.

Two distinct courses seem to me to be required by
such a state of things.

First, the distinct, solemn, and if need be, severe,
decision of authority that assertions such as these
cannot be put forward as possibly true, or even
advanced as admitting of question, by honest men,
who are bound by voluntary obligations to teach the
Christian revelation as the truth of God.

I put this necessity first, from the full conviction,
that if such matters are admitted by us to be open
questions amongst men under such obligations, we
shall leave to the next generation the fatal legacy of
an universal scepticism, amidst an undistinguishable

confusion of all possible landmarks between truth and

•

falsehood.

To say this, be it observed, is to evince no fear of
argument against our faith though the freest, or of
enquiry into it though the most daring. From these,
Christianity has nothing to dread. In their issue
these do but manifest the truth. The roughest
wind sweeps the sky the most speedily, and shews
forth the soonest the unclouded sun in all his splen
dour. It is not, therefore, because believers in Eeve-
lation fear enquiry, that authority is bound to inter
fere. But it is to prevent the very idea of truth, as
truth, dying out amongst us. For so indeed it must
do, if once it be permitted to our clergy solemnly to

X PREFACE.

engage to teach as the truth of God a certain set
of doctrines, and at the same time freely to discuss
whether they are true or false. First, then, and even
before argument, our disorders need the firm, un
flinching action of authority.

Secondly, we need the calm, comprehensive, scholar-
like declaration of positive truth upon all the matters
in dispute, by which the shallowness, and the passion,
and the ignorance of the new system of unbelief may
be thoroughly displayed.

That this volume may in some measure, at least,
fulfil these conditions, is the endeavour of its writers,
and the hope of him who ventures now to commend
it to the prayers of the Church, and the study of its
readers.

S. 0.

CUDDESDON PALACE,
Dec. 1861.

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

" The Education of the World." By FREDERICK TEMPLE, D.I).,
Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen ; Head Master of Rugby
School ; Chaplain to the Earl of Denbigh. The Second Edition.
(London: John W. Parker and Son, West Strand. 1860.)

" The Education of the Human Race" From the German of
GOTTHOLD EPURAIM LESSIXG. (London : Smith, Elder, and
Co. 1858.)

" How charming is Divine Philosophy !
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose ;
But musical as is Apollo's lute."

"WE quite echo back these words of our great bard.
Divine philosophy is charming in its every shape ;
— not only that discovery of precious moral truth in
ancient myths which, judging from the context, Mil
ton seems to have had principally in his thoughts,
but any true theory of the dealings of God with man
to which the words ' divine philosophy' might be suit
ably appropriated. If we can at all get a glimpse into
the significance of the Scheme of Grace, as God has
been unfolding it from the primitive prediction of the
Seed of the woman until now, this glimpse cannot
fail to be attractive and cheering, — as attractive and
cheering (though perhaps as much obstructed) as that
which the pilgrim gains, at interstices between tan
gled boughs, of the spires and pinnacles of the city to
which his steps are bent. But just as in physical
science the true philosopher will never form theories
independently of the facts of nature ; just as his crude

B

2 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

guesses will be originated, modified, enlarged by those
facts, in some cases retracted and thrown aside in obe
dience to them ; just as all natural philosophy consists
in being led by the hand of nature into natural truth,
— so the divine philosopher will never draw up his
scheme independently of the truths of Holy Scripture,
(which are in theology what the facts are in nature) ;
his theories will not only be started, but corrected, by
those truths, and will be safe, and sound, and valu
able, just so far as in forming them he has been led by
the hand of God's Word.

We have before us two essays on the education of
the human race, and the slightest glance at either
of them shews that the author means the religious
or spiritual education which God is conferring upon
man. We shall attempt to clear the ground for our
criticism by pointing out the senses in which man
may be truly said either to have received from God,
or to be receiving, a spiritual education.

I. First, there can be no doubt that man (or rather
that portion of the human race which is under the
divine economy, and which we think, with Dr. Tem
ple, may not unfairly be regarded as a representa
tive of the whole racea,) is receiving an education in
time for eternity. Earth is the school in which God's

a "If the Christian Church le taken as the representative of
mankind, it is easy to see that the general law observable iu the de
velopment of the individual may also be found in the development
of the Church." — Essays and Reviews, p. 40.

"We do not see that the hypothesis can be quarrelled with.
Though in one important sense the world and the Church are op
posed to one another, yet, under another aspect, regenerate hu
manity is surely a sample of the whole. " Of His own will begat
He us with the word of truth, that we should le a kind of first-
fruits of His creatures" (James i. 18.)

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 3

people are being trained for heaven. This is clearly
implied in the well-known passage, 1 Cor. xiii. 9, &c.
"We are children at present, conceiving darkly, reason
ing uncertainly, and expressing ourselves imperfectly ;
but hereafter we shall come to the full maturity of
our powers, knowing no longer in the way of dis
covery, but intuitively, "even as also we are known,"
and no longer needing to express things divine by
figures and images drawn from things earthly. Take
the dawning intelligence and the limited experience
of a little child, not yet emancipated from the re
straints of the nursery, and contrast them with the
large research of a Columbus, the sagacious investiga
tions of a Bacon, and the profound discoveries of a
Newton, and you have then, if the Scripture ana
logy be correct, some idea of the proportion which
our present mental and spiritual faculties will bear
to our attainments hereafter. The analogy at once
teaches us this, that just as there are many truths,
quite on a level with a man's understanding, which
cannot be at all explained to a child with its present
capacities, and others which can only be explained
very imperfectly, by illustrations drawn from its own
narrow circle of ideas and associations; so there arc
some spiritual truths altogether out of our reach in
our present condition, and others which can be con
veyed to us only through the imperfect medium of
earthly relations and human language. All man's in
sight into divine truth is and must be, as its essential
condition, "through, a glass," and all his knowledge
in a riddle, (eV aivlyfJUJLTi). He can only see, not the
object itself, but an image of it reflected in a mirror,
whose surface is never quite true or quite smooth ; he
can only know heavenly things by comparisons with

4 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

earthly, (which comparisons must break down some
where,) not by conversancy with the realities. And
the moral lesson to be learnt from this education of
the human race would be, that our heavenly Father
intends for us, by our present condition of existence,
a discipline of humility of mind; and that, there
fore, having once seen our way to faith in God's
Word, (and abundant light is supplied to us for this
purpose,) we must thenceforth acquiesce devoutly in
the difficulties and obscurities which beset some of its
statements, remembering that, if we could see through
all entanglements, faith would cease to be faith, and
become sight. This theory of man's education hum
bles his reason, instead of exalting it, and pours con
tempt upon his utmost mental progress, instead of
magnifying it as the maturity of his powers.

II. But there is another sense in which we may
speak of the education of man, — a sense more defi
nitely recognising the race as one creature, and so
more nearly approaching Dr. Temple's theory of "a
colossal man, whose life reaches from the creation to
the day of judgment."

We are told that God's ancient Church received
from Him a preparatory discipline to fit it for the
reception of the Gospel: — " The Law," says the Apo
stle, "was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ."
While the economy of the Law was running its course,
God's child (His Church) was under " tutors and go
vernors," " in bondage under the rudiments of the
world." But the fulness of the time came, when the
One great Master, to whose class-room the pedagogue
had but conducted0 the learner, appeared upon earth.

c Persons acquainted only with the English version of the Holy
Scriptures will need to be warned that the word translated 'school-

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 5

He taught the truth, which made men free ; and,
hearing this truth, the heir was emancipated from the
restraints of childhood, and entered upon his inherit
ance. This education, therefore, was terminated, not
by the end of the world, or the day of judgment, but
by the" first coming of Christ.

Now, guiding ourselves by this clue, a most in
teresting theory might be drawn out of the education
of the world, the outline of which, at all events,
would be correct. Such a theory has been attempted
in a little work, which has been many years before
the public, but which perhaps is less extensively
known than it deserves'1. "We can here only find
space for the most rapid sketch of the argument.
Before the Saviour appeared upon earth, it was ne
cessary that men should be prepared to appreciate the
blessings and the truth which lie would reveal ; other
wise they would never have intelligently received
the Gospel. No mind could apprehend Christianity,
which was not first well grounded in certain elemen
tary religious ideas, which had been corrupted in the
Fall, and further depraved in that frightful result of
the Fall, the degeneracy of idol worship. In restor
ing these ideas to the mind of man, and forming there
certain new ones, which were necessary to the intelli
gent reception of the Gospel, God determined to act
on His usual principle (which runs through all Ilis
dispensations) of using men for the instruction of men.
One man, however, would not suffice for so great a

master' in the passage referred to properly denotes, not the actual
instructor, but a domestic employed to take charge of children and
see them safe to school. Christ is our rabbi, at whose feet we sit,
to receive the truth whiclT makes us free; and the Law is the

df-ni'-stir who "brought us unto" Him.

d The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation : a Book for the Times.

6 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

work as the preparatory initiation of the human mind
into elementary religious ideas. He would not live
long enough ; and, while he did live, could not make
his influence felt widely enough. God therefore must
raise up a nation of teachers ; must thoroughly imbue
them with the elementary ideas, and then finally dis
seminate them, in the order of His Providence, and
cause them to come in contact with the mind of other
nations. This, accordingly, was the plan which He
adopted. He first prepares the Israelites for His pur
pose, riveting them together by a common parentage
felt to have the sacredness of caste in it, by a com
mon worship, distinct altogether from that of other
nations, by the long oppression under which they
groaned in a strange country, and by the miraculous
deliverance from Egypt, which came to them just as
their minds were in a high state of excitement and
susceptibility. This is the account which we should
be inclined to give of that " extraordinary toughness
of nature0" in the Jew, upon which Dr. Temple com
ments, so far indeed as the result was brought about
by natural causes, and not chiefly due to the special
interference of God, who for His own purposes has
endowed their nationality with extraordinary vital
powers. Israel having by these means become a
strongly marked and firmly united people, with the
most exclusive sympathies and antipathies, then com
menced the throwing into their minds those religious
conceptions with which, in long process of time, and
by varied discipline, their whole souls were to be

e " The people whose extraordinary toughness of nature has
enabled it to outlive Egyptian Pharaohs, and Assyrian kings, and
Roman Caesars, and Mussulman caliphs," &c. — Essay on the Edu
cation oftlie World, p. 14.

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 7

imbued. First was communicated, as the original
ground of all religious thought, the personality, and
existence of God, altogether independently of His
attributes, which were afterwards to be revealed. If
a man does not believe that God exists, or that a per
sonal God exists, there is no basis for religion to stand
upon in that man's mind. The first name, therefore,
under which God made Himself known to the people
whom He was training as the religious teachers of
the world, was "I am," — leaving all besides to sub
sequent development, "I am that I am."

Next followed the covenant relationship in which
God condescended to stand to them, (for the idea of
absolute God is bleak and dreary, however sublime, —
chilling rather than attractive to the heart): "And
God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say
unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your
fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you : this is my
name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all gene
rations f." This personal God, so related to them, was
then shewn by the miracles which preceded and at
tended the Exodus, to be mightier than all the gods
of the Egyptians ; or, to use the words of Lessing,
(Sect. 12,) " Through the miracles, with which He
led them out of Egypt and planted them in Canaan,
He testified of Himself to them as a God mightier
than any other god." Thus the Israelitish mind got
as far as these three ideas — personality, covenant re
lationship, Almighty power. The moral attributes had
next to be impressed upon it. And this was done by
the promulgation of the Law, both moral and cere
monial. The Ten Commandments, revealing, as they

f Exod. iii. 15.

8 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

did, the will of God as regards man's conduct, pro
claimed His holiness. But the people being still in
the infancy of religious knowledge, the same lesson
was taught in another way by external observances
and an appeal to the senses. The notion of moral
purity was developed in their mind, and connected
with the thought of God, by the ceremonial distinc
tions between clean and unclean beasts, and the use
of the former class only in sacrifice, — by the separa
tion of the priests from the people, of the holy of
holies from the holy place, and of that from the court
of the tabernacle, and by the ceremonial washings and
sprinklings which both sacrifices and priests and wor
shippers had to undergo. The justice of God, which
exacted the forfeiture of life as the desert of sin, and
at the same time the possibility of transferring the
penalty to an innocent victim, which constitutes the
idea of atonement, would be taught by the sin-offer
ings, with which the worshipper was supposed to iden
tify himself by laying his hands on the victim. In
short, all the observances of the Mosaic ritual would
be to the Jew like so many pictures in a child's
primer, by which rough but lively ideas are con
veyed to the child of objects which it never yet saw.

The unity and spirituality of God, enforced so often
by positive precepts and minor punishments, were the
truths which the national mind found it most difficult
to master. Has the propensity to Pantheism, — to the
recognising something divine in every object of the
world of nature, — so entirely ceased among Christians
of the nineteenth century, who live under the ripest
experience of the " colossal man," that we shall be
surprised to find a similar propensity somewhat tena
ciously rooted in the minds of a people always stiff-

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 9

necked, and uncircumcised in heart and ears ? Is no
tendency manifested now-a-days in any part of the
Christian Church to lean unduly upon objects of sense
and external aids in religious worship ? Well, — ten
dencies similar to these in principle were to be sternly
corrected in those who were to be the appointed reli
gious teachers of the human race. When less severe
discipline had failed, God smote them with a stroke
so heavy, that the smart of it taught them this, the
lesson of His unity and spirituality, effectually, and im
printed it in ineffaceable characters upon their minds.
The Babylonish captivity cured them altogether of
idol worship ; while the dispersion which accompanied
it answered another great end, — it brought the Jeius
into contact ivith the Gentile mind, and thus put God's
trained masters into communication with their scholars.
It domesticated many of them in different parts of the
heathen world, made them learn Gentile tongues, and
enabled them to introduce into those tongues the ideas
which they themselves had imbibed. The Septuagint
translation of the Old Testament Scriptures enshrined
for ever the religious ideas of the Jews in the language
which, through the Macedonian conquest, had spread
itself over the whole civilized world.

This design of God's providence in the dispersion of
the Jews is implied in the strongest way, if we cannot
say that it is expressed, in the Holy Scriptures of the
New Testament. The day on which the new dispen
sation w^as solemnly inaugurated, under the auspices
of the Holy Spirit, found Jews at Jerusalem out of
every nation under heaven, — " Parthians, and Medes,
and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in
Jucleea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia,
and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya

10 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

about Cyrene, and strangers of Kome, Jews and prose
lytes, Cretes and Arabians." And we know from other
parts of the Acts of the Apostles that large bodies of
proselytes were found in all the chief cities of the
ancient world, — Jews by religion, Gentiles by birth,
— who, as having affinities with both, acted as a
ready-made bridge by which the truths of the Gospel
might pass over from one to the other. Does not the
existence of these proselytes argue that the Jews had
leavened very considerably the religious mind of the
Gentiles in the various countries of their dispersion ?
They had leavened it by the diffusion of those funda
mental religious ideas — such as the personality and
unity of God, holiness, the atonement, the inseparable
union of morality with religion — which are necessary
to the acceptance and appreciation of Christianity.
And thus the intellect of the human race may be said
to have been matured for the reception of the Gospel.
In the fulness of the Time g came the great Teacher,
to impart the knowledge of the Truth (or, in other
words, of Himself,) which should make men free. He

g Dr. Temple's Essay is said to have grown out of a sermon
(preached before the University), on " the fulness of the Time."

We have attempted (in a humble way) to shew how, when our
Lord appeared, the Church of God was prepared for His appearance
by the gradual discipline of foregone dispensations. The subject,
however, muy be looked at in another light ; and the " fulness of
the times" may be considered in reference to the desperately cor
rupt state of the world at large, which called for some direct Divine
interference. See a masterly sermon by Dr. Eobertson the historian,
(1759), "On the Situation of the World at the Time of Christ's
Appearance," in which it is shewn how "the political, moral, reli
gious, and domestic state of the world at that time" were all
eminently suitable to the great event. The sermon is now, un
fortunately, one of those rare pieces which is only to be found in
old collections of tracts.

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 11

lifted from off their necks the yoke of the ceremonial
Law, which neither that generation to which He came,
nor their fathers, were able to bear. He relieved them
sensibly of the burden of unforgiven sin, cancelling in
His Blood the records of the accusing conscience, and
the handwriting of the moral law, " which was contrary
to us." He relieved them also of the oppressive tyranny
of sin by His grace, which communicated a new spring
of energy to their wills, and brought into operation
motives which, if they existed before, were never be
fore so powerfully elicited. But in speaking of this
liberty wherewith Christ made us free, it is observable
how carefully both our Lord and His Apostles guard
themselves against the notion of its being lawless, or
emancipated from moral restraints. He promises to
give rest to those who come to Him, but the rest con
sists not in the absence of a yoke and burden, but in
its light pressure: "Take My yoke upon you
and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke
is easy, and My burden is light." The freedom which
He bestows is a freedom from the service of sinh. It
is an obedience from the heart to a form of doctrine ;
it is a service of God \ The Christian has a law, and
a law by which he will be judged ; although indeed
it is a law of liberty1'. And St. Paul, when shewing
how he adapted his ministry to those whom he ap
proached with it, and how to the Gentiles who were
without (revealed) law he became as without law, re
tracts the very word avopos, (' lawless,') lest it should
be misunderstood: "Being not without law to God,
but under the law to Christ." He was, even as an
apostle, under a law, although indeed it was " the law

h See John viii. 32, 34, 36. ' Rom. vi. 17, 22.

k James i. 25, and ii. 12.

12 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

of the Spirit of life1." Thus the Bible gives no sanc
tion to the idea that the present state of the Christian
is one of emancipation from law, though no doubt we
are exempt from obedience to the ceremonial rules im
posed by the old economy.

Even to this exemption we do not find that the ori
ginal Jewish converts, or even the original Apostles,
easily accommodated themselves. The Jewish mind
had yet need of further training, (even after the de
scent of the Holy Ghost,) before it burst the shell of
ritual restraints. The liberty of the Church from
ceremonial bondage, and its essential Catholicity, are
gradually developed in the Acts of the Apostles. St.
Peter is reconciled to this part of the Divine plan by
a vision, and a voice from heaven, and a providential
circumstance, and an intimation of the Holy Ghost;
and yet afterwards recalcitrates, and needs to be pub
licly expostulated with by a colleague"1. The first
Christian Council solemnly decides for all time the
question that circumcision is not necessary for Gen
tile converts. St. Paul's preaching and influence at
length, under the blessing of God, brought about that
full and free expansion of religious thought which had
been so long unfolding by various agencies. But it
was only an expansion which refused to be cramped
any longer within the narrow limits of the Mosaic
law ; not one, like that affected by moral Eationalists,
which feels itself narrowed by creeds and formularies
of doctrine. With deference to Dr. Temple, who tells
us that " there are no creeds in the New Testament,
and hardly any laws of Church government," we
think that 1 Tim. iii. 16 sounds remarkably like a

1 Eom. viii. 2. » Acts x. 11, 13, 17, 20; Gal. ii. 14.

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 13

creed, and that " the form of sound words n" which Ti
mothy is exhorted to hold fast must have been some
thing of the kind ; and we should be at a loss to de
fine the contents of the pastoral Epistles, if we might
not say that they contained the laws of primitive
Church government.

In concluding this sketch, we may venture to sup
pose that the signal for the final emancipation of reli
gious thought from the bondage of the Mosaic law
was given by God's own hand, when Jerusalem and
the Temple were demolished, and Judaism had no
more a local habitation upon earth.

And shall we say that after this period all further
religious development of the mind of the Church
ceased ? We think that the intimations of Holy
Scripture, if not its express declarations, lead us to
an opposite conclusion. We have seen that even
after the day of Pentecost an Apostle had something
of religious truth yet to learn. We have seen that
even the presence of the Holy Spirit, in His mira
culous gifts, did not supersede the necessity for the
sentence of a Christian Council. And certain it is
that the Apostolic age, when it passed away, left the
Church founded in the earth, and nothing more ; that
its full organization had yet to be given it, its bat
tlements had yet to be constructed. Accordingly,
as Dr. Temple says, "the Church's whole energy was
taken up, in the first six centuries of her existence, in
the creation of a theology." Heresies (that is, devia
tions from the faith taught by the Apostles and em
bodied in their writings,) sprang up, and made it ne
cessary that the truth should be, not indeed revealed
anew, but re-stated, and cleared by definition and illus-
n 2 Tim. i. 13.

14 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

tration. This was done by (Ecumenical Councils ; and
we have the results of the process in our Creeds. In
the decisions of these Councils, forms of expression
and technical terms of theology are of course intro
duced which are not found in the Holy Scriptures,
(for if the bare Scriptural expressions had sufficed for
the refutation of heresy, where would have been the
need of a conciliar determination ?) but it is remarkable
how the first four Councils found their conclusions on
the uniform and continuous belief of the Church from
the beginning, shewing that they did not presume to
add anything to primitive truth, but merely to vin
dicate and clear it of those parasitical errors which
threatened its existence. In short, divine truth, hav
ing been cast into the seed-plot of human minds, was
constantly springing up with certain accretions which
came from the vice of soil, which accretions had to be
removed as they arose; and thus each of the four
great Councils, if in one sense an expositor of the
Word of God, was in another sense a reformer, bring
ing things back to the primitive model of belief. They
sought the perfection of theology, not in the develop
ments of future ages, but in what had been received
in the past °.

And shall we say that, since the decisions of the
(Ecumenical Councils, the science of theology has re
ceived no further accessions ? None, we think, simi
larly authenticated. We should attach the greatest
deference now-a-days to the decisions of an (Ecumeni-

0 Mr. Archer Butler describes the function of the early Councils
with admirable terseness as well as clearness, when he says, (Deve
lopment, p. 224,) " The function of the early Councils was ... to
define received doctrine, to elucidate obscured doctrine, to condemn
false doctrine. But it was not to reveal new doctrine."

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 15

cal Council, if such could be gathered, which should
have a sufficient occasion and object, should be impar
tially constituted, and should found its decisions en
tirely on Holy "Writ, as interpreted by primitive anti
quity. But at the same time we fully concede that,
in the absence of such Councils, and without the sanc
tion which they would lend, the evolution of divine
truth in the human mind is always going on.

On this head we quote Mr. Archer Butler's letters
in reply to Mr. Newman's " Theory of Development."
Nowhere else shall we find words at once more suc
cinct and more exhaustive of the subject :—

" I have no disposition to conceal or question that theo
logical knowledge is capable of a real movement in time,
a true successive history, through the legitimate application
of human reason. This movement may probably be regarded
as taking place in two principal ways : —

"The first is the process of logical development of primitive
truth into its consequences, connexions, and applications."
[An instance of what the author means by logical develop
ment is thus given in a former part of the work : " When
we have learned, on the infallible authority of inspiration,
that the Lord Jesus Christ is Himself very God, and when
we have learned from the same authority the tremendous
fact of His Atoning Sacrifice, we could collect (even were
Scripture silent) the priceless value of the atonement thus
made ; the wondrous humiliation therein involved ; the un
speakable love it exhibited ; the mysteriously awful guilt of
sin, which would again reflect a gloomy light upon the
equally mysterious eternity of punishment"^

" The second is, positive discovery. Members of the English
Church — which (by a strange dispensation of Providence)
has, since its lapse into ' heresy/ done more to benefit Chris
tianity in this way than all others put together — will not
find much difficulty in conceiving many classes of these
precious gifts of God to His Church, conveyed through the
ministration of human sagacity. Such are —

16 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

" 1. Unexpected confirmations or illustrations of revealed
doctrine from new sources ; as from unobserved applications
or collations of Holy Scripture ; or from profound investi
gations of natural religion, and the philosophy of morals, as
in some parts of the researches of Bishop Warburton.

"2. New proofs in support of the evidences of religion;
such as the conception and complete establishment of the
analogical argument by Bishop Butler, or the invention and
exquisite application of the test of undesigned coincidence -
by Paley.

" 3. Discoveries regarding the form and circumstances of
the Revelation itself; such as those of Bishops Lowth and
Jebb on the remarkable structure of the poetical and sen
tentious parts of Holy Writ.

"4. Discoveries of divine laivs in the government of the
Church and world, so far as the same may lawfully be col
lected by observation and theory.

"5. Discoveries, through events disclosing the meaning
of prophecy, or correcting erroneous interpretations of
Scripture."

To these we may add what perhaps the learned and
highly -gifted writer intended to classify under the
third head : —

Accessions to the stock of knowledge, already pos
sessed by the world, of the languages in which the
Holy Scriptures were written.

"While upon this point, we cannot avoid quoting
the weighty testimony of one who (great as Mr. Archer
Butler was) was greater -than he, to "the possibility
of a real movement of theological knowledge in time,
through the legitimate application of human reason."
It is a grand passage, and will well repay perusal : — -

" As it is owned the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet
understood ; so, if it ever comes to be understood, before the
restitution of all things, and without miraculous interpositions ;
it must be in the same way as natural knowledge is come at :

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 17

by the continuance and progress of learning and of liberty ;
and by particular persons attending to, comparing and pur
suing, intimations scattered up and down it, which are over
looked and disregarded by the generality of the world. For
this is the way, in which all improvements are made ; by
thoughtful men's tracing on obscure hints, as it were, dropped
us by nature accidentally, or which seem to come into our
minds by chance. Nor is it at all incredible, that a book,
which has been so long in the possession of mankind, should
contain many truths as yet undiscovered. For all the same
phenomena, and the same faculties of investigation, from
which such great discoveries in natural knowledge have
been made in the present and last age, were equally in the
possession of mankind, several thousand years before. And
possibly it might be intended, that events, as they come to
pass, should open and ascertain the meaning of several parts
of Scripture." — Sutler's Analogy of Natural and Revealed
Religion, book-ii. ch. 3.

It will be seen that both Mr. Archer Butler and his
illustrious namesake quite admit a certain progress
of the human mind on theological subjects by " the
legitimate application of reason." How can such a
progress be questioned ? Would there be any room at
all for the science of theology, if the illustration, elu
cidation, interpretation, application, enforcement of
the sacred Books had been stereotyped at the time
they were given ? Does not the Church's ordinance p
of preaching, which, is to endure for all time, assume
that the human mind is to be brought in contact with
the Word of God, and to deal with it in the way of
explanation, enforcement, and so forth. And if a good
sermon of a single preacher, composed with the ordi
nary helps of God's Spirit, often throws real light on

p An ordinance which surely must not be narrowed to oral
addresses made in a church, but must include also religious instruc
tion by books, &c.

C

l8 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

the Word of God, can the ministers of the whole
Church of Christ from the beginning (thousands of
them men of the profoundest erudition as well as the
deepest piety) have failed to do a great deal, not in
deed in the way of revealing any new thing, but of
unfolding and illustrating what has been revealed?
It may be greatly questioned whether any truth in the
world can be fully appreciated by the human mind,
when it is freshly lodged there. It must first be
studied and discussed, — must pass through the various
stages of questioning, controversy, advocacy, before it
can gain a real and influential hold. In this respect
of course later ages of the Church have an advantage
over earlier ones. The truth has been more maturely
considered, filtered through a larger variety of human
minds, devout and indevout ; and if, on the one hand,
it has gained certain accretions from the process, on
the other its bearings and significance are now more
fully understood.

It is, however, most important to remark that be
tween this progress of the mind of the Church, and
the progress, which Dr. Temple brings into comparison
with it, of the individual mind, there is one very
striking difference, which he has wholly overlooked.
The education of the individual is carried on by sub
stantive accessions of knowledge, and the rudiments
are swallowed up and lost as the knowledge grows.
But the education (if we are to call it so) of the Church
is all wrapped tip in the rudiments; — it is simply
an expansion of "the faith once delivered to the
saints." Eevelation stands not at the end, but at
the beginning, of the Church's career. The highest
degree of knowledge is communicated to the Church
in the first instance ; all that follows is merely a full

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 19

development of the import of that knowledge. IN

INDIVIDUAL EDUCATION THE MORE ADVANCED SCIENCE
EMBRACES THE RUDIMENT; BUT IN THE EDUCATION OP

THE CHURCH THE RUDIMENT (WHICH is REVELATION)

EMBRACES THE MORE ADVANCED KNOWLEDGE. He that

is perfectly master of a language, so as to speak and
write fluently in it, forgets his rules of grammar ;
they remain with him only in the shape of u a perma
nent result," But when the Council of Constantinople
condemned the Macedonian heresy, it by no means
superseded, but simply unfolded, and brought out
more clearly into the general consciousness of Chris
tendom, the import of that great precept, " Grieve
not the Holy Spirit of God," and of that comfortable
benediction, " The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, and the communion of the Holy
Ghost, be with you all." The man who can read
Greek has outgrown his English spelling-book. But
the " colossal man" (or, as we should prefer to put
it, the Church of the latter days) can never outgrow
Scripture; all she can do is to appropriate more
thoroughly the nourishment of divine truth contained
in it, and to "grow thereby."

We conceive that the above theory of the education
of the world, although not in all its parts explicitly
Scriptural, yet holds all along to the clue which Scrip
ture furnishes. For,—

1. Scripture speaks of the law as pedagogic, — a
discipline of childhood, u to bring us unto Christ."

2. Scripture speaks of a Church synod, after the
first promulgation of Christian truth, for the deter
mination of questions vitally affecting the interests of
the Church.

c 2

20 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

3. Scripture provides a ministry of teaching and
preaching among uninspired men.

"We shall now proceed to examine the first of the
" Essays and Beviews" under the light thus gained.

Very early one of the fallacies which pervades it is
made to appear. The writer having told us (what
doubtless may be admitted) that the long lapse of
time since the creation of man must have a purpose,
and that " each moment of time, as it passes, is taken
up into the time that follows in the shape of perma
nent results," goes on to assert that not only does
knowledge receive continually a fresh accession, but
also "the discipline of manners, of temper, of thought,
of feeling, is transmitted from generation to gene
ration, and at each transmission there is an imper
ceptible but unfailing increase." (p. 4.) What, pre
cisely^ does the learned Essayist mean by this "dis
cipline of manners, temper, thought, and feeling,"
which is always on the increase ? Does he allude
to the humanizing influences of civilization, which
certainly gild and varnish the surface of society,
while they leave the vices of the human heart un
touched ? It may be conceded to him that these in
fluences do secure an improvement in manner, and to
a certain extent in temper, round off many a sharp
angle, and restrain many an impetuous sally, which
might end in provocation and mischief. We are not
quite sure, however, that civilization has been regu
larly and steadily progressive among men. In the
more prominent nations of the world it has had its
day, has run its course, and then has collapsed and
become effete. But granted that we could trace in it
(as regards mankind in general) any regular progres-

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 21

sion, surely Dr. Temple does not mean to represent
this as a divine education, either of the Church or
of the world. Yet the thought is constantly obtruded
upon us, as we read' his Essay, that he is confusing
the progress of the species by civilization with the
progress of the Church in divine knowledge.

But will he say that by discipline of manners, tem
per, thought, and feeling, he means a moral advance
of the human species, or of the professing Church ?
Then surely this is as contrary to all the facts of ex
perience as to the anticipations of man's moral career
which Holy Scripture would lead us to form. With
Dr. Temple, we suppose that the long succession of
time exists for a great purpose. A mighty drama is
developing its plot upon the earth, which shall issue,
if the Scripture be true, not in the moral improve
ment of the species, but in the glory of God, by the
final salvation of His true people from the present evil
world. So far from the moral improvement of the
species being gradually worked out, as this drama
proceeds, the fallen will of man, instigated by external
evil agency, is everywhere counterworking God, and
continually being overruled by His good Providence
to His own greater glory. And what we have to ex
pect, as time goes on, is that both evil and good will
draw to a head together ; that if on one side of us the
lights will be brighter, on the -other the shadows will
be darker, until the Eighteous One and the Evil One
in personal manifestation confront one another on the
stage of the earth. Such is the history of the race
which Scripture leads us to expect. But putting out
of sight the intimations of Scripture, are any traces of
moral progress visible in the history of the world ? To
take only the histories of Home and Greece, to which

22 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

Dr. Temple more than once refers, is not the picture
which they present one of moral degeneracy rather
than of moral improvement. What had become of the
stern integrity and primitive simplicity of the ancient
Bomans in the last days of the Empire? Did the
public virtue and patriotism of Greece stand higher in
the days of Aristides or in the days of Philopoemen ?
And to turn to the history of the Church of God,
were the Jews of Manasseh's day better or worse than
those of David's ? Was the spirit of true religion
more developed among the Pharisees and Sadducees
of our Lord's time r, than among the little band who,
in obedience to the edict of Cyrus, sought again their
country, and rebuilt, amidst manifold oppositions, their
temple? Has even Christianity eradicated the vices
of the human species ? We cannot think it, when we
remember the monstrosities of the French Revolution,
and the rampant tyranny which the three worst
passions of the human heart (vanity, ferocity, and
lust,) then exercised among a people moving in the
first rank of civilization, and who had been for cen
turies nominally Christian. Quite as much then, we
suspect, as in the antediluvian world, was there to be
seen upon earth " brutal violence and a prevailing
plague of wickedness." Surely these and similar in
stances prove that whatever development of human
resources, and of the natural powers of the mind, may
attend the lapse of time, there has not been in the
species generally any moral or spiritual progress ; and

r Dr. Temple admits further on, that "it is undeniable that, in
the time of our Lord, the Sadducees had lost all depth of spiritual
feeling, while the Pharisees had succeeded in converting the Mosaic
system into so mischievous an idolatry of forms, that St. Paul does
not hesitate to call the law the strength of sin." — (p. 10.)

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

23

that man, if (tinder certain circumstances) restrained
by law and softened by civilization, is still funda
mentally what he became in the moment of his fall,
" earthly, sensual, devilish."

Or again, can it be anyhow made to appear that
from the days when man first began to make his own
nature, relations, and duties a subject of study, moral
science has been steadily advancing ? A simple com
parison of the moral philosophy of Cicero with that
of Plato will shew that any such theory must be
utterly baseless. Plato embodied the Socratic teach
ing on moral subjects ; and never in after ages was
there any heathen teacher of moral truth at all ap
proaching to Socrates.

What then, precisely, is the progress of the species
to which our Essayist refers ? Great as his abilities
unquestionably are, we cannot but think that his
Essay is pervaded by confusion of thought, and that
in its most fundamental idea. There is the Scriptural
assertion (certain, because Scriptural,) that the ancient
Church was disciplined by the Law for the reception
of Christ. There is the patent fact that the civiliza
tion of a single people advances (at least up to a cer
tain point) and brings in its train certain humanizing
influences. There is the old remark, so beautifully
embodied in the first Pensee of Pascal, that in respect
of knowledge and research we enter into the posses
sion of the stores which our ancestors have accumu
lated, and have a wider range of prospect than they,
because, being mounted higher, we can see further.
There is the admitted fact that explanations and il
lustrations of God's Word are multiplied and varied
"through the legitimate application of human rea
son," as time goes on. Finally, there is all around

24 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

us in the present age, when " men run to and fvo
and knowledge is increased," a rapid movement of
mind, which continually throws up new ideas to the
surface ; a jewel here and there, and a great deal of
rubbish. The learned Essayist has, as far as we can
see, mingled all these sorts of progress together, and
elicited from them the idea of a " discipline of man
ners, of temper, of thought, of feeling, transmitted
from generation to generation," which, we are per
suaded, has no existence but in his own mind. This
we hold to be the TrpcoTov \//"eD£os- of the whole Essay.
But to proceed.

The divine training of mankind, he tells us, has
three stages. In the individual, "first come rules,
then examples, then principles." In the species,
"first comes the Law, then the Son of Man, then the
gift of the Spirit." The sins of the antediluvian
world (like those of a child before he is sent to
school) were those of violent temper and animal
appetites : —

" The education of this early race may strictly be said
to begin when it was formed into the various masses
out of which the nations of the earth have sprung. The
world, as it were, went to school, and was broken up into

classes." — (p. 7.)

The classes, as it appears from a subsequent part of
the Essay, were four : — the Eoman class, in which the
will was disciplined ; the Greek class, which culti
vated the reason and taste of the race ; the Asiatic
class, in which was developed the idea of immortality ;
and the Hebrew or highest class, in which the con
science was trained.

Now, independently of the puerility of detail into

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 25

which the illustration is allowed to run, we must here
object to Dr. Temple that, letting go of the Scriptural
clue which might have guided him to a right theory,
he thereby throws the divine agency in the education
of man entirely into the background. The great
Parent, Master, and Guide of the world's youth is as
much as possible hidden away from our eyes. Where
and how does it appear that Borne, Greece, Asia, were
in any sense religious educators of the human race?
That they contributed much to the education of the
human mind, (and in the way which Dr. Temple elo
quently and beautifully states,) no one will be dis
posed to deny. That the mind of the human race
has been, and ever will be, applied to religion, some
times with evil and sometimes with good results, must
be also universally admitted. But from these pre
mises we can never collect that the discipline bestowed
by Borne, and Greece, and Asia was a discipline in
divine truth. It gave nothing beyond simple mental
development. A soil is formed by the fall and de
composition of decayed leaves, by accidental deposits
of manure, or by some alluvial residuum ; and when
it is formed, an agriculturist throws a fence round
it, and sows seed in it, and rears plants; but we do
not speak of the agencies ivhich acted upon and pre
pared the soilj as either seeds or sotvcrs. Why could
not our Essayist have followed where Scripture points
the way, and have told us that, man having proved
a disobedient and prodigal son, his heavenly Father
for awhile left him to pursue his own devices, (as
parents will sometimes allow wilful and truant children
to run riot and injure themselves,) that the hope
less disorder into which his nature had fallen might
be proved to himself, — and not until this was becoin-

26 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

ing apparent by the wide-spread and deepening cor
ruption of idolatry, did God take in hand the education
of the species, (an education which was of the nature
of a recovery,) by founding a nation of teachers, and
throwing His revealed truth like seed into that na
tion's mind ? As it is, there is a painful ignoring of
any truth divinely communicated or revealed ; and the
impression left is, that the mental culture, for which
the race is indebted to Greece and Borne, is a thing
the same in kind with the special discipline in truth
and holiness which has been the prerogative of the
Church of God.

Moreover, in describing this gradual discipline, as
it took effect upon the ancient Church, while much
that he says is true and forcible, Dr. Temple drops
altogether the idea that the discipline was preparatory
for Christ. The Law, according to him, was a school
master to bring men — not to Christ, but — to that period
of the age of humanity when the world was ripe for
example. Not a word of the ceremonial Law, darkly
prefiguring Christ. Not a word of the moral Law,
convicting and condemning, and, by doing so, creating
a feeling of moral need which only Christ could meet ;
but simply an expansion of religious thought, paving
the way for its further expansion under the Gospel, — •
a weaning from idolatry, and a discipline in chastity
of morals and spirituality of conception. All true, no
doubt, and important in its place ; but we become (and
surely not without reason) impatient of the little pro
minence given to the revealed Object of faith, and of
Christ being represented rather as a stage in the hu
man mind) than as the One Centre of hope, and aspira
tion^ and devout desire.

Having conducted his colossal man through the

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 27

period of childhood, the Essayist next notices his
youth : —

"The tutors and governors," he says, (that is, Greece,
Rome, Asia, and more especially Israel,) "had done their
work. It was time that the second teacher of the human
race should begin his labour. The second teacher is Ex
ample. . . . The youth can appreciate a character, though he
cannot yet appreciate a principle. . . . He instinctively copies
those whom he admires, and in doing so imbibes whatever
gives the colour to their character."

Dr. Temple states very forcibly the power of ex
ample in the youth of the individual, and then goes
on to draw out the analogy in this respect between
the individual and the species : —

" The second stage of the education of man was the pre
sence of our Lord upon earth. . . . Our Lord was the Example
of mankind, and there can be no other example in the same
sense. But the whole period from the closing of the Old
Testament to the close of the New was the period of the
world's youth — the age of examples."

Surely it is very questionable whether the gene
rations which lived between the close of the Old Tes
tament and that of the New were peculiarly suscep
tible to example more than men of the present day.
Dr. Temple himself, perhaps, would hardly have said
so, had not the exigencies of his theory demanded it
of him. At all events, what proof can be given that
it was so? For our own part, we believe that the
influence of example is now as potent with men in
general as it ever was. The most profitable and the
most popular of all religious works are the biogra
phies of saints and eminent Christians; nor do we
believe that any period of the Church has been left
destitute of such testimony to divine truth, and the

28 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

indwelling of the Spirit, as example furnisiies. As
God lias illustrated His truth by the variety of
minds brought to bear upon it, so He has also con
firmed it in the Church's experience by the variety of
hearts in which its sanctifying power has been recog
nised. His saints have, no doubt, adapted themselves
to the circumstances and manners of their own time ;
but in all essential graces they have been one with
the saints of the world's youth, and have all taken up
the cross and followed the great Exemplar. In
deed, Dr. Temple recognises this when he says : —
" Saints had gone before [our Lord] and saints have
been given since ; . . . there were never, at any time,
examples wanting to teach either the chosen people or
any other." But his theory demanded that the age
of our Lord should be represented as the age of ex
amples ; and accordingly the facts of the case, if ad
mitted, must be glossed over.

But there are graver charges which lie against this
part of the Essay than that of an analogy which,
when examined, will hardly hold water.

"When we are reviewing, as Dr. Temple professes
to be reviewing, the great scheme of God's dealings
with man ; and when we remember that Christ is the
key and corner-stone of all those dealings ; we must
say that the position assigned to our Lord in the
theory of the Essayist is totally inadequate. For what
does this position amount to ? In the course of the
world's history there has been an age of examples ;
and Christ, as the Example of examples, stands at the
head of that age. Now it is true, no doubt, that the
atoning work of our Blessed Lord, in Us objective cha
racter, it did not come within the province of the Essay
ist to notice. He is writing upon the sanctification, not

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 29

on the justification, of man ; he is treating of the work
which has to be done upon the human mind, and does
not profess to go higher. It is man's education, not
God's provision for his salvation, which is in question.
But granting this, (and in fairness it ought to be
granted,) should the subjective bearings of Chrises Atone
ment have been wholly ignored in an Essay tracing
the theory of the education of the human race ? Was
it not a step in man's education, which at least de
served notice, when God threw into his mind that
new and most powerful of all motives, the love of
a crucified Saviour, and wholly altered his conceptions
of virtue by giving to the passive graces of character,
— submission, resignation, humility, meekness, poverty
of spirit, — a lustre which they never had before ? But
no ; the theory is rigidly to confine itself to an ima
ginary natural progression of the species, analogous to
the growth of the individual, and cannot easily make
room for supernatural interferences on the part of God.
In these omissions of the first Essayist we perceive
with sorrow the germs of those frightful errors which,
stated positively, disfigure the other parts of this un
happy book.

But worse remains behind in this section of the
Essay. The Essayist is explaining how our Blessed
Lord came in the fulness of time, "just when the
world was fitted to feel the power of His presence."
And on this point he says, — " Had His revelation
been delayed till now, assuredly it would have been
hard for us to recognise His divinity ; for the faculty
of faith has turned inwards, and cannot noiv accept
any outer manifestations of the truth of God" In plain
words, the world has now become too wise to accept
miracles as the credentials of a message from God.

30 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

Surely this statement is both unphilosophical and un-
scriptural. Whatever marvels natural science may
have discovered, the laws of the mind have not altered.
And can it be disputed that it is a law of the mind to
expect that a divine message will be accredited by
miracles, and to demand such credentials from a
person claiming to come with a new message to the
world ? We believe instinctively that the effect will
be commensurate with the cause, and that the work
will bear some proportion to the nature of the agent.
We expect from irrational creatures actions on a
level with their capacity, — the display of appetites
and passions, and occasionally the sagacities of in
stinct. From men, in like manner, we expect what
we know humanity to be competent to. From God,
on the same principle, we expect (ivhcn the occasion
ivortliy of them arises) actions exceeding human power.
Constituted as we are, we shall never outgrow this
expectation, any more than we can outgrow any other
law of the mind. It is true indeed that the expec
tation may take degenerate or superstitious shapes, that
it may form its conclusions with undue precipitation,
and so mislead us. The tendency to expect from
a Divine Being an evidence of supernatural power
has often prompted men to credit too hastily the pro
fessed supernatural, or to accept as God's work that
which is the devil's. These are perversions of the
instinct which shew that it needs regulation. But
dispense with the instinct we cannot. It is another
instinct of the mind, which may be depraved, but of
which we can never rid ourselves, to infer a general
truth from particular instances. Hasty inductions are
very foolish and very unscientific, and have been the
fruitful parents of error. But no one on this account

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 31

throws over the principle of induction altogether as a
means of arriving at truth. A man of well- disciplined
mind may say that it wants regulation, and that it
must be exercised with discrimination; but he will
never say that we can do without it. So with the ten
dency to, expect supernatural events as credentials of
a divine message. We may rest too much on the
supernatural events. They may not be the most im
portant credentials , and in the absence of others (such
as teaching which approves itself to the moral sense)
they may be altogether unsatisfactory and inconclusive.
But to reject the supernatural altogether as a cre
dential is to strain the mind awry out of its natural
constitution ; to cut ourselves off altogether from one
means of access to divine truth ; to shut one door by
which God's revelations reach us.

Nor is the position of the Essayist more Scriptural
than it is philosophical. Our Blessed Lord more than
once rests His claim on His miracles: " If I do not
the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do,
though ye believe not Me, believe the works : that ye
may know, and believe, that the Father is in Me, and
I in Him s." Does our Essayist mean to tell us that
He rested His claim on a ground which did not really
bear it out ? which would not have even seemed to bear
it out, had His generation been more enlightened?
Could our Lord have expressly sanctioned a view of
things which has no foundation in truth ? If " outer
manifestations of the truth of God" are to an advanced
and disciplined intellect unsatisfactory and inconclu
sive, would Christ (whose province surely it was to
raise the tone of the popular mind) have appealed to
them ? Would it not have been far worthier of Him in
8 See also John xiv. 10, 11 ; Matt. xi. 4, 5.

32 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

that case to come with no other credentials than that
of a doctrine which went home to man's heart, and to
have said, " Believe Me on this ground; for on no
other ought a messenger of God to be received and
believed ?" To use such language would have been
quite in the genius of an ancient philosopher; it is
altogether language which might have been held by
Socrates, and very nearly approaches to much of the
language which Socrates actually did hold : — " If what
I say does not carry with it the convictions of your
reason, I would not have you believe it, even were it
attested by a sign from heaven." But our Lord did
not use such language. He referred to the signs from
heaven as rendering the people inexcusable for not
believing. ("If I had not done among them the
works which none other man did, they had not had
sin.") And yet our Essayist implies that " the works
which none other man did" would not have secured
credit for Christ as a divine ambassador from the
men of this generation, because forsooth "faith has
now turned inwards and cannot accept any outer
manifestations of the truth of God." Dr. Temple,
we are sure, is an earnest and devout Christian, who
Would shrink sensitively from shaking in any mind
the evidences of Christianity. Has he considered what
is the real scope and significance of this unfortu
nate sentence of his Essay ? It has been admirably
shewn by Davison1 that "the vindication of our faith
rests upon an accumulated and concurrent evidence,"
derived not from one but from many sources, — "mira
cles, fulfilment of prophecy, the sanctity of our Lord's
doctrine, His character as expressed in His life, the
triumphant propagation of His religion without arms,

1 Discourses on Prophecy, i.

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD, 33

eloquence, or learning, and its singular adaptation to
the nature and condition of man." Our Lord Him
self seems to have rested the evidence on three main
supports : — I. Miracles u. II. Purity of doctrine, re
echoed by the moral sense ; " If I had not come and
spoken unto them, they had not had sin." III. Pro
phecy ; " Search the Scriptures ; for in them ye
think ye have eternal life : and they are they which
testify of Me." " Had ye believed Moses, ye would
have believed Me: for he wrote of Me." No. I.
perhaps might be called an appeal to the senses ;
No. II. to the conscience; No. III. to the under
standing. No doubt, one age will attach greater
weight to one of these branches of evidence, another
to another. No doubt, also, the present generations
of men, being to a certain extent familiarized with
scientific marvels, and having gained a considerable
power over nature, would be impressed by miracles in
a less lively way than men of former times, when the
material laws which govern the universe had not been
discovered. But is it wise, or is it reverent, to knock
away any one of the fair columns, on which the Lord
Himself has rested the truth of His holy religion, on
the pretext that the superior enlightenment of the
nineteenth century enables us to dispense with it ?
The argument for Christianity being essentially cumu
lative, is it charitable to weak brethren (to take the
lowest ground) to destroy its cumulative force ? Yet
this is really what Dr. Temple's argument in the above
passage goes to.

Besides our Lord, (though in a scale far inferior to
Him,) the Essayist enumerates certain other examples
vouchsafed to the human creature when in a state

u See the passages just referred to.
D

34 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

of adolescence. Greece and Borne, who were in the
former period teachers of classes, ("giving us the
fruits of their discipline,") now appear as associates,
and " give us the companionship of their bloom."
The early Church was another associate, "an earnest,
heavenly-minded friend, whose saintly aspect was a
revelation in itself."

As regards the placing Greece and Borne in the same
category with the early Church, (that is, with our Lord's
immediate followers,) we find here another instance of
that confusion of thought, by which the mental and
social development of mankind — his arts, his learning,
his civilization — is made part of his religious progress.
Dr. Temple writes an exquisite passage (the gem of
his Essay, quite worthy of being preserved in a com
monplace-book,) on the distinguishing excellence of
classical literature, the freshness of its grace. We
thank him for a noble piece of writing ; but how is it
ad rem ? What has the mere cultivation of taste (to
which, of course, classical literature has very largely
contributed,) to do with the very serious subject
on which we are engaged, " God's education of the
human race?" That the classics have contributed
much to the civilization of man will not be denied.
But are not civilization and the progress of the Church
somewhat sharply distinguished in Scripture, which
surely is a sign that the two should be kept asunder
as separate subjects of thought? We commend to
Dr. Temple's notice the pregnant fact, that in the
earliest extant history of mankind it is stated that
arts, both ornamental and useful, (and arts are the
great medium of civilization,) took their rise in the
family of Cain. In the line of Seth we find none
of this mental and social development. Is he not

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 35

mixing up in his theory the mental and material
progress of the world with the spiritual progress of
the Church, two things which God has kept carefully
distinct ?

As regards the early (i.e. the Apostolical) Church,
he strives to make out (as his theory requires of him)
that it presents to us example chiefly, to the exclusion
of doctrine and precept. It has left us, he says, little
beyond examples. " The New Testament is almost
entirely occupied with two lives, the life of our Lord
and the life of the early Church." As for the Epistles,
they are only " the fruit of the current history."
Doubtless, all the books of the New Testament (and
the same might be said of most of those of the Old)
were written on special occasions ; but who will deny
that principles both of doctrine and duty, which dis
entangle themselves from and rise very much above
the occasion, are continually being thrown out by the
sacred writers? Who will deny that the mind of
the Spirit, though legislating primarily for the occa
sion, contemplates beforehand and provides for the
future emergencies of the Church ? Is there no warn
ing against future error in the reproof of the Blessed
Virgin by our Lord ? or in His assertion that " he who
hears God's word, and keeps it, the same is His
mother ?" or in His severe censure of St. Peter ? or in
St. Paul's withstanding St. Peter to the face ? Great
part of the Scriptures are no doubt narratives; but
the narrative is only the vehicle of doctrine and pre
cept, which are always more readily received in a con
crete than in the abstract form. No writing, however
eloquent and ingenious, (and Dr. Temple's is both,)
will ever successfully gloss over the fact that the New
Testament does contain the principles of all Christian

D2

36 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

doctrine and duty ; nor would any one (el /JL^ Oicriv
SiafyvXaTTtov) ignore the usual definition of the Epi
stles as doctrinal books.

We now come to the last stage of the Essayist's
theory :—

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

In this last stage of his progress the individual
learns, we are told, by "the growth of his inner
powers and the accumulation of experience," by
"reflection," by "the mistakes both of himself and
others," and by " contradiction." Though free from
outward restraint, he is still under an internal law,
" a voice which speaks within the conscience, and
carries the understanding along with it." If his
previous education have not given him the control
over his will, he must acquire it by a self-imposed
discipline, which with weak persons assumes the
shape of a regular external law. Then passing (as
his wont is) from the moral to the intellectual, from
the discipline of the will to that of the mind, Dr.
Temple tells us that persons of mature age, who really
think for themselves, are often obliged to put a tern-

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 37

porary restraint on their intellects, and finding their
speculations (specially if they turn on practical sub
jects) bewildering and unsatisfactory, " finally take
refuge in a refusal to think any more on the particular
questions." Some, on the other hand, are always
forming theories on insufficient grounds, and are " as
little able to be content in having no judgment at all,
as those who accept judgments at second hand." Then,
finally, even the matured intellect of the full-grown
man does not altogether break with the associations
of childhood : —

" He can give no better reason very often for much that
he does every day of his life than that his father did it before
him ; and provided the custom is not a bad one, the reason
is valid. And he likes to go to the same church. He likes
to use the same prayers. He likes to keep up the same festi
vities. There are limits to all this. But no man is quite
free from the influence ; and it is in many cases, perhaps in
most, an influence of the highest moral value." — (p. 39.)

Analogous to this, we are then told, is the last
stage in the education of the human race, so far as it
has yet gone. Since the Apostles' days, the Church
has been left to herself to work out, by her natural
faculties, the principles of her own action. Her doc
trines were evolved, partly by reflection on her past ex
perience, and by formularizing the thoughts embodied
in the record of the Church of the Apostles, partly by
perpetual collision with every variety of opinion. (This
corresponds to the growth of the individual's inner
powers by "reflection," "contradiction," and "the
mistakes both of himself and others.") But " before
this process was completed, a flood of new and un
disciplined races poured into Europe," and " neces
sitated a return to the dominion of outward law."

38 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

The papacy of the middle ages was " neither more nor
less than the old schoolmaster (Judaism) come back to
bring some new scholars to Christ." (This corre
sponds to the self -discipline which the grown man,
who has imperfectly acquired self-control, is obliged
to impose upon himself. ) Then came the Reformation,
when the yoke of mediaeval discipline was shaken off.
Its great lesson was — not, as one would imagine, the
power of God's pure Word over the human heart, and
of the simplicity of primitive religion, but — the lesson
of toleration. Men then began to see, and have ever
since seen more clearly, that " there are insoluble
problems upon which even revelation throws no light."
"The tendency of toleration is to modify the early
dogmatism by substituting the spirit for the letter,
and practical religion for precise definitions of truth."
(This corresponds to that state of mind of the indivi
dual in which, finding speculations bewildering and
unsatisfactory, he refuses to think any more on the
questions which trouble him, and contents himself
with so much of truth as he finds necessary for his
spiritual life.) Some definitions of truth, however,
seem to be necessary, as a point without the world of
religious opinion, from which the lever may be applied
to move the world. Accordingly, the post-Eeformation
Church looks for these definitions in the volume of
Holy Scripture. In this connexion we find the pas
sage to which so much objection has been made. We
will not trust ourselves to represent its meaning in our
own words. It runs thus : —

" In learning this new lesson, Christendom needed a firm
spot on which she might stand, and has found it in the Bible.
Had the Bible been drawn up in precise statements of faith,
or detailed precepts of conduct, we should have had no alter-

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 39

native but either permanent subjection to an outer law, or
loss of the highest instrument of self-education. But the
Bible, from its very form, is exactly adapted to our present
want. It is a history ; even the doctrinal parts of it are cast
in a historical form, and are best studied by considering them
as records of the time at which they were written, and as
conveying to us the highest and greatest religious life at that
time. Hence we use the Bible — some consciously, some un
consciously — not to override, but to evoke the voice of con
science. When conscience and the Bible appear to differ,
the pious Christian immediately concludes that he has not
really understood the Bible. Hence, too, while the inter
pretation of the Bible varies slightly from age to age, it
varies always in one direction. The schoolmen found pur
gatory in it. Later students found enough to condemn
Galileo. Not long ago it would have been held to condemn
geology, and there are still many who so interpret it. The
current is all one way — it evidently points to the identifica
tion of the Bible with the voice of conscience. The Bible,
in fact, is hindered by its form from exercising a despotism
over the human spirit ; if it could do that, it would become
an outer law at once ; but its form is so admirably adapted to
our need, that it wins from us all the reverence of a supreme
authority, and yet imposes on us no yoke of subjection. This
it does by virtue of the principle of private judgment, which
puts conscience between us and the Bible, making conscience
the supreme interpreter, whom it may be a duty to enlighten,
but whom it can never be a duty to disobey." — (pp. 44, 45.)

The advance of toleration, however, is not entirely
progressive. It is apt to be retarded by a strong in
clination, in all Protestant countries, to "go back, in
every detail of life, to the practices of early times."
(This corresponds to the love which grown people
often manifest for the customs and associations of their
home, — a feeling of great moral value, though accom
panied perhaps with something of narrowness.) Still
toleration is progressing in the main, (though, like the

40 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

tide, it lias refluent waves,) and gains gradually upon
the mind of the race. Then our author (somewhat in-
consecutively it appears to us) springs from toleration
to the subject of Biblical interpretation. That inter
pretation, he thinks, we must expect to be greatly
modified. Nor need we fear such modification. "We
should welcome all discoveries which really throw
light on the Scripture, however rudely they may jar
with preconceived notions. This is the age of thought :
" clear thought is valuable above everything else, ex
cepting only godliness ;" and to exert it upon Scrip
ture and elicit original results is the great task and
vocation of the age. That we should address ourselves
to the task candidly and fearlessly is the practical
exhortation with which the Essay is wound up.

Dr. Temple appears to mean by toleration some
thing distinct from what commonly goes by the name.
Most people would define toleration as the allowing to
others the free exercise of their religion. Dr. Temple
seems to identify it, as far as we can catch the thread
of his argument, with a free interpretation of doctrines
and articles of faith. The two things, however, by
no means go together. If we might admit that at the
Eeformation toleration, in the ordinary and popular
sense, first dawned as an idea upon the mind of the
Church, (which yet a person thinking of Servetus
and Joan Bocher might be disposed to doubt,) surely
the Reformation had no conceivable sympathies with
laxity or indefiniteness of doctrine. Only let a person
read the elaborate Confessions of Eaith of the Pro
testant Churches, and we are persuaded he will come
to the conclusion that sharp and austere definition of
doctrine (and not the reverse) was the genius of the
Eeformation. Indeed, the second article of the So-

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 41

lemn League and Covenant x alone is enough by itself
to raise a question how far, in any sense of the word,
toleration made its appearance with the Eeformation.
Our modern latitudinarians (we do not mean to include
Dr. Temple under this designation, though we are
compelled to apply it to some of his coadjutors,) wish
to extract from the carcase of religion the hard skeleton
of definite doctrine, (upon which the whole structure
is built,) and to leave only the pliable and soft parts,
(" practical religion," "the spirit instead of the let
ter,") which are constantly in a transition state, like
the flesh and blood of the animal frame. But they
will not find among the Reformers, either English or
foreign, any sympathies with such a design. The
post-Eeformation creeds are generally quite as hard
in outline as the Athanasian. And we may confi
dently assert that the Eeformers were right in build
ing their systems on the framework of creeds. With
out such framework, religion is apt to collapse and
corrupt, as a body of flesh from which the bones
should be withdrawn.

We have been accustomed to think that the Chris
tian is under the twofold guidance of the Spirit and
Word of God, — distinguished and yet combined in
that admirable collect for St. John's Day : — " Merciful
Lord, we beseech Thee to cast Thy bright beams of

* " That we shall in like manner, without respect of persons, en
deavour the extirpation of popery, prelacy, (that is, church-govern
ment by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors, and commissaries,
deans, deans and chapters, archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical
officers depending on that hierarchy,) superstition, heresy, schism,
profaneness, and whatsoever shall be found to be contrary to sound
doctrine, and the power of godliness, lest we partake in other men's
sins, and thereby be in danger to receive of their plagues ; and that
the Lord may be one, and His name one, in the three kingdoms."

42 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

light" (the Spirit) " upon Thy Church, that it being
enlightened by the doctrine of'7 (the Word) "Thy
blessed Apostle and Evangelist St. John, may so walk
in the light of Thy truth, that it may at length at
tain to the light of everlasting light ; through Jesus
Christ our Lord." But in the education of the indi
vidual, the learner being emancipated from all re
straints when he has reached mature age, it did not
suit Dr. Temple's theory to notice these external
guides; his " colossal man" must be left to guide
himself when he comes to years of discretion. Accord
ingly, in the last section of the Essay, the guidance of
the Holy Spirit is entirely ignored, as far as explicit
statement goes ; and were it not for the capital letter
in the sentence, "The human race was left to itself,
to be guided by the teaching of the Spirit within,"
and for the slight intimation, " Whatever assistance the
Church is to receive in working out her own principles
of action, is to be through her natural faculties, and
not in spite of them," we might say of the author
what the Ephesian disciples, who had received only
John's baptism, said of themselves, "He hath not so
much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost."

Dr. Temple, no doubt, will say that in virtue of His
indwelling in the faithful, he regards the Spirit of
God as identified with the spirit of man. But we
cannot help thinking that a far more explicit recogni
tion of the Holy Spirit's personality, and a far more
constant reference to His agency, might have been
made without the smallest interference with the plan
of the Essay ; nor, indeed, can we think that the office
of the blessed Comforter is at all exhausted, or even
adequately represented, by saying that the Church is
now to guide herself, not by external rule, but by the

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 43

application of principles to the varying exigencies of
her position.

The guidance of the Word, however, being more
extrinsic than that of the Holy Spirit, some attempt
must be made to surmount the obstacles which it
seems to throw in the way of the theory. And the
attempt is made in the passage quoted at length
above. We find it exceedingly hard to trace the
exact connexion of thought between the sentences of
which this passage is composed. We suppose it to be
something of this kind : — "The Bible is indeed external
to the mind of man ; but then it is very elastic, and,
as the history of its interpretation shews, accommo
dates itself very readily to the mind of man. So
that the Bible promises at some future, but not dis
tant, time, to resolve itself into enlightened reason,
and leave the spirit of man the sole arbiter of its
own duties." We think Dr. Temple is here confound
ing the conscience of man with his understanding,
and the preceptive character of the Bible with its
aspect as a history of certain miraculous events.
Had he confined his remarks to the preceptive part
of the New Testament, every one would of course ad
mit that it is a book of principles rather than rules,
and that the adjustment of those principles is left to
the individual conscience, under the direction of the
Holy Spirit of God. It is also most true (and most
important truth) that this guidance of the Holy Spirit
is in the New Testament itself thrown very much
more into the foreground than any written document ;
that, under the present economy, it is "the anointing
from the Holy One which teacheth all things," and
" the law of the Spirit of life" (not a law graven on
tables) which presides in the human spirit. Had

44 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

Dr. Temple said this, he would have said what not
only does not admit of dispute, but also what appears
to us to suit his argument quite as well as the gravely
questionable things which he has said. But, as the
paragraph stands, he has mixed up the record of mira
culous facts in Scripture, which are in the sphere of man's
understanding? , (not in that of his conscience,) with its
precepts, which are in the sphere of his conscience and
not of his understanding ; thereby producing a sad con
fusion of thought. He alludes to certain narratives of
Scripture which, in consequence of modern discoveries
in natural science, are now understood in a manner
different from that in which people once accepted
them. This is a matter for the understanding, surely,
and not at all in the sphere of the conscience. Eesearches
into nature shew that the miracle in Joshua and the
Mosaic cosmogony have been misunderstood, and that
we must correct our apprehensions of the meaning of
these passages. Well, what then ? Argal, says Dr.
Temple, "The current is all one way, — it evidently
points to the identification of the Bible with the voice
of conscience" "We confess we cannot catch the con
nexion between the premises and the conclusion. We
should have drawn the conclusion somewhat in this
fashion: — "The current is all one way, — it evidently
points to a general recognition of the truth that the
interpretation of Scripture is one thing, and the true
sense another ." If there be any connexion between
the premises and the conclusion, we avow ourselves
unable to trace it, except in this most offensive form,

y "We have said above (p. 33) that miracles may be called " an
appeal to the senses." But of course the understanding must
operate upon the notices of the senses, in order that the evidence
derived from a miracle may be appreciated.

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 45

(which we believe Dr. Temple would repudiate as ear
nestly as ourselves): — "Geological and astronomical
discoveries have proved the Bible wrong on points of
natural philosophy. It does not much matter, however ;
for the true Word of God is not co-extensive with the
Bible, but only contained in it ; that portion only of
the Bible is the true "Word which is recognised by the
moral sense or verifying faculty. So that the current
is all one way, — we are gradually knocking away from
the framework of our belief those portions of the Bible
which the conscience cannot assimilate; histories we
may doubt or give up, only retaining their moral ;
much more may we give up cosmogonies ; the only
residuum we need leave is that portion of the sacred
volume to which our verifying faculty saith, i Yea ;'
so that at length the Bible resolves itself into the
voice of conscience." This gives the passage in ques
tion a certain logical sequence, and also a melancholy
coherence with the avowed sentiments of other Essay
ists. If Dr. Temple meant this, why did he not say
it explicitly ? But we will not believe he did mean
it. Of the two alternatives open to him, illogical
writing and the reduction of God's Word to the
square and measure of man's conscience, we joyfully
accept for him the former. And we take his Essay as
a solemn warning of the dreadfully unsafe statements
into which a very good and very able man may be
driven, who will ride an ingenious and plausible
analogy to death, even when at every turn it breaks
down under him afresh.

We turn, with something of a sense of relief, to
notice Lessing's treatise on the " Education of the Hu
man Eace," which, perhaps, may have suggested Dr.
Temple's. If so, we think that the original concep-

46 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

tion of Lessing (although parts of it are far more ex
travagant than anything to be found in the first Essay)
has materially suffered in clearness and power from
Dr. Temple's method of treatment. Our readers shall
judge. The German author begins with this funda
mental statement : —

"That which education is to the individual, revelation
is to the race.

"Education is revelation coming to the individual man;
and revelation is education which has come, and is yet com
ing, to the human race." — (Sects. 1, 2.)

Kevelation, it will be observed, and revelation ex
clusively, is, according to Lessing, the educator of the
race. He does not, with Dr. Temple, assign a class
to Greece, and a class to Eome, and a class to Asia,
recognising them as teachers, and thus putting them
on a level with revelation. He supposes, indeed, that
when "in captivity under the wise Persians," the
doctrine of the Mosaic Law respecting the unity and
spirituality of God, and its hints and allusions in re
gard to the doctrine of immortality, were developed in
the consciousness of the Jews by their contact with
the Gentile mind. But he knows nothing of any edu
cator save God in revelation, nor of any other persons
as educated by Him, save the people of His covenant.
The other nations of the earth, he thinks, were left
without education by the universal Father, in conse
quence of which, —

" the most part had remained far behind the chosen people.
Only a few had got before them. And this, too, takes place
with children, who are allowed to grow up left to themselves ;
many remain quite raw; some educate themselves even to
an astonishing degree.

" But as these more fortunate few prove nothing against the

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 47

use and the necessity of education, so the few heathen na
tions, who even appear to have made a start in the knowledge
of God before the chosen people, prove nothing against a
revelation. The child of education begins with slow yet sure
footsteps ; it is late in overtaking many a more happily or
ganised child of nature ; but it does overtake it ; and thence
forth can never be distanced by it again." — (Sect. 21.)

So far we think the German has the advantage of
the Englishman, inasmuch, as he gives revelation a far
more exclusive prerogative.

At the outset of Lessing's Essay lie makes the fol
lowing startling assertion, of which, if we cannot
agree with it in its present form, we may at all
events say that we wish all the assertions of our seven
Essayists were as explicit, and presented as clear an
outline to the understanding : —

"Education gives to man nothing which he might not
educe out of himself ; it gives him that which he might educe
out of himself, only quicker and more easily. IN THE SAME

WAY, TOO, REVELATION GIVES NOTHING TO THE HUMAN SPECIES,
WHICH THE HUMAN REASON LEFT TO ITSELF MIGHT NOT AT
TAIN ; ONLY IT HAS GIVEN, AND STILL GIVES TO IT, THE MOST
IMPORTANT OF THESE THINGS EARLIER." (Sect. 4.)

It immediately rises to the mind of the reader that
there are doctrines of revelation (such as those of the
Atonement and the Trinity) which never could be at
tained by the human reason, and are plainly altogether
out of its reach. The German theologian is prepared
for this, and carries his theory through with a bold
ness which, at all events, is perfectly consistent. He
thinks the doctrines of the Atonement and the Trinity
may be ultimately reached ~by the human reason ; and he
believes the great end of God's training of the human
race to be the recognition by reason of all the truths of
revelation. But he shall speak for himself: —

48 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

u As we by this time can dispense with the Old Testament,
in reference to the doctrine of the unity of God, and as we
are by degrees beginning also to be less dependent on the
New Testament, in reference to the immortality of the soul :
might there not in this book also be other truths of the same
sort prefigured, mirrored as it were, which we are to marvel
at, as revelations, exactly so long as until the time shall
come when reason shall have learned to educe them out of
its other demonstrated truths, and bind them up with them ?

"For instance, the doctrine of the Trinity. How if this
doctrine should at last, after endless errors, right and left,
only bring men on the road to recognise that God cannot
possibly be One in the sense in which finite things are one,
that even His unity must be a transcendental unity, which
does not exclude a sort of plurality ? Must not God at least
have the most perfect conception of Himself, i. e. a concep
tion in which is found everything which is in Him? But
would everything be found in it which is in Him, if a mere
conception, a mere possibility, were found even of his neces
sary reality, as well as of His other qualities? This possi
bility exhausts the being of His other qualities. Does it that
of His necessary reality ? I think not. Consequently God
can either have no perfect conception of Himself at all, or
this perfect conception is just as necessarily real (i. e. actually
existent) as He Himself is. Certainly the image of myself
in the mirror is nothing but an empty representation of me,
because it only has that of me upon the surface of which
beams of light fall. But now if this image had everything,
everything without exception, which I have myself, would it
then still be a mere empty representation, or not rather a
true reduplication of myself? When I believe that I recog
nise in God a similar reduplication, I perhaps do not so much
err, as that my language is insufficient for my ideas : and so
much at least remains for ever incontrovertible, that they
who wish to make the idea thereof popular for comprehen
sion, could scarcely have expressed themselves more intelli
gibly and suitably than by giving the name of a Son through
whom God testifies of Himself from eternity.

"And the doctrine of Original Sin. How, if at last, every-

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 49

thing were to convince us, that man standing on the highest
and lowest step of his humanity, is not so entirely master of
his actions as to be able to obey moral laws ?

" And the doctrine of the Son's satisfaction. How, if at
last, all compelled us to assume that God, in spite of that
original incapacity of man, chose rather to give him moral
laws, and forgive him all transgressions in consideration of
His Son, i. e. in consideration of the self-existent total of all
His own perfections, compared with which, and in which, all
imperfections of the individual disappear, than not to give
him those laws, and then to exclude him from all moral
blessedness, which cannot be conceived of without moral
laws."— (Sects. 72—75.)

How far this attempt at an explanation of them
really clears up the doctrines in question, or even
modifies their difficulty to the mind, we leave to
metaphysicians to determine. To ourselves, it seems
to let in so little light on these abstruse subjects,
that we much prefer to fall back upon " what is
written," that is, upon the divine authority ; and we
cannot but think that, in respect of such profound
verities, our Blessed Lord encourages us to do so,
when in answer to one who asked in reference to the
doctrine of regeneration, " How can these things be ?"
He replied, "Yerily, verily, I say unto thee, We
speak that we do know, and testify that we have
seen ; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told
you eartbly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye
believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? And no
man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came
down from heaven, even the Son of man which is
in heaven." At all events, it must strike every
reader of Lessing's treatise as an objection to his
theory, that if no further advanced towards that end
than it is at present, the human reason will take an

E

£0 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

enormous time in fully recognising these abstruse
truths of revelation. This objection is anticipated by
the writer, and is disposed of, unless we misunder
stand him, by the very extraordinary hypothesis that
each individual may perhaps live more than once
upon the earth, and come back again to acquire new
lights on divine truth by a fresh pilgrimage in a
more advanced stage of thought. But, again, we
would not have the reader trust our own representa
tion of the meaning : —

" Go thine inscrutable way, Eternal Providence ! Only
let me not despair in Thee because of this inscrutableness.
Let me not despair in Thee, even if Thy steps appear to me
to be going back. It is not true that the shortest line is
always straight.

" Thou hast on Thine eternal way so much to carry on
together, so much to do ! so many side steps to take ! And
what if it were as good as proved that the vast slow wheel,
which brings mankind nearer to this perfection, is only put
in motion by smaller, swifter wheels, each of which contri
butes its own individual unit thereto ?

" It is so ! The very same way by which the race reaches
its perfection, must every individual man — one sooner, an
other later — have travelled over. Have travelled over in one
and the same life ? Can he have been, in one and the self
same life, a sensual Jew and a spiritual Christian ? Can he
in the self- same life have overtaken both ?

" Surely not that ! But ivhy should not every individual man
have existed more than once upon this world ?

" Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the
oldest? Because the human understanding, before the so
phistries of the Schools had dissipated and debilitated it,
lighted upon it at once ?

" Why may not even I have already performed those steps
of my perfecting which merely temporal penalties and re
wards can bring man to ?

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 51

"And, once more, why not all those steps, to perform
which the views of eternal rewards so powerfully assist us ?

" Why should I not come back as often as I am capable
of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expertness ? Do I bring
away so much from once, that there is nothing to repay the
trouble of coming back ?

" Is this a reason against it ? Or, because I forget that
I have been here already ? Happy is it for me that I do
forget. The recollection of my former condition would per
mit me to make only a bad use of the present. And that
which even I must forget now, is that necessarily forgotten
for ever ?

" Or is it a reason against the hypothesis that so much
time would have been lost to me ? Lost ? — And how much
then should I miss ? — Is not a whole eternity mine ?"-
(Sects. 91—100.)

Do these extravagances — this revival of the doc
trine of Pythagoras in tbe nineteenth century of the
Christian era — spring (as we believe many modern
errors in theology do) from a morbid hankering after
the novel and the startling ? Why could not Lessing
have been content to say that the full revelation of
these subjects to the human reason is probably reserved
for a future state of existence ? To be sure, this has
been said a thousand times before, in sermons and
religious books. But because it is a very old idea,
is it therefore a false one? For our own part, we
do not feel sure that Lessing' s theory, apart from
its absurd extravagances, is fundamentally wrong.
We should be quite prepared to accept it, if only he
would not disfigure it by insisting that the reason of
man may become competent in this condition of exist
ence to recognise all the truths of revelation ? Why
should we doubt that it will recognise these truths
in that other land beyond the grave ? That the Atone-

E2

£2 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

merit was necessary in the nature of things, and not
a mere arbitrary arrangement of the divine will;
that the divine nature necessarily embraces a tri-
personality, just as the human nature necessarily in
volves a body, soul, and spirit, few thinking persons
will be disposed to deny. But whether we can see
into the necessity for the Atonement, or into the
essential constitution of the divine nature, while we
are in the lody, we take the liberty (notwithstanding
all metaphysical explanations,) to doubt. Humours
hang about our reason, and a cloudy atmosphere,
which intercepts and refracts the rays of divine truth.
But we entirely believe that a better condition of the
intellect is in store for us, when we shall see no
longer "in a mirror enigmatically," but face to face,
and know no longer partially, but " as we are known."

We have only to add that Lessing's essay, with
all its wild fancies, will well repay the perusal of
thoughtful persons, and that side by side with theories
flagrantly unsound, the author throws out hints well
worthy of being preserved and digested. This we
suspect (from our very narrow acquaintance with it)
to be the genius of German theology, — three or four
diamonds in a heap of rubbish, several beautiful and
valuable thoughts lying hid in a mass of writing
and a tangle of talk. Of the latter fault, however,
the little treatise of Lessing now before us is cer
tainly not guilty. It is (even severely) terse, and
may be read through in a quarter of an hour.

"We have noticed it here not only for its intrinsic
interest, but because we think Dr. Temple's mind
must, in the composition of his Essay, have travelled
along a similar line of thought. And we. much regret
that he has confounded with this a line of thought

THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 53

which appears to us distinct — that of the merely in-
telbctual progress of the human species, thus pro
ducing an entanglement between the Church and the
world, between the advance of civilization and the
development of religious truth, which exceedingly
perplexes those who desire to follow his argument.

In conclusion, may the writer of these pages be
allowed to express the hope that the controversy
which the seven Essays have roused, will be con
ducted by those opposed to them not only calmly
and temperately, but with a candid acknowledgment
of those truths after which the Essayists are groping,
and with which their very serious errors are weighted ?
Mere denials and protests do little or nothing ; we must
seek to disentangle the truth which they are mis
representing, and to set it forth, if possible, free of
their perversions.

We do not fear the storm with all its bluster, even
though it seems that some of the fundamental articles
of faith, nay, the principle of theism itself, is perilled.
Persuaded as we are that our own Church is the pal
ladium both of Scriptural truth and Apostolic order,
we believe that the special providence of God watches
over her, and that Christ Himself is in the tempest-
tossed bark. He can and will overrule this mass
of error and contradiction for good. Indeed, may it
not be said that, except through the antagonism of
opposing error, truth can never be thoroughly appre
ciated or developed in its full proportions in the
human mind? Truth learned by rote, as children
learn the Catechism, is not appreciated, nor even
under- tood. But truth, which has been beset round
about by heresies, and perplexed by grave question
ings, and which at length has emerged, with its

54 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.

ground cleared and its limits well defined, this be
comes a valuable acquisition, in which the mind may
take a just and intelligent delight.

Only let us never for a moment drop the clue to all
religious truth which the Word of God lends to us.
Holding fast to it, we shall find our way with safety
and ease through every labyrinth, however dark and
intricate, and shall emerge into that sunlight of " clear
thought" on subjects of religion, which Dr. Temple
tells us is " valuable above all things, excepting only
godliness."

BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL, AND
DR. WILLIAMS.

TT will scarcely be denied by any man of pure and
elevated mind, that the highest object to which our
faculties can be directed is the attainment of religious
truth. Our natural longings after immortality, our in
stinctive apprehensions of the mysterious presence of
Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being,
unite to persuade us that all questions are of inferior
moment to the great question, whether He has made
any revelation of Himself by which we may be guided
in our search after this truth ; and if we are convinced
that He has not left Himself without witness in the
world, then the true interpretation of that revelation
must be, to every pure mind and holy spirit, the
greatest problem on which his energies can be em
ployed. I think, however, that it will also be gene
rally conceded, that these questions in the present day
are almost limited to the enquiry into the evidence for
the truth of the Bible and the true principles on which
it ought to be interpreted. If that book is not derived
from direct revelation, no other source of revelation
will create much discussion among the men of our
own age and nation. Of these two great questions, —
the truth of the Bible and its interpretation, — it is
difficult to say which is the most important. The
enquiry into the truth of the document is prior in
deed in order, but when once fairly decided in the
mind, its work is done; while the interpretation of

^6 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

the word that has been revealed will give a deepen
ing interest to our studies to the end of life. Nay,
the very means employed in the investigation of the
true meaning of Scripture by those who have - had
any success in interpreting it, is worthy the atten
tion of all who believe in its divine origin. It is,
therefore, always a source of gratification to learn
any particulars concerning the lives of men who have
devoted themselves entirely to the study of Scripture,
or have attained to distinction by writings connected
with sacred studies.

The late Baron Bunsen may be said to have been
a person of this class. He has written many works
connected with sacred literature, and his name has
so long been before the public, that a general in
terest is felt among those, who have not had leisure
or an opportunity to study deeply the subjects to
which his attention has been directed, to know some
thing definite about the value of his researches and
the results to which he has attained. The expecta
tions of this portion of the public must have been
highly raised, when they learned that Dr. "Williams
had undertaken the very task which they desired to
see performed. He is a man of reputation as a scholar,
who obtained high academical distinctions, and is in
a position of eminence as Vice-Principal of a College
for the Education of the Clergy. These circumstances
would seem to offer a sufficient guarantee to his readers
that the information he would present to them would
be of the most trustworthy character, and that matters
of such deep and overwhelming importance, as the
truth and the interpretation of Scripture, would be
treated in a manner suitable to their great value and
dignity. But they who opened this Essay with such

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 57

expectations, would soon be inclined to close it with
feelings of sorrow and disappointment. They could
not fail, however slight their acquaintance might be
with the subject, to perceive that the tone in which
these great questions are treated is, for the most part,
that of one who plays with them as if they were
subjects for the exercise of ingenuity, rather than
questions on which it is of vital importance to us
to hold truth rather than error. They would find
that Baron Bunsen receives almost as high a meed of
praise for missing what his reviewer believes to be
the true explanation of Scripture as for discovering
it, and that although Dr. Williams vaunts the great
ness of the Baron's exploits in sacred literature, he
very carefully abstains from committing himself in
general to the conclusions of this great authority. In
deed, the Essay is so written, that while Dr. Williams
would persuade his readers that Baron Bunsen is im
measurably superior to those English divines who
maintain old-fashioned opinions on Scripture truth
and prophecy, he generally expresses himself in such
a manner that he cannot be charged* with holding
the opinions he reports. As an instance of this mode
of writing, we may cite the passage where Bunsen's
opinion on the antiquity of the human race is re
ported. It is said in p. 54 that

" He could not have vindicated the unity of mankind if
he had not asked for a vast extension of time, whether his
petition for twenty thousand years be granted or not."

Now certainly it is a matter of deep importance in
regard to the foundations of our faith, whether the
Bible is to be esteemed a trustworthy history even
in its chronology ; and it is, to say the least, sur
prising to see it treated as a matter of indifference,

58 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

whether it is wholly wrong in its account of the
origin of man or nota. But this is the manner in
which great questions appear to be treated in this
Essay ; and in the present instance it will be observed
that while the twenty thousand years are rather un
ceremoniously disposed of, Baron Bunsen alone is left
responsible even for the " large extension of time."
If Dr. Williams were charged on the strength of this
passage with maintaining that the Hebrew text of
the Bible contains a manifestly false account of the
origin of man, he might reply that he has only
asserted that Bunsen could not maintain the unity
of mankind on this hypothesis. He might say that
with Bunsen' s standing point this was impossible,
but that he has not asserted that it cannot be main
tained at all. Indeed, after sketching out some argu
ments in favour of this view of Baron Bunsen, through
rather more than a page, he ends with the favourite
refuge of reviewers in distress, who are desirous to
praise, but not inclined to follow the author they
are reviewing, by assuring us that "his theories are at
least suggestive" The real question which we desire
to investigate is this — are they true? And when an
author is put forth as a great luminary to the world,
it may be interesting to speculative students to know
that his theories are suggestive, but to the great mass
of readers the real question must be their truth or
falsehood ! In the same manner we find the highest
praise bestowed on Bunsen for his masterly exposition
of a prophecy, where the reviewer declines to follow

a It may easily be shewn that the Bible chronology is scarcely
elastic at all. For a proof of this assertion it will be sufficient to
refer to Clinton's Scripture Chronology in the third volume of his
Fasti Hellenici.

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 59

his explanation b. Again, Bunsen has exerted all his
ingenuity to persuade us .that the latter portion of the
prophecies of Isaiah were written by Baruch, and his
reviewer, in praising the ingenuity of his arguments,
assures us that " most readers of the argument for the
identity will feel inclined to assent;" but he takes
care to assure us that the argument does not convince
him, for he adds immediately, —

"But a doubt may occur, whether many an unnamed
disciple of the prophetic school may not have burnt with
kindred zeal, and used diction not peculiar to any one ; while
such a doubt may be strengthened by the confidence with
which our critic ascribes a recasting of Job, and of parts
of other books, to the same favourite Baruch." — (p. 75.)

The fact is, that the rashness of Baron Bunsen, in
hazarding conjectures as to the authorship of the books
of Scripture, has found little favour with the better
class even of rationalist divines in Germany ; and his
English reviewer, though he immediately hazards a
conjecture far more rash, has given us a quiet hint
that the German author has put more upon Baruch
than his evidence will warrant. It certainly surprises
one — and if the subject were less sacred it would
amuse a reader not a little — to see with what per
tinacity Bunsen is exhibited as a great discoverer
and an admirable guide, not for leading us to truth,
but for his ingenuity in dressing up error so as
almost to persuade men to accept it for truth. We
can only remark that, however strange it may ap
pear to us, this seems to be the way of Dr. Williams.
Every writer has his own way, and this appears to
be his way. We who differ from him toto ccelo, can

b " Still the general analogy of Scripture . . . may permit us to
think the oldest interpretation the truest." — (p. 73.)

60 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

have no objection to his removing with one hand the
praise he has just bestowed with the other, except
that it appears rather likely to mislead the ignorant.
They will remember the praise, and forget the dissent,
which is so delicately hinted. To those who are able
to read Bunsen in his own language, or are well
acquainted with the subjects he discusses, such ob
servations are quite superfluous. But it is clear that
although there is a certain parade of learning in this
Essay, it cannot be intended for learned readers, or
if it be intended for them, the author is very slenderly
acquainted with that which men of learning would
require. He can scarcely imagine that any persons
capable of investigating the reading and the proper
translation of a difficult passage in Scripture, can do
anything but smile when he pronounces an opinion
upon it ex cathedra, and ventures to attribute im
proper motives to those who take a different view.
They will naturally ask how he has acquired a right
to pronounce so peremptorily on questions which the
greatest Hebrew philologers have considered to in
volve very great difficulties. It is therefore to be
presumed, from this and other reasons, that Dr. Wil
liams intends rather to dazzle the minds of those who
are called i general readers/ than to address his ob
servations to those who are capable of discussing these
questions. An opinion somewhat similar to this is
expressed in a very learned periodical, of which the
first number has just appeared, in a German review of
the " Essays and Beviews0," where we find in p. 173
the following observation : —

" For all who know Bunsen's f Biblical Researches/ Dr.

c Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift fur EngliscJi-TheologiscTie Fors-
chung und Kritik ; herausgegeben von Dr. M. Heidenheim, (in

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 6l

Williams says nothing new ; and those who do not coincide
with Bunsen's notions on certain prophetical portions of
Isaiah, will still less be likely to be converted to them by
the reasons alleged by his reviewer. If they [these authors]
had taken into consideration the history of the Jews, and
the history of Jewish interpretation of Scripture, they would
have seen clearly why Saadias Gaon and the Kabbis who
follow him — from whom certain men of our own day, and
among them Dr. Williams, derive their dogmatic views —
gave up on paper the original interpretation of the 53rd
chapter of Isaiah."

The writer then proceeds to adduce other instances
of a class of criticism, which could have no weight
with persons who are acquainted with the Bible in
the original.

It is clear that the writer views, as I do, the Essay
of Dr. Williams as addressed rather ad populum than
ad clerum ; and it is on this account that I deplore the
tone in which it is written. If Dr. Williams believes
that it is for the interest of man, and likely to pro
mote the advancement of religious truth, that the
everlasting contests which have been carried on in
Germany about the genuineness of the Scriptures and
the truth of their main facts should be imported into
our English literature, and occupy a large share of
our attention, he has a right to introduce them to any
extent he may desire, by writings addressed to those
who are capable of investigating the questions thus
brought forward : the fair discussion of Scripture
difficulties will not endanger the cause of truth, and
we, who believe that the truth is with those who are
opposed to Dr. Williams, cannot fear the fullest dis-

London). No. I. March 31, 1861. This is a critical journal and
review printed at Leipzig, and published at Gotha, by Perthes,
but conducted by Germans living in England.

62 ' BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

cussion of Scripture questions : but if any man ad
dresses to those who have neither the leisure, nor
always the acquirements, necessary to the prosecution
of such enquiries, the most peremptory decisions on
questions which have exercised the greatest philo-
logers, and accompanies them with gross insinua
tions against those who differ from him ; if he repre
sents the state of opinion in Germany, and the course
of prophetic exegesis in general, with the utmost
unfairness, and attempts by such representations to
bias the opinions of his readers, we may fear that he
is likely to cause many, who are but slightly ac
quainted with these *subjects, to make shipwreck of
their faith. This is the only ground of fear. We
have no fear that the truth of Scripture, which has
borne for more than a thousand years the battle and
the strife of man, will succumb under a puny attack
like this. It has survived the assaults of Celsus and
Porphyry, of Bayle and Voltaire, of Gibbon and Hume,
and it is not very likely that it will fall by the hands
of Bunsen and Dr. Williams. It is the unfair repre
sentations, the partial and the one-sided views of this
Essay, announced ex cathedra, and coupled with con
temptuous insinuations against those who hold the
ancient opinions, which render it worth while to
spend a moment in answering it. They may deceive
the unlearned and the superficial, but there is really
nothing in the Essay itself which adds a new argu
ment to the old conditions of the great problem, or
would give the smallest uneasiness to those who
really know the history of Scripture criticism in
Germany and England. These accusations may ap
pear to be expressed in strong language, but if they
can be substantiated they will shew that, however

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 63

learned Dr. "Williams may be, however capable of
writing a trustworthy treatise on Scripture, the Essay
he has ventured to publish in this volume is worthless
as a guide to truth, and altogether unworthy of his
reputation and his position. It is a very legitimate
subject of enquiry to ascertain generally, whether the
representations of this Essay, or Eeview, are trust
worthy or not, and to that enquiry I now propose
to devote my attention.

It deals with vast questions and it abounds in very
strong assertions concerning them, and in the most
peremptory decisions about matters of vital import
ance as to Scripture truth and Scripture interpreta
tion. The question before us is — What is the value
of these assertions and decisions ? Before we enter
on the great point, — the truth of Scripture and the
true method of interpreting it, — as Baron Bunsen
was the peg on which this Essay was suspended,
it would be uncourteous not to make a few remarks
on his life and labours.

Entirely opposed, as I have always been, to the
opinions of Baron Bunsen, I have no wish to detract
from his merit or to diminish his legitimate reputa
tion. I believe that few persons will be disposed to
deny his abilities and acquirements, although during
the time he was in great favour with the sovereigns
of Prussia and of England it is probable that the
adulation of his followers may have given exaggerated
notions of both. Such leisure as was afforded by
a life of high diplomatic employments was eagerly
devoted to literature, and I believe that he had a very
earnest spirit with regard to religion. But, unhap
pily, these high qualifications were combined with
other habits of mind, which neutralized their value,

64 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

and rendered his Biblical researches unsound and
mischievous. He appears to have been self-confident
in the extreme, and rash in speculation, almost be
yond the example of his countrymen. The adulation
of his friends and followers increased his self-confi
dence, gave license to his spirit of speculation, and
thus he announced his decisions with a degree of
dogmatism which contrasted very strongly with the
argumentative support on which they rested. He
was born and educated in Germany at a season when
the religious faith of the country had been almost
overwhelmed by the torrent of unbridled rationalism,
and even the lamp of religious feeling burnt very
feebly. It seems to me to have been a dreary time,
but Dr. Williams appears to consider it a time of
glorious light and knowledge.

After a few incivilities about England, with some
remarks on the language of pulpits and platforms, he
speaks thus of the close of the last century and the
beginning of the present : —

"But in Germany there has been a pathway streaming
with light, from Eichhorn to Ewald, aided by the poetical
penetration of Herder and the philological researches of
Gesenius, throughout which the value of the moral element
in prophecy has been progressively raised, and that of the
directly predictive, whether secular or Messianic, has been
lowered. Even the conservatism of Jahn amongst Romanists,
and of Hengstenberg amongst Protestants, is free and ra
tional compared to what is often in this country required
with denunciation, but seldom defended by argument.

" To this inheritance of opinion Baron Bunsen succeeds." —
(pp. 66, 67.)

This was, unhappily for him, the case. He was
trained in sacred philology at a period when the
divine authority of Scripture was daily undermined

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 65

by professors and divines, and we cannot wonder
if the seed thus sown should have produced very
bitter fruit. That Baron Bunsen did not give up his
devotional feelings and his earnestness in religion is
not to be ascribed to the teaching of the period in
which he was educated, but to the more religious
frame of mind with which it had pleased God to
endow him. And in considering this portion of his
character we must never forget the difference between
the German and the English mind. The paradise of
the German appears to consist in unlimited license
of speculation, while the practical element is the
prevailing characteristic of the English : aiid thus it'
often happens that a German will not cast off a cer
tain phase of faith when he has demolished every
ground which an Englishman would deem a rational
and logical foundation for holding it. We ought not,
therefore, to be surprised at finding that, after deny
ing the genuineness of half the books in the Bible,
and treating a very large portion of its history as
mere idle tales or legendary myths, Baron Bunsen, to
the very end of his life, had a great love for devotional
hymns, framed upon a very different hypothesis, and
addressed to a very different state of mind. I have
heard, on the authority of private friends, that in his
last hours he was cheered and supported by the words
of the old German hymn, " Jesu, meine Zuversicht d,"
• — " Jesus, my trust." The same explanation will solve
the discrepancy which Dr. Williams finds between

d The hymn is found in Bunsen' s collection of Prayers and
Hymns, 1833, among those whose commencement is changed.
It is there No. 497, and begins, " Outer Hirte, willst du nicht."
33 it many of the German hymns have a commencement nearly
similar.

F

66 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

the Gesang und Gebetlucli of Baron Bunsen and his
criticisms : — " Either reverence or deference may
have prevented him from bringing his prayers into
entire harmony with his criticisms." (p. 91.) The
truth is he was better than his principles: he was
not in flesh and blood what he was upon paper. Dr.
Williams, however, evidently rests his claim to ce
lebrity on the brilliancy of his Biblical researches.
My own belief is that although some ingenious sug
gestions in the Liturgical portion of Baron Bunsen' s
" Hippolytus and his Age" may be referred to here
after, his name will be unknown in Biblical criticism
twenty years hence. But on this point the opinions
of Dr. Williams and myself are wholly unimportant :
it is one of those questions which posterity alone can
decide, and to which the words of a writer familiar to
Dr. Williams exactly apply, —

'Ajjiepai, B' eV/Xot7roi, Mdprvpes aofjxoTarot,

And indeed, this Essay on Bunsen has brought
forward in the strongest manner other questions, com
pared with which, the reputation of any man, how
ever eminent, is insignificant. The truth and the
interpretation of Scripture are discussed in a manner
which must leave an impression on the minds of those
who have not leisure or opportunity to study deeply
such questions, that their faith is founded on igno
rance and misapprehension ; and thus a general spirit
of scepticism is likely to be promoted. Now this im
pression I believe to be promoted by a series of mis
representations of the most unfair and one-sided cha
racter; and I therefore proceed to point out some of
the most striking of these misrepresentations.
. It may be convenient briefly to state the nature

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 67

of the misrepresentations to which I advert, and the
order in which I propose to consider them.

1. The state of opinion as to the Scriptures among
the learned men of Germany.

If we are to believe Dr. Williams, the researches
of the German critical school have disproved the
genuineness of a very large portion of the Bible, and
entirely deprived the prophecies, except in one or
two doubtful cases, of any direct Messianic prediction.
And Baron Bunsen, accepting this state of the ques
tion e, is highly praised by Dr. Williams for endea
vouring on this hypothesis to shew that the doctrine
of the Bible contains divine truths.

I propose to shew that this is utterly at variance
with fact ; that whatever currency such opinions may
have had some years ago in Germany, they are re
pelled by the most distinguished men of that nation,
and that they are gradually dying away.

2. The second great misrepresentation with which

6 This is of course a mere general statement of Bunsen's views.
In fact, he agrees in details with no wiiter of eminence whatever,
but simply considers himself at liberty to assign any date to any
book of the Bible, to explain any part of it as legendary or para
bolical, and to correct its authors on all questions in the most
arbitrary manner. Thus, the fall of man is not a narrative of
a real event, but a history of the fall of man as it appears in the
contemplation of the Divine Mind, the serpent being the symbol of
man's perverted understanding, his reason separated from his con
science; the Pentateuch is a late book with a few ancient docu
ments ; an universaT^deluge is a simple impossibility ; Jonah is
a legendary tale ; the song of Hannah was not hers, but the song
of the mother of Saul on her son's elevation to the kingdom, &c.
It would be easy to multiply these instances to any extent, but it
is needless — as needless as to refute such, gratuitous assertions and
suppositions in detail. Were every one of them proved impossible,
their author would have been ready the next day with another list,
just as gratuitous, just as unfounded, and just as absurd.

F2

68 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

I charge Dr. Williams relates to the interpretation of
prophecy in our country.

Dr. Williams asserts that as men have become more
learned, each writer on the prophecies has detracted
something from the extent of literal prognostication ;
which means in plain language, that the belief in Mes
sianic predictions has gradually ceased in England.

I propose, in the second place, to examine this
statement.

3. I then propose to examine in detail the mis
representations of Dr. Williams in regard to particular
passages of Scripture.

