Let us gain more knowledge, and consecrate it to the investigation of the
highest problems of life and of religion; especially applying ourselves,
by the help of the ripest aid which miscellaneous literature or church
history can afford us, to the study of the sacred scriptures. But above
all these intellectual instruments, let us add the further one of prayer.
For prayer not only has a reflex value on ourselves, purifying our hearts,
dispersing our prejudices, hushing our troubled spirits into peace; but it
acts really, though mysteriously, on God. It ascends far away from earth
to the spot where He has His dwelling-place. The infinite God condescends
to enter into communion with our spirits, as really as a man that talketh
with a friend. The Saviour of pity will Himself look down upon us, and
condescend to become our teacher, and give us the purity of heart which
will lead us into truth. Our own trials, our own struggles for truth and
holiness, the desire to know Christ and to be known by Him, will excite
our deep pity for those who endure the like temptations, and prepare us
for effectually ministering to the good of others. And if the struggle in
our own hearts be long, and there be moments when we seem to have our
Gethsemane; let us cleave the closer, with the more simple trust, to our
heavenly Father; still imploring Him to grant us in this world knowledge
of his truth, and in the world to come life everlasting; assured that the
clouds shall one day disperse, and the vision of truth be unveiled to us
in the bright light of the eternal morning.
I shall be well content that all that I have said to you be forgotten; and
when these lectures take their humble place in the series of which they
form a part, deriving an honour, not their own, from the great names with
which they are associated, I shall be willing that they be consigned to
neglect; if I can only hope that this final exhortation to prayerful study
may remain fixed in the memory of any one of those that now hear these
words, or may impress the mind of any chance student who, in traversing
the same ground, may hereafter have occasion to peruse them, at a time
perhaps when the voice that now speaks shall be hushed in the tomb, and
the spirit shall have gone to its account.
-------------------------------------
The lectures are now ended. May God forgive the errors, and sanctify any
truth that has been uttered to His honour! The faults are mine: the truth
is His, not mine. To Him be the glory.
NOTES.
Lecture I.
Note 1. p. 3. Subdivisions Of Historical Inquiry.
A few words may explain the distinctions intended in the text.
History has been properly distinguished by Macaulay into two branches, the
artistic or descriptive, and the scientific or analytic. (_Essays_, vol.
i. 2, on Hallam.) If viewed in the former aspect, history aims as far as
possible to reproduce what has been, to recover a picture of the past.
Hence it is obedient to the two conditions which rule all art,—precise
outline in details, and preservation of perspective in the combination. In
the latter, theory in some slight degree steps in, but theory dictated by
the instinct of taste rather than by reflection. It is in this branch, in
which the historian is the critic, that the border line lies between art
and science. For it is hard to measure the precise amount which is due in
the appreciation of facts respectively to artistic intuition and to
reflective analysis.(1054)
Supposing the facts to be thus given, it is the province of the science of
history to ascertain their causes. Two living writers, Mr. Mill (_System
of Logic_), and Dr. Whewell (_Philosophy of Inductive Sciences_), have
given an account of the logic of science. That of the latter is more
suitable to the conception which we are here forming of history; for
history is exactly one of the class of sciences which he calls
“Palætiological.” (vol. i. b. x.) It requires first, that we recover the
record of the successive stages of facts, the narrative of the past,
before searching for the causes. The causes are then to be sought by
transferring backward for the explanation of the past those which are at
present operating. The search will probably exhibit three successive
stages in the process of examination. First, causes will be found which
are the mere antecedents of the events, the mere links which connect the
phenomena. Next, a cyclical law of the recurrence of the facts is
perceived, such e.g. as Vico’s well-known law concerning the development
of political society. Such a law as this, supposing it to hold good
without exception within the limits of experience, is what Mr. Mill calls
an “empirical law.” (_Logic_, vol. ii. b. iii. ch. xvi.) Next, this law
must be analysed into its causes. Mr. Mill gives three forms which this
third stage of analysis may assume in science. (_Id._ vol. i. b. iii. ch.
xii.) Probably in history it will generally assume the one of the three in
which the complex result is analysed into its simpler component elements.
(_Id._ § 2.)
This inquiry would complete the study of history as a science. But when we
deal with moral as distinct from material relations, we feel that there is
a question of philosophy as well as science, one of ethics and
metaphysics, which rises above all lower ones. We instinctively wish to
measure the responsibility of the moral agents who have contributed to
work out the results which have been studied. We turn to the personal and
biographical question for the purpose of the ethical lesson. The theist
also asks another question. Believing that nature and man are the work,
direct or indirect, of a personal Creator and Governor, of infinite power
and goodness, he strives to search out the purposes of Providence, hoping
to find in the drama of universal history the solution of the plot which
he could not expect to attain by the study of a portion of it.
