THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM.

1. _The Creed of Christendom; its Foundations and Superstructure._

By WILLIAM RATHBONE GREG. London: Chapman. 1851.

2. _St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians; an Attempt to convey

their Spirit and Significance._ By JOHN HAMILTON THOM. London:

Chapman. 1851.

These two books are placed together without the least intention to

intimate a resemblance between them, or to represent either author as

sharing in the conclusions of the other. They are, indeed, concerned

with opposite sides of the same subject; viewed, moreover, from the

separate stations of the layman and the divine; and are the expression

of strongly contrasted modes of thought. Mr. Greg deals principally

with the external vehicle of the primitive Christianity; Mr. Thom with

its internal essence. The one seeks in vain for any outward title in

the records to suppress the operations of natural reason; the other

clears away from the interior every interference with the free action

of conscience and affection. The one, in the name of science,

demolishes the outworks of ecclesiastical logic with which the shrine

of faith has been dangerously guarded: the other, in the name of

Christ, expels both priest and dogma from the sanctuary itself. The

one, selecting deep truths from the words of Jesus, would construct

religion into a philosophy; the other, with eye upon His person as an

image of perfect goodness, would develop it from a sentiment. As all

opposites, however, are embraced in the circumference of the same

circle, so are these works complements of each other. Mr. Greg, in

common with the Catholics and the Unitarians, evidently looks for the

strength of Christianity in the Gospels; Mr. Thom, with the majority

of Protestants, in the Epistles. For want of some mediating harmony

between the two, each perhaps requires some correction: the historical

picture of Christ saved by the former is but a pale and meagre

outline; while the Pauline ideal presented by the latter is a glow of

rich but undefined coloring. Mr. Greg, who, in spite of particular

errors, manifests a large knowledge and a masterly judgment in his

criticism of the Evangelists, appears to have, in his own sympathies,

no way of access to a mind like that of Paul, and to be much at fault

in estimating the place of the Apostle both as a witness and a power

in the organization of Christian tradition and doctrine. Had the

acuteness and severity of his understanding been a little more

qualified by such reflective depth and moral tenderness as Mr. Thom

brings to the work of interpretation, his religion, we fancy, would

have retained a less slender remnant of the primitive Christianity.

Measured by the standard of common Protestantism, there can be no

doubt that the second of these books would be condemned for heresy,

and the first for unbelief. These ugly words, however, have been too

often applied to what is fullest of truth and faith, to express more

than a departure, which weak men feel to be irritating, from a

favorite type of thought. They have lost their effect on all who are

competent to meditate on the great problems of religion, and are fast

taking their place in the scandalous vocabulary of professional

polemics. It is a thing offensive to _just_ men when divines, who have

succeeded in smothering, or been too dull to entertain, doubts which

rend the soul of genius and faithfulness, and insist on a veracious

answer, meet them, not with sympathy, still less with mastery, but

with the commonplaces of incompetent pity and holy malediction. And

the offence is doubled in the eyes of _instructed_ men, who know the

state to which Biblical criticism has brought the theology of the

Reformation. It is notorious that, in the revolt from Rome, the

Scriptures--like a dictator suddenly created for the perils of a

crisis--were forced into a position where it was impossible for them

permanently to repose; that they cannot be treated as infallible

oracles of either fact or doctrine, and were never meant to bear the

weight of such unnatural claims; that the authority once concentrated

in them, and held even _against_ the reason and conscience, must now

be distributed, and ask their concurrence. These are not questionable

positions, but so irresistibly established, that learning of the

highest order would no more listen to an argument against them, than

Herschel or Airy to a disquisition against the rotation of the earth.

When a clergyman, therefore, treats them with horror, and denounces

them as infidelity, he produces no conviction, except that he himself

is either ill-informed or insincere. Professional reproaches against a

book so manly and modest, so evidently truth-loving, so high-minded

and devout, as this of Mr. Greg's, are but a melancholy imbecility. We

may hold to many things which he resigns; we may think him wrong in

the date of a Gospel or the construction of a miracle; we may even

dissent from his estimate of the grounds of immortal hope and the ways

of eternal Providence: but we do not envy, and cannot understand, the

religion which can feel no thankful communion with thought so

elevated, and trust so sound and real. No candid reader of the "Creed

of Christendom" can close the book without the secret acknowledgment

that it is a model of honest investigation and clear exposition; that

it is conceived in the true spirit of serious and faithful research;

and that whatever the author wants of being an ecclesiastical

Christian is plainly not essential to the noble guidance of life, and

the devout earnestness of the affections.