The first and greatest misrepresentation on which I
would remark occurs in a passage which has just been
quoted, but it pervades also the whole Essay. It is
the attempt to insinuate, rather than to assert, that
the opinion of the genuineness of the Old Testament
and a very large part of the New has been universally
given up by the scholars of Germany, and that they
have proved that it cannot be maintained. The con
temptuous language with which an opposite view is
treated may be judged of by the following specimen.

After an enumeration of all the triumphs of phi
lology over prophecy, by which only a few doubtful
passages are left to testify of the Messiah and one of
the final fall of Jerusalem, and a declaration that even
these few cases are likely to melt, "if not already
melted, in the crucible of searching enquiry,'7 the
author proceeds thus : —

"If our German had ignored all that the masters of phi
lology have proved on these subjects, his countrymen would
have raised a storm of ridicule, at which he must have
drowned himself in the Neckar.

" Great then is Baron Bunsen's merit, in accepting frankly

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 69

the belief of scholars, and yet not despairing of Hebrew pro
phecy as a witness to the kingdom of God." — (p. 70.)

We may think it a happy thing for Baron Bunsen
that the miserable trash which rationalism often sends
forth for enlightened philology, did not rob him
altogether of his faith in Christ ; but if the principles
of these philologers were erroneous, it is no " merit"
that he was led astray by them, nor does it much mend
the matter that he has made some awkward attempts
to patch up the cause he supposes them to have
damaged, by introducing a new source of confusion.
But. the representation here given of the state of
sacred philology is so utterly unlike the reality, that
one wonders how any person of the acquirements and
knowledge of Dr. "Williams could venture to bring it
forward. It must be supposed, by those who read it
without the means of correcting the statements by
an enquiry into German criticism, that the philologists
of Germany have made the spuriousness of the books
of the Old Testament so apparent, and have so con
futed the older notions about prophecy, that no man,
who had any regard for his reputation as a scholar,
would venture to maintain the antiquity and genuine
ness of the Pentateuch, or express a belief in the
existence of prophecies which in former ages were
appealed to in proof of the great truths of Christianity.
In short, that if a man maintained that Moses wrote
the Pentateuch or Isaiah prophesied of Christ, he
would be met by " a storm of ridicule" under which
life would be intolerable. I fear, if all who venture,
notwithstanding the sneers of Dr. Williams, to main
tain these opinions, were to follow his prescription,
the channel of the Neckar would soon be choked up.

70 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

It is perfectly true that for a considerable period these
subjects have been debated with the utmost freedom
in Germany, and that at the beginning of the present
century these opinions were, upon the whole, in. the as
cendant, — even then, however, not without opposition,
although that opposition was feeble. But the result of
the discussion has been of a very different character from
that which Dr. Williams would lead his readers to believe.
The defenders of the old opinions are now more than
maintaining their ground against the impugners of the
truth of Scripture. Have Keil, and Havernick, Heng-
stenberg and Delitzsch, Lange and his coadjutors in
his Bibelwerk, Tholuck and Lechler, with many others
of similar powers, found it necessary to " drown them
selves in the Neckar," or to hide their heads in
privacy ? It is easy enough to make such an assertion
in the pages of a volume addressed to general readers
in England, but if the assertion had been made in
Berlin, it would probably have raised so great " a storm
of ridicule," that the author would have been glad to
find himself at Lampeter again. The tide has turned,
and although some writers of great philological at
tainments, like Ewald and Hupfeld, maintain the
rationalist opinions with all the violence which seems
a natural inheritance of rationalism, yet the prevailing
tone is conservative, and that in a degree which is
constantly increasing f. It would be supposed also,
that in what Dr. Williams calls a " destructive" pro
cess, the rationalist authorities were in agreement,
or at least, not in direct contradiction to each other,

f It is a significant fact that the clever and eloquent sermons of
L. Harms, who assails the rationalists continually, and gives them
no quarter, have t>een eagerly listened to by crowds, and created an
unexampled sensation throughout the kingdom of Hanover.

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 71

in regard to the arguments on which they found
their system. But when you examine their opinions,
you find that they seem to agree in nothing except
a determination to reject the theory of the truth of
Scripture. No matter what hypothesis is set up in
its place, that hypothesis is altogether tabooed. And
the consequence is that their theories are often, not
only divergent, but contradictory and mutually de
structive. There are among these writers three who
have done considerable service in certain departments
of Hebrew philology, I mean Gesenius, Ewald, and
Hupfeld, and I am very glad to avail myself of the
fruit of their labours, but when they begin to reason
on the books of Scripture, I find it necessary to watch
every assertion with the utmost vigilance, almost every
step. When a theory is at stake, assertions are con
stantly made of the occurrence or non-occurrence of
words, which the use of a Concordance proves to be
groundless. Such accusations are not to be lightly
made, and therefore I invite any person who doubts
its truth, to examine the list of words brought for
ward by Gesenius and Hartmanng in order to prove
Deuteronomy later than the rest of the Pentateuch :
he will find that six of the ten instances do occur
where they are said not to be found. Or let him
examine the phrases said to be peculiar to the Elohist
in Genesis h, and he will find them in passages where

g See Gesenius, Geschiclite der Helraischen Sprache und Schrift*
p. 32, (1815) ; and Hartraann, Historiscli-Kritische Forschungen, fyc.,
uber die Funf Bucher Hosis, p. 660, (1831).

h See Gramberg, Libri Geneseos secundum fontes rite dignos-
cendos adumlratio nova. (Leipzig, 1828.) Some of these incorrect
statements are repeated in the last Introduction to the Scriptures
published in Germany. See Dr. Bleek's JSinleitung in das Alte

72 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

the name Jehovah, occurs. These are minor points
in the great conflict of opinion, but they serve to
shew how these opinions are supported. But if we
ask in what conclusion do these critics agree, it would
be difficult to find any position maintained by one
which is not destroyed by the rest. I must anticipate
an objection which will at once rise to the mind of a
reader of these lines. If these men differ so entirely
in these minor matters, is not their agreement in one
conclusion, viz. that the old belief in the genuineness
of Scripture is untenable, a very strong argument in its
favour ? It might have some weight in the general
argument, if it rested on other and independent grounds,
but when that agreement is founded on arguments
which each new hypothesis destroys, it appears to me
that its value is nothing. Perhaps this may be best
illustrated by an example. If a person is enquiring
into the age of the Pentateuch, he would naturally
read what Gesenius has said concerning the age of the
Hebrew language. He has laid it down as a rule
that the language of the prose writers in the greater
part of the Bible is identical with that of the Penta
teuch in its prose, and of the poets with that of the
poetical parts of the Pentateuch, such as, e. g. the
blessings of Jacob and of Moses. He assures us that
with the Captivity a new epoch of the language
begins. Gramberg tells us that some of the books of
the Pentateuch were written at the conclusion of the
Captivity, and Yon Bohlen declares it altogether to be
a production of the age of Josiah. It is true, they all
agree in rejecting the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch,

Testament, $c., p. 249. (Berlin, 1860.) This is only one of the
many instances which might be given of arguments repeated in
the most careless way by one writer after another.

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 73

but then the enquiry remains, why they reject it.
There may be prejudices against its Mosaic origin, as
well as prejudices in its favour, and if men are de
termined at all events to reject it, one can understand
why they differ when they begin to frame hypotheses
to suit the facts. But if they are led by these en
quiries to reject it, any two out of these three base
their rejection of it on grounds overthrown by the
third. Again, the Song of Solomon is declared by
Gesenius to have been written at a time when the
Hebrew language had been altered by an admixture
of Chaldaic forms and phrases. Suppose, with this
decision fresh in our minds, we take up one of the
latest publications by a great authority on the Semitic
dialects, — I mean Ernest Eenan, — who handles all
Scripture matters as freely as our Essayists could
wish, we are assured that the Song of Solomon cannot
have been written later than towards the end of the
tenth century before Christ ! The stream of light, of
which Dr. Williams speaks in such glowing terms as
having illuminated Germany from the time of Eichhorn
and Gesenius, does not appear to shine with all the
brightness which he proclaims, even upon purely philo
logical questions. I am not taking obscure writers
of small tracts, but acknowledged leaders and men
of eminence. Indeed, Gesenius is the highest name
among the philologers of the critical school; and
Ernest Eenan stands very high among the Semitic
scholars of the present day. But the fact is, that
each book of the Pentateuch, and the whole work
itself, is hunted up and down the four centuries be
tween the time of David and the Captivity, till the
heart and the mind are wearied alike with fruitless
enquiries and hypotheses which have no foundation.

74 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

Sometimes it is written about the time of the Cap
tivity, then it cannot be later than David ; sometimes
it is written before, sometimes after the division of
the kingdoms. And the only conclusion left for the
mind is to wonder whether it was ever written at all !
The everlasting differences on these subjects pervading
the lecture-rooms of Germany, must have wearied
many a noble mind and earnest spirit, that panted
after truth and found only husks like these. One
such spirit * has expressed the loathing with which he
was at last driven to regard such enquiries. He found,
as he tells us, that " one day St. Matthew and the
Gospel of the Hebrews were up, the next day St. Luke,
and then an original Gospel ; and the fourth day St.
Mark; one day Deuteronomy was a late book, the
next it was an early one," and so forth ; and at last
he felt that he could gain no nourishment for his soul
in a perpetual round of self- destructive hypotheses,
and changed his course j. It might be supposed, from
the rounded periods and positive statements of Dr.
Williams, that this critical school has run a triumphant
course in Germany, but unfortunately for this suppo
sition, this school is daily losing its influence.

There is a spirit of infidelity spread abroad among
the middle classes in Germany which the writings of
this school have helped to foster, but there is also
a large and increasing number of zealous Christians ;
and the hold of rationalism on those who acknowledge
a revelation is daily relaxing. There is also an altered
tone in the rationalist works themselves. The latest
Introduction to the Old Testament which I have seen

i Yilinar, now Professor of Theology at Marburg. Die Theo-
logie der ThatsacJien wider die Theologie der RJietorik is the title
of his work. j Vilmar, p. 15.

AND DR. WILLIAMS.

75

is that of Dr. Bleekk, who handles all these questions
with the utmost freedom, and decides in many cases
against the old opinions. He assigns the Pentateuch
in its present form to the time of David, and is against
the genuineness of Daniel. But his tone is altogether
different from that of the critical school in the day of
Gesenius and his followers. His admissions are such
as would have boon treated with scorn in the palmy
days of rationalism ; and he speaks with reverence of
the prophets, as receiving revelations from God and
being the interpreters between God and man : and
when he controverts the positions of Hengstenbcrg
or other writers of orthodox opinions, he does it with
courtesy. It is true the gift of evil-speaking, which
appeared to be pre-eminently the prerogative of ra
tionalist writers, has not entirely departed, and the
mantle of former critics has fallen on Ewald and Hup-
feld. The name of Hengstenberg appears to excite
a degree of positive fury in Hupfeld ; and in the pre
face to his Commentary on the Psalms he openly
declares that he considers it a duty to drag Hengsten
berg forward wherever he can accuse him of error.
He says of Hengstenberg that he is trying to " in
sinuate his poison into our Uood" which is no doubt
very becoming language for a great rationalist, but
would be thought rude in a Christian divine. But
perhaps if Hengstenberg and the an ti- critical reac
tionary school, as he calls it, are so displeasing to him,
Ewald and the rationalists are quite to his taste. Not

• k This work is posthumous. Its title is Einleitung in das Alte
Testament von Friedrich Bleek. Ilerausgegeben von J. F. Bleck
und Ad. Kamphausen, fyc. (1860.) A. Kamphausen was a coadjutor
of Bunsen in his BibelwerJc. See the Vorerinnerungen to the
Bibehuerk, p. cxxv.

76 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

at all, I am sorry to say, — for in the same preface he
complains that Ewald has pursued him for many years
"with peculiar fury,77 (mit besondern wuth,) simply
because in reviewing some of Ewald' s critical essays
in Hebrew, Hupfeld had hinted that he wanted more
knowledge of the language. These two men, Ewald
and Hupfeld, are mentioned here, because they appear
to be the only two of the rationalist school whose ob
servations on Hebrew philology are really worth con
sidering. And as they seem to be rather discordant,
the happy family of rationalism has some chance of
breaking up altogether before long.

Where every man has — not his psalm and his doc
trine — but a theory about every book in Holy Writ,
where it happens that every two or three years the
order in which these books were written is infallibly
discovered and as infallibly refuted, it would, of course,
be impossible to specify each opinion even on one
book; but it may be convenient to exhibit to the
English public a glimpse or two of that clear stream
of light which has been shed on sacred literature by
the scholars of Germany. Let us take for example
Genesis, as that was the book on which rationalist
criticism for some time bestowed its most particular
attention.

It was very early observed that two names for God
in the Book of Genesis were used in a peculiar man
ner ; that passages occurred in which Elohim was the
predominant, if not the only word used, while in
other passages Jehovah predominated, or appeared to
be used exclusively. On this foundation it is almost
impossible to enumerate the various theories which
have been formed. Eichhorn endeavoured to shew
that these different portions of the book proceeded from

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 77

two different and independent writers. But when
once this notion was fairly launched, there was no end
to the modifications it underwent. Every few months
a new theory, which of course superseded all the former
ones, made its appearance, and professed to solve all
the difficulties, only just to make room for another
more pretentious system. Ilgen imagined two Elohists
and one Jehovist. Gramberg modified the hypothesis
one way, Hartmann another, Ewald a third, and so forth,
till the world was weary of these endless suppositions *.
About this time it was almost assumed as an axiom
that it was absurd to imagine that a book could be
written in the time of Moses, as the means of writing
books were not discovered at that early period, and
a number of auxiliary arguments of the same kind
were pressed into the service. The result of these
discussions has been that the hypothesis of a number
of independent fragments is generally looked upon
with disfavour, and the prevailing tone is in favour of
what is called the Urlcunden-hypothesey or theory of
one original document receiving additions during the
lapse of time in successive editions. The objections
raised against the probability of the means of writing
being found in the time of Moses are, I suppose, now
generally given up. At least so Bleek, a rationalist
himself, informs us. These are his words : " That the
art of writing (schriftstellerei) existed among the He
brews in the time of Moses, according to our present
indications, cannot be a matter of doubt."

I suppose that in the palmy days of rationalism any

1 This representation will be found, with circumstantial details,
in Keil's edition of Hiivernick's Spezielle Einleitung in den Pen~
tateuch. It coincides with the results of a more elaborate enquiry
which I made into these theories some years ago.

78 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

divine who ventured to maintain this proposition would
have been met with such " a storm of ridicule," that
he would have been glad "to drown himself in the
Neckar ;" and therefore, when I hear of the unpopu
larity of opinions which I believe to be true, I am
willing to hope that further discussion will only prove
their truth.

I find that it is now acknowledged that some of the
most telling arguments against the Mosaic origin of
the Pentateuch must be given up: and I find also
from Mtzsch's "Academical Lectures" that it cannot
any longer be maintained that the demonology and
angelology of the Jews was learned at Babylon.
This was another point on which the assertions of
the rationalists were most positive. Indeed, this
belief of the Babylonian origin of these notions was
one of the great arguments on which reliance was
placed to prove the late composition of the Penta
teuch. If my readers ask who Nitzsch is, I must
refer them to Bunsen's " Signs of the Times," (p.
406 in the translation,) where he is said to be "the
man who is almost universally throughout Germany
considered as the first of Evangelical theologians;"
so that we are not quoting an obscure writer, but the
man who occupies "the most distinguished post" in
the Prussian Church, i. e. Provost of Berlin.

The examples which have here been given relate
for the most part to the Pentateuch, because that is
one of the chief battle-grounds of the critical school,
and it serves as well as any other portion of Scripture
to shew how much darkness is mixed with " the stream
of light" from Eichhorn and Gesenius to the present
day. In fact, the philological and linguistic collections
and criticisms of Gesenius and Hupfeld are highly

AND DR. WILLIAMS.

79

valuable, although their conclusions even on these
subjects must be received with caution. But it is
self-evident that a man may be extremely useful in
illustrating the language of Scripture who would be
a very unsafe guide in unravelling the difficulties of
its history, or reasoning upon the genuineness of its
books. But it is to be remarked that the contradic
tions I have brought forward are chiefly contradictions
on the very subject on which alone these men would
be entitled to speak with any authority, — I mean the
determination of date and authorship from the language
of a book. One more remark shall be made on this
subject, and then I leave it to the reader's own judg
ment. If Jerome is to be condemned, as Dr. Williams
would lead us to believe, for what he considers an
absurd dictum on prophecy, we might quote number
less absurdities from these critics of the most flagrant
kind. Did Jerome ever patronize so preposterous
a notion as that the name Noah was derived from the
Latin no, or mus-, (!) as Yon Bohlen gravely conjec
tures111? or did the best abused of the Fathers ever
propose such drivelling absurdities as that the story of
^Esop, as a great writer of fables, possibly arose from
some report of Solomon's apologues about the Hyssop
on the wall, (!) as Hitzig suggests in the preface to
his translation of the Book of Proverbs ?

These circumstances, to which a great deal more
of the same kind might be added, will afford a con
siderable source of modification, to say the least, to
the assertions of Dr. Williams about the state of
Biblical criticism in Germany. They shew that the
impression which any reader of his Essay would in
evitably derive from it on this subject, is entirely
m Von Bohlen on Genesis, vol. ii. p. 106, Eng. Tr.

8o EUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

erroneous. Whether he has wilfully and intentionally
misled those who cannot check his statements, can
only be known by himself and by Him Who searches
the heart, and to Whom he stands or falls.

But if this- Essay gives a false impression with
regard to the state of Biblical criticism in Germany,
its representation of the progress of opinion in Eng
land as to prophecy is still more glaringly unjust, and
is calculated to convey a still more false impression
of the actual state of prophetic exegesis. The most
objectionable passage is the following : —

" In our country each successive defence of the prophecies,
in proportion as its author was able, detracted something from
the extent of literal prognostication ; and either laid stress on
the moral element, or urged a second, as the spiritual sense.
Even Butler foresaw the possibility that every prophecy in
the Old Testament might have its elucidation in contempo
raneous history ; but literature was not his strong point,
and he turned aside, endeavouring to limit it [what ?] from
an unwelcome idea. Bishop Chandler is said to have thought
twelve passages in the Old Testament directly Messianic;
others restricted this character to five. Paley ventures to
quote only one." — (p. 65.)

The impression which this language is calculated
to leave on the mind can only be the following, viz.,
that as prophecy has become more studied and better
imderstood amongst us, the learned have gradually
cast aside their belief in the Messianic nature of the
prophecies of the Old Testament, till at last there
are scarcely any which are considered to be strictly
prophecies of Christ. Nay, the author seems to give
us a descending scale by which we may measure
the gradual diminution of faith in prophecy during
the last century. " Bishop Chandler is said to have

AND DR. WILLIAMS.

8l

thought," — surely this phrase is strange in regard
to a book so well known as Chandler's " Answers to
Collins n !" Why should not Dr. Williams have taken
the trouble to ascertain what Bishop Chandler does
say, before he made so loose a statement?

We shall simply place Bishop Chandler's own
words in apposition with Dr. Williams's report of
them : —

DR. WILLIAMS.
" Bishop Chandler is said

BISHOP CHANDLER.
" But not to rest in gene-

to have thought twelve pas- rals, let the disquisition of
sages in the Old Testament particular texts determine
directly Messianic." the truth of this author's

assertion. To name them all
would carry me into too
great length. / shall there
fore select some of the princi
pal prophecies, which being
proved to regard the Messias
immediately and solely, in
the obvious and literal sense
according to scholastick rules,
may serve as a specimen of
what the Scriptures have
predicted of a Messias that
was to come/'

It seems very clear that Dr. Williams knows even
less of Bishop Chandler than he appears to know
of Bishop Butler. But before we pass on to Bishop
Butler, let me ask those who read this. Essay, what

n I refer to the following books: — Bishop Chandler's "Defence
of Christianity from the Prophecies of the Old Testament," &c.,
against the " Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion" of
Collins, and his "Vindication of the Defence of Christianity," &c.,
against "The Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered" of the same
author.

82 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

faith, they can put in any statements it contains
after reading these words. The allusion to Paley is
even worse. Paley was not writing a book on pro
phecy, but in treating of the evidences of Christianity
he contents himself with quoting only one prophecy,
and assigns his reason for limiting his quotation to
that one, viz., " as well because I think it the clear
est and strongest of all, as because most of the rest,
in order that their value might be represented with
any tolerable degree of fidelity, require a discussion
unsuitable to the limits and nature of this work."
lie then refers with approbation to Bishop Chandler's
dissertations, and asks the infidel to try the experi
ment whether he could find any other eminent per
son to the history of whose life so many circumstances
can be made to apply. It is not that he " ventures to
quote" only this as if he were afraid to meet the
question, but he actually refers to the book where
these questions which lie out of his own path are
specially treated. And now, what becomes of the list
of prophecies, " fine by degrees and beautifully less"
as years roll on, which Dr. "Williams would persuade
his readers have been given up till a grave divine
" ventured to quote" only one ! The subject is really
too sacred, too solemn to be treated in a manner like
this. On any subject such misrepresentation would
be very discreditable, but in treating of the evidence
for the truth of Holy Scripture it becomes positively
criminal.

But if Paley and Bishop Chandler are thus mis
represented, what shall we say to the insinuation
about Bishop Butler ° ? Instead of Bishop Butler

0 The assertion that " literature was not his strong point" is
really beneath criticism ; though coming in the midst of a sentence

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 83

having turned aside from, a future prospect of pro
bable interpretations, he distinctly grapples with those
that have been made on this principle, and denies
that they have any weight. So that in the repre
sentation of Bishop Chandler, Dr. Paley, and Bishop
Butler, the author of this Essay may be said to have
misrepresented every one of them, and to have inter
woven his misrepresentations together into a state
ment which it would be difficult to parallel for its
contempt of truth. I have no wish to charge the
author with wilful misrepresentation, and I trust he
may not have thought of the impression his words
would inevitably leave on the mind of any reader
of his book, but I appeal with confidence to every
reader of plain common sense, whether that is not the
only impression they are calculated to make ? Bishop
Butler's is not a work on prophecy, but in enumerat
ing the sources of evidence for Christianity he can
not well overlook prophecy. He is not attempting
to expound prophecy, but shewing how it bears upon
the evidence for Christianity, and answering some
objections which are commonly made against its testi-

which it is an act of courtesy to designate as English, it may excite
something like wonder. It rather resembles another attack upon
an eminent prelate of our Church — I mean Bishop Pearson. Dr.
Williams accuses him of making the prose of the Jewish rabbinical
writers more prosaic. I never understood that they professed to
write poetry, and therefore, if Bishop Pearson has made them in
telligible, he will be excused for not rendering them into poetry.
But to say the truth, most persons who read what Dr. AVilliams
has printed in the form of stanzas at the conclusion of this Essay
will feel that the author's notions of poetry are rather peculiar.
These sneers at great and eminent men are so unworthy of a man
of learning, that we will pass them by, only hoping that Dr. Wil
liams may one day be entitled to a tithe of the reverence due to
those whom he has thus depreciated.

84 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

mony. He adduces and answers three lines of objec
tion: 1. The obscurity of parts of the prophecies;
2. The objection that, considering each prophecy dis
tinctly by itself, it does not appear to be intended of
the events to which Christians apply it : to this he
answers, that " a series of prophecy being applicable
to such and such events, is in itself a proof that it
was intended of them," &c. ; 3. " That the shewing,
even to a high degree of probability, if that could be,
that the prophets thought of some other event, in
such and such predictions, and not those at all which
Christians allege to be completions of such predic
tions, — or that such and such prophecies are capable
of being applied to other events than those to which
Christians apply them, — that this would not destroy
the force of the argument from prophecy, even with
regard to those very instances." And after he has
given his reason for this decision, he says, " Hence
may be seen to how little purpose those persons busy
themselves who endeavour to prove that the prophetic
history is applicable to events of the age in which
it was written, or of ages before it." And he then
argues the case in regard, to Porphyry, and concludes
his remarks. What colour does this course of argu
ment give for insinuating that Bishop Butler foresaw
the possibility that every prophecy in the Old Testa
ment might have its elucidation in contemporaneous
history, and " turned aside" from the thought? It
was an objection which had been often made, it formed
a strong point of attack, and Butler quietly points out
that it has no force. To those who have a knowledge
of the writings of Chandler, Butler, and Paley, or to
those who have the patience to examine each assertion
of this author, and place it at its true worth, these ob-

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 85

servations would be wholly unnecessary. I do not
address myself to them, but I address myself to those
who might be expected to look to a man of the repu
tation and position of Dr. Williams for guidance in
such matters, and would receive his statements with
trust. Such persons, whatever Dr. Williams may
have meant, would be entirely deceived. They would
suppose that belief in prophecy in England was well-
nigh exploded among the learned, and left only to
platform orators ; while the insinuation that upon the
Continent only about two or three doubtful passages
are now believed to testify of the Messiah, and one
of the destruction of Jerusalem, seems completely
to banish all faith in prophecy from the world. And
this is effected by a series of misrepresentations, which
it would not be easy to parallel. Let those therefore
who read these pages endeavour to learn from the
examination of such assertions as these, what depend
ence they may place on other portions of this Essay
where they have less means of testing the justice of
the statements.

As Dr. Williams has the reputation of an expe
rienced controversialist, it may be desirable to point
out one subterfuge, to which he has no right to have
recourse : I mean by a quibble on the words " directly
Messianic." If he professes to mean no more than
that the prophecies were in the first place applicable
to some other subject, but were intended by the Holy
Spirit to testify of the Messiah, he concedes the whole
question. His whole Essay is constructed on the
principle that there are no real " predictions " in the
Bible, with two or three insignificant exceptions.
This Essay would take away all belief in such pre
dictions, and utterly banish inspired prophecies as

86 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

a source of evidence. If lie admits that they are
inspired predictions, it matters not whether they
are so in a primary or a secondary sense. And it
is well to suggest to his readers, that although Dr.
"Williams appears to think it sufficient to deny each
prophecy individually to apply to Christ, no attentive
reader of the Bible can fail to see that the image
of the Messiah is foreshadowed and pourtrayed in
its integrity by the combination of these individual
features, each of which may be contained in a single
prophecy. They are full of wonder when considered
individually, but united, their strength is, or ought
to be, irresistible.

Before we leave the general notion of prophecy as
having a real element of prediction, we would ask those
persons who have been led astray by the assertions
— I cannot call them arguments — of this author to
read attentively the prophecies in which the fall of
the great powers of the world is predicted, and to
compare the predictions with the present state of
those powers, e.g. of Egypt, of Tyre, and of Babylon p.
These are among the most striking of the secular pre
dictions, if we may so call them, of the Bible. Let
the candid enquirer well consider these side by side
with the assertions of this Essay, and he will then
be enabled to form some judgment of the prejudice
and one-sidedness against which the believer in the
Bible has to contend.

There is another subject also to which we may here

P Babylon — Isa. xiii., xiv., &c. Tyre — Isa. xxiii. ; Ezek. xxvi.
— xxviii. Egypt — Ezek. xxix. These are not the only pro
phecies, but sufficient as a basis for the enquiry. Bp. Newton
in his " Dissertations on the Prophecies" will supply more, as
well as the prophecies relating to Nineveh and other great powers.

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 87

allude in a few transient remarks : it is the manner
in which the Essayist has argued against the inspira
tion of the apostles by a manifest misconception of
a very plain passage.

In a note at p. 67 Mr. Mansel is reproved, because
in his Bampton Lectures " recognised mistranslations
and misreadings are alleged as arguments." Mr.
Mansel is so abundantly able to make answer for him
self, that it would be superfluous for any friend to
answer for him. But these words are quoted to shew
how very prone we are to commit the very fault
which we attribute to others. Dr. "Williams, both
in his Essay, and in his " Eational Godliness," p. 309,
uses as an argument against the inspiration of the
apostles, the words of St. Paul when he assured the
Lycaonians that he and Barnabas were " men of like
passions" with themselves. Is there a mistranslation
more recognised than this, or can there be an argu
ment more entirely alien from the subject into con
nection with which it is dragged, than this quota
tion of Dr. Williams ? What argument can it afford
against any theory of inspiration, that the apostles
acknowledged to those who were about to worship
them as gods, that they were mortals like themselves,
subject to suffering, sickness, death ? Had the author
taken counsel on the subject with a well-educated
fifth-form boy he would, I am willing to believe, have
cancelled this argument.

But Dr. Williams is not content to throw contempt
on the great men of modern days, on Bishops Pearson
and Butler, and on men of reputation in our own day,
like Mr. Mansel, — he wings his shafts against the great
men of ancient days also, and has especially selected
Jerome for his mark. It does not appear very pro-

88 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

bable, after some fourteen centuries in which the name
of Jerome has been held in high reverence, even by
those who would demur to some of his opinions, that
this eminent Father would sink into contempt even
though assailed by one who was thoroughly conversant
with his weakest points. But when the attack is so
made as to shew the weak points of the assailant him
self, the effect becomes rather ludicrous than serious.
It seems a pity for the reputation of the Essayist that
when he selects a few crowning absurdities, as he
imagines, from the whole works of this Father, he
should flounder at every step in a manner which almost
excites our compassion. One feels something like
compassion for a man, who with the pages of an
eminent expositor of Scripture before him, indulges
in the littleness of picking out a single specimen
of what appear to him to be absurdities, and then pro
duces it in a manner which evidently shews either
that his acquaintance with the author is very slight,
or that he is unwilling his readers should know any
thing more than the bare assertion which, quoted by
itself, sounds strange to our ears. Dr. "Williams, after
telling us that to estimate rightly Bunsen's services in
exhibiting the Hebrew prophets as witnesses to the
divine government would require from most English
men years of study, proceeds thus : —

" Accustomed to be told [i. e. tlie English] that modern
history is expressed by the Prophets in a riddle, which re
quires only a key to it, they are disappointed to hear of moral
lessons, however important. Such notions are the inheritance
of days when Justin could argue, in good faith, that by the
riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria were intended
the Magi and their gifts, and that the King of Assyria sig
nified King Herod ; (!) or when Jerome could say, ' No one

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 89

doubts that by Chaldaeans are meant Demons/ and the Shu-
nammite Abishagq could be no other than heavenly wisdom,
for the honour of David's old age ; not to mention such
things as Lot's daughters symbolizing the Jewish and Gen
tile Churches."— (pp. 63, 64,)

For this attack upon Jerome we have the authority
quoted in a note. The authority is thus stated, p.
64:—

" On Isaiah xliii. 14, 15, and again on ch. xlviii. 12 — 16.
He also shews on xlviii. 22 that the Jews of that day had not
lost the historical sense of their prophecies, though mystical
renderings had already shewn themselves."

In another note, p. 65, we have the following re
mark : —

" When Jerome Origenises he is worse than Origen, be
cause he does not, like that great genius, distinguish the
historical from the mystical sense."

These are very hard words ; but the Fathers have
had the vials of wrath showered down upon them
so often that an ounce or two, more or less, of the
virtuous indignation of the nineteenth century at their
shortcomings, can make but little difference. But
when the nineteenth century begins to depreciate the
fourth and fifth centuries in theology, it would be well
that the matter should be stated quite fairly. It will
be of no avail for Dr. Williams to state, as he did in
reply to an anonymous critic, that he speaks " in
a style abundantly clear, though with rapid conden
sation," &c., for in the present instance he selects his
own point of attack, and if he quotes any statement of
an author, he is bound to quote it with sufficient detail
to place his reader in possession of the whole case.

i This is not worth answering. It occurs in a private letter to
Nepotianus, and is simply a case of etymological trifling.

90 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

I have no means of testing the familiarity of Dr.
Williams with the works of Jerome ; and as he bears
the reputation of a learned and candid man) I should
wish to believe that he is not quoting from a random
plunge or two into the depths of that Father's Com
mentary, although I can scarcely imagine that any
candid man would endeavour from such a passage to
create so unfavourable an impression of this eminent
commentator, if he really knew much about him !
Throughout these valuable remains of ancient exegesis,
Jerome compares the Hebrew text and that of the
LXX, and points out the difference of the inter
pretations to which they naturally lead. He occa
sionally gives his opinion on other interpretations,
and gives his reasons for rejecting or accepting them.
Often two different interpretations are found in the
commentary on the same passage, and the sagacity of
the reader must be exercised in judging between
them. "While he gives one of these interpretations,
he uses the language which fits that interpretation,
whether it expresses his own sentiments or not. What
are we therefore to think of the fairness of a person
who picks out and isolates a single sentence from the
middle of a mystical interpretation, and then presents
it to his readers as a specimen of the exegesis of
Jerome ? If he only meant that the simple fact that
such a statement could ever enter into any mystical
interpretation at all, is a proof that exegesis was at
a very low ebb, and that Jerome was not much above
his contemporaries, then his proof would be worth
nothing, and he would only exhibit pro tanto his own
incompetence to measure the intellectual power of the
age. If he meant to exhibit this as an average speci
men of Jerome's powers, then such a proceeding needs

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 91

only the simple detail which. I have given to shew its
unfairness. It would be unfair to take it as a specimen
if it were shewn to be Jerome's own opinion and
enounced generally. But when it is shewn to be
a part of a great interpretation, which is immediately
followed by the words "But the sense according to
the LXX is entirely different," what shall we say of
such a quotation? And that too on the supposition
that Dr. Williams has given a true interpretation of
the words he has quoted? Any competent Hebrew
and Latin scholar, on reading these words, " De Chal-
deeis nullus ambigit quin Dsemones sonent," would be
directed by the words Chaldcei and sonent to a paro
nomasia or play on words between the Hebrew name
for the Chahlrcans and the word for Demons r. If he
looked for Jerome's own interpretation of the word
among his Hebrew words, there he would find that
the Hebrew word for Chaldees is rendered by Jerome,
"Chasdim, quasi Daemonia, vel quasi ubera, vel fe-
roces." So that after all this contempt of Jerome, it
appears that he is only enouncing, in connection with
a particular interpretation of a certain passage, an
etymological fact, not an exegetical principle. The
unlearned would understand from the account in
the Essay that Jerome meant to lay down as a rule
of interpretation, that wherever Chaldeans are men
tioned, Demons are intended, whereas all that Jerome
does say is this, viz., that the Hebrew text lends
itself to a mystical interpretation, by which Babylon
is represented as the world, and there is no doubt that
the word Chasdim may be interpreted ' Deemones,' ety-

, CJiasdim, or Cliaslidim. Now this is, otherwise pointed,
equivalent to "like Demons," the word D^TtP occurring for Demons
in the Pentateuch.

92 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

mologically speaking. He immediately adds that the
sense is entirely different according to the LXX. I
invite all those who have the requisite acquirements
to study this portion of Jerome, and to test the ac
count which I have given of his meaning with the
utmost severity. I now ask, if this account be true,
can any reader trust the author of this Essay for
a faithful portrait of one of the Fathers s ? But this
is by no means all the retribution due from the author
of the Essay to the memory of this eminent Father.
So far from being anxious to interpret Scripture thus
mystically, and to make out the Chaldeans to be
Demons, Jerome actually reproves Origen for this
very fault on more occasion than one. .

Any person who desires to judge more fairly of
Jerome, after this paltry attack of Dr. Williams, may
consult, among other passages, his commentary on
Isaiah xiii., with its preface*. He will there see
how carefully he rejects the spiritual interpretation of
Eusebius, who was not a person commonly run away
with by his imagination, and cleaves to the simple
historical view of the passage, and how he repudiates
the allegorizing spirit of Origen. Or, again, let him
turn to Jer. xxv., where he will find the judgment
of Jerome on the allegorical interpretation of Ori
gen : " The allegorical interpreter" (i.e. Origen) " here

8 I must not be misunderstood, however. I quite acknowledge
that this etymology is farfetched, and that this is an unsound
mode of interpretation. But to charge Jerome with flagrant ab
surdity for a single expression like this is simply ridiculous and
unworthy.

1 There can be no doubt that Jerome's translation is faulty here.
B'Q'niD cannot be in the nominative, but is in the genitive after
" the doors," " the doors of the princes," but this makes no difference
as to the general sobriety of his interpretation of this passage.

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 93

talks nonsense, and puts force upon the historical
interpretation." Indeed, he seems to think the mere
statement of such an opinion here a sufficient re
futation. Let him turn again to Jeremiah xxvii.,
where he finds these words : " The allegorical inter
preter" (i.e. Origen) " interprets this passage about
the heavenly Jerusalem, because the inhabitants of
that city are to descend into Babylon, that is, the
confusion of this world, which is in the wicked one,
and to serve the king of Babylon, that is without
doubt the devil." This is his account of Origen's
interpretation, and the reader will remark that he
makes here the king of Babylon the devil ; but he
immediately adds, " But ivc follow the simple and
true history, that we may not be involved in clouds
and delusions."

Surely no reader will require further proof that, if
he desires to estimate the character of Jerome fairly,
he must go to some other source than Dr. "Williams.
If Dr. Williams really knows much about Jerome, —
a question I do not presume to answer, although I
may have formed an opinion upon it, — it is quite
clear that he does not intend his readers to benefit
by his knowledge. He may be capable of giving
them a just notion of this Father, but he is quite
determined to thrust upon them an unjust view, and
depreciate Jerome in order to libel modern writers
who differ from the rationalists.

The specimens already adduced of the method of
this author in dealing with general questions, such as
the interpretation of prophecy and the character of
great patristic authorities, are sufficient to shew that
no confidence whatever can be placed in his state
ments. But perhaps it may be thought that he is

94 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

more happy in his exegesis or explanation of particu
lar passages of Scripture. Dr. Williams has ventured,
fortunately for us? and as we deem unfortunately for
himself, to give us his opinion on certain difficult
passages of Holy Writ. If he had not ventured on
this experiment he might have maintained the repu
tation of being a very competent Hebrew scholar;
but if in the opinions he delivers he shews a thorough
want of appreciation of the nature of the passages
he brings forward, he must be content to sink down
into the common herd of. authors, who write on what
they do not take pains enough to understand.

"Whether this is the case with Dr. Williams will
appear from the following statement.

All Hebrew scholars are well aware that some diver
sity of opinion has existed, especially in Germany, as
to the interpretation of that portion of the prophecy of
Jacob in Gen. xlix. which relates to Judah and Shiloh.
The English reader who is not acquainted with Hebrew
and German is, of course, unable to refute any mis
representation of the state of the question, and if
Dr. Williams writes for them, he is bound to state it
fairly. If he writes for the learned I need scarcely
say that they will only smile at the presumption of
a scholar who, in regard to a passage on which there
has been a division of opinion, considers himself qua
lified to overturn the decision of the best authorities
and the tradition of more than two thousand years,
and to declare that except for doctrinal perversions
this view would never be maintained. Let us now
examine the passage and the authorities for the two
divergent views.

The words as translated in our version are, " The
sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver

AND DR. WILLIAMS.

95

from between his feet, until Shiloh come." And such
has been the translation from the earliest days till
within a comparatively modern period, when the last
clause has been translated by some Hebrew scholars,
" until he come to Shiloh."

If we enquire into the support on which these two
translations respectively rest, we shall find that there
was till within the last two centuries an almost u una
nimous concurrence in the translation given by our
version, as far as the subject of the verb " to come"
is concerned. It was almost universally translated
" until Shiloh come," although some understood by
Shiloh " He to whom it belongs," and others under
stood ' rest' or ' peace' as a name of the Messiah. It
is one of those prophecies which might seem to press
hardly upon the Jews after the utter dispersion of
their nation; but all their writers, as quoted in the
Pugio Fidei, maintain the old interpretation which
their Targums put upon the passage, " until Messias
comes." A few modern commentators, as well as
Gesenius and other rationalists, have however trans
lated the passage "until he comes to Shiloh," and
this translation Baron Bunsen has accepted. And of
this his reviewer remarks : —

" The famous Shiloh (Gen. xlix. 10) is taken in its local
sense, as the sanctuary where the young Samuel was trained;

u I find a statement in Reinke's Die Weissagung Jacobs, fyc.t
p. 124, which leads me to suppose that Rabbi Lipmann supported
this view, but I am unable to ascertain that he understood the town
Shiloh under this word. His view is given in his poem as pub
lished in "Wagenseil's Tela Ignea Satance, pp. 113, 114, and an
swered pp. 264 — 328. In the Nizzaclion Vetus, in the same
volume, there is another attack on the Christian interpretation,
p. 27.

96 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

which, if doctrinal perversions did not interfere, hardly any
one would doubt to be the true sense." — (p. 62.)

The Jews, against whom our interpretation presses
very severely, have had every motive for adopting the
new view, yet we see they adhere to the old. Let
us then look at the teacher of Gesenius, I. S. Vater,
a man entirely free from any bigoted prepossessions
in favour of theological tenets. After enumerating the
different views, and giving that in which Shiloh is
taken for the sanctuary a very complete examination,
he adds, —

"All this would be very suitable under the supposition
that this song was sung at a time in which Shiloh was the
centre of the theocracy The possibility of such a sup
position cannot be denied. Nor can the possibility also that
it was sung under the influence of a deep feeling of the pre
eminence of the tribe of Judah in David and his race of
kings," &c. — (Commentary, vol. i. p. 321.)

Such is the language of a very calm rationalist com
mentator, and yet Dr. Williams quietly tells us that
nobody would maintain our translation except from
" doctrinal perversions." But in fact, the new trans
lation, though patronized by Dr. Williams, really en
tails a series of difficulties, which nothing but very
strong " perversions," whether doctrinal or not, could
enable a competent scholar to overlook. What era
did the fixing of the tabernacle at Shiloh commence ?
What historical importance, except in the religious
history of the people, does it possess ? And could
the tribe of Judah be said then to exercise any pre
eminence when the leader of the people of Israel
was Joshua of the tribe of Ephraimx? If this song,

x It has been well observed that in the time of the Judges, Oth-
niel alone was certainly of the tribe of Judah. Ebzon is doubtful.

AND DR. WILLIAMS.

97

as Yater disrespectfully calls it, was forged in the
time of Samuel, what a very clumsy forger its au
thor must have been ! The man who swallows this
camel may well strain out the few gnats which he
finds in the Authorized Version. If Dr. Williams
desires to maintain his reputation as a Biblical scholar,
he will avoid assertions by which nothing can be
proved, except that he has a very arrogant mode of
attributing bad motives to those who differ from him,
even when it is almost demonstrable that he is in the
wrong. All that can be said is, that in a passage of
some difficulty, Dr. Williams has taken the side which
has not only an overwhelming weight of authority
against it, but has very little in its favour, and, not
content with this, he denounces all who differ from
him, very much in the style of a person who is wholly
ignorant of the strength of the case of his opponents y.

Such is the impression which this first essay of Dr.
Williams in Hebrew criticism in the present Eeview
is calculated to make on those who have any compe
tent knowledge of the original passage.

But we have several other passages despatched in
almost as summary a manner, and with about as
much regard to the real circumstances of the case.
Take for example his view of the second Psalm, or
rather one expression in it. Dr. Williams in describing
the opinions of Bunsen on various prophetic announce
ments of Scripture, seems to take the position of one
leading a poor English neophyte through these dan
gerous mazes in order to familiarize his mind with the

y Those who read German will find a good account of the different
opinions on this passage in Die Weissagung Jacobs, Sfo., by Dr. L.
Keinke, (Munster, 1849,) pp. 58—129. The English reader will
also find much information in Hengstenberg's " Christology," vol. i.

II

98 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

notion that all Messianic interpretations have been
given up and are untenable. He speaks thus of Bun-
sen's views of Psalm ii. : —

" If he would follow our version in rendering the second
Psalm, 'Kiss the Son/ he knows that Hebrew idiom con
vinced even Jerome the true meaning was 'worship purely."3

In a note he quotes as much of Jerome as suits his
purpose, thus : — " Cavillatur . . . quod posuerim, . . .
Adorate pure . . . . ne violentus viderer interpres, et
Jud. locum darem." Now so far from Jerome's being
convinced by the Hebrew idiom that this is the real
meaning of the passage, he states clearly that one
word is ambiguous, and although, to avoid calumnies
from the Jews in regard to such an ambiguous word,
he translates in the text Adorate pure, he appears in
his notes clearly to prefer the other translation, ' Kiss
the Son.' Now could any unlearned reader dream that
this was the state of Jerome's mind as to this passage
from the bold assertion of the text of Dr. Williams
and the very cautious dotted extract which he gives
in his note ?

I here subjoin an exact translation of the whole
passage : —

" He is also said to blame me, because in interpreting the
second Psalm, instead of that which is read in the Latin,
Apprehendite disciplinam, ' Learn instruction/ and which is
written in the Hebrew, -Q pL£72, nascu bar, I have said Adorate
filium, ' Worship the Son/ and then, again, in turning the
whole Psalter into the Roman tongue, as if I had forgotten
the former interpretation, I have put Adorate pure, which it
would seem is a contradiction evident to all. And, indeed,
we may pardon him for not being accurately acquainted
with Hebrew, when he sometimes is in difficulty in Latin.
ptt?3, nascu, — if we are to translate word for word — is equi
valent to KaTafaXrjcrare = deosculamini, ' Kiss ye/ and being

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 99

unwilling to translate it baldly, I followed the sense rather
[than the words] so as to translate it adorate, ' Worship ye/
because they who worship are wont to kiss the hand and
bow the head, which blessed Job declares that he had not
done to the elements and to idols, saying, ' If I have seen
the sun when it shone, and the moon walking in brightness,
and my heart in secret rejoiced, and I kissed my hand, which
is a great sin, and a denial of the most high God / and the
Hebrews, according to the idiom of their language, put
deosculatio, ' kissing/ for veneratio, l worship/ I have trans
lated that which they, to whose language the word belongs,
understand. But -Q, bar, with them has different meanings,
for it means ' son/ as in Barjona, ' son of a dove / Bar-
ptolomaeus, 'son of Ptolomseus / Barthimseus, &c. It means
also ' wheat/ and a ' bundle of ears of wheat/ and ' elect '
and 'pure/ What fault have I committed if I have trans
lated an ambiguous word in different ways? In my Com
mentary, where there is an opportunity of discussing the
matter, I had said Adorate filium, l Worship the Son/ [but]
in the text itself, not to seem a violent interpreter and not
to give occasion to Jewish calumny, I said Adorate pure sive
electe, 'Worship purely or in a choice manner/ as Aquila
and Symmachus had translated it." — Hieron. adv. Ruffinum,
lib. i.

The reader will observe how entirely Dr. Williams
omits all reference to Jerome's views; as expressed in
his no teSj and how cunningly he cuts out the word
calumny, as applied to the Jewish objectors. Can the
unlearned English reader trust such a guide as this ?
I must also add that, although Ewald and Hupfeld,
as one might expect, reject the Messianic view, De-
litzsch, the last learned commentator on the Psalms,
maintains it very strongly.

There is an amount of misrepresentation in these
statements which entirely precludes any confidence
in an account given by Dr. Williams, either of the

100 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

views of any writer on a given passage or of the real
state of the case in regard to that passage. In one
of these instances he has not only pronounced ex ca
thedra, as it were, an opinion on the meaning of a
prophecy against the weight of authority and the
general bearing of the passage, but he has coupled
the expression of his opinion with the attribution of
bad motives to those who do not agree with him. In
the other, he has told half the truth as to Jerome's
opinion, but only half the truth, and he has shaped
his quotation from that Father in such a manner as
to conceal the fact that the rest of it altogether makes
against him.

The same spirit of rash assertion marks his treat
ment of the Messianic passage in the 22nd Psalm,
where it is very difficult to ascertain the genuine
reading; but Dr. "Williams would persuade the un
learned reader that the cause has been entirely
settled, and that the evidence is all in his favour.
So far is this from being the case, that it is one of
those passages where learned men find it difficult to
make up their mind what the true reading and inter
pretation are. My own belief is, that upon the whole
the evidence preponderates for our rendering; but it
is a point on which, from the evidence of the Old
Testament MSS. alone, there are some difficulties,
though the certainty, from the quotations in the
New Testament, that other portions of this .Psalm
are Messianic, is a great argument in favour of the
Messianic nature of this verse z.

z To examine this passage properly would require several pages :
it is a question both of reading and interpretation. Bp. Pearson
considered this one of the passages confessedly altered by the Jews :
but later researches have rather altered the conditions of the ques-

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 1O1

These are specimens of the manner in which the
evidence for the Messianic interpretation of particular
passages of Scripture is dealt with ; it will hardly
be expected that an answer should be given to every
one, for this would need a volume. A single sen
tence conveys an objection the answer to which must,
if complete, extend to several pages.

But we will now enter upon a larger field of inter
pretation. The Essayist has given us one interpreta
tion of a prophetic chapter. It is a chapter in the
interpretation of which all our deeper feelings of
Christianity are so intimately interwoven that a re
ligious man might be expected to approach it with
reverence, and if the force of evidence compelled him
to give up the old and Christian interpretation of that
chapter, he would announce his change of view, if not
with sadness, at least with gravity and sobriety. The
last thing which a religious man would be expected
to do with the 53rd chapter of Isaiah would be to
play with its interpretation — as if it were a matter of
utter indifference whether a vital prophecy were en
tirely irrelevant or not to the mission of the Ee-
deemer of the world. We are not to be led by our
preconceived notions, but at all events a religious
heart might be expected to part with some of the
most striking evidences of our faith with some regret.
And truly, when the question concerns a prophecy

tion. I shall now only refer to De Rossi's " Collations," vol. iv.
pp. 14—20 ; Pfeiffer, Dubia Vexata, pp. 305—309 ; Delitzsch and
Hupfeld on the passage; Davidson's "Hebrew Text Kevised,"
and Reinke's MessianiscJie Psalmen, vol. i. p. 266, &c. Of these,
all but Hupfeld and Davidson either adopt the sense of ' piercing,'
or consider the evidence nearly balanced. Reinke, as usual, is very
full and valuable.

102 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

which has almost invariably been held to be one of
the most striking in the Bible, to which the New
Testament sometimes in sublime silence gives a won
derful testimony a, the last thing we should expect
would be very high praise of an ingenious interpre
tation, nay an elaborate exposition of it, where the
author after all acknowledges that it does not per
suade him. Why then so elaborately display it ? and
why add, that if any individual can be thought to
fulfil the prophecy that individual would be judged
to be Jeremiah, unless by a kind of insane crusade
against the ordinary view of the passage the author
wished to deprive the humble Christian of any possi
bility of using this passage as a prophecy of the
Messiah? Now if either of these interpretations, —
that which makes collective Israel the subject of the
prophecy, as Dr. "Williams appears to believe, or that
which makes Jeremiah, as Bunsen maintains, — were
proved to fulfil the prophecy in some sense, it would
be no proof that it was not intended in a fuller and
higher sense to describe the Messiah. But the truth
is that if the prophecy be taken as a whole, there are
insuperable objections to both these interpretations,
which it suits Dr. Williams to ignore, that he may
throw a little dust in the eyes of those who are un
fortunate enough to lean on him as an interpreter of
Scripture. Great humiliation, and that voluntary,
and undergone by an innocent man for the benefit
of others, and the most lofty exaltation, these are the
characteristics of the subject of that prophecy. It
is quite true that once Jeremiah was taken from a

a When our Lord was silent before Pilate "insomuch that the
governor marvelled," no specific reference is made to the passage,
but the prophecy flashes on our minds at once.

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 103

dungeon, and so (if this were not a " recognised
mistranslation") "he was taken from prison b," but
where was his lofty exaltation ? The interpretation
fails in a cardinal point, and the Jews themselves
have given it up. The German periodical before
referred to, says they gave up the Messianic inter
pretation " on paper," that is, in controversy with
the Christians ; but if Dr. Williams will read their
liturgies he will see that they still retain it in reality.
Any person well acquainted with Eabbinical writings
knows that frequently they used in their commentaries
to say " This passage applies to the Messiah, but to
answer the Christians we must apply it to some other
person;" but when their books began to be published,
in many instances they withdrew these words as
being discreditable to them.

The language of Dr. Williams is somewhat un
guarded. After sketching out Bunsen's reasons for
applying the prophecy to Jeremiah, he adds :—

" This is an imperfect sketch, but may lead readers to con
sider the arguments for applying Isaiah Hi. and liii. to Jere
miah. Their weight (in the master's hand) is so great, that
if any single person should be selected, they prove Jeremiah
should be the one."

They may prove it to the Essayist, though what
the cogency of a proof may be which fails to produce
conviction, I must leave him to explain ; but I doubt
whether he will find many to agree with him. Let

b This translation is generally discarded now, so that even this
trifling coincidence is nullified. See Gesenius, M'Caul, Drechsler,
and Henderson. There is a difference of opinion still as to the
exact meaning of the passage ; but none of these interpreters dream
of " prison."

104 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

us examine one or two of his quotations. It is true
that Jeremiah appears to have wished to intercede
for the Jews, and the Essayist refers to Jer. xviii. 20,
xiv. 11, xv. 1, in proof of this ; from which passages
(xiv. 11 and xv. 1) we learn that God forbade Jere
miah to intercede for them as he had done, for the
judgments must come upon them ; and in xviii. 20 he
says, "Bemember that I stood before Thee to speak
good for them, and to turn away Thy wrath from
them." It is a pity that the Essayist omitted to
give the sequel of this intercession found in xviii. 21,
the very next verse, which runs thus : — " Therefore
deliver up their children to the famine, and pour out
their blood by the force of the sword ; and let their
wives be bereaved of their children, and be widows ;
and let their men be put to death * let their young
men be slain with the sword in battle. Let a cry
be heard from their houses, when Thou shalt bring
a troop suddenly upon them : for they have digged
a pit to take me, and hid snares for my feet. Yet,
Lord, Thou knowest all their counsel against me to
slay me : forgive not their iniquity ', neither blot out their
sin from Thy sight, but let them be overthrown be
fore Thee ; deal thus with them in the time of Thine
anger c."

c And yet in the very face of these denunciations of his perse
cutors, Baron Bunsen ventures to use the following language, which
I translate literally from the German original : — " Jeremiah says
in speaking of the cruel persecutions of the citizens of his native
town, xi. 18, &c., 'The Lord has given me knowledge of it, and
I know it : then Thou shewed ; t me their doings. But I was like
a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter/ And afterwards
kings and nobles wrought all in their power to realize this antici
pation of the prophet. And if Jeremiah when Pashur cast him into
the dungeon, broke out into loud lamentations on his misfortune,

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 105

It may suit the Essayist to ignore this sequel to
the declaration of Jeremiah that he had formerly
interceded for the people, in whose prosperity, should
it come, he himself would have shared, and he may
consider this a striking fulfilment of the prophecy ;
but who will follow him in this perversion ? I speak
not of the Christian sentiment only, but I simply ask
what shall we think of an exegesis which can refer
to passages like Jer. xviii. 20, followed as it is by

and prayed God to ennoble his reputation by the punishment of these
men who denied his truth ; yet we find in the last most bitter trial
to which he was subjected in Judaaa, no word of impatience escape
him, still less a word of desire that God should revenge him on his
enemies. But on the contrary \ there runs through his whole life
the very inmost (die innigste) intercession for the transgressors !
to which allusion is made in the end of the celebrated chapter of
Isaiah."— Gott in der Geschichte, vol. i. pp. 205, 206.

It is true that one half of a verse of Isaiah appears to be fulfilled
by the declaration of Jeremiah that he is " led as a lamb or an ox
to the slaughter," but the slightest amount of attention, cne would
think, would have sufficed to shew that such a fulfilment utterly
contradicted the rest of the verse ! The sheep of Isaiah is dumb and
opens not its mouth, but Jeremiah utters loud complaints not un
mixed with denunciations ! We are now entitled to ask where the
prejudiced view lies ? With Baron Bunsen who is determined that
the prophecy shall be no prophecy, or with us who believe the pro
phecy, and find its fulfilment where the Church of Christ has found
it for 1800 years ? But above all, how can Bunsen dare to say that
throughout the life of Jeremiah he was constantly interceding for
the transgressors ?

And again, though not a word is said of Jeremiah's death, Baron
Bunsen assumes that he perished by " a cruel murder," because
the great prophet of truth could " scarcely" be expected to escape
martyrdom. And this fact (!) for which he appeals to his own con
jecture, rather than the tradition preserved in Jerome, and these con
tradictions to the prophet's own words, form the basis of Bunsen's
application of this prophecy to Jeremiah. And this absurd spe
culation, which scarcely deserves a refutation, gains for the author
from Dr. Williams the high praise of being from the hand of a master !

106 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

these denunciations, as a fulfilment of the prophecy
of " interceding for transgressors;" and dare to pre
fer it to that most thrilling, most awful prayer of
mercy, which rose from the lips of One in the very
agony of a painful death, when He who even then
spake as never man spake, made that sublime inter
cession for His persecutors, " Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do."

It cannot be needful to go through the weary
task of examining each quotation in detail, here ; I
would only recommend those who have any desire to
investigate the question, to do as I have done — ex
amine them carefully ; and I believe that the conclu
sion of such persons will be the same as mine, that
no more unfounded assertion was ever made than that,
if any single person should be selected, they prove Jere
miah to be the one ! The English and the argument of
this sentence are nearly on a par, but it is useless to
cavil about trifles when such momentous questions are
at issue. The discrepancies between the history of
Jeremiah and the words of the prophecy are so manifest,
that Saadias Gaon has found few followers till Bunsen
revived this palpable controversial device. Even Abar-
banel himself, one of the most bitter opponents of
Christianity among the Jews, says, " In truth I do not
see even one verse that can prove the truth of its
application to him." And yet Bunsen is spoken of
as a " master" in exegesis here, not for proving the
truth, but for his ingenious defence of a theory which
the Essayist himself rejects. His notions of a masterly
exposition and a "proof" are so manifestly peculiar,
that we must conceive these words to belong to a
private vocabulary of the English language in use at
Lampeter, but not current elsewhere.

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 107

Abarbanel proposed both Josiah and the Jewish
nation. Josiah is scarcely worth considering. But
what particular interpretation Dr. "Williams does
adopt, it would be difficult to say. His words are
these : —

" Still the general analogy of the Old Testament which
makes collective Israel, or the prophetic remnant d, especially
the servant of Jehovah, and the comparison of chaps, xlii.
xlix. may permit us to think the oldest interpretation the
truest ; with only this admission, that the figure of Jeremiah
stood forth among the Prophets, and tinged the delineation
of the true Israel, that is, the faithful remnant who had been
disbelieved — just as the figure of Laud or Hammond might
represent the Caroline Church in the eyes of her poet.

" If this seems but a compromise, it may be justified by
Ewald's phrase, ' Die wenigen Treuen im Exile, Jeremjah und
Andre/ (the few faithful in the captivity, Jeremiah and
others,) though he makes the servant idealized Israel."

It would be convenient in considering this author's
views, to be able to ascertain exactly what they are,
but as he does not seem to be quite fixed in any one
view, it is a hopeless task. Collective Israel, or the
faithful remnant, or the prophetic remnant, — though
I suppose by " the faithful remnant" he means the
faithful prophetic remnant, — appear to prefer almost
equal claims to acceptance ; and the author seems to
oscillate between them with a beautiful impartiality,
throwing in only a word in favour of Jeremiah, which
leaves us as much in the dark as we were before.
Can Dr. Williams believe that these interpretations
are synonymous, or that an amalgamation of all of

d The italics are mine, not the author's. The reader will observe
that Dr. Williams leaves it open which of these interpretations we
are to choose, as if either would do.

108 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

them can possibly stand ? If he does, his character
for critical acumen will scarcely survive such palpable
incongruities! And this, it is to be observed, is the
criticism of a man who thinks he is not interpreting
a prophecy, but an historical narrative, where a writer
would describe events without ambiguity.

But these vacillations are trifles compared with the
assertion that the interpretation now in favour with
the Jews is the " oldest interpretation.37 Our own
interpretation is at least coeval with the New Testa
ment, (see 1 Pet. ii. 24, &c.) a clear proof that it rests
upon an older basis still. And though Origen informs
us that in a dispute with learned Jews one of them
attempted to evade the force of this prophecy by such
an interpretation, this is very slender evidence that
they generally accepted it, even then. And, if we
enquire of the Jewish authorities themselves, we find
them acknowledging that the ancient Jews interpreted
this prophecy of the Messiah. The Targum distinctly
recognises it, the most ancient Jewish interpreters
acknowledge it : even in the present day, the litur
gies of the Jews testify their adherence to the ancient
view in a manner which is far more convincing than
a controversial statement would be.

Before however I pass on to another subject, it
will be right to mark the treatment Bishop Pearson
receives at the hands of Dr. Williams. His vast at
tainments and his great power have obtained for him
an homage which has scarcely ever been refused by
those who are competent to test his learning. But,
as the late Archdeacon Hare used to say, " Many an
empty head is shaken at Plato and Aristotle ;" and in
a similar manner we find occasionally a perverse dis
position which seems to rejoice in throwing a stone

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 109

at departed greatness. Thus the Essayist remarks
" It is idle with Pearson to quote Jonathan as a wit
ness to the Christian interpretation, unless his con
ception of the Messiah were ours." The transparent
absurdity of this remark strikes the mind so forcibly,
that it would be a matter of surprise that the author
did not reject it himself, if we did not find many
other illogical remarks throughout the Essay. So
then, it is really the opinion of Dr. Williams that we
do nothing, even if we shew that all the ancient Jews
considered this prophecy as clearly relating to the
Messiah, unless they will acknowledge that Jesus is the
Messiah ! I fear that even the first class at Lampeter
will hardly be contented with husks like these ; and
men of plain sense will consider it of rather more im
portance that the whole of the ancient Jewish Church
accepted this view, than that Bunsen applies it to
Jeremiah, and Dr. Williams to the collective Israel !
Bishop Pearson was probably almost as good a judge
of the cogency of arguments — if we may presume to
compare any one to Dr. Williams — as the Essayist
himself. And I do not very much fear that the repu
tation of Bishop Pearson will suffer much damage
from so puerile an attack.

But before I leave this part of the subject, it is
only justice to Dr. Williams to remark that he only
denies that these great declarations of Scripture are
predictions ; he professes to acknowledge that their
moral teaching has its highest fulfilment in Christ.
His words are : " A little reflection will shew how the
historical representation in Isaiah liii. is of some
suffering prophet or remnant," (which?) " yet the
truth and patience, the grief and triumph, have their
highest fulfilment in Him who said i Father, not My

110 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

will but Thine.' But we must not distort the pro
phets to prove the Divine Word incarnate, and then
from the incarnation reason back to the sense of
prophecy6."

I was not aware of the intention with which the
remark in the latter part of this paragraph was made,
till I happened to find an allusion in Mr. Hansel's
Bampton Lectures to the views of Dr. Williams on
the 53rd of Isaiah, as developed in his " Eational
Godliness."

Mr. Mansel (p. 418) argues that if we believe one
such miracle as the incarnation of our Lord, we have
no reason to disbelieve another, such as the prediction
of future events under the inspiration of God. And
this Dr. Williams calls reasoning back from the incar
nation to the sense of prophecy. It seems strange that
a man of any acuteness could fail to see that Mr.
Mansel did not reason back to the sense of the pro
phecy ; the sense of the prophecy must be determined
by just principles of interpretation ; but Mr. Mansel
argues that if it must be interpreted of Christ, we
have no reason to reject it from a priori and general
objections to miracles. The only possible effect this
can have on the interpretation of this special prophecy
or any other is this, that it leaves us at liberty
to take the predictive sense, if other considerations

e A little more of the same sort follows. Israel would be acknow
ledged as in some sense a Messiah, &c., but the Saviour, who ful
filled in His own person the highest aspirations of Hebrew seers and
of mankind, thereby lifting the words, so to speak, into a new and
higher power, would be recognised as having eminently the unction
of a prophet whose words die not, of a priest in a temple not
made with hands, and of a king in the realm of thought, delivering
His people from a bondage of moral evil, worse than Egypt or
Babylon, &c.

AND DR. WILLIAMS. Ill

lead us to itf. As we do not therefore reason back
from the incarnation "to the sense of prophecy,"
I feel no inclination to enter on the defence of a
course which we do not adopt.

We shall simply remark that Christ and His apo
stles tell us that the Hebrew Scriptures testify of
Him, and they expressly ascribe a predictive sense
to the prophecies. We have therefore, on the one
hand, Christ and His apostles, who assure us that the
prophecies are predictions; on the other, we have
Dr. Williams and the critical school, who assure us
that they are not. The question is therefore simply
this, — Will you believe Christ and His apostles, or will
you believe the critical school ? The pretence of
a moral fulfilment is only a device to cover the bare
faced impudence of denying the very words of the
Saviour and His apostles, but it is too flimsy to de
ceive even the most ignorant. I will not accuse Dr.
Williams of placing it there intentionally to deceive
the ignorant : I suppose that he himself considers
this moral fulfilment as more than equivalent to the
real fulfilment of a bond fide prediction. But as this
is a peculiar view, and as those who think with me
believe that it cannot be maintained without falsifying
the words of our Saviour and contradicting His own
account of the Scriptures, Dr. Williams must excuse
his opponents if they speak very plainly as to the
worthlessness of his admissions.

f Mr. Mansel says indeed, " Once concede the possibility of the
supernatural at all, and the Messianic interpretation is the only one
reconcileable with the facts of history and the plain meaning of
words," He finds out the plain meaning of the words from a true
exegesis ; and he only argues from the Incarnation that you have
no right to reject this sense because it implies a miracle.

112 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

The observations which have been made may serve
to shew with how little justice the Essayist has at
tempted to exhibit this wonderful prophecy as a piece
of historical writing of a date posterior to the time of
Isaiah. This is all which I am here concerned to
shew, but if a commentary on this most astounding
prophecy be required, I may state that great assist
ance may be derived towards its exegesis from the
Essay of Hengstenberg, either in its early form as
translated in Clark's " Biblical Cabinet," or in its more
developed condition as found in the " Christology of
the Old Testament," (published also by Messrs. Clark,)
and from the pamphlet of Dr. M'Caul, or Dr. Hen
derson's " Translation of Isaiah." From all these
sources together, the mere English reader will obtain
a very sufficient refutation of the non-Messianic inter
pretations, and he will be able also to elicit from
a comparison of the various views of each verse, an
interpretation of the whole which will give him much
satisfaction. The works of Bishops Chandler and
Lowth, as well as that of Prebendary Lowth, may be
consulted with advantage.

In the indiscriminate onslaught upon prophets
and prophecy it could not be expected that Daniel,
whose predictions are the most definite of all included
in the sacred volume, should escape proscription. We
have however, in Bunsen and Dr. Williams, very little
which is new. It seems sometimes to be imagined
that the attacks upon Daniel are due to some new
discoveries, and that the Germans have brought a
host of new arguments against the genuineness of
this portion of Scripture ; but if we look at the selec
tion of topics made by Dr. Williams to overwhelm
this prophet, we shall find that even down to the very

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 113

words selected as proving that the language is later
than his time, they are all the old cranibe repetita.
The simple fact is, that the Germans and Dr. Williams
follow Porphyry and Collins, while others consider that
their arguments are insufficient to warrant their con
clusions. It is true that Bunsen and Ewald have
added each his own particular theory to the general
medley of speculation upon this prophet, but they
have met with little favour, even in Germany. The
extraordinary facility with which a prophet or two is
extemporized in Germany, would surprise those who
are not aware of the strength of the theorizing faculty
in the German mind. * If one Isaiah or one Daniel
will not solve the question satisfactorily, take two,' ap
pears to be the rule, and accordingly an earlier Daniel
is supposed by Baron Bunsen to have lived, not at
Babylon, but at the Assyrian court, about twenty-
two years before Sargina (the Sargon of Scripture
and the father of Sennacherib) overturned the ancient
dynasty of Assyria. The history of Daniel is partly
derived, according to this view, from traditional tales
about the older Daniel, and some of the prophecies
are a traditional reconstruction of these, with sundry
confusions between Assyria and Babylon. It is hardly
. worth while to spend our time in considering so gra
tuitous an hypothesis, for even the German rational
ists assure us that Baron Bunsen has done for Daniel
very little except to add to the perplexity in which his
history is involved. Bleek, who also supposes another
Daniel of a more ancient date than ours, entirely re
pudiates the suppositions of Ewald and Bunsen, and
closes his remarks upon them with these words :
" By such assumptions the explanation of the exist
ence of our Book of Daniel in its present condition is

i

114 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

by no means rendered more easy, but on the contrary,
more difficult."

It must be clear to every man of plain common
sense, that if the license quidlibet audendi which was
conceded to poets and painters is assumed by German
critics, the theological world cannot be expected to
disprove each hypothesis separately. The question
must be argued in a different manner. If the objectors
to the genuineness of Daniel are content to rake up
again and endorse all the miserable mistakes and
perversions of Porphyry and Collins, we are surely
entitled to assert that they have entirely failed to
make out their case, without writing a volume to
confute a sentence. I shall merely remark with re
gard to the arguments, that they chiefly rest on two
assertions : —

1. That the prophecies of Daniel are so clear as to
Antiochus Epiphanes, and so manifestly end with him,
that it is to be inferred that they were written shortly
after his time,

2. That the language is not that of the time of
Daniel, and that Greek words occur in Daniel, espe
cially in the names of the musical instruments g, which
proves that its author lived long after the time in
which Daniel is placed according to the Bible.

These are the two main grounds, and neither of them
is capable of any satisfactory proof. The first pro-

g With regard to the names of the musical instruments, the ob
jectors fail in two primary points. They entirely fail in proving
that they are derived from the Greek ; and, if they did, they cannot
prove that this would necessarily bring down the date to a later
period than 536 B.C. They might almost as well deduce the Akka-
dimi mentioned in Rawlinson's Memoir on Nineveh from Academus.
See also Dr. Mill's " Historical Character of St. Luke's First Chapter
Vindicated," pp. 65—69.

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 1 1 5

position is also manifestly false in one of its asser
tions, for the prophecies extend to far later times
than those of Antiochus. Indeed, the supposition that
Antiochus Epiphanes is intended in some parts of those
prophecies of Daniel which are so confidently applied
to him, is attended with insuperable difficulties, as
any one who is disposed to enquire into this matter
may learn from Bishop Chandler, especially pp. 140
— 157, and Bishop Newton on the prophecies. In
chapter vii. (see Chandler, pp. 206—282,) the little
horn cannot be Antiochus Epiphanes, although in an
other chapter (the eighth) some things may be attri
buted to him which belong to the little horn. But if
the fourth kingdom be the Eoman, (and what other
will answer to its description ?) then the fifth kingdom
can be no other than the kingdom of Christ. We
may not be able to explain every part of these pro
phecies, but we know enough to shew that Antiochus
Epiphanes could really fulfil only a very small part
of them, and that those who attempt to apply the rest
to him, involve themselves in inextricable contradic
tions. It is manifestly impossible to answer a general
statement like that of Dr. Williams, because we do not
know how many of the prophecies he applies to Antio
chus Epiphanes, nor how he explains them.

Again, with regard to the suspicious words, if the
enquirer will consult either Haver nick's " Daniel,'7 or
Hengstenberg's Die Authentic des Daniel und die Inte-
gritat des Sacharijah, he will see with how little reason
this argument has been alleged. Modern philology,
upon the whole, has rather tended to remove this ob
jection than to confirm ith.

h I may direct those who do not read German, and cannot there
fore make use of Hiivernick and Hengstenberg, to an Essay in the

i 2

Il6 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

The same remark must apply to the statements
regarding Zechariah. I have now before me two
volumes in German, in one of which the author ap
pends a defence of the integrity of Zechariah to that
of the genuineness of Daniel, viz., the volume of
Hengstenberg to which I have just referred; the
other is a Commentary on Zechariah, by "W. Neu
mann, published at Stuttgart in the course of last
year, which does not seem to think the hypothesis
of the authorship of the book being divided between
Zechariah and Uriah worth mentioning. These hy
potheses being endless, it is of course impossible to
refute them. If objections are raised against one,
another is ready to take its place. And with regard
to Daniel, it must be observed that while these hypo
theses are as plentiful as blackberries, no one seems
to advert to the utter improbability that a spurious
book should be inserted into the canon of the Jewish
Scriptures between the time of Antiochus Epiphanes
and our Saviour, and that no suspicion of this ill
dealing should ever arise till Porphyry denied the
prophecies because they were clear, and declared that
they must be historical narrative and not prediction.
The camel is swallowed, and the gnat very carefully
strained out. The German rationalists find no diffi
culty in believing in the genuineness of Ossian, while
they repudiate that of the Pentateuch \

" Journal of Sacred Literature" for January last, on the Chaldee of
Daniel and Ezra, for a great deal of information on this subject.

1 "We must not altogether omit all notice of Bunsen's views on
Jonah, because they have been made in the pages of this Essay the
occasion of a sneer at the English. Baron Bunsen in his Gott in
der Geschichte defends the genuineness of Jonah's prayer, but treats
the history of Jonah, though warranted by our Saviour's own words,
as a mere myth. On this, Dr. Williams, with his usual courtesy

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 117

"We have now examined a very considerable portion
of the statements, if they deserve the name, of Dr.
Williams, and we have not found one which has the
common merit of fairly representing the truth. An
examination such as this must necessarily be imper
fect, but if it is shewn that the representations of
the author are such, that no person who is unable
to investigate thoroughly the questions of which he
treats, can gain any just notion of the state of those
questions, but, on the contrary, is certain to imbibe
a most prejudiced and untrue view of them, the mis
chief which his statements can do will be diminished.
To those who are competent to discuss these questions,
I do not think that a single word of reply would bo
needed. There is not an objection brought forward
with which they are not familiar, and the only thing
which they can deem novel is the positive and arro
gant tone in which our acceptance is challenged for
what most of them will believe to be by far the least
probable interpretation of the passages to which allu
sion is made.

towards English believers, remarks, " One can imagine the cheers
which the opening of such an essay might evoke in some of our own
circles, changing into indignation as the distinguished foreigner
developed his views." My belief is that no well-informed En
glishman would feel any exultation at finding that Bunsen accepted
his views, because, if he knew much of Bunsen, he would feel
his judgment to be so fallible and weak, that his opinion on a point
of genuineness would be of little value. And in the very chapter
in Gott in der GescMcJite which treats of Jonah he would find a re
markable confirmation of his distrust of Bunsen's judgment on
a question of genuineness, for the author there declares his belief
that a very trumpery poem folind in JElian, which professes to ba
the song of Arion, is really the production of this individual. To
account for the inferiority of the style he tells us that we must
remember that Arion was not a poet, but a ballet-master.

l i 8 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

It may perhaps be expected that a few words should
be said about the remarks on the Trinity and the doc
trines of St. Paul, but they appear so harmless from
the superficial and sketchy manner in which they are
delivered, and from their extreme weakness, that it
would be unwise to give them importance by raising
up serious objections to them. If any person believes
that the language of Scripture can be explained in
regard to the relation of Father, Son, and Spirit, by
considering these terms as equivalent to will, wisdom,
and love ; as light, radiance, and warmth ; as foun
tain, stream, and united flow, &c., he is beyond the
reach of argument. Let a person take any one of
these triads, and read the first chapter of St. John,
substituting the middle term of this triad for the
Word, and the first for God, and he will soon perceive
the vanity of this mode of explanation ; or let him
attempt to explain the epistles of St. Paul on the
principles enounced in p. 80 of this Essay, and he will
very soon leave the guidance of Bunsen, if he desires
either to understand or explain St. Paul. There is
nothing in this portion of the Essay to overthrow the
truth of Scripture facts, and the view of the doctrines
is not profound enough for the learned nor attractive
enough for the simple reader. It may, therefore,
safely be left to its native weakness. No attempt
will be made to expose its imbecile weakness unless
it is supported by fresh developments and new ar
guments. It will be left to take its place with
other rather ambiguous endeavours to explain the
Epistles of St. Paul in a non-natural sense, such as
that of Taylor on the Epistle to the Romans. If there
is any truth in the statements which have here been
made against Dr. AVilliams, they are sufficient to ruin

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 119

the credit of his Essay, and to shew that it is full,
even to overflowing, of misrepresentations, which are
highly discreditable even if they proceed from igno
rance and carelessness, but if they are made with
a consciousness of their nature, deserve a still deeper
reprobation.

A large portion of this Essay having now been sub
jected to examination, it may be desirable, before we
conclude our remarks, to recapitulate the results to
which we have attained. We believe that it has been
shewn, —

1. That the author in his account of the present
state of theological literature in Germany has entirely
misrepresented its condition ; that he has greatly ex
aggerated the achievements of the critical school, and
appears utterly to ignore its miserable failures, blun
ders, and extravagances ; and that either from his
ignorance of the fact, or from a wilful suppression of
the truth, he gives the impression that there is an
almost unanimous acceptance of these views among
the learned in Germany, while the real truth is that
the rationalist cause is daily losing ground in that
country.

2. That in describing the course of prophetical
interpretation in England, the author has entirely mis
represented the whole case. That he has specified
three persons in particular as giving indirect testimony
to his views, viz., Bishop Chandler, Bishop Butler, and
Dr. Paley, and that in every case he has utterly mis
represented their testimony. Of Bishop Chandler's
views he appears wholly ignorant; Bishop Butler's
argument he has entirely misunderstood ; and with
regard to Dr. Paley, he has misrepresented his selec
tion of one case only as a virtual abandonment of the

120 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

rest, while the author himself expressly obviates in
the strongest possible terms any such inference from
this selection.

3. That in the exegesis of particular passages11 the
author has shewn by the arrogance with which he
treats those who differ from him, even in the most
difficult passages, that he is either wholly ignorant of
the weight of argument and authority against him, or
unable to appreciate it ; and that in order to favour
his views he has in one case misrepresented the views
of Jerome, and garbled his text so as to favour his
misrepresentation ; that he has attributed to Jerome
exegetical absurdities on a very partial examination
of his words, to which a further acquaintance with
Jerome would give a very different colouring; and
that no person desiring to know the truth on any of
these questions would derive any assistance from the
remarks of the Essayist, but, on the contrary, would
necessarily derive a very false impression from them.

4. That in regard to the interpretation of Isaiah
Hi., liii., the Essayist has given the highest praise to
Bunsen for an interpretation which has very little to
recommend it, and what he has exhibited in some par
ticulars is flatly contradicted by the very passages
adduced to prove it; that notwithstanding his high
praise of this interpretation, he rejects it himself, and
yet most strangely endeavours to amalgamate it with
two, if not three, other interpretations with which it is
wholly incompatible ; and that he has thus given to
the world a specimen of utter incompetence in the
interpretation of Scripture, which must take away all

k The assertions and interpretations which are not examined here
are not one whit more trustworthy, but those which have been
selected offer the most definite tests of their inaccuracies.

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 121

confidence in his opinions, until he shews that he has
better grounds for them than any which he has hitherto
put forth.

5. That in regard to Daniel, the Essayist has done
nothing except to assert a few of the oldest and the
most commonplace objections to the genuineness of
this part of Scripture ; that he takes no notice of
the fact that they have frequently been refuted, but
brings them forward as if they were irresistible, only
because he yields assent to them himself.

If these charges against the Essayist are founded
in truth, the least which can be claimed for them is
this, that the Essayist is entirely disqualified as a guide
of those who are unable to pursue such enquiries for
themselves. They prove, if they are established, that
no person who desires to have a true view of the evi
dence for Scripture or for the interpretation of pro
phecy can possibly attain it from the statements of
this writer, and consequently that his Essay, instead
of assisting the well-informed and able enquirer in his
search after truth, is only calculated to mislead the
ignorant, and to induce him to embrace falsehood
rather than truth.

These are heavy charges, but the author can have
no reason to complain, because the reason for each
assertion is given. They are not simple assertions,
as his are, without proof. Each charge is supported
by evidence, and if the evidence is insufficient, the
author has an opportunity of answering it. The as
sertions of the rationalists are dangerous only when
they are made without the arguments on which they
are founded, because it is usually impossible really
to refute an assertion unless the grounds on which
it is made are alleged, except in regard to matters

122 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

of positive fact or of mathematical or scientific truth.
If a person asserted that the three angles of a triangle
are greater than two right angles, the falsehood of
such an assertion might be demonstrated, but if we are
told that the contents of Daniel prove that it is later
than the period to which it is assigned, we cannot
answer the statement until the specific manner in
which the anachronism occurs is indicated.

In answering Dr. "Williams, we are obliged to con
fine ourselves to a destructive process, without at
tempting a constructive argument. It is necessary to
shew those whom he misleads that they cannot trust
him. Had this Essay been addressed to men capable
of discussing the questions to which they relate, no
answer would have been required, but as it is cal
culated to mislead the uninformed, the truth de
mands a defence. I know not with what feelings
these authors may regard the circumstance, that
infidel societies have assisted in promoting the read
ing of these Essays in cities and large towns, by
buying copies to cut them up and lend them out
at a penny per Essay ! and clubs were formed that
those who could not afford to purchase this expensive
luxury might at least have the satisfaction of learning
that the Church of which all the Essayists, except
one, are ministers, is teaching them doctrines founded
on a book full of the grossest untruths and the most
extravagant myths, and based upon miracles which
are unworthy of any belief. But this is the fact.

Such is the practical result of this " free handling"
of sacred subjects. If the conclusions to which the
Essayists would lead us were true, it would be our
duty to accept them, with all their awful consequences,
with all the confusion they would bring into our

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 123

knowledge, all the uncertainty they throw on the
prospects of a life beyond the grave. But as these
views, instead of being an advance on our present
knowledge, are really a miserable return towards
ignorance and heathenism, every Christian man,
who can examine and expose them, is bound to
the utmost of his power to oppose them. Neither
the knowledge nor the judgment shewn in any of
the Essays appear to me to warrant the tone in
which the volume is written, for the knowledge of
the subject shewn in the Essay of Dr. Williams ap
pears to be of the most superficial kind, and the judg
ment for the most part seems to lead the author
almost invariably to embrace the weakest side, and
where I have given any time to the examination of
the rest I have found that they have no superiority
in these respects. Eor instance, in the Essay on
the " Religious Tendencies of England from 1688 —
1750," the whole weight of the argument, such as
it is, is produced by ignoring the literature of
that period which was uot devoted to evidences,
and a great deal of its infidel literature. No notice
is taken of the " Oracles of Reason," a book con
stantly referred to in the earlier part of the last
century, and very little is said of the various works
of Collins. The author attributes to the age a sort
of monomania for manufacturing evidences, and of
course with such a theory it is very convenient to
ignore almost all the infidel literature which called forth
these replies. Indeed, I cannot think that any person
can be very much misled by a writer who makes
Humphrey Prideaux, who died in 1724, a voucher
for the state of public opinion in 1748, and who, in
talking very confidently about the controversies as to

124 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

the origin of the Gospels, blunders irretrievably be
tween Marsh's Michaelis and his Lectures at Cambridge !
These may be slips of the pen, but there is too much
besides in the Essay which indicates a very hasty and
superficial view, to permit the author to escape censure
under this plea. "When we behold defects like these,
and can discover nothing that contributes in any
degree to advance our knowledge of sacred things,
the arrogant tone and the assumption of superiority
which characterize this volume would provoke a
smile, if they did not stir up deeper feelings in the
heart, — feelings of sorrow for the ignorant who have
been misled, and the certain infidelity and immorality
which must result from principles like these being
disseminated among the half- educated and the igno
rant. For, after all, it is to these classes that the
mischief is done. So far from deprecating the fullest
discussion of Scripture difficulties among the learned,
I am rejoiced when any question is thoroughly dis
cussed, because I am sure the truth will prevail ; and
I firmly believe that the truth is with those who be
lieve in Scripture as the inspired word of God, and
bow before its authority. For myself, I am happy to
have been obliged to examine very carefully some
portions of the evidences for the truth and the inspira
tion of Scripture, because I bring from that examina
tion the most profound contempt for arrogant asser
tions, and the most convincing proofs to my own
mind that they alone who build on Scripture as the
only solid foundation of religious truth, are like the
wise man who laid the foundations of his house in the
solid rock. Every attempt of Dr. Williams to dis
parage Scripture as an inspired book which I have
been obliged to examine, has only impressed on my

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 125

mind more deeply the wonderful nature of that reve
lation which God has been pleased to make to man,
and the unassailable strength of the evidence by
which He has recommended it to our acceptance. The
endeavour to reduce it to a mere moral phenomenon,
and to reject, as Bunsen professes to do, all external
revelation as a fable, appears to me to rest on nothing
but the determination to resist all evidence, and to
discard all the rules of sound criticism in interpreting
a volume which is still in some unaccountable way sup
posed to represent the will of God. We have no right
to attribute the opinions of Bunsen to Dr. Williams, for
he carefully abstains from making himself directly an
swerable for them, however strongly he may indirectly
recommend them to the unwary. But we have a full
right to bring him face to face with the consequences
of that system which he thus indirectly and by inference
supports, and to those whom he is misleading we arc
bound to present the contradictions and absurdities in
which they involve themselves by following such prin
ciples. And in concluding this review I will endeavour
to bring the matter to a fair conclusion. Whenever
Dr. Williams officiates in the devotional services of
the Church, he repeats an old — perhaps he may think
an obsolete — form of words, I mean the Apostles' Creed.
Now this Creed asserts that our Saviour was crucified,
dead, and buried, and that after three days He rose again
from the dead and afterwards ascended into heaven.
I give Dr. Williams credit for a belief in that which
his lips thus utter, and I ask him whether he believes
that He who thus died and rose again, and who
claimed to be Son of God, is to be supposed less
acquainted with the truth and the meaning of the
Scriptures of the Old Testament than Baron Bunsen

126 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,

and the critical school of Germany, with the addi
tional authority of Dr. Williams himself. He de
clared that the Scriptures did testify of Him, and
that they did predict His sufferings and His death ;
Baron Bunsen and the critical school tell us that
they did not. He instructed His apostles also in
the meaning of those Scriptures, and they declare
that holy men of old prophesied as they were in
spired by the Holy Spirit of God, and that they
did predict the great facts of the Gospel, and that
God intended by this means to give testimony to the
truth of that Gospel ; Baron Bunsen tells us, and ap
parently with the approbation of Dr. Williams, though
he will not make himself answerable for it, that they
did not. The personal faith of Baron Bunsen, of Dr.
Williams, and the critical school of Germany is of
very small importance to the world at large ; but for
every living man who feels that he has an everlasting
soul, "What shall I believe that I may be saved?"
is a vital question, and where the broad facts of reve
lation are admitted, I believe that there will not be
many who will be content to take their doctrines from
the critical school of the present day in preference to
Christ and His apostles. If the facts of revelation,
the central facts brought together in the apostles'
Creed, are denied, then we have to deal with simple,
open infidelity, and our arguments must be addressed
to that condition of the mind. But let us not have
an insidious foe, let us have no ambiguity in so vital
a question. Let us stedfastly refuse to hear men who
acknowledge Christ as the Son of God in words, but
deny Him in reality. They acknowledge that He was
the Son of God, and that He is ascended into heaven,
and sits at the right hand of God, and yet they be-

AND DR. WILLIAMS. 127

lieve that they know more of the "Word of God than
He did ! He declared that the prophets predicted His
coming, and they declare that they did not ! This
brings the question to the true issue. We must make
our choice between these two authorities, and I trust
when this issue is fairly tried that there will be very
few, who know and understand the state of the ques
tion, who will not exclaim with a holy man of old,
"Let God be true and every man a liar!" who will
not prefer to believe that man's criticism may be
erroneous, to accepting the monstrous dogma that the
Son of God could either deceive or be deceived in the
interpretation of the Word of God !

NOTE ON THE " EDINBURGH REVIEW,"

No. 230.

SINCE the publication of the "Essays and Reviews," a
defence of them has been attempted in the " Edinburgh Re
view," No. 230. It would be unnecessary to offer a single
remark on so feeble a performance, if it were not desirable to
correct one or two misrepresentations which occur in it.

The first passage on which we shall offer a few remarks is
the following : —

" The relative importance of the moral and predictive elements in
prophecy, and again of the historical circumstances to which, in the
first instance, the predictions were applied, have been discussed by
Davison and Arnold in a style hardly less repugnant to the literal
views of Dr. M'Caul or Dr. Keith, than anything in Professor
Jowett or Dr. "Williams. One of the passages deemed most fatal to
the orthodoxy of the Essayist just named, [Dr. Williams,] (' only
two texts in the Prophets directly Messianic,') was anticipated almost
verbally even by Bishop Pearson : ' "Wherever He is spoken of as the
Anointed One (or the Messiah) it may well be first understood of
some other person, except it be in one place in Daniel.' (Pearson on
the Creed, Art. 2.) ' The typical ideas of patience and glory in the
Old Testament/ says Dr. "Williams, « find their culminating fulfil
ment in the New.' This is the positive side of his view of pro
phecy, and it is, in fact, coincident with all that the best interpreters
of Scripture have said since the Reformation."

It would seem from this passage that the study of " Essays
and Reviews" has so familiarized the mind of the Reviewer
with dishonest misrepresentation, that he has lost the faculty
of distinguishing truth from falsehood. Bishop Pearson ac
knowledges that prophecies which are real predictions of the
Messiah may be applicable, in the first instance, to some
other person, although intended to testify of the Messiah

NOTE ON THE "EDINBURGH REVIEW.'

1 29

and to predict the manner of His coming. Dr. Williams
maintains that, except in two cases, there is no such thing
as a prediction of the Messiah at all in the Old Testament ;
and the Reviewer holds these views to be equivalent. He
also seems to consider an assertion that the moral excellence
and beauty of the New Testament are the fulfilment of the
prophetical ideas of the Old, to be equivalent to a belief that
these prophecies were inspired predictions which were lite
rally fulfilled in the facts of the New Testament. Until
he asserts this, he leaves a world-wide difference between
the learned, the reverent, the holy Bishop Pearson, and the
Essayist ; and if he does assert it, we must decline to cha
racterize his assertion. The complaint against Dr. Williams
is, not that he maintains that the prophecies may primarily
be applied to some other person, but that he denies that they
are intended in any way to be predictions of Christ. Until
the Reviewer can see the difference between these two pro
positions, he will do well to abstain from theological discus
sions, for which he is evidently unfitted. But if Dr, Williams
is compelled to acknowledge that, although spoken in the
first instance of other persons, these prophecies were still
intended as predictions of the Messiah, we shall have gained
something by the controversy. Such a statement would be
a contradiction, if not to the words, to the spirit of his whole
Essay, and we should understand for the future how to esti
mate his assertions.

Having considered the case of Bishop Pearson, we come
to those of Arnold and Davison. Of Dr. Arnold little need
be said, as he was comparatively little known in theological
literature. His biographer published his opinions on Daniel,
but unhappily without the arguments on which they were
founded. Thus the prestige of his name — and he was highly
popular and much beloved — is brought to bear on a ques
tion which depends entirely on argument and historical
fact. This is the only mischief we have to fear. Where
reasons are given and arguments adduced, they can be
answered, and we have no fear of the result, for in nearly
two thousand years the faith of Christ has never yet been
trampled in the dust, nor the heel of the foernan planted

K

130 NOTE ON THE "EDINBURGH REVIEW."

on the neck of the Christian warrior. Arguments can be
answered, but no answer can be given to the mere influence
of a name.

With Mr. Davison the case is very different. There may
be positions in his excellent book on " Prophecy" on which
theologians might differ, but to identify his clear decisive
testimony to the predictive element in Scripture prophecies
with the denial of Dr. Williams that they contain any such
element at all, is to confound truth and falsehood. The
writer who can do this is scarcely worthy of an answer.
Mr. Davison sees in the Psalms " the most considerable attri
butes of the reign and the religion of the Messiah foreshewn.
There is a king set on the holy hill of Sion," &c. He sees
there "His unchangeable priesthood; His divine Sonship;
His exalted nature and early resurrection outrunning the
corruption of the grave," &c. Again, he admits the twofold
sense of prophecy by which the establishment of the kingdom
of David is a type of that of Christ, and many "memorable
events and objects of the first, the older dispensation," fore
shadowing " the corresponding events and objects in the
New." He expressly states in a note on this passage that it
is highly probable that " the profanation of the temple by
Antiochus, and the corresponding profanation of the Chris
tian Church by the great Apostacy, the tyrannic corruption
of Antichrist, are rightly joined together as correlative terms
of a joint prophecy." (p. 206.) Mr. Davison declares that in
" the abyss of the Babylonian bondage Daniel weighed and
numbered the kingdoms of the earth. There also he mea
sured the years to the death of the Messiah," &c. Indeed,
his whole volume teems with declarations such as these.
We will add only one extract on the prophecies of Daniel,
which may serve as an antidote to part of the mischief of
the Essay. Bunsen makes the fourth empire of Daniel " the
sway of Alexander," to which the Essayist adds the remark,
" as is not uncommonly held." Any moderately well-informed
reader knows that the Roman empire is commonly held to be
the fourth ; but that would imply more prescience in Daniel
than the followers of Bunsen are willing to concede, and
accordingly they deny it. But we hasten to give Davison's

NOTE ON THE "EDINBURGH REVIEW." 131

own words. After repudiating the notion that the pro
phecies of Daniel could possibly have been written in the
age of Antiochus Epiphanes, and stating what he thinks
" may amount to a refutation of this hypothesis," (p. 497,)
Mr.Davison explains in part the prophecy of the four em
pires. In the course of the lecture the following passage
occurs : —

" Once more the termination of the Fourth Empire by its sub
division into a multitude of separate kingdoms is a further in
gredient in the information of the prophecy, and a new test of its
prescience. Those separate kingdoms are indicated to be ten. The
definite number may or may not be a strict postulate of the pro
phecy; a multifarious division unquestionably is denoted. That
multifarious division took place in the cluster of petty contemporary
kingdoms which replaced the Roman empire upon its dissolution.
In that cluster of kingdoms the ten horns of the fourth beast,
diverse from all the rest, find their interpretations, and their cor
respondent realities.

" So long, therefore, as the civil history of the ancient world
shall last, under the scheme of its four successive empires ; so long
as the introduction of Christianity, in the place and order previously
assigned to it, shall remain upon record, and its visible reign exist;
so long as the conclusion of the Iron Empire of Rome shall be
known in the promiscuous partition made of it by the host of
Northern and Eastern invaders ; so long there will be a just and
rational proof of the inspiration of these illustrious prophecies of
Daniel. If we try to refer such discoveries to any ingenuity of
human reason, they have too much extent and system for the sub
stituted solution. In that attempt of solution we are cramped by
improbabilities on every side. One adequate origin of them there
is, and that alone can render them intelligible in their manifest
character, if we consent to read them as oracles of God, communi
cated by Him to His prophets, and by them to others, for the
manifestation of His foreknowledge and over-ruling providence in
the kingdoms of the earth; and next for the confirmation of the
whole truth of revealed religion. In that light they fall into order.
In that same light, too, their origin and their use explain each
the other."

These passages sufficiently indicate the views of Davison
on prophecy. He believed that while these prophecies sonie-

K2

132 NOTE ON THE "EDINBURGH REVIEW."

times shadowed out the events of the first dispensation, it
was chiefly when those events were the counterpart of the
Gospel history that these prophecies were strictly intended
by the Holy Spirit of God to predict what actually took
place in the life of our Saviour and the events of the
Gospel, and that they were literally fulfilled. He believed
the prophecies of Daniel to be genuine, scouted the absurd
notion that they were written in the time of Antiochus
Epiphanes, and in the partition of the Roman empire he
acknowledges the fulfilment of the prophecy of the ten
horns. The fourth empire, in his opinion, was undoubtedly
the Eoman.

There is only one point more in this article that de
serves remark here. It is the statement about truth and
falsehood. It is contained in the following passage of the
review :—

" The truth or falsehood of the views maintained is treated as
a matter of indifference. The lay contributor, however offensive
his statements, is dismissed as ' comparatively blameless.' But the
Christian minister it is said ' has parted with his natural liberty.'
It is almost openly avowed (and we are sorry to see this tendency
as much among free-thinking laymen as among fanatical clergymen)
that truth was made for the laity, and falsehood for the clergy ;
that truth is tolerable everywhere except in the mouths of ministers
of the God of truth ; that falsehood driven from every other quarter
of the educated world, may find an honoured refuge behind the con
secrated bulwarks of the sanctuary."

It is needless to spend much time in answering so manifest
a mistake in the apprehensions of the Reviewer. He really
requires a course of logic before he ventures to write on
theology. The simple question before us is this, Whether
it is reputable for men to profess one set of principles and
teach another ? Does the Reviewer think that it is for the
interest of truth that men who have ceased to believe in
the resurrection of our Saviour, or any other great fact of the
Creed, should remain ministers of a Church which requires
them publicly to profess their belief in that fact? What
difference can the abstract truth or falsehood of the fact or

NOTE ON THE "EDINBURGH REVIEW." 133

dogma make to the character of the man who professes to
believe it with his lips, when he secretly believes it to be
false?

I have instanced the resurrection of our Saviour because
allusion is made to that great central fact of our religion in
another passage in the review, but the argument is equally
applicable to any other doctrine or fact.

