_Essays, Theological and Literary._ By RICHARD HOLT HUTTON, M.A. (Lond.)
Two vols. Strahan and Co.
These volumes are likely to take a high place in English literature, and
to measure and expound the influence which their author has for many
years exerted on the higher thought of our generation, through the
periodical press. He has submitted a selection of his more elaborate
essays to final revision, and has brought them together with much skill
and felicity of arrangement. The two volumes are, in fact, two separate
works of exceeding interest, the one bearing on the highest forms of
modern literature, and the other on the theological and philosophical
speculations of the last twenty years. The polish and finish of the
revision have excised the genial humour and delicate satire which have
characterized some of Mr. Hutton's critical efforts, but they have not
altered the substance or modified the tone of these remarkable papers.
In almost all of them it is easy to trace the hand of the accomplished
publicist, who has acquired the faculty of seizing one main
characteristic of the poetry or philosophy, political career, or moral
tendency he is wishful to examine, and having made himself master of
this, is resolved to establish or illustrate it at his leisure. He
decides on a good working hypothesis to account for the composition of a
great poet, or the spirit of a remarkable book, and leisurely sits down
to transform his hypothesis into a true induction. When Mr. Hutton
brings Wordsworth, or George Eliot, or Ernest Rénan, or Henry Rogers
into his field of view, he seems to say to himself, 'some explanation is
possible of this congeries of spiritual phenomena,' and he forthwith
attacks the problem with the enthusiasm of a naturalist, and often with
the penetration of a true philosopher. He exhibits great insight, and
his speculation is always worthy of attention, but it too much resembles
the bar of sunshine gleaming through an aperture in a shutter, which
throws an intense light on some portions of a painted chamber but leaves
other portions in hazy and dubious shadow. We heartily thank him for the
vivid image he has drawn, and for the key he has often given us to the
intellectual treasures of some of our greatest modern thinkers; but we
do not feel that he has adequately solved all the problem, or has
definitely formulated the mental life or calibre of either the poets or
theologians whom he passes in review. Thus almost all that he says of
Wordsworth is nobly and truly said. There is consummate ability in his
reply to Hazlitt's 'thorny praise,' in his comparison of Wordsworth and
Tennyson, and in his method of proving the thesis with which he starts,
viz., that the charge against Wordsworth, of 'profundity and
transcendentalism,' sprang from the same root as that which declaims
against his 'unintelligible fuss about common feelings and common
things.' Still, in his anxiety to establish this position, Mr. Hutton
appears to us to overstate the frugality of Wordsworth's genius, and to
exaggerate the poet's habit of making a very minute modicum of incident
furnish all the material he needed for the exercise of his imagination
and the development of his vast subjective energies. The entire series
of ecclesiastical sonnets, as well as those which were dedicated to
national independence, cover a prodigious field, and make no
inconsiderable demand upon the reader's knowledge, as well as upon his
sympathy. In the description of the retreat from Moscow, Wordsworth
surely chose a theme big enough for the historic imagination of Scott,
and he dealt with it in an as objective a fashion, with Dryden's fire
and Shelley's pomp of style to boot. Again, in Mr. Hutton's profoundly
interesting paper on the 'Poetry of the Old Testament,' there is a
principle which is full of force, and our author's working hypothesis
will and does explain a great deal. He urges with eloquence and beauty
of illustration, that 'faith in the glorious destiny of the nation, and
the overseeing providence of God as the power which had wrought out that
destiny,' are the two roots of the Hebrew traditionary poems, and he
sees these roots in all the efflorescence of the glorious tree; but
while there is truth in the remark that this double idea underlies and
absorbs the significance of all the Hebrew poet's references to the
beauty of nature, and much also of the tragic human interest of the life
that was being lived by the prophets, there is some niggardliness in
failing to acknowledge how the very fringes of the tabernacle that
enshrined both the nation's destiny and the Divine presence are
glittering with touches of refined gold, and how much nearer an approach
the few Hebrews made to the modern conceptions of the transcendent and
pathetic beauty of nature, than all the Greeks and Romans put together.
