PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 BV 4253 .T34 1846 
 
 Ta il t n.ilt h 2 i±ald Campbe11 ' 
 
 ^.//.....Suggestions offered to the 
 
SUGGESTIONS 
 
 OFFERED TO THE THEOLOGICAL STUDENT, 
 UNDER PRESENT DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 FIVE DISCOURSES 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. 
 
 By A. c/TAIT, D.C.L., 
 
 HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL, 
 LATE FELLOW AND TDTOR OF BALIOL COLLEGE. 
 
 LONDON : 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1846. 
 
Lately Pitblished, by the same Author, 
 
 FIVE SERMONS PREACHED AT OXFORD, 
 
 in 1843. 
 
 LONDON : 
 BRADBURY AND EVANS, PKINTKRS, WHITKKR1ARS. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 It is stated in one of the following Sermons, 
 that there is a mixture of truth in every 
 attractive error ; and that, therefore, none 
 can successfully meet such error except those 
 who understand, and are willing to appreciate, 
 the truth which is mixed up with it. If a 
 man would persuade others not to be Roman- 
 ists, he must know what the truths are on 
 which the strength of Romanism is built : 
 if he would persuade them not to adopt what 
 is commonly, vaguely enough, called Rational- 
 ism, he must have some acquaintance (the 
 deeper the better) with the literature and 
 habits of thought prevalent in that country 
 to which the system owes its birth. This 
 seems to be a mere truism. Yet so strange 
 a 2 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 are the prejudices which sway even intelligent 
 and good men, that a very general impression 
 seems to prevail amongst English Divines, 
 that the very fact of a writer's showing any 
 acquaintance with the theology of Germany 
 may be taken as an a priori indication of 
 unsoundness. There are of course very few 
 who would have the boldness to confess that 
 they entertain so unreasonable an opinion ; 
 but they who act on this opinion are certainly 
 not few, and very serious evil may, before we 
 are aware, be thus done to our Church : for 
 certainly it is not impossible that young and 
 ardent minds may be driven, almost against 
 their will, to look with too much sympathy 
 upon errors with which they find themselves 
 unjustly charged. 
 
 It is scarcely more than might be expected 
 from this prejudice if some English writers, who 
 draw many good thoughts Jrom the Protestant 
 divines of the Continent, seem not unnatu- 
 rally to have become unwilling to refer more 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 than is absolutely necessary to the sources to 
 which they are indebted. 
 
 The author of the present volume is deeply 
 sensible of the very limited range of his 
 own acquaintance with the Divines who are 
 thus looked upon with suspicion ; but he has 
 thought it a duty, in order to protest against 
 this prejudice, as well as for other reasons, 
 to refer distinctly to the few of whose assist- 
 ance he has availed himself. For it is of 
 much importance that English readers, if 
 they do not know it already, should learn 
 that Germany has to boast of writers in 
 almost every department of theology, who 
 unite the deepest learning with a sound and 
 earnest Christian faith ; and that it is to 
 such writers we shall mainly be indebted, if 
 the Infidelity which is commonly associated 
 with the name of their country be smitten 
 and overthrown. It is indeed much to be 
 deprecated that these writers should become 
 directly the guides of the English mind. 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 They have their German peculiarities ; and 
 their whole mode of treating subjects is 
 affected by the controversies which are around 
 them in their own land. What is wanted 
 to meet Infidelity in this country is an English 
 theology, which, fully alive to the peculiar 
 excellencies of our great national Divines, 
 shall thankfully avail itself of the labours of 
 foreigners, while it is still, essentially, our own. 
 And now a very few words seem required 
 to explain the connection and bearing of the 
 following Sermons. Shortly after the author 
 was appointed to the office of Select Preacher, 
 and before he had entered on his duties, it 
 seemed probable to many well acquainted 
 with the feelings prevalent in Oxford, that 
 great changes would soon occur in the theo- 
 logical atmosphere of the place. Symptoms 
 were not wanting to indicate, that the opinions 
 which had been for some years dominant 
 were about to disappear almost as rapidly 
 as they had sprung up ; while nothing was 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 so likely to give them for a time a lingering 
 hold over the public mind, as those inju- 
 dicious attempts which are often made to 
 destroy error by mere protest, without any 
 efforts to substitute a better system in its 
 room. Subsequent events have certainly 
 confirmed the impression that such a change 
 was approaching, as the erroneous system 
 alluded to has now, by the publication of 
 Mr. Newman's Essay, received its death- 
 blow from the very hand to which it owed 
 its creation. 
 
 The question then naturally occurred, what 
 ought to be done to guide the minds of 
 younger students amid that shaking of all 
 opinions which was likely to follow. It 
 seemed that the great object ought to be, to 
 direct attention to some intelligible, enlight- 
 ened, and well-grounded Protestant system, 
 which might, by the blessing of God's Spirit, 
 recal men's minds to the simplicity of the 
 Gospel, and enable them to take their stand 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 on the theology of the New Testament, amid 
 the ruins of that baseless traditional teaching 
 which was crumbling around them. 
 
 To effect this, however, must be the work 
 of time, and is the great duty of those to 
 whom at this trying juncture the University 
 entrusts the task of conducting its daily 
 instructions, and moulding the minds of the 
 young, through personal intercourse, both by 
 precept and example. 
 
 Meanwhile it became obvious, that, as the 
 transition-state is always one of great anxiety, 
 there could be little doubt of the particular 
 very alarming direction in which thoughtful 
 minds would be not unlikely at present to 
 hurry, in escaping from the system which they 
 had learned to distrust. The teaching of the last 
 ten years had entirely unsettled men's minds ; 
 and it was certain that they could not quietly 
 return to the old channels., A thousand new 
 thoughts had been suggested to them. New 
 fields of theological inquiry lay enticingly 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 open on every side. It might indeed be 
 hoped that such works as Mr. Trench's 
 Notes on the Parables, and his subsequently 
 published Notes on the Miracles, uniting, as 
 they seem to do, so earnest a zeal for 
 faithful religion to an inquiring spirit ac- 
 quainted with the wants and longings of 
 an intellectual age, would tend to give a 
 safe direction to the inquiries on which so 
 many had entered. But no one could doubt 
 that the prospect was full of danger ; and 
 that every man who thought he understood 
 the temptations to which his younger brethren 
 were exposed, was bound to use all his influ- 
 ence, if perchance he might benefit them. 
 
 The intention of these Sermons then has 
 been, in connection with the present ten- 
 dency of men's minds, to offer some few 
 suggestions which have occurred only at 
 spare moments in the midst of the claims 
 of a laborious practical occupation ; but 
 which it is still hoped may possibly be of 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 use in showing the spirit in which specu- 
 lative error ought to be met. The object 
 of their publication will be gained if they 
 shall be found to have lent any assistance, 
 however slight, to the efforts of those few 
 leading spirits who unite an understand- 
 ing of the present state of feeling in the 
 rising generation of our divines to a real 
 knowledge of that attractive theology which, 
 coming from the early seat of the Refor- 
 mation, seems likely for good or for evil, 
 so deeply to affect the highest interests 
 of our own Church ; and who sanctify their 
 acuteness and learning by an earnest love 
 of Gospel truth. Humanly speaking, it is 
 only to such men, if perchance they may 
 be found among us, that we can look with 
 any confidence as fitted to be the guides 
 of an inquiring age. 
 
 School-house, Rugby, 
 
 23rd April, 1846. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 DISCOURSE I. 
 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 
 
 St. John xx. 31. — "These are written that ye might helieve that 
 Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might 
 have life through his name" ....... 
 
 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 VARIETY IN UNITY. 
 
 Hebrews xiii. 8. — " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and 
 for ever" ........ ... 36 
 
 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 DANGERS AND SAFEGUARDS OF THE CRITICAL 
 STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 St. John xx. 31. — "These are written, that ye might believe that 
 Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might 
 have life through his name" . . . . . . .71 
 
 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 DANGERS AND SAFEGUARDS OF THE CRITICAL 
 STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 St. John xx. 31. — "These are written, that ye might believe that 
 Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might 
 have life through his name" . . . . . . .91 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 DISCOURSE V. 
 THEOLOGY, BOTH OLD AND NEW. 
 
 2. Timothy iii. 14, 15. — " But continue thou in the things which 
 thou hast learned, and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou 
 hast learned them ; 
 
 " And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which 
 are able to make thee wise unto salvation" . . . . . 117 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 GOSPEL FACTS. 
 
 Acts x. 39. — " We are witnessess of all things which He did both in 
 the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem : whom they slew and 
 hanged on a tree" . ....... 169 
 
 II. GOSPEL DOCTRINES. 
 
 Philippians ii. 6-8. — " Who, being in the form of God, thought it not 
 
 robbery to be equal with God : 
 " But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of 
 
 a servant, and was made in the likeness of men : 
 " And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and 
 
 became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" . 179 
 
/ 
 
 ^AA*** 
 
 
 ? C " '<* 188, 
 
 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL THE MODEL OF 
 CONTROVERSY. 
 
 St. John xx. 31. 
 These are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the 
 Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have 
 life through his name." 
 
 ^HIS is St. John's own account of the ob- 
 ject with which he composed his Gospel. 
 It is doubtful whether we have distinct his- 
 torical grounds for attributing to him any 
 other motive. The well-known assertion of 
 Irenseus,* that the Apostle was induced to 
 write by his desire to oppose the errors of 
 Cerinthus and the Nicolaitans, has been 
 
 * I would refer to Lucke's Commentary (Bonn. 1840), ch. iii., 
 in which is collected the testimony of antiquity on the facts 
 here mentioned. Any reader of Lucke will see how largely 
 throughout this sermon I have availed myself of his suggestions. 
 
2 st. John's gospel [discourse i. 
 
 repeated by a chain of early authors, but 
 with such slight variations in the name of 
 the prevailing heresy, as seem to endanger 
 the claims of this tradition to any great 
 historical or chronological accuracy. It is 
 well known that Clement of Alexandria, 
 as quoted by Eusebius * has asserted, that 
 St. John wrote in order to fill up the defi- 
 ciencies of the other Evangelists, by the 
 publication of a more spiritual gospel. And 
 Eusebius f has recorded his own opinion, that 
 St. John, having this completion of the Gos- 
 pel-history in view, effected his object chiefly 
 by a detailed account of the events which 
 happened between our Lord's birth and the 
 imprisonment of the Baptist. This opinion 
 of Eusebius is sanctioned by Jerome,! but not 
 to the exclusion of the polemical object to 
 which Irenseus points. 
 
 Now it will be found on examination, that 
 probably, as has been well observed, § these 
 several statements rest rather on an exe- 
 
 * Euseb. H. E. vi. 14. t Ibid. iii. 24. 
 
 % De Vir. Illust. 9. § Lucke's Comment, vol. i. p. 189. 
 
discourse I.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 3 
 
 getical than on any historical or even tra- 
 ditionary basis. I mean that most, if not 
 all of these writers (as is clearly the case 
 with Eusebius) were not so much recording 
 facts which history told them as to the 
 object of St. John, but rather bringing for- 
 ward conjectures, which they naturally 
 formed for themselves from the study of 
 his Gospel, and from their observation of 
 the uses to which it was obviously capable 
 of being applied. 
 
 It is not at all intended that these writers 
 ought not to have formed such conjectures, 
 or that there is any inconsistency between 
 their statements and that of the Apostle 
 himself in our text. When St. John says of 
 his Gospel, that it was written that those 
 to whom it was addressed might "believe 
 that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, 
 and that believing they might have life 
 through His name," he attributes to himself 
 a motive which must equally have influenced 
 the other three Evangelists ; for all, in obe- 
 dience to their Saviour's last command, had 
 
 B 2 
 
4 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i. 
 
 devoted their lives to the salvation of their 
 brethren. It was natural for the early 
 readers of St. John's Gospel, as it is for us, to 
 seek some further explanation of its marked 
 peculiarities. What we have now to note is, 
 that apparently the earliest writers, what- 
 ever reference they may at first sight appear 
 to make to certain outward traditions, did 
 in reality in this matter seek rather for 
 the solution of their difficulty in that 
 intelligent examination of the book itself, 
 illustrated by the known history of the 
 times, to which sound biblical criticism has 
 ever pointed as the best guide, when used 
 humbly in dependence on the Spirit of God. 
 for enabling us to understand his word. 
 
 If we endeavour then ourselves, aided by 
 the suggestions of those early writers, so to 
 examine St. John's Gospel, that it may as 
 it were speak for itself, and tell us of its 
 object, we shall probably come to the con- 
 clusion that this object was threefold. First, 
 It may be doubtful, as a matter of history, 
 whether the Apostle wrote with any distinct 
 
discourse I.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 
 
 especial reference to the particular heresy 
 of Cerinthus; but heresies like that of 
 Cerinthus he had undoubtedly to oppose. 
 Secondly, He knew that the best way to 
 oppose these heresies was by writing an 
 account of our Lord's life, more distinctly 
 spiritual than the histories of the three 
 Evangelists who had gone before him. And, 
 Thirdly, As the new errors which had arisen 
 had called for a new gospel, it followed, of 
 course, that the points of view from which 
 he was now to survey the history, and the 
 discourses as well as incidents which he 
 must of necessity introduce in illustration 
 of these views, must make his work for the 
 most part supplementary to the writings of 
 his three predecessors. 
 
 This account of St. John's threefold object 
 in the composition of his Gospel — uniting 
 the three early opinions into one whole — 
 has at least the merit of giving an obvious 
 explanation of each of its marked pecu- 
 liarities. I believe, also, that a patient 
 examination of the whole book will confirm 
 
6 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i. 
 
 our supposition as to the gradation accord- 
 ing to which the members of this threefold 
 object ought to be ranked. The Apostle's 
 main object then is, in the best sense of 
 the word, polemical. His work, being po- 
 lemical, naturally dwells on those spiritual 
 doctrines which are the true antagonists of 
 the errors he confutes; and the form of a 
 supplementary narrative of the Lord's life 
 and teaching was wisely selected as the best 
 vehicle for confuting erroneous doctrine, by 
 its striking exhibition of positive truth in 
 his heavenly words and deeds. 
 
 Taking then this to be the true account 
 of the object of St. John's Gospel, I propose 
 to examine how far the book may be rightly 
 regarded as the Divine model, which the 
 Holy Spirit has given to Christians to direct 
 them in their struggles with erroneous 
 teaching : — 
 
 I. First of all let us note, that there was 
 much in the circumstances and character of 
 the beloved Apostle which pointed him out 
 more than his fellow-disciples as the man 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 
 
 best suited to be the champion of truth 
 against these growing errors. 
 
 1. St. John must have been acknowledged, 
 even by his opponents, to be more likely 
 than any other Apostle to be well acquainted 
 with the true doctrine of his Master. 
 
 It is not of course meant that there is 
 really any ground for drawing distinctions 
 between the different degrees of heavenly 
 illumination with which the Apostles were 
 enlightened ; but such distinctions were 
 drawn by heretics at a very early time. To 
 attempt to draw these distinctions is in- 
 deed the sure way to shake the foundations 
 of our faith, by raising questions as to the 
 degree of deference which we owe to each 
 inspired authority; while both the sacred 
 writers themselves * and, more distinctly, the 
 wisest uninspired Christians in all ages, 
 following their example, have regarded the 
 New Testament as one whole, the several 
 parts of which God's providence did from 
 time to time cause to be added to the 
 
 * 2 Peter, iii. 15, 16. 
 
8 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i. 
 
 already existing canon of the Old Testa- 
 ment, while the new works, as they were 
 successively written, became invested with 
 the same majesty of an unquestioned au- 
 thority as belonged to the ypa<j)cu of the 
 elder time. To these elder scriptures our 
 Lord had most distinctly given his heavenly 
 sanction ; and the new writers were even 
 more clearly proved by miracles, than their 
 predecessors of the Old Testament, to form 
 one body, as the others had formed one 
 chain, of inspired teachers accredited from 
 Heaven. The very gulf by which Christ's 
 overruling providence ordained that the body 
 of these teachers should be separated from 
 the holy uninspired men who came imme- 
 diately after them, will shew, that whatever 
 writer is proved by historical evidence to 
 belong to this Apostolical or canonical body, 
 is to be regarded by all humble Christians 
 with implicit reverence &s delivering the 
 oracles of God. And when a man's mind is 
 once satisfied with the historical proof that 
 any writing is a genuine portion of this one 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 9 
 
 book, he cannot, without sin and danger, 
 draw distinctions of greater or lesser au- 
 thority between the several members of 
 what God has united, that it may be, not 
 in this or that portion of it, but as one 
 whole, the perpetual record of his will. 
 
 But still, necessary as it is to maintain 
 the equally inspired authority of all writers 
 who are proved to be inspired at all, it is 
 certain that, in early as in later times, this 
 principle has been continually neglected. 
 It was not in Corinth alone that men op- 
 posed the authority of Cephas to that of 
 Paul ; nor is it in our age alone that infi- 
 delity has endeavoured to justify itself by 
 the watchword of "not Paul but Jesus." 
 Doubtless there were many of the early 
 heretics who considered that the pure philo- 
 sophical Christianity, which the Lord Jesus 
 came to promulgate, had been corrupted by 
 the ignorance or prejudice of his followers. 
 But where could such men expect a true 
 account of what the Lord had taught, if not 
 from the Apostle who had been with him in 
 
 B 3 
 
10 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i, 
 
 his secret hours, and whom the Church 
 delighted to honour with the name of his 
 " bosom friend " ((brio-r^tos). So that, speaking 
 after the manner of human evidence, we re- 
 cognise, in St. John's intimate friendship 
 with his Divine Master, the first requisite 
 which he possessed above all other men to 
 be the champion of God's truth. Nor will it, I 
 think, be fanciful to maintain that, even in 
 this point, St. John is our model of contro- 
 versy, that gospel truth will best be main- 
 tained by him who has lived, if we may so 
 speak, in the most intimate society of his 
 now unseen but still present Saviour. 
 
 2. Again, the Apostle's time of life pointed 
 him out very naturally as the fittest cham- 
 pion of truth. It is always an evil sign 
 when the young and inexperienced put them- 
 selves forward as the leaders of Christ's 
 Church. Now, there is little doubt that the 
 Apostle wrote his Gospel,.if not late in his 
 long extended life, at least after he had 
 reached and passed maturity. It is granted 
 that his silence as to the destruction of Jeru- 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 11 
 
 salem forbids ns to place the date of his 
 Gospel after that event ; for it seems impos- 
 sible that, if the ruin of the old system by 
 the fulfilment of his Lord's prophecies had 
 already come, he could have failed to allude 
 to it. But the testimony of antiquity as to 
 the country in which he composed his work 
 equally forbids us to place the date much 
 earlier. We have the strongest negative 
 evidence from St. Paul's writings, that, so 
 long as he lived, St. John had not yet made 
 the Asiatic province the seat of his labours. 
 Now, St. John could not well have been more 
 than ten years younger than our Lord, and 
 if he wrote his Gospel after St. Paul's death, 
 and near the time of the destruction of Jeru- 
 salem, he must have been fast approaching 
 to his sixtieth year. Mature in age as well 
 as holiness, he seemed called both by his 
 apostolic office and his time of life to stand 
 forth and save the younger members of his 
 Master's flock from the grievous errors that 
 destroyed so many of them. 
 
 These, however, are only outward circum- 
 stances in the Apostle's history. It is better to 
 
12 st. John's gospel [discourse i. 
 
 note, in the second place, how his own pecu- 
 liar character fitted him for this warfare. 
 
 II. First, St. John was, of course, above 
 all his brethren, the Apostle of love ; and, 
 unless controversy be carried on in the spirit 
 of love, it is essentially unchristian. Error 
 may indeed appear to be rooted out by the 
 sword, or without such harshness it may be 
 crushed and borne down by the mere weight 
 of a stern authority, which seeks to over- 
 whelm at once the erring brother and his 
 doctrine. Speaking generally, however, such 
 a mode of warfare will insure no lasting- 
 victory. It may silence the adversaries, and 
 spread the solitude which we mistake for 
 peace — it may induce a few to do violence to 
 their convictions, and thus gain for the win- 
 ning cause the aid of some treacherous 
 waiters upon fortune. But, usually, error 
 checked by force alone will* spring up at last 
 only the more vigorously. Heresy, as well 
 as truth, has had its martyrs, and their blood 
 has ever a fertilizing power. Persecution is 
 always ultimately, and, unless it be so 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 13 
 
 thorough as to shock all feelings of hu- 
 manity, it is usually, even in the moment of 
 its present triumph, as impolitic as it is un- 
 christian. But St. John's example of love is 
 a practical protest, not against persecution 
 merely, but against all bitterness or violence 
 even of speaking or writing against those 
 who are in error. 
 
 Setting aside all question as to the com- 
 parative truth or falsehood of the opinions 
 advocated, we cannot fail to be shocked with 
 that bitterness of satire and invective, with 
 which, for example, South assaults the Puri- 
 tans. Surely, supposing the doctrines thus 
 advocated to be true, they never could be 
 propagated with any benefit to men's souls 
 by such carnal weapons. It is not meant that 
 South is in this matter at all a solitary in- 
 stance. Doubtless the opposite party retali- 
 ated where they could with equal bitterness, 
 and Christ's Church has been disgraced in 
 all ages and countries by the bitter writings 
 of unloving and unsanctified controversy. 
 
 To oppose error, except from a love to 
 
14 st. John's gospel [discourse i. 
 
 Christ and his truth, and the souls of our 
 brethren, is only to be proudly bent on 
 spreading our own opinions. Such opposition 
 to error may in many cases be resolved 
 solely into the love of power, and, taken at 
 the best, it shows nothing better than the 
 proselytizing spirit of the Pharisees, or that 
 which once alarmed the world by the terrible 
 alternative held out by Mahometan aggres- 
 sion. Those who would meet error, as Christ 
 and his Apostles met it, must combat it in 
 St. John's spirit. 
 
 The characteristics however of St. John, 
 as the Apostle of love, are by no means so 
 simple as might at first sight be supposed. 
 He was not merely the beloved, but also the 
 loving Apostle ; and active love cannot exist 
 at all without earnestness — can never be per- 
 fect without a depth and intensity of zeal. 
 The stern severity of the well-known passage 
 in St. John's 2nd Epistle, v, 10, 11 ("If there 
 come any unto you and bring not this 
 doctrine, receive him not into your house, 
 neither bid him God speed; for he that biddeth 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 15 
 
 him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds "), 
 as well as the legend of his fleeing from the 
 pollution of Cerinthus, seem but to set forth, 
 somewhat more fully developed, that same 
 element in his character, of which we find 
 plain traces in the history of the Gospels. It is 
 the Apostle of love, of whom St. Luke (ix. 49) 
 and St. Mark (ix. 38) tell us that he was 
 rebuked because, when he saw one casting out 
 devils in his Master's name, he forbad him, 
 since he would not join the disciples' com- 
 pany. It was he, with his brother, who 
 would have called down fire from heaven to 
 overwhelm the Samaritan village which re- 
 fused to admit Christ ;* and this zeal was so 
 prominent a feature as to justify the appella- 
 tion given to both brethren of " the Sons of 
 Thunder."f All who have even begun the 
 study of Church history know Clement of 
 Alexandria's story t of the young disciple 
 rescued from his robber comrades by the 
 aged Apostle's bold exposure of his life, if by 
 
 * Luke ix. 51. t Mark iii. 17. 
 
 X Given by Eusebius, H. E. iii. 23. 
 
16 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i. 
 
 any means he might win back his convert's 
 soul to the love of Christ. And whether true 
 or merely legendary, this story represents the 
 prevailing belief of the ancient Church, that 
 St. John's predominating love was quickened 
 by as active a zeal for his Master's honour 
 as ever burned in the heart of St. Peter 
 or St. Paul. His was, in fact, the very 
 temper from which the best champions of 
 truth are formed. They love Christ and love 
 him warmly — they are jealous for the honour 
 of that truth of which his Holy Spirit has 
 convinced them — but their love for their 
 fellow-men, even the most sinful, is never swal- 
 lowed up by zeal : and therefore they plainly 
 show that they seek to win the sinner's 
 soul, even when they denounce his errors with 
 most severity. 
 
