ESSAYS AND REVIEWS.
[The Authors reserves the right of Translation.]
IT will readily be understood that the Authors of the ensuing Essays are responsible for their respective articles only. They have written in entire independence of each other, and without concert or comparison.
The Volume, it is hoped, will be received as an attempt to illustrate the advantage derivable to the cause of religious and moral truth, from a free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language, and from traditional methods of treatment.
CONTENTS.
The Education of the World. By Frederick Temple, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen; Head Master of Rugby School; Chaplain to the Earl of Denbigh , |
1 |
Bunsen’s Biblical Researches. By Rowland Williams, D.D., Vice-Principal and Professor of Hebrew, St. David’s College, Lampeter; Vicar of Broad Chalke, Wilts |
50 |
On the Study of the Evidences of Christianity. By Baden Powell, M.A., F.R.S., &c. &c., Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford |
94 |
Séances Historiques de Genève. The National Church. By Henry Bristow Wilson, B.D., Vicar of Great Stoughton, Hunts |
145 |
On the Mosaic Cosmogony. By C. W. Goodwin, M.A. |
207 |
Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750. By Mark Pattison, B.D. |
254 |
On the Interpretation of Scripture. By Benjamin Jowett, M.A., Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford |
330 |
Note on Bunsen’s Biblical Researches |
434 |
IN a world of mere phenomena, where all events are bound to one another by a rigid law of cause and effect, it is possible to imagine the course of a long period bringing all things at the end of it into exactly the same relations as they occupied at the beginning. We should, then, obviously have a succession of cycles rigidly similar to one another, both in events and in the sequence of them. The universe would eternally repeat the same changes in a fixed order of recurrence, though each cycle might be many millions of years in length. Moreover, the precise similarity of these cycles would render the very existence of each one of them entirely unnecessary. We can suppose, without any logical inconsequence, any one of them struck out, and the two which had been destined to precede and follow it brought into immediate contiguity.
This supposition transforms the universe into a dead machine. The lives and the souls of men become so indifferent, that the annihilation of a whole human race, or of many such races, is absolutely nothing. Every event passes away as it happens, filling its place in the sequence, but purposeless for the future. The order of all things becomes, not merely an iron rule, from which nothing can ever swerve, but an iron rule which guides to nothing and ends in nothing.
Such a supposition is possible to the logical understanding: it
is not possible to the spirit. The human
In accordance with this difference between the material and the
spiritual worlds, we ought to be prepared to find progress in the latter, however
much fixity there may be in the former. The earth may still be describing precisely
the same orbit as that which was assigned to her at the creation. The sea. sons
may be precisely the same. The planets, the moon, and the stars, may be unchanged
both in appearance and in reality. But man is a spiritual as well as a material
creature, must be subject to the laws of the spiritual as well as to those of the
material world, and cannot stand still because things around him do. Now, that the
individual man is capable of perpetual, or almost perpetual, development from the
day of his birth to that of his death, is obvious of course. But we may well expect
to find something more than this in a spiritual creature who does not stand alone,
but forms a part of a whole world of creatures like himself Man cannot be considered
as an individual. He is, in reality, only man by virtue of his being a member of
the human race. Any other animal that we know would probably not be very different
in its nature
This power, whereby the present ever gathers into itself the results of the past, transforms the human race into a colossal man, whose life reaches from the creation to the day of judgment. The successive generations of men are days in this man’s life. The discoveries and inventions which characterize the different .epochs of the world’s history are his works. The creeds and doctrines, the opinions and principles of the successive ages, are his thoughts. The state of society at different times are his manners. He grows in knowledge, in self-control, in visible size, just as we do. And his education is in the same way and for the same reason precisely similar to ours.
All this is no figure but only a compendious statement of a very
comprehensive fact. The child that is born to-day may possibly have the same faculties
as if he had been born in the days of Noah; if it be otherwise, we possess no means
of determining the difference. But the equality of the natural faculties at starting
will not prevent a vast difference in their ultimate development. That development
is entirely under the control of the influences exerted by the society in which
the child may chance to live. If such society be altogether denied, the faculties
perish,
We may, then, rightly speak of a childhood, a youth, and a manhood
of the world. The men of the earliest ages were, in many respects, still children
as compared with ourselves, with all the blessings and with all the disadvantages
that belong to childhood. We reap the fruits of their toil, and bear in our characters
the impress of their cultivation. Our characters have grown out of their history,
as the character of the man grows out of the history of the child. There are matters
in which the simplicity of childhood is wiser than the maturity of manhood, and
in these they were wiser than we. There are matters in which the child is nothing,
and the man everything, and in these we
This training has three stages. In childhood we are subject to positive rules which we cannot understand, but are bound implicitly to obey. In youth we are subject to the influence of example, and soon break loose from all rules unless illustrated and enforced by the higher teaching which example imparts. In manhood we are comparatively free from external restraints, and if we are to learn, must be our own instructors. First come Rules, then Examples, then Principles. First comes the Law, then the Son of Man, then the Gift of the Spirit. The world was once a child under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the Father. Then, when the fit season had arrived, the Example to which all ages should turn was sent to teach men what they ought to be. Then the human race was left to itself to be guided by the teaching of the Spirit within.
The education of the world, like that of the child, begins with
Law. It is impossible to explain the reasons of all the commands that you give to
a child, and you do not endeavour to do so. When he is to go to bed, when he is
to get up, how he is to sit, stand, eat, drink, what answers he is to make when
spoken to, what he may touch and what he may not, what prayers he shall say and
when, what lessons he is to learn, every detail of manners and of conduct the careful
mother teaches her child, and requires implicit obedience. Mingled together in her
teaching are commands of the most trivial character and commands of the gravest
importance; their relative value marked by a difference of manner rather than by
anything else, since to explain it is impossible. Meanwhile to the child obedience
is the highest duty, affection the highest stimulus, the mother’s word the
As the child grows older the education changes its character, not so much in regard to the sanction of its precepts as in regard to their tenor. More stress is laid upon matters of real duty, less upon matters of mere manner. Falsehood, quarrelling, bad temper, greediness, indolence, are more attended to than times of going to bed, or fashions of eating, or postures in sitting. The boy is allowed to feel, and to show that he feels, the difference between different commands. But he is still not left to himself: and though points of manner are not put on a level with points of conduct, they are by no means neglected. Moreover, while much stress is laid upon his deeds, little is laid upon his opinions; he is rightly supposed not to have any, and will not be allowed to plead them as a reason for disobedience.
After a time, however, the intellect begins to assert a right to enter into all questions of duty, and the . intellect accordingly is cultivated. The reason is appealed to in all questions of conduct: the consequences of folly or sin are pointed out, and the punishment which, without any miracle, God invariably brings upon those who disobey His natural laws—how, for instance, falsehood destroys confidence and incurs contempt; how indulgence in appetite tends to brutal and degrading habits; how ill-temper may end in crime, and must end in mischief. Thus the conscience is reached through the understanding.
Now, precisely analogous to all this is the history of the education
of the early world. The earliest
Violence was followed by sensuality. Such was the sin of Noah, Ham, Sodom, Lot’s daughters, and the guilty Canaanites. Animal appetites—the appetites which must he subdued in childhood if they are to be subdued at all—were still the temptation of mankind. Such sins are, it is true, prevalent in the world even now. But the peculiarity of these early forms of licentiousness is their utter disregard of every kind of restraint, and this constitutes their childish character.
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 sprang. The world, as it were, went to school, and was broken up into classes.
Before that time it can hardly be said that any great precepts had been given. The
only commands which claim an earlier date are the prohibitions of murder and of
eating blood. And
The Jewish nation, selected among all as the depository of what may be termed, in a pre-eminent sense, religious truth, received, after a short preparation, the Mosaic system. This system is a mixture of moral and positive commands: the latter, precise and particular, ruling the customs, the festivals, the worship, the daily food, the dress, the very touch; the former large, clear, simple, peremptory. There is very little directly spiritual. No freedom of conduct or of opinion is allowed. The difference between different precepts is not forgotten; nor is all natural judgment in morals excluded. But the reason for all the minute commands is never given. Why they may eat the sheep and not the pig they are not told. The commands are not confined to general principles, but run into such details as to forbid tattooing or disfiguring the person, to command the wearing of a blue fringe, and the like. That such commands should be sanctioned by divine authority is utterly irreconcileable with our present feelings. But in the Mosaic system the same peremptory legislation deals with all these matters, whether important or trivial. The fact is, that however trivial they might be in relation to the authority which they invoked, they were not trivial in relation to the people who were to be governed and taught.
The teaching of the Law was followed by the comments of the Prophets.
It is impossible to mistake the complete change of tone and spirit. The ordinances
indeed remain, and the obligation to observe them is always assumed. But they have
sunk to the second place. The national attention is distinctly
The comments of the Prophets were followed in their turn
by the great Lesson of the Captivity. Then
The results of this discipline of the Jewish nation may be summed up in two points—a settled national belief in the unity and spirituality of God, and an acknowledgment of the paramount importance of chastity as a point of morals.
The conviction of the unity and spirituality of God was peculiar
to the Jews among the pioneers of civilization. Greek philosophers had, no doubt,
come to the same conclusion by dint of reason. Noble minds may often have been enabled
to raise themselves to the same height in moments of generous emotion. But every
one knows the difference between an opinion and a practical conviction—between a
scientific deduction or a momentary insight and that habit which has become second
nature. Every one, also, knows the difference between a tenet maintained by a few
intellectual men far in advance of their age, and a belief pervading a whole people,
penetrating all their daily life, leavening all their occupations, incorporated
into their very language. To the great mass of the Gentiles, at the time of our
Lord, polytheism was the natural posture of the thoughts into which their minds
unconsciously settled when undisturbed by doubt or difficulties. To every Jew, without
exception, monotheism was equally natural. To the Gentile, even when converted,
it was, for some time, still an effort to abstain from idols; to the Jew it was
more an effort than it is to us. The bent of the Jewish mind was, in fact, so fixed
by their previous
It was the fact that this belief seas not the tenet of the few, but the habit of the nation, which made the Jews the proper instruments for communicating the doctrine to the world. They supported it, not by arguments, which always provoke replies, and rarely, at the best, penetrate deeper than the intellect; but by the unconscious evidence of their lives. They supplied that spiritual atmosphere in which alone the faith of new converts could attain to vigorous life. They supplied forms of language and expression fit for immediate and constant use. They supplied devotions to fill the void which departed idolatry left behind. The rapid spread of the Primitive Church, and the depth to which it struck its roots into the decaying society of the Roman empire, are unquestionably due, to a great extent, to the body of Jewish proselytes already established in every important city, and to the existence of the Old Testament as ready-made text-book of devotion and instruction.
Side by side with this freedom from idolatry there had grown up
in the Jewish mind a chaster morality than was to be found elsewhere in the world.
There were many points, undoubtedly, in which the early morality of the Greeks and
Romans would well bear
The idea of monotheism and the principle of purity might seem
hardly enough to be the chief results of so systematic a discipline as that of the
Hebrews. But, in reality, they are the cardinal points in education. The idea of
monotheism outtops all other ideas in dignity, and worth. The spirituality of God
involves in it the supremacy of conscience, the immortality of the soul, the final
judgment of the human race. For we know the other world, and can
Such was the training of the Hebrews. Other nations meanwhile
had a training parallel to and contemporaneous with theirs. The natural religions,
shadows projected by the spiritual light within shining on the dark problems without,
were all in reality
When the seed of the Gospel was first sown, the field which had been prepared to receive it may be divided into four chief divisions, Rome, Greece, Asia, and Judea. Each of these contributed something to the growth of the future Church. And the growth of the Church is, in this case, the development of the human race. It cannot indeed yet be said that all humanity has united into one stream; but the Christian nations have so unquestionably taken the lead amongst their fellows, that although it is likely enough the unconverted peoples may have a real part to play, that part must be plainly quite subordinate; subordinate in a sense in which neither Rome, nor Greece, nor perhaps even Asia, was subordinate to Judea.
It is not difficult to trace the chief elements of civilization
which we owe to each of the four. Rome contributed her admirable spirit of order
and organization. To her had been given the genius of govern. runt. She had been
trained to it by centuries of difficult and tumultuous history. Storms which would
have rent asunder the framework of any other polity only practised her in the art
of controlling popular passions; and when she began to aim consciously at the Empire
of the World, she had already learned
To Greece was entrusted the cultivation of the reason and the
taste. Her gift to mankind has been science and art. There was little in her temper
of the spirit of reverence. Her morality and her religion did not spring from the
conscience. Her gods were the creatures of imagination, not of spiritual need. Her
highest idea was, not holiness, as with the Hebrews, nor law, as with the Romans,
but beauty. Even Aristotle, who assuredly gave way to mere sentiment as little as
any Greek that ever lived, placed the Beautiful (τὸ
καλόν) at the head of his moral system, not the Right, nor the Holy. Greece,
in fact, was not looking at another world, nor even striving to organize the present,
but rather aiming at the development of free nature. The highest possible cultivation
of the individual, the most finished perfection of the natural faculties, was her
dream. It is true that her philosophers are ever talking of subordinating the individual
to the state. But in reality there never has been a period in history nor a country
in the world, in which the peculiarities of individual temper and character had
freer play. This is not the best atmosphere for political action; but it is better
than any other for giving vigour and life to the impulses of genius, and for cultivating
those faculties, the reason and taste, in which the highest genius can be
The discipline of Asia was the never-ending succession of conquering
dynasties, following in each other’s track like waves, an ever moving yet never
advancing ocean. Cycles of change were successively passing over her, and yet at
the end of every cycle she stood where she had stood before, and nearly where she
stands now. The growth of Europe has dwarfed her in comparison, and she is paralysed
in presence of a gigantic strength younger but mightier than her own. But in herself
she is no weaker than she ever was. The monarchs who once led Assyrian, or Babylonian,
or Persian armies across half the world, impose on us by the vast extent and rapidity
of their conquests; but
Thus the Hebrews may be said to have disciplined the human conscience,
Rome the human will, Greece the reason and taste, Asia the spiritual imagination.
Other races that have been since admitted into Christendom also did. their parts.
And others may yet have something to contribute; for though the time for discipline
is childhood, yet there is no precise line beyond which all discipline ceases. Even
the grey-haired
The child is not insensible to the influence of example. Even
in the earliest years the manners, the language, the principles of the elder begin
to mould the character of the younger. There are not a few of our acquirements which
we learn by example without any, or with very little, direct instruction—as, for
instance, to speak and to walk. But still example at that age is secondary. The
child is quite conscious that he is not on such an equality with grown-up friends
as to enable him to do as they do. He imitates, but he knows that it is merely play,
and he is quite willing to be told that he must not do this or that till he is older.
As time goes on, and the faculties expand, the power of discipline to guide the
actions and to mould the character decreases, and in the same proportion the power
of example grows. The moral atmosphere must be brutish indeed which can do deep
harm to a child of four years. But what is harmless at four is pernicious at six,
and almost fatal at twelve. The religious tone of a household will hardly make much
impression on an infant; but it will deeply engrave its lessons on the heart of
a boy growing towards manhood. Different faculties within us begin to feel the power
of this new guide at different times. The moral sentiments are perhaps the first
to expand to the influence; but gradually the example of those among whom the life
is cast lays hold of all the soul,—of the tastes, of the opinions, of the aims,
of the temper. As each restraint of discipline is successively cast off, the soul
does not gain at first a real, but only an apparent freedom. The youth, when too
old for discipline, is not yet strong enough to guide his life by
The power of example probably never ceases during life. Even old age is not wholly uninfluenced by society; and a change of companions acts upon the character long after the character would appear incapable of further development. The influence, in fact, dies out just as it grew; and as it is impossible to mark its beginning, so is it to mark its end. The child is governed by the will of its parents; the man by principles and habits of his own. But neither is insensible to the influence of associates, though neither finds in that influence the predominant power of his life.
This, then, which is born with our birth and dies with our death,
attains its maximum at some point in the passage from one to the other. And this
point is just the meeting point of the child and the man, the brief interval which
separates restraint from liberty. Young men at this period are learning a peculiar
lesson. They seem to those who talk to them to be imbibing from their associates
and their studies principles both of faith and conduct. But the rapid fluctuations
of their minds show that their opinions have not really the nature of principles.
They are really learning, not principles, but the materials out of which principles
are made. They drink in the lessons of generous impulse, warm unselfishness, courage,
self-devotion, romantic disregard of worldly calculations, without knowing what
are the grounds of their own approbation, or caring to analyse the laws and ascertain
the limits of such guides of conduct. They believe, without exact attention to the
evidence of their belief; and their opinions have accordingly the richness and warmth
that belongs to sentiment, but not the clearness or firmness that can be given by
reason. These affections, which are now kindled in their hearts by the contact of
their fellows, will afterwards be the reservoir of life and light, with which their
faith and their highest conceptions will be animated and coloured. The opinions
now picked up, apparently not really, at random, must hereafter give reality to
the clearer and more settled convictions of mature manhood. If it were not for these,
the ideas and laws afterwards supplied by reason would be empty forms of thought,
without body or substance; the faith would run a risk of being the form of godliness
without the power thereof. And hence the lessons of this time have such an attractiveness
in their warmth and life, that they are very reluctantly exchanged for the truer
and profounder, but at first sight colder wisdom which is destined to follow them.
To almost all men tins period is a bright spot to which the memory ever afterwards
Of course, this is only one side of the picture. This keen susceptibility
to pleasure and joy implies a keen susceptibility to pain. There is,
probably, no time of life at which pains are more intensely felt; no time at
which the whole man more ‘groaneth and travaileth in pain together.’ Young men
are prone to extreme melancholy, even to disgust with life. A young preacher will
preach upon afflictions much more often than an old one. A young poet will write
more sadly. A young philosopher will moralize more gloomily. And this seems unreal
sentiment, and is
The period of youth in the history of the world, when the human
race was, as it were, put under the teaching of example, corresponds, of course,
to the meeting point of the Law and the Gospel. The second stage, therefore, in the
education of man was the presence of our Lord upon earth. Those few years of His divine
presence seem, as it were, to balance all the systems and creeds and worships which
preceded, all the Church’s life which has followed since. Saints had gone before, and
saints have been given since; great men and good men had lived among the heathen; there
were never, at any time, examples wanting to teach either the chosen people or any
other. But the one Example of all examples came in the ‘fulness of time,’ just when
the world was fitted to feel the power of His presence. 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 now accept any outer manifestations
of the truth of God. Our vision of the Son of God is now aided by the eyes of the Apostles,
and by that aid we can recognise the Express Image of the Father. But in this we are
like men who are led through unknown woods by Indian guides. We recognise the indications
by which the path was known, as soon as those indications are pointed out; but we
feel that it would have been quite vain for us to look for them unaided. We, of
course, have, in our turn, counterbalancing advantages. If we have lost that freshness
of faith which
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; and our Lord’s presence was not the only influence of that kind which has acted upon the human race. Three companions were appointed by Providence to give their society to this creature whom God was educating; Greece, Rome, and the Early Church. To these three mankind has ever since looked back, and will ever hereafter look back, with the same affection, the same lingering regret, with which age looks back to early manhood. In these three mankind remembers the brilliant social companion whose wit and fancy sharpened the intellect and refined the imagination; the bold and clever leader with whom to dare was to do, and whose very name was a signal of success; and the earnest, heavenly-minded friend, whose saintly aspect was a revelation in itself.
Greece and Rome have not only given to us the fruits of their
discipline, but the companionship of their bloom. The fruits of their discipline
would have passed into our possession, even if their memory bad utterly perished;
and just as we know not the
The Early Church stands as the example which has most influenced
our religious as Greece and Rome have most influenced our political and intellectual
life. We read the New Testament, not to find there forms of devotion, for there are
few to be found; nor laws of church government, for there are hardly any; nor creeds,
for there are none; nor doctrines logically stated, for there is no attempt at logical
precision. The New Testament is almost entirely occupied with two lives—the life
of our Lord and ‘the’ life of the Early Church. Among the Epistles there
are but two which seem, even at first sight, to be treatises for the future instead of letters
for the time—the Epistle to the Romans and the Epistle to the Hebrews. But even
these, when closely examined, appear, like the rest, to be no more than the fruit
of the current history. That early church does not give us precepts, but an example.
She says, Be ye followers of me, as I also am of Christ. This had never been
said by Moses, nor by any of the prophets. But the world was now grown old
enough to be taught by seeing
It is nothing against the drift of this argument, that the three friends whose companionship is most deeply engraven on the memory of the world were no friends one to another. This was the lot of mankind, as it is the lot of not a few men. Greece, the child of nature, had come to full maturity so early as to pass away before the other two appeared; and Rome and the Early Church disliked each other. Yet that dislike makes little impression on us now. We never identify the Rome of our admiration with the Rome which persecuted the Christian, partly, indeed, because the Rome that we admire was almost gone before the church was founded; but partly, too, because we forget each of these while we are studying the other. We almost make two persons of Trajan, accordingly as we meet with him in sacred or profane history. So natural is it to forget in after life the faulty side of young friends’ characters.
The susceptibility of youth to the impression of society wears off 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.
Now the education by no means ceases when the spirit thus begins
to lead the soul; the office of the spirit is in fact to guide us into truth, not
to give truth. The youth who has settled down to his life’s Work makes a great mistake
if he fancies that because
In this last stage of his progress a man learns various ways.
First he learns unconsciously by the growth of his inner powers and the secret but
steady accumulation of experience. The fire of youth is toned down and sobered. The
realities of life dissipate many dreams, clear up many prejudices, soften down
many roughnesses. The difference between intention and action, between anticipating
temptation and bearing it, between drawing pictures of holiness or nobleness and
realizing them, between hopes of success and reality of achievement, is taught by many
a painful and many an unexpected experience. In short, as the youth puts away childish
things, so does the man put away youthful things. Secondly, the full-grown man
learns by reflection. He looks inwards
But throughout all this it must not be supposed that he has no more
to do either with that law which guided his childhood or with any other law of any
kind. Since he is still a learner, he must learn on the one condition of all learning—obedience
to rules; not indeed, blind obedience to rules not understood, but obedience to the
rules of his own mind—an obedience which he cannot throw off without descending below
the childish level. He is free. But freedom is not the opposite of obedience,
but of restraint. The free-man must obey, and obey as precisely as the bond-man; and
if he has not acquired the habit of obedience he is not fit to be free. The law
in fact which God makes the standard of our conduct may have one of two forms.
It may be an external law, a law which is in the hands of others, in the making,
in the applying, in the enforcing of which we have no share; a law which governs
from the outside, compelling our will to bow even though our understanding be unconvinced and unenlightened; saying you must, and
This need of law in the full maturity of life is so imperative
that if the requisite self-control be lost or impaired, or have never been sufficiently
acquired, the man instinctively has recourse to a self-imposed discipline if he
desire to keep himself from falling. The Christian who has fallen into sinful habits
often finds that he has no resource but to abstain from much that is harmless in
itself because he has associated it with evil. He takes monastic vows because the
world has proved too much for him. He takes temperance pledges because he cannot
resist the temptations of appetite. There are devils which can be cast out with
a word; there are others which go not out but by (not prayer only, but) fasting.
This is often the case with the late converted. They are compelled to abstain from,
and sometimes they are induced to denounce, many pleasures and many enjoyments which
they find unsuited to their spiritual health. The world and its enjoyments have
been to them a source
For the same reason a strict and even severe discipline is needed
for the cure of reprobates. Philanthropists complain sometimes that this teaching
ends only in making the man say, ‘the punishment of crime is what I cannot bear;’ not,
‘the wickedness of crime is what I will not do.’ But our nature is not all
will: and the fear of punishment is very often the foundation on which we build the
hatred of evil. No convert would look back with any other feeling than deep gratitude
on a severity which had set free
This return to the teaching of discipline in mature life is needed for the intellect even more than for the conduct. There are many men who though they pass from the teaching of the outer law to that of the inner in regard to their practical life, never emerge from the former in regard to their speculative. They do not think; they are contented to let others think for them and to accept the results. How far the average of men are from having attained the power of free independent thought is shown by the staggering and stumbling of their intellects when a completely new subject of investigation tempts them to form a judgment of their own on a matter which they have not studied. In such cases a really educated intellect sees at once that no judgment is yet within its reach, and acquiesces in suspense. But the uneducated intellect hastens to account for the phenomenon; to discover new laws of nature, and new relations of truth; to decide, and predict, and perhaps to demand a remodelling of all previous knowledge. The discussions on table-turning a few years ago, illustrated this want of intellects able to govern themselves. The whole analogy of physical science was not enough to induce that suspension of judgment which was effected in a week by the dictum of a known philosopher.
There are, however, some men who really think for themselves.
But even they are sometimes obliged, especially if their speculations touch upon
practical life, to put a temporary restraint upon their intellects.
Some men, on the other hand, show their want of intellectual self-control
by going back not to the dominion of law, but to the still lower level of intellectual
anarchy. They speculate without any foundation at all. They confound
the internal consistency of some dream of their brains with the reality of independent
truth. They set up theories which have
There is yet a further relation between the inner law of mature
life and the outer law of childhood which must be noticed. And that is, that the
outer law is often the best vehicle in which the inner law can be contained for
the various purposes of life. The man remembers with affection, and keeps up with
delight the customs of the home of his childhood; tempted perhaps to over-estimate
their value, but even when perfectly aware that they are no more than one form out
of many which a well-ordered household might adopt, preferring them because of his
long familiarity, and because of the memories with which they are associated. So,
too, truth often seems to hiss richer and fuller when expressed in some favourite
phrase of his mother’s, or some maxim of his father’s. 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 festivities. 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. There is great value in the removal of many indifferent
matters
Such is the last stage in the education of a human soul, and similar (as far as it has yet gone) has been the last stage in the education of the human race. Of course, so full a comparison cannot be made in this instance as was possible in the two that preceded it. For we are still within the boundaries of this third period, and we cannot yet judge it as a whole. But if the Christian Church be taken as the representative of mankind it is easy to see that the general law observable in the development of the individual may also be found in the development of the Church.
Since the days of the Apostles no further revelation has been granted, nor has any other system of religion sprung up spontaneously within the limits which the Church has covered. No prophets have communicated messages from Heaven. No infallible inspiration has guided any teacher or preacher. The claim of infallibility still maintained by a portion of Christendom has been entirely given up by the more advanced section. The Church, in the fullest sense, is left to herself to work out, by her natural faculties, the principles of her own action. And whatever assistance she is to receive in doing so, is to be through those natural faculties, and not in spite of them or without them.
From the very first, the Church commenced the task by determining
her leading doctrines and the principles of her conduct. These were evolved, as
principles usually are, partly by reflection on past experience, and by formularizing
the thoughts embodied
Before this process can be said to have worked itself out, it
was interrupted by a new phenomenon, demanding essentially different management.
A flood of new and undisciplined races poured into Europe, on the one hand supplying
the Church with the vigour of fresh
When the work was done, men began to discover that the law was
no longer necessary. And of course there was no reason why they should then discuss
the question whether it ever had been necessary. The time was come when it was fit
to trust to the conscience as the supreme guide, and the yoke of the medieval
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 alternative 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 of that time. Hence we use the Bible—some consciously,
some unconsciously—not to override, but to evoke the voice of conscience. 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 interpretation
of the Bible varies slightly from age to age, a varies always in one direction.
The schoolmen found purgatory in it. Later students found enough to condemn
This recurrence to the Bible as the great authority has been accompanied
by a strong inclination, common to all Protestant countries, to go back in every
detail of life to the practices of early times, chiefly, no doubt, because such
a revival of primitive practices, wherever possible, is the greatest help to entering
into the very essence, and imbibing the spirit of the days when the Bible was written.
So, too, the observance of the Sunday has a stronger hold on the minds of all religious
men because it penetrates the whole texture of the Old Testament. The institution
is so admirable, indeed so necessary in itself, that without this hold it would
deserve its present position. But nothing but its prominent position in the Bible
would have made it, what it now is, the one ordinance which all Christendom alike
agrees in keeping. In such an observance men feel that they are, so far, living
a scriptural life, and have come, as it were, a step nearer to the inner power of
the book from which they expect to learn their highest lessons. Some, indeed, treat
it as enjoined by an absolutely binding decree, and thus at once put themselves under
a law. But short of that, those who defend it only by arguments of Christian
This tendency to go back to the childhood and youth of the world
has, of course, retarded the acquisition of that toleration which is the chief philosophical
and religious lesson of modern days. Unquestionably as bigoted a spirit has often
been shown in defence of some practice for which the sanction of the Bible had been
claimed, as before the Reformation in defence of the decrees of the Church. But
no lesson is well learned all at once. To learn toleration well and really, to let
it become, not a philosophical tenet but a practical principle, to join it with
real religiousness of life and character, it is absolutely necessary that it should
break in upon the mind by slow and steady degrees, and that at every point its right
to go further should be disputed, and so forced to logical proof. For it is only
by virtue of the opposition which it has surmounted that any truth can stand in
the human mind. The strongest argument in favour of tolerating all opinions is that
our conviction of the truth of an opinion is worthless unless it has established
itself in spite of the most strenuous resistance, and is still prepared to overcome
the same resistance, if necessary. Toleration itself is no exception to the universal
law; and those who must regret the slow progress by which. it wins its way, may
remember that this slowness makes the final victory the more certain and complete.
Nor is that all. The toleration thus obtained is different in kind from what it
would otherwise have been. It is not only stronger, it is richer and fuller. For
the slowness of its progress gives finis to disentangle from dogmatism the really
valuable
Even the perverted use of the Bible has therefore not been without
certain great advantages. And meanwhile how utterly impossible it would be in the
manhood of the world to imagine any other instructor of mankind. And for that reason,
every day makes it more and more evident that the thorough study of the Bible, the
investigation of what it teaches and what it does not teach, the determination of
the limits of what we mean by its inspiration, the determination of the degree of
authority to be ascribed to the different books, if any degrees are to be admitted,
must take the lead of all other studies. He is guilty of high treason against the
faith who fears the result of any investigation, whether philosophical, or scientific,
or historical. And therefore nothing should be more welcome than the extension of
knowledge of any and every kind—for every increase in our accumulations of knowledge
throws fresh light upon these the real problems of our day. If geology proves to
us that we must not interpret the first chapters of Genesis literally; if historical
investigations shall show us that inspiration, however it may protect the doctrine,
yet was not empowered to protect the narrative of the inspired writers from occasional
inaccuracy; if careful criticism shall prove that there have been occasionally interpolations
and forgeries in that Book, as in many others; the results should still be welcome.
Even the mistakes of careful and reverent students are more valuable now than truth
held in unthinking acquiescence. The substance of the teaching which we derive from
the Bible will not really be affected by anything of this sort. While its hold upon
the minds of believers, and its power to stir the depths of the spirit of man, however
much
The immediate work of our day is the study of the Bible. Other studies will act upon the progress of mankind by acting through and upon this. For while a few highly educated men here and there who have given their minds to special pursuits may think the study of the Bible a thing of the past, yet assuredly, if their science is to have its effect upon men in the mass, it must be by affecting their moral and religious convictions—in no other way have men been, or can men be, deeply and permanently changed. But though this study must be for the present and for some time the centre of all studies, there is meanwhile no study of whatever kind which will not have its share in the general effect. At this time, in the maturity of mankind, as with each man in the maturity of his powers, the great lever which moves the world is knowledge, the great force is the intellect. St. Paul has told us ‘that though in malice we must be children, in understanding we ought to be men.’ And this saying of his has the widest range. Not only in the understanding of religious truth, but in all exercise of the intellectual powers, we have no right to stop short of any limit but that which nature, that is, the decree of the Creator, has imposed on us. In fact, no knowledge can be without its effect on religious convictions; for if not capable of throwing direct light on some spiritual questions, yet in its acquisition knowledge invariably throws light on the process by which it is to be, or has been, acquired, and thus affects all other knowledge of every kind.
If we have made mistakes, careful study may teach us better. If
we have quarrelled about words, the enlightenment of the understanding is the best
means to show us our folly. If we have vainly puzzled our
When geologists began to ask whether changes in the earth’s structure might be explained by causes still in operation, they did not disprove the possibility of great convulsions, but they lessened necessity for imagining them. So, if a theologian has his eyes opened to the Divine energy as continuous and omnipresent, he lessens the sharp contrast of epochs in Revelation, but need not assume that the stream has never varied in its flow. Devotion raises time present into the sacredness of the past; while Criticism reduces the strangeness of the past into harmony with the present. Faith and Prayer (and great marvels answering to them), do not pass away: but, in prolonging their range as a whole, we make their parts less exceptional. We hardly discern the truth, for which they are anxious, until we distinguish it from associations accidental to their domain. The truth itself may have been apprehended in various degrees by servants of God, of old, as now. Instead of, with Tertullian, what was first is truest, we may say, what comes of God is true, and He is not only afar, but nigh at hand; though His mind is not changed.
Questions of miraculous interference do not turn merely upon our conceptions
of physical law, as unbroken, or of the Divine Will, as all-pervading: bug they
include inquiries into evidence, and must abide by verdicts on the age of
records. Nor should the distinction between poetry and prose, and the possibility
Thus considerations, religious and moral, no less than scientific and
critical, have, where discussion was free, widened the idea of Revelation for
the old world, and deepened it for ourselves , not removing the footsteps of the
Eternal from Palestine, but tracing them on other shores; and not making the
saints of old orphans, but ourselves partakers of their sonship. Conscience
would not lose by exchanging that repressive idea of revelation, which is put
over against it as an adversary, for one to which the echo of its best instincts
should be the witness. The moral constituents of our nature, so often contrasted
with Revelation, should rather be considered parts of its instrumentality. Those
eases in which we accept the miracle for the sake of the moral lesson prove the
ethical element to be the more fundamental. We see this more clearly if we
imagine a miracle of cruelty wrought (as by Antichrist) for immoral ends; for
then only the technically miraculous has its value isolated; whereas by
appealing to good ‘WORKS’ (however wonderful) for his witness, Christ has taught
us to have faith mainly in goodness. This is too much overlooked by some
apologists. But there is hardly any greater question than whether history shows
Almighty God to have trained mankind by a faith which has reason and conscience
for its kindred, or by one to whose miraculous tests their pride must
In this issue converge many questions anciently stirred, but recurring
in our daylight with almost uniform It is very remarkable that, amidst all our Biblical illustration
from recent travellers, Layard, Rawlinson, Robinson, Stanley, &c., no single point
has been
discovered to tell in favour of irrational supernaturalism; whereas numerous
discoveries have confirmed the more liberal (not to say, rationalising)
criticism which traces Revelation historically within the sphere of nature and
humanity. Such is the moral, both of the Assyrian discoveries, and of all travels
in the East, as well as the verdict of philologers at home. Mr. G. Rawlinson’s
proof of this is stronger, because undesigned.
Bunsen’s enduring glory is neither to have paltered with his conscience nor shrunk from the difficulties of the problem; but to have brought a vast erudition, in the light of a Christian conscience, to unroll tangled records, tracing frankly the Spirit of God elsewhere, but honouring chiefly the traditions of His Hebrew sanctuary. No living author’s works could furnish so pregnant a text for a discourse on Biblical criticism. Passing over some specialties of Lutheranism, we may meet in the field of research which is common to scholars; while even here, the sympathy, which justifies respectful exposition, need not imply entire agreement.
In the great work upon Egypt, Egypt’s Place in Universal History, by Christian C.
J. Bunsen, &c. London. 1848, vol. i. 1854, vol. ii. See an account of him, and his tables, in the Byzantine Syncellus,
pp. 72-145, vol. i., ed. Dind., in the Corpus Historiae Byzantinae,
Bonn. 1829. But with this is to be compared the Armenian version of Eusebius’s
Chronology, discovered
by Cardinal Mai. The text, the interpretation, and the historical fidelity, are
all controverted. Baron Bunsen’s treatment of them deserves the provisional
acceptance
due to elaborate research, with no slight, concurrence of probabilities; and
if it should not ultimately win a favourable verdict from Egyptologers, no
one who summarily rejects it as arbitrary or impossible can have a right to be on the
jury. The common term was
Indo-Germanic. Dr. Prichard, on bringing the Gael and Cymry into the same
family, required the wider term Indo-European. Historical
reasons, chiefly in connexion with Sanskrit, are brings the term Aryan (or Aryas)
into fashion. We may adopt whichever is intelligible, without excluding, perhaps,
a Turanian or African element surviving in South Wales. Turanian means nearly Mongolian.
The traditions of Babylon, Sidon, Assyria, and Iran, are brought
by our author to illustrate and confirm, though to modify our interpretation of,
Genesis. It is strange how nearly those ancient cosmogonies Aegypten’s
Stella in der Weltgeschichte, pp. 186-400; B. v.
1-3. Gotha. 1856. Aegypten’s
Stelle, &c., B. v. 4-5, pp. 50-142. Gotha. 1857. νόμον ἔθετο μήτε προσκυνεῖν Θεοὺς . . . . συνάπτεσθαι δὲ μηδενὶ
πλὴν τῶν συνωμοσμένων· αὐτὸς δὲ . . . . ἔπεμψε πρέσβεις
πρὸς τοὺς ὑπὸ Τεθμώσεως ἀπελαθέντας ποιμένας . . . . καὶ ἡξίου
συνεπιστρατεύειν κ.τ.λ. Manetho, apud
So in the passage of the Red Sea, the description may be interpreted with the latitude of poetry though, as it is not affirmed that Pharaoh was drowned, it is no serious objection that Egyptian authorities continue the reign of Menephthah later. A greater difficulty is that we find but three centuries thus left us from the Exodus to Solomon’s Temple. Yet less stress will be laid on this by whoever notices how the numbers in the Book of Judges proceed by the eastern round number of forty, what traces the whole book bears of embodying history in its most popular form, and how naturally St. Paul or St. Stephen would speak after received accounts.
It is not the importance severally, but the continual recurrence
of such difficulties, which bears wills ever-growing induction upon tire question,
whether the Pentateuch is of one age and hand, and whether subsequent books are
contemporary with the events, or whether the whole literature grew like a tree rooted
in the varying thoughts of successive generations, and whether traces of editorship,
if not of composition, between the ages of Solomon and Hezekiah, are manifest to
whoever will recognise them. Baron Bunsen
As in his Egypt our author sifts the historical date of
the Bible, so in his Gott in der Geschichte, Gott in der Geschichte (i.e. the Divine Government in
History). Books i. and ii. Leipzig. 1857.
It may be thought that Baron Bunsen ignores too peremptorily
the sacerdotal element in the Bible, forgetting how it moulded the form of the
history. He certainly separates the Mosaic institutions from Egyptian affinity
more than our Spencer and Warburton would permit; more, it seems, than Hengstenberg considers
necessary. But the distinctively Mosaic
That there was a Bible before our Bible, and that some of our
present books, as certainly Genesis and Joshua, and perhaps Job, Jonah, Daniel,
are expanded from simpler elements, is indicated in the book before us rather than
proved as it might be. Fuller details may be expected in the course of the revised
Bible for the People, Bibel-werk für die Gemeinde, I. and II. Leipzig.
1858.
Already in the volume before-mentioned Baron Bunsen has exhibited the Hebrew Prophets as witnesses to
the Divine
Government. To estimate aright his services in this province would require from most
Englishmen years of study. Accustomed to be told that modern
On To Nepotian. Letter 52. Presbyteri apud Irenaeum. Trypho § 41-43. This tract of Justin’s shows strikingly a transition from the utmost evangelical freedom, with simplicity of thought,
to a more learned, but confused speculation and literalism. He still thinks
reason a revelation, Socrates a Christian, prophecy a necessary and perpetual
gift or God’s people, circumcision temporary, because not natural;
and lustral washings, which he contrasts with mental baptism, superstitious.
His view of the Sabbath is quite St. Paul’s. His making a millennial
resurrection the Christian doctrine, as opposed to the heathen immortality
of the soul, is embarrassing, but perhaps primitive. But his Scriptural
interpretations are dreams, and his charge against the Jews of corrupting
the Prophets as suicidal as it is groundless. Collected in Boyle Lectures. A Literal Translation of the Prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi,
with Notes, by Lowth, Blayney, Newcome,
Wintle, Horsley, &c. London. 1836. A book unequal, but useful for want of a better,
and of which a revision, if not an entire recast, with the aid of recent expositors,
might employ our Biblical scholars. ‘Of prophecies in the sense of prognostication I utterly
deny that there is any instance delivered by one of the illustrious Diadoche, whom
the Jewish church comprised in the name Prophets—and I shall regard
Cyrus as an exception, when I believe the Nay, I will go farther, and assert that the contrary belief,
the hypothesis of prognostication, is in irrecconcileable oppugnancy to our Lord’s
declaration, that the times hath the Father reserved to Himself.”—Memoir of Cary, vol. ii. p.
