Such being Carlyle's view of human rights, it is not surprising that he has applauded the most gigantic effort in history to establish a government upon the system of human bondage. But all slavery will by and by vanish like the tobacco-smoke of "Teufelsdroeckh." Part of the world's best work will be the unceasing effort for its universal and perpetual extermination; and posterity will honor those who labor for this consummation as greater benefactors and workers than all the divinities idolized by the author of Sartor Resartus and the Life of Frederic the Great.

While Carlyle's system does not appear to flatter humanity its effect is of that character. He would make his readers believe that they are pure, great, and capable beings like those deified by him. The adulation being too great for many who peruse his pages, large numbers of readers are led into dangerous vagaries. "The influence of Carlyle's writings," says an essayist, "and especially of his Sartor Resartus, has been primarily exerted on classes of men most exposed to temptations of egotism and petulance, and least subjected to anything above them,—academics, artists, litterateurs, strong-minded women, 'debating' youths, Scotchmen of the phrenological grade, and Irishmen of the young-Ireland school."[164] There are very many beside this grotesque group, who exclaim, with one of his warmest admirers, "Carlyle is my religion!" There are others again who say gratefully what John Sterling wrote him in his last brief letter, "Towards me it is still more true than towards England that no man has been and done like you."[165]

The time has not yet come when men can awake from the spell of a charmer like Carlyle. But the illusion will some day be dissipated, and many of his readers in Great Britain and America will feel deeply and almost despairingly that, in the original fountain of his teaching, there was "a poison-drop which killed the plants it was expected to nourish, and left a sterile waste where men looked for the bloom and the opulence of a garden of God." It behooves those who idolize him to examine the image before which they stand. He is a man of unquestioned boldness and some originality, and no one of the present generation has greater power to dazzle and bewilder the young. Happily, age brings with it the clearing up of much of the obscurity of youth, and on the additional light of increasing years we depend for the illumination of many a mind obscured by his sentiments. The late R. A. Vaughan, a careful observer of the tendencies of English thought, says: "It may not be flattering to Mr. Carlyle, but we believe it to be true that by far the larger portion of the best minds, whose early youth his writings have powerfully influenced, will look back upon the period of such subjection as the most miserably morbid period of their life. On awaking from such delirium to the sane and healthful realities of manful toil, they will discover the hollowness of that sneering, scowling, wailing, declamatory, egotistical, and bombastic misanthropy, which, in the eye of their unripe judgment, wore the air of a philosophy so profound."[166] The time will also come when Carlyle will be revealed to all in his true character: as the theologian preaching a pagan creed; as the philosopher emasculating the German philosophy which he scrupled not to borrow; as the stylist perverting the pure English of Milton and Shakspeare into inflated, oracular Richterisms; and as the arch demagogue who, despising the people at heart, assigned no bounds to his ambition to gain their hearing and cajole them into the reception of his unmixed Pantheism.

The periodical press has been a successful agency in the dissemination of literary Rationalism throughout the British Islands. Years before the recent discussions sprang up, the Westminster Review was the ablest and most avowed of all the advocates of the "liberal theology" of the Continent. It still rules without a rival. Emboldened by the late accession of sympathizers, it opposes orthodoxy and the Church with an arrogance equal to that of the Universal German Library, whose editor, Nicolai, is reported to have said: "My object is merely to hold up to the laughter and contempt of the public the orthodox and hypocritical clergy of the Protestant church, and to show that they make their own bad cause the cause of their office and of religion, or rather that of Almighty God himself,—to show that when they make an outcry about prevailing errors, infidelity, and blasphemy, they are only speaking of their own ignorance, hypocrisy, and love of persecution, of the wickedness of their own hearts concealed under the mantle of piety."[167]

From its character as a quarterly publication, the Westminster Review has the constant opportunity to reply to every new work of Christian apology, and to elaborate each new heresy of the Rationalistic thinkers. Assuming a thoroughly negative position, it repels every tendency toward a higher type of piety, and retards, as far as it can, the popular acceptance of the doctrines of Christianity. Its attacks on the sanctity of the Sabbath are bold, and carefully designed to affect popular sentiment. It gives its support to the fatal theories of Sociology, a system which holds "that so uniform are the operations of motives upon the actions of men that social regulations may be reduced to an exact science, and society be organized to a perfect model." It thus commits itself to the position that all history takes place by force of necessity.

The Westminster Review studiously opposes the orthodox view of inspiration, miracles, the atonement, and the Biblical age of the world and of man. It indorses the sentiments of the Tuebingen school, and holds with Baur that if we would know the truth of the early Church, its entire apostolic history must be reconstructed. It is compelled to confess the recent advance of evangelical doctrines in the German mind, but sees only evil in the fact, and utters this jeremiade: "This church sentiment, which has seized upon the whole of the noblesse in North Germany is becoming every year the sentiment of the clergy. The theological radicalism of the last period is now quite a thing of the past. The present is an epoch of restoration. Scientific criticism has no longer any interest; it is, who can be most orthodox, and reproduce more precisely the ideas of the sixteenth century. As the scientific and critical school is defunct, the mediation-theology, whose business was to compromise between the results of learning and the principles of orthodoxy, is necessarily in a state of decay. Its occupation is gone. This school of theologians, which numbers in its ranks some of the most respectable names in Germany, and which traces its origin to Schleiermacher, can scarcely be said now to make head against the sweeping current of Pharisaical orthodoxy. Some of its older representatives have been withdrawn from the scene either by age or death; others have followed the multitude, and conformed to the reigning 'churchmanship.' It is the old story enacted in the Catholic revival of the end of the sixteenth century, and at other times before and since. The reactionary clergy have succeeded in getting themselves regarded as the Swiss Guard of the throne. They stand between Royalty and Revolution. All the places in the gift of the crown—and all the places are in the gift of the crown—are filled on party considerations. Learning goes for nothing. Thus inferior men are elevated to a platform from which they deliver their dicta with authority, and ignorance can contradict knowledge at an advantage. The mutual understanding among the party enables them to puff each other's books, and run down their opponents. Only learning can get no hearing."[168]

A number of writers have been furnished with a creed by the literature of which we have spoken, and are now endeavoring to teach it to the people. Their system has many names, among which are, Positivism, Secularism, and Socialism. Consummate shrewdness is exhibited in its presentation to the people, "the children of this world" sustaining their old reputation for superior wisdom. The circulating libraries abound in its books, and the newspaper and six-penny pamphlet are used as instruments for its wider dissemination.

The Protestant church of Great Britain has no time for idleness, and cannot afford to waste any truth-power while so many enemies are assailing its walls. When the crisis shall have passed it will be seen that not a superfluous hand was lifted in the combat. What British and American Protestantism needs to-day is not a class of discoverers of new truth, but that the defenders of the old truth, availing themselves of every new step of science and criticism, be chivalric in opposing their adversaries, and watchful of the interests which God has placed in their keeping.

FOOTNOTES:

[142] National Review, Oct., 1856.

[143] Introductory Essay to Coleridge's Works. Vol. i., pp. 21-22. Harper's edition.

[144] Letter dated Shrewsbury, Jan. 19th, 1798, to Mr. Isaac Wood, High St., Shrewsbury.

[145] Biographia Literaria. Appendix III., p. 709.

[146] Introductory Essay to Coleridge's Works, vol. i., pp. 35-36.

[147] Works, vol. i., p. 115.

[148] Works, p. 241. The full argument is contained on pp. 241-253.

[149] Ibid. vol. i., pp. 269-271.

[150] Works, vol. i., p. 308.

[151] Ibid, p. 325.

[152] Mission of the Comforter. Note 8a.

[153] Sermons on the Law of Self-Sacrifice, and the Unity of the Church.

[154] Sermon on John, xix., 30.

[155] Theological Essays. Second Edition. London, 1853. Maurice has published thirty-four works. Vid. Low's English Catalogue, 1835-1862, pp. 509-510.

[156] Lectures on the Old Testament, p. 6.

[157] Ibid. pp. 3-6.

[158] Unity of the New Testament. Introduction, pp. xxi.-xxvi.

[159] Theological Essays, p. 61.

[160] The date of this Sentence was Oct. 28th, 1853.

[161] Sermons on National Subjects. First Series, p. 14. London Edition.

[162] Modern Anglican Theology. By the Rev. J. H. Rigg. Second Edition. London, 1859. The student of contemporary theology will find this work the best summary of the opinions of Coleridge and his school.

[163] Christian Life, p. 14. American Edition.

[164] National Review, Oct. 1856.

[165] Life of Sterling, p. 334.

[166] Essays and Remains, vol. i., pp. 7-8.

[167] Sebaldus Nothanker. Second Edition. 1774.

