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 INFIDELITY; 
 
 ITS ASPECTS, CAUSES, AND AGENCIES, 
 
 BY THR ^ 
 
 KEV. THOMAS -PEARSON, 
 
 EYEMOUTH, N.B. 
 
 PENSANTUR TRUTINA. — Horace. 
 
 O ce TTOiuii' n)y a\i]deiav ep-^erai irpoQ to (pivg. — The Master. 
 
 CHEAP EDITION, 
 FROM THE FORTIETH LONDON EDniON. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS. 
 
 1854. 
 
THIS ESSAY 
 
 IS EESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THE 
 
 EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 Introduction 
 
 PART THE FIRST. 
 
 Infidelity in its Various Aspects 
 
 Chap. I. Atheism; or, the Denial of the Divine Existence .. .. 6 
 
 II. Pantheism; or, the Denial of the Divine Personality .. .. 23 
 
 III. Naturalism; or, the Denial of the Divine Providential Govern- 
 
 ment 48 
 
 IV. Spiritualism ; or, the Denial of the Bible Kedemption . . . . 88 
 V. Indifferentism; or, the Denial of Man's Eesponsibility .. 136 
 
 VI. Formalism; or, the Denial of the Power of Godliness.. .. 156 
 
 PART THE SECOND. 
 
 Intidelity in its Various Causes 173 
 
 Chap. I. General Cause ib. 
 
 II. Speculative Philosophy , 182 
 
 III. Social Disaffection 199 
 
 IV. The Corruptions of Christianity 209 
 
 V. Relifjious Intolerance 222 
 
 VI. Disunion of the Church 237 
 
 PART THE THIRD. 
 
 Infidelity in its Various Agencies 2.^1 
 
 Ch4P. I. The Press 252 
 
 n. The Clubs 273 
 
 in. The Schools 286 
 
 V. The Pulpit 300 
 
 Appendix 315 
 
INTEODUCTION. 
 
 The answer given by tlie messengers to the angel of the Lord 
 that stood among the myrtle trees, in the vision of Zechariah the 
 projDhet, does not apply to our times : " We have walked to and 
 fro through the earth, and behold all the earth sitteth still and is 
 at rest." Politically and morally, in the sphere of things sacred 
 and in the sphere of things civil, Europe, in the middle of the 
 nineteenth century, is a troubled sea. Numerous and mighty 
 agencies both for good and evil, are abroad and at work. These 
 agencies may embody the same great principles that liave been 
 opposing and struggling with each other from the beginning. 
 Light and darkness strove (in tho face of the deep before this 
 goodly universe rose out of chaos, and they have their strivings 
 still. Error is not of yesterday any more than truth. They 
 encountered each other in Paradise, they have had many en- 
 counters since, and they are yet in the field. But periods arise 
 which become exalted into epochs, when these ancient forces, on 
 the one side or on both, display more than usual vigour, appear in 
 new or revived forms, change their modes of attack and defence, 
 and come off with honours. Such a period was the beginning of 
 the Gospel, when truth in her fairest form descended from heaven, 
 sustained the combined attack of all the powers of evil, and by 
 her own inherent vigour spoiled principalities and powers and 
 went on conquering and to conquer. Sucl? a period was the dark 
 or middle ages, which, like a long and dreary night, succeeded a 
 short but bright day, when it seemed as if truth had been driven 
 from the field, and the world had been given up to the reign of 
 ignorance and error. Such a period was the Reformation of the 
 sixteenth century, which, with a voice whose sound was like the 
 sea, awoVe Europe from the sleep of ages, mustered in fierce and 
 
2 IXTIIODUCTION. 
 
 vigorous conflict all the powers of good and evil, and sent through 
 out the heart of ransomed humanity a thrill of joyous liberty that 
 has echoed over the earth and down the stream of time. Such a 
 l^eriod, (to contract our view within our own England), was that 
 august and earnest century when an oppressed people rose up, 
 resolute and majestic, against their faithless oppressors — when the 
 Puritans sounded the Gospel trumpet against the formalism and 
 irreligion of the age, and men awoke at once to civil freedom, and 
 that yet higher liberty wherewith the truth makes men free. And 
 — to leap over the bridge that spanned the dark and boisterous 
 waters that rolled between, one of those dreary intervals that ever 
 and anon occur in history, and which constituted in itself a dark 
 age, when the foe was permitted to advance and stretch his sceptre 
 over the church and the world, and, in a great measure, corrupt 
 the form and stifle the voice of truth itself, — such a period was 
 the latter half of the last century, when an awakening evangelism, 
 big and feeling-hearted, counteracted the materialistic tendencies 
 which a sceptical soulless philosophy had given to the age, and 
 blew upon the cold earthly morality that had usui-ped the place of 
 the Gospel in the college chair and in the church pulpit. 
 
 The fruits of this latter age, fruits both good and evil, we are 
 now reaping. There is more reason, however, to be thankful for 
 its legacy of good, than to deplore the inheritance of its evil. Its 
 shining light has shined more and more unto our own day, b:it 
 masses of dark cloud envious and poi'tentous have followed it. 
 We are not so moodishly disposed as to call to remembrance the 
 former days and say they were better than the present. No, the 
 age carrying along with it maich of the rich good of the past, is, 
 in spite of many drawbacks, advancing onward in the right path. 
 There is in the heart of humanity a much larger amount of the 
 leaven of heavenly truth than could be found at any preceding 
 period, and, notwithstanding all opposing tendencies, it is spread- 
 ing and will spread. Despotism, which robs man of his rights and 
 obstructs the progress of God's truth, is losing its gi-ound, and 
 truth and freedom are advancing. The Bible, the schoolmaster, 
 the evangelist, and the missionary, are abroad. The church at 
 home is becoming more^and more alive to the call of her Lord, 
 ' arise, shine,' — her voice is becoming more loud and earnest 
 
INTRODUCTION. o 
 
 in tlio pulpit, her instruction agencies among our Lome popula- 
 tion are strengthening and thickly multiplying, and she is lengthen 
 ino- her cords so as to emhrace within her pale the abundance of 
 the sea and the forces of the Gentiles. But if it is unwise to 
 brood over the. maladies of an age as if it were only evil and that 
 continually, it is not less so to glory in its fair forms and healthy 
 activities as if oblivious of its wounds and bruises and putrifying 
 sores. The sun is in the heavens bright and beaming, but the 
 clouds have gathered surcharged with the elements of strife, and 
 they are ever and anon darkening and troubling the sky. Our age 
 is one of intense earnestness and action both for good and evil. 
 The old truth and the old error which have struggled throughout 
 the past, are in the field. But neither is slumbering, both are vigi- 
 lant, extending their lines, increasing their forces, devising and 
 adopting new modes of defence and attack, as if conscious that a 
 blow was about to be struck which would mark another gi-eat era 
 in the conflict between the powers of good and evil. 
 
 There are giants on the earth in these days both in the one 
 encampment and in the other. A mighty force is on the side of 
 the friends of truth, but it is sadly divided and scattered. What 
 is wanting is the strength of union, the concentration of those 
 energies in defending the citadel and making inroads on the 
 enemy, which are spent on the defence of comparatively unim- 
 portant posts, or in one detachment of the same corps guarding 
 against the encroachment of another. The champions of error, 
 though not without their discords and divisions, are yet wiser in 
 their generation than the children of light. As of old they discern 
 the signs of the times, and take counsel togetlier against the Lord 
 and against his anointed. The Press, to which under God we owe 
 so much of our light and liberties, wields a mighty influence on 
 the side of evil. The halls of pliilosophy, hallowed though they 
 be by many a name illustrious for Christian worth as well as intel- 
 lectual greatness, are often sending forth doctrines as gross as the 
 earth or as vague as the air, but alike adverse to that truth which, 
 coming from above, is above all. Our current literature and works 
 on science, with not a few bright and beneficent exceptions, arc 
 hostile either by their silence in reference to divine truth when 
 their subjects afford them occasions to speak out, or by their 
 
 b2 
 
4 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 avowed opposition to much of what constitntcs the essence of true 
 religion. And what is peculiar in a great measure to our times, 
 and throws a vast potency into the scale of irreligion, is the un- 
 ceasing effort of infidels to diifuse their principles among the 
 artizans and lahouring classes of the land. The earth is not still 
 and at rest. Men of every class are searching after an unknown 
 good. The demon of infidelity is stalking abroad, knocking at the 
 l)alaces of the rich and the cottages of the j)oor,« transforming 
 itself into this shape and that, and becoming all things, except an 
 angel of good, to all men. One dreary theory succeeds another, like 
 storm-cloud chasing storm-cloud over the face of the sky, and yet 
 man is not at peace. The cravings of his mind ai-e agonized, 
 not satisfied. It becomes those then who know the truth and 
 whom the truth has made free, those who having believed do enter 
 into rest, to arouse themselves for the two-fold object of meeting 
 infidelity at its various points and combatting its diversified formg, 
 and of presenting in every lawful way that truth which they know 
 only can give rest to a labouring and heavy-laden world. Let the 
 antagonist forces on the one side as well as on the other be pressed 
 into the unfettered conflict, and the lovers of God and the friends 
 of man have nothmg to fear but much to hope. "Christianity, 
 like Rome, has had both the Gaul and Hannibal at her gates : but 
 as the 'Eternal City,' in the latter case, calmly offered for sale, and 
 sold, at an undepreciated price, the very ground on which the 
 Carthaginian had fixed his camp, with equal calmness may Chris- 
 tianity imitate her example of magnanimity. She may feel 
 assured that, as in so many past instances of premature triumpli, 
 on the part of her enemies, the gi-ound they occu2iy will one day 
 be her own; that the very discoveries, apparently hostile, of 
 science and philosophy, will be ultimately found elements of her 
 sirengtlK"! " All fiesli is as grass, and all the glory of man as the 
 flower of grass. Tlie grass withereth, and the flower thereof 
 hiUetli av/ay. But the word of the Lord endin-eth for ever." 
 
 * " Aequo pulsat pedc panperum taljenins 
 
 l{(^gumque tuiros.'" — Jloracn. 
 
 + Rogers' Essays, vol. ii.p. 315. 
 
PAPtT THE FIEST. 
 
 ATHEISM PANTHEISM NATURALISM PSEUDO-SPIRITUALISM — - 
 
 INDIFFERENTISM — FORMALISM. 
 
 Infidelity, tlioug-h elaborating its own creed, is, properly s^Dealduo-, 
 a system of negations. It suggests rather what it seeks to demolish 
 than what it attempts to biuld. In this respect it is like the 
 ])almer-worm of the prophet, ^i' the mere mention of which leads 
 one to think more of what it has destroyed, than of what it has 
 left to be eaten by the locust. But in the work of demolition, one 
 man or class of men advances farther than another. Some sacred 
 truths wliicli one band of fell destroyers clear away in their march, 
 another band, leagued in the same warfare, leave standing. Just as 
 we may suppose some of the soldiers of Csesar, in attacldngthe Mas- 
 siliau grove, went scrupulously and sparingly to work from a super- 
 stitious dread of invisible power, while others, less timid and super- 
 stitious, levelled to the ground everything that had for ages been 
 counted sacred, j- Infidelit}' in one age or country may be much more 
 sweeping than in another, and, as every body knows, contempora 
 neous systems of unbelief among the same people may differ 
 wddely in the number of things sacred which they proscribe. But 
 there is a clearly defined body of religious truth, in reverencing 
 which, people and nations who have had and fairly used the means 
 of judging, liowever much differing on other points, have gene>rally 
 been agreed. This is the ark of the God of Israel ; and however 
 the Philistines may outstrip each other in laying hands upon it, 
 they are yet to be numbered under one genus, on the principle 
 that depredators are but depredators, though some may be braver 
 and more successful in the work of plunder than others. This 
 body of truth comprises all the commonly understood doctrines of 
 natural and revealed religion : such as the independent existence 
 of one absolutely perfect Being, the Creator, Preserver, and 
 Governor of all things ; the doctrine of the Trinity, or of three 
 Persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; 
 the Incarnation and Atoiement of the Son for human salvation; 
 and the necessity of the Spiiit's influences to regenerate the souls 
 
 * Joel i. i + Fostcv'a Zsstiys, p. 30, loth ed. 
 
atheism; oe, 
 
 of men. This is God's truth, tlie substance of all that material 
 nature teaches, the purest reason has ever been able to discover, 
 and the Scriptures have revealed. There is room for a diversity 
 of opinion about modes of ecclesiastical government, external 
 I'ites and ceremonies, and the interpretation of certain Scriptural 
 passages, but no one who has ears to hear, and who humbly listens 
 to the voices of nature and revelation, can fail to discover what 
 God is, and wliat he has done, what man is, and what he needs. 
 Infidelity, then, is found to manifest itself in such forms as tlie 
 following : in the denial of the Divine Existence, or absolute 
 Atheism ; in the denial of the Divine Personality, or Pantheism ; 
 in the denial of the Divine Providential Government, or Natural- 
 ism; in the denial of the Divine Redemption (including, as it 
 does, the doctrines of the Trinity, Atonem^ent, and Spirit's influ- 
 ences), or Pseudo-Spiritualism. And to these may be added, what 
 belongs more properly to practical, than to theoretical infidelity, 
 the denial of IMan's responsibility, or indifierentism ; and the denial 
 of the Power of Godliness, or Formalism. These forms we shall 
 now develop. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DENIAL OF THE DIVINE EXISTENCE, OE ATHEISM. 
 
 Albeism completes tlie negation — A somewhat strange phenomenon — Its exist- 
 ence doubted — No man of straw — Processes by which men have become 
 atheists — Prevalent in most depraved times — French atheism — Eeign of 
 Terror — Anatheistical nation self-destructive — No lack of adverse speculations 
 respecting the Divine Being,but absolute atheism comparatively rare — Develop- 
 ment hypothesis not positively atheistical — Atheism, however, a fact — Involves 
 a monstrous assumption — The existence of God an intellectual necessity — 
 Ai-f^umentH a priori and a ])osteriorl — EiLchisi\e claim for either disposed of — 
 Inductive proof from matter and mind — Defect of induction — Bible testimony 
 — Practical Proof the real one — Dr. Ai-nold. 
 
 Here the negation is complete. The work of demolishing things 
 esteemed sacred, has advanced so far as to leave nothing more for 
 the destroyer to do. He has reached the dreary brink from which 
 many destroyers, by no means craven-hearted, have shrunk back. 
 And from that bad pre-eminence he looks upwards to the heavens, 
 vacant at first in his wishes, and now in his creed, and with as 
 much boliiness as if he had travelled through the realms of space 
 and beheld all dark and desolate, says, Tliere is there no God. He 
 looks down to the gulf of annihilation, and, amid the troubles of 
 his godless existence, feels something like a morbid satisfaction in 
 the thought that the grave is an eternal sleep and the present 
 scene the whole of man. He looks abroad upon the mass of 
 human society, ill at ease and yearning after an enjoyment that it 
 l:as never found, and to the question, "Who will shew us any 
 good?" he has only one answer, "Let us eat and drink, for to- 
 
THE DENIAL OF THE DIVINE EXISTENCE. 7 
 
 against the aspirings of his better self, to rest in the dark dogma 
 that the highest being is man. 
 
 Atheism in this im qualified sense is, it must be admitted, a 
 somewhat strange and startling phenomenon. People in many- 
 parts would turn out and look at a real and avowed atheist, just 
 as they do at some singularly huge foreign animals, with mingled 
 astonishuient and alarm. Faith in God is so inherent in the heart 
 of humanity, and so essential to our reason, that many wise 
 and good men have doubted if ever there lived an intelligent 
 mortal so absolutely destitute of religious belief as is implied in 
 atheism., Addison would have told a man vv'ho gloried in this 
 distinction, that he was an impudent liar, and that he knew it. 
 Bacon accounted atheism to be rather in the lip than in the heart, 
 and that a contemplative atheist is a prodigy, a thing unusually 
 rare. " I confess," says Dr. Arnold in one of his weighty letters, 
 " that I believe conscientious atheism not to exist." And it does 
 appear an incredible thing, that a man possessed of intelligence 
 and feeling, standing amid this glorious amphitheatre of earth 
 and sky, gazing upon its grand and lovely forms, and listening to 
 its thousand voices of rapturous praise, can coolly deny the existence 
 of Him who sits enthroned above the heavens. It does seem hard 
 to be beheved that one of oin- race can retire into the depths of his 
 OAvn inner nature, and familiarize himself with the wondrous phe- 
 nomena of liis mental existence, and yet come out of himself and 
 unhesitatingly say that this great system of animate and inanimate 
 being is without a presiding and independent'mind. It does look 
 like a very prodigious thing in the world that men should be found 
 who not only rob God of the attributes that are essential to his 
 nature, and extrude Him fi-om the domain of his own creation, but 
 can frame and assent to the proposition that God is not. But 
 such prodigies have been and ai'e ever and anon 'recurring. 
 Every one indeed is not an atheist who wishes to be so. And 
 many who would fain persuade the world that they are heroes of 
 this description, are no more to be credited than the coward who, 
 in the absence of the foe, boasts of his bravery. But absolute 
 atheism is no man of straw that controversialists have set up in 
 order that they might knock him down. It is an embodied breath- 
 ing reality. And however much violence may be implied in free- 
 ing the mind of a belief in God, in thwarting and representing 
 those moral instincts which naturally go out thither and rest in 
 that faith, and in falsifying all the signs palpably marked on the 
 shining heavens and the green earth, which have spoken from the 
 beginning to the philosopher and the peasant of a supreme pre- 
 siding intelligence, the violence in not a few instances has been 
 done.^ 
 
 In 'some minds of a philosophic cast the work has proceeded 
 with something like system and deliberation. From one or two 
 
8 atheism; oe, 
 
 principles, wliicli in their fondness they no more thought cf 
 doubting than axioms in mathematics, tliey have wrought out, 
 through a series of inevitable developments, an independent uni- 
 verse, governed exclusively by mechanical laws, the lawgiver being 
 fate or necessity, or some otlier equally vague and unintelligible 
 name. In other minds less accustomed to scale the heavens and 
 traverse the fields of space, the consummation has been reached 
 by a felt necessity of advancing after having thrown off' religious 
 restraints; just as some people ar« necessitated to do a second 
 wrong action because they have done the first, to do a third 
 because they have done the second, and so on until the character 
 .for daring has been stereotyped into something like the shape of 
 an indomitable hero. And never but in the whirlpool of revolu- 
 tionary frenzy, or in such circinnstances as to be at once the cause 
 3,nd effect of the corruption of a state, has atheism been boldly 
 adopted and acted upon by the masses of a nation. A Diagoras, 
 a Bion, and a Lucian, are marked out from among the minds of 
 the ancient world as having made this unenviable attainment. 
 The men of Athens were wont to banish from their city the soli- 
 tary sceptic that now and then appeared, and dared even to 
 doubt the existence of a supreme intelhgence. Ancient Eome, 
 we know, had passed the climax of her glory before atheism 
 obtained any hold of the public mind, and its prevalence was 
 followed by such a course of degeneracy, oppression, and blood- 
 shed, as makes the reader of her history even now tremble; the 
 age of Pericles among the Greeks, and the age of Augustus among 
 the Romans had departed, and in the deluge of depravity that in 
 either case set in the monster abounded. But never was atheism, 
 whether of a philosophical or political kind, more boldly mani- 
 fested than in the history of modern Europe. During the latter 
 half of the last century, \he religious world had to contend not 
 only with a stnpid deism but with the abettors of an undisguised 
 atheism. The very first principle of natural religion was avowedly 
 rejected and stoutly contended for. Sensationalism reached its 
 culminating point. The materialistic school of France sent forth 
 an infidel science and literature of the broadest stamp, and that 
 school had its disciples in many lands In the " Systeme de la 
 Nature," the celebrated work of Baron d'Holbach, the most abso- 
 lute atheism is asserted as openly as the existence of God is 
 maintained in any of our treatises on natural theology. "The 
 grand object of the book," to use the language of Lord Brougham, 
 " being to show that there is no God, the author begins by endea- 
 Toiuing to establish the most rigorous materialism, by trying to 
 show that there is no such thing as mind — nothing beyond or 
 different from the material world."=:= This work, full tliough it be 
 of gratuitous assumptions and inconclusive reasoning, wa's well 
 
 * Discourse of Natural TbcolofeT, p. 172. 
 
THE DENIAL OF THE DIVINE EXISTENCE. -> 
 
 fitted as Dr. Chalmers spealiiug from liis own experience once 
 remarked, "by its gorgeous generalizations on natm-e and triitli 
 and the universe, to make tremendous impression on the unpi;ac^ 
 tised reader."^= The French Encyclopaedia of sciences which 
 numbered amoug its contributors some of the most biilh^^^^^^ 
 writers of the ag?, was avowedly a work of atheism. Matter and 
 its laws became the engrossing subiects ot investigation, the 
 existence of God was treated as the fiction of an overcredulous 
 ao-e and man was regarded as but an organised ammal the otl- 
 spring of chance, the sport of fate, aud whose end is annihilation 
 The Sreat work of Auguste Comte, which has obtained lor him a 
 wide reputation, is the most celebrated of the recent proauctions 
 of the same school. It is a system of huge matenalism, whicu 
 "records the dread sentiment, that the universe displays no proois 
 of an all-directing mind, and records it too as t^^ deduc ion o 
 unbiassed reason." Newton, Kepler, and others of the gieatest 
 discoverers in science, have risen from nature up to natures God, 
 and had their minds filled with religious emotion when exploring 
 the earth aud the heavens, but the disciples of the school to wh ch 
 we have referred, biilliant though their 4-eputation be in the 
 departmeuts of physical research, have presented to the world 
 productions of their genius which must l.ear the broad brand of 
 
 ""^ What has been too truly called the Eeign of Terror, in France, 
 was avowedly the reign of the most absohite atheism. InHdelity 
 then assumed its boldest front and lifted up its loudest voice, and 
 it found an echo in some paits of our own land. 1 frf^liy con- 
 fess that I am an atheist," said one of the members of the irencl 
 convention in a deliberative assembly of his countrymeii; and 
 thoucrh the declaration startled multitudes by its darmg, yet voices 
 were'not wanting in that asseuibly to cry out, '' \ou arean honest 
 man " The Revolutionary leaders, in the height ot their impiety, 
 not only sought to destroy every vestige of Christianity by abo- 
 lishing the sabbath, altering the calendar, plundering and shutting 
 im 01^ converting into warehouses, the various churches; but in 
 the climax of their guilt, they brought the convention to yield o 
 the crv, that the era had come when men should cease to feai the 
 Eternal, and, in the person of a strumpet, enthroned with heathen 
 or-ies the goddess of Reason as tlie object of national worsnp. 
 Fiance thus presented to the world the singular and appal mg 
 spectacle of a refined and civilized nation openly declarmg tha 
 thei-e is no God. proscribing all the acts of religious homage, and 
 
 nscribm^ on thieutrance to the sepulchre tuat deatli is an e en 
 sleep. "This," as Robert Hall remarks, '; is the first attempt 
 which has ever been witnessed, on an extensive scale, to establish 
 
 the principles of atheism; the first eff-ort whicli history has recorded 
 * Hannas Life of Chalmers, vol. i. p. 43. 
 
10 atheism; or, 
 
 to disannul and extingiiisli the belief of all superior powers." It 
 had been a matter of dispute in former ages whether a community 
 leavened throughout with atheistical principles could possibly sub- 
 sist. No great powers of reasoning were requisite to show that, 
 abstractedly considered, the thing is impossible. It is not necessaiy 
 to see the ocean shifting its bed or rapidly advancing beyond its 
 ancient limits, to feel persuaded that were it to do so, it would carry 
 a sweeping devastation into the towns and villages that skirt 
 the shore. Let the throne in the heavens be declared vacant, and 
 proclamation be made throughout the land that there is no God, 
 and society is reft of all its safeguards, crime is committed without 
 dread of punishment, and the vilest passions of the vilest men 
 rush onward without restraint. For how utterly feeble is the 
 check imposed by human laws when, by denying the Divine 
 existence, they have succeeded in exploding the law of God. 
 But the bad pre-eminence was reserved for modern France, to 
 teach in a palpable form the awful lesson, that when the Euler 
 among the nations is openly disowned, the foundations of tlie 
 earth are out of course, the bonds of society are dissolved, human 
 life is accounted cheap and wantonly sacrificed, and the most 
 horrid deeds are perpetrated imder the sacred name of libert3^ It 
 was " a grand experiment on human nature." Atheism had 
 never been tried on such an extensive scale before. And it was 
 seen and felt that nations, like individuals, cannot be prosperous 
 and safe, enjoy liberty and be at peace, without acknowledging the 
 living and tiiie God. France was like a troubled sea, a sea of 
 blood, under the reign of atheism. The people at last recoiled 
 from the impious and horrid system. And that same convention 
 which had publicly disowned the Most Fligh and proclaimed death 
 to be an eternal sleep, was constrained to recognise by enactment 
 the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, and, by an 
 impious festival, professedly to restore the Eternal to the nation's 
 faith and homage. " Vengeance belongeth luito me, I will recom- 
 pense, saith the Lord." " The republic of these men without a 
 God," remarks Lamartine, " was quickly stranded." Europe has 
 never witnessed the reign of such a bold and undisguised atheism 
 since, and in all probability never will. 
 
 Infidel opinions, monstrous and many-shaped enough, are ever 
 and anon thrown up amid the heavings of restless humanity, the 
 natural tendency of which is to lead men to look up to a vacant 
 heaven and down to the dreary gulf, from which, however, they 
 instinctively shrink back, and of such opinions no age was, 
 perhaps, ever more rife than our own. Views of a Supreme 
 Power, of human nature, and of the material world, are emanating 
 from the schools and being diffused throughout the mass of society, 
 which are unquestionably atheistical in tlieir leanings. But there 
 is no broad surface of humanity on which we can look and sjty, 
 
THE DENIAL OF THE DIVINE EXISTENCE. 11 
 
 tliere is atheism absolute and undisguised. Infidelity and atheism 
 are not convertible terms. Atheism is the worst form, the ulti- 
 mate bound of infidelity, but all infidelity is not atheism. The 
 one is, comparatively, a strange phenomenon, the other is ever 
 floating in innumerable shapes on the surface of society as well as 
 pervading, like leaven, the mass. Men in general will vvorship. 
 They are naturally led to recognise a Supreme Being, even though 
 he may possess in their imaginings none of the attributes and 
 characteristics of the God of the Bible. We would in nov/ise be 
 indulgent to the many adverse specidations respecting the Divine 
 Being which are afloat in their subtle and philosophic form, or 
 which are popidarized so as to meet the capacities of the multi- 
 tude, speculations which are dishonouring to God and virtually 
 deny Him. But we woidd distiugidsh between the man who 
 believes in the existence of a great First Cause, though holding 
 opinions that rob Him of his glory, and the man who openly 
 avows that there is no God, and denounces the belief in Him as a 
 mere chimera of the understanding. A hypothesis may be athe- 
 istical in its bearings and yet its assertor may be no theoretical 
 atheist. His theism, dissociated from other important beliefs, 
 may be of no moral worth whatever, and in the scriptural sense of 
 the expression he maybe without God in the world, yet so long as 
 positive atheism is not involved in his philosophical creed, and he 
 professes to have faith in God, it were unjust to place him at the 
 bound which he had not yet reached, and wTite him down atheist. 
 Mr. Hugh Miller justly remarks of the development hypothesis of 
 Maillet and Lamarck, that there is no positive atheism involved 
 in it. " God might as certainly have originated the species by a 
 law of development, as he maintains it by a law of development ; 
 the existence of a first great Cause is as perfectly compatible with 
 the one scheme as witli the other." =:< If it were a question of 
 moral influence, and not of dogmatical opinion, we might merge 
 such sim})le theism in atheism, for, as the author of the " Foot- 
 prints" observes, " without a belief in the immortality and respon- 
 sibility of man, and in the scheme of salvation by a Mediator and 
 Redeemer, a belief in the existence of a God is of as little etJtical 
 value as a beUef in the existence of the great sea-serpent." But 
 it is with men's creed, not their practice, that we have at present 
 to do. And men may be living without God in the world, and 
 yet hold that there is a God in the heavens. It is the man who 
 disowns God, who theoretically and practically denies his exist- 
 ence, that bears on his brow the self-inflicted brand, " I am an 
 atheist." Our own age does not lack such daring mortals ; they 
 may be found here and there in the schools, and in the workshops, 
 wielding the press, or spouting from the rostrum, or taking up the 
 gauntlet on the platform, but, in general, the mass of society 
 
 * rootprints of the Creator, p. 14. 
 
12 ATHEISM ; OK, 
 
 which is not Christian is infidel ratlier than atheistical. Com- 
 paratively few are so foolhardy as to maintain that there is no 
 God, though vast multitudes are foolhardy enough to deprive Him 
 of all His distinguishing glory while professing to acknowledge 
 liis existence. Atlieism, however, is a fact in human society, and 
 more or less prevalent in every age, and must be numbered as one 
 and the grossest of the forms of infidelity.-;^ 
 
 In atheism the negation of infidelity is complete. Now, before 
 noticing the positive proof for the existence of God, there is an 
 initial consideration, of some importance to the argument, which 
 must be adverted to. We allude to the immense knowledge 
 requisite in certain cases to establish a negative. Evidence may 
 be adduced at once to show that such a thing is or that such a 
 thing has been done, while the negation of this may demand a 
 surprising amount of research and experience. An individual, for 
 example, cast upon what seemed to be a desert island, might 
 affirm that it was, or lately had been, inhabited, and in proof of 
 this he would need only to point to the human footprint on the 
 sand. One such mark would of itself be sufficient to make good 
 the affirmation. But v/ere the companion of his misfortune to 
 contend that the island was uninhabited, and that no traces of a 
 human being having ever been there could be found, it is very 
 obvious that the proof of this negative assertion would be attended 
 with much greater difficulty. In the one case, the single human 
 footmark fresh upon the soil would be proof sufficient. In the 
 other case, it would be necessary to explore the whole region, to 
 examine carefully every cavern and locality, before the negative 
 proposition could be substantiated. The one clear print of a man's 
 foot would prove that man was, or had been, in the island, but it 
 would be requisite to see that no human footprint was visible 
 througliout its entire length and breadth, that no vestige of a 
 human inhabitant could be discovered, before an individual would 
 be entitled to say, that no man was or ever had been there. And the 
 difficulty of making good the negative would increase with the en- 
 largement of the country and the number and size of the localities 
 to be gone over. 
 
 The same principle holds with regard to extent of time as to 
 
 * A3 to the general character of the atheism amoug the people, we here adduce 
 two competent witnesseis. Dr. Krummacher, in his Alliance Paper on Infidelity 
 in Germany, remarks, "that Atlieism in the lower classes appeaj-s as a plant, 
 proceeding inore from political interest, than as a proof, proceeding from a clear 
 sclf-jtidgment. Religion is looked npon as an invention to press down tho 
 people." Mr. Vanderkisto, in his deeply interesting "Notes and Narratives of a 
 Six Years' Mission among the Dens of London," says : " the so-called atheists 
 witli whom I have met, have proved, with few exceptions, upon being closely 
 quostionod, not realhj to he atheists at all. Tliey have admitted some causation, 
 and wlien pressed closely upon the subject of intelligent causation, and required 
 to define terms, tliey have fairly broken down, and become angry. Atheism is to 
 be regarded as' the desperate shift of an ill-regulated mind, determined to rid 
 itself of responsibility at the expense of all reason and argument." 
 
THE DENIAL OF THE DIVTXE EXISTENCE. 13 
 
 extent of space. Let it be affirmed of the British monarch that, 
 on a certain occasion, she entered, in the most unostentatious 
 manner, into a poor cottage and relieved with her own hands a 
 suffering family. Nothing more would be requisite to substantiate 
 the affirmation than the honest testimony of the favoured cottagers, 
 or the truthful word of some competent witnesses. But let tho 
 negative statement be made, that tlie monarch never entered such 
 a humble abode, and never administered relief in such a way, and 
 it is obvious that very much is necessarj^ to make the statement 
 good. No one would be warranted to utter such a negative, but 
 an individual who had closely followed the monarch through eve]-j 
 path and winding which she took in private life, or who was, in 
 some way or another, cognizant of all her out-door movements 
 throughout every day of every year since she ascended the tlu'one. 
 Did the individual's experience extend so far as three hundred and 
 sixty-four days of a given year and no farther, for aught he knew, 
 the condescension might have been manifested and the good deed 
 performed on the very day to which his knowledge did not reach. 
 The difficulty of establishing the negative would increase as the 
 time extended to the whole reign, and it would be absolutely 
 insurmountable when made to embrace not only a particular 
 monai-ch but all the sovereigns that ever sat on the British tlu-one. 
 Even in the absence of all proof to the contrary, wdiat an amount 
 of presumption would be implied in saying that no English 
 monarch ever entered an humble dwelling, and did a benevolent 
 act to its poor inmates, but the arrogance would be complete if the 
 statement was made in defiance of one or more well-authenticated 
 instances of such benignant doings in the annals of English 
 royalty. 
 
 These remarks will enable us to see what extraordinary attain- 
 ments must have been made before an individual would be entitled 
 to say, There is no God. It is a negative proposition which no 
 finite mind can enunciate without being guilty of the most 
 astounding presumption; and the man would only beti-ay his 
 folly who should attempt to demonstrate it. The sceptic may 
 express his doid^ts of the Divine existence and give reasons 
 for his doubting, but beyond this, scepticism can achieve nothing. 
 In order to substantiate the affirmative proposition, that there is a 
 God, nothing more might be necessary than to i)oint to some of 
 the footprints of the Creator which are visible in the heavens and 
 the earth. If there be a God, only a very small amount of know- 
 ledge and experience would be requisite to prove it. The evidence 
 might lie, as we say that it does lie, in a flower of the field, in a 
 leaf of the forest, in a single hand, or in a single eye. But the 
 negative proposition could be substantiated within no such com- 
 pass. Even were there no indications of the Creator in that 
 wondrous microcosm the human eye, or in the waving leo*', or in 
 
14 atheism; or, 
 
 the "blooming floorer, still it were an illegitimate inference and a 
 manifestation of high presxmiption to conclude that there is no 
 God. He must needs have traversed not only every part of "this 
 dim spot which men call earth," but he must have wandered fi'om 
 stai* to star, made himself thoroughly acquainted with all worlds, 
 have searched into the records of all ages, and have foimd 
 throughout all space and all time no evidence for design, before 
 an individual could be entitled to say that the universe is without 
 a God. This idea is forcibly expressed by John Foster, -^ and 
 eloquently illustrated by Dr. Chalmers. + "The wonder then 
 turns," says the original minded author of the Essays, " on the 
 great process, by which a man could gTow to the immense intel- 
 ligence which can know that there is no God. What ages and 
 wliat lights are requisite for this attainment ! This intelligence 
 involves the very attributes of Divinity, while a God is denied. 
 For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment 
 in every place in the universe, he cannot know but there may be 
 in some place manifestations of a Deity, by which even he would 
 be overpowered. If he does not know absolutely every agent in 
 the universe, the one that he does not know may be God. If he 
 is not himself the chief agent in the universe, and does not know 
 what is so, that which is so may be God. If he is not in absolute 
 possession of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, 
 the one which he wants may be, that there is a God. If he 
 cannot with certainty assign the cause of all that he perceives to 
 exist, that cause may be God. If he does not know everything 
 that has been done in the immeasurable ages that are past, some 
 things may have been done by a God. Thus, unless he knows all 
 things, that is, precludes all other divine existence by being Deity 
 himself, he cannot know that the Being whose existence he rejects, 
 does not exist. But he must laiow that he does not exist, else he 
 deserves equal contempt and compassion for the temerity with 
 which he firmly avows his rejection and acts accordingly." 
 Atheism is thus shown, at the very outset, to be illogical and to 
 rest on a monstrous assumption, so that we are prepared to welcome 
 whatever evidences offer themselves for the truth of the proposition 
 that there is a God 
 
 But not only is the proof of the non-existence of God an intel- 
 lectual impossibility. His existence is felt to be an intellectual 
 necessity. The mind of man is so constituted that it cannot be 
 satisfied without it, and hence the monstrous violence done to his 
 intellectual and moral nature when he attempts to banish from 
 him the idea of a First Cause. That there must be a First Cause, 
 is an axiom assumed in all our reasoning upward from the phe- 
 nomena of nature to natm-e's God. The snow that is now thickly 
 falling as we wi'ite these ]mges, the stormy wind that is drifting 
 
 * Essays, 15th eel. p. .35. f Institutes of Theology, vol. i. p. 63. 
 
THE DENIAL OV THE D1VI>;E EXISTENCE. \iP 
 
 tliat snow against our windows and doors, are effects the causes of 
 wLich we investigate and the laws of which we trace ; but in our 
 upward track we are seeking after a resting point, we come to the 
 last link in the chain of material causation, and from the very- 
 constitution of our minds we repose in a cause essentially different 
 fi-om all others, which is the I A^r, the selfexistent and inde- 
 pendent God. The idea of a great First Cause is not derived 
 originally from the phenomena of natm-e around us, but assumed 
 in our investigations into these phenomena. It ip an axiomatic 
 truth which every sound reasoner carries along witb liim in his 
 ascent from effects to their apparent causes, and to which the mind 
 from a felt necessity fully surrenders itself wlien it lias reached 
 the last link in the phenomena of nature. The Greek logician bas 
 said, " all that moves refers us to a mover, and it were only an 
 endless adjournment of causes were there not a primary im.- 
 movable Mover." Such an endless adjournment of causes can 
 never be resorted to without doing great violence to our mental 
 constitution, and forcibly thwarting its natural tendencies. It is 
 just a perpetual armed attempt to thrust the mind away from the 
 rest to which, from the law of its being, it is ever aspiring. '_' Our 
 minds cannot be satisfied," remarks Professor Whewell,* "with a 
 series of successive, dependent causes and effects, without some- 
 thing first and independent. We pass from effect to cause, and 
 from that to a higher cause, in search of something on which the 
 mind can rest ; but if we can do nothing but repeat this process, 
 there is no use in it. We move our limbs but make no advance. 
 Our question is not answered but evaded. The mind cannot 
 acquiesce in the destiny thus presented to it, of being referred 
 from event to event, from object to object, along an interminable 
 vista of causation and time. Now, this mode of stating the 
 reply, — to say that the mind cannot tJius be satisfied, appears to be 
 equivalent to saying that the mind is conscious of a principle in 
 virtue of which such a view as this must be rejected; — the mind 
 takes refuge in the assumption of a First Cause, from an employ- 
 ment inconsistent with its owti nature." "That First Cause, 
 indeed," observes Dr. Harris,! " must be immensely different, both 
 in rank and in nature, from the subordinate physical causes to 
 which it has imparted motion ; but still the mind feels the ne- 
 cessity for such a cause with all the force of an intellectual 
 instinct. The mind was constituted to feel this necessity, and 
 thus to supply the last link in the chain of reasoning from itself, 
 as much as it was made and meant to find the preceding links in 
 the phemomena of nature." 
 
 Having thus glanced at the intellectual impossibility involved 
 in the negative proposition that there is no God, and at the intel- 
 
 * Indications of the Creator, 2nd ed. p. 198-9. 
 + Pre-Adamite Earth, p. 151. 
 
]6 atheism; or;, 
 
 lectiial necessity for the axiom that there must be a First Cause, 
 we are prepai'ed to consider the real value of the arguments a 
 j)riori and a posteriori. And we cannot help remarking, at tho 
 outset, that too exclusive an importance has been attached to each 
 of these celebrated forms of proof, as if the one were absolutely 
 independent of the other. The two, in a great measure, go hand 
 in hand, and conduct us to the jjosition that there is a God, the 
 Great Creator and Parent of the universe. The a jrriori mode of 
 reasoning is the exclusive idol of many of the German logicians, 
 tliey have an utter contempt for our inductive philosophy and 
 matter-of-fact theolog}'. Experience, the great teacher, is pro- 
 fessedly ignored in their argumentation, the world with all its 
 palpable reahties is shut out, and from mere mental abstractions 
 they evolve ah existencies and all truth. But in their hands this 
 kind of reasoning has completely failed. It conducts the mind 
 to no firm resting-place. It bev/ilders, instead of ehicidating, our 
 notions of God, of man, and the universe. It g^'.ves us no divine 
 personal existence, and leaves us floating in a region of mere 
 vague abstractions. Such reasonings are either altogether vain, 
 or are not really what they profess to be. 
 
 In our country the name of Dr. Clarke is chiefly associated 
 with the a priori argument. He and many others attached to it 
 an immense importance. But however highly extolled in past 
 times, and worthy to be admu-ed as a specimen of intellect, it is 
 now generally set aside as insufficient of itself to demonstrate the 
 Being and Attributes of God. Clarke himself found it necessary 
 to stoop to the argument « posteriori, and thereby acknowledged 
 the failure of attempting to reason exclusively a p)riori. In ex- 
 amining his celebrated demonstration, it is found to be really 
 inductive, and not wholly independent of experience as supposed 
 Our conception of a First Cause is not indeed derived from ex- 
 perience, for it is felt to be an intellectual necessity, but experience 
 is necessary to its development. The very first jn-oposition that 
 something must have existed from eternity, since it assumes that 
 something exists, is a posteriori. And in order to prove that this 
 eternal something is not " a blind and nnintelUgent necessity, but 
 in the most proper sense an imdcrstandimj and reaUy active being," 
 in which, as he well says, " lies the main question between us and 
 the atheists," he resorts to the world with its orderly arrangements, 
 and on tlie ground of fact and exjoerience builds up his argument. --'= 
 'Tiie fate of Dr. Clarke's pretended demonstration, and the result, 
 in so far as theology is concerned, of tlie transcendental reasoning 
 of the continental philosophers, show the futility of attempting to 
 rise up to the lieight of the great argument for the existence of 
 God on the h priori method alone. 
 
 TiiB o\0i a posteriori argument, while decried by the German 
 
 * Clarke's Discourse, Prop. viii. 
 
THE DENIAL OF THE DIVINE EXISTENCE 17 
 
 logicians on the one hand, has, it must he confessed, been invested 
 ^vith too exclusive an importance by some of our own theologians 
 on the other. It is necessarily limited in its range. It carries us 
 upwards from effects to causes, from the evidences of design to a 
 designer; bat it cannot of itself carry us to the throne of the 
 Eternal, who is uncaused and the cause of all. We cannot, by a 
 strict process of inductive reasoning, infer from one or more finite 
 effects that the cause of them is absolutely infinite. Design proves 
 a designer, but it does not prove that the designer is God. The 
 argument from external and visi])ie nature leads the way, but, 
 unaided by other prooi's or conceptions, would never conduct us 
 to the I AM THAT I A]\r. The marks of contrivance which are so 
 palpable in everything we see in the fields of creation give us the 
 logical conclusion that every thing has had a contriver. They give 
 us also the idea of gi-eat wisdom and goodness and power, but of 
 themselves they do not give us the jiroof of a Being possessed of 
 infinite and absolute perfections. The argument points, like a 
 finger-post, in tliat direction ; but, strictly speaking, we leave the 
 argument, or it leaves us, and we resign ourselves to tlie necessary 
 conviction tliat there is a Great First Designer and that he is God. 
 There is nothing elaborate in the process. It is simpler and easier 
 than the simplest step. From effects we ascend naturally to 
 causes, from subordinate laws we rise up to the highest law; but 
 when the inductive philosophy has carried us easily up, and placed 
 us as it were on the highest point in the series of material caus- 
 ation, it has not given us the great First Intelligent Cause. It 
 has, however, conducted us so far that, by our very mental consti 
 tution, we repose in the conviction that beyond the series of mere 
 mechanical causes and effects, is the Infinite Cause of all. 8. t 
 Isaac Newton has truly said, " though every true step made in this 
 philosophy brings us not immediately to the knowledge of the 
 Fii'st Cause, yet it brings us nearer to it."' Let the chain of mate- 
 rial causation be lengthened out ever so far, we only feel however 
 at the topmost link, what is felt throughout all the lower links, 
 the necessity of a cause above all otliers in nature and rank, 
 a cause uncaused and the cause of all. Induction points to this, 
 but it does not give it. Call it an intuitive sentiment, a primitive 
 judgment, an intellectual necessity, or what you will, the mind is 
 so constituted as in the reasoning process to supply it and rest in 
 it. The starting-point of the ci posteriori m-gument,^v]nc\\ is the 
 idea of design or causality, is an a priori belief, and from the argu- 
 ment itself we pass necessarily to tlie conviction that there is a 
 Fu-st Cause, differing essentially from all others, whose name is 
 God. So that it is vain to assert an exclusive claim for either 
 iirgument, since they involve and aid each other.* 
 
 * The Atbeist, in availing himself of the exclusive importance attached to the 
 a posteriori avgnrnont, thu'i reasons; "if design implies a designer, contrivance 
 
 G 
 
18 ATHEISM ; 01{, 
 
 The exclusive claim for either of these arguments being disposed 
 of, we are prepared to notice the indications of the Creator that 
 lie without the field of revealed truth. And here we avail our- 
 selves of the rich contributions in the way of proof, which are 
 furnished by the phenomena both of matter and mind; and in 
 doing so, we repudiate neither argument, but make use of both. 
 The plain way in which men have reasoned from the beginning, 
 is upwards from the evidences of design in the material universe 
 to the existence of the Great Designer; upwards from the orderly 
 and beneficial dispositions of matter to the Divine Hand that 
 framed the whole. And this old path is the truest and safest still. 
 It has been adorned by the eloquence of Cicero and Brougham, 
 of Paley, Chalmers, and others. It is the ai-gument of the royal 
 psalmist: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firma- 
 ment sheweth his handiwork." Nature in all her departments 
 abounds in such evidences. The discoveries of physical science only 
 enlarge to our view the vast magazine of contrivances, all of which 
 point upward in the direction of the great Infinite Contriver. And 
 our progress in that direction is in nowise arrestoa by any of the 
 theories which profess to account for the origin of the universe, or 
 to give us the beginning of its existing motions and arrangements. 
 The hypothesis of Laplace, which has been so much vaunted 
 against our Natiual Theology, and which would trace backward 
 the earth and the whole solar system to an extremely diffiised 
 nebulosity that gradually cooled down and condensed, has been 
 very much discredited by recent discoveries of the telescope. But 
 even supposing that it were verified, it would not destroy the argu- 
 ment for a God derived from the collocations of matter, nor prevent 
 us from going beyond itself to an intelligent First Cause. " Let it 
 be supposed," remarks ProfessorWhewell,* " that the point to which 
 this hypothesis leads us, is the ultimate point of physical science ; 
 that tiie farthest glimpse we can obtain of the material universe by 
 our natural faculties, shows it to us occupied by a boundless abyss 
 of luminous matter; still we ask, how space came to be thus occupied 
 — how matter came to be thus luminous ? If we establish by phy- 
 sical proofs, that the first fact which can be traced in the history 
 of the world, is tliat there was light; we shall still be led, even by 
 our natural reason, to suppose that before this could occur, ' God 
 said, let there be light.' " It is indeed true, as we before hinted, 
 that the experimental argument of itself does not give us an Infi- 
 nite cause. But if it carries us to the last link in the chain which 
 is furnished by the phenomena of nature, it leaves us to repose, 
 
 a contriver, nature's contrivor must have been himself contrived." The mon- 
 strous assumption, out of which arises this atheistical inference, is, thatnatuie"s 
 contriver has in himself marks of design. This is the reasoning of a man whose 
 chi"r distinction is that he is editor of "The Eeasoner." 
 * Indications of the Creator, p. 63. 
 
THE DENIAL OF THE DIVINE EXISTENCE. .19 
 
 from an intellectual necessity, in the conviction that there is an 
 uncaused cause which is the cause of all. The old assumption of 
 an eternal succession of finite beings was made to get rid of th' 
 idea of One Eternal BeiDg. That the supposition is unphiloso- 
 phical and absurd has been shown thousands of times. The mind, 
 from its very constitution, disowns it. Men may form as many 
 links in the chain of causes as they choose, but they must, at last, 
 reach an uncaused Cause. It is strictly tme that from nothing 
 nothing can proceed. Something must have existed before all 
 finite beings, or whence came these finite beings into existence? 
 That something must be self-existent, underived, necessary, and 
 eternal. It is He who is the I am, and to whom we apply the 
 sublime language of tlie ancient seer: "Before the mountains 
 were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the 
 world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God." It 
 matters not whether it be in the department of zoology, with its 
 two well-established princi])les, that there is no such thing as 
 spontaneous generation, and that there is no transmutation of the 
 species, or whether it be in the department of a sublime and ever- 
 enlarging astronomy ; it matters not whether we extend our survey 
 to the systems of suns that roll throughouttheimmensity of space, 
 or w^hether we centre it on that wondrous microcosm, the human 
 eye ; we meet wuth teeming evidences of design, which not only 
 carry us to a designer, but hand us over, necessarily, if we may so 
 speak, to the belief that the great First Designer is God. It is no 
 mechanical necessity that we thus reach. It is Jehovah, the living, 
 and the life-giving One. 
 
 This argument has also received increasingly rich contributions 
 from a closer study of the constitution of the mind, and a more 
 perfect analysis of its various phenomena. To reason upwards 
 from the laws of our mental constitution to the Infinite Mind, 
 who is the Parent Source of the whole, is just as experimental, 
 (though, in neither case, dissociated from « priori beliefs,) as to 
 reason from material nature up to nature's God. Some of our 
 popular writers on natural theology have either entirely overlooked 
 the evidences of design presented by our mental constitution, or 
 have satisfied themselves with merely adverting to them. Paley, 
 who has written so admirably on the material phenomena, never 
 once extends his argument to the intellectual and moral. This 
 omission has been accounted for by the astonishing discoveries 
 of physical science, which, bringing palpably into view a vast 
 assemblage of material evidences, have, for the time, thrown into 
 the shade the proofs of the Divine existence and character derived 
 from the iniiid. And yet the field of man's inner nature is as 
 legitunate a province of the inductive philosophy as the external 
 world with its manifold organizations, and furnishes no less 
 numerous and greatly more influential evidences of an intelligent 
 
 c 2 
 
20 atheism; on, 
 
 Cause. Lord Brougham, in his " Introductory Discourse of Na- 
 tural Tlieology," and Dr. Chahners, in his "Institutes," have. 
 liherally supplied what, in this department, was lacking in some 
 of our older writers. The mind is a created effect, and, like matter, 
 is a proper suhject of ohservation. It has its own peculiar pheno- 
 mena and laws, which we can examine, and, from tliem, gather 
 proofs of the Infinite Mind, which is the source of all. Between 
 it and matter there is a gulf fixed. The properties of the one are 
 wholly different from the properties of the other. No combination 
 of mechanical forces could ever produce an intelligent and moral 
 being. That mind is a mere modification of matter, is no less at 
 variance with the inductive philosophy than is the exploded dogma 
 of the transmutation of the species. Here, then, is an efiect en- 
 dowed with intelligence, reason, and moral sentiment. This effect 
 must have had a cause. And on the evident principle that no 
 effect can possess any perfection which was not in the cause, we 
 naturally infer that the creator of the human spirit is a moral and 
 intelligent being. This is as much an inductive process of rea- 
 soning, as the step we take in advancing from material nature up 
 to Him who has designed it. Men have reasoned in this simple 
 way from the beginning. " He that planted the ear, shall he not 
 hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see? he that teacheth 
 man knowledge, shall not he know ? " And since there is an in- 
 tellectual necessity for a First Cause, himself uncaused, and the 
 cause of all, his seeing must be all-seeing ; his knowledge must be 
 omniscience ; his moral nature must be absolutely perfect. The 
 most striking phenomenon in our mental constitution is con- 
 science, the man within the breast as it has been called. It sits 
 enthroned amid the other principles of our nature, and is invested 
 with a rightful authority over them. Its voice — the voice of a 
 sovereign judge — is heard above the tumult of passion, and the 
 rebellious uproar of the less noble propensities. And though its 
 high behests are not always obeyed, yet its right to rule is every 
 where acknowledged. It is sovereign de jure even where it is not 
 sovereign de facto. Now let it be observed, tliat all the authority 
 of this faculty is on the side of righteousness and truth ; that it 
 has sanctions for the enforcement of its utterances ; that it approves 
 the good, and denounces the evil ; and in the righteous supremacy 
 of this part of our nature, we have a strong proof lor the existence 
 of a just and holy God. The authority of a law of right and wrong 
 in our moral constitution implies a lawgiver, the setting up of a 
 tribunal within the breast points to a yet higher tribunal in the 
 heavens, and from the felt presence of a judge within us, denouncing 
 wrong, and sanctioning right, we infer the existence of a righteous 
 Judge over us, who is at once its Author and Lord. In the supre- 
 macy of this moral principle we have strong evidence not only of 
 an intelligent Creator, but of one who is just and true in all his 
 
T}IF. DENIAL OF THE DIVINE EXISTENCE. 21 
 
 waj's, and holy in all his \vorl\S. "And this theology of conscience," 
 as Dr. Chalmers remarks, " has done more to uphold a sense of 
 God in the world than all the theology of academic demonstration." 
 Conscience, however, though the chief, is only a part of our mental 
 phenomena. The mind is replete with other evidences for the 
 heing and character of God. These we do not stay to illustrate. 
 Suffice it to say that in the intellectual powers of man, and 
 their adaptation to external nature — an amazing assemhlage 
 of brilliant and magnificent phenomena — in the emotional 
 part of his nature, with the hallowed pleasure inseparable from 
 the indulgence of good affections, and the wretched disquietude at 
 tendant on evil ones, speaking loudly, as they do, for a God who 
 loves righteousness, and hates iniquity; — and in the supremacy 
 of conscience, enthroned, as it were, above the whole, and ever 
 uttering her voice on the side of whatsoever things are true, and 
 lovely, and of good report, and against their opposites ; and not 
 only so, but rewarding well-doing, and punishing wrong-doing; — 
 in such mental departments of natural theology as these we gather 
 no less rich contributions to the evidence of a God, than from the 
 field of external nature.* Indeed, in man himself, we have an 
 embodiment of the whole argument. He is fearfully and wonder- 
 fully made. The human frame is the noblest structure beneath 
 the heavens. In the exquisite mechanism of his body, and in the 
 primitive judgments, and wondrous operations of his mind, we 
 have the clearest indications of the Creator that lie within the 
 range of natural theology. " If you want argument from design," 
 says Mr. Morell,f " then you see in the human frame the most per 
 feet of all known organization. If you want the argument from 
 belnrf^ then man, in his conscious dependence, has the clearest con- 
 viction of that independent and absolute one, on which his own 
 being reposes. If you want the argument from reason and morals, 
 then the human mind is the only known repository of both. Man is, 
 in fact, a microcosm — a universe in himself; and whatever proof the 
 whole universe affords, is involved in j^rincipJe, in man liimself. 
 With the image of God before us, who can doubt of the divine 
 type ? " 
 
 The argument then for the being of a God is neither exclusively 
 d 2)osterion, nor exclusively a j)nori, but partakes of both. Man 
 cannot declare that there is no God, without being gviilty of the 
 most tremendous presumption. He is a fool who hazards the 
 assertion, because it involves an amount of intelligence w-hich no 
 creature can possess, the very attribute of omniscence, while He, 
 in whom alone that attribute resides, is denied. And not only so, 
 but there is an intellectual necessity for a Being uncaused and the 
 cause of all. Tiie mind cannot be satisfied without it. It refuses to 
 
 * Seo C]ialmer9"i5 Institutes, vol. i. pp. on— 110. 
 + History of Philosophy, vol. ii. pp. 010.7. 
 
13ass along a depcndeut series of causes and effects, without resting- hi 
 something that is first and independent. That there must be a first 
 cause, is a primitive belief, a jiroposition that lies beyond the pale of 
 demonstration, — a principle with which we start in our reasoning 
 upwards and to the full conviction of which we surrender ourselves at 
 the height of the argument. The good old way in which men have 
 reasoned from the beginning, is upwards from the evidences of 
 design to a designer, upwards from the goodly collocations of mat- 
 ter that meet our view, and the mental phenomena that conie 
 under our consciousness, to the great Parent Source of all the 
 orderly relations of matter and mind. And this simple way is the 
 best still. Finite efiects, indeed, can never, of themselves, give us 
 an infinite cause. The d jtosteriori argument, strictly speaking, 
 cannot, unaided, carry us up to the tlu'one in the heavens, and 
 Ijrove that beyond the circle of nat\n-al causes and effects is 
 the great First Cause of all. But it leads us very far onward in 
 that path. And then, by a soft and imperceptible step, transfers 
 us to the natural conviction that there is an independent existence 
 Avho is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending, 
 the First and the Last. To the height of this great argument we 
 rise from the evidences furnished both by matter and mind. The 
 mateiial universe is full of indications of the natural attributes of 
 the Creator. And our mental constitution is no less full (A evi- 
 dences of his moral nature. We weaken our argument against 
 atheism, if we refuse to avail ourselves of the contributions in the 
 way of proof which are fm'nished by either depaitment. Both lie 
 within the domain of the inductive iDhilosophy. And with the 
 evidences gathered from both, we logically infer that our Maker 
 possesses transcendent attributes ; that he is of great power, and 
 wisdom, and goodness, one who loveth righteousness, and hateth 
 iniquity. From the great we pass, by a different link, to the in- 
 finite; from transcendent attributes we pass to absolute perfec- 
 tions. And that link is supplied by the mind itself. The transi- 
 tion, in most cases, is made imperceptibly; but it is done. We 
 have a certain primitive conviction that there is a Being of neces- 
 sary and unchanging existence, the Maker of all things, and in 
 whom centres, in an infinite degree, every perfection that is found 
 in His works. It is thus that we, apart from the scriptural reve- 
 lation, rise with a firm step from nature up to nature s God. 
 
 The testimony of tlie Bible now comes and crowns the tlieistic 
 argument. It authenticates the deductions of enlightened reason, 
 and confirms those primitive judgments, whereby we repose in the 
 belief tliat God is, and that He is what He is. Tlie very first 
 sublime utterance of inspiration. In the hegbrninfj God created the 
 heavens and the earth, sets its seal that our reasoning upwards 
 from matter and mind to the Infinite creating Mind, is true 
 The Bible presupposes the Divine existence, and never formally 
 attempts to prove it. It appeals to that very experimental evi- 
 
PANTHEISM. 23 
 
 (lence, which is patent to the eyes of all men, as a witness against 
 irreligion and idolatry, and for the only living and true God, 
 while it throws a lustre, peculiar to itself, around his moral cha- 
 racter, and his relations to man and the world. In the beneficial 
 collocations of matter, in the orderly relations of this goodly uni- 
 verse, and in the constitution of tlie mind, with its intellectual 
 powers and moral sentiments, there is a vast amount of clear 
 evidence which points upwards to an infinitely perfect Mind. 
 But it is when we reach the Bible itself, " that wondrous monu- 
 ment of past ages, with its firm place in history, and its telling 
 ])ower on men's hearts," that we stand on an elevation, v/hence, 
 like the angel in the sun, we see in the clearest and most impres- 
 sive light the glory of Him who created and controls all things. 
 " God never wrought a miracle," says Bacon, "to convince atheism, 
 because his ordinary works convince it." The material pheno- 
 mena that lie around us, and the mental phenomena that arise 
 within us, give the lie to it. And if men will not believe on the 
 ground of this evidence and the superadded evidence of revealed 
 truth, neither would they believe though the Eternal uttered his 
 voice from the rent heavens, and declared what He has done in 
 His word, " I am God, and besides me there is none else." 
 
 Thus far the proof has been dogmatic. But after all, to use the 
 weighty words of Dr. Arnold,-:^ "the real proof is the practical one; 
 that is, let a man live on the hypothesis of its falsehood, the prac- 
 tical result will be bad ; that is, a man's besetting and constitu- 
 tional faults will not be checked ; and some of his noblest feelings 
 will be unexercised, so that if he be right in his opinions, truth 
 and goodness are at variance with one another, and falsehood is 
 more favourable to our moral perfection than truth ! which seems 
 the most monstrous conclusion which the human mind can pos- 
 sibly arrive at." 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE DEN-IAL OF THE DIVINE PEUSONALITT, OR PANTHEISM. 
 
 Pautheism (listingaishecl from atheism— The result of severing two good prin- 
 ciples — Pantheism and polytheism a higher and a lower grade — Seduces by its 
 comprehensiveness — Its existence in the past — The doctrine of the Eleatics 
 and of Buddhism — Its prevalence in Germany: Spinoza, Schelliug, Hegel, 
 Strauss, Feuerbach — French philosophy accused of it: Cousin — Continental 
 Socialism pantheistic — An exotic in England — Emerson and his school — In- 
 tellectual pantheism of Carlyle — Eemarks of Professor Garbett— Quotation 
 from Tennyson — Bearings of pantheism : Makes creation an inmilable neces- 
 sity, destroys responsibility, shuts out prayer, and extinguishes individual im- 
 mortality — The personality of God argued from our own personality, from con- 
 sciousness and inward expenence, from the language of ycripture — The abso- 
 lute and the personal reconciled in Christ. 
 
 Atheism is the ultimate point to which pantheism tends. Both 
 may be said to lie in the same plane. But the one is not to be 
 
 * Life of Arnold, vol, ii. p. 1. 
 
24 PANTHEISM ; OIlj 
 
 confounded with the other. The atheist denies the primal truth 
 that God is. The pantheist, on the other hand, admits it. It is in 
 fact with him the sum and substance of all truth, or rather the one 
 gi-eat truth in the universe. The atheist sees God nowhere, the 
 pantheist sees Him everywhere. The one looks upon a world won- 
 drously fair and sublime, every department of which is bright with 
 intelligence, and resolves the whole into mere mechanical forces, 
 and thrusts out, by a denial of his being, the all-pervading energy 
 of nature's God. The other sees God really shining in the sun, 
 moon, and stars, living in the flowers and the grass of the field ; 
 hears Him speaking in the winds and waters, in the songs of the 
 inhabiters of the grove, and in the deep emotions of the human soul. 
 The atheist looks up to the bright heavens and around on tlie varie- 
 gated earth, and coolly says, There is natm-e, but no God. The pan- 
 theist points to all the glorious forms of earth and sky, and exclaims 
 with something like enthusiasm, There is God. The Divine Being 
 is with him indeed the only real existence. The universe, with 
 its multitudinous forms of what we call matter and mind, is only 
 phenomenal. Men who have not reached the utmost bound of 
 infidelity — atheism, or who have not come so far within sight 
 of it as pantheism, conceive of the Creator as entirely distinct 
 from his works, though incomjirehensibly present with and per- 
 vading them. But the pantheist virtually makes of the twain 
 one. Nature is absorbed in Deity. God is extended beneatli all 
 that exists, thinks, and moves. He is in all and all is in Him. 
 The pantheist then has a God, and, strictly speaking, he has no- 
 thing else. But his God is merely an infinite substance, a vague 
 immensity — the one essence of Being extended everywhere, of 
 which man and all other existing things are but the modes. The 
 world and all the fulness thereof mirrors to our view the glory of 
 the Infinite, Personal, and Independent One. But the pantheist 
 worships the mirror itself, and sums up his creed by saying that 
 all is God. 
 
 Almost every fatal dish contains food as well as poison. Every 
 eiTor in religion lies upon or side by side with some truth. Pan- 
 theism has within it an element of godliness, but, like the food in 
 the fatal dish, it is overborne and rendered destructive by the ele- 
 ment of evil. Or rather, pantheism looks like a good principle 
 severed from another which is necessary to keep it sound and 
 healthy, and in its isolated state transformed into a bad principle. 
 The principle to which we allude is the omnipresence and all- 
 pervading energy of the Creator and Governor of tlie universe. 
 It is a truth, the vivid recognition of which is essential to piety, 
 that God is everywhere present throughout the vast creation. All 
 nature is full of Him. The luminaries of heaven and the flowers 
 of earth, the perpetual hills, and the wide sea where go the ships, 
 the various animal tribes, and intelligent man, the noblest of all, 
 
THE DENIAL OF THE DIVINE PERSONALITY. 25 
 
 proclaim the presence of the living God. It might he thoiiglit 
 that poetry has carried this principle too far vrhen it represents God 
 as shining in the snn, whispering in the winds, clothing Himself 
 with clouds and storms, and speaking in the rational nature of man. 
 But such poetry is not necessarily pantheistic. It is just an em 
 hodiment in living words of sentiments and emotions that burn 
 more or less in the bosom of every man who is susceptible of the 
 infliisnces that come upon him from every department of nature. 
 These influences tend to raise the mind from nature up to nature's 
 God, and such is the tendency of much of the jwetry to which we 
 allude. The morning orison which Milton puts into the mouth 
 of Adam and Eve in Paradise, the hymn which Thomson raises to 
 the God of the Seasons, or Coleridge's " Hymn before Sunrise in 
 the Vale of Chamounis,"have no tendency whatever to produce or 
 strengthen pantheistic feelings; because however much they clothe 
 with living attributes the grand and lovely forms of nature, they 
 never absorb God in these forms, but rise from the visible to the 
 Invisible, and make "earth with her thousand voices" praise a 
 living, personal, and absolutely perfect God. In the last nobla 
 hymn which we have mentioned, the whole of Alpine nature is 
 grandly personified, but all its utterances rise, " like a cloud of 
 incense," to Him who in his glorious personality existed before 
 the mountains were brought forth or ever He had foimed the earth 
 and the world. It is this latter principle, the principle of per- 
 sonality, that the pantheist sinks or loses sight of The world, 
 so to speak, is full of vitalities. God is present in them in the 
 immensity of his essence whereby He filleth all things. That 
 is a true devotional principle. God is nevertheless as distinct from 
 them as the soul of man is distinct from his body. That is an- 
 other trae devotional principle. Both must be held fast in order 
 to our having right views of the relation subsisting between the 
 Infinite and the linite, the Divine nature and the divinely-created 
 and divinely-sustained universe. Seize hold of the former principle 
 and let go the latter, recognise a divinity in the vitalities which 
 appear in the world around you, but withhold your recognition of 
 a divinity essentially distinct from these vitalities, and what 
 have you but these collective vitalities for a God. This is pan- 
 theism. 
 
 Pantheism and polytheism are in fact but a higher and a lowei', 
 a more refined and a more vulgar way, which men have taken 
 when they have ceased to walk in a spiritual relatiouihip vrith 
 God.=;: Their idea of Him — 
 
 who sittetli above these heaveins 
 
 To us invisible, or dimly seen 
 In these his lowest works," 
 
 See Tholuck on the Nature anu Moral lufluenoe of KetUhcnisjM, jt. hi. 
 
2G PANTHEISM ; OBj 
 
 has lost its vivid spiiituality, and they liave fallen from high con- 
 verse with the Creator down to the creation itself. In such a case, 
 the more learned and philosophic, who were not prepared to take 
 tlie leap to absolute atheism, would no longer regard the life and 
 thought that appear in the visible world as merely manifestations 
 of the presence and agency of the Great Spirit, but as modes or 
 niodiiications of the Divine essence. Those, on the other hand, 
 "whose thoughts proud science never taught to stray," v.'ho had 
 little or nothing of the specidative temperament, and who could 
 not grasp the idea of one gTeat whole, would see a distinct deity in 
 every diffsrent department of nature. The one beheld the same 
 infinite substance under all mental and material phenomena. 
 AYhat are called powers of nature or secondary causes, all of which 
 are controlled by the supreme Intelligent Cause, would be regarded 
 by the speculatist as so many modes of the infinitely-extended 
 One. The collective energies and agencies of the visible world, in 
 his estimation, constituted God. And thus he became a pantheist. 
 The other class, less comprehensive and vigorous in mind, looked 
 at creation in its smaller divisions, and recognising a distinct 
 energy in every difierent kind of phenomena, assigned a distinct 
 divinity to the hills and to the vallies, to the woods and to the 
 waters, and thus became polytheists. Pantheism and polytheism, 
 however mucli they diverge the one from the other, are to be traced 
 up to the tendency in the depraved mind, in its estrangement from 
 the High and Holy One, to confound God with nature, and to lose 
 the pin-e spiritual world in the phenomenal and visible. The 
 reluctance or incapacity of men to retain God in tJieir knowledge 
 as a Person, self existent and independent, lies at the bottom of 
 both. The one is the fruit of a speculative philosophy, the other 
 is the gi'osser manifestation of the same corrupt tendency, \inre- 
 fmed and iniarrested by the influence of the schools or the higher 
 influence of Christianity. 
 
 It is this very comprehensiveness, this embracing nature of its 
 principles, which distinguishes pantheism from polytheism, that 
 renders it in Christian lands the most dangerous foe to Chris- 
 tianity. "Never did a philosophical system take such an attitude 
 towards the Christian faith; it does not make it a superstition, as 
 did atheism; it does not neglect it as does our popular pliilosophy; 
 it does not scout its mysteries, as does an irrational common- 
 sense; nor does it attenuate it into a mere ethical system : but it 
 grants it to be the highest possible form of man's religious nature, 
 it strives to transform its gi-andest truths into philosophical prin- 
 ciples ; it says tliat only one thing is higher, and that is pan- 
 theism." =1= There is no fear of men becoming polytheists in a 
 country where paganism lias been rooted out, and the influences 
 of th« Gospel have been deejily and extensively felt. But pan- 
 
 * smith's Eelations of Faith and Philosophv, p. 11, 
 
THE DENIAL OF THE DIVTNE PEESONALll V. 2't 
 
 theism flourishes in the very heart of comniunities called Chris- 
 tian, and coils its pliant form around the very faith whose author 
 and finisher is the Brightness of the Father's glory and the express 
 Image of His Person. The coil indeed is fatal : for however fair 
 to look upon may he the sinuous folds, it poisons the truth, and 
 destroys everything that is distinctively Christian. " It weaves its 
 subtle dialectics around everything, that thus it may drag all into 
 its terrific vortex. It has a word for almost every man, excepting 
 for the Christian established in his faith. By the very extrava- 
 gance of its pretensions it seduces many; by its harmony with 
 the life of sense it attracts those who love the world ; and by its 
 ideal character it sways such as would fain be lifted above the 
 illusions of sense and the visions of imagination, and the contra- 
 dictions of the understanding, into a region of rarer air, where 
 reason sways a universal sceptre. Its system includes all things. 
 God is all things; or rather all is God; he that knows this system 
 knows and has God."=.'^ It, accordingly, has its attractions for all 
 men who have ceased to walk in communion with the living per- 
 sonal God, and who yet feel the want of something in the shape 
 of religious faith. The philosopher revels in it as in a region of 
 boundless speculation ; the poet and the artist find therein a 
 beautiful dwelling-place where they can wander at their own sweet 
 will ; and the half-thinking artisan is pleased wdth a creed which 
 interferes so little with material interests, and summons him so 
 seldom to look at things unseen and eternal. Many such persons, 
 in our day, are pantheists. 
 
 Pantheism is not, however, a thing of yesterday. It has, in its 
 essence, existed in all ages. Some would persuade us that it is the 
 latest result of human experience, a resting-place for the long- 
 tossed mind, reserved for us upon whom the ends of the world 
 have come. But it is not so. Infidelity in our times is throwing 
 up nothing but what has been thrown up before. Its difierent 
 forms are only old idols in new positions and an-ayed in modern 
 garbs. " In e'^^ery form of it, it has its ancestry, and it must not ask 
 now to be spoken to as if we had not already, and long ago, made 
 acquaintance with it "■)- " Heresies," says Sir Thomas Browne, 
 " are like the river Arethusa, though they lose their currents in 
 one place, they rise up again in another." "VVe meet with pan- 
 theism in the speculative philosophy of the ancient world. It has 
 been tlie faith of millions in India from a remote antiquity down 
 to the present day. Spinoza in the seventeenth century, and 
 Schelling, and Hegel in the nineteenth, have only systematized 
 and reduced to a severe logical form what had been floating else- 
 Avhere for ages before. This was substantially the docti'iue of tho 
 Eleatic?. They speculated on the great problem of existence, and 
 
 * Smith's Relations of Faith and Philosophy, p. 11. 
 + The Kestoration of Belief, p. 15. 
 
28 pa:<theisji; on, 
 
 fjidcavoured to resolve those mysteries which have baflfied tl)e 
 Iniman uuderstaiiding in every age. Zeno, the most distinguished 
 philosopher of this scliool, maintained tliat there was but one real 
 existence in the universe, that all other things were merely phe- 
 nomenal, being only modifications or appearances of the Great 
 One which existed as a substratum beneath the whole. Pantheism, 
 indeed, has appeared in all nations where there have been minds 
 of a speculative cast, ignorant of, or in a great measure uninflu- 
 enced by the revelation of Christ. It seems "to be the joint product 
 of an estrangement from God, the eternal and independent I A:\r, 
 and an effort to comprehend the essence of things and the 7iexiis 
 which unites the Infinite with the finite, the phenomena of nature 
 vv'ith the cause of all that phenomena. The very same doctrine 
 forms substantially the creed of some Hindoo sects in the present 
 day. India has had its philosophies and has them still. And 
 pantheism is the common form which speculations on the mys- 
 teries of existence have there assumed, unrestrained as these 
 speculations have been in the absence of the Gospel. Hindooism 
 and Buddhism are but philosophies of religion. The priests may 
 have been the speculatists, but the system has found a spontaneous 
 welcome with the people who were too dull of apprehension to rise 
 to the thought of a pure spiritual Intelligence, and too alive to a 
 sense of dependence to say there is no God. Tlie author of the 
 " Recollections of British India," speaking of a philosophical sect 
 called the Gosains, tells us that, " in common v>^ith the Buddhists, 
 they believe that the Divine Being is not separate from, but iii 
 Himself the universe, so that all its constituent parts are but parts 
 of Himself. The different deities, therefore, are merely portions of 
 the same essential Godhead." This coiToborates what has been 
 said of the connection between pantheism and polytheism, and 
 reminds us of the old doctrine of the Stoics, according to which 
 tlie spirit pervades the whole world as the substratum of its acti- 
 vity, and receives from men various designations according to the 
 different phenomena which it animates. There is, indeed, a striking 
 coincidence between the One substratum of the Eleatics, the Brahm 
 of the Hindoo, and the World-spirit of the modern German.-- 
 
 Germany, of all the countries of modern Europe, is the most 
 prolific soil of pantheism. And it is imported from thence into 
 our own among other European states. It is the native fruit of 
 iK'-r meta])hysics. The mental habitudes of her people are pecu- 
 liarly thoughtful and reflective. Pliilosophy, not the inductive and 
 experiuiental as with us, but the speculative and idealistic, is 
 natural to the German mind. Her schools liave been absorbed in 
 discussing the same great questions which were discussed over 
 and over agxin in the schools of tlie ancients. Those mysterious 
 ])robl©ms v/hich regard the principles of things, the existence and 
 
 * Di-. Yanghan's Age and Christianity, p. 2-55. 
 
THE DENIAL OF THE DIVINE PERSONALITY. 20 
 
 nature of God, the relations between Him and the nnirerse, and 
 the origin of human knowledge, — problems on the solution of 
 which the gi-eatest minds in past ages have been employed with so 
 little profit, — possess a peculiar charm for the philosophers of the 
 Continent. There is this important difference, however, between 
 the pantheism of the old world and that of the new, between that 
 of ancient Greece and India, and that of modern Germany : the 
 one sprung up and flourished in the absence of an authoritative 
 revelation from heaven, while the other has risen and spread in 
 contempt of it. The German has become a pantheist with the 
 Bible in his hand, and his foot in the birth-place of the Eeform- 
 ation. He has refused to follow, humbly and submissively, that 
 light that has come into the world, and which alone has hitherto 
 conducted individuals or communities to rest. 
 
 The German philosophy — a philosophy which seeks to reach the 
 one originating principle of all things — has been carried into the 
 region of theology, and there borne its bitter fruit. Spinoza has 
 been justly regarded as the father of modern pantheism. He, by a 
 stern logic, fully developed the system of Descartes. The illus- 
 trious Frenchman had endeavoured to demonstrate the existence 
 of God from the phenomena of consciousness. The position he 
 assumed was, that whatever consciousness clearly proclaims must 
 be true. Descartes, in short, derived existence from thought. 
 Spinoza identified them, and referred both to the one Infinite 
 Substance of which everything else is a mode or manifestation. 
 According to his logic, God is the only reality in the universe, tha 
 one universal existence that underlies all other existences, so 
 that everything is in and from God. The distinction between 
 the Creator and His works was thus annihilated, and the 
 system of pantheism became complete. Others had held it 
 as a vague dreamy doctrine, but Spinoza was the first to give it 
 a rigid logical form. It is remarkable that he, too, in a, j)as- 
 sage in his posthumous works, has anticipated some of the 
 disciples of the Hegelian school in their interpretation of th© 
 great doctrines of the Bible. " I tell you," says he in a letter to 
 Oldenburgh, "that it is not necessary for your salvation, that you 
 should believe in Christ according to the flesh ; but of that eternal 
 Son of God, that is, the eternal wisdom of God, which is mani- 
 fested in all things, but especially in the human mind and most 
 of all in Jesus Christ, we must cherish a very different opinion. "'i^ 
 It is the philosophy of Spinoza, propounded in the seventeenth 
 century, and diffused over the Continent ever since by his writings, 
 that has given the greatest impulse to the speculative mind of 
 Germany, and produced that wide-spread pantheism so charac- 
 teristic of German s})eculations. Schelling and Hegel, whose 
 names ai*e identified with the pantheism of the nineteenth century, 
 
 * Lewes s Biogi-aphical Histoid of Philosophy, toI. iii. p. 12.j. 
 
30 pantheism; or, 
 
 are the fiuit of his lahoiu'S. They liave refined and carried out 
 the system to \vhich Spinoza gave the form. In both of these 
 philosophic leaders, we see a thorough contempt for what is induc- 
 tive and experimental, the method by which Newton attained an 
 unprecedented eminence in physical science, and Locke rose to 
 such high distinction in the science of mind. The treasures of 
 knowledge which observation contributes are professedly discarded 
 by them, and those which abstract reason furnishes are exclusively 
 valued. The evidence from design, which has been so fully illus- 
 irated by our ov/n writers on natural theology, and which is so 
 patent to the eyes of all men, is set at nought by the heads and 
 disciples of this school. And they pretend to prove all existence 
 by laying down a priori axioms, and starting from them in a course 
 of stern logical argumentation. By this process, Fichte, who 
 preceded the two philosophers referred to, brought to a fatal con- 
 summation what is called Subjective Idealism. Nature and God 
 in his philosophy vanished. Self became the solitary existence in 
 the universe, and the creator of everything else human and divine. 
 The moral order of the world was all that was left for the world's 
 God, and the philosopher stood on the very brinlc of absolute 
 atheism. From this the mind of Germany shrunk back ; and 
 Schelling reproduced, in an attractive form, the pantheistic system, 
 the tendency towards which is so strong in the great Fatherland. 
 He identified the subject and the object, and inade them mani- 
 festations of God or the Absolute. Nature with him is but the 
 self-development of Deity. The whole phenomena of the universe 
 have proceeded in one strict chain of necessary evolution. And 
 God has only come to realize Himself, and attain self-conscious- 
 ness, in man. Everything, according to this system, exists in 
 God, and He is of necessity the All One. The system, in so far 
 as it is intelligible, proclaimed the universe to be God. There 
 was, however, another step to be taken before tlie climax was 
 reached, and that step was boldly taken by Hegel. He denied the 
 existence of both subject and object, and left only a imiverse of 
 relations. Everything with him is a process of thought, and God 
 himself is the whole process. The Deity is not a self-existent 
 reality, but a never-ending self-discession, which never realizes 
 itself so fully as in the human consciousness. Creation, according 
 to this, is not a single act, but God is necessarily ever creating. 
 The pantheism of the Hegelian system is obvious amid much of 
 tlic mysticism that shrouds it. Natme is absorbed in God, and 
 God and the universe, whatever they be, are identified. By this 
 same process of pure philosophic thought, Hegel pretended to 
 deduce the whole of doctrinal Christianity Schelling before him 
 had made the Gospel revelation one of the modes in which God is 
 manifesting Himself in history. But Hegel, by his philosophy, 
 transformed Christianity into a system of regularly evolved ideas, 
 
THE DENIAL OF THE DIVINE PERSONALITY. 31 
 
 the value of which is altogether independent of historical testi- 
 mony. 
 
 It is at this point that David Frederick Strauss and his school 
 appear. He has put on the Hegelian armour, taken his stand in 
 the very heart of the Christian theology, scattered into air the gi'and 
 sbjective element of the Gospel, and left nothing remaining except 
 a few religious ideas or conceptions of the mind. He is, strictly 
 speaking, neither a rationalist nor a supernaturalist. He disavows 
 all connection with either, and proclaims war against both. He 
 is, however, a pantheist in the extreme. He represents the far 
 left of the Hegelian party, and stands on the very verge of atheism, 
 if he has not fallen into the gulf God is with him a process of 
 thought He has no separate individual existence. Apart from 
 the universe, or out of that process which is alleged to he eternally 
 unfolding itself and which attains the highest state of consciousness 
 in the mind of the philosopher himself there is no God. No room 
 whatever is left in the system for the intervention of a personal 
 God, and in the system a personal God has no existence. Hence 
 his mythical theory. The historical Christ of the Gospels, accord- 
 ing to him, was the personified ideas of the church. The Divine 
 Jiedeemer was a process, a personality gradually formed out of 
 elements contributed by Old Testament history, rabbinical tradi- 
 tion, and the state of the popular mind at the time when the Mes- 
 siah was expected. In other words, Christ was the creation of the 
 church, not the founder of it. Such a person as Jesus, it is ad- 
 mitted, lived and died, who believed Himself to be the Christ. 
 Strauss recognised a small historical element in the person of 
 Jesus, a land of skeleton which the church gradually clothed 
 with flesh and blood, the distinguishing attributes of which were 
 an investment thrown around it from the mind of the chm'ch 
 itself The fully developed Christ of the Gospel, was thus made the 
 embodied aggi-egate of the conceptions of the first Christians and 
 the thoughts of the past. Tliis is the latest shape, Avith the excep- 
 tion perhaps of Feuerbach's, which German infidelity has assumed, 
 the extreme point to which pantheism has been carried, and where 
 it becomes almost, if not altogether, identical with atheism. It 
 leaves no God, but a vague personification of human conscious- 
 ness. The existence of a divine consciousness separate from the 
 human is ignored. It sweeps the world clean of an historical 
 Christianity. It binds up all the physical and moral movements of 
 the world in one unbroken chain of necessary development. And 
 having left no Supreme and Independent object of worship, it takes 
 away the Bible, and presents us with nothing in its room but 
 mythological ideas embellishing the shadow of a reality. Pan- 
 theism in Germany wiU be found, then, like other forms of infi- 
 delity, to have a variety of shades, so that those who stand at the 
 one extreme may hold some opinions that are denied by tliose who 
 
32 pantheism; or, 
 
 stand at the other. Hegel himself was unquestionably a pantheist, 
 though it maybe doubted if he would have gone the length of liis 
 bold and admiring disciple Strauss. But Spinoza, the founder of 
 this philosophy, and Schelling, Hegel, Strauss, and others, who 
 have developed it, agree in this that they sink the personality of 
 God.^:- 
 
 Pantheism is not, however, restricted to the schools and lite- 
 rature of Germany. The existing French philosophy is by no 
 means clear of it. While there is reason to apprehend that, in its 
 most unphilosophic form, it constitutes the faith of a large portion 
 of the French people. The system of Cousin, who is regarded as 
 the founder and coiyphseus of the modern eclectic school of France, 
 has met with much opposition from various writers on account of 
 its pantheistic leanings. He holds the balance, as Dr. Chalmers 
 has remarked, between the two philosophies of Germany and Scot- 
 land, neither being exclusively ontological as the former, nor exclu- 
 sively psychological as the latter. His idealism, modified though 
 it be^ has led him, however, in a pantheistic direction. And though 
 he repels the charge of pantheism, yet what other interpretation 
 can be put on his language, when he speaks of God as " being 
 absolute cause, one and many, eternity and time, essence and life, 
 end and middle, at the summit of existence and at its base, infinite 
 and finite together; in a word, a Trinity, being at the same time 
 God, Nature, and Humanity." Mr. Morell, an admirer of Cousin's 
 genius, justly remarks, when commenting on his view of the 
 .Divinity: " even if we admit that it is not a doctrine, like that of 
 Spinoza, which identifies God with the abstract idea of substance; 
 or even like that of Hegel, whicli i-egards Deity as synonymous 
 with the absolute law and process of the universe ; if we admit, in 
 fact, that the Deity of Cousin possesses a conscious personality, 
 yet still it is one which contains in itself the finite personality and 
 consciousness of every subordinate mind. God is the ocean — we 
 are but the v/aves; the ocean may be one individuality, and each 
 wave another; but still they are essentialhj one and the same."f — 
 Here we have the very notion of Deity which is developed in much 
 of the current literature of the day, and which leads to a system of 
 man-worship. The finite is an emanation or portion of the infinite. 
 The universe is comprehended in God. Men's souls are divine. 
 Every man is an incarnation of Deity. All existences are in God, 
 and God is in all existences.! 
 
 * Morell's History of Philosophy, vol. ii. chap. v. sect. 2. + Ibid. pp. .502, .511. 
 
 + It is but just to admit, what Cousin stoutly contends for, that his system is 
 uol identical with that of Spinoza and the Eleatics. " I must remind my adver- 
 nari«H5," says he, "that the God of Spinoza and the Eleatics is a pure substance, 
 and not a cause. In the system of Spinoza, creation is impossible • in mine it is 
 Meeessary." But when he tells us that " if God be not everything.', He isnotliing-; 
 — that everywhere present, He returns, as it were, to Himself in the consciousness 
 ef man,"— who eaa wonder if it be looked upon as pantheism of another phase ? 
 See e»usiii'» Phil. Essays, (Clark's edition, 1 pp. 22, 77. 
 
THE DENIAL OF THE DIVINE PEESONALITY. 33 
 
 But the veil of mysticism which shrouds the pantheism of the 
 schools, and often renders its language hard to he understood, is 
 removed from the ^san theism of the people. The socialism of the 
 Continent is, in a great measure, pantheistic. The masses, who 
 are incapable of following the philosopher in his metaphysical 
 investigations, readily aiDprehend their results when popularized, 
 and brought within the sphere of man's interests and duties. 
 This is done by the socialist propaganda. And however much the 
 various sects of socialism war with each other on points of polity, 
 they are generally of one mind in regard to man-worship. Amid 
 the late revolutions which shook •continental Europe, it was not 
 difficult to see the divinity to whom the clouds of incense arose. 
 That the highest being is man, was the dogma commonly taught 
 and cordially received. In France, the teaching of Pierre Leroux, 
 who has been counted the metaphysician of socialism, was undis- 
 guised pantheism. He knows of no God distinct from the universe 
 of being. And humanity with liim is but the incarnation of 
 divinity. The tendency, in short, of all the socialist sects in 
 France, notwithstanding the religious sentimentalism of the lan- 
 guage of some of their leaders, is towards pantheism. Hence 
 their declamations on the perfectibihty of the human race, and 
 their exclusion of all motive power but the human will. God, 
 accordiag to them, was in Jesus Christ, and so he is in the French 
 people. And this is the faith which has supplanted the infidelity 
 of Voltau-e in tlie heart of the nation. The diseased patient is 
 perpetually turning himself on the same bed, seeking rest and 
 finding none. The coimnunism of Germany is rampant with the 
 same eleuient. Feuerbach, who is the chief teacher of the more 
 advanced form of socialism, has deilied the human race. According 
 to him God is not a being above man, but God is to be found in 
 man. Eeligion is not a thing that comes to man from without;, 
 but the whole contents of religion are derived from human nature 
 itself Man thus becomes a god to himself Theology becomes 
 anthropology. And pantheism reaches the pomt to which it is 
 ever tending, the very verge of atheism. Such has been, and is 
 in a great measure still, the faith of immense multitudes of people 
 on the Continent, in the middle of the nineteenth century. And 
 if there is one lesson more impressively taught than, another by 
 the recent commotions, amid which such gross infidelity was 
 thrown up, it is that such a faith can never give rest and happiness 
 to the nations of the world. 
 
 Pantheism among ourselves is somewhat of an exotic. The 
 sturdy English mind is not the most congenial soil for it. The 
 philosophy irom which it lias sprung, is alien to the mental habi- 
 tudes of our people. But if it does not exist as an intellectual 
 system in our schools, or widely prevail in the communistic foim 
 
 u 
 
34 PAiNTHEISM , OK, 
 
 among the masses, it has been miported into our literature in the 
 most alhiring guise, and is destined, we think, to prove for a whilo 
 the great foe of Bible Christianity. 
 
 In some of the transatlantic j'^roductions which are circulating 
 among us, we meet with the system in its poetic or most attractive 
 form. The Emerson school, which numbers many disciples in our 
 land, is unquestionably pantheistic. Emerson himself, with all 
 his gorgeous mysticism, is a pantheist. Man-worship is the phi- 
 losophy which pervades his speculations. He comes before the 
 Avorld as a reformer. And whether he addresses a class of divinity 
 students, or the members of a literary society, or a mechanics* 
 association, the one prominent doctrine in his orations is the soul 
 of man. Emerson -finds everything in man, and he wages war 
 with all systems that lead mau out of himself for an object of faitlr 
 and worship. His complaint is that " the soul is not preached." 
 The doctrine of the soul, " first soul ; and second, soul ; and ever- 
 more, soul;" is, according to him, the grand truth that is to rege- 
 nerate the world, and he seems to consider himself commissioned 
 to promulgate it. He boldly denies the personality of God, It is 
 the " theologic cramp" that bound Swedenborg, one of his favourite 
 Representative Men, that otherwise " colossal soul." After the 
 manner of some of the German Transcendentalists, he holds the 
 totality of being to be God, who comes to self-consciousness only 
 in the individual man. " The universal does not attract us until 
 housed in an individual. Who heeds the waste abyss of possi- 
 bility ? The ocean is everywhere the same, but it has no character 
 until seen with the shore or the ship." Man is at once the wor- 
 shipper and the object of worship. " Standing on the bare ground, 
 my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, 
 all mean egotism vanishes. — The currents of the Universal Being 
 circulate through me. I am part or particle of God." Prayer, in 
 perfect consistency with these notions, is shut out. " It is God in 
 us which checks the language of petition by a grander thought." 
 Historical Christianity, being a thing from without, is repudiated. 
 Man is a revelation to himself. His soul becomes the fountain of 
 all truth and goodness. And Emerson and his school comjilaiu 
 that "men have come to speak of tlie revelation as somewhat long 
 ago given and done, as if God were dead." The first defect of 
 Historical Christianity with him is, tliat it " dwells with noxious 
 exaggeration about the person of Jesus." Eor " tlie soul knows no 
 persons." Mr. Emerson, like many others who would destroy the 
 doctrinal system of the great Teacher, professes much admiration 
 ibr Jesus Christ. He is no longer denounced as an impostor. He 
 is held up as the true, the model man. " He saw with open eye 
 the mystery of the soul. — Alone in all history, he estimated the 
 vrreatupss of luan Ope man v;n.:i truo to what is in vou auci 
 
TilE DENIAL OF THE DIVIKE PERSuN^LITY £5 
 
 me. He saw that God incarnates Himself in man, and evermore 
 goes forth anew to take jjossession of his world. He said in this 
 jubilee of sublime emotion, ' I am divine. Through me God acts; 
 through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, 
 when thou also thinkcst as I now think.' " But the doctrine of 
 the true prophet was distorted, and jMr. Emerson tells us how, 
 " Because the indwelling Supreme Spirit cannot wholly be got rid 
 of, the doctrine of it suffers this perversion, that the divine nature 
 is attributed to one or two persons, and denied to all the rest, and 
 denied with fury." — Man, in short, is thus made the highest being. 
 Every human soul is a wave in the ocean of divine existence. God 
 is the whole sea. And we are divine or a part of God. No won- 
 der then that man refuses to receive truth at second-hand, and is 
 taught to believe that all the vii'tues are comprehended in self- 
 trust. Know yourself, reverence yourself, rely upon yourself, are 
 the law and gospel of this school that claijus to regenerate the 
 world. In this strain does this poetic philosopher discourse to the 
 youth connected with divinity halls, literary societies, and me- 
 chanics' institutes. =;~ 
 
 He is not a logician, but a seer ; he announces, not argues; is 
 the language of an admiring editor of his works. This witness is 
 true. Seldom or never does anything in the shape of an argimieut 
 cross oiu' path in reading the orations and essays of Emerson, 
 He dreams and dogmatizes. All his responses are delivered with 
 oracular authority. " I stand here to say. Let us worship the 
 mighty and transcendant soul." He is im questionably a man of 
 genius, endowed with exquisite sensibilities and a brilliant fancy. 
 His style, though far from undefiled, is energetic and attractive. 
 It is often, however, far too mystical to be extensively popular. 
 He is, after all that has been said about him, a dreamer, a glorious 
 dreamer if you will, but still a dreamer. Such seers as J\lr. Emer- 
 son have been in the world before, and have discoursed to young 
 and old, as he has done, about the divinity of the soul, and the 
 duty of self-reliance, and what tlie better has the world been for 
 such oracles? History attests that it never has been by such 
 dreamers and dreamy systems that society has been quickened and 
 regenerated Look at the Hebrew prophets who ever and anon 
 appeared, filled with the inspiring Spuit, to rebuke the Israelites 
 for their apostasy, and recall them to the service of the living 
 God. Look at John, the harbinger of the Messiah, the voice of 
 one ciying in the wilderness, whose teaching was so influential 
 and impressive for good. Look at Christ Himself, who " alone in 
 all history, estimated the greatness of man," and for whom Emer- 
 son and his disciples profess such veneration, and where in all his 
 discourses do you find him preaching this doctrine of the soul, 
 t< lling his hearers that there is no atheism but the proposition of 
 
 ♦ Sp? Emereon's Oro.tions and Efisavs, ffissfm. 
 
 i)2 
 
36 paj;theism; or, 
 
 depraTity, that they are parts or particles of God, and that they 
 ought to rely upon themselves aud act a godlike part? The con- 
 duct of Judas ^yas honourahle compared with such attempts to 
 betray the Son of man with a kiss. Look at Paul and the noble 
 company of the apostles, men who turned the world upside down 
 when living, and who being dead yet speak, and in vain do you 
 seek for a single point of contact between theii- doctrines, which 
 alone have been instrumental in the world's regeneration, and 
 this system of man-worship. Look at all the mighty throng, be 
 they poets or philosophers, statesmen or divines, who, by the 
 almost universal consent of mankind, have been counted, in the 
 highest sense of the expression, reformers, and who have left the 
 salutary impress of their genius and labours on their own and 
 succeeding times, and which of them ever acted on the belief that 
 in one soul, in any soul, are resources for the world, and that the 
 office of a true teacher is to show God in the soul ? " The thing 
 tiiat hath been, it is that which shall be." The world's regenera- 
 tion will go on as it has begun. And that is not by preaching the 
 pantheistic doctrine of the soul. Go to the heathenism that is 
 abroad, or to the heathenism tlmt surrounds us at home; tell the 
 idolater in the wilderness who di-inks out of the skulls of his 
 enemies, or tell the convict in his cell, or the half naked v»Tetch in 
 bis hovel, that his soid is divine, and the haggard look and gi'ovel- 
 ling propensities will cry out that the doctrine is a mockery and a 
 lie. But the disciples of this school never venture into such fields 
 as these. Mr. Emerson tells us that in walking abroad, he sees 
 vegetables and trees nodding to him, and he nods to them.* But 
 he meets with no salutation from men wh.^re, if true, his doctrine 
 would be most welcome. It is only among the di-eaming men and 
 youth in cities and towns, persons who iiave a love for the half 
 mystic and half poetic, persons whose religious sentiments are 
 vague and undefined, and v/ho are disposed to be gods unto them- 
 selves, that he finds worshippers of this doctrine of the soul. 
 There he may do some mischief. But neither he nor any of his 
 school will ever by any witchery of language, gain an ascendancy 
 over the strong English mind. And of two things they may be 
 assured. Historical Christianity will ever prove too mighty for 
 them. It has overcome vastly more powerful enemies, and tra- 
 velled on in the greatness of its strength. And tliis system of 
 man-worship, like every other, will miserably fail to regenerate 
 mankind. The diseased patient must look to the remedy without. 
 And instead of being mocked by the cry, look to yoiu'self, hearken 
 to the good old invitation, "Beliold the Lamb of God that taketh 
 away the sin of the world." f 
 
 * Emerson's Nature. 
 
 + The very able author of " The Restoration of Belief," in initting " in n, 
 distinct light what it was which the chiu-ch of the early age did for mankind in 
 
TITK DENIAL OF THE DIVINE PEESONALITY. o7 
 
 In speaking of Mr. Carlyle in this connection, we are to be 
 understood rather as indicating the religious bearing of much of 
 iiis writings, than assigning him a definite place in a particular 
 category. There is no great writer in modem times who is ever 
 speaking of men's beliefs or unbeliefs, of whom it is more difiicult 
 to say precisely what his own belief or unbelief is. John Foster 
 once said, (whether wisely or unwisely we leave the reader to judge,) 
 that it would at any time be a great luxury to him to accompany 
 a few athletic men with pole-axes among the monuments in West- 
 minster Abbey, to be most vigorously wielded, with just here anl 
 there an omission, in a process which we might imagine.* Mr. 
 Carlyle has a like luxury in vigorously wielding his pole-axe 
 against our churches, as 'if they were "mere cases of articles;" 
 and against our Bible creeds, as if they were no better than 
 "extinct traditions," " unbelievabilities," "worn-out symbolisms, 
 reminiscences, and simulacra,." We miglit easily conjecture what 
 Foster's excepted instances among the sculptm-ed memorials would 
 have been, but we are without ground on which to conjecture the 
 exceptions, if exceptions there be, in the case of Carlyle. Mul- 
 titudes of good men read his writings v/ith strong suspicions that, 
 under the cover of assailing the shams, hypocrisies, and for- 
 malities, of which there are unhappily too many in the church as 
 v>-ell as in the world, he is assailing the very Bible truth itself; 
 and these suspicions are certainly not weakened by his last inter- 
 esting work, " The Life of John Sterling." We know that he 
 has said, "Adieu, Church; thy road is that way, mine is this : 
 in God's name, adieu!" We know that he does worship in " the 
 great Cathedral of Immensity," and acknowledges "the Supreme 
 Silences," " the Destinies and the Immensities," and " the Eter- 
 nities," and that he is apt to regard our Christian beliefs as a 
 " stealing into Heaven by sticking ostrich-like our head into fal- 
 lacies on earth." t But beyond this we know nothing positively. 
 We are not going, then, to write liim down pantheist. But he has 
 given us occasion to say that the tendency of much of what he 
 has Maitten is pantheistical. He does not, indeed, say anything 
 so offensive on the subject of Christianity, as his admirer, Mr. 
 Emerson. He never speaks of it as " an Eastern monarchy, 
 built by indolence and fear," nor charges it with the radical defect 
 of dwelling vath noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus.]; 
 
 preparation for a new moral era, aud uuder what conditions this necessary func- 
 tion was discharged," and thereby constructing an arpument in favour of Chris- 
 tianity, remarl<s, "the ground of that Christian fortitude (the fortitude _ of 
 Polycarp and his'contemporaries) v,hich,in the end, prevailed overtlie polytheism 
 of the Roman State, was a bei.ikf toward a Person ; it was not an opinion as to 
 a doctrine "—" hut a belief toward a Person whose authority they regarded as 
 paramount to every other." (Pp. 77, 74.) This behef in a personal Saviour-God 
 is the grand lever in the world's elevation. 
 
 * Life of Foster. + Life of Sterling. 
 
 t Emerson's Address to a Senior Class of Divinity. 
 
83 PANTHEISM ; OK, 
 
 But we ave at a loss to gather any better religion from his pages 
 than a kind of irran-worship. He sees Godlike principles "^in 
 Inrman nature, especially in great and earnest men, who have 
 made any impression irpon the world, and he falls down himself, 
 and calls upon others to fall down and do thenr homage. Moses 
 and Zoroaster, Jesus Christ and ^lahomet, Saul of Tarsus and 
 Paul the Apostle, were, though not in the same degree, alike 
 divinely inspired men. His hero-worship points to the Emersoir 
 doctrine of the soul. He says virtually, what the American says 
 openly, that the doctrine of the Divine nature sutlers perversion 
 in bein^/ attributed to one or two persoirs, aird denied to others. 
 God in man, not exclusively in the man Christ Jesus, but God iir 
 every man in whom appear greatness and earnestness, seems to be 
 the religion of this hero-worship. Literatrrre, in short, witli him 
 is religion; and "the true sovereigrr souls" of literatrrre, the 
 Goethes and so on, are the true prophets and Gospel preachers. 
 The contents of religion are accordingly regarded by the men of 
 this school as fourrd within the man, not coming to the man from 
 withorrt, the soirl is a revelatiorr to itself. Emerson has said, "it 
 is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from airother 
 sorrl. Wliat he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly 
 reject; and on his word, or as his secoird, be he who he nray, I 
 can accept nothing." And says Mr. Carlyle : "the Maker's Laws, 
 Avhether they are promrrlgated in Sinai thunder, to the ear- or ima- 
 gination, or quite otherwise promulgated, are the Laws of God; 
 transcendent, everlasting, imperatively demanding obedience 
 from all men. This, without any thunder, or with never so 
 mrrch thrrnder, thou, if there be any soul left in thee, canst know 
 of a truth. The Urriverse, I say, is made by Law; the gr-eat Sord 
 
 of the world is just and irot unjust Rituals, Liturgies, 
 
 Credos, Sinai thunder : I kirow nrore or less the history of these ; 
 the rise, progress, decline, and fall of these. Can thunder from all 
 the thirty-two azimuths, repeated daily for centmies of years, make 
 God's Laws more Godlike to me ? Brother, no. Perhaps I am 
 grown to be a man now; and do not need the thunder and the 
 terror any longer ! Perhaps I am above being frightened ; per- 
 haps it is not fear, but revererrce aloire, that shall now lead me ! — 
 lievelatiorrs, Inspiratioirs? Yes: and thy own god-created soul, 
 dost thou not call that a 'revelation?'" He tells us that religion 
 is "no Morrison's Pill from without," but a clearing of the Inner 
 Light or Moral Conscience, a re-awakening of our ownselves from 
 within; the world has looked to the revelation without, but it was 
 " when its beard was irot grown as now."=:= And, with a sneer at 
 the old churches and the old creeds, he says: "What the light of 
 your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pro- 
 
 * Carlylo's Past and Present, pp. 307—312, 
 
Tllli DENIAL OF THE DIVINE PEKSONALITY. ' oS) 
 
 iioimoes incredible, — that, in God's name, leave nncreditcd ; at 
 your peril do not try believing that."* Where such talk as this is 
 indulged in, the law and the testimony is very little valued. Mr. 
 Carlyle, accordingly, is disposed to make sincerity or earnestness 
 the test of truth and moral greatness. Christianity is thus reduced 
 from its high position as the only true religion, to a level with the 
 other religions of the earth, and what a man honestly believes, 
 and really practises, is counted a good orthodox creed. The reve- 
 lation is made within the man, and the Outer Light is respected 
 only in so far as it agrees with the Inner Light. All this comes 
 from a dreamy, exaggerated notion about the human soul. Mr. 
 Carlyle does not bay, with Proudhon and Emerson, that the 
 highest being is man, and thus make theology anthropology, but 
 much of what he does say looks in that direction. And his style 
 of expression is frequently such as to lead many of his indiscrimi- 
 natiug admirers to that position, or to strengthen those in it who 
 already occupy it. He does not stop with scowling upon the 
 formalism of the age, and calling upon men to be honest, earnest, 
 and active, but the scowl seems to be turned towards Clnistianity 
 and its evidences as a body of fact lying without. He is not 
 satisfied with a natural reverence for what is great and good in 
 any of our race, but the great with him becomes Divine or God- 
 like. In a mighty intellect we recognise the presence and power 
 of the Divinity. And for such he claims something like worship 
 or religious admiration. His hero-worship is just a kind of intel- 
 lectual pantheism. It is preaching up, though in a somewhat 
 different way from the men of Ae Emerson school, the doctrine of 
 the divinity of the soul. Mucli as Mr. Carlyle is to be admired 
 for his original vigorous thinking, his liberal and independent 
 cast of mind, and his wish to raise up among us an earnest race of 
 men, we cannot but deprecate the religious tendency of a great 
 deal that he has written, as pantheistical. 
 
 "The result," says Professor Garbett.f "is briefly this. The 
 human mind has wakened into a mighty thrilling consciousness of 
 its collective capacity ; it has gathered up into one great unity and 
 organized humanity, all individual intellects and hearts, all genius 
 and all inspiration"; and exulting in tliis great corporate lile, and 
 bounding pulse, thus identified with it, it is drank with pride and 
 worships itself. In its own depths it believes all life and knowledge 
 to lie; the meaning of all outward utterances and phenomena, 
 and the self-evolved solution of all mysteries in heaven and earth. 
 Before the chancery of its own subjective laws and arbitrary 
 requirements, all objective truth is called to judgment. It is itself 
 God in fact, and the universe is its product and its mirror." We 
 
 * Life of Sterling, p. 78. , , , , ., r- • 
 
 + See an admirable sermon on tlae Pcvsonality of God, preached oefore the L lu- 
 versity of Oxford. 
 
40 
 
 pantheism; oh, 
 
 are remiuded of Tennyson's truthful and beautiful description of 
 mere intellectual knowledge ; 
 
 " What is she, cut from love and faith 
 But some wild Pallas from the hrain 
 
 " Of Demons ? fiery hot to burst 
 All barriers in her onward race 
 For power. Let her know her place : 
 She is the second, not the first. 
 
 " A higher hand must make her mild, 
 If all be not in vain ; and guide 
 Her footsteps, moving side by side 
 With wisdom, like the younger child : 
 
 " For she is earthly of the mind. 
 
 But Wisdom heavenly of the soul.' * 
 
 We conclude by taking a bird's-eye view of some of the bearings 
 of this form of infidelity, and VN^ith some remarks in disin-oof of it. 
 The doctrine of an impersonal God, as we have seen, lies at its 
 l)asis. The universe is the di%dnity, and men themselves, as 
 " God-intoxicated," mingle vrith it. Out of this fundamental idea 
 rise the follownig : 
 
 1. Creation, with the pantheist, is not a free act, hut an inevi- 
 table necessity. It is not a complete effect, but a process that is 
 going on eternally. Hegel says, God did not create the world, he 
 is eternally creating it. Creation is God passing into activity, but 
 neither suspended nor exhausted in the act. Anaximander said 
 substantially the same thing ages before him. And Victor Cousin 
 has repeated it after him. "The distinguishing characteristic of 
 the Deity," says the French philosopher, " being an absolute 
 creative force, which cannot but pass into activity, it follows, not 
 that the creation is possible, but that it is necessary." And the 
 men of the Emerson school tell us, that the world is " a projection 
 of God in the unconscious." Pantheism is thus fatalistic. We, 
 according to enlightened reason and Scriptural truth, have been 
 wont to believe that God existed independently, from eternity, in 
 a state of absolute perfection, and that, of his own good pleasure, 
 he called the universe into being. Moses began his historical 
 narrative by declaring, " In the beginning God created the heavens 
 and the earth;" and he sung, "Before the mountains were 
 brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, 
 even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." The pious in 
 all ages, on looking over the creation, have said, " Our God made 
 the heavens." And the heavenly inhabitants cry, " Thou hast 
 created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created." 
 But, according to the pantheist, this is all a delusion. The Divine 
 free-will is a nonentity. Creation is but the inevitable develop- 
 ment of the one Being that is beneath all and in all. Thus are 
 falsified all those clear marks of design in the universe on which 
 
 * lu Memonam, p. 177, 
 
THE DENIAL 01 THE DIVIXE PERSONALITV. 41 
 
 mcM liave looked for ages, the world is robbed of all its moral 
 grandeur, the holy emotions of man's religions nature are re- 
 pressed, and he has nothing to behold but a creation that has 
 sprung from fate and necessity, and nothing to think of behind 
 the whole, but an absolute creative force ever passing, not from a 
 moral but a physical necessity, into activity. We may theoreti- 
 cally distinguish pantheism from atlieism, but assuredly the man 
 who looks upon the universe, and says that it is " a remoter and 
 inferior incarnation of God,"=:< or that'it is God necessarily passing 
 .into action, is as much without God in the world, as the man who 
 ascribes every thing to mechanical forces, and says there is no 
 God. 
 
 2. Pantheism inevitahhj destro7js all moral distinctions, and 
 makes man irresponsible. " Evil and good are God's right hand 
 and left," is the doctrine of some of our popular literatare.f And 
 if the whole phenomena of the universe be one chain of necessary 
 development, if man and his actions are strictly inevitable pulsa- 
 tions of the one great source of being, then what is properly called 
 moral evil has no existence. And the Emerson school tells us 
 that it lives offly in dogmatic theolog}^ " Evil, according to old 
 philosophers," says the author of the " Representative Men,"f "is 
 good in the making. That pure malignity can exist, is the extreme 
 proposition of unbelief It is not to be entertained by a rational 
 
 agent; it is atheism; it is the last profanation The divine 
 
 effort is never relaxed; the carrion in the sun wiU convert itself 
 to gi-ass and flowers; and man, though in brothels, or jails, or on 
 gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and tnie." This may 
 accord ^ith the generous spirit of the Indian Yishnu," but Chris- 
 tianity and it are wide as the poles asunder. The "Festus" of 
 I^Ir. Bailey, a poem of gTeat power and of a religious spn-it, is 
 pervaded by this bad pantheistic theology. The following is but 
 a specimen : — 
 
 " The soul is lint an org-an, and it hatli 
 No power of good and evil in itself, 
 ISIore than the eye hath power of light or dark. 
 God fitted it for good; and evil is 
 Good in another way we are not skilled in." ? 
 
 ^ He-jce the notion that all religions are good, but that Chris 
 tianity is the best. And the conclusion : " all souls shall be in 
 God, and shall be God, and nothing but God, be."|| Dr. Strauss 
 moves in the same jDlane, though far a-head, when he says: " hu- 
 man kind is impeccable, for the progress of its development is 
 irreproachable. Foliation cleaves only to the individual. It does 
 not reach the race and its history. The human race is the Christ, 
 the God-made man, the sinless one, that dies, rises again, and 
 
 * Emerson's Nature, p. 53. + Bailey's Festus, Proem, p. vii. 
 
 t P. 68, " Swedenhoi g ; or, ihe Mystic. J Festus, p. 48. II Festus, p. 109. 
 
42 pantheism; or, 
 
 inomils into t!io beavei-S.' 
 on this system, a delusion. The sense of responsibility, which is 
 a fact in the natural history of man, is belied. And'^that voice, 
 •u'hicli comes from the recesses of our moral nature, pointing us 
 from a jud.q-e within the breast to a judge without and above, is 
 silenced. That God is ever educing good from evil is true, and 
 that the ministry of evil, mysterious though 't be, is made under 
 his benign supremacy to subserve most important purposes, agrees 
 at once with experience and Scriptai-e. But that evil has no 
 positive existence, that it is only good in another way, is as repug- 
 nant to our moral sentiments as it is opposed to Christianity. ^Ye 
 will persist in calling this course of conduct bad, and that opposite 
 course good; and can never act on the belief that both were alike 
 things of fate and necessity, or that each agent is a structure formed 
 by inevitable laws, and part or particle of God. When this creed 
 })revails, the foundations of the earth will be out of course. Only 
 let this doctrine leaven the mass of a community, and the result 
 will be a deluge of sensuality and crime. 
 
 3. This system sJiuts out Prayer. Man will worship. Here the 
 object of worship is self. And if the soul knows no persons, and 
 is itself "wiser than the whole world," f as the thorough-going 
 pantheist maintains, it were folly to go out of itself for the re- 
 sources either in the way of a rule of duty or of spiritual influences. 
 Coleridge's "Ancient IMariner" went much too far when he 
 said • — 
 
 ' He pi-ayetli well who lovctU well 
 
 Both mau, and bird, and beast. 
 He prayeth best who loveth best 
 
 All things both great and small : 
 For the dear God, who lovelh us, 
 
 He made and loveth all." 
 
