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REESE riRRAPy j UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. [
deceived JUN 14 1893 • '^''■> ■
\ Accessions No. ^/ff^
REPLIES
ESSAYS AND REVIEWS.
REPLIES
"ESSAYS AND REVIEWS.'
BV THE
I. REV. E. M. GOULBURX, D.D. IV. REV. W. J. IRONS, D.D. II. REV. H. J. ROSE, B.D. j V. REV. G. RORISON, M.A.
III. REV. C. A. HEURTLEV, D.D. ' VI. REV. A. W. HADDAN, B.D. VII. REV. CHR. WORDSWORTH, D.D.
^yITH A PREFACE
BV THE LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD;
AND LETTERS
FROM THE RADCLIFFE OBSERVER AND THE READER IN GEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
©xforti anU Honbon:
JOHN HENRY and JAMES PARKER. 1862.
iv-7ff
|lriut£i) bn ||lcssrs. -jJavlur, (L'onuu'.uhct, (Dvforb.
ADVERTISEMENT.
TT is necessary to state that the seven Essays con- tained in this vohime have, like those Essays to which they are replies, been "written in entire in- dependence of each other, without concert or com- parison."
Each Author was, individually, requested by the Publishers to write an Essay on a subject named, with the especial object of replying to a given Essay in the volume of " Essays and Ee views."
For the selection of writers, and for the choice of subject assigned to each, the Publishers are respon- sible. Beyond this, each writer was free to exercise his own judgment in the mode of treatment of the Essay : nor was he guided in any way by what others had written, or were writing, for the same volume.
This course of proceeding was not adopted without due consideration. It was thought, firstly, that as the " Essays and Reviews" professed to be written in- dependently of each other and without concert among the Authors, so ought the " Replies" ; otherwise, it might be objected that the latter volume was wi'itten under advantages which did not belong to the former, and therefore be refused the possession of the same weight as that volume. Secondly, that the Authors, unfettered by suggestions from Publishers or Edi- tor, would be enabled to treat their subjects more
11 ADVEETISEMENT.
thoroughly, to write more freely, and so more con- vincingly.
In most cases the Publishers are well aware that such a coui'se would be attended with danger, but in this case they have such full confidence in the several writers that they believe a supervision beyond that of the ordinary details attendant in passing works through the press would have been needless. They feel fully assured that all the main arguments are such as would be subscribed by all the writers, while on unimportant and avowedly ojDcn questions any dis- crepancies, if there should be such, might be reason- ably allowed in a volume written on the plan thus adopted.
The Publishers take this opportunity of tendering their thanks to the several writers who so readily accepted the task imposed on them.
To the Bishop of Oxford, not only for the Preface, but for advice and assistance also in making the necessary arrangements for producing such a volume.
To the Eadcliffe Observer, and the Eeader in Geo- logy in the University of Oxford, they are also in- debted for two valuable letters. They insert them in the volume because, although unreasonably, the "Essays and Reviews" obtained the title of "The Oxford Essays." In the volume itself it will be seen that the wi'iters are selected partly from Oxford and partly from Cambridge, as was the case in the volume to which it is hoped the present will be found to be a satisfactory and convincing reply.
Oxford, Januanj 1, 1862.
CONTENTS.
Preface.
By the Lord Bishop of Oxford.
I. The Education of the World . . . i
By the Rev. E. M. Goulburn, D.D., late Head Master of Rugby School ; Prebendary of St. Paul's ; Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen, &c.
II. Bnnsoi, the Critical School, and Dr. Williavis . ,55
By the Rev. H. J. Rose, B.D., Rector of Houghton Conquest, Bedfordshire.
V. TJic Creative Week ....
By the Rev. G. Rorison, M.A., Incumbent of Peterhead, Diocese of Aberdeen.
135
III. Miracles ......
By the Rev. C. A. Heurtley, D.D., Canon of Christ Church, and Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford.
IV. Tlie Idea of the National Church . . ■ ^99
By the Rev. W. J. Irons, D.D., Prebendary of St. Paul's, and Vicar of Brompton, Middlesex.
277
VI. Rationalism . . . . -347
By the Rev. A. W. Haddan, B.D., Rector of Barton-on- the-Heath, Warwickshire.
VII. On the Interpretation of Scriptmr . . 409
By the Rev. Chr. Wordsworth, D.D., Canon of Westminster ; Proctor in Convocation, &c.
Appendix.
I. Letter from the Rev. Robert Main, M.A., Pembroke
College, Radcliffe Obser\'er . . . -5°!
II. Letter from John Phillips, M.A., Magdalen College, Reader in Geology in the University of Oxford . -514
PEEFACE.
T^nE A'olumc wliicli is here placed in the reader's hands seems to me to need neither preface nor recommendation. The importance of its subject, the gravity of the occasion which has called it forth, the weighty names in the catalogue of its wi'iters, all combine to demand for it the full attention which preface or recommendation might solicit for an ordi- nary volume. Nevertheless, yielding to the request of those who had combined to produce it, I had pro- mised to contribute a preface to it : and having done so, I desired to enter at some length into the general subject towards which these several essays converge, and to the mode in which it had been dealt with here.
Diocesan engagements compelled me to postpone my work to an approaching period of comparative leisure. But at this moment my contribution is called for, and rather than delay the publication of the work, I have resolved to furnish it at once, reduced to the narrowest dimensions ; and even before I have been able myself to read any of the following Essays.
It is then of the general object only of the work that I can speak. As to which let me say, — first, that its object is not so much to reply directly b 2
IV PREFACE.
to error, as to establish truth, and so to remove the foundations on ^yhich error rests; secondly, that the publication of this volume is no admission that new or powerful arguments against the truth have rendered necessary new arguments in its defence. Eather, the re-statement of old truths of which it consists is a declaration that the fresh-varnished ob- jections which have called it forth are neither new nor profound. Further, there is no allowance here that the views which have called it forth are open questions or fair subjects for discussion between Christians, still less between Church of England men. Its scope is to shew that the objections to which it refers are old objections, the urging of which must of necessity, with our limited faculties, be possible against all revelation; and that, as such, they have been often put forth, repeatedly answered. Such difficulties are to be set at rest in any mind rather by strengthening the deep foimdations of the faith, than by the laboured refutation of every sepa- rate, captious, and casuistic objection in which re- pugnance to all fixed belief of dogmas, as having been dii'ectly communicated by God to man, is wont to vent itself.
That such objections to revelation should appear in this day, and should clothe themselves in the fresh garb which they have assumed, will not seem strange to thoughtful minds. K'ot, indeed, that it is other than a very narrow philosophy which would con- ceive of them as a mere reaction from recentl}^ re-
I'REFACE.
newed assertions of the pre-eminent importance of dogmatic truth and of primitive Christian practice, or even from the excesses and evils which have, as they always do, attended on and disfigured this revival of the truth. To attempt to account for these phenomena by such a solution as this is to fix the eye upon the nearest headland round which the stream of time and thought is sweeping, not daring to look further ; and so to deal with all beyond that nearest prospect as if it were not. 'No ; this movement of the human mind has been far too wide-spread, and con- nects itself with far too general conditions, to be capable of so narrow a solution. Much more true is the explanation, which sees in it the first stealing over the sky of the lurid lights which shall be shed profusely around the great Antichrist. For these dif- ficulties gather their strength from a spirit of lawless rejection of all authority, from a daring claim for the unassisted human intellect to be able to discover, measure, and explain all things. The rejection of the faith, which in the last age assumed the coarse and vulgar features of an open atheism, which soon de- stroyed itself in its own multiplying difficulties, in- tellectual, moral, civil, and political, has robed itself now in more decent garments, and exhibits to the world the old deceit with far more comely features. For the rejection of all fixed faith, all definite revela- tion, and all certain truth, which is intolerable to man as a naked atheism, is endurable, and even seductive, when veiled in the more decent half-concealment of
Vlll PREFACE.
Christianity must be certain and complete. For dis- guise it as you will, it is simple unbelief. Pantheism is but a tricked-out Atheism. The dissolution of Ee- velation is the denial of God.
With such a wide-spread current of thought, then, the strong foundations of Church-of-England faith came rudely in contact. Her simple retention of the primi- tive forms of the Apostolic Church ; her Ministry, and her Sacraments ; her firm hold of primitive truth ; her Creeds ; her Scriptures ; her Formularies ; her Cate- chism ; and her Articles ; all of these were alike at variance with the new rationalistic unbelief. The struggles and strifes of the last thirty years have been the inevitable consequence. The passionate re-assertion of the old truths, with all the evils which have waited on that passion, as well as all the immeasurable good which has been the fruit of the re-assertion, — all of these have been themselves the consequence of the widely-acting influence to which the human mind has of late been subjected. Short-sighted men have looked at these things with their narrow range, and believed that the scepticism which on the one side has been evolved in the struggle, was the fruit of that energetic assertion of the truth which was itself but one conse- quence of the unbelief with which it was striving.
As well might they believe that the causes of the existence of some naked promontory which has had its sharp and rocky point defined by the great current it has long breasted, or of that mighty ocean-like flow which sweeps against it, arc to be found in the bois-
PREFACE. IX
terous waves which roar down the lower stream, and fleck with foam the agitated waters of its troubled bosom.
Two distinct courses seem to me to be required by such a state of things.
First, the distinct, solemn, and if need be, severe, decision of authority that assertions such as these cannot be put forward as possibly trne, or even advanced as admitting of question, by honest men, who are bound by voluntary obligations to teach the Christian revelation as the truth of Grod.
I put this necessity fii'st, from the full conviction, that if such matters are admitted by us to be open questions amongst men under such obligations, we shall leave to the next generation the fatal legacy of an universal scepticism, amidst an undistinguishable confusion of all possible landmarks between truth and falsehood.
To say this, be it observed, is to evince no fear of argument against our faith though the freest, or of enquiry into it though the most daring. From these, Christianity has nothing to dread. In their issue these do but manifest the truth. The roughest wind sweeps the sky the most speedily, and shews forth the soonest the unclouded sun in all his splen- doiu'. It is not, therefore, because believers in Eeve- lation fear enquiry, that authority is bound to inter- fere. But it is to prevent the very idea of truth, as truth, dying out amongst us. For so indeed it must do, if once it be permitted to our clergy solemnly to
X PREFACE.
engage to teach as the truth of God a certain set of doctrines, and at the same time freely to discuss "whether they are true or false. First, then, and even before argument, our disorders need the firm, un- flinching action of authority.
Secondly, we need the calm, comprehensive, scholar- like declaration of positive truth upon all the matters in dispute, by which the shallowness, and the passion, and the ignorance of the new system of unbelief may be thoroughly displayed.
That this volume may in some measure, at least, fulfil these conditions, is the endeavour of its writers, and the hope of him who ventures now to commend it to the prayers of the Church, and the study of its readers.
S. 0.
CuDDESDON Palace, Dec. 1861.
THE education"^? THE WORLD.
" Tlie Education of the World." By Frederick Temple, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen; Head Master of Rugby School ; Ohaplain to the Earl of Denbigh. The Second Edition. {London: John W. Parker and Son, West Strand. 1860.)
" The Education of the Human Race." From the German of GoTTEOLD Ephbaim Lessixg. (Londou : Smith, Elder, and Co. 1858.)
W^
" How charming is Divine Philosophy ! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose ; But musical as is ApoUo's lute."
'E quite echo back these words of our gi-eat bard. Divine philosophy is charming in its every shape ; — not only that discovery of precious moral truth in ancient myths which, judging from the context, Mil- ton seems to have had principally in his thoughts, but any true theory of the dealings of God with man to which the words ' divine philosophy' might be suit- ably appropriated. If we can at all get a glimpse into the significance of the Scheme of Grace, as God has been unfolding it from the primitive prediction of the Seed of the woman until now, this glimpse cannot fail to be attractive and cheering, — as attractive and cheering (though perhaps as much obstructed) as that which the pilgi-im gains, at interstices between tan- gled boughs, of the spires and pinnacles of the city to which his steps are bent. But just as in physical science the true philosopher will never form theories independently of the facts of nature ; just as his crude
2 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
guesses will be originated, modified, enlarged by tliose facts, in some cases retracted and thrown aside in obe- dience to them ; just as all natural pliilosophy consists in being led by the hand of nature into natural truth, — so the divine philosopher will never draw up his scheme independently of the truths of Holy Scripture, (which are in theology what the facts are in nature) ; his theories will not only be started, but corrected, by those truths, and will be safe, and sound, and valu- able, just so far as in forming them he has been led by the hand of God's Word.
We have before us two essays on the education of the human race, and the slightest glance at either of them shews that the author means the religious or spiritual education which God is conferring upon man. We shall attempt to clear the ground for our criticism by pointing out the senses in which man may be truly said either to have received from God, or to be receiving, a spiritual education.
I. First, there can be no doubt that man (or rather that portion of the human race which is under the divine economy, and which we think, with Dr. Tem- ple, may not unfairly be regarded as a representa- tive of the whole race''',) is receiving an education in time for eternity. Earth is the school in which God's
° "7/" the Christian Church he tal-en as the representative of mankind, it is easy to see that the general law observable iu the de- velopment of the individual may also be found in the development of the Church." — Essays and Bevieios, p. 40.
We do not see that the hypothesis can be quarrelled with. Though in one important sense the world and the Church are op- posed to one another, yet, under another aspect, regenerate hu- manity is surely a sample of the whole. " Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth, that toe should he a kind of first- fruits of His creatures. ^^ (James i. 18.)
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 3
people are being trained for heaven. This is clearly implied in the well-kno^Yn passage, 1 Cor. xiii. 9, &c. We are children at present, conceiving darkly, reason- ing uncertainly, and expressing ourselves imperfectly ; but hereafter we shall come to the full maturity of our powers, knowing no longer in the way of dis- covery, but intuitively, "even as also we are known," and no longer needing to express things divine by figures and images drawn from things earthly. Take the dawning intelligence and the limited experience of a little child, not yet emancipated from the re- straints of the nursery, and contrast them with the large research of a Columbus, the sagacious investiga- tions of a Bacon, and the profound discoveries of a Is'ewton, and you have then, if the Scripture ana- logy be correct, some idea of the proportion which our present mental and spiritual faculties will bear to oiu- attainments hereafter. The analogy at once teaches us this, that just as there are many truths, quite on a level with a man's understanding, which cannot be at all explained to a child with its present capacities, and others which can only be explained very imperfectly, by illustrations drawn from its own narrow circle of ideas and associations; so there are some spiritual truths altogether out of our reach in our present condition, and others which can be con- Yeyed to us only through the imperfect medium of earthly relations and human language. All man's in- sight into divine truth is and must be, as its essential condition, "through a glass," and all his knowledge in a riddle, (eV ali^Ly/xari). He can only see, not the object itself, but an image of it reflected in a mirror, whose surface is never quite true or quite smooth ; he can only know heavenly tilings by comparisons with b2
4 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
eartlily, (wliicli comparisons must break down some- where,) not by conversancy with the realities. And the moral lesson to be learnt from this education of the human race would be, that our heavenly Father intends for us, by our present condition of existence, a discipline of humility of mind; and that, there- fore, having once seen our way to faith in God's Word, (and abundant light is supplied to us for this purpose,) we must thenceforth acquiesce devoutly in the difficulties and obscurities which beset some of its statements, remembering that, if we could see through all entanglements, faith would cease to be faith, and become sight. This theory of man's education hum- bles his reason, instead of exalting it, and pours con- tempt upon his utmost mental progress, instead of magnifying it as the maturity of his powers.
II. But there is another sense in which we may speak of the education of man, — a sense more defi- nitely recognising the race as one creature, and so more nearly approaching Dr. Temple's theory of "a colossal man, whose life reaches from the creation to the day of judgment."
We are told that God's ancient Church received from Him a preparatory discipline to fit it for the reception of the Gospel: — "The Law," says the Apo- stle, " was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ." While the economy of the Law was running its course, God's child (His Church) was under "tutors and go- vernors," "in bondage under the rudiments of the world." But the fulness of the time came, when the One great Master, to whose class-room the pedagogue had but conducted' the learner, appears^ upon earth.
" Persons acquainted only with the English version of the Holy Scriptures wiU need to be warned that the word translated ' school-
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 5
He taught the truth, which made men free; and, hearing this truth, the heir was emancipated from the restraints of chiklhood, and entered upon his inherit- ance. This education, therefore, was terminated, not by the end of the world, or the day of judgment, but by the fii'st coming of Christ.
Xow, guiding ourselves by this clue, a most in- teresting theory might be drawn out of the education of the world, the outline of which, at all events, would be correct. Such a theory has been attempted in a little work, which has been many years before the public, but which perhaps is less extensively known than it deserves^. We can here only find space for the most rapid sketch of the argument. Before the Saviour appeared upon earth, it was ne- cessary that men should be prepared to appreciate the blessings and the truth which He would reveal ; other- wise they would never have intelligently received the Gospel. Xo mind could apprehend Christianity, which was not fii'st well grounded in certain elemen- tary religious ideas, which had been corrupted in the Tall, and further depraved in that frightful result of the Fall, the degeneracy of idol worship. In restor- ing these ideas to the mind of man, and forming there certain new ones, which were necessary to the intelli- gent reception of the Gospel, God determined to act on His usual principle (which runs through all His
dispensations) of using men for the instruction of men.
One man, however, would not sufiice for so great a
master' in the passage referred to properly denotes, not the actual instructor, but a domestic employed to take charge of children and see them safe to school. Christ is our rabbi, at whose feet "we sit, to receive the truth which makes us free; and the Law is the domestic who "brought us unto" Him.
^ The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation : a Book for the Times.
6 THE EDUCATIOX OF THE WORLD.
work as the preparatory initiation of the human mind into elementary religious ideas. He would not live long enough ; and, while he did live, could not make his influence felt widely enough. God therefore must raise up a nation of teachers ; must thoroughly imbue them with the elementary ideas, and then finally dis- seminate them, in the order of His Proyidence, and cause them to come in contact with the mind of other nations. This, accordingly, was the plan which He adopted. He first prepares the Israelites for His pur- pose, riveting them together by a common parentage felt to have the sacredness of caste in it, by a com- mon worship, distinct altogether from that of other nations, by the long oppression under which they groaned in a strange country, and by the miraculous deliverance from Egypt, which came to them just as their minds were in a high state of excitement and susceptibility. This is the account which we should be inclined to give of that " extraordinary toughness of nature*"' in the Jew, upon which Dr. Temple com- ments, so far indeed as the result was brought about by natural causes, and not chiefly due to the special interference of God, who for His own purposes has endowed their nationality with extraordinary vital powers. Israel having by these means become a strongly marked and firmly united people, with the most exclusive sympathies and antipathies, then com- menced the throwing into their minds those religious conceptions with which, in long process of time, and by varied discipline, their whole souls were to be
® " The people whose extraordinary toughness of nature has enabled it to outlive Egyptian Pharaohs, and Assyrian kings, and Homan CaDsars, and Mussulman caliphs," &c. — Essay on the Edu- cation of the World, p. 14.
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 7
imbued. First was commimicated, as the original ground of all religious thought, the personality, and existence of God, altogether independently of His attributes, which were afterwards to be revealed. If a man does not believe that God exists, or that a per- sonal God exists, there is no basis for religion to stand upon in that man's mind. The first name, therefore, under which God made Himself known to the people whom He was training as the religious teachers of the world, was " I am," — leaving all besides to sub- sequent development, '-'I am that I am."
Xext followed the covenant relationship in which God condescended to stand to them, (for the idea of absolute God is bleak and dreary, however sublime, — chilling rather than attractive to the heart): "And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Ahraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacoh, hath sent me unto you : this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all gene- rations V This personal God, so related to them, was then shewn by the miracles which preceded and at- tended the Exodus, to be mightier than all the gods of the Egyptians; or, to use the words of Lessing, (Sect. 12,) "Through the miracles, with which He led them out of Egypt and planted them in Canaan, He testified of Himself to them as a God mightier than any other god." Thus the Israelitish mind got as far as these three ideas — personality, covenant re- lationship, Almighty power. The moral attributes had next to be impressed upon it. And this was done by the promulgation of the Law, both moral and cere- monial. The Ten Commandments, revealing, as they
' Exod. iii. 15.