It surely cannot be needful to add another word in refer
ence to this argument of the Reviewer. The plain good
sense of the English mind is incapable of admitting such
a view for a moment, and the Reviewer must seek some
other ground, if he desires to vindicate his friends a.
' I will only, in concluding these remarks, express my hope
that the discussion which has been caused by these " Essays
and Reviews/' may not only result in the firmer establish
ment of the great doctrines of our faith, but may induce the
writers themselves to reconsider the questions they have
treated so inadequately, and bring them to a frame of mind
in which they may seek the glory of God, not by denying
His miracles or explaining away His word, but in the ear
nest belief and the practical enforcement of those great
truths which the Church of Christ has received for nearly
two thousand years, and which have been the stay and
the hope of countless millions from the first formation of
that Church.

a It must be acknowledged that the Reviewer is candid enough to say that
considering the ability with which the Essays are written, it is strange that
they should have added little or nothing to our knowledge of the subjects on
which they treat.

MIRACLES.

"On the Study of the Evidences of Christianity. By BADEN-
POWELL, M.A., F.R.S., Savilian Professor of Geometry in the
University of Oxford"

"pBOFESSOK POWELL," says the author of an
apology for the " Essays and Ee views," "has
passed beyond the reach not only of literary criticism,
but of ecclesiastical censure a." He has indeed passed
beyond the reach of ecclesiastical censure; but un
happily his work survives him : and while it does so,
it cannot claim exemption from criticism.

Its subject, as set forth in its title, is " The Study
of the Evidences of Christianity." It would have been
designated more accurately had its title been nar
rowed into more exact keeping with its real object,
which is to shew that Miracles have no place among
those evidences.

The Essay may be considered as divided into two
parts : After an Introduction (pp. 94 — 100), in which
the author deprecates the want of candour and im
partiality with which, as he affirms, the subject of
miracles is often approached, and intreats a fair hear
ing, he endeavours to shew (pp. 100 — 115) that the
antecedent incredibility of miracles is such that no
amount of evidence is sufficient to establish the proof
of one : this is the first part. The second (pp. 115 —
129) is occupied with the consideration of the evi
dential force of miracles — a labour, by the way, which
he might have spared himself, as needless, if he had
proved his point in the preceding part. The remainder

a Edinburgh Beview, April, 1861, p. 475.

1 36 MIRACLES.

of the Essay (pp. 129 — 144) is of a more discursive
character, and is occupied chiefly in gathering up
fragments, which might seem to have been dropped
from parts I. and II., and which the author was either
unable to arrange in their proper places, or which he
thought would serve his purpose more effectually if
reserved for the end.

It is a hard matter at the outset to know how to
deal with a writer who occupied the position of Pro
fessor Powell. As a Christian, and a clergyman of
the English Church, we should naturally expect that
on the subject of which he treats we should have
much common ground with him, — that, in fact, almost
the only question between us would be, not whether
the Christian miracles are to be acknowledged as
miracles, or whether they are to be appealed to at all
among the evidences of Christianity, but to what
extent they are evidential. But on examination we
find the case to be widely different.

The reality of the New Testament miracles is denied,
or, if granted in any wise, is granted, — to use Professor
PowelPs own words in another work, of certain writers
whom he censures, — merely as " a nominal homage to
the prejudices of a religious party, a profession in
name, covering a denial in substance, as transparent
as that of the Jesuit commentators on Newton, in
their professions of unlimited deference to the Eccle
siastical dogmas, — * Cseterum latis a summis pontifi-
cibus contra telluris motum decretis nos obsequi pro
fit emur,' — while they deliberately contravened them
in promulgating, illustrating, and demonstrating the
prohibited doctrines V

b B. Powell, "Order of Nature," p. 222. See "Essays and
Reviews," pp. 140, 142, 143; and compare Bp. Yan Mildert's

MIRACLES. 137

Further, — the Scriptural account of the Creation is
ignored, and Mr. Darwin's " masterly volume," which
establishes "the grand principle of the self-evolving
powers of nature," is accepted as an authority which
summarily overrides the Mosaic record0. And thus,
such is the credulity of unbelief, this writer, who can
not bring himself to believe a miracle except under
a protest, is ready, without hesitation, to acquiesce in
a theory which would deduce the descent of all the
animals that live or have ever lived on this earth,
man included, from one or at most four or five com
mon progenitors d. There are others, it seems, than the
" ignorant," of whom it may be said with truth, that

account of some of the promoters of infidelity in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries : — " Some, with strange inconsistency, called
themselves Christians, and even contended for the necessity of
faith in the doctrines of the Gospel, while they acknowledged
that faith to be altogether at variance with the philosophical
opinions which they espoused." — Boyle Lectures, Serm. ix., vol. i.
p. 322.

c Essays and Reviews, p. 139. See also, in the same page, the
nonchalance with which the author sets aside the Scriptural record
of the origin of mankind : — " Never, in all that enormous length of
time which modern discovery has now indisputably assigned to the
existence of the human race!" Again, p. 129: — "More recently
the antiquity of the human race, and the development of species,
and the rejection of the idea of ' Creation' have caused new advances
in the same direction," (towards the " dissociation of the spiritual
from the physical.") Of a piece with this is the following from
another work by our author: — "I can only add an expression of
surprise that so leading and liberal a journal as the ' Edinburgh
Review' should have so far lost sight of all sound philosophy, and
shewn itself so far behind the advance of enlightenment, as to intro
duce in a recent article a new attempt to revive the credit of Bible
geology. The whole argument proceeds on the assumption — as if
imcontroverted — of the authority of the Judaical Scriptures in the
matter" — Order of Nature, p. 219.

d Darwin on the " Origin of Species," p. 518.

138 MIRACLES.

they are "as obstinate in their contemptuous incre
dulity, as they are unreasonably credulous e."

The existence of a God is indeed acknowledged,
but it is of a God very different from the God whom
the Bible sets before us; of a God subjected to the
laws which govern the material universe; laws pos
sibly of His own framing, but which, once framed,
like the laws of the Medes and Persians, may not be
altered even by Himself, The world, it would seem,
is a piece of clock-work, which having been wound up
in the beginning, — if indeed it ever had a beginning,
— was then set a-going, and left to go, in a perpetual
motion, without further interference on the part of its
Maker. Strange that it should be thought more
agreeable to sound reason to believe of Him who has
given to the creatures which He has made both the
will and the power to control the operation of the
laws of matter to an almost indefinite extent, that He
has divested Himself of the same, than that He has
both retained them, and exercises them according to
the dictates of His infinite wisdom !

What the author's view of revelation is, it is not
easy to understand. He seems expressly to acknow
ledge a revelation of some sort f ; but it is a revelation,
which, however it may differ in degree, does not ap
pear to be different in kind from that accorded to
"poets, legislators, philosophers, and others gifted
with high genius g;" and yet it is a revelation of

e Mill's "Logic," vol. ii. p. 165. f Essay, pp. 142—144.

e p. 140. " If the use of fire, the cultivation of the soil, and the
like, were divine revelations, the most obvious inference would be
that so likewise are printing and steam. If the boomerang was
divinely communicated to savages ignorant of its principle, then
surely the disclosure of that principle in our time by the gyro-

MIRACLES. 1 39

truths, some of which at least transcend the utmost
reach of reason ; nay, according to the author's prin
ciples, require a sacrifice of reason upon the altar of
faith h. Moreover it is, as this account of it might
lead one to expect, an internal revelation, not an
external one. But by what means its claims, in those
points which transcend the reach of human reason,
and which form, as miracles are said to do, "the main
difficulties and hindrances to its acceptance1," are to
be enforced on those to whom it has not been directly
communicated, does not appear. One would be strongly
tempted to suppose that none but those to whom it
has been directly communicated are under an obliga
tion to receive it. This, at least, was Lord Herbert
of Cherbury's conclusion (and a just one), from pre
mises very similar to those of Professor Powell k.

These will serve as specimens of the author's teach
ing. But I have no intention of following him into
every particular in which his questionable opinions
come out to view. My object is simply to deal with
the subject of Miracles, which is the subject of his
Essay. If I touch upon other subjects, it will only
be as they stand related to this.

Before proceeding to the main question, Professor
Powell "premises a brief reflection upon the spirit
and temper in which it should be discussed1." He

scope was equally so. But no one denies revelation in this sense ;
the philosophy of the age does not discredit the inspiration of
prophets and apostles, though it may sometimes believe it in poets,
legislators, philosophers, and others gifted with high genius"

h Essay, pp. 140 — 142. * p. 140.

k See Van Mildert's Boyle Lectures, Serin, ix. vol. i. pp. 326, 327,

1 Essay, p. 95.

140 MIRACLES.

would have it approached with the candour and im
partiality which befit a judge, not with the bias of an
advocate. And though those who deal with it may
have no doubts or difficulties of their own, he would
have them appreciate those of others, and make allow
ance for them.

This is all very just. Especially it behoves that
there should be no want of sympathy with minds
perplexed with difficulties, which they are hon
estly seeking to have resolved. Harshness is not
the treatment proper for such cases, — not to mention
that he who exhibits it is, by that token, wanting
himself in a very important qualification necessary
for the attainment of truth, and may well doubt
whether that which he holds, and would enforce so
imperiously, is truth ; or if it is, at the least whether
he holds it practically and to any salutary purpose.
But sympathy with those who are perplexed and
troubled with difficulties, and are conscientiously seek
ing their way out of them, must not be suffered to
run on into a countenancing of those who have turned
aside from the way of truth themselves, and are avail
ing themselves of their position, and of the influence
which their position gives them, to turn others aside
from it.

That we should approach the question with candour,
and with an honest desire to arrive at the truth, is
a caution very necessary to be borne in mind in other
matters as well as in the one before us. But it is to
be remembered that there may be an undue bias
against as well as for. Dr. "Whewell, in his Bridge-
water Treatise, has assigned reasons for believing that
what he calls deductive habits as opposed to inductive,
— habits formed by following out the discoveries of

MIRACLES. 141

others, as opposed to those formed by prosecuting the
work of discovery ourselves, — "may sometimes exer
cise an unfavourable effect on the mind of the student,
and may make him less fitted and ready to apprehend
and accept truths different from those with which his
reasonings are concerned"1." And a critic, certainly
not hostile to our author, said of him in a review of
a previous work, some time before the appearance of
the present, as though finding in him an exemplifi
cation of the truth of Dr. WhewelPs remark, " It
would not be a harsh criticism to say that Professor
Powell shews a marked fondness for what is new and
arduous in philosophy; and takes pleasure in stig-

m Chap vi., "On Deductive Habits; or, On the Impression pro
duced on Men's Minds by tracing the Consequences of Ascertained
Laws." Bridgewater Treat., p. 329. See also p. 334 :— " We have
no reason whatever to expect any help from the speculations (of
the mechanical philosophers and mathematicians of recent times),
when we attempt to ascend to the First Cause and Supreme Ruler of
the universe. But we might perhaps go further, and assert that
they are less likely than men employed in other pursuits to make
any clear advance towards such a subject of speculation. Persons
whose thoughts are thus entirely occupied in deduction, are apt to
forget that this is, after all, only one employment of the reason
among more ; only one mode of arriving at truth, needing to have
its deficiencies completed by another. Deductive reasoners, those
who cultivate science of whatever kind, by means of mathematical
and logical processes alone, may acquire an exaggerated feeling of
the amount and value of their labours. Such employments, from
the clearness of the notions involved in them, the irresistible con
catenation of truths which they unfold, the subtlety which they
require, and their entire success in that which they attempt, possess
a peculiar fascination for the intellect. Those who pursue such
studies have generally a contempt and impatience of the pretensions
of all those other portions of our knowledge, where, from the nature
of the case or the small progress hitherto made in their cultivation,
a more vague and loose kind of reasoning seems to be adopted."
See Burgon on " Inspiration and Interpretation," p. 241.

142 MIRACLES.

matizing as hindrances to truth in physical science all
such opinions as are fostered by ancient and popular
belief, including those which assume Scriptural autho
rity for their foundation." • And presently afterwards,
referring to certain views, which are reproduced here,
relating to the " transmutation of species," and the
asserted " creation of animalcule life" in the experi
ments of Messrs. Crosse and Weekes, he adds11, " We
have the constant feeling that the leaning is too much
to one and the same side in these questions, — we might
fairly call it the paradoxical side; while admitting
at the same time, that paradoxes are often raised into
the class of recognised truths °."

So much for candour and dispassionateness in the
conduct of discussions of this kind. At the same time,
it is to be confessed, that they who believe our Lord
to have been what He claimed to be, and acknowledge
the New Testament to contain an authentic record of
His teaching and that of His apostles, cannot approach
the subject but with a foregone conclusion in favour of
the reality of the Christian miracles. With them the
question is already settled, upon authority which ad
mits of no dispute. For it is impossible to deny that
the reality of those miracles is perpetually implied
throughout the New Testament. Not the shadow of
a doubt is ever cast upon it. If the Christian miracles
were not real miracles, what becomes of our Lord's

n See Essays and Reviews, pp. 138, 139.

0 Edinb. Review, July, 1858. Campbell makes a like observation
respecting Hume : — "No man was ever fonder of paradox, and, in
theoretical subjects, of every notion that is remote from sentiments
universally received. This love of paradoxes, he owns himself, that
both his enemies and his friends reproach him with." — On Miracles,
Part i. § 4.

MIRACLES. 143

truthfulness ? "Whatever may be thought of His apo
stles, He at least, on such a supposition, must stand
before us in the character of a deceiver. It is not too
much to say, therefore, that the question is vital as re
gards Christianity. And it cannot be matter of sur
prise, that they who have embraced the Gospel, on
whatever grounds, and have staked their dearest hopes
upon its promises, should look upon the denial of the
reality of the Christian miracles as a sacrilege of the
worst description.

All this Professor Powell seems to have felt; and
therefore, while asserting, in the most positive man
ner, that "in nature and from nature, by science and
by reason, we neither have nor can possibly have any
evidence of a Deity working miracles," he adds, as
though providing a loophole by which he might es
cape from the necessity which seemed to lie upon him
of denying miracles altogether, "for that, we must
go out of nature and beyond science p ;" and he adds
presently, —

" In the popular acceptation, it is clear the Gospel mira
cles are always objects, not evidences of faith ;" (objects of faitli
they must certainly be to Christians, as we have seen — evi
dences they are also, as I shall hope to shew ;) " and when
they are connected specially with doctrines, as in several of
the higher mysteries of the Christian faith, the sanctity which
invests the point of faith itself, is extended to the external
narrative in which it is embodied ; the reverence due to the
mystery renders the external events sacred from examination,
and shields them also within the pale of the sanctuary ; the
miracles are merged in the doctrines with which they are con
nected, and associated with the declarations of spiritual things
which are, as such, exempt from those criticisms to which
physical statements would be necessarily amenable V
P Essay, p. 142. q p. 143.

144 MIRACLES.

What have we here but the hateful principle by
means of which, in so many instances, infidelity has
eaten out the heart of religion, while it has left the
outward form of it untouched, — that opinions may be
philosophically true yet theologically false, or, con
versely, philosophically false yet theologically true r ?
Woe be to the individual by whom such a principle is
accepted ! woe be to the Church in which it gains
currency !

The miracles to which Professor Powell's concession
refers are obviously those which circle more immedi
ately round our Lord's Person, — His Incarnation, Re
surrection, Ascension s. But, it is clear, from what has
been already urged, that the concession, if made at all,
must be extended to the Gospel miracles generally, see
ing that the truth of our Lord's word is bound up with
them. And at the same time, it is to be considered
that if the reality of but one single miracle be granted,
of whatsoever kind, — say, for example, the Resurrec
tion, — the objection on which the whole stress of our
author's argument rests is done away. What has been
in one instance may have been in another, in ten
others, in a thousand others. The principle is con
ceded. There is no longer any antecedent incredibility
to be overcome*.

r " To such lengths did some of these Schoolmen proceed, that,
when accused of advancing tenets repugnant to the Scriptures, in
stead of repelling the accusation, they had recourse to the danger
ous position, that opinions might be philosophically true yet theologi
cally false ; a position obviously mischievous in its principle, and
opening a door for the admission of infidelity into the very bosom of
the Church." — Van Mildert, Boyle Lect., vol. i. p. 250.

8 See " Order of Nature," p. 69.

* "In one respect, this semi-rationalism, which admits the au
thority of revelation up to a certain point and no farther, rests on

THE ARGUMENT FOR MIRACLES. 145

But, in truth, Professor Powell's concession, as will
be seen in the sequel, is but verbal after all. And
I take this opportunity of remarking, that repeatedly,
in the course of his Essay, one has the conviction
forced upon one, either that he had a difficulty in ex
pressing himself clearly, or else that, on occasion, ho
designedly involved his meaning in a mist of words
because he feared that, if seen in clear sunshine, it
would be too much for the prejudices of his readers.

I.

At all events, as to the point in question, it is plain
that the whole drift and tendency of the Essay is to
deny the reality of miracles altogether. The argu
ment lies within the smallest possible compass, — The

a far less reasonable basis than the firm belief which accepts the
whole, or the complete unbelief which accepts nothing. For what
ever may be the antecedent improbability which attaches to a mi
raculous narrative, as compared with one of ordinary events, it
can affect only the narrative taken as a whole, and the entire
sears of miracles from the greatest to the least. If a single miracle
is admitted as supported by competent evidence, the entire history is
at once removed from the ordinary calculations of more or less proba
bility. One miracle is sufficient to shew that the series of events
with which it is connected is one which the Almighty has seen fit
to mark by exceptions to the ordinary course of His providence : and
this being once granted, we have no a priori grounds to warrant us
in asserting that the number of such exceptions ought to be larger
or smaller. If any one miracle recorded in the Gospels, — the Resur
rection of Christ, for example, — be once admitted as true, the
remainder cease to have any antecedent improbability at all, and
require no greater evidence to prove them than is needed for the
most ordinary events of any other history. For the improbability,
such as it is, reaches no further than to shew that it is unlikely that
God should work miracles at all ; not that it is unlikely that He
should work more than a certain number." — Mansel's Hampton
Lectures, p. 252.

L

146 MIRACLES

antecedent incredibility of a miracle is such as abso
lutely to preclude all a posteriori reasoning on the
subject.

And that antecedent incredibility rests on " the
grand truth of the universal order and constancy of
natural causes, as a primary law of belief," a belief
" so strongly entertained in the mirrd of every truly
inductive inquirer, that he cannot even conceive the
possibility of its failure u." Wherever we turn our
eyes we see the operation of fixed laws. The world,
in all its parts, is ordered and governed upon an es
tablished plan. As science extends her domain and
pushes her discoveries into new regions, cases which
once seemed exceptional are found to conform to the
general rule. If in any instance the conformity can
not be traced, yet the instances in which it can are
so innumerable, that there can be no reasonable doubt
that in this also the rule holds.

" The very essence of the whole argument," as the author
expresses himself in another work of a similar tendency
with the one under consideration, " is the invariable preser
vation of the principle of order : not necessarily such as we
can directly recognise, but the universal conviction of the
unfailing subordination of everything to some grand prin
ciples of law, however imperfectly apprehended or realized
in our partial conceptions, and the successive subordination
of such laws to others of still higher generality to an extent
transcending our- conceptions, and constituting the true chain
of universal causation which culminates in the sublime con
ception of the Cosmos x."

Professor Powell's view, it will be observed, differs
from Spinoza's and from Hume's, to both of which at
first sight it bears some resemblance.

u Essay, p. 109. * Order of Nature, p. 228.

NOT ANTECEDENTLY INCREDIBLE.

Spinoza held that a miracle is absolutely impossible,
because it would be derogatory to the Deity to depart
from the established laws of the uni verse y, an argu
ment which appears to be identical with that of Weg-
scheider referred to by Professor Powell, "that the
belief in miracles is inconsistent with the idea of an
eternal God consistent with himself2."

Hume did not absolutely deny the possibility of
a miracle, but he denied its capability of being proved
from testimony. With him the matter is simply a
balancing of probabilities, and in his judgment it is
always more probable that the testimony to a miracle
is false, than that the ordinary course of nature has
been deviated froma.

Professor Powell does not, with Spinoza, presume
to determine what it behoved God to do ; nor, with
Hume, does he trouble himself nicely to adjust the
balance of probabilities. His reasoning is built upon
analogy. He concludes peremptorily from the analogy
of God's dealings in the material world in every in
stance in which His operations can be traced, from
the Cosmos, the order which pervades the universe,
that a miracle which, according to his notion, is "a
violation of the laws of matter, or an interruption of
the course of physical causes b," is simply incredible.

y " Hinc clarissime sequitur, leges nature universales mera esse
decreta Dei, quse ex necessitate et perfectione naturae divinae se-
quuntur. Si quid igitur in natura contingeret, quod ejus univer-
salibus legibus repugnaret, id decreto et intellectui et naturae divinae
necessario etiam repugnaret; aut si quis statueret Deum aliquid
contra leges naturae agere, is simul etiam cogeretur statuere, Deum
contra suam naturam agere, quo nihil absurdius." — Spinoza, Tract.
Theol. Polit., c. 6.

z Essay, .p. 114. a Hume's Essay, " Of Miracles."

b Essay, p. 132.

L2

148 MIRACLES

But it is this very notion of a miracle, unguardedly
countenanced, it is true, in some instances, by writers
of eminence, which makes his whole argument wide
of its mark, as it does also that of Spinoza, which in
this respect agrees with it c.

A miracle, in the Scriptural notion of the word, is
a violation neither of the laws of matter, nor of any
other of the laws of nature. It is simply the inter
vention of a Being possessing, or endued with, super
human power, — an intervention, which, though it tem
porarily modifies, or suspends the operation 'of, the
laws ordinarily in operation in the world, is yet itself
exercised in strict accordance with the law of that
Being's nature, or super indued nature, by whom it is
exercised.

It is true that Professor Powell distinctly acknow
ledges that lower laws are continually held in re
straint by higher, and quotes Dean Trench with ap
proval as affirming such to be the case d. But there
is one clause in his quotation, the meaning of which,
he confesses, is not clear to him, that, namely, in
which "moral laws" are spoken of as "controlling
physical."

And this is precisely the point to which Professor
Powell's philosophy seems to have been incapable of
reaching. His mind appears to have been so en
grossed with the study of what is called natural
science, his eye so exclusively fixed upon the mate
rial world around him, that he overlooked the fact,
that the world contains other elements besides material,
that it has other forces besides physical, and that as
matter is perpetually acted upon in all imaginable

c See Dean Trench, "Notes on the Miracles," p. 15.
d Essay, p. 134.

NOT ANTECEDENTLY INCREDIBLE. 149

ways by those other forces, so the laws of matter
are perpetually, not " violated," but interfered with,
moulded, controlled, kept in check, as to their opera
tion, by those forces.

The human will is the element, the action of whose
disturbing force upon the material system around us
comes most frequently or most strikingly under our
notice. Man, in the exercise of his ordinary faculties,
is perpetually interfering with, or moulding, or con
trolling the operation of those ordinary laws of matter
which are in exercise around him. He does so if he
does but disturb one pebble in its state of rest, or stay
the fall of another before it reaches the ground. He
does so to a vastly greater extent when, by means of
the appliances with which art, instructed by science,
has furnished him, he projects a ball to the distance of
four or five miles, or constrains steam, or light, or
electricity, or chloroform to do his bidding. Still his
doings are not miracles, because they do not extend
beyond the range of his unassisted powers. But are
we sure that God may not, on special occasions and
for special ends, have endued some men with super-,
human powers, by which the laws of the material
world may be controlled to an extent beyond what
could have been done by unassisted nature? or that
He may not have directed or permitted beings superior
in might to man to exercise such powers6? That He

e " What degrees of power God may reasonably be supposed to
have communicated to created beings, to subordinate intelligences,
to good or evil angels, is by no means easy for us to determine.
Some things absolutely impossible for men to effect, it is evident
may easily be within the natural powers of angels, and some things
beyond the power of inferior angels, may as easily be supposed to
be within the natural power of others that are superior to them,

MIRACLES

has done so, in sundry instances, Scripture affirms.
"What is there in the reason of things to make the
affirmation incredible or even improbable? To say
that it is contrary to experience is to beg the whole
question at issue.

The fact is, once admit that there is a God, and
even beings who have to do with this earth, inferior
to God but superior in might to man, or admit that
man himself may, for special reasons, be endued with
superhuman power, and you grant that there are
agents who have it in their power to interfere with
or control the laws ordinarily in operation in the
material world, so as to work miracles.

Admit, further, that there may be an occasion calling
for superhuman interference, — and such surely is the
authentication of a revelation containing truths which
it was of the utmost consequence for man to know,
but of which, except by revelation, he could know
nothing, — and the possibility is advanced to proba
bility. We have, if we may without irreverence use
the heathen poet's words in such connection, both a
vindeX) and a nodus dignus vindice.

Such a revelation Christianity professes to be. It
professes to direct man towards the attainment of the
true end of his being, to instruct him in the know
ledge of God, and to teach him how to serve God
acceptably, and it assures him (an assurance which
he could not otherwise have had) of the continu-

and so on. So that excepting the original power of creating, which
we cannot indeed conceive comnmnicated to things which were
themselves created, we can hardly affirm with any certainty that
any particular effect, how great or miraculous soever it may seem
to us, is beyond the power of all created beings in the universe to
have produced." — S. Clarke, Evidences, p. 298.

NOT ANTECEDENTLY INCREDIBLE. 151

ance of his existence in a future state of happiness
or misery after death, that happiness or misery de
pending upon his conduct here. Underlying the
information thus described are such truths as the
incarnation, the death and passion, the resurrection,
the ascension of the Son of God, and the descent of
the Holy Spirit, together with an account of the re
spective offices of both of these divine Persons in the
economy of man's salvation. These are subjects to
the knowledge of which unassisted human reason
could by no possibility have attained, and yet that
knowledge, seeing that sundry most important duties
grow out of the relationships involved f, cannot but be
of the utmost consequence to us.

If then it was not to have been expected ante
cedently ( as who could have ventured to predict
beforehand how God would deal with us in such a
case ?) that Christianity, if true, would be attested by
miracles, yet now that it does claim to have been so
attested, there is sufficient reason apparent why it
should have been so. Indeed, it seems inconceivable,
how, without miracles, — including prophecy in the
notion of a miracle, — it could sufficiently have com
mended itself to men's belief? Who would believe,
or would be justified in believing, the great facts which
constitute its substance, on the ipse dixit of an un
accredited teacher? And how, except by miracles,
could the first teacher be accredited ? Paley, then, was
fully warranted in the assertion which our author
censures, that " we cannot conceive a revelation" —
such a revelation of course as Christianity professes to
be, a revelation of truths which transcend man's
ability to discover, — "to be substantiated without

' Sec Butler's " Analogy," Pt. n. ch. i. p. 216, Oxford, 1820.

J£2 MIRACLES

miracles g." Other credentials, it is true, might be
exhibited in addition to miracles, — and such it would
be natural to look for, — but it seems impossible that
miracles could be dispensed with.

And in this respect Christianity is entirely con
sistent with itself. Had it made no appeal to miracles,
its teaching, considering what the substance of its
teaching is, could scarcely have gained credit. Had
its teaching been such as men might have attained
to by their unassisted powers, suspicion might fairly
have rested on its appeal to miracles.

Assuming, then, that it has pleased God to make
a revelation, such as Christianity claims to be, to man,
what have we in the ordinary course of the world's
affairs analogous to it, on which to raise the conclusion
that miracles are incredible, or even improbable ? The
case is one entirely sui generis, except in so far as it
has associated with it other revelations, intimately
connected with it, belonging to a former dispensation.
As Bp. Butler remarks, — " Before we can have ground
for raising what can with propriety be called an argu
ment from analogy, for or against revelation, considered
as somewhat miraculous" — or, as it might be added with
equal truth, for or against miracles, as authenticating
a revelation, — " we must be acquainted with a similar
or parallel case. But the history of some other world
seemingly in like circumstances with our own is no
more than a parallel case, and therefore nothing short
of this can be so V It follows, then, that the analogy
of the ordinary course of nature affords no sufficient
ground for doubting the reality of miracles, said to
have been wrought in attestation of a revelation which
has nothing analogous to it in nature. The general-

* Essay, p. 119. h Analogy, Pt. n. ch. ii. p. 237.

NOT ANTECEDENTLY INCREDIBLE. 133

ization which would conclude from thence that there
can be no such thing as a miracle is an over-hasty
one, large as is the induction on which it rests.

If it be urged that the reasoning which has been
employed hitherto does but remove the question of
probability or improbability, of credibility or incredi
bility, a step farther back, - - viz. from the case of
miracles to that of revelation in general, — this is
granted ; but at the same time, he who thus compels
us to go back with him one step, must be content to
go with us one step more. For before we can venture
to affirm the improbability or incredibility of revela
tion generally, we ought to be sure that there are no
truths essential to man to know, of which yet man
cannot attain the knowledge without supernatural
instruction \

Professor Powell, indeed, is not indisposed to ac
knowledge a revelation, provided it be not an external
onej. And no doubt a revelation by internal illumi-

1 That a revelation is not antecedently improbable would appear
from the circumstance that Socrates is represented by Plato as
intimating not only his belief in a future life, but his belief that
some divine communication would one day be made concerning it. —
Dean Lyall, Pr opted ia Prophetica, p. 155.

j Compare "Order of Nature," p. 282: — " Those who have felt
the greatest difficulty in admitting physical miracles, have no hesi
tation in accepting the assertion of any amount of purely moral and
spiritual influence, even to the extent of those exalted conditions of
soul in which the favoured and gifted disciple was enlightened by
immediate disclosures of divine truth, or endowed with internal
energies and spiritual powers, beyond the attainment or conception
of the ordinary human faculties : and theistic reasoners have held
it more consonant with the Divine perfections to influence mind than
to disarrange matter." — But man's moral and spiritual nature, by all
analogy, must have its laws as well as his physical nature. And a
departure from the former is as truly a miracle, — as truly indicates
supernatural interference^ — as a departure from the latter.

THE ARGUMENT FOR MIRACLES.

nation is perfectly conceivable. Indeed Scripture re
cognises such a revelation repeatedly. But it is to
be observed that if that revelation be a revelation of
truths of which man could not by the exercise of his
natural faculties have attained the knowledge, we
have at once something which transcends nature, that
is, in other words, a miracle, — not indeed a physical
miracle, but a moral one.

Let thus much suffice for the question of antecedent
credibility or probability. But indeed, we are but
feeling about in the dark while we are discussing such
questions in a matter where we are, after all, so little
competent to determine antecedently what is credible
or probable, or are following out analogies where we
are so little competent to determine to what extent
the analogies hold, or whether indeed they hold at all.
The really important question is, as to the facts re
puted to be miraculous. And it is surely inconsistent
in those who lay so much stress, and justly so, on the
necessity of weighing every fact which bears upon
their theories in matters of science, summarily to
override facts, when they do not accord with their
theories in matters of religion.

That the facts of the Christian history which are
reputed miraculous really did take place, rests, as has
been often urged, upon such testimony as would bo
accepted as sufficient, and much more than sufficient,
in all ordinary matters.

We are told, indeed, that testimony "is, after all,
but a second-hand assurance, a blind guide* that it
can avail nothing against reason ;" nay, that even our
own senses may deceive us k. And it is very true that
both testimony may mislead, and our senses may dc~
k Essay, pp. 141, 142.

THE ARGUMENT FOR MIRACLES.

ceive. But these results depend upon the character
of the testimony, and upon the condition in which
our senses are, or the opportunities which they have
for taking cognizance of that which comes under their
notice. Testimony may be sufficiently established ;
our senses may have sufficient certainty in their ob
servations : and it is as much a law of our moral
nature that we should place reliance upon testimony
when sufficiently established, and upon our senses
when they are not disordered and at the same time
have sufficient opportunities of observing, as it is
a law of our physical nature that we should feel pain
if wounded, or that we should fall if not supported.

But then it is to be observed to what extent the
report of testimony and the observation of our senses
are claimed. There are two elements to be considered
in an alleged miracle — the fact, and the author of tho
fact; all that is claimed for testimony, all that is
claimed for the senses is, that they are competent to
establish the fact ; as to the author, this point is to
be arrived at on other considerations.

The reality, then, of the Christian miracles, so
far as the fact is concerned, rests, as has been said,
on the most ample testimony. They were wrought
openly ; in many instances before enemies. They were •'_
asserted in the most public manner by those who pro
fessed to have been eye-witnesses of them, and that
in the country in which they were said to have been
wrought, and while there were numbers still living
who could have contradicted the assertion if false;
numbers, too, who had every disposition to contradict
it, if they could have done so with success : yet no
contradiction that we know of was ever made. The
enemies of Christianity, - - though they refused to

1^6 THE ARGUMENT FOR MIRACLES.

acknowledge the finger of God in them, and so denied
them to be miracles, or rather divine miracles, — never
denied the facts. They endeavoured, indeed, to ac
count for them; but the very circumstance of their
doing so afforded the strongest testimony which
they had it in their power to yield to their reality,
as facts.

It is true the prevalent belief in magic, and in the
power of evil spirits and their sensible interference in
the world, made men more ready to believe reports
of supernatural or superhuman occurrences than they
might have been otherwise. Still, when every allow
ance has been made on this account, it is inconceiv
able that facts, such as the Christian miracles were
affirmed to be, could have been accepted, as facts, by
enemies, who had every opportunity of testing them,
and actually did test them in some instances most
rigorously, unless they had really taken place.

And it is much to be observed that many of them
were of a kind respecting which, as far as the fact is
concerned, it is incredible that deception could have
been practised, or mistake or delusion have occurred.
The walking upon the water, the instantaneous hush
ing of a storm, the healing of a paralytic, the cleans
ing of a leper, the giving of sight to the blind, the
making whole of the maimed, the feeding of great
multitudes with a few loaves and fishes, the restora
tion of the dead to life in the presence of many wit
nesses, in one instance four days after death was said
to have occurred, and when the grave had to be
opened in which the body lay ; these are facts, which,
however it may be pretended to account for them,
could not have gained credit unless they had actually
taken place.

THE ARGUMENT FOR MIRACLES. 157

And what is also especially worthy of note, they,
together with the other Christian miracles, are not
a few, and those isolated facts ; but a multitude
which cohere together, and, like the several stones
of an arch, mutually support and strengthen one
another.

Of these facts the central one, — the key- stone, so to
speak, of the arch,— is our Lord's Eesurrection. This
rests independently on the strongest evidence, our Lord
having been seen alive after His death many times
and by many different persons, — in one instance " by
above five hundred brethren at once," of whom, says
St. Paul, referring to the circumstance, "the greater
part remain unto this present, but some are fallen
asleep." But besides the independent evidence on
which it rests, it is sustained on the one side, by the
manifold signs and wonders, such as those above
referred to, which our Lord did antecedently to His
death; on the other, by His ascension, and by the
descent of the Holy Spirit, — the former witnessed and
attested by the eleven apostles, the latter manifested,
not only by the marvellous works wrought by the
apostles, and the gifts of power bestowed largely
through the laying on of their hands upon the first
disciples, but also — which is very much to be observed
— by the moral change effected both in their own cha
racters, and in the lives and conversations of those
who received their testimony ; for this, though not
a miracle physically, was at least a fact, and as such,
a witness to the reality of that gift of the Holy Spirit,
which is represented as consequent upon our Lord's
ascension, and by which miracles are said to have
been wrought.

And to all these must be added another great and

158 THE ARGUMENT FOR MIRACLES.

most important fact, — that Christianity made its way
in a world whose interests and prejudices were arrayed
against it, avowedly from the very beginning appeal
ing to the miracles of its Founder, and to the mi
raculous powers possessed and exercised by its first
preachers, as well as by others to whom they imparted
the gift. For however men may now, while profess
ing to accept Christianity as of divine origin, attempt
to eliminate the miraculous element from its system,
nothing could be farther from the thoughts of its
first preachers. Mistakenly or not, they both believed
and taught that miracles, especially that chief mi
racle, the Eesurrection of its Founder, were part and
parcel of Christianity. And as they believed and
taught, so their converts believed and confessed.
And both preachers and converts, in repeated in
stances, laid down their lives in proof of the sincerity
of their convictions.

It is of no avail to refer to the countless pretences
to miraculous powers which have since been made,
whether by heathens or Christians, as though these,
as a matter of course, invalidated the Gospel miracles.
Both the Gospel miracles and other alleged miracles
are to be tried severally upon their own merits ; and
if the facts alleged are established upon sufficient
evidence, they are to be received as facts : whether as
miraculous facts or as divinely miraculous facts, is
a subject for further consideration. At the same
time, if there should be ground for believing, as
doubtless there is, that many of the later miracles
are spurious, this is no more than was to have been
expected in the reason of things ; no more than our
Lord and His apostles had prepared the Church to
expect. And indeed, to a certain extent, such spuri-

THE ARGUMENT FOR MIRACLES. 159

ous miracles are even witnesses to the reality of some
miracles. For, as one has remarked who will not be
suspected of an undue bias in this direction, "The
innumerable forgeries of this sort which have been
imposed upon mankind in all ages are so far from
weakening the credibility of the Jewish and Christian
miracles, that they strengthen it. For how could we
account for a practice so universal of forging miracles
for the support of false religions, if on some occasions
they had not actually been wrought for the confir
mation of a true one ? Or how is it possible that so
many spurious copies should pass upon the world,
without some genuine original from whence they were
drawn, whose known existence and tried success might
give an appearance of probability to the counterfeit1 ?"

There can be no reasonable pretext, therefore, for
denying the facts supposed to be miraculous in the
Gospel history. Nor, truly, does Professor Powell
absolutely and in every instance deny the facts. It
is only when no reasonable prospect of a solution
upon his own principles offers itself that he denies
them. And even then his denial is couched in such
ambiguous terms, that, if we had not a more explicit
statement of his views elsewhere to guide us, it might
be somewhat difficult to ascertain his precise meaning.

But let us hear his own account of the way in
which he would deal with the Christian miracles. He
is speaking, indeed, of alleged miracles in general,
but of course with his eye specially directed to those
of the Gospel : —

"An alleged miracle can only be regarded in one of two
ways ; — either (1) abstractedly as a physical event, and tliere-

i Middleton, quoted by Bp. Douglas, " Criterion," pp. 245, 246.

160 THE ARGUMENT FOR MIRACLES.

fore to be investigated by reason and physical evidence, and
referred to physical causes, possibly to known causes, but at all
events to some higher cause or law, if at present unknown ;
it then ceases to be supernatural, yet still might be appealed
to in support of religious truth, especially as referring to the
state of knowledge and apprehensions of the parties addressed
in past ages ; or ( 2 ) as connected with religious doctrine,
regarded in a sacred light, asserted on the authority of inspi
ration. In this case it ceases to be capable of investigation
by reason, or to own its dominion ; it is accepted on religious
grounds, and can appeal only to the principle and influence
of faith. Thus miraculous narratives become invested with
the character of articles of faith, if they be accepted in a less
positive and certain light, as requiring some suspension of
judgment as to their nature and circumstances, or perhaps as
involving more or less of the parabolic or mythic character ;
or at any rate as received in connexion with, and for the sake
of the doctrine inculcated m."

It appears then, that in the first place the fact of
the alleged miracle is to be subjected to a rigid scru
tiny, and if there be no apparent ground for rejecting
it, we are then to consider whether it is not capable of
being referred to some known physical cause.

If there is no such cause to which it can be referred,
still, — as no one can pretend to set bounds to nature,
— it may reasonably be supposed that, if our know
ledge were sufficiently enlarged, we should be able to
assign a cause, in accordance with the laws of nature,
— a natural cause as distinguished from a supernatural
one ; and we may rest in that supposition.

If, however, the character of the miracle, or possibly
the constitution of our own minds, be such, that we
cannot bring ourselves to acquiesce in such a suppo
sition, — then, as a last resource, we must accept the

m Essay, p. 142.

THE ARGUMENT FOR MIRACLES. 161

narrative which contains the account of it, — supposing
it to be one of the Scriptural narratives, — "as an
article of faith,'7 "on the authority of inspiration."

In doing this, however, we must be content to re
gard the narrative " in a less positive and certain light,
as requiring some suspension of judgment as to its
nature and circumstances:" in other words, we must
presume that we have been mistaken in looking upon
it as literally and historically true. And we must
either leave it to " await its solution," without ven
turing to offer a solution of our own, receiving it "in
connexion with, and for the sake of the doctrine
inculcated," or we must have recourse to "ideology,"
and suppose that the narrative has " more or less of
the parabolic or mythic character," or, as our author
expresses himself elsewhere, is "of a designedly fic
titious or poetical nature n."

n Compare "Order of Nature," pp.274, 275:— " We have ad
verted to the kind of examination we should make of a marvellous
event occurring before our eyes. The same critical scrutiny could
not be applied to a marvellous event recorded in history. But in
general, if such an event be narrated, especially as occurring in
remote times, it would still become a fair object of the critical
historian to endeavour to obtain, if possible, some rational clue to
the interpretation of the alleged wonderful narrative. And in this
point of view, it is sometimes possible, that, under the supernatural
language of a rude age, we may find some real natural phenomenon
truly described according to the existing state of knowledge.

"But marvels and prodigies, as such, are beyond the province of
critical history and scientific knowledge ; they can only be brought
within it, when, either certainly or probably, brought within the
domain of nature. It is almost needless to add, in reference to any
such historical narrative, that it is of course presumed, as pre
liminary to all philosophical speculation, that we have carefully
scrutinized the \vhole question of testimony and documentary au
thenticity, on purely archa3ological and critical grounds.

"But in other cases, where such marvels may seem, still more to

162 THE ARGUMENT FOR MIRACLES.

Professor Powell is ingenious in the method which
he has devised for maintaining his theory. Other
opponents of miracles have been content to rest their
opposition each on a single principle ; Professor Powell
has a second and a third in reserve, if the one which
he had first put forward fails. It is a matter of no
little difficulty in dealing with him to know, in the
case of any particular miracle, the precise ground on
which he is entrenching himself. At the same time,
however, it is to be observed, that, as regards the
Christian miracles, it is a matter of necessity that he
who calls them in question must choose the principle
on which he proposes to deny them, and adhere to it
throughout. If, for instance, it be granted in any case
that the narrative is a narrative of fact, though possibly
of a fact which happened according to the ordinary
course of nature, it is impossible to believe that others of
the narratives are "of a designedly fictitious or poetical"
character ; and vice versa, if it be granted that any of
them are designedly fictitious or poetical, it is im
possible to understand others as narratives of facts.
They are all so obviously of one and the same cha
racter that they must stand or fall together.

militate against all historical probability, and where attempts at
explanation seem irrational, we may be led to prefer the supposition
that the narrative itself was of a designedly fictitious or poetical
nature. And this alternative opens a wide and material field of
inquiry, which can only be adequately entered upon by those who
unite in an eminent degree the spirit of philosophic investigation
with accurate critical, philological, and literary attainments; and
which embraces the entire question of the origin and propagation of
those various forms of popular fiction which are, and have been in
all ages, so largely the expression of religious ideas, and often
convey, under a poetical or dramatised form, the exposition of an
important moral or religious doctrine, 'and exemplify the remark,
that parable and myth often include more truth than history."

NATURALISTIC SENSE. 163

1. With regard to the theory which would attribute
the Christian miracles to natural causes :

It is not denied that some few of them, stripped of
the circumstances connected with them, might admit of
being explained without the supposition of special
divine interference. But take those circumstances into
account, and the natural at once "lifts itself up into
the miraculous0." That a piece of money, for ex
ample, should be found in a fish's mouth, is an occur
rence which might possibly happen in a natural way :
but add the coincidence that our Lord directed Peter
to go to the sea and cast in a hook and take the fish
that should first come up, and told him that he should
find in its mouth the very sum of money which he
was in want of for the particular occasion, and it seems
impossible to deny that "the finger of God" was in
the whole transaction. In like manner, that a sudden
storm upon the sea of Galilee should speedily be al
layed, is perhaps not extraordinary ; but that when it
was at its height, and the sailors were alarmed at the
prospect of instant destruction, our Lord should rise
up, and speak the words "Peace, be still," and it
should forthwith die down, and be succeeded by a
great calm, — here was a coincidence which cannot be
believed to be fortuitous. Those who witnessed it, at
least, were deeply impressed with the conviction that
there was an exercise of other than human agency :
" What manner of man," they exclaimed, " is this, that
even the winds and the sea obey Him p ?"

But though some few of the miracles, apart from
the circumstances connected with them, might pos
sibly be accounted for in a natural way, the great

0 Trench, "Notes on the Miracles," p. 13.
P Matt. viii. 27.

M2

164 RELATIVE MIRACLES.

majority refuse to be so dealt with. It is true that
a naturalistic construction has been devised systemati
cally for the whole of themq; but that I may here
use Professor Powell's own wordsr, — uthe immense
multitude of coincidences and combinations of circum
stances and extraordinary occurrences, which it thus
becomes necessary to suppose concentrated in one
short period, presents too complex a mass of hypo
theses to furnish a real and satisfactory theory of the
whole series of evangelical miracles."

If the theory will not answer for the whole series,
it can be of little service in the case of the very few
to which it might seem to admit of application, nor,
when the abatement necessary to be made for the con
comitant circumstances is taken into consideration,
can it be of any service even for them.

Professor Powell, while implying that some of
the facts of the Gospel narrative commonly described
as miracles are in reality to be ascribed to natural
causes, goes on to say that such " might still be ap
pealed to in support of religious truth, especially as
referring to the state of knowledge and apprehension
of the parties addressed in past ages :" in other words,
they might be dealt with on Schleiermacher's prin
ciple, as relative miracles.

But the boon thus offered is one which, even if the
solution suggested were acquiesced in, the whole tone
of the Gospel narrative would forbid us to accept.
Our Lord constantly appealed to His miracles as real
miracles, as superhuman works, as testimonies borne
to Him by His Father. "Whatever therefore might have
been the effect of such marvels upon those who deemed
them to be of heaven, when indeed they were but of

i By Paulus. r Order of Nature, p. 333.

RELATIVE MIRACLES. 165

the earth, on us, to whom a deeper insight into nature
had revealed their true character, it would only be to
excite indignation and disgust.

If it be urged, that the deeper insight into nature
possessed by our Lord and communicated by Him to
His apostles, by which He and they wrought marvel
lous works, might fitly be " appealed to in support of
religious truth," without impeachment of His or their
sincerity, inasmuch as the very possession of it, in the
age in which it was exercised, implied superhuman
knowledge, this truly is to grant the principle which
we contend for. Here is a miracle in the strictest
sense of the word : not indeed a physical miracle,
though it produced physical effects, but something
which was above humanity and above nature.

But indeed we do but trifle while we speculate on
such matters. With all the insight into nature to
which modern science has introduced us, we are as
far removed at this day as were the contemporaries
of our Lord and His apostles from comprehending the
means by which such works as those recorded in the
New Testament are to be wrought. We can travel
with such speed as almost to outstrip an arrow in its
flight, we can send a message over hundreds of miles
in a few seconds, we can transfer an instantaneous
likeness of ourselves or of the scene around us to
paper with an exactness which no pencil could equal,
we can cheat pain of its victims, we can weigh the
earth, we can foretell the eclipses of the sun and
moon, and even of the satellites of other planets, — but
we are as incapable of communicating instantaneous
sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the
dumb, health to the sick, life to the dead, or of doing
any other of the mighty works ascribed to our Lord

166 ALLEGORICAL SENSE.

or His apostles, as was the simplest and most un
learned of those who witnessed them.

2. The second theory which Professor Powell calls
in to his aid is one, which, like the preceding, he is
far from adopting universally. It is only when other
methods fail, or when this has some special advantage
to recommend it, that he has recourse to it. And
even so he appears to do so with some hesitation.
The narrative, it is suggested, may " perhaps involve
more or less of the parabolic or mythic character."
It doubtless contains important instruction as sym
bolizing certain truths, but it is not literally and his
torically true. We must read it as we read the
parable of Dives and Lazarus, or that of the unjust
steward. "We must apply it as St. Paul has taught
us to apply the history of Sarah and Hagar, only, it
should be added, with this difference, that whereas
St. Paul's application was built upon the literal truth
of the history, the theory under consideration rejects
the literal truth and substitutes the mythic in its
stead.

To unfold on system the mythic or allegorical appli
cation of which the Scripture narratives may be thought
capable, may serve as an exercise for ingenuity ; and
this, in his coarse, ribald style, was the method pur
sued by Woolston in his assault upon the miracles.
But that such application should be accepted, in such-
wise as to exclude the literal and historical sense, by
any sincere lover of truth, I do not say in all, but
even in one of the narratives, is impossible. Those
narratives bear every appearance of reality on their
surface, and no skill or ingenuity can discover any
thing of a different character underneath the surface.
The actors are real, the actions are real, the conver-

ALLEGORICAL SENSE. 167

sations, the discussions, which accompany or arise out
of the actions, and the proceedings which result from
them are real. Let any one read over, for instance,
the account of the raising of Lazarus and of the mea
sures taken by the Jews in consequence of it, or of
the giving of sight to the man who had been born
blind and of the investigation instituted by our Lord's
enemies into the reality of the miracle8, and he will
rise from the perusal with the conviction that it is an
insult to his understanding to ask him to allow a so-
called ideological application to supplant the natural
and obvious meaning. And if this would be his feel
ing on reading one or two of the Gospel narratives, it
would be so in a much greater and more intense de
gree on reading the whole of the historical books of
the New Testament with the subject specially kept
in view.

Woolston made large and confident appeals to the
Fathers in support of his system : and it cannot be
denied either that allegorizing was in much use in the
early Church, or that it was carried to excess in some
instances by individual Fathers. But of that excess,
reaching so far as occasionally to exclude the literal
sense and to substitute an allegorical in its stead, we
have no instance till towards the middle of the third
century. Origen set the example*; and he was fol-

6 John ix.

* " Strong as the appetite of the Fathers certainly was on all
these accounts for figures, I do not think any instance can he pro
duced from those before Origen of the literal meaning of a passage
of Scripture being evaporated in the figurative. . . . He is the first of
the Fathers of whom it can be said, that he refines the fact away in
the allegory : and even of him it can only be said under great re
striction. Origen's general notions upon this question seem to be
most fairly represented in his work against Celsus, — the soberest of

l68 ALLEGORICAL SENSE.

lowed occasionally by men whose names carry greater
weight than hisu. Yet even Origen, in his work
against Celsus, uniformly argues, as does Celsus also,
on the principle that the narratives of the Christian
miracles are to be understood literally, however they
may admit or solicit an allegorical sense besides. He
repeatedly appeals to the miracles as real, not only in
a general way, but with the specification of particular
instances ; such as the feeding of the multitudes with
a few loaves and fishes, the three several cases of the
dead raised to life, the healing of the sick, the giving
of sight to the blind, and the enabling of the lame to
walkv . And in so doing he is but acting in confor-

his works, — viz. that we are to consider the narrative of Scripture
as having an obvious sense, but that we are not to rest in the ob
vious ; nor, in interpreting the law, are we to begin and end with
the letter : and in like manner, in contemplating the incidents re
lated of Jesus, we shall not arrive at the spectacle of the truth in
full, unless we are guided by the same rule." — Professor Ulunt,
" On the right use of the Early Fathers" pp. 213—215.

u " Sed etiam Hieronymum video tan turn insaniisse, ut scriberet ad
Nepotianum, in Epistola de Yita Clericorum, Historiam Davidis et
Abisae Sunamitis figmentum esse de mimo vel Atellanarum ludicro,
si sequeris literam. Apage vero has allegoristarum nugas, quibus,
propter nonnulla vere typica in Sacra Scriptura, et alia quaadam vel
tropice prolata, vel ambigua3 interpretation's, magni alioqui viri,
dum aliis prodesse volebant, suam ipsorum famam lasserunt." —
Routh, Seliquiae Sacrcs, torn. iii. p. 434.

v Thus, e. g, (lib. i. p. 5, ed. Spenc.) he appeals to prophecy
and miracles as evidences of Christianity, in accordance with the
Apostle's words, 1 Cor. ii. 4, fv dnodfi^ei Trvevp-aros Koi dvvdfjLetos, as
he explains them : — HvevfiaTos p-fv, did ras Trpo^reias1, iKavas TTIO~TO-
TTOtija'aL TOV (VTvyxavovra, p.d\io~Ta els TO. Trepl TOV XptoroC* dvvdpfws 8e,
fiia TCIS Tfpaa-riovs dwd^fis as KaTacrKevacrTcov yeyovevai /cat CK rroXXcov
p,ev aXAa>i>, Koi CK TOV 'i)(yr] 8e avrSav ert cra>£f(r$ai irapa rots Kara TO

pov\r)p.a TOV \6yov /Stovo-t. See also pp. 30, 34, 53, and lib. 2. pp. 70,

87? 88.

SPIRITUALIZED SENSE. 169

nrity with the principles of the earlier Fathers as well as
of the sounder part of the later. To whatever extent
they might employ allegory, — and no doubt they did
in many instances to a great extent, — their rule was
to make the literal and historical truth the basis of
the allegory which they built upon it x.

3. One other principle of solution is put forward by
Professor Powell. He is willing, in certain cases, to
accept the miracle "on religious grounds," "in con
nexion with and for the sake of the doctrine incul
cated," — as "an article of faith," not as a matter re
specting which our senses can have any cognizance.

If by this be meant that there are certain mira
culous facts, which transcend our reason, but which
nevertheless we believe as facts, on the authority of
revelation, — such, for instance, as the incarnation

1 " Tune namque allegorise fructus suaviter carpitur, cum prius
per historian! in veritatis radice solidatur." — Gregory the Great,
Horn. 40 in Evang., quoted by Dean Trench, " Notes on the Mira
cles," p. 82. See also St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, lib. xiii. c. 21, where,
animadverting upon those who would put an allegorical interpreta
tion on Gen. ii. to the exclusion of the literal sense, he says : — " Tan-
quam visibilia et corporalia ilia non fuerint, sed intelligibilium sig-
nincandorum causa eo modo dicta vel scripta sint. Quasi propterea
non potuerit esse paradisus corporalis, quia potest etiam spiritualis
intelligi: tanquam ideo non fuerint duse mulieres, A gar et Sara, et
ex illis duo filii Abraha3, unus de ancilla, unus de libera, quia duo
Testamenta in eis figurata dicit apostolus ; aut ideo de nulla petra
Moyse percutiente aqua defluxerit, quia potest illic figurata signi-
ficatione etiam Christus intelligi, eodem apostolo dicente, 'Petra
autem erat Christus.' " Then, after giving two different allegorical
expositions of the description of Paradise, he adds : — " Ha3C, et si
qua alia commodius dici possunt de intelligendo spiritualiter Para-
diso, nemine prohibente dicantur, dum tamen et illius historic
veritas fidelissima rerum gestarum narratione commendata creda-
tur." — See also De Genesi ad Liter am, lib. viii. c. 1.

170 SPIRITUALIZED SENSE.

of our Blessed Lord, — the principle is most sound,
and every Christian will acquiesce in it cordially.
Only it follows immediately, as has been already in
timated, that if it be conceded but in a single in
stance that a miracle has been wrought, the ground
on which Professor Powell's grand objection to mira
cles rests is cut away from under him. What has been
in one instance may have been in others. There is no
longer, even on his own principles, any shadow of
reason for maintaining that a miracle is antecedently
and absolutely incredible.

Whether the sense above referred to is that which
Professor Powell really intends, is not easily to be
collected from the work before us. He speaks more
plainly however in his book " On the Order of Nature."
And there it appears that while he professes to accept
such miracles as the incarnation, the resurrection, and
the ascension, in what he calls a " spiritualized sense,"
"in connexion with and for the sake of the doctrine
inculcated," he has the utmost repugnance to receive
them as physical facts. The truth is, he has already
become convinced, on antecedent considerations, that
there can be no such thing as a miracle ; and not even
the authority of the inspiration which he professes
to accept is of avail to shake his conviction. Even
while acknowledging the name, he is at pains to
deny the thing.

But let us hear his own words : —

"If we turn to the New Testament, and acknowledge in
its later writings, especially those of St. Paul, the fullest de
velopment of apostolic Christianity, we there find, in a very
remarkable manner, that no reference is made to any of the
Gospel miracles, except only those specially connected with
the personal office and nature of Christ ; and even these are

SPIRITUALIZED SENSE. 171

never insisted on in their physical details, but solely in their
spiritual and doctrinal application.

" Thus the Resurrection of Christ is emphatically dwelt
upon, not in its physical letter, but in its doctrinal spirit ; not
as a physiological phenomenon, but as the corner-stone of Chris
tian faith and hope, — the type of spiritual life here, and the
assurance of eternal life hereafter. . . .

"So in like manner the transcendent mysteries of the
incarnation and ascension are never alluded to at all by the
apostles in a historical or material sense, but only as they are
involved in points of spiritual doctrine, and as objects of
faith

" And in this spiritualized sense has the Christian Church
in all ages acknowledged these divine mysteries and miracles,
* not of sight but of faith;' not expounded by science, but de
livered in traditional formularies, celebrated in festivals and
solemnities by sacred rites and symbols, embodied in the
creations of art, and proclaimed by choral harmonies ; through
all which the spirit of faith adores the great mystery of god
liness, — manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of
angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world,
received up into glory." — Order of Nature, pp. 458 — 460.

The whole drift of these remarks obviously is to
deny, if not in express words yet by implication, the
reality of our Lord's incarnation, resurrection, and
ascension in any physical sense y.

y In confirmation of the construction which I have put upon Pro
fessor Powell's words, I may refer to an article on the " Essays
and Reviews," in the "Edinburgh Review," for April, 1861, in
which the apologist, (for this is really the character which the
writer sustains,) after asserting that, though many parts of the Bible
are confessedly figurative and parabolic, there still remain events,
such as, above all others, our Lord's Resurrection, where the historic
reality must be admitted, proceeds, — " But our own assurance of
this and of like occurrences far less important ought not to blind us
to the fact, that the very events and wonders, which to us are
helps, to others are stumbling-blocks. And though we shrink from
abandoning any thing which to us seems necessary or true, yet

172 SPIRITUALIZED SENSE.

The other miracles of the Gospel, it seems, are not
even referred to in the later writings of the New
Testament. Had then the apostles, in "the fuller
development of Christianity" to which they had at
tained, learnt to regard their earlier belief on this
point as a delusion ?

Even if it were true, however, that there is no re
ference in the Apostolic Epistles to the miracles of the
Gospel, this would be no matter of surprise, unless
(which requires to be shewn) the subject in any par
ticular instance required, or at all events suggested,
the reference. The fact is, however, that there are
occasional, though not frequent, references by the
writers to their own miracles, and these distinctly as
literal facts z. And if they spoke of their own miracles
as such, we may be sure they would have had no
hesitation, had the occasion required, in speaking of
their Lord's miracles as such.

The miracles, however, which are connected with
our Lord's Person and office are " never," we are told,
" insisted on in their physical details, but solely in
their spiritual and doctrinal application." The resur
rection, for instance, is " emphatically dwelt upon, not
in its physical letter, but in its doctrinal spirit."

One is at a loss to conceive how any one could make
such an assertion as this, unless he thought by its bold

we are bound to treat those who prefer to lean on other, and, as
they think, more secure foundations, with the tenderness with
which we cannot douht they would have heen treated by Him,
to whom the craving for signs and wonders was a mark, not of
love and faith, but of perverseness and unbelief."

z See Gal. iii. 5 ; 'Kom. xv. 18, 19 ; 2 Cor. xii. 12 ; Heb. ii. 3, 4.
The transfiguration and the voice from heaven are expressly ap
pealed to, and that as strictly literal and historical facts, 2 Pet. i.
10, 17.

SPIRITUALIZED SENSE. 173

confidence to impose upon himself and overbear the
reclamations of others. Most persons would rise from
the perusal of the 15th Chapter of the First Epistle
to the Corinthians with the thorough conviction that
how much use soever the Apostle may make of our
Lord's resurrection doctrinally, he does most empha
tically dwell upon it in its physical letter. Its literal
truth as a " physiological phenomenon" is the very basis
and substratum of all that is said on the subject.
It is implied throughout the whole of the Apostle's
argument: "I delivered unto you first of all," says
the Apostle, remind ing the Corinthians of the doctrine
which he had taught at Corinth, "that which I also
received, how that Christ died for our sins according
to the Scriptures ; and that lie was buried, and that
He rose again the third day, according to the Scrip
tures : and that He was seen of Cephas, then of the
twelve. After that, He was seen of above five hundred
brethren at once. . . . After that, He was seen of James ;
then of all the Apostles ; and last of all, He was seen
of me also. . . . Now if Christ be preached that He
rose from the dead, how say some among you that
there is no resurrection of the dead ? But if there be
no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen :
and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain,
and your faith is also vain. Yea, and ive are found
false witnesses of God ; because we have testified of God
that He raised up Christ: whom He raised not up, if so
be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not,
then is not Christ raised : and if Christ be not raised,
your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins. Then they
also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. . . .
But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the
firstfruits of them that slept"

1/4 SUMMARY OF PROPOSED SOLUTIONS.

"Will any one venture, after such a passage as this,
to talk of a merely " spiritualized sense," as though
the resurrection of the " fullest development of apo
stolic Christianity" were of a different kind from that
which was recognised on the very day on which the
history relates that it occurred, when our Lord shewed
the assembled disciples His hands and His feet, and
bade them handle Him and see that His body was
a real body, and by consequence His resurrection
a real resurrection, literally and physically true ?

It would be a waste of time to adduce further
proofs, whether as regards the resurrection, or the
incarnation, or the ascension, that whatever doctrinal
instructions the apostles might graft upon these great
and cardinal truths, they neither held nor taught any
other faith respecting them than that which pervades
the whole volume of the New Testament. They regarded
them as facts, — " physiological phenomena" to use Pro
fessor Powell's phrase, — and they denounced those
who denied their literal truth, — whether by explain
ing 'them, as Hymenseus and Philetus did the resur
rection, in a " spiritualized sense," or as the Docetce,
by attributing to our Lord a phantom body and de
nying that He was really "come in the flesh," — as
heretics and antichrists a.

So much, then, for the several solutions which
Professor Powell offers in explanation of the Christian
miracles. I have endeavoured to shew of each in
turn that it is wholly unsatisfactory. But, indeed,
there is no need of a laboured refutation. The sim
plest and the most convincing exposure of their un-
satisfactoriness is that which each one may derive for

a 2 Tim ii. 17; 1 John iv. 3.

SUMMARY OF PROPOSED SOLUTIONS. 175

himself from an attentive pernsal of the New Testa
ment narratives. Let any candid person read the
accounts there given, and, as he reads, ask himself
from time to time, whether it is possible that there
could be room for illusion, and that in so many and
such various instances, so that what he has been
accustomed to regard as facts were not facts ; or
whether it is conceivable that what was done or
happened can be accounted for, all the concomitant
circumstances being considered, by a reference to natu
ral causes; or whether it can be believed that the
writers of the Christian books could have intended
their narratives to be understood, not as literally and
historically true, but only ideologically, or in a " spiri
tualized sense ;" — if any one, on reading these accounts,
should affirm that one or the other of these suppo
sitions is credible, is conceivable, is possible, he must
be beyond the reach of argument ; I know of no
further consideration which would be likely to have
weight with him. The difficulty, however, is to pre
vail upon those who have already determined with
themselves on antecedent grounds to reject the Chris
tian miracles, to read the narratives of those miracles
with any measure of candour. Hume owned that he
had never read the New Testament with attention b ;
and there is reason to fear that not a few of those who
have arrived at conclusions similar to those of Hume,
strengthen themselves in the same by a like disregard
of that sacred Book and the witness which it bears.

To gather up, then, what has been said thus far : —
We have seen, 1st, that they who, on the ground of
antecedent incredibility, are for rejecting miracles

b Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. ii. p. 19, ed. 1823.

176 THE ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES.

summarily and without even entering into the ques
tion of evidence, have no warrant for such a course ;
2ndly, that the real question at issue is, What are the
facts of the case ? and that, as regards the Christian
miracles, there is the strongest reason for believing
the facts, — while at the same time the solutions offered
by our author, when he would dispose of their claim
to be recognised as miracles, are wholly unsatisfactory.
Being facts, it is idle to speak of an allegorical or a
" spiritualized" sense, such as shall exclude the literal.
And they are facts which it is impossible to account
for by a reference to causes ordinarily in operation.
~No such solution is conceivable. They must be acknow
ledged to be beyond the power of man, and above
nature : they must be accepted as Miracles.

II.

But it may still be a question, How far are mira
cles to be accepted as evidence for a divine reve
lation, — or, to confine the matter within narrower
bounds, as evidence for Christianity ? This is Pro
fessor Powell's second consideration, though one, as
has been already observed, which he might well have
spared himself the labour of discussing, supposing that
he had proved his point in the preceding part of his
Essay. Eor to what purpose is it to discuss the value
of the evidence afforded by miracles, if we are already
persuaded that no such thing as a miracle was ever
wrought? As it is, indeed, he does not so much
discuss the question, as though it were one which
admitted of debate, as ring a variety of changes upon
the principle, which he conceives he has already made
good, of " the universal order and constancy of natural

CRITERIA OF DIVINE MIRACLES. 177

causes." This being the case, whatever might be the
evidential force of miracles, with those whose precon
ceived notions disposed them to acquiesce in them as
miracles, to others, whom modern science has en
lightened, it can be of no account.

But that principle, as we have seen, has not been
established. And we may therefore proceed to dis
cuss the question of the evidential force of miracles
upon its own merits.

And this question involves a previous one, By what
tokens may miracles, acknowledged such, be proved
to be from God ?

By many, indeed, such an inquiry would be thought
superfluous, inasmuch as a miracle having once been
granted to be real, there would seem no room for
further question. The appeal to miracles, however, is
one which has been repeatedly made by rival sects in
support of their respective claims : and though pro
bably enough without any foundation of truth to rest
upon in the vast majority of cases, yet Scripture, as
it distinctly recognises the existence of superhuman
beings, evil as well as good, so it not less distinctly
warns us that miracles, even real miracles it should
seem, may be wrought by the agency of such beings,
God so permitting, where the workers are evil, whe
ther for the trial of His servants, or, judicially, for
the punishment of those who wilfully blind themselves
against the truth c.

Let us see to what extent the same Scripture
affords us a test whereby we may try the miracles
whether they are of God.

c 2 Thess. ii. 9, &c. See Cudworth's " Intellectual System,''
p. 706; and Clarke's "Evidences of Natural and Revealed Re
ligion," p. 306.

N

178 CRITERIA OF DIVINE MIRACLES.

" If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer
of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the
sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake
unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou
hast not known, and let us serve them ; thou shalt not
hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer
of dreams : for the Lord your God proveth you, to
know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul . . . And that prophet, or
that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death ; be
cause he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord
your Godd."

This, then, was the rule under the Old Testament :
a miracle wrought, or pretended to be wrought, — and
it mattered not which, — in support of a system opposed
to the revelation already given, was not to be hearkened
to for an instant.

And it is much to be observed that a tacit reference
to this rule pervades our Lord's intercourse with those
who opposed His claims. That He did many miracles
they could not and they did not attempt to deny.
But they endeavoured to put Him down summarily on
the ground that His teaching was at variance with
their law. While He, on the contrary, continually
appealed to that law, bidding them search the Scrip
tures, for they testified of Him, and affirming, that had
they believed Moses they would have believed Him,
for he wrote of Him.

Precisely similar, it may be added, to the rule
under the Old Testament, is the rule under the
New: — " Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try
the spirits whether they are of God: because many

d Deut. xiii. 1 — 5.

CRITERIA OF DIVINE MIRACLES. 179

false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby
know ye the Spirit of God : Every spirit that con-
fesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God :
and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ
is come in the flesh is not of Gode." "Though we or
an angel from heaven preach any other Gospel unto you
than that which tve have preached unto you, let him be
accursed f ." Here is the same test ; and though mira
cles are not specified in connexion with it, yet it is
obviously designed to apply to whatsoever credentials
might be adduced, miracles in the number. No one
is to be- hearkened to, no not for a moment, let him
come with what pretensions he may, whose teaching
contravenes a revelation already given.

In what has been said thus far, it will be seen that
the subject has been regarded from the point of view of
those only who are already in possession of a divine
revelation. If it be asked, How the case stands with
those who have had no previous revelation to guide
them ? — It must be confessed that such persons are, so
far, comparatively at a disadvantage. Still there are
certain great principles of moral and religious truth
written on men's consciences, though in many cases
well-nigh obliterated, which, as far as they go, must
serve to them instead of a precedent revelation. No
miracle ought to be accepted by a heathen as divine,
the object of which is to confirm a system of teaching
plainly repugnant to those principles. On the other
hand, there being no antecedent presumption on such
grounds against the teaching, the appeal to mira
cles would be entitled to a candid and patient con
sideration.

e 1 John iv. 1—3. f Gal. i. 8.

N2

180 CRITERIA OF DIVINE MIRACLES.

If the case, instead of being that of a heathen, were
that of an unbeliever living in a Christian country,
the only difference would be, that such a one would
have the advantage of a truer and higher moral
standard to judge by, — the standard, namely, which
had been furnished by that very revelation on which
he was sitting in judgment, and of which he was un
consciously reaping the benefit.

And now we may see the extent to which the
doctrine is a test of the miracle. And it is highly
important that we should have a right understanding
on this point, seeing that certain dicta, such as that
u the miracles prove the doctrines, and the doctrines
approve the miracles," have got into current use, which,
though they are perfectly true if taken rightly, often
have an unsound sense put upon them.

The doctrine, then, taught by him who appeals to
miracles as a proof that he has a commission from
God, must itself be tried by the revelation already given.
Under the Old Testament dispensation, that doctrine
would have been self-condemned, and the miracles to
which it appealed together with it, which taught men
to forsake the worship of the one living and true God.
Under the New Testament, the case is the same where
the doctrine denies that Jesus is the Christ, or contra
venes any other of the fundamental truths of the Gospel.
Where neither the Old Testament nor tie New can
be appealed to, then, and then only, must men be con
tent with that standard of truth and morality, an im
perfect one at best, to which, by whatsoever means,
those who know nothing or believe nothing of a pre
cedent revelation have attained. To appeal to any
such standard, when the benefit of a precedent reve-

CRITERIA OF DIVINE MIRACLES. l8l

lation is enjoyed, would be as superfluous as to light
a candle in full sunshine.

Professor Powell, after referring to such passages as
those which have been above cited, and inferring most
justly, "that the un worthiness of the doctrine will
discredit even the most distinctly alleged apparent
miracles," adds, that the worthiness or un worthiness
of the doctrine "appeals solely to our moral judg
ment^" It does so, no doubt; but then it is to our
moral judgment, if we are already in possession of a
revelation, enlightened by that revelation. Scripture
distinctly recognises the standard of natural conscience,
where men have no safer and truer guide h. But where
they have, its language is, " To the law and to the
testimony : if they speak not according to this word, it
is because there is no light in them V

It will be observed that the test referred to makes
proof, not whether the facts in question are miracles
or not, of any sort; — it is no test of that: — but whe
ther they are divine miracles; whether they are to be
referred to God as their author, or to "the working
of Satan," and are to be classed with those "signs
and lying wonders" (repara \jsevdovs), — not necessa
rily counterfeit miracles, but, in some cases possibly
enough, real miracles, wrought for the upholding of
a lie, — wherewith the Evil One is permitted to deceive
those "who receive not the love of the truth that
they may be saved k."

It must be borne in mind too, that the test re
ferred to is, after all, but a negative test. It disproves
in certain cases ; it does not prove in any. If the doc
trine taught contradicts a revelation already given, or,

g Essay, p. 121. h Rom. ii. 14, 15. f Isa. viii. 20.

k See Cudworth, p. 708.

I 82 CRITERIA OF DIVINE MIRACLES.

where there is no precedent revelation, those great
principles of truth and morality which are written on
men's consciences, no works of wonder wrought in
support of it are even to be admitted to a hearing :
they are to be rejected summarily. But if the doctrine
be in accordance with a revelation already given, or
with those principles, it does not necessarily follow
that the alleged miracles are divine or even real
miracles ; these points are to be determined upon
other considerations : but at least there is no reason,
which there would have been otherwise, why they
should not be admitted to be tried.

To pass, however, from negative criteria to those of
a positive description.

It may be granted, at the outset, that there is no
test which, taken singly, ly itself, is absolutely suf
ficient to stamp an alleged miracle with the seal of
God. But yet, notwithstanding, there may be pre
sumptions afforded by various considerations, and
there may be concurrent circumstances of such weight,
that the joint result may be to place the matter beyond
question. And it is important to remember that it is
ly such joint result, rather than by any single test, that
divine miracles are to be ascertained. Though even
so, Scripture warns us that there is need of an honest
and truth-loving heart, otherwise the proofs afforded,
be they what they may, will be fruitless.

Of the presumptions referred to, one is supplied by
the alleged miracle itself. Its character may be such,
that, as it is inconceivable that it should have been
wrought but by power more than human, so it is
inconceivable but that that power must have been
divine. This was Nicodemus's conclusion drawn from
the character of our Lord's miracles : "We know that

CRITERIA OF DIVINE MIRACLES. 183

thou art a Teacher come from God, because no man
can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God
be with him."

Another presumption is afforded by the character of
the Person by whom the alleged miracle is wrought :
for though it is possible enough for Satan to transform
himself into an angel of light, and the world has had
too many proofs that the teachers of false doctrine
may be men of blameless lives, — (and truly it is this
very circumstance which, more than any other, has
contributed to the first establishment of heresies) — yet,
doubtless, if a man of sound judgment, whose word
has never been falsified, whose life is eminently holy,
claims to work miracles in attestation that he has a
commission from God, and if there is nothing in the
character of his teaching to invalidate his claim, his
integrity and truthfulness do afford a presumption
that his claim is well founded.

And the same may be said of the doctrine taught.
It is true, as I have observed above, that the test
afforded by the doctrine, so far as that test is absolute
and decisive, is negative, not positive ; — doctrine which
is contrary to a revelation already given being at once
and summarily conclusive against the claims of any
miracles, or alleged miracles, to be regarded as divine ;
but doctrine which is not contrary to such revelation
being not necessarily conclusive in their favour. Still
a proof is one thing, a presumption is another. And
if the doctrine, in attestation of whose divine origin
miracles are alleged to have been wrought, be so emi
nently holy, and inculcate truth and righteousness to
such a degree, and carry on the face of it such an air
of goodness that it is impossible to conceive that it
should have proceeded from the Evil One, here also,

184 CRITERIA OF DIVINE MIRACLES.

however there may be an absence of absolute proof,
there is surely presumptive evidence that the appeal
which is made is founded in truth.

One other presumption is afforded by the object, for
which the miracle is said to have been wrought. If
that object be trifling and apparently unworthy of
the divine interference, or if the end could have been
gained by natural means, then there is at once a pre
sumption against the idea of a divine miracle. But
if, on the other hand, the object be of grave import
ance, and especially if there be no way apparent by
which otherwise it could so well have been attained,
there is here also a presumption that the miracle is
from God.

Now each and all of these presumptions are found
in the case of our Lord's miracles. Those miracles
carried what might well be thought a divine stamp
upon their forefront; and that stamp was recognised
by those, who, as Mcodemus, brought with them
candid and truth -loving hearts. They were com
mended, further, by the life and conversation of Him
who wrought them, and by His doctrine so entirely
in accordance with that life and conversation; and
the object for which, as it is alleged, they were
wrought was one, if any, eminently worthy of divine
interference.

Still these are but presumptions, — only, be it ob
served, presumptions which mutually strengthen and
confirm one another. For let it be considered for
a moment how the case would have stood, supposing
that one or more of them had been wanting. If,
for example, our Lord's miracles had been such as
we find attributed to Him in some of the Apocryphal
Gospels, trifling, or malevolent, or vindictive, or in

CRITERIA OF DIVINE MIRACLES.

any other way unworthy of Him who professed to
have come forth from God ; or, the character of the
miracles affording no ground for remark, if the life
and conversation of Him who wrought them, or the
tendency of His teaching, had been exceptionable ;
or, these also being free from blame, if the object, for
which it was professed that the miracles were wrought,
had been apparently unworthy of the divine inter
ference, — in any of these cases it is obvious how
greatly the force of that presumptive evidence which
they yield, now that they are combined, would have
been impaired, if not indeed destroyed altogether.

But, besides these presumptions, there is another
circumstance to be taken into the account, of a much
more substantive and determinate character .

Prophecy, in foretelling the advent of the Messiah,
had described the circumstances of His coming and
the characteristics by which He should be known.
Among these characteristics it had intimated that
He should shew signs and wonders1, and it had even
particularized some of these. It had foretold that
"the eyes of the blind should be opened, and the ears
of the deaf should be unstopped, that the lame man
should leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb
should singm." And such works " were held by the
Jews to constitute the distinctive marks of the Mes
siah, according to the prophecies of their Scriptures n."
There were intimations also, more or less distinct,
of those still greater marvels which should circle
round His Person, — the Incarnation, the Eesurrection,
the Ascension, — and of the outpouring of the Holy
Spirit upon His followers.

1 See Deut. xviii. 15 — 22. m Isa. xxxv. 5, 6.

n Professor Powell, "Essay," p. 116.

J86 CRITERIA OF DIVINE MIRACLES.

Now the works of Jesus and the other marvellous
circumstances connected with Him accurately corre
sponded to these predictions and these intimations.
And even where, as in some instances might be the
case, the prophecies were obscure or of doubtful ap
plication, the works threw light back upon the pro
phecies, while at the same time the prophecies stamped
the works as divine.

It was with an evident though tacit reference to
these prophecies ° that our Lord bade John's disciples,
who had been sent to Him with the question, "Art
Thou He that should come, or look we for another?"
return and tell their master what things they had
seen and heard, (He had in their presence, as of set
purpose, " cured many of their infirmities and plagues,
and of evil spirits ; and unto many that were blind He
had given sight,") " How that the blind see, the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead
are raised, to the poor the Gospel is preached. And

0 St. Jerome, commenting upon Isa. xxxv. 5, 6, says, " Quod,
quanquam signorum magnitudine completum sit, cum Dominus
loquebatur discipulis Joannis qui ad eum missi fuerant, Euntes
renuntiate Joanni quae audistis et vidistis, &c., tamen quotidie ex-
pletur in gentibus, quando qui prius caeci erant et in ligna et lapides
impingebant, veritatis lumen aspiciunt," &c. ; which is a distinct
acknowledgment that, though the passage will bear a spiritual sense,
yet primarily it is to be understood literally. And Origen deals with
the prophecy in a similar manner, interpreting it first literally of
bodily cures, and then building upon the literal interpretation,
though with something of an apology, a spiritual one: — *Eya> 5'

eiTroi/i' av, ort, Kara rrjv 'iTjcrou eVayyeXtai/, ol p.adrjTa.1 Kal p.ei£ova TTfTToif)-
Kaaiv £>v 'irjcrovs al(rOr)T£)V TreTroirjicev del yap dvoiyovrat 6(f)dd\p,ol ru<^>Xa>j>
TTJV TJsvxr)t>, K. T. X. — Contr. Gels.., lib. ii. p. 88. To the same pur
pose Tertullian, De Resurrect. Carnis, c. 20. Justin Martyr, in
the passage quoted below, Trypho, § 69, interprets the prophecy
literally.

CRITERIA OF DIVINE MIRACLES. 187

blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me p."
And in like manner His Eesurrection was constantly
appealed to, both by Himself prospectively, and by
His apostles after the event, not only as a sign, — (it
was, in fact, the great and crowning sign,) — whereby
He might be known as the true Messiah, but as a sign
which the Scriptures had foretold. And the Church,
taking up the very words of St. Paul q, and incor
porating them into her Creed, echoes on the same
teaching to this hour, declaring her belief, not only
that " Christ rose again the third day," but that He
so rose " according to the Scriptures"

This correspondence between the Gospel miracles
and the prophecies which foretold them was a cri
terion on which the early Christian writers laid espe
cial stress, as proving those miracles to be divine. It
has been truly remarked that the prevalent belief in
magic, as it afforded a subterfuge to the enemies of
Christianity, by which they sought to escape when
they were pressed with the argument from the Gospel
miracles, so it made those who maintained the Chris
tian cause more slow than they would have been
otherwise to avail themselves of that argument. Still
they did avail themselves of it without hesitation;
and, when they did so, they were careful for the most
part to couple their appeal to the . miracles with an
appeal to prophecy; not merely to prophecy which
described beforehand our Lord's person and character
and office, and the establishment of His religion and its

p Luke vii. 21 — 23. So St. Matthew represents Isa. liii. 4 as
fulfilled in our Lord's miracles of healing, Matt. viii. 16, 17. And
St. Peter refers to Joel ii. 28, 29 as fulfilled in the outpouring of
the Holy Spirit on the apostles and those who were associated with
them, Acts ii. 16, &c. « 1 Cor. xv. 4.

l88 CRITERIA OF DIVINE MIRACLES.

growth and increase, but also specifically to prophecy
which foretold that He should work miracles, and
described the miracles which He should workr. Such

r Thus Justin Martyr : — "OTTWS 8e p.r) TIS dvriTidels rip.1v, Tt KcoXvci Koi
TOV Trap rjp.1v \ey6p.evov Xptoroi/, av6pu>Trov e{- dvdpd>7ra)v ovra, p.ayiKrj
Tfxyy as \eyop,fv dvvdpets TrerroirjKevai, KOI 86£ai 8ia TOVTO vlov Qcov tivat ;
TTJV d7r6dei£iv fj8rj 7roir)o~6p,t:6a, ov rots Xeyou<rt 7rio~TevovTfs} aXXa Tols
7rpo<pr)Tfvovo~i Trplv t) yeveo~6ai KUT* dvdyicrjv Treid6p.€voi, dia TO Kal o\^ei cos
TrpofCprjTfvdri opav yevop,fva KOI ywopeva.' rJTTfp p.fyi<TTr) KOL d\rj8fardTrj
a7rd8ei^ty /cat vfjilv, cos vop-i^ofifv, (pavfjcrfrai. . . . 'Ev drj rats ra>i> 7rpo(pi]Ta>v
/3i/3Xots evpoftev TrpoKrjo'Vcra'op.fvov, TIapayivofjicvov, yewmfj-fvov 8ta Trap&evov,
KOI avdpovnevov, xai dtpaKtvovra iraffav voffov xai vaffav j&aXaxiav, Kal
vfKpovs dveyfipovrat Kal <p6ovovp.evov, KOI dyvoov/j-evov, KOI <TTa.vpovp.evov
'l^o-oCi/ TOV T)p.eT€pov Xpio~Tov, Kal dirodvfjo-KovTa, Kal dveyeipopevov, Kal ds
ovpavovs dvepxopfvov,, K. T. X. — Apol. i. § 30, 31.

In his Dialogue with Trypho, § 69, he cites Isa. xxxv. 1 — 7 in
proof that our Lord's miracles had been foretold, and then proceeds
to shew the fulfilment of the prophecy in Him : — *Os Kal ev r« ytvei

Vfj-wv ntfpavrai, Kal TOVS CK yfVfTrjs Kal KOTO. Trjv trdpKa Trrjpovs, Kal Kaxpovs,
Kal ^coXous tao-aro, TOV pev aXXea^at, TOV 8e Kal aKovetv, TOV de Kal opc.v,
TW Xoyw OVTOV iroir]o-as' Kal VfKpovs de dvaorrr]0-as Kal £f)V Troifjo-as, Kal
dia TUV epy(t)v e'Sucra>7ret TOVS Tore ovTas dvOpwrrovs (niyva>vai avTov.

And yet the author of the article above referred to on the "Essays
and Eeviews," in the " Edinburgh Review," says, "In the early ages
of the Church, Justin Martyr in his ' Apology' rarely, if ever, appeals
to the miracles of the Gospel in proof of its divinity." It is not ob
vious which of Justin's "Apologies" is meant, nor why one of his
works should be singled out when, besides the two "Apologies,"
there is another equally apologetic in its character, nor why he
alone of the writers of " the early ages of the Church" should be
appealed to. It must be confessed that Justin's appeals to the mira
cles are not frequent; but the passages which have been cited shew
that he did not hesitate to appeal to them when the occasion re
quired, and that when he did, he did so in no faltering tone.
Other passages to the like effect will be found in 'Trypho/ cc. 11,
35, and 39. Bp. Kaye, in his analysis of the contents of the first
" Apology," regards Justin's appeal to miracles and prophecy as of
sufficient prominence to have a separate head allotted to it, — "III.
Direct arguments in proof of the truth of Christianity drawn from
miracles and prophecy " — Kayes Justin Martyr, p. 13.

CRITERIA OF DIVINE MIRACLES. 189

a concurrence, it was justly urged, placed those mira
cles beyond the reach of cavil, and afforded a conclu
sive proof that He whose mission was thus attested
must have come from God.

Our Lord's miracles, then, — and the same holds of
the miracles of the apostles, — were, by all the tokens
which have been mentioned, plainly proved to have
proceeded from God as their Author. Negatively,
there was nothing in the teaching of those who
wrought them which was contrary either to the great
principles of moral and religious truth written on
men's consciences, or to the revelation which God had
previously given. Positively, there was every pre
sumption in their favour, whether from the nature of

To the same purpose as Justin, St. Irenaeus writes, lib. n. c.
xxxii. § 3, 4 : — Ei 8e KOI rov Kvpiov 0aj/racrta)8ws TO. roiaCra ncirotrjKevai
<pr]o~ovo~iv, fVt TO. npu(f>TjTiKa dvdyovres atrovy, e£ avr&v eVi§ei'£o/Liej>, irdvra
OVTWS TTfpt avToO Koi 7rpoeipr}o~0ai} KOI ycyovevai /3e/3ata)$', KOI avrbv povov
«ii>ai TOV Yiov TOV Qeov.

Origen, Contr. Gels., lib. ii. p. 87, ed. Spenc., expressly refers to
Isa. xxxv. as fulfilled in our Lord's miraculous works : — "On ^tv ovv
X&)Xoi/s KOI Tv(p\ovs edepdnevo-f, (as Celsus had acknowledged, though
he had spoken with a us v/xets (pare of the miracles of raising the
dead,) SioTrep Xpta-Tov O.VTOV /eat Ytov Qeov vofii^op.€v} df)\ov r^iiv co-rii/
tK TOV KOI eV 7rpo(pr)Teiais yeypdfpdat, Tore dvoi^drjaovrai 6(pdd\p,ol TV<p\a>vt

K. T. X. See also Com. in Matth., torn. xii. 2.

Lactantius, in like manner, appeals to the correspondence between
our Lord's miracles and the prophecies which were fulfilled in
them, as a criterion by which they might be known to be divine :
— "Fecit mirabilia; magum putassemus, ut et vos nuncupatis, et
Judaei tune putaverunt, si non ilia ipsa facturum Christum prophetae
omnes uno spiritu prsedicassent." Again, " Exinde maximas vir-
tutes ccepit operari, non preestigiis magicis, quse nihil veri ac solidi
ostentant, sed vi ac potestate coelesti, qua? jampridem prophetis
nuntiantibus canebantur." — Lib. v. c. 3, and lib. iv. c. 15. In
connexion with the latter passage he cites Isa. xxxv. See Dr.
Ogilvie's Bampton Lectures, Serm. II., and Appendix, pp. 248 — 255.

190 THE ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES.

the miracles themselves, or from the character of those
who wrought them, or from the tendency of their
teaching, or from the object for which they were
professedly wrought; and, what was beyond these
presumptions, there was a marked correspondence
between them and the prophecies which had foretold
the signs by which the Christ should be known.
There could be no doubt but that such works were
to be ascribed to God.

And as they were to be ascribed to God, so they
bore witness to those by whose instrumentality they
were wrought, that they had a commission from God.
And as such they were repeatedly appealed to by
them ; sometimes, as we have already seen, in con
junction with the prophecies which foretold them, at
other times simply and absolutely, and without any
such reference ; — "If I do not the works of My
Father," said our Lord to the Jews, " believe Me
not. But if I do, though ye believe not Me, believe
the works : that ye may know and believe that the
Father is in Me and I in Him8." And the apostles
held the same language : — " Jesus of Nazareth, a
man approved of God among you, by miracles and
wonders and signs, which God did by Him in the
midst of you, as ye yourselves also know V And the
miracles of the apostles are appealed to in similar
terms, as proving that they also had a like commis
sion: — "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great
salvation ; which at the first began to be spoken by the
Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard

8 John x. 37, 38. So Matt. xi. 20—24, xii. 38—40 ; John ii.
18—22, v. 33—36, xiv. 11, xv. 24.

* Acts ii. 22. So St. John xx. 30, 31; Acts v. 30—32; x.
37—39.

THE ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES. 191

Him ; God also bearing them witness, both with signs
and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of
the Holy Ghost, according to His willu?"

And on this appeal to miracles, both our Lord's and
those of the apostles, the Church of Christ was built
up in the beginning. True, miracles were not the
only foundation on which tho superstructure was
raised ; but they were one of the foundations, and a
very important one, — so important, that, when we look
back upon the Church's earliest history, it is impos
sible to conceive, how, without some foundation of
the same or of like description, it could have been
raised at all.

For what are the facts which that history sets
before us ? — A few Jewish peasants go forth into the
world, and declare everywhere that they have a com
mission from God to teach a religion diametrically
opposed to the prejudices, the associations, the ha
bits, the worldly interests, of those to whom they
address themselves. It is true, that this religion in
culcates a morality so pure and exalted, that it cannot
but commend itself to the minds and consciences of
such as are really in earnest in seeking to know and
do what is right, though even so not without the ad
mixture of some precepts which must seem foolish
ness in their eyes : but together with this, and in
separable from it, it contains assertions of the most im
probable kind, and such as one would imagine the most
credulous must revolt from. It affirms that the Son
of God had become man; that He had been born into
the world, not as a mighty prince, surrounded with
earthly pomp and splendour, but as an obscure Jewish

u Heb. ii. 3, 4 ; So St. Mark xvi. 20 ; Acts iv, 29—31 ; xiv. 3,
Rom. xv. 18, 19; 2 Cor. xii. 12 j Gal. iii. 5.

192 THE ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES.

peasant. It affirms, further, that he had been regarded
by those of His countrymen whose learning and au
thority entitled them to the utmost deference, as an
impostor ; that as such He had been delivered over by
them to the Eoman Procurator and put to an igno
minious death ; that He had come to life again, how
ever, and after shewing Himself sundry times to those
who had been His followers, had ascended up to
heaven in their presence ; that thence He will come
again at some future day to judge the world, and that
then all who ever lived will be summoned before Him,
the dead raised from their graves, the living called
from their occupations ; and that He will award to
every one his final and irreversible destiny according
to his works. This was the strange story which the
first preachers of the Gospel carried forth with them
wherever they went. This was the very heart's core
of the religion which they taught, and for which they
required men to abandon the beliefs of their fore
fathers, without the faintest prospect of worldly ad
vantage, but, on the contrary, with every reason to
expect derision and ridicule, the loss of goods, the
estrangement of friends, even imprisonment and death.
And the expectation was realized. Those who em
braced it "ligabantur, includebantur, casdebantur,
torquebantur, urebantur, laniabantur, trucidabantur,
et — multiplicabantur V The religion in a brief space
spread itself over the whole civilized world. Is it
conceivable that it should have done so unless it
had appealed, and had been able to make good the ap
peal, to superhuman attestations in proof of its divine
origin? As St. Augustine forcibly urges, " You have
two alternatives to choose between : either you must
x S. August., De Civ. Dei, xxii. 6. 1.

THE ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES. 193

%

believe the miracles ; or you must believe, what is itself
a miracle, that the world was converted without mira
cles:" "Si miraculis non credatis, saltern huic mira-
culo credendum est, mundum sine miraculis fuisse
conversum y."

Yet we are told that this goodly fabric of the Chris
tian Church, whose existence at this day is none of
the least of the proofs of the divine mission of its
founder, was built up upon an unsound and insecure
foundation: — "Miracles which would be incredible
now, were not so in the age and under the circum
stances in which they are stated to have occurred."
And the appeal to them, however cogent with those to
whom it was addressed in the first century, has lost
its force in the nineteenth: nay, "it might not only
have no effect, but even an injurious tendency if urged
in the present age, and referring to what is at variance
with existing scientific conceptions2."

It has been my endeavour to shew, in the pre
ceding part of this Essay, how utterly groundless
is the insinuation which is here cast upon the Chris-

y De Civ. Dei, xxii. 8. 1. Origenhad urged the same argument : —

OVK av ^(Bpip 5vvdp.fQ)v Kal 7rapa86£o)v CKIVOVV TOVS Katv&v \6ycov KOL Kaivwv
p.a8rjfj.dTd)v aKovovras TTpos TO KaraAiTreij/ p.ev TO. Trarpia, 7rapa.8et-a.aQai 5e
ftera K.IV§VVU>V ru>v pexpl Qavdrov TO. rovratv p-aOrniara. — Contr. Cels., lib.
i. p. 34. St. Augustine, on another occasion, has the following strik
ing passage referring to the miracle of our Lord's Resurrection : —
"Jam ergo tria sunt incredibilia, quee tamen facta sunt. Incredibile
est Christum resurrexisse in carne, et in ccelum ascendisse cum
carne ; incredibile est mundum rem tarn incredibile credidisse ; in-
credibile est homines, ignobiles, infimos, paucissimos, imperitos,
rem tarn incredibilem tarn efficaciter mundo, et in illo etiam doctis,
persuadere potuisse. Horum trium incredibilium primum nolunt
isti, cum qiiibus agimus, credere ; secundum coguntur et cernere ;
quod non inveniunt unde sit factum si non credunt tertium." — DQ
Civ. Dei, xxii. 5. * Essay, p. 117.

0

194 THE ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES.

tian miracles ; that as their reality as facts, and facts
not only superhuman but divine, rests upon the most
convincing proofs, so they are as surely to be be
lieved now, with the full light of modern science
streaming upon them, as they were believed in the
age of comparative darkness in which they were
wrought. But apart from this, — What, on the sup
position referred to, becomes of the truthfulness of
Him who, as we have seen, rested His claim to be
heard on the appeal to those miracles? For it is
undeniable that when our Lord did appeal to them,
it was on the ground that they were miracles, super
human works, works wrought by the power of God,
and indicating the finger of God, that the appeal
was made.

No, — if the appeal to miracles is not valid now, it
was not valid when it was made by our Lord. And if
it was not valid then, there was an insincerity in it,
as made by Him, which communicates a taint to the
whole of His teaching. It is of little consequence by
what other arguments the cause of Christianity is
sought to be sustained. We may admire much that
we see in it; but we can no longer regard it as a
religion on which the seal of God is set. The great
articles of its Creed must henceforth take their place
among the myths and legends of men's invention.

We cannot then, as reasonable men, we dare not
as Christian men, make light of the argument from
miracles, or even give it a subordinate place among
the Christian evidences. It may have been dwelt upon
too exclusively, and have been pushed into undue
prominence in some instances; but that is only a
reason why we should be especially on our guard, lest,
by a change of fortune naturally enough to be ex-

THE ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES. 195

pected, it should be thrown into the background and
unduly depressed in others a.

Most true it is indeed, that miracles, though form
ing an important part of the evidence for Christianity,
form but a part. But it is a part intimately connected
with the other parts, and, together with prophecy,—
both prophecy which received its fulfilment in our
Lord's life and ministry, and prophecy, in some in
stances uttered by our Lord and His apostles, which
has been fulfilled subsequently, and is still being ful
filled, — so essentially underlying those other parts,
that without it they have no sufficient foundation to
rest upon.