It is highly honorable to an English layman, amid the pressure of

affairs, to take up a class of critical inquiries, which the clergy seem

to have abandoned for a narrower and more passionate polemic. It is a

remarkable characteristic of the present age, that, when the most

startling attacks are made upon the very foundations of existing

churches, nobody repels them. Nothing is offered to break their effect,

except the inertia of the mass that rests upon the base assailed. For

every great sceptical work of the last century there was some score of

reputable answers; but half a dozen books of the same tendency have

appeared within a few years, all of which have been copiously reviewed,

have spread excitement over a wide surface, and set an immense amount of

theological hair on end, but not one of which has received any adequate

reply. Yet the slightest of these productions would favorably compare,

in all the requisites for successful persuasion,--in learning, in

temper, in acuteness,--with the best of the last age, excepting only the

philosophical disquisitions of Hume and the ecclesiastical chapters of

Gibbon. The first in time,--Hennell's "Inquiry into the Origin of

Christianity,"--though the most open to refutation, was permitted to

pass through an unmolested existence; and its influence, considerable in

itself, and increased by the sweet and truthful character of the author,

is still traceable in the pages of Mr. Greg. To the effect of Strauss's

extraordinary work, the good Neander's _Leben Jesu_ offers but a mild

resistance, and is itself, through the extent of its concessions, an

open proclamation that the problems of theology can never be restored to

the state in which all churches assume them to be. Parker was

excommunicated by his sect; but his "Discourse of Matters pertaining to

Religion" has walked the course unchallenged, and displayed the splendor

of its gifts, within the entire lines of the English language. Newman,

Foxton, and Greg have since entered their names on the _index

expurgatorius_ of Orthodoxy; but they also will be simply excluded from

the sacred circle of readers bound over not to think; and, beyond this,

will make their converts undisturbed, and accumulate fresh charges of

threatening power in the intellectual atmosphere which surrounds the

Church. Whence this pusillanimous apathy? Is it forgotten that creeds

always assailed and never defended are sure to perish? Or is it felt

that the defence, to be sound and strong, must be so partial--so limited

to points of detail--as to promise a mere diversion, instead of a

repulse, and be more dangerous than the attitude of passiveness? Or does

the Church resignedly give up her hold on the class of earnest,

intellectual men who cannot degrade religion into a second-hand

tradition, but must "know what they worship"? Certain it is that her

whole activity has long abandoned this class, and addressed itself

exclusively to the narrower and lower order of mind, whose vision is

bounded by the periphery of a given creed, and whose life is satisfied

with the squabbles and the gossip of articles forced into neighborhood,

but no longer on speaking terms. If the efficacy of "holy orders" is

called in question, streams of sacerdotal refutation flow from the

press; but if the inspiration of the twelve Apostles is denied, it is a

thing that neither bishop nor priest will care to vindicate. If a word

of mistake is uttered about the drops of water on the face of a baptized

baby, it conjures up a storm that rolls from diocese to diocese; but if

you say that pure religion has no rite or sacrament at all, the

ecclesiastic atmosphere remains still as a Quaker's silent meeting. The

deepest interest is felt about the origin of liturgies, and the history

of articles, but nobody heeds the most staggering evidence that three of

the Gospels are second-hand aggregations of hearsay reports, and the

fourth of questionable authenticity. You deny the self-consistency of

the Church of England and call it a compromise; and the sudden rustle of

gowns and sleeves proclaims a great sensation. You analyze the accounts

of Christ's resurrection; you ask whether they are not discrepant; you

point out that, apparently, the oldest record (Mark's) contained, in its

original form, no account of the event at all, and that the others bear

seeming traces of distinct and incompatible traditions. You cry aloud

for help in this perplexity, and hold yourselves ready to follow any

vestiges of truth; and, except that the creeds are still muttered every

Sunday, all the oracles are dumb. If you want to find the true magic

pass into heaven, scores of rival professors press round you with

obtrusive supply: if you ask in your sorrow, Who can tell me whether

there be a heaven at all? every soul will keep aloof and leave you

alone. All men that bring from God a fresh, deep nature, all in whom

religious wants live with eager power, and who yet are too clear of soul

to unthink a thought and falsify a truth, receive in these days no help

and no response. The Church feels its interest, as an _educated_

corporation, to consist in overlaying and covering up the foundations of

faith with huge piles of curious learning, history, and art, which, by

affording endless occupation, may detain men from search after the

living rock, or notice of the undermining flood. And, as an

_established_ corporation, she relies on the lazy conservatism of mental

possession; on the dislike felt by the comfortable classes towards the

trouble of thought and the disturbance of feeling, and their usual

willingness to hand over these operations to the prayer-book and the

priest. We are grateful to Mr. Greg for shaking this ignoble and

precarious reliance, which he notices in these admirable sentences.

"A more genuine and important objection to the consequences of our

views is felt by indolent minds on their own account. They shrink from

the toil of working out truth for themselves out of the materials

which Providence has placed before them. They long for the precious

metal, but loathe the rude ore out of which it has to be extricated by

the laborious alchemy of thought. A ready-made creed is the paradise

of their lazy dreams. A string of authoritative, dogmatic propositions

comprises the whole mental wealth which they desire. The volume of

nature--the volume of history--the volume of life--appall and terrify

them. Such men are the materials out of whom good catholics of all

sects are made. They form the uninquiring and submissive flocks which

rejoice the hearts of all priesthoods. Let such cling to the faith of

their forefathers, if they can. But men whose minds are cast in a

nobler mould, and are instinct with a diviner life,--who love truth

more than rest, and the peace of Heaven rather than the peace of

Eden,--to whom 'a loftier being brings severer cares,'--

'Who know man does not live by joy alone,

But by the presence of the power of God,'--

such must cast behind them the hope of any repose or tranquillity,

save that which is the last reward of long agonies of thought; they

must relinquish all prospect of any heaven, save that of which

tribulation is the avenue and portal; they must gird up their loins

and trim their lamp for a work which cannot be put by, and which must

not be negligently done. 'He,' says Zschokke, 'who does not like

living in the _furnished lodgings of tradition_, must build his own

house, his own system of thought and faith for himself.'"--p. 242.

The work of Mr. Greg derives its interest, not from anything in it

that will be new to the studious theologian, but from the freshness

and force with which it presents the results of the author's reading

and reflection on both the claims and the contents of Scripture.

Adopting the ordinary notion of "inspiration," as equivalent to a

supernaturally provided "infallibility," he reviews and condemns the

reasonings by which this attribute has been associated with the Bible;

and decides that the mere discovery of a statement in the Scriptures

is no sufficient reason for our implicit reception of it. Having

cleared away this obstacle to all intelligent criticism, he pursues

his way, chiefly under the guidance of De Wette, through the earlier

literature of the Hebrews; and adds another to the many exposures of

the humiliating attempts, on the part of English divines, to reconcile

the cosmogony of Genesis with modern science; attempts which we should

call obsolete, did we not remember that Buckland and Whewell are both

living, and have not yet attained the episcopal bench. Mr. Greg adopts

the views of which Baur is the best known recent expositor, but which

Lessing long ago traced out, as to the gradual formation of the Hebrew

monotheism; and shows the striking contrast between the family Jehovah

of the Patriarchs and the universal God of the later Prophets.

Whatever be the origin of the doctrine of a Messiah, and under

whatever varieties it appeared, it never pointed, the author

conceives, to such a person as Jesus of Nazareth, or such a product as

the Christian Church; and it is only by perverse interpretations,

unendurable out of the field of theology, that any passages in the Old

Testament can be made out to prefigure the events in the New. In the

argument, therefore, between the early missionaries of the Gospel and

the unconvinced Jews, Mr. Greg maintains that the latter were the more

faithful to their sacred books. The phenomena of the first three

Gospels are next examined sufficiently to explain the several

hypotheses respecting the order and materials of their composition.

The author rests on Schleiermacher's conclusion, that a number of

fragmentary records of incident and discourse formed the groundwork,

partly common, partly exclusive, of the triple Evangile. He thus

removes us, in this portion of the Scriptures, from first-hand

testimony altogether; and throws upon internal criticism the task of

discriminating between the original and reliable elements on the one

hand, and those on the other which did not escape the accidents of

floating tradition and the coloring of later ideas. This delicate task

the author attempts; and manifests throughout an acquaintance with the

methods and models of the higher criticism, fully qualifying him to

form the independent judgment which he sums up in these words:--

"In conclusion, then, it appears certain that in all the synoptical

Gospels we have events related that did not really occur, and words

ascribed to Jesus which Jesus did not utter; and that many of these

words and events are of great significance. In the great majority of

these instances, however, this incorrectness does not imply any want

of honesty on the part of the Evangelists, but merely indicates that

they adopted and embodied, without much scrutiny or critical acumen,

whatever probable and honorable narratives they found current in the

Christian community."--p. 137.

The peculiarities of the fourth Gospel are next dealt with: its apparent

polemic reference to the gnosis of the first and second centuries; its

absence of demoniacs and parables; the length, the mysticism, the dogma

of its discourses, and their uniformity of complexion with the

historian's own narrative and reflections; the narrowness of its

charity, and the apocryphal appearance of its "first miracle." Without

questioning the probability that within the contents of this Gospel is

secreted a nucleus of facts, Mr. Greg thinks the book so clearly imbued

throughout with the writer's idiosyncrasy, as to be inferior in

historical value to the Synoptics; and the discourses of Jesus, in

particular, must be regarded as free compositions by the Evangelist. In

our author's management of this subject there seems to us to be an

unfavorable change. The style of thought peculiar to John, as well as

that characteristic of Paul, lies out of the latitude native to him; and

with every intention to be just in his appreciation, he fails, we think,

to reach the point of sympathy from which the fourth Gospel should be

judged. The realism of his mind makes him a better critic of the hard

Judaical element of the Christian Scriptures, with its objective

distinctness and its moral beauty, than of the more ideal Gentile

ingredients, where a subjective dialectic traces forms of thought in the

intense fires of spiritual consciousness.