8 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
did, the will of God as regards man's conduct, pro- claimed His holiness. But the people being still in the infancy of religious knowledge, the same lesson was taught in another way by external observances and an appeal to the senses. The notion of moral purity was developed in their mind, and connected with the thought of God, by the ceremonial distinc- tions between clean and unclean beasts, and the use of the former class only in sacrifice, — by the separa- tion of the priests from the people, of the holy of holies from the holy place, and of that from the court of the tabernacle, and by the ceremonial washings and sprinklings which both sacrifices and priests and wor- shippers had to undergo. The justice of God, which exacted the forfeiture of life as the desert of sin, and at the same time the possibility of transferring the penalty to an innocent victim, which constitutes the idea of atonement, would be taught by the sin-offer- ings, with which the worshipper was supposed to iden- tify himself by laying his hands on the victim. In short, all the observances of the Mosaic ritual would be to the Jew like so many pictures in a child's primer, by which rough but lively ideas are con- veyed to the child of objects which it never yet saw.
The unity and spirituality of God, enforced so often by positive precepts and minor punishments, were the truths which the national mind found it most difficult to master. Has the propensity to Pantheism, — to the recognising something divine in every object of the world of nature, — so entirely ceased among Christians of the nineteenth century, who live under the ripest experience of the "colossal man," that we shall be surprised to find a similar propensity somewhat tena- ciously rooted in the minds of a people always stiff-
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 9
necked, and uncircnmciscd in heart and ears ? Is no tendency manifested now-a-days in any part of the Christian Church to lean unduly upon objects of sense and external aids in religious worship ? Well, — ten- dencies similar to these in principle were to be sternly corrected in those who were to be the appointed reli- gious teachers of the human race. When less severe discipline had failed, God smote them with a stroke so heavy, that the smart of it taught them this, the lesson of His unity and spirituality, effectually, and im- printed it in ineffaceable characters upon their minds. The Babylonish captivity cured them altogether of idol worship ; while the dispersion which accompanied it answered another great end, — it brought the Jetvs into contact ivith the Gentile mind^ and thus 'put God^s trained masters into communication loith their scholars. It domesticated many of them in different parts of the heathen world, made them learn Gentile tongues, and enabled them to introduce into those tongues the ideas which they themselves had imbibed. The Septuagint translation of the Old Testament Scriptures enshrined for ever the religious ideas of the Jews in the language which, through the Macedonian conquest, had spread itself over the whole civilized world.
This design of God's providence in the dispersion of the Jews is implied in the strongest way, if we cannot say that it is expressed, in the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament. The day on which the new dispen- sation was solemnly inaugurated, under the auspices of the Holy Spirit, found Jews at Jerusalem out of every nation under heaven, — " Parthians, and Modes, and Elamitcs, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judtea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya
JO THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
about Cyrene, and strangers of Eome, Jews and prose- lytes, Cretes and Arabians." And we know from other parts of the Acts of the Apostles that large bodies of proselytes were found in all the chief cities of the ancient world, — Jews by religion, Gentiles by birth, — who, as having affinities with both, acted as a ready-made bridge by which the truths of the Gospel might pass over from one to the other. Does not the existence of these proselytes ' argue that the Jews had leavened very considerably the religious mind of the Gentiles in the various countries of their dispersion? They had leavened it by the diffusion of those funda- mental religious ideas — such as the personality and unity of God, holiness, the atonement, the inseparable union of morality with religion — which are necessary to the acceptance and appreciation of Christianity. And thus the intellect of the human race may be said to have been matured for the reception of the Gospel. In the fulness of the Time ^ came the great Teacher, to impart the knowledge of the Truth (or, in other words, of Himself,) which should make men free. He
K Dr. Temple's Essay is said to have grown out of a sermon (preached before the rniversity), on " the fulness of the Time."
We have attempted (in a humble way) to shew how, when our Lord appeared, tlie Church of God was prepared for His appearance by the gradual discipline of foregone dispensations. The subject, however, may be looked at in another light ; and the " fulness of the times" may be considered in reference to the desperately cor- rupt state of the world at large, which called for some direct Divine interference. See a masterly sermon by Dr. Eobertson the historian, (1759), "On the Situation of the World at the Time of Christ's Appearance," in which it is shewn how "the political, moral, reli- gious, and domestic state of the world at that time", were all eminently suitable to the great event. The sermon is now, un- fortunately, one of those rare pieces which is only to be found in old collections of tracts.
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 11
lifted from off their necks the j^oke of the ceremonial Law, which neither that generation to which He came, nor their fathers, were able to bear. He relieved them sensibly of the burden of unforgiven sin, cancelling in His Blood the records of the accusing conscience, and the handwriting of the moral law, '' which was contrary to us." He relieved them also of the oppressive tyranny of sin by His grace, which communicated a new spring of energy to their wills, and brought into operation motives which, if they existed before, were never be- fore so powerfully elicited. But in speaking of this liberty wherewith Christ made us free, it is observable how carefully both our Lord and His Apostles guard themselves against the notion of its being lawless, or emancipated from moral restraints. He promises to give rest to those who come to Him, but the rest con- sists not in the absence of a yoke and burden, but in its light pressure : " Take My yoke upon you .... and ye shall find rest unto your souls. Foi' My yoJce is easy^ and My liirden is lights The freedom which He bestows is a freedom from the service of sin*". It is an obedience from the heart to a form of doctrine ; it is a service of God \ The Christian has a law, and a law by which he will be judged ; although indeed it is a law of liberty's And St. Paul, when shewing how he adapted his ministry to those whom he ap- proached with it, and how to the Gentiles who were without (revealed) law he became as without law, re- tracts the very word aVo/zoy, ('lawless,') lest it should be misunderstood: "Being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ." He was, even as an apostle, under a law, although indeed it was '' the law
h See John viii. 32, 34, 36. ' Rom. vi. 17, 22.
^ James i. 2.3, ami ii. 12.
12 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
of the Spirit of life '." Thus the Bible gives no sanc- tion to the idea that the present state of the Christian is one of emancipation from law, though no doubt we are exempt from olbedience to the ceremonial rules im- posed by the old economy.
Even to this exemption we do not find that the ori- ginal Jewish converts, or even the original Apostles, easily accommodated themselves. The Jewish mind had yet need of further training, (even after the de- scent of the Holy Ghost,) before it burst the shell of ritual restraints. The liberty of the Church from ceremonial bondage, and its essential Catholicity, are gradually developed in the Acts of the Apostles. St. Peter is reconciled to this part of the Divine plan by a vision, and a voice from heaven, and a providential circumstance, and an intimation of the Holy Ghost; and yet afterwards recalcitrates, and needs to be pub- licly expostulated with by a colleague"". The first Chiistian Council solemnly decides for all time the question that circumcision is not necessary for Gen- tile converts. St. Paul's preaching and influence at length, under the blessing of God, brought about that full and free expansion of religious thought which had been so long unfolding by various agencies. But it was only an expansion which refused to be cramped any longer within the narrow limits of the Mosaic law ; not one, like that afi'ected by moral Eationalists, which feels itself narrowed by creeds and formularies of doctrine. With deference to Dr. Temple, who tells us that " there are no creeds in the 'New Testament, and hardly any laws of Church government," Ave think that 1 Tim. iii. 16 sounds remarkably like a
' Ptom. viii. 2. » Acts s. 11, 13, 17, 20; G:il. ii. 11.
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 13
creed, and that " the form of sound words'"' which Ti- mothy is exhorted to hold fast must have been some- thing of the kind ; and we should he at a loss to de- fine the contents of the pastoral Epistles, if we might not say that they contained the laws of primitive Church government.
In concluding this sketch, we may venture to sup- pose that the signal for the final emancipation of reli- gious thought from the bondage of the Mosaic law ■\?ts given by God's own hand, when Jerusalem and the Temple were demolished, and Judaism had no more a local habitation upon earth.
And shall we say that after this period all further religious development of the mind of the Church ceased? We think that the intimations of Holy Scripture, if not its express declarations, lead us to an opposite conclusion. We have seen that even after the day of Pentecost an Apostle had something of religious truth yet to learn. We have seen that even the presence of the Holy Spirit, in His mira- culous gifts, did not supersede the necessity for the sentence of a Christian Coimcil. And certain it is that the Apostolic age, when it passed away, left the Church founded in the earth, and nothing more ; that its full organization had yet to be given it, its bat- tlements had yet to be constructed. Accordingly, as Dr. Temple says, '' the Church's whole energy was taken up, in the first six centuries of her existence, in the creation of a theology." Heresies (that is, devia- tions from the faith taught by the Apostles and em- bodied in their writings,) sprang up, and made it ne- cessary that the truth should be, not indeed revealed anew, but re-stated, and cleared by definition and illus- » 2 Tim. i. 13.
14 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
tralion. This was done by CEcumenical Councils ; and we have the results of the process in our Creeds. In the decisions of these Councils, forms of expression and technical terms of theology are of course intro- duced which are not found in the Holy Scriptures, (for if the bare Scriptural exj^ressions had sufficed for the refutation of heresy, where would have been the need of a conciliar determination ?) but it is remarkable how the first four Councils found their conclusions on the uniform and continuous belief of the Church from the beginning, shewing that they did not presume to add anything to primitive truth, but merely to vin- dicate and clear it of those parasitical errors which threatened its existence. In short, divine truth, hav- ing been cast into the seed-plot of human minds, was constantly springing up with certain accretions which came from the vice of soil, which accretions had to be removed as they arose; and thus each of the four great Councils, if in one sense an expositor of the Word of God, was in another sense a reformer, bring- ing things back to the primitive model of belief. They sought the perfection of theology, not in the develop- ments of future ages, but in what had been received in the past °.
And shall we say that, since the decisions of the (Ecumenical Councils, the science of theology has re- ceived no further accessions ? None, we think, simi- larly authenticated. We should attach the greatest deference now-a-days to the decisions of an OEcumeni-
° Mr. Archer Eutler describes the function of the early Councils with admirable terseness as well as clearness, when he says, (Deve- lopment, p. 224,) " The function of the early Councils was ... to define received doctrine, to elucidate ohscnred doctrine, to condemn false doctrine. But it M-as not to reveal new doctrine."
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 15
cal CWncil, if such could be gathered, which should have a sufficient occasion and object, should be iinpar- tiallj^ constituted, and should found its decisions en- tirely on Holy Writ, as interpreted by primitive anti- quity. But at the same time we fully concede that, in the absence of such Councils, and without the sanc- tion which they would lend, the evolution of divine truth in the human mind is always going on.
On this head we quote Mr. Archer Butler's letters in reply to Mr. Newman's "Theory of Development." Nowhere else shall we find words at once more suc- cinct and more .exhaustive of the subject : —
"I have no disposition to conceal or question that theo- logical knowledge is capable of a real movement in time, a true successive history, through the legitimate application of human reason. This movement may probably be regarded as taking place in two principal waj^s : —
"The first is the process o^ logical derelopment of primitive truth into its consequences, connexions, and applications." [An instance of what the author means by logical develop- ment is thus given in a former part of the work : " When we have learned, on the infalHble authority of inspiration, that the Lord Jesus Christ is Himself very God, and when we have learned from the same authority the tremendous fact of His Atoning Sacrifice, we could collect (even were Scripture silent) the priceless value of the atonement thus made; the wondrous humiliation therein involved; the un- speakable love it exhibited ; the mysteriously awful guilt of sin, which would again reflect a gloomy light upon the equally mysterious eternity oi punishment."]
" The second is, 2^osiiive discovery. Members of the English Church — which (by a strange dispensation of Providence) has, since its lapse into ' heresy,' done more to benefit Chris- tianity in this way than all others put together — will not find much difiB.culty in concei\dng many classes of these precious gifts of God to His Church, conveyed through the ministration of human sagacity. Such are —
l6 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
"1. Unexpected confirmations or illustrations of revealed doctrine from new sources ; as from unobserved applications or collations of Holy Scriptui-e ; or from profound investi- gations of natural religion, and the philosophy of morals, as in some parts of the researches of Bishop Warburton.
"2. New proofs in support of the evidences of religion; such as the conception and complete establishment of the analogical argument by Bishop Butler, or the invention and exquisite application of the test of undesigned coincidence by Paley.
" 3. Discoveries regarding the form and circumstances of the Revelation itself; such as those of Bishops Lowth and Jebb on the remarkable structure of the poetical and sen- tentious parts of Holy Writ.
"4. Discoveries of divine laws in the government of the Church and world, so far as the same may lawfully be col- lected by observation and theoiy.
"5. Discoveries, through events disclosing the meaning of prophecy, or correcting erroneous interpretations of Scripture."
To these we may add what perhaps the learned and highly -gifted writer intended to classify under the thii'd head : —
Accessions to the stock of knowledge, already pos- sessed by the world, of the languages in which the Holy Scriptures were written.
While upon this point, we cannot avoid quoting the weighty testimony of one who (great as Mr. Archer Butler was) was greater than he, to "the possibility of a real movement of theological knowledge in time, through the legitimate application of human reason." It is a grand passage, and will well repay perusal : —
" As it is owned the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet understood; so, if it ever comes to be understood, before the restitution of all things, and without miraculous interpositions; it must be in the same wav as natural knowledge is come at :
I
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 17
b}' tlie contmuance and progress of learning and of liberty ; and by particular persons attending to, comparing and pur- suing, intimations scattered up and down it, which are over- looked and disregarded by the generality of the world. For this is the way, in which all improvements are made ; by thoughtfid men's tracing on obscure hints, as it were, dropped us by nature accidentally, or which seem to come into our minds by chance. Nor is it at all incredible, that a book, ichich has been so long in the ^^ossession of manhincl, should contain many truths as yet undiscovered. For all the same phenomena, and the same faculties of investigation, from, which such great discoveries in natural knowledge have been made in the present and last age, were equally in the possession of mankind, several thousand years before. And possibly it might be intended, that events, as they come to pass, should open and ascertain the meaning of several parts of Scripture." — Butler's Analogy of Natural and Revealed Eeligion, book ii. ch. 3.
It will be seen that both Mr. Archer Butler and his illustrious namesake quite admit a certain progress of the human mind on theological subjects by " the legitimate application of reason." How can such a progress be questioned ? Would there be any room at all for the science of theology, if the illustration, elu- cidation, interpretation, application, enforcement of the sacred Books had been stereotyped at the time they were given? Does not the Church's ordinance ^ of preaching, which is to endure for all time, assume that the human mind is to be brought in contact with the Word of God, and to deal with it in the way of explanation, enforcement, and so forth. And if a good sermon of a single preacher, composed with the ordi- nary helps of God's Spirit, often throws real light on
p An ordinance wliich surely must not be narrowed to oral addresses made in a church, but must include also religious instruc- tion by books, &c.
C
l8 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
the "Word of God, can the ministers of the whole Church of Christ from the beginning (thousands of them men of the profoundest erudition as well as the deepest piety) have failed to do a great deal, not in- deed in the way of revealing any new thing, but of unfolding and illustrating what has been revealed? It may be greatly questioned whether any truth in the world can be fully appreciated by the human mind, when it is freshly lodged there. It must first be studied and discussed, — must pass through the various stages of questioning, controversy, advocacy, before it can gain a real and influential hold. In this respect of course later ages of the Church have an advantage over earlier ones. The truth has been more maturely considered, filtered through a larger variety of human minds, devout and indevout ; and if, on the one hand, it has gained certain accretions from the process, on the other its bearings and significance are now more fully understood.
It is, however, most important to remark that be- tween this progress of the mind of the Church, and the progress, which Dr. Temple brings into comparison with it, of the individual mind, there is one very striking difference, which he has wholly overlooked. The education of the individual is carried on by sub- stantive accessions of knowledge, and the rudiments are swallowed up and lost as the knowledge grows. But the education {if ive arc to call it so) of the Church is all ii}ra]pijcd up in the rudiments; — it is simply an expansion of " the faith once delivered to the saints." Eevelation stands not at the end, but at the beginning, of the Church's career. The highest degree of knowledge is communicated to the Church in the first instance ; all that follows is merely a full
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 19
development of the import of that knowledge. In
INDIVIDUAL EDUCATION THE MORE ADVANCED SCIENCE EMBRACES THE RUDIMENT; BUT IN THE EDUCATION OP
THE Church the rudiment (which is revelation)
EMBRACES THE MORE ADVANCED KNOWLEDGE. He that
is perfectly master of a language, so as to speak and WTite fluently in it, forgets his rules of grammar; they remain with him only in the shape of " a perma- nent result." But when the Council of Constantinople condemned the Macedonian heresy, it by no means superseded, but simply unfolded, and brought out more clearly into the general consciousness of Chris- tendom, the import of that gi'eat precept, " Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God," and of that comfortable benediction, " The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all." The man who can read Greek has outgro^^Ti his English spelling-book. But the "colossal man" (or, as we should prefer to put it, the Church of the latter days) can never outgrow Scripture; all she can do is to appropriate more thoroughly the nourishment of divine truth contained in it, and to "grow thereby."
We conceive that the above theory of the education of the world, although not in all its parts explicitly Scriptural, yet holds all along to the clue which Scrip- ture furnishes. For, —
1. Scripture speaks of the law as psedagogic, — a discipline of childhood, " to bring us unto Christ."
2. Scripture speaks of a Church synod, after the first promulgation of Christian truth, for the deter- mination of questions vitally affecting the interests of the Church.
r 9
20 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
3. Scripture provides a ministry of teaching and preaching among uninspired men.
We shall nov proceed to examine the first of the "Essays and Eeviews " under the light thus gained.
Yery early one of the fallacies which pervades it is made to appear. The wi'iter having told us (what doubtless may be admitted) that the long lapse of time since the creation of man must have a purpose, and that '' each moment of time, as it passes, is taken up into the time that follows in the shape of perma- nent results," goes on to assert that not only does knowledge receive continually a fresh accession, but also "the discipline of manners, of temper, of thought, of feeling, is transmitted from generation to gene- ration, and at each transmission there is an imper- ceptible but unfailing increase." (p. 4.) ^'hat, pre- cisely, does the learned Essayist mean by this "dis- cipline of manners, temper, thought, and feeling," whfch is always on the increase ? Does he allude to the humanizing influences of civilization, which certainly gild and varnish the surface of society, while they leave the vices of the human heart un- touched ? It may be conceded to him that these in- fluences do secure an improvement in manner, and to a certain extent in temper, round off many a sharp angle, and restrain many an impetuous sally, which might end in provocation and mischief. We are not quite sure, however, that civilization has been regu- larly and steadily progressive among men. In the more prominent nations of the world it has had its day, has run its course, and then has collapsed and become effete. But granted that we could trace in it (as regards mankind in general) any regular progres-
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 21
sion, surely Dr. Temple does not mean to represent this as a divine education, either of the Church or of the world. Yet the thought is constantly obtruded upon us, as we read his Essay, that he is confusing the progress of the species by civilization with the in'ogress of the Church in divine knowledge.