There is one portion indeed of the Christian evi
dence, and a most important one, which might seem,

a I am not acquainted with Coleridge's works: but, judging
from the use which Professor Powell and others have made of them,
I cannot but think that he has in this respect, through dread of
one extreme, contributed "to thrust the pendulum back with too
violent a swing" towards the opposite. And yet, in the context
immediately connected with one of the passages quoted by Professor
Powell, (Essay, p. 120,) I find him adding what shews that in reality
nothing was farther from his own thoughts than the disparagement
of the external evidences: — "But most readity do I admit, and
most fervently do I contend, that the miracles worked by Christ,
loth as miracles and as fulfilments of prophecy, both as signs and
as wonders, made plain discovery, and gave unquestionable proof
of His divine character and authority ; that they were to the whole
Jewish nation true and appropriate evidences that He was indeed
come who had promised and declared to their forefathers, ' Behold,
your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; He
will come and save you.' I receive them as proofs, therefore, of the
truth of every word which He taught who was Himself the Word, and
as sure evidences of the final victory over death, and of the life to
come, in that they were manifestations of Him who said ' I am the
Resurrection and the Life.'" — Aids to Reflexion, Aphorisms on
Spiritual Religion, note prefatory to Aphorism xxiii.

o2

196 THE ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES.

at first sight, to have little connexion with external
proofs, — the assurance, namely, which the Christian
derives from his inner consciousness of the purifying,
sanctifying, and ennobling influence of the Gospel
upon his own heart and life. And the conviction
produced by this assurance, where the soul is tho
roughly penetrated by the influence of Christ's reli
gion, is such, as no arguments drawn exclusively from
external considerations could have effected. The
Christian's answer, to those who might interrogate
him respecting his belief, would be like that of the
man who had been born blind, to whom our Lord had
given the gift of sight, when questioned about his
Benefactor, — "Whether He be a sinner or no, I
know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was
blind, now I see b."

b John ix. 25. They are words deserving to be well weighed
and pondered, which were written, on the review of a long life, by
one who had had large experience in dealing with other men's con
sciences, and had been a close observer of his own : — " I am now
more apprehensive than heretofore of the necessity of well grounding
men in their religion, and especially of the witness of the indwell
ing Spirit. For I more sensibly perceive that the Spirit is the
great witness for Christ and Christianity to the world. And though
the folly of fanatics long tempted me to overlook the strength of
this testimony while they placed it in certain internal affections or
enthusiastic inspiration, yet now I see that the Holy Ghost is in
another manner the witness of Christ and His agent in the world.
The Spirit in the prophets was His first witness ; and the Spirit by
miracles was the second ; and the Spirit by renovation, sanctifica-
tion and illumination, and consolation, assimilating the soul to

Christ and heaven, is the continued witness to all true believers

And therefore ungodly persons have a great disadvantage in their
resisting temptations to unbelief; and it is no wonder if Christ be
a stumblingblock to the Jews, and to the Gentiles foolishness." —
IticTiar d Baxter, Narrative of his Life and Times, in Wordsworth's
Eccl. Biog., 1st ed., vol. v. p. 568.

THE ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES. 197

13 ut it is to be observed that this assurance comes
under the head of confirmation rather than of proof.
It does not precede, but follow, the reception of Chris
tianity. No one is susceptible of its force but he who
is already a believer. It rests therefore eventually
on the same basis as that on which Christianity itself
rests. And thus, though not directly, yet indirectly,
it also is inseparably connected with the evidence af
forded by miracles, however unconscious the person
who is under its influence may be of the extent to
which he is indebted to that evidence.

There are those whose happy lot it is to have been
nurtured in the knowledge and love of Christ from
their infancy, and never to have known a doubt.
And there are those who once did doubt, but have
been convinced by the force of the Christian evi
dences, and doubt no longer. These, as far as their
personal belief is concerned, have no need to resort
to the argument from miracles. But then it is be
cause they have advanced to a higher stage, and they
have no occasion for the steps by which that stage is
to be reached.

It was to such persons that the Apostolic Epistles
were addressed; and the appeal, consequently, was
no longer, as doubtless it had been before their con
version, "to outward testimony or logical argument,
but to spiritual assurances c." It was of such persons
that St. Chrysostom spoke when he said, in words
which Professor Powell quotes, "If you are a be
liever as you ought to be, and love Christ as you
ought to love Him, you have no need of miracles d."

c Essay, p. 124.

d St. Chrysostom, Horn. 23 (al. 24) in S. Joan., quoted by Pro
fessor To well, p. 128.

198 THE ARGUMENT FROM MIRACLES.

But there are others, who stand on different gronnd.
They, it may be, have never yet believed, or they
may have had doubts and difficulties suggested to
them, whether from within or from without, which
affect the very foundations of the faith ; while, at the
same time, they are not sufficiently advanced in reli
gion to be conscious of the force of those internal evi
dences which have been referred to. To such per
sons the evidence afforded by miracles is of pressing
urgency ; and he who would disparage it and .teach
them to regard it as of little or no account, is so far
a hinderer of their faith and of their salvation. They
are like men struggling for life amid the waves, and
he is snatching from their grasp that plank on which
they might have buoyed themselves up and have es
caped, bidding them meanwhile, as though in cruel
mockery, lay hold on another, which, however service
able it might prove to them hereafter, is at present
beyond their reach.

THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH:

(CONSIDERED IN REPLY TO MR. WILSON.)

SECTION 1. Theories of " National Beligion" in England.

„ 2. Outline of the Essay on ' Broad Christianity.'

„ 3. Religious Idea of * Broad Christianity.'

,, 4. * Broad Christianity' and the Apostolic Age.

„ 5. " Exclusiveness" of Primitive Christianity considered.

„ 6. Ethical Basis of 'Broad Christianity.'

„ 7. Appeal to History, as to ' Broad Christianity.'

„ 8. Adjustment demanded.

[Numerous writers have criticized the " Essay on the JV0-
tional Church" praising the style or blaming the preliminary
tone, marking inaccuracies or deprecating tenden
cies, without examining its subject. It can matter little, how
ever, to the world at large, whether the writer of that Essay
be as eloquent, or rash, or obscure, or heterodox, as his various
critics have shewn. But with his subject-matter we must all
be concerned; to that therefore the ensuing pages will be given.

It is not here proposed to offer what has been termed a
" counter - essay," which might be regarded as a merely
literary prolusion; but to attempt a real discussion of a
practical matter3-.^

§ 1. Theories of National Religion in England.
rHE CHURCH OP ENGLAND still bears the name which.

-•- she has borne for a thousand years, "

"the National Church." The Acts of spdman,ak.D.

TT . „ . „ 668, Abp. Theo-

Uniiormity now assert for her in the dore.

a For many minor details, and for the examination of most of
Mr. Wilson's incidental statements, the reader may be referred to
a work entitled " The Reviewers Reviewed and the Essayists
Criticized," published by J. H. and Jas. Parker, Oxford and
London.

200 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

Statute-book, as really as they did in 1662, or 1559,
The name of — as really as synods had done it ten
thechSh.»nal centuries before,— a National position;
and even in the popular mind the belief of that
" Nationality" yet lingers, though with growing in
distinctness. It is not now the idea of the Caroline
or of the Elizabethan times, still less of the pre-
Keformation period ; it is not the idea of even fifty
years ago. The name remains, while the reality has
greatly changed, more than once. "We are even now
in a period of transition.

Time was when the decisions of our "National

Church" in synod, confirmed at Eome, bound every

Pre-Eeformation subject of the realm. The theory on which

f°tSnaiism?'a" our ancestors then proceeded was Ec-

wiiiiamii. and clesiastical ; the unity compulsory, and

Anseim. therefore co-extensive with the nation. —

Henry II. and

Becket. Disputes as to Investiture, the Constitu-
VicharTiL11 tions of Clarendon, the Great Charter, the
Statutes of Provisors, and Prsemunire, are the prac
tical witnesses against it from age to age : but, while it
lasted, doubtless it had conscientiousness, if not of the
Tudor form, highest type. — Again, time was when the
king, as head of the State, commanded the Eeligion of
the whole people. The theory was Political : to dis
pute the spiritual Supremacy of the Crown was "high
35 Hen.viiL 0.3. treason," and the penalty was sternly in-
iMary, c. i. s. s. flicted, whether the offender had the grace
of a Fisher or the dignity of a More. Eut the theory
came to an end; and that very soon; for it revolted
the conscience of the majority in England, of more
than a majority in Scotland, and of the whole of Ireland.
Gradually within a hundred years, the resolute Eoyal
assumption, that the whole nation must follow the

VARIOUS THEORIES. 2O1

conscience of the sovereign, perished, and the clay,
the stone, and the iron, of the great image of Tudor
Supremacy that had been set up, could no more
cohere.

Henceforth Eeligious Unity seemed hopelessly broken.
Between the days of Edward VI. and Charles II. a
fundamental change had taken place in Transition form.
the sentiments and feelings of those who formed the
lower stratum of the British people. They had been
Eoman, and they had become Puritan. A its occasion;
change scarcely less vital had come over the higher
classes of the nation. At the Eeformation, the rich
(and they who sought to be rich) were progressive
and protestant; at the Eestoration they were con
servative, and hierarchical. The sympathies of both
classes had been reversed in one century : but an
effort was still to be made to gather together once
more, if not to unite, the dissolved elements of so
ciety. "When the time for this effort arrived, let us
mark how it was attempted.

To do this we must revert to those theories of
the past on which, in some form, the Eestoration
had to fall back. Of course the old pre-Eeformation
views were not to be thought of. The bare dread of
a possible return to Eomanism, a few years its later Revival;
later, overthrew the dynasty which had been restored.
Some modification of the old Tudorism seemed to be
all that remained practicable. Among her sons, the
Church, ( notwithstanding her great names, ) had
" none to guide," no great ecclesiastic. Bancroft
and his brethren had been taught in the school of
Andrewes and Laud, who had strained the Eegale to
the utmost; the former against Eome, the latter
against both Eome and Geneva. The great divines of

202 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH,

the Bestoration, as if hopeless of ascertaining the
limits of lawful State-interference with Beligion, indis
tinctly acquiesced in political intervention, thankful
And character, that it happened on the whole to be ortho
dox. The Tudor theory, in all its transitions, had
preserved a vague adherence to the distinction in
herently existing between the " spiritualty J; and
" temporal ty" of the nation, and recognised alike by
the Constitution and by the popular instincts. To this,
Churchmen and Statesmen alike recurred ; and though
the practical compromise to be attempted might in
volve some theoretical surrenders, it seemed actually
inevitable.

No doubt indeed the original Tudor spirit urged

Eoyal. Authority as the ground of the Nation's faith.

A.D. 1530. The " Act of Submission" of King Henry's

Convocation, (under an unjust pra3munire,) while

Henry vin. and really giving up all to the king, had still

wareham. fg^jy intended to assert a principle when

the words " quantum per CHEISTI legem licet" were

added by the Lower House. But the conscience of the

people retained, far more faithfully, the high principle

so implied; and, as we know, vindicated it severely

Elizabethan form, at last. — Elizabeth saw the fatal defect

of her father's spiritual claim, declined the title of

The "Refor- "Head of the Church" worn by her three

matio Legum"

given up. predecessors, (of which it had been trea
son to " deprive" her,) and hesitated to proceed as her
father had done, by " Eoyal Commission," to reform the

A.D. 1571. Ecclesiastical Constitution. She sought,
and yet feared, to supply by Convocation a Spiritual
sanction to her religious government; and there she

A.D. 1604. paused. — So, too, King James I. had his
synod and his canons ; and Charles I. had his ; but the

VARIOUS THEORIES. 203

theory of " the spiritualty," remained still uncertain. —
And such was the modification of "Su- A.D. 1640.
premacy" taken up and revived in 1662, to last in
its vigour little more than twenty years.

It was not (as has been intimated) that the Church
men or the politicians of the Eestoration Restoration form.
proceeded on a defined theory. Necessities of state
seem often to oblige measures of which men consider
not at first the intellectual or moral ground. But it was
resolved at all events that the Eeligion of the country
should be "National;" and, in forgetfulness of the
changed conditions of the whole case, men fell back as
far as they could on the ideas of the previous Protes
tant reigns. To the Eoyal Supremacy and the sanction
of Convocation they added, more stringently, the au
thority of Parliament ; and the " Act of A.D. 1662.
Uniformity" was the result. But "canons" never
followed.

The short-lived hope that the Nation might hence
forth be "of one language and of one speech" in
Eeligion, finally perished in 1688. The "Act of
Toleration" formally registered the fact, iwrniam and
that henceforth, whatever the "National ^y**-1-*-™-
Church" might mean, it did not imply Eeligious Unity.
The condition of Scotland and Ireland only confirmed
the same general conclusion. On what terms the
Government and the Church should go on together,
remained once more to be seen.

The Sixth section of the " Toleration Act" preserved
the temporalities of the Church from all Revolution form.
invasion ; and a Tudor subterfuge was thus uniformity ar-
again introduced, that ecclesiastical pro
perty and ecclesiastical duties need not be co-extensive.
—In 1717 the action of "the Spiritualty," the Con-

204 TIIE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

The "Spin- vocation, was suppressed. It was natu-

tualty"asrepre- L f i • -\

Beuted m "Con- rally the next step. — Every act 01 legisla-

vocation," sus- ,./,., -111 1-1

tiOH for the ensuing hundred years, which

touched on ecclesiastical affairs at all, attenuated the
connexion between the Church and the State ; till in
9 Geo. iv. c. 17. 1828 it was not deemed necessary even
for members of the Church to submit to the "test" of
being Communicants. Then came the admission of the
Roman Catholics to Parliament; and the legislation
Further restric- of the next thirty years formally abolished

tion of the quasi- ,_ , • 1 » .1 -^. • i •

"Nationality." all that remained of the coercive Discipline
of Courts Ecclesiastical, — (which on Ash- Wednesday
is still deplored !) The " National," or quasi-national,
position being gradually restricted, the law still
sought to dictate in some instances the Doctrine to be
believed within the ^Establishment;" and in some,
actually impinged on the most sacred convictions of
(The Divorce law.) all who had accepted the teaching of the
Prayer-book as not simply "authorized by statute,"
but actually true.

Can it be thought surprising, that the design is

Proposal to now at length distinctly avowed, by a con-
abrogate "Na- . J -) J

tionaiism." siderable party in the State, to bring to

a conclusion what seems to it a struggle for no in
telligible principle on the side of the Church? — and
which is thought to involve the progress of liberty
for the people ?

It is easy perhaps to see, as we look back, that
when nonconformity was tolerated by the Act of
William and Mary, it was the Church's duty, be-

Eetrospect. lieving in her old position, to have con
solidated in every parish some Discipline for her body,
as a Spiritual Community. The temptation was great,
no doubt, to accept all Englishmen as Churchmen

VARIOUS THEORIES. 2OJ

still, unless formally joined to some external congre
gation. It swelled the Church's numbers for the time,
and seemed to give, that which had been her snare
before, political strength ; but it hopelessly broke down
the conscience of her laity to the worldliest level, and
conduced to all the secularism which followed ; led to
the too frequent profanation of the most sacred offices
of the Church without enquiry, and at length even
without reluctance ; and almost to the loss of the idea
(in our times) among the multitude, that the " Na
tional Church" ever had a CREED higher than human
laws could give.

It is impossible to regret that, at such a crisis as
this to which we have now come, atten- Present crisis.
tion should be earnestly called to the question, What
shall be the future relation between the State and the
Church, between Politics and Religion, — must we not
say, between Civilization and Christianity ? Men who
are termed " practical" are in the habit of thinking
that they can go on without a theory. Half thinkers
perhaps generally do so. They are forgetful, or un
aware, that a course of action always implies a prin
ciple, avowed or unavowed. The many will sometimes
bear with action, while unprepared to admit its real
basis. But conscience and act refuse to be for ever
separate. Men speak out at length, and say that
which their conduct has all along been Some theory
meaning. What is seen to be an hypo- inevitable-
crisy, perishes at last. It is this which the present
generation is witnessing, not only in our own country,
but in all Europe.

And now we seem to be met by two classes of

thinkers — those who would abolish, and

, , „ , i it i ^ ism" and Secular

those who would fundamentally remodel, Nationalism.

206 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

the National profession of Religion. Hitherto it has
been roughly assumed by all parties among us, that
Eeligion has chiefly to deal with the future world, and
policy with the present, and that their mutual action
and relation arises from those mixed questions, both
ethical and social, which affect in different ways both
the " life which now is and that which is to come."
This is no longer a common assumption. There are
those who would entirely separate the spiritual and
the secular ; and others who would identify them, on
the pagan principle, that religion, like morals, is, as
M. Comte would say, "a phase of humanity."

The " Abolitionists" have scarcely at present any
Abolitionism philosophy ; but they would be content,
apparently, that the State should stumble

on, with no hypothesis, practically assuming the non-
existence of all questions of a future life. They must
know, indeed, that these questions will still be smoul
dering, and often dangerously, in the individual breasts
of millions ; but they would risk a total ignoring of
them by the politicians. They point to the American
Eepublic as a State successfully constituted without
a recognised Eeligion ; which is not only a premature
boast, but in other respects ill serves their argument.
The most recent act, for example, of the American
President, Mr. Lincoln, by which he appoints a day
of " National Humiliation, Prayer, and Fasting," is
a clear invasion of the principles which demand entire
separation of religion and politics ; and it will be re
garded by perhaps a majority of Americans as insult
ing to their convictions and inconsistent with their
political professions. — But, indeed, before we can
listen to the Abolitionists at all, as teachers of a Civili
zation of the future, we have a right to call on them

VARIOUS THEORIES.

207

to give some account of the past. Are all the efforts
of fifteen centuries to adapt Christianity to the nations
of Europe, for instance, to be supposed to tend to no
thing? Is there no philosophy of all this history?
Does it belong to no law of human progress ? — If they
maintain this, very few at present will follow them.

Our primary concern is, at all events, with those
who would make Eeligion a branch of Politics, and
leave indeterminate all questions of a possible future.

The followers of M. Comte in France and America
conceive that they have worked out what The latter an

t English form of

they term a "Positive Eeligion," from "Positivism."
which they have " eliminated Catholicism ;" and they
claim adherents in our own country among all those
who would in like manner withdraw the Creeds from
the religion of Christendom, and criticize the Bible on
the same level as all other literature. They speak
with confidence of the growth of their principles
among the educated classes of our country ; in them
they discern, (can it be said untruly ?) a daily in
creasing disinclination to every dogma, and a reduc
tion of every doctrine once thought sacred to the level
of an opinion. Eeligion (as Christians have thus far
received it anywhere) is more and more remitted to
the region of speculation ; and it is regarded as the ex
treme of uncharitableness to suspect the future safety
of any man, on account of his creed. It is obvious,
too, to observe that some theories which have sprung
up independently among ourselves of late, — such
as "Christian Socialism," and what has «christianSo-
been termed "Essayism,"— so far harmo-
nize with the " Positivism" of M. Comte
as to aim, on principle, to divert attention from the
distinctive hope of " salvation" hereafter, and direct it

208 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

to the primary consideration of the affairs and duties
of this world b.

It is to this class of theories we have now to address

ourselves. Few Churchmen, and indeed few thought-

Aboiitionism ful politicians, can be supposed as vet to

not the most im- 7 r r J

mediate danger, have sympathy with the plans of those
who would abolish all National profession of Chris
tianity. Our immediate attention belongs to others,
who would still retain a " National Church" in name,
but in truth deliberately set aside all its supernatural
claims, and gradually abate every portion of our Bible
and Prayer-book, according as the level of popular
feeling sinks lower and lower.

The proposition is formally laid down and defended
secularism, among us. — That a " National Church" is

or the New Na- . ° 7

tionaiism,— pro- as simply, " as properly, an organ of the

posed in "the . ^ J\ ^ * J. '

Essays." National life, as a magistracy or a legis

lative estate0!" Leaving " speculative doctrine" to
philosophers, a " National Church" has for its one ob
ject, it is said, to " concern itself with the ethical de
velopment of its members d." To do any justice to
this view, to understand how it arises or takes shape
in the mind of one who still retains any hold on the
Prayer-book and the Scriptures, it will be necessary
to take in at a glance the whole outline of the Essay
in which it is developed : we shall then be in a posi
tion to compare the " National Eeligion," so suggested,
both with the history and the fundamental ethics of
Christianity.

For in truth the questions raised are "fundamen-
tal," not only as involving the objec-
tlve certainty of the Christian facts, but
the individual recognition of all moral and

b Essay, p. 196. c p. 190. d p. 195.

VARIOUS THEORIES.

209

spiritual truth. If "National Beligion" be nothing
but the expression of the general life and public opi
nion of a people, it is very little more than an abstract
idea ; and the question then arises, whether the right
ful freedom of each individual conscience (for which
the " free-thinkers" declaim at other times so strongly)
be not unjustly interfered with, by the proposed au
thoritative promulgation of the so-called " religious
truth ?" From this point of view, those who would
abolish all national professions of faith, would seern to
be the more consistent reasoners. For the Essayist, it
will be seen, encourages freedom of indi- Latont irra_
vidual thinking, up to a certain point, and
then stops. He would have men free to
reason themselves into a denial of their " traditional
Christianity," and then acquiesce in the authoritative
promulgation of a u generalized system" reflecting the
views of the day.

The term by which these — as they may be called —
semi-free-thinkers describe the theory they This secularism
defend is " Multitudinism," a term of tionaiism," and

„ . . . , , , , -,. abroad known as

foreign origin, about equivalent to "ISa-

tionaiism." The opposite view, (which they reject,) is,
that Eeligion makes its appeal to each separate con
science ; (because men's future condition will not be
determined in masses, but in accordance with indi
vidual character;) this they call " Individualism."
The two views recently came into collision, in a dis
cussion which arose in Switzerland ; and the Essay, an
outline of which here follows, formally arises out of
that discussion. — Persuaded, as every honest mind
must be, that to mis-state any position when about
to oppose it, is an offence against the truth itself,
the ensuing Outline will, it is hoped, be such as the

p

210 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

Essayist himself will acknowledge to be a true re
presentation of his entire drift and meaning.

§ 2. Outline of the "Essay on Nationalism" or
i Broad Christianity?

< In the city of Geneva, a controversy lately arose, — .
1 Whether Eeligion is to be regarded as a National or
1 an Individual concern ? — M. Bnngener defended the

< former, or Multitudinist, idea. His position admits of
i better defence in England perhaps ; as our ' Nation-
4 ality' is so strong. The signs of the times, too,

* among us, warn us that a broader basis of Eeligion is
i demanded. Grave doubts have arisen, whether our

< future Civilization is bound to Christianity at all ; and
1 these are the doubts of earnest, sincere, and educated
1 minds, whom our existing religion has shocked. The
4 masses, de facto, are recoiling from us and our narrow
i traditions. This scepticism is the result of thought

* and knowledge, not pride of reason or culpable hos-
1 tility. We shall find it impossible to maintain much
1 longer the necessity of faith in Christ. If Scripture
4 seems to teach it, either Scripture is wrong, or we
4 interpret it wrongly. Our Eevelation has never
4 reached a fourth part of the world we now are ac-
c quainted with. We must not any longer say that
4 Christ came just in the fitness and " fulness of time."
i Was not Budhism a Gospel for India 600 years be-
i fore Christ ? — The solution must be, that men will be
4 judged according to the law and light they have. If
' we hold this of the heathenism of past ages, so also
1 of that of the future.'— (Essay, pp. 145—158.)

i In advocating, then, a broader basis for Chris-
i tianity, we are encouraged by the fact that its
i triumphs thus far have been on the " Multitudmist "

OUTLINE OF MR. WILSON'S ESSAY. 211

4 principle. Primitive Christianity was doctrinally
1 and ethically broad. It appears not as a theory of
4 personal salvation, but as a moral and social system ;
4 (except in the fourth Gospel). And the relative value
4 of doctrine and morals in the Apostolic age may be
4 judged by the compatibility even of a denial of the
4 Eesurrection with membership of the Christian body.
4 Nor can we suppose that even immorality shut men out
4 from the Christian brotherhood. — The first Churches
4 being thus " Multitudinist," tended too, from their
4 local character, to Nationality. True, dogma came to
4 be more insisted on in the days of Constantine ; yet
4 a Multitudinist Church is not necessarily either dog-
4 matic or hierarchical ; but the reverse. — The ethical
4 view, that the "world lieth in wickedness," is St. John's
4 rather than Christ's.'— (pp. 159—168.)

4 Nationalism (or Multitudinism) is, in fact, a neces-
4 sity of human society. In Heathenism, in Judaism,
4 and Christianity, it is alike found ; though the Na-
4 tionalism of Judea is miscalled a " Theocracy." Christ
1 offered His religion to the Jews nationally ; when they
4 rejected it, it appealed (by a kind of temporary neces-
4 sity) to individuals, and so it " filtered" into society
4 by " conversions." Conversion of nations, en masse ,
4 was however the natural tendency, though checked
4 by the disruption of the empire and other causes ; and
4 by old fetters, such as the assumption of an objective
4 " faith once delivered" to us.' — (pp. 169 — 174.)

4 The actual basis of our own Nationalism may be
4 termed — SCRIPTURE, without defined Inspiration. In
4 our sixth Article, the Protestant feeling of our nation
4 just satisfies itself, in a blind way, with an anti-Eoman
4 view. But extreme Scripturalism cannot be charged
4 on Art. VI., for it leaves us free to interpret most

212 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

1 things as we will. An Englishman agreeably fancies
1 that one portable book makes him independent of his
4 priest ; but the result is disappointing. The circu-
4 lation of Scripture, excellent and divine as it is,
* (though with a human element,) has issued in a
4 puzzle. A National Church, true to Multitudinism,
4 will leave us more and more free to judge the
4 Bible.7— (pp. 175— 180.)

4 At present the ex ammo subscription to the Thirty-
1 nine Articles seems a restraint on the clergy ; but it
4 is very vague. What the legal restraint amounts to,
4 when all the Canons are considered, is hard to ima-
4 gine. We acknowledge the Articles to be " agreeable
4 to the Word of God;" but not of equal authority
4 with it. There may be certain erroneous statements
4 in the Articles ; and if so, we fall back on Scripture.
4 True indeed an old Statute (13 Eliz,, cap. 12) requires
4 44 assent" to the Articles; but that could not be en-
4 forced now. The Articles are flexible, and there is
4 latitude of interpretation, — with many open ques-
4 tions. Not that this state of things ought to last, in
' a Multitudinist Church. Obsolete tests should be
4 repealed ; and it may easily be done by withdrawing
4 the old statute, and the subscription which hampers
4 us. Subscription being abolished, the Articles them-
4 selves might remain, (to gratify anti-Eoman feeling).
4 At present it enervates us, to oblige us to prove the
4 Articles " agreeable to Scripture or to antiquity ;" or
4 become Dissenters.' — (pp. 181 — 190.)

4 Then as to the Endowment of the " National
4 Church;" it is National Property; and so, in one sense,
4 is all property. But a ministry supported by endow-
4 ments may perfectly reflect the National mind; and be
4 quite suitable to a Multitudinist Church. And the Na-

OUTLINE OF MR. WILSON'S ESSAY. 213

1 tional interest lies in preserving such endowment, as it

* tends to unite all classes in the community. Each one
' of us when born into a Nation is born into a Spiritual

* Society. The Nation has one spiritual life ; and its
i Church is the expression of its social and ethical
1 development. The Gospel would be narrow and one-
c sided, if it did not quicken Nationality, but only pro-

* vided isolated "salvation," — a notion which unfits men
' for this life. At least there should be no needless ob-
4 stacles to National Unity, even if it cannot be perfectly
i secured. Without aiming unreasonably at " compre-

* hension," all barriers should, if possible, be thrown
1 down. Intellectual differences should be allowed for ;
4 they are inevitable. All may verbally accept Scrip-
' ture, in some sense. Ideal methods of interpretation
1 may go far at last to unite all. — The accounts, e.g. of
' our Descent from Adam, or of the Flood, or the destruc-
1 tion of Sodom, and other catastrophes and marvels,
' may be " ideologically "viewed. Our Lord's Transfigura-
4 tion or His " miracles" may be put in a light to satisfy

* various minds. The " ideologian" is not disturbed by
i difficulties, or defects in evidence, or by gross notions
' of Apostolic descent of the ministry, or by the Mille-
' nium : Christianity (to his view) is not a theology
6 of the intellect, nor an historical faith ; but may be
' received generally. This ideology may be but the
4 philosophy of the few ; but it denounces none, — be-

* lieving that all will at last le received to the bosom of

191—206.)

All verbiage apart, we have here, at one view, the
entire course of the thought of the Essayist, simply
disengaged from the incidental and ornamental ad
ditions. What the speculation means as a whole, is

214 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

here faithfully exhibited; and it may be confessed,
that there lies before us a real theory corresponding
with the facts of our Eeligious life as a Nation, to a
serious extent. If that theory were accepted by us,
and further acted out, it must involve (as will be
seen) the rejection of the entire Christianity of the
Bible, or the Church, ancient or modern. This is the
point to be made clear, and not, of course, barely as
serted, by those who differ from "the Essayist."
The tone here adopted towards Christianity by the
The general advocate of this " new Nationalism," is

Challenge given nt\r\

to Christianity, certainly not a nattering one. For 1,800
years our Eeligion has been in the position of an in
tellectual and moral superior, and could generally
make terms, as such, with a decaying or uncouth
civilization wherever it came. But the nineteenth
century, it is said now, professes to be intellectually
and morally in advance of us, — an alienation between
the Church of the past, and the times we live in, is
even boasted of. True, indeed, society cannot go on
without Eeligion, but the world is at present on most
unsatisfactory terms with Christianity everywhere ;
nor does there appear to be much probability of an
early concordat between the "spirit of the age" and
the spirit of the Christian Eevelation : but the pro
fessors of the present forms of Christianity, Eoman,
Anglican, and Puritan, are all now warned that a
broader system than theirs is demanded, to which the
name of " Christianity " shall yet be given. We are
bidden to " set our house in order." Intellectually,
of course, we may "hold our own" if we can; poli
tically, we may content ourselves awhile with any po
sition that may be offered by the accidents of the hour.
But the supernatural character hitherto attributed to

OF BROAD, OR GENERALIZED CHRISTIANITY. 21,5

the Eeligion of Christ is not only denied, but declared
to be a subsequent development, and no necessary part
of the teaching of our Divine Master.

§ 3. .Religious idea of a Broad National Christianity.
It is supposed, then, — for the question must be put
in some tangible form, — That Christianity The scheme of
may be received in a generalised way, with- Sm^h^ien^ed
out men's being bound to acknowledge all by us'~
the details of any existing part of the Christian body,
or all the various books of the Old and New Testa
ment, as true. This, of course, opens every religious
question among us, de novo ; and we are bound to
ascertain what this Generalized Christianity, — which
is the "idea" of Multitudinism, its dpxn and reXcy, —
really means. For to say, you will accept as the Ideal of
the Bible, and hold yourself at liberty Multitude™.
afterwards to reject it piece-meal, seems simply, to
most persons, unintelligible, if not absurd. "We can
not permit the assertors of the rights of reason to
stultify their subject and their argument, without
challenge. We are not asking too much if, in the
name of reason, we do our best to ascertain what
educated men mean, when, with an air of superiority,
they profess to believe in Christ, not only apart from
the history and tradition of His followers, but apart
from the record of His life and teaching in the four
Gospels. To this we must first of all address our
selves. Let us have the theory clearly expressed and
logically worked out, to some extent, of a GENERALIZED
CHRISTIANITY, independent of historical creeds, his
torical Scriptures, and historical continuity. It is
hard to ask us to commit ourselves to such a scheme,
without knowing something about it.

216 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

The course taken by our eclectic opponents seems to
Christianity to "be this. Accepting in a literary way the

be reduced to a f .

merely " DOCU- existing volume of Scripture, as usually

mentary Eevela- ° J J

tion." admitted, and separating it as a purely

Documentary Revelation, from " all the work of the
Spirit of God, from the day of Pentecost till now,"
they proceed to examine it part by part, as they
would "any other book6." How far, or in what
sense, they think any part of Scripture sacred, or
even true, they abstain at first from saying. They
receive, and even praise it, as a whole.

Thus they may secure the hasty suffrages of the
Popular aspect of ignorant and the toleration of the pious,
m£niithof'Se who fancJ tliat a11 is simplified if they
have only to ascertain the one " plain
meaning" of one well-known Volume ; forgetting that
all are not critics. The Protestantism of the age is
pleased, too, by such appeal to a purely Documentary
Eevelation, is soothed by the deference to " private
judgment," and hoodwinked by the rejection of " an
tiquity." The new theorists have been thriving on
the delusion. — Yet is there not something thoroughly
unworthy of men engaged in a great intellectual and
moral work, in ad captandum appeals as if to the
" Bible onlyf," addressed to the reverent sentiment
of the untheological masses, whose whole faith they
are about to sweep away ?

Tor the very next step to this general reception of
tiie Bible, is to separate the Old Testament from the
New ] and in the latter, to distinguish the Gospels
from the Epistles. Then, the Gospels are reduced to
the lowest point by separating the supernatural from
the " natural" portions of the narrative; and the

e Essay, p. 377. f Essays, p. 426, &c.

OF BROAD, OR GENERALIZED CHRISTIANITY. 217

words of Christ Himself from the incidents recorded
by the Evangelists ; and again, His ethics from His
doctrine! Not that the process of " criticism" stops
here, though by this time the unlearned allies of the
critics must take alarm ; and before long the whole
cause of Scripture investigation even by scholars is
discredited.

This way of proceeding is to be indignantly de
precated by honest thinkers. - - The di- insidious pro-

. . . gress of this at-

rection of the spiritual course of our time tempt.
(if the truth is to be owned) has not, with all men's
pretensions, been intellectual. The progress of edu
cation and taste a few years ago led to the partial
revival of old theological learning and ritualism ; and
it was not a further progress of education that checked
it. It was arrested by political and social causes,
and, more than all, by panic ; instead of being met by
any counteracting efforts of a thoughtful kind. There
followed indeed a temporary religious re-action of a
Puritan spirit, — but with no intellectual life. And
now, "Essayism" (if the term be allowable) has not
been unwilling to pretend to espouse the Chillingworth
doctrine, which ever pleases the crowd ; and unwor
thily has thought to blind the unthinking many with
the offer of a "/m?/y-handled Bible."

The alarm which has followed, however, now that
the insidious nature of the proposal has Th? Pan]c°f

r r f the allies of Ea-

been understood, has occasioned a recoil, tumaiism at the

" free- handling"

which was not unnatural. The generality, of the Bible,
so painfully appealed to, doubtless lean on Scripture,
(for they feel that they must have something:) they
cannot themselves examine much of it, and they see
not what is to become of them, if they are to be given
over to the authority of " critics ;" for that seems as

21 8 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

great an invasion of the " rights of Englishmen" as
the " voice of the Church" had ever been. They
thought the Bible had been criticized enough before
their time; and that " private judgment" now had
only to " interpret" it. To submit to scholars, —
might it not at once lead to a narrower and more
stringent tyranny than that of ecclesiastics? — and
equally interfere with the absolute right and assumed
competency of every man of average powers to in
terpret the vernacular Scriptures as he pleased, for
himself? — They did not see, at first, that to reduce
Eevelation to the rank of mere literature, was to hand
it over to the literati.

Among those who now shrink the most from the
The concessions critical destruction of Scripture as the

of the alarmed . .

semi-critics. substance oi our Keligion, there are some
who are ready to concede its partial mutilation.
There is an attempt here and there, of a crude and
hasty kind, to make " concessions " to the enemy.
Like mariners in a storm, certain religionists have
been looking about to see what they can part with,
to make their vessel "more safe;" or like besieged
men who have to consider how much they had better
abandon, before they retire to make desperate resist
ance, perhaps at the citadel. — The philosophers are
not unpleased at the commotion ; and the irreligious
are beginning to suspect that they may soon get rid
of many a terror, which thus far has held their con
science in bondage.

For those who share none of these fears, the course
to be pursued with the defenders of this " Generalized
Christianity," is (as we shall repeat) to insist on their
producing it for the examination of all men. Let them
tell us, in no misty or evasive sentences, what their

OF BROAD, OR GENERALIZED CHRISTIANITY. 219

" Christianity" is; and where they will get it, after
they shall have reduced the Eeligion of Christendom
to a " Document," and ascertained the uncertainty,
if not the doubtfulness, of every part of it ?

To have any anxiety as to the ultimate results of
the most searching investigation of Scrip- Thepos.tion
ture would betray, in any case, a feeble- of cabmen.
ness of faith, which the well-taught Christian would
but pity. They who know that their "house cannot
fall," for it is " founded upon a rockg," must not be
supposed to be fearful for themselves because they
are willing to help others who are tossing on the
waves. All that the most patient and penetrating
learning, or the most advanced science, shall ever
teach, the truth-loving Christian will welcome. They,
on the other hand, who have surrendered the an
cient Creeds, (and with them so much of the living
grace of the Gospel,) must make the best defence
they can of all that remains to them of the " deposit
of faith." — It is their concern, pre-eminently, to deal
with this portentous scheme of a " Gen- Definition of

... . " Generalized

eralized Chnstianity, the residuum that

1/7

. . the ideal of Mul-

is to remain to them after the latest criti- titudinism.
cal sifting of the text of the Christian Scriptures. The
Churchman refuses the postulate, (without which the
generalizers cannot proceed one step in their argu
ment); he denies that the Sacred Eecord was de
signed to be cut off, as a mere "document," from the
de facto Christianity of all ages. The Churchman's
defence will not avail the merely literary believer.

But, accepting for a moment the assumption with
which the generalizers of our religion Example of the

° Process of Gen-

. .

would begin, it is not difficult to see
how, step by step, the whole order of the "new cre-
8 St. Matt. vii. 25.

220 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

ation in CHRIST JESUS" may be undone, and a chaos
arrived at. Let us follow for a moment one of the
lines of thought which the writer of the " Essay on
the National Church" suggests to us, and see what
it comes to :—

i The Descent of mankind from Adam and Eve, —
the destruction of the world by the Flood, — the over
throw of Sodom and Gomorrah, — are all thought ob
jectionable by a growing class of " critics h." But they
are only parts (it must be urged) of the Hebrew Scrip
tures ; and, on examining them, many great scholars
have rejected them as of doubtful credibility ! As
(Baden Powell's Christians, are we bound to accept as true
wSoifju-7 tne entire Scriptures of Judaism ? The
three points objected to are not essential
then to Christianity ! We find ourselves in the diffi
culty, no doubt, that Christ and His apostles accepted
all these " errors " as truths ; or at least the JSTcw
Testament represents them as so doing. Christ says,
that "from the beginning God made them male and
female * ;" and He refers, in proof, to this " erroneous"
Jewish record as Divine. He equally mentions the
catastrophe of "the days of Noahk," the destruction
of the world by the Deluge, and the overthrow of
the cities of the plain 1 ; and this not once, but seve
ral times. But may we not conclude that Christ thus
deferred to the national prejudices of His country
men? — or perhaps, that His biographers have re
ported untruly His words on all these subjects ? — This
obliges us, indeed, at once to give up as much as
several important passages of the Evangelists • and to
doubt the authority of those writers on other points. For

11 Essay, p. 200, &c. * St. Matt. xix. 4—8.

k Ibid. xix. 38. l St. Luke xvii. 29.

OF BROAD, OR GENERALIZED CHRISTIANITY. 221

if they have not truly reported CHRIST'S words, how
can we trust them as to His deeds ? — say e. g. the
" Transfiguration," mentioned by St. Luke. Is it pos
sible to accept the words of that Evangelist, who tells
us m that Moses and Elias came from the invisible world
to hold a supernatural conversation with Christ on the
Mount0, — when we have been compelled to reject, or
suspect, what he says about Sodom and Gomorrha ?

i It becomes imperative, then, to advance a step
further ; and ascertain rather the spirit of the teaching
of Christ, to be learned from the Evangelist ; without
binding ourselves to any facts which seem to a "just
criticism" to be improbable. The difficulty, however,
of accepting the spirit of a book which we have been
obliged to think untrustworthy as to its facts ; or of
ascertaining the spirit of Christ's teaching when we
can no longer be certain of one of His words, — is en
hanced at every step. The inherent beauty of many
passages of the so-called " Discourses of Christ" might
well save them from being consigned to neglect ; but
the Miracles can hardly be admitted now, without bet
ter evidence than that of such " biographers." The
" supernatural element," too, of His Birth, (as well as
His Resurrection,) would need other vouchers !J

But enough of this. — A similar course of thought
might arise from any of the miserable suspicions
thrown out by these " critics," till nothing of the
Gospel remained but this : — That a person, or per
sons, of the name of Jesus, appeared in Judaea 1800
years ago, who greatly influenced many minds at the
time ; and whose alleged history was recorded some
thirty or forty years after the events ! — All beyond
m St. Luke ix. 30. n Essay, p. 202.

222 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

this being a "human accretion" on the divine teach
ing which ' produced so remarkable an effect at the
time !'

Such, then, is GENERALIZED CHRISTIANITY. And
Conclusion let it not be said that the specimen is

against General- 111 i

ized Christianity, extra vagant, or beyond what any one has

the Ideal of Mul- f ' . J. /

dreamed. It is strictly deduced from the

principles of "Essayism." Much more might be said
without overstepping logical propriety. A Christianity
without certainty of a single fact of the Gospel, from the
Incarnation to the Eesurrection of Christ, — that is the
shadow of religion to which these eclectics and critics
would lead our nation. Or, if all this be denied, and
they mislike this plain language, once more, in the
name of all reason and fairness, we repeat our chal
lenge, and call on our new teachers to tell us openly,
in their own words, what their " Generalized Chris
tianity" is to be ? and where we are to find it ?

It is not said, or implied for a moment, that the

Reserving an scheme of vague religion here delineated

has taken definite form in the minds of

all those now living among us, who are teaching its

first principles. AVhat we must rather say is, that

these writers accost us, not as hard, bold, English

reasoners, but as half- German, half-fanatical, credu

lous, imaginative, illogical ; quite capable of going on

holding premises and denying conclusions.

Let these halting and feeble-minded thinkers be
made to take any part of the New Testament, in which
there is any reference to the Old, and reason from it.
— Suppose the advocate of " Generalized Christianity"
to decide on receiving as " genuine " the reported
words of Christ in any one of the Gospels ; he will

BROAD CHRISTIANITY AND THE APOSTLES'.

223

see our Lord there referring to " all the prophets °," —
Isaiah, Jonah, Daniel, and the rest ; and making quota
tions from the Psalms, or the Pentateuch, Further EX.
mystically, typically, spiritually, hardly amPles-
ever " literally," or in the way any secular book would
be understood. And he will then stand in this di
lemma : — Either he must reject those words of Christ
which fix His imprimatur on the old prophets, and on
a special way of interpreting them ; or he must accept
them, with all their consequences. If the latter, then
he is committed to the Old Testament as divine Scrip
ture, " which cannot be broken p ;" if the former, he is
bound to shew what rule he has to determine, Which
of Christ's words are to be accepted ? And which not ?
In the one case his Christianity will be no abstrac
tion, it will be special doctrine ; in the other, doubt
less his view will be a very generalized one ; but he
must say how he will prevent it from fading down
to the thinnest indisputable truisms, which may be
gleaned from the fewest sentences, of the least mys
tical discourse, reported in the briefest Gospel.

§. 4. Broad Christianity compared with the
Apostolic Age.

But the generalizers of our religion are not con
sistent. They cannot, or do not, reason. Another enquiry.
For, after using the language of utter scepticism, we
find them, perhaps in the next page, referring (with
out hint of " criticism") to the documents of the New
Testament as in some sense trustworthy evidence
still, for some of the facts of Primitive Christianity,

0 St. Matt. xv. 7 ; St. Luke iv. 17 ; St. John xii. 38 j St. Matt,
xii. 40, xxiv. 15, iv. 4, 7, 10 ; St. Luke xxiv. 27, 44.
p St. John x. 35, v. 38, 39.

224 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

which, are incomprehensibly declared to accord with
" Multitudinism !" It is urged (as will be seen by
whether, in fact, the Outline) that their broad and general
Sm'taSdi idea of Christianity may be vindicated,
-or exclusive? aSj after allj moj.Q « apOStolical " than the

exclusive views, prevalent since the first age, as to
definite faith in Christ, or as to the idea of " salva
tion" in a future state. Let this then be examined
in the next place, — Whether, from the first, it was
the intention of Christianity (as affirmed) to provide
a u generalized religion" for the multitude, of an in
clusive kind? And whether this can be fairly learned
from the Christian Scriptures, which are here happily,
though inconsistently, called to give evidence, by those
who regard them as so very uncertain, if not also
frequently false ?

It will not avail to say, in reply to what will be
alleged, that the authority of the texts quoted is dis
allowed ; that is not the question. It has been dis
tinctly assumed, that the Christian Scriptures may be
appealed to in support of this " Multitudinism," or
"New Nationalism," which is recommended to us.
We deny this ; and it therefore becomes a question
of fact. For whether the inclusiveness, argued for
by these writers, — or the exclusive claims, urged by
us for our Eeligion, — be to be preferred, is not the
enquiry ; but which is in fact borne out by the New
Testament? — and there must be no mystification as
to this precise issue.

Of course a Christian cannot consent, that the theory
The theory, of his Eeligion should be lowered to the
level of the facts; but the one will un-
doubtedly serve at au times to tjirow

light on the other, though the attempt must be made

BROAD CHRISTIANITY AND THE APOSTLES. 22,5

to distinguish, them ; since it would be unreasonable
to suppose, either that the high spiritual aim of Chris
tianity was always attained, or that the practical dere
lictions of moral agency should be chargeable on the
Gospel as its design.

Eeligion, we affirm, has two aspects, — one towards
this world, and one towards the future. its acknow-

. lodged aspect to-

It raises and ennobles the present, and wards "the life

. 1 . . that now is, and

that all the more because it points to im- that which is to
mortality. None will deny that its action viT)
on the present is frequently generic : the many are
affected by it, and affected in masses. Hence we
speak of Christianity as " influencing civilization"
in all its great developments. There is not so much
dispute as to this; but rather, as to which is the
primary object of religion, this world, or the next ?
for, upon the determination of this, the merits of
Multitudinism and Individualism will easily be ascer
tained by any one. If Eoman Christianity — itself
often a corrupt form of Multitudinism — have helped
to confuse men's thoughts, in some degree, as to this
distinction, let it not be thought tedious if it be
somewhat enlarged on, since so much depends on it.

Hitherto, so universal has been the belief among
religious people of all kinds, with the rarest ex
ceptions, that earthly duties, however sacred, are
but preliminary to an eternal "life to come," that
some, (as the Pelagians,) even conceive the present
to be the means of meriting the future reward; and
though this is heretical, it is but a dogmatic exagger
ation of what Scripture says, and all persons feel,
that we shall hereafter be " judged according to our
works V While faith sees, and lives for, "the In-

q Heb. xi. 27.
Q

226 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

visible," (as witnessed by all the men of faith since
idea of the the world began,) the "fruits of faith,"
^"'life being good works, have been acknow-
ledged by all to have their temporary use
and salutary action in this world. But Christianity
distinctively proposes a "life of Faith;" while Mul-
titudinism declines the consideration of the future1".
Whether, indeed, even for this life, "individualism"
be not more ethically true, shall also be considered;
but at present the question of fact is to be looked to,
—whether primitive Christianity, as learned from its
only records, was " multitudinistic," and broad, and
directed to the present? or whether it was "ex
clusive," and sought access to the individual con
science of the few, (indirectly approaching the many,)
and chiefly contemplated the eternal world ?

The Ten following grounds have been suggested for
Alleged scrip- the position, that " Multitudinism " has

tare grounds of

the support of the N ew Testament.

1st. That "though the consequences of what the
ist Ground. Gospel does will be carried out into other
Essay, P. 159. woridSj ft$ work fs to be done here."

The reply to this it is needless to repeat, as it is
contained in what has been just said as to the primary
and secondary objects of Eeligion.

2nd Ground. That " neither in doctrine nor in morals

2nd Ground, did the primitive Christian communities

Essay, p. 160. ^if ju(}ged by the Apostolic Epistles) ap

proach the idea formed of them ;" but are much more

like communities of general professors of Christianity,

than societies requiring individual strictness.

The reply is a plain one. The same Epistles which in
form us of the moral failures of the primitive Churches

r Essay, pp. 159—161.,

BROAD CHRISTIANITY, AND THE APOSTLES'. 227

warn and rebuke individuals ; and in no case complain
of their moral state as a result of organic defect, or
of corporate false action. Special duties of Christians,
man by man, woman by woman, child by child, form
the subject-matter of apostolic exhortation. A generic
remedy, singularly enough, is not perhaps glanced at
as much as once by St. Paul (as it might have been)
in his thirteen Epistles. He had "not so learned
Christ ;" but his preaching, he says, was " warning
every man and teaching every man .... that we may
present every man perfect in Christ 8."

3rd Ground. " That the doctrinal features of the
early Church are more undetermined 3rd Ground.
(and inclusive of many opinions) than isay' p< 1G
would be thought by those who read them only
through ecclesiastical Creeds."

But here the reply naturally is, that the Multi-
tudinist is bound to shew, if he would establish his
conclusion, that there were no essential " doctrinal
features" at all. — Perhaps, indeed, the earliest pro
fession of faith may have been little more than " be
lieve on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be
saved;" but such a profession, in the simplest ima
ginable form, still required individual reception, and
supposed the need of " salvation ;" and the very form
of Baptism (taking every person singly) was indivi
dualistic; nor could sacramental administration well be
otherwise. Baptism, the foundation of every Church,
early or late, carries with it the doctrine of " the Fa
ther, the Son, and the Holy Ghost," from the begin
ning. Men, e.g., who " had not heard whether there
were any Holy Ghost1," and had been baptized only
by John the Baptist; and one who was already an
• Coloss. i. 28. * Acts xix. 2.

Q2

228 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

" eloquent" expounder of Scripture, had to receive,
somewhat later, more perfect baptism, or (as the
case might be) more exact instruction in the Chris
tian dogma u.

4th Ground. "That the doctrine taught by the
4th Ground. Lutherans of justification by subjective

Essay, pp. 159, J . V,

160. faith was never the doctrine 01 any con
siderable portion of the Church till the time of the
Eeformation. It is not met with in the apo
stolic writings, except those of St. Paul."

Reply: — Whether the "Lutheran" expression of
the doctrine of "justification by faith" be Scriptural,
is not our concern ; but Whether faith as a subjec
tive grace in the soul, — whether faith as dwelling
in a man, (and not simply as the general opinion of
a "multitude,") — be truly exhibited to us in Scrip
ture? For, as to making the writings of St. Paul
"exceptions," when examining what the New Testa
ment evidence is, it appears most unreasonable and
tortuous ; unless it be at once avowed that St. Paul's
Epistles (constituting nearly half the New Testament)
are ' untrustworthy.' It is forgotten, (when this
doubt is thrown in about St. Paul's inspiration,) that
the point under examination is, whether his record of
a "fact" is to be admitted? For undoubtedly, he says,
that faith was an indwelling and individual gift, in
the opinion of Christians then. In proof, the ex
amples of Timothy, his mother, and his grandmother,
may be taken : the Apostle thanking God " for the
unfeigned faith that was in him, which dwelt first in
his grandmother Lois, and his mother Eunice x." — But
we are not obliged to refer to the Epistles of St. Paul
only. Our Lord Himself, in the Gospels, (if we are
u Acts xviii. 26. * 2 Tim. i. 5.

BROAD CHRISTIANITY AND THE APOSTLES'.

229

to credit them,} assigns mercy to individuals " accord
ing to the faith that was in themy ;" and His apostles,
in the Acts, imitating their Master, blessed the cripple
at Lystra, " perceiving that he had faith to be healed55."
And the expressions, "purifying the heart by faith,"
"sanctified by faith a," and others which we meet
with, describe an effective work of individual ele
vation and conversion. St. Peter and St. James speak
of the " trial of faith " in the soul ; the former as
" precious and praiseworthy in the day of the Lordb,"
the latter as "working patience0." And St. James
in almost all instances refers to faith as indwelling in
the individual, even when warning Christians against
attributing to it a false value. St. Peter classes " faith
with hope*" as indwelling graces directed towards
God as their outward object, as subjectively as St.
Paul had done; and he, too, speaks of "salvation of
souls" as the end of that inward "believing." And,
finally, St. John in the Apocalypse makes no difference
between "faith," "charity," and "patience6," so far
as their indwelling character is concerned. The word
"faith" is used sixteen times by St. James, and five
times by St. John ; but in only one instance does
St. James, and only twice St. John, use "faith" to
describe the Eeligion of Christ as a system ; and in
every other to exhibit its internal character as a Grace
in the believer's soul.

5th Ground. ' That the doctrine of the Niccne and
Athanasian Creed is less definitely, or in 5th Ground.
other words more broadly, stated in Scrip- :ssay' p> ]
ture than in the symbols of the later Church.'

y St. Matt. ix. 22, xv. 28 ; St. Mark x. 52 ; St. Luke xvii. 19.
z Acts xiv. 9. a Acts iii. 16, vi. 5 — 7, xi. 24, xv. 9, xxvi. 18.

b 1 St. Tot. i. 7. c St. James i. 3. d 1 St. Pit. i. 9, 21.

e Rev. ii. 19; xiii. 10.

230 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

This has been answered, by anticipation, in what
has been said in reply to the " Third Ground."

6th Ground. < That the Gospels of St. Matthew,
6th Ground. St. Mark, and St. Luke, afford evidence
Essay, pp. iGi-2, fo Q^igt's own words \ and these words,
taken in connection with the Epistle of St. Jarnes and
the 1st of St. Peter, leave no doubt that the general
character of Christianity was chiefly moral?

Eeply: — Supposing this were admitted, it would
not lead to the conclusion desired by the advocate of
" Multitudinism." For morality is only sound when
it has its hold on individual conviction. A general
conformity to the public opinion, in matters of duty,
may often lead to good average results ; but we could
not praise the morality of any man who had no con
science as to the rectitude of the rules to which he
socially conformed. And indeed the whole of the at
tempted reasoning connected with this subject, in the
place referred tof, is rather opposed to "Multitudin-
ism ;" inasmuch as it represents Christ's moral de
sign to be, to " penetrate to the root of Conscience,"
—which, of course, is to address the individual, rather
than the corporate life of man.

7th Ground. Three facts are referred to as implying
7th Ground. Multitudinism. First, our Lord's lament
JSS153, 171. ' over Jerusalem for their national rejection
of Him, which proved " that He had offered it to them
nationally, in a broad and general way." Secondly,
the conversion of 3,000 on the day of Pentecost; for,
"that they cannot be supposed to have been indi
vidual converts ; but only a mass of persons brought
in as a body;" and, thirdly, the alleged existence
" among the Christian converts in the early Church of

f Essay, p. 162.

BROAD CHRISTIANITY, AND THE APOSTLES'. 231

those, for example, who had no belief in a corporeal
" resurrection g ;" and therefore, ' that even a denial of
doctrine, such as the Resurrection of the body, ought
to be permitted in a Broad National Church intended
for all.'

Eeply : — The first alleged fact is contrary to all that
we read in the Gospels. For it does not appear that
our Lord, on any one occasion, laid His claims before
the authorities, for an official investigation; but in
every instance called out individuals, and appealed to
consciences. — The second supposition is even more
distinctly contrary to the record, in which the " prick
ing of the heart," " repentance," and " baptism" are at
tributed to every one ; and it is added, that " fear came
upon EVERY soulh." The whole narrative is as strongly
individualistic, as if written for our argument. — The
third supposition1 is founded on St. Paul's remonstrance
in the Epistle to the Corinthians, " How say so me
among you that there is no resurrection of the dead ?"
Why, (it is asked,) did not St. Paulk excommunicate
such Sadducees if he thought their opinion ought to
exclude them ? Now let the same argument be urged
a verse or two further on, in the same chapter, and it
might plausibly enlarge the boundaries of this " broad
Christianity" to include even those who had no true
"knoivledge of God" at all; for, among these Corin
thians it is said, that there were even " some who had
not the knowledge of God1," and the Apostle adds,
"I speak this to your shame." Let our "Multi-
tudinist," who uses this surely preposterous argument,
decide whether open idolaters, sceptics, or atheists,

* Essay, pp. 146, 163. * Acts ii. 37, 38,43. * Essay, p. 164.
k 1 Cor. xv. 12. ' Ibid., ver. 34.

232 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

are to be admissible, with " Sadducees," to bis compre
hensive Church ? Of the one class as much as of
the other the Apostle said there were r^ey, " some,"

among the Corinthians. To those who are not Multi-
tudinists it will seem plain enough that there would,
in that unformed and unfixed condition of things at
Corinth, be many half -persuaded, many ignorant,
many only preparing for baptism ; and there is no
reason whatever to think that these rebuked Sad-
ducees, and unbelievers in God, had been yet bap
tized. So far indeed from a denial of God or of the
Resurrection being compatible with membership of
the primitive Church, the Apostle shews how " Jesus
and the Resurrection" must stand together, when he
declares that the whole structure of Christianity must
fall if the Resurrection be denied m ; and that for " some
to be without the knowledge of Godn" was utterly
"shameful" to a Christian community0.

8th Ground. £ That the relative value of doctrine
8th Ground. and morals in the primitive Church may
Essay, P. iG2. j^ jujge(j by ^he preference given in the

Apostolic Epistles to the latter beyond the former;
and that latitude as to doctrine may be fairly inferred
from this.'

Reply : — We are not left to mere inference in esti^
mating the vital importance of sound doctrine as well .
as morals. St. Paul says, "A man that is an heretic
after the first and second admonition reject* P He
left Timothy in Ephesus, to " charge some to teach
no other doctrine ;" and to urge " charity, out of a
pure heart, a good conscience, and. faith unfeigned^:"
he warns him to " take heed to himself and to the

m 1 Cor. xv. 17, 18. n 1 Cor. xv. 34. ° Acts xvii. 18, 32.
p Titus iii. 10. q 1 Tim. i. 3, 5 :

BROAD CHRISTIANITY, AND THE APOSTLES'. 233

doctrine* ," 8i8ao-Ka\lay and that "the time would
come when men would not endure sound doctrine."
St. John uses our Lord's own word, diSaxn, and de
scribes apostasy as a not " abiding in the doctrine of
Christ8," and forbids Christians to receive those who
do not " come with this doctrine ;" — (and the special
doctrine there alluded to is the Divine Sonship of our
Lord.) In fact, two-thirds at least, if not four-fifths,
of the Apostolic Epistles are Doctrinal ; and if their
evidence is to be taken, it seems scarcely possible to
have a point more conclusively settled against the
Comprehensionists and Anti-doctrinists.

But the preference given to morals above dogma
in this argument proves to be but short-lived \ and
it is soon seen that, in arguing his case, it was not
that the Multitudinist loved Morals more, but Doc
trine less. Observe the

9th Ground. "That if any called a brother were a
notoriously immoral person, the rest were 9th Ground.
to be enjoined, < no, not to eat with him,' Essay> p- 165'
but he was not to be refused the name of a brother or
Christian."

Eeply: — The injunction "not to eat" with a gross
ill-liver applies also to religious eating, at " Commu
nion:" the participation in a common meal cannot be
supposed to be the whole of the Apostle's meaning,
since he forbids all "keeping company" with such an
immoral person. And if this be so, excommunication
(in the Scripture sense *) is implied in this very passage.
Even if, indeed, it were granted that the Christian
Church was at first unable to exclude profligate mem-

r 1 Tim. iv. 16. • St. John ii. 9, 10. * 1 Cor. v. 11, &c. ;

2 Thess. iii. 14, compared with Acts x. 28, \_a-wavanlyvvnt. and
1 Cor. vi. 16, 17.

234 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

bers, that would not shew the desirableness of now re
verting to such a state of things, and deliberately, as
a theory, adopting its " comprehensiveness." But the
very instance referred to evidences beyond a doubt
the individualistic aim of the Church, and indeed
the personal inspection of every member.

10th Ground. "That the Apostolic Churches took
ioth Ground, collective names from the localities where
Essay, p. IBS. thev were situate," and so 'tended from
the first to be Multitudinistic.' And thus ' National
ism' is to be regarded, not merely as a providential
fact in the history of our religion, and so dealt with ;
but as the theory of Christianity from the first.

Eeply : — It is difficult to conceive of anything more
natural, or inevitable, than the designation of any
institute from the name of the place where it is fixed.
Until it can be gravely shewn that to call any other
institution by the name of the place where it stands
is a proof that it comprehends the whole neighbour
hood in its plan, we shall not be able to see any argu
ment in this hypothesis — (for it is nothing more) — as
to the tendency of the Apostolic Churches to Multi-
tudinism, shewn by their names. To argue a theory
of our Religion from this, is somewhat weak.

The entire " Scripture evidence" alleged in behalf
of the supposition, that this new " Nationalism" was
the original intention or tendency of Christianity,
has now been reviewed ; and it is difficult to repress
astonishment at the state of mind which could explore
the New Testament, and then produce these "proofs"
that it meant to teach a Eeligion with no exclusive
Doctrines or exclusive Morals !

We proceed to a different thesis.

THE "EXCLUSIVENESS" OF CHRIST. 235

§ 5. The Exclusiveness of Primitive Christianity

Examined,

If we produce the unambiguous testimony of our
Divine Master, Christ Himself, and of His The Scripture
chosen Apostles, as to the fact, that in SS^
Christianity we are appealed to, singly, tobeheard-
conscience by conscience, let those who are not
ashamed to be " Christians" take heed how they turn
from it. If the New Testament witness to " Indi
vidualism" (as it is termed) make it appear indeed
what men call "narrow and exclusive," be it re
membered that we are not now examining the philo
sophy of our religion, nor its ethical vindication. That
may be done elsewhere. Neither will the criticism
of a few phrases help the objector. It is to the matter
of fact we are pointing, (whether it be pleasing or
not,) — the broad fact which is patent to every eye,
that Christianity, according to the Scriptures, has a
Doctrine, — has a strict Moral system, — asks to include
none who will not rise towards its standard of truth
and purity, anticipates frequently narrow results, aims
always at the individual conscience, and points, pri
marily, to an "eternal life" beyond the grave.

And first let us hear the words of Him i. our Saviour

Christ's own
Who is "the Truth." warnings.

""What is a man profited, if he shall gain the
whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall
a man give in exchange for his soul1'?"

"It is profitable for thee that one of thy members
perish, and not that thy whole body be cast into
hell." And " Fear Him who is able to cast both
body and soul into hell8."

r St. Matt. xvi. 26 ; St. Mark viii. 36.
• St, Matt. v. 29, 30, and St. Luke xii. 5.

236 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

" Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for
that meat which endureth unto everlasting life V

" Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where
neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves
do not break through nor steal : for where your trea
sure is, there will your heart be also V

"Provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a
treasure in the heavens that faileth notx."

" When the fruit is brought forth, He putteth in
the sickle, because the harvest is comey."

"The harvest is the end of the world; and the
reapers are the angels z."

" Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it a."

"If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in
your sins : . . . . and whither I go ye cannot come V

No ingenuity can possibly extract from such words
a theory of " Multitudinism ;" a Eeligion for this
world in preference to the next; a broad and "com
prehensive" scheme lowered to the feelings of the
crowd, the " many, whose love shall wax cold0" in
the latter days. — It is not to the point to say here,
" if Scripture teaches exclusiveness, Scripture is
wrong d." We are only examining the question of
fact, What does Scripture teach ? Is it a " little
flock6," or a great flock, to whom "the kingdom will
be git en ?"

One more sentence from Christ Himself shall con
clude His warning witness to us all. The question
was formally raised for His decision : —

4 St. John vi. 27. u St. Matt. vi. 20, 21. * St. Luke xii. 33.
y St. Mark iv. 29. z St. Matt. xiii. 39. a Ibid., vii. 14.

b St. John viii. 24 and 21. c St. Matt. xxiv. 12. d Essay,

p. 154. e St. Luke xii. 32.

"EXCLUSIVENESS" OF THE APOSTLES' TEACHING. 237

"Lord, are there few that be saved? And He
said unto them, Strive to enter in at the strait
gate : for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter
in, and shall not be able. When once the master
of the house hath risen up, and hath shut to the
doorf."

If we pass on to the witness of those who came
afterwards, and enquire how they under- n. The witness

' of Apostles, and

stood the Lord's apparently unworldly others.
and exclusive teaching, we now cannot be surprised
to read thus : —

St. Peter. "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou
hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and
are sure that Thou art that Christ, the Son of the
living God g."

St. John and St. Peter. " Neither is there salvation
in any other: for there is none other Name under
heaven given among men, whereby we must be
saved V

St. Paul. "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of
Christ : for it is the power of God unto salvation
to every one that believeth1."

The Apostle to the Hebrews. " Without holiness no
man shall see the Lord V

St. Jude. " Contend earnestly for the faith once
delivered to the saints l."

St. Philip the Deacon. "If thou belie vest with all
thy heart, thou mayest be baptized. And he said,
I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God m."

The Angel at Joppa. " Call for Simon, who shall

f St. Luke xiii. 23, &c. g St. John vi. 68, 69. h Acts iv. 12.
1 Rom. i. 16. k Heb. xii. 14. ' St. Jude, 3, 4; &c., 17, &c.
m Acts viii: 37.

238 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

tell thee words whereby thou and all thy house shall
be saved11"

If the idea of * exclusive salvation for those who
believe and obey the Gospel' be not here placed before
the individual conscience, it seems impossible to say
in what form it could have been naturally expressed
at all.

Nor is it any " abstract Christianity" which is thus
put forward. The greatest of the writers of the New
Testament leaves on record this authoritative sentence,
twice uttered, and conclusive against all other versions
of our Eeligion than the original message : — " Though
we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other Gospel
unto you than that which we have preached unto you,
let him be accursed ! As we said before, so say I now
again, If any man preach any other Gospel unto you
than that ye have received, let him be accursed0!"

It is not as though " eliminating" two or three
obstinate texts would relieve the case. The facts
which lie on the surface, or those most deeply im
bedded in the structure of the whole record of our
Eeligion, equally attest the sense which primitive be
lievers had of the everlasting importance of a right
faith in "Him whom not having seen they lovedp,"
and for whom they would " suffer the loss of all
things," and "count them as dross," if they might
but "win Christ, and be found in Himq" at last.

And see how urgent they became, therefore, " heark-
m. The testi- ening to God's voice r." — In "adding to

mony of Aposto- Jr °

HC Deeds. the Church8" the newly baptized, it was

for "salvation" "Whether to the alarmed jailor of

n Acts xi. 14. ° Gal. i. 8, 9. " 1 St. Pet. i. 8.

q Philipp. iii. 8. r Acts iv. 19, 20. s Ibid. ii. 47,

"EXCLUSIVENESS" OF THE APOSTLES' CONDUCT. 239

Philippi, or to the quiet Church settled at Borne, or
to the scattered Jews who had believed, the message
was the same, " Believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou
shalt be saved." " We shall be saved from wrath
through Him*." ""We are not of them who draw
back unto perdition ; but of them that believe to the
saving of the souln." — Let men risk their puny view
that all this was bigotry, if they will ; but was it not
a characteristic of original Christianity, such as no im
partial reader (believer or not) can dispute ? — If not,
then the heathen who complained of the heat and zeal
of Paul and Barnabas x were right. Unless Christianity
were essential to each soul to whom it came, why
should the sincere adherents of old religions have
been so roughly and needlessly disturbed? Why
should even Jews be told, that in rejecting Christ
they were "counting themselves unworthy of ever
lasting life7?" Why should "father be set against
son and son against father, mother against daugh
ter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law
against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against
mother-in-law2?" — Why see we that life-long eager
ness to "spend and be spent a" for souls; — to move
about among ivilling moral agents, and pass the rest ;
—to listen to a vision, if it beckoned to Macedonia
as a field of success; — or to hasten to bear the "good
tidings," when informed of "much people" in a cer
tain city willing to hear it; — or to be reluctantly
turned away from another ' unwilling ' region as hope
less, being "forbidden of the Holy Ghost b?"— If in
foregoing all that the world holds dear, encounter-

* Acts xvi. 30, 31 ; Rom. v. 9. u Hcb. x. 39. * Acts xiv. 5 ;
xix. 28. y Ibid. xiii. 46. z St. Matt. x. 35—37.

a 2 Cor. xii. 15. b Acts xvi. 9, xviii. 10, xvi. 6.

240

THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

ing all perils and hardships, and facing a daily mar
tyrdom c, those first missionaries were under the belief
that the issues of Eternity were at stake, and trusted
that by their toil they might " by any means save
somed," — bring even "one of a city, or two of a fa
mily6," to "Him whom to know was life eternal f,"-
then their conduct was reasonable, their self-devotion
most noble. But if they only meant that they desired
for Him whom they preached one niche in the Pan
theon of the nations ; if they " turned the world upside
down s " in order that the Gospel might be accepted
as one Religion among many, it is impossible not to
deplore what must then be considered the cruel and
terrifying language of their addresses, — in a word,
impossible perhaps to overrate -the actual mischievous-
ness of such unmeasured enthusiasm.

It may be concluded, then, unless a common- sense
view of the whole subject is to be refused, that enough
has now been adduced to justify the conviction that
apostolic Christianity, as learned from the New Testa
ment, required Individual Conscientiousness, Indivi
dual Faith.

In whatever form this " exclusive Christianity" be
objected to hereafter, let us not in the face of all facts
be told, that Scripture does not teach this "necessity
of faith in Christ;'7 or that the Primitive Churches
designed to include nominal professors of the Gospel,
and did not primarily contemplate the salvation of in
dividual souls. — We now pass on.

No question appears to have gravely been raised,

c Acts xv. 26; 2 Cor. vi. 4—10, xi. 23—28. d Eom. xi. 14;

1 Cor. ix. 22 ; 1 Tim. iv. 16 ; Jude 23. e Jer. iii. 14.

f St. John xvii. 3. s Acts xvii. 6.

"EXCLUSIVENESS" OF ANTE-NICENE TIMES. 241

as to the "exclusiveness" of every form iv. The testi-

.... i»t monyoftheApo-

ot Christianity in the next age alter the stoiicai canons ;
apostles. Of some dim Gnostic semi -heathenism it
were vain to speak ; and it may be supposed that the
system of the " Apostolical Canons " (as, for brevity,
it may be termed) was too indisputable, to invite criti
cism of a fact perhaps more indisputable than any other
in the Christianity of the second and third centuries,
— its rigid demarcation, alike from Judaism and from
the world h. The Creeds, the Eitual, the Discipline of
the whole Christian body of those ages, may be de
precated by enemies, or repudiated by false friends ;
but their " growing exclusiveness " is a fact of which
even our critics will remind us : and and the First
while we accept their testimony, we will Three Centuries-
add that no one in those days seems to have ques
tioned that such exclusiveness was a true " following
of the apostles," up to the days of Constantine ; — of
which hereafter.

Perhaps no greater service could be done at this
time to the cause of practical Christianity, than to
gather together all the incidental records \ and to ex
hibit the actual relation of the Church and the world
in detail, in the times between St. John and St.Atha-
nasius. It would need a more minute knowledge of
the social and domestic life in the great cities and
villages of the Eoman world than is often found among
scholars, (even such as Albert de Broglie, " Pressense,"
or Neander,) to convey the true magnitude of the
Church's spiritual and separating influences on her
individual members. But it needs to be done : for
under God's Providence, and led by His promised

h St. Justin M., Dial, with Trypho.

1 See Gibbon, and his authorities, ch. xv., xvi., xvii.

R

242 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

Spirit, by no mere accident did it come to pass that
the Church had to work out the Divine plan at first,
unaided by the powers of the world. — Our generation
certainly needs to see, how Christ's Church aimed to
found the "city of the living Godj;" to raise the
"building fitly framed together to grow to an holy
temple in the Lordk," and anticipate "the kingdom
that cannot be moved1."

§ 6. Ethical Basis of Broad Christianity.

The assertion now disproved, — That Christianity ex-
Ethicaiview pressed itself at first in " Multitudinism "

"ofMultitu- r .

dinism." — was intended apparently to lead to the
position, that what the Multitude shall in future be
pleased to hold, shall be the " Christianity" of the age
to come. It appears to have been conceived that the
course of the Gospel, and the course of the human
mind, had hitherto diverged. Eevelation, and the gen
eral Conscience of mankind, had thus far moved in
distinct orbits ; but they had at length arrived at the
point where they would coincide, and might, (by some
happy neutralizing of the original forces,) continue to
take one and the same direction in future. This dream,
it may be hoped, is somewhat dissipated : but let us
glance at the theory of this " general Conscience" —
(this "public opinion," or opinion of the majority,
which was to be the Eule of Eeligion, the " Gospel"
of the future"1,) — before we wholly lose sight of it.

We have seen that a " Generalized Christianity" is
impossible, if we accept the New Testament at all. A
Eeligion without a Doctrine, or "dogma," must be
so transcendental as to lie beyond even the region of

3 Heb. xii. 22. k Ephes. ii. 21. * Heb. xii. 28.

m Essay, p. 195.

ETHICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SUBJECT. 243

metaphysics. Dogma, we find, insists on definition ;
and " vague thinking" is a misnomer, commonly be
traying only incapacity. But the idea of a " gene
ralization of Conscience" or abstract " ethical develop
ment," is still to be considered.

No one will question, that in matters of feeling
and sentiment there actually is an average Vague Think_
standard, in any civilized community. It in|eehnndg coT*
rises and falls, with many circumstances ;
but it is specially elevated by the elevation of indi
vidual hearts and aims ; and a single hero will some
times raise the standard of the age, as a single saint
has often thrilled the hearts of millions in the Church.
Such an admission, therefore, of "average conscien
tiousness" will not assist " Multitudinism," inasmuch
as it depends for its very existence on the action,
inward and outward, of each man for himself.

It has been said that Nationalism, based thus upon
the general sentiments of an age or country, has ex
isted even in Heathenism n ; and this will not be
denied; yet even so, in every instance, Even "Heathen

' J . ' J . . ' Nationalism"

it has had some individual origin, and must have been

... somewhat based

lives on by the inward life of individual on "conscience."
souls, far more than by any formal enactments or
corporate acts. But, without pausing upon this, — (for
we have here no concern in constructing a moral de
fence for the old religions of the world before or
apart from Christ,) — it has been recognized among
Christians, and we depend on it as one glorious dis
tinction of our Eevelation, that we have been taught
in a special way the grandeur of Individual Eespon-
sibility. The absence of this, the Christian feels is
the fatal defect of every philosophical scheme of polity

n Essay, p. 169.
E2

244 TIIE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

— from Plato n, down to Ilobbes. The value of each
immortal soul of man, suspected before, is the open
announcement of the Gospel0; and it will be seen
that the theory of a " Multitudinism " crushing all
men into one general mould of thought, is prepared
to undo, as far as in it lies, that elevating work which
the Eeligion of Christ would accomplish for each of us.

In thus urging, we do not attribute to the " Multi-
tudinist" a conscious denial of Individual Eesponsi-
bility, but the maintenance of a position which vir
tually destroys it. He subordinates the sense of right
to the existing average of propriety, when he limits
the sphere of Conscientiousness, practically, to this
world.

At the risk of seeming to elaborate — what many will
The real issue of course admit at once — the priority of

before the en- .

quh-er. the claims of CONSCIENCE, it will be ne

cessary to explain with care what is so fundamental.
Let men see what the " Broad Christianity" to which
they are invited implies morally. Intellectually, it
would aim destruction at all Creeds and Doctrines, —
reckless of the fact that to deny Christianity as a
" theology of the intellect p" is to banish it from the
realm of truth. It would also, as we have seen, reject
its " Historical character q," and so consign it, after due
" criticism," to the region of fable. But there was
a step further in disparagement which it seemed pos
sible to take ; and the " Broad Eeligionists " are, we
find, prepared for it. They would remove our Chris
tianity from its lofty Moral eminence also. The Soul,
and its future, they set aside : and, reversing the in
junction alike of Moses and St. Paul, bid men " follow

n In the "Republic" — where the Individual is utterly crushed.
0 St. Matt. xvi. 26. P Essay, p. 205. * Ibid.

ETHICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SUBJECT. 245

the multitude1*," and " conform to this world, and not
be transformed for another 8."

It is easy, no doubt, to hamper any investigation of
the rights of Individual Conscience, with irrelevant ques-

•n , , . , . . T. . , , , tions to be here

collateral considerations. It might be omitted.
urged, and truly, that Society is bound to protect
itself against the aberrations of some, and the moral
obliquity of others. Again, it may be said, the equity
and benevolence of the Divine government may be
believed to provide some alleviation of the heavy
weight of Individual Eesponsibility, in the widely
varying circumstances of mankind ; and that this
alleviation may be found in the just influences of a
well- ordered Society. This, and much more, may be
admitted, beyond question ; but must not interfere
with what is now before us.

For there still remains, all the more firmly esta
blished by these very considerations, what may be
termed the substratum of Will to be dealt with, in
every man. Take away the solemn enquiries, or sub
lime anxieties, of each Individual, and Morality as
well as Eeligion must cease to have real meaning ;
there must remain, even confessedly, no more than a
nominal adherence to that which can only by courtesy
be called "Eaith," — an acquiescence so morally base,
as to amount to a repudiation of the first conditions
of all possible Duty.

No thoughtful believer could doubt that Chris
tianity really stands in all its parts on a Christianity

•'. * objectively true,

true foundation of philosophy ; however and as such de-

r r J > manding indivi-

imperfectly that may have been ascertained dual recognition.
by us. The proof, indeed, that it makes its appeal to
our Moral nature is accessible to every man who will

r Exod. xxiii. 2. * Horn. xii. 2.

246 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

but examine his own Moral Eesponsibility, as man, in
any transaction of his life. There is no sentence of
praise or blame, social or religious, pronounced by us
on the conduct of others, or by them on us, which
does not imply such Eesponsibility as results from Self-
government; which is commonly known as "Moral."
— The error which lies at the root of " Multitudinism5'
will be found to be a misconception of the whole cha
racter of Moral Eesponsibility in man, and a confusion
of that idea with a very different one, viz. his Political,
or his Social, Eesponsibility, as member of a Com
munity. — Let this be examined.

Man is so far intended by nature to be a " Self-
of Man as a governing" being, that his highest Moral

self-governing °

being. perfection lies in his most perfect Self-
control. If all men usually attained this, the func
tions of external government would be limited to a
guarding of the (still possible) errors of individuals ;
and the progress of political knowledge is teaching
men, more and more, the wisdom of non-intervention
with personal liberty of will and action ; so that it has
become almost a kind of axiom in politics, that that is
the best government for men which is able to inter
fere the least with each individual, and simply restrains
the wrongful interference of one man with another.
All external governments are no doubt inherently im
perfect, (except that of the Divine Being,) when thus
considered as restraints on Individual "Will and Power,
in the manifestation of which Moral Agency consists.
How deep a Moral confusion, then, must enter into
the speculation of theorists who transfer the great
Moral work of human life, formally, from the Indi
vidual to the Government ! And this is what these
"New Nationalists" would do.

ETHICAL EXAMINATION OF THE SUBJECT. 247

Let it not be hastily imagined that any doubt is here
to be thrown on men's real Eesponsibility Of man>s Po.
to the State; or to any Community in g^.?Sd
which their sphere of moral agency lies. by mutable law>
But the ideas must be distinguished. Our Eespon
sibility as men is prior to our Eesponsibility as citizens ;
and it is founded in our very constitution. MAN is
not only capable of originating action, but he is so con
stituted as to know that he ought to originate it, in
accordance with some anterior and unchangeable prin
ciples of truth and righteousness. But his Eespon
sibility as a citizen is at present regulated by ever-
mutable law.

It is a distinction of all Law, that it carries con

sequences to the law-breaker ; and that is what

. guishes Moral

what may be termed " Political Eespon- .Responsibility.
sibility." But there is 'this further distinction of
Moral law, — that our inward Consciousness more or
less accompanies the principle, and its results. We
have a knowledge, in the case of other laws, that they
are vindicated by such and such sanctions, and will
be attended by certain consequences ; but in the case
of Moral laws, we have a further conviction that thus
it ought to be.

A man, for instance, is truly enough said to be
" obliged" by the laws of the country or illustrations:
society to which he belongs. He is in such wise
" responsible " to the laws, that if he violates them
he incurs punishment. This kind of responsibility
has nothing certainly Moral in it. The law may be
good, or it may be bad ; yet this responsibility of the
person is real, while the law remains : i. e. if he vio
lates the law, he abides the penalty. This Political
Eesponsibility no doubt ought to be Moral 1. Political.

248 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

also, — (because States ought to conform their laws to
the essential rules of right); — but Eesponsibility to
the State is a distinct idea from Moral Eesponsibility,
even when the one happens to coincide with the other.
Again; Communities within a State, (and more
2. Social, limited in their nature in every respect, )
may have customs, habits, and rules, which infer more
or less of obligation on the members. The individual
perhaps may withdraw, if his Conscience disapprove ;
but while his membership continues, he has a Social
Eesponsibility ; which may be described, however, as
a mere " liability to consequences."

What is thus said of Political and Social laws may,
3. Physical, in some sense, be also affirmed of the Phy
sical. A "law of Nature" cannot be broken with
impunity. If we violate it, we incur the penalty. We
are Eesponsible. Yet in this case also the consequence
follows absolutely, whether our inward Consciousness
accompanies it or not.

But the idea of a true Moral Eesponsibility is far

4. Moral more than this ; it is no less, indeed,

than Chalmers vindicates as a " Supremacy of Con-

(Chaimers' science." It implies, not only that we

JBridgewater ' ^

Treatise.) are, but ought to fo, — accountable for our
own doings. For, we can well conceive that one who
had come under the extremest censures of some de
facto political or social law ; or had become the victim
of some difficult or imperfectly known physical law ;
might be regarded with the deepest sympathy and com
passion. The martyr for liberty wins our approbation,
though he perish beneath some legal tyranny. The
philanthropist, who unsuccessfully withstands some
evil social custom, obtains eventually the applause of
the human Conscience. The votary of knowledge, whose

DISTINCTION OF RESPONSIBILITY AND PROBATION. 249

struggle for science has involved him in accidental
suffering, has the good-will of his fellow-men to attend
him in his disaster. But, on the other hand, let us
be told of a man who has done a deed of injustice
and cruelty, yet (miscarrying in his object) has been
overtaken by apparent Retribution ; there is no senti
ment of approbation for him. We do not feel that his
disaster ought not to be ; but just the reverse, — that
it ought. Our Conscience records its approval.

There may be a thousand theoretical difficulties in
connexion with this high truth ; but there is a divinity
in it that will surmount them all.

But the subject must not further be pursued here,
though most important and attractive. A distinction
should, however, be pointed out between Distinction of

' ' . . . Responsibility

the idea of the Responsibility, and that of and Probation.
the Probation, of moral agents ; and it is by con
sidering moral agency in its Social position that we
shall best ascertain the distinction between the two.
— The formation of the character of the Individual
through the action of his own will, amidst the habits
and influence of Society, is not an " end," — not a final
object, or reAos". The man is intended to act on the
community of his fellow men, for their well-being ; and,
so far, perhaps, as Society is concerned, Moral Respon
sibility might be conceived to terminate in this. It is
a result which satisfies the phenomena of Social Moral
agency. But, viewed relatively to the Individual him
self, this certainly is not enough. And it is How far the
the Individual that we must consider, un- gS^f °™y
less we imagine every man to exist for the be a T€'Aos*
sake of some other man, and no man for his own sake,
— (so that the well-being of a thousand men is worth
obtaining, but the well-being of one is not to be con-

THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

sidered !) — which is absurd. We must conceive, then,
that the forming and perfecting of the character of
each Moral Agent, for his attainment of the Highest
Good, is the end of .present Probation. — Whether, in
deed, this perfecting of the individual be not the de
termining of certain ultimate relations of the creature
to the Creator — the finite to the Infinite, — is an en
quiry which would now lead us too far.

But it may be well to add that, prone as we are
Relation of the to crave for something less changeable

Individual to the . . °

Highest Good, than the decision of our own will as Indi
viduals, — (and tempted therefore to rely on the greater
seeming stability of the laws and habits of Society,)
we may find our best corrective in the thoughts here
suggested. We shall not be in danger of lower
ing our moral tone to the fascinating level of the
Multitude, if we throw ourselves on the noble belief
that our Individual Conscience is in direct communi
cation with the Moral Governor of the world, the
Supreme Eeason, the Highest Good; and that our
Individual struggle for good, and against evil — (con
ducted under His eye, who will not let the Moral
World become chaos at last,) — will ultimately be
vindicated by Him, whether its present issue appear
with us successful or not.

It cannot be necessary to point out to any one who
has followed the course of thought here pursued, that
a " Broad Nationalism," without definite Truth and
without the individual approval of Conscience, — (for
such is its intended " breadth,") — has no ground of
philosophy ; but involves an entire disbelief of all Per
sonal Virtue, as well as Faith. Knowing, as the Chris
tian does, the need which Conscience has of illumination

RELATIONS OF CONSCIENCE AND SOCIETY. 251

and guidance, still he must insist on its real action.
If Mr. Mill i can afford to risk entire freedom for the
intellect, we may at least maintain that Conscience
may be equally trusted.

But there is one further aspect of the subject, and
bearing directly on Political Eesponsibility, which must
not in this place be omitted. Many who Relations of

* Conscience and

may have acquiesced in what has been Society.
said as to the Supremacy of Conscience, and the Indi
viduality of responsible action, may still enquire,—
Has the State, as a State, no duties towards Eeligion ?
And nothing which has been said ought to cast doubt
on the solemn fact, that the State has such duties.
To put the question in more philosophical terms, — it
amounts to an enquiry into the Mutual Relations of
the Individual Conscience, and the Society of which
it is a member.

It is evident that these relations are subject to
change, as civilization advances. In earlier stages,
Society, or the State, might have almost paternal
duties towards the individual. It must be remem
bered too, that the human individual is intended at all
times to develope in Society, — a fact which of itself
implies duties of the whole to the parts, as well as of
the parts to the whole. But the laws of the Society
and the convictions of the Individual having thus,
alike, an ethical basis, must be judged ethically. In
the best conceivable polity a law would always be
moral, — i.e. not only politically, but ethically good.
We cannot even conceive of the permanent existence
of a system of law condemned by every individual
conscience. The de jure relation of law and morals is
therefore assumed in such passages as St. Paul's, —
* Mill on Liberty.

THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH,

"the law is not made for the righteous man," and
" it is not a terror to the good but to the evilV

It is the duty then of the State always to aim to
Duty of the express in Law the highest ethical convic
tions of the Consciences of individuals.

A large class of Mixed questions, connected with per
sonal and domestic rights, — such as Education, Mar
riage, Inheritance, Service, — may long need for their
settlement the exercise of political patience. In the
meantime, if the Church be free to inculcate her
divine principles, — which bear on all social subjects
directly or indirectly, — the majority of individual con
sciences will be so elevated to the Christian standard,
that the Law and Morality of the State will become
necessarily Christian.

§ 7. Appeal to History in behalf of ' Broad Christianity ?

Having traced the character and pretensions of this
The Appeal to projected " Multitudinism " thus far, and

History. shewn that it has no Scriptural and no
Ethical vindication, but is afraid of the fair operation
of all Conscience v; it might seem superfluous to go
further, and shew that the references made to History,
in support of this hypothesis of comprehension, are
worthless.

But as History has been very confidently invoked w,
we have no option. They who make the appeal must
take the consequences.

Christianity appeared on earth when the old Mytho
logies of Greece and Rome had lost their hold on man.
The Individual Conscience had parted from them ;
they had become " Multitudinistic," — and therefore

* 1 Tim. i. 9; Rom. xiii. 3. v Essay, p. 189. w Ibid., p. 37.

APPEAL TO HISTORY.

2,53

must perish. The new Eeligion made the appeal that
was needed to Conscience. In Apostolic and post-
Apostolic times there was uniformly an effort to create
a Personal Religion in connexion with a Baptismal
Creed, as has been already shewn. The age of Constan-
tine stands next, and has been referred to for a kind
of formal " inauguration x " of the principles of ' Broad
Christianity.7 Up to that time it is allowed, that
there was a " gradual hardening and systematizing ;"
in other words, fixed principle was always desired.

Constantino, by the Edict of Milan and succeeding
acts, restored to Christians their lost pro- Constantino.
perty, and gave them (notwithstanding all A-D-313-
professions of general toleration) an ascendency in
the Empire which they did not possess before y. But
great as was his interference with Christianity, both
for good and for ill, no disposition was shewn, either
by him or by any party in the Church, to dispense
with a definite Creed. This is acknowledged by
those who supposed " Multitudinism" to have been
set up by him z. The Christianity patronized by the
Imperial favour was also hierarchical and sacerdotal,
as well as dogmatic. It was therefore vitally different
from that which the " Broad-Nationalists" Muititudinism
would seek; and no arguments deduced oftheWest-
from it can, in any fairness or justice, be available by
them. There was one point, however, in which the
Imperial encouragement of Christianity may be re
garded as " Multitudinistic ;" viz., its employment
of Secular influences to spread the name of the Chris-

* Essay, p. 166.

y See in Fabricius (the Imperial Edicts for and against the
Christians) — Lux Salutaris, c. xii.
1 Essay, pp. 155—167.

2^ THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

tian Eeligion beyond the limits of its Spiritual system.
The attempt to make the whole framework of the Church
coincident with that of the Empire was broad enough,
no doubt, though not so broad as the "New Nationalists"
of our day would ask. It was natural (may we not add,
Some effects of noble ?) for a Eoman Emperor to desire to

the Imperial 7 . .

edicts. use Eeligion as a bond of Unity for his
dominions; but the effect was unhappy. It was
" the new cloth and old garment." The whole body
of the Church resisted. Bishops in their councils, and
missionaries in their remoter spheres, remonstrated,
Hosiusand an(^ recalled with affection the memory

others. of tlie Ante-Mcene freedom. The whole
body of the laws, framed by the Church from age to
age, for the Spiritual Discipline of all her members,
were one protest against it a. The spread of an Im
perial Christianity beyond the Church's real influence
was a primary cause of the withdrawal of tens of
thousands of stricter Christians to the deserts of
Africa and the mountains of Asia; and what then
remained ? — The Church of the Empire, exhausted of
so much of its active spirituality, soon ceased to be
the " salt of the earth." The energy of heathenism
had died out; the energy of Christianity (which is
Sanctity) was driven out; and the half- Chris tian,
half-heathen " JVIultitudinism," which had spread with-
Faiiofthe out the Individual Conscience, utterly

Western Empire. , i AI i i T-. • i •

A.D. 476. enervated the whole Empire; and in a
hundred and fifty years Western Borne was an easy
prey to the barbarians.

Nothing would be easier than to trace the progress

a See Mr. Bright' s " History of the period from Nicsea to Chal-
cedon;" also, my Lectures on " Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction;" and
Montalembert's Moines D"1 Occident.

APPEAL TO HISTORY.

of the secularization of Christianity, and the ruin of
Nations, side by side, — from the fifth century to our
own, — alike in the East and the West. But the task
is superfluous to those not wholly unacquainted with
the history of Europe, and useless to all others. From
the time when patriarchs corresponded in rank with
" prefects," and when each " diocese" of the Empire
had its primate, each province its metropolitan, and
each metropolitan of necessity his suffragans, a nominal
Christianity sprung up faster than the Church could
sanctify it. Being unconscientious, it could but ruin
the nations. — The attempts of Theodosius, and after
wards of Justinian, to digest the laws of the Church
and the Empire, were resolute efforts of justiman*s
great minds to find some theory to com
bine the facts existing around them ; but they were
vain. The fall of the exarchate of Eavenna A.D.753.
to the barbarians, in the year 753, is commonly as
signed as the era of the extinction of the Eoman law
in Italy ; and of the failure with it of the great im
perial schemes for " comprehending " the world in
the Church, or rather, for amalgamating the two.

Each nation of the West, from Charlemagne on
wards, in its turn aimed at the same im- Charlemagne.
possible end, — impossible while man is a moral agent,
— coercive National Unity in Eeligion and Policy.

The great systems of Feudal Law which prevailed
among the tribes which overwhelmed the Feudal law-
Eoman civilization, — the Salic law, the Eipuarian, the
Burgundian, the Lombard, and others, — were all im
pregnated with the Eoman spirit, and equally desired
a National Unity, partly secular and partly spiritual.
Here for the first time we find the Eeligious element
predominating, and not unfrequently preserving the

256 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

See the Trea- social system from extinction. Imperial-
toTheTuStn ism had sought to mould the Church to
collection. ^s great earthly purposes ; Feudalism as
sisted the Church in moulding, for some higher end, the
character of nations. But under the influence of Feudal
ism, all Europe tended to become one great Hierarchy,
from the days of Charlemagne to those of Hildebrand.
ISTow it has been said, that Christianity, in fact,
made its great triumphs by means of the medieval
Multitudinism b. Nations were " born in a day." The
assertion involves a petitio of the whole question ; for
those who believe Eeligion to be an imposture, apart
from individual Conscience, will demur altogether to
these alleged " triumphs." If France became Chris
tian in a multitude, Spain became Arian in a multi
tude, and had an obstinate State-Axiamsm for some
hundred years. The leaven of "Multitudinism" is so
defiling that it may soon degrade any Church to a mere
establishment) in half its elements ; an Establishment
as debased as that of Louis XIV. supported only by
Dragonnades. — (Anywhere, indeed, where Savonarolas
are burnt and Kens are driven out, Establishments
instead of " triumphing" preside over a wide Moral
Ruin.) — Or, to look in another direction. — The masses
who were baptized by St. Yitus in the North returned in
masses to heathenism, and adored, in their favourite
idol, " Santo vitchc," the saint who had once preached
to them of Christ. Was that a "triumph?" The
crowds, — received as crowds, — by the illustrious Xa-
vier in India, faded away in crowds once more into
their original Hinduism. Undisciplined for Christ,
the nominal Christianity came to nought. — " Multi
tudinism" failed everywhere.

b Essay, pp. 146, 159. c See Hoffman.

APPEAL TO HISTORY.

2<57

How was it in the Byzantine Empire? There
surely, if anywhere, the principle of " Mul- «Muititudin5sm»
titudinism » had a sphere for eleven hun
dred years, so far as it could have it in connexion
with a definite Creed and an authorized Hierarchy.
The great work which Trebonius and his nine co
adjutors, under Justinian's auspices, so ably achieved ;
those fifty books which digested with such care the
codes of Theodosius, of Gregory, and Hermogenes,
and the Constitutions of succeeding Emperors ; ex
hibit the rule of the Eastern civilization, from the
rise of Constantinople in the fourth century to its
fall to the Mahometans in the fifteenth. Can any one
refer with pride to that course of " Multitudinism"
in those long ages of growing decrepitude ? Is there
much in the spectacle to encourage the attempt, poli
tical or religious, to force into existence an Ecclesias
tical and Civil Unity ?

If from the fourth to the ninth century the Eastern
Church made some struggle to act on the Nomo.cai:on of
ancient Discipline of Christ, as an inde
pendent reality, it is evident that from the time of Pho-
tius the struggle was practically over. The Nomo-canon
fixes the character of the Byzantine Church and State
henceforth. A " discipline," degenerated to a dead for
malism, consummated doubtless a "Unity," but it was
at the cost of Moral life. It was put to shame by the
new-born vigour of Islamism, — a success- Mahometamsm.
ful, because a confessedly sensual, u Multitudinism,"
defying the Christian name. As the Feudalism of the
West ended in Papacy, so the "Photianism" of the East
was, at length, what we now term "Erastianism," of the
most unreserved type that the civilized world has known.
It has received its retribution since 1453, A.D. 1453.

s

258 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

Oriental Muiti- beneath, the Ottoman rule ! Its whole
in1? lesson to us is a warning. There is some-

*L°C- thing, indeed, sublime in the continued
tures, P. eo.) existence of Oriental Christianity at all,
" amidst the fires, unconsumed " so long ! — If, in the
future Providence of God, it may be permitted to
emerge from the ordeal of lengthened degradation
and suffering, may it have unlearned its unhappy
traditions of Secular policy, and abandon at last a
" Multitudinism " which wrought out the chains of
a miserable Captivity, though it paralyzed the tyrant
hand that forged them !

But our own concern is with the Western, rather
than the Eastern civilization; and to this the dis
cussion (as has been intimated d) rightly must return ;
and the more so, that we may have a summary view
of our own position now.

England inherited the "Western form of the pro-
England follows hlem which the present age, or the fu
ture, must solve, as to the position of the
State and the Church; the relations, of Society and
the Individual Conscience. Speaking generally, our
institutions were, under God's Providence, of Eeudal
origin; and the feeling of Nationality was strong
in us, as in all the Northern races. This was shewn,
without question, in the Anglo-Saxon period, —
(at least from the time of Theodore, himself an
Oriental); but it was modified by many influences
ab extra. Separated by the sea from the continent of
Europe, our National life had a distinctive develop
ment. We became Eoman, but remained National.
We had lost that union with the civilization of Europe

d Essay, p. 147.

APPEAL TO HISTORY. 2,59

which in some degree was ours till the old Eomans
left us to that National self-government which in the
fifth century began to be a reality ; but The Heptarchy.
the union of the Heptarchy, and still more The Coniuest-
the Norman Conquest, re-established our relations with
the Continent and with Rome, on a footing which
Augustine's mission could not attain. Nevertheless,
from the Conquest to the Beformation there was a
struggle of the "two powers," the spiritual and the
temporal, conducted without a definite appreciation
of the exact issue. The Church would not have deli
berately said that prelates, with the pope at their
head, ought really to supersede kings, parliaments,
and magistrates ; the State would not have said that
it could give validity to sacraments, and salvation to
souls, and could therefore afford to do without bishops
and priests. Each party stood in need of the other ;
and each felt it. Vacillating, irritated, and just con
scious that the right settlement of Church and State
had not been attained, our Nation remained till the
sixteenth century; when the strong will of Henry VIII.
interfered. — We in England have certainly tried fairly
to fight out the battle between these "two powers;"
so have some Eoman Catholic nations abroad : the
Lutherans smothered the struggle.