In a separate discussion of the question of miracles they are restored

to the subordinate position, as compared with moral evidence, assigned

to them by the early Protestant divines. Adopting the position of

Locke, that "the miracles are to be judged by the doctrines, and not

the doctrines by the miracles," he can admit with the less pain his

conviction, that, even in the instance of the resurrection of Jesus,

the historical evidence is too conflicting and uncertain to bear the

supernatural weight imposed upon it. He admits, indeed, that Jesus

_may_ have risen from the dead; the Apostles manifestly believed it;

and that the marked change in their character and conduct, from

despair to triumph, affords the strongest evidence of the sustaining

energy of this belief. But, in our ignorance of the grounds of this

belief, (the Gospels and book of Acts containing no correct or

first-hand report of the facts,) it is impossible, he conceives, to

form any rational estimate of their adequacy. In Mr. Greg's decision

on this important point, we see the effect of his entrance on the

problem of Christianity from the historical end. If, instead of

addressing himself first to the Gospels which lie most remote from the

source of the religion, and represent the latest and most constituted

form of the primitive tradition, he had begun with the earliest

remains of Christian literature, and traced the doctrine of the

resurrection from the Epistles of Paul into the story of the

Evangelists, we think he would have arrived at a different conclusion.

In dismissing the testimony of Paul as "of little weight," he throws

away the main evidence of the whole case. We can understand the critic

who, having put the miraculous entirely aside, as logically

inadmissible, makes light of the Pauline statements on this matter,

and appeals to their writer's openness to impressions of the

supernatural in proof of a certain vitiating unsoundness of mind. But

one who, like our author, regards this _à priori_ incredulity as an

unphilosophical prejudice, and upon whose list of real causes, never

precluded from possible action, supernatural power finds a place,

cannot consistently condemn another for believing in concrete

instances what he himself allows in the general; and put the Apostle

out of court, on the plea that we have no evidence but _his assertion_

of his intercourse with the risen Christ. Is not _his assertion_ the

only evidence possible of a subjective miracle? and is there any

ground for restricting supernatural agency to an objective direction?

No doubt, facts presented to external perception have the advantage of

being open to more witnesses than one; and if it be deliberately laid

down as a canon, that in no case can any anomalous event be admitted

on one man's declaration, we allow the consistency of refusing a

hearing to the Apostle. But such a rule would only be an example of

the futility of all attempts to reduce moral evidence to mathematical

expression. Facts of the most extraordinary nature have always been,

and will always be, received on solitary attestation; and if so, it

makes no logical difference whether they be called "objective," or

"subjective." A man has faculties for apprehending what passes within

him, as well as what passes without; nor do we know any ground for

trusting the latter which does not hold equally good for the former.

If it be said that the reporter of a miracle not only announces what

he sees or feels,--which we may accept on his veracity,--but proclaims

its supernatural source,--which we may repudiate from distrust of his

judgment,--the remark is perfectly just, only that it applies alike to

_all_ testimony, and not exclusively to miraculous reports. Our

disposition to receive the evidence of a witness assumed to be

veracious, depends on our having the same preconceptions of causation

with himself. In the ordinary affairs of life, this common ground is

sure to exist, and therefore remains a mere latent condition of

belief. But the slowness to admit a miracle arises from the failure of

this common ground; and if the hearer reserved in the background of

his mind, and in equal readiness for action, the same supernatural

power to which the witness's assertion refers, he would feel no more

temptation to incredulity than in listening to some matter of course.

The reluctance to believe, is proof that his store of causation is

limited to the natural sphere; and every phenomenon irreducible to

this drops away from all hold upon his mind. As there is no such thing

as a fact perceived without a judgment formed, so is there no belief

in the attestation of a fact without reliance on the soundness of a

judgment; and that reliance depends on the hearer having the same list

of causes in his mind as the witness. If, then, Mr. Greg holds, with

Paul, that the power exists whence a subjective miracle might issue,

and if from the nature of the case such miracle must remain a matter

of personal consciousness, why reject the Apostle's report of his

experience? In choosing from among the causes which both parties

admit, it cannot be denied that Paul alights upon that which, _if

there_, gives the easiest and most certain explanation; and to find a

satisfactory origin for his impressions and conduct in natural

agencies is so difficult, that critics would never attempt it, but to

escape the acknowledgment of miracle. On his own principles we do not

see how our author could excuse himself to the Apostle for rejecting

his testimony; which does but communicate, in the only conceivable

way, that which is allowed to be possible enough, and which best

clears up the mystery of an astonishing revolution in personal

character, and in the convictions of an earnest and powerful mind.

The whole question of miracles, however, loses its anxious importance

with those who, like our author, would still, amid their constant

occurrence, look to other sources for the credentials of moral and

religious truth. If anything is positively and incontrovertibly known

respecting the Apostles,--and in proportion as we trust the synoptical

Gospels must we allow Mr. Greg to extend the remark to their

Master,--it is this: that whatever powers they exercised, and whatever

communications they received, were inadequate to preserve them from

serious error; and from delivering to the world, as a substantive part

of their message, a most solemn expectation which was not to be

fulfilled. This fact, no longer denied by any reputable theologian,

alone shows that, even in the presence of the highest Christian

authority, the natural criteria of reason and conscience cannot be

dispensed with. In the application of these to the teachings and life

of Christ, our author finds, if not any truths of supernatural

dictation, at least the highest object of veneration and affection yet

given to this world.

"Now on this subject," he says, "we hope our confession of faith will

be acceptable to all save the narrowly orthodox. It is difficult,

without exhausting superlatives, even to unexpressive and wearisome

satiety, to do justice to our intense love, reverence, and admiration

for the character and teachings of Jesus. We regard him, not as the

perfection of the intellectual or philosophic mind, but as the

perfection of the spiritual character,--as surpassing all men of all

times in the closeness and depth of his communion with the Father. In

reading his sayings, we feel that we are holding converse with the

wisest, purest, noblest Being that ever clothed thought in the poor

language of humanity. In studying his life, we feel that we are

following the footsteps of the highest ideal yet presented to us upon

earth. 'Blessed be God that so much manliness has been lived out, and

stands there yet, a lasting monument to mark how high the tides of

divine life have risen in the world of man!'"--p. 227.

We differ altogether from our author in his notion of inspiration, and

his reduction of Christianity within the limits of human resource. But

we must say, that while there is such an estimate as this of what

Jesus Christ _was_, it is a matter of subordinate moment what is

thought about the mode in which he _became so_.