 But Mr. Emerson and his school go much farther " As 
 soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg He 
 will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer, 
 kneeling in his field to weed it ; the prayer of the rower, kneeling 
 with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers, heard throughout na- 
 ture, though for cheap ends." Mr. Theodore Parker who, though 
 not a professed pantheist, pretends to have found pantheism in the 
 writings of John the Evangelist, discourses in a similar way. 
 Speaking of what he calls the happy condition of the religious 
 man, he tells us that his " religion demands no particular actions, 
 forms, or modes of thought: the man's ploughing is holy as his 
 ])rayer — his daily bread as the smoke of his sacrifice; his home 
 sacred as liis temple ; his work day and In's sabbath are alike God's 
 day. His jiriest is tlie holy spirit within him."]: And if Mr. 
 Carlylo does not mean to countenance this pantheistic dogma, why, 
 in " The Modern Worker," does he so frequently talk tlius : " ^^'ork 
 ♦ Lebeu Jesu (last chapter). + Emerson. X Parker's Discourses, p. 110. 
 
THE DENIAL OF THE DIVINE PERSONALITY. 43 
 
 is ofa religions nature. . . . All true work is sacred; in all true work, 
 were it bat true hand-labour, there is something of divineness. 
 Labour, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven. Sweat of 
 the brow, and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the 
 heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, Newton medita- 
 tions, all sciences, all spoken epics, all acted heroisms, martyrdoms, 
 — up to that ' Agony of bloody sweat,' which all men have called 
 divine ! O brother, if this is not ' worship,' then I say, the more 
 pity for worship ; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under 
 God's sky."-- No doubt all this will be hailed by many of the 
 listeners and readers of Emerson, Pai'ker, and Carlyle. And there 
 may be here and there, " the poor day-labourer, the weaver of your 
 coat, tlie sewer of yom* shoes," who, having no inclination for 
 prayer, may like to be told that "no man has worked, or can 
 work, except religiously," and that he shall, " return home in 
 honour, to his far distant home in honour."f But it will not do for 
 the millions who fail to attain to such a delirium of soul as these 
 poetic-philosophers, and whom they will never get to believe that 
 the fountain of all good is in themselves, that they are divine pil- 
 grims in nature, and that everything attends their steps. No. 
 Men's minds, which have not been spoiled by a philosophy falsely 
 so called, will ever, as aforetime, go out in a felt sense of want 
 They will cry, in spite of all tliis delirious teaching, " who will shew 
 us any good?" And experience will continue to attest that man 
 will never possess the satisfying good, until as a beggar he say, 
 " Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us." 
 
 4. What becomes o^ in dividual immortality in such a system as 
 pantheism? It is absorbed and lost. Men in all ages, even in. 
 the absence of revelation, have yearned for existence beyond death 
 and the grave. The gospel, by bringing life and immortality to 
 light, has answered these yearnings. So that with all oar moral 
 and religious impressions, is blended the conviction of our indi- 
 vidual existence being prolonged on the other side of the tomb. 
 We are conscious of our personal being now, our moral nature 
 points to the continuance of our conscious peisonality hereafter; 
 and an authoritative revelation has not only set its seal to the 
 truth of the personal immortality of man, but shed an illumination 
 all its own on the grave and the world beyond. But life with the 
 pantheist is a di'eam, and death is absorption. It is like the re- 
 turn of a ray of light to the sun whence it emanated, or a drop of 
 water to the gi-eat ocean from which it originally came The 
 disciples of a system do not always go to the full length of the 
 system itself. And so it may happen that some professed pan- 
 theists have not discarded the belief of personal immortality. But 
 such is the legitimate issue of the system, and such will actually 
 bo its result when descending from the schools, it becomes tho 
 * Past and Present, rp. 208, 27L + Iljid. pp. 278, 872. 
 
41 pantheism; oe, 
 
 faitli of the common people. Witli the pantlieists of the East, the 
 consciousness of separate existence is an illusion, which in a little 
 time will pass away. The souls of men being portions of the 
 divine essence, "parts or 'particles of God," will ultimately return 
 to their source, so that, apart from the great substance, there will 
 he no conscious existence. Whatever might be Hegel's individual 
 view of the future state of man, Hegelianism, in this respect, is 
 thorouglily pantheistic. " On the doctrine of immortality," re- 
 marks ":Mr. Morell,^;^ " Hegel has said but httle, and that little by 
 no means satisfactory." But it is apart of his philosophy, that the 
 Divine Being is necessitated to send forth existences and to absorb 
 them again. Eeinhard, who is deemed a fair and competent judge 
 of the system, says, that " according to Hegel's speculative de- 
 cisions, the individual personality of man is perishable in its very 
 nature. In his view, reason demands that the thinking individual 
 sliould acknowledge the nothingness of his individual essence, and 
 willingly meet self-annihilation in view of his entering into that 
 universal substance which, like Chronos in the old mythology, 
 devours all its own offspring." f Strauss and others of the same 
 school, have gone this length. His words are, " a life beyond the 
 grave is the last enemy which speculative criticism has to oppose, 
 and, if possible, to conquer."^ Here, as in some other points, the 
 extremes of sensationalism and idealism meet. The atheist and 
 the pantheist shake liands as believers in the same black creed. 
 Danton, on his trial, said, " My name is Danton, my residence will 
 soon be in annihilation , my name will live in the pantheon of history." 
 And the pantheist says, let us dream on the dayof our existence here, 
 for the night is coming when self must return to the great ocean 
 of being and there be lost for ever. Such are the issues of a sys- 
 tem that denies the livinfj Personal God. 
 
 1. In proof of the personality of God, we might, in the first 
 l)lace, argue from our oicti ])ersonality. That we are real, intelligent, 
 and responsible persons, is a matter of consciousness. There is 
 a spirit in man. He has understanding, will, moral sentiment, a 
 power to choose between good and evil, and he knows it. It is 
 this which gives us a decided pre-eminence over the whole visible 
 creation. It separates at an immeasurable distance from us the 
 flowers of the earth however beautiful, the stars of heaven however 
 bright, and the beasts and birds however wise. Were it possible 
 for us to be divested of our complete personality as moral, in- 
 telligent, individual beings, the crown would fall from our head-, 
 and we would descend in the scale of earthly creatures. Person- 
 ality — living, moral, and intellectual pt^rsonality — such as man's, 
 
 * Histoi-y of Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 190. 
 + Dr. Beard's Voices of the Church, p. \-2. % Glaubenslobre. 
 
THE DENIAL OF THE DIVINE PERSONALITY. 45 
 
 is clearly, tbeu, a perfection. And in the very existence of such 
 personal beings we have an argument for a Personal Gocl. Let it 
 be supposed that by intuition, or argumentation, or both, we had 
 come simply to the knowledge of a First Cause ; it is evident that 
 the conception of the j^ossession of perfect personality by Him 
 would render Him a more glorious 13eiug than the want of it. 
 And this being the case, He must possess it, for our conceptions of 
 the greatest Being in the universe, can never surpass, but must 
 always come short of the reality. "It is clear," says Professor 
 Garbett, " that anything which does not possess personality, or 
 possesses it in a low degree, whether it be like the earth, however 
 exquisitely modelled into beauty and sublimity manifold, or the 
 beasts of the field, however marvellous their living powers, must 
 be inferior to ourselves. And, therefore, Almighty God must be a 
 person likewise. Por if not, He would be inferior to ourselves, 
 contrary to the supposition on which we go. And the very name 
 imports that, ori ttot kari, He is, at all events, the highest of 
 beings. You may, indeed, if you please, abandon the intellect to 
 the lawless tyranny of imagination ! . . . Drimk with the mad- 
 dening wine of intellectual licentiousness and creative speculation, 
 you may rave eloquently of a Being of infinite power, who pours 
 forth out of His exhaustless bosom, unfathomable as the abyss of 
 space itself, all glory, all living things, multitudinous and diver- 
 sified beyond created arithmetic, such as fill the universe. And 
 yet, by the same right of unreason and self-will, you may lay it 
 down that He has not a self-consciousness, nor a choice, nor any- 
 thing, in short, of that which makes us, to our fellow-men, objects 
 of love and hope, of di-ead and hatred, of joy and of misery. _ And 
 you may then, piling postulate on postulate into the empty air, till 
 you reach, in haze and mist, the limbo of utter unreality, set up 
 this blind, and dumb, and deaf abomination, with a crown upon 
 its head, on the tin-one of Him who is, and was, and is to be — the 
 living Jehovah. . . . But this is not a God, according to the sup- 
 position ; and, of coiu'se, is not a living, loving, avenging, awful 
 Deity. Why in such a case, though the spirit within us is clothed 
 in perishable dust and ashes, we should be far superior, in the 
 order of intelligent being, to such a Deity, with all Plis im 
 mensity."t- 
 
 2. Men, in general, feel, in the most solemn and affecting mo 
 ments of their lives, that God is a real Person. I^emonstration is 
 not necessary. Consciousness and inward experience, more power- 
 fully than any argumentation, attest it. This truthful evidence 
 is given forth at times from the bosoms of the worst and the best 
 of "men. How true to natme are such pai-ables as those of the 
 Prodigal Son, and the Pharisee and the Publican. And the most 
 life-like feature in each pictui'e, is, when the Prodigal coming ts 
 
 * The Personality of God, pp. 2G— 29. 
 
4.0 pantheism; ot!, 
 
 Jiimself exclaimed, "Father,! have sinned;" and the Puhliean 
 conscions of his burden of guilt, cried, " God be merciful to me a 
 sinner." The very cry for help whicli, under an irresistible im- 
 pulse, ascends from the human soul when in imminent danger or 
 stricken under a sense of sin, is a testimony of conscience to the 
 personality of God. It is the witness of unsophisticated nature 
 to the truth that He is a Being who can save from danger, who 
 has displeasure to be dreaded, and mercy to be sought after. The 
 mind, then, unrestrained by philosopliical theories or other ar- 
 tificial hindraiii;es, recognises Him in the personality of the judge, 
 the sovereign, or the saviour. The consciousness of the most ex- 
 cellent ones of the earth, gives a yet clearer evidence for the 
 Divine personal existence and attributes. Men who have been 
 renewed in the spirit of their mind, and who long for closer union 
 Avith the best and greatest Being in the universe, never think of 
 Him as a substance " stretched uncouthly through infinite space," 
 which has only arrived at self-consciousness in their own souls. 
 But they thirst for God, for the living God, They, clothed with 
 humility, bend the knee, and, with hearts uplifted to heaven, say, 
 hi filial confidence, "Abba Father." They gather up, as it were, 
 nto one, all the glorious attiibutes by which He is distinguished, 
 and contemplate Him as Creator and Lord, Father and Friend, 
 Judge and Saviour. This we regard as real evidence, uttered 
 from amid the indestructible elements of man's moral nature, for 
 the perfect personality of God. 
 
 3. The Sacred Scriptures througJiout are fall of the Divine Per- 
 sonality. Every page breathes or burns with it. From the opening 
 sentence of Genesis to the closing chapter of Revelation, in its 
 unadorned histories as well as in its magnificent poetry, in the 
 • anguage alike of its threatenings and its promises, the Bible moves 
 ,vith the living Personal God. This places an impassable gulf 
 between the religion of the pantheist and that of the Christian. 
 And the Bible owes much of its telling power over men's hearts, 
 as a divine instrument, to this pervading element of personality. 
 Be it remembered that this is the book which has done vastly more 
 than all others to regenerate and elevate our race, and that, under 
 the agency of the Divine Spirit, it exerts this influence by bringing 
 the mind into contact with God, not as a vague immensity, but as 
 n, glorious, awful, benignant person with whom we have to do. 
 The sinner has been arrested in his wickedness, his spirit has 
 quailed within him, and he has become a new creature, by hearing 
 the living God of tloly Scripture speak to him in solemn warning 
 and melting invitation. The saint has been refreshed and armed 
 fiuew by the thought that the same Divine Being who clothes the 
 grass of the field, and cares for the fowls of the air, loves, as a 
 father, liis own redeemed children, and surrounds them with his 
 favour as with a shield. Y«?i? : the Spiiit, by v.hose inspiration 
 
THF DENIAL OF THE DIVINE PEESONALITY. 47 
 
 the Word was given, bearetli witness with our spirit to the perfect 
 personality of God. And could this be separated from the Bible, 
 and a pantheistic creed substituted in its stead, it would be as it' 
 the sun had been shorn of his beams, and the ocean had lost his 
 voice. " Ye shall know," said Joshua to the Israelites, " that the 
 living God is among you " " It is a fearful thing," says, Paul, " to 
 fall into the hands of the living God." And in such winning 
 words as these, of which the sacred volume is full, how near does 
 the personality of Him whose name and nature are love, come to 
 the heart; " Incline your ear, and come unto me; hear, and your 
 soul shall live." " Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of 
 the earth : for I am God, and there is none else." The relational 
 conception of the Most High, as our Maker, King, Father, Saviour, 
 Judge, guards us as efiectually against a pantheistic view on the 
 one hand ; as the absolute conception of Him does against an 
 anthropomorpliic view on the other. Both conceptions blend 
 with each other in the Bible. No book gives us such exalted 
 ideas of the Infinite Intelligence, and none is less in harmony 
 with the system of pantheism. "It is all in the same spirit: 
 burning, powerful words; real above everything in this world; 
 piercing, as living words must needs do, to the dividing of the very 
 hearts and reins. They have the impression, they are stamped 
 with the seal of the living God The tetragrammaton is on 
 them."* 
 
 4. In Christ Jesus ive see the ahsolute and tlie j)ersonal reconciled. 
 Pantheism and anthropomorpliism, though traceable to the same 
 soiu'ce, are two extremes, towards one of which the mind, in the 
 absence of revelation or in the want of faith in it, has ever sliowii 
 a strong tendency. Men have been apt either to limit the Infinite, 
 and think of Him as being such an one as themselves, or to con- 
 ceive of Him as an infinite substance of which all things are but 
 the modes and manifestations. How to reconcile the personality 
 with the infinitude of the ])i\dne natui'e, seems to be one of those 
 sublime mysteries pertaining to the Divine existence which un- 
 aided reason cannot solve. Such knowledge is too wonderful for 
 us ; it is high, we cannot attain unto it. As principles of abstract 
 theology they may be clearly made out, but really to grasp them 
 in our religious belief as attributes of the Almighty, is a groat 
 achievement of faith. The two are, however, reconciled before 
 our view in Him who is the Word made flesh, at once the Son of 
 God and the Son of man The creation of the world was the 
 work of an infinite Being. The everlasting God, the Lord, is the 
 Creator of the ends of the earth. And by Jesus Christ were all 
 things created, that are in heaven and that arc in earth. Tlie 
 redemption of the world demanded the interposition of Him who 
 inade it. It was Jehovali's prerogative to say, "■ Behold I creu'-e 
 * y^rofessor Garbetfs Plscovus**. p. 4% 
 
48 i-atukalism; or, the de^jiai. 
 
 new bea^^ens and a new earth." And in Emmanuel, God in our 
 nature, God with us, we see the Eedeemer of man. The judgment 
 of the world is an act of the Absolute. None else is judge but 
 God. And the Son of man, coming in his glory, occupies the 
 judgment throne. The Divine Being, without any limitation of 
 his absolute perfections, is thus revealed in the person of Christ. 
 Great indeed is the mystery of godliness. The incarnation is a 
 stupendous fact that surpasses reason, for whatever pertains to the 
 Divine nature must be incomprehensible by the human mind. 
 But it contains in itself the solution of the mysterious problem 
 how the absolute and the personal agree in One. And with all its 
 mysteriousness, it becomes a resting truth to the minds of men 
 and angels, when attempting to grasp the idea of an infinite and 
 yet a personal God. The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Boot of 
 bavid, has opened the book and loosed the seals thereof. And 
 happy the mind that returns from its wanderings, that leaves off 
 raving about a vague immensity wliich it can neither love nor 
 fear, and rests in Jehovah- Jesus, God manifest in the flesh. 
 
 CHAPTEB, III. 
 
 TUE DENIAL OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT, OR NATURALISM. 
 
 Distinctive characteristic of Naturalism— Denounces every idea of Divine inter- 
 position — Not peculiar to any age or counti-y— Broadly manifested in some 
 -works on Physical and Moral Science System of Auguste Comte — "Vestiges 
 of the Natural History of Creation" — Humboldt's " Cosmos" — Combe's consti- 
 tution of Man" — The Owen School — Naturalism in the department of Bible 
 Theology; Anti-miracle School of Gennany — Spinoza — Paulus — Strauss — 
 ISIiraoles considered — Hume and Strauss alike guilty of a petUio principii — 
 Denial of Special Inspiration of the Scriptures — Theodore Parker — Inspiration 
 viewed as a fact— Mr. MoreU's Position — General remarks upon Naturalism 
 as a whole — The idea of a self-sustaining universe based upon false analogy 
 — Chargeable with anthropomorphism — Opposed to palpable evidence of 
 Geology — Assigns no adequate cause for Christianity and its effects — Dia- 
 metrically opposed to the religion of the Bible — Naturalism unnatural. 
 
 Naturalism, or, as it is sometimes called, rationahsm, is dis- 
 tinguishable enough from atheism and pantheism. The rationalist 
 is distinguished from the atheist by his theoretical belief of a 
 Supreme Power, and he is distinguished from the pantheist by 
 his denial of an ever-present and all-pervading Divine energy. 
 Tiie pantheist says, God is at hand; the rationalist ^ays, God is 
 afar off. Pantheism sees the Divine Being in all things, and 
 confounds the Creator with the creation. Whereas naturalism, 
 •though distingLiishing Him from His works, banishes Him into a 
 distant solitude. It is not essential to this system that the evi- 
 dences of design in proof of a creative intelligence be denied, hovv-- 
 ever much it may tend in that dh'ection, and though many of its 
 abettors may have gone that length. But its distinctive cha- 
 racteristic, as a form of infidelity, is, tliat wliile admitting the 
 
OF THE DIVINE P1^0vIDE^;TIAL GOVERNMENT. 49 
 
 ■\yorld to have been originally created by Gcd, it as it were ex- 
 trudes Him ii'om that v;rorld, by reducing it to a self-sustained 
 mechanism, and by resolving, what are generally understood by 
 the works of Providence, into a regularly successive series of neces- 
 sary developments. The seed, having the vegetative jiower in 
 itself, is cast by tlie husbandman into the soil, and tliere, aided 
 merely by natui-al agencies, it is left to develop itself into the 
 full-grown plant or tree. The watch, complete in its wheels and 
 mainspring, is wound up, and continues to move, though ever so 
 far distant from the maker. The ship-builder, having finished 
 and launched the ship, leaves it entnely to the care of the sailors.-i^ 
 Such are specimens of some of the analogies by which men would 
 exclude God from his own world, and make the universe, if not 
 independent of his creative power, altogether independent of his 
 presence and control. The falsity of the analogy is obvious, and 
 will be noticed by us hereafter. At present we wish to get as 
 full-sized a view, as possible,, of the system itself. 
 
 Men, whose piety is both rational and scriptural, have been 
 accustomed to consider God as continually present in the world 
 with the same power by which He made it. They reckon up no 
 less numerous indications of a designing providential agency than 
 of an original creating intelligence, and feel that they would be 
 as much warranted to deny the presence and power of God in 
 creating, as to deny his presence and power in sustaining and 
 conti'olling. The heavens and the earth, in their estimation, 
 furnish as clear and impressive tokens of the agency of the 
 Divine Preserver as of the Divine Creator. The seasons roll on 
 in beautiful hai'mony, but God is there present as the source of 
 that hai-mony. We may speak of the universe as a huge machine 
 moved by natural powers or mechanical laws, but it is the finger 
 of God that touches the subordinate agencies which move the 
 whole. He acts in every place, upon all things, and throughout 
 all time. And but for his pervading influence, the world would 
 become an inactive mass, without form and void, and darkness 
 would again cover the face of the deep. The language of Thom- 
 son, according to the creed of Cluistian piety, is as philosophically 
 true as it is poetically beautiful : — 
 
 " But wandering oftwitli brute unconscious gaze, 
 Man marks not Thee, marks not the mighty hand, 
 That, ever-busy, wheels the silent spheres ; 
 Works in the secret deep ; shoots, steaming, thence 
 The fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring : 
 Flings from the sun direct the flaming day ; 
 Feeds evei-y creature ; hurls the tempest forth ; 
 And, as on earth this grateful change revolves, 
 With transport touches all the springs of life." 
 
 This is neither pantheism nor naturalism. It distinguishes the 
 great Intelligent Spiiit from the material world which He pervades, 
 
 * " UtfaLer discedit auavi exstructa et relinquit eam n&uiia." — Melancihon. 
 
50 naturalism; or, the denial 
 
 while it acknowledges his presence and energy acting upon nil 
 secon;,ary causes as tlie priinary action of the whole. Hence the 
 ample room which such a system opens for the outgoings of a 
 grateful and lofty devotion. Hence its firm faith in the M'ell- 
 attested Divine interpositions of the past, and its expectation that, 
 if need he, similar intei'[5ositions will take place in the future. 
 
 Naturalism denies all tliis. It denounces it as the progeny of 
 ignorance and fanaticism. It demolishes it at once, just as a man 
 on awakening, demolishes the aiiy castles which he huilt during 
 sleep. If naturalism admits of a special and supernatural inter- 
 ference at all, it restricts such an interference to the original act 
 of creation. The Almighty is allowed to come forth, create, give 
 life, set in motion, and look on the scene, but afterwards He retires, 
 and leaves the whole to nature and nature's laws. All the pheno- 
 mena of matter and mind however rich and magnificent, all the 
 events of history however influential and unprecedented, all the 
 changes that have taken place in nations and individuals however 
 thorough and beneficent, have, according to tliis system, occurred 
 in a merely natural way, just as the engine speeds along the line 
 of rail by the natural force of steam. The poet spake with a poetic 
 license or under the hallucination of genius, when, addresshig 
 the God of the seasons, he said, " The rolling year is full of 
 Thee." King David, in a dark age, sang very beautifully but 
 not truly, when he said to Jehovah, " Thou visitest the earth, 
 and waterest it : Thou greatly enrichest it with the river of 
 God, which is full of water: Thou preparest them corn when 
 Thou hast so provided for it : Thou makest it soft with showers: 
 Thou blessest the springing tliereof. Thou crownest the year 
 with Thy goodness ; and Thy paths drop fatness." Jesus Christ 
 merely accommodated Himself to the views and circumstances 
 of liis followers, when He said to them, " Behold the fowls 
 of the air : for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather 
 into barns ; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them." I\Iiracles 
 are impossible, just because they are unnatural. And what in 
 theology is called the doctrine of Divine influence, is a mystery, 
 a thing supernatural, and, therefore, not to be believed. The 
 rationalist traverses the wide fields of space, and makes himself 
 familiar with the laws that regulate the movements of suns and 
 stars; or he penetrates into the bowela of the earth, and reads, 
 amid its rocky beds and their wreck of animal existence, the 
 history of a past world ; but neither in the heavens above nor in 
 the eartli beneath, does he recognise the presence or interposition 
 of God. He may admit that the Creator has left the impress of 
 his finger there from a past eternity, but he sees no such finger 
 amid the continued harmony of the spheres on high, or amid the 
 convulsions and up-heavings that have taken i)lace in the depths 
 below. Me virtually, if not openly, says, the Almighty was once 
 
OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 51 
 
 here present, Lut He has withdrawn ages ago; nature reigns, and 
 all physical phenomena are the necessary result of mechanical 
 laws. The rationalist reads history too, hut he sees not God in 
 history. Its marvellous events, however unforeseen hy men, how- 
 ever much they startled and baffled the calculations of the wise 
 who Avere contemporaneous with them, and however mighty and 
 protracted have been their influence in succeeding times, are 
 drawn by him into that iron chain of necessary development in 
 which he binds up all things. He looks too upon vast masses of 
 men sunk in ignorance and vice, so sunk notwithstanding the 
 play of many influences upon them which rationalists deem 
 beneficial, and he will admit any or every agency into the work 
 of tlieir regeneration but the special agency of the Former of 
 men's bodies and the Father of men's spirits. "Is it not strange," 
 remarks Jolm Foster,* " to observe, how carefully some philo- 
 sophers, who deplore the condition of the world, and profess to 
 expect its melioration, keep their si^eculations clear of every idea 
 of Divine interposition? No builders of houses or cities were 
 ever more attentive to guard against the access of flood or fire. 
 li He should but touch their prosjDective theories of improvement, 
 they would renounce them, as defiled and fit only for vulgar 
 fanaticism. Their system of Providence would be profaned by 
 tlie intrusion of the Almighty. Man is to eftect an apotheosis 
 for himself, by the hopeful process of exhausting his corruption. 
 Ajid should it take a long series of ages, vices, and woes, to reach 
 this glorious attainment, patience may sustain itself the while by 
 the thought that wdien it is realised, it will be burdened with no 
 duty of religious gratitude. No time is too long to wait, no cost 
 too deep to incur, for the triumph of proving that we have no 
 need of a Divinity, regarded as possessing that one attribute which 
 makes it delightful to acknowledge such a Being, the benevolence 
 that would make us happy. But even if this noble self-sufficiency 
 cannot be realised, the independence of spirit which has laboured 
 for it must not sinli at last into piety. This afflicted world, ' this 
 l^oor teiTestrial citadel of man,' is to lock its gates, and keep its 
 miseries, rather than admit the degradation of receiving help 
 from God." 
 
 This form of infidelity is no novelty. It is not peculiar to any 
 age or country. And while it may be said of other forms, that 
 they slay their thousands, it must be said of tliis that it slays its 
 ten thousands. This was the doctrine of the ancient atomists and 
 Epicureans. They were not, theoretically considered, atheists. 
 They believed in the existence of the gods, but denied that they 
 interfered with either the physical or moral concerns of the universe. 
 Plato held the doctrine in abhorrence, and made it one of the three 
 kinds of blasphemy punishable in his republic with death. Justin 
 
 * Fosters Essays, p. 177, l-'^'lh edition. 
 
52 katuralism; or, the denial 
 
 Martyr,^ speaking of the pliilosoi^hei's in his time, tells as they 
 taught it to he " useless to pray to God, since all things recur 
 according to the unchangeahle laws of an endless progression." 
 Some of the English deistical writers of the last century, held 
 substantially the same infidel opinion. Lord Herbert, " the first 
 and purest of our English free-thinkers," who lived in the century 
 preceding, includes the doctrine of Divine providence and the 
 duty of worshipping God, in his five articles of religion. But 
 others of the free-thinking school advanced ahead of him, and 
 either denied that the Supreme Being interposed in the affah-s of 
 men, or held such a vague idea of a general providence as virtually 
 excluded Him from the government of the woi'ld. Chubb seems to 
 have maintained that God kept aloof from human afiairs, and that 
 whatever happened to men depended entirely upon secondary 
 causes. Bolingbroke's idea of a providence that regarded things 
 collectively but not individually, was such as left no room for the 
 special interposition of God either in tlie physical or moral world. 
 Hume, in his essays on Miracles and Providence, sapped the very 
 foundations of natural and revealed religion, and would preclude 
 us from believing that the same power which created the world, 
 can continue to sustain it. The French Encyclojjsedists, who 
 flourished during the latter half of the same century, built the 
 whole of their metaphysical philosophy upon the basis of mate- 
 rialism, a system that began by removing God to a distance from 
 the world, and explaining everything by secondary causes, and 
 that ended in excluding Him altogether from their conceptions, 
 and elevating nature to his throne. Men of science and literatm-e 
 were then resolutely bent on disregarding everything that seemed 
 to admit the interference or idea of God, and on shutting them- 
 selves up in a system of blind fatalism and stern materialism. 
 The bold scepticism and gross impiety of such schools have, in a 
 great measure, passed away, yet much of the spirit that animated 
 them is manifested in our own times. From the elaborate work on 
 science down to the cheap journal that circulates aniong the masses 
 of the people, there is not a little, both in our own country and on 
 the Continent, that is avowedly opposed to the idea of Providence, 
 crying out upon it as a bugbear in men's path, or seeking to ex- 
 l^lode the doctrine by maintaining a studied silence respecting it, 
 when it might most naturally have been introduced. 
 
 Such, in an undisguised form, is the philosophical system of 
 M Auguste Comte, who has been styled the Bacon of the nine- 
 teenth century. '1'= He has given to the world a large work of pro- 
 found science,)- built entirely on palpable facts, which arc said to 
 have occurred in a chain of necessary development, and to need 
 nu dogma of a Divine Providence to account for them. It iuter- 
 
 * Lewes'8 Biographical History of Philosophy, vol. iv. p. 255. 
 + Cours de Philosopliie Positive, 6 vol:;. 
 
OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENTIAL GOVETINMEN': 
 
 53 
 
 diets every investigation beyond plienomena and the laws of phe- 
 nomena, as without the reach of the human mind. And not only 
 so, but every philosophical theory admitting the intervention of 
 the First Cause, is denounced as bearing a drag that obstructs the 
 march of science and human improvement. This is very broadly 
 laid down in the law of mental evolution or human progress, 
 which he applies to ev'ery department of knowledge. According 
 to him, the intelligence of mankind passes successively through 
 three distinct stages : the supernatural, the metaphysical, and tlie 
 positive. The first is the lowest or infant state of human society. 
 The last is the period of progressive development, in which tho 
 mind advan.ces oiiward to perfection. It belongs to the former, to 
 attribute all the operations of nature to a Divine cause, and to 
 admit the intervention of supernatural ])Ower to account for every 
 unusual phenomenon. It belongs to the metaphysical stage, to 
 ignore all such supernatural interpositions, to bring in the idea of 
 abstract forces, and to personify them under the one agency of 
 Nature. While it belongs to the last, the age of advanced science, 
 to exclude all search into causes, and to apply itself to palpable 
 phenomena, their relations and laws, so as to classify and gene- 
 ralize them. David, in a distant age, looked upward, and said, 
 " The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth 
 his handiwork. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in 
 all the earth ! who hast set thy glory above the heavens." Newton 
 declared that " every true step" made in inductive philosophy, is to 
 be liighlv valued, because it brings us nearer to the Fii'st Cause." 
 "A GodVithout dominion, providence, and final causes," said the 
 author of the " Principia," " is nothing but fate and nature." And 
 again, remarks that greatest name in science, " it no doubt belongs 
 to natural philosophy, to inquire concerning God from the obser- 
 vation of phenomena." But according to tlie great French i^hilo- 
 sopher, David lived in an infantile state of society, when men 
 sought the supernatural in everything ; and Newton was fettered 
 in liis glorious career of discovery by the theological chimera of a 
 Providence and a God. These heavens and this earth, the bare 
 contemplation of which has filled with holy rapture many of the 
 greatest minds of our race, and the investigation into the pheno- 
 mena of which has drawn a Newton and others nearer to God, 
 are, in the view of Augustus Comte, and his disciples, but a mag- 
 nificent piece of mechanism, in the harmonious movements of 
 which nothing higher is to be recognised than mechanical laws. 
 It is said of the ancient Epicureans that they Ijelieved in the 
 existence of the gods, but neither believed tiiem to have created 
 nor to govern the^ universe. And if the brilliant French philo- 
 sopher admits a God at all, he excludes Him from creation and 
 dominion, by resolving this goodly universe, both in its formation 
 and government, into the spontaneous operation of purely phy- 
 
oi >;aturalisji; or, the denial 
 
 sical principles. The system wliicli is impressed \>y Lis great 
 name, if not absolutely atheistical, looks certainly in that direction, 
 and is, to say the least, as massive a structure of naturalism as 
 ever scientific genius exhi])ited to the world. 
 
 It might have been expected that such a work of profound 
 science, characterised as it is by high intellectual j^owers, would 
 be greatly prized by the scientific men of our own country. But' 
 assuredly it is to be regretted that the author of so useful a book 
 as "A Biographical History of Philosophy," should be found iden- 
 tifying himself with so much of its most objectionable principles. 
 Speaking of Comte's system as the key to decipher past history, 
 Mr. Lewes says,^'= "when we sefe so great a writer as Niebuhr un- 
 able to give any other explanation of the stability and progress of 
 the Koman people, than that of destiny — unable to read any signs 
 but those of the ' finger of God' — it is high time to bestir ourselves 
 to rid the world of this supernatural method of explaining facts." 
 It is striking and gratifying that about the same time that this 
 little work, in a cheap form, is endeavouring to propagate such 
 principles among us, one of the most graphic historical works f 
 that was ever given to the world, and embracing one of the most 
 remarkable portions of the world's history, should follow as its 
 guiding star, the sentiment "God in histor3^" — And, to say the 
 least, it is surely more philosophical to believe that the Supreme 
 Being operates through the medium of natvual laws, than that 
 these laws are independent of the Lavf -maker, — that the world 
 with all its grand and beautiful phenomena, and that history \^^th 
 all its marvels, bear traces of the directing finger of God, than 
 that all should be wrapped up in an iron chain of necessary de- 
 velopment. " The finger of Providence was on me," said the Duke 
 of Wellington, in one of the brief notes that he despatched from the 
 field of Waterloo ; and this sentiment, expressed at the close of 
 the dreadful fight that decided the fate of nations, and under a 
 solemnizing impression of the many brave that had fallen, belongs, 
 we are told, to the lowest stage of human intelligence ! " I had 
 rather," said Bacon — and the remark is as applicable to the denial 
 of Divine Providence as to the denial of the Divine Existence — 
 " 1 had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, 
 and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind."]; 
 
 * Biograpliical History of Philosophy, vol. iv. p. 258. 
 
 + D'Aubigne's History of the Refoi-mation. 
 
 t M. Comte is not inactive in carrying out his principles. lie knows that man 
 will worship. But he is determined, as much as in him lies, to lerid France p.nd 
 the other European nations from the worship of the supernatural to an idolatry 
 of science or a systematic worship of humanity. With a view of utterly exploding 
 the theological element, he has recently constructed a " Positive Calendar" of 
 Infidel Worship, on the model of the festivals and saints' days of the Romish 
 Church. It is nothing more than a public periodic commemoration of great men; 
 and while Moses and Paul have a place in it with such heroes as Confucius .and 
 Mahomet and VoHaire, the diviue man, the model man, Jesus Christ, is ignored. 
 
OF THE DIVINE movlDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 55 
 
 A work producing considerable excitement, calling forth a storm 
 of opposition from the man of science and the divine, and which 
 excludes God as effectually from the concerns of the universe, as 
 that to which we have just adverted, has, hut a few years ago, pro- 
 ceeded from the press of our own country. We allude to tho 
 "Vestiges of the Natural Histcry of Creation." The naturalism 
 of this anonymous publication, notwithstanding the term Pi-ovi- 
 dence is occasionally on the author's lips, appears without disguise. 
 The theory is one of those extreme systems of development, ac- 
 cording to which the world, with all its varied phenomena, moves 
 on in its stern necessary course, guided only by physical laws, to the 
 exclusion of the Divine agency. It assumes" the nebular hypothe- 
 sis — an hypothesis, which, resting originally on insufficient data, 
 i(5 falling more and more into discredit as science steadily advances 
 — and from the nebulous matter of space, which " nuist have been 
 a universal fire-mist," it evolves, on the principle of pure physical 
 law, the whole system of worlds. Tiiis universal fire-mist "being 
 granted, we have, as it were, the original germ of the material 
 universe. The germ may have been created by God, and have 
 received from Him its first impulse, but out of itself, and solely 
 through the operation of physical laws, have been gradually un- 
 folded those forms of magnificence and beauty which we see in the 
 heavens and the earth. The theory may admit of a Divine inter- 
 position in calling the original constituents of the universe into 
 existence, but it dispenses Avith or extrudes all Divine interposition 
 in giving to matter its wondrous and richly-varied collocations. 
 It may allow God in the -beginning to utter his fiat, summon 
 matter forth in its shapeless form from the void, and impress on 
 it certain laws, but it allows not the Creator henceforth to inter- 
 fere with his creation or even to touch any of its springs of motion 
 so that, after the first creating act, He might as well have ceased 
 to be. The universe, according to this theory of naturalism, has 
 moved on in its glorious path of evolution, from the hour of the crea- 
 tion of the nebulse, without the interposition of God; his existence 
 and agency being deemed necessary to give it beginning, but not 
 necessai-y to fashion, dispose, continue, and control it. To the 
 questions, whence this universal fire-mist, this nebulous matter, 
 diffused throughout space, and the natural laws with which it has 
 been endowed, you may get the answer, " from God." But you 
 get no such answer when you ask who fasliioned matter into such 
 grand and beautiful forms, and disposed them so orderly and be- 
 neficially. The Most High seems now to have abdicated, and to 
 have enthroned the physical laws, and left them to mould and 
 govern the worlds. The Bible, in its sublime simplicity, tells us 
 that " God made two gTeat lights ; the greater light to rule the 
 
 These be thy goJs, O France, and this worship of " Positive Thilosophv" is fivRt 
 to regenerate thee and then the world ! !— See North British Review, Ma'y, 18-01. 
 
56 naturalism; on, the denial 
 
 day, and the lesser light to rule the night : he made the stars als^o." 
 But the author of the " A^estiges" declares, " the masses of space 
 are formed hy law ; law makes them in due time theatres of exist- 
 ence for plants and animals."^;- '• It is impossible," he says,f " to 
 suppose a distinct exertion or fiat of Almighty Power for the form- 
 ation of the earth, \^Tought up as* it is in a complex dynamical 
 connection, first with Venus on the one hand, and Mars on the 
 other, and secondly with all the other members of the system." 
 And not only so, but" he endeavours to interpret the first chapter 
 of Genesis so as to discountenance " special efforts of the deity." 
 The sublime expression, " Let light be," indicates no special inter- 
 position of the great Creator, but merely a process of law. And such 
 statements as — God made the firmament. God made the beast of 
 the earth, &o., are said "to occur subordinately .... not neces- 
 sarily to convey a different idea of the mode of creation, and in- 
 deed only appear as alternative phrases in the usual duplicative 
 style of the East."| This is naturalism without a cloak. 
 
 We dwell not here on the strong presumptive proof which 
 advancing science is bringing against tl>e nebular hypothesis. 
 The fact that so many of the supposed nebulae have been resolved 
 into starry systems, makes it highly probable that all are re- 
 solvable. Lord Piosse's powerful telescope has revealed suns and 
 systems where nothing but dim nebulse were supposed to exist. 
 And could a,nother instrument of considerably greater magnifying 
 power be constructed, the hypothesis, abeady so much damaged, 
 might be completely destroyed. " As thrown out by Laplace," 
 remarks Professor Whewell,§ "it was a mere conjecture. It is a 
 mere conjecture still. Hitherto it has lost ground in the progress 
 of astronomical researches." But let us suppose it to be true, 
 " that the primary condition of matter was that of a diff'used mass, 
 in which the component molecules were probably kept apart 
 tln-ough the efficacy of heat ; that portions of this agglomerated 
 into suns, wliicli threw off planets; that these 2'>lanets were at first 
 veiy nnich diffused, but gradually contracted by cooling to tlieir 
 present dimensions :"|| still, on this supposition, we demand the 
 presence and agency of God. The orderly and varied dispositions 
 of matter bespeak a Divine interposition, as well as the origination 
 of matter itself In view of the collocations and motions of the 
 material system, we no less naturally infer a Divine Providence 
 than in thiiaking of the existence of matter we infer the agency of 
 the creating God. The d posteriori argument has as firm a footing 
 amid these collocations, as it has on the existence of matter, 
 and its laws. Yea, more ; it is in these collocations that we see the 
 most legible evidences of design, and it is not so jnuch from thelDare 
 
 * Ve-'tiges,?. 372, 5th etl. + IbiJ. p. 20!. $ Ibid. p. 167, 5th ed. 
 
 § Indications of the Cretitor. p. 07, Snd ed. H Vestiges, p. 4D, 5th cd. 
 
OF THE DIVINE PEOVIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 57 
 
 existence of matter as from its dispositions and motions that we rise 
 up to the Great Designer. The nebulous mass diffused throughout 
 space, supposing such to have existed, came not there without the 
 fiat of the Almighty; and suns and planets were not formed out of 
 that mass ^vithout the intervention of Infinite Wisdom. The Book 
 of Creation, beautifully written and well arranged, points up to the 
 Divine Hand that garnished and disposed it, no less than it pro- 
 claims the Divine Power that called from nothingness the materials 
 of which it is composed. The author of the " Vestiges" tells us 
 that law formed the masses of space into goodly theatres of 
 existence for plants and animals. But what are natural laws 
 without a Divine intelligence working in them and by them? 
 Not realities but merely abstractions. The existence of law not 
 more truly presupposes the Lawgiver, +han does the harmonious 
 and uniform operation of law indicate the presence and control of 
 the Governor. It is quite an illusion to speak of the laws of 
 nature as if they were things distinct from the natural phenomena, 
 and to invest them, like independent deities, with fashioning and 
 regulating powers. " if is a perversion of language," says Dr. 
 Paley,=- " to assign any law, as the eflicient operative cause of any 
 thing. A law presupposes an agent; for it is only the mode, ac- 
 cording to which an agent proceeds : it implies a power, for it is 
 the order according to which that power acts. Without this agent, 
 without this power, which are both distinct from itself, the law 
 does nothing ; is nothing." " Opus," remarks Lord Bacon, " quod 
 operatur Deus a primordio usque ad finem." 
 
 But this theory of progi"essive development explains how the 
 world was peopled, as well as how it was fonned. It includes 
 within its sweep both the animate and inanimate phenomena of 
 the universe. It w^ould not only evol.ve from a universal fire- 
 mist, and by the exclusive operation of physical law, all the forms 
 which matter has assumed, but it would trace the whole organised 
 system, in a regularly advancing series, up from an infusorial 
 13oint to the noblest being, man. " No organism is, nor ever has 
 one been created," is the language of a chief philosopher of this 
 school.f " which is not microscopic. Whatever is larger has not 
 been created but developed. Man has not been created but de- 
 veloped." " AVe call in question," says the author of the " Ves- 
 tiges,"! " not merely the simple idea of the unenlightened mind, 
 that God fashioned all in the manner of an artificer seeking by 
 special means to produce special effects, but even the doctrine in 
 vogue amongst men of science, that ' creative fiats ' were required 
 for each new class, order, family, and species of organic beings, as 
 they successively took their places upon the globe, or as the globe 
 
 * XatnvaJ Tlieology, vol. i.i pp. 9, 10. (Knight's edition.) 
 
 t rrol'cssoi- Okexi. t Vestiges, p. IGl, otli ediliou. 
 
58 naturalism; or, the DEr^iai:, 
 
 became gradually fitted for their reception." Accordiug to tlie 
 Bible, " Grod said, Let us make man in our image, after our like- 
 ness. So God created man in bis own image, in the image of 
 God created He him." But, according to this theory, God created 
 only microscopic monads or embryotic points, and from these, by 
 a process of natural development extending through cycles of 
 ages, arose all the animated tribes. Creatures of " the simplest 
 and most pr-imitive type gave birth to a type superior to it in com- 
 positeness of organization and endowment of faculties ; tliis again 
 produced the next higher, and so on to the highest; the advance 
 being, in all cases, small, but not of any determinate extent."^- 
 Man was not then the special workmanshi}) of the living God. 
 Moses is to be understood as speaking of ordinary law when he 
 says, " The Lord God formed man of the dust of the gi-ound, and 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." David's devotion is 
 to be set down as enthusiasm, when, addressing God, he exclaimed, 
 " Thou madest man a little lower than the angels." We must go 
 back to the infusorial point, " whose seed was in itself," for the 
 germ of human existence, and then, in retracing our steps, notice 
 iiow throughout the whole marvellous process there is no mixture 
 of the supernatural. The Creator is thus bidden to retire to the 
 utmost bound of creation. No room is left for Him to interpose 
 and create new species. He gave the first impulse at a dateless 
 period in the past, and all subsequent formations and dispositions, 
 however wondrous and varied, are the necessary results of fixed 
 laws. This is the order of God's universe ! Yea : " the system 
 ought to be described as a System of Order in icliich life grows out 
 of dead matter, the higher out of the lower animals, and man out of 
 hrutcs."j- 
 
 The theory is no less opposed to the well-ascertained facts of 
 science than it is to the scriptural record. The most illustrious 
 names in the scientific world have condemned it. Geology, as it 
 unfolds leaf after leaf of the " great stone book," gives the lie to it. 
 The maxim is indeed true : Natura non operatur per saltum, un- 
 derstanding that " Nature is but a name for an effect, wliose cause 
 is God. "I But it is a wild fancy, a reckless mode of philoso- 
 ])hising, to conclude that since tiicre are no gaps in nature, there 
 have been no interpositions of the Creator from the period when 
 He formed the first and smallest organism. The stars in their 
 harmonious courses have been called to fight against God, and 
 now the orderly gradations of the vegetable and animal kingdoms 
 are summoned to give eviden'.e against his agency and dominion. 
 But the earth beneath and t.:e heavens above refuse to be per- 
 jured. And, as Dr. Chalmers has remarked, " these two doctrines, 
 
 * Vestiges, p. 2.32, 5th edition. 
 + WhfcWuU's ludications, p. 12, 2acl edition. i Cowpcr. 
 
OF IflK DIVINE PROVIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 59 
 
 tlie all but universal faith of naturalists, that there is no spon- 
 taneous generation and no transmutation of the species, are two 
 denials, in fact, of nature's sufficiency for the origination of oiu- 
 races, and shut us up unto the faith of nature's God." Had the 
 development theory been founded in truth, it is obvious that tlie 
 earlier fossils woidd have been very small in size and very low in 
 organisation. But such is not the case. We meet with giants 
 where we should have found dwarfs, and creatures of a high organi- 
 zation instead of creatures of a low one. In the last, and one of 
 the ablest replies to this fanciful hypothesis, Mr. Hugh Miller 
 shows that the oldest ganoids yet known are, both as to size and 
 organization, in direct opposition to it. " Up to a certain point hi 
 the geologic scale vv^e find that the ganoids are not; and when 
 they at length make their appearance upon the stage, they enter 
 large in their stature and high in their organization."* The 
 Fossil Flora also contradicts it. At the base of the Old Red 
 Sandstone where, according to the development theory, " nothing 
 higher than a lichen or a moss could have been exjiected, the 
 ship-carpenter might have hopefully taken axe in hand to explore 
 the woods for some such stately pine as the one described by 
 Milton. "f The stubborn facts of science thus conflict with this 
 baseless theory, a theory adopted before ever geology had a place 
 among the inductive sciences, and which no eminent geologist is 
 found to advocate. We are warranted, then, with the autlior of 
 the " Footprints," to say : " Had an intelligent being, ignorant of 
 what was going on upon earth during the week of creation, visited 
 Eden on the morning of the sixth day, he would have found in it 
 many of the inferior animals, but no trace of man. Had he re- 
 turned again in the evening, he would have seen, installed in the 
 office of keepers of the garden, and ruling with no tyrant sway as 
 the humble monarchs of its brute inhabitants, two mature human 
 creatures, perfect in their organisation, and arrived at the full 
 stature of their race. The entire evidence regarding them, in the 
 absence of all such information as that imparted to Adam by 
 Milton's angel, would amount simply to this, that in the morning 
 man mas not, and that in the evening he leas. There, of course, 
 could not exist, in the circumstances, a single appearance to sanc- 
 tion the belief that the two human creatures whom he saw walking 
 together among the trees at sunset, had been ' developed from 
 infusorial points,' not created matm-e. The evidence would, on 
 the contrary-, lie all the other way."]: Such is at once the evidence 
 of Scripture and geology. The " vestiges of the natural history of 
 the creation" become the "footprints of the Creator," and vjiin 
 becomes the attempt to explain the world's genealogies so as to 
 banish fi'om it the Omnipotent Father and Sovereign Lord. 
 
 * Footprints, p. lOJ. t Ibiil. p. 120. f Ibid. p. 104. 
 
GO KATUEALISM ; OR, THE DENIAL 
 
 In tliG clomnin of physical research, the "Cosmos" of Hum- 
 boldt, a work of considerable value and popularity, bears on it the 
 stamp of naturalism. Unlike the book on which we have been 
 animadverting, it propounds no theory to account for the forma- 
 tion and peopling of the world, though the author favours the ne- 
 bular hypothesis, but gives, what it professes to do, a physical 
 description of the universe. It is more guilty by its omissions 
 than by its assertions, though in some of tnese the naturalism is 
 obvious enough. It is the most striking illustration, with which 
 we are acquainted, of a work setting aside the docti-ine of Divine 
 Providence by maintainnig a studied silence respecting it, when 
 the author, if a believer in the doctrine, would have been naturally 
 led by his subject to advert to it. It is just as if one were to 
 give a glowing description of the pictures of Raphael without 
 alluding' to the genius of the artist ; just as if Addison and Macau- 
 lay, in their dissertations on the grand poem of " Paradise Lost," 
 had never mentioned Milton, " that mighty orb of song," or, as 
 has been remarked,* just as if a critic were to give a correct and 
 eloquent account of the contents of " Cosmos" itself, without refer- 
 ring to its illustrious author, and the mental manifestation which 
 he has made of himself in its pages. Baron Humboldt, in this 
 work, makes no reference to a living omnipresent God. He sinks 
 the spiritual in the material. He can, with much picturesque ani- 
 mation of st3de, exhibit the phenomenal harmony of the heavens, 
 and describe his path from the remotest nebula to the minutest 
 organism, and ignore Him who is the source of all that life and 
 order. We perused a considerable portion of this interesting book 
 while wandering on a lovely day of June over a beautiful tract 
 of country, and were struck with the contrast between its repeated 
 references to the active forces of nature and no reference to na- 
 ture's God, and the glorious volume of creation that lay open be- 
 fore us, every page and line of which were radiant with the Crea- 
 tor s glory, and spoke of His power, wisdom, and goodness. We 
 lifted the eye from the page of the philosophic traveller to the 
 grand scenery above and around us, and involuntarily asked, is 
 there, then, amid this magnificent spectacle of earth and sky no 
 other power pervading and animating the whole but physical 
 forces ? We wondered to what specific cause it was to be attributed, 
 that so keen and enthusiastic an observer of natural phenomena 
 could, " in the late evening of an active life," present a sketch of 
 a Physical Description of the Universe, " whose undefi»ed image 
 had floated before his mind for almost half a century," in which 
 no reference is made to the Eternal One, but in the outset of which, 
 as if to prevent disappointment, he uses such language as the fol- 
 lowing: " In reflecting upon physical piienomena and events, and 
 tracing their causes by the i)rocess of reason, we become more 
 
 * Dr, Harris's Man PrimevaJ. p. 313. 
 
OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. () I 
 
 and more convinced of the truth of the ancient doctrine, that the 
 forces inherent in matter, and those which govern the moral world, 
 exercise their action under the control of primordial necessity, 
 and in accordance with movements occm-ring periodically after 
 longer or shorter intervals." =:= The illustrious German, after hav- 
 ing travelled over a considerable portion of the earth's surface, 
 and made himself acquainted with all that is at present known of 
 the physical phenomena of the universe, thus acknowledges, in the 
 midst of his fourscore years, no higher agency than inherent ma- 
 terial forces acting under the government of a primordial neces- 
 sity. Divine Providence is thus interdicted, and this goodly uni- 
 verse moves onward, unfolding its forms of life and grandeur, 
 without the hand of Him tliat made it. This may consist with 
 Hegelianism, or with some other form of the transcendental phi- 
 losopliy, but it does not consist with the deeper philosophy ot 
 man's inward nature. It 7night do if we had heads and no hearts. 
 The intellect may rest in it for a while, but the soul with its ca- 
 pacities and cravings cannot repose there for a moment. Oiu- very 
 heart-strings must be torn out, the emotional part of our nature 
 must be over-borne, and all om- upward aspirations repressed, 
 before we can be satisfied with this thing of fate, this primordial 
 necessity, in the room of the living and ever-ruling God. Even 
 in an aesthetic view this metl^od of philosophising stands con- 
 demned. Robert Hall has truly said : " The exclusion of a 
 Supreme Being and of a superintending Providence, tends directly 
 to the destruction of moral taste. It robs the universe of all 
 finished and consummate excellence, even in idea." 
 
 Combe's " Constitution of Man," a work of vastly wider circula- 
 tion, and more adapted to the masses of the people than any to 
 which we have referred, is, notwithstanding much tliat is valuable 
 in the book, notorious for its naturalism. Mr. Combe and his 
 school are not satisfied with discarding ignorant and superstitious 
 notions about Providence. But their philosophy explodes the 
 very idea of a Providence who controls and orders all things, and 
 without wliose permission not even a sparrow can fall to the 
 groujid. We meet, in such writers, with much that is worthy of 
 attention respecting the influence of natural lav/s both on physical 
 liealth and mental and moral training, and tlie evil consequences 
 of disregarding or violating these laws. And we are quite willing 
 to admit with the author of the " Vestiges," that to Mr. Combe's 
 Essay, among other publications, "may be ascribed no small 
 share of that public movement towards improved sanitary regular 
 tions which is one of the most cheering features of our age."f 
 But the good in this respect is more than counterbalanced by the 
 evil of erecting the natural laws into a sort of independent control, 
 and holding out this principle as the true key to the government 
 * Cosmos, vol. i. p. 30. t Vesiiges, p. 397, SUi edilion. 
 
C2 natcjralism; or, the denial 
 
 of the -world. t- It is a good service to rescue natural laws from 
 the hands of ignorance and superstition, and to set forth their 
 operations in a clear light. Mr. Combe has, in some measure, 
 done this. But evil is done when these laws are taken, as it were, 
 out of the hand of the superintending Lawgiver, when either a 
 studied silence about God as working in and by them is preserved, 
 or intimations given that they are all in all, and that God does not 
 interfere witli their operations. And Mr. Combe and Ids school 
 have done this. 
 
 It is the extreme of superstition or fanaticism, to repose implicit 
 faith in Divine Providence while neglecting or going counter 
 to the clearly-defined laws of the human constitution, or those 
 whicli regiilate the physical and moral worlds. The type of 
 such fanaticism is to be seen in the man who expects, as it 
 were, bread to drop from the clouds into his mouth, or treasures 
 to fall into his pockets from the same source, while doggedly 
 refusing to work. But it is rushing to a godless extreme, the 
 extreme of naturalism, to rest in mere secondary agencies 
 without rising upward to Him who touches all the springs of 
 action, or to ignore His presence in and superintendence over the 
 world. It is confessedly mysterious how human instrumentality 
 and Divine agency blend in bringing about events. But the 
 mystery of things is not a whit lessened in cutting the link that 
 connects the two together, in virtually saying, let us loose our 
 hold of the heavens above, and attach ourselves exclusively to the 
 earth and things therein. Is the world's history, or is individual 
 history, less mysterious, by shutting out from the sphere of human 
 things the Divine Providence, and leaving room for nothing but 
 the operation of natural laws? Or rather is not all history, by 
 such an exclusion, made much more mysterious than ever? In the 
 one case, we have the human agency moving freely under the 
 moral control of the Divine, we have in full i)lay the elements of 
 human action and piety, and yet mysterious relations. In the 
 other case, we have only the human agent and the physical and 
 moral laws, we have excluded the hand of God and taken away 
 the elements of piety, and still the relations are mysterious. The 
 choice then lies between a mysterious world in which God is ever 
 present and ever felt, and a mysterious world that moves onward 
 in its glorious evolutions without His continued agency. He is 
 the better philosopher and the happier man who prefei-s the 
 former, and holds a key to things inscrutable which can never be 
 solved by the man who chooses the latter. 
 
 Mr. Combe sets up for a reformer, the advocate of a philosophy 
 which would turn the pulpits of our churches and the chairs ol 
 
 * Constitution of Jlan, p. 6, People's Eclitiou (Oih). 
 
OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 63 
 
 our schools upside (3own.=;= Spiritual religion must be supplanted 
 " by teaching mankind the philosophy of their own nature and of 
 the world in which they live." Human depravity is a doctrine 
 which he cannot away with, and it is set down to " an age when 
 there Avas no sound philosophy, and almost no knowledge of 
 physical science."f That Christianity is " a system of spiritual . 
 influences, of internal operations on the soul," is the representa- 
 tion " of men who knew extremely little of the science of either 
 external nature or the human mind."! Prayer has no power with 
 God, but is merely reflex in its influence, affecting only the mind 
 of the petitiouer.§ And death is not, || as Moses and Paul have 
 written, and Milton sung, the penal effect of man's first dis- 
 obedience. Hence the necessity, as he asserts, of the religious 
 instructors of mankind being taught over again, aud of "a new 
 direction" being given to their pursuits. He means modestly to 
 insinuate, that were it possible to summon such men as Butler 
 and Edwards, Howe and Charnock, Hall and Chalmers, '* men 
 who knew extremely little of the science of either external nature 
 or the human mind," back again to this world, they would have 
 to learn, in his own school, the philosophy of human nature and 
 material things, in order to prove, in this age, efi'ective insti-uctors 
 of mankind! Not to dwell, however, on the inconsistency of 
 such statements with facts, we readily grant that there is much 
 in them consistent with naturalism or the denial of Divine Pro- 
 vidence. It is with such a denial that we have now to do. If, 
 as Mr. Combe asserts,^ " suj^ernatura] agency has long since 
 ceased to interfere with human affairs," then it were time that 
 spiritual Christianity should give place to a philosophy of nature, 
 and that the worshippers of God were asking what profit should 
 we have if we pray to Him?^=* But if, as seems to be admitted, 
 Buch an agency once interposed in the concerns of the world, why 
 may not that agency be there still, operating through the medium 
 of those natural laws which the school of Combe would exalt into 
 a sort of independent dominion ? 
 
 There is a double illusion into which writers of this class fall 
 when speaking of natural phenomena. In the first place, they 
 represent the laws of nature, not, as they really are, modes of the 
 Divine procedure, but as if they were real and independent 
 existences. And then they suppose that because things happen 
 according to fixed laws, the Divine agency cannot be in them. 
 This, viewed merely as a philosophy, not to speak of its utter 
 repugnance to Scripture, is extremely supefficial. Men, by know- 
 
 * Constitution of Man. pp. 00, 100. t Ibid. p. 4. i Ibid. p. 92, 
 
 i Ibid. p. 9r). ;i Ibid. p. 58. 51 Ibid. p. 90. 
 
 ** Cicero, speaking of the philosophers of this school — not the "magni atqtio 
 
 nobiles," — asks: "quorum si vera sententia osl, qua3 potest esse pietas ? qi.as 
 
 sanctitas ? qure religio "/ ' — Pe Nat. Deorxnn, lib. i. 
 
61 naturalism; or, the denial 
 
 iiig, and adapting themselves to, fixed laws, can often work out 
 their own will. But this does not warrant the conclusion that 
 the Divine Lawgiver cannot or does not, in such cases, make 
 them subservient to the accomplishment of His higher will. An 
 army, at the will of a monarch bent on enlarged dominion, is 
 marched into a foreign state; or a voyage of discovery is made for 
 mere commercial ends. The designs of men in both instances 
 are served. But the accomplishment of a much higher design, to 
 which these inferior ones are rendered tributary, follows.^ The 
 gospel of peace enters into the respective territories, civilisation 
 comes in its train, and by the truth multitudes ai-e made free. 
 God's will was thus paramount ; and, under His moral control,^ the 
 human will, acting by the fixed laws, was made the pliant minister 
 of the Divine. Take one of Combe's own examples. In the reign 
 of Charles the Second, London was, in a great measure, depopu- 
 lated by the jDlague. " Most people of that age," says he,>:= " attri- 
 buted the scourge to the inscrutable decrees of Providence, and 
 so]ne to the magnitude of the nation's moral iniquities." But, 
 according to his views, " there was nothing inscrutable in its 
 causes or objects. — These appear to have had no direct reference 
 to the moral condition of the people;" and the calamity "must 
 have arisen from infringement of the organic laws, and have been 
 intended to enforce stricter obedience to them in future." Now 
 we ask, can disease or suffering not be an infringement of organic 
 laws, and also a dispensation of Providence ? Mr. Combe assumes 
 that it cannot ; and because an individual or a community, neg- 
 lectful of sanitary conditions, falls a victim to plague, we are to 
 believe that the natural violation leaves no room for the Divine 
 operation. This, however, is nothing less than an assumption, an 
 assamption too, which fails to account for much of the aflBictive 
 hd^^ in the history of individuals and communities. The human, 
 or secondary agencies do not exclude the Divine or first agency, 
 the natural laws by no means supersede the presence and inter- 
 position of the Lawgiver. Mr. Morell, speaking of these secondary 
 agencies, justly remarks : " They are all under the moral control 
 of Deity from first to last, so that the penalty, which seems at first 
 to be simply the result of brealdng a natural law, is really an 
 effect of that providential power which governs the world." And 
 what he says of the world's history, may be said of the history of 
 many a community and individual: "To the man wlio looks un- 
 believingly upon Divine Providence, the world's history is a 
 problem that can never be solved."f 
 
 Combe's view of prayer, — bolstered up though it be by such 
 names as Lord Kames,*Dr. Hugh Blair, and Professor Leechman,| 
 
 * Combe's Constitution of Man, p. 36, 
 
 t ^Morell's History of Philosophy, vol. ii.,p. 571. 
 
 i Comhe's Constitution of Man, pp. 9-5, 9G. 
 
Of THE DIVINE PI{0VIX)ENT1AL GOVERNMENT. 05 
 
 men of no high authority, verily, in such matters, — stands con- 
 demned also as most unnatural, not to say most unsciiptural. It 
 is, indeed, quite of a piece with his philosophy, but it consists not 
 with the deeper philosophy of the heart and the Bible. Men have 
 never prayed under the persuasion that the sole eiiicacy of prayer 
 is reflex, that it has an influence only upon the mind of the wor- 
 shipper. The Avisest and best of the Greeks and Romans, the 
 unsophisticated childi-en of the desert, as well as the most enlig]it- 
 ened and devout Christians, have resorted to prayer under^ the 
 conviction tliat it is efiectual to secure blessings directly from 
 above. The reflex influence of prayer is valuable, but the value 
 is realised just in proportion as the heart goes out after the direct 
 influence. A rational theory it truly is, which would thus make 
 the value of men's devotions to arise from men's illusions ! The 
 reflex influence supposes the direct influence, and for men to 
 enjoy the former without faith in the latter, resembles, as Isaac Tay- 
 lor remarks,* " the supposition that we might continue to enjoy the 
 accommodation of moonlight, even if the sun were blotted from 
 the planetary system." As to the stale objection, which is ever 
 and anon brought forth,f that the direct influence of prayer sup- 
 poses that we can alter the Divine determinations, it is sufficient 
 to reply, that it is according to these determinations that nien 
 must ask in order to receive, and knock in order to the door being 
 opened. God discloses unto us the treasures of liis grace, and 
 says, " I will yet for these be inquired of." 
 
 What is insidiously taught by such a writer as Combe, has been 
 advocated more boldly, and with less fear of giving oflence by the 
 Owen School. Eationalism is here defined to be the science of 
 material circumstances. And the philosophy of Owenism ignores 
 everything else. It denounces other systems for liaving spiritual- 
 ized" man, and it professes to look upon him, to all practical 
 purposes, as a material being. Humanity, in its estimation, con- 
 tains within itself the germs of indefinite moral improvement, and 
 needs only to be brought under the genial influences of earth to 
 ripen into perfection. Supernatm-al aid is interdicted at the 
 threshold, lest it should beget an indifterence to self-exertion, and 
 foster a habit of dependence. The first and last lesson given to 
 its disciples is, that men's opinions and actions result exclusively 
 Trom their original susceptibilities, and the influences of the world 
 around them, over which they liave no control. Hence its oft 
 repeated injunction, Study yourself and mind external circum- 
 
 * Spiritual Christiauitv, p. 51. , . , - 
 
 + Mr. R. W. Mackay, who, after tlie manner of Comhe, confines " the circle of 
 our real knowledge to phenomenal succession and its laws." witli all the coolness 
 of the sensational school, serves up this oft-refntecl objection. He falsely assumes 
 thr.t prayer pr supposes changeableness in God, and then settles the matter by 
 tolling us that the Creator is not " to be diverted from his purposes by entreaty." 
 —The Proi/ress of the Intellect, vol. i. pp. 25, lOy. 
 
60 naturalism; oe, the denial 
 
 stances. This is the sum and substance of its commandments. 
 It admits the existence of error and vice inhumanity, for these are 
 too palpable to be denied, but it charitably calls them misfortunes, 
 and, as a remedy for all moral ills, insists on a rational education. 
 The favourite analogy of this system is derived from the influence 
 which the sun exerts upon the earth. This is at once the grand 
 image in its poetry, and the grand illustration of its philosophy. 
 Human nature is compared to the earth, and external influences 
 to the sun which vivifies and adorns it. Kationalism says, bring 
 a man of good susceptibilities into a favourable position as regards 
 external circumstances, and hence results a good character. This 
 is the system, ushered forth with big pretensions, and propounded 
 in innumerable little books and pamphlets, which is " to renovate 
 the social state, recast and elevate humanity !" 
 
 The crude elements of the system have heen found floating on 
 the surface of society in every age. Its modern form may be said 
 to have been cut out by Rousseau and French philosophy, and to 
 have assumed a still more palpable shape in the hands of Owen 
 and his followers. It is gross naturalism, naked and not ashamed, 
 and as such, though now fast in the wane, it has been gi-eeted by 
 masses of the people who were disposed to throw off every species 
 of religion as an intolerable yoke. Such writers as the author of 
 the " Vestiges," do not more effectually exclude Providence frorn^ 
 the government of the spheres, and from the whole domain of 
 natural history, than do the disciples of the " new moral world" 
 shut out the idea of supernatural interference in educating man. 
 Eationalism in this form, and what is called communism, are often 
 associated, though they are by no means to be identified or con- 
 founded. Its politics rise out of its philosophy. The great 
 lesson of its philosophy is, external circumstances are the agents 
 of fate, look well to them. Its polities may be summed up in 
 ascribing demoralization and crime to the factitious arrangements 
 of society. It cries out, alter these, place society in a favourable 
 position, educate man aright, and then will be realised the new 
 heavens and the new earth, wherein dwclleth righteousness. 
 
 Viewed merely as a system of philosophy, it is the shallowest 
 that rationalism ever offered to the world. No one denies the 
 vast influence of external circumstances upon the human charac- 
 ter, and the importance of attending to them. It will also be 
 admitted that improved systems of education, and altered arrange- 
 ments in civil society, would tend greatly to lessen crime, and 
 ameliorate the condition of man. But to rest the world's regene- 
 ration on these alone, exposes the system to the charge of being 
 one-sided and empirical, as unphilosophical as it is ungodly. It 
 takes up one idea, an important and a true one, but, to the neglect 
 of other ideas no less true and important, this is exalted, carried 
 everywhere forth, and all men and things are called to fall down 
 
OF THE DIVINE PKOVIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. (57 
 
 and worship it. Material circumstances are something, but the 
 school of Owen makes them everything. The human will is no 
 doubt influenced by them, but our rationalists maintain, in oppo- 
 sition to consciousness, that it is controlled by them. Man is 
 made a passive creature. This is plainly implied in the fond 
 analogy of the sun acting upon the earth. Emerson has said,* 
 " man is here, not to work, but to be worked upon." And the 
 men of this school tell us that our characters ai'e the necessary 
 result of our organisation at birth, and subsequent external in- 
 fluences over wliich we have no control. " The germs of intelli- 
 gence and virtue are expanded or blasted by them," and thus the 
 whole human character is foi-med. It is not so. Our subjective 
 constitution is not sucli an inert, helpless thing. We are conscious 
 of possessing a faculty which gives us control over external cii- 
 cumstanees; so that, taking this into account, it is true that 
 character is the result of our subjective nature, and of the objective 
 influences acting upon it. But, in this system of naturalism,^ the 
 gi-eat facts of man's moral natui-e are ignored. One portion of the 
 field of phenomena is dwelt upon as if it were the whole, and the 
 other portion, which to a reflective mind is no less obvious, is 
 overlooked. 'Jlie eye is turned outward and lost in material 
 tilings. It does not direct its glance down into the depths of 
 liuman consciousness, and fails to perceive the more wondrous 
 things of the spirit. A sense of responsibility, and moral senti- 
 ment, are great truths in the natural history of man. They are 
 phenomena just as palpable to the eye that looks inward, as any 
 of the material circumstances ai-e to the eye that looks outwai'd. 
 But the Owen school either loses sight of these phenomena in 
 human nature, or would assign them to a blind necessity, a source 
 from which the unsophisticated mind refuses to receive them. 
 Then there is the stubborn, though mysterious fact of human 
 depravity, which it either winks at or entirely overlooks, and for 
 counteracting which it accordingly makes no provision. The 
 wonder is how the abettors of such a system can read history, or 
 look upon the v/orld ai'ound them, without perceiving, on the one 
 hand, how individuals and communities, placed amid the most 
 favourable external circumstances, have continued corrupt and 
 corrupters ; and how, on the other hand, persons more unfavour- 
 ably situated have, notwithstanding, become exemplai'S of virtue. 
 A theory that ascribes so much to the mere outward relations, and 
 leaves no room for an influence counteractive of bad ones or efli- 
 cacious to good ones, is condemned by experience as well as by 
 religion. But perhaps its advocates would reinove it from such a 
 tribunal, by affirming that no community has ever yet been placed 
 in such a paradisaical state as rationalism would place it. In 
 
 * Representative Men, p. 92, Boliu's edition. 
 
 F 2 
 
C? naturalism; or, the denial 
 
 sucli a case, it must bear tlie double stigma of being godless and 
 Utopian. 
 
 Hitherto we have viewed naturalism as broadly manifested in 
 some works on physical and moral science, and now we have to 
 notice its appearance in the department of Bible theology. 
 Germany, in this respect, though not exclusively its seat, has 
 attained a bad pre-eminence. Thousands of men, professing to 
 be Christ's ministers and expounders of his word, have, during 
 the last half century or more, propounded from the halls and pul- 
 pits of Germany a creed which no more admits of supernatural 
 influence than any of the philosophical sj'stems to which we have 
 adverted. In their teaching, God is as effectually excluded from 
 the province of the Bible, as in the " Vestiges" and similar works 
 He is excluded from the solar system. The brilliant and bene- 
 ficent miracles which ushered in the Gospel dispensation, are 
 exploded, or explained away on purely natural principles. And 
 what is properly meant by Divine influence is denied a place 
 either in the mode of inspiring the sacred writers, or in the mode 
 of enlightening and renewing the minds of the readers. Spinoza, 
 whose philosophy has exerted such a mighty influence on the 
 thinking of Germany, had said, " all that is recorded in the books 
 of revelation, took place in conformity with the established lavrs 
 of the universe." On this principle, interpretation after interpreta- 
 tion has been given, until the sacred record has been swe2Jt as 
 clear of its mighty signs and wonders, as some would sweep the 
 starry firmament of the evidences of an ever-present and all-con- 
 trolliug God. In Germany, speculative philosophy and theological 
 doctrine are more closely linked together than in any other country 
 in Europe. The pervading principle of its speculative philosophy, 
 that God never intervenes specially, but that all things move on 
 in a chain of necessaiy development, has been carried into the 
 region of its theology. Hence the axiom, laid down at the 
 threshold, " mnacles are an impossibility." The very first prin- 
 ciple which Strauss brings to the study of the evangelists is, that 
 when the events narrated are incompatible with known and 
 universal laws, it must be maintained that they did not happen 
 in the manner recorded. Divine Providence is thus interdicted 
 at the onset. 
 
 We have been accustomed to consider Christianity as a second 
 creation, and to conceive that as the first creation took place by 
 a special intervention of Divine Power, so did the second. The 
 philosophy of tlie rationalist will not admit this, and therefore 
 his theology must be shaped so as to exclude it. The first 
 miracle in" Christianity is the birth and manifestation of the. 
 Saviour. This cannot be a true literal history, says the rationalist, 
 for it is incompatible v.'ith tlic laws that regulate the succession of 
 events. The m.iraculons texture of the gospel narrative may 
 
OF T]IE DIVINE PROVIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. C' 
 
 lie admitted, "but the wonders recorded must be accounted for 
 in accordance with the assumed ' principle that there is no 
 supernatural intervention in the world's history. Hence tlie 
 theory, formerly adverted to,* that Christ did not make t'le 
 church, but the church made Him. He is represented as a pious 
 Israelite, educated in the bosom of a pious family in Nazareth, 
 who endeavoured to realise in Himself the Messianic conceptions 
 that prevailed among the people. He believed Himself to be the 
 Messiah of promise; the Jews, in process of time, transferred 
 their conceptions to Him, and recognised Him as the expected 
 deliverer. Thus, out of the existing Messianic notions, and the 
 impression which Jesus made by his personal qualities anc!. 
 actions, does rationalism derive the first miracle of Christianity — 
 the birtli, incarnation, and appearing of the Son of God. The 
 great mystery of godliness having been thus -stripped of its 
 grandeur, and mpde to assume the shape of a natural event, the 
 whole train of mighty worlrs wrought by Christ and his apostles 
 must undergo a similar denuding process. Eationalism admits 
 that, according to the conceptions then prevalent sjnong the 
 Jews, the Messiah was to be a worker of miracles; and it infers 
 that, in consequence of these concejotions, they ascribed to Him 
 the power of performing them. " The chain of endless causation," 
 says Strauss, " can never be broken, and a miracle is an im- 
 possibility." — They must be resolved, therefore, into purely 
 natural principles.! 
 
 The earlier school of rationalists, which took hold of Spinoza's 
 principle, endeavoured to show that the gospels were not miracu- 
 lous in their texture, that the writers never intended to assert 
 miracle, and that the events recorded were simple facts magnified 
 by the impression which they made on the senses, or exaggerated 
 by the false colouring of copyists and others. This school of ra- 
 tionalism has well-nigh become obsolete. It was too materialistic 
 for the ideal tendencies of Germany. Strauss assailed it. He de- 
 clai-es in that misnomer, the " Leben Jesu," "that it was time to 
 substitute a new method of considering the history of Jesus for 
 the worn-out idea of a supernatural intervention, and a naturalist 
 explanation." He is, however, but a naturalist in another shape. 
 He admits the gospels to be miraculous narratives. And in this 
 admission there is assuredly no more virtue than in the recogni- 
 tion, on a clear frosty night, of the stars that shine out of the 
 depths of the blue sky. Miracles, as Dr. Newinan has well said.]; 
 " form the substance and groundwork of the narrative, and, liks 
 
 * Chapter II. p. 53. 
 
 + It may be here noticed that the " Progress of the Intellect" goes on the pan 
 theistic assumption that a miracle is God at variance with Himself; and, then 
 taking a leaf out of Strauss, accounts for the development of a supematurr 
 Messiah. See vol. i. p. 20, and vol. ii. chap. 8. 
 
 t Newman's Dissertation on Miracles, Encyclop. Metrop. 
 
70 NATURALISM ; OK., THE I)E^'IAL 
 
 the figure of Phidias on Minerva's shield, cannot be erased without 
 S]toiling the entire composition." But, while admitting the gos- 
 pels to he supernatural in their texture, or to have miracles inter- 
 woven with them, he aims to show that they nevertheless originated 
 without an historical foundation ; as if the stars of night were 
 mere mental iUusions, and the form of Phidias on the shield 
 A fiction not a reality. His fundamental position is a naturalist 
 one : " miracles are not and never were." Every narrative that 
 surpasses the ordinary course of events proves itself not to be his- 
 torically true. The allegory, the legend, the myth, must explain 
 all the bright and beneficent miracles that astonished the Jews 
 before whom they were wrought, and that have drawn forth the 
 homage of the church in every age. The naturalism of Strauss, 
 and his followers may differ in some features from that of Paulus 
 and the older rationalists, but it is sheer naturalism still. =i= 
 
 Is the feeding of five thousand men with five loaves and two 
 small fishes to be accounted for ? This has generally been re- 
 garded as one of the most striking manifestations of the divine power 
 of Christ, and so great was the impression produced on the multi- 
 tudes who witnessed it, that they cried, " This Is of a truth that 
 Prophet that should come into the world." But, according to our 
 rationalist, this great miracle dwindles down to the event of Christ 
 having had such an influence over the minds of men, as that the 
 more wealthy in the crowd who were well supplied with provisions, 
 v/ere constrained to distribute of their abundance to the destitute 
 multitudes ; or it may be regarded as a copy of the story of the 
 manna in the desert. The calming of the storm on the sea of 
 Galilee, is another of those miglity works that have strikingly dis- 
 played the supernatural power of the Saviour. It led the observers 
 in wonder and awe to exclaim, " What manner of man is this, that 
 even the winds and the sea obey him !" Rationalism, however, 
 has the explanation at hand. Jesus, by his calm and dignified 
 demeanour, tranquillised the troubled minds of his disciples. By 
 a happy coincidence, the raging elements of nature at the same 
 time became still. And the event was thus magnified into the mira- 
 culous. In short, is it the most magnificent of all miracles, the 
 resurrection of Christ, that is to be accounted for? The rationalist 
 acknowledges that the surprising revolution in tlie minds of the 
 disciples from the deep despair into which tbey had sunk at the 
 death of Jesus, to the fearless energy with which they shortly after- 
 wards pleaded His cause, shows that during the interval something 
 extraordinary had happened. What that something was, the 
 gospel narratives tell us: — the miraculous resurrection of Christ. 
 wliich powerfully declared Him to be the Son of God. But naturalism 
 admits no miracle. Strauss says, the roeurn of a dead person to 
 
 * See Dr. Beard's Voices of tlie Church, p. 3.3, 
 
OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENTIAL G0VERN5IENT. 71 
 
 life is impossible. And the change which took place in the minds 
 of the disciples is resolved into visions, and these visions are re- 
 solved into their own excited feelings. The most stupendous 
 events in the world's history are thus made to vanish before a 
 naturalist explanation.* And Strauss coolly and remorselessly 
 looks on, as the bright train of beneficent and mighty deeds, which 
 have drawn forth Jiien's faith and reverence, disappear. No won- 
 der that the German mind, on reflecting, drew back from, or re- 
 fused assent to such critical principles as these, inasmuch as they 
 viere seen to uproot all our hold upon the past, and to involve all 
 history in a mythical illusion. 
 
 Pantheism and naturalism may be said to meet in this theory, 
 which we denounce as one of the most imphilosophical that was 
 ever attempted to be imposed upon the world. Its dogged 
 adherence, in spite of all evidence, to the position that miracles 
 are impossible, is consistent only with absolute atheism or 
 pantheism. Men who adopt, as a fundamental principle, the 
 impossibility of supernatural intervention, must either deny that 
 Ood is, or deprive Him of his personality. Strauss, as we have 
 already noticed, is a pantheist in the extreme. He stands at that 
 point where atheism and pantheism face each other, and shake 
 hands. And just as one impiety naturally follows another, does 
 his theory of Christianity arise out of his other infidel views. But 
 admit the existence of a first Intelligent Cause, the Creator of 
 heaven and earth, the living God, — a necessary truth granted by 
 all sound reasoners — and where is the rationality in denying that 
 He either does or can interpose in the system of tilings which He 
 has established ? Reasoning a jiriori, and in accordance with a 
 pure theism, we would have been led to conclude that He who 
 made the worlds would continue to govern them, and that, for 
 gi-eat and special ends, He would intei^iose in a special and 
 extraordinaiy manner. Whether He has done so or not must bo 
 decided on the broad ground of evidence. The axiom of Strauss 
 contravenes the very jfoundatiou principles of the inductive plii- 
 losophy. A miracle is neither impossible nor incredible, on the 
 supposition of a God. 
 
 Miracles are supernatural facts, things which bespeak the 
 inteiwention of a cause superior to and having a supreme control 
 over all natural causes. It matters not, in our present argument, 
 whether we strictly define them as lying beyond the sphere of 
 natural laws, or as invoh^ng the idea of suspension of or opposition 
 to these laws. In either case we demand the interposition of God. 
 To raise a dead man to life, or to walk upon the sea, may be 
 viewed either as above the range of the established laws of nature, 
 or as directly contrary to them; but, on either suj)position, the 
 
 * See Tholuck, in Dr. Beard, p. ]5l. 
 
72 naturalism; oe, the denial 
 
 operation is divine. Tlie latter point of view is commonly, tliougli 
 not uniyersally, taken by evangelical men in our country ; the 
 former is the stand-point of distinguished Christian divines on the 
 Continent. Strauss and his school lay down the position that 
 nature is but a development of God. He says the chain of endless 
 causation cannot be broken; and taking the common idea of 
 miracles, as violations or suspensions of natural laws, he declai-es 
 a miracle to be impossible. Neander, Mliller, D'Aubigne, and 
 other Continental divines, without conceding anything to the 
 rationalists, oppose them, by maintaining that miraculous 
 phenomena lie beyond the sphere of those laws, and are not 
 violations of them. And in this theory they are joined by some 
 of our own eminent evangelical writers, such as Trench, Vaughan, 
 Westcott, and the author of "The Kestoration of Belief "-■:< The 
 idea of supernatural intervention is prominent, however, in either 
 view, and that is not to be tolerated by naturalism. Miracles may 
 be perfectly natural, viewed in reference to a higher w^orld, 
 but they are supernatural viewed in reference to this. " At the 
 establisinnent of Christianity," says D'Aubigne, " the superior 
 world acted upon the inferior world, conformably to the laws which 
 are peculiar to it; a miracle is nothing more than this."f Be the 
 mii-acle contrary to, or lying beyond, the subordinate laws of 
 physical nature, it is doubtless in conformity with tlie moral and 
 supreme law of the universe. " God, therefore," says Gioberti, 
 "far from disturbing universal harmony, maintains it, by in- 
 terrupting the course of physical forces in certain determinate 
 cases, and for a most wise end."| 
 
 Hume and the older deists said, a miracle is incredible. 
 Strauss and the modern rationalists, affirm a miracle to be im- 
 possible. Hume's fallacy, as has often been shown, lay in con- 
 founding two distinct experiences, the miiform experience of the 
 individual, and the uniform experience of mankind viewed as a 
 whole. He reasoned as if his own experience embraced a knov/- 
 
 * Page 23.>. _ + The Miracles ; or, Two Errors. 
 
 * Dr. Wardla\v, in his recent able work " On Miracles," advocates what may be 
 callejl the old \iew, and offers some strictures on Drs. Vaughan and Beard, and 
 Mr. Trench, who contend that miracles are not "contra naturam, but prcstcr 
 naturam, and supra naturam." And yet he says of the miraculous event, " it does 
 not to me seem vei-y material, whether we speak of it as beyond nature, or above 
 nature, or beside nature, or against nature, or conti-ary to natui-e, — whether as a 
 suspension, an inteiTuption, a contravention, or a violation of nature's laws; 
 — provided we are understanding 'nature and nature's laws' as having reference 
 to the physical economy of our own system." — (P. 31.) This, we presume, is just 
 thair understanding when, according to Mr, Westcott, they say, " that there is 
 nothing in miracles contrary to nature, while all is above nature ; — that the laws 
 of existences around us are not broken, but resolved into higher laws." — Gospel 
 Harmony, p. 17. V/e are disposed to regard this discussion as not " much more 
 than a logomachy," for the great idea of supernatural intervention is unaffected 
 by it. At the same time, the " above and beyond nature" view seems the more 
 advantageous one in cutting away the ground from beneath the German anti- 
 iniracle school. 
 
OF THE DIVINE PItOVlDENTIAL GOVEIINMENT. 73 
 
 ledge of all causes, and as if his kuowledgo of the power of all 
 causes was so complete that he was wairanted to say, there is not 
 a cause able or willing to work miracles. His own uniform ex- 
 perience, as an individual, bore testimony to the constancy of the 
 laws of nature. And the fallacy consisted in exulting tliat ex- 
 perience into the experience of the human race. In short, the 
 argument is based upon a gross assumption. By it he arro^-ates 
 to himself a knowledge which no finite intelligence can possess. 
 The argument fails also in the principle on which it vfould set 
 aside the testimony of witnesses adduced to prove a miracle. 
 
 Hume reasons thus: there are two testimonies in the case the 
 
 testimony of uniform experience in affirming tlie constancy of the 
 laws of nature, and the testimony of witnesses in favour of a 
 miracle or deviation from these ordinary laws. No number of 
 witnesses for the miracle can equal the evidence for the constancy 
 of nature. It is more probable that the witnesses should have 
 been deceived, however apparently strong their testimony, than 
 that the laws of nature should have been departed from. Thus, 
 all miracles are denied, v/ithout any regard to the kind or quality 
 of proof by which they are supported. The rationalist entrenches 
 liimself behind the position of the incredibility or impossibility of 
 - miracles, and levels to the ground the whole structure of Chris- 
 tianity. Now, it is sufficient to say to this, tliat, in the ordinary 
 concerns of life, we value testimony rather for its quality tlian for 
 its quantity. If a few witnesses of known veracity attest an e;> 
 traordinary occurrence, we confide in their testimony as naturally 
 as we do in the testimony of thousands of persons who had pre- 
 viously deposed to the ordinary course of events. On the veiy 
 same principle, then, we should, as has been satisfactorily argued, 
 credit testimony unexceptionable in its quality when it is adduced 
 not only in proof of the extraordinary, but when it carries us a 
 step higher — to the supernatiu-al or miraculous. Well-attested 
 miracles can consistently be denied only on atheistical, or, what 
 in this case amounts to the same thing, pantheistical principles. 
 Once admit the existence of a Personal God, Himself uncaused 
 and the cause of all, and you cannot rationally deny that He may 
 interpose in the concerns of the universe. Grant that the 
 Almighty intervened in calUng into existence the first creation, 
 and you cannot reasonably withliold your assent, that, if evidence 
 in support of it exist. He may have intervened in originating 
 Christianity, the second creation. The rationalist who, in. the 
 face of all evidence, takes up the position that miracles are im- 
 possible, must be driven back to another position, viz. the non- 
 existence of a Being who can perform supernatural works. 
 Strauss, in maintaining the impossibility of miracles, as vrell as 
 Hume in asserting their incredibility, has been flagi-antly guilty 
 of a p.jtitio 2'rincijjii — a begging of the question. It is nothing 
 
7-1 NATURALISM ; OR, THE DENIAL 
 
 more than his ipse dixit. The world has had more than enough 
 of this philosophy, falsely so called, which would supersede all 
 investigation into the testimony for miracles by proclaiming it as 
 an axiom that miracles are impossible, or that no evidence can 
 substantiate them. It is alike opposed to the cautious philosophy 
 of Bacon, and to the facts and principles of Holy Scripture. It 
 is the taking of a one-sided, and consequently a very erroneous 
 view of God's universe. The moral system is ignored, a system 
 as real and palpable as the ])hysical, though immeasurably 
 superior to it. And the remark is as applicable to the men of the 
 Strauss school as to the men of the Hume school : their antece- 
 dent objections against miracles " will be found nearly all to arise 
 from forgetfulness of the existence of moral laws. In their zeal 
 to perfect the laws of matter, they most unphilosophically over- 
 look a more sublime system, which contains disclosures not only 
 of the Being but of the Will of God."':=. 
 
 But Scripture itself, imder this system of naturalism, is, as a 
 whole, disrobed of its glory. The special interposition of God in 
 inspiring the sacred writers, is as much excluded as his interpo^ 
 sition in working the Bible miracles. And, if the mighty deeds 
 recorded sink down to the level of common events, why should not 
 the Holy Book itself descend to the level of a common treatise ? 
 John Foster has said : " Surely it is fair to believe that those who 
 received from heaven superhuman power, received likewise super- 
 human wisdom. Having rung the great bell of the universe, the 
 sermon to follow must be extraordinary." Naturalism, having 
 denied the superhuman power, consistently with its own principles, 
 denies the superhuman wisdom. The bell, according to it, was 
 nothing uncommon, and the sermon that followed was nothing 
 transcendent. The denial of the miracles has, in fact, led to the 
 denial of the inspiration. It must be admitted that the Bible 
 records miracles. It must be admitted also that the Bible claims 
 special inspiration. Naturalism cannot admit the miracles, and 
 consequently it cannot concede that the prophets and apostles, 
 holy men of God, spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 
 De'^Wette and others attacked the Old Testament, and Strauss has 
 made a similar onslaught on the New, from the same naturalist 
 position. The books must be treated as spurious because they 
 narrate predictions and miracles, things which naturalism cannot 
 away with. We find, accordingly, in the writings of the old 
 English deists, in the AVolfenblittel Fragments, and in a succes- 
 sion of such like productions down to that paragon of honest 
 book-writing — "Phases of Faith," aheap of apparent contradic- 
 tions raked together from all quarters, the fruit of a shallow 
 criticism and an irreligious spirit, in order to falsify the Book 
 
 * Newman's Dissertation, Encyclop. Metrop. 
 
OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENTIAL CiOVEnNMENT. 75 
 
 which claims to have been given by insinratiou of God. Hatred 
 of the supernatural, which is interwoven with every page of Scrip- 
 ture, has led to the various disingenuous attempts to depreciate 
 the testimony of the inspired writers. It is related that a Swedish 
 traveller, in looking through the library of Voltaire, found Calmet's 
 Commentary with slips of paper inserted, on which were written 
 the difhculties noticed by Calmet, without the slighest reference 
 to the solutions given by the commentator. The Swede, who, in 
 other respects, admired the brilliant Frenchman, denounced this 
 conduct as dishonourable. And yet, as Hengstenberg remarks,-:- 
 our modern rationalist critics have acted in a similar manner. 
 Theodore Parker, Francis William Newman, and Eobert William 
 Mackay.f who make no secret of the Gamaliels at whose feet they 
 have been sitting, serve up the often-refuted objections against 
 the infallibility of the sacred writers, as if they were a fresh course, 
 and then, on the assumption of their gross mistakes and contra- 
 dictions, conclude against their miraculous inspiration. 
 
 The age in which we live is universal in its tendencies. It 
 must have all thmgs in common. The mind lias become into- 
 lerant of monopolies. And not a few writers in our own and other 
 lands ai-e labouring to bring the Bible down from its proud pre- 
 eiJiinence, stripping it of its solitary grandeur, and allowing it no 
 other inspiration than that which is common to men. The con- 
 troversy may be said to have shifted its ground, or to present a 
 new phasis, in consequence of a new philosophic influence. For- 
 merly, our Christian apologists had to contend for the very element 
 of inspiration in the sacred books, as they had to contend for the 
 miraculous texture of the Gospel narratives; now, we have to 
 strive for their special claim to the Divine inbreathing, against 
 those who would merge them in an influence common as the 
 light or air of heaven. Thus Mr. Farker,! speaking after the 
 Emerson fashion, tells us, "inspiration, like God's omnipresence, 
 is not limited to the few writers claimed by the Jews, Christians, 
 or Mahometans, but it is co-extensive with the race." Minos and 
 Moses, David and Pindar, Leibnitz and Paul, Newton and Simon 
 Peter, " receive into then- various forms the one spirit from God 
 most high." Yea, " this inspiration is limited to no sect, age, or 
 nation. It is wide as the world, and common as God." The 
 Bible thus ceases to be the law and the testimony, the only in- 
 fallible directory of faith and morals, and men may turn it into 
 myths and legends, receive or reject it, as they please. But this 
 attempt to confound inspiration and omnipresence goes on the 
 assumption that as God is present everywhere, He cannot be 
 
 * Hengstenberg on the Pentateuch, vol. i. p. 47. 
 
 + See Parkers Discourses, Newmans Phases of Faith, and Mackay's Progress of 
 the Intellect, passim. 
 
 i Paiker's Discourse, pp. 161 — 171. 
 
ib NATUEALISM ; OK, THE DENIAL 
 
 Specially present auyv^-llere ; that as he may be said to exert a com- 
 mon influence on the minds of all men, He cannot be said to exert a 
 supernatm-al influence on the minds of a chosen number of men. 
 An assumption of the same nature and philosophic value as tliat 
 of Sti'auss — miracles are impossible. 
 
 The Bible comes to us claiming to have been given by 
 miraculous inspiration of God — an inspiration separated by an 
 impassable gulf from that of mere genius — and, in support of its 
 claims, presents a large atnount of clear and strong evidence. 
 There is an impregnable external testimony encircling it " as the 
 mountains are round about Jerusalem," and, on its pages, the 
 finger of God is not less clearly manifested than on the stariy 
 heavens. This Book stands above and apart from the sublimest 
 efi'usious of human genius, revealing truths bearing on man's 
 liighest interests and lying beyond the sphere where science and 
 genius make their discoveries — having a history quite un- 
 paralleled and miraculous — and producing on individuals and 
 commimities such radical and beneficent changes of heart and 
 life, as no other book in the world has effected. It professes to 
 have received its grand revelations directly from above, and to have 
 transmitted them under such infallible guidance as entitles it 
 to be regarded as the oracle of God. We meddle not with the 
 question of degrees of inspiration. We advocate no theory of 
 mechanical dictation. It is enough, but not more than enough, 
 that vre hold a special influence ranging from the highest point, or 
 dii-ect revelation, down to the lowest limit, or superintendence as 
 a guard against erroi-. We take the fact as it stands — all Scrip- 
 ture is given by inspiration of God. The mode does not trouble 
 us, Sciipture, in its rich diversity of style, evinces free mental 
 action on the part of the sacred writers, while it asserts that action 
 to have been under the infallible guidance of the Divine Spirit. 
 The plenary inspiration, wc hold in perfect consistency with the 
 human peculiarities. Our position " presupposes tliat the san}e 
 providential power which gave the message selected tlie messenger, 
 and implies that the traits of individual character and the peculiar- 
 ities of manner and purpose, which are displayed in the compo- 
 sition and language of the sacred writings, are essentia] to the 
 perfect exhibition of their meaning. , . . It preserves absolute 
 truthfulness with perfect humanity, so that the nature of man is 
 not neutralised, if we may thus speak, by the Divine agency, and 
 the truth of God is not modified, but exactly expressed in one cf 
 its several aspects, by the individual mind. Each element per- 
 forms its perfect work, and in religion, as well as in philosophy, 
 we find a glorious reality based upon a true antithesis."-:^ This 
 is the Bible claim. And if this be not conceded on the ground 
 
 * Westcott's Elemenis of the Gospel Ilaniiouy, rp- ", 10, 
 
OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENTIAL GOVEENMENT. 77 
 
 of the internal and external evidence, then the Bible, in its struc- 
 ture, in its characteristic truths, in the simplicity and majesty of 
 its style, in its matchless character of Christ, in its influence on 
 and present position in the world — is a greater miracle than the 
 miraculous inspiration wliicli uatiu-alism would set aside. Dis- 
 crepancies we admit, such discrepancies as migiit have been ex- 
 pected to result from the transmission of a hook through so many 
 hands, languages, and ages, unless shielded so miraculously at 
 every point that the finger of no copyist could inadvertently have 
 introduced a wrong date or omitted a letter. But what is the 
 chafi" to the v.-lieat ? A large number of discrepancies, on which 
 infidel objections were grounded, have vanished before the appli- 
 cation of a true and searching criticism, and we anticipate that 
 the residue will be still further diminished till it shall be accounted 
 as nothing. There is no discrepancy in regard to the substantial 
 contents of Christianity, and to found an argument against 
 the miraculous inspiration of Scriptm-e on a few unresolved 
 variances, is no less irrational than to argue against the perfec- 
 tions of God because of some conflicting natural phenomena.* 
 The Bible, in its disclosures, history, and position, is as unac- 
 countable without the admission of special inspiration, as the 
 world and the fulness thereof without the creating and unholdin^r 
 hand of God.f ■" 
 
 The position taken up by Mr. Morell on this question, however 
 stoutly he, in other respects, denounces rationalism, is little better 
 than a rationalist one. He indeed admits supernatural agency, 
 but it is a mere vivifying operation, a heightening or clearing of 
 the power of intuition, not generically different from the ins^nra- 
 tions of genius or the spiritual elevation common to Christians. 
 'I Inspiration," according to him, "depends upon the clearness,' 
 force, and accuracy of a man's religious intuitions.^ ... It 
 does not involve any form of intelligence essentially diflerent from 
 whatwe already possess.§ . . . It is a higher potency of a 
 certain form of consciousness, whicli every man to some deoree 
 possesses."!! Indeed, if his theory be true, inspiration is not only 
 a much less extraordinary thing than the church has imagined, 
 but there is nothing to hinder it taking place again, and a supple- 
 ment being made to the volume of revelation. Let the religious 
 
 * Butler's AnaJogy, p. 8. (Dublin, 1849.) 
 
 + We make no use of the petitio piincipii in tlie above remarks. We do not 
 say to our opponents, The Scriptures are inspired, and therefore their statements 
 must be true. But we ground an argument for their inspiration on their internal 
 structure and external position. The author of " The Restoration of Belief 
 observes, "We are often told that we timidly hold up this 'Inspiration' as a 
 scn^en. Jest the documents of our faith should come to be dealt with severely in 
 the mode that is proper to historic criticism." With him we say, " Only let this 
 Historic Severity take its free course, and Disbelief will be driven from its last 
 stnndmff-plnce. . . . It would wither like the prass of the tronics."—P 127 
 f .Morell's Philosophy of Eehgion, p. 176. ? Ibid. p. 151. " |' Ddd p 106 
 
78 KATUnALlSM ; OR, THE DExNIAL 
 
 consciousness be elevated, the moral nature purified, and the power 
 of spiritual vision increased, and, as he asks, what do we require 
 more in inspiration? He denies that any special Divine com- 
 mission to wi-ite was given to the sacred penman, " that each Look 
 came forth with a specific impress of Deity upon it,"=i'» — or that 
 the providence of God watched over the composition and con- 
 struction of the Bible in any other sense than Providence super- 
 intends every event bearing upon the w^elfare of man.f The in- 
 spired word, with him, is just a transcript of the religious 
 consciousness of the writers, a representation of " the bright im- 
 pressions of apostolic men," — the result of "the Divine light 
 which was granted to the age, and to the mmd of the author — 
 a gift which ho was left to make use of as necessity or propriety 
 might suggest."! He thus cuts up infallibility by the root, that 
 error which, he and Mr. Newman hold, has been introduced into 
 the idea of inspiration. And then he thinks that, without irrever- 
 ence,S he can speak of misstatements made by the Evangelists, 
 and of false reasoning in Paul the most logical of the apostles. 
 
 It is the strangest part of this unsatisfactory theory, that inspi- 
 ration cannot apply to processes of reasoning, that " it can neither 
 give any certitude, nor guard against any eiTors which an accurate 
 thinker could not detect for himself." |1 He confounds logic as an 
 instrument with the understanding that employs it when he speaks 
 of inspired logic as an absurdity. Let us suppose a reasoner so 
 accurate that he errs only once in a hundred times. That one 
 error, however, may have been very important. What impos- 
 sibility is there in the supposition of a supernatural influence 
 carrying up the mind from general to universal accuracy — as 
 eflectually excluding ciTor from the hundredth process as it had 
 been excluded up to the ninety-ninth ? God, assuredly, can sug- 
 gest a train of reasoning to the mind of an individual, and control 
 that mind so as to lead it to a right conclusion, and extend that 
 control over the wiiter so as to enable him to convey to others 
 both the process and the result in terms free from error. This, we 
 maintain, has been done in the case of Paul. In this there is no 
 absurdity. Without this, we have no secmity that Scripture is 
 inspired of God. 
 
 All the inspiration which Mr. Morell allows, is restricted to 
 brightening and elevating the intuitional faculty so as to render it 
 receptive of truth. He leaves the whole after-process, involved in 
 giving a formal expression to the intuitions, to the natural work- 
 ing of the human faculties ; and denounces the idea of Scripture 
 being written under the special direction of the Spirit as a per- 
 nicious and indefensible dogma. This we regard as nothing less 
 than an attempt to strip Scripture of its supernatural character. 
 
 * Moreirs rhilosophy of Religion, p. 160. + Ibid. p. 183. t Ibid. p. IGl. 
 
 i Ibid, p. 173. 'i Ibid. p. 171. 
 
OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT. 79 
 
 Tnspii-ation is denied to the written word contrary to its own 
 claims, and it is attributed exclusively to a certain form of man's 
 own consciousness. The Bible, in this case, is not God's word 
 but man's. The writers may have seen visions and had the truth 
 revealed in their minds, but we have no security that they have 
 been kept from error in recording what they received, or that they 
 have conveyed the truth ])urely to us. The idea that they had no 
 special commission to write and no special guidance in writing, 
 does not harmonize with the solemn announcement with which 
 they often begin their oracles, " Thus saith the Lord ;" or witli 
 the statements, "holy men of God spake as they were moved 
 by the Holy Ghost," and " all Scripture is given by inspira- 
 tion of God." The elevation of the religious consciousness, by 
 special and extraordinary agencies, may account for the divine 
 conceptions of the sacred penmen. But, without a continued 
 supernatural agency, under which the minds of the writers were 
 allowed to develop their characteristic peculiarities, it is difficult 
 to account for the structure of the books, the " halo of Divine 
 glory," in which these conceptions are expressed. The internal 
 evidence shows, that in the w^ork of composition the hand of the 
 Lord was with them. 
 
 Mr. Morell fails to substantiate the old charges adduced to 
 weaken that evidence. He lu-ges-;^ the imperfect morality of the 
 Old Testament, as if the word of God necessarily implied approval 
 of all that it records. He urgesf discrepancies between some of 
 the scriptural statements and scientific truth, as if the Book of 
 Genesis pretended to give a scientific account of the creation, or as 
 if it were in open conflict with the results of geological research. 
 He charges Paul with errors in reasoning, without specifying a 
 single instance ; and Peter with arguing perversely about the cir- 
 cumcision, whereas everybody knows that Peter only acted against 
 his own conviction.]; In this way he backs his assertions that it 
 would not be very reverent to suppose the Spirit of God had any- 
 thing to do with such statements, and that the writers of them 
 were left to the influence of the imperfect religious, moral, and 
 scientific ideas of their times. These are things much more easily 
 said than proven. The only discrepancies on which objections 
 against plenary inspiration can be raised, are but as the small 
 dust in the balance, compared with the weight of proof that the 
 book is, what it claims to be, the word of God. Even that small 
 dust, we are warranted from the past to believe, will become yet 
 smaller and may ultimately vanish away. Mr. Morell's theory ol 
 inspiration may naturally result from his own philosophical prin- 
 ciples, but it explains nothing, is at variance with palpable evi- 
 dence, at open conflict with scriptural claim, makes room for the 
 
 * Morell's riailosophy of Eeligiou, p. IG7. + Ibid. p. .170. i Ibid. p. 17G. 
 
80 NATUIIALISJL ; Oil, THE DEXIAL 
 
 most latitudinarian interi5retations, and, if brouglit to bear upon 
 the progress of the church, would be long in ushering in the 
 brighter day, of which he speaks, when the gospel would come to 
 us, not in word only, but in demonstration of the spirit and in 
 power. 
 
 Our investigation into naturalism has led us from the point 
 •where Divine Providence is ignored in sustaining and garnishing 
 the material universe, to the point where his presence is excluded 
 from the Bible — his holy temple. We might have passed on to 
 notice the denial of Di^^ne influence in regenerating the souls of 
 men. But this wiJl find a place in the next chaj^ter, when speak- 
 ing of the denial of the Divine redemption. We have tracked the 
 rationalistic spirit up to the very shrine of the holy oracle, and 
 found it there lurking under the Christian name and professing 
 adherence to the Christian faith. Between the two points there is 
 doubtless a gulf, but it is not an impassable one. The man who 
 excludes miraculous inspiration from the Bible, may admit super- 
 natural agency in the heavens and the earth, and even in giving 
 birth to Chi-ikianity ; but in that exclusion he occupies a natu- 
 ralist position. On reviewing our track, then, we see that, in 
 physical science, naturalism has given rise to the mechanical theory 
 of the universe ; in moral philosophy, it has led men to attach an 
 exclusive importance to external circumstances as influencing 
 numan conduct ; and in theology, it has banished the supernatm-al 
 from the sphere of Christianity, so as to account for its origin and 
 influence on ordinary principles, or has left but partial room for 
 its operation. With a few summary remarks upon the theory as 
 a whole, we shall close our notice of it. 
 
 1. The idea of an entirely self-sustaining universe is based ujwn 
 a false analogy. The regularity of nature's operations may have 
 given rise in some minds to the opinion. And not a few of its 
 abettors may maintain, that it is a more exalted conception of 
 God to represent the multiphcity of eflects which take place in 
 natiu-e as the result of a single original act of his power, than to 
 conceive of Him as ever interposing in the affairs of the world. 
 Order is the law of heaven. The very regularity which is adduced 
 to favour the mechanical theory, is adduced more justly in proof 
 of the Divine presiding agency. And it is surely more exalting to 
 God to view the universe as directly dependent on his arm, and 
 ever pervaded by his presence, tlian to compliment him out of it 
 by attributing to it a self-sustained action. The falseness of the 
 analogy, however, is obvious. The movements in a piece of 
 mechanism do not, propeily speaking, originate with the meclianist. 
 Pie only employs pre-existing forces, such as gravity, elasticity, 
 cohesion, and repulsion. Now, tliese powers are the very thuigs to 
 be accounted for in the theory which likens the universe to a 
 
OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENTIAL GOVEENMENT. 81 
 
 maehine.* In a piece of liimian mechanism, we can account for 
 these properties irrespective altogether of the workman. They 
 were there before he existed, and they continue after he is gone. 
 But, that the universe, after having been constructed and set in 
 motion by the Ahnighty, has continued to revolve and develop 
 itself ever since, without his providential agency, is a theory that 
 is unsupported by any analogy whatever. And, in the absence of 
 all true analogy, it is more rational to \ie\Y the creation as always 
 directly dependent on the Creator, than to view it as self-sustained. 
 In fact, it is as easy to conceive of a self-originated world as of a, 
 self-subsisting world. The thing is an impossibility. Dr. Harris 
 says,! " the reasoniug which comj^liments God out of the material 
 universe not imfrequently ends in excluding Him from the Throne 
 of his moral government." May it not be said that the one is 
 done for the sake of the other ? 
 
 2. This theory, as it is often advocated, is cliargeahle with anthro- 
 pomorphism. While professing to exalt God, it virtually degrades 
 Him. It thinks of Him as if He were such an one as" ourselves. 
 The piece of human mechanism saves the labour of the artist. He 
 can set it in motion and go his way. And the machine is con- 
 sidered to be more ingenious and complete, the more that it 
 dispenses with the interposition of the constructor. But to reason 
 in a similar manner regarding the Almiglity and liis works, is to 
 ascribe unto Him the limitations and imperfections of the human 
 fiiculties. His presence in one part of his dominions does not 
 imply his absence elsewhere. An infidel philosophy has often, by 
 the anthropomorphism of its reasoning, endeavoured, with a feigned 
 homage, to exclude the Eternal from the management of the uni- 
 verse. This was involved in the astronomical objection against 
 Christianity, which has been so eloquently repelled by Dr.'^Chal- 
 mers in his " Astronomical Discourses." The modern astronomv 
 has wonderfully enlarged our conceptions of the magnitude and 
 extent of the material universe, and shown that this earth occupies 
 but a small place in the vast creation. Pliilosophical infidels 
 urged that our world, being comparatively so insignificant, could 
 not have had centered upon it such special regards of the Almighty 
 as the Christian scheme represents. At the very root of "this 
 objection lay the principle of conceiving of the Most High a« 
 acting after the manner of men. It is just clothing the Divine 
 Being with the impotency of the human. " It is oiu- imperfection 
 that we cannot give our attention to more than one object, at one 
 and the same instant of time ; but surely it would elevate our 
 every idea of the perfections of God, did we know, that while his 
 comprehensive mind could grasp the whole amplitude of nature to 
 the veiy outermost of its boundaries, He had an attentive eye 
 
 * Dug.ild Stewart. + Pre-Adamito Earth, p. 12S. 
 
 G 
 
82 katuPlAlism ; ok, the denial 
 
 fastened on tlie veiy humblest of its objects, and pondered eveiy 
 thought of my heart, and noticed every footstep of my goings, and 
 treasured up in his remembrance every turn and every movement 
 of my history."* And as this would be the most glorious concep- 
 tion of God, it must be the true one, for, as John Foster remarks,! 
 *' to say that v/e can, in the abstract, conceive of a magnitude of 
 intelligence and j^ower which would constitute the Deity, if He 
 possessed it, a more glorious and adorable Being than He actually 
 is, could be nothing less than flagi'ant impiety." The antlu'o- 
 pomorphising view of the Almighty is brought out very palpably 
 in some of om' modern books of science which advocate the natural 
 development hypothesis. The £vuthor of the " Vestiges" speaks of 
 it as " nothing less than a mean view of the Great Author, to sup- 
 pose Him obliged to come in on frequent occasions with new feats 
 or special interferences." And the question is asked, "Is it con- 
 ceivable, as a fitting mode of exercise for creative intelligence, 
 that it should be constantly paying especial attention to the creation 
 of species?"! Here, the Divine Being is assimilated to the human. 
 He is stripped of the attributes of omnipresence and omniscience 
 vrhich enter into the glories of his incomprehensible character. 
 This is a damning evidence against tliis theory of naturalism. It 
 makes God like to corruptible man. Whereas, on the super- 
 natural theory, while his name is excellent in all the earth, liis 
 glory is set above the heavens. 
 
 3. The theory which excludes the Divine agency from the uni- 
 verse, and abandons it to natural laAvs, is opposed to the 2'>ctlpcd>lc 
 evidence of geology. This science has established, beyond a doubt, 
 not only that our globe has repeatedly undergone great changes 
 previous to its becoming the habitation of man, but that during 
 these changes several successive creations of animal and vegetable 
 life have taken place. The organic remains imbedded in strata, 
 that had been formed ages anterior to the existence of the human 
 race, (these strata being separated from each other by considerable 
 periods of duration,) furnish evidence of v/hole groups having been 
 swept away by some violent agencies, and of entirely new races 
 having been called into being to supply their place. Geology tell.^ 
 us that the temperature of the globe in a remote antiquity was 
 such, that our present races of animals and vegetables could 
 not tlien have existed, and that the creatures then existing, could 
 not have lived now. This being the case, the inference is obvious, 
 that new creations of animal and vegetable life must have oc- 
 curred, between whose natures and the changed earth there sub- 
 sisted a nice adaptation. Now it is for the production of these 
 new races that we demand the interj)osition of God. There is no 
 
 * Chalmers's Astronomical Discourses. 
 
 + Foster's Contributions to the Eclectic,—" Review of Chalmers," 
 
 % Vestiges, pp. 165, 169, 5th edition. 
 