But will he say that by discipline of manners, tem- per, thought, and feeling, he means a moral advanqe of the human species, or of the professing ChurcK,^ Then surely this is as contrary to all the facts of ex- perience as to the anticipations of man's moral career which Holy Scripture would lead us to form. With Dr. Temple, we suppose that the long succession of time exists for a great purpose. A mighty drama is developing its plot upon the earth, which shall issue, if the Scripture be true, not in the moral improve- ment of the species, but in the glory of God, by the final salvation of His true people from the present evil world. So far from the moral improvement of the species being gradually worked out, as this drama proceeds, the fallen will of man, instigated by external evil agency, is everywhere counterworking God, and continually being overruled by His good Providence to His own greater glory. And what we have to ex- pect, as time goes on, is that both evil and good will draw to a head together ; that if on one side of us the lights will be brighter, on the other the shadows will be darker, until the Eighteous One and the Evil One in personal manifestation confront one another on the stage of the earth. Such is the history of the race which Scripture leads us to expect. But putting out of sight the intimations of Scripture, are any traces of moral progress visible in the history of the world ? To lake only the histories of Eome and Greece, to which
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that man, (undor certain • ncr*) rmtrainpd
by law ar aoftcofxl by ci\i.i/-i.i - i. U itill fuiwla^ mentally T at ho beram<' in the mutuont of hit fall, "earthly, nxual, drvili^h "
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What len, prrci-K'ly, ij tho proj^\« of the 8|>o<it'3 to whjhnjr I'UrayiAt n'fem? (jn*at oa his abilili**s ini.in- '1 ;il)ly nro, wo r:innot but think that his rvmlrd by r<>nfu«*ion of thought, and that lundamrntal idt-a. Thon* in the Scriptural '•rtain, UvauHo Scriptural,) that the ancient •..'<l by thr Uiw for the reception 1 the piiterit fact that tho civiliza-
!ij;le iHH)ple odvances (at least up to a cer- mj brin^H in it.s train certain humanizing : There is the old nmark, so beautifully
ornlKxiil in the tirst /V/uk-V of I'ascal, that in respect f'f knoredj;e and research wo enter into the posses- ion of lio stores which our ancestors have accumu- lated. J d have a wider rau,;;e of prospect tlian they, lM>faim bring mounted higher, we can sec further. There tlu- admitted fact tha^MJ^itions and il- lustrat.ns of dud's Word arc^^^^K :i"'l varied "thro/l^|L- Ir-itiinate appli m'unnaii rea-
son," ^^^^^ocs on. I'ii
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2 2 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
Dr. Temple more than once refers, is not the picture which they present one of moral degeneracy rather than of moral improvement. What had become of the stern integrity and primitive simplicity of the ancient Eomans in the last days of the Empire? Did the public virtue and patriotism of Greece stand higher in the days of Aristides or in the days of Philopoemen ? And to turn to the history of the Church of God, were the Jews of Manasseh's day better or worse than those of David's? Was the spirit of true religion more developed among the Pharisees and Sadducees of our Lord's time "■, than among the little band who, in obedience to the edict of Cyrus, sought again their country, and rebuilt, amidst manifold oppositions, their temple? Has even Christianity eradicated the vices of the human species ? We cannot think it, when we remember the monstrosities of the French Eevolution, and the rampant tyranny which the three worst passions of the human heart (vanity, ferocity, and lust, ) then exercised among a people moving in the first rank of civilization, and who had been for cen- turies nominally Christian. Quite as much then, we suspect, as in the antediluvian world, was there to be seen upon earth "brutal violence and a prevailing plague of wickedness." Surely these and similar in- stances prove that whatever development of human resources, and of the natiu'al powers of the mind, may attend the lapse of time, there has not been in the species generally any moral or spiritual progress ; and
' Dr. Temple admits further on, that "it is undeniable that, in the time of our Lord, the Sadducees had lost all depth of spiritual feeling, while the Pharisees had succeeded in converting the Mosaic system into so mischievous an idolatry of forms, that St. Paul does not hesitate to call the law the strength of sin." — (p. 10.)
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 23
that man, if (under certain circumstances) restrained by law and softened by civilization, is still funda- mentally what he became in the moment of his fall, " earthly, sensual, devilish."
Or again, can it be anyhow made to appear that from the days when man first began to make his own nature, relations, and duties a subject of study, 7noral science has been steadily advancing ? A simple com- parison of the moral philosophy of Cicero with that of Plato will shew that any such theory must be utterly baseless. Plato embodied the Socratic teach- ing on moral subjects ; and never in after ages was there any heathen teacher of moral truth at all ap- proaching to Socrates.
What then, precisely, is the progress of the species to which our Essayist refers ? Great as his abilities unquestionably are, we cannot but think that his Essay is pervaded by confusion of thought, and that in its most fundamental idea. There is the Scriptural assertion (certain, because Scriptural,) that the ancient Church was disciplined by the Law for the reception of Christ. There is the patent fact that the civiliza- tion of a single people advances (at least up to a cer- tain point) and brings in its train certain humanizing influences. There is the old remark, so beautifully embodied in the first Pensee of Pascal, that in respect of knowledge and research we enter into the posses- sion of the stores which our ancestors have accumu- lated, and have a wider range of prospect than they, because, being mounted higher, we can see further. There is the admitted fact that explanations and il- lustrations of God's Word are multiplied and varied "through the legitimate application of human rea- son," as time goes on. Finally, there is all around
24 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
US ill the present age, when "men run to and Lo and knowledge is increased," a rapid movement of mind, which continually throws up new ideas to the surface ; a jewel here and there, and a great deal of rubbish. The learned Essayist has, as far as we can see, mingled all these sorts of progress together, and elicited from them the idea of a "^discipline of man- ners, of temper, of thought, of feeling, transmitted from generation to generation," which, we are per- suaded, has no existence but in his own mind. This ■we hold to be the Trpwrov \j/€vSo9 of the whole Essay. But to proceed.
The divine training of mankind, he tells us, has three stages. In the individual, "first come rules, then examples, then principles." In the species, " first comes the Law, then the Son of Man, then the gift of the Spirit." The sins of the antediluvian world (like those of a child before he is sent to school) were those of violent temper and animal appetites : —
"The education of this early race may strictly be said to begin when it was formed into the various masses out of which the nations of the earth have sprung. The world, as it were, went to school, and was broken up into classes." — (p. 7.)
The classes, as it appears from a subsequent part of the Essay, were four : — the Eoman class, in which the will was disciplined; the Greek class, which culti- vated the reason and taste of the race ; the Asiatic class, in which was developed the idea of immortality ; and the Hebrew or highest class, in which the con- science was trained.
Now, independently of the puerility of detail into
THE EDUCATION OF TIIi: WORLD. 25
wliich tlie illustration is allowed to run, we must here object to Dr. Temple that, letting go of the Scriptural clue which might have guided him to a right theory, he thereby throws the divine agency in the education of man entirely into the background. The great Parent, Master, and Guide of the world's youth is as much as possible hidden away from our eyes. "Where and how does it appear that Eome, Greece, Asia, were in any sense religious educators of the human race? That they contributed much to the education of the human mind, (and in the way which Dr. Temple elo- quently and beautifully states,) no one will be dis- posed to deny. That the mind of the human race has been, and ever will be, applied to religion, some- times with evil and sometimes with good results, must be also universally admitted. But from these pre- mises we can never collect that the discipline bestowed by Eome, and Greece, and Asia was a discipline in divine truth. It gave nothing heijond simple mental development. A soil is formed by the fall and de- composition of decayed leaves, by accidental deposits of manure, or by some alluvial residuum-; and when it is formed, an agriculturist thi'ows a fence round it, and sows seed in it, and rears plants ; but we do not speak of the agencies ivhich acted upon and pre- pared the soil, as either seeds or sotuers. Why could not our Essayist have followed where Scripture points the way, and have told us that, man having proved a disobedient and prodigal son, his heavenly Father for awhile left him to pursue his own devices, (as parents will sometimes allow wilful and truant children to run riot and injure themselves,) that the hope- less disorder into which his nature had fallen might be proved to himself, — and not until this was becom-
26 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
ing apparent by the wide-spread and deepening cor- ruption of idolatry, did God take in hand the education of the species, (an education which was of the nature of a recovery,) by founding a nation of teachers, and throwing His revealed truth like seed into that na- tion's mind ? As it is, there is a painful ignoring of any truth di™ely communicated or revealed ; and the impression left is, that the mental culture, for which the race is indebted to Greece and Eome, is a thing the same in kind with the special discipline in truth and holiness which has been the prerogative of the Church of God.
jMoreover, in describing this gradual discipline, as it took effect upon the ancient Church, while much that he says is true and forcible. Dr. Temple drops altogether the idea that the discipline was preparatory for Christ. The Law, according to him, was a school- master to bring men — not to Christ, but — to that period of the age of humanity when the world was ripe for example. Xot a word of the ceremonial Law, darkly prefiguring Christ. Xot a word of the moral Law, convicting and condemning, and, by doing so, creating a feeling of moral need which only Christ could meet ; but simply an expansion of religious thought, pa^-ing the way for its further expansion under the Gospel, — a weaning fi'om idolatry, and a discipline in chastity of morals and spirituality of conception. All true, no doubt, and important in its place ; but we become (and surely not without reason) impatient of the little pro- minence given to the revealed Object of faith, and of Christ being represented rather as a stage in the hu- man mind^ than as the One Centre of hope, and asjnra- tion^ and devout desire.
Having conducted his colossal man through the
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 27
period of cliiklliood, tlie Essayist next notices his youth : —
"The tutors and governors," he says, (that is, Greece, Rome, Asia, and more especially Israel,) "had done their work. It was time that the second teacher of the human race should begin his labour. The second teacher is Ex- ample. . . . The youth can appreciate a character, though he cannot yet appreciate a principle. . . . He instinctivel,y copies those whom he admires, and in doing so imbibes whatever gives the colour to their character."
Dr. Temple states very forcibly the power of ex- ample in the youth of the individual, and then goes on to draw out the analogy in this respect between the individual and the species : —
" The second stage of the education of man was the pre- sence of our Lord upon earth. . . . Our Lord was the Example of mankind, and there can be no other example in the same sense. But the whole period from the closing of the Old Testament to the close of the New was the period of the world's youth — the age of examples."
Sui'ely it is very questionable whether the gene- rations which lived between the close of the Old Tes- tament and that of the New were peculiarly suscep- tible to example more than men of the present day. Dr. Temple himself, perhaps, would hardly have said so, had not the exigencies of his theory demanded it of him. At all events, what proof can be given that it was so? For our own part, we believe that the influence of example is now as potent with men in general as it ever was. The most profitable and the most popular of all religious works are the biogra- phies of saints and eminent Christians ; nor do we believe that any period of the Church has been left destitute of such testimony to divine truth, and the
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28 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
mdTvellmg of the Spirit, as example lurnisnes. As God has illustrated His truth by the varietj of minds brought to bear upon it, so He has also con- fii'med it in the Church's experience by the variety of hearts in which its sanctifying power has been recog- nised. His saints have, no doubt, adapted themselves to the cii'cumstances and manners of their own time ; but in all essential graces they hare been one with the saints of the world's youth, and have all taken up the cross and followed the great Exemplar. In- deed, Dr. Temple recognises this when he says: — " Saints had gone before [our Lord] and saints haye been given since ; . . . there were never, at any time, examples wanting to teach either the chosen people or any other." But his theory demanded that the age of our Lord should be represented as the age of ex- amples ; and accordingly the facts of the case, if ad- mitted, must be glossed over..
But there are graver charges which lie against this part of the Essay than that of an analogy which, when examined, will hardly hold water.
"When we are reviewing, as Dr. Temple professes to be reviewing, the great scheme of God's dealings with man ; and when we remember that Christ is the key and comer-stone of all those dealings ; we must say that the position assigned to oui' Lord in the theory of the Essayist is totally inadequate. For what does this position amount to ? In the course of the world's history there has been an age of examples ; and Christ, as the Example of examples, stands at the head of that age. ISTow it is true, no doubt, that the atoning work of our Blessed Lord, in its objective cha- racter ^ it did not come within the province of the Essay- ist to notice. He is writing upon the sanctification, not
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 2g
ou the justlficatioii, of mau ; he is treating of tlic work which has to be done upon the human mind, and does not profess to go higher. It is man's education, not God's provision for his salvation, which is in question. But granting this, (and in fairness it ought to be granted,) shouhl the subjective hearings of ChrisV s Atone- ment have been wholly ignored in an Essay tracing the theory of the education of the human race ? Was it not a step in man's education, which at least de- served notice, when God threw into his mind that new and most powerful of all motives, the love of a crucified Saviour, and wholly altered his conceptions of virtue by giving to the passive graces of character, — submission, resignation, humility, meekness, poverty of spirit, — a lustre which they never had before ? But no ; the theory is rigidly to confine itself to an ima- ginary natural progression of the species, analogous to the growth of the individual, and cannot easily make room for supernatural interferences on the part of God. In these omissions of the first Essayist we perceive with sorrow the germs of those frightful errors which, stated positively, disfigure the other parts of this un- happy book.
But worse remains behind in this section of the Essay. The Essayist is explaining how our Blessed Lord came in the fulness of time, ''just when the world was fitted to feel the power of His presence." And on this point he says, — "Had His revelation been delayed till now, assuredly it would have been hard for us to recognise His divinity ; for the faculty of faith has turned inwards, and cannot now accept any outer manifestations of the truth of Gociy In plain words, the world has now become too wise to accept miracles as the credentials of a message from God.
30 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
Surely this statement is both imiDhilosophical and im- scriptiiral. Whatever marvels natural science may- have discovered, the laws of the mind have not altered. And can it be disputed that it is a law of the mind to expect that a divine message will be accredited by miracles, and to demand such credentials from a person claiming to come with a new message to the world? We believe instinctively that the effect will be commensurate with the cause, and that the work will bear some proportion to the nature of the agent. We expect from irrational creatures actions on a level with their capacity, — the display of appetites and passions, and occasionally the sagacities of in- stinct. From men, in like manner, we expect what we know humanity to be competent to. F)-om God, on the same pn'nci'jjlc, tve expect (when the occasion zvorthy of them arises) actions exceeding human poieer. Constituted as we are, we shall never outgrow this expectation, any more than we can outgrow any other law of the mind. It is true indeed that the expec- tation may take degenerate or superstitious shapes^ that it may form its conclusions with undue precipitation, and so mislead us. The tendency to expect from a Divine Being an evidence of supernatural power has often prompted men to credit too hastily the pro- fessed supernatural, or to accept as God's work that which is the devil's. These are perversions of the instinct which shew that it needs regulation. But dispense with the instinct we cannot. It is another instinct of the mind, which may be depraved, but of which we can never rid ourselves, to infer a general truth from particular instances. Hasty inductions are very foolish and very unscientific, and have been the fruitful parents of error. £ut no one on this account
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 31
throtvs over the ininciple of induction altogether as a means of arriving at truth. A man of well- disciplined mind may say that it wants regulation, and that it must be exercised with discrimination; but he will never say that we can do without it. So with the ten- dency to expect supernatural events as credentials of a divine message. We may rest too much on tlie supernatural events. They may not be the most im- portant credentials, and in the absence of others (such as teaching which approves itself to the moral sense) they may be altogether unsatisfactory and inconclusive. But to reject the supernatural altogether as a cre- dential is to strain the mind awry out of its natural constitution ; to cut ourselves off altogether from one means of access to divine truth ; to shut one door by which God's revelations reach us.
Nor is the position of the Essayist more Scriptural than it is philosophical. Our Blessed Lord more than once rests His claim on His miracles: "If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do, though ye believe not Me, believe the works : that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in Me, and I in Him'." Does our Essayist mean to tell us that Ho rested His claim on a ground which did not really bear it out ? which would not have even seemed to bear it out, had His generation been more enlightened? Could our Lord have expressly sanctioned a view of things which has no foundation in truth ? If " outer manifestations of the truth of God" are to an advanced and disciplined intellect unsatisfactory and inconclu- sive, would Christ (whose province surely it was to raise the tone of the popular mind) have appealed to them ? Would it not have been far worthier of Him in
s See also John xiv. 10, 11 ; Matt. xi. 4, 5.
3°
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
Surely this statement is both iinphilosophical and un- scriptural. Whatever marvels natural science may have discovered, the laws of the mind have not altered. And can it be disputed that it is a law of the mind to expect that a divine message will be accredited by miracles, and to demand such credentials from a person claiming to come with a new message to the world ? We believe instinctively that the effect will be commensurate with the cause, and that the work will bear some proportion to the nature of the agent. We expect from irrational creatures actions on a level with their capacity, — the display of appetites and passions, and occasionally the sagacities of in- stinct. From men, in like manner, we expect what we know humanity to be competent to. From God, on the same princijjle^ we expect (tvhcn the occasion worthy of them arises) actions exceeding human power. Constituted as we are, we shall never outgrow this expectation, any more than we can outgrow any other law of the mind. It is true indeed that the expec- tation may take degenerate or superstitious shapes^ that it may form its conclusions with undue precipitation, and so mislead us. The tendency to expect from a Divine Being an evidence of supernatural power has often prompted men to credit too hastily the pro- fessed supernatural, or to accept as God's work that which is the devil's. These are perversions of the instinct which shew that it needs regulation. But dispense with the instinct we cannot. It is another instinct of the mind, which may be depraved, but of which we can never rid ourselves, to infer a general truth from particular instances. Hasty inductions are very foolish and very unscientific, and have been the fruitful parents of error. But no one on this account
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 31
throivs over the lorinciple of induction altogether as a means of arriving at truth. A man of well- disciplined mind may say that it wants regulation, and that it must be exercised with discrimination; but he will never say that we can do without it. So with the ten- dency to expect supernatural events as credentials of a divine message. We may rest too much on the supernatural events. They may not be the most im- portant credentials, and in the absence of others (such as teaching which approves itself to the moral sense) they may be altogether unsatisfactory and inconclusive. But to reject the supernatural altogether as a cre- dential is to strain the mind awry out of its natural constitution ; to cut ourselves off altogether from one means of access to divine truth ; to shut one door by which God's revelations reach us.
!N"or is the position of the Essayist more Scriptural than it is philosophical. Our Blessed Lord more than once rests His claim on His miracles: "If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do, though ye believe not Me, believe the works : that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in Me, and I in Him'." Does our Essayist mean to tell us that He rested His claim on a ground which did not really bear it out ? which would not have even seemed to bear it out, had His generation been more enlightened? Could our Lord have expressly sanctioned a Adew of things which has no foundation in truth ? If " outer manifestations of the truth of God" are to an advanced and disciplined intellect unsatisfactory and inconclu- sive, would Christ (whose province surely it was to raise the tone of the popular mind) have appealed to them ? Would it not have been far worthier of Him in
s See also Jolin xiv. 10, 11 ; Matt. xi. 4, 5.
32 THE EDUCATIOX OF THE WORLD,
that case to come with no other credentials than that of a doctrine which went home to man's heart, and to have said, "Believe Me on this ground; for on no other ought a messenger of God to be received and believed ?" To use such language would have been quite in the genius of an ancient philosopher; it is altogether language which might have been held by Socrates, and very nearly approaches to much of the language which Socrates actually did hold : — " If what I say does not carry with it the convictions of your reason, I would not have you believe it, even were it attested by a sign from heaven." But our Lord did not use such language. He referred to the signs from heaven as rendering the people inexcusable for not believing. ("If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin.") And yet our Essayist implies that " the works which none other man did" would not have secured credit for Christ as a divine ambassador from the men of this generation, because forsooth "faith has now turned inwards and cannot accept any outer manifestations of the truth of God." Dr. Temple, we are sui*e, is an earnest and devout Christian, who would shrink sensitively from shaking in any mind the evidences of Christianity. Has he considered what is the real scope and significance of this unfortu- nate sentence of his Essay? It has been admirably shewn by Davison* that "the vindication of our faith rests upon an accumulated and concurrent evidence," derived not from one but from many sources, — "mira- cles, fulfilment of prophecy, the sanctity of our Lord's doctrine, His character as expressed in His life, the triumphant propagation of His religion without arms,
* Discourses on Prophecy, i.
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD, 33
eloquence, or learning, and its singular adaptation to the nature and condition of man." Our Lord Him- self seems to have rested the evidence on three main supports: — I. Miracles ^ II. Purity of doctrine, re- echoed by the moral sense ; " If I had not come and sjjoken unto them^ they had not had sin." III. Pro- phecy ; '' Search the Scriptures ; for in them ye think ye have eternal life : and they are they which testify of Me." "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he \^Tote of Me." No. I. perhaps might be called an appeal to the senses ; No. II. to the conscience; Ko. III. to the under- standing. No doubt, one age will attach greater weight to one of these branches of evidence, another to another. No doubt, also, the present generations of men, being to a certain extent familiarized with scientific marvels, and having gained a considerable power over natm-e, would be impressed by miracles in a less lively way than men of former times, when the material laws which govern the universe had not been discovered. But is it wise, or is it reverent, to knock away any one of the fair columns, on which the Lord Himself has rested the truth of His holy religion, on the pretext that the superior enlightenment of the nineteenth century enables us to dispense with it? The argument for Christianity being essentially cumu- lative, is it charitable to weak brethren (to take the lowest ground) to destroy its cumulative force ? Yet this is really what Dr. Temple's argument in the above passage goes to.