 The depth of St. John's love was well 
 suited to reclaim. It must at once have 
 enabled him to enter fully into his erring 
 brother's difficulties and peculiar temptations, 
 and thus must have conciliated at the very 
 moment that it opposed ; while the almost 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 17 
 
 stern earnestness, which at times flashed out 
 from his heart, taught all, that in essential 
 truth he would admit of no indifference ; and 
 that, while he would willingly die for those 
 with whom he reasoned, he would not sacrifice 
 to conciliate them one iota of God's real 
 word. Now this last point, his zeal for truth, 
 is the more important to be noted, before we 
 pass on to another, perhaps the most striking 
 of all the characteristics of this Apostle's 
 writings. 
 
 2. It has been said that St. John's 
 is the most spiritual Gospel. Certainly St. 
 John's eagle flight does soar directly up to 
 the throne of God, where he gazes on the 
 most mysterious truths which concern the 
 divine essence, and that incomprehensible 
 bond which unites the human soul with the 
 source of its life both spiritual and natu- 
 ral. We need scarcely mention in proof of 
 this the introduction and the manifold dis- 
 courses. Now we have seen that St. John 
 wrote to confute or dispel error arising from 
 the blending of Christianity with the strange 
 
18 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i. 
 
 transcendental philosophy of the East. But 
 mark the mode which he adopts to com- 
 bat it. It is the statement of a com- 
 mentator, already often referred to, that 
 " St. John's relation to the Gnosticism of 
 his time is not merely polemical " but in part 
 also what may be called " accommodative." 
 This word " accommodative " may have a 
 suspicious sound ; but it is here used in the 
 best sense. This writer means that St. John 
 recognises and fully allows the existence of a 
 true divine yv&o-is, such as that for which the 
 Eastern philosophy was in vain seeking by 
 mere human means, and through the exal- 
 tation of the intellect. It is by dwelling 
 upon, and developing and encouraging men to 
 follow after the true Christian yvSxns, that 
 St. John seeks to supply those wants of the 
 more philosophic mind, which led so many, 
 while they professed to be following the simple 
 Gospel, to wander quite away from it amid 
 the misty speculations of heresy or hea- 
 thenism. Thus he does not meet these errors 
 by mere protest, or denial — by seeking to chain 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 19 
 
 men's minds down when they wish to soar. 
 He knows, that, as truth is certainly more in 
 itself to be loved than error, so every error 
 into which men fall is only attractive because 
 it bears some resemblance to a truth ; for no 
 one would follow its treacherous glare unless 
 he mistook it for a cheering light which was 
 to refresh and comfort him : and therefore 
 the only way to stop men's mad pursuit of 
 it, is to set before them the true light, not to 
 exhort them to remain contented in the dark- 
 ness. It may safely be asserted that no 
 heresy ever yet gained any adherents which 
 had not some features of truth to recom- 
 mend it to man's better nature ; and the at- 
 tempt to overpower error by mere protest 
 and negation, if it affects men at all, will 
 but make them infidels instead of heretics. 
 It is the worst way of casting out the evil spirit 
 from a man's head or heart, to leave its place 
 empty, swept and garnished, ready for re- 
 ceiving back a more than sevenfold greater 
 plague than that which at first tormented him. 
 Daily experience proves this. It is true, 
 
20 ST JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i. 
 
 both of communities and individuals, that 
 those who have long laboured under the 
 malady of believing too much, do often 
 when cured hurry into the worse malady of 
 believing too little. Superstition is continu- 
 ally replaced by infidelity ; as in like manner 
 infidelity is often replaced by superstition. 
 And this does not arise merely from the fact 
 that unsettled minds have a natural ten- 
 dency to be continually vibrating from one 
 extreme of error to another, and never rest- 
 ing in the central truth. The evil would 
 seem rather to originate in those injudicious 
 means which are so commonly taken to keep 
 men right. 
 
 For first, a man's mind is like a time-piece, 
 which it is in vain to seek to regulate well 
 unless you understand something of its 
 secret mechanism. You may stop the hands 
 violently from without when it goes too fast: 
 but, if you do so, there is^ great danger that 
 you will never bring it into accordance with 
 the true time. For a short period it will go 
 too slow ; and, afterwards, when it has re- 
 
discourse i.] MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 21 
 
 covered the minutes it has lost, it will go too 
 fast again. Thus, no one can hope to free 
 his brethren from religious error, unless he 
 is able to understand and appreciate those 
 secret feelings by which they have been led 
 astray. 
 
 And again, when these feelings are dis- 
 covered, it is vain to seek to cure them by 
 mere thwarting. Christ's religion is no dry 
 unnatural system, which cannot be embraced 
 by our minds till they have been forced into 
 some formal mould contrary to their whole 
 nature. As the Lord Jesus came to save and 
 teach men of all times, countries, and cha- 
 racters, one of the clearest marks that His 
 system is divine, is to be found in its won- 
 derful adaptation to every want of human 
 nature. Each one may find full vent for 
 what still remains of good and noble in his 
 lost heart within the wide circle of Christ's 
 real truth ; and if any, following their natural 
 bent, have hurried into error, there is but 
 one wise course for seeking, by the aid of 
 God's Spirit, to rescue them. The supersti- 
 
22 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i. 
 
 tion of an exuberant imagination will never 
 be cured by prosaic arguments on the danger 
 of a voluntary humility and worshipping of 
 angels. The simple credulity of the unin- 
 structed is not to be regulated by sermons 
 upon evidences, nor the daring speculations 
 of a philosophic mind scared by lectures on 
 the temptations of human wisdom, and the 
 blissfulness of ignorance. St. Paul showed, 
 that he, as well as St. John, had a deep con- 
 viction of this truth, when " he was made all 
 things to all men, that he might by all means 
 save some." * And a wise uninspired teacher 
 will ever act like these two wise Apostles, 
 first probing deep to find the real secret cause 
 from which error springs, and then seeking 
 to satisfy, by an exhibition of some portion 
 of Christ's truth, those very longings, which, 
 unsatisfied, have, by their vain attempts to 
 gain satisfaction, been the cause of all the 
 error. 
 
 Now, it is vain to say that the Gnosticism 
 of the Apostolic age was nothing but un- 
 
 * 2 Cor. ix. 22. 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 23 
 
 mixed error and folly of human wisdom. 
 Like every other heresy it reflected the sha- 
 dow of many great truths. There is un- 
 doubtedly a \6yo<} yrwo-eco9, which St. Paul 
 classes among the spiritual gifts ;* and it was 
 in an ill-directed pursuit of this, that men 
 fell into the ^o^gW/xos- yv&o-is (science falsely 
 
 SO Called) — that $iAoo-oc/>ia kcu Kzvrj diraTri, of 
 
 which St. Paul says that it was according to 
 the tradition of men and the elements of 
 the world, and not, like the true yvao-is, accord- 
 ing to Christ. f 
 
 St. John then, as we have already said, pre- 
 sents the true yi/oW, as the only effectual an- 
 tagonist by which the false is to be combated. 
 Men dissatisfied with all the systems of con- 
 tracted religion which the world presented, 
 were seeking a true philosophic religion suit- 
 able for all countries, and free from the 
 restraints which confined it to one sacred 
 time or place. Hear then St. John repeating 
 the Lord's words : " The hour cometh when 
 ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at 
 
 * 2 Cor. xii. 8. t Col. ii. 8. 
 
24 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i. 
 
 Jerusalem worship the Father — The hour 
 cometh and now is when the true worship- 
 pers shall worship the Father in spirit and 
 in truth, for the Father seeketh such to wor- 
 ship him. — God is a spirit, and they that 
 worship him, must worship him in spirit and 
 in truth." * 
 
 Again, men who wished to exalt those very 
 debased notions of the Godhead, in which 
 the heathen were sunk, and yet to re- 
 concile the idea of the Almighty's exalted 
 majesty with the belief of some divine super- 
 intendence over this lower world, represented 
 the Eternal Father as withdrawn altogether 
 from any direct interference with mankind, 
 and imagined for themselves those succes- 
 sions of emanating spirits, who formed as it 
 were a connecting link between the Father 
 and His universe.f Now, compare St. John's 
 
 * John iv. 21, 23. 
 
 t The difficulty which gave rise to this doctrine seems well 
 illustrated in the comparison between the Almighty's supremacj* 
 and that of the great king, set forth in the 6th ch. of the 
 treatise irepl k6<tjaov, printed with Aristotle's works, vol. iv. 
 Lips. 1832. 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 25 
 
 account, in his introduction, of the relation 
 in which the Eternal Word stands, at once to 
 the Father and to us His creatures, thus : — 
 " No man hath seen God at any time — the only 
 begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the 
 Father ; he hath declared him." 
 
 Again, did philosophers, in their mistaken 
 eagerness to withdraw men's minds from 
 the things of sight and sense, assert that 
 the human soul was debased by all contact 
 with matter, and that it never could be 
 pure till it had been entirely purged, and 
 had become kindred to the Eternal mind ? 
 Hear our Lord in St. John : — " Verily, verily, 
 I say unto thee, except a man be born again, 
 he cannot see the kingdom of God. — That 
 which is born of the flesh is flesh ; and that 
 which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel 
 not that I said unto thee, ye must be born 
 again." 
 
 Lastly — for this branch of our subject is 
 boundless, and we might go through the 
 whole Gospel in illustration of it — did these 
 men assert that the one object of the soul 
 
 c 
 
26 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i. 
 
 throughout our whole life should be, by- 
 giving itself to the pursuits of pure intellect 
 to become united with God? Hear again 
 St. John, repeating our Lord's words : — " If a 
 man love me he will keep my commandments, 
 and my Father will love him, and we will come 
 unto him and make our abode with him."* 
 
 Wherever the Apostle can descry any 
 truth glittering from amidst the mass of 
 error, he turns to it eagerly and strives to 
 purge away the dross that overlays it. He 
 knows that there is in heavenly truth a 
 most attractive power : He knows that, if 
 the minds he has to deal with can only 
 be once taught really to love that truth in 
 its purity, which, in its debased and tar- 
 nished state, they are gladly idolising, they 
 will soon come, by the help of Christ's spirit, 
 to prize truth alone, and carefully to separate 
 it from the surrounding mass of erroneous 
 and wicked teaching. 
 
 Besides, it ought to be remarked, that there 
 were other heresies to be feared in St. John's 
 
 * St. John xiv. 23. 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 27 
 
 time than that of the mystical Gnosticism. 
 If the statements of history are accurate, 
 the doctrines of the Ebionites were in 
 many respects the very opposite of the Gnos- 
 ticism of Cerinthus, refusing to recognise the 
 Lord as more than a human teacher, and 
 ever materialising where Cerinthus would 
 have mounted to the sublimest intellectual 
 heights.* Had St. John met his Gnostic 
 antagonists by mere protest and denial, he 
 might have encouraged a low materialising 
 system almost worse than the errors he was 
 opposing; or, at best, another work would 
 have been required, to vindicate the mean of 
 truth. As it is, however, St. John's Gospel 
 allows and appreciates those features in the 
 Gnostic system which were opposed to what 
 was low ; thus carefully does he guard his 
 opposition, and as it were indirectly employ 
 one heresy to strengthen resistance to the 
 other. 
 
 * Lucke ibid. vol. i. p. 213. Cf also Munscher's, Dogmen- 
 Geschichte (Cassel, 1832), vol. i. p. 254. Also Mosheim Hist. 
 Eccl., soec. ii. pars ii. § 3, and soec. i. pars ii. § 16. 
 
 c2 
 
28 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i. 
 
 Yet observe, that in all this there is no 
 compromise. The Apostle never forgets, 
 that, though there are glimmerings of truth 
 in the system he directly opposes, the great 
 mass of it is dangerous and fearful error. 
 He is not contented with correcting those 
 false statements with which the true notions 
 were adulterated ; insisting, for example, on 
 what the lovers of the false yv&o-Ls had for- 
 gotten, that the true religious wisdom is 
 united indissolubly with faith — that it is 
 only by active, obedient, loving faith, not 
 by any mere effort of the intellect, that 
 the Inscrutable can be known. Still fur- 
 ther, he never hesitates to bring forward, 
 in the most pointed way, those peculiar 
 Doctrines of the Gospel which the Gnostics 
 disallowed. Did they hold our Lord to 
 be but the first of inferior spirits, emana- 
 ting from God in time? St. John de- 
 clares distinctly that he was in Himself 
 the Eternal God. Did they hold that matter 
 was essentially all full of evil, incapable of 
 regeneration, and quite abhorrent from the 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 29 
 
 Divine nature? He asserts, without any 
 qualification, that the Eternal Word became 
 Flesh. Did they reject, as altogether shocking 
 to their notions of the Deity, the possibility 
 of the permanent union of any Divine being 
 with the suffering Jesus? St. John enters 
 into distinct historical details to show how 
 the Eternal Son of God was insulted, cru- 
 cified, died, and was buried. 
 
 So that, on the whole, we come on this 
 point to the conclusion, that St. John's own 
 mind being most naturally inclined to soar 
 to the very heights for which his antagonists 
 were ignorantly longing, the Holy Spirit of 
 God employed him to resist those men by 
 that union of conciliation with kind in- 
 struction and bold protest, which was most 
 likely, speaking humanly, with God's assist- 
 ance, to lead them to the truth. 
 
 III. It remains now, lastly, to turn from 
 St. John's circumstances and personal cha- 
 racter, to consider briefly the form in which 
 he has made his stand against error. 
 
30 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i. 
 
 Plainly, it must be for some wise reason 
 that not one single book of Scripture is 
 written in a directly dogmatical form ; and 
 if we ask why this is in the other books, 
 the question occurs still more naturally as 
 to a book written under the peculiar cir- 
 cumstances of St. John's Gospel. It might 
 at first sight appear strange, if dangerous 
 errors were prevailing amongst ourselves, 
 that the answer to them should be, not any 
 directly polemical attack on the arguments 
 of the false teachers, nor any distinctly 
 explanatory statements, like the Apologies 
 of old, of that truth which its antagonists 
 first misrepresented and then denied, but 
 a history of those holy men by whom the 
 truth we love was taught ; yet observe, that, 
 with the difference of its being a history of 
 the Lord, and not of any holy men, that lies 
 before us, this is the very form by which 
 the Spirit of God guided St. John to resist 
 error. It is not the distinctive form either 
 of dogmatical or of polemical writing which 
 he adopts, either in this work, or when he 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 31 
 
 exhorts his beloved converts, by letter, to 
 beware of these same dangerous errors. In 
 the Gospel he gives them history or bio- 
 graphy; in the Epistles practical exhorta- 
 tions to a life of holiness : in both cases the 
 form is adopted surely, if we may say so, 
 not without the deepest wisdom. 
 
 There might, it is true, be that in the 
 peculiar features of the heresy which 
 St. John opposed, distorting, as it did, and 
 misrepresenting, or explaining away, the 
 facts of our Lord's birth, life, and death, which 
 called for a plain historical statement as its 
 best answer; even as in our own time the 
 heretical or infidel misrepresentations of the 
 " Life of Jesus," have been answered by the 
 great Ecclesiastical Historian of Germany, 
 in a critical and historical narrative of the 
 real facts * 
 
 But there are also other and deeper rea- 
 sons for St. John's here adopting this form. 
 Who knows not that mere dogmatical state- 
 ments of Christian doctrine are cold and 
 
 * Neander's Leben Jesu. 
 
32 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i. 
 
 powerless, compared with that spiritual 
 energy with which it becomes invested when 
 set forth in the holy lives and deaths of 
 those whose every act and word embodied 
 it? Surely the real secret of the great 
 influence of what I will not hesitate to call 
 the most truly religious section of our own 
 Church, and of that wonderful progress 
 which their opinions have made in England, 
 from the days when a man was sure to be 
 reckoned a Dissenter or a fanatic for preach- 
 ing them, is not to be found so much in 
 any learned statements of consistent doc- 
 trine, in which these writers are usually re- 
 garded as deficient — nor yet in the powerful 
 preaching of many of them — nor yet in 
 that unwearied assiduity in their parish 
 duties, which was long the peculiar charac- 
 teristic of the whole school; but rather in 
 that silent influence which they gained in 
 every family, as they found their w r ay to 
 the heart in those countless simple histories 
 of holy men, women, and children, who 
 lived and died rejoicing in the great Gospel 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 33 
 
 doctrines, because they had taught them the 
 love of Christ. Surely, also, Rome's wisdom 
 is well shown in the mode in which she 
 seeks to recommend her follies, by investing 
 them with a holy interest in the lives of 
 saints. 
 
 And if such be the influence of the lives of 
 weak, andfallible, andsinfulmen, what wonder 
 that the Holy Spirit suggested to St. John that 
 no arguments against error, or laboured state- 
 ments of systematic truth, could ever gain 
 one thousandth part of the influence possessed 
 by a simple narrative of what the Lord Jesus 
 did and said ! What cure for heresy like the 
 thought of that converse which was living in 
 the memories of all who heard it— the im- 
 pression of which, once received even from the 
 narrative of another, could never be erased 
 from any feeling heart ! Thus did God pro- 
 vide by the writings of St. John, that, to 
 the end of time, if a man, brought up under 
 Christian teaching, be ever tempted by vain 
 speculations to adopt a mere intellectual or 
 low rationalising theory of Christianity, he 
 
34 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL [discourse i. 
 
 may have the thought of its deep spiritual 
 fulness recalled to his heart at once by the 
 mere mention of the names of Nicodemus, 
 and the woman of Samaria, or of the Upper 
 Chamber and Garden in the suburb towards 
 Bethany, where our Lord spake those hea- 
 venly chapters which I suppose no earnest 
 man ever read without emotion, which seem 
 able to sustain us under every difficulty, and 
 to give the most vivid realisation of Christ's 
 presence that can be attained in thought on 
 earth, till he comes again bodily and visibly 
 to dwell with us for ever. 
 
 And now it only remains very briefly to 
 recapitulate the various points wherein we 
 have seen that St. John's Gospel is the 
 Christian's model. At all times, whenever 
 dangerous error is to be found in Christ's 
 Church (and what age has there ever been in 
 which dangerous error has not abounded?) 
 St. John's example is much wanted. Need 
 we say how much there is* in our own age and 
 country which makes it wanted by ourselves ? 
 In general, wherever we turn in the world, 
 
discourse i.] THE MODEL OF CONTROVERSY. 35 
 
 we still hear (though less perhaps than two 
 years ago) the most solemn questions made 
 the subjects of idle conversation and argument, 
 even by those who are most unfit to speak of 
 them. I know well that in this place such an 
 evil is less prevalent than elsewhere ; for here, 
 thank God, there is too much good feeling to al- 
 low us thus thoughtlessly to handle things sa- 
 cred. But still is the lesson very needful here. 
 As this is the centre of theological teaching for 
 our country, it must ever be also the centre of 
 controversy: and it will be well for us to 
 learn at all times from St. John, the holy 
 and reverent, and loving and prudent Spirit, 
 in which, when compelled, we are to enter 
 upon controversy — holding first, that the chief 
 qualification for it must be a holy life of 
 intimate union with our Saviour — secondly, 
 that without maturity of years and judgment 
 we dare not enter on it — thirdly, that there 
 can be no Christian controversy without 
 Christian love, excited indeed and deepened 
 by an earnest zeal which, in its turn, it softens 
 — fourthly, that we can never meet error 
 
36 st. John's gospel, etc. [discourse i. 
 
 successfully without being able to enter into 
 those feelings in our brother's mind which 
 have led to it, and without being prepared 
 to allow these feelings their full scope and 
 action, so far as they are innocent — and 
 lastly, that no mere arguments will ever 
 have any force, unless they be accompanied 
 by distinct proof, from our own conduct and 
 that of others on our side, that our opinions 
 have been illustrated and enforced by a life 
 of self-denying holiness. May we all (both 
 old and young) remember, that to hurry 
 into controversy without these rules attended 
 to, instead of doing Christ service, is but to 
 perpetuate strife, while we turn his holy 
 Church into a field for our vanity, or pride, or 
 opinionativeness, or at best for the display 
 of an unsanctified zeal which can never 
 save souls. 
 
DISCOURSE II. 
 
 VARIETY IN UNITY.* 
 
 Hebrews xiii. 8. 
 " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." 
 
 As these words are found in our version, 
 the name of our Lord may seem, to a cursory 
 observer, to stand grammatically in apposi- 
 tion with part of the previous sentence : thus, 
 v. 7, " Remember them which have the rule 
 over you, who have spoken unto you the 
 word of God, whose faith follow, considering 
 the end of their conversation :" and then 
 follows our text, seeming to point out what 
 is that end, viz., Jesus Christ, of whom 
 the Apostle seems to predicate, as it were 
 incidentally, that He is the same yesterday, 
 to-day, and for ever. One glance at the 
 
 * This Sermon was originally printed separately, as having an 
 immediate interest from the circumstances under which it was 
 preached. 
 
38 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse n. 
 
 original, however, will show that the passage 
 cannot be taken in this construction. For, 
 first, the words of the text being in the no- 
 minative, after the accusative preceding, 
 form an entire sentence or clause by them- 
 selves, with the substantive verb in the 
 original understood, " Jesus Christ is the 
 same yesterday, to-da}% and for ever :" and, 
 secondly, the Greek phrase translated " End 
 
 Of their Conversation," {'U^aaiv rijs avao-rpoQrjs,) 
 
 with which, in our version, the words Jesus 
 Christ seem at first sight to stand in appo- 
 sition, would be quite inapplicable to 
 our Lord. The only question that remains 
 is, whether the whole clause, " Jesus Christ is 
 the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," 
 may be taken, as our translators seem to 
 have taken it, as representing the sum and 
 substance of the faith and conversation which 
 is held up as a model : Thus, " Whose faith 
 follow, considering the end of their conver- 
 sation ;" which, we supply, is the doctrine 
 that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, 
 to-day, and for ever. Here the words 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 39 
 
 cKpao-iv ttjs avcKrrpoQrjs again oppose a difficulty, 
 being scarcely more applicable to the doc- 
 trine than to our Lord. With this view of 
 the construction of the clause, it would be 
 better to translate it in the order of the 
 Greek : " Considering the end of whose con- 
 versation, follow their faith ;" their faith, viz. 
 that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to- 
 day, and for ever. 
 
 But, on the whole, the passage is taken 
 more naturally, according to that interpreta- 
 tion which is sanctioned by Lachmann, and 
 those who with him connect our text, not 
 with the 8th, but with the 10th verse, as the 
 beginning of a new sentence, and as laying 
 down the general principle on which the 
 Apostle is going on to ground his exhorta- 
 tion to a particular duty : Thus, " Whose 
 faith follow, considering the end (or result or 
 termination) of their conversation " (or lives). 
 Then " Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, 
 to-day, and for ever : be not ye therefore car- 
 ried about by divers and strange doctrines." 
 
 Now, it will be obvious that, whichsoever 
 
40 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse ii. 
 
 of these two admissible interpretations is 
 adopted, as showing the true grammatical 
 connexion of the passage, the whole words of 
 our text stand out as a well-known Aposto- 
 lical maxim. According to the one, they are 
 considered as the sum of Apostolical doctrine, 
 the grand statement that embodies a Chris- 
 tian's faith : according to the other, they are 
 at least the readily-acknowledged general 
 maxim on which the writer is about to build 
 his particular deductions. Taken either way, 
 the whole sentence seems to be brought for- 
 ward as embodying a statement well known 
 and highly prized throughout the Church. 
 