OF THE DIVINE mOVlDENTIAL GOVERNilENT. 83 
 
 ] ower in the laws of nature to produce tliem. " The growth of 
 new systems out of old ones," says the gi-eat Newton, " without tlie 
 mediation of Divine Power, is absui'd." Man, compared with the 
 ages that elapsed before his creation, is but a very recent being on 
 the earth. For the production of a creature so distinct in his in- 
 tellectual and moral qualities from the whole animal creation, a 
 new exertion of the creative power of God was necessary. Tiieories 
 of spontaneous generation and of transmutation of the species 
 have not been wanting. But these theories have never risen any 
 higher than vague fancies. The records of geology furnish no 
 indication of such phenomena. And, as Cuvier asks, wliy, if sucli 
 transmutations have occurred, do not the bowels of the e"arth pre- 
 serve the records of such a curious genealogy ? In the domain of 
 fossil geology, we discover abundant remains of distinct species,. 
 but not a single specimen of any species being in a state of trans 
 mutation has been met with. The faith of the most distinguished 
 geologists and anatomists is very unaniinous on this jioint. 
 The first proposition which Cuvier establishes is, that the 
 species now living are not mere varieties of the species which 
 are lost. " For myself," says Agassiz, " I have the conviction 
 that species have been created successively at distinct inter- 
 A'als, and that the changes which they have undergone during 
 a geological epoch are very secondary, relating only to then- 
 fecundity, and to migrations dependent- on epochal influences."^: 
 Lyell gives it as the result of a careful inquiry, " that species have 
 a real existence in nature, and that each was endovv'ed at the time 
 of its creation with the attributes and organs by which it is now 
 distinguished."! "Everything," says Sir Charles Bell, in his 
 " Bridgewater Treatise," " declares the species to have its origin 
 in a distinct creation, not in a gi'adual variation from some original 
 type ; and any other hypothesis than that of a new creation of 
 animals suited to the successive changes in the inorganic matter 
 of the globe — the condition of the water, atmosphere, and tem- 
 perature — brings Avitli it only an accumulation of difficulties." On 
 the strength of all this high testimony, we may say with Dr. 
 Chalmers, that it places our argument for the interposal of God, 
 on firm vantage groinid, to assert, that were all the aiTangements of 
 our existing natural history destroyed, all the known forces of our 
 existing natural philosophy could not replace them. The records 
 of geology are thus shown to be the records of a special Providence. 
 And, as Conybeare justly remarks, the geological evidence strikes 
 at once at the root of every sceptical argument against miracles. 
 If God has specially interposed in the ages preceding the present 
 state of the globe, is there not a strong presumption that He has 
 done so at the most wondrous epoch of om- earth's history —the 
 
 * Dr. Harris's Pre-Adamite Earth, p. 287. 
 + Lyoll's Principles of Geology, vol. ii. p. 65, 1st edition. 
 
 o 2 
 
84 NATUEALISM ; Oil, THE BEXIAL 
 
 introduction of Christianity ; and that at soin° future period, He 
 will again interpose for the accomplishment of his high purposes. 
 Geology convicts naturalism of falsehood, \Yhile it warrants us to 
 credit'^the miracles and revelations of the Bible, if authenticated 
 on the broad ground of evidence. The Almighty had not with- 
 drawn from the world in the remote past, but presided over it as 
 sovereign Lord, and, on befitting occasions, made bare his arm in 
 new exertions of creative energj". And why should it be ques- 
 tioned that He is there still, touching all the springs of life and 
 motion, and upholding all things by the word of his power ? 
 
 4. Christianity and its effects are phenomena for ivhich natiir- 
 alism assigns no adequate cause. The theory of Strauss, that tho 
 church made its founder in the natural progress of events, and 
 out of the Messianic conceptions existing at the birth of Jesus, — 
 that the grand miracles which signalised his history were merely 
 a kind of mythological clothing gradually tlu-own around Him 
 by his followers in order to exalt their hero, is a more idle fancy 
 than any of the hypotheses of spontaneous generation and trans- 
 mutation of the species, which have been formed to account foi 
 the origin of our races. Geology gives not a more decided nega- 
 tive to the one theory than historical facts do to the other. It 
 is a foolhardy attempt to account for a creation without the inter- 
 vention of the Great Creator. Christianity is a new creation, and 
 naturalism ascribes it to a <;ause wliich did not at the time exist, 
 and which, if it had existed, would have been altogether inade- 
 quate to the effect. The conceptions of the Hebrew nation re- 
 specting the mission, character, and kingdom of the Messiah, were 
 far from being realised in Him who claimed to be the Son of the 
 Highest and the Christ of promise. Indeed, the notions of his 
 immediate disciples, up to the time of his leaving the world, were 
 ever coming into conflict with his sayings and doings ; and their 
 attachment to his cause, notwithstanding, can only be accounted 
 for on the belief of an evidence and agency that lay beyond the 
 influence of these conceptions. The character of Christ, it has 
 generally been admitted even by infidels, is altogether unique; 
 and some of them have granted that the invention of such a noble 
 character by the first discii)les would have been a greater miracle 
 than any that is recorded. It is magnifying the effect much above 
 the cause ; it is investing the creation with a glory that did not 
 belong to the creator, to assert, that a character so absolutely com- 
 plete in all the elements of moral grandeur, and standing alone in 
 its majesty on the pages of history, originated in Jewish concep 
 tions thrown around the skeleton of an historic reality. " The 
 author of a new creation," remarks D'Aubigne,- " must not him- 
 self come of the old creation which he is to change. The regene- 
 
 * D'Aubigiie'a Discourses and Essfiya, p. 336. 
 
or THE DIVINE PnOVlDENTlAL GOVERNMENT. 85 
 
 rator of the human race must not himself be a polluted member 
 of the corrupt body which he is going to purify. He who comes 
 to bring a divine life into the world must himself emanate from 
 that life and possess it in its fulness ; for how otherwise can he 
 communicate it ? The first man of the new creation must issue 
 from the hand of God, as did the first man of the old creation." 
 There are two stubborn things which the theory of Strauss cannot 
 solve. The first is, why, if Christ answered to the conceptions of 
 the Jews, was He persecuted by them, and the more in proportion 
 as He manifested Himself? The second is, why, after his death, 
 the death, according to them, of an impostor and blasphemer, was 
 He received by so many thousands of the people who had formerly 
 rejected Him ? To ascribe all this to the mere natural course of 
 things, exclusive of a Divine interposal, is, if possible, more absurd 
 tliian to account for the creation of the universe without the agency 
 of the Great First Cause. Whether we consider the age — an age 
 of unbelief and derision — in which Christianity as a "myth" is 
 said to have arisen, or the men with their strongly-rooted adverse 
 jirejudices, to whom the origin of the myths is assigned, we see 
 the wild unphilosophical character of the Straussian theory. It 
 accounts still less for the success of such a myth as Christianity 
 among the Gentil-es, opposed as it was at all points to their systems 
 of superstition and philosophy. " In truth," as Mr. Henry Rogers 
 remarks, -N- " nothing less than a universal lunacy of the nations 
 will account, under such circumstances, for its reception by them."f 
 And as the origin of Christianity cannot be accounted for, 
 except on the belief of a supernatural interposition, so it is 
 impossible to account for the mighty effects of Christianity, except 
 on the belief of an accompanying supernatural influence. It has 
 ])een soundly argued that the marked contrast between the writings 
 of the apostles and those of the most ancient fathers, can only be 
 
 * Appeiulix to Rogers's Reason and Faitb. 
 
 t " Geriuau theories, thoutrh they have bi-oken clown in quick succession at 
 home, have been imported as if still good, and have been done into English without 
 scruple." To this remark of the author of " The Restoration of Belief," the theory 
 of Strauss is no exception. Germany is getting ashamed of it. Yet this is sub- 
 stantially the theory, though Gfriirer is the great authority referred to that Mr 
 Mackay has re-produced in his " Progress of the Intellect," chap. 8. vol ii He 
 fathers the idea of a superhuman Messiah on ''a visionary sugi^estion" that rose 
 mthe Hebrew mind when suffering under Persian oppression — this suggestion 
 or wish " filled up the blank of political disappointment"— this wish, in due time 
 assumed " the fixity of dogmatical theory" — and this wish threw around "the 
 Messianic champion " miraculous glories and God-like qualities. In other words 
 the church created its founder. Mr. Mackay has no doubt of it. He describes 
 the process as coolly and deliberately as if it were a piece of art, the fashioning 
 of which he had witnessed in the artist's studio. Like some of his Gei-man proto- 
 types, however, he overshoots the mark, when he tells us, in the face of historical 
 evidence to the contrary, that the record of Christ's life, having " a supernatural 
 colouring," was given to the world "when the generation of his contemporaries 
 ■was extinct." He makes Christ to have been an ingenious impostor, the evan- 
 gchsts to have been very clever knaves, and the sceptical age in which Chris- 
 tianity was received to have been an age of great simpletons. All this has been 
 said over and over again long ago. There is here no " Progress of the Intellect." 
 
B5 KATURALISM ; OR. THE DENIAL 
 
 explained on tlie suppositioi] that the sacred penmen wrote under 
 the inspiration of the Spirit of God.- And the radical and 
 beneficent change which the progress of Christianity lias wrought 
 on individuals and connnunities, argues that it has coine_ iu 
 demonstration of tlie Sphit and in power. Human depravity is a 
 stubborn fact which no theory of naturalism can get rid of. 
 ludividuals and nations have been placed in the most favourable 
 external circumstances, and yet their depravity has grown with 
 their gi-owth, and strengthened with theii' strength. Tlie power of 
 mere natural influences has failed to reach the depths of that 
 depravity, and elevate man to a high and holy character. The 
 Christian revelation, accompanied by that Divine energy v.dnch 
 originated it, has been brought to bear on human nature, and 
 tliat nature, in thousands of instances, it has thoroughly renewed, 
 and maintained in its moral dig-nity in a world where so many 
 natural influences tend to debase it. This fact, taken along with 
 another, viz. that the best men in every age have been firm 
 believers in the doctrine of Divine influence, goes to prove that 
 Christianity and its beuignant deeds are effects which point to the 
 agency of the Great Spirit that at first moved upon the face of the 
 waters and garnished the world. 
 
 5. It need scarcely be remarked, that natm-alism, whethe?* 
 viewed as excluding JDivine Providence from the government ol 
 the spheres, or from interposing in the concerns of men, is 
 diametrically op}iosed to the religion of the Bible. The constant; 
 concurrence of the Divine will with the operation of secondary 
 causes, is alike the doctrine of sound reason and scripturiil truth. 
 " jl'.Iy Father worketh hitherto, and I work," said the Great Teacher, 
 — an expression which seems to refer to the conjunct agency of 
 tiie Father and Son in producing the Christian miracles, and the 
 works of Providence in general. It is said of Him who is God 
 manifest in the flesh, that "by him all things consist, and that he 
 upholdeth all things by the word of his power." Passages like 
 these, with which the feook of God is thickly strewed, sliow that 
 any attempt to remove God to a distance from the creation, or to 
 explode the idea of Providence, wars Avith the record of revealed 
 truth. The Scriptures, as we have seen, assert their own in- 
 spiration. And tlicir testimony is clear in regard to the necessity 
 of Divine influence to regenerate men. This is a great mystery, 
 
 * '^ The interval between tlie Scrintures and the very best of tbc Fathers is so 
 immense that not a few bave testified tbat it forms to them the most convincing 
 i^rooFof the inspired origin of tbe former; it being, iu their judgment, absurd to 
 suppose that any man— much less a nnmberof men— could have composed such a 
 voliime as the IJibbi.in an age in wliich iheirimmediate successors, many of them 
 possessing undoubted genius and erudition, and having the advantage of such a 
 model could fall into puerilities so gross, and errors so monstrous. I or ourselvog 
 we could sooner believe that Jacob Buhmen could have composed the Novum 
 Organ um,' or 'Ihomas Sternhold the ' raradise Lost:" — Eogers's Essmjs from 
 the Edinhurnh Eevieiv, vol ii. pp. 12'^ 124, 
 
OF TUE DIVINE PIlOVlDENTIAL COVIlRNMENT. 87 
 
 who then can believe it ? Its mysleriousness is admitted in the 
 very 25assage that asserts its necessity.* Strip Christianity of its 
 mysteries, and you stiip it of its glory. "A religion without 
 its mysteries," savs Robert Hall, " is like a temple vrithout its 
 God." 
 
 Bat you cannot get rid of the mysterious. Naturalism banishes 
 the Creator to a distance from the creation, resolves everything 
 into the unaided operation of established laws, and thinks that the 
 mysteiy is greatly lessened. But, in truth, it is gi-eatly increased 
 The stupendous systems of worlds on worlds moving in haimony 
 tln-oughouL the fields of space, without the ever-present agency of 
 Him vvho made them, is a mystery more baffling and less sublime 
 than the same system viewed as directly dependent on the 
 presidency and power of God. It is confessedly mysterious how 
 the Divine Spirit works on the human mind, so as in the case of 
 inspu-ation to allow free intellectual action, and in the case of 
 regeneration not to infringe on moral liberty. But so it is. 
 Scripture attests it, and the subjects of Divine influence in either 
 case have been conscious of it Naturalism guards the human 
 mind and Imman concerns from such an interposal, and thinks 
 that it has cleared the nioral world of a mystery. But it is not so. 
 The Bible, in its grand disclosures and rolje of solitary majesty, is 
 much more inexplicable without inspiration than with it. And 
 how moral evil — that most insoluble of all mysteries — should be 
 coimteracted, and men rescued from its pov/er, by the mere play 
 of natural influences, is assuredly more mysterious and unac- 
 countable than that it should be accomplished by the Spirit of 
 God. 
 
 In fine, naturalism, viewed in all its bearings, is most unnatural 
 It has a universe independent of Him who created it. It has a 
 Christ, a Gospel, and a Church, for the existence of which no 
 higher cause is assigned than Jewish conceptions and traditions. 
 It has a world in wdiich moral evil abounds, and depraved human 
 heai'ts exist, for overcoming and regenerating which, it ignores all 
 but natural influences. In attempting to get rid of mysteries the 
 most sublime and ennobling, it falls into mysteries far more per- 
 plexing but less elevating. Were the two systems to be tested by 
 the attribute of mysteriousness, we would pi-efer snpernaturalism 
 with its mysteries to rationalism with its mysteries. 
 
 * JoLa iii, 7, 8. 
 
88 SPIRITUALISM ; OR, THE DENIAL 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE DENIAL OF THE BIBLE REDEMPTION-, OR SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 Change in the enemy's tactics — Rationalism confessedly beaten on the field of 
 Biblical criticism — Coleridge's remark — The doctrines of redemption granted 
 by rationalistic theologians and philosophers, to be in the sacrud text — The 
 warfare shifted from the ground of critical interpretation to that of speculative 
 philosophy — Change that has come over Unitarianism : its pi-etensions philo- 
 sophical rather than exegetical — The" School of Progress" — Parker's "Dis- 
 course on Religion" — Newmans "Phases of Faith"— Mackay's "Progress of 
 the Intellect" — Tendency of :Mr. Morell's speculations — Examination of the 
 moral argument against the evangelical doctrines — The argument stated — 
 Refutation of it: unsupported by analogy — View given by it of the Divine 
 character is one-sided and partial — Scripture doctrine of depravity accords 
 with actual condition of man — Pardon on the ground of an atonement con 
 sistent with the paternity of God — Reasonableness of the Scripture doctrine of 
 spiritual regeneration— Sustained by an appeal to three undeniable facts — 
 Charge of gloominess against the doctrines of redemption shown to be un- 
 founded — Quotations from Jonathan Edwards and Cowper. 
 
 More than half a centmy ago, the battle raged keeuly between 
 the defendants and assailants of the New Testament doctrines on 
 the field of Biblical criticism. Neology and rationalism in Ger- 
 tnauy brought a large though unhallowed amount of scholarship 
 to the attempt to exjoel from the sacred yolume those doctrines 
 which have been generally regarded as its distinguishing truths. 
 And the same warfare was prosecuted with much \igt)ur in our 
 owD country. Tlie cool daring of the French atheistical philoso- 
 phy infected men's minds ; and individuals who professed to in- 
 terpret the Divine Book, set about demolishing one text after 
 another that favomed the obnoxious articles of atonement and 
 spiritual regeneration, as men set about destroying the underwood 
 of a forest in order to build them houses on the clear gi-ound. 
 Christendom for a while looked on appalled. But the work of 
 destruction was soon seen not to be the work of interpretation. 
 And, after the alarm and heat of the first onset were past, the at- 
 tempt to expunge the doctrines of the incarnation, atonement, 
 and regenerating influences of the Spirit, from the sacred record, 
 was pronounced a more complete faikne than the attempt in France 
 wholly to explode the idea of God from the heart of society. On 
 the ground of criticism, then, the dispute, as is generally admitted,, 
 has been decided in favour of the great doctrines of redem2')tion. 
 It is only such a man as Mr. Foxton, late of Oxford, that ven- 
 tures now to say that "in the teaching of Christ Himself, there is 
 not tlic slightest allusion to tlie modern evangelical notion of an 
 atonement."^:- It is only such a kindred spirit as Mr. Newman, 
 formerly fellow of Balliol, wliose faith, having passed through so 
 many phases, has at last got into the ecUpse, that " can testify 
 
 * Foxloa's I'upular Chvisti;uuty, p. C7. 
 
OF THE BIBLE REDEMPTION 89 
 
 that the atonement may be dropt out of Pauline religion Avithout 
 affecting its quality."-;^ Such a style of writing as this is only to 
 be rivalled by asserting that Hamlet would still be Hamlet thoagh 
 the part of Hamlet were omitted. Nothing but a system of mon- 
 strously forced interpretation — so forced that, if applied to ex- 
 tract a meaning from any human composition, it would raise the 
 shout of dishonesty — could expel these doctrines from Holy Writ, 
 strip the text of all that is peculiar to the Gospel, reduce its the- 
 ology to a mere theism, and the teaching of Jesus to a morality 
 somewhat elevated above the best of the heathen. The mode of 
 attack, accordingly, has been changed, the ground of warfare has 
 been shifted. But there is the sacred text speaking as loudly and 
 clearly for the atonement and the doctrines inseparably connected 
 with it, as the stars in their courses and the earth with its teem- 
 ing productions, speak for the existence and providential agency 
 of God. Coleridge spoke strongly, but not more strongly than 
 tnaly, when he said that " Socinians would lose all character for 
 honesty, if they were to explain their neighbour's will with the 
 same latitude of interpretation, which they do the Scriptures." 
 " I told them," — at a time when he was far ahead of them, as he 
 himself informs us — " I told them plainly and openly, that it was 
 clear enough John and Paul were not unitarians."f 
 
 Such has become the opinion of many of the rationalistic theo- 
 logians, and philosophers of Germany. Christianity with them 
 may be either true or false, but they are constrained to admit that 
 what ai-e usually regarded as its peculiar doctrines, iii-e contained 
 in the sacred volume. Schelling and Hegel | assume the exist- 
 ence of the doctrines of the Trinity, incarnation, atonement, the 
 lapsed condition of man, and the regeneration of the soul by the 
 Holy Spirit; and attempt, in the tnie rationalistic mode, to de- 
 duce the whole from philosophical principles. Their Christology 
 in so fai- as doctrinal articles are concerned, differs but little from 
 the evangelical creed. The Trinity and incarnation may be ex- 
 plained according to a theory of development which denudes them 
 of their surpassing glory, bivt that they are in the Bible is not 
 denied. The idea of the doctrine of the fall and of redemption 
 by Christ, as enunciated in their philosophy, agrees in the main 
 with evangelical principles, however contrary to these may be the 
 attempt to deduce them on principles of pure science. The doc- 
 trine of the fall is explained as being the disuniting of the human 
 
 * Newman's Phases of Faith, p. 103, ^ . . ,., 
 
 + Mr. Theodore Parker thus speaks of the "Old School" of unitarians, which 
 he has outgrown, though in a very different way from Coleridge : "It the Athaii- 
 asian Creed, the thirty-nine articles of the English church, and the pope a bull 
 ' Unigenitus,' could be found in a Greek manuscript, and be proved to be the work 
 of an 'inspired' apostle, no doubt unitarianism would in good faith explain all 
 three, and deny that they taught the doctrine of the Trinity or the fall of man." 
 — Discourse on lirUgion, p 3."j7. 
 
 i Morell's History of Philosophy, vol. ii. pp. 152, 100. 
 
90 SPIRITUALISM ; Orx, the DEN1A.I. 
 
 ■\rill from the Divine vrill. AvA redemption is regaraed as the 
 reunion of man's will to God. The rationalism of the system is 
 broad and palpable. But it is Fcmething in advance of former 
 speculations, that the Christian doctrines are admitted to be in 
 the text of the Bible. Siicli intrepid thinkers, the very spirit of 
 whose philosophy is destructive of the influence of the Gospel, 
 virtually declare that tlie attempt to extrude the evangelical doc- 
 trines from the sacred record is vain, and that, be tbey true or 
 false, they must be recognised as occupying a prominent place in 
 that book which claims to be from lieaven. 
 
 Strauss, who is a true Hegelian, and who, as we have seen, has 
 exploded an historical gospel for the sake of a philosophical creed, 
 has adopted and more fully developed the same view of the leading 
 Christian doctrines. He denounces as strongly the old rationalistic 
 method of interpretation as he does the idea of a supernatural 
 intervention. He denies the historical truth of the New Testament, 
 but he admits the gospels to be miraculous in their textm-e, and 
 that the orthodox tenets are contained in them. His principle is, 
 not that there are no miracles in the sacred record, but that the 
 miracles there related cannot be literally true, for miracles are an 
 impossibility. His principle is, not that the dogmas of the Trinity, 
 incarnation, atonement, the fall of man, and his regerieration by 
 the Spirit, have no place in the Scripture text, but that they are a 
 series' of myths or philosophical iigments, which can be explained 
 on the principles of Hegelianism. Thus, in Germany, the attempt 
 to interpr*?t the New Testament so as to expunge from it the 
 peculiar doctrines of the Gospel, and reduce it to little more than 
 a mere theism, — the attempt to make John and Paul Socinians, 
 — has been for the most part abandoned. The hostility to these 
 doctrines, as princi])les of evangelism, may not a whit be abated, 
 but it is granted that they are in the sacred canon. And the 
 wai-fare against them is, to a consideraJjle degree, shifted from the 
 ground of critical interpretation to that of speculative philosophy. 
 
 It has been said that Unitarianism gravitates towards ration- 
 alism. And, accordingly, the change that has come over German 
 rationahsm, has, in some meastu-e, influenced English and 
 American- unitarianism. It is assuming something like the 
 shape of a religious philosophy. We seldom meet it in the field 
 of critical exegesis, and, generally, wherever we do meet it, the 
 weapons of the new philosophy are found in its hands. It was 
 from the sensational philosophy that the unitarianism of the last 
 
 * " It is probable," says Dr. Baird, " that unitarianism in tlie United States will 
 disappear in process of time vei-y much as it avose—gradualbj. The more serious 
 wili return, if proper measures be piu-sued, to tlie evangelical churches — many 
 have done 'so within the last twenty years. Tliose who have embraced the 
 transcendental and pantheistic views will go further astray, until they end in 
 downright infidelity and deism. Indeed, that is their present position, so far as 
 concerns their opinions of the inspiration of the Scriptures and the Divine 
 nature." — TAc Religious Condition of Christendom, p. 005, 1852. 
 
01' THE BIBLE KEDEMPTION. " 91 
 
 century took its character. In the time of Priestley and sub- 
 sequently, it was deeply stamped with liis own fatalism and ma- 
 terialism. And everybody knows how D'Alembert and Voltaire ex- 
 idted in its progress, and hailed it as an ally in the war in which they 
 themselves were engaged. A writer in the Encyclopedie rem.arks: 
 " The Unitarians have always been regarded as Cliristian divines, 
 who had only broken and torn off a few branches of the tree, but 
 still held to the trunk ; whereas they ought to have been looked 
 upon as a sect of philosophers, who, that they miglit not give too 
 rude a shock to the religion and opinions, true or false, which 
 were then received, did not choose openly to avow pure deism, 
 and reject formally and unequivocally every sort of revelation ; 
 but who were continually doing, with respect to the Old and New 
 Testaments, what Epicurus did with respect to the gods; admitting 
 them verbally but destroying them really. In fact, the Unitarians 
 received only so much of the Scriptures as they found conformable 
 to the natural dictates of reason, and what might serve the purpose 
 of propping up and confirming the systems which they had em- 
 braced. . . . From Socinianism to deism there is but a very 
 slight shade, and a single step to take : and the Socinian takes 
 it."=.- And not only the French encyclopredists, but the German 
 Tationalists looked favourably on the progress of Socianism both 
 i"n our own country and on the other side of the Atlantic, as help- 
 ing them in their attempt to extrude from the Gospels the mira- 
 culous and supernatural element. But the reign of the sensa- 
 tional philosophy having passed, and the idealistic philosophy 
 having gained the ascendant, unitarianism, at least, among many 
 of its adherents, has, without losing any of its virulence toward 
 evangelical truth, undergone a somewhat, corresponding change 
 in its character. It has, in a great measure, laid aside the old 
 rationalistic method of attempting by forced interpretations to 
 thrust out from the Bible text the doctrines of redemption. Its 
 pretensions are philosophical rather than exegetical. It exhibits 
 Christianity as a system of spiritual philosophy founded in the 
 nature of things, rather than a body of truth derived from the 
 New Testament fairly and literally interpreted. It does not so 
 much deny that the" evangelical doctrines are there, as assume 
 that if they were they could not be literally true. Accordingly, 
 the more modern Unitarianism pays less deference to the Bible, 
 viewed as a revelation from heaven, than even did the old. It 
 heeds far less what saith the Sci-ipture, than what says human 
 reason, or this and that oracle of the speculative schools. The 
 chiefs of this system of religious philosophy consequently rid 
 them.selves of many of the embarrassments which their predeces- 
 sors had to encounter. Holding an increasingly lax theory of 
 
 * Dr. Pmiili'g Scnpfnro TesUrr.ony, vol. i. pp. 135, 133, 
 
02 SPIRITUALISM , OR, THE DENIAL 
 
 inspiration, or tossing aside the idea of inspiration altogether, 
 the doctrines of the Trinity, incarnation, atonement, and Spirit's 
 ini3uences, become not so much a question of scriptural truth 
 as of philosophical possibility. The stubborn texts have been 
 abandoned, and the weapons of transcendentalism have been re- 
 sorted to. Reason is to be the umpire in every dispute. There 
 are laT<^s of the mind, say the disciples of this school, which ai-e 
 exact and uniform. These are libsolute tests to man, and by 
 means of them the pretensions of eveiy doctrine must be decided. 
 "What is of use to man lies in the plane of his own consciousness, 
 neither above it nor below it."* This is the motto of the class 
 of writers referred to. Strauss takes up the position, " miracles 
 are impossible;" and, being pinned there as lirmly as a man in 
 the stocks, proceeds to examine the miraculous Gospel history. 
 In like manner, the more liberal Unitai'ians fix themselves on the 
 assumption that the Trinity and atonement cannot rest on evidence ; 
 and then, either deny that they are to be found in the Bible, or 
 finding them there, discard them as false because not according 
 with their own sense of fitness. 
 
 Socinianism, then, properly so called, is not the goal in which 
 such speculations terminate. Emerson, Parker, Blanco White, 
 F. W. Newman, and others, have touched at this point, but they 
 have passed beyond it. There is no great gulf, indeed, fixed be- 
 tween them and their former associates. It is only the difterence 
 between men who seeing clearly whither the road leads have shot 
 along it, and men halting dubiously at an intermediate post yet 
 looking onward to the advanced station. The " school of progress," 
 conscious of a common linking principle between itself and unita- 
 rianism in all its shades, is calling upon it to come on. " It must 
 do this, or cease to represent the progress of man in theology. Then 
 some other will take its oflice ; stand God-parent to the fair cliild 
 it has brought into the world, but dares not own."f Mr. Parker, 
 in America, has talven the ofiice ; and Mr. F. W. Newman aspires 
 to it in England. Our amazement is that such persons should 
 still profess a vague reverence for Christianity, clotlie themselves 
 so frequently in the language of its ca.st-ofi* Bible, and claim the 
 privilege of being accounted Christians. "A certain man," we 
 read, " went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and foil among 
 thieves, wliich stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and 
 departed, leaving him half dead." Had such depredators turned 
 again upon their victim and professed friendship, it would have been 
 somewhat parallel to the conduct of many in our day, who, while 
 stabbing Christianity in the heart, speak of it as something divine, 
 
 IVlr. I'arker, as a member of the Unitarian body, grew too fast 
 for the body itself, and has been detached from it. His M^ritings 
 
 * Parker's Discourse on Eeligion, p. 33. + Ibid. p. 3-37. 
 
OF THE BIBLE KEDEMPTION. 93 
 
 are highly appreciated by the men of the new school, and they 
 seem not unwilling to acknowledge him as a leader. Ho is a stre- 
 nuous advocate of what he calls " absolute religion,' or those sim- 
 plest elements of moral and religious truth which are supposed to 
 underlie all theologies, Pagan, Jewish, and Christian. His talk- 
 on this point is not unlike the rhapsodies of Emerson. " There is 
 but one religion," he tells us, " as one ocean."* And again, "there 
 can be but one kind of religion, as there can be but one kind of 
 time and space." Of course, the different names given to it indi- 
 cate " our partial conceptions," or distinctions belonging '' to the 
 thinker's mind, not to rehgion itself "f Just as in looking over 
 the world, we see only one race of men, taking the name of Biitons 
 or Esquimaux, &c., according to artificial or local distinctions; or 
 just as it is one and the same element of water though parts of it 
 be named the Pacific, the Atlantic, or the German Ocean. Two 
 things follow from this view which occupy a prominent place in 
 Mr. Parker's writings. The one is, that " there no difference but 
 of words between revealed religion and natural religion. "| All re- 
 ligions being more or less true, and the essence of Christianity be- 
 ing made independent of all circumstances, " all those extraneous 
 matters relating to the person, character, and authority of him 
 who first taught it."§ The other is, that each man possesses in 
 his own mind the power of discerning the absolute truth, so that 
 everything supposed to be included in religion is to be tested by 
 this intuitive susceptibility or power. " Christianity is dependent 
 on no outside authority. . . . We verify its eternal truth in our 
 soul."j| He, in common with some of our own men of progress, 
 resolves, after the example of Schleiermacher, the religious element 
 in man into a sense of dependence. This religious sentiment or 
 sense of dependence, supposed to exist at the root of all religions, 
 is made everything ; while the character, nature, and essence of 
 the object on whicli it depends, are made of little or no importance. 
 The objects of worship are " accidental circiunstances peculiar to 
 the age, nation, sect, or individual." This religious sentiment i.s 
 the " eternal element," all else is "mutable and fleeting." The 
 problem of our times which he deems himself commissioned to 
 solve, is: " To separate religion from whatever is finite, — church, 
 book, person, — and let it rest on its absolute tmth."l[ Mr. Parker is 
 a sort of Luther in his own way : " Protestantism delivers us from 
 the tyranny of the church, and carries us back to the Bible."** 
 Philosophical spiritualism is to eftect the next Reformation. " Our 
 theology," he says,-j-f " has two great idols — the Bible and Christ." 
 And Mr. Parker is the iconoclast who Avould break them in pieces. 
 It is, after all, however, but the exchange of one infallibility for 
 
 * Parker's Discourse on Religion, p. 6. + Ibid. pp. 33 34. 
 
 X Ibid. p. 33. I Ibid. p. 183. i| Il)id. p. ?09. IT Ibid. p. 37 
 
 ** Ibid. p. 364. ft Ibid. p. 3C9. 
 
Gi spiritualism; on, the denial 
 
 another — an infallible Bible for an infallible Self — the outward 
 for the inward oracle. There is an idol still. 
 
 We meet with strang-e reasoning and a coimfounding of things, 
 in " A Discourse of Matters pertaining to Religion." Thus, in 
 order to cut away the external evidences, he argues, that if it could 
 be sliown that Christianity rested on miracles, it would prove 
 nothing in its favour, because other religions appeal to the same 
 authority : which is sometliing like saying that because there is 
 a great deal of counterfeit coin in the world there can be no genuine, 
 or because there are multitudes of knaves there can be no true 
 men. It is overlooked that Christ has " done the works that 
 none other man did," that his miracles, in their simplicity and 
 sublimity, in their power and benevolence, stand apart from and 
 in contrast to all the pretended miracles alleged in support of false 
 religions. 
 
 The character of Jesus is a link in the chain of proof, and, in 
 order to rend it asunder, it is sophistically argued,=;= that as the 
 truth of a demonstration in Euclid is independent of Euclid's 
 character, so what is true in Christianity is independent of the 
 character of Christ. "If it depends on Jesus, it is not eternally 
 true ... if not eternally true, it is no truth at all. . . . Personal 
 authority adds nothing to a mathematical demonstration." Now, 
 in the first place, we protest against the infidel assumption that 
 Christianity rests exclusively on this or that thing which forms 
 only a part of the whole ground of evidence.f And, then, 
 secondly, we can conceive nothing more unphilosophical than this 
 attempt to place mathematical and moral truth, in point of evidence, 
 on the same plane. Mathematical truth has no influence on moral 
 character; and the bad or good life of a mathematical teacher does 
 not affect the truth of his demonstrations. But the chcaracter of 
 one who claims to be a teacher sent from God, enters into that 
 amount of evidence by which his message is substantiated. Com- 
 mon sense never thinks of a connection between a man's life and 
 the truth of his theorem, but it does think of such a connection 
 
 * Parlccr's Discourse, pp. 181, 19S. 
 
 + Out- opponents, with great unfairness, charge us Avith resorting to a sophism 
 when v.e hold that the external aiui internal evidences, the miracles and the 
 doctiin^s corrohorate each other. This is well met by trying it in a simple case. 
 "You have to do with one who offers to your eye his credentials — his diploma 
 duly signed and sealed, and which declare him to be a Personage of the highest 
 rank. All seems genuine in these evidences. At the same time the style and 
 tone, the air and behaviour, of this Personage, and all that he says, and what he 
 informs you of, and the instructions he gives you, are in every respect consistent 
 with his pretensions, as set forth in the Instrument he brings with him. It is not, 
 then, that you alternately believe his credentials to be genuine, because his de- 
 portment and his language arc becoming to his alleged rank ; and then that you 
 yield to the imp?essioa which has been made upon your feelings by his deportment, 
 because you have admitted the credentials to be true. Your belief is the p»duct 
 of a simultaneous accordance of the two species of proof: it is a combined force 
 that carries comuction, not a succession of proofs in Wne.'— The Resioration of 
 Bdief,v. 103.. 
 
or TK'E BIBLE REDEMPTION. \jj 
 
 between moral tnitli and the character of him who reveals it. The 
 Jews felt the force of this, and, in order to resist his doctrine, they 
 endeavom-ed to fasten upon the Great Teacher tiie charges of being 
 a blasphemer and in league with Beelzebub. Besides, religious 
 doctrines maybe trae without being eternal — such is the doctrine 
 of the incarnation. And a doctrine may be eternal and yet 
 historical — such is the doctrine of the Trinity. Mr. Parker should 
 know that eternally true and eternally known are quite different 
 things. Tt is a similar fallacy, and adduced for the sam.e end — 
 ridding the world of a fixed doctrinal staudaixl — v/hicli is involved 
 in the assertion that " the phenomena of religion — like those of 
 science and art — must vary from land to land, and age to age, 
 v/itli the Tarying civilisation of mankind."* The progress of 
 physical truth no more indicates a similar progi'ess in religious 
 ti'uth, than a man's bodily growth indicates the enlargement 
 of his soul. And to conclude that, as we have outgrovv-n the 
 geology of a past age, we ought to outgi'ow its religious belief, is 
 as good as saying that a people who have railways and huge 
 reflecting telescopes, must be sounder in the faith than those who 
 ride upon asses and nexev have resolved the nebulge in Orion's 
 belt. " It may be shown," remarks an able reviewer,! " that while 
 what is merely historical in physics may be of small value ; the 
 historical in morals and in religious faith may embrace all the 
 truth of that nature the world will ever need, and greatly more 
 than the world would ever have discovered had it been left to 
 itself." 
 
 But the great fallacy in this theory of spiritualism — that which 
 lies at the very core of the system — consists in making the re- 
 ligious principle in man find its proper object, in the same way 
 that the senses — the eye or the ear — find theii-s. Two things 
 are here confounded : the capacity for receiving religious truth 
 and the capacity of unaided reason to discover it. " This theory," 
 says Mr. Parker.j " teaches that there is anatm-al supply for spiri- 
 tual as well as for corporeal wants; that there is a connection 
 between God and the soul, as between light and the eye, sound 
 and the ear, food and the palate, truth and the inteUect, beauty 
 and the imagination." He thus cuts off the mu-aculous provision. 
 And then, " as we have bodily senses to lay hold on matter, and 
 supply bodily wants, through which we obtain, naturally, all 
 needed material things ; so we have spiritual faculties to lay hold 
 on God and supply spiritual M-ants ; through them we obtain nR 
 needed spiritual things." He thus excludes the supernatural in- 
 fluence which opens the heai-t to receive the miraculous supply. 
 Here is a point of fact. — Do men obtain peace of conscience and 
 rest for the soul, as naturally as their eyes obtain light or their 
 
 * Parker's Discourse, p. 37. + British Quai-terly, No. XXI. 
 
 * Parkers Discourse, p. 160. 
 
06 SPIRITUALISM ; OR, THE DENIAL 
 
 palate obtains food? Do the spiritual faculties and the spiritual 
 objects come together in tlie merely natural way here represented ? 
 We trow not. Universal history and individual history dis- 
 claim the analogy. "Each animal, in its natural state, attains 
 its legitimate end, reaches perfection after its kind."=:= Yes. But 
 man is the anomaly here. He fails of reaching the perfection 
 that is proper to liim. It is easy to descant, as our author does, 
 on the relation of supply to demand in the animal kingdom, and 
 on tlie sufficiency of instinct in the ox and the sparrow. But to 
 conclude that because the natural circumstances attending them 
 are perfect, it must be so in the case of man ; that because they 
 obtain rest and satisfaction in a natural and not miraculous sup- 
 ply, by a natural and not su])ernatural guide, therefore the human 
 race needs no miraculous provision and no other than natural 
 gniidance ; is as consistent with fact as to infer that since the fowls 
 of the air fly, man must have wings. It is true that we find a race of 
 men, though " we never find a race of animals, destitute of what is 
 most needed for them, wandering up and down seeking rest and find- 
 ing none."f That capacity implies the object, and that there are 
 supplies to meet the spiritual wants of man are truths. But the 
 fact, however mysterious, in reference to man, is, that the capacity 
 and the object do not, as in the irrational animals, come naturally 
 together. ' There is no discrepancy between the proper destiny 
 and the actual condition of the sparrow, but there is much between 
 the proper destiny and the actual condition of man. A sense of 
 guilt is a real and powerful element in man's religious conscious- 
 ness which this theory of spiritualism ignores, and for which, con- 
 sequently, it makes no provision. That sense of guilt is a fact in 
 the natural history of man, which remains in spite of all such 
 teaching, and to talk, amid this felt discordance between actual 
 condition and proper destiny, of throwing man npon himself or 
 npon the religious sentiment at the bottom of his heart, is some- 
 thing like bidding a man brood over his disease when he feels tlie 
 need of going out after a remedy. Mr. Parker tells us that " for 
 the religious consciousness of man, a knowledge of two great 
 tniths is indispensable ; namely, a knowledge of the existence of 
 the Infinite God, and of the duty we owe to Him."]: These, of 
 coarse, may be known, independently of all revelation and super- 
 natural influence, by intuition and reflection. Now supposing 
 that man needed no more than this knowledge, it is asked, does 
 his own unaided intuition furnish it, or is he found in tliis state 
 of nature discharging his duty? Let the world's history, actual 
 observation, and personal experience answer. Our question t^- 
 answered wlien we think of "many a swarthy Indian, who bowed 
 down to wood and stone — many a grim-faced Calmuck, who wor- 
 shipped the great God of Storms — many a Grecian peasant, who 
 
 * rarker'a Discoiuse, p. 136. + Ibi.l. * Ibid. p. 158. 
 
OF THE BIBLE BEDEIMI TIOK. 07 
 
 (lid hooy^e to Phoebiis-Apolio when the sun rose or went dow]i 
 — many a savage, his hands smeared all over with human sacrifice," 
 although Mr. Parker assures us, in his catholicity, that they shall 
 sit down witli Moses and Jesus in the kingdom of God."::= But 
 much more than this knowledge is wanting. Men who have it 
 are wandering up and dov/n seeking rest and finding none ; they 
 know that the infinite God exists, hut they want to know how He 
 can pardon guilt and justify the ungodly; they know theii' duty, 
 but there is the want of inclination or moral power to act up to it. 
 And, — amid all this fine talk about the light of nature, world-wide 
 inspiration, and the power of intuitive sentiment, — the actual 
 condition of the race, without the external teaching of Christianity, 
 rises up in dark contrast, and forces from us the exclamation, 
 Has this intuitive power given to the soul its proper object, as 
 instinct has given to the beast and bird theirs "? 
 
 It will be seen, then, what is the attitude taken by this system 
 of spiritualism towards the Christian revelation. " It bows to no 
 idols, neither the church, nor the Bible, nor yet Jesus, but God 
 
 only Its redeemer is within — its salvation williin; its 
 
 heaven and its oracle of God."f The intuitive susceptibility or 
 power of the mind is placed on the judgment seat, and made the 
 sovereign determinator of what is truth oi- the "absolute religion." 
 The Bible, irrespective altogether of its evidences, is stripped of 
 its authority as the law and the testimony, and is received as a 
 help only in the degree that its utterances accord with the senti- 
 ment of the mind. The claims of Christianity are settled, not on 
 the ground of its grand divine peculiarities, but in proportion a& 
 its statements are found to contain the simple unchanging prin- 
 ciples of the religion called absolute. It " sponges out nine-tenths 
 of the whole; or, after reducing the mass of it to a caput mortuum 
 of lies, fiction, and superstitions, retains only a few drops of fact 
 and doctrine, — so few as certainly not to pay for the expenses of 
 the critical distillation. "| Christianity, or what is generally under • 
 stood to be its distinguishing principles, is, of course, well black 
 ened and grossly misrepresented, in order to insiu'e its condemna- 
 tion. Spiritualism, we are told, "calls God father, not king;" 
 whereas popular Christianity "makes God dark and awful; a 
 iudge, not a protector; a king, not a father : jealous, selfish, vin- 
 dictive. He is the Draco of the universe; the author of sin, but 
 its unforgiving avenger."§ This we can characterise only as a 
 great untruth, and we cannot help thinking, that Mr. Parker 
 knew it. The design is to array man's moral nature against the 
 external divine revelation, and to represent the doctrines of atone- 
 ment as conflicting witli the imperishable religious sentiments 
 
 * Parker's Discourse, p. 83. + Ibirl. p. 30]. 
 
 t Picgers's Essays from the Edinburgh Review, vol. ii. p. 330. 
 
 i Parkers Discourse, pp. 342, 3o'J 
 
98 spiritualism; or, the denial 
 
 comiiion to the race. But, as we shall afterwards show,eepiritiial- 
 isra is as much at variance with analogy in calling God father and 
 refusing to call Him also king, as it is dishonest in making evan- 
 gelism call Him king only and not father also. 
 
 Mr. Parker, like many others, would shift the contest from the 
 field of the external evidences, (hy affecting to despise them as, 
 even if true, of no value,) to the matter of Christianity itself; the 
 intuitive susceptihility or power of the mind heing supreme arbiter. 
 "\Ye, without abating a jot of our regard for these evidences — 
 being more and more disposed to tell these towers and mark these 
 bulwarks — are willing to abide by a fair trial of the contents of 
 the revelation itself. It is part of the disingenuousness of infi- 
 delity, to represent us as fixed on the one ground, and reluctant to 
 do battle on the other. The nature of the doctrine must be taken 
 into account, as well as the external evidence v/hich attests it. 
 But we demur to making any inward power of depraved man, be 
 it called intuition or religious sentiment, a sufficient guide or test 
 in sucli a question as this. It is enough that our moral natm'e, 
 in its clear imperishable utterances, be not overborne or brought 
 into collision. But it is not entitled to demand that it should be 
 made the revaaler of truth, or that an external revelation should 
 disclose nothing but what lies within the range of our natural 
 faculties, for that were to deny the possibility of a revelation 
 properly so called. This, however, is the high claim of modern 
 spiritualism. Common sense refuses to yield to any such intole- 
 rable dogmatism. It is inconsistent with om- dependent condition 
 in this world, and vdth the felt wants of the human spirit. We 
 are led to look for a revelation from without, and if attested by 
 sufficient evidence, if its documents be proved genuine, and if its 
 contents, though above the power of our moral nature to discover, 
 be in harmony with its broad principles and with what we other- 
 wise know of the Divine government, nothing on oiu* part should 
 hinder its reception. It is the alleged discordancy between the 
 two that nins throughout the whole of Mr. Parker's illogical and 
 intolerant book, and which is the sharp sword in the hands of 
 philosophical spiritualism. But, let us hear another chief of the 
 game school, before we turn the weapon. 
 
 " Modern spiritualism has reason to be deeply grateful to Mr. 
 Nevrman." So says a London journal- that numbers among its 
 contributors men of like stamp. He seems to have done great 
 things for them whereof they are glad. His recent work, " Phases 
 of Faith ; or. Passages from the History of my Creed," is looked 
 upon as having thrown up a highway on which the "new re- 
 formation" may safely advance. People, in certain regions, are 
 tliankful for what in other places would be counted but very bad 
 
 * The Leader. 
 
OF THii. ElBLE EEDEJIPTION. 99 
 
 roads. And surely the pathways of spiritualism must have been 
 loose and insecure that it needed Mr. Newman's work to tread on, 
 and for which it is so grateful. "NVe willingly accord to this book 
 the j)raise of a simple and good English style ; but we deny it 
 the merit of cleverly sustaining the part of honesty which it 
 assumes. There is reason to suspect that a man has not overmuch 
 of this virtue, when, at the end of every paragraph in his speech, 
 he is making loud professions of it. Mr. Newman becomes an 
 unbeliever, and then he writes a book to tell us that he could not 
 help it. He would have us to look upon him, in passing through 
 these " phases," as a man whose sympathies were mainly in favour 
 of the old doctrines, but who, under a strong sense of duty, had to 
 sacrifice them and suffer loss. And these professions, be it ob- 
 served, are not unfrequently made after grossly perverting Scrip- 
 ture, or misrepresenting the evangelical creed. He " struggled to 
 the last, to rest on the practical soundness of Paul's eminently 
 sober understanding. . . But Paul also proved a broken reed "* 
 And why? Because, in his treatment of the gift of tongues, he 
 speaks, according to Mr. Newman, like an Irvingite ; and because 
 the Christ of Paul's cjDistles is a diiierent being from the Christ of 
 the evangelists ! Again, he tells us that the 53rd chapter of Isaiah 
 and some of the other Messianic prophecies " were the very last 
 link of his chain that snapt." After severe tugging, '' it still re- 
 mained strange that tliere should be coincidences so close with the 
 sufferings of Jesus : but he reflected that he had no proof that the 
 narrative had not been strained by credulity. . . . And herewith 
 (lie adds) my last argument in favour of views for which I once 
 would have laid down my life, seemed to be spent."f We are thus 
 to judge of the way in which he has made such mighty sacrifices. 
 And our conclusion is, that Mr. Newman's statements must be 
 taken with some qualification, v\-hen he assm-es us of beiiig forced, 
 against all his prepossessions, to yield to the authority of Strauss : 
 or, of being thrown every now and then into great disquietude, 
 because Iris " moral sentiment and the Scripture v.'cre no longer in 
 full har]nony."J 
 
 The impression made on most minds in reading the " Phases," 
 we are persuaded, will be that its author never was, in the proper 
 sense of the expression, a Christian. Indeed, his ignorance or 
 perversion of Christian doctrines and evidences is manifested in 
 almost every page. He divides the progress of his creed into a 
 number of periods. In the first period, or what he calls his 
 " youthful creed," we have the picture of a young man sent to 
 Oxford without armour, and wounded by all the little fighters 
 that surround him. "VYe may sympathise with his detestation of 
 formalism and of priestly assumptions. But he lacks judgment 
 
 * rhases of Faith, p. 177. + Ibid. p. 197 i Ibid. p. 81. 
 
 H Z 
 
100 SPIRITUALISM ; OR, THE DKNIAL 
 
 to discern the tliinors tliat differ. In the second period, or " striv- 
 ings after a more Primitive Christianity," he occupies the position 
 of a man in open conflict with other men's opinions, and yet cha- 
 grined that they do not hug and emhrace him. He is caught and ■ 
 tossed ahout hy every wind. He throws aside the leading Chris- 
 tian doctrines as intellectual propositions or dogmas, while pre- 
 tending much reverence for Scripture. In tlie third period, his 
 religion has assumed the shape of moral sentiment, ('' if shape it 
 miglit he called, that shape had none,") which is independent of 
 our belief in the Bible. The inward power of judging is here 
 made everything. He touches at Unitarianism, but it cannot 
 afford him " half an hour's resting place."=:= And befoTe this in- 
 ward power " whether called common sense, conscience, or the 
 Spirit of God,"f he brings, after having in a great measure per- 
 verted them, the doctrines of depravity and the fall, election and 
 future punishment, the atonement and divinity of Clu'ist, and 
 having surrendered them, indorses them " Calvinism Abandoned." 
 And yet he would have us believe that in all the workings of his 
 mind about these doctrines, they had little to do with the inward 
 exercises of his soul towards God. "He was still the same, im- 
 mutably glorious : not one feature of his countenance bad altered 
 to my gaze or could alter."| Surely, then, a dishonest man might 
 say, "after his worlv of plunder, what has this to do v/itb my in- 
 tegrity? The fourth period, or "the religion of the letter re- 
 noimced," represents him afloat far from laud. He lays hold of all 
 the old objections to the Bible, grounded for the inostpart on such 
 things as wrong dates and names, most of which have been refuted 
 a thousand times. He would have us infer, that as John and Paul 
 did not understand astronomy so well as Sir W. Herschell, that as 
 their science as men might be at fault, so might their teaching as 
 inspired apostles. § It is in vain to tell JNIr. Newman, it is not in 
 their character as men, but in their peculiar character as apostles, 
 that we claim for them inspiration and infallibility; — that as they 
 were not commissioned to teach human science, they might have 
 been wrong in astronomy ; but that as they were commissioned 
 and inspired to teach Christian truth, they could not have been 
 wrong in theology. He has here reduced the Bible to almost 
 nothing, being greatly aided, he confesses, I| by some German! 
 divines, especially by Be ^^'ette, and yet he professes to hold by 
 Christianity. He would liave us to imagine him "resting under 
 an Indian iig-tree, which is supported by certain grand stems, but 
 also lets down to the earth many small branches, wliich seem to 
 the eye to prop the tree, but in fact are supported by it. If they 
 were cut away, the tree would not be less strong. So neither was 
 the tree of Christianity weakened by the loss of its apparent props. 
 
 * riiases of Faitli, p. 101. ^ Ibid. p. 8-2. t Ibid. p. 104. 
 
 i Ibid. p. J 21 II Ibid. p. 108. 
 
OF THE BlBLi: REDEMri'ION, 101. 
 
 I might still enjoy its shade, and eat of its fruits, and bless the 
 hand that planted it."- This may seem beautiful, but it is not 
 true. The tree, in so far as Mr. Newman is concerned, has dis- 
 appeared with all its props and stems. And that under whicli he 
 is sitting is as like the tree of Christianity as the bramble bush 
 is like the oak. In renouncing the letter he has renounced the 
 spirit. And the flagrancy is, after having openly done the deed, 
 to vaunt of his innocence. In the fifth period, or " faith at second- 
 hand found to be vain," he has reached the position that miracles 
 cannot be admitted as evidence of moral truth. He does not 
 attempt so much to deny the miracles as to depreciate them. The 
 assertion on which he lays stress is, " that miraculous phe- 
 nomena will never prove the goodness and veracity of God, if we 
 do not know these qualities in Him witliout miracle. "f Granted: 
 but this does not preclude miracle attesting a special manifestation 
 of tlie Divine goodness. That God is good, is indeed a trutli 
 '•discernible by the heart without the aid of miracle;" but that 
 He would manifest his goodness in the way implied in the Chris- 
 tian redemption is not so discernible. And though such a mani- 
 festation, after it has been made, may answer the yearnings of the 
 heart, yet the want of special evidence to attest the special and 
 extraordinary interposition is felt. Mr. Newman and his scliool 
 can never make good the proposition that moral truth cannot be 
 substantiated by miracles of sense. Ixlen are so constituted as to 
 associate (unless wilfully blinded by prejudice) the truthfulness of 
 the moral teaching with the tmdoubted manifestations of mi- 
 raculous power on the part of the teacher. And wdiat he does to 
 weaken or nullify them, is to represent Jesus as " solely anxiou.-5 
 to have people believe in Him, without caring on what grounds 
 they believed;"]: to represent the logical notions of the apostles as 
 at variance with oiu's, and to speak of our moral judgments as at 
 conflict with the Gospel and its evidences.§ Did he never read the 
 Scripture, how that Christ, resting his claims on his miracles, said, 
 "The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of 
 me. .If I do not the works of my Father, believe mo not. But 
 if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works; that ye may 
 know and believe, that the Father is in me and I in him? " And 
 when he assumes, that because the astronomy of Paid's day was 
 defective, so was the logic; or asserts,|| that because we cannot 
 cross-examine the ajjostles, we have no means of assuring ourselves 
 that they held correct principles of evidence, we tell him that 
 though men may have different data in different ages, it by no 
 means follows that they must have different principles of reason- 
 ing; and we ask if he is prepared to set aside all but contempor- 
 aneous history, to place no confidence in Thucydides or Josephus, 
 
 * Phases of Faith, p. 113. + Ibid. p. 107. t Ibid. p. 116. i Ibid. p. 147. 
 
 II loid. p. HR 
 
102 spiritualism; or, the denial 
 
 ■because he cannot interrogate them ? And then he assumes, what 
 never has happened, and never can happen, the existence of a 
 miracle that would authorize him to violate his moral perceptions. 
 It is, we repeat, a disingenuous resort of infidelity, to separate two 
 things which God hath joined together — the character of the doc- 
 trine and the character of the external evidence attesting it — and 
 to represent us as resting on the latter, exclusive of the former, 
 whereas the faith of the Christian has regard to hoth. In the 
 sixth phase of Mr. Newman's faith, he attempts to cut up histori- 
 cal religion hy the roots, and represents religion as a state of sen- 
 timent toward God that is independent of any outward creed 
 v.'hatever. He assumes that because wo contend for an historical 
 foundation to- Christianity, we make it a mere problem of litera- 
 ture ; and then argues,* that as he cannot solve literary problems 
 concerning distant history, and as they lie beyond " the rehgious 
 faculties of the poor and half-educated," they can form no part 
 of religion. Here is obviously a confounding of two dififerent 
 things : the mind's susceptibility of religious sentiment, and the 
 outward law and testimony which appeals authoritatively to that 
 susceptibility. And, to use the words of Dr. Vaughan.f we ask 
 " what means this constant insinuation, that historical evidence 
 must be wholly without value to m^en not learned in history ? Is 
 it not manifestly the sentiment of our nature — a sentiment^ so 
 common and rooted as to seem to be instinctive, that there is a 
 credibility in historical testimony, even as relating to the mass of 
 mankind^! sufficient to bring the remote past into a certain and 
 living connection with the present. Not only is it a fact, that the 
 least learned are influenced by historical testimony as truly, if not 
 as immediately, as the most learned, but it is manifestly a law of 
 Providence that it should be so ; and it remains to be sho^vn why 
 the law which embraces testimony to this effect concerning Crom- 
 well or Alfred, should not embrace testimony to the same effect 
 concerning Paul and Esaias." Mr. Newman, referring we presume 
 to some of the difficulties connected with this subject,^ says,| '_' II 
 I have been seven years labouring in vain to solve this vast lite- 
 rary problem, it is "an extreme absurdity to imagine that the sol- 
 ving of it is imposed by God on the whole human race." Now, 
 let him spend seven times seven years in labouring to solve some 
 of the problems that lie before him in the domain of natural reli- 
 o-ion, — for example, the problem of moral evil — and what will he 
 niake out? Nevertheless, God certainly lias not imposed the so- 
 lution upon him or upon any of the race. 
 
 But Mr. Newman's drift is to get rid of an historical Christ. He 
 insinuates that Jesus was far from perfect — that his portrait as 
 drawn by the evangelists is in a great measure imaginary — and, 
 
 * Phases of Faith, p. ICO. 
 + Dr. YansliaiV.g Letter and Spirit, p. 04. i Phases of Faith, p. 199 
 
OF THE UIBLE IIEDEMPTION. 103 
 
 if asked to specify the faults in that matchless character, he main- 
 tains that he is not boimcl to do so because this were presuming 
 Him to be perfect until we find him to be imperfect.* Yes. If a man 
 is generally reported to be honest and claims to be accounted so, 
 you, if you deny it, are obliged to establish the charge of dishonesty. 
 It is generally acknowledged that every mere man is imperfect — 
 every sane mind admits it. The onus jjy oh audi, therefore, lies on 
 him who denies it. So with the man who denies the sinless 
 character of Jesus, We meet with another strange thing here. 
 Mr. Newman represents! it as moral suicide to sit in judgment on 
 the claims of Jesus and then to submit our judgment to his autho 
 rity, first to criticise and then to cease our criticism, first to exer 
 cise free thought and then to abandon it. We say, that to yieic 
 the mind up to Cluist, after having been convinced of the divinity ' 
 of his claims, is alone worthy of the name of free thought. Anc 
 we ask, do you act thus in common life — in selecting a friend, for 
 example? You criticise at first. Do you goon with your criticism? 
 Mr. Ne\vman would have us believe that it is with jDain he gives 
 up " sentiments tov/ards an historical person, v/hieh have been 
 tenderly cherished as a religion. ":|: But, with his book before us, 
 we refuse to do so. 
 
 In concluding the " Phases," he deems himself warranted, 
 fii-om his previous " passages," to consider it as a settled point that 
 the external revelation is in colHsion with the moral sentiments. 
 We have here Spiiitualism versus Clmstianity. " If the spirit 
 within us," says he, " and the Bible (or Church) without us are 
 at variance, we must either follow the inward and disregard the out- 
 ward law ; else we must renounce the inward law and ohejj the 
 outward."^ Matters have been brought to no such pass. The 
 child has not received " discordant commands" from his father 
 and mother, and is not reduced to " the painful necessity of disobey- 
 ing one in order to obey the other." Mr. Newman, throughout 
 his book, has given such representations of the atonement and 
 the doctrines connected with it, not to speak of the old-refuted 
 objections which he brings against many parts of the sacred 
 record, as to remind us of the coarseness and unfairness of 
 the school of Paine. He has first perverted the outward law, ana 
 then set over against it the inward. Pie has exalted the one to 
 the judgment seat, and then brings the other, blackened and de- 
 formed, before it, to be condemned. And what, after all, does he 
 mean by "the spirit witliin us," but individual feeling? One 
 man's spiritualism may differ widely from another man's. Judging 
 from some recent manifestations, the inward oracle is far from 
 being harmonious in its utterances. " The authoritative unity, 
 claimed for it, is a fiction. Newman's Personal Spiritualism, in 
 
 * Phases of Faith, pp. 210 210. 
 + ibiJ. p. 210. i Ibid. p. £'14. ' 2 Ibid. pp. 227, 228. 
 
lf]4 spiniTUALisM ; on, the denial 
 
 l^lace of beino;- a centre of rest, must be a perpetual Lattle-iield 
 between the claims of feeling and the claims of the understanding.'^^ 
 And then what wilful blindness to, or ungrateful reading of, the 
 world's history, to speak of the world'sreligious progress as having 
 b3en intercepted or turned back by the claim of Messiahshipfor 
 Jesus. And what a miserable delusion to anticipate, that if the 
 world was swept clear of intellectual creeds and an historical 
 Christianity, and men were thrown on their own inward sentiments, 
 liaving no doctrine in common but the vague thing called " God's 
 sympathy with individual man," the race would move steadily 
 onward If But for th.e historical Christianity which he contemns, 
 Mr. Newman's religion, most assuredly, would not have differed 
 in the degree that it does, from the religion of the Greek and 
 Eoman philosophers. The " progress" would not have been quite 
 so " spiritual." 
 
 ^,lr. Mackay's " Progress of the Intellect," though differing in 
 many respects from Newman's "Phases" and Parker's "Discourse," 
 is a production of tbe same school, and assumes a like hostile 
 attitude towards the doctrines of the Christian redemption. These 
 doctrines, with him, are " a petty sanctuary of borrowed beliefs." 
 And he has much more admiration for the times when men saw 
 " serious meaning in the golden napkin of lihampsinitus, nay 
 even in the gush of water from the jaw-bone of Samson's ass," than 
 for our age with its doctrinal articles and creeds.;]: A floating, 
 ever-changing sanctuary of faith is, in bis view, more beautiful 
 than a fixed one. If the Bible would only submit to be regarded 
 as a jsart of this shifting cloud-land, one of the many phases of 
 our ideal creations, it would, like the other " jilayful mythi," be 
 attractive to Mr. Mackay and his school ; but it cannot be tolerated 
 in its claim to be the law and the testimony. T)ie ancients, with 
 their mytiiical legends, "were as the eagle intently gazing on what 
 be wants strength to reach ;" we, with oin- Bible creeds, " are the 
 owls blinking at thc*first dayliglit, which, however, we are slowly 
 learning to support. "§ 
 
 Our author places the polytheistic systems of tiie Greeks and the 
 Jewish and Clu-istian Scriptures on the same plane, both, ac- 
 cording to him, being the mind's own weaving, the results of 
 investing the inward conceptions with an outward and divine 
 authoritv. He assumes that all religion is a form of symbolism ; 
 Christianity and material idolatry being in this respect on the 
 same level, only the one is deemed a higher product of the 
 intellectual law of development than the other. Like Mr. Parker 
 and his fellow disciples, he holds that Christianity has two aspects. 
 The first is " the moral conception, which, as eternally good and 
 true, is not so much its own peculiarity as an essential part of all 
 
 * Britisla Quailerly, No. XXIII. + Phases of Faith, pp. 225, 2.34. 
 
 % The Progress of the lut'-llect, vol. i. p. 7. 2 Ibii. vol. i. p. 12. 
 
OF THE IJIBLE REDEMPTION. 105 
 
 civilisation." And secondly, its " special dogmas and forms," such 
 us the atonement and Spirit's influences, " which making up its 
 accidental expression or clothing, have never ceased to accompany 
 its development, though often threatening to ohscure or supersede 
 the vital meaning connected with them."=:' This is something like 
 taking a man's soul for his clothes, or depriving him of reason and 
 intelligence in order to reduce him to the mere animal. Mr. 
 Mackay, in short, like his fellow on the other side of the Atlantic, 
 is a resolute disciple of what is called " absolute religion" — "an 
 eternal, never-failing jirinciple," of which all religious symbols or 
 dogmas are but the temporary livery.f By this eternal inde 
 structible principle, we are to understand some such vague thing 
 as a sense of dependence, or a feeling of Divine sympathy, which, 
 as an ultimate fact, is supposed to underlie all tlie religions that 
 the world ever saw, — a sort of universal soul pervading all systems, 
 Pagan, Hebrew, and Christian, — a kind of pantheistic element, to 
 which all " ai'tificial forms of ritual or creed" bear the same 
 temporary relation that the leaves of the forest, or the gTass of the 
 field, bear to tlie principle of life that pervades the universe. Mr. 
 Mackay would, without scruple, indorse Mr. Parker's statement 
 — '• there is but one religion, as one ocean ; though Ave call it faith 
 in our cliurch, and infidelity out of our church.";]: And he would 
 shake hands with brother Newman in affirming — "religion was 
 created by the inward instincts of the soul : it had afterwards to be 
 pruned and chastened by the sceptical understanding."§ 
 
 The pruning and chastening process goes on ; and Mr. Mackay 
 is resolved, in relation to Christianity, that spare the knife wlio 
 will, he will not. The Bible doctrines of the fall of man, atone- 
 ment by Christ, and regeneration through the Spirit, are, according 
 to his theory, excrescences threatening to obscure or supersede tbe 
 vital element, and he lops them off. The work, of course, required 
 no little daring, and something very different from shamefacedness. 
 It did not consist with the humility professed in the first sentence 
 of his preface. And, accorchugly, Mr. Mackay, on entering tlie 
 temple, instead of leaving his shoes after the Eastern manner, at 
 the door, left his humility.|| And then the fall and the atonement, 
 not denied to be in th,8 13ible, are dismissed as mere " tricks of 
 fancy," " ancient superstitions," " subjective facts in the writer's 
 miud," in short, only a projection of the inward consciousness into 
 the outward world. 1[ 
 
 Dr. Strauss, in dealing with the evangelical histories, has been 
 spoken of as without an equal in the nil admirari vein. But wo 
 warrant our author, in his manner of treating Jesus and Paul, to 
 match him. He admits that there existed the notion of atonement 
 
 * The Progress of the Intellect, vol. ii. p. 393. + Ibid. vol. i. p. 17. 
 
 t Parker's Discourse, p. 6. ? Newman's Phases, p. 232. 
 
 I' The Progress of the Intellect, vol. i, n 18. IT Ibirl. vol. ii. pp. 3l>6, 4G5, 4CG. 
 
lOG si'IRItualism; or, ±B.r. denial 
 
 in the Heorew mind, but he " cannot kdmit tlie atonement doc- 
 trine to have been authorized by Jesi^.s as part of his rehgion."^ 
 He is aware, however, that the teaching of Christ had something 
 to do with the doctrine, and that the evangelists in recording his 
 sayings are not altogether silent in reference to it. But the 
 "foolishness" cannot be tolerated, the "stumbling-block" must be 
 removed, though it be at the expense of Christ's character and the 
 credit of the sacred record. Jesus, accordingly, is represented j- 
 as having eventually been influenced, contrary to his original 
 intentions, by the prevailing idea of meritorious suffering, in order 
 " to uphold his sinking cause." " He used the terms and symbols 
 of his age." These the disciples applied literally, " thereby creating 
 a superstitious mystery never deliberately contemplated by their 
 master."! That there are " distinct announcements by Jesus of 
 his propitiatory death," recorded in the gospels, Mr. Mackay does 
 not venture to deny. But he easily disposes of them. Just as 
 Mr. Newman, after putting the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah on the 
 rack, and failing to extort a confession to his liking, settled the 
 matter by saying that he " had no proof that the narrative had not 
 been strained by credulity," — so Mr. Mackay declares that none 
 of the distinct announcements referred to " can be relied on as 
 authentic ;" or, lest this should be going too far, " it seems needless 
 to ascribe to them more than the figurative sense."§ Miracles are 
 impossible, says Strauss. The doctrine of atonement is incredible, 
 says Mackay. And notliing remains but to falsify the record, or 
 to bring myths and symbolism to account for them. 
 
 Mr. Mackay does not sa,y, with Mr. Newman, that the atone- 
 ment might be dropt out of " Pauline religion" without affecting 
 its quality ; any more than he says, with Mr. Foxton, that in the 
 teaching of Christ there is not the slightest allusion to the doctrine. 
 On the contrary, this doctrine is made an essential part of the 
 "Pauline development" — a development very different indeed 
 from the scriptural one wliich took place in the minds of the 
 apostles after the resurrection and ascension of then Lord. Chris- 
 tianity, according to him, had now shifted its ground. " The 
 Christianity of Paul differs from that of Jesus as an imparted in- 
 fluence from without differs from moral effort from wdthin." ij In 
 other words, Christ is represented as, on the whole, discouraging 
 the idea of vicarious atonement, though using its symbolical 
 terms ; and pleading simply for amendment, sincerity, and moral 
 purity. While Paul is spoken of as having been the first to make 
 the necessity of atonement felt by proving the inefiicacy of the law 
 for justification, and then as having supplied it. ^ Tims it is, 
 according to " the Progress of the Intellect," that " the Hebrew 
 
 * The Progress of the Intellect, vol. ii. p. 4C.1. 
 
 + Ibia. vol. ii. p. 305. t Ibi'l. vol. ii. p. 464. ? Ihid. vol. ii. pp. 3?!, 4G3. 
 
 II Ibid, vol, ii. p. 391. IT Ibid, vol, ii. p. 396. 
 
CF THE BIBLE IIEDEJJPTION. 107 
 
 Palladium " has been " inherited by Christians."* The atonement 
 then, even in the estimation of Mr. Mackaj'-, could not he spunged 
 out of Paul's religion without affecting its quality. He scorns it, 
 however, as an excrescence, a special dogma that loads and ob- 
 scures the moral conception or the simple element called absolute 
 religion. The atonement, which in Scripture is represented as the 
 brightest manifestation of God's love to our fallen race, and which 
 has ever been regarded as such by the Christian world, is conse- 
 quently made hideous, and spoken of, after the Parker fashion, as 
 "practically giving to Christianity a character, which, though it 
 have an ill sound it would be vain as well as dishonest to dis- 
 semble, that of a religion of Moloch."f 
 
 Had we been reviewing Mr. Mackay's work as a whole, v/e 
 would have felt ourselves called upon to shov\r the untenableness 
 of his mythical theory, the baselessness of his assumption that all 
 religion is and can only be a form of symbolism. He accounts 
 for the origin of Christianity, as we have already noticed, in a way 
 somewhat similar to that of Strauss. His " Progress of the In- 
 tellect" is just the reproduction among us of what has had its day 
 elsewhere. So that the answer to Strauss is substantially the 
 ansvyer to be given to his notions of the Messianic development.! 
 But it is only with what bears on the atonement that we have at 
 present to do. And here his development theory is at fault. 
 History is opposed to it. And it is only by the most gross as- 
 sumptions, that the conflicting evidence of history is set aside. 
 Any writer who should deal with the Hebrevf Scriptures as he has 
 done, could not be expected to feel much scruple in tv/isting the 
 New Testament record. It serves his theory of symbolism, to 
 make out idolatry or Moloch-worship to have been the practice of 
 the early Hebrews. The ancient Hebrew God, according to him, 
 was only one of the many gods of the nations, and cannibalism 
 was associated with the rites paid to him by the people. The 
 sacred record is at open conflict with this, the fact being that in 
 the earliest Hebrew writings we have some of the sublimest 
 descriptions of the glory of the one God that are to be found in 
 the Bible. Mr. Mackay feels this. But in order to preserve his 
 
 * Tlie Pro?re?s of the Intellect, vol. ii. p. 465. + Ibid. vol. ii. p. 4€6. 
 
 t Yv'e should also have taken Mr. Mackay to task in regard to a considerable 
 number of his Scripture references. It was truly difficult to account formany of 
 these references, or to see ho'.v they bore out his statements, till we reflected that 
 he had beforehand wanted us of his intention to be guided more by German 
 (neological) cx-iticism than by the English version of the Bible. For example, it 
 serves Mr. Mackay's theory, to maintain that Christ " was unconscious of his own 
 mission " till he was baptized of John ; and for proof he refers us to John i. 26, 
 33 ; vii. 27. Why did he not tell us how the ignorance of the Baptist and of the 
 people proved unconsciousness on the part of Christ ? Again, — as an evidence 
 that the " ancient Hebrew God" was only one of the many gods, and that He ac- 
 knowledged their existence, we are referred to Deut. xxxii. 17 — 21. On the same 
 principle, it might be maintained that missionaries acknowledge the real exist- 
 ence of the gods of the heathen and are jealous of them. — Vsl. ii. pp. 315, 416, 
 
108 spiritualism; on. xiii:: i;enial 
 
 tlieory. lie is forced to come out witli the assertion that the Bible 
 \^a■itei•s have transferred to olden times improvements of newer 
 date, — ancient Moloch practices having been cleansed by modern 
 ■wliite-wash, and then impressed witli the stamp of antiqnity.^;- 
 And if we ask for evidence in support of this " borrowed belief," 
 we receive no better answer than that it must have been so because 
 his development theory requires it. Having in this way made out 
 a Hebrew development from mere nature-worship up througli 
 polytheism to the recognition of a personal and independent God, 
 it could not be difficult for him to make out a Christian develop- 
 ment in which Christ and Paul stand at antipodes — a develop- 
 ment, however, according to his own showing, in a contrary 
 direction, from better to v.'orse. 
 
 But this is no more the development of tlije New Testament 
 than the other is of the Old. There was development throughout 
 the period embraced, by the New Testament record, but it was 
 like the morning light which shineth more and more until the 
 perfect day. Men must pi-esume very much upon the unreasoning 
 Vinbelief or intense hatred of our age in regard to evangelical 
 religion, who can say, either that there is not the slightest allusion 
 in tlie teaching of Jesus to the evangelical doctrine of atonement, 
 or that He on the whole discouraged the idea of it. That the doc- 
 trine is not so fully enunciated in the discourses of Christ as in 
 the letters of his apostles must be admitted. But this is just what 
 might have been expected In the one case, the work of atone- 
 ment was unfulfilled; in tiiw otlicr case, it was finished and had 
 become matter of history. Besides, the strain of Christ's teaching 
 pointed to the time wheii the germs of truth which He had thrown 
 out among his disciples would be fully unfolded, v/hen, under an 
 increased ciliilgence from on high, they should see the truth en- 
 shrined in his sayings which their prejudices prevented them from 
 now doing. Tlie atonement was embraced in Christ's teaching. 
 What can'be more explicit than his own words — words which are 
 felt to be a difficulty even by Mr. Mackay — " The Son of man 
 came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his 
 life a ransom for many." The *' Pauline development" was not 
 different from this, nor anything added to this, but it was this very 
 truth more fully unfolded,"and made, as it was designed to be, the 
 grand central fact of the Gospel of Christ. The ]n-ogress of the 
 New Testament was no more " the Progress of the Intolleet" than 
 was tlie progress of the ancient Hebrews. And Mr. Mackay fails 
 in giving us anything more than assumption for his bold denial 
 that the doctrine of Paul's e])istlcs is countenanced by the pi'ophets 
 and the Great Teacher, as completely as he does in finding a base 
 ment for his assertions that idolatry Avas the established religion 
 
 * The Trogreas of the latellect, vol. ii. pp. 405 — 115. 
 
OJ;- THE BIDLE REUEMPTIOX. 109 
 
 m Tsrael up to the reign of Josiah — that the prophets then, m 
 adaptation to the wants of the age, remodelled the system, made 
 Jehovah, who had hitherto been only one among the many Gods, 
 now the Universal Power, and then represented this better religion 
 as tlie religion of Moses and the early Hebrews. "We are con- 
 strained to say, that jNlr. ]\[ackay, in thus dealing with history, 
 is guilty of the very deception which he woidd charge upon the 
 " holy men of God," and our wonder is how he can attempt to 
 palm it upon the world. ])ut the atonement must be got rid of. 
 The Gospel doctrines must be deprived of their historical basis. 
 And, since the attempt to expel them from the sacred page has 
 confessedly failed, nothing remains but to resolve them into the 
 conceptions of a past age, to bring them before the chancery of 
 the mind's own decisions, and to dismiss them as unfit for this 
 stage in " the Progress of the Intellect." 
 
 In noticing Mr. Morell in this connection, we wish to be under- 
 stood as indicating the tendency of his speculations on religion 
 rather than their actual results. Wide indeed is the difference 
 between the spirit in which he treats of such matters, and that of 
 Messrs. Parker, Newman, and Mackay. And yet the " School of 
 Progress," as if conscious of some links of sympatliy between him 
 and them, regard him as advancing on the same path, only keeping 
 a little beliind. He, in common with them, resolves religion into 
 a peculiar mode of feeling. And though not, like them, seeking 
 utterly to demolish the objective element, he reduces it to com- 
 paratively little value. The subjective or intuitional consciousness 
 has in his speculations a province assigned to it that can scarcely 
 consist with tlie claim of Scripture to be accounted the lavv' and 
 the testimony. It is not what history has attested to be authentic 
 that we are to receive, but what we leel to be morally and religiously 
 true. " The Philosophy of lieligion" is but a form of spiritualism. 
 
 Mr. Morell attaches much importance to the philosophical 
 groundwork that he has laid in the first two chapters of his boolc. 
 And it is found to influence all his subsequent speculations on the 
 subjective nature of religion. Into a minute examination of that 
 groundwork, it would be out of place for us here to enter. With 
 much of it we find no fault. But the broadly prominent principle 
 that runs throughout it, is, in our apprehension, unsound and 
 mischievous. We refer to Ms development of the " principal 
 points of distinction between our logical and intuition faculties" — 
 a distinction, as he says, of vital importance, and which he carries 
 along with him when"^ arguing on the relation of philosophy to 
 religion. He says,':= " there is ones tate of our intellectual con- 
 sciousness by virtue of which we define terms, form propositions, 
 construct reasonings, and perform the whole office that we usually 
 
 * Philosophy of Religion, p. 33. 
 
iiif sr-iBiTUALiSM ; or., tue denial 
 
 attribute to a mind that acts hgically ; but there is also another 
 state of our intellectual consciousness, in which the material of 
 truth comes to us as though by a rational instinct — a mental sen- 
 sibility — an intuitive power — a 'communis sensus,' traceable 
 over the whole surface of civilised humanity." These two classes 
 of phenomena are denominated the logical and tlie intuitional 
 consciousness. That there is a distinction between these two 
 states of consciousness — a distinction recognised before the times 
 of Mr. Morell — we readily admit. But we demur to the way in 
 which he dispai-ts the one from the other, exalting the power of 
 intuition at the expense of the understanding, and assigning it an 
 independence and efficiency which do not belong to it. "With re- 
 gard to higher truths and laws," he tells us, " the understanding 
 furnishes merely the subjective forms, in w^hich they may be 
 logically stated, while intuition brings us face to face witli the 
 actual matter, or reality of truth itself." ■■' We open our eyes and 
 we see at once the blue heavens and the green earth. In like 
 manner, Mr. i!iIorell vvould have us to believe, the mind by its 
 simple spontaneous power of intuition looks out, " and the absolute 
 stands before us in all its living reality." Now we maintain, in 
 opposition to this, that the understanding has much to do in 
 enabling us to reach the mount of vision, and that it is not re- 
 stricted to the humble function of giving logical expression to the 
 supersensual truth we gaze upon there. Mr. Morell v/ould kick 
 away the ladder by v/hich he had been helped upward, and then 
 refuse to admit that it had rendered him any assistance. " It is 
 not enough for our author to say, as all sensible men have ever 
 said, that our knowledge of * the true, the beautiful, and the good,' 
 comes to us in j)art fi'om our intuitions, he is peremptory in assert- 
 ing that it comes to us only from that source — a doctrine which 
 caa never be made to harmonise with anything deserving the 
 name of philosophy ; and which must prove eminently hostile to 
 the purity of religion." f | 
 
 * Philosophy of Relieiou, p. 19. + British Quarterly, No. XIX. p. 149. 
 
 t The author of " The Eclipse of Faith," — a work that carries vPi-y destructive 
 fire into the enemy's camp, — in commenting " on a prevailing fallacy," thus ad- 
 dres'?es our modern " spiritualists." — " You do not sufficiently regard man as a 
 complicated unity; — you represent, if you do not suppose, the several capacities 
 of his nature — the dilierent parts of it, "sensational, emotional, intellectual, moi-al, 
 spii-itual, — as set off from one another by a sharper boundary lino than nature 
 
 acknowledges What can be more obvious than that whether we have a 
 
 distinct religious faculty, or whether it be the result of the action of many 
 faculties, the functions of our 'spiritual" nature are performed by the instru- 
 mentality, and involve the intervention of the very same much-abused faculties 
 which enable us to perform any other function? .... Eeligious ^rM<A, like 
 any other truth, is embraced by the understanding — as indeed it would be a queer 
 kind of truth that is not ; is stated in propositions, yields inferences, is adorned 
 by eloquence, is illustrated by the imagination, and is thus, as well as from its 
 intrinsic claims, rendered powerful over the emotions, the affections, and the 
 will Hence we see the dependence of the true development of re- 
 
OF THE BIULE HEDE JIPTIOr. ill 
 
 In applying tins philosophy to the fundamental . questions in- 
 volved in his subject, Mr. Morell very naturally considers in the 
 first j)lace, what is the peculiar essence of religion? He here 
 ti'eats the matter subjectively — not as a system of truth or form 
 of doctrine, but simply as a fact or phenomenon in human na- 
 ture. He lays dovai the position " that there are just ^/iive great 
 and fundamental forms of man's inward consciousness expressed 
 by the terms knowing, iciWuvj, feeVmrjy'''- And, in determining 
 to which of these generic forms of consciousness religion belongs, 
 he, of course, fixes on feeling. The great error in his philosophy 
 in particg off the intuitional from the logical consciousness, has 
 here its counterpai't in the separation between religious knov/ledge 
 and religious feeling. It is not enough for him to say, "that there 
 may be many gradations of religious intensity iw men, whose 
 amount of knowledge is as nearly as possible identical; and on 
 the other hand, that there may be about an equal manifestation of 
 rehgious intensity where the degrees of knovdedge are immensely 
 at variance." No sane mind denies tliis. But he concludes that 
 "religion is really cradled in some phenomenon lying icithout the 
 region of what we may term intellectual activity;" and, "that 
 although the co-operation of knowledge may be necessaiy to the 
 perfection of our religious life, "yet it does necessarily enter into the 
 " essential germ" of religion.! We do not much object to the state- 
 ment, that religion, suljectively considered, consists in the feeling 
 of dependence upon God ; but vv'e deny that any emotion worthy 
 of the name of religion can exist without some knowledge of divine 
 things. Mr. Morell obviously felt himself entangled here by his 
 pliilosophy, for while the diift of the chapter is to assert the inde- 
 pendence and exclusive importance of feeling as he had done that 
 of the intuitional consciousness, lie yet asserts that the co-operation 
 of knowledge may, " in a subordinate sense," be necessary to the 
 very existence of our religious life. If the scholastic and many of 
 the rationalistic theologians made too much of the mere form of 
 knowing, Mr. Morell assuredly makes too much of the mere form 
 of feeling. It results, as we have seen in such men as Parker and 
 Newman, in attaching no importance whatever to an objective 
 revelation ; and, as we will see, in the case of such as Morell, in 
 assigning a very subordinate place to it. 
 
 In treating of the Essence of Christianity, vv'hieli is done in 
 the next chapter, the subjectivity of our autlior becomes more 
 and more manifest. We reckon this chapter a complete mis- 
 nomer. It is as if an astronomer were to give us an historical 
 description of the tlioughts and feelings awakened within him 
 
 ligion ou thft just and harmonious action of all our faculties. They march toge- 
 ther ; and it is the glorious prerogative of true i-eligion that it makes them do so." 
 — The Jk'ciivse of Faith, p. 305, &c. 
 
 * Philosophy of Btligion, p. G6 + ILiJ. p. 69. 
 
1]:3 spiritualism; oh, the denial 
 
 during Ins surveys of the heavens, and to designate it a treatise on 
 astronomy, instead of giving us a discourse on the magnitudes, 
 distances, and revolutions of the planets. The Essence of Chris- 
 tianity is a phrase which conveys to an English reader the idea of 
 those grand doctrines which distinguish it from all other forms of 
 religion. But Mr. Morell generally here puts the effect for the cause, 
 and sometimes plays on the two different senses of Christianity as 
 ohjective and suhjective. He says, " The only mode in which we 
 can assign the true nature of Christianity, relativeh/ to all other 
 religions in the world, and show wherein its essential and distin- 
 guishing feature consists," is to consider " what is the distinguish- 
 ing feature of man's religious nature, when it has come properly 
 under the Christian infiuence."H= He denies that what are esteemed 
 the prominent facts and main doctrines of Christianity determine 
 tlie essence of Christianity itself. This, he tells us, " does not 
 consist in any development of thought, but in the flow of holy afFec- 
 tions."f The outward revelation, according to this system, is not 
 Christianity, it is only a means to awaken it. The Gospel is 
 viewed rather as an external provision for cultivating certain states 
 of feeling, than as an authoritative communication from heaven 
 designed to build us up in the knowledge of Divine things. Chris- 
 tianity, as a distinct spiritual life, is made to occupy the place of 
 Christianity as a body of inspired truth by which the spiritual life 
 is organized. The true state of matters is completely reversed. 
 And this Philosophy of Religion tends, like the systems of Parker 
 and Newman, to make everything of the feelings within, and to 
 reduce to little or almost nothing the objective truth that lies 
 without 
 
 Mr. Morell, though chiefly engi-ossed with the subjective point 
 of vievr, does not, however, ignore the objective. He defines 
 Christianity, viewed as an outward condition of the religious life, 
 to be " that rehgion which rests upon the consciousness of the 
 redemption of the world through Jesus Christ."^ He very pro- 
 perly notices two great and essential points here — " the exclimve- 
 ness of Christianity as the sole appointed means of human re- 
 covery, and the concentration of the agency for such recovery in 
 the life and person of Christ, historically considered."§ But be- 
 yond this we have no explanation. He does not say what is 
 implied in the redemption of the world, or what was the nature of 
 the moral expedient devised for its accomplishment. And he is 
 silent also as to the truth about the personal Eedeemer. This is 
 unpardonable even in a philosophical discussion of the essence of 
 Christianity, and while professing to look at the objective side of 
 the question. Mr. Morell knows very well that the redemption of 
 tiie world through Christ is about one of the vaguest expressions 
 
 * Philosophy of Religion, p. 100. + Ibid. p. 2.->0. t Ibid. p. i:8. 
 
 i Ibid. p. IIP 
 
OF THE BIBLE REDEMPTION. 113 
 
 current in modern times. It would cover the whole " scliool of 
 progress." Under its ample shade would come multitudes of 
 teachers in Germany, America, England, and elsewhere, whose 
 ideas of redemption and the Eedeemer are as far apart from the 
 Christian doctrines as the east is from the west. This vague and 
 hrief allusion to the ohjective element can only be exjilained on 
 the principle, so dear to our modern sentimentalists, of unduly 
 magnifying everything within man and lessening whatever comes 
 to him in the shape of religion from without. What Mr. Morell's 
 views are of the process through which the redemption of the 
 world has been effected, and of the personal constitution of the 
 Eedeemer, we know not. But he has laid himself open to the 
 suspicion of making the essential elements of the Christian life 
 independent of those grand peculiar doctrines which have been 
 generally understood to be the truth as it is in Jesus.=!^ 
 
 It is foreign to our pm-pose, to review the whole of " The Philo 
 sophy of lieligiou." We only point out some of its strongly 
 marked tendencies towards that philosophic spiritualism which is 
 so destructive of the essence of Christianity. These are, indeed, 
 to be found in every chapter of the Avork. In passing on, for 
 example, to speak of the method by which Christianity was first 
 communicated to the human mind, he defines revelation to be 
 "a process of the intuitional consciousness gazing upon eternal 
 verities."!' He denies that the Bible, strictly speaking, is a reve- 
 lation, " since a revelation always implies an actual process of in- 
 telligence in a living mind."J And he asserts, that " the power 
 which that book possesses of conveying a revelation to us, consists 
 in its aiding in the awakenment and elevation of our religious 
 consciousness." We have here, as throughout the whole treatise, a 
 systematic undervaluing of objective truth. Christ and His apos- 
 tles are represented as giving no exposition of Christian doctrine 
 to the understanding, but as seeking to awaken man's power of 
 spiritual intuition ; and since it cannot be denied that Paul gives 
 such a systematic inculcation of truth, we are reminded that " his 
 writings were designed not so much to be a revelation of truth, as 
 a further explication of it."§ He would make Paul the theologian, 
 and John the intuitionist. Now, in reply to this, it might be said, 
 in the first place, that it is not true, that Christ and the apostles 
 gave no systematic exposition of doctrine. The sermon on the 
 mount, and the discoiu'se on the way to Eramaus when "begin- 
 
 * " No philosophy of religion that assumes to embrace Christianity can be 
 complete if it does not show that salvation was effectuated by a process alike con- 
 gruous with the Divine char-'^ter, and with man's constitution and moral neces- 
 sity. It may be replied, that this is the province of Christian theology, and not of 
 internal subjective Christianity. We incline, however, to the opinion that the 
 idea of 'a just God aud a Saviour," through the atonement of Christ, is the 
 meeting-place, the point where Christianity as a theology loses itself in Chris- 
 tianity as a religion." — Mr. Morell and the Sources of his In/urwation. p. 38. 
 
 t Philosopuy of Ileligion, p. 141 t Ibid, pp, 143, HI. I Ibid. pp. ^39— 111- 
 
 J 
 
114 BnilTTUALTSM ) OR, THE DEKiAL 
 
 Ding at Moses and all the projDhets, be expouuded imto them in 
 all the Scriptures the things concerning himself," not to mention 
 othei- discourses, contradict the statement in so far as the Great 
 Teacher is concerned. The book of Acts falsifies the statement in 
 reference to the apostles. And, in the logical expositions of Paul, 
 we have as many new ideas revealed as in John, which proves 
 that truth may be given first in a systematic or theological form. 
 Besides, it is a mere play on words to say that the revelation was 
 made in the mind, not in the Book. The Bible is the actual reve- 
 lation imparted to the minds of the sacred writers. It brings us 
 la contact with knowledge which, in its origin, lay beyond both 
 lie intuitional and the logical consciousness ; and, in conveying 
 itie truth to us, it addresses the understanding, and, through it, 
 rises higher into the region of actual experience. God disclosed 
 Ihe revelation originally in the minds of Isaiah and Paul, and the 
 inspiring Spirit so guided them that the oracle came forth un- 
 changed to us. Yv'hat Mr. Morell, then, calls special and Divine 
 arrangements for elevating the religious consciousness, we persist 
 in calling the revelation of God. 
 
 The preceding- remarks have prepared ris for considering what our 
 author's views are as to the true bond of religious fellowship and as to 
 the true basis of religious certitude. And here, also, the man of mere 
 feeling appears very prominent. Things which God hath joined 
 together, are here put asunder. " The ground of all true union 
 amongst Christians," he tells us, "is to be found, not in the common 
 consent of the understanding to certain theological definitions, 
 but in the common development of the intuitional consciousness 
 as regards man's religious life."* It is not enough for Mr. Morell 
 to say, that no system of theological doctrine can of itself secure 
 religious fellowship, he must maintain that the latter is inde- 
 pendent of the former. He reasons on the assumption that if the 
 basis of fellowship be moral in its character it cannot be theological, 
 or that if it be theological it cannot be moral. We have always 
 thought that tlie moral power of Christianity lay in its doctrines 
 ur.derstood and believed, and that Christian feliowsliip, or a true 
 Evangelical alliance, must depend upon unanimity of religious 
 feeling and adoption of common doctrines combined; and not 
 only so, but that the influence of the two things would be reci- 
 procal, the belief in the common doctrines strengthening the 
 common feeling, and the common feeling strengthening the belief 
 in the doctrines. But " The Pl)ilosophy of Beligion," in accord- 
 ance uith its previous speculations, separates the one fiom the 
 other. 
 
 ]\]r. Morell's first reason for rejecting a fixed theological test 
 of fellowsliip, is the want of authority for it in tho apostolic church. 
 
 * riiilosopliy of Religion, p. 2S3, 
 
OF THE EIBLE EEDEMPTION. 115 
 
 •' The bond of union," he says, 'i= " amongst the early churches was, 
 the powerful awakening of the religious consciousness, originating 
 in and maintained by an intense belief of the great facts connected 
 with the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ." And 
 w^hat, we ask, were these great facts but a doctrinal -basis? His 
 second reason, wliich he anticipates will startle us, is, that 
 theological statements do not contain any essential element of 
 Christianity, f This arises out of the false principle that the 
 essence of Christianity is only cognizable directly by the intui- 
 tional consciousness, and is supported only by telling us of 
 persons who "take the sign for the thing; the counter for the 
 money." But his principal objection, " and one which admits of 
 liistorical verification," is, that a fixed logical or doctrinal basis, 
 ''tends inevitably to the gi-adual extinction of all that is 2)ositive 
 in Christianity."! Mr. Morell's historical evidence only proves 
 that churches, despite then- doctrinal standards, have often lost 
 the life of true religion, a thing which no one denies, but 
 against which the mere flow of feeling, irrespective of ob- 
 jective truth, affords no guarantee. He appeals, among othet 
 places, to Geneva and Scotland, § and so do we. And we 
 tell him that there is a chiu'ch in Geneva — though it be little 
 among the thousands of Judali — possessed of life and power which 
 adheres firmly to a doctrinal basis ; and that no country has 
 ever enjoyed more of the religious life than Scotland, which has 
 always attached much importance to theological doctrines. We 
 have as little sympathy as Mr. Morell with lifeless forms and a 
 barren orthodoxy. But the idea that men, or communities, can 
 be knit together in holy love, while at variance on great essential 
 doctrines, is perfectly Utopian. There is much in this talk of 
 leaving doctrinal matters undetermined in view of a broad and 
 general fellowship, that reminds one of Parker's " absolute reli 
 gion" and Newman's "doctrine of divine sympathy," over each 
 of which mJght be inscribed, " wide is the gate and broad is the 
 way, and many there be which go in thereat." 
 
 Mr. Morell's basis of religious certitude accords with his basis 
 of religious fellowsliip. He removes it from the Bible page to 
 the religious consciousness of humanity which it awakens. " The 
 basis of certitude," he says, " lies in the essential characteristics of 
 the intuitions themselves — in their distinctness, in their uni- 
 formity, and under due influences, in their universality ; not in 
 their symbolical representation upon the sacred page."l| The test 
 is thus shifted from tlie inspired Book — the law and the testimony 
 — to a comparison of inward experiences. The ultimate appeal 
 is not, what saith the Scripture? but, what is tlie catholic feeling 
 and thinking of the Christian community ? Such an appeal may, 
 
 * Philosophy of Keligion, p. 271, + Ibid. p. 273. i Ibid. p. 278. 
 
 I Ibid. pp. 281—280. il Ibid. p. 337. 
 
116 spiritualism; ok, the denial 
 
 in certain eircnmstances, serve to corroborate, but can never afford 
 a sure criterion. And tben, bow could it be applied in cases 
 wbere tbe teachers of Christianity have stood almost alone, their 
 intuitions of spiritual things being very partially expeiienced by 
 others? Besides, how are distinct, uniform, and universal intui- 
 tions to be secured, except through a living faith in the gi'eat 
 Christian doctrines as revealed in the Bible? So that the catholic 
 feeling and thinking of the wliole Christian community must fall 
 back on the Scriptures as at once a ground and test. The want 
 of uniformity in the results of Biblical interpretation, is urged by 
 our author as a formidable objection against making the Scriptm-es 
 the basis of religious certitude ; and the doctrine of private judg- 
 ment is falsely represented as if rationalism were its inevitable 
 landing-phace.* It were easy to retaliate the charge of want of 
 uniformity, and to show that we have no security for it in mere 
 inward experiences; but the charge is unduly exaggerated. There 
 is a wonderful harmony in the several sections of the Christian 
 church, in regard to the bearings of Scripture on the great doctrines 
 of salvation; and our complacency in that harmony is not dis- 
 turbed, any more than our confidence in the principle oi private 
 judgment is shaken, by pointing us to such reckless unbelieving 
 intei-preters as Paulus and Strauss. We deny that the doctrine 
 of private judgment necessarily cuts us off from the Christian 
 consciousness of mankind, Avhile we assert that its legitimate 
 exercise is in searching the Scriptures to see whether or not these 
 things are so. But the " Philosophy of Religion" will not allow 
 " that the data of Christian theology lie before us fixed and com- 
 plete in the Bible." f And intimations are given as if Christian 
 ideas were subject to the same laws of development as the truths 
 of astronomy. It is a fallacy to speak of Christian doctrine as a 
 germ which received its first great luifolding in the apostolic age, 
 and which goes on receiving other unfoldings. The Christian 
 doctrine is not more fully unfolded in the mind of a believer now 
 than it was in the days of Paul. The ])rogress made from the day 
 of Pentecost till the apostles finished their course, does not find 
 its parallel in the progress subsequently made in the church. In 
 the former period, the Revelation Avas going on ; the latter period 
 received it complete. And the only kind of progress that awaits 
 Christianity, is the glorious one of seeing nation after nation 
 coming to this " sempiternal source of truth divine," and all the 
 sections of the church deeply influenced by, and united together 
 in, the belief of the " common salvation." Mr. Morcll's hopes for 
 the world and for imi'^y and peace to the chin-ch, rest, however, 
 on the power of the intuitional consciousness, and on the deve- 
 lopment of a new philosophy which shall smite all our theological 
 
 * PLilosophy of Religion, pp. 331, 33-5. + Ibid. pp. 375, 370. 
 
OF THE BIBLE REDEMPTION. 117 
 
 dogmas and elevate us to the region of catholic feeling. The 
 spiritualism of Mr. Morell wants the bold otfensiveness of Parker 
 and Newman, but it has this feature, in common, that it unduly 
 magnifies everything within man, and leaves little or no authority 
 to the objective truth lying without.^= 
 
 Such specidations as the above, surrender Christianity into 
 the power of mere sentiment. That, as we have seen in the case 
 of Parker, Newman, and Mackay, is made the test and arbiter of 
 truth. And the tendency of much in the " Philosophy of Beli- 
 gion," is to bring matters to the same standard. Mr. Morell ima- 
 gines, that, under such custody, we would be led " from the barren 
 region of mere logical forms, into the hallowed paths of a divine 
 life." The men of the " School of Progress" know full well what, 
 these paths are, and hence their com^olacency in liis speculations 
 He has not urged the moral argument against the evangelical 
 doctrines, nor do we charge him with denying them, but those 
 who do urge it are disposed to look upon him as an auxiliary in 
 the same warfare. It is this argument that runs throughout, or 
 underlies, many of the Avritings of our philosophical spiritualists. 
 It extends, like a broad belt, through Parker's " Discourse," and 
 Newman's " Phases." It is involved in very much of Mackay's 
 " Progress." And, in some other productions, it is supposed to 
 receive a tacit, if not an avowed, support. Texts of Scripture, in- 
 volving the obnoxious doctrines of redemption, wliich will not bend 
 before a neological exegesis, are reduced under the weight of what 
 is called the moral argument. We shall scrutinize it for a little. 
 
 The argument is grounded on the supposed contradiction 
 between men's moral sentiments and the i^eculiar tenets of the 
 evangelical creed. God is the author of our moral nature, and his 
 revealed will must harmonize with its utterances. The voice of 
 
 * It is with this principle of suhjectivity, that the Evangelical Church in 
 Geneva has now to contend. There is much in Scherer's letter to D'Aubigne that 
 reminds us of some of our own spiritualists, all of whom have drunk of the 
 philosophy beyond the Rhine. He says "the Scriptures are the productions of 
 great saints or of great religious heroes." " The inspiration of the apostles is 
 purely religious." " For the simple believer, the Bible is no longer an aulhorihf, 
 but it is a treasure." " Biblicism is not merely a theological error.but it is a plague 
 upon the Church." Calvin, Beza, and the other Genevese theologians, had to 
 combat the same errors three centuries ago. The President of the Theological 
 Institute, who is now fighting the same good fight, says, in his well-timed treatise : 
 " I dread this subjective tendency in our limes. I dread it, convinced that it 
 cannot fail to have the same developments, and the same consequences, that it 
 had in the sixteenth century. You have remarked the sad progression of this 
 opinion. Chatillon simply taught the doctrine which substitutes the authority, 
 of the individual spirit tor the authority of Divine Scripture. But every seed" 
 hears its fruit. This doctrine, soon aft,er professed by Socinus and Servetus, 
 first overthrew all the doctrines of fuilh ; then, interpreted by Coppin, Pocquet, 
 Gruet, and the libertines, overthrows all the precepts of morality. It thus 
 brou^rht forth great heresies and frightful irregularities. The progr ession is 
 terriiile, but inevitable. . . . Tlipfovndation of Ckristia7i dngma and Christian 
 moraliti/, is involved in these opinions." — The Authority of God, by D'Aubigne, 
 pp. 189, 190. 
 
113 SPlRiTUALIS:.! ; OR, THE DENIAL 
 
 tli8 Iinmiitaole One within the hreast, pronouncing decisively on 
 right and wrong, can never be falsified, or disputed, by the Toice 
 speaking in the word. Man's reason and moral consciousness, 
 it is alle^c-oj are opposed to much of what currently passes for the 
 Christian theology. In the latter, views are given of God and 
 man so dark and^wful as to be repulsed by the former. There 
 is a collision, it is maintained, between the dark creed of depra- 
 vity, the vindictive justice of God as exhibited in the atonement, 
 and the indestructible judgments and feelings of the human heart, 
 Christ has revealed unto us the Father, and it sufficeth us.^ He 
 has taught us to look up to heaven, and, inspired with filial con- 
 fidence,^to say, " Our Abba, our Father." He has inculcated love 
 to our enemies, that we may be the children of our Father in 
 heaven, who maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good 
 He has bidden us behold God as a Father feeding the fowls of the 
 air, clothing the lilies of the field, and much more caring for men 
 his ov/n children. These are sentiments which meet with a wel- 
 come response in every human bosom, and they proclaim them- 
 selves divine. They are in unison wdth those genial currents of 
 thought and feeling which flow through the soul of every man of 
 sensibility, when looking on the shining heavens and the green 
 earth, and which move him to say, " My Father made them all." 
 It is in this endearing character, that we must view Him _ as pre- 
 siding over the universe, pitying men even as a father pitieth his 
 children, and making all things to work together for theii- good. 
 And, it is in this character, that we would expect to meet Him, 
 in making a special revelation of Himself to the world. But the 
 doctrines of what is called evangelism, continues the objector, con- 
 flict with such sentiments as these. Man is therein represented 
 as a most wretched object, a creature shapen in iniquity, and a 
 child of wrath. The God of mercy is exhibited as incensed against 
 his own offspring, making a heavy exaction for then- guilt, and 
 being appeased only by the interposition of his well-beloved Son. 
 Eepentance does not suffice to procure forgiveness, as, from the 
 fatherly character of God, we would have been led to suppose. 
 But an atonement must first be made to turn away God's wrath, 
 and a supernatural povfer must be exerted to raise man up from 
 his degradation. 
 
 These are strong statements. There is ni them much gi-oss 
 misrepresentation. But it is in some such way as this, that the re- 
 liction of the moral sentiments and the orthodox creed are arrayed 
 against each other. It is not, as in the old rationalistic con- 
 troversy, a warfare waged on the gi-ound of critical exegesis. But 
 it is an attempt to set the moral nature of man over against what 
 the general mind of Christendom has pronounced to be the Eeve- 
 lation of God. Are, then, the doctrines of redemption irreconcile- 
 able wMth the paternity of God ; and do the persons who urge the 
 
or THE BIBLE EEDEMPXION 111) 
 
 moral objection give a view of the Divine character that is acle- 
 (juate, and consistent with the nature of things ? We trow not ; 
 and we assign our reasons. 
 
 1st, This argument is unsupported by analogy. Although 
 urged by professed theists, it is as applicable to natural religion 
 as to revealed. If it has any bearing against the great facts of th.e 
 scriptural record, it has not less against the great facts of the boolc 
 of providence. The argument is an old and by no means an in- 
 \T.ncible one. The answer is old also, and, in our estimation, a 
 truly satisfactory one. The gist of the argument is, that God must 
 always act in accordance vnth the simple idea of his pateru!:'! 
 character; and that the doctrines of redemption, militating, as is 
 alleged, against that idea, cannot in their orthodox sense be true 
 Carrying along with us, then, the simple and exclusive idea of pa- 
 ternity, suppose that from the date of our creation we had dvv'elt 
 in another region of God's empire where sin and misery were un- 
 known, where knowledge of the most delightful kind was dilfiused 
 wide as the hght, and where all the inhabitants were perfectly 
 holy and happy. Suppose, farther, that we had known nothing, 
 by report or otherwise, of the moral and physical condition of this 
 earth, but that at a certain period we alighted on its soil and 
 mingled with its children ; would we not have found much in the 
 condition of mankind irreconcileable with the simple and exclusive 
 idea of the paternity of God? We are far from believing tliat 
 there is any part of the wide universe, however sinless and happy, 
 the inhabitants of which have no other idea of the Eternal than 
 that of a Father. The idea of paternity is of all others the most 
 dehghtful, and, in such a province of the Creator's dominions as 
 that supposed, v»'iil be most vivid. But it is not all-comprehen- 
 ding. It is a glory that blends with other glories in the Divine 
 character, and the idea will consequently be associated with other 
 ideas in the minds of those beings who have the most enlarged 
 and correct knowledge of God. But, for the sake of argument, we 
 suppose ourselves to have lived in some remote happy region, and 
 then, bringing along with us the exclusively vivid idea of pater- 
 nity, to have come into tiiis v/orld ; and we ask, how much in iis 
 condition would we not have found apparently at variance with it ? 
 
 There is the palpable fact of moral evil meeting us at every step, 
 a fact which, however much men may attempt to disguise or miti- 
 gate it, cannot be denied. The existence of this, in any part of 
 the earth, would be to us a monstrous anomaly, and conflict migh- 
 tily with our exclusive idea of the Divine paternity. Much moil 
 would this happen, when we ascertained that it was neither Iocs! 
 nor temporary, that traces of it were to be found wherever ma:l 
 set his foot, and that it had been perpetuated from generation 
 to generation ever since the existence of the first family. Hen •. 
 we might say, is a phenomenon, which, judging from our notion 
 
120 SPIRITUALISM ; OK, TIIK DENIAL 
 
 of the paternal character of the Divine dispensations, we would 
 never have expected. And how account for the permission at first, 
 and for the prevalence hitherto, of this dreadful evil in a vrorld 
 under the supreme control of Him whom we have been accustomed 
 to regard as the Father of his creation, the wisest and best Father 
 of his people? 
 
 Then again, there is the moral nature of man, speaking clearly, 
 by its in-imitive judgments, on behalf of truth and rectitude, and 
 yet ever in love with error and swerving from the right path. The' 
 human soul declaring, by the wondrous natural powers with 
 which it has been endowed, that it is celestial in its origin ; and 
 yet making it evident, by the manifestation of these powers, that 
 it is allied to the dust. This is what Ave never would have anti- 
 cipated under the government of Him who is the Father of spirits. 
 And, as we travelled through this world, or read its history in past 
 ages, and became acquainted with the ignorance, the irreligion, 
 and suffering that prevailed, our preconceived notions_ would be 
 the more scattered, and our exclusive idea of paternity be brought 
 the more into conflict with actual realities. Here aiul there, we 
 would perceive a few minds, like tall trees studding at intervals a 
 level tract of country, rising by their intelligence and attainments 
 above the crowd; wliile the greater part of that crowd were gi'o- 
 velling, ignorant, sensual. The perplexities would increase, and 
 the gloom thicken upon us, as we proceeded to consider the reli- 
 gious condition of mankind in general. Here, on an insignificant 
 spot of the world's map, would we behold a small portion of the 
 race possessiug any thing like worthy conceptions of God; and, 
 even among these, an ever manifesting tendency to corrupt that 
 knowledge and to depart from Him ; while, in reference to the rest, 
 we would find tlie description of the sacred oracle to be by no 
 means exaggerated, " darkness covered the earth, and gross dark- 
 ness the people." 
 
 The darkness would become the more visible, and the anomalies 
 the more bewildering, on noticing the moral and physical suffer- 
 ing that prevailed. What a vast and varied amount of mental 
 and bodily distress meets the eye in this direction and in that ! 
 The thirst for happiness is insatiable, the cry is deep, earnest, and 
 incessant, "who will show us any good?" The yearnings and 
 strivings of the human spirit indicate that hap]uness is •' our 
 being's end and aim," — and yet men in general fail of attaining 
 to it. The moral viciousness of individuals and communities has 
 its counterpart in dreadful and complicated sufferings. Here, we 
 see physical ills following moral transgressions with something 
 like the certainty of fixed laws ; and there, we behold ever and 
 anon in history, terrible special interpositions in the form of 
 famine or flood, pestilence or war, proclaiming to those who have 
 cars to hear, that there is verily a God that judgelh in the earth 
 
OF THE BIBLE iif.DEMPTlON 121 
 
 The innocent are involved in these calamities, as well as the guilty. 
 The sins of the fathers are visited npon the children. The good 
 and heneficent are not unfrequently overwhelmed in the same 
 national judgments that come upon the evil-doers and the profane. 
 
 This is a state of matters, a complicated scene of ignorance and 
 irreligion, of moral and physical suffering, which the inhabitants 
 of a sinless world, having a vivid idea of the paternity of God, 
 would have found on their arrival, (until the explanation was 
 given,) to be awfully and distressingly embarrassing. And, had it 
 been possible for such intelligences to have had no otber idea of 
 God but the paternal one, they would have learned that some other 
 must be embraced, and that between tliem there was the most 
 perfect harmony. Here, then, we meet the objection against the 
 doctrines of the Christian redemption, urged on the gi'ound of tbeir 
 supposed contrariety to the paternal character of God. The 
 objector says, the atonement and the system of which it forms the 
 centre, are utterly at vai'iance with what we, judging from his 
 character as a father, would have supposed God to have done had 
 He interjjosed on behalf of the human race. We ask the objector, 
 is that world without and around you such as you would have 
 supposed it would be ? Had you come from another sphere with 
 no other idea about God in your head than the paternal one, would 
 you have expected to have found that mysterious and mighty thing, 
 moral evil, at the heart of humanity, perpetuating and difiusing 
 itself from age to age, and bringing in its train such an amount of 
 moral and physical wretchedness as has inscribed on the world's 
 history, mourning, and lamentation, and woe? We ask you to 
 reconcile that fact, which is patent to every eye, with your pre- 
 conceived notions of the paternity of God ; and we tell you, that 
 you could no more ward off the objection which the supposed 
 visitant might bring against the condition of our world, than, as 
 you suppose, it can be warded ofl' from the doctrines of the Chris- 
 tian redemption. -1= 
 
 2nd. The view of the Divine character taken by this argument, 
 is one-sided and jJartial. It embraces a delightful and important 
 truth, but it is not the whole truth, nor the whole of tlie most 
 
 * Harrington the sceptic, who had been prevented from taking refuge in the 
 "half-way houses" between the Bible and religious scepticism, says: "If I 
 acquiesce, on Mr. Newman's grounds, in the rejection of the Bible as a special 
 revelation of God, I am compelled on the very same principles to go a few steps 
 further, and to express doubts of the absolutely divine original of the World, and 
 the administration thereof, just as he does of the divine original of the Bible. If 
 I concede to Mr. Newman, however we may differ as to the moral and spiritual 
 faculties of man. that these are yet the sole and ultimate court of appeal to us; 
 that from onr ' intuitions' of rigiit and wrong, of ' moral and spiritual truth,' be 
 they more perfect according to him, or more rudimentary and imperfect according 
 to me, we must form a judgment of the moral bearings of every presumed external 
 revelation of God, I cannot do otherwise than reject much of the revelation of God 
 in his presumed Wo7-hs as unwortliy of him, just as Mr. Newman does very much 
 in his supposed Word as equally unworthy of him." — The Eclipse of Faith, 
 p. 147. 
 
12-i sPirviTUALTSM ; on, the denial 
 
 important truth. God is the common father of all his creatures. 
 " Have we not all one father, hath not one God created us ?" And 
 it is in this character, that He opens his hand, and satisjfies the 
 desires of every living thing. The child feels the sweet power of 
 this truth, when, with hended knee and uj)lifted heart and look, he 
 says, "our Father which art in heaven." The man of feeling, 
 casting his eye over the varied face of nature, is moved, and justly 
 so, at the thought of that immense paternity which embraces 
 heaven and earth, and the whole empire of animated being from 
 the seraph to the reptile. And the Christian has been taught, by 
 the holy oracles, to look upon God as being in the highest sense 
 his Father, and as thus making all things work togetlier for his 
 good. But the regal character pertains no less to the Divine 
 Being than does the parental ; and nature and revelation teach us 
 to regard Him as a Sovereign no less than a Parent. The two 
 ideas blend together, and are realized, in the utmost perfection, in 
 the Divine naWe ; and so should they blend in our conceptions 
 of what God is, and of what are his relations to our world. He is 
 not only the best and wisest of fathers, but the most righteous, 
 benignant, and powerful of kings. The same dispensation of 
 Pro^uden3e may bring impressively before our mind this two-fold 
 view of the Divine relation. Afflictions, in one sense, are 
 sovereign judgments; and, in another sense, they are fatherly 
 chastisements. In one view, they are punishments for sin ; and, 
 in another view, they are tokens of a father's love. They manifest 
 at once the righteous Sovereign and the benignant Parent. Jus- 
 tice has been defined to be goodness regulated by wisdom, and the 
 sovereign relation may be said to be the parental controlled by the 
 same attribute. It would, however, be a very defective view of the 
 Divine character, to exclude the idea of justice, and adopt the bare 
 idea of goodness, as comprehensive of the whole truth about God. 
 And it is the very same defect in that theory which regards Him 
 simply and exclusively as the Parent of all. It is a gross mis- 
 representation of the Christian atonement, to speak of it as if the 
 fatherly character of God was there overshadowed or shut out. 
 " Go to my brethren," said the Apostle and High Priest of our 
 profession, " and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and 
 yoiu' Father; and to'my God and your God." It is, indeed, in the 
 atonement, that we see the paternal relation in its richest elements 
 and loveliest manifestation, not dissociated from or shrouded by 
 the regal, but the nmjesty of the one rendered attractive by the 
 love of the other, and the love of the one appearing the more grand 
 and costly in union with the other. "Mercy and truth meet 
 together, righteousness and peace embrace each other." We 
 behold at once, " the just God and the Saviour." The theology of 
 the natural religion is no less meagre and contracted than that of 
 the revealed, and the view of the Divine character as the God of 
 
OF THE BIBLE REDEMPTTON. i.-^e 
 
 providence, is no less partial tlian the view of Him as the God of 
 redemption, which does not embrace the two-fold relationship of 
 Jehovah as the King and Father of his people. Whether we 
 contemplate Him as seated on the circle of the universe, presiding 
 over the movements of the spheres, and managing tlie aifairs of 
 men; or, as manifested in the cross, magnifying his law and 
 bringing redemption to a lost world ; we do not contemplate Him 
 aright, unless it be in the blended relations of the righteous 
 Sovereign and the benignant Parent. "The Lord reigneth ; let 
 the earth rejoice ; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof. Clouds 
 and darkness are round about Him ; righteousness and judgment 
 are the habitation of his throne." 
 