But in the pre-Reformation times there was this ad
vantage on the Ecclesiastical side, — it was The Pre-Refor-

0 ' mation Unity of

not subject to the same organic changes England.
as the State. The people, as a whole, might be di
vided as to the succession of their Kings ; but not
as to the Creeds and Sacraments. Had the temporal
been as one, as the ecclesiastical power, the theory of
" Multitudinism" would for the time have seemed to
have a triumph. The National Oneness was arrested

s2

260 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

by a divided allegiance in the pre-Beformation days ;
as truly as by divided opinions in religion in the times
which followed. — (And this is the inherent weak
ness of all "Multitudinism," that it must follow the
fortunes of two masters.) — But the Eeligious unanimity
of England in the medieval age, though great, was
not distinctively local ; and the same causes which
broke up the unity of the Church elsewhere, operated
here with equal power. Then came the Tudor and
Stuart transitions; and the great change of 16SS, as
delineated at the outset of this enquiry; to which
we revert.

The Bevolution was a political necessity, which for

Revolution. the time bewildered the consciences of the

people. The relations of Church and State settled

themselves very greatly, to human eyes, by hap-hazard.

(BofnprinS'?hts Attempts were made by such writers as

Wake on Con- Bumet and Wake on the one hand, and

vocation.

c. Leslie.) Leslie on the other, to adjust the claims
of the u Eegale and the Pontificate ;" — but, after this,
all parties among us took up that position which, with
some variations, they have since maintained. The Act
of Uniformity had, in some sort, closed up enquiry
into such fundamental questions ; and the suspension
of Convocation, and the extradition of the Conjurors,
completed the de facto settlement. Conscience, through
every historical change, secretly clung to the truth
that Eeligion is a spiritual concern of each Individual.
" Practical men" despaired, however, of a solution of
the old difficulty of imperium in imperio, on paper ; and
a compromise was the resort of all sides, with some
surrender of truthfulness, perhaps with all.

The old u Church and State" party had triumphed

ADJUSTMENT DEMANDED. 261

in 1688, by abating their Churchmanship, and hence
forth they could only maintain their ground against
different classes of opponents by permitting, and
using, different " schools of thought," (as we have
since expressed it,) and by adopting different, and
scarcely consistent, methods of defence. Against Rome
the controversy was still carried on, on the principles
of Andrewes and Laud ; against Rationalism and Non
conformity on those of Warburton. But eventually
the Nation grew to doubt the grounds of the actual
religious compromise; and wearied of attempts to
modernize ecclesiastical machinery, as antiquated as
the costume of the middle ages. A Church only too
willing to become " Multitudinistic" was gradually
losing its life. Its better members " endured/' — as
if tacitly reserving to themselves the right to schism,
wiien things might become intolerable. The Conscience
of the Nation made some gallant efforts to right itself;
but in vain. Outside the Church, the Tolerated Non
conformity, — while denying priesthood, sacraments, and
rites, — vindicated the " distinction of spiritual and tem
poral," and so intrenched itself in the consciences of
the uneducated and sincere. — From Owen From Owen
and Patrick, down to Seeker, that dis
tinction had been fought for. Then came an ominous
silence of nearly a hundred years; — and, Where are
we now ?

§ 8. Adjustment Demanded.

It has seemed to some, that we are rapidly drift
ing towards the entire Separation of the Apparent position.
Church, as a Church, from its union with the State,
and the adoption of that position, as Christians, which
our Religion held 1,600 years ago. — Are we then to

262 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

retrace our way through all the wilderness of so many
ages, as though Providence had misled us all along ?
— The question is a grave one ; let it be well
Need of some weighed before our future become hope-
adjustment. iessiy complicated.

Doubtless in those first ages of the Church and the
Empire, when the old religions were decaying or de
cayed, there was entire independence on both sides ;
but there followed not only jealousy, discord, and per
secution, but even a disruption of society, rendering
some adjustment absolutely necessary; and in that
adjustment the Church, and not the sects, naturally
took the lead. — The nature of Man has not changed ;
he needs Government. The nature of Religion is not
changed ; it needs freedom of Conscience. May it not
be for our own Nation, leading so prominently the van
of civilization, at length to teach the truth in this
also, — that, while learning to do the work which is
proper to them, all wise States must leave to the Chris
tian Church, in all its parts, the task of doing its own
work, more and more unimpeded? Our " National
ism " in Eeligion can only be real, when it is con
scientious. And Conscientiousness, as we have seen,
is individual. But why may not the " Toleration" of
the nineteenth century, and the Individualism of the
first, or second, or third, here at length coincide? —
Some sectarian jealousies may yet be hard to deal
with ; but let the Christianity of the age to come be
free among us, and it will have no need to fear the
intellectual and moral struggle which lies before us.
But at this point the question is naturally raised

The Anglican ^J some,— How has the Church of Eng-
rig-!;tchtoacon£ ^nd, "the Church of the XXXIX
deration. Articles," any more right, in virtue of

ADJUSTMENT DEMANDED. 263

this demanded " freedom," to assume the Eeligious
direction of the people, than any other Christian com
munity among us ? Granting that some form of Chris
tianity must take the lead, in the settlement of those
mixed questions where social interests and moral truth
are likely to touch ; or in the general instruction of the
people; — What right has the " Church of the Prayer-
book" to claim this position beyond all others ?

It will not be expected that, in reply to this en
quiry, a disCUSSion as to the truth Of the Hereditary claim.

Anglican doctrines should be opened. It would not
only be out of place, but interminable. The answer
is a practical one. The Anglican Church has not
claimed for herself a position, she has inherited it;
and there is no sect which could with any probability
compete for it with her. She has it by historical con
tinuity and descent. The Church of the Monks of
Bangor, the Church of Augustin, the Church of Theo
dore, of Dunstan, of Stigand, of Becket, of Warham,
of Parker, of Andrewes, of Laud, of Pearson, Wilson,
Butler, has gone through all the National phases of
all our generations, and has preserved, through all,
the same Creeds of the Ecumenical Councils, the same
Canonical Scriptures, the one Baptismal Rite, the one
Eucharistic Consecration in the ancient words of the
first Liturgies, and an unbroken Hierarchy. A multi
tude of questions may be ingeniously raised as to all
these, but they are irrelevant here. There is no dis
puting the broad fact. No one can pretend that the
de facto Church of England is, or ever has been, in
the position of a sect forcing itself, ab extra, on the
Nation. It has come down with the Nation, through
all its varied fortune, and shared its destiny. Of course
this does not prove that she ought to have perpetuity

264 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

among us; but it accounts for the position actually
occupied. The theory of some might be, that if there
is to be "an alliance," the State should be free to
choose her own Church ; but history is stronger than
theory ; and history, recording the mutual action of
Church and State on each other, assigns no such sub
lime function of religion-choosing in the abstract to
either Parliament or Monarch; on the contrary, any
assumption which has ever looked like this, for a
moment, has always been a failure.

Whether that form of our Church which it received
when the XXXIX Articles were imposed shall for ever
continue without change, is a question which cannot
be answered on principles of the past ; the future will
deal with it on its own principles. The idea of a
"Parliamentary Ee vision" belongs to the past. It is
more than 200 years old. The idea of "relaxation
of subscription" by the authority of the Crown, is of
the past. It is Tudor. The adjustment of the future
must be based on higher principles, or it will be re
jected as no fit religious settlement for a people which
has outgrown the folly which could recognise the Se
cular as Divine.

The present position of the Anglican Church is
Present this : ^^e *s believed by her own sons to
position. have possession of that Divine Eevelation,
with its vital gifts of Grace, bestowed by Christ on
our world 1,800 years ago. She has certain local
peculiarities also, some of them restraining her use of
that Eevelation, and among them this, — that she is
not free to act as a corporate body, as all other reli
gious bodies around her are. She is hampered by
accidents of her historical position from which she
ought, as a spiritual body, to be free as the first

ADJUSTMENT DEMANDED. 265

Christians at the Pentecost. The advance of educa
tion, civilization, science, social economy, and law, all
warn her that " old things are passing away." She
will need all the energy, power, and grace which
Christ has bestowed, if she is to fulfil her mission
now. The sooner the State learns, that to treat the
Church as an unspiritual body is to make her worth
less as an instrument even of Civilization, — the better
it will be for the Nation. The Church pretends to be
more ; she must be what she pretends, or abandon the
pretence , — and be abandoned by the conscience of the
people. The Spiritual Freedom of the Church is her
right, and it can neither honestly nor safely be with
held. Let her be put to the fair trial of her sacred
powers ; if she cannot grapple with a free and intel
lectual age, then let her, in the Name of Him who is
True, take the consequences, whatever they be. But
let not the unjust and ignominious course be adopted,
of employing and overstraining her "spiritual" cha
racter6 for some purposes, and denying it for others;
using and yet half - outlawing her higher intellects.
That can only end in the most hopeless National Infi
delity. And let her not be bound to the cowardly
political traditions of the least spiritual era of our
history. Let her be free to reform her Convocation,
reform her spiritual laws, and regulate her internal
Discipline ; and if then she cannot deal with the age
in which her lot is cast, her place may be taken by
some loftier and better teacher.

The State may fairly be enquired of by us, { "Why

e As, for instance, in the licences issued to non-conformists by
archidiaconal and other courts — which confuse the consciences of
those who receive, as well as of those who give them.

266 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

Unreasonable- are you afraid of us ? You can trust all

ness and unfair- ^ 1,1- m -ii •

ness of distrust, the sects to do their own will, within
fair legal restrictions for mutual protection ; and why
not us ? You upbraid us warmly for our deficiencies
at times ; and then refuse to allow us to act on our
own highest principles ! What means this subtle sort
of homage to our spiritual character ? If your clergy
be, as they are sometimes told, a ' learned clergy,'
(at least in comparison of others,) if, considering their
numbers, they are (not untruly) thought in some re
spects exemplary, — on what reasonable ground shall
a nation which proclaims itself educated and free,
insist on shackling the intellectual and spiritual ac
tivity of its teachers ? '

The extent, truly preposterous, to which the un-
derminers of our whole Christianity claim for them
selves a monopoly of intellect and fearless " pursuit
of truth," forces upon us this great subject. Divine
Eevelation being true, must deal with the intellects no
less than with the passions and interests of mankind.
But this means not the mere action of isolated in
tellect, apart from all the corporate and social con
ditions of the mindf. "We can take no narrow view

f The mutual relation of our corporate duties, and our Individual
Moral life, can only be rightly adjusted — perhaps only rightly
apprehended, when the greatest freedom of action has been con
ceded. Professor Goldwin Smith, in his Lectures (p. 65), has sug
gested some difficulties in connexion with the occasional sacrifice
of the Individual — as in acts of heroism for the benefit of com
munities, or of human nature ; or as in the toil of the present
generation for the future. In addition to what I have already said
on this subject (infra] in the latter part of the section on "the
Ethical View," (pp. 51 — 54,) it is obvious to mark that the Virtue
of Action, in each case supposed by the Professor, first pertains
to the Individual — though certain advantage flows to others. The

ADJUSTMENT DEMANDED. 267

of the field of human thought. It is we who are for
freedom, and the courageous following up of every
ascertained truth, and this will yet be seen ; but we
shall be certainly put to work at a fearful disadvantage,
through the intrusions of many a pedantic half- scholar,
half-recluse, (for whom the Church is little answer
able,) unless we may be free as a Body to do all our
great Master's will among men.

Too often the term " intellectual freedom" seems as
if identified with a departure from all the Our inteiiectuai
foundations of the faith ; which is as rea
sonable as if the demand for moral freedom were sup
posed to imply a surrender of all the grounds of
morals, thus far admitted among mankind. But let
us be reasonably understood, and we can recognize
no danger in claiming for the Church of Christ all
the freedom which He bequeathed, and we believe
that that alone will secure the harmonious develop
ment of all the spiritual nature of man.

Not that the satisfaction of those who are deemed
the intellectual classes is the principal end Our gphere and
to be aimed at by a Church which has to its diffi°ulties-
care for all. Perhaps the hardest fact to be encountered,
and the most humiliating, is that the lowest forms of
Puritanism are still popular with the ignorant multi
tude and therefore with their politicians, and by them
even identified with Spirituality. But while the temp-
relation to the individual probation may, and indeed must, be very
intricate ; because we know so little of the whole moral condition
of any individual. But this does not throw the least doubt on the
reality of Personal Responsibility, in any case ; any more than all
the other incidents of life in which the influence of others so con
stantly touches us. Indeed many an act of heroism would cease
to be noble, were it not for the Personal responsibility of the hero.

268 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

tation to pander to this must be withstood, it implies
also a condition of things to be wisely ministered to. —
A fact, however, scarcely less hard and less degrading-,
is the prevalence of a quasi-scientific spirit, which is
i. Popular. afraid to look into its own conclusions,
and has a greedy faith in the latest uncouth imagining
of some " free-thinker," who never escaped in his life
from the trammels of sham-philosophy, but just has
a scepticism as to the Bible, and a horror of a close
thinker, if he happens to be a theologian. Bishop
Berkeley in his day chastised some such — g.

But in becoming equal to the requirements of the
2. Ecclesiastical, age to come, the Anglican Church will
have to conform her Ecclesiastical System to new posi
tions. Only, if she be a Church, — really and spiri
tually so, — she must be free to do it. — It may not un
justly be thought a providential circumstance that so
many organic questions, connected with the Church,
have thus far been staved off. 'Not " Church Bates"
only, but (and far more) the "comprehensive mea
sure " which has been threatened as to our Eccle
siastical Courts, has been postponed time after time.
May it not seem as if designed to give us space
for reflection ?

At present, if any question be referred to Ecclesias
tical Courts, sympathy is evoked for the persons con
cerned, as if they were victims of antiquated oppres
sion. Yet how loud is the outcry raised if scandals,
either religious or moral, are unchecked by authority !
— If the purely spiritual or religious questions which
are stirred in the Anglican Church were settled with no
more intervention of legal authority than if they were

8 In "The Analyst" and "Alciphron;" and his replies to the
Cambridge Mathematician, &c.

ADJUSTMENT DEMANDED. 269

litigations among Baptists, the world would soon learn
whether this learned and extensive Anglican Church
had a life of its own. Then let purely spiritual be
separated from mixed questions, before any measure
is adopted as to Courts Ecclesiastical.

The Church, confident in her Faith, and able, with
out jealousy, without fear, to act on every HOW the church
Conscience, will not fail to be " National :" £eaey 8S> ^
for she will possess (she knows) the high "
intellects and best hearts of the time. Since the con
flict, to which Christianity is to be called in these
days, must be a more vital one than it has yet known,
is it too much for the Church to ask to be allowed to
meet it with her own weapons, and in her own way ?
And if then she carries with her, as she will, the
individual convictions of the great mass of the thought
ful laity of England, the idea of even ruling "by a
majority" for a while, is not so unfamiliar, as to forbid
the expectation that even on that ground the Church
will yet receive a "National" homage and support.

Of course, if men regard Religion only, or chiefly,

as it tells on this world, they must soon useiessness of

. . . political hypo-

arrive at practical conclusions widely dif- ef
ferent from all those of Churchmen, with whom the
engrossing thought is, as to the destiny of each soul in
the world beyond the grave. With the all-important
enquiries arising out of the question11, "What shall I
do to be saved?" it is impossible here to deal. The
great doctrines of our future happiness or ruin, re
ward or retribution, belong to the foundations of all
Moral responsibility. But even to the mere politicians
of the present hour it may not be useless to point out
the impossibility of their dealing much longer with
h Essay, pp. 153, 161, 196.

270 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

Christianity on their hypothesis. Things cannot con
tinue as they are. Some may of course be quite
willing to go on, on the tacit assumption that the
Christian Scriptures, and generally the Christian
System, may be used as far as convenient, and then
dropped; but the advancing education and under
standing of mankind will demand intelligible Prin
ciples, and put it beyond the power of politicians to
deal thus immorally with religion. As to the as
sumption of the Eclectics, that the Moral argument
is against an " ex elusive" Christianity; we meet it,
at present, by urging, that the alternative now is an
Exclusive Christianity, or none.

The people will certainly require statesmen to speak
out their real meaning : for the people's conscience is
more with us than the statesmen. Once let it be
understood that there is nothing supernatural in
the " Eeligion of the nation," and, as Eomanists well
know, its days are numbered. A sacred book (dis
obeyed in more than half its rules) will not save it.
To take out of the Bible a few "leading principles,"
and leave the rest, satisfies no honest conscience.
If this were lawful, why complain of the " free-
handling " critics ? — what do they more than this ?
— Then, again, let men well consider what it means
to submit spiritual questions to the arbitration of a
Parliament consisting of four or five different reli
gions. None can fail to see that it must hopelessly
widen the growing distance, between men of thought
and cultivation, and all popular Christianity. The
whole English people will certainly perceive that
it implies a denial of all Objective Religious Truth.
They will feel how impossible it must be for a real
Church to go on, with its principles and its practices

ADJUSTMENT DEMANDED. 271

more and more at variance. This must lead to in
fidelity, social despair, convulsion. Roman Catho
lics have a system and theory to which some of their
people at least conform, and others attempt it, and all
abstain from denying it; the same may be said of
all classes of Nonconformists; but a great mass of
population, nominally left to the Church, are taught
to consider themselves Christians, without as much as
an attempt on their part to follow any distinct Chris
tianity at all, — such, for example, as the system im
plied in any one of St. Paul's Epistles. To the Bible
they do not conform, nor to the Prayer-book; and
with a half- traditional modification of Natural Reli
gion, they frequently are more like " Positivists" than
Christians; that is, they are vague believers in one
another, and what is called " public opinion."

Well will it be if the present controversy bring back
honest minds to the principle impressed Reai member-
on the history of all Christendom from the "S^SSS
Pentecost onwards, — that the Communi- or not>what il is-
cants of a Church, with their baptized dependents, are
the Church. " We being many are one Body : for we
are all partakers of that one Bread1." A departure
from this point, towards any other " comprehension,"
is a departure in the direction of ultimate infidelity, —
which only a lack of the logical faculty fails at once
to detect. For the iv oriel's sake, no less than the
Church's, the sacred rites of our religion must, before
long, be more discriminatingly used. The Church
cannot for ever go on lamenting her " lack commination
of Discipline." The State cannot continue
nominally to acknowledge our Christianity as Divine,
and then brow-beat it — -(as capriciously as Indians

1 1 Cor. x. 17.

272 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

their idol when deaf to their prayers). This
never be tolerable, to a people who, whatever they
become, will not be Indian in superstition.

Let men ponder well the theory, whether it be
called " Positivism," or " Multitudinism," or this
ideal "Nationalism," which "philosophers" have pro
pounded for them, as thinking the world is now ripe

The theory for it. " Broad Christianity" as if to

brought to TI-,

shame us. put us to shame, has been held up as
a glass before the mind of this generation ; it is repre
sented as demanded by the character and needs of
the age. And yes, — this " Multitudinism" is truly
the only idea which will fairly account for the treat
ment which our Eeligion has submitted to receive, — a

Unprincipie. theory of ^PRINCIPLE. The Conscience of
the Church has been so frequently crushed, the free ex
pression of her mind so restrained, that bolder thinkers
than our statesmen have not hesitated at last (as has
been seen) to put out as a theory for future action
that which has, however unconsciously, been almost
a theory of the past, — a " Multitudinist " National
Church, of which "public opinion" is to be the rule,
and from which every creed and article may be with
drawn, and only such portion of the New Testament
be admitted as each individual may approve as gen
uine, and "interpret" to his own mind !

Neither for the Nation, nor for the Individual, can
its impossibility, it be safe to go on without Principle. —

(Gladstone's Conscious of this, a modern statesman.

" State in its Re- . . „ , . . .

lation with the at the beginning ot his political life, gave
himself with steady devotion to the care
ful examination of the theories of law and philosophy
and government, by which in past generations the
facts of our religious and social life had been in-

ADJUSTMENT DEMANDED. 273

terpreted; and he ended by abandoning theorizing.
Solvitur ambulando ! There was everything that was
noble in the effort ; but may it not have been nobler
in its cessation than in its action, (needful as that
may certainly have been,) — if it be clearly seen, that
there are first truths of Political as well as of Moral
science, which are anterior to definition and proof.
Gamaliel's lesson, to "let these men alone," if their
work may be of Godk, is no mean result to gain. —
To have missed a theory, and to have arrived at a
Principle of action, is worth all the intellectual toil.

And this is the Principle, that Christianity aims
at each Conscience, — and must be left to The principle
do its own work. Fearless for the Truth, and patient,
it welcomes every honest effort of the human mind.
It bears a message from the Eternal, to each undying
soul; and "whoso hath ears to hear, let him hear1."
Thus it has the courage to win even a minority from
the ranks of the world to the "knowledge of the
Truth;" and yet claim for them to be the "salt of
the whole earth." If for a time " not many wise,
not many mighty, not many noble m," be her promised
adherents, she still would refuse to reckon a merely
nominal adherence to her faith; for that would be
morally base, a falsehood, a denial of Duty and Con
science. And if despair of theorizing has taught states
men this at last, it shall indeed be well ! And this
great and glorious England of ours, with a Church
" National," not in name only, but in Conscience,
may have a moral future such as the world has
not yet seen.

There have been speculators before now who have
determined that the soul of man is equally illustrated.

k Acts v. 38. l St. Matt. xi. 15. m 1 Cor. i. 26.

274 THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH.

diffused throughout his body ; there have been others,
who have located it personally in the brain, or even
in one special gland : but that our Personality is truly
one, however difficult its definition, none have ques
tioned. And if a Church by its spiritual and moral
energy shew itself to be the Soul of any people, there
will be no dispute as to the law of its diffusion, or as
to its being " National." It will be the free utterance,
for the body of that Nation, of its highest aspirations
after Truth and Goodness ; and it will remain the
reverenced Minister of " hopes full of immortality."
Let no one imagine so vain a thing as that a prac-

its opposite, tical people will tolerate a generalized
" ideal of Christianity" as Divine. As little also will
a free people bear any form of compulsory Eeligion.
Yet will " the public" ultimately demand something
more spiritual than its own " opinion." It will have
an " historical Christianity." A narrow few may
have already persuaded themselves to "give up the
Church, and fall back on the Bible;" but what will
they do with the " critics ?" — Certainly they will need
a learned clergy ; and what then shall become of the
fanatics ? Will they do as they have done before, —
avail themselves of the scholarship which shields them,
and then go on awhile, until they need a fresh de
liverance ?

But let us hope for better things. A noble specta-

The prospect, cle it may be for the world, if this free
land, with its illustrious Monarch and free Parliament,
should teach observant Europe, that a highly educated
Church may be trusted to fulfil her spiritual mission.
A statesman really worthy of the name, seeing among
our twenty thousand clergy some, and not a few, fore
most in science, and all eager for the spread of real

ADJUSTMENT DEMANDED. 275

knowledge; seeing others (and they too not a few)
giving their high gifts and hard lives to difficult enter
prise for Christ's cause in the whole habitable globe ;
seeing, once more, the vast multitude of them engaged
in the ten thousand villages of our nation, in life-long
work for the Gospel, — such an one might believe that
such a Church, freely and generously trusted, might
make Christianity Catholic in our land. Our Church's
character is marvellously "National" now; it is one
with the people, even in its faults no less than its ef
forts ; and it doubts not that its future, in the truest
sense, shall be "National." Nor would it be less
speedily so, but far more, if the Church were even as
free as the judges in their proper sphere, — that sphere
being entirely Spiritual.

It will not detract from the National character of
the Church, if her inner and spiritual ^ai
affairs be untouched by the State.— Look
at the ten thousands of English homes of which, in
uncounted examples, it may be said in the touch
ing words of an apostle, there is a " Church in that
house n!" Are they not the glory of the "Nation?"
Have they no inner life beyond that which statesmen
can regulate ? Are they not " National ?"

And so, in a far higher measure, and with yet
fuller authority and grace, the "Nationality" of our
CHURCH OF ENGLAND, if she may do her own work,
shall yet abide, — founded on the "hidden life"
which CHRIST has given her, and sanctifying the
souls of the people, for HIM who "purchased" them
for His own °.

n Col. iv. 15. ° Acts xx. 28.

THE CREATIVE WEEK.

rpHEEE is no attaining a satisfactory view of the
" mutual relations of Science and Scripture till men
make up their minds to do violence to neither, and
to deal faithfully with both. On the very threshold,
therefore, of such discussions as the present, we are
encountered by the necessity for a candid, truthful,
and impartial exegesis of the sacred text. This can
never be honoured by being put to the torture, "We
ought to harbour no hankering after so-called " recon
ciliations," or allow these to warp in the very least
our rendering of the record. It is our business to
decipher, not to prompt ; to keep our ears open to
what the Scripture says, not exercise our ingenuity
on what it can be made to say. We must purge our
minds at once of that order of prepossessions which
is incident to an over- timid faith, and, not less scru
pulously, of those counter-prejudices which beset a
jaundiced and captious scepticism. For there may
be an eagerness to magnify, and even to invent diffi
culties, as well as an anxiety to muffle them up and
smooth them over, — of which last, the least pleasing
shape is an affectation of contempt disguising obvious
perplexity and trepidation. Those who seek the re
pose of truth had best banish from the quest of it,
in whatever field, the spirit and the methods of so
phistry. The geologist, for example, if loyal to his
science, will marshal his facts as if there were no

278 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

book of Genesis. Even so is it the duty of the inter
preter of the Mosaic text to fix its sense and investi
gate its structure as though it were susceptible of nei
ther collation nor collision with any science of geology.
If we cancel the disturbing divisions of chapter
and verse, which are certainly one mask on the face
of the record, and liberate the parallelism, — the sup
pression of which, if parallelism there be, must needs
constitute another, — the Scripture account of creation,
with slight though not gratuitous deviations from the
Authorized Version, will stand as follows : —

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was desolate and void :

And darkness was upon the face of the deep :

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light :

And there was light :

And God saw the light that it was good :

And God divided the light from the darkness :

And God called the light Day :

And the darkness He called Night :

And the evening and the morning were the first day.

2.

And God said, Let there be a canopy in the midst of the waters :

And let it divide the waters from the waters :

And God made the canopy :

And divided the waters which were under the canopy from the

waters which were above the canopy :
And it was so.
And God c illed the canopy Heaven :

And the evening and the morning were the second day.

3.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered
together unto one place :

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 279

And let the dry land appear :

And it was so.

And God called the dry land Earth :

And the gathering together of the waters called He Seas :

And God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth shoots :

The herb yielding seed, the fruit-tree yielding seed-enclosing fruit,

after his kind, upon the earth :
And it was so.

And the earth brought forth shoots :
The herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding seed-

enclosing fruit, after his kind :
And God saw that it was good :

And the evening and the morning were the third day.

4.

And God said, Let there be lights in the canopy of heaven to

divide the day from the night :

And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years :
And let them be for lights in the canopy of heaven to give light

upon the earth :
And it was so.

And God made two great lights :
The greater light to rule the day :
And the lesser light to rule the night :
He made the stars also.
And God set them in the canopy of heaven to give light upon

the earth :

And to rule over the day and over the night :
And to divide the light from the darkness :
And God saw that it was good :

And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

5.

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving

creature that hath life :

And let fowl fly above the earth in the open canopy of heaven :
And God created great leviathans :
And every moving creature, which the waters brought forth

abundantly, after their kind :

280 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

And every winged fowl after his kind :

And God saw that it was good :

And God blessed them, saying :

Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas :

And let fowl multiply in the earth :

And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

6.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after

his kind :

Cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind :
And it was so.

And God made the beast of the earth after his kind :
And cattle after their kind :

And everything that creepeth on the earth after his kind :
And God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness :
And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea :
And over the fowl of the air :
And over the cattle :
And over all the earth :

And over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
So God created man in His own image :
In the image of God created He him :
Male and female created He them :
And God blessed them, and God said unto them :
Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it :
And have dominion over the fish of the sea :
And over the fowl of the air :

And over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
And God said, Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed,

on the face of all the earth :
And every tree which has seed-enclosing fruit :
To you it shall be for meat :
And to every beast of the earth :
And to every fowl of the air :

And to everything that creepeth on the earth, wherein is life :
I have given every green herb for meat :
And it was so.

And God saw everything He had made, and behold it was very good :
And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 28

7.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished :

And all the host of them :

And on the seventh day God put period to the work which He

had made :
And He rested on the seventh day from all His work which

He had made.

And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it :
Because that in it He rested from all His work which God

created and made.

"Now every reader looking with a fresh eye on this
sublime composition, must be struck, first of all, with
its indubitable unity. All its parts cohere in the
strictest symmetry, and bind up into an integral and
indissoluble whole. There is here the same organic
unity which marks the Decalogue, or the Lord's
Prayer, or the parable of the labourers in the vine
yard : or, if we go out of the Bible for comparisons,
it combines with lyric breadth of treatment and state-
liness of tread, all the compactness of some solemn
sonnet freighted with a single thought from begin
ning to end, — severe and yet exhaustive, — in which
abridgement would be mutilation, and addition ex
crescence. It therefore occasions no surprise to find
at Gen. ii. 4 the clearest marks of a break and a tran
sition a ; one strain of composition closed, a fresh strain

a " Post enumerationem et expositionem dierum septem inter-
posita est quasi quaedam conclusio, et appellatus est Liber crea-
turse, &c., Gen. ii. 4." — St. Augustine, De Genesi contra Manich.,
ii. 1.

"Even a cursory perusal will convince us that they consist of
two distinct sections." — Kurtz, Bible and Astronomy, Edinburgh,
1859, ch. i. ; also Wiseman, "Connection between Science and
Revealed Religion," vol. i. p. 150.

282 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

begun. Verse 4 is a bridge, or rather stepping-stone,
from the one monograph to the other. How this is
to be critically accounted for is no part of the present
enquiry. Whether, as has been thought probable
from the change of the divine nameb, and for other
reasons, certain sections of the book of Genesis are
to be viewed as recensions of more ancient materials,
and, if so, what those sections are, does not here con
cern us. Adoption, in such case, is equivalent to
authorship. Some parts of the Pentateuch, indeed,
are certainly more recent, if others are perhaps more
ancient, than Moses j just as one at least of the
Psalms is held to be of earlier, and many are known
to be of later, date than the age of David0. Who
ever believes that the Spirit of prophecy spoke be
fore the Hebrew lawgiver d, as It spoke after him,
will not deem the freest of free criticism, in this pro
vince of research, inimical to the authority of Scrip
ture. Be the explanation what it may, — variety
in a pre-existing basis or a deliberate change of
strain, — the record of the creative week is one re
cord, what follows is another. Sceptical criticism
may deny that the two monographs are harmonious :
this must not provoke refusal to recognise them
as distinct.

b From Elohim to Jehovah-Elohim. The latter the plural of
Majesty, Intensity, or Fulness of Divine Perfection, the consistency
of which with pure Monotheism is proved by Deut. vi. 4, "Jehovah
our Elohim is one Jehovah." Adam Clarke connects Elohim with
the Arabic Allah = the Adorable. Most critics interpret it as " the
Mighty One." On the plural see Kalisch, " Historical and Critical
Commentary on the Old Testament," p. 80.

c Deut. xxxiv. ; Ps. xc., cxxxvii. d Jude, ver. 14.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 283

The Mosaic heptameron is thus a whole in itself:
it is further manifest that it shuts in a whole. What
ever the work-peopled week be, it is meant absolutely
to include and enclasp the creation of the All at the
will of the One. Ere this week opened, in the con
ception of the sacred penman, God had not begun
to create : ere this week closed, He had done with
creating. Of work prior to the first day the sacred
writer knows no more than of work posterior to the
sixth. With the first day the series of creative fiats
begins; by the seventh they have ceased. uForm,?>
that is, within, " six days the Lord made heaven and
earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the
seventh day," — rested from all His work. Accord
ingly, the record articulates into seven strophes or
segments. Of which five are contain^, and two are
terminal or contain/^. The five are defined in the
clearest manner by their opening and close : — " God

said Evening and morning were the second,

third, fourth, fifth, sixth, day." The initial and final
sections are necessarily modified, the one as supply
ing an exordium, the other as forming a peroration
or climax. Still the only question that can naturally
rise is whether the exordium belongs strictly to tne
first day, or to the six days in common. Within
those six days, on either view, all is made that has
been made. During six days God works. On the
seventh day that rest is resumed which before the
first day had not been broken.

Pursuing our analysis, the exordium in abeyance,
it is further evident, not only that six days are
broadly homogeneous, and the seventh unique, — a
sisterhood of work-days in contrast to a solitary rest-
day, — but also that the six work-days part spon-

284 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

taneously into two groups, each bearing a very re
markable relation to the other :—

God said, Let there be light : God said, Let there be lights :

And there was light. And God made two great lights.

God said, Let there be a canopy God said, Let the waters bring

in the midst of the waters : forth abundantly :

And God called the canopy And let fowl fly above the earth

Heaven. in the open canopy of heaven.

God said, Let the dry land God said, Let the earth bring
appear : forth the living creature, &c.

God said, Let the earth bring God said, Let us make man.
forth shoots, &c. Behold I have given you

every herb, &c.

It is manifest that we have here a balance and
a correlation of parts, an interlocking of the second
moiety of creative working with the first, a prelude
and a sequence, a preparation and a development.
The story of creation is told at twice. Each day has
its double and its consort. In the preliminary triad,
light is severed from darkness ; a firmament divides
the waters above from the waters below ] the dry
land is disengaged from the waters, and clad with
vegetation. In the complementary triad, light is
collected and concentrated in sun, moon, and stars;
water and air are peopled with marine animals and
birds ; lastly, the dry land is replenished with ter
restrial creatures, and with man himself, and pre
existing vegetation is gifted away to them for food.
This ground-plan betokens a delicate co- adjustment of
group to group — a fulness and finish of parallelism —
which corrects the first impression of simple con
tinuity. The first day pairs with the fourth, the
second with the fifth, and the third with the sixth:

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 285

each, to borrow a term from comparative anatomy,
a homotype to each6. Consequently the structure
requires a complex symbol :—

a. 1. Light. "| The heavens

b. 2. Firmament between the Waters. > and

c. 3. Dry Land (with plants) above the Waters. J the earth,

a. 4. Lights : Sun, Moon, and Stars. ^ and all the

b. 5. Water- Animals and Birds. > host of them.

c. 6. Land- Animals — Man. J (Gen. ii. 1.)

The mighty mansion is first built, next furnished.
A triad of "days" is devoted to its architecture, a
triad to its occupants. The former describes a series
of extrications, — light from darkness, the waters from
the air and sky, the dry land from the waters. The
latter portrays a series of formations, — the heavenly
bodies in celestial space, the animal population of the
waters and the air, lastly, land -animals and man.
Thus the first three days are so many finger-posts to
the second three f. In consonance with which bi
partite arrangement, there may be noted a certain
expansion and elaboration of details in the third and
sixth days respectively. Each has two creative fiats :
the earlier days in both groups have but one.

At this point a sudden light, or what seenn a light,
breaks in ; and the question will suggest itself to most

e Compare Qucestiones Mosaica, London, 1842, p. 31 ; Dr.
Forbes, "Symmetrical Structure of Scripture," p. 162; Kalisch,
p. 63.

f God said, Let there be light, and there was light :
Next parted water from the vault of air :
Then bade the land above the ocean, rise.

God said, Sun, rule the day, Moon, rule the night :
Next bade fish, bird, the sky and water share :
Last gave the earth its various tenantries.

286 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

minds at all versant in critical studies, to what ORDER
of composition the opening section of Genesis belongs.
Which, e.g. does it most resemble in the apparent law
of its structure, the 27th of Acts, or the 104th Psalm ?
To what shall we parallel its " days," — to the nota
tion of literal week-periods in our Lord's earlier mi- ,
nistry g or in the missionary travels of St. Paul, or
to the mystic " hours" of labour in the vineyard,
or the lofty refrains of Psalms xlii. — xliii., and cvii. ?
Poetry may be detached from reality, or opposed to
reality ; it may also, and that without ceasing to be
itself, or foregoing its appropriate framework, be the
highest and most vivid exponent of reality. It is
enough for the present to indicate this enquiry. "We
have still to look somewhat more closely into the
details of the record.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth." This is the Hebrew periphrasis for the
universe of things = Kocr/zoy, mundush. So, in the
Creed, "Maker of heaven and earth" is expounded
by "all things visible and invisible;" this last pro
bably a development of the meaning present to the
mind of the sacred writer, since he only concerns
himself with such results of creative power as are
palpable to the senses. Whether "created" denotes
egress into being from absolute nonentity, or only
a moulding and manipulating of self-existent matter,
cannot be determined from the word itself. "!N"o

g St. Luke iv. 16, 31, vi. 1, 6. 2a/3/3aroz/ §evrepo7rpa>roj/ is simply
the third in this series : compare Acts xiii. 14, 42, 44.

h Pearson on the Creed, Ed. 1840, p. 74; "Creation and the
Tall," by the Rev. D. MacDonald, Edinburgh, 1856, p. 81.
"Universa creatura significata est quam fecit et condidit Deus."
— St. August. De Gen.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 287

language, as the addition out of nothing shews, has
a single term to express the former idea1." But the
intention of the sacred penman may be safely gathered
from the tenor of Hebrew belief k. Whence the open
ing sentence of Genesis may be held as announcing
that everything save God had a beginning, and had
its beginning from Him. Before the "beginning,'7
only God was ; " in the beginning," He caused all
things to be ; and He is thus the unbegun beginner
of all that is1.

Creation being conceived as proper or improper,
immediate or mediate, the word " create," however,
may be here understood either contradistinctively of
one or comprehensively of both processes. On the
former view the meaning will be, — " In the beginning
— in primo puncto temporis m — God brought into being
the material of all things, the heavens and the earth.
And the earth, so brought into being, was not created
perfect, but desolate and void," &c. On the other
supposition we shall read, — " In the beginning — com
mensurate and conterminous with the creative week
— God made all things, immediately or mediately,
out of nothing, or out of substances He Himself had
made; and He made them in manner following."

1 Dr. Pusey, note in Buckland's " Bridgewater Treatise," p. 22.
So Bishop Pearson, p. 80: — "We must not weakly collect the
nature of creation from the force of any word, which may be
thought by some to express so much, but by the testimony of
God," &c.

k Ps. xc. 1 ; 2 Mace. vii. 28; Heb. xi. 3; 2 Pet. iii. 5.

1 " Omnia formata de ista materia facta sunt, haec ipsa materia
tamen de omnino nihilo facta est." — (St. August, de Gen. i. 14.)
— " Created, caused existence where, previously to this moment,
there was no being." — Adam Clarke, in loc. ; Kalisch, p. 53;
Barrow on the Creed, Serm. xii. ; Macdonald, p. 65.

m Piscator, in loc. " In pr." sc. temporis. Poli Synops.

288 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

According to our estimate of the preferability of either
paraphrase, we shall consider the verse as the com
mencement of the first day's work, or as a proleptic
epitome of the entire hexameron. Philologically, the
latter view has all likelihood on its side n. " Create"
and " make"-— lam and hasah — are constantly used as
synonyms throughout the monograph itself, and else
where in the Old Testament. God's " creating hea
ven and earth in the beginning" is precisely equivalent
to His " maldng in six days the heavens and the earth."
So "the day in which the Lord God made the earth
and the heavens ° " is not the first day, still less any
period preceding it, but the entire six days embracing
"#/£the work which God created and madeV The
first verse of Genesis is therefore to be taken as of
the same compass and generality with " Maker of
heaven and earth" in the Apostles' Creed. It is
the condensed summary of succeeding details, the
nucleus or embryo of which the sequel is the ex
pansion, the intrada to the strain of creative har
mony.

The work of the first day follows, the way being
paved for its distinctive fiat by a picture of that
chaos from which the cosmos sprung. "The earth
was without form," &c., — tohu-va-bohu, — desolate and
voidq, uninhabitable and uninhabited1", "and the
Spirit of God moved" — or hovered, or brooded8 —
" on the face of the waters. And God said, Let there
be light And evening was, morning was, one

n Quast. Mos., p. 7. ° Gen. ii. 4.

p Gen. ii. 3. * Jer. iv. 23.

r " Invisibilis et incomposita," St. Augustine (after the Septua-
gint); "Inanis et vacua/' Vulgate.
6 Deut. xxxii. 11; Ps. civ. 30.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 289

day1." We have thus (1.) Day antithetic == light-
period, (2.) Day comprehensive = light and night
period, wyOrjiJiepov.

To the day of partition of the light from the dark
ness succeeds 1hat of severance of the firmament from
the waters. " God said, Let there be a firmament
in the midst of the waters," &c. " Firmament,'7
raHa", is literally expanse or canopy, and the work
of the second day is the spreading the zone of air
between the zone of cloud and the zone of ocean ; and
the constitution in general, so to speak, of the circum-
terrestrial sphere, or space. uAnd God called the
canopy Heaven." The Hebrews distinguished a first,
a second, and a third heaven. Of these the third was
the invisible abode of God and His angels, in the
second the heavenly bodies were set, on the first
the clouds rested x. Rakia, or expanse, with an elas-

i Compare St. Matt, xxviii. 1, iv pia rZ>v o-a/3/3ara>i/ ; and note,
"Kalisch, p. 67 : — " It is futile to assign to this use any mysterious
or hidden reason, as Josephus and others insinuate, or to under
stand it as a peculiar day, a day sui generis, or a period of in
definite duration. MacDonald's 'Creation and Fall,' p. 99." Kaliseh
translates, " It was morning, it was evening, one day."

u Septuag. o-Tepeco/Lia, Vulg. firm amentum. That which gives
firmness or fixity to the "fixed" stars, holding each in its place
and binding all into a " shining frame." Compare stereotype. See
Dr. M'Caul, " Some Notes on the First Chapter of Genesis," p. 38.

* " That second heaven is not so far above the first as beneath
the third (2 Cor. xii. 2) into which St. Paul was caught. The
brightness of the sun doth not so far surpass the blackness of
a wandering cloud, as the glory of that heaven of Presence sur
mounts the fading beauty of the starry firmament." — Pearson, p. 75.
"The Jews say there are three heavens; ccelum nuliferum, or
the firmament ; ccelum astriferum, the starry heavens ; ccelum
angeliferum, where the angels reside, the third heaven in St. Paul."
• — Barrow on the Creed, Serm. xii.

U

THE CREATIVE WEEK.

ticity of meaning like that of our own word sky, is
used for either of the two inferior '* heavens," the in
terior or the remote : thus in the fifth-day work, -as
in the second, it is the ethereal floor that props the
clouds, and beneath which the birds fly ; whereas in
the fourth-day work it is the spangled vault, from
which the sun looks forth, and in which the stars are
burning. Translated into modern phrase, therefore,
the rakia was either the eartlrs atmosphere or the
cosmical space beyond. And uthe waters above the
firmament"' are simply those lodged in the clouds7.

7 See the noble chapter in •• Modern Painters," vol. iv. pp. 83 — 89 :
• — " The account given of the stages of creation in the first chapter
of Genesis is in every respect clear and intelligible to the simplest
reader, except in the statement of the work of the second day. . . .
The English word firmament itself is obscure and useless, because
\ve never employ it but as a synonym of heaven. . . . But the mar
ginal reading, expansion, has definite value, and the statement that
• God said. Let there be an expansion in the midst of the waters,
and God called the expansion heaven,' has an apprehensible mean
ing. . . . Xow with respect to this whole chapter we must remember
always that it is intended for the instruction of all mankind, not
for the learned, reader only; and that therefore the most simple
and natural interpretation is the likeliest, in general, to be the
true one. An unscientific reader knows little about the manner
in which the volume of the atmosphere surrounds the earth ; but
I imagine that he could hardly glance at the sky when rain was
falling in the distance, and see the level line of the bases of the
clouds from which the shower descended, without being able to
attach an instant and easy meaning to the words ' expansion in the
midst of the waters.' And if having once seized this idea he pro-
eeeded to examine it more accurately, he would perceive at once,
if he had ever noticed anything of the nature of clouds, that the
level line of their bases did indeed most severely and stringently
divide 'waters from waters,' that is to say, divide water in its col
lective and tangible state from water in its divided and aerial state ;
cr the waters which fall and flow from those which rise and float.
. . . . I understand the mAin^ the firmament to signify that, so

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 291

"He stretcheth out the north over the empty place,
and hangeth the earth upon nothing. He bindeth
np the waters in His thick clouds, and the cloud
is not rent under them z." The conception is mani
festly that of concentric spheres; an inner " firma
ment" on which the clouds are suspended, an outer
in which and along with which the orbs of heaven
revolve.

Firmament above, a world of waters below; so
the second day closes. The third brings the fiat for
the rescue and elevation of the dry land. i; And God
called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together
of the waters called He Seas.7' " Earth," like " day,"
is thus either inclusively the whole terraqueous globe,
or, contradistinctively, the part uncovered by the ocean.
Nor is the surface so rescued left a desert. By a fresh
creative mandate, the earth brings forth " grass" or

far as man is concerned, most magnificent ordinance of the clouds;
— the ordinance, that as the great plain of waters was formed on
the face of the earth, so also a plain of waters should be stretched
along the height of air, and the face of the cloud answer the face
of the ocean; and that this upper and heavenly plain should be
of waters, as it were, glorified in their nature, no longer quenching
the fire, but now bearing fire in their own bosoms ; no longer mur
muring only when the winds raise them or rocks divide, but an
swering each other with their own voices from pole to pole ; no
longer restrained by established shores, and guided through un
changing channels, but going forth at their pleasure like the
armies of the angels, and choosing their encampments upon the
heights of the hills ; no longer hurried downwards for ever,
moving but to fall, nor lost in the lightless accumulation of the
abyss, but covering the east and west with the waving of their
wings, and robing the gloom of the farther infinite with a vesture
of divers colours, of which the threads are purple and scarlet, and
the embroideries name."
1 Job xxvi. 7, 8.

292 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

" shoots a, the herb yielding seed, and the tree yield
ing fruit enveloping its seed," each " after his kind."
This enumeration may remind us of the old classifi
cation based on vegetable magnitudes — herbs, shrubs,
and trees. But it is much more likely that " shoots "
is the containing term for the two which follow, that
is, for food-yielding plants, which may indeed be held
as representative of vegetation in general, but with
which alone the sacred writer was prospectively con
cerned b.

A threefold foundation being now laid, a threefold
superstructure is built up. On the fourth day light
[Ileb. or] is consigned to light-bearers c, [ma-orotK] ;
passes from its state of diffusion into celestial recep
tacles * is located and concentrated in sun, moon, and
stars. The text says that these were "made;" and
therefore means that they were made, not made to
appear. Had this latter been the thing to be ex
pressed, the sacred writer who had just set down,
"Let the dry land appear," had every facility for
expressing it. But just as God " made the firma
ment d," or "made the beast of the earth6," or "made
man f," is it affirmed that He " made two great lights g,
and also the stars h." There is an end to all ingenu
ousness in the interpretation of Scripture if we foist,
in one of these examples, a meaning on " made" which
it bears in none of the others. No honest doubts can
be appeased by recourse to transparent make-shifts.

a " Sacred Scriptures, Hebrew and English," by De Sola, &c.
Baxter, 1844. Kalisch renders "vegetation."

b Gen. i. 29, 30. c ^coo-r^pes-, luminaria.

d Gen. i. 7. e Ibid. 25. f Ibid. 26.

g Observe also that they are first made, and then set to give
light, &c. h Gen. i. 16.

THE CREATIVE WEEK.

293

Tlio Hebrew verb indeed, like facio, conforms to its
accusative ; and may mean, if its regimen so necessi
tate, to prepare, to dress, &c. But the subject must
be such as to dictate these reflex determinations of
sense ; and it is preposterous to contend that fecit
luminaria can be naturally rendered, ' He made sun
and moon become visible,' or, ' He cleared away the
clouds.' Such is not the meaning which the text puts
into an unbiassed reader, but that which a biassed
reader or an embarrassed controversialist for a pur
pose of his own puts into the text. The founda
tions of faith would be indeed precarious if they
depended for their solidity on such artifices of mis
translation.

Sun, moon, and stars, ranked in the ratio of their
importance to the earth, as alone consisted with the
object of the sacred survey of creation1, occupy the
fourth day. To this plenishing of the sky succeeds,
on the fifth day, the peopling of the air and the waters.
" God said, Let the waters teem with shoals of ani
mate creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in
the open expanse of heaven k," that is, beneath the
concave of the lower firmament. "And God created
the great animals of the sea, and every living creature
that moveth, with which the waters teemed, after
their kind, and every winged bird after its kind."
The central day of the first triad had prepared a two
fold home : the corresponding day of the second triad
stocks that home with two vast groups of inhabitants.
The cold-blooded fish-reptile family take possession
of the deep; the warm-blooded bird wings its flight
through the air. A slight rectification of the Eng-

1 "Nos enim potius respcxit quam sidera, ut theologum deeebat."
• — Calvin, in loc. k Do Sola.

294 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

lish version, suggested and endorsed by the best He
brew scholars1, restores consistency, as regards the
bird-tribe, between Gen. i. 20 and ii. 19. In the other
province of life, while the phrase " every living crea
ture that moveth " is doubtless meant to include the
humblest forms of vitality, the type-groups denoted
by tanninim are clearly those represented by the great
water-breathing or water-haunting vertebrates, such as,
the shark and the crocodile m. These dominating the
waters, with the winged fowl careering in the open
firmament of heaven, compose the fifth -day aspect
of creative power.

A sixth day peoples the earth with those creatures,
higher or lower, for whom, in humble companionship
and subordination to man, the earth, on the pioneer
third day, had been specially prepared. " God said,
Let the earth bring forth the living creature after
his kind, cattle, and creeping thing [or reptile], and
.beast of the earth," &c. The sixth day thus intro
duces " behemoth" to the dry land, as the fifth
" leviathan" to the waters11. With a cattle and beast
of the earth" there can be no difficulty in identifying
the mammalia, or milk-givers, herbivorous and carni
vorous, to the latter of whom mediately, as to the
former directly, since there can be no fauna without

1 De Sola and Kalisch, p. 74.

m Tanninim, Exod. vii. 9; Isa. li. 9; Job vii. 12; literally 'long-
extended :' comp. Dolichosaurus. "Tanninim — quod signrficat dra-

cones et omnia ingentia animalia Nomen cete commune est

omnibus magnis et cetaceis piscibus." — Cornelius a Lapide, in loo.
" Non soli ceti significantur, sed onmes animantes stupenda vastitate
et anguinea specie monstra qua3 inveniuntur in utroque genere." —
Piscator, in loc. See also MacDonald, p. 278. This work does
honour to the theological literature of Scotland.

a Ps. civ. 26; Job xl. 14.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 295

a flora, terrestrial vegetation is the basis of subsist
ence0. And while " creeping thing" may be a term
of sufficient generality to include worms and insects,
it seems specially pointed at the ophidian " reptile p,"
or serpent-tribe, holding place between these and the
nobler animals. Thus the dry land also is tenanted.
But the master-creature is still wanting. By the sup
plementary fiat of the third day vegetable life had
been added to inorganic matter. By the supernu
merary fiat of the sixth day, the eighth and final fiat
of all, there is superinduced on all lower forms of
life, vegetable or animal, the rational, spiritual, God-
resembling life of man q. After solemn counsel with
Himself, shadowing the unique dignity and incom
parable endowments of the creature to be brought into
being, — crJi/^eoyzoy OLTTOLVT^V^ — " God created man in
His own image, in the image of God created He him ;
male and female created He them. And God blessed
them, and said unto them," —unto them as alone of
capacity to listen1", — "Be fruitful and multiply, and

0 Gen. i. 31. P De Sola.

q "As it is reasonable to imagine that there is more of design,
and consequently more of perfection, in the last work, we have
God here giving His last stroke and summing up all into man ;
the whole into a part, the universe into an individual ; so that
whereas in other creatures we have but the trace of His foot
steps, in man we have the draught of His hand. In him were
united all the scattered perfections of the creature, all the graces
and ornaments; all the airs and features of being were abridged
into this small yet full system of nature and divinity : as we might
well imagine that the great Artificer would be more than ordinarily
exact in drawing His own picture." — South, vol. i. Serm. ii. See
also the long and admirable note in Kalisch, pp. 74 — 78.

r God speaks eight times by way of mandate to nature or
of deliberation with Himself; twice by way of blessing and bene
faction to man.

296 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have domi
nion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the
air, and over every living thing that moveth upon
the earth."

And thus the mighty work is crowned and closed,
and the twofold evolution of creative activity — the
triad of preparation and the triad of plenishment-
subsides in a seventh day of Sabbatic calm. "The
heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host
of them," — their tenantry (ornatus, supellex) animate
or inanimate8, star-peopled space, life-peopled earth,
"the round world and all that dwell therein." His
plan complete, in both its aspects, " on the seventh
day, God put period to His work1; wherefore"
whether from the creation or at an after time the
text is silent — " God blessed the seventh day, and
sanctified it, because that in it He rested from all
His work which God created and made."

Now, waiving for the present all enquiry into the
literal time-limits of the creative week, these lessons,
as it seems, emerge unforced from the record. That
creation did not create itself. That matter is not
God's coeval, but His creature and servant. That
God only had no beginning, and that all things else
began to be by His will. That the whole universe
is one harmonious system, the work of one God ; the
projection of His thought, the transcript of His plan.
That such plan bore the stamp of a preconceived pro
gress ; and evolved itself in orderly successions, stage
after stage, towards a foreseen terminus or goal. That

s Ps. xxiv. 1.

1 Kalisch suggests"/*^ ended his work:" iTacDonald, p. 310,
•with better reason, declines the pluperfect, referring to Exod. xxxiv.
83, &c. So Calvin, " Quiu novas species crcare destitit."

THE CREATIVE WEEK.

297

all life, vegetable or animal, came into being, not by
the blind operation of natural law, but by acts of
divine volition, never put forth capriciously, though
"a law unto itself." That each form or type of life
was made " after its kind," and owes its characteristic
endowments to creative ordination, not to fortuitous
development. That the lower life, in the main, ante
dated the higher; the water - vertebrates and birds
preceding the mammalia, the brute mammalia pre
ceding man. That man is not only the latest-born
of creatures, but a creature sui generis, with the advent
of whom, so far as this earth is concerned, the work
of creation closed, and a new era of divine govern
ment began. That man has not developed into what
he is from some bestial type, but holds his prero
gatives as a gift direct from the Almighty. That we
owe no worship to nature, and all worship to God.
That "it is He that hath made us, and not we our
selves;" and that "in Him we live, and move, and
have our being."- —Such are the teachings of the
"Mosaic cosmogony." They may or may not har
monize with modern science. But it will be instruc
tive, before turning to that test, to place side by side
with them, though in the merest outline, such rival
and partially analogous interpretations of the origin
and purpose of things as have prevailed in ancient,
or been influcntially put forth even in recent, times.

II.

Man, the species, lives. Has he lived for ever?
If not, how came he to live at all ? How also the
myriads of humbler creatures around him ? And
whence that ordered whole, of sun and sky, and

298 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

earth and sea, so liberally commissioned to minister
to his wants, if inexorably dumb to his questionings ?

Man, the individual, dies. How to make the most
of life while it lasts? How best to propitiate the
unseen powers that can prolong or cut it short, that
can make it at their pleasure a curse or a blessing ?
Moreover, is this life the only life? When a man
dies, shall he live again ? If so, what can he do here
and now, to ensure that it shall be well with him
in that great hereafter ?

Problems these of perennial and imperishable in
terest. As the mist of primeval history begins to
clear away, we see the human mind grappling with
them, and speculation surging round them, through
out the family of nations from the Ganges to the Nile.
Not with one set of these questions only, but with
both. For they are so interknit that they cannot be
parted. A law of life for the individual present, a
hope for the individual future, must each repose on
a doctrine of the collective human past. All creeds
must cast anchor on some scheme of beginnings.
Cosmogonies may be sober and sound, or they may
be frivolous and foolish. But it was always seen, as
it is evident still, that to forego a cosmogony is to
dispense with a religion.

The Hebrews grew into a nation in Egypt, and
their great lawgiver was learned in all the wisdom
of the Egyptians. Were these, then, his tutors in
cosmogony? The Egyptian chaos, we are told, is
denoted in ancient hieroglyphics by a confusion of
the limbs and parts of various animals u. The future

u Quasi. Mas., p. 8. On the Egyptian and other Oriental cos
mogonies, see Diod. Sic., lib. i. 10, &c. ; Euseb., Prcepar. Evangel.,
lib. i. 6, 10, ii. 1 ; Brucker, Hist. Crit. Pkilosoph., torn. i. lib. ii.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 299

heavens and earth are a promiscuous pulp. At last
the elements begin to separate of their own accord.
Fire, being lightest, springs to the upper region ;
and air is set in motion next. By the heat of the
sun, the earth, plastic and prolific, brought forth mul
titudes of living creatures, even the largest; though
afterwards spontaneous generation became enfeebled
in its capabilities, and the larger animals could only
be perpetuated by propagating themselves *. Accord
ing as the earthy, watery, or fiery principles pre
ponderated in the composition of each animal, it
became quadruped, fish, or fowl. The first men were

passim; Egypt's Place in Universal History, vol. i. pp. 377, &c. ;
Kalisch, pp. 53—60 ; LyelPs Principles of Geology, book i. ch. ii. ;
MacDonald, Part i. sect. iv. ; Gibbon, vol. i. ch. viii. ; Quast.
Mos., passim.

x With this ancient conception may be compared the following
passage from a modern savant : — " L'eifervescence qui se manifesto
dans cette matiere etant en raison de sa masse, plus celle-ci est
considerable, plus il en sort de produits et plus ils sont avances en,

organisation D'apres ces considerations, est-il necessaire de

dire pourquoi dans nos experiences toujours faites sur une si petite
echelle, on ne voit apparaitre que de si infimes Protozoaires ?
Nos infusions, nos bocaux ne representent guere qu'un point meta-
physique dans 1'espace en comparaison de ces masses incalculables
de matieres organiques qui purent entrer en fermentation apres les
grands cataclysmes du globe. Cette idee, que les forces productrices
doivent etre en raison directe de la masse du substance en action,
ee presente naturellement a 1'esprit. Aussi beaucoup d'hommes
d'une intelligence elevee, ainsi que le fait M. Guepin, se sont de-
mande si, au lieu de se produire dans un etroit bocal, Tacte gene-
sique avait lieu dans un lac echauffe et renfermant d'abondants
materiaux organiques, il n'en resulterait pas des etres infiniment
plus eleves." — Pouchet, Heterogenie, p. 494.

Dugald Stewart might well observe, (" Dissertation on Progress
of Metaphysics/') " In reflecting on the repeated reproduction of
ancient paradoxes by modern authors, one is almost tempted to
suppose that human invention is limited, like a barrel-organ, to
a specific number of tun^s "

300 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

produced in Egypt from the rnud of the Nile. Thus,
like the lower creatures, man himself seems to have
been considered, by at least one of the Egyptian
schools, as a hap-hazard birth of the subsiding chaos.
Kneph with his potter's wheel, and the tradition of
a divine power bringing light out of darkness, shew
indeed that worthier conceptions were not unknown
to the higher minds of ancient Egypt7. Yet these
did not rescue their cosmogony from the grossest
extravagances of polytheism. The creed bore fruit.
Incapable of religion, the inferior animals are also
incapable of idolatry. Man, abdicating his place at
the head of creation, and stooping to worship a brute,
falls lower than the brute he worships. It would
strike us with amazement to see a dog or an elephant
crouching in awe before a calf or a crocodile. Yet
conceptions of the Most High from which the beasts
have been shielded are the product of perverted cre
dence in man. The ox did not worship the Egyptian ;
the Egyptian worshipped the ox.

But Moses, though brought up in Egypt, was a
son of Abraham. Does his cosmogony, then, shew
a family likeness to those of Mesopotamia and Syria ?
The Chaldseo- Phoenician belief traced all things to
darkness and water, — "a wind of black air, and a
chaos dark as Erebus and without bounds2." In
this moved mis-shapen monsters, ruled by a woman
named Homoroka, or the Ocean. Bel, or the supreme
being, cut this woman in two parts, which became
heaven and earth. Then Bel beheaded himself; and
the gods, mixing the blood with earth, from this
made man. — In the Phoenician myths, wind and chaos
produce mot, or slime, and that all things ; or, other
wise, men and all creatures issue from a gigantic egg,

y Lyell, chap. ii. ; MacDoiiald, p. 50. z Quccat. Mos., p. 8.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 301

in which they are woke to life by a peal of thunder.
"With the amplest allowance for the allegorical ele
ment, what could spring from such grotesque deli
neations of the human origin save idolatries as gro
tesque and grovelling as themselves ?

When we pass to the cosmogonies of India and
Persia, we exchange the Semitic for the Aryan cycle
of tradition. Of this the first and purest embodi
ment is the very ancient hymn from the Rig- Veda,
certainly not later than 1200 B.C. a : —

" Nor Aught nor Nought existed ; yon bright sky
Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.
What covered all ? what sheltered ? what concealed ?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss?
There was not death — yet was there nought immortal :
There was no confine betwixt day and night ;
The only One breathed breathless by itself,
Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound — an ocean without light ;
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
Then first came love upon it, the new spring
Of mind — yea, poets in their hearts d'sccrned,
Pondering, this bond between created things
And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth,
Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven ?
Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose —
Nature below, and power and will above —
Who knows the secret ? Who proclaimed it here ?
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang ?
The gods themselves came later into being —
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang ?
He from whom all this great creation came,
Whether his will created or was mute ?
The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,
He knows it — or perchance even He knows not."

* Translated by a friend of Mr. Max Miiller for his contribution
to Bunsen's " Philosophy of History," vol. ii. p. 136.

302 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

In a certain lofty simplicity and meditative gran
deur this could scarcely be surpassed, were we to
ransack all ancient literature, out of the Bible. Nor
are flashes of kindred sublimity wanting in later effu
sions of the Hindoo mind. But these emerge in de
praving alliance with the most fantastic and brain
sick reveries. The Supreme Unknown thinks within
Himself, "I will create worlds." Water is then
brought into being. From a germ dropped into this
ocean is developed the mundane egg. In this Brahma
creates himself; and then, moving upon the waters,
becomes ancestral creator of all things besides. The
sun springs from his eye, the air from his ear, the fire
from his mouth. From his mouth, his arm, his thigh,
his foot, proceed the founders of the chief Hindoo
castes. Further, Brahma divides himself into male and
female, whence issues the divine Yiradj, who, dividing
himself in like manner, gives birth to Manu ; who in
turn creates gods, saints, giants, the celestial bodies,
and mankind b. Brahma, having accomplished his
task, " changes the time of energy for the hour of re
pose." He sleeps during 4,320 millions of years, a
day of Brahma, at the end of which period the world
is destroyed by fire, and has to be created over
again. " For there are creations and destructions of
worlds innumerable ; the Being, supremely exalted,
performs all this with as much ease as if in sport,
again and again, for the sake of conferring happi
ness." At the end, however, of a hundred years,
each consisting of three hundred and sixty days of
Brahma, he himself, and all things with him, will
cease to exist.

Hindoo cosmogony, not satiated with these extra-

b Kalisch, p. 58 ; Lyell, book i. ch. ii.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 303

vagances, developes in monstrosity as it gathers age.
Forbearing to trace its lurid contortions, we may
turn to the creed of Zoroaster. In the Zendavesta,
or Persian Scriptures, the famous doctrine of the Two
Principles, or a divine dualism, is propounded as the
key to the mysteries of the universe. A Supreme
Abstraction, Infinite Time, or Necessity, gives birth to
Ormuzd and Ahriman, the deities respectively of light
and darkness. In six successive periods, consisting
of unequal numbers of days, all together amounting
to one year, Ormuzd creates the light, the waters,
the earth, the trees, the inferior animals, and man.
This is palpably borrowed, with certain emendations,
from the Mosaic record. But what is strictly ori
ginal is very significant. All animals spring from
a primeval bull. Ormuzd feasts at each creative
interval with his heavenly companions. After the
good work has been completed, Ahriman's malignity
" pierces Ormuzd' s egg." From this all evil ensues.
Ormuzd and Ahriman are still struggling for the
mastery. But Ormuzd will conquer in the end.

The poems of Hesiod may be said to form a link
between the Oriental cosmogonies and the kindred
speculations of the Greek philosophers. Chaos, in the
ancient Hellenic myth, is the first -generated of all
things. Earth, sprung from Chaos, begets the sky
and the ocean; next a superhuman brood of giants
and monsters. There are generations of men, more
over, before the introduction of woman ; and woman
is depicted as the baneful result of the rivalry be
tween Zeus and Prometheus c. In the dawn of the
philosophic period, Thales and Anaximenes propound
water or air as the principle of all things. Anax-
agoras first distinctly disparts the idea of God from
c Theogony, 116—146; Works and Days, 59—68.

304 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

matter d. Aristotle is but the spokesman of all the
ancient philosophers, Plato not excepted, in affirming,
notwithstanding, that matter is eternal e ; and he has
but a feeble grasp on its Divine Controller. Not so
the author of the Timceus, which is, beyond doubt,
the most elaborate and representative effort of Greek
speculation on cosmical beginnings, and on the mutual
relations of Nature and God. To find out the Framer
and Father of the universe, Plato teaches, is difficult ;
to reveal Him to all men through the ministry of speech
is impossible. The cosmos was framed after an eternal
pattern or paradigm in the mind of the Maker ; it the
goodliest of works, He the best of causes. Willing
all for good, He educed order from chaos. The world
is a living and divine thing, strictly one, since it is
the expression of one thought of its Architect. Air
and water are mediatorial elements between fire and
earth. The cosmos is a sphere, because this is the
most perfect of all figures. Sun, moon, and the other
five planets were created as markers of time, and
placed in seven orbits. The divine ideal desiderated
four natures to people the universe — gods, winged
creatures, aquatic and terrestrial animals. Creating
the gods Himself, the Supreme Artificer constitutes
these deputy-creators of the lower orders of being,
and retires into His wonted repose f. Bad men, after
death, in the ratio of their un worthiness, become
women, birds, beasts, or fishes. — Eeverence for the
great name of Plato, and recognition of the marvellous
insight displayed in portions of this dialogue, espe
cially in its doctrine of the Archetype, need not blind

d Erucker, torn. i. p. 504.
e Physics, lib. i. cap. iv. and viii.

f Km 6 /JL€V £17 airavTa ravra Smra£ay, (}j.(Vfv fv reS eavrov Kara
rjOet. Compare Gen. ii. 2.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 305

us to the fantastic alloy which renders it so con
spicuous a monument of the " follies of the wise."
And yet it embodies the highest reach of Greek
thought, in the intellectual noon of the nation.

The Augustan age of Rome supplies poetical inter
preters of other phases of Hellenic speculation. Pan
theism and polytheism find their logical goal in the
blank unshrinking atheism re-edited with fierce earn
estness by Lucretius :—

" Nam certe neque consilio primordia rerum
Ordine se suo quaeque sagaci mente locarunt ;
N"ec quos qiueque darcnt motus pepigere profecto," &c.

(Bk. v. 420—422.)

All is force, nothing forethought. Atoms wander
ing in infinite space enter into an infinity of combi
nations in the lapse of infinite time. Chaos yields to
order. The particles of matter combine, like allying
itself with like. Ether embraces all things avido com-
plexu. Sun and moon appear. Vegetation succeeds.
Earth, justly styled on this account Mother, brings
forth all sorts of animals. Birds issue from eggs in
the genial season of spring. Next are generated beasts
and men. This ought to startle no one. Even now,
in her old age, the earth can produce small animals
spontaneously : she could yield them of any size in
her youthful prime. These were nursed in wombs
attached to the soil by fibres,—

" Crescebant uteri terrae radicibus apti," —
and supplied thence with milk as they were born.
Some were monstrous abortions, but only the perfect
survived. Exhausted with these efforts, like a woman
past bearing, the earth, on this scale, produces no more.
Out of chaos she has not very long ago come ; to chaos
she must, inevitably repass. Human language differs

306 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

only in degree from the cries of brutes. And death
consigns to a common nothingness a brute and a man.
In a work of widely different purport, a poet of far
inferior calibre to Lucretius becomes the mouthpiece
of a worthier reading of creation. No familiarity
ought to blunt the perception of the exceeding beauty
with which the best results of the unaided thought of
ancient times are gathered up in the exordium to the
Metamorphoses g. "With this we may consider the cycle

g To the non-classical reader a condensed translation may be not
unwelcome : —

" Ere sea and land, the vaulted sky before,
The face of things a common aspect wore :
Chaos its name — a rugged mass and rude,
Inert, incongruous, unformed, and crude ;
A lump where lay, in wild disorder blent,
Each undistinguishable element.
No sun as yet his fiery beams had flung,
No horned moon had in the heaven been hung ;
No orbed world, to need the glorious pair,
Self-poised, was floating in the ambient air ;
Nor Amphitrite had spread her arms, and pressed
The lands, far- stretching, to her watery breast.
All things were jumbled — sea and soil were mixed ;
That was unyielding, this nor firm nor fixed :
Confusion reigned ; the air, uncharged with light,
Left all things warring in unbroken night :
Cold, hot, dense, rare, their various powers would prove,
And hard with soft, and dry with humid, strove.

But God and nature bade them cease to jar,
And lulled to peace the elemental war :
O'er the terrene the arched heaven He spread,
And forced the waters to their ample bed ;
Educed the firmament, serene and clear,
Prom forth the thick and loaded atmosphere ;
And, while He bade the parts asunder roll,
In solid concord bound the gorgeous whole.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 307

of cosmogony in any sense collateral to the Mosaic as
closed. True, the proneness to probe beginnings was
not exhausted. Cosmogonies are among the latest as
among the earliest efforts of the speculative faculty,
and co-exist with every stage of thought and culture.
Even when faith is not in quest of a resting-place for
the sole of her foot, an impulse of a less legitimate
kind takes shape in the attempt speculatively to re
create creation. Despite the tutoring of innumerable
failures, the human mind is still found guessing and
groping in regions where it can only guess, not know,
and only grope, not see. Whether the brood of cre
dulity, or the narcotics of scepticism, these efforts are
rife in every age. The same decade which witnessed
the publication of the Principia welcomed the solemn
puerilities of 13urneth; and the contemporaries of

Now burst the stars, and bristle o'er the sky ;

The world now teems with various tenantry :

The fishes glide throughout their ocean home,

O'er hill and plain the beasts begin to roam ;

While new-fledged birds to lighter realms repair,

And try their pinions on the liquid air.
A nobler creature, of capacious breast,

As yet was wanting to control the rest :

See him at last the infant earth adorn,

Man, heaven-allied, creation's lord, is born !

"While brutes are fashioned prone, with drooping head,

And forced to gaze upon the earth they tread,

Him gives his Maker port and brow sublime,

Him bids look upward on his native clime j

And lift, unfettered by terrestrial bars,

Aloft his visage to the sparkling stars !"

h " In this smooth earth were the first scenes of the world, and
the first generations of mankind. It had the beauty and youth of
blooming nature, fresh and fruitful, and not a wrinkle, scar, or frac
ture in all its body ; no rocks nor mountains, no hollow caves nor
gaping channels, but even and uniform all over. And the smoothness

x2

308 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

Cuvier and Owen have lent an ear to the " Physio-
philosophy" of Oken and the kindred romance of the
" Vestiges." Theological delusion in our own time,
indeed, addicts itself by preference to the end, and
leaves the origin of things to its rival. Each does
its appropriate work, — the depraving of religion into
myth, and the debasing of science into materialism.

The spirit of special pleading is as abhorrent as
it would be injurious to the cause of revealed truth.
Let the question then be asked in all candour and
calmness, whether any of the cosmogonies now passed
in review can be placed on the same platform with
the Mosaic record. To deny or depreciate flashings of
the mens divinior in the best of them, would be to
stamp primeval man as a castaway from the Paternal
Providence, unvisited and unblessed by divine whis
perings to the soul. Yet how dense the darkness
amidst which that light was flickering ! The psalmist
of the Veda doubts whether the universe is not too
hard a problem for even God. The Eoman poet be
trays the absence of religious insight and earnestness,
not only by the conscious intermixture of legend,
but by asking, as if in playful bewilderment, which
god it was that made man. Plato himself postulates
a plurality of sub-creators. The Hindoo conception
of periodic renovation is not the sagacious forecasting
for which it has been mistaken; since it is simply
ebb and flow, and unmeaning repetition, with sheer

of the earth made the heavens so too ; the air was calm and serene,
none of those tumultuary motions and conflicts of vapours which the
mountains and the winds cause in ours: 'twas suited to a golden
age, and to the first innocence of nature." — " The Theory of the
Earth, containing an account of the original of the earth and of
all the general changes which it hath already undergone, or is to
undergo, till the consummation of all things." Book i. chap. vi.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 309

exhaustion and oblivion as the goal, not progress in
a creative plan. These are blots on what is best. To
compare the Mosaic record with the residuary fable
would be to compare the utterances of right reason
and profound devoutness with the incoherent mutter-
ings of some distempered dream.

How reticent is that record ! How free from the
grotesque flights of an unchastened imagination !
How abstinent from aught that can be stigmatized
as a pandering to a childish curiosity or love of the
marvellous * ! Above all, how uniquely clear in the
grand basis of all religion — the truth that creation is
not self-created ; and that man, its terrestrial climax,

1 " How docs this picture of creation so singularly distinguish
itself above all the fables and traditions of Upper Asia ? By con
nection, simplicity, and truth. ... I thank the philosopher therefore
for this bold amputation of monstrous ancient fables." — Herder, Phil,
of Hist, of Man, book x. chap, vi.; see also chap.v. Qu&st.Jfos., p. 32.
" Compared with these rude efforts of the most civilized people to solve
the problem of the world's existence, the narrative of the creation in
the book of Genesis is remarkable for its sublimity and truth." —
Kenrick, Ess. on Prim. Hist., p. 9. "All other cosmogonies are
founded on the non-recognition of the existence and life of God in
relation to the existence and life of the creature ; hence the idea of
emanation, in various modifications, pervades them all, being found
in its most spiritual form in the Indian and Persian cosmogonies,
and in one more rude and grotesque in the Phoenician, Babylonian,
and Egyptian traditions, which suffer hylotheism to appear more
plainly. To the idea of a creation out of nothing no ancient cosmo
gony has ever risen." — Havernick, Introduct. to Pentateuch, pp. 93, 94.
"Both systems [Homer's and Hesiod's] have the defect of exhibit
ing mind as subordinate to matter in the order of mundane de
velopment. Of creation in the higher sense, or the calling into
existence of habitable animated worlds, by the fiat of a Supreme
Eternal Spirit, out of chaos or nonentity, as in the Mosaic system,
neither Hesiod nor Homer manifests any conception." — Mure's
Grit. Hist, of Lang, and Lit. of An. Greece, book ii. ch. xx. Comp.
Bishop Thirl wall's Hist, of Greece, vol. i, ch. vii.

310 THE CREATIVE WEEK

is the child and charge, not of an unconscious nature,
but of the living God !

III.

The author of the Essay on " Mosaic Cosmogony"
is at pains to re- impress his readers with the oft-
delivered lesson of the comparative insignificance of
the earth, and the contrasting magnitude of the uni
verse. Awe-inspiring, and in a sense appalling as the
survey isk, no well-regulated Christian mind need
shrink from it. Mr. Goodwin challenges us to look
the facts in the face. Be it so. The earth is a planet
among planets. An inner group of four comparatively
small satellites, an outer group of four enormously
larger, and a flock of asteroids between, such, with
comets unnumbered, and sub-satellites not a few, the
known retinue of the sun. The radius vector of the
earth nearly 100 millions of miles in length; that
of Neptune, the outpost, marking the frontier of
the solar system in space, about 3,000 millions ; the
earth's diameter to the sun's as 1 to 100 — such the
dimensions with which the mind must grapple at
the first and lowest stage of this survey.

The sun is a star among stars. If the earth's dis
tance from that luminary be taken as unity, a parallax
of one second represents over 200, 000 l. But no star
yields a parallax so large. The nearest, Alpha of the
Centaur, gives nine-tenths of a second, Sirius one-
fourth, the pole-star scarcely one-tenth"1. Sirius there
fore is about a million times farther off than the sun.

k See Mr. Treble's fine lines in Lyra Innocentium, for All Saints.
1 Herschel's "Outlines of Astronomy," 4th edition, p. 540.
m "Cosmos," Sabine's translation, vol. iii. pp. 186 — 190.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 311

Light travels to us from the moon in a second, from
the sun in eight minutes, from Sirius in fifteen years.
Sirius, moreover, is believed to surpass the sun in
bulk and brightness as much as Jupiter, seen from
an equal distance, would outshine the earth. On the
other hand, certain stars which exceed the sun in
volume are his inferiors in mass and density11. All,
however, in a general sense, are bodies of the same
order ; and their varying magnitudes, on a sufficient
average, are reasonably ascribed to vista. On this
principle the dimensions of the Milky Way have been
approximately " gauged." The system to which our
sun and Sirius belong is conceived to be a stratum or
swarm of about eighteen millions of stars ; its shape
that of a flattened Y? the sun being near the centre
or point of bifurcation0. If the distance of Sirius be
as 1, that of a star at any outskirt of the stratum will
be as from 200 to 300. Light traverses the diameter
of Neptune's orbit, or spans the solar system, in eight
hours. It passes, by any of the three routes, from the
centre to the extremities of the Milky Way, in about
3,000 years p.

If certain writers on astronomy are to be trusted in
their diagnosis of celestial space, we must prepare for
a third flight into a third order of distances. The
Galaxy itself, they tell us, is but a nebula among
nebulae. Of these nearly 4,000 are already cata-

n Lardner, " The Stellar Universe," chap. i. § 35 ; " Plurality of
"Worlds," chap. viii. § 5.

0 Herschel, p. 537.

P " Cosmos," Bonn's edition, vol. i. p. 72 ; Herschel, p. 541 ;
Lardner, chap. iii. § 75. The elder Herschel (quoted by Lardner)
computes 20,000, the younger 2,000, for the passage of light from
the centre to an extremity of the Galaxy.

312 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

logued ; and it is often asserted that they are parted
from our stellar cluster and from each other by
chasms only expressible by light- journeys, not of
thousands^ but of millions of years. Here at last we
pause.

And not too soon ; for we have by this time ex
changed the sure pinions of science for the waxen
wings of imagination q. It is not only unproved, but
it has been unanswerably disproved, that any cluster
of stars within the field of the telescope is co-ordinate
in dimensions or in contents with the Milky "Way.
Among the cosmical clusters, the Galaxy is as the
Australian continent to Polynesia — the mainland of
the celestial archipelago. The nebula? are its outliers
and suffragans, not its peers and equivalents1". Of
many proofs, one. It is a law of optics that the
visibility of a luminous object diminishes with the
square of increasing distance : the moon three times
farther off would yield only a ninth of the light. Place
Sirius, then, on an outskirt of the Galaxy, — say 300
times his present distance, — and his light is enfeebled
ninety thousand-fold ; that is, he will be ninety times
less visible to the highest power which can be applied
to Lord Bosse's telescope, than he is to the naked
eye. Place him, however, at the hypothetical distance
claimed by some writers fora nebula, — say 1000 times

i A scientific friend favours me with the following : — " The state
ments current as to the distance of the nebulae are founded on con
jectural estimates, most diffidently advanced, by Sir "W. Herschel,
rather asjeux d' esprit than as even probable results, but which, by
dint of repetition, have come to be regarded as almost of equal
authority with the numbers relative to the solar system."

r See an admirably reasoned article on the nebular hypothesis in
the " Westminster Review," New Series, No. xxvii. Comp. Herschel,
pp. 593, 608, 614; also "Plurality of Worlds," chap. vii. § 11.

THE CREATIVE WEEK.

3*3

more remote than this, — and he becomes ninety million
times less visible ! How in that case can he be "re
solved?" — The universe of God is vast and awful:
its greatness needs no loose exaggeration, no pander
ing to the vulgar appetite for arithmetical hyperbole.
But He alone is infinite. Creation, mighty as it is,
has limits. It claims no co-infinity with the Creator.
Authentic astronomy, overwhelming us by its mea
surements of magnitude and distance, supplies kindred
conceptions of cosmical time. In the universe nothing
is at rest. The fixed stars are now set free. Among
them and along with them, our sun circulates in a
track for one revolution in which Miidler 8 demands no
fewer than eighteen millions of years. How often
have he and his attendant worlds described this round ?
How often may they be destined to describe it again ?
To such questionings the only answer is, that as the
universe, however vast, is not infinite, so the universe,
however ancient, is not eternal. It may be techni
cally true that " neither astronomical nor geological
science affects to state anything concerning the first
origin of matter*;" yet chemical analysis most cer
tainly points to an origin, and " effectually destroys
the idea of an external self-existent matter, by giving
to each of its atoms the essential characters, at once, of
a manufactured article and a subordinate agent*" Before
the great clock was set a-going, there was an anneal
ing of its materials, and an adjustment of its minutest
parts. Law had its seat in "the bosom of God," be
fore it had its expression in the constitution of matter

• Quoted by Kurtz, "Bible and Astron.," ch. ii. § 16.
1 Essays and Ee views, p. 218.

w Sir John Herschel's "Discourse on the Study of Natural
Philosophy," § 28.

314 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

and in" the mechanism of the heavens. Motion so
regulated presupposes manipulation, and therefore a
" beginning. " Apart, moreover, from the conviction
so irresistibly generated by the contemplation of re
condite numerical symmetry v, astronomical phenomena
are utterly inexplicable unless we postulate evolution
in cycles, however vast and slow; change, however
infinitesimal ; a terminus a quo, however remote, and
a terminus ad quern, however obscure. If we combine
the nebular hypothesis with the doctrine of a resisting
medium w, the solar system is now wending through
a stage of isolated parts, from a past of vaporous
unity to a future of consolidated reunion. It was
once all nebula ; it will yet, if left to physical agen
cies, collapse into an exhausted and extinguished
sun. That is, all we know of the earth is an interval
between ejection from and re-absorption into the
parent mass. Now the doctrine of the primitive
continuity of matter, with high physical probability

v " Illustrations of the law of multiple proportions abound. Let
the reader take for example the compounds of nitrogen and oxygen,
five in number, containing the proportions of the two elements so
described that the quantity of one of them shall remain constant : —

Nitrogen. Oxygen.

Protoxide .... 14-06 8

Deutoxide . . . 14-06 16

Hyponitrous acid . . 14'06 24

Nitrous acid . . . 14r06 32

Nitric acid . . . 14-06 40

It will be seen at a glance, that while the nitrogen remains the same,
the quantities of oxygen increase by multiples of 8," &c., &c. —
Fownes, Elementary Chemistry, p. 147.

w Whewell, " Bridgewater Treatise," bk. ii. chap. viii. ; Herschel,
pp. 357, 374; Comte, " Positive Philosophy," vol. i. p. 206. Comte
feels the above difficulties. With the characteristic credulity of
unbelief, he predicts that when all the planets are ensepulchred in
the sun, the sun will re-expand into a nebula.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 313

on its side, is perfectly consistent with the enlightened
advocacy of final causes. Without a Divine Pilot,
how could a mass of nebulosity have steered itself into
a solar system or a habitable earth x ? And yet He,
instead of creating, not only each planet, but each
wandering fragment of the system, by a distinct fiat
of Omnipotence, may have effected the necessary
adaptations in concert with the ministry of His own
laws. But the nebular hypothesis means " beginning.'7
Subtract a day, or a thousand billions of years, it
signifies not; eternity is left as eternal as ever. If
matter is eternal, why then is its appointed race not
run ere now ? With eternity to ripen in, why is the
earth so newly ripe ? With a resisting medium, why
is planetary and even cometary motion still uncon-
quered ? With an evolution eternally necessary, why
is it still in progress ? There is no refuge from the
gripe of these questions save that which unites science
to the first sentence of the Bible. The cosmos ori
ginated, not in physical necessity, but in Divine Will.
" In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth."

Supposing, however, thus much conceded, — and the
critic of " Mosaic Cosmogony" might perhaps readily
concede it, — it will still be urged that science and
Scripture dictate very different estimates of the im
portance of the earth, — astronomically, "but one of the
lesser pendants of a body which is itself only an in
considerable unit in the vast creation7." And this
would be true were physical magnitude the sole

x Whewell, "Bridgewater Treatise," bk. ii. chap, vii., and Sedg-
wick, " Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge,"
Appendix D.

y Essays and Reviews, p. 213.

316 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

criterion of importance. There are two bars to this
surmise. One such consists in the manifest liability
to deceptive extension of the principle of final causes.
It is not astronomical science, but a vivacious imagin
ation — not a Newton, but a Fontenelle — that builds
earth-resembling worlds in the air. Than unnum
bered masses of dead matter, be it brilliant or opaque,
life is intrinsically nobler. Intelligence is intrinsically
nobler, in a single example of it, than a universe of
brute life. All the stars that surrender to the tele
scope are in themselves less wonderful than the soli
tary looker through2. Now no analogy can be more pre
carious than that which postulates the co-extension
of matter and life. All the laws of vital development
that obtain on this planet must be, not modified, but
reversed, if there be any life in the sun. The moon
can be inspected as if she were 200 miles off ; and is
plainly a naked mass of volcanic rock, without water,
atmosphere, or trace of vegetation. Comets, compared
by Kepler to " fishes in the sea" for multitude, may
be peopled by the temerity of the human imagination,
but not otherwise. The planets, indeed, are in a dif
ferent case ; there is a very high presumption that
some of these at least are prepared homes for living
beings. But there is an enormous and perilous stride
from life to intelligence. If winged creatures cleave
our co-planetary atmospheres, and fish replenish co-
planetary deeps, does it follow that observatories
crown the heights of Jupiter, or that navies sweep the
seas of Mars ? And yet, in the absence of reason and
its creations elsewhere, — and we have not the shadow
of a right to assume that there are libraries in Mercury

z Compare Pascal, — "L'homme n'est qu'un roseau . . . mais c'est '^
un roseau pensant" &c. — Pensees, Art. xvm. x.

f*'f PA

M

/ii

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 317

any more than that there is a printing-press in the
moon, — this earth must needs be the prerogative planet
of the system. In this there may be physical congruity.
The distribution of animal life athwart the globe ap
pears to yield a law, ivliich there is no reason for sup
posing peculiar to itself, of gradual deterioration and
ultimate extinction as we recede from a medium tem
perature towards assignable extremes of either heat or
cold. To God nothing is impossible. He might sus
tain life amidst the fires of Etna, or around the chillest
pinnacle of the Alps. Life, in like manner, may be
unfolded in other regions of the solar system, under
physical conditions which are always noxious or fatal
to it on the surface of the earth. But analogy, rightly
construed, does not favour the surmise. And he who
ponders the incompatibility of all terrestrial life with
certain terrestrial locations, will pause before, in idol
atry of mere material vastitude, he imposes on the
Deity a speculative task, or disparages the noblest of
His works that is known to us — the understanding
and the soul of mana.

The plurality of worlds is a subject on which it is

a The argument of this paragraph coincides with that of the
" Plurality of Worlds." Coincides — for these sentences and that
which is here subjoined were written years ago, before the writer
had the slightest inkling that the same considerations had seemed
of weight to a master of thought. — " Our planet has been given by
our Maker, so far as we can read His laws, and supposing the laws
of life to be uniform, the same advantage in space and in relation
to other bodies, which an inhabitant of the temperate zone has in
reference to the regions," &c. In the same unpublished MS. geo
logical time was insisted on as a counterpoise to astronomical space.
Compare "Plurality of "Worlds," p. 196. Similar considerations,
I find, suggested themselves to Hugh Miller and to the Rev. Dr.
King : " First Impressions of England," chap. xvii. ; " Geology and
Religion/' p. 49.

318 THE CREATIVE WEEK,

not prudent to dogmatize either way. That the uni
verse is a lifeless desert, would be a doctrine loaded
with improbabilities of which no ingenuity could get
rid. But it would be quite as extravagant to insist
that all space is swarming with duplicates of the globe
we inhabit. "We have no right to ask, Why, then,
were they made ? To what purpose is this waste ? is
an objection which will only appear of force to those
who overlook the disproportion between life potential
and life actual, and forget that Prospective Adjustment,
though one law of divine workmanship, has Symme
trical Eepetition for its colleague b. Who shall assure
us that all suns, even double suns, have planets ? Or
that all planets are habitable, while it is certain that
the only celestial body which can be closely scrutinized
is " desolate and void?" Still more, who shall pre
dicate from the pr.obable or possible diffusion of life,
across inaccessible areas of the universe, the necessary
co-presence of reason and mind ?

For reason, be it remembered, is but of yesterday
on the earth ; and it may be with millions of bodies in
space, even supposing them inhabited, as it was with
the earth for millions of years in time. Civilization
has no monument five thousand years old, the age of
some still living trees. For the tertiary strata alone,
Mr. Darwin demands three hundred millions, which
implies his belief that ten times the period is far too
narrow a reckoning for the entire sedimentary series.
But even the least fanciful geologist will concede that
not fewer than one million centuries parts the age of
granite from the age of man0. So long, at the least,

b e.g. the female breast was meant for suckling, but of what use
the paps in the male ?

c Phillips, "Life on the Earth," p. 126.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 319

was the earth a-ripening; who shall say, a-being
wasted? So long, ere she was freighted with a thinker
or a worshipper, or had become the domicile of man
and his marvels, our planet performed her rounds as
punctually and perfectly as she does to-day. In pre
sence of this fact, how precarious the taunt, and how
inconsiderate the sneer, which parades physical bulk as
the infallible index whether of created dignity or of
creative regards d ! As if the earth, when she first re
ceived a rational inhabitant, did not thereby become
a value in the universe which would neither have been
impaired nor augmented had she shrunk that instant
to the dimensions of Mercury, or expanded that in
stant to the girth of Sirius.

"Were all that has been so eloquently imagined
proved; were it to be admitted, not only with due
reserve, but with the largest licence claimed by the
most fervent and fertile fancy, that the luminaries of
midnight were not, even to that reckoning, " created
in vain," or " called into existence for no other pur
pose than to throw a tide of useless splendour over the
solitudes of immensity e,"-— we might with bold front
and sure footing remind the sceptic that if the universe
was not too great for God to make, no part of it can
be too little for God to care for ; and track his faith
lessness to its source in a tacit transference of his own
short-sightedness to the All- Seeing, and his own weak
ness to the Almighty. It might be added that any
revelation, to be of use to mankind, must treat the sys
tem of things as it is in our perspective, putting in the
foreground what is of concernment to us, and leaving

d " Shall we measure grace by cubic miles, and God's love by the
size of the fixed stars ?"— JTwrte, p. 83.

e Dr. Chalmers, " Astronomical Discourses."

320 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

the outer universe among the secrets of Omniscience ;
fulfilling its aim if it tell us with sublime brevity
that there are not two, or ten, or ten thousand crea
tors, but that He who made our great lights of sun and
moon enkindled all lights in the spangled space, and
" made the stars also." And such vindication would
be' sound, such reassurance sufficient. Yet it is not
all. We owe allegiance to science, but none to ro
mance masquerading in scientific costume. Now if
astronomy supplies a survey of space, geology yields
an inquest of time. And this latter, by opposing the
twin immensity of past duration to the vastness of
the starry universe, contributes a salutary and invin
cible check to gratuitous guess-work in the garb of
philosophy. Who shall tell us that wherever matter
is life must be, with the moon a naked desert ? Who
shall tell us that where life is there must also be
reason and moral responsibility, with the certainty
confronting him that this earth has been ten thou
sand years the abode exclusively of brutes, for one
that it has been the home of man ?

Geology, like astronomy, though with still more
peremptory grasp, leads us back to a beginning. Its
bulging equator and flattened poles, its pavement of
congealed lava, which we name granite, nay, the oldest
water- woven carpeting of that pavement composed of
the detritus of the igneous rocks, all attest the emerg
ence of our planet from a primitive temperature and
a crisis of forces in which no life could subsist. At
a low estimate, as we have seen, a million centuries
intervene between that period and the present. Which
interval, whatever its length, forms a chronicle of the
genesis of life, the procession of the types of life, and
the advent of man. Now what, in brief epitome, on

THE CREATIVE WEEK.

321

these absorbing subjects, has the record of the rocks
to tell ?

Besting on the primitive crust of the globe, and
stretching upwards through a thickness of tens of
thousands of feet to the old red sandstone, are sedi
mentary strata, — Silurian, Cambrian, Laurentian, —
which it may be convenient to group as the sub-
Devonian series. In the upper segments of this vast
cumulation life abounds; in the lower it fades away
to zero. To reach, save approximately, the absolute
life-limit, science can scarcely hope : enough that a
region has been reached where life is findable but not
found1. So soon as it appears at allg, life presents it
self in three of the four familiar types ; to which, ere
the Silurian system closes, the vertebrate is added.
Under the lower garb of fish, this takes possession of
the waters throughout the old red, carboniferous, and
permian systems, on to the end of the palaeozoic pe
riod : throughout the entire mesozoic period, it is do
minant under the higher though continuous garb of
gigantic reptiles — as also of birds — both on land
and sea. Faintly and feebly represented during these
" middle ages," the mammalia start into strength and
supremacy with the dawn of tertiary or ca3nozoic time.
The emergence of all new species has ceased ere
man, in the latest portion of this latest period, him
self appears.

Thus the crust of the earth is a chronicle in five
zones. The history is that of creative ascent from
dead matter to life ; from invertebrate life to that of

f See Sir Roderick Murchison's great work on " Siluria," p. 20;
"Life on the Earth," pp. 68, 214; " Footprints of the Creator,"
pp. 216 — 220; and Ansted, " The Ancient World," passim.

* " Life on the Earth," p. 71.

Y

322 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

the back-bone ; from the life of the back-bone, in the
fish-reptile series, to that of the breast; and lastly,
from the life of the breast to that of the plenarily-
endowed brain. Between the exterior zones, azoic and
anthropozoic, lie three intermediate brute zones, the
sub-vertebrate, vertebrate, and mammiferous. That
a tincture of vertebrate life is detected in Siluria, or
a subdued prophecy of mammalian life in the mesozoic
rocks, signifies not. The fades of each period is un-
mistakeable. In Siluria, a vertebrate fossil is a strag
gler and a stranger : the Silurian fish is the mere
vanguard of that innumerable host which crowds the
ocean for ever after from pole to pole. Just so the
few and feeble pioneer mammalia do not give charac
ter to the secondary formations : only in the tertiaries
do they appear in strength. Geology must be, not
extended, but revolutionized, before this generalization
can be upset. For it checks the less secure though
consistent indications of land-life by the cogent and
copious criteria of the life of the seah.

Can dead matter, of its own accord, become alive ?
Can an invertebrate animal improve itself into a fish ?
Can a bird, or a reptile, never suckled itself, improvise
an apparatus for suckling its offspring ? Finally, can
the mere brute burst the bonds of instinct ; struggle
into the capacity of abstract thought, and its rational
expression, language ; fall down on its knees and
pray ; and pass either per saltum or by slow degrees
the gulf that parts the simian from the human brain ?
If these questions, one and all, must be met by a
peremptory negative, the strata of the earth are the
register of divine acts strictly creative and super
natural ; each marking a step in an ordered progress
h Owen, " Paleontology," pp. 408—410.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 323

culminating at last in man. Of him all lower crea
tion prophesies ; to him all lower creation tends. The
vertebrate structure is the endowment of life with
power : the mammalian function superadds love. But
the plenary development of neither is possible till
wisdom is bestowed through the human brain \ Thus
the evolution of ancient nature, through phases that
are perplexing only because they are preliminary and
partial, steadily converges towards its sublime pur
pose — the manifesting of God, All- Wise, All-Loving,
Almighty. Each act of the long drama contributes
to the result, though the enigma is not unravelled till
the whole is seen. The dynasty of the lower verte
brate, and the dynasty of the mammal, await their
explanation in the master- creature who succeeds to
both. The rocks, therefore, which are the monument
of a "high and ancient order," are also the receptacle
of a natural revelation. Palaeontology, like the Mosaic
cosmogony, leads up to its "image of God." It lays
its finger on a starting-point of which it perceives man
to be the goalk. Till man is made, there are many
creatures to make ; the vegetable and animal life that
is -summoned into being in the latest tertiary ages has
evidently a special relation to his wants : but when
he is made, God creates no more.

Nature is a scheme, or it is an accident. It is an
evolution foreseen, controlled, and piloted throughout
by Divine thought and will, or it is hap-hazard de
velopment of unconscious force. To the latter doc
trine the rocky archives are in changeless antagonism.