If the Hebrews rose to the stupendous idea of the universe being but the
shadow of Jehovah's might, and believed that the light was the skirt of
His raiment, that the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars, were the work
of His fingers, that the 'seven stars and Orion,' the 'sweet influence
of Pleiades,' and 'the morning spread upon the mountains,' were alike
declaring His glory, there is sufficient evidence in the abundance of
their imagery and the sweetness of their song, that they exulted in as
well as beheld the primal beauty. Interesting and demonstrative as Mr.
Hutton's essay is, he leaves a range of facts unaccounted for. The
gorgeous imagery of Ezekiel, when in parabolic fashion he sees the
analogies between nature and national life, the idyllic, perhaps
dramatic grace of the Song of Songs, and the genuine lyrical cry of
large portions of the minor prophets and Psalms, seem to us to
transgress the canon of our author.
One of the volumes before us consists of eighteen theological essays,
admirably classified. They start from the moral and religious
significance of Atheism; they proceed to show the insufficiency of the
scientific and positivistic explanation of our moral relations. The
Pantheistic hypothesis is displayed in its strength and its weakness.
The question, 'What is revelation?' is then handled, and Mr. Maurice is
vindicated and Dean Mansel demolished. In another essay the historic
problems of the fourth Gospel are discussed with great candour and
success. 'The principles of evidence' are illustrated in their
application to the 'Doctrine of Incarnation,' which our author, like Mr.
Baring-Gould, would hold, even if the New Testament should pass out of
existence. Two papers on M. Rénan's recent works, and a vehement attack
upon the evangelical doctrine, under the irritating title of 'The Hard
Church,' are followed by an estimate of the relative position of the
'Romanists, Protestants, and Anglicans.' Several of these papers were
published in the _National Review_, and one of them forms part of a
series of essays entitled 'Tracts for Priests and People.' We
acknowledge great obligation to Mr. Hutton for many of these
dissertations. We sympathise most profoundly in the general estimate he
forms of the position of the Atheist, the Positivist, and the Pantheist;
and we are confident, after again perusing his examination of 'the
historical problems of the fourth Gospel,' that though we differ from
him in many details, and regret that he should find it necessary to
relinquish the Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse, it is the noblest
and most triumphant vindication in the English language of this
stronghold of Christianity. In the graceful preface to the first volume,
in which Mr. Hutton acknowledges his debt of obligation to Mr. Maurice,
he sums up in a sentence the living principle of Mr. Maurice's writings.
There, as elsewhere, too much credit is given to a key; too much of a
jet of light is thrown upon a portion of Mr. Maurice's theology. We do
not believe that this great and suggestive writer can be crushed into a
proposition. Still it does cover much of the speculation associated with
Mr. Maurice's name. It is as follows:--'All beliefs about God are but
inadequate intellectual attempts to justify a belief in Him, which is
never a merely intellectual affirmation, but rather a living act of the
spirit, by no means confined to those who consciously confess His
presence.' The paper entitled 'What is Revelation?' and part of the
argument entitled 'The Hard Church,' are expansions of this principle,
in vehement opposition to the philosophy of Hamilton, as it was applied
by Dean Mansel to theological problems. We think that we may give Mr.