Such are the ideas which are intended in the text.
Note 2. p. 4. The Comparative Study Of Religions.
The comparison of Christianity with other religions was necessarily forced
upon the Christian church by contact with the heathen world.
We meet in the early fathers with two distinct opinions; the one held in
the Alexandrian school, that the heathen religions were imperfect but had
a germ of truth, and that philosophy was a schoolmaster to bring men to
Christ; the other chiefly in the African school, that they were entire
errors, and an obstacle to the conversion of mankind.
In the middle ages, contact with Mahometan life (see Lect. III. p. 88)
created a sceptical mode of comparing Christianity with other creeds;
circumstances compelling toleration, and toleration passing into
indifference. A similar spirit is also seen in the hasty attempt of the
French philosophers of the last century to resolve all religion into
priestcraft.
It is only in still more recent times that the first scientific conception
of a comparative study of religion arose. Even in Herder the comparison is
æsthetical more than scientific, and relates to the comparison of
literatures more than of religious ideas. Benjamin Constant (_De la
Religion Considérée dans sa source, ses formes et ses développements_,
1824) seems to have been the first who really suggested a serious
psychological examination; and hence there soon arose the idea of
comparative theology analogous to comparative anatomy. His spirit has
pervaded French literature subsequently. The religious speculations of the
eclectic school give expression to it; e.g. Quinet (_Le Génie des
Religions_, vol. i.); and the mode of contemplating religion in Renan
(_Etudes de l’Histoire Religieuse_) is based upon it. Caution in using the
method is necessary on the part of those who believe in the unique and
miraculous character of the Jewish and Christian revelations. In Lect.
III. (p. 87) we have given an enumeration of three modes; the one true,
the others false; in which Christianity may be put into comparison with
other creeds.
Mr. Maurice’s _Boyle Lectures on the Religions of the World_ refer to this
subject; and some useful remarks exist in Morell’s _Philosophy of
Religion_,(c. iii. and iv.) But the book most full of information is the
interesting _Christian Advocate’s Publication_, of the late archdeacon
Hardwick, _Christ and other Masters_; a work full of learning and piety,
unfortunately left unfinished by the tragedy of his premature death in
August 1859. In the parts published he has compared Christianity with the
Egyptian and Persian religions (part iv.), with the Hindoo (part ii.), and
the Chinese (part iii.); and he was preparing materials for its comparison
with the Teutonic, and with those of the classic nations.
Note 3. p. 4. Zend And Sanskrit Literature.
The purpose of this note is to indicate the sources of information in
reference to (1) the Zend and (2) the Sanskrit literature, for
illustrating the comparative history of religion.
1. It was about the middle of the last century (1762) that Anquetil du
Perron brought manuscripts to Europe from Guzerat, written in the Zend or
ancient Persian tongue. For some time the relation of the language to the
Sanskrit was not understood. The great scholar to whom are due both the
study of the tongue and the editing of the _Yaçna_, was Eugene Burnouf.
The work just named is the first of the three works which make up the
_Vendidad Sadé_; parts of which possibly go back to a period almost coeval
with Zoroaster, i.e. perhaps the sixth century B.C. Two other works exist
for the study of the Persian theology, though much more modern in
date,—the _Desatir_ of the ninth century A.D., and the _Dabistan_ of the
seventeenth,—which both contain fragments of ancient traditions embedded
in their texts. The _Avesta_, of which the _Vendidad_ is one of the oldest
parts, has been edited by Spiegel. References to the older literature
concerning it may be found in Heeren’s _History of the Asiatic Nations_,
vol. i. ch. ii.
An account of the present results of comparative philology in reference to
Persian is given by professor Max Müller in Bunsen’s _Philosophy of
History_, vol. i. p. 110. E. T. The Persian theology brought to light by
these investigations is discussed by A. Franck, in a paper, _Les Doctrines
Religieuses et Philosophiques de la Perse_, in his _Etudes Orientales_,
1861; also in Dr. John Wilson’s _Parsi Religion_, 1843; Martin Haug’s
_Essays on the Parsis_, 1861, founded on Burnouf’s researches; and in
archdeacon Hardwick’s _Christ and other Masters_, part iv. ch. iii.
(Hyde’s _Hist. Relig. Vet. Pers._ 1700, is obsolete.)