 Viewed in this light, the words, I think, 
 become more solemn and important. They 
 ought to be familiar to us, as to the early 
 Christians. They speak of the true unity 
 which binds together all the scattered por- 
 tions of Christ's flock. The object of all 
 our worship is one, the one Saviour, un- 
 changing from eternity: and this, steadily 
 kept in mind, will make our worship itself 
 also one, in the only sense in which unity is 
 
discourse n ] VARIETY IN UNITY. 41 
 
 of real value. The one Christ will be wor- 
 shipped in the one acceptable way of a holy 
 self-denying life by all, who, being admitted 
 into His church by the one baptism, are led 
 by the one Spirit, in the hope of the one 
 salvation. 
 
 And this unity of a holy purpose will 
 lead much more than any enforced rules 
 of outward uniformity — much more than, 
 till they all try it, men can have any 
 thought of — to the great blessing of perfect 
 unity of belief and practice. 
 
 To exhaust this subject, or to trace those 
 thoughts which even a superficial examina- 
 tion of it will suggest, is of course for us 
 here impossible. The point in it to which 
 I would at present direct attention is the 
 following: That this oneness of Jesus 
 Christ, the object of our worship, of which 
 the Apostle speaks, does not exclude that 
 diversity in our modes of conceiving of many 
 of His doctrines, and of serving Him, to 
 which the peculiar circumstances or cha- 
 racter of each of us may naturally lead. 
 
42 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse ii. 
 
 God has not made all men alike: He has 
 made the children of His universal family 
 to differ, race from race, nation from nation, 
 individual from individual, by the grand 
 distinctions of blood, climate, country, poli- 
 tical state, and disposition ; and our Chris- 
 tianity, though one and unchangeable in its 
 essence, must, in outward appearance, vary 
 with our varying circumstances. There is 
 more truth than might at first sight be 
 supposed in the Eastern simile, that, when 
 the Almighty looks down upon the garden 
 of the universe, which He has planted and 
 waters for His pleasure, He is not delighted 
 with that dull monotony which would force 
 all the beds, however different their soils, 
 to yield the same fruits and flowers; but 
 what really pleases Him is to see each 
 exhibiting in its own way the product of 
 that better nature which He has given it, 
 and putting forth in luxuriance its own 
 peculiar riches as an offering in His honour. 
 Doubtless, this statement has often been 
 so understood as to lead men to suppose 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 43 
 
 that the Almighty is pleased, not with the 
 thousand varieties of healthful flowers only, 
 but also with noxious weeds, provided they 
 be fresh and vigorous. This is the perversion 
 of the truth which makes men forget that, 
 however various may be the thousand forms 
 of right, there is an immutable and inde- 
 structible separation between it and wrong. 
 
 But however capable of being perverted — 
 however fruitful actually in producing error, 
 the doctrine I now speak of does, doubtless, 
 like most other principles which have become 
 sources of heresy, point in itself to a great 
 truth, which it was originally intended to 
 express; and this truth is, that the one 
 Saviour will be worshipped, and His doc- 
 trines apprehended, in many varying ways, 
 by men of different natural dispositions and 
 in different circumstances, and that to allow 
 room for such varieties is absolutely neces- 
 sary, if we would have any real unity of 
 heartfelt earnest piety. 
 
 Now our text, so far from excluding the 
 idea of this variety in the midst of unity, 
 
44 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse ir. 
 
 seems rather, when fully examined, dis- 
 tinctly to lead us to the acknowledgement 
 of it, by referring us to the true unity as 
 existing in Christ. If any one doubts this, 
 let him consider the sense in which, in the 
 text as elsewhere, the Lord Jesus Christ 
 himself is spoken of as one and unvarying. 
 " He is," the Apostle says, " the same yes- 
 terday, to-day, and for ever:" yet is there 
 endless variety in the forms in which He is 
 manifested. First, He is the Eternal Word, 
 residing quiescent from the beginning in 
 the bosom of the Father: then He is His 
 Father's active minister, the Creator of the 
 Universe: then He descends as the Angel 
 of the Covenant to watch over the Jews, 
 and gives them the law from Sinai; then 
 He stoops still lower to be born at Beth- 
 lehem. He becomes the perfect child ; the 
 perfect boy; the perfect man: He is the 
 suffering Saviour in Pilate's judgment-hall, 
 and on the cross: He rises the powerful 
 conqueror; reigns now the intercessor, the 
 gracious Head of the Mediatorial Kingdom, 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 45 
 
 and at last will be, for all who have despised 
 Him, the inexorable judge. 
 
 The same awfully benignant features are 
 doubtless to be traced, whatever be the stage 
 of His existence in which we contemplate 
 His heavenly image; but how endless is 
 the variety of light and shade in which 
 these features are presented to us. Holy 
 minds, led by God's spirit, will not fail, in 
 whatever aspect they view Him, to note 
 those grand characteristics as a Saviour, 
 which make Him one and invariable, the 
 Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
 world ; but still they will love to dwell, 
 according to their varying tempers or cir- 
 cumstances, each on different points of all 
 that is revealed of Him. The mind of the 
 religious youth will delight to think of Him 
 as subject to His parents, as seeking in- 
 struction like, other youths, in the regular 
 channels, though astonishing all who heard 
 Him by His understanding and His answers ; 
 as growing in wisdom as in stature, and 
 in favour with God and man, and patiently 
 
46 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse ii. 
 
 waiting for the good time His Heavenly- 
 Father had appointed, before He began 
 openly to announce His message. Again, 
 in vigorous manhood, we shall be sustained 
 and taught to sanctify our labours by the 
 thought of Him rising up a great while 
 before day, and retiring to solitude, that, 
 braced by the new energy which communion 
 with His Father gave Him, He might be 
 ready when dawn came to begin that course 
 of ceaseless toil for others, which was to 
 fill every moment of His time till evening. 
 Or if, again, in age we begin to think of rest 
 in our families, we shall see Him in the 
 house of Lazarus, or with John leaning on 
 His bosom: Or, when sickness or death 
 threatens, our continual meditation will be 
 of Him in His agony. Thus, our thoughts 
 of the one Christ are as various as the 
 varying trials in which we need His example 
 to encourage us. 
 
 In like manner, as in Christ himself, so 
 also in His word, is there this endless variety 
 in unity. Almost each book of the Bible, 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 47 
 
 when attentively considered, will be found 
 to have its own peculiar character of piety ; 
 and probably God has employed the various 
 dispositions and circumstances of the several 
 human authors as the means for bringing 
 out the various features of Divine truth, 
 and thus providing that each sacred writer 
 should speak through all ages with especial 
 force to minds of his own stamp. Thus, the 
 most careless reader is led to contrast the 
 searching practical wisdom of the Proverbs, 
 with the exalted contemplative piety of the 
 Psalms; and in the New Testament it is 
 scarce needful to mention the most com- 
 monly quoted instance of the different turn 
 of thought observable in St. James and St. 
 Paul — the one apparently accustomed, all 
 the days of his manhood, to an unvarying* 
 life of regulated holiness in daily attendance 
 upon God's sanctuary— the other plucked 
 suddenly as a brand from the burning, and 
 sent to wander over the earth, preaching in 
 season and out of season to the lost Gentiles 
 
 * Vide Euseb. Hist. Eccl. ii. 2. 3. 
 
48 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse n. 
 
 the unspeakable riches of that constraining 
 grace which could save both him and them. 
 Nay, all allow that the very Gospels which 
 give us the details of our Lord's history, 
 have their several characters — that, while 
 one gives us especially the history of His 
 outward activity, as sent to be the long-fore- 
 told Saviour of his countrymen, and the 
 promulgator of a better practical law than 
 that of Moses ; another, as we have seen, 
 initiates us into the sublimest truths of His 
 spiritual being, and seems to prepare our 
 minds for such unearthly speculations, by 
 setting forth Divine discourses, in wdiich He 
 no longer insists on particular duties; but 
 rises to those mysterious heights of God's 
 nature and of man's, in which all duties have 
 their springs, but which cannot be ascended 
 by any but the longing spiritual heart. 
 
 This thought, as to the wonderful variety 
 in the different parts Qf the Bible, well 
 deserves to be considered further. As the 
 sacred subject of the teaching in the books 
 varies, so does their outward form. Some 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 49 
 
 would almost regard the Bible as the arche- 
 type of all human writings, the great Divine 
 model, exhibiting each species in its perfect- 
 ness. Not however to advance for it any- 
 such disputable claim, we have without any 
 doubt in this one volume, a literature of 
 almost every kind. To look at this in 
 detail : in the Old Testament, we have, first 
 of all, the majestic simplicity of the narra- 
 tive, that describes the patriarchal times 
 with winning grace and power — capti- 
 vating by its striking pictures the volatile 
 fancy of childhood, and charming us in age 
 into forgetfulness of all present troubles, by 
 that freshness which breathes from the acts 
 and words of those who lived when society 
 was young. What legendary tales of Greece 
 or Rome, or of the old Babylonian or Egyp- 
 tian kings, can compare even for mere 
 attractiveness, with the holy story, in which 
 God commissioned His servant to trace the 
 origin of the chosen people, through the 
 wilderness, and their slavery, up to the 
 nomad tents of their great ancestor, and 
 
 D 
 
50 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse n. 
 
 through him to the fathers of the human 
 race ? And these simple annals take their 
 rise in a sublime revelation of the creation 
 of matter by the all-governing and all- 
 pervading Mind, which separates them from 
 human legends at their very outset, by 
 causing them, in the midst of their childlike 
 simplicity, to solve questions on which we 
 shall in vain look for light in the works of 
 the acutest uninspired intellects of the most 
 cultivated age. Here surely, in the very 
 form of this early history, is a variety in 
 the midst of unity which proclaims itself 
 divine. 
 
 Again, as we go further, we pass from 
 the peaceful simplicity of the earliest to 
 the stirring wars of the rude heroic times, 
 in the tale of the gradual conquest of 
 the promised land. Then succeeds the 
 grave history of courts and camps, when 
 Eastern civilisation was at its height ; and 
 interspersed are fair pictures of family and 
 of rustic life, to win those whose homely 
 spirits can scarcely gather lessons for their 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 51 
 
 own daily guidance from God's dealings with 
 the great of the earth. Besides, we have the 
 laws of the favoured nation in its political, 
 its moral, and its ceremonial code, displayed 
 with a minuteness to be found in no trea- 
 tise on Spartan, or early Roman legislation, 
 which, deeply studied, enable us to realise 
 the daily habits of the people, while they 
 may exercise also the ingenuity of the sub- 
 tlest political philosophy to classify them, 
 and refer them to their principles. Then 
 come the grave ethical treatises, the expe- 
 rience of a long life passed in active duty, 
 and arranged by a wisdom from above. 
 Then too, in poetry, we have the pastoral, 
 perhaps the drama, and above all the lyric 
 in its highest perfection, interspersed in the 
 earliest history, or standing forth by itself as 
 the model for the holy praise of all genera- 
 tions — various in its psalmody as the thou- 
 sand varying feelings of the calmly thankful, 
 or desponding, or repenting, or longing, or 
 exulting, or persecuted, or victorious soul 
 of God's servant: while the vista in this 
 d2 
 
52 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse ii. 
 
 ancient choir is closed by the grandeur of 
 the prophetical lyric, which carries on the 
 bold longings of the ardent soul to the end 
 of time. 
 
 Or turn again to the form in which God 
 communicates his truth in the New Testa- 
 ment. Here are at least two different kinds 
 of the most unadorned biography of the 
 human life of the Redeemer ; interspersed 
 with the simplest moral lessons and the 
 bright imaginative colouring of the parables 
 for the childlike, acute arguments for the 
 subtle, and the highest flights of heavenly 
 philosophy for the contemplative. Then 
 comes the plain history of the planting of 
 the Church, and its struggles within and 
 without, with Sadducaic and Pharisaic 
 Judaism, with the sensuous classical, and 
 mystic Eastern heathenism, again ending in 
 a biography of the most energetic of the sons 
 of men whom God employed to bear His 
 truth through the struggle. Then we have 
 the letters of this great Apostle and his 
 brethren, to churches of all kinds : to the holy 
 
bksoourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 53 
 
 Ephesians ; to the Corinthians, sorely 
 tempted to make a compromise of their 
 faith with the Epicurean luxury and philo- 
 sophy which surrounded them ; against the 
 stern Judaizers, who beset the Roman or 
 Galatian Christians; or those who would 
 have misled the Thessalonians into a political 
 fanaticism. Or think again how, all through 
 these letters, we have the plain practical 
 morality of conscience, mixed up with the 
 holiest and most mysterious of those doc- 
 trines which Christ came to reveal, and even 
 with reasonings on those dark subjects of 
 controversy as to the freedom of man's will 
 and its slavery, which have agitated the 
 philosophic mind under every system of faith 
 or intellectual teaching. And here again, as 
 in the Old Testament, the sacred vista closes 
 with that wild prophetic poetry which thrills 
 so deeply through every meditative heart, as 
 it opens to us mysterious glimpses into the 
 final destiny of our whole race, and the par- 
 ticular mode in which God will award hap- 
 piness or misery to each individual soul. 
 
54 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse n. 
 
 So that, in fact, throughout the whole 
 volume, what is scarcely intelligible and 
 somewhat repulsive to men of one time of 
 life or state of civilisation, is the very point 
 which gives the sacred books their chief 
 power to attract men of another tone. 
 
 Yet, through all this variety of Old Testa- 
 ment and New, we cannot fail to note the 
 perfect all-pervading unity. There are the 
 same lessons of holy living ; the same truths 
 as to God's nature and man's — more clearly 
 marked indeed, and of a deeper colouring, as 
 the tide of revelation swells, but still substan- 
 tially the same; the same struggle of the 
 fallen human race with its great adversary 
 is shadowed forth in all : but, above all, the 
 whole Scripture is made one by the one holy 
 image which every page reflects, the one 
 Jesus Christ, himself the author and the 
 subject of the whole, of whom Genesis speaks 
 as the first creator, and the Apocalypse as 
 the final judge — of whom' every good man 
 in its history is the type — whose sufferings 
 and victory every prophet foretels— whose 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 55 
 
 glory is hymned in every song of praise — 
 who is set forth as by his Spirit alone giving 
 the power to obey each practical lesson and 
 understand each doctrine. Thus the whole 
 Bible is as it were one heavenly instrument 
 of music, tuned to sing the glory of Him 
 who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for 
 ever. And it has its harmony from the very 
 variety of the notes which are blended in 
 its symphony : and each ear which God's 
 Holy Spirit has prepared to love the sound, 
 has its own peculiar note in which it espe- 
 cially delights. Far then be it from us the 
 attempt to destroy the harmony by allowing 
 no notes but one. Jesus Christ is brought 
 before us, in the Bible as all-sufficient to 
 supply all wants, to cheer, sustain, to ani- 
 mate, to lead to victory ; for young and old ; 
 for men of every age, climate, degree of pro- 
 gress in civilisation ; of all ranks, professions, 
 talents, tempers. He is the same yesterday, 
 to-day, and for ever ; but in this sameness 
 there is variety as infinite as that of His 
 own Creation. 
 
56 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse if. 
 
 It would be easy to follow out this 
 thought, and to show that this characteristic 
 is to be found, not only in the mysterious 
 features of the Lord himself, or in the sub- 
 jects, or in the fashion of His heavenly 
 volume ; but still further, 1 st, in those very 
 different forms of contemplative or active 
 piety, which are embodied in the lives of his 
 chosen servants ; and, 2ndly, in the way in 
 which His universal church adapts itself to 
 every age and country. 
 
 In the Bible how many and how different 
 are the characters on which the Holy Spirit 
 has stamped the seal of Christ's approba- 
 tion. We have one form in the patriarch- 
 chief, the priest as well as king and general 
 of his people ; another in the priest who in 
 later days had no office but to wait on God's 
 Sanctuary. We have one in the great king 
 who adorns and extends his paternal realm, 
 and cares daily for its laws, its commerce, 
 and its literature ; another in the myste- 
 rious prophet who flies from courts to the 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 57 
 
 brook Cherith,* and who seeks converse with 
 his Maker in the dark solitudes of Horeb.f 
 We have one in the courtier-sage of Babylon ; 
 another in the fishermen of Gennesaret. 
 We have f Mary resting at Christ's feet ; 
 and Martha busy with many worldly cares, 
 yet full of faith, § to acknowledge without 
 any hesitation the coming resurrection. We 
 have Anna and Simeon || waiting all their 
 time daily in the temple ; and Cornelius *j[ 
 full of alms and prayers in the midst of the 
 duties of the Roman garrison. We have 
 Paul the energetic, full of zeal ; and John 
 the meek, full of love. And so, to pass 
 beyond the limits of sacred history, his mind 
 must have little of a real Catholic spirit, who 
 despises the wild retreat of the strange 
 Egyptian hermit, because his soul kindles 
 rather as he dwells on those public scenes in 
 which Christ's truth was borne victorious in 
 the sight of men, by the popular eloquence 
 
 * 1 Kings xvii. t Kings xix. 
 
 X Luke x. 38. § John xi. 24. 
 
 || Luke ii. 25, 36. ^ Acts x. 
 
 d3 
 
58 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse ii. 
 
 of Chrysostom, or the practical vigour of 
 Athanasius ; who cannot bear the homeliness 
 of Latimer, because he loves rather to be 
 instructed by the learning which almost 
 overburdens the piety of Taylor ; who has no 
 admiration for the uncompromising zeal of 
 Luther, because he has more sympathy with 
 that winning gentleness with which Leighton 
 sought in vain to teach men of different 
 thoughts and tempers to live as brethren. 
 
 And various as are the characters of 
 Christ's individual saints, so various also 
 are the forms into which His Church has 
 moulded itself, whether it sits in learned 
 leisure, as amongst ourselves, seeking to 
 rear teachers, and afterwards to help them 
 by its prayers ; or, actively engaged in its 
 missionary work, either uplifts a warning 
 voice, as in Apostolic times, in populous 
 cities, or seeks for its scattered converts 
 amid the stillness of American forests, or in 
 the islands of the Pacific. The student of 
 ecclesiastical history recognises the same 
 Church, displaying itself under one form in 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 59 
 
 the second century, under another in the 
 fourth, under another in the sixteenth, and 
 under another in our own. But in each, 
 keeping always steadily in view its grand 
 end, we see that it subserves also by 
 its peculiar development some immediate 
 secondary purpose for which its Lord had 
 destined it. In the first and beginning of 
 the second century, we see it gliding on its 
 way silently, attracting but little the notice 
 of the heathen authorities; in the third, 
 raising its head, and gaining outward gran- 
 deur as it grows, that it may be the better 
 ready, when God's providence calls it, to re- 
 ceive an imperial convert, and sit as a queen 
 among the nations. We see it moulding 
 itself into one compact body in the fourth 
 century, that when civil ties were burst by 
 the irruption of barbarian hordes, and the 
 whole fabric of imperial civilisation seemed 
 crumbling into ruins, in it the scattered ele- 
 ments of society might be again cemented 
 into one enduring fabric. By its influence 
 we see the nations of Christendom, through 
 
60 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse ii. 
 
 the dark times that follow, forced to own 
 another outward bond of union besides that 
 of common wars, and to fear another powerful 
 arm besides that which wielded the sceptre 
 or the sword. Again, in the sixteenth 
 century we see the same Church reformed, 
 becoming in Protestant countries the pledge 
 and safeguard of their separate life and 
 energy for the several nations, as it had 
 been before of the common life of all. Again, 
 we hope to see it in our own day rise to 
 meet our own wants, silencing sceptical 
 doubts by solid arguments, or filling up the 
 unsatisfied longings of the cultivated mind 
 by a deeper philosophy and poetry than 
 infidelity could ever dream of. And, as we 
 look forward, we see it promising at last in 
 time, as the doctrines of love and charity 
 gain ground in spite of all the accidental 
 hindrances which now so much oppose them, 
 to unite all the tribes of Europe, of the east, 
 the west, and the far- distant south, into one 
 holy brotherhood, in which each shall have 
 full scope for the development of its own 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 61 
 
 genius, while all agree to worship Christ, 
 and teach each other to speak His truth 
 boldly, though they speak it in love. The 
 intelligent reader of Ecclesiastical History 
 knows that the forms which Christ's Church 
 assumes must vary with its duties, and that 
 the field of these duties is as wide as the 
 world which He has willed to save. 
 
 And now let us think briefly what is the 
 practical result to which these thoughts 
 conduct us. One lesson which they teach 
 is obvious, that we must study to live in 
 Christian peace with all who are bound 
 together in this essential unity. If the 
 Apostle urges, "If it be possible, as much 
 as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men,"* 
 we make, surely, no great demand if we sub- 
 stitute for " all men," all who love the Lord 
 Jesus Christ in sincerity. As this lesson 
 will teach us not to confine too much the 
 limits of our own communion, so even 
 where circumstances over which we have 
 no control have made outward fellowship 
 
 * Rom. xii. 18. 
 
62 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse n. 
 
 impossible, still shall we learn from it to 
 study the fellowship of the heart. The 
 most ardent attachment to our own holy 
 forms, the most full appreciation of their 
 efficiency in guiding our own souls in the 
 way of life, nay, a conviction that under 
 Providence our own Church seems more 
 likely than any other to be our Lord's in- 
 strument in the great work of spreading a 
 pure, and enlightened, and orderly Chris- 
 tianity throughout the world — our conviction 
 of all this can have no natural connexion 
 with any uncharitable feelings towards those 
 who are not able to agree with us. "If," 
 says Jeremy Taylor,* " the persons be Chris- 
 tians in their lives, and Christians in their 
 professions, if they acknowledge the Eternal 
 Son of God for their Master and their Lord, 
 and live in all relations as becomes persons 
 making such professions, why then should 
 I hate such persons whom God loves, and 
 who love God, who are partakers of Christ, 
 
 * Liberty of Proph., Ep. Dedicatory, p. ccccii. Works, Lon- 
 don, 1839. Vol. vii. 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 63 
 
 and Christ hath a title to them, who dwell 
 in Christ and Christ in them, because their 
 understandings have not been brought up 
 like mine ; have not had the same masters ; 
 they have not met with the same books, 
 nor the same company, or have not the 
 same interest, or are not so wise, or else 
 are wiser ; that is, for some reason or other, 
 which I neither do understand nor ought 
 to blame, have not the same opinions that 
 I have, and do not determine their school 
 questions to the sense of my sect or inte- 
 rest?" When will the day come when 
 Christians throughout the world will re- 
 member, that however great the differences 
 which divide sincere believers from one 
 another, these never can be one-thousandth 
 part so important as those which ought to 
 separate them by an impassable gulf from 
 all who live in sin ? 
 
 And here, lest this be misunderstood, it is 
 well to speak plainly, and to state that this 
 lesson must be taken with two limitations : — 
 
 1st. It will, of course, often be our bounden 
 
64 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse 11. 
 
 duty to protest against the errors of our 
 brethren, and partially at least to withdraw 
 ourselves from acting with them, although 
 we believe them to be, according to their 
 consciences, sincere followers of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ ; because, though they have 
 the right foundation, they may have raised 
 on it the vain superstructure of wood, hay, 
 stubble; and may thus teach a system, 
 which, though its poison cannot deaden their 
 own ardent faith, has a strong tendency to 
 destroy the life of all who are instructed by 
 them. Thus we are bound to protest against 
 Rome, and stand apart from her, even though 
 we know her annals to be adorned by many 
 noble saints ; and, while we pray for her 
 daily, as included in Christ's Universal 
 Church, and revere with trembling the good- 
 ness which we acknowledge to be often grow- 
 ing within her pale, we dare make no com- 
 promise with her, nor speak lightly of her sins. 
 2ndly. The unity which binds us all 
 together has the Lord Jesus Christ for its 
 centre ; with those, therefore, who are not 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 65 
 
 one with us in Him, the text gives us no 
 encouragement to live in Christian fellow- 
 ship. If any regard the Lord and Saviour, 
 who is to us the source of all our spiritual 
 life, as a mere man, or a mere angel, or what 
 is almost worse still, as a mere shadowy 
 name — if any, while they profess to revere 
 its author, have reduced Christianity to he- 
 come one amongst many systems of poor 
 human philosophy, while its words of life 
 are placed in the rank of the early Roman 
 legends ; here is no pardonable variety, but 
 a total change from what the Apostles 
 taught ; these men cannot be united with us 
 in the worship of Him who is the same yes- 
 terday, to-day, and for ever. 
 