By a process of "Christian Eclecticism," Mr. Greg draws forth from the

Gospels the elements which he regards as characteristic of the

religion of Jesus; distinguishing those which make it the purest of

faiths from others which appear to him irreconcilable with a just

philosophy. The doctrine of a future life is reserved for a separate

discussion; the general result of which we know not how to describe,

otherwise than by saying that the author discards all the evidence and

yet retains the conclusion. All the arguments, metaphysical and moral,

for human immortality, he condemns as absolutely worthless; he

confesses that he has no new ones to propose; he affirms that all

appearances, without exception, proclaim the permanence of death, the

absence of any spiritual essence in man, and the absolute sway of the

laws of organization; yet, on the report of that very "soul" within

him, whose existence nature disowns, he holds the doctrine of a future

existence by the irresistible tenure of a first truth. We do not

wonder that the rigor with which Mr. Greg has pushed his principles

through other subjects of thought should relent at this point, and

refuse to cast the sublimest of human hopes over the brink of

darkness. We respect, as a holy abstinence, his refusal to silence the

pleadings of the inner voice. But we admire his faith more than his

philosophy; and are astonished that he does not suspect the soundness

of a scientific method which lands him in results he cannot hold. No

scepticism is so fatal,--for none has so wide a sweep,--as that which

despairs of the self-reconciliation of human nature; which flings

among our faculties the reproach of irretrievable contradiction; which

sets up first truths against deductions, conscience against science,

faith against logic. Ever since Kant balanced his Antinomies, and

employed the gravitation of _Practical_ reason to turn the irresolute

scales of the _Speculative_, this unwholesome practice has been

spreading, of assuming an ultimate discordance between co-existing

powers of the mind. In the language of rhetoric or poetry, in the

discussion of popular notions on morals and religion, it would be

hypercritical to complain of the antitheses of understanding and

feeling,--sense and soul. But to an exact thinker it must be apparent

that an ambidextrous intellect is no intellect at all; and that, were

this all our endowment, the life of the wisest would be but a chase

after mocking shadows of thought. The following words of our author,

with all their tranquil appearance, describe a state of things which,

were it real, might well strike us with dismay:--

"There are three points especially of religious belief, regarding

which intuition (or instinct) and logic are at variance,--the efficacy

of prayer, man's free-will, and a future existence. If believed, they

must be believed, the last without the countenance, the two former in

spite of the hostility of logic."--p. 303.

This is absolute Pyrrhonism, and though said in the interest of

religion, is subversive alike of knowledge and of faith. The pretended

"logic" can be good for very little, which comes out with so suicidal an

achievement as the _disproof of first truths_. The condition under which

alone logic can exist as a science is the unity in the human mind of the

laws of belief,--a condition which would be violated if any first truth

contradicted another in itself, or in its deductions. The moment,

therefore, such a contradiction turns up, a consistent thinker will

either regard it as a mere semblance, and proceed to re-examine his

premises, and test his reasoning; or he will treat it as real; and then

it throws contempt on logic altogether, and relegates it into

impossibility. In neither case can his reliance incline to the logical

side. Mr. Greg, however, sticks to his logic whenever, as in the two

cases mentioned in the foregoing extract, it loudly _negatives_ a point

of religious belief; and abandons it only where it restricts itself to

cold and dumb discouragement. A bolder distrust of _his_ logic, and a

firmer faith in the logic of nature, would perhaps have harmonized the

differing voices of the intellect and the soul, blending them in a faith

neither afraid to think nor ashamed to pray.

Had our author been as familiar with the Catholic and Arminian

divines, as with the literature of inductive science and Calvinistic

theology, he would have known that there is a philosophy from which

the religious intuitions encounter no repugnance; and would, at least,

have noticed its offer of mediation between Faith and Reason. He is,

however, entirely shut up within the formulas of a different school,

which press with their resistance on his religious feeling in every

direction, and produce a conflict which he can neither appease nor

terminate. With an intellect entirely overridden by the ideas of Law

and Necessity, no man can escape the force of the common objections to

any doctrine of prayer, or of forgiveness of sin; and if those ideas

possess universal validity, the very discussion of such doctrines is,

in the last degree, idle and absurd. But what if some mediæval

schoolman, or some impugner of the Baconian orthodoxy, were to suggest

that, though Law is coextensive with outward nature, Nature is not

coextensive with God, and that beyond the range where his agency is

bound by the pledge of predetermined rules lies an infinite margin,

where his spirit is free? And what if, in aggravation of his heresy,

he were to contend that Man also, as counterpart of God, belongs not

wholly to the realm of nature, but transcends it by a certain

endowment of free power in his spirit? Having made these assumptions,

on the ground that they were more agreeable to "intuitive" feeling,

and not less so to external evidence, than the one-sidedness of their

opposites, might he not suggest that room is now found for a doctrine

of prayer? Not that any event bespoken and planted in the sphere of

nature can be turned aside by the urgency of desire and devotion; not

that the slightest swerving is to be expected from the usages of

creation, or of the mind; wherever law is established--without us or

within us--there let it be absolute as the everlasting faithfulness.

But God has not spent himself wholly in the courses of custom, and

mortgaged his infinite resources to nature; nor has he closed up with

rules every avenue through which his fresh energy might find entrance

into life; but has left in the human soul a theatre whose scenery is

not all pre-arranged, and whose drama is ever open to new

developments. Between the free centre of the soul in man, and the free

margin of the activity of God, what hinders the existence of a real

and living communion, the interchange of look and answer, of thought

and counterthought? If, in response to human aspiration, a higher mood

is infused into the mind; if, in consolation of penitence or sorrow, a

gleam of gentle hope steals in; and if these should be themselves the

vivifying touch of divine sympathy and pity, what law is prejudiced?

what faith is broken? what province of nature has any title to

complain? And so, too, (might our mediæval friend continue,) with

respect to the doctrine of forgiveness. If men are under moral

obligation, and God is a being of moral perfection, he must regard

their unfaithfulness with disapproval. Of his sentiments, the clear

trace will be found in the various sufferings which constitute the

natural punishment of wrong. These are incorporated in the very

structure of the world and the constitution of life; and to

persistence in their infliction, the Supreme Ruler is committed by the

assurance of his constancy. They fasten on the guilty a chain which no

pardon will strike off, but which he will drag till it is worn away.

_Not all_ the divine sentiment, however, is embodied in the physical

consequences. Besides this determinate expression of his thought,

written out on the finite world, there is an unexpressed element

remaining behind, in his infinite nature: on the visible side of the

veil is the suggestive manifestation; on the invisible, is the very

affection manifested. There is a personal alienation, a forfeiture of

approach and sympathy, which would survive though creation were to

perish and carry its punishments away; and would still cast its black

shadow into empty space. This reserved sentiment, and this alone, is

affected by repentance. But it is no small thing for the heart of

shame to know this. The estrangement lasts no longer than the guilty

temper and the unsoftened conscience; and when, through its sorrow,

the mind is clear and pure, the sunshine of divine affection will

burst it again. In this the free Spirit of God is different from his

bound action in nature. Long after he himself has forgiven and

embraced again, necessity--the creature of his legislation--will

continue to wield the lash, and measure out with no relenting the

remainder of the penalty incurred; and he that yet drags his burden

and visibly limps upon his sin, may all the while have a heart at rest

with God. And thus is retribution--the reaping as we have sown--in no

contradiction with forgiveness,--the personal restoration.