Besides our Lord, (though in a scale far inferior to
Him,) the Essayist enumerates certain other examples
vouchsafed to the human creature when in a state
^ See the passages just referred to.
D
34 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
of adolescence. Greece and Eome, who were in the former period teachers of classes, ("giving ns the fruits of their discipline,") now appear as associates, and " give us the companionship of their bloom." The early Church was another associate, "an earnest, heavenly-minded friend, whose saintly aspect was a revelation in itself."
As regards the placing Greece and Eome in the same category with the early Church, (that is, with our Lord's immediate followers,) we find here another instance of that confusion of thought, by which the mental and social development of mankind — his arts, his learning, his civilization — is made part of his religious progress. Dr. Temple writes an exquisite passage (the gem of his Essay, quite worthy of being preserved in a com- monplace-book,) on the distinguishing excellence of classical literature, the freshness of its grace. We thank him for a noble piece of writing ; but how is it ad rem ? What has the mere cultivation of taste (to which, of course, classical literature has very largely contributed,) to do with the very serious subject on which we are engaged, "God's education of the human race?" That the classics have contributed much to the civilization of man will not be denied. But are not civilization and the progress of the Church somewhat sharply distinguished in Scripture, which surely is a sign that the two should be kept asunder as separate subjects of thought? We commend to Dr. Temple's notice the pregnant fact, that in the earliest extant history of mankind it is stated that arts, both ornamental and useful, (and arts are the great medium of civilization,) took their rise in the family of Cain. In the line of Seth we find none of this mental and social development. Is he not
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 35
mixing up in his theory the mental and material progress of the workl ^Yith the spiritual progress of the Church, two things which God has kept carefully distinct ?
As regards the early (i.e. the Apostolical) Church, he strives to make out (as his theory requires of him) that it presents to us example chiefly, to the exclusion of doctrine and precept. It has left us, he says, little beyond examples. "The New Testament is almost entirely occupied w^ith two lives, the life of our Lord and the life of the early Church." As for the Epistles, they are only "the fruit of the current history." Doubtless, all the books of the New Testament (and the same might be said of most of those of the Old) were written on special occasions ; but who will deny that principles both of doctrine and duty, which dis- entangle themselves from and rise very much above the occasion, are continually being thrown out by the sacred wi'iters? Who will deny that the mind of the Spirit, though legislating primarily for the occa- sion, contemplates beforehand and provides for the future emergencies of the Church ? Is there no warn- ing against future error in the reproof of the Blessed Virgin by our Lord ? or in His assertion that " he who hears God's word, and keeps it, the same is His mother?" or in His severe censure of St. Peter? or in St. Paul's withstanding St. Peter to the face ? Great part of the Scriptures are no doubt narratives; but the narrative is only the vehicle of doctrine and pre- cept, which are always more readily received in a con- crete than in the abstract form. No writing, however eloquent and ingenious, (and Dr. Temple's is both,) will ever successfully gloss over the fact that the New Testament does contain tlie principles of all Christian D 2 /^'
I r V
Y
36 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
doctrine and duty ; nor would any one (el firj Olaiv dLacfyvXarrcou) ignore the usual definition of the Epi- stles as doctrinal books.
We now come to the last stage of the Essayist's theory : —
" The susceptibility of youth to the impression of society wears 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. lie is the third great teacher and the last." — (p. 31.)
In this last stage of his progress the individual learns, we are told, by "the growth of his inner powers and the accumulation of experience," by "reflection," by "the mistakes both of himself and others," and by "contradiction." Though free from outward restraint, he is still under an internal law, " a voice which speaks within the conscience, and carries the understanding along with it." If his previous education have not given him the control over his will, he must acquii*e it by a self-imposed discipline, which with weak persons assumes the shape of a regular external law. Then passing (as his wont is) from the moral to the intellectual, from the discipline of the will to that of the mind, Dr. Temple tells us that persons of matiu-e age, who really think for themselves, are often obliged to put a tern-
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 37
poraiy restraint on their intellects, and finding their speculations (specially if they turn on practical sub- jects) bewildering and unsatisfactory, "finally take refuge in a refusal to thiuk any more on the particular questions." Some, on the other hand, are always forming theories on insufficient grounds, and are "as little able to be content in having no judgment at all, as those who accept judgments at second hand." Then, finally, even the matured intellect of the full-grown man does not altogether break with the associations of childhood: —
" He can give no better reason very often for much that he does every day of his hfe than that his father did it before him ; and provided the custom is not a bad one, the reason is valid. And he Hkes to go to the same church. He likes to use the same prayers. He hkes to keep up the same festi- vities. There are limits to all this. But no man is quite free from the influence ; and it is in many cases, perhaps in most, an influence of the highest moral A-alue." — (p. 39.)
Analogous to this, we are then told, is the last stage in the education of the human race, so far as it has yet gone. Since the Apostles' days, the Chiu'ch has been left to herself to work out, ly her natural faculties^ the principles of her own action. Her doc- trines were evolved, partly by reflection on her past ex- perience, and by formularizing the thoughts embodied in the record of the Church of the Apostles, partly by pei-petual collision with every variety of opinion. (This corresponds to the gi'owth of the individual's inner powers by "reflection," "contradiction," and "the mistakes both of himself and others.") But "before this process was completed, a flood of new and un- disciplined races poured into Europe," and "neces- sitated a return to the dominion of outward law."
38 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
The papacy of the midtUe ages was "neither more nor less than the okl schoohnaster (Judaism) come back to bring some new schohirs to Christ." (This corre- sponds to the self-discipline which the grown man, who has imperfectly acquired self-control, is obliged to impose upon himself. ) Then came the Eeformation, when the yoke of mediceval discipline was shaken off. Its great lesson was — not, as one would imagine, the power of God's pure Word over the human heart, and of the simplicity of primitive religion, but — the lesson of toleration. Men then began to see, and have ever since seen more clearly, that " there are insoluble problems upon which even revelation throws no light." "The tendency of toleration is to modify the early dogmatism by substituting the spirit for the letter, and practical religion for precise definitions of truth." (This corresponds to that state of mind of the indivi- dual in which, finding speculations bewildering and unsatisfactory, he refuses to thiok any more on the questions which trouble him, and contents himself with so much of truth as he finds necessary for his spiritual life.) Some definitions of truth, however, seem to be necessary, as a point without the world of religious opinion, from which the lever may be applied to move the world. Accordingly, the post-Ecformation Church looks for these definitions in the volume of Holy Scripture. In this connexion we find the pas- sage to wliich so much objection has been made. "We will not trust ourselves to represent its meaning in our own words. It runs thus : —
" In learning this new lesson, Christendom needed a firm spot on which she might stand, and has found it in the Bible. Had the Bible been di'awn up in precise statements of faith, or detailed precepts of conduct, we should have had no alter-
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 39
native but either permanent subjection to an outer law, or loss of the highest instrument of self- education. But the Bible, from its very form, is exactly adapted to our present want. It is a historj^ ; even the doctrinal parts of it are cast in a historical form, and are best studied by considering them as records of the time at which they were written, and as conveying to us the highest and greatest religious life at that time. Hence we use the Bible — some consciously, some un- consciously— not to override, but to evoke the voice of con- science. "When conscience and the Bible appear to differ, the pious Cliristian immediately concludes that he has not really understood the Bible. Hence, too, while the inter- pretation of the Bible varies slightly from age to age, it varies always in one direction. The schoolmen found pur- gatory in it. Later students found enough to condemn Galileo. Not long ago it would have been held to condemn geology, and there are still many who so interpret it. The current is all one way — it evidently points to the identifica- tion of the Bible with the voice of conscience. The Bible, in fact, is hindered by its form from exercising a despotism over the human spirit ; if it could do that, it would become an outer law at once ; but its form is so admirably adapted to our need, that it wins from us all the reverence of a supreme authority, and yet imposes on us no yoke of subjection. This it does by virtue of the principle of private judgment, which puts conscience between us and the Bible, making conscience the supreme interpreter, whom it may be a duty to enlighten, but whom it can never be a duty to disobey." — (pp. 44, 45.)
The advance of toleration, however, is not entirely progressive. It is apt to be retarded by a strong in- clination, in all Protestant countries, to "go back, in every detail of life, to the practices of early times." (This corresponds to the love which grown people often manifest for the customs and associations of their home, — a feeling of great moral value, though accom- panied perhaps with something of narrowness.) Still toleration is progressing in the main, (though, like the
38
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
The papacy of the middle ages was "neither more nor less than the old schoolmaster (Judaism) come back to bring some new scholars to Christ." (This corre- sponds to the self-discipline which the grown man, who has imperfectly acquired self-control, is obliged to impose upon himself. ) Then came the Eeformation, when the yoke of mediaeval discipline was shaken off. Its great lesson was — not, as one would imagine, the power of God's pure Word over the human heart, and of the simplicity of primitive religion, but — the lesson of toleration. Men then began to see, and have ever since seen more clearly, that "there are insoluble problems upon which even revelation throws no light." "The tendency of toleration is to modify the early dogmatism by substituting the spirit for the letter, and practical religion for precise definitions of truth." (This corresponds to that state of mind of the indivi- dual in which, finding speculations bewildering and unsatisfactory, he refuses to think any more on the questions which trouble him, and contents himself with so much of truth as he finds necessary for his spiritual life.) Some definitions of truth, however, seem to be necessary, as a point without the world of religious opinion, from which the lever may be applied to move the world. Accordingly, the post-Eeformation Church looks for these definitions in the volume of Holy Scripture. In thiig connexion we find the pas- sage to which so much objection has been made. We will not trust ourselves to represent its meaning in our own words. It runs thus : —
*' In learning this new lesson, Christendom needed a firm spot on which she might stand, and has found it in the Bible. Had the Bible been drawn up in precise statements of faith, or detailed precepts of conduct, we should have had no alter-
B i
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
39
native but either permanent subjection to an outer law, or loss of the highest instrument of self-education. But the Bible, from its very form, is exactly adapted to our present want. It is a history ; even the doctrinal parts of it are cast in a historical form, and are best studied by considering them as records of the time at which they were written, and as conveying to us the highest and greatest religious life at that time. Hence we use the Bible — some consciously, some un- consciously— not to override, but to evoke the voice of con- science. When conscience and the Bible appear to differ, the pious Christian immediately concludes that he has not really understood the Bible. Hence, too, while the inter- pretation of the Bible varies slightly from age to age, it varies always in one direction. The schoolmen found pur- gatory in it. Later students found enough to condemn Galileo. Not long ago it would have been held to condemn geology, and there are still many who so interpret it. The current is all one way — it evidently points to the identifica- tion of the Bible with the voice of conscience. The Bible, in fact, is hindered by its form from exercising a despotism over the human spirit ; if it could do that, it wovJd become an outer law at once ; but its form is so admirably adapted to our need, that it wins from us all the reverence of a supreme authority, and yet imposes on us no yoke of subjection. This it does by virtue of the principle of private judgment, which puts conscience between us and the Bible, making conscience the supreme interpreter, whom it may be a duty to enlighten, but whom it can never be a duty to disobey." — (pp. 44, 45.)
The advance of toleration, however, is not entirely progressive. It is apt to be retarded by a strong in- clination, in all Protestant countries, to "go back, in every detail of life, to the practices of early times." (This coiTcsponds to the love which grown people often manifest for the customs and associations of their home, — a feeling of great moral value, though accom- panied perhaps with something of narrowness.) Still toleration is progressing in the main, (though, like the
40 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD,
tide, it has refluent waves,) and gains gradually upon the mind of the race. Then our author (somewhat in- consecutively it appears to us) springs from toleration to the subject of Biblical interpretation. That inter- pretation, he thinks, we must expect to be greatly modified. Nor need we fear such modification. We should welcome all discoveries which really throw light on the Scripture, however rudely they may jar with preconceived notions. This is the age of thought : " clear thought is valuable above everything else, ex- cepting only godliness ;" and to exert it upon Scrip- ture and elicit original results is the great task and vocation of the age. That we should address ourselves to the task candidly and fearlessly is the practical exhortation with which the Essay is wound up.
Dr. Temple appears to mean by toleration some- thing distinct from what commonly goes by the name. Most people would define toleration as the allowing to others the free exercise of their religion. Dr. Temple seems to identify it, as far as we can catch the thread of his argument, with a free interpretation of doctrines and articles of faith. The two things, however, by no means go together. If we might admit that at the Eeformation toleration, in the ordinary and popular sense, first dawned as an idea upon the mind of the Church, (which yet a person thinking of Servetus and Joan Bocher might be disposed to doubt,) surelfj the Reformation had no conceivalle sympathies ivith laxity or indefiniteness of doctrine. Only let a person read the elaborate Confessions of Faith of the Pro- testant Churches, and we are persuaded he will come to the conclusion that sharp and austere definition of doctrine (and not the reverse) was the genius of the Eeformation. Indeed, the second article of the So-
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 4I
lemn League and Covenant "" alone is enough by itself to raise a question how far, in any sense of the zvordj toleration made its appearance with the Eeformation. Our modern latitudinarians (we do not mean to include Dr. Temple under this designation, though we arc compelled to apply it to some of his coadjutors,) wish to extract from the carcase of religion the hard skeleton of definite doctrine, (upon which the whole structure is built,) and to leave only the pliable and soft parts, ("practical religion," "the spirit instead of the let- ter,") which are constantly in a transition state, like the flesh and blood of the animal frame. But they will not find among the Reformers, either English or foreign, any sympathies with such a design. The post-Eeformation creeds are generally quite as hard in outline as the Athanasian. And we may confi- dently assert that the Reformers were right in build- ing their systems on the framework of creeds. With- out such framework, religion is apt to collapse and corrupt, as a body of flesh from which the bones should be withdrawn.
We have been accustomed to think that the Chris- tian is under the twofold guidance of the Spirit and Word of God, — distinguished and yet combined in that admii^able collect for St. John's Day : — " Merciful Lord, we beseech Thee to cast Thy bright beams of
« " That wc shall in like manner, without respect of persons, en- deavour the extirpation of popery, prelacy, (that is, church-govern- ment by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors, and commissaries, deans, deans and chapters, archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical officers depending on that hierarchy,) superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness, and whatsoever shall be found to be contrary to sound doctrine, and the power of godliness, lest we partake in other men's sins, and thereby be in danger to receive of their plagues ; and tliat the Lord may be one, and His name one, in the three kingdoms."
42 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
light" (the Spirit) '' upon Thy Church, that it being enlightened by the doctrine of" (the Word) "Thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist St. John, may so walk in the light of Thy truth, that it may at length at- tain to the light of everlasting light ; through Jesus Christ our Lord." But in the education of the indi- vidual, the learner being emancipated from all re- straints when he has reached mature age, it did not suit Dr. Temple's theory to notice these external guides; his "colossal man" must be left to guide himself when he comes to years of discretion. Accord- ingly, in the last section of the Essay, the guidance of the Holy Spirit is entirely ignored, as far as explicit statement goes ; and were it not for the capital letter in the sentence, "The human race was left to itself, to be guided by the teaching of the Spirit within," and for the slight intimation, " Whatever assistance the Church is to receive in working out her own principles of action, is to be through her natural faculties, and not in spite of them," we might say of the author what the Ephesian disciples, who had received only John's baptism, said of themselves, " He hath not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost."
Dr. Temple, no doubt, will say that in virtue of His indwelling in the faithful, he regards the Spirit of God as identified with the spirit of man. But we cannot help thinking that a far more explicit recogni- tion of the Holy Spirit's personality, and a far more constant reference to His agency, might have been made without the smallest interference with the plan of the Essay ; nor, indeed, can we think that the office of the blessed Comforter is at all exhausted, or even adequately represented, by saying that the Church is now to guide herself, not by external rule, but by the
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 43
application of principles to the varying exigencies of her position.
The guidance of the Word, however, being more extrinsic than that of the Holy Spirit, some attempt must be made to surmount the obstacles which it seems to throw in the way of the theory. And the attempt is made in the passage quoted at length above. We find it exceedingly hard to trace the exact connexion of thought between the sentences of which this passage is composed. We 8uppo8e it to be something of this kind : — "The Bible is indeed external to the mind of man ; but then it is very elastic, and, as the history of its interpretation shews, accommo- dates itself very readily to the mind of man. So that the Bible promises at some future, but not dis- tant, time, to resolve itself into enlightened reason, and leave the spirit of man the sole arbiter of its own duties." We think Dr. Temple is here confound- ing the conscience of man with his understanding, and the preceptive character of the Bible with its aspect as a history of certain mu'aculous events. Had he confined his remarks to the 'preceptive part of the jS"ew Testament, every one would of course ad- mit that it is a book of principles rather than rules, and that the adjustment of those principles is left to the individual conscience, under the dii-ection of the Holy Spirit of God. It is also most true (and most important truth) that this guidance of the Holy Spirit is in the Kew Testament itself thrown very much more into the foreground than any written document ; that, under the present economy, it is "the anointing from the Holy One which teacheth all things," and " the law of the Spirit of life" (not a law graven on tables) which presides in the human spirit. Had
44 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
Dr. Temple said this, he would have said what not only does not admit of dispute, but also what appears to us to suit his argument quite as well as the gravely questionable things which he has said. But, as the paragraph stands, he has mixed up the record of mira- culous facts in Scripture, tvhich are in the sphere of man^s understanding^ ^ (not in that of his conscience,) with its precepts, lohich are in the sphere of his conscience and not of his understanding ; thereby producing a sad con- fusion of thought. He alludes to certain narratives of Scripture which, in consequence of modern discoveries in natural science, are now understood in a manner different from that in which people once accepted them. This is a matter for the understanding, sm^ely, and not at all in the sphere of the conscience. Researches into nature shew that the miracle in Joshua and the Mosaic cosmogony have been misunderstood, and that we must correct our apprehensions of the meaning of these passages. Well, what then? Argal, says Dr. Temple, "The current is all one way, — it evidently points to the identification of the Bible with the voice of conscienceP "We confess we cannot catch the con- nexion between the premises and the conclusion. We should have drawn the conclusion somewhat in this fashion: — "The current is all one way, — it evidently points to a general recognition of the truth that the interpretation of Scriptiu-e is one thing, and the true sense another." If there be anij connexion between the premises and the conclusion, we avow ourselves unable to trace it, except in this most offensive form,
y "We have said above (p. 33) that miracles may be called " an appeal to tlie senses." But of course the understanding must operate upon the notices of the senses, in order that the evidence derived from a mii-acle may be appreciated.
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
45
(wliicli we believe Dr. Temple would repudiate as ear- nestly as ourselves): — "Geological and astronomical discoveries have proved the Bible ivrong on points of natural philosophy. It does not much matter, however ; for the true Word of God is not co-extensive with the Bible, but only contained in it ; that portion only of the Bible is the true Word which is recognised by the moral sense or verifying faculty. So that the current is all one way, — we are gradually knocking away from the framework of our belief those portions of the Bible which the conscience cannot assimilate; histories we may doubt or give up, only retaining their moral; much more may we give up cosmogonies ; the only residuum we need leave is that portion of the sacred volume to which our verifying faculty saith, ' Yea ;' so that at length the Bible resolves itself into the voice of conscience." This gives the passage in ques- tion a certain logical sequence, and also a melancholy coherence with the avowed sentiments of other Essay- ists. If Dr. Temple meant this, why did he not say it explicitly ? But we will not believe he did mean it. Of the two alternatives open to him, illogical writing and the reduction of God's Word to the square and measure of man's conscience, we joyfully accept for him the former. And we take his Essay as a solemn warning of the dreadfully unsafe statements into which a very good and very able man may be driven, who will ride an ingenious and plausible analogy to death, even when at every turn it breaks down under him afresh.