180. Amongst recent authors, Dr. Palfrey, an American scholar, has expounded
in five learned volumes the difficulties in current traditions about prophecy; but instead
of remedying these by restricting the idea of revelation to Moses and the Gospels, he would have done better to seek
a definition of revelation which should apply to the Psalms, and Prophets, and Epistles. Mr. Francis Newman, in his Hebrew Monarchy, is historically
consistent in his expositions, which have not been controverted by any serious argument; but his mind seems to fail in the Ideal element; else he would see,
that the typical ideas (of patience or of glory) in the Old Testament, find their
culminating fulfilment in the New. Mr. Mansel’s Bampton Lectures must make even those who value
his argument, regret that to his acknowledged dialectical ability he has not added
the rudiments of Biblical criticism. In all his volume not one text of Scripture is
elucidated, nor a single difficulty in the evidences of Christianity removed. Recognised
mistranslations, and misreadings, are alleged arguments, and passages from the Old
Testament are employed without reference to the illustration, or inversion, which
they have received in the New. Hence, as the eristic arts of logic without
knowledge of the subject-matter become powerless, the author is a mere gladiator
hitting in the dark, and his blows fall heaviest on what it was his duty to defend.
As to his main argument (surely a strange parody of Butler), the sentence from Sir
W. Hamilton prefixed to his volume, seems to me its gem, and its confutation. Of
the reasoning, which would bias our interpretation of Isaiah, by telling
us Feuerbach was an atheist, I need not say a word. We are promised from Oxford farther elucidations of the Minor
Prophets by the Regius Professor of Hebrew, whose book seems launched sufficiently
to catch the gales of friendship, without yet tempting out of harbour the blasts
of criticism. Let us hope that, when the work appear, its interpretations may
differ from those of Catena Aurea, published under high auspices in the same
university, in which the narrative of Uriah the Hittite is improved by making David
represent Christ, and Uriah symbolize the devil; so that the grievous crime which
‘displeased the Lord,’ becomes a typical prophecy of Him who was harmless
and undefiled!
To this inheritance of opinion Baron Bunsen succeeds. Knowing
these things, and writing for men who know them, he has neither the advantage in Cavillatur . . . . quod posuerim, . . . . Adorate
purè . . . . ne violentus viderer interpres, et Jud locum darem.—Hierom.
c. Ruffin. § 19. By reading כלביאים for כלבים. Septuagint version may have
arisen from הקיפוני, taken as from נקף.
Great then is Baron Bunsen’s merit, in accepting frankly the belief
of scholars, and yet not despairing of Hebrew Prophecy as a witness to the kingdom
of God. The way of doing so left open to him, was to show, pervading the Prophets,
those deep truths which lie at the heart of Christianity, and to trace the growth
of such ideas, the belief in a righteous God, and the nearness of man to God, the
power of prayer, and the victory of self-sacrificing patience, ever expanding in
men’s hearts, until the fulness of time came, and the ideal of the Divine thought
was fulfilled in the Son of Mari. Such accordingly is the course our author pursues,
not with the critical finish of Ewald, but with large moral grasp. Why he should
add to his moral and metaphysical basis of prophecy, a notion of foresight by vision
of particulars, or a kind of clairvoyance, though he admits it to be ‘Die Kraft des Schauens, die im Mensshen verborgen liegt, und, von der
Naturnothwendigkeit befreit, im hebräischen Prophetenthum sich zur wahren Weltanschauung erhoben hat
. . . . ist der Schlüssel,’ &c. Gott in der Geschichte, p. 149. ‘Jene Herrlichkeit besteht nicht in dem
Vorhersagen . . . . Dieses haben sie gemein mit manchen Aussprüchen der Pythia,
. . . . und mit vielen Weissagungen der Hellscherinnen dieses Jahrhunderts
. . . . ’ id. p. 151.
The most brilliant portion of the prophetical essays is the treatment
of the later Isaiah. With the insertion of four chapters concerning Hezekiah from
the histories of the kings, the words and deeds of the elder Isaiah apparently close.
It does not follow that all the prophecies arranged earlier in the book are from
his lips; probably they are not; but it is clear to demonstration, To prove this, let any one read Jerome’s arguments against it;
if the sacred test itself be not sufficient proof. ‘Go ye forth of Babylon,’ &c.,
C. Celsum, i. 55. (Quoted by Pearson.) For, in making the Gentiles mean Proselytes, they must have made the servant
Israel. ἀλλὰ τί; οὐ πρὸς τὸν νόμον λέγει, καὶ τοὺς φωτιζομένους
ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ, κ.τ.λ.—Trypho,
§ 122. Later, because it implies the fall of Jerusalem. It is thought to have
been compiled in the fourth century of our era. It is very doubtful,
whether the Jewish schools of the middle ages had (except in fragments) any
Hermeneutic tradition so old as what we gather from the Church fathers, however unfairly this may
be reported. My own belief is clear, that they had not. יןגון תולדת קודשא, and דעמיה ית שארא—Targum on
In Pearson’s hands, even the Rabbins become more Rabbinical.
His citations
from Jonathan and from Jarchi are most unfair; and in general he makes their prose
more prosaic. Titularly styled Gaon, as president of the Sora school.
This is an imperfect sketch, but may lead readers to consider the arguments
for applying The tenses from
If this seems but a compromise, it may be justified by Ewald’s
phrase, ‘Die wenigen Treuen im Exile, Jeremjah und andre,’ Die Propheten, d. A.
B. 2ter Band. pp. 438-453.
If any sincere Christian now asks, is not then our Saviour spoken
of in Isaiah; let him open his New Testament, and ask therewith John the Baptist,
whether he was Elias? If he finds the Baptist answering I am not, yet our
Lord testifies that in spirit and power this was Elias; a little reflexion
will show how the historical representation in
Loudly as justice and humanity exclaim against such traditional
distortion of prophecy as makes their own sacred writings a ground of cruel prejudice
against the Hebrew people, and the fidelity of this remarkable race to the oracles
of their fathers a handle for social obloquy, the cause of Christianity itself would
be the greatest gainer, if we laid aside weapons, the use of which brings shame.
Israel would be acknowledged, as in some sense still a Messiah, having borne centuries
of reproach through the sin of the nations; but the Saviour who fulfilled in his
own person the highest aspiration of Hebrew seers and of mankind, thereby lifting
the ancient words, so to speak, into a new and
Whether the great prophet, whose triumphant thanksgiving on the
return from Babylon forms the later chapters of our Isaiah, is to remain without
a name, or whether Baron Bunsen has succeeded in identifying him with
Baruch, the
disciple, scribe, and perhaps biographer or editor of Jeremiah, is a question of
probability. Most readers of the argument for the identity will feel inclined to
assent; 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. Yet, if kept within the region of critical conjecture, his reasons are something
more than ingenious. It may weigh with some Anglicans, that a letter ascribed to
Athanasius mentions Baruch among the canonical
prophets. Ἰερεμίας, καὶ
σὺν αὐτῷ Βαρούχ,
Θρῆνοι, Ἐπιστολὴ
καὶ μετ᾽ αὐτὸν Ἰεζεκιήλ,
κ.τ.λ.—Ep. Fest.
In distinguishing the man Daniel from our book of Daniel, and
in bringing the latter as low as the reign of Epiphanes, our author only follows
the admitted necessities of the case. Auberlen indeed defends, but says, ‘Die Unächtheit Daniels ist
in der modernen Theologie zum Axiom geworden.’—Der Prophet Daniel. Basel.
1854. Compare ‘Philosophy of
Universal History’ (part of the Hippolytus),
vol i. pp. 217-219, with Gott in der Geschichte, 1str Theil. pp. 5l4-540. The saying that later Jews changed the place of the
book in the canon, seems
to rest on no evidence.
It provokes a smile on serious topics to observe the zeal with
which our critic vindicates the personality of Jonah, and the originality of his
hymn (the latter being generally thought doubtful), while he proceeds to explain
that the narrative of our book, in which the hymn is imbedded, contains a late legend, The present writer feels excused from repeating here the explanation
given in the appendix to his Sermon on Christian Freedom. London, 1858.
But, if such a notion alarms those who think that, apart from omniscience belonging to the Jews, the proper conclusion of reason is atheism; it is not inconsistent with the idea that Almighty God has been pleased to educate men and nations, employing imagination no less than conscience, and suffering His lessons to play freely within the limits of humanity and its shortcomings. Nor will any fair reader rise from the prophetical disquisitions without feeling that he has been under the guidance of a master’s hand.
The great result is to vindicate the work of the Eternal Spirit;
that abiding influence, which as our church teaches us in the Ordination Service,
underlies all others, and in which converge all images of old time and means of
grace now; temple, Scripture, finger, and hand of God; and again, preaching, sacraments, waters which comfort, and flame which burns. If such a Spirit did not dwell
in the Church the Bible would not be inspired, for the Bible is, before all things,
the written voice of the congregation. Bold as such a theory of inspiration may
sound, it was the earliest creed of the Church, and it is the only one to which
the facts of Scripture answer. The sacred writers acknowledge themselves men of
like passions with ourselves, and we are promised illumination from the Spirit which
dwelt in them. Hence, when we find our Prayer-book constructed on the idea of the
Church being an inspired society, instead of objecting that every one of us is fallible,
we should define inspiration consistently with the facts of Scripture, and of human
nature. These would neither exclude the idea of fallibility among Israelites of
old, nor teach us to quench the Spirit in true hearts for ever. But if any one prefers
thinking the Sacred Writers passionless machines, and calling Luther and Milton
‘uninspired,’ let him co-operate in researches by which his theory, if true, will
be triumphantly confirmed. Let him join in considering it a religious duty to print
the most genuine text of those words which he calls Divine; let him yield no grudging
assent to the removal of demonstrated interpolations in our text or errors in our
translation; let him give English equivalents for its Latinisms, once natural, but
now become deceptive; let him next trace fairly the growth of our complex doctrines
out of scriptural germs, whether of simple thought or of Hebrew idiom, then, if
he be not prepared to trust our Church with a larger freedom in incorporating into
her language
On turning to the Hippolytus Hippolytus and his
Age, by Chr. C. J. Bunsen, &c. London, 1852. 2nd edition recast, London,
1854. The awakening freshness of the first edition is hardly replaced by the
fulness of the second. It is to be wished
that the Biblical portions of the Philosophy of Universal History, vol. ii.
pp.
149-338, were reprinted is a cheap form.
This recognition of Christ as the moral Saviour of mankind may
seem to some Baron Bunsen’s most obvious claim to the name of Christian. For, though
he embraces with more than orthodox warmth New Testament terms, he explains them
in such a way, that he may be charged with using Evangelical language in
a philosophical sense. But in reply he would ask, what proof is there that
the reasonable sense of St. Paul’s words was not the one which the Apostle intended?
Why may not justification by faith have meant the peace of mind, or sense of Divine
approval, which comes of trust in a righteous God, rather than a fiction of merit
by transfer? St. Paul would then be teaching moral responsibility, as opposed to
sacerdotalism; or that to obey is better than sacrifice. Faith would be opposed,
not to the good deeds which conscience requires, but to works of appeasement The doctrine of the Fall, the doctrine of Grace, and the doctrine
of Atonement, are grounded in the instincts of mankind.’—Mozley on Predestination,
chap. xi. p. 331.
If our philosopher had persuaded us of the moral nature of Justification,
he would not shrink from adding that Regeneration is a correspondent giving of insight,
or an awakening of forces of the soul. By Resurrection he would mean a spiritual
quickening. Salvation would be our deliverance, not from the life-giving God, but
from evil and darkness, which are His finite opposites, (ὁ ἀντικείμενος. Propitiation
would be the recovery of that peace, which cannot be while sin divides us from the
Searcher of hearts. The eternal is what belongs to God, as spirit, therefore the
negation of things finite and unspiritual, whether world, or letter, or rite of
blood. The hateful fires of the vale of Hinnom, (Gehenna,) are hardly in the strict
letter imitated by the God who has pronounced them cursed, but may serve as images
of distracted remorse. Heaven On this point, the summary of St. Augustine at the end of
his 13th book, ‘On the Trinity,’ is worth reading. ’Neque sermo aliud quam Deus neque caro aliud quam homo,’
and ‘ex carne homo, ex spiritu Deus.’—Tertullian adv. Prax. cxxvii. Comp.
If we would estimate the truth of such views, the full import
of which hardly lies on the surface, we find two lines of inquiry present themselves as criteria: and each of these divides itself into two branches. First, as
regards the subject matter, both spiritual affection and metaphysical reasoning
forbid us to confine revelations like those of Christ to the first half century
of our era, but show at least affinities of our faith existing in men’s minds, anterior
to Christianity, and renewed with deep echo from living hearts in many a generation.
Again, on the side of external criticism, we find the evidences of our canonical
books and of the patristic authors nearest to them, are Butler’s Analogy. Part ii. ch. iii. Hooker,
Eccl. Pol.
Books i. ii.
Our author then believes St. Paul, because be understands him reasonably.
Nor does his acceptance of Christ’s redemption from evil bind him to repeat traditional
fictions about our canon, or to read its pages with that dulness which turns symbol
and poetry into materialism. On the side of history lies the strength of his genius.
His treatment of the New Testament is not very unlike the acute criticism of De Wette, tempered by the affectionateness of Neander. He finds in the first three
gospels divergent forms of the tradition, once oral, and perhaps catechetical, in
the congregations of the apostles. He thus explains the numerous traces characteristic
of a traditional narrative. He does not ascribe the quadruple division of record
to the four churches of Jerusalem, Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, on the same principle Josephus B. J. b. vi. c. v. § 3. In my own judgment, the Epistle bears traces of being post-apostolic. Clement and Origen, amongst others.
After a survey of the Canon; the working as of leaven in meal,
of that awakening of mankind which took its impulse from the life of Christ, is
traced through the first seven generations of Christendom. After Origen, the first
freedom of the Gospel grows faint, or is hardened into a system more Ecclesiastical
in form, and more dialectical in speculation, the fresh language of feeling or symbol
being transferred to the domain of logic, like Homer turned into prose by a scholiast.
It need not, to a philosophical observer, necessarily follow that the change was
altogether a corruption; for it may have been the Providential condition of religious
feeling brought into contact with intellect, and of the heavenly kingdom’s expansion
in the world. The elasticity with which Christianity gathers into itself the elements
of natural piety, and assimilates the relics of Gentile form and usage, can only
be a ground of objection with those who have reflected little on the nature of revelation.
But Baron Bunsen, as a countryman of Luther, and a follower of those Friends
of God whose profound mysticism appears in the Theologia Germanica, takes
decided part with the first freshness of Christian freedom, against the confused
thought and furious passions which disfigure most of the great councils. Those who
imagine that the laws of criticism are arbitrary (or as they say, subjective), may
learn a different lesson from the array of passages, the balance of evidence, and
the estimate of each author’s point of view, with which the picture of Christian antiquity
The picture was too truly painted for that ecclesiastical school
which appeals loudest to antiquity, and has most reason to dread it. While they
imagine a system of Divine immutability, or one in which, at worst, holy
fathers unfolded reverently Apostolic oracles, the true history of the Church exhibits
the turbulent growth of youth; a democracy, with all its passions, transforming
itself into sacerdotalism, and a poetry, with its figures, partly represented by
doctrine, and partly perverted. Even the text of Scripture fluctuated in sympathy
with the changes of the Church, especially in passages bearing on asceticism, and
the fuller development of the Trinity. The first Christians held that the heart
was purified by faith; the accompanying symbol, water, became by degrees the instrument
of purification. Holy baptism was at first preceded by a vow, in which the young
soldier expressed his consciousness of spiritual truth; but when it became twisted
into a false analogy with circumcision, the rite degenerated into a magical form,
and the Augustinian notion, of a curse inherited by infants, was developed in connexion
with it. Sacrifice, with the Psalmist, meant not the goat’s or heifer’s blood-shedding,
but the contrite heart expressed by it. So, with St. Paul, it meant the presenting of
our souls and bodies,
as an oblation of the reason, or worship of the mind. The ancient liturgies contain
prayers that God would make our sacrifices ‘rational,’ that is spiritual. Religion
was thus moralized by a sense of the righteousness of God; and morality See this shown,
with just rebuke of some Oxford sophistries, in the learned Bishop Kaye’s Council of Nicæa, London, 1853 a book of admirable
moderation, though hardly of speculative power. See pp. 163, 168, 194, 199, 219,
226, 251, 252. Adv. Prax. c. iii.
The historian of such variations was not likely, with those whose
theology consists of invidious terms, to escape the nickname of Pelagian or Sabellian.
He evidently could not state Original Sin in so exaggerated a form as to
make the design of God altered by the first agents in his creation, or to destroy
the notion of moral choice and the foundation of ethics. Nor could his Trinity destroy
by inference that divine Unity which all acknowledge in terms. The fall of Adam
represents with him ideally the circumscription of our spirits in limits of flesh
and time, and practically the selfish nature with which we fall from the likeness
of God, which should be fulfilled in man, So his doctrine of the Trinity ingenuously
avoids building on texts which our Unitarian critics from Sir Isaac Newton to Gilbert
Wakefield have impugned, but is a philosophical rendering of the first chapter of
St. John’s Gospel. The profoundest analysis of our world leaves the law of thought
as its ultimate basis and bond of coherence. This thought is consubstantial with
the Being of the Eternal I AM. Being, becoming, and animating, or substance, thinking,
and conscious life, are expressions of a Triad, which may be also represented as
will, ‘Anima hominis naturâ, suâ in se habet Trinitatis simulacrum;
in se enim tria complectitur, Mentem, Intellectum, et Voluntatem; . . . cogitat . .
. percipit . . . vult.’—Bede i. 8. Copying almost
verbally St. Augustine. Hippolytus, vol. ii. p. 46. lst ed. ‘Liberty of Prophesying,’ pp. 491-2’ vol. vii. ed. Heber.
Burnet’s ‘Own Times.’ Letter from Tillotson at the end.
The strong assertions in the Hippolytus concerning the freedom of the human will, may require some balance from the language of penitence and of prayer. They must be left here to comparison with the constant language of the Greek Church, with the doctrine of the first four centuries, with the schoolmen’s practical evasions of the Augustinian standard which they professed, and with the guarded, but earnest protests and limitations of our own ethical divines from Hooker and Jeremy Taylor to Butler and Hampden.
On the great hope of mankind, the immortality of the soul, the Hippolytus left something to be desired. It had a Brahmanical, rather than a Christian, or Platonic, sound. But the second volume of Gott in der Geschichte seems to imply that, if the author recoils from the fleshly resurrection and Judaic millennium of Justin Martyr, he still shares the aspiration of the noblest philosophers elsewhere, and of the firmer believers among ourselves, to a revival of conscious and individual life, in such a form of immortality as may consist with union with the Spirit of our Eternal life-giver. Remarkable in the same volume is the generous vindication of the first Buddhist Sakya against the misunderstandings which fastened on him a doctrine of atheism and of annihilation. The penetrating prescience of Neander seems borne out on this point by genuine texts against the harsher judgment of recent Sanskrit scholars. He judged as a philosopher, and they as grammarians.
It would be difficult to say on what subject Baron Bunsen is
not at home. But none is handled by him with more familiar mastery than
that of Liturgies, Gesang-und Gebet-buch. Hamburgh. 1846.
It did not fall within the scope of this Essay to define the extent
of its illustrious subject’s obligations (which be would no doubt largely acknowledge)
to contemporary scholars, such as Mr. Birch, or others. Nor was it necessary
to touch questions of ethnology and politics which might be raised by those who
value Germanism so far as it is human, rather than so far as it is German. Sclavonians
might notice the scanty acknowledgment of the vast contributions of their race
to the intellectual wealth of Germany. One might ask, whether the experience of our two latest wars encourage
our looking to Germany for any unselfish sympathy with the rights of nations? Or
has she not rather earned the curse of Meroz? So the vaunted discovery of Professor Zeuss, deriving
Cymry from to imaginary word ‘Combroges,’ is against the testimony of the hest Greek geographers.
THE investigation of that important and extensive subject which
includes what have been usually designated as ‘The Evidences of Revelation,’
has prescriptively occupied a considerable space in the field of theological literature,
especially as cultivated in England. There is scarcely one, perhaps, of our more
eminent divines who has not in a greater or less degree distinguished himself in
this department, and scarcely an aspirant for theological distinction who has not
thought it one of the surest paths to that eminence, combining so many and varied
motives of ambition, to come forward as a champion in this arena. At the present
day it might be supposed the discussion of such a subject, taken up as it has been
successively in all its conceivable different bearings, must be nearly exhausted.
It must, however, be borne in mind, that, unlike the essential doctrines
of Christianity, ‘the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,’ these external accessories
constitute a subject which of necessity is perpetually taking somewhat at least
of a new form, with the successive phases of opinion and knowledge. And it thus
becomes not an unsatisfactory nor unimportant object, from time to time, to review
the condition in which the discussion stands, and to comment on the peculiar features
which at any particular epoch it most prominently presents, as indicative of strength
or weakness—of the advance and security of the cause—if, in accordance with the
real progress of enlightenment, its advocates have had the wisdom to rescind what
better information showed defective, and
Before proceeding to the main question we may, however, properly premise a brief reflection on the spirit and temper in which it should be discussed. In writings on these subjects it must be confessed we too often find indications of a polemical acrimony on questions where a calm discussion of arguments would be more becoming, as well as more consistent with the proposed object; the too frequent assumption of the part of the special partisan and ingenious advocate, when the character to be sustained should be rather that of the unbiassed judge; too much of hasty and captious objection on the one hand, or of settled and inveterate prejudice on the other; too strong a tendency not fairly to appreciate, or even to keep out of sight, the broader features of the main question, in the eagerness to single out particular salient points for attack; too ready a disposition to triumph in lesser details, rather than steadily to grasp more comprehensive principles, and leave minor difficulties to await their solution, or to regard this or that particular argument as if the entire credit of the cause were staked upon it.
And if on the one side there is often a just complaint that objections are urged in a manner and tone offensive to religious feeling and conscientious prepossessions, which are, at least, entitled to respectful consideration; so, on the other, there is too often evinced a want of sympathy with the difficulties which many so seriously feel in admitting the alleged evidences, and which many habitual believers do not appreciate, perhaps because they have never thought or enquired deeply on the subject; or, what is more, have believed it wrong and impious to do so.
Any appeal to argument must imply perfect freedom of conviction. It is a palpable absurdity to put reasons before a man, and yet wish to compel him to adopt them, or to anathematize him if he find them unconvincing; to repudiate him as an unbeliever, because he is careful to find satisfactory grounds for his belief; or to denounce him as a sceptic, because he is scrupulous to discriminate the truth; to assert that his honest doubts evince a moral obliquity; in a word, that he is no judge of his own mind; while it is obviously implied that his instructor is so—or, in other words, is omniscient and infallible. When serious difficulties have been felt and acknowledged on any important subject, and a writer undertakes the task of endeavouring to obviate them, it is but a fair demand that, if the reader be one of those who do not feel the difficulties, or do not need or appreciate any further argument to enlighten or support his belief, he should not cavil at the introduction of topics, which may be valuable to others, though needless, or distasteful to himself. Such persons are in no way called upon to enter into the discussion, but they are unfair if they accuse those who do so of agitating questions of whose existence they have been unconscious; and of unsettling men’s minds, because their own prepossessions have been long settled, and they do not perceive the difficulties of others, which it is the very aim of such discussion to remove.
Perhaps most of the various parties who have at all engaged in
the discussion of these subjects are agreed in admitting a wide distinction
between the influences of feeling and those of reason; the impressions of
conscience and the deductions of intellect; the dictations of moral and religious sense,
and the conclusions from evidence; in reference especially to the questions agitated
as to the grounds of belief in Divine revelation. Indeed, when we take into account
the nature of the objects considered, the distinction is manifest
In the questions now under consideration, both classes of arguments are usually involved. It is the professed principle of at least a large section of those who discuss the subject, that the question is materially connected with the truth and evidence of certain external alleged historical facts: while again, all will admit that the most essential and vital portion of the inquiry refers to matters of a higher—of a more internal, moral, and spiritual kind.
But while this distinction is clearly implied and even professedly acknowledged by the disputants, it is worthy of careful remark, bow extensively it is overlooked and kept out of sight in practice; how commonly—almost universally, we find writers and reasoners taking up the question, even with much ability and eloquence, and arguing it out sometimes on the one, sometimes on the other ground, forgetful of their own professions, and in a way often quite inconsistent with them.
Thus we continually find the professed advocates of an external
revelation and historical evidence, nevertheless making their appeal to conscience
and feeling, and decrying the exercise of reason; and charging those who find critical
objections in the evidence with spiritual blindness and moral perversity; and on
the other hand we observe the professed upholders of faith and internal conviction
as the only sound basis of religion, nevertheless regarding the external facts as
not less essential truth which it would be profane to question. It often seems to
be rather the want of clear apprehension in the first instance of the distinct
Thus it is the common language of orthodox writings and discourses to advise the believer, when objections or difficulties arise, not to attempt to offer a precise answer, or to argue the point, but rather to look at the whole subject as of a kind which ought to be exempt from critical scrutiny and be regarded with a submission of judgment, in the spirit of humility and faith. This advice may be very just in reference to practical impressions; yet if the question be one (as is so much insisted on) of external facts, it amounts to neither more nor less than a tacit surrender of the claims of external evidence and historical reality. We are told that we ought to investigate such high questions rather with our affections than with our logic, and approach them rather with good dispositions and right motives, and with a desire to find the doctrine true; and thus shall discover the real assurance of its truth in obeying it; suggestions which, however good in a moral and practical sense, are surely inapplicable if it be made a question of facts.
If we wore inquiring into historical evidence in any other
case (suppose e.g. of Cæsar’s landing in Britain) it would be little to the
purpose to be told that we must look at the case through our desires rather than
our reason, and exercise a believing disposition rather than rashly scrutinize testimony
by critical cavils. Those
We find certain forms of expression commonly stereotyped among a very large class of Divines, whenever a critical difficulty or a sceptical exception is urged, which are very significant as to the prevalent view of religious evidence. Their reply is always of this tenor: ‘These are not subjects on which you can expect demonstrative evidence; you must be satisfied to accept such general proof or probability as the nature of the question allows: you must not inquire too curiously into these things; it is sufficient that we have a general moral evidence of the doctrines; exact critical discussion will always rake up difficulties, to which perhaps no satisfactory answer can be at once given. A precise sceptical caviller will always find new objections as soon as the first are refuted. It is in vain to seek to convince reason unless the conscience and the will be first well-disposed to accept the truth.’ Such is the constant language of orthodox theologians. What is it but a mere translation into other phraseology, of the very assertions of the sceptical transcendentalist?
Indeed, with many who take up these questions,
they are almost avowedly placed on the ground of
practical expediency rather than of abstract truth.
Good and earnest men become alarmed for the
dangerous consequences they think likely to result
from certain speculations on these subjects, and
thence in arguing against them, are led to assume
a tone of superiority, as the guardians of virtue and censors of right, rather than as unprejudiced inquirers
If indeed the discussion were carried on upon the professed ground of spiritual impression and religious feeling, there would be a consistency in such a course; but when evidential arguments are avowedly addressed to the intellect, it is especially preposterous to shift the ground, and charge the rejection of them on moral motives; while those who impute such bad motives fairly expose themselves to the retort, that their own belief may be dictated by other considerations than the love of truth.
Again, in such inquiries there is another material distinction very commonly lost sight of; the difference between discussing the truth of a conclusion, or opinion, and the mode or means of arriving at it; or the arguments by which it is supported. Either may clearly be impugned or upheld without implicating the other. We may have the best evidence, but draw a wrong conclusion from it; or we may support an incontestible truth by very fallacious arguments.
The present discussion is not intended to be of a controversial kind, it is purely contemplative and theoretical; it is rather directed to a calm and unprejudiced survey of the various opinions and arguments adduced, whatever may be their ulterior tendency, on these important questions; and to the attempt to state, analyse, and estimate them just as they may seem really conducive to the high object professedly in view.
The idea of a positive external Divine revelation
of some kind has formed the very basis of all hitherto
The scope and character of the various discussions raised on ‘the evidences of religion,’ have varied much in different ages, following of course both the view adopted of revelation itself, the nature of the objections which for the time seemed most prominent, or most necessary to be combated, and stamped with the peculiar intellectual character, and reasoning tone, of the age to which they belonged.
The early apologists were rather defenders of the Christian cause generally; but when they entered on evidential topics, naturally did so rather in accordance with the prevalent modes of thought, than with what would now be deemed a philosophic investigation of alleged facts and critical appreciation of testimony in support of them.
In subsequent ages, as the increasing claims of infallible Church
authority gained ground, to discuss evidence became superfluous, and even dangerous
and impious; accordingly, of this branch of theological
It was not perhaps till the 15th century, that any works bearing
the character of what are now called treatises on ‘the evidences’ appeared; and
these were probably elicited by the sceptical spirit which had already begun to
show itself, arising out of the subtilties of the schoolmen. Several such
treatises are enumerated and described by Eichhorn. See Hallam’s Lit. of Europe, i. p. 190.
But in modern times, and under Protestant auspices, a greater disposition to follow up this kind of discussion has naturally been developed. The sterner genius of Protestantism required definition, argument, and proof, where the ancient church had been content to impress by the claims of authority, veneration, and prescription, and thus left the conception of truth to take the form of a mere impression of devotional feeling or exalted imagination.
Protestantism sought something more definite and substantial,
and its demands were seconded and supported, more especially by the spirit
of metaphysical reasoning which so widely extended itself in the 17th century, even
into the domains of theology; and divines, stirred up by the allegations of the
Deists, aimed at formal refutations of their objections, by drawing out the idea
and the proofs of revelation into systematic propositions supported by logical arguments.
In that and the subsequent period the same general style of argument on these topics
prevailed among the advocates of the Christian cause. The appeal was mainly to the
miracles of the Gospels, and here it was contended we want merely the same testimony
of eye-witnesses which would suffice to substantiate any ordinary matter of fact;
accordingly, the narratives were to be traced to writers at the time, who were either
themselves
It is true, indeed, that some consideration of the internal evidence derived from the excellence of the doctrines and morality of the Gospel was allowed to enter the discussion, but it formed only a subordinate branch of the evidences of Christianity. The main and essential point was always the consideration of external facts, and the attestations of testimony offered in support of them. Assuming Christianity to be essentially connected with certain outward and sensible events, the main thing to be inquired into and established, was the historical evidence of those events, and the genuineness of the records of them; if this were satisfactorily made out, then it was considered the object was accomplished. The external facts simply substantiated, the intrinsic doctrines and declarations of the Gospel must by necessary consequence be Divine truths.
If we compare the general tone, character, and pretensions of
those works which, in our schools and colleges, have been regarded as the standard
authorities on the subject of ‘the evidences,’ we must acknowledge a great change
in the taste or opinions of the times from the commencement of the last century
to the present day; which has led the student to turn from the erudite folios of
Jackson and Stillingfleet, or the more condensed arguments of Clarke On the Attributes,
Grotius de Veritate, and Leslie’s Method with the Deists, the
universal textbooks of a past generation, to the writings of Lardner
The state of opinion and information in different ages is peculiarly
shown in the tone and character of those discussions which have continually arisen,
affecting the grounds of religious belief. The particular species of
difficulty or objection in the reception of Christianity, and especially of its
external manifestations, which have been found most formidable, have varied
greatly in different ages according to the prevalent modes of thought and the character of the dominant philosophy.
Thus, the difficulties with respect to miraculous evidence in particular, will necessarily
be very differently viewed in different stages of philosophical and physical information.
Difficulties in the idea of suspensions of natural laws, in former ages were not
at all felt, canvassed, or thought of. But in later times they have assumed a much
deeper importance. In an earlier period of our theological literature, the critical
investigation of the question of miracles was a point scarcely at all appreciated.
The attacks of the Deists of the 17th and early part of the 18th century were almost
wholly directed to other points. But the speculations of Woolston, and still more
the subsequent influence of the celebrated Essay Div. Leg. ix.
5. Criterion, pp. 239, 241.
But it was long since perceived that the argument from necessity
of miracles is at best a very hazardous one, since it implies the presumption
of constituting ourselves judges of such necessity, and admits the fair objection—when
were miracles more needed than at the present day, to indicate the truth amid manifold
error, or to propagate the faith? And again, in the other case, how is the inspiration
to be ascertained apart from the miracles? or, if it be, what is the use of the
miracles? In fact, in proportion as external evidence to facts is made the professed
demand, it follows that we can only recur to those grounds and roles by which the
intellect always proceeds in the satisfactory investigation of any questions of
fact and evidence, especially those of physical phenomena. By an adherence
to those great principles on which
In appreciating the evidence for any events of a striking or wonderful kind, we must bear in mind the extreme difficulty which always occurs in eliciting the truth, dependent not on the uncertainty in the transmission of testimony, but even in cases where we were ourselves witnesses, on the enormous influence exerted by our prepossessions previous to the event, and by the momentary impressions consequent upon it. We look at all events, through the medium of our prejudices, or even where we may have no prepossessions, the more sudden and remarkable any occurrence may be, the more unprepared we are to judge of it accurately or to view it calmly; our after representations, especially of any extraordinary and striking event, are always at the best mere recollections of our impressions, of ideas dictated by our emotions at the time, of surprise and astonishment which the suddenness and hurry of the occurrence did not allow us time to reduce to reason, or to correct by the sober standard of experience or philosophy.
Questions of this kind are often perplexed for want of due attention
to the laws of human thought and belief, and of due distinction in ideas and terms.
The proposition ‘that an event may be so incredible intrinsically as to set aside
any degree of testimony,’ in no way applies to or affects the honesty or
veracity of that testimony, or the reality of the impressions on
the minds of the witnesses, so far as it relates to the matter of sensible
fact simply. It merely means this: that from the nature of our antecedent convictions,
the probability of some kind of mistake or deception somewhere, though
we know not where, is greater than
This of course turns on the general grounds of our antecedent convictions. The question agitated is not that of mere testimony, of its value, or of its failures. It refers to those antecedent considerations which must govern our entire view of the subject, and which being dependent on higher laws of belief, must be paramount to all attestation, or rather belong to a province distinct from it. What is alleged is a case of the supernatural; but no testimony can reach to the supernatural; testimony can apply only to apparent sensible facts; testimony can only prove an extraordinary and perhaps inexplicable occurrence or phenomenon: that it is due to supernatural causes is entirely dependent on the previous belief and assumptions of the parties.
If at the present day any very extraordinary and unaccountable fact were exhibited before the eyes of an unbiassed, educated, well-informed individual, and supposing all suspicion of imposture put out of the question, his only conclusion would be that it was something he was unable at present to explain; and if at all versed in physical studies, he would not for an instant doubt either that it was really due to some natural cause, or that if properly recorded and examined, it would at some future time receive its explanation by the advance of discovery.
It is thus the prevalent conviction that at the present day miracles are not to be expected, and consequently alleged marvels are commonly discredited.
But as exceptions proving the rule, it cannot be denied that amid
the general scepticism, instances sometimes occur of particular persons and parties
who, on peculiar grounds, firmly believe in the occurrence of certain miracles even
in our own times. But we invariably find that this is only in connexion with their
own particular tenets, and restricted to the communion
To take a single instance, we may refer to the alleged miraculous ‘tongues’ among the followers of the late Mr. Irving some years ago. It is not, and was not, a question of records or testimony, or fallibility of witnesses, or exaggerated or fabulous narratives. At the time, the matter was closely scrutinized and inquired into, and many perfectly unprejudiced, and even sceptical persons, themselves witnessed the effects, and were fully convinced, as, indeed, were most candid inquirers at the time, that after all reasonable or possible allowance for the influence of delusion or imposture, beyond all question, certain extraordinary manifestations did occur. But just as little as the mere fact could be disputed, did any sober-minded person, except those immediately interested, or influenced by peculiar views, for a moment believe those effects to be miraculous. Even granting that they could not be explained by any known form of nervous affection, or on the like physiological grounds, still that they were in some way to be ascribed to natural causes, as yet perhaps little understood, was what no one of ordinarily cultivated mind, or dispassionate judgment, ever doubted.
On such questions we can only hope to form just and legitimate
conclusions from an extended and unprejudiced study of the laws and phenomena
of the natural world. The entire range of the inductive philosophy is at once based
upon, and in every
Such are the arguments of those who have failed to grasp the positive scientific idea of the power of the inductive philosophy, or the order of nature. The boundaries of nature exist only where our present knowledge places them; the discoveries of to-morrow will alter and enlarge them. The inevitable progress of research must, within a longer or shorter period, unravel all that seems most marvellous, and what is at present least understood will become as familiarly known to the science of the future, as those points which a few centuries ago were involved in equal obscurity, but are now thoroughly understood.
None of these, or the like instances, are at all of the same kind,
or have any characteristics in common with the idea of what is implied by the term
‘miracle,’ Which is asserted to mean something at variance with nature and law;
there is not the slightest analogy between an unknown or inexplicable phenomenon,
and a supposed suspension of a known law: even an exceptional case of
a known law is included in some larger law. Arbitrary interposition is wholly
different
The enlarged critical and inductive study of the natural world, cannot but tend powerfully to evince the inconceivableness of imagined interruptions of natural order, or supposed suspensions of the laws of matter, and of that vast series of dependent causation which constitutes the legitimate field for the investigation of science, whose constancy is the sole warrant for its generalizations, while it forms the substantial basis for the grand conclusions of natural theology. Such would be the grounds on which our convictions would be regulated as to marvellous events at the present day; such the rules which we should apply to the like eases narrated in ordinary history.
But though, perhaps, the more general admission at the present day of critical principles in the study of history, as well as the extension of physical knowledge, has done something to diffuse among the better informed class more enlightened notions on this subject, taken abstractedly, yet they may be still much at a loss to apply such principles in all cases: and readily conceive that there are possible instances in which large exceptions must be made.
The above remarks may be admitted in respect to events at the present day and those narrated in ordinary history; but it will be said there may be, and there are, cases which are not like those of the present times nor of ordinary history.
Thus if we attempt any uncompromising, rigid scrutiny of the Christian miracles, on the same grounds on which we should investigate any ordinary narrative of the supernatural or marvellous, we are stopped by the admonition not to make an irreverent and profane intrusion into what ought to be held sacred and exempt from such unhallowed criticism of human reason.
Yet the champions of the ‘Evidences’ of Christianity have professedly
rested the discussion of the
In history generally our attention is often called to
narratives of the marvellous: and there is a sense in which they may be viewed
with reference to its general purport and in connexion with those influences on
human nature which play so conspicuous a part in many events. Thus it has been
well remarked by Dean Milman—‘History to be true must condescend to speak the
language of legend; the belief of the times is part of the record of the times;
and though there may occur what may baffle its more calm and searching
philosophy, it must not disdain that which was the primal, almost universal
motive of human life.’ Latin Christianity, vol. i. p. 388.
Yet in a more general point of view, when we consider the strict office of the critical historian, it is obvious that such cases are fair subjects of analysis, conducted with the view of ascertaining their real relation to nature and fact.
From the general maxim that all history is open to criticism as to its grounds of evidence, no professed history can be exempt without forfeiting its historical character; and in its contents, what is properly historical, is, on the same grounds, fairly to be distinguished from what may appear to be introduced on other authority and with other objects. Thus, the general credit of an historical narrative does not exclude the distinct scrutiny into any statements of a supernatural kind which it may contain; nor supersede the careful estimation of the value of the testimony on which they rest—the directness of its transmission from eye-witnesses, as well as the possibility of misconception of its tenor, or of our not being in possession of all the circumstances on which a correct judgment can be formed.
It must, however, be confessed that the propriety of such dispassionate examination is too little appreciated, or the fairness of weighing well the improbabilities on one side, against possible openings to misapprehension on the other.
The nature of the laws of all human belief, and the broader grounds of probability and credibility of events, have been too little investigated, and the great extent to which all testimony must be modified by antecedent credibility as determined by such general laws, too little commonly understood to be readily applied or allowed.
Formerly (as before observed) there was no question as to general credibility. But in later times the most orthodox seem to assume that interposition would be generally incredible; yet endeavour to lay down rules and criteria by which it may be rendered probable, in cases of great emergency. Miracles were formerly the rule, latterly the exception.
The arguments of Middleton and others, all assume the antecedent
incredibility of miracles in general, in order to draw more precisely the distinction
that in certain cases of a very special nature that improbability Essay, Book i. ch. xvi. § 13.
The belief in Divine interposition must be essentially dependent on what we previously admit or believe with respect to the Divine attributes.
It was formerly argued that every Theist must admit the credibility of miracles; but this, it is now seen, depends on the nature and degree of his Theism, which may vary through many shades of opinion. It depends, in fact, on the precise view taken of the Divine attributes; such, of course, as is attainable prior to our admission of revelation, or we fall into an argument in a vicious circle. The older writers on natural theology, indeed, have professed to deduce very exact conclusions as to the Divine perfections, especially Omnipotence; conclusions which, according to the physical argument already referred to, appear carried beyond those limits to which reason or science are competent to lead us; while, in fact, all our higher and more precise ideas of the Divine perfections are really derived from that very revelation, whose evidence is the point in question. The Divine Omnipotence is entirely an inference from the language of the Bible, adopted on the assumption of a belief in revelation. That ‘with God nothing is impossible,’ is the very declaration of Scripture; yet on this, the whole belief in miracles is built, and thus, with the many, that belief is wholly the result, not the antecedent of faith.