 3rd. The doctrine of depravity, as stated in Scripture or im- 
 plied in the atonement, is not a ^^■hit more aggravated and 
 mysterious than the actual condition of man. The Bible doctrine, 
 on this subject, has been denounced as dark and jDerplexing; but 
 it is not more so than the palpable facts that come under observa- 
 tion and experience. To hear some men speak about the dark and 
 mysterious doctrines of Scripture, you would imagine that, without 
 the pale of Christianity, difficulty and darkness were unknown, that 
 all was unclouded sunshine, comprehensible and plain. Whereas, 
 it is just because there are mysteries in natm'e, that there are 
 mysteries in revelation. No one disputes the existence of sin in the 
 world. The moimtain stands before us, however different may be 
 the estimates formed of its origin and size. But some would 
 represent its existence in nature, and account for its presence in 
 the human soul, in such a way as to set the natural religion over 
 against the revealed. The conflict takes place at two points. The 
 Bible teaches that sin is an element of positive evil in the heai't, 
 consisting in the corruption of the will, and that, as a depraved 
 force, it affects all the mental powers, and manifests itself in the 
 outward conduct. Opponents consider sin as a negative thing, 
 consisting rather in the defect of a positive good than in the 
 presence of a positive evil. The Bible traces all human 
 transgression up to the inward depraved principle, which is 
 strengthened and developed by outward circumstances. The 
 objectors, maintaining the original goodness of the heart, regard 
 sin as an accident, and the product of external forces acting upon 
 man's constitution. There it is, however, in the heart of humanity, 
 account for it as you will. 
 
 The first thing we affirm respecting it is, that it is not repre- 
 sented more darkly in Scripture tlian it exists actually in the world. 
 There is not a darker picture of depravity in the Bible, than that 
 which is drawn by Paul in his epistle to the llomaus. He there 
 woves, by an induction of evidence, that mankind are deeply and 
 aniversally depraved. And the testimonies of historians, who 
 were by no means friendly to Christianity, may be appealed to in 
 
124 sriRiTUALisM; or, the denial 
 
 proof that the apostolic description is not darker than the outward 
 reality. Experience and observation are in perfect harmony with 
 scriptural representations on this point. The book declares that 
 all have sinned, and the world sets its seal to the statement as 
 true. The book declares that the heart is deceitfid, and what man 
 of self-reflection will deny it ? The plague raged not less fearfully 
 in the city, than Daniel Defoe describes it. The desert is not less 
 arid and cheerless, than it appears in the pages of the traveller. 
 And the actual state of the moral nature of man, before better 
 influences come down upon it, is no less dark and dejn-aved, than 
 it is represented in scriptural statements, or implied in the doc- 
 trine of atonement. 
 
 But we assert, further, that the Bible account of the origin of 
 sin, however mysterious, is more in accordance with fact than 
 the view given in the opposite argument. 'Jlie doctrine of Scrip- 
 ture is, that all men have been involved in the fall of their com- 
 mon parent, and that, in consequence of the first sin of the first 
 man, they have inherited a depraved nature. Not that men ac- 
 tually sin without the concurrence of then- own will, but that the 
 princij^les of depravity are inherent within them. This we hold 
 to be more ])hilosophically true than the explanation that sin is 
 an accident, the result of external agencies, a thing not proceeding 
 from the soul within but coming to it from without. It is true 
 that we cannot detect depravity till some time after the birth of an 
 individual, but neither can we detect reason or the rudiments of a 
 moral nature. Tlie child, in process of time, however, gives signs 
 of the existence of the reasoning faculty, and of the moral consti 
 tution, and contemporaneously therewith, does it manifest ten- 
 dencies to evil. Now, as has been often remarked, v.'e never ascribe 
 the existence of reason and the moral sense to education or to any- 
 external influences. They may develope them, but they do not 
 produce them. Men, in all circumstances, manifest reason and a 
 moral nature ; and this is to us a proof that they are inherent in 
 the human constitution. Men, in all circumstances, manifest de- 
 praved affections. These circumstances may call them forth, 
 strengthen them, or even counteract them, but they do not origin- 
 ate them, and this we take to be a proof of the existence of an 
 original depraved propensity. The uniform occurrence of moral 
 actions is not a stronger evidence of a moral nature, than the uni- 
 form occurrence of wrong moral actions is an evidence of a corrupt 
 moral natm-e. 
 
 It is somewhat strange, that certain reforming projectors, who 
 persist in maintaining that inherent depravity is to be found now- 
 here bat in the " dark creed" of the Gospel, and that all the evils 
 which afflict man are to be traced to external circumstances ope- 
 rating on his mental and physical constitution, should, on the sup- 
 position of their theory being true, never have succeeded, — in 
 
OF THE BIBLE hedemption. 125 
 
 those genial climes wbitlier they have removed, and amid those 
 favourable circumstances by Which they were surrounded, — in 
 rearing up plants without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. They 
 have had their Utopias, their Icarias, and Harmony Halls. But 
 old Adam has always proved too strong for young Melancthon. 
 The power of inward evil has sported with all their fondly-cher- 
 ished schemes to subdue it, a,nd shov*'n sucli schemes to be vision- 
 ary and vain. And, it is not less strange, (on the supposition of 
 the truth of the theories of Parker and Newman,) that, notwith- 
 standing tbe alleged virtue of the " absolute religion," and the 
 " spiritual faculty," which are said to render the Gospel unneces- 
 eary, men, uninfluenced by that Gospel, should have everywhere 
 continued corrupt and corrupters. But, it is not strange, on 
 the belief of the Scripture doctrine that man is radically depraved, 
 that the principle of evil is within, and that out of the heart come 
 tlie things which defile the man. Tliis doctrine, as we have 
 admitted, is dark and mysterious, standing boldly forth as it does 
 on the Bible page. But" it is not a whit more so than the actual 
 condition of man in the world. The account of the astounding 
 phenomenon as given in the inspired volume, is, however, vastly 
 more in accordance with observation and experience, than any 
 opposite theory. And we ask, when are men of philosophical pre- 
 tensions to cease assuming, or how long is the world to tolerate 
 theii- assumption, that darkness and mystery belong only to tlie 
 theology' of the Gospel which they disown, and that these horrible 
 things'have no place in the theology of nature of which they pro- 
 fess themselves the disciples and friends? 
 
 4th The doctrine of jyardon on the ground of an atonement is 
 neither unreasonable nor inconsistent with the Paternity of God, as 
 is supposed. We assent to the remarks of the eloquent preacher,^): 
 " that there is in this doctrine something extremely remote from ordi- 
 nary apprehension, apart from the instruction derived from Holy 
 Writ. That one of the human race, by submitting to an ignominious 
 and painful death, should be the moral source of the salvation of ax- 
 innumerable multitude of mankind, and, if duly improved, a 
 sufficient source for the salvation of all, is surely one of the most 
 extraordinary of the Divine proceedings with regard to man. 
 Nothing like this has ever existed. It seems to stand by itself, an 
 insulated department of Divine Providence, to contain williin itself 
 a method of acting which was never seen before, and will never be 
 repeated." It was a mysterious exigency, altogether unprecedented, 
 that had to be met, and the expedient devised by Infinite wisdom 
 has a height and a depth that pass knowledge. And yet, notwith- 
 standing the luiique and unparalleled nature of this distinctive act 
 of moral mediation, the idea of moral substitution has a founda- 
 
 * Eobert Hall. 
 
126 spiritualism; or, the denial 
 
 tion in nature, and pardon through a mediator is a princii^le nof 
 unfrequently exemplified in history. Some men speak under 
 a land of horror at this doctrine, because it represents the God and 
 Father of mankind as inflicting punishment on the innocent, and 
 thus reversing all our ideas of moral rectitude that where there is 
 no sin there should be no suffering. B-ut, — not to dwell on the 
 assumption involved in this objection, that the objector knew all 
 the ends God Imd in view in the work of atonement, or that these 
 ends are not better secured by the sufferings of Christ than they 
 coiud have been in any other way, — does it not frequently happen 
 in God's providential administration, that persons are involved in 
 sufferings in consequence of the sins of others in the commission 
 of which they had no part; and that men, possessed of little or no 
 virtue in themselves, have much respect shown to them, and many 
 benefits conferred upon them, solely on account of the virtues of 
 others? Some of the most direful calamities that ever fell on 
 individuals or communities, have been the consequences of the 
 vrrong- doings of others, of which they themselves were innocent. 
 And some of the richest blessings that ever descended upon fami- 
 lies or nations, may be traced to the merit and suffering of those 
 who, for righteousness' sake, perished in the field, at the stake, or 
 on the scaffold. 
 
 In such cases as these, we see the existence of a principle, which 
 is manifested, in a mannei* altogether unparalleled, in the Christian 
 redemption, the prifcipls of moral substitution, the principle of 
 confen-ing benefitv- 'm individuals or communities from a regard 
 to the merits of otliCTS, and of the innocent suffering in consequence 
 of the deeds of th^^ tiiiilty. And, that this piir-ciple is in harmony 
 with the general sentiments of mankind, is abundantly testified by 
 their religious observances even in lands where the Gospel is 
 unknown. It is altogether iin philosophical, to ascribe any per- 
 manent and universally diffused feelings and sentiments to what 
 have been considered a few interested classes of the community. 
 '' To affirm, as some have done," says Isaac Taylor, =:= " that priests 
 are the authors of religion and moral sentiment, is a sort of upside- 
 dovN'-n logic, not easily understood. Surely it were more philoso- 
 phical to invert the terms of the proposition, and to affirm that 
 religion and moral sentiment are the authors of priests." Xhe 
 altars which have been reared, and the sacrifices which have been 
 offered, in every age and quarter of the world, show, that the idea 
 of vicarious interposition has its foundation in the constitution of 
 nature. And the same principle is evinced in cases, unconnected 
 with religious rites and observances, of the good and great in 
 history suffering for the uuworthy, and the virtues of such 
 illustrious sufferers being so reckoned to others as that on account 
 
 * ^lan Ecsponsible, p. 8 
 
OF THE ElBLE RELEJtPTION. 127 
 
 of them undeserved favours have been bestowed. We never look, 
 in anything among men, for a parallelism to the amazingly grand 
 fact of salvation by the interposition and sacrifice of the Son of the 
 Highest. But, in such cases as those to which we have adverted, 
 v,"8 see, be the actions blameworthy or commendable, thaj; the 
 notions of vicarious suffering and of treating the undeserving 
 kindly for the sake of the deserving, are not so strange and 
 unnatural as some persons, in objecting to the atonement, would 
 seem to suppose. 
 
 It was one of the unworthy expedients of the old deistical 
 writers, and the same is not unfrequently resorted to in more 
 modern times, to misrepresent and disfigiu-e the atonement, and 
 then hold it up to the execration of mankind. The follov/ing is a 
 sj)ecimen from Bolingbroke : "Let us suppose a gi'eat prince, 
 governing a wicked and rebellious people, he has it in his power 
 to punish but thinks fit to pardon them. But he orders his 
 only and well-beloved son to be put to death, to expiate their sins, 
 and satisfy his royal vengeance. Would this proceeding (asks the 
 writer) appear to the eye of reason, and in the unprejudiced light 
 of nature, wise, or just, or good ? No man dares to say that it 
 would except it be a divine."-:- No person deserving the name 
 of a divine but would cry out on the monstrous injustice as loudly 
 as the philosopher himself. But is such a case parallel to the 
 Christian atonement ? Far from it. It fails in two things, and 
 failing in these, the whole is vitiated. In the first place, the 
 highest injustice would have been done to the substitute, in the 
 case supposed; whereas, no injury whatever was done to Christ, 
 for, with a. perfect knowledge of what he would have to endure, his 
 undertaking was entirely voluntaiy. He is represented in the 
 ancient oracle as saying, when about to enter on the work of 
 mediation, " Lo ! I come, I delight to do thy will, O my God;" 
 and, on earth he declared, " no man taketh my life from me. 
 I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again." 
 In the second place, no sentiment is more derogatory to the Divine 
 character, and more opposed to the declarations of Scripture, than 
 that wliich represents God as naturally implacable towards the 
 human race, and as being appeased by the interposition of his 
 beloved Son. The sacred penmen, and the adherents of the 
 doctrine of redemption, always speak of the mission and death of 
 Christ, not as the cause, but as the effect of the Father's love, not 
 as rendering Him merciful towards us, but as the divinely 
 appointed way of manifesting his self-moved benignity to the 
 guilty. What can be plainer than the golden passage in John, 
 " God so loved the world as to give his only begotten Son, that 
 whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting 
 
 * LclautVs Deistical Vrritcrs. 
 
128 SPIRITUALISM ; OR, THE DENIAL 
 
 life." The paternal theory, as we have seen, embraces only one 
 aspect of the twofold relation in which the Supreme Being stands 
 to men ; it separates theglones that blend in the Divine character, 
 and overlooks one of them as if it had no existence. Whereas, it 
 is the pre-eminent excellence of the Christian doctrine of atone- 
 ment, that it is comprehensive of the whole. In it, we see at once 
 the righteous Governor of the world maintaining the integrity of 
 his just and good laws, and the benignant Parent, in perfect 
 consistency with the holiness of his character and the honour of 
 his administration, extending mercy to his rebellious children. 
 We behold in the theory of the atonement, wliat we fail to perceive 
 in the paternal theory, a high regard to the cause of moral right 
 and to the general interests of the universe, and an altogether 
 extraordinary manifestation of Divine benevolence to guilty man. 
 It speaks loudly in behalf of its truthfulness, that it harmonizes 
 so wondrously the Divine relations of sovereign and parent; 
 exhibiting, in the world's great exigency, righteousness inviolable 
 and imcompromising to be the girdle of God's throne, and love, 
 unexampled and ineffable, going forth from his heart. The angels 
 embraced the blended glories of king and father, when tliey sung 
 over the plains of Bethlehem, " Glory to God in the highest, and 
 on earth peace, good-will toward men." 
 
 But this is mysterious doctrine ! As if, by crying up mystery 
 as a bugbear, men are to he scared away from it. We reply to the 
 taunt by saying, there is a mystery no less inscrutable and as- 
 tounding before your eyes, a mystery which has called this other 
 forth — tlie mystery of moral evil. Solve that mystery, or deny it, 
 before you urge mystery as an objection against the Divine pro- 
 vision that has been made to meet it. It is tlie mystery of man's 
 fall that has occasioned the mystery of man's redemption. 
 " Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness ; God 
 was manifested in the flesh." But, " herein he hath abounded 
 toward us in all wisdom and prudence." 
 
 5th. The doctrine of Divine influence as indispensably necessary 
 lo regenerate the souls of men, is a reasonable doctrine ; at variance 
 neither with the dictates of nature nor the principles of sound 
 philosophy. It deserves notice, thac while the earlier Unitarians 
 shrunk from boldly impugning this article of the evangelical creed, 
 their successors generally ridicule and deny it ; or, in accordance 
 with the " School of Progress," merge it in the very commonest 
 natural influence. Men may think to construct a religious philo- 
 sophy without it, but it requires little consideration to see, that of 
 all philosophies it is the most unphilosophical. It has been al- 
 ready shown, that, to be thoroughly consistent in denying the 
 intervention of God in ])reserving and ruling the universe, men 
 must take up their position in atheism and deny the existence of 
 God Himself. And it may as justly be aflirmed, that, to be 
 
OF THE BIBLE IlEDEMPTIOX. 1'2'.) 
 
 tlioroiiglily consistent in denyin"- a Divine influence on the 
 soul, men must either hold that the soul exists indejiendently of 
 God, or is placed beyond the reach of his operations. The possi- 
 bility, not to say the probability or actual certainty of the Almighty 
 ]\Iaker exerting an influence on the material worlds, in accordance 
 with the laws and properties which He has impressed on them 
 being gi-auted; it cannot, with any pretensions to philosophy, be 
 denied, that God may exercise an influence on the souls which He 
 has formed, so as not to interfere with their free agency and re- 
 sponsibihty. No one will venture to assert that it is more difficult 
 to conceive how the spirit of God operates on mind, than how He 
 operates on matter. Yea, we will venture to say that it is more 
 easy to conceive the action of mind on mind, than the action of 
 mind on matter. Many of the ancient Greek and Roman philo- 
 sophers, as has often been shown by quotations from their writ- 
 ings, admitted not only the possibility but the necessity and reality 
 of Divine influences on the mind for the attainment and practice 
 of virtue. Seneca declares, " It is God that comes to men, yea 
 more, He enters into them, for no mind becomes truly good but 
 by his assistance." Plato has remarked, " that virtue is not to be 
 taught but by the assistance of God." And he introduces Socrates 
 as declaring, " that wheresoever virtue comes, it seems to be the 
 fruit of a divine dispensation." These considerations show, not 
 only that the exercise of a Divine influence on the mind is pos- 
 sible, but that the want of it has been felt, and the reality of it 
 admitted, by the greatest men living under the gliunnering light 
 of nature. This augurs something in favour of its reason able-ness 
 and accordance with sound philosophy. And surely, if we admit 
 a supernatural intervention in revealing Christianity at the first ; 
 it is more in accordance with right reason to believe, that it makes 
 its way through this world, rife as it is with powerful principles 
 that are hostile to it, accompanied with an influence from on high, 
 than that it has been left to struggle alone, unaided by the spiritual 
 energy which gave it birth. 
 
 Dut the objection is, that it interferes with the moral freedom 
 of man. As if an influence coming from without could not but 
 destroy or impair the freedom of the will within. It is a sufficient 
 reply to this objection, that the operation of such an external 
 cause no more implies interference with human liberty than the 
 operation of any other external causes. One man exerts an influ- 
 ence upon another by his speech or example, without it ever 
 being supposed that the moral freedom of that other is interfered 
 with. The orator in the senate, or from the pulpit, influences 
 men to change their opinions and follow a different line oi' conduct, 
 and no one ever imagines that the responsibility of men is thereby 
 lessened. We are thrown into society, or brought into contact 
 witli the scenes of external nature, and passively receive impres 
 
130 sPir.iTUALiSM ; or, the denial 
 
 sions from the objects that sm-rouud us, but ^Ye, nevertheless, feel 
 that our free v/ill is not interfered with in avoiding or pursuing 
 any train of thought or course of conduct to vdiich they would 
 lead us. And why shoald it be thought to be otherwise with an 
 influence coming not from earth but from heaven, not from objects 
 that are natural but divine and spiritual? Men, it has been 
 remarked, are passive in receiving natural light and bodily strength 
 from God, and yet free and active in making use of them. And 
 so it may be conceived that men derive spiritual light and strength 
 from the same source, and enjoy their moral freedom in like man- 
 ner. If it be objected that the cases are not parallel, we ansvrer 
 that they are perfectly parallel in the point for which they have 
 hesii adduced, viz. non-interference with man's moral liberty. 
 We are conscious that the influence exerted on our minds by 
 human spirits, is according to the laws of our moral constitution. 
 We feel that influence, and nevertheless we are conscious that we 
 pare morally free. In like manner, the subjects of Divine influ- 
 ence know that it is God that worketh in tliem, and yet they feel 
 ;too, that they are free to choose the good and avoid the evil. 
 
 Such are the aspects in vrhich the doctrine is presented in Scrip- 
 ture, and in that orthodox creed which is objected against. It is 
 ■ obviously implied in those inspired statements which speak of 
 :men resisting and quenching the Spirit's influences, that these in- 
 •fiuences do not in the least interfere with man's free agency, nor 
 diminish but rather increase his responsibility. David, conscious 
 of his moral freedom, meditated on his comparatively small and 
 dark Bible, while he lifted up his heart to the heavens and said, 
 " Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of 
 thy lav/." Paul gave the exhortation, " Work out your own salva- 
 tion with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you 
 both to will and to do of His good pleasure." At this point, then, 
 the Scripture doctrine, however inscnitable otherwise, accords 
 with human consciousness, and with the lorinciples of sound jDlii- 
 losophy. We attempt not, and wish not, to strip it of its myste- 
 riousness. But mystery here, is not mystification. And, as Dr. 
 Vaugiian remarks,=:< " the mystery is, that men should be in a con- 
 dition to need regeneration, not, that such being the fact, the Sphit 
 of the Lord should be sent to regenerate them." 
 
 In farther confirmation of the reaUty and reasonableness of this 
 doctrine, we appeal to three unquestionable facts. The first is, 
 that where the Gospel is unknown, men are morally degraded and 
 vile. Whether we look at the ancient or modern heathen world, 
 the testimony given is the same, that men, without Christianity, 
 are unregenerate and destitute of moral loveliness. Let any one 
 read Tholuck's admirable treatise " on the Nature and ]Morai In- 
 iiuence of Heathenism, especially among the Greeks and liomans," 
 
 * The Ago and Claristiani'iv, p. 299. 
 
OF THE BIBLE REDEMPTION. 131 
 
 and ho will be convinced, if imconyinced before, of the truth of 
 tbe proposition which he seeks to demonstrate, — that " heathenism 
 as such, did not restore, but profaned the image of God in man." 
 " History," observes Llaclaurin,';^ " showeth the weak and con- 
 temptible efficacy of the sublimest philosophy of the heathens, 
 when it is encountered vrith inveterate corruptions or violent tempt- 
 ations. How many of them that spake of virtue like angels, yet 
 lived in a manner like brutes : whereas, in all ages, poor Christian 
 plebeians, unpolished by learning, but earnest in prayer, and de- 
 pending upon grace, have, in comparison of these others, lived 
 rather like angels than men ; and shown such an invincible sted- 
 fastness in the practice of virtue, as shameth all the philosophy in 
 the world." Plato represents Socrates as saying in his discourse 
 with Alcibiades, "Methinks, as Homer says, that Minerva removed 
 the mist from the eyes of Diomede, in order that he might well 
 distinguish God from man, so it is needful that He (the heavenly 
 teacher), first removing from tliy soul the mist which is now pre- 
 sent, should then impart means by which thou shalt know good 
 and evil ; for 7iow thou dost not appear to me capcMe of this." And 
 the absence of life in modern heathenism to renovate and raise 
 np man, and the presence and power of it in the Gospel, are strik- 
 ingly illustrated in the veritable records of Christian missions. 
 '' Why do you believe in the Divine origin of Cluistianity ?" said an 
 officer of a 13 ritish ship to some converted islanders of the South Sea. 
 "We look," replied one of them, " at the power with which it has 
 been attended in effecting the entire overthrow of idolatry among 
 us ; and v/hich, we believe, no human means could have induced 
 us to abandon."! If, over against all this, men will set the cor- 
 ruptions, which have existed in the presence of Christianity, and 
 assert that the moral pollution within the pale of the church has 
 not been less than within the province of heathenism, we reply, 
 in the words of Tholuck, that, "The question is not, in what tlie 
 Christian, who is merely baptized with water, is better than the 
 heathen, but the one who is baptized with the Spirit and with fire. 
 .... Yain would be the task of him who would prove, that the 
 mass of weeds which have luxuriated within the pale of the Chris- 
 tian church from the beginning, might h.ave sprung from the root 
 of the Spirit of Christ."! It can be shown that the Divine life has 
 been wanting wherever a native or baptized heathenism prevails, 
 but it cannot be shown that a spiritual deadness has been preva- 
 lent where the Gospel, in its purity and simplicity, has been be- 
 lieved and obeyed. This of itself is a strong presumptive j)roof 
 that a Divine influence accompanies, in a greater or less degi-ee, 
 the truths of Christianity among men. 
 
 * Maclauriu's Works, p. 78 (Collias's Edition). 
 
 + The Bible not of 'SXa.n. By Dr. Spring, p. 160. 
 
 t Nature and JMoral Influence of Heathenism, pp. 6, 7. 
 
 K 2 
 
13:i 
 
 spiritualism; ok, the dental 
 
 The second fact, to wliicli wo appeal, is, tliat where Christianity 
 is exhibited, stripped of all its grand distinctive peculiarities as a 
 system of atonement and spiritual regeneration, and reduced to a 
 kind of religious pliilosophy, it is seen to he destitute of life and 
 morally impotent to regenerate men. It is " Christianity in the 
 frigid zone." It contains no elements of trutli fitted to arouse the 
 conscience of the ungodly, or to interest the heart of the virtuous. 
 In so far as doctrinal trutli is concerned, it is negative ratlier than 
 positive ; and Christianity in its hands, having dwindled down to 
 little more than a code of ethics, is supplied with no power to 
 counteract the stubborn principle of depravity, and to infuse a 
 holy, heavenly life into the soul. Having shorn the Gospel of its 
 mysteries, it has, in a great measure, deprived it of its strength, 
 and left it to move a cold, meagre, uninfluential thing among men. 
 Let it be carried, accordingly, into the lanes and hovels of our 
 cities where ignorance and vice hold their ancient reign ; or let it, 
 if it has the zeal, cross the seas and be brought to bear on the 
 malignant and inveterate fonns of heathenism; — and it is alike 
 powerless in reclaiming the vicious, and in turning men from idols, 
 to sei-ve the living and true God. It is by their fruits that we 
 are to judge of systems as well as of men. And may it not be 
 asked, (without breach of charity,) is the power of godliness mani- 
 fested, does a lofty, unearthly piety prevail, are the duties of re- 
 ligion generally attended to, do works of faith and labours of love 
 begin and progress, do real conversions to God and a radical re- 
 formation of heart and life take place, under a system of religious 
 teaching that expunges from its creed the doctrines of atonement 
 and Divine influence? Is thei-e not rather a great congeniality of 
 sj)irit between this system of an impoverished Christianity, and 
 the scepticism and indifference of men who wish to retain an out- 
 ward form of religion, while destitute of its inner life ? Dr. Priestley 
 honestly acloiowledged that infidelity and unitarianism were not 
 very far from each other. The little state of Geneva, under the 
 predominance of such principles — the progress of which afforded 
 such delight to D'Alembert and Yoltaire — was characterized by 
 its depravity, its neglect of public and domestic religion, and the 
 dissoluteness of its manners in general. And though the system, 
 in the hands of some of its chiefs, has recently begun to assume a 
 more spiritual aspect, and "to represent ihepj-ogressofmanintheG- 
 logrj," it is not the spiritualism of the revelation that has come 
 from above, but that of the idealistic philosophy ; and, being as des- 
 titute as ever of the great distinctive elements of the Gospel, it is 
 as ineiTectual to make men holy and hai^py. But it is of little con- 
 sequence what shape systems may assume, or what name tbeii' 
 abettors may take, — go forth as they may, avowing themselves to 
 be religious teachers, so long as they have the corruptions of the 
 heart to contend with, they will be seen to be visionary and power- 
 
OF THE BIBLE BEDEMPTION. 133 
 
 less, and will leave the race, as similar systems have left it, de- 
 praved and unrenewed, because they have not the Spirit. And 
 this we take to be another presumptive proof of the reality and 
 reasonableness of the doctrine of Divine influence. 
 
 The third fact, to which we appeal, is, that wherever the Gospel 
 has been influential in working a radical change on masses of 
 men, or in adorning the individual character with the beauties of 
 holiness, strong faith in the doctrine of Divine influence has 
 existed in the minds of its teachers and disciples. It was so in 
 the beginning of the Gospel age. The whole machinery of means 
 had been completed, the atonement had been finished, the apostles 
 had been chosen and instructed, the Lord had risen from the 
 grave and ascended up on high, — but life in the wheels w^as 
 wanting, and no remarkable success followed tlie movements of 
 the moral machinery, till a supernatural influence came down 
 from heaven. The first teachers of Christianity waited in expecta- 
 tion of such an influence. It descended, according to the promise 
 of their Lord, and they had power in converting, sanctifying, 
 and saving men. Paul and his fellow-labourers never fail to 
 acknowledge, in any distinguished success that attended their 
 preaching, the presence and power of the Spirit of God. And a 
 similar devout recognition of the regenerating Spirit, has been 
 made, in every succeeding epoch of revival and missionary achiev- 
 ment. It was so at the Eeformation when the Gospel trumpet 
 sounded anew and awoke the nations. It was so in the times of 
 the good and brave Puritans, men of whom the world was not 
 worthy, and who were instrumental in bringing about an age of 
 strong faith and reviving earnestness. It was so in the age of 
 Whitfield, and Wesley, and liomaine, men born to summon the 
 dead to life ; and quicken again the things that were ready to 
 die. It has been so in the brilliant successes that have crowned 
 modern missions, and in the times of refreshing that have ever 
 and anon come upon the church of God. The most honoured 
 ■nstruments in advancing the world's i-egeneration have been 
 persons who had firm faith m the doctrine of the regenerating 
 mfiuences of the Holy Spirit. And a like testimony is obtained, 
 on perusing the memoirs, or in mingling in the society of eminent 
 private Christians. The choicest spirits of our race, whether in 
 the public or retii*ed walks of life, whether standing forth before 
 the world and battling with its vices and errors, or shedding 
 noiselessly a hallowed influence in the domestic circle, have been 
 men who looked up to God for the high life of the soul, and for 
 success to their benignant labours. 
 
 This doctrine has often been stigmatized as chimerical and 
 visionary. But such epithets ai'e misapplied, unless they are 
 kept to brand projects and systems which count on the world's 
 regeneration while unaccompanied with a power that can overcome 
 
loi SillllTUALlSM ; OR, THE BEXIAL 
 
 the world's depravity. "Tlieii- vrork," says John Foster,-:' "is 
 before them ; the scene of moral disorder presents to tliem the 
 plagues which they are to stop, the mountain which they are to 
 remove^ the torrent which they are to divert, the desert which 
 they are to clothe in verdure and bloom. Let them make their 
 experiment, and add each his page to the humiliating records in 
 which experience contemns the folly of elated imagination." The 
 rorld's regeneration, meanv/hile, goes oil And it must go on, 
 r,'ith the same system of moral means, and accompanied by the 
 same heavenly energy, (though it may be with greater potency,) 
 as it has proceeded hitherto, until the glorious consummation shall 
 have come, when voices in heaven will be heard saying, " the 
 .kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of oar Lord 
 xnd of his Christ." 
 
 Gth. The charge of gloominess vrhich opponents bring against 
 the doctrines of redemption, is unfounded. Some men are inces- 
 santly speaking of these doctrines as if they tended to hang the 
 world in mourning, and to repress every genial impulse of the 
 soul. They taunt us, in no measured terms, with the " dark and 
 horrible creed of depravity," as if this article were a shade darker 
 in the Gospel than in the book of nature. The hideous thing has 
 its origin in the world, not in the Scripture, and it is dark in the 
 one just because it is dark in the other. They taunt us v,dth the 
 doctrine of sacrifice and atonement as if it clothed the Divine 
 Being with the most unamiable attributes. But we repel the 
 taunt as a gross misrepresentation, and maintain the atonement 
 of the Gospel to be the most illustrious manifestation of Hun who 
 is at once inflexibly just, immaculately holy, and inconceivably 
 kind. They taunt us with the doctrine of Divine influence as 
 implying that man is unequal to his duties and destiny, as inter- 
 fering vv-ith his moral freedom, and tending to unnerve all his 
 euci-gies. But we reply that man's moral impotency is a fact 
 that lies within the range of observation and expeiience, that 
 Divine influences no more necessarily interfere with his moral 
 fi-eedom than other external influences, and that the doctrine, 
 scripturally understood, instead of unnerving, rouses and quickens 
 the energies with which man has been endowed. And not only 
 do the docti-ines of redemption, abstractly considered, falsify the 
 charge under consideration ; but the I'act is undeniable, that per- 
 sons in eveiy age who have yielded themselves up to the influence 
 of these doctrines have generally been the best and happiest of 
 men The tree is known by its fruits. In rebutting the charge 
 of gloominess, then, we appeal to palpable testimony. The power 
 and character of principles are especially manifested in circum- 
 stances of fierce opposition and severe trial. In such circumstances 
 
 * Fofiter's Essays, p. 173. 
 
OF THE BIBLE REDEMPTION. ]3j 
 
 Vt'ere the early Christians placed, men who were of one heart and 
 . of one soul in reference to the doctrines of redemption, and to 
 them we appeal for evidence of their power to elevate man ahovo 
 his depraved condition, and to assimilate him to the holiness and 
 happiness of heaven. They gladly received the word — the word 
 about the person and work of Him who had suffered and died tlie 
 Just One in the room of the unjust, — they continued daily with 
 one accord in the temple, and did eat their meat with gladness and 
 singleness of heart; they departed from the councils, whither they 
 had been summoned, rejoicing that they were counted wortl^y to 
 suffer for Christ ; in the prisons into which they had been cast, 
 they prayed at midnight and sung praises to tlie God of heaven ; 
 and, of the generality of primitive believers, Peter could say, vvhen 
 speaking of their Lord, "whom having not seen ye love, in whom, 
 though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy un- 
 speakable and fiill of glory." Paul was no dreaming visionary, no 
 weak enthusiast, but a man of towering intellect and acute po^ver3 
 of reasoning, and yet who ever grasped these doctrines more firmly, 
 and what a well of joy sprung up within him under their influence, 
 " I would to God," said he to king Agrippa, " that not only thou, 
 but also all that hear me this day, v.-ere both almost, and altogether, 
 such as I am, except these bonds." 
 
 There have been, and may be, many melancholy Christians, 
 but, passing over the fact that all the melancholy in the world is 
 not to be found within the pale of the Church, it requires little 
 philosophy to perceive that that melancholy is no part of their 
 Christianity. It may be resolved into a natural gloomy tempera- 
 ment, into weak faith, into partial views of divine truth, or into a 
 want of devotedness in the life ; but the Scripture says, a.nd the 
 cross says, ' it is not in me.' Solemnity is not to be confounded 
 with gloom ; seriousness and joy a,re quite compatible.. Hume, 
 sporting on his death-bed, was liker a fool than a philosopher. 
 The world in which we dwell is fitted to make men grave and 
 thoughtful. But, it may be imhesitatingly affirmed, that the 
 believers m the atonement are not less sensible to the grand and 
 beautiful in nature, and not less capable of appropriating to 
 themselves tlie good that is to be found in the world, than any 
 other class of men. Yea, we go beyond this, in asserting that the 
 truth as it is in Jesus is better fitted than any other to expand 
 every intellectual power and to purify and strengthen every moral 
 feeling, and that, in the view of the mind in whom it dwells, 
 creation is the more radiant and lovely, and God, even our own 
 God, " sits enthroned on the riches of the universe." The recorded 
 experience of Jonathan Edv^'ards has, in some degree, been the 
 experience of many, who, being originally endowed with sus- 
 ceptibilities to receive impressions from external nature, have had 
 the eyes of their understanding enlightened at the foot of the cross 
 
130 INDIFFERENTISM : OR, THE DENIAL 
 
 But we appeal specially to it as an illustration of a mind, second 
 to none in acuteness and vigour, holding with a strong faith the 
 doctrines of redemption in what some men count all their 
 repulsiveness, and yet sunning himself, as it Avere, amid the light 
 and beauty of God's world. "The aj)pearance of every thing," 
 says he, in speaking of the influence produced on his mind- by the 
 clearer views which he had obtained of the work of Christ, " the 
 appearance of eveiything was altered; there seemed to be, as it 
 were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost 
 every thing. God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity, and love, 
 seemed to appear in every thing; in the sun, moon, and stars, in 
 the clouds, and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, and trees; in the 
 water, and all natiu-e ; which used greatly to fix my mind. I often 
 used to sit and view the moon for along time, and in the day spent 
 much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet 
 glory of God in these things ; in the mean time singing forth, with 
 a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Eedeemer." 
 
 "' He looks abroad into the varied field 
 Of nature, and, though poor perhaps, compared 
 With those whose mansions glitter in his sight, 
 Calls the delightful scenery all his own. 
 His are the mountains, and the valleys his, 
 And the resplendent rivers. His to enjoy 
 With a propriety that none can feel, 
 But who, with filial confidence inspired, 
 Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye. 
 And smiling say— My Father made them all:" 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 THE DENIAL OF MANS UESrONSIBILITY ; OR, IXDIFFEKENTISM. 
 
 A diluted kind of scepticism— Not necessarily implying open hostility to the 
 generally-received body of truth— A weakened sense of responsibility, or an 
 actual denial of it, lies at the bottom of indifi"erentism— Indiffereutism on the 
 Continent— Remarks of Dr. Krummacher— Continental Churches — Character- 
 izes much of our o\\ti literature — Man's responsibility for his dispositions, 
 opinions, and conduct, maintained:— A matter of consciousness — Rests on the 
 fact of man's free agency — Measured by ability and privilege — Remains inde- 
 structible amid all objections from original temperament and external influences 
 — Phrenology— Case of Alexander the Sixth — Men individually, and societies 
 in general, advance morally, in proportion as the sense of responsibility is high. 
 
 In this case, no hostile attitude to the generally-received body of 
 truth may be taken. The doctrines respecting the Divine exist- 
 ence, personality, providential government, and the Bible redemp- 
 tion, may theoretically be admitted, but there is a want of stern 
 fidelity to these doctrines. The truth is not, like a fortress, stoutly 
 assailed and bravely defended. But it happens, either that those 
 who are without pass by and turn toward it a look of indiflerence ; 
 or that some of its professed guardians would shake hands alike 
 
OF man's eespomsibility. 137 
 
 with friends and foes, persuade them that their variance is a mere 
 trifle, and receive the one as well as the other within the citadel. 
 The man does not go forth before us fully equipped and boldly- 
 defying the armies of the living God, but he shouts for a truce, al- 
 leges that mere matters of opinion are not worth contending for, 
 and that a man is no more responsible for his belief than he is 
 for the colour of his skin or the height of his stature. This diluted 
 kind of scepticism is large in its toleration. Not attaching much 
 importance to any kind of religious belief, it is indulgent towards 
 aU. It cares not to assail by argument, or otherwise, this creed 
 or that; and it cares as little about defending what it may have 
 adopted as its own. It says, leave me alone to the indulgence of 
 my opinion, and I will leave you to the indulgence of yours. Dif- 
 ferent forms of religious belief are much the same in itsestimation, 
 as the difterent shaped or different coloured coats v>diicli men wear. 
 And it is disposed to think that the one sits with as little respon- 
 sibility on the conscience as the other does on the back. It will 
 stand up resolutely for a political creed, and unsparingly denounce 
 its opposite ; it will have its favourite theory in science, and argue 
 keenly for it against every other; it will be engrossed with its land 
 or merchandise, and sufler nothing to interfere with the most in- 
 tense devotion thereto. Bat it has no zeal to spend on religious 
 opinions, it has no article in theology so dear as to muster up an 
 argument in its defence, and it will suffer itself to be engrossed 
 with any thing or every thing rather than with the system of truth 
 which it professes to believe. It is indifferent itself toward religion, 
 and it cares little what quiet shape it may assume in others. 
 Gibbon, speaking of the paganism of ancient Eome, says, " the 
 various modes of worship which prevailed in the Eoman world 
 Vv^ere all considered by the people as equally true, by the pliiloso- 
 })her as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful." 
 The comment of some one is, " after eighteen centuries of the 
 Gospel, yye seem imhappily to be coming back to the same point." 
 A very weakened sense of responsibility, or an actual denial of 
 it, lies at the bottom of that indifferentism which is so extensively 
 prevalent in the present age. On the Continent, especially in 
 Germany and France, not only are opinions destructive of the 
 sense of responsibility widely diffused among the masses, but in 
 the case of vast multitudes, who would not w^ish to be counted 
 the foes of Christianity, there is an utter absence of anything like 
 tlie religious obligation of belief. This state of matters — the 
 showing a kind of civil deference to religion while utterly heedless 
 of the obligation which rests upon the individual conscience in 
 reference to religion itself — exists among all classes fi-om the 
 liigher ranges to the low levels of society. "We find especially," 
 savs Dr. Krummacher, speaking of Germany, " an indifference to 
 all that is called religion in that mass of people with whom care 
 
138 I^•DIF^EPvE^•TISM ; or., thk l>enial 
 
 and anxiety for daily bread exists. In this so-called proletariat, 
 particularly in large towns, this indifference often, borders on 
 animal stnpidity ; the material wants fill the whole soul. . . . 
 Tlie number of the indifferent are, however, unhappily not less 
 in the circles of the well-instructed, and particularly among Stato 
 functionaries. Besides that time which is necessary for the fulfil- 
 ment of their official duties, they have but barely sufficient left for 
 the more trivial dissipations which they find in literary and poli- 
 tical lectures, and in social intercourse. In regard to all higher 
 interests, Pilate's question reigns — 'What is truth?' They 
 believe that they are able to infer from the religious controversy, 
 by which they are on all sides surrounded, that in the region of 
 supernatural things nothing certain is to be learned. They there- 
 fore consider it wiser not to enter upon their consideration, and 
 passively to await what is once to be revealed as truth or as a 
 lovely dream.""< This picture is too true a description of other 
 parts of Europe besides Germany. It is obvious that such a state 
 of tliLngs can only consist with an avowed re'jection or with the 
 very faintest recognition of the principle that man is responsible 
 for his religious belief. 
 
 Indifferentism as to the real import of evangelical truth — the 
 result, it may be, of a,n indiscriminate recognition of widely-dif- 
 fering cliurches by the political powers — is sadly prevalent in 
 some of the continental religious bodies at the present day. It is 
 no uncommon thing, to find men of all shades of opinion, fi-om 
 simple deism up to 'the dry skeleton of an orthodox creed, blended 
 together as parts of the same professedly Christian church. Eecent 
 events have shown an unwillingness, on the x;)art of the ecclesias- 
 tical authorities, to moot the subject of a confession grounded in 
 its details on the law and the testimony, and to insist on a per- 
 sonal adherence to the articles of evangelism as an indispensable 
 condition of membership. The liking of some of the continental 
 Protestant chiu'ches for a coat of many colours has long been 
 evinced ; and the same ecclesiastical robe is made to cover the 
 man whose Christianity consists merely in a bare recognition of 
 the New Testament and a respect for Jesus as a better moral 
 teacher than Socrates, and the man who professedly holds the 
 divinity of Christ, the atonement, and the regenerating influence 
 of the Spirit. This state of things indicates an enfeebled sense of 
 responsibility, or the existence, somewhere, of the notion that 
 religious belief is not a matter of personal obligation for which wo 
 are "accountable to God. It was against such indifferentism that 
 Ardnt, Sponer, Bengel, Franke, and others, lifted up _ their 
 voice in the two preceding centuries. And on the side of a spiritual 
 Christianity, of a sound doctrinal faith, and man's responsibility 
 
 * The Religious Condition of Christendom (1852), p. 423. 
 
OF man's responsibility. ISD 
 
 for tlie same, have their ilkistrioiis successors, Tlioluck, Kengsten- 
 berg, Mtiller, Neander, D'Aubigne, Monod, and others, fought 
 Taliantly in our own times. 
 
 This vague sort of infidelity, sometimes associated with a pro- 
 fessed respect for Clnist and the Scriptures, and, at other times, 
 allied with unbelief in some of its bolder forms, is often to be met 
 with in the workshops, and in the higher circles of our own land. 
 It has not lacked advocacy on the part of some vvdiose position and 
 talents give them influence. It is stated, or implied, in much of 
 ciu- current popular literature, that a man's creed does not depend 
 upon himself This dogma pervades the writings of Mr. Emerson,^?: 
 Napoleon, one of his " representative men," of whom he tells 
 " horiible anecdotes," must not, in his view, "be set down as cruel; 
 but only as one who knew no impediment to his will." He de- 
 picts him as an " exorbitant egotist, who narrovred, impoverished, 
 and absorbed the power and existence of those who served him ;" 
 and concludes by saying, " it was not Bonaparte's fault " He thus 
 condemns and acquits in the same breath, sends forth from the same 
 fountain sweet water and bitter. Mr. Theodore Parker makes each 
 form of religion that has figured in the history of the world, "na- 
 tural and indispensable." "It could not have been but as it was." 
 And, therefore, he fi.nds trutli, or the " absolute religion," in all forms; 
 " all tending towards one great and beautiful end."f Of course, 
 the idea of the religious obligation of belief resting upon the indi- 
 vidual conscience, is here quite out of question. My. F. W. 
 Newman, v/ho is so fond of parting off things that most men 
 connect together, vv^ould persuade us that tliere may be a true faith 
 without a true belief, as if the emotional part of our nature was 
 independent of the intellectual. " Relief," says he, " is one thing, 
 and faith another." And he complains of those who, on religious 
 gi'ounds, are alienated from him because he has adopted "intel- 
 lectual conclusions" different from theirs — "the difference between 
 them and him" turning merely " on questions of learning, history, 
 criticism, and abstract thought."; The philosophy is as bad here 
 as the theology. In the view of common sense and Scripture, a 
 living faith is as the doctrine believed. But Mr. Newman, in 
 common with Mr. Parker and others, can lay down his offensive 
 weapons when he wills, and take up a position on the low ground 
 of indifference as to religious belief. Then, creeds become matters 
 of mere jnoonshine, and responsibility is regaixled as a fiction 
 invented by priests. This is part of the bad theology of Mr. 
 Bailey's " Festus," as we formerly noticed. The hero of the poem 
 is made to say : — 
 
 " Yet ment oi- drmerit none I see 
 In nature, liuman or mateiii.l, 
 
 * Emerson's Representatiye Men, pp. 114, 127. 
 + Pavlcers Discourse, p. 81. » Phases of Faith Preface. 
 
I-IO indiffeeentism; oe, the denial 
 
 In passions oi- affections goocl or bad, 
 
 We only know tliat God's best purposes 
 
 Are oftenest brought about by dreadest si:;9. 
 
 Is thunder evi', or is dew divine ? 
 
 Does virtue lie in sunshine, sin in stern-. ? 
 
 Is not each natural, each nee.lful, best ?"* 
 
 Aiicl, to come down to the lower levels of oitr literature, it is r^ii 
 avowed principle of the Owen or Holyoake school, that a man 
 who does ^vl•ong is not to be blamed but pitied; and, if restraint 
 be necessary, he must be restrained like a wild bull merely that 
 society may be uninjured. Man is thus degraded, in the attempt 
 to set him free from the Divine moral government. And these 
 philosophers are every day acting an alDSurdity, in speaking of 
 *' A^Tong" or " bad" actions; since in their view, men cannot help 
 performing them, and these actions are but parts of one liEU'- 
 monious whole. 
 
 But, to rise up in the scale, a greater name than any yet men- 
 tioned has, in an " inaugural discourse," lent his authority to the 
 l^ernicious doctrine of non-responsibility for belief. Many of our 
 ingenuous academic youth were startled, some years ago, on hear- 
 ing it given forth, with something like oracular authority, from 
 the halls of science, as a great truth, that man has no control 
 over his belief, that he is no more responsible for his opinions, 
 than he is for his colour or his height, and that an infidel or an 
 atheist is to be pitied but not blamed. This, we are persuaded, is a 
 piece of flimsy sophistry, which no man durst utter, and w^hich 
 would not be listened to for a moment, in connection with any 
 other subject but that of religion. It would be condemned in the 
 senate and at the bar, it would be drowned in the tumult of the 
 exchange and the market place. Common sense, and a regard to 
 worldly interests, would rise up and hoot down the traitor. Un- 
 fortunately, however, in the province of religion, the natural indis- 
 position of the mind to things unseen and spiritual, allies itself 
 with the pleadings of the sophist, and receives his doctrine of 
 in-esponsibility with something like flattering unction. Nothing 
 more tlian this is requisite, to undermine the foundation of 
 all religious belief and morals, to let open the floodgates of im- 
 morality, and to make the restraints of religion like the brittle 
 flax or the yielding sand. In opposition to such latitudinarianisra, 
 we maintain that man is responsible for the dispositions which he 
 cherishes, for the opinions v>dnch he holds and avows, and for his 
 habitual conduct. This is going the whole length of Scripture, 
 but no farther, which affirms that every one of us must give an 
 account of himself unto God. And this meets witli a response 
 from amid the elements of man's moral nature, which sets its seal 
 that the thing is true. 
 
 * Bailey's Festus, r- 40. 
 
OF man"s responsibility. 141 
 
 1. Our first remark, tljcn, on this subject, is, that res2')onslhilily 
 is a matter of consciousness. A sense of moral responsibiiity 
 naturally springs up in the mind of man. It does not depend 
 upon processes of reasoning, nor does it arise originally out of 
 the truths of revelation. 13ut it is itself a fundamental truth in 
 moral science, a primary principle of our mental and moral 
 constitution. Like the doctrine in physics of the existence of a 
 material world, or that in inetaphysics of the fi'ee agency of man, 
 it is not to be brought to the bar of reason, but it is a simple 
 question of fact to be determined by observation and experience. 
 Eevelation takes it for granted, and reasons and exhorts upon it. 
 And we often find it healthy and vigorous in meli whose reason- 
 ing powers are feeble and little exercised. Every man knows and 
 feels that he is a moral agent, that he is placed under a system of 
 government which takes cognizance of right and wrong, and that 
 he is accountable for his dispositions and conduct to his fellows 
 here, and to the Supreme Being hereai'ter. We may be told that 
 travellers have described savage nations so degraded and brutahzed, 
 as to have no such consciousness as that of which we speak. We 
 may be pointed to individuals living and moving amid civilized 
 society, so besotted and sunken in vice as apparently never to be 
 disturbed with the idea that they are the subjects of invisible 
 government and accountable to "God. Yea, we may be directed 
 to those few philosophers who stood out from the crowd in per- 
 suading themselves, and in endeavouring to persuade others, that 
 the notion of moral responsibility is a mere chimera invented by 
 priests and fanatics for friglitening and enslaving men. And we 
 may be asked, how, in the face of all these exceptions, we can 
 maintain that the consciousness of responsibility belongs to all 
 mankind? Why, suppose that a man with a jaundiced eye were 
 to liold that the fleecy clouds which float over the face of the sky, 
 or the pure snow that covers the sides of the hills, or tl:ie white 
 paper on which he looks, were yellow. AYhat would that prove? 
 Not that tliese objects, which everybody else believed to be white 
 were of a different colour ; not that men's eyes were organs which 
 in general conveyed false impressions, but that the eyes of the 
 individual himself were diseased. We would never thinJc of going 
 among savage nations which have become brutalized by a long 
 course of sensuality and ferocity ; we would never appeal to this 
 individual or that individual, who, by vicious indulgences, has 
 sunk himself below the level of the brutes; nor would we sit at 
 the feet of sceptical philosophers, in order to obtain any very 
 strong proofs of the universality and force of those moral convic- 
 tions which we assert to be fundamental principles in man's 
 nature. But we would make our appeal to minds Avhere con- 
 science sits invested with some authority, and where she is listened 
 to vvith some degree of deference; where the moral sense, so to 
 
142 ixdifferentism; or the denial 
 
 speak, is not droTvned in sensuality, nor bemldered and led astray 
 by a false philosophy; and, in such minds, we would find that the 
 consciousness of moral responsibility springs up naturally and 
 is strong. We are not disposed, hoviever, to exclude these excep- 
 tions, as they ars called, altogether. We might appeal to these 
 very savage tribes, and amid their bratal degradation, and in their 
 cruel and superstitious rites, discover the rudimental principles of 
 man's moral nature. ^Ye might follow the man whose conscience 
 seemed seared, and whose heart seemed reprobate, whose percep- 
 tions of right and wrong were severely blunted, and who appeared 
 never to be troubled with the idea of responsibility, — we might 
 follow him into* his retirement; and, in his hours of calm reflec- 
 tion, we would see conscience asserting her supremacy and aveng- 
 ing her vvTongs, the banished idea of responsibility returning in 
 its vividness, and the dread of a Supreme and Omniscient Being 
 forcing itself upon the soul. We might appeal to the sophist him- 
 self, and, notwithstanding all the refinements of liis false philoso- 
 phy, we would see that at times he could no more divest iiimself 
 of his moral nature, than he could of his belief in matter and a 
 materieil world, when he walked the streets, jostled the crowd, or 
 came in contact with the pillars that stood by the way. Men are 
 responsible, they know it and feel it, and it is only by a long-con- 
 tinued process of vicious indulgences, or by the refinement of an 
 imreasonable philosophy, that their sense of accoiuitability is 
 deadened or subdued. 
 
 Now we affirm that men are responsible for the dispositions 
 which they cherish, and that this is a matter of consciousness. 
 Look at that man who is ever and anon hurried into scrapes and 
 calamities by a j)i'oud, ambitious, and hateful temper. And you 
 will see that, when the storm of passion has passed and reflection 
 has succeeded to fury, the individual blames himself, and suffers 
 keenly in his ovm bosom. His ov»'n unsophisticated mind never 
 tells him that over his temper he had no control, that it was as 
 purely the result of physical causes as the swoln river tliat chafes 
 and foams in its bed, or as the ebbings and Sowings of the sea. 
 No. The consciousness of responsibility rises naturally on his 
 bosom, and, under its influence, he bewails liis folly and condemns 
 liimseh". AVe affirm, too, that men are responsible for their 
 opinions, and that this also is a matter of consciousness. Men's 
 opinions are generally very much influenced by their dispositions, 
 their belief on most subjects is in a great measure controlled by 
 their inclination. And of this every man is conscious. We feel 
 that we cannot believe otherwise than that two and two make 
 four. And were an individual, without jesting, stoutly to main- 
 tain that two and two make five, we would set him down for an 
 idiot, and pity — not blame — liim for the aben-ations of his un- 
 derstanding. But we know that v.-e may, if we will, reject or 
 
OF MAN S RESPONSIBILITY. 1-13 
 
 receive this and the other moral truth; and we not merely pity, 
 but blame the man, who, in spite of the strongest and clearest 
 eyidence, refuses to believe. Now, it may be asked, how is this 
 fact to be accounted for, — a fact in the natural history of man — • 
 that men feel they can embrace or reject this opinion or that 
 opinion if they will, and that they commend or condemn oth.ers for 
 embracing or rejecting it, except on the principle that God has 
 made man a moral and responsible agent, and that man himself is 
 conscious of it? " His creed may be his crime ; and surely none 
 ought to see this more clearly than the writers who deny it ; for 
 why their eternal invectives against ' doginas,' — and especially the 
 tolerably universal dogma that men are responsible for the forma- 
 tion of their opinions, — except upon the supposition that raen are 
 responsible for framing and maintaining them? If they are not, 
 men should be left alone ; if they are, they are to be thought of as 
 ' worse and better' for their ' intellectual creeds.' "•!- "We affu-m, 
 too, that men are responsible for their conduct in general, and that 
 this also is a matter of consciousness. Our conduct is very much 
 the result of our dispositions and opinions. So that, if it be 
 admitted that we are responsible for the one, it must be admitted 
 that we are responsible for the other. But it is not so much with 
 the philosophy of the fact, as with the fact itself, that we have at 
 present to do. There is the feeling of remorse bearing witness to 
 this truth. " Remorse," says Isaac Taylor*, " is man's dread 
 prerogative, and is the natural accompaniment of his constitution 
 as a knowing, voluntary agent, left in trust with his own welfai'e 
 and that of others. Hemorse, if we exclude the notion of re- 
 sponsibility, is an enigma in human nature, never to be ex- 
 plained." 
 
 It will not do to say, as has been said, that these feelings are 
 altogether factitious, that they have been instilled into our minds 
 by our fond mothers who have spoiled us, or by the ministers of 
 religion who, from policy or self-interest, would frighten us ; and 
 that, but for such artificial training, the spendthrift, the sensual- 
 ist, and the criminal, would never shrink from the feai' of a present 
 God, and the anticipation of a future reckoning. For, besides 
 remarking with the author of the " Natural History of Enthusi- 
 asm," that, " nothing can be more unphilosophical than to attri- 
 bute any permanent and miiA'ersally diffused modes of feeling 
 to the influence and interested teaching of some one class of the 
 community," — we ask, how comes it that men Vvho never crossed 
 the thresliold of the sanctuary, and never sat at the feet of the 
 teachers of religion, who have desipsed a good mother's counsels 
 and whose lives have run contrary to the jmrental example, — how 
 comes it that they in their calm moments of reflection, cannot 
 
 * The Eclipso oiFuitli, p. 11-5. + Man Eesponsible, p. 25. 
 
lit INDIi'FERENTlSM ; OR, THE DENIAL 
 
 divest themselves of tlie unwelcome idea of responsibility, of an 
 invisible Power, and of a coming account? It is a fact, then, in 
 the natural history of man, not to be proved by reasoning, but to 
 be decided simply by observation, that the consciousness of re- 
 sponsibility attaches to him. Independent of all external teaching, 
 the conviction is naturally produced in his mind that he has, in 
 a gi*eat measure, a control over his opinions and conduct, and 
 that for these he is accountable here and hereafter. And it is only 
 when he has unmanned himself, as it were, by vicious indulgences, 
 or been led astray by a corrupt philosophy, that he becomes dead 
 to the feeling that he is the subject of moral government and 
 responsible to God. 
 
 2. Om- second remark is, that Responsilnlitu rests on the fact 
 of mans free agency. The ground has been denied. But what 
 has not ? We appeal to every man's conscience and unsophisti- 
 cated sense in proof of it. " It moves for all that," said Galileo, 
 after signing his memorable recantation. And endeavour to per- 
 suade men, as you will, that they are driven on by irresistible 
 Xjhysical causes, they declare in spite of all your reasonings, we 
 are free after all. Now, it is obvious, on the slightest reflection, 
 that our will, and our will only, is the proper object of command ; 
 and that we are no otherwise responsible, or susceptible of moral 
 government, than as we are the subjects of voluntary powers. Man 
 is accountable because he is a free agent. And the dispositions 
 which he habitually cherishes, the opinions which he holds, and 
 the conduct which he pursues, are, in a great measure, under his 
 control, and as he wills them to be. The distinction between 
 moral and natural inability is a sound and useful one. ]Moral 
 inability lies in the want of disposition, inclination, or will, to do 
 that wJiicli a man has natural faculties to perform. Natural in- 
 ability, on the other hand, arises from the want of natural faculties 
 and means to do that which the individual, it may be, would very 
 gladly do. This distinction is before us, when we notice that man is 
 responsible for his dispositions, his belief, and his conduct, in so 
 far as they are the result of his own free agency. 
 
 ]Man is responsible for his dispositions, because the Creator has 
 endowed him with faculties in the right exercise of which he can 
 bring them under his control. We make all reasonable allovrances 
 for original temperament, or peculiarities in the organic structm-e 
 of individuals. These, however, are not altogether beyond the 
 reach of moral culture. On the contrary, it is a chief business in 
 education, to study these peculiarities, to bring proper motives to 
 bear upon them, and tlms, in some measure, gain a mastery over 
 the original temperament. In asserting tliat man can, to a con- 
 sidoi-able extent, make himself master of his dispositions, and that 
 for their state lie is responsible, we do not mean to say that he 
 can, at any given moment, by a direct volition of his uiind, call 
 
 J 
 
OF man's rvESPONSILilLlTY. 115 
 
 forth this emotion or that emotion, this kind of temper or that kind 
 of temper. But what '>\-c mean to say is, that he can, at his wih', 
 attend to those truths or come in contact with tljose ohjects, the 
 natural influence of which is to excite certain emotions, and jior- 
 duce such a disposition of the mind and heart. Take an example 
 in illustration of this principle. Benevolence toward the suffering 
 poor is an excellent disposition of the soul. I may not he able 
 by a direct efibrt of the mind, to call up this emotion at any time 
 or in any place. But I can, if I will, listen to the lionest tale of 
 distress, which the virtuous poor have to tell ; I can, if I will, visit 
 the fatherless and widows in their afBiciions. And thus by a 
 voluntary exercise of my own power, place myself in circumstances 
 that will excite or strengthen compassion and bevevolence towards 
 the wretched. The frequent repetition of this voluntary process 
 of attending to, and impartially examining scenes of distress, 
 results in the production of the man of feeling and of a benevolent 
 disposition. Whereas, in the case of the man who meets every 
 suppliant with a surly look, and refuses to listen to the tale of the 
 stranger, who, like the Levite in tlie parable, coldly and uncon- 
 cernedly passes by the sufferer on the wayside; that callous and 
 unfeeling disposition is forming which is not only proof against 
 compassion, but which even delights in producing scenes of woe. 
 It is just, in like manner, with the devout emotions. One man 
 moves day after day amid the glories of earth and sky, without 
 a pious sentiment or feeling toward Him who stretched out the 
 heavens like a curtain and clothed the grass of the field, because 
 he does not attend to them as manifestations of the wisdom and 
 goodness of God. Another individual, of no gi-eater strength of 
 intellect it may be, directs his attention to these evidences of the 
 cliaracter and presence of the Divinity, habitually meditates on 
 thAn, and feels that — 
 
 " these declaro 
 God's goodness beyoud thought, and power divine." 
 
 In these and similar cases, men are responsible for tlio moral 
 state of the heart, because they have the power of attending to 
 those truths and objects which are fitted to produce such impres- 
 sions on the soul. V\'e say to the ferocious man, to the avaricious 
 man, to the sensualist, and the revengeful, and to the man all 
 v/hose mental tendencies are away from the absolute good, that 
 for these dispositions you are responsible, because you voluntarily 
 sought and familiarized your minds with those objects and scenes 
 that produced and strengthened them, and turned away from 
 those other objects and scenes that would liave counteracted them, 
 and produced dispositions of a different and nobler kind. It is 
 thus that a man is brought in responsible for those ungodly emo- 
 tions and dispositions, v;hich, having grown with his growth, and 
 strengthened with his strength, liave carried him captive, and hold 
 
 L 
 
146 INDIFFERENTISM ; OR, THE DENIAL 
 
 iiim in fetters wliicli nothing but a mighty spiritual influence can 
 rend asunder. 
 
 It is on the very same principle, that vre hold man to be respon- 
 sible for his belief. Our opinions, in so far as they are influenced 
 by our dispositions, our beliefs in so far as they are controlled by 
 oiu' inclination, are legitimate subjects of responsibility. Inclina- 
 tion has nothing v.-hatever to do in believing that two and two 
 make four, or tliat the three angles of a triangle are equal to two 
 right angles. A man in his senses could not believe otherwise. 
 But inclination has much to do in receiving or rejecting moral and 
 religious truth. All enlightened belief depends u])on evidence, 
 the effect of the clearest and strongest evidence depends very much 
 on attention, and attention is a mental exercise over which we 
 have a complete control. This being the case, it is very obvious 
 that a man may contract deep moral guilt, by neglecting to attend 
 to evidence in support of a subject of intrinsic magnitude and 
 bearing on man's highest interests. The case of the Jewish people 
 is in point. When Jesus of Nazareth appeared among them, He 
 claimed to be the Son of God and the Messiah of promise. In 
 support of these claims. He openly w^rought miracles of surpassing 
 grandeur and benevolence. He did not call on them to believe on 
 the ground of his own bare assertions, but He j)ointed them to his 
 mighty deeds in proof that He had come from God. He said, if 
 ye believe not me, believe the works. Now, we do not assert that 
 the Jews were under a moral obligation to believe at the very first 
 that Jesus was the Messiah, but we do assert that they were 
 morally bound to attend to tliat clear and strong evidence, to weigh 
 it fairly, and to let it have its full influence on their minds. Those 
 of them that did so, hailed him as the deliverer and consolation 
 of Israel. While the vast majority of them, because his doctrines 
 fnwarted their fondest wishes and frowned on their grovelling 
 expectations, ridiculed his pretensions, ascribed liis v/orks to 
 Batanic agency, and treated Him as the vilest of impostors. That 
 inclination had much to do witli tliis, is evident from the fact that 
 the multitudes, at his first appearing, would, on the ground of his 
 miraculous deeds, have made Him their king; and it was not till 
 they saw his designs to be running counter to their wishes, that 
 they rejected Him and cried out, " crucify him." It was in their 
 refusal honestly and impartially to attend to that evidence, that 
 the Israelitish nation incurred deep moral guilt in the sight of 
 lieaven. 
 
 A messenger from majesty arrives in the condemned cell of some 
 gaol, and presents the doomed criminal with a document containing 
 a fidl and free pardon, to which is afiixed the royal seal. He is 
 sceptical at first as to the truth of the document. But he carefully 
 examines the seal. He is convinced tliat it is the sovei-eign's, and 
 on that evidence he joyfully and gratefully receives the pardon. 
 
Oi man's IIESPONSIBILITY. 147 
 
 The Bible is such a document It claims to be divine. It con- 
 tains important statements ou subjects of vast magnitude. It 
 presents itself to our notice under the highest of all authority. It 
 declares that on its reception or rejection depend our greatest 
 interests in time and eternity. And, in support of all these claims 
 and assertions, it exliibits an amount of evidence which, for weight 
 and clearness, can be produced by no other book in the world. It 
 says, attend to tliat evidence, look at it fairly and impartially. 
 And it dreads not the consequence. ^Ye do not say that a man 
 is morally bound to believe the volume, on the naked assertion 
 that it is divine. But we do say that he is responsible for what- 
 ever opinions he forms in reference to it, be these opinions friendly 
 or hostile. He can, by a voluntary effort, examine the evidence ; 
 he can search the book, he can look at the seals, he can question 
 the witnesses. This he can do, and must do honestly. And, in 
 this intellectual process over which he has a direct control, in this 
 effort of the attention which he has at his will, lies his responsibility 
 for his belief. The very fact that the Book, irrespective altogether 
 of its truthfulness, claims to have come from the throne of the 
 Eternal, the very fact that the subjects of which it treats are of 
 vast moment, the very fact that it presents such a brilliant array 
 of evidence in proof of its divinity, — these place all men, among 
 whom it comes, under a moral obligation to attend to it, and, in 
 the face of the evidence, impartially to form then- opinions re- 
 garding it. One man may refuse to do this, because his mind is 
 habitually so Mstless and indifferent as never to care about having 
 any settled opinions on such subjects. Another man may be so 
 profligate and sensual as, like the beast in his lair, to be unwilling 
 to be disturbed by the approach of the light. While another man, 
 from pride of intellect, or station, or self-sufficiency, may never 
 bend his mind humbly and fairly to consider whether or not the 
 Gospel is the truth of God. Hume, the celebrated infidel, tells 
 us that his readings in the New Testament were but scanty. Vol- 
 taire and Paine betrayed gross ignorance of the Christian system 
 which they thought to banish from the v/orld. But whatever be 
 the specific moral cause that keeps men from attending to the 
 Gospel testimony, or induces them to examine it in a frivolous 
 and prejudicial manner, it is in the attention, over which they 
 have a direct control, that lies their responsibility for their belief. 
 This point being established in reference to dispositions and 
 opinions, nothing need be added to show that the principle holds 
 good in reference to actions. Our conduct, as already said, is 
 very much the result of our opinions and dispositions. I cherish 
 such dispositions and form such ojjinions in reference to my 
 neighbour and the Supreme Being, and I act accordingly. If I 
 have a control over my dispositions and opinions and am respon- 
 sible for them, I have a control over and am responsible for the 
 
 T O 
 
148 INDIFFERENTISM ; OR, THE DENIAL 
 
 actions that proceed from tliem. This is never questioned in tlie 
 sphere of worldly concerns. It is only when you venture witliin 
 the sphere of religion that scepticism is thrown over it. Some 
 men who talk and act rationally enough in their ordinary inter- 
 CGiu'se with the world, would doti' tliat rationality and play the 
 fool, when they touch upon inan's relation to things unseen and 
 eternal. They assail and condenm men of a different political 
 creed from their own for the opinions which they advocate, and the 
 thought never occurs to them that it is folly so to do, hecause 
 over their belief they have no control. But no sooner does the 
 politician become a moral teacher, than, (as in a well-known 
 instance, not, we trust, to be repeated.) he announces it as a great 
 truth which has gone out through all tlie earth, that man has no 
 control over his belief, and that an atheist is to be pitied but not 
 blamed. True philosophy, and man's u-nsophisticated nature, 
 common sense, and revealed religion, tell us tliat we have such a 
 control, and that for our sentiments and conduct we are respon- 
 sible to God. 
 
 3rd. Our third remark is, that responslhillty is to he measured hij 
 abilitij and privilege. Eesponsibility springs, as we have seen, 
 from the structure of the human mind as endowed with faculties, 
 in the exercise of which man can direct his thoughts to a given 
 subject, compare all the facts and considerations bearing upon it, 
 and ttius ai'rive at an honest and impartial decision regarding it. 
 But the measure of responsibility, in the case of particular com- 
 munities or individuals, is to be estimated by such things as the 
 tbllowing ; — the capacity of their understanding, the means and 
 opportunities of information, and the force of evidence. The 
 poor harmless idiot who fancies himself a king, and declares the 
 reigning monarch a usurper ; who talks day after day of raising 
 armies, and marcliing on to London to take possession of the 
 crown ; is never accounted a traitor, tried and condemned as such. 
 The man whose intellect is naturally so imbecile as scarcely to 
 comprehend the ideas of a God, of his own moral relations, and of 
 a future life, occupies a vastly lower positio-n in point of respon- 
 sibility, (if he occupies any position on that ground at all,) than 
 the man whose intellect is naturally sound and vigorous, but 
 who, in reference to moral and religious truth, is a child in under- 
 standing. 
 
 It is, in like manner, with the means and opportunities of in- 
 formation. No one woidd ever say that the Bechuana of the 
 desert, who had lived like his forefathers, remote from civilization, 
 v/ho had never seen the face of a missionaiy, nor heai'd a word 
 aliout the Saviour of mankind, is resjionsible in the same degree 
 as a Briton living in this land of light and liberty where know- 
 ledge runs to and fro and is increased. 
 
 liesponsibility takes its measure, not only from the capacity of 
 
or- man's riESPONSIBILlTY. ll'J 
 
 the understanding, and the means and opportunities of information, 
 but also from the force of evidence. This is strildngly ilhistrated 
 by Paul in the lirst two chapters of his epistle to the liomans, and 
 the inspired illustration accords with uninspired testimonies and 
 man's moral sentiments. Look abroad, then, upon the ancient 
 heathen world, upon the seats of intellectual refinement, Egypt, 
 Greece, and Eome. And what do we witness? Men professing 
 themseh^es to be wise, — claiming to be philosophers, — worshipping 
 images in the shape of men, and birds, and beasts, and creeping 
 things ; debasing and dislionouring God., and debasing and dis- 
 iionouring themselves. But some will say, they were not respou/ 
 sible for this; over their dispositions, their opinions, and their 
 conduct in this matter, they had no control. They were to bo 
 pitied, not blamed; no more to be blamed than for the colour of 
 then- skin or the height of their stature. Yes, says Paul, they 
 were to be blamed, tliey were responsible in this matter, they 
 wei-e guilty in cherishing tliese vile affections, in holding these 
 erroneous opinions, and in manifesting such clegTading conduct. 
 They had evidence which, if they had duly attended to it, woidd 
 have led them to feel, to think, and to act differently. There was 
 a sufficiency of evidence in the works of creation, in the shining 
 Jieavens above them, and in the fruitful earth around them, to 
 have convinced them that one Almighty, and all-perfect Beiog 
 had made and presides over the whole. It is not the want of 
 evidence, but the want of relish for the truth about the Creator, 
 that accounts for their idolatrous opinions and practices. "I'jr 
 the invisible things of liim from the creation of the world are 
 clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even 
 his eternal power and godhead; so that they are without excuse "* 
 Tlie heathen, then, were responsible; and that responsibility 
 took its measure from the means of information, and the force of 
 evidence, whicli they possessed. But the measure of oin* respon- 
 sibility is vastly greater than theirs. We walk amid a clearer 
 light than what is emitted from these resplendent heavens, we hear 
 louder, fuller and more impressive voices than any which proceed 
 from the hills and the valleys, the woods and the waters. The 
 revelation which hf?s come to us direct from the throne of the 
 Eternal, containing, as it does, ample information on subjects 
 of supreme importance, — information which none of the wisest of 
 the heathen could have evoked from the material heavens and 
 earth, — this places us on a ground of responsibility higher far 
 than that occupied by tlie most gifted sage of the Grecian schools, 
 who had no other light but tlie glimmering light of nature. This 
 is what the apostle means when he says, "as many as have sinned 
 without law, (that is, without a special revelation of the divine 
 
 * IJomaD? i. 20. 
 
150 iNDirfEr.EXTis:.!; on, the denial 
 
 %yill,) sliall also be condemned Avitliout law (or hj a diffi'rcnt 
 standard) : and as many as have sinned in the law sliall be judged 
 by the law."-!' All who, without a diriue revelation, have erred 
 from the truth and done wrong, will be condemned by the evi- 
 dence afforded by tlie light of nature ; and all who have sinned 
 under the revelation of God's will shall be judged by that revela- 
 tion. Eeason and Scripture thus unite their testimonies, in estab- 
 lishing the position that responsibility is in proportion to the 
 means of information and the weight and clearness of evidence. 
 
 An indi\'idual may be very unwilling to avail liimself of these 
 means, and to look calmly and impartially at that evidence ; but 
 tliis indifference only adds to his guilt, and does not, in the least, 
 lessen the measure of his responsibility. Hesponsibility takes its 
 measure not from an individual's inclination, but from an in- 
 dividual's capacity of understanding, his opportunity of arriving 
 at the truth, and tlie sufficiency of evidence which he enjoys. 
 Were an individual to hold that responsibility takes its measure 
 from the inclination, or what is called moral ability, he Avould be 
 landed in the very strange position that a man is under an obliga- 
 tion only to do that which he is inclined to do. In other words, 
 ho would tear up responsibility, root and fibre, and cast it to the 
 winds. Suppose that, in reference to some disturbed district, a 
 royal proclamation were issued forbidding the inhabitants, under 
 severe penalties, to go abroad after sunset. The proclamation is 
 read aloud at the market-cross, it is posted up on the church 
 doors and all other places of public resort. None who wished to 
 become acquainted with the purport of the royal decree, could 
 remain ignorant of it. But some individuals who gave no heed 
 to royal proclamations, and would not trouble themselves to 
 ascertain the meaning of this particular one, venture abroad in 
 the time prohibited, are captured, charged with breaking the law, 
 and put upon their trial. Would any judge, knowing the capacity 
 of the men, and the means of knowledge within their reach, listen 
 for a moment to the plea, we never heard the proclamation, and 
 were utterly ignorant of the law in this matter. No. The judge 
 would say, you are persons who can read and understand ; this 
 proclamation was published in your streets, and placarded in the 
 most frequented places; you were indisposed to become acquainted 
 with it, you are responsible for the consequences, and must endure 
 the stated penalty. Now, it is on this principle, we liold, that 
 men, having available means of coming to the knowledge of the 
 truth, and yet indisposed to avail themselves of them, having the 
 Bible within their reach and yet refusing to read it, Jiaving the 
 Gospel at the very threshold of th.eir doors and jet unwilling to 
 come out and liearit; it is on this principle we maintain, that 
 
 * Koinans ii. 12, 
 
OF mane's IlliSPONSIBILITY 151 
 
 tlieir responsibility is little less tlifin if tliey knew that Bible, and 
 •.understood the truths of that Gospel. A man may say, I did not 
 know that the Book prohibited such a course of conduct, and 
 threatened such penalties against those who pursued it. I did 
 not know that it prescribed such a path to be followed, and pro- 
 mised such blessings to those who entered upon and prosecuted 
 it. There would be force in such a plea coming from an in- 
 dividual so situated as that it was physically impossible for him 
 to have access to the divine record, to read and understand it. 
 But the answer to an individual having access to ample means, 
 and urging such a plea, would be : you had the volume near you 
 and could have read it, you had the Gospel within hearing and 
 could have listened to it, you were indisposed to come to the know- 
 ledge of the truth, sin lies at your own door, your responsibility 
 is to be measured not by your inclination but by your privileges. 
 " Unto whomsoever much is given, of the same much shall be 
 required." 
 
 4tli. Our fourth remark is, that responsibility remains indestructible 
 amid all object ions from original temperament and external injhienccs. 
 It is not necessary that we here pronounce any judgment on the 
 claims of phrenology to be regarded as a system of intellectual 
 philosophy. We woidd only say, that as long as any of the results 
 of comparative anatomy disagree with it, and physiologists of the 
 first rank can urge some strong objections against it, so long must 
 we regard it as far from being a fixed and settled science. But 
 assuming that the physiological facts upon which it is grounded 
 are correct, that the feelings or faculties of the mind are in propor- 
 tion to and determined by the protuberances in the cranium,, 
 human liberty and accountability are not, as some have alleged, . 
 affected thereby. Mr. George Combe, who advances such high, 
 claims for the science, obviously thought it consistent with respon- 
 sibility, when he says, " to the animal nature of man have been 
 added, by a bountiful Creator, moral sentiments and reflecting 
 faculties, which not only place him above all other creatm-es on 
 earth, but constitute him a different being from any of them, a 
 rational and accountable being."=:- But some men, with the 
 phrenological map of the human skull before them, and knowing 
 it to be a fundamental principle of the science that mental dis- 
 positions are determined by the form, size, and constitution of the 
 brain, lenp at once to the conclusion that an individual's character 
 is made for him not by him, and that for it he is not responsible. 
 It were vain to deny an original difference of temperament auvl 
 organization in different individuals, or to underrate the difficidties 
 arising thence in reference to man's moral agency, but the admis- 
 sion of these can be made while firmly holding the doctrine of 
 
 * Constitution of Man, p. 2. fPeopIc's Edition.) 
 
152 indifferentis.m; or, the denial 
 
 responsibility. That is a matter of consciousness, a fact in tlie 
 natural history of man, of which it were needless to seek any 
 lintlier explanation, and it consequently must harmonize with 
 all the other iacts and principles of the human constitution. But 
 this is not all. Some men have originally, it is admitted, i^owerful 
 tendencies to certain vicious dispositions and practices. Such 
 j^ropensities may be said to ally them to the brutal tribes; and, 
 were tliey not jDossessed of a higher order of faculties, they would 
 .stand on the same level of irresponsibility. But man is dis- 
 tinguished from the lower animals, hj the possession of faculties, 
 and a susceptibility of motives, of which they are destitute and 
 incapable. These raise the worstof men above thelevel of the.brutes, 
 place them within the sphere of moral agency, and give them a 
 pov.-er of counteracting or controlling an original bad temperament. 
 We take an extreme case for illustration. It Avas said, by Spurz- 
 heim, of Alexander the Sixth, the most infamous man that ever 
 sat on tlje papal cliair, that his " brain was no more adequate to 
 the manifestation of Christian virtues, tliaii the brain of an idiot 
 from birth to the exhibition of the intellect of a Leibnitz or a 
 Bacon."* Here were great difficulties arising from original 
 temperament and organization ; but these ditSculties were not of 
 the same kind, nor insuperable in the same manner, as the diffi- 
 culties tliat beset the mind of the idiot. Alexander Avas endoAved 
 witli inental faculties, and a susceptibility of moral motives, Avhich 
 s^ave him a power countei-active of the evil propensities, and ren- 
 lered him, in some measure, the trustee of his oAvn well-being, and 
 responsible for his moral character. It may have been a vastly 
 more difficult thing for such a man to manifest Christian virtues, 
 than it was for Philip Melancthon ; but conscience must have 
 ])een torn Avholly out of his breast, and he must originally have 
 been utterly incapable of moral sentiment, before he could hn.\Q 
 been divested of the character of a moral and responsible agent. 
 The po]itifi", though carried along in a vicious course by powerful 
 depraA^ed tendencies, Avas doubtless conscious of his moral freedom; 
 and, unless given up to a reprobate mind, must at times have had 
 a sense of his responsibility. It is as natural for such men, amid 
 all theii" dejoravity, to have a sense of desert before the process of 
 searing the conscience has been completed, and for others to hold 
 them responsible for their dispositions and conduct, as it is for 
 tlie idiot to be undisturbed by such a feeling, and to be accounted 
 guiltless of the evil that may arise out of his actions. 
 
 The remarks made in reference to organization arc substantially 
 applicable to external influences. Both may inodify human re- 
 sponsibility, but neither of them destroys it. The temperament 
 and situation of one man may be much more favourable for mani- 
 
 * Combe's Coastitution of Mau, p V?. 
 
OF MAN S ^iESPO^'STBILn■V. 153 
 
 festing yvhatsoeyer tilings are lovely and true than the tem]icra- - 
 meut and situation of another, but responsibility is an attribute 
 of the character and circuni stances of both. If there is power on 
 the side of individual organization and outward influences, so 
 that some men are less favourably situated in a moral point of 
 view than others, there is power also in those energies supplied 
 by the moral world which are counteractive of evil and productive 
 of good, and which men are imder an obligation to study and 
 employ. They may refuse to acquaint themselves with these moral 
 forces,' or to avail themselves of them, and thus be carried away 
 without a struggle on the current of depraved pro])ensity or exter- 
 nal vicious influences ; but in that refusal lies their guilt, as in 
 the availableness of the moral power lies their responsibility. It 
 is an easy thing to muster up arguments against human liberty. 
 Let the doctiine of the Divine prescience and foreordination of 
 all things be asserted, and some men at once conclude that no 
 room il left for man's moral freedom. The doctrine does not 
 paralyze their energies in the workshop or in the held, and they 
 never dream that it renders them irresponsible for tlie operations 
 of their hands. And yet the objection is as tenable in the one 
 case as in the other. In like manner, let the force of original tem- 
 perament and external circumstances be admitted, and man, by 
 some, is represented as helpless and destitute of moral freedom, 
 as a raft carried u-resistibly down the river on which it floats. It 
 is not so easy, however, to destroy the argument grounded on the 
 facts that man is possessed of faculties and susceptible of motives 
 that give him, in some measure, a control over original tempera- 
 ment and external circumstances. Far less easy is it to destroy 
 that consciousness of moral freedom which every man possesses, 
 vrhatever be his mental conformation, and the influences that are 
 brought to bear upon him. If, then, the sense of responsibility 
 cannot be destroyed, witliout falsifying the testimony of all our 
 primitive beliefs, it may be said to remain truly indestructible. 
 
 5th. Our fifth remark is, that men individualhj, and societies in 
 fieneral, advance morally in proiwrtion as the sense of responsibility 
 is Jii'jh. No one doubts the absolute necessity of a belief in this 
 doctrine, in the daily business of life. The dealings of the sb.op 
 and the exchange could iiot be carried on without it. We would 
 not intrust a servant with a letter, or admit a professed friend 
 into the confidence and hospitalities of the domestic circle, if they 
 avowed themselves to be irresponsible and acted on the avowal. 
 I'rom the first minister of an empire who kisses the hand of 
 majesty on receiving office, down to the private soldier who takes 
 the oath of allegiance on entering the ranks, the necessity and 
 reality of responsibility are acknowledged. And not only so, but 
 it is just in proportion as the notion of responsibility in individuals, 
 or in societies, assumes a decidedly religious a'specL,thatiti3 power- 
 
loi INDIFFERENTISINI ; OR, THE DENIAL 
 
 ful for good. France, a country v.-here experiments on human 
 nature, on a large scale, have often been made, gave at the close 
 of the last century a fearful illustration of what the social system 
 becomes when it loses its hold of moral obligation. The philoso- 
 phers and wits of the Yoltaire school jestingly cried out " what is 
 truth," declared the moral system to have been superseded, ridi- 
 culed the notion of responsibility as an antiquated fiction, taught 
 that the only causes in the world are physical and irresistilDle, and 
 that men are the offspring of an invincible necessity. It was this 
 doctrine of irresponsibility, propounded by the encyclopaedists, 
 countenanced by statesmen, and propagated throughout the masses, 
 that was expressed in the torrents of blood that liowed during the 
 reign of terror. Men being looked upon as creatures of physical 
 necessity, were no more accounted of than stumps of trees or 
 ruined houses, when they stood in the way of the revolutionaiy 
 movement. They were levelled to the ground and torn up by the 
 roots. The principle, laid down by Diderot, was acted upon, — a 
 principle that rose out of the ruins of man's moral agency, — that 
 those who encumbered the social system should summarily be de- 
 stroyed. And what more is necessary to let loose the reins upon 
 fury, corruption, and massacre, than to instil into men's minds the 
 notion that they are the creatures of fate, and no more responsible 
 for their belief than for the colour of their skin and the height of 
 their stature ! 
 
 It is very much with the doctrine of man's responsibility as it is 
 vatli saobath observance. Public men in our country generallv 
 acknowledge the moral and physical advantages of the weekly day 
 of rest, just as they recognise the utility and necessity of a sense 
 of accountability being difiused throughout the state. But, as by 
 far the most valuable benefits of the sabbath result only from its 
 religious observance as a day sacred to the memory of tlie resur- 
 rection of Christ; so the real and high advantages of responsibility 
 are only experienced when the doctrine is felt to link earth with 
 heaven, man with his Maker, and the judgment of conscience 
 with the judgment of the gi-eat white throne. " This practical 
 doctrine of responsibility," says Isaac Taylor,'i< " can rest on no 
 fulcrum short of the centre of the universe — the throne of God. 
 Rest it at any intermediate point, and though it may bear some 
 stress, it will not bear every stress ; and it fails where most it wiU 
 be needed." Take an individual or a community, in which the 
 sense of responsibility is weakened, or associated merely with 
 worldly calculations ; and take another individual, or community, 
 in which it is religious and vivid ; and it will be found that while 
 the one is unstable as v/ater, the other is stedfast as a rock ; that 
 while the one is ever in danger of sacrificing principle to selfish 
 
 * Man Rospousiblc, p. 03. 
 
OF MA>; 3 BESPONSIBiLlTY. i-j-J 
 
 cjain, the other counts nothing dear that comes into competition 
 With principle itself. It is the man deeply imbaed \\-ith the re- 
 ligious sense of responsibility that stands firm amid all tempta- 
 tions, while another is driven with the wind and tossed ; and it is 
 in the former that even men, who have no vivid sense of religion 
 themselves, prefer reposing confidence. 
 
 It will also be found that in societies professedly religious, where 
 the dry skeleton of a creed remains, — but where nen nominally 
 adhering and others avowedly opposing are gathered under one 
 ecclesiastical organization around it, — tlie doctrine of respon- 
 sibility, in its high import, is either denied or fluctuating and 
 feeble! Wherever religious belief comes to be regarded as an 
 accident of the mind just as colour is of the hair of the head, or 
 wherever responsibility, though admitted, is languid, — doctrinal 
 ai'ticles are counted as of little worth, the standards are either 
 deserted, or friends and foes proclaim a truce, and shake hands 
 around them ; and the distinction between the church and the 
 world, — a distinction so much insisted on in the Kew Testament, 
 ■ — disappears and is lost. 
 
 Indi-sT-duals of the brightest moral excellence have been these 
 who were influenced by a high and religious sense of responsibility. 
 Men, to whose instrumentality the v/orld ov,-es its reformations, 
 and the church its life and purity, v.'ould never have struggled as 
 they did, and could never have eflected the regenerations whicli 
 they have eff'ected, had they not had firm faith in the truth that we 
 are responsible to our fellows here and to God hereafter. And 
 those communities in which the truth shines conspicuous as a star. 
 and who have faithfully guarded the church from the abomination 
 of desolation, have been mightily influenced by the idea of their 
 stewardship and the prospect of rendering an account. Is then a 
 doctrine so influential for good both on individuals and societies, 
 on churches and states; a doctrine that has been the guardian of 
 so much that is true and holy, and the spring of so many grand 
 and benignant enterprises ; a doctrine that is beneficent in 
 proportion as it is believed and acted upon, — is it to be regarded 
 as a beautiful and useful fiction, necessary for the well-being of 
 society, but having no foundation in truth? This were something 
 like yielding to the tempter, and falling down and worshipping Mm 
 But it cannot be. It is written upon the heart — and nothing but 
 along process of vicious indulgence can cover or efi'ace it; it 
 is ^^^itten upon the social system under which men live safely and 
 happily ; and it is written more legibly and impressively in the 
 inspired page, — that every one of us must give an account of 
 himself unto God. Happy the individual, or the community, who 
 moves under a felt sense that the Great Searcher of hearts is in the 
 heavens and looks down upon men, and that He will hereafter 
 judge the world in righteousness, and render to all according to 
 their works. 
 
i-jvj ror.MALisM ; or, the len;al 
 
 CITAPTEE VI. 
 
 THE de>::al of the powes of godliness; or, fokmalism. 
 
 Not infidelity in theory but in practice — Nature of formalism — Prevalency of 
 it — Philosopliy of formalism — Heligions of ancient bs-alhen world generally of 
 this description — Many of our meu of taste and science chargeable Avith it — 
 11 em aik of Foster — Strong tendency to formalism in the ancient Hebrews^ 
 Pharisees of the Christian age — Formalism in the Christian Church — Result 
 of Romish theoi-y of fellowship — The Oxford Eitual — Itemarlcs of Morell, 
 D'Aubigne, and Taylor — Foimalism not peculiar to Pomanism or Tractarianism 
 — General remarks on it : — Its utter worthlessness to satisfy the great wants of 
 human nature — The pleasure found in spiritual religion not experienced — 
 Its tendency to intolerance — Diametrically opposed to the spirit and precepts 
 of the Gospel. 
 
 HEPtE Ave advance from the region of speculative into that of 
 practical infidelity. All the body of truth previously noticed, 
 v.-hich some men liave denied wholly or in part, is supposed to be 
 admitted ; but the grand influence of that truth on the conscience 
 and conduct is virtually disowned. The prim.al truth that God 
 is, the self-existent, independent, and all-perfect One, — is un- 
 hesitatingly assented to ; but the practical testimony to that trutli, 
 Vv-hich is given in enduring as seeing Him who is itivisible, is 
 vfithheld. The proofs of the being and character of God, drav^n 
 from tlie phenomena of mind and matter, convince the under- 
 standing; but, amid all the light that beams from these phe- 
 nomena, the heart is alienated and darkened. That God is really 
 a Person — not a merely infinite substance — a Person related to us 
 as Patlier and Lord, Saviour and Judge, is not questioned; but 
 there is no devout recognition of Him as being, in these relations, 
 the glorious and gracious One witli whom we have to do. Tlie 
 no less well-attested trutli that God is ever-present with, and 
 exercises a m.inute inspection and control over, his creatures, has 
 a placp v/illingiy assigned to it among the things believed ; but 
 there is an utter absence of the manifested power of that truth, in 
 fas Scripture significantly expresses it) walking with God. The 
 Bible doctrines of redemption, including and presupposing, as 
 they do, the guilt and depravity of man, the atonem.ent of Christ, 
 and the regenerating influences of tlie Spirit, are essential parts of 
 tlie creed; but that creed is like the dry lifeless skeleton, the body 
 witliout the spiiit. The man never tliinks of questioning the dark 
 doctrine of sin, but 1)6 is not penitent and humble under tlie con- 
 viction of ])is own sinful character. He musters up no argument 
 against the work that expiates and the influences that sanctify, he 
 no more doubts that they are truths in the Bible than lie doubts 
 that the sun is-in the heavens; but he is not found standing on 
 that work, ov Hying under the power of those influences, any more 
 than if their existence and efficacy were restricted to some distant 
 
OF THE rOV/ER OF GODLINESS. 157 
 
 •woiid. He T'.^oiild no more think of denying tliat man is respon- 
 sible for his dispositions, ojoinions, and conduct, than of denying 
 that he tliinks, feels, and acts. Words implying moral agency 
 and accountability are ever flowing over his lips, and yet his 
 habitual sentiments and conduct are such as could only be fonned 
 under an habitual forgetfulness of Him whose eyes behold and 
 Avhose eyelids try the children of men. There is no infidelity in 
 theory, but there is abundance of it in practice. In so far as the 
 mere letter of a creed is concerned, all may be evangelical and 
 coiTect ; but the inner and outer man are as little influenced by 
 it as by the abrogated notions of the Ptolemaic system. There is 
 religion, but it is merely professional and verbal. " The sign is 
 taken for the thing, the counter for the money." The structure 
 is complete as regards shape, size, and bones ; but the flesh and 
 blood, the sparkling eye, and the agile limbs, are wanting. This 
 is wliat the Scripture means wdien it speaks of men having the 
 form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. 
 
 Formalism is tlie tendency of the mind to rest in the mere 
 externals of religion, to the neglect of the inner life of religion 
 itself. It is just as when a child runs his lesson rapidly over 
 without heeding the import of the story v/hicli lie reads. It is 
 just as if our knowledge of a man was confined to liis stature, to 
 the shape and colour of his coat ; so that, when his name is men- 
 tioned in our presence, we immediately think of his size and dress 
 but nothing more. It is the folly of valuing the tree for its bark, 
 instead of its goodly timber ; the folly of choosing a book for its 
 binding, irrespective of the nature of its contents; tbe folly of 
 delighting in painted windows and adorned wa,lls, regardless of 
 the character of the society and accommodation wdthin. It is tho 
 very essence of formalism to set the outward institutions above 
 the inward truths, to be jounctilious in going the roiuid of cere- 
 monial observances while neglectful of those spiritual sacrifices 
 Avith which God is w^ell pleased, to substitute means in the room 
 of ends, and to rest in the type and symbol without rising to the 
 glorious reality. It will stand up for the skeleton creed, though 
 the life be as little influenced by it as by a muuimy ; it wdll in 
 the strength of its zeal, put on armour, brandish weapons, guard 
 the courts of thesanctuary from unhallowed intrusion, and shout 
 lustily, " the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are we;" 
 while it lacks heart for fighting the good fight of faith, and wrest- 
 ling vdth spiritual wickednesses. The church and the sacraments, 
 the symbol and the lettered creed, fill the sphere of its vision, and 
 draw forth its devotion, to tho almost utter exclusion of those 
 grand s]nritual objects that are unseen and eternal. Such, in 
 general, is the character of formalism. 
 
 It is not a thing peculiar to any age or country, though it may 
 bs more prevalent at one time and in one place than in another. 
 
iaS roEiiALisM ; on, the dental 
 
 Yflierever there is a field, we meet witli weeds or thorns; and 
 wherever humanity dwells, we witness, to some extent or auoiher, 
 formalism. We may travel over a large tract of inhabited country, 
 and find there no such monster as absolute atheism ; we may meet 
 with large masses of men among whom pantheism, or naturalism, 
 has scarcely a local habitation ; we may enter into one crowded 
 congregation after another, and hear the doctrines of Socinianism, 
 of a false spiritualism, and of irresponsibility, repudiated; but 
 formalism is a tiling at hand as well as afar ofl', it lies everywiiere 
 about us, many coloured and many shaped, sometimes gorgeously 
 decked and at other times meanly clad, sometimes prominently 
 manifested and at other times scarcely perceptible. Man v»'ill 
 worship. It seems to be as natural for him to have something in 
 the shape of religion as it is for him to have a place to dwell in. 
 And there may not be a greater variety in the habitations which 
 lie constructs, than in the religions which he adopts. The 
 gradation, in the one case, varying from the gorgeous palace to the 
 hole dug in the earth, may not be more than the gradation in the 
 other, — var}T.ng from a purely spnitual Christianity, to the lowest 
 form of fetichism or nature-worship. And not more true is it that 
 man will have a religion, than, if left to himself, he v/ill choose a 
 corrupt one, or corrupt a spiritual one iuto a system of formalism. 
 Here is a principle in man which leads him out of himself to 
 worship and perform religious services. That principle, in a holy 
 being, vrould fix his thoughts and afiections on the most excellent 
 glory, and the forms v,-hicli he employed v/ould only be used as 
 symbols of eternal realities, or means by which to rise up to the 
 Supreme Good. But that principle in man, as he now is, 
 participates in the depravity of his nature ; and while it goes forth 
 after a religion, it is one which, though demanding much bodily 
 service, lies very lightly on the conscience and heart ; one which 
 says, go tliis round and that, but seldom or never summons the 
 soul to an earnest conflict with the power of evil. Man will have 
 a religion, but depraved man will have a formal instead of a 
 spiritual one, — one consisting in mere outward observances, in 
 preference to one requiring the homage of the heart and the con- 
 secration of the life. The philosophy of formalism is, therefore, 
 easily explained. It is the result of two opposing forces. The one 
 of which will not let man live witbout a religion, and, if 
 undisturbed by hostile influences, would lead liim spiritually to 
 worship God who is a spirit. The other is of the earth earthy, 
 and, by its greater potency, prevents the former in the natural 
 man from rising above rites and ceremonies, above the symbol and 
 tlie lettered creed. An adjustment or compromise of the claims of 
 two rival parties takes place. The one pointing the thougbts and 
 affections vipward to God, and tlie other seeking to draw them 
 av\'oy from Him. Both are persuaded to meet and shake hands 
 
OF THE POWi:Pv OF GODLINESS. 15U 
 
 over a religious form, and tluis the former 13 hoodwinked while the 
 latter triumphs. 
 
 Our object, more especially, is to notice tlie formalism that 
 lies within the domain of revealed truth, or that is thrown up 
 within the pale of the visible church. But before doing so, we 
 maj glance at some of the formalism that lies beyond. In fact, 
 that is formalism, be it baptized pagan or Christian, natural reli- 
 gion or revealed, which, though bearing the name of a religious 
 belief, exerts no influence in transforming the character, and jn-o- 
 duces no love and likeness to God. The religions of the ancient 
 heathen world were generally of this descrii^tion. What were the 
 creeds and rites of Greece and Eome, but splendid and imposing- 
 systems of formalism? Objects of religious worship met the 
 Greek or Eoman, wherever he turned his eyes. Every street 
 down which he passed, every house into which he entered, every 
 fountain at which he di-ank, and the summit of every little liill on 
 which he stood, reminded him of the divinities that he was to 
 adore. Eeligion blended itself with almost every p-iece of daily 
 business that he performed, with almost every journey that he 
 took, and with nearly every amusement that he witnessed. There 
 were numerous and magnificent temples into which he could 
 enter. There was a gorgeous and attractive mythology witli 
 which he was familiar. There were statues and paintings every- 
 where, on v/hich unrivalled art depicted to his vieAV things sacred 
 and divine. And there were rights and ceremonies of the most 
 engrossing description wdiich he was ever called upon to observe. 
 But, amid all this sensible pomp and grandeur, there was no pro- 
 vision for the wants of tiie inner man. Heathenism had no 
 line to reach the depths of human depravity, and no power to 
 raise man up from his degradation, to break the spell by which 
 he was bound to sensual objects, and to set his spirit free. It had 
 no object of religious v/orship fitted to call forth love, veneration, 
 gratitude ; and no body of truth that could be instrumental in puri- 
 fying and ennobling man's mental powers, in connecting him 
 with the higher world, and renewing him after the image of God. 
 It was a system every way fitted to gratify and strengthen the 
 tendency in human nature to rest in mere external symbols, re- 
 gardless of spiritual and invisible realities. Tlie heathen duly 
 went his round of religious observances, but it was merely a round 
 of formalism. 
 
 Much of the same thing constitutes the religion of many of our 
 men of taste and science. "VYe give forth no sweeping condemna- 
 tion against philosophers as a class. Not a few of them have 
 been, and are, spiritually minded men, — men who, while prosecut- 
 ing enthusiastically their researches into nature, have held high 
 converse with nature's God. But, agai]ist a large proportion of 
 
IGO roRMALisM ; or, the denial 
 
 versant with, and have much admiration for, the material tvpes. 
 But there they rest. As if afraid of being counted pietists or 
 fanatics, they guard their researches effectually from the intrusion 
 of the living God, and shrink from having their language imbued 
 witli any thing apj)roaching to a deep devotional feeling. In the 
 case of such individuals, the existence and providential agency 
 of the Holy One may be admitted, but the admission is only formal, 
 not elevating, and consecratmg. There would be no difficulty in 
 getting them to acknowledge that the Great Eternal Spirit"^sits 
 behind all those wondrous creations that meet their eye, that the 
 heavens are bright with his glory, and the earth full of his praise ; 
 but there is a difficulty in getting them to nWovv that truth to 
 occupy its legitimate position in their minds, and to exert its 
 legitimate influence over their thoughts and speculations. There 
 is in them no lack of sensibility to the grand and beautiful assem- 
 blage of natural phenomena. They may feel a kindling of fancy, 
 and an aggrandisement of thought, in looking, from some emi- 
 nence, over a magnificent region, rich in all the elements of 
 sublime and graceful scenery ; or, in taking a telescopic view of 
 the innumerable worlds that move harmoniously throughout the 
 fields of space ; but there is apparently a sad want of the capacity 
 of rising from the grandeur and loveliness of creation up to the 
 infinitely greater grandeur and loveliness of creation's God, — a 
 sad want of being moved and subdued under the impression that 
 He who is supremely good reigns over all these scenes, is present 
 in every star and atom, witnesses every thought and feeling, and 
 will one day call us to account. The world has tolerated" not a 
 few books in the shape of travels and journals, in wliich the 
 writers have been more careful to tell us how many miles they 
 passed over in a day, how they slept and were fed, than to make 
 us acquainted with the moral and physical aspects of the country 
 and people where they sojourned. These writers are not more 
 chargeable with a want of good taste and natural sensibility, than 
 are those philosoplicrs and men of genius to wliom we have 
 alluded, chargeable with being insensible to the glory of the 
 Divine character, while impressed with the loveliness and grandeur 
 of the Divine works. We would not liave our men of science and 
 cultivated taste to turn theologians, and mingle doctrinal discus- 
 sions and prayers with their descriptions of mental and material 
 ])henomena ; but we would have them to rise up from the magni- 
 ficent symbols that meet their eye, to the High and Holy One 
 whose perfections they shadow forth. " It is unfortunate," says 
 John Foster,^:' " I have thought within these few minutes, — while 
 looking out on one of the most enchanting nights of the most 
 interesting season of the year, and hearing the voices of a com- 
 
 * Foster's Essays, pp. IG, 17. 
 
or THE POWEIl OF GODLINESS. 181 
 
 pany of persons, to whom T can perceive that this soft and solemn 
 shade over the earth, the calm sky, the beautiful stripes of cloud, 
 the stars, and the waning moon just risen, are things not in the 
 least more interesting than the walls, ceiling, and candle-light of 
 a room." But it is still more unfortunate that there are men of 
 genius fascinated and elevated by the grand scenes of earth and 
 sky, and yet unattracted by the excellency of God, of which all 
 that material grandeur and gracefulness is but a type. It is sad 
 to think that the thought of nature's magnificence should so often 
 fail, in the case of men in whom that thought is vivid, to bring in 
 its train the more ennobling thought of the unrivalled glory of the 
 Author of Nature Himself 
 
 " These are Ihy plorious works. Parent of good, 
 Almighty I Thine this universal frrime, 
 Thns wondrous fair: Thyself how wondrous then, 
 Unspeakable :" 
 
 It is not of such a writer as the author of " Cosmos," who has 
 given us a great picture of nature without any reference to the 
 living God, that we are now speaking. He has, at least, in this 
 melancholy exclusion, been consistent with his own established 
 belief, " that the forces inherent in matter, and those whicli govern 
 the moral world, exercise their action under the control of pri- 
 mordial necessity." But it is of those of our men of taste and 
 science, who, while acknowledging the truth about God as the 
 Creator, Preserver, and Moral Governor of the universe, seem to 
 rest in the mere natural phenomena; to concentrate there all 
 their thoughts, and spend there all their feelings; and can carry 
 on their researches, and give us graphic and useful descriptions 
 of the material world, witliout being led themselves, or attempting 
 to lead others, to the contemplation of Him wlio has set his glory 
 above the heavens. This, whatever other epithet may be applied 
 to it, must be denounced as mere formalism. 
 
 The tendency, in the domain of revealed religion, to hal6 in 
 mere forms, was strongly evinced by the Hebi-ew people. The 
 Levitical economy, containing a large machinery of divinely- 
 appointed rites and ceremonies, though cumbei-some compared 
 with the dispensation of the Gospel, was admirahly adapted to the 
 state of the Israelites, in conveying to their minds, and preserving 
 in the midst of them, tliose elements of Divine truth wliich have 
 been fully developed in all their simplicity and majesty in the 
 Gospel age. But their history, as faitliliilly recorded in Scripture, 
 shows that their besetting sin was to idolize the symbol, instead 
 of rising from it to the thing signified; to go the mere round of 
 external observances, neglectful of the cultivation of the heart 
 and that spiritual worship which God requires. And it deserves 
 notice that, in the same record where the typical and ritual system 
 is so fully and minutely detailed, the most strict cautions are 
 
 M 
 
162 formalism; or, the denial 
 
 given against restinsf in it; and tlie most terrible denunciations 
 are uttered against tliose who substitute the symbol in the place 
 of the invisible reality. The burden of pro]ihecy, while leading 
 the mind forward to the glory of the latter days, and seeking to 
 concentrate the thoughts in Him who was emblematically repre- 
 sented in evei-y lamb that bled on the Hebrew altars, contained 
 often a strong rebuke to the hollow formalism that prevailed. 
 The divinely-appointed rites were repudiated as worthless, when 
 men converted tbem into idols, and failed to be led by them to the 
 high spiritual realities. " Hath the Lord," said Samuel to Saul, 
 "as great delight in burnt-ofierings and sacrifices, as in obeying 
 the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, 
 and to hearken than the fat of rams." " To what purpose is the 
 multitude of your sacrifices unto me ?" was the question which 
 Jehovah addressed to the punctilious formalists among the ancient 
 Hebrews. This system of religiou'=; ceremonialism appeared in 
 all its odiousness in the Pharisees of the Gospels. And it was 
 against the men who were scrupulously exact in paying tithe of 
 mint, and anise, and cummin, while regardless of the weightier 
 matters of the law, — judgment, mercy, and faith, that the meek 
 and lowly Saviour pronoimced the most tremendous woes. Eigid 
 adherence to bare rites went hand in hand with the most gross 
 corruptions. Men would stand up and stoutly contend for the 
 mere letter of the law, while shamelessly violating its spirit. The 
 formalism of the system was complete, and the Amen, the faithful 
 and true witness, denounced the hypocrisy of its worshippers. 
 
 The new economy is distinguished from the old, by its greater 
 simplicity and spirituality. ]t has no gorgeous and imposing 
 ritual. The schoolmaster, npces'sary for the instruction of the 
 Jews, has been dismissed. The shadow has vanished away and 
 given place to the substance. And the hour has come 
 when neither in this mountain exclusively, nor yet at Jerusalem, 
 men should be required to worship the Fatiier, but when the tme 
 worshi])pers should worship Him in spirit and truth; for the 
 Father seeketh such to worship Him. But under the shadow of 
 Clnistianity, formalism soon grew up, and extended its cold, 
 withering influence, for ages, over the church. Judaizing teachers 
 — the masters of forms — insinuated themselves into the first 
 Christian societies, and insisted on the observance of abrogated 
 ceremonies as indispensable to salvation. Apostolic vigilance and 
 7,eal, in a great measure, thwarted their ])ernicious efforts, and 
 preserved the truth of God pure and unclogged. But, soon after 
 the ajiostles had fallen asleej), and the spii'itual energy which they 
 had infused into the church had diminished, the tendency to exalt 
 the material above the spiritual, and bind up the living element of 
 truth in a system of forms, appeared almost unchecked. The 
 symbols were aggrandized, and occupied the place of the grand 
 
OF THE POWER OF GODLINESS. 1G3 
 
 realities. The inherent efficacy of the sacraments was preached, 
 instead of the doctrine of tiie cross. And that deadly dishonouring 
 system of pinning men's faith to the priest and the mere external 
 rite, of identifying haptism with regeneration, and of making the 
 tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, a suhstitute for the practice, 
 and a plea for the omission, of tlie weightier mattei's of the law, 
 almost everywhere ])revailed. History hears witness to the fact, 
 that the dai'kest period in the annals of the church, when the 
 question might have been pat, Were the Son of man to come, 
 would he find faith in the earth ? was the period when Christianity 
 was ritual bound, ministers and people as intent on mere forms as 
 the heathen on idols. 
 
 Such is the result of the Eomish theory of fellowship. Instead 
 of making the church, as the apostle Peter did, a Uving body, 
 composed of faithful mea, who " as lively stones, are built up a 
 spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to ofler up spiritual sacrifices, 
 acceptable to God by Jesas Chribt;" it has set up a lifeless arti 
 ficial system of mosaic work, the essential qualifications to a name 
 aiid place in which are, not the faith of the truth and the love of 
 the Saviour as manifested in a life of moral loveliness, but a 
 strict attention to rites and ceremonies. It matters not, according 
 to this theory, how much glorying there may be in the cross of 
 Christ on the part of individuals, and how brightly in them the 
 features of the new creature may shine, if the party watch-word 
 cannot be pronounced, and the party rite cannot be submitted to, 
 there is no recognition of them as belonging to the Israel of God. 
 It is in accordance with this theory, that some Romish mission- 
 ai'ies have baptized large companies of the heathen in a mass, 
 pronounced over them the name of Christ before they really knew 
 who Christ was, set them down as children of the truth before 
 the truth had gained an inlet into their minds, and reported them 
 as accessions to the Holy Catholic Church, — which is just like 
 the swelling of a body with diseased flesh. " We find," Mr. Morell 
 truly remarks, " as the result of this theory, multitudes of the most 
 debased, most unscrupulous, most antichristian of mankind, 
 standing in due right and order, as channels of Christian truth 
 to the world ; while, on the other hand, we find multitudes of the 
 humble, the holy, the self-denying, hopelessly thrust out beyond 
 the pale of broti'ierhood, as not being in the legitimate succession 
 of olficial validity. If the fellowship of the faithful is to depend 
 upon such principles as these, then to make it all intelligible to 
 the reason or consistent with the moral sense of numkind, we need 
 altogether a difierent interpretation of the whole natp.re and de- 
 sign of Chiistianity from what we have in the life of Christ and 
 the writings of the apostles."-:' There are, doubtless, not a few 
 
 * Philosophy of Religion, p. 268. 
 
 M 2 
 
104 formalism; or, the denmal 
 
 spiritually-minded men in the Piomish ChnrcL, but tliey are spiri- 
 tually-minded in spite of her theory of feliowshi}). As a whole 
 it is a gigantic system of formalism. 
 