We turn, with something of a sense of relief, to notice Lessing's treatise on the " Education of the Hu- man Eace," which, perhaps, may have suggested Dr. Temple's. If so, we think that the original concep-
46 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
tion of Lessing (although parts of it are far more ex- travagant than anything to be found in the first Essay) has materially suffered in clearness and power from Dr. Temple's method of treatment. Our readers shall judge. The German author begins with this funda- mental statement : —
"That which education is to the individual, revelation is to the race.
"Education is revelation coining to the individual man; and revelation is education which has come, and is yet com- ing, to the human race." — (Sects. 1, 2.)
Eevelation, it will be observed, and revelation ex- clusively^ is, according to Lessing, the educator of the race. He does not, with Dr. Temple, assign a class to Greece, and a class to Eome, and a class to Asia, recognising them as teachers, and thus putting them on a level with revelation. He supposes, indeed, that when ''in captivity under the wise Persians," the doctrine of the Mosaic Law respecting the unity and spirituality of God, and its hints and allusions in re- gard to the doctrine of immortality, were developed in the consciousness of the Jews by their contact with the Gentile mind. But he knows nothing of any edu- cator save God in revelation, nor of any other persons as educated by Him, save the people of His covenant. The other nations of the earth, he thinks, were left without education by the universal Father, in conse- quence of which, —
" the most part had remained far behind the chosen people. Only a few had got before them. And this, too, takes place v,-ith children, who are allowed to grow up left to themselves ; many remain quite raw; some educate themselves even to an astonishing degree.
" But as these more fortunate few prove nothing against the
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 47
use and the necessity of education, so the few heathen na- tions, who even appear to have made a start in the knowledge of God before the chosen people, prove nothing against a revelation. The child of education begins with slow yet sure footsteps ; it is late in overtaking many a more happily or- ganised child of nature ; but it does overtake it ; and thence- forth can never be distanced by it again." — (Sect. 21.)
So far we think the German has the advantage of the Englishman, inasmuch as he gives revelation a far more exclusive prerogative.
At the outset of Lessing's Essay he makes the fol- lowing startling assertion, of which, if we cannot agree with it in its present form, we may at all events say that we wish all the assertions of our seven Essayists were as explicit, and presented as clear an outline to the understanding : —
*' Education gives to man nothing which he might not educe out of himself ; it gives him that which he might educe out of himself, only quicker and more easily. In the same
WAY, TOO, REVELATION GIVES NOTHING TO THE HUMAN- SPECIES, WHICH THE HUMAN REASON LEFT TO ITSELF MIGHT NOT AT-r TAIN ; ONLY IT HAS GIVEN, AND STILL GIVES TO IT, THE MOST IMPORTANT OF THESE THINGS EARLIER." (Scct. 4.)
It immediately rises to the mind of the reader that there are doctrines of revelation (such as those of the Atonement and the Trinity) which never could be at- tained by the human reason, and are plainly altogether out of its reach. The German theologian is prepared for this, and carries his theory through with a bold- ness which, at all events, is perfectly consistent. He thinks the doctrines of the Atonement and the Trinity may he ultimatchj reached hj the human reason ; and he believes the great end of God's training of the human race to be the recognition by reason of all the truths of revelation. But he shall speak for himself: —
40 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
"As we by this time can dispense witli the Old Testament, in reference to the doctrine of the unity of God, and as we are by degrees beginning also to be less dependent on the New Testament, in reference to the immortality of the soid : might there not in this book also be other truths of the same sort prefigured, mirrored as it were, which we are to marvel at, as revelations, exactly so long as until the time shall come when reason shall have learned to educe them out of its other demonstrated truths, and bind them up with them ?
" For instance, the doctrine of the Trinity. How if this doctrine should at last, after endless errors, right and left, only bring men on the road to recognise that God cannot possibly be One in the sense in which finite things are one, that even His unity must be a transcendental unity, which does not exclude a sort of plurality ? Must not God at least have the most perfect conception of Himself, i. e. a concep- tion in which is foimd everything which is in Him? But would everything be found in it which is in Him, if a mere conception, a mere possibility, were found even of his neces- sary reality, as well as of His other qualities? This possi- bility exhausts the being of His other qualities. Does it that of His necessary reality ? I think not. Consequently God can either have no perfect conception of Himself at all, or this perfect conception is just as necessarity real (i. e. actually existent) as He Himself is. Certainly the image of mj-self in the mirror is nothing but an empty representation of me, because it only has that of me upon the surface of which beams of light fall. But now if this image had everything, everything without exception, which I have myself, would it then still be a mere empty representation, or not rather a true reduplication of myself? When I believe that I recog- nise in God a similar reduplication, I perhaps do not so much err, as that my language is insufiicient for my ideas : and so much at least remains for ever incontrovertible, that they who wish to make the idea thereof popular for comprehen- eion, could scarcely have expressed themselves more intelli- gibly and suitably than by giving the name of a Son through whom God testifies of Himself from eternity.
"And the doctrine of Original Sin. How, if at last, every-
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 49
fhing were to convince us, that man standing on the highest and lowest step of his humanity, is not so entirely master of his actions as to be able to obey moral laws ?
" And the doctrine of the Son's satisfaction. How, if at last, all compelled us to assume that God, in spite of that original incapacity of man, chose rather to give him moral laws, and forgive him all transgressions in consideration of His Son, i. e. in consideration of the self-existent total of all His own perfections, compared with which, and in which, all imperfections of the individual disappear, than not to give him those laws, and then to exclude him from all moral blessedness, which cannot be conceived of without moral laws."— (Sects. 72—75.)
How far this attempt at an explanation of them really clears up the doctrines in question, or even modifies their difficulty to the mind, we leave to metaphysicians to determine. To ourselves, it seems to let in so little light on these abstruse subjects, that we much prefer to fall back upon '' what is written," that is, upon the divine authority ; and we cannot but think that, in respect of such profound verities, our Blessed Lord encourages us to do so, when in answer to one who asked in reference to the doctrine of regeneration, " How can these things be ?" He replied, "Yerily, verily, I say unto thee. We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen ; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." At all events, it must strike every reader of Lessing's treatise as an objection to his theory, that if no further advanced towards that end than it is at present, the human reason will take an
E
50 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
enormous time in fully recognising these abstruse truths of revelation. This objection is anticipated by the writer, and is disposed of, unless we misunder- stand him, by the very extraordinary hypothesis that each individual may perhaps live more than once upon the earth, and come back again to acquire new lights on divine truth by a fi-esh pilgrimage in a more advanced stage of thought. But, again, we wonld not have the reader trust our own representa- tion of the meaniug : —
" Go tliine inscrutable way, Eternal Providence ! Only let me not despair in Thee because of this inscrutableness. Let me not despair in Thee, even if Thy steps appear to me to be going back. It is not true that the shortest line is always straight.
" Thou hast on Thine eternal way so much to carry on together, so much to do ! so many side steps to take ! And what if it were as good as proved that the vast slow wheel, which brings mankind nearer to this perfection, is only put in motion by smaller, swifter wheels, each of which contri- butes its own individual unit thereto ?
" It is so ! The very same way by which the race reaches its perfection, must every individual man — one sooner, an- other later — have travelled over. Have travelled over in one and the same life ? Can he have been, in one and the self- same Ufe, a sensual Jew and a spiritual Christian ? Can he in the self-same life have overtaken both ?
" Surely not that ! But tchy should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this tcorld ?
" Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the so- phistries of the Schools had dissipated and debihtated it, lighted upon it at once ?
" Why may not even I have already performed those steps of my perfecting which merely temporal penalties and re- wards can bring man to ?
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD, 51
"And, once more, why not all those steps, to perform which the views of eternal rewards so powerfully assist us ?
" AVhy should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh expertness ? Do I bring away so much from once, that there is nothing to repay the trouble of coming back ?
" Is this a reason against it ? Or, because I forget that I have been here already ? Happy is it for me that I do forget. The recollection of my former condition would per- mit me to make only a bad use of the present. And that which even I must forget noic, is that necessarily forgotten for ever ?
" Or is it a reason against the hypothesis that so much time would have been lost to me ? Lost ? — And how much then should I miss ? — Is not a whole eternity mine ?" — (Sects. 91—100.)
Do these extravagances — this re^^val of the doc- trine of Pythagoras in the nineteenth century of the Christian era — spring (as we believe many modem errors in theology do) from a morbid hankering after the novel and the startling ? Why could not Lessing have been content to say that the full revelation of these subjects to the human reason is probably reserved for a future state of existence ? To be sure, this has been said a thousand times before in sermons and religious books. But because it is a very old idea, is it therefore a false one? For our own part, we do not feel sure that Lessing' s theory, apart from its absurd extravagances, is fundamentally wrong. We should be quite prepared to accept it, if only he would not disfigure it by insisting that the reason of man may become competent in this condition of exist- ence to recognise all the truths of revelation ? Why should we doubt that it will recognise these truths in that other land heijond the grave ? That the Atone- e2
52 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD.
ment was necessary in the nature of things, and not a mere arbitrary arrangement of the divine will; that the divine natiu'e necessarily embraces a tri- personality, just as the human nature necessarily in- volves a body, soul, and spirit, few thinking persons will be disposed to deny. But whether ive can see into the necessity for the Atonement, or into the essential constitution of the divine nature, ivliile we are in the hody^ we take the liberty (notwithstanding all metaphysical explanations,) to doubt. Humours hang about our reason, and a cloudy atmosphere, which intercepts and refracts the rays of divine truth. But we entirely believe that a better condition of the intellect is in store for us, when we shall see no longer ''in a mirror enigmatically," but face to face, and know no longer partially, but " as we are known."
We have only to add that Lessing's essay, with all its wild fancies, will well repay the perusal of thoughtful persons, and that side by side with theories flagrantly unsound, the author throws out hints well worthy of being preserved and digested. This we suspect (from our very narrow acquaintance with it) to be the genius of German theology, — three or four diamonds in a heap of rubbish, several beautiful and ^■aluable thoughts lying hid in a mass of writing and a tangle of talk. Of the latter fault, however, the little treatise of Lessing now before us is cer- tainly not guilty. It is (even severely) terse, and may be read through in a quarter of an hour.
AVe have noticed it here not only for its intrinsic interest, but because we think Dr. Temple's mind must, in the composition of his Essay, have travelled along a similar line of thought. And we much regret that he has confounded with this a line of thought
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 53
wliicli appears to us distinct — that of the merely in- tellectual progress of the human species, thus pro- ducing an entanglement between the Church and the world, between the advance of civilization and the development of religious truth, which exceedingly perplexes those "who desire to follow his argument.
In conclusion, may the writer of these pages be allowed to express the hope that the controversy which the seven Essays have roused, will be con- ducted by those opposed to them not only calmly and temperately, but with a candid acknowledgment of those truths after which the Essayists are groping, and with which their very serious errors are weighted ? Mere denials and protests do little or nothing ; we must seek to disentangle the truth which they are mis- representing, and to set it forth, if possible, free of their perversions.
^ye do not fear the storm with all its bluster, even though it seems that some of the fundamental articles of faith, nay, the principle of theism itself, is perilled. Persuaded as we are that our own Church is the pal- ladium both of Scriptural truth and Apostolic order, we believe that the special providence of God watches over her, and that Christ Himself is in the tempest- tossed bark. He can and will overrule this mass of error and contradiction for good. Indeed, may it not be said that, except through the antagonism of opposing error, truth can never be thoroughly appre- ciated or developed in its full proportions in the human mind? Truth learned by rote, as children learn the Catechism, is 7iot appreciated, nor even under tood. But truth, which has been beset round about by heresies, and perplexed by grave question- ings, and which at length has emerged, with its
54 "THE EDUCATION OF THE ^YORLD.
ground cleared and its limits well defined, this be- comes a valuable acquisition, in which the mind may- take a just and intelligent delight.
Only let us never for a moment drop the clue to all religious truth which the Word of God lends to us. Holding fast to it, we shall find our way with safety and ease through every labyrinth, however dark and intricate, and shall emerge into that sunlight of " clear thought" on subjects of religion, which Dr. Tem^Dle tells us is " valuable above all things, excepting only godliness."
BUNSEN. THE CRITICAL SCHOOL, AND DR. WILLIAMS.
TT will scarcely be denied by any man of pure and elevated mind, that the highest object to which our faculties can be directed is the attainment of religious truth. Our natural longings after immortality, our in- stinctive apprehensions of the mysterious presence of Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being, unite to persuade us that all questions are of inferior moment to the great question, whether He has made any revelation of Himself by which we may be guided in our search after this truth ; and if we are convinced that He has not left Himself without witness in the world, then the true interpretation of that revelation must be, to every pure mind and holy spirit, the greatest problem on which his energies can be em- ployed. I think, however, that it will also be gene- rally conceded, that these questions in the present day are almost limited to the enquiry into the evidence for the truth of the Bible and the true principles on which it ought to be interpreted. If that book is not derived from direct revelation, no other source of revelation will create much discussion among the men of our own age and nation. Of these two great questions, — the truth of the Bible and its interpretation, — it is difficult to say which is the most important. The enquiry into the truth of the document is prior in- deed in order, but when once fairly decided in the mind, its work is done; while the interpretation of
,56 BUXSEX, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
the word that has been revealed will give a deepen- ing interest to our studies to the end of life. Kay, the yery means employed in the investigation of the true meaning of Scripture by those who have had any success in interpreting it, is worthy the atten- tion of all who believe in its di\dne origin. It is, therefore, always a source of gratification to learn any particulars concerning the lives of men who have devoted themselves entii'ely to the study of Scripture, or have attained to distinction by wiitings connected with sacred studies.
The late Baron Bunsen may be said to have been a person of this class. He has written many works connected with sacred literature, and his name has so long been before the public, that a general in- terest is felt among those, who have not had leisure or an opportunity to study deeply the subjects to which his attention has been dii-ected, to know some- thing definite about the value of his researches and the results to which he has attained. The expecta- tions of this portion of the public must have been highly raised, when they learned that Dr. Williams had undertaken the very task which they desired to see performed. He is a man of reputation as a scholar, who obtained high academical distinctions, and is in a position of eminence as Vice-Principal of a College for the Education of the Clergy. These circumstances would seem to offer a sufiicient guarantee to his readers that the information he would present to them would be of the most trustworthy character, and that matters of such deep and overwhelming importance, as the truth and the interpretation of Scripture, would be treated in a manner suitable to their great value and dignity. But they who opened this Essay with such
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 57
expectations, would soon be inclined to close it with feelings of sorrow and disappointment. They could not fail, however slight their acquaintance might be with the subject, to perceive that the tone in which these great questions are treated is, for the most part, that of one who plays with them as if they were subjects for the exercise of ingenuity, rather than questions on which it is of vital importance to us to hold truth rather than error. They would find that Baron Bunsen receives almost as high a meed of praise for missing what his reviewer believes to be the true explanation of Scripture as for discovering it, and that although Dr. Williams vaunts the great- ness of the Baron's exploits in sacred literature, he very carefully abstains from committing himself in general to the conclusions of this great authority. In- deed, the Essay is so written, that while Dr. Williams would persuade his readers that Baron Bunsen is im- measurably superior to those English divines who maintain old-fashioned opinions on Scripture truth and prophecy, he generally expresses himself in such a manner that he cannot be charged with holding the opinions he reports. As an instance of this mode of writing, we may cite the passage where Bunsen's opinion on the antiquity of the human race is re- ported. It is said in p. 54 that
" He coiild not have vindicated tlic unity of mankind if he had not asked for a vast extension of time, whether his petition for twenty thousand years be granted or not."
Kow certainly it is a matter of deep importance in regard to the foundations of our finth, whether the Bible is to be esteemed a trustworthy history even in its chronology; and it is, to say the least, sur- prising to see it treated as a matter of indifference,
58 BUXSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
whether it is wholly ^Tong in its account of the origin of man or not^ But this is the manner in which great questions appear to be treated in this Essay ; and in the present instance it will be observed that while the twenty thousand years are rather un- ceremoniously disposed of, Baron Bunsen alone is left responsible even for the "large extension of time." If Dr. Williams were charged on the strength of this passage with maintaining that the Hebrew text of the Bible contains a manifestly false account of the origin of man, he might reply that he has only asserted that Bunsen could not maintain the unity of mankind on this hypothesis. He might say that vrith Bunsen's standing point this was impossible, but that he has not asserted that it cannot be main- tained at all. Indeed, after sketching out some argu- ments in favour of this view of Baron Bunsen, through rather more than a page, he ends with the favourite refuge of reviewers in distress, who are desii'ous to praise, but not inclined to follow the author they are reviewing, by assuiiug us that ^^ his theories are at least suggestive.'''' The real question which we desire to investigate is this — are they true ? And when an author is put forth as a great luminary to the world, it may be interesting to speculative students to know that his theories are suggestive, but to the great mass of readers the real question must be theii* truth or falsehood ! In the same manner we find the highest praise bestowed on Bunsen for his masterly exposition of a prophecy, where the reviewer declines to follow
a It may easily be slie^vn that the Bible chronology is scarcely elastic at all. For a proof of this assertion it wiU be sufiicient to refer to Clinton's Scripture Chronology in the third volume of his Fasti HeUenici.
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 59
his explanation^. Again, Bunscn has exerted all his ingenuity to persuade us that the latter portion of the prophecies of Isaiah were written by Baruch, and his reviewer, in praising the ingenuity of his arguments, assui-es us that '' most readers of the argument for the identity will feel inclined to assent ;" but he takes care to assure us that the argument does not convince him^ for he adds immediately, —
"But a doubt may occur, whether many an xmnamed disciple of the prophetic school may not have burnt with kindred zeal, and used diction not pecuhar to any one ; while such a doubt may be strengthened by the confidence with which our critic ascribes a recasting of Job, and of parts of other books, to the same favourite Baruch." — (p. To.)
The fact is, that the rashness of Baron Bunsen, in hazarding conjectures as to the authorship of the books of Scripture, has found little favour with the better class even of rationalist divines in Grermany ; and his English reviewer, though he immediately hazards a conjecture far more rash, has given us a quiet hint that the German author has put more upon Baruch than his evidence will warrant. It certainly surprises one — and if the subject were less sacred it would amuse a reader not a little — to see with what per- tinacity Bunsen is exhibited as a great discoverer and an admirable guide, not for leading us to truth, but for his ingenuity in dressing up error so as almost to persuade men to accept it for truth. We can only remark that, however strange it may ap- pear to us, this seems to be the way of Dr. Williams. Every writer has his o-^ti way, and this appears to be his way. We who differ from him toio coelo^ can
'" " Still the general analogy of Scripture . . . may pennit us tt» tliink the oldest interpretation the truest."— (p. 73.)
6o BUXSEX, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
have no objection to his removing with one hand the praise he has just bestowed with the other, except that it appears rather likely to mislead the ignorant. They will remember the praise, and forget the dissent, which is so delicately hinted. To those who are able to read Bunsen in his own language, or are well acquainted with the subjects he discusses, such ob- servations are quite supei-fluous. But it is clear that although there is a certain parade of learning in this Essay, it cannot be intended for learned readers, or if it be intended for them, the author is very slenderly acquainted with that which men of learning would requii'e. He can scarcely imagine that any persons capable of investigating the reading and the proper translation of a difficult passage in Scripture, can do anything but smile when he pronounces an opinion upon it ex cathedra, and ventures to attribute im- proper motives to those who take a different view. They will naturally ask how he has acquired a right to pronounce so peremptorily on questions which the greatest Hebrew philologers have considered to in- volve very great difficulties. It is therefore to be presumed, from this and other reasons, that Dr. Wil- liams intends rather to dazzle the minds of those who are called 'general readers,' than to address his ob- servations to those who are capable of discussing these questions. An opinion somewhat similar to this is expressed in a very learned periodical, of which the first number has just appeared, in a German review of the ''Essays and Be views*'," where we find in p. 173 the following observation : —
" For all who know Bunsen's ' Biblical Researches/ Dr.