How far such modes of thought as these would help to reconcile the

conflicting claims,--and how they would stand related to Mr. Greg's

terrible friend, "Logic," we do not pretend to decide. We refer to

them only as possible means of escaping--at least of postponing--his

desolating doctrine, that intuitions may tell lies; and in support of

our statement, that his theoretic view lies entirely within the circle

of a particular school,--a school, moreover, so little able to satisfy

his aspirations, that he is obliged to patch up a compromise between

his nature and his culture. The curious amalgamation which has taken

place in England, of the metaphysics of Calvin with the physics of

Bacon, has produced, in a large class, a philosophical tendency, with

which the distinctive sentiments of Christianity very uneasily

combine. The effacing of all lines separating the natural and moral,

the limitation of God to the realm of nature, and the subjugation of

all things to predestination, are among the chief features of this

tendency, and the chief obstacles to any concurrence between the

intellectual and the spiritual religion of the age.

If some of the elements in the early Christianity are too hastily

cancelled by our author, there is one sentiment whose inapplicability

to the present day he exposes with an irresistible force;--that

depreciating estimate of life which, however natural to Apostles

"impressed with the conviction that the world was falling to pieces,"

is wholly misplaced among those for whose office and work this earthly

scene is the appointed place. The exhortations of the Apostles,

"granting the premises, were natural and wise."

"But for divines in this day--when the profession of Christianity is

attended with no peril, when its practice, even, demands no sacrifice,

save that preference of duty to enjoyment which is the first law of

cultivated humanity--to repeat the language, profess the feelings,

inculcate the notions, of men who lived in daily dread of such awful

martyrdom, and under the excitement of such a mighty misconception; to

cry down the world, with its profound beauty, its thrilling interests,

its glorious works, its noble and holy affections; to exhort their

hearers, Sunday after Sunday, to detach their heart from the earthly

life, as inane, fleeting, and unworthy, and fix it upon heaven, as the

only sphere deserving the love of the loving or the meditation of the

wise,--appears to us, we confess, frightful insincerity, the enactment

of a wicked and gigantic lie. The exhortation is delivered and listened

to as a thing of course; and an hour afterwards the preacher, who has

thus usurped and profaned the language of an Apostle who wrote with the

fagot and the cross full in view, is sitting comfortably with his hearer

over his claret; they are fondling their children, discussing public

affairs or private plans in life, with passionate interest, and yet can

look at each other without a smile or a blush for the sad and

meaningless farce they have been acting!... Everything tends to prove

that this life is, not perhaps, not probably, our only sphere, but still

an _integral_ one, and _the_ one with which we are here meant to be

concerned. The present is our scene of action,--the future is for

speculation and for trust. We firmly believe that man was sent upon the

earth to live in it, to enjoy it, to study it, to love it, to embellish

it,--to make the most of it, in short. It is his country, on which he

should lavish his affections and his efforts. _Spartam nactus es--hanc

exorna_. It should be to him a house, not a tent,--a home, not only a

school. If, when this house and this home are taken from him,

Providence, in its wisdom and its bounty, provides him with another, let

him be deeply grateful for the gift,--let him transfer to that future,

_when it has become his present_, his exertions, his researches, and his

love. But let him rest assured that he is sent into this world, not to

be constantly hankering after, dreaming of, preparing for, another,

which may or may not be in store for him, but to do his duty and fulfil

his destiny on earth,--to do all that lies in his power to improve it,

to render it a scene of elevated happiness to himself, to those around

him, to those who are to come after him. So will he avoid those

tormenting contests with nature,--those struggles to suppress affections

which God has implanted, sanctioned, and endowed with irresistible

supremacy,--those agonies of remorse when he finds that God is too

strong for him,--which now embitter the lives of so many earnest and

sincere souls; so will he best prepare for that future which we hope

for, if it come; so will he best have occupied the present, if the

present be his all. To demand that we love heaven more than earth, that

the unseen should hold a higher place in our affections than the seen

and familiar, is to ask that which cannot be obtained without subduing

nature, and inducing a morbid condition of the soul. The very law of our

being is love of life, and all its interests and adornments."--pp. 271,

272.

With all that is admirable in our author's book, he contemplates the

whole subject from a point of view which exhibits it in very imperfect

lights. He professes to treat of "The Creed of Christendom." Yet, in

examining only the canonical Scriptures and the primitive belief, he

totally ignores the "Creed" of the greater part of "Christendom,"

namely, of the Catholic Church. For it is only Protestants that

identify Christianity with the letter of the New Testament, and settle

everything by appeal to its contents. According to the older

doctrine, Christianity is not a Divine Philosophy recorded in certain

books, but a Divine Institution committed to certain men. The

Christian Scriptures are not its _source_, but its first _product_;

not its charter and definition, but its earliest act and the

expression of its incipient thought. They exhibit the young attempts

of the new agency, as it was getting to work upon the minds of men and

trying to penetrate the resisting mass of terrestrial affairs. They

are thus but the beginning of a record which is prolonged through all

subsequent times, the opening page in the proceedings of a Church in

perpetuity; and are not separated from the continuous sacred

literature of Christendom, as insulated fragments of Divine authority.

The supernatural element which they contain did not die out with their

generation, but has never ceased to flow through succeeding centuries.

Nor did the heavenly purpose--precipitated upon earthly materials and

media--disclose itself most conspicuously at first; but rather cleared

itself as it advanced and enriched its energy with better instruments.

The sublimest things would even lie secreted in the unconscious heart

of the new influence, and only with the slowness of noble growths push

towards the light; for the noise and obtrusiveness of the human is

ever apt to overwhelm the retiring silence of the divine. The

disciples, who, when events were before their eyes, and great words

fell upon their ears, "understood not these things at the time," are

types of all men and all ages; whose religion, coming out in the

event, is known to others better than to themselves. A faith,

therefore, should be judged less by its first form than by its last;

and at all events be studied, not as it _once_ appeared, but in the

entire retrospect of its existence.

No doubt this doctrine of development is made subservient, in the

Romish system, to monstrous sacerdotal claims. A priestly hierarchy

pretends to the exclusive custody, and the gradual unfolding, of God's

sacred gift. But sweep away this holy corporation; throw its treasury

open, and let its vested right, of paying out the truth, be flung into

the free air of history; gather together no Sacred College but the

collected ages; appeal to no high Pontiff but the Providence of

God;--and there remains a far juster and sublimer view of the place

and function of a pure Gospel in the world, than the narrow Protestant

conception. Christianity becomes thus, not the Creed of its Founders,

but the Religion of Christendom, to be estimated only in comparison

with the faiths of other groups of the great human family; and the

superhuman in it will consist in this,--the providential introduction

among the affairs of this world of a divine influence, which shall

gradually reach to untried depths in the hearts of men, and become the

organizing centre of a new moral and spiritual life. It is a power

appointed--an inspiration given--to fetch by reverence a true religion

out of man, and not, by dictation, to put one into him.