[168] October Number, 1863.



CHAPTER XXI.

ENGLAND CONTINUED: CRITICAL RATIONALISM—JOWETT, THE ESSAYS AND REVIEWS, AND COLENSO.

The devout disciple of Christ regards the Scriptures with profound reverence, for they contain the doctrines which show him his path to the pure life of heaven. His theological opponents are not blind to this attachment, nor are they ignorant of the service of the Bible in supporting the entire Christian system. It could not therefore be expected that, while literature and philosophy were affected by Rationalism, the Scriptures should escape with impunity. There lies a deep destructive purpose beneath the brief utterance of Dr. Temple: "The immediate work of our day is the study of the Bible.[169]" The Critical Rationalism of England which is now attracting the attention of the civilized world is of recent growth, but the energy with which it has been cultivated is unsurpassed in the annals of skepticism.

Professor Jowett's commentary on the Epistles to Thessalonians, Galatians, and Romans, was published in 1855. Coming from a highly respectable source, and assailing the doctrines of revelation boldly, it was a clear indication of what might be expected from the Critical Rationalists as a class.

The doctrine of the atonement, according to this writer, is involved in perplexities whose growth is of more than a thousand years. Christ did not die to appease the divine wrath, and "sacrifice" and "atonement" were accommodated terms used by the apostles because they had been reared among the Jewish offerings and were familiar with them. The great advantage we derive from Christ is his life, in which we behold a perfect harmony of nature, absolute self-renunciation, pure love, and resignation. We know nothing of the objective act on God's part by which he reconciled the world to himself, the very description of it being a figure of speech. Conversion is not in accordance with the claims of orthodoxy, for while there were conversions in the early Church, there is no possibility of establishing a harmony between them and those which are now said to occur. The conversions of the first Christians were marked by ecstatic and unusual phenomena, whole multitudes were simultaneously affected, and the changes wrought were permanent; but the subjects were chiefly ignorant people, who no doubt did many things which would have been distasteful to us as men of education.[170]

The most noteworthy work of the Critical Rationalists is the Essays and Reviews (1861), a volume which consists of broad generalizations against the authority of the Bible as a standard of faith.

I. THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. By Frederic Temple, D. D. There is a radical difference between man and inanimate nature. The latter is passive, and subject to the workings of the vast physical machinery, but man is at no time stationary, for he develops from age to age, and concentrates in his history the results and achievements of all previous history. There is no real difference between the capacity of men now and that of the antediluvian world; the ground of disparity lies in the time of development afforded the present generation. Thus a child of twelve stands at present where once stood the full-grown man.

There are three stages in the world's development: Childhood, Youth, Maturity. Childhood requires positive rules, and is made subject to them; youth is governed by the force of example; and manhood, being free from external restraints, must be its own instructor. We have first rules, then examples, and last principles:—the Law, the Son of Man, and the Gift of the Spirit. The world was once a child, under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the Father. Afterwards, when the fit season had arrived, the Example, to which all ages should turn, was sent to teach men what they ought to be; and the human race was left to itself to be guided by the instruction of the Spirit within.[171] The world, before the time of Christ, was in its childhood, when commands were given without explanation. The pre-Christian world, being in its state of discipline and childhood, was divided into four classes: the Roman, the Greek, the Asiatic, and the Hebrew, each of which contributed something toward the world's improvement and its preparation for the age of Example. The Hebrew did the most, though his work was of the same class and aimed at the same result. The Roman gave an iron will; the Greek, a cultivated reason and taste; the Asiatic, the idea of immortality, and spiritual imagination; and the Hebrew, the trained conscience.

The whole period from the close of the old Testament to the termination of the New was the time of the world's youth, the age of examples.[172] Christ came just at the right time; if he had waited until the present age his incarnation would have been misplaced, and we could not recognize his divinity; for the faculty of faith has turned inwards, and cannot now accept any outward manifestations of the truth of God.[173]

The present age is that of independent reflection and the supremacy of conscience—the world's manhood. Laws and examples are absolute, and should be forgotten, just as we look lightly upon the things of our childhood. The world has arrived at its present exalted state through a severe ordeal, but the grandeur of its position is sufficient to make it forget its trials. "The spirit or conscience [which are terms for reason] comes to full strength and assumes the throne intended for him in the soul. As an accredited judge, invested with full powers, he sits in the tribunal of our inner kingdom, decides upon the past, and legislates upon the future, without appeal except to himself. He decides not by what is beautiful or noble, or soul-inspiring, but by what is right. Gradually he frames his code of laws, revising, adding, abrogating, as a wiser and deeper experience gives him clearer light. He is the third great teacher and the last."[174]

In some aspects this essay is the least objectionable in the volume. Yet it contains radical errors which many a reader would accept without suspicion. The agency of the Holy Spirit in revelation is ignored, and the development through which the world has passed is confounded with civilization. This development is alleged to have occurred in a purely natural way, the Hebrew type being no more a divine appointment than that of the Grecian or Roman. The doctrines of Christianity were not clearly stated in the early Church, and the flight of eighteen centuries has been required to lift the curtain from them.[175] Conscience is placed above the Bible, and if the statements of the Scriptures be in conflict with it, allowance must be made for occasional inaccuracies, interpolations, and forgeries.[176]

II. $1nd Williams, D. D. We here find the same deference paid to conscience as in the preceding essay. If it differ from revelation, man's own notions of right and wrong must prevail over Scripture. Dr. Williams is contented with arraying Bunsen's skeptical theories before the British public without formally indorsing them himself; yet, as their reviewer, he is evidently in complete harmony with the German author. For he carefully collects the chevalier's extravagant speculations; brings them into juxtaposition; admires the spirit, boldness, and learning which had given birth to them; and in no case refutes, but looks with complacence upon nearly every one. The impression of a candid reader of the essay must be, that the writer indorses almost all of Bunsen's opinions without having the courage to avow his assent. Of his hero he says, "Bunsen's enduring glory is neither to have faltered with his conscience, nor shrunk from the difficulties of the problem, but to have brought a vast erudition, in the light of a Christian conscience, to unroll tangled records; tracing frankly the Spirit of God elsewhere, but borrowing chiefly the traditions of his Hebrew Sanctuary."[177]

The absence of that reverence to be expected in all whose vocation enjoins the frequent reading of the sublime liturgy of the Church of England, produces a depressing influence upon any one not in sympathy with the doctrines of Rationalism. The Evangelical theologians are termed "The despairing school, who forbid us to trust in God or in our own conscience, unless we kill our souls with literalism."[178] The inquiries and successes of the German Rationalists are worthy of hearty admiration, for they are so great that the world has seldom, if ever, seen their equal. Bishops Pearson and Butler, and Mr. Mansel are seriously at fault in their notions of prophecy, and even Jerome is guilty of gross puerilities. There is no reason why Bunsen may not be right when he holds that the world must be twenty thousand years old; there is no chronological element in revelation; the avenger who slew the first-born, may have been the Bedouin host; in the passage of the Red Sea, the description may be interpreted with the latitude of poetry; it is right to reject the perversions which make the cursing Psalms evangelically inspired; perhaps one passage in Zechariah and one in Isaiah may be direct prophecies of the Messiah, and possibly a chapter in Deuteronomy may foreshadow the final fall of Jerusalem; the Messianic prophecies are mere contemporaneous history; and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is only a description of the sufferings of Jeremiah. Inspiration is too loftily conceived by "the well-meaning crowd," for whom we should manifest "grave compassion."

What is the Bible, continues the essayist, but the written voice of the congregation, and not the written voice of God? Why all this reverence for the sacred writers, since they acknowledge themselves men of like passions with us? Justification by faith is merely peace of mind from trust in a righteous God, and not a fiction of merit by transfer. Regeneration is a correspondent giving of insight or an awakening of the forces of the soul; propitiation is the recovery of peace, and the atonement is our sharing the Saviour's Spirit, but not his purchase of us by his own blood. Throughout the Scriptures we should assume in ourselves a verifying faculty,—conscience, reason, or whatever else we choose to term it.