'^ Deutsche Vierteljalirsclirift fur Englisch-Theologische Fors- chung und KritiJc ; herausgegehen von Dr. M. Heidenheim, (in
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 6 1
Williams says nothing new ; and those who do not coincide with Bunsen's notions on certain prophetical portions of Isaiah, will still less be likely to be converted to them by the reasons alleged by his reviewer. If they [these authors] had taken into consideration the history of the Jews, and the history of Jewish intei-pretation of Scripture, they would have seen clearly why Saadias Gaon and the Rabbis who follow him — from whom certain men of our own day, and among them Dr. Williams, derive their dogmatic views — gave up 0)1 paper the original interpretation of the 53rd chapter of Isaiah."
The wiiter then proceeds to adduce otlier instances of a class of criticism, which could have no weight with persons who are acquainted with the Bible in the original.
It is clear that the writer views, as I do, the Essay of Dr. Williams as addressed rather ad ^mjmliim than ad clerum ; and it is on this account that I deplore the tone in which it is written. If Dr. Williams believes that it is for the interest of man, and likely to pro- mote the advancement of religious truth, that the everlasting contests which have been carried on in Germany about the genuineness of the Scriptures and the truth of their main facts should be imported into our English literature, and occupy a large share of our attention, he has a right to introduce them to any extent he may desire, by writings addressed to those who are capable of investigating the questions thus brought forward : the fair discussion of Scripture difficulties will not endanger the cause of truth, and we, who believe that the truth is with those who are opposed to Dr. Williams, cannot fear the fullest dis-
London). Xo. I. March 31, 186L This is a critical journal and review printed at Leipzig, and published at Gotha, by Perthes, but conducted by Germans living in England.
62 BUNSEX, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
cussion of Scripture questions : but if any man ad- dresses to those who have neither the leisure, nor always the acquirements, necessary to the prosecution of such enquiries, the most peremptory decisions on questions which have exercised the greatest philo- logers, and accompanies them with gross insinua- tions against those who differ from him ; if he repre- sents the state of opinion in Germany, and the course of prophetic exegesis in general, with the utmost unfairness, and attempts by such representations to bias the opinions of his readers, we may fear that he is likely to cause many, who are but slightly ac- quainted with these subjects, to make shipwi'eck of their faith. This is the only ground of fear. We have no fear that the truth of Scripture, which has borne for more than a thousand years the battle and the strife of man, will succumb under a puny attack like this. It has survived the assaults of Celsus and Porphyry, of Bayle and Voltaire, of Gibbon and Hume, and it is not very likely that it will fall by the hands of Bunsen and Dr. "Williams. It is the unfair repre- sentations, the partial and the one-sided views of this Essay, announced ex cathedra^ and coupled with con- temptuous insinuations against those who hold the ancient opinions, which render it worth while to spend a moment in answering it. They may deceive the unlearned and the superficial, but there is really nothing in the Essay itself which adds a new argu- ment to the old conditions of the great problem, or would give the smallest uneasiness to those who really know the history of Scripture criticism in Germany and England. These accusations may ap- pear to be expressed in strong language, but if they can be substantiated they will shew that, however
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 63
learned Dr. Williams may bo, however capable of writing a trustworthy treatise on Scripture, the Essay lie has Yentured to publish in this volume is worthless as a guide to truth, and altogether unworthy of his reputation and his position. It is a very legitimate subject of enquiry to ascertain generally, whether the representations of this Essay, or Eeview, are trust- worthy or not, and to that enquiry I now propose to devote my attention.
It deals with vast questions and it abounds in very strong assertions concerning them, and in the most peremptory decisions about matters of vital import- ance as to Scripture truth and Scripture interpreta- tion. The question before ns is — AVhat is the value of these assertions and decisions ? Before we enter on the great point, — the truth of Scripture and the true method of interpreting it, — as Baron Bunsen was the peg on which this Essay was suspended, it would be uncourteous not to make a few remarks on his life and labours.
Entirely opposed, as I have always been, to the opinions of Baron Bunsen, I have no wish to detract from his merit or to diminish his legitimate reputa- tion. I believe that few persons will be disposed to deny his abilities and acquirements, although during the time he was in great favour with the sovereigns of Prussia and of England it is probable that the adulation of his followers may have given exaggerated notions of both. Such leisure as was afforded by a life of high diplomatic employments was eagerly devoted to literature, and I believe that he had a very earnest spirit with regard to religion. But, unhap- pily, these high qualifications were combined with other habits of mind, which neutralized their value,
64 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
and rendered his Biblical researches unsound and mischievous. He appears to have been self-confident in the extreme, and rash in speculation, almost be- yond the examjDle of his countrymen. The adulation of his friends and followers increased his self-confi- dence, gave license to his spirit of speculation, and thus he announced his decisions with a degree of dogmatism which contrasted very strongly with the argumentative support on which they rested. He was born and educated in Germany at a season when the religious faith of the country had been almost overwhelmed by the torrent of unbridled rationalism, and even the lamp of religious feeling burnt very feebly. It seems to me to have been a dreary time, but Dr. Williams appears to consider it a time of glorious light and knowledge.
After a few incivilities about England, with some remarks on the language of pulpits and platforms, he speaks thus of the close of the last century and the beginning of the present : —
"But in Germany there has been a pathway streaming with light, from Eichhorn to Ewald, aided by the poetical penetration of Herder and the philological researches of Gesenius, throughout which the value of the moral element in proj)hecy has been progressively raised, and that of the directly predictive, whether secular or Messianic, has been lowered. Even the conservatism of Jahn amongst Eomanists, and of Hengstenberg amongst Protestants, is free and ra- tional compared to what is often in this country required with denunciation, but seldom defended by argument.
" To this inheritance of opinion Baron Bunsen succeeds." — (pp. 66, 67.)
This was, unhappily for him, the case. He was trained in sacred philology at a period when the divine authority of Scripture was daily undermined
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 65
by professors and divines, and we cannot wonder if the seed thus sown should have produced very- bitter fruit. That Baron Bunsen did not give up his devotional feelings and his earnestness in religion is not to be ascribed to the teaching of the period in which he was educated, but to the more religious frame of mind with which it had pleased God to endow him. And in considering this portion of his character we must never forget the difference between the German and the English mind. The paradise of the German appears to consist in unlimited license of speculation, while the practical element is the prevailing characteristic of the English : and thus it often happens that a German will not cast off a cer- tain i)hase of faith when he has demolished every ground which an Englishman would deem a rational and logical foundation for holding it. We ought not, therefore, to be surprised at finding that, after deny- ing the genuineness of half the books in the Bible, and treating a very large portion of its history as mere idle tales or legendary myths. Baron Bunsen, to the very end of his life, had a great love for devotional hymns, framed upon a very different hypothesis, and addressed to a very different state of mind. I have heard, on the authority of private friends, that in his last hours he was cheered and supported by the words of the old German hymn, " Jesu, meine Zuversicht '^j" — " Jesus, my trust." The same explanation will solve the discrepancy which Dr. Williams finds between
•^ The hjrmn is found in Bunscn's collection of Prayers and Hymns, 1833, among those whose commencement is changed. It is there No. 497, and begins, " Guter Hirte, willst du nicht." B it many of the German hymns have a commencement nearly similar,
F
66 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
the Gesang unci Gehethuch of Baron Bunsen and Ms criticisms : — " Either reverence or deference may have prevented him from bringing his prayers into entire harmony with his criticisms." (p. 91.) The truth is he was better than his' principles: he was not in flesh and blood what he was upon paper. Dr. Williams, however, evidently rests his claim to ce- lebrity on the brilliancy of his Biblical researches. My own belief is that although some ingenious sug- gestions in the Liturgical portion of Baron Bunsen's "Hippolytus and his Age" may be referred to here- after, his name will be unknown in Biblical criticism twenty years hence. But on this point the opinions of Dr. Williams and myself are wholly unimportant : it is one of those questions which posterity alone can decide, and to which the words of a writer familiar to Dr. Williams exactly apply, —
'AfiepaL h' eirlXoLTToi, Mdprvpes (TocficoTaTOi,
And indeed, this Essay on Bunsen has brought forward in the strongest manner other questions, com- pared with which, the reputation of any man, how- ever eminent, is insignificant. The truth and the interpretation of Scripture are discussed in a manner which must leave an impression on the minds of those who have not leisure or opportunity to study deeply such questions, that their faith is founded on igno- rance and misapprehension ; and thus a general spirit of scepticism is likely to be promoted. iNow this im- pression I believe to be promoted by a series of mis- representations of the most unfair and one-sided cha- racter; and I therefore proceed to point out some of the most striking of these misrepresentations. 1 It may be convenient briefly to state the nature
AND DR. WILLIAMS. ^"^
of the misrepresentations to which I advert, and the order in which I propose to consider them.
1. The state of opinion as to the Scriptures among the learned men of Germany.
If we are to believe Dr. Williams, the researches of the German critical school have disproved the genuineness of a very large portion of the Bible, and entirely deprived the prophecies, except in one or two doubtful cases, of any direct Messianic prediction. And Baron Bunsen, accepting this state of the ques- tion ^, is highly praised by Dr. Williams for endea- voiuing on this hypothesis to shew that the doctrine of the Bible contains divine truths.
I propose to shew that this is utterly at variance with fact ; that whatever currency such opinions may have had some years ago in Germany, they are re- pelled by the most distinguished men of that nation, and that they are gradually dying away.
2. The second great misrepresentation with which
= This is of course a mere general statement of Bunsen's views. In fact, he agrees in details with no wiiter of eminence whatever, but simply considers himself at liberty to assign any date to any book of the Bible, to explain any part of it as legendary or para- bolical, and to correct its authors on all questions in the most arbitrary manner. Thus, the fall of man is not a narrative of a real event, but a history of the fall of man as it appears in the contemplation of the Divine Mind, the serpent being the symbol of man's perverted understanding, his reason separated from his con- science; the Pentateuch is a late book with a few ancient docu- ments; an universal deluge is a simple impossibility; Jonah is a legendary tale ; the song of Hannah was not hers, but the song of the mother of Saul on her son's elevation to the kingdom, &c. It would be easy to multiply these instances to any extent, but it is needless — as needless as to refute such gratuitous assertions and suppositions ra detail. Were every one of them proved impossible, their author would have been ready the next day with another list, just as gratuitous, just as unfounded, and just as absurd.
f2
68 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
I charge Dr. Williams relates to the interpretation of prophecy in our country.
Dr. AVilliams asserts that as men have become more learned, each writer on the prophecies has detracted something from the extent of literal prognostication; which means in plain language, that the belief in Mes- sianic predictions has gradually ceased in England.
I propose, in the second place, to examine this statement.
3. I then propose to examine in detail the mis- representations of Dr. Williams in regard to particular passages of Scripture.
The first and greatest misrepresentation on which I would remark occurs in a passage which has just been quoted, but it pervades also the whole Essay. It is the attempt to insinuate, rather than to assert, that the opinion of the genuineness of the Old Testament and a very large paj-t of the New has been universally given up by the scholars of Germany, and that they have proved that it cannot be maintained. The con- temptuous language with which an opposite view is treated may be judged of by the following specimen.
After an enumeration of all the triumphs of phi- lology over prophecy, by which only a few doubtful passages are left to testify of the Messiah and one of the final fall of Jerusalem, and a declaration that even these few cases are likely to melt, "if not already melted, in the crucible of searching enquiry," the author proceeds thus : —
" If our German had ignored all that the masters of phi- lology have proved on these subjects, his countrymen would have raised a storm of ridicule, at which he must have drowned himself in the Neckar.
'* Great then is Baron Bunsen's merit, in accepting frankly
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 69
the belief of scholars, and yet not despairing of Hebrew pro- phecy as a witness to the kingdom of God." — (p. 70.)
We may think it a happy thing for Baron Bunsen that the miserable trash which rationalism often sends forth for enlightened philology, did not rob him altogether of his faith in Christ ; but if the principles of these philologers were erroneous, it is no '' merit" that he was led astray by them, nor does it much mend the matter that he has made some awkward attempts to patch up the cause he supposes them to have damaged, by introducing a new source of confusion. But the representation here given of the state of sacred philology is so utterly unlike the reality, that one wonders how any person of the acquirements and knowledge of Dr. Williams could venture to bring it forward. It must be supposed, by those who read it without the means of correcting the statements by an enquiry into German criticism, that the philologists of Germany have made the spuriousness of the books of the Old Testament so apparent, and have so con- futed the older notions about prophecy, that no man, who had any regard for his reputation as a scholar, would venture to maintain the antiquity and genuine- ness of the Pentateuch, or express a belief in the existence of prophecies which in former ages were appealed to in proof of the great truths of Christianity. In short, that if a man maintained that Moses wrote the Pentateuch or Isaiah prophesied of Chi'ist, he would be met by " a storm of ridicule" under which life would be intolerable. I fear, if all who venture, notwithstanding the sneers of Dr. Williams, to main- tain these opinions, were to follow his prescription, the channel of the Neckar would soon be choked up.
70 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
It is perfectly true that for a considerable period these subjects have been debated with the utmost freedom in Germany, and that at the beginning of the present century these opinions were, upon the whole, in the as- cendant,—even then, however, not without opposition, although that opposition was feeble. But the result of the discussion has been of a very different character from that which Dr. Williams would lead his readers to believe. The defenders of the old opinions are now more than maintaining theii' ground against the impugners of the truth of Scripture. Have Keil, and Havernick, Heng- stenberg and Delitzsch, Lange and his coadjutors m his Bihcliverlc^ Tholuck and Lechler, with many others of similar powers, found it necessary to " drown them- selves in the Neckar," or to hide their heads in privacy ? It is easy enough to make such an assertion in the pages of a volume addressed to general readers in England, but if the assertion had been made in Berlin, it would probably have raised so great " a storm of ridicule," that the author would have been glad to find himself at Lampeter again. The tide has tiu-ued, and although some writers of great philological at- tainments, like Ewald and Hupfeld, maintain the rationalist opinions with all the violence which seems a natural inheritance of rationalism, yet the prevailing tone is conservative, and that in a degree which is constantly increasing ^ It would be supposed also, that in what Dr. Williams calls a " destructive" pro- cess, the rationalist authorities were in agreement, or at least, not in direct contradiction to each other,
^ It is a significant fact that the clever and eloquent sermons of L. Harms, who assails the rationalists continually, and gives them no quarter, have been eagerly listened to by crowds, and created an unexampled sensation throughout the kingdom of Hanover.
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 71
in regard to the arguments on which they foiind theii" system. But when you examine their opinions, you find that they seem to agree in nothing except a determination to reject the theory of the truth of Scripture. No matter what hypothesis is sot up in its phice, that hypothesis is altogether tabooed. And the consequence is that their theories are often, not only divergent, but contradictory and mutually de- structive. There are among these writers three who have done considerable service in certain departments of Hebrew philology, I mean Gesenius, Ewald, and Hupfeld, and I am very glad to avail myself of the fruit of their labours, but when they begin to reason on the books of Scripture, I find it necessary to watch every assertion with the utmost vigilance, almost every step. When a theory is at stake, assertions are con- stantly made of the occurrence or non-occurrence of words, which the use of a Concordance proves to be groundless. Such accusations are not to be lightly made, and therefore I invite any person who doubts its truth, to examine the list of words brought for- ward by Gesenius and Hartmann^ in order to prove Deuteronomy later than the rest of the Pentateuch : he will find that six of the ten instances do occur where they are said not to be foimd. Or let him examine the phrases said to be peculiar to the Elohist in Genesis^', and he will find them in passages where
5 See Gesenius, Geschichte der Hehraischen Spraclie und Schriftt p. 32, (1815) ; and Hartmann, Uistorisch-Kritischc Forschungen, 8fc., uber die Funf Biicher Mosis, p. 660, (1831).
^ See Gramberg, Lihri Geneseos secundum fontes rite dignos- cendos adumhratio nova. (Leipzig, 1828.) Some of these incorrect statements are repeated in the last Introduction to the Scriptures published in Germany. Sec Dr. Blcck's Einlcitung in das AUe
72 LUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
the name Jehoyah occurs. These are minor points in the great conflict of opinion, but they serve to shew how these opinions are supported. But if we ask in what conclusion do these critics agree, it would be difficult to find any position maintained by one which is not destroyed by the rest. I must anticipate an objection which will at once rise to the mind of a reader of these lines. If these men differ so entirely in these minor matters, is not their agreement in one conclusion, viz. that the old belief in the genuineness of Scripture is untenable, a very strong argument in its favour? It might have some weight in the general argument, if it rested on other and independent grounds, but when that agreement is founded on arguments which each new hypothesis destroys, it appears to me that its value is nothing. Perhaps this may be best illustrated by an example. If a person is enquiring into the age of the Pentateuch, he would natiu-ally read what Gesenius has said concerning the age of the Hebrew language. He has laid it do-^Ti as a rule that the language of the prose writers in the greater part of the Bible is identical with that of the Penta- teuch in its prose, and of the poets with that of the poetical parts of the Pentateuch, such as, e. g. the blessings of Jacob and of Moses. He assures us that with the Captivity a new epoch of the language begins. Gramberg tells us that some of the books of the Pentateuch were written at the conclusion of the Captivity, and Yon Bohlen declares it altogether to be a production of the age of Josiah. It is true, they all agree in rejecting the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch,
Testament, ^'c., p. 249. (Berlin, 1860.) This is only one of the many instances "which might be given of arguments repeated in. the most careless way by one "vrriter after another.
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 73
but then the enquiry remains, why they reject it. There may be prejudices against its Mosaic origin, as well as prejudices in its favour, and if men are de- termined at all events to reject it, one can understand why they differ when they begin to frame hypotheses to suit the facts. But if they are led by these en- quiries to reject it, any two out of these three base their rejection of it on grounds overthrown by the third. Again, the Song of Solomon is declared by Gesenius to have been written at a time when the Hebrew language had been altered by an admixture of Chaldaic forms and phrases. Suppose, with this decision fresh in our minds, we take up one of the latest publications by a great authority on the Semitic dialects, — I mean Ernest Eenan, — who handles all Scripture matters as freely as our Essayists could wish, we are assured that the Song of Solomon cannot have been written later than towards the end of the tenth century before Christ ! The stream of light, of which Dr. "Williams speaks in such glowing terms as having illuminated Germany from the time of Eichhorn and Gesenius, does not appear to shine with all the brightness which he proclaims, even upon purely philo- logical questions. I am not taking obscure writers of small tracts, but acknowledged leaders and men of eminence. Indeed, Gesenius is the highest name among the philologers of the critical school; and Ernest Eenan stands very high among the Semitic scholars of the present day. But the fact is, that each book of the Pentateuch, and the whole work itself, is hunted up and down the four centuries be- tween the time of David and the Captivity, till the heart and the mind are wearied alike with fruitless enquiries and hypotheses which have no foundation.
74 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
Sometimes it is written about the time of the Cap- tivity, then it cannot be later than David ; sometimes it is written before, sometimes after the division of the kingdoms. And the only conclusion left for the mind is to wonder whether it was ever written at all ! The everlasting differences on these subjects pervading the lectui'e-rooms of Germany, must have wearied many a noble mind and earnest spii'it, that panted after truth and found only husks like these. One such spirit ' has expressed the loathing with which he was at last diiven to regard such enquiries. He found, as he tells us, that "one day St. Matthew and the Gospel of the Hebrews were up, the next day St. Luke, and then an original Gospel ; and the foui'th day St. Mark; one day Deuteronomy was a late book, the next it was an early one," and so forth; and at last he felt that he could gain no nourishment for his soul in a perpetual round of self-destructive hypotheses, and changed his course J. It might be supposed, from the rounded periods and positive statements of Dr. Williams, that this critical school has run a triumpliant course in Germany, but unfortunately for tliis suppo- sition, this school is daily losing its influence.
There is a spirit of infidelity spread abroad among the middle classes in Germany which the wi-itings of this school have helped to foster, but there is also a large and increasing number of zealous Christians ; and the hold of rationalism on those who acknowledge a revelation is daily relaxing. There is also an altered tone in the rationalist works themselves. The latest Introduction to the Old Testament which I have seen
' Yilmar, now Professor of Theology at Marburg. Die Theo- logie der Tkatsachen tcider die Theohgie der Rhetorik is the title of his work. j YiJmar, p. 15.