For this end, it would not even be necessary that the bearers of the

divine element should be personally initiated into the counsels whose

ministers they are. _Philosophy_ must know what it teaches; but

_Inspiration_, in giving the intensest light to others, may have a

dark side turned towards itself. There is no irreverence in saying

this, and no novelty: on the contrary, the idea has ever been familiar

to the most fervent men and ages, of Prophets who prepared a future

veiled from their own eyes, and saintly servants of heaven, who drew

to themselves a trust, and wielded a power, which their ever-upward

look never permitted them to guess. Nay, to no one was this conception

less strange, than to the very man who, in his turn, must now have it

applied to himself. With the Apostle Paul it was a favorite notion,

that the entire plan of the Divine government had been a profound

secret during the ages of its progress, and was opening into clear

view only at the hour of its catastrophe. Not only was there _more in

it_ than had been surmised, but something utterly _at variance_ with

all expectation. Its whole conception had remained unsuspected from

first to last; undiscerned by the vision of seers, and unapproached by

the guesses of the wise. Never absent from the mind of God, and never

pausing in its course of execution, it had yet evaded the notice of

all observers; and winding its way through the throng of nations and

the labyrinth of centuries, the great Thought had passed in disguise,

using all men and known of none. Nor was it only the pagan eye that,

for want of special revelation, had been detained in darkness, or

beguiled with the scenery of dreams. The very people whose life was

the main channel of the Divine purpose did not feel the tide of

tendency which they conveyed; the patriarchs who fed their flocks near

its fountains, the lawgiver who founded a state upon its banks, the

priests whose temple poured blood into its waters, and the prophets at

whose prayer the clouds of heaven dropped fresh purity into the

stream,--all were unconscious of its course; assigning it to regions

it should never visit, and missing the point where it should be lost

in the sea. Nay, Paul seems to bring down this edge of darkness to a

later time; to include within it even the ministry of Christ and the

Galilean Apostles; to imply that even they were unconscious

instruments of a scheme beyond the range of their immediate thought;

and that not till Jesus had passed into the light of heaven did the

time come for revealing, through the man of Tarsus, the significance

of Messiah's earthly visit, and its place in the great scheme of

things. Paul, in claiming this as his own special function, certainly

implies that, previous to his call, no one was in condition to

interpret the secret counsels of God in the historic development of

his providence. He feels this to be no reflection on his predecessors,

no cause of elevation in himself; steward as he is of a mighty

mystery, he is less than the least of all saints. He simply stands at

the crisis when a conception is permitted to the world, which even

"the angels have vainly desired to look into"; and though he may _see_

more, he _is_ infinitely less than the Prophets and the Messiah whose

place it is given him to explain. He is but the interpreter, they are

the grand agencies interpreted. He is but the discerning eye, they are

the glorious objects on which it is fixed.

In seeking, therefore, for the _divine element_ in older

dispensations, the Apostle would assuredly _not_ consult the projects

and beliefs of their founders and ministers. In his view, the very

scheme of God was to work through these without their knowing what

they were about; to let them aim at one thing while he was directing

them to another; to pour through their life and soul an energy which

should indeed fire their will and flow from their lips in _their own_

best purposes, but steal quietly behind them for _his_; so that what

was primary with them was perhaps evanescent with him; while that

which was incidental, and dropped from them unawares, was the seed of

an eternal good. What Moses planned, what David sung, what Isaiah led

the people to expect, was not what Heaven had at heart to execute.

Even in quest of God's thought in the _Christian_ dispensation, Paul

does not refer to the doctrines, the precepts, the miracles of Jesus

during his ministry in Palestine,--to the memorials of his life, or

the testimony of his companions. He assumes that, at so early a date,

the time had not yet come for the truth to appear, and that it was

vain to look for it in the preconceptions of the uncrucified and

unexalted Christ; who was the religion, not in revelation, but in

disguise. If, therefore, any one had argued against the Apostle thus:

"Why tell us to discard the law? your Master said he came to fulfil

it. How do you venture to preach to the Gentiles, when Jesus declared

his mission limited to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? No

vestiges of your doctrine of free grace can be found in the parables,

or of redeeming faith in the Sermon on the Mount";--he would have

boldly replied, that this proves nothing against truths that are newer

than the life, because expounded by the death, of Christ; that God

reveals by action, not by teaching; that no servant of his can

understand his own office till it is past; and that only those who

look back upon it through the interpretation of events, can read

aright the divine idea which it enfolds.

This view it was that made the Apostle so bold an innovator, and

filled his Epistles with a system so different from that of the

synoptical Gospels as almost to constitute a different religion. He

had seized the profound and sublime idea that, when men are inspired,

the inspiration occupies, not their conscious thought and will, but

their unconscious nature; laying a silent beauty on their affections,

secreting a holy wisdom in their life, and, through the sorrows of

faithfulness, tempting their steps to some surprise of glory. That

which they deliberately think, that which they anxiously elaborate,

that which they propose to do, is ever the product of their human

reason and volition, and cannot escape the admixture of personal

fallibility. But their free spontaneous nature speaks unawares, like a

sweet murmuring from angels' dreams. What they think without knowing

it, what they say without thinking it, what they do without saying it,

all the native pressures of their love and aspiration, these are the

hiding-place of God, wherein abiding, he leaves their simplicity pure

and their liberty untouched. The current of their reasoning and action

is determined by human conditions and material resistances; but the

fountain in the living rock has waters that are divine. If this be

true, then must we search for the heavenly element in the latencies

rather than the prominencies of their life; in what they _were_,

rather than in what they _thought to do_; in the beliefs they felt

without announcing; in the objects they accomplished, but never

planned. We must wait for their agency in history, and from the fruit

return to find the seed.

It is not peculiar to Mr. Greg that, in estimating Christianity, he has

neglected, and even reversed, this principle. All who have treated of it

from the Protestant point of view have done the same. They have assumed

that the religion was to be most clearly discerned at its commencement;

that the divine thought it contained would be, not evolved, but obscured

by time, and might be better detected in ideal shape at the beginning of

the ages, than realized at the end; that its agents and inaugurators

must have been fully cognizant of its whole scope and contents, and set

them in the open ground of their speech and practical career. In the

minds of all Protestants the Christian religion is identified

exclusively with the ideas of the first century, with the creed of the

Apostles, with the teachings of Christ. The New Testament is its sole

depository, in whose books there is nothing for which it is not

answerable. The consequence is a perpetual struggle between untenable

dogma and unprofitable scepticism. The whole structure of faith becomes

precarious. If Luke and Matthew should disagree about a date or a

pedigree; if Mark should report a questionable miracle; if John should

mingle with his tenderness and depth some words of passionate

intolerance; if Peter should misapply a psalm, and Paul indite mistaken

prophecies; above all, if Jesus should appear to believe in demonology,

and not to have foreseen the futurities of his Church,--these detected

specks are felt like a total eclipse; affrighted faith hides its face

from them and shrieks; and he who points them out, though only to show

how pure the orb that spreads behind, is denounced as a prophet of evil.

The peaceful and holy centre of religion is shaken by storms of angry

erudition. Devout ingenuity or indevout acuteness spend themselves in

vitiating the impartial course of historical criticism; neither of them

reflecting, that, if the topics in dispute are open to reasonable doubt,

they cannot be matter of _revelation_, and may be calmly looked at as

objects of natural thought. It is a thing alike dangerous and unbecoming

that religion should be narrowed to a miserable literary partisanship,

bound up with a disputed set of critical conclusions, unable to deliver

its title-deeds from a court of perpetual chancery, whose decisions are

never final. The time seems to have arrived for freeing the Protestant

Christianity from its superstitious adhesion to the mere _letter_ of the

Gospel, and trusting more generously to that permanent inspiration,

those ever-living sources of truth within the soul, of which Gospel and

Epistle, the speeches of Apostles and the insight of Christ, are the

pre-eminent, rather than the lonely, examples. The _primitive_ Gospel is

not in its form, but only in its spirit, the _everlasting_ Gospel. It is

concerned, and, if we look to _quantity_ alone, _chiefly_ concerned,

with questions that have ceased to exist, and interests that no longer

agitate. It often reasons from principles we do not own, and is tinged

with feelings which we cannot share. Often do the most docile and open

hearts resort to it with reverent hopes which it does not realize, and

close it with a sigh of self-reproach or disappointment. With the deep

secrets of the conscience, the sublime hopes, the tender fears, the

infinite wonderings of the religious life, it deals less altogether than

had been desired; and in touching them does not always glorify and

satisfy the heart. We are apt to long for some nearer reflection, some

more immediate help, of our existence in this present hour and this

English land, where our enemies are not Pharisees and Sadducees, or our

controversies about Beelzebub and his demons; but where we would fain

know how to train our children, to subdue our sins, to ennoble our lot,

to think truly of our dead. The merchant, the scholar, the statesman,

the heads of a family, the owner of an estate, occupy a moral sphere,

the problems and anxieties of which, it must be owned, Evangelists and

Apostles do not approach. Scarcely can it be said that general rules are

given, which include these particular cases. For the Christian

Scriptures are singularly sparing of general rules. They are eminently

personal, national, local. They tell us of Martha and Mary, of Nicodemus

and Nathaniel, but give few maxims of human nature, or large formulas of

human life: so that their spiritual guidance first becomes available

when its essence has been translated from the special to the universal,

and again brought down from the universal to the modern application.

They are felt to be an inadequate measure of our living Christianity,

and to leave untouched many earnest thoughts that aspire and pray within

the mind. One divine gift, indeed, they impart to us,--the gracious and

holy image of Christ himself. Yet, somehow, even that sacred form

appears with more disencumbered beauty, and in clearer light, when

regarded at a little distance in the pure spaces of our thought, than

when seen close at hand on the historic canvas. It is not that the ideal

figure is a subjective fiction of our own, more perfect than the real.

Every lineament, every gesture, all the simple majesty, all the deep

expressiveness, we conceive to be justified and demanded by the actual

portraiture: our least hesitating veneration sees nothing that is not

there. But the original artists' sympathy we feel to have been somewhat

different from ours. They have labored to exhibit aspects that move us

little; and only faintly marked the traces that to us are most divine.

The view is often broken, the official dress turned into a disguise. The

local groups are in the way; the possessed and the perverse obtrude

themselves in front with too much noise; and the refracting cloud of

prophecy and tradition is continually thrown between. So that the image

has a distincter glory to the meditating mind than to the reading eye.

All this, oftener perhaps felt than confessed, is perfectly natural

and innocent. It betrays the instinctive analysis by which our own

affections separate the divine from the human. Paul was right in his

principle, that in history _the divine element lies hid_; is missed at

the time, even by those who are its vehicle; and does not parade

itself in what they consciously design, but lurks in what they

unconsciously execute. It comes forth at "the end of the ages,"--the

retrospect of fifty generations instead of the foresight of one. This

doctrine is true of individuals, in proportion as they are great and

good. They labor at what is most difficult to them, and make it their

end; but their appointed power lies in what is easiest. They chiefly

prize the beliefs and the virtues most painfully won; but their

highest truth dwells in the trusts they cannot help, and their purest

influence in the graces they never willed, or knew to be their own.

And it is true in history; Paul himself signally illustrating the rule

which he had applied to earlier times. He had found, as he supposed,

the Providence of the Past, which all had missed, from Moses to

Christ; but in his turn he missed, as we perceive, the Providence of

the Future, from himself to us. The kind of agency which he

anticipated for Christ bears no resemblance to that which his religion

has actually exercised. The only fault we can find with Mr. Thom's

admirable exposition is, that he attributes to the Apostle too

distinct an apprehension of Christ as an impersonation of _moral

perfection_; and supposes the purpose of the Pauline Christianity to

have been the establishment, as sole condition of discipleship, of

reverential sympathy with the type of character realized in the

Galilean life of Jesus. He says:--

"In contrast with such teachers" (the Ritual and the Dogmatic), "St.

Paul, in our present chapter (1 Corinthians ii.), refers both to the

_matter_ and the _manner_ of his own ministration of the Gospel. He

did not teach it as a _Rhetorician_, to attract admiration to himself,

and give more lively impressions of Paul the Orator than of Christ the

Redeemer from sin, nor as a _Philosopher_, to raise doubtful questions

on metaphysical subjects, and become the leader of a speculative

school; but as the Apostle of Jesus Christ, he proclaimed to the

hearts of men the practical and life-giving Gospel, that 'God was in

Christ reconciling the world unto himself'; that by the universal

Saviour all distinctions were for ever destroyed, and the whole family

of God to grow into the common likeness of that well-beloved Son,--for

that now neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision,

but the renewal of the affections after the image of the Lord. Where

could an entrance be found for party divisions in a doctrine that

professed nothing, that aimed at nothing, except to awaken the

consciousness of sin within the heart, and, through trust in the God

of holiness and love revealed in Jesus, to lead it to repentance and

life? All who felt this love of Christ constraining them, cleansing

their souls by the divine image that had taken possession of their

affections, and, through the mercy it proclaimed, encouraging their

penitence to look for pardon from their God, must, of necessity, be

one communion; for this Gospel sentiment and hope could create no

divisions amongst those who had it,--and those who had it not were

outside the Christian pale, and, so far, could make no schisms within

it. Now, whence comes this Gospel sentiment, this new principle of

life? Were there any who had the exclusive power of communicating it?