III. ON THE STUDY OF THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. By Baden Powell, M. A. The author of this essay having recently died, he has therefore incurred less censure than he would otherwise have received. The views here expressed, taken in connection with his more elaborate treatise on the Order of Nature, do not place him on the same theoretical ground with Hume and Spinoza; but the moral effect of the present attack upon miracles as an evidence of Christianity is not less antagonistic than the theories of either of those authors. Spinoza held that miracles are impossible, because it would be derogatory to God to depart from the established laws of the universe, and one of Hume's objections to them was their incapability of being proved from testimony.[179]

Professor Powell objects to them because they bear no analogy to the harmony of God's dealings in the material world; and insists that they are not to be credited, since they are a violation of the laws of matter or an interruption of the course of physical causes. The orthodox portion of the Church are laboring under the egregious error of making them an essential doctrine, when they are really a mere external accessory. Reason, and not "our desires" must come to our aid in all examination of them. The key-note to Professor Powell's opposition is contained in the following statement: "From the nature of our antecedent convictions, the probability of some kind of mistake or deception somewhere, though we know not where, is greater than the probability of the event really happening in the way and from the causes assigned."[180] The inductive philosophy, for which great respect must be paid, is enlisted against miracles. If we once know all about those alleged and held as such, we would find them resolved into natural phenomena, just as "the angel at Milan was the aerial reflection of an image on a church; the balls of fire at Plausac were electrical; the sea-serpent was a basking shark on a stem of sea-weed. A committee of the French Academy of Sciences, with Lavoisier at its head, after a grave investigation, pronounced the alleged fall of aerolites to be a superstitious fable."[181]

The two theories against the reality of miracles in their received sense, are: first, that they are attributable to natural causes; and, second, that they may involve more or less of the parabolic or mythic character. These assumptions do away with any real admission of miracles even on religious grounds. The animus of the whole essay may be determined by the following treatment of testimony and reason: "Testimony, after all, is but a second-hand assurance; it is but a blind guide; testimony can avail nothing against reason. The essential question of miracles stands quite apart from any consideration of testimony; the question would remain the same, if we had the evidence of our own senses to an alleged miracle; that is, to an extraordinary or inexplicable fact. It is not the mere fact, but the cause or explanation of it, which is the point at issue."[182] This means far more than Spinoza, Hume, or any other opponent of miracles, except the radical Rationalists of Germany, has claimed,—that we must not believe a miracle though actually witnessed.

IV. SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE—THE NATIONAL CHURCH. By Henry Bristow Wilson, B. D. The Multitudinist principle, or Broad Christianity, is advocated by the essayist with earnestness and an array of learning. The difficulty concerning the non-attendance of a large portion of the British population upon the ordinances of the Church is met by the proposition to abrogate subscription to all creeds and articles of faith, and thus convert the whole nation into a Broad Church. The youth of the land are educated into a false and idolatrous view of the Bible. But on the Census-Sunday of 1861, five millions and a quarter of persons, or forty-two per cent. of the whole population, were not present at service. Many of these people do not believe some of the doctrines preached; they have thought seriously, but cannot sympathize with what they are compelled to hear. If we break down all subscription and include them in the great National Church, we will approach the Scriptural ideal. Unless this be done they will fall into Dissenting hands, and die outside the Church of Christ. There are several proofs of the Scriptural indorsement of Nationalism; Christ's lament over Jerusalem declares that he had offered Multitudinism to the inhabitants nationally, while the three thousand souls converted on the day of Pentecost cannot be supposed to have been individual converts, but merely a mass of persons brought in as a body. Some of the converts of the apostolic age did not believe in the resurrection, which fact implies that the early Churches took collective names from the localities where they were situated, and that doubt of the resurrection should now be no bar to communion in the National Church. Even heathenism in its best form proceeded on the Multitudinist principle, for all were included as believers in the faith of the times. The approval of reason and conscience, and not verbal adherence to human interpretation of Scripture, should be the great test of membership. Advice is administered by the essayist to the Church of which he is a clergyman, in this language: "A national church may also find itself in this position; which, perhaps, is our own. Its ministers may become isolated between two other parties,—between those, on the one hand, who draw fanatical inferences from formularies and principles which they themselves are not able or are unwilling to repudiate; and on the other, those who have been tempted, in impatience of old fetters, to follow free thought heedlessly wherever it may lead them. If our own churchmen expect to discourage and repress a fanatical Christianity without a frank appeal to reason, and a frank criticism of Scripture, they will find themselves without any effectual arms for that combat; or if they attempt to check inquiry by the repetition of old forms and denunciations, they will be equally powerless, and run the especial risk of turning into bitterness the sincerity of those who should be their best allies, as friends of truth. They should avail themselves of the aid of all reasonable persons for enlightening the fanatical religionist, making no reserve of any seemingly harmless or apparently serviceable superstitions of their own. They should also endeavor to supply to the negative theologian some positive elements in Christianity, on grounds more sure to him than the assumption of an objective "faith once delivered to the saints," which he cannot identify with the creed of any church as yet known to him."[183]

V. ON THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. By C. W. Goodwin, M. A. The assumption is made that the Mosaic account of creation is irreconcilable with the real creation of the earth. We do wrong in elevating that narrative above its proper position, and orthodox geologists have grossly erred in attaching much importance to the language of the first chapter of Genesis. There is nothing poetical or figurative in the whole account; it contains no mystical or symbolical meaning, and is a plain statement of just so much as suited the Jewish mind. All attempts, however, to find any consistency between it and the present state of science are simply absurd. The theory of Chalmers and Buckland, and afterward that of Hugh Miller, are not tenable, for Moses was ignorant of what we now know, and his alleged description is contradicted by scientific inquiry. If then it is plain that God has not thought it needful to communicate to the writer of the Scriptural Cosmogony the knowledge revealed by modern researches, why do we not confess it? We would do so if it did not conflict with a human theory which presumes to point out how God ought to have instructed man.[184] The writer had no authority for what he asserts so solemnly and unhesitatingly, for he was an early speculator who stated as facts what he only conjectured as probabilities. Yet he seized one great truth, in which he anticipated the highest revelation of modern inquiry; namely, the unity of the design of the world, and its subordination to one sole Maker and Law-giver.[185] But no one contends that the Mosaic view can be used as a basis of astronomical or geological teaching; and we must therefore consider the Scriptural cosmogony not as "an authentic utterance of divine knowledge, but a human utterance, which it has pleased Providence to use in a special way for the education of mankind."[186]

VI. TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. By Mark Pattison, B. D. We are surrounded with a Babel of religious creeds and theories, and it is all-important that we should know how we have inherited them. If we would understand our times, we must know the productive influences of the past; if we would thread the present mazes of religious pretension, we should not neglect those immediate agencies in their production that had their origin near the beginning of the eighteenth century. These agencies are three in number: 1. The formation and growth of that compromise between church and state which is called Toleration; 2. Methodism without the Church and the evangelical movement within it; 3. The growth and gradual diffusion, through all religious thinking, of the supremacy of reason. The theology of the Deistic age is identical with Rationalism. That Rationalistic period of England is divided into two parts: from 1688 to 1750, and from 1750 to 1830. The second age may be called that of evidences, when the clergy continued to manufacture evidence as an ingenious exercise,—a literature which was avowedly professional, a study which might seem theology without being it, and which could awaken none of the dormant skepticism beneath the surface of society.[187] The defense of the Deists was perhaps as good as the orthodox attack, but they were inquirers after truth, and being guided by reason, they deserve all commendation. Yet they only foreshadowed the glory of the present supremacy of reason. Deism strove eagerly for light; it saw the dawn; the present is the noonday. The human understanding wished to be satisfied, and did not care to believe that of which it could not see the substantial ground. The mind was coming slowly to see that it had duties which it could not devolve upon others, and that a man must think for himself, protect his own rights, and administer his own affairs.

Reason was never less extravagant than in this first essay of its strength; for its demands were modest, and it was easily satisfied,—far too easily, we must think, when we look at some of the reasonings which passed as valid.[188]

English Deism, a system which paralyzed the religious life and thought of the nation, has never had a more enthusiastic eulogist than the author of this historical plea for Rationalism. If the demands of the Deists were "modest," who shall be able to find a term sufficiently descriptive of the claims of their present successors?

VII. ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. By Benjamin Jowett, M. A. Professor Jowett, as commentator on St. Paul's epistles, had already so defined his position on the science of Scriptural exegesis, that we needed no new information to be convinced of his antagonism to evangelical interpretation. The present essay, which is the most formidable and destructive in the volume, commences with a lamentation over the prevailing differences in the exposition of the Bible. The Germans have been far more successful in this respect than the English people, the former having arrived at a tolerable degree of concurrence.