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 75
is that of Dr. Bleek'', who liaDcUcs all these questions with the utmost freedom, and decides in many cases against the old opinions. He assigns the Pentateuch in its present form to the time of David, and is against the genuineness of Daniel. But his tone is altogether different from that of the critical school in the day of Gesenius and his followers. Ilis admissions are such as would have been treated with scorn in the palmy days of rationalism ; and he speaks with reverence of the prophets, as receiving revelations from. God and being the interpreters between God and man : and when he controverts the positions of Hengstenberg or other writers of orthodox opinions, he does it with courtesy. It is true the gift of evil-speaking, which appeared to be pre-eminently the prerogative of ra- tionalist writers, has not entirely departed, and the mantle of former critics has fallen on Ewald and Hup^- feld. The name of Hengstenberg appears to excite a degree of positive fury in Hupfeld ; and in the pre- face to his Commentary on the Psalms he openly declares that he considers it a duty to di'ag Hengsten- bero^ forward wherever he can accuse him of error. He says of Hengstenberg that he is trj^ng to " in- sinuate his poison into our blood,^^ which is no doubt very becoming language for a great rationalist, but would be thought rude in a Christian divine. But perhaps if Hengstenberg and the anti-critical reac- tionary school, as he calls it, are so displeasing to him, Ewald and the rationalists are quite to his taste. K'ot
'' This work is posthumous. Its title is Mnleiiung in das Alte Testament von Friedricli Bleeh. Ilerausgegeben von J. F. Bleek undAd. KampTiausen, ^'c. (1860.) A. Kamphausen was a coadjutor of Bunsen in his Bibelwerk. See the Vorerinnerungen to the Biheliverh, p cxxv.
76 BUXSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
at all, I am sorry to say, — for in the same preface he complains that Ewald has pursued him for many years ''with peculiar fury," [niit hesondern tvuth^) simply because in reviewing some of Ewald's critical essays in Hebrew, Hupfeld had hinted that he wanted more knowledge of the language. These two men, Ewald and Hupfeld, are mentioned here, because they appear to be the only two of the rationalist school whose ob- servations on Hebrew philology are really worth con- sidering. And as they seem to be rather discordant, the happy family of rationalism has some chance of breaking up altogether before long.
Where every man has — not his psalm and his doc- trine— but a theory about every book in Holy Writ, where it happens that every two or three years the order in which these books were written is infallibly discovered and as infallibly refuted, it would, of course, be impossible to specify each opinion even on one book ; but it may be convenient to exhibit to the English public a glimpse or two of that clear stream of light which has been shed on sacred literature by the scholars of Germany. Let us take for example Genesis, as that was < the book on which rationalist criticism for some time bestowed its most particular attention.
It was very early observed that two names for God in the Book of Genesis were used in a peculiar man- ner ; that passages occuri'ed in which Elohim was the predominant, if not the only word used, while in other passages Jehovah predominated, or appeared to be used exclusively. On tliis foundation it is almost impossible to enumerate the various theories which have been formed. Eichhorn endeavoured to shew that these different portions of the book proceeded from
AND DR. WILLIAMS. -JJ
two different and independent writers. But when once this notion was fairly launched, there was no end to the modifications it underwent. Every few months a new theory, which of course superseded all the former ones, made its appearance, and professed to solve all the difficulties, only just to make room for another more pretentious system. Ilgen imagined two Elohists and one JcJwvist. Gramberg modified the hypothesis one way, Hartmann another, Ewald a third, and so forth, till the world was weary of these endless suppositions ^ About this time it was almost assumed as an axiom that it was absurd to imagine that a book could be written in the time of Moses, as the means of writing books were not discovered at that early period, and a number of auxiliary arguments of the same kind were pressed into the service. The result of these discussions has been that the hypothesis of a number of independent fragments is generally looked upon with disfavour, and the prevailing tone is in favour of what is called the Urkunden-hypothese, or theory of one original document receiving additions during the lapse of time in successive editions. The objections raised against the probability of the means of wi'iting being found in the time of Moses are, I suppose, now generally given up. At least so Bleek, a rationalist himself, informs us. These are his words : " That the art of writing [schriftstcllerei) existed among the He- brews in the time of Moses, according to our present indications, cannot be a matter of doubt."
I suppose that in the palmy days of rationalism any
» This representation will be found, with circumstantial details, in Keil's edition of Havernick's Spez telle Einleitunj in den Pen- tateuch. It coincides with the results of a more elaborate enquiiy which I made into these theories some years ago.
yS BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
divine who ventured to maintain this proposition would have been met with such '' a storm of ridicule," that he would have been glad "to drown himself in the Neckar;" and therefore, when I hear of the unpopu- larity of opinions which I believe to be true, I am willing to hope that further discussion will only prove their truth.
I find that it is now acknowledged that some of the most telling arguments against the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch must be given up : and I find also from ISTitzsch's "Academical Lectures" that it cannot any longer be maintained that the demonology and angelology of the Jews was learned at Babylon. This was another point on which the assertions of the rationalists were most positive. Indeed, this belief of the Babylonian origin of these notions was one of the great arguments on which reliance was placed to prove the late composition of the Penta- teuch. If my readers ask who Mtzsch is, I must refer them to Bunsen's " Signs of the Times," (p. 406 in the translation,) where he is said to be "the man who is almost universally throughout Germany considered as the first of Evangelical theologians;" so that we are not quoting an obscure writer, but the man who occupies "the most distinguished post" in the Prussian Church, i. e. Provost of Berlin.
The examples which have here been given relate for the most part to the Pentateuch, because that is one of the chief battle-grounds of the critical school, and it serves as well as any other portion of Scripture to shew how much darkness is mixed with " the stream of light" from Eichhorn and Gesenius to the present day. In fact, the philological and linguistic collections and criticisms of Gesenius and Hupfeld are highly
AND DR. WILLIAMS.
79
Taluable, altliougli their conclusions even on these subjects must be received with caution. But it is self-evident that a man . may be extremely useful in illustrating the language of Scripture who would be a very unsafe guide in unravelling the difficulties of its history, or reasoning upon the genuineness of its books. But it is to be remarked that the contradic- tions I have brought forward are chiefly contradictions on the very subject on which alone these men would be entitled to speak with any authority, — I mean the determination of date and authorship from the language of a book. One more remark shall be made on this subject, and then I leave it to the reader's own judg- ment. If Jerome is to be condemned, as Dr. Williams would lead us to believe, for what he considers an absurd dictum on prophecy, we might quote number- less absurdities from these critics of the most flagrant kind. Did Jerome ever patronize so preposterous a notion as that the name Noah was derived from the Latin wo, or vclv^^ (!) as Yon Bohlen gravely conjec- tures""? or did the best abused of the Fathers ever propose such drivelling absurdities as that the story of iEsop, as a great writer of fables, possibly arose from some report of Solomon's apologues about the Hyssop on the wall, (!) as Hitzig suggests in the preface to his translation of the Book of Proverbs ?
These circumstances, to which a great deal more of the same kind might be added, will afford a con- siderable soiu'ce of modification, to say the least, to the assertions of Dr. Williams about the state of Biblical criticism in Germany. They shew that the impression which any reader of his Essay would in- evitably derive from it on this subject, is entii'ely «" Yon Bohlen on Genesis, vol. ii. p. lOG, Eng. Tr.
So BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
erroneous. Wliether he has wilfully and intentionally- misled those who cannot check his statements, can only be known by himself and by Him Who searches the heart, and to Whom he stands or falls.
But if this Essay gives a false impression with regard to the state of Biblical criticism in Germany, its representation of the progress of opinion in Eng- land as to prophecy is still more glaringly unjust, and is calculated to convey a still more false impression of the actual state of prophetic exegesis. The most objectionable passage is the following : —
" In our country each successive defence of the prophecies, in proportion as its author was able, detracted something from the extent of Kteral prognostication ; and either laid stress on the moral element, or urged a second, as the spiritual sense. Even Butler foresaw the possibility that every prophecy in the Old Testament might have its elucidation in contempo- raneous history ; but literature was not his strong point, and he turned aside, endeavouring to limit it [what ?] from an unwelcome idea. Bishop Chandler is said to have thought twelve passages in the Old Testament directly Messianic; others restricted this character to five. Paley ventures to quote only one." — (p. 65.)
The impression which this language is calculated to leave on the mind can only be the following, viz., that as prophecy has become more studied and better understood amongst us, the learned have gradually cast aside their belief in the Messianic nature of the prophecies of the Old Testament, till at last there are scarcely any which are considered to be strictly prophecies of Christ. Nay, the author seems to give us a descending scale by which we may measure the gradual diminution of faith in prophecy during the last century. ''Bishop Chandler is said to have
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81
tlionglit," — surely this phrase is strange in regard to a book so well known as Chandler's " Answers to Collins" !" Why should not Dr. Williams have taken the trouble to ascertain what Bishop Chandler does say, before he made so loose a statement ?
We shall simply place Bishop Chandler's own words in apposition Avith Br. Williams's report of them : —
Dr. Williams. "Bishop Chandler is said to have thought twelve pas- sages in the Old Testament directly Messianic."
Bishop Chandler. "But not to rest in gene- rals, let the disquisition of particular texts determine the truth of this author's assertion. To name ihem all would carry me into too great length. I shall there- fore select some of the princi- pal prophecies, vrhich being proved to regard the Messias immediately and solely, in the obvious and Hteral sense according to scholastick rules, may serve as a specimen of what the Scriptures have predicted of a Messias that was to come."
It seems very clear that Dr. Williams knows even less of Bishop Chandler than he appears to know of Bishop Butler. But before we pass on to Bishop Butler, let me ask those who read this Essay, what
■ I refer to the following books : — Bishop Chandler's " Defence of Christianity from the Prophecies of the Old Testament," &c., against the " Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion" of Collins, and his "Vindication of the Defence of Christianity," &c., against "The Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered" of the same author.
G
82 BUXSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
faith they can put in any statements it contains after reading these words. The allusion to Paley is even worse. Paley was not writing a book on pro- phecy, but in treating of the evidences of Christianity he contents himself with quoting only one prophecy, and assigns his reason for limiting his quotation to that one, viz., "as well because I think it the clear- est and strongest of all, as because most of the rest, in order that their value might be represented with any tolerable degree of fidelity, require a discussion unsuitable to the limits and nature of this work." He then refers with approbation to Bishop Chandler's dissertations, and asks the infidel to try the experi- ment whether he could find any other eminent per- son to the history of whose life so many cii'cumstances can be made to apply. It is not that he " ventures to quote" only this as if he were afraid to meet the question, but he actually refers to the book where these questions which lie out of his own path are specially treated. And now, what becomes of the list of prophecies, " fine by degrees and beautifully less" as years roll on, which Dr. Williams would persuade his readers have been given up till a grave divine " ventured to quote" only one ! The subject is really too sacred, too solemn to be treated in a manner like this. On any subject such misrepresentation would be very discreditable, but in treating of the evidence for the truth of Holy Scripture it becomes positively criminal.
But if Paley and Bishop Chandler are thus mis- represented, what shall we say to the insinuation about Bishop Butler ° ? Instead of Bishoj) Butler
"The assertion that " literature was not his strong point" is really beneath criticism ; though coming in the midst of a sentence
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 83
having turned aside from a future prospect of pro- bable interpretations, he distinctly grapples with those that have been made on this principle, and denies that they have any weight. So that in the repre- sentation of Bishop Chandler, Dr. Paley, and Bishop Butler, the author of this Essay may be said to have misrepresented every one of them, and to have inter- woven his misrepresentations together into a state- ment Avhich it would be difficult to parallel for its contempt of truth. I have no wish to charge the author with ivilful misrepresentation, and I trust he may not have thought of the impression his words would inevitably leave on the mind, of any reader of his book, but I appeal with confidence to every reader of plain common sense, whether that is not the only impression they are calculated to make ? Bishop Butler's is not a work on prophecy, but in enumerat- ing the sources of evidence for Christianity he can- not well overlook prophecy. He is not attempting to expound prophecy, but shewing how it bears upon the evidence for Christianit}', and answering some objections which are commonly made against its testi-
■svhich it is an act of courtesy to designate as English, it may excite Bomething like wonder. It rather resembles another attack upon an eminent prelate of our Church — I mean Bishop Pearson. Dr. ■W^illiams accuses him of making the prose of the Jewish rabbinical writers more prosaic. I never understood that they professed to write poetry, and therefore, if Bishop Pearson has made them in- telligible, he will be excused for not rendering them into poetry. But to say the truth, most persons who read what Dr. AVilliams has printed in the form of stanzas at the conclusion of this Essay will feel that the author's notions of poetry are rather peculiar. These sneers at great and eminent men are so unworthy of a man of learning, that we will pass them by, only hoping that Dr. Wil- liams may one day be entitled to a tithe of the reverence due to those whom he has thus depreciated. ^^ rv.
84 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
mony. He adduces and answers tliree lines of objec- tion: 1. The obscurity of parts of the prophecies; 2. The objection that, considering each prophecy dis- tinctly by itself, it does not appear to be intended of the events to which Chiistians apply it: to this he answers, that " a series of prophecy being applicable to such and such events, is in itself a proof that it was intended of them," &c. ; 3. " That the shewing, even to a high degree of probability, if that could be, that the prophets thought of some other event, in such and such predictions, and not those at all which Christians allege to be completions of such predic- tions,— or that such and such prophecies are capable of being applied to other events than those to which Christians apply them, — that this would not destroy the force of the argument from prophecy, even with regard to those very instances." And after he has given his reason for this decision, he says, " Hence may be seen to how little purpose those persons busy themselves who endeavour to prove that the prophetic history is applicable to events of the age in which it was "wiitten, or of ages before it." And he then argues the case in regard to Porphyry, and concludes his remarks. AVhat colour does this course of argu- ment give for insinuating that Bishop Butler foresaw the possibility that every prophecy in the Old Testa- ment might have its elucidation in contemporaneous history, and "turned aside" from the thought? It was an objection which had been often made, it formed a strong point of attack, and Butler quietly points out that it has no force. To those who have a knowledge of the writings of Chandler, Butler, and Paley, or to those who have the patience to examine each assertion of this author, and place it at its true worth, these ob-
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 85
servations would be wholly unnecessary. I do not address myself to them, but I address myself to those who might be expected to look to a man of the repu- tation and position of Dr. Williams for guidance in such matters, and would receive his statements with trust. Such persons, whatever Dr. Williams may have meant, would be entirely deceived. They would suppose that belief in prophecy in England was well- nigh exploded among the learned, and left only to platform orators ; while the insinuation that upon the Continent only about two or three doubtful passages are now believed to testify of the Messiah, and one of the destruction of Jerusalem, seems completely to banish all faith in prophecy from the world. And thi^ is effected by a series of misrepresentations, which it would not be easy to parallel. Let those therefore who read these pages endeavour to learn from the examination of such assertions as these, what depend- ence they may place on other portions of this Essay where they have less means of testing the justice of the statements.
As Dr. Williams has the reputation of an expe- rienced controversialist, it may be desirable to point out one subterfuge, to which he has no right to have recourse : I mean by a quibble on the words " directly Messianic." If he professes to mean no more than that the prophecies were in the fii'st place applicable to some other subject, but were intended by the Holy Spirit to testify of the Messiah, he concedes the whole question. His whole Essay is constructed on the principle that there are no real "predictions" in the Bible, with two or three insignificant exceptions. This Essay would take away all belief in such pre- dictions, and utterly banish inspired prophecies as
86 BUXSEX, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
a source of evidence. If lie admits that tliey are inspired predictions, it matters not whether they are so in a primary or a secondary sense. And it is well to suggest to his readers, that although Dr. Williams appears to think it sufficient to deny each prophecy individually to apply to Chi'ist, no attentive reader. of the Bible can fail to see that the image of the Messiah is foreshadowed and pourtrayed in its integrity by the combination of these individual features, each of which may be contained in a single prophecy. They are full of wonder when considered indi^-idually, but united, theii* strength is, or ought to be, irresistible.
Before we leave the general notion of prophecy as having a real element of prediction, we would ask those persons who have been led astray by the assertions — I cannot call them arguments — of this author to read attentively the prophecies in which the fall of the great powers of the world is predicted, and to compare the predictions with the present state of those powers, e.g. of Egypt, of Tyre, and of Babylon p. These are among the most striking of the secular pre- dictions, if we may so call them, of the Bible. Let the candid enquirer well consider these side by side with the assertions of this Essay, and he will then be enabled to form some judgment of the prejudice and one-sidedness against which the believer in the Bible has to contend.
There is another subject also to which we may here
P Babylon— Isa. xiii., xiv., &c. Tyre — ^Isa. xxiii. ; Ezek. xxvi. — xxviii. Egypt — Ezek. xxix. These are not the only pro- phecies, but sufficient as a basis for the enquiry. Bp. Kewton in his " Dissertations on the Prophecies" vnil supply more, as -svell as the prophecies relating to Xineveh and other great powers.
AND DR. ^VILLIAMS. 87
allude in a few transient remarks : it is the manner in which the Essayist has argued against the inspira- tion of the apostles by a manifest misconception of a very j^lain passage.
In a note at p. 67 Mr. Mansel is reproved, because in his Barapton Lectures ''recognised mistranslations and misreadings are .alleged as arguments." Mr. Mansel is so abundantly able to make answer for him- self, that it would be superfluous for any friend to answer for him. But these words are quoted to shew how very prone we are to commit the very foult which we attribute to others. Dr. Williams, both in his Essay, and in his " Eational Godliness," p. 309, •uses as an argument against the inspiration of the apostles, the words of St. Paul when he assured the Lycaonians that he and Barnabas were "men of like passions" with themselves. Is there a mistranslation more recognised than this, or can there be an argu- ment more entii'ely alien from the subject into con- nection with which it is dragged, than this quota- tion of Dr. Williams ? What argument can it afford against amj theory of inspiration, that the apostles acknowledged to those who were about to worship them as gods, that they were mortals like themselves, subject to suff'ering, sickness, death ? Had the author taken counsel on the subject with a well-educated fifth-form boy he would, I am willing to believe, have cancelled this argument.
But Dr. Williams is not content to throw contempt on the great men of modern days, on Bishops Pearson and Butler, and on men of reputation in our own day, like Mr. Mansel, — he wings his shafts against the great men of ancient days also, and has especially selected Jerome for his mark. It does not appear very pro-
88 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
bable, after some fourteen centimes in which the name of Jerome has been hekl in high reverence, even by those who wouki demur to some of his opinions, that this eminent Father woukI sink into contempt even though assaikd by one who was thoroughly conversant with his weakest points. But when the attack is so made as to shew the weak points of the assailant him- self, the effect becomes rather ludicrous than serious. It seems a pity for the reputation of the Essayist that when he selects a few crowning absurdities, as he imagines, from the whole works of this Father, he should flounder at every step in a manner which almost excites our compassion. One feels something like compassion for a man, who with the pages of an eminent expositor of Scripture before him, indulges in the littleness of picking out a single specimen of what appear to him to be absurdities, and then pro- duces it in a manner which evidently shews either that his acquaintance with the author is very slight, or that he is unwilling his readers should know any- thing more than the bare assertion which, quoted by itself, sounds strange to our ears. Dr. Williams, after telling us that to estimate rightly Bunsen's services in exhibiting the Hebrew prophets as witnesses to the divine government would require from most English- men years of study, proceeds thus : —
" Accustomed to be told [i. e. the English] that modern history is expressed by the Prophets in a riddle, which re- quires only a key to it, they are disappointed to hear of moral lessons, however important. Such notions are the inheritance of days when Justin could argue, in good faith, that by the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria were intended the Magi and their gifts, and that the King of Assyria sig- nified King Herod ; (!) or when Jerome could say, ' No one
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 89
doubts that by ClialdiEans are meant Demons,' and the Sliu- nammite Abishag '^ could be no other than heavenly wisdom, for the honour of David's old age ; not to mention such things as Lot's daughters symbolizing the Jewish and Gen- tile Churches."— (pp. 63, 64,)
For this attack upon Jerome we have the authority quoted in a note. The authority is thus stated, p. 64:—
" On Isaiah xliii. 14, 15, and again on ch. xlviii. 12 — 16. He also shews on xlviii. 22 that the Jews of that day had not lost the historical sense of their prophecies, though mystical renderings had already shewn themselves."