But were these views of the
Divine attributes, on the other hand, ever so well established, it must be considered
that the Theistic argument requires to be applied with much caution; since most
of those, who adopted such theories of the Divine perfections, See Mansel, Bampt. Lect. p.
185. Theism, &c. p. 263, comp, p. 113. Persuasio de supernaturali et
miraculosa eademque immediata Dei
revelatione, haud bene conciliari videtur cum idea Dei æterni, semper sibi constantis,
&c.,—Wegscheider, Instit. Theol. § 12.
Paley’s grand resource is ‘once believe in a God, and all is easy.’ Now, no men have evinced a more deep-seated and devout belief in the Divine perfections than the writers just named, or others differing from them by various shades of opinion, as the late J. Sterling, Mr. Emerson, and Professor F. W. Newman. Yet these writers have agreed in the inference that the entire view of Theistic principles, in their highest spiritual purity, is utterly at variance with all conception of suspensions of the laws of nature, or with the idea of any kind of external manifestation addressed to the senses, as overruling the higher, and as they conceive, sole worthy and fitting convictions of moral sense and religious intuition.
We here speak impartially and disinterestedly, since we are far
from agreeing in their reasonings, or even
In advancing from the argument for miracles to the argument from miracles; it should, in the first instance, be considered that the evidential force of miracles (to whatever it may amount) is wholly relative to the apprehensions of the parties addressed.
Thus, in an ‘evidential’ point of view, it by no means follows, supposing we at this day were able to explain what in an ignorant age was regarded as a miracle, that therefore that event was not equally evidential to those immediately addressed.. Columbus’s prediction of the eclipse to the native islanders was as true an argument to them as if the event had really been supernatural.
It is a consideration adopted by some eminent divines that in the very language of the Gospels the distinction is always kept up between mere ‘wonders’ (τίρατα) and ‘miracles’ or ‘signs’ (σημεῖα); that is to say, the latter were occurrences not viewed as mere matters of wonder or astonishment, but regarded as indications of other truths, specially adapted to convince those to whom they were addressed in their existing stage of enlightenment.
Archbishop Whately, besides dwelling on this distinction, argues
that ‘the apostles would not only not have been believed but not even listened
to, if they had not first roused men’s attention by working, as we are
told they did, special (remarkable) miracles.’ Lessons on Evidences, vii. §
5.
Some have gone further, and have considered the application of
miracles as little more than is expressed in the ancient proverb, ‘θαύματα μώροις’—which
is Letter and Spirit, by Rev. J. Wilson, 1852, p. 21.
Schleiermacher regards the miracles as only
relatively or apparently such, to the apprehensions of the age. By the Jews we know
such manifestations, especially the power of healing, were held to constitute the
distinctive marks of the Messiah, according to the prophecies of their Scriptures.
Signs of an improper or irrelevant kind were refused, and even those which were
granted were not necessarily nor universally conclusive. With some they were so,
but with the many the case was different. The Pharisees set down the miracles of
Christ to the power of evil spirits; and in other cases no conviction As, e. g.,
The later Jews adopted the strange legend of the ‘Sepher Toldeth
Yehsu’ (Book of the Generation of Jesus), which describes his miracles
substantially as in the Gospels, but says that he obtained his power by hiding
himself in the Temple, and possessing himself of the secret ineffable name, by
virtue of which such wonders could be wrought. Orobio, a Jewish writer, quoted by Limborch
(De Verit. p. 12-156). observes:—‘Non crediderunt Judæi non illa quæ in
Evangelio, narrantur a Jesu facta esses negabant; se quia iis se persuaderi non
sunt passi ut Jesum crederent Messiam.’ Celsus ascribed the Christian miracles
to magic (Origen
cont. Cels. i. 38; ii. 9.) as Julian did those of St. Paul to superior knowledge
of nature. (Ap. Cyr. iii. 100.) The general charge of magic is noticed by
Tertullian,. Ap. 23. See also Dean Lyall, Propædia Prophetica,
439. Neander, Hist. i. 67.
All moral evidence must essentially have respect to the parties to be convinced. ‘Signs’ might be adapted peculiarly to the state of moral or intellectual progress of one age, or one class of persons, and not be suited to that of others. With the cotemporaries of Christ and the Apostles, it was not a question of testimony or credibility; it was not the mere occurrence of what they all regarded as a supernatural event, as such, but the particular character to be assigned to it, which was the point in question. And it is to the entire difference in the ideas, prepossession, modes, and grounds of belief in those times that we may trace the reason why miracles, which would be incredible now, were not so in the age and under the circumstances in which they are stated to have occurred.
The force and function of all moral evidence is nullified and destroyed if we seek to apply that kind of argument which does not find a response in the previous views or impressions of the individual addressed; all evidential reasoning is essentially an adaptation to the conditions of mind and thought of the parties addressed, or it fails in its object. An evidential appeal which in a long past age was convincing as made to the state of knowledge in that age, might have not only no effect, but even an injurious tendency, if urged in the present, and referring to what is at variance with existing scientific conceptions; just as the arguments of the present age would have been unintelligible to a former.
In his earlier views of miracles Dr. J. H. Newman Essay on Miracles,
&c. p. 107. Christianity, &c. Davison’s transl. 1847, p. 226.
This was also the argument of several of the Reformers, as Luther,
Huss, and others See Seckendorf’s Hist. Luther., iii. 633.
The force of the appeal to miracles must ever be essentially dependent on the preconceptions of the parties addressed. Yet even in an age, or among a people, entertaining an indiscriminate belief in the supernatural, the allegation of particular miracles as evidential may be altogether vain; the very extent of their belief may render it ineffective in furnishing proofs to authenticate the communications of any teacher as a Divine message. The constant belief in the miraculous may neutralize all evidential distinctions which it may be attempted to deduce. Of this we have a striking instance on record, in the labours of the missionary, Henry Martyn, among the Persian Mahometans. They believed readily all that he told them of the Scripture miracles, but directly paralleled them by wonders of their own; they were proof against any argument from the resurrection, because they held that their own Sheiks had the power of raising the dead.
It is also stated that the later Jewish Rabbis, on the same plea
that miracles were believed to be wrought by so many teachers, of the most
different doctrines, denied their evidential force altogether. For some instances of this class of objections, see Dean
Lyall’s
Propædia Prophetica, p. 437 et seq.
By those who take a more enlarged survey of the subject, it cannot fail to be remarked how different has been the spirit in which miracles were contemplated as they are exhibited to us in the earlier stages of ecclesiastical literature, from that in which they have been regarded in modern times; and this especially in respect to that particular view which has so intimately connected them with precise ‘evidential arguments;’ and by a school of writers, of whom Paley may be taken as the type, and who regard them as the sole external proof and certificate of a Divine revelation.
But at the present day this ‘evidential’ view of miracles as the sole or even the principal external attestation to the claims of a Divine revelation, is a species of reasoning which appears to have lost ground even among the most earnest advocates of Christianity. It is now generally admitted that Paley took too exclusive a view in asserting that we cannot conceive a revelation substantiated in any other way. And it has been even more directly asserted by some zealous supporters of Christian doctrine that the external evidences are altogether inappropriate and worthless.
Thus by a school of writers of the most highly orthodox pretensions,
it is elaborately argued, to the effect, that revelation ought to be believed though
destitute of strict evidence, either internal or external; and though we neither
see it nor know it. See Tracts for the Times, No. lxxxv. pp. 85-100. Tract No. x. p. 4. British Critic, No. xlviii. p. 304. Edin. Rev. No. cxli. Aids to
Reflexion, i. p. 333.
But still further: Paley’s well-known conclusion to the 5th book
of his Moral Philosophy, pronounced by Dr. Parr to be the finest prose passage
in English literature, more especially his final summing up of the evidential argument
in the words, ‘He alone discovers who proves: and no man can prove this point (a future
retribution), but the teacher who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes
from God,’—calls forth from Coleridge an emphatic protest against the entire principle,
as being at variance with that moral election which he would make the essential
basis of religious Aids to Reflexion, p. 278. Ib. p. 338.
Some of the most strenuous assertors of miracles have been foremost to disclaim the notion of their being the sole certificate of Divine communication, and have maintained that the true force of the Christian evidences lies in the union and combination of the external testimony of miracles, with the internal excellence of the doctrine; thus, in fact, practically making the latter the real test of the admissibility of the former.
The necessity for such a combination of the evidence of
miracles with the test of the doctrine inculcated is acknowledged in the Bible,
both under the old and the new dispensations. We read of false prophets who
might predict signs and wonders, which might come to pass; but this was to be of
no avail if they led their hearers ‘after other gods.’
In like manner, ‘if an angel from heaven’ preached any other
gospel to the Galatians, they were to reject it.
According to this view, the main ground of the admissibility of external attestations is the worthiness of their object—the doctrine; its unworthiness will discredit even the most distinctly alleged apparent miracles, and such worthiness or unworthiness appeals solely to our moral judgment.
No man has dwelt more forcibly on miraculous evidence than Archbishop
Whately; yet in relation to the character of Christ as conspiring with the
external attestations of his mission, he strongly remarks (speaking, of some who
would ascribe to Christ an unworthy doctrine, an equivocal mode of teaching), ‘If I could believe Jesus to have been guilty of such subterfuges
. . . . . . I not only could
not
acknowledge him as sent from God, but should reject him with the deepest moral indignation.’ Kingdom of Christ, Essay
i. § 12.
Dean Lyall enters largely into this important qualification in
his defence of the miraculous argument, applying it in the most unreserved manner
to the ecclesiastical miracles, Propædia Prophetica, p. 441. Boswell’s Life,
iii. 169. Ed. 1826.
This has, indeed, been the common argument of the most approved
divines: it is that long ago urged by Dr. S. Clarke, Evidences of Natural and Revealed
Religion, § xiv. Notes on Miracles, p. 27.
Again, it has been strongly urged by the last-named See Phases of Faith., p. 154.
The view of miraculous evidence which allows it to be taken only
in connexion with, and in fact in subserviency to, the moral and internal proof
derived from the character of the doctrine, has been pushed to a greater extent
by the writer last named; who asks, What is the value of ‘faith at second hand?’—Ought
any external testimony to overrule internal conviction? Ought any moral truth
to be received in mere obedience to a miracle of sense? Ib. pp. 82,
108, 201, 1st Ed.
If it be alleged that this internal sense may be delusive, not less so, it is replied, may the external senses deceive us as to the world of sense and external evidence. The same author however expressly allows that the claims of ‘the historical’ and ‘the spiritual,’ the proofs addressed to ‘reason’ and to the ‘internal sense,’ may each be properly entertained in their respective provinces—the danger lies in confounding them or mistaking the one for the other.
Even in the estimation of external evidence, everything depends on our preliminary moral convictions, and upon deciding in the first instance whether, on the one hand, we are ‘to abandon moral conviction at the bidding of a miracle,’ or, on the other, to make conformity with moral principles the sole test both of the evidences and of the doctrines of revelation.
In point of fact, lie contends that the main actual
Thus in this fundamental assumption of internal evidence, some of the most orthodox writers are in fact in close agreement with those nominally of a very opposite school.
It was the argument of Döderlein, that ‘the truth of the doctrine does not depend on the miracles, but we must first be convinced of the doctrine by its internal evidence.’
De Wette and others of the rationalists expressly contend,
that the real evidence of the divinity of any doctrine can only be its
accordance with the dictations of this moral sense, and this, Wegscheider
further insists, was in fact the actual appeal of Christ in his
teaching. Jesus ipse doctrinam quam tradidit divinam esse professus
est, quantum divina ejus indoles ab homine vere religioso proboque bene cognosci potest
atque dijudicari.—Wegscheider, in Nulla alia ratio et via eas [doctrinas] examinandi
datur quam ut illarum placita cum iis quæ
via naturali rectæ rationis de Deo ejusque voluntate ipsi innotuerint diligenter componat
et ad normam sine omni superstitione examinet.—Wegscheider, Instit.
Theol. Chris. Dogm., § p.
In a word, on this view, it would follow that all external attestation
would seem superfluous if it concur with, or to be rejected if it oppose, these
moral Such was the argument of the Characteristics, vol.
ii. p. 334. Ed. 1727.
Thus considerations of a very different nature are now introduced from those formerly entertained; and of a kind which affect the entire primary conception of ‘a revelation’ and its authority, and not merely any alleged external attestations of its truth. Thus any discussion of the ‘evidences’ at the present day, must have a reference equally to the influence of the various systems whether of ancient precedent or of modern illumination, which so widely and powerfully affect the state of opinion or belief.
In whatever light we regard the ‘evidences’ of religion, to be of any effect, whether external or internal, they must always have a special reference to the peculiar capacity and apprehension of the party addressed. Points which may be seen to involve the greatest difficulty to more profound inquirers, are often such as do not occasion the least perplexity to ordinary minds, but are allowed to pass without hesitation. To them all difficulties are smoothed down, all objections (if for a moment raised) are at once answered by a few plausible commonplace generalities, which to their minds see invested with the force of axiomatic truths, and to question which they would regard as at once idle and impious.
On the other hand, exceptions held forth as fatal by the shallow
caviller are seen by the more deeply reflecting in all their actual littleness and
fallacy. But for the sake of all parties, at the present day, especially
Those who have reflected most deeply on the nature of the argument from external evidence, will admit that it would naturally possess very different degrees of force as addressed to different ages; and in a period of advanced physical knowledge the reference to what was believed in past times, if at variance with principles now acknowledged, could afford little ground of appeal: in fact, would damage the argument rather than assist it.
Even some of the older writers assign a much lower place to the evidence of miracles, contrasting it with the conviction of real faith, as being merely a preparatory step to it. Thus, an old divine observes:—
‘Adducuntur primum ratione exteri ad
fidem, et quasi præparantur; . . . . . . . signis ergo et miraculis via fidei
per sensus et rationem sternitur.’ Melchior Canus,
Loci Theol. ix. 6. about 1540.
And here it should be especially noticed, as characteristic of the ideas of his age, that this writer classes the sensible evidence of miracles along with the convictions of reason, the very opposite to the view which would now be adopted, indicative of the difference in physical conceptions, which connects miracles rather with faith as they are seen to be inconceivable to reason.
These prevalent tendencies in the opinions of the age cannot but
be regarded as connected with the increasing admission of those broader views of
physical truth and universal order in nature, which have been
In advancing beyond these conclusions to the doctrines of revelation, we must recognise both the due claims of science to decide on points properly belonging to the world of matter, and the independence of such considerations which characterizes the disclosure of spiritual truth, as such.
All reason and science conspire to the confession that beyond the domain of physical causation and the possible conceptions of intellect or knowledge, there lies open the boundless region of spiritual things, which is the sole dominion of faith. And while intellect and philosophy are compelled to disown the recognition of anything in the world of matter at variance with the first principle of the laws of matter—the universal order and indissoluble unity of physical causes—they are the more ready to admit the higher claims of divine mysteries in the invisible and spiritual world. Advancing knowledge, while it asserts the dominion of science in physical things, confirms that of faith in spiritual; we thus neither impugn the generalizations of philosophy, nor allow them to invade the dominion of faith, and admit that what is not a subject for a problem may hold its place in a creed.
In an evidential point of view it has been admitted by some of the most candid divines that the appeal to miracles, however important in the early stages of the Gospel, has become less material in later times, and others have even expressly pointed to this as the reason why they have been withdrawn; whilst at the present day the most earnest advocates of evangelical faith admit that outward marvels are needless to spiritual conviction, and triumph in the greater moral miracle of a converted and regenerate soul.
They echo the declaration of St. Chrysostom—‘If you are a believer
as you ought to be, and love . . . εἰ γὰρ πίστος εἶ ὡς εἶναι χρὴ καὶ φιλεῖς τὸν Χρίστον ὡς φιλεῖν
δεῖ, οὐ χρείαν ἔχεις τῶν σημείων· ταῦτα γὰρ ἀπίστοις δέδοται.—Hom.
xxiii. in Johan. To the same effect also S. Isidore, ‘Tunc oportebat
mundum, miraculis credere,—nunc vero credentem oportet bonis operibus coruscare.’
cited is Huss in defence of Wickliff.
After all, the evidential argument has but little actual weight with the generality of believers. The high moral convictions often referred to for internal evidence are, to say the least, probably really felt by very few, and the appeal made to miracles as proofs of revelation by still fewer; a totally different feeling actuates the many, and the spirit of faith is acknowledged where there is little disposition to reason at all, or where moral and philosophical considerations are absolutely rejected on the highest religious grounds, and everything referred to the sovereign power of divine grace.
Matters of clear and positive fact, investigated on critical grounds and supported by exact evidence, are properly matters of knowledge, not of faith. It is rather in points of less definite character that any exercise of faith can take place; it is rather with matters of religious belief belonging to a higher and less conceivable class of truths, with the mysterious things of the unseen world, that faith owns a connexion, and more readily associates itself with spiritual ideas, than with external evidence, or physical events and it is generally admitted that many points of important religious instruction, even conveyed under the form of fictions (as in the instances of doctrines inculcated through parables) are more congenial to the spirit of faith than any relations of historical events could be.
The more knowledge advances, the more it has been, and will be, acknowledged that Christianity, as a real religion, must be viewed apart from connexion with physical things.
The first dissociation of the spiritual from the physical was rendered necessary by the palpable contradictions disclosed by astronomical discovery with the letter of Scripture. Another still wider and more material step has been effected by the discoveries of geology. More recently the antiquity of the human race, and the development of species, and the rejection of the idea of ‘creation,’ have caused new advances in the same direction.
In all these cases there is, indeed, a direct discrepancy between what had been taken for revealed truth and certain undeniable existing monuments to the contrary.
But these monuments were interpreted by science and reason, and there are other deductions of science and reason referring to alleged events, which, though they have left no monuments or permanent effects behind them, are not the less legitimately subject to the conclusions of positive science, and require a similar concession and recognition of the same principle of the independence of spiritual and of physical truth.
Thus far our observations are general: but at the present moment
some recent publications on the subject seem to call for a few more detailed remarks.
We have before observed that the style and character of works on ‘the evidences’ has of necessity varied in different ages, Those of Leslie and Grotius have, by
common consent, been long since superseded by that of Paley. Paley was long the
text-book at Cambridge; his work was never so extensively popular at Oxford—it
has, of late, been entirely disused there. By the public at large however once
accepted, we do not hesitate to express our belief, that before another quarter
of a century has elapsed it will be laid on the shelf with its predecessors; not
that it is a work destitute of high merit—as is pre-eminently true also of those it superseded,
and of others again anterior to
Paley caught the prevalent tone of thought in his day. Public opinion has now taken a different turn; and, what is more important, the style and class of difficulties and objections honestly felt has become wholly different. New modes of speculation—new forms of scepticism—have invaded the domain of that settled belief which a past age had been accustomed to rest on the Paleyan syllogism. Yet, among several works which have of late appeared on the subject, we recognise few which at all meet these requirements of existing opinion. Of some of the chief of these works, even appearing under the sanction of eminent names, we are constrained to remark that they are altogether behind the age; that amid much learned and acute remark on matters of detail, those material points on which the modern difficulties chiefly turn, as well as the theories advanced to meet them, are, for the most part, not only ignored and passed over without examination or notice, but the entire school of those writers who, with infinitely varied shades of view, have dwelt upon these topics and put forth their attempts, feeble or powerful as the case may be—to solve the difficulties—to improve the tone of discussion, to reconcile the difficulties of reason with the high aspirations and demands of faith—are all indiscriminately confounded in one common category of censure; their views dismissed with ridicule as sophistical and fallacious, abused as infinitely dangerous, themselves denounced as heretics and infidels, and libelled as scoffers and atheists.
In truth, the majority of these champions of the evidential logic
betray an almost entire unconsciousness
Paley clearly, as some of his modern commentators do avowedly, occupied the position of an advocate, not of a judge. They professedly stand up on one side, and challenge the counsel on the other to reply. Their object is not truth, but their client’s case. The whole argument is one of special pleading; we may admire the ingenuity, and confess the adroitness with which favourable points are seized, unfavourable ones dropped, evaded, or disguised; but we do not find ourselves the more impressed with those high and sacred convictions of truth, which ought to result rather from the wary, careful, dispassionate summing-up on both sides, which is the function of the impartial and inflexible judge.
The one topic constantly insisted on as essential to the grounds of belief, considered as based on outward historical evidence, is that of the credibility of external facts as supported by testimony. This has always formed the most material point m the reasonings of the evidential writers of former times, however imperfectly and unsatisfactorily to existing modes of thought they treated it. And to this point, their more recent followers have still almost as exclusively directed their attention.
In the representations which they constantly make, we cannot but notice a strong apparent tendency and
desire to uphold the mere assertion of witnesses as the
supreme evidence of fact, to the utter disparagement of all general grounds of reasoning, analogy, and antecedent
A great source of misapprehension in this class of arguments has been the undue confusion between the force of testimony in regard to human affairs and events in history, and in regard to physical facts. It may be true that some of the most surprising occurrences in ordinary history are currently, and perhaps correctly accepted, on but slight grounds of real testimony; but then they relate to events of a kind which, however singular in their particular concomitant circumstances, are not pretended to be beyond natural causes, or to involve higher questions of intervention.
The most seemingly improbable events in human history may be perfectly credible, on sufficient testimony, however contradicting ordinary experience of human motives and conduct—simply because we cannot assign any limits to the varieties of human dispositions, passions, or tendencies, or the extent to which they may be influenced by circumstances of which, perhaps, we have little or no knowledge to guide us. But no such cases would have the remotest applicability to alleged violations of the laws of matter, or interruptions of the course of physical causes.
The case of the alleged external attestations of Revelation, is one essentially involving considerations of physical evidence. It is not one in which such reflexions and habits of thought as arise out of a familiarity with human history, and moral argument, will suffice. These no doubt and other kindred topics, with which the scholar and the moralist are familiar, are of great and fundamental importance to our general views of the whole subject of Christian evidence; but the particular case of miracles, as such, is one specially bearing on purely physical contemplations, and on which no general moral principles, no common rules of evidence or logical technicalities, can enable us to form a correct judgment. It is not a question which can be decided by a few trite and commonplace generalities as to the moral government of the world and the belief in the Divine Omnipotence—or as to the validity of human testimony, or the limits of human experience. It involves, and is essentially built upon, those grander conceptions of the order of nature, those comprehensive primary elements of all physical knowledge, those ultimate ideas of universal causation, which can only be familiar to those thoroughly versed cosmical philosophy in its widest sense.
In an age of physical research like the present, all highly cultivated
minds and duly advanced intellects have imbibed, more or less, the lessons of the
inductive philosophy, and have at least in some measure learned to appreciate the
grand foundation conception of universal law—to recognise the impossibility even
of any two material atoms subsisting together without a determinate relation—of
any action of the one on the other, whether of equilibrium or of motion, without
reference to a physical cause—of any modification whatsoever in the existing conditions
of material agents, unless through the invariable operation of a series of eternally
impressed consequences, following in some necessary chain of orderly connexion—however
imperfectly
Among writers on these questions, Dean Trench has evinced a higher view of physical philosophy than we might have expected from the mere promptings of philology and literature, when he affirms that ‘we continually behold lower laws held in restraint by higher; mechanic by dynamic—chemical by vital, physical by moral;’ remarks which, if only followed out, entirely accord with the conclusion of universal subordination of causation; though we must remark in passing that the meaning of ‘moral laws controlling physical,’ is not very clear.
It is for the most part hazardous ground for any general moral
reasoner to take, to discuss subjects of evidence which essentially involve that
higher appreciation of physical truth which can be attained only from an
accurate and comprehensive acquaintance with the connected series of the physical
and mathematical sciences. Thus, for example, the simple but grand truth of the
law of conservation, and the stability of the heavenly motions, now well understood
by all sound cosmical philosophers, is but the type of the universal self-sustaining
and self-evolving powers which pervade all nature. Yet the difficulty of conceiving
this truth in its simplest exemplification was formerly the chief hindrance to the
acceptance of the solar system—from the prepossession of the peripatetic dogma that
there
Of these would-be philosophers, we find many anxiously dwelling
on the topic, so undeniably just in itself, of the danger of incautious conclusions—of
the gross errors into which men fall by over-hasty generalizations. They recount
with triumph the absurd mistakes into which some even eminent philosophers have
fallen in prematurely denying what experience has since fully shown to be true,
because in the then state of knowledge it seemed incredible. Numerous
instances of the kind referred to will be found cited in Mr. R. Chamber’s Essay on Testimony, &c. Edinburgh Papers, 1859;
and in Abp. Whately’s Edition of Paley’s Evidences.
These, with a host of other equally recondite, novel, startling, and conclusive instances are urged in a tone of solemn wisdom, to prove:—what? That water is converted into ice by a regular known law; that it has a specific gravity less than water by some law at present but imperfectly understood; that without violation of analogy, fins may be modified into wings; that it is part of the great law of climate that in winter leaves are brown and the ground sometimes white—that machinery may be made with action intermitting by laws as regular as those of its more ordinary operation. In a word, that the philosopher who looks to an endless subordinating series of laws of successively higher generality, is inconsistent in denying events at variance with that subordination!
It is indeed curious to notice the elaborate multiplication
of instances adduced by some of the writers referred to, all really tending to prove
the subordination of facts to laws, clearly evinced as soon
as the cases were well understood, though, till then, often regarded in a
sceptical spirit; while of that scepticism they furnish the real and true refutation
in the principle of law ultimately established, under whatever primary appearance
and semblance of marvellous discordance from all law. It would be beyond our limits
to notice in detail such instances as are thus dwelt upon, and apparently regarded
as of sovereign
These and the like cases are all urged as triumphant proofs, of what?—that some men have always been found of unduly sceptical tendencies; and sometimes of a rationally cautious turn; who have heard strange, and, perhaps, exaggerated narratives, and have maintained sometimes a wise, sometimes an unwise, degree of reserve and caution in admitting them; though they have since proved in accordance with natural causes.
Hallam and Rogers are cited as veritable witnesses to the truth of certain effects of mesmerism in their day generally disbelieved; and for asserting which they were met with all but an imputation of ‘the lie direct.’ They admitted, however, that their assertion was founded on ‘experience so rare as to be had only once in a century;’ but that experience has been since universally borne out by all who have candidly examined the question, and the apparently isolated and marvellous cases have settled down into examples of broad and general laws, now fully justified by experience and analogy.
Physiological evidence is adduced (which we will suppose well
substantiated) to show that the excision of the whole tongue does not take
away the power of speech, though that of the extremity does so; hence the
denial of the story from imperfect experience. So of other cases: the angel at Milan
was the
Granting all these instances, we merely ask—what do they prove?—except the real and paramount dominion of the rule of law and order, of universal subordination of physical causes, as the sole principle and criterion of proof and evidence in the region of physical and sensible truth; and nowhere more emphatically than in the history of marvels and prodigies, do we find a verification of the truth, ‘opinionum commenta delet dies, naturæ judicia confirmat.’
This in fact is the sole real result of all the profound parallelisms and illustrative anecdotes so confidently but unconsciously adduced by these writers with an opposite design.
What is the real conclusion from the far-famed Historic Doubts and the Chronicles of Ecnarf? but simply this—there is a rational solution, a real conformity to analogy and experience, to whatever extent a partially informed inquirer might be led to reject the recounted apparent wonders on imperfect knowledge, and from too hasty inference; these delightful parodies on Scripture (if they prove anything), would simply prove that the Bible narrative is no more properly miraculous than the marvellous exploits of Napoleon I., or the paradoxical events of recent history.
Just a similar scepticism has been evinced by nearly
all the first physiologists of the day, who have joined British Association Address, 1858.
By parity of reason it might just as well be objected to Archbishop
Whately’s theory of civilization, we have only for a few centuries known anything
of savages; how then can we pretend to infer that they have never civilized
themselves? never, in all that enormous length of time which modern discovery has
now indisputably assigned to the existence of the human race! This theory, however,
is now introduced as a comment on Paley in support of the credibility of revelation;
and an admirable argument no doubt it is, though perhaps many would apply it in
a sense somewhat different from that of the author. If the use of fire, the cultivation of the soil, and the like, were
One of the first inductive philosophers of the age, Professor
Faraday, has incurred the unlimited displeasure of these profound intellectualists,
because he has urged that the mere contracted experience of the senses is liable
to deception, and that we ought to be guided in our conclusions—and, in fact, can
only correct the errors of the senses—by a careful recurrence to the consideration
of natural laws and extended analogies. Lecture on Mental Education.
1854. See Edinburgh Papers, ‘Testimony,’ &c., by R. Chambers,
Esq. F.R.S.E., &c.
This, perhaps it will be said, is an extreme case. Let us suppose another:—if a number of veracious witnesses were to allege a real instance of witchcraft at the present day, there might no doubt be found some infatuated persons who would believe it; but the strongest of such assertions to any educated man would but prove either that the witnesses were cunningly imposed upon, or the wizard himself deluded. If the most numerous ship’s company were all to asseverate that they had seen a mermaid, would any rational persons at the present day believe them? That they saw something which they believed to be a mermaid, would be easily conceded. No amount of attestation of innumerable and honest witnesses, would ever convince any one versed in mathematical and mechanical science, that a person had squared the circle or discovered perpetual motion. Antecedent credibility depends on antecedent knowledge, and enlarged views of the connexion and dependence of truths; and the value of any testimony will be modified or destroyed in different degrees to minds differently enlightened.
Testimony, after all, is but a second-hand assurance;—it is but a blind guide; testimony can avail nothing against reason. The essential question of miracles stands quite apart from any consideration of testimony; the question would remain the same, if we had the evidence of our own senses to an alleged miracle, that is, to an extraordinary or inexplicable fact. It is not the mere fact, but the cause or explanation of it, which is the point at issue.
The case, indeed, of the antecedent argument of miracles is very clear, however little some are inclined
perceive it. In nature and from nature, by science
To conclude, an alleged miracle can only be regarded in one of two ways;—either (1) abstractedly as a physical event, and therefore 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 inspiration. 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, 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.
Some of the most strenuous advocates of the Christian
‘evidences’ readily avow, indeed expressly contend, that the attestation of
miracles is, after all, not irresistible; and that in the very uncertainty which
confessedly remains lies the ‘trial of faith,’ See, e.g. Butler ‘a Analogy, pt. ii. ch. 6.
In the popular acceptation, it is clear the Gospel miracles are always objects, not evidences of faith; 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 connected, and associated with the declarations of spiritual things which are, as such, exempt from those criticisms to which physical statements would be necessarily amenable.
But even in a reasoning point of view, those who insist most on the positive external proofs, allow that moral evidence is distinguished from demonstrative, not only in that it admits of degrees, but snore especially in that the same moral argument is of different force to different minds. And the advocate of Christian evidence triumphs in the acknowledgment that the strength of Christianity lies in the variety of its evidences, suited to all varieties of apprehension; and, that, amid all the diversities of conception, those who cannot appreciate some one class of proofs, will always find cone other satisfactory, is itself the crowning evidence.
With a firm belief in constant supernatural interposition, the
cotemporaries of the Apostles were as much blinded to the reception of the gospel,
as, with an opposite persuasion, others have been at a later period. Those who had
access to living Divine instruction were not superior to the prepossessions and
ignorance of their times. There never existed an ‘infallible age’ of exemption from doubt or
prejudice. And if to later times records written in the characters of a long
The ‘reason of the hope that is in us’ is not restricted
to external signs, nor to any one kind of evidence, but consists of such
assurance as may be most satisfactory to each earnest individual inquirer’s own
mind. And the true acceptance of the entire revealed manifestation of Christianity
will be most worthily and satisfactorily based on that assurance of ‘faith,’ by which
the Apostle affirms ‘we stand,’ (
IN the city of Geneva, once the stronghold of the severest creed of the Reformation, Christianity itself has of late years received some very rude shocks. But special attempts have been recently made to counteract their effects and to re-organize the Christian congregations upon Evangelical principles. In pursuance of this design, there have been delivered and published during the last few years a series of addresses by distinguished persons holding Evangelical sentiments, entitled Séances Historiques. The attention of the hearers was to be conciliated by the concrete form of these discourses; the phenomenon of the historical Christianity to be presented as a fact which could not be ignored, and which must be acknowledged to have had some special source; while, from time to time, as occasion offered, the more peculiar views of the speakers were to be instilled. But before this panorama of historic scenes had advanced beyond the period of the fall of heathenism in the West, there had emerged a remarkable discrepancy between the views of two of the authors, otherwise agreeing in the main.
It fell to the Comte Léon de Gasparin to illustrate the reign
of Constantine. He laid it down in the strongest manner, that the individualist
principle supplies the true basis of the Church, and that by inaugurating the
union between Church and State
‘Le multitudinisme est une force qui peut, comme toute force,
être mal dirigée, mal exploitée, mais qui pout aussi l’être au profit de la vérité,
de la piété, de la vie. Les Eglises fondées sur un autre principe ont aidé à rectifier celui-là; c’est un des incontestables services qu’elles ont rendus, de nos jours,
à la cause de l’Evangile. Elles ont droit à notre reconnaissance; mais à Genève,
qu’elles ne nous demandent pas ce que nous ne pouvons faire, et qu’on me permette
de le dire, ce qu’elles ne font pas elles-mêmes. Oui! le multitudinisme genevois
est resté vivant chez elles, et certainement elles lui doivent une portion notable
de leur consistance au dedans, de leur influence au dehors. Elles font appel, comme
nous, à ses souvenirs et à ses Séances Historiques de Genève—Le Christianisme au
4ième Siècle, p. 153.
Such are the feelings in favour of Nationalism on the part of
M. Bungener, a member of the Genevan Church; a Church to which many would not even
concede that title, and of which the ecclesiastical renown centres upon one great
name; while the civil history of the country presents but little of interest either
in ancient or modern times. But the questions at issue between these two Genevans
are of wide Christian concern, and especially to ourselves. If the Genevans cannot
be proud of their Calvin, as they cannot in all things—and even he is not truly
their own—they have little else of which to speak before Christendom. Very different
are the recollections which are awakened by the past history of such a Church as
ours. Its roots are found to penetrate deep into the history of the most freely
and fully developed nationality in the world, and its firm hold upon the past is
one of its best auguries for the future. It has lived through Saxon rudeness,
Norman rapine, baronial oppression and bloodshed; it has survived the tyranny of
Tudors, recovered from fanatical assaults, escaped the treachery of Stuarts; has
not perished under coldness, nor been stifled with patronage, nor sunk utterly in
a dull age, nor been entirely depraved in a corrupt one. Neither as a spiritual
society, nor as a national institution, need there be any fear that the Church of
this country, which has passed through so many ordeals, shall succumb, because we
may be on the verge of some political and ecclesiastical changes. We, ourselves,
cohere with those who have preceded us, under very different forms of civil constitution,
and
When signs of the times are beheld, foretelling change, it behoves those who think they perceive them to indicate them to others, not in any spirit of presumption or of haste; and, in no spirit of presumption, to suggest inquiries as to the best method of adjusting old things to new conditions.
Many evils are seen in various ages, if not to have issued directly, to have been intimately linked with the Christian profession—such as religious wars, persecutions, delusions, impositions, spiritual tyrannies; many goods of civilization in our own day, when men have run to and fro and knowledge has been increased, have apparently not the remotest connexion with the Gospel. Hence grave doubts arise in the minds of really well-meaning persons, whether the secular future of humanity is necessarily bound up with the diffusion of Christianity—whether the Church is to be hereafter the life-giver to human society. It would be idle on the part of religious advocates to treat anxieties of this kind as if they were forms of the old Voltairian anti-Christianism. They are not those affectations of difficulties whereby vice endeavours to lull asleep its fears of a judgment to come; nor are they the pretensions of ignorant and presumptuous spirits, making themselves wise beyond the limits of man’s wisdom. Even if such were, indeed, the sources of the wide-spread doubts respecting traditional Christianity which prevail in our own day, it would be very injudicious polemic which should content itself with denouncing the wickedness, or expressing pity for the blindness, of those who entertain them. An imputation of evil motives may embitter an opponent and add gall to controversy, but can never dispense with the necessity for replying to his arguments, nor with the advisableness of neutralizing his objections.
If anxieties respecting the future of Christianity, and the office
of the Christian Church in time to come, were confined to a few students
or speculative philosophers, they might be put aside as mere theoretical questions;
if rude criticisms upon the Scriptures, of the Tom Paine kind, proceeding from agitators
of the masses, or from uninstructed persons, were the only assaults to which the
letter of the Bible was exposed,
It is generally the custom of those who wish to ignore the necessity
for grappling with modern questions concerning Biblical interpretation, the construction
of the Christian Creed, the position and prospects
There may be a certain amount of literature circulating among
us in a cheap form, of which the purpose, with reference to Christianity, is simply
negative and destructive, and which is characterized by an absence of all reverence,
not only for beliefs, but for the best human feelings which have gathered round
them, even when they have been false or superstitious. But
The sceptical movements in this generation are the result of observation
and thought, not of passion. Things come to the knowledge of almost all persons,
which were unknown a generation ago, even to the well informed. Thus the popular
knowledge, at that time, of the surface of the earth, and of the populations which
cover it, was extremely incomplete. In our own boyhood the world as known to the
ancients was nearly all which was known to ourselves. We have recently become acquainted—intimate—with
the teeming regions of the far East, and with empires, pagan or even atheistic,
of which the origin runs far back beyond the historic records of Judæa or of the
West, and which were more populous than all Christendom now is, for many ages before
the Christian era. Not any book learning—not any proud exaltation of reason—not
any dreamy German metaphysics—not any minute and captious Biblical
criticism—suggest questions to those who on Sundays hear the reading and exposition of the Scriptures
as they were expounded to our forefathers, and on Monday peruse the news of a
If, indeed, we are at liberty to believe, that all shall be equitably dealt with according to their opportunities, whether they have heard or not of the name of Jesus, then we can acknowledge the case of the Christian and non-Christian populations to be one of difference of advantages. And, of course, no account can be given of the principle which determines the unequal distribution of the divine benefits. The exhibition of the divine attributes is not to be brought to measure of numbers or proportions. But human statements concerning the dealings of God with mankind, hypotheses and arguments about them, may very usefully be so tested. Truly, the abstract or philosophical difficulty may be as great concerning a small number of persons unprovided for, or, as might be inferred from some doctrinal statements, not equitably dealt with, in the divine dispensations, as concerning a large one; but it does not so force itself on the imagination and heart of the generality of observers. The difficulty, though not new in itself, is new as to the great increase in the numbers of those who feel it, and in the practical urgency for discovering an answer, solution, or neutralization for it, if we would set many unquiet souls at rest.
From the same source of the advance of general knowledge respecting
the inhabitancy of the world issues another inquiry concerning a promise, prophecy,
or assertion of Scripture. For the commission of Jesus to his Apostles was to preach
the gospel to ‘all nations,’ ‘to every creature;’ and St. Paul says of the gentile
world, ‘But I say have they not heard? Yes, verily, their sound went into all the
earth, and their words unto the ends of the world,’ (
So likewise a very grave modification of an ‘evidence’ heretofore current must ensue in another respect, in consequence of an increased
knowledge of other facts connected with the foregoing. It has been customary to
argue that, a priori, a supernatural revelation was to
It would not be very tasteful, as an exception to this description, to call Buddhism the gospel of India, preached to it five or six centuries before the Gospel of Jesus was proclaimed in the nearer East. But on the whole it would be more like the realities of things, as we can now behold them, to say that the Christian revelation was given to the western world, because it deserved it better and was more prepared for it than the East. Philosophers, at least, had anticipated in speculation some of its dearest hopes, and had prepared the way for its self-denying ethics.
There are many other sources of the modern questionings of traditional
Christianity which cannot now be touched upon, originating like those which have
been mentioned, in a change of circumstances wherein observers are placed; whereby
their thoughts are turned in new directions, and they are rendered dissatisfied with
old modes of speaking. But such a difficulty as that respecting the souls
of heathendom, which must now
.Moreover, to our great comfort, there have been preserved to
us words of the Lord Jesus himself, declaring that the conditions of men in another
world will be determined by their moral characters in this, and not by their hereditary
or traditional creeds; and both many words and the practice of the great Apostle
Paul, within the range which was given him, tend to the same result. He has been
thought even to make en allusion to the Buddhist Dharmma, or law, when he
said, ‘When the gentiles which have not the law do by nature the things contained
in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves, which show the work
of the law written in their hearts,’ &c. (
There may be a long future during which the present course of
the world shall last. Instead of its drawing near the close of its existence, as represented
Different estimates are made of the beneficial effects already wrought by Christianity upon the secular aspect of the world, according to the different points of view from which it is regarded. Some endeavour, from an impartial standing point, to embrace in one panorama the whole religious history of mankind, of which Christianity then becomes the most important phase; others can only look at such a history from within some narrow chamber of doctrinal and ecclesiastical prepossessions. And anticipations equally different for like reasons will be entertained by persons differently imbued, as to the form under which, and the machinery by which, it shall hereafter be presented with success, either to the practically unchristianized populations of countries like our own, or to peoples of other countries never as yet even nominally christianized.