 Formalism has not. however, been restricted to the ample and 
 imposing shades of popery. It has taken root also, grown up, and 
 been carefully fostered in the bosom of Protestantism. The Oxford 
 ritual, as it has been called, makes a very near approach to that of 
 Rome. And the doctrines propounded by the Tractarians, viewed 
 as a whole, come in dh-ect antagonism with those grand spiritual 
 principles of the Reformation, which have been so happily exjiressed 
 by Merle D'Aubigne : The Word of God only; the Grace 
 OF Christ only; and the Work of the Spirit only. Their 
 theory of the church, and of the efficacy of its rites, is the very 
 theory that quenches spiritual life, dries up the goodly sap, blights 
 every gi-een thing, and superinduces a dark and leaden' system of 
 formalism. The church and the priest come between the soul of 
 the sinner and the Saviour ; and the church and the sacraments 
 are made to dispense those spiritual influences for which we, as 
 Bible-taught, look to the church's Head. Let men be instructed 
 as multitudes of our fellow countrymen are, that the sacraments 
 are the wells of Divine grace, that they are efficacious only as 
 administered by the hands of e2)iscoiially ordained men, and that 
 perishing souls can find the bread of life only in this particular 
 fold, — and, within the pale of the Protestant church, will soon be- 
 come rampant a system that will eat out the very life of the Gospel, 
 — a system having the form of godliness but denying the power 
 thereof. " If we be Christians ecclesiastically, it is enough : all 
 besides is illusion," — is the engrafted word which thousands of 
 cultivated and uncultivated minds have in our day, received within 
 the church of Cranmer. " And such in fact," says Mr. Isaac Tay- 
 lor, " are every day seen to be the products of the ecclesiastical 
 theory which v/e denounce as, at this time, tlie antagonist of Spiri- 
 tual Christianity. In its recent revival it has shed a cold arrogance 
 into many bosoms that once glowed with Christian affection ; and, 
 at the same time, it has drawn such aside (in how many sad in- 
 stances !) from an enlightened regard to the substantial trutlis of 
 the Gospel ; while they give all their cares to frivolous and servile 
 observances."* 
 
 The snake is to be found creeping among the grass, as well as 
 displaying its sinuous form under some stately plant or tree. And 
 formalism is not a sin peculiar to Eomanism or to a Romanized 
 Protestantism. It is to be met with, not only under the imposing 
 shade of the cathedral pile, clad in white vestments, kneeling be- 
 fore the altar, clasping to the bosom a crucifix, and going puncti- 
 liously the proscribed round of gorgeous ceremonies ; but it often 
 
OF THE POWER OF GODLINESS. 165 
 
 has a place in the plain built chapel, and on the low wooden form 
 where no sacramental theory has ever been propounded, where a 
 creed tlioroughly evangelical has been adopted, and where nothing 
 but the pure spiritual Gospel of Christ has been heard. It may 
 have a much more ample shelter, and be much more countenanced 
 amid g]-eat architectural splendour, venerated altars, and a rich 
 ceremonial; but it can and does exist in the absence of everything 
 external that is fitted to rivet the eye, regale the ear, and engToss 
 the heart. Men may place a false dependence on the simplest ob- 
 servances as well as on the most artificial and splendid, and there 
 may lurk as deadly and hateful a spirit of self-righteousness under 
 an appearance of puritan meekness, as ever did in the bosom of 
 the ostentatious Pharisee who, in the temple and before God's 
 throne, boasted of his fast-days and the regular payment of his 
 tithes. It matters not whether the forms be few or many, bald or 
 costly decked, — if they are unduly confided in, shifted from the 
 position which they may lawfully occupy as means, to that which 
 in God's sight they never can occupy as a ground, and if the observ- 
 ance of them is made a substitute for piety and holy obedience, 
 — the system must be branded as mere formalism. 
 
 1. Our first remark on such a system is, its lUter icortlilessness 
 to satisfy the great uants of liuman nature. The wants of man, in 
 a religious point of view, are obvious. He is guilty before God, 
 and needs expiation. He is the subject of depraved principles, 
 and needs to be regenerated. Formalism, whether gorgeous or 
 naked, can no more remove the condemning sentence from the 
 head, and root out depraved principles from the heart, than saying 
 to a destitute brother or sister, be ye warmed and filled, can profit, 
 if we give them not those things that are needful to the body. To 
 look amid a mere ceremonial for some power to atone and purify, 
 were as foolish and vain as to seek the living among the dead. And 
 yet this is a folly which multitudes of cidtivated and uncultivated 
 minds are repeating every day. Forms are necessaiy, in this world 
 at least, to display and maintain the power of godliness. But it 
 should never be forgotten that in the forms the Divine efficacy is 
 not inherent. The internal religious sentiments and emotions 
 must express themselves in some outward shape, and neither 
 reason nor revelation forbids that the external institutions of piety 
 should be imposing and graceful. But as man cannot feed upon 
 flowers, nor his natural life be sustained by the most enrapturing 
 music ; so, amid the most strict observance of even divinely ap- 
 pointed rites, he will, if halting in them, remain, in the scriptural 
 sense of the expression, dead in trespasses and sins. The use of a 
 ladder is to ascend by it to some lofty eminence ; but if men were 
 merely to run up and down the steps, and imagine that they had 
 reached the height to which it pointed, and that they had beheld 
 the view which the summit commanded, they woidd be regarded 
 
106 formalism; or, the denial 
 
 as under a strawge hallucination. The hallucination is not less 
 real, and infinitely more dangerous, in the man who goes the 
 round of religious observances, stops short at them, builds upon 
 them, and deems himself all the while to have attained to the 
 position and character of a child of God and an heir of heaven. 
 It betrays a littleness of conception in reference to the character 
 and law of the great I am, to suppose that, by mere outward rites 
 and ceremonies, men are to be pardoned, sanctified, and saved. 
 It manifests a great lack of spiritual discernment, to regard a 
 punctilious attention to a ritual, and a reliance on forms, as occu- 
 pying the place, and answering the ends, of faith and repentance, 
 holy love and spiritual obedience. It is acting as if the reverse of 
 the proposition — and not the proposition itself — were true : man 
 looks upon the outward ajipearance, but God looks upon the 
 heart. 
 
 The worthlessness of such a reliance, in reference to the two 
 great wants of human nature, — deliverance from guilt and from 
 the dominion of evil, is attested by observation and experience. 
 Men have run, countless times, round the circle of prescribed 
 observances, leaning on the symbol without rising up to the thing 
 signified ; and it has either been, in their experience, a round of 
 anguish, or a dead tread, in which they were destitute of a sense 
 of reconciliation and peace with God. Sacrifice after sacrifice has 
 been ofl;ered, the yoke in a thousand forms has been borne, words 
 of what seemed holiest prayer have been daily uttered, hymns of 
 sweetest harmony and devout fervour have been chanted ; and, 
 after the excitement, produced by the pomp of ceremony, by a 
 religion of refined ceremonial, or a religion of primitive simplicity, 
 has subsided, the soul has been, like a stricken deer, ill at ease, and 
 panting again for the excitement of the chase. The splendid ritual 
 and the plain, the divinely appointed institute and the human, the 
 sacrament stamped with Heaven's authority and that bearing only 
 man's, have, each and all of them, deokired, the merit that atones 
 and the grace that pardons are not to be found in them. 
 
 The inefficacy of the system to regenerate, and assimilate men 
 to the likeness of God, is as manifest as itspowerlcssnessto remove 
 the burden of guilt. Be it in the shape of a court ceremonial, of 
 things appealing to refined taste and sentiment, or of the common 
 sacred decencies of the sabbath-day, if it be a religion merely 
 formal, men will observe its rites, and pass through its forms, with- 
 out throwing off any more of their impurity and receiving any more 
 of the beauties of holiness, than if they ])aced to and fro the floor 
 of a gallery amid cold marble statues. The man of taste has stood 
 amid some glorious amphitheatre of nature, and felt his soul elated 
 by the majesty of the liills, the green loveliness of the valleys, the 
 splendour of the setting sun, and the concert of the rejoicing 
 creation. He has witnessed the same magnificence and felt its 
 
OF Tna POWER OF GODLINESS. 167 
 
 power over and over again. But when the excitement of the ima- 
 gination has been subdued, and the charm has passed away like 
 a dream, and the man has fallen back upon himself, or mingled 
 with the world, his heart has been found without God, and his 
 life reflecting not a ray of the Divine image. Thus making it 
 manifest tliat the formalism of taste, gratified though it be by the 
 grand and graceful in sceneiy, has, in itself and independent of 
 influences from above, no efficacy whatever to purily the heart and 
 clothe man in moral beauty. The formalist has gone up, demurely 
 and punctually, to the temple at the hour of prayer, and, whether 
 it has been amid the architectural splendour of the cathedral 
 where the pealing organ carries the soul aloft, and gorgeous cere- 
 monies are observed; or whether it be in the humble meeting- 
 house where psalms are plainly sung, and the Gospel is plainly 
 preached, he has felt himself attracted and regaled as with a lovely 
 song. But it has been a mere round of formal excitement, which 
 has never moved the depths of the heart to harmony with tho will 
 of God, and thrown no hallowed comeliness over the life. Thus 
 shosving that the ritual of a sanctuary, be it splendid or simple, 
 can of itself no more regenerate the soul of man, than the ritual 
 of material nature. Men may speak of the efiicacy of the sacra- 
 ments, but daily observation makes it too palpable, that multitudes 
 who are baptized and received to the Lord's Su]}per, even by those 
 claiming to be the successors of the apostles, differ little or nothing 
 in theii temper and conduct from tlie ungodly world araund them. 
 And the same thing is evinced in the observance of other forms, 
 when these are made halting-places on which the mind unduly 
 leans. Whatever observances men may substitute for the finished 
 work of the Son of God, and the regenerating influences of the Holy 
 Spirit, be they costly or mean, imposing or simple, appointments 
 of Heaven or appointments of earth, their worthlessness to satisfy 
 the wants of man's moral nature will be made evident. 
 
 2. Our second remark is, that, in mere formalism, ilw pleasure 
 found in sjnrilual religion is not experienced. It is impossible that 
 a should. The creation is not so joyous and full of life when a 
 mass of dark clouds intercepts the rays of the sun, as when that 
 sun beams brightly forth on hill and valley, and covers heaven 
 and earth with light as with a garment. God is a sun. He is the 
 infinite good. Notiiing but a living sensible communion with 
 Him, can displace heaviness from the heart, and shed a holy hap- 
 pirjer)S over the life. Formalism interposes thick shadows between 
 the fountain of iiglit and the human soul. It is as when a man 
 halts on the somewhat bleak and rugged borders of a lovely region, 
 without ever enteiing into the beautiful territory itself. Fonns 
 were designed, by Him who knoweth our frame, to be the means 
 by which we might ascend to the enjoyment of Himself. But 
 when the mind halts in the symbol, instead of rising from it to 
 
IGS formalism; or., the deiNiai 
 
 the thing signified ; when the man iiins up and down the ladder, 
 instead of reaching the eminence which commands the glorious 
 prospect, he loses the enjoyment insepai'ahle fi-ora intercourse with 
 the hlissful realit3\ It has often been remarked, that, in those 
 countries and ages where religion has appeared in her most gaudy 
 trim, — ages characterized by the architectm'al splendour of 
 churches, and by the observance of a gorgeous round of rites and 
 ceremonies, — the spirital element in worship has been feeble and 
 scarcely perceptible. And there, too, the light, loveliness, and 
 joy, inse])arable from the Gospel truth, have been wanting; and 
 gloom and slavish fear have prevailed in tlieir room. When one 
 passes from a country that lies under the deadly grasp of civil and 
 ecclesia3tico,l despotism, to another where political and religious 
 liberty is richly enjoyed, it is like making a transit from a region 
 of thick gloom to one of joyous sunshine. And the dilFerence is 
 not less discernible between a religious community where the spi- 
 ritual clement is buried in the formal, and one in which the former 
 pervades and gives life to the latter; or between an individual 
 who has a feeling of the Divine presence and a relish of theDivmc 
 excellence, and one whose idol is the church he attends and the 
 rites in which he engages. It is not the ritual in itself, at least, it 
 is not the divinely appointed ritual, that is incompatible with or 
 obstructive of spiritual life and joy, but the substitution of it as 
 means in the place of ends. David and Asaph, who lived imder 
 the Levitical economy, so full and minute in its provisions regard- 
 ing forms, lost not sight of the sjnritual element, and had a vivid 
 experience of the joy inseparably connected with it. The mere 
 formalist is a stranger to that life of godliness Avhich enables a^ 
 man to say, — when he looks abroad upon the fields of creation, or 
 when he has entered into his closet, shut his door, and is conscious 
 that no eye sees him and no ear hea.rs him but the eye and ear of 
 God, — " whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon 
 earth that I desire beside thee." " There be many that say, Who 
 will show us any good ? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy coun- 
 tenance upon us." 
 
 Formalism may be found in all religious communities, for it is 
 the besetting sin of human nature; but we look in vain, in the 
 religion of the formalist, for those robes of fine linen, as joyous as 
 pure, which clothed such men as Leighton and Doddridge, Baxter 
 and Edwards, and thousands of others whom the world never 
 heard of, and of whom the world was not worthy. There is a 
 pleasure which a man of taste and sensibility enjoys in contem- 
 plating the grand and beautiful objects of nature, but the pleasure 
 is poor and transient compared with what the same man experiences 
 when, in filial confidence, he views them as the creations of his 
 Father. Byron, amid the lovely scenery of the isles of Greece, 
 never felt what the great metaphysician of New England felt, 
 
OF THE POWER OF GODLINESS. 169 
 
 when, as he tells ns, he " spent much of his time in viewing the 
 clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things; 
 in the mean time singing forth, with a low voice, his contempla- 
 tions of the Creator and Kedeemer." There is a pleasure, too, felt 
 under the shadow of the cathedral pile, derived from the imposing 
 splendour of the place, the enrapturing music, and the rich cere- 
 monial ; hut it is a pleasure different in kind, and vastly inferior 
 in degree to what is experienced by the man, observant it may be 
 of the same forms, who rises through them to divine fellowship 
 with the Father of spirits, and the God of his salvation, And 
 there is a pleasure, also, in going up to the humble chapel, amid 
 the hallowed calm of the sabbath morning, and bearing a part in 
 the routine of its simple services; but that pleasure, likewise, may 
 have little or none of the life and joy of godliness, and be as nnliko 
 the holy inward happiness of the man who worships God in spirit 
 and in truth, as earth is unlike heaven. Men do not gather grapes 
 of thorns, nor figs of thistles; neither do they experience that joy 
 which is a fruit of the Spirit, in a religion which is merely formal 
 and not spiritual. 
 
 3. Our third remark is, that formalism ever has a tendency to 
 intolerance. Men, in proportion as they are imbued with the 
 spirit of the Gospel, have enlarged heai'ts. Love is represented, in 
 almost every page of the New Testament, as the characteristic of 
 the Christian. It is not an attachment to men merely because 
 they are members of this or that particular society, but because 
 they belong to the church of the living God. It is not entwined 
 around a man because he bears a humanly-devised name, but be- 
 cause he wears in his bosom, and shows in his life, the Saviour's 
 image. This holy principle looks beyond the outward appearance, 
 and fastens its regard on that image, though it be found in a 
 Lazarus sitting in rags and seeking to be fed with the crumbs of 
 the rich man's table. Nor does it confine its regards to those who 
 ai'e united to the common Saviour, and are made partakers of the 
 common salvation. It looks on the wide world with an eye of 
 compassion, and feels towards it those stirrings of benevolence 
 which seek to save that Avhich is lost. It is like the sun in the 
 firmament which confines not his radiance to any little spot on 
 the siu'face of the earth, but spreads it over the wide fields of 
 creation. " Its going forth is from the end of the heaven, and 
 its circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the 
 heat thereof." 
 
 Formalism engenders a spirit the reverse of all this. It is sec- 
 tarian. It is pent up within the pale of its own community; and 
 whatever rehgious zeal it possesses, is spent on its own creed and 
 ceremonies. We see this in the Pharisees of the Gospels. They 
 were proud, haughty separatists. Men who stood aloof from 
 others on the ground of mere outward observances. They erected 
 
170 formalism; or, the denial 
 
 the banner of party distinction in the teuijue wliere all meet 
 on a common level. Tliey said to others, by their looks and 
 actions, " Stand by yonrsolt'; come not near to me, for T am holier 
 than yon." We see this in that church which arrogates to itself 
 the exclusive claim of being " Holy Catholic." The most massive 
 system of religious formalism, it has ever been the most intolerant 
 in tlieory and practice. Out of the Komish pale there is no 
 salvation, — is an infallible dogma which every good catholic is 
 bound to believe. Jt is instilled into the minds of youth, by the 
 catholic school book. It is tlie vital element that pervades Papal 
 decrees. It ever and anon di'ops from the priest's lips, in the hearing 
 of young and old, of peasant and noble. And, in accordance with 
 this monstrous dogma, members of other conununions are con- 
 signed over to eternal perdition, though they may have been the 
 most excellent ones of the earth, men of seraphic piety, the very 
 salt of the earth, and the lights of the world. Sectarian exclusive- 
 uess is strikingly characteristic of Oxford Tractarianism. It re- 
 fuses even the name of church to whatever Protestant body lies with- 
 out the pale of its own communion, arrogates the commission to 
 administer Christian ordinances to episcopally ordained ministers 
 only, denounces dissent as apostasy from the true church, and 
 considers it sinful to have fellowship with any beyond the epis- 
 copal border. Hence the intolerance, which has sometimes been 
 manifested in high places, in prohibiting the catholic-spirited men 
 in that portion of the church irom co-operating in good works with 
 Cln-istian men of otlier denominations. But it behoves us not to 
 be unmindful that the same exclusively sectarian feeling may exist 
 in per.sons, mere formalists, sitting side by side with each other in 
 the same chui-ch pew. Whoever, — instead of humbling his heart 
 before God. and recognising in the meanest worshipper a child of 
 the same bountiful leather, and alike welcome with himself to a 
 participation in the fulness of his house. — assumes a conceited 
 sentiment of his own superior sanctity, such as removes him in. 
 fancy to an elevation apart from other men, is filled with the same 
 self-rigliteous and intolerant spirit which actuated the Pharisees, 
 and which Jehovah, by the prophet, so strongly reprobates: "These 
 are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the day!" 
 
 The transition from such separatism to a rancorous fanaticism, 
 is easy and natural. The full-blown separatist not only stands 
 aloof from other men and disregards their claims, but he assumes 
 towards them an attitude of scowling defiance. He carries his 
 hateful spirit into the very exercises of the sanctuary, and utters 
 his denunciations at the altar. The formalist, wrapped up in the 
 robe of bis own righteousness, feigns a " God I thank thee," that 
 he is not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, but that he fasts 
 twice in the week and gives tithes of all that he has. Vv'ith iiis 
 tongue blesses he God, even the Father; and therewith curses bo 
 
OF THE rOWEll OF GODLINESS. 171 
 
 men, which are made after the similitude of God; out of the same 
 mouth proceed blessing and cui-sing. and we behold in him a 
 fountain sending forth at the same place sweet water and bitter. 
 Tliis odious system stings like a serpent, and bites like au adder, 
 at every species of spiritual piety that crosses its path. It varies 
 in the manifestation of its intolerance, from the man who, like a 
 sentinel, goes the round of his own church observances, and in- 
 wardly says, "the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are 
 we," to the man who would erect the gibbet and kindle the faggot 
 for schismatics and heretics, and j^ersuade himself that in thus 
 acting he was doing God service. 
 
 4. Our fourth remark is, t at such a system is diametriccdli/ op- 
 posed to the spirit and precepts of the Gospel. It says, "our fathers 
 worshipped in this mountain." This is the church in which alone 
 is given under heaven that name whereby we can be saved. The 
 Lord and Master says, the exclusive system has ceased. " The 
 hour is come when ye shall neither in this moimtain, nor yet at 
 Jerusalem, worship the Father. God is a spirit, and they that 
 worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Formal- 
 ism says, we who fast so often, pray so fervently, and attend on 
 the sacraments so punctually, are God's people. Evangelism re- 
 plies, "he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that 
 circumcision which is outwciaxl in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which 
 is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the 
 spirit, and not in the letter ; whose praise is not of men, but of 
 God." The one says, "we have Abraham to our father," and are 
 in the line of the true x\postolical succession. The other says, 
 "we are the circumcision," the true seed of Abraham, " which 
 worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have 
 no confidence in the Hesh." The one says, perform this ceremony 
 and that, go this round of observances and that, and ye shall be 
 justified. The other, in holy indignation, e.xclaims, "if righteous- 
 ness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain ; therefore by 
 the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified." The one 
 says, baptism is regenei-ation. only be baptized, come to the sacra- 
 mental table, and ye shall be saved. The other says, " neither 
 circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision, but a new 
 creature." Formalism looks chiefly at what a man does, irrespec- 
 tive of his character and motives. Jt takes notice of his long and 
 numerous ]u-ayers, while it winks at him oppressing tlie poor, and 
 devouring widows' houses. It approves of kis strict observance of 
 the decencies and rites of the Sabbath day, wh'ile it frowns v.pou 
 him healing the diseased, raising an ox out of the i)it, or perform- 
 ing any other works of niercy in the same sacred period. It is 
 heedless of the state of heaVt in which a man approaches God's 
 altar, while it is careful to see that iiis hands are washed, and 
 that his raiment is tidy. It will furnish him with a reason for 
 
172 FORMALISM. 
 
 neglecting a moral duty, and throw an air of sanctimonious pre- 
 tence over the violence done to natural afFection, provided he is 
 mindful of the claims of the temple treasury. It teaches him to 
 say " Oorban," it is a gift: and thus frees him from the obligation 
 of relieving his father and mother. There is not less communion 
 hetvv^een light and darkness, than there is between such a system,, 
 and the spiritual Christianity taught by Jesus and his apostles. 
 " This people," said the Great Teacher, " draweth nigh unto me 
 with their mouth, and honoureth me with tlieir lips; but their 
 heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching 
 for doctrines the commandments of men." Christianity does not 
 overlook what a man may have done, but it looks more to what 
 a man is. It gives no countenance whatever to despise sacred 
 rites and seasons, but it says to the man who attaches an undue 
 importance to them, while neglecting the weightier matters of the 
 law, " These things ought ye to have done, and not to leave the 
 others undone." 
 
 "There are two ways of destroying Christianity," remarks 
 D'Aubigne, "one is to deny it, the other to displace it. To put 
 the church above Christianity, the hierarchy above the word of 
 God; to ask a man, not whether he has received the Holy Ghost, 
 but whether he has received baptism from the hands of those who 
 are termed successors of the apostles and their delegates : all this 
 may doubtless flatter the pride of the natural man, but is funda- 
 mentally opposed to the Bible, and aims a fatal blow at the re- 
 ligion of Jesus Christ, If God had intended that Christianity 
 should, like the Mosaic system, be chieily an ecclesiastical, sacer- 
 dotal, and hierarchical system, he would have ordered and estab- 
 lished in the New Testament, as He did in the Old. But there 
 is nothing like this in the New Testament. All the declarations 
 of our Lord and of his apostles tend to prove that the new religion 
 given to the v/orld, is ' life and spirit,' and not a new sj^stem of 
 priesthood and ordinances. 'The kingdom of God,' saith Jesus, 
 ' cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lohere! 
 or lo there ! for behold the kingdom of God is within you.' ' The 
 kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and 
 
 peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.' Let us not, then, 
 
 esteem the bark above the sap, the body above the soul, the 
 form above the life, the visible church above the invisible, the priest 
 above the Holy Spirit. Let us hate all sectarian, ecclesiastical, 
 national, or dissenting spirit; but let us love Jesus Christ in all 
 sects, whether ecclesiastical, national, or dissenting." '-i^ " And as 
 many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, 
 and upon the Israel of God." 
 
 * Geneva and Oxford, by D'Aubign6. 
 
173 
 
 PAET THE SECOND. 
 
 InSitclitg in its ^lalm &m$t$. 
 
 GENERAL CAUSE. — SPECIFIC CAUSES: SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY - 
 
 SOCIAL DISAFFECTION — THE CORP.UPTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY - 
 RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE DISUNION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GKNKRAL CAUSE. 
 
 Causes of Iiifidelity etbical rather than intellectual — The Will has much to c^ 
 with it — Moral evidence not irresistible — Existence of God does not admit of 
 demonstration — Remark of Dr. Arnold — Pantheism and naturalism traced to 
 avei-sion of heart — SufSciency of Christian evidences — Jewish unbelief origin- 
 ated in a moral cause — Speculative and practical Infidelity have same origin — 
 Bible account of the matter. 
 
 It is evident that unbelief, generally speaking, can originate in 
 only one of two sources ; either in a deficiency of evidence, or, in 
 a state of mind and heart on which the clearest and strongest 
 evidence has no jjower. The causes of infidelity, we are per- 
 suaded, are more ethical than intellectual. And this persu'^sion 
 is greatly strengthened hy the perusal of some of the productions 
 of our modern infidel %Yriters. " Nothing can be more contempt- 
 ible," says Professor Garbett,=" "than the argumentative resources 
 of modern infidelity. It iloes r.ot reason, it only postulates; it 
 dreams and it dogmatizes. Nor can it claim invention." This wit- 
 ness is true. Indeed, we venture to assert, that the general strain 
 of argument brought to bear against Christianity by its modern 
 assailants, would not be tolerated for a moment within the pro- 
 vince of purely literary criticism. The strong determination to 
 withstand everything in the shape of reasonable evidence, contrasts 
 very mnch with the feeble argumentation by which many of the 
 trutls of religion are set aside. Be it atheism or pantheism, 
 natuialism or spiritualism, in different ism or formalism, the will 
 has much to do with it. Moral evidence is the appropriate 
 proof of moral truth. All moral evidence is cumuiatiTe; but, 
 
 * Modern Philosophical Infidelity, p. 5. 
 
171 GKNEItAL CAUSE. 
 
 however strong it may be, it is never irresistible. An indocile 
 reason can ward it off. 
 
 The existence of God, for example, does not admit of demon- 
 strative, but of moral certainty. And. tliough supported by a vastly 
 preponderating amount of proof, room is left for the ravils of a 
 strongly-prejudiced unbelief. The argtunent from design is ons 
 of great power, and though it does not of itself lead us to the High 
 and Holy One, it points us very clearly thither. But the ground 
 is by no means tree from difficulties. Faith, supported by the 
 immensely overbalancing amount of clear evidence, triumphs over 
 these, v/hereas the unbelieving heart yields to them. Still stronger 
 is the testimony to this primal truth given by orir own inward 
 consciousness — a testimony that outweighs all atheistical assump- 
 tions and arguments ; but, in spite of it, man can befool himself, 
 and say in his heart, there is no God. The disrelisli of the truth 
 that God is, strengthens itself in the comparatively small residue 
 of phenomena that seems to conflict with it, and there repels the 
 conviction arising from the irrefragable proof on the other side. 
 Dr. Arnold, reasoning on the supposition that the intellectual 
 difficulties are balanced, remarks, "here is the moral fault of un- 
 belief, — that a man can bear to make so great a moi-al sacrifice, 
 as is implied in renouncing God. He makes tlie greatest moral 
 sacrifice to obtain partial satisfaction to his intellect: a believer 
 ensures the greatest moral perfection, with paitial satisfaction to 
 his intellect also; entire satisfaction to the intellect is, and can 
 be, obtained by neither." =:= The choice in such a case must be 
 resolved into the inclination, or tlie wish to have it that there is 
 no God. But matters are not really so balanced. The difficulties 
 greatly preponderate on tlie side of unbelief And for a man 
 to accept of the proposition that God is not, with the mass of 
 m.onstrosities and difficulties that attend it, and thereby renounce 
 the affirmative pro])osition that God is, — a ])roposition so well 
 substantiated, and for which there is an intellectual necessity, — 
 indicates very plainly the leanings of the heart. Lord Bacon 
 says: " none deny there is a God, but those for whom it maketh 
 thkt there were no God." 
 
 The personality of the Divine Being, irrespective of its being 
 interwoven with the language of the Bihle, and imparting to it a 
 burning energy, is mucli more rational than the ])antheistic doc- 
 trine. It does not admit, however, of strict demonstration. We 
 mav argue very conclusively in favour of it, from our own person- 
 ality, and maintain that, since personality is a peifection. God 
 nmst possess it in the highest degree, otherwise He would be 
 inferior to onrselves; and not only so, but we could conceive of 
 God as a more glorious being than He really is, which is an 
 
 * Dr. Arnold's Life and Correspoudence. 
 
GENERAL CAUSE. 175 
 
 abeui-dity. We may strengthen our proof by the eonsideration 
 that men in general feel, in the most solemn and affecting 
 moments of their lives, that God is a real person. And to this 
 we may add, that, without the idea of a personal God, " we cannot 
 really eX])lain the oiigin or the order of the universe ; and that 
 it is a mere assumption to assert, that personality is in its veiy 
 nature finite — since it is the finiteness of man's attributes, and 
 that alone, which gives the finiteness to his personality."* But 
 the heart can repel all this proof; and bring to its aid, if not the 
 force of argument, the language of the mystic and the principles 
 of a dreaming philosophy. The reluctance to think of God as a 
 living Person, holy, just, and good, and with whom we have to do, 
 is greater than the incapacity. It is in the delirium of self-adora- 
 tion, in the swellings of a pride-intoxicated heart, that men break 
 loose from a sense of responsibility, ignore the existence of the 
 Personal Creator and Judge, and yield to the temptation — ye 
 shall be as gods. No one can read the rhapsodies of such a man 
 as Emerson, without perceiving that the state of the heart, — a 
 heart puffed up with the delusive notion of its own divinity, — 
 lies at tlie bottom of his imbelief. And the appeal is made, not 
 to men's sober judgment, but to their rebellious propensities, 
 when they are told that they have the resources of the world in 
 their own souls, and that all their actions are forms of piety. 
 
 Naturalism has its root in the same soil. In so far as argument 
 is concerned, it has scaicely a leg to stand upon. The evidences 
 of a Supreme Presiding Intelligence are as manifest as those of a 
 Supreme Creative Power. The development hypothesis is nothing 
 better than a wild dream, which is fast disappearing before the 
 light of advancing science. Astronomical and geological re- 
 searches are rapidly cutting away the ground on which any such 
 theory is sup])osed to rest, whether as applied to the heavens 
 above or to tlie earth beneath. I'he nebular hypothesis, which 
 would remove God beyond the limits of the visible universe, and 
 account for the changes, as well as for the orderly movements in 
 the heavens, without his presiding agency, was merely thrown 
 out as a conjecture at first, and is now being falsified by the dis- 
 coveries of the telescope. And, as Professor Whewell remarks, 
 " Science negatives the doctrine that men grew out of apes, that 
 language is the necessary development of the jabbering of such 
 creatures, and reason the product of their conflicting appetites."! 
 Besides, it is doubtless more rational to suppose that God con- 
 tinues to govern the world which He has made than that He has 
 abandoned it. " When a man," says Bacon, •' seeth the depend- 
 ence of causes and the works of P)'ovidence, then, according to 
 tlie allegoiy of the poets, he will easily believe that the highest 
 
 • Smith's ■Relatione of Failb and Philosophy, 11. 13. 
 + Indications of thv Creator, p. 8. 
 
170 GENERAL CAUSE. 
 
 link of nature's chain must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's 
 chair." Having interposed in a miraculous manner at the crea- 
 tion of the world, it is reasonable to believe that God v/ould in- 
 terpose again, for an end worthy of his character, and bearing on 
 the highest interests of the human race. The position taken up 
 by Strauss, — that miracles are impossible, is utterly indefensible. 
 It may consist with his philosophy, but not with the common- 
 sense truth that God is in the heavens, and that He doeth what- 
 soever He pleaseth. But the doctrine of the Divine Providential 
 Governinent does not admit of demonstrative certainty. The 
 facts lying without, and the voice of conscience within, speak 
 loudly in proof of it. The evidence is sufficient to justify our 
 faith, but it is not irresistible. There are other facts which seem 
 to conflict with the doctrine. Darkness and difficulties, which 
 have been felt by the best men in every age, beset us in this field 
 cf inquiry. But what is the darkness to the light? The diffi- 
 culties arise from our limit(^d capacity and kno\Ying but in part. 
 Our vision is restricted to a point of a universal system; and 
 analogy warrants the conclusion, that, were our range of view 
 widened, these difficulties would lessen, if not disappear. The 
 difficulties are much greater on the side of naturalism, besides 
 the monstrosities that are involved in the hypothesis. And when 
 men choose the latter, and thereby extrude God from the throne 
 of his natural government, or compliment Him out of it, there is 
 reason to suspect that the thing is done with the view of exclu- 
 ding Him from his moral dominion. We must fall back on the 
 state of the heart, in seeking for the great reason why men, in the 
 face of such preponderant evidence for divine i)rovidence,' will 
 have it that "God doth not know, and that the Almighty doth 
 not consider." 
 
 Christianity is based upon evidence. The reason why evidence 
 is necessary, is to be found in our moral constitution as rational, 
 discriminating, accountable agents; and in the fact that, from the 
 existence of evil in the world, we were otherwise liable to decep- 
 tion in reference to our highest interests. It could never be a man's 
 duty to believe in a revelation claiming to itself the authority of 
 lieaven, unless that revelation bore, legibly on its front, heaven's 
 signature, or was in some way attended with heaven's evidencing 
 power. The evidence that attests the truth of Christianity, vast, 
 varied, and of great cumulative power, though it be, is not, how- 
 ever, irresistible. No man is warranted to expect it to be so. 
 Faith is a moral act, and, while resting on a strong groundwork 
 of proof, it must have some difficulties over which to triumph. 
 Origen, speaking of the difficulties in the Bible revelation, and of 
 those in the revelation of nature, says: "In both we see a self- 
 concealing, self-revealing God, who makes Hinisclf known only to 
 those who earnestly seek Him ; in both are found stimulants to 
 
GENERAL CAUSK. 177 
 
 faith, and occasions for nnbelief" " There is h'sht enough," savs 
 Pascal, "for those who sincerely wish to see; and chtrknes" e'nougli 
 for those of an opposite desci-ii)tion." Mr. Newman tells us^it 
 " supersedes the authoritative force of outward miracles entirely," 
 to say that " a really overpowerino- miraculous i)roof would have 
 destroyed the moral character of faith." 'J'his, however, is not 
 argument, hut a foolish dogmatic assertion. The Christian miracles 
 are of " a convincing and stupendous character," and yet not so 
 overpowering as the axiom that a whole is greater tlian its ])art; 
 and we lack sagacity to perceive whei-e lies the contradiction be- 
 tween these statements. Evidence is obligatory on man, not be- 
 cause it is overpowering or irresistible, but because it ]>reponderates. 
 Indeed, on the former supposition, to talk of obligation were an 
 absurdity. The judge on the bench is every day" deciding im- 
 portant cases, not on the ground that the evidence is absolutely 
 perfect, but because, notwithstanding objections, the ))roof on the 
 one side preponderates ; and no reasonable man questions the 
 validity of his decision. The external and internal evidences of 
 Christianity constitute a mass of proof fully sufficient to justily 
 our belief in its truths; and, as if aware of the force of it, our 
 modern infidels attack one part of it, and represent us as if resting 
 on that, to the exclusion of the rest. Difficulties there are, both 
 in the record and in the outward evidence, l^ut what are these 
 difficulties compared with the greatly preponderating amount of 
 clear heavenly proof? The difficulties arise out of our ignorance. 
 Analogy warrants us to conclude that they are so only relatively, 
 not absolutely. And they are but as the small dust in\he bahtnce 
 compared with the thousand paradoxes which a man must be ])ve 
 pared to swallow who denies that Christianity is an autboi-itativo 
 revelation from heaven. The infidel is reconciled to these jjara 
 doxes. on the alleged gi-ound of objections which appear as no- 
 thing compared to them. And this furnishes a strong presump- 
 tion that the will has much to do with infidelity, whether it he named 
 deism or spiritualism. " Nor do we well know what midtitudes, 
 who neglect religion on accoinit of the alleged uncertainty oi' its 
 evidence, could reply, if God were to say to them, 'And vet on 
 such evidence, and that far inferior in degree, vou have never hesi- 
 tated to net, when your own tenvporal interests were concerned. 
 You never fenred to commit the ba,i-k of your worldly fortunes to 
 that fluctuating element. In many cases you believe on the testi- 
 mony of others, what seemed even to contradict your own senses. 
 Why were you so much more scrupulous in relation to ME?' "=:= 
 
 The cause of mibelief among the Jews, for exam))le. in the days 
 of the Saviour's flesh, could not be a want of evidence, — for that 
 evidence was numerous, varied, and brilliant. Many, in our day, 
 
 * Rogers's Deasoa and Faith, p. 36 
 
178 OEKERAL CAUSE. 
 
 afifect to despise the evidence from miracles, for no better reason, 
 we are persuaded, than that it is against them. But the Great 
 Teacher rested his claims on the fact of his miracles. " If I do 
 not the works of my Father," said He, " believe me not. But if I 
 do, though ye believe not me, believe the works ; that ye may 
 know and believe that the Father is in me and I in Him." Their 
 fathers had beheld the mighty works of the Lord in the wilderness, 
 in the land of Ham, and at the Red Sea ; but never did they Avit- 
 ness such a visible agency multiplying, in quick and varied 
 succession, its deeds of benevolent and miraculous power, as was 
 daily beheld by their children. They bowed before the majesty 
 of that evidence itself, they paid to it a willing homage, they were 
 fully persuaded that Jesus was the Messiah, so long as the golden 
 dream of an earthly monarchy remained unbroken; and, on the 
 strength of that evidence, would have proceeded at once to make 
 Him their king. It was not till they felt his doctrines thwarting 
 their fondest wishes, — not till they perceived that his kingdom had 
 no battle for the warrior, and was unaccompanied with confused 
 noise and garm.ents roiled in blood, not till they perceived that his 
 subjects were to be composed of the pure, the meek, and the poor 
 in spirit, — that they hid, as it were, their faces from Him. It was, 
 therefore, a moral cause that produced Jewish unbelief, — a state of 
 mind that, relatively to itself, weakens evidence the most powerful, 
 and darkens evidence the most brilliant. His religion ran counter 
 to their moral tendencies, condemned their favourite pursuits, and 
 frowned on their grovelling expectations. And in this originated 
 that carping spirit in which they ever after listened to his dis- 
 courses, that deadly enmity with which they incessantly pursued 
 Him, even when performing among them works of unparalleled 
 grandeur and benevolence. It was because their deeds were evil, 
 that they hated his light. When He was in the world, the world 
 hated Him, because He testified of it that the works thereof are 
 evil. 
 
 The same remarks are substantially applicable to the hostility 
 which has been shown to the pure Gospel in every succeeding age. 
 If, for convenience, we divide infidelity into the s])eculative and 
 the practical, it will be found that both these forms, however 
 different may be the specific process by which the mind in each 
 case settles down in it, may be traced to the same moral cause — 
 the repugnance in human nature to what is purely s])iritual and 
 divinely authoritative. Could we, for instance, have looked into 
 the hidden chambers of imagery, and beheld the jirocesses of 
 thought and feeling in which many talented infidels investigated 
 the Scriptiu-e testimony, our wonder would not have been that 
 tliey landed in unbelief The religion of Jesus, wlien summoned 
 to the bar of their understanding, has met with such treatment as 
 an innocent man meets with when he comes before a liostile jury. 
 
GENERAL CAUSE. 179 
 
 Rather, we should say, they never suffer themselves to behold 
 Cliristianity in all its radiant glory, nor to mark its lofty towers 
 and stable bulwarks; for, as they advance on their way to the 
 temple of truth, they are ever and anon raising around them a 
 thick cloud of dust and darkness. In most cases, we doubt not. 
 Christianity and its evidences have never been examined by such 
 men at all. In our times, it is fashionable, in many quaiters. to 
 ignore the evidences altogether,- to pass them over with a proud 
 sneer as things antiquated and effete, and to judge tiie Gos])e] ac- 
 cording to the conceptions of the individual mind. In other 
 words, the case is prejudged, before the witnesses ai-e exfunined. if 
 examined at all. And in other cases, while an inquiiy into the 
 evidences has been entered upon, it has been with a Juikiug wisii 
 that the examination, after all, might prove unfa voma hie. Jn 
 such circumstances, the wish biasses the judgment, and the in- 
 evitable result is that the man can never believe to be true what 
 he wishes may be false. 
 
 Now this process, which ends in unbelief, has its origin m the 
 aversion of the mind to the high and holy principles of the Gos- 
 pel. There is a demand, made in that Gospel, of every lofty 
 imagination, and every high thought, beicg brought into c;iptiviiy 
 to Christ, which is repugnant to that reckless independence of 
 mind in which such a sceptic glories. To such a nu'nd, Chris- 
 tianity is too humbling ; its meek, and lowly, and crucified Saviour 
 appears mean and uninteresting, and he easily turns from the 
 thought of Him who lias no form or comeliness to tlie conieuj- 
 l^lation of some stormy hero of romance. Its strict moi-aliiy, — 
 exercising a minute inspection over every movement of the inner 
 man, and claiming to be a discerner of the tlioughts and intents 
 of the heart, — is felt to be an uncomfortable restraint; like an in- 
 dividual who follows us through every path and winding wiiich wo 
 take to avoid his presence. Above all, its doctrine of the cross. — 
 staining, as it does, all human glory, reducing the loltiest to a level 
 with the meanest in the sight of God, and making all lieavenly 
 blessedness to depend on Him wlio was crucified as a felon between 
 two thieves, — outrages that high sense of merit which would exalt 
 itself as the eagle and set its nest among the stars. David Hume, 
 somewhere in his writings, acknowledges, as we have aliVHdy 
 noticed, that his readings in the New Testament were but scMuty. 
 And it is not difficult to conceive how such a mind would sit down 
 to the perusal of some of the discourses of the lledeen)er and the 
 letters of his apostles. Other infidels, of whrtm Rousseau is ■n\ 
 example, have paid an involuntary homage to the character of the 
 Saviour. They have admired Him going about, like the esnbodied 
 spirit of benevolence, continually doing good. But they have 
 shrunk back from the doctrine of the cross, and the un( oui- 
 promising req[uirements of Christ's laws, just as a person with a 
 
180 GENERAL CAUSE.' 
 
 diseased eye instinotivoly retires into tlie sliade when the frail 
 organ is about to be ex];)osed to the light of the sun. Mr. Emerson 
 professes to reverence Jesus Christ as belonging to the true race 
 of prophets, as " the only soul in history who has appreciated the 
 worth of man ;" and yet he spurns the idea of receiving religion 
 and law from liis lips, and of subordinating his nature to the 
 nature of Christ. Mr. Parker does not conceal his hatred to " the 
 Popular Christianity," because it represents man as fallen and de- 
 praved, and makes so much of the one mediator between God and 
 man. And when Mr. Newman tells us that he was forced, agaiustall 
 his prepossessions, to renounce every thing distinctively Christian; 
 and would have us to believe ihat the will, in his case, durst "not 
 dictate, whereto the inquiries of the imderstanding should lead ;":;- 
 we appeal to his " Phases," for a refutation of such assertions. 
 We have, in such men, tlie pride without the greatness of tho 
 mighty fallen Intellect in Milton, who said, — 
 
 " In my choice, 
 To reign is worth amhition, though in hell : 
 Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven !" 
 
 Oh ! these intolerable evidences ! Better far be reconciled to all 
 the strange paradoxes implied in disowning Christianity, than 
 submit ourselves to " church, book, person."! Such is the choice 
 of men who are labouring to undermine the historical verity of 
 the sacred writings; and who, baptizing an enlightened attach- 
 ment to them by the ill-sounding name of ' Bibliolatry,' would cut 
 the link asunder, and leave us to wander at will after the unde 
 fined and undefmeable tiling called ' absolute religion.' 
 
 It is, in like manner, with that cold insensibility to divine truth, 
 — that practical form of infidelity which frequently prevails among 
 the multitude. There is an unbelief common among many of the- 
 would-be giants of the earth, and one th at exists among the lowly walks 
 of other men. But as the object of their contempt or disregard is the 
 same, so are the specific causes to be traced to the same great evil 
 principle — an inveterate love of those practices and pursuits 
 which the light of divine truth reproves and condemns. There 
 are immense masses of our population who perhaps never spent 
 five minutes of their lives in considering whether the Bible were 
 a revelation froui God, or a cinmingly devised fable. The Bible, 
 as a book, may be found beneath their roof; but its grand truths 
 have not been rightly apprehended and duly felt, because the 
 volume has seldom been oiiened, and. when opened, not read with 
 half the interest with which they read some fairy tnle. The light 
 which it afibrds sViineth in the darkness, but the darkness admit* 
 teth it not. These individuals would perhajis count it impiety to 
 wield the weapons of the sceptic against the Gospel, were they able 
 
 ♦ Phases of Faith, p. 219. + Parker's Discourse, p. 372. 
 
GENERAL CAUSE. 181 
 
 for the task, and would shrink with horror from the thought of any- 
 way traducing the divine Saviour ; and yet tliey can pass from day 
 to day as little elevated hy all that is magnificent and sublime, as 
 little impressed with all that is marvellous in condescension, as 
 little attracted by all that is beauteous in holiness, as if God's Son, 
 in whom meet pre-eminently all this grandeiu- and loveliness, had 
 never manifested Himself to the world. This is formalism, and, 
 as a species of imbelief, this is what the Gospel condemns. 
 
 The Bible comes to us as a message from the skies. In it, God 
 utters his voice loudly and intelligibly in the ears of men. It is a 
 message of mercy from the thi'one of the Eternal to us the guilty 
 and rebellious, making known a divine Saviour, and offering, on 
 the ground of his atoning sacrifice, a free and a full salvation. In 
 making such declarations, the Bible deals with men as rational 
 and accountable agents. It has no blessings for those who are not 
 deterred by its threatenings, nor won by its promises. It presents 
 to the mind saving tinth, which, in order to prove efficacious, 
 must be believed ; and, in order to be believed, must be carefully 
 read and rightly understood. How, then, are we to account for the 
 melancholy fact, that men possessing the sacred volume, and 
 acknowledging it to be a revelation from God, are little, if at all, 
 influenced by the momentous statements which it contains ? That 
 volume finds a place in the house, but it has no home in the 
 heart. It is assented to as the law and the testimony, the only 
 infallible directory of faith and morals. But its grand truths are 
 seldom, if ever, made the object of devout contemplation; its pre- 
 cepts are seldom taken as a light unto the feet and a lamp unto 
 the path. Whence originates this insensibility to all that is ma- 
 jestic and merciful, this unwillingness to bring the mind into con- 
 tact with the purifying and elevating truths of Christianity, — but 
 in a deceitful ; uspicion that its grovelling earthly pursuits would 
 be disturbed, that its moral tendencies would be thwarted, that the 
 searching light of the Gospel wouhA make manifest its unholy 
 thoughts and aflfections, just as a ray of the sun, let through the 
 chink of an old ruin, reveals the "unsightly guests that dwell 
 within ? It were well if some of our literary men, and jihilosophic 
 religionists, who cry out against soulless creeds and dogmatic 
 Ciu-istianity, would "lay theblamo at the right quarter, and not 
 give a false value to human nature, at the expense of depreciating 
 historical truth. He wh.o " saw with open eye the mystery of the 
 soul," accounted for the rejection or feeble influence of his 
 Gospel, by saying, "men loved darkness rather than light, because 
 their deeds were evil," And all history proves, what the Scripture 
 afiiims, that the natural man receivetli not the things of the Spirit 
 of God, 
 
 The river is traced up to its source. But, in order to account 
 
182 SPBCULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 fully for its nisliing waters, we must notice the tributary streams 
 that it receives in its passage. And, among the specific and subor- 
 dinate canoes of iniidelity, we are disposed to enumerate — Specu- 
 lative Pliilosophy, Social Disiitfection, the CoiTuptions of Christi- 
 anity, Keligious Intolerance, and the Disunion of the Church. 
 These we shall briefly notice. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Sppcnlativp Philosophv inevitable— Indicates a thinkinjf and reflective a^e — Tn- 
 flneiicps the religion' of an age— Has ever been tampering vnth Chnstian truth 
 
 — Gnosticism in tlie primiiive Church — Allegoricai method of inteiiDretation 
 
 — Sacramental theoi^ — Platonism — Scholasticism - Connection_!:flween Mo- 
 dern Speculative I'hilosophv and forms of Modern Infidelity — The Sensational 
 I'liih.snphv — Deistical Writers — Influence of Sensationalism on works of 
 pcienre and common literature — The old Uuitarianism — French Sensa- 
 tionalism • Co , dillac— School of Voltaire — Protracted influencesof Sensation- 
 alism—The Ideal Philo-^ophv : Germany— The human mind made determinatoi" 
 of r'liL;ions truth — Contempt for Evidences — Seen in Strauss — Influence of 
 Idealii=ra in our own countrv — Carlvle — Emerson — Parker — Newman — 
 Mackav — Morell — Importance of maintaining Historical Christianity — Har- 
 mony between a true Faith and a true Philosophy. 
 
 Thf rise of a speculative philosophy, in any age or country where 
 there are thinkers, seems inevitable. It is the natural consequence 
 of the mind's desire to penetrate into the mysteries of existence, 
 and to Icnow all things. IMan himself is a mystery, the world 
 aroinid him is a mystery, the great God above him is a mystery, 
 and the relations between each and all of them are profoundly and 
 impressively mysterious. And, while the great majority of men 
 never attempt to lift up the veil, but are content "with the know- 
 ledge that lies on the surface of things, there are those who must 
 end"eavour to get beyond and solve the problems of mysterious 
 existence. Every country that has emerged from barbarism, and 
 attained to any degree of mental cultivation, is more or less cha- 
 racterized by philosophical speculation. This, in itself, is not to be 
 regarded as an evil. It indicates a thinking and reflecting age, 
 and marks the advancement of a community in mental culture. 
 The evil is, when it spurns the investigation of palpable facts and 
 indubitable evidence, treats as empirical the honest method of in- 
 duction, and incautiously passes the bounds of all fair and legiti- 
 mate inquiry. Then it becomes intolerant of the world of realities, 
 is vainly ])n'ffed up, and. intruding into those things which are not 
 seen, would, instead of proving a handmaid to true leligion, assume 
 the air of an imperious mistress, and decide its shape, dress, and 
 laws. To this charge, the gi-eater number of the systems of phi- 
 losophy tliat have emanatetVfrom the schools must plead guilty. 
 
 Jt is vei-y obvious that the philosophy of an age must materially 
 influence the religion of that age. The great subjects with which 
 
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY, 183 
 
 speculative philosophy is conversant, are those which lie within 
 the domain of natural and revealed truth. It cannot touch upon 
 the finite and the infinite, upon man, the universe, and God, 
 without coming into contact with some of the great essential prin- 
 ciples of religion. Its speculations upon man aflect his position 
 as a fallen heing, the suhject of moral government, and an lieir of 
 immortality. Its speculations upon the universe bear upon the 
 evidences of creative power, and providential control, and the 
 existence of good and evil. And its speculations upon God, the 
 Absclute, as philosophy terms Him, bear upon his personality, 
 independent existence and agency, and the relations in wliich He 
 stands to the material universe and the human race. Views on 
 these great subjects, at particular periods, notwithstanding the 
 clear and definite statements regarding them in the sacred volume, 
 have been very much moulded by the reigning intellectual philo- 
 sophy. And that divine record itself, so firmly established in 
 history, and speaking in the tone of heaven's authority, lias been 
 made to give forth its utterances according as philosophy dictated 
 and allowed. The servant, usurping the place of the master, has, 
 as commonly happens, stripped the master of every vestige of 
 authority, put words into his mouth, or given the interpretation, 
 and that not unfrequently a false one, of all that he said. 
 
 The history of every age. from the beginning of the Gospel 
 until now, too clearly shows that a speculative philosophy has ever 
 been tampering with " the law and the testimony," corrupting the 
 simplicity, and weakening the power, of Christian truth ; and been 
 a subordinate cause in producing, or aiding, the irreligion and 
 scepticism of cultivated minds. The Pauline epistles testify, that, 
 before the apostles had left the world, philosophy, in some ef its 
 forms, was seeking to exert an evil influence on the church ; so 
 that Paul needed to protest against its intrusion, and wai-n the 
 disciples of its spirit. Christianity, in the primitive age, had 
 obtained a footing in many of those cities where, on account of 
 their proximity to Greece, the Oriental and Grecian philosophies 
 prevailed. These philosophies were rife with bold and unhallowed 
 speculations respecting such things as the mode of the Divine 
 existence, and the nature of the Divine agency. The sublime 
 mysteries of the Gospel were just such subjects into which they 
 wished to intrude. And, from a vain philosophy — vain, because 
 transcending the boundaries of fair and legitimate inquiry — the 
 simplicity of the faith had no less to dread than from the misap- 
 preliensions and corruptions of Judaism. Gnosticism did in the 
 church, in primitive times, what rationalism has been doing in 
 modern times. " In all cases," says Neander, " the gnostics were 
 for explaining outward things from within — that is, from their 
 intuitions, which were above all doubt."* Gnosticism was the phi- 
 
 * Church History, vol. ii. p. 71. (Clarke's edition.) 
 
13 i SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 lo^iophiogavl) in wiiicli infidelitv, with great professions of reverence, 
 ]ai(l lis Imnds on tlie Gospels, reduced to its own standard ths 
 revealed mvsf.eries. and disturbed the peace and purity of the early 
 cliurt'li. This ]^hilosophy was a fruitful source of scejiticism and 
 irreligion. and from it s:.em. in a great measure, to have emanated 
 those deadly errors respecting the person and work of Christ which 
 disfigured and tore in pieces tlie fair form of primitive Christianity. 
 
 The corrujitions of Christianity pave the way for the denial of 
 Christianity itself. And it has often been remarked, that there is 
 scai'cely a corruiition of religious truth which might not be shown 
 to liave existed during the first three centuries of the Christian age. 
 These corruptions are. in a great measure, to be traced to the pre- 
 vailing speculative philosophies, abetted and being abetted by the 
 depraved tendency in man to mutilate, ov add to, deform, and 
 weaken, the revelations of heaven. It is to a philosophical influ- 
 ence, for the most part, that we ascribe those unsound methods of 
 intei'pretation, which, in the shape of allegory and mysticism, 
 were carried so far by Origen and others, and which found hidden 
 meanings in statements that were perfectly plain, and saw nothing 
 incomprehensible in doctrines the most mysterious. The Alex- 
 andrian school of divinity, beaded by Origen, became famous for 
 its union of a spurious philosophy with Christianity. Some of the 
 Ciiristian fathers em])loyed the same allegorical method in inter- 
 jU'eting the inspired record, that the Pagan Platonists employed in 
 coimnenting on the popidar mythology and the Iliad of Homer. 
 And this tended, very much, to change Christianity from the pure 
 state in which it had been given to the world by the Lord and his 
 apostles. 
 
 It is to a philosophical influence, in a great degree, also, that 
 must be traced the sacrament'-d theory. Baptismal regeneration 
 does not date its birth in modern times. It was held by many of 
 the primitive fathei's. We find it, where we find almost all the 
 corruptions of Christianity, in the first three centuries ; and as a 
 fiTiit of a vain philosoijhy tampering with t!ie spirituality and sim- 
 plicity of the church. It was common to impute a mystic efficacy 
 to the use of certain terms, such as the repetition of the name of 
 Jesus, and to the practice of certain forms. This flowed fiom the 
 philosophical notions about matter. Matter was alleged to have cer- 
 tain evil tendencies, while, co-existing with these, were some inherent 
 powers which, being controlled by the divine will, counteracted 
 tlie evil. Thiscontrol was believed to be associated with the utter- 
 ance of certain words and the j'lerformance of certain rites. Hence 
 th,i mystical and superstitious efficacy of the sacraments.-i< But 
 for the ])hysical ])hilo5ophy ol' tlie schools, and the general belief 
 in magic in the early ages of the church, it may be questioned 
 if the sacramental theory would have met with such a reaay 
 
 * Sec Yangli.tin"s Corruptions of Christiar.ity, p. 293, f>ic. 
 
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPIIT. IdW 
 
 reception. These invested the ministers of religion with tremen- 
 dous spiritual power, made them, by virtue of their office, dispensers 
 of the grace of God, and originated that system of sacramental 
 efficiency which, overshadowing tlie pure gospel, has corrupted 
 God's religion into man's religion, and, in thousands of cases, has 
 induced thinking men to reject both. 
 
 Plato and Aristotle were the chiefs of the ancient schools. In 
 them may be said to have centered all the speculative philosophy 
 of Greece. And the influence of the one in the Eastern churches, 
 for several centui-ies subsequent to the apostles, was manil'ested 
 in debasing and changing the very substance of revealed truth ; 
 w^hile the influence of \he other in the ^^'est. during the middle 
 ages, was exerted in defending and strengthening the corruptions. 
 It is not a question with us, what use these philosophies were in 
 whetting the human intellect, or how far they jnoved to be " the 
 best gymnastic of the mind," but what bearings had they upon 
 that truth which, coining from above, is the divinest and truest 
 phjloso])hy. And history w^arrants the assertion that they spoiled 
 it, corrupted its purity, innovated into its very essence, and were 
 fruitful sources of formalism and infidelity. 
 
 It has been well remarked, by Dr. Hampden, that of the two 
 philosophies, in their bearing on religious opinion, " Platonism 
 has been more aiTogant in its pretensions: it has aspired, not to 
 modify, but to supersede Christian truth.. Christianity had to 
 struggle in its infancy against the theology of the school of Alex- 
 andria, vdiich regai'ded the Chiistian system as an intrusion on 
 the philosophical ascendancy w^hich it had hitlierto enjoyed. The 
 Kew-Platonists disputed the originality of the Christian doctrine, 
 asserting that the sayings of our Lord were all derived from the 
 doctrines of their master.* Nor was the mischief from the 
 Alexandrian school neutralized, when, its open hostility being 
 found ineff*ectual, disciples of that school mercfed themselves into 
 the Christian name. The accommodation which then took place 
 between the theories of their philosophy and the doctrines of the 
 faith, proved a snare to members of the church. Hence, upon 
 the whole, resulted, even in the beginnings of the Gospel, an 
 ambiguity respecting the peculiar rights of the antagonist systems. 
 And this" ambiguity aflected the question of the self-originated 
 divine character of the Christian truth." f 
 
 It deserves notice that Neander re})resents Platonism as having 
 had a double influence in relation to Christianity. He, speaking 
 from his own experience, regards it as having been, in many cases, 
 a tran.'iition point to the Gospel. But the question is, what was 
 its influence when carried into Christianity itself? The illus- 
 
 * Infirlelity perfm-ni^ a cvcIp. ISiv. Emer^ou says— a tbing easier sr.id tliaa 
 prove-l— ■•' CijriHti;inity is in Plato's Pliaedo." 
 t JiainiJuen'a Banjptou Lectuie, p. 10. 
 
ISO SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tiious church historian himself shall answer: " the New Platonism 
 could not bring itself to anquiesce, particularly, in that humility 
 of knowlediie, aud that rc'iiiitaiution of self, which Christianity 
 required. It could not be induced to sacrifice its philosophical, 
 aristocratic notions, to a reiis^ion which would make the higher 
 life a common possession for all mankind. The religious eclecticism 
 of this direction of the spirit could do no otherwise than resist 
 the exclusive aud sole supremacy of the religion that suffered no 
 other at its side, but would subject all to itself."* Accordingly, 
 as he shows, it was from this school that the most numerous as 
 well as the most formidable antagonists of Cln-istianity proceeded. 
 
 While the i^atouism of Ale.\audria was thus gaining an 
 ascendancy in the early church, recommending itself to the ima- 
 gination of tiie contenijilative as the revealer of mysteries, and 
 thus transnuiting the pni-e gold of Christianity into an impure 
 mixture, the pliilosophy of Aristotle was, for the most part, 
 regarded with aversion, as the armour-bearer of heretics and of 
 the assailants of the faith. But, duriiig the middle ages, the 
 Scholastic Philosophy had its throne in the very heart of the 
 Christian church; and its supremacy is still visible in the Romish 
 system — the most corrupt form of Christianity that has been 
 given to the world. From the seventh century, and onward, the 
 philosophy of the Stagyrite began to he exclusively studied; 
 and was resorted to for weapons, not so much in defence of scrip- 
 tural truth as for tlie purpose of strengthening and perpetuating 
 the corruptions and superstitions with which the church was 
 overrun. " The question of the influence of Aristotle's philosophy 
 is more important on this very account, that it has been more 
 subtile, more silently insinuated into, and spread over, the whole 
 system of Christian doctrines. J3eing employed as an instrument 
 of disputation, it has not been confined, like Platonism, to certain 
 leading points of Christianity, as, for instance, to the doctrines of 
 the Trinity and the immortality of the soul, but has been applied 
 to the systematic development of the sacred truth in all its parts." 
 
 " It is the metaphysics of the schools, which form the texture 
 of the Ptoman theology and by which that system is maintained. 
 In the destitution of 'Scrii)ture-facts for the support of the theolo- 
 gical structure, the method of subtile distinctions and j-easoniugs 
 has been found of admirable efficacy. It eludes the opponent, 
 who, not being trained to this dialectical warfare, is not aware, 
 that all such ai-gume;itation is a tacit assumption of the point in 
 controversy; or is perplexed aud confounJed by the elaborate 
 
 subtilties of the apologist The resistance, which the 
 
 Roman church has shown against improvements in Natural 
 Philosophy, is no inconsiderable evidence of the connection of the 
 
 * Neander's Cliurcli History, vol. i. pp. 40, 218. (Clarke's edition.) 
 
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 187 
 
 ecclesiastical system with the ancient logical philosophy of the 
 schools. There has been a constant fear, lest, if that philosophy 
 should be exploded, some important doctrines could not be 
 maintained. "-;=: 
 
 This contentious philosophy, existing in the bosom of the 
 church for many centuries, '' clothed in the purple of spiritual 
 supremacy, and giving the law of faith to the subject-consciences of 
 men," was a fruitful source of scepticism and infidelity. Not a few 
 distinguished names, including scholars of eminence and several 
 of the popes, have been mentioned as instances in wliich doubt 
 and disputation, taking the place of the love of truth, engendered 
 a cold or profligate disbelief. Mr. Hallam, speaking of the un- 
 bounded admiration which the schoolmen had for the wi'itings 
 of Aristotle, says, " With all their apparent conformity to the 
 received creed, there was, as might be expected from the circum- 
 stances, a great deal of real deviation from orthodoxy, and even 
 of infidelity. The scholastic mode of dispute, admitting of no 
 termination, and producing no conviction, was the sure cause of 
 sceptism ; and the system of Aristotle, especially with the com- 
 mentaries of Averroes, bore an aspect very unfavourable to na- 
 tural religion The Aristotelian philosophy, even in the hands of 
 the master, was like a barren tree, that conceals its want of fruit 
 by profusion of leaves. But the scholastic ontology was much 
 worse. "f Men, in order to display their ingenuity, involved in 
 perplexity the most important truths, fostered a spirit the very 
 reverse of that with which it becomes us to approach the Sacred 
 Oracles, made the worse not unfrequently appear the better reason, 
 and, in some instances, went so far as to take up the false and 
 destructive position, that opinions which were philosophically 
 true might be theologically false. What Milton says of the iallen 
 angels and their speculations, is strikingly descriptive of the 
 schoolmen and the dialectical abuses in which they passionately 
 indulged: — 
 
 " They found no end, in wandering mazes lost. 
 
 Vain wisdom all, and fedse philosophy." 
 
 And just because the philosophy was false, and the wirxlom vain, 
 the Christian faith encountered in it a dangerous enemy under 
 the disguiss of a professed friend. 
 
 It is, however, of the connection subsisting between the modern 
 speculative philosophy and the forms of modern infidelity, that we 
 wish more especially to speak. Two philosophies, distinguished 
 from each other by very broad characteristics, though, in so far 
 as religion is concerned, often tending substantially to the same 
 result, have played very pi-ominent parts in modern times. We 
 
 * Hampden's Bampton Lecture, pp. 12, 385. 
 + Hallam's Europe during the Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 636. 
 
183 SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 allude to \vliat havp. bsen aptly desicfnated scnsatlonaHsm and 
 idealism. Tho influence of these philosophies, when puslied to 
 their extremes, lias been productive of a vast amount of the in- 
 fidelity which, during;- the last and the present century, has pre- 
 vailed in the departments of scriptural exegesis, literature, and 
 science. 
 
 Tho sensational philosophy has liad a wide-spread influence, 
 in niany quarters, in destroying the veiy fundamental principles 
 of natural and revealed religion. It was in fact, iu one period, 
 the creed of nparly the whole of philosophical Kurope. Hobbes 
 is the precursor of modern sensationalism. He. by resolving 
 every operation of the mind into transformed sensations, based 
 his theory upon avowed materialism, struck the root of all religion, 
 precluded us from having any real conception of a Supreme Being, 
 and sliut us out fi*om all otliei- existences but matter and a ma- 
 terial world. His Psychology is expressed in the maxim: nihil 
 e.st in in'eUectu quod iinn priiis fiierit in sensu. Nothing, according 
 to him, is in the intellect, but wliat was previously in the sense. 
 It is chiefly owing, however, to the circumstance of his name 
 having become so much associated with that of Locke, that the 
 philosopher of Malmesbury has exerted such an influence in tlie 
 spread of sensationalism. The system of the " Leviathan," and 
 that of the '• Essay on the Human Understanding," have been 
 confounded. And a corruption, or an exaggerated development, 
 of Locke's principles, has been imputed to him as if he were its 
 veritable author. But the difference between them is funda- 
 mental. The sensationalism of Locke has no necessary tendency 
 to materialism, whereas materialism is not only the landing-])lace, 
 but the foundation of the theory of Hobbes. " They difl^er," says 
 Sii- James Mackintosh, " not only in all their premises, and many 
 of their conclusions, hut in their manner of philosophizing itself. 
 Locke had no prejudice which could lead him to imbibe doctrines 
 from the enemy of lihei'ty and of religion" The province wiiich 
 Locke assigns to reflection, and his maintaining that the senses 
 do not furnish the intellect with the whole of its ideas, clear him 
 of the charge of a tendency to materialism. How, then, has his 
 name become allied with the jiernicious dogmas of the materialist 
 scliool that flourished in the eighteenth century; and how comes 
 M. Cousin to say, that " since the metaphysic of Locke crossed 
 the channel, on the light and brilliant wings of Voltaire's imagin- 
 ation, sansualism has reigned in France without contradiction, 
 and with an authority of which there is no parallel iu the whole 
 history of philosophy?" 'i'he explanation is to be found in what 
 Sir W. Hamilton calls " tlio two pai-tial princii)les'' of Locke, 
 which the French school. re])resentpd by Cond iliac and Cabanis, 
 much exaggerated. The sensuous origin of our knowledge, though 
 not to the exclusion of reflection, has a very prominent place as- 
 
SPECULATIVE I'll ILOSOI-IIY. 189 
 
 sipfned to it in tlie " Essay on tlie Hnmau Understanding;" and 
 it is this ])art of Irs syst.eui tlia^. the sensational school has drawn 
 out, and founded tliereou a scheme of niaierialism destructive of 
 ail the prineijiles ofnioraliiy and religion. 
 
 It has been said, "that Locke distinctly enough foresaw the 
 idealistic and sceptical arguments which might he drawn frou) his 
 principles. He did not draw them, because he thought iheni 
 frivolous." But others did. In our own country Berkeley de- 
 rived from them his arguments against the e.\.istence of matter 
 and a material world; and David Hume, taking a bold step ia 
 advance, involved both mind and matter in doubt and darkness. 
 Berkeley laid hold on Locke's principle, tlr-t oiir knowledge of 
 extei-nai things is not immediate but through the intervention of 
 ideas, and maintained that matter is not a reality but an infer- 
 ence; that " all the choir of heaven and fra-niture of earth — all 
 those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world — 
 have not any subsistence without a mind." Hume, too acute not 
 to see the inference, and too sceptical not to diaw it, showed that 
 the existence of mind as well as matter was a more inference, and 
 that nothing real was left us but a succession of nnpressions and 
 ideas. These speculations were, in the last degree, adverse to the 
 interests of religion. 
 
 Philosophical scepticism, within certain limits, does not neces- 
 sarily imply religious scepticism. But in the case of Hume it 
 was universal — involving in inextricable doubt and confusion 
 the whole region of morals and religion. And its etiect on multi- 
 tudes who had neither the inclination, nor ability, to follow the 
 philosopher through all his subtile windings, was seen in a con- 
 temptuous disregard of everything lying beyond the senses as 
 wrapped up in the most ])erplexing doubt and mystery. It is 
 indisputable that the stu])id deistical school of writers which 
 flourished during the last century, a school into wiiich Locke 
 never would have entered, fortilied themselves with many of the 
 conclusions that were drawn from exaggeratiiig the somewhat 
 partial principles of his philosophy. It was on these conclusions 
 that they endeavoured to ground their doctrines of invincible 
 necessity, and stern materialism, theieby tending to confound 
 moral distinctions, and to make God and nature synonymous. 
 And it is just as indis])utable that through them descended to the 
 educated classes in general, the disposition to look with indiffer- 
 ence on everything supernatural, so fearfully cliaract^^ristic of the 
 period referred to. The Israelites heard conflicting accoiuUs of 
 the land of Canaan, and being disposed to believe the evil report 
 which suited their indolence and carnality, they said, *' Let tis 
 make a captain, and let us return into Egyi)t." And multitudes 
 who are more prone to cleave to earth than rise to heaven, seeing 
 in the progress of philosophic speciUatiou the tendency to mate- 
 
190 SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 rialise everything, or to wrap in perplexity tlie supersensual, are 
 disposed to leave religion to priests, and \artually say, " Let us 
 eat and drink, for to-morrov/ we die." 
 
 In many of our works of science, and in much of our common 
 literature, the evil influence of an extreme sensationalism has 
 been manifested. Secondary causes are rested in, while an intel 
 ligent First Cause is seldom or never adverted to. Providence is 
 either denied, thrust away into a general superintendence, or 
 habitually passed over as a worn-out fiction. And nature is 
 brought in to control and account for everything, as if, indepen- 
 dent of nature, there were no God. Priestley has been instanced 
 as an example of the influence of a sensational philosophy on 
 religious opinions. He Avas an avowed materialist ; and, though 
 he did not carry his materialism so far as to overturn the prin- 
 ciples of natural religion, his theology was unstable as water, 
 liaving little or nothing in it peculiarly Christian, and being 
 powerless for the promotion of spiritual life. Tliis influence has 
 been felt, and acknowledged, on the Unitarianism which, since 
 his time, has existed on both sides of the Atlantic ; for it is unde- 
 niable that it has been losing whatever spirituality it possessed, 
 and been gravitating more and more towards simple Deism. 
 There exist an " Old School" and a "New School," as they are 
 called ; and while the latter is, in a great measure, the effect of 
 German idealism, the former represents the influence of the old 
 sensationalism. "It is connected," says Mr. Theodore Parker, 
 " with a philosophy poor and sensual, the same in its basis with 
 that which gave birth to the seliish system of Paley, the scepti- 
 cism of Hume, the materialism of Hobbes, the denial of the 
 French deists."-'.'^ This, though the testimony of one who has 
 passed over to the " Scbool of Progress," is true. In short, the 
 influence of a developed sensational i^hilosophy, when brought to 
 bear on religion, has ever been to denude it of its mysteries, 
 quench its si)irit, reduce it to a system of material formalism, if 
 not to deny it both in substance and name. Mr. Morell thus 
 briefly marks the progressive stages : " The first effect is to 
 weaken our perception of the Divine personality; this, in the 
 second place, makes itself apparent by overturning the doctrine 
 of a particular providence; next, in order to remove the Divine 
 woi-king further away from the world, secondary causes are 
 adduced to explain, not only all the phenomena of nature, but 
 also the direction of human life; and then, lastly, the process 
 advancing one step further, it begins to be an object of specula- 
 tion and of doubt wliether there be a distinct personality in the 
 Deity or not; until, at length, the conception of God is entirely 
 blended with that of the order and unity of natui-e."f 
 
 * Parlter's Discourse, p. 355. 
 + Morell's History of Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 584. 
 
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 191 
 
 It is to the Continent, however, and especially to France, that 
 we must look for the full and b)'oad efieets of an extreme sensa- 
 tional philosophy. Condillac was the great apostle of the sensual 
 philosophy of the Continent. He tiomished about the same time as 
 Hume, but his influence was much greater. A professed disciple 
 of Locke, wliose essay on the " Human Understanding" was warndy 
 received in France, he, in the course of his speculations, dejiarted 
 widely from him. The English philosopher, while laying great 
 stress on the sensuous origin of our knowledge, recognised two 
 sources — sense and reflection. The French metapliysu^ian obli 
 terated the distinction, and resolved reflection and aii our mental 
 processes into sensation. As a philosophy of sensationalism, that 
 of Condillac was complete; and it \^ould have roused the indig- 
 nation of the illustrious Englishman, could he have heard his 
 name associated with it, as has often been done on the Continent, 
 "In truth," as Mr. Lewes remarks, " when you see Locke's name 
 mentioned by the French writers of the eighteenth century, you 
 may generally read Hobbes; for they had retrogiaded to Hobbes, 
 imagining they had developed Locke. "-f- Tlie results which fol- 
 lowed, in reference to religion, were feaiful. 'I'he amiable philo- 
 sopher, spending his time noiselessly in his study, was sending 
 forth speculations, involving geims which aiterwards rij)ened into 
 absolute atheism and social convulsions. A host of po])ular writers 
 arose who, pushing his philosophy to the utmost extreme, Ibunded 
 upon it an ethical system of the most undisguised selfishness, and 
 which substituted physical, educational, and ])olitical improvement, 
 for the duties and sanctions of religion. France, at tliis period, 
 was renowned for her brilliant writers, her literary society, and 
 men of scientific research. But within these circles, everything 
 spiritual was paralyzed under the reigning influence of sensation- 
 alism; and an infidelity, sensual, flippant, and daringly iiti})ious, 
 ran riot and prevailed. Scientific reseaich was sternly restricted 
 to the material objects and mechanical forces of nature; and, if 
 the philosopher looked beyond tliese, it was up to a vacant heaven 
 in which, he complacently said, there is no (Jod. The moralist 
 viewed man as a being wholly material, all whose mental powers 
 and processes were but manifested sensations, whose moral law 
 was self-interest, and to whom the doctrines of ies})onsibility, a 
 future life, and a living Personal God, were tlie dreains, ])leasing 
 or perplexing, of an unj)hi]osophic age. The schoo.l of Voltaire, 
 which completed its cycle of impieties by ridding men's minds of 
 the idea of God — uttering, as its watch-word, in reference to the 
 Saviour of the world, " Crush the wretcl.' ;" proclaiming death to 
 be an eternal sleep, and the present sc, le the whole of man — 
 was just an embodiment of the irreliyious influences of the 
 
 * Lewes's Biogi-apliical Hiotory of rhilosopby, vol. iv. p. 59. 
 
1<^^ SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 reigning philosophy. Diderot and others of the Encyclojiaedists 
 were pupils and admirers of Condillac. And the famous athe- 
 istical hook, " Systeme de la Natiu-e," a work of which Lord 
 Brougham savs, ''that words sldlfully substituted for ideas, and 
 assumptions for proofs, are made to "pass current, not only for 
 arguments against existing beliefs, but for a new system planted 
 intheir stead,"- was the matured fruit of the French sensational 
 philosophy. And what was the influence of that philosophy on 
 the people at large ? They might never have sat at tlie feet of Con- 
 dillac, or of any of the chiefs of the metaphysical schools, but, as has 
 been remarked, " they had no difficulty in laying hold of what we 
 may term the formulas of that philosoi^hy — formulas which came 
 before them in very intelligible propositions, declarative of complete 
 materialism, together with an implied denial both of the doctrine 
 of man's immortality, and the existence of a God."f The inmost 
 spirit o!" that philosopliy was atheistical, and it was expiessed in 
 that bold course of anarchy and impiety which has been too well 
 designated the reign of terror. 
 
 The extreme scepticism of Hume, and the old French atheistical 
 philosophy, may receive little or no coimtenance in this age of re- 
 viving earnestness, but we have inherited sometliing of their 
 spirit. Reid in Scotland, and Kant on the Continent, may have 
 been instrumental in rolling back the tide, but the destrtictive 
 eflects of it are yet visible on the land. That positive hostility to 
 a pure spiritual religion, or that contemptuous disregard of it, so 
 Avofully characteristic of some modern woi'ks of science; that 
 strict care to guard metapliysical speculations and physical re- 
 searches from the idea of a superintending providence ; that 
 exclusive attention to mere secondary causes, to the extrusion of 
 the great First Cause ; that cold formal air of respect shown by 
 much of our literature to rehgious truth, and the manifest tendency 
 to look with indifference on all religions as very much alike ;— 
 the materialism, indifferentism, and formalism of the age, are the 
 protracted influences of a waning sensationalism acting on tlie 
 minds of men that are prone to live without God in the world. 
 
 The influence of an extreme Ideal PhilosopJiy, in producing 
 religious scepticism, has been not less powe'-ful than an extreme 
 sensationalism. The former having a tendency to run into pan- 
 theism, as the latter to run into materialism and atheism. Wo 
 look to France, at the end of last century, for the full development 
 of the one; and to Germany, in more recent times, for tlie full de- 
 velopment of the other The speculative philosopliy of Germany 
 ditters widely from that of our own country ; and, as the nnnd of 
 a nation is very much reflected in its i)hilosophy, this ditferenco 
 aiises out of the uifterent mental habitudes of the two peoples. 
 
 ♦ Bi-onpbam's Introfhictnry Discourse, p. 172. 
 + Morells Histoi? of Philosophy, vol. i. p. 22. 
 
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 193 
 
 The English mind is einineutly practical, and deals with palpable 
 facts ; it respects moral evidence, experience, and testimony ; and 
 from these makes its way to tlie higher regions of abstract truth. 
 Hence the clear common sense of our philosophy, and the absence 
 of a vague transcendentalism in our theology. The German mind, 
 on the other hand, is imaginative and fond of speculation, intole- 
 rant of the evidence of palpable realities, and, from abstract con- 
 ceptions, argues its way to a system of science. Hence the 
 extreme idealism of its philosophy, and the vague subtile specu- 
 lations winch, with much that is precious, float in its theology. 
 Our pliilosopliy aims chiefly at analyzing the powers and faculties 
 of the human mind, and thus reaches man's moral and intellectual 
 nature; and tliere finds, as in the phenomena of the material 
 imiverse, evidences of the existence, providence, and character of 
 God. The German philosophy, on the contrary, busies itself with 
 tliose great problems of existence which were discussed again and 
 again in the ancient schools, and attempts to solve the questions 
 relating to the being and nature of God, the universe, and the 
 moral agency of man. Philosophy, in our country, is not sucli an 
 engrossing and exclusive object of pursuit, and consequently does 
 not exert such an influence on oiu" religious beliefs. There might 
 be a false philosophy in our colleges, and yet a true theology might 
 retain a strong hold on the hearts of our people. But, in Germany, 
 pliilosopliy occupies a large place, and sways powerfully the minds 
 of the learned, and so close in hand does it go with theology, that, 
 the two have almost become identified. The idealism which cha- 
 racterizes its meta]3hysical disquisitions, characterizes also its 
 religious speculations. 
 
 The German Ideal Philosophy dates from the time of Leibnitz. 
 He was an opponent of Locke, and an independent, not a slavish 
 disciple, of Descartes. " The comprehensive and original genius 
 of Leibnitz," remarks Sir W. Hamilton, " itself the ideal abstract 
 of the Teutonic character, had reacted powerfully on the minds of 
 his countrymen ; and Bationalism, (more properly Intellectualisni,) 
 has, from his time, always remained the favourite philosophy of 
 the Germans. On the principle of this doctrine, it is in Pteason 
 alone that truth and reality are to be found. "--i- Leibnitz placed 
 himself in antagonism to Locke, by maintaining the Platonic 
 dogma that the soul originally contains the princi^Dles of several 
 notions and doctrines which experience affords only the occasions 
 of awakening. And it is in this view of the mind j^ossessing 
 innate ideas, independent of experience, and by its necessary laws 
 arriving at necessary truths, that we have the germs of that philo- 
 sophical rationalism which, when fully developed, bore such bitter 
 fruits in theology; just as in the sensationalist principle of found- 
 
 * Discussions ou riiilosopliy aud Literature, p. 4. 
 
 O 
 
19-1 SPECULATIVE PHILOSOniY. 
 
 ing all our knowledge on experience, we have tlie seed that ripened 
 into the complete scepticism of Hume, and furnished food to the 
 atheistical school of France. The one, attaching an exclusive im- 
 5)ortauce to everything within man, led the way to the finding of 
 uli knowledge and life in the depths of the mind ; as the other, 
 attaching itself to what lay without, was the occasion of sinking 
 .the spiritual in the material. The philosophic thoughts of Leibnitz 
 "boated loosely and beautifully on the stream ; Wolf, one of his 
 professed disciples, gathered them np and formed them into a rigid 
 system. With him may be said to have begun the modern method 
 cf oaiTying philosophy into the domain of religion, of applying 
 methods of proof to the Christian doctrines which are applicable only 
 to objects of human science, and of arraigning, before a stern 
 logic, divine i-evelation and historical testimony. Tn the wake of 
 '.this school of philosophy, arose the great chief, Immanuel Kant, 
 "who greatly modified it. He was a man of strong subjective ten- 
 idencies It is a primary principle of his philosophy that the 
 element of oiir knowledge coming from without, is merely phe- 
 nomenal, — having no reality or shape till it is subjected to the 
 laws of the understanding. The metaphysicians of this school, 
 •says Dr. Chalmers, will tell us, " that no evidence for a God is to 
 be found in the experimental argument afforded by external and 
 visible nature, not at least till the glorious spectacle of nature, 
 ; teeming to common eyes with all the indices of design and order, 
 •shall somehow have been transformed and sublimated into their 
 own speculations." Kant led his followers to a dizzy height far up 
 ill the regions of air, but there they did not stop. The climax 
 "was reached by Hegel, in whom idealism has become absolute, 
 and from him have been obtained those weapons which, in the de- 
 l)ai-tment of theology, have been wielded on the side of a complete 
 -i.*ationalism- 
 
 Now, one thing is especially observable, amid all the bewildering 
 .and shifting speculations of the modern German school, namely, 
 ;that the human mind is made the determinator of religious truth, 
 .and that no weight is given to the external facts and evidences of 
 revelation except in so far as they harmonize with the inward 
 •-sentiments and conceptions. The religious creed of our idealists 
 is not historical, a matter derived from the past, a light coming 
 'from without; but it is metaphysical and personal, wrought out 
 'Of the human consciousness, and altogether independent of out- 
 •^vard testimony. It is a peculiarity of the extreme transcendental 
 ^)hilosophy, to begin with the general and abstract notion of being; 
 and, by a dialectic process, to construct a universe, a God, and a 
 xeligion. Accordingly, the transcendentalist treats alike contemp- 
 tuously our writers on the evidences of natural and revealed religion, 
 and our experimental philosophers — a Bacon, a Newton, and a 
 HerschelL The whole ahiective element of Christianity, as a 
 
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY, 195 
 
 religion of liistoiical facts, has no place in Hegelianism, Its 
 place is usurped by the a priori conceptions of the human mind. 
 Hegel, as Ave have seen, has a Christology, but it is the creation of 
 his own philosophy. He deduces, by a process of logical argu- 
 mentation, a God and the essential doctrines of evangelism; bat, 
 with him. God lias no personality, except in the human conscious- 
 ness; and the evangelic doctrines are not historical, inspired facts, 
 but are included in the sweep of a philosophical rationalism. 
 
 The matured influence of this philosophy, in the department of 
 tlieology, is seen in the writings of Strauss. He is an avowed 
 representative of the extreme Hegelian party, and the Lehen Jesu 
 is the fruit of absolute idealism. His attack on the genuineness of 
 the Gospels, his denial of an historical truth to the New Testament, 
 and his attempt to resolve ail its wondrous and well-authenticated 
 facts into mythological representations of great spiritual ideas, have 
 proceeded irom his philosophical principles. The fundamental 
 idea of the school is, that rehgious truth is the development of 
 men's thoughts and intuitions, and not a revelation from without, 
 having a firm footing in well-attested history. Accordingly, the 
 doctrines of the fall, the Trinity, the incarnation, and the atonement, 
 are held not to be historically true, but to have been framed by a 
 developing process of the mind. The Christ of the Gospels, Strauss 
 declares, is not an individual, but an idea. It is in vain that you 
 point such a man to that vast and clear amount of evidence for 
 Christianity as a religion of facts and a revelation from Heaven, 
 derived from unquestionable historic testimony, from a keen, 
 searching criticism, from a wide experience, and from the character 
 of Christ, — a character unrivalled in the annals of the world for 
 the perfect harmony of its intellectual and moral elements. He 
 tells you that the question, with him and his school, is one, not of 
 biblical interpretation or historical testimony, but of philosophical 
 possibility. " First principles," he says, " must be settled on phi- 
 losophical and dogmatic grounds, before the interpretation of the 
 Scriptures can take effect."* A first principle, with him, is, the 
 impossibility of mu-acles : and that arises naturally out of his 
 philosophical creed. His philoso])hy allows not the interposal of a 
 living personal God in the government of the world, or in efiectiug 
 the redemption of men. The chain of endless causation, it says, 
 can never be broken. All things, both in the physical and moral 
 worlds, fall under the same law of necessary development ; and, 
 in harmony with this principle, Christianity must be explained. 
 
 Isaac Taylor has somewhere said, that es'ery particle of the 
 German infidelity disappears, when once it is proved that Jesus 
 rose from the dead. 13 ut the idealist, entrenched behind his spe- 
 culative philosophy, is proof against this evidence. He does what 
 
 * See Strauss, Hegel, a-ud their Opinions. 13y Dr. Beai-d. 
 
 o 2 
 
196 SPECULATIVE rHILOSOPlIY. 
 
 tlie French infidels did in another way, supersedes the question of 
 historical testimony, by raising abstract questions. We may sj^eak 
 of the folly of this principle, and show how, if applied to instory 
 in general, it would nullify its facts, and reduce its marvels to 
 mere mental conceptions. But the rationalist, armed with his 
 Hegelian weapons, replies, Such is my philosophy, and my philo- 
 sophy is my theology. And that theology, as Germany too j>lainly 
 testifies, has left the world without a personal God, and man with- 
 out moral freedom and immortality. " A life beyond the grave," 
 says Strauss, " is the last enemy which speculative criticism has 
 to*^ oppose, and, if possible, to vanquish." " Ask the extreme 
 idealists of the present day," remarks Mr. Morell, " and they will 
 tell you that God is one Avith the universe itself. The glorious 
 conception of the great Jehovah, which we derive from the display 
 of his wisdom, power, and love, in the creation without, the con- 
 stitution of our minds within, and the intuition of our rational 
 and moral nature, soon sinks down into a vague personification of 
 the human consciousness. The final result of such a theology is, 
 that the divine is dragged down to a level with the human, instead 
 of the human being raised up (as it is by Christianity) to the 
 divine. Tims, then, the extremes of sensationalism and idealism 
 at length meet. The one says that God is the universe, the other 
 that the universe is God. Diderot and Strauss can here shake 
 hands, and alike rejoice in the impious purpose of sinking the 
 personality of the lieity into an abstraction, which the holy can- 
 not love, and which the wicked need not fear. Such is the extreme 
 of idealism in its influence upon Christian theology, an extreme 
 which contravenes and destroys all the good which at first it pro- 
 mised to efiect."=;= 
 
 The influence of these idealistic speculations is telling, in some 
 quarters, on the religious literature of our own country. Amid 
 much really valuable in the department of theology, wliich wo 
 have hnported from Germany, has come the evil genius of its 
 philoso]ihic spirit. The writings of Coleridge, Carlyle, and others, 
 Avho have drunk deep at the German originals, have done much 
 to diffuse among us the German philosophy. And though idealism 
 in its extreme manifestations, has made but little impression on 
 the sturdy and sound English intellect, yet we have not wholly 
 escaped the infection ; and, judging from some recent productions 
 of the press, are not likely to get rid of it very soon. A want of 
 real vitality and earnestness in our religious comniimity, (to the 
 ungrateful overlooking, we think, of the vast amount of living 
 godliness among us,) has been felt, and proclaimed to be the great 
 want of the age. This has been ascribed, hi a great degree, by 
 some, to the want of a spiritual philosophy in our schools And, 
 
 * Morell's History of rbilosopLy, vol. ii. p. G!l, 
 
SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. 197 
 
 in Older to suj^ply this want, and infuse new life into our 
 cold orthodoxy, certain of om- writers would bring a portion of 
 German idealism to Lreathe upon our prostrate lifeless creeds, 
 shake them, make them stand up and live. Accordingly, a j-eli- 
 gious philosophy, or a philosophical religion, has, for some time 
 back, been quietly makhig its way among us ; and we arc only 
 now becoming awake to the mischievous influence it is likely to 
 have on an liistorical Christianity. 
 
 Carlyle and the men of his school seem to have a greater love 
 for earnestness than for plain Gospel truths. They are disposed 
 to follow the philosophers of Germany in making religion a 
 creation from within, — not a matter received from without ; and 
 to be in danger of including among the shams they cry out 
 against, the experimental and historical evidences of Christianity. 
 Emerson, after the German fashion, and doubtless owing to 
 German influence, finds everything within man, and makes reli- 
 gion merely an effect of mental action. "We run," says he, " all 
 our vessels into one mould. Our colossal theologies of Judaism, 
 €hristism, Buddhism, Mahometism, are the necessary and structural 
 action of the human mind."* Of course, as man has the fountain 
 of all good in himself, his mind is the determinator of what is 
 true in every thing that comes to liim from without. Theodore 
 Parker, who has been so well taught by Strauss and De Wette, 
 would have men to use the Bible as they use a well-filled table, — 
 take what suits their palate. Francis William Newman, who has 
 sat at the feet of the same teachers, has come to look upon the 
 study of the Bible and its evidences " as the greatest religious 
 evil "of England;"! and he " deliberately, before God and man, 
 protests against the attempt to make it a law to men's understand- 
 ing, conscience, or soul."| Mr. Mackay,in his recent contribution 
 to our rationalistic theology, — " The Progress of the Intellect," — 
 has taken, from the German metaphysical speculations, the deve- 
 lopment theory ; and, with little regard to scriptural statements, 
 and with an unfair use of historical testimony, has applied it so 
 as to account for the religion of the Bible, without leaving any 
 authority to the Bible itself. It is with much reluctance, we add, 
 that Mr.' Morell, who, in his first valuable work, pointed out and 
 denounced the influences of an extreme idealism, has, notwith- 
 standing the friendly warning of Dr. Chalmers, since shown a 
 strong tendency to construct, somewhat after the German mode, 
 a religion from within, and to attach comparatively little impor- 
 tance to that which comes independently from without. _ It is but 
 iustice to say, as we have formerly said, that there is a wide 
 difference between the spirit of Mr. Morell and some of the 
 
 * Emerson's "Representative Men, p. 2. + Phases of Faith, p. 205. 
 
 i Tiio Soul; her Sorrows and Aspirations, p. 19'J. 
 
198 SPECULATIVE rHlLOSOFHY 
 
 rationalistic writers adverted to. !!<:? is by no means eager, we are 
 persuaded, however bis principles may tend in tbat direction, to 
 subvert the great Christian truths. Nevertheless, Ins " Philosophy 
 of Religion" is the product of the German religious philosophy. 
 And, in contending "most earnestly for this position — that the 
 simplicity of the gospel of Christ is to be looked for, not in our 
 logical systems of doctrine, but in the clear elimination from all 
 systems, or rather from the religious intaitions of all good men, of 
 tiie vital and essential elements of Christian faith and love, hope 
 and joy,"* — he shows his strong subjectivity, and a tendency to 
 number among logical forms what the Christian world has ever 
 regarded as the essence of Christian doctrine. 
 
 Christianity, as we simple folks have imagined, is a fixed and 
 not a floating thing — having an objective and authoritative 
 standard in the Scriptures, being supported by a powerful force of 
 external and internal evidence; the truths of which enter into 
 tlie understanding and descend into the heart, quicken and purify 
 all its sensibilities, and manifest their lovely fruits in the con- 
 versation and life. But, according to our idealist writers, reve 
 lation is spontaneous and intuitional, a process of the mind 
 gazing intuitively upon eternal verities, a thing altogether sub- 
 jective ; and no other authority is left to the Scriptures than in so 
 far as they harmonize with the mind's intuitions. " No one," says 
 an able reviewer, " can have read books of this class — from tliose 
 of ]Mr. Carlyle downwards — without marking the special aversion 
 of this whole school of authors to what are called the ' Evidences.' 
 By this term they mean the external and critical evidence which 
 determines the historical truthfulness and the just intei-pretation 
 of the sacred writings. There is no end to the repugnance evinced 
 by them tov/ards this department of investigation." j- 
 
 In all this, we see the influence of the modern transcendental 
 philosophy, a pjiilosophy subtile, daring, proud, — intolerant of the 
 world of realities lying without, and wliich assumes to weave, by 
 its own dialectics, all truth from the mind within. Let us hail, 
 from whatever quarter it may come, any goodly element of vitality 
 that would quicken the good things which remain and are ready 
 to die. But let us be jealous of every system, whatever be its 
 pretensions, that v/ould transmute a Christianity founded in facts, 
 into a matter of the mind's own fashioning; and that would dis- 
 mantle the towers and bulwarks of an historical Mth as if they 
 were only fit for a bygone age. " Christianity comes to our thues 
 as the survivor of all systems ; and after confronting, in turn, 
 every imaginable form of error, each of wliich has gone to its 
 almost forgotten place in histoiy — itself alone lives," + — lives, not 
 
 * Morell's Philosophy of P.elipou, preface, p. xxii. 
 ■f- Biitivh Quarterly, No. xix. p. 1G7. * Taylor's Spiritual Christiauity, p. 6. 
 
SOCIAL DISAl'^ECTION. 100 
 
 as a creature of the mind's development, — a thing of mere senti- 
 ment or intuition, hut lives with its firm footing in history, and 
 its powerful hold of men's hearts. 
 
 Faith and philosophy are not enemies hy nature. They are 
 both children of the liglit and of the day, and were designed ta 
 walk hand in hand through the world. But, " in pride, in reason- 
 ing pride, our error lies." Men have often put asunder what God 
 hath joined together. Speculation has been arrayed against the 
 power of fact. Man's mind, vainly puffed up, lias risen against 
 God's mind. Philosophy, having eitJier become sensual or vaguely 
 transcendental, has been changed into that which is devilish and 
 spurious, and has then fought against the truth of God. But 
 " truth is strong next to the Almighty," and will prevaiL Mean • 
 while, we note, that speculative philosophy, whetiier in the form 
 of an extreme sensationalism, or of an extreme idealism, has, as a 
 subordinate cause, been productive of no small amount of infidelity. 
 Paul's exhortation is still needed, — " Beware lest any man make 
 plunder of you, through philosophy and vain deceit." " Which 
 words," says Thomas Fuller, *• seriously considered, neither express 
 nor imply any prohibition of true philosophy, but rather tacitly 
 commend it. Thus, when our Saviour saith, ' Beware of fi^ls9^ 
 prophets,' by way of opposition, he inviteth them to believe and 
 respect such as are true ones." * 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SOCIAL DISAFFECTION. 
 
 Social agitation not always to be deprecated — It is often a mart of riglit progi-ess — 
 Deep social discontent has, nevertheless, often proved favourable to infidelity — 
 Great French Eevolntion — Social disabilities of the working classes — Existing 
 social discontent, the stronghold of infidel socialism— Desirableness of seveiing 
 the socialist question from irreligious elements— Injurious influence of the 
 prevalent theories : they make a religion of political liberty— Attempt to identify 
 them with Christianity itself — Their pantheistic tendency — Admiration of po"- 
 litical principles of infidels seductive in times of social agitation — Infidelity- 
 employed as an organ of political convulsion 
 
 Social agitation is inevitable in a community that is sufiered to 
 develop its energies, and is, to some extent, salutary and beneficial 
 It often marks the progress of a state from barbarism to civiliza- 
 tion, from despotism to civil and religious liberty. The grumbling- 
 and the upheaving are not unfrequently syniptoms of advancement 
 from a wrong to a right position. There are many things we like 
 not the less, because they are subject now and then to a shaking, 
 and give forth a growl. Protestantism, v/ith its conflicting sects, 
 and hetdthy rivalries, is infinitely preferable to Pionianism with its 
 leaden imii'ormity. Britain, with its free constitution, its limited 
 
 * Fullers Hist of the Univ. of Cambridge. 
 
?,00 SOCIAL DISAFFECTION. 
 
 monarchy, and right of public discussion, is a happier and safer 
 governtnent than liussia under the iron hand of absohitism. The 
 storm tliat }-ends the heavens and shakes the foundations of the 
 earth may be attended witli many disasters ; but if it be instru- 
 mental in purging the atmosphere, and rendering it salubrious, it 
 is much more desirable than the dead noxious calm in ^Yhich 
 animal and vegetable life becomes oppressed. Our sympathies 
 are more with the principles of a Sidney and a Hampden, tlian 
 with those of a Filmer and his modern disciple, who declared that 
 the people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them. 
 Wc woukl not, then, that the political world were lulled asleep, 
 and that peoples' minds where drawn off from discussing the affairs 
 of government. For, whatever injurious influence may affect re- 
 ligion amid the social hcavings, it is assuredly not under the pall 
 of despotism that it flourishes in its loveliness and vigour. Political 
 science and religious truths are not points of repulsion, and a 
 moderate attachment to the former is not necessarily counteractive 
 of the influence of the latter. There is no necessary connection 
 between the principles of political freedom and infidel opinions. 
 It has often been remarked that the chief advocates of civil liberty 
 in the reigns of the Charleses, were the puritans — men of whom 
 the world was not worthy, some of whom were republicans, and 
 others of them the firm adherents of a limited monarchy. Amid 
 the storms of that period the cradle of British freedom was rocked, 
 and rocked too by the saints, the excellent ones of the earth. 
 
 It may, however, be safely maintained, that political agitation, 
 when running very high, has often for a time proved detrimental 
 to spiritual Christianity, and advantageous to infidelity. It is not 
 for us to balance the good and bad effects of the great French 
 Revolution, which, in its results, marked a new era in the nations 
 of Europe. But there can be no doubt, that the deep discontent 
 engendered at the heart of French society by social wrongs and 
 abuses, rendered the soil receptive of the infidel principles of the 
 philosophers, and that, in the terrible upheavings that followed, 
 these principles were carried forth triumphantly like a flood. They 
 were at once partly the cause and partly the effect of the social 
 disorder. They set fire to the materials that had long lain ready 
 to be kindled, and in the blaze they yelled, sported, and exulted 
 like fiends. The enormous abuses both in the civil and ecclesi- 
 astical institutions of the country — the church richly endowed, 
 and yet leaving the mass of ignorance and vice around her to grow 
 and strengthen ; the venality and corruption wh!ch characterized 
 the administration of justice, the unequal and oppressive taxation 
 imposed upon the lower and middling classes, the mental degra- 
 dation to which they were subjected in consequence of long standing 
 feudal distinctions, the luxury and frivolity of the court and many 
 of the nobles, — these and such like abuses, which had separated 
 
SOCIAL DISAFFKCTION. 201 
 
 one part of French society by a great gulf from the other, were the 
 elements which infidelity quickened into a convulsion and in whose 
 excesses it reigned.* An ill-taught and oppressed populace, over- 
 borne by a corrupt churcli and a despotic government, lies open 
 to infidel teaching when allied with liberal politics, and in the 
 agitation or revolt thereby produced, infidelity finds its element. 
 Political and social harangues strongly interest the prejudices and 
 passions of mankind, and tend, even when containing no infidel 
 mixture, to draw the mind off from religious objects, unless they 
 meet with a strong faith in eternal verities to counteract the 
 evil. But when such discussions are associated with irreligious 
 principles, and are brought to bear on minds socially disaffected 
 and at the same time indifterent or hostile to vital Christianity, 
 the influence on behalf of infidelity becomes powerful indeed. The 
 poison, mingled with the water, flows on as fast as the water itself, 
 and infects all who drink of it. " The Rights of Man" renders 
 palatable to many minds " The Age of Reason." 
 
 This is very much the case with many of the political and social 
 theories afloat in our day, more especially on the Continent. The 
 great problem in modern politics, is the elevation of the industrial 
 mind so as to secure the greatest good to society in general. Com- 
 paratively few persons will maintain that the arrangements of 
 society are as they should and might be. The spread of intelli- 
 gence among the working classes has made them sensible of the 
 social disabilities under which, in many parts of Europe, they 
 have been long lying. The rebound is fully proportionate to the 
 pressure. And the industrial interests rising up from the one 
 extreme of depression, would ascend to the other extreme of 
 elevation. The servant brooding over years of neglect and harsh 
 treatment, would now avenge himself by becoming lord. The 
 truth is, governments, by foolishly continuing those restraints on 
 the popular mind in an enlightened age, which were suited to a 
 past and different state of society, notunfrequently suffer a penalty 
 somewhat similar to that which a landed proprietor suffers in 
 damming up a stream. Arbitrarily checked in its course, it swells 
 and chafes against the barrier ; at length it sweeps all before it, 
 and carries wasting and desolation, where it otherwise would have 
 contributed to the fertility and picturesqueness of tlie countiy. 
 Even in our own England, which is the home of freedom in 
 Europe, and which, in the language of one of our old poets, 
 
 " was sui-e desicfnecl 
 
 To be the sacred refuge of mankind," — 
 
 the consequences of past neglect are too manifest. There are large 
 classes among us who, from regarding almost every thing estab- 
 lished with blind reverence, have come to look upon almost every 
 
 * SeeBronghain on "Frencli Eevol. (" Statesmen of the Time of Geo. ILL") 
 
202 SOCIAL UISAFFECTiOy. 
 
 thing really sacred with grov^-ing aversion. " In many cases.;* says 
 Dr. Arnold, "the real origin of a man's irreligion is, I believe, 
 political. He dislikes the actual state of society, hates the church 
 as connected with it, and, in his notions, supporting its abuses, 
 and then hates Christianity because it is tauglit by the church." 
 
 The problem to vdhch we have adverted is that which the several 
 socialist schools, with their widely conflicting theories, propose to 
 solve. The possibility of a great and sudden amelioration in the 
 condition of the v/orking classes, is the common faith of them all. 
 Politically and socially tliey vary, and frown upon each other, from 
 St. Simoiiianism with its somewhat hierarchical arrangement of 
 classes, to the humanist theory, the latest form of socialism, with 
 its intolerance of any vestige of inequality. But tested by a reli- 
 gious standard, they all bear the mark of Cain, are vagal)onds on 
 the eartji, and the last of them is worse than the first. Owenism, 
 though it never had a strong hold on any large portion of the 
 English people, and for some years has been losing the old that it 
 had, is steeped in atheism. It sees omnipotence nowhere but in 
 external circumstances. And through this wretched system, appeal- 
 ing to existing social disaiiection, not a few are to be found here 
 and there in our workshops and factories, who have been led over to 
 the ranks of infidelity. In France, Germany, and other parts of 
 the Continent, socialism has leavened the masses, and is still 
 rapidly diffusing itself; and — what we wisli especially to mark — 
 the poison of infidelity is almost everywhere mixed up with it. It 
 would seem that the socialist theories of the Continent can no more 
 keep neutral in reference to religion, than the continental specu- 
 lative ])hi]osophies. Indeed, these theories have, in some measm-e, 
 been tlio fruit, or formed a parcel, of the philosophies. Feuerbach 
 and G]un, who are of the extreme left Hegelian party, are the 
 great teachers of humanism — a system which finds every thing in 
 man, which ignores all motive power but tlie human will, and 
 which is as intolerant of the existence of religion as of private 
 property. 
 
 There are good men, in oiu- own country and elsewhere, who, 
 being persuaded that socialism is no temporary ebullition of social 
 discontent, but, as Mr. John Stuart Mill remarks, " has now 
 become irrevocably one of the leading elements in Europ»eau 
 politics," Avould seek to deal with the questions involved in it in 
 a Christian manner. This v\'e deem praiseworthy. The working 
 classes have been left too much to the will of infidel socialist 
 teachers, v.dio exaggerate their grievances, Iny upon evangelical 
 religion the bhame that belongs only to its corruptions, and hold 
 out to Ibem false hopes of amelioration. They have grievances 
 ■wliieh must be dealt vv'ith. And, convinced as we are that ex- 
 isting social arrangem.ents admit of mucl) improvement, that the 
 relation between the capitalist and the workman, tlie governors 
 
SOCIAL DISAFrECTION. ^03 
 
 and fhe gforerned, might be more satisfactory, wc ^ould have 
 Christian men hoth in the chin-ch and in the state to step in and 
 deal fairly with the socialist question. AYe see no necessary con- 
 nection between it and infidelity. And, without giving any 
 opinion hero as to the trutli or justice iuYolved in its essential 
 principles, we would hiare it dissociated from the irreligious 
 elements which have been hitherto so much mixed up with it, 
 and let it stand forth simply as a question of political economy. 
 But, be it the system of Owen, or Fourier, of Louis Blauc, or 
 Feuerbach ; all, notwithstanding the religious sentinientalism 
 that may be found in some of them, have been of an irreligious 
 tendency, and influential in making democracies at once tierce 
 and ungodly. 
 
 The lirst thing, in the way of injurious influence that presents 
 itself, on examining tliese theories, is the hope of happiness which 
 they hold out, from entirely remodelling the framework of society. 
 Diftering as they do on important points of polity, the prophet of 
 this scliool ridiculing the j^rophets of all other schools as fanatics 
 and impostors, they agree in naaking a religion of political liberty, 
 and looking for Paradise restored to a new arrangement of pro- 
 perty and industrial interests. The real devil of the world, in 
 their estimation, is private property. The depravity and wretch- 
 edness existing among men are ascribed to the factitious arrange- 
 ments of society, and the regeneration of the race is to be ex- 
 pected from thorough-going social changes. It is in vain that 
 history tells of speculations and schemes of a similar character 
 having been tried in the past, having aggravated instead of having 
 mitigated the miseries which they professed to cure, and having 
 been numbered long ago among the follies whereby visionary 
 projectors thought to make a nev.' world. So long as these specu- 
 lations were not theirs, there is room, they imagine, for the" trial 
 of their own. The world must have its golden age, and these 
 prophets of a social regeneration are to be instrumental in ex- 
 alting every valley, making low every mountain and hill, making 
 the crooked straight and the rough places plain. It were really 
 amusing to sit, as in a panorama, and see how one plan of the 
 world's reformation has absorbed men's attention for avrhile, 
 passed away as a vain show, and then given place to another 
 destined to shaie the same fate, were the thought not to arise 
 that these visionary projects have not only left society a prey to 
 numerous vices and miseries, but have in a great measure 
 diverted men's minds from " heaven's easy unencumbered plan," 
 — a plan which has survived all otliers, and which experience, as 
 well as the voice of God, assmes us is the only one fitted to make 
 all things new. It is with this evil influence that all the socialist 
 theories which have lately jilayed such a prominent part aie 
 fraught. It v.-ere vrell enough did their abettors insist on social 
 
204 SOCIAL DISAFFECTION. 
 
 reforms as necessary to the physical and moral Avell-being of man. 
 But to bid men look to these reforms as the panacea of all ills, 
 the means of regenerating the race, and bringing about a heaven 
 on earth, is as ungodly as it is visionary, as antagonistic to the 
 Gospel of Christ as it is deluding and destructive to men. Once 
 persuade an individual or any body of individuals that all their 
 miseries originate in 2)olitical and social causes — that the soui'ce 
 of the evil lies chiefly or exclusively without, and is to be removed 
 by the prevalence of certain modes of education and civil govern- 
 ment, and you leave no room whatever for the influence of that 
 truth which coming from above is above all. And yet tliis is the 
 teaching to which myriads of men in our own country, and more 
 especially on the Continent, have eagerly listened at the feet of 
 the apostles of social regeneration. 
 
 It has been well said by a respectable London journal,-!'- that 
 "the socialist principles are inevitable in any thinking country 
 which has shaken oil" religious belief. If the Christian dispensa- 
 tion does not rise as the great and all-explaining truth before 
 man's eyes, the philosopher cannot be contented with the ine- 
 quality of human condftions, or avoid devising material plans 
 lor its removal. The more unformed intellect of the poor will 
 eagerly follow in this path. And happiness being considered a 
 compound of comforts, he will infallibly ask by what right he is 
 excluded from his share of what the earth and industry produce, 
 when his creed cannot enjoin the duty of patience or point to any 
 present or future compensation." The truth is, that in all the 
 socialist theories, as in the great expectations cherished from 
 philosopliical illumination in a preceding age, three very palpable 
 facts are forgotten or denied. The first is, that a personal change 
 of heart, and not a mere social or political amelioration, is the 
 indispensa1)le condition of all real and lasting improvement. 
 National can only be the effect of individual regeneration. It is 
 out of the heart, as the Great Teacher taught, that proceed the 
 things which defile a man. And, Avere the external arrangements 
 of society ever so perfect, yet, without a radical change in men 
 individually, these cU-rangements v/ould be ever liable to coiTup- 
 tion and attended with much misery. The second is, that in- 
 equalities and sufferings, in some form or another, are inseparable 
 from man's lot upon earth. It is a principle in God's moral govern- 
 ment that where there is no sin there is no suffering. Sin, how- 
 ever mysterious the fact, has entered this world, and suffering as 
 a penal consequence has followed it. And that suffering is dis- 
 ciplinary as well as penal, 'i'he prophets of social regeneration, 
 however, lay out their perfected world in the present state, and by 
 the overthrow of the existing arrangements of society, would at 
 
 * The Daili/ Neus. 
 
SOCIAL DISAFFECTION. 205 
 
 once usher in the new heavens and new earth. The third thing 
 of which tliey are oblivious or disbelieving is, that the Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ, not a mere political Gospel whose favourite theme 
 is equahty and fraternity, but a Gospel bringing glad tidings of a 
 free and full salvation, containing ample provision for expiating 
 }iuman guilt and subduing human dejiravity, and giving the hope 
 of life and immortality beyond the gi-ave, is alone capable of real- 
 ising all the good for which pants the soul of humanity. These 
 are facts confirmed by experience, and by none more than what is 
 learned from the recent shakings among several of the European 
 nations. The rise of a new and better order of things among 
 mankind is no mere dream of projectors. The revelations of 
 heaven warrant us to anticipate it. But we must look for its 
 realisation chiefly to the influence of nobler principles than poli- 
 tical and social theories. Grapes are not to be gathered from 
 thorns, nor figs from thistles. And to hold out, as all socialist pro- 
 jects that have been recently in agitation do, the hope of happi- 
 ness from new social arrangements, is to delude men and abet the 
 cause of infidelity. A religion of political liberty is thus substi- 
 tuted for the Gospel of the grace of God. 
 
 The second thing, in the way of injurious influence, noticeable 
 in many of these theories, is the endeavour to identify them with 
 Christianity itself. The existence of Christianity is an influential 
 fact, the sanction of which, other systems, however visionary and 
 destructive of its spirit, are anxious to obtain. This they can do 
 only by misrepresenting and virtually falsifying it. In the first 
 great Frejach revolution, there was no compromise. It was a war 
 of open extermination against everything that bore the Christian 
 name. The infidel leaders proclaimed the Christian system and 
 the institutions connected with it to be the great hindrances 
 in the progress of humanity, and they avowed their purpose to 
 crush and extirpate the whole. But infidels now-a-days are cove- 
 tous of the Christian name, and each one would have his respective 
 system accounted the gospel which is designed to regenerate man- 
 land. Many of the leaders of socialism have claimed to be 
 regarded as the faithful expositors of Christianity. The reforma- 
 tion preached by Christ and his apostles is declared to have been 
 a social regeneration. The Saviour of the world is hailed as the 
 prince of the communists. The substance of the Gosj)el is to be 
 found in those texts which inculcate mutual love and affection. 
 And the kingdom of God on earth, is the reign of equality and 
 fraternity. Hegel, as we have seen, recognised Christianity, and 
 the leading doctrines of the Trinity, incarnation, and atonement ; 
 but it was only to bring them within the sweep of his law of neces- 
 sary development, and to destroy them as facts on which men rest 
 their faith and hope. In like manner, Fourier and his disciples, 
 and even Pierre Leroux the pantheist, who has been acknowdedged 
 
OOS SOCIAL DISAFFECTION. 
 
 by the French to be the metaphysician of socialism, have sought to 
 f^mft their speculations into Christianity, and have represented the 
 one as naturally rising out of tlie other. In short, socialism lays 
 hold of a peculiar characteristic of Christianity, _ which it severs 
 from other and yet more prominent characteristics, and then 
 preaching it up, as if it were the whole, does all the mischief which 
 inlide'ht/could wish. The religion of paganism and of a corrupt 
 Christianity have had much of the arrogance and assumptions of 
 caste ahout tliem. They have endeavoured to distribute men into 
 classes, and have had their esoteric and exoteric doctrines. But 
 the characteristic of Christianity, to which we refer, is, that it 
 snreads a feast before all people, that it makes little account of 
 natural or artificial distinctions, that it propounds and offers truth 
 without reserve to the mass of mankind. This want of monopoly 
 in Christianity, which, after all, is but its external aspect— the 
 bio'-hearted and benignant attitude which it assumes towards the 
 nations — is held up as if it were its essence. Socialism loves the 
 generous and compassionate look of the Gospel, but it hates its 
 holy humbling requirements. It would substitute Chiistianity as 
 a mere liberal social economy, for Christianity as a system of pui-e 
 spiritual truth. However visionary and absurd this may appear, 
 yet its influence in promoting infidelity among the masses must 
 have been great. It would be congenial, in the highest degree, to 
 the social disaffection that existed; and, though utterly destractive 
 of spiritual Christianity, would in multitudes of cases be the more 
 welcome that it came under the pretended sanction of Him whose 
 '• name is ploughed into the history of the world." The faith of 
 the French people, in the nineteenth century, is a political faith. 
 It has no reference to man as guilty before God and radically de- 
 praved; it does not lay hold of the Gospel as in the highest sense 
 a restorative economy, and seeking to make men free by delivering 
 them from the state of the condemned, and forming them to a high 
 and holy character. It is not a new thing in the world's liistory 
 for infidelity to have propagated itself under the Christian name, 
 and with a show of respect "to Christianity's great Founder. 
 