In another note, p. 65^ we have the following re- mark : —
" "When Jerome Origenises he is worse than Origen, be- cause he does not, like that great genius, distinguish the historical from the mystical sense."
These are very hard words ; but the Fathers have had the vials of wrath showered down upon them so often that an ounce or two, more or less, of the virtuous indignation of the nineteenth century at their shortcomings, can make but little difference. But when the nineteenth century begins to depreciate the fourth and fifth centuries in theology, it would be well that the matter should be stated C[uite fau'ly. It will be of no avail for Dr. Williams to state, as he did in reply to an anonymous critic, that he speaks " in a style abundantly clear, though with rapid conden- sation," &c., for in the present instance he selects his own point of attack, and if he quotes any statement of an author, he is bound to quote it with sufficient detail to place his reader in possession of the whole case.
1 This is not worth answering. It occurs in a private letter to Nepotianus, and is simply a case of etymological trifling.
90 BUXSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
I have no means of testing the familiarity of Dr. Williams with the works of Jerome ; and as he bears the reputation of a learned and candid man, I should wish to belieye that he is not quoting from a random plunge or two into the depths of that Father's Com- mentary, although I can scarcely imagine that any candid man would endeavour from such a passage to create so unfavourable an impression of this eminent commentator, if he really knew much about him ! Throughout these valuable remains of ancient exegesis, Jerome compares the Hebrew text and that of the LXX, and points out the difference of the inter- pretations to which they naturally lead. He occa- sionally gives his opinion on other interpretations, and gives his reasons for rejecting or accepting them. Often two different interpretations are found in the commentary on the same passage, and the sagacity of the reader must be exercised in judging between them. "While he gives one of these interpretations, he uses the language which fits that interpretation, whether it expresses his own sentiments or not. What are we therefore to think of the fairness of a person who picks out and isolates a single sentence from the middle of a mystical interpretation, and then presents it to his readers as a specimen of the exegesis of Jerome ? If he only meant that the simple fact that such a statement could ever enter into any mystical interpretation at all, is a proof that exegesis was at a very low ebb, and that Jerome was not much above his contemporaries, then his proof would be worth nothing, and he would only exhibit ^ro tanto his o^ti incompetence to measui'e the intellectual power of the age. If he meant to exhibit this as an average speci- men of Jerome's powers, then such a proceeding needs
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 91
only the simple detail wliich I have given to shew its unfairness. It would be unfair to take it as a specimen if it were shewn to be Jerome's own opinion and enounced generally. But when it is shewn to be a part of a great interpretation, which is immediately followed by the words "But the sense according to the LXX is entirely different," what shall we say of such a quotation? And that too on the supposition that Dr. Williams has given a true interpretation of the words he has quoted? Any competent Hebrew and Latin scholar, on reading these words, '' De Chal- dseis nullus ambigit quin Diiemones sonent," would be directed by the words Chaldcei and sonent to a 2^aro- nomasia or play on words between the Hebrew name for the ChaldcEans and the word for Demons". If he looked for Jerome's own interpretation of the word among his Hebrew words, there he would find that the Hebrew word for Chaldees is rendered by Jerome, "Chasdim, quasi Daemonia, vel quasi ubera, vel fe- roces." So that after all this contempt of Jerome, it appears that he is only enouncing, in connection with a particular interpretation of a certain passage, an etymological fact, not an exegetical principle. The unlearned would understand from the account in the Essay that Jerome meant to lay down as a rule of interpretation, that wherever Chaldeans are men- tioned. Demons are intended, whereas all that Jerome does say is this, viz., that the Hebrew text lends itself to a mystical interpretation, by which Babylon is represented as the world, and there is no doubt that the word Chasdim may be interpreted ' Dcemones,' cty-
' C''12'3, Cliasdim, or CJiashdim. Xow this is, otherwise pointed, equivalent to "like Demons," the word D^m? occurring for Demons in the Pentateuch.
92 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
mologically speaking. He immediately adds tliat the sense is entirely different according to the LXX. I invite all those who have the requisite acquirements to study this portion of Jerome, and to test the ac- count which I have given of his meaning with the utmost severity. I now ask, if this account be true, can any reader trust the author of this Essay for a faithful portrait of one of the Fathers ' ? But this is by no means all the retribution due from the author of the Essay to the memory of this eminent Father. So far from being anxious to interpret Scripture thus mystically, and to make out the Chaldeans to be Demons, Jerome actually reproves Origen for this very fault on more occasion than one.
Any person who desires to judge more fairly of Jerome, after this paltry attack of Dr. Williams, may consult, among other passages, his commentary on Isaiah xiii., with its preface*. He will there see how carefully he rejects the spiritual interpretation of Eusebius, who was not a person commonly run away with by his imagination, and cleaves to the simple historical view of the passage, and how he repudiates the allegorizing spirit of Origen. Or, again, let him turn to Jer. xxv., where he will find the judgment of Jerome on the allegorical interpretation of Ori- gen : " The allegorical interpreter" (i.e. Origen) '' here
' I must not be misunderstood, however. I quite acknowledge that this etymology is farfetched, and that this is an unsound mode of interpretation. But to charge Jerome with flagrant ab- surdity for a single expression like this is simply ridiculous and unworthy.
' There can be no doubt that Jerome's translation is faulty here. □>^>^^ cannot be in the nominative, but is in the genitive after " the doors," " the doors of the princes," but this makes no difference as to the general sobriety of his interpretation of this passage.
AND DR. WILLIAMS.
93
talks nonsense, and puts force upon the historical interpretation." Indeed, he seems to think the mere statement of such an opinion here a sufficient re- futation. Let him turn again to Jeremiah xxvii., where he finds these words : '' The allegorical inter- preter" (i.e. Origen) "interprets this passage about the heavenly Jerusalem, because the inhabitants of that city are to descend into Babylon, that is, the confusion of this world, which is in the wicked one, and to serve the king of Babylon, that is without doubt the devil." This is his account of Origen's interpretation, and the reader will remark that he makes here the king of Babylon the devil; but he immediately adds, " But tve follow the simple and true history, that we may not be involved in clouds and delusions."
Surely no reader will require further proof that, if he desires to estimate the character of Jerome fairly, he must go to some other source than Dr. Williams. If Dr. Williams really knows much about Jerome, — a question I do not presume to answer, although I may have formed an opinion upon it, — it is quite clear that he does not intend his readers to benefit by his knowledge. He 7naij be capable of giving them a just notion of this Father, but he is quite determined to thrust upon them an unjust view, and depreciate Jerome in order to libel modern writers who differ from the rationalists.
The specimens already adduced of the method of this author in dealing with general questions, such as the interpretation of prophecy and the character of great patristic authorities, are sufiicient to shew that no confidence whatever can be placed in his state- ments. But perhaps it may be thought that he is
94 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
more happy in his exegesis or explanation of particu- lar passages of Scripture. Dr. Williams has ventured, fortunately for us, and as we deem unfortunately for himself, to give us his opinion on certain difficult passages of Holy Writ. If he had not ventured on this experiment he might have maintained the repu- tation of being a very competent Hebrew scholar; but if in the opinions he delivers he shews a thorough want of appreciation of the nature of the passages he brings forward, he must be content to sink down into the common herd of authors, who write on what they do not take pains enough to understand.
Whether this is the case with Dr. Williams will appear from the following statement.
All Hebrew scholars are well aware that some diver- sity of opinion has existed, especially in Germany, as to the interpretation of that portion of the prophecy of Jacob in Gen. xlix. which relates to Judah and Shiloh. The English reader who is not acquainted with Hebrew and German is, of course, unable to refute any mis- representation of the state of the question, and if Dr. Williams writes for them, he is bound to state it fairly. If he writes for the learned I need scarcely say that they will only smile at the presumption of a scholar who, in regard to a passage on which there has been a division of opinion, considers himself qua- lified to overturn the decision of the best authorities and the tradition of more than two thousand years, and to declare that except for doctrinal perversions this view would never be maintained. Let us now examine the passage and the authorities for the two divergent views.
The words as translated in our version are, " The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 95
from between his feet, until Shiloli come." And such has been the translation from the earliest days till within a comparatively modern period, when the last clause has been translated by some Hebrew scholars, " until he come to Shiloh."
If we enquire into the support on which these two translations respectively rest, we shall find that there was till within the last two centuries an almost ^ ima- nimous concurrence in the translation given by our version, as far as the subject of the verb " to come" is concerned. It was almost universally translated "until Shiloh come," although some understood by Shiloh "He to whom it belongs," and others under- stood ' rest' or ' peace' as a name of the Messiah. It is one of those prophecies which might seem to press hardly upon the Jews after the utter dispersion of theii- nation; but all their writers, as quoted in the Pugio Fidei, maintain the old interpretation which their Targums put upon the passage, " until Messias comes." A few modern commentators, as well as Gesenius and other rationalists, have however trans- lated the passage "until he comes to Shiloh," and this translation Baron Bunsen has accepted. And of this his reviewer remarks : —
" The famous Shiloh (Gen. xHx. 10) is taken in its local sense, as the sanctuary where the young Samuel was trained ;
° I find a statement in Eeinke's Die Weissagiing Jacobs, Sfc, p. 124, which leads me to suppose that Eabbi Lipmann supported this view, but I am unable to ascertain that he understood the town Shiloh under this word. His view is given in his poem as pub- lished in Wagenseil's Tela Ignea Satance, pp. 113, 114, and an- swered pp. 264—328. In the NizzacJion Vetus, in the same volume, there is another attack on the Christian interpretation, p. 27.
96 EUXSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
which, if doctrinal perversions did not interfere, hardly any one would doubt to be the true sense," — (p. 62.)
The Jews, against whom our interpretation presses Tery severely, have had every motive for adopting the new view, yet we see they adhere to the old. Let us then look at the teacher of Gesenius, I. S. Vater, a man entirely free fi'om any bigoted prepossessions in favour of theological tenets. After enumerating the different views, and giving that in which Shiloh is taken for the sanctuary a very complete examination, he adds, —
"All this would be very suitable under the supposition that this song was sung at a time in which Shiloh was the centre of the theocracy The possibility of such a sup- position cannot be denied. Nor can the possibility also that it was sung under the influence of a deep feeling of the pre- eminence of the tribe of Judah in David and his race of kings," &c. — [Commentary, vol. i. p. 321.)
Such is the language of a very calm rationalist com- mentator, and yet Dr. Williams quietly tells us that nobody would maintain our translation except from " doctrinal perversions." But in fact, the new trans- lation, though patronized by Dr. Williams, really en- tails a series of difficulties, which nothing but very strong '' perversions," whether doctrinal or not, could enable a competent scholar to overlook. What era did the fixing of the tabernacle at Shiloh commence ? What historical importance, except in the religious histoiy of the people, does it possess ? And could the tribe of Judah be said then to exercise any pre- eminence when the leader of the people of Israel was Joshua of the tribe of Ephraim ^ ? If this song,
^ It has been well observed that in the time of the Judges, 0th- niel alone was certainly of the tribe of Judah. Ebzon is doubtful.
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 97
as Yater disrespectfully calls it, was forged in the time of Samuel, what a very clumsy forger its au- thor must have been ! The man who swallows this camel may well strain out the few gnats which he finds in the Authorized Version. If Dr. Williams desires to maintain his reputation as a Biblical scholar, he will avoid assertions by which nothing can be proved, except that he has a very arrogant mode of attributing bad motives to those who differ from him, even when it is almost demonstrable that he is in the wrong. All that can be said is, that in a passage of some difficulty. Dr. Williams has taken the side which has not only an overwhelming weight of authority against it, but has very little in its favour, and, not content with this, he denounces all who differ from him, very much in the style of a person who is wholly ignorant of the strength of the case of his opponents ^,
Such is the impression which this first essay of Dr. ■Williams in Ilebrew criticism in the present Eeview is calculated to make on those who have any compe- tent knowledge of the original passage.
But we have several other passages despatched in almost as summary a manner, and with about as much regard to the real circumstances of the case. Take for example his view of the second Psalm, or rather one expression in it. Dr. Williams in describing the opinions of Bunsen on various prophetic announce- ments of Scripture, seems to take the position of one leading a poor English neophyte through these dan- gerous mazes in order to familiarize his mind with the
y Those who read German will find a good account of the different
opinions on this passage in Die Weissagung Jacohs, Sj-c, by Dr. L.
Reinke, (Munster, 1849,) pp. 58 — 129. The English reader will
also find much information in Ilcngstenberg s " Christology," vol. i.
II
98 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
notion that all Messianic interpretations have been given up and are untenable. He speaks thus of Bun- sen's views of Psalm ii. : —
" If he would follow our version in rendering the second Psalm, 'Kiss the Son,' he knows that Hebrew idiom con- vinced even Jerome the true meaning was 'worship purely.'"
In a note he quotes as much of Jerome as suits his purpose, thus : — "Cavillatur . , . quod posuerim, . . . Adorate pure . . . . ne violentus viderer interpres, et Jud. locum dar6m." IS'ow so far from Jerome's being convinced by the Hebrew idiom that this is the real meaning of the passage, he states clearly that one word is ambiguous, and although, to avoid calumnies from the Jews in regard to such an ambiguous word, he translates in the text Adorate pure^ he appears in his notes clearly to prefer the other translation, ' Kiss the Son.' Now could any unlearned reader dream that this was the state of Jerome's mind as to this passage from the bold assertion of the text of Dr. Williams and the very cautious dotted extract which he gives in his note ?
I here subjoin an exact translation of the whole passage : —
" He is also said to blame me, because in interpreting the second Psalm, instead of that which is read in the Latin, Apprehendite disciplinam, ' Learn instruction,' and which is written in the Hebrew, -13 pti73, nascu bar, 1 have said Adorate fiUum, ' "Worship the Son,' and then, again, in turning the whole Psalter into the Roman tongue, as if I had forgotten the former interpretation, I have put Adorate pure, which it would seem is a contradiction evident to all. And, indeed, we may pardon him for not being accurately acquainted with Hebrew, when he sometimes is in difficulty in Latin. \W1, nascu, — if we are to translate word for word — is equi- valent to Kara(j)L\y]a-aT€ = deosciilaminl, 'Kiss ye,' and being
AND DR. WILLIAMS. 99
unwilling to translate it baldly, I followed the sense rather [than the words] so as to translate it adorute, ' AVorship 3-e,' because they who worship are wont to kiss the hand and bow the head, which blessed Job declares that he had not done to the elements and to idols, saying, * If I have seen the sun when it shone, and the moon walking in brightness, and my heart in secret rejoiced, and I kissed my hand, which is a great sin, and a denial of the most high God ;' and the Hebrews, according to the idiom of their language, put deosculatio, ' kissing,' for vcneratio, ' worship.' I have trans- lated that which they, to whose language the word belongs, understand. But -!2, bar, with them has different meanings, for it means ' son,' as in Barjona, ' son of a dove ;' Bar- ptolomseus, 'son of Ptolomseus;' Barthimseus, &c. It means also ' wheat,' and a ' bundle of ears of wheat,' and ' elect ' and 'pure.' "What fault have I committed if I have trans- lated an ambiguous word in different ways ? In my Com- mentary, where there is an opportunity of discussing the matter, I had said Adorate filium, ' Worship the Son,' [but] in the text itseK, not to seem a violent interpreter and not to give occasion to Jewish calumny, I said Adorate pure sice electe, 'Worship purely or in a choice manner,' as Aquila and Symmachus had translated it." — Eieron. adv. Ruffinum, Hb. i.
The reader will observe how entirely Dr. Williams omits all reference to Jerome's views, as expressed in his notes ^ and how cunningly he cuts out the word calumny^ as applied to the Jewish objectors. Can the unlearned English reader trust such a guide as this ? I must also add that, although Ewald and Hupfeld, as one might expect, reject the Messianic view, De- litzsch, the last learned commentator on the Psalms, maintains it very strongly.
There is an amount of misrepresentation in these statements which entirely precludes any confidence in an account given by Dr. Williams, either of the
lOO BUXSEX, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
yiews of any wi'iter on a given passage or of the real state of the case in regard to that passage. In one of these instances he has not only pronounced ex ca- thedra^ as it -vrere, an opinion on the meaning of a prophecy against the weight of authority and the general bearing of the passage, but he has coupled the expression of his opinion with the attribution of bad motives to those who do not agree with him. In the other, he has told half the truth as to Jerome's opinion, but only half the truth, and he has shaped his quotation from that Father in such a manner as to conceal the fact that the rest of it altogether makes against him.
The same spirit of rash assertion marks his treat- ment of the Messianic passage in the 22nd Psalm, where it is very difficult to ascertain the genuine reading; but Dr. Williams would persuade the un- learned reader that the cause has been entirely settled, and that the evidence is all in his favour. So far is this from being the case, that it is one of those passages where learned men find it difficult to make up their mind what the true reading and inter- pretation are. My own belief is, that upon the whole the evidence preponderates for our rendering; but it is a point on which, from the evidence of the Old Testament MSS. alone, there are some difficulties, though the certainty, from the quotations in the New Testament, that other portions of this Psalm are Messianic, is a great argument in favour of the Messianic nature of this verse ^
' To examine this passage properly ^vould require several pages : it is a question both of reading and interpretation. Bp. Pearson considered this one of the passages confessedly altered by the Jews : but later researches have rather altered the conditions of the ques-
AND DR. WILLIAMS.
These are specimens of the manner in which the evidence for the Messianic interpretation of particular passages of Scripture is dealt with ; it will hardly be expected that an answer should be given to every- one, for this would need a volume. A single sen- tence conveys an objection the answer to which must, if complete, extend to several pages.
But we will now enter upon a larger field of inter- pretation. The Essayist has given us one interpreta- tion of a prophetic chapter. It is a chapter in the interpretation of which all our deeper feelings of Christianity are so intimately interwoven that a re- ligious man might be expected to approach it with reverence, and if the force of evidence compelled him to give up the old and Christian interpretation of that chapter, he would announce his change of view, if not with sadness, at least with gravity and sobriety. The last thing which a religious man would be expected to do with the 53rd chapter of Isaiah would be to play with its interpretation— as if it were a matter of utter indifference whether a vital prophecy were en- tirely irrelevant or not to the mission of the Ee- deemer of the world. We are not to be led by our preconceived notions, but at all events a religious heart might be expected to part with some of the most striking evidences of our faith with some regret. And truly, when the question concerns a prophecy
tion. I shall now only refer to De Rossi's " Collations," vol. iv. pp. 14—20 ; Pfeiffer, Buhia Vexata, pp. 305—309 ; Delitzsch and Hupfeld on the passage; Davidson's "Hebrew Text llevised," and Eeinke's MessianUche Psalmen, vol. i. p. 266, &c. Of these, all but Hupleld and Davidson either adopt the sense of ' piercing,' or consider the evidcuce nearly balauced. Eeinkc, as usual, is very full and valuable.
102 BUNSEN, THE CRITICAL SCHOOL,
wliich has almost invariably been held to be one of the most striking in the Bible, to which the New Testament sometimes in sublime silence gives a won- derful testimony "", the last thing we should expect would be very high praise of an ingenious interpre- tation, nay an elaborate exposition of it, where the author after all acknowledges that it does not per- suade him. Why then so elaborately display it ? and why add, that if any individual can be thought to fulfil the prophecy that individual would be judged to be Jeremiah, unless by a kind of insane crusade against the ordinary view of the passage the author wished to deprive the humble Christian of any possi- bility of using this passage as a prophecy of the Messiah? K'ow if either of these interpretations, — that which makes collective Israel the subject of the prophecy, as Dr. Williams appears to believe, or that which makes Jeremiah, as Bunsen maintains, — were proved to fulfil the prophecy in some sense, it would be no proof that it was not intended in a fuller and higher sense to describe the Messiah. But the truth is that if the prophecy be taken as a whole, there are insuperable objections to both these interpretations, which it suits