Hutton credit for having made the difference between Dean Mansel and
Professor Maurice more obvious than those distinguished men ever
succeeded in making it appear for themselves; but we imagine that he has
forced them into more irreconcilable antagonism than they are themselves
conscious of, and has effected this by a slight exaggeration of the
position of each disputant. We sympathize with Mr. Hutton far more than
with Dean Mansel, in his general philosophical opinions; but this
vehement scolding and irate horror caught from Mr. Maurice seems to us
perfectly misplaced. Surely, surely the 'living act of the spirit,' by
which man knows the only true God, the intuition of God by the eye of
the soul, the transcendental conclusion or conviction of the whole
intelligence, the bound heavenwards of the sanctified imagination, the
'real assent' to super-sensuous, extra-logical, metaphysical facts, all
of which processes are aided by the facts and words of Scripture, by the
recorded life of Christ, by the sublime utterances and confessions of
the creeds, will not be rejected by Dean Mansel. They are differently
described but thankfully acknowledged. What Mansel seems to us to imply
is that these processes do not solve the contradictions which are
involved in the logical effort to formulate the infinite; the knowledge
they supply is approximate rather than exhaustive, regulative rather
than absolute; a spiritual apprehension rather than scientific
comprehension. The intuitions of Mr. Hutton and Mr. Maurice are far more
numerous and intense than Dean Mansel's. Our author has more confidence
in his direct experiences of truth than Dean Mansel has. The living God
is more visible, more accessible to some minds than others, and these
want less help and fewer manifestations to penetrate the mystery; but we
do not see why Mr. Hutton should be so wrath with Dean Mansel for the
position that 'the faculties in man furnish the conditions of
constructing a philosophical theory of the object presented.' 'The
object presented' is not the living and infinite God, but the finite
manifestation and unveiling of his perfections through a certain series
of human experiences. The criticism of Mr. Hutton shows that he is
attributing to the words 'philosophical theory' more than it is meant by
Mansel to carry. It is just because Dean Mansel cannot form a theory of
the underlying 'infinite' and the 'abysmal deep' of human personality,
that he is content to theorize about that which is presented in the
person and voice and known history and character of a human being. It is
because the infinite baffles and confounds us, and refuses to come under
the formal laws of thought, that Mansel and Hamilton made a virtue and
a science out of the recognition of our nescience, and would confine
their theorizing to that which was manageable and apprehensible; but the
entire philosophy of the unconditioned turns on the presence in our
consciousness of these stupendous factors, unlabelled and untheorized.
It appears to us that the conflict narrows itself to the name to be
given to our personal relations with the transcendental and eternal
realities in which both disputants profoundly believe; and therefore we
do not for one moment think that this summation of Dean Mansel's
position would be accepted by him. Can Mr. Hutton really mean that Dean
Mansel would deny that we can be 'conscious of God's presence with us,
conscious of the life we receive from Him, conscious of what He really
is, and in the same, indeed, even in far higher sense than that in which
we are conscious of what human beings are?' We heartily agree with Mr.
Hutton in his denunciation of the idea that the moral nature of man is
fundamentally different from the moral nature of God, that the goodness
and mercy of God's being must be essentially different from the goodness
and mercy in a human will, and that the 'revelation to us of the very
character and life of the Eternal God' has been made by the
'purification of human vision,' and is 'the history of the awakening,
purifying, and answering of the yearnings of the human spirit for a
direct knowledge of Him. It proceeds from God, and not from man.' He
details with clearness and force the spread of this 'revelation,' the
human condition of it, and the widely diffused material of it, in the
instincts and regrets, and secret hopes and fears of universal man. 'The
revelation through Christ fulfilled ... the desire of all nations, by
revealing the living power in man, by which human nature is wrought into
His likeness.' But in his defence of this position he appears to us
partially, if not utterly, to ignore the new life given to our humanity
in Christ. 'Grace' seems on this theory rather to be a development of
dormant powers than the conference of a new tendency, and 'Christ' to
become rather the name of a sleeping but universal divineness in all
humanity, which is at length realized to the conscience, rather than to
be the personal source of all the life. The 'Father,' in the theology of
Mr. Hutton, is a living God, as against the Pantheistic tendencies of
modern science; but we are not sure--and few things would be farther
from our wish than to misrepresent him--that the Christ and the Spirit
of God are distinguishable from the voice of universal conscience and
the hidden and better nature of the (not fallen but) ever aspiring child
of the living God.