 It is always difficult and would savour of 
 presumption, to attempt to state distinctly 
 what is essential in Christianity ; but, hap- 
 pily, the most universally revered of the 
 councils of the Church may here be our 
 guide. The best symbol of universal Chris- 
 tian brotherhood with those without our 
 own particular Church, will be that which 
 
66 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse ii. 
 
 the Fathers of Nicaea and Constantinople 
 instituted, when they bequeathed to us that 
 Confession which alone has received 1 the 
 sanction both of East and West. And it is 
 not unimportant to remark, in passing, that 
 in the explanation which the Nicene Fathers 
 appended to their Creed, they have, as to the 
 great doctrines it was composed to teach, 
 recorded their protest against all attempts to 
 add to, as well as take away from, the ful- 
 ness of its perfect statements.* Those whose 
 hearts are full of the certain heavenly truths 
 of which this Creed treats, will have little 
 
 * Vide Acta Conciliorum, Harduin, Paris, vol. i. p. 507 ; fol. 
 1715. — " Hsec est orthodoxorum et probatorum fides. Quorum 
 autem omnium cognitio ex divinis Scripturis clare patet, et nos 
 trecenti octodecim profitemur et confitemur atque cunctos pro- 
 testamur hanc eandem esse fidem quam accepimus. Quam- 
 
 obrem maledicimus, anathematizamus et excommu- 
 
 nicamus cunctos quifidei huic aliquid, vel addunt vel detrahunt" 
 — The original Creed, to which the explanation containing these 
 words is appended, referred only to the doctrine of our Lord's 
 nature, and His connexion with the Father. The Creed was 
 completed, as is well known, when, the articles on the Holy- 
 Spirit (with the exception of the " Filioque ") were added by 
 the 150 bishops in the Constantinopolitan Council. — Vide 
 Harduin, as above ; Mosheim's Hist. Eccl., Saec. IV. Pt. II. 
 § xx. 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 67 
 
 leisure or inclination to be arguing on matters 
 which are fairly disputable. 
 
 A second lesson, which the thoughts sug- 
 gested by the text teach, is not less obvious 
 than the first. In all our efforts to enforce 
 Christ's truth, either on our brethren at home, 
 or still more on men in other countries, we 
 must be most cautious not to press on them 
 a greater resemblance to ourselves than the 
 Bible requires. If it be true that every 
 natural temperament must have its fair 
 room to work— -that in the non-essential 
 parts of Christianity what is suited to one 
 honest and pious mind is repulsive to an- 
 other — we must not fall into the error attri- 
 buted to the Puritans, of forcing on the joy- 
 ousness of childhood the austerity of age, 
 nor strive to cool down all ardent feelings 
 because we are ourselves calm and unex- 
 citable. This surely is to confound our own 
 prejudices with Christ's all-comprehensive 
 truth ; to put new wine into old bottles, and 
 to act in direct opposition to the Apostle's 
 precept of becoming all things to all men, if 
 by any means we may win some. 
 
68 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse if. 
 
 But perhaps, after all, a third lesson, as it 
 is the most obvious, is also the most import- 
 ant practically for each of us. Jesus Christ, 
 the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, is, 
 still, in the varying features of His heavenly 
 character, suited to be the object which de- 
 lights and sustains men of all natural dispo- 
 sitions, and under all circumstances. His 
 religion also, brought home to our hearts, 
 has as miraculously infinite a capability of 
 adaptation to all our individual wants as He 
 has himself. We can never, then, be in any 
 circumstances in which we can be excused 
 from acting directly on His example, and 
 according to His commands. 
 
 Are many of you here now following the 
 calm course of well-regulated discipline, not 
 yet plunged into the world's cares and 
 harassing business? He is your model now 
 during the thirty years of silent preparation 
 for His mission. It is better to insist on this 
 over and over again, than to point out the 
 particular sins which you must flee from; 
 for if any of you will steadily keep Christ's 
 
discourse ii.] VARIETY IN UNITY. 69 
 
 example before you, and try to realise the 
 thought that He, your God, is by your side 
 now in His Spirit, to sustain you against 
 temptation, and lead you on to holiness, in 
 the midst of the varied temptations of this 
 place, you must live as Christians. Again, 
 no one can tell of some of you when you 
 leave this place, in what countries or pro- 
 fessions your lot in life may be cast ; but if 
 what has been now stated be true, there 
 can be no place where Christ and His re- 
 ligion will not follow you. There is no 
 delusion more certain to ruin souls than that 
 which so often whispers, that Christ's ex- 
 ample and rules may be well suited for those 
 in other circumstances, but do not apply to 
 ourselves. There is, in truth, no place but 
 Hell where Christ does not enter, no pro- 
 fession but the devil's service which He is 
 not ready to sanctify. The soldier, the mer- 
 chant, the sailor, the lawyer, may be, and 
 often by God's grace has been, as directly 
 employed in Christ's service as the ministers 
 of his inner sanctuary. If His Holy Spirit 
 
70 VARIETY IN UNITY. [discourse ii. 
 
 would only enable us to keep the thought 
 of Him and His sustaining grace before us 
 wherever we go, there would be no fear for 
 us, either here or in still more dangerous 
 scenes ; for we might feel secure that He 
 would guide us safely, and lead us at last 
 to His everlasting kingdom. 
 
DISCOURSE III. 
 
 DANGERS AND SAFEGUARDS OF THE 
 CRITICAL STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 St. John xx. 31. 
 " These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the 
 Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing ye might have 
 life through his name." 
 
 In considering these words formerly, as 
 applied to St. John's Gospel, it was natural 
 to remark, that they set forth the object 
 proposed not by St. John alone, but by all 
 the Evangelists. But this statement may be 
 extended much further. The words of the 
 text may apply not to this or that portion 
 merely of the Old or New Testament, but to 
 the whole Bible : and of course they point 
 out the object, not merely of the human 
 authors, but of God. 
 
72 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse in. 
 
 Now I am the more induced to dwell on 
 this point, because in a former sermon, in 
 connexion with this text, we were led to 
 certain historical and critical observations on 
 the composition of one of the Gospels ; and 
 the tendency of all such study of the sacred 
 books, unless under very watchful guidance, 
 must be to withdraw our minds in some 
 degree from the one great spiritual object 
 with which they were all written. 
 
 I propose now to examine into some of 
 the dangers of those perilous studies con- 
 nected with the history and criticism of the 
 sacred volume, in which all in this place 
 are more or less engaged. 
 
 And first of all I would remark, that, in 
 these studies, from their very nature, there 
 can be no safety for us, unless by God's 
 help we keep continually in mind that great 
 truth which our text suggests : viz., that all 
 the objects of the particular books, proposed 
 by the particular human authors, in the 
 particular circumstances in which they or 
 their first readers were placed, are subordi- 
 
discourse in.] OF THE BIBLE. 73 
 
 nate, and to be reckoned as nothing when 
 compared with this one great spiritual object 
 of the whole, proposed by the Divine Author, 
 viz., the salvation of lost man through Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 The chief of the dangers to which I have 
 alluded, arise necessarily from the very 
 form in which God has been pleased to com- 
 municate the revelation of His will. No 
 one can enter at all deeply on the critical 
 and historical study of the Bible without 
 having his attention very soon arrested by 
 the following difficulty : — We hold, that, 
 when the Lord Jesus Christ withdrew His 
 inspired teachers from the world, and left 
 His church to struggle henceforward without 
 miraculous help, He ordained that His 
 Apostles should leave behind them a com- 
 plete body of Christian truth, perfectly 
 sufficient, by the help of His ever-present 
 Spirit, to guide each Christian's belief in all 
 essential points, and thus to save his soul. 
 We hold also that this body of truth is 
 sufficient, by the principles which shine forth 
 
 E 
 
74 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse iii. 
 
 everywhere throughout its unsystematic, but 
 perfectly plain teaching, to guide the un- 
 inspired rulers of the Church, if they will 
 humbly seek to learn, in the formation of 
 those varying rules of discipline, which must 
 from time to time be laid down and changed 
 by their authority, to suit the varying cir- 
 cumstances of each age. Now, the question 
 which very soon meets every one who 
 studies the Bible critically, is this : How is 
 the idea of this perfect completeness of the 
 sacred volume to be reconciled with what 
 criticism tells us of the gradual, and almost, 
 as it were, fortuitous production of the 
 several books ? The obvious answer is, that 
 the whole of this difficulty arises from look- 
 ing merely to the human authors, not to 
 our Lord himself, who by his Holy Spirit 
 guided and controlled all for His one great 
 purpose of which the text speaks. 
 
 To examine this more in detail — It is the 
 key-stone of our Theology that Holy Scrip- 
 ture is complete: yet St. John says in the 
 verse preceding our text, " Many other signs 
 
discourse in.] OF THE BIBLE. 75 
 
 truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, 
 which are not written in this book." Many 
 other discourses certainly did the Lord hold 
 with His disciples, both in public and in 
 private, the memory of which has perished. 
 Many others besides the four Evangelists 
 (St. Luke intimates*) took in hand to set 
 forth, in order, a history of the Lord's life and 
 sufferings; and if St. Luke, in the passage 
 referred to, be speaking of inaccurate written 
 histories, there must besides these have 
 been, if not written, certainly many float- 
 ing oral accounts of the gospel narrative, 
 coming from Apostles, and equally authentic, 
 if they had survived, with those which we 
 now reverence. Moreover, even if the lost 
 Epistle to the Laodiceansf could be proved to 
 be none other than that to the Church of 
 Ephesus, I still St. Paul, and St. Peter, and 
 St. James, and St. John, to say nothing of 
 their fellow Apostles, must have written 
 letters to churches and individuals, besides 
 
 * Luke, i. 1, 2. f Coloss. iv. 16. 
 
 X Cf. Olshausen, Bibl. Comment. Coloss. iv. 1G. 
 
 e2 
 
76 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse hi. 
 
 those which have come down to us. All 
 these are lost : the very names of them 
 have perished : the utmost ingenuity of re- 
 search cannot find either the works them- 
 selves, or any account of them in the remains 
 of Christian antiquity. Very few of the many 
 sayings of our Lord not recorded in the Gos- 
 pels have been handed down to us, and these 
 important only from the heavenly majesty of 
 Him who uttered them.* 
 
 Now, it may be true that no one now, 
 after the subject has been so thoroughly 
 investigated, expects the canon of Scripture 
 to be increased by the discovery of any lost 
 writing of the Apostles. It is allowed that 
 we know now all of the Apostles' teaching 
 that by human means we can ever expect to 
 know of it: but men not unnaturally ask, 
 How can that be considered as a complete 
 code of Christian laws, and storehouse of 
 Christian principles, perfect in itself, which 
 
 * Vide Acts, xx. 35. Cf. Olshausen, in loc. Cf. also Fabricius. 
 Codex Apocr. Novi Test. (Hamburg, 1719), p. 321, where these 
 sayings are collected and classified. 
 
discourse in.] OF THE BIBLE. 77 
 
 history and criticism show us to be thus 
 fragmentary? 
 
 And from this difficulty may naturally 
 spring many errors. On the one hand, if 
 Scripture be supposed to contain but a small 
 portion of what we may learn of God's 
 revealed word, what more natural than to 
 hold that its deficiencies must be filled up 
 from some other stream of inspiration ? At 
 first, men may strive to gain the aid they 
 need from some supposed remains of the 
 unwritten teaching of the Apostles; but 
 soon, forced by history and criticism in 
 candour to admit that no such remains 
 exist, they will more boldly throw them- 
 selves, with the Romanists, on the aid of 
 an ever-present Church, which, claiming to 
 be itself inspired, professes to fill up the 
 scanty measure of Scripture-teaching from 
 its own unbounded stores. 
 
 On the other hand, if men be convinced 
 not only that all the unwritten teaching of 
 the Apostles has perished, but that these 
 founders of Christ's church have never had 
 
78 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse hi. 
 
 any inspired successors ; that it was not till 
 very degenerate days that any inspiration 
 similar to that of Scripture was ever claimed 
 for fathers or councils; that the signs of 
 an Apostle have never been wrought by any 
 but those to whom Christ at first gave 
 them ; what more natural than for one 
 convinced of the impiety of such preten- 
 sions, who still looks on Scripture as very 
 scanty, and knows not where else to turn, to 
 give up the thought of being guided by inspi- 
 ration altogether; to make human reason 
 his guide ; and to assign to the Scripture a 
 co-ordinate place in his esteem with Plato, 
 or Aristotle, or the Institutes of Justinian ; 
 as others have classed it with Cyprian, or 
 Chrysostom, or the decrees of Nicsea ? 
 
 Into one or other of these two species of 
 error there is great danger lest all critical 
 students of the Bible fall, if they do not, 
 by the help of Divine grace, keep their eyes 
 fixed on the Lord Jesus Christ as by His 
 providence over-ruling the composition of 
 the whole book, and making all the various 
 
discourse in.] OF THE BIBLE. 79 
 
 wishes, and powers, and necessities of its 
 human authors and first readers work to- 
 gether for that one grand object which He, 
 its Divine Author, had always steadily in 
 view. 
 
 The passage of Irenseus,* as to the number 
 of the Gospels, is almost too trite for quo- 
 tation : " As there are four quarters of the 
 world in which we live, and four chief 
 winds, and the Church is spread over all 
 the earth, but the pillar and support of 
 the Church is the Gospel and its breath of 
 life, plainly the Church must have four 
 columns, and from these must come forth 
 four blasts breathing immortality and giving 
 life to men." Nor is this mere rhetoric. 
 Each Evangelist, at the time when he 
 wrote, had doubtless his own objects: he 
 knew the wants of those for whom he 
 wrote : St. Matthew, as a Jew to the 
 Jews ; St Mark, as a compiler for St. Peter's 
 converts; St. Luke, to edify Theophilus; 
 St. John, as a disciple of the true Gnosis, 
 
 * Adv. Haeres. c. iii.p. 23*7. Paris, 12mo. 1545. 
 
80 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse hi. 
 
 to spiritualise and thus destroy the false. 
 But, as all the winds in their various courses 
 are but the ministers of God's pleasure, 
 — each fulfilling its appointed office in the 
 great work of purifying the atmosphere — so 
 the labours of all four Evangelists together 
 produce in unison that one history of the 
 Divine and human perfection with which 
 Christ has purposed to purify His Church. 
 He employed each as a workman to form, 
 according to his capacity, some one portion 
 of that great statue of Himself, which he 
 intended to be the object of His Church's 
 adoration through all time. The workman 
 might not aspire further while he worked 
 than to complete his own allotted portion 
 of the task ; but, if we would understand 
 the whole, we must look to the designs of 
 the great Master-builder who employed and 
 directed all. And thus, when St. Paul, 
 roused by the immediate wants of a particu- 
 lar church in his own day, took up his pen to 
 write to the Christians of Galatia, the Lord 
 Jesus still guided him, and ordained that the 
 
discourse in.] OF THE BIBLE. 81 
 
 Roman, Galatian, Corinthian, Ephesian, and 
 Thessalonian converts should be types of 
 classes to be found in the Church in all ages ; 
 so that all men might in them see their own 
 likeness, and the book of these many frag- 
 mentary writings might be formed into one 
 perfect whole. 
 
 Thus our Lord ordained. In this one 
 book (however fragmentary its original com- 
 position) we find that one sufficient guide, 
 for which we shall in vain seek in the works 
 of mere uninspired reason, whether pre- 
 tending to no higher title than that of 
 philosophy, or falsely claiming to be divine. 
 
 And thus keeping our eyes steadily fixed 
 on God's one great purpose, as unfolded in 
 the text, we shall never be distracted by 
 our examination of the human motives 
 which influenced the several human authors, 
 or the circumstances which formed, as it 
 were, the mould in which the heavenly metal 
 was to be fused. 
 
 We have then seen a great danger to 
 which the critical student of the Bible must 
 e3 
 
82 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse hi. 
 
 be exposed. It is a very extensive danger, 
 comprising under it many forms of evil, of 
 some of which it may be necessary to speak 
 more in detail. 
 
 Without a deep conviction of that all- 
 important truth of which the text reminds 
 us, it must, we repeat, be impossible to pass 
 safely through this dangerous field of study. 
 Perhaps there is no period in a thoughtful 
 man's life, in which the crisis of his future 
 spiritual being is more deeply involved, than 
 that in which he first begins critically to 
 study God's holy word. So awful indeed 
 are the results which may follow, and so 
 many are the instances in which faith is 
 altogether shipwrecked, that men advanced 
 in years, who have themselves known the 
 peril, cannot think without fear of the duty 
 of leading their younger brethren to enter 
 on this field, when God's Providence has 
 imposed this duty on them as teachers 
 in His Church. The strong practical bias 
 of the English mind may have prevented 
 the danger from being so clearly developed 
 
discourse in.] OF THE BIBLE, 83 
 
 amongst ourselves as in foreign countries; 
 but still is there, even in our own country, 
 enough to warn us. We need not go abroad 
 to look for instances of men who, having 
 begun with the simple belief of childhood, 
 have plunged thoughtlessly into the enticing 
 field of Scripture criticism, reckless of the 
 hidden pitfalls which on every side beset 
 their way ; and such men, whose minds are 
 not sufficiently imbued with a deep convic- 
 tion of the sacredness of the task on which 
 they enter, have often fallen, first into cold 
 doubts; then into so-called philosophic in- 
 difference; and lastly into daring unbelief 
 No wonder then that a man of thoughtful 
 mind should long pause and hesitate before 
 he engages himself, and still more before 
 he leads others to engage, in studies amid 
 the mazes of which his soul may so easily 
 be lost. 
 
 We may, indeed, feel that perfect convic- 
 tion which the Holy Spirit works in humble 
 hearts, that the everlasting arms of our Lord 
 and Saviour will be beneath us to sustain us 
 
84 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse in. 
 
 in every hour of peril, and that, provided we 
 be in the path of duty in our studies, we 
 must be safe ; but, even with this feeling, 
 there is much to disquiet us. The faith of 
 him who is carried safely through these 
 studies may, it is true, be of a higher order 
 intellectually, and become even morally 
 more perfect, because it has stood some trial, 
 and by the grace of God has gained manli- 
 ness as it has been kept unscathed ; yet, still 
 in the various steps of the struggle which it 
 has undergone, there has been unhappiness 
 and danger. 
 
 When the simple lessons which we learned 
 in childhood are first examined by us with 
 a critic's eye, who shall explain the strange 
 feelings that spring up within ! In self-con- 
 fident and thoughtless minds, nay, perhaps 
 in all, there will be at first a burst of that 
 enthusiasm with which youth and vigour 
 scarcely ever fail to welcome an emancipa- 
 tion from controlling power. If this feeling 
 continues, the danger is imminent, and the 
 soul must suffer grievous loss. But the 
 
discourse in.] OF THE BIBLE. 85 
 
 humble, faithful, and loving heart, if it gives 
 way to this feeling for a moment, will soon 
 return to sober thought ; and will be almost 
 more disposed to long for the return of those 
 happy days of childhood, in which it never 
 knew what doubts were, than to look for- 
 ward with any confident anticipation to that 
 full manhood in which, by God's help, after 
 having known, it will be sure to vanquish 
 them. While the mind is in this perplexed 
 state, it will look almost with envy on the 
 contented acquiescence of the uninstructed 
 poor, who have never dreamed of any diffi- 
 culties, and whose faith reposes happily on 
 those detached portions of the authorised 
 English version of the Scriptures with which 
 they happen to be familiar, as affording for 
 all their needs a full and satisfying supply 
 from God's living oracles. 
 
 And if this state of perplexity be not 
 merely a short transition state of trouble, 
 from which, by God's mercy, our minds soon 
 pass on to more certainty of faith, we may 
 well envy the most ignorant. To these, God's 
 
80 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse hi. 
 
 ever-present Spirit makes their acquaintance 
 with His will, however limited, to be a sure 
 foundation, while we, still doubting, shall be 
 able, in all the wide range on which we seek 
 to build, to find nothing but shifting quick- 
 sands. 
 
 Now, I believe, that in all the worst and 
 darkest difficulties of an inquiring mind, 
 even if the genuineness and authenticity 
 and inspiration of the holy books be them- 
 selves brought into question, every man will 
 be comforted and kept in safety who fixes 
 his thoughts steadily on that portion of the 
 great truth suggested by the text which his 
 present unhappy doubts will allow him to 
 receive. The Almighty Father wishes the 
 happiness and salvation of all His children : 
 no man with an honest and good heart ever 
 doubted this. These books claim to have 
 been written under His especial guidance, 
 that men believing them might have life 
 through Christ's name ; a claim which the 
 good and wise of all times have been the 
 more ready to admit, the better and the 
 
discourse in.] OF THE BIBLE. 87 
 
 wiser they have become. The books have 
 doubtless a very striking majesty about 
 them, which must command respect ; so that, 
 however we may doubt, it will be madness 
 to refuse to study them with reverent atten- 
 tion, and, thus studying them, we must at 
 last, by God's help, be safe. 
 
 We have seen, then, enough to convince 
 us of the unsettling tendency of the studies 
 of which we are speaking ; how apt they are 
 to lead the mind into scepticism ; and from 
 scepticism the rebound is very natural into 
 that blind deference to authority which shuts 
 its eyes to all reasoning, because, for fear of 
 harassing doubts, it dares not any longer 
 to think. 
 
 And here two questions now very naturally 
 arise. If the critical study of the Bible be 
 thus beset with very serious difficulties — if 
 in many minds it be very likely to shake 
 their conviction of the perfectness and 
 all-sufficiency of God's holy word — if it 
 suggests, as we advance in it, an infinite 
 number of doubts as to particular passages 
 
88 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse hi. 
 
 or particular books — if every man who 
 engages zealously in the study is sure to 
 have his mind, to a certain extent at least, 
 and for a time, unsettled — First, Why 
 should we engage in the study at all ? and 
 Secondly, If we are forced to engage in it, 
 can we really pass through it safe ? 
 
 The answer to the first of these questions 
 is obvious. The study must be engaged in 
 by persons in the circumstances of most of 
 us, because God has willed that it should be 
 indispensable. We may, indeed, wish that 
 God had so ordered man's mind that no 
 doubts had ever arisen in it — that the very 
 sight of the Bible had caused a conviction of 
 the truth and divine authority of every part 
 of it to flash on every mind — that it had 
 been written in some universal language, 
 which required no aid of translations to be 
 intelligible in every land — that there had 
 been no verse in it at all difficult in structure 
 or meaning, requiring to be illustrated from 
 the human author's habitual mode of ex- 
 pression, or the circumstances of his age and 
 
discourse in.] OF THE BIBLE. 89 
 
 country. But whatever we may wish, this 
 has not been God's plan : He has given the 
 revelation of His will in such a form as re- 
 quires the aid of man's other light of reason to 
 make it plain. Nay, He has even ordained that, 
 as an understanding of his truth is not forced 
 upon us by the mere letter of His word, the 
 mode in which we exert ourselves to obtain 
 an insight into its full meaning shall be, to 
 many of us, the trial of our faith. Thus we 
 may see generally, how, for very many of us, 
 this critical study of the Bible is indispens- 
 able. 
 
 And this point, if established, involves 
 also the answer to our second question : 
 God cannot have made it an imperative duty 
 to enter on any course of study, in which 
 He is not ready, by His Almighty power, to 
 shield us. But the full answer to these two 
 questions is so important, that it may well 
 occupy by itself a whole discourse. Having 
 now pointed out some of the chief dangers 
 of these studies, we may, by God's blessing, 
 inquire more fully at a future time ; first, into 
 
90 CRITICAL STUDY, &C. [discourse hi. 
 
 their absolute necessity; and secondly, into 
 their safety. At present let us content our- 
 selves with the prayer, that if we are led by 
 duty to engage in them, we may do so, by 
 the help of God's Spirit, in all humility and 
 never in self-confidence, 
 
DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 DANGERS AND SAFEGUARDS OF THE 
 CRITICAL STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 St. John, xx. 31. 
 These are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the 
 Christ, the Son of God ; and that believing ye might have 
 life through his name." 
 
