THE

METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW.

JULY, 1862.

ART. I.-THE "ESSAYS AND REVIEWS."

Essays and Reviews. Seventh edition. 8vo., pp. 433. London: Longman, Green, Longmans & Roberts. 1861.

Recent Inquiries in Theology, by eminent English Churchmen; being "Essays and Reviews." Fourth American from the second London edition. Edited, with an Introduction, by Rev. FREDERICK H. HEDGE, D.D. 12mo., pp. 480. Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co.

"INQUIRIES in theology," the phrase indicates an anxiety for the solution of religious difficulties. And what are these inquiries? They are such as these: "Is the Bible the work of God or man?" "Are its historic narratives fact, fiction, or allegory, or a blending of the three?" "Would Scripture lose any of its essential religious value to the world, if all its history, chronology, biography, in fine, all its statements concerning things physical, should be rejected?" "Would it not gain greatly, in spiritual power and efficiency, upon this advanced and enlightened age, if we could feel entirely relieved from all obligations to exercise faith in its physical statements?" "Can God be called the author of the Bible, in any other sense than he was the author of the dialogues of Plato, and the plays of Shakspeare?" "Was a miracle ever wrought? indeed, is such a thing possible?" "Has not man invented the religions of the earth as he has invented its steam-engines and printing-presses?" And who are these inquirers? English Churchmen, clergyFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XIV.-23

men, some of them, and some professors and teachers in wellknown Christian institutions; and the American editor, to whom we owe the characteristic title on which we comment, is a Christian minister in the suburbs of Boston. Certainly, if men who have not yet settled such questions as these are to be called Christians, it cannot be in the same sense that the "disciples were called Christians first at Antioch." We do not complain just now of attacks on Orthodoxy, on the Thirtynine Articles, and the Nicene Creed; but why, gentlemen, will you quarrel with the English Dictionary? When men use a word, especially professional writers, we have a right to demand that they shall use the word in the sense set down in the dictionaries, especially if all the dictionaries agree. What is the use of language if every man is to change the meaning of words according to his whim? Now the word Christianity has, in all literature, a definite signification; it is applied to a professedly supernatural system of religion. Whether this profession can be made out or not is another matter; but for a man to call himself "Christian" who is "inquiring" whether any supernatural system of religion is possible, is simply to sail under false colors, whether ignorantly, carelessly, or designedly we must decide by the circumstances. But, in the present instance, Christian charity bids us hope that this is the instinctive clinging of the moral nature to the name, even after it has been robbed of the spirit; as Adam cast a longing look back to the gate from which his sin had driven him into exile; as we fondly hang over the cold face from which the light of love has fled.

These inquiries are not all stated here in the direct style that we have used in repeating them. Most of them are rather intimated than expressed. To one accustomed to the frank utterances of American Parkerism, most of these essays seem strangely timid. Dr. Hedge promises us, in his Introduction, that we shall find here "breadth and freedom of view, an earnest spirit of inquiry, and resolute criticism;" but the authors themselves, in their brief prefatory note, express the hope that the volume will "illustrate the advantage derivable to the cause of religious and moral truth, from a free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language and traditional modes

of treatment." This sentence, so labored and clumsy, so carefully guarded and carefully indefinite, is all that they directly give us to show their common sentiment and spirit. And as we read on, we find in most of these essays a dainty reserve, a cautious wordiness, a smothering of the thought in remote suggestions and circumlocutory intimations that betrays a fear of some kind; whether it comes from a dissatisfied intellect or a dissatisfied conscience we do not decide; we hope from both. It would hardly be charitable to suggest that there may be mingled with these the more carnal fear of the loss of livings and professorships, did not the manner of its reception and defense across the water bear out the suggestion. It is evident enough that neither these authors nor their friends ever dreamed of such a storm of unwelcome notoriety as has lifted up these essayists and reviewers before the world. The knights who rush to their defense, and who, we may fairly suppose, speak for them, beg that we will not imagine them to be ambitious for the martyr-crown of the reformer. It is the wicked Westminster, they tell us, that has done all the mischief by its shout of welcome. These scholarly men want to lead a quiet life; they had no idea of being bandied about in cheap editions among the million; they wrote for the learned, and not for the ignobile vulgus, and so on.