Each of Mr. Hutton's papers deserves careful study; we regret that we
cannot even refer to more than one other, and this, moreover, one to
which we cannot fail to take certain exceptions. It is entitled 'The
Hard Church,' a 'degraded phase of the Church of common sense.' It is
the Church whose logic has been supplied by Whately, whose metaphysic
has been elaborated by Dr. Mansel; one of its most 'merciless and
slashing captains' is seen in Professor Henry Rogers, and Mr. Binney
caught its exact spirit in his lecture addressed to young persons on the
possibility of 'Making the best of both Worlds.' 'Its heroes,' we are
told, are 'latitudinarian but not catholic in the tone of their
theology.' It has no sympathy, no heart, offers 'no divine
reconciliation of contradictory yearnings;' it glories in 'hard sense,'
and 'dismisses from view all those fluctuating elements of human life
which do not seem deeply imbedded in the average notions of average
men.' Its representatives scold away all individuality, denounce the
eccentricities of positive faith, and are, in short, 'the most
mischievous section of Christendom.' All this is introductory to a
tremendous attack on Mr. Rogers for the pitiless severity with which he
introduces a thoroughly sceptical mind, seeing no _intellectual_
standing-place in a 'shallow Deism,' and more consistency in
thoroughfaced Positivism or Pantheism, and more hope too, because he is
sure that at the very bottom of the abyss, the heart will spring upward
and the conscience will rise in rebellion. Mr. Hutton should remember
that 'the real and deep Theism, holding by prayer, near to
Christianity,' was not the intellectual position condemned by the author
of 'The Eclipse of Faith;' it was a Theism that is or was in a fluent
and changeable condition, a Theism that had, in deference to certain
loudly-vaunted principles of reasoning, relinquished Christianity, and
spoken of the moral character of Jesus--to put it mildly--with
disloyalty if not with disrespect; it was a Theism trembling on the
verge of Atheism, yet boasting itself to be a spiritual religion.
Methods of thought may surely be harmless in some regions, and deadly in
other spheres. It is not hardness but goodness which exposes the
worthlessness of the method. This seems to us to have been the work of
Mr. Rogers. We are not called upon to defend Mr. Rogers's strong way of
putting certain things, but we think that Mr. Hutton has not shown him a
more excellent way when he speaks of his 'throttling art,' and would
give you to believe that he is a spiritual garotter, rather perhaps of
the Antæus proportions, who has at last found a Hercules. Mr. Hutton
appears to us to be too angry to see the genuine humour as well as
rather grim pleasantry with which Mr. Rogers has represented the enemies
of the Christianity infinitely dear to him as destroying each other. The
doctrine that 'Christianity is against the grain of human nature,' is
spoken of as demonstrating the truth that 'the Hard Church has a hard
Master.' Nothing surely is more true than this language of Mr. Rogers,
and we are astonished that Mr. Hutton thinks he replies to this estimate
of Christianity by saying that Paul told the Athenians that they were
'seeking the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him.' Our
author is generally quite ready to admit the complexity of human nature,
the multiplicity of the forces that are moving it. The same apostle who
thus spake to Athenians, said to Galatians, 'Brethren, if I yet preach
circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? then is the offence of
the Cross ceased.' We can conceive of no more satisfactory response to
the position here assailed than that so often attributed to Lord
Palmerston, 'that all children are born good.' We suppose Mr. Hutton
must endorse it. The paper on 'Romanism, Protestantism, and Anglicanism'
cannot be discussed by us here for want of space. Its delicate insight
into 'root-principles,' and formulated tendencies, is another
illustration of the author's disposition to generalise, and to cast
pencils of coloured light upon the parts of a theme, or of a system of
thought. With the general estimate of _Luther_ we have not much to
contend against, except that no reference is made to the objects or
reasons of his faith. The unlimited, ecstatic, violent confidence in an
unproved, transcendental fact, with nothing but personal intuitions to
guide the triumphant _trust_--itself a Saviour--may be apparently proved
from certain table-talk of Luther, but is a very imperfect exhibition of
Luther's position. Why, by implication, should all whom Mr. Hutton calls
'pseudo-Protestants' be supposed to deny the indispensable necessity of
an entire moral surrender of the whole nature to the will of God? With
some of those whom Mr. Hutton thus denounces, as for example, Bishop
Bull and all who agree with him, faith is identifiable with moral
surrender to the will of God; in the view of others, as proved by almost
all the Protestant confessions, it is inseparably associated with saving
trust. Where, we ask, is 'the bibliolatry which relegates the Holy
Spirit to the province of explaining the Bible,' except in a small
section of Scotch divines, whose hard and artificial lines have long
since shown a tendency to vanish away? Mr. Hutton seems to try to take
from those whose joy and crown it is to speak of trust in a present
Christ their most distinctive feature; because here and there a logical
theologian may use scholastic or forensic phrases in his theorizing, it
is ungenerous to say that 'the passionate faith of Luther is degraded
into the acceptance of an artificial contract,' or that 'the orthodox
theory of substitution excludes the purifying influence of spiritual
union with Christ.' The best reply that we can make to Mr. Hutton's
contemptuous allusion to Dr. Candlish is to call his attention to Dr.
Candlish's sermon on 'His servants shall serve Him,' and to the greater
part of his Commentary on the first Epistle of St. John. Would that our
great thinkers succeeded in learning more of each other's mind! There
are a hundred other questions raised by Mr. Hutton on which it is
tempting but difficult to dilate. We cannot part from him, however,
without assuring him that we believe these volumes will gain what they
richly deserve--a high place in English literature. Our remarks have
been somewhat critical and dissatisfied, but we are anxious to express,
notwithstanding, the exceeding admiration which we feel for these
eloquent and noble essays. It is often most instructive to see how the
position we occupy shapes itself to the intelligence of one who is only
in partial sympathy with us.
_First Principles of Ecclesiastical Truth._ Essays on the Church and
Society. By J. BALDWIN BROWN, B.A. Hodder and Stoughton.
This volume consists of ten essays: the first four are entitled 'The
Doctrine of the Infallible,' and contain Mr. Brown's exposition of the
inquiry--What is truth? a brave and full exhibition of the answer to
that question given by the infallible church; a criticism of the
Protestant dictum that an infallible book is adequate to the solution of
every great moral and spiritual problem; and in the last place a
passionate vindication for the free spirit of the possession of the true
infallibility. Two essays then follow, of considerable speculative
interest, under the titles of 'The Natural History of Antichrist,' and
'The Christian Commonwealth.' The volume is completed by four lecture
essays on the 'Revolution of the last Quarter of a Century,' the
intellectual, social, ecclesiastical and theological revolution which
has unrolled itself during the twenty-five years of Mr. Brown's fruitful
and stimulating ministry. We have said enough to indicate the
comprehensiveness and multifariousness of the theme which our author has
here investigated. It is as though he had taken his stand on some high
promontory which overlooks a boundless sea of thought, and with well
practised, almost prophetic eye, taken in the vast expanse, the rolling
tides, the brooding storms of the great highway of the nations; here a
very maelström of confusion and wreathing agony, where equatorial and
arctic currents blend in driving mist and fierce agitation, and there a
dreamy outlook of serene though glittering colour; now, the breaker and
the wreck and then the ark of refuge, the busy craft, the haven of rest.
Few writers of the present day appear to us to take a larger view of men
and things, and though his senses seem painfully acute to the moan of
distress and the shriek of the torment, yet few appear to hear more
distinctly the sound of the Master's voice, or to see more clearly the
triumphant form of Him who holds that ocean in the hollow of His hand.
We think this volume is unquestionably the noblest production of Mr.
Baldwin Brown's pen. In refinement and elevation of style, in high
sympathy with the good and the noble side of that which he condemns, in
readiness to learn from his opponents, and to see himself and his own
position with their eyes, amounting to what some may deem almost a
dangerous concession to the misconception of the free spirit entertained
by both the Romish doctor and the apostle of science, coupled with
outspoken and brave utterance of unpopular truth, this volume will
hardly find its parallel in modern times.
We cannot attempt more than to touch on a few points. We are inclined to
think that the paper on 'The Natural History of Antichrist' is not only
the most original and suggestive portion of the volume, but that it is,
in fact, the pivot, or the centre of the entire argument. Our author has
drawn a comparison between 'Babel,' 'Babylon,' and 'Babylon the Great,'
and has shown how the hoary legend of man's first endeavour to establish
a worldly and human independence of the Supreme will, found its
counterpart in the subsequent efforts to produce the four world-wide
monarchies of pre-Christian times, and again, in the towering system of
Pontifical rule, the rise, triumph, and fall of which are seen in the
visions of Patmos. He has discussed with consummate eloquence and
brilliancy of touch, the analogies which link these three manifestations
of the spirit of antichrist, and how God's providence has undermined
them one after the other by a like energy of the individual conscience
and the free spirit. The paper on the 'Christian Commonwealth' provides
a delicately-sketched theory of the true relation between the governing
and the Christian spirit. Mr. Brown admits, nay, contends, for the fact
that the Church and the State in their last significance and highest
development are one, and argues with great ingenuity that a supposed
alliance between the Church and the State, as between two contracting
parties, is essentially unchristian; it is, moreover, 'an exceedingly
low and false conception of the true character of the National
Establishment, and is quite unsupported by its early history.' He
acknowledges the difficulty of realizing the Christian idea in any
Christian State, and asserts 'that the Gospel has still a missionary
function in every State in Christendom; men have not only to be helped
to live by it, they have to be persuaded to believe in it;' but 'that
the idea of a National Church whose rulers are clergy, which shall have
the whole spiritual interests of the community in charge, having its own
ordinances, officers, and laws, of which it is the only lawful custodian
and administrator, lending a Christian character to the State by its
alliance, and deriving material countenance and support from the State
in return, is simply anti-Christian. The only National Church is the
whole community which has been redeemed by Christ, and on which, and in
which, He is working as the head of the Church in a thousand ways, of
which theologians of all parties little dream.'
Mr. Brown differs from many Nonconformists in holding the competency of
the public assemblies of a Christian State to deal with spiritual
matters, and would prefer to have such regulation as the British
Parliament might supply to religious belief and life to that of any
'spiritual synod that he is acquainted with;' but he considers that a
body like the British Parliament may and must 'abstain from all attempt
at legislation on certain subjects, because they know that they would
only mar them if they were to touch them with their legal fingers.' He
does not think that domestic sympathies and affections, the higher
intellectual life of the community, or the religious life of the people,
are palpably beyond the sphere of a government, but that they are beyond
'their power. One shudders to think of the costly, wasteful, pompous,
grasping, titled, beneficed, wealthy and bigoted thing which has been
presented during three hundred years to the English people, as the
visible embodiment of His kingdom, who was the incarnation of
tenderness, compassion, purity, patience, gentleness, and love. The
Establishment principle, under the most favourable conditions, seems to
run directly counter to the fundamental principle of the spiritual
government of men as we watch it working through all the ages. It
belongs to the age of stagnancy and deadness, is vested in the old and
decaying order, is doomed, and must die.' The theoretical admission of
competency, coupled with the trenchant disavowal of power to deal with
the higher regions of the social and religious life of the people,
reminds us of the ground taken for some years by a large section of the
free kirk of Scotland. There is no practical difference between the
views held by Mr. Brown and by the bulk of Nonconformists; his
condemnation of the Establishment principle is at least the result of
experience, and appears to be final.
As Christianity and the Church are the form and life of the truth, Mr.