 In my last sermon I endeavoured to set 
 forth some of the great dangers to which the 
 critical student of the Bible is exposed, from 
 the unsettling tendency of many of the specu- 
 lations into which he is necessarily led. I 
 will not now recapitulate what was said in 
 pointing out the nature of these difficulties ; 
 every earnest student will be sure soon to 
 encounter them, and understand their nature, 
 whether it be to the strictly philological or 
 to the historical department of Scripture 
 criticism that he applies himself. This criti- 
 cism, whether it speaks directly of the 
 
92 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse iv. 
 
 language of the Bible, or of the circumstances 
 and habits of the authors by whom that 
 language is employed, or tells us what is 
 known of the history of the several docu- 
 ments which compose the volume, directs 
 our thoughts always to the contemplation 
 of the human vehicle, by which divine truth 
 has been expressed. There is danger, there- 
 fore, always, lest we forget the divine in our 
 contemplation of the human — lest, while we 
 learn to handle familiarly the outward case, 
 our thoughts may be withdrawn from the 
 jewel of countless price which it contains. 
 
 Leaving, then, the difficulties alluded to 
 to speak for themselves and explain their 
 own nature, I proceed to a more full con- 
 sideration of the two important questions 
 formerly proposed. If the critical study of 
 the Bible be thus beset with very serious 
 difficulties, first, why should we engage in 
 a study so confessedly dangerous? and, 
 secondly, if we do engage in it, can we really 
 pass through it safe ? 
 
 I. Now, in examining the first of these 
 
discourse iv.] OF THE BIBLE. 93 
 
 questions, we must observe, first, that the 
 critical study of the Bible must be necessary 
 at all times, for without such study we 
 cannot arrive at its real meaning. This, as has 
 been observed above, is a consequence of the 
 form in which God has been pleased to reveal 
 his will. Not to dwell on the obvious fact, 
 that the Scriptures have been written in lan- 
 guages now dead, which, before they can be 
 understood, must be translated into our own, 
 and that these translations must, from time 
 to time, be tested, if we are to feel any secu- 
 rity that they are correct — it is almost equally 
 obviousthat, even when translated, the books 
 require aid of illustration and comparative 
 criticism to make their meaning plain. 
 
 It is granted indeed, that the great truths 
 on which our salvation depends, are so plainly 
 set forth in the statements of the Bible, that, 
 when once the learned have translated the 
 book into our mother tongue, he who runs 
 may read and understand these statements 
 sufficiently, if he read them with a humble 
 heart. It is granted also most fully, that for 
 
94 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse iv. 
 
 those great essential truths, which are, I be- 
 lieve, in name at least, and outward profes- 
 sion, assented to by the great majority of 
 those who call themselves Christians through- 
 out the globe, the teaching of God's Holy Spirit 
 is a readier and far better guide, needing but 
 little aid of human criticism. But the truths, 
 a belief of which is essential for our individual 
 salvation, are very few as they are very simple. 
 And no one doubts that the Bible contains, 
 besides these, many other truths, some plain, 
 and others hidden beneath its surface, which 
 God would not have caused to be written there, 
 had He not intended them to be in some way 
 influential on man's conduct, and therefore, 
 indirectly, on his prospects for eternity. From 
 the passages containing these, all our length- 
 ened dogmatical statements of Christian doc- 
 trine are to be at first derived, or afterwards 
 tested. It is very frequently a man's convic- 
 tion of the truths to be found in such passages, 
 which causes him to adhere to one division of 
 Christ's Universal Church rather than another. 
 And these are the very passages of which the 
 
discourse iv.] OF THE BIBLE. 95 
 
 true meaning cannot be settled without the 
 aid of criticism. Hence there can be no ques- 
 tion as to the necessity of this study for all 
 Christ's ministers, and for all also among the 
 brethren, to whom He has entrusted leisure 
 and ability and learning to be used in His 
 cause. 
 
 II. Again, let it be remembered, that if 
 these studies be discouraged, men will lose a 
 great help which God intended should assist 
 in enabling them to realise the full force and 
 power of both the narrative and the directly 
 doctrinal teaching of the Bible even in its 
 plainest parts. Who is there brought up in 
 a Christian country, who does not find great 
 difficulty in forming to himself a well-defined 
 and vivid picture of those truths, with the 
 expression of which he has been familiar from 
 his childhood ? 
 
 Doubtless, the power of calling up in our 
 minds these vivid pictures, is something very 
 different, indeed, from saving Christian Faith, 
 which is an energetic habit of our whole 
 spiritual nature, and not of the imagination 
 
96 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse iv. 
 
 merely, however chastened and directed 
 aright. But neither can it reasonably be 
 doubted, that our faith may be much assisted 
 by such vivid conceptions of the Gospel truths, 
 in the same manner as the usual lifeless and 
 formal way in w 7 hich we think of them is a 
 serious stumbling-block to many. How many 
 are there of us to whom the several Apostles 
 or Prophets are but names, suggesting no 
 traits of individual character either in their 
 actions or their writings ; who look upon the 
 several Gospels or Epistles but as convenient 
 divisions or heads of chapters, for enabling 
 us more easily to make our references to the 
 sacred book, without having ever realised the 
 particular definite purpose and marked dis- 
 tinguishing features of each ! How many are 
 there of us before whom the whole sacred 
 history and its doctrines float with all the 
 indistinctness of a confused and misty vision, 
 leaving but a vague and dull impression, such 
 as intelligent men would never be content to 
 have received in any matter of mere human 
 interest to which their attention had been 
 
discourse iv. J OF THE BIBLE. 97 
 
 drawn. There is not more difference in the 
 study of ordinary history, between that vague 
 catalogue of the names of kings, and the 
 dates of their births and deaths, with which 
 the memories of children are often unwisely 
 burdened, and that clear picture of men's 
 thoughts and deeds and mode of living, which 
 an intelligent student delights to form, from 
 the annals and private memoirs of an age 
 which has excited his keenest interest, than 
 there is between the dull assent which most 
 men give, as a matter of course, to what the 
 Bible tells them, and that lively conception of 
 all its various truths, which a soul, at once 
 faithful and intelligent, may, by the blessing 
 of the Holy Spirit, gain from an earnest study 
 of the whole Bible, with all those many 
 human aids which God provides for us. 
 
 Doubtless, God's spirit does compensate for 
 the want of this assistance to His faithful poor 
 and illiterate servants ; but, for those of us 
 whom He has blessed with leisure and ability, 
 there is no human means more likely than 
 this study for enabling us, by His aid, to live 
 
98 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse iv. 
 
 with an ever-present feeling of the reality of 
 those unseen friends and interests of which 
 the Bible speaks to us. 
 
 3. There is a third reason which obliges us 
 to encourage the critical study of the sacred 
 writings ; even the very fact, that many diffi- 
 culties are known to attach to it. Speaking 
 humanly, there is scarcely anything more 
 likely to spread infidelity amongst us, than the 
 existence of a general suspicion, that many 
 doubts and difficulties are involved in the cri- 
 ticism of the Bible, which no one has the cou- 
 rage or ability to grapple with. Akin to this, 
 is that miserable distrust which the impolitic 
 severity of the laws has often allowed infi- 
 dels to spread, by insinuating that they could 
 say much against Christianity, if they were 
 not restrained by the fear of civil penalties. 
 
 Wherever a general suspicion is engen- 
 dered, however unfounded it may be, that 
 something is amiss in our system of religion, 
 which from policy or cowardice we are 
 anxious to conceal, there hidden infidelity 
 will make rapid progress, and many a man 
 
discourse iv.] OF THE BIBLE. 99 
 
 of honest mind will in secret be tortured 
 with anxiety, having no leisure to examine 
 for himself the difficulties he has heard of, 
 and be distressed by a painful impression 
 that those who ought to examine for him 
 are deliberately or unwittingly banded 
 together to mislead. Thus, as is usual 
 wherever men take upon themselves to act 
 against God's purposes, that very infidelity, 
 the fear of which scared them from their 
 duty, will grow with tenfold vigour because 
 they have neglected to perform it. 
 
 And here it seems well to remark that the 
 critical study of the Bible is more than ever 
 necessary to be encouraged now, from the 
 particular circumstances of our own age and 
 country. Whatever may be thought of the 
 honesty or policy of endeavouring to conceal 
 difficulties and stifle inquiry formerly, the 
 days when such methods of propping up the 
 truth of God were possible, are at an end. 
 Or — not to speak harshly of the well-meant 
 conduct of good men in former times — for us 
 in this country the days when the minds of 
 
 F 2 
 
100 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse iv. 
 
 the mass of men could be directed, as if they 
 were children, and withdrawn from all 
 dangerous speculations to those thoughts 
 which their superiors in education consi- 
 dered to be edifying, have passed away. 
 The old times, with their mingled good and 
 evil — the old ideas of the paternal duty of 
 government both in Church and State to 
 lead the mass of men as it were blind- 
 fold, and to shut up knowledge within 
 the privileged caste of those who were 
 thought likely to make a good use of it, have 
 passed. We may look back on the retiring 
 scene, and while its less pleasing features are 
 softened by the effect of distance as it fades 
 from our view, we may long to recall it — 
 some may even wish, in their day-dreams, 
 that they had lived four hundred years ago ; 
 but, whether it were good or whether it were 
 evil, the old state of things can never be 
 brought back. It is in our own generation, 
 and amid the men of our own generation 
 — amid their thoughts, bad as well as 
 good, their questionings and doubtings, and 
 
discourse iv.] OF THE BIBLE. 101 
 
 shallow disputations, as well as their ener- 
 getic impatience of concealment and hatred 
 of all formalism, that God has placed the scene 
 of our responsibilities ; and it is vain to think 
 that we can do any good amongst them by 
 attempting to teach them on the principles of 
 a departed state of society, and not as their 
 own characters and circumstances require. 
 
 It is certain that every man in this 
 country who can read, either knows already, 
 or may learn any day as he reads, what 
 those difficulties with respect to the Bible 
 are on which infidels insist; and it must 
 be well also that he should know their 
 refutation; or, better still, that he should 
 feel that confidence which is inspired by a 
 persuasion that good and learned men have 
 candidly met these difficulties, grappled with 
 them fairly, and vindicated the truth. Nor 
 can this service be said to have been per- 
 formed for us by the able writers on 
 Evidences of the last age; for, since their 
 time, infidelity has ,much changed the 
 grounds of its attack. Its objections are 
 
102 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse iv. 
 
 much more connected now than in former 
 times with a minute critical examination 
 of the sacred books ; and therefore it is in 
 the field of criticism that it must be met 
 and overthrown. 
 
 Nor is it for the sake of those beneath us 
 only that such protection is required. A 
 calm review of the history of our Church 
 from the Reformation downwards, will pro- 
 bably convince us that almost every genera- 
 tion, as it has had its own peculiar character 
 of theology, has had also its own peculiar 
 dangers for the learned as well as for the 
 ignorant. One or two men of leading minds 
 have had their thoughts directed in some 
 particular channel by their early education, 
 or the society into which they have been 
 thrown, and all the world of their contem- 
 poraries, eager for novelty, has hastened in 
 the path they pointed out. Or, again, poli- 
 tical events have occurred, which have forced 
 on men a reconsideration of principles long 
 deemed irrefragable; or, opening up fresh 
 intercourse with foreign nations, have im- 
 
discourse iv.] OF THE BIBLE. 103 
 
 bued us with a taste for the theology or 
 philosophy which they admire. 
 
 Now of course it would be presumption to 
 speak confidently as to the particular direc- 
 tion in which men's minds are likely to 
 wander during the coming age. But there 
 can be no wisdom in refusing to form reason- 
 able conjectures, because we are not gifted 
 with prophetic power. Our attention has 
 been of late so much and so deeply occupied 
 by the unexpected revival of the controver- 
 sies which were fought out and really settled 
 at the time of the Reformation, and, in this 
 place especially, the errors we deplore, con- 
 nected with this controversy, have been 
 rendered so deeply interesting, from what we 
 know of the personal excellence of those who 
 have been most prominent in maintaining 
 them, as well as from the many ties of almost 
 sacred friendship which these controversies 
 have burst or rudely tried, that we are apt 
 very naturally to over-estimate the im- 
 portance of what, for the moment, we see 
 actually around us. Yet surely, if we 
 
104 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse iv. 
 
 examine the real state of our country and 
 of Europe altogether, we must allow that the 
 great conflict of this age is not that between 
 the Romanist and the Protestant, but 
 between the Infidel and the Christian ; and 
 that Romanism is for us principally formida- 
 ble only from the advantage it must give to 
 infidelity by the false foundation on which it 
 teaches men to build their faith, and the poor 
 human superstructure by which it weakens 
 while it overloads the inestimable power 
 of Christ's simple truth. It is certain that 
 as Romanism spreads, Infidelity will spread 
 also. But we must not mistake there- 
 fore the nature of our real contest: and 
 there is much danger lest the noise and 
 interest of our immediate disputations with 
 those whose errors we are right deeply to 
 deplore, but who still love the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and seek, in their own mistaken way, 
 to maintain His cause as eagerly as our- 
 selves, lead us to neglect the greatest danger 
 which threatens us from the enemy that 
 abhors Him. Infidelity also, be it noted, is 
 
discourse iv.] OF THE BIBLE. 105 
 
 always most active and most to be feared 
 while disputes distract the Church. 
 
 Now there are many symptoms to warn 
 us, that, if such an attack from Infidelity as 
 is reasonably to be apprehended should be 
 made, we are not as yet prepared as we 
 ought to be to meet it. It is sure to come 
 upon us now-a-days in a new and subtle 
 form, often arming itself with its most 
 formidable weapons from the very store- 
 house of the Sacred books. And is it not 
 certain that there are many questions con- 
 nected with the authenticity and authority 
 of these books, on which we, in this country, 
 with all our vaunted learning, are not as yet 
 prepared with the requisite information and 
 thought to enable us to vindicate the truth ? 
 Is it not too true that the great majority 
 of serious men feel themselves quite taken, 
 as it were, by surprise, when such difficulties 
 are forced upon their notice? And if the 
 watchmen of Israel have not looked their 
 danger steadily in the face, how can they be 
 
 prepared to meet it. 
 
 f3 
 
106 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse iv. 
 
 Moreover, it is well to remark, in passing, 
 that we are ourselves (in many respects 
 very properly) encouraging studies in mat- 
 ters of secular literature, which are sure, in 
 time, to suggest to all minds, that the free- 
 dom of inquiry which they engender may 
 sooner or later be applied also to the Sacred 
 books. And yet, while we encourage these 
 studies, and therefore deliberately run the 
 risk of all the danger that must follow from 
 them, we have taken little pains to provide 
 ourselves with that knowledge which is 
 absolutely necessary to prevent them from 
 being perverted. How few of those, e. g., 
 whom we train to a free examination and 
 discussion of the early Roman History, are 
 able to understand and show to others that 
 its doubtful legends have their counterpart 
 in the spurious Gospels or the Rabbinical 
 traditions of the History of Abraham, and 
 that, in trusting the real Sacred books to 
 the rejection of these fables, we are already, 
 through God's mercy, resting on that sure 
 basis of historical truth with respect to 
 
discourse iv.] OF THE BIBLE. 107 
 
 Christianity and the older Revelation, on 
 which the great Roman historian wishes to 
 place us as to his subject, by his laborious 
 research. 
 
 The difficulties that threaten to come upon 
 us, are then to be met, not surely by closing our 
 eyes to the danger, and looking with suspicion 
 upon those who would prepare themselves to 
 meet it ; not surely by lagging behind our age, 
 and allowing our minds to be engrossed with 
 the refutation of errors that have already had 
 their day ; but by seriously applying ourselves 
 to those many and very severe studies which 
 are absolutely indispensable as the discipline 
 that is to train us for the coming warfare. 
 Speaking humanly, if infidelity is to be resisted, 
 it can only be by our opposing the true criticism 
 to the false, and being able to bring as great 
 an amount of philological and historical know- 
 ledge and deep research to aid the cause of 
 Christ's truth as are sure to be employed in 
 the assaults by which it is menaced. 
 
 The young student of Theology has indeed 
 before him, at this time, a very great and 
 
108 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse iv. 
 
 noble task, which, by its very difficulty, may 
 stimulate him to exertion. There is no power 
 of his mind which may not find an adequate 
 employment in those great studies, to which 
 the exigencies of the Church seem to sum- 
 mon him. It would be ruinous to put off ac- 
 customing ourselves to these investigations 
 till the necessity becomes urgent — to neglect 
 to train our troops till the enemy is at our 
 gates. Many years must be given to the 
 diligent study of the language and history of 
 the Bible, if we would be ready really to de- 
 fend it when infidelity assails. And even 
 independently of the heavenly nature of the 
 subjects with which we are brought into fami- 
 liar intercourse, and the promise of God's 
 spirit, which gives our whole occupation an 
 ennobling character, there is no study in which 
 all our powers of memory, judgment, reason- 
 ing, imagination may better find an adequate 
 field for their activity than this criticism of 
 the Holy books. 
 
 II. But it is full time to turn now to our 
 second question : Useful as these studies may 
 
discourse iv.] OF THE BIBLE. 109 
 
 be, can we really pass through them unhurt ? 
 The answer has already necessarily been in 
 part anticipated. God cannot have made it 
 the imperative duty of His servants to enter 
 on any course of study, without being ready 
 to shield us, while engaged in it, by His 
 Almighty power. 
 
 Moreover, we must not too greatly magnify 
 the dangers that beset the critical study of 
 the Bible. Whatever anxiety we may justly 
 feel as we enter on it, we must not forget 
 that dangers, the same in kind, beset the 
 whole field of Theological inquiry. If Theo- 
 logy be that science in which man clothes in 
 human language, and classifies under human 
 divisions, what Revelation suggests to him of 
 God, there must always be danger for the 
 student, lest he lay a rash human hand on 
 the Divine Ark, and tread with soiled feet 
 upon the holy ground. Whenever the divine 
 and the human are thus brought into close 
 proximity, it requires no small degree of faith- 
 ful reverence to enable us, while we probe 
 and examine and test, still to worship with 
 
110 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse iv. 
 
 humble adoration whatever is shown to be 
 divine. No man who regards the welfare of 
 his soul will dare to enter on theological 
 studies at all without anxiety and prayer — 
 whether his duty call him to the difficult and 
 dangerous task of examining creeds and ar- 
 ticles, and, while he traces their history and 
 construction, thus separating between the 
 formal human expression and the divine spi- 
 ritual essence which it incases; or whether 
 ascending the long stream of the Church's 
 history, he is called to point out, in examin- 
 ing its teaching, the almost imperceptible 
 line which, in early times, before they had 
 joined in one discoloured flood, separated the 
 pure living waters of life near their source 
 from the foul streams of false doctrine which 
 were continually flowing in and striving to 
 adulterate them. 
 
 In fact, throughout the whole of Theology 
 there are difficulties similar in kind to that 
 which must have often shaken the faith of 
 the Apostles and of the Virgin Mother, when 
 called to recognise the Eternal Word, the 
 
discourse iv.] OF THE BIBLE. Ill 
 
 Creator of the World in Him, whom in his 
 humble fleshly nature they had so often seen 
 and heard and handled in the intimate fami- 
 liarity of daily life. This is the very difficulty 
 which has made some inquisitive travellers 
 return infidels from the holy countries — men 
 who have come, from their very familiarity, 
 to deem it impossible that God Almighty 
 could ever have spoken in accents of thunder 
 on those mountain peaks, or the Eternal Son 
 have wrought His divine miracles on the bor- 
 ders of that lake, or in the streets of those 
 towns, all of which are now associated in 
 their minds with the common-place details of 
 their ordinary travel. 
 
 In fact similar dangers pervade our whole 
 life. It is well for us to remark, that the 
 danger of error is not entirely on one side. 
 There is in all the world that strange 
 blending of the divine and human, which 
 makes it very difficult for us, thus brought 
 into contact with the two united, to escape 
 the danger on the one hand of superstition, 
 on the other of irreverence. It requires a 
 
112 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse iv. 
 
 strong mind and a strong faith to steer 
 between the two. While this man regards 
 the holy countries with the indifference of 
 scepticism — refusing to believe because of 
 the commonness of their appearance, that 
 heavenly works were ever wrought in them, 
 another is undertaking a laborious pilgrimage, 
 and paying to their mere soil and locality 
 that reverence which is due only to Him 
 whose presence once ennobled them. It is in 
 the same spirit, that, while some degrade 
 the sacred volume to the level of a profane 
 classic by their irreverent criticism, others 
 would superstitiously warn us not to study 
 it with any real accuracy, as a thing too 
 sacred to be touched by human learning. 
 
 Now, without doubt, it is in all cases very 
 difficult for men, in a reverential and yet 
 intelligent spirit, to examine minutely any 
 compound of the divine and the human 
 elements, and to pay to each its due regard ; 
 but the duty of thus distinguishing is so 
 continually imposed on us in life, that, as has 
 been said already, we may safely trust our 
 
discourse iv.] OF THE BIBLE. 113 
 
 Heavenly Master, if we are humble, to keep 
 us right. Look, for example, to God's pro- 
 vidential judgments. We need scarcely be 
 reminded of the difficulty of distinguishing 
 between the influence of human second 
 causes, and that controlling power which 
 proceeds direct from Him. Now, in this 
 particular instance, to neglect either the 
 divine or the human element is to run at 
 once into serious error. If we neglect man's 
 part, we seem to be fatalists; if God's, we 
 are practically atheists; but there is no 
 reason for neglecting either. And so is it 
 also in all our critical study of the Bible. 
 As a frail body and an immortal soul are 
 united in every human being — as the body 
 is allowed to affect and operate upon the 
 soul — as Christian doctrine does not make 
 a sharp distinction between the two elements 
 of body and soul in man, but teaches us to 
 allow each its due scope in fulfilling the 
 object of our compound being — since we 
 know that the Lord Jesus has glorified 
 even that element which is inferior and 
 
114 CRITICAL STUDY [discourse iv. 
 
 vile; so in God's word the two elements 
 of the divine spirit, and the human form 
 or expression, are united indissolubly : yet 
 are they not to be confounded, or to be 
 treated both alike. And there is no reason 
 surely, because we treat the inferior element 
 with that freedom with which God has 
 willed it to be treated, on the very ground 
 that it is inferior — there is no reason for 
 our thereby losing our reverence for that 
 element which is Divine. 
 
 We return, in fact, in conclusion, to the 
 point from which we set out. Let us remem- 
 ber when we begin the critical study of the 
 Bible, that God himself has been believed by 
 all the best and wisest of men to be in the 
 highest and truest sense its author ; that He 
 is asserted, as our text reminds us, to have 
 caused it to be written for the most important 
 of all objects: viz., that men may believe 
 that "Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, 
 and that believing they may have life through 
 His name :" let us accompany our study with 
 earnest prayer for guidance, knowing that we 
 
discourse iv.] OF THE BIBLE. 115 
 
 are engaged in a serious task where there are 
 many perils, and the Lord Jesus will Him- 
 self lead us on in safety. If we study cri- 
 tically in this frame of mind, we shall never 
 forget to adore the Holy Spirit their guide, 
 while we trace the character and style of St. 
 Matthew or St. Paul as modified according to 
 God's purpose by the temporal circumstances 
 in which He placed them. We shall be as 
 little likely to admire the poetry without 
 bowing to the inspiration of the Prophets, 
 or to overlook the Almighty wisdom of God 
 while we think of Moses 5 Egyptian learn- 
 ing, as we shall be to forget that there is a 
 hand which can direct the thunderbolt at 
 will, because we have learned something of 
 electricity, or to deny the divine creation of 
 the world, if geology could teach us to mark 
 the stages of its formation ; or to deride the 
 truth that ungodly nations are visited by 
 God's vengeance, because we can trace the 
 gradual progress of their commercial or mili- 
 tary decay. 
 