 "We are led to remark, thirdly, the strong tendency of many of 
 the recent socialist theories toward pantheism. — Humanity is 
 everything with them. The highest being is man. The perfectibility 
 of the race is asserted. And in a paradise of social interests here, 
 the idea of a happy world beyond is excluded. This is more 
 especially the case with the humanists, who, in their rejection of 
 an historical and spiritual Christianity, are in advance of other 
 schools of socialism. In fact, pantheism has become the orthodox, 
 creed of the system. Tlve extremes of idealism and socialism 
 meet, in declaring that religion comes not from without but from 
 within, that it has no objective reaUty, but is purely a matter of 
 the mind's own creation. We say that the sum and substance of 
 
SOCIAL DISAFFECTION. 207 
 
 religion is to be found in the Bible, a well-attested revelation iroin 
 heaven, and that it only becomes the religion of man individually 
 when it is received by faith, and thus incorporated with all his 
 springs of thought and feeling. But the humanist says, not so. 
 In man himself, or in humanity, is to be found all that constitutes 
 religious truth. It is not a thing without, lying in the world of 
 facts, as the fortress on the hill and the river that runs at its base, 
 but it is part of man himself, having neither origin nor objec- 
 tive reality independent of himself. Ask the apostles of this sys- 
 tem, Y\liere is yom- God ? They at once reply, God is in man. 
 He is incarnate in humanity, aud dwells in every member of the 
 human race. Man as an individual dies, but humanity is in- 
 destructible, in the continual reproduction of the race he lives; 
 and this is the life and immortality brought to light by the gospel 
 of socialism. This system is just as intolerant of religion as an 
 historical fact, as it is of private property as a thing existing in 
 law, and it would proclaim the jubilee of humanity by abolishing 
 both. Socialism, in its advanced for.n, has thus been iniluenced 
 by the extreme ideal philosophy; and, in retm-n, lends its helping 
 hand to annihilate an historical Chiistianity. If it passed from 
 France to Germany, and was originated by Kousseau and the infidel 
 philosophy of last century, it has been thrown into the German 
 mould, and has come out in the shape of undisguised pantheism, 
 ■afVnd vast multitudes who have neither the capacity nor the inclina- 
 tion to follow the transcendentalist philosopher in his lofty and be- 
 wildering flight, sit at tlie feet of the socialist teacher, and through 
 him imbibe all the infidelity with which that philosophy is preg- 
 nant. Masses of men who are socially disaffected, and in v/hom 
 exists little or nothing of vital religion, and v/hose disaffection, it 
 may be, is turned towards some corrupt form of Christianity 
 among them, are readily carried captive by a pantheistic socialism. 
 Our last remark here is, that admiration for the political prin- 
 ciples of infidels often leads men to think lightly of religion, and 
 ultimately to cast it off. This is especially the case in times of 
 social agitation. There is no necessary connection between poli- 
 tics, be they conservative or liberal, and infidel opinions. Pious 
 as well as irreligious men are to be found in the ranks of all 
 political parties. Principles of civil polity are nothing the worse, 
 because infidels have held and advocated them. The famous 
 Declaration of American Independence was not the less illustrious 
 because Thomas Jefferson, who prepared it, unhappily did not 
 believe in the great truths of the Gospel. It is true, however, 
 that those who think favourably of the political principles of 
 infidels, are apt to be drawn away, so as to look with no un- 
 fi-iendly eye on the infidel principles themselves. This, owing 
 to the original depraved bias of tlie mind, is likely to be much 
 more frequently the case, than that love for the political prin- 
 
208 SOCIAL DISAFFECTION. 
 
 ciples of a Cln-istian should lead men to embrace bis Chris- 
 tianity. It has been not unreasonably supposed, that admira- 
 tion of Hume as a metaphysician and frequent intercourse 
 with him, had no small influence with Smith in inducing him to 
 expunge from his " Theory of Moral Sentiments," the well known 
 and remarkable passage in which he recognises the doctrines of 
 the Christian revelation as harmonizing with the original antici- 
 pations of nature. And it is not unreasonable to believe, that 
 multitudes have been prejudiced against Clmstianity, being kept 
 from embracing it, or been induced gradually to renounce it, from 
 a regard to the political principles of the men at whose feet they 
 have sat. This will have be6n the case especially when tlie waters 
 at the base of the social edifice have been running high, and men's 
 minds have been agitated under real or imaginary social wrongs. 
 If it has been so with political and social theories, containing no 
 irreligious elements in themselves, but dangerous only when advo- 
 cated by influential infidels, much more must it have been the 
 case with many of the recent speculations of socialism, in which 
 the liberal political creed and the infidel sentiments have been so 
 blended together that, in imbibing the one, men could scarcely 
 avoid imbibing the other. 
 
 Infidelity has come before the industrial classes in our day 
 in an alluring shape. It does not stand forth in its own proper 
 character. It has appeared in the garb of a liberal system of poli- 
 tics, professing to redress their grievances, and holding out to 
 them the hopes of social elevation. The liberal polity, from its 
 very connection, has recommended the infidel opinions, and, as 
 the former has progressed, so have the latter. Kobert HaU re- 
 marks, " the eflbrts of infidels to difl'use their principles among 
 the common people is peculiar to the present time. Hume, Bo- 
 lingbroke, and Gibbon, addressed themselves to the more polished 
 classes. AVhile infidelity was rare, it was employed as the instru- 
 ment of literary vanity. Its wide difiusion having disqualified it 
 for answering that purpose, it is now adopted as the organ of poli- 
 tical convulsion." He is speaking of the time of the great French 
 lievolution, but tlie remark is no less applicable to our own age. 
 Since the close of last century, political knowledge has made great 
 progress among the people. It is no longer with fiercely ignorant 
 democracies that many European governments have to deal. 
 The schoolmaster, in many shapes, has been abroad. Tlie know- 
 ledge imparted by him has often served to awaken men to a sense 
 of the social evils by which they are surrounded, without any 
 salutary counteractives following the discovery. Social disaflec- 
 tion, tlie inevitable consequence of letting light in u})on dark- 
 ness, has been engendered. Hot-beds of infidel socialism have 
 thus been prepared. While governments have been making 
 too much ado about the people's duties and too little about 
 
THE COJIKUPTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 200 
 
 their rights, the socialist teachers, with no small measure of 
 success, have been incessantly calling the attention of the masses 
 to their rights, and saying nothing or next to nothing about their 
 duties. Out of the social discontent, occasioned by opjiression or 
 neglect, has come forth an evil spirit, uttering at once threaten- 
 ings against the kings of the earth, and blasphemies against the 
 God of heaven 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TIIK COKRUrnOXS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Not wonderful that Christianity has heen corrupted — It has heen so with trutJis 
 of science — No promise that Christianity should be exempted — Corruptions in 
 apostolic churches— Paul foretold them— Christianity not to be confounded 
 Avith them or made responsible for them — Evil in judging of one by the other — 
 Two evils flourish iu the bosom of coi-rupted Christianity : superstition and un- 
 ht'Iief— Reciprocal influence of these — Remark of Plutarch— A corrupted 
 Christianity, and Romanism iu particular, ministers to infidelity in three ways : 
 It often produces aversion in cultivated minds to Christianity itself— The middle 
 ages — France and other Catholic countries in last century — Remark of Macaulay 
 — Italy, Spain, France, at present time — Tendency of Oxford Tractism — Re 
 marks of Rogers and Whately — It leaves the mass of the people, in times of 
 excitement, to be captured by infidel leaders— Instanced in France — It furnishes) 
 weapons for attacking Christianity itself— Parallel between corruptions of 
 Christianity and the base citizens of a great nation. 
 
 The best of things in this world are liable to bo perverted and 
 abused. Good is often made to assume the shape of evil, and 
 then to be evil spoken of Christianity is the very last system 
 that could be anticipated to escape corruptions. Its doctrinal 
 truths are so elevating in their character, and humbling to tlie 
 pride of the human intellect, that men would be sure to distort 
 their simple grandeur, and bring them down to the level of their 
 own enfeebled perceptions. Its morality is so strict and pure, — 
 being a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and 
 admitting of no compromise with aught that is unholy, — as to in- 
 duce those who are unwilling to follow its dictates, and yet anxious 
 to have its sanction, to bend it to their own prevailing inclinations. 
 Its rites are so few, simple, and destitute of attractions to the 
 carnal mind, as to make it no matter of surprise that men who 
 seek righteousness in mere outward observances, should add to 
 their number, and render them meet for the lust of the eye. 
 Christianity has been frequently so much corrupted in its doctrines, 
 morals, and institutions, as to "have rendered it somewhat difficult 
 to trace any resemblance between the blotched copy and tlie fair 
 original. 
 
 Every system of trutli has been more or less corrupted under 
 human influence. The sublime science of astronomy luis appeared 
 in the somevvhat ridiculous shape of astrology. The simple 
 science of chemistry, in the hands of the alchemists, was a science 
 
 P 
 
•210 THE COEIIUPTIOXS OF CHRISTIAIsITy. 
 
 of slieer extravagancies. Natural philosojiliy was once represented 
 by magic. Jurisprudence, rightly understood and applied, pro- 
 tects the helpless, shields the innocent, and promotes the liberty 
 and prosperity of a state ; but it has often been systematized into 
 an eugine of lawless oppression. If these earthly things, which 
 are by no means uncongenial to human nature, or at variance 
 with Its predominating tendencies, have been corrupted in the 
 hands of men, it is not wonderful that heavenly things, in coming 
 down to the earLh, should have been subjected to a similar in- 
 fluence. It might rather have been anticipated, that, in proportion 
 as the revelation from above was purer and loftier than tlie prin- 
 ciples of human conduct, woidd men endeavour to distort and 
 corrupt it. 
 
 It is divinely promised that Chri^:;tianity shall never be destroyed, 
 but there is no promise that it shall, in every case, be kept free 
 from corruptions. So far from this, that, even under the watchful 
 23residency of inspired men, there were false teachers who crept 
 into the church and endeavoured to pervert the Gospel of Christ. 
 Yea, Paul, in his farewell address to the elders at Miletus, not 
 only spake of the " grievous wolves " that should enter into the 
 church after his departure ; but he warned them that, even from 
 the midst of their ownselves, should men arise, teaching a cor- 
 rupted Gospel, to di-aw away the disciples after them. And the | 
 most influential and extensively spread form of a corrupt Chris- 1 
 tianity that ever existed, was clearly foretold in the apostolical | 
 writings. They speak of damnable heresies, of a falling away, of |' 
 the man of sin beiug revealed, and of the working of the myst -ry ' 
 of iniquity. I 
 
 Christianity is not, however, to be confounded with its cor- 1: 
 ruptions, or made responsible for tl^.em^. The solar light is pure ji 
 and resplendent in itself, though often much bedimmed in the! 
 dense medium through which it passes. The fomitain may be r 
 clear as crystal, and cast up no mire and dirt, while the streams' 
 ai'O much polluted. Tlie sacred text is to be distinguished iVoin 
 the false interpretations that have been given of it. The doctrines, 
 precepts, and rites of Christianity, are to be judged of, not as they': 
 appear in the pages of the fathers, or as they are exhibited in Jlo-j 
 manism, but as they are made known in the pages of the apostles, | 
 and were originally held forth in the churches wlrich they planted. 
 Astronomy, chemistry, and jurisprudence, are true sciences ; but 
 •we would form very unfavourable opinions of tliem, did we esti- 
 mate them by the frauds of the astrologer, the dreaming extrava- 
 gancies of tlie alchemist, and the pleadings and practices of the 
 corrupt lawyer. " In the view of an intelligent and honest mind, 
 the religion of Christ stands as clear of all connection with the 
 corruption of men, and churches, and ages, as when it was first 
 revealed. It retains its purity like Moses in Eg}'pt, or Daniel in 
 
THE CORHUPTIOXS OF CHRISTIANITY, 211 
 
 Babylon, or the Saviour of tlio woild Himself wliile He mingled 
 Avith scribes and pharisees, or publicans and sinners." ^' 
 
 The evil is, that multitudes persist in judging of the grand 
 original from the gross caricature ; which is just as if we were to 
 form our estimate of the Saviour's character from tlie representa- 
 tions given by tlie chief priests and rulers, instead of beholding 
 Him who, in the midst of his enemies, could challenge the most 
 fierce and watchful of them to convince him of sin. And it is a 
 still greater evil, that, in consequence of taking away the key of 
 knowledge, suppressing religious inquiry, and prohibiting the pe- 
 rusal of the Scriptures, men have had often no other standard by 
 which to estimate Christianity as a revelation from heaven, than 
 the corrupt form. It might indeed be said, that the very corruption 
 of the doctrines, precepts, and rites of Christianity, oi-iginating as 
 it does in a tendency to assimilate the Divine to the human, would 
 have made it more accordant with the tastes of depraved human 
 nature, and thereby secured it a wider and firmer reception. Such 
 has been the case. Christianity in its debased forms has had a 
 much more extensive sway, and numbered vastly more adherents, 
 than Christianity as it came from God, holy, benignant, and uu- 
 deiiled. But this has only been detrimental to the truth as it is 
 in Jesus. Christianity in its imdefiled form is the great antago- 
 nistic influence to the pov,'er of Satan on earth. He, the father 
 of lies and the seducer from the beginning, has polluted the 
 streams in order to divert men from the fountain. And the Divine 
 author of Christianity, whose prerogative it is to bring good out 
 of evil, has permitted the advorsaiy, in a considerable extent, to 
 succeed. 
 
 It deserves notice that in the bosom of a corrupted Christianity, 
 two evils flourish — superstition and unbelief — and that the 
 former is, in some measure, the cause of the latter. It was so with 
 the religions of the old Pagan world, all of which were gross cor- 
 ruptions of the religion of nature ; as Romanism and some otlier 
 Christianized forms are gross corruptions of the religion of revela- 
 tion. The ignorant and debased, in the presence of the corrupt 
 system, generally sink into the arms of an unbounded supersti- 
 tion ; wlnle men of cultivated and philosophic minds, conforming, 
 it may be, from policy, to the outward ceremonies, run off to a cold 
 arj d hardened unbelief. It is an histori c al fact th at, in the An gustan 
 a.; ■, when the larger proportion of the Eoman people were swell- 
 ing the number of false gods, and yielding themselves up to the 
 most degrading superstitions, (in which they were countenanced 
 by the emperor and the nobles,) the Epicureans were outstripping 
 all other philosophic sects in the propagation of their infidel prin- 
 
 * Foster's Essays, p. 195. 
 
 p 2 
 
212 THE CORRUPTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ciples. The priest laughed in his sleeves at the delusions of 
 the people whom he himself was deluding; the orator, in the 
 senate, avowed his disbelief of a future life, and repudiated the 
 falmlous legends respecting the gods and the infernal world; and 
 the historian, in quoting the popular religious traditions, mtmiated 
 that he did not believe them. The infection spread from the 
 liigher and more intelligent classes to the illiterate multitude, and 
 manv, in renouncing the gross fables of Paganism, shook otF all 
 belief in invisible power and immortality. 
 
 Plutarch, whom Tholuck has characterized as the mdividual 
 amono- the ancients that has spoken of belief, unbelief, and super- 
 stition with the greatest wisdom and the deepest knowledge of 
 mankind, has said, " unbelief never gives occasion for superstition, 
 while the latter does not unfrequeutly occasion the former; for 
 when we teach perverted views in reference to divine things, we 
 hold out occasion for total scepticism." The first of these state- 
 ments is bv no means to be assented to. The extreme of unbelief 
 has often led to the extreme of superstition. :Men from believing 
 almost nothing, have come to believe almost everything. Into the 
 void created by infidelity, superstitions have rushed and been 
 eagerly received ; just as the prodigal son, in the parable, would 
 have welcomed the husks, when he began to be in want.--:^ But 
 what Plutarch says of superstition as the cause of unbelief, is 
 accurate and profound. And not less worthy of his wisdom is his 
 admoDition, in respect to the prevailing tendency of his age, " let 
 every man be well on his guard, that in order to escape robbers, he 
 do not plunge into an impassable chasm; that while escaping from 
 superstition, he do not fall into the power of unbelief, by leaping 
 over that which lies between them, viz. true piety." f 
 
 Superstition and unbelief, in the ancient world, generally in- 
 creased as the corruptions of religion developed themselves. And 
 multitudes, knowing of no other alternative than the robbers or 
 the chasm, escaped from the former and plunged into the latter. 
 So has it been in the presence of a corrupted Christianity. The 
 religion of nature was in nowise responsible for the corruptions 
 in which heathenism enveloped it. The heavens declared the 
 glory of God and the firmament showed forth his handiwork, not- 
 withstanding the unbounded superstition and unbelief that pre- 
 yailed. The religion of revelation stands clear of all the dis- 
 
 * Neander states yeiT truly tlie mutual connection >elwccn superstition and 
 unbelief: " These two distempered conditions of the spiritual hfe are but opposite 
 symptoms of the same fundamental evil, of which the 0V?.^^"T!fti!pf.lS,C«ses 
 other. When once the inner life is become thoroughly wor div, it eUhe ^3«"^-; ^ 
 all religious feeling and abandons itself to infidelity ; or, feuding itstlMuthth.t 
 feeling gives to it an interpretation of its own, and thus turns it to supeist iod. 
 •Jhe desperation of unbelief surrenders the troubled ^o"^^^^"^,^,,^ Pi.^^i^Tthe 
 stition; and the irrationalitv of superstition makes religipu suspected by the 
 thoucjhlful mind."— Church Hist. vol. i. p. 18. (Bohn s edition.) 
 
 + Tholuck on the Moral Influence of Heathenism, p. /i. 
 
THE CORRUPTIONS Ofc CHRISTIANITY. 213 
 
 tortious into which men have wrouglit it, and of all the abomina- 
 tions with which tliey have associated it. It brings glory to God 
 in the highest, peace on earth, and good-will toward men. But 
 the fine gold has been changed ; and in tossing away the countei-- 
 feit, men have often lost sight of the heavenly reality. The counter- 
 feit, however, must bear a portion of the guilt in the dishonour done 
 to the pure original ; and to a corrupted Christianity, as a subor- 
 dinate cause, must be assigned no small amount of influence in 
 occasioning the rejection of Christianity itself. Dr. Arnold be- 
 lieved the great cause of hinderance to the triumph of Christianity 
 to lie in the corruption not of the religion of Christ, but of tlie 
 church of Christ. The distinction serves only to mark off more 
 broadly the Divine revelation from the human corruptions, while 
 it leaves the latter to bear much of the blame of the rejection of 
 the former. " Christianity," says he, " being intended to remedy 
 the intensity of the fall by its religion, and the universality of the 
 evil by its church, has succeeded in the first because its religioa 
 has been retained as God gave it, but has failed in the second, be- 
 cause its church has been greatly corrupted." 
 
 Eomanism is not the only form of a corrupted Christianity. 
 There is the Greek church, in which are to be found many of the 
 same corruptions as are found in the Romish. There, in the very 
 bosom of Protestantism, are the Tractarians; "those factors for 
 Eome," as Archbishop Whately calls them, who " remind one of 
 Charon, in the old mythology, that ' grim ferryman whom poets 
 write of,' continually ferrying over multitudes across the ' melan- 
 choly flood,' to a gloomy shore, from which he regularly returned 
 himself alone, to take in a fresh cargo."* And, under the same 
 category of a con-upted Christianity, must come much of the 
 nominal Protestantism of the Continent, out of which has arisen 
 a cold, deadening rationalism. But Ptomanism occupies the bad 
 l)re-eminence. Most of the other distorted shapes have been but 
 mole-hills, this is the great and hideous mountain. That salvation, 
 is attainable in the Romish church, we no more doubt than we 
 question the exalted piety of such men as Borromeo, Fenelon, 
 and Pascal. But, consistent with this admission, history bears 
 us out in affirming, that it is the most corrupt form of Christianity 
 that has prevailed to any considerable extent; and that, in pro- 
 portion as it gains gi-ound, the pure spiritual Christianity of the 
 New Testament is supplanted or impeded, and superstition and 
 imbelief appear. It has no more been able wholly to extinguish 
 the flame of vital piety, than the Egj^ptian bondage was to crush 
 the Israelitish spirit. Even when a thick darkness that might be 
 felt has overspread the land, the children of Israel have had Hght 
 in their dwellings. But how large a space does it occupy in the 
 
 * Cautions for the Times, p. 302. 
 
214 THE CORRCJPTIOXS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 history of the church and the woiicl ; how very numerous are the 
 pomts of contrast which it presents to the simple trutli as it is in 
 Jesus ; and, itself the offspring of darkness, how great the darkness 
 in which it has slirouded, for ages, a large portion of humanity ! 
 
 It is of the system as a whole that we speak. AYe know that 
 within its pale exist men of erery grade, from the spiiitually 
 minded dovvn to the grossly superstitious and idolatrous. And, as 
 a system, it is douhtless the most corrupt that ever bore the Chris- 
 tian name, and has proved more prejudicial to the pure Gospel of 
 Christ than any or all of the coiTupt systems which have not pro- 
 fessedly waged war against it. It may claim a venerable anti- 
 quity, but Christianity, as it came down from heaven, clothed in 
 line linen clean and white, dates beyond it. And the centuries 
 that it reckons up in its age, only remind us how very soon the 
 mystery of iniquity began to work, and the fine gold became dim. 
 If'^that be not the most coiTupt form of Christianity, which, under 
 the penalty of anatliemas forbids the common people to read the 
 Scriptures, denies that they are a complete rule of faith and prac- 
 tice, and exalts vain traditions as of equal authority; if that be 
 not the most corrupt which enjoins the worship of saints, images, 
 and relics ; virtually denies the perfection of the Christian atone- 
 ment by offering up the sacrifice of the mass, multiplies the 
 number of the sacraments, and loads the simple divine institutes 
 with a gorgeous host of ceremonies; if that be not the most coiTupt 
 which enslaves the mind and keeps it in ignorance, and which, in 
 making darkness its pavilion, is ever jealous of the light; we know 
 not where a corrupted Christianity is to be foimd. It preserves 
 the name of Christianity, and, nominally, at least, retains its 
 doctrines; but, under an enormous mass of corruptions, entombs 
 its spirit. 
 
 It is not as now existing in Protestant countries, surrounded 
 and in a great measure influenced by the light of the Reformation, 
 that we are to form our estimate of it, but as it appears in Italy 
 and Spain, where it develops itself according to the authorized 
 canons of the church ; and even there it is somewhat under the 
 check of the advancing mind of the nineteenth century. It had 
 its origin in the attempt to reconcile the adherents of tlio worn-out 
 pagan worship, who were scattered in considerable numbers 
 throughout the empire, to the Christian faith which had silenced 
 the oracles and overthrown the altars of polytheism. It was a 
 kind of compromise between the old worshiiJ and the new. The 
 church hierarchy, so early as the days of Constantino, evinced 
 a tendency (so often shown since by Piomish missionaries) to 
 give Christian baptism to individuals while yet in the bosom of 
 heathenism, and to make old superstitious practices fit into ths 
 Christian worship. The striking resemblance between the super- 
 stitions of Papal Eome and Pagan Home, has often been pointed 
 
THE CORRUPTiOKS OF CHRISTIANITY. 215- 
 
 out. Eoraanism, by its j^erversious of ^-eat Christian doctiineSr 
 and by tho meretricious ornaments with which it has loaded 
 simple Christian rites, has earned the title of a bai^tized paganism. 
 No enlightened mind, looking at Christianity as it is taught in 
 the New Testament, and exemplified by the apostles and early 
 churches, and comparing it with the Papal system as enunciated 
 in the decrees of councils, embodied in its existing institutions, 
 and manifested in the moral condition of those lands where it 
 predominates, can help concluding thatPopeiy is the most decrepit 
 and corrupt form of Christianity. 
 
 " hi the stagnant marshes of corrupted Cliristianity," remarks- 
 Robert Hall, " infidelity has been bred." Romanism has nourished 
 the grossest superstitions, and given rise to the most dissolute- 
 scepticism. By locking up the treasures of divine knowledge, and 
 substituting penances, indulgences, and pompous ceremonies, for 
 an enlightened and operative faith, she has kept the great mass of 
 her people as ignorant and slavishly superstitious as Hindoos; 
 while she has disgusted the more intelligent, and driven them into 
 secret or open infidelity. 
 
 It will be found, then, that there are three ways in which a 
 corrupted Christianity, and more especially the Papacy, the master- 
 piece of corruptions, ministers to infidelity. 
 
 1. In the first place, it often produces aversion in cultivated amV 
 rejecting minds to Ghristianitij itself. Men have often known- 
 Christianity only by Popery — its most corrupt form. The 
 Romish chiu-ch and tlie Christian church, the Catholic doctrines 
 and the Gospel doctrines, they have been taught to consider as 
 identical. All the good effected by Christianity in the world, is 
 (claimed for the Papacy. M. de Falloux, one of the most staunch 
 Romanists among the French statesmen, strikingly confounded. 
 Christianity with Romanism, when, in a recent speech in the- 
 French Assembly, he went on to say the Papacy has done this good 
 and that good. All the corruptions of Popery, on the other hand, 
 are laid by multitudes at the door of Christianity. If they read his- 
 tory, so large a space does Romanism occupy, that, (overlooking the 
 little uncorrupted church of Christ which has ever been as a green 
 islet in a troubled sea or as a light shining in a dark place,) the 
 history of the Papacy is with them the history of Christianity.. 
 And that history is dark, foul, and loathsome. It is a series of 
 dire opj)ressions, and hideous- corruptions; the record of a systeni- 
 which, professing to free and elevate man, has debased and en- 
 slaved him ; a system loving the darkness and hating the light,, 
 full of pious frauds and outrageous crimes. They look around 
 the land in which they dwell, and Romanism, unchangeable in its 
 mummeries and corruptions, in its enslaving and benighting in- 
 fluences, I'ises up before them as the all-explaining fact of the 
 Christian Dispensation. Sucli men, on becoming enliglitened. 
 
filQ THE CORRUPTIONS OF CIIRISTIANJTi'. 
 
 and emerging out of the superstition in wbicli the masses are 
 sunk, iuvvardjy, if not avowedly, loathe the gross doctrines, cum- 
 bersome rites, and absurd practices of the church. And if they 
 know not a purer faith, or, by the very loathing whicli tliey have 
 contracted, are averse to inquire after it, the consequence will be 
 either that, retaining, from policy, an outward connection v/ith 
 Eome, they secretly cherish iniiclelity ; or, adopting an honester 
 though still a fatal course, they pass openly over to the ranks of 
 those who denounce Christianity as a cunningly-devised fable. 
 
 This is no mere supposition. The history of the past and the 
 experience of the present corroborate it. During the dark ages, 
 Cbristianity, in the hands of llomanism, sunk into the grossest sujjer- 
 stition ; and that superstition was the occasion of a vast amount of 
 tlie then existing infidelity. A pure Gospel was then, as always, in 
 the world, but it was wandering in deserts, and in mountains'^ and 
 in dens, and caves of the earth, being destitute, afSicted, tormented. 
 It was a sadly depraved Christianity, more like a demon of dark- 
 ness than an angel of light, that stood before men; and no wonder 
 that multitudes mistook the demon for the angel, and in rejecting 
 the one, rejected the other also. In the fifteenth century, when 
 monkisli superstition overspread the world — a thick darkness 
 that preceded the break of day — men of learning and classical 
 attainments in the church, sucli as Leo the Tenth, Bembo, and 
 many others, wei-e infidels; and their infidelity, even amid the 
 abounding degeneracy, they could scarcely conceal. Under the 
 shadow of the churcli were at once nourished a gross superstition 
 and a profligate scepticism. 
 
 It was even so in the latter half of last century. Protestantism 
 had, in many quarters, sinik into a dee]") apathy. A dry and 
 sapless orthodoxy, followed by a carnal life, had supplanted the 
 life-giving Gospel in the churches. Pvomanism, on the other 
 hand, had increased greatly in insolence and corruptions. The 
 pure form of Christianity, except in a few places, had lost its 
 vigour ; and the corrupt form had become proportionably more 
 corrupt. The consequence was an inexpressible disgust in the 
 minds of enlightened men at the doctrines and practices of the 
 Romish church, followed afterwards by an outburst of infidelity 
 and impiety. The church of France, before the llevolution of 
 1789, had left the great mass of the people in the most extreme 
 ignorance, and had disguised religion in a tissue of frauds and 
 impostures. Its intestine quarrels, its grievous oppressions, its 
 benighting influences, its absurd pagan mummeries, had rendered it 
 an object of disgust and contempt to the more intelligent portion 
 of the nation. Tlie spirit of infidelity waxed mightily. Ilomanisin, 
 being the only form of Christian ity'^tli at came prominently under 
 men's notice, was confounded or identified with Christianity itself. 
 And men, in making a rebound from a gross and oupressive 
 
THE COREUPTIONS OF CHHTSTIANITY. 217 
 
 superstition, overlooked the little true piety that lay between, and 
 fell into the abyss of unbelief. The growing corruptions of the 
 system opened men's eyes, and convinced them of its falsehood; 
 and some being unwilling, and others unable, to make a dis- 
 tinction between Christianity as a revelation from lieaven, and 
 Christianity as distorted and deformed by Popery, the former had 
 to bear the crimes of the latter, and, in the fierce onset, tlie 
 destruction of Eomanism was hailed as the abolition of Chris- 
 tianity itself. The Archbishop of Paris and others, in publicly 
 renouncing Popery, proclaimed their disbelief in Christianity. 
 
 Such was the case, to a considerable extent, in all the other 
 Catholic countries of Europe, during last century. 'J'he churcli of 
 Piome was fast losing its hold on men's minds. Infidelity, in 
 many places, gained tlie ascendant. Multitudes, in escaping from 
 superstition, rushed into unbelief Mr. Macaulay remarks, that 
 " at the time of the Pveformation, whole nations renounced Popeiy 
 without ceasing to believe in a First Cause, in a future life, or in 
 the Divine mission of Jesus. In the last century, on tlie other 
 hand, when a Catholic renounced his belief in the real presence, 
 it was a thousand to one that he renounced his belief in the Gospel 
 too."- The reason of the difference is obvious. The Peformation 
 was a voice calling aloud, like a trumpet, on the slumbering nations 
 to awake. It Avas liberty, in all the vigour of youth, imdoing the 
 heavy burdens, breaking^ every yoke, and bidding tlie oppressed go 
 free. It was the Gospel of the grace of God, as fresh and mighty 
 as when preached by Paul, proclaiming the acceptable year of the 
 Lord, and bringing the good news of a free and full salvation to 
 distressed and wearied souls. The men who called upon others to 
 escape from the robbers pointed them to the city of refuge, and 
 thus the nations escaped the chasm. 13 ut the Protestantism of 
 the Continent, during the eighteenth century, had, to a fearful 
 extent, lost the life which the Ileformation originally breathed 
 into it. It was slumbering on the lap of rationalism. The trum- 
 pet had fallen from its lips. It had substituted mere abstractions, 
 or negations, for the life-giving w^ord. And when multitudes were 
 rushing, like prisoners let loose, from an oppressive superstition, 
 Protestantism, shorn of its locks, wanted the power to arrest them 
 at an intermediate point, and prevent them from falling into the 
 abyss of infidelity. 
 
 Again, if we look to those parts of the Continent where a cor- 
 rupted Christianity is dominant in our own day, we find abundant 
 illustrations of the position which we are endeavouring to establish. 
 These two excrescences of religious life, as Tholuck calls them, 
 superstition and unbelief, appear very prominently. One portion 
 of the people, generally the more ignorant, are sunk in supersti- 
 
 * Eeview of Ranke's History of Ihe Popes. 
 
>18 THE COREUPTIONS OF CHniSTlANITY. 
 
 ;ion, and blindly devoted to gross ceremonies. The otlier. and 
 nore enlightened portion, (saving tliose who have embraced the 
 genuine Gospel,) having confounded the pure and the corrupt, 
 lave lapsed into secret or open unbelief. In the bosom of Eoman- 
 sm men have been taught to regard every species of Protastantism 
 is an upstart faith, and lying without the pale of the true church, 
 iud multitudes, in abandoning the one for its corruptions, have 
 lot been divested of their prejudices in reference to Ihe other so 
 IS to seek in it a religious home. It has been deemed no libel to 
 iffirm that many intelligent Romanists on the Continent, v/ho are 
 ;oo clear-sighted to be befooled by the mummeries of the Papacy, 
 md too politic openly to proclaim their hostility, have no faith in 
 he Christian revelation. In Italy, in Spain, and France, Ptoman- 
 sm, in the eyes of the nation, is Christianity, and Christianity is 
 ^.omauism. Men still judge of the pure gold by the base counter- 
 eit, tliey decide on the merits of .the heavenly original by the 
 'arthly caricature. Indeed, in many cases, the distorted form is 
 till the only shape in which Christianity comes under observa- 
 ion, so that, in losing then- hold of the one, men give up all the 
 Christianity that ever they knew. And in other cases, the rebound 
 rom Romanism, in cultivated minds, is proportioned to the former 
 )ressure, so that, to repeat Plutarch's saying, men in escaping 
 i-orn the robbers, plunge into the chasm. 
 
 " Italy," says Dr. Achilli, " pants to shake off Popeiy. But, with 
 ew exceptions, men who have seen Popery and Christianity so 
 iitimately connected with one another, have not spiritual discern- 
 [lent to separate the one from the other, and with the falsehoods 
 if Rome they reject the sublimest truths of Christianity. . . . 
 taly is full of men who, ceasing to believe in the Romish dogmas, 
 lave ceased to believe in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 )ne main cause of this is their ignorance of Holy Scripture." 
 Pantheism and deism are, accordingly, occupying much of the 
 •round in the Italian peninsula which has been prepared, though 
 ost, by Romish superstition. Dr. James Thomson, v/hose acquaint- 
 ,nce with the moral and religious condition of Spain is so extensive, 
 ells us, that " many of the middling classes are free-thinkers or 
 .theists. They could not be easily brought to read the Bible, for 
 >eing disgusted with priestcraft and its impositions, they believe 
 LOthing and will hear of nothing." The corruptions of Christianity 
 Q that once proud land are fearfully glaring, and infidelity, as the 
 onsequence, is ravaging the country. Romish pretensions in 
 ^rance, since the revolution of 1848, have revived. But France 
 >as no faith in them. They may be made to play a part in the 
 hifting scenes of the political drama. But discerning men pre- 
 lict that they will revive the spirit of Voltaire, and extend the 
 lominiou of infidelity. " For tiie gi'eat masses of our French 
 )opulation," says ]\I. Roussel, " Christianity is Romanism, and 
 
THE CORRUPTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY. 219 
 
 Eomanism is the mass, confessioii, ceremonies, fasts, and a tlioii- 
 sand ridiculous superstitions ; and here we have a distinct reason 
 why infidelity prevails in France." 
 
 And, to come home, what have we in the " Oxford School" but 
 a source of corruption, one stream of which is continually running 
 to Eome, and another going off to scepticism. Mr. Henry Eogers 
 affirmed, in 1843, in an article in the Edinhior/h Review, that 
 " the desperate assertion that the 'evidence for Christianity' was 
 no stronger than that for ' church principles,' must, by reaction, 
 lead on to an outbreak of infidelity." And he can now say, "that 
 prophecy has been to the letter accomplished."* Newman, Fox- 
 ton, Fronde, and others, who are waging war against Christianity, 
 ai-e the result. 
 
 The present Archbishop of Dublin devotes several numbers of 
 his " Cautions for the Times," to show that the Tractite party in 
 depreciating the investigation of Christian evidence, and insisting 
 on an implicit faith in what is taught ; in putting the SGrij)ture- 
 miracles on a level with the absurd miracles of later times; in 
 covertly and by implication discouraging the study of the Scrip- 
 tures, and exalting the authority of " traditionary revelation ; " 
 in earnestly deprecating the exercise of private judgment in reli- 
 gious matters ; and in making Christianity assume the form of 
 a religion of mere outv^'ard rites and observances; — are doing 
 "more to shake the authority of Scripture than all the attacks 
 made by infidels directly upon it, ever have done, or ever can do. 
 For Scripture is, in itself, invulnerable; and they who attack it, 
 do but dash themselves to pieces against a rock. But it may be 
 easily shown that 'the fathers of the church' are mere human 
 teachers, who often deliver false, and sometimes even absurd 
 things, as true doctrine. To encumber Clnistianity, therefore, 
 with the defence of their errors and absurdities, — and make that 
 essential to the safety of our religion, — is voluntarily to exchange 
 an impregnable fortress for a position which cannot be maintained 
 against the enemy."f Once persuade men, as the Oxford Trac- 
 tarians endeavour to do, that there is no alternative between their 
 church princinles and infidelity, and many, seeing the sony foun- 
 dation on which the former rest, will be led to pass over to the 
 latter. " One might almost thank you," said a thoughtful young 
 man, on leaving the church of St. Mary's, Oxford, Avliere one of 
 the most determined of the Tractarian preachers had been holding 
 forth in this strain, — " one might almost thank you for infidelity 
 as an antagonist to this God-dishonouring and man-debasing 
 system."! Thus it is that superstition, baptized with the Chris 
 tian name, leads on, by reaction, to unbelief 
 
 2. Another way in which a corrupted Christianity, and more 
 
 * Eeason auci Faith. + Cautions fov the Times, p. 243. 
 
 t Christian Times (Nov. 1850). 
 
20 THE COnKUPTIONS OF CHIlISTIANTTY 
 
 specially the Papacy, ministers to infidelity, is, — that it leaves 
 he mass of the j^eo-ple, among ivhom it prevails, to be captured bjj 
 ifidel leaders in times of national excitement. The times of the 
 reat French revolution furnished ahundant and feai'ful illustra- 
 Lons of the truth of this remark. The only religion which the 
 reat body of the French people, at the period referred to, was 
 miiliar with, was a bastard Christianity. And that bastard had 
 oodwinked, pilfered, and enslaved them. It had interdicted 
 eligious inquiry, it had jealously withheld from them the pure 
 'ord of life, aud, in tlie room of the glad tidings of gTcat joy, it 
 ad presented them with a system of impostures and falsehoods, 
 lie atheistical philosophers, men who knew of the existence of a 
 urer religion, but wlio wished to bring every form of religion 
 3to the same condemnation, found the people in this condition, 
 nd determined to turn it to their own destructive aims. It was 
 asy to point out to the })eoi:)le the trash, which, in the name of 
 ?ligion, had been gathering, during ages of darkness and igno- 
 ince, around them; easy it was to expose and hold up to ridicule 
 2e absurd doctrines, puerile ceremonies, extravagant pretensions, 
 nd oppressive exactions of the church of which they were chil- 
 ren ; and easy too it was, amid the darkness, to confound Popery 
 dth Christianity, and make ignorant and enslaved men believe 
 ;iat the religion of Christ was opposed to the rights of man, that 
 ) was tlie wretch, the oppressor. The lamp of Clu'istian truth, as 
 light shining in a dark place, Avas in the land, but it was well- 
 igh overpowered by the surrounding obscurity. And men, 
 aving been trained to regard Pomanism as the only true Chris- 
 anity, were now easily i:)ersuaded by then' infidel leaders, in 
 bjuring Pomanism, to reject Christianity itself. 
 Had the church of France, previous to the revolution, instructed 
 le people in the Gospel truth, put into their hands the pure 
 'ord of God, and preached the doctrines of the cross from her 
 ulpits ; had she stood forth before the eyes of the nation identi- 
 ed with all that is i^ure and lovely and of good report in Chris- 
 anity; then, though a revolution had been necessary, and infidel 
 ^aders might not have been wanting, the body of the people 
 ould have been kept from those dreadfully impious excesses 
 ith which the revolution was stained. As it was, hov/ever, the 
 lir form of religion wore a repulsive disguise, lay upon the neck 
 f the nation like a yoke, had kept it in a worse than Egyptian 
 ondage ; and, the people being thus left a prey to pretending 
 hilosophcrs, were taught to avenge themselves by throwing off 
 le heavy burden, and trampling everything bearing the name 
 f Christianity in the dust. A corrupt church left the people to 
 e seduced by an atheistical philosophy; and the protracted 
 ffect is seen at the present day, for, amid the illumination of 
 le nineteenth century, the French nation is nominally Poman 
 
THE COlirtUPTIONS OF CHEISTIANITY. 221 
 
 Catholic, but at heart without faith in the Christian revelation. 
 This, then, is one of the chief ways in which a corrupted Chris- 
 tianity ministers to infidelity. It plunges the people into super- 
 stition, and out of that superstition, at the call of the ungodly 
 leaders, rises the demon of unbelief Tltat demon is now stalking 
 abroad in many lands. 
 
 3. The corruptions of Christianity form also an armoury out of 
 ivMcli infidels take weapons to attack Christianity itself. Their 
 own infidelity maybe accounted for in another way; but their 
 hands are strengthened by the impostures, al'/Surdities, and 
 oppressions, which, bearing the Christian name, have converted 
 that which is a blessing into a curse. A good cause Avhen de- 
 praved and made hideous by professed friends, becomes auxiliary 
 to its avowed enemies. It is rarely that such men attack Chris- 
 tianity as it is developed in the sacred volume, and exemplified in 
 the lives of real Christians, but as it has been misrepresented by 
 themselves, or as it exists imbedded in a mass of corruptions. They 
 are wont to appeal to the ignorance and superstition, the priest- 
 craft and crime, existing under a grossly perverted Christianity, of 
 which unhappily the greater part of church history is too full, and 
 nations nominally Christian present too abundant illustrations — 
 and, with a dishonesty wofully glaring but often effectual, repre- 
 sent the evils as if they were the fruits of Christianity itself These 
 v/ere the weapons which were brandished by Paine and his school; 
 Holywell Street bristled with them; and they are not unfrequently 
 taken u]) by a class of adversaries who would repudiate all sym- 
 pathy with Paine in his coarse blasphemy and vulgar impudence. 
 The grossest darkness and superstition have existed and been re- 
 tained under the shadow of the church, the direst oppressions and 
 the most outrageous crimes have been perpetrated in the Christian 
 name; and these, the effects of a sadly distorted Christianity, are, 
 with little ingenuity and less modesty, thrown in the face of unde- 
 filed Christianity itself Men can distinguish between astrology 
 and astronomy, between chemistry and alchemy, between natural 
 philosophy and magic, and they never think of employing the one 
 to fight against the other. Buttliey have other interests than those 
 of truth to serve, in being unwilling to distinguish the heavenly 
 from the earthly, — the religion of God from the religion of man. 
 
 Upon the whole, then, w^e may say, that it has often fared with 
 Christianity, on account of its corruptions, as it has sometimes done 
 with the character of a great nation, because of the degeneracy of 
 those who were considered to reiiresent it. The inhabitants of a 
 distant land, who never saw any better specimens of the English 
 character than the drunken ship's crew that time after time visited 
 their shores, and perpetrated fraud, robbery, and oppression, have 
 no faith in the virtue of the English nation. They identify it 
 with intemperance, deceit, and cruelty ; and look with jealousy and 
 
)vO IIELIGIOUS INTOLEEAXCE. 
 
 letestation on every Avliiteman that sets bis foot on their soil, even 
 hough he comes to bless them. The English in India, during the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by their ra})ine, impiety, and 
 icentiousness, led the natives to regard them as little better than 
 lends let loose from hell to ravage then- coasts. Other joeoples 
 igain, v\dio knovv^ full well that the depraved class, which now and 
 hen come under their observation, are but spurious specimens of 
 he true Britons, choose, out of ill-will, or some un-vorthy motive, 
 hold them up as types of England's character. There is a time 
 lational character which gives the lie to the libel, and there is a 
 )ure benignant Christianity which disowns the corrupt as its repre- 
 ientative. Nevertheless, the base citizens, in the eyes of foreigners, 
 )roduce and strengthen scepticism in regard to the national 
 lonour; and, in like mauner, the corrupt form of Christianity 
 ^ives occasion for rejecting the true. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 KSLIGIOUS IXTOLEEAXCE. 
 
 luch intolerance without the Church — Cliristianity itself stands clear of all 
 within it — Its Founder the most tolerant of beings — Precepts and doctrines 
 of the New Testament, and the lives of the best Christians, acquit the gospel of 
 the charge — Accidental association of intolerance with the religion of Christ, 
 has often been injurious to it — Three manifestations of intolerance noticed: — 
 1st. Jealousy in reference to science : — Nature and revelation in harmony — 
 Astronomy and the Bible once set at variance — Galileo —A right principle of 
 Scriptural interpretation harmonizes Bible language with the true system of 
 the universe — Geology — Great antiquity of the globe a result, not an assump- 
 tion—Perfect harmony between this and the Mosaic record — Injurious influ- 
 ence of refusing the harmonizing principle — 2nd. Jealousy in reference to any 
 departure from the common mode of p'ulpit teaching — V/ant of Paul's principle 
 of accommodation in cbnsistency with great prominence to doctrines of the 
 cvoss — Necessity of a wider and'more diversified range — Chalmers s Astrono- 
 mical Discourses. — 3rd. Intolerance of different forms and observances — Much 
 handled by infidels— Causes disaffection to Christianity in many intelligent 
 and liberal minds— Such a spirit rebuked by Christ. 
 
 T should never be forgotten that a great deal of the intolerance in 
 tie world lies vdthout tlie pale of the church, and that from all the 
 itolerance found witliin it, Christianity itself is eutirely free. 
 )ne woidd imagine, to hear some objectors, that the thing had no 
 xistence except amoug the adherents of the Christian system, and 
 lat it was the native fruit of the system itself. Some men see 
 orruptions, divisions, and intolerances, nowhere except within 
 10 province of revealed religion ; and they cannot, or will not, dis- 
 ^nguish between that religion and the abuses that have crept 
 round it, or the evils clone in its name. It is necessary, accord- 
 igly, to remind such individuals that intolerance has had a place 
 1 the schools, and in the senate, as well as in the church ; that 
 hilosophy, literature, and politics, have keenly manifested it, as 
 •ell as systems of religion; and that while the evil could often be 
 
TvELIGlOUS INTOLERANCE. 22o 
 
 shown to have been tlie natural effects of the human system, it 
 could as easily be shown to he foreign to the divine. 
 
 The character of Christianity is to he judged of by the spirit of 
 its Founder, by its precepts and doctrines as contained in the New 
 Testament, and by the conduct of tiiose who hare been acknow- 
 ledged to be most under its influence. The man Christ Jesus — 
 the holy, harmless, and undefiled One — was the most tolerant of 
 beings. In him v/ere harmoniously blended two great principles : 
 an uncompromising attachment to the truth, and great forbearance 
 toward those who were weak in faitli, or as yet strangers to its 
 povrer. He declared before Pilate, "to this end was I born, and 
 for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness 
 unto the truth." And so ardent was his zeal for the truth, and so 
 faithful his attachment to it, that men who take a one-sided view 
 of things, and confound an enlightened regard to truth with 
 intolerance, might indeed bring the charge against the Saviour 
 Himself. Had some persons who are ever raising this cry against 
 Christianity, seen Him, in holy indignation, expelling the buyers 
 and sellers from the temple; or heard Him utter such uncompro- 
 mising language as this, — " he that is not with me is against me 
 — If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself, and take 
 up liis cross and follow me," — they wou.ld, in all probability, have 
 ascribed it to an intolerant spirit. How libellous would have 
 been the charge ! For we have only to behold tlie faithful and true 
 witness, v/hile firmly grasping the truth, exemplifying its kindly 
 spuit, and discountenan<^:ng in ]iis followers any manifestations 
 of temper inconsistent with it. He rebuked the various kinds of 
 intolerance that were manifested in his day. There was the 
 intolerance of the synagogue, or of churcli exclusivcness, which 
 expresses itself in the cry, " the temple of the Lord, the temple of 
 the Lord, are we." And He said to it, " I tell you of a truth, many 
 widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was 
 shut up three years and six. months, when great famine was 
 throughout all the land; but unto none of them v\'as Elias sent, 
 save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. 
 And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet ; 
 and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian." 
 Tiiere was the intolerance of a monopolizing caste, the germs of 
 v.'hich appeared in his own partially enlightened disciples who 
 woidd forbid the man casting out demons, because he did not 
 form one of their company. And Jesus said, " forbid him not : 
 for he that is not against us is for us." There was the intolerance 
 of misplaced zeal, as manifested by James and John, who, in tlis 
 times of their ignorance, would have commanded fire to come down 
 from heaven and consume the Samaritans, because they did not 
 receive the ]SIaster, But he turned, and said unto them, "ye 
 know not wliat manner of spirit ye are of." Intolerance in Him 
 
224 r.ELiGious intoleranxe. 
 
 was reserved for a base and sanetimonious livpocrisy, and then it 
 became a virtue to manifest it. But the bruised reed he did not 
 "break, and the smoking flax he did not quench. And, with an 
 enlarged heart, he recognised in every one who did the will of 
 God, his mother, his brother, and his sister. Let the charge of 
 intolerance be made against whatever religious systems and 
 teachers men will ; but let the life and doctrine of Him who 
 taught his followers to love their enemies, and who on the crosi? 
 prayed for his murderers, stand clear of it. 
 
 Tlie same two great principles to which we have adverted, are 
 exemplified also in the character and writings of the apostles. It 
 is not to the time when they were beset with Jewish prejudices 
 that we refer, but when they were in the very height of their 
 noble career as Christians and ambassadors, and most of all under 
 the iniluence of the truth. Look at John, — Boanerges, the son of 
 thunder, — him who would have brought down lire on the Sama- 
 ritans. He has lost none of his zeal for the truLh. " If there come 
 any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your 
 house, neither bid him God speed." But how deeply is he imbued 
 with the kindly and tolerant spirit of that truth, " We know that 
 we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren." 
 Look at Paul, once a persecutor and injurious. In him v\-erQ 
 combined uncompromising attachment to great truth, and for- 
 bearance to all who held it, though differing on other matters. He 
 who withstood Peter to the face, because the truth was likely to 
 suffer through his dissimulation, became all things to all men in 
 order that he might win some. It would be a difficult task for 
 any man to find a single precept or doctrine in the apostolical 
 epistles, or anything in the conduct of the apostles themselves 
 after they had been enlightened, on which to fasten tlie charge of 
 intolerance, unless he confound with it an enlightened attachment 
 to the trutli itself. And there are thousands of Christians, iji 
 every age, whose temper and conduct, being under the influence 
 of the truth as it is in Jesus, give the lie to the insinuation that 
 Christianity fosters narrow-mindedness and intolei'ance. It is a 
 petty, unmanly, dishonest way of attacking the Gospel, to father 
 upon it all the weaknesses and vices of its professors ; when in 
 the character of its author, and both in its letter and spirit, it 
 rebukes intolerance of every shape. Happy is it tliat, amid the 
 false imputations thrown on Christianity by its enemies, and the 
 unfavourable representation often given of it by being associated 
 witli the imperfections and errors of its professed friends, we can 
 contemplate its native undiminished grandeur in the sacred page, 
 and see its holy benignant influence manifested in so many of its 
 true disciples, as warrant us to say that the Gospel has as much 
 communion with intolerance as light has with darkness. 
 
 But, although the religion of Christ disowns all connection with 
 
RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. 225 
 
 the narrowness and Ligotry of its avowed disciples, it cannot be 
 doubted that, in consequence of such associations, it has presented 
 a repulsive aspect to many minds. We mean, therefore, to notice 
 some of the forms of religious intolerance, which have thrown a 
 stumbling-block in the way of a pure and benignant Christianity. 
 
 1. The first, to which we advert, is, — the jealousy villi ivMch 
 some relujious men regard the advancement of science. The Book 
 of nature and the Book of revelation have the same Author, and, 
 when rightly interpreted, both declare the glory of God, and show 
 forth his handywork. There may be apparent discrepancies 
 between them, but there can be no real contradictions ; and, in 
 proportion as scientific research is prosecuted in the right spirit, 
 and true principles of interpretation are applied to the scriptural 
 page, will the harmony be manifested. The one, however, has 
 often been arrayed against the other, to the injury of the truth of 
 God. We refer, not so much to the vaunts of infidels that the ago 
 of i)hilosophical illumination and scientific discovery would eclipse 
 and falsify the scriptural revelation, or to the fact that some phi- 
 losophers have, unhappily, been unbelievers in the sacred record 
 — circumstances which have had considerable influence in pre- 
 judicing some good, though not great men, against such pursuits 
 — as to the fact that Christians themselves, in many cases, have 
 countenanced the notion that there is real enmity between them. 
 
 It was once a dogma both of philosophy and of the church, 
 that the earth is the greatest body in the universe, placed immove- 
 able in its centre, and that all the heavenly bodies were created 
 solely for its use. The influence of Aristotle riveted the notion of 
 the earth's immobility on men's minds for ages, and the wliole 
 body of the faithful received it as the very doctrine of the Bible. 
 At length when the Aristotelian dogmas respecting motion were 
 overturned by the discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo,— 
 and the motion of the earth round the sun, as the centre of the 
 planetary system, was, on demonstrable evidence, asserted, — 
 science and religion were set against each other, and, what is now 
 universally regarded as a true astronomy, was denounced as in- 
 consistent witii the Christian faith. It is well known that the 
 Vatican thundered its anathemas against those who held the Co- 
 pernican doctrine, and that the famous Galileo was sent to the 
 dungeons of the Inquisition for thinking, as Milton says, in 
 astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers 
 thought. And even men of learning and piety w^ere to be found 
 sometime afterward in the Eeformcd Church, who maintained it 
 to be antiscriptural to believe otherwise than that the earth is at 
 rest, and that the sun performs a daily revolution around it. 
 David, the man inspired of God, was boldly set against the philo- 
 sopher Galileo; and because the former sung, " God hath established 
 the earth upon its foundations : it shall not be moved for ever and 
 
 Q 
 
2:20 heltgious intolehaxce. 
 
 ever. Tlie going forth of the sun is from the end of the heaven 
 and his circuit unto the ends of it," and the latter could not but 
 maintain, on tl^e ground of sure evidence, that the earth moved, — 
 philosophy was placed under the ban, and stigmatized as heretical 
 and infidel. 
 
 The famous rule of interpretation, so fully adopted by expositors 
 in modern times, that the sacred writers speak of natural objects, 
 according to the popular mode of comprehending them, " ex veri- 
 tate optica non physka" as Eosenmiiller says, — a rule which 
 Galileo himself, who held both by the truth of the Scriptures and 
 the truth of the new philosophy, seems clearly to have understood 
 — was little thought of, or generally repudiated by divines as an 
 example of wresting the Scriptures from then- plain and obvious 
 meaning. The persecuted philoso])her could have told them, that 
 as the sacred writers, in accommodating their language to the 
 wants and capacities of men, speak of God Himself under the 
 •semblance of liuman properties; so do they, in speaking of his 
 •works, adopt those popular forms of speech which could readily 
 be comprehended. ^= But the church, intellectually, as v/ell as in 
 other respects, was intolerant. The philosophy of nature, however 
 clearly established on fact, must bend to men's narrow interpre- 
 *tation of Scripture. It refused to do so. The philosoj^her, after 
 kns humiliating recantation, rose from his knees, stamped his foot 
 ■on the ground, and exclaimed, " It moves after all !" A perpetual 
 imprisonment was the penalty; and that very astronomy which 
 gives us such enlarged conceptions of the God of nature and of 
 gi-ace, and which we regard as in perfect harmony with scriptural 
 truth, had, for years after the time of Galileo, to bear the brand 
 of heresy. That many of the philosophical minds of that age 
 were strengthened in their secret opposition to Christianit}^ by 
 such a course of intolerance, we may well believe, when we con- 
 sider how much it is appealed to by the enemies of revelation, and 
 how a similar, though less fierce mode of intolerance affects some 
 minds in our own day. 
 
 The once aj^parent inconsistency between astronomy and reve- 
 lation has vanished ; the globularity and mobility of the earth 
 are no longer viewed by the enlightened friends of Scripture as in 
 conflict with its statements ; and they can view the march of that 
 sublime science, not only without jealousy of any injury accruing 
 thei-eby to Christianity, but with the satisfaction of seeing it con- 
 tribute to enlarge our conceptions of Him who is the Savioiu- of 
 the world and the Upholder of all things. The application of a 
 riglit principle of scriptural interpretation harmonizes the language 
 of the Bible with the true system of the universe; just as the dis- 
 coveries of the microscope, evincing as they do the care of the 
 
 ♦ Dr. Smith'a Scripture ami Geology, p. 192 (4th editiou). 
 
RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. '^'41 
 
 Almighty for the little as well as the great, ward off the ohjections 
 wliich iiifidelity has drawn from the discoveries of the telescope, 
 on the ground, that the magnitude of the creation is opposed to 
 the helief that our little eartii has had concentrated upon it so 
 much of the Divine regards as is implied in the scheme of re- 
 demption. But if the elder science of astronomy has been cleared 
 of the stigma of being opposed to religion, the younger science of 
 geology has incurred the reproach, and still labours, in some 
 measure, under it. 
 
 Geology has secured its place among the inductive sciences ; and, 
 " in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, 
 undoubtedly ranks, in the scale of the sciences, next to astro- 
 nomy." * It is a fixed principle of this science, — which extended 
 observations are constantly strengthening, and in reference to 
 which great unanimity prevails among geologists, — that the mate- 
 rials of wliich this globe is composed are of a very high antiquity, 
 and date far beyond the six thousand yeai's which are the com- 
 monly assigned age of the earth. This is no mere hypothesis. 
 Physical phenomena, which lie patent to the eye of every observer, 
 prove that om- j)lanet has passed through several different states, 
 separated from each other by immense intervals of time, long 
 before man, or any of the other creatures now existing, had been 
 created. Several miles of strata upon strata have been carefull}" 
 examined by scientific men of the first eminence, and they are 
 agi'eed, upon ii-resistible evidence, in affirming, that the formation 
 even of those stratified beds wliich are nearest the surface, must 
 have taken periods of time which carry us immeasui'ably beyond 
 tlie commonly received date of the creation. The facts that no 
 remains of the human species have been found in any of the re- 
 gular geological deposits, that these deposits bear indubitable 
 mai'ks of having occupied vast ages in their formation, and that 
 the temperatm-e of the globe during the processes must have been 
 such as that man could not then have existed, prove the antiquity 
 of the globe to be so great as that, in comparison, man's stay upon 
 it dwindles into an insignificant point of time. This is one of 
 the gi-and conclusions of geology, carefully and legitimately diav/n 
 from the records contained in the bosom of the earth, and a con- 
 clusion which nothing whatever can falsify. " No geologist worthy 
 of the name, says Mr. Hugh Miller, " began with the belief of the 
 antiquity of the earth, and then set himself to square geological 
 phenomena with its requii-ements. It is a deduction, a result; — ■ 
 not the starting assumjition, or given sum, in a process of calcula- 
 tion, but its ultimate finding or answer." f Men of sceptioai 
 principles have arrayed this conclusion against Scripture on the 
 one hand, and some men of piety have arrayed Scripture against 
 
 * Herschell's Discourse on Natural Philosophy, p. 287. 
 + Footpiints, p. 265. 
 
 q2 
 
228 RELIGIOUS INIOLERAXCE. 
 
 it on tlie other. It is with the latter that we have at present 
 to do. 
 
 That there is an apparent discrepancy hetween the teachings of 
 geology and the teachings of the Bible in this case, must he ad- 
 mitted : and that something like alarm should at first have been 
 produced thereby, in serious minds, is not to be Avondered at. No 
 truth appears all at once full-orbed and complete. Some of the 
 noblest ideas of science and philosophy, that are now as the sun 
 shining in its strength, seemed, at their early daM-ning, to conflict 
 with cTiristianity, because opposed to some of the popular but mis- 
 taken interpretations of the sacred record. Cowper had something 
 like an excuse in his day, which he would not have had now, in 
 saying, 
 
 " Some drill and bore 
 The solid earth, and from the strata there 
 Extract a register, hy which we learn, 
 That he who made it, and revealed its date 
 To Moses, was mistaken in its age." 
 
 It is unfortunate, however, that such jealousy should exist; for 
 believing, as such men must do, that the records of nature and 
 the records of revelation have the same Author, they might be 
 assured that the true interpretation of the one could never really 
 be at variance with the true interpretation of the other. ^ Had 
 Moses, the man of God, anywhere asserted that the materials of 
 -which this globe is composed were called into being a few thou- 
 sand years ago, had the inspired historian identified the original 
 act of forming the world out of nothing with the six days of the 
 Adamic creation, science and revelation would then have been at 
 open war, and the consequences would have been serious. Geolo- 
 gists can no more renounce their belief in the great antiquity 
 of the eartli, than the followers of Copernicus can give up the 
 creed that the earth moves, and that the sun is in the centre of the 
 planetary system. The convictions in the one case, as well as in 
 the other, are consequents — not antecedents. Moses nowhere 
 asserts that the chronology is different. The variance between 
 his record and the geological evidence is only apparent, not real; 
 it vanishes before a sound principle of scriptural interpretation. 
 What we complain of, however, is, that some good men disown 
 the harmonizing principle, and, to the injury of Christianity, 
 cling doggedly to their narrow principle of interpretation, and 
 denounce, as heretical and infidel, one of the most legitimate con- 
 clusions of science. Let it once be admitted that the first sentence 
 in the Book of Genesis stands as a distinct and independent pro- 
 position, that it refers to an undefined antiquity when the Al- 
 mighty created the materials of the universe out of nothing, and 
 then, as Dr. Chalmers remarks, " we can allow geology the am- 
 plest time for its various revolutions without infringing even on 
 
BELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. ^ 229 
 
 the litei-alities of the Mosaic record." ■'■' This principle of inter- 
 pretation is no novelty, no mere bending of the sense of Scripture 
 so as to meet the claims of a young science. It is to be found in 
 many of the ancient Christian writers, it was supported by some 
 of the most learned and pious men in more modern times, but who 
 lived before geology had obtaiiied a place among the inductive 
 sciences, and it is becoming more and more generally acceptable 
 among judicious and devout expositors of Scripture in our own day. 
 But the outcry has been heard, here and there, from the pulpit and 
 the religious press, that the geological doctrines are antiscriptural. 
 The Mosaical and M>neral geologies have been compared and con- 
 trasted, as if they Vvere actually conflicting ; and the most sweeping 
 charges of atheism and the like, have been made against a science 
 that appeals to palpable evidence in support of its conclusion, 
 that the earth is greatly older than the date commonly assigned to 
 it.f It is but lately that a correspondent, in a respectable public jour- 
 nal said, *' I hold by my antiquated tenets, that our world, nay, the 
 whole material universe, was created about six or seven thousand 
 years ago, and that in a state of physical excellence of which we 
 have in our present fallen world only the ' vestiges of creation.' " 
 The holders of such an opinion, we hope, in all charity, are rapidly 
 diminishing. 
 
 But who can estimate the amount of injury thus unintentionally 
 done to the interests of Christianity, and the advantage afforded 
 to the ranks of infidelity. It unfortunately happens that not a few 
 scientific men have, independently altogether of such representations, 
 no favourable prepossessions for the Christian religion, and are 
 criminally strangers to the strength of its evidences and the gran- 
 deiu' of its truths. And surely the intolerance of which we are 
 speaking, is calculated to strengthen their indifference or hostility, 
 and to induce them to rest in the conclusion that the Gospel is 
 cither a cunningly devised fable, or a system inimical to enlightened 
 and philosophical inquiry. It betrays indeed no small degree of 
 intolerance on the part of some philosophers themselves, and 
 evinces a little-mindedness altogether unworthy of them, that they 
 can coolly dismiss Christianity and refuse to examine its claims, 
 because it has occasionally come before them associated with the 
 weaknesses and prejudices of some of its professors. They are 
 guilty of acting in the same way toward religion. that the Christiam 
 professors, of whom they complain, act toward science; and th- 
 charge of intolerance, which they bring against others, migh. 
 justly be retaliated upon themselves. But this does in nowise 
 weaken the fact that the attempt, on the part of some, to limit the 
 Mosaic account of the creation to the date of six thousand years, 
 in opposition to geological conclusions carefully drawn and now 
 
 * Daily Scripture Readings, vol. i. p. 1. 
 + See Dr. Smith's Scripture and Geology, p. 130, &:c. 
 
'^'30 r.ELlGIOUS INTOLERANCE. 
 
 firmly established; and tlie attempt, on tlie jjart of others, to put 
 the mark of Cain on the science, — have operated injuriously on 
 some minds in fostering a secret or open contempt for Christianity. 
 There is a natural indifference in the human mind to the things 
 which are revealed of God, and it is unfortunate when men can 
 lay hold of some of the repulsive associations of Christianity as a 
 pretext for disregarding Christianity itself, llevelation cannot be 
 made to conflict with reason, Christianity cannot be arrayed 
 against science, without provoking enmity on the other side, and 
 giving an immense advantage to infidelity. 
 
 Mr. Babbage says, "It is a fact, not to be disputed, that some of 
 the most enlightened minds of the day, have nurtured a secret 
 opposition to the doctrines of Christianity, owing to the intellectual 
 intolerance of its abettors." And vv^hile it may be that some men 
 of philosophical pursuits are claimiug much more for reason than 
 its due, or than it would be consistent with the paramount claims 
 of Christianity to concede, and that intolerance may thus be in- 
 iiiscriminately applied to old prejudices and an enlightened zeal 
 for great truth; yet it must be admitted that any attempt to inter- 
 ilict a science whose conclusions are based not upon airy specula- 
 tions, but upon palpable evidence, under the mistaken notion that 
 Bucli conclusions are hostile to the "Word of God, must tend to make 
 come men infidels, and furnish with additional weapons those who 
 are so. Let no tolerance be shown to the opinion, prevalent in 
 our day, that religion is a web of the mind's own weaving, that it 
 has no fixed and immutable standard in history, but that it fluctu- 
 ates vf ith the fluctuation of ages ; for that were to act the pai't of 
 Judas and betray the very truth. But let the simple assurance 
 that the Author of the material and mental constitutions, is also 
 the Author of Christianity, for ever stifle all jealousy, and silence 
 all outcry against the steady march of physical and mental science. 
 Natural religion and revealed become the more friendly the better 
 they get acquainted, and the present as Avell as past times can fnr- 
 uish names alike illustrious for philosophical acquirements and 
 Christian excellence. One of these recently said, amid an illus- 
 trious circle of his scientific compeers : " If the God of love is most 
 appropriately worshipped in the Christian temple, the God of nature 
 may be equally honoured in the temple of science. Even from its 
 lofty minarets, the.jihilosopher may summon the faithful to prayer ; 
 and the priest and the sage may exchange altars without the com- 
 promise of faith or of knowledge." ^i- 
 
 2. The second form of religious intolerance, which we woidd 
 notice, as having an unfavourable bearing on Christianity, is, — 
 the jealousy uith uhich any departure from the common mode of 
 address, and any attemjrt to accommodate religious discussions to 
 
 * Sir D. Brewster's Address at the Meeting of the British Associatiou, at Edin- 
 burgh. 1800. 
 
EELIGIOCS INTOLERANCE. 281 
 
 the taste, literature, and philosophy of the times, are not unfre- 
 quently lieived by some of its jirofessed friends. It is by no means 
 desirable to make any material change in oiu- usually adopted 
 style of pulpit preaching. To the poor the Gospel is preached. 
 They form by far the larger portion of almost eveiy religious au- 
 dience, and to their intelligence and capacities should the teaching 
 of the Church be adapted. In order to secure plainness of speech, 
 however, it is no more necessary to descend to vulgarity than to 
 resort to raving in order to be impressive. Lord Brougham, in 
 his " Dissertation on the Eloquence of the Ancients," says: "The 
 best speakers of all times have never failed to find that they could 
 not speak too well or too carefully to a popular assembly ; that if 
 they spoke their best — the best they could address to the most 
 learned and critical assembly, they were sure to succeed." Some 
 of the most popular and useful preachers on both sides of the 
 Tweed, are those whose style is level to the comprehension of the 
 feeblest of the ilock, while it is characterized by an elegance and 
 sti'ength wdnch render it acceptable to the more refined and intel- 
 lectual. What is wanting is a greater prevalency of what, in some 
 quarters, extensively prevails, — the style which blends the exposi- 
 tory and the sermonizing, the docti'inal and the practical, the stiff- 
 ness of the lecture having imparted to it something of the graceful 
 looseness of the sermon, and the declamation of the sermon re- 
 ceiving some of the massiveness of the lecture. 
 
 If it be not desirable to lay aside the common mode of address, 
 far less would it be to strip the Gospel of its pecuUarities, or to 
 throw them into the shade, in order to remove the offence of the 
 cross. The great preacher who acted, within legitimate bounds, 
 on the principle of becoming all things to all men, acted always 
 too on his noble determination to know nothing among men save 
 Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The field of divine truth is ex- 
 tensive in itself, and richly diversified in its objects, but Christ is 
 the sun which clothes the whole with light as with a garment, and 
 the cross is the seat whence He sheds abroad the brightness of 
 his glory. Over this wide field it behoves the Christian teacher to 
 conduct his disciples, and to make them acquainted with every 
 flower and tree that grows on its surface; but all his lessons 
 should be given from under the shadow of the cross, and, on what- 
 ever subject he touches, there should be a constant reference to 
 this as the tree of life whose leaves are for the healing of the 
 nations. 
 
 But it is of the want of Paul's principle of accommodation, acted 
 on in consistency with due prominence being given to the doctrines 
 of the cross, that we complain. He accommodated himself to the 
 prejudices of the synagogue and of the market-place. He closed 
 with the philosophers" in the Areopagus, and with the more un- 
 leai-ned among the people. He pursued one train of thought, and 
 
2-32 KELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. 
 
 adopted one style, while reasonmg with the Jews ; and another and 
 different one when addressing the Gentiles. And yet, while thus 
 becoming all things to all men, he made it manifest that he connted 
 all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ. 
 It is the greater prevalency of branching off from the cardinal doc- 
 trine of the Gospel, v/hile liolding fast by it; and of throwing the 
 sanctity of religion over philosophical researches on the one hand, 
 and of making science minister to the illustrations of religious 
 truth on the other, that we desiderate in much of our religious 
 teaching. Tl^e pulpit, being designed for the instruction of men. 
 in every age in the things of God, should be prepared to meet the 
 various forms of error whicli are ever and anon thrown up from 
 the heart of society, to dissipate the illusions which have been 
 thrown around them, and to show how nature., when interrupted 
 aright, yields an unbiassed and spontaneous testimony to revela- 
 tion. Far be it that the lessons of the pulpit should ever be turned 
 into philosophical discussions, into learned disquisitions, or into a 
 mere baptized lifeless morality. Of the former there has been 
 more than enough in past ages, and of the latter there may be in 
 some quarters too much still. But, let it not be forgotten that 
 nature teaches many useful and pious lessons, and that the Bible 
 appeals to them ; that in the same record we are admonished to 
 behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, 
 and to consider the lilies of the field how they grow; tliat the in- 
 spired canon contains the Proverbs of Solomon as well as the 
 Psalms of David, the philosophical epistle of James as well as the 
 doctrinal epistles of Paul. Let not God's book of nature be treated 
 as if its inscriptions had grown dim and effete before the clearer 
 light of revelation, and, while ii-religious men would make the stars 
 in their courses fight against prophets and apostles, and adduce the 
 great "stone book" as a witness against the word of life; let 
 those who are set to teach in the church show that the records of 
 tlie material creation, of the heavens above and of the earth be- 
 neath, are in perfect harmony with the statements of tlie scriptural 
 page. There is the leaven of a secularist infidelity diffusing itself 
 among the masses, and of a philosophical unbelief making its 
 way among the educated classes, to the existence and influence of 
 whicli, many who wait upon the ministrations of the sanctuary are 
 not entire strangers ; and this surely warrants an occasional de- 
 partm-e from the usual mode of address, in order to strip false 
 systems of their pretensions, and to exliibit by contrast the glory 
 of the true. Paul, if we mistake not, would have acted thus, had 
 he lived in an age like ours so widely different in many points from 
 his own; and in doing so, would have manifested the harmony 
 of his two grand principles — determining to know nothing among 
 men save Jesus Christ and Hira crucified, and becoming all things 
 ko all men in order that he might win some. 
 
EELIGIOCS INTOLERANCE. 233 
 
 Now, it is in the jealousy with which some devoted teachers of^ 
 religion view any such accommodation to the taste and prejudices 
 of the times, and in the, perhaps, still stronger jealousy with which 
 such an occasional departure from the old com-se would be re 
 ceived by multitudes of simple-minded hearers, that we discover 
 an inliuenee really injurious to Christianity. We are not, let it be 
 remembered, advocating a trimming mode of preaching, the sub- 
 stitution of a sort of religious philosophy for the Gospel itself, or 
 mere displays of literary taste, in order to captivate literary men. 
 No. This, besides proving, as it ever has done, a wretched 
 failure, would be an abandonment or an unworthy compromise of 
 the one great principle of Paul to which we have adverted. But 
 it is the greater prevalency of the system which has been partially 
 adopted "by some distinguished teachers, of making occasional 
 excursions to other topics, while habitually expounding, and en- 
 forcing the gi-eat doctrines of the cross, and of linking even 
 these other topics with the truth of the Gospel for Avhich we 
 plead. It is undeniable that Christianity in the teaching of by 
 far the greater number of its devoted ministers, wears a more con- 
 tracted and exclusive aspect than really belongs to it; and that the 
 stern refusal to adapt the pulpit to the age, has led some intelli- 
 gent minds to cherish unfavourable opinions of the great truths of 
 the Gospel. The jealous exclusion of almost every topic from 
 sacred teaching, which is not directly included within the system 
 of evangelical doctrine, or the intolerance shown when an occa- 
 sional excursion is made beyond the lorescribed boundary, has in- 
 duced many to associate the grand themes of the pulpit with a 
 narrow and illiberal exclusiveness to wliich in themselves these 
 themes are strangers. " If the priesthood of the sanctuary," re- 
 marks Dr. Yaughan,-" " is to bo a match for the priesthood of 
 letters, the path of its labour must become wider and more diver- 
 sified every day. Men who see this must give little heed to those 
 who see it not." 
 
 Dr. Chalmers, in the introduction to his celebrated Astronomical 
 Discourses, which we consider a good exemplification of the two 
 principles of Paul formerly adverted to, makes a remark, in some 
 measure still applicable. He is speaking of " those narrow and 
 intolerant professors who take an alarm at the very sound and 
 semblance of philosophy ; and feel as if there was an utter irrecon- 
 cileable antipathy between its lessons on the one hand, and the 
 soundness and piety of the Bible on the other," and adds, " it were 
 well, I conceive, for our cause, that such persons could become a 
 little more indulgent on this subject; that they gave up a portion 
 of those ancient and hereditary prepossessions, which go so far to 
 cramp and enthral them; that they would sufier theology to take 
 
 * Letter and Spirit, p. 78. 
 
531 RELIGIOUS IXTOLEnANCE. 
 
 til at "wide range of argument and of illustration whicli belongs to 
 her; and that, less sensitively jealous of any desecration heing 
 brought upon the sabbath, or the pulpit, they would suffer her 
 freely to announce all those truths which either serve to protect 
 Christianity from the contempt of science ; or to protect the teachers 
 of Christianity from those invasions, which are practised both on 
 the sacredness of the office, and on the solitude of its devotional 
 and intellectual labours." 
 
 It is unfortunate that theology, the gi-andest of all the sciences, 
 should have been kept so much aloof from the otbers, as it is 
 unfortunate that the others have been kept so much aloof from 
 theology ; uiifortunate it is that theology has often been made to 
 look strangely and jealously on natural science, as it is that natu- 
 ral science has often looked strangely and jealously on theology. 
 The two real friends have been made to cherish silent or open 
 contempt for each other; and while the contempt of science has 
 often occasioned the contemj)t of theologj-, the contempt of theo- 
 logy has often occasioned the contempt of science. 
 
 3. The most common species of religious intolerance, and one 
 that has given to Christianity a more repulsive aspect than any 
 other, remains to be noticed — the intolerance of different forms, 
 rites, mid ceremonies. The form of godliness, in the present state, 
 is necessary to the manifestation and maintenance of its pov\'er. 
 But men in every age have been prone to attach that importance 
 to the external shape which only belongs to the inner life. And 
 in proportion to the exclusiveness of attachment to any particular 
 form, has been the intolerance shown to those who differ fi-om it. 
 Christianity is the ministration of the spirit. Its divine Founder 
 frowned ujion the formalism and consequent intolerance of his 
 day. Tlie New Testament, while giving no coimtenauce to the 
 neglect of the outward institutions of religion, places them in 
 complete subordination to piety itself ; and, "by the utter absence 
 of minute regulations as to external ceremonies, indicates not only 
 that they are of inferior importance compared with the weightier 
 matters of the law, but that professing Christians should sho\T 
 much indulgence towards one another in reference to them. The 
 several sections of the church have often acted as if the New Tes- 
 tament had its book of Leviticus, and their individual interpretation 
 could not possibly be otherwise than the right one ; and as if they 
 had been commanded to punish or stand aloof from those who 
 denied there was any such book in the New Testament, or who 
 ventured to adopt another interj)retation of its meaning. From 
 the beginning until now, some men, pent np within their own 
 sacred enclosure, and being unable to see any good beyond, have 
 been crying, " the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are 
 we." Their own Zion has filled up so largely the sphere of their 
 vision as to be looked upon as exclusively the church, and they 
 
EELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. 235 
 
 say, with an imj^lied dispai-agement of all other liills, " our fathers 
 worshipped in this mountain." The line of genealogy — the chain 
 of succession — has become so exclusively sacred in their estima- 
 tion as the channel of grace, as to have blinded their eyes to an 
 illustrious ancestral piety elsewhere, and to lead them to say with 
 ineffable complacency, " we have Abraham to our father." And 
 while intolerance has been manifesting itself in this way, under a 
 pretended zeal for the honour of Christianity itself, that veiy 
 Christianity, in the life of its great Author, and in the pages of 
 inspiration, has been rebuking the foul and wicked spirit, and 
 calling upon it to come out of the church. 
 
 Men who have no inclination to examine the evidences of 
 Christianity, and to contemplate its native grandeur disconnected 
 from the weakness and intolerance of its professed friends, confound 
 the one Avith the other. Or they are something like individuals 
 prevented from entering into a magnificent castle, and surveying 
 its beautiful grounds, by the surly looks of the porters that stand 
 at the gate. This intolerance, like an evil genius, has so often 
 accompanied Clnistianity in its descent down the stream of ages, 
 and in its progi*ess through the world, leading to the formation of 
 conventicle acts and acts of uniformity, unchurching, anathema- 
 tizing, imprisoning, and burning those who were of a different 
 way, that it would not be wonderful were thousands to rise up in 
 judgment, and say to the demon of intolerance, " You made us 
 infidels." Vast multitudes, in every age, will, in spite of all 
 remonstrance, estimate Christianity by the spirit and conduct of 
 its professed followers. And, while they see much in the past, 
 and not a little in the present, of that temper which, under the 
 plea of religion, would bring down fire from heaven and consume 
 the Samaritans ; or which manifests itself in a conceited piety, 
 saying, " Stand by yourself, come not near to me, for I am holier 
 than you;" their prejudices against Christianity will strengthen, 
 and they will be apt to confound the darkness and the light. No 
 one, at all acquainted with the writings of infidels, more especially 
 with those which have been popularized and diffused through the 
 masses, but must know that this species of religious intolerance is 
 handled and held up as if it were the natm-al fruit of religion 
 itself. And how often, in the walks of social iutercourse, do we 
 meet with intelligent and liberal-minded men, who cannot conceal 
 then disaffection to Christianity, on account of what may be called 
 the churcli intolerance of many of its professors. 
 
 Coleridge has said, " I will be tolerant of every thiug else, but 
 Dvery other man's intolerance." Religious intolerance is the most 
 odious and insufferable of all. The spirit of humanity, if it be not 
 enslaved, rises up against it ; and on many minds who have not 
 learned to distinguish between the gentleness of Christ and the 
 bitterness of some professing Christians, such is its influence as to 
 
236 RELIGIOUS intolerancp:, 
 
 involve in one feeling of disgust eveiy thing in the shape and 
 nanie of Christianity. "What an inconceivably paltry, troublesome, 
 intolerant thing, must Christianity be in the eyes of some men- 
 who form their notions of it from some portions of Church His, 
 tory, or from those who stickle for caste, vestments, and cere- 
 monies, as if the life of genuine religion was bound up in them. 
 x\nd so much fiery zeal has been manifested, by large bodies of 
 professing Christians in every age, for the mere wood, hay, and 
 stubble, that it is not to be wondered at, if those who were indis- 
 posed to appeal to the Bible, should have come to the conclusion 
 that there was nothing else in religion worth contending for. 
 The Church in every age has had its Hamans who could not bear 
 to see Mordecai sitting at tlie gate. There have been multitudes 
 of great and petty Lauds who would rather have had the plague in 
 their parishes than religious dissent, and who would sooner have 
 tolerated drunkenness and uncleanness than the unpardonable sin 
 of Puritanism and Nonconformity. The imprisonment of a John 
 Bunyan and thousands of men of less note, because they would 
 pray without a common prayer-book ; the outrage of refusing 
 Christian burial to men who had not been baptized within the 
 pale of a particular communion; the denial of the validity of any 
 ordination but this particular one or that particular one: the jea- 
 lousy sometimes shown toward lay preaching, not lest error should 
 be propagated, but lest the priest's office should be invaded ; and 
 the many ways in which the old j^roposition is openly expressed, 
 or half-concealed, " out of our church, no salvation ;" these, which 
 are but the intolerancies of erring, deluded, or proud men, have 
 done incalculable injuries to that benignant work which is of 
 God. " The prevalence of so intolerant a theory," says Isaac 
 Taylor, when spealdngof Tractarianism, " and the bold avowal of 
 it by those who are regarded as the best informed expounders of 
 Christianity, silently but extensively operates to drive cultured 
 and ingenuous minds into deism or atheism. What is this 
 Christianity, say such, which, while professing to be a religion, 
 not of bondage and forms, but of truth and love, nevertheless im- 
 pels its adherents to violate all charity on the precarious ground 
 of an elaborate hypothesis ! "* 
 
 The disciples may forbid a man to cast out demons in the 
 name of Jesus, because he follows not with them. But the 
 Lord, instead of sanctioning their conduct rebukes them. It 
 is enough for Him that the man is doing his work, and doing it in 
 liis name. " Such a church, or such a community," says Vinet, 
 " believes that to follow Jesus Christ, it is necessary to be with it 
 form a part of its organization, join the society of which it is com 
 posed, espouse its interests, and hang out its banner."!; The Loixi 
 
 * Spiritual Christianity, p. 99. + Vinet' s Vital Christianity, p. 223. 
 
BIStTNIOX OF THE CHUECII. 237 
 
 rebukes sucli a spirit. He looks over all the hedge-work of forms 
 and ceremonies witliin which his professed followers have too often 
 enclosed themselves, and says, "he that is not against us is for 
 us." Let not Christianity, then, be made responsible for what it 
 repudiates; but let it not be denied that an intolerance of different 
 external forms and rites, on the part of churches, has been preju- 
 dicial to the Gospel and strengthening to infidelity. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DISUNION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 Christ's Church really one — Scriptural illustrations of this — A truth often lost 
 sight of — Disjointed state of tlie Church a common refuge of infidelity — An 
 argument easily applied — Its influence on a man whose religious knowledge is 
 merely superficial, and who has but a very lingering attachment to ChriPtiauity 
 — The" sophism repelled by aman of an opposite character — The refuge, however, 
 remains — Deistical writers used it — A source of pei-plexity to the weak and 
 inqttiring, and an auxilini-y to the hostile — Remark of Robert Hall — Unity not 
 to he confounded with uniformity — Romish unity a huge fiction— Remark of 
 Whately — Scriptural tinity consistent with minor differences — Remark of Sir 
 James Stephen — Mr. Ruskin's " Notes" — Difi"ereuce between moral and mathe- 
 matical certainty — Voltaire — JNIacaulay's remarks on Gladstone — A^isible unani- 
 mity to be aimed at — Saviour's Prayer — Twofold influence of Christian unity 
 — The exhibition of unity would tell mightily as a proof of the divinity of 
 Christianity — Instanced in the early Church — The consequent unity of action 
 would tell powerfully on successful propagation of Christianity — Primitive 
 Church had unity of action so long as it had unity of exhibition — Noble things 
 done since by combined Christian effort — God, in the signs of the times, is 
 calling upon Christians to manifest their unity. 
 
 The Church of Christ, amid all outward diversities and conflicting 
 interests, is really one. AVhat Cyprian, one of the most illustrious 
 of the Fathers, said, with a too partial, if not an exclusive refer- 
 ence, to the existing church, is true of the great company of the 
 faithful, composed of men in all ages and lands, who hold the 
 Head, even Christ : — " The church is one, wliich, by reason of its 
 fecundity, is extended into a multitude, in the same manner as 
 the rays of the sun, however numerous, constitute but one light; 
 and the branches of a tree, however many, are attached to one 
 trunk, which is supported by its tenacious root; and when various 
 rivers flow from the same fountain, though number is difiiised by 
 the redundant supply of waters, unity is preserved in their origin." =:' 
 This essential characteristic of the Christian community is illus- 
 trated by several comparisons in Scripture. The church is repre- 
 sented as a building of which the Lord Jesus is the foundation, 
 and believers in every place and age are living stones united to 
 Him and to each other, and built up a spiritual house. It is 
 spoken of as one fold under the care of the one shepherd, as a 
 whole family or brotherhood named after the Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and, not to multiply illustrations, it is described as 
 
 * Hall's Terms of Communion. 
 
one body, all genuine believers holding the same Head, and everj 
 one members one of another. Yet the clmrch, in many of its 
 branches, has often lost sight of this dehghtful truth, and acted a 
 part directly contrary to its influence. The harmony has been 
 broken, brethren hare set brethren at nought, scliisms have been 
 made in the body, and member has been saying unto member, "I 
 have no need of thee." The faithful have been ranging themselves 
 under different leaders, some saying we are of Paul, others, we are 
 of Apollos, others, we are of Cephas ; while their common Lord 
 and Savioiu' has been saying unto them, " One is yoiu' Master, 
 even Christ, and all ye are brethren." 
 
 The disjointed and disorderly state of the church has been no- 
 toriously one of the most common refuges of infidelity. At the 
 beginning, the lovely manifestation of its inward unity often drew 
 tlie unwilhng homage from the world, " Behold how" these Chris- 
 tians love one another!" And we may easily conceive how in- 
 fluential must have been the exhibition of Christian unity in 
 disarming the prejudices and overcoming the hostility of those 
 without. To see vast multitudes of individuals, men of every 
 kindred and tongue, and nation and people, separated from each 
 other by country and language, by a diversity of station and in- 
 terests, all glorying in the same cross, bound by the bands of love 
 into one Christian brotherhood, and harmoniously engaged in 
 doing the greatest good to the world, must, in many cases, have 
 been instrumental in producing the conviction that Christianity is 
 of God. " It was this, indeed," remarks Neander, "which, in a 
 cold and selfish age, struck the pagans with wonder." But the 
 picture has been reversed. Modern Christendom has too often 
 presented the unseemly spectacle of the several companies of the 
 Prince of Peace contending against each other, instead of uniting 
 their strength and advancing against the common foe. The un- 
 believing world has meanwhile looked on, and said with a more 
 deeply rooted prejudice, " See how these Christians are divided, 
 how they hate and oppose each other. This is your boasted 
 Clu-istianity, and these are the followers of Him whom they call 
 meek and lowly of heart ! " 
 
 Tlie argument against the Gospel, derived from the divisions 
 and discords of the Christian community, is a very popular one. 
 It lies upon the surface of things, requiring no great grasp of com- 
 prehension either on the part of him who takes it up and applies 
 it, or on the part of him who receives it There are multitudes, 
 whose natural aversion ^o Christianity would fail to manifest itself 
 openly under the pressure of abstract reasoning, who will be 
 drawn out to an avowed unbelief, by the use of popular sophisms, 
 and an appeal to those palpable facts which are unhappily fur- 
 nished by the divided state of the Clmstian world. Disunion 
 among the adherents of any system is a weapon put into the hands 
 
DISUNION OF THE CHURCH. 230 
 
 of opiioneuts, which they readily point against the system itself. 
 And the weapon flies the swifter toward the mark, according as 
 the pretensions of the system and the conduct of its professors are 
 at variance. With what a degree of self-elation, then, must many 
 an infidel, who had neither the honesty nor the inclination to 
 examine Christianity, have looked upon the sectarianism and con- 
 tention of the chm-ch. And how impregnable must he have felt 
 his position, when encountering a man somewhat like-minded with 
 himself, only retaining the shadow of a hereditary reverence for 
 Christianity, but as little disposed to imitate tlie noble Bereans in 
 searching the Scriptures to see whether or not these things are so. 
 He would have at hand a number of texts in which the character 
 and pretensions of the Gospel are expressed or implied, and, with 
 «t view of falsifying these, he would appeal to the temper and con- 
 duct of the adherents of the Gospel, place the one in conflict with 
 the other ; and, as if it were indisputable that tlie temper was the 
 genuine influence of Christianity, endeavour to fix upon the sys- 
 tem the brand of imposture. He would need only to lay hold of 
 the song, so descriptive of the Gospel, which was sung by the 
 angels over the plains of Bethlehem, and then making his appeal to 
 the history of the church, and to the actual state of some portions 
 of the Christian world, complacently ask, *' Where is glory to 
 God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men?" 
 The appeal would not be without its influence on the mind of a 
 man who had no experimental knowledge of the peaceful tendency 
 of the Gospel, whose acquaintance with the state of the Christian 
 world was of the most superficial character, and whose lingering 
 attachment to Christianity was like the last sere leaf on a tree 
 ready to be carried off by the next wind that blew. 
 
 An individual whose acquaintance with Christian truth was 
 enlightened, deep, and experimental, and whose knowledge of the 
 Christian community extended to other facts than external divi- 
 sions and imperfections, could withstand the appeal and repel the 
 sophism. He could say to the infidel pleader, These are not all 
 the facts of the case. Your ai-gument is a one-sided one. You 
 have gone to the bleak and wintry side of the hill, and have come 
 away with the notion that all around is gloomy and sterile, wliereas 
 the other slope is clothed to the top with verdm-e, and on it the sun 
 is brightly shining. You have raked up the divisions and conten- 
 tions of the church, but you have not told us of the times of her 
 unity and valiant contendings for the truth. And not only so, but 
 you have confounded the corruptions of Christianity with Chris- 
 tianity itself, the accidental with the essential, the work of man 
 with the work of God. The divisions, of which you make so 
 much, are to be deplored, but they are not unforeseen obstacles 
 thwai-ting the march of Christianity ; on the contrary, the Christian 
 \ecord foretold them, Christianity itself overcomes them, and 
 
210 DISUNION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 eventually makes them swell the train of her trunnph. The 
 church, amid all outward diversities, is verily one ; and when the 
 storms have been hushed, and the dark clouds have passed away, 
 the world will see the true vine, and, clustering on eitlier side of it 
 — united by a common bond, pervaded by a common principle of 
 life, and bearing the same manner of fruits — a goodly array of 
 living branches. 
 
 But this mode of stating the case, however just and true, and 
 whatever might be its weight on the mind of an anxious inquirer, 
 would not prevail with the man whose tendencies were in an op- 
 posite direction. There is the palpable ftct of a disjointed and 
 divided church standing before liim, there are schisms in the king- 
 dom that is declared to be one, there is the sound of discordant 
 voices and conflicting interests among the followers of the Prince 
 of Peace. And so long as these excrescences of the religious life 
 are manifested, and men are to be found who will persist in form- 
 ing their notions of Clmstianity, not from the New Testament, 
 but from the imperfections and inconsistencies of its followers, so 
 long will inditference and infidelity have a refuge in the secta- 
 rianism and contentions of the Christian world. We may get 
 behind the refuge and endeavour to push the man from it, we may 
 tell him that he has mistaken a mud shed for a strong tower, we 
 may cry out against his unfairness and little-mindedness in con- 
 founding what is accidental with what is essential, and in suffering 
 himself to be prejudiced against a revelation from heaven because 
 of the coutendings of its professed friends. We may carry the 
 point farther, and charge his hostility, as the Saviour himself has 
 done, on a deep-rooted aversion of mind and heart to the high and 
 holy principles, the strict and uncompromising requirements of the 
 Gospel itself. But, after having done all this, the refuge, such as 
 it is, remains ; and the man still resorts to it in the way of justifying 
 and confirming his aversion to the Gospel truth. We might be 
 almost sure too, that, in the case of many, were this refuge taken 
 away, others would be resorted to, and their prejudices against 
 Christianity be not a wliit lessened. But this does not affect the 
 fact, that the visible disunion of the Christian church has been a 
 stumbling-block to the world, and had strengthened the hands of 
 the infidel. 
 
 The deistical wi'iters, from Lord Herbert downwards, liave 
 availed themselves, with much disingenuousness indeed, of this 
 weapon against the Christian cause; and have fallaciously, yet 
 witli some plausibility, argued, that a system which admitted of 
 such conflicting opinions among its adherents, could possess 
 nothing like certainty ; and that a church professedly one and yet 
 split into a number of isolated or opposing sects, must be a con- 
 tradiction. Herbert, Bolingbroke, and other writers of a lower 
 grade in the same school, may have become unbelievers, inde- 
 
DISUNION OF THE CHURCH. 241 
 
 pendent altogether of tlie subordinate cause wliich we are nov; 
 considering, and might have retained their unbelief had that cause 
 been removed out of the way ; but it was among the auxiliaries that 
 strengthened their prejudices against Christianity, furnished them 
 with weapons of attack, and gave then- infidel sentiments a readier 
 access into the minds of other men. The world has, in these con- 
 flicting sects and divisions, a hold which it had not in the primi- 
 tive age of Christianity ; and, without assigning to the unity of the 
 chinch that efficiency as a cause which some (with a view of pre- 
 cluding a higher agency) have dojie, * we cannot doubt that its 
 visible unity, short though its continuance was, had a strong sub- 
 ordinate influence in recommending the Christian cause, any more 
 than we can doubt that the return of peace and unity will be 
 powerfully instrumental in the conversions of the latter day 
 '" Nothing," says Lord Bacon, " doth so much keep men out of the 
 church, and drive men out of the church, as breach of unity." And, 
 as Isaac Taylor remarks, " if we could only bring to view the secret 
 causes of that infidelity wliich, it is to be feared, prevails among 
 the educated classes, this now named — the scandal arising from 
 religious dissensions would probably appear to be one of the most 
 frequent and determmative."f 
 
 The most povferful arguments in favour of Christianity have 
 been repelled and thrown upon its advocates by the infidel sarcasm, 
 '' AgTee among yourselves first; and then, manifesting yourselves, 
 what you profess to be, the disciples of one Master, come and ask 
 lis to join you." And it has been felt, when advocating the Chris- 
 tian cause before those who are indifferent or opposed to it, that 
 liowever shallow the sophisms by which they endeavom to defend 
 their hostility, and however much that hostility is to be traced to 
 an ulterior and more powerful cause, a stumbling-block, an occa- 
 sion of offence, would be destroyed, were the breaches in Zion 
 healed; and the church would then look forth " as the morning," 
 on a world destined to be her inheritance, " fan- as the moon, clear 
 as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners." The divisions 
 and conflicting opinions of the Christian world have been a source 
 of painful perplexity to the weak and inquiring on the one hand, 
 andhave operated as a flattering unction to the indifferent, and an 
 auxiliary force to the decidedly hostile on the other. Some of the 
 former, with great want of manliness, have sought refuge from the 
 embarrassment in tlie infallibility and uniformity of Home ; thus 
 renouncing the right of private judgment, after having exercised it 
 in choosing their new mother, and rolling their responsibility ever, 
 afterwards upon the back of a self-styled infallibihty ; wliile the- 
 latter, seeing division to be the weakness of the chm'ch, have, with 
 much unfairness, ascribed it to the weakness of Christianity itself. 
 
 * Gibbon. + Spiritual Christianity, p. 149. 
 
24S DISUNION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 Eobeit Hall, in allusion to the controversies and factions which 
 distracted the church subsequent to the Reformation, arising out 
 of the abuse of the right of private judgment then nobly vindicated, 
 says, "in this disjointed and disordered state of the Christian 
 church, they who never looked into the interior of Christianity 
 were apt to suspect, that to a subject so fruitful in particular dis- 
 putes must attach a general uncertainty ; and that a religion 
 founded on revelation could never have occasioned such discord- 
 ancy of principle and practice among its disciples. Thus infidelity 
 is tlie joint offspring of an irreligious temper and unholy specu- 
 lation, employed, not in examining the evidences of Christianity, 
 but in detecting the vices and imperfections of professing 
 Christians."=:< 
 
 Unity is not to be confounded with uniformity. The distinction 
 between the two, however, has often been lost sight of both by the 
 enemies and friends of Christianity. The church has had many 
 an extensive scheme of uniformity, while within it there has been 
 anything but unity. Popery glories in her undivided empire, but 
 it is only the oneness of an external ceremonial, which shelters 
 men of no opinions about religion and men of almost every diversity 
 of opinion. It is the unity of millions yielding an external 
 homage to one man, and scrupulously observing the same outward 
 ceremonies, while between multitudes of them there are few or no 
 other points of contact. It is a huge fiction to maintain that 
 Rome is, in the proper sense of the expression, an united cliurch, 
 while within the uniform pale are aU. kinds of doctrines from 
 supralapsarianism to atheism. " It is not true,"' remarks Arch- 
 bishop Whately, " that the church of Rome is, even in their own 
 sense of the word, exempt from divisions and dissensions. The 
 great means of unity, according to most of them, is the authority 
 of the pope ; yet they are not agreed among themselves about the 
 extent of the pope's authority ; some thinking the pope infallible, 
 others denying that he is; some making him superior to a general 
 council, others inferior, etc. Nay, learned men have reckoned up 
 at least tvv'enty-four fierce schisms and dissensions (some of them 
 very blood}') about, uho was pope; when several rivals each 
 claimed to be the true pope, and condemned all others as impostors. 
 Again, they are divided among themselves about many of the same 
 things as Protestants are divided about; as fi-ee will, predestina- 
 tion, etc. ; besides many disputes which have no place among us."]- 
 
 Protestantism, too, in aj^ing the imposing system of Rome, has 
 had its schemes of uniformity, but these schemes have failed of 
 exhibiting Christian unity. The unity for which the Saviour 
 prayed was a oneness of heart and soul among his people — mani- 
 fested in loving each other, in seeking the salvation of men, and 
 
 * Modem Infidelity, + Cautions for the Times, p. 28. 
 
DISUNION Of THE CHURCH. 243 
 
 in promoting the extension of liis kingdom. This unity is per- 
 fectly consistent with minor differences. It is not necessary to its 
 exhibition, and in order to secm'e its good results, that all he 
 bound up in one and tlie same system of ecclesiastical organiza- 
 tion.-:< This we regard as altogether Utopian. On such points, for 
 example, as church government, and the subjects of baptism, Scrip- 
 ture is not so full and explicit, as to preclude diversity of sentiment 
 among sincerely good men. And the grand reason, we doubt not, 
 is, that the disciples of Christ may be taught to forbear one 
 another in love. Uniformity is never enjoined in Scripture, but 
 unity, times and ways without number, is. It is according as 
 Christians have already attained, that they are to walk by the 
 same rule and to mind the same thing. Besides, who does not 
 see that the unanimity of the church would be more strikingly 
 manifested, and present a more persuasive spectacle to the world, 
 did it exist along with minor diversities, than under a smoothly- 
 shaven system of uniformity ? In the latter case, there might be 
 a danger of ecclesiastical despotism, which would excite the 
 jealousy of the world; in the former case, there would be the 
 working of a powerful common principle, making it manifest that 
 the religion which produced such benignant harmony amid such 
 diversity, must be not of man but of God. " There is," says Sir 
 James Stephen, " an essential unity in that ' Kingdom which is not 
 of tliis world.' But within the provinces of that mighty state there 
 is room for endless varieties of administration, and for local laws 
 and customs widely differing from each other. The unity consists 
 in the one object of worship — the one object of affiance — the ono 
 source of virtue — the one cementing principle of mutual love, 
 which pervade and animate the whole. The diversities are, and 
 must be, as numerous and intractable as are the essential dis- 
 tinctions which nature, habit, and circumstances have created 
 among men. Uniformity of creeds, of discipline, of ritual, and of 
 
 * Mr. Ruskin, in concluding his " Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds," 
 thus speaks : " But how to unite the two great sects of paralyzed Protestants ? 
 By keeping simply to Scripture. The members of the Scottish church have not 
 a shadow of excuse for refusing episcopacy ; it has indeed been abused among 
 them ; grievously abused ; but it is in the Bible ; and that is all they have a right 
 to ask. They have also no shadow of excuse for refusing to employ a written form 
 of prayer. It may not be to their taste — it may not he the way in which they 
 like to pi-ay ; but it is no question, at present, of likes or dislikes, but of duties." 
 (p. 49.) Suppose another author in his " Notes on the Construction of Slieep- 
 folds" were to say: " The members of the episcopal church have not a shadow of 
 excuse for refusing presbyterianism ; it has indeed been abused among them ; 
 but it is in the Bible ; and that is all they have a right to ask ; " would not the one 
 statement, even in the estimation of many episcopalians — not to speak of thou- 
 sands of Christian men who ai-e neither episcopalians nor presbyterians — be as 
 good as the other? In truth, no section of the Christian church, in making pro- 
 posals for union, is entitled to speak in this strain to any other section. It is an 
 aping of Romish airs, it is a setting at defiance Christian men's conscientious 
 convictions, and it throws a stumbling-block not only in the way of incorporation 
 but of co-operation." Christ has ordered us to be at peace one with another." 
 But these are not the terms. 
 
 r2 
 
O^J; DISUNION OF THE CHUBCH. 
 
 ceremonies, in such a world as ours ! — a world where no two men 
 are not as distiuguishahle in their mental as in their physical 
 aspect; where every petty community has its separate system of 
 civil government ; where all that meets the eye, and all that aiTests 
 the ear, has a stamp of houndless and infinite variety ! " * 
 
 If many of the professed friends of Christianity have erred in 
 then- zeal for unilbrmity of religious opinions and ceremonies, its 
 avowed enemies have unfairly argued as if the ahsence of uni- 
 formity indicated the want of certitude. In "Voltaire's Dictionary," 
 Under the article " Sect," it is said, " there is no sect in geometry 
 mathematics, or experimental philosophy. When truth is evident, 
 it is impossible to divide people into parties and factions. Nobody 
 disputes that it is broad day at noon." In this way it is attempted 
 to preclude all inquiry into the evidences of Christianity, and to 
 lead men to conclude that religion has no fixed data, because there 
 have been so many conflicting opinions and divisions within its 
 province. It is surely a miserably ungenerous charge against the 
 Christian religion, that it has not the evidence of the mathematical 
 sciences — an evidence that arises out of their very nature, but 
 which is altogether foreign to a system of moral truth. The argu- 
 ment auiounts to this, that because the gospel cannot be shown to 
 be as demonstrably true as that tlie three angles of a triangle are 
 equal to tvfo right angles, therefore it cannot be proved to be true 
 at all. In other words, no evidence is to be relied on but that 
 which belongs to what are caUed the accurate sciences. By such 
 a course of reasoning as this, pohtical economy, for example, might 
 be denounced as a baseless science, because the greatest poUticians 
 have embraced the most conflictiug theories in legislation; and 
 all philosophical investigations, that are not of a strictly mathema 
 tical chai-acter, might be interdicted as useless, because they liave 
 given rise to much opposing speculations. Moral subjects can 
 admit of no evidence that is incompatible with human responsi- 
 bility. So that to object that Christianity has no certainty be- 
 cause it has not mathematical certainty, is the same thing as 
 saving that it cannot be true because it wants the evidence which 
 would deprive men of the liberty of rejecting it. Besides, there 
 are no inducements for a sane man to deny that two and two 
 make four, or that it is broad day at neon ; but there are strong 
 mental tendencies which lead multitudes to darken the lustre of 
 Christianity, and to deny that it is true. A.s a system of pure 
 ]iioral truth, it thwarts d£.praved human propensities; and that 
 accounts for its being ccJrrupted or rejected by men, though its 
 evidences stand before them as clear and majestic as the sun. 
 
 But it is too much to grant that there are no sects in experi- 
 mental philosophy. Astronomy and geology belong to the m 
 
 * E3say3 in Ecclesiastical Biography, vol. i. p. 518. 
 
DISUNION OF THE CHURCH. 2 io 
 
 ductive sciences, and very opposite theories in both have been 
 held by the most eminent philosophers. But who would conclude, 
 on the ground of these conflicting theories, that there is not a true 
 system of astronomy or geology ? And where is the fairness of 
 denouncing Christianity as the most uncertain of all things, be- 
 cause its adherents, on some points, have held very different opi- 
 nions ? The objection, we are noticing, is not unlike that which 
 is urged against the Gospel on account of the mysterious nature of 
 its truths. The sciences which admit of demonstration, pursued 
 to a certain length, land the mind in a region of mysteries, as well 
 as do the truths of revelation. So that, if the attribute of mys- 
 teriousness is sufficient to falsify a system, it would falsify the 
 higher branches of mathematical science. And if the circumstance 
 of a diversity of opinion having scope v^^ithin a system, be an argu- 
 ment against the system itself, it must sweep away from the region 
 of the true many other commonly received systems of truth besides 
 the religion of Christ. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, in his zeal for high church principles, has 
 asserted that the state of the exact sciences proves, that, as respects 
 religion, " the association of these two ideas, activity of inquiry, 
 and variety of conclusion, is a fallacious one." His brilliant re~ 
 vievs'-er, Mr. Macaulay, says, in reply, " Our way of ascertainiiiag: 
 the tendency of free inquiry is simply to open our eyes and. look 
 at . the world in which we live ; and there we see that free inquiry 
 on mathematical subjects produces unity, and that free inquiry on 
 moral subjects produces discrepancy. . . . Discrepancy tliere will 
 be among the most diligent and candid, as long as the constitutio>ri 
 of the human mind, and the nature of moral evidence, contimts 
 unchanged. That we have not freedom and unity together is a 
 very sad thing; and so it is that we have not wings. But we ars 
 just as likely to see the one defect removed as the other. It is not 
 only in religion that tliis discrepancy is found. It is the same 
 with al] matters which depend on moral evidence, with judicial 
 questions, for example, and with political questions. All thd 
 judges will work a sum in the rule of three on the same principle, 
 and bring out the same conclusion. But it does not follow that, 
 however honest and laborious they may be, they will all be of one 
 mind on the Douglas case."* 
 
 But if it is vain to think of securing union in the church bf 
 a visible uniformity, or by amalgamating all denominations into 
 one, it is not vain to seek after visible unanimity among the several 
 sections of the church holding those fundamental doctrines whicli 
 we mentioned, in the beginning of this essay, as emphatically 
 constituting the truth of God. We may, and will, continue to 
 have diversities of forms, but let these be seen to be animated by 
 
 * Beview of Gladstone on Church and State, (Edinburgh Review, April, 1839.) 
 
246 DISUNION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 an all-pervading unity of spirit. It is obyiously implied in the 
 Saviour's intercessory prayer, that the world must be confirmed 
 in its infidelity by the visible disunion of the Christian community ; 
 and that the world's conversion depends, in a great measure, on 
 the palpable unanimity of his professed followers. He prayed 
 for their union, in order that the world might believe that tne 
 Father had sent Him. This consummation, so devoutly to be 
 wished, would have a favourable bearing on mankind, in two ways 
 at least, just as the divided sta,te of the church has an unfavourabl© 
 influence in two opposite ways. 
 
 In the first place, the exhibition of unity would tell mightily as 
 a demonstration of the divinity of Clmstiauity. " Our thoughts," 
 remarks tlie author of the Essay on the Port-Royalists, " are 
 steeped in imagery; and where the palpable form is not, the im- 
 palpable spirit escapes the notice of the unreflecting multitude. 
 In com.mon hands, ^analysis stops at the species or the genus, and 
 cannot rise to the order or the class. To distinguish birds from 
 fislies, beasts from insects, limits the efforts of the vulgar observer 
 of the face of animated nature. But Cuvier could trace the sub- 
 lime unity, the universal type, the fontal Idea, existing in the 
 creative intelligence, which connects as one the mammoth and the 
 snail. So, common observers can distinguish from each other the 
 different varieties of religious society, and can rise no higher. 
 Where one assembly worships with harmonies of music, fumes of 
 incense, ancient liturgies, and a gorgeous ceremonial, and another 
 listens to the unaided voice of a single pastor, they can perceive 
 and record the differences ; but the hidden ties whicli unite them 
 both escape such observation. All appears as contrast, and all 
 ministers to antipathy and discord. "'-;= The sublime unity of the 
 church of Christ, the hidden ties which link one member with 
 another, and all with tlie Head, escape the notice of the world. 
 They are spiritually discerned. Hence the necessity of a visible 
 outward expression of the real hidden unity. Tlie prayer of the 
 God-man Mediator demands palpable unanimity. Mere unanimity 
 among the adherents of any sj^stem does not of itself prove the 
 truth of that system. INIen have often combined for the propaga- 
 tion of error. But the unity may be of such a kind, displaying 
 such purit}"-, disinterestedness, and benevolence, as to carry along 
 with it a convincing evidence that it is of God. It may be seen 
 to be such an effect as no known motive power among men could 
 produce, and which must be ascribed to a Divine interposition. 
 
 Such was the visible union manifested by the primitive Chris- 
 tians which was attended with such remarkable triumphs. It was 
 such a union of heart and hand for bringing the greatest glory to 
 God, and effecting the greatest good among men, as the world 
 
 * Sii- James Stephen's Essays iu Eccles. Biog. vol. i. pp. 510, 520. 
 
DISUNIOM OF THE CHURCH. 217 
 
 never saw. It was a lovely persuasive spectacle, as free from 
 selfish elements on the one hand as from fanaticism on the other. 
 The world beheld men of every diversity of character, separated 
 naturally from each other hy different habits and stations, and by 
 the most conflicting interests, coming under tlie transformino- 
 influence of the Christian faith, losing thereby their mutual repul- 
 sions and enmities, moving in the same element of love, bound 
 sweetly and strongly to a common crucified Lord and to eacli other, 
 and looking on that world with something of the benevolent yearnings 
 of Him who came to seek and to save that which was lost. It was 
 not a union of men who had agreed to merge their differing tastes 
 and sentiments in a common impulse, and to combine for the pur- 
 pose of furthering a cause which would get them a name on the 
 earth, or secure some worldly interests. In such a case, tlie 
 heterogeneous elements might have been driven asunder, mutual 
 jealousies and rivalries would have arisen, and the bonds of union 
 would have been broken amid the tumult of passions and conflict- 
 ing gains. Such were the disastrous results of the introduction of 
 worldly elements afterwards into the church. But it was a union 
 of materials, which, though originally discordant, underwent a 
 radical change ; and, while each reflected the image of their com- 
 mon Lord, all were bound in love to one another, and in the most 
 disinterested eflbrt to regenerate and bless the world. Midtitudes 
 beheld the astonishing spectacle. It was a new and lovely creation, 
 which coifld not be accounted for on natural principles. The 
 purity, love, and benevolence of the Gospel, were impressively 
 exhibited in the community of its professed followers ; and, in that 
 exhibition, the world saw and felt an evidence that Christianity is 
 divine, and that the Father had sent the Son. 
 