2. The Sanskrit literature has been the subject of still more careful
study by a series of learned men. See Donaldson’s _Cratylus_, b. i. ch.
ii. § 36. 3d ed. Nearly the whole of the literature indirectly offers
materials for a history of the alteration and deterioration of religious
and ethical ideas, and of the relation of schools of philosophy to a
national creed preserved by the priesthood and deposited in books esteemed
sacred. The literary works can be placed in their relative order, though
the absence of all chronological dates from the time of the contact of the
Indians with the Greeks (third century B.C.), down to the visits of the
Chinese Buddhist pilgrims in the fourth and seventh centuries A.D., whose
works have been translated into French by A. Remusat and Stanislas
Julien,(1055) and the Mahometan histories, renders the determination of
absolute dates impossible. The following are the dates approximately given
for the chief works of Sanskrit literature. The _Vedas_, especially the
oldest, date from B.C. 1200 to 600. The _Epic Poems_, the _Rámáyana_ and
_Mahábhárata_, are perhaps of the third century B.C.; the laws of _Manu_,
or more truly of the family which claimed descent from the mythical
_Manu_, contain materials dating from several centuries B.C., but were put
into their present form probably several centuries A.D.; the _Bhagavat
Gitá_, an episode in the _Mahábhárata_ bearing traces of a Christian
influence, dates some centuries A.D. The Hindu drama is perhaps subsequent
to 500 A.D. The _Puránas_ carry on the literature to mediæval times.
Several of the systems of philosophy were probably constructed anterior to
the Christian era; but the date at which they were put into their present
form is undetermined.
The earlier literature is regarded as the most valuable for the study of
the growth of religious ideas and institutions. The development or
deterioration may be traced from the simple nature-worship of the _Vedas_,
to the accumulation of legends which disgrace the modern creed. The causes
which gave birth to mythology are no longer a matter of conjecture; the
study of the Sanskrit language and literature having exhibited an
historical instance of it. In this way the early Sanskrit literature
becomes one of the most precious treasures to the mental philosopher who
approaches his subject from the historical side.
The earliest _Veda_ is in course of publication by professor Max Müller.
It has been partly translated by the late professor H. H. Wilson, and
wholly by Langlois. Mr. M. Müller has given the results of his studies of
this early literature in his admirable work, the _History of Ancient
Sanskrit Literature_, 1859; which is full of instruction for the
philosopher who is inquiring concerning intellectual and religious
history. Most of the other works named above have also been translated
into European languages, viz. the _Epic Poems_,—the _Rámáyana_, in Italian
by Gorresio, and in French by H. Fauche, 1854; and _Episodes_ from the
_Mahábhárata_ by P. E. Foucaux, 1862;—also the _Laws of Manu_,(1056) in
English by Sir W. Jones, and in French by A. Loiseleur Des-Lonchamps; the
_Bhagavat Gitá_ by Wilkins, 1809, the text of which was edited by
Schlegel, 1823; the 2d ed. by C. Lassen, 1846. One of the _Puránas_ (the
_Vishnu_) has been translated by Wilson; and part of the _Bhagavat_ by
Burnouf, who has also edited the text.
Concerning the systems of Hindu philosophy; see Ritter’s _History of
Philosophy_, E. T. vol. iv. b. xii. ch. v; Archer Butler’s _Lectures on
Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 243 seq.; Colebrooke’s _Essays on the Philosophy
of the Hindus_, 1837; _Aphorisms of Hindu Philosophy_, printed under the
care of Dr. Ballantyne for the Benares government college; and Dr. R.
Williams’s _Christianity and Hinduism_, 1856. The work of the late
archdeacon Hardwick, _Christ and other Masters_, also contains a brief
account of three of the systems of philosophy, the _Vedánta_, founded on
the sacred books, the _Sánkhya_ or atheistic, and the _Yoga_ or mystic,
together with a comparison of them with Christianity (part ii.). An
explanation of a part of the _Nyáya_ or Logical Philosophy, is given by
Max Müller in the Appendix to Dr. Thomson’s _Outlines of the Laws of
Thought_, 3d ed.
On the system of thought in Buddhism, on which the study of the Páli has
thrown light, consult E. Burnouf’s _Introduction à l’Histoire du Buddhisme
Indien_; and Spence Hardy’s _Manual of Budhism_, 1853. Also archdeacon
Hardwick’s work above named. The Hindu history, exhibiting its double
movement, of philosophy on the one hand and of the Buddhist reformation on
the other, has been thought to offer a distant analogy to the mental
history of Europe in the double movement of the scholastic philosophy and
the reformation.