The word "inspiration" is a crux theologorum, the most of its explanations being widely divergent, and at variance with the original signification of the term. We make it embrace far too much, for there is no foundation for any high or supernatural views of inspiration in either the Gospels or Epistles. There is no appearance in those writings that their authors had any extraordinary gift, or that they were free from error or infirmity; St. Paul hesitated in difficult cases, and more than once corrected himself; one of the gospel historians does not profess to have been an eye-witness of the events described by him; the evangelists do not agree as to the dwelling-place of Christ's parents, nor concerning the circumstances of the crucifixion; they differ about the woman who anointed our Lord's feet; and the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy is not discernible in the New Testament history. To the question, What is inspiration? there are two answers: first, That idea of Scripture which we gather from the knowledge of it; and, second, that any true doctrine of inspiration must conform to all the ascertained facts of history or of science. The meaning of Scripture has nothing to do with the question of inspiration, for if the word "inspiration" were to become obsolete nothing vital would be lost, since it is but a term of yesterday. The solution of the various difficulties in the gospels is, that the tradition on which the first three are based was preserved orally, and, having been slowly put together, was written in three forms. The writers of the first three gospels were, therefore, not independent witnesses of the history itself. To interpret the Bible properly it must be treated as any other book, "in the same careful and impartial way that we ascertain the meaning of Sophocles or Plato.... Scripture, like other books, has one meaning, which is to be gathered from itself, without reference to the adaptations of fathers or divines, and without regard to a priori notions about its nature and origin. It is to be interpreted also with attention to the character of its authors, and the prevailing state of civilization and knowledge, with allowance for peculiarities of style and language, and modes of thought and figures of speech; yet not without a sense, that, as we read, there grows upon us the witness of God in the word, anticipating in a rude and primitive age the truth that was to be, shining more and more unto the perfect day in the life of Christ, which again is reflected from different points of view in the teachings of his apostles."[189]

The old methods of interpretation, Jowett concludes, must give place to this new and perfect system, for the growing state of science, the pressing wants of man, and his elevated reason demand it. If this liberal scheme be inaugurated we shall have a higher idea of truth than is supplied by the opinion of mankind in general, or by the voice of parties in a Church.

It is interesting to notice the opinions of the evangelical theologians of Germany, who have long been accustomed to attacks upon Christianity, concerning these English critics. "The authors of the essays," says Hengstenberg, "have been trained in a German school. It is only the echo of German infidelity which we hear from the midst of the English church. They appear to us as parrots, with only this distinction, common among parrots, that they imitate more or less perfectly. The treatise of Temple is in its scientific value about equal to an essay written by the pupils of the middle classes of our colleges.... The essay of Goodwin on the Mosaic cosmogony displays the naive assurance of one who receives the modern critical science from the second or tenth hand. The editor [Hengstenberg] asked the now deceased Andreas Wagner, a distinguished professor of natural sciences at the University of Munich, to subject this treatise to an examination from the stand-point of natural science. The offer was accepted, and the book given to him. But after some time it was returned with the remark, that he must take back his promise, as the book was beneath all criticism.... All these essays tend toward Atheism. Their subordinate value is seen in the inability of their authors to recognize their goal clearly, and in their want of courage to declare this knowledge. Only Baden Powell forms in this respect an exception. He uses several expressions, in which the grinning spectre makes his appearance almost undisguisedly. He speaks not only sneeringly of the idea of a positive external revelation, which has hitherto formed the basis of all systems of the Christian faith; he even raises himself against the 'Architect of the world,' whom the old English Free Thinkers and Free Masons had not dared to attack."[190]

The Essays and Reviews were not long in print before the periodicals called attention to their extraordinary character. Had they not been the Oxford Essays, and written by well-known and influential men, they would probably have created but little interest, and passed away with the first or second edition. But their origin and associations gave them weight at the outset. The press soon began to teem with replies written from every possible stand-point. Volumes of all sizes, from small pamphlets to bulky octavos, were spread abroad as an antidote to the poison. From trustworthy statements we are assured that there have been called forth by the Essays and Reviews in England alone nearly four hundred publications. Hardly a newspaper, religious or secular, metropolitan or provincial, has stood aloof from the contest. Every seat of learning has been agitated, the social classes have been aroused, the entire nation has taken part in the strife. Meanwhile, the High Church and Low Church have united in the cordial condemnation of the work. Even some of the First Broad Churchmen have written heartily against its theology and influence.

A remarkable feature of the whole controversy is the judicial prosecution of the essayists. Petitions numerously signed were presented to the bishops, praying that some action might be taken against them. One protest contained the signatures of nine thousand clergymen of the Established church; and the bishops, without a single exception, took ground against the theological bearing of the Essays and Reviews. The Convocations of Canterbury and York, which possessed the full exercise of their legislative functions for the first time in one hundred and fifty years, declared against it, and pledged their influence to protect the church from the "pernicious doctrines and heretical tendencies of the book." After much deliberation and counsel, Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson were summoned before the court of Arches, the chief ecclesiastical tribunal of England. Finally, June 21, 1864, decision was pronounced that they had departed from the teachings of the Thirty-Nine Articles on the inspiration of Holy Scripture, on the atonement, and on justification. They were therefore suspended for one year, with the further penalty of costs and deprivation of their salary. At the urgent solicitation of friends, in addition to their own strong desire to push their defense as far as possible, their case was brought before the Privy Council, a court of which the Queen is a member, and from which there can be no appeal. Contrary to the general expectation, the decision of the Court of Arches was reversed, and the essayists in question were restored to their functions. The reversal of the decision of the Court of Arches is couched in the following significant language: "On the general tendency of the book called 'Essays and Reviews,' and on the effort or aim of the whole essay of Dr. Williams, or the whole essay of Mr. Wilson, we neither can, nor do, pronounce any opinion. On the short extracts before us, our Judgment is that the charges are not proved. Their Lordships, therefore, will humbly recommend to Her Majesty that the sentences be reversed, and the reformed articles be rejected in like manner as the rest of the original articles; but inasmuch as the Appellants have been obliged to come to this Court, their Lordships think it right that they should have the costs of this Appeal."[191] This action was regarded by every skeptical sympathizer as a great triumph, and we may therefore expect the Rationalistic school to engage in still more important enterprises than any to which they have addressed themselves.

The most outspoken and violent attacks of critical Rationalism in England are contained in the exegetical publications of Dr. John William Colenso, who, in 1853, was consecrated Bishop of Natal, South Eastern Africa. He had previously issued a series of mathematical works which obtained a wide circulation; but his first book of scriptural criticism was the Epistle to the Romans, newly translated and explained from a Missionary Point of View. Having completed the New Testament and several parts of the Old, he was laboring assiduously on a translation of the Bible into the Zulu tongue, when his former doubts concerning the unhistorical character of the Pentateuch revived with increased force. The intelligent native who was assisting him in his literary work asked, respecting the account of the flood, "Is all that true?" This, with other inquiries propounded to him by the Zulus, led him to a careful reexamination of the Mosaic record.

The fruit of this additional study is the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua critically examined, in Three Parts. Appearing just at the time when the contest concerning the Essays and Reviews was at fever-heat, the Bishop's work added excitement to all the combatants.

Those who are intimately acquainted with the treatment of the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua by the most unsparing of the German Rationalists will at once see the resemblance between their views and those of Colenso. His aim is to overthrow the historical character of the early Scriptural history by exposing the contradictions and impossibilities contained therein; and also to fix the real origin, age and authorship of the so-called narratives of Moses and Joshua. "I have arrived at the conviction," says he, "that the Pentateuch, as a whole, cannot possibly have been written by Moses, or by any one acquainted personally with the facts which it professes to describe, and, further, that the so-called Mosaic narrative, by whomsoever written, and though imparting to us, as I fully believe it does, revelations of the Divine will and character, cannot be regarded as historically true.... My reason for no longer receiving the Pentateuch as historically true, is not that I find insuperable difficulties with regard to the miracles or supernatural revelations of Almighty God recorded in it, but solely that I cannot, as a true man, consent any longer to shut my eyes to the absolute, palpable self-contradictions of the narrative. The notion of miraculous or supernatural interferences does not present to my own mind the difficulties which it seems to present to some. I could believe and receive the miracles of Scripture heartily, if only they were authenticated by a veracious history; though, if that is not the case with the Pentateuch, any miracles, which rest on such an unstable support, must necessarily fall to the ground with it."[192]

In proof of this assumption the author selects a large number of inexplicable portions from the narratives in question, and uses all the resources of his talents and learning to prove them to be the fruit of "error, infirmity, passion, and ignorance." Hezron and Hanuel, he avers, were certainly born in the land of Canaan; the whole assembly of Israel could not have gathered about the door of the tabernacle; all Israel could not have been heard by Moses, for they numbered about two millions of people, according to the assumption of the Biblical narrative. The Israelites could not have dwelt in tents; they were not armed; the institution of the Passover, as described in the book of Exodus, was an impossibility, the Israelites could not take cattle through the barren country over which they passed; there is an incompatibility between the supposed number of Israel and the predominance of wild beasts in Palestine; the number of the first-born is irreconcilable with the number of male adults; and the number of the priests at the exodus cannot be harmonized with their duties, and with the provision made for them.[193] These, with other difficulties chiefly of a numerical nature, constitute the basis on which the Bishop builds his objections to the historical character of Exodus as an integral part of the Pentateuch.