1 "The Three Barriers/' (Oxford, J. H. and J. Parker, 1861,)
pp. 88—94.

k See the profound and splendid concluding pages of Owen, " On
the Nature of Limbs."

Y2

324 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

Life had its beginning. How ? All life that we
know of presupposes life1: even were its microscopic
forms producible from a " corps putrescible," whence
that " corps™?" Again, life has its gradations. A lower
animal cannot create itself into a higher animal.
Throughout the geologic aeons, there is indeed most
clearly an " ascent in the main11 ; " a passing from
simpler to more specialized embodiments of the crea
tive archetype. But this is a process effected for the
creature, not by it. Transmutation of species, un
known to human experience, is equally unknown to
geology. Type after type appears and disappears ;
but none melts into a something not itself. Each
creature, throughout the long succession, comes in as
it goes out, and goes out as it came in. When we
concentrate attention on the cardinal transitions, the
proof becomes overwhelming. If, by the operation of
natural law, a sub-vertebrate could produce a ver
tebrate, or a reptile a mammal, in the old periods of
the earth, why not now ? Law cannot be supposed

1 The words of Cuvier are very weighty : — " La vie en general
suppose done 1' organisation en general, et la vie propre de chaque
etre suppose 1* organisation propre de cet etre, comme la marche
d'une horloge suppose 1'horloge ; aussi ne voyons-nous la vie que
dans des etres tout organises et faits pour en jouir; et tous les
efforts des physiciens n'ont pu encore nous montre la matiere
s'organisant, soit d'elle-meme, soit pour une cause exterieure
quelconque. En effet, la vie exergant sur les elemens qui font
a chaque instant partie du corps vivant, et sur ceux qu' elle y
attire, une action contraire a ce que produiraient sans elle les af-
finites chimiques ordinaires, il repugne qu'elle puisse dire elle-meme
produite par ces affinites, et cependant Ton ne connait dans la nature
aucune autre force capable de reunir des molecules auparavant
separees." — Cuvier, Le Regne Animal; Introduction, p. 17.

m " The Three Barriers," p. 160.

n Owen, " Palaeontology," p. 411.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 325

conscious of the superfluity of its own action, or
cognizant of the critical moment when to stop. For
the facts of geology there is therefore but one solution,
—the periodical exertion of supernatural power.

To such intervention is it specially necessary to
refer the origin of the human race. Between man
and all lower existence there stretches a chasm defined
by what may be called the language-generating brain.
On a centigrade scale of cerebral development, all
values of the human organ shade into each other from
one hundred downwards to seventy-five ; while all
values of the brute brain, from the fish to the ape,
range upwards in close sequence from zero to about
thirty. At both ends of the scale, therefore, the two
orders of endowment pass through the assigned range
by every, or almost every, shade. of transition. But
there is no bridging brain between. Bounded by cerebral
tropics lies a huge zone vacant, nearly equal to both the
outlying ranges above and below. Even the most ab
normally low individual human brain and the most
abnormally high individual brute brain leave two-
thirds of its normal compass unspanned. Whence
this prodigious chasm? Connecting it, as we must
needs do, with the perfect hand and the erect atti
tude, there could be no more signal monument of the
interposal of the Creator °.

0 "But admitting the foregoing evidence, freely recognising the
greatness of its cumulative force, and proceeding to the conclusion
to which it leads, we still find ourselves on the shore of a vast and
seemingly impassable gulf separating the highest of the quadrumana
from the lowest forms of man. . . . The wide chasm in cerebral de
velopment still remains; and, considered in conjunction with the
fact that, so far as we know, man alone possesses the gift of speech,
compels us to confess that the genesis of mankind is a mystery

326 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

"The holy gift of speech p," as it has been aptly
called, is to all men common, to man strictly peculiar.
Like the parent prerogative of which it is the sign
and the satellite, this endowment secludes mankind
as of one blood and one brotherhood, between which
and the very highest of the manco-cerebral mammalia
" a great gulf is fixed q." Moreover, it constitutes an
instrument of discovery, and bestows a power of asso-

tvJ/ic7i,for tlie present at least, science is powerless to penetrate"
— Westminster Review, No. xxxiv. Art. vi.

p Wiseman, " Connection between Science and Revealed Religion."
i " Language is our Rubicon. . . . No process of natural selection
will ever distil significant words out of the notes of birds or the
cries of beasts. In Greek, language is logos ; but logos means also
reason, and alogon was chosen as the name, and the most proper
name, for brute. No animal thinks, and no animal speaks, except
man. ... To think is to speak low ; to speak is to think aloud. . . .
That faculty [articulate expression of rational conceptions] ivas not
of his own making. . . . The science of language thus leads us up to
that highest summit from whence we see into the dawn of man's
life on earth ; and where the words which we have heard so often
from the days of our childhood, — * And the whole earth was of one
language and of one speech,' — assume a meaning more natural, more
intelligible, and more convincing than they ever had before." —
3£ax Midler, Lect. on Science of Language, pp. 240 — 377.

Compare the fine passage of St. Ambrose : — " Erigit bucula ad
cesium oculos, sed quid spectet, ignorat. Erigunt feree, erigunt
arcs : omnibus est liber aspectus, sed soli inest Jiomini eorum quce
aspicit qffectus interpres. . . . Audiunt quoque animantes caeterao,
sed quis prater hominem audiendo cognoscit ? . . . Hoc est precio-
sissimum, quod homo divinse vocis sit organum," &c. — Heocaemeron,
lib. vi. cap. ix. Among patristic expositors of the Hexameron,
St. Basil must rank far below the great Latin Fathers. Of recent
works on the early chapters of Genesis, one of the most valuable is
" Discourses on the Fall and its Results," by Dr. Hannah, "Warden
of Trinity College, Glenalmond, Perthshire. See especially as cor
rective of "Essays and Reviews," p. 221, the discourse on the
" Image of God in Man."

THE CREATIVE WEEK.

327

elation, ancillary to the dominion divinely delegated
to the master-tenant of the world.

Cursory as this review has necessarily been, it may
in some degree assist the reader in the task of collating
with the teachings of modern science the group of
ancient cosmogonies, in the first instance, and the
Mosaic record in the second. From that fiery ordeal,
how much, say of the Timceus, escapes unscathed?
And what harm has happened to the Scripture ? One
point reserved, though not forgotten or evaded, which
lesson, of all those our exegesis yielded, have we got
to unlearn? Astronomy indeed teaches us that the
universe is inconceivably vast, and geology that the
earth is immensely old. But does the majesty of
the Scripture collapse under the new burden of signi
ficance it has to bear ? True, modern science expands
and educates our apprehension of Almighty power.
But does it displace or disturb the conception already
imbibed from that ancient and reverend record ? Docs
it limit the power which spake all things into being ?
Does it teach us of any time when God was not, or
give us a lower idea of His duration than this, that He
" inhabits eternity?" "When the elder Herschel shut
up his telescope after sounding the Galaxy through
and through into the starless space beyond, did he find
nobler language for the celestial revelation than " God
said, Let there be light ! And there was light. . . . He
made the stars also?" "When the inquisitors of the
earth's strata return from their perusal of those cham
bers of imagery where the animal dead of uncounted
ages lie sealed in stone, have they acquired any know
ledge of the creative archetype, and fore-ordained suc
cession of forms, which does not readily fall into the

328 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

mould provided in the written Wordr ? " Inspiration,"
indeed, "is not omniscience." Moses did not know
the universe as its Maker knew it. But the thing
hypothetically required is not the miraculous anti
cipation of scientific range of research, or the reveal
ing of such knowledge before its time, but such an
influence of the Divine Spirit on the mind of the
writer as should ensure that, when the knowledge came,
the general dignity, congruity, and religious impres-
siveness of the lesson should suffer no harm from the
advent of such knowledge. This is all which, on any
sober or reasonable theory of inspiration, we have
a right to expect. And this we have. True insight
into the meaning and method of the extant creation is
not falsified, though it is extended, by the unveiling
of the past. Insight into the geological past it is
unnecessary to suppose that the inspired penman
either needed or had given him. Enough if the Bible
opens with a divinely illuminated survey of creation
such as readily assimilates the results of that research
it was never meant to supersede or forestall ; perfect,
in scientific as in earlier ages, to all spiritual intents
and purposes ; so imbued with religious grandeur that
it can never be supplanted in its own proper sphere ;
so far before its time in this respect that it is of all
time, and leads us upward from the limitations of even
a prophet's thought to the presiding and over-ruling
influence of that Wisdom "known to Whom are all His

r " Ejiciant aquse reptilia, et volatilia volantia" (Gen. i. 20).
By comparing " Palaeontology," p. 198, on the " artificiality of the
supposed class-distinction between fishes and reptiles," with " Essays
and Reviews," p. 239, it will be seen that Professor Owen coincides
with Moses, though he differs from Mr. Goodwin.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 329

works from the beginning of the world." In the esti
mate of the most encyclopaedic scientific mind of this
century, one psalm, the 104th, " represents the image
of the whole cosmos8." Yet what is the first of Gene
sis but the mother-psalm of which the 104th, sec
tion by section, is the daughter, the antiphone, and
the echo ?

IY.

Of the old Vedic Hymn (p. 304) Mr. Max Miiller
remarks, "Prose was at that time unknown, as well
as the distinction between prose and poetry1.'7 By
what epithet shall we designate the Mosaic hepta-
meron ? Sceptics call it a myth ; or else, more mildly,
the speculation of an ancient sage. Most Christians
speak of it as a history or narrative. Hitherto, de
clining either of these terms, we have been styling it
somewhat vaguely a " record." The author of an able
and learned reply to Mr. Goodwin, written in a most
reverential spirit, has come to the conclusion that it
is a " parable V Others suggest that it is a " vision V

9 Humboldt adds, "We are astonished to find in a lyrical poem
of such limited compass the whole universe — the heavens and the
earth — sketched with a few bold touches. The contrast of the
labour of man with the animal life of nature, and the image of
Omnipresent Invisible Power, renewing the earth at will or sweep
ing it of inhabitants, is a grand and solemn poetical creation." —
Cosmos, vol. ii. part i.

* Bunsen, " Philos. of Univ. Hist.," vol. ii. p. 136. Compare
that most interesting concluding chapter of Mr. Miiller's " Hist, of
Ancient Sanskrit Literature."

u Mr. Huxtable, "The Sacred Record of Creation Vindicated
and Explained."

x Kurtz, " Bible and Astron.," ch. i., iii. ; Hugh Miller, " Tes
timony of the Rocks;" also " Mosaic Record in Harmony with the
Geological."

330 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

One gentleman considers it an account of " plan" as
distinguished from fulfilment y. "We venture to think
none of these descriptions satisfactory. The Book of
Genesis opens with the inspired PSALM of Creation.

On so transparent a gloss as the " vision' '-scheme,
words would only be wasted. Nor will many believe
that creation as an idea is the thing intended, so long
as the plainest of plain language assures them that the
thing intended is creation as a fact. " Parable" has
a certain propriety when applied to a single accessory
of the record ; but it cannot for one moment . be ac
cepted as a feasible designation for the 1st of Genesis
as a whole. On the hypothesis that we have to do
with an ordinary prose narrative, chronicle, or diary,
there immediately emerges the great difficulty of the
" days." With this it is not too much to say that no
ingenuity has as yet grappled successfully. The choice
lies between the Chalmerian interpolation of the geo
logical ages before the first day begins, and the
Cuvierian expansion of the six days into geological
ages. For these solutions respectively, Dr. Buckland
and Hugh Miller have each done their best ; and more
skilful and accomplished advocacy could not be found2.

y Professor Challis, " Creation in Plan and in Progress."
z Among the followers of Buckland, with certain modifications,
are Dr. Pye Smith, "Relation between Scripture and Geological
Science;" Hitchcock, "Religion of Geology;" Crofton, "Genesis
and Geology ;" and, so far as they commit themselves, Archdeacon
Pratt, " Scripture and Science not at Variance ;" Gloag, " Primeval
"World." Miller's ablest ally is MacDonald, " Creation and the
Fall;" and on the same side are Silliman, " Wonders of the Earth
and Truths of the Bible;" Gaussen, " The World's Birthday;"
Sime, ''Mosaic Record in Harmony with the Geological;" McCaus-
land, " Sermons in Stones;" and McCaul, " Notes on Genesis." The
Burnet Prize Essay of forty-five years ago, "Itecjrds of Crea-

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 331

But the arguments which, compelled Hugh Miller to
abandon the older method have not been answered.
Nor is his own scheme free from the gravest diffi
culties. Who can bring himself to believe, for ex
ample, that when the sacred writer speaks of trees
laden for human use with seed-enclosing fruit, he
could have had in his mind, or could have so de
scribed, the gymnogenous flora of the coal-measures ?

Certain writers evade embarrassment by declining
to elect among the competing " reconciliations." It
is enough, they suggest, that some one of them may
be sound, although it is inconvenient to become re
sponsible for any of them ; or they allege that the
record was not intended to do what it expressly under
takes and professes to do ; or, otherwise, that the time
is not come for a comparison between Scripture and
geology, since there are points on which geologists are
not agreed among themselves a. All this is but a inani
tion," by the present Archbishop of Canterbury, although one of
the four works which compose collectively the most valuable con
tribution to the theistic argument since Paley, (Dr. "Whewell's
" B rid g water Treatise," Hugh Miller's "Footprints of the Creator,"
and Principal Tulloch's " Theism" being the others,) was written
long before the data for a decision had been reached.

a This multiform fallacy of evasion, brushed away by Hugh
Miller both in " First Impressions of England" and in " Testimony
of the Rocks," is exemplified in Euckland, pp. 12, 33; Archdeacon
Pratt, p. 34; King, " Geology and Religion," p. 44 ; Gloag, p. 1 10 ;
and Buchanan, "Essays and Reviews Examined," pp. 128, 131.
Dr. Chalmers himself, in his private correspondence, betrays a similar
hesitance, by speaking of " yet another way of saving the credit of
the record." It no doubt escaped this great and good man that his
own "way" brought him into direct collision with the "Shorter
Catechism," which asserts that God's work of creation consists in
His "making all things out of nothing, in the space of six days"
— not millions of years before \hQjirst day dawned.

332 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

festation of anxiety to snatch a cherished dogma from
a dreaded foeb. Were the panic well-founded, the
belief indebted to such expedients would be only
screened, not saved. The combat would indeed be
averted, but the enemy would remain master of the
field.

Mr. Goodwin cannot be blamed for chastising pal
pable subterfuges. " Without a sun," it has been
observed, " morning and evening are inconceivable to
all, save commentators, and they have made the matter
very clear to usc." If well-meaning harmonizers will
lay themselves open to sarcasm, they must take the
consequences. Satire will not spare writers who
trench, however unwittingly, on the ludicrous, when,
under the abused segis of the " Plurality of Worlds,"
they identify the planet Jupiter with " the waters that
are above the firmament;" or figure Moses as sur
prised into the ejaculation, " The great Tanninim !"
as he descries in cosmoramic trance the saurian mon
sters of the Oolite d. The worst ^service to the cause
of divine truth is that contributed by contorted science
and sophistic exegesis6. Mr. Goodwin exemplifies,
however, the opposite pole of prejudice. Why make

b " The doubt and perplexity which they afFoct do not exist :
both the principles of the natural sciences and of Biblical exegesis
are certain beyond dispute." — Kalisch, p. 52.

c Quasi. Mos., p. 14.

d The curious reader may collate " Harmony of Mosaic with
Geological Record," (Constable, 1854,) p. 98, with the lively and
ingenious pictorial restorations in Mr. Page's "Life of the Globe,"
(Blackwood, 1861,) p. 137, if he wishes to appreciate the "vision."

e For example: — " Before sin entered, there could be no violent
deaths, if any death at all. But by the particular structure of the
teeth of animals, God prepared them for that kind of aliment which
they were to subsist on after the fall'' ! — Adam Clarke on Gen. i.

THE CREATIVE WEEK, 333

difficulties where there are none ? "Why gratuitously
degrade " Spirit" into "wind," converting the image
of divine love and energy into an agitation of the airf ?
Or why try to tear from ralria its true equivalent of
expanse g ? Or why refuse to allow for the essentially
figurative character of all words descriptive of celestial
space and its aspects, in order to fasten an incredible
puerility of conception on the " Hebrew Descartes or
Newton?" Mr. Goodwin ought to caution the readers
of Shelley, in case "build up the blue dome of air"
should suggest delusive reminiscences of the dome of
St. Paul's. Uni-verse ought to be banished from his
vocabulary, as implying the diurnal revolution of the
fixed stars in a frame or "firmament." And it might
obviate disappointment were he to drop a warning that
we need not look for milk in the Galaxy.

Enough, whether of quibbles or of makeshifts.
When we consider the pervading parallelism ; the
rhythmic refrainh — " the evening and the morning ;"

f " Quod nonnulli ventum intelligunt, adeo frigidum est ut refu-
tatione nulld indigeat" — Calvin, in loc. " Spiritus inciibabat : in-
star avis, quae incubando ovis, ilia fovet," &c. — Piscator, in loc.
Compare Yedic Hymn, p. 301.

£ Long before the days of "reconciliations" Calvin wrote, —
" Nescio cur Graecis placuerit vertere (rrepe'eo/xa, quod in firmamenti
nomine imitati sunt Latini: ad verbum enim est expansio." So
Tremellius and Junius, followed by Piscator, render expansum.
Compare " spreadest out the heavens like a curtain" Ps. civ. 2 ;
and see previous note, p. 290.

h Compare the refrain in the fine Vedic hymns (circa B.C. 1000)
translated by Mr. Max Miiller, " Hist, of Ancient Sanskrit Lite
rature," pp. 540, 569. "Varuna" is ovpavos : —

" Let me not yet, 0 Yaruna, enter into the house of clay :

Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy !
If I go along trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind :

Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy !
******

334 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

the periodic fiat — " Let there be light, a water-parting
firmament, land, plants : lights in the firmament, life
in the waters, life on the land, Man;" the punctual
fulfilment — "It was so;" the retrospect — " God saw
that it was good ;" — the chief wonder is how it ever
was possible to exact from the oldest and sublimest
poem in the world the attributes of narrative prose.
Yet our surprise abates, not only when we reflect that
the error entailed, till these later times, rather a lite
rary than a religious loss, but also when we call to
mind how long a similar mask disguised the architec
ture of entire books of the Old Testament, and ob
scured the plenary significance of large sections even
of the New. Bishop Jebb belongs to this century,
Bishop Lowth to the last ; yet how much, in this field
of hermeneutic, is due to these two names ! If a veil
was lifted so recently from the face of David or
Isaiah, are we to marvel if a veil has lain on the face
of Moses? Even some eighty years ago, however,
a striking indication of the true affinities of the com-

Whenever, O Varuria, we commit an offence :
"Whenever we break thy law through thoughtlessness :
Have mercy, Almighty, have mercy !

" In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light :
He was the only born lord of all that is :
He established the earth and this sky :

Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?
He who gives life, He who gives strength :
"Whose blessing all the bright gods desire :
Whose. shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death:

Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?
##**##

May He not destroy us— -He the Creator of the earth :

He, the righteous, who created the heavens :

He who also created the bright and mighty waters :

Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?"

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 335

position was furnished in a book well known in Scot
land as the " Assembly's Paraphrases." The idea
was to provide metrical versions of portions of Scrip
ture most closely akin to the Psalms. Of the thirty-
two Old Testament selections, one, " 0 God of Bethel,"
is a hymn; thirty -one are, in the strict sense, para
phrases. Of these, thirty are based on the poetical
books, — Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Prophets.
The solitary outsider, linking like with like, has for
pedestal the ~Lst of Genesis.

None will dispute the presence of parallelism in the
Lord's Prayer, — such parallelism as is proper to prayer,
or psalm, or parable, or prophecy, or impassioned dis
course, but is not proper to historical narrative. Yet
how closely homologous in structure is the Mosaic
heptameron: —

Our Father, which, art in hca- In the beginning God created

ven : the heaven and the earth :

Thy Name be hallowed : Let there be light :

TJnj kingdom come : Let there be a firmament, &c.

Thy will be done, &c. Let the d/ry land appear, &c.

Give us our bread : Let there be lights :

Forgive us our trespasses : Let the waters . . . and fowl, &c.

Lead us not into temptation, &c. Let the earth bring forth, &c.

For Thine is the kingdom, &c. Thus the heavens and the earth

were finished, &c.

If one of these divine compositions is not ordinary
prose, neither is the other. The triads of days are as
distinctly denned as the triplets of petitions. Only
the parallelism, from the correlative interlacement of
the groups, is more intricate and complex in the Hep
tameron than in the Prayer.

He who perceives this has the true Jcey to the concord
which he will search for elseivhere and otherwise in vain.
Eespect the parallelism, cease to ignore the structure,

336 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

allow for the mystic significance of the number seven1,
and all perplexities vanish. The two groups of days
are each perfectly regular, when group, in its integrity,
is collated with group : neither triad, if it is to ex
haust its own aspect of creation, can afford to part
with, or dislocate, any of its members ; and the second
triad, as a whole, is rightly and of necessity second,
as the first is rightly and of necessity first. And yet
it is self-evident that if, for any reason, we trisect or
break up the groups, the true continuation of day 1 is
not day 2 but day 4, of day 2 not day 3 but day 5, of
day 3 not day 4 but day 6. And thus the "days"
themselves are transfigured from registers of time into
definitives of strophes or stanzas, — lamps and land
marks of a creative sequence, — a mystic drapery,
a parabolic setting, — shadowing by the sacred cycle
of seven the truths of an ordered progress, a fore
known finality, an achieved perfection, and a divine
repose k.

* " If Cain be avenged sevenfold" = completely. " To flee seven
ways" = a total rout. " Silver purified seven times" = perfectly,
&c., &c. "Per senarium numerum [1 -f- 2 -f 3 =• 6] est operum
significata perfectio. . . . De septenarii porro numeri perfections
dici quidem plura possunt," &c. — St. Augustine, De Civitat. Dei,
lib. xi. cc. xxx. and xxxi. On the number seven see also Moses
Stuart, "Apocalypse," vol. ii. pp. 425 — 432, and Forbes, " Symmet.
Struct, of Scripture," pp. 159—162.

k Herder was a rationalist, but too candid and clear- sighted to
pervert a symbol, of which the meaning was evident to him, into
a literal register of time. The following passages are very import
ant, as coming from so acute and unbiassed a witness : —

"To remove the false notion of days, let me observe what is ob
vious to every one on a bare inspection, that the whole system of
this representation rests on a comparison by means of which the
separations do not take place physically but symbolically. As our
eye is incapable of comprehending at one view the whole creation,
it was necessary to form classes, and it was most natural to distin-

THE CREATIVE WEEK. , 337

Which symbolism, engrafted by permission of the
divine wisdom on a division of time astronomically
obvious, and embodied in the Psalm of the Almighty's
handiwork by

" That Shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of chaos,"

becomes, in turn, to the Jewish nation at the Exodus,

guish in the first place the heavens from the earth Thus this

ancient document is the first simple table of a natural order, in
which the term ' days,' while it is subservient to another purpose
of the author, is employed only as a nominal scale for the division.
.... Before we approach this crown [man], let us consider a few
more master-strokes which animate the picture of this ancient sage.
.... The sun and stars enter into this picture of nature as soon as
they can With equal truth and acuteness this natural philo
sopher places the creatures of air and water in one class With

joy and wonder I approach the rich description Behold the

most ancient philosophy of the history of man." — Bk. x. ch. v.

" Our philosopher has unravelled this chaos Everything in
comprehensible to man his account excludes, and confines itself to
what we can see with our eyes and comprehend with our minds. . . .
Men have deemed the Asiatic nations, with their infinite compu
tations of time, infinitely wise ; and the tradition of which we are
speaking infinitely childish, because, contrary to all reason they say,
nay contrary to the testimony of the structure of the globe, it hurries

over the creation In my opinion this is palpable injustice.

Had Moses been nothing more than the collector of these traditions,
he, a learned Egyptian, could not have been ignorant of those
seons, &c. Why, therefore, did he not interweave them into his
account ? Why, as if in contempt and despite of them, did he sym~
lolically compress the origin of the world into the smallest portion
of time ? Evidently because he was desirous of obliterating them

as fables Moses leaves every one at liberty to frame epochs as

he pleases To obviate these follies, he represents his picture

in the readiest cycle of a terrestrial revolution" — Bk. x. ch. vi.

So Dr. Henry More, Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 22, makes Moses
explain, " It was for pious purposes that I cast the creation into that
order of six days." Again, " The hebdomad or septenary is a fit
symbol of God."— p. 86.

Z

338 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

the platform of the law of the Sabbath. God's week
is mystical, man's week is literal, But the spiritual
homology assumed is not disturbed by the inevitable
disparity of scale. God did His own perfect work in
His own perfect way, and His very rest was but a
passing onward to still higher manifestations of His
boundless bounty and love. In this, says the Fourth
Commandment, quoting, though without reference, the
familiar religious lesson, "Be ye followers of God.
Fill your six days as He does His, in the Psalm of His
creative working, with work that shall, like His, be
f good.' Rest on your seventh day, as you have heard
He rested, not in the torpor of an animal sloth, but
in the liberated activities of a devout soul."

Y.

For more than half a century the Mosaic record of
creation has been invested with a peculiar interest.
Like the regiment in a great war which goes first into
action, or like the outlying rock in a long ridge which
has to sustain the full shock of the yet unbroken
billow, this portal of the Scriptures, from its being the
portal, and from the presumed facilities of successful
attack supplied by the young science of geology, has
been pre-eminently exposed to the polemic of modern
scepticism. One phase, however, of the " conflict of
ages" only dates from the publication of " Essays and
Reviews." The Bible used to be assailed by candid
and consistent adversaries : it is now, for the first
time in the history of religious controversy, impeached
by professed friends.

Now we are surely entitled to ask any critic of
" Mosaic Cosmogony" in what character he proposes to

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 339

approach it ; in plain English, to shew his colours and
to take his side. A man may be a Christian or ho
may be an unbeliever, but he cannot be anything
between. There are certain problems which cannot
be dealt with piecemeal. Divine revelation must be
accepted as a whole, or rejected as a whole ; no third
course is conceivable. Of the Hebrew lawgiver, in
special, has not the Lord of Christians said, "If ye
believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My
words1 ?»

"We are not indeed bound to imperil the Christian
faith on the credibility of every rash and rhetorical
exaggeration of a doctrine the over-statement of which
might be natural in the ninth, and excusable even in
the seventeenth century ; although in the present age
to transgress in like fashion is simply to play into the
hands of adversaries. The sacred writers were pen-
men and not pens ; the Divine influence under which
they wrote was not analogous to the infusion of such
an instinct as makes the bee or the ant an " animated
tool," but rather to the power of a great human mind
over narrower, and lower, and feebler minds. The
afflatus was not mesmeric, but moral and spiritual :
it was rather comparable to thermal currents than to
the rigid circumscription of mathematically defined
zones. But it is one thing to make frank and full
allowance for the human element in the Scriptures,
and quite another to forget or explain away the co-
presence of the divine. Does a man accept the super
natural, yes or no ? Does he believe, or not believe,
in the resurrection of our Lord from the dead ? These
are the plain questions to which, from any censor of
the Scriptures, we are entitled, in limine, to exact

1 St. John v. 47.

z2

340 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

plain and straightforward answers. If the reply be,
"I do not accept the supernatural: I do not believe
that Christ is risen," — we know what and whom we
have to contend with. But if the response be the
other way, — u I do accept the supernatural: I do be
lieve in the Saviour's rising from the dead," — it is
surely, in such case, pertinent to remind him that he
must in all consistency accept and believe much more.
A divine reality in the religion bespeaks and implies
a divine element in its records. They stand or fall
together. He who professes to hold that the reve
lation is supernatural, yet argues as if the Bible were
merely human, confutes himself. Every mind dis
ciplined in the valuation of evidence must see that
the choice is, Neither or Both.

u If Christ be not risen, your faith is vain." This
is one point of apostolic teaching out of which no
trick of words can ever juggle us. We cannot pillow
our hopes on cloudland; and all is cloudland if we
cannot discern in the past the divine Personality of
Him who, u when He had overcome the sharpness of
death, opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers."
"Weary human nature lays its head on this Bosom, or
it has nowhere to lay its head. Tremblers on the
verge of the dark and terrible valley which parts the
land of the living from the untried hereafter take this
Hand of human tenderness yet godlike strength, or
they totter into the gloom without prop or stay. They
who look their last on the beloved dead listen to this
Voice of soothing and peace, else death is no uplifting
of everlasting doors and no enfolding in Everlasting
Arms, but an enemy as appalling to the reason as to
the senses, the usher to a charnel-house where high
est faculties and noblest feelings lie crushed with the

THE CREATIVE WEEK.

341

animal wreck; an infinite tragedy, maddening, soul-
sickening ; a " blackness of darkness for ever." Christ
not risen means that there is absolutely nothing, less
than nothing, worse than nothing, in the Bible and in
Christianity. Christ risen means that His religion is
no human device, but a revelation from above; and
therefore that those Scriptures to which He set His
seal are " given by inspiration of God."

No such via media, then, as seems to have floated
before the minds of certain " Essayists" can possibly
be struck out or maintained. The revelation refuses
to be sundered from its records. Between naturalism
and supernaturalism we must perforce elect ; accept
ing in full, if we be clear-sighted and consistent, the
logical consequences of either decision. In the human
past, as in palaeontology, there are only two ways of
it, the creed of Lucretius or the creed of St. Paul, —
the " self-evolving powers" of a blind, improvident,
unpitying nature, or the unfolding plan of an All-
foreseeing Deity. Suppose, then, as regards the geo
logical ages, we adopt the latter solution with Owen
and Whewell, rather than the former wo-solution with
Powell and Darwin; in such case the question will
immediately press, whether supernatural power and
purpose, indispensable postulates in the survey of
brute being, can be rationally eliminated from the
history of man.

It is God's use, if we may speak it reverently, to
repeat Himself; to reproduce His creative ideas with
appropriate " variations." Now it has been argued
elsewhere"1 that the ground-plan of ancient nature con
sists in an ascent, by trenchant transitions, from sub-
vertebrate life to the backbone, as the basis of power ;
m The Three Barriers, pp. 87—103.

342 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

from the backbone to the breast, as the sign and
channel of love ; and from the breast to the human or
language-generating brain, as the organ of wisdom
or rational thought. What, we ask with entire con
fidence, if this same programme, suitably modified, be
reiterated in the upbuilding of each normal human
life? What, we ask with due diffidence, assuming
human history to be the projection of a divine thought,
if an analogous evolution be the key to history?

Childhood, youth, manhood, are familiar divisors of
human life; yet far more accurate, it may be, than
a fanciful trio of "law, example, and spirit." For the
former, if we go in quest of an equation for them, are
simply the vertebrate, mammalian, and cerebral de
velopments of the perfect man or woman "nobly
planned." The rationale of the first period is the
building up of physical strength; the affections and
the reflective faculties being kept bac/c, as it were, and
kept low, till that work is done. Animal strength
attained, the affections shoot up into supremacy ; and
these, as life advances, are not deposed, but crowned
by ripe reason and judgment. The later gift does not
destroy or displace, though it transfigures and elevates
what goes before. Each, nevertheless, in its own
order". The keen affections of twenty are dormant at
two, the mature judgment of fifty is unattainable at
fifteen. How different the capacity of grief, which mea
sures that of love, in an ordinary child of five, from
Avhat it is in his brother or sister three or four times
the age ! Strength pioneer to love, love culminating
in wisdom — such therefore the sequence alike in the
animal series and in the individual human life.

What if this also be the key to the " biography" of
n Compare the procession of types in the foetal brain.

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 343

the " colossal man?" Is not the history of our race
a chronicle admitting no natural primary division save
that into three chapters, — those of childhood and
youth, which are closed; that of manhood, which is
a-writing still? The cerebral period, if we may ven
ture so to designate that commencing approximately
A.D. 1500°, is sundered from all that preceded it by
characters which he who runs may read. Its achieve
ment has been the apocalypse of the universe. What
was said of him who, take him all in all, is the repre
sentative man of the erap, is true of the era itself: —

" Nature and nature's laws lay wrapped in night :
God said, Let Newton be ! and all was light."

For the central, or youth-period, we have the first
fifteen centuries of Christianity. All that while had
God been leavening the heart of man with the lesson
of that love which remains His supreme gift to the
end of time ; passing into the world's manhood, not pass
ing away from it q. The pre-Christian period, again,
was the childhood of our race. It was the merely
vertebrate age; differing from those that came after
as Nimrod from St. Augustine or from Isaac Newton.
Its attribute was ferocious force ; its law despotic will.
Neither the power of divine love nor that of disciplined
reason, despite the prophecy of each in Greece and

0 "We may connect with this cradle-date, invention of printing,
revival of learning, the Reformation ; discovery of America ; Co
pernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton ; modern physiology, zoology,
botany, chemistry, geology ; steam, the electric telegraph ; historical
criticism, and the science of language.

P Herschel, " Disc, on Nat. Philos.," § 301.

^ "That which distinguishes Christ, that which distinguishes
Christ's apostles, that which distinguishes Christ's religion — the
love of man." — Milman, Hist. Lat. Christ., bk. xiv. ch. iii. Compare
Frederick Robertson's Sermon on "The New Commandment."

344 THE CREATIVE WEEK.

Palestine, had as yet entered prevailingly into the
temper and doings of mankind. For the last three
and a half centuries, history takes its hne from science ;
the fifteen centuries before are chiefly memorable for
their saints ; till the Advent, history is monopolized
by war. These, earliest times were very fierce times ;
the quality of mercy, the u milk of human kindness,"
was not infused into them * they were ages not of gold
but of blood. The "new commandment" was as yet
unuttered; the evangel of " Peace on earth, goodwill
towards men," as yet unproclaimed. Force unleavened
by love is the complexion of history, till the Son of
God appears to change it. — May we venture to inter
pret all this as a third edition of the thought legible
in the rocky archives, and re- emergent in the indi
vidual human life? If so, it is plain that Christian
religion, in the historical evolution of humanity, is the
analogue and equivalent of the mammalian bond in
nature. Those accepting the analogy, and weighing
what it imports, will perhaps cease to doubt whence
comes this baptism, from heaven or of men.

Thus much at least is certain, that man is the ripe
result, and flower, of an immensely ancient terrestrial
time. To the impression so often generated by the
survey of sidereal space must be opposed the correc
tive ministered by the quasi-infinitude of past dura
tion. He who built the heavens on such a scale as
seemed to preclude the expenditure, even by the
Almighty, of minute solicitude on the earth, has gar
nished it throughout the ages with such profusion of
living forms as seemed to leave no time, even to the
Eternal, for the plenishing and embellishing of the
heavens. And yet all these were but God's works ;
we only are His offspring. If one branch of modern

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 345

science teach, and teach justly, that man's relation to
the universe may be such as should check his pride,
another completes the lesson by shewing that his re
lation is such as yields no fuel to despondency. The
buried strata have their burden of meaning as well as
the rolling worlds. What is there in a million cen
turies of animal warfare, were all the universe its
stage, to take rank in the regards of God with the
struggles of His intellectual offspring towards light,
towards goodness, towards Himself? Is there no high
authentic instinct which whispers to the heart that He
with whom we have to do turns willingly away from
the shining of His suns and the singing of His morn
ing stars for joy, to listen with a far diviner interest
to the prayer of the humble and the cry of the con
trite? However wide His universe, and its varied
being, He who made us flesh, be we well assured, is
in no danger of forgetting that He made us spirit.
" Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she
should not have compassion on the son of her womb ?
Yea, she may forget : yet will I not forget thee."

No weapon that is formed against this trust shall
prosper. Modern scepticism indeed advances, minatory
and menacing, poising in one hand what seems the
spear of Ithuriel, and brandishing in the other the
hammer of Thor. But the proof of the encounter tells
how egregiously she has over-vaunted alike her de
tective faculty and her destructive strength. In the
brunt of collision the weapons exchange attributes •
the spear has but the pointlessness of the hammer,
the hammer but the levity of the spear.

RATIONALISM.

" Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688—1750. 13y
MARKPATTISON, B.D., Hector of Lincoln College, Oxford.'"

TT was the remark some years ago of one of the
Essayists themselves, that in whatever direction
religious thought in this nineteenth century was
tending, no distinctive and characteristic fact had
yet occurred, small in itself but pregnant in the in
ferences to which it should lead, to reveal and to
stamp that tendency. So far as England and the
middle of the century are concerned, Mr. Wilson and
his colleagues have themselves unintentionally sup
plied the want. Friends and foes, though with dif
ferent motives, have alike contrasted the fragmentary
and cursory character of their volume with the im
mensity and unexpectedness of the outcry it has oc
casioned. But the contrast is surely a superficial one.
The straw that is cast up by the stream may well be
nothing, yet not so the current of religious feeling
which it indicates. The book itself, it is true, deals
thoroughly with no one subject, puts forward little
that is new or original, was written with no idea
of producing a panic or a revolution, simply stirs up
with an assumption of intellectual and moral supe
riority almost every possible topic of current scepti
cism, while dealing seriously with no one in the list.
It was merely a bye-work of able men, published with

348 " GREATNESS OF THE PRESENT CRISIS.

no particular purpose beyond that of accommodating
a bookseller with a sequel to an unfinished series.
Eat the crisis of religious thought to which it belongs
is of far graver import. And the publication of it
will head a notable chapter in any future history of
the Tendencies of Eeligious Thought in England. It
were unwise indeed to exaggerate. And little hills
close to us, no doubt, may easily be made to look
like mountains if viewed through the requisite kind
of atmosphere. And one has great faith in the mere
inertia of religious belief : and still more in the present
revived earnestness and life, spiritual and intellectual
both, in the Church : and above all, faith in Him who
has preserved us hitherto through worse perils. Yet
the evil, which the Essayists themselves profess (no
doubt honestly) to remedy while they really increase
it, is no imaginary one. Infidelity is assailing us
afresh, and with a power and under circumstances
sufficiently new to invest its assault with a character
of special danger. It is no longer the coarse and
shallow and unsatisfying infidelity of last century. It
appeals, on the contrary, to the deepest and highest
faculties in human nature, and it is equipped for
the conflict with an array of profound and extensive
historical and philological criticism. It claims, more
than ever, to speak in the interests of knowledge, mo
rality, and truth, against a theology irreconcileable
with them. As the revival of literature in the sixteenth
century produced the Reformation, so the growth of
the critical spirit, and the change that has come over
mental science, and the mere increase of knowledge of
all kinds, threaten now a revolution less external but
not less profound. And though the Church, in this land
at least, is in a position that is strength itself com-

CAUSES OF DANGER. 349

pared with that which it then occupied, yet there are
circumstances even now which lend to the threatened
assault an undue power. Then it was the Church such
as it had grown to be without the Bible. Now it is
too much the Bible such as men have made of it for
themselves without the Church. Then an external and
authoritative dogmatism had sought to crush all minds
into unquestioning submission. Now we have the op
posite excess of a system of subjective intuitions, and of
an individualizing and sentimental faith. And now,
as then, morality and divinity are divorced from one
another in many men's minds : although then, it was
divinity that was in fault through its load of perver
sions and superstitions, while now out of an undue ra
tionalism men are seeking to pervert the Creeds them
selves into a futile conformity to their own supposed
moral instincts. And it may well be, then, the crisis
of Protestantism among us, as continental spectators
of a sceptical turn appear sarcastically to consider
it;- the sifting, at any rate, of the extreme anti-
Church system which abroad usurps the name. It
may be the test of the vitality of the Church of Eng
land herself, and of the work that has been done to
revive her true strength during the last thirty years ;
which is the light in which it seems to have struck
the mind of the greatest of those who have unhappily
quitted the English Church because they thought she
had lost her vitality. It is, at any rate, a time when
religious questions are being sifted with an apparatus
of knowledge, and with faculties and a temper of mind,
seldom, if ever, before brought to bear upon them.
The entire creation of new departments of knowledge,
such as philology ; the discovery, as of things before
absolutely unknown, of the physical history of the

3,50 THE SIXTH ESSAY MAINLY A LITERARY ONE.

globe ; the rising from the grave, as it were, of whole
periods of history contemporary with the Bible, through
newly found or newly interpreted monuments; the
science of manuscripts, and of settling texts, — all
these, and many more that might be named, embrace
in themselves a whole universe of knowledge bearing
upon religion, and specially upon the Bible, to which
our fathers were utter strangers. And beyond all
these is the change in the very spirit of thought
itself, equally great and equally appropriate to the
conditions of the present conflict ; the transformation
of history by the critical weighing of evidence, by the
separation from it of the subjective and the mythical,
by the treatment of it in a living and real way ; the
advance in Biblical criticism which has undoubtedly
arisen from the more thorough application to the Bible
of the laws of human criticism, (the honey out of the
lion's carcase); the temper of mind in dealing with
the supernatural, which habits of experimental science
and enlarged physical knowledge have engendered;
and above all, the entire change in the point of view
from which men regard all subjects, from the out
ward to the inward, from the historical to the meta
physical, from the sensuous to the transcendental,
from the common sense of last century to the theories
of the Absolute and the Infinite which occupy the
attention of the present.

Be the crisis however great or small, and whatever
share in any recasting of the religious thought of the
age, for good or for evil, the " Essays and Ee views" as
a whole may be destined to take, the particular Essay,
at any rate, to which the present paper relates, must
in fairness be exonerated from any intentional partici
pation in the furtherance of scepticism. It is a sequel

OBJECTIONS TO ITS TONE. 331

to other valuable papers by the same pen on kin
dred subjects. And had it occurred alone, the literary
world would have welcomed in it a proof that its
writer had not deserted those studies which once pro
mised at his hands a really great and enduring work,
— a work of which it may be boldly said that it should
have taken rank on its special subject with the larger
labours of a Hallam. It is an Essay open, no doubt,
to literary criticism ; searching in its analysis, apt in
its quotations, sound in its general view of the age
which is its subject, but on the other hand, unfair to
some of the writers criticized, fragmentary, and un
developed; but it is one which would not in itself
have stirred the waters of theological polemics. And
its writer must have woke up with something of a
sense of both surprise and injustice, to the indiscri
minate censure which has attached to him the common
notoriety of the volume. Without pretending to do
otherwise than regret the temper in which it is written,
or to underrate the mischievous effect it may pro
bably have, being where it is, upon young and clever
students, or to disguise the unsettling impression
which it leaves upon the reader, or to deny that its
writer has himself to thank for the rashness which
originally joined (and let it be added, for the gene
rosity which will not now desert) his colleagues ; it
must be obvious, nevertheless, — 1, that the Essay was
not. written with any theological object, good or bad,
but mainly with a literary one ; and, 2, that it is a
libel to accuse it of containing either wanton or formal
unbelief. It is written in a dissatisfied tone of isolation-
It knocks down without building up. It ignores or
depreciates objective standards of truth, and speaks of
the conflict between faith and infidelity without suf-

352 DOES NOT INTENTIONALLY FURTHER SCEPTICISM.

ficiently recognising the possibility of any clear grasp
of a truth above opinion. It drops here and there
harsh- sounding dicta, unexplained and undeveloped,
which will be read by the light of more pronounced
passages in the other Essays, and which therefore in the
result, in spite of honest disclaimers of " conspiracy,"
affix a subsequent responsibility to the writer for all
parallel passages in the volume — a responsibility which
it would surely be both reasonable and desirable to
disclaim. But these things apart — and I have no
intention to make light of them — the Essay is not
open, either in tone or in matter, to the imputations
justly made against one or other of its companions.
It does not offend good taste, nor violate the common
principles of honesty, nor indulge in wanton profanity.
It does not formally propound or indirectly imply
any of the now current forms of unbelief, which dis
figure the pages of some of the remaining Essays : —
the ideology, for instance, which dissolves Scripture
into a subjective reflection of the Oriental mind, and
exhibits it as the merely human product of a peculiar
national literature, — or the metaphysical scepticism,
which denies the possibility of revelation or of any
dispensation of God to man as inconsistent with the
perfection of the Divine attributes, — or that perver
sion, again, of the Baconian spirit, which is striving
to confound both the animate with the inanimate, and
the moral with the physical, and having frozen the
whole into a like mechanical slavery to law, to crown
the absurdity by substituting an abstraction of the
human mind for a personal God. Even that which is
more akin to the speculations of the Essay, and which
forms the staple of those of one of its companions, —
the tracing up the battle of "human opinion into the sub-

ITS MOST OBJECTIONABLE PASSAGES. 353

stance of the New Testament itself, and the assertion
of an unauthorized development, not only as between
Scripture and the Creeds, but as between our Lord
and His Apostles, or as between our Lord in Him
self and the representation of Him and of His words
which is described as reflected to us through the mirror
of the minds of early disciples, who were of course fal
lible men, — these have no place here. Neither does it
tamper with texts of Scripture, or affirm the honesty
of subscribing theological propositions which the writer
does not believe, or assert any special point of false
doctrine. The whole field, again, of Biblical criticism
is out of its way. One text of Scripture alone claims
a mention of its various interpretations, but is not
interpreted by the Essay itself. And had its writer
only refrained from some cursory remarks at the be
ginning of his paper, which seem to imbed his special
subject in a naturalistic theory of Church history in
general, and from a neat and compact formula of suc
cessive " theories of belief" current from time to time
in the Church, which seems to land us in the position
that the Church has not yet found a trustworthy
" theory of belief" at all, little would have been said
theologically of his Essay. It would have given offence
to the holders of some popular opinions. It would have
left an uncomfortable impression respecting the extent
to which ambiguous phrases were intended to reach.
It would not have done, — what the writer might have
well done, — aided the good cause by his shrewd insight
and great analytical powers. But neither would it have
drawn down the severe censure which has now swept
over it. The one or two sentences a, singled out to

a Two passages are cited in the Report of the Committee of the
Lower House of Convocation from Mr. Pattison's Essay. One, we

A a

354 OUGHT NOT TO HAVE BEEN INVOLVED

justify its inclusion in that censure, would have been
interpreted in the better instead of in the worse

must take leave to affirm, is capable of a better interpretation,
while the other is incapable of the bad one affixed to it.

1. From pp. 327, 328 of the volume : — " If reason be liable to an
influence which warps it, then there is required some force which
shall keep this influence under, and reason alone is no longer the
all-sufficient judge of truth. In this way we should be forced back
to the old orthodox doctrine of the chronic impotence of reason,
superinduced upon it by the Fall; a doctrine which the reigning
orthodoxy had tacitly renounced."

The previous sentence in Mr. Pattison's text shews that he is
here pointing out the inconsistencies of the evidential school of di
vines upon their own (imputed) principles. It is they, not himself,
who would be " forced back" upon the orthodox doctrine of the
Fall by the conditions of their own hypothesis : whereas, according
to Mr. Pattison, they had implicitly renounced that doctrine by
their assumption of the supremacy of reason. It is impossible, he
says in effect, at one and the same time to rest the claims of religion
upon the paramount authority of reason, and to impute to all who
deny those claims, an incapacity in point of reason to apprehend them.
Mr. Pattison seems to have exaggerated his case, in point of fact, in
both parts of this argument. Divines of those days were neither
rationalists, nor deniers of the feebleness produced in the reason by
means of the Fall, to the extent to which he alleges they were.
Neither is the tone of the allusion to such a subject such as one is
disposed to defend. But assuredly the paragraph implies nothing
whatever of Mr. Pattison's own belief or disbelief in the doctrine
of Original Sin or its consequences.

2. From p. 297 : — "In the present day, when a godless ortho
doxy threatens, as in the fifteenth century, to extinguish religious
thought altogether, and nothing is allowed in the Church of Eng
land but the formula of past thinkings, which have long lost all
sense of any kind, it may seem out of season to be bringing forward
a misapplication of common sense in a bygone age."

Unhappy words, no doubt, on any shewing; and if they did
apply to the Creeds (as the Convocation Committee suppose), then
worse than unhappy. But surely the very turn of the language
excludes the alleged reference. The common sceptical objection to
the Creeds lies, not against the obsoleteness, but against the pre-

IN THE SAME CENSURE WITH THE OTHER ESSAYS. 355

meaning. And nothing would have involved the
writer then, — as indeed there is little now, generosity

cision, of their meaning. Neither was it the Creeds, but the
overgrowth of theological systems, which did the mischief in
the fifteenth century. It is at least far more probable, that the
writer was thinking of those relics of the phraseology of medieval
or of still later controversies which have been embalmed, not only
in our formularies, but also in the established orthodoxy of predo
minant schools, or of what is commonly acknowledged as standard
divinity : to some of which he elsewhere alludes, and upon which
a good deal of the Atonement controversy undeniably turns. And
the question then must be, 1 . to what extent he intends to carry
his censure ? Are all parties alike, or is the prevailing party really
imposing upon us, by the help of bigoted public opinion, unau
thorized terms of communion, which after all will not bear sifting
by the light of reason and sound knowledge ? There is something
of such a spirit. There are party formula) which very many would
enforce, in spite of the reclamations of a sounder divinity, by the
silent martyrdom of social persecution. Yet one would be sorry
to say of even the fautors of these, that they were " godless." They
are only narrow-minded and in earnest, determined to support
truth, but not exactly qualified to know what is truth. And are
they the Church of England ? And if the Church as a whole is
meant, then, 2. one must ask, What is included under this term
of " past thinkings?" Mr. Pattison probably means only that there
are many narrow views to which religious people generally cling
as to essential truth, although advanced knowledge has shewn
them to be untenable. There certainly are such views. But
under the circumstances it is not unreasonable to ask a direct
disclaimer of including under them more than the mere relics
of Evidential, or Puritanical, or other older schools, and not what
other Essayists appear to intend, the current unquestioning belief
in Scripture and the Creeds, which is undoubtedly cherished with
a jealous care by a not godless orthodoxy. That Mr. Pattison
means this, I see nothing in his words to shew. I wish there was
more in those words to render it impossible. Surely, too, it is the
hastiest of historical paradoxes to parallel the present time with that
horrible Pharisaism of self-complacent orthodoxy (so called) com
bined with outward pomp and inward corruption which ushered
in the Reformation. But it is one thing to protest against the

A a 2

356 CONDEMNS A MODE OF ARGUING, NOT THE FAITH.

apart, which need continue to involve him, — in the
general and deserved condemnation of the volume as
a whole. For if rationalism is imputed in the Essay to
any, that rationalism, be it remembered, is condemned.
If a particular theological school is accused of failure,
it is because that school assumed the supremacy of — •
not the reason only, but — the common reason of man
over divine truth. If the transcendental reason, in
the judgment of the Essayist, cannot solve clearly,
and the common reason cannot solve at all, the popu
lar objections against Scripture morality, it is the
rationalist hypothesis which is in fault, for assuming

exaggeration of the passage historically considered, or against the
unsoundness of the principle involved in it, or against the impu
tation it contains npon the Church of the present day : another to
condemn a writer of fundamental denial of Christianity, because he
demurs to the retention and (alleged) unintelligent and higoted
use of past controversial language. Nor does it follow, that Mr.
Pattison denies the truth of these formulae, — rather it seems im
plied that he believes in them, — as referred to their original his
torical place and circumstances. That the present Church of Eng
land is indeed so intolerant of " religious thought," as the passage
asserts, is at least not the common opinion. Legally, she is held
by most people to be more tolerant than she ought to be, and at
least as tolerant as is consistent with holding any dogmas at all.
That there are narrow and intolerant men within her, is perhaps
rendered more prominent in proportion to her own laxity and
their consequently louder reclamations. And undoubtedly there
are kinds of " free-handling" of religious subjects, against which
the faith of Church-people generally rises in protest. But with
respect to these the only question is one of degree. The most
liberal thinker would allow that some scepticism ought to be met
by the moral coercion of an earnest counter-belief in the Church.
The point is, whether the line is drawn at present too narrowly,
and whether that counter-belief is rea'ly a sound and an earnest one ;
and this, not as regards particular coteries or parties, but prevailing
public Church opinion. Are people really disabled too muck from
preaching or printing what they please ?

DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 357

as a principle that such objections have a right to
a clear solution. If the Deistical and the Christian
arguments are represented as almost evenly balanced,
the reason lies, not in any denial of the superiority of
the latter cause in itself, but in the mistaken prin
ciples upon which both alike are alleged to have pro
ceeded. And although the various theories are found
fault with into which men have hitherto analysed the
grounds of their belief, yet the "eternal verities'7
of the faith itself, and the revelation of them, are
throughout assumed.

The Essay is a chapter, or part of one, in Church
history, written with a professedly practical object, and
upon certain principles. What lesson, then, does the
writer intend us to draw from the facts he analyzes ?
And are those facts correctly represented? And,
lastly, what principles are implied in the sketch
given of them ?

To " guide us through the maze of religious pre
tence by which we are now surrounded," is the prac
tical use suggested of the picture here drawn of our
antecedents. We are to learn our present bearings by
tracing the mental route that has actually brought us
where we are. No doubt the true use, or one of them,
of the study of Church history. But the Essay leaves
us, nevertheless, to frame our conclusion for ourselves.

Now there does indeed appear to be one unmis-
takeable lesson impressed upon us by the history
of religious thought in England during the last cen
tury; and that is, the untold value of the Church
movement of thirty years ago. The obvious remedy
for the patent defects of eighteenth - century divinity
in England lay in Church principles, to the revival
of which indeed these defects did, historically, lead.

358 TRUE LESSON FROM THE WRITER'S FACTS.

A sceptical spirit of toleration, based upon indiffe-
rentism, — and as a reaction from this, an unregu
lated and individualizing Methodism, — and through
out, an attempt to deal with religious truth through
the instrumentality of reason in its shallowest form,
— are the " agencies " specified in the Essay as mark
ing that period ; and they are also the " agencies,"
against which a deeper reason, and a more chastened
spiritualism, and the craving of men's minds for truth
out of and above themselves, have in this present
century risen in a most righteous rebellion. Other
and collateral causes co-operated; political circum
stances, the revival of learning, a corresponding re
volution in mental philosophy, wider social sym
pathies, improved taste, the wonderfully increased in
tercourse between the various portions of the Church
throughout the world. But the results of the misuse
of private judgment, which Methodism, and after
wards Evangelicalism, had only transferred from the
tribunal -of the common reason to that of the spiri
tual emotions, underlay the whole. That sincerity is
a legitimate substitute for truth, that the inward
emotions of the individual believer supply the basis
of faith, that belief is to be limited to the boun
daries of the understanding, — these and the like
propositions, held under various forms and by diffe
rent schools, indicate the tone of thought, originating
in the period which this Essay delineates, and con
tinuing even now, against which a profounder reli
gious movement has in good time protested.

But the Essay itself may be thought perhaps to sug
gest another conclusion, and to point to a different sort
of religious movement. The failure of common sense
as an organ of religious inquiry is the main result

APPLICATION SEEMINGLY INTENDED. 359

"which it (most truly) signalizes. The merit which coun
terbalanced the failure was the practical application of
religion, such as common sense had made it, to the
real wants of the time. And the use of reviving
the remembrance of that failure is hinted to be the
necessity of a similar effort now to render religion
truly practical, only with a higher and better instru
ment. The fuller language of other Essays lends to
the suggestion a more decided meaning, for which the
words of the particular Essay merely leave room.
The thoughts and language of a past generation do not
meet the religious wants of the present, and religion, it
is assumed, is becoming in consequence unreal. But
while the present Essay merely indicates the want,
the others claim, as belonging to their own school,
the only true and efficient way of meeting it. Now
about the facts, it is to be supposed, the whole world
unhappily are agreed. From various causes there is
an infidelity among us of a new kind, to which older
writers supply no answer. To put the apologists or
the divines of the last or any preceding generation
into the hands of assailants of the truth now, or into
those of persons who really desire to believe, is no
doubt a mockery. Their mode of reasoning, their
very principles, their range of knowledge, however
grounded upon substantial truth, are out of date. The
Paleys or the Lardners supply no answer to the
Strausses or the Hennells. And we must needs
come to the modern pages of Eogers or of Mansel
to find the appropriate reply to Francis Newman or
to Theodore Parker. That there is need, then, of a
new " Bationalism," and specially of an application to
the altered difficulties of the time of a profounder and
more critical knowledge and of the higher reason, is

360 FALSE "RATIONALISM" OF THE PRESENT DAY.

a statement in which all must agree. And though it
may be hard to see the sincerity of an attempt which,
as a whole, seeks to conquer infidelity by admitting
its principles and adopting its conclusions, yet one is
bound to give even the extremest of the Essayists credit
for at least the intention of making it. But the real
thing wanted is not new Creeds, but to bring the new
modes of thought into subjection to the old ones. And
which have laboured most successfully at this task,
Mr, Maurice and Professor Jowett, or Mr, Eogers and
Professor Mansel? The Church does indeed want a
new " Bationalism," that shall employ a higher range
of faculties than the common sense of the older ra
tionalists (if they may be truly so called), and shall
base" itself upon a wider and more intelligent know
ledge than theirs, and shall aim at a higher and more
spiritual and disinterested morality than the pruden
tial bargaining with God and with the world which
satisfied them. But she must find it, — and what
ever might be feared, there is nothing in the Eector
of Lincoln's own pages to prevent his finding it also,
— in a school toto coelo opposed to that, which first
of all has specially distinguished itself by denouncing
the higher reason as no reason at all, and as leading
to atheism ; and secondly, has adopted the unsound
history and crude theology of such as Bunsen b ; and

b The historical critic who can postpone the Bible to Manetho,
surely puts himself out of court on purely literary grounds. And
if any one wishes the measure of Bunsen' s theology, let him read
his speculations on the doctrine of the Trinity in bis " Christianity
and Mankind," vol. iv. part ii. sect. iii. cc. 2, 3, ed. 1854. Really
one ought to speak out about a writer whom persons of such oppo
site schools in England have at different times so strangely com
bined to idolize. If any religious and sensible man, no matter
what his views so that he be a Christian, can read the passage just

WHAT KIND OF " RATIONALISM" IS REALLY NEEDED. 361

thirdly, while shrinking honourably from the ethical
fatalism under which the Mills and the Buckles have
revived the old " sufficient-cause" quibble of Hobbes,
has itself become the apostle of a half-pagan type of
physical morality, too self-reliant and too much wrapped
up in the world we live in to be wholly Christian, to say
nothing of the omission from its leading idea of manli
ness of most of the gentler, and many of the nobler,
meanings of " humanity." We do want, indeed, a new
" Rationalism," but it must be far other than this. It
must be a rationalism that shall not seek to defend the
Creeds by giving them up ; shall not mutilate them of
obnoxious doctrines in order to purchase from man's
reason a hollow and patronizing acquiescence in the re
mainder ; shall not leave us to the alternative of Ro
manism or Socinianism by assuming the Catholic faith
of the first centuries to have been a human development
of a primitive undoctrinal morality ; shall not, in a
word, make a peace with human reason by acknow
ledging its supremacy in order to retain at its mercy the
relics of a pseudo-Christianity. It must be one, on the
contrary, that shall so use the deeper philosophy arid
wider knowledge of the day, as to add one more link
to the ever-lengthening chain of proof, that the truths
of revelation overmaster all phases of human reason,
and that each new development in man's mental
history has ever found itself constrained to submit
to the conditions of thought laid down once for all
in the faith of Christ. "Would that the Eector of

referred to without an involuntary thrill of mingled horror, pity,
and contempt, I am sadly mistaken. It may sound arrogant, but
the truth is greater than great men. And I do say advisedly, that
such ravings have seldom darkened counsel by words without know
ledge since the days of the Gnostics.

362 ANTI-DEISTICAL WRITERS OF 1720—1750.

Lincoln may turn his own great powers to the task,
of which he so vividly sees the need, and the lines of
which he has so truly laid down by contrast in the
masterly picture he has drawn of an unsuccessful
rationalism.

But we turn from the object of the Essay to its
contents ; from the lesson it designs us to draw, to
the facts upon which the lesson is based.

I. Its main subject is the anti-deistical writers of
1720 — 1750. It imputes to them rationalism. The
acceptance of reason as the supreme judge of the
matter as well as the evidence of revelation, is the
main feature in the picture drawn of them. Without
attempting to settle the true bounds of the functions
of reason in religious subjects, or to define differing
degrees of excess in the matter, an extreme view of
the subject is laid to the charge of the school of wri
ters above named as a whole, including names emi
nent not only then but for all time. Is this charge
well grounded ?

There can be no doubt that the eighteenth century
was a rationalistic age. Eeason was its cry. And
the tone of the time infected the Church as well as
its opponents. But then rationalism appears in Church
writers in the form of a concession, under continual
protest, and carefully shackled by all possible limita
tions. Of the writers named in the Essay, even Eogers
talks of "inevident" propositions in religion. And
Tillotson denies that " the finite can comprehend the
infinite," or that human similitudes can fully explain
divine mysteries. And Prideaux qualifies his own
broad principle, in the end of the Tract from which
the Essay quotes. And of others we shall see below,
that a denial of the supremacy of reason is really more

THEIR METAPHYSICAL SHALLOWNESS. 363

their object than an assertion of it. Conceding then,
(as we must) the name, and the fact, so far as they
indicate a difference between particular schools of
English theology, it is clearly unfair to reckon these
divines and their opponents as alike rationalists. And
the result of so indiscriminate a statement is simply
to leave the impression that the Christian reasoners
in that controversy did precisely the opposite of what
they really did. It is equivalent to saying that their
chief occupation was to maintain the supremacy of
reason; whereas they rather accept the principle at
their opponents' hands as containing a basis of truth,
while their own works were mainly written in order to
limit and control it.

Indisputably, however, the school was unduly ra
tionalistic. And every one familiar with their writings
must admit the general truth of the masterly analysis
given in the Essay, of their line of argument. In many
things the age was too much for them. They treated
reason, to use Butler's phrase, with far too much of
" consideration."

1. That religious faith ought to be the issue of a
purely intellectual process, is maintained by them in
a far too unguarded way. While admitting that in
point of fact it can hardly be the actual case with any,
their ideal of a Christian belief was yet that of a state
of mind which, starting from pure impartiality, had
admitted no influences to build it up save those which
reach the heart through the understanding. So far
the Essayist has not done them injustice, and has sup
plied to ourselves a powerful and profound criticism
upon a position too common still to render that cri
ticism unpractical, and too much mixed up with truth
to allow it to be useless.

364 UNDULY NEGLECT CHURCH AUTHORITY.

2. Again, that the truths of revelation, on that side
of them which relates to the nature and attributes
of God, belong to a different order of truths from
those which come within the range of human expe
rience ; that the causes of our inability to fathom re
ligious mysteries, do not lie simply in the partial and
limited extent of our knowledge, but in the necessary
texture of that knowledge in itself; that the infinite
is not simply an indefinite extension of the finite, but
belongs to a different range of intellectual powers, and
appeals to faculties which man has not, although he
can perceive the limitations of those which he has, and
can recognise accordingly the existence of truths which
he cannot master, — these and the like familiar results
of later philosophy were mainly wanting to philoso
phers and divines alike of a century since. And the
Essayist has justly noted the defect. It is one
prominent in the unmetaphysical pages of Bishop
Butler. And though intimations may be found of
the deeper view in the writings of eighteenth cen
tury divines, — and the celebrated work of Bishop
Browne is a proof that the formal speculations of even
theologians tended sometimes, wisely or unwisely, in
a like direction, — yet the general tone of speculation
on the subject tended to the encouragement of undue
rationalism, by omitting to mark distinctly the exist
ence of those deeper truths before which reason fails
in its own intrinsic powers.

3. Further still, the Hanoverian divines of the last
age, though the Essayist only notes this incidentally,
paid little attention to the authority of the Church,
in any sense of the phrase. It was no age, so far as
they were concerned, for Catenas, except as an argu-
mentum ad homines against Eome. ISTor do we find in

IN WHAT SENSE ALL REASONERS RATIONALIZE. 365

them patristic quotations, as a rule, and hardly at all.
Nor do they make more than passing references, more
for completeness' sake than anything else, to the views
of the primitive Church or of (Ecumenical Councils
upon religious truths. So far from going into any ex
cess in this direction by way of counterbalance to rea
son, the leading divines of that time did not lay even
due stress upon that historical and external system
of belief which offers an authoritative interpretation
of Scripture upon essential doctrinal points. They
threw individuals too nakedly upon their own bare
reason, and bade them make a creed for themselves
with too little of safeguard in respect to the Creeds
of the Church. Yet even this must be qualified. For
to talk of Church authority to deistical opponents
would have been waste of words. And the theory
at least of " the use and value of ecclesiastical anti
quity" cannot be said to have been wholly forgotten or
denied in the age that produced Cave and Waterland.
4. Again, there is of course a sense in which reason
is supreme. Just as the most vacillating will prac
tically decides ; just as it is his eyes with which a man
must see, although he may see very badly : so the rea
son of each man necessarily rules the judgments which
he forms. It is a common fallacy which shifts the real
burden of the private judgment question to an irrele
vant issue. That question is not, by what faculty
a man must shape his religious faith, but by what
rules and with what auxiliaries he must govern that
faculty in the process ; to what limits and to what
conditions reason itself says that reason ought to sub
mit in the matter. Locke's dictum, then, is self-
evident — that to extinguish reason in order to exalt
faith is the same as to put out our eyes in order to see

366 A PRIORI MORAL JUDGMENTS.

better with, a telescope. The information supplied by
faith must perforce be cast in the mould of the human
reason in order to obtain access to the human mind at
all. The supremacy of reason in this sense is a truism.
The real question is, how far the forms of the reason
are discovered by the reason itself, whether upon in
ternal or upon external grounds, to be adequate or
inadequate to present truly the truths which they
convey; how far it is reasonable to believe that the
subjective representation corresponds to the objective
truth. We must perforce argue on the assumption of
the forms of the reason. And reason itself must settle,
for us, how far these forms are to be trusted as suffi
cient equivalents for the »ideas represented under them.
It must be admitted, then, that large general state
ments about the power of reason in any school of
divinity prove little ; but that the gist of the question
lies in the explanations and qualifications by which
these statements are reduced from bare truisms to
a special theological view.

5. And in particular of the primary axioms of the
moral reason. Surely nothing can be made out re
specting the doctrines of a particular school from ad
missions of the independence and supremacy of the
simplest moral ideas. The Occham doctrine (if it was
Occham's) which resolves morality into the arbitrary
Divine will, can be nakedly held by none who under
stand their own words. When Waterland maintains
something like it as against the free-thinkers, his
argument is perforce a heap of confused self-contra
dictions. I do not mean that human reason can theo
retically combine religion and morality into a single
idea, st) as to obviate all cavil, or even all reason
able difficulty; or that there is not a truth at the

BISHOP BUTLER.

367

bottom of the perversion which goes by Occham's
name, and which must not be got rid of by a simple
assertion of the contradictory of it. Morality must not
be set up as something overruling God from with
out Him. But if we are to have any real meaning
in our words, the proposition that God is good must
needs contain something more than that He is any
thing whatsoever that He has pleased to be. And
every one who would argue on moral subjects, must
needs have distinct and substantive principles on which
to argue. It is no " rationalism," then, in any specific
sense, to maintain that elementary moral truth is as
axiomatic as the bare forms of the reason themselves.
The real questions are, to what extent we know the
facts and are capable therefore of applying the axioms ;
and how far these elementary truths are adequate re
presentations of absolute morality, and capable there
fore of bearing the inferences which, on the assumption
of such adequacy, seem to follow from them. Such
statements, then, as those of Butler, of which the Es
sayist, by the way, has not quoted the strongest, prove
nothing of Butler's " rationalism." For they are the
common "rationalism" of all reasoners, the essential
pre-requisites to any reasoning, or to any reasoning on
moral subjects, at all. Every one must say with him,
that " reason is indeed the only faculty we have where
with to judge concerning anything, even revelation
itself;" and that he must not "be misunderstood to
assert that a supposed revelation cannot be proved
false from internal characters: for it may contain
clear immoralities or contradictions; and either of
these may prove it false." Still more, in the words
quoted in the Essay, must it be maintained, that there
is a "moral fitness and unfitness of actions, prior to

368 PARALLEL WITH COLERIDGE.

all will whatever :" and further still (what is necessary
to make this passage relevant) that this moral fitness
or unfitness is discernible to some real extent by human
reason, even as weakened by the Fall.

So far, then, the imputation of rationalism to the
eighteenth century is very far from being an untrue
imputation. Not only were the divines of the ruling
party of that time rationalists in the sense in which
every reasoner and every moral reasoner must be so ;
but beyond this, they must be admitted to have laid
too exclusive a stress upon the reason, to have ig
nored too much, if not in many instances altogether,
the higher faculties of the reason, and to have un
duly left out the counterpoises provided against un
wise private judgment. But the Essay imputes to
them a much more extreme rationalism than this. It
represents them as claiming or admitting a " verifying
faculty" in the largest sense. Reason, in their use of it,
is described as " proving instead of evolving, arguing
upon instead of appropriating, the eternal verities."
And the " supremacy of reason" appears to mean,
that although Christian mysteries could not have been
discovered by reason, yet when made known they
must be capable of rational proof, must harmonize
with rational presumptions, must be such that reason
distinctly recognises their necessary truth upon its own
principles. It is a legitimate result of such a view, for
instance, that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity could not
indeed have been discovered by man uninformed from
God ; but that, being thus made known to him, he can
perceive by reason, that the case could not have been
otherwise ; and that if he could not perceive this, the
doctrine must be false. The comparison of the early
anti-deistical writers to Coleridge sufficiently shews

EXTREME RATIONALISM IMPUTED TO THE SCHOOL. 369

that this is the meaning here attributed to the word
Nationalism. It is not simply that nothing is to be
allowed which is contradictory to reason, but that
" the mysteries of Christianity are reason in its high
est form ;" i. e. necessarily, reason as man now pos
sesses that faculty, only, as Coleridge meant it, in
respect to its transcendental and not its common-sense
powers. " Human reason as strengthened by Chris
tianity" -so his view has been expressed — "can
evolve all the Christian doctrines from its own sources. "
Still more, in the words quoted in the Essay itself,
must " the compatibility of a document with the con
clusions of self-evident reason, and with the laws of
conscience," be " a condition a priori of any evidence
adequate to the proof of its having been revealed by
God." And so also, in the language of the Essay, the
earlier eighteenth-century divines are described to us
as holding, that the truths revealed by Christianity,
over and above those previously known by the light
of natural religion, " could not have been thought out
by reason, but when Divinely communicated, approve
themselves to the same reason which has already put
us in possession" of those previous truths. Or in other
words, the " supremacy of reason" is alleged to have
been maintained by these divines, not simply as judg
ing of evidence, but as judging also, and as by an
adequate instrument for the purpose, of the possibility
and of the lightness of the thing evidenced; and
again, not simply as understanding the meaning of
terms so far as to attach a real and precise sense to
them, and as deciding upon the compatibility of those
terms with one another in a proposition to the extent
of rejecting simple contradictions, and as drawing im
mediate inferences, as e.g. from moral or other axioms,

Bb

3/0 THEY ARE NOT RATIONALISTIC IN THIS SENSE.

within the limits of its own experience and of its
own comprehension of those terms, but as thoroughly
master of religious ideas, so that no doctrine can be
accepted as true unless its terms in their full meaning,
and the entire relations of those terms to one another,
and not their compatibility only with self-evident prin
ciples of reason but their dependence upon such prin
ciples, be patent to the human reason itself. Now
nothing is easier than to shew that the leading divines
of that age were so far from accepting, that they dis
tinctly rejected, the supremacy of reason in this sense
and to this extent. That as a rule they did not appeal
simply to authority, whether of the Church or of the
Fathers or of primitive tradition, but to reason, and to
authority, if at all, only as entirely subordinate to rea
son, is perfectly true. Partly it did not harmonize with
their own tone of thought or doctrine to do otherwise.
Partly they were compelled by the necessities of argu
ment to take ground which their opponents would ad
mit. It is true, also, that the line was by no means
sharply drawn, in the philosophy of the time, be
tween the sensuous and the transcendental, between
the world of experience and of phenomena, and that
of intuitions and of things as they are in themselves,
between the common and the higher reason. And
divines did not anticipate the philosophical specula
tions of a later date. The Tertullianistic paradox,
' The harder a doctrine the better for faith,' was the
opposite to their line of thought. But assuredly the
divines of those days neither asserted the compre-
hensibility, still less the capability of being rationally
proved, — nor alleged that comprehensibility or capa
bility as conditions of the truth, — of religious mysteries.
They did not hold that mysteries must have ceased to

THEIR OBJECT MAINLY IS TO LIMIT REASON. 37!

be such, if they are to be reckoned in the list of
Gospel doctrines. They seem, on the contrary, to
have drawn the line between reason and faith, prac
tically and substantially, although in language of very
different aspect and approaching the subject from an
entirely different side, pretty much where the philo
sophical defenders of the Christian faith at this very
day would draw it. Their main object is to depress
reason. They treat it tenderly, but from argumenta
tive considerations. It was their opponents' main
theme, and that on which they relied: and contro
versialists must needs make all possible concessions to
the main strength of an opponent's argument, in order
at once to shield themselves from sound objections,
and to obtain the greater vantage-ground for their
own assault. But the whole drift of their reasoning
is to put limits upon reason, although they certainly
draw those limits far too laxly. One might almost say,
that the Essay, unintentionally and for want of suffi
cient discrimination, but really, represents the greater
Christian defenders as yielding the precise points upon
which they most insisted. The whole of Butler's
" Analogy," for instance, is an elaborate depreciation
of the supremacy of reason. It seems to imply, indeed,
too strongly, that if we knew all the facts, we could
judge, even with our present faculties. But then we
cannot know all the facts, or more than the very least
portion of them. And its main principle is, that reason
must accordingly be content with being irrational, —
that it is the height of reason to discern, that reason
cannot judge, because it has not the principles on which
to judge, but must expect to continue always in this
world baffled by difficulties that it cannot solve, and
compelled to accept as truths positions that it can

Bb2

37,2 BISHOP STILLINGFLEET.

neither reconcile nor comprehend, much less prove.
And if we turn from Butler to other and inferior writers,
who yet were among the leading writers of the Church
side of the controversy, we find generally the same
character in their speculations also. "With some ex
ceptions certainly, and above others that of Tillotson,
(and even he, here and there, largely qualifies his gene
rally over-strong statements), they are truly described
in the words which Waterland uses of one of them,
when he tells us " that the insufficiency of reason to be
a guide in such matters," viz. of religion, " hath been
very lately set forth" (viz. in Bishop Gibson's second
Pastoral Letter) " in the clearest and strongest manner
for the conviction of infidels."

Take, for instance, the following passages from the
writers selected by a Eegius Professor of Divinity in
the latter part of last century as leading defenders of
the faith, those writers themselves belonging to the
earlier period with which the Essay is directly con
cerned, and one of them indeed, viz. Gibson, being
quoted in the Essay itself.

1. Bishop Stillingfleet, "On Scripture Mysteries,"
from the Enchiridion Theologicum, vol. i. p. 383, 3rd
edition : —

" Truly no men (by their own authority) can pretend to
a right to impose on others any mysteries of faith, or any
such things which are above their capacity to understand.
But that is not our case ; for we all profess to believe and
receive Christianity as a divine revelation ; and God (we
say) may require from us the belief of what we may not be
able to comprehend, especially if it relates to Himself, or
such things as are consequent upon the union of the di
vine and human nature. Therefore our business is to con
sider, whether any such things be contained in that reve
lation which we all own : and if they be, we are bound

BISHOP STILLINGFLEET. 373

to believe them, although we are not able to comprehend
them."

2. Id. ibid., pp. 389, sq. :-

" Although in the language of Scripture it be granted,
that the word mystery is most frequently applied to things
before hidden but now revealed, yet there is no incongruity
in calling that a mystery, which being revealed, hath yet
something in it which our understandings cannot reach to.
But it is mere cavilling to insist on a word, if the thing
itself be granted. The chief thing therefore to be done is,
to shew that God may require from us the belief of such
things which are incomprehensible by us. For, God may
require anything from us, which it is reasonable for us to
do ; if it be thus reasonable for us to give assent where the
manner of what God hath revealed is not comprehended,
then God may certainly require it from us. Hath not
God revealed to us, that 'in six days He made heaven
and earth and all that is therein ?' But is it not reason
able for us to believe this unless we are able to compre
hend the manner of God's production of things ? Here
we have something revealed, and that plainly enough, viz.
that God ' created all things;' and yet, here is a mystery
remaining as to the manner of doing it. Hath not God
plainly revealed that there shall be a resurrection of the
dead? And must we think it unreasonable to believe it,
till we are able to comprehend all the changes of the particles
of matter from the Creation to the general Resurrection?
But it is said, that there is no contradiction in this, but
there is in the mystery of the Trinity and Incarnation. It
is strange boldness in men to talk thus of monstrous contra
dictions in things above their reach. The atheists may as
well say, Infinite power is a monstrous contradiction, and
God's immensity and His other unsearchable perfections are
monstrous paradoxes and contradictions. Will men never
learn to distinguish between numbers and the nature of
things ? For three to be one is a contradiction in numbers ;
but whether an infinite Nature can communicate itself to

374 BISHOP STILLINGFLEET.

three different Subsistences without such a division as is
among created beings, must not be determined by bare
numbers, but by the absolute perfections of the Divine
Nature; which must be owned to be above our compre
hension. For let us examine some of those perfections
which are most clearly revealed, and we shall find this true.
The Scripture plainly reveals, that ' God is from everlasting
to everlasting ;' that * He was and is and is to come ;' but
shall we not believe the truth of this till we are able to
fathom the abyss of God's eternity? I am apt to think
(and I have some thoughtful men concurring with me) that
there is no greater difficulty in the conception of the Trinity
and Incarnation, than there is of eternity. Not but that
there is great reason to believe it ; but from hence it appears
that our reason may oblige us to believe some things which
it is not possible for us to comprehend. We know that God
must have been for ever, or it is impossible He ever should
be ; for if He should come into being when He was not, He
must have some cause of His being ; and that which was the
first cause would be God. But if He were for ever, He must
be from Himself; and what notion or conception can we
have in our minds concerning it ? And yet, atheistical men
can take no advantage from hence ; because their own most
absurd hypothesis hath the very same difficulty in it. For
something must have been for ever. And it is far more
reasonable to suppose it of an infinite and eternal Mind,
which hath power and wisdom and goodness to give being
to other things, than of dull, stupid, and senseless matter,
which could never move itself, nor give being to anything
besides. Here we have therefore a thing which must be
owned by all ; and yet such a thing which can be conceived
by none ; which shews the narrowness and shortness of our
understandings, and how unfit they are to be the measurers
of the possibilities of things."

(Stillingfleet pursues the like argument through
others of the divine attributes, sucli as the spiritual
nature of God, His foreknowledge, His infiniteness ;

BISHOP CONYBEARE.

37<5

following out a train of thought in substance identical
with that of Mr. Mansel in his sixth Bampton Lec
ture, however differing from that lecture, as of course
is the case, in context and immediate purpose, in
style of thought and terminology. The same line of
reasoning is also followed, to the extent of — not
" hewing" Athanasianism down to "an intelligible
human system," but — maintaining the doctrine of the
Trinity as set forth in the Athanasian Creed, in Stil-
lingfleet's " Doctrine of the Trinity and Transub-
stantiation Compared," ib., pp. 427, sq. ; of which
treatise one main object is, to maintain such a differ
ence between the relation of the two doctrines re
spectively to reason as to support a rejection of the
latter consistently with an acceptance of the former ;
and this is done, not by affirming the former to be
comprehensible, still less proveable by reason, but
only not contradictory to it, whereas the latter is
alleged to be so.)

Taking Stillingfleet for the beginning of the pe
riod, we may turn now to a writer at the close
of it.

Bishop Conybeare, (Bishop of Bristol 1750 — 1755),
" On Mysteries," ib., vol. ii. p. 32 :-

" The point therefore in which they [the Socinians] differ
from us, is this : we affirm that there are several doctrines
above our reason ; and which we are still incapable of com
prehending, notwithstanding the revelation which hath been
made to us concerning them : they affirm, on the contrary,
that there is nothing in the Christian religion above our
reason ; nothing but what, by a due use of otfr faculties, we
are able to comprehend : and in consequence of this, they
reject such interpretations of Scripture as carry with them
anything incomprehensible."

376 BISHOP CONYBEARE.

Ibid., p. 34, sq. : —

" This account supposes that of these mysterious doctrines
we have some ideas ; we have ideas, though such as are
either partial or indeterminate. Indeed, where we can frame
no ideas we can, strictly speaking, give no assent. For what
is assent, but a perception, or at least a firm persuasion, that
the extremes in a proposition do agree or disagree ? But
where we have no manner of ideas of these extremes, we can
have no such perception or persuasion. And as no combi
nation of terms really insignificant can make a real pro
position ; so no combination of terms to us perfectly unin
telligible, can, with respect to us, be accounted propositions.
We do maintain, therefore, that we have some ideas even
of mysterious doctrines. And thus, I conceive, we are suffi
ciently guarded against an objection sometimes made against
us as contending for unintelligible doctrines. There is a vast
difference between unintelligible and incomprehensible. That
is, strictly speaking, unintelligible, concerning which we
can frame no ideas; and that only incomprehensible, con
cerning which our ideas are imperfect. It is plain, therefore,
that a doctrine may be intelligible, and yet incomprehensible.
Nay, I shall adventure to maintain, that there are several
propositions of whose extremes we have ideas, but are yet
incapable of discerning how far these extremes do agree or
disagree. For since this agreement or disagreement is, in
most cases, to be proved by the use of several intermediate
ideas, we are incapable of discerning whether they do agree
or disagree. In all such instances the propositions are in
telligible, and yet incomprehensible. The incomprehensi
bility therefore of certain doctrines in our religion does not
arise from our having no ideas of them; but from hence,
that our ideas are either inadequate or indeterminate. I
conceive it is very evident, that there may be infinite re
lations of one thing to another, which for want of adequate
ideas will be to us undiscernible ; but any propositions with
respect to such undiscernible relations will, when proposed,
be to us mysterious : and consequently, those who explode

BISHOP CONYBEARE. 377

all mysteries, can maintain their ground only by asserting
that all their ideas are adequate; a perfection which the
sober part of mankind will be very backward in allowing
them. Besides this, there are other things concerning which
our ideas are indeterminate. The importance of the obser
vation will best appear by considering that in those reve
lations which God is pleased to make, He deals with us as
men, and does not produce in us any new faculties different
from what we had before. If the doctrines revealed are
made up of such ideas as we are capable of receiving in the
ordinary methods of knowledge, then the revelation is either
a farther enforcement of such truths as might naturally be
known, or a discovery of such truths as (for want of adequate
ideas) could not naturally be known. But it hath happened
in some instances, that the doctrines revealed are made up
of such ideas as we are incapable of receiving in an ordinary
way : such as the doctrines concerning the generation of the
Son of God, the distinction between the Persons in the ever-
blessed Trinity, and the like. In these cases the ideas are
themselves revealed ; — revealed, I say, not by producing in
us any new faculties of receiving them, but by representing
them by some other ideas, with which they have a remote
resemblance and analogy. "

Id. ib., p. 39 :-

"As creatures we must be dependent and finite ; and what
ever is finite in its nature must be finite in its attributes. The
consequence will be, that every creature must be bounded in
its capacity of knowledge. Or thus ; no being can be endued
with absolute knowledge, unless it be endued with absolute
perfection ; and no being can be endued with absolute per
fection, but the supreme self- existent Being. From hence
it follows, that there must be an infinite number of truths
actually comprehended by the self-existent Being, and yet
incomprehensible by the most perfect creature : i. e. there
must be an infinite number of truths to us mysterious."

Again : —

" I do maintain, that ... we may have in some cases de
monstrative evidence of doctrines mysterious."

378 BISHOP GIBSON.

Id., " On Scripture Difficulties," ib., p. 108, sq. :—

" Mysteries are points in which the Supreme Being hath
imparted some knowledge to us ; — but the revelation stop
ping there, several questions to be raised about them are ob
scure. Difficult, therefore, they must be, unless our notions
concerning these things were more full and determinate ;—
unless our capacities were greater and the revelation itself
more complete. . . . Words are the immediate representatives
of our thoughts ; and consequently can reach no farther than
our thoughts themselves. The things, therefore, of which we
have hitherto had no manner of notion, cannot be perfectly
represented in our words : from whence it follows, that to
clear up some things in reference to Divine doctrines, an
immediate inspiration to each particular person would be
necessary ;— a new language to express such matters, and new
ideas to understand the language. And after all that can be
supposed this way, as ours is a finite nature, it is impossible
but some things must exceed our knowledge."

Turn from these to a writer of intermediate date.
Bishop Gibson, "First Pastoral Letter," ib., pp.
132, sq. :-

"When a revelation is sufficiently attested to come from
God, let it not weaken your faith if you cannot clearly see
the fitness and expedience of every part of it. This would be
to make yourselves as knowing as God; whose wisdom is
infinite, and the depth of whose dispensations, with the
reasons and ends of them, are not to be fathomed by our
short and narrow comprehensions. God has given us suffi
cient capacity to know Him and to learn our duty, and to
judge when a revelation comes from Him : which is all the
knowledge that is needful to us in our present state. And it
is the greatest folly as well as presumption in any man, to
enter into the counsels of God, and to make himself a judge
of the wisdom, of His dispensations to such a degree, as to
conclude that this or that revelation cannot come from God,
because he cannot see in every respect the fitness and reason
ableness of it : to say, for instance, that either we had no

BISHOP GIBSON. 379

need of a Redeemer, or that a better method might have
been contrived for our redemption : and upon the whole, not
to give God leave to save us in His own way. In these
cases the true inference is, that the revelation is therefore
wise, and good, and just, and fit to be received and submitted
to by us, because we have sufficient reason to believe that it
comes from God. For so far He has made us competent
judges, inasmuch as natural reason informs us what are the
proper evidences of a Divine revelation ; but He has not let
us into the springs of His administration, nor shewn us the
whole compass of it, nor the connection of the several parts
with one another ; nor, by consequence, can we be capable to
judge adequately of the fitness of the means which He makes
use of to attain the ends. On the contrary, the attempting
to make such a judgment is to set ourselves in the place of
God, and to forget that we are frail men ; that is, short
sighted and ignorant creatures, who know very little of
Divine matters further than it has pleased God to reveal
them to us."

To which let me add the whole of another passage
of the same Bishop, where the writer of the Essay,
quoting the first sentences, has surely not looked to
the next page c ; and which will also clear two writers
at once from the charge — not of rationalism, but of
the extreme rationalism we are here considering, viz.
Gibson himself, and Locke whom he quotes. It is
part, too, of a set of treatises written expressly to
confute those who claim to assent or dissent from
Scripture, "just as they judge it agrees or disagrees
with the light of nature and the reason of things."

Id., " Second Pastoral Letter," ib., p. 167 :-

" Those among us who have laboured of late years to set
up reason against revelation, would make it pass for an esta-

c This is noticed in a pamphlet in reply to the Essay by
Mr. Candy.

380 GIBSON AND LOCKE.

blished truth, that if you will embrace revelation, you must
of course quit your reason ; which if it were true, would
doubtless be a strong prejudice against revelation. But so
far is this from being true, that it is universally acknow
ledged that revelation itself is to stand or fall by the test of
reason ; or, in other words, according as reason finds the
evidences of its coming from God to be or not to be sufficient
and conclusive, and the matter of it to contradict, or not con
tradict, the natural notion which reason gives us of the being
and attributes of God, and of the essential differences be
tween good and evil."

So far, save the last clause, the quotation in the
Essay. But Bishop Gibson adds some most important
qualifications of his statement. He continues : —

"And when reason upon an impartial examination finds
the evidences to be full and sufficient, it pronounces that the
revelation ought to be received, and as a necessary conse
quence thereof, directs us to give ourselves up to the guidance
of it. But here reason stops ; not as set aside by revelation,
but as taking revelation for its guide, and not thinking itself
at liberty to call in question the wisdom and expedience of
any part after it is satisfied that the whole comes from God ;
anymore than to object against it as containing some things,
the manner, end, and design of which it cannot fully com
prehend."

And then, quoting Locke, he adds farther: —

"These were the wise and pious sentiments of an inge
nious writer of our own time ; ' I gratefully receive and re
joice in the light of revelation, which sets me at rest in many
things, the manner whereof my poor reason can by no means
make out to me/ And elsewhere, having laid it down for
a general maxim, that ' reason must be our last judge and
guide in every thing/ he immediately adds, ' I do not mean,
that we must consult reason, and examine whether a propo
sition revealed from God can be made out by natural prin
ciples, and if it cannot, that then we may reject it. But

BISHOP BUTLER. 381

consult it we must, and by it examine whether it be a reve
lation from God or no. And if reason finds it to be revealed
from God, reason then declares for it as jnuch as for any
other truth, and makes it one of her dictates/ >'

Lastly, let the following passage of Butler be con
sidered, which is one of the strongest of his statements.
And let it be asked whether, after all, it does not
qualify as much as it affirms the power of reason :
and whether it in any degree bears out the extreme
imputation hazarded in the Essay.

Butler, " Analogy,'7 Pt. i. c. 3 :-

" Reason can, and it ought to judge, not only of the mean
ing, but also of the morality of the evidence of revelation.
First, it is the province of reason to judge of the morality of
Scripture ; i. e. not whether it contains things different from
what we should have expected from a wise, just, and good
Being ; for objections from hence have been now obviated :
but whether it contains things plainly contradictory to wis
dom, justice, or goodness ; to what the light of nature teaches
us of God."

An admission this, let it be observed : a concession
to opponents, made as strong as the temper of the
arguer, candid and discreet to a degree, could fairly
make it, yet qualified in itself to a sense not only
allowable but necessary, if we are to retain any mean
ing in the names of moral attributes at all, and to be
taken also with the fuller " qualifications which the
work as a whole is expressly intended to supply.

Of the other points in the Essayist's masterly ana
lysis of the general argument of the anti-deistical
divines, I have only to say that they form a contri
bution of no small value to a yet unwritten chapter
of English Church history. That analysis as a whole
no one can doubt to be a true one : unless so far as

382 CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST THESE DIVINES

this, that as in the general imputation of rationalism,
so in the other lines of the picture, — e. g. in the doc
trinal, ethical, and social aspects of it, — there is some
times a breadth of statement which omits the quali
fications necessary to exactness. The powerful mi
croscope has occasionally intensified the lights and
shades into lines so marked as to be practically be
yond the truth. It is true, for example, that the
doctrine of the fallibility of human reason arising from
the Fall, as of any other portion of the results of
original sin, was not prominent in the writings of that
school. But it is not true that such a doctrine was,
even " tacitly, renounced" by them. It occurs in
terms even in Eogers. And Bishop Gibson, e.g., ex
pressly cautions us against the " fallacious" method
of u arguing from the powers of reason in a state of
innocence, in which the understanding is supposed
to be clear and strong, and the judgment unbiassed
and free from the influences of. inordinate appetites
and inclinations, to the powers and abilities of reason
under the present corrupt state of human nature, in
which we find by experience how apt we are to be
deceived; . . . and more particularly in the case of
religion, how apt our judgment would be to follow
the bent of our passions and appetites, and to model
our duty according to their motives and desires, if
God had left this wholly to every one's reason, and
not given us a more plain and express revelation of
His will, to check and balance that influence which
our passions and appetites are found to have on our
reason and judgment." Again, it is quite true that the
prudential view of morality, which subordinated reli
gion to police, the next world to the present, was not
only prevalent, but was pushed by some of the divines

REQUIRE QUALIFICATION. 383

in question to a degree quite as extravagant as that
imputed to them by the Essayist in his comparison
of their view with the sceptical saying of the deist
Collins. Archbishop Tillotsond, whom the Essayist
selects, has actually gone so far as to demand, " What
religion is good for, but to reform the manners and
dispositions of men, to restrain human nature from
violence and cruelty, from falsehood and treachery,
from sedition and rebellion?" — a doctrine to which
its propounder himself would perhaps hardly have
stood if drawn out into its consequences, but which
fully deserves the extremest of the condemnation
which the Essayist bestows upon that writer, though
without quoting this emphatic passage. Yet in de
picting the theology of the period it would only have
been fair to add, that Waterland pointedly and at
length confutes and censures the statement. Further,
although, after making allowances for the style of
controversy prevalent in the age, there was still too
much of polemical violence, and although it is true
also that bishops, writing gravely and calmly, e. g.
Gibson and Berkeley, do impute directly or by im
plication to freethinkers as a body a generally lax
morality, yet surely it is unreasonable to accuse di
vines, whose usual tone is that of candour and calm
reasoning, of malignantly imputing evil to opponents,
on the a priori assumption that freethinking opinions
and defect of morals must needs go together, while
omitting inquiry into the fact whether or no they
actually did so. Bishops would not have ventured on
the assertion if it could have been refuted by noto
rious facts, nay, if it had not been supported by them.

d I take the quotation from Waterland.

384 ANTI-DEISTICAL SCHOOL A SUCCESSFUL ONE.

And the Essayist's own account of the period har
monizes hut too well with the truth of the accusation.
On the whole, agreeing in the main with the Es
sayist's estimate hoth of evidential schools as such,
and of the particular school of internal and a priori
evidence here described, — admitting fully, that the
common reason of men, if assumed to be capable of
measuring divine truth, will inevitably mutilate and
attenuate it in order to bring it within its own grasp,
and that religious views, if exhausted of all spiritual
depth by being reduced to a merely intellectual per
ception of moral obligation, will undoubtedly be de
graded into a worldly and utilitarian code of cold
prudential precepts and nothing more, — acknowledg
ing also, that the tone of religious thought in the
ruling divines of the eighteenth century certainly was
thrown into the line of undue appeal to plain common
sense, by the over reaction of a very reasonable dis
gust against the theological excesses of predestinarian
controversy6, and into that of a suppression of the
spiritual and mystical element through horror of such
hideous perversions of truth and morality by the " fa
natics," as may be found recorded at length in, e.g.,
Edwards' s Gangrcena, or the like books; — I think it
must be said, 1. that the present sketch of these di
vines, masterly and in the main true, does nevertheless
bring out the dark lines of the picture without suffi
cient qualification from those counter views which still

e Certainly the origin of the Latitudinarian school, and of its legi
timate development in the eighteenth century divines, was, histo
rically, not any reaction from nndue authority claimed for the English
Church by the Laudian divines or any other, but distinctly a re
action from Puritan excesses, both of theology and of a persecuting
spirit. The history of Whichcote and his friends at Cambridge is
sufficient proof of this.

PALEY. 385

held their ground; and 2. that it swamps in parti
cular such men as Butler, too indiscriminately in the
general condemnation; and 3. that it overlooks the
decisive evidence to the real ability of the school, af
forded by its undeniable success. Both combatants
it is true were fighting, so to say, with their right
hand tied and their right eye bandaged. Yet even
so, the Christian defenders, as a matter of fact, main
tained their ground, and defeated their opponents.
The deistical school, as a fact, died out. And its line
of thought and moral tone are as dead and repulsive,
even to sceptics of the present day, and its powers of
argument and knowledge as contemptible, as the sharp
est satire could ever represent those of the Christian
apologists to have been. And though the awakened
earnestness and deeper spiritualism of the Methodist
movement claims a large share in the victory, yet
some portion of the credit is plainly due to the un
answerable, however limited, arguments of a Leslie
on the one hand, and a Butler on the other.

II. The Essay however is, I think, harder upon
other schools of divines than upon that which is its
main subject. An incidental notice is bestowed by it
in passing upon the school of external evidences re
presented by Paley, upon the Laudian divines, upon
the religious tone and temper of the present day in
England. But the brevity of the notice only aggra
vates the severity of the censure in each case, by
leaving it in the form of a sharply expressed general
condemnation, unlimited and unapplied.

A "factitious thesis," for instance, and " unreal
matter," and a " conventional case," are the words
flung at the head of Paley's great argument for Chris
tianity; or again, that it combines a large breadth

c c

386 BISHOP MARSH.

of assumption with a narrow result of proof. And it
is compared disadvantageous^ with the "only honest
critical enquiry into the origin and composition of
the canonical writings," in the last century, Bishop
Marsh's Germanizing lectures on the document-hypo
thesis of the origin of the Gospels.