The celebrated works of C. Lassen, _Indische Alterthumskunde_, 1844-47,
and A. Weber, _Indische Studien_, 1850, are well known as sources of
information in reference to the general subject. Also Dr. J. Muir has
lately published (1858) _Sanskrit Texts on the Origin and Progress of the
Religion and Institutions of India_. Several articles in reviews have
appeared which contain much popular information; e.g. in the _North
British Review_, Nov. 1858; _Westminster Review_, April 1860; _Edinburgh
Review_, Oct. 1860. On the general subject of this note compare also
Quinet, _Œuvres_, t. i. 1. 2, 3.
Note 4. p. 12. The Controversy Between Christians And Jews.
The history of the controversy of Christianity with Judaism is so
connected in the writings of the early apologists with the contemporaneous
one directed against Paganism, and in recent times so related in one of
its aspects to rationalism, that these reasons seem sufficient,
independently of the literary interest, to justify the insertion of a
brief notice of it, and of the sources of information with respect to it.
The controversy with the Jew varies in different ages. We can distinguish
three separate phases; (1) that which is seen in the early centuries, (2)
in the middle ages, and early modern times, (3) the position which is
taken up by the educated Jew at the present day. The sources for
understanding the contest are, partly the Jewish writings, and partly
those of Christians who have written against them.
1. In the early ages the controversy merely turned upon the question
whether Jesus was the Christ. The Jews did not deny the fact of the
Christian miracles, but explained them away; and the controversy
accordingly turned on the interpretation of Jewish prophecy. This phase of
the contest is seen in the New Testament, in the Apology of Justin Martyr
against Trypho, to which a new kind of objection expressive of prejudice
is added in the discourse which Celsus, as preserved in Origen (_Contr.
Cels._ b. i. and ii.), puts into the mouth of the Jew whom he introduces.
In reference to it, the commentators on these fathers, and especially
Semisch’s work on Justin Martyr (translated), and the works on the Jewish
Talmudic literature and philosophy, may be consulted. The contest is
continued at intervals in treatises by inferior writers; an account of
which may be found in the sources of information hereafter given, and in
_Hagenbach’s Dogmengesch._ § 144.
2. The second phase of the contest is seen in the middle ages, and in
modern times till about 1700 A.D. It is marked by two lines of thought on
the part of the Jewish writers; a system of defence of their own tenets by
a method of scriptural interpretation; and the attack of calumny or of
argument against Christianity. The former existed especially in Moorish
Spain about the twelfth century, the golden age of Jewish literature. For
a brief account of the theological literature of the Jewish nation at that
time, and in the period which had intervened since the early ages, the
writer may be permitted to refer to one of his own Sermons, and the
references there given (_Science in Theology_, 1859, Sermon IV.); to which
references add Beugnot’s _Les Juifs d’Occident_, 1820, and the new work of
De Los Rios on _Spanish Literature_. The movement included both a
philosophical side in Maimonides, and a critical in Jarchi, Aben Ezra,
Kimchi, &c.
The other movement, which was hostile to Christianity, was marked by a
series of works, written by Jews for their own nation, and carefully
hidden from the sight of Christians, probably for fear of persecution and
suffering; which were given to the world by the learning of the foreign
Hebrew scholars of the seventeenth century. The chief of these works are,
the _Nizzachon Vetus_ of the twelfth century, first published in
Wagenseil’s _Tela Ignea Satanæ_, 1681. In the thirteenth, the _Disputatio
Jechielis cum Nicholao_, _Disputatio Nachmanidis cum fratre Paolo_, and
the celebrated _Toldos Jeschu_ or Jewish view of Christ’s life. About 1399
the Rabbin Lipmann wrote the second book _Nizzachon_, which was published
by Hackspan, 1644; and also the _Carmen Memoriale_; and about 1580(1057)
the Rabbin Isaac wrote the noted _Chissuk Emuna_, or _Munimen Fidei_. All
these (with the exception of the second _Nizzachon_) are contained in
Wagenseil. During the period one important defence of Christianity against
the Jews appeared, the _Pugio Fidei_ by Raymund Martin, in Arragon, about
1278, which has been edited with an introduction by De Voisin 1651, and by
Carpzov. Another defence was by Alphonso de Spina. _Fortalitium Fidei
contra Judæos, Saracenos_, 1487. In Eichhorn’s _Geschichte __ der
Literatur_, vol. vi. 26, another treatise is named by a writer called
Hieronymus, 1552.