Although the consequences of what the Gospel does will be carried
on into other worlds, its work is to be done here; although some of its work
here must be unseen,
Those who belong to very different theological schools acknowledge
at times, that they cannot with any certainty find in the highest ecclesiastical
antiquity the dogmas which they consider most important. It is customary with Lutherans
to represent their doctrine of justification by subjective faith as having died
out shortly after the Apostolic age. In fact, it never was the doctrine of any considerable portion of the Church
But although the primitive Christians fell far short both
of a doctrinal and ethical ideal, them is this remarkable distinction to be noted
between the primitive aspects of doctrine and of ethics. The morals of the first
Christians were certainly very far below the estimate which has been formed of them;
but the standard by which they were measured was unvarying, lofty, and peculiar;
moreover, the nearer we approach to the fountain head, the more definite do we find
the statement of the Christian principle, that the source of religion is in the
heart. On the contrary, the nearer we come to the original sources of the history,
the less definite do we find the statements of doctrines, and even of the facts
from which the doctrines were afterwards inferred. And, at the very first, with
our Lord Himself and His Apostles, as represented to us in the New Testament,
morals come before contemplation, ethics before theoretics. In the patristic writings,
theoretics assume continually an The fourth Gospel has always been supposed to have been written
with a controversial purpose, and not to have been composed till from sixty to
seventy
years after the events which it undertakes to narrate; some critics, indeed, think
it was not of a date anterior to the year 140, and that it pre-supposes opinions of a Valentinian character, or even Montanist,
which
would make it later still.. At any rate it cannot, by external evidence, be attached the
person of St. John as its author, in the sense wherein moderns understand the word
author: that is, there is no proof that St. John gives his voucher as an eye and
ear witness of all which is related in it. Many persons shrink from a
bonâ fide examination of the ‘Gospel question,’
because they imagine, that unless the four Gospels are received as perfectly
genuine and authentic—that is, entirely the composition of the persons whose
names they bear, and without any admixture of legendary matter or embellishment
in their narratives, the only alternative is to suppose a fraudulent design in those who did compose them. This is a supposition
from which common sense,
and the moral instinct, alike revolt; but it is happily not an only alternative.
As monuments or witnesses, discrepant in a certain degree as to
other particulars, the evidence afforded by the three Synoptics to the Lord’s own
words is the most precious element in the Christian records. We are thereby placed
at the very root of the Gospel tradition. And these words of the Lord, taken in
conjunction with the Epistle of St. James, and with the first, or genuine, Epistle
of St. Peter, leave no reasonable doubt of the general character of His teaching
We may take an illustration of the relative value in the
Apostolic age of the doctrinal and moral principles, by citing a case which will be allowed
to be extreme enough. It is evident there were among the Christian converts in that
earliest period, those who had no belief in a corporeal resurrection. Some
of these had, perhaps, been made converts from the sect of the Sadducees, and had
brought with them into the Christian congregation the same doubts or negative beliefs
which belonged to them before their conversion. The Jewish church embraced in
its bosom both Pharisees and Sadducees: but our Lord, although he expressly taught
a resurrection, and argued with the Sadducees on the subject, never treated them
as aliens from Israel because they did not hold that doctrine; is much more severe
on the moral defects and hypocrisies of the Pharisees than upon the doctrinal defects
of the Sadducees. The Christian Church was recruited in its Jewish branch chiefly
from the sect of the Pharisees, and it is somewhat difficult for us to realize
the conversion of a Sadducee to Christianity, retaining his Sadducee disbelief or
scepticism. But the ‘some among you who say that there is no resurrection of
the dead,’ ( So in St. Paul
‘delivered to Satan’ (whatever that may mean), Hymenæus,
who maintained the resurrection to be past already, most likely meaning it was only a moral one; but it does not appear it
was for this offence he is so mentioned
in conjunction with Alexander, and their provocation is not described: where he is
said to have taught that the resurrection is past already, he is in
companionship with Philetes, and nothing is added of any punishment of either.
These strange opinions afterwards hardened into heretical doctrine. Tertull.
de Præscriptione Hær. c. xxxiii. Paulus in 1mâ ad Corinthios notat negatores
et dubitatores resurrectionis. Hæc opinio propria Sadducæorum: partem ejus
usurpat Marcion et Apelles, et Valentinus et si qui alii resurrectionem carnis
infringunt—æque tangit eos qui dicerent factam jam resurrection: id de se Valentini adseverant.
Now, from what has been said we gather two important conclusions:—first,
of the at least equal value of the Christian life, as compared with the Christian
doctrine; and, secondly, of the retaining within the Church, both of those who were
erroneous and defective in doctrine, and of those who were by their lives unworthy
of their profession; they who caused divisions
It would be difficult to devise a description of a multitudinist Church, exhibiting more saliently the worst defects which can attend that form, than this which is taken from the evidence of the Apostolic Epistles. We find the Pauline Churches to have comprised, not only persons of the truest doctrinal insight, of the highest spiritual attainments, of martyr-like self-devotion, but of the strangest and most incongruous beliefs, and of the most unequal and inconsistent practice. The individualist could say nothing more derogatory of any multitudinist Church, not even of a national one; unless, perhaps, he might say this, that less distinction is made within such a Church itself, and within all modern Churches, between their better and worse members, than was made in the Apostolic Churches. Any judicial sentence of excommunication was extremely rare in the Apostolic age, as we have seen, and the distinction between the worthy and unworthy members of the Church was to be marked, not by any public and authoritative act, but by the operation of private conduct and opinion.
The
Apostolic Churches were thus multitudinist, and they early tended to become
National Churches; from the first they took collective names from the localities
where they were situate. And it was natural and proper they should, except upon
the Calvinistic theory of conversion. There is some show of reasonable independence, some appearance
of applying the protestant liberty of private judgment, in maintaining the Christian
unlawfulness of the union of Church and state, corruption of national establishments,
and like propositions. But it will be found, that where they are maintained by serious
and religious people, they
Unhappily, together with his inauguration of Multitudinism, Constantine,
also inaugurated a principle essentially at variance with it, the principle of doctrinal
limitation. It is very customary to attribute the necessity of stricter definitions
of the Christian creed from time to time to the rise of successive heresies. More
correctly, there succeeded to the fluid state of Christian opinion in the first
century after Christ, a gradual hardening and systematizing of conflicting views;
and the opportunity of reverting to the freedom of the Apostolic and immediately
succeeding periods, was finally lost for many ages by the sanction given by Constantine
to the decisions of Nicæa. We cannot now be very good judges, whether it would
have been possible, together with the establishment of Christianity as the imperial
religion, to enforce forbearance between the great antagonisms which were then in
dispute, and to hove insisted on the maxim, that neither had a right to limit the common Christianity
to the exclusion of the other. At all events a principle at variance with a true
Multitudinism was then recognised. All parties it must be acknowledged were equally
exclusive. And exclusion and definition
That the members of a Calvinistic Church, as in the Geneva of
Calvin and Beza, or in the Church of Scotland, should coincide with the members
of the State—that ‘election’ and ‘effectual call’ should be hereditary, is, of course,
too absurd to suppose; and the congregational Calvinists are more consistent than
the Calvinists of Established Churches. Of Calvinism, as a system of doctrine, it
is not here proposed to say anything, except, that it must of necessity be hostile
to every other creed; and the members of a Calvinistic Church can never consider
themselves but as parted by an insuperable distinction from all other professors
of the Gospel; they cannot stand on a common footing, in any spiritual matter, with
those who belong to the world, that is, with all others than themselves. The exclusiveness
of a multitudinist Church, which makes, as yet, the ecclesiastical creeds the terms
of its communion, may cease when that test or limitation is repealed. But
the exclusiveness of a Calvinistic Church, whether free from the creeds or not,
is inherent in its principles. There is no insuperable harrier between Congregationalists
not being Calvinists, and a multitudinist Church which should liberate itself sufficiently
from the traditional symbols. Doctrinal limitations in the multitudinist form of
Church are not essential to it; upon larger knowledge of Christian history, upon
a more thorough acquaintance with the mental constitution of man, upon an understanding
of the obstacles they present to a true Catholicity, they may be cast off. Nor is
a multitudinist Church necessarily or essentially hierarchical, in any extreme
or superstitious sense; it can well admit, if not pure congregationalism, a
large admixture of the congregational spirit. Indeed, a combination of the two principles
will alone keep any
It was natural for a Christian in the earliest period to look upon the heathen State in which he found himself as if it belonged to the kingdom of Satan and not to that of God; and consecrated as it was, in all its offices, to the heathen divinities, to consider it a society having its origin from the powers of darkness, not from the Lord of light and life. In the Apostolic writers this view appears rather in the First Epistle of St. John than with St. Paul. The horizon which St. John’s view embraced was much narrower than St. Paul’s;
Qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes.
If the love felt and inculcated by St. John towards the brethren
was the more intense, the charity with which St. Paul comprehended all men was the
more ample; and it is not from every point of view we should describe St. John as
pre-eminently the Apostle of love. With St. John, ‘the whole world lieth in
Heathendom had its national Churches. Indeed, the existence of
a national Church is not only a permissible thing, but is necessary to the completion
of a national life, and has shown itself in all nations, when they have made any
advance in civilization. It has been usual, but erroneous, to style the Jewish constitution
a theocracy in a peculiar and exclusive sense, as if the combination of the religious
and civil life had been confined to that people. Even among barbarous tribes the
fetish-man establishes an authority over the rest, quite as much from the yearning
of others after guidance as from his own superior cunning. Priesthoods have always
been products. Priests have neither been, as some would represent, a set of deliberate
conspirators against the free thoughts of mankind; nor, on the other hand, have
they been the sole divinely commissioned channels for communication of spiritual
truth. If all priests and ministers of religion could at one moment be swept from
the face of the earth, they would soon be reproduced. If the human race, or a
given people—and a recent generation saw an instance of something like it in no
distant
The distinction between the Jewish people and the other
nations, in respect of this so-called theocracy, is but feebly marked on both
sides. For the religious element was much stronger than has been supposed in
other nationalities, and the priesthood was by no means supreme in the Hebrew
State. Previous to the time of the divided kingdom, the Jewish history
presents little which is thoroughly reliable. The taking of’ Jerusalem by ‘Shishak’ is for the Hebrew history that which the sacking of Rome by the Gauls is for the
Roman. And from no facts ascertainable is it possible to infer there was any early
period during which the Government by the priesthood was attended with success.
Indeed the greater probability seems on the side of the supposition, that the priesthood, with its distinct offices and charge, was constituted by Royalty, and
that the higher pretensions of the priests were not advanced till the reign
Josiah. There is no evidence of the priesthood ever having claimed a supremacy over
the kings, as if it had been in possession of an oracular power; in the earlier
monarchy the kings offer sacrifice, and the rudiments of a political and religious organization,
which prevailed in the period of the Judges, cannot be appealed to as pre-eminently a theocracy.
At any rate, nothing could be more unsuccessful, as a government, whatever it
might be called.
Indeed, the theory of the Jewish theocracy, seems built chiefly upon
some expressions in
Constantly the title occurs in the Hebrew Scriptures, of ‘the
Lord’s people,’ with appeals to Jehovah as their Supreme Governor, Protector,
and Judge. And so it is with polytheistic nations; they are the offspring of the
gods; the deities are their guides and guardians, the authors of their laws and
customs; their worship is interwoven with the whole course of political and
social life. It will of course be said, the entire difference is no more than
this—the object of worship in the one case was the true God, in the other
All things sanctioned among the Jews are certainly not to be imitated
by us, nor all pagan institutions to be abhorred. In respect of a State religion,
Jew and Gentile were more alike than has been thought. All nations have exhibited,
in some form or another, the development of a public religion, and have done so
by reason of tendencies inherent in their nationality. The particular form of the
religion has been due to various causes. Also in periods of transition there would,
for a time, be a breaking in upon this feature of national life. While prophets, philosophers, reformers, were
at work, or some new principle winning its way, the national uniformity would be
disturbed. So it was at the first preaching of the Gospel; St. Paul and the Lord
Jesus himself offered it to the Jews as a nation, on the multitudinist principle;
but when they put it from them, it must make progress by kindling a fire in the earth,
even to the
Christianity was therefore compelled, as it were against its will,
and in contradiction to its proper design, to make the first steps in its progress
by cutting across old societies, filtering into the world by individual conversions,
showing, nevertheless, from the very first, its multitudinist tendencies; and before
it could comprehend countries or cities, embracing families and households, the
several members of which must have been on very different spiritual levels (
In some parts of the West this national and natural tendency was
counteracted by the shattering which ensued upon the breaking up of the Roman empire.
And in those countries especially which had been longest and most
closely connected with Pagan Rome, such as Italy itself, Spain, France, the people
felt themselves unable to stand alone in their spiritual institutions, and were
glad to lean on some other prop and centre, so far as was still allowed them. The
Teutonic Churches were always more free than the Churches of the Latinized peoples,
though they themselves had derived their Christianity from Roman Missionaries; and
among the Teutonic Churches alone has a freedom from extraneous dominion as yet
established itself. For a time even these could only adopt the forms of doctrine
and practice which were current in other parts of the West. But those forms were
neither of the essence of a national Church, nor even of the essence of a Christian
Church. A national Church need not, historically speaking, be Christian, nor, if
it be Christian, need it be tied down to particular forms which have been prevalent
at certain times in Christendom. That which is essential to a national Church is,
that it should undertake to assist the spiritual progress of the nation and of the
individuals of which it is composed, in their several states and stages. Not even
a Christian Church should expect all those who are brought under its influence to
be, as a matter of fact, of one and the same standard, but should endeavour to raise
each according to his capacities, and should give no occasion for a reaction against
itself, nor provoke the individualist element into separatism. It would do this if it submitted to define itself otherwise
It will do this also, if while the civil side of the nation is
fluid, the ecclesiastical side of it is fixed; if thought and speech are free among
all other classes, and not free among those who hold the office of leaders and teachers
of the rest in the highest things; if they are to be bound to cover up instead
of opening; and having, it is presumed, possession of the key of knowledge, are
to stand at the door with it, permitting no one to enter, unless by force. A
national Church may also find itself in this position, which, perhaps, is our
own. Its ministers may become isolated between two other parties—between those
on the one hand who draw fanatical inferences from formularies and principles
which they themselves are not able or are unwilling to repudiate; and on the
other, those who have been tempted, in impatience of old fetters, to follow free
thought heedlessly wherever it may lead them. If our own Churchmen expect to
discourage and repress a fanatical Christianity, without a frank appeal to
reason, and a frank criticism of Scripture, they will find themselves without
any effectual arms for that combat; or if they attempt to check inquiry by the
repetition of old forms and denunciations, they will be equally powerless, and
run the especial risk of turning into bitterness
the sincerity of those who should be their best allies, as friends of truth. They
should avail themselves of the aid of all reasonable persons for enlightening the
fanatical religionist, making no reserve of any seemingly harmless or apparently
serviceable superstitions of their own; they should also endeavour to supply to
the negative theologian some positive elements in Christianity, on grounds more
sure to him than the assumption of an objective ‘faith once delivered to the saints,’
which he cannot
It has been matter of great boast within the Church of England,
in common with other Protestant Churches, that it is founded upon the ‘Word of God,’
a phrase which begs many a question when applied to the canonical books of the Old
and New Testaments, a phrase which is never applied to them by any of the Scriptural
authors, and which, according to Protestant principles, never could be applied to
them by any sufficient authority from without. In that which may be considered the
pivot Article of the Church this expression does not occur, but only ‘Holy Scripture,’
‘Canonical Books,’ ‘Old and New Testaments.’ It contains no declaration of the Bible
being throughout supernaturally suggested, nor any intimation as to which portions
of it were owing to a special divine illumination, nor the slightest attempt at
defining inspiration, whether mediate or immediate, whether through, or beside,
or overruling the natural faculties of the subject of it,—not the least hint of
the relation between the divine and human elements in the composition of the Biblical
books. Even if the Fathers have usually considered ‘canonical’ as synonymous with
‘miraculously inspired,’ there is nothing to show that their sense of the word
must necessarily be applied in our own sixth Article. The word itself may mean either
books ruled and determined by the Church, or regulative books; and the employment
of it in the Article hesitates between these two significations. For at one time
‘Holy Scripture’ and canonical books are those books ‘of whose authority never was
any doubt in the Church,’ This clause is taken from the Wirtemburg Confession
(1552), which proceeds: ‘Hanc Scripuram credimus et confitemur esse oraculum
Spiritus Sancti, cælestibus testimoniis ita confirmatum, ut Si Angelus de
cælo aliud prædicaverit, anathema sit.’ Thus the Helvetic Confession states: ‘We believe and profess
the Canonical Scriptures of the Holy Prophets and Apostles, of the Old and New
Testaments, are the very Word of God, and have sufficient authority from
themselves and not from men.’ The Saxon Confession refers to the creeds as
interpreters of Scripture—nos vera fide amplecti omnia scripta
Prophetarum et Apostolorum; et quidem in hac ipsa nativa sententia, quæ express
est in Symbolis, Apostolico, Nicæno et Athanasiano.—De Doctrina.
The Protestant feeling among us has satisfied itself in a blind
way with the anti-Roman declaration, that ‘Holy Scripture containeth all things
necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved
thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article
of the faith,’ &c., and without reflecting how very much is wisely left open in
that Article. For this declaration itself is partly negative and partly positive;
as to its negative part it declares that nothing—no clause of creed, no decision
of council, no tradition or exposition—is to be required to be believed on peril
of salvation, unless it be Scriptural; but it does not lay down, that everything
which is contained in Scripture must be believed on the same peril. Or it may be
expressed thus—the Word of God is contained in Scripture, whence it does not follow
that it is co-extensive with it. The Church to which we belong does not put that
stumbling-block before the feet of her members; it is their own fault if they
place it there for themselves, authors of their own offence. Under the terms of
the sixth Article one may accept literally, or allegorically, or as
Many evils have flowed to the people of England, otherwise free enough, from an extreme and too exclusive Scripturalism. The rudimentary education of a large number of our countrymen has been mainly carried on by the reading of the Scriptures. They are read by young children in thousands of cases, where no attempt could be made, even if it were desired, to accompany the reading with the safeguard of a reasonable interpretation. A Protestant tradition seems to have prevailed, unsanctioned by any of our formularies, that the words of Scripture are imbued with a supernatural property, by which their true sense can reveal itself even to those who, by intellectual or educational defect, would naturally be incapable of appreciating it. There is no book indeed, or collection of books, so rich in words which address themselves intelligibly to the unlearned and learned alike. But those who are able to do so ought to lead the less educated to distinguish between the different kinds of words which it contains, between the dark patches of human passion and error which form a partial crust upon it, and the bright centre of spiritual truth within.
Some years ago a vehement controversy was carried on whether the Scripture ought to be distributed in this
It is ill to be deterred from giving expression to the truth or
from prosecuting the investigation of it, from a fear of making concessions to revolutionary
or captious dispositions. For the blame of this captiousness, when it exists, lies
in part at the door of those who ignore the difficulties of others, because they
may not feel any for themselves. To this want of wisdom on the part of
the defenders of old opinions is to be attributed, that the noting of such differences
as are to be found in the Evangelical narratives, or in the
Thus it may be attributed to the defect of our understandings,
that we should be unable altogether to reconcile the aspects of the Saviour as presented
to us in the three first Gospels, and in the writings of St. and St. John. At any rate, there were current the primitive Church very distinct Christologies.
But neither to any defect in our capacities, nor to any reasonable presumption
of a hidden wise design, nor to any partial spiritual endowments in the narrators,
can we attribute the difficulty, if not impossibility,
If the national Church is to be true to the multitudinist principle, and to correspond ultimately to the national character, the freedom of opinion which belongs to the English citizen should be conceded to the English Churchman; and the freedom which is already practically enjoyed by the members of the congregation, cannot without injustice be denied to its ministers. A minister may rightly be expected to know more of theology than the generality, or even than the best informed of the laity; but it is a strange ignoring of the constitution of human minds, to expect all ministers, however much they may know, to be of one opinion in theoreticals, or the same person to be subject to no variation of opinion at different periods of his life. And it may be worth while to consider how far a liberty of opinion is conceded by our existing laws, civil and ecclesiastical. Along with great openings for freedom it will be found there are some restraints, or appearances of restraints, which require to be removed.
As far as opinion privately entertained is concerned, the
liberty of the English clergyman appears already to be complete. For no ecclesiastical
person call be obliged to answer interrogations as to his opinions, nor be
troubled for that which he has not actually expressed, nor be made responsible
for inferences which other people may draw from his expressions. The oath
ex officio in the ecclesiastical law, is defined to
be an oath whereby any person may be obliged to make any presentment of any
crime or offence, or to confess or accuse himself or herself of any criminal
matter or thing, whereby he or she may be liable to any censor, penalty,
or punishment whatsoever. 4 Jac. ‘The lords of the council at
Whitehall demanded of Popham and Coke, chief justices, upon motion made by the
Commons in Parliament, in what cases the ordinary may examine any person
ex officio
upon oath.’ They answered—1. That the ordinary cannot constrain any man, ecclesiastical
or temporal, to swear generally to answer each interrogations as shall be
administered to him, &c. 2. That no man, ecclesiastical or temporal, shall be examined
upon the secret thoughts of his heart, or of his secret opinion, but something
ought to be objected against him, which he hath spoken or done. Thus 13 Jac.
Dighton and Holt were committed by the high commissioners because they being convented
for slanderous words against the book of Common Prayer and the government of the
Church, and being tendered the oath to be examined, they refused. The case being brought before the
K.B. on habeus corpus, Coke, C.J., gave the determination of the Court.
‘That they
ought to be delivered, because their examination is made to cause them to accuse
themselves of a breach of a penal law, which is against law, for they ought to proceed against them by witnesses, and
not inforce them to take an oath to accuse themselves.’ Then by 13 Car. 2, c. 12, it was enacted.
‘that it shall not be lawful for any person, exercising ecclesiastical
jurisdiction, to tender or administer to any person whatsoever the oath usually called the oath
ex-officio,
or any other oath, whereby such person to whom the same is tendered, or administered, may be charged, or compelled
to confess, or accuse, or to purge himself, or herself, of any criminal matter
or thing,’ &c.—Burn’s Eccl.
Law, iii. 14, 15. Ed. Phillimore.
Still, though there may be no power of inquisition
The ecclesiastical authority on the subject is to be found in
the Canons of 1603, the fifth and the thirty-sixth.
The other canon which concerns subscription is the thirty-sixth,
which contains two clauses explanatory to some extent, of the meaning of ministerial
subscription, ‘That he alloweth the Book of Articles, &c.’ and ‘that he
acknowledgeth the same to be agreeable to the Word of God.’ We ‘allow’ many
things which we do not think wise or practically useful; as the less of two evils,
or an evil which cannot be remedied, or of which the remedy is not attainable, or
is uncertain in its operation, or is not in our power, or concerning which there
is much difference of opinion, or where
But after all, the important phrase is, that the Articles are
‘agreeable to the Word of God.’ This cannot mean that the Articles are precisely
coextensive with the Bible, much less of equal authority with a whole. Neither
separately, nor altogether, do they embody all which is said in it, and relatively which they
draw from it are only good relatively and secundum quid and
quatenus concordant.
On the other hand, there may be some things in the Articles which
could not be contained, or have not been contained, in the Scripture—such as propositions
or clauses concerning historical facts more recent than the Scripture itself; for
instance, that there never has been any doubt in the Church concerning the books
of the New Testament. For without including such doubts as a fool might have, or
a very conceited person, without carrying doubts founded upon mere criticism and
internal evidence only, to such an extent as a Baur or even an Ewald, there was
a time when certain books existed and certain others were not as yet written;—for
example, the Epistles of St. Paul were anterior, probably to all of the Gospels,
certainly to that of St. John, and of course the Church could not receive without
doubt books not as yet composed. But as the canon grew, book after book emerging
into existence and general reception, there were doubts as to some of them, for
a longer or shorter period, either concerning their authorship or their
authority. The framers of the Articles were not deficient in learning, and could
not have been ignorant of the passages in Eusebius where the different books current in Christendom
in his time are classified as genuine or acknowledged, doubtful and spurious. If
there be an erroneousness in such a statement, as that there never was any doubt
in the Church concerning the book of the Revelation, the Epistle to the Hebrews,
or the second of St. Peter, it cannot be an erroneousness in the sense of the fifth canon, nor can it be at variance
with the Word of God according to the thirty-sixth. Such
Many of those who would themselves wish the Christian theology to run on in its old forms of expression, nevertheless deal with the opinions of others, which they may think objectionable, fairly as opinions. There will always, on the other hand, be a few whose favourite mode of warfare it will be, to endeavour to gain a victory over some particular person who may hold opinions they dislike, by entangling him in the formularies. Nevertheless, our formularies do not lend themselves very easily to this kind of warfare—Contra retiarium baculo.
We have spoken hitherto of the signification of subscription which
may be gathered from the canons; there is, also, a statute, a law of the land, which
forbids, under penalties, the advisedly and directly contradicting any of them by
ecclesiastics, and requires subscription with declaration of ‘assent’ from beneficed
persons. This statute (13 Eliz. c. 52), three hundred years old, like many other
old enactments, is not found to be very applicable to modern cases; although it
is only about fifty years ago that it was said by Sir William Scott to be
in
viridi observantiâ. Nevertheless, its provisions would not easily be brought
to bear on questions likely to be raised in our own days. The meshes are too open
for modern refinements. For not to repeat concerning the word ‘assent’ what
has been said concerning ‘allow’ and ‘acknowledge,’ let the Articles be taken according to an obvious
classification. Forms of expression, partly derived
from modern modes of thought on metaphysical subjects,
If, however, the Articles of religion and the law of the Church of England be in effect liberal, flexible, or little
stringent, is there any necessity for expressing dissatisfaction with them, any
sufficient provocation to change? There may be much more liberty in a Church like
our own, the law of which is always interpreted, according to the English spirit, in the manner most
But it is not a state which ought to be considered final, either by the Church itself or by the nation. It is very well for provisions which cease to be easily applicable to modem cases to be suffered to fall into desuetude, but after falling into desuetude they should be repealed. Desuetude naturally leads to repeal. Obsolete tests are a blot upon a modern system, and there is always some danger lest an antiquated rule may be unexpectedly revived for the sake of an odious individual application; when it has outlived its general regulative power, it may still be a trap for the weaker consciences; or when it how become powerless as to penal consequences, it may serve to give a point to invidious imputations.
And farther than this, the present apparent stringency of subscription
as required of the clergy of the Church of England does not belong to it as part
of its foundation, is not even coeval with its reconstruction at the period of the
Reformation. For the Canons are of the date of 1603, and the Act requiring the public reading of
the Thirty-nine Articles, with declaration
A large portion of the Articles were originally directed against
the corruptions of the Church of Rome, and whatever may be thought of the unadvisableness
of retaining tests to exclude opinions which few think of reviving in their old
shape, these Roman doctrines and practices are seen to be flourishing in full life
and vigour. And considering the many grievous provocations which the people of England
have suffered from the Papacy both in ancient and modern times, they would naturally
resist any change which might by possibility weaken the barriers between the National
Church and the encroachments of the Church of Rome. It is evident, moreover, that
the act of signature to the Thirty-nine Articles contributes nothing to the exclusion from the Church of Romish views. For, as it is; opinions
and practices prevail among some of the clergy, which are extremely distasteful
to the generality of the people, by reason of their Romish character. Those of the
Articles which condemn the Romish errors, cannot themselves be made so stringent
as to bar altogether the intrusion of some opinion of a Roman tone, which the Reformers,
if they could have foreseen it, might have desired to exclude, and which
Considering therefore the practical difficulties which would beset any change, and especially those which would attend, either die excepting of the anti-Romish Articles from repeal or including them in it; any attempt at a relaxation of the clerical test should prudently confine itself in our generation, to an abolition of the act of subscription, leaving the Articles themselves protected by the second section of the Statute of Elizabeth and by the canons, against direct contradiction or impugning.
For, the act of subscription being abolished, there would disappear
the invidious distinction between the clergy and laity of the same communion,
as if there were separate standards for each of belief and morals. There would
disappear also a semblance of a promissory oath on a subject which a promise is
incapable of reaching. No promise can reach fluctuations of opinion and personal
conviction. Open teaching can, it is true, if it be thought wise, be dealt with
by the law and its penalties; but the law should content itself with saying, you
shall not teach or proclaim in derogation of my formularies; it should not require
any act which appears to signify ‘I think.’ Let the security be either the penal
or the moral one, not a commingling of the two. It happens continually, that able
and sincere Persons are deterred from entering the ministry of the national Church
by this consideration; they would be willing to be subject to the law forbidding
them to teach Arianism or Pelagianism—as what
It may be easy to urge invidiously, with respect to the impediments
now existing to undertaking office in the national Church, that there are other
sects, which persons dissatisfied with her formularies may join, and where they
may find scope for their activity with little intellectual bondage. Nothing can
be said here, whether or not there might be elsewhere bondage at least as galling,
of a similar or another kind. But the service of the national Church may welt be
regarded in a different light from the service of a sect. It is as properly an organ
of the national life as a magistracy, or a legislative estate. To set barriers
before the entrance upon its functions, by limitations not absolutely required by
public policy, is to infringe upon the birthright of the citizens. And to lay down
as an alternative to striving for more liberty of though and expression within the
Church of the nation, that those who are dissatisfied may sever themselves and join a sect, would be paralleled by declaring to political
reformers, that they are welcome to expatriate themselves, if they desire any
change in the existing
There is another part of the subject which may be slightly touched upon in this place—that of the endowment of the national Church. This was well described by Mr. Coleridge as the Nationalty. In a certain sense, indeed, the nation or state is lord paramount over all the property within its boundaries. But it provides for the usufruct of the property in two different ways. The usufruct of private property, as it is called, descends, according to our laws, by inheritance or testamentary disposition, and no specific services are attached to its enjoyment. The usufruct of that which Coleridge called the Nationalty circulates freely among all the families of the nation. The enjoyment of it is subject to the performance of special services, is attainable only by the possession of certain qualifications. In accordance with the strong tendency in England to turn every interest into a right of so-called private property, the nominations to the benefices of the national Church have come, by an abuse, to be regarded as part of the estates of patrons, instead of trusts, as they really are. No trustee of any analogous property, of a grammar-school for instance, would think of selling his right of appointment; he would consider the proper exercise of the trust his duty; much less would any court of law acknowledge that a beneficial interest in the trust property was an asset belonging to the estate of the trustee. If the nomination to the place of a schoolmaster ought to be considered as purely fiduciary, much more should the nomination of a spiritual person to his parochial charge. Objections are made against our own national Church bonded upon these anomalies, which may in time be rectified. Others are made against the very principle of endowment.
It is said, that a fixed support of the minister
Reverting to the general interest in the Nationalty, it
is evidently twofold. First, in the free circulation of a certain portion of the
real property of the country, inherited not by blood, nor through the accident of
birth, but by merit and in requital for certain performances. It evidently belongs
to the popular interest, that this circulation should be free from all unnecessary
limitations and restraints—speculative, antiquarian, and the like, and be regulated,
as far as attainable, by fitness and capacity for a particular public service. Thus
by means of the national endowment there would take place a distribution of property
to every family in the country, unencumbered by family provisions of
each succession—a distribution in like manner of the best kind of education,
of which the effects would not be worn out in one or two generations. The Church
theoretically is the most popular, it might be said, the most democratic of all
our institutions; its ministers— as a spiritual magistracy—true tribunes of the
people. Secondly, the general interest in the Nationalty as the material
means whereby the highest services are obtained for the general good, requires,
that no artificial discouragements should limit the number of those who otherwise
would be enabled to become candidates for the service of the Church—that nothing
should prevent the choice and recruiting of the Church ministers from the whole
of the citizens. As a matter of fact we find that nearly one-half of our population
are at present more or less alienated from the communion of the national Church,
and do not, therefore, supply candidates for its ministry. Instead of securing the
excellences and highest attainments from the whole of the people, it secures them,
by means of the national reserve, only from one-half; the rest are either not
drawn up into
the Christian ministry at all, or undertake it in connexion with schismatical bodies,
with as
We all know how the inward moral life—or spiritual life on its moral side, if that term be preferred—is nourished into greater or less vigour by means of the conditions in which the moral subject is placed. Hence, if a nation is really worthy of the name, conscious of its own corporate life, it will develop itself on one side into a Church, wherein its citizens may grow up and be perfected in their spiritual nature. If there is within it a consciousness that as a nation it is fulfilling no unimportant office in the world, and is, wider the order of Providence, an instrument in giving the victory to good over evil and to happiness over misery, it will not content itself with the rough adjustments and rude lessons of law and police, but will throw its elements, or the best of them, into another mould, and constitute out of them a society, which is in it, though in some sense not of it—which is another, yet the same.
That each one born into the nation is, together with his civil rights, born into a membership or privilege, as belonging to a spiritual society, places him at once in a relation which must tell powerfully upon his spiritual nature. For the sake of the reaction upon its own merely secular interests, the nation is entitled to provide from time to time, that the Church teaching and forms of one age do not traditionally harden, so as to become exclusive barriers in a subsequent one, and so the moral growth of those who are committed to the hands of the Church be checked, or its influences confined to a comparatively few. And the objects of the care of the State and of the Church will nearly coincide; for the former desires all its people to be brought under the improving influence, and the latter is willing to embrace all who have even the rudiments of the moral life.
And if the objects of the care of each nearly coincide, when
the office of the Church is properly understood,
It is a great misrepresentation to exhibit the State as allying itself with one out of many sects—a misrepresentation, the blame of which does not rest wholly with political persons, nor with the partisans of sects adverse to that which is supposed to be unduly preferred. It cannot concern a State to develop as part of its own organization a machinery or system of relations founded on the possession of speculative truth. Speculative doctrines should be left to philosophical schools. A national Church must be concerned with the ethical development of its members. And the wrong of supposing it to be otherwise, is participated by those of the clericalty who consider the Church of Christ to be founded, as a society, on the possession of an abstractedly true and supernaturally communicated speculation concerning God, rather than upon the manifestation of a divine life in man.
It has often been made matter of reproach to
the heathen State religions, that they took little
concern in the moral life of the citizens. To a
certain extent this is true, for the heathens of classical history had not generally the same conceptions of
morals as we have. But as far as their conceptions
of morals reached, their Church and State were
mutually bound together, not by a material alliance,
nor by a gross compact of pay and preferment passing between the civil society
and the priesthood, but by the penetrating of the whole public and domestic life
of the nation with a religious
sentiment.. All the social relations were consecrated by the feeling of their being entered into and carried
on under the sanction—under the very impulse of Deity. Treaties and boundaries, buying and selling,
marrying, judging, deliberating on affairs of State, spectacles and all popular amusements, were under the
Certainly the sense of the individual conscience was not sufficiently developed under those old religions. Their observances, once penetrated with a feeling a present Deity, became, in course of time, mere dry and superstitious forms. But the glory of the Gospel would only be partial and one-sided, if, while quickening the individual conscience and the expectation of individual immortality, it had no spirit to quicken the national life. An isolated salvation, the rescuing of one’s self, the reward, the grace bestowed on one’s own labours, the undisturbed repose, the crown of glory in which so many have no share, the finality of the sentence on both hands—reflections on such expectations as these may make stubborn martyrs and sour professors, but not good citizens; rather tend to unfit men for this world, and in so doing prepare them very ill for that which is to come.
But in order to the possibility of recruiting any national ministry
from the whole of the nation, in order to the operation upon the nation at large
of the special functions of its Church, no needless intellectual or speculative obstacles should be interposed. It is not to be
expected that terms of communion could be made so large, as by any possibility to
comprehend in the national Church the whole of such a free nation as our own. There will always be those who, from a conscientious
scruple, or from a desire to define, or from peculiarities of temper, will hold aloof
from the religion and the worship of the majority; and it is not desirable that it should
be otherwise, so long as the national unity and the moral action of society are not
thereby seriously impaired. No doubt, speaking politically, and regarding merely the
peacefulness with which the machinery of ordinary executive government can be
carried on, it has proved very advantageous to the State, Hist. Pur. iv. p. 618.
There are, moreover, besides those who have joined the ranks of Dissent, many others holding aloof from the Church of England, by reason of its real or supposed dogmatism—whose co-operation in its true work would be most valuable to it—and who cannot become utterly estranged from it, without its losing ultimately its popular influence and its national character. If those who distinguish themselves in science and literature cannot, in a scientific and literary age, be effectually and cordially attached to the Church of their nation, they must sooner or later be driven into a position of hostility to it. They may he as indisposed to the teaching of the majority et Dissenters as to that which they conceive to be the teaching of the Church; but the Church, as an organization, will of necessity appear to be the most damaged by a scientific criticism of a supposed Christianity common to it with other bodies. Many personal and social bonds have retarded hitherto an issue which from time to time has threatened a controversy between our science and our theology. It would be a deplorable day, when the greatest names on either side should be found in conflict; and theology should only learn to acknowledge, after a defeat, that there are no irreconcileable differences between itself and its opponents.
It is sometimes said with a sneer, that the scientific men and the men of abstractions will never change the religions of the world; and yet Christianity has certainly been very different from what it would have been without the philosophies of a Plato and an Aristotle; and a Bacon and a Newton exercise an influence upon the Biblical theology of Englishmen. They have modified, though they have not made it. The more diffused science of the present day will farther modify it. And the question seems to narrow itself to this—How can those who differ from each other intellectually in such variety of degrees as our more educated and our less educated classes, be comprised under the same formularies of one national Church—be supposed to follow them, assent to them, appropriate them, in one spirit? If such formularies embodied only an ethical result addressed to the individual and to society, the speculative difficulty would not arise. But as they present a fair and substantial representation of the Biblical records, incorporating their letter and presupposing their historical element, precisely the same problem is presented to us intellectually, as English Churchmen or as Biblical Christians.
It does not seem to be contradicted, that when Church formularies
adopt the words of Scripture, these must have the same meaning, and be subject to
the same questions, in the formularies, as in the Scripture. And we may go somewhat
farther and say, that the historical parts of the Bible, when referred to or presupposed
in the formularies, have the same value in them which they have in their original
seat; and this value may consist, rather in their significance, in the ideas
which they awaken, than in the scenes themselves which they depict. And as Churchmen,
or as Christians, we may vary as to their value in particulars—that is, as to the
extent of the verbal accuracy of a history, or of its spiritual significance, without
breaking with our
The application of ideology to the interpretation of Scripture, to the doctrines of Christianity, to the formularies of the Church, may undoubtedly be carried to an excess—may be pushed so far as to leave in the sacred records no historical residue whatever. On the other side, there is the excess of a dull and unpainstaking acquiescence, satisfied with accepting in an unquestioning spirit, and as if they were literally facts, all particulars of a wonderful history, because in sonic sense it is from God. Between these extremes lie infinite degrees of rational and irrational interpretation.
It will be observed that the ideal method is applicable in two
ways; both to giving account of the origin of parts of Scripture, and also in explanation
of Scripture. It is thus either critical or exegetical. An example of the critical
ideology carried to excess is that of Strauss, which resolves into an ideal the
whole of the historical and doctrinal person of Jesus; so again, much of the allegorizing
of Plato and Origen is an exegetical ideology, exaggerated and wild. But it by no
means follows, because Strauss has substituted a mere shadow for the Jesus of the
Evangelists, and has frequently descended to a minute captiousness in details, that
there are not traits in the scriptural person of Jesus, which are better explained
by referring them to an ideal than an historical origin: and without falling into
fanciful exegetics, there are parts of scripture
Thus some may consider the descent of all mankind from Adam and
Eve as an undoubted historical fact; others may into perceive in that relation a
form of narrative, into which in early ages tradition would easily throw itself spontaneously.
Each race naturally—necessarily, when races are isolated—supposes itself to be
sprung from a single pair, and to be the first, or the only one, of races. Among
a particular people this historical representation became the concrete expression
of a great moral truth—of the brotherhood of all humans beings, of their community,
as in other things, so also in suffering and in frailty, in physical pains and in
moral ‘corruption.’ And the force, grandeur, and reality of these ideas are not
a whit impaired in the abstract, nor indeed the truth of the concrete history as
their representation, even though mankind should have been placed upon the earth
in many pairs at once, or in distinct centres of creation. For the brotherhood of
men really depends, not upon the material fact of their fleshly descent from a single
stock, but upon their constitution, as possessed in common, of the same faculties
and affections, fitting them for mutual relation and association; so that the value
of the history, if it were a history strictly so called, would lie in its
emblematic force and application. And man narratives of marvels and catastrophes
in the Old Testament are referred to in the New, as emblems, without either denying or asserting their literal truth—such
as the destruction of Sodom and
The ideologian is evidently in possession of a principle which
will enable him to stand in charitable relation to persons of very different opinions
from his own, and of very different opinions mutually. And if he has perceived
to how great extent the history of the origin itself of Christianity rests ultimately
upon probable evidence, his principle will relieve him from many difficulties
which might otherwise be very disturbing. For relations which may repose on doubtful
grounds as matter of history, and, as history, be incapable of being ascertained
or verified, may yet be equally suggestive of true ideas with facts absolutely certain.