Did it require to be introduced by any intricate reasonings, by any

subtle dialectics, which only the Masters in philosophy had at their

command? Not so, says St. Paul;--it is a spiritual feeling, excited

by moral sympathy, as soon as Christ is offered to the hearts that are

susceptible of the sentiment;--and in whatever bosom there is not

enough of the Spirit of God to cause that moral attraction to take

place, neither philosophy nor outward forms, nor aught else but the

divine image of goodness kept before the heart, can awaken the

slumbering sensibilities which are the very faculties of spiritual

apprehension, and which, as soon as they are alive, behold in Christ

the solution of their own struggling and imperfect existence, their

ideal and their rest. In regard to a sentiment so spiritual, a

sympathy with the image of God, where is the possibility of

introducing party divisions, and violating Christian unity? There can

be but two parties,--those that _have_ the sentiment, and those that

have it not. All Christians constitute the one,--and as for the other,

in relation to Christian unity, they are not in question. Such is the

argument of St. Paul in this second chapter."--p. 30.

It may be quite true that the essential power of Christianity resides

in the image, ever present to the heart of Christendom, of a God

resembling Christ, and loving those who aspire to approach him through

the same resemblance. But we cannot find any traces of such a

conception in the writings of Paul. The "faith" on which he

exclusively insisted would be very incorrectly defined, we conceive,

as a reverence of Christ's character as morally like God. If we may

judge from the negative evidence of his letters, he appears to have

had no insight into the interior of his Master's earthly life, and no

great concern about it. There is an entire absence of any _moral_

picture of Jesus, who is presented in the Apostolic writings as an

object, not of retrospective veneration, but of expectant reliance;

not of admiring trust for personal qualities realized in a past

career, but of hope grounded on his official destiny in the future.

_One_ beauty of his character is, indeed, appealed to in the Pauline

writings, viz. his humility and self-renunciation;[54] but even this

is recognized, not on historical, but on theocratic grounds; it is

illustrated, not by anything in his life, but by the fact of his

death, conceived as a voluntary postponement of his theocratic

prerogatives, and an abrogation of his exclusive nationality. He was a

"spiritual" object to the Apostle of the Gentiles, not from perception

of the inner marks and graces of his spirit, but from his being

invisible and immortal, reserved in heaven under external escape from

the conditions of earthly life. Mr. Thom's doctrine is a happy

development of modern truth from ancient error; but regarded as a mere

interpretation, it perhaps sets down to the Apostle's account a just

moral appreciation of the past, instead of an erroneous conception of

the Providence of the future. The religion of Christ has assuredly

turned out a very different phenomenon from anything that was

anticipated at its origin. It was announced as a Kingdom; as the king

did not come, it became a Republic. It was conceived as a State; it

grew up into a Faith. It was proclaimed as the world's end; it proved

to be a fresh beginning. It was to consummate the Law and the

Prophets; and it confounded both. It was to cover Pagan nations with

shame and destruction; it embalmed their literature, and was

transformed by their philosophy. It was to deliver over the earth to

the pure and severe Monotheism of the Hebrews; which, however, it so

relaxed as to provoke Islam into existence to proclaim again the

monarchy of God. Its subjects were to be gathered from the Jews and

half-castes of the Eastern Synagogue; and its most signal glories have

been among the Teutonic nations, and the then unsuspected continents

of the West. In every element of its internal power, in every

direction of its external action, it has burst all the proportions,

left behind all the expectations, with which it was born; and how can

we continue to try it by the standard of its origin? Are we to say,

that, having promised one thing and become another, it is not of God?

That might be well, if it had _fallen short_ of its own

professions,--disappointed us of dreams it had awakened of glory and

delight. But if it has been _far better than its word_; if, instead of

winding up the world's affairs, it has given them a new career; if

for Messiah's tame millennium we have the grand and struggling life of

Christendom, and for his closed books of judgment the yet open page of

human history; if for the earthly throne and sceptre of Christ,

sweeping away the treasures of past civilization, we have his heavenly

image and spirit, presiding over the re-birth of art, the awakening of

thought, the direction of law, and the organism of nations; if from

the dignity of outward sovereignty he has been raised to that of Lord

of the living conscience, not superseding the soul, but exercising it

with sorrow and aspiration; then, surely, in so outstripping itself,

the religion should win a more exceeding measure of trust and

affection. Had it only realized its first assurances, we should have

thought it divine; since it has so much surpassed them, we must esteem

it diviner. There is no reason for the common assumption that a

religion must be purest in its infancy. It is no less surrounded then,

than at each subsequent time, with human conditions, and transmitted

through human faculties; and when delivered to the world, embodied in

action or in speech, necessarily presents itself as a mixed product of

divine insight and of human thought,--of the living present and the

decaying past; a flash of heavenly fire on the outspread fuel upon the

altar of tradition. So it is with the Scriptures of the New Testament;

which are not the heavenly source, but the first earthly result and

expression of Christianity, and which present the perishable

conditions as well as the indestructible life of the religion. Only by

the course of time and Providence can these be disengaged from one

another, and the accidents of place and nation fall away. If there

dwell in the midst a divine productive element, the further it passes

from the moment of its nativity, the clearer and more august will it

appear. It is like the seed dropped at first on an unprepared and

unexpectant ground; which in its earliest development yields but a

struggling and scanty growth, but each season, as another generation

of leaves falls from the boughs, becomes the source, through richer

nutriment, of fuller forms; till at length, when it has spread the

foliage of ages, making its own soil, and deepening the luxuriance of

its own roots, a forest in all its glory covers the land, and waves in

magnificence over continents once bare of life and beauty. So is it

with the germ of divine truth cast upon the inhospitable conditions of

history; it is small and feeble in its earlier day; but when it has

provided the aliment of its own growth, and shed its reproductive

treasures on the congenial mind of generations and races, it starts

into the proportions of a Christendom, and becomes the shade and

shelter of a world.

Much, therefore, as we value all attempts to illustrate the first

records of Christianity, and to detach what was purely human and

transient in its original form, we think that the religion itself

cannot acknowledge the competency of such investigations to decide

upon its claims. From a verdict on its _first_ works, it has a right

to appeal for judgment upon _the whole_. It is the religion, not of

John and Paul alone, but of Christendom; without a comparative

estimate of whose moral and social genius, it can by no means be

appreciated. The weakness and inadequacy of all narrower methods of

defence will in the end drive the clergy to occupy this larger basis

of operations. And the change will be not more favorable to the logic

of their cause than to the charity of their disposition. So long as

the Scriptures alone are taken as the standard, no more than one

creed, at most, can be regarded as concurrent with the Christian

faith. But when the entire existence of the religion through eighteen

centuries is adopted as the measure, the very interests of advocacy

themselves require that the best construction rather than the worst be

put upon the errors and eccentricities of all churches within the

compass of Christendom. The evidences would, in that case, be

destroyed by exclusiveness, and widened in their foundations by

comprehensiveness of temper; and the firmness of every disciple's

faith and the energy of his zeal would become assurances, not of his

limitation of mind, but of his largeness of heart. Instead of endless

divisions, multiplied in the search after unity, we might hope to see

the lines of separation become ever fainter; and every test of

Christianity withdrawn except that of moral sympathy with the spirit

of Christ; a test which, as God alone can apply it, man cannot abuse;

and according to which many that, in the ecclesiastic roll, have been

first, shall be last, and the last first.