 So will it be again. The evidence derived from the palpable 
 unanimity of the Christian church is emerging forth anew. To 
 this result the leagued assaults of infidelity and superstition are 
 contributing. The Eedeemer with his fan in his hand is purging 
 his floor, making more manifest the broad distinction between his 
 friends and his foes. And when the faithful of every name have 
 ceased to make matters, confessedly subordinate, rallying points 
 for a party ; and are made willing to acknowledge, and co-operate 
 with, airthose v.ho hold by the Head; M'hen those jealousies 
 and discords are banished from the kingdom of God, wliich 
 however natural in the empires of earth, are uncongenial to the 
 kingdom of heaven ; and when tlie church looks forth again as one 
 united force on the world, at war with notliing but all the powers 
 of evil, and manifestly the greatest instrument of good ; all, but 
 the wilfully blinded and irrecoverably depraved, will be constrained 
 to acknowledge the hand of the Invisible, and to receive Christianity 
 as of God. '^ Fain would I," says Calvin, " that all the churches 
 of Christ were so united, that the angels miglit look down from 
 
2-iS DISUNION OF THE CHURCH, 
 
 Leaven and add to our glory with their harmony." He might ha^'o 
 added, as no douLt he felt, that the unreasonahleness of unbelief 
 miglit be driven from one of its refuges of lies. 
 
 We are led to remark secondly, that the uuity of action, conse- 
 quent on the unity of exhibition, would tell powerfully on the 
 successful propagation of Christianity. Sectarianism has been the 
 bane of the church. Multiplied divisions have weakened her 
 energies. A vast amount of zeal and power, which should have 
 been brought to bear on the conversion of the world, has been 
 expended in assailing and defending the several points on which 
 the Christian community has been split into fragments. Christen- 
 dom has often resembled a battle-field, in which the several 
 detachments of the same army, instead of combining in one 
 aggressive movement against the common foe, have raised the 
 shout of war against each other. The enemy, meanwhile, has 
 exulted at the sight, and not only been fortified in the belief that 
 Christianity is a profession under which men drive low and selfish 
 designs, but has strengthened his position in defying the armies of 
 the living God. The storms of controversy may have been over- 
 ruled for purifying the atmosphere of the church, and preserving 
 in vigour the faith once delivered to the saints ; but although good 
 has come out of the evil, the evil has been manifested in the 
 consumption of so much intellectual energy and effort on internal 
 disputes, which might have been bestowed on the infinitely nobler 
 object of converting the world to God. 
 
 There have been great questions of principle involved in many 
 of the divisions of the church ; and better is it to have divisions, 
 than that important principles should be sacrificed ; but the rent 
 has not unfrequently been made on the most unjustifiable pretexts ; 
 and even when the denominational distinctions have been called 
 for, the zeal in aiding the common object of evangelizing the 
 world, has been wofully disproportionate to that bestowed on 
 lengthening the cords and strengthening the stakes of party 
 interests. The primitive chm-ch, so long as it had the uuity of 
 exhibition, had the unity of action also. It not only presented 
 one undivided front to the w^rld, but it brought the full tide of its 
 heavenly energy tc^ bear on the point of the world's conversion. 
 In the palpable unanimity of the Christian community was not 
 only exhibited a lovely persuasive spectacle; but, out of that 
 unanimity, arose a might of benevolence which, like a noble river, 
 enriched by a thousand streamlets, fertilized and gladdened eveiy 
 region through which it flowed. The force which was afterwards 
 spent on internal strifes and party interests, was exerted in execut- 
 ing tlie Lord's commission to go into all the world, and preach the 
 Grospel to every creature ; and it ran speedily, and vast multitudes 
 everywhere became obedient to the faith. The Church stood out 
 from the world, one in its interests and aims, and the world felt the 
 
DISUNION OF THE CHURCH. 249 
 
 power of its instrumentality, and acknowledged tliat it was of God. 
 If ever there was a period when Christianity seemed on the eve of 
 making the world all her own, it was within the century after the 
 effusion of Pentecost, when, under an united impulse, and endued 
 Avith power from on high, she travelled onward in the greatness of 
 her strength. The victories of Imperial Rome were eclipsed by 
 the bloodless conquests of the " kingdom not of this world." The 
 standard of the cross was planted beyond the bounds where stood 
 the standard of Caesar. And the angel, having the everlasting 
 Gospel, flew farther than the Roman eagles. An united Churcli, 
 in the face of the most powerful obstacles, spread itself, ■\^^thin a 
 century after the ascension of Clu-ist, more rapidly and extensively 
 than it has done in any single century since. And, as already 
 hinted, without assigning this as exclusively the cause of the rapid 
 progi-ess of the Gospel ; or, with Gibbon, accounting it one of a 
 number of natural causes that produced the unparalleled effect — 
 (for the question occurs whence that union?) — we cannot, with the 
 Saviour's intercessory prayer before us, hesitate to acknowledge it 
 as a powerfully subordinate som-ce of the Church's strength. 
 Ichabod might almost have been written upon her — for lier gloiy 
 had nearly departed — when men of worldly policy tampered with 
 her purity, and strifes and divisions brake her in pieces. 
 
 But there have been noble things done since, by the combined 
 efforts of large portions of the Christian community, which indicate 
 what a mighty influence for good a thoroughly united church 
 would exert on the mass of mankind. The Reformation from 
 Popery, the most glorious event since the introduction of Christi- 
 anity, was, to a considerable degree, the united work of the 
 children of God that were scattered abroad. The London Mission- 
 ary Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Tract 
 Society, and some other kindred institutions, have, by the catho- 
 licity of their constitution, opened up common channels, into 
 which the several sections of the church might bring their enlight- 
 ened efforts, and thereby diffuse the river of the water of life over 
 our own and other lands. But these have been but earnests, and 
 indications of what that unity, which the Saviour prayed for, 
 would effect. It is no Utopian dream — a thing to be desired rather 
 than expected — to believe that the time will come when the church 
 will possess that unity of exhibition and of action of which wc 
 have been speaking, that then infidelity will be driven from one of 
 its refuges, and the world, now unbelieving without a cause, will 
 liave a clear palpable proof that the Father has sent the Son, and 
 that Christianity is divine. The old sarcasm of the unbeliever, 
 derived from the disjointed and disorderly state of the church, will 
 be silenced; the repulsive aspect, which divisions have given to 
 Christianity, will be effaced, and her native loveliness be restored ; 
 a mighty stumbling-block, in the w^ay of the diffusion of the Gospel, 
 
250 DISUNION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 will be removed ; and Chrii?tians, being united to each other in 
 heart and hand, will come, with a moral might such as tlie world 
 has not experienced for ages, to the help of the Lord, to the help 
 of ti^ Lord against the mighty. The brief but bright description 
 of the churches given by James Montgomery, will then be realized : 
 — "distinct as tlio billows, but one as the sea." Meanwhile God, 
 in the signs of the times, is calling upon all the friends of the pure 
 "Gospel truth to make it manifest that they are one. The religion 
 of Christ, in our land, is powerfully beset by a bold reviving 
 Romanism on the one hand, and by a subtle, busy, well-organized 
 infidelity on the other. Both would, in a great measure, be dis- 
 armed and driven back, were tlie ranks of evangelical Protestantism 
 to re-unite and move forward under the impulse of an all-pervading 
 spirit of unity. Let the churches hear the words of the Genevese 
 Eeformer, whose love of union was as the love of life : — " Keep your/ 
 smaller differences, let us have no discord on that account ; but 
 let us march in one solid column, under the banners of the Captain 
 of our salvation, and with undivided counsels form the legions of 
 the cross upon the territories of darkness and of death." 
 
PAET THE THIRD. 
 
 THI? PRESS. THE CLUBS. — THE SCHOOLS. THE PULl'IT. 
 
 TKtJTH and error, good and evil, are propagated in the world bj 
 the same instrumentalities; "and no marvel, for Satan himself ivS 
 tmnsft)rmed into an angel of light." The most powerful means in 
 ^accomplishing the greatest good are made the most effectual 
 ministers of the greatest evil. Infidelity fights truth with her own 
 wea23ons. Aaron casts down his rod before Pharaoh, and it becomes 
 a serpent, and the magicians of Egypt do likewise with their 
 enchantments. The die that gives the impress to the genuine 
 coin, is employed to stamp the counterfeit.^ The poison and the 
 healing waters flow through like channels. And it is not more 
 common for good men and bad men to walk on the same roads, 
 ride in the same carriages, and sail in the same ships, than it is for 
 God's truth and the Devil's lie to pass through the same medium. 
 We do not reckon the air less precious as the gift of heaven, 
 because men send through it curses as well as blessings. And the 
 agencies for disseminating truth are not a whit less valuable be- 
 cause some men use them for propagating falsehood. The good 
 and the evil come so closely together in this world, and are found 
 in such perpetual antagonism, tliat wherever you see an effective 
 instrumentality in the hands of the former, you may expect to 
 meet with a like one in the hands of the latter. Infidelity thus 
 follows after faith in order to destroy it. The magicians are 
 suffered to do with their enchantments in like manner as Aaron 
 the servant of God. But Aaron's rod at last swallows up their 
 rods. And so will ultimately be destroyed all the works of the 
 devil. Infidelity, meanwhile, is up and doing ; and, as if conscious 
 that the hour of decision had come, is vigorously plying for eviL 
 all the instnmientalities of good. " It may be," as Professor 
 Gai'bett remarks, " that at all the periods of the world, the rude 
 material of unbelief is a constant quantity. The only difference 
 may consist in the presence or absence of outward checks, and 
 such repressive influences as, in ancient times, were exercised by 
 
2d2 the press. 
 
 those civil and ecclesiastical polities which can never be reiiti- 
 posed upon the masses' of mankind. The spread of liberty alike 
 of action and thought, the enormous expansion of the sphere in 
 wliich intellect ranges, and, above all, the approximation, tlu'ough 
 the press, of man to man, and the contact of intellect with intellect, 
 have, on this hypothesis, only quickened and revealed what was 
 always latent." =;= But so it is. The power of the Press, of the 
 Clubs, of the Schools, and of the Pulpit, is -wielded most effectually 
 on tlie side of the various forms of infidelity. 
 
 ^ CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PRESS. 
 
 Great power of this agency— Its benignant doings in the world— Powerfully em- 
 ployed on the side of infidelity — Great breadth of the reading niiud — Unprece- 
 dented cheapness and abundance of literature — Influx from Germany — Shoal 
 of French novels — Carlyle and hig imitators — Influence of Combe's Constitution 
 of jMau — Tractarian books for the village poor— Periodical literature the strong- 
 est combined agency — French Newspaper Press — The feuilleton — Continental 
 Press in general — Our own periodical literature — Newspapers — Classification 
 of the enormous issue of anti-Christian cheap publications: 1st. The avoicedly 
 infidel — Organ of atheistic secularism — 2ud. The polluting — Disclosures of 
 Mr. Mayhew — 3rd. The latitudinarian — The " Family Herald" — 4th. Tlie mor- 
 ralhj neutral — The Church becoming awake to the evil — Improvement in some 
 old influential organs — Edinburgh Review — Good service doing by younger 
 ones — A lack of clieap entertaining Christianized literature — Defect of Cham- 
 bers'—Resources of the Church. 
 
 The mightiest agency of modern times, in disseminating either 
 good or evil, is unquestionably the Press. It has long been the 
 rival of the pulpit, and is now, if we mistake not, in the wide 
 range of its influence, far ahead of it. Millions who listen, week 
 after week, to the living voice of the preacher, are daily fed by the 
 press ; and millions more are only accessible by its instrumentality, 
 and to them it is the great teacher. The time was when it was 
 otherwise. Before the discovery of printing, society was almost 
 entirely dependent on oral instruction. Books existing in the 
 sliape of manuscripts, were few and costly, aud beyond the reach 
 of all but the wealthy. Men learned nearly every thing that they 
 did learn from the orator in the forum, from the i)hilosopher in 
 the schools, or from the preacher in the church. The breadth 
 of mind that came under such influences was by no means gene- 
 rally gi'eat ; and, if we except the illustrious teachers of the ancient 
 world and the preachers of the eai'ly age of the church, the instru- 
 meutalities as means of instruction were for the most part power- 
 less. But the press, for the last three centuries, has occupied 
 
 * Modern Philosophical lufidelitj'. 
 
THE I'EESS. 053 
 
 njuch of the grouud tliat once belonged exclusively to the oral 
 iustructor ; and with vast multitudes in our day it is made the 
 chief, if not the sole teacher. This is the case to a considerablo 
 extent in our own country, and much more is it so in France and 
 other parts of the Continent. The appetite for periodical litera- 
 ture, on both sides of the Channel, is strong. And every class, 
 movement, and interest are represented, in a greater or less degree, 
 in the mighty current. Like a never failing fountain, the press 
 is sending forth its publications of every possible variety of 
 character, as numerous as the dew-drops from the womb of the 
 morning, all of which are exerting an influence for good or evil on 
 the masses with vdioni they come in contact. It has been said — 
 and, notwithstanding the temporary thraldom to wliich the French 
 press is now subjected, the statements ai'e still substantially true — 
 " without a newspaper, France is deaf. . . . Every morning 
 when it awakes, the reading public of France is appealed to by the 
 defenders of interests, parties, ideas, systems of all descriptions, 
 waging war against one another, for the conquest of the ])resent, 
 or the direction of the futiu-e, Eeligion, politics, philosophy, 
 industry, arts, sciences — everything is represented, everything 
 finds an utterance, everything stirs about, under the full blaze 
 of daily publicity : everything — except Evangelical Protestantism; 
 for, in this universal concert of human passions and convictions, 
 the voice of the Gospel alone is missing."* 
 
 If this description does not apply, in every particular, to our 
 own country (and we rejoice to think that it does not), it is for the 
 most part applicable to the range and influence of our own press. 
 It sends forth its streams of powerful influence for weal or woe, 
 far and wide ; here diffusing the blessings of heavenly truth and 
 holy beauty, and there scattering the curses of error and moral 
 desolation. 
 
 "By thee religion, liberty, and laws, 
 Exert their influence and advance their cause : 
 By thee worse plagues than Pharaoh's laud befell, 
 Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell ; 
 Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise. 
 Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies; 
 Like Eden's dread probationary tree, 
 Knowledge of good and evil is from thee."+ 
 
 The good resulting from the press, upon the whole, is certainly 
 much greater than the evil. ' The invention of printing has proved 
 one of the mightiest and most beneficent instnunentalities that has 
 been brought to bear upon the world. The civilization of mankind 
 has advanced rapidly since this noble discovery. It has been one 
 of the most effective agencies in scattering the seeds of immortal 
 trutli ai)road among men. And all who take an interest in the 
 
 * Pastor Boucher. (In " The Power of the Press," p. 32.) 
 + Cowper's Progress of Error. 
 
254 THE PRESS. 
 
 advancement of human society have reason to thank God for the 
 press. It gave the mightiest impulse to the revival of learning in 
 the fifteenth century. It roused the mind of Europe from the 
 sleep of the middle ages, and made the nations feel that they were 
 men. It not only brought to light, and scattered abroad, the 
 treasures of classical literature, but it was early consecrated to the 
 work of quickly multiplying and disseminating the sacred Sciip- 
 tm-es which were hidden and rare. But for the press, the lieform- 
 ation, that most benignant of events since the introduction of 
 Christianity, had probably never taken place. By its agency in 
 promoting the revival of learning, the way was prepared for tlie 
 overthrow of mental despotism, and for teaching men, in oppo- 
 sition to human authority, the right of private judgment, and the 
 duty of appealing, in things sacred, to " the law and the testimony." 
 And wheji the Keformation had been effected, this agency was yet 
 more powerfully exerted in extending and strengthening it, by 
 diffusing the writings of the reformers and vernacular copies of 
 the Bible among the people. Luther influenced the mind of 
 Germany, not only by the energy of his living voice; but, by his 
 version of the Scriptures — edition after edition of which issued 
 from the press — he pushed on the good work in his own country 
 and in other lands. And while Latimer and Eidley, by their 
 preaching, told on the crowds of Englishmen that flocked to hear 
 them, Tyndale and Coverdale, by their printed translations of the 
 Divine word, influenced not only those crowds, but tens of thou- 
 sands who were beyond the reach of the voice of the reformers. 
 It is to the press, as an instrument, that we greatly owe our civil 
 and religious liberties. By it, as well as by preaching, the word 
 of the Lord has had free course and been glorified. The darkness, 
 superstition, and despotism of the middle ages can never return ; 
 the messengers of truth must run to and fro, and knowledge be 
 increased ; and the nations, in spite of all temporary checks, must 
 advance onward in the path of light, liberty, and happiness, so 
 long as this mighty agency pours its enlightening and enlivening 
 influences over the heart of human society. Men do well to be 
 jealous of whatever tends to shackle and corrupt such a divine 
 instrumentality as the press. And were the civilized, and 
 especially the Christianized nations of the world, truly grateful, 
 they would thank the God of heaven for the press, and beseech 
 Him to preserve it free and uncorruptible, and consecrate its 
 energies to the cause of immortal truth. 
 
 But if the press be a powerful agency for good, it is unquestion- 
 ably a powerful agency for evil also. Out of the same mouth 
 proceedeth blessing and cursing, and this fountain sends forth 
 sweet water and bitter. If it has been greatly instrumental in 
 multiplying our Bibles, and propagating divine truth among the 
 nations, it has been, and is, greatly instrumental in disseminating 
 
THE PRESS. 255 
 
 anti-Christian sentiments and pernicious errors. We can very well 
 hold that the press does more good than evil, and yet maintain 
 that the evil is fearfully great. Divine truth is, from its very 
 nature, imperishable; whereas error, however mischievous in its 
 influence for the time, is doomed to destruction. And we have 
 more hope of a few seeds of heavenly truth, scattered here and 
 there, producing much lasting good, than fear of a gi-eater num- 
 ber of pernicious principles cliecting much lasting evil. But the 
 harm, at certain periods and in certain countries, may greatly 
 jDreponderate over the good, and this we aj^prehend is true in 
 reference to the present state of the press in many lands. It is 
 powerfully employed on the side of infidelity. It is ceaselessly 
 sending forth publications of almost every shape and character, 
 like the sand by the sea-shore for number, which must be assigned 
 to the account of evil. 
 
 The age in which we live is unprecedented for the clieapness 
 and abundant supply of its literature. The huge costly tomes 
 which were within reach of comparatively few of our ancestors, 
 have given place to the small and low-jn-iced volume which is 
 accessible to all. Speculations, decidedly hostile to true religion 
 and to man's best interests, are no longer confined to the upper 
 and more refined classes of society ; but they have descended 
 through the many channels opened up by the prolific press to the 
 reading millions of the present time. Our age is characterized by 
 the large superficies of the reading mind rather than by its 
 solidity and depth. The thii-st for reading of a light and novel 
 kind is almost universal and insatiable. The poorest artisan must 
 have a library out of which he can read, and one or more cheap 
 journals which he can devour. The great competition in the 
 press naturally tempts its conductors to minister to the public 
 tastes whatever these be, and unhappily, amid such a large pro- 
 prietary, many ai*e to be found ready to yield fully to the tempta- 
 tion. Every diversity of sentiment and interest is represented by 
 the press, and carried, by its cheap and rapid agency, throughout 
 the length and breadth of the land; and the misfortune is, that so 
 large a proportion of these sentiments and interests, thus spread 
 abroad, are adverse to that interest which is the most noble and 
 precious of all. 
 
 It is the periodical press — that mighty engine in the civilized 
 world — that we have more immediately in view, when speaking of 
 the press as the chief agency in propagating infidelity. And it is 
 to be remembered that, in our periodical literature, we have poj^u- 
 larised the anti-religious notions that appear in a more abstract 
 form in books of a higher stamp. Before coming down, however, 
 to what is strictly called the periodical, we see no little power put 
 forth by the press on the side of evil. It were not difficult to fix 
 upon a considerable number of works of high pretensions and 
 
256 THE PEESS. 
 
 extensive cii'culation that have proceeded from the modern press, 
 which are either openly or insidiously detrimental to genuine 
 religion. They are to he met with in the departments of theologj^ 
 of literature, and of science. Belonging to the first of these, we 
 have a large and rapidly increasing numher of hooks in the form 
 <if a philosophical theism appealing to the educated mind, the 
 tendency of which is to cut up, root and hranch, all that is dis- 
 tinctively Christian, and to suhstitute a self-relying deism. In 
 literature and science, we have not a little in which upper and 
 under crn'rents of scepticism are too perceptible ; and siiil more 
 in which Christian truths and principles are ignored when they 
 might have been most fittingly introduced. Judgiug from many 
 publications which are sent forth amid the lull blaze of Gospel 
 light, and vv-liich possess this negative characteristic, one could 
 never infer that such a thing as Christianity existed amoug men. 
 Multitudes of authors woukl seemingly reckon it weakness, or 
 fanaticism, to be indebted to revelation for a sentiment, a prin- 
 ciple, or an embellishment. 
 
 The press in Germany is, to an alarming extent, steeped in 
 infidelity. This holds true both of the higher and lower litera- 
 ture. " The left-hand school of Hegel," remarks Dr. Krummacher, 
 " knew how to find its way among the lowest classes of the people, 
 by making its philosophy popular, in a flood of pamphlets, novels, 
 romances, etc. In consequence of this, it is natural that atheism, 
 v/hich opposes religion in every form, denies the existence of God, 
 personal immortality, and the moral order of the world, should 
 spread further and further This secret of wickedness had long 
 sneaked about hi darkness ; but no one would credit it, up to the 
 yeai- 1848. Since then, truly, we have been convinced of the con- 
 trary." ^'= Numbers of noble Christian men in Germany, who are 
 fully aware of this, are vigorously exerting themselves to command 
 the influence of the press on the side of Gospel truth, aud to in- 
 crease tlie popular Christian literature. And while we may be 
 thankful to that land for its treasures of Biblical criticism and 
 profound research, imported to us through the press ; yet it cannot 
 be forgotten that these treasures have not unfrequenily come to 
 us with an infidel theological literature, the influence of which has 
 been such on the literature of our own country, as would almost 
 lead us to doubt whether the amount of good has not been over- 
 balanced by the amount of evil. It is unquestionably from this 
 source that we have derived the spirit, so prevalent among many 
 of our haff-literary, half-philosophical writers, which tends to 
 destroy a historical and heaven -inspired Christianity, and which 
 would leave nothing in its place but a kind of vague, floating, 
 religious sentiment — the collective produce of many minds. 
 
 * The Religious Conditions of Christendom, p. 425. (1852). 
 
THE PRESS. 257 
 
 The press is bringing us, among other things, from France, a 
 shoal of light, popular novels, which are pregnant with the seeds 
 of irreligion ; and which, it is believed on good grounds, have had 
 no small influence in producing the dissoluteness so fearfully 
 characteristic of modern French society. The writings of 
 Rousseau and the men of his school are considered to have been 
 more effective than any other cause in producing the dreadful 
 convulsions in the early days of the great French Revolution. 
 And the productions of Eugene Sue, George Sand, Dumas, 
 and others, tell powerfully for any thing but good on a large 
 portion of French society, and on the society of other states. 
 The evil of these same novels is, not merely that they incapacitate 
 the minds of the readers of them for any thing like serious thought, 
 which in itself is no trifling injury, but that an air of romance is 
 thrown around libertinism, profligacy, and crime, well fitted to sink 
 religion and exalt vice in the estimation of many. These anti- 
 Christian productions are wafted far and wide. Mr. De Vere, 
 speaking of Athens, says, " The young men, I fear, are somewhat 
 infected with sceptical opinions, a circumstance which may, in 
 some measure, be accounted for by the attention paid to French 
 literature. French novels are the works which chiefly abound in 
 the bookshops. Can one imagine a greater misfortune, especially 
 to so yoimg a nation ?" These works have come in, like a deluge, 
 on America, and they are making their way in our own country, de- 
 structive of evei-y thing deserving the name of moi-ality and 
 religion. In the catalogues of cheap circulating libraries, they are 
 to be found side by side with books of which it may be said, that 
 they are arrayed in fine linen, clean and white — reminding one of 
 the tempter and the Holy One in the wilderness. And it generally 
 happens that where there is a relish for the one, there is a dislik:.". 
 for the other. 
 
 Of our own home produce, we have not a few works of note 
 through which runs, either broadly or stealthily, a vein of infidel 
 philosophy. Some of them must be assigned to the idealistic, and 
 others of them to the sensational school. Mr. Carlyle, whose 
 influence on thinking minds of a peculiar cast is perhaps greater 
 tlian that of any living writer, is the acknowledged chief of the 
 former. He, as vre have already remarked, says nothing disrespect- 
 ful of the gospel of Christ; yet he may not unjustly be regarded 
 as waging under covert, a war against the claims of a historical 
 Christianity, or as endeavouring to bring men to look upon all 
 religious creeds as having the same subjective origin, and to con- 
 found or identify earnestness with truth. What poor John 
 Sterling says to Mr. Carlyle, in his last brief letter — a letter " fit to be 
 for ever memorable to the receiver of it" — could doubtless be said 
 by multitudes of individuals who have come under his influence : 
 " towards me it is still more true than towards England, that no 
 
 s 
 
258 THE PRESS. 
 
 man has been and done like you."-i^ Great, indeed, is the respon- 
 sibility of his leadership. Such a man raises up a host of imitators 
 who are quick to discern and eager to lay hold of the worst part of 
 his teaching, to obtrude it at every point, and to carry it undis- 
 guiscdly to such an extreme as he himself would probably deem 
 offensive. 
 
 " We should think," says Mr. Henry Eogers, " that some of 
 these more powerful minds must be by this time ashamed of that 
 ragged regiment of most shallow thinkers, and obscure writers and 
 talkers, wlio at present infest our literature, and whose parrot-like 
 repetition of their own stereotyped phraseology, mingled with somo 
 barbarous infusion of half- Anglicised German, threatens to form 
 as odious a cant as ever polluted the stream of thought, or dis- 
 figured the purity of language. As in Byron's day, there 
 were thousands to whom the world ' was a blank' at twenty or 
 thereabouts, and of whose ' dark imaginings,' as Macaulay says, 
 the waste was prodigious; so now there are hundreds of dilettanti 
 pantheists, mystics and sceptics, to whom everything is a ' sham,' 
 an 'unreality;' who tell us that the world stands in need of a 
 great 'prophet,' a 'seer,' a 'true priest,' a 'large soul,' a 'god-like 
 soul' — who shall dive into 'the depths of the human consciousness,' 
 and whose 'utterances' shall roTise the human mind from the 
 'cheats and frauds' which have hitherto everywhere jiractised on 
 its simplicity. They tell us, in relation to philosophy, religion, 
 and especially in relation to Christianity, that all that has been 
 believed by mankind has been believed only on ' empirical' groimds ; 
 and that the old answers to difficulties will do no longer. They 
 shake their heads at such men as Clarke, Paley, Butler, and declare 
 chat such arguments as theirs will not satisfy them."\ 
 
 The existence of such a "ragged regiment," nevertheless, shows 
 the influence of one or two great minds and the grave responsi- 
 bility they incur in sending abroad, by means of the press, thoughts 
 that are openly or covertly hostile to the gospel of Christ. The 
 influence of Lord Byron has passed, but the misanthropy and 
 voluptuousness of his poetry did then work of mischief; and mul- 
 titudes of young persons, out of an enthusiastic admiration for him, 
 were formed to a character the very reverse of the ethics of the 
 gospel. The influence of those writers who are contending against 
 the paramount claims of historical Christianity, will also pass 
 away; but they too, meanwhile, perform their part in keeping 
 men from the faith of the truth and the love of the Saviour. How 
 many of our polite writers have gone, or are advancing, into 
 eternity, as John Foster says, " under the charge of having em- 
 ployed their genius, as the magicians their enchantments against 
 Moses, to counteract the Saviour of the world."| 
 
 ♦Life of sterling, p. 334. + Rogers' Essays, vol. ii. p. 316. 
 
 i Foster's Essays, p. 341. 
 
THE PRESS. 259 
 
 Of our modern productions of the sensational school, "Combe's 
 Constitution of Man," if not the most profound and philosophical, 
 has doubtless been the most popularized and extensively circulated. 
 The naturalism of this work, as we have seen, is broad and undis- 
 guised. Containing, as it does, many valuable remarks on the 
 operation of natural laws, and the consequences of infringing them, 
 it, by making these laws explanatory of all phenomena, explodes the 
 idea of an interposing and superintending Providence ; so that, 
 had it been possible, God might as well have ceased to exist after 
 the creation of the world. Upwards of eiglity thousand copies of 
 this work have issued from the press of our own country, besides 
 having obtained a wide circulation in America, and having been 
 translated into various foreign languages. Having had the ad- 
 vantage of a liberal bequest, it has appeared, in numerous cheap 
 editions, for circulation among the people, and even for introduction 
 into the schools; so that, in so far as a cheap press is concerned, 
 nothing has been wanting to leaven tlie masses with its principles. 
 To this work, despite its many useful facts and lessons, nuiltitudes 
 of our reading artisans are indebted for those popular infidel 
 objections which are urged against the doctrine of divine Provi- 
 dence and special prayer. Sensationalism is doubtless on the 
 wane, and the triumph of Combe, if we mistake not, has passed; 
 but it were vain to deny that such works as the " Constitution of 
 Man," pervaded as they are with principles antagonistic to 
 spiritual Christianity, have exerted a disastrous influence on 
 many minds. And such influences, we may be assured, are not 
 obliterated, like the wake of a sliip by the next rolling wave. 
 
 Besides such works as these, which address themselves more 
 especially to a peculiar cast ot cultivated minds, or to our reading 
 artisans, there is a class of books, of recent growth, designeil for 
 the village poor, in which are insidiously taugfit Tractarian 2"»rin- 
 ciples, the tendency of which is to substitute a merely ceremonial 
 Christianity for the spiritual gos]iel of Christ. Archbishop 
 Whately, in his " Cautions for Ihe Times," remaiks of the promo- 
 ters of Tractism, that " at first they gained an almost unexam[)led 
 command of the public press . . , Nor was it only by tiie 
 open and direct inculcation of their opinions they mace way for 
 themselves. That which one of the original conspirators a])tly 
 called ' the 2'>oisoning sijsteni proved even still more efiectual. 
 "Works were produced in almost every style of composition, to 
 catch the unwary, and the tenets of Tractism cautiously infused 
 into them all, so as to steal upon the reader when he least expected 
 them ; when he took up the volume only to verify some fact of 
 ancient history, or to beguile an hour with an amusing tale. 
 Their ahn, indeed, was to create a literature for themselves, and 
 exercise an influence over everything that came before the public 
 
 s 2 
 
260 . THE PRESS. 
 
 mind, from the discussions of the severest science down to the 
 songs and stories of the nursery."^- 
 
 The class of books to which we refer is an illustration of the 
 carrying on "the poisoning system." A simple story of village 
 life, full of pleasing incidents, and told in an agreeable style, is 
 made, with no little cleverness, the medium of infusing into the 
 minds of unlettered rustics the tractarian poison. The curate or 
 rector, who figures in the tale, does great and good things. The 
 parish, which he found like a barren and neglected wilderness, 
 becomes, under his assiduous ministry, a fruitful field wliich the 
 Lord hath blessed. Of course, he is a tractarian. He discourses, 
 in a winning way, about the efficacy of tlie sacraments, the rever- 
 ence due to the authority of tlie church, the diviuity that hedges 
 round the j^^'ayer-book, and such like. The atonement, contrary 
 to Scripture, is thrown into the back-ground, and made a sort of 
 reserve-doctrine ; and the faith inculcated is faith in the mere 
 ceremonials of the Gospel, not faith in what, in the estimation of 
 apostolic men, constitutes its very core — the doctrine of Jesus 
 Christ and Him crucified. In these books, to quote from one of our 
 Reviews,! there is an attempt insidiously made to exalt " the very 
 brick and mortar of the church, at the expense of spiritual religion. 
 A distressing formalism in them very destructive of the pure and 
 simple faith — the leaning upon the merits of the Redeemer- —which 
 is emphatically the 'religion of the poor.'" We mark this, then, 
 as an agency to make men formalists, and wiiich may, by a not 
 uncommon reaction, lead the more thoughtful among them, in 
 their disgust at "church principles," to repudiate Christianity 
 itself 
 
 But we turn to the Periodical. In this department of the press, 
 we find the strongest combined agency for propagating anti- 
 Christian principles. The strength expended on periodical litera- 
 ture, in our age, is prodigious; and marvellous is the phancy of 
 tliis great agency. The nev/spaper, which, for the wide range of 
 its influence, and as an indispensable element in modern civiliza- 
 tion, has been aptly called " the Fourtli Estate," is the creation of 
 tlie seventeenth century. The first regular newspaper started into 
 existence about the close of the reign of James the First, and but 
 shortly after tlie death of Shakspeare. From the great English 
 Kevolution, wlien newspapers appeared in such numbers, journal- 
 ism has constituted a power w4iich has told mightily on society.]; 
 But it is in our time that this power has waxed so strong, both 
 in our own country and on the Continent. With the commence- 
 ment of the eighteenth century, appeared the Iveview. Then 
 followed the British Essayists, who exerted a powerful influence on 
 
 * Cautions for the Times, p- 294 + North British, May, 18o2. 
 
 i Hunt's Fourth Estate. 
 
THE PRESS. 261 
 
 the reading mind of the age. They sternly reproved the follies, 
 and were influential in correcting the vices, of their times. But 
 they neglected the opportunities which they had, of thoroughly 
 leavening their elegant moral papers with the evangelical element 
 of that religion w'hich they professed to venerate. Since that period, 
 a large class of readers has risen up. Such men as Addison and 
 Johnson addressed themselves chiefly to the middle and upper 
 classes, while they left the masses ranging helow them almost un- 
 touched; hut the Press is now, in a very extensive degree, the 
 Press of the people. By its cheap periodical literature, it becomes 
 all things to them, appealing in every diversity of form, to their 
 reason, their passions, their prejudices, and their interests. Any 
 estimate of the influence of the periodical press that should leave 
 out this large superficies of the reading mind, would be as faulty 
 as the survey of such a city as Edinburgh which, while embracing 
 the Princes and George Streets, overlooked the Cannongates 
 and Cowgates. 
 
 We are not insensible to the vast amount of healing influences 
 that proceed from the periodical press. The river of the water of 
 life is pouring forth a rich supply through various channels opened 
 U]) by this agency. But statistical facts go to prove that the chan- 
 nels, in which flow the poisonous streams, are yet more numerous, 
 and that the supply is inucli more abundant. The periodical 
 press has expanded prodigiously within the last twenty or thirty 
 years, and the expansion on the side of evil has greatly prepon- 
 derated over that on the side of good. No one doubts that this has 
 been the case in France. " In our important periodical literature," 
 said Pastor Boucher, w^hen starting a daily Protestant paper in 
 Paris a few years ago, " the first angle is occupied by iniidelity 
 in its various shapes'— indifference, materialism, scepticism ; the 
 second angle belongs to Roman Catholicism ; the third, the Biblical 
 angle, has remained empty — we must fill it up." The newspaper 
 press occupies, generally, a more commanding position, and a 
 larger place in the literature of France than in that of any other 
 European country. The lower classes of French Society are much 
 more generally engrossed with political and social questions, than 
 the same classes in England. The public journals in France,., 
 accordingly, pass through many more hands than they do with us... 
 Every Frenchman is a politician. In the workshops where large 
 numbers of men are gathered together, it is no uncommon thing for 
 one artisan to read the paper aloud for the benefit of all. The 
 French journals command some of the first-rate writers in the 
 country, and the pens of the celebrated novelist and of the dis- 
 tinguished statesman are employed in their pages. But their in- 
 fluence is, for the most part, hostile to the Gospel of Christ. Some 
 of the most powerful Parisian Jom'nals are perpetually wavering 
 from Piomanism to Voltairianism, and from Voltairianism to Pvo- 
 
262 THE PKESS. 
 
 manism. The " Constitutionnel," at the time when its circulation 
 was the largest of any paper in France, was actively putting forth 
 the opinions and principles of the infidel chief* And, at the pre- 
 sent moment, when priestly pretensions are becoming more and 
 more arrogant, the infidelity of many of the Journals is reviving. 
 
 But it is the feiiilleton, or light French novel, chapter after 
 chapter of which appears in the columns of the daily papers, that 
 constitutes tlie chief attraction of the journal to myriads of men 
 and women, it is in this department of the paper, separated from 
 the political articles and mere news by a broad line, that Dumas, 
 Sand, Eugene Sue, and writers of such stamp, produce each their 
 dozen or eighteen volumes of tales, yearly ; the tendency of which 
 is to make their readers anything but grave and thoughtful, moral 
 and religious. In reading lately a romance of the last-named 
 author, with a view of giving forth an impartial judgment, v/e 
 seemed to be wading through some of the foulest mud that ever we 
 met with in cheap literature ; and it became at last a question 
 with us, whether we were justifiable in making the attempt. And 
 yet no volume in a large circulating library had been more fre- 
 quently handled than the one refeired to. In the feuilletons of the 
 newspaper, marriage has been declaimed against, nauseous love- 
 stories have been told, the poor and labouring classes have been 
 ex(!ited against the rich and noble, the most startling pictures of 
 depravity have been drawn, the most Utopian schemes of social 
 amelioration have been advocated, the most sacred facts in the 
 Gospel History have been parodied, and the bitterest sarcasm and 
 mockery have been thrown upon the holiest doctrines of religion.^ 
 Millions of readers of French papers, in and out of France, come 
 day after day under the influence of this anti-Christian agency. 
 We can conceive no more effectual barrier against serious thought 
 or religious j^i'inciples, and no more effective instrumentality in 
 perverting jDublic taste and morals, than these nswspaper romances. 
 Of these, multitudes are republislied in our own country, and, in 
 company with less objectionable things, swell the tide of our cheap 
 literature. 
 
 JNIatters, in this respect, are much the same in Germany as ii? 
 France. Socialism, with its various conflicting theories and broadly 
 marked irreligion, the romance, whose heroes enjbody every cha- 
 racteristic except the Christian and the human, have everywhere 
 possessed themselves, to a considerable extent, of the Periodical 
 Press ; and through this channel have deluged with a flood of im- 
 
 * British Qnarterlv, No. 6 (.Journalism in France). 
 
 + M Alexandre Dumas, a wviter who panders to the public taste, however viti- 
 ated, for the sake of money, has been publishiucf for some time a romance of a 
 most profane character in the columns of the Comtitutio7inel — a. daily paper, said 
 to be circulating at the rate of from 30,030 to 40,000. The immoral tendency of 
 the romance has been so glaring, that its publication has been checked by a hint 
 from high quarters. 
 
THE PRESS. 203 
 
 morality and irreiigion the length and breadth of the land. What 
 John Foster once said of the socialist publications of our own 
 country, is yet more truly applicable to the greater proportion of 
 the periodical literature of the Continental Press. " The thing 
 seems like a moral epidemic, breathed from hell, destined to be 
 permitted for a time to sweep a portion of the people to destruc- 
 tion, in defiance of all remedial interference." Would that the 
 remedial interference in those lands were but as powerful as with 
 ourselves ! 
 
 Our own periodical press, however, is employed to a large 
 extent on the side of evil. Unquestionable statistics have shown 
 this to be the case. No doubt, as the tone of society in our coun- 
 try has become much more healthy within the last twenty or 
 thirty years, many departments of the periodical press have parti- 
 cipated in the favourable reaction. Some journals of an extensive 
 circulation, though yet far from being what they ought to be, 
 present a favourable contrast to what they once were. Still, the 
 quantity both of our stamped and unstamped periodical literature 
 jireponderates greatly on tlie anti-Christian side. In this estimate 
 w^e unhesitatingly include those publications which pour contempt 
 on the Cin-istiau Sabbath, diverting it from its ordained uses as a 
 day of holy rest and heavenly training, to one of mere bodily relax- 
 ation and mental diversion; and that larger class which would 
 make men religious without any regard to tlie atonement of Christ 
 and the influences of the Spirit; as well as the avowedly infidel 
 and grossly demoralising. These classes combined constitute an 
 amount of agency in conflict witli the spirit and claims of the Chris- 
 tianity of tlie New Testament, of greater power than many men 
 are apt to im'agine. The Edinburgh Review, which is not 
 chargeable vrith countenancing exaggerated statements in these 
 matters, said, about two years ago, " the total annual issue of 
 immoral publications has been stated at twenty-nine millio'ns, 
 being more than the total issues of the Society for Promoting 
 Christian Knowledge, the Pteligious Tract Society, the British and 
 Foreign Bible Society, the Scottish Bible Society, the Trinitarian 
 Bible Society, and some seventy religious magazines." More 
 recently, it has been affirmed that, during the year 1851, the purely 
 infidel press in London issued publications to the amount of more 
 than twelve millions; the issues of avowed atheism, during the 
 same period, exceeded six hundred and forty thousand ; and, in 
 addition to these, were issued upwards of seventeen millions and 
 a half of a negative or corrupting character. All this is exclusive 
 of what are properly called newspapers. Indeed, in such influential 
 organs as the Times, the Daily News, and the Morning Chronicle, 
 some of these corrupt periodical issues iiave been subjected to a 
 withering exposure. 
 
 But the Newspaper Press cannot be altogether exculpated. It 
 
264 THE PRESS. 
 
 •Kas shown, but a few years ago, that, according to the official 
 stamp returns of 1843, the weekly papers which had the lai'gest 
 circulation, were of an irreligious and demoralizing character.-^: 
 Mr. Bucknall, in his evidence before the select committee on news- 
 paper stamps, in May, 1851, adverting to one of these, now some- 
 what changed in its character, but still far from being unobjec- 
 tionable, said that, twenty years ago, it was " almost a blasphemous, 
 scurrilous, and contemptible paper, but with an enormous circu- 
 iation." This paper, according to the stamp returns of 1850, has 
 considerably decreased in circulation though that is still large ; 
 thus showing that the days of its worst character were the days of 
 its greatest influence. Another of these, ministering much more 
 to the sporting than to the moral life, and tending to nourish the 
 ignoble passions of man, has of late been on the increase, having 
 had an issue of stamps for 1850 amounting to considerably more 
 than a million and a quarter. While a third paper, circulating at 
 the rate of about thirteen thousand weekly, openly invades the 
 sanctities of the Sabbath, and directs men's thoughts anywhere than 
 to things above. These we have noted as of a demoralizing ten- 
 dency. But how many possess a negative characteristic, saying 
 little or nothing for or against the cause of the gospel. It has 
 been said of the English journal, that " it is a great mental camera, 
 which throws a picture of the whole world upon a single sheet of 
 paper." And yet, with a few noble exceptions, that mental camera 
 either gives no representation of the Christian world, or a very 
 ( listorted one ; or throws forth pictures, the direct influence of which 
 is to make men any thing but Christians. Of the seventy millions 
 of newspapers which, ]Mr. Dickens, in his HousehQld Words, says, 
 pass through all the post-ofiices every year, from how many could 
 we gather any thing like an account of the working of the most 
 beneficent of all agencies in the world — the missionary enterprise? 
 Indeed, from many of our public journals, a man could scarcely 
 inter that there was such a thing as Christianity in the earth ; and 
 to a good man it were a melancholy thought, did the actual world 
 contain no better elements of regeneration than are represented to 
 us by the greater bulk of the newspaper press. 
 
 But it is in the reading for the million — the cheap unstampe<^ 
 publications — that we find the greatest amount of infidel and 
 demoralizing influences. Mr. Knight, the respectable publisher in 
 rieet-street, stated, not long ago, "During the last five years, 
 while cheap religious periodicals have made limited progress, 
 either in numbers or interest, the corrupt printing-press has been 
 unceasingly at work. The present circulation in London of 
 immoral unstamped publications of a half-penny to thi'ee-half- 
 pence each, must be upwards of 400,000 weekly, which would give 
 
 * The Power of the Press (18-17). 
 
THE PEESS. 265 
 
 the enormous issue of 20,800,000 j^early ! In addition to these 
 there is the weekly importation of French prints and novels, of so 
 indecent a character, that once they could only be obtained by 
 stealth, but may now be purchased openly from any vendors of the 
 other periodicals," To a large proportion of this literature for the 
 people might be applied the language which Burke applied to the 
 Frenchpapers of his time: — " The writers of these papers, indeed, 
 for the gi-eater part, are either unknown or in contempt ; but they 
 are like a battery, in which the stroke of any one ball produces no 
 greatimpression, but the amount of continual repetition is decisive." 
 
 We may classify the anti-Christian cheap literature thus :— 
 There is, first, the avowedly infidel. Publications of this class are 
 circulating, at an extremely cheap rate, among the artisans in our 
 lai-ge towns, the object of which, in the language of one of them 
 (the recognised organ of the secularist party in London and the 
 provinces), is to induce the people "to shake off religious belief — 
 to cut the cable by which theology has a hold on practical affairs, 
 and to let theology float away to the undefined future to which it 
 belongs." Instead of finding much calm and fair reasoning in 
 this organ, as the title would lead us to expect, we have the old 
 dishonest trick, so much resorted to by Paine, of vilifying Chris- 
 tianity by identifying it with its corruptions ; and the usual kind 
 and quantity of raillery aimed at anxious enquirers and praying 
 men and women, the only excuse for which is that such weapons 
 are more easily wielded against the religion of Christ than argu- 
 ments. ''Excelsior !" is surely an ii-onical motto for an oracle 
 which forbids us to look up to the skies and beyond the stars; and 
 which eujoins us to let God and futurity alone as we have no irre- 
 sistible evidence in proof of either. Most unquestionably, the 
 motto should have been — " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
 die." Were the mischief produced by such publications only pro- 
 portionate to the talent displayed in them, they might be allowed 
 to pass on unnoticed to the oblivion to which they are hastening. 
 But it is not so. Their sentiments find a welcome response in 
 many minds that have remained indifferent or hostile to the Gospel 
 of Christ ; and, in workshops and factories, they have done no 
 inconsiderable amount of evil. An atheistic secularism, at the 
 present day, is wielding, with renewed vigour, the penny periodical 
 press ; and, by this means, is endeavouring to leaven the people, 
 especially in manufacturing districts, with its earthy principles. 
 
 The second class may be distinguished as j^olluting. Publica- 
 tions of this class pander to the sicldiest curiosity and the basest 
 passions. Vice is here tricked out in all its alluring attire. The 
 reader is conducted through some of the dissolute scenes of fashion- 
 able life, or his sympathies are enlisted in favour of some desperado 
 who has been the hero of the den, and whose hair-breadth escapes 
 
205 THE PP.ESS. 
 
 have tlirown an air of romance around his Hfe of crime and infamy. 
 I'he readers of tliis class of poUuting puhUoations are mnch more 
 numerous than the former. They address themselves to tlie lowest 
 of the people, demand not the least eiibrt of thought, aud are ever 
 hot with stirriug scenes and incidents. Among the myriads of 
 young men and women in the metropolis who are able to read, but 
 who seldom or never a})pear in the house of God, this low, cor- 
 rupiing literature has a very large circulation. " If you go," said 
 Mr. Bucknall before the select committee on newspaper stamps, 
 " into some of what we call the back slums, and diiierent places 
 both in London and in provincial towns, you will see very often 
 shops oi)en on the Sunday mornhig. Those are out of the general 
 reach of observation ; and unless you go there and positively 
 watch the sale, it is impossible that you can have any idea of the 
 amount of moral depravity of these things." jNIr. jNlayhew, in his 
 instructive work, entitled " London Labour and the London Poor," 
 has made some startling disclosures in reference to tlie literature 
 of the masses. Speaking of the costermongers — a class number- 
 ing about 30,000, living '-in a state of almost brutish ignorance" 
 • — he says, "What ihey love best to listen to — and, indeed, what 
 they are most eager for — are Eeynolds' periodicals, especially the 
 " Mysteries of the Court." One street-seller assured him that iiis 
 master alone '' used to get rid of 10,000 copies of Kuch works on 
 a Saturday night and a Sunday morning;"* — the principal cus- 
 tomers being young men. Mr. Abel Heywood of Manchester, 
 through whose hands jtass about ten ^^er cent, of these cheap pub- 
 lications — sujjplying the surrounding towns to tiie extent of twenty 
 miles — has sliown, in his evidence before the select committee, 
 that the circulation of the penny vitiating periodicals among the 
 nianuJactuiing distiicts is very large. And one or two works of 
 this kind, we are informed, meet with a readier sale in Edinburgh 
 than almost any other cheap publication. To this corru^^t class of 
 reading must also be assigned the '• gallows " literature. The ap- 
 petite for this, especially among the reading poor, is enormous. 
 The morbid leoling about criminals has, of late years, been strong; 
 and the press — even that which claims to be respectable — has, by 
 its pictorial iilusirations, and minute details of criminal deeds, 
 hirgely ministered to it. It is stated that no less than four millions 
 aud a half of broadsheets, relating to two late principal executions, 
 were })riuted and got up in London, and sold throughout the 
 country. The chief way to check or counteract the iniiuence of 
 this pernicious trash, is, as Mr. Mayhew hints, in the " resj^ectable" 
 ])ress becoming a more healthful public iubtructor. In all this 
 penny literature, we have an agency v>hich,like an army of locusts, 
 
 * Loudon Labour aad '.lie Loudon Poor, vol. i. pp. 25, 290. 
 
THE PilESS. 
 
 26T 
 
 eats up all that is healthful wherever it alights, and leaves nothing 
 heliind but pollution and desolation. =:= 
 
 There is a third class which, in regard to moral and religious 
 influences, may be called latitudinarian. In this class we have 
 none of the broadly-marked and openly-avowed intidelity of the 
 first, nor any of the grossly depraved and deeply polluthig scenes 
 of the second. light reading, in the shape of novels and ro- 
 mances, is tlie staple commodity; and this of a kind calculated 
 to make men and women anything but wise and thougbtful ; wbile 
 (in tlie way of warp and woof), threads of thought, connected with 
 religious indifferentism or a false liberalism, y\\\\ throughout. 
 This class of cheap literature is a large and growing one. and seems, 
 in many places, to be supplanting, in a great extent, publi- 
 cations of a decidedly immoral kind. To this class belongs the 
 '' Family Herald," a miscellaneous joiu-nal, which is said to have 
 the largest sale of any of tlie penny or cheap publications among 
 the worldng classes. The weekly circulation of this pennyworth, 
 as stated in evidence before the select committee relerred to, is 
 more than two himdred thousand. Of these, somewhere about 
 fourteen thousand circulate weekly in Manchester and the ueigh- 
 bourhood. " There is a peculiarity about the ' Family Herald,' " said 
 the extensive Manchester bookseller in his evidence ; " it addresses it- 
 self to the fairer sex in a great measure, and to that perhaps may be 
 attributed its very large circulation." It has, however, " facts and 
 philosophy for gentlemen," as well as "hints and entertainment 
 for ladies." Not the least engrossing part of this " domestic ma- 
 gazine," as the " Herald" itself testifies, and as we know from 
 observation, is the large space devoted to replies to correspondents. 
 The useful and the ludicrous here meet. These we let pass. 
 They may be "interesting to all — ofi'ensive to none." But re- 
 ligious doubts are here solved, and interpretations of Scripture are 
 here given ; and thus, through the channel in which flows the ex:- 
 hilarating beverage, runs also the diluted poison. The " Family 
 Herald's" brief " discourse on matters pertaining to religion," is 
 more akin to the sentiments of Theodore Parker than to those of 
 Christ and His apostles. Man's original uprightness is here de- 
 
 * The " Christian Times," .=;peaking of the " Acherontic Shades of the Metropo- 
 lis," and especially of those " normal schools of vice and profligacy in London — 
 the low theatres, ""says : " Of the penny theatres, the abused power of the press 
 is the maiii, if not tlie sole cause. In none of these houses is the histrionic lite- 
 rature of the more decent school represented, :or the obvious reason that it is 
 not sufficiently prurient. The songs, the dramas, and the farces of the Holywell 
 Street and the Ilevnolds Schools are exclusively used at the penny theatres. 
 Instead of Richard the Tliird, Hotspur, Wolsey. Catherine of Arrayon, Oliver 
 Cromuell, and ideal personages of the modern drama, we only find Jack Shep- 
 panl, Turpin, Carew, Tom Shingle, Rush, Mrs. IManuing, and others, who have 
 risen above the ordinary heroes of the Xewi/ate Cah-ndar! ami these are neither 
 exhibited to elicit the self-delusions or the certain penalties of crime, hut to ex- 
 cite compassion for the criminal, or to smother all possible reflections by termi- 
 n .ting a tragedy with a grimace." — Christian Times, Nov. 23, 1850. 
 
268 THE PRESS. 
 
 iiiecl: non-responsibility for belief is inculcated; tbe salvation of 
 the whole race without any exception is preached ; and to speak 
 of future punishment, or of the doctrine of atonement, is repre- 
 sented as making a sort of Moloch of God. No wonder then that 
 Pollock's divine poem is condemned for its Calvinistic theology, 
 and that Madame George Sand's works are represented as the 
 works of " a very religious writer." No wonder that doctrinal 
 creeds are made very lightly of, that Scotch Sabbaths are hated, 
 and that " conventicles" are shunned for their fanaticism. These, 
 we presume, are some of the "facts and philosophy for gentle- 
 men." No doubt they are meant also for the " ladies," to whom 
 " hints and entertainment" of a different kind are given ; as well 
 as for the "youth," for whom "questions and diversions" are 
 provided. The " Herald " is not unfrequently spoken of as the 
 most respectable penny periodical of its class — and it is respect- 
 able compared with much of the cheap literature circulating along- 
 side of it. But here lies the danger. Many a domestic circle that 
 would justly repel the organ of an atheistic secularism, or the 
 grossly immoral trash of the Reynolds' school, because their irre- 
 ligion is too palpable, admit the "Herald "for its "recreation 
 and harmless pastime," while they receive along with it (knowingly 
 or vniknowingly) the teachings of an infidel theology. By all 
 means let us have cheap " domestic magazines of usefid inform- 
 ation and amusement ; but let parents and guardians and churches 
 see to it that their "facts and philosophy," as well as their "hints" 
 and " diversions," are, at least, in harmony with the genial and 
 ennobling teaching of the Book of God. Such, we regret to say, 
 is not the case with the " Family Herald." =:' 
 
 Lastly, comes a class whose name is legion — a class which is 
 not in open conflict with Christianity, like the first ; nor glaringly 
 
 * Our " Family Herald " says, " The passages which speak of the salvation of 
 all men arc very numerous. There is one wliich expressly asserts the salvation 
 of intidels." And if our fii-e-side companions should think this too good news to 
 he true, they are referred to Eoin. xi. .32 for proof!! "The salvation of the 
 Scripture," says this domestic teacher, "is a bodily salvation on the earth, in 
 which men will eat bread and drink wine, and enjoy the pleasures of corporeal 
 existence. Philosophy has chnnged all this, and we hear almost nothing of it. 
 What can the clergy be about ?" And then follows an admiralde text-proof, which 
 Paul himself certainly never thought of: "Is not the Head of the Church called 
 * the Saviour of the body ?' " I ! Here is another lesson : " A man is responsible for 
 his false or bad faith.. just as he is responsible for his bad breath. It is his mis- 
 foitune." To this Messrs. Emerson, Owen, and Holyoake will have no objec- 
 tion. " Every world," we are told, " has no doubt its own incarnation, and these 
 are all one incarnation : and we, being many, are part of it, etc." This is some- 
 thing like pantheism. " Sinceiuty wants to know if it be possible to obtain tlie 
 old faith in God that v.-rought miracles ?" And ihe " Herald" insinuates that " the 
 two facts of faith and mesmerism combined" are to work wonders. Another will 
 suffice: — An " Unleaknkd Person" enquires about the heathen, and he is told 
 " Scripture being a universal revelation by a Universal Spirit — when it says the 
 heath(-n are lost.it means that they all are finally gathered into the universallsrael 
 — lost by ceasing to be heathen." Do not such sentiments justify us, then, in class 
 ing among evil instructors the " Family Herald ? " 
 
THE PRESS. 209 
 
 vicious and immoral, like the second; nor gives forth loose religious 
 views with its entertainments, like the third ; hut which aims at 
 making men moral, irrespective of the great essential doctrines of 
 the gospel. Works of this class pass hy Christianity in silent 
 contempt, falsely exalt human nature, and endeavour to keep it in- 
 dependent of divine spiritual aids. This class of cheap literature 
 sins in the way of defect rather than m positive statements. John 
 von Miiller, an illustrious German scholar and historian, said of 
 Herder's Philosophy of History, " I find every thing there but 
 Christ, and what is the history of the world without Christ?" 
 In the periodicals referred to, we find almost every thing hut 
 Christ; and what is all the moral instruction in the world with' 
 out Christ? These publications avowedly aim in their teaching, 
 not only to increase men's information, but to make them better 
 and happier. This is the grand design for which Christianity was 
 given to the world. It claims to be the only system of truth cap- 
 able of thoroughly regenerating the human race. This claim is 
 substantiated by an appeal not only to its own principles, but to 
 what the world has been without it, and to what it has done for 
 communities and individuals. Surely then the moral teaching of 
 the periodical, as well the moral teaching of the living preacher, 
 that takes up a neutral position with regard to Chi-istianity, must 
 be construed into virtual hostility. It may be said of the one, as 
 it has been said of the other, that it is merely aping Epictetus, 
 "We do not want the literature on which we are commenting ser- 
 monized, nor to be taken up with theological controversies; but 
 we want in it a distinct recognition of the fact that distinctively 
 Christian elements are alone efficacious in radically regenerating 
 the world. The Great Teacher has said — and the remark is 
 peculiarly applicable to moral teaching — "He that is not with me 
 is against mc." 
 
 In the above classes of the j-teople's literature combined, were a 
 mighty agency adverse to spiritual Christianity, even though the 
 Christianized periodical literature were greater or equal in amount 
 to it. But how fearfully eflective must be that agency, week after 
 week, and year after year, when the circulation of the antidote is 
 so utterly disproportionate to tlie circulation of the poison. 
 
 It has happened, to a considerable extent, with the press, as it 
 has done with some of the lands of the lieformation. The dark- 
 ness has invaded and driven back the light. Komish superstition 
 has multiplied her altars greatly more than an Evangelical Pro- 
 testantism has lengthened her cords and strengthened her stakes. 
 The press, by which we won our liberties and multiplied our 
 Bibles, though powerfully employed on the side of good, is yet, in 
 many departments, more powerfully em})loyed on the side of evil. 
 The church is only becoming awake to the great preponderance 
 ou the wrong side We have been looking too exclusively to the 
 
270 THE PRESS. 
 
 multitndinons streams of healing influences that have been flowing 
 foith in many directions. We have dwelt too complacently on 
 our large Bible issues, on our Tract Society grants, on the number 
 and extensive circulation of our religious periodicals, and on the 
 many other productions of sterling worth that are ever and anon 
 issuing from the press. These numerous and powerful instrumen- 
 talities for good have dazzled our eyes, so as to have concealed 
 very much from our view the strong and numerous currents of 
 evil that are flowing visibly on the surface, and more secretly, 
 though not the less effectually, underneath. But to be awake to 
 an evil, is half overcoming it; and patriotic Christian men, in our 
 own country and on the Continent, are aiming at making a much 
 more vigorous use of the press. 
 
 Some of our old influential organs have, of late years, without 
 losing any thing of their ability, decidedly improved in tone and 
 spirit. "While others, both in the review and magazine depart- 
 ments, have begun a vigorous course in opposition to infidel 
 errors, and on the side of Gospel truth. Of the former, we need 
 only notice the Edinburgh Review, whose appearance marked an 
 era in our liigher periodical literature, and which has exerted a 
 strong influence on public opinion. At the time when the 
 "Quarterly" entered the field as its yix-aX, i\\Q Northern Journal 
 is said to have had a cii-culation of about nine thousand. It is 
 well known, however, that Christian missions were assailed, and 
 sceptical o]iinions found favour in many of the papers in its early 
 numbers, and when its influence was so great. But for a number 
 of years, this powerful organ has done much effective service on 
 tlie ]-isht side. And while IMacaulay has been enriching its pages 
 with his brilliant and healthy literary criticisms, such men as Sii- 
 James Stephen and Mr. Henry Eogers have been more directly, 
 and with great power, asserting the principles of the Kcformation 
 against Komanism and Puseyism, and the claims of an historical 
 Cln-istianity against German and English rationalism. The re- 
 prints of these writers are among the most valuable contributions 
 to our modern literature. 
 
 In some of the younger quarterlies"'- and monthlies, which have 
 been called forth by the aggressions of Bomanism on the one 
 hand, and of Infidelity on the other, we find men of might and of 
 a right spirit doing valiantly lor the truth. And their influence 
 has not unfrcquen'tly stricken the camp of the enemy with dismay. 
 
 it should be borne in mind, however, that while such period- 
 icals arc battling with, and affording a strong counteractive to, 
 that vague ])hiloso])hical theism which, in numerous ways, appeals 
 to the uiddling and higlier classes, there is a wide lower range of 
 mind which the cheap anti-Christian literature especially addresses 
 
 * The British Quarterly and tlie North British Rcricw deserve special notice. 
 
THE PRESS. 271 
 
 — a range of mind which tlie massive qnarterly or monthly does 
 not reach ; and it is here chiefly that we lack a sufficiently apt 
 force to coiniteract the enemy. The prohlera — how to siip])ly the 
 masses with acceptable and yet wholesome and elevating reading 
 
 — has never yet been actually and fully wrought out. Philan- 
 thropic men, in endeavouring to meet the evil, have generally 
 erred in one of two ways. They have either gone to the extreme 
 of bringing purely religious publications, in tlie form of tracts or 
 biographies, to bear upon the popular mind that had been accus- 
 tomed to the dangerous romance; or they have gone to the ex- 
 treme of merely diffusing useful information, and of aiming to 
 make men moral with little or nothing of the evangelical element. 
 Both courses have, in a great measure, failed. The former has 
 been like casting pearls before swine. The latter has been the 
 effort of men to draw water out of a well, while they had nothing 
 to di-aw with. 
 
 The Pteligious Tract Society, which all good men love, as if con- 
 scious that something more was needed to meet the condition of 
 the masses than the religious tract or narrative, has, by the issue 
 of the monthly volume, taken a step in the right direction — a 
 scheme which has Arnold's language for its motto, " i never 
 wanted articles on religious subjects half so much as articles on 
 common subjects, written with a decidedly Christian tone." It 
 has too much been forgotten that the peo[)le will have entertaining 
 literature. It is by entertaining literature of a de])raved kind that 
 the evil is wrought, and it must be by entertaining literature of a 
 healthy Christian tone that the evil must be counteracted. This 
 counteractive influence is especially needed in reference to the 
 weekly penny publications. It is from this stronghold that the 
 enemy brings his demoralizing energies to bear upon the masses. 
 It seems that within the last two years, not less than two hundi'ed 
 new penny periodicals have started into existence, the greater 
 part of which are more influential for evil than for good. These 
 can only be met and counteracted by penny weekly ])eriodicals 
 combining instruction and entertainment, and which shall have 
 the effect of elevating the working classes in the scale of moral 
 being. Some weekly penny-worths (the " Leisure Hoin-," for ex- 
 ample) realize, in a greater or less degree, the kind of influence 
 referred to. Let such approximate still nearer to the model tlmt 
 has often been indicated, let the number of such be multii)lied, 
 and let good men employ a like energy in disseminating their 
 cheap good things as bad men employ in disseminating their 
 cheap bad tilings. 
 
 The Alessrs. Chambers, whose Edinburgh Journal has an im- 
 mense circulation throughout the kingdom, have succeeded, to a 
 very considerable extent, in disseminating sound and useful mforni- 
 ation among the people. Yet they complain o^' not having influ- 
 
272 THE PRESS. 
 
 enced the masses who are poUuted by those Grab-street produc- 
 tions, which are the scum and disgrace of our literature. In the 
 Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on News- 
 paper Stamps, it is stated that the publications which have been 
 brought out at a cheap rate, originally under the plea of benefiting 
 the working classes, such as the "Penny Magazine," "Chambers' 
 Journal," etc., have missed their aim, and have been generally cir- 
 culated among the middle classes. In Chambers' publications, we 
 miss the evangelical element — that decidedly Christian tone — 
 which Dr. Arnold wished to give to the Useful Knowledge Society's 
 works, and especially to the Penny Magazine, which was circu- 
 lating at the rate of a hundred and twenty thousand copies weekly. 
 " Prudence," says a reviewer * of our Popular Serial Literature, 
 "is Chambers' favourite theme and darling virtue. It is the aim 
 of all his moral instruction. Right feeling, correct ethics, and 
 'enlightened selfdove,' are not only the highest principles tov*Iiich 
 he appeals, but seem to be so appealed to as to leave no room for 
 reference to a higher standard. It does not, as all professed instruc- 
 tion ought to do, point upward." He justly adds, "let our lightest 
 literature preserve the standard of Coleridge's 'Commendable Pru- 
 dence,' sanctioning no principle which the word of God condemns 
 — if vice be portrayed, let our impression of it be, 'there is no 
 peace to the wicked.' But let our professedly didactic works exliibit 
 the ' Wise Prudence' of Coleridge — aim at a higher standard of 
 principle, if not distinctly religious, tending toward^ religion and 
 kept in harmony with it ; and we should have a fairer hope of 
 reaching and moving the lowest of our people." 
 
 The church has powerful resources, in the form of talent and 
 wealth, at her command, which need only lay hold more vigor- 
 ously on the Periodical Press, in order to drive back the darkness 
 of infidel error, and carry forth triumphantly the light of Gospel 
 truth. Would that the men of sanctified intellect, the princes in 
 Israel, devoted their energies to a larger extent in giving us a 
 Christianly baptized periodical literature, and that Christian men 
 of wealth were to expend much larger sums in extending and ren- 
 diSring more efficient a cheap instructive religious press! The 
 newspaper, the twopenny and penny journal, v.-ithout being exclu- 
 sively devoted to religious subjects, or anything like sermonized, 
 must, in their spirit and aim, be Christianized. Along with a 
 goodly number of works in sacred literature issuing ever and anon 
 from the press, in the form of doctrinal and practical treatises, 
 and religious biographies, we must have our little and large books 
 of science, our cheapest as well as our high-priced periodicals, our 
 journals which treat of common things and the engrossing topics 
 of the day, as well as those which are taken up with the philo- 
 
 • North Britisli. 
 
THE CLUBS. 273 
 
 sophical essay, leavened tlirougbout witli the principles of Christian 
 truth. One of tlie most gi'aphic and widely-circulated histories 
 that have proceeded Irom the modern press, as we have ah-eady 
 noticed, is written on the principle of exhibiting God in history — 
 a principle whicli Robertson had almost forgotten, and to wbich 
 Hume and Gibbon were opposed. And wlien the principle of 
 seeing God in every thing — a ]>rinci])le as remote from a v.igue 
 dreamy pantheism as from a cold lifeless natiiralism — is recog- 
 nised in every department of our literature, ^oth in that v;liich 
 circulates among tbe middle and higher classes »," society, and in 
 that which runs throughout the lower masses — tlie ])ress will be 
 consecrated wholly to the grand end for which God gave it; be 
 omnipotent on the side of truth and righteousness ; and, like the 
 bells of the horses.' and the pots in Jerusalem and in Judah, have 
 inscribed upon it, HOLINESS UNTO THE LOUD. 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 THE CLUBS. 
 
 The present pre-eminently an npre of associations — Amount of sucli instrument- 
 ality on the side of truth — This often blinds us to existing agencies foi- evil — 
 These advance under different shields — Charge brought aLiainst mauy literary 
 and philosophical associations — Infidelity of the Socialist clubs — Those of 
 France in 1789 And 1848 — Still strong in their irreligious influences though sup- 
 pressed by law — Hegelianisni of the German clubs — Resorts of the travelling 
 jour, eymen — S\vitz-rla;id — Sitlutary changes in Continental institutions de- 
 feated by such irreligious and revolutionary associations — Infidel associations 
 in England — Existing secularist societies — Clubs of f ireign workmen in Lon- 
 don — InfidelUy most prevalent in trades that admit of most intercourse — 
 Excellence of existing counteractive and aggressive Christian agencies — Neeil 
 of a specific agiUK^v for meeting the infidelity of our artizans — Wichern and the 
 German Inner Mission — Coniereaces oa true Christianity at Paris. 
 
 The present age is characterized by the number and variety of its 
 cTSsociations. Never was the maxim, that union is strength, so 
 generally acted upon. Projects hearing upon man's social and 
 moral condition are no sooner hinted at, than societies are or- 
 ganized for developing and executing them. It is pre-eminently 
 an age of combination for the diHusion of principles, whether 
 good or evil. Isolation of mind and a monopoly of ideas are by 
 no means prominent features in its manifestation. All things are 
 expansive, and aim' at universality. Man is brought nearer to 
 man, and there is much more fellowship of intellect with intellect, 
 than in tbe ages that are past. The associations that exist in our 
 day could never have taken root and grown up under the old civil 
 and ecclesiastical despotisms. Knowledge is not, as aforetime, the 
 inberitance of any particidar class. It has descended from the 
 privileged few, and become the common projjerty of the many. 
 Tbe repressive influences of the middle ages, that checked the in- 
 
 T 
 
274 THE CLUBS. 
 
 terconrse of mind with mind, and made knowledge a monopoly, can 
 no more reUnn than the years that are passed can be rolled back 
 upon the world. The current not only Hows, in a great measure, 
 imimpeded from man to man, indi\dduallj, but numerous and 
 powerful combinations are formed for diverting and diffusing 
 it throughout the heart of humanity. These combinations are 
 mighty for evil as well as for good. 
 
 It would be ungrateful to overlook the amount of this kind of 
 instrumentality that is employed on the side of righteousness and 
 truth. There are our noble foreign missionary societies, tlie glory 
 of our land, which, having sprung up within the last sixty years 
 or little more, have made the desert, in many parts, blossom and 
 rejoice as the rose ; and have produced a mighty reflex influence 
 for good on the moral and intellectual state of a vast portion of our 
 home population. There are our Christian instruction agencies, our 
 city and town missions, which carry the lamp of divine truth into 
 the dark places of our cities and towns, and point the ignorant and 
 lost to Him who is the light and life of men. There are our young 
 men's Christian associations, which seek to lay hold of the minds 
 of ingenuous youth, and protect them from an infidel literature 
 and science, by presenting them with a i)hilosophy and literature 
 baptized in the influences of the gospel. And there are numerous 
 other societies branched out over the land, which tend to counteract 
 pernicious error, and directly or indirectly produce much moral 
 good. Such associations as these, which are peculiar to the age 
 in which we live, are valuable beyond all estimate, as influences^ 
 on the side of whatsoever things are true and pare, lovely and of 
 good re])ort.=- 
 
 * Mr. Mayhew. in liis work on " London Labour and the London Poor," has 
 done good service by fixing our attention on tbe pocial and religious condition of 
 the masses. There "is room for administering a rebuke to our indifference to the 
 amount of irreligion and wretchedness that, like the troubled sea, is ever rolling 
 around the base of the social edifice. But, why do it with a frown directed towards 
 missionary zenl in other lands ? The heathenism at home has by no means been 
 ovei-looked, while attending to the heathenism abroad. The church of Cbrist in 
 our land has two loud calls addressed to her at present. The one is to propagate 
 the Gospel in foreign parts, especially among Continental nations, where adooris 
 open. The other is to look to our own countrymen who, though surrounded by 
 churrhps p'ace themselves beyond the pale of their influence. We should have 
 liked Mr.'Mayhew's remarks better had lie said, " this thing ought ye to have done, 
 and not have'left the other undone." The passage to which we refer is the fol- 
 lowing • speaking of the metropolitan costermongers, he says: " Indeed the moral 
 and rf li"ious state of these men is a foul disgrace to us, laughing to scorn our 
 zeal for the ' propagation of the gospel in forehpi pans,' and making our many so- 
 cieties for the civilization of savagf-s on the other side of the globe appear like a 
 ' delusion, a mockery, and a snare,' wlien we hive so many people sunk in the low- 
 est depths of barbarism round about our very homes. It is well to have bishops 
 of New Zealand when we have Christianized all o?(rou-» heathen ; but with 30,000 
 individuals in merely one of our cities, utterly creedless, mindless, and principle- 
 less surelv'it would look more like earnestness on our part if we created bishops 
 of tiie New-cut and sent ' right reverend fatheis' to watr-h over the ' cure of souls' 
 in the Broadway and the Brill. If our sense of duty will not rouse us to do this, 
 at least our regard for our own interests should teach us, that it is not safe to 
 
THE CLUBS. 275 
 
 But we are apt to be affected with these as with the influences 
 for good exerted by the press. We are dazzled by them, and become 
 blinded, as it were, to the numerous and powerful combinations 
 on the side of evil. Our insensibiHty to tl)e latter may, indeed, 
 partly be accounted for from the fact, that many of these evil 
 agencies work secretly and in darkness, though not the less 
 effectually. They hate the light, neither come to the light lest 
 their deeds should be reproved. Whereas the other associations, 
 being tlie children of the light and of the day, come to the light 
 that their deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in 
 God. But, whether openly or concealed, it is unquestionable that 
 societies, which tend either directly or indirectly to advance the 
 cause of infidelity, are spread, like a network, over the frame of 
 human society. Their design is not always broadly expressed in 
 their title, and their irreligious influences are not unfrequently 
 exerted irx combination with plans and objects that in themselves 
 are perfectly legitimate. Sometimes the demon of riugodliuess 
 stalks forth under the patronage of an association, the inscription 
 on whose banner is purely political, at other times the badge is 
 literary or scientific, at other times it is social amelioration, and at 
 other times it is even divine and theological. But, under all these 
 shields, advances and works the selfsame spirit whose mission is to 
 war against, pervert, and, if possible, destroy spiiitual Christianity. 
 The religion of Christ can bring a heavy charge against many 
 of the literary and philosophical societies existing in oin- own and 
 other lands. Paramount in her claims, she might say to some of 
 them, 'ye have kept me standing and knocking at the door with- 
 out, and, as if I were a stranger and a foreigner, have refused to 
 admit me within. Ye have most unnaturally divorced science and 
 literature from theology, and what God hath joined together ye 
 have put asiuider. I claim the homage of the whole realm of 
 nature. Mine is the world of matter, mine also is the world of 
 mind. But ye have treated me as an alien, and have thrust me 
 into a- corner, and by insulating science from its natural relations 
 to theology, have occupied inquiring minds with the former, at 
 the cost of excluding or undervaluing the latter. ' He that is not 
 with me is against me.' Upon others, the gospel could fasten the 
 charge of positive hostility, and say, ' ye have made the stars in 
 their courses fight against God; ye have ransacked the bowels of 
 the earth and made their records speak against Him whose hand 
 inscribed them ; and ye have given such views of man and of the 
 universe as directly conflict with the claims of religion both natural 
 and revealed. In endeavouring to advance the sciences ye have 
 waged war against theology, which stands at the head of them ; 
 
 allow this vast dung heap of ignorance and vice to seethe and fust, hreeding a so- 
 cial pestilence in the very heart of our land." — London Labour and the London 
 Poor, vol. i. p. lOL 
 
 T 2 
 
27G THE CLL'BS. 
 
 and, in prosecuting tliG interests of literature, ye "have scorned the 
 excelloncy of that knowledge for which one of tlie greatest of the 
 sons of men couuled all things but loss.' Not a few institutions 
 of influence and renown could thus be reckoned as abetting, di- 
 rectly or indirectly, the cause of infidelity. 
 
 But what we have chiefly in view, in this chapter, are the po- 
 litical and socialist clubs. Societies for the peaceful discussion of 
 matters of social polity, and the promotion of social ameliorations, 
 are not only legitimate, but have often done good service to the 
 comnuniity. We exclude, therefore, all such as sustain this cha- 
 racter from our enumeration of evil agencies; and restrict our 
 remarks to those which aim, in connection with social changes, at 
 an innovation into the substance of Ciu-istianity, or the subversion 
 of it as tlie divinely revealed system of truth. Their name is 
 legion. The socialist clubs of the Continent, for the most part, 
 partake of this character. 
 
 France is the hot-bed of socialism, whence it is propagated 
 throughout Switzerland and Germany. And it is in France that 
 the cluh.s to which we are adverting exist, or have existed until 
 very recently, in great numbers and efficiency. Socialism, as we 
 have seen, does not stand neutral in regard to religion. As 
 hitherto organized, it has been steeped in irreligion. Christianity 
 comes within the sweep of its levelling agency, and it aims at sup- 
 planting the established forms of worship. Its religion, at the 
 very best, is one of social equality or man-worship. Depravity, 
 in its creed, lies in the inequalities and oppressiveness of the 
 social frame-work; pi'ivate property is the demon to be repressed 
 or cast out; and equality, liberty, and fraternity, in a mere poli- 
 tical sense, constitute the everlasting Gospel of humanity. The 
 system puts on a political face, but it is decidedly infidel at heart. 
 
 Associations for the propagation of these opinions rose up in 
 immense numbers and great vigour, in France, after the outbreak 
 of the late revolution. These ojiinions had long been floating 
 throughout the mass of society, had formed the subjects of dis- 
 cussion in workshops and social meetings, and had been wafted 
 abroad by tracts and Journals. But the regularly organized clubs 
 combined and strengthened their scattered adherents, and, along 
 with the press, for ii d the most efTective socialist propaganda. 
 Nothing gives a more powerful impulse to any system than the 
 a])proximation of its abettors, one toward another, through such 
 agencies as associations. Discussions in clubs, in proportion to 
 the extent of surface on which they are brought to bear, are in 
 general more influential than discussions in public joui'nals, es- 
 peitially in matters that tend to excite and interest the ])assions of 
 men. Sucli associations not unfrequently conunand some of the 
 most eloquent and clever men that are to be found within and 
 witliout the public assemblies of the nation. In the great French 
 
THE CLUBS. '277 
 
 Revolnticn of 1789, the clubs were resorted to by some of tlie 
 ablest and most popidar of tlie public men of E'ranee. Robespierre 
 and tlie other revolutionary chiefs swayed tliera by their infltienfe, 
 and through tliem swayed the National Assembly. The doors of 
 these clubs were flung open to tke people, and there, ai5 well as in 
 other ways, the masses heard those ojunions enforced, and i-eceived 
 that impulse, which urged tliern to sweep away the throne and the 
 altar, and deluge the land with infidelity and blood. 
 
 The socialist leaders, at the revolution of Februnry. 1848, exerted 
 their influence on the Frencli community chiefly tln'ougli the nje- 
 dium of such associations. That )-evolution was vahmble in their 
 eyes, only as it afforded them an opportunity of bringing about 
 certain great social cljanges. The many unjust and oppressive 
 arrangements of society yielded tliem a ground on which to stand 
 and ply their logic. But not satisfied witli con-ecting abuses, they 
 aimed at remodelling the whole f)-ame-work, and would virtually 
 have snl)stituted socialism as a system for the Gospel, or have 
 baptized it with the name of Christ:ianity. The discussions of the 
 socialist clubs have often assumed a complexiow of this kind. 
 There it has been maintained that socialism i? the true religion of 
 Christ; that He was the Prince of the Communists; that a social 
 amelioration was the design of setting up the kingdom of God 
 among men ; and that it therefore should supplant all other forms 
 of civil and religious polity. These clubs were the chief places of 
 resort during the time in which France, like a troubled sea, could 
 not rest. The din of intestine strife was heard in the midst of 
 them. But, notwithstanrling their internal differences, they all 
 agreed in proclaiming a social revolution to be the hope of the 
 world, and tlie grand means of indefinitely a ^meliorating tlie con- 
 dition of man. In the clubs, indeed, not to speak of the broad 
 atheism often manifested, there was preached, in connection with 
 social reform, another gospel, as different Irora the Gospel of 
 Christ as darkness is from light. And countless multitudes received 
 the proclamation with an eagerness seldom manifested, at least 
 on so large a scale, by those who listen to the real glad tidings of 
 great joy. 
 
 Socialism, happily, has failed of seizing the reins of government, 
 and the woi-ld has been spared again witnessing the leign of pro- 
 scription and infidelity. But, though banished from the Luxem- 
 bourg, an:l beaten down at the' tribune, and having its clubs 
 placed under the ban, it has by no means halted or lost its vigour. 
 The clubs, in spite of all opposition, are said to exist secretly in. 
 great numbers. Discussions, destructive of all social order and 
 sound religion, are carried on. Less cons])icuous than it once 
 was in the eye of the public, socialism, with indomitable peise- 
 verance. is prosecuting its work of proselytizing beneath tlic sur- 
 face. It aims at leavening the entire mass of society with its 
 
278 THE CLUBS. 
 
 principles. And, though politically disunited and weak, it is still 
 strong in its irreligious influences, because the tendency of its 
 different contending sects is hostile to that truth which requires 
 repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 Vast multitudes of the working classes on the Continent, who 
 have a growing faith in their social elevation, are prepared, by the 
 deep grudge which they bear to the existing social arrangements, 
 to apphiud the comnninist doctrines however irreligious, as they 
 fall from the lips of the club orator. And it is not difficult to con- 
 ceive how masses of men, politically and socially disaffected, may, 
 by haraTjgues, have their passions roused against the existing 
 religious, as well as civil institutions of the country, and thereby 
 against religion itself Each of these clubs is a vortex of irre- 
 ligion into which artisan after artisan is drawn by the hope which 
 is held out of an indefinite amelioration in their condition. Let 
 such associations as these be suppressed by the law, it is just the 
 scattering of the seeds of anarchy and ungodliness abroad to form 
 centres of influence elsewhere. These clubs, in their scattered 
 members, or in their secret meetings, are, we are persuaded, no 
 less influential on tlie side of irreligion than wlien they flourished 
 openly without opposition. The spirits of evil, when not sutTered 
 to remain in open council, meet in conclave and act the more 
 resolutely, under the impulse already given, in propagating abroad 
 their infidel opinions. 
 
 It is not to France, however, that such associations have been 
 confined. They overspread, in a greater or less degree, the most 
 of Europe. Tlie cities of Germany and Switzerland were rife 
 with them, and nowhere was their atheistical character more 
 broad and decided. The communism of these countries is to be 
 traced to France. Myriads of German workmen are ever passing 
 to and from Paris, where they become acquainted, and fall in, 
 with all the social movements of the French working classes. It 
 was calculated, a few years ago, that there were from forty thou- 
 sand to sixty thousand Germans in Paris, employed, or seeking 
 employment, as mechanics. These, generally, become members 
 of clubs, where a gross infidelity and a lawless democracy go 
 hand in hand ; and then, returning in process of time to their 
 own country, they organize associations of a similar character, or 
 swell those that are already existing. But if the German moving 
 population imbibe and carry home the infidel French socialism, it 
 is not to be forgotten that they have an infidelity of their own 
 which they impart to others. The infidel principles of the Hege- 
 lian school are not restricted to university students. They are 
 familiar to the German workmen, and they reduce them to prac- 
 tice. Pantheism, or the boldest atheism, has been avowed and 
 advocated in their clubs. The belief in a living personal God has 
 been repudiated as a worn-out fiction, and the notion of a heaven 
 
THE CLUBS. 279 
 
 beyond tlie grave has been denounced as the greatest hinderance 
 in realizing a paradise on earth. " Man by liimself," said one of 
 the boldest and most strenuous apostles of these infidel clubs, 
 "Man is the religion of the coming age." 
 
 It has been affirmed that the test of admission to the higher 
 Jionours of these associations, was an unscrupulous denial of the 
 existence of God. He, whose conscience prevented him going 
 thus far, was not, however, wholly excluded, but placed under the 
 most effective teaching in order to induce him to renounce the old 
 dogma, and make him a proselyte of the true stamp. These chibs 
 had their divisions and sub-divisions for carrying on more effec- 
 tually the work of proselytism, and, with an energy and zeal 
 worthy of a better cause, became all things to all men in order 
 that they might gain multitudes. There are two social arrange- 
 ments which, though crigiuaUy designed for good, greatly 
 strengthen the infidelity of the German workmen who compose 
 these clubs. The one is the corporation law which renders it 
 necessary for the German artisan to travel before he can obtain a 
 master's diploma. The design of this is that every young man, 
 on finishing his apprenticeship), might, by two or more years 
 travelling, get thoroughly acquainted with his business. The 
 otlier is the existence of the Hcrherge, or tradesman's house of 
 call, of which one exists for every trade in those cities where the 
 corporation law is in foi'ce. The former arrangement brings the 
 moving artisans in contact with the infidelity that is afloat. The 
 latter gives the power of association to all the irreligious opinions 
 that they have gathered in their wanderings. In these resorts of 
 the travelling journeyman, says the noble-minded Wichern, " the 
 A. B. C. of democracy is taught, and many advance in the political 
 catechism, systematically gone through, until the top-stone is laid 
 in red repulilicanism and avowed atheism."-- 
 
 Switzerland, also, recently abounded in infidel communist clubs. 
 It has been asserted that not fewer than twenty thousand German 
 mechanics in that land, were exposed to iheir seductions, the 
 greater portion of whom have come under their demoralizing in- 
 fluence. Here ultra-radicalism and ultra-atheism are closely con- 
 nected. The notorious Marr, who learned his atheism in'' these 
 synagogues of Satan, boasted of having been instrumental in 
 
 * A correspondent in " Evangelical Christenclom" for Feb. 1850, states, "there 
 are secret clubs of commuuists everywhere; for instance, eight in Berlin, four 
 in Cologne, two in Dusseldorf, three in ■Mainz, &c. &c. These clubs haveso-callad 
 'apostles,' of whom there are many hundreds, who declare (I extract it from one 
 of their paraplilets), ' We stand on the i'oundation of the Apostles, but we are free 
 from the blindness of the first scholars of the great mastery We trouble not 
 ourselves about the miracles of tlie Jewish philosopher, and inquire not after his 
 passport to heaven. The Son of God could not save the world ; his doctrine be- 
 came a ciir«e for eighteen centtiries,' &c." Men blaspheme against "Jesus Christ 
 himself, the chief corner-stone," and yet maintain that they stand on the founda- 
 tion of the Apostles." 
 
'>80 THE CLUBS 
 
 inducing many hunclreds of liis countiymen to renonnce their 
 faitli in God, and of sending them back to their native land 
 avowed enemies to all religion but man-worship.- 
 
 When such numerous and powerful associations for evil as 
 these, are known to have existed over continental Europe— asso- 
 ciations wliere the most revolutionary politics, tlie most unblusli- 
 ing atlieism, and the most blaspliemous songs, have been heard 
 and enthusiastically greeted— it is not wonderful that, amid the 
 social heavings of foreign lands, there should have been throvvn up 
 such an amount of irreligion which, like the smoke out of the 
 bottomless pit, darkened the sun and air, and defeated those 
 attempts at a salutary change in civil and ecclesiastical institutions, 
 the success of which was so desirable 
 
 England too, though by no means to the same fearful extent, 
 and in the presence of a higher amount of good counteractive 
 influences, has her infidel clubs and associ-ations. It is but the 
 truth, when we say that our woi'king classes, as a whole, are much 
 souiiiJer at heart, and that there exists among them a greater por- 
 tion of vital godliness, than is to be foimd among the workmen of 
 France and Germany. But let not any recent manifestations of 
 social stability and sound piety on the part of our working classes, 
 blind us to tlie fact that infidel principles and agencies are at work 
 among our artisans, endeavouring to enlist their political and 
 social' disaffection on the gide of evil. There is an infidelity allied 
 Avith intelligence, or half-intelligence, as well as an infidelity allied 
 with ignoi-ance. The former prevails to a large extent among the 
 artisans in our cities and towns, and strengthens and propagates 
 itself by associations. There is. it must not be forgotten, a deep 
 disaffection and grudge at the heart of the working classes, on 
 account of their political disabilities and social wrongs, wdiether 
 these be counted real or imaginary, that gives the apostles of au 
 infidel socialism a ground on which to ply their arts of seduction. 
 In many of the workmen's clubs which are to be found throughout 
 the empire, the political and moral amelioration of man is held out 
 as the result of certain socialist theories. Christianity is cither 
 supplanted in their declamations, or both it and its institutions 
 are represented, openly or by insinuation, as among the instru- 
 ments of oppression, and the iiinderances to the realization of their 
 golden age. These are the sermons to which multitudes eagerly 
 fisten on^vork-day evenings and on the day of rest. It is either 
 the doctrine of material circumstances, or a system of man-worship, 
 that is ]ireaclied. 'J'he club orators point to the existing arrange- 
 ments of society as the chief evils, and they ignore all motive 
 power but the human will in the work of regeneiation. T^Iultitiides 
 of our young and lialf-intelligent artisans, in resorting to such 
 
 * Evan^-tilical Christendom, vol. iii. p. 13. 
 
THE CLUES. 281 
 
 teaching, are promised liberty by those \Yho themselves are tho 
 servants of corniiHion. 
 
 That there exists at the ]n-espnt moment, a system of agTr.cy, 
 somewhat loosely and irrepfularly organixed, i'or disseminating 
 infidel principles, not only in the metropolis but thronohout the 
 empire, there can be no doubt. Societies of this kind, differing in 
 the number of their adhei-ents and in the vigour oi' tlieir operations, 
 are to be found scatteied here and there fiom the Thames to the 
 Clyde. London is the heart of the movement; and that heait is 
 now full of energy. The numbers of well-attended weekly lectures 
 and discussions tiiat are held in the city and suburbs, the exertions 
 made to widen the influence of one or more atheisticul organs, not 
 to mention some efforts of a more fitful and irregular character, 
 betoken a resolute attempt to pervert the people. The blood is 
 conveyed from the heart thiough the body by tlie arteries, and these 
 we find in such populous places as Bradlbixl, Manchester, Leeds, 
 Dudley, Nottingham, Bolton, Blackbuin. New( astle, Glasgow, &.c. 
 These societies, like others of an opposite description at which 
 they are continually railing, have their differences — their essential 
 and non-essential i)oints. But one word has recently been adopted 
 so as to cover all their principles — and none could he more ai)pro- 
 priate if it be rightly understood, only there is a convenient 
 ambiguity about it — the word secvlari.sni. Two of the non-essential 
 points are the existence of a Supreme Being distinct from nature, 
 and the immortality of the soul. Tliese, it seems, are to be left 
 open questions: some secularists boldly avowing their disbelief in 
 them, and others not having attained to such, a pitch of hero^'sra. 
 The one essential article of the creed — the shibboletli of the party, 
 the common linking })rinciple — is that morality is independent of 
 religion. The ])resent scene is to be regarded as if it weie the 
 whole of man. This life, as it is alleged, being tlie first in ceitainty, 
 must be placed first in importance. 'J'hough the ]))inciples are 
 out and out atheistical, the term atheist is now abandoned for its 
 bad sound. Though all that is worthy of the name of tiutb be 
 re-jectcd, the designation of infidel is to be disused, because of its 
 ill fame. And under this c* nvenient title of secularism, natme is 
 to be preached as the only subject of knowledge, and man is 
 to be taught to limit his thoughts and anxieties to the ])resent 
 world. Our seculai-ists must tear out men's consciences first, turn, 
 the human breast into a sepulchre of dead hopes, seal it up, and 
 set a \vatch, before they can ex]>ect any great portion of the woild 
 to be converted to their princij)les; for if there is one thing more 
 clearly established than another by the voice of miiversal history, 
 it is that man will liave a religion, and that, in the sense of com- 
 pletely ignoring a Supreme Being distinct ironi nature and shut- 
 ting out futurity from his view, man is not a s?,crlarist. Let it' 
 be understood then that no-religion is the fundamental dogma, of' 
 
2S2 THE CLDBS. 
 
 these societies; that moralit}^ without religion, or the never-failiDg 
 streams after the fountain has been sealed, is the only prospect 
 that they seek to realize; and we care not whethei' they he called 
 agencies of secularism or sensualism, though v/e thiuk the latter 
 designation the more appi'opriate of the two. * 
 
 The German, and other foreign workmen, have their clubs in 
 om- own land, which are for the most part of an irreligious character. 
 This is especially the case in London. Chevalier Bunsen stated, 
 a few years ago, at the formation of the Foreigners' Evangelical 
 Society, that there were from thirty-five thousand to forty-five 
 thousand Germans, or about half the whole number of foreigners, 
 in this country. Most of these are workmen. The clever design- 
 ing men, connected with the clubs, eagerly lay hold of them, and 
 persuade them to attend their meetings, where they imbibe the 
 most infidel principles. 
 
 Thus the power of association by which great things among us 
 are done on the side of goodness and truth, is mightily employed 
 on behalf of the worst forms of evil. It has been ascertained that 
 infidelity is generally most prevalent in those trades which admit 
 of most intercourse among the workmen. One clever infidel, in a 
 Avorkshop, will sometimes exert all the influence of the club orator, 
 especially if he comes in contact with men who are somewhat pre- 
 judiced against, or but nominally attached to Christianity. We 
 have heard of a German engineer — a man of remarkable mental 
 power and ener^n- — who, some years ago, got into a large factory 
 in the south of London, and gi'adually diffused infidel principles 
 among the workmen. It was generally understood that in this 
 propagandism, he acted as the deputy of an infidel association. 
 The Camlachie weaver, whom Dr. Chalmers had been instrumental 
 in converting, was apprenticed, when a boy, to an infidel, of whom 
 it is told that he succeeded in seducing the twenty men under him 
 into unbelief.- How^ melancholy to think that men so sedulously 
 do the work of him who is the great adversary of God and man ! 
 And how often may the children of light learn a lesson of united 
 effort and persevering zeal, in pi'osecuting their noble object, from 
 the way in which the children of this world seek their destructive 
 ends. " When bad men combine," said a great English statesman, 
 "good men must associate." 
 
 Combinations for evil have not, however, as already noticed, 
 the field to themselves. There exists, and happily is multi])lying 
 a strong counteractive and aggressive Christian agency which, if 
 rightly adapted so as to meet the ever shifting foims of error, is 
 calculated to do good service in the cause of truth. We do not 
 refer so nnich to the Christian churches that stud the land, as to 
 tlie beneficent instrumentalities that owe their existence and sup- 
 
 * Dr. Hauua's Life of Chalmers, voT. ii. p. 481. 
 
THE CLUBS. 283 
 
 port to these churches. There is, we cannot help thinking, a 
 louder complaint of inefficiency and want of adaptation uttered 
 by some men against our regularly constituted associations for 
 Christian worship, than the nature of the case really warrants. 
 Because our creeds have no attractions for vast masses of men 
 who are seeking a religion of political liberty or social elevation, 
 they are spoken of as a dead letter, as worn out and eti'ete. Be- 
 cause our pulpit ministrations fail to win the men who hang un- 
 weariedly on tiie lips of club orators, therefore, it is alleged, they 
 are not adapted to the wants of the age in which we live. We have 
 admitted, in another part of this essay, that the j^nlpit, in some 
 quarters, might relax a little of its rigidity without surrendering 
 any of its orthodoxy, that its teaching might take a wider range 
 while all its instructions nevertheless are given from under the 
 shadow of the cross, and that a nearer approach to the colloquial 
 in style might be made without losing anything of its grave 
 dignity. But far distant be the day, when it shall descend to the 
 political arena, and take up socialist questions, the discussions of 
 which have greater attractions for multitudes than the publishing 
 of the simple truth as it is in Jesus. The fact is, that a great 
 portion of the blame which is laid at the door of churches, must 
 be thrown over upon the stubborn fact of human depravity. 
 There are vast numbers of the jpulpits of our evangelical churches 
 occupied hymen of superior abilities, of great unction and of living 
 power, and many of these churches, it is not to be forgotten, are 
 composed, in a considerable extent, of working men. 
 
 But the multitudes who throng the socialist clubs, or frequent 
 the secularist lecture room, whether in our own' or in foreign lands, 
 are beyond the pale of the pulpit's influence, because deeply pre- 
 judiced against its teaching, and, if reached at all, must be reached 
 by other agencies. Such agencies exist, and what is wanting is 
 that they may be multiplied or supplemented, more vigorously 
 used, have men of mental j^ower as well as burning zeal in their 
 employ, and work a little moi-e on the principle of becoming all 
 things to all men. Our home missionary associations, with the 
 exception perhaps of the London City Mission, restrict their opera- 
 tions too exclusively to the ignorant masses who are a degree be- 
 low the working classes to whom we refer, but from whom their in- 
 fidelity descends and is received by the lower grade. While the 
 many excellent young men's Christian associations which are 
 rising up with great vigour, are fitted rather to shield from danger 
 those who have a nominal connection with the church, but who 
 are exposed to strong infidel allurements, than to reach the thou- 
 sands who have fallen into the net of the spoiler. Something is 
 wanting to carry the siege into the enemy's strongholds, to attack 
 the various forms of infidelity that have obtained a hold of the 
 minds of our artisans, to expose the sophistries and delusions under 
 
284 TUB CLUBS. 
 
 which they are held, and thus prepare them for the admission of 
 thjit truth hy which alone men are made f-ee. Piety however deep, 
 and zeal however indomitahle. will not suiBce for this ohject; 
 tiiey must he coinhined with intellectual acuteness and grasp; and 
 a host of persons, in whom all these qualifications meet, can be 
 supplied hy the Christian church. In our city missions, and 
 Christian instrucdon associations, we have an admirahle instru- 
 mentality for carrying- the Gospel to the poor who will not come 
 to the Gospel. But we want a more efficient agency, either under 
 the direction of such associations, or wielded hy a new comhina- 
 tion, for the ]>latforin occupied l\y our intelligent or half-intelligent 
 artisans wlio are indifferent or hostile to evangelical truth. 
 
 The Christian community in Germany, who are lar behind 
 England in their home-mission agencies, and who are beginning 
 to attribnte our stability, amid the late revolutions, to the salt 
 that is among us, are putting forth their strength not only to carry 
 the Gospel into the homes of the poor, but to meet the spiritual 
 needs of their shifting artisan population. The conference lately 
 held at Wittenberg, the city of Luther, has pledged itself to the 
 promotion of these objects. Wicliern of Hamburgh, a man of a 
 noble spirit, has the merit of heading this movement for tlie wants 
 of the German Fatherland. He says, " The blight of infidelity 
 has fallen on our laud, chiefly tin-ough the instrumentality of an 
 artisan propaganda; and it must be met by the counteracting in- 
 fluence of a Christian artisan propaganda. — And thus the freedom 
 of speech, and press, and association, which is now the most 
 powerful ally of Satan, will become the best and most effective aid 
 of Christian benevolence." 
 
 The conferences on true Christianity, opened at Paris, a few 
 years ago, in which the working classes were chiefly addressed, 
 arose out of the felt-want of some specific agency to counteract 
 the infidel teaching of the socialist clubs. These conferences 
 were attended with success, so long as the government, jealous of 
 every thing that could be construed into a club, permitted them. 
 The artisans of the faubourgs are said to have heard with interest 
 tlie true Gospel of Chiist. And even educated auditories of so- 
 cialists listened to the bearings of Christianity on those social 
 questions which have been mixed up with a medley of the worst 
 forms of infidelity.'-!^ 
 
 The desirableness of some such agency among ourselves has 
 been hinted at. It is requiied by the niunber of reading artisans 
 in our cities and towns who have been suffered to grow uj) strongly 
 prejudiced against the gospel, persons on whom our churches have 
 no hold, but to whom an infidel socialist club or association pre- 
 sents an allurement. And, not to mention other inducements, it 
 
 * Evangelical Christeudom. Vol. iii. pp. 41, 139, 329. 
 
TeE CLUBS. 285 
 
 is required by the Christian principle of accoinmodation. hecoming 
 all things to all men in order that we may win some. It is only, 
 •we are persuaded, by some such specific agfjucy that the efforts 
 now making, in many of our large towns, by tlie infidel secularist 
 propaganda, can be met and successfully (jounteracted. 'i'hese 
 efforts are chietly directed to the working classes, and it is among 
 th3 artisans who have either no connection with the Chiistian 
 churches, or but a very slight one, that they greatly succeed. A 
 mission to such classes has been talked of. By all means let us 
 have it. But let us see that it is adapted to the exigencies of the 
 case. AVe would deprecate, in our usiud church ministrations, 
 any great departure fi-om exi ting forms of worship. But, in 
 order to the working ot the agency for which we plead, there 
 should be meetings for the classes referred to held without the 
 performance of any act of worship pro})erly so called. It was so 
 in the Paris conlerences. These meetings must he addressed by 
 Christian men of good temper, and clear argumentative power, 
 who will speak to their dee])ly prejudiced hearers, and argue with 
 them, as Paul did on Mars Hill, in the school of 'J'yrannus, and 
 in other places. This would prove a meet and valuable practical 
 measure consequent oa the inquiry which has been instituted into 
 the prevalent forms and workings of modern infidelity. 
 
 Let our evangelical churches abide firmly by their ancient 
 creeds, in so far as they harmoni/e with " the law and the testi- 
 mony," and determine to know nothing among men saying Jesus 
 Christ and Him crucified ; but let theni, without compromise, adapt 
 themselves more to the growing intelh'gence and thinking hal)its 
 of the age. Let our Home Mission and Christian Instruction 
 Agency Societies prosecute vrith increased vigour the work wliich 
 they have begun, of carrying the light of life into the dark dwell- 
 ings of the poor and ignorant. Let our Young Men's Christian 
 Associations multiply in every city and town, in order to preserve, 
 or snatch, our generoiis youth from the apostles of systems of de- 
 lusion. But let US have another association, or, at least, another 
 kind of instrumentality for battling with the infidelities of our 
 knowing artisans, the evils which are chiefly to be dreaded in the 
 present social state of civilized lands. Men of power and tact, as 
 well as zeal and piety, are required here. Such men, we doubt not, 
 are to be found. The Church of Christ, in these lands, is strong 
 in her resources. Only let them be drawn out and rightly applied. 
 We have no fear so long as, to use the words of Milton, triUh is 
 in the field; only let her have all the advantages of free speech, 
 press, and association.* 
 
 * We are glad to see that a mission to the working classes in relation to In- 
 fidelity, has, since writing the above, been begun. 
 
283 
 
 CHAPTER ril. 
 
 THE SCHOOLS. 
 
 Powerful influeiice of Educational Institutions — Defect in our common Schools 
 
 — Want of a Christian atmosphere in higher Seminaries — Dr. Maherly's testi- 
 mony — Dr. Arnold's exertions — Oxford and Camhiidge — Conuteuance given 
 to Eatioualism and Semi-Popery — Secessions to Rome and to the Infidel ranks 
 
 — Scottish Schools — St. Andrew's at the end of last century— Continental ■ 
 Europe — Philosophy in France — Subserviency of Education to Romanism — 
 Influence of German Schools in propagating Infidelity — PedapoEfy — Panthe- 
 istic Philosophy at Berlin — Neology at Halle — Dr. Paulus of Heidelberg — 
 Countei-active influence of Neander, Tholuck, &c. — Infidel teaching in the 
 Universities of Holland — Unitarian Rationalism of the College of Geneva — 
 Noble influence of the New Academy — A Christianized University. 
 
 It is obvious that the educational institutions of a country must 
 €xert a powerful influence, for good or evil, on the faith and morals 
 of its inhabitants. They mould, in a great measure, the public 
 mind. From the venerable university down to the humble village 
 school, they are sources of moral power which tell continuously on 
 the national sentiments and character. Dr. Arnold, on hearing 
 of new comers to Rugby, said, " It is a most touching thing to 
 me, to receive a new fellow from his father, when I think what an 
 influence there is in this place for evil, as well as for good." The 
 amount of power wielded by such agencies differs, no doubt, at 
 different periods, and in different lands. Some universities, whose 
 renown extended far and wide a century or two ago, are now like 
 the shadow of a great name ; while others, which have sprung up 
 more recently, have all the vigour and power of manhood. We 
 ■walk amid the shades of some, just as we tread half-deserted 
 palaces, whose life and gaiety are gone, and for their influence we 
 must look to the records of the past. We stand by others as at a 
 fountain head, whence are ever issuing streams that enrich or 
 desolate the land, and can say — here is an instrumentality of 
 good, or an instrumentality of evil. In some countries, the lesser 
 schools, which are branched out over the land, are exerting the 
 influence that once belonged to the greater seats of learning. In 
 other places, the amount of power wielded by such institutions is 
 much diminished, or counteracted, by the operation of other agen- 
 cies. But, in general, the schools, higher and lower, are felt, in 
 every land where they exist, to be no mean agencies in the dis- 
 semination of sentiments, and in the formation of character. 
 Governments, whether civil or ecclesiastical, Protestant or Roman 
 Catholic, are fully aware of this. The debates in the senate, the 
 discussions in church courts, and tlte conflict often maintained 
 between the civil and ecclesiastical powers about such institutions, 
 show the vast importance attached to them as agencies in mould- 
 
THE SCHOOLS. 287 
 
 ing the mind of the people. Men who wish to give the streams 
 a particular tinge or turn, fight for the possession of the foun- 
 tain. They who would steer the ship on a certain track, seek the 
 command of the helm. Be it the disciple of Loyola, eager for the 
 universal sway of the church of which he is a devoted son ; or 
 the mere politician, careful only to advance his schemes of state 
 policy; he it the zealous Cliristian reformer, heedless of party 
 ends, hut anxious ahove all things to leaven society witli the pure 
 Gospel; or the no less zealous infidel, who would wish full scope 
 for his schemes of social regeneration ; all look to the schools, 
 the educational institutions, as the levers by which they could 
 move and influence the public mind. 
 
 It is one of the cheering signs of the times, that the state of 
 our public schools, higher and lower, is occupying so much the 
 thoughts of patriotic and Christian men. The amount of educa- 
 tion comes far short of the requirements of the country, and the 
 character of much of what exists is eillier inferior in itself or sm-- 
 rounded by unhealthy influences. These things have been placed 
 beyond dispute, by the Hejiort of the Government Connnission of 
 Inquiry. The secular instruction of many of the lower schools is 
 glaringly defective ; while notwithstanding the growing improve- 
 ment in this respect, there is a great want of healthy, vigorous, 
 attractive, religious teaching. Difliculties indeed beset the subject. 
 But, in the full view of all these difliculties, we hold by the clear tan- 
 gible principle, that the religious element is indispensable to a sound 
 and elevating system of education. The mode in wliich religious 
 instruction has been imparted, in a large proportion of our schools, 
 has been far from satisfactory. It has tended to make young peo- 
 ple formalists rather than to inspire them with a loving regard for 
 the truths of Scripture. This fact is being recognised in many 
 quarters ; and the more excellent way is being followed of rescuing 
 the Bible from the position of a mere task-book, and of informing 
 the mind, and impressing the conscience, with its histories, doc- 
 trines, and precepts. Tet religion be shut out from the daily 
 school, and irreligion will grow up and abound, just as weeds 
 overrun a garden which is not properly cropped and cultivated. 
 Or, let religion be taught merely as a matter of dull routine, and a 
 habit of formalism may be contracted, which it may take much to 
 loosen. Without expecting too much from improved systems of 
 education, we cannot help thinking that, had the religious element 
 in teaching occupied in our schools, generally, the genial and in- 
 fluential place which it ought to occupy, young men, in passing 
 from tffe school to the factory or workshop, would not have become 
 so often tlie prey of the infidel. 
 
 Many of the higher seminaries of the countiy are renowned for 
 their scholarship, whence many young persons pertaining to the 
 educated classes are drafted oft' every year to the universities. Not 
 
288 THE SCHOOLS. 
 
 a few distir.^uisliecl Christian teachers are to he found in some of 
 these schools. Jiut. as has recently been remarked, " their presence 
 does not suffice to create a Christian atmosphere. Their influence 
 is neuti-alized by the contrary influence of others."* Upwards of 
 fi\^e and twenty years acfo, the want of any thing like a systematic 
 effort to give a thoroughly Christian character to the education of 
 the higher classes was. in many quarters, keenly felt. It was 
 about this period that Dr. Arnold was elected to Rugby, where he 
 bec;-an to practis3. what he so energetically advocated, making our 
 public schools places of a real Christian education. He en- 
 deavoured to create, (the absence of which seemed to him the 
 great cause of all the evil.) a ])ublic opinion among the scholars 
 themselves in favour nf decidedly Christian principles, so that each 
 nevv coiner mi^^ht find himself at once in a healthy moral atmo- 
 sphere. The testimony of Dr. Maberly. head-master of Winchester, 
 at once shows the religious influences of many of our public 
 schools at the period referred to, and the beneficial change intro- 
 duced by the great and good Arnold. "The tone of young men 
 at the university," he remarks, " whether they came from Win- 
 chester, Eton, Rugby, Harrow, or wherever else, was universally 
 irreligious. A religious under-graduate was very rare, very much 
 laughed at when he ap]ieared. and I think I may say hardly to be 
 found among ])ublic-s(;hool men ; or, if this be too strongly ex- 
 pressed, hardly to be found except in cases where private and 
 domestic training, or good dispositions, had prevailed over the 
 school habits and tendencies." "Dr. Arnold's pupils," he adds, 
 " were thoughtful, manly-minded, conscious of duty and obli^-ation, 
 when they first came to college."! Genuine religion has, oi late 
 years, been progressing a nong the higher classes of our country, 
 and while improvement has been carried into the schools, that 
 improvement lias not been so thorough and beneficent as Christian 
 parents would wish, for the sake of their sons, that it were. En- 
 ligiitened. liberal, good men. still complain, that Eton, Harrow, 
 Rugby, and other ]>ublic schools, want that supremacy of the 
 Christian influence, without which the sons of the educated classes 
 will lie oi)en to the inroads of infidelity. 
 
 0.s.ford and Cambridge rise up before the mind at once, in pro- 
 cee I ng to notice tlie universities of England. With these vene- 
 rab' seats of learning, are associated some of the greatest names 
 that have adorned tiie British senate and the British churches, 
 and tbat have given our country a world-wide renown for its 
 brilliant literature and scientific achievements. Here the scions 
 of our nobility are tauglit, and receive, in a great measuft, their 
 mental moulding. Aiul here, as the schools of the prophets, the 
 youth of every rank, destined to fill the jjulpits of the English 
 
 * Evnnarflirnl riiriatenrlom, vol. vi. p. 9-1. 
 + Stanley's Life and Correspondence of Arnold, vol. ii. 
 
THE SCHOOLS, 289 
 
 Establishment, imbibe, for the most part, those principles which 
 tliey are henceforth to disseminate over the length and breadth of 
 the land. The great influence of the teaching of these schools on 
 tlie English mind, from the peer down to the peasant, is obvious. 
 It is true that their power, for good or evil, is not so great as when 
 they furnished nearly all the instruction that Avas given td^he 
 educated youth of our country. =- The Nonconformists, who are 
 excluded by statute from these old universities, have their aca- 
 demic institutions in considerable numbers and efficiency, and 
 presided over by men, many of whom would adom the chairs of 
 Oxford or Cambridge. But as the mountains rise above the hills, 
 so are these two ancient seats of learning among the more modern 
 schools that possess the land. They are still entitled to tlieir old 
 distinctive a])pellation — the eyes of England, however mucL these 
 eyes need to be purged. 
 