The spiritual significance is the same of the transfiguration, of opening blind
eyes, of causing the tongue of the stammerer to speak plainly, of feeding multitudes
with bread in the wilderness, of cleansing leprosy, whatever links may be deficient
in the traditional record of particular events. Or, let us suppose one to be uncertain,
whether our Lord were born of the house and lineage of David, or of the tribe of Levi,
Moreover, the same principle is capable of
application to some of those inferences which have been the source, according to
different theologies, of much controversial acrimony and of wide ecclesiastical
separations; such as those which have been drawn from the institution of the sacraments.
Some, for instance, cannot conceive a presence of Jesus Christ in His institution
of the Lord’s Supper, unless it be a corporeal one, nor a spiritual influence upon
the moral nature of man to be connected with baptism, unless it be supernatural,
quasi-mechanical, effecting a psychical change then and there. But within these
concrete conceptions there lie hid the truer ideas of the virtual presence of the
Lord Jesus everywhere that He is
The same may be said of the concrete conceptions of art hierarchy described by its material form and descent; also of millenarian expectations of a personal reign of the saints with Jesus upon earth, and of the many embodiments in which from age to age has reappeared the vision of a New Jerusalem shining with mundane glory here below. These gross conceptions, as they seem to some, may be necessary to others, as approximations to true ideas. So, looking for redemption in Israel was a looking for a very different redemption, with most of the Jewish people, from that which Jesus really came to operate, yet it was the only expectation which they could form, and was the shadow to them of a great reality.
Even to the Hebrew Psalmist, He comes flying upon the wings of the wind; and only to the higher Prophet is He not in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in ‘the still small voice.’ Not the same thoughts—very far from the same thoughts—pass through the minds of the more and the less instructed on contemplating the same face of the natural world. In like manner are the thoughts of men various, in form at least, if not in substance, when they read the same Scripture histories and use the same Scripture phrases. Histories to some, become parables to others; and facts to those, are emblems to these. The ‘rock’ and the ‘cloud’ and the ‘sea’ convey to the Christian admonitions of spiritual verities; and so do the ordinances of the Church and various parts of its forms of worship.
Jesus Christ has not revealed His religion as a theology of the intellect,
nor as an historical faith; and it is a stifling of the true Christian life, both
in the
There is enough indeed to sadden us in the doubtful warfare which the good wages with the evil, both within us and without us. How few, under the most favourable conditions, learn to bring themselves face to face with the great moral law, which is the manifestation of the Will of God! The greater part can only detect the evil when it comes forth from them, nearly as when any other might observe it We cannot, in the matter of those who are brought under the highest influences of the Christian Church, any more than in the case of mankind viewed in their ordinary relations, give any account of the apparently useless expenditure of power—of the apparent overbearing generally of the higher law by the lower—of the apparent poverty of result from the operation of a wonderful machinery—of the seeming waste of myriads of germs, for the sake of a few mature growths. ‘Many arc called but few chosen’—and under the privileges of the Christian Church, as in other mysteries,—
πολλοὶ μὲν ναρθηκοφόροι, βάκχοι δέ γε πᾶυροι.
Calvinism has a keen perception of this truth; and we shrink from
Calvinism and Augustinianism, not because of their perceiving how few, even under
Christian privileges, attain to the highest adoption of sons; but because of the
inferences with which they clog that truth—the inferences which they draw respecting
The Christian Church can only tend on those who are committed to its care, to the verge of that abyss which parts this world from the world unseen. Some few of those fostered by her are now ripe for entering on a higher career: the many are but rudimentary spirits—germinal souls. What shall become of them? If we look abroad in the world and regard the neutral character of the multitude, we are at a loss to apply to them, either the promises, or the denunciations of revelation. So, the wise heathens could anticipate a reunion with the great and good of all ages; they could represent to themselves, at least in a figurative manner, the punishment and the purgatory of the wicked; but they would not expect the reappearance in another world, for any purpose, of a Thersites or an Hyperbolos—social and poetical justice had been sufficiently done upon them, Yet there are such as these, and no better than these, under the Christian name—babblers, busy-bodies, livers to get gain, and mere eaters and drinkers. The Roman Church has imagined a limbus infantium; we must rather entertain a hope that there shall be found, after the great adjudication, receptacles suitable for those who shall be infants, not as to years of terrestrial life, but as to spiritual development—nurseries as it were and seed-grounds, where the undeveloped may grow up under new conditions—the stunted may become strong, and the perverted be restored. And when the Christian Church, in all its branches, shall have fulfilled its sublunary office, and its Founder shall have surrendered His kingdom to the Great Father—all, both small and great, shall find a refuge in the bosom of the Universal Parent, to repose, or be quickened into higher life, in the ages to come, according to his Will.
ON the revival of science in the 16th century, some of the
earliest conclusions at which philosophers arrived were found to be at variance
with popular and long-established belief. The Ptolemaic system of astronomy, which
had then full possession of the minds of men, contemplated the whole visible universe
from the earth as the immovable centre of things. Copernicus changed the point of
view, and placing the beholder in the sun, at once reduced the earth to an inconspicuous
globule, a merely subordinate member of a family of planets, which the terrestrials
had until then fondly imagined to be but pendants and ornaments of their own habitation.
The Church naturally took a lively interest in the disputes which arose between
the philosophers of the new school and those who adhered to the old doctrines, inasmuch
as the Hebrew records, the basis of religious faith, manifestly countenanced the
opinion of the earth’s immobility and certain other views of the universe very incompatible
with those propounded by Copernicus. Hence arose the official proceedings against
Galileo, in consequence of which he submitted to sign his celebrated recantation,
acknowledging that ‘the proposition that the son is the centre of the world and
immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical,
because it is expressly contrary to
The Romish Church, it is presumed, adheres to the old views to the present day. Protestant instincts however, in the 17th century were strongly in sympathy with the augmentation of science, and consequently Reformed Churches more easily allowed themselves to be helped over the difficulty, which, according to the views of inspiration then held and which have survived to the present day, was in reality quite as formidable for them as for those of the old faith. The solution of the difficulty offered by Galileo and others was, that the object of a revelation or divine unveiling of mysteries, must be to teach man things which he is unable and must ever remain unable to find out for himself; but not physical truths, for the discovery of which he has faculties specially provided by his Creator. Hence it was not unreasonable that, in regard to matters of fact merely, the Sacred Writings should use the common language and assume the common belief of mankind, without purporting to correct errors upon points morally indifferent. So, in regard to such a text as, ‘The world is established, it cannot be moved,’ though it might imply the sacred penman’s ignorance of the fact that the earth does move, yet it does not put forth this opinion as an indispensable point of faith. And this remark is applicable to a number of texts which present a similar difficulty.
It might be thought to have been less easy to reconcile in men’s
minds the Copernican view of universe with the very plain and direct averments
contained in the opening chapter of Genesis. It can scarcely be said that this chapter
is not intended in part to teach and convey at least some physical truth,
It would have been well if theologians had made up their minds to accept frankly the principle that those things for the discovery of which man has faculties specially provided are not fit objects of a divine revelation. Had this been unhesitatingly done, either the definition and idea of divine revelation must have been modified, and the possibility of an admixture of error have been allowed, or such parts of the Hebrew writings as were found to be repugnant to fact must have been pronounced to form no part of revelation. The first course is that which theologians have most generally adopted, but with such limitations, cautels, and equivocations as to be of little use in satisfying those who would know how and what God really has taught mankind, and whether anything beyond that which man is able and obviously intended to arrive at by the use of his natural faculties.
The difficulties and disputes which attended the first revival
of science have recurred in the present
When this new cause of controversy first arose, some writers
more hasty than discreet, attacked the conclusions of geologists, and declared
them scientifically false. This phase may now be considered past, and although
school-books probably continua to teach much as they did, no well-instructed
person now doubts the great antiquity of the earth any more than its motion.
This being so, modern theologians, forsaking the maxim of Galileo, or only using
it vaguely as an occasional make-weight, have directed their attention to the
possibility of reconciling the Mosaic narrative with those geological facts
which are admitted to be beyond dispute. Several modes of doing this have been
proposed which have been deemed more or less satisfactory. In a text-book of
theological instruction widely used, Horne’s Introduction, to the Holy Scriptures (1856,
tenth Edition.)
In truth, however, if we refer to the plans of conciliation proposed,
we find them at variance with each other and mutually destructive. The conciliators are
not agreed among themselves, and each holds the
views of the other to be untenable and unsafe. The
ground is perpetually being shifted, as the advance
of geological science may require. The plain meaning
of the Hebrew record is unscrupulously tampered with, and in general the pith of the whole process lies
in divesting the text of all meaning whatever. We are told that Scripture not being designed to teach us natural
philosophy, it is in vain to attempt to make out a cosmogony from its statements.
If the first chapter of Genesis convey to us no information concerning the origin
of the world, its statements cannot indeed be contradicted by modern discovery.
But it is absurd to call this harmony. Statements such as that above quoted are,
we conceive, little calculated to be serviceable to the interests of theology, still
less to religion and morality. Believing, as we do, that if the value of the Bible
as a book of religious instruction is to be maintained, it must be not by striving
to prove it scientifically exact, at the expense of every sound principle of interpretation,
and in defiance of common sense, but by the frank recognition of the erroneous views
of nature which it contains, we have put pen to paper to analyse some of the popular
conciliation theories. The inquiry cannot be deemed a superfluous one, nor one which
in the interests of theology had better be let alone. Physical science goes on unconcernedly
pursuing its own paths. Theology, the science whose object is the dealing of God
with man as a moral being, maintains but a shivering existence, shouldered and jostled
by the sturdy growths of modern thought, and bemoaning itself for the hostility
which it encounters. Why should this be, unless because theologians persist in clinging to theories
of God’s procedure towards man, which have long
The account which astronomy gives of the relations of our earth to the rest of the universe, and that which geology gives of its internal structure and the development of its surface, are sufficiently familiar to most readers. But it will be necessary for our purpose to go over the oft-trodden ground, which must be done with rapid steps. Nor let the reader object to be reminded of some of the most elementary facts of his knowledge. The human race has been ages in arriving at conclusions now familiar to every child.
This earth apparently so still and stedfast, lying in majestic
repose beneath the ætherial vault, is a globular body of comparatively insignificant
size, whirling fast through space round the sun as the centre of its orbit,
and completing its revolution in the course of one year, while at the same time
it revolves daily once about its own axis, thus producing the changes of day and
night. The sun, which seems to leap up each morning from the east, and traversing
the skyey bridge, slides down into the west, is relatively to our earth motionless.
In size and weight it inconceivably surpasses it. The moon, which occupies a
position in the visible heavens only second to the sun, and far beyond that
of every other celestial body in conspicuousness, is but a subordinate globe, much
smaller than our own, and revolving round the earth as its centre, while it accompanies
it in yearly revolutions about the sun. Of itself it has no lustre, and is visible
to us only by the reflected sunlight. Those beautiful stars which are perpetually
changing their position in the heavens, and shine with a soft and moon-like light, are
bodies, some much larger, some less, than our earth, and like it revolve round
the sun,
Our earth then is but one of the lesser pendants of a body which
is itself only an inconsiderable unit in the vast creation. And now if we withdraw
our thoughts from the immensities of space, and look into the construction of man’s
obscure home, the first question is whether it has ever been in any other condition
than that in which we now see it, and if so, what are the stages through which it
has passed, and what was its first traceable state. Here geology steps in and successfully
carries back the history of the earth’s crust to a very remote period, until it arrives at region
of uncertainty, where philosophy is reduced to mere guesses and possibilities, and
pronounces nothing definite. To this region belong the speculations which have been
ventured upon as to the original concretion of the
earth and planets out of nebular matter of which the sun may have been the. nucleus. But the first
clear view which we obtain of the early condition of the earth, presents to us a ball
of matter, fluid with intense
It is in the system of beds which overlies these primitive formations
that the first records of organisms present themselves. In the so-called Silurian
system we have a vast assemblage of strata of various kinds, together many thousands
of feet thick, and abounding in remains of animal life. These strata were deposited
at the bottom of the sea, and the remains are exclusively marine. The creatures
whose exaviæ have been preserved belong to those classes which are placed by naturalists
the lowest with respect to organization, the mollusca, articulata, and radiata. Analogous
beings exist at the present day, but not their lineal descendants, unless time can
effect transmutation of species, an hypothesis not generally It has been stated that a coal-bed, containing remains of
land-plants, underlying strata of the lower Silurian class, has been found in
Portugal.
In the upper strata of the Silurian system is found the commencement of the race of fishes, the lowest creatures of the vertebrate type, and in the succeeding beds they become abundant. These monsters clothed in mail who must have been the terror of the seas they inhabited, have left their indestructible coats behind them as evidence of their existence.
Next come the carboniferous strata, containing the remains of a gigantic and luxuriant vegetation, and here reptiles and insects begin to make their appearance. At this point geologists make a kind of artificial break, and for the sake of distinction, denominate the whole of the foregoing period of animated existences the Palæozoic, or that of antique life.
In the next great geological section, the so-called Secondary
period, in which are comprised the oolitic and cretaceous systems, the predominant
creatures are different from those which figured conspicuously in the preceding.
The land was inhabited by gigantic animals, half-toad, half-lizard, who hopped about,
leaving often their foot-prints like those of a clumsy human hand, upon the sandy
shores of the seas they frequented. The waters now abounded with monsters, half-fish, half-crocodile, the well-known
saurians, whose
bones have been collected in abundance. Even the air had its tenantry from the
same
Lastly, comes the Tertiary period, in which mammalia of the highest
forms enter upon the scene, while the composite growths of the Secondary period
in great part disappear, and the types of creatures approach more nearly to those
which now exist. During long ages this state of things continued, while the earth
was the abode principally of mastodons, elephants, rhinoceroses, and their thick-hided
congeners, many of them of colossal proportions, and of species which have now passed
away. The remains of these creatures have been found in the frozen rivers of the
north, and they appear to have roamed over regions of the globe where their more
delicate representatives of the present day would be unable to live. During this
era the ox, horse, and deer, and perhaps other animals, destined to be serviceable
to man, became inhabitants of the earth. Lastly, the advent of man may be considered as
inaugurating a new and distinct epoch, that in which we now are, and during
the whole of which the physical conditions of existence cannot have been very materially
different from what they are now. Thus, the reduction of the earth into the state
in which we now behold it has been the slowly continued work of ages. The races
of organic beings which have populated its surface have from time to
We pass to the account of the creation contained in the Hebrew
record. And it must be observed that in reality two distinct accounts are given
us in the book of Genesis, one being comprised in the first chapter and the first
three verses of the second, the other commencing at the fourth verse of the second
chapter and continuing till the end. This is so philologically certain that it were
useless to ignore it. But even those who may be inclined to contest the fact that
we have here the productions of two different writers, will admit that the account
beginning at the first verse of the first chapter, and ending at the third verse
of the second, is a complete whole in itself. And to this narrative, in order not to complicate the subject
unnecessarily,
we intend to confine ourselves. It will sufficient for our purpose to enquire, whether
this account can be shown to be in accordance with our astronomical and geological
knowledge. And for the
We are told that ‘in the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth.’ It has been matter of discussion amongst theologians whether the word
‘created’ (Heb. bara) here means simply shaped or formed, or shaped or formed
out of nothing. From the use of the verb bara in other passages, it appears
that it does not necessarily mean to make out of nothing, This appears at once from
In the second verse the earliest state of things is described;
according to the received translation, ‘the earth was without form and void.’ The
prophet Jeremiah
The earth itself is supposed to be submerged under the waters of the deep, over which the breath of God—the air or wind—flutters while all is involved in darkness. The first special creative command is that which bids the light appear, whereupon daylight breaks over the two primæval elements of earth and water—the one lying still enveloped by the other; and the space of time occupied by the original darkness and the light which succeeded, is described as the first day. Thus light and the measurement of time are represented as existing before the manifestation of the sun, and this idea, although repugnant to our modern knowledge, has not in former times appeared absurd. Thus we find Ambrose (Hexaemeron lib. 4, cap. 3) remarking:—‘We must recollect that the light of day is one thing, the light of the sun, moon, and stars another,—the sun by his rays appearing to add lustre to the daylight. For before sunrise the day dawns, but is not in full refulgence, for the midday sun adds still further to its splendour.’ We quote this passage to show how a mind unsophisticated by astronomical knowledge understood the Mosaic statement; and we may boldly affirm that those for whom it was first penned could have taken it in no other sense than that light existed before and independently of the sun, nor do we misrepresent it when we affirm this to be its natural and primary meaning. How far we are entitled to give to the writer’s words an enigmatical and secondary meaning, as contended by those who attempt to conciliate them with our present knowledge, must be considered further on.
The work of the second day of creation is to erect the vault of
Heaven (Heb. rakia; Gr. στερέωμα; Lat.
firmamentum) which is represented
as supporting an ocean of water above it. The waters are said to be divided, so that
some are below, some above the vault. The root is generally applied to express the hammering
or beating out of metal plates; hence something beaten or spread out. It has
been pretended that the word rakia may be translated expanse,
so as merely to mean empty space. The context sufficiently rebuts this.
On the third day, at the command of God, the waters which have
hitherto concealed the earth are gathered together in one place—the sea,—and the
dry land emerges. Upon the same day the earth brings forth grass, herb yielding
seed and fruit trees, the destined food of the animals and of man (
On the fourth day, the two great lights, the sun and moon, are
made (Heb. hasah) and set in the firmament of heaven to give
light to the earth, but more particularly to serve as the means of measuring time,
and of marking out years, days, and seasons. This is the most prominent office assigned
to them (
On the fifth day the waters are called into productive activity,
and bring forth fishes and marine animals, as also the birds of the air. In the second narrative of creation, in which no distinction of days is made, the birds
are said to have been formed out of the ground. See particularly the narrative in It is in the second narrative of creation that the formation
of a single man, out of the dust of the earth, is described, and the omission to
create a female at the same time, is stated to have been repaired by the subsequent formation of one from the side of the man.
The The common
arrangement of the Bible in chapters is of comparatively modern origin, and is admitted, on all hands, to have no authority or philological worth
whatever. In many cases, the division is most preposterous, and interferes greatly with an intelligent perusal of the text.
Remarkable as this narrative is for simple grandeur, it has
nothing in it which can be properly called poetical. It bears on its face no
trace of mystical or symbolical meaning. Things are called by their right names
with a certain scientific exactness widely different
The circumstances related in the second narrative of creation are indeed such as to give at least some ground for the supposition that a mystical interpretation was intended to be given to it. But this is far from being the case with the first narrative, in which none but a professed mystifier of the school of Philo could see anything but a plain statement of facts. There can be little reasonable dispute then as to the sense in which the Mosaic narrative was taken by those who first heard it, nor is it indeed disputed that for centuries, putting apart the Philonic mysticism, which after all did not exclude a primary sense, its words have been received in their genuine and natural meaning. That this meaning is primâ facie one wholly adverse to the present astronomical and geological views of the universe is evident enough. There is not a mere difference through deficiency. It cannot be correctly said that the Mosaic writer simply leaves out details which modern science supplies, and that, therefore, the inconsistency is not a real but only an apparent one. It is manifest that the whole account is given from a different point of view from that which we now unavoidably take; that the order of things as we now know them to be, is to a great extent reversed, although here and there we may pick out some general analogies and points of resemblance. Can we say that the Ptolemaic system of astronomy is not at variance with modern science, because it represents with a certain degree of correctness some of the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies?
The task which sundry modern writers have imposed upon themselves is to prove, that the Mosaic
narrative,
however apparently at variance with our knowledge, is essentially, and in fact true, although
Two modes of conciliation have been propounded which have enjoyed considerable popularity, and to these two we shall confine our attention.
The first is that originally brought into vogue by Chalmers and adopted by the late Dr. Buckland in his Bridgewater Treatise, and which is probably still received by many as a sufficient solution of all difficulties. Dr. Buckland’s treatment of the case may be taken as a fair specimen of the line of argument adopted, and it shall be given in his own words. ‘The word beginning,’ he says, ‘as applied by Moses in the first verse of the book of Genesis, expresses an undefined period of time which was antecedent to the last great change that affected the surface of the earth, and to the creation of its present animal and vegetable inhabitants, during which period a long series of operations may have been going on; which as they are wholly unconnected with the history of the human race, are passed over in silence by the sacred historian, whose only concern was barely to state, that the matter of the universe is not eternal and self-existent, but was originally created by the power of the Almighty.’ ‘The Mosaic narrative commences with a declaration that ‘in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ These few first words of Genesis may be fairly appealed to by the geologist as containing a brief statement of the creation of the material elements, at a time distinctly preceding the operations of the first day; it is nowhere affirmed that God created the heaven and the earth in the first day, but in the beginning; this beginning may have been an epoch at an unmeasured distance, followed by periods of undefined duration during which all the physical operations disclosed by geology were going on.’
‘The first verse of Genesis, therefore, seems explicitly to assert the creation
of the universe; the
’ The second verse may describe the condition of the earth on the evening of this first day (for in the Jewish mode of computation used by Moses each day is reckoned from the beginning of one evening to the beginning of another evening). This first evening may be considered as the termination of the indefinite time which followed the primeval creation announced in the first verse, and as the commencement of the first of the six succeeding days in which the earth was to be filled up, and peopled in a manner fit for the reception of mankind. We have in this second verse, a distinct mention of earth and waters, as already existing and involved in darkness; their condition also is described as a state of confusion and emptiness (tohu bohu), words which are usually interpreted by the vague and indefinite Greek term chaos, and which may be geologically considered as designating the wreck and ruins of a former world. At this intermediate point of time the preceding undefined geological periods had terminated, a new series of events commenced, and the work of the first morning of this new creation was the calling forth of light from a temporary darkness, which had overspread the ruins of the ancient earth.’
With regard to the formation of the sun and moon, Dr. Buckland observes, p. 27, ‘We are not told that the substance of the sun and moon was first called into existence on the fourth day; the text may equally imply that these bodies were then prepared and appointed to certain offices, of high importance to mankind, ‘to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day, and over the night, to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years.’ The fact of their creation had been stated before in the first verse.’
The question of the meaning of the word bara, create, has been previously touched upon; it has been acknowledged by good critics that it does not of itself necessarily imply ‘to make out of nothing,’ upon the simple ground that it is found used in cases where such a meaning would be inapplicable. But the difficulty of giving to it the interpretation contended for by Dr. Buckland, and of uniting with this the assumption of a six days’ creation, such as that described in Genesis, at a comparatively recent period, lies in this, that the heaven itself is distinctly said to have been formed by the division of the waters on the second day. Consequently during the indefinite ages which elapsed from the primal creation of matter until the first Mosaic day of creation, there was no sky, no local habitation for the sun, moon, and stars, even supposing those bodies to have been included in the original material. Dr. Buckland does not touch this obvious difficulty, without which his argument that the sun and moon might have been contemplated as pre-existing, although they are not stated to have been set in the heaven until the fourth day, is of no value at all.
Dr. Buckland appears to assume that when it is said that the heaven and the earth
were created in the beginning, it
is to be understood that they were created in their present form and state of completeness, the heaven raised above the earth as we see
it, or
Having, however, thus endeavoured to make out that the Mosaic account does not negative the idea that the sun, moon, and stars had ‘been created at the indefinitely distant time designated by the word beginning,’ he is reduced to describe the primæval darkness of the first day as ‘a temporary darkness, produced by an accumulation of dense vapours upon the face of the deep.’ ‘An incipient dispersion of these vapours may have readmitted light to the earth, upon the first day, whilst the exciting cause of light was obscured, and the further purification of the atmosphere upon the fourth day, may have caused the sun and moon and stars to re-appear in the firmament of heaven, to assume their new relations to the newly modified earth and to the human race.’
It is needless to discuss the scientific probability of this hypothesis,
but the violence done to the grand and simple words of the Hebrew writer must strike
every mind. ‘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 called he night; and the evening and the
morning were the first day.’ Can any one sensible the value of words suppose, that nothing more is here
described, or intended to be described, than the partial clearing
What were the new relations which the heavenly bodies according to Dr. Buckland’s view, assumed to the newly modified earth and to the human race? They had, as we well know, marked out seasons, days and years, and had given light for ages before to the earth, and to the animals which preceded man as its inhabitants, as is shown, Dr. Buckland admits, by the eyes of fossil animals, optical instruments of the same construction as those of the animals of our days, and also by the existence of vegetables in the early world, to the development of which light must have been as essential then as now.
The hypothesis adopted by Dr. Buckland was first promulgated at
a time when the gradual and regular formation of the earth’s strata was not seen
or admitted so clearly as it is now. Geologists were more disposed to believe in
great catastrophes and sudden breaks. Buckland’s theory supposes that previous to
the appearance of the present races of animals and vegetables there was a great
gap in the globe’s history,—that the earth was completely depopulated, as well
of marine as land animals; and that the creation of all existing plants and animals
was coæval with that of man. This theory is by no means supported by geological
phenomena, and is, we suppose, now rejected by all geologists whose authority is valuable.
Thus writes Hugh Miller in 1857—‘I certainly did once believe with Chalmers and
with Buckland that the six days were simply natural days of twenty-four hours
each—that they had comprised the entire work of the existing creation—and that the
latest of the geologic ages was separated by a great chaotic gap from our own.My labours at the time as a practical geologist Testimony of the Rocks, P. 10.
Hugh Miller will be admitted by many as a competent witness to the untenability of the theory of Chalmers and Buckland on mere geological grounds. He had, indeed, a theory of his own to propose, which we shall presently consider; but we may take his word that it was not without the compulsion of what he considered irresistible evidence that he relinquished a view which would have saved him infinite time and labour, could he have adhered to it.
But whether contemplated from a geological point of view,
or whether from a philological one, that is, with reference to the value of
words, the use of language, and the ordinary rules which govern writers whose
object it is to make themselves understood by those to whom their works are immediately
addressed, the interpretation proposed by Buckland to be given to the Mosaic
description will not bear a moment’s serious discussion. It is plain, from the
whole tenor of the narrative, that the writer contemplated no such representation
as that suggested, nor could any such idea have entered into the minds of those
to whom the account was first given. Dr. Buckland endeavours to make out that
we have here simply a case of leaving out facts which did not particularly concern
the writer’s purpose, so that he gave an account true so far as it went, though
imperfect. ‘We may fairly ask,’ he argues, ‘of those persons who consider physical
science a fit subject for revelation, what point they can imagine short of a communication
of Omniscience at which such a revelation might have stopped without imperfections
of omission, less in degree, but See Dr. Pusey’s note—Buckland’s Bridgewater Treatise, pp.
24, 25.
‘After all,’ says Buckland, it should be recollected that the question
is not respecting the correctness of the Mosaic narrative, but of our interpretation
of it,’ proposition which can hardly be sufficiently reprobated.
‘It should be borne in mind,’ says Dr. Buckland, ‘that the object
of the account was, not to state in what manner, but by whom the world
was made.’ Every one must see that this is an unfounded assertion, inasmuch as
the greater part of the narrative consists in a minute and orderly description
of
We come then to this, that if we sift the Mosaic narrative of
all definite meaning, and only allow it to be the expression of the most vague
generalities, if we avow that it admits of no certain interpretation, of none
that may not be shifted and altered as often as we see fit, and as the
exigencies of geology may require, then may we reconcile it with what science
teaches. This mode of dealing with the subject has been broadly advocated by a
recent writer of mathematical eminence, who adopts the Bucklandian hypothesis, a
passage from whose work we shall quote. Scripture and Science not at
Variance. By J. H. Pratt, M.A., Archdeacon of Calcutta, 1859. Third edition,
p. 34.
‘The Mosaic account of the six days’ work is thus harmonized
by some. On the first day, while the earth was ‘without form and void,’ the result
of a previous convulsion in nature, ‘and darkness was upon the face of the deep,’
God commanded light to shine upon the earth. This may have been effected by such
a clearing of the thick and loaded atmosphere, as to allow the light of the sun
to penetrate its mass with a suffused illumination, sufficient to dispel the total darkness which had prevailed, but
proceeding from a source not yet apparent on the earth. On the second day a
separation took place in
‘According to this explanation, the first chapter of Genesis
does not pretend (as has been generally assumed) to be a cosmogony, or an
account of the original creation of the material universe. The only cosmogony which
it contains, in that sense at least, is confined to the sublime declaration of the
first verse, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ The inspired
record thus stepping over an interval of indefinite ages with which man has no
direct concern, proceeds at once to narrate the events preparatory to the introduction
of man on the scene; employing phraseology strictly faithful to the appear- ances
which would have met the eye of man, could, he have been a spectator
on the earth of what passed during those six days. All this has been commonly supposed
to be a more detailed account of the general truth announced in the first verse,
in short, a cosmogony: such was the idea of Josephus; such probably was the idea
of our translators; for their version,
‘The foregoing explanation many have now adopted. It is sufficient for my purpose, if it be a possible explanation, and if it meet the difficulties of the case. That it is possible in itself, is plain from the fact above established, that the Scriptures wisely speak on natural things according to their appearances rather than their physical realities. It meets the difficulties of the case, because all the difficulties hitherto started against this chapter on scientific grounds proceeded on the principle that it is a cosmogony; which this explanation repudiates, and thus disposes of the difficulties. It is therefore an explanation satisfactory to my own mind. I may be tempted to regret that I eau gain no certain scientific information from Genesis regarding the process of the original creation; but I resist the temptation, remembering the great object for which the Scripture was given—to tell man of his origin and fall, and to draw his mind to his Creator and Redeemer. Scripture was not designed to teach us natural philosophy, and it is vain to attempt to make a cosmogony out of its statements. The Almighty declares himself the originator of all things, but he condescends not to describe the process or the laws by which he worked. All this he leaves for reason to decipher from the phenomena which his world displays.
‘This exploration, however, I do not wish to impose on Scripture; and am fully prepared to surrender it, should further scientific discovery suggest another better fitted to meet all the requirements of the case.’
We venture to think that the world at large will continue to consider the account in the first chapter of
Dissatisfied with the scheme of conciliation which has been discussed,
other geologists have proposed to give an entirely mythical or enigmatical sense
to the Mosaic narrative, and to consider the creative days described as vast periods
of time. This plan was long ago suggested, but it has of late enjoyed a high degree
of popularity, through the advocacy of the Scotch geologist Hugh Miller, an extract
from whose work has been already quoted. Dr. Buckland gives the following account
of the first form in which this theory was propounded, and of the grounds upon
which he rejected it in favour of that of Chalmers: Bridgewater Treatise, p.
17.
‘A third opinion has been suggested both by learned theologians
and by geologists, and on grounds independent of one another—viz., that the days
of the Mosaic creation need not be understood to imply the same length of time which
is now occupied by a single revolution of the globe, but successive periods each
of great extent; and it has been asserted that the order of succession of the organic
remains of a former world accords with the order of creation recorded in Genesis.
This assertion, though to a certain degree apparently correct, is not entirely supported
by geological facts, since it appears that the most ancient marine animals occur
in the same division of the lowest transition strata with the
Archdeacon Pratt also summarily rejects this view as untenable: Science and Scripture
not at Variance, p. 40, note.
‘There is one other class of interpreters, however, with whom I
find it impossible to agree,—I mean those who take the six days to be six periods
of unknown indefinite length. This is the principle of interpretation in a work
on the Creation and the Fall, by the Rev. D. Macdonald; also in Mr. Hugh
Miller’s posthumous work, the Testimony of the Rocks, and also in an admirable
treatise on the Præ-Adamite Earth in Dr. Lardner’s Museum of Science.
In this last it is the more surprising because the successive chapters are in
fact an accumulation of evidence which points the other way, as a writer in the
Christian Observer, Jan. 1858, has conclusively shown. The late M. D’Orbigny
has demonstrated in his Prodrome de Palæontologie, after an elaborate examination
of vast multitudes of fossils, that there have been at least twenty-nine distinct
periods of animal and vegetable existence—that is, twenty nine creations separated
one from another by catastrophes which have swept away the species existing at
the time, with a very few solitary exceptions, never exceeding one and a-half per
cent, of the whole number discovered which have either survived the catastrophe,
or have been erroneously designated. But not a single species of the
In this trenchant manner do theological geologists overthrow one another’s theories. However, Hugh Miller was perfectly aware of the difficulty involved in his view of the question, and we shall endeavour to show the reader the manner in which he deals with it.
He begins by pointing out that the families of vegetables and
animals were introduced upon earth as nearly as possible according to the great
classes in which naturalists have arranged the modern flora and fauna. According
to the arrangement of Lindley, he observes—‘Commencing at the bottom of the scale
we find the thallogens, or flowerless plants, which lack proper stems and leaves—a
class which includes all the algæ. Next succeed the acrogens, or flowerless plants
that possess both stems and leaves—such as the ferns and their allies.
Next, omitting an inconspicuous class, represented by but a few parasitical plants incapable of preservation
as fossils, come the endogens— monocotyledonous flowering plants, that include
the palms, the liliaceæ, and several other families, all
Now, these facts do certainly tally to some extent with the Mosaic
account, which represents fish and fowl as having been produced from the waters
on the fifth day, reptiles and mammals from the earth on the sixth, and man as made
last of all. The agreement, however, is far from exact, as according to geological evidence, reptiles would appear to have existed ages
ages before birds and mammals, whereas here the creation of birds is attributed to the fifth day, that of reptiles to the sixth. There remains,
moreover, the insuperable
Although, therefore, there is a superficial resemblance in the Mosaic account to that of the geologists, it is evident that the bare theory that a ‘day’ means an age or immense geological period might be made to yield some rather strange results. What becomes of the evening and morning of which each day is said to have consisted? Was each geologic age divided into two long intervals, one all darkness, the other all light? and if so, what became of the plants and trees created in the third day or period, when the evening of the fourth day (the evenings, be it observed, precede the mornings) set in? They must have passed through half a seculum of total darkness, not even cheered by that dim light which the sun, not yet completely manifested, supplied on the morning of the third day. Such an ordeal would have completely destroyed the whole vegetable creation, and yet we find that it survived, and was appointed on the sixth day as the food of man and animals. In fact, we need only substitute the word ‘period’ for ‘day’ in the Mosaic narrative to make it very apparent that the writer at least had no such meaning, nor could he have conveyed any such meaning to those who first heard his account read.
‘It has been held,’ says Hugh Miller, ‘by accomplished
philologists, that the days of Mosaic creation may be regarded without doing
violence to the Hebrew language, as successive periods of great extent.’ Testimony, p. 133.
Archdeacon Pratt, treating on the same subject, says (p, 41, note),
‘Were there no other ground of objection to this mode of interpretation, I think
the wording of the fourth commandment is clearly opposed to it.
‘Is it not a harsh and forced interpretation to suppose that
the six days in
Hugh Miller saw the difficulty; but he endeavours to escape the
consequences of a rigorous application of the periodic theory by modifying it in a peculiar,
and certainly ingenious manner. ‘Waiving,’ he says, ‘the question as a philological one, and simply holding
with Cuvier, Parkinson and Silliman, that each of the six days of the Mosaic account in
the first chapter The expression, Testimony, p.
134.
The theory founded upon this hint is that the Hebrew writer did
not state facts, but merely certain appearances, and those not of things which really
happened, A very inadmissible
assertion. Any one, be he geologist, aetronomer, theologian, or philologist, who attempts to explain the Hebrew narrative,
is bound to take it with all that really belongs to it. And in truth, if the
fourth day really represented an epoch of creative activity, geology would be
able to give some account of it. There is no reason to suppose that any
intermission has taken place.
‘The middle great period of the geologist—that of the secondary
division—possessed, like the earlier one, its herbs and plants, but they were of
a greatly less luxuriant and conspicuous character than their predecessors, and
no longer formed the prominent trait or feature of the creation to which they belonged.
The period had also its corals, its crustaceans, molluscs, its fishes, and in some
one or two exceptional
Thus by dropping the invertebrata, and the early fishes and reptiles of the Palæozoic period as inconspicuous and of little account, and bringing prominently forward the carboniferous era which succeeded them as the most characteristic feature of the first great division, by classing the great land reptiles of the secondary period with the moving creatures of the waters, (for in the Mosaic account it does not appear that any inhabitants of the land were created on the fifth day). and evading the fact that terrestrial reptiles seem to have preceded birds in their order of appearance upon earth, the geologic divisions are tolerably well assimilated to the third, fifth, and sixth Mosaic days. These things were represented, we are told, to Moses in visionary pictures, and resulted in the short and summary account which he has given.
There is something in this hypothesis very near to
Hugh Miller’s treatment of the description of the first dawn of light is not more satisfactory than
that of Dr. Buckland. He supposes the prophet in his
We are then asked to imagine that a second and a third day, each
representing the characteristic features of a great distinctly-marked epoch, and
the latter of them marked by the appearance of a rich and luxuriant vegetation,
are presented to the seer’s eye; but without sun, moon, or stars as yet entering
into his dream. These appear first in his fourth vision, and then for the first
time we have ‘a brilliant day,’ and the seer, struck with the novelty, describes
the heavenly bodies as being the most conspicuous objects in the picture. In reality
we know that he represents them (
In one respect the theory of Hugh Miller agrees with that advocated
by Dr. Buckland and Archdeacon Pratt. Both these theories divest the Mosaic narrative
of real accordance with fact; both assume that appearances only, not facts, are
described, and that in riddles, which would never have been suspected to be such,
had we not arrived at the truth from other sources. It would be difficult for controversialists
to cede more completely the point in dispute, or to admit more explicitly that the
Mosaic narrative does not represent correctly the history of the universe up to
the time of man. At the same time, the upholders of each theory see insuperable objections
in details to that of their allies, and do not pretend to any firm faith in
their own. How can it be otherwise when the task proposed is to evade the plain meaning of
language, and to introduce obscurity into one of the simplest stories ever told,
It is refreshing to return to the often-echoed remark, that it
could not have been the object of a Divine revelation to instruct mankind in physical
science, man having had faculties bestowed upon him to enable him to acquire this
knowledge by himself. This is in fact pretty generally admitted; but in the
application of the doctrine, writers play at fast and loose with it according to
circumstances. Thus an inspired writer may be permitted to allude to the phenomena
of nature according to the vulgar view of such things, without impeachment of
his better knowledge; but if he speaks of the same phenomena assertively, we are
bound to suppose that things are as he represents them, however much our knowledge
of nature may be disposed to recalcitrate. But if we find a difficulty in admitting
that such misrepresentations can find a place in revelation, the difficulty lies
in our having previously assumed what a Divine revelation ought to be. If God made
use of imperfectly informed men to lay the foundations of that higher knowledge
for which the human race was destined, is it wonderful that they should have
committed themselves to assertions not in accordance with facts, although they
may have believed them to be true? On what grounds has the popular notion of
Divine revelation been built up? Is it not plain that the plan of Providence for the education of man
is a progressive one, and as imperfect men have been used as the agents
for teaching mankind, is it not to be expected that their teachings should be
partial and, to
Admitting, as is historically and in fact the case, that it
was the mission of the Hebrew race to lay the foundation of religion upon the earth,
and that Providence used this people specially for this purpose, is it not our business
and our duty to look and see how this has really been done? not forming for ourselves
theories of what a revelation ought to be, or how we, if entrusted with the task,
would have made one, but enquiring how it has pleased God to do it. In all his theories
of the world, man has at first deviated widely from the truth, and has only gradually
come to see how far otherwise God has ordered things than the first daring speculator
had supposed. It has been popularly assumed that the Bible, bearing the stamp of
Divine authority, must be complete, perfect, and unimpeachable in all its parts,
and a thousand difficulties and incoherent doctrines have sprung out of this theory.
Men have proceeded in the matter of theology, as they did with physical science
before inductive philosophy sent them to the feet of nature, and bid them learn
in patience and obedience the lessons which she had to teach. Dogma and groundless
assumption occupy the place of modest enquiry after truth, while at the same time
the upholders of these theories claim credit for humility and submissiveness.
This is exactly inverting the fact; the humble scholar of truth is
not he who, taking his stand upon the traditions of rabbins, Christian fathers, or
school-men, insists upon bending facts to his unyielding standard, but he who is willing
to accept such teaching as it has pleased Divine Providence to afford, without
The Hebrew race, their works, and their books, are great facts in the history of man; the influence of the mind of this people upon the rest of mankind has been immense and peculiar, and there can be no difficulty in recognising therein the hand of a directing Providence. But we may not make ourselves wiser than God, nor attribute to Him methods of procedure which are not His. If, then, it is plain that He has not thought it needful to communicate to the writer of the Cosmogony that knowledge which modern researches have revealed, why do we not acknowledge this, except that it conflicts with a human theory which presumes to point out how God ought to have instructed man? The treatment to which the Mosaic narrative is subjected by the theological geologists is anything but respectful. The writers of this school, as we have seen, agree in representing it as a series of elaborate equivocations—a story which ‘palters with us in a double sense.’ But if we regard it as the speculation of some Hebrew Descartes or Newton, promulgated in all good faith as the best and most probable account that could be then given of God’s universe, it resumes the dignity and value of which the writers in question have done their utmost to deprive it. It has been sometimes felt as a difficulty to taking this view of the case, that the writer asserts so solemnly and unhesitatingly that for which he must have known that he had no authority. But this arises only from our modern habits of thought, and from the modesty of assertion which the spirit of true science has taught us. Mankind has learnt caution through repeated slips in the process of tracing out the truth.