 In fact, all studies, and the critical study 
 
116 CRITICAL STUDY OF THE BIBLE, [discourse iv. 
 
 of the Bible, like all others, while they are 
 a savour of death unto death to those who 
 hurry into them in wanton self-confidence of 
 shallowness and pride, may most surely be 
 used to God's glory by those who enter on 
 them thoughtfully with a faithful and pray- 
 ing heart. And both we who teach and those 
 who are taught, and those amongst us, above 
 all, w T ho live the life of speculative students, 
 will do well to remember how solemn a trust 
 the Lord Jesus Christ has committed to us 
 in giving us our acuteness, or our leisure, or 
 our knowledge, to be employed in the study 
 of His Word. 
 
DISCOURSE V. 
 
 THEOLOGY BOTH OLD AND NEW. 
 
 II. Timothy iii. 14-15. 
 " But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned, and 
 
 hast been assured of — knowing of whom thou hast learned 
 
 them ; 
 " And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, 
 
 which are able to make thee wise unto salvation." 
 
 Surely no criticism will ever shake our 
 belief that this Second Epistle to Timothy, 
 even though it may not contain St. Paul's 
 last written words, has yet been provi- 
 dentially preserved, and caused to find its 
 place in the holy volume, especially for this, 
 amongst other purposes, that it may set before 
 us the frame of mind in which the Saint 
 did contemplate the near approach of his 
 martyrdom. Think of the express declara- 
 tion in the fourth chapter, (v. 6.) " I am now 
 
118 THEOLOGY [discourse v. 
 
 ready to be offered, and the time of my 
 departure is at hand," which in the original 
 
 is even Stronger — 'eycb yap 'rjbr) (ntivhoixai /cat 
 'o Kdipbs TTJs 'e/x^s 'avakvaecds \(\)£<TTr]KZ — " I am 
 
 now being offered, and the time of my 
 departure hath come upon me," (v. 7), 
 " I have fought " the " good fight," " I have 
 finished my course." To this add the exult- 
 ing strains whereby he gives utterance to 
 the assurance of his faith — which, contrasted 
 as they are with the almost fearful diffidence 
 of an earlier epistle * seem almost to speak of 
 the songs of angels already bursting on his 
 ears and heaven opening on his dying eyes, 
 and Jesus visibly manifested " standing on 
 the right hand of God " — " I have kept the 
 faith," " Henceforth there is laid up for me" 
 the " crown of righteousness," (v.v. 7-8), and 
 " The Lord shall deliver me from every evil 
 work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly 
 kingdom" (v. 18). Think, also of what have 
 not unnaturally been considered the prepara- 
 tions for his trial — as the call for the 
 
 * 1 Cor. ix. ; also Philipp. iii. 12. 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 119 
 
 important parchments which he had left at 
 Troas (v. 13) : think of the apparent allusion to 
 his first hearing before the emperor (v. 16), and 
 the danger of the lion's mouth (v.17) — of the 
 keen feeling that he is deserted by human aid, 
 but the Lord stands by him and strengthens 
 him, and enables him to bear testimony to 
 the Gospel before the Gentiles who are trying 
 him— of his prayer for the timid friends who 
 had left him. In all this there is much to 
 remind us of the closing scenes of Stephen 
 and of the Lord himself. And, if there be a 
 hope expressed that his ministry is not yet 
 ended, in the desire for the return of Mark,* 
 (v. 11), who had once deserted him, but was 
 now ready to be his " profitable" helper ; and 
 in the anticipation that he should yet outlive 
 the coming winter (v. 21) — these will still 
 not prevent us from regarding the Epistle as 
 written when St. Paul saw that a speedy 
 death was very probable, and therefore as 
 containing what he wished to be his dying 
 injunction to his son in the faith ; " I charge 
 
 * And Acts xv. 38. 
 
120 THEOLOGY [discourse v. 
 
 thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ; 
 who shall judge the quick and the dead at 
 His appearing and His kingdom." * 
 
 Now if this inference be correct, it adds a 
 peculiar solemnity to our text ; it enables us 
 to consider St. Paul's ministry as almost 
 closing, in the words now before us, with an 
 earnest exhortation quite similar in principle 
 to that which ends the writings of St. John.f 
 Each of these Apostles, as he sees his death 
 draw near, seems to warn his disciples that 
 they must beware of either impairing or 
 adding to the doctrines they had been 
 taught. 
 
 Our text, to be fully understood, must be 
 read in its whole connection. The Apostle 
 is speaking of the coming perilous times, and 
 of the seducers or cheats, (y6rjT€s)t who, 
 after his death, shall wax worse and worse ; 
 not deceiving only, but being themselves de- 
 ceived. And he points out, in the text, 
 where his disciples may find safety : " Con- 
 tinue thou in the things which thou hast 
 
 * 2 Tim. iv. 1. t Revel, xxii. 18-19. % 2 Tim. iii. 13. 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 121 
 
 learned, and hast been assured of, knowing 
 of whom thou hast learned them ; and that 
 from a child (from infancy, 'airb fiptyovs) 
 thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which 
 are able to make thee wise unto salvation." 
 And then follows, " All Scripture is given 
 by inspiration of God, and is profitable for 
 doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for in- 
 struction in righteousness. That the man 
 of God may be perfect, throughly furnished 
 unto all good works." Immediately after 
 comes the solemn charge, how Timothy, thus 
 kept from error, is to exert himself. " I 
 charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus 
 Christ." 
 
 Now, first of all, one or two points must 
 here be noted in explanation of the expres- 
 sions here used. By " the man of God," I sup- 
 pose, St. Paul, here as elsewhere* means, the 
 teacher. The teacher has no more authority 
 than the taught to seek his doctrine any- 
 where but in the old records of inspiration. 
 And the teacher addressed is, in this instance, 
 
 * 1 Tim. vi. 11. Deuteron. xxiii. 1, &c. 
 
 G 
 
122 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 observe, one of the immediate successors, 
 nay, a companion of the Apostles. Again, 
 when exhorted to continue in the things 
 which he has learned, he is referred at once 
 to the written word: and this is the more 
 remarkable, because, in speaking of those 
 Scriptures, which Timothy (through the care 
 of his Jewish mother) had known from in- 
 fancy, St. Paul must mean the Old Testa- 
 ment. And I think we must allow the same 
 Old Testament Scriptures to be principally 
 alluded to also in the following verses, even 
 though we translate with our version, " All 
 Scripture is given by inspiration of God," 
 and thus employ the passage before us in 
 conjunction with 2 Peter iii. 16. for establish- 
 ing the inspiration of St. Paul's Epistles, 
 which are there classed with the elder ypa^at. 
 Whether we adopt this interpretation as 
 authorized by our version, or translate with 
 others, " All Scripture given by inspiration 
 is also profitable for doctrine," we must still, 
 I think, hold, that it is the Old Testament, 
 which the Apostle has here especially in his 
 
discourse v,] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 123 
 
 mind, and of which he is speaking directly, 
 when he goes on to say, that it is able to 
 make the man of God perfect, throughly 
 furnished unto every good work. But when, 
 on the other hand, St. Paul refers Timothy, 
 in the 14th verse, to his own instructions, he 
 is speaking of what afterwards became the 
 New Testament. When he refers to the then 
 written word in the 15th verse, he means the 
 Old Testament ; when to the word spoken by 
 himself and his brother Apostles, he means 
 that divine preaching, of which the sole 
 remains, we hold, as a matter of fact and 
 history, are now preserved, in the written 
 records of the New. # 
 
 And now, keeping these preliminary points 
 in mind, we proceed to consider what lessons 
 may be learned from the text for ourselves. 
 
 Of the various difficulties which beset the 
 path of the young student of theology at this 
 time, there is scarcely any more serious than 
 the following. He sees on every side of him 
 men of the greatest learning, ability, zeal, and 
 
 * See note at end of this Sermon. 
 
 G 2 
 
124 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 goodness, whose course is pointed out to 
 him, no longer as an example, but as a 
 warning. He is told that, whenever he 
 diverges from the straight and narrow line 
 of the received theology, there is danger lest 
 he stumble on some pitfall, and be precipitated 
 into error. On one side Romanism, on 
 the other Rationalism, are the words of 
 warning which call him to tread cautiously. 
 Nay, he is almost afraid even to move 
 straight-forwards, lest the path, on which he 
 has been accustomed to walk from his child- 
 hood, may itself lead him to some dangerous 
 quicksand, on which there is no sure standing; 
 and he is tempted, not unnaturally, to sit 
 down in despair. This must often be the 
 trial of many an inquiring mind, in times of 
 much controversy. Especially the young and 
 inexperienced, who feel that the grave 
 questions at issue require much learning and 
 soundness of judgment, and holiness of life, 
 to settle them — who are accustomed therefore, 
 in ordinary times, to walk supported by the 
 guiding hand of those whom they respect 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 125 
 
 and honour — what are they to do in such 
 times as these, when they hear such very 
 different views of Christian truth advanced 
 with equal earnestness by those who, if they 
 did not uphold contradictory opinions, would 
 naturally appear to be equally likely to have 
 gained the truth ? 
 
 One of two consequences will very probably 
 follow: the young will either be driven 
 prematurely to investigate and decide for 
 themselves questions for which as yet they 
 have not the requisite information and expe- 
 rience ; or will sink into a very uncomfort- 
 able scepticism. As the tone of theology 
 around them varies so much, according to 
 the society with which they are from time 
 to time thrown, and they know that con- 
 tradictory statements cannot be true, they 
 are often glad to prevent themselves from 
 thinking, rejoice to give up theology alto- 
 gether, and will gladly take refuge in any 
 other pursuit of literature or science which 
 promises to divert their minds. 
 
 It is of course true, that there are certain 
 
126 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 plain Christian duties which present them- 
 selves to every serious person's conscience 
 in the position in which God has placed 
 him; and that the best advice which can 
 be given generally to the young in present 
 difficulties, is to occupy themselves with 
 these. It is certain that God will make 
 their path plain to them, and lead them on, 
 by His Holy Spirit, through the discharge 
 of these simple duties, if they wait on Him 
 earnestly in prayer, to a more perfect and 
 assured acquaintance with what is His real 
 will. But I would speak now, not so much 
 of ordinary Christians, as of those whose 
 duty would seem to summon them to some- 
 what more of a scientific examination of 
 things divine, Those especially who look 
 forward to dedicating their manhood to the 
 direct teaching of Christ's word, cannot, 
 nor is it to be desired that they should, 
 prevent themselves from looking forward, 
 with longing anticipation, to that which is 
 to be their life-long business. They know 
 that practical and speculative divinity are 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 127 
 
 indissolubly connected; and how are they 
 ever to learn to be teachers of others, if they 
 shun all thought of the subjects which they 
 are to teach? It is impossible that the 
 very youngest member of this university, who 
 knows that in a few years he is to be called 
 to provide for the spiritual wants of hun- 
 dreds of souls — unless indeed he be wasting 
 in thoughtlessness and sin those precious 
 years which the Lord gives him to prepare 
 for his overpowering responsibilities — can 
 fail to inquire often in these days where 
 sound theology is to be found. Nay, no 
 intelligent man whatsoever, who knows that 
 in some sphere of domestic or public life his 
 opinions must directly or indirectly affect 
 and guide others, will be able to escape this 
 inquiry altogether. The answer to it is not 
 easy ; and the doubts and difficulties which 
 gather round him will often make a man 
 almost despair, as if truth were unattainable. 
 But even if, avoiding this temptation to 
 mere scepticism or indifference, a man is 
 forced to allow and feel that there is some 
 
128 THEOLOGY, [discourse v, 
 
 great and important science of theology, no 
 small difficulty and danger of judging wrongly 
 as to its nature, will still await him, If 
 he is told continually, of the most intelligent 
 and acute thinkers, whom he knows also to 
 be men of deep piety, that they have fallen 
 into some dangerous error, he will learn not 
 unnaturally to conclude that it is their very 
 ability which has misled them ; and thus he 
 will do injustice both to God's very precious 
 gifts, and to the science which claims to be 
 divine. If he believes that acute reasoning- 
 powers and a vivid imagination do but lead 
 their possessors astray, when applied to the 
 subject-matter of theology, he must concede 
 to the scoffer, that whatever may be said 
 of the practice of religion, its science seems 
 to ally itself with dulness, if its sole office 
 be to load the memory with the opinions of 
 those who have spoken with authority, and, 
 above all things, to avQid all vigorous or 
 independent thought. But here would be 
 grievous wrong surely to the noblest of all 
 sciences, if the best powers of intellect were 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 129 
 
 to be supposed to find their sole legitimate 
 field for development in treating of things 
 profane. She who was thus degraded to 
 be but a laborious drudge, could no longer 
 be regarded as the queen and mistress of 
 all sciences; and a total change would be 
 wanted in the whole theory of the studies 
 of this place. 
 
 I propose then to show that the rule which 
 St. Paul has set forth in our text, calling 
 upon his disciples to remain firm in the re- 
 ceived faith, amid the seductions of enticing 
 novelties, has nothing in it that is at all akin 
 to dulness — that in the field which is still 
 left open, there is ample room for the full 
 employment of every best faculty of the 
 head as well as heart. 
 
 The Gospel, it must be remembered, is in 
 one sense both old and new. That is true of 
 the whole of it, which St. John applies espe- 
 cially to its great practical commandment. 
 "Brethren, I write no new commandment 
 unto you, but an old commandment which 
 ye had from the beginning. Again, a new 
 
130 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 commandment I write unto you."* Its truths 
 and doctrines are very old, and yet possess 
 an ever-springing freshness. For as when 
 Christ came He revealed the God, who had 
 been long known, in completely new rela- 
 tions, and enforced His commandments by 
 new motives, so, even when He closed the 
 source of revelation and exhibited the ever- 
 lasting Gospel in its perfectness before the 
 death of the last apostle, He endowed the holy 
 books in which He caused it to be written, with 
 a supernatural fruitfulness which speaks of 
 their divine origin, causing them to unfold 
 new stores of riches to the praying student 
 every time he opens them, and giving them 
 a power far above any contrivance of man's 
 wisdom to adapt their never-failing instruc- 
 tions to every new exigency in the history of 
 the human race ; so that to the end of time 
 every scribe which is instructed unto the 
 kingdom of Heaven must, be, in the matter 
 of what he teaches, as well as the form of 
 his expressions, " like unto a man that is 
 
 * 1 John ii. 7, 8. 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 131 
 
 an householder, which bringeth forth out of 
 his treasure things new," as well as " old." # 
 
 There is then one sense in which the Gos- 
 pel admits of no novelty ; another in which 
 (as we have seen on a former occasion) it is 
 ever fresh and varying. 
 
 But there are some very important distinc- 
 tions which it will be necessary to take with 
 us before we go farther. It is granted that 
 the Gospel is not so confined in its application 
 to the mere letter and form of what is old, 
 as to have lost its power of influencing men 
 under a thousand changes, which, humanly 
 speaking, in the time of the Apostles could 
 never have been contemplated. He who 
 knew all that was in men, and all that ever 
 could be in them, intended His Gospel to be 
 no unnatural system by which their best 
 energies were to be stunted in their growth, 
 while they were forced into a strange resem- 
 blance of outward look or stature; but Pie 
 wished it to supply to all the principle of 
 life, which was to enable their many varied 
 
 * Matthew xiii. 52. 
 
132 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 powers to be put forth vigorously in His 
 service. Yet when the Gospel is called the 
 " faith once (i: e. 9 once for all, aVaf )* deli- 
 vered unto the saints," and when, as in the 
 text, we are exhorted to guard ourselves 
 against unauthorized and dangerous novel- 
 ties, by clinging close to the things which we 
 have learned from the inspired Apostles and 
 from the Old Testament, we are taught, above 
 all, that the heavenly doctrines and prin- 
 ciples of action to which we are to cling, are 
 not so new in their adaptation to our varying 
 circumstances as to admit of any real addi- 
 tion to the primal truth which Christ came 
 into the world to unfold. 
 
 Doubtless, He who inspired prophets and 
 holy men of old when He was causing the 
 Old Testament seers to preach, and their 
 teaching to be recorded through many cen- 
 turies, w r hile the light, dim at first, was as 
 yet shining more and mor§ clearly unto the 
 perfect day — but who afterwards sent forth 
 the Apostles to proclaim, during the short 
 
 * Jude 3. 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 133 
 
 space of only seventy years, that the sun was 
 now fully risen, and that all the world might 
 now rejoice in its unclouded light — might, if 
 it had seemed good to his heavenly wisdom, 
 have adopted another system. He might 
 have inspired the fathers of the first four 
 hundred years, or popes and councils, and a 
 never-failing church, to develope the New 
 Testament as the Apostles did the Old ; hut 
 the proof of His having done so as a matter 
 of fact is quite wanting, and no fancied ana- 
 logy* can be adduced as evidence to outweigh 
 
 * For the way in which such fancied analogies have been em- 
 ployed, see Mr. Newman's Essay on Developments. In pages 
 108-110, the gradual development of Christian doctrine, in the 
 successive ages of the Church, is inferred from the case of God 
 having first commissioned Moses to demand of Pharaoh that the 
 people might go three days' journey into the wilderness to sacri- 
 fice, and afterwards sanctioned his extending (developing) the 
 claim into a demand to go with the children, and flocks, and 
 herds, a claim which finally developed itself into a complete 
 departure from the country, never to return. The same theolo- 
 gical principle is inferred from the children of Israel having at first 
 undertaken to leave Sihon in possession of the country east of 
 Jordan ; and afterwards, on Sihon 's refusal to let them pass, 
 having " developed " this original offer into a conquest of his 
 territory. Could the author be writing seriously when he 
 advanced these analogies ? Bishop Butler would surely repu- 
 diate such an employment of his argument. 
 
134 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 well-attested historical facts. Where mira- 
 cles are wanting, there we have no proof of 
 inspiration, and without inspiration it is 
 impious to add to God's word. The prin- 
 ciple is the same applied to the whole 
 word, which St. John laid down with re- 
 ference to his prophecy and Moses to his 
 law: "If any man shall add unto these 
 things, God shall add unto him the plagues 
 that are written in this book." * " Ye shall 
 not add unto the word which I command 
 you."f " What thing soever I command, ob- 
 serve to do it, thou shalt not add thereto." t 
 Or, as Solomon says more generally : " Every 
 word of God is pure ; add thou not unto His 
 words, lest He reprove thee and thou be 
 found a liar." § The principle is still the 
 same: None may add to God's word but 
 those whom He has directly commissioned 
 and inspired; and we dare not allow that 
 any are endowed with this, authority, unless, 
 
 * Rev. xxii. 18. + Deut. iv. 2. J Deut. xii. 32. 
 § Proverbs xxx. 5, 6. 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 135 
 
 like St. Paul, they can point to the signs of 
 their apostleship. 
 
 It is absolutely necessary for any sound 
 system of theology, that a marked distinction 
 be drawn between revealed truths and all 
 which does not proceed thus directly and 
 immediately from God.* For it is, as opposed 
 to the old truths revealed, that all novelty 
 must be error: where God on the contrary 
 is silent, there He has not intended to pro- 
 hibit man from seeking out the truth for 
 himself. Men may differ in their judg- 
 ments of what this directly revealed truth 
 is. To some it may appear, and truly, that the 
 Gospel is very simple; that it is all to be 
 summed up in an enumeration of those few 
 first principles, which are written in the 
 Bible as with a sunbeam, of the truth of 
 which, almost all experience shows, that every 
 
 * I cannot refrain from expressing my strong opinion, that the 
 whole force of Mr. Newman's Essay lies in a studious endeavour 
 to keep this distinction out of sight. Hence I believe that the 
 book will have no weight with any except those who have had 
 their ideas on the nature of revelation confused, on the one hand 
 by rationalistic, or on the other by Romanizing, teaching. 
 
136 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 really humble and praying student will be 
 convinced by God's Holy Spirit from an ear- 
 nest attention to the meaning of the sacred 
 books. Others may have so accustomed them- 
 selves to refine away the plain meaning of 
 the sacred text, sitting down to the study of 
 it more with the captious spirit of critics, than 
 as anxious humbly to be taught, that they may 
 miss its heavenly meaning, and reduce it to 
 a mere repetition, from on high, of truths al- 
 ready acknowledged by uninspired philosophy. 
 Others again, and those perhaps good and holy 
 men, never turning to the word of life with full 
 desire to ascertain its true meaning, but look- 
 ing at it always through the medium of some 
 human gloss, to which they have been accus- 
 tomed from their childhood, may think that 
 it contains and proves many things which 
 God never intended should be found in it. 
 All these, each to his own Master, at the Day 
 of Judgment, must stand or fall. Thus vary- 
 ing in our estimates of what the primal 
 revealed truth is, we may not too strongly 
 blame, though we may strongly differ from 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 137 
 
 each other. But this we are entitled and 
 bound to require of all, who, either in theory 
 or practice, would put forth a system of theo- 
 logy, that they treat nothing as a part of the 
 Eternal Gospel, which they are not prepared, 
 in life and in death, to maintain to be dis- 
 tinctly revealed from God. Otherwise they 
 really degrade the majesty of divine truth, 
 while they profess to elevate it. Every one 
 knows that to see something miraculous in 
 all the ordinary processes of nature, is much 
 the same as to hold that there is no such 
 thing as a miracle : and so also, to class all 
 truths relating to religion as inspired is much 
 the same as to affirm that there is no such 
 thing as inspiration. He who would avoid 
 an universal superstition, which is merely, 
 after all, another name for a universal scep- 
 ticism, must draw a marked distinction be- 
 tween statements which he holds to come 
 directly from God's revelation, and those 
 which he admits to be only human opinions, 
 however true and admirable ; as he must 
 also between institutions believed to be 
 
138 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 directly ordained of God, and those which 
 have sprung up and been developed merely 
 by the sanction of His superintending pro- 
 vidence, however useful and highly to be 
 esteemed. 
 
 Now the revealed truths of the Gospel, as 
 opposed to which all novelty must be false- 
 hood, are either themselves the great principles 
 or major premises, by the application of which 
 the Christian's conduct is to be regulated, or 
 they are facts of God's nature and man's, by 
 which such principles are proved. And God's 
 almighty wisdom has taken care that, with 
 all their simplicity, these are abundantly 
 sufficient for the regulation of our lives. 
 Every truth then, be it principle or fact, which 
 thus stands forth in the word of revelation, 
 or, again, which may be inferred by strict and 
 accurate logical sequence from a candid and 
 enlarged comparison of all the Bible's state- 
 ments, may fairly be considered an integral 
 part of the eternal Gospel. 
 
 These are the old truths, in the belief of 
 which, Timothy is warned to continue stead- 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 139 
 
 fast ; which are capable, indeed, of a thousand 
 varying applications under varying circum- 
 stances, but which themselves ever remain 
 certain and immutable ; to fall back upon our 
 convictions of which is the great safeguard 
 against novelty and error. With these, man's 
 learning and ingenuity cannot, without dan- 
 ger, tamper. It will be wise for him to find 
 some other field than those, on which directly 
 to exercise his imagination or acuteness. 
 
 But indirectly, even these afford wide scope 
 for the application of human learning and 
 genius ; for there is a perpetual fund of never- 
 failing interest in tracing their various com- 
 binations when applied to human conduct, 
 and the modes in which they find admit- 
 tance, and take up their abode as living prin- 
 ciples, by the Holy Spirit's assistance, within 
 the thousand different hearts of men. And 
 such secondary speculations on such subjects 
 are, of course, no part of the primal Gospel 
 truth, though so nearly occupied with its 
 principles. 
 