 It is not of their ancient glory, but of their recent influence, and 
 that especially in its bearing on our common Scriptural Chris- 
 tianity, that we speak: And truth demands the statement that these 
 two schools, which once, as Thomas Fuller, in his filial regard, 
 says, " became the fruitful nurseries of Protestant worthies, to the 
 envy and admiration of all Christendom,"-}- have, of late, to a great 
 extent, proved the hot-beds of Komanism and of an infidel senti- 
 mentalism. Sir W. Hamilton has said, "the nearest approxima- 
 tion to the learned freedom of the German divines, and the most 
 enthusiastic encomiasts of their writings, have been found among 
 the English clergy, and in that clergy, among the teachers and 
 dignitaries of the English universities."! These twp enemies — 
 rationalism and semi-Popery — have been, and still are, the besetting 
 dangers of the English clergy, and no wonder, considering the coun- 
 tenance they have received in the high places of learning. Men in 
 the situations, and v/ith the authority of Lloyd and Marsh, (the for- 
 mer many years ago professor of Hebrew in Cambridge, the latter 
 late Margaret professor of divinity in the same university.) endea- 
 voured to promote the study of Eichhorn and his school among 
 the academic youth. Great has been the joy in the Vatican at 
 Oxford tendencies, and the chiefs of " our Lord, the Pope," did not 
 fail to repair to the banks of the Isis to express it. " Most sincerely 
 and unafl'ectedly," said the " Catholic Magazine," a few years ago, 
 '' do we tender our congratulations to our brethren of Oxford, that 
 
 * The Oxford Coniniission TJeport estimates the number of students actually 
 resident in Oxford at the present time to be about 1,300 ; whicli is a gieater niuu- 
 ber than at any time in the last two centuries. The number of studf nts at Cam- 
 bridge is greater. Mr. Hallam remarks (Europe during the Middle Ages, vid. iii. 
 p. 526) that " at Oxford under Henry III., it is said that there were 30,000 
 scholars ; an exaggeration wnich seems to imply that the real number was very 
 great." 
 
 + Fuller's Histoi7 of the University of Cambridge. 
 
 J Sii- W, Hamilton's Discussions, pp. 507, 5C8. 
 
 T3 
 
290 THE SCHOOLS. 
 
 their eyes have been opened to the evils of ])nvate judgment, and 
 the consequent necessity of curbing its multiform extravagance." 
 The quaint historian of the University of Cambridge, tells of a 
 grave divine preaching before the university, at St. Mary's, more 
 than two centuries ago, who had this " smart passage" in his ser- 
 mo#: " That, as at the Olympian games he was counted the con- 
 queror who could drive his chariot wheels nearest the mark, yet so 
 as not to hinder his running, or to stick thereon, 
 
 metaque fervidis 
 
 ETitata rotis; 
 
 so be who in his sermons could preach near popery, and yet no 
 popery, ' there was your man.' " This, Dr. Fuller follows up by a 
 remark applicable to our own time: "It now began to be the 
 general complaint of most moderate men, that many in the uni- 
 versity, both in the schools and pulpits, approached the opinions 
 of the church of Rome nearer than ever before." Many of our 
 modern university charioteers have been running a like course. 
 Not a few, however, have driven the chariot wheels up to the 
 mark, and have stuck thereon. Open desertions to the chiu'ch of 
 Rome, the result for the most part of luiiversity teaching, have 
 taken place ; and, as one of her distinguished evangelical ministers 
 has recently said, "enough remain behind, tainted with the same 
 principles, and imbued with the same doctrines, to make the Church 
 of England like a camp divided against itself, where two parties, 
 representing the Middle Age and the Reformation, ai-e in open and 
 almost deadly hostility one to the other." -i= 
 
 The English Universities, as regards pecuniary endowments, are 
 the wealthiest in Europe; but, in contrast with this, is their 
 inefficiency in advancing the cause of an enlarged and healthy 
 education. They have, in this respect, come to be looked upon 
 rather as counteractives; than as auxiliaries. The physical 
 sciences at Oxford have long been in a depressed condition. The 
 Tutorial system has absorbed the Professorial. Distinguished 
 professors of astronomy, geology, and other branches of physical 
 science, can scarcely form a class. But the crying evil is the want 
 of efficient theological training. It is as a school of sacred learning 
 — a chief avenue to the ministry of the Established Church — that 
 Oxford is to be regarded ; and vrith ample means for theological 
 teaching — the theological chairs being the best endowed in the 
 University — theology itself, as was shown in the evidence before 
 the University Commission, is there at a low ebb. "No efficient 
 means," says the invaluable report, " at present exist in the Uni- 
 versity for' training candidates for holy orders in those studies 
 which belong peculiarly to their profession. . . The University 
 
 * The Religions Condition of Chnstendom, p. 149. 
 
THE SCHOOLS. 291 
 
 must be to blame if tbeological studies languish. Few of the 
 clergy apply themselves in earnest to the study of Hebrew. Eccle- 
 siastical History, some detached portions excepted, is unknown to 
 the great majority. The history of doctrines has scarcely been 
 treated in this country. It may be safely stated, that the epistles 
 of St. Paul have not 'been studied critically by the great bulk of 
 those in Orders."=:= The theology, which has found favour at the 
 Alma Mater of Laud and Sacheverel, is patristic rather than 
 Biblical. The spirit of the Reformation has all along had to 
 struggle there with the evil genius of a modified popery. Oxford, 
 more than ever, has become the great school of a corrupt theology. 
 It is this theology that we rank among the anti-Christian systems 
 of the age ; and Oxford, the seat of its strength, we look upon as 
 having gained an unenviable distinction among British schools, 
 in doing service on the side of evil. 
 
 We need not enter into any minute details of the Tractarian 
 heresy. It is not a system shrouded in mystery. The Oxford 
 writers have fully enunciated it in tract after tract. Their disciples 
 
 Promulgate it week after week from many of the pul])its of the land, 
 t has been battled with both by great men and small. The goodly 
 octavo volume, the brilliant review, the little pamphlet, have ex- 
 posed this great foe of Scriptural Christianity, driven it crest-fallen 
 from the pre-eminence to which it was aspiring in literature; if 
 not, in other respects, having checked its march. It is a corrupt- 
 ing and destructive bastard in the church of the Reformation — a 
 system of spiritual despotism, of awful delusion, tending to under- 
 mine the very foundations of evangelical truth, and social morality. 
 The spirit of her Reformers frowns upon it. It gives the lie to her 
 doctrinal articles, and is much more to be dreaded than an avowed 
 infidel enemy. It may have been one of the forms of reaction 
 against the materialism of the age, but compared with the spiritual 
 Christianity of the New Testament, it is gross materialism itself. 
 It may have originated in a reviving earnestness, and, as the 
 author of the ' Nemesis of Faith' declares, " in a desire of the 
 church to win back the love of her children, to draw them from 
 doing to praying, from early hours in the office, or in the field, 
 to matins and daily service."! But, like every form of corrupt 
 Christianity, it is likely to foster infidelity under its ecclesiastical 
 pageantry, and provoke the spiiit of an infidel reaction against the 
 despotism which it imposes. 
 
 Such is the influence exerted by the Oxford school. From the 
 bosom of this university, have gone forth large numbers of the guides 
 and teachers of the people, impregnated with a set of religious 
 principles alike opposed to the church under whose shadow thty 
 abide, and destructive of that Gospel whose ministers they profess 
 
 * Oxford Commission ■Report, p. 71 (1852). 
 + Nemesis of Faith, p. 154. 
 
 u 2 
 
292 THE SCHOOLS. 
 
 to be. This anti-scriptural influence is brought to bear r/eek after 
 week, and day after day, on many of the schools and churches in 
 our English towns and rural parishes. Nor is the heart of the eAdI 
 less active in its movements than it was, now that the excitement 
 of the first battle is past. " A voice from Oxford," whose witness 
 is true, has said, " Many seem to think that the influence of the 
 Romanizing party in the University is on the decline, and that 
 their doctrines have fallen into disrepute ; but it is far otherwise. 
 Open aggression, on their part, may not be so rife as during the 
 publication of the Tracts for the Times ; but their action is 
 perhaps more vigorous tlian ever, and their quiescence only appar- 
 ent. A great portion of the young clergy, and of those looking 
 forward to holy Orders, while professedly deriving healthful 
 nourishment from their Alma Mater, drink in the poisonous 
 heresy ; and, when scattered over the length and breadth of the 
 land, it is not to be expected that they will be inactive or indiffer- 
 ent to the propagation of those Romish doctrines and principles 
 with which they have been impregnated." 
 
 It is a significant fact, and tells on what side oiu* old English 
 universities are doing service, that within a short period, about a 
 hundred members of Oxford and fifty of Cambridge have passed 
 over to the Romish communion. The great modern satirist has 
 said, " according to the ancient proverb, ' every road leads to Rome,' 
 but the nearest way is the Tracts through Oxford." " Newmanism," 
 said Dr Arnold, when the water was just letting out, " Newman- 
 ism, I suppose, will grow and grow, till it provokes a reaction of 
 infidelity." The reaction has begun. The house has been divided 
 against itself. In the brothers Newman, not to mention others, 
 we see the double workings of the system. A large and increasing 
 party has shot over to Rome; a smaller, but still an increasing, 
 party has been drifted on till they landed in unbelief. The evil 
 is great. Oxford is giving to our country, and sending abroad, 
 the religion of man for the religion of God. And whatever glory 
 from the past may encircle her, she now occupies the bad pre-emi- 
 nence among British schools, in corrupting the truth of Christ. 
 
 The educational institutions in the northern part of the island, 
 whatever may be their imperfections otherwise, are not chargeable, 
 in our day at least, of exerting any direct influence tliat is 
 adverse to Bible Christianity. Scotland as a nation, has long oc- 
 cupied a proud position among the other civilized nations of the 
 world, for the religious intelligence of her people. This doubtless 
 has been partly owing to her parish schools, which, bowever sec- 
 tarian now in their character, and needing to be adapted to the 
 wants of the age, have been, in some measure, the means of ground- 
 ing her youth in scriptural knowledge to an extent which strikingly 
 contrasts with the southern division of the country. Scotland lias 
 liad her systems of rank scepticism and infidelity, which have told 
 
THE SCHOOL?. H'Jo 
 
 for evil far beyoud her own land, and throughout generations ; 
 but these have, generally, been found without the pale of her high 
 seats of learning, and, in her famed schools, have met with their 
 stoutest antagonists. 
 
 But our northern universities cannot be altogether exempted 
 from the charge of having done some service on the wrong side. 
 Their moral philosophies, like tlie moral philosophies of the age 
 in general, have too much ignored Christianity as a remedial system, 
 if they have not placed themselves in antagonism to it. And wo 
 cannot but regard it as a disastrous thing, that the lessons of the 
 moraf teacher, if not given from under the shadow of the cross, 
 should fail to point the way to it. The great sin of them all, as 
 has often been noticed, has been the want of a distinct recognition 
 of human depravity ; and in failing to conduct their disciples to 
 such a turn at the end of tlie road, as that on looking up they 
 might at once see the finger-post tliat points to the faith and hope 
 of "the Gospel. The theological chiiirs, both in the endowed and 
 unendowed schools, have often felt it necessary, in their prelections, 
 to counteract the influence of such adverse teaching, instead of 
 being free to treat at once of the grand reiuedy, the way to which 
 should at least have been indicated by the moral prelections. The 
 ethical chairs of some of our Scottish schools, have been filled by 
 men of a more than European reputation ; but in their systems, 
 generally, ethics have been very mucli divorced from Christianity, 
 and attempts have been made to build up and complete the one 
 without the other. 
 
 But this is not all. It is matter of fact that, at the close of last 
 century, and at the beginning of the present, the period when a 
 baptized pagan philosophy held place in our Scottish schools, an- 
 appalling deadness had, to a considerable extent, crept over the- 
 church establishment. A cold inoperative morality was substi- 
 tuted for the spirit and life of the Gospel. Gross heresies were 
 winked at, or softly admonished, by the supreme ecclesiastical 
 judicatories. Men held an orthodox creed in their hands which 
 they had solemnly vowed to exhibit, while doctrines dropped ft-om 
 their lips which tended to destroy or cast it aside. The state of 
 the universities at tliat period is made known by one who speaks- 
 from personal experience. Dr. Chahners, speaking of the oldest 
 of these venerable seats of learning, says, " St. Andrew's was, at 
 this time (end of last century), overrun with Moderatism, under 
 the cliilling influences of which we inhaled, not a distaste only, 
 but a positive contempt for all that is properly and peculiarly 
 gos]iel; insomuch that our confidence was nearly as entire in the 
 sufficiency of natural theology, as in the sufficiency of natiu'al 
 science." The biographer of the great and good man remarks, 
 that from this religious lapse into which he had been seduced at 
 his Alma Mater, '• it needed many years, and other than human 
 
294 THE SCHOOLS. 
 
 influences to recall liim.">:= This case, of itself, shows the moral 
 power which a university exerts on young and ardent minds, filled 
 with enthusiasm for its studies and charmed with its associations; 
 and leaves us to imagine how many who have sat under the 
 shadow of such seats of learning, may have imhibed a similar 
 disrelish for spiritual Christianity; and hoAV wide-spread it maj 
 have been, and how disastrous its influence, if not overcome hj 
 another and a mightier influence than human. We are not for- 
 getful, however, of the greater agency of our Scottish schools for 
 good, while we make mention of their agency, especially in the 
 past, for evil. Nor can we forbear adverting to the fact that the 
 logical and metaphysical chair of Edinburgh is. at the present day, 
 filled by the most distinguished philosopher of the age, and that 
 his philosophy is at once profound and healthy, counteractive of 
 scepticism and subservient to truth. 
 
 But let us turn to Continental Europe. There infidelity, in its 
 many forms, comes more broadly and palpably before our view ; 
 and there the influence of the schools is more powerfully exerted 
 on the side of it. In every thing relating to language, science, 
 and art, the educational institutions of France might be said to be 
 almost perfect. These departments, with their full complement of 
 sections, leave nothing wanting, viewed merely as a great system 
 of human knowledge. But the wisdom that cometh from above 
 has little or no part in it, Christianity, as a remedial economy, is 
 either disowned by French philosophy, or the theological faculty, 
 which should represent it, is dedicated not to the pure and un- 
 defiled. but to the corrupt form. Philosophy, in the schools of 
 France, has been allied either with a gross materialism or a proud 
 spiritualism ; and, in either case, has had an influence adverse to 
 the truth of God. During the latter half of last century, and the 
 early part of the present, an infidel sensationalism sat in the high 
 places of learning and gave forth its oracles. This became the 
 predominant doctrine in France; and from it Voltaire and the 
 Encyclopaedists deduced those gross infidel principles which deso- 
 lated the land. For the last twenty-five years. Cousin, the eloqnent 
 "apostle of Rationalism in France," and others of the Eclectic 
 school, have been inculcating, in the Ecole Normale, at Paris, a 
 system much more favourable to pantheism than to the Christian 
 revelation ; and have raised up not a few instructors to dissemi- 
 nate the same throughout the country. The Jesuits in France, at 
 the present day, are striving to get the schools of every grade 
 completely under their control. Government, by its concessions 
 to the clerical power, has opened the door to them. Ultramon- 
 tanism is in the ascendant. The university has become subser- 
 vient to Romanism. Protestant schools, in consequence of 
 
 * Hanna's Life of Chalmers, vol. i. p. 15. 
 
THE SCHOOLS. 295 
 
 Piomish interference, have to struggle with a load of difficulties ; 
 while the educational institutions in general, and the village 
 schools especially, are wielded for advancing a corrupt religious 
 system, which in turn provokes a reaction in favour of infidelity. 
 
 In Germany, the university life is seen to be all-important, and 
 the teaching of the professors to be greatly influential. The gi-eat 
 religious movements that have ever and anon blessed the German 
 fatherland, are to be traced up to the seats of learning. It was so 
 in the past, and it is so at the present day. But if the German 
 schools have the credit of those revivals that have been as streams 
 in the desert*, they have also the unenviable renown of having 
 been the chief agencies in sending abroad that amount of infi- 
 delity which has desolated both the church and the state. It is an 
 unquestionable fact that, at the beginning of the present centuiy, 
 the schools of every grade were, almost without exception, under 
 the influence of men whose opinions were adverse to Scriptural 
 Christianity. Eationalistic teachers presided over the elementary 
 schools. There the truth, as it is in Jesus, was gradually under- 
 mined. The German youth imbibed infidelity with their earliest 
 lessons, and hence the readiness of the adult population to abjure 
 the very symbols of the Christian faith. Tholuck tells us that, 
 even in boyhood, infidelity had forced its way into his heart, and 
 that at the age of twelve he was wont to scoff at Christianity 
 And how decided must have been the infidel spirit that pervaded 
 the schools, when it happened not only that his unbelief strength- 
 ened during his stay at the Gymnasium, but that, on leaving it, 
 he was suffered to maintain, in an oration, the superiority of 
 Mahomedanism to Christianity. This case is somewhat solitary 
 only on account of the illustrious name associated with it. Thou- 
 sands, unknown to fame, who have lived and died infidels, could 
 Lave pointed to the lower and higher schools as the agencies of 
 their unbelief. And, at the present day, in which infidelity is still 
 so prevalent, if the faithful men in Germany are asked to account 
 for such a general abandonment of the faith by the male popula- 
 tion, they at once refer, among other agencies, to the infidel influ- 
 ences of the schools. Many of the schoolmasters in the country 
 parishes, and the higher teachers in the gjmmasia, are decided 
 rationalists, who, though undfer the necessity of using the Bible, 
 accompany their teachings with such comments as tend to make 
 their scholars avowed unbelievers. Institutions, designed to instil 
 into the minds of youth the principles of Christian truth, have 
 thus, in a great measure, become nurseries of the most withering 
 scepticism f . 
 
 * e. g. Wittemberg prorlucecl the Refonnation ; Halle, under Francke's influ- 
 ence, i)f came a source of life to the German churches. 
 
 + " Pedagopf^'," say3 Dr. Krummacher, " in respect to evangelical faith, has not 
 kept pace with theology; on the contrary-, the rationalist maxims of Dinter and 
 Diesterweg continue to prevail ia most of the elementary schools. . . . The people 
 
29'J THE SCHOOLS. 
 
 The uuiversities also, aboatthe heginning of the present centiirj, 
 and till within the last few years {in wliich a decided change has 
 taken place, especially in the theological faculty), were almost en- 
 tirely exerting the same evil influence. In a former part of this 
 essay, we have spoken of the hitter fruits which the German 
 speculative philosophy has borne in the field of German theolog3^ 
 It is to an extreme philosophical influence, we have seen, that all 
 the rationalistic and pantheistic views, which have been developed 
 by the German theologians, are to be ascribed. Tliat influence 
 has had its chief seat in the universities. Hegel, whose philosophy 
 destro3'ed the personality of God, and included in its sweep of 
 necessary development, the whole Christian doctrine, occupied for 
 many years an influential position in the imiversity of Berlin. 
 Here he developed to a number of admiring pupils that system 
 which, being carried into the province of theology, has swept away 
 a historical Christianity. He supplied from his armoury the 
 weapons which such daring men as Strauss, Feuerbach, and Bruno 
 Bauer, have wielded on the side of the most determined unbelief. 
 The success which attended his lectures is said to have been great, 
 and their influence has told disastrously on the German churches 
 and people. 
 
 While Berlin was thus fostering and sending forth a pantheistic 
 philosophy, Halle, the first theological university in the land, was 
 occupied by neological professors. Y\^egscheider was propounding 
 to the future ministers of the church the lowest rationalism, and 
 Gesenius, the corypheus of Hebrew literature, was stripping the 
 Old Testament of its divine glory."= Heidelberg, Gottingen, Jena, 
 and other universities, were lending their influence to the same 
 side of avowed hostility to spiritual Christianity. The celebrated 
 rationalistic professor. Dr. Paulus, was the presiding mind over the 
 first of these seats of learning. A large number of the pulpits 
 throughout the land were occupied by his disciples. From the 
 chair he had gone on, for years, expounding to them, or rather 
 explaining away, the marvellous facts of the New Testament. The 
 Gospels, in his hands, lost all their miraculous character, and the 
 
 in general are continually nourished with the milk of the old false enlightening, 
 and robbed in the school-room of that good which they perhaps receive m the 
 catechumen instruction. The teachers of the higher schools, particularly of the 
 grammar-schools, are, for the most part, either addicted to pantheistic philosophy, 
 or altogetlier indifferent to religion, and fully satisfied with the ideas of their 
 Socrates and Plato." — The Relif/ious Condition of Chrisipndom, p. 428-9. (18-52.) 
 
 * Dr. Uobinson, who attended Gesenius' lectures in the winter of 1829-30, says: 
 "Halle is the favourite resort of almost all the followers of rationalism, who, at 
 the present day, constitute a very large class among the theological students. . . 
 Eationalism, through the exertions of Wegscheider, the countenance of Gesenius, 
 and the indiffe--ence of Niemever, had obtained firm footing, and seduced the 
 understandings of the great bodv of the students." As an instance of the influence 
 of Gesenius, it is stated that when he began his course on Genesis, which he 
 treated a<^ a mere collection of myths or fables, he had only fourteen hearers, hut 
 at the period referred to he was addr'^ssing five hundred.— Robiiison's Concise 
 View oj' Ike German Uniccrsiiics, ^-c. p. 2(3, 36, &c. 
 
THE SCHOOLS. 207 
 
 mighty works of the great teacher sent from God were accounted 
 for on purely natural principles. The influence of this one j^ro- 
 fessor, in strengthening and extending infidelity within the church, 
 was very great. He is reputed to have been the chief agent in 
 propagating unbelief throughout Baden and the Avhole palatinate 
 of the Khine. A number of such men of learning and influence 
 scattered throughout the colleges and seminaries of Germany, and 
 employed incessantly in instilling into the minds of the future 
 teachers of the people principles involving the denial of all that 
 is supernatural in Christianity, must have contributed much of 
 that infidelity which twenty or thirty years ago deluged the land, 
 and which covers nnich of the country still. 
 
 Berlin and Halle have, for some yeai's, possessed a strong evan- 
 gelical element, counteractive of the low rationalism that once 
 reigned almost alone. And this illustrates the powerful influence 
 which a professor in Germany has over the minds of his disciples, 
 and the great responsibility of the government in filling up the 
 chau's. Neander, — the great, the good, the loved Neander — who 
 was but lately at the head of the theologi cal faculty in Berlin, and 
 who for long had to battle, almost single-handed, with a dominant 
 rationalism, has beeu instrumental in raising up a noble band of 
 men, valiant in the good fight, who, with himself, have lifted up a 
 standard, and in some measure driven back the flood of the enemy. 
 Tholuck, whose hallowed zeal is very much the effect of Neander's 
 influence, is, as a son, doing at Halle, what his spiritual father 
 had long been doing at Berlin. The influence on the side of 
 Scriptural truth of such a noble corps of university teachers as 
 Neander, Hengstenberg, Midler, Tholuck, and others, has told, 
 and is telling, powerfully for good on the churches and schools of 
 Germany. But what a vast amount of low rationalism and in- 
 different'ism have they had to strive against, a considerable portion 
 of which must be laid at the door of the universities and other 
 schools. =;' 
 
 Holland also has been renovv-ned for its seats of learning. Sir 
 
 * Tlioluck, speakinfT recently of the universities, said : " If Ave look back to the 
 time a little before the liberation of Germany from the Frpnch yoke, with the 
 exception of Wurtember^', we may say that there were, perhaps, amongst all the 
 rest of the teachers of divinity, not more than three or four that may be called 
 evangelical. . . The University of Halle— that very university which lias, in two 
 memorable periods of our ecclesiastical history, decided, as it were, the faith of 
 the Protestant religion in our country, and which numbered during a long period 
 no less than 900 pupils of divinity— lay entirely in the darkness of Socinianism 
 and Unitarianism ; aTid only one voice— it was a timid one, but yet a candid one 
 — was lifted up nmong the professors " He here refersto Professor Kuapp, who, 
 in a letter to a friend.inqniring about the state of vital Christianity among the 
 large number of nearly lOTOdiviniiy students, replied that he had only known one 
 f-tudent whom he co isidered to bo ureal Christian, and thit he came from the 
 Moravians. It is cheering to hear fn nr Tholu'dt, who twenty-four vears before 
 had to tell nothing but sr.d tidings in England, that a glorious change has taken 
 place in tl;e German ui iversities, and chieflv in Hulle.— See " The Religious 
 Condition of Christendom," p. 431-3 '1(^5?,) 
 
298 THE SCHOOLS. 
 
 W. Hamilton says of Leyden. the oldest of them, she " has been 
 sm-passed by many other universities, in the emoluments and in 
 the nmnber^of her chairs, but has been equalled by none in the 
 aver;ige eminence of her professors. Of these, the obscurer names 
 ■would be luminaries in many other schools ; and from the circle 
 of her twelve professors, and in an existence of two hundred years, 
 she can select a more numerous company of a higher erudition 
 than can be found among the public teachers of any other semi- 
 nary in the world. '"=i- Affording, as Holland once did, a refuge to 
 our persecuted nonconforming forefathers, its schools were much 
 resorted to by many of our English and Scottish students. Ley- 
 den. at the beginning of last century, was famed as a school of 
 Christian theology. John a Mark and Wesselius, whose teaching 
 exerted a hallowing influence on the Dutch Reformed Church, 
 adorned its chairs. But at the beginning of the present century, 
 it happened with the schools of Holland as with the schools of 
 Germany. Rationalism attained to the dominion within their 
 walls. Neological professors sent forth a deformed and powerless 
 Christianity from the chairs of Leyden, Groningen, and Utrecht. 
 And we see much of their influence in the low state of religion 
 throughout the land, and in the torpor that has, in a great mea- 
 sure, crept over the church. There are, however, hopeful indica- 
 tions of a re-awakening of the religious life in Holland. The Gos- 
 pel is progressing among all classes. But the true Protestant 
 faith has still to struggle with an infidel theology as taught in the 
 universities, especially those of Groningen and Leyden. 
 
 Geneva, one of the lights of the world, shows also the powerful 
 agency exerted by a theological school. Three centuries ago, Cal- 
 vin founded that celebrated academy in which he and Beza taught, 
 and from which was carried that sacred fire which is now burning 
 brightly on the altars of other lands. But at the end of last cen- 
 tury and the beginning of the present, wdien the adversaries of the 
 truth almost everywhere lengthened their cords and strengthened 
 their stakes, a unitarian rationalism enthroned itself in the sacred 
 place, and held dominion over the church and state of Geneva. 
 From this school, where the illustrious reformer set up the lamp 
 of heavenly truth that shone to the ends of the civilized world, 
 proceeded pastors and teachers to fill the pulpits of the Genevese 
 church, who had been taught doctrines opposed alike to the Refor- 
 mation and the t)-uth of Scripture. D'Aubigne, G.aussen, Malan, 
 and other noble men who are doin<7 valiantly in the war against 
 pernicious error and on the side of Scriptural Clu-istianity, sat at 
 the feet of a divinity professor who, in a great measure, substituted 
 heathen morality for Bible truth, and preferred Seneca and Plato 
 as oracles, to such authorities as John the Evangelist and the 
 
 * Sii- W. Hamilton's Discussions, p. 364. 
 
THE SCHOOLS. 299 
 
 Apostle Paul.* The excellent Haldane, on Lis arrival in Geneva 
 in the year 1816,fonnd the students deeply sunk in Socinian theo- 
 logy; and among them were such men as D'Aubigne and Adolph 
 Monod, whom he was instrumental in leading to the trutli. The 
 city of Calvin has had for some years in such men as tlie author 
 of the History of the Eeformation, and the author of Theopneustia, 
 a theological school worthy of the great reformer, and second to 
 none in the world for talent and piety. It is there, as Dr. Cheever 
 remarks, " that D'Aubigne first utters some of those voices of truth 
 and freedom — those declarations of independence which afterwards 
 go echoing through the world."f These few, but noble-spiri:ed 
 and truly great reformers of the nineteenth century, placed as they 
 are between unitarian rationalism on the one hand and despotic 
 Jesuitism on tlie other, are doing good service, by means of their 
 theological institute, to Christ's cause in Geneva and in other parts 
 of the Continent. But, as regards numerical strength, they are 
 like Gideon and his three hundred men opposed to the Midianites. 
 The Lord, however, is with them, and is saying unto them, " Go in 
 this your might, and ye shall save Israel from the hand of the Mi- 
 dianites: have not I sent you?" This relieves the gloom, but it 
 is still dense and disastrous. Socinianism, having long held its 
 place in the Academy and the Church, aud being supported by 
 the secular arm, has left the way open for a reviving Romanism, or 
 for the doctrines of Strauss. It is from this rationalistic school 
 too, be it observed, that the French Protestant churches have 
 chiefly derived those pastors who must be numbered among the 
 rationalists and latitudinarians whose influence is adverse to spi- 
 ritual Christianity. Geneva is justly regarded as one of the most 
 important centres of influence for e'xtending Christianity on the 
 Continent. But if we look to the New Academy as an eflectlve 
 agency in diffusing around and abroad the light of the Gospel, we 
 
 * M. Bost, who in 1817 becanje one of the pastors of the Evaupelical Dissenting 
 Church then formed, thus describes the course of instruction through which the 
 students at the College of Geneva had to pass. He is writing in 1825: " For more 
 than thirty years, the ministers who have gone out of our schools of theology to 
 serve either the churches of our own land, or those of France and other foreign 
 countries, have not received one shigle Icchire on the truths which exclusively 
 belong to revelation, such as the redemption of mankind by the death of Christ, 
 the justification of the sinner by lailh, the corruption of our nature, the divinity 
 of our Saviour, &c. In theology we were taught nothing but what are called the 
 dogmas of natural religion. The extent to which this practical incredulity was 
 carried, is clear from the fact— elsewhere unheard of, I suspect, in the annals of 
 the Protestant churches — that excepting for a lecture in the Hebie w language, 
 when the Bible was used simply as a Hebrew book, and not for anything which it 
 contained, the word of God svas nevei' used throughout our course ; m particular, 
 the New Testament never appeared either as a language-book, or for any other pur- 
 pose ; there was no need of the New T.-stament whatever, in order to complete our 
 four years" course in theology; in other words, that book, especially in the ori- 
 ginal, was not at all among the number of books required in order to accomplish 
 the career of our studies for the sacred ministry." — See Dr. Alexandei's Switzei-- 
 land and the Snixs Churches, p. 191. 
 
 + Cheever's Wanderings, p. 34. 
 
300 THE PULPIT 
 
 ranst reckon the old as having exerted no inconsiderable power on 
 the side of rationalism and infidelity. 
 
 Our survey of the schools, in so far as they have exerted an in- 
 fluence hostile to the Gospel and favourable to infidelity, has been 
 far from complete. But it has been extensive enough to let us see 
 that they have been, and in many instances are, no mean agencies 
 informing and disseminating those many-shaped systems of un- 
 belief which, during the last sixty years or more, have been ram- 
 pant in many lands. If the fountains are polluted what must be 
 the streams ? And how great the responsibility of governments in 
 appointing men to chairs in the national schools, who, by their 
 teach in gj infuse principles into the minds of youth, that are de- 
 structive at once of loyalty to the powers of earth and of devotion 
 to the God of heaven. Were all the seats of learning in which the 
 human sciences arc taught, instrumental in guiding the minds of 
 their disciples aright, instead of, as has often been the case, 
 grievously perverting them; and were the schools which are 
 especially designed for sacred instruction, made reservoirs of the 
 pure river of the water of life, what a mighty agency for good 
 would be brought to bear upon the world. Many would then run 
 to and fro, and, in the best sense of the expression, knowledge 
 would be increased. " A Christianized university, in i-espect of 
 its professorships," says Dr. Chalmers, " would be to me a mightier 
 accession than a Christianized country, in respect of its parishes. 
 And should there be a fountain, out of which there emanated a 
 thousand rills, it would be to the source that I should carry the 
 salt of purification, and not to any of the streams which flow from 
 it."* 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PULPIT, 
 
 The Pulpit no bad critPvion —■Divides now its former influence Avith the Press — 
 Can never be superseded — Lines of Cowper — Extensively employed on the 
 side of evil — Deplorable state of the German churches — Testimonies of Urs. 
 "Wichern and Krummacher — Dishonesty of the rationalistic preachers — Fault 
 of the consistories — Evil of uniting- churches on a loose doctrinal basis — 
 Eationalism in the Protestant pulpits of Huntjary — National church of Geneva 
 — State of the Reformed Churcii of Holland — A glance at Belgium — Pulpit 
 agency in France — Ministering to old superstitious or to infidelity — The .\bbe 
 Lacordaire — Piationalism in the French Protestant church — Causes of this — 
 Stnte of the British Pulpit — IMiicb that is cheering — Ruiiiousinfluence of mere 
 moral preaching in the Establishment — Tractariauism the growing evil— Con- 
 cluding remark. 
 
 The state of the pnlpit among any people is, generally, no bad 
 criterion of the state of religion'^itself It does not indeed indicate, 
 
 * Hanna's Life of Chalmers, vol. ii. p. 376. 
 
THE PULPIT. 301 
 
 as infallibly as the thermometer, or the water-mark, the teni- 
 jieratiire of the siirroiindiiig atmosphere, or the height to which 
 the river of the water of life has risen. In some places there may- 
 be much light and heat in the pulpit, while the people to a con- 
 siderable extent may be frigid and sitting in darkness. In other 
 places, on the contrary, there may be much more vital godliness 
 among the peojjle than among tlieir teachers ; just as the lowlands 
 may be bathed in sun-ligl)t while the uplands are shrouded in 
 mists. But these cases are like exceptions to a general rule. It 
 commonly happens that where a pulj)it agency exists in any con- 
 siderable extent, as in European countries, it exerts no little in- 
 fluence on the faith and morals of the population. The continual 
 droppings from this quarter make an impression, for good or evil, 
 on the hearts of the millions that come under them. 
 
 The pulpit, at one time, was almost the only means of imparting 
 instruction to the people. Books existed only in manuscript, and 
 these were scarcely kuown beyond the walls of monasteries and 
 the libraries of the learned. i)own to the end of the middle ages, 
 the oral teacher had nothing deserving the name of a competitor. 
 During much of thut period, however, the power of the pulpit was 
 in a great measure dormant, owing to the coiTuption of the church 
 and the indolence of the clergy. At the lieformation it awoke ; 
 and, like the blast of a trumpet, startled the nations. And from 
 that time onward to the present, the pulpit, as in^ the early ages of 
 the Christian church, has wielded an extensive influence over the 
 minds of men. Ever since the invention of printing, it has ])ad 
 a rival in the press. The rivalry in a great measure and for long, 
 has been a salutary one. Both agencies have done mighty service 
 to the world, in disseminating that truth v»lierewith men are made 
 free. The press, within a few years, owing to the removal of 
 restrictions that crippled its energies, has made rapid strides, and 
 is, at the present moment, perhaps, the most powerful agent for 
 good or evil that is brought to bear on the minds of men. The 
 pulpit, it cannot be denied, has lost something of its influence. At 
 least as an agent in moulding and controlling the minds of the 
 people, it nuist divide, with the advancing press, the influence 
 which it once exerted alone. 
 
 But the pid])it can never be superseded. It is pjre eminently 
 heaven's instrumentality in operating on men's minds and hearts, 
 " It hath pleased God by the foolishness of preaching," or by what 
 worldly men count foolishness, " to save them that believe." Eeli- 
 gious truth has hitherto been propagated ma'i;ly by a pulpit 
 agency, and so will it continue to be. By this the battles of the 
 Lord must be fought, darkness and error driven back, and the 
 "kingdom not of this world" extended. Men, in general, are 
 iriach more influenced by what they hear than by what they read. 
 The living voice of the preacher is better fitted to excite attention 
 
302 THE PULPJT. 
 
 to divine things, to awaken an interest in them, and to impress 
 them on the mind, than the press. 
 
 " the pulpit (in the sober use 
 
 Of its legitimate, peculiar powers) 
 Must stand acknowledged, while the world shall stand, 
 The most important and efiFectual guard, 
 Support, and ornament of virtue's cause. 
 There stands the messenger of truth : there stands 
 The legate of the skies ! — His theme divine, 
 Bis office sacred, his ci-edentials clear. 
 By hun the violated law speaks out 
 Its thunders ; and by him, in strains as sweet 
 As angels use, the gospel whispers peace. 
 He stablishes the strong, restores the weak, 
 Eeclaims the wanderer, binds the broken heart, 
 And, arm'd himself in panoply complete 
 * Of heavenly temper, furnishes with arms 
 
 Bright as his own, and trains, by every rule 
 
 Of holy discipline, to glorious war, 
 
 The sacramental host of God's elect ! 
 
 Are all such teachers ? — would to heaven all were ! " * 
 
 The poet drew from life. It was no mere fanciful sketch — a 
 thing to be desired, but seldom or never realized. Many a hamlet 
 and town throughout our country and other lands, can tell of such 
 a " messenger of truth," such a " legate of the skies." But all 
 are not " such teachers." " Would to heaven all were ! " — How 
 very different would be the state of the church and the world ! 
 
 The pulpit, notwithstanding its high sacredness, is extensively 
 employed, in many lands, on the side of evil. All the forms of 
 infidelity, from the grossest pantheism to the most lifeless for- 
 malism, have their abettors in the pulpit. The unbelief of the 
 schools works chiefly, by this agency, on the minds of the people. 
 If the seats of learning, where the future ministers of the church 
 are reared, be occupied by infidel teachers, it will generally hap- 
 pen that the pulpits are much on the side of infidelity. Conti- 
 nental Europe, during the last half century and more, affords sad 
 evidence of the truth of this. And notwithstanding so much of 
 the pulpit power in our own land is on the side of scriptm-al truth, 
 we see that it is also much exerted on behalf of pernicious error. 
 
 Look at Germany. There the power of the i3ulpit is seen to- 
 preponderate mightily on the side of infidelity. Nothing can be 
 more deplorable than the state of the German churches. Ea- 
 tionalism of every shape sits enthroned in the holy place. It is, 
 or has been, deeply rooted in the universities, in the lower schools, 
 and in the pulpits. Saxony, the cradle of the Eeformation, and 
 the country of Luther, has been its stronghold. Most of the old 
 pastors have sat at the feet of the rationalist chief Wegscheider, 
 and are faithful to his principles ; while multitudes of the younger, 
 who have not come under the benign influence of such men as 
 Thoiuck and Midler, belong to the extreme left of the Hegehan 
 
 ♦ Cowper's Task. 
 
THE PULPIT. 303 
 
 scliool, and acknowledge as their guides, Strauss, Bruno Bauer, 
 and such like. The light shines araid the darkness, but it is hated. 
 A fervid evangelism is to be found bearing witness against the low- 
 rationalism that has usurped its place. But pietism bears the 
 obloquy that once belonged, in our own couTitry, to Puritanism 
 and Methodism. The German churches, with some illustrious 
 exceptions, present, on a large scale, the spectacle of men shel- 
 tered under an evangelical creed, but throwing out doctrines tliat 
 give the lie to it; men holding the Bible in their hand as their 
 text-book, who exalt their fallible reason above its true sayings; 
 men who rob Christ of his glory and liis word of its supreme 
 authority; men wh.o eat the church's bread, and lift up the heel 
 against her. By such a pulpit agency as this, exeited on the side 
 to which lean the depiaved tendencies of human nature, a pan- 
 theistic and rationalistic creed has made wide conquests over a 
 Scriptural Christianity, among thousands and tens of thousands 
 of all classes in Germany. 
 
 It was stated, a very few years ago, that at Dresden, in the 
 chapel of whose castle the great reformer ])reached the doctrines 
 of salvation, only one of the many Lutheran pulpits soiJfeded 
 forth the gospel of grace. In such parts as Baden, Rhenish Ba- 
 varia, and Hesse Darmstadt, the rationalistic ministers were said 
 to preponderate over the evangelical in the proportion of ten to 
 one.-i' The adage, like priest, like peo])le, is in such places strongly 
 exemplified Their religious princijiles have long been under- 
 mined by a systematic course of rationalistic preaching from the 
 pulpit. Infidelity and inditierentism, especially in large towns, 
 characterize to a learful extent all classes from the highest to the 
 lowest. Dr. Krummacher stated, very lately, that in Berlin, which 
 contains more than 400,000 persons, not more than one twentieth 
 visit the house of God. The remainder, to all appearance, being 
 the disciples of a vulgar rationalism. Thei-e are other parts, it is 
 true, such as Wurtembui'g. Old Bavaria, Westphalia, and Pome- 
 rania, where the doctrines of the Reformation have some hold of 
 the minds of the people, and where believing preachers are to be 
 found. Dr. Wichern, who is full of hope in reference to Ger- 
 many, tells of a large province containing three bundled clergy- 
 men, in which evangelical doctrine was not ])reached twenty-five 
 years ago by more tlian one or two of them, but where now two 
 hundred believing, faithful men are holding ibrth the word of life. 
 But, after reckoning up all that can be claimed for the pure Gos- 
 pel, a vast prepojiderance of discipleship and pulpit agency in the 
 German fatherland is on the side that is adverse to Scripture 
 Christianity. " In short, a popular philosophic inundation of the 
 most shallow kind, which bears nothing of true Christianity but 
 
 ♦ Evangelical Christeuclora, Dec. 1S19. 
 
o04 THE PULriT. 
 
 the assumed name, covers up to tliis day an immeasurable extent 
 of the ground of the German church." =:• 
 
 No more disastrous influence can come upon a church, and, 
 through the church, upon a country, than to admit unconverted 
 and unbeUeving men into her pulpits. It is like allowing traitors 
 to enter the army, thieves to preside at the treasury, and states- 
 men, who are bribed by foreign gold, to guide the destinies of a 
 nation. The pitiful meanness and base hypocrisy of tlie men 
 •who cling to the emoluments of a church, while their principles 
 are glaringly opposed to its creed and destructive of its influence, 
 cannot be too severely reprobated. How would it have incurred 
 the woful denunciations of Him wlio, though meek and lowly, 
 frowned upon the false and deluding guides of the people. Strauss, 
 at the end of his Lehen Jesu, after having reduced Christianity to 
 a system of myths, and thereby destroyed its historical validity, 
 claims for himself, and those who think with him, the right of 
 ministering at the altar, and preaching the Gospel, that is, the 
 right of being a Christian and an infidel at the same time. The 
 dishonesty witli w^iich he handles the evangelical histories, for- 
 bids us to expect over strict morality in discussing such questions. 
 May not the language which the God of truth addresses to certain 
 other personages, be addressed to such aspirants after two incom- 
 patible characters. " What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, 
 or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? Seeing 
 thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee."f 
 
 But our condemnation must be pronounced, also, on the autho- 
 rities with whom lies the responsibility of admitting infidel teachers 
 into the pulpits of the church. The Protestant church in Ger- 
 many, as is well known, is governed by consistories which are 
 composed partly of ecclesiastical and partly of lay members. With 
 them, generally, rests the power of deciding on the election of 
 pastors, subject indeed to the sanction of the supreme civil power. 
 In some parts, as in Prussia and Bavaria, these bodies are for the 
 most part composed of men of evangelical principles; but their 
 
 * The Religious Condition of Christendom (18.52), p. 42.3. 
 
 + Dr. Beard says: " Immediately on the appearance, in June, 1835. of the first 
 part of his " Life of Jesus," Strauss received from the Wurtemberg Council of 
 Education a formal inquiry whether he considered a position in an institution, 
 designed to prepare young men for the Christian ministry, tenable by one who 
 had put forth such views as he had published in his book. In answer, Strauss 
 endeavoured to show, that his opinions did not disqualify him for holding an 
 office in the Church, since the clergyman conceived that as an idea which the 
 people assumed as histoi-y, and that the two must be brought into accordance." 
 In the last chapter of the Lebm Jr^su, Strauss presents us with a similar piece of 
 precious morality. He says : " He who does not believe the Gospel histoiy may 
 Btill recognise the religious influence, as well as he who receives the liistory; it 
 is only a difference of form, by which the substance remains unaffected. Where- 
 fore it is discourieous to impute a lie to a minister who preaches on the resur- 
 rection of Christ; and, while he does not think this a reality as an individual, 
 sensible fact, yet holds for true tlie spectacle of the liviug process of the spirit 
 which lies therein."— i>r. Beard's " Strauss, Heijel, and their Opinions," pp. 16, 23. 
 
THE PULriT, 305 
 
 influence is not imfrequently counteracted by the dominant un- 
 godliness of the people, and the indifterentisni of the members of 
 the government. In other places again, as in the Palatinate, those 
 who have the administration of church affairs, instead of endea- 
 vouring to check the current of irreligion, would let it flow and 
 float on the bosom of it. While in other parts, among which are 
 especially signified the smaller Saxon Principalities, the consis- 
 tories are, without any other spot or wrinkle, grossly rationalistic 
 in their character.-;^ 
 
 It deserves notice, also, as bearing upon, and in some measure 
 accounting for the infidelity of the pulpits, that in Germany there 
 has been cherished, on the part of the church rulers at least, a strong 
 desire of mere external unity. The late king of Prussia aimed at 
 imiting all the Protestant churches. The Augsburg and the 
 Genevan confessions were amalgamated, about thirty years ago, 
 in Prussia, in Rhenish Bavaria, and in otlier parts of the land; 
 and out of the amalgamation, arose the United, or, as it is not very 
 correctly called, the Evangelical church. But the doctrinal basis, 
 mider this state dictatorship, was very loosely defined; and hence, 
 anfiid an external uuitbrmity, exists much doctrinal dissension. 
 The coat is one, but it is made of many colours. The right 
 of private judgment in interpreting the Lutheran symbols, has 
 been tolerated so far as to let men of the lowest rationalistic 
 views as well as the most orthodox dwell under the shadow of the 
 same church. A loose rule of faith, a wavering doctrinal standard, 
 and a latitudinarian interpretation, have thus opened a door for 
 the admission of pastors and teachers whose influence is exerted 
 against Scriptural Christianity. Be the governors of the church, 
 civil or ecclesiastical, or both ; be they independent of the state or 
 connected with it, great responsibility lies upon them in admitting 
 directly or indirectly, tmconverted and infidel men into the pulpit 
 from which should sound forth the Gospel of the grace of God. 
 And this shows the importance of no man. or body of men, having 
 anything to do with the government of Christ's house, but those 
 who are true members of the household of faith.f 
 
 * Evangelical Chnsfenclom, vol. iii. p. 362. 
 
 + Dr Robinson, speaking of the examinations to wLich candidates for the 
 pastoral office in Germany are subjected— examinations which in point of scholar- 
 ship are very testing, says : " In these examinations, rigorous and decisive as they 
 are, there is one omission which strikes our feelings with surprise and grief. 
 By this door enter all the pastors and teachers of tlie church ; of tliat church, the 
 object of which is to keep alive the pure and holy flame of the Christian religion, 
 and to extend the boundaries of Gods kingdom upon earth. But to those thus 
 entering the question is never put, whether they have any regard for this kingdom 
 of God.— The church, alas! is no longer at her own disposal, and cannot prove 'the 
 spirits of her prophets whether thpy be of God." She is but the slave of civil 
 power ; and all tliat she is at liberty to ask or know is, whether her prophets 
 are regularly appointed by the king and his ministers. Not one question is ever 
 asked as to their belief in a revelation, nor as to their personal motives in thus 
 undertaking to be the ambassadors of God to man. When the shepherds are thua 
 
 X 
 
306 THE PULPIT. 
 
 We speak not of Popisli Austria, whose pulpit agency, like that 
 of all countries enslaved by Rome, is on the side of tlie corruptions 
 of Christianity, and thus hostile to the pure gospel of Christ. But 
 we advert to Hungary, that interesting land under Austrian rule, 
 whose political struggles and religious condition have, of late years, 
 drawn forth the sympathies of the lovers of civil and religious 
 freedom. The Hungarian Protestant church flourished both in 
 numerical and spiritual vigour for some time after the Eeformation, 
 and her pulpit agency was a blessing to the country. But the 
 persecutions of last century, and the rationalism of later times, 
 have corrupted her principles and prostrated her strength. This 
 Protestant church reckons up about four millions of members at the 
 present day. Almost all their ministers, however, are rationalists, 
 having been educated in rationalistic academies, not in Hungary, 
 but in otlier parts of the Continent. The consequence of infidelity 
 and lukewarmness among the ministers, has been infidelity and a 
 wide-spreading degeneracy among the flocks. The pulpit agency 
 which was once on the side of the pure Christian faith, has been 
 largely employed on the side of unbelief A few faithful men in 
 Hungary are endeavoimng to build up the walls of their Jerusalem, 
 and bring the church back to her first love. Cluistiaa education 
 is occupying their attention. They are aiming at undoing the 
 evils of neological training received from abroad, by establishing 
 a sound theological faculty among themselves. And from this 
 evangelical school, in the establishment and support of which they 
 need Christian help, they design to supply faithful ministers to the 
 Protestant church of Hungary and Austria. - 
 
 There are other parts of the Continent where the agency of the 
 pulpit is not less strongly exerted on the side of infidelity, and 
 where the powers that be give that evil agency their support. 
 Look, for example, at Switzerland. In Geneva, not to mention 
 other parts where socinianism and neolog-^raiism have extensively 
 prevailed, a rationalistic unitarianism, for nearly a century, has 
 had possession of the national pulpits. It is well known that the 
 gi-eat chiefs of the French infidelity hailed the Genevese pastors 
 as allies in the work of demolishing every thing peculiarly Christian. 
 D'Alembert, in the article Geneva, in the French Encyclopedic, 
 says, " All tlie religion that many of the ministers of Geneva have 
 is a complete socinianism, rejecting everything called mystery, and 
 supposing that the first principle of a true religion is to propose 
 nothing to be received as a matter of faith which strikes against 
 
 cLoseu without any reference to their fidelity, are we to wonder that the flock 
 should go astray and become widely scattered?" — Robinson's Concise View of tlie 
 German Universities, <^-c. p. 97. 
 
 The above, written about twenty years ago, if not an exact description of mat- 
 ters still, shows, at least, on what side the pulpit agency of Germany has for long 
 been exerted. 
 
 * See Evang. Christendom, vol. iv. p. 334, and vol. v. p. 179. 
 
THE PULPIT. SOT 
 
 reason."^^ And it was significant of the leanings of the pastors 
 that some of the most iiitellectual among them were a(lmirij:ig 
 visitors of Voltaire during liis residence at Ferney. The departure 
 of the Genevese church from the doctrines of the Reformation, and 
 the occupancy of her pulpits bysocinian and deistical teachers, are 
 considered to have had no small share in bringing in that flood of 
 ungodUness and immorality vvhich, as in the case of France, at 
 last deluged the country. 
 
 Previous to the Revolution of 1846. which deprived the church 
 of her constitution, as she l)ad formerly been deprived of her 
 evangelical doctrine, tlie right of nomination to all the eccle- 
 Biastical vacancies in the canton, resided with the " Company of 
 Pastors." And it is an indisputable fact that tliey chose men of 
 rationalistic principles. ]\Jalan. Gaussen, DAubigne, and others 
 of that noble band, who, on being awakened themselves, sum- 
 moned the Genevese to the faith and hope of the Gospel, were 
 censured and severely treated for so doing by the company referred 
 to. Cheever, in his deliirhtful " Wandeiings," tells us ti)at Gaus- 
 sen mentioned, what to him was a startling fact, that out of foity 
 pastors in the national chui'ch, only tln^ee were regarded as evan- 
 geHcal. By the new constitution given to Geneva, in May, 1847, 
 an infidel radicalism has stretched its hand over the church. All 
 opinions are tolerated witliin her pale, and may have tlieir repre- 
 sentatives in her pulpits; and thougli, through this opened door, 
 evangelical doctrines may enter, as well as the most rationalistic, 
 yet the license must be more favourable to the latter tlmn to the 
 former. Every Protestant citizen who has reached the age of 
 twenty-one, be he Cln-istian or infidel, is by law a member of the 
 church, and has a right to all her privileges. The pulpit and the 
 pew, in the hands of an infidel government, to which the church 
 is subjected, are thus made agents in strengthening and propa- 
 gating socinian and rationalistic principles. " Calvin's vessel," 
 remarks D'Aubigne, " which for a century past lay half-sunken in 
 the waters, has now suddenly been enguli)hed." 
 
 If we cast oiu- eye upon HoJIaitch we see that rationalism, as in 
 the Protestant churches of Germany, there wields, in a great mea- 
 sure, the pulpit agency of the Reformed Chuvch. Those doctrines 
 which form the very marrow of the Christian creed, such as the 
 trinity, the true and proper divinity of Chiist, and his atonement 
 for human salvation, are very generally repudiated by tlie teachers 
 of the people. The infidelity of the schools is boldly enunciated 
 fi'om the pulpit. A pure fervid evangelism, as held forth by the 
 faithful in the land, is frowned u])on by those who have been or- 
 dained to preach it. The laity are even said to conti-ast favonr- 
 ahly with the clergy: the departure from the doctrines of the 
 
 * Dr. Smith's Scripture Testimony, vol. i. p. I'Jl, 
 
 X 2 
 
308 THE PULPIT. 
 
 EefonimtioD "being much more general among, the latter than 
 among the former. The Dutch people have still, to some extent, 
 a love for the doctrines of the cross, and that love is increasing 
 both among the higher and lower classes of society. Another 
 favourable sign is that the younger ministers who are commg 
 forth to occupy the pulpits, evince in a great measure, an attach- 
 ment to the old Gospel truth. But, (as one who knows the Ne- 
 therlands, and is well remembered there, has said.) the gi-eat body 
 of the clergy represented by the National Synod-seem to be still 
 decidedly unfavourable to pure evangelical religion.^:- 
 
 Belgium, the other division of the Netherlands, with the ex- 
 ception of its small number of Protestant evangelical churches, 
 and, notwithstanding its free constitution, lies under the blighting 
 influence of Popery. The pulpit agency, as in Italy and Spain, 
 in so far as it is employed, advocates man's rehgion, not God's. 
 It is on the side of superstition and materialism, and adverse to 
 spiritual Christianity. There are good grounds for believin'g that 
 not a few of the priests, disgusted with the Eomish system, have 
 become deists or infidels, but cling to the priest's office for the 
 sake of bread. " One may attend whole years on the prayers and 
 semions without ever hearing it proclaimed, ' that whoso believeth 
 on the Son hath eternal life;' or having those words of the apostle 
 repeated and developed, ' for by grace are ye saved through faith ; 
 and that not of yourselves : it is the gift of God : not of works, 
 lest any man should boast, for we are his workmanship, created in 
 Christ Jesus unto good works.' But you will hear sermons enough 
 on the authority of the Church, the excellence of the priesthood, 
 the mediation of the Virgin, the intercession of saints, purgatory, 
 confession, works of satisfaction, and indulgences,"! all of which 
 are destructive of the authority of God's word and of the per- 
 fection of Christ's work. 
 
 If we turn to France, we see that, with a few brilhant excep- 
 tions, all the existing pulpit agency is on the side of materiahsm, 
 or rationalism, or a gi'ossly corrupted Christianity. France, like 
 every other Eoman Catholic country, swanns with priests. Be- 
 sides the higher classes of ecclesiastics, wdm amount to three or 
 four thousand, there are more than thirty thousand curates scat- 
 tered throughout the country. But it is not so much by the pulpit, 
 as by imposing rites and ceremonies, that Popery influences the 
 minds of the people. The Roman Catholic church, in France, 
 has had her pulpit orators, men whose names shone like stars in 
 the seventeenth century; and, thouo^h her glory in this respect has 
 departed with the Bossuets and Massillons, she is not without 
 celebrated preachers still. But as a church, the pulpit is by no 
 
 The Religious Condition of Christendom, p. 409 ; and Evangelical Christen- 
 dom, vol. vii p. 47. 
 + The Religious Condition of Christendom, p. 347. 
 
THE PULPIT. 309 
 
 meaii£ the seat of her power. The loerformance of the mass, the 
 pomp and pageantry of her ceremonies, the readiness with which 
 she grants absolution from sin, and such like, exert the influence, 
 and more than the influence, which belongs to the pulpit in Pro- 
 testant countries. It is well known that the church of France, 
 previous to the great revolution, was filled with men of seci-et or 
 avowed infidel principles. That church, as we have seen, left the 
 peo])le in de])lorable ignorance; and must bear a considerable por- 
 tion of the guilt of those terrible excesses which stained the revo- 
 lution. At the present day, her clergy, while wondrously apt and 
 vigorous in accommodating themselves to eveiy turn of the poli- 
 tical wheel, — now blessing, in the presence of the people, trees of 
 liberty, and preaching up equality and fraternity, and anon in- 
 triguing with others to promote a reaction in favour of despotism, 
 — are doing nothing to put France in possession of faith in God. 
 They are yielding rather to the infidel spirit tliat pervades all 
 ranks; or, at best, having recourse to their old superstitious and 
 frauds; and, both by their poHtical intrigues and religious impos- 
 tures, are calling forth the demon that would destroy every tiling 
 that bears the Christian name. The Abbe Lacordaire, who is at 
 present perhaps the most popular and influential preacher in 
 France, has been wielding his pulpit power over the thousands 
 that crowd the old cathedral of Notre Dame, not on the side of 
 Scriptural Christianity, but on the side of its corruptions _He 
 has, since the last revolution, and until lately, been declaiming 
 rather on political and social questions, than exhibiting and en- 
 forcing religious truth ; flattering the national vanity of the people 
 by telling them that they are beloved of God, and will have the 
 first rank in heaven, instead of begetting in them humility, re- 
 pentance toward God, and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. In 
 so far, then, as the pulpit of the Boman Catholic church in France 
 is concerned, we have an agency that, upon the wdiole, is power- 
 less for good, and which is exerting whatever influence it pos- 
 sesses, either directly or indirectly, against spiritual Christiauiiy. 
 One red republican, pointing to the Bible, which he had been in- 
 duced to read, said to another revolutionist that had come, to dis- 
 cuss other matters, " Robert, Robert, not till that book fills the 
 empty throne of France can France be happy, "=:= Rather, would 
 v*^e say, not till the pure Gospel be enthroned in her many pulpits, 
 and she possess an extensive thoroughly Christian pulpit agency, 
 can she cease to resemble the troubled sea which cannot rest. 
 
 If from, the Roman Catholic we turn to the Protestant reformed 
 church in France, matters, considering what we expect from 
 protestantism, are far fi'om cheering. French protestantism, which 
 owed its organization to the great Calvin, flourished vigorously 
 
 * Evangelical Christeuilovn, ISIarch 1851 
 
3J0 THE PULriT. 
 
 foi a lengthened period, and exerted a happy influence on the 
 coantry. It has been calculated that, at one lime, there were in 
 France ahontfive millions of Cidvinists. forming between two and 
 three thousand churches, and that from their ]mlpits sounded forth 
 that Gospel which multitudes from all lands flocked to hear from 
 the reformer's lips. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes gave a 
 fatal blow to the protestant chuiches. dissolved their organization, 
 and dispersed the faithful. The blood of the Huguenots is still 
 upon France and upon her children. Religious liberty, a thing- 
 long unknown, was in some measure established under the con- 
 Bulate of Napoleon, but the Protestants were not free to assemble 
 as an ecclesiastical body. This right they enjoyed, amid the dissolu- 
 tion of the social frame-work that happened at the February revolu- 
 tion. And the assembly of the Protestant delegates held in Paris 
 a few years ago, indicated, in some measure, the kind of influence 
 exerted by the pulpit of the French Protestant chm'ch. That 
 there are men ot evangelical views, of devoted piety and of pulpit 
 power, among her teachers, besides the noble few who have seceded 
 and formed an independent church on the true principle of indi- 
 vidnal profession, we gladly acknowledge, but they are decidedly in 
 a minority. And what is to be thought of a church which, not 
 having met in an assembly for a very long period, shrinks, when it 
 does meet, from adverting to the state of its doctrines, and rejects, 
 almost unanimously, a proposal to place a confession of positive 
 faith at the base of its organization? The latitudinarian and the 
 orthodox repose under the same shadow, and, for the sake of pre- 
 serving an external uniformity, the utmost license in interpreting 
 Bible and symbol is conceded. This system, so widely prevalent 
 on the Continent, is well calculated to rationalize a church, and to 
 admit men of pantheistical or ueological views into her pulpits. 
 The majority of the Paris synod were unquestionably rationalistic 
 in their leanings, men adverse or indifferent to those great doctrines 
 which constitute the glory of the Pteformation. The pulpit agency 
 of the French Protestant church must, therefore, to a large extent, 
 be coinited among the agencies that are against Scriptural 
 Christianity. 
 
 Various influences have contributed to produce this result. 
 The sceptical philosophy of last century infected the minds of 
 many of the pastors. It entered into the sacred place as well as 
 ran riot in the outer courts. Numbers of the sworn servants of 
 Christ yielded to the deadly power of the reign of materialism. In 
 addition to this, the rationalistic socinianism of Geneva came over 
 nnd gradually took possession of almost all the protestant pulpits. 
 It is from the low Socinian Academy of Geneva that the greater 
 number of the preachers that minister in the French church, 
 have been obtained. Here, then, in the church of Farel and 
 Calvin and Beza — a church which should prove a check to the 
 
TUE PULPIT. 311 
 
 superstitions of Romanism on the one hand, and to the doctrines 
 of an infidel socialism on the other — we have the greater portion 
 of the pulpit agency on the wrong side. Over against that, we see 
 the few good men within her pale, and that little but increasing 
 band who bid fair to do valiantly without — taking, as they do, 
 for their motto, " No in-difFerentism, no exclusiveness." And while 
 we beseech God to send prosperity both to the one and the other, 
 the thought is depressing that the pulpit of such a church should, 
 for the most part, be of a character much more gratiljing to the 
 infidel than to the Christian. 
 
 If from this rapid glance at the state of the pulpit on the Conti- 
 nent, we fix our attention on our ow?i country, we witness much 
 more that is cheering; but here also the pulpit, to some extent, is 
 made an agent of evil. The Gospel is the glory and defence of ovn* 
 beloved land, and to its influence, more than to anything else, we 
 owe the high position that our sea-girt isle occupies among the 
 nations, and the stability of our social fabric amid the shakings of 
 principalities and powers. England and Scotland are indebted to 
 the treasure which the Reformation gave, or rather restored to 
 them, for their intellectual, moral, social, and physical prosperity. 
 In both parts of the island, we exult in thinking that there are 
 thousands of pulpits, both in the established and dissenting 
 churches, sounding forth every Sabbath, to millions of our popu- 
 lation, the genuine Gospel of the Grace of God. "We regard the 
 evangelical pulpit of Great Britain," says a writer whose judgment 
 in such matters is to be confided in,=i= " with all its faults, as pre- 
 senting to the millions of our people, a fuller and better propor- 
 tioned view of revealed truth, and of the piety which that truth 
 should produce, than has been exhibited to any generation since 
 the age of inspired teachers." But while this is gi-atefully and 
 joyfully acknowledged, it must not blind us to the existence of a 
 pulpit agency among us which is the very opposite of evangelical. 
 We refer not so much to the rationalistic preachers who are to be 
 found here and there, in a solitary state, in our large towns, and 
 whose influence is by no means very great, as to the tractarians 
 who fill, in considerable numbers, the pulpits of the Episcopal 
 Church. 
 
 It is to the praise of all the Evangelical Nonconforming churches 
 on both sides of the Tweed, that a dcpartm-e from what is generally 
 regarded as the articulus stands vet cadentis ecdesice, is followed 
 either by deposition or a forfeittu'e of communion. It must be 
 admitted, also, that the Scottish Establishment is generally much 
 more careful to guard against the admission of faithless men into 
 her pulpits, than the Establishment in England. The time was 
 ■when moderatism had the ascendency in the church of Knox, when 
 
 * Dr. Vauglian. 
 
312 THE PULPIT. 
 
 all that is peculiarly evangelical was frowned upon, and much that 
 is opposed to evangelism was winked at, when many of her pulpits 
 gave forth morality for the Gospel, and doctrines disparaging to 
 the person and work of the Redeemer. But that time happily is 
 gone ; and however much formalism and lifelessness may he seen 
 in some places, it cannot be said that in the establishment, or in 
 the several vigorous evangelical nonconforming churches by which 
 she is surrounded, there is anything deserving the name of a pul- 
 pit agency on the side adverse to spiritual Christianity. 
 
 It is otherwise, however, in the Episcopal Church of England. 
 There, it must not be forgotten, are a number of choice saintly 
 men. both in large towns and rural parishes, upon whom the mantle 
 of the apostolic band, that laboured within her during the deadness 
 of last century, seems to have fallen, and who have great sorrow 
 and heaviness of heart for the state of their Zion. It is unques- 
 tionable that, during the last fifty or sixty years, the evangelical 
 leaven has made much progress within her pale, and that the 
 number of her earnest believing preachers has greatly increased. 
 But these are just like scattered lights in a wide extent of dark 
 space. It is no slander, but the very truth, when it is asserted 
 that under the shadow of that great establishment are to be found 
 multitudes of pastors and teachers who are preaching. Sabbath 
 after Sabbath, another gospel than the gospel of Christ. IMen who 
 know not the truth, and care not a fig about it. readily get admis- 
 sion into ber pulpits. Personal conversion to God is not generally 
 inquired after, as an indispensable qualification for the ministry. 
 Such a qualification, in hundreds of cases, would be stigmatised as 
 puritanism, or raethodism, or pietism. A formal subscription to 
 the thirty-nine articles is, in such cases, the sure passport to inves- 
 titure with the sacred office. Thus multitudes of men, who know 
 not the way of salvation themselves, are constituted the spiritual 
 guides of others. It is the blind leading the blind. From the 
 ministrations of such teachers, we could glean little more of the 
 gospel of Christ, than from the pages of Seneca or Epictetus. A 
 cold prudential morality is substituted for the truth as it is in 
 Jesus, that truth in the belief of which the sinner is justified, sanc- 
 tified, and saved. This is an agency at once adverse to Scriptural 
 Christianity and ruinous to men's sords. 
 
 But this'^is not all. Tractarianism is the growing evil. It may 
 be resolved, as we have said, into a reaction against the material- 
 ism that had crept over the church, but it is not less fatal to the 
 spiritual Christianity of the New Testament. It is not merely the 
 preaching of a lifeless morality that makes the pulpit an agency in 
 deluding and destroying men, but the inculcation of doctrines 
 that are in open conflict Avith the great Scri})tural principles of the 
 Eefoimation. Tbe last few years have shown a wide-spread defec- 
 tion in this direction on the part of the ordained instructors of the 
 
THE PULPIT, 313 
 
 people. " Those men at Oxford," said Dr. Arnold, on the first 
 appearance of the Tracts, " 1 necessarily shrink from them when 
 I see them laboiu'ing so incessantly, though 1 doubt not so igno- 
 rantly, to enthrone the very mysteiy of falsehood and iniquity in 
 that neglected and dishonoured temj)le, the church of God." 
 Oxford, the seat of the pernicious heresy, sends forth her disciples 
 thoroughly imbued with tractarianism, who find their way into the 
 pulpits. And there they, in number and strength no contemptible 
 band, advocate sabbath after sabbath, and day after day, a theolo- 
 gical system that is in direct antagonism with Scripture and the 
 evangelical religion of England. The teaching of innumerable 
 pulpits in the church of Cranmer exalts the church into the place 
 of her Lord, assigns an efficacy to a mere ritual which belongs 
 only to the Divine Spirit, and leads men to rest in mere outward 
 observances, instead of bringing them to rest exclusively in the 
 finished work of Clu-ist. Tractarianism indeed, when full blown, 
 would throw the pulpit into the shade, make the ministers of reli- 
 gion little more than masters of ceremonies ; and, instead of saying 
 with Paul, " Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gos- 
 pel," would teach each of them to say, " Christ sent me not to 
 preach the Gospel, but to baptize." But the pulpit, at present, 
 must minister to the forms. Baptismal regeneration and such like 
 errors must have an advocate in the preacher. The tendency of 
 such a system of pulpit ministration is at once to enervate the 
 manliness of the ISritish mind, and obscure, or take away, that 
 foundation other than which can no man lay. This agency is ex- 
 tensively exerted on thousands of our countrymen of all classes, in 
 a church which was one of the glories of the Reformation. Its 
 influence on many of our aristocracy has been made too obvious, 
 its influence on multitudes of humbler parishioners can be easily 
 imagined, and, unless checked, it promises to eat out the evangeli- 
 calism that remains in the Church of England. Spiritual Chris- 
 tianity being supplanted by this formalism, the consequence will 
 be, as in like cases, an increase of indiflerentism or avowed in- 
 fidelity. " If the Church of England," remarks D'Aubigne, " were 
 well administered, she would only admit to her pulpits teachers 
 who submit to the Word of God, agreeably to the thirty-nine 
 articles, and banish from them all those who violate her laws, and 
 poison the minds of youth, trouble souls, and seek to overthrow 
 the Gospel of Jesus Christ."- 
 
 We have not attempted anything like a full estimate of 
 pulpit agency. Much, both of good and evil attributable to its 
 influence, has necessarily esca])ed our notice. We have limited 
 our view to those parts of Christendom Avhere the various forms of 
 infidelity have appeared most conspicuous. And without ignoring 
 
 * Gauera aud O.vford. By D'Au'bigne. 
 
81i THE PULPIT. 
 
 the vast amount of good effected hy the pulpit, we see tliat its 
 agency is much employed on the side of evil. The office hallowed 
 by the labours of our Lord and his apostles, and which occupies 
 the foremost place among tlie means of promoting religion in the 
 world, has been largely perverted to the service of the\dversary. 
 That agency which stands apart from and lifted high above all 
 other agencies by its sanctity, has often been degraded to unholy 
 purposes. And in the pulpit, the divinely appointed instrument 
 of publishing truth and extending Christ's kingdom, all the forms 
 of unbelief have had and still have their abettors in considerable 
 numbers. 
 
 In looking at the aspects, in tracing the causes, and in estimating 
 the agencies of infidelity, we have found much to excite our fears, 
 but nothing whatever to shake our faith. No one can view the 
 amount of evil embodied in the various forms of unbelief, and the 
 divers agencies employed for its propagation, without a feeling of 
 apprehension. Infidelity is a dren that allin-es men but to destroy 
 them. No one, on the other hand, can contemplate Christianity 
 in itself, in its evidences, in its past history, and in its present 
 position and influence, without lively hope. We have seen the 
 argumentative resources of infidelity to be miserably weak, but 
 infidelity itself to be pliant, active, and strong for mischief Beaten 
 though every form of it has been, thousands of times, in the field 
 of ai-gument, it has had the daring, a season after each defeat, to 
 reappear in a somewhat modified form, and renew the attack. The 
 modern assailants of Christianity are not men of more metal than 
 its assailants of old ; and notwithstanding their wily and insidious 
 movements, we are persuaded that they will be as thoroughly 
 beaten as ever their predecessors were. Our fears are not for 
 Christianity. She is not noiv on her trial. She has passed through 
 the furnace long ago; and, in coming out of the trial, has been 
 powerfully declared to be heavenly in her origin, in her nature, 
 and in her aims. The battle has been fought, the victory has 
 been won. Each succeeding strife is only the opening up of an 
 already decided contest, to be closed again with new triumphs to 
 the Christian cause More deeply rooted than ever in the belief 
 that the Gospel of Christ is of God, tliat it is destined to march 
 onward among the nations, and ultimately to bless all the families 
 of the earth, we would close in off"ering up in the church's name 
 the devout ode which she offered of old : — 
 
 God be merciful unto us anrl bless us; and cause bis face to shine upon us. 
 
 TiiP.t thy way may be known unon earth, thy saving health rmonif all nations. 
 
 Let the people praise ihee, God ; let all the people praise thee. 
 
 O let the nations be i;lad and sin? for joy ; 
 
 For thou Flialt.judRetlie people riyhteously, and povern the nations upon earth. 
 
 Let the people praise thee, O Goi]": l^t all the people praise thee. 
 
 Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even onr own God, shall 
 
 bless us. 
 God shall bless us ; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 EEMARKS ON SECULAHISM.* 
 
 Grecian mythology tells us of a marine deity whose distinguish- 
 ing characteristic was the faculty of assuming different shapes, 
 Proteus was the very symhol of infidelity. Its history is but a 
 history of changes. Exceedingly pliable in its principles, and versa- 
 tile in its form — passing out of one phase into another, ever 
 modifying its professions and changing its names — it would be 
 nothing less than a libel to say that it is the same yesterday, to- 
 day, and for ever. In our age, the thing has put on new garbs, 
 undergone one or more baptisms, and altered its tone. It is 
 unstable as water, it cannot excel. Proteus was, however, the 
 same wanton sea-god, under all the different shapes which he had 
 assimied. And we detect in every form of modern infidelity — des- 
 pite its wonderful pliancy and softened names — the old enemy of 
 God's truth and man's weal. 
 
 Since treating of the aspects of infidelity in the preceding essay, 
 what seems, at first sight, a new phase, has turned up. Undisguised 
 atheism has failed to reach the dominion to which it aspired among 
 the working classes. Thorough-going infidel principles, bearing 
 the appropriate mark, do not take nearly so well, as could be wished, 
 with the public. The representatives of the Owen school have ac- 
 cordingly applied themselves " to the re-inspection of the general 
 field of controversy," and the result, as we have already hinted, has 
 been the rejection of the old ill-reputed names, and the adoption of 
 the better-looking title — Secularism. From being one of the most 
 intolerant, they are about to become the most tolerant of all sects 
 in the world. They are "to recognise the sincerity of the clergy, 
 and the good intention of Christians generally." They are no 
 longer to doubt " the truthful purpose of the prophets and the 
 apostles, and the moral excellence of many passages in their 
 writings." The door is widened so as to admit the "various 
 classes of persons known for their dissent from the popular Chris- 
 tian tenets of the day," — these various classes compreliending 
 men who "reject the authority of miracles," and " allege general 
 objections to the inspiration of the Bible," as well as those who 
 " question the dogma of the immortality of the soul," and " an 
 increasing party " who cannot "subscribe to the arguments sup- 
 posed to establish the existence of a Being distinct from 
 
 * Chiefly suggested by the recent London debate. 
 
316 APPENDIX. 
 
 nature." We cannot conceal our gratification at these shifts, 
 symptomatic as they are of anything but strength. But we are 
 not to be imposed upon by them. Our secularists claim the right 
 of preserving a '' discretionary silence." Tliere would be little 
 discretion on the part of us who have at heart the best interests of 
 the working classes, did we not break silence, and say, " secularism" 
 is atheism in disguise — tliat-it is designed to inculcate the latter, 
 when the people are able to bear it, secularism in the meantime 
 being the cry, while a "discretionary silence" is to be kept in refer- 
 ence to atheism. The secularist apostle himself has so far out' 
 grown the common covering, that he cannot preserve the " dis- 
 ci-etionary silence," even when insisting on the right and propriety 
 of doing so. "There are many of us," said he, when lately ex- 
 pounding "secularism" before a large London audience, "who trace 
 all religious evil to one root, and regard ' the belief in a God as an 
 Atlas of error bearing on its broad shoulders a world of immoral- 
 ities.' . . . What some call atheism is in one sense suspensive 
 in secularism." It is not, then, really a new phase of infidelity 
 but a compound of old systems. It is not an " aspect " essentially 
 different from those aspects which have passed under our review, 
 bi't inclusive of all of them except the last. Down the broad way 
 and through the wide gate of " secularism," the atheist, the pan- 
 theist, the rationalist, the spiritualist, and the man who denies 
 responsibility — all may pass, excej^t the individual who has the 
 form of godliness, 
 
 1. A¥e notice, first, the "suspensive" principle — the non-belief 
 in the existence of a Supreme 13eing distinct from nature. Mr. 
 Holyoake's position is, " the nature which we know must be the 
 Goci which we seek." " The wondrous manifestations of nature 
 indispose liim to degrade it to a secondary rank." He is not satisfied 
 with the arguments for the existence of a God — they do not give 
 him certainty. We have here two questions to ask: — the first is, 
 What arguments give him certainty that the nature which we 
 know must be the God which we seek? The second is. Has the 
 mind of man been so constituted as to rest satisfied with nature for 
 a God? A direct negative must be given to both questions. The 
 position occu]ned by the secularist apostle is an extrSmGly absurd 
 ojie. He demands evidence of a kind or degree that the subject 
 from its nature does not admit. It is tantamount to saying " there 
 may be a God, but no evidence for his existence will convince me." 
 The only way to meet such a mnn in controversy is to take him 
 u]) on his own ground. You demand entire satisfaction to the 
 intellect before you will believe in the Divine existence. Partial 
 satisfaction to tlie intellect is all that is attainable on the subject. 
 And you can pretend to no more tlian partial satisfaction in adopt- 
 ing tiie proposition that the nature which we know must be the^ 
 God which we seek. You renounce the belief in God for want of 
 
APPENDIX. 317 
 
 certainty, and yon believe in natnre as occupying the fii-st rank 
 in existence, without any thing deserving the name of certainty. 
 But man has moral instincts as well as an intellectual faculty, 
 and in the strength of these instincts has been kindly provided a 
 compensation for the weakness of our intellects. These moral 
 instincts refuse to rest in "the nature which we know," — the soul 
 and conscience recoil from accepting it as " the God which we 
 seek." In other words, the mind of man, from its very constitution, 
 goes beyond nature, and demands for its rest the existence of a Su- 
 preme Being distinctfrom nature. The choice then, on this ground, 
 lies between non-belief in the Divine existence for want oi^ entire 
 certainty, with thwarting or repressing the moral instincts; and 
 belief in that existence which partially, at least, satisfies the intellect, 
 and which is fully demanded by the heart. The light of intellect 
 in that man is surely darkness, and prodigious violence must have 
 been done to the instincts of his soul and conscience, who, in 
 view of " the wondrous manifestations of nature," can maintain 
 that nature is degraded in placing over it a creating and presiding 
 mind ! The top-stone of secularism would be laid in material 
 idolatry. Men will not suffer "the existence of Deity" to be 
 thrust aside as an " abstract question," and labelled " not settled." 
 If men areto be robbed of the conception of an immutably glorious 
 Being distinct from nature — a conception which "borrows splen- 
 dour fi'om all that is fair, subordinates to itself all that is great, 
 and sits enthroned on the riches of the universe" — the substitute 
 inevitably will be fetichism or nature-worship. 
 
 2. The first fundamental principle of secularism — a principle 
 not " suspensive," but openly avowed, and to which all secularists 
 must subscribe — is. " that ])recedence should be given to the duties 
 of this life over those which pertain to anotlier world ," the 
 assumption being that "this life being the first in certainty, it 
 ought to have the first place in importance." This simply resolves 
 itself into the proposition that the seen is more certain than the 
 unseen, that what we know personally is more certain than what 
 we know only by testimony, and the inference is that therefore the 
 former must, in importance, take precedence of the latter. Now, 
 in the first place, we deny that the seen, strictly speaking, is more 
 certain than the unseen ; and. secondly, admitting that it is relatively 
 more certain, it does not follow that it is more important. It is not 
 more certain that water always exists in a fluid state in a warm 
 eastern climate, than it is that water exists as ice in cold regions, 
 though to the King of Siam who had always lived in a warm 
 climate, the one was more certain than the other. Again, the 
 seen, in one sense, may be more certain than the unseen, and yet the 
 latter may be the more important. Relatively to myself it is 
 more certain that I am thinking and acting just now, than it is 
 that I will be doing so to-morrow, and yet to-morrow, in the sum 
 
318 APPENDIX 
 
 of my thoughts and actions, may he a day of greater importance 
 in my histoiy than the day nov/ present. Mathematical truth, in 
 one sense, is more certain than moral truth, hut no one will say 
 that it is of greater impoi'tance. In short, no man is warranted to 
 assume the first and fundamental position of seculai'ism unless he 
 is sure that there is no future life. Our secularists have no cer- 
 tainty on this point, yet they build their system on the supposition 
 that they have — that is to say, they build upon the uncertain, the 
 very ground, as they allege, on which the doctrine of a future life 
 stands, and for which they ignore or reject it. The doctrine 
 itself does not admit of demonstrative hut of probable evidence. 
 Independent of the Scripture testimony, there are (as Dr. Chalmers 
 in his Lectures on Butler's Analogy has remarked) high probabi- 
 lities for the immortality of man, founded not on that which is com- 
 mon to him with the other organic creatures, but on that which 
 is peculiar and which signalizes him from or above the others 
 — as the conscience which is his exclusively, and those indefi- 
 nite powers and asj)irations which are his exclusively. These, 
 which point man to a future life, will lead him to believe in such 
 a well-attested revelation of it as the Gospel, unless the hand of 
 violence, thwarting the moral instincts, puts it away from him. 
 Secularism prefers the present over the future for no better rea- 
 son tban that it is present, a reason repudiated by every secularist 
 who takes his passage to Australia. Some men who act ration- 
 ally enough in the region of the material, doff their rationality 
 whenever they touch upon the borders of the spiritual. Again, 
 our secularists, on the supposition of a future life, are guilty 
 of a fundamental error in mapping otF the moral duties — saying, 
 these belong exclusively to the present, and those belong to the 
 future ; — they are chargeable too with much misrepresentation in 
 affirming that the teachings of Christianity make men indifferent to 
 the one and absorb them in the other. There is no such separation 
 of duties. All the duties of Christianity pertain to the present life, 
 and are related to the future just as the seed sown is related to the 
 harvest to be reaped. The duties of Christianity may be said to 
 be summed up in the vrord faith. But, as has been well expressed 
 by Mr. Riddle in his Bampton Lecture, " the man who lives the 
 life of faith is the man who at the same time works the works of 
 God, — works of integrity and uprightness, — works of benevolence 
 and mercy, — works of industry and labour, — works for the glory of 
 God and for the welfare of mankind, — works as of one who has a 
 spring of activity within him, as well as a glorious reward before 
 him." " It is wholly a mistake," observes Chalmers in his Prelec- 
 tionsonPaley, "that in a mind of ordinary soundness the forceof the 
 rehgious princij)le, even to the utmost, either unfits or withdraws 
 from the necessary attention we should give to the business of the 
 day, and the accommodations of the day. . . . Suppose a 
 
APPENDIX. 819 
 
 person setting oat on a far journey to a place where, on his arrived 
 he knew that a magnificent fortune awaited him. His heart would 
 he there. His thought would be ever carrying him forward to 
 contemplation there, yet all this engrossment and hig expectation of 
 what lie was tending to, would not strip him of the necessaiy atten- 
 tion and self-command for giving the requisite directions on the 
 road, for ordering the right accommodation at night, for arranging 
 a constant conveyance from one place to another, or even for re- 
 marking on the loveliness of the sucessive scenes, and noting either 
 the comfort that gladdens or the beauty that smiles on the passing 
 traveller." 
 
 3. A second avowed principle of secularism is, that " science 
 is the providence of man, and that absolute spiritual dependency 
 may involve material destruction." By science is meant " those 
 methodized agencies which are at our command — that systematized 
 knowledge which enables us to use the powers of nature for human 
 benefit." By spiritual dependency is meant " application to 
 heaven by prayer, expecting that help will come to us." On this 
 platform such men as Combe, Owen, and Holyoake meet. The 
 former part of the proposition is a mere assertion without proof. 
 The latter j)art involves a gross misrepresentation of the scriptural 
 doctrine of providence. The secularist teacher argues thus : " if 
 the despot and the knave accomplish their end by a vigorous use 
 of material appliances, it is clear that natural resources are inde- 
 pendent of any form of religious faith, and the patriot and the 
 hoDest man may hope to succeed by equal or gi-eater vigour, what- 
 ever may be his speculative opinions." It is not so clear. The 
 force of the argument is this: if a knave uses money effectually 
 for accomplishing his bad ends, therefore a good man needs no 
 help from God to enable him to use it for good ends. This is the 
 death of logic. Science and Christianity are not antagonists. A 
 vigorous use of the one is in perfect harmony with a believing 
 reliance on the other. A true science has made the most brilliant 
 progress in lands the most illumined with the liglit of Christianity. 
 But the noblest minds — minds of spiritual depth and possessed of 
 vigorous moral instincts — after having mastered all known science, 
 have felt that it is not the providence of life. Dependence of a 
 different kind is needed to satisfy the outgoings and aspirations of 
 the human heart, and that is only found in a Divine Providence. 
 The Providence which secularism repudiates is 7iot the scriptural 
 doctrine, but a gross caricature of it. " Absolute spiritual depend- 
 ency may involve material destruction." ]\lost assuredly it may. 
 " It has a great tendency to check human exertion." Most assiu'edly 
 it has. Let the mariner ptit to sea in a leaky and ill-rigged ship, 
 under the pretence of trusting Divine Providence, and the pro- 
 bability is that in the storm his ''absolute spiritual dependency" 
 will "involve material destruction." It was absolute spiritual de- 
 
320 APPENDIX. 
 
 pendency which the tempter wished the Saviour to exercise when he 
 said to Him, " If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from the 
 battlement of the temple : for it is written, He shall give his angels 
 charge concerning thee." But Jesus, who taught that not a sparrow 
 falls without our heavenly Father, said unto him, " Thou shalt not 
 tempt the Lord thy God." Absolute spiritual dependency is not 
 enlightened trust, but impious presumption. The Gospel teaches 
 no such doctrine. Its doctrine is not " pray," but " watch and pray." 
 By providing a ground of dependence, and calling forth a man's acti- 
 vities, it checks presumption on the one hand, and prevents despair 
 on tlie other. The most firm and enlightened believers in this 
 doctrine have been the men who have laboured most for the good 
 of humanity. They have never felt any contradiction — and no 
 man of any spiritual discernment and moral honesty ever can — 
 between the Divine injunction " be anxiously solicitous for nothing," 
 and the duty to guard against tiood and fire, — between the precept 
 "lay not up treasures upon earth," and making provision, through 
 the savings-bank, for those of their own house. It is here that we 
 see the narrow view, the little depth, the irreverent dogmatism of 
 the secularist philosophy. The amount of what our secularist 
 teacher says is — 'If there be a Providence, that Providence would 
 do this and that ; and because this and that are not done, there is 
 no Providence. Our symjiathies are all on the side of the freedom 
 of Poland, and against the oppres^^ors of Italy ; but it were intoler- 
 able presumption and daring impiety in us, whose survey is so 
 limited, to say, as the expounder of secularism has said, that were 
 there a Providence, Poland would be free, and Mazzini Avould rule 
 in Italy to-morrow. All history shows that national as well as in- 
 dividual suffering is disciplinary, that God is ever educing good 
 out of evil, and that protracted oppressions, which we would soon 
 bring to an end, are made under his control to contribute the more 
 effectually at last to the overthrow of despotism and to the stability 
 of true liberty. Would not the special interposition of Providence 
 that secularism demands check human exertion ? It would as- 
 suredly leave no room for the cultivation of those virtues which 
 national struggles call forth, and which have made our own people 
 the richest inheritors and the best guardians of freedom. Secu- 
 larism stands condemned at the bar of the world's history. 
 
 4. The third avowed principle of secularism is, " that there exist, 
 independently of scriptural authority, guarantees of morals in 
 human nature, intelligence, and utility." Forproofsof these guaran- 
 tees, we have nothing but assertions. " There are certainly," it 
 is said, " many persons who hardly ever sin." An expression 
 contrary to individual experience and universal observation, and, 
 even if true, no |)roof of the position itself What is wanted is 
 a broad proof, not that many persons hardly ever sin, but that men 
 in general never sin It is altogether an assumption — an assump- 
 
APPENDIX, $21 
 
 tion disowned by every man of self-knowledge — that human nature 
 in the sum of its passions and natural qualities is incorrupt and 
 undefiled, and that the corruption manifested is to be attributed 
 to a " doubtfully conditioned state of society." It is a sort of 
 upside-down logic, a complete reversal of the order of cause and 
 effect. But secularism is here self-contradictory. Human nature, 
 it is said, is itself a guarantee of morality. Yet secularists " do 
 not say to the young, without qualification, consult your aptitude, 
 follow your bias ;" for if that language were used, " the immoral 
 and unprincipled might victimize their fellows." Now if it be not 
 safe to follow the "bias," how can it be held that human nature 
 itself is a guarantee of morality ? It is not by telling us that men's 
 Judgments are on the side of truth and justice ; it is not by ad- 
 ducing some stray sentiments in heathen literature — some solitary 
 saying of Confucius, or some beautiful maxim of a Persian poet 
 — that we are to be convinced of the existence in human nature of 
 independent and sufficient guarantees of morals. No one denies 
 the existence of a moral sense in man. But the question is not 
 on what side lie the judgments of conscience, but what is the 
 natural bent of men's inclinations ? Many an individual can say 
 
 "Video meliora proboque ;" 
 
 while the " Deteriora sequor" must be applied to his conduct. 
 Look at human nature on a broad scale — on human nature that 
 has been kept entirely free of the influences of Christianity — and 
 ask where are the independent guarantees of morality ? We place 
 the wide world of facts over against proofless assertions. 
 
 Secularism admits, after all, that " there is another order of j>c^. 
 sons besides those whose well-balanced feelings incline them to mo- 
 rality — an order less happily constituted, whom error misdirects." 
 Confucius' wonderful saying, at which our secularist expounder can 
 get no one to wonder but himself, and which may be paralleled 
 any where except "in the Jewish Scriptures," belongs to this side 
 of the account rather than to the other. Here it is, " alas I find 
 no one who prefers virtue to personal beauty! " One thing about 
 it is very wonderful, viz. that it should be adduced in proof of 
 independent and sufficient guarantees of morality in human nature. 
 The lament of the "poet-moralist" may be taken, however, as an 
 incidental proof of the secularist admission, that there exists a 
 class of men whose constitutional tendencies lead them to error. 
 These "less happily constituted" persons, secularism would govern 
 by knowledge and put under the dominion of ideas. " The majestic 
 influence of intelligence rules a million of men now, whom lust, 
 rage, and rapine would have ruled in a former age." Christianity, of 
 course, gets no credit for it. Oh no! it is all "independent" 
 of " the Jewish Scriptures ! " The accomplished mechanic, we 
 are told, dislikes bad machinery, the expert builder hatea tb^ 
 
 1 
 
322 APPENDIX. 
 
 sight of an ill-contrived house, the musician is enraged at false 
 notes, and the true painter will not endure a mediocre pictui-e. 
 Knowledge is power: only put man under the dominion of ideas, 
 and all his errors will he rectified and his had tendencies checked! 
 Now this talk, we submit, is not to the point. Christianity seeks 
 to put men under the dominion of ideas. The Sei-mon on the 
 Mount, of which secularists think so little, and the Gospel caU 
 which they utterly repudiate, have this for their aim. The ques- 
 tion is, what are the ideas which exert a regenerating influence on 
 the minds of men, or where, in the ahsence of Christian ideas 
 and influence, do we find men exemplifying such conduct in rela- 
 tion to morals, as expert builders and true painters do in reference 
 to science and art ? Our secularists would appeal to the " artistic 
 sense." The appeal has been made and the decision given long 
 ago. Intellectual refinement and moral viciousness are not stran- 
 gers to each other The age of Pericles and Alcibiades was a period 
 in which Greece stood at the highest degree of intellectual im- 
 provement ; and " here," as Tholuck remarks, " we see directly, 
 in the clearest manner, how little the mere cultivation of know- 
 ledge and refined feeling can benefit man, when not accompanied 
 by the sanctification of the heart." The light of purity stands 
 closely connected with the light of knowledge, but the inference 
 from history and experience is, that it is only the knowledge of 
 Christian truth. 
 
 But " allowing that some men and women are good by nature, 
 and that it is possible, by the culture of the artistic sense, to control 
 others usefully," what does secularism propose to do with those 
 who are " both vicious and dull ?" The appeal then is " to util- 
 ity, to the sense of interest." If you can make nothing of the 
 artistic sense, you may make something of the sense of profit. 
 If you cannot get men to follow virtue because of its native love- 
 liness, you may allure them by a calculating regard to the benefit 
 that arises from it. This is the last resort of secularism. We 
 need not predict its failure. It is no new expedient. Men's sense 
 of utility has been appealed to by social reformers in all ages. 
 The ancient schools appealed to this as well as to the artistic sense, 
 and in so far as human regeneration was concerned the appeal 
 miserably failed. Men are not led to practise virtue as they are 
 led to the market and the exchange. The strength of vicious in- 
 clination can bear down all suggestions as to real and ultimate 
 profit. Appeal to utility ! Carry it round the dens of vice and 
 intemperance, and it is withstood by the preference forthepleasm-es 
 of sin which are but for a season. It is, at the best, like descant- 
 ing to the poor and naked of golden fields at a distance, while you 
 give them no provisions to enable them to prosecute the way. 
 We have not a few publications of merit appealing to men's sense 
 of utility and pi-udence, but because the appeal goes no deeper, 
 
APPENDIX 323 
 
 and is carried up do higher, they have confessedly failed in 
 morally elevating the people for whom they were designed. Chris- 
 tianity appeals to utility. It says, " Godliness is profitable unto 
 all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which 
 is to come." But Christianity has constrained influences, and 
 adequate provisions, of which other systems are destitute. It has 
 a line to reach the very lowest depth of human viciousness; and 
 in thousands of cases it has turned the will to choose virtue, brought 
 the afiections to delight in it, and all the active powers to practise 
 it, where appeals to the meie " artistic sense," or to the mere sense 
 of utility have left men depraved and vile. The gi'eat and good 
 things to be efiected by secularism are only suspended in promise 
 — not so surely suspended indeed as atheism is suspended in secu- 
 larism itself — but the good deeds of Christianity are broad pal- 
 pable realities, marking off the regenerated from the unregenei ated 
 world. It is only in proportion as the race of man is leaven mi by 
 it, that we find guarantees in human nature for morality, that a 
 true culture is promoted, and that the lovely and the useful meet 
 together. This is no mere assertion. We appeal to the out-lying 
 world for proof. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Addison, his opinion of atheists, 7. 
 
 Arnold, Dr., his opinion of atheism, 7 ; 
 extract from his life, 23 ; on the 
 moral fault of unbplief, 174; on so- 
 cial disaffection, 202; his influence 
 on education, 288; on the Oxford 
 Tractarians, 313. 
 
 Atheism, its characteristics, G; its 
 existence doubted, 7 ; no man of 
 straw, ib ; its prevalence in France, 
 8; the worst form of infidelity, 11 ; 
 character of among the people, 12; 
 a negation incapable of proof, 12 — 15. 
 Atonement, doctrine of the, misrepre- 
 sented, 97, 103, 107, 127. 
 
 Bacon, Lord, his opinion of atheism, 7. 
 
 Bailey's " Festus," its bad theo- 
 logy, 41, 139. 
 
 Baird. Dr., on American unitarianism, 
 90, n. 
 
 Bible, claims of the, 76 ; treatment of, 
 by modern rationalists, 88. 
 
 Bolingbroke, Lord, on the doctrine of 
 atonement, 127. 
 
 Bost, M., on the schools of Geneva, 
 299, n. 
 
 Brougham, Lord, on the " Sj-steme de 
 la Nature," 8; on the design argu- 
 ment, 20 ; on non-responsibility, 140. 
 
 Carlyle, religious bearing of his writ- 
 ings, 37 ; idealism of, 197 ; his in- 
 fluence injurious, 257. 
 
 Chalmers, Dr., his opinion of d'Hol- 
 bach's work, 9 ; on the theology of 
 'ion science, 21 ; on the development 
 theor}-, 58 ; on the astronomical 
 objection, 81 ; on intolerant pro- 
 fessors, 233 ; on a Christianized uni- 
 'irsity, 300. 
 
 Cheap literature, classification of, 265. 
 
 Christianitv, a second creation, 68; 
 
 distinguished by simplicity and 
 
 spiritualit3% 162 ; based on evidence, 
 
 and why,. 176. 
 
 Christian Times, on the penny press, 
 
 267, n. 
 Church of Christ, its disunion an oc- 
 casion of infidelity, 237 ; is really 
 one, ib. 
 Clubs, as an agency of infidelity, 273; 
 a characteristic of the age, ib. ; the 
 principle of, employed for good, 274 ; 
 irreligious character of many, 275; 
 political and socialist, 276 ; infidel 
 character of French, ib. ; their spread 
 on the continent, 278 ; secret, 279,n. ; 
 use made of workmen's, 280 ; fo- 
 reigners', in London, 282 ; counter- 
 active agencies, ib. 
 Coleridge, extract from, 42 ; his opi- 
 nion of unitarianism, 89. 
 Combe, character of his " Constitution 
 of Man," 61 ; his notions of Provi- 
 dence, 64 ; of prayer, ib. ; disastrous 
 influence of his writings, 259. 
 Comte, Auguste, huge materialism of 
 his system, 9 ; denies a Divine Pro- 
 vidence, 52 ; his system of worship, 
 54, n. X 
 Corruptions of Christianity, an occasion 
 of infidelity, 209 ; their sources, ib. ; 
 not to be confounded with itself, 2 10 ; 
 various forms of, 213 ; produce aver- 
 sion to Christianity, 215; expose 
 the people to infidel leaders, 220 ; 
 supply weapons to attack Chris- 
 tianity, 221. 
 Cousin, his pantheistic leanings, 32 ; 
 
 extract from, ib. n. J 
 Cowper, on the Christian's enjoyment, 
 
325 
 
 136 ;■ on geology, 228 ; on the press, 
 
 253; on the pulpit, 302, 
 Chambers' Journal, character of, 
 
 272. 
 Creation, pantheistic notions of, 40. 
 
 D'Aubigne's " History of the Reforma- 
 tion," 5i; on modern spiritualism. 
 117, n. ; on the ecclesiastical theory, 
 164,172. 
 
 Development Hypothesis, Hugh Mil 
 
 ler's opinion of, 11,59; theory of, 
 '57; Oken on, ib. ; testimony of 
 geology against, 58. 
 
 D'llolbach, Baron, atheism of, 8. 
 
 Disunion of the Church, a popular 
 argument against the gospel, 238. 
 
 Divine Influence indispensably neces- 
 sary, 128; admitted by Seneca and 
 ■ Plato, 129; does not interfere with 
 moral freedom, ib. ; testimonies to 
 its reality, 131. 
 
 Doctrines of religion, 5. 
 
 Dumas, M., character of his writings, 
 262. 
 
 "Eclipse of Faith " on modern spiri- 
 tualism, 110, 121, n. 
 
 Emerson, a pantheist, 34 ; a dreamer, 
 35 ; his notions of moral evil, 41. 
 
 Evidence. Chrl-itianity founded on, and 
 why, 176 ; not irresistible, ib. 
 
 Existence, the Divine, nature of the 
 arguments for, 16, &c. ; indications 
 of, in the material universe, 18; in 
 the human mind, 19; the testimony 
 of the Bible, 22 ; the practical proof, 
 23; does not admit of demonstrative 
 but of moral certainty, 174. 
 
 Family Herald, character of, 267, 268. 
 
 Feuerbach, his pantheistic opinions, 33. 
 
 Fichte, his pantheism, 30. 
 
 Formalism, infidelity in practice, 156 ; 
 its nature, 157; prevalency, ib. ; 
 phih)Sophy of, 158 ; of the ancient 
 heathens, 159; of man}' men of 
 science, ib. ; of the ancient Hebrews, 
 161 ; its appearance in the early 
 Christian church, 162 ; of the Romish 
 Church, 163 ; of the Tractarians, 
 164; not peculiar to any system, 
 ib. ; utterly worthless, 165; desti- 
 tute of real happiness, 167 ; tends to 
 
 intolerance, 169; diametrically op- 
 posed to the gospel, 171 ; D'Aubigne 
 on, 172. 
 Foster, John, on atheism, 14 ; on na- 
 turalism, 51 ; on formalism, 160 ; on 
 socialist publications, 263. 
 
 Garbett, Professor, on the Personality 
 of God, 39, 45, 47. 
 
 Geology, opposed to the development 
 hypothesis, 58, 82 ; evidence of, in 
 harmony with Scripture, 228. 
 
 Germany, prevalence of pantheism in, 
 28; its rationalism, 68. 
 
 God, existence of, an intellectual ne- 
 cessity, 14. 
 
 Hampden, Dr., on the influence of 
 Platonism, 185 ; on the scholastic 
 philosophy, 186. 
 
 Harris, Dr., quotations from his "Pre- 
 Adamite Earth," 15, 81. 
 
 Hegel, pantheism of, 30, 195 ; influ- 
 ence of in German}', 296. 
 
 Humboldt, naturalism of his "Cosmos," 
 60 
 
 Hume, fallacy of his reasoning, 72. 
 
 Ideal Philosophv, its character and in- 
 fluence, 192;' German, 193; Leib- 
 nitz, Wolf, Kant, Hegel, Strauss, 
 193—195; its influence on English 
 literature, 196. 
 
 Immortality, individual, lost in pan- 
 theism, 43. 
 
 Indifferentism, a diluted kind of scep- 
 ticism, 136; Dr. Krummacher's re- 
 marks on, 137; in the continental 
 churches, 138 ; prevalency of in 
 our own literature, 139: implies a 
 weakened sense or an actual denial 
 of responsibility, 137, 140 ; see 
 " Respon-ibilit}', Moral." 
 
 Infidelity, a S3'stem of negations, 5; 
 its various forms, 5; atheism, 6; pan- 
 theism, 23; naturalism, 48; spiri- 
 tualism, 88: indifl'erentisra, 136; 
 formalism, 156. 
 
 , causes of, 173 ; moral rather 
 
 than intellectual, ib. ; s[ieculative 
 philosoph}', 182; social disaflfection, 
 199; corruptions of Christianity, 
 209; religious intolerance, 222; dis- 
 union of the church, 237. 
 
326 
 
 Infidelity, its agencies, 251 ; the press, 
 252; the clubs, 273; the schools, 
 286; the pulpit, 300. 
 
 Intolerance, much, without the church, 
 222 ; not chargeable on Christianity, 
 223; religious, the worst, 235. 
 
 Kant, principle of his philosophy, 194. 
 Krumraacher, Dr., on atheism, 12, n. ; 
 
 account of indifFerentism, 137 ; on 
 
 pedagogy, 295, n. 
 
 Laplace, his hypothesis, 18. 
 
 Lewes, his "Biographical History of 
 
 Philosophy," 54. 
 Locke, use made of his metaphysics, 
 
 188. 
 
 Macaulay, remark of, on popery, 217 ; 
 his review of Gladstone's " Church 
 and State," 245. 
 
 Mackay, his notion of prayer, 65 ; his 
 idea of the origin of Messiah, 85, 
 n. f; his "Progress of the Intel- 
 lect," character of this book, 104 ; 
 examination of his assertions, ib. > 
 &c. ; his scripture references, 107, 
 n. ; guilty of deception, 109. 
 
 Mayhew, Mr., on the literature of the 
 masses, 266 ; on the state of the 
 costermongers, 274, n. 
 
 Miller, Hugh, on development, 11 ; 
 quotations from his *' Footprints," 
 59. 
 
 Miracles, Strauss on, 69, &c. ; New- 
 man's remark, 69 ; true doctrine of, 7 1. 
 
 Moral Argument of Spiritualism, ex- 
 amined, 117; unsupported by an- 
 alogy, 119; one-sided, 121; human 
 depravity matter of experience, 123 ; 
 pardon on the ground of atonement 
 not unreasonable, 125 ; spiritual re- 
 generation a reasonable doctrine, 
 128 ; charge of gloominess unfound- 
 ed, i43. 
 
 Moral Distinctions, destroyed by pan- 
 theism, 41. 
 
 Morell, on the argument from design, 
 21 ; on the views of Cousin, 32; on 
 secondary agencies, 64; his theory 
 of inspiration, 77; failure of his 
 rhargt'S against special inspiration, 
 79 ; tendency of his speculations, 109, 
 &c. ; on Romish fellowship, 163; on 
 
 the process of Sensationalism, 1 90 ; 
 on the ideal philosophy, 196, 197. 
 Mystery, inseparable from God's works, 
 87 ; in nature and in revelation, 
 123. 
 
 Naturalism, distinctive characteristic 
 of, 48 ; no novelty, 51 ; works on phy- 
 sical and moral science in which it is 
 manifested, 52, 68 ; its elFecton Bible 
 theology, 68 ; interdicts Divine Pro- 
 vidence, ib. ; denies inspiration of 
 the Scriptures, 74 ; remarks on the 
 theory of, 80; based on false analogy, 
 ib. ; is chargeable with anthropomor- 
 phism, 81 ; opposed to the evidence 
 of geology, 82 ; assigns no adequate 
 cause for Christianity, 84 ; opposed to 
 the religion of the Bible, 86; most 
 unnatural, 87 ; its argumentative 
 weakness, 175. 
 
 Nebular hypothesis, Whewell on, 56. 
 
 Newman, Dr., on miracles, 69. 
 
 ,F. VV., his "Phases of Faith," 
 
 98; character and analysis of this 
 book, 99, &c.; his progress in unbelief, 
 ib.; on the character of Christ, 102; 
 his unfairness, 103. 
 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, his testimony to a 
 Divine Providence, 53. 
 
 Oken, Professor, on development, 57. 
 Owen School, philosophy of, 65; shal- 
 lowness of, 66. 
 
 Paley, Dr., on natural laws, 57. 
 
 Pantheism, distinguished from athe- 
 ism, 23; its real character, 24; 
 dangerous to Christianity, 26 ; an 
 ancient error, 27 ; its prevalence in 
 Germany, 28 ; progress of, 29 ; the 
 faith of many Frenchmen, 32 ; the 
 element of continental socialism, 33 ; 
 an exotic in England, ib. ; bearings 
 of, 40-44. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, extract from, 42 ; 
 deiionncf s the Old Unitarian School, 
 89, 190 ; his theological opinions, 92 ; 
 fallacy of his theory, 95 ; unfairness 
 of his representations, 97. 
 
 Personality of God, Prof. Garbett on, 
 39 ; proofs of, 44—46 ; more rational 
 than pantheism, 174. 
 
 Philosophy, not opposed to faith, 199. 
 
827 
 
 Philosophy, Speculative, an occasion 
 of infidelity, 182 ; its rise inevitable, 
 and marks progress, ib. ; has ever 
 tampered with Christian truth, 183; 
 gnosticism, Origen, platonism, phi- 
 losophy of Aristotle, 183—187 ; sen- 
 sationaiiiim and idealism, 188. See 
 " Sensational Philosophy," " Ideal 
 Philosophy." 
 
 Phrenolog3\ does not affect human 
 liberty, 151 ; case of Alexander VI., 
 152. 
 
 Prayer, shut out by pantheism, 42 ; 
 Combe's view of, 64; Mackay's 
 notion of, 65. 
 
 Press, The, a powerful agent, 252 ; its 
 beneficent doings, 253; powerfully 
 employed on the side of infidelity, 
 254 ; character of, in Germany, 256 ; 
 immense power of the periodical, 
 260 ; the periodical, greater for evil 
 than for good, 261; character of 
 in France, 2€2 ; statistics of, 263; 
 signs of improvement, 270 ; appeal to 
 the church, 272. 
 
 Providence, Divine, denial of, in- 
 creases difficulties, 62 ; instance from 
 Combe, 64; denied by rationalists, 
 68. 
 
 Pulpit, The, state of, a criterion of the 
 state of religion, 300; at one time 
 almost the only means of instruction, 
 301; main instrument of propa- 
 gating religious truth, ib. ; is exten- 
 sively employed for evil, 302 ; state 
 of, in Germany, ib.; state of, in 
 Hungary, 306 ; in Switzerland, ib. ; 
 in Holland, 307 ; in Belgium, 308 ; in 
 France, ib. ; in our own country, 311. 
 
 Rationalists, dishonesty of, 75. 
 
 Religious Intolerance, a cause of infi- 
 delity, 222 ; not chargeable on 
 Christianity, 223 ; 1st form of, jea- 
 lousy in reference to science, 225 ; 
 2nd form of, jealousy in reference 
 to accommodation in preaching, 230 ; 
 3rd form of, intolerance of different 
 rites and ceremo^iies, 234; Isaac Tay- 
 lor on, 236 ; Vinet on, ib. 
 
 Responsibility, Moral, matter of 
 consciousness, 141 ; rests on free 
 agency, 144; is measured by privi- 
 lege, 148; indestructible amid all 
 
 objections, 150 ; essential to human 
 improvement, 153 ; Taylor on, 154. 
 
 "Restoration of^ Belief," extract from, 
 36, n. t ; 94, n. f 
 
 Robinson, Dr.. on the influence of Ge- 
 senius, 296, n. ; on examinations for 
 the pastoral office in Germany, 305, 
 n. t 
 
 Rogers, Mr. Henry, his opinion of the 
 Straussian theory, 85 ; on the fathers, 
 86, n.; on modern infidel writers, 258. 
 
 Ruskin, Mr., on unity of the church, 
 243, n. 
 
 Schelling, pantheism of, 30. 
 
 Schools, an agency of infidelity, 286; 
 attention now given to, 287 ; infla 
 ence of Oxford and Cambridge, 288; 
 the northern, 293; of France, 294. 
 of Germany, 295 ; of Holland, 297; 
 Geneva, 298. 
 
 Sectarianism, the bane of the church, 
 248. 
 
 Secularism, its real nature, 281; re- 
 marks on, 315. 
 
 Sensational Philosophy, its influence, 
 188; its evil effect on science and 
 literature, 190 ; in France, 191. 
 
 Smith on Pantheism, 26, 27. 
 
 Smith, Dr. Pye, his " Scripture and 
 Geology" referred to, 226, 229. 
 
 Social disaffection, an occasion of infi- 
 delity, 199; agitation not always an 
 evil, ib. ; when injurious, 200 ; causes 
 of, 201 ; leads to visionary theories, 
 203; employs infidelity, 208. 
 
 Socialism, Mill on, 202 ; a religion ot 
 political liberty, 203; "Daily News" 
 on, 204; ignores three palpable facta, 
 ib. ; seeks identity with Christianity, 
 205 ; its tendency to pantheism, 206 
 
 Spinoza, the father of modern pan- 
 theism, 29. 
 
 Spiritualism, the denial of redemption, 
 88 ; its mode of explaining Bible 
 doctrines, 89 ; ftxllacy of its theory, 
 95 ; see " Moral Argument.'" 
 
 Strauss, his opinions, 31 ; on miracles, 
 69, &c. ; his convenient morality, 
 304, n. t 
 
 Superstition, connected with unbeliei, 
 212. 
 
 " Syst^me de la Nature," an atheistical 
 work, 8 ; Chalmerg' opinion of, 9. 
 
.3-38 
 
 Taylor, Isaac, quotation from, 126 ; on 
 
 human responsibility, 154 ; on Trac- 
 
 tarianism, 164. 
 Tennyson, quotation from his " In Me- 
 
 moriam," 40. 
 Tholuck, on Divine influence, 13 Ij on 
 
 the Continental universities, 297, n. 
 Tractariaus, their use of the Press, 
 
 259. 
 
 Unbelief, moral fault of, 174; not from 
 want of evidence, 177 ; arises from 
 aversion to holiness, 179; Plutarch 
 on, 212. 
 
 Unitarianism, Coleridge's opinion of, 
 89;Parkei-'s opinion of,ib.n.+ ;chang- 
 ing its ground, 90 ; opinion of a French 
 Encyclopsedist, 91 ; rapidly merging 
 in infidelity, 92. 
 
 Unity, not uniformity, 242 ; false pre- 
 tences of Popery to, ib. ; VVhately 
 on, ib. ; Sir James Stephen on, 
 243. 216; Ruskin on, 243, n, ; 
 Voltaire on, 244 ; Gladstone on, 245 ; 
 
 advantages of, 246 ; noble things 
 eflFected by, 249. 
 Universities, The, influence of, 289 ; 
 see "• Schools." 
 
 Vaughan, Dr., on spiritualism, 102, 
 
 130. 
 "Vestiges of the Natural History of 
 
 Creation," character of, 55. 
 Voltaire, his objection to Christianity 
 
 for want of uniformity, 244. 
 
 Wardlaw, Dr., on miracles, 72. 
 VVestcott's •' Elements of the Gospel 
 
 Harmony," quotation from, 76. 
 Whately, Archbishop, on unity of the 
 
 church, 242 ; on the Tractarians, 213; 
 VVhewell, Professor, on atheism, 15. 
 
 on the Divine Existence, 18 ; on the 
 
 nebular hypothesis, 56. 
 Will, Tiie Human, has much to do with 
 
 infidelity, 173, &c. 
 Working Class, necessity of special 
 
 agency for, 284. 
 
 Partridge, Oakey, & Co., Printers, Paddington. 
 
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