The early speculator was harassed by no such scruples, and asserted as facts what he knew
in reality only as probabilities. But we are not on that account to doubt his
perfect good faith, nor need we attribute
THE thirty years of peace which succeeded the Peace of Utrecht (1714), ‘was the most prosperous season that England had ever experienced; and the progression, though slow, being uniform, the reign of George II. might not disadvantageously be compared for the real happiness of the community with that more brilliant, but uncertain and oscillatory condition which has ensued. A labourer’s wages have never for many ages commanded so large a portion of subsistence as in this part of the 18th century.’ (Hallam, Const. Hist. ii. 464.)
This is the aspect which that period of history wears to the political philosopher. The historian of moral and religious progress, on the other hand, is under the necessity of depicting the same period as one of decay of religion, licentiousness of morals, public corruption, profaneness of language—a day of ‘rebuke and blasphemy.’ Even those who look with suspicion on the contemporary complaints from the Jacobite clergy of ‘decay of religion’ will not hesitate to say that it was an age destitute of depth or earnestness; an age whose poetry was without romance, whose philosophy was without insight, and whose public men were without character; an age of ‘light without love,’ whose ‘very merits were of the earth, earthy.’ In this estimate the followers of Mill and Carlyle will agree with those of Dr. Newman.
The Stoical moralists of the second century who witnessed a
similar coincidence of moral degradation and material welfare, had no difficulty
in connecting them together as effect with cause. ‘Bona
rerum secundarum optabilia, adversarum mirabilia.’ (Seneca, ad Lucil. 66.)
But the famous theory which satisfied the political philosophers of antiquity, viz.,
that the degeneracy of nations is due to the inroads of luxury, is laughed to scorn
by modern economists. It is at any rate a theory which can hardly be adopted
by those who pour unmeasured contempt on the 18th, by way of contrast with the revival
of higher principles by the l9th century. It is especially since the High Church
movement commenced that the theology of the 18th century has become a byeword. The
genuine Anglican omits that period from the history of the Church altogether. In
constructing his Catenæ Patrum he closes his list with Waterland or Brett,
and leaps at once to 1833, when the Tracts for the Times commenced—as
Charles II. dated his reign from his father’s death. Such a legal fiction may be
harmless or useful for purposes of mere form, but the facts of history cannot be
disposed of by forgetting them. Both the Church and the world of to-day are what
they are as the result of the whole of their antecedents. The history of a party
may be written on the theory of periodical occultation; but he who wishes to trace
the descent of religious thought, and the practical working of the religious ideas,
must follow these through all the phases they have actually assumed. We have
not yet learnt, in this country, to write our ecclesiastical history on any better footing than that of praising up the party,
in or out of the Church, to which we happen to belong. Still further are we
from any attempt to apply the laws of thought, and of the succession of opinion, to
the course of English theology. The recognition of the fact, that the view
of the eternal verities of religion which prevails in any given age is in part determined
Of these agencies there are three, the present influence of
which cannot escape the most inattentive. 1. The formation and gradual growth
of that compromise between Church and State, which is culled Toleration, and which,
believed by many to be a principle, is a mere arrangement between two principles.
But such as it is, it is part of our heritage from the last age, and is the foundation,
if foundation it can be called,
If we are to put chronological
limits to this system of religious opinion in England, we might, for the
This whole rationalist age must again be subdivided into two
periods, the theology of which, though belonging to the common type, has distinct
specific characters. These periods are of nearly equal length, and we may conveniently
take the middle year of the century, 1750, as our terminus of division. Though both
periods were engaged upon the proof of Christianity, the distinction between
them is that the first period was chiefly devoted to the internal, the second to
the external, attestations. In the first period the main endeavour was to show that
there was nothing in the contents of the revelation which was not agreeable to
reason. In the second, from 1750 onwards, the controversy was narrowed to what are
usually called the ‘Evidences,’ or the historical proof of the genuineness and authenticity of the Christian records. From this distinction of topic arises an important difference
of value between the theological produce of the two periods. A great injustice is
done to the 18th century, when its whole speculative product is set down under the description
of that Old Bailey theology in which, to use Johnson’s illustration, the Apostles are being tried once a week for the
capital crime of
forgery. This evidential school—the school
The historical investigation, indeed, of the Origenes
It seems, indeed, a singular infelicity that the construction of the historical proof should have been
the task which
the course of events allotted to the latter half of the 18th century. The critical knowledge
of
Should the religious historian then acknowledge that the impatient contempt with which ‘the last century’ is now spoken of, is justifiable with respect to the later period, with its artificial monotone of proof that is no proof, he will by no means allow the same of the earlier period 1688-1750. The superiority which the theological writing of this period has over that which succeeded it, is to be referred in part to the superiority of the internal, over the external, proof of Christianity, as an object of thought.
Both methods alike, as methods of argumentative proof, place the
mind in an unfavourable attitude for the consideration of religious truth. It is
like removing ourselves for the purpose of examining an object to the furthest point
from which the object is visible. Neither the external nor the internal evidences
are properly theology at all. Theology is—1st, and primarily, the contemplative, speculative
habit, by means of which the mind places itself already in another world
than this; a habit begun here, to be raised to perfect vision hereafter. 2ndly,
and in an inferior degree, it is ethical and regulative of our conduct as men, in
those relations which are temporal and transitory. Argumentative proof that such
knowledge is possible can never be substituted for the knowledge without detriment
to the mental habit. What is true of an individual is true of an age. When an
age is found occupied in proving its creed, this is but a token that
the age has ceased to have a proper belief in it Nevertheless, there is a difference
in this respect between
This acknowledgment seems due to the period now referred to.
It is, perhaps, rather thinking of its pulpit eloquence than its controversies,
that Professor Fraser does not hesitate to call this ‘the golden age of English
theology.’ (Essays in Philosophy, p. 205.) Such language, as applied to our great preachers,
was once matter of course, but would now hardly be used by any Anglican, and has
to be sought for in the mouth of members of another communion. The names which once
commanded universal homage among us—the Souths, Barrows, Tillotsons, Sherlocks,—excite,
perhaps, only a smile of pity. Literary taste is proverbially inconstant; but theological
is still more so, for here we have no rule or chart to guide us but the taste of
our age. Boussuet, Bourdaloue, and Massillon
have survived a dozen political revoltions. We have no classical theology, though we
have not had a political revolution since
1660. For in this subject matter the most of Englishmen have no other standard of merit than the prejudices of sect.
The Deistical Controversy, the all-absorbing topic of religious
writers and preachers during the whole of this first period, has pretty well-defined
limits. Stillingfleet, who died Bishop of Worcester in the last year (1699) of
the seventeenth century, marks the transition from the old to the new argument.
In the six folios of Stillingfleet’s works may be found the latest echoes of the
Romanist Controversy, and the first declaration of war against Locke. The Deistical
Controversy attained its greatest intensity in the twenties (1720-1740), after the
subsidence of the Bangorian controversy, which for a time had diverted attention
to itself, and it gradually died out towards the middle of the century. The decay
of interest in the topic is sufficiently marked by the fact that the opinions of
Hume failed to stimulate curiosity or antagonism. His Treatise of Human Nature
(1739) ‘fell dead-born from the press,’ and the only one of his philosophical
writings which was received with favour on its first appearance was one on the new
topic—Political Discourses (1752). Of this he says ‘it was the only
work of mine which was successful on the first publication, being well received both abroad
and at home.’ (My Own
Life.) Bolingbroke, who died in 1751, was the last of the professed Deists.
When his
works were brought out by his executor, Mallet, in 1754, the interest in them was already
gone; they found
the public cold or indisposed. It was a rusty blunderbuss, which he need not
have been afraid to
The rationalism, which is the common character of all the writers of this time, is a method rather than a doctrine; an unconscious assumption rather than a principle from which they reason. They would, however, all have consented in statements such as the following: Bp. Gibson, Second Pastoral Letter, 1730. ‘Those among us who have laboured of late years to set up reason against revelation would make it pass for an established 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 acknowledged 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 contradict the natural notions which reason gives us of the being and attributes of God.’
Prideaux (Humphrey, Dean of Norwich), Letter to the Deists, 1748. ‘Let what is written in all the books of the N. T. be tried by that which is the touchstone of all religions, I mean that religion of nature and reason which God has written in the hearts of every one of us from the first creation; and if it varies from it in any one particular, if it prescribes any one thing which may in the minutest circumstances thereof be contrary to its righteousness, I will then acknowledge this to be an argument against us, strong enough to overthrow the whole cause, and make all things else that can be said for it totally ineffectual for its support.
Tillotson (Archbishop
of Canterbury), Sermons, vol. iii. p. 485. ‘All our reasonings about revelation
are
Rogers (John, D.D.), Sermons at Boyle’s Lecture, 1727, p. 59. ‘Our religion desires no other favour than a sober and dispassionate examination. It submits its grounds and reasons to an unprejudiced trial, and hopes to approve itself to the conviction of any equitable enquirer.’
Butler, (Jos., Bp. of Durham), Analogy, &c., pt. 2, ch. 1. ‘Indeed, if in revelation there be found any passages, the seeming meaning of which is contrary to natural religion, we may most certainly conclude such seeming meaning not to be the real one.’ Ibid., ch. 8: ‘I have argued upon the principles of the fatalists, which I do not believe; and have omitted a thing of the utmost importance which I do believe: the moral fitness and unfitness of actions, prior to all will whatever, which I apprehend as certainly to determine the divine conduct, as speculative truth and falsehood necessarily determine the divine judgment.’
To the same elect the leading preacher among the Dissenters, James Foster,
Truth and Excellency of the
Christian Revelation, 1731. ‘The faculty of reason which God hath implanted
in mankind, however it may have been abused and neglected in times past, will, whenever they
begin to exercise it aright, enable them to judge of all these things. As by means
of this they were capable of
Finally, Warburton, displaying at once his disdain and his ignorance of catholic theology, affirms on his own authority, Works iii. p. 620, that ‘the image of God in which man was at first created, lay in the faculty of reason only.’
But it is needless to multiply quotations. The received theology of the day taught on this point the doctrine of Locke, as clearly stated by himself. (Essay, B. iv. ch. 19. § 4.) ‘Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father of light and fountain of all knowledge communicates to mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural faculties; revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated by God immediately, which reason vouches the truth of, by the testimony and proofs it gives, that they come from God. So that he that takes away reason to make way for revelation, puts out the light of both, and does much-what the same as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes the better to receive the remote light of an Invisible star by a telescope.’
According to this assumption, a man’s religious belief is
a result which issues at the end of an intellectual
process. In arranging the steps of this process,
The deference paid to natural religion is farther seen in the
attempts to establish a priori the necessity of a revelation. To make
this out it was requisite to show that the knowledge with which reason could supply
us was inadequate to be the guide of life, yet reason must not be too much depressed,
inasmuch as it was needed for the proof of Christianity. On the one hand, the moral
state of the heathen world prior to the preaching of Christianity, and of Pagan
and savage tribes in Africa and America now, the superstitions of the most civilized nations of antiquity,
the
In accordance with this view they
interpreted the passages in St. Paul which speak of the religion of the heathen;
e.g.,
Consequent with such a theory of religion was their notion of
its practical bearings. Christianity was a republication of the moral law—a republication rendered necessary by the helpless state of moral debasement into which the
world was come by the practice of vice. The experience of ages had proved that,
though our duty might be discoverable by the light of nature, yet virtue was not able to maintain itself in
The preachers of any period are not to be censured for
adapting their style of address and mode of arguing to their hearers. They are as necessarily
bound to the preconceived notions, as to the language, of those whom they have to
exhort. The pulpit does not mould the forms into which religious thought in any
age runs, it simply accommodates itself to those that exist. For this very reason,
because they must follow and cannot lead, sermons are the surest index of the prevailing
religious feeling of their age. When we are reminded of the powerful influence of
the pulpit at the Reformation, in the time of the Long Parliament, or at the Methodist
revival, it must also be remembered that these preachers addressed a different class
of society from that for which our classical pulpit oratory was written. If it could
be said that ‘Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach in vain,’ it was because the populace
were gone to hear mad Henley on his tub. To charge Tillotson or Foster with not moving the masses which Whitefield moved, is to charge them with
not having preached to another congregation than that to which they had to preach.
Nor did they preach to empty pews, though their carefully-written ‘discourses’ could
never produce effects such as are recorded of Burnet’s extempore addresses, when
he ‘was often interrupted by the deep hum of his audience, and when, after preaching
out the hour-glass, he held it up in his hand, the congregation clamorously
encouraged him to go on till the sand had run off once more.’ (Macaulay, vol.
ii. p. 177.).
The dramatic oratory of Whitefield could not have sustained its power over the same
auditors; he had a fresh congregation every Sunday. And in the judgment
The Rationalist preachers of the eighteenth century are usually
contrasted with the Evangelical pulpit which displaced them. Mr. Neale has
compared them disadvantageously with the mediæval preachers in respect of Scripture knowledge. He selects
a sermon of the eighteenth and one of the twelfth century; the one by the well-known Evangelical preacher John
Newton, Rector of St. Mary Woolnoth; the other by Guarric, Abbot of Igniac. ‘In Newton’s sermon
we find nine references to the Gospels, two to the Epistles, nine to the Prophets,
one to the Psalms, and none to any other part of Scripture. In the sermon of
Guarric we find seven references to the Gospels, one to the Epistles, twenty-two
to the Psalms, nine to the Prophets, and eighteen to other parts of Scripture.
No quality of these ‘Discourses’ strikes us more now than the good sense which pervades them. They are the complete
reaction against the Puritan sermon of the 17th century. We have nothing far-fetched,
fanciful, allegoric. The practice of our duty is recommended to us on the most undeniable
grounds of prudence. Barrow had indulged in ambitious periods, and South had been
jocular. Neither of these faults can be alleged against the model sermon
of the Hanoverian period. No topic is produced which does not compel our assent
as soon as it is understood, and none is there which is not understood as soon as
uttered. It is one man of the world speaking to another. Collins said of St. Paul,
‘that he had a great respect for him as both a man of sense and a gentleman.’ He
might have said the same of the best pulpit divines of his own time. They bear
the closest resemblance to each other, because they all use the language of fashionable society, and say
exactly the proper thing. ‘A person,’ says Waterland, ‘must
have come knowledge of men, besides that of books to succeed well here; and must have a kind of practical sagacity which nothing but the
grace of God joined with recollection and wise observation can bring, to be able to represent truths to
the life, or to any
considerable degree of advantage.’
Not only the pulpit, but the whole theological literature of the
age, takes the same tone of appeal. Books are no longer addressed by the cloistered academic to a learnedly
educated class, they are written by popular divines—‘men of leisure,’ Butler calls
them—for the use of fashionable society. There is an epoch in the
Among a host of mischiefs thus arising, one positive good may be signalized. If there must be debate, there ought to be fair play; and of this, publicity is the best guarantee. To make the public arbiter in an abstract question of metaphysics is doubtless absurd, yet it is at least a safeguard against extravagance and metaphysical lunacy. The verdict of public opinion on such topics is worthless, but it checks the inevitable tendency of closet speculation to become visionary. There is but one sort of scepticism that is genuine, and deadly in proportion as it is real; that namely, which is forced upon the mind by its experience of the hollowness of mankind; for ‘men may be read, as well as books, too much.’ That other logical scepticism which is hatched by over-thinking can be cured by an easy remedy; ceasing to think.
The objections urged against revelation in the course of the Deistical controversy were no
chimæras
If ever there was a time when abstract speculation was brought
down from inaccessible heights and compelled to be intelligible, it was the period from
the
When a dispute is joined, e.g. on the origin and composition
of the Gospels, it is, from the nature of the case, confined to an inner circle
of Biblical scholars. The mass of the public must wait outside, and receive the
result on their authority. The religious public were very reluctant to resign the
verse
M. Villemain has remarked in Pascal, ‘that foresight which revealed
to him so many objections unknown to his generation, and which inspired him with
the idea of fortifying and intrenching positions which were not threatened.’ The
objections which Pascal is engaged with are not only not those of his age, they
are not such as could ever become general in any age. They are those of the
higher reason, and the replies are from the same inspiration. Pascal’s view of
human depravity seems to the ordinary man but the despair and delirium of the
self-tormenting ascetic. The cynical view of our fallen nature, however, is at
least a possible view. It is well that it should be explored, and it will always
have its prophets, Calvin or Rochefoucault. But to ordinary men an argument in
favour of revelation, founded on such an assumption, will seem to be in
contradiction to his daily experience. Pascal’s Pensées stand alone; a work of individual genius, not
belonging to any age. The celebrity which the Analogy of Bishop Butler has gained
is due to the opposite reason. It is no paradox to say that the
merit of the Analogy lies in its want of originality. It came (1736) towards the end
of the Deistical period. It is the result of twenty year’s study—the very
twenty years during which the Deistical notions
Not that he did not pay attention to the parts. Butler’s eminence over his contemporary apologists
is seen in nothing
more than in that superior sagacity which rejects the use of any plea that is not
entitled to consideration singly. In the other evidential books of the time we
find a miscellaneous crowd of suggestions of very various value; never fanciful,
but often trivial; undeniable, but weak as proof of the point they are brought to
prove. Butler seems as if he had sifted these books, and retained all that was solid
in them. If he built with brick, and not with marble, it was because he was not
thinking of reputation, but of utility, and an immediate purpose. Mackintosh wished
Butler had had the elegance and ornament of Berkeley. They would have been sadly
out of place. There was not a spark of the littleness of literary ambition about
him. ‘There was a certain naturalness in Butler’s mind, which took him straight
to the questions on which men differed around him. Generally it is safer to prove
what no one denies, and easier to explain difficulties which no one has ever felt.
A quiet reputation is best obtained in the literary quæstiunculæ of important subjects.
But a simple and straightforward man studies great topics because he feels a want
of the knowledge which they contain. He goes straight to the real doubts and fundamental
discrepancies, to those on which it is easy to excite odium, and difficult to give
satisfaction; he leaves to others the amusing skirmishing and superficial literature
accessory to such studies. Thus there is nothing light in Butler, all is grave, .serious, and essential;
nothing else would be characteristic of him.’ (Bagehot, Estimates, &c.,
p. 189.) Though he has rifled their books he makes no display of reading. In the Analogy
he never names the author he is answering. In the Sermons he quotes, directly, only Hobbes, Shaftesbury,
Wollaston,
Rochefoucauld, and Fenelon. From his writings we should infer that his reading
was not promiscuous,
This popular appeal to the common reason of men, which is one
characteristic of the rationalist period, was a first effort of English theology
to find a new basis for doctrine which should replace those foundations which had
failed it. The Reformation had destroyed the authority of the Church upon which
Revelation had so long rested. The attempt of the Laudian divines to substitute
the voice of the national Church for that of the Church universal had met with only
very partial and temporary success. When the Revolution of 1688 introduced the freedom
of the press and a general toleration, even that artificial authority which, by
ignoring non-conformity, had produced an appearance of unity, and erected a conventional
standard of truth and falsehood, fell to the ground The old and venerated authority
had been broken by the Reformation. The new authority of the Anglican establishment
had existed in theory only, and never in fact, and the Revolution had crushed the
theory, which was now confined to a small band of non-jurors. In reaction against
Anglican ‘authority,’ the Puritan movement had tended to rest faith and doctrine
upon the inward light within each man’s breast. This tendency of the new Puritanism,
which we may call Independency, was a development of the old, purely scriptural,
Puritanism of Presbyterianism. But it was its natural and necessary development.
It was consequence of the controversy with the establishment. For both the Church and
Dissent agreed in acknowledging Scripture as their foundation, and the controversy turned
on the interpreter of Scripture. Nor was the doctrine of the inner light, which individualized
the basis of faith, confined to the Nonconformists. It was shared by a section of the Church,
Such an attempt to secure a foundation in a new consensus will
obviously forfeit depth to gain in comprehensiveness. This phase of
rationalism—‘Rationalismus vulgaris’—resigns the transcendental, that it may gain adherents.
It wants, not the elect, but all men. It cannot afford to embarrass itself with
the attempt to prove what all may not be required to receive. Accordingly there
can be no mysteries in Christianity. The word μυστήριον, as Archbishop Whately points out (Essays,
2nd ser., 5th ed., p. 288), always means in the New Testament not that which is
incomprehensible, but that which was once a secret, though now it is revealed it
is no longer so. Whately, who elsewhere (Paley’s
Evidence, new ed.) speaks so contemptuously of the ‘cast-off clothes’ of
the Deists, is here but adopting the argument of Toland in his Christianity not
Mysterious. (Cf. Balguy, Discourses, p. 237.) There needs no special
‘preparation of heart’ to receive the Gospel, the evidences of religion are sufficient to convince every unprejudiced inquirer. Unbelievers
are blameworthy as deaf to an argument which is so plain that they cannot
but understand it, and so convincing that they cannot but be aware of its force.
Under such self-imposed conditions religious proof seems to divest itself of all
that is divine, and out of an excess of accommodation to the recipient
In the Analogy it is the same. His term of comparison,
the ‘constitution and course of nature,’ is not what we should understand
by that term; not what science can disclose to us of the laws of the cosmos,
but a narrow observation of what men do in ordinary life. We see what
he means by the ‘constitution of things,’ by his saying (Sermon xv.) that
‘the writings of Solomon are very much taken up with reflections upon human nature
and human life; to which he hath added, in Ecclesiastes, reflections upon the constitution
of things.’ In Part i. ch. 3, of the Analogy, he compares the moral government of God with the
natural—the distinction is perhaps
from Balguy (Divine Rectitude, p. 39), that is to say, one part of natural
religion with another; for the distinction vanishes, except upon a very conventional sense of the term
‘moral.’ Altogether
we miss in these
divines not only distinct philosophical conceptions, but a scientific use of terms.
Dr. Whewell
Upon the whole, the writings of that period are serviceable to
us chiefly as showing what can and what cannot
be effected by common-sense thinking in theology. It is of little consequence to inquire
whether or not the objections of
the Deists and the
This judgment, however, must not be left unbalanced by a consideration
on the other side. It will hardly be supposed that the drift of what has been said
is that common-sense is out of place in religion, or in any other matter. The defect
of the eighteenth century theology was not in having too much good sense, but in
having nothing besides. In the present day when a godless orthodoxy threatens, as
in the fifteenth century, to extinguish religious thought altogether, and nothing
is allowed in the Church of England but the formulæ 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. There are times and circumstances
when religious ideas will be greatly benefited by being submitted to the rough and
ready tests by which busy men try what comes in their way; by being made to
stand their trial, and be freely canvassed, coram populo.
As poetry is not
for the critics, so religion is not for the theologians. When it is stiffened into
phrases, and these phrases are declared to be objects of reverence but not of intelligence, it is on the way to become a
useless encumbrance, the rubbish of the past, blocking
The habits of controversy in which they lived deceived the belligerents
themselves. The controversial form of their theology, which has been fatal to its
credit since, was no less detrimental to its soundness at the time. They could not
discern the line between what they did, and what they could not, prove. The polemical
temper deforms the books they have written. Literature was indeed partially refined
from the coarser scurrilities with which the Caroline divines, a century before,
had assailed their Romanist opponents. But there is still an air of vulgarity about
the polite writing of the age, which the divines adopt along with its style. The
cassocked divine assumes the airs of the ‘roaring blade,’ and ruffles it on the
mall with a horsewhip under his arm. Warburton’s stock argument is a threat to
cudgel anyone who disputes his opinion. All that can be said is that this
was a habit of treating your opponent which pervaded society. At a much later period Porson complains,
‘In these ticklish times . . . talk of religion it is odds you have infidel, blasphemer, atheist, or
schismatic, thundered in your ears; touch
upon politics, you will be in luck if you are only charged with a tendency to
treason. Nor is the innocence of your intention any safeguard. It is not the publication
Were this blustering language a blemish of style and nothing more, it would taint their books with vulgarity as literature, but it would not vitiate their matter. But the fault reaches deeper than skin-deep. It is a most serious drawback on the good-sense of the age that it wanted justice in its estimate of persons. They were no more capable of judging their friends than their foes. In Pope’s satires there is no medium; our enemies combine all the odious vices, however incongruous; our friends have ‘every virtue under heaven.’ We hear sometimes of Pope’s peculiar ‘malignity.’ But he was only doing what every one around him was doing, only with a greatly superior literary skill. Their savage invective against each other is not a morally worse feature than the style of fulsome compliment in which friends address each other. The private correspondence of intimate friends betrays an unwholesome insincerity, which contrasts strangely with their general manliness of character. The burly intellect of Warburton displays an appetite for flattery as insatiable as that of Miss Seward and her coterie.
This habit of exaggerating both good and evil the divines share
with the other writers of the time. But
A little consideration will show that the grounds on which
advocacy before a legal tribunal rests, make it inappropriate in theological
reasoning. It is not pretended that municipal law is coextensive with universal
law, and therefore incapable of admitting right on both sides. It is allowed
that the natural right may be, at times, on one side, and the legal title on the
other; not to mention the extreme case where ‘communis error facit jus.’ The advocate
is not there to supply all the materials out of which the judge is to form his
decision, but only one side of the case. He is the mere representative of his client’s interests and has
not to discuss the abstract merits of the juridical point which may be involved.
He does not undertake to show that the law is conformable to natural right, but
to establish the condition of his client relatively to the law. But the rational
defender of the faith has no place in his system for the variable, or the indifferent,
or the non-natural. He proceeds on the supposition that the whole system of the
Church is the one and exclusively true expression of reason upon the subject on
which it legislates. He claims for the whole of received knowledge what the jurist claims for international law, to be a universal science.
He lays before us, on the one hand, the traditional canon or symbol of doctrine.
On the other hand, he teaches that the free use of reason upon the facts of nature
and Scripture is the real mode by which this traditional symbol is arrived
at. To show, then, that the candid pursuit of truth leads every partial intellect to the Anglican conclusion was the task which, on their theory
of religious proof, their theology had to undertake. The process, accordingly, should have been analogous to
that of the jurist or legislator with regard to the internal evidence, and to
that of the judge with regard to the external evidence.
With rare exceptions the theology of the Hanoverian period is of the most violently partisan character. It seats itself, by its theory, in the judicial chair, but it is only to comport itself there like Judge Jefferies. One of the favourite books of the time was Sherlock’s Trial of the Witnesses. First published in 1729, it speedily went through fourteen editions. It concludes in this way:—
‘Judge.—What say you? Are the Apostles guilty of giving false evidence in the case of the resurrection of Jesus, or not guilty?
‘Foreman.—Not guilty.
‘Judge.—Very well; and now, gentlemen, I resign my commission,
and am your humble servant. The company then rose up, and were beginning to pay
their compliments to the Judge and the counsel, but were interrupted by
a gentleman, who went up to the Judge and offered him a fee. ‘What is this?’ says the Judge.
‘A fee, sir,’
said the gentleman. ‘A fee to a judge is a bribe,’ said the Judge. ‘True, sir,’ said the
gentleman; ‘but you have resigned your commission, and will not be the first judge who has
come from the bench
to the bar without any diminution of honour. Now, Lazarus’s case is to come
on next, and this fee is to retain you on his side.’
Some exceptions, doubtless, there are to the inconclusiveness
Another, perhaps the only other, book of this
‘He can never conceive or wish a priesthood either quieter for him, or cheaper, than that of the present
Church of England. Of your quietness himself is a
convincing proof, who has writ this outrageous book,
and has met with no punishment nor prosecution.
And for the cheapness, that appeared lately in one of
your parliaments, when the accounts exhibited showed
that 6,000 of your clergy, the greater part of your
whole number, had, at a middle rate one with another,
not 50 pounds a year. A poor emolument for so long,
so laborious, so expensive an education, as must qualify
them for holy orders. While I resided at Oxford, and
saw such a conflux of youth to their annual admissions, I have often studied and admired why their
parents would, under such mean encouragements,
design their sons for the church; and those the most towardly, and capable, and
select geniuses among their
children, who must needs have emerged in a secular life. I congratulated,
indeed, the felicity of your establishment, which attracted the choice youth of
your nation for such very low pay; but my wonder was at the parents, who generally have interest, maintenance and wealth, the first thing in their view, till
at last one of your state-lotteries ceased my astonishment. For as in that, a few glittering
prizes, 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 pounds among an infinity of blanks,
It has been mentioned that Bentley does not attempt to reply to
the argument of the Discourse on Freethinking. His tactic is to ignore
it, and to assume that it is only meant as a covert attack on Christianity; that
Collins is an Atheist fighting under the disguise of a Deist. Some excuse
perhaps may be made for a man nourished on pedagogic latin, and accustomed to
launch furious sarcasm at any opponent who betrayed a brutal ignorance of the
difference between ‘ac’ and ‘et.’ But
Collins was not a sharper, and would have disdained practices to which Bentley stooped
for the sake of a professorship. When Bentley, in pride of academic dignity, could thus browbeat a
person of Collins’s consideration, it was not to be expected that
In days when the pillory was
the punishment for common libel, it cannot be thought much that heresy
Whatever excuse the Deistical writers might have
It was not difficult to draw the unhappy Middleton into ‘unguarded expressions’ (Van Mildert, Life of Walerland, p. 162); and something which had fallen from Rundle in his younger days was used against him so successfully that even the Talbot interest was able to procure him only an Irish bishoprick. Lord Chesterfield, seeing what advantage the High-church party derived from this tactic, endeavoured to turn it against them. He gives a circumstantial account of a conversation with Pope, which would tend to prove that Atterbury was, nearly all his life, a sceptic. The thing was not true, as Mr. Carruthers has shown (Life of Pope, 2nd ed. p. 213), and true or false, the weapon in Chesterfield’s hands was pointless.
Though the general feeling of the country was sufficiently decided
to oblige all who wished to write against Christianity, to do so under a mask,
this was
One inference which we may safely draw is that public feeling encouraged
such representations. It is a symptom of the religious temper of the times, that the same
public which
compelled the Deist to wear the mask of
As we advance towards the middle of the century, and the French
influence begins to mingle with pure English Deism, the spirit of contempt spreads
till it involves all priests of all religions. The language now is, ‘The established
clergy in every country are generally the greatest enemies to all kinds of reformation,
as they are generally the most narrow-minded and most worthless set of men in every
country. Fortunately for the present times, the wings of clerical power and influence
are pretty close trimmed, so that I do not think their opposition to the proposed
reformations could be of any great consequence, more of the people being inclined
to despise them, than to follow them blindly.’ (Burgh, Political Disquisition,
1774.) It was no longer for their vices that the clergy were reviled, for
the philosopher now had come to understand that ‘their virtues were more
dangerous’ to society. Strictness of life did but increase the dislike with
which the clergyman was regarded; his morality was but double-dyed hypocrisy;
religious language from his mouth was methodistical cant. Nor did the orthodox
attempt to struggle with this sentiment. They yielded to it, and adopted for
their maxim of conduct, ‘surtout point de
zèle.’ Their sermons and pamphlets were now directed against ‘Enthusiasm,’
which became the bugbear of that time. Every
Again came a change. As the Methodist movement gradually leavened the mass beneath, zeal came again into credit. The old Wickliffite, or Puritan, distinction is revived between the ‘Gospel preachers’ and the ‘dumb dogs.’ The antipathy to priests was no longer promiscuous. Popular indignation was reserved for the fox-hunter and the pluralist; the Hophni and Phinehas generation; the men, who are described as ‘careless of dispensing the bread of life to their flocks, preaching a carnal and soul-benumbing morality, and trafficking in the souls of men by receiving money for discharging the pastoral office in parishes where they did not so much as look on the faces of the people more than once a year.’ In the well-known satire of Cowper, it is no longer irreligious mocking at sacred things under pretence of a virtuous indignation. It becomes again what it was before the Reformation—an earnest feeling, a religious sentiment, the moral sense of man; Huss or Savonarola appealing to the written morality of the Gospel against the practical immorality consecrated by Church.
Something too of the old anti-hierarchical feeling accompanies this revival of the influence of the inferior clergy; a faint reflection of the bitter hatred which the Lollard had borne to pope and cardinal, or Puritan to ‘Prelacy.’ The utility of the episcopal and capitular dignities continued to be questioned long after the evangelical parish pastor had re-established himself in the affections of his flock, and 1832 saw the cathedrals go down amid the general approbation of all classes. In the earlier half of the century the reverse was the case. The boorish country parson was the man whose order was despised then, and his utility questioned. The Freethinkers themselves could not deny that the bench and the stalls were graced by some whose wit, reputation, and learning would have made them considerable in any profession. The higher clergy had with them the town and the mart, the country clergy sided with the squires. The mass of the clergy were not in sympathy, either politically or intellectually, with their ecclesiastical superiors. The Tory fox-hunter in the Freeholder (No. 22.) thinks ‘the neighbouring shire very happy for having scarce a Presbyterian in it except the bishop;’ while Hickes ‘thanks God that the main body of the clergy are in their hearts Jacobites.’ The bishops of George the Second deserved the respect they met with. At no period in the history of our Church has the ecclesiastical patronage of the crown been better directed than while it was secretly dispensed by Queen Caroline. For a brief period, liberality and cultivation of mind were passports to promotion in the Church. Nor were politics a hindrance; the queen earnestly pressed an English see upon Bishop Wilson. The corruption which began with the Duke of Newcastle (1746) gradually deepened in the subsequent reign, as political orthodoxy and connexion were made the tests, and the borough-holders divided the dignities of the Church among their adherents.
Of an age so solid and practical it was not to be expected that its theology and metaphysics
would mount
into the more remote spheres of abstraction. Their line of argument was, as has
been seen, regulated by the necessity they laid themselves under of appealing to sound sense and common reason. But not only was
their treatment of their topic popular, the motive of their writings was an immediate
practical necessity. Bishops and deans might be made for merit, but it was not mere
literary merit, classical scholarship, or University distinction. The Deistical
controversy did not originate, like some other controversies which have made much
noise in their time, in speculative fancy, in the leisure of the cloister, or the
college. It had a living practical interest in its complication with the
questions of the day. The endeavour of the moralists and divines of the period
to rationalize religion was in fact an effort to preserve the practical principles
of moral and religious conduct for society. It was not an academical disputation,
or a contest of wits for superiority, but a life and death struggle of religious
and moral feeling to maintain itself. What they felt they had to contend against
was moral depravity, and not theological error; they wrote less in the interest
of truth than in that of virtue. A general relaxation of manners, in all classes
of society, is universally affirmed to be characteristic of that time; and
theology and philosophy applied themselves to combat this. A striking instance of this is Bishop
Berekely, the only metaphysical writer of the time, besides Locke, who has maintained a very high
name in philosophical history. He
forms a solitary—it might seem a singular—exception to what has been said of the prosaic and unmetaphysical
character of this moralising age. The two peculiar metaphysical notions which are connected
with Berkeley’s name, and which, though he did not originate, he propounded
with a novelty
and distinctness equal to originality, have
Were the ‘corruption of manners’ merely the complaint of one
party or set of writers, a cry of factious Puritanism, or of men who were at war
with society, like the Nonjuring clergy, or of a few isolated individuals of
superior piety, like William Law, it would be easily explicable. The ‘world’ at
all times, and in all countries, can be described with truth as ‘lying in
wickedness,’ and the rebuke of the preacher of righteousness is equally needed
in every age. There cannot be a darker picture than that drawn by the Fathers of
the third century of the morals of the Christians in their time. (See passages
in Jewel’s Apology.)
The rigorous moralist, heathen or Christian, can always point in sharp contrast the vices and the belief of
mankind. But, after making every allowance for the exaggeration of religious rhetoric, and the querulousness
‘There are six things which seem more especially to threaten ruin and dissolution to the present States of Christendom.
‘1st. The great growth of atheism and infidelity, particularly amongst the governing parts of these States.
‘2nd. The open and abandoned lewdness to which great numbers of both sexes, especially in the high ranks of life, have given themselves up.
3rd. The sordid and avowed self-interest, which is almost the sole motive of action in those who are concerned in the administration of public affairs.
‘4th. The licentiousness and contempt of every kind of authority, divine or human, which is so notorious in inferiors of all ranks.
‘5th. The great worldly-mindedness of the clergy, and their gross neglect in the discharge of their proper functions.
‘6th. The carelessness
and infatuation of parents and magistrates with respect to the education of
‘All these things have evident mutual connexions and influences; and as they all seem likely to increase from time to time, so can scarce be doubted by a considerate man, whether he be a religious one or no, but that they will, sooner or later bring on a total dissolution of all the forms of government that subsist at present in the Christian countries of Europe.’
Though there is this entire unanimity as to the fact of the
prevailing corruption, there is the greatest diversity of opinion as to its cause.
Each party is found in turn attributing it to the neglect or disbelief of the abstract
propositions in which its own particular creed is expressed. The Nonjurors and High-Churchmen
attribute it to the Toleration Act and the latitudinarianism allowed in high places.
One of the very popular pamphlets of the year 1721 was a fast-sermon preached before
the Lord Mayor by Edmund Massey, in which he enumerates the evils of the time, and
affirms that they ‘are justly chargeable upon the corrupt explication of those
words of our Saviour, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’—i.e., upon Hoadley’s
celebrated sermon. The latitudinarian clergy divide the blame between the Freethinkers
and the Nonjurors. The Freethinkers point to the hypocrisy of the Clergy, who, they
say, lost all credit with the people by having preached ‘passive obedience’ up to
1688, and then suddenly finding out that it was not a scriptural truth.
The Nonconformists lay it to the enforcement of conformity and unscriptural terms
of communion;; while the Catholics rejoice to see in it the Protestant
Reformation at last bearing its natural fruit. Warburton characteristically attributes
it to the bestowal of ‘preferment’ by the Walpole administration. (Dedication to
Lord Mansfield, Works, ii. 268.) The power of preferment was not
under-estimated then. George II. maintained to the last that the
‘The reverence which,’ says Dr. Whewell, ‘handed down by the traditions of ages of moral and religious teaching, had hitherto protected the accustomed forms of moral good, was gradually removed. Vice, and crime, and sin, ceased to be words that terrified the popular speculator. Virtue, and goodness, and purity were no longer things which he looked up to with mute respect. He ventured to lay a sacrilegious hand even upon these hallowed shapes. He saw that when this had been dared by audacious theorists, those objects, so long venerated, seemed to have no power of punishing the bold intruder. There was a scene like that which occurred when the barbarians broke into the Eternal City. At first, in spite of themselves, they were awed by the divine aspect of the ancient magistrates; but when once their leader had smitten one these venerable figures with impunity, the coarse and violent mob rushed onwards, and exultingly mingled all in one common destruction.’ (Moral Philosophy in England, p. 79.)
The actual sequence of cause and effect seems, if it be not presumptuous
to say so, to be as nearly as possible inverted in this eloquent statement. The licentiousness of talk and manners was not produced by the moral
doctrines promulgated; but the doctrine of moral consequences was had recourse to
by the divines and moralists as the most likelyremedy of the prevailing licentiousness.
It was an attempt, well-meant but not successful, to arrest the wanton proceedings of
‘the coarse and violent mob.’
Good men saw with alarm, almost with despair, that what they
Experience, however, the testimony of history, displays to us a result the very reverse. The experiment of the eighteenth century may surely be considered as a decisive one on this point. The failure of a prudential system of ethics as a restraining force upon. society was perceived, or felt in the way of reaction, by the Evangelical and Methodist generation of teachers who succeeded the Hanoverian divines. So far their perception was just. They went on to infer that, because the circulation of one system of belief had been inefficacious, they should try the effect of inculcating a set of truths as widely remote from the former as possible. Because legal preaching, as they phrased it, had failed, they would essay Gospel preaching. The preaching of justification by works had not the power to check wickedness, therefore justification by faith, the doctrine of the Reformation, was the only saving truth. This is not meant as a complete account of the origin of the Evangelical school. It is only one point of view—that point which connects the school with the general line of thought this paper has been pursuing. Their doctrine of conversion by supernatural influence must on no account be forgotten. Yet it appears that they thought the channel of this supernatural influence was, in some way or other, preaching. Preaching, too, not as rhetoric, but as the annunciation of a specific doctrine—the Gospel. They certainly insisted on ‘the heart’ being touched, and that the Spirit only had the power savingly to affect the heart; but they acted as though this were done by an appeal to the reason, and scornfully rejected the idea of religious education.
It should also be remarked that even the divines of
In the Catholic theory the feebleness of Reason is met half-way and
made good by the authority of the Church. When the Protestants threw off this authority,
they did not assign to Reason what they took from the Church, but to Scripture.