 But, moreover, beyond the range of such 
 
140 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 truths altogether, there are many subjects 
 of great interest for man, on which God has 
 not thought fit supernaturally to instruct 
 him ; and these subjects, on which we have 
 no revelation, are often so intimately con- 
 nected with other points revealed, that pas- 
 sages occur in the Bible which may fairly 
 be regarded as giving us slight hints to 
 guide us in our thoughts of them, though 
 it would be quite rash and illogical to say 
 that on these obscure hints alone any certain 
 conclusions can be built. Take, for example, 
 the intermediate state of the soul between 
 death and judgment. Doubtless, 1 Pet. iii. 
 19, and Rev. vi. 9, 10, 11, give some slight 
 hints as to this state ; but anything built on 
 these hints must be merely human. Or, 
 take again the particular mode in which the 
 sacrament of the Lord's Supper is made 
 available for the purifying of the soul. God 
 has told us that the faithful soul communi- 
 cating must receive a spiritual blessing ; but 
 as to the particular mode of blessing He is 
 silent. Now, on this point, which Hooker* 
 
 * Eccl. Pol., book v. ch. lxviii. 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 141 
 
 seems wisely to regard as, after all, one more 
 of metaphysics than of religion, it has been 
 thought that light may be gained from the 
 few hints which the Bible contains as to the 
 nature of Christ's glorified body; but any 
 theory built on these is human merely. 
 
 Such matters as these are the great field of 
 Rome's errors. Her teachers have taken {e.g.) 
 that human theory on these two subjects 
 which suits their own purposes ; and, pointing 
 to obscure hints in the Bible, as the foun- 
 dations of their baseless superstructure, have 
 attempted to force us to admire it as an 
 integral portion of Christ's truth. But the 
 error of the Romish Church in all this has 
 lain, not in allowing theories to be con- 
 structed, but first, in constructing false 
 theories, contradictory to other immutable 
 principles of the Divine Word ; and secondly, 
 in claiming for these theories, which are 
 false, an honour which would not have been 
 due to them if true. On matters not forming 
 part of revelation, men may speculate if they 
 please in an humble spirit; but they can 
 
142 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 have no right to confound their own fallible 
 opinions with God's unchanging truth. 
 
 Here then, as in the particular applications 
 of the general principles revealed, is a wide 
 field for men's thoughts to exercise themselves 
 with humility and reverence; not, perhaps, 
 on such dark and subtle questions as we 
 have now alluded to, but on those various 
 other points where philosophy may well 
 approach and illustrate the subject of reli- 
 gion: but the opinions or conclusions of 
 human philosophy, however true, are not to 
 be confounded with the Eternal Gospel which 
 God alone reveals. 
 
 We may see then, I think, from these 
 distinctions what the field is on which the 
 Apostle will admit of no novelty. The 
 Gospel is the same Gospel now, neither more 
 nor less perfect than it was when St. John 
 died; and it is in the immutable truths 
 which the holy record of Apostolic teaching 
 sets before us, that the text calls upon us 
 to see that we remain steadfast. It is by 
 testing all our human speculations by these, 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 143 
 
 that both churches and individual Christians 
 learn to separate the chaff from the wheat, 
 regarding all human teaching as part of the 
 deceit against which St. Paul is warning us, 
 if it shall be found by the humble inquirer, 
 either in theory, or when carried out and 
 developed in practice, to militate against 
 these. 
 
 And now it will be seen also that the 
 theological student need have no apprehen- 
 sions lest, when thus summoned to follow 
 the old beaten path, he must find his journey 
 dull and devoid of all new incident, and 
 giving no opportunity for the employment 
 of his energies. To study God's word de- 
 votionally by the Holy Spirit's help, and 
 meditate on the truths of religion for the 
 direct benefit of our souls, is of course the 
 highest employment of the highest element 
 in man; but it is well, especially in such a 
 place as this, that we should understand 
 that in the province of theology the humble 
 student will find full exercise also for the 
 energies of his intellect. 
 
144 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 It remains, then, to say a few words which 
 may serve to suggest, with greater distinct- 
 ness, how inexhaustibly rich is that field 
 of study which still lies open to us. Of 
 course, within narrow limits, nothing but 
 a very vague sketch can be here attempted. 
 Yet may even this, by God's blessing, be 
 serviceable to the young, if, causing them 
 to reflect on the great duty which the Lord 
 Jesus Christ has laid upon them, to use all 
 their best faculties of intellect as well as 
 heart in his service, it shall stir up the zeal 
 of any, more actively to use the many bless- 
 ings provided in this much favoured place. 
 
 And here remark in passing, that this wide 
 range of study goes far beyond the province 
 of the mere professional theologian. The- 
 ology, in its highest sense, must be the 
 noblest study for man as man, since it leads 
 him to the contemplation and fuller know* 
 ledge of the Divine nature in its creating, 
 sustaining, redeeming, and sanctifying powers; 
 penetrates also into the deep secrets of the 
 human heart; and is, besides, indissolubly 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 145 
 
 connected with both the outward and inward 
 history of those great Societies, which, being 
 the selected depositaries of heavenly truth, 
 have, both in their faithfulness to this great 
 trust, and their neglect of it, so deeply 
 affected the destinies of our race. 
 
 It is, in fact, the most distinguishing cha- 
 racteristic of the system of this university, 
 that it considers theology not merely as the 
 professional study of the clergy, but, closely 
 connected, as it is, with the only true philoso- 
 phy, as the great master-science, standing to us 
 in the same relation in which their philosophy 
 stood to the Greeks — apart from which there 
 may, indeed, be a disjointed communication 
 of knowledge on particular subjects, but no 
 education of the whole man. And those 
 who would have our system in this respect 
 altered, are surely unacquainted with the true 
 nature of the divine science they are speaking 
 of, and have never seriously contemplated the 
 fact, that, in all ages, its truths have been 
 the great motives that have swayed men, 
 
146 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 and thus hastened or retarded the rise and 
 fall of nations. When they would confine 
 theological instruction to the clergy, these 
 persons must be dreaming, surely, of some 
 useless common-place book, filled with the 
 names of forgotten heresies and the tech- 
 nical jargon of the schools, and can have no 
 thought of the true divine philosophy : for 
 those who know most of the nature and the 
 workings of God and of man, with power to use 
 this knowledge, must ever be the real guides 
 of a nation's thoughts, and must therefore 
 give its chief direction both to a nation's 
 will, and to the events that spring from 
 it. Such men do really control that flood 
 which the mere politician can never stem, 
 but which he deems it his highest wis- 
 dom to moderate, while he clears the ob- 
 stacles that oppose its course. Who doubts 
 that it is, not indeed the clergy, but in 
 Coleridge's phrase, the cleresy — by which, I 
 suppose, he means the great body of those 
 especially who know most of the science of 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 147 
 
 human nature and have the power to wield 
 it — that must ever be the real controllers 
 of their fellow-men. 
 
 It was their exclusive possession even of 
 a very imperfect form of this science, which, 
 in the more barbarous ages, chiefly gave to 
 the clergy a power that no physical force 
 of kings or conquerors could control. The 
 world seeks to train men to such knowledge 
 on false and ungodly principles. To raise 
 them to a pure and holy form of it, and 
 thus endow them with a practical wis- 
 dom which the world's hollow philosophy 
 vainly strives to imitate, and before which it 
 falls powerless, is the grand object of divine 
 theology in its fullest and truest sense. It 
 cannot, surely, be of such science as this that 
 the objectors are speaking, or they would never 
 wish to shut up the most powerful of all 
 kinds of knowledge within the circle of a 
 priestly caste. Yet such is the real nature of 
 that theology, to which, however we may fail 
 miserably in practice, the whole theory of our 
 education calls upon us to guide the young. 
 
 h2 
 
148 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 Such knowledge has obviously its deep in- 
 terest for men of every class. 
 
 It is not unusual to consider theology as 
 divided into speculative and practical — the 
 one the province of the student, the other 
 that of the professional pastor, or of every 
 one who exerts himself in any pastoral 
 relation amongst his fellow-men. Great 
 exception may justly be taken against such 
 a division, which seems at first sight to im- 
 ply that it is possible for a man to form 
 right opinions on religion without a zealous 
 practice of them, or to practise its precepts 
 to any real efficient purpose in guiding others, 
 without some system as his rule. It must, 
 of course, be granted, that a holy life is the 
 great indispensable requisite for the forma- 
 tion by the Holy Spirit's help of correct views 
 of divine truth ; and that as all theories of 
 religion formed in solitude must be tested 
 by their applicability in the market-place, so, 
 on the other hand, he who is perpetually 
 occupied in instructing his fellows publicly 
 in the resorts of men, must every day strive 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 149 
 
 to gain guidance and new life by retiring 
 within himself, not for devotion only, but for 
 study. The division, therefore, is not one 
 which it is safe to encourage too much in 
 actual practice. It may, however, be suitable 
 enough for assisting us to understand with 
 logical precision, the various subdivisions of 
 our great science. Each branch of theolo- 
 gical study must be subdivided according as 
 we propose to view it on its speculative or 
 its practical side. 
 
 " What," says South,* " is divinity but a 
 doctrine treating of the nature, attributes, 
 and works of the great God, as he stands 
 related to rational creatures ; and the way 
 how rational creatures may serve, worship, 
 and enjoy him ? And if so, is not the subject- 
 matter of it the greatest, and the design and 
 business of it the noblest, in the world ? It 
 has been disputed," he continues, " to which 
 of the intellectual habits mentioned by 
 Aristotle, it most properly belongs, some 
 referring it to wisdom, some to science, some 
 
 * Sermons, vol. iii. p. 31. Oxford, 8vo. 1823. 
 
150 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 to prudence, and some compounding it of 
 several of them together ; but those seem to 
 speak most to the purpose, who will not have 
 it formally any one of them, but virtually, and 
 in an eminent transcendent manner, all. 
 And now can we think," he says, " that a 
 doctrine of that depth, that height, and 
 that vast compass, grasping within it all the 
 perfections and dimensions of human science, 
 does not worthily claim all the preparations 
 whereby the wit and industry of man can fit 
 him for it ? All other sciences are accounted 
 but handmaids to divinity." And this, I 
 think, will be allowed to be no over-charged 
 picture drawn by the professed theologian 
 enamoured of his own pursuit, if we regard 
 the science in all the breadth and fulness 
 to which it swells when regarded as the 
 enlightener and guide of human nature. Its 
 sphere of study must be boundless, as its 
 practical duties are inexhaustible. 
 
 In order to see the great extent of its range 
 we might dwell first on the way in which 
 this divine science may be used to hallow 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 151 
 
 those branches of learning which are merely 
 preparatory and subsidiary to it. God has 
 willed {e.g.) that the study of languages shall 
 be necessary as the first step to enable us to 
 feel any confidence in our attempts to under- 
 stand the documents on which it is all built. 
 And here in sacred philology is more than 
 enough to occupy the labours of the longest 
 and most energetic life. And when the way 
 has been thus cleared, and we can understand 
 the meaning of the words which are to be 
 the ground of our foundation, think still how 
 all the other preparatory studies of a liberal 
 education seem each to fall into its own place 
 as indispensable, before we can either our- 
 selves add to the superstructure or even learn 
 to appreciate or comprehend the labours of 
 our predecessors. To confine ourselves still to 
 the foundation — take any one portion of the 
 Bible, even after the ordinary difficulties of 
 its language have been surmounted, who shall 
 be able without such instruction to approach 
 to a solution of its many critical questions, to 
 form to himself a vivid conception of its 
 
1 52 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 historical and biographical sketches, or 
 descend into its deep mines of philosophic 
 thought? Nor, when we leave the mere 
 foundation, can we have any difficulty in 
 seeing how, as we go further, our ordinary 
 human learning must, by the blessing of 
 Christ's spirit, aid us in a science which 
 above all others requires acute and practised 
 powers of reasoning to detect fallacies, 
 imagination and poetic feeling to soar to its 
 empyrean heights, and practical sound sense 
 and an acquaintance with the facts of 
 history, to enable us to test its lofty theories 
 by their effects on the lives of men. 
 
 As all human learning does to the faithful 
 christian's ear, even in his earliest studies, echo 
 the voice divine, so will the remembrance of 
 it enable him the better to understand these 
 heavenly accents when he is giving himself 
 up entirely to dwell upon their sound. The 
 very faults and ignorance, of his heathen 
 teachers (noble even in their fallen state) 
 help him the better surely to appreciate that 
 truth which they were vainly feeling after. 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 153 
 
 Who sees not a heaven-taught Plato in the 
 holy John ; a Stoic not of this earth in the 
 enduring Paul ; who ever allows himself to 
 speculate on the state of the souls in prison 
 without thinking how poet and philosopher of 
 the old times has wandered over the same 
 ground before him ; and who can read the 
 ninth chapter of the Romans without rejoic- 
 ing that his own soul's eternal destiny 
 depends on the resolves of his beneficent 
 Creator and the Lord Jesus Christ, not on 
 the iron laws of a remorseless fate which 
 sways even God and all the universe ; or 
 who reads the account of the wretched state 
 of the lost heathen world in the first chapter 
 of the same Epistle, without reverting in 
 thought to the poet or the historian who 
 tells us of the rock of Capri and the 
 miserable old man who made it infamous by 
 his lusts? Here are one or two out of 
 innumerable instances of the intimate con- 
 nection of our common preparatory studies 
 with things divine. 
 
 Again, when the theologian enters more 
 
154 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 directly on the distinctly practical portion 
 of his labours, what writer of biography, 
 what sweet singer in our own or any other 
 tongue, who has laid open the secrets of the 
 human heart and gained an undying fame 
 because his descriptions are true to nature, 
 can be useless to him whose pastoral office it 
 is to understand man's wants and the mode 
 of their supply, to listen to the murmurs of 
 the craving human soul, and give the food 
 which God in Christ has ordained should 
 satisfy it? What grave disquisition on the 
 theory of the passions, or historical exempli- 
 fication of the mode in which they work, can 
 be useless to him who, while he treats of 
 God and things divine, thinks of these ever 
 in their relation to man, and cannot fully 
 understand them unless he has mastered the 
 science of man ? 
 
 It would be vain to attempt to enter here 
 on another field — the way in which the 
 skilful pastor, bent on his Master's service, 
 will endeavour to make his human learning 
 the source from which he draws an innocent 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 155 
 
 relaxation for his people, that by Christ's 
 help he may thus wean them from low 
 pursuits, using the lecture-room or his school- 
 house, as the week-day assistant to his 
 labours in the Church. It would be vain 
 also to attempt to do more than hint that 
 our Lord's own example throughout the 
 whole Gospels, as well as distinctly in the 
 13th chapter of St. Matthew, warns us how 
 we must avail ourselves, in teaching, of all 
 human helps, to give interest to the new 
 forms in which we set forth old truths. 
 
 Passing by all these, remember, in con- 
 clusion, that theology has departments of 
 study distinctly and peculiarly its own, 
 which are almost boundless. These it would 
 be useless now to attempt even to enume- 
 rate. Observe only, that so little are we in 
 the habit of realising this thought, and so 
 much ground of theological study remains 
 still untouched amongst us, with all our 
 vaunted lore, that the very names of many 
 of these cannot easily be expressed in our 
 tongue. Where amongst us, e.g., is to be found 
 
156 THEOLOGY, [discourse v. 
 
 the systematic history of opinions in the 
 Church, marking their development and cor- 
 ruption, and the various causes in history 
 or philosophy that have called them forth 
 at first into prominence, or caused them to 
 be abused? And without such works how 
 shall we expect to train the polemic to 
 resist error, the most profitless certainly of 
 theologians, but still indispensable in his 
 sphere, as long as the revolving wheel, and 
 the recurrence of the same causes, are sure 
 to bring back old errors, though masked 
 under new names ? 
 
 Or, to take one more example. We are 
 a great missionary country, and profess to 
 be anxious, under God's blessing, at this 
 time to provide more distinctly systematic 
 instructions for the missionaries Ave would 
 train. But how is the missionary to be well 
 armed to go forth in his Redeemer's service, 
 to combat with the many subtle forms of 
 error which, in the great empires of the East, 
 e.g., are supported by the reverence and ac- 
 cumulated learning of hundreds of years, 
 
discourse v.] BOTH OLD AND NEW. 157 
 
 if he has not studied the history and doc- 
 trines of false religions as well as of the 
 true, seen the relations in which these doc- 
 trines stand to Christianity, and learned 
 to know at once their weakness and their 
 strength ? 
 
 Indeed the field is boundless. The student 
 ought to be under no temptation to think 
 that he must stray into dangerous novelties 
 in search of subjects that are to interest 
 him. The danger is not the poverty of our 
 science, but lest we be blinded and confused 
 and unable to make any choice amid the 
 superabundance of its riches. It is necessary 
 to warn each one who would make real 
 progress in theology, that he must select his 
 sphere and labour in it zealously. 
 
 It only remains to call to mind, last of all 
 what danger there is when we thus speak 
 of the science of religion, lest, however much 
 we strive to avoid it, we may fall into the 
 great sin of regarding the whole too much 
 as a matter of speculation and intellect. Yet 
 " God hath chosen the foolish things of this 
 
158 THEOLOGY. [discourse v. 
 
 world to confound the wise;"* and many 
 an uninstructed peasant, by the blessing of 
 Divine grace, has a far deeper and truer 
 knowledge of God, and Christ, and things 
 divine, and his own soul, than the most 
 learned and acute theologian. Let us then 
 all receive this solemn lesson : that, above 
 all his other labours and exertions, there is 
 a great work laid on the student, from the 
 fact that no man can be a truly great 
 theologian who is not, by the Holy Spirit's 
 aid, endued with personal holiness. The 
 principle is as true as the Gospel, that no 
 one can understand the word of God who 
 is not himself a child of God: hence the 
 regulations of our colleges have wisely pro- 
 vided that these houses of learning shall be 
 also houses of prayer. Here is after all 
 the great work — to make personal progress, 
 by the Holy Spirit's help, in the Christian 
 life. And the holiness required must be no 
 poor compromise between conscience and 
 worldliness, but something which shall really 
 
 * 1 Cor. i. 27. 
 
discourse v.] BOTH NEW AND OLD. 159 
 
 resemble what it is called, the imitation of 
 Christ crucified. This work no outward cir- 
 cumstances, no failure of health, or leisure, 
 or other means, can interrupt: a thousand 
 things may prevent us, however willing, 
 from making progress as students ; but this 
 work is indispensable for us as beings with 
 immortal souls. 
 
NOTE.— p. 123. 
 
 I have dwelt on this point because persons often argue as if 
 the concession, that St. Paul ( in the words 'tepa ypdixfxara 
 and -rraaa ypcupr}) is here speaking of the Old Testament, would 
 entirely destroy the applicability of this passage to be used in 
 proof of the all-sufficiency of God's written word. It is often 
 urged that verses 16 and 17, as thus used by Protestants, prove 
 too much : if they prove the all-sufficiency of scripture at all, 
 they will prove, it is said, the all-sufficiency of the Old Testa- 
 ment to the exclusion of the New. To this it is answered, that 
 the Apostle is to be understood as saying directly, in verse 16, 
 that even the Old Testament, properly understood, might furnish 
 the man of God thoroughly : just as St. John says of the 
 contents of his Gospel, that they are sufficient to secure eternal 
 life for those who believe in them ; but neither Apostle means 
 to imply any exclusion of a future more full explanation of the 
 word of life by other inspired teachers. What I understand St. 
 Paul to be here insisting on is this, that the only security against 
 error will be found by turning to inspired teachers — to the Old 
 Testament and the inspired teaching of the Apostles of the New. 
 It is not simply because it is written that we uphold the autho- 
 rity of the Scripture against tradition, but because being written, 
 it is as a matter of fact the only existing record of inspired 
 teaching. The true Protestant principle is the absolute necessity 
 of tracing all those statements of doctrine to which we bow with 
 implicit reverence to an inspired source, and the impossibility 
 of so tracing any statements but those of Holy Scripture. And 
 from this follows, as a natural inference, the all-sufficiency of 
 Holy Scripture ; for as a matter of fact and history, God has 
 
162 NOTE. 
 
 given us no other inspired guide, and we trust His merciful and 
 fatherly care of us not to have given us an insufficient guide. 
 
 This statement of the Protestant principle will show at once 
 how fallacious it is to say that Protestants must go to tradition 
 for their own doctrine of the all-sufficiency of Scripture. We 
 hold Scripture to be all-sufficient, not on the authoritative deci- 
 sion of any Fathers or of the whole Church, but because, as a 
 matter of fact and history, it is known to be the only sure record 
 of inspired teaching. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 I am induced to add two very short Sermons to 
 this series, as connected in subject with the appre- 
 hensions I have expressed, lest an insidious form of 
 infidelity may, before we are aware of it, gain ground 
 in this country. It is maintained by some that a 
 marked tendency exists at present in reflecting minds 
 to diverge into one or other of two extreme views, 
 one of which passes necessarily into Romanism, 
 while the other regards all Christian doctrine as a 
 matter of complete indifference, teaching, that, pro- 
 vided a man rejects the decision of an infallible guide, 
 he may unite with those who entertain any belief, 
 however erroneous, if only they will profess a willing- 
 ness to be led by Christ's example, and to act in his 
 spirit. A confident hope seems to be entertained in 
 some quarters, especially, I believe, amongst persons 
 of the Unitarian school, that, as the logical faculty is 
 more exercised, Christendom will resolve itself into two 
 churches, one professing to be infallible, the doc- 
 
166 APPENDIX. 
 
 trines of which are fixed and promulgated by one 
 irresistible authority, the other embracing all 
 varieties of speculative opinion on Christian doc- 
 trine ; in a word including all who can " ex animo 
 repeat the Lord's Prayer," the only formula, it has 
 been stated, to which the adhesion of Christians can 
 rightfully be demanded. 
 
 I will not stop to ask why a (so called) church 
 which is to be thus comprehensive, should confine 
 itself at last by adopting a confession of belief in 
 dogmas concealed under the form of a prayer. I would 
 rather most solemnly protest against the statement, 
 that inquiry conducted in a reverent spirit is likely 
 to lead to any such result. Protestantism is rightly 
 a distinct and definite system, teaching indeed that 
 the number of doctrines necessary to salvation is few, 
 and that these doctrines, as living principles of ac- 
 tion, may be held by many who cannot express them 
 accurately in words, or who may choose other words 
 than those to which we are accustomed, in which to 
 clothe their belief in the truths we love, but duly 
 upholding the majesty and paramount importance of 
 right Christian principles, which it considers as but 
 another name for right Christian doctrines. 
 
 That sort of pseudo-protestantism which is thus 
 erroneously held up to admiration as the only true 
 
APPENDIX. 167 
 
 antagonist of Romanism, must, I believe, at last, 
 however little its advocates may wish snch a result, end 
 in spreading what is nothing better than a very insi- 
 dious form of infidelity. If it has no rallying point 
 but the Christian name, we must remember that that 
 name is happily in the present day too much held in 
 honour to allow even infidels to dispense with it. 
 Men may be found who call themselves Christians 
 now, who look upon the Gospel as a mere aggregate 
 of unauthoritative legends, and its history as only 
 valuable when regarded as the mythical exposition 
 of certain philosophic truths to which the mind 
 can attain without the aid of revelation.* It would 
 indeed be a miserable prospect if there were no alter- 
 native but an unconditional surrender of our reason 
 to the crushing tyranny of Rome, or embarking on 
 this shoreless sea of indifferentism. But God will 
 defend his Church ; and the sure and positive gospel 
 truth which has triumphed through so many ages, 
 will not be lost now. As it is sometimes implied, in 
 reference to this subject, that Dr. Arnold favoured 
 such a view of the unimportance of correct belief, I 
 think it right to record my conviction, that had that 
 great man been now living he would have been 
 
 * For a clear exposition of such errors, see Trench's Notes on 
 the Miracles, Preliminary Essay, ch. v. 
 