In order to determine the true quality of the Book of Genesis, he brings out the old theory that the work had two writers, the Elohist and the Jehovist,—so called because of their separate use of a term for Deity. The Elohist was the older, and his narrative was the ground-work which the Jehovist used and upon which he constructed his own additions.[194] This Elohist account is defined to be "a series of parables, based, as we have said, on legendary facts, though not historically true."[195] The Pentateuch existed originally not as five books, but as one; and it is possible that its quintuple division was made in the time of Ezra. The writer of Chronicles was the same who wrote the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, probably a Levite living after the time of Nehemiah; the Chronicles were therefore written only four hundred years before Christ; but the Chronicler must not be relied on unless there is other evidence in support of his narrative. Exodus could not have been written by Moses or any one of his contemporaries. It is very probable that the Pentateuch generally was composed in a later age than that of Moses or Joshua.[196] Samuel was most likely the author of the Elohistic legends, which he left at his death in an unfinished state, and which naturally fell into the hands of some one of his disciples of the School of the Prophets, such, for instance, as Nathan or Gad.[197]

Yet the writer of the Pentateuch must not be reproached for his errors as much as those who would attribute to him infallible accuracy. He had no idea that he was writing truth. "But," says the Bishop, "there is not the slightest reason to suppose that the first writer of the story in the Pentateuch ever professed to be recording infallible truth, or even actual, historical truth. He wrote certainly a narrative. But what indications are there that he published it at large, even to the people of his own time, as a record of matter-of-fact, veracious history? Why may not Samuel, like any other Head of an Institution, have composed this narrative for the instruction and improvement of his pupils, from which it would gradually find its way, no doubt, more or less freely, among the people at large, without ever pretending that it was any other than an historical experiment,—an attempt to give them some account of the early annals of their tribes? In later days, it is true, this ancient work of Samuel's came to be regarded as infallibly Divine. But was it so regarded in the writer's days, or in the ages immediately following? On the contrary, we find no sign of the Mosaic Law being venerated, obeyed, or even known, in many of its most remarkable features, till a much later time in history."[198]

The excitement occasioned by the publication of these views of Colenso was second only to that produced by the Essays and Reviews. There was a decided disposition on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities to deal summarily with him, since he had been intrusted with the Episcopal office, and sent as a missionary to the heathen. Several of the Bishops early took ground against his destructive criticism, and refused to allow him to officiate within their dioceses. The Convocations of York and Canterbury united in condemnation of his work. There was a difference of opinion as to the best method of depriving him of his episcopal authority. In the dilemma it was resolved to appeal to him without any appearance of legal pressure; whereupon the Bishops of England and Ireland, with but three exceptions, Drs. Thirlwall, Fitzgerald, and Griffin, addressed him a letter, in which he was requested to resign his office, since he must see, as well as they, the inconsistency of holding his position as Bishop and believing and publishing such views as were contained in his exegetical works. His reply was a positive refusal, coupled with the statement that he would soon return to his See in Africa, there to continue the discharge of his duties. The Episcopal Bench of England failing to eject him, he was tried and condemned before an Episcopal Synod, which assembled in Cape Town, Southern Africa, on November 27th, 1863.

The charges against Colenso were:—his denial of the atonement; belief in man's justification without any knowledge of Christ; belief in natal regeneration; disbelief in the endlessness of future punishment; denial of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and of the truthfulness of what they profess to describe as facts; denial of the divinity of our blessed Lord; and depraving, impugning, and bringing into disrepute the Book of Common Prayer. Having been adjudged guilty, he was deposed from his office as Bishop of Natal, and thenceforth prohibited from the exercise of all ministerial functions within any part of the metropolitical province of Cape Town. Being absent in England at the time of the trial, Colenso was represented by Dr. Bleek, who protested against the legality of the proceedings and the validity of the judgment, at the same time giving notice of his intention to appeal. But the Metropolitan of Cape Town refused to recognize any appeal, except to the Archbishop of Canterbury, which must be made within fifteen days from sentence. Immediately after the deposition, the Dean of Natal, the Archdeacon, the parochial clergy, and the church-wardens of the diocese, signed a declaration, by which they pledged themselves not to recognize Colenso any longer as their Bishop.

Before Colenso was served with a copy of the decree against him, he issued a letter to his diocese, in which he denied the power claimed by the Metropolitan and the other bishops of Cape Town to depose him. He maintained that, of the nine charges brought against him, four had already been disposed of by the late judgment of the Privy Council in the case of the Essays and Reviews. In the meanwhile, his friends at home collected a fund of more than two thousand pounds to enable him to plead his cause before the English courts. The first proceeding in Great Britain commenced in 1863, before the judicial committee of the Privy Council. The case has finally been decided in Colenso's favor, the Lord Chancellor declaring the sentence pronounced by the Bishop of Cape Town illegal, in the following words: "As the question can be decided only by the sovereign or head of the Established Church and depositary of appellate jurisdiction, their Lordships will humbly report to Her Majesty their judgment and opinion that the proceedings taken by the Bishop of Cape Town, and the judgment or sentence pronounced by him against the Bishop of Natal, are null and void."

But while this judgment of the Privy Council annulled the proceedings against Colenso, it also destroyed his Episcopal authority by pronouncing that the letters patent of the Queen, by which he was made Bishop, had neither been authorized by any Parliamentary statute nor confirmed by the legislative council of Natal. His continuance in authority, therefore, was made dependent on the voluntary recognition of the clergy within the diocese of Natal. But the latest intelligence reveals the important fact that the clergy unanimously refuse to recognize his Episcopal authority, and have asked the Bishop of Cape Town to administer the diocese until a new appointment can be made for the See of Natal. The trustees of the Colonial Bishops' fund have also declared that they will no longer pay the salary of Colenso. He has already set sail for Southern Africa, but on his arrival will find himself without a clergy or a people to recognize his jurisdiction. Dr. Pusey has written an interesting letter, in which he hails the decision of the Privy Council as an indication that the church of South Africa will soon be as free and prosperous as the Scotch Episcopal church and the church of the United States.

The remaining parts of the Bishop's Commentary on the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua have met with a tardy and cold reception. We accept this as a hopeful sign that no great portion of the people are willing to adopt his theological views. The first two parts, however, created an excitement which was not confined to Christian lands. Even a Mussulman addressed a letter from the Cape of Good Hope to a Turkish paper at Constantinople, in which he gives an account of the Christians in that colony, together with a description of their multiform dissensions. "Their priests," he writes, "all advocate different creeds; and as to their bishops, one Colenso actually writes books against his own religion." It may be more a gratification of the vanity than flattering to the piety of the late Missionary to the Zulus to be informed that already the Buddhists of India are making free use of his works as an invaluable aid in their controversies with the missionaries from Christian lands. Thus the herald of the cross of Christ in heathen nations must encounter not only the superstition and prejudices of paganism, but the infidelity exported from his own home, where for centuries the battles of the truth have been fought and won.

FOOTNOTES:

[169] Essays and Reviews. Edited, with an Introduction, by Rev. F. H. Hedge, D. D. Boston, 1862.

[170] Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles.—Noyes' Essays, pp. 222-276.

[171] Essays and Reviews, pp. 5-6.

[172] Essays and Reviews, p. 37.

[173] Ibid. p. 39.

[174] Ibid. pp. 35-36.

[175] For an able refutation of this point, vid. Houghton, Rationalism in the Church of England, pp. 127-136.

[176] Essays and Reviews, p. 54.

[177] Ibid. p. 60.

[178] Essays and Reviews, p. 68.

[179] Replies to Essays and Reviews, p. 135.

[180] Essays and Reviews, p. 120.

[181] Ibid. p. 155.

[182] Essays and Reviews, p. 159.

[183] Essays and Reviews, pp. 195-196.

[184] Ibid. p. 277.

[185] Essays and Reviews, pp. 277-278.

[186] Ibid. p. 278.

[187] Essays and Reviews, p. 287.

[188] Ibid. pp. 328-329.

[189] Essays and Reviews, p. 446.

[190] Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, Vorwort, 1862.

[191] Ecclesiastical Judgments of the Privy Council, p. 289. Edited by Hon. G. C. Brodrick, and the Rev. W. H. Freemantle. London, 1865. The members of the Queen's Privy Council are as follows: Earls Granville and Lonsdale; Duke of Buccleugh; Marquis of Salisbury; Lords Westbury, Brougham, Cranworth, Wensleydale, St. Leonards, Chelmsford, and Kindsdown; and Right Hons. Lushington, Bruce, Wigram, Ryan, Pollock, Romilly, Turner, Cockburn, Coleridge, Erie, and Wylde.