Calvin did not shrink from saying that Scripture ‘shone sufficiently by its own
light.’ As long as this could be kept to, the Protestant theory of belief was whole
and sound. At least it was as sound as the Catholic. In both, Reason, aided by spiritual
illumination, performs the subordinate function of recognising the supreme authority
of the Church, and of the Bible, respectively. Time, learned controversy, and abatement
of zeal drove the Protestants generally from the hardy but irrational assertion
of Calvin. Every foot of ground that Scripture lost was gained by one or other of
the three substitutes: Church-authority, the Spirit, or Reason. Church-authority
was essayed by the Laudian divines, but was soon found untenable, for on that
footing it was found impossible to justify the Reformation and the breach with Rome. The Spirit then came into
favour along with Independency. But it was still more quickly discovered that on
such a basis only discord and disunion could be reared. There remained to be tried
Common Reason, carefully distinguished from recondite learning, and not based on
metaphysical assumptions. To apply this instrument to the contents of Revelation
was the occupation of the early half of the eighteenth century; with what success has been seen. In the latter part the
century the same Common Reason was applied to the
external evidences. But here the method fails in a
Such appears to be the past history of the Theory of Belief in the Church of England. Whoever would take the religious literature of the present day as a whole, and endeavour to make out clearly on what basis Revelation is supposed by it to rest, whether on Authority, on the Inward Light, on Reason, on self-evidencing Scripture, or on the combination of the four, or some of them, and in what proportions, would probably find that he had undertaken a perplexing but not altogether profitless inquiry.
IT is a strange, though familiar fact, that great differences
of opinion exist respecting the Interpretation of Scripture. All Christians receive
the Old and New Testament as sacred writings, but they are not agreed about
the meaning which they attribute to them. The book itself remains as at the first;
the commentators seem rather to reflect the changing atmosphere of the world or
of the Church. Different individuals or bodies of Christians have a different
point of view, to which their interpretation is narrowed or made to conform. It
is assumed, as natural and necessary, that the same words will present one idea
to the mind of the Protestant, another to the Roman Catholic; one meaning to the
German, another to the English interpreter. The Ultramontane or Anglican divine
is not supposed to be impartial in his treatment of passages which afford an apparent
foundation for the doctrine of purgatory or the primacy of St. Peter on the one
hand, or the three orders of clergy and the divine origin of episcopacy on the other.
It, is a received view with many, that the meaning of the Bible is to be defined by
that of the Prayer-book; while there are others who interpret ‘the Bible and the
Bible only’ with a silent reference to the traditions of the Reformation. Philosophical differences
are in the background, into which the differences about Scripture also resolve themselves.
They seem to run
This effort to pull the authority of Scripture in different directions
is not peculiar to our own day; the same phenomenon appears in the past history
of the Church. At the Reformation, in the Nicene or Pelagian times, the New Testament
was the ground over which men fought; it might also be compared to the armoury which
furnished them with weapons. Opposite aspects of the truth which it contains were
appropriated by different sides, ‘Justified by faith without works’ and ‘justified
by faith as well as works’ are equally Scriptural expressions; the one has become
the formula of Protestants, the other of Roman Catholics. The fifth and ninth chapters
of the Romans, single verses such as a
Another cause of the multitude of interpretations is the growth
or progress of the human mind itself. Modes of interpreting vary as time goes on;
they partake of the general state of literature or knowledge. It has not been easily
or at once that mankind have learned to realize the character of sacred writings—they seem almost necessarily
to veil themselves from human eyes as circumstances change; it is the old age of the world only that has at
length understood its childhood. (Or only rather perhaps is beginning to understand
it, and learning to make allowance for its own deficiency of knowledge; for the infancy of the
‘In pious meditation fancy fed.’
Another has straitened the liberty of the Gospel by a rigid
application of logic, the former being a method which was at first more
naturally applied to the Old Testament, the latter to the New. Both methods of
interpretation, the mystical and logical, as they may be termed, have been
practised on the Vedas and the Koran, as well as on the Jewish and Christian
Scriptures, the true glory and note of divinity in these latter being not that
they have hidden mysterious or double meanings, but a simple and universal one,
which is beyond them and will survive them. Since the revival of literature,
interpreters have not unfrequently fallen into error of another kind from a
pedantic and misplaced use of classical learning; the minute examination of
words often withdrawing the mind from more important matters. A tendency may be
observed within the last century to clothe systems of philosophy in the
phraseology of Scripture. But new wine cannot thus be put ‘into old bottles.’
More common than any of these methods, and not peculiar to any age, is that which may be called by
way of distinction
the rhetorical one. The tendency to exaggerate or amplify the meaning of simple
words for the sake of edification may indeed have a practical
use is sermons, the object of which is to awaken not so much the intellect as the
heart and conscience. Spiritual food, like natural, may require to be of a
certain bulk to nourish the human mind. But this ‘tendency to edification’ has
had an unfortunate influence on the interpretation of Scripture. For the preacher
almost necessarily oversteps the limits of actual knowledge, his feelings overflow with
the subject; even if he have the power, he has seldom the time for accurate thought
or inquiry. And in the course of years spent in writing, perhaps, without study,
he is apt to persuade himself, if not others, of the truth of his own
repetitions. The trivial consideration of making a discourse of sufficient
length is often a reason why he overlays the words of Christ and his Apostles
with commonplaces. The meaning of the text is not always the object which he has
in view, but some moral or religious lesson which he has found it necessary to
append to it; some cause which he is pleading, some error of the day he has to
combat And while in some passages which he hardly dares to trust himself with the full force of Sciripture (
The phenomenon which. has been described in the preceding pages
is so familiar, and yet so extraordinary, that it requires an effort of thought to
appreciate its true nature. We do not at once see the absurdity of the same words
having many senses, or free our minds from the illusion that the Apostle or Evangelist
must have written with a reference to the creeds or controversies or circumstances
of other times. Let it be considered, then, that this extreme variety of interpretation is found to exist in the case of no other book, but of the Scriptures only.
Other writings are preserved to us in dead languages—Greek, Latin, Oriental, some
of them in fragments, all of them originally in manuscript. It is true that difficulties
arise in the explanation of these writings, especially in the most ancient, from
our imperfect acquaintance with the meaning of words, or the defectiveness of copies,
or the want of some historical or geographical information which is required to
present an event or character in its true bearing. In comparison with the wealth
and light of modern literature, our knowledge of Greek classical authors, for example,
may be called imperfect and shadowy. Some of them have another sort of difficulty
arising from subtlety or abruptness in the use of language; in lyric poetry especially,
and some of the earlier prose, the greatness of the thought struggles with the stammering
lips. It may he observed that all these difficulties occur also in Scripture; they
are found equally in sacred and profane literature. But the meaning of classical
authors is known with comparative certainty; and the interpretation of them seems
to rest on a scientific basis. It is not, therefore, to philological or historical
difficulties that the greater part of the uncertainty in the interpretation
of Scripture is to be attributed. No
To bring the parallel home, let us imagine the remains of some well-known Greek author, as Plato or Sophocles, receiving the same treatment at the hands of the world which the Scriptures have experienced. The text of such an author, when first printed by Aldus or Stephens, would be gathered from the imperfect or miswritten copies which fell in the way of the editors; after awhile older and better manuscripts come to light, and the power of using and estimating the value of manuscripts is greatly improved. We may suppose, further, that the readings of these older copies do not always conform to some received canons of criticism. Up to the year 1550, or 1624, alterations, often proceeding on no principle, have been introduced into the text; but now a stand is made—an edition which appeared at the latter of the two dates just mentioned is invested with authority; this authorized text is a pièce de resistance against innovation. Many reasons are given why it is better to have bad readings to which the world is accustomed than good ones which are novel and strange—why the later manuscripts of Plato or Sophocles are often to be preferred to earlier ones—why it is useless to remove imperfections where perfect accuracy is not to be attained. A fear of disturbing the critical canons which have come down from former ages is, however, suspected to be one reason for the opposition. And custom and prejudice, and the nicety of the subject, and all the arguments which are intelligible to the many against the truth, which is intelligible only to the few, are thrown into the scale to preserve the works of Plato or Sophocles as nearly as possible in the received text.
Leaving the text we proceed to interpret and translate. The meaning of Greek words is known with tolerable certainty; and the grammar of the Greek language has been minutely analysed both in ancient and modern times. Yet the interpretation of Sophocles tentative and uncertain; it seems to vary from age to age: to some the great tragedian has appeared to embody in his choruses certain theological or moral ideas of his own age or country; there are others who find there an allegory of the Christian religion or of the history of modern Europe. Several schools of critics have commented on his works; to the Englishman he has presented one meaning, to the Frenchman another, to the German a third; the interpretations have also differed with the philosophical systems which the interpreters espoused. To one the same words have appeared to bear a moral, to another a symbolical meaning; a third is determined wholly by the authority of old commentators; while there is a disposition to condemn the scholar who seeks to interpret Sophocles from himself only and with reference to the ideas and beliefs of the age in which he lived. And the error of such an one is attributed not only to some intellectual but even to a moral obliquity which prevents his seeing the true meaning.
It would be tedious to follow into details the absurdity which
has been supposed. By such methods it would be truly said that Sophocles or Plato
may be made to mean anything. It would seem as if Novum
Organum were needed to lay down rules of interpretation for ancient literature.
Still one other supposition has to be introduced which will appear, perhaps, more extravagant
than any which have preceded. Conceive then that these modes of interpreting Sophocles
had existed for ages; that great institutions and interests had become
interwoven with them, and in some degree even the honour of nations and churches—is
it too much to say that in such a case they would
No one who has a Christian feeling would place classical on a level with sacred literature; and there are other particulars in which the preceding comparison fails, as, for example, the style and subject. But, however different the subject, although the interpretation of Scripture requires ‘a vision and faculty divine,’ or at least a moral and religious interest which is not needed in the study of a Greek poet or philosopher, yet in what may be termed the externals of interpretation, that is to say, the meaning of words, the connexion of sentences, the settlement of the text, the evidence of facts, the same rules apply to the Old and New Testaments as to other books. And the figure is no exaggeration of the erring fancy of men in the use of Scripture, or of the tenacity with which they cling to the interpretations of other times, or of the arguments by which they maintain them. All the resources of knowledge may be turned into a means not of discovering the true rendering, but of upholding a received one. Grammar appears to start from an independent point of view, yet inquiries into the use of the article or the preposition have been observed to wind round into a defence of some doctrine. Rhetoric often magnifies its own want of taste into the design of inspiration. Logic (that other mode of rhetoric) is apt to lend itself to the illusion, by stating erroneous explanations with a clearness which is mistaken for truth. ‘Metaphysical aid’ carries away the common understanding into a region where it must blindly follow. Learning obscures as well as illustrates; it heaps up chaff when there is no more wheat. These are some of the ways in which the sense of Scripture has become confused, by the help of tradition, in the course of ages, under a load of commentators.
The book itself remains as at the first unchanged
Nothing would be more likely to restore a natural feeling on
this subject than a history of the Interpretation
Such a history would be of great value
to philosophy as well as to theology. It would be the history of the human
mind in one of its most remarkable manifestations. For ages which are not original show their character in the interpretation of ancient writings. Creating nothing, and incapable of that effort of imagination
which is required in a true criticism of the past, they read and explain the thoughts
of former times by the conventional modes of their own. Such a history would form
a kind of preface or prolegomena to the study of Scripture. Like the history of
science, it would save many a useless toil; it would indicate the uncertainties
on which it is not worth while to speculate further; the byepaths or labyrinths
in which men lose themselves; the mines that are already worked out. He who reflects
on the multitude of explanations which already exist of the ‘number of the beast,’
‘the two witnesses,’ ‘the little horn,’ ‘the man of sin,’ who observes the manner
in which these explanations have varied with the political movements of our own
time, will be unwilling to devote himself to a method of inquiry in which there
is so little appearance of certainty or progress. These interpretations would destroy
one another if they were all placed side by side in a tabular analysis. It is an instructive
fact, which may be mentioned in passing, that Joseph Mede, the greatest authority on this subject, twice
fixed the end of the world in the last century and once during his own lifetime. In
like manner, he who notices the circumstance that the explanations of the first
chapter
of Genesis have slowly changed, and, as it were, retreated before the advance of geology, will
be unwilling to add another to the spurious reconcilements of science and
revelation. Or to take an example of another kind, the Protestant divine who
Much of the uncertainty which prevails in the interpretation
of Scripture arises out of party efforts to wrest
its meaning to different aides. There are, however, deeper reasons which have hindered
the natural meaning of the text from immediately and universally prevailing.
One of these is the unsettlement of many questions which have an important but indirect
bearing on this subject. Some of these questions veil themselves in ambiguous terms;
and no one likes to draw them out of their hiding-place into the light of day. In
natural science it is felt to be useless to build on assumptions; in history we
look with suspicion on a priori ideas of what ought to have been; in mathematics,
when a step is wrong, we pull the house down until we reach the point at which the
error is discovered. But in theology it is otherwise; there the tendency has been
to conceal the unsoundness of the foundation under the fairness and loftiness of
the superstructure. It has been thought safer to allow arguments to stand which,
although fallacious, have been on the right side, than to point out their defect.
And thus many principles have imperceptibly grown up which have overridden facts.
No one would interpret Scripture, as many do, but for certain
previous suppositions with which we come to the perusal of it. ‘There can be no error
in the Word of God,’ therefore the discrepancies in the books of Kings and
Chronicles are only apparent, or may be attributed to differences in the copies.
‘It is a thousand times more likely
that the interpreter should err
§ 2.
Among. these previous questions, that which first presents itself
is the one already alluded to—the question of inspiration. Almost all Christians
agree
in the word, which use and tradition have consecrated to express the reverence which they truly feel for the Old and New Testaments. But here the agreement
of opinion ends; the meaning of inspiration has
been variously explained, or more often passed over in silence from
a fear of stirring the difficulties that would arise about it. It is one of those
theological terms which may be regarded as ‘great peacemakers,’ but which are also
sources of distrust and misunderstanding. For while we are ready to shake hands
with any one who uses the same language as ourselves, a doubt is apt to insinuate
itself whether he takes language in the same senses—whether a particular term conveys
all the associations to another which it does to ourselves—whether it is not possible
that one who disagrees about the word may not be more nearly agreed about the thing. The advice has, indeed, been given to
the theologian that he ‘should take care of words and leave things to themselves;’ the authority, however, who gives the advice is not good—it is placed by Goethe
in the mouth of Mephistopheles. Pascal seriously charges the Jesuits with acting
an similar maxim—excommunicating those who meant the same thing and said another, holding communion
with those who said
the same thing and meant another. But this is not the way to heal the wounds of
the Church of Christ; we cannot thus ‘skin and film’ the weak places of theology. Errors about words,
and the attribution to words themselves of an excessive importance, lie at the root of
theological as of other confusions. In theology they are more dangerous
The word inspiration has received more numerous gradations and distinctions of meaning than perhaps
any other in the whole of theology. There is an inspiration of superintendence
and an inspiration of suggestion; an inspiration which would
have been consistent with the Apostle or Evangelist falling into error, and an
inspiration which would have prevented him from erring; verbal organic inspiration by which the inspired person
is the passive utterer of a Divine Word, and an inspiration which acts through the
character of the sacred writer; there is an inspiration which absolutely communicates
the fact to be revealed or statement to be made, and an inspiration which does not supersede
the ordinary knowledge of human events; there is an inspiration which demands
infallibility in matters of doctrine, but allows for mistakes in fact. Lastly, there
is a view of inspiration which recognises only its supernatural and prophetic character,
and a view of inspiration which regards the Apostles and Evangelists as equally
inspired in their writings and in their lives, and in both receiving the guidance
of the Spirit of truth in a manner not different in kind but only in degree from
ordinary Christians. Many of these explanations lose sight of the original meaning
and derivation of the word; some of them are framed with the view of meeting
difficulties; all perhaps err in attempting to define what, though real, is incapable
of being defined in an exact manner. Nor for any of the higher or supernatural views
of inspiration is there any foundation in the Gospels or Epistles. There is no appearance
in their writings that the Evangelists or Apostles had any inward gift, or were
subject to any power external to them different from that of preaching or
teaching which they daily exercised; nor do they anywhere lead us to suppose that they
were free from error or infirmity.
St. Paul writes
The subject will clear of itself if we
bear in mind two considerations:—First, that the nature of inspiration can only
be known from the examination of Scripture. There is no other source to which we
can turn for information; and we have no right to assume some imaginary doctrine
of inspiration like the infallibility of the Roman Catholic Church. To the question,
‘What is inspiration?’ the first answer therefore is, ‘That idea of Scripture which
we gather from the knowledge of it.’ It is no mere a priori notion,
but one
to which the book is itself a witness. It is a fact which we infer from the study
of Scripture—not of one portion only, but of the whole. Obviously then it embraces
writings of very different kinds—the book of Esther, for example, or the Song of
Solomon, as well as the Gospel of St. John. It is reconcileable with the mixed good
and evil of the characters of the Old Testament, which nevertheless does not exclude
them from the favour of God, with the attribution to the Divine Being of actions
at variance with that higher revelation, which he has given of himself in the Gospel; tit
is not inconsistent with
imperfect or opposite aspects of the truth as in the book of Job or Ecclesiastes,
with variations of the fact in the Gospels or the books of Kings and Chronicles,
with inaccuracies of language in the Epistles of St. Paul. For these are all
found in Scripture; neither is there any reason why they should not be, except a general impression that Scripture
The other consideration is one which has been neglected by writers
on this subject. It is this—that any true doctrine of inspiration must conform to
all well-ascertained facts of history or of science. The same fact cannot be true
and untrue, any more than the same words can have two opposite meanings. The same
fact cannot be true in religion when seen by the light of faith, and untrue in science
when looked at through the medium of evidence or experiment It is ridiculous to suppose
that the sun goes round the earth in the same sense in which the earth goes
round the sun; or that the world appears to have existed, but has not existed during the vast epochs
of which geology speaks
to us. But if so, there is no need of elaborate reconcilements of revelation
and science; they reconcile themselves the moment any scientific truth is
distinctly ascertained. As the idea of nature enlarges, the idea of revelation also
enlarges; it was a temporary misunderstanding which severed them. And as the knowledge of nature which
is possessed by
It is true that there are a class of scientific
facts with which popular opinions on theology often conflict which do not seem to
conform in all respects to the severer conditions of inductive science: such especially are the facts relating to the formation of the
earth and the beginnings of the human race. But it is not worth while to fight on
this debateable ground a losing battle in the hope that a generation will pass away
before we sound a last retreat. Almost all intelligent persons are agreed that the
earth has existed for myriads of ages; the best informed are of opinion that the
history of nations extends back some thousand years before the Mosaic chronology;
recent discoveries in geology may perhaps open a further vista of existence for
the human species, while it is possible, and may one day be known, that mankind
spread not from one but from many centres over the globe; or as others say, that
the supply of links which are at present wanting in the chain of animal life may
lead to new conclusions respecting the origin of man. Now let it be granted that these
facts, being with the past, cannot be shown in the same palpable and evident
manner as the facts of chemistry or physiology; and that the proof of some of them,
especially of those last mentioned, is wanting; still it wanting; still it is a false policy to set
up inspiration or revelation in opposition
to them, a principle which can have no influence on them and should be rather kept out of
their way. The sciences of geology and comparative philology are steadily gaining
ground (many of the guesses of twenty years ago have become certainties, and the
guesses of twenty years ago have become certainties, and the guesses of to-day
may hereafter become so). Shall we peril religion on the possibility of their untruth? on such a
cast to stake
A similar train of thought may be extended to the results of historical inquiries. These results cannot be barred by the dates or narrative of Scripture; neither should they be made to wind round into agreement with them. Again, the idea of inspiration must expand and take them in. Their importance in a religious point of view is not that they impugn or confirm the Jewish history, but that they show more clearly the purposes of God towards the whole human race. The recent chronological discoveries from Egyptian monuments do not tend to overthrow revelation, nor the Ninevite inscriptions to support it. The use of them on either side may indeed arouse a popular interest in them; it is apt to turn a scientific inquiry into a semi-religious controversy. And to religion either use is almost equally injurious, because seeming to rest truths important to human life on the mere accident of an archaeological discovery. Is it to be thought that Christianity gains anything from the deciphering of the names of some Assyrian and Babylonian kings, contemporaries chiefly with the later Jewish history? As little as it ought to lose from the appearance of a contradictory narrative of the Exodus in the chamber of an Egyptian temple of the year B.C. 1500. This latter supposition may not be very probable. But it is worth while to ask ourselves the question whether we can be right in maintaining view of religion which can be affected by such a probability.
It will be a further assistance in the consideration of
this subject, to observe that the interpretation of Scripture has nothing to do
with any opinion respecting its origin. The meaning of Scripture is one
It is one evil
of conditions or previous suppositions in the study of Scripture that the assumption of them
has led
to an apologetic temper in the interpreters of Scripture. The tone of apology is
always a tone of weakness and does injury to a good cause. It is the reverse of
‘ye shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free.’ It is hampered
with the necessity of making a defence, and also with previous defences of the
same side; it accepts, with an excess of reserve and caution, the truth itself, when it comes
from an opposite quarter.
Commentators are often more occupied with the proof of miracles than with the
declaration of life and immortality; with the fulfilment of the details of prophecy than with its life
and power; with the reconcilement
of the discrepancies in the narrative of the infancy, pointed out by
Schleiermacher, than with
the importance of the great
The temper of accommodation shows itself especially in two
ways: first, in the attempt to adapt the truths of Scripture to the doctrines of the
creeds; secondly, in the adaptation of the precepts and maxims of Scripture to the language or practice of our own age. Now
the creeds
are acknowledged to be a part of Christianity; they stand in a close relation to the words of Christ
and his Apostles; nor can it be said that any heterodox formula makes a nearer approach
to a simple and scriptural rule of faith. Neither is anything gained by contrasting
them with Scripture, in which the germs of the expressions used in them are sufficiently
apparent. Yet it does not follow that they should be pressed into the service of
the interpreter. The growth of ideas in the interval which separated the first century
from the fourth or sixth makes it impossible to apply the language of the one to
the explanation of the other. Between Scripture and the Nicene or Athanasian Creed,
a world of the understanding comes in—that world of abstractions and second notions;
and mankind are no longer at the same point as when the whole of Christianity was
contained in the words, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou mayest be saved,’
when the Gospel centred in the attachment to a living or recently departed friend
and Lord. The language of the New Testament is the first utterance and consciousness
of the mind of Christ; or the immediate vision of the Word of life (
To attribute to St. Paul or the Twelve the abstract notion of
Christian truth which afterwards sprang up in the Catholic Church, is the same sort
of anachronism as to attribute to them a system of philosophy. It is the
same error as to attribute to Homer the ideas of Thales or Heraclitus, or
to Thales the mom developed principles of Aristotle and Plato. Many persons who
have no difficulty in tracing the growth of institutions, yet seem to fail in
recognising the more subtle progress of an idea. It is hard to imagine the absence of conceptions
with which we are familiar; to go back to the germ of what we know only in
maturity; to give up what has grown to us, and become a part of one minds. In
the present case however the development is not difficult to prove. The statements of Scripture
are unaccountable if we deny it; the silence of Scripture is equally unaccountable.
Absorbed as St. Paul was in the person of Christ with an intensity of faith and love
of which in modern days and at this distance of time we can scarcely form a conception—high as he raised the
dignity of his Lord above all things in heaven and earth—looking to him as the
Creator of all things, and the head of quick and dead, he does not speak of him
as ‘equal to the Father,’ or ‘of one substance with the Father.’ Much of the
language
of the Epistles (passages for example such as
Neither, as has been already remarked, would the substitution
of any other precise or definite rule of faith, as for example the Unitarian, be
more favourable to the interpretation of Scripture. How could the Evangelist St.
John have said ‘the Word was God,’ or ‘God was the Word’ (according to either mode
of translating), or how would our Lord Himself have said, ‘I and the Father are
one’ if either had meant that Christ was a mere man, ‘a prophet or as one
of the prophets?’ No one who takes words in their natural sense can suppose that
‘in the beginning’ (
The other kind of accommodation which was alluded to above arises
out of the difference between the social and ecclesiastical state of the world,
as it exists in actual fact, and the ideal which the Gospel presents to us. An ideal
is, by its very nature, far removed from actual life. It is enshrined not in the
material things of the external world, but in the heart and conscience. Mankind
are dissatisfied at this separation; they fancy that they can make the inward kingdom
an outward one also. But
this is not possible. The frame of civilization, that is to say, institutions and
laws, the usages of business, the customs of society, these are for the
most part mechanical, capable only in a certain degree of a higher and spiritual life. Christian motives have never existed in such strength, as to make it
safe or possible to entrust them with the preservation of social order. Other interests
are therefore provided and other principles, often independent of the teaching of
the Gospel, or even apparently at variance with it. ‘If a man smite thee on the
right cheek turn to him the other also;’ is not a regulation of police but an ideal
rule of conduct, not to be explained away, but rarely if ever to be literally acted
upon in a civilized country; or rather to be acted upon always in spirit, yet not
without a reference to the interests of the community. If a missionary were to endanger
the public peace and come like the Apostles saying, ‘I ought to obey God rather
than man,’ it is obvious that the most Christian of magistrates could not allow him
(say in India or New Zealand) to shield himself under the authority of these
words. For in religion as in philosophy there are two opposite poles; of truth
and action, of doctrine and practice, of idea and fact. The image of God in Christ is over
against the necessities of
human nature and the state of man
All men appeal to Scripture, and desire to draw the authority of Scripture
to their side; its voice may be heard in the turmoil of political strife; a merely
verbal similarity, the echo of a word, has weight in the determination of a
controversy. Such appeals are not to be met always by counter-appeals; they
rather lead to the consideration of deeper questions as to the manner in which
Scripture is to be applied. In what relation does it stand to actual life? Is it
a law, or only a spirit? for nations, or for individuals? to be enforced
generally, or in details also? Are its maxims to be modified by experience, or
acted upon in defiance of experience? Are the accidental circumstances of the
first believers to become a rule for us? Is everything, in short, done or said
by our Saviour and His Apostles, to be regarded as a precept or example which is
to be followed on all occasions and to last for all time? That can hardly be,
consistently with the changes of human things. It would be a rigid skeleton of
Christianity (not the image of Christ), to which society and politics, as well
as the lives of individuals, would be conformed. It would be the oldness of the
letter, on which the world would be stretched;
not ‘the law of the spirit life’ which St. Paul teaches. The attempt to force
politics
and law into the framework of religion is apt to drive us up into a corner, in
which the great principles
of truth and justice have no longer room to make themselves felt. It is better,
as well as safer, to take the liberty with which Christ has made us free. For our Lord himself
has left
behind Him words, which contain a principle large enough to admit all the forms of
The neglect of this necessary contrast between the ideal and the
actual has had a twofold effect on the Interpretation of Scripture. It has led to
an unfair appropriation of some portions of Scripture and an undue neglect of others.
The letter is in many cases really or apparently in harmony with existing practices, or opinions, or institutions.
In other cases it is far removed from them; it often seems as if the world would come to an end before
the words of Scripture
could be realized. The twofold effect just now mentioned, corresponds to these
two classes. Some texts of Scripture have been eagerly appealed to and made (in
one sense) too much of; they have been taken by force into the service of received opinions
and beliefs; texts of the other class have been either unnoticed or explained
away. Consider, for example, the extraordinary and unreasonable importance attached to single words,
sometimes of doubtful meaning, in reference to any of following subjects:—1, Divorce;
2, Marriage with Wife’s Sister;
On the first of the subjects referred to above, it is
argued from Scripture that adulterers should not be allowed to marry again; and the point of the argument turns on the question whether
the words (ἐκτὸς λόγου πορνείας)
saving for the cause of fornication, which I occur in the first clause of an important
text on marriage, were designedly or accidentally omitted in the second (
With this minute and rigid enforcement
of the words of Scripture in passages where the ideas expressed in them either
really or apparently agree with received opinions or institutions, there remains to be contrasted the neglect, or in some instances the misinterpretation
of other words which are not equally in harmony with the spirit of the age. In
many of our Lord’s discourses he speaks of the ‘blessedness of povrty:’ of the hardness which they that have riches
will experience ‘in attaining eternal life.’ ‘It is easier for a camel to go
through a needle’s eye,’ and ‘Son, thou in they lifetime receivedst thy good
things,’ and again, ‘One thing thou lackest, go sell all that thou hast.’
Another instance of apparent, if not real neglect of the
precepts of Scripture, is furnished by the commandment against swearing. No precept about
divorce is so plain, so universal, so exclusive as this; ‘Swear not at all.’ Yet
we all know how the custom of Christian countries has modified this ‘counsel of
perfection’ which was uttered by the Saviour. This is the more remarkable
because in this case the precept is not, as in the former, practically
impossible of fulfilment or
even difficult. And yet in this instance again, the body who have endeavoured to
follow more nearly the letter of our Lord’s commandment, seem to have gone against
the common sense of the Christian world. Or to add one more example: Who, that hears
of the Sabbatarianism, as it is called, of some Protestant countries, would imagine
that the Author of our religion had cautioned his disciples, not against the violation
of the Sabbath, but only against its formal and Pharisaical observance; or that the
chiefest of the Apostles had warned the Colossians to ‘Let no man judge them in respect of the new moon, or of the sabbath-days.’
(
The neglect of another class of passages is even more surprising, the precepts contained
in them being quite practicable and in harmony with the existing
state of the world. In this instance it seems as if religious teachers had failed to gather
those principles
The same habit of silence or misinterpretation extends to words or
statements of Scripture in which
Nor indeed is it easy to say what is the meaning of ‘proving a doctrine
from Scripture.’ For when we demand logical equivalents and similarity of circumstances, when we balance adverse statements,
St.
James and St. Paul, the New Testament with the Old,
There is a further way in which the language of creeds and liturgies
as well as the ordinary theological use of terms exercises a disturbing influence
on the interpretation of Scripture. Words which occur in Scripture are singled out
and orated in systems like stones taken out of an old building and put into a new one. They acquire a technical meaning
more or less divergent from the original one. It is obvious that their use in Scripture, and not their later and
technical sense, must furnish the rule of interpretation. We should not have
recourse to the meaning of a word in Polybius, for the explanation of its use in
Plato,
or to the turn of a sentence in Lycophron, to illustrate a construction of Æschylus.
It is the same kind of anachronism which would interpret Scripture by the
scholastic or theological use of the language of
Other questions meet us on the threshold of a different kind,
which also affect therefore the interpretation of Scripture, and demand an
answer. Is it admitted that the Scripture has one and only one true meaning? Or
are we to follow the fathers into mystical and allegorical explanations? or with
the majority of modern interpreters to confine ourselves to the double senses of
prophecy, and the symbolism of the Gospel in the law? In either case, we assume
what can never be proved, and an instrument is introduced of such subtlety and
pliability as to make the Scriptures mean anything—‘Gallus in campanili,’ as the Waldenses
described it; ‘the weathercock on the church tower,’ which is turned hither and
thither by every wind of doctrine. That the present age has grown out of the mystical
methods of the early fathers is a part of its intellectual state. No one will now
seek to find hidden meanings in the scarlet thread of Rahab, or the number of Abraham’s followers, or in the little
The question which has been suggested runs up into a more general one,
‘the relation between the Old and
New Testaments.’ For the Old Testament will receive a different meaning accordingly as it is explained from itself or from the New. In the first case a careful
and conscientious study of each one for itself is all that is required; in the second case the types and
Our object is not to attempt here the determination of these questions,
but to point out that they must be determined before any real progress can be made
or any agreement arrived at in the interpretation of Scripture. With one more example
of another kind we may close this part of the subject. The origin of the three first
Gospels is an inquiry which has not been much considered by English theologians
since the days of Bishop Marsh. The difficulty of the question has been sometimes
misunderstood; the point being how there can be so much agreement in words, and
so much disagreement both in words and facts; the double phenomenon is the real
perplexity—how in short there can be all degrees of similarity and dissimilarity,
the kind and degree of similarity being such as to make it necessary to suppose
that large portions are copied from each other or from common documents; the dissimilarities
being of a kind which seem to render impossible any knowledge in the authors
of one another’s writings. The most probable solution of this difficulty is that
the tradition on which the three first Gospels are based was at first preserved
orally, and slowly put together and written in the three forms which it assumed
at a very early period, those forms being in some places, perhaps, modified by
translation. It is not necessary to develope this hypothesis farther. The point
to be noticed is, that whether this or some other theory be the true account (and
some such account is demonstrably
Until these and the like questions are determined by interpreters,
it is not possible that there should be agreement in the interpretation of Scripture.
The Protestant and Catholic, the Unitarian and Trinitarian will continue to fight
their battle on the ground Of the New Testament, The Preterists and Futurists, those
who maintain that the roll of prophecies is completed in past history, or in the
apostolical age; those who look forward to a long series of events which are yet to come
[εἰς ἀφανὲς τὸν μῦθον ἀνενεγκὼν οὐκ ἔχυ ἔλεγχον], may alike claim the authority of the
book of Daniel, or the Revelation.
Apparent coincidences will always he discovered by those who want to find them.
Where there is no critical interpretation
§ 2.
It is probable that some of the preceding statements may be
censured as a wanton exposure of the difficulties of Scripture. It will be said
that such inquiries are for the few, while the printed page lies open to the many,
and that the obtrusion of them may offend some weaker brother, some half-educated
or prejudiced soul, ‘for whom,’ nevertheless, in the touching language of St. Paul,
‘Christ died.’ A confusion of the heart and head may lead sensitive minds
into a desertion of the principles of the Christian life, which are their own witness,
because they are in doubt about facts which are really external to them. Great evil
to character may sometimes ensue from such causes. ‘No man can serve two’ opinions
without a sensible harm to his nature. The consciousness of this responsibility
should be always present to writers on theology. But the responsibility is really
two-fold; for there is a duty to speak the truth as well as a duty to withhold it.
The voice of a majority of the clergy throughout the world, the half sceptical,
half conservative instincts of many laymen, perhaps, also, individual interest,
are in favour of the latter course; while a higher expediency pleads that ‘honesty
is the best policy,’ and that truth alone ‘makes free.’ To this, it may be replied that truth is not truth to those who are
unable to use it; no
First, that the difficulties referred to are very well know; they
force themselves on the attention, not only of the student, but of every intelligent
reader of the New Testament, whether in Greek or English. The treatment of such
difficulties in theological works is no measure of public opinion respecting them.
Thoughtful persons, whose minds have turned towards theology, are continually discovering
that the critical observations which they make themselves have been made also by
others apparently without concert. The truth is that they have been led to them
by the same causes, and these again lie deep in the tendencies of education and
literature in the present age. But no one is willing to break through the reticence
which is observed on these subjects; hence a sort of smouldering scepticism.
It is probable that the distrust is greatest at the time when the greatest efforts
are made to conceal it. Doubt comes in at the window, when inquiry is denied at
the door. The thoughts of able and highly educated young men almost always stray
towards the first principles of things; it is a great injury to them, and tends
to raise in their minds a sort of incurable suspicion, to find that there is one book of the fruit of the knowledge of which they are forbidden
freely to taste, that is, the Bible. The same spirit renders the Christian minister
almost powerless in the hands of his opponents. He can give no true answer to
the mechanic or artizan who
Secondly, as the time has come when it is no longer possible
to ignore the results of criticism, it is of importance that Christianity should
be seen to be in harmony with them. That objections to some received views should
be valid, and yet that they should be always held up as the objections of
infidels, is a mischief to the Christian cause. It is a mischief that critical
observations which any intelligent man can make for himself, should be ascribed
to atheism or unbelief. It would be a strange and almost incredible thing that the
Gospel, which at first made war only on the vices of mankind, should now be opposed
to one of the highest and rarest of human virtues—the love of truth. And that in
the present day the great object of Christianity should be, not to change the lives
of men, but to prevent them from changing their opinions; that would be a singular
inversion of the purposes for which Christ came into the world. The Christian religion
is in a false position when all the tendencies of knowledge are opposed to it. Such
a position cannot be long maintained, or can only end in the withdrawal of the educated
classes from the influences of religion. It is a grave consideration whether we
ourselves may not be in an earlier stage of the same religious dissolution, which
seems to have gone further in Italy and France. The reason for thinking so is not
to be sought in the external circumstances of our own or any other religious communion,
but in the progress of ideas with which Christian teachers seem to be ill
at ease. Time was when the Gospel was before the age; when it breathed a new life
into a decaying world—when the difficulties of Christianity were difficulties
of the heart only, and the highest minds found in its truths not only the rule of
their lives, but a well-spring of intellectual delight. Is it to be
Those who hold the possibility of such a reconcilement or restoration
of belief, are anxious to disengage Christianity from all suspicion of disguise
or unfairness, They wish to preserve the historical use of Scripture as the continuous
witness in all ages of the higher things in the heart of man, as the inspired source
of truth and the way to the better life. They are willing to take away some of the
external supports, because they are not needed and do harm; also, because they interfere
with the meaning. They have a faith, not that after a period of transition all things
will remain just as they were before, but that they will all come round again to
the use of man and to the glory of God. When interpreted like any other book, by
the same rules of evidence and the same canons of criticism, the Bible will still
remain unlike any other book; its beauty will be freshly seen, as of a picture which
is restored after many ages to its original state; it will create a new interest
and make for itself a new kind of authority by the life which is in it. It will
be a spirit and not a letter; as it was in the beginning, having an influence like that of the spoken word, or
the book newly
found. The purer the light in the human heart, the more it will have an expression
of itself in the mind of Christ; the greater the knowledge of the development of
man, the truer will be the insight gained into the ‘increasing purpose’ of revelation. In which also the individual soul has a practical part,
finding a sympathy with its own imperfect feelings, in the broken utterance of the Psalmist or the Prophet
as well as in the fulness of Christ. The harmony
But for the faith that the Gospel might win again the minds of intellectual men, it would be better to leave religion to itself, instead of attempting to draw them together. Other walks in literature have peace and pleasure and profit; the path of the critical Interpreter of Scripture is almost always a thorny one in England. It is not worth while for any one to enter upon it who is not supported by a sense that he has a Christian and moral object. For although an Interpreter of Scripture in modern times will hardly say with the emphasis of the Apostle, ‘Woe is me, if I speak not the truth without regard to consequences,’ yet he too may feel it a matter of duty not to conceal the things which he knows. He does not hide the discrepancies of Scripture, because the acknowledgment of them is the first step towards agreement among interpreters. He would restore the original meaning, because ‘seven other’ meanings take the place of it; the book is made the sport of opinion and the instrument of perversion of life. He would take the excuses of the head out of the way of the heart; there is hope too that by drawing Christians together on the ground of Scripture, he may also draw them nearer to one another. He is not afraid that inquiries, which have for their object the truth, can ever be displeasing to the God of truth; or that the Word of God is in any such sense a word as to be hurt by investigations into its human origin and conception.
It may be thought another ungracious aspect of the
What remains may be comprised in a few precepts, or rather is
the expansion of a single one. Interpret the Scripture like any other book.
There are many respects in which Scripture is unlike any other book; these will
appear in the results of such an interpretation. The first step is to know the meaning,
and this can only be done in the same careful and impartial way that we ascertain the meaning of Sophocles or of
Plato. The subordinate
principles which flow out of
First, it may be laid down that Scripture has one meaning—the
meaning which it had to the mind of the prophet or evangelist who first uttered
or wrote, to the hearers or readers who first received it. Another view may be easier
or more familiar to us, seeming to receive a light and interest from the circumstances
of our own age. But such accommodation of the text must be laid aside by the interpreter,
whose business is to place himself as nearly as possible in the position of the
sacred writer. That is no easy task—to call up the inner and outer life of the contemporaries
of our Saviour; to follow the abrupt and involved utterance of St. Paul or one of
the old Prophets; to trace the meaning of words when language first become Christian. He will
often have to choose the more difficult interpretation (
There are difficulties of another kind in many parts of Scripture,
the depth and inwardness of which require a measure of the same qualities
in the interpreter himself. There are notes struck in places, which like
some discoveries of science have sounded before their time; and only after many
days have been caught up and found a response on the earth. There are germs of
truth which after thousands of years have never yet taken root in the world.
There are lessons in the
But while acknowledging this inexhaustible or infinite character
of the sacred writings, it does not, therefore, follow that we are willing to admit
of hidden or mysterious meanings in them (in the same way we recognise the wonders
and complexity of the laws of nature to be far beyond what eye has seen or knowledge
reached, yet it is not therefore to be supposed that we acknowledge the
existence of some other laws different in kind from those we know which are
incapable of philosophical analysis). In like manner we have no reason to
attribute to the Prophet or Evangelist any second or hidden sense different from that which appears on the surface.
All that the Prophet meant may not have been consciously present to his mind; there
were depths which to himself also were but half revealed. He beheld the fortunes
of Israel passing into the heavens; the temporal kingdom was fading into an eternal
one. It is not to be supposed that what he saw at a distance only was clearly
defined to him; or that the universal truth which was appearing
The second rule is an application of the general principle; ‘interpret Scripture from itself’ as in other respects, like any other book written
in an age and country of which little or no other literature survives, and about
which we know almost nothing except what is derived from its pages. Not that all
the parts of Scripture are to be regarded as an indistinguishable mass. The Old
Testament is not to be identified with the New, nor the Law with the Prophets,
nor the Gospels with the Epistles, nor the Epistles of St. Paul to be violently
harmonised with the Epistle of St James. Each writer, each successive age, has
characteristics
of its own, as strongly marked, or more strongly, than those which are found in
the authors or periods of classical literature. These differences are not to be
lost in the idea of a Spirit from whom they proceed or by which they were overruled.