Now we confess that we have not the least admiration for an author who winds round and round his heresy in spirals of intimation, or sends us chasing after his error through a dozen pages of insinuation, and even then leaves us to infer what he really believes. Instead of finding here what the American editor promises us, "breadth and freedom of view," and "resolute criticism," we find oftentimes not merely a cowardly caution in the avowal of real belief, or attempted belief, but a dishonorable evasion of the inevitable conclusions from their own premises, a shrinking from legitimate logical consequences. They begin to build, and drop their tools in alarm; while they, or their friends for them, beg that we will not think that they ever intended to finish.

It is unnecessary to say that this characteristic makes the book far more mischievous, just as well-covered pitfalls and carefully masked batteries are the most dangerous. This criticism does not apply equally to all the authors. The

review of Bunsen is outspoken, being mainly a bald statement of Bunsen's characteristic conclusions and learned eccentricities. The Edinburgh critic, who breaks a lance in behalf of these cowering knights, reproaches this author with inexcusable rashness, in that he has gathered up the inferences which Bunsen reached after a lifetime of learned toil, and attempted "to pitchfork them into the face of the British public."* Professor Powell, now, alas! gone where the natural is swallowed up in the supernatural forever, contributed the essay on the "Evidences of Christianity," which fairly avows the impossibility of miracles.

But there are radically important presumptions, presuppositions essentially unchristian, nowhere distinctly and categorically stated and defended, but pervading every essay and every sentence, forming the very atmosphere in which these and swarms of kindred errors always breed spontaneously. Here is the virus of the book. The mischief is not in new facts presented, for there is little or none of this; not in a fresh grouping of old facts, not in new doctrines, or in new or clearer statements of old doctrines; but in the views of God's government, man's nature and relations to God, which underlie the whole, and which, when admitted, not only legitimate these conclusions, but a thousand other and more startling conclusions, which would not only sweep away the Christian Church and the Christian Scriptures, but leave man an outcast orphan in the universe, without religion, without God, without hope.

The whole battle with modern infidelity is a battle of presuppositions, moral or metaphysical. These are the artillery of the combat; critical, historical, and scientific arguments are but the small arms, pushed forward under their fire. For example, Gesenius comments on Isaiah, presupposing that the prophet never did nor could predict future events; Hengstenberg writes, presupposing that he both could and did. Strauss writes the "Life of Jesus," presupposing that Christ's superhumanity is unprovable and impossible; Neander writes, presupposing that it is both possible and provable. These seven essayists all write, presupposing that there never has been any supernatural influence in human history. Probably

* Edinburgh Review, April, 1861.

all would not admit this statement of their underlying dogma, but this is the real key-note of the book. Now, if these manifold errors are to be routed, of course this is the point of attack, this is the key of the position. But before attending to this let us take a rapid glance over the volume.

Everybody that has read the book has remarked the great inequality and diversity in its component Essays and Reviews, both in style and in grasp of the themes discussed. It would be tedious and unprofitable, at this late day, to follow up the track of each of these seven authors, examine each position, beat down every difficulty, and impale every objection that is here raised to what all the world calls Christianity. We rather aim to direct attention to the general principles that pervade the whole. The opening essay, however, being altogether the most carefully written and highly finished production of the series, we notice more in detail. This is, substantially, a discourse delivered about a year before the volume appeared. Learning and culture appear on every page, rich suggestive thoughts and wide generalizations form a graceful and seductive drapery for the mortal error coiled within. The human race (Dr. Temple tells us) may be compared to a colossal man, who has passed through his prattling babyhood, his artless, docile childhood, his ardent, sensitive youth, and is now rejoicing in his ripened manhood. The successive generations are his days; discoveries and inventions his works; creeds and doctrines, his thoughts. This is "no figure, but a comprehensive fact." Childhood is trained by rules, youth by example, manhood by principles. So God gave man first the Law, then his Son, then the Spirit. The earliest commands were adapted to the childhood of the race, and refer to bodily appetites and animal passions; for example, the prohibition of murder and of the eating of blood. These were given to all mankind before the dispersion; but the great lessons of humanity were too manifold to be taught all at once, so the race was "broken up into classes and sent to school." In Greece man learned the love of the beautiful. Here specially the intellect was trained, so that the logic and rhetoric of the race came from Greece. In Rome man was taught the love of order, reverence for law. In Asia the "spiritual imagination" was cultivated, so that to Asiatic mysticism and contemplative musing we owe the doc