[192] Pentateuch and Book of Joshua, Part I., pp. 49, 51-52. Am. Edition.

[193] Pentateuch and Book of Joshua, Part I., pp. 60, 78, 81, 94, 105, 118, 138, 141, 185.

[194] Pentateuch and Book of Joshua, Part II., p. 60.

[195] Ibid. p. 296.

[196] Pentateuch and Book of Joshua, Part II., pp. 83, 84, 115.

[197] Ibid. p. 160.

[198] Pentateuch and Book of Joshua, Part II., p. 292.



CHAPTER XXII.

ENGLAND CONTINUED: SURVEY OF CHURCH PARTIES.

The Church of England has always been proud of the outward form of unity. Her rigid view of the sin of schism has induced her to submit to great elasticity of opinion and teaching rather than incur the traditional disgrace of open division. But on this very account she has never been free from internal strife. In everything but in name she has been for centuries not one church, but several. Her entire history discloses two tendencies balancing each other, and for the most part reacting to great advantage. The Sacramentalist party represents Romanizing tendencies, and is thoroughly devoted to "the sacramental services and the offices of the church, especially as performed according to the rubric." The Evangelical party is less formal, is in harmony with the Articles, aims to keep up with the accumulating religious wants of society, and lays stress upon the practical evidences of Christian life. Under these two standards may be ranked all those schools within the pale of the Church which have been growing into prominence since the closing years of the eighteenth century. We will only speak of the most influential parties, remembering, however, that each of them is again subdivided into various sections.

THE LOW CHURCH. Within a short time after the Church of England gave signs of religious awakening in consequence of the rise of the Wesleyan movement, the triumph of evangelical tendencies was complete. "In less than twenty years," says Conybeare, "the original battle-field was won, and the enemy may be said to have surrendered at discretion. Thenceforward, scarcely a clergyman was to be found in England who preached against the doctrines of the creed. The faith of the church was restored to the level of her formularies."[199] The revival was so thorough that it gave rise to a zealous class which was called by its friends the Evangelical Party, but by its enemies the Low Church.

The Low Church had its seat at Cambridge, and was conducted by vigorous theologians, who were encouraged and aided by highly-respected and leading laymen. Attaching new importance to the neglected doctrines, their principal themes were "the universal necessity of conversion," "justification by faith," and "the sole authority of Scripture as the rule of faith." They were worthy successors of the old Evangelical party, represented by Milner, Martyn, and Wilberforce. Through their agency there arose in the popular mind a dislike of ecclesiastical landmarks, the state church fell into disrepute, the broadest catholicity received hearty support, and personal piety was the acknowledged test of true religion. In 1828 Lord Russell, the leader of the Reform party, effected the abrogation of the Test Act,—a law which required all officers, civil and military, to receive the sacrament according to the usage of the Established church, and to take an oath against transubstantiation within six months after their entrance into office. The repeal immediately placed Dissenters and Catholics upon the same footing with members of the Established church, and was in itself sufficient to provoke opposition on the part of all who had not united in the evangelical movement. But the antagonism became still more decided when Parliament passed the Irish Church Property Act, in 1833, in spite of the determined remonstrances of the bishops. One half of the Irish bishoprics were thereby abrogated, Parliament assuming ecclesiastical authority. The people supported the Parliament, and in some instances public indignation was hurled at the bishops themselves.

The Low Church has always been on the side of popular reform. Not forgetful of its lineal descent from that evangelical spirit which animated Wilberforce, Stephen, Thornton, and Buxton, in their philanthropic labors, it has sought out the population of the factories and mines of England, and addressed itself to the relief of their cramped and stifled inmates. It has reorganized Ragged-Schools, and endeavored to reach all the suffering classes of the kingdom. Neither has it been found unmindful of the wants of the heathen world, for no sooner did the Low Church commence its public career than it founded the Church Missionary Society, which has established over one hundred and forty-eight missionary stations, sustains two hundred and sixty-six clergymen, and includes about twenty thousand members.[200] These labors have been abundantly successful, for besides the converted towns on the coast of Africa, "whole districts of Southern India have embraced the faith; and the native population of New Zealand (spread over a territory as large as England) has been reclaimed from cannibalism and added to the church." The same party was chiefly instrumental in establishing the British and Foreign Bible Society, which has translated the Scriptures into one hundred and fifty languages, and distributes over two millions of copies annually.

The Low Church party was the first to tell England that her population had far outgrown her places of worship, and it accordingly devised means to remedy the evil. Archbishop Sumner founded the first Diocesan Church Building Society, in 1828; and after becoming Bishop of Chester consecrated more than two hundred new churches. Mr. Simeon of Cambridge had previously set the example of caring for the unchurched population by his personal labors and the outlay of his large private fortune. His name is now like "ointment poured forth" among the inhabitants of Bath, Clifton, Bradford, and other places. The Pastoral Aid Society was founded in 1836, and by its lay and clerical employees, is now ministering to the spiritual wants of over three millions of souls. The Low Churchmen have also established, in needy localities, Sunday Schools, Infant Schools, Lending Libraries, Benefit Societies, Clothing Clubs, and Circles of Scripture Readers. From the ranks of this party have arisen devout and zealous preachers, who, without any great natural endowments, have given their hearts to the work of saving souls. Hamilton Forsyth, Spencer Thornton, and Henry Fox,—the follower of Henry Martyn to Southern India,—are names which will ever adorn the history of the Church of England.[201]

At the present time the Low Church is leading the van within the Establishment, in all those movements which have the stamp of true piety. It is seeking out the abandoned and homeless wretches in the darkest sinks of London, reading the Bible to them, clothing, finding work, and training them to self-respect. Some of its clergy are among the most gifted and influential in Great Britain, whether at the editor's table, in the pulpit, or on the platform. The lofty position they have lately taken against the inroads of Rationalism entitles them to the thanks and admiration of Christendom.

Within the Low Church there are two subdivisions. The first is the Recordite party, so called from its organ. It intensifies the doctrines of the Low Church; on justification by faith it builds its view of the worthlessness of morality; on conversion by grace its predestinarian fatalism; and on the supremacy of Scripture its dogma of verbal inspiration. It holds strong Biblical views on the sanctity of the Sabbath, and both by the pulpit and the press, opposes the secularization of the Lord's day. The other party is sneeringly called the "Low and Slow," and corresponds with a similar faction within the High Church which enjoys the sobriquet of the "High and Dry."

After the evangelical movement had fully taken root there arose an antagonistic tendency; it was the old Sacramentalist party re-asserting itself. Oxford arrayed itself against Cambridge. The views of Laud had always found favor in the former seat of learning, and their adherents felt that the time had now come for their vigorous revival. They directed their opposition equally against Parliamentary usurpation and evangelical liberalism. The centre of the counter-movement was Oriel College, which, under Whately, Hampden, and Thomas Arnold, was already celebrated for its new spirit of free scientific inquiry. Keble, Pusey, Froude, and J. H. Newman, were here associated either as fellows or students. Froude recognized the truth of the saying of Vicentius: "Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est." He rose above his friends as leader of the whole movement.

The Conference which convened at Hadley, was the first organized demonstration against the evangelical portion of the Low Church. Its initiative act was the adoption of a catechism which contained the views of the High Churchmen, and was the first issue of the celebrated series of Tracts which gave to the new movement the name of Tractarianism. It was published in 1833, and the last of the series, the ninetieth, appeared seven years afterward. Newman and Pusey were the chief writers. Pusey preached a sermon in 1843 which avowed, with only slight modifications, the doctrine of transubstantiation; in consequence of which he was deposed from preaching to the university for the space of two years. The Romish church received flattering eulogy from all the High Churchmen or Tractarians. It was represented by them as the embodiment of all that was grand, imposing, and sound in art, poetry, or theology. When Newman went over to its fold, Pusey said of him: "He has been called to labor in another part of the Lord's vineyard." The High Church went so far in its opposition to the Low that many attached to the former felt more attracted to Roman Catholicism than to any form of Protestantism. Accordingly, at the close of 1846, one hundred and fifty clergymen and distinguished laymen had gone over to Popery.

The doctrines of the High Church may be divided into two classes: the material, or justification by sacraments; and the formal, or the authority of the church.