During the period just considered the contest with the Jews was carried on
chiefly in Spain, or the few Jewish settlements of Lithuania. Henceforth
it is chiefly seen in Germany and Holland, where the learned Dutch and
German theologians of the seventeenth century were brought into contact
with them, or were attracted to the study of the controversy by an
interest in the newly awakened taste for Hebrew learning. This age
supplies works of great value in gaining a knowledge of Jewish literature,
some of which will be named below, and a few treatises, such as, one by
Micrælius (_De Messiâ_, 1647); a brief notice by Hoornbeek, _Summa
Controv._ 1653 (p. 65); an unfinished treatise by Hulsius, _Theologia
Judaica_, 1653; and one by Cocceius, _Jud. Respons. Consid._ 1662. The
activity of the Jews is seen in the fact that an unfair attack by Bentz,
1614, was answered in the _Theriaca Judaica_ of the Jew Salomo Zebi,
Hanover 1615, which again met with a Christian respondent in Wulferus,
1681. Also Limborch had a dispute with a Jew in his _Amica Collatio cum
Erudito Judæo_ (Dr. Orobius), 1687. The controversy continued through the
eighteenth century, probably outlasting its cause; for defences on the
side of the Jews ceased. We meet with two works by Difenbach, _Judæus
Convertendus_, 1696, and _Judæus Conversus_, 1709; Calvoer’s _Gloria
Christi_, 1710; Mornæus’ _De Verit. Relig. Christianæ_, 1707; and, in
England, Bp. Kidder’s and Dr. Stanhope’s _Boyle Lectures_, the former of
which was the basis of the treatise, _The Demonstration of the Messias_,
1700; and C. Leslie’s _Short Method with the Jews_. Catalogues of the
writings, of which the above are the best known, may be found in J. A.
Fabricius’s _Biblioth. Græc._ (ed. 1715), vii. 125; and _De Verit. Relig.
Christianæ_, 1725, ch. xxxi; and _Blasphemia Judæorum_, Id. ch. xxxvii;
Walch’s _Biblioth. Theol. Selecta_, vol. i. c. v. sect. 8. (1757); also in
Bartollocci’s _Dictionary of Jewish Authors_, 1678, and Imbonati’s
_Dictionary of Christian Writers_ concerning the Jews, 1694; and
especially in Wolff’s _Biblioth. Hebr._, 1715, and De Rossi’s _Dizionario
degli Autori Ebrei_, 1802. For information concerning sources of Jewish
theology and literature, it is enough to cite Hottinger’s _Historia
Orientalis_, Carpzov’s _Introductio_, and Owen’s _Prelim. Exercitationes_.
3. In the third phase of the controversy, viz. that which exists with the
modern Jew, the controversy is a little changed. The old prejudices
against Christianity are in a great degree made obsolete by the freedom of
commercial intercourse, and the enjoyment of protection and civil liberty;
and hence the contest takes two forms; either the continuation of the
argument concerning the meaning of Jewish prophecy, or a discussion on the
function of the Jewish religion in history. Sources for the former are
found in the older books of evidence. A digest of the arguments concerning
it is given in J. Fabricius (not the celebrated Fabricius), _Consideratio
Variarum Controversiarum_, 1704, p. 41, and in Stapfer’s _Institut.
Theolog. Polemic_, vol. iii. 1-288, 1752; or in the modern works, Greville
Ewing’s _Essays addressed to the Jews_, and Dr. McCaul’s _Old Paths_,
1837, and his _Warburton Lectures_, 1846. The condition of Jewish life and
thought may he seen in Allen’s _Modern Judaism_. The system of
interpretation on which the controversy is conducted is either the ancient
Messianic and allegorical of the Targums and Talmud, or the literal and
grammatical introduced by the Spanish mediæval commentators.(1058)
The other form of Jewish argument which Christians have to encounter is
more novel, and, being confined to educated Jews, its influence is less
wide, and does not actuate the stratum of Jewish life with which
missionaries generally come into contact. It is based on modern
rationalist speculations, and is seen in a work of Dr. Philippsohn, late
rabbin at Magdeburg, _Development of the Religious Idea in Judaism,
Christianity, and Mahometanism_, (translated both into English 1855, and
also into French,) and in the writings of Salvador. Dr. Philippsohn
regards the mission of Judaism to be, from first to last, to teach to the
world the lesson of monotheism. He traces the struggle in the Jewish
church between priestism and prophetism; and regards Christianity as an
abnormal form of the latter, which has led the world away to Tritheism:
and, so far from regarding the office of Judaism to be extinct, he
considers that its mission is still to restore monotheism to the world. A
comparison with the statement of the views of the Tübingen school in Lect.
VII. or the speculations of Mr. Mackay in Lect. VIII. will show how
completely this argument is borrowed from the later forms of German
historical criticism.