And therefore, illustration of one part of Scripture by another should be confined
to writings of the same
But supposing all this to be understood, and that by the interpretation
of Scripture from itself is meant a real interpretation of like by like, it may
be asked, what is it that we gain from a minute comparison of a particular author
or writing? The indiscriminate use of parallel passages taken from one end of Scripture
and applied to the other (except so far as earlier compositions may have
afforded the material or the form of later ones) is useless and uncritical. The uneducated, or imperfectly educated person who
looks out the
marginal references of the English Bible, imagining himself in this way to gain
a clearer insight into the Divine meaning, is really following the religious
associations of his own mind. Even the critical use of parallel passages is not
without danger. For are we to conclude that an author meant in one place what he says in another? Shall we venture to mend
a corrupt phrase on the model of some other phrase, which memory, prevailing over judgment, calls up and
The meaning of the Canon ‘Non nisi ex Scripturâ Scripturam potes interpretari,’ is only this, ‘That we cannot understand Scripture without becoming familiar with it.’ Scripture is a world by itself, from which we must exclude foreign influences, whether theological or classical. To get inside that world is an effort of thought and imagination, requiring the sense of a poet as well as a critic—demanding much more than learning a degree of original power and intensity of mind. Any one who, instead of burying himself in the pages of the commentators, would learn the sacred writings by heart, and paraphrase them in English, will probably make a nearer approach to their true meaning that he would gather from any commentary. The intelligent mind will ask its own questions, and find for the most part its own answers. The true use of interpretation is to get rid of interpretation, and leave us alone in company with the author. When the meaning 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 itself. For almost our whole knowledge of the history of the Jews is derived from the Old Testament and the Apocryphal books, and almost our whole knowledge of the life of Christ and of the Apostolical age is derived from the New; whatever is added to them is either conjecture, or very slight topographical or chronological illustration. For this reason the rule given above, which is applicable to all books, is applicable to the New Testament more than any other.
Yet in this consideration of the separate books of Scripture it
is not to be forgotten that they have also a sort of continuity. We make a separate study
of the subject,
the mode of thought, in some degree also of the language of each book. And
at length the
There is an interval in the Jewish annals which we often exclude from our thoughts, because it has no record in the canonical writings—extending over about four hundred years, from the last of the prophets of the Old Testament to the forerunner of Christ in the New. This interval, about which we know so little, which is regarded by many as a portion of secular rather than of sacred history, was nevertheless as fruitful in religious changes as any similar period which preceded. The establishment of the Jewish sects, and the wars of the Maccabees, probably exercised as great an influence on Judaism as the captivity itself. A third influence was that of the Alexandrian literature, which was attracting the Jewish intellect, at the same time that the Galilæan zealot was tearing the nation in pieces with the doctrine that it was lawful to call ‘no man master but God.’ In contrast with that wild fanaticism as well as with the proud Pharisee, came One most unlike all that had been before, as the kings or rulers of mankind. In an age which was the victim of its own passions, the creature of its own circumstances, the slave of its own degenerate religion, our Saviour taught a lesson absolutely free from all the influences of a surrounding world. He made the last perfect revelation of God to man; a revelation not indeed immediately applicable to the state of society or the world, but in its truth and purity inexhaustible by the after generations men. And of the first application of the truth which he taught as a counsel of perfection to the actual circumstances of mankind, we have the example in the Epistles.
Such a general conception of growth or development in Scripture,
beginning with the truth of the Unity
Such a growth or development may be regarded as a kind of
progress from childhood to manhood. In the child there is an anticipation of truth; his reason
is latent
in the form of feeling; many words are used by him which he imperfectly understands;
he is led by temporal promises, believing that to be
‘Which things are an allegory,’ the particulars of which any one may
interpret for himself. For the child born after the flesh is the symbol of the
child
born after the Spirit. ‘The law was a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ,’ and
‘now we are under a schoolmaster’ no longer.
The anticipation of truth which came from without to the childhood or youth of the
§ 3.
Scripture has an inner life or soul; it has also an outward body
or form. That form is language, which imperfectly expresses our common notions,
much more those higher truths which religion teaches. At the time when our Saviour
came into the world the Greek language was itself in a state of degeneracy and decay.
It had lost its poetic force, and was ceasing to have the sway over the mind which
classical Greek once held. That is a more important revolution in the mental history
of mankind, than we easily conceive in modern times, when all languages sit
loosely on thought, and the peculiarities, or idiosyncrasies of one are corrected
by our
knowledge of another. It may be numbered among the causes which favoured the growth
of
From the inner life of Scripture it is time to pass on to the
consideration of this outward form, including that other framework of modes of thought
and figures of speech which is between the two. A knowledge of the original language is a necessary qualification
of the Interpreter
of Scripture. It takes away at least Herman.
The study of the language of the New Testament has suffered in another way by
following too much the track of classical scholarship. All dead languages which have passed into the hands of grammarians, have given rise
to questions which have either no result or in which the certainty, or if certain,
the importance of the result, is out of proportion to the labour spent in attaining
it. The field is exhausted by great critics, and then subdivided among lesser ones.
The subject, unlike that of physical science, has a limit, and unless new ground
is broken up, as for example in mythology, or comparative philology, is apt to grow
barren. Though it is not true to say that ‘we know as much about the Greeks and
Romans as we ever shall,’ it is certain that we run a danger from the deficiency
of material, of wasting time in questions which do not add anything to real knowledge,
or in conjectures which must always remain uncertain, and may in turn give way to
other conjectures in the next generation. Little points may be of great importance
when rightly determined, because the observation of them tends to quicken the instinct
of language; but conjectures about little things or rules respecting them which were not in the mind of Greek authors themselves, are not of equal value. There
is the scholasticism of philology, not only in the Alexandrian, but in our own times;
as in the middle ages, there was the scholasticism of philosophy. Questions
of more orthography, about which there cannot be said to have been a right or wrong,
have been pursued almost with a Rabbinical minuteness. The story of the scholar who
regretted ‘that he had not concentrated his life on the dative case,’ is hardly
a caricature of the spirit of such inquiries. The form of notes to the classics often seems to arise out of a necessity for
observing a certain proportion between the commentary and the text. And the same
tendency is noticeable in
There seem to be reasons for doubting whether any considerable
light can be thrown on the New Testament from inquiry into the language. Such inquiries
are popular, because they are safe; but their popularity is not the measure of their
use. It has not been sufficiently considered that the difficulties of the New Testament
are for the most part common to the Greek and the English. The noblest translation
in the world has a few great errors, more than half of them in the text; but ‘we
do it violence’ to haggle over the words. Minute corrections of tenses or particles are no good; they spoil the English without being nearer the Greek. Apparent
mistranslations are often due to a better knowledge of English rather than a worse
knowledge of Greek. It is true that the signification of a few uncommon expressions,
e.g., ἐξουσία, ἐπιβαλών, συναπαγόμενοι, κ.τ.λ. is yet uncertain. But no
result of consequence would follow from the attainment of absolute certainty respecting the meaning of any
of these. A more promising field opens to the interpreter in the examination of theological
terms, such as faith (πίστις,), grace (χάρις),
righteousness (δικαιοσύνη), sanctification (ἁγιασμός),
the law (νόμος), the spirit (πνεῦμα),
the comforter (παράκλητος), &c., provided
always that the use of such terms
in the New Testament is clearly separated (1) from their derivation or previous use
in Classical or Alexandrian Greek, (2) from their after use in the Fathers and
in systems of theology. To which may be added another select
It is for others to investigate the language of the Old Testament,
to which the preceding remarks are only in part applicable. [It may be observed in
passing of this, as of any other old language, that not the later form of the language,
but the cognate dialects, must ever be the chief source of its illustration. For
in every ancient language, antecedent or contemporary forms, not the subsequent
ones, afford the real insight into its nature and structure. It must also be admitted
that very great and real obscurities exist in the English translation of the Old
Testament, which even a superficial acquaintance with the original has a tendency
to remove.] Leaving, however, to others the consideration of the Semitic languages
which raise questions of a different kind from the Hellenistic Greek, we will offer
a few remarks on the latter. Much has been said of the increasing accuracy of our
knowledge of the language of the New Testament the old Hebraistic method of explaining
difficulties of language or construction, has retired within very narrow limits;
it might probably with advantage be confined to still narrower ones—[if it have
any place at all except in the Apocalypse or the Gospel St. Matthew]. There
is, perhaps, some confusion between
These remarks may be applied to the Greek of the New Testament,
which although classed vaguely under the ‘common dialect,’ has, nevertheless, many features
which are altogether peculiar to itself, and such as are found in no other remains
of ancient literature.
Our knowledge of the New Testament is derived almost exclusively
from itself. Of the language, as well as of the subject, it may be truly said that
what other writers contribute is nothing in comparison of that which is gained
from observation of the text. Some inferences which may be gathered from this general
fact, are the following:—First, that less weight should be given to lexicons, that
is, to the authority of other Greek writers, and more to the context. The use of
a word in a new sense, the attribution of a neuter meaning to a verb elsewhere passive,
(
Passing from the grammatical structure, we may briefly
consider the logical character of the language of the New Testament. Two things
should be here distinguished, the logical form and the logical sequence of thought. Some ages have been
remarkable
The observation of this rhetorical or logical element has a bearing
on the Interpretation of Scripture. For it leads us to distinguish between the superficial
connexion of words and the real connexion of thoughts. Otherwise injustice
is done to the argument of the sacred writer, who may be supposed to violate logical
rules, of which he is unconscious. For example, the argument of
Other questions arise out of the
analysis of the modes of thought of Scripture. Unless we are willing to use words
without inquiring into their meaning, it is necessary for us to arrange them in some
relation to our own minds. The modes of thought of the Old Testament are not the same with those of the
New, and those of the New are
only partially the
This is the metaphysical difficulty in the Interpretation of Scripture, which it is better not to ignore, bemuse the consideration of it is necessary to the understanding of many passages, and also because it may return upon us in the form of materialism or scepticism. To some who are not aware how little words affect the nature of things it may seem to raise speculations of a very serious kind. Their doubts would, perhaps, find expression in some such exclamations as the following:—‘How is religion possible when modes of thought are shifting? and words changing their meaning, and statements of doctrine though ‘starched’ with philosophy, are in perpetual danger of dissolution from metaphysical analysis?
The answer seems to be, that Christian truth is not dependent
on the fixedness of modes of thought. The metaphysician may analyse the ideas of
the mind just as the physiologist may analyse the powers or parts of the bodily frame,
yet morality and social life still go on, as in the body digestion is uninterrupted.
That is not an illustration only; it represents the fact. Though we had
no words for mind, matter, soul,
Connected
with the modes of thought or representation in Scripture, are the figures of speech
of Scripture, about which the same question may be asked: ‘What division can we
make between the figure and the reality?’ And the answer seems to be of the same
kind, that ‘We cannot precisely draw the line between them.’ Language, and especially
the language of Scripture, does not admit of any sharp distinction. The simple expressions
of one age become the allegories or figures of another; many of those in the New
Testament are taken from the Old. But neither is there anything really essential
in the form of these figures; nay, the literal application of many of them has a great stumblingblock to the reception of Christianity. A recent commentator on Scripture appears
willing to peril religion on the literal truth of such an expression as ‘We shall be
caught up to meet
the Lord in the air.’ Would he be equally ready to
Of what has been said, this is the sum;—‘That Scripture, like other books, has one meaning, which is to be gathered from itself without reference to the adaptations of Fathers or Divines; and without regard to a priori notions about its nature and origin. It to be interpreted like other books, with attention to the character of its authors, and the prevailing state of civilization and knowledge, with allowance for peculiarities of style and language, and modes of thought and figures of speech. Yet not without a sense that as we read there grows upon us the witness of God in the world, anticipating in a rude and primitive age the truth that was to be, shining more and more unto the perfect day in the life of Christ, which again is reflected from different points of view in the teaching of His Apostles.’
§ 4.
It has been a principal aim of the preceding pages to distinguish
the interpretation from the application of Scripture. Many of the errors alluded
to, arise out of a confusion of the two. The present is nearer to us than the past,
the circumstances which surround us pre-occupy our thoughts; it is only by an effort
that we reproduce the ideas, or events, or persons of other ages. And thus, quite
naturally, almost by a law of the human mind, the application of Scripture takes
the place of its original meaning. And the question is, not how to get rid of this
natural tendency, but how we may have the true use of it. For it cannot be got rid
of, or rather is one of the chief instruments of religious usefulness in the
world: ‘Ideas must be given through something;’ those of religion find their natural
expression in the words of Scripture, in the adaptation of which to another state
There is also a use of Scripture in education and
literature. This literary use, though secondary to the religious one, is not unimportant.
It supplies a common language to the educated and uneducated, in which the best
and highest thoughts of both are expressed; it is a medium between the abstract
notions of the one and the simple feelings of the other. To the poor especially,
it conveys in the form which they are most capable of receiving, the lesson of
history and life. The beauty and power of speech and writing would be greatly
impaired, if the Scriptures ceased to be known or used among us. The orator
seems to catch from them a sort of inspiration; in the simple words of Scripture
which he stamps anew, the philosopher often finds his most, pregnant expressions. If modern times
have been richer in the wealth of abstract thought, the contribution of earlier ages to the mind of the world has not been
less, but, perhaps
greater, in supplying the poetry of language. There is no such treasury of instruments
Many by whom considerations of this sort will be little understood,
may, nevertheless, recognise the use made of the Old Testament in the New. The religion
of Christ was first taught by an application of the words of the Psalms and the
Prophets. Our Lord Himself sanctions this application. ‘Can there be a better use
of Scripture than that which is made by Scripture?’ ‘Or any more likely method
of teaching the truths of Christianity than that by which they were first taught?’ For it may be argued that the critical interpretation of Scripture is a device almost
of yesterday; it is the vocation of the scholar or philosopher, not of the Apostle
or Prophet. The new truth which was introduced into the Old Testament, rather than
the old truth which was found there, was the salvation and the conversion of the
world. There are many quotations from the Psalms and the Prophets in the Epistles,
in which the meaning is quickened or spiritualized, but hardly any, probably none,
which is based on the original sense or context. That is not so singular a phenomenon
as may at first sight be imagined. It may appear strange to us that Scripture
should be interpreted in Scripture, in a manner not altogether in agreement with modern criticism;
but would it not be more strange that it should be interpreted otherwise, than in agreement with the ideas
of
But, on the other hand, though interwoven with literature, though
common to all ages of the Church, though sanctioned by our Lord and His Apostles,
it is easy to see that such an employment of Scripture is liable to error
and perversion. For it may not only receive a new meaning; it may be applied in
a spirit alien to itself. It may become the symbol of fanaticism, the cloke
of malice, the disguise of policy. Cromwell at Drogheda, quoting Scripture to his
soldiers; the well-known attack on the Puritans in the State Service for the Restoration,
‘Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord;’ the reply of the Venetian
Ambassador to the suggestion of Wolsey, that Venice should take a lead in Italy,
‘which
was only the Earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof,’ are examples of such
uses. In former times, it was a real and not an imaginary fear, that the wars of
the Lord in the Old Testament might arouse a fire in the bosom of Franks and Huns.
In our own day such dangers have passed away; it is only a figure of speech when
the preacher says, ‘Gird on thy sword, O thou most mighty.’ The warlike passions
of men are not roused by quotations from Scripture, nor can states of life such
as slavery or polygamy which belong to a past age, be defended, at least in England,
by the example of the Old Testament. The danger or error is of another kind; more
subtle, but hardly less real. For if we are permitted to apply Scripture under the
pretence of interpreting it, the language of Scripture becomes only a mode of expressing
the public feeling or opinion of our own day. Any
Truth seems to require that we should separate mere adaptations,
from the original meaning of Scripture. It is not honest or reasonable to confound
illustration with argument, in theology, any more than in other subjects. For example,
if a preacher chooses to represent the condition of a church or of an individual
in the present day, under the figure of Elijah left alone among the idolatrous tribes
of Israel, such an allusion is natural enough; but if he goes on to argue that individuals
are therefore justified in remaining in what they believe to be an erroneous communion—that is a mere appearance of argument which ought not to have the slightest weight
with a man of sense. Such a course may indeed be perfectly justifiable, but not
on the ground that a prophet of the Lord once did so, two thousand five hundred
years ago. Not in this sense were the lives of the Prophets written for our instruction.
There are many important morals conveyed by them, but only so far as they themselves
represent universal principles of justice and love. These universal principles they
clothe with flesh and blood; they show them to us written on the hearts of men of
like passions with ourselves. The prophecies, again, admit of many applications
to the Christian Church or to the Christian life. There is no harm in speaking of the Church as the Spiritual Israel, or in
using the imagery of Isaiah respecting
This is the first step towards a more truthful use of Scripture
in practice—the separation of adaptation from interpretation. No one who is engaged
in preaching or in religious instruction can be required to give up Scripture language;
it is the common element in which his thoughts and those of his hearers move. But
he may be asked to distinguish the words of Scripture from the truths of Scripture—the
means from the end. The least expression of Scripture is weighty; it affects the
minds of the hearers in a way
Other simple cautions may also be added. The applications of Scripture should be harmonized and, as it were, interpenetrated with the spirit of the Gospel, the whole of which should be in every part; though the words may receive a new sense, the new sense ought to be in agreement with the general truth. They should be used to bring home practical precepts, not to send the imagination on a voyage of discovery; they are not the real foundation of our faith in another world, nor can they, by pleasant pictures, add to our knowledge of it. They should not confound the accidents with the essence of religion—the restrictions and burdens of the Jewish law with the freedom of the Gospel—the things which Moses allowed for the hardness of the heart, with the perfection of the teaching of Christ. They should avoid the form of arguments, or they will insensibly be used, or understood to mean more than they really do. They should be subjected to an overruling principle, which is the heart and conscience of the Christian teacher, who indeed ‘stands behind them,’ not to make them the vehicles of his own opinions, but as the expressions of justice, and truth, and love.
And here the critical interpretation of Scripture
The real unity of Scripture, as of man, has also a relation to
our present subject. Amid all the differences of modes of thought and speech which
have existed in different ages, of which much is said in our own day, there is a
common element in human nature which bursts through these differences and remains
unchanged, because akin to the first instincts of our being. The simple feeling
of truth and right is the same to the Greek or Hindoo as to ourselves. However great
may be the diversities of human character,
In some cases, we have only to enlarge the meaning of Scripture
to apply it even to the novelties and peculiarities of our own times. The world
changes, but the human heart remains the same; events and details are different,
but the principle by which they are governed, or the rule by which we are to act,
is not different. When, for example, our Saviour says, ‘Ye shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free,’ it is not likely that these words would have
conveyed to the minds of the Jews who heard Him any notion of the perplexities of
doubt or inquiry. Yet we cannot suppose that our Saviour, were He to
The portion of Scripture which more than any other is immediately
and universally applicable to our own times is, doubtless, that which is contained
in the words of Christ Himself. The reason is that they are words of the most universal
import. They do not relate to the circumstances of the time, but to the common life
of all mankind. You cannot extract from them a political creed; only, ‘Render unto
Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s,’ and ‘The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat; whatsoever, therefore, they say unto you do, but after their works do not.’
They present to us a standard of truth and duty, such as no one can at once and
immediately practise—such as, in its perfection, no one has fulfilled in this world.
But this idealism does not interfere with their influence as a religious
lesson. Ideals,
The Parables of our Lord are a portion of the New Testament, which
we may apply in the most easy and literal manner. The persons in them are the persons
among whom we live and move; there are times and occasions at which the truths symbolized
by them come home to the hearts of all who have ever been impressed by religion.
We have been prodigal sons returning to our Father; servants to whom talents have
been entrusted; labourers in the vineyard inclined to murmur at our lot, when compared
with that of others, yet receiving every man his due; well-satisfied Pharisees;
repentant Publicans:—we have received the seed, and the cares of the world have
choked it—we hope also at times that we have found the pearl of great price after
sweeping the house—we are ready like the Good Samaritan to show kindness
There is no language of Scripture which penetrates the individual
soul, and embraces all the world in the arms of its love, in the same manner as
that of Christ Himself. Yet the Epistles contain lessons which are not found in
the Gospels, or, at least, not expressed with the same degree of clearness. For
the Epistles are nearer to actual life—they relate to the circumstances of the first
believers, to their struggles with the world without, to their temptations and divisions
from within—their subject is not only the doctrine of the Christian religion, but
the business of the early Church. And although their circumstances are not our circumstances—we
are not afflicted or persecuted, or driven out of the world, but in possession
of the blessings, and security, and property of an established religion—yet there
is a Christian spirit which infuses itself into all circumstances, of which they
are a pure and living source. It is impossible to gather from a few fragmentary
and apparently not always consistent expressions, how the Communion was celebrated,
or the Church ordered, what was the relative position of Presbyters and Deacons,
or the nature of the gift of tongues, as a rule for the Church in after ages;—such
inquiries have no certain answer, and at the best, are only the subject of honest
curiosity. But the words, ‘Charity never faileth,’ and ‘Though I speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am nothing’—these have a voice
which reaches to the end of time. There are no questions of meats and drinks now-a-days,
yet the
Such are a few instances of the manner in which the analogy of
faith enables us to apply the words of Christ and His Apostles, with a strict
regard to their original meaning. But the Old Testament has also its peculiar
lessons which are not conveyed with equal point or force in the New. The
beginnings of human history are themselves a lesson having a freshness as of the early dawn.
There are forms of evil against which the Prophets and the prophetical spirit of
the Law carry on a warfare, in terms almost too bold for the way of life of modern
times. There, more
It is true that there are examples in the Old Testament which were not written
for our instruction, and that, in some instances, precepts or commands are attributed
to God Himself, which must be regarded as relative to the state of knowledge which
then existed of the Divine nature, or given ‘for the hardness of men’s hearts,’
It cannot be denied that such passages of Scripture are liable to misunderstanding;
the spirit of the Old Covenanters, although no longer appealing to the action of
Samuel, ‘hewing Agag in Pieces before the Lord in Gilgal,’ is not altogether extinguished.
And a community of recent origin in America found their doctrine of polygamy on
the Old Testament. But the poor generally read the Bible unconsciously; they take
the good, and catch the prevailing spirit, without stopping to reason whether this
or that practice is sanctioned by the custom or example of Scripture. The child
is only struck by the impiety of the children who mocked the
§ 5.
Some application of the preceding subject may be further made to theology and life.
Let us introduce this concluding inquiry with two remarks.
First, it may be observed, that a change in some of the prevailing
modes of interpretation is not so much a matter of expediency as of necessity. The
original meaning of Scripture is beginning to be clearly understood. But the apprehension
of the original meaning is inconsistent with the reception of a typical or conventional
one. 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” (
From the circumstance that in former ages there has been a four-fold or a seven-fold Interpretation of Scripture, we cannot argue to the possibility of upholding any other than the original one in our own. The mystical explanations of Origen or Philo were not seen to be mystical; the reasonings of Aquinas and Calvin were not supposed to go beyond the letter of the text. They have now become the subject of apology; it is justly said that we should not judge the greatness of the Fathers or Reformers by their suitableness to our own day. But this defence of them shows that their explanations of Scripture are no longer tenable; they belong to a way of thinking and speaking which was once diffused over the world, but has now passed away. And what we give up as a general principle we shall find it impossible to maintain partially, e.g., in the types of the Mosaic Law and the double meanings of prophecy, at least, in any sense in which it is not equally applicable to all deep and suggestive writings.
The same observation may be applied to the historical criticism
of Scripture. From the fact that Paley or Butler were regarded in their generation
as supplying a triumphant answer to the enemies of Scripture, we cannot argue that
their answer will be satisfactory to those who inquire into such subjects in our
own. Criticism has far more power than it formerly had; it has spread itself over
ancient, and even modern, history; it extends to the thoughts and ideas of men as
well as to words and facts; it has also a great place in education. Whether the
habit of mind which has been formed in classical studies will not go on to Scripture; whether
Scripture can be made an exception
II. It has to be considered whether the intellectual forms under
which Christianity has been described may not also be in a state of transition and
resolution in this respect contrasting with the never-clanging truth of the Christian
life. (
And now, as the Interpretation of Scripture is receiving another
character, it seems that distinctions of theology, which were in great measure based
on old Interpretations, are beginning to fade away. A change is observable in the
manner in which doctrines are stated and defended; it is no longer held sufficient
to rest them on texts of Scripture, one, two, or more, which contain, or appear
to contain, similar words or ideas. They are connected more closely with our moral
nature; extreme consequences are shunned; large allowances are made for the ignorance
of mankind. It is held that them is truth on both sides; about many questions there
is a kind of union of opposites; others are admitted to have been verbal only; all
are regarded in the light which is thrown aims them by church history and religious
experience. A theory has lately been put forward, apparently as a defence of the
Christian faith, which denies the objective character of any of them. And there
are other signs that times are changing, and we are changing too. It would be scarcely
possible at present to revive the interest which was felt less than twenty
years ago in the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration; nor would the arguments by
which it was supported or impugned have the meaning which they once had. The communion
of the Lord’s Supper is also ceasing, at least
‘Our greatest love turned to our greatest hate.’
A silence is observable on some other points of doctrine around which controversies swarmed a generation ago. Persons begin to ask what was the real difference which divided the two parties. They are no longer within the magic circle, but are taking up a position external to it. They have arrived at an age of reflection, and begin to speculate on the action and reaction, the irritation and counter-irritation, of religious forces; it is a common observation that ‘revivals are not permanent;’ the movement is criticised even by those who are subject to its influence. In the present state of the human mind, any consideration of these subjects, whether from the highest or lowest or most moderate point of view, is unfavourable to the stability of dogmatical systems, because it rouses inquiry into the meaning of words. To the sense of this is probably to be attributed the reserve on matters of doctrine and controversy which characterizes the present day, compared with the theological activity of twenty years ago.
These reflections bring us back to the question with which we
began—‘What effect will the critical interpretation of Scripture have on theology
and on life? Their tendency is to show that the result is beyond our control, and
that the world is not unprepared for it. More things than at first sight appear
are moving towards the same end. Religion often bids us think of ourselves, especially
in later life, as each one in his appointed place, carrying on a work which is fashioned
within by unseen hands. The theologian, too, may have peace in the thought that
he is subject to the conditions of his age rather than one of its moving powers.
When he hears theological inquiry censured as tending to create doubt and confusion, he knows
very well that the cause of this is not to be sought in
This distraction of the human mind between adverse influences and associations, is a fact which we should have to accept and make the best of, whatever consequences might seem to follow to individuals or Churches. It is not to be regarded as a merely heathen notion that ‘truth is to be desired for its own sake even though no ‘good’ result from it.’ As a Christian paradox it may be said, ‘What hest thou to do with ‘good;’ follow thou Me.’ But the Christian revelation does not require of us this Stoicism in most cases; it rather shows how good and truth are generally coincident. Even in this life, there are numberless links which unite moral good with intellectual truth. It is hardly too much to say that the one is but a narrower form of the other. Truth is to the world what holiness of life is to the individual—to man collectively the source of justice and peace and good.
There are many ways in which the connexion between truth and good
may be traced in the interpretation of Scripture. Is it a mere chimera that the
different sections of Christendom may meet on the common ground of the New Testament?
Or that the individual may be urged by the vacancy and unprofitableness of old traditions
to make the Gospel his own—a life of Christ in the soul, instead of a theory of
Christ which is in a book or written down? Or that in missions to the heathen Scripture
may become the expression of universal truths rather than of the tenets of particular
men or churches? That would remove many obstacles to the reception of Christianity.
1. No one casting his eye over the map of the Christian world
can desire that the present lines of demarcation should always remain, any more
than he will be inclined to regard the division of Christians to which he belongs
himself, as in a pre-eminent or exclusive sense the Church of Christ. Those lines
of demarcation seem to be political rather than religious; they are differences
of nations, or governments, or ranks of society, more than of creeds or forms of
faith. The feeling which gave rise to them has, in a great measure, passed away;
no intelligent man seriously inclines to believe that salvation is to be found only
in his own denomination. Examples of this ‘sturdy orthodoxy,’ in our own generation,
rather provoke a smile than arouse serious disapproval. Yet many experiments show that these differences cannot be made up by any formal concordat or scheme
of union; the parties cannot be brought to terms, and if they could, would cease
to take an interest in the question at issue. The friction is too great when persons
are invited to meet for a discussion of differences; such a process is like
opening the doors and windows to put out a slumbering flame. But that is no reason
for doubting that the divisions of the Christian world are beginning to pass away.
The progress of politics, acquaintance with other countries, the growth of knowledge
and of material greatness, changes of opinion in the Church of England, the present
position
In this movement, which we should see more clearly but for the
divisions of the Christian world which partly conceal it, the critical interpretation
of Scripture will have a great influence. The Bible will be no longer appealed to
as the witness of the opinions of particular sects, or of our own age; it will cease
to be the battle field of controversies. But as its true meaning is more
clearly seen, its moral power will also be greater. If the outward and inward witness,
instead of parting into two, as they once did, seem rather to blend and coincide
in the Christian consciousness, that is not a source of weakness but of strength.
The Book itself, which links together the beginning and end of the human race, will
not have a less inestimable value because the Spirit has taken the place of the
letter. Its discrepancies of fact, when we become familiar with them, will seem
of little consequence in comparison with the truths which it unfolds. That these
truths, instead of floating down the stream of tradition, or being lost in ritual
observances, have been preserved for ever in a book, is one of the many blessings
which the Jewish and Christian revelations
Again, the Scriptures are a bond of union to the whole Christian
world. No one denies their authority, and could all be brought to an intelligence
of their true meaning, all might come to agree in matters of religion. That may
seem to be a hope deferred, yet not altogether chimerical. If it is not held to
be a thing impossible, that there should be agreement in the meaning of Plato or
Sophocles, neither is it to be regarded as absurd, that there should be a like agreement
in the interpretation of Scripture. The disappearance of artificial notions and
systems will pave the way to such an agreement. The recognition of the fact, that
many aspects and stages of religion are found in Scripture; that different,
or even opposite parties existed in the Apostolic Church; that the first teachers
of Christianity had a separate and individual mode of regarding the Gospel of Christ;
that any existing communion is necessarily much more unlike the brotherhood of love
in the New Testament than we are willing to suppose—Protestants in some respects,
as much so as Catholics—that rival sects in our own day—Calvinists and Arminians—those
who maintain and those who deny the final restoration of man—may equally find texts
which seem to favour their respective tenets (
II. Christian missions suggest another sphere in which a more
enlightened use of Scripture might offer a great advantage to the teacher. The
more he is himself penetrated with the universal spirit of Scripture, the more he
will he able to resist the literal and servile habits of mind of Oriental nations.
You cannot transfer
III. It may be doubted whether Scripture has ever been sufficiently regarded as an element of liberal education. Few deem it worth while to spend in the study of it the same honest thought or pains which are bestowed on a classical author. Nor as at present studied, can it be said always to have an elevating effect. It is not a useful lesson for the young student to apply to Scripture, principles which he would hesitate to apply to other books; to make formal reconcilements of discrepancies which he would not think of reconciling in ordinary history; to divide simple words into double meanings; to adopt the fancies or conjectures of Fathers and Commentators as real knowledge. This laxity of knowledge is apt to infect the judgment when transferred to other subjects. It is not easy to say how much of the unsettlement of mind which prevails among intellectual young men is attributable to these causes; the mixture of truth and falsehood in religious education, certainly tends to impair, at the age when it is most needed, the early influence of a religious home.
Yet Scripture studied in a more liberal spirit might supply a
part of education which classical literature fails to provide. ‘The best book for
the heart might also be made the best book for the intellect.’ The noblest study
of history and antiquity is contained in it; a poetry which is also the highest
form of moral teaching; there, too, are lives of heroes and prophets, and especially
of One whom we do not name with them, because He is above them. This history, or
poetry, or biography is distinguished from all classical or secular writings by
the contemplation of man as he appears in the sight of God. That is a sense of things
into which we must grow as well as reason ourselves, without which human
nature is but a truncated, half-educated sort of being. But this sense or
IV. Another use of Scripture is that in sermons, which
seems to be among the tritest, and yet is far from being exhausted. If we could
only be natural and speak of things as they truly are with a real interest and not
merely a conventional one! The words of Scripture come readily to hand, and the
repetition of them requires no effort of thought in the writer or speaker. But,
neither does it produce any effect on the hearer, which will always be in proportion
to the degree of feeling or consciousness in ourselves. It may be said that originality
is the gift of few; no Church can expect to have, not a hundred, but ten such preachers
as Robertson or Newman. But, without originality, it seems possible to make use
of Scripture in sermons in a much more living way than at present. Let the
preacher make it a sort of religion, and proof of his reverence for Scripture, that
he never uses its words without a distinct meaning; let him avoid the form of argument
from Scripture, and catch the feeling and spirit. Scripture is itself a kind of
poetry, when not overlaid with rhetoric. The scene and country has a freshness which
may always be renewed; there is the interest of antiquity and the interest of home
or common life as well. The facts and characters of Scripture might receive a
new reading by being described simply as they are. The truths of Scripture again
would have greater reality if divested of the scholastic form in which theology has
cast them. The universal and
V. It is time to make an end of this long disquisition—let the
end be a few more words of application to the circumstances of a particular class
in the present age. If any one who is about to become a clergyman feels or thinks
that he feels that some of the preceding statements cast a shade of trouble or suspicion
on his future walk of life, who, either from the influence of a stronger mind than
his own, or from some natural tendency in himself, has been led to examine
those great questions which lie on the threshold of the higher study of theology,
and experiences a sort of shrinking or dizziness at the prospect which is opening
upon him; let him lay to heart the following considerations:—First, that he may
possibly not be the person who is called upon to pursue such inquiries. No man should
busy himself with them who has not clearness of mind enough to see things as
they are, and a faith strong enough to rest in that degree of knowledge which God has really given; or who is unable to separate the truth from his own religious
wants and experiences. For the theologian as well as the philosopher has need of
Secondly, let him consider that the difficulty is not so great
as imagination sometimes paints it. It is a difficulty which arises chiefly out
of differences of education in different classes of society. It is a difficulty
which tact, and prudence, and, much more, the power of a Christian life may hope
to surmount. Much depends on the manner in which things are said; on the evidence
in the writer or preacher of a real good will to his opponents, and a desire for
the moral improvement of men. There is an aspect of truth which may always be put
forward so as to find a way to the hearts of men. If there is danger and
shrinking from one point of view, from another, there is freedom and sense of relief.
The wider contemplation of the religious world may enable us to adjust our own place
in it. The acknowledgment of churches as political and national institutions is
the basis of a sound government of them. Criticism itself is not only negative; if it creates some difficulties, it does away others. It may
put us at variance with a party or section of Christians in our own neighbourhood.
But on the other hand, it enables us to look at all men as
Thirdly, the suspicion or difficulty which attends critical inquiries is no reason for doubting their value. The Scripture nowhere leads us to suppose that the circumstance of all men speaking well of us is any ground for supposing that we are acceptable in the sight of God. And there is no reason why the condemnation of others should be witnessed to by our own conscience. Perhaps it may be true that, owing to the jealousy or fear of some, the reticence of others, the terrorism of a few, we may not always find it easy to regard these subjects with calmness and judgment. But, on the other hand, these accidental circumstances have nothing to do with the question at issue; they cannot have the slightest influence on the meaning of words, or on the truth of facts. No one can carry out the principle that public opinion or church authority is the guide to truth, when he goes beyond the limits of his own church or country. That is a consideration which may well make him pause before he accepts of such a guide in the journey to another world. All the arguments for repressing inquiries into Scripture in Protestant countries hold equally in Italy and Spain for repressing inquiries into matters of fact or doctrine, and so for denying the Scriptures to the common people.
Lastly, let him be assured that there is some nobler idea of truth than is supplied by the opinion of mankind in general, or the voice of parties in a church. Every one, whether a student of theology or not, has need to make war against his prejudices no less than against his passions; and, in the religious teacher, the first is even more necessary than the last. For, while the vices of mankind are in a great degree isolated, and are, at any rate, reprobated by public opinion, their prejudices have a sort of communion or kindred with the world without. They are a collective evil, and have their being in the interest, classes, states of society, and other influences amid which we live. He who takes the prevailing opinions of Christians and decks them out in their gayest colours—who reflects the better mind of the world to itself—is likely to be its favourite teacher. In that ministry of the Gospel, even when assuming forms repulsive to persons of education, no doubt the good is far greater than the error or harm. But there is also a deeper work which is not dependent on the opinions of men in which many elements combine, some alien to religion, or accidentally at variance with it. That work can hardly expect to win much popular favour, so far as it runs counter to the feelings of religious parties. But he who bears a part in it may feel a confidence, which no popular caresses or religious sympathy could inspire, that he has by a Divine help been enabled to plant his foot somewhere beyond the waves of time. He may depart hence before the natural term, worn out with intellectual toil; regarded with suspicion by many of his contemporaries; yet not without a sure hope that the love of truth, which men of saintly lives often seem to slight, is, nevertheless, accepted before God.
SINCE the Essay on Bunsen’s Biblical Researches was in type, two more parts of the ‘Bible for the People’ have reached England. One includes a translation of Isaiah, but does not separate the distinguishable portions in the manner of Ewald, or with the freedom which the translator’s criticisms would justify. The other part comprehends numerous dissertations on the Pentateuch, entering largely on questions of its origin, materials, and interpretation. There seems not an entire consistency of detail in these dissertations, and in the views deducible from the author’s Egypt, but the same spirit and breadth of treatment pervade both. The analysis of the Levitical laws, by which the Mosaic germs are distinguished from subsequent accretions, is of the highest interest. The Ten Plagues of Egypt are somewhat rationalistically handled, as having a true historical basis, but as explicable by natural phenomena, indigenous to Egypt in all ages. The author’s tone upon the technical definition of miracles, as distinct from great marvels and wonders, has acquired a firmer freedom, and would be represented by some among ourselves as ‘painfully sceptical.’ But even those who hesitate to follow the author in his details must be struck by the brilliant suggestiveness of his researches, which tend more and more, in proportion as they are developed, to justify the presentiment of their creating a new epoch in the science of Biblical criticism.
R. W.
THE END.
Genesis
1:14-18 1:16 1:21 1:26 1:26-27 1:29 1:29 1:29-30 2:1 2:1-3 2:1-25 2:4 2:4 3:15 5:3 7:1 9:3 18:1-33 39:11 49:10
Exodus
20:8 20:9 20:9 20:10 20:11 20:11
Leviticus
Deuteronomy
Joshua
1 Samuel
2 Samuel
Job
Psalms
17:15 22:17 26:1 34:1-22 78:23 109:6-19 137:1-9
Ecclesiastes
Isaiah
7:16 8:4 23:1-18 40:1-31 42:1-25 42:1-25 43:1-5 43:10-14 43:14-15 44:7-8 45:1 46:1-9 46:10 48:12-16 48:20 48:22 49:1-26 49:1-26 49:3 50:5-6 52:1-14 52:1-15 52:1-15 52:10-13 53:1-12 53:1-12 53:1-12 53:1-12 53:2 53:8 54:1-17
Jeremiah
1:1-19 1:18-19 4:33 11:19 11:19 11:19-23 12:3 14:11 15:1 16:15 18:18 18:20 20:9-17 20:10 23:1-2 26:11-15 30:1-3 30:10 30:18 31:6-12 36:19 36:30 37:16 38:4-6 41:2-3 41:9-10 44:15-16 45:1-3 45:2-3 50:6-17
Lamentations
Daniel
Hosea
Amos
Matthew
2:1 2:15 2:22 5:32 5:34 9:13 12:38 12:39 16:9 16:18 16:18-19 17:26 18:18 19:21 22:21 24:24 24:34 28:20
Mark
Luke
John
1:1 3:3 3:5 3:13 6:2-30 6:52 6:56 6:63 7:17 10:35 11:46 14:11 14:26 16:15 18:36 19:35 20:30 21:25
Acts
5:29 16:31-34 16:33 17:1 19:11
Romans
1:1-3 1:2 1:3-4 1:8 1:16-18 1:32 2:1-16 2:14 2:14-15 2:17-21 3:2 3:5-9 3:9 3:15 3:19 3:25 5:7 5:12 5:12-18 9:1-33 9:5 9:22 10:1-21 10:10 10:18 11:32 13:1 15:6 16:25-27
1 Corinthians
1:17 2:5 3:15 3:15 5:2 5:11 9:20 11:10 13:1-13 13:8 15:4 15:12 15:19 15:22 15:29 15:32
2 Corinthians
Galatians
1:8 2:20 3:1 4:3 4:11-20 4:13 5:19
Philippians
Colossians
1 Thessalonians
1 Timothy
2 Timothy
Hebrews
1 John
Revelation
2 Maccabees
i ii iii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 79 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434