While it declares that we are justified by faith, it also holds that we are judged by works. Men are converted by grace, but Christians are regenerated by baptism. The Scriptures are supreme authority, but the "church hath authority in controversies of faith," by virtue of its apostolic descent. The watchwords of the High Church are, therefore, judgment by works; baptismal regeneration; church authority; and apostolical succession. Faith, it claims, does not justify us in and of itself, but simply brings us to God, who then justifies us by his free grace. Baptism is regeneration; in the New Testament the new birth is always connected with it; we are not born of faith, or of love, or of prayer, but by water and the Spirit. All Tractarians believe in the real presence of Christ, and only differ as to the mode in which he is present. The consecrated elements become really the body and blood of Christ by virtue of the consecrating word, though the change takes place in a spiritual and inexpressible way. Christ is a kind Saviour to those who partake of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper worthily, but a harsh judge to those who do it unworthily.

High Churchmen hold that the Church is a saving institution founded by Christ, and continued by apostolical succession. It is the only mediator of salvation in Christ in so far as it is the only dispenser of the means of grace, the only protectress and witness of the truth, and the highest authority in matters of faith and practice. There are three tests of the true Church: first, apostolicity, or the divine origin of the Church and its succession of apostles; second, catholicity, or the truth in matters of instruction and life communicated through the succession of the apostles, the truth in matters of faith and life as interpreted by Scripture and tradition; and, third, autonomy, or the absolute independence and supreme authority of the Church in faith and practice.

Apostolical succession was the first dogma in which all High Churchmen united. Connected with this opinion is the idea that the priesthood is the only mediatorial office between Christ and the congregation. The bishops are the spiritual sons of the apostles, and should be respected for their office' sake; Christ is the Mediator above, but his servant, the bishop, is his image on earth.[202] The Church has authority to forgive sins by the new birth, and to bring souls from hell to heaven.[203] Tradition must be respected not less than the Bible itself; the Old and New Testaments are the fountain of the doctrines, and the catholic fathers the channel through which they flow down to us.[204] The Bible must be explained, not by individual opinion, but by the church; for the Church is its rightful interpreter.

It must be said, in justice to the High Church, that while it attaches great weight to these views it does not discard those really important. It does not overlook the doctrines maintained by the majority of evangelical Christians. The moderate members of this party, especially, do not hold them as "the basis of their system, but only as secondary and ornamental details. Even against Dissenters they are not rigidly enforced. The hereditary non-conformist is not excluded from salvation. Foreign Protestants are even owned as brethren, though a mild regret is expressed that they lack the blessing of an authorized church government. Apostolical succession is not practically made essential to the being of a church, but rather cherished as a dignified and ancient pedigree, connecting our English episcopate with primitive antiquity, and binding the present to the past by a chain of filial piety. In the same hands, church authority is reduced to little more than a claim to that deference which is due from the ignorant to the learned, from the taught to the teacher."[205]

Of the general service rendered by the High Churchmen, the same writer says, "Their system gives freer scope to the feelings of reverence, awe, and beauty than that of their opponents. They endeavor, and often successfully, to enlist these feelings in the service of piety. Music, painting, and architecture, they consecrate as the handmaids of religion. Thus they attract an order of men chiefly found among the most cultivated classes, whose hearts must be reached through their imagination rather than their understanding.... In the same spirit the writers of this party have contributed to the religious literature of the day many admirable works which under the guise of fiction teach the purest Christianity, and exemplify its bearing in every detail of common life. To the training of childhood especially they have rendered most valuable aid, by thus embodying the precepts of the Gospel. But we need not do more than allude to works so universally known and valued as those of Miss Sewell, Mr. Adams, and Bishop Wilberforce. Again the revival of the High Church party has effected an important improvement among the clergy. Many of these were prejudiced by hereditary dislike against the doctrines and the persons of the Evangelicals, and by this prejudice, were repelled from religion. But under the name of orthodoxy and the banner of High Church, they have willingly received truth against which, had it come to them in another shape, they would have closed their ears and hearts. A better spirit has thus been breathed into hundreds who but for this new movement would have remained as their fathers were before them, mere Nimrods, Ramrods, or Fishing-rods."[206]

Of all the men engaged in the Tractarian enterprise there was no one in whose religious and personal history a deeper public interest concentrated than in John Henry Newman. His ardent espousal of the High Church cause collected many friends about him at the same time that it organized numerous enemies. But he did not inquire concerning the number of his friends or foes, for he valued sincerity higher than favor or opposition. His previous history was not without incident. Thirteen years before the Tracts for the Times were published, he had been engaged in a controversy concerning baptismal regeneration, in which he defended the evangelical side.[207] Subject to various inner conflicts, and greatly influenced by the party-spirit which ran high, he finally entered the communion of the Roman Catholic Church. His view of the development of Christian doctrine is very favorable to his adopted faith. Development can be applied to anything which has real vital power; it is the key that unlocks the mystery of all growth; any philosophy or policy, Christianity included, requires time for its comprehension and perfection. The highest truths of inspiration needed only the longer time and deeper thought for their full elucidation, for perfection can be reached only by trials and sore conflicts. A philosophy or sect is purer and stronger when its channel has grown deep and broad by the flow of time. Its vital element needs disengagement from that which is foreign and temporary, and its beginning is no measure of its capabilities or scope. At first no one knows what it is or what it is worth, since it seems in suspense which way to go; but notwithstanding this, it strikes out and develops all its hidden world of force. Surrounding things change, but these changes only contribute to its development. Here below, to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. This is all true of Christianity; the lapse of years, instead of injuring it, has only brought out its power.[208]

These hints furnish a specimen of the ideal robe in which Father Newman clothes Romanism. But it will take a stronger intellect than his to show any harmony between his theory of development and the history of the papacy. He has once more assumed the pen of the controversialist. In the January number of Macmillan's Magazine, 1864, Kingsley, in a review of Froude's History of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, said, "Truth for its own sake has never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not be, and, on the whole, ought not to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given to the saints wherewith to withstand the brute man's force of the wicked world, which marries and is given in marriage." The venerable Father being thus assailed has given vent to his indignation by a defense of his life, under the title of Apologia Pro Vita Sua. It abounds in rare touches of satire; while Kingsley, in his reply, indicates excitement and bitterness.

The younger brother, Francis William Newman, has led a sad and changeful life. It has many features in common with Blanco White, both of whom betray the destructive absence of a positive evangelical faith. In some skeptics there is a strength of will which gives a successful appearance to their cause in spite of all their doubts; but when the will is subjected to the domination of opinion; when religion, whether true or false, is not an appendage but the principle of life, the power of mere sentiment is fully manifested. The younger Newman is an illustration of the position in which one is left when he throws himself into the arms of a false creed.

He reveals his inner life in the Phases of Faith, one of the most touching pieces of biography in the realm of literature. While a student at Oxford, he became enamored with the "Oriel heresy about Sunday." One by one the views of the standard authorities of the Church lost their hold upon him, and he imbibed the opinion that the Old Testament is not really the rule of life, according to the Pauline idea; infant baptism is an excrescence of a post-apostolic age, and Wall's attempt to trace it to the Apostles a decided failure; Episcopacy has been so contemptibly represented by incumbents, some of whom opposed the Missionary and Bible Societies, that it is not entitled to respect; and the Church Fathers are greatly overrated, Clement alone being respectable.

Unable to find any theological resting-place, Newman went as a quasi-missionary to Bagdad. He returned to Oxford and gave himself up to his increasing doubts. Finally, becoming a Unitarian, the Scriptures present new difficulties; Christianity has been too highly praised and flattered; and has had the credit of doing a great deal which it has had no share in effecting. The Bible has not been found able to cope with fresh evils; and Romanism became corrupt and vicious with that book in the hands of the priesthood. But dissatisfied as Newman is with the present, he takes a cheerful look upon the future. "The age is ripe," he says, "for something better, for a religion which shall combine the tenderness, humility, and disinterestedness which are the glory of the present Christianity, with that activity of intellect, untiring pursuit of truth, and strict adherence to impartial principle which the schools of modern science embody. When a spiritual church has its senses exercised to discern good and evil, judges of right and wrong by an inward power, proves all things, and holds fast that which is good, fears no truth, but rejoices in being corrected, intellectually as well as morally, it will not be liable to 'be carried to and fro' by shifting wind of doctrine. It will indeed have movement, namely, a steady onward one, as the schools of science have had since they left off to dogmatize, and approached God's world as learners; but it will lay aside disputes of words, eternal vacillations, mutual ill-will and dread of new light, and will be able, without hypocrisy, to proclaim 'peace on earth and good will toward men,' even toward those who reject its beliefs and sentiments concerning God and his glory."[209]