168 APPENDIX. 
 
 in many ways admirably suited to destroy this very 
 mistaken system. Few men who ever lived have had a 
 more ardent faith in those doctrines which he deemed 
 essential, or have more clearly understood and illus- 
 trated how Christian doctrine, if really believed, must 
 affect practice. Surely any one who reads his Ser- 
 mons, or follows the record of his daily life, must see 
 that his whole soul would have revolted from a 
 Christianity which was to teach no positive Christian 
 truth. 
 
GOSPEL FACTS. 
 
 Acts x. 39. 
 
 " We are witnesses of all things which He did both in the land 
 of the Jews and in Jerusalem : whom they slew and hanged 
 on a tree." 
 
 These words call our attention to a very 
 important characteristic of the teaching of 
 the Apostles. The passage from which the 
 words come is a short summary of Chris- 
 tianity, given by St. Peter to Cornelius and 
 his company. There are others of the 
 same kind in the sacred narrative, and they 
 bear, in many respects, a remarkable resem- 
 blance to what we call the Apostles' Creed ; 
 giving us thereby a clear proof, that, what- 
 ever may be the real history of that Creed 
 as a distinct formulary, it is well entitled 
 to the name Apostolic, from its being so 
 
170 APPENDIX. 
 
 very much a copy in substance, and some- 
 times even in language, of these statements 
 of the Apostles. 
 
 One of the most remarkable features in 
 which the Apostles' Creed resembles these 
 summaries given us by inspired men, is the 
 way in which it dwells on certain plain his- 
 torical facts, and represents the belief in them 
 to be a necessary part of Christian faith. It 
 has been remarked, that this important pecu- 
 liarity accounts for the introduction of the 
 name of Pontius Pilate into the Apostles' 
 Creed. We say, " Crucified under Pontius 
 Pilate," to mark the date and locality of our 
 Lord's crucifixion, and consequently the his- 
 torical character of our faith ; to record that 
 we are not contented with any transcendental 
 theory of a victory over the powers of evil, 
 won by the Son of God in the human soul ; 
 but that we believe in our Lord's birth, 
 life, death, and resurrection, literally and 
 historically as facts. The form of some of 
 those strange mystical errors, which, spring- 
 ing from the metaphysical subtleties of the 
 
GOSPEL FACTS. 171 
 
 Eastern mind, vexed the Church in very 
 early times, makes it probable that this 
 historical allusion was introduced into the 
 Creed for the very purpose here mentioned. 
 Certain it is that similar errors of a mystical 
 transcendentalism have appeared again in 
 other countries in the present day, and seem 
 not unlikely, in time, to corrupt the sim- 
 plicity of the faith even in our own Church. 
 Against all such subtle refinements of scep- 
 ticism the Apostles' Creed contains a plain 
 protest, warning us that he who does not 
 believe historically is no Christian in the 
 sense of St. Peter or St. Paul : nay, it would 
 seem to be against the maintainers of such 
 errors that St. John* is warning us, when 
 he tells us, of him who denies that Jesus 
 Christ is come in the flesh, "that he is a 
 deceiver and an antichrist." 
 
 In fact, every student of the New Testa- 
 ment must come to one of two conclusions, 
 however he may try to conceal from himself 
 the alternative ; either that Christianity is no 
 
 * Second Epistle. Cf. verses 7, 9, 10. 
 i 2 
 
172 APPENDIX. 
 
 religion at all as distinguishable from simple 
 Deism, and that its sacred books are a mere 
 cheat ; or that it demands an assent to a num- 
 ber of distinct historical statements which it 
 considers the basis of all its teaching, and 
 without which it would be nothing but a 
 name. The plain historical character of the 
 faith which we are required to have in our 
 Lord's life and death and resurrection, are 
 shown, as in a thousand other places, so also 
 in our text. The apostle speaks as a witness 
 attesting facts. " We are witnesses of all 
 things which He did, both in the land of the 
 Jews and in Jerusalem, whom they slew and 
 hanged on a tree. Him God raised up and 
 showed him openly unto witnesses chosen 
 before of God, even to us who did eat and 
 drink with him after he rose from the dead." 
 Now why, it may be asked, do I insist on 
 this in addressing you ?* The danger amongst 
 us surely is, not lest any of you should refine 
 away your belief in the facts of Christianity 
 into a mere airy subtlety, which is the most 
 
 * Preached at Rugby, 
 
GOSPEL FACTS. 173 
 
 insidious form of infidelity, because it has an 
 appearance both of philosophy and of religion 
 in it ; but lest, while you fully acknowledge 
 the facts of the Gospel as history, they have 
 no influence on your lives. Such warning, it 
 might be urged, may be needful enough for 
 men in the maturity of their education, espe- 
 cially for men of speculative minds, but why 
 force it upon you ? The answer is distinct. 
 It is our business, as Christ's ministers, train- 
 ing the young in this place, not to look merely 
 to the boyish errors, with the temptations to 
 which you are immediately surrounded, but 
 to endeavour, by God's help, to store your 
 minds with thoughts which, through His 
 Spirit, will keep you safe in the shock of the 
 conflicts of life. Against all bad principles, 
 whether of unsound theology or loose moral- 
 ity, forewarned is forearmed. One of the 
 greatest attractions of error is generally its 
 novelty. It will fall powerless on the man 
 who has known how its sophistry may be 
 detected from his boyhood. 
 
 There is, however, another plain and more 
 
174 APPENDIX. 
 
 immediate reason why this subject should 
 present itself to us now. The holy season 
 on which we have this day entered is a 
 more than usually solemn and distinct com- 
 memoration of historical facts. When we 
 call to mind this week* the testimony of 
 the Apostles as to the various stages of the 
 Lord's passion, it will be well that we should 
 consider how really a belief in these facts 
 is the basis and foundation of our faith. 
 
 This demand which Christianity makes on 
 our assent to facts of history is a very im- 
 portant point of distinction between it and 
 what is called the religion of nature. At 
 first sight, we might be inclined to suppose, 
 that, if certain great principles of morality 
 and religion be admitted, the historical ele- 
 ment of our faith must be comparatively 
 unimportant. But all experience shows that 
 this is not so, and a little reflection will 
 convince us, that reason would itself suggest 
 what experience thus confirms. The whole 
 scheme of Christian doctrine turns upon 
 
 * Preached on Palm Sunday. 
 
GOSPEL FACTS. 175 
 
 facts, for the atonement which has been 
 made for the sins of lost man by the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, was accomplished by His birth on 
 earth, as followed by His suffering life, death, 
 and resurrection. He who does not believe 
 in these, cannot be, in our sense of the word, 
 a Christian ; neither can he know those 
 motives of deep reverence, gratitude, and 
 love, by which Christian faith is made ope- 
 rative. If we were to select one point as 
 the most distinguishing characteristic of a 
 truly Christian heart, it would be the feeling 
 of a real and ardent reverential attachment 
 to the person of our Saviour. But this feel- 
 ing cannot exist in the heart without an 
 acknowledgment of the facts of His his- 
 tory. We must know what He has done for 
 us. We must see in him one wiio, first, 
 being the Eternal Son of God, has left Hea- 
 ven, and endured for us the worst sufferings 
 of our mortal nature ; and secondly, who has 
 returned to His kingdom in Heaven, where 
 He ever lives to make intercession for us. 
 Without the first fact, which is indissolubly 
 
176 APPENDIX. 
 
 connected with the history of His passion, 
 the claim upon our gratitude is lessened in- 
 finitely ; without the second, which depends 
 on the history of His ascension, our gratitude 
 must be cold, and cannot ripen into love, for 
 we cannot recognise Him as our ever present 
 friend. 
 
 Here, then, is enough to show us how the 
 historical facts of Christianity differ from 
 those of common ordinary history, in that 
 they are the sources of the purest Christian 
 feeling. The spark of holy feeling and of holy 
 living will lie dormant in the soul till these 
 facts strike upon it, and call forth its hidden 
 warmth and light. And he whose heart is 
 really humble and faithful will, by the 
 help of God's Spirit, embrace the facts of 
 Christianity as soon as they are presented 
 him, for he will find in them, when 
 really apprehended, the satisfaction of those 
 longings of his spiritual nature which were 
 never before able to find their proper vent. 
 He that is of God heareth God's word; 
 and the heart that longs for a Saviour 
 
GOSPEL FACTS. 177 
 
 rejoices when it finds him revealed his- 
 torically in the Gospel. A Christianity, then, 
 without the facts of Christian history, is not 
 only a system quite unknown to the Apostles 
 and first preachers of the Gospel, but has 
 also lost the motives by which they stirred 
 men's hearts. 
 
 Brethren, we shall meet together in the 
 mornings this week to have the historical 
 facts of our Lord's passion vividly repre- 
 sented to us before we enter on the business 
 of each day. For those who try to realize 
 these truths, this week is indeed the holiest 
 in all the year; and we are to mark the 
 close of it by joining together in the holiest 
 Christian ordinance. It may well be said 
 that this week must be a marked stage 
 in the Christian life of every one of us. 
 We cannot be brought into that intimate 
 proximity with our Lord and His sufferings 
 which this time with its services implies — 
 we cannot hear the summons given us this 
 morning to prepare for the Lord's table, 
 and the further exhortations to the same 
 i 3 
 
178 APPENDIX. 
 
 purpose, which I suppose will be addressed 
 to each of you in your several houses this 
 evening, without being in some marked 
 degree either better or worse. These things, 
 intended by God's Spirit to stir our hearts 
 to a deeper sense of sin, and a deeper feeling 
 of gratitude to Him who will save us from 
 it, must either be a savour of life unto life, 
 or, if neglected, of death. Would that we 
 could all of us, as we follow the spectacle 
 of this week, think how deeply we are our- 
 selves concerned in its history ; thus would 
 every smallest sin of unkindness, evil 
 temper, indolence, self-sufficiency, or self- 
 indulgence, appear indeed a thing to be 
 hated by us, if we see that it could not be 
 atoned for without the death of Christ. 
 
II. 
 
 GOSPEL DOCTRINES. 
 
 Philippians ii. 6-8. 
 " Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be 
 
 equal with God : 
 " But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the 
 
 form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men : 
 " And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and 
 
 became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.' 5 
 
 This remarkable passage was read in the 
 Epistle for last Sunday, having been evidently- 
 selected as well suited to prepare our minds 
 for the solemnities of this day/' 
 
 Some of you are aware that there has 
 been considerable controversy as to the inter- 
 pretation of it, and especially that the trans- 
 lation, ' fc thought it not robbery to be equal 
 with God," has been objected to. I am not 
 going now to enter on the controversy, I 
 shall only state my opinion, that the point 
 
 * Preached on Good Fridav. 
 
180 APPENDIX. 
 
 in dispute is one of comparatively little 
 moment. The rival interpretations of the 
 
 Words 'ovx apirayixov fjyrjaaro, are that of OUr 
 
 version, " thought it not robbery to be equal 
 with God," and that which the Unitarian 
 writers especially, though not exclusively, 
 prefer, " thought it not a thing to be grasped 
 at that he should be equal with God." 
 
 These, at first sight, appear very different ; 
 but I repeat that the point in dispute is one 
 of little moment, for whichever way the 
 words are taken, the same doctrine must be 
 inferred from them. As to our version, there 
 is no mistaking its declaration of the God- 
 head of Christ ; " he thought it not robbery 
 to be equal with God :" and if w^e grant, for 
 argument's sake, the propriety of the other 
 translation, "thought it not a thing to be 
 grasped at that he should be equal with 
 God," the same doctrine still follows neces- 
 sarily by inference. For observe the context. 
 The Apostle is inculcating a lesson of humility 
 from Christ's example : but what humility 
 could tnere be in a creature not grasping at 
 
GOSPEL DOCTRINES. 181 
 
 equality with his Creator ? The Being there- 
 fore who taught us a lesson of humility by 
 not grasping at an equality with God must 
 be himself divine. The doctrine then remains 
 unaltered, whichsoever of the two interpre- 
 tations is preferred. In the first, it is clearly 
 and directly stated : from the second, it 
 follows by necessary inference if the pas- 
 sage is to have any meaning. The words 
 remind us then, taken either way, that the 
 Being whose death on earth we are this 
 day met to commemorate, is Divine, and 
 hence its suitableness to direct our thoughts 
 to-day. 
 
 We had occasion to observe, last Sunday, 
 that any true belief in the doctrines of 
 Christianity, implies a belief also in its record 
 of historical facts. It is very important to 
 remark that the converse is true also: that 
 the facts of the Christian history are dead 
 and powerless unless accompanied by* its 
 doctrines. There is often great confusion on 
 this subject. Men speak of Christian doc- 
 trines as if they were mere intellectual pro- 
 
182 APPENDIX. 
 
 positions, mere statements of speculative 
 opinion, uninfluential upon life and conduct. 
 Such statements have, it is true, sometimes, 
 perhaps often, been intruded into schemes 
 of Christian doctrine ; and the great majority 
 of worldly men will hold even the holiest 
 truths that ought to affect the heart in this 
 cold intellectual way. But the true Christian 
 doctrines, rightly held, are living principles 
 of action, inseparable from our conduct, and 
 give their whole tone and complexion to our 
 thoughts and lives. 
 
 The acutest of philosophers has analysed 
 that process of reasoning which attends on 
 or precedes all human conduct ; and from his 
 analysis it may be shown that the mind 
 is always swayed in action by the presence 
 of a doctrine.* No man ever acts without a 
 reason of some kind, i.e., without a motive ; 
 that is, in other words, without a doctrine, 
 whether it be good or bad.. For by the term 
 doctrine, we mean the systematic statement 
 of the principles of religion, and prin- 
 
 * Aristotle Eth. N. B. VI. ch. xii. § 20. Oxford, 1828. 
 
GOSPEL DOCTRINES. 183 
 
 ciples of religion are of course principles of 
 conduct.* To say, then, generally, that the 
 doctrines to which a man assents are of no 
 importance, and that his conduct may be 
 right without doctrines, is to maintain a con- 
 tradiction in terms ; for conduct is only 
 called right because it proceeds from right 
 motives, and right motive is merely another 
 name for right doctrine. 
 
 But, probably, no one means to deny this, 
 however vaguely he may express himself. 
 What objectors, urging that doctrines are un- 
 important, mean, is, probably, that, though of 
 course some doctrines (as those of natural 
 religion) are influential in conduct, those of 
 Christianity are not such. Men, they say, 
 may be all united in heart and sentiment, if 
 they believe the plain outward facts of the 
 Christian history, without troubling them- 
 selves as to its doctrines. This would be 
 very strange: the mere dead facts, surely, 
 
 * It is not of course denied, that what is essentially the 
 same doctrine may be expressed in more than one form of 
 words. It is the deep importance of the essence, not of the 
 form, that is here contended for. The form has its value as the 
 case which is to preserve the essence. 
 
184 APPENDIX. 
 
 without the doctrines, cannot be principles 
 of action: nay, they can have no influence 
 on our conduct. 
 
 The mistake all through is obvious. The 
 facts of the Gospel history, as they are 
 themselves the sure means of eliciting the 
 peculiar doctrines which our Lord revealed, 
 in their turn can only be appreciated in their 
 full proper significancy, when meditated on 
 and viewed in all their various bearings by the 
 light which is shed on them from the doctrines 
 they have illustrated and proved. We have 
 both a historical and a doctrinal Christianity, 
 and each in truth is essential for the other ; 
 neither can be fully understood or appre- 
 ciated if they stand apart. Just as the 
 New Testament would be imperfect if it did 
 not contain both the Epistles and the doc- 
 trinal discourses of our Lord on the one 
 hand; and the plain historical narratives, 
 the Gospels, and the Acts, on the other. 
 
 Christianity without the basis of the his- 
 torical facts of our Lord's birth, life, death, 
 resurrection and ascension, must be a mere 
 system of Deism ; and these facts themselves 
 
GOSPEL DOCTRINES. 185 
 
 would be only more strange, not more 
 divine, than those of any ordinary history, if 
 they did not become to every faithful mind 
 the illustration and proof of certain great 
 Christian doctrines, which spring forth from 
 them to be the directors of the faithful 
 Christian's life. Without such doctrine as 
 that of the text, there would be little in 
 the history of the Lord's birth more than in 
 that of Samuel — in his death, more than 
 in that of Jeremiah — in his resurrection, 
 more than in that of Lazarus — in his ascen- 
 sion, more than in the taking up into 
 Heaven of Enoch and Elijah. But all things 
 that are most wonderful in the various 
 histories of the most chosen sons of men 
 meet in Him, and illustrate the doctrine 
 that He is the Eternal Son of God: and 
 this doctrine presents his earthly history 
 to us, as we read and dwell upon it, in a 
 totally different aspect. 
 
 The general statement of this matter has 
 too long delayed us from applying it to the 
 especial subject of this day. The text sets 
 
186 APPENDIX. 
 
 before us that great doctrine which gives 
 the spectacle of this day its awful solemnity, 
 and makes the events which were witnessed 
 upon Calvary the crisis of the world's fate. 
 Our Lord's whole life, conduct, and sayings, 
 had been an illustration of this great doc- 
 trine of His divinity; and, on the other 
 hand, it is only when viewed by the light 
 of this doctrine that His crucifixion can be 
 appreciated as the sacrifice for the sin of 
 man; while again, it is when so viewed 
 that His crucifixion assumes its proper place 
 as the director of our lives. He who hung 
 upon the cross this day was the same 
 Eternal Being who had been employed by 
 His Father to create the universe, and was 
 destined to be at last the Judge of all ; and 
 who, at the time when He submitted to be 
 thus rejected by his creatures, could have 
 swept the earth and all its inhabitants into 
 annihilation by a single word. 
 
 To say nothing of the enemies who caused 
 the Lord's death, it will be granted, I suppose, 
 that the Jews and Roman soldiers who stood 
 
GOSPEL DOCTRINES. 187 
 
 looking on, could not understand or make a 
 good use of the event they witnessed, for 
 want of any right doctrinal knowledge of 
 who or what he was : It will be granted that 
 even the Centurion's declaration only showed 
 a good beginning of faith, which wanted 
 further knowledge to make it really operative 
 and acceptable : It will be granted that even 
 the Apostles and the Virgin Mother could 
 not at all really understand the mysterious 
 scene, and appreciate its ineffable moment 
 for the race of men, till from the Lord's 
 resurrection and ascension, and the fulfilment 
 of His promise to send the Comforter, they 
 had learned the doctrine that He was indeed 
 their God. 
 
 It is then from the doctrine of the text that 
 the history of this day gains its deep signifi- 
 cancy : and thus explained, it becomes at 
 once necessarily the turning point of the 
 whole Christian life. It has been truly said 
 that "the great and awful doctrine of the 
 Cross of Christ (i.e., of His death interpreted 
 by the belief in His divine nature), may be 
 
188 APPENDIX. 
 
 fitly called the heart of religion. The heart 
 is the seat of life — it is the principle of mo- 
 tion, heat, and activity — from it the blood 
 goes to and fro to the extreme parts of the 
 body — it sustains the man in his powers and 
 faculties — it enables the brain to think, and 
 when it is touched man dies : and in like 
 manner the sacred doctrine of Christ's aton- 
 ing sacrifice is the vital principle on which 
 the Christian lives," and without which the 
 Christian's faith dies * 
 
 Hence it is that from the event of this day 
 Christianity has gained its usual name — the 
 Religion of the Cross. The Cross has become 
 its universal symbol. This day's history 
 rightly understood, and the thoughts that 
 spring from it, search the human heart, and 
 stir it from its depths. 
 
 Brethren, let us endeavour in all our lives 
 to show that we are influenced by it. Deep 
 humility — a deep sense of sin — deep grati- 
 tude to the Divine Being who suffered and 
 died as man to save us from sin — a gradually 
 
 * Newman's Sermons, vol. vi. Sermon 7. 
 
GOSPEL DOCTRINES. 189 
 
 deepening love of Him, and trust in His 
 mercy, and desire to hold communion with 
 Him — these are the necessary results which, 
 by the Holy Spirit's aid, must flow from con- 
 templating the history of the Lord's death 
 by the light of the doctrine of His divinity. 
 And in conclusion, think not that any one 
 of us can become the subjects and recipients 
 of such feelings, without showing that they 
 have taken possession of us in our whole 
 conduct. Young and old we all fall prostrate 
 this day at our Saviour's cross, outwardly. 
 If we do so in heart, we shall hate and flee 
 from sin, and gladly seek on Easter-Morn- 
 ing to gain strengthening aid from the same 
 Saviour in his ordinance, that we may rise 
 with Him to a new life of holiness. 
 
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 1. LEGENDARY GREECE.— 2. GRECIAN HISTORY TO THE 
 
 REIGN OF PEISISTRATUS AT ATHENS. 
 
 By George Grote, Esq. With Maps. 2 vols. 8vo, 32s. 
 
 "Endeavour to become acquainted with Mr. Grote, who is engaged on a Greek 
 History ; he, too, will receive you well if you take him my regards. I expect a 
 great deal from this production." — Niebuhr, the Historian, to Professor Lieber, 
 in 1827. 
 
 " It may be objected, at the outset, to Mr. Grote's subject, that it is one ex- 
 hausted by the Bishop of St. David's. The best answer to this is— read Mr. Grote's 
 volumes. No man, probably, has more thoroughly exhausted the historic learning 
 of Ancient Greece than Dr. Thirlwall ; yet he has a bias, which, we must contend, 
 diminishes the value of his conscientious labours. . . . We want results in 
 reading history, with a reasonable exhibition of the evidence which sup- 
 them . . . For becoming dignity of style, unforced adaptation of results to 
 principles, careful verification of theory by fact and impregnation of fact by theory 
 — for extensive and well-weighed learning, employed with intelligence and taste, 
 we have seen no historical work of modern times which we would place above this 
 portion of Mr. Grote's history." — Morning Chronicle, March 19, 1846. 
 
 ' * This book has been some time expected by scholars. If there existed any 
 doubt of Mr. Grote's qualifications for this weighty undertaking, it was, whether 
 he would bring to it the amount of imaginative feeling necessary to sustain and 
 inform his scholarship. AVe confess that these volumes are a surprise to us in that 
 respect. The acute intelligence, the discipline, faculty of intellect, and the excellent 
 erudition, every one would look for from Mr. Grote ; but they will here also find 
 the element which harmonises these, and without which, on such a theme, an 
 orderly and solid work could not have been written. Poetry and Philosophy attend 
 the historian on either hand, and do not impede or misguide his steps." — 
 Examiner, March 22, 1846. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 MILMAN'S EDITION OF 
 GIBBON'S DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
 
 Second Edition, revised. With 13 Maps. 6 vols. 8vo, 31. 3s. 
 This Edition contains the unmutilated Text of Gibbon, carefully revised, 
 particularly in the Quotations ; and illustrated with Notes to correct 
 the errors of Gibbon, and put the reader on his guard against his mis- 
 statements regarding Christianity. 
 The chief works from which the present Editor (Rev. H. H. Milman) 
 has derived his materials, are : — 
 
 I. The French Translation, with Notes by M. Guizot. 
 II. The German Translation, with the Notes of Wenck. 
 
 III. The new Edition of Le Beau's " Histoire du Bas Empire, with 
 
 Notes by M. St. Martin and M. Brossett." 
 
 IV. Such works that have come to light since the appearance of 
 
 Gibbon's History. 
 
 "There can be no question that this edition of Gibbon is the only one extant 
 to which parents and guardians and academical authorities ought to give any 
 measure of countenance. The editor's illustrations are in every respect such as 
 might have been anticipated from his character as one of the most accomplished 
 scholars and writers of his age." — Quarterly Review. 
 
 "Mr. Milman has published an edition of Gibbon's Roman Empire, with an 
 admirably well written Preface, and numerous learned Notes, which are of great 
 value, especially as antidotes to the irreligious and infidel tendency of the work. 
 The Notes are partly original and partly derived from others ; and they not only 
 expose the author's base insinuations against Christianity, but cast much additional 
 light on the history itself."— Dr. Murdoch's Pre/ace to the American Edition. 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
DATE DUE 
 
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