Surely the comparison is hardly fair. It implies
that the two lines of enquiry are divergent modes of
investigating one and the same subject, — the one
honest, and the other not so. They are really dis
tinct and parallel enquiries, proceeding from a like
evidence - seeking temper, upon different subjects,
and neither of them, so far as I can see, blinking
evidence or facts dishonestly. Each would have wel
comed the other as a fellow-labourer in different com
partments of the same field. Further, while refusing
to interpret the unexplained praise of this Essay by
the elaborate dissolution of the first three Gospels
into an uncertified and inconsistent tradition, which
is built upon a like eulogy of Marsh in another part
of the volume, it must be said that this whole incli
nation towards such inquiries as Marsh's proceeds
very much upon an ignoring of the external testi
mony of the Church from the beginning to the
Scriptures. The Gospels claim to be inspired Scrip
ture, primarily, upon the historical evidence which
proves them to have been received as such, — as the
inspired writings of certain inspired men, — from Apo
stolic times. Into what earlier sources they were re
solvable in the process of composition, is to believers
a question of curiosity only, except so far as the an
swer to it may, 1. remove cavils against the alleged
account of their inspired origin, and 2. throw light
upon their meaning. To unbelievers such a line of

CRITICISM MORE INSTRUCTIVE THAN EVIDENCE. 387

inquiry can do little more than establish the ground
lessness of the cavils in question. I cannot see then
how an enquirer is otherwise than honest who accepts
external testimony on such a subject. The one ques
tion in the point for such an enquirer is, whether
there be indeed such difficulties in the mutual rela
tions of the language, and of the meaning, of the first
three Gospels one to the other, as to overpower the
external testimony. And the one value of works like
Marsh's seems to be, not the discovery by them of the
real account of the materials from which the Evan
gelists wrote, — the building has been raised and the
scaffolding knocked down, and 110 divination can now
conjecture whence each particular stone was hewn, —
but simply to establish that there is a possible account
to be given of the existing phenomena, which shall
remove all difficulty from the path of that external
evidence into which the arguments for belief must
be really resolved. The particular account given,
by Marsh in the volume in question is indeed futile
enough. And like the similar hypotheses respecting
the Pentateuch, one serpent of the kind has swallowed
up another so rapidly in German speculation on the
subject, as to shew that all solid discovery about it is
as impossible as it is indeed superfluous. And surely
it was from this feeling of the inutility of an enquiry
which is to a large extent superseded by evidence
of another sort, coupled no doubt with a considerable
ignorance of German theology, and with a pre-occu-
pation by nobler and more profitable themes, and not
from any such dishonest fear of results as the Essayist
speaks of, that so few English divines have been found
to tread in Dr. Marsh's steps. However, there is a
ground of comparison between the historical argument

c c 2

388 PALEY'S CONCLUSIONS NARROW;

of Paley and the critical analysis of Marsh, apart
from the merits of the particular writers. Undoubtedly
exegetical enquiries, assuming them to be rightly con
ducted, tend to establish a more profound knowledge
and a more convincing proof than the external and
historical. The light thrown upon Scriptural studies
by the complete living reproduction of the actual cir
cumstances under which each book was written, at
which modern criticism aims, has its undoubted ad
vantages. It breathes life and motion into what was
before like an object seen in the mass under shade.
And so far, I freely own, that the laboured result of
Paley 's lengthy argument is jejune and narrow com
pared with the results of a study of the sacred text
itself. The very boast of that writer, — that his book
will be serviceable to all denominations of Christians,
because the rent between sects does not go down to
the foundation, which it is his work to lay, — shews
plainly enough how vague that foundation is, which is
the extent of his results. Setting aside, then, all ques
tion respecting the exceedingly imperfect historical
and patristic knowledge of the time and of the school,
(although Lardner, at any rate, cannot be called igno
rant of the latter subject,) it is plain that a living
knowledge of the meaning of Scripture, though con
sidered only in its literal and direct sense, will pre
sent to the mind a far more profound and exact con
ception of the Gospel and of its origin, whether for
the purpose of evidence or of devout thought, than
any amount of bare outward proof of the barren gene
ral proposition that " Christianity," a word connoting
many complex and disputed ideas, rests upon the tes
timony of witnesses who could be "neither deceivers
nor deceived." Moreover, one cannot but sympathize

BUT SOUND AS FAR AS THEY REACH. 389

with the general remarks, which stigmatize the di
rect study of merely external evidence, however ne
cessary with respect to the unbeliever, as neverthe
less injurious to that temper of belief in the student
of which it necessitates the temporary suspension.
Apart from the profanity which seems almost inse
parable from the bare argumentative statement of the
case, the mind is taken off for the time from religious
thinking itself to the mere historical proof of the facts
upon which religious thought may be exercised, which
is of course in no sense religious thinking at all. A
rational mind must indeed have reasonable ground for
believing. There is a legitimate function to be dis
charged by evidential reasoning. There is a strength
in such evidence which occasionally may be useful to
confirm the faith even of a believing mind. But it is
not the task on which a Christian temper would choose
habitually to employ itself.

But allowing all this, — allowing that the study of
the text of Scripture is more remunerating than that
of external evidences ; and that, even as an evidence-
writer, Paley is certainly narrow in the result of his
laboured proof; — does he prove nothing because he
proves little? A " conventional case,'7 and " unreal
matter," and a " factitious thesis," imply that the
argument thus stigmatized falls to the ground alto
gether, unless upon some one or more groundless
assumptions. And in Paley's great argument, — to
say nothing of Leslie's before, and of Lardner's after
him, — what are these groundless assumptions ? It is
perfectly true that the historical fact of certain mira
cles, which became also the ground of a new religious
body among men, is the sum total of Paley's results.
The theory of miracles in themselves, the value of

3go LAUDIAN DIVINES.

miracles as evidence, the exclusion of the possibility
of any conversion of subjective belief into supposed
objective testimony, the value of historical evidence
as set over against a priori reasonings on the subject,
the application of the argument to the special and
cardinal doctrines of the faith, — in a word, the entire
subject of the argumentative bearings and value of
the naked skeleton of an argument put forward, are
not touched. The book is no answer to modern infi
delity, no basis for a complete faith in Christian doc
trine j only a very small portion of the materials for
either. But it is one thing to say that an argument
is incomplete, or that it did not anticipate, and so did
not notice, modes of thought and reasoning posterior
in date to itself; another to stigmatize it as founded
on mistakes. And if the Essay, as I believe, means
simply the former of the two, then one cannot but feel
it unwise to fling out harsh- sounding words upon the
sensitive mind of the religious public, all alert as it
is at the present moment, and with considerable pro
vocation, to find heresy wherever it can.

III. But the Laudian divines come off far worse.
Two or three hard words, which find in the facts
a partial justification, are bestowed, in passing, upon
Paley : has not the Dalilah of a neat historical for
mula tempted the Essayist to sacrifice Laud and his
school to an antithesis ? In a brief sketch of the
successive " theories of belief'7 which have prevailed
among Christians, it was needful so to describe each
as to bring out the link of connection which led
to its successor. And the Caroline divines are sum
marily characterized as having substituted the autho
rity of the National Church for that of the discarded
Church Universal of pre-Keformation times : and this

LAUDIAN "THEORY OF BELIEF."

391

in such a way as to render it " impossible to justify
the Eeformation and the breach with Kome."

Now, the only supposition that will justify the first
statement is, that those divines resolved the ultimate
intellectual ground of religious faith into the decree
of the existing and national Church of England. The
only supposition that will justify the second is, that
they resolved it into the decree of the existing Ca
tholic Church assumed to be represented by the Pope,
or at the outside by the Churches in communion with
the Pope. And surely the Caroline divines were so
far from assuming either of these suppositions, that
they unhesitatingly deny both. Nay, did any man
ever assert for any national Church as such the attri
bute of infallibility, or the right of concluding the
faith of its own members by its own simple testimony,
which implies infallibility ? Or did any English di
vine of the Church school ever so give up his own
cause, as to allow the identification of the Church
Catholic with any of the half-dozen forms under which
the Eoman Catholic controversialist claims infallibility
for his OWTI part of the Church ? It is absolutely cer
tain that Laud did neither ; nor, I think, any of those
divines who are roughly classed together as forming
the Laudian school. The Church, according to their
view, — no doubt to each individual his own branch
of it, — proposes to each the doctrines of the faith as
the doctrines of the Church in its entirety and from
the beginning, gives him therewith also the Holy
Scriptures as God's inspired Word, refers him to the
traditional and historical faith of the Church Uni
versal, reaching up to and including Apostolic times,
as presenting an authoritative interpretation of Scrip
ture in fundamentals, and bids him then see for him-

39 2 DOES NOT SURRENDER THE REFORMATION TO ROME.

self that the doctrines she thus lays before him are
in Scripture. If he in a teachable and earnest spirit
endeavours with both heart and reason to embrace
the truth thus proposed, she tells him that he will
be led on by God's grace to recognise the doctrines,
thus pointed out to him in Scripture, to be in them
selves divine. An experimental Christian life will
give him an internal evidence of that which first comes
to him on external and historical grounds. And then
according to his measure he will have true faith. He
will at length know his Saviour, not because others
have told him, but for himself. The case of the
Samaritans in the fourth chapter of St. John was the
favourite type, taken from older divines, and employed
to enforce the view thus laid down. The woman was
as the present and national Church. She proclaimed
Christ to the people of her village, and announced
to them His supernatural knowledge, and His claim
to be the Messiah; and she bade them come and
see for themselves. Her office was external, intro
ductory, evidential, needing their own act to bring
it to a completion. She could only repeat what
she had been told, and testify to her own expe
rience. They accept her invitation, invite the Sa
viour to dwell with them, and then declare to the
woman that their belief corresponds to, and crowns,
her declaration; for that they now believe, not be
cause of her saying, but because they have heard
Jesus for themselves, and know that He is indeed
the Christ, the Saviour of the world. Here is no
thing surely of a " substitution of the voice of the
national Church for that of the Church universal."
So far as the Church of the day, national or universal,
claimed a self-terminated authority to impose doc-

LAUD'S OWN TESTIMONY. 393

trines upon her members as of herself, so far there is
a rejection of all such authority on the part of the
Church altogether. So far as the question is of pro
posing the truth with the moral authority of a wit
ness, referring the disciple to the ultimate and divine
authority of Scripture, so far there is no substitution
but a retaining of both Church universal and Church
national ; the latter as necessarily the immediate re
presentative to the individual Christian of the former,
but as partaking its authority, and that simply a moral
authority, only in the due proportion which the case
itself implies. And so stated, there is assuredly no
suicidal surrender of the Reformation to Rome in the
adoption of the principle. For the Reformation is to
be justified on the very ground that it was an appeal
from a corrupt part of the present Church to the col
lective witness of the whole Church yet undivided;
and that corrected by the Scriptures themselves as
being the witness of the first and inspired Church,
to which Scriptures it is the very office of the present
uninspired Church to introduce her members as to the
final and conclusive Word of Godf.

Take Laud's own view, too long to quote, but
which any one may find set forth repeatedly in
his " Conference with Fisher." We have there,
first, as the ultimate objective ground of faith, not
the Church in any sense, but the Scriptures : and
these subjectively apprehended, through the aid of
the Holy Spirit, not by the understanding merely,

1 A reference to Laud's " Conference with Fisher" would be con
clusive on this subject. And quotations to the point may be found
ready collected in an "Anglican Catena" ("Tracts for the Times,"
vol. iv.) ; which, by the way, beginning with Jewel, does not end
with Brett or "Waterland, but with Jebb and Van Mildert.

394 ARCHBISHOP BRAMHALL.

but by the entire complex experience of the mature
Christian man. And then we have, next, the Church,
the Church Catholic, the Church from the beginning,
brought before the believer by the voice of the Church
present, but with no claim of formal authority with
out appeal, even for the former. And the office of
the Church so understood is introductory, corrective,
educational, regulative, interpretative, possessed of a
moral authority proportioned to the universality and
antiquity, and other corroborative circumstances, of
the testimony given, but not claiming to be the formal
and ultimate ground of faith.

And if we look further for express statements of
the relative authority of the Church Catholic and the
Church national, these are not far to seek; and as
suredly negative outright any notion of a desire to
substitute the latter for the former. Jeremy Taylor,
perhaps, can scarcely claim rank as a Laudian di
vine, although in his later works he may be mostly
so reckoned, and his departures from that school
at any time were partial and occasional only, how
ever extravagant. Otherwise, his Ductor Dulitantium
would supply us with a precise testimony. But none
can doubt the right of Archbishop Bramhall, the
Irish Laud, to represent that school. And his decla
ration of faith on the subject (in the Address to the
Christian Eeader, prefixed to his "Eeplication to the
Bishop of Chalcedon") is as exact as it is instructive.
First the " Catholic oecumenical essential Church," to
which he " submits himself implicitly" until its testi
mony be given, and " in the preparation of his heart ;"
seeing that his u adherence is firmer to the infallible
rule of faith, i. e. the Holy Scriptures interpreted by
the Catholic Church, than to his own private judg-

RELIGIOUS TONE OF THE PRESENT DAY. '395

ment and opinions.'7 And next, and in a distinct
line from this, a simple " submission " to " the repre
sentative Church, i.e. a free General Council," and
"until then to the Church of England, or to a na
tional English synod, to the determination of all
which, and of each of them respectively, according to
the distinct degrees of their authority, I yield, " he
says, "a conformity and compliance, or at the least,
and to the lowest of them," (i.e. the English national
synod,) "an acquiescence." Assuredly there is no
substitution here of the particular for the universal.
As well might the Archbishop be called a "rational
ist," because he concludes this very declaration of his
"theory of belief," by bidding his opponent in the
end to " follow the dictates of right reason." And his
more expanded statement of the nature of the autho
rity which he assigns to the national Church, in his
" Answer to La Milletiere," shews plainly that the
"authoritative" judgment which he there claims for
it, the "judgment of jurisdiction," is one to which
obedience, and not faith, is the correlative, and which
is therefore in no sense a substitute for the formal
infallibility claimed by the Eomanist for the Church
Universal as in communion with the Pope, or even
for the practical infallibility claimed by the Anglican
for the Church, as a whole and from the beginning,
irrespective of the Pope altogether.

IY. The condition of religious feeling in the pre
sent English Church is a more delicate subject. The
religious world in England at present is described, in
different parts of the Essay, as being in the unsound
and unhealthy state of holding views of which it is
afraid to " allow the proofs to be sifted in open
court ;"— views which have become mere formula?,

396 IN WHAT RESPECTS DEFECTIVE.

once but no longer the living expression of earnest
belief, now a " godless orthodoxy," which " extin
guishes religious thought," and shrinks from honest
enquiry lest it should prove fertile "in unpleasant re
sults." That orthodoxy has " ceased to be a social in
fluence," — so it is hinted — and is growing into an arti
ficial system, where theological virtues are no longer
moral ones, and theological doctrines have " stiffened
into phrases," and "bear no relation to the actual
history of man;" while a "factitious phraseology," or
the " passwords of the modern pulpit," are " sub
stituted for the simple facts of life." Severe language,
surely, to be applied either expressly or by implication
to the existing tone of religious thought among us, or
to its tendency \ language strangely at variance with
the more common and cheering belief, finding both
utterance and evidence in ways so numerous, of an
unprecedented revival within the past generation of
a living and chastened faith. But when we come to
interpret and criticise this language, the question must
be first answered, to what extent is it intended to
reach? Is it the whole belief of the Church as such
that is thus dissevered from the faith and the wants
of the age ? Or is it merely that such moral defects
exist in a particular party, or extend to only the
manner in which the truth is taught? It is quite
possible, — and in an age of thought and of discovery
must needs be the case, — that a large amount of un
reasoning, unsifted belief in the bulk of mankind will
enshrine the particular opinions of a previous genera
tion, and its errors among them, in a religious reve
rence, long after the more learned of individual en
quirers have renounced those errors. The various
readings of Kennicott's Hebrew text, and the critical

REAL QUESTION AT ISSUE. 397

emendations of Mill's New Testament, and the very
Polyglott of "Walton, were each of them heresy in
their day and for a while to some people. And pro-
bahly we are as our forefathers were ; not less, yet
not more likely to be obstinate in retaining exploded
errors. Dean Ellicott, for instance, runs no particular
risk of being called hard names for giving up the Os
in the 1st of Timothy. Again, it is very possible,
that when the life of a religious movement is pretty
nigh exhausted, and its existence has become rather
one of opposition to more living movements of a later
date, — when a theological school has outgrown the
conditions which called it into existence and made it
the real supply to a true want, — the peculiar forms
of speech that once had, but now have lost, a real
meaning, shall nevertheless retain a traditional and
customary acceptance, and be defended with a bigotry
and acrimony proportioned to the loss of a living faith
in them and of an honest appreciation of their evi
dence. Something of a " godless orthodoxy" is almost
a necessary incident of a declining theological move
ment. It is possible, yet once more, that a true Scrip
tural theology may be preached in a conventional and
unreal tone, and that men who have confounded their
own stiff modes of handling the truth with the truth
itself, may be apt to " stifle thought " to the best of
their power by condemning those who throw them
selves into a heartier way of teaching it. These sup
positions taken together — and I believe each of them
has, or has had, a real application to ourselves — give
an innocent, and I believe the actual, meaning of the
Essayist's language. Unhappily, however, other Essays,
for which the Eector of Lincoln is not responsible,
attach a much wider sense to similar censures of the

398 NOT THAT WHICH IS HERE RAISED.

present time. The factitious phraseology, the posi
tions which will not bear the light of day, the formula
which are unreal, and yet from which an irrational
"bigotry will tolerate no departure, — are interpreted
elsewhere to be questions of Biblical interpretation,
of the construction of creeds, of the Church of the
future. And the unquestioning belief in an inspired
Book, the absolute acceptance of the doctrines of the
Creeds, the customary theology to be found in Prayer-
book and Catechism, preached in the old letter and
not in the new spirit, — these are proclaimed to be in
opposition so diametrical to the intellect, and know
ledge, and moral instincts of the age, as to render it
impossible for many honest enquirers to continue to
accept them. If so, then let the real issue be raised
openly: only let it be remembered, that it is not raised
by the words of this Essay, but by the piecing out of
the indefiniteness of those words through the language
of others. Then it is indeed Christianity itself which
is assailed. The Christianity of 1,800 years is held to
have done its work, and lived its life, and to be now
effete. And the difference between Comte, for instance,
or any other open assailant of the Gospel, and the ex-
tremest of the school that is now rising among us,
will be simply the difference between an open substi
tution of a human system for Christianity, and an at
tempt to alter the latter into conformity with a human
system — the difference, in a word, between rejecting or
retaining the mere name of the Gospel, while equally
giving up the thing. Only let it be repeated, while
thus in all sadness insisting upon the real issue at the
bottom of this conflict, that the deliberate intention of
raising that issue is not to be imputed to men who pro
fess, however (we may think) groundlessly, to be only

THAT TONE IMPROVED, NOT DETERIORATED. 399

recalling the Christianity of the day to a truer, and
therefore more effective condition ; and who do beyond
a doubt intend, in their own purpose, however unhap
pily, to reconcile intellect with revelation. And, at any
rate, the words of the present Essay are responsible for
no question of the kind. Meanwhile, it certainly does
seem to meet the facts of the case more truly, that we
should recognise rather an improvement than a deterio
ration in the present tone of English theology. English
preaching has surely thrown off the pompous conven
tionalities and rounded Latinisms that sent our fathers
to sleep, and has become more of a living and flexible
instrument, fitting into men's hearts and speaking to
their real wants ; while, at the same time, and with
the very reverse of a diminution of acceptableness,
it has learned a deeper theology and preaches more
thoroughly and more livingly the u terminology of
the Creeds." And English exegesis has been so far
from refusing to face the extremest researches of Ger
man criticism, that it has been learning of late to
rifle them of their solid and minute learning without
being tainted by their generally crude and unpractical
spirit. And without denying that there is much among
us of narrowness and of bigotry, or that the Church
has been well-nigh rent in half by a bitter and un
reasoning party spirit, it is surely plain, that a large
part at least of the polemical ferment which has arisen
now, means only — what is both right and reasonable
— that earnest men are shocked at what they hold to
be a tampering with fundamental truth, and a wanton
assault upon Scripture ; that they expect that clergy
men shall believe what they subscribe, instead of
spending their labour in determining the minimum
of belief that is unavoidable ; and that Christians shall

400 OBJECTIVE "THEORY OF BELIEF."

submit their judgments to the faith of Christ, instead
of altering that faith to suit their own narrow concep
tions. This is assuredly the impression under which
the whole Church, so to say, has undoubtedly acted ;
and the very strength of which shews, at any rate, no
unreality of feeling, while the breadth of the provoca
tion excludes any charge of narrow bigotry.

It yet remains to notice one further topic, of deeper
interest and wider reach than any mere question of
matter of fact respecting the doctrines or temper of
particular periods of the Church. Having spoken
hitherto of facts, let us turn now to principles. There
are two ways of writing the history of religious, as of
any other class of opinion. Either an historian may
trace the course of that opinion with continual refer
ence to a standard of truth, by which he measures his
judgments of each passing phase of belief; or, waiving
this, he may trace the successive shades and schools
of belief on the hypothesis of a merely natural suc
cession of ideas, developed according to " a law of
necessary continuity" by the simple operation of the
laws of thought. He may either write, as a Christian,
a history of his own religion, discriminating the min
gled truth and falsehood of successive schools of doc
trine; or as a spectator, placed externally, he may
analyze the growth and variations of a philosophy,
irrespective of truth or falsehood altogether. In the
first case, he will run the risk, no doubt, of colouring
his statements, unconsciously if not intentionally, by
the particular views of his own school and time. His
book, if he is not on his guard, may degenerate into
the special pleading of a partizan. In the second, he
must of necessity deprive himself of that sympathy
with his subject, which alone can enable an historian

NECESSARY TO A SOUND BELIEF. 401

to depict aright a history of religion. He will be
come a mere dry analyzer of facts, to the true life of
which he has voluntarily blinded himself*. The phi
losophical spirit, which realizes to the life the entire
atmosphere of thought and fact under which any view
of doctrine came into existence, seems impossible in
matters of religion, unless to a religious thinker.
Truth, in such subjects, hides itself from those who
deliberately write without any thought of truth at all.
So far, however, the question is only one between two
opposite extremes ; both of which, indeed, must be
blended together, in order to produce a perfect his
tory. A history of truth will be unreal and technical,
unless it be also clothed in the flesh and blood of the
successive phases of opinion. And a history of opinion,
independent of the moral certainty that it will in such
a case lean towards falsehood, will be destitute of in
sight into the deeper springs of human action, much
more into the dispensations of God, unless it be re
ferred throughout to the standard of truth. But the case
is materially altered, if the natural connection of suc
cessive theological views be assumed to be inconsistent
with any " theory of belief," by which objective truth
is held to be attainable. If the value of ecclesiastical
history be asserted to be, that it eliminates the sub
jectivity of one age by the neutralizing effect of com
paring also those of other ages, the assertion no doubt
is to the point, and true. But if it is also implied,
that no more present and immediate instrument exists
for ascertaining fundamental religious truth than the
tracing back the opinion of the present day to its
antecedents, and that men are in the midst of a kind

* There are some good remarks on this subject in the beginning
of Neander's " History of the Church."

Dd

402 SUBJECTIVE THEORY HERE ADVANCED.

of mesmeric chain of external influences through
which no hand is stretched to lift them up to the
truth itself, such a view claims to be otherwise cha
racterized. It seems to ignore the provisions made
under the Gospel for perpetuating truth, the external
teaching of Church and Bible, and the internal powers
of the reason as guided by the Holy Spirit ; and to
substitute accordingly, for truth belief, for dogma
opinion, for the Creeds a mere philosophy. And the
ultimate result of such a view must be a very sad
alternative, yet one which the events of the last few
years have shewn too plainly to be a real one. For
men will not rest content with a faith held to depend
upon grounds that are illusory. And they who are
so placed, must needs end either in believing no
thing, or in arbitrarily choosing and blindly accept
ing some external and self-constituted standard of
belief for themselves.

Now the undeveloped and cursory remarks at the
beginning of the Essay here considered, leave un
deniably the impression of favouring such a view.
They seem to exhibit as the grounds of the faith,
what are in truth the causes of its corruption, the
character and mental condition of each successive age.
They appear to speak of "the eternal verities" of the
original revelation, as though they were visible to us
only through the vista, — the tortuous windings and
hazy atmosphere, — of the past world of thought that
intervenes between them and ourselves ; and as though
they owed their present form, less to the unchangeable
Divine informant, than to the minds of the men who
teach and the men who are taught. And they do
distinctly include within the influence and sphere of
variable opinion, all theories of objective standards

WHAT IS THE TRUE "THEORY OF BELIEF." 403

of religious truth ; ranking, under a trenchant though
surely a rather strained alternative, as alike untenable,
the outward and the inward, the Eoman Catholic and
Anglican, and the Protestant, theories; or, in other
words, the assertion of an external and living in
structor, whether single or corporate, immediate or
traditional, or of an inspired book, capable of being
interpreted whether by Church or individual, or of
both combined, if assumed to be channels of a truth
above opinion, and able, therefore, to overrule and
inform it. Of course there may be theories, on the
one hand, of a continuous external source of Divine
teaching, which yet recognise " the laws of human
thought ;" and on the other, of individual enquiry,
which do "take account of the influences of educa
tion:" either of which, therefore, escape the rather
verbal antithesis of the Essayist's dilemma; — a di
lemma, however, professing by its terms to be an
exhaustive one. But while, if pressed to their most
precise meaning, room is thus left by the words for
the loftier view, it is impossible to help feeling that
the tone of the remarks in question does tend to in
clude the whole body of religious truth within the
shifting mass of current human opinion, and to deny
to ourselves the possession of any competent instru
ment for ascertaining that truth, in its purity, ob
jectively as truth.

And what, then, is the question, suggested rather
than distinctly put, still less formally answered in
either direction, by the remarks of the Essay — an
old question, that has underlain much of the con
troversy between England and Eome as well as be
tween Christian and Deist, and that has come to
the surface again now in more places than in the

D d 2

404 CATHOLIC CONSENT

volume of Essays? It is the question, whether or
no the Church has yet succeeded in propounding
a true " theory of belief." „ Faith is correlative to
a Divine informant; yet here is, directly and to
ourselves, only man, one man commonly against an
other. Truth must rest upon absolute grounds;
yet religious belief, as a matter of fact, is what it
is, mainly because men are born in this or that
school of theology, in Italy or in England, in a
cottage or in a palace. The interpretation, again,
of the Bible must needs vary with the opinions, and
temper, and knowledge of the age. And the present
Church, under whatever form represented, must needs
consist of men, who do not by reason of their Church
position rise above humanity, and who therefore see
with the eyes of their age, and judge according to
the idola with which that age surrounds them. Does
it not follow, either that there must bea besides these,
some visible and continuous present Divine informant,
if we are to have a truth in religion at all above
opinion, or that we cannot attain to such truth?
Neither a living Pope nor an open Bible are an
adequate answer to this question. The former leaves
us still to mere moral evidence, even granting that
there was such evidence, to establish his right to be
the required oracle. Nor does the present Church at
large, even omitting the divisions that impair its autho
rity and silence its voice, claim more certainly, although
more plausibly, the privilege of formal infallibility.
And although, granting the conditions of an accessible
Bible, and a belief in its inspiration, and a fair average
of education, I do not believe that broad or funda
mental error in religion could in the long run hold
its ground ; yet, doubtless, the very text of the Bible,

INTERPRETING SCRIPTURE. 403

and the canonicity of it, and its inspiration, and the
body of doctrine to be deduced from it, depend to
us upon human reasoning. But if there be thus no
living Divine informant, is there, for that reason,
no philosophically tenable ground for religious faith
at all ? Is the voice of God not brought to our ears,
because there are no audible accents of that voice
speaking to our physical sense of hearing from a
visible Sinai ? Because moral evidence is not in itself
formally infallible, is it impossible that some moral
evidence shall bring within the reach of men truths
which are formally infallible ? And there is abundant
moral evidence to a past infallible revelation, and to
the embodiment of the words of infallible men in
a still existing book; and to the continuous exist
ence of a certain Creed from the beginning, taught
by those infallible men, and held by the Church at
all times, although mixed up with a mass of error
at this or that time ; and held from the beginning
to have been the Creed, upon belief in which that
book was founded, and which its text therefore im
plies, and which may be read and re-read, in that
text, from time to time. In a word, there is that
which does seem, as it has seemed, surely, to the He-
formed Church of England, to be a philosophically
sound " theory of belief," in fundamentals, viz. Scrip
ture interpreted by Catholic consent. Here is the
sufficient foundation for a belief, that shall rest upon
a truth above opinion, and be correlative to a Creed
and not to a mere philosophy. It is unreasonable
and presumptuous to refuse to believe unless a pre
sent and living voice speaks to ourselves with a Di
vine power; and if men cannot find such a voice,
to declare belief impossible. The evidence of the
Christian Church of all times and places, — omitting

406 IS AN ABSOLUTE, NOT A RELATIVE, STANDARD.

all question of Divine aid or appointment, — con
stitutes a collective witness to the facts of the ori
ginal revelation, — to the written records left behind
by its inspired teachers, — to the main lines of their
teaching itself, — such as at least rises to a level
above the fluctuations of opinion or the subjective
conditions of particular periods. Eitual, liturgies, an
ordained clergy, a traditional orthodox faith, the coun
terpoise of opposite influences in different peoples
neutralized by combination, the views of one age cor
rected by those of another, in a word, the collec
tive evidence of the Church of all times and ages,
— and this corrected, checked, enlightened, gifted
as it were with a living and human power, by the
volume of Scripture, by the written words in which
are embodied the living teachings of prophets and
apostles, and of Christ Himself, — and vitalized, again,
and applied by the spiritual experience and spiri
tually guided reasons of individual Christians, — con
stitutes together a complex but wonderful machinery
for the preservation of truth ; which cannot be got rid
of by pointing out that its operation is modified, as no
doubt it is, by the nature of the subject on which it is
brought to bear. A floating mass of uncertified and
confused opinion will, of course, always exist ; and the
tone of thought will vary ; and the aspect of the truth,
and the stress laid upon particular portions of it, and
the inferences drawn from it, and the amount of error
mingled with it, will fluctuate with the knowledge,
and the philosophy, and the moral tone of the time.
Difficulties again, transformed by the solution of them
into evidences, will arise on the side of metaphysics,
physics, criticism, morals, history; yet each passing
away, as a matter of fact, with the conditions of the
time to which it belonged, and out of which it arose,

TRUTH ACTUALLY PRESERVED BY IT. 407

and all together dwarfed into insignificance by the
side of the counter- difficulty of explaining the his
torical fact of Christianity on any other supposition
than that of its truth. But, old-fashioned as the words
may sound in the ears of modern intellect, the Bible,
as interpreted by Catholic consent, does appear, never
theless, to be the very instrument fitted to the very
need with which we are here concerned. Moral evi
dence of course it is, and not demonstrative. But it
is moral evidence which, practically, and to a temper
not blinded by moral defects, precisely performs the
office of lifting the mind above the conditions of the
time, and of bringing it in contact with the uncoloured
truth. It is moral evidence which rests upon an ulti
mate Divine informant, and checks itself by a con
tinued reference to recorded Divine words. And a
large view of Church history will shew, that on the
whole, and for its main purpose, it has actually an
swered the end for which God gave it. The funda
mental truths of the Gospel have been overlaid, but
not forgotten ; have been distorted, but not blotted
out; have " progressed by the antagonism" of op
posing tendencies, yet have ever oscillated again to
their true balance; have been preserved, in a word,
as it has pleased God to preserve all truth for man, by
the instrumentality of man himself ; not with mathe
matical demonstration or rigorous precision, but with
moral certainty and with substantial truth ; not by
abolishing the atmosphere of human thought and feel
ing, but by penetrating that atmosphere with the rays
of a distant, but unmistakeable and glorious sun.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF
SCRIPTURE a.

the gallant Percy was smarting under his
wounds on the field of Holmedon, where he
had fought nobly for his king and country, he was
accosted by a courtier who had taken no part in the
fray, and who discoursed to the faint and weary sol
dier on the calamities of war. It was a strange thing,
he said, that men should risk their lives in battle : —

" .... It was great pity,

So it was, that villainous saltpetre should be digged
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed
So cowardlyV

He also informed the bleeding man that there was
an excellent recipe for the healing of his wounds : —

" . . . The sovereign' st thing on earth
"Was parmaceti for an inward bruise."

The temper of the brave soldier was nettled by this
impertinent talk, and he answered it in good plain
downright English, for he says " it made him mad."

a Note. — In the following pages the writer has endeavoured to
remove objections, and to shew the result of erroneous principles.
This, he is well aware, is only a portion of the work to be done,
with regard to the subject before him. It is necessary to build
up, as well as to pull down ; to establish the truth, as well as to
refute error. He has therefore attempted to deal with that other
part of the argument in " Lectures on the Inspiration, and on the
Interpretation, of the Bible, delivered at "Westminster Abbey."
(llivingtons, 1861. 2 vols., 7s.)

b Shakespeare, Henry IV., Pt. i. Act i. sc. 3.

4 10 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

Hotspur knew by experience that war was not a
pleasant trade, and he felt some of its evils at that
time. But, human nature being what it is, it did
not seem to him a strange or surprising thing that
men should fight. He knew that they have passions
and lusts, and if he had read the Epistle of St. James
in the Latin Vulgate, or in Wickliffe's Version, — for
he probably did not know Greek, — he had learnt the
cause of war, — " Whence come wars and fightings
among you ? Come they not hence, even of your lusts
that war in your members c ?"

He felt also an instinct within him, prompting him,
when called by the voice of his sovereign, to fight
valiantly for his king, his country, and his God.

The author of the Essay before us will not, it is
hoped, resent the comparison of the first six pages
of his Essay to the discourse of the courtier at
Holmedon.

The Essay opens thus : — " It is a strange though
familiar fact, that great differences of opinion exist
respecting the Interpretation of Scripture d." It is a
wonderful thing, that men are not all agreed as to its
meaning, and that they should engage in conflicts and
controversies upon it. " It is so extraordinary a phe
nomenon," he tells us, "that it requires an effort of
thought to appreciate its true nature*." What a won
derful prodigy it must be, to demand such a distress
ing strain of our mind that we should absolutely be
obliged to think !

Is not this very like the lack-a-daisical languor of

the courtier in the play ? It required of him an effort

of courage to look the enemy in the face, and buckle

on his armour and fight ; and " it requires an effort

c James iv. 1. d Essay, p. 330. e p. 334.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

411

of thought to appreciate" the true nature of differences
of Interpretation of Scripture. It is a sad thing that
such differences should exist. Pity it is, that the
saltpetre should be dug out of the earth which has
supplied the material for this controversial warfare.

Yes ; but in sober seriousness, are not all the
plaintive notes which compose the dolorous dirge of
these first six pages of our Essay like the effeminate
effusions of a maudlin sentimentalism ? True, very
true it is, that there are differences, and have been
differences, and ever will be differences in the Inter
pretation of Holy Scripture. But let us look them
honestly and courageously in the face. Is it " a
strange thing," is it "an extraordinary phenomenon,"
that there should be such differences ? No, certainly
not; at least in the estimate of those who acknow
ledge the divine origin of Scripture, and who con
sider the corruptions of the human heart and the ope
rations of our spiritual Enemy. It is not more strange
and extraordinary that there should be controversies
concerning the meaning of Scripture, than that there
should be wars and fightings among us. Scripture is
God's word. And the Evil Spirit is the enemy of
Scripture, and he has been ever eager to take the
seed of God's word out of men's hearts f; and our
hearts are often bad soil, and do not retain the Word.
He stirs up some men to deny the Inspiration of
Scripture ; and to treat the Bible as a common book.
He excites others to pervert its meaning and to bend
it in various directions, as a mere "regula plumbed, a
leaden rule," to suit their own wayward imaginations,
which they call their "verifying faculty;" and to
twist it about as a " cercus nasus, a nose of wax," to

f Luke viii. 12.

412 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

be moulded with easy pliancy so as to accommodate
itself to their " inner consciousness ;" and to set at
naught all the guidance which the Holy Spirit affords
for the true Interpretation of Scripture, both in Scrip
ture itself, and in the primitive consent and practice
of the Christian Church.

All these machinations of the Enemy of Scripture
are perfectly familiar to every student of Church-his
tory, and will not seem strange to any child who
reads Scripture itself. At the Temptation in the wil
derness, the Devil quoted Scripture against the Divine
Author of Scripture g. And St. Peter tells us that
even in his own days there were " differences in the
interpretation of Scripture," and that " unlearned and
unstable men " wrested some things in St. Paul's Epi
stles, as they did " the other Scriptures, unto their
own destruction11."

From the times of the Apostles, and after them in
the days of St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp and St. Ire-
na3us and Tertullian, even to the present age, the
same Evil Spirit which stirred up the first false teach
ers to corrupt the sense of Scripture, has been always
at work in prosecuting the same design. Therefore no
one need be surprised or staggered by the fact, that
there are great differences in the interpretation of
Scripture. No one ought to consider it a "strange
and extraordinary phenomenon," but he ought to
recognise in it a proof of the divine truth of Scripture
warning us that so it would be ; and he ought to see
here an evidence of the divine worth of Scripture,
which the Evil Spirit desires to destroy ; and he ought
also to derive from it a strong motive to hold fast the
true sense of Holy Scripture, which the Divine Author
* Matt. iv. 6; Luke iv. 10. '' 2 Pet. iii. 16,

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

4'3

of Scripture declares to us by the witness of His
Church universal, "the Church of the living God, the
pillar and ground of the truth1."

The Essayist, having expressed his surprise "that
differences of opinion should exist respecting the In
terpretation of Scripture," and having said that " it
requires an effort of thought to appreciate the nature
of so extraordinary a phenomenon," proceeds to pre
scribe a remedy for the evil. If we will follow his
advice, our differences respecting the Interpretation
of Scripture may, he says, be abated, and eventually
disappear. He has discovered an excellent medicine
which will cure the malady. He has found out a spiri
tual panacea, he has invented a soothing balm more
potent than that

"Nepenthes which the wife of Thon
In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena j."

He has compounded a wonderful diallacticon, to re
concile the divided members of Christendom, and
assuage their aches and pains, and make them move
in harmony and peace.

It is much to be regretted, that, when we come to
examine this marvellous recipe, we do not find that it
answers our expectations ; we shall see what it is when
we proceed a little further.

In the meantime we must be permitted to say, with
all due respect to the inventor of this new medi
cine, that here also we recognise a resemblance to the
courtier at Holmedon. He lamented the differences
and strifes of frail humanity ; and he then proceeded
to recommend his own remedy. He told Hotspur that

" The sovereign'st thing on earth
Was parmaceti for an inward bruise."

1 1 Tim. iii. 15. j Milton's Comus.

414 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

It is much to be feared that the Essayist's panacea
may prove very like the courtier's parmaceti. But
we must pass on.

§ 2. The Essayist complains that there is great
reluctance among Christians to profit by recent re
searches of Biblical criticism. Hence, in part, he would
account for the differences which he deplores in the
interpretation of Scripture. He says that the Elzevir
edition of the Greek New Testament, published in the
year 1624, "has been invested with authority, and is
made a piece de resistance against innovation k." This
is a marvellous assertion; and if the writer's name
had not been prefixed to this Essay — if the title-page
had not told us that it was produced by one who oc
cupies the chair of Eegius Professor of Greek in the
University of Oxford, which was lately filled by one
of the most learned critics in Christendom, the late
Dean of Christ Church, we should rather have ima
gined that it was put forth by some of those benighted
persons whose blindness he deplores.

The Essayist of course is speaking of England when
he uses this language. Germany, it is certain, does
not need his pity. Tischendorf cannot be charged
with bigoted adherence to the edition of 1624. Nor
can Lachman, as the Essayist calls him *; nor can Meier,
as our author writes his namem. And as far as Eng
land is concerned, — enveloped in darkness as she is, in
the Essayist's estimation, like a land of critical Cim
merians, — there is scarcely a single Biblical scholar in
this country, among those who have put forth anno
tated editions of the whole or portions of the Greek
Testament in the last half-century, who has made
a stand for the text of 1624, and has regarded it as

k Essay, p. 335. l p. 352. ra p. 339.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

a " piece de resistance against innovation." Dean Al-
ford, Dean Ellicott, Dr. Bloomfield, Dr. Tregelles, and
others, have shewn themselves free from the trammels
of a superstitious reverence for that edition. We had
even supposed that Professor Jowett himself had re
sisted the claims of the Textus Receptus, and had
adopted the text of Lachmann in his edition of four
of the Epistles of St. Paul : and, as a learned writer has
observed", he seems to cling with great tenacity to
that text, — which in very many instances is less cor
rect than that of the Textus Receptus, — and to make
it a " piece de resistance against innovation."

It is indeed a " strange fact," an "extraordinary phe
nomenon," that a writer who expresses a desire to see
a history of Biblical Interpretation0, and who pro
poses to inaugurate a new era in Scriptural criticism,
should exhibit so much forgetfulness of what has been
done in that department in his own country and in
his own age. Did it require " an effort of thought" to
appreciate the true nature of the case ? and was that
effort too great to be made ?

§ 3. The Essayist next states his opinion on the du
ties of an Interpreter of Scripture. " The office of
an Interpreter of Scripture," he says, " is to transfer
himself to another age," to "recover the meaning of
the words as they struck on the ears or flashed before
the eyes of those who first heard and read themp."

We must here again, with great reluctance, crave
leave to dissent. We venture respectfully, but confi
dently, to assert that here is a great mistake ; and it
does not seem to be improved by what immediately
succeeds it. "The Interpreter," we are told, "is to

n The Eev. J. B. Lightfoot, in the " Journal of Classical and Sacred
Philology," No. VII. p. 88. ° Essay, p. 338. P Ibid.

416 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

disengage himself from all that follows" the age in
which the words of Scripture were first spoken. He
is " to know nothing" of all subsequent history, eccle
siastical and civil. Armed cap-a-pie in this panoply
of ignorance he is to set forth as knight-errant to do
battle against all comers, for the truth of his own in
terpretations of Scripture. Cervantes himself could not
have imagined a more portentous form of self-decep
tion than is displayed in this exegetical Quixotism.
Let us observe what it involves. It supposes that the
first hearers of the words recorded in Scripture were
fully conscious of their meaning. Surely a greater
delusion than this never entered the mind of the
chivalrous knight of La Mancha.

We know that the ancient Hebrews had only dim
visions of the meaning of the prophecies which they
heard, and even the Prophets themselves did not fully
understand the meaning of their own propheciesq;
but, as St. Peter tells us, "they searched diligently
what the Spirit of Christ that was in them did
signify1"."

We know also from the Apostles and Evangelists,
that they themselves did not understand the meaning
of many of their Divine Master's words when they
were first uttered. How often do they confess this !
how often do we read in the Gospels that "they un
derstood not this saying, and it was hid from them,
and they perceived it not8 !"

Many of our Lord's sayings were hard sayings at
first, but were afterwards made easy; many of His
sayings were at first dark, but were made clear by
His subsequent acts. Mcodemus could have had

q See, for instance, Dan. xii. 4—9. r 1 Pet. i. 11.

8 Mark ix. 32 : cf. Luke ii. 50, ix. 45, xviii. 34.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

417

little notion of our Lord's meaning when He said,
" Except a man be born of ivater and of the Spirit, he
cannot enter into the kingdom of God1." But this
saying of our Divine Teacher was afterwards explained,
when our Lord gave a general commission to His
apostles, " Go, teach all nations, baptizing them11 :"
that saying also itself must in another respect have
seemed a hard one to those unlettered Galileans, until
they received the gift of the Holy Ghost, empowering
them to speak in new tongues v. And our Lord's
assertion of the general obligation to " eat His Flesh
and drink His Blood" was, we know, "a hard saying w"
to those who first heard it. But its meaning was
afterwards explained, when the same Divine Speaker
said, "Take, eat, this is My Body. Drink ye all of
this*."

If the Scriptures of the Old Testament had been
clear to those who first heard or read them, or even
to those by whose instrumentality they were written,
there would have been little need of the work which
our Blessed Lord wrought in the hearts of the two
disciples going to Emmaus, and of the assembled
apostles at Jerusalem. " Beginning at Moses and
all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the
Scriptures the things concerning Himself y." And
again we read, " Then opened He their understanding,
that they might understand the Scriptures *." If the
true meaning of the words of our Lord had " struck
on the ears of those who first heard them," there
would have been comparatively little reason for the
miracle of Pentecost, and for the effusion of the glo-

* John iii. 5. u Matt, xxviii. 19. v Acts ii. 7, 8.

w John vi. GO. x Matt. xxvi. 26, 27. y Luke XXLV. 27.

1 Luke xxiv. 45.

E e

41 8 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

rious light of the Holy Ghost then shed on the minds
of the apostles and first disciples, and on the words
which they had heard from Christ. Then it was, but
not till then, that the true meaning " flashed before
their eyes."

" Every prophecy," says St. Irenseus, " is an enigma
before its fulfilment a." How different is this language
from that of the Essayist ! He would have us place
ourselves in the age of those who first heard or read
the words of Holy Scripture. He would have us
abandon our Christian privileges, and go back from
the noonday splendour of the Gospel to the dim twi
light of the Law. How many degrees would the
sun go down on our spiritual dial if the Essayist
had his will ! When it was rising on our horizon,
he would send us to the antipodes. In reading the
Old Testament, he would have us see with the eyes
and hear with the ears of those who lived before
the first Advent of Christ !

Consider also the prophecies of Christ.

His predictions concerning His sufferings and death
were like inexplicable riddles to those who first heard
themb. The Evangelist declares that "they under
stood none of these things, neither knew they the
things which were spoken." Does the Essayist desire
that his pupils should relinquish all the helps which
were furnished by subsequent events for the interpre
tation of those things ? And to take another example,
when our Lord prophesied concerning St. John, " If
I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?"
then the meaning which u flashed before the eyes" of
the brethren who first heard those words was, that

a St. Irenseus, iv. 26, 1. b See Luke ix. 44; 45, xviii. 32—34.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 419

"that disciple should not die0." "Will the Essayist
maintain, that, as " the history of Christendom is
nothing to him," and that he must take the sense of
Scripture as it "first sounded on the ears of those
who heard it," therefore the Evangelist St. John is ,
still alive ?

What also shall we say of our Lord's prophecies
concerning the destruction of Jerusalem ? Eusebiusd
and other ancient Christian writers were rightly of
opinion, that the comparison of those prophecies with
the history of the siege of Jerusalem is very con
ducive to the correct interpretation of them, and
affords clear evidence of Christ's divine foreknowledge,
and supplies a strong argument for the truth of our
holy religion. But the Essayist tells us that his ideal
interpreter of Scripture shall know "nothing of his
tory." " The greatness of the Eoman empire is nothing
to him ; it is an inner and not an outer world that
he is striving to restore. All the after-thoughts of
theology are nothing to him6."

Happy expositor ! thrice happy interpreter ! dwell
ing in the Epicurean ease of his own serene self-
sufficiency. He has no need to take down any pon
derous folios from his shelves. He need not have any
on his table. He need not invest any of his income in
the purchase of a theological library. He may live in
a room with four bare walls. He need not pore over
the pages of Polyglotts. No Chrysostoms or Augus-
tines shall darken his doors. Perhaps he will admit

c John xxi. 23.

d See Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. iii. 6 — 9. Cf. St. Jerome in Isa. Ixiv.
and Zech. i., where he infers from Josephus the truth of other pro
phecies of Scripture concerning Jerusalem.

e Essay, p. 338.

E e 2

420 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

a Lexicon and a Grammar; "a few rules guarding
against common errors are enough for himf." But
"no voluminous literature" shall obscure the cloud
less calm of his solitary speculations. He will dwell
a visionary a3on in the pure pleroma of his own
imagination, and thence come forth as a spiritual
emanation to create a world. He will read the pro
phecies of our Lord concerning the siege of Jerusalem
without troubling himself about the evidence of their
fulfilment. " All this is nothing to him." No ; he is
determined to live in the time when these prophecies
were first spoken ; he has taken his seat on the Mount
of Olives, and looks down on Jerusalem as it then
was ; and no power on earth shall disturb him from
his place. There he remains firmly seated, like a grey
lichen- covered rock upon the mountain, in the first
century of the Christian era ; " sedet aeternumque se-
debit." From that prophetic tripod on which he has
placed himself he will deliver oracular responses to
all future generations.

When the Puritan Divines of the Westminster As
sembly had seated themselves comfortably in their
arm-chairs, and held their little gilt-leaved Bibles
with metal clasps in their hands, they imagined
themselves wiser than all the Fathers who ever
wrote, and than all the Councils which ever sat.

The learned John Selden ventured sometimes to
ruffle their self-complacent equanimity by a few im
portunate questions ; but it was not easily perturbed.
Every one of that august body had more wisdom, in
his own conceit, than if he had all the contents of
the Bibliotheca Patrum Maxima in his mind.

The Essayist seems to have earned a place in

' Essay, p. 338.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

421

that venerable conclave. " Uhus Bibliotheca liber?"*
One book is his library. " When the meaning of
Greek words" (of the Bible, why not also of the
Hebrew ?) " is once known, the young student has
almost all the real materials which are possessed by
the greatest biblical scholar — in the Book itself*."
And he is determined to live in the age in which it
was written. "All the after-thoughts of theology are
nothing to him ; the history of Christendom is no
thing to him." No; all these things are nothing to
him. Indeed, we might almost say that his stock in
trade is " to turn nil." And having set up himself
in the business of interpreter, he proceeds to deal out
his wares, and to assure his customers that ' ' he has
no connexion with any other house," and that genuine
articles, unadulterated viands, are only to be procured
at his depot and a at that of others who imitate his
example of embarking in the trade of interpreter
without any capital for carrying it on.

Gentle reader, pardon this raillery. The subject
is indeed a very serious one. But our Essayist's new
mode of forming an Interpreter of Holy Scripture is
really — excuse the word — so ludicrous, that it could
hardly be treated with gravity. Elijah himself could
not refrain from irony when he saw the miserable
infatuation to which the worship of Baal reduced its
votaries11. And the self - idolizing worship of the
Essayist is scarcely less fanatical. Indeed, in read
ing the pages of this Essay, we may be sometimes
disposed to doubt whether the author himself is not
in jest, and whether he is not amusing himself with
speculating on the credulity of his readers, and with

* Essay, p. 384. h 1 Kings xviii. 27.

422

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

trying how large an amount of paradox they are
ready to receive at his hands.

But if he is really in earnest, then let us he per
mitted to say, that in the interpretation of Holy
Scripture the history of Christendom is not " nothing
to" us; the "after-thoughts of theology," as he is
pleased to call the workings of the Holy Spirit in the
Church, "are" not "nothing to "us. No: they are
something ; they are a very great deal to us ; and are
designed by Almighty God to be so ; and he who shuts
his eyes to their light, and desires that others should
listen to the dictatorial dogmatism of his own arbitrary
conceit, and fall down and worship the image which
he sots up of himself, is not only wilfully blind, but
is " a blind leader of the blind; and if the blind lead
the blind, both shall fall into the ditch1."

A diligent study of "the history of Christendom"
has ever been regarded by soberminded and pious
men as one of the best aids to the right understand
ing of Holy Scripture.

In reading the history of Christendom we see the
record of the successive attempts which have been
made by the Evil One, who is the enemy of Scripture,
to pervert or obscure the true meaning of Scripture.
We see also the means which the Holy Spirit has
been pleased to use, by the agency of holy men whom
He has raised up from time to time in the Church;
and whom He has enabled to resist those efforts of
the Adversary, and to refute error, and to vindicate
the true meaning of Holy Scripture k, and to declare
that meaning to the world in Creeds and Confessions
of faith.

1 Matt. xv. 14. k Cf. St. Augustine in Ps. liv., and in

Ps. Ixvii. ; Hooker, V. xliii. 6.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 423

By examining those records, we learn to admire
and adore God's goodness in eliciting truth from
error, and in overcoming evil with good, and in
making heresy itself to be subservient to the clearer
manifestation and to the firmer establishment of the
faith. Here also we see the fulfilment of Christ's
prophecy, that "the gates of hell shall not prevail
against His Church1;" and we derive from this con
templation the cheering assurance, that He will be
ever with her " even to the end of the world™."

Well therefore did Lord Bacon say, that " Church-
history thoroughly read and observed" is of great
virtue in " making a wise divine11." "Well did he also
say that inasmuch as "the Scriptures are written to
the thoughts of men, and to the succession of all ages,
with a foresight of all heresies, and of all contradictions
and differing estates of the Church, they are not to
be interpreted only according to the latitude of the
proper sense of the place, and respectively towards
the present occasion whereupon the words were ut
tered0." No; but the full explication of them is
often to be derived from subsequent events, which were
within the scope and range of the divine eye of Him
who uttered them, and to whom all things are present;
but which were not visible to those who first heard
those words, nor indeed were fully revealed to the
eyes of those holy men by whose agency they were
written, but were afterwards explained by God's
Providence in the government of the world and
of His Church.

1 Matt. xvi. 18. m Matt, xxviii. 20.

11 Lord Bacon, Advancement of Learning, bk. ii. p. 100.

0 Ibid., p. 267.

\

424 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

In page 361 the Essayist thus speaks :—
" To avoid misconception, it may be remarked that ....
Infant Baptism, or (qu. and) the Episcopal Form of Church
Government, have sufficient grounds; the weakness is the
attempt to derive them from Scripture"

Here is a striking example of the character and
tendency of his system of Interpretation. If we are
to treat Scripture as he would have us do, then we
must allow that this assertion is true. There is no
express command in Scripture that infants should be
baptized, or that the Church should be governed by
lishops ; but it has been generally maintained by the
best divines that Infant Baptism and Episcopacy can
and ought to be derived by logical inference from Holy
Scripture.

With regard to Infant Baptism, even the theologi
ans of the Church of Rome have asserted this : Bel-
larmine p, Gregory of Yalentia q, and Suarez r, and even
Pope Innocent III., in one of his Decretals s. And the
ancient Church with one consent applied to the sa
crament of Baptism t the words of our Blessed Lord,
" Except a man be born again" — or, more correctly,
" "Whosoever is not born again" — " of water and the
Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of
God ;" and therefore the Church of England begins
her office for the Public Baptism of Infants with re
hearsing those words of Holy Scripture. She also

P See Bellarmine, De Bapt, lib. i. c. viii.

4 De Bapt. Parvul., §2. r In Thorn. Disput. xxv. p. 3.

8 Decret., lib. iii. tit. xlii. c. 3.

1 St. John iii. 5; cf. Hooker, V. lix. 2. See also the testimony of
St. Cyprian and the sixty-six bishops of Africa, A.D. 253, Epist. ad
Fidurn.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

rightly considers that infants are a part of nations, and
she therefore cites in the same office the words of
Scripture in which our Lord gave a commission to His
disciples to " go and teach all nations, baptizing them V

The true sense of Scripture is Scripture, and that
sense is to be ascertained by rational inference, and by
comparison of one passage of Scripture with another ;
and the Church rightly accepts whatever " is read in
Scripture or may be. proved thereby v;" and on this
principle it may surely be asserted, that it is not
a "weakness to attempt to derive Infant Baptism from
Scripture"

Precisely the same reasoning may be applied to
Episcopacy. It may be, and ought to be, deduced by
logical inference from Scripture*. The best interpre
tation of a law is the practice of those who lived at
the time when the law was delivered. And when we
find not only a contemporaneous and uniform practice
immediately after the delivery of the law, but also
a continuous and uninterrupted usage for many cen
turies after the law was given, we ma accept that
usage as affording the clearest exposition of the mean
ing of the law. From the time of the Apostles for
fifteen hundred years there was no Church in Chris
tendom without a Bishop y.

* Matt, xxviii. 19. Y Thirty-Nine Articles, Art. VI.

* The author will not repeat what has been said by him. on this
subject in an introductory note to the third chapter of St. Paul's
first Epistle to Timothy.

* Cf. Hooker's Preface, iv. :— " We require you to find out one
Church upon the face of the whole earth that hath not been or
dained by episcopal regiment since the time that the blessed apostles
were here conversant;" and see vn. v. 2 — 8; and cf. Barrow, vol.
iii. serm. xxiv.

426 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

The Essayist says that in the Interpretation of Scrip
ture he has nothing to do with " subsequent history."
Thus he shuts the windows which let light in upon
Scripture, and darkens the house in which he dwells.
If he likes to close his own casements, and prefers
a dark house to a light one, we need not quarrel with
his taste ; but let him not induce others to come
and live with him under the same roof; let him not
censure them as bigots if they do not "love darkness
rather than light."

§ 4. The Essayist seems to have felt that his readers
would naturally ask, —

What have been the fruits of his method of inter
pretation ? Has it been adopted ? Has it produced any
results ? What are they ?

He answers these questions with the following as
sertion : — The science of Biblical Criticism, he informs
us, has made some progress in our own day. In Eng
land, it is true, in his opinion, we have not done much.
We are too timid and cautious. Among ourselves
" the Interpretation of Scripture has assumed an
apologetic character, as though making an effort to
defend itself against some supposed inroad of science
and criticism z."

But our continental friends, it seems, are more ad
venturous, and therefore more prosperous. The Essay
ist tells us that " among German commentators there
is, for the first time in the history of the world, an ap
proach to agreement and certainty a."

And again, " The diversity among German writers
on prophecy is far less than among English ones. That
is a new phenomenon which has to be acknowledged^

z E<say, p. 340. a Ibid.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 427

Acknowledged ! By whom ? Certainly not by Ger
mans themselves. They make no such professions of
" agreement and certainty," as th.3 Essayist claims for
them. We have already seen, that in his disdain for
"the voluminous literature which has overgrown the
text" of Scripture, he has hazarded some extraordi
nary assertions with regard to that literature b ; and we
are constrained to say that his statements concerning
the condition of Biblical Interpretation in Germany
are not more accurate than those which this Essay
presents to our notice in reference to the critical la
bours of scholars in our own country.

Most Biblical critics are aware, that at the close of
the last century, and in the earlier part of the present,
Bationalism was dominant in the theological schools of
Germany. The booksellers' shops were filled with the
critical works of Paulus, Wegscheider, Bretschneider,
Gabler, and others. " Hie meret sera liber Sosiis," was
then the word current concerning the newest rational
istic volume that appeared in the spring at the Leipsic
book-fair. But no one now ever reads their writings,
or cares one jot for their theories. They are ex
ploded6. The books which contain them are waste
paper, and are wrapping up

" . . . thus et odores,
Et piper, et quicquid chartis amicitur ineptis d "

in the grocers' shops. Paulus and Wegscheider, and
Gabler, have shared the fate which, as Burke says,

b See above, p. 414.

c See the recent histories of Biblical Interpretation in Germany,
especially Dr. Kahnis, Der innere Gang des deutschen Protestantis-
mus, Leipzig, 1860; and Karl Schwartz, Zur GeschicUe der neuesten
Theoloyie, Leipzig, 1856; and Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, Leip
zig, 1857. d Horat., Epist. 11. i. 269.

428 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

had overtaken the English free-thinkers of the six
teenth and seventeenth centuries, Chubb, Collins, Mor
gan, and Tindal, — " They are gone to the tomb of all
the Capulets6." The pantheistic speculations of Strauss
and others who followed them have fared little better,
and a struggle has ensued between more orthodox inter
preters, such as Hengstenberg, Havernick, Delitzsch,
Oehler, Stier, on the one side, and a sceptical and de
structive school of expositors on the other. But to
say that German exegesis has found a safe mooring -
and anchorage in the calm and quiet harbour of " agree
ment and certainty," is to venture upon an assertion
which any one who has dipped into the first pages of
any German Eirileitung, is able to refute. Any of the
Essayist's pupils who may spend a few weeks of a long
vacation in Berlin, Heidelberg, or Bonn, will supply
him with abundant proofs to the contrary.

Let us read on: — "The diversity among German wri
ters on. prophecy is far less than among English ones."

Before the publication of the " Essays and Ee-
views," it might have been truly affirmed that there
was almost an universal consent in England with re
gard to the interpretation of prophecy in the most
important respect of all, namely, in its relation to the
actions and sufferings of Christ. It was this universal
consent which caused an almost universal horror, when
we heard from one of the Essayist's fellow-labourers
that hardly any of the prophecies which have hitherto
been connected with Christ by Christian interpreters
in England " are capable of being made directly
Messianic f."

The " agreement and certainty" which prevailed in
England in this respect has been disturbed by that an-

e Burke* s "Works, v. 171. f Essays and Beviews, pp. 69, 70.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

429

nouncement ; but that disturbance, it is to be hoped,
will only be like a temporary ripple on the surface.
The " agreement and certainty" in England have been
produced by firm faith in the teaching of Christ and
His Apostles, who have instructed us how to interpret
those prophecies g, and we shall not forsake their inter
pretation for those of our Essayist's companions, and,
I regret to add, of our Essayist himself h, even though
they should be leagued with all the critics of Germany,
— which happily is not the case.

With regard to the prophecies of the New Testa
ment, the claim set up on behalf of German inter
preters is not much more tenable. There is no
" certainty and agreement" among them. Let us
turn to one of the most recent German expositions
of the Apocalypse, that of Diisterdieck, published at
Gottingen in 1859, and forming the last volume of
Meyer's series of Commentaries on the New Testa
ment. If the reader will have the goodness to look
at the Introduction to that volume, he will see that
not only is there great diversity among German wri
ters with regard to the plan of that prophetical book,
— the only prophetical book of the New Testament, —
but also with respect to its date, and even the person
of its author, and he will be satisfied that " the new
phenomenon," of which the Essayist speaks, is in fact,
in the proper sense of the word, no phenomenon at all,
for it is not yet visible, nor seems likely to appear on
the horizon for some time to come.

* Luke xxiv. 25—27, 44—48, and Acts ii. 25—32, iii. 15—25,
viii. 32—35.

h Essay, p. 406. " There are many quotations from the Psalms
and Prophets in the Epistles, but hardly any — probably none —
which is based on the original sense or context."

430 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

§ 5. How can we account for the celebrity of the
volume entitled " Essays and Eeviews?"

Not, certainly, from any intrinsic merit, but from
the position of its writers.

The stations which they occupy in the Church, and
in one of our Universities, have given to this volume
an importance which it would not otherwise have ac
quired. If it had been produced by authors who had
no such adscititious advantages, it would long since
have slept in oblivion. But when Trojans wear the
armour of Greeks they become more dangerous, and
make more havoc in the camp, —

" ATutemus clypeos, Danaumque insignia nobis
Aptenius1."

When six persons dressed in academic hoods, cas
socks, and surplices, come forth and preach scepticism,
they do more mischief than six hundred sceptics clad
in their own clothes. They wear the uniform of the
Church, and are mingled in her ranks, and fight
against her, and therefore they may well say—

" Yadimus imniixti Danais hand numine nostro,
Multaqne per ctecam congrcssi proelia noctem
Conseriinus, multos Danauin demittimus Oreo.'1

Among many evidences of this, we may refer to
one which now meets us. The Essayist is charging
the Biblical critics of his own age with disingenuous-
ness. They will not allow, he says, that there "is
any error in the Word of Godj. The failure of pro
phecy is never admitted" by them, "in spite of
Scripture and of history, (Jer. xxxvi. 30, Isaiah xxiii.,
Amos vii. 10 — IT V) And in a later passage of the
Essay he does not hesitate to say that "the majority

1 Virgil, .En. ii. 389. J p. 342. k p. 343.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 431

of the clergy 1 " are leagued in a cowardly conspiracy
to " withhold the truth'7 on these and similar matters;
and he ventures to insinuate that he and his friends
are the only people in England who hold the truth
and have the courage to speak it m.

But to return to the specific charge concerning the
supposed failure of prophecy.

On this, and similar allegations in this Essay, let
us offer one general remark. They are not original ;
they have no charm of novelty ; they have been already
urged in other publications, and they have been ad
vocated there with not less ability, and, we are con
strained to add, with more openness and honesty
than in the present Essay ; they have been adduced
in sceptical books, and those sceptical books have at
tracted little notice. A few copies of a single edition
of them have been sold. But mark the difference !
When these same sceptical objections are urged, with
less intellectual vigour and logical acumen, by Pro
fessors and Tutors of a famous University, then these
obscure and feeble objections assume an importance
which they never before possessed ; then the book in
which they are contained runs with the rapidity
of electric fluid through nine or ten editions. Then
the intelligence contained in them is devoured with
eager appetite by many thousand readers, like the
most interesting news in the columns of the daily
press.

The allegation just quoted may serve as a specimen.
It is only a repetition of an objection which appeared
ten years ago in a sceptical book called " The Creed
of Christendom"," which is certainly not inferior in

-1 Essay, p. 372. m pp. 374, 375.

n By "W. 11. Grog. (London, Chapman, 1851.)

432 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

literary merit to the Essay now before us, and yet
attracted little or no observation. Let us place the
passages from the two volumes side by side : —

Creed of Christendom, p. 55. Essays and Rerieics,

" It is now clearly ascertained, PP- 342-3.

and generally admitted among cri- " The failure of a pro-
tics, that several of the most re- phecy is never admitted,
markable prophecies were never in spite of Scripture and
fulfilled at all, or only very par- history, (Jer. xxxvi. 30 ;
tially and loosely fulfilled. Among Isaiah xxiii. ; Amos vii.
these may be specified the denun- 10 — 17.")

ciation of Jeremiah (xxii. 18, 19,
xxxvi. 30) against Jehoiakim ; as
maybe seen by comparing 2 Kings
xxiv. 6, and the denunciation of
Amos against Jeroboam (vii. 11) ;
as may be seen by comparing 2
Kings xiv. 23— 29."

I will not affirm that the Essayist copied from the
Sceptic, but the coincidence is certainly remarkable.
The Essayist says that "a failure of prophecy is never
admitted," i.e. by orthodox critics: the Sceptic says
that "it is generally admitted by critics," i.e. those
who agree with him in his sceptical opinions. The
Sceptic cites two instances of alleged failure : both
these instances are also cited by the Essayist. And
the Essayist must not be surprised to hear that on the
score of ingenuousness the balance is in favour of
the Sceptic. And why ? Because the Sceptic tells us
honestly in ^vhat the alleged failure consists: he cites
chapter and verse of the passage of history which he
asserts to be at variance with the prophecy. The
Essayist does no such thing ; but in a mode of deal
ing which is too common with him, and which cannot

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 433

be too strongly reprobated, especially when it affects
the characters of the writers of Scripture, he wraps
up his charge in indefinite terms, which make it
appear more formidable. The failure of a prophecy
"is never admitted, in spite of Scripture and his-
tory" "What ! " in spite of Scripture and history"
generally ? Is this a specimen of the new school of
Biblical criticism which the Essayist would establish ?
No : surely this insidious language of insinuation and
inuendo can never become current in an English Uni
versity. It is utterly un-English, and, we must needs
add, utterly un-Christian. It is not fit for the Eomish
Inquisition. Fortunately the Sceptic enables us to
fill up the gap left by the Essayist. The prophecy
in Jeremiah xxxvi. 30 is alleged to have failed be
cause it is not consistent with the history in 2 Kings
xxiv. 6. There the sacred historian relates that " Je-
hoiakim slept with his fathers, and Jehoiachin his
son reigned in his stead." Therefore, it is said, the
prophecy of Jeremiah concerning Jehoiakim failed : —
"He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David,
and his dead body shall be cast out, in the day to the
heat, and in the night to the frost."

Here is a seeming discrepancy, and it is of very
great service, for it shews the futility of allegations
such as meet us in this Essay, and in others of the
same volume, that the prophecies of the Old Testa
ment have been tampered ivith, in order that they may
fit the history. And this seeming discrepancy may
easily be reconciled. I will not quote any English
critic in behalf of this assertion. But an eminent
German writer, who has never been supposed to be
credulous, thus speaks: — "Jehoiakim is said to have
died in peace (2 Kings xxiv. 6), but Jeremiah (xxxvi.

Ff

434 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

30) speaks of his dead body as cast out in contempt ;
but this may easily be reconciled with the history by
the consideration that this might have happened as a
consequence of the capture of Jerusalem under his suc
cessor, Jehoiachin, when his enemies, or even his own
subjects, may have vented their rage on the remains
of the hated king0."

Still further : if the Essayist who has written a dis
sertation on the Interpretation of Scripture was really
desirous of enlightening his readers on that subject,
he might have here taken occasion to remind them of
the remarkable fact, that whereas the historical books
of the Bible inform us that some of the kings of Israel
were not buried at all, or omit to mention their burial,
they record in every single case of the kings of Judali,
whose death they relate, that they were also buried^
except only in the one case of Jehoiakim p. This cir
cumstance ought never to be forgotten by those who
comment on the prophecy of Jeremiah.

As for the succession of his son, Jehoiachin, in his
father's stead, when it is remembered that the sove
reignty of Jehoiachin was subject to his mother's
tutelage"1, and that it only lasted about a quarter of
a year, and that he was then taken captive to Babylon,
and that his uncle was made king in his stead r, and
that the Hebrew term to sit* signifies permanence, — it
may surely be affirmed that the prophecy of Jeremiah

0 "Winer, Billisches Real-Worterluch, i. p. 395, art. Jojakim.

P Cf. Rev. J". Fendall, "On the Authority of Scripture," p. 39.

1 Cf. Winer, art. Jojachin, referring to Jer. xiii. 18.
r 2 Kings xxiv. 8 ; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 9.

6 SttP: cf. Bp. Pearson on the Creed, Art. vi. p, 279, note, ed.
1669. The LXX well render the word by a participle, OVK co-rat ai™

Kadr) p.fj> 09 eVt Opovov Aa/3id.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 433

did not fail ; and it is well worthy of remark that
Jeremiah predicted that some of Jehoiakim's seed
should survive him, for he says, "I will punish him
and his seed and his servants for their iniquity, and
I will bring upon them and upon the inhabitants of
Jerusalem all the evil that I have pronounced upon
them1." This prophecy was fulfilled by the capture
of Jerusalem in the days of the son of Jehoiakim, very
soon after his father's death.

Let us now turn to another prophecy quoted by the
Essayist as presenting an instance of failure, Amos
vii. 10—17.

Two able writers in two periodicals11 have justly ex
pressed their surprise that the Essayist should have
referred to this prophecy ; for when we examine it we
find that it is not a prophecy of Amos at all ! It is
a message of Arnaziah the priest of Bethel, in which
he falsely attributes to Amos words he had not spoken.
How are we to account for such a blunder as this ?
Our answer is, We have seen that the sceptical writer
to whom we have referred quotes precisely the same
prophecy of Amos, and also asserts that it failed. It
seems most probable that our Essayist borrowed his
examples of supposed failure from that or some other
similar work, but did not stop to examine them. And
thus it has come to pass, that he has confounded an
idolatrous priest of a golden calf with a true prophet
of Jehovah ! Here is another specimen of enlightened
Biblical criticism, or rather, let us say with sorrow,

* Jer. xxxvi. 31.

u "Quarterly Review," No. ccxvii. p. 299, for Jan. 1861, and
the " Christian Remembrancer" for the same month. The article
in the latter has been reprinted by the author, the Rev. J. Gr. Caze-
nove : .see there, p. 25.

pf 2

436 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

here is another evidence of the character of the mate
rials from which this Essay is derived, and here is
a proof of the righteous retribution which overtakes
those who fight with " fiery darts of the wicked onex,"
against the Holy Spirit of God.

With regard to the predictions in Isaiah xxiii.,
which relate to the destruction of Tyre, any one who
has access to such a common book as Bishop Newton's
work on the Prophecies7, will need no other reply to
the Essayist's objections.

In the instances recited above, the Essayist alleges
that prophecies have not been fulfilled ; and now mark
his inconsistency. He suddenly shifts his ground, and
rejects a prophecy because it has been fulfilled! He
thus writes2 : — " The mention of a namea later than the
supposed age of the prophet is not allowed, as in other
writings, to be taken in evidence of the date, (Isaiah
xlv. I).'7 Wonderful indeed! Because God, who sees
all things from the beginning, enabled Isaiah the pro
phet to do what uninspired writers cannot do, and to
foretel the future, and to name beforehand the deli
verer of His people, therefore the prophecy of Isaiah
is to be rejected ! it was composed after the event !
How difficult to please is such a critic as this ! He
complains of some prophecies because they have failed,
and of others because they have been fulfilled ! Might
he not go and take a seat with the Jewish children in
the market-place, who in their wayward humour could

* Eph. vi. 16.

y Dissertation xi., On the Prophecies concerning Tyre, pp. 145 —
162.

z Essay, p. 343.

a The name of Cyrus. On the same grounds the Essayist must
reject 1 Kings xiii. 2, because it mentions the name of Josiah.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 437

neither be pleased with piping nor with mourning b ?
How is this to be explained ? Is not this the true
account of the matter, — that he will have no prophecies
at all? that the Bible is like any " other writing?"
that it is to be treated as " any other book ?"

§ 6. This supposition is confirmed by what follows.
We come now to the root of the evil.

The Essayist does not believe in the Inspiration of
Holy Scripture, according to the ordinary accepta
tion of the term.

He asserts that there is no " foundation in the Gos
pels or Epistles for any of the higher or supernatural
views of inspiration." The Evangelists and Apostles
do not " anywhere lead us to suppose that they were
free from error or infirmity*"

Here is an example of that strange confusion of
thought and expression which prevails throughout this
dissertation. It is perfectly true that the Apostles do
not lead us to suppose that " they were free from error
or infirmity." Indeed, they plainly declare that they
were liable to human frailty. " We are men of like
passions with you," they say d. " In many things we
offend all6." Holy Scripture itself records their fail
ings. It relates that St. Mark faltered for a time, and
that St. Paul and St. Barnabas strove together concern
ing himf. It narrates that St. Peter was openly re
buked by St. Paul because he walked not uprightly g-
But what is all this to the purpose ? Nothing, abso
lutely nothing ; except, as we shall presently see, to
afford a more striking proof of what the Essayist gain
says, namely, of the Inspiration of Holy Scripture.

But, first, what are we to say to the Essayist's asser-

b Luke vii. 32. c Essay, p. 345. d Acts xiv. 15.

e James iii. 2. f Acts xv. 37—39. * Gal. ii. 11—14.

438 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

tion that "there is not any foundation in the Gospels
for any of the higher or supernatural views of inspira
tion ?" We flatly deny it. Holy Scripture does assert
its own Inspiration. The word Scripture^ is used in
about fifty places of the New Testament, and though
that word in its ordinary sense simply means writing,
yet in the New Testament it is limited to those particu
lar writings which the Church calls Scripture ; and
thus it shews that those writings are distinguished fiom
all other writings in the world. Now Scripture itself
declares, by St. Paul, that " every Scripture is Oeoirvtv-
0-7-09, or divinely inspired1," or rather, inbreathed by
God, filled with the Divine breath.

Now when we recollect ly ivJiom this assertion was
made, namely by St. Paul, a Hebrew of the Hebrews k,
and to whom it was addressed, namely to Timothy, the
son of a Jewess \ and that he had been familiar with
the Hebrew Scriptures from a child m ; and when we
bear in mind also that this sentence occurs in the last
of St. Paul's Epistles ; and when we remember also
the religious reverence and awe with which the He
brews treated those writings which they called Scrip
tures11, and which they regarded as wholly distinct
from all other writings in the world, and as no other
than the unerring words, the living oracles, of God;
and when we also reflect that St. Paul's Divine Master,
Jesus Christ, the Everlasting Son of God, sanctioned
that belief and awe ; and when we also consider that the
books of the New Testament were delivered by the Apo
stles and Evangelists to the Church, and were received
by the Church, as of equal authority with the books of
the Old Testament, which had been recognised as Di-

h ypa^. ' 2 Tim. iii. 16. k Phil. iii. 5. 1 Acts xvi. 1.
m 2 Tim. iii. 15. n See Josephus, c. Apion, i. § 8.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

439

vine writings by Jesus Christ Himself, and that they
are equally called " Scripture," by the Apostles ° and by
the Church, we could not have a clearer assertion of
the supernatural origin and Divine authority of all
those writings which the Christian Church Universal
receives as Scripture, than is contained in the declara
tion of St. Paul to Timothy, that " Every Scripture is
given by inspiration of God p."

But to proceed. The Essayist tells us that the
Apostles and Evangelists were not free " from error or
infirmity." What is this to the purpose ? "Who ever
supposed that they were? But how does this affect
the question of Inspiration ? Here is another charac
teristic of this Essay, which makes it the more danger
ous. The author begins with asserting a truth, and
then he joins an error with it, which, if the reader is
not on his guard, he may be tempted to receive to
gether with the truth which introduces it.

The Essayist confounds two things which ought to
be kept separate. But let him distinguish the writings
dictated by the Holy Spirit inspiring the Apostles and
Evangelists to write Scripture, from the practice of
those by whose instrumentality Scripture was written.
The men were liable to human infirmities, but the
writings are divine q. The writers assure us that they
do not speak by words " which man's wisdom teach-
eth, but words which the Holy Ghost teacheth/."
Therefore, when we say that Holy Scripture is inspired,

0 Cf. 2 Pet. iii. 16.

p On the claims which Holy Scripture itself makes to Inspiration,
the reader may see the additional evidence clearly stated by the
Rev. J. "W. Burgon on Inspiration, pp. 53 — 57, and pp. cxcvii.

q See Augustine, Epist. ad Hieron., xxviii., xl., Ixxii.

r 1 Cor. ii. 13.

440 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

we mean that the Holy Ghost is its Author a. We mean
that it was written by His inspiration, "for onr learn
ing," and "to make us wise unto salvation," and that
it is worthy of its Divine Author, and is the word of
the living God. We mean, that in writing the Scrip
tures, the Holy Spirit, who cannot err, used the in
strumentality of fallible men, in order that the excel
lency of the power of the Gospel might not be of
man, but of God1; and in order that the perfection
of the work done by means of imperfect instruments
might prove that the work is not due to the instru
ments which were used, but to HIM who wrought
by them.

We have adverted to the confusion of ideas which
is observable in the Essayist's allegation against the
writers of Scripture. This confusion of ideas, which
is too frequent in the work, has produced a confu
sion of writing. There is an ambiguity of language —
may we not call it an amphibiousness of style — in this
Essay, which is very embarrassing to the reader. In
perusing it we hardly know sometimes whether we
are treading on a solid, or floating in a fluid. We
cannot tell whether we are on terra firma, or at sea.
For instance, in one place the Essayist expresses a
hope that after u sweeping the house" he may have
" found the pearl of great price V To say nothing of the
confusion here made in two divine parables, we have
in the former part of the sentence the writer compar
ing himself to a woman sweeping the house, and in
the latter he has suddenly become a merchantman,
trading for pearls at sea. In another place he speaks
of persons who, having chosen "the path of practical

8 Lectures on Inspiration, p. 14. * 2 Cor. iv. 7. u Essay, p. 414.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 441

usefulness, should acknowledge that it is a narrow
path; for any but a strong swimmer will be insen
sibly drawn out of it by the tide of public opinion V
He proposes to make a new world of harmony and
order, but it seems more probable that he may bring
back the state of confusion, —

" Quern dixere chaos, rudis indigestaque moles,"
in which

" Prigida pugnabant calidis, humentia siccis,
Mollia cum duris, sine pondere habentia pondus y."

§ 7. The Essayist says that St. Paul " was corrected
by the course of events in his expectation of the coming
of Christ z." St. Paul, therefore, was in error when he
wrote his first Epistle to the Thessaloniansa, — for to
that doubtless the Essayist alludes, — in which the
Apostle says that "we, who are alive and remain till
the Coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them that
are asleep."

This also is no new objection : it has been urged by
the same sceptical writer already cited b, and unhap
pily it has derived undue importance from the name
of a celebrated person0, who, if his life had been
spared, would probably have regretted and retracted
some of his rash and unsound assertions on such mat
ters as these. May God in His mercy grant that this
may be the case with the author of the present Essay !

But what is the fact ? St. Paul is here speaking in

p. 431. y Ovid. Met. i. 7, 19, 20.

p. 346. a 1 Thess. iv. 15.

b Creed of Christendom, p, 18, where it is said that " St. Paul is
manifestly and admittedly in error in 1 Thess. iv. 15." And again,
ibid., p. 25.

c Dr. Arnold, Christian Life and Character, p. 490 : — " "We may
safely and reverently say, that St. Paul, in this instance, entertained
and expressed a belief which the event did not justify."

442 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

very solemn terms. He declares that he writes by
the inspiration of God. " This we say unto you by the
Word of the Lord&." If, therefore, he is in error here,
the error is a grave one indeed. But what, we repeat,
is the fact ? Does St. Paul here assert that he himself
will ~be alive when Christ comes again ? The Essayist
says that he does, and that his error in this respect
was " corrected by the course of events."

No one who is familiar with the chronology of
St. Paul's Epistles could have written as the Essayist
does here. But he seems to have little respect for
such matters as these. " Discussions respecting the
chronology of St. Paul's life" he says, "have gone far
beyond the line of utility6." And he is only applying
his own principle of Interpretation; "the history of
Christendom is nothing to him;" his " office is to re
cover the meaning of the words as they struck on the
ears of those who first read them f ;" and here is a signal
proof of the utter worthlessness of such a principle
of interpretation. Be it so, that the TJiessalonians
imagined, when the words of that Epistle " first struck
on their ears," that the Day of the Lord was close at
hand. But our enquiry is, not ivhat they thought, but
what St. Paul meant. Most readers of St. Paul's Epi
stles know that the first Epistle of St. Paul to the
Thessalonians was the first ivritten of all his Epistles,
and that the second Epistle to the Thessalonians was
written at the same place as the first *, and very soon
after it. Turn, therefore, to the second Epistle. In
that second Epistle we read a solemn caution from
St. Paul, guarding them against the notion that the
" Day of Christ was at handh." If St. Paul had be-

d 1 Thess. iv. 15. e Essay, p. 393. f p. 338.

* Corinth. h 2 Thess. ii. 2.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 443

lieved, when lie wrote his first Epistle, that he would
be alive at Christ's coming, he believed the same thing
when he wrote the second. Indeed, he would have
had a stronger belief then. No " course of events"
had intervened to affect that belief, if he had enter
tained it. But we see that he did not entertain it
when he wrote the second Epistle. He cautions the
Thessalonians against it. Nor had he any such belief
when he wrote his first Epistle, and he was not " cor
rected in his expectation by the course of events."

Few persons who have formed any acquaintance
with St. Paul's style can be perplexed by his use of
the pronoun we in this passage, — u We which are alive
and remain." It is the habit of the great Apostle to
put himself in the place of others, and to speak, as it
were, from them ; and even to do this when they
whom he thus identifies with himself are very differ
ent from him, and even opposed to him \ St. Paul's
"we" is an universal we, and is applicable to every
age. Indeed, this is the genuine language of inspi
ration, and if the Essayist had not been resolved to
interpret this passage as one " in any other book,"
he would not have missed the sense ; but his error
is like a judicial retribution for unworthy notions of
Holy Scripture.

The simple truth is, that the Holy Spirit is speaking
by St. Paul, who utters "by the Word of the Lord"
what is here revealed. He is writing an Epistle not
merely for one Church or one age, but to be read in
the Church of Christ in every country in every age,
even till the Coming of Christ. By St. Paul the Holy
Spirit delivers a solemn warning, which every age must

1 See, for instance, Rom. iii. 7, and the numerous authorities cited
in a note on 1 Thess. iv. 17, and 1 Cor. iv. 6, vi. 12.

444 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

apply to itself. No age knows when Christ will come,
but every age ought to be prepared for Christ's Coming
to judgment. Every one ought so to believe and live
as if Christ would come in his own day. Therefore
with great wisdom has the Holy Spirit spoken by
St. Paul on this subject in such a language as that
which represents him as contemporaneous with every
age. This is genuine Inspiration. It is the language
of the Eternal Himself,

Once more. "We have seen that in the second Epi
stle to the Thessalonians St. Paul warns his readers
against the supposition that " the day of Christ was
at hand.'7 Therefore when he wrote that Epistle,
the Apostle, who was in frequent peril of deathk,
did not expect that he himself would be alive when
Christ came.

About three years after the date of that second Epi
stle he wrote his first Epistle to the Corinthians, and
in that Epistle he uses the pronoun " we" in the
same manner as he had done in the first Epistle to the
Thessalonians. He says, " We shall not all sleep," that
is, we shall not all die, " but we shall all be changed1."
Will the Essayist say, after the emphatic words in
which St. Paul himself had disclaimed any such notion
in the second Epistle to the Thessalonians, that St. Paul
expected to be alive at Christ's coming, and that " he
was corrected in that expectation by the course of
events?" No; he cannot say it in this case. Nor
ought he to do so in the other. And if he would
follow St. Paul's rule for interpreting Scripture, by
comparing111 one portion of it with another, he would

k " "We stand in jeopardy every hour. I die daily." 1 Cor. xv.
30, 31 ; cf. 2 Cor. xi. 26.

1 1 Cor. xv. 51. m Ibid. ii. 13.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 445

have been saved from the presumption of attributing
an error to St. Paul, — or rather to the Holy Spirit, who
spake by St. Paul's mouth.

§ 8. Having charged an Apostle with error the
Essayist becomes more bold, and brings a similar ac
cusation against two Evangelists at once : —

" One" Evangelist, lie says, " supposes the original dwell-,
ing-place of our Lord's parents to have been Bethlehem
(Matt. ii. 1, 22), another Nazareth (Luke ii. 4), and they
trace his Genealogy in different ways ; one mentions the
thieves blaspheming, another has preserved to after-ages the
record of the penitent thief; they appear to differ about
the day and hour of the Crucifixion n."

At the same time the Essayist says " that there is
no appearance of insincerity in them, or want of faith ."
No appearance of "insincerity or want of faith" in
those holy men whose writings are received by the
Christian Church universal as " given by inspiration
of God !" Admirable candour, most Christian con
descension ! But let us see whether there may not
be here some appearance of inaccuracy and want of
learning and ability, as well as of modesty and humi
lity, on the part of a writer who deals thus freely with
the Gospels. The Essayist would quiet our alarms
by assuring as that though there are, as he alleges,
"discrepancies of fact0" in Scripture, yet that "when
we become familiar with them they will seem of
little consequence in comparison with the truths
which it unfolds."

We cannot accept the proffered consolation. For,
surely the answer must be, l If the documents are in
error, what will become of the doctrines?' It is
rightly urged, in a recent sceptical publication, against

n Essay, p. 346. ° p. 425.

446 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

all such low notions of the Bible as this: — " A book
cannot be said to carry with it the authority of being
God's Word, if the same writer may give us in one
verse a revelation from the Most High, and in another
a blunder of his own. How can we be certain that the
very texts upon which we rest our doctrines and our
hopes may not be the uninspired portion of it p ?"

In the passage above quoted, the Essayist, as most
scholars know, is only reviving the objections which
have been often refuted already.

Schleiermacher, De Wette, Strauss, Bruno Bauer,
and others, — especially the English Sceptic already
quoted q, who has anticipated the Essayist in almost all
his allegations against the writers of Holy Scripture,
— have made the same objections before him.

If the Essayist had been disposed to treat this im
portant subject aright, he would have reminded his
younger readers that St. Matthew and St. Luke wrote
their Gospels with different designs ; the former for
the special benefit of the Jews, and the latter for the
Gentile world. This consideration alone would have
saved him from two of his errors in this place. The
Holy Spirit writing by St. Matthew dwells therefore
particularly on the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem, the
city of David, the city pre-announced by the Hebrew

p Creed of Christendom, p. 25.

i Ibid., p. 101 : — " In this place we must notice the marked
discrepancy between Matthew and Luke as to the original residence
of Jesus. Luke speaks of them as living at Nazareth before the
birth of Jesus, Matthew as having left their former residence to go
to Nazareth only after that event, and from peculiar considerations.
Critics, however, are disposed to think Matthew right on this occa
sion." And ibid., p. 97 : — " The genealogy of Jesus given by Luke
is wholly different from that given by Matthew. They trace the
descent through an entirely different line of ancestry."

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 447

prophet Micahr as the birth-place of the Messiah.
St. Matthew thus leads the Jews to acknowledge that
Jesus is the Christ. He lays stress on the birth at
Bethlehem, and with divine wisdom omits what is not
relevant to his argument in that Gospel, the previous
residence of the parents at Nazareth. The Holy Spirit,
writing by St. Matthew, omits that incident, but He does
not deny it ; no, with divine foresight He reserves it
to be communicated afterwards, in its proper place , by
a later Evangelist, St. Luke, in his Gospel, the Gospel
of the Gentile world, to whom it would be welcome
intelligence that the Saviour of mankind was conceived
in Nazareth, in Galilee of the Gentiles. Thus the Holy
Spirit shews to all who are willing to learn, that He
knows when to speak and when to be silent. Thus
He dispenses suitable food to all in due season s.

The Evangelists (i. e. St. Matthew and St. Luke)
says the Essayist, trace our Lord's " genealogies in
different ways." He means to imply that they con
tradict one another.

They trace " His genealogies in different ways."
Certainly they do : and why ? Because they had tivo
different designs. The one, St. Matthew, designed to
shew his readers, especially his Hebrew readers, that
Jesus of Nazareth was the promised seed of Abraham
through Isaac and Jacob, and that He was the King
of the Jews, and came of the royal tribe of Judah, and

r Micah v. 2.

8 If the reader desires further information on this point he will
find that the objections reproduced by the Essayist had been already
well refuted by Dr. Davidson, (formerly Professor in the Lancashire
Independent College,) "Introduction to the Gospels," pp. 116 — 118.
It may well excite the shame and sorrow of all friends of the Church
and Universities that sceptical allegations, exploded in Dissenting
Colleges, should be revived by clergymen of the English Church,
Professors and Tutors in an English University.

448 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

inherited the royalties of David and Solomon, and of
the other kings of Judah in succession; and there
fore he traces His genealogies from Abraham through
David, Solomon, and Eehoboam, and others, who
either were kings of Judah de facto, or de jure after
the captivity, and thus proves that the royal preroga
tives of the house of David were inherited by Him,
and that He was the representative of the kings of
Judah by right of His birth, as the only-begotten son
of Mary the wife of Joseph, the heir of the royal race.
This is what the Holy Spirit has done by means of the
genealogy in the Gospel of St. Matthew.

Are we to murmur against Him because He has
been pleased to do something more than this? Are
we to complain, because by the genealogy in St. Luke's
Gospel He has traced up our Lord's relationship to
David by a line of personal connection, and has thus
shewn that by natural descent *, as well as by royal
succession, He is the Son of David ; and further, has
carried up His lineage through Abraham even to Adam
and to God, and thus reminds the readers of that
Gospel that all men, whether Jews or Gentiles, are one
family, children of the same Father, and that as they
are all by nature in the first Adam, so by grace they
are all joined together in the second Adam, Jesus
Christ?

Ought we not, on the contrary, to be thankful to
the Holy Spirit that He has traced our Lord's " gene
alogy in different ways ?" And what sort of interpre-

* Jacob in St. Matthew i. 16 was supposed by ancient writers to
have been the brother of Heli (Luke iii. 23), and on the death of
the one, the other brother married his widow, from whom Joseph
the husband of Mary was born. See on Matt. i. 1 ; and thus Joseph
was accounted the son of the one brother legally, as well as of th"
other brother naturally.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 449

tation of Scripture is that, which is blind to these
benefits, and would teach us to censure and condemn
the Gospels for the very abundance of the sidrr ,al
light which Almighty God has been graciously pleased
to bestow upon us by their means ?

The Essayist's next objection is, that one Evangelist
" mentions the thieves blaspheming (Matt, xxvii. 44),
another has preserved to after ages the record of the
penitent thief, (Luke xxiii. 39)."

The writer is hardly bold enough to accuse either
Evangelist of inaccuracy here, and yet he seems desi
rous of doing so, for otherwise why does he make this
observation, " One Evangelist mentions the thieves
blaspheming, another has preserved the record of the
penitent thief?" Yes; and ought we not to be grate
ful to both Evangelists for what they have done ?
But if he really means that they are not consistent
with one another, let him be requested to read what
St. Augustine has written on this subject11, and he
may perhaps change his opinion.

" They (the Evangelists) appear" also "to differ
about the day and hour of the crucifixion."

Appear ! to whom ?

Certainly not to any who have carefully examined
the subject. As to the appearance of discrepancy, it
rests only on a misinterpretation of John xviii. 28,
where it is said that " the Jews went not into Pilate's
judgment-hall lest they should be defiled, but that
they might eat the Passover." Now, whatever may
be the meaning of the words, "eat the Passover,"
it is quite certain that St. John places the crucifixion
on the same day as the other three Evangelists.

St. Matthew says that the crucifixion took place
" on the day of the preparation*" (i. e. for the Sabbath) ;

tt De Consensu Evangelistarum, iii. 52. * Matt, xxvii. 62.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

St. Mark says that " it was the preparation, that is,
the day before the Sabbathy ;" St. Luke says, " that
day was the preparation, and the Sabbath drew onz."

What now does St. John say ? — " The Jews there
fore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies
should not remain on the Sabbath day, for that Sab
bath was an high day, besought Pilate that their legs
might be broken, and that they might be taken
awaya." And again, St. John says, speaking of our
Lord's burial in the garden : — " There laid they Jesus
therefore because of the preparation*"

Thus all the four Evangelists place the crucifixion on
the same day, the day of the preparation, or day before
the Sabbath. And yet the Essayist tells us that " they
appear to differ as to the day of the crucifixion !"

He asserts also that they differ as to the hour. He
does not let us know the grounds of this assertion.
This is one of the melancholy characteristics of this
book. The writer brings grave charges against holy
men, and he does not state the reasons on which those
charges rest ; and thus he makes it more difficult to
deal with those charges. This is a cruel way of pro
ceeding ; not only as regards those who are assaulted,
but cruel also it is with respect to those who see the
wounds after their infliction. They know not why
they were inflicted, and perhaps when they consider
the character and office of the person who inflicts
them, they may think that they were deserved. We
shall see more of this by and by.

What was in the Essayist's mind when he wrote
these words, " The Evangelists appear to differ as to
the hour of the crucifixion ?" We are left to conjec
ture on this point. Our surmise is, that as his alle-

? Mark xv. 42. z Luke xxiii. 54.

a Johnxix. 31. b Ibid. 42.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 451

gations are usually repetitions of what has been al
ready objected and answered, he is referring to the
supposed discrepancy between Mark xv. 25 and John
xix. 14. In the former Gospel it is said — according
to the Roman mode of reckoning time — that "it was
the third hour when they crucified Him ;" that is, He
was crucified at nine o'clock in the morning. St. John
says, that Pilate took his place upon the judgment-
seat when it was " about the sixth hour."

Now here was an occasion for a writer on the
"Interpretation of Scripture" to remind his younger
readers that, in order to understand the Bible, they
must know something of the customs of the countries in
which its various books were written. The Essayist,
however, proceeds on a different principle. He slights
such helps as these. " The greater part of his learning
is a knowledge of the text itself;" this is his canon of
criticism, but he seems quite to forget that a true
"knowledge of the text itself," in such matters as
these, can only be derived from a knowledge of a great
many other things, — especially of the circumstances
under which the text was written.

Let us apply this principle to the question before
us. St. John's Gospel, as all Christian Antiquity tes
tifies, was written in Asia, and St. John follows the
Asiatic mode of reckoning time c. Therefore we learn
two things from St. John's and St. Mark's Gospels.
We are told by St. John that Pilate took his place on
the judgment-seat at six o'clock in the morning ; and
St. Mark informs us, that the sentence of Crucifixion
was pronounced and put in execution at nine o'clock.

Where is the contradiction here ?

e Perhaps the Author may be permitted to refer to the passages
quoted in a note on St. Joha iv. 6, in support of this assertion.

Gg2

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

§ 9. " What is Inspiration?"

The Essayist asks this question, and his answer
to it is : — " That idea of Scripture which we gather
from the knowledge of it." " It is a fact which w'e
infer from the study of Scripture."

This assertion, we must take leave to say, is based
upon a very erroneous notion of our capacities. It
assumes that we are competent to pronounce an opi
nion on what it befits God to say. This surely is
a very presumptuous view of the case. It is a kind
of theological Protagoreanism. " Man is the measure
of all things," was the bold dogma of the ancient
Greek sophist d ; and according to the Essayist's asser
tion, Scripture is not to be Scripture unless it pleases
us ! or as the similar notion was described of old by
Tertullian e, " Except God pleases man, He is not to
be any longer God !" We must also be allowed to
observe that the Essayist's method of arguing con
cerning the Inspiration of Scripture is totally at vari
ance with the plan which Almighty God has been
pleased to pursue — ever since any portion of Scripture
was written — to assure us of its Inspiration.

The divine Author of Scripture did not make the
proof of the Inspiration of the Pentateuch to depend " on
the idea which men might gather from the knowledge
of it." No ! this indeed would have been a most pre
carious foundation to build on. Some of the Hebrews
took little pains to acquaint themselves with the Pen
tateuch; others openly violated its laws, and set up
idols in opposition to its divine Author. But still
the Pentateuch was inspired ; and all were bound to
acknowledge its Inspiration. And why ? Because
Almighty God had visibly distinguished the Pentateuch

d See Plato Cratyl., iii. 234. e Tertullian, Apolog., c. 5.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 453

from all other books, and had avouched it as His own
Book, by enshrining it by the side of the Ark in the
Holy of Holies f. And when the Son of God Himself
came down from heaven and proved His divine au
thority by the mighty works recorded in the Gospels,
(which in course of time were received as true and
divine histories by the Eoman Empire itself, which at
first persecuted the Christians,) Jesus Christ openly
acknowledged all the books of the Old Testament to
be given by Inspiration of God, and He commanded
all men, as they desire to be saved, to receive those
books as divine.

This is the method which God has adopted for as
suring mankind that the Old Testament is divinely
inspired. Doubtless a well-constituted mind, full of
reverence for God, and for His holy Word, and hum
bly seeking for the truth, and praying for the light of
the Holy Spirit, will see in the Old Testament clear
internal testimonies of its divine origin ; but God has
not made the proof of its Inspiration to depend on the
idea which we may gather from the knowledge of it,
He has authenticated it by external evidences and in
controvertible facts, manifest to all; so that no man
in a Christian land has any just excuse if he does
not believe the Old Testament to be God's holy
Word.

He has followed a similar method with regard to
the New Testament.

Jesus Christ established His Church to remain for
ever upon earth g; He has constituted her to be a
"witness and keeper of Holy Writh;" He promised
to be with her " even to the end of the world *," and to

f Deut. xxxi. 9, 24—26. & Matt. xvi. 18.

h Thirty-nine Articles, Art. XX. * Matt, xxviii. 20.

454 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

give to her the Holy Spirit to teach her all things,
and to guide her into all truth k, and to abide with
her for ever.

We may therefore conclude, that whatever the uni
versal Church of Christ has received as divinely in
spired Scripture, is the unerring Word of God. Her
testimony in this respect is the witness of Christ who
is with her; it is the testimony of the Holy Spirit
who is in her, and speaks by her.

Well, therefore, does the Church of England thus
speak1: — "In the name of Holy Scripture we do
understand those canonical Books of the Old and
New Testament, of whose authority was never any
doubt in the Church. . . . All the Books of the New
Testament, as they are commonly received, we do re
ceive, and account them Canonical131."

But the Essayist sets at nought this external testi
mony of Christ and His Church to the inspiration of
Holy Scripture. He would have every man take the
Bible into his hands as a common book, and test it by
his own conscience, or feelings, and then pronounce
judgment upon it.

This is no new theory. It has been put forth in
Germany and in other countries of the world. And
what has been the consequence? Some receive one
part of the Bible, and some another; some reject one
part, some another; and if this theory is adopted,
there will be as many different Bibles as there are
persons, and the end of it must be that there will be
no Bible at all, but only a Babel of tongues.

k Johnxiv. 16, 26; xvi. 13.
1 In the Thirty-nine Articles, Art. VI.

m The above argument has been stated more in detail in the
" Lectures on Inspiration," quoted above, p. 409.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

§ 10. " The question of inspiration," says the Essayist,
" though in one sense important, is to the interpreter as if
it were not important ; he is no way called upon to determine
a matter with which he has nothing to do"

In accordance with this proposition, the Essayist
lays down the following rules for expounding Scrip
ture : —

"Scripture has one meaning, to be gathered from itself,
without a regard to a priori notions about its nature and
origin. It is to be interpreted like other looks n."

Again he says : —

" We can only ascertain the meaning of Scripture in the
same way as we ascertain that of Sophocles or of Plato0"
" And it would be well to carry the theory of interpretation
of Scripture no further than in other works p."

And he does not hesitate to suggest an opinion that
differences of Interpretation of Scripture arise from
the fact that Scripture is not treated like any other
book, and that we should attain to unity and uni
formity in interpreting the Bible, if we would agree to
lay aside all questions concerning its inspiration, and
if we would consent to interpret it as a common book q,
in the same way as we would interpret a human
composition, e. g. the work of some classical author,
" Sophocles or Plato."

Let us consider these propositions : —

" The question of inspiration is one with which the inter
preter of Scripture has nothing to do."

What ! nothing to do with the question whether
the Bible is the Word of God ? Surely this question

n Essay, p. 404. ° p. 377. " p. 378.

« pp. 334, 375—377.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

is important to the interpreter of Scripture, it is the
most important question with which he can have to do.
He cannot stir a step in interpreting Scripture with
out having first settled it.

If Holy Scripture is inspired, then its author is
God : and then the Bible must be interpreted as a book
written by a Being to whom all things are present,
and who contemplates all things at once in the pano
ramic view of His own Omniscience. Lord Bacon
says, "The Scriptures being given by inspiration, and
not by human reason, do differ from all other books
in the Author ; which by consequence doth draw on
some difference to be used by the expositor. For the
Inditer of them did know four things, which no man
attains to know : which are, the mysteries of the king
dom of glory; the perfection of the laws of nature;
the secrets of the hearts of man ; and the future suc
cession of agesr." And again he says, " The Scrip
tures being written to the thoughts of man and to the
succession of all ages, are not to be interpreted only
according to the latitude of the proper sense of the
place'7 (or particular passage of Scripture), "and re
spectively towards that present occasion whereupon
the words were uttered ; but have infinite springs and
streams of doctrine to water the Church in every part,
... so that I do much condemn the interpretation of
the Scripture which is only after the manner as men
use to interpret a profane book."

In a similar spirit of wise criticism our great philo
sophical divine, Bishop Butler8, thus writes: — "The
general design of Scripture may be said to be to give
an account of the world in this single point of view,

r Bacon, Advancement of Learning, p. 265. * Analogy, u. vii.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

as God's world, by which it appears essentially distin
guished from all other books."

Consequently an expositor of Scripture must fail in
his task ^/he does not do what the Essayist says that
he need not do, and if he does what the Essayist recom
mends him to do. If the expositor has not first settled
the question whether Scripture is divinely inspired,
and if he handles it as he would " any other book,"
he will not be disposed to receive with humility such
Christian precepts or doctrines, and such supernatural
truths, as may be repugnant to his own reason, will,
and appetites. But he will measure them, as indeed the
Essayist and his fellow- labourers do, by the standard
of his own " inner consciousness." He will try them
by what they call their " verifying faculty *." There
fore those very precepts and doctrines which consti
tute the essence of the Gospel may serve as occasions
and arguments to him for rejecting it. If, again, he is
in doubt as to the Inspiration of the Bible, he will set
aside every interpretation of its words which would
not be applied to those words on the supposition that
they were uttered by men unaided by the Holy Spirit,
and were not dictated by God.

With regard to the Essayist's notion that Scripture
can have only one meaning, this is manifestly contra
dicted by Scripture itself. For example, the words of

* Essays and Eeviews, pp. 31, 32—36, 45; cf. pp. 343, 365.
The teaching of " Essays and Eeviews" on this point has been thus
summed up by a French critic, of sceptical opinions, in an article
upon that volume in the Revue des deux Mondes for May, 1861,
p. 418 : — " La Bible ne peut conserver sa place dans notre vie reli-
gieuse qu' a une condition, celle de ne plus exercer comme jadis
une espece de despotisme sur 1'esprit hurnain, mais de s1 identifier
avec la voix de la conscience en nous."

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

Scripture, " He hath borne our griefs, and carried
our sorrows u," are declared in one passage of Scripture
to have been fulfilled in Christ's miraculous healing
of men's bodily infirmities x ; and are asserted in an
other place y to have been accomplished by His bearing
our sins in His own body on the cross.

Here are two meanings assigned in Scripture to the
same text of Scripture. Will not every humble and
devout reader of Scripture thankfully receive both ?

The Essayist himself has displayed some remarkable
specimens of the disastrous consequences of his own
theory, as we shall see hereafter2. Indeed, the pre
sent Essay supplies abundant evidence of the un-
soundness of that theory, which, while it professes
to be conducive to the right understanding of Holy
Scripture, would be utterly destructive of its true
interpretation.

The Essayist seems almost to forget, that moral and
spiritual qualifications, as well as intellectual endow
ments, are necessary for the right interpretation of Holy
Scripture. The Scriptures cannot be understood except
through the illumination of the Holy Spirit who wrote
them. He must open our eyes, if we are to see the
wondrous things of God's law. But the Holy Spirit
will not vouchsafe His divine light to those who ven
ture to treat the Scriptures as a common book. No :
He will punish them with spiritual blindness. Spiri
tual blindness is the just retribution which they who
handle Scripture with familiarity bring upon them
selves. " Mysteries are revealed unto the meeka."
" Those that are meek shall He guide in judgment,

u Isa. liii. 4. * Matt. viii. 17. y 1 Pet. ii. 24.

1 e. g. in his comment on St. Matthew's interpretation of Hosea
xi. 1. See below, p. 481. a Ecclus. iii. 19.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 459

and such as are gentle, them shall He learn His
wayb."

Here is the true explanation of the delusion which
seems to have perverted the understanding of the
writer of the present Essay. He has acted on his own
maxim, " Interpret the Scripture like any other book."
He has treated the Bible like a common book. He
tells us that it is of no importance to him whether
the Bible is inspired or no ; and that he " has nothing
to do with that question0." And he defines Inspi
ration to be " that idea of Scripture which he him
self gathers from a knowledge of it d." Thus he has
blinded his own eyes, and he will also extinguish the
light of others who listen to him. Nahash the Ammo
nite said to the people of Jabesh-Gilead, " On this
condition will I make a covenant with you, that I may
thrust out all your right eyes6." The Essayist does the
same ; if we are to be scholars of this Biblical Nahash,
we must allow him to thrust out our right eyes.

As he loves his own intellectual and spiritual health
and that of others committed to his care, let him be
earnestly entreated to retrace his steps. Let him not
deem it an unworthy thing to sit down as a scholar
at the feet of Jesus Christ, and to hearken to that
Divine Teacher, who delivers the Holy Scriptures to
the world not as a common book, but as the Word of
the living God, who enabled His Apostles and Evan
gelists to see and to expound the meaning of the
Old Testament, and who promises to give the Holy
Spirit to those who meekly receive the Scriptures as
the lively oracles of divine truth. Then the scales

b Ps. xxv. 8. c Essay, pp. 350, 377. d p. 347.

e 1 Sam. xi. 2.

460 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

will fall from his eyes, and he will see the light — but
not till then.

§11. The Essayist has no great veneration for the
ancient Fathers of the Church, and yet he endeavours
to enlist them in his service. And how ? In a manner
which could hardly have been expected, and would
have greatly surprised them. The question of the
Inspiration of Scripture, he says, "was not deter
mined by the Fathers of the Church f."

Here it seems to be silently insinuated that the Fa
thers had no clear views of Inspiration. This must
be the meaning of this sentence, or else it is wholly
irrelevant to the place where it stands.

Let us grant now — what is quite true — that no
ancient Council ever met to determine the question of
inspiration, and that no ancient Father has left a trea
tise on inspiration. Why was this ? Was it because
that question was not determined ? Will the Essayist
venture to say this ? No. It was because the ques
tion was settled, and because no one in Christendom
had any doubt about it.

We may hope that the Essayist is ignorant of this
fact, for if he is not ignorant of it, he has wilfully
calumniated the ancient Fathers in a matter of solemn
concern ; but if he is ignorant of it, let him be re
quested to read the works of the Fathers, and let him
name, if he can, a single Father who had any doubt
of the Inspiration of the Bible. Let him mention any
ancient Interpreter, who ever said that "the inspiration
of Scripture was a matter with which he had nothing
to do," or who ever thought of interpreting the Bible
" as a common book." He cannot do so. And, as far as
positive proof on this subject is concerned, any candid

f Essay, p. 351.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 461

inquirer may satisfy himself upon it by consulting the
large collections of testimonies gathered from the works
of the ancient Fathers of the Church by the late vener
able President of St. Mary Magdalene College, Oxford,
Dr. Bouthg, and after him by Dr. William Lee, of
Trinity College, Dublin h, and by the Eev. B. F. West-
cott, of Trinity College, Cambridge, in his excellent vo
lume " An Introduction to the Study of the Gospels1."

The testimony of "Christian Antiquity may be summed
up in the words of the three hundred and eighteen
Nicene Fathers, which have been received by the uni
versal Church for fifteen hundred years, — " I believe
in the Holy Ghost, who spake by the prophets."

§ 12. The Eeformers also are cited by the Essayist
as favouring his own opinions. "The word (inspira
tion)," he says, " is but of yesterday, not found in the
earlier confessions of the reformed faith."

The writer lays a heavy tax on the credulity of his
readers, — " The word inspiration is but of yesterday !"
Have we not the word "inspiration" in our own
Authorized Version of the Bible k, and has it not stood
there for two hundred and fifty years? Is not the
word inspiration to be found in that place in the Ge
nevan version of 1557, and in Cranmer's version of
1539, and in Tyndale's version of 1534 ? Is it not as
old as the age of St. Cyprian, who wrote in the third
century ? Does he not say that the Apostles teach us
what they learnt from the precepts of the Lord, being

g Ilouth, Reliquiae Sapra, vol. v.

h Dr. William Lee on Inspiration, Appendix G, pp. 470 — 501.
Lond. 1854.

1 "Westcott's Introduction, Appendix B, pp. 383 — 422, Lond.
1860.

k 2 Tim. iii. 16, where the Yulgate has "divinitus inspiratum."

462 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

full of the grace of the inspiration of their Lord1?
Does not Origen say that "the Holy Ghost inspired
every one of the holy prophets and apostles in the Old
and New Testament m ?" Nay, is not the word used by
St. Justin Martyr in the second century, who says
that the prophets taught us by divine inspiration*?
Does not St. Irenseus, the scholar of Polycarp, the dis
ciple of St. John, say that the Prophets received divine
inspiration0, and does not all Christian Antiquity tes
tify that the Scriptures are OeoirvevcrTOL, given by
inspiration* of God? And if the ancient Fathers
witnessed to the thing, why should we dispute about
the word?

With regard also to the Reformers, it is equally cer
tain that they asserted the inspiration of Scripture in
the strongest terms in their public confessions of faith.
Let the Essayist be requested to look again at the
" earlier confessions of the reformed faith."

The Bohemian Confession of 1535q thus begins: —
" First of all, we all receive with unanimous consent
the Holy Scriptures which are contained in the Bible,
and were received by our fathers and accounted ca
nonical, as immovably true and most certain, and to
be preferred in all things to all other looks, as sacred

1 " Dominicae inspirationis pleni." — S.Cyprian, De Oper. et
Eleemosyn., § 9.

m Origen De Principiis, i. § 4.

n S. Justin M. Cohort, ad Grsec., § 38 : — Sia rl}s 0eias firiirvoias.

0 S. Irenaeus c. User. iv. 34.

p In addition to the authorities cited above, the reader may find
similar testimonies in Suicer's Thesaurus on v. ypatyrj, and on v.

q Corpus Librorum Symlolicorum Ecclesia Reformatce, ed.
Augusti, Elberfeld, 1827, p. 276; in which volume the other Con
fessions here cited may be found.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 463

books ought to be preferred to profane, and divine
books to human r ; and to be believed with sincerity
and simplicity of mind ; and that they were delivered
and inspired by God Himself, as Peter and Paul and
others do affirm."

The Helvetic Confession, published in 1536, de
clares that they " execrate all who say that the Holy
Scriptures are not from the Holy Ghost, or who reject
any portion of them;" and that the " Scriptures are
the very word of God, who speaks to us by them."

The Gallican Confession, published in 1561, asserts
that the " word contained in the books of Holy Scrip
ture," which it enumerates, " proceeded from one
God, and are the sum and substance of truth, and
that neither men nor angels may add anything to it,
or make any change in it."

The Scottish Kirk in her Confession affirms that
the " Scriptures were committed to writing through
the Holy Spirit of God."

The Belgic Confession says that the Scriptures con
tain "the holy and divine word, not given by human
will, but spoken by men of God, who were inspired
by His Spirit," and " that they were written by God's
command;" and "we believe," say the framers of the
Confession, " all things contained therein."

The doctrine of the old Lutheran divines, at least
from the end of the sixteenth century, — for it is
readily allowed that some of the earlier Lutherans
were less explicit in their expressions, — is stated in
these words8 : — " Inspiration is the act by which God
communicated supernaturally to the mind of the
writers of Scripture not only the ideas of the things

r Art. XVIII.

8 See Hase. Hutterus Redivivus, 8th edition, Lips. 1855, p. 102.

464 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

which they were to write, but also the conceptions of
the words by which they were to be expressed. The
true Author of the Holy Scripture is God."

Can any language be more explicit ? And yet the
Essayist suggests that the Eeformers laid little stress
on the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible. "What
else is the meaning of his language, "the word'7
inspiration "is but of yesterday, not found in the
earlier Confessions of the reformed faith," taken in
connexion with his assertion that Scripture is to be
interpreted like "any other book," and that "the
question of inspiration is one with which the inter
preter of Scripture has nothing to do ?" Is he ready
to adopt the language of those Confessions to which he
appeals ? If he is not, why did he refer to them ? If
he is, must he not retract almost all that he has said
in this Essay on the subject of Inspiration?

§ 13. When a person comes before a magistrate to
bring a charge against a neighbour, he is rightly re
quired to state the particulars of his grievance. He is
not allowed to say that the man whom he impeaches is
a housebreaker, but he is called upon to specify the
circumstances of some act of burglary upon which he
grounds his charge. And if he cannot do so, he is
justly regarded as guilty of calumny, for injuring his
neighbour's reputation, and he will have damaged his
own character in the eyes of the whole neighbour
hood by such a slanderous imputation.

It is deeply to be regretted that the Essayist is
chargeable with this wrong. He brings accusations
against others which would not be received by any
Justice of the Peace at any Petty Sessions, against
the lowest and least respectable of Her Majesty's
subjects. And who are the persons against whom

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 465

he prefers these charges ? The holy Evangelists them
selves.

The following example of this mode of dealing now
meets us. He tells us that there are " discrepancies
in the narrative of the Infancy pointed out by Schleier-
macherV Tantamne rem tarn neglig enter ! Is so great
matter to be dismissed in this loose way? " Discre
pancies in the narrative of the Infancy !" What do
these words mean ? They look very formidable, and
may well inspire the reader with alarm.

Here is the mischief of the Essay, It teems with
insinuations. It is a whispering-gallery of indistinct
sounds muttering evil.

A young man — one of the writer's own pupils — or
an earnest-minded woman looking to the Essayist as
a Tutor of a College and a Eegius Professor at Oxford,
for instruction on the important subject of " the inter
pretation of Scripture," would be filled with indefinite
dread and panic in reading such a statement as this,
— u There are discrepancies in the narrative of the
Infancy ;" that is, in the infancy of our Blessed Lord
and Saviour* discrepancies in the narrative of the
Gospels which have hitherto been received as the
words of the Holy Ghost.

But what and where are these discrepancies ? You
bring a charge of discrepancy against the Evangelists.
You indict them of error. But where are your wit
nesses? Come forward boldly, and state the parti
culars of your charge. Even the heathen populace
required this : —

"Quis delator? quibus indiciis, quo teste probavitu?"

But the answer is "Nil horum." Nothing of the

kind. The youthful reader is referred to Schleier-

* Essay, p. 351. u Juvenal, x. 70.

Hh

466 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

macher ! To Schleiermacher! Yerily a "verbosa et
grandis epistola" is the ground of this terrible accu
sation, involving a question of life and death. " Dis
crepancies pointed out by Schleiermacher !" These are
to be our reasons for distrusting the Evangelists.
Pointed out where ? Dr. Frederick Schleiermacher, as
the reader knows, was a German philosopher and
divine who published a score of volumes. Is the
youthful student to search through them in quest of
these " discrepancies in the narrative of the Infancy ?"
Is he to hunt for the needle in that bundle of hay ?

But perhaps he may have heard that one of the
learned German's works x was translated into English
thirty-six years ago ; and if he is fortunate enough to
meet with a copy of that translation, now very scarce,
he may at length discover7 the alleged " discrepan
cies in the narrative of the Infancy pointed out by
S chleiermacher . ' '

Schleiermacher' s work, as I have said, was pub
lished many years ago, and since that time his alle
gations have been often refuted z. Did the Essayist
know this ? We can hardly suppose it. If he did,
his appeal to those exploded objections becomes more
censurable ; but if he did not know it, is he well qua
lified to write a dissertation "on the Interpretation of
Holy Scripture ?"

Lest, however, the reader should remain in the state

x Dr. F. Schleiermacher, Ueber d. Scliriften des Lukas, ein Jcri-
tischer Versucli. Berlin, 1817.

y A Critical Essay on the Gospel of St. Luke, by Dr. Frederick
Schleiermacher, with an Introduction by the Translator. London,
1825. See there in pp. 44—52.

z Particularly, as staled above, by Dr. Davidson, " Introduction to
the Gospels," pp. 116—119.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 467

of embarrassment into which he has been thrown by
this vague charge of discrepancy brought against the
holy Evangelists, let us briefly examine what Schleier-
macher's objections were, to which the Essayist re
fers us.

Schleiermacher says that St. Luke's account of the
Annunciation cannot be true, because if it were, the
Blessed Yirgin would certainly have communicated it
to Joseph, and then Joseph would not have formed the
design of putting her away, as stated by St. Matthew.
Schleiermacher, therefore, rejects St. Luke's history of
the Annunciation as a poetical embellishment.

This is a specimen of the kind of Interpretation of
Scripture which the Essayist sanctions with his autho
rity when he directs the attention of his youthful
readers to the " discrepancies pointed out by Schleier
macher."

Surely any one of those readers, when he comes to
meet this objection face to face, would hardly fail to
perceive that it is as hollow and worthless as it is pre
sumptuous and profane.

St. Luke himself supplies an answer to it. He de
scribes the Blessed Yirgin Mary as u keeping all"
the divine revelations, and " pondering them in her
heart a." A beautiful picture of maiden modesty and
delicate reserve, and of patient waiting and reverent
faith in God. If such was the case after her marriage
with Joseph, as the Evangelist assures us it was, how
much more would it be so before she was united to
him, and while she dwelt apart in virgin privacy at
Nazareth.

A writer who makes such an objection is not worthy
to be recommended to the young. What a poor notion

a Luke ii. 19.

nh 2

468 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

must he have of that quiet meekness and holy piety
which are the best ornaments of womanhood !

Let us observe also that St. Matthew does not say
that Joseph intimated to Mary any intention of re
nouncing his purpose of a matrimonial alliance with
her. No : he was only " minded" to do so; and while
he " thought thereon, the angel of the Lord appeared
to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David,
fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that
which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost b."

The Blessed Virgin " was highly favoured" by God,
and we may be sure that she was under the heavenly
guidance of the Holy Ghost. She was taught by Him
even in her silence. It was a providential thing that
she did not mention to Joseph the angelic communi
cation. If she had done so, the assertion would have
rested merely on her authority, and he might have
been perplexed, and even have been tempted to doubt
the fact. It was a providential thing that she went
away from Nazareth soon after the Annunciation, and
remained with her cousin Elisabeth0 three months;
and there she received a testimony to the truth of the
vision which had appeared to herself, for she found
that it was true which was spoken by the angel, viz.,
that " her cousin Elisabeth had conceived a son in
her old age d ;" and the fact of the Annunciation had
been revealed to Elisabeth6.

It was also a providential thing that Joseph did not
communicate to Mary his intention of abandoning his
design of marriage with her. For thus a fit occasion
arose, a dignus vindice nodus, for the appearance of the
Angel to Joseph in the dream ; and he acted upon that
appearance, and probably he communicated to Mary
b Matt. i. 20, 21. c Luke i. 39, 56. d Ibid. i. 36. e Luke i. 45.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 469

the vision vouchsafed to himself. And this act and
communication would elicit from her an account of
the Annunciation, and would be an independent testi
mony to it. The dream would confirm the Annun
ciation, and the Annunciation would confirm the dream.
The Angel in the dream who says to Joseph in St.
Matthew's Gospel " that which is conceived in her is
of the Holy Ghost," shewed that he came from the
same divine Lord who revealed to Mary by Gabriel,
as St. Luke relates, "the Holy Ghost shall come upon
thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow
thee ; therefore that holy thing which shall be born
of thee shall be called the Son of God." And so the
faith of both Joseph and Mary would be strengthened
by God, and they would both receive from Him in
expressible comfort in their union.

This pairing of visions, vouchsafed to two several
parties, and mutually confirming one another, is cha
racteristic of God's dealings with His saints on great
and worthy occasions. We see it in His dispensations
to Saul and to Ananias f, and also to Cornelius and
to St. Peter g. A writer on the "Interpretation of
Scripture" might have done well to bear in mind this
characteristic, and to apply it to the illustration of
the " narrative of the Infancy."

The other " discrepancies" which Schleiermacher
has supposed to exist in the narratives of St. Matthew
and St. Luke are disposed of with equal ease. One
refers to the two genealogies, and has already been
examined h.

He alleges also, that if the wise men came at all to
Bethlehem, they must have come to Bethlehem before

1 Acts ix 12-17. g Acts x. 3—7, 17—19.

h Above, p. 447.

4/0 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

" the presentation in the temple,'7 which was forty days
after the birth. Schleiermacher adds, St. Luke makes
the parents to have returned to Nazareth immediately
after the Presentation. Consequently if Herod, as re
presented by St. Matthew, heard from the wise men
the fact of the birth of the King of the Jews, and had
issued his savage order against the children at Beth
lehem, Joseph would never have hazarded the life of
the Infant by going to Jerusalem for the Presentation.
Schleiermacher, therefore, rejects the narrative of St.
Matthew as a poetical fiction, designed " to represent
Jesus as immediately recognised by the heathen,"
" and to establish the right of Christianity to extend
beyond the limits of Judaism V

In the former instance St. Luke was the poet and
St. Matthew the historian, but now the tables are
turned, and at the bidding of this Berlin necromancer
waving his magical wand, St. Matthew is transformed
into a poet and St. Luke becomes an historian ; St.
Matthew has given us a legend which is to be rejected
on the authority of St. Luke ! To all this gratuitous
assumption it may be replied, How does our critic
know that the Magi arrived before the Presentation ?
There is no ground in the Gospels for such a suppo
sition, but very much the reverse. The star seems to
have appeared at the Nativity. The Magi, led by the
star, came from a distance, and would hardly arrive at
Bethlehem within forty days after the birth. And if
the time between the birth and their arrival had been
so short, Herod would have hardly extended his san
guinary order to infants of two years oldj. And if the

1 Schleiermacher,' Critical Essay on the Gospel of Luke, pp.
4G — 50, English translation. London, 1825.
J Matt. ii. 16.

ON THE INTERPRETATION O7 SCRIPTURE. ^ i

parents had received the gold of the wise men they
would probably not have presented the offerings of
the poor k.

But it may be objected, — St. Luke tells us that the
parents quitted Bethlehem after the Presentation, and
returned to Nazareth. Yes ; and he also informs us that
they were in the habit of coming " to Jerusalem every
year for the Passover1.7' What more probable than
that after the birth at Bethlehem, the city of David,
where the Messiah was to be bornm, and after the
glorious revelations at Bethlehem in the angelic vision
to the shepherds, Joseph and Mary should have had
a strong yearning for Bethlehem, and that in visiting
Jerusalem for the Passover they should come to Beth
lehem, in its neighbourhood, in order to settle there ?
Perhaps their return to Nazareth after the Presentation
was only for the sake of arranging their affairs there,
with a view to a migration to Bethlehem, which had
such glorious associations and such gracious attrac
tions for them; and when they were there, not any
longer in the stable of the inn^ as at the Nativity n,
but, as St. Matthew notes, in a house °, they received
the visit and homage from the wise men coming from
the East.

This arrangement of incidents is certainly very pro
bable p ; indeed, anything is more probable than that
St. Matthew, who wrote his Gospel for the Jews, and
published it in Juda3a a few years after the Ascension,
should have commenced his narrative with a false-

k Luke ii. 24. ' Ibid. ii. 41. m Micah v. 2.

n Lukeii. 7. ° Matt. ii. 11.

P It has already been submitted to the consideration of the student
of Scripture in a note on Matt. ii. 9, with some other reasons not
repeated here.

472 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

hood, which any one almost in that country would
have been able to refute. But so far was this from
being the case, that Christians of that age and country
not only received his Gospel as true, but died cheer
fully in defence of its truth ; and in course of time
the Eoman mistress of the world, which at first perse
cuted the Christians, was convinced that St. Matthew's
Gospel is true, and placed it on thrones in her imperial
council-chambers, and revered it as the Word of God.

Let us now be permitted to put the question, —
How would the Essayist's friends bear it, if a writer
holding a high place in a learned University were to
treat his character in the same way as he has treated
that of the Evangelists ? How would they brook it, if
a Tutor and Professor had charged the Essayist with
putting forth fictions as facts ; and if, in support of
such imputations, his accusers had appealed to some
voluminous writings, without any specification of any
particular charge; and if, after much search, the
grounds of that accusation had been discovered to be
frivolous and nugatory, and to have been already ex
amined and refuted ? Would not the Essayist's friends
and admirers have resented such dealing as disin
genuous and dishonest ? Would they not have pro
tested against it as calumnious, cowardly, and base ?
Surely they would, and they would have done rightly.
But this is precisely the manner in which the Es
sayist himself has treated St. Matthew and St. Luke.
And is it not the duty of the friends and scholars of
the Evangelists to vindicate their credit ? Are we to
sympathize with the Essayist, and to have no sym
pathy with the Evangelists ? The Essayist is alive,
and is able to vindicate himself; but the Evangelists

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 473

are dead, and cannot speak for themselves. Therefore
every lover of truth and justice ought to become their
advocate, and to rise up in their defence against such
accusations as these.

Again : if a medical practitioner had mixed poison
with the diet of his patients, and if he had told them
that the poison was wholesome nourishment ; if he
had put deleterious drugs into a beautiful vessel, and
had inscribed upon it the name of some pleasant and
healthful potion ; if he had thus disarmed their sus
picions, and attracted them by his own fair name,
and by that of some other person commended by
his eulogies, would he not be more censurable than
if he had openly endangered their lives ? Certainly
he would. And what has been done by the writer
of this Essay ? He has administered poison to the
souls of his youthful readers ; he has inscribed a fair
name upon the poison, he has afforded no test for
its detection, he has commended it as palatable food,
he has dispensed it to thousands and tens of thou
sands as spiritual nourishment, good for their souls'
health.

§ 14. The Essayist is ready enough to imagine
discrepancies in the Gospels, but he does not seem
equally sensitive as to the discrepancies in his own
Essay : —

"Non videmus manticse quod intergo estq."

But let him shift the wallet from his back and place
it before his eyes, and he may perhaps find it amply
stored with what he imputes to others.

He has assumed the existence of contradictions in
the Gospels; he says that there "is so much disagree-

* Catull. xx. 21.

47-4 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

ment in facts in the Gospels r ;" and yet, in another
part of his dissertation, he assures us that it is " & great
fact" — as he terms it — that "the Gospels are for the
most part of common origin* ;" and insisting on this
" great fact ," he assumes it as a necessary inference,
that "we can no longer speak of three independent
witnesses of the Gospel narrative V

Here he has revived the obsolete theory, of which
German scholars have long since been ashamed, that
the Gospels are from " some common original." A
century ago this notion, which was put forth by
Semler and others, was rightly discarded as chimerical
and ridiculous by J. G. Bosenmiiller u. For who had
ever seen that original Gospel? Who among the
ancients had ever mentioned it? It was a mere
legendary fiction of critics eager to find some support
for their own baseless hypotheses. And the Essayist,
now in the middle of the nineteenth century, has
disinterred that theory from its grave, where it has
slept quietly for some time ; he would galvanize into
new life this crazy skeleton, and set it up for our ad
miration ; and in his affection for it he would have
us relinquish our own belief in the living reality of
the three synoptical Gospels " as independent wit
nesses" of our Lord's history ! And yet, mark his
own discrepancy ! he charges those same witnesses
with inconsistencies ! They are all dependent on one
common account; and yet they are at variance with
one another! They do not even agree in the "ori
ginal dwelling-place of our Lord's parents3";" they

r Essay, p. 370. 8 p. 371. * Ibid.

u Scholia in MaUJi<Bum> 1787; cf. Meyer's Einleitungiv St. Mat
thew's Gospel, § 4.
1 Essay, p. 346.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 475

"trace His genealogy in different ways;" and besides
other differences which he assumes, there are the
"discrepancies in the narrative of the Infancy pointed
out by Schleiermacher."

Observe, also, the modesty with which this super
annuated theory of a common origin of the Gospels is
put forth. Ancient writers, from Papias the disciple
of St. John and IrenaBus the scholar of Poly carp, have
agreed in testifying that there was a connection be
tween St. Mark's Gospel and the holy apostle St. Peter,
who calls Mark " his sony;" and Biblical critics, and
readers of the New Testament generally, have recog
nised an internal evidence of the truth of that ancient
testimony in the interesting fact that Si. Peters fail
ings are dwelt upon with particular emphasis in the
Gospel of St. Marie. But observe the Essayist's dif
fidence. In spite of all that ancient testimony, con
firmed by internal proof, St. Mark is only to be a copyist
of an apocryphal original Gospel, which never had any
existence except in the Essayist's imagination ! And
the testimony of Irenseus, Tertullian, Clement of Alex
andria, Origen, and a host of other ancient writers,
who agree in asserting the connection of St. Mark's
Gospel with St. Peter, is summarily dismissed by the
Essayist with this contemptuous sentence : —

" It is evident that no weight can be given to traditional
statements of facts about the authorship [of the Gospels] ;
as, for example, that respecting St. Mark being the inter
preter of St. Peter; because the Fathers who have handed
down these statements were ignorant or unobservant of the
great fact, which, is proved by internal evidence [qu. of their
' discrepancies ?'] that they [the Gospels] are for the most
of common origin z."

y 1 Pet. v. 13. z Essay, p. 371.

476 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

Another specimen of our author's modesty and consis
tency may here be noticed. He says in one place very
truly, that " Scripture is to be interpreted from itself,"
— " Non nisi ex Scriptura Scripturam potes interpre-
tari a." But how does he apply his own rule in other
parts of his Essay ? As we shall see hereafter, he will
not accept the interpretations of the Old Testament
which are given by the Holy Spirit in the New. And
yet " Scripture is to be interpreted from itself!" He
says that there " is hardly any quotation in the Epistles
of the New Testament from the Prophets, in which
the meaning is based on the original sense b ;" and he
earnestly warns his pupils against accepting more than
one meaning* of a prophecy ; and he asserts that the
•only true meaning of Sciipture is that which is to be
gathered from Scripture interpreted like any other hook ;
and therefore he rejects those meanings which are as
signed by the Evangelists in Scripture themselves to
prophecies of the Old Testament d ! And yet we are
gravely assured by the Essayist that we cannot in
terpret Scripture except from Scripture itself !

It may perhaps be asked by the reader, ' How does
the Essayist reconcile his mode of treating the New
Testament, with the reverent affection, which is often
professed in this Essay, for the person of our Blessed
Lord ? Our Blessed Lord Himself is the Author of
these interpretations of the prophecies of the Old
Testament, either directly in His own Person, or
mediately by His Apostles or Evangelists. How can
the Essayist's rejection of the teaching accord with
veneration for the Teacher?'

This question has evidently presented itself to his

a Essay, pp. 382, 384. b p. 406.

c p. 404; cf. 377, 378. d See p. 418.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 477

mind ; and it is answered by means of one of those
unhappy expedients, which the Essayist found already
made to his hand in the magazine of German theology
from which his materials are derived.

All who are familiar with the history of German
Protestantism will at once anticipate the reply. It
is supplied by the theory of accommodation. That
theory was propounded about a century ago by Semler6
and others f. It is well described by the late revered

" Compare the account in the "Historical Sketch of German
Protestantism," by G. H. Dewar, M.A., p. 107 :— " Semler, thirty
years professor at Halle, was the founder of what is called the
historical method of interpretation. The principal feature of this
system is, that every passage of Scripture is to he interpreted with
reference to the time and circumstances under which it was' de
livered. True as this principle in a certain sense may be, it is
easy to perceive that in the sense in which it has been used by
Semler and his successors, and as a foundation for the so-called
doctrine of accommodation, it must lead to a total abandonment of
the doctrine of the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. If in speak
ing of the expectation of a Messiah, of His own miraculous birth,
of the effusion of the Holy Ghost, of a future judgment, of a heaven
and a hell, of angels and of evil spirits, Jesus and His Apostles
were only accommodating themselves to the preconceived opinions and
errors of the Jews, in order to gain an influence over them, and thus
induce them to submit to the pure and spiritual requirements of the
Gospel, which Semler, educated among the Pietists, considered of
more importance than a distinctive belief; — if, I say, on such points
as these Jesus and His Apostles were accommodating themselves to
Jewish prejudices, surely the volume of Holy Scripture would be of
a very similar character with the fables of JEsop, which, in order to
convey to children some useful lesson, endeavour to excite their
attention and please their fancy by absurd and unnatural fictions J
and surely then the v/ords of Scripture cannot have emanated from
that Holy Spirit with whom is neither falsehood nor deceit ; surely
it cannot claim our reverence ; it cannot be unto us a rule of faith,
or an instructor in holiness."

f Eckermann, Yan Hemcrt, Kirsten, Vogel, &c., &c.

478 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

Hugh James Kose, in one of his Sermons preached
before the University of Cambridge in 1825 g: — " Sem-
ler invented an hypothesis to get rid of what offended
him in the New Testament. He contended that we
are not to take all the declarations of Scripture as
addressed to us, but to consider them as in many
points adapted to the feelings and dispositions of the
age when they originated. This was the origin of that
famous theory of accommodation, which Semler carried
to great lengths, but which, in the hands of his
followers, became the most formidable weapon ever
devised against Christianity. Whatever men were
disinclined to receive in the New Testament, and
could not with decency reject, while they called them
selves Christians and retained the Scripture, they got
rid of by this theory.'7 They " maintained that the
Apostles, and even Jesus Himself, had adapted Him
self, not only in His way of teaching, but in His
doctrines, to the prejudices of the Jews." . . . " When
the prophecies of the Old Testament were cited, then
appeal was made to the interpreters on the new plan,
who asserted constantly that there were no prophecies
to be found, or (what was perhaps stranger still) that
there was nothing in the Old Testament clear enough
to argue from, without danger of arbitrary conclu
sions11." "I cannot," says the same excellent writer1,
" mention this theory (of accommodation) without
adding to it an expression of the strongest abhor
rence. Strange, indeed, must men's notions be of
a divine, or even of a sincere human teacher, when
they can believe that He would endeavour to recom-

g On the State of the Protestant Religion in Germany, p. 447.
h Ibid., p. 78. i Ibid,, p. 48.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

479

mend a practical system of the most lofty virtues
by a sacrifice of truth."

Yet this is the idea which the Essayist seems to
have formed, or rather reproduced, of our Blessed
Lord, and His Apostles and Evangelists.

Having said that there is scarcely any prophecy of
the Old Testament which is interpreted in the New
according to its "original sense k," he adds, that we
are not to be surprised at this; for we ought to be
prepared to see Scripture interpreted according to the
u ideas of the age or country in which it was written"
and therefore we ought not to insist " on the applica
tions which the New Testament makes of passages in
the Old, as their original meaning ! ;" and he puts a
question to which he himself has already suggested
the answer, " Is the Interpretation of the Old Tes
tament in the New to be regarded as the meaning
of the original text, or an accommodation of it to the
thoughts of other times m ?"

The Essayist professes a feeling of reverence for the
Divine Saviour of the world ; but how can this ques
tion be reconciled with such a profession ? Christ is
" the Way, the Truth, and the Life n ;" and " He came
to bear witness to the truth0;" and He sternly de
nounced the sins and errors of the Jews and their
teachers; and therefore He suffered death at their
hands. And yet we are to entertain the question,
whether He was not guilty of equivocation, dissimu
lation, and cowardice ! and whether He did not adapt
His language to the prejudices of His hearers; and
whether His teaching is any longer to be regarded as

Essay, p. 406. > p. 407. m p. 370.

n John xiv. 6. ° Ibid, xviii. 37.

480 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

of universal application, or only to have a temporary
and local significance, accommodated with dexterous
pliancy to the temper and circumstances of the times
in which His language was uttered !

This theory of accommodation being once assumed to
be true, there is no limit to its application. All the
teaching of Christ and His Apostles must eventually
disappear under its withering influence. The doc
trines of Christianity will soon be treated as merely
ephemeral ideas, or floating fashions adapted to the
spirit of the age in which they were first published.
Indeed, as is well known, these disastrous results have
already followed from that theory of accommodation.
It brought forth an abundant harvest of unbelief.
" The lessons of Semler," the author of that theory,
"have not been lost," says the writer just quoted.
" The evil seed which he committed to the earth pro
duced an hundredfold ] and even the sower himself
would have contemplated with surprise and horror the
evil and poisonous crop which has sprung from the
seed he planted. ... In the works of Sender's fol
lowers there is a daringness of disbelief, a wantonness
of blasphemy, which in a professed unbeliever we
should expect and understand, but when we turn
from the works where it is found to the page which
records the name and situation of the writer s^ and when
we find that to man// of them is entrusted the solemn
charge of educating the younger brethren, and to all is
committed that still more solemn charge of feeding and
watching over Christ's flock on earth, there would be
no consolation for the Christian heart, were it not
persuaded that God has some great end in view,
some great lesson to teach, in allowing so dreadful
a pest to infest this portion of His vineyard, and to

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 481

threaten the destruction of all that is dear, sacred,
and holy p."

Such were the fruits of Sender's theory of accommo
dation, in the Universities, schools, and parish churches
of Germany. It is now revived in England ; and if it
is allowed to take root among us, its consequences will
be the same here.

§ 15. Having impeached the historical veracity of
the Evangelists, the Essayist does not hesitate also to
impugn their authority in interpreting the prophecies
of the Old Testament. He discards their interpreta
tions as obsolete. Their expositions might do well
enough formerly, but the world is now becoming
wiser. Listen to his words q : —

" The time will come, when educated men will be no more
able to believe that the words, 'Out of Egypt have I called
My Son r," were intended by the Prophet to refer to the return
of Joseph and Mary out of Egypt, than they are now able to.
believe the Roman Catholic exposition of Gen. iii. 15, ' Ipsa
conteret caput tuum.' '

The reader is aware that " the Eoman Catholic
exposition'7 of that passage in the Book of Genesis is
grounded upon a perversion of the Hebrew original.
According to that exposition, the words of God to the
serpent are interpreted as if they signified " She shall
bruise thy head," and those words are applied by the
Church of Eome to the Yirgin Mary; whereas the
words clearly mean "It shall bruise thy head," and,

p Hugh James Hose's Discourses, preached hefore the University
of Cambridge, on the " State of the Protestant Religion in Ger
many," p. 58.

i Essay, p. 418.

r Hosea xi. 1 ; Matt. ii. 15.

I i

482 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

as all Christian antiquity testifies8, they refer to the
Seed of the woman, which is Christ

Here, therefore, is a glaring misrepresentation of a
most important text of the Old Testament ; and yet
the Essayist tells us that "the time is coming, when
educated men" will acknowledge that the interpre
tation which the holy Evangelist St. Matthew gives
of the words of the Prophet, Hosea xi. 2, "Out of
Egypt have I called My Son," is not more credible
than that glaring misrepresentation !

The Essayist has not much respect for the early
Fathers; he "has no delight in the voluminous litera
ture which has overgrown the text * " of the Gospels.
If he had been more conversant with it, perhaps he
might have been preserved from raising this objection
to St. Matthew, by which he has brought himself into
the company of Julian the Apostate, who made the
same accusation against the Evangelist11 fifteen cen
turies ago.

Let us consider the allegation.

The Essayist says : —

" The time is coming, when educated men will no more be
able to believe that the words, ' Out of Egypt have I called
My Son/ were intended by the Prophet (Hosea) to refer to
the return of Joseph and Mary from Egypt, than they are
now able to believe the Roman Catholic exposition of Gen.
iii. 15."

On the other hand, an Evangelist, St. Matthew,
assures us, that those words of Hosea were fulfilled in
that return. St. Matthew thus writes x, — "When he

8 See Rom. xv. 20 ; St. Leo Magn. Serm. de Nativ. ii. ; St. Jerome,
Question. Hebr. in Gen., torn. ii. p. 110; and the Benedictine note
on Gen. iii. 15. * Essay, p. 338.

u See St. Jerome on Hosea xi. * Matt. ii. 15.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 483

(Joseph) arose, lie took the young child and His
mother by night, and departed into Egypt, and was
there until the death of Herod, that it might be ful
filled which was spoken of (or by) the Lord, by (or
through y) the Prophet (Hosea), Out of Egypt have I
called My Son."

The Essayist intimates that the Evangelist has
made a mistake here ; otherwise his remark is wholly
unmeaning, The Evangelist is wrong ; and " the time
is coming when educated men" will discover his error,
and correct it, and discard the interpretation of Hosea
which St. Matthew would impose upon them.

But what is the fact ? Has St. Matthew misinter
preted Hosea ?

Assuredly not. The truth is, that the Essayist has
been caught in the snare which he has laid for others.
He had advised us to " interpret Scripture as any
other book2," that is, as a human composition. He
also assures us that no passage of Scripture can have
any more than one meaning a, and "that one meaning
is to be gathered from (Scripture) itself" without re
gard to its nature and origin; and again, " Scripture has
one meaning, — the meaning which it had to the mind
of the Prophet or Evangelist . . . who first uttered it."
And again, " We have no reason to attribute to the
Prophet any second or hidden sense, different from that
which appears on the surface b."

These are his famous canons of Interpretation. Un
fortunately for himself he has applied them here. He
tries the prophecy of Hosea by his own critical standard,
and finds that Hosea is speaking of Israel coming
forth from Egypt. And Hosea is to have but "one

' 8ti. z Essay, pp. 350, 377. * pp. 404, 378.

b p. 380.

484 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

meaning ;" and that meaning is " the meaning which
is on the surface]"1 the meaning which may be gathered
from Hosea's writings, treated "like any other book."
Hosea meant to refer to Israel's coming out of Egypt.
His prophecy refers to that coming, and therefore^
argues the Essayist, it cannot refer to anything else.
Consequently St. Matthew is wrong in saying that
"Joseph took the young child and His mother by
night, and departed into Egypt ; and was there until
the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by the Lord through the Prophet, Out of
Egypt have I called My Son;" and "the time is com
ing when educated men" will reject this interpretation.

In contemplating such reasoning we are lost in
astonishment. The vanity and self-conceit of the
human heart is indeed great, and scarcely any com
mon exhibition of it ought to cause much surprise.
But surely this is a phenomenon almost unparalleled.
The Essayist correcting the Evangelist ! The Essayist
in the nineteenth century correcting St. Matthew, — a
Hebrew by birth, a companion and apostle of Jesus
Christ, and writing a Gospel for Hebrew Christians,
which was received by them as a divine work ! The
Essayist correcting St. Matthew in the interpretation
of Hebrew prophecy ! This is something almost be
yond the powers of all human conception.

Consider also, if haply it be true, that the Scrip
tures are not " like any other book," and if St. Mat
thew wrote under the guidance of the Holy Spirit of
God, and if his Gospel is indeed, what all Chris
tendom for eighteen hundred years has believed it to
be, a divinely inspired work, then we have this fearful
phenomenon — the Essayist correcting the Holy Ghost !

When, however, we come to analyze this strange

ON THE INTERPRET ATION OF SCRIPTURE. 485

prodigy, it is not altogether inexplicable. Holy Scrip
ture enables us to explain it. The first requisite for
"the Interpretation of Scripture" is humility. The
second is reverence for Scripture. If we rely on our
selves and our own intelligence, and if we disparage
Scripture, and treat it "as any other book," then
Almighty God, Who is the Author of Scripture, will
punish us by our own devices. He will " choose our
delusions6." He will "chastise us by our wicked
ness," and "reprove us by our backslidingsd," and
"give us the reward of our own hands6." Our
presumption and our irreverence will be the instru
ments of our punishment ; we shall have provoked
God to withdraw His Holy Spirit from us, and to give
us over to spiritual blindness, and then we shall dis
play to the world that most wretched spectacle, the
spectacle of men professing themselves wise, and
vaunting their own intelligence, and setting them
selves up to be censors of the Evangelists, and to
enlighten the Holy Spirit Himself! Miserable ig
norance ! pitiful infatuation ! the fruit of arrogance
and irreverence. And is not this the spectacle before
us ? The Essayist comes forward to instruct the world
in his new method to be used for the interpretation
of Scripture. He puts forth with oracular authority
his own canons of Biblical criticism. We have seen
what those canons are, and how he applies them.
And yet, after all this show of knowledge, he convicts
himself of ignorance concerning the authorship of pro
phecy ; and he deprives himself, and would rob his
scholars, of all the beautiful imagery which they may
derive from the illumination of the Holy Ghost, teach
ing them to recognise in Israel a type of Jesus Christ.

c Isa. Ixvi. 4. d Jer. ii. 19. • Tsa. iii. 11.

486 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

This is a specimen of the glorious gain which the
rising generation is to receive from this new method
of Interpretation.

He takes for granted, that because lie himself can
not see the meaning which St. Matthew assigns to
Hosea' s prophecy, and because that meaning does not
"appear on the surface," and because the Prophet
Hosea himself may not have had that meaning fully
revealed to him, — therefore the prophecy of Hosea has
no such meaning ! But let us ask one question. Did
any educated man, who has reflected seriously on
the prophecies, ever imagine that the Prophets them
selves were the original authors of those prophecies f?
Has not the whole Church of Christ always held
" that the Holy Ghost spake by the Prophets ?" And
let us also ask this, Is not the Holy Ghost, speaking
by the Evangelist St. Matthew, to be believed, when
He tells us what was in His own divine mind when He
spake by the Prophet Hosea ? Is the Essayist to be
permitted to come forward and enlighten the Holy
Spirit, and to inform Him that He had no such meaning
as that which He Himself assures us that He had ?

Can any arrogance in the world be conceived greater
than this ?

A writer in a celebrated periodical g thus speaks : —
" The position of Professor Jowett has a significance

f On this subject the reader may refer to St. Augustine, De Doct.
Christ., iii. 39 ; Ep. Butler, Anal., n. vii. ; Ep. Sherlock on Prophecy,
ii. p. 21 ; Ep. Marsh on the Interpretation of the Bible, Lect. x.
p. 443, cf. p. 403 ; Dr. W. Lee on Inspiration, x. p. 198, 199. The
passages may be seen quoted in the present writer's Lectures on
Interpretation, pp. 80 — 89.

g Edinburgh Beview, No. 230, for April 1861, p 476, where this
Essay is thus characterized : — " Professor Jowett has furnished what

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 487

of its own. Since the termination of the great move
ment of the ' Tracts for the Times,' he is the only man
in the University of Oxford who has exercised a moral
and spiritual influence at all corresponding to that
which was once wielded by John Henry Newman."

The parallel here is remarkable, and suggests some
ominous forebodings. Dr. Newman has unhappily
fallen away from the Church of England, and has led
many others into the communion of that Church which
has devised the monstrous interpretation, rightly cen
sured by the Essayist, of Gen. iii. 15, which refers that
text to the Virgin Mary. He has accepted the teach
ing of that Church, which, mainly on the groundwork
of that texth, has lately put forth a new dogma of
faith, and anathematizes all who do not believe that
new dogma, namely, the Immaculate Conception of the
Blessed Virgin. This is one of the Romish interpre
tations which Dr. Newman and his followers have now
solemnly bound themselves to receive, in opposition
to Scripture, Councils, and Fathers of the Church.

Whether the Papal mode of Interpretation is not
quite as safe as that propounded by the Essayist,
may well admit of a doubt ; and whether the conse
quences of the Essayist's method, if adopted in our

may be termed a valuable supplement to his work on St. Paul. It
is intended to clear away some of the misconceptions which have
prevented Biblical students from deriving the full advantages to
be reaped from the sacred records, and to point out what those ad
vantages are." These words of the Reviewer suggest sorrowful re
flections ; at the same time they will awaken the energies of those
who feel a reverent regard for the sacred records, and will excite
them to greater vigilance and zeal in their behalf.

h See the Papal Decree promulgating that new Article of the
"Immaculate Conception," Dec. 8, 1854, and appealing to that
text in its support.

488 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

schools and colleges, will not be at least as calamitous
as those of the Roman, deserves carefully to be con
sidered: especially if it be indeed true, as the Re-
viewer affirms, that the Essayist exercises so com
manding an influence in the University of Oxford,
that, to quote the Reviewer's words, "he stands
confessedly master of the situation in the eyes of the
rising generation of English students and theo
logians1."

Is this really the case with the University of Ox
ford, — the University of Jewel, Hooker, Sanderson,
and Bull? If it indeed be true, "how are the
mighty fallen !"

Surely "the time is coming, when educated men
will be no more able to believe" that such notions as
these concerning the Interpretation of Scripture were
propounded as valuable discoveries in an Essay pub
lished by a Tutor in a distinguished College, and a
Regius Professor in that University, and that the
Author of that Essay exercised the greatest influ
ence among all his contemporaries there, and stood
" confessedly master of the situation in the eyes of
the rising generation of English students and theolo
gians," — than they are now able to believe the Roman
Catholic exposition of Gen. iii. 15, or any other strange
dogma or portentous figment which the Roman Church
would impose on a credulous world. And if it be
really true that the Author of this Essay does exercise
that dominant influence over the "minds of the rising
generation of English students and theologians," then
it is high time that all who feel a loyal attachment to
the Church of England, and who are animated with
a generous zeal for the intellectual reputation and for
1 Edinburgh Eeview, No. 230, p. 476.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 489

the moral and spiritual character of our ancient Uni
versities, should consider well, whether they are con
tent that the teaching of that Church and of those
Universities should be abandoned and discarded as
obsolete and erroneous, and that the opinions pro
mulgated in this Essay should henceforth be adopted
in their place.

§ 16. Let us now proceed to examine the probable
consequences of this system of Interpretation.

In the year 1774 a celebrated German theologian,
J. S. Semler, already mentioned, published at Halle
his " Plan for the Liberal Teaching of Christian Doc
trine1'." Semler had been educated among the Pietists,
as they were called, who thought that outward forms
and confessions of faith were not of much use for the
maintenance of spiritual life, and who disparaged
human learning and theological science as of little
benefit to vital devotion. "With them religious emo
tions constituted true spirituality. With them fer
vour and enthusiasm were almost everything, but
ecclesiastical organization and order were of very little
account. They professed a laudable zeal for practi
cal piety and moral virtue, but they did not ground
them on the principles of Christian doctrine and on
the articles of the Christian faith. They regarded the
Bible with reverence; but they had no sound founda
tion of belief in its inspiration, nor any safe guidance
for its interpretation. They appealed to their own
inner consciousness and spiritual illumination for di
rection in these two questions, — What is the Bible ?
and, How is it to be understood? They separated
the Scriptures from the Church, to which the Scrip-

k Institutio ad Doctrinam Christ ianam liber aliter discendam.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

tures were delivered by God. They did not regard
the Bible as a heavenly message, authenticated, deli
vered, and interpreted by a divinely appointed mes
senger, the universal Church of Christ ; but they
looked on it as like some wondrous aerolite, which
had fallen down from heaven they knew not how.

Semler, in course of time, came under the influence
of the philosophical divines of the school of Wolff,
whose theories developed themselves into Bational-
ism. From the Pietists he had brought with him a
sanguine confidence in his own opinions, not restrained
by the correctives and controls of the public autho
rity and judgment of the universal Church, as de
clared in her formularies and practice. To quote the
language of an English divine, who has drawn an ac
curate portrait of his character1, — "He never hesi
tated to desert sober, substantial truth for striking but
partial views, subtle error, and ingenious theory. To
this quality he added others, which are very frequent
ingredients in such a character, — an undoubting esti
mation for all his own speculations, and a rash boldness
in bringing them into public view.'7 And from his
netv rationalistic teachers he derived that adventurous
spirit which he applied in the free handling of
Holy Scripture, and which he exerted in endeavour
ing to emancipate it, as he said, from traditional modes
of treatment, and from that conventional language by
which its meaning, as he alleged, had hitherto been
obscured.

What Semler was at Halle in the middle of the

1 Hugh James Rose, Discourses, p. 47; referring to the Life of
Semler in Eichhorn's Allcjem. £ibl, vol. v. part i. A biographical
account of Sender has also been given by Tholuck, Verm. Sclriften,
ii. p. 39, &c.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 491

eighteenth century, that the Essayist seems to be at
Oxford in the nineteenth. If we might venture to
form an opinion from his mode of writing, we might
suppose him to have been trained, like Semler, among
some who have little reverence for the authority of
the Christian Church, and have paid little attention
to her principles, her polity, and her history; and
not having laid any solid foundation in this necessary
knowledge, he appears to have entered boldly into
theological speculations, with little guidance but that
of a warm imagination and an unhesitating reliance
on himself.

The resemblance between Sender's " Free-handling
of Christian Doctrine" and the Oxford Professor's
Essay is remarkable. Indeed, there is scarcely a
single point in the Oxford Essay which was not anti
cipated by Semler a hundred years ago.

Semler made his own conscience to be a criterion
of Inspiration. He tells us that " whatever he found
in Scripture to be conducive to his own good, that
he held to be divinely inspired™" He adds, that " he
will not however dispute or contend with any one
who maintains the Inspiration of other books of Scrip
ture which he finds of no use to himself." In fact,
the Inspiration of the Bible was with him purely sub
jective. His only knowledge of the Inspiration of the
Scripture was the " idea which he himself formed
of it."

This notion, as we have seen, is precisely that of
the Essayist11. "Inspiration," he says, "is that idea

m p. 256. " Quicquid in Scripturae illo corpore invenio mihi
ox^cXt/xoi/ irpbs didao-KaXiav, rrpbs eXey^or, illud est Qeonvevo-rov, S6U ad
J)eum auctorem a me referendum est."

n See Essay, p. 347.

492 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

of Scripture which ive gather from the knowledge of it.
. . It is a fact which we infer from the study of it."

As for the Interpretation of Scripture, that, said
Semler, must also be left to the private conscious
ness of each individual; so that every man is at
liberty to take the Bible into his hands and to ex
tract the best meaning he can from it, without refer
ence to external aids.

Similarly the Essayist assures us that any one who
has a tolerable knowledge of Greek may set up for an
interpreter of the New Testament. " When the mean
ing of Greek words is once known, the young student
has almost all the real materials which are possessed
by the greatest Biblical scholar in the book itself0."

Semler also alleged that the doctrines now pro
fessed by the Christian Church are, in great measure,
of recent formation, and are due to the influence of
the Creeds on the Interpretation of Scripture. The
doctrines of our Lord's Divinity, of Original Sinp,

0 Essay, p. 384.

p See Semler, ibid., pp. 175, 197, 199, and the following account
from Dewar, p. 109: — "The formation of the orthodox doctrine
Semler attributes to certain hypotheses, which he supposes to have
been framed from time to time, and to have given, as it were,
a tone to the Interpretation of Scripture. Among these are, at an
early period, the hypothesis of the Divinity of Jesus, and, somewhat
later, the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin, that of Grace, of
Predestination, and various others. It is deserving of mention, that
Semler introduces this whole subject for the purpose of shewing
how injuriously pre-existing theories or ideas, or, as he terms them,
hypotheses, operate upon the true Interpretation of Scripture. He
is indeed a consistent rationalist. He calls himself a Christian,
and lays great stress upon spirituality of feeling. He admits the
authority of the Bible ; but he meets with certain passages in it,
which have been supposed to prove certain doctrines, — doctrines
which are not in accordance with the results to which the exercise
of his own reasoning powers hm led him. To these passages he

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

493

and of Grace are, lie supposed, the results of pre
existing theories and hypotheses applied by exposi
tors to the handling of Scripture.

Here, too, he is imitated by the Essayist q, who
speaks of " an attempt to adapt the truths of Scripture
to the doctrines of the Creeds ;" and asks, " How can
the Nicene or Athanasian Creed be a proper instru
ment for the interpretation of Scripture ?" and says
that great difficulties would be introduced into the
Gospels by the attempt to identify them with the
Creeds. How different is the language of our Be-
forrners in our eighth Article, and in the Reformatio
Legum\ where they say that, "in interpreting Scrip
ture in sermons, the preacher should ever have the
Creeds in his view."

The . Christian Church builds human duty on the

can readily give another interpretation, so as to make them mean
something very different, or nothing at all. But the fact that for
many ages, aye, even from the time of the Apostles, the interpre
tation which he rejects had been the one received, he cannot so
easily get rid of. He resorts therefore to the ingenious theory
of assigning to the opinions or hypotheses of the early Fathers the
origin of the articles of our faith, and supposes that in support of
the doctrines thus framed, was invented an interpretation of Scrip
ture which is not the true one, and that a new and more liberal
method must henceforth be adopted. These hypotheses, — in other
words this tradition of the Church, — he, as a rationalist, consistently
rejects ; but inasmuch as with them he rejects all that we hold to be
the most sacred doctrines of the Christian faith, — doctrines which,
by his own shewing, not only are contained in the tradition of the
Fathers, but which that tradition, if its authority be admitted,
proves to be contained in Scripture, — he makes it manifest that
the written Word is not sufficient to protect the pure faith from
the attacks of human reason; he proves to us that the voice of
Catholic consent is a testimony with which the Christian Church
cannot afford to dispense."

q See Essays, pp. 353 — 355. r De Summa Trinitate, cap. xiii.

494 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

foundation of faith in the doctrines of the Gospel.
But Semler laid little stress on the articles of the
Christian Creed. He relied on the moral sense of
mankind, irrespective of divine revelation of super
natural truths, such as the doctrine of Christ's Divi
nity, the Incarnation, and Atonement.

The Essayist's system of ethics is framed on the
same plan. "In religion," he says8, "are two op
posite poles, of truth and action, of doctrine and
practice, of idea and fact ;" as if doctrine were not
the basis of duty, but were only revealed to supply
materials to feed the imagination.

It was a favourite hypothesis with Semler, that
there were different schools of Christian doctrine in
primitive times, even among the Apostles themselves ;
and that consequently to maintain any uniform system
of teaching, or any fixed formulary of faith, is incon
sistent with the structure of Scripture, and with the
facts of primitive history *.

In a like spirit the Essayist ventures to assert that
" the first teachers had a separate and individual mode
of regarding the Gospel u ;" as if the Apostles did not
teach that there is " one Faith," and did not exhort
all to " speak the same thing."

Semler depreciates the use of verbal criticism in
the interpretation of Scripture v; and in this respect
also he has anticipated the Essayist, who says that
"there seem to be reasons for doubting whether any
considerable light can be thrown on the New Testa
ment from inquiry into the language x."

Semler also imagined the Gospels to be not indepen-

8 Essay, p. 356. * Cf. Hugh James Rose, p. 51.

u Essay, p. 426; cf.p. 354. v Semler, p. 222.

* Essay, p. 393. See also pp. 392, 405.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 495

dent compositions, but to have been derived from some
common document, now lost. So does the Essayist y.

Semler also treats as of little account the interpre
tations of the Old Testament which are given in the
New z. As we have already seen a, he explains away
those interpretations by his theory of accommodation /
according to which, our Lord is assumed to have adapted
His language to the circumstances of the age in which
He taught. Here also he has preceded the Essayist.

Semler also assures us that there are errors and
contradictions in Scripture b : here likewise he has
been followed by the Essayist c.

Semler taught his scholars to treat Holy Scripture
as a common book : here likewise we have a parallel
in the Essay before us d.

Let us now pause, and enquire, What were the
practical results of Semler' s teaching ?

Frederick Bahrdt was a young man of great promise.
He was gifted with a lively temper, a quick fancy, and
wonderful versatility. He was an ardent admirer of
Semler. The effect of Semler' s influence on him is thus
described by a learned German author6 : — " The study
of Semler' s critical writings had brought him to the
persuasion that Scripture is a mere human book. f I
considered Eevelation,' he says, in his autobiography f,
'as a common and natural incident of Providence.
I regarded Moses, Jesus, as I did Confucius, Luther,

1 See above, p. 474.

1 Semler, p. 223. " Anceps atque incerta regula Yeteris Testa
ment! libros explicandos esse ex Novi Testament! libris."

a See above, pp. 477, 478. b Semler, pp. 249, 251.

c See above, pp. 445, 465. d See Essay, pp. 350, 377, 378, 404.

e Dr. Kahnis, Der inner e Gang des Protestantism us ; (Leipzig,
I860,) p. 100. f iv. 119.

496 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

Semler, and myself, as instruments in the hand of
Providence. I was convinced that these, and similar
men, had drawn only from the source of Reason.' It
was in this sense that he treated the Gospel history
in his writings. The Gospel narrative was changed
by him into a sentimental romance. He had become
a disciple of Naturalism."

He taught these doctrines as a Professor at Halle,
the University of Semler. Strange to say, Semler
himself, who had nurtured Bahrdt by his own teach
ing, and who was then at the head of the theological
faculty at Halle, was constrained to deliver an offi
cial protest against the scholar whom he himself had
trained !

Semler censured Bahrdt. But, exclaims the Ger
man writer from whom I am quoting e : —

" Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes ?"

Who could endure Semler protesting against Ra
tionalism? " Bahrdt," says he, " had right on his
side when he wrote against Semler, whose works had
contributed to destroy in him the last vestige of the
Church's faith." Semler, whose teaching had made
Bahrdt what he was, in vain attempted to restrain the
effects of his own teaching. The pupil outran the
master. Bahrdt carried Semler 's principles to their
logical results. He became an unbeliever, a preacher
of infidelity ; he had married a virtuous woman, but
he deserted her for the vicious indulgence of his
appetites in riot and debauchery h ; he professed to
ground his system on Natural Reason and Morality ;
he even said that he had a mission from heaven to

« Kahilis, p. 99 ; cf. Bahrdt's Leben, iv. p. 61.
h Cf Kahnis, p. 92, 93.

ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 497

emancipate mankind from the thraldom of superstition,
and he boasted to be the teacher of spiritual illu
mination; but in practice he was a libertine and a
profligate, a victim of sensuality and impurity. At
length he died at Halle, a miserable death, broken in
mind, and wasted in body with a loathsome disease?
in the year 1792.

Such is a specimen of the fruits of Sender's teach
ing in the last century.

The revival of that teaching in one of our Univer
sities in our own day may well inspire sorrow and
alarm. It is probable, that the Essayist himself may
soon be constrained to censure the errors and to weep
over the miseries of some who have imbibed his
opinions, and who may be excited by youthful pas
sions and sanguine self-confidence to develope those
opinions in their full dimensions, and to act upon
them in their lives : but his efforts will then be
in vain. Semler endeavoured to reclaim his pupil
Bahrdt ; but it was too late.

Therefore in the name of God, and in the name
of those for whom Christ died, let the Essayist be
solemnly entreated to reconsider the opinions put
forth in this Essay ; and if he sees reason to believe
them to be erroneous, let him be implored to retract
them. It will be a noble task, worthy of the high
place which he holds in one of the greatest Univer
sities of the world, to set an example of genuine love
of truth by a public avowal of error.

In the meantime, we may cherish a hope, that,
under God's gracious dispensation, the discussion of
the questions revived in this Essay may be made
conducive to great good. We are all now called
upon to examine the reasons for which we believe the

Kk

498 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE.

Scriptures to be the Word of God ; and it behoves us
to consider well, whether Almighty God, who has
given us the Scriptures, has not also given us ex
ternal as well as internal evidence of their Inspira
tion; and whether He has not also afforded us sure
guidance for their right Interpretation, in the con
sentient faith and practice of the Universal Church
of Christ.

If by means of this examination we attain to clearer
views on these essential questions, we shall have great
cause to thank Him, whose special prerogative it is to
elicit good from evil, and who makes the propagation
of error to be a great and glorious occasion for the
clearer manifestation of Truth.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

i.

BADCLIFPE OBSERVATORY, OXFORD,

Dec. 21, 1861.
MY DEAR SIR,

In responding to your request that I would add my name
to the list of those who have taken upon themselves the task
of defending the cause of revealed truth from the cavils and
doubts that have been unhappily raised against it by the
publication of the " Essays and Reviews," I do so with great
diffidence, as neither competent by my learning or my leisure
to enter minutely into the controversies which have been
promoted by the work in question.

There are, however, one or two points on which both as
a Christian man, as a clergyman, and as a cultivator of
science, I am glad of the opportunity of expressing my
opinion, and I therefore thank you for the honour you have
done me, and which I attribute to my office rather than to
n^self, in requesting it from me.

In the first place, then, I would say that, in common, I hope,
with thousands of my fellow-countrymen, I have been deeply
grieved, not only at the nature and spirit of several of the
articles of the book in question, but at the circumstances
under which it has appeared. That philosophic truth, when
it is clearly recognised, should be followed at all hazards and
independently of all consequences, I am willing to admit;
and I trust I have had too long and severe a training in
mathematics and the natural sciences to put me in danger of
erring on the side of bigotry in religion, or of the reception
of any doctrines on the mere plea of authority or tradition.
But when I am introduced to a book, not written by one
hand but by many, and containing fragmentary essays, and
reviews uncalled for by any particular occasion, whose only
unity of purpose seems to be that of a deliberate attack on
many of the fundamental principles of our most holy faith,

502

and when I find that, with a single exception, all the writers
are men bound by most stringent obligations to defend and
to teach religion such as it has been delivered to us by our
forefathers in the Liturgy and the Articles of the Church of
England, — when I see this, I am grieved, I repeat it, at the
scandal of the spectacle presented.

If, up to this time, we have been mistaken in our faith,
and in the objects of our love and reverence ; if at this time
it is requisite, for the advancement of abstract truth, that we
should sit at the feet of these new Gamaliels and be untaught
almost every principle of speculative and of practical religion ;
if it is really true that with regard to the inspiration and
authority of the Old and New Testament we have been mis
taken ; if prophecy, and miracles, and all the old foundations
of our faith, are proved to be the weak props that they are
here represented to be, — let us, after deep and mature study,
yet with bitter tears of regret and disappointment, — let us,
I say, give them up ; let us, with our new instructors,
ransack the sacred pages for disagreements and contra
dictions ; let us use the knowledge of morality which the
sacred Word has given us, to prove that the morality incul
cated in that Word is indefensible ; let us give up every cheer
ing hope which the sure confidence of the truth of that Word
has given us, and be henceforth the converts of that new
intellectual religion which has refined away all that was
tangible, consolatory, and real in the old. But, if we be
driven by the necessity of truth and consistency to do this,
we may still grieve that it has fallen to the lot of the sworn
defenders of orthodox Christianity to be its executioners.
Unwelcome it is at any time to a tender heart to be the
bearer of intelligence which is painful or grievous, and most
unwelcome will we still believe that it has been to the Essay
ists to follow their convictions of the demands of truth to
their consequence, and to proclaim, in a volume which has
been read by tens of thousands, that the faith of themselves
and of their ancestors is a delusion, and that they must now
construct for themselves a new, and for the most part a nega
tive, religion. And, that clergymen should feel compelled
(by what necessity we know not) to do this, who are bound
by most holy vows to defend the ancient faith, defined as it

503

is and limited by ancient creeds, is of all the grievous cir
cumstances connected with this book the most unfortunate,
and that which has given (almost alone) notoriety to the
work, and such scandal to the community at large.

But surely when men of deep wisdom and learning, most
of them occupying responsible situations in society, unite to
gether for so serious a purpose as to convince us that the
ordinary grounds on which we hold our faith are no longer
tenable, (for there must have been some settled plan of action
in the collection of a series of Essays like those in question,
having at least one determinate object,) we might at least
expect that each subject would be well argued out. To the
Christian, whose fundamental article of faith is the resurrec
tion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ from the dead, the
most stupendous of all miracles, there should have been given,
not a fragmentary Essay, controverting the evidence deduci-
ble from miracles, (if not, by implication, denying their pos
sibility,) but a clear and convincing statement, proving, be
yond the possibility of mistake, that the Christian miracles
are false. Facts should have been discussed first and theory
afterwards; and, in a matter so momentous, if regard for
truth imposed upon a clergyman the necessity of so painful
an office as the disproof of the ordinary belief in the Chris
tian miracles, not only should the writer's convictions be
clear, but his facts and his inferences should be incapable of
contradiction.

Again, if, in the casual discussion of the prophecies of the
Old Testament, it became necessary to disavow the pertinency
of those which ordinary Christians have, ever since the esta
blishment of Christianity, believed to refer to the Messiah,
• — if it were necessary to revive in these days, with very little
variation, the deistical notions of the last century, for the pur
pose of proving that our faith, as founded on prophecy, is
worthless, — we have a right to expect that such an attempt at
disproof would be supported by profound wisdom as well as
learning, and on grounds totally different from any which
have been familiar — too familiar — to English readers. Bishop
Chandler's admirable " Defence of Christianity," and Bishop
Kidder's " Demonstration of the Messias against the Jews/' if
the writer of the article to which I refer had read them, (which

504

seems doubtful from the vague way in which they are quoted
to support his own views,) might have taught him better the
connection between the old and the new dispensations, and
the indispensable need of prophecy in the scheme of salvation.

But I need not tell the readers of the "Essays and Re
views," or you, Sir, that there is nothing worked out. Doubts
and difficulties respecting numerous points of our faith are
suggested, but rarely proved valid ; cruel insinuations against
the fundamentals of the Christian faith are sometimes ob
scurely hinted at and sometimes broadly given, sufficient
to shake the faith of the young and the ignorant, but without
the solutions which would deprive them of their power to do
harm, and without the discussion which would call for an
elaborate answer from the learned orthodox divine. When,
too, the barriers and safeguards of ordinary Christianity have
been sufficiently battered by our author, a new scheme of
Christianity is put before us to rebuild our religion ; a scheme
in which everything is mysticised and spiritualized, and in
comparison with which the Christianity of the Neo-Platonists
was plain common-sense. And, if the subject were not so
awfully important, it would be simply amusing to follow the
critic in his fondling admiration of the German philosopher.
A mild rebuke here, a dash of unqualified admiration
there; here an attempt to render the transcendental lan
guage and ideas of the German mind intelligible to English
readers on points where the well-trained English mind can
see nothing but baseless speculation and a perverse ingenuity
in distorting plain facts, bordering on the ludicrous.

I did expect, when I read these Essays, to find something
which would have better repaid the labour of reading such
a heavy and miscellaneous collection of fragmentary papers.
I thought that, if I were forced to disagree with the conclu
sions of the writers, I should at least have an intellectual
treat ; that I should at least see indicated the sources of
these new discoveries which are to put the evidences of our
faith upon so different a footing ; and that I should have been
benefited by the critical disquisitions of some of our best
English scholars. I need not tell you, Sir, that I was disap
pointed to a great extent in my expectations ; though it would
be unjust to say that there are not in some of the Essays

505

some things both original and instructive, nor that there are
some whose chief fault is that they are in bad company.
Still the general impression left on the mind was that of
weariness and dissatisfaction, both with the matter and
manner of the book as well as with its doctrines.

But enough of this ; — my province is not to analyse or to
criticise the details of the articles in the " Essays and Re
views." This has probably been done, by far abler hands, in
the body of the " Replies." It is sufficient for me to express
my opinion that as literary productions the Essays cannot be
rated very high. Some have evidently been written hastily,
and might in any other case have put in a plea for indulgence,
but certainly not in this. As a whole, they have had a ten
dency to invalidate the evidences of Christianity, and to shake
the confidence of Christians ; and though the writers could
not have foreseen the notoriety or the excitement which they
have, from circumstances quite independent of their own
merits, produced in the public mind, they are equally an
swerable for any bad effects which may be produced by them.
If they are right in their general statements and deductions,
then alas for our holy faith, which, till this time, we have
cherished as our greatest treasure ! If they are wrong, who
can properly estimate the mischief which they have done !

I fear that I have already written you too long a letter
before I have come to the point which especially concerns
me as a man of science, and on which you desired my
opinion ; namely, the bearings of astronomical research on
the arguments of the " Essays and Reviews."

The only article in which the assumed antagonism of the
physical sciences to the Bible record is treated of, is that on
the " Mosaic Cosmogony," by Mr. C. W. Goodwin, and the
discussion has more to do with geology than with astronomy.
This, indeed, might be expected from the nature of the case.
The earth is man's dwelling-place, and it concerns him to
know its origin and its history, while the hosts of heaven,
the sun and the moon, the planets and the stars, though
equally the work of the same divine Creator, and included in
the inspired record of His works, are rather the objects of
man's study and admiration than of his interested inquiries.

506

Imagine now for a moment that we were in the condition
of the ancient heathen world, without a revelation of God's
doings and purposes, and left to our own vague and uncer
tain guesses about our origin and our destiny. What would
be the order of our inquiries and of our cravings after know
ledge of ourselves and of the universe of God ? Assuming, as
the later philosophers did, a great First Cause or Author of
all things, would not the first yearnings of our souls be to
learn what is the relation of this Almighty Being to ourselves,
and to the world which we inhabit ? And, imagining all the
wants of the soul longing after some direct manifestation from
God, some authenticated record bearing the impress, as far
as human words can do so, of His majesty, could we imagine
anything more sublime or more worthy of Him than the com
mencement of that record which we believe to have come
from Him : " In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth." Criticism finds no place, either on physical or
philological grounds, for analysing the sublime simplicity of
this opening message from the Creator to His creatures.
The boasted light of modern science can add nothing to it,
and take a\vay nothing from it.

The record does not limit the time, nor the succession of
the intervals of time, when the Almighty Architect com
menced and added to the works of creation ; and the religious
necessities of man do not require the knowledge of the in
finite past. Let imagination here revel as she will, and she
can scarcely go too far; let her imagine past duration so
far back as the powers of numbers will allow ; let her listen
to the fiats of the Almighty, at intervals of enormous length,
filling np the skies with glittering orbs, and, as a last work,
preparing by successive steps the habitable earth for man's
dwelling-place, and she cannot go beyond or misinterpret
the opening of the divine record, "In the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth."

Quite as little can criticism have to do with the second state
ment concerning creation, " And the earth was without form and
void." The sublime simplicity of this statement of the prime
val state of the earth is worthy of the divine inspiration which
we claim for it, and its truth is unquestioned by scientific in-

507

vestigation. Imagination here may come again into play,
and legitimately exercise her functions, for science can do but
little either to substantiate or controvert this record of the
origin of our globe. A happy scientific guess of a great
astronomer (we can scarcely call it a theory) has shewn that,
assuming the matter which now constitutes the solar system
to have once been a nebulous mass, intensely heated and ex
tending beyond the distances of the now existing planets, it
is consistent with physical laws to suppose that the exterior
of this mass would cool by the radiation of heat into the void
spaces beyond, and would contract or become condensed in
cooling. As the velocity of rotation (originally assumed) would
necessarily increase with the decreasing distance from the
centre of motion, an exterior zone of vapour might become
detached from the rest, the central attraction being no longer
able to balance the increased centrifugal force. In general,
if this zone were not of uniform density it might break up
into detached masses, and these would ultimately coalesce
into one mass, having rotation on its axis and revolution
round the sun in the same direction and in a nearly circular
orbit, and thus the formation of the planetary masses would
be accounted for. La Place himself supposes, indeed, that,
the sun himself being a solid body originally a, his heated
atmosphere would thus produce planets ; but this would really
explain so little, that such a theory is hardly worth framing
or contending for, and it is equally valid to suppose the
whole mass of which the sun and planets are composed to
have been originally nebulous.

Now we may say of this theory, which has been discussed
beyond its merits, that it would probably never have been
framed if the constitution of the nebulae which we see in the
heavens had been understood as well as it is now. Many of
them which appeared, in telescopes of moderate power, to be
mere masses of nebulous light, have been resolved into con
geries or aggregations of stars when seen through Lord
Rosse's large reflecting telescope ; and even in cases wherein

a He afterwards, however, imagines a preceding nebulous condition of the
sun, for he says, " Dans cet etat, la plan&te ressemblait parfaitement au soleil a
1'etat de ilebuleuse, ou nous venons de le cousiderer."

508

this resolution lias not taken place, there is observed a curd
ling, or unequal distribution, of the nebulous matter, which
makes it appear probable that a still greater optical power
would resolve these masses also. We may also observe of
the theory, that even granting it a high probability as ex
plaining more phenomena of the planetary movements than
any other, it after all explains very little. We have still to
assume that the nebulous mass out of which the sun and the
planets were formed was created at some time or other ; that
it was in a state of most violent heat ; that on it were im
pressed those laws of condensation by which solid worlds
were formed out of it ; and, finally, that it had an initial
velocity round an axis. It removes the Creator one step
farther from us than if we were to suppose that the sun and
each planet were made by His direct personal agency and in
terference ; and this is all. We have still to account for the
innumerable, wonderful, and posterior adaptations by which
the earth was accommodated to the physical nature of man
— a most complicated set of arrangements being necessary
not only with regard to the earth itself, but also with regard
to the orbit which it describes in space.

As bearing, however, on the verse we are discussing, it is
important to observe that the earth was once in a fluid state.
This is as distinctly proved as any problem in pure mathe
matics, by comparing the ellipticity which we know it to have
by direct measurement, or by the law of the increase of gra
vity in going from the equator to the poles, with that which
calculation proves it ought to have had (with its known time
of rotation) on the supposition that it was once a fluid mass.
And this harmonizes admirably with the desolate condition
which the Scripture asserts that it had while cooling down
and becoming solid. "The earth was without form and
void/' — or rather, "desolate and void," — " and darkness was
upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters." Think as you will, favourably
or otherwise, of the nebular theory, substitute for it any
other which is consistent with known facts; — nothing can
exceed in truth and grandeur these words of the inspired
historian. Like the bold touches of a great artist, they

509

create a picture which no after addition or refinement can
improve.

The only passage besides these which concerns me as an
astronomer is that which describes with equal majesty the
works of the Creator beyond the earth : — " And God said, Let
there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day
from the night ; and let them be for signs, and for seasons,
and for days, and years : and let them be for lights in the
firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth : and
it was so.

"And God made two great lights; the greater light to
rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night : He made
the stars also. And God set ihem in the firmament of the
heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the
day and over the night, and to divide the light from the dark
ness : and God saw that it was good."

The most keen- eyed hypercriticism should see nothing to
object to as unworthy of an inspired pen in this grand
assertion of God's creation of the sun and moon and stars,
and of the provision which He made by them for the neces
sities and convenience of His creatures. But our critic, Mr.
Goodwin, thinks otherwise. Their office is a poor and un
worthy one. " They are set in the firmament of heaven to
give light to the earth ... to serve as the means of measuring
time. . . . This is the most prominent office assigned to them.
The formation of the stars is mentioned in the most cursory
manner." Barely has it been my lot to see so much bad reason
ing and petty criticism in so small a compass. As far as man
is concerned, and to man is revelation addressed, what more
important or more suitable office could these glorious orbs of
heaven answer than to minister to his convenience ? It may
be that they answer other, but scarcely higher, purposes in
the general economy of God's providence. The sun himself,
astronomy has already taught us, journeys with wonderful
celerity through space, and in an orbit whose dimensions we
scarcely can conceive : he carries with him in their orderly
march the grand array of the planets his satellites ; all have
a mission known only to their Creator, but utterly beyond
the sphere of man's destinies or his wants. To us they are

510

the dividers of our day* and nights, and of our summer ami
winter. They bring to us seed-time and harvest, rain ami
drought, heat and cold ; and when we look with humble and
thankful hearts towards the Author of these benefits, the in-
spired record comes to the aid of our religious thankfulness,
and tolls us that " God made them."

But " the formation of the stars is mentioned in the most
cursory manner.*' I answer, ami so is the formation of light : —
" And God said, Let there be light, and there was light/* And
yet one of the greatest of Greek critics considered this as om>
of the most remarkable instances of the sublime which he
couKl quote; and critics as well informed as our author
ma\ be of the same opinion hero. To my own mind the im
pression from childhood has boon that of the sublime brevity
of the assertion, " lie made the stars also," There are men
who measure everything by the carpenter's two-foot rule,
who would apply the same canons to etery possible variety
of circumstances, and who would look to the Book of Job ti»r
a treatise on natural philosophy, But do<\s not the rule hold in
this ease which I propounded just now, only with still greater
pert money ? The stars are removed still farther from the
sphere of man's destiny. Those glittering orbs ore plaee\l
in general at distance even yet numeasurxxl. We have made
some g\\\l guesses at their number, ami at the law of their
distribution, and we have mt\>snrx\l the distance of i>i\e or
more fi\>m our owu globe : but, of the purposes which they
answer in the economy of God's creation we know nothing
whatever, and quite as little do we know tvr/atn^f of their
ph> sical oi*igiw,

When we Ux>k at them oi\ a tine winter's uight traversing
the blue vault of heaven in calm ami glorious majesty, the
coldest aa\nn\gst us ttvls the iues*sagt> sent us by their Creator,
' ilovl made the stars also.*'

Of all the writers in the book of " VIssi»ys and Reviews**
Mr. Goodwin is the mi\st candid. Other writers contradict
the ivvealed AY oi\l w ith at least a semblance oJ* regret,
thus does oxir critic contradict the insj\ii\\l pix^vhet
His mission is to prove him iuconvct> and this he attempts
to do with the utmost straightforwardness* The old story of

51J

< , ilil. .. irt roN'ivod lot- -ni nlilicill itill, l-ni I In loNMotl (•> I.. .!.
t i < . .1 fnuu it in < . i \ dilloront IK. in Mid \\ liicli Mi. ••!,,[ phi

I.. ..|.li. i OVOI1 -It. 111. 1 ..I Tin I'olnlinttntl I- .1. "II.- ••. -.il-l it*
Ortlnhlirtliod, it i .inn.. I I. in. .-..I.' illlpliort M,. MWM'od poil-

in. in' . it/n<ir<in<'(i "I i In- l:i« i tlml (lin oiirth .I... movo," \l. «
ii K.I l>y ili. two I.H.I ml. (In JH Mi. umiumvonihlo fuH .
\ • i I • inn., I lull. Muni. Mill .1 lilM. rollnidt'l'iil inll would I. M I.
"«n -in i... i. il lii linitfhl ninny olhorw, Mini, wo n. . .1 n..i
iiruiiiin. iln Mm niii'lh imdniililndl y to ilrj i iihnhil Mltifl irt

iiiiinnviMihlo ; Hiid il M,. Hiicrcd poiiiiiun iiilmidnd, nn ho niiMii-
I. M-. did, In ilidicillo in punlim! |iili(jtiu^o Mm |,. ilr. I B|,M
liilily nl' tnnti'n <lwi'llin^ plncn mid nnnirily «! «....!' |,. ..|,|. .
ho could nut hnvo unod n, hoMor Torm.

Afj'iiin, no |>iilliiiM<»n niu I" iidniillod in 1'iivoiir of M.. -

I )<> U'O IIMckly (!••;•.. |. |, hill. (llO Itilllo U ,1 : (ml illlolldod !'•

lounh Wdionoo K- wo MII- mi I with (ho MJ»|\ Ihul. I In In I
clinpli'i' ol'Ootioniri "in inlondrd, in |.ni. lo louoh IIIH! convoy
ul. loiifil noiiin phywiciil li'itlh," 1 1 ndoiihl.ndly il. in, hnl. not,
IMM'ordiiifr lo llio iiiiMiniu'niiuMil nl I ho I, wo loot. ruin. 1 1 lonrhon,
I'onlritry lo nil Orinnlul mid nil (Jrocifin nnd Kninuit . -. m-.

; nil, 1, Inil, ( iod inlhonolo A ill hor of nil l.ho Ihin^rn ol' whirh

our fii-iiMori urn cn^ni/ntil . II, inudo MM . .uM,. nnd //, m ,.|.
MK ho/tvonw ; (In mirth for IIIIIM'N uwo, mid (ho honvono purlly
(or In UNO, mid partly, UN l.ii iii! wo MM- (MMM'.nniod, lor (.ho
HiilinCiu'lioii -.I l,i rofinonuhlo liiniltidM,

liul it SM not IM - • n y tlmt I nhould follow Mr. (loodwin
through nil (ho innhiiHTH o!' In ci il iciam, or»how inoro rldiirly

Mi. in )|0 lillii •.. II li;r: doflO, Ix.VV i-ii I lirc.l. )|H I". (.O di ••.hoy MM,

crodit of MM innpirod milhor of tho roamo^/ony. I \v«ul<l
riilhor c.oncludo thin too l-.n;- lo(.tor with it low roninrKa on
tho ^ononil iirrun^omi nt of M« aopimito itc/tw of r.ronlivo

Jtnw< l, wlm h niiiy holp ill "MM mi .1 -.IIM to It I- II. i m,. |, i

founding of tho •-. l,'.l« nnrruliv", and whi< h I do not roinoni-
In i to Intvo noon itmintod on. Tho (.hroo ur.ttt of tho grout
diiiuiii n n-, tho I'm inn I inn of tho oitl'th , of tho m I* •. of hoftVdfl ,

nii'l of livili}/ rn-.-ihiM • Tin: I ••. MM n,lm..l oiilc.rof «'Vont«

lU'r-ordiMi/ to Mi. 1 1 Mil. wln<h I hitvo innifetod upon foi MM,

propof ifil' » |>» < I :i I i«n nl .ill liil»l<-. In. '.lory, MiiMnly, I In lUHtf-
tlltMN Or M.« M in-.l. M« of M...I,' [fliOf^ti ill tllO Mil »' Xll i V<1 ;

512

and this rule is adhered to without a single deviation. The
first verse having asserted the fact that God is the Creator of
all things in heaven and earth, the narrative from the
second to the thirteenth verse is occupied exclusively with
the preparation of the earth for its inhabitants ; there is not
a single passage in it which is not most rigorously confined
to this. I have nothing to do with the scientific objections
and real difficulties which may be met with in detailed
passages ; they may be safely left to the care of our excellent
Geological Professor ; but, I repeat, everything has relation
to this earth in it». various stages of formation : the dreary
darkness of the primeval chaos ; the introduction of light,
(whether by this is meant the introduction of the property of
light in the formation of the luminiferous ether, or the pierc
ing through of the rays of those luminaries afterwards men
tioned) ; the separation of the clouds and vapours above from
the dry land and the water on the surface of the earth ; the
fertilization of the ground, and the introduction of all plants
and vegetables fit for the use of its future inhabitants.

Then follows, from the fourteenth to the nineteenth verse,
the creation of the heavenly bodies ; and, finally, from the
twentieth verse to the end of the chapter, the creation of all
the inferior animals, and of man.

I do not trouble myself, nor you, Sir, with discussing the
meaning of the days within which the separate acts of crea
tion are included. Mr. Goodwin is quite right in reminding
us that some school-books still teach to the ignorant that the
earth is six thousand years old, and that it (he should have
said all things) was created in six days. No well-educated
person of the present day shares in this delusion ; but, if any
there be, Mr. Goodwin's two little rudimentary treatises on
astronomy and geology, which increase the bulk of his Essay,
will teach them better. We know that we cannot expand
our ideas of God's universe too much, both as to space and
time. With Him a thousand years are but as one day ; and,
if we take a thousand years as the unit of our counting, we
shall require still an incalculable number of such units to
enumerate the sum of creation-periods, and to fathom the
depths of space through which He has scattered the millions

513

of His stars. Whatever be the meaning of the six days, end
ing with the seventh day's mystical and symbolical rest, in
disputably we cannot accept them in their literal meaning.
They serve apparently as the divisions of the record of creation,
lest the mind may be too much burdened and perplexed by all
these wonderful acts ; but they as plainly do not denote the
order of succession of all the individual creations. Something
is symbolized, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews
uses the symbol; and this, the only mystical fact in the whole
narrative, we may surely, in all reverence, leave unexplained,
without detracting at all from the credit or the veracity of
this wonderful record.

During the writing of this letter I find my own mind
cleared and elevated. I see, by this additional study of the
record of creation, more clearly than I ever saw before, its
lucid order, its divine simplicity, its internal evidence of
bearing the impress of that Divine Spirit that dictated the
narrative ; and I wish that I could make others see with me
how harmless are the shafts of ordinary criticism when di
rected against this, the most wonderful chapter of God's re
vealed Word.

I am, my dear Sir,

Yours very faithfully,

EGBERT MAIK
JAMES PARKER, ESQ.

Ll

II.

UNIVERSITY MUSEUM, OXFOED.

June 11, 1861.
MY DEAR SIR,

The question which you have done me the honour to ask,
touching the bearing of geological discovery on religious be
lief, as experienced by myself, is the more agreeable for me
to answer, because I know how readily your own mind has
received the great truths now established regarding the
ancient natural history of the earth, and how constantly you
have favoured the free and unrestrained teaching of them
from the Chair of Geology in this University.

During these last eight years, in sixteen courses of lec
tures, embracing geology in every form, involving questions of
force and time, of the succession of life and changes of phy
sical condition, there has never been produced in my own
mind, nor, so far as I know, in the minds of my hearers, the
slightest impression that we were considering facts and laws
in any degree opposed to Christian faith, to the inferences
from natural theology, or to the deductions from Scripture.

How, indeed, could it be otherwise ? Seeing that, in common
with all the most experienced geologists of this age and
nation, in agreement with the conclusions of Conybeare, and
the lectures of Buckland and Sedgwick, I see in the vast
geologic record which we are invited, if not compelled, to read,
not an anti-Mosaic history of the creation of man, but pre-
Mosaic tables of stone, inscribed by the hand of the Divine
Master, and bearing indisputable traces of His earlier works,
earlier co-ordinations of the appointed powers of nature,
earlier terms of the one creative series, whose latest period
includes the history of man.

Thus viewed, the two great problems on which we are in
tent, — the physical history of the earlier world, and the moral
and religious history of man, — appear in natural sequence
and relationship, not in unfriendly contrast, or perplexed
and suspicious alliance. The evidence proper to each inquiry

515

is kept clearly separate : we do not seek our Christianity in
the rocks, nor our geology in the Bible ; we do not confound
two independent records ; but, examining each by the appro
priate means of interpretation, we adopt the conclusions which
fairly spring from each, under the guidance of sound criti
cism and with the aid of healthy discussion.

There are points of contact between the two histories. The
great system of physical causes and effects is ever moving
onwards, gathering what is present into what is past, and
giving us hints, if not measures, of the lapse of time and the
changes of nature. The physical events which happen on
the earth in our days are but a continuation of its earlier
history ; and the ages during which man has existed on
the earth, though limited within a few thousand years, are
linked with a far longer stretch of earthly time, and serve
at least as a unit for computing the vast integral of past
duration.

The conclusions reached by this kind of computation are
at present quite indeterminate, whether they relate to the
whole or any particular part of the periods which have
passed away. Equally indeterminate are those inferences
concerning the length of time during which man may have
existed on the earth, which are based on the few, and as yet
insufficiently examined, cases of the discovery of the remains
or works of men, in bone-caves, gravel-beds, and other super
ficial deposits. They belong to the latest period of which
geology takes cognizance; they^are comparatively modern;
but we can apply no sure computation to them, founded on
the geological evidence.

If it ever could be a serious question whether a diligent
and philosophical study of nature were likely to lead to habits
of mind unfitted for dealing with the evidences of the truth
and authority of the Gospel, I would venture to reply, — and
not for geology only, — that -this kind of study is eminently
fitted to train the mind in the right methods of estimating
the probability of remarkable and unusual occurrences, and
to touch the heart with a susceptibility of gratitude for the
effects of God's goodness, whether we perceive or not the
method and motive of His working. His ways are often past

516

finding out in the physical not less than in the moral world ;
our notion of the laws by which He regulates the changes of
nature is but a feeble copy of the truly divine idea ; we must
not say to Him, as He to the ocean, " Thus far and no farther ;"
but rather, — thankful for the knowledge already imparted,
and conscious of its imperfection, but hopeful of future pro
gress, — we may look forward, and look higher, even towards
the Fountain of life, and thought, and hope, for some further
exhibition of His goodness, some clearer manifestation of His
designs, than can be had in this stage of our existence.

On the whole, I believe, and am satisfied, that geology
has added to the defences of natural theology, established
no results hostile to the evidences of revelation, and en
couraged no disposition of mind unfavourable to a fair ap
preciation of those evidences. In this faith I cheerfully
abide, and remain, ever,

Yours very truly,

JOHN PHILLIPS.

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8

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12

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16 PERIODICALS.

THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.— The times, it is readily al
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in pursuing such studies. This is a state of things that he thinks he may claim
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of the Future, as testified by the formation of Archaeological and Literary Societies,
which have already achieved much good, and may do still more ; and as a means to
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It has ever been the desire of Sylvanus Urban to see his CORRESPONDENCE
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conveyed an invaluable amount of knowledge to the world. He invites those of the
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PARKER'S CHURCH CALENDAR FOR 1862, price 6d., being

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DATE DUE

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