THE FIRST BROAD CHURCH. The division of the Broad Church into two parties has been produced by the recent discussion. The First Broad Church corresponds in the main with philosophical Rationalism. It commenced with Coleridge, was interpreted principally by Hare, was defended by the chaste and vigorous pen of Arnold, and is now represented by Maurice, Kingsley, and Stanley. It cannot be said to have a distinct creed. Its members being attached to the Established Church, they are distinguished peculiarly for their method of interpretation of the articles of faith. "The Broad Church teachers give us readings of each dogma of the Atonement and Future Punishment."[210] They avow the main doctrines of the Gospel, but in such a modified sense that, they say, the same were held virtually by all Christians in every age; by Loyola and Xavier, not less than by Latimer and Ridley. They conceive the essence of Popery to consist, not in points of metaphysical theology, but in the ascription of magic virtue to outward acts. All who believe the Scriptures are, in their opinion, members of the household of faith. Salvation does not depend upon the ritual but upon the life; the fruits of the Spirit are the sole criteria of the Spirit's presence. They give prominence to the idea of the visible Church when they hold the Church to be a Society divinely instituted for the purpose of manifesting God's presence, and bearing witness to his attributes, by their reflection in its ordinances and in its members. If its ideal were fully embodied in its actual constitution "it would remind us daily of God, and work upon the habits of our life as insensibly as the air we breathe."[211] For this end, it would revive "daily services, frequent communions, memorials of our Christian calling, presented to our notice in crosses and wayside oratories; commemorations to holy men of all times and countries; religious orders, especially of women, of different kinds and under different rules, delivered only from the snare and sin of perpetual vows."[212]

The special defender of these views of the visible Church, the late Dr. Thomas Arnold, of Rugby, was a man of great industry, profound erudition, and extraordinary power and tact in the management of youth. His sermons, delivered to his pupils at Rugby, were short, and usually written just before delivery in the school-chapel on Sabbath afternoons.[213] He interested himself in all questions of reform, education, politics, and literature. But he is best known as one of the leaders of the Broad Church, and in this light his theological opinions may be considered a fair sample of the theology adopted by that party in its earlier and purer days. With him, inspiration is not equivalent to a communication of the divine perfections. Paul expected the world would come to an end in the generation then existing. The Scripture narratives are not only about divine things, but are themselves divinely framed and superintended. Inspiration does not raise a man above his own time, nor make him, even in respect to that which he utters when inspired, perfect in goodness and wisdom; but it so overrules his language that it shall contain a meaning more than his own mind was conscious of, and thus give to it a character of divinity, and a power of perpetual application.[214]

According to Arnold, Christ was the sum of the Bible, and the centre of all truth. We cannot come to God directly; Christ is to us in place of God; and he is God, for to hold the contrary would be idolatry. Christ suffered for the Church, not only as a man may suffer for man by being involved in evils through the fault of another, and by his example awakening in others a spirit of like patience and self-devotion, but in a higher and more complete sense, as suffering for them, the just for the unjust, that they, for his sake, should be regarded by God as innocent. In a deep sense of moral evil, more, perhaps, than in anything else, a saving knowledge of God abides. Sin must not be lightly considered. Christ's death shows it to be an exceeding evil; and the actions of whole days and weeks, passed as they are by too many in utter carelessness, are nothing but one mass of sin; and no one thing in them has been sanctified by the thought of God or of Christ.

The penalty of sin, according to Arnold, is one of the revelations of Scripture which men are least inclined to hear. It will be true of every one of us, that, unless we turn to Christ, it had been better that we were never born. If we fail of the grace of God there is reserved for us an indescribable misery. Conversion is the development of Christian life. It is growth. We must be changed during the three score and ten years of our life, not in the twinkling of an eye, but through a long period of prayer and watchfulness, laboring slowly and with difficulty to get rid of our evil nature.[215] By constant repentance and faith we ripen for heaven. Justification by faith is a reliance on what God has done for us; faith in Christ is not only faith in his having died for us, but in him as our present Saviour by his life. It is throwing ourselves upon him in all things, as our Redeemer, Saviour, Head, of whom we are members, and desire our life only for Him. Our dependence in Christ is not once only, but perpetual.

Arnold attached paramount importance to a proper understanding of the Church and its relations to the State. He held that the work of a Christian Church and State is absolutely one and the same, and that the full development of the former in its perfect form as the Kingdom of God, will be an effectual means for the removal of all evil and the promotion of good. There can be no perfect Church or State without their blending into one.[216] The Church, during her imperfect state, is deficient in power; the State, in the like condition is deficient in knowledge; one judges amiss of man's highest happiness, the other discerns it truly, but has not the power on a large scale to attain it. But when blended into one, the power and knowledge become happily united; the Church has become sovereign, and the State has become Christian.[217] The Church has its living and redeemed members; it may have those who are craving to be admitted within its shelter, being convinced that God is in it of a truth; but beyond these, he who is not with it is against it.[218]

In intimate connection with Arnold stands the name of his friend and biographer, Arthur P. Stanley, Dean of Westminster, for some years a writer of celebrity in England. Two late volumes on the Eastern and Jewish Churches have given him a standing occupied by few theologians in the old or the new world. His style is gorgeous and enchanting, and his Rationalistic tendencies so subdued and covert that few would suspect him of sympathy with the Broad Church theology of the last ten years' growth. In his work on Sinai and Palestine he aimed to delineate the outward events of the Old and New Testament in such a way that they should come home with a new power to those who, by long familiarity, had almost ceased to regard them as historical truth; and so to bring out their inward spirit that the more complete realization of their outward form should not degrade but exalt the faith of which they are the vehicle. But in subsequent works, Dean Stanley has clearly departed from an evangelical position, and we now find him in open sympathy with the Broad Church. This tendency was foreshadowed in his History of the Jewish Church. He describes miracles as one who prefers to omit, rather than state, his real objections to their reception. He seems to believe in Israel as an inspired people, more than in the Old Testament as a plenarily inspired book. He allows searching criticism into the Hebrew text, and does not seem disturbed by evidences of errors, contradictions, and phantasy. He does not know whether the Israelites were in Egypt two hundred and fifteen, four hundred and thirty, or one thousand years,—thus leaving an important question unsettled. Neither does he decide, with or against Colenso, whether the number of armed Israelites who left Egypt was six hundred or six hundred thousand men. He implies that monotheism was unknown before Abraham, and that the name Jehovah was not known to Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. He cannot tell how the Israelites were supported in their journeyings; and ascribes the priesthood to an Egyptian origin. If we only admit the above arithmetical errors, and give up the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, he thinks we should remove at one stroke some of the main difficulties of the Mosaic narrative.[219]

But Stanley has exposed his Broad Church sympathies more in a late review article than in any formal volume.[220] It is a discussion of the judicial proceedings in connection with two authors of the Essays and Reviews. His theme permits a wide range, and he therefore dwells at length upon the whole question of ministerial teaching. He considers the final acquittal of the essayists one of the most gratifying events of the day. According to him, the questions raised by the work are, with few exceptions, of a kind altogether beside and beyond the range over which the formularies of the Church extend. No passage in any of the five clerical essayists contradicts any of the formularies of the Church in a degree at all comparable to the direct collision which exists between the High Church party and the Articles, or the Low Church party and the Prayer-Book; on the points debated in the Essays and Reviews the Articles and Prayer-Book are alike silent. Stanley rejoices that of the thirty-two charges presented against Mr. Wilson and Dr. Williams all were dismissed but five, and that for these "there was no heavier penalty than a year's suspension." He is in ecstacy that the judgment in the case of these two men has established the legal position of those who have always claimed the right of free inquiry and latitude of opinion equally for themselves and for both the other sections of the Church. By the issue of the litigation, he claims that great victories have been won, that henceforth ample freedom is left to all detailed criticism of the Sacred Text, so long as the canonicity of no canonical book is denied, and that the questions whether there be "one Isaiah or two, two Zechariahs or three, who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews, and who wrote the Pentateuch, whether Job and Josiah be historical or parabolical, whether the Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah or the Second Psalm be directly or indirectly prophetic, what are the precise limits of the natural and practical, what is the weight of internal and external evidence, whether the Apocalypse refers to the Emperor Nero or to the Pope of Rome; are to be settled according to the individual opinion of every clergyman of the Established Church." Stanley sneers at the Declaration of the Oxford Committee sent to every Clergyman of England and Ireland, "with an adjuration, for the love of God and out of duty to the souls of men, to sign it." That Declaration was a protest against the acquittal of the Essayists; and Stanley rejoices over the fact, that, though "every influence was used to get signatures to it, and was so concealed as to enlist the support of High and Low Church parties," the result was the signature of only one third of the London clergy, nine Professors at Oxford and one at Cambridge, eight out of the thirty English deans, two of the Head Masters of the Public Schools, and only six out of the fