ARTICLE IV.

OLD UNITARIANISM AND NEW ORTHODOXY.

IF anything is orthodox, it must be the theology of the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the piety that is nurtured by those articles cordially received; for example, Old English Oxford and its numerous sons who had been, par excellence, illustrations and defenders of the faith for several centuries.

If anything is new in this orthodoxy, it is the phase which has recently been given to it by certain Oxford Professors and others in the Church of England in sympathy with them, most of whom hold their honorable positions and draw their rich livings only as they swear by the old faith, which in these recent writings they are laboring to destroy.

If anything can be called old in so recent a thing as American Unitarianism, it must be what the denomination held thirty or forty years since in distinction from their current notions; or that which some few of their elders now hold in distinction from what their juniors generally hold and preach.

The new orthodoxy of which we speak is set forth in a volume of some four hundred pages, written by seven Englishmen, and entitled Essays and Reviews - a very neutral name for a very positive substance. While their ostensible object is, by a reverent yet fearless criticism, to strengthen the prevalent faith in Christianity by ridding it of some of its antiquated and rotten "evidential" supports, leaving its whole weight to fall upon, and thus strengthen the arch of its internal reasonableness or accordance with the "inner light" and "verifying faculty" of man, its covert intent is indicated by the fact that that irreverent freethinker, the "Westminster Review," immediately gave it an able and hearty, but withal satirical welcome, as having laid down principles which the inevitableness of logic would ultimately drive to their own destructive conclusions.

The "North British" and "London Quarterly Reviews regard the book as an enemy sailing under false colors, and have accordingly opened their heaviest columbiads upon it; and their thunder has been reëchoed by lesser ordnance on both sides of

the Atlantic, down to a still running fire from our graceful, scholarly, but highly denominational neighbor, the "Church Monthly."

In a prefatory note, the writers solemnly affirm that "they have written in entire independence of each other, and without concert or comparison." Nevertheless, the reading public will be slow to believe that seven such essays from as many men in the Established Church could have fallen together thus in the form of a crystal, with its cutting point towards the very heart of the current religious faith in that church, without something equivalent to previous concert and comparison among the component particles. We have no faith whatever in such fortuitous generation. And this which we at first strongly suspected, is now distinctly affirmed by the "Church Monthly," professing to speak from personal knowledge.

It is not our purpose to add another to the numberless reviews of this work which have already appeared, but the rather to quote so many characteristic passages from it as will give our readers a clear idea of its main tenor, and then to notice particularly how it has been received and treated by the two extremes of Unitarianism in this neighborhood, which process will also show how much more orthodox on some cardinal points is old Unitarianism than this recent orthodoxy. Dr. Hedge, of Brookline, a leader on the extreme left, or rationalistic wing of Unitarianism, hastened forward an American edition of the "Essays and Reviews," under the new title of "Recent Inquiries in Theology ;" and in a brief but significent Introduction to the same, gives it his hearty God-speed in such terms as these. Referring to the late Puseyite controversy, he says, (p. xiii.)

"The full development and thorough application of the principles involved in it necessitate, as recent defections from the national communion in favor of Romanism have shown, the entire abandonment of the Protestant ground. The future of the Church is committed to another interest, and a different order of minds. The life of Anglican theology is now represented by such men as Powell and Williams, and Maurice and Jowett and Stanley. Its strains and promise are apparent in these Essays."

Of this monument which he calls the "Broad Church," he testifies thus:

"Rationalistic it is, inasmuch as it is Protestant; for, of Rationalism, the only alternative is Romanism. Yet assuming in Christianity, itself the perfection of reason, and believing that the truest insight in spiritual things is where the human intellect, freely inquiring, encounters the Holy Ghost, and that such encounter is afforded by the Gospel, it goes about to analyze and interpret, not to gainsay or destroy; currently listening, if here and there it may catch some accents of the Eternal Voice amid the confused dialects of Scripture, yet not confounding the latter with the former; expecting to find in criticism, guided by a true philosophy, the key to revelation; in revelation, the sanction and condign expression of philosophic truth. May this spirit, which is now leavening the Church of England, find abundant entrance into all the churches of our own land; and may this volume, its genuine product, though very imperfect exponent, contribute somewhat thereto !"

Thus explicit and cordial is the testimony of Mr. Hedge that this new leaven in the old English Church is kindred to his own, and admirably suited to help it rise. So short and direct is the new highway opened from Oxford to Tubingen. This, then, is the latest, the present fashionable phase of Unitarianism in this neighborhood.

But how do these "Recent Inquiries" strike the minds of some of the fathers and elders in this denomination? Let Mr. Bowen, formerly editor of the "North American," speak for them. In the January number of that Quarterly he reviews this book under the running title, "The Oxford Clergymen's Attack on Christianity." Observe, he does not call it Essays and Reviews, or Recent Inquiries in Theology, but an Attack; and not an attack upon certain commonly received evidences, or upon certain doctrines of Christianity, but upon Christianity itself; and his whole paper, which is one of the calmest and most comprehensive protests which the book has called out, treats it as a subtle and dangerous foe to the whole supernaturalism of the Gospel, and thus to all revealed religion. With the slight exception of a few lines, it is an article whose high religious tone and vigorous defence of miracles would abundantly satisfy the demands of our own journal. So far forth, it is Puritan, and worthy of primitive New England. But, by how much it is orthodox on the subject of the Bible supernaturalism, by so much is it apart from the recent faith

of the denomination. By how much it approximates our own theological standpoint, by so much it widens the gulf between himself and the more numerous not to say more popular · leaders of his denomination.

Let us now illustrate and fortify this point by quotations from the book, and from Mr. Bowen's review of it. Passing by many loose and ruinous principles concerning the interpretation of the Bible generally, we will examine more particularly its doctrine of miracles as developed in Baden Powell's article upon the "Evidences of Christianity," with some brief allusions to the views of his co-laborators, touching the supernaturalism of the Bible:

"What is alleged is a case of the supernatural; but no testimony can reach to the supernatural: testimony can apply only to apparent sensible facts; testimony can only prove an extraordinary and perhaps inexplicable occurrence or phenomenon. That it is due to supernatural causes, is entirely dependent on the previous belief and assumptions of the parties." (p. 121.) "The entire range of the inductive philosophy is at once based upon, and in every instance tends to confirm by immense accumulation of evidence, the grand truth of the universal order and constancy of natural causes as a primary law of belief; so strongly entertained and fixed in the mind of every truly inductive inquirer, that he can hardly even conceive the possibility of its failure." (pp. 122, 123.)

"The enlarged critical and inductive study of the natural world cannot but tend powerfully to evince the inconceivableness of imagined interruptions of natural order, or supposed suspensions of the laws of matter, &c., &c. . . Such would be the grounds on which our convictions would be regulated as to marvellous events at the present day ; such the rules which we should apply to the like cases narrated in ordinary history.” — (p. 124.)

Is the Bible narrative an exceptional case? Then its miracles shrink from a scientific, critical examination, and retreat within the sacred precincts of mystery, thus:

"Yet there seems an unwillingness to concede the propriety of such examination, and a disposition to regard this as altogether an exceptional case. But, in proportion as it is so regarded, it must be remembered, its strictly historical character is forfeited, or at least, tampered with; and those who would shield it from the criticisms to which history and fact are necessarily amenable, cannot, in consistency, be

offended at the alternative involved, of a more or less mythical interpretation." (p. 125.)

"In advancing from the argument for miracles to the argument from miracles, it should, in the first instance, be considered that the evidential force of miracles (to whatever it may amount) is wholly relative to the apprehensions of the parties addressed. . . . Columbus's prediction of the eclipse to the native islanders, was as true an argument to them as if the event had really been supernatural"!(p. 130.)

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"All moral evidence must essentially have respect to the parties to be convinced. Signs' might be adapted peculiarly to the state of moral or intellectual progress of one age, or one class of persons, and not be suited to that of others. . . . And it is to the entire difference in the ideas, prepossession, modes, and grounds of belief in those times, that we may trace the reason why miracles, which would be incredible now, were not so in the age and under the circumstances in which they are stated to have occurred.” — (p. 132.)

This idea, with a slight modification or addition, occurs on pp. 123, 133, 139, and 141.

"The boundaries of nature exist only where our present knowledge places them the discoveries of to-morrow will alter and enlarge them. The inevitable progress of research must, within a longer or shorter period, unravel all that seems most marvellous," &c., &c.

"The case of the alleged external attestations of revelation is one essentially involving considerations of physical evidence. . . But the particular case of miracles, as such, is one specially bearing on purely physical contemplations, and on which no general moral principles, no common rules of evidence or logical technicalities, can enable us to form a correct judgment." (p. 150.)

"Those who have reflected most deeply on the nature of the argument from external evidence will admit, that it would naturally possess very different degrees of force as addressed to different ages; and, in a period of advanced physical knowledge, the reference to what was believed in past times, if at variance with principles now acknowledged, could afford little ground of appeal; in fact, would damage the argument rather than assist it.". (p. 142.)

"The main assertion of Paley is, that it is impossible to conceive a revelation given except by means of miracles. This is his primary axiom; but this is precisely the point which the modern turn of reasoning must call in question, and rather adopts the belief that a revelation is then most credible, when it appeals least to violations of