Brown has prepared the way for his discussion of both by his discourses
on the infallible. The first paper, entitled 'What is Truth?' exhibits
with painful intensity the anguish, even the torment that accompanies
the search after this hidden treasure. Expressing, as we suppose, the
feelings of others rather than his own, the signs of the times rather
than his own heart-throbbings, his language almost amounts occasionally
to a wail of despair: nor does he, in the discourse which is entitled
the 'Intellectual Revolution of the last Quarter of a Century,'
exonerate the Christian teachers of the present day from the charge of
augmenting that despair. After clearly expounding the theory of the
Positivist, and showing how in its isolation it fails to satisfy the
need of either the intelligence or the heart of man, he boldly charges
theology and the Church with the sin of giving to science such a
representation of God as to induce it to do without him. In his extreme
anxiety to do justice to the scientific spirit, Mr. Brown appears to us
to do some injustice to the age-long yearning after truth which has
characterized theological science. Perhaps he does not sufficiently take
notice that the mental faculties which are quite adequate to secure the
broadest generalizations of science are insufficient to furnish us with
some of the chief data of theology. He speaks with perfect confidence of
'common ground in our Christian belief for us and the leaders of the
intellectual progress of men.' We believe that this common ground will
be found only when the methods of theology and the methods of science
are alike seen to be incomplete; but a difference of method in the two
regions there must ever be.
In the paper on 'the Infallible Church,' our author frankly admits that
there must be infallibility somewhere. With high courage and honesty he
traces the confidence with which the Catholic Church has entertained a
consciousness of the unerring guidance of the Holy Spirit, and he has
done much to show how reasonable is the expectation of such a guidance
and the truth that underlies the celebrated dictum of St. Vincent of
Lerins; and with distinguished skill he has indicated the way in which
vagueness and uncertainty have forced some of the strongest minds in the
Romish Church to sigh after and ultimately to secure the definition of a
Papal infallibility. Few things are more remarkable than the steady
growth of this yearning in face of the proved forgeries and infinite
gullibility on which the modern dogma conspicuously rests. Mr. Brown
thinks that some deep necessities of human nature must be the
explanation of this mystery. We believe he need not go much deeper than
the ignorance, credulity, laziness, cowardice, and abjectness of the
human mind, and the wide-spread incapacity, independently of the Holy
Spirit, for the spiritual apprehension of transcendental truth. In his
papers on the infallible book and the doctrine of Christ, Mr. Brown has
shown how dependent a man with the Bible in his hand must ever be, on
the spiritual presence and indwelling light of the Comforter. He may
almost be said to have drawn Bossuet's rapier from its scabbard, and
made some vigorous passes at the 'variations of Protestantism;' but it
is not that he may turn back to an infallible Pope for guidance or for
rest, but that he might fight his way past sects and churches, and
dogmas and popes, into the true temple, where all who have received the
fulness of the spirit are worshipping their father. As we have already
said, Mr. Brown opens up so many controversies, and displays such varied
culture and exceeding fairness in his treatment of these high themes,
that we will now content ourselves with urging our readers to peruse the
whole volume.
_The Office and Work of the Christian Ministry._ By JAMES M. HOPPIN,
Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology in Yale College. Second
Edition. New York: Sheldon and Co. 1870.
This elaborate course on homiletics and pastoral theology may be said
almost to exhaust the subject. The history of preaching, the art of
preaching, the analysis of a sermon in all its various parts, from the
text to the peroration, constitute the first part of the homiletical
manual. The second part contains a series of valuable dissertations on
the application of rhetoric to preaching. The pastoral office is then
examined in its divine institution, in its ideal, in the call to its
high functions, and the ordination to the office. The author further
discusses the pastor as a man, the pastor in his relations to society,
and the pastor in his relations to the Church. Here Dr. Hoppin
investigates the conduct of public worship, and under this heading such
details even as church music, marriages, and funerals are included.
Finally the whole question of the care and cure of souls is wisely and
affectionately urged upon the student. We have never seen a more
complete treatise on the question with which the author deals. There is
not much room for originality, and the analytical tone of the discussion
precludes the presence of much enthusiasm or fire. There is an abundance
of wise, godly counsel, and a considerable reference to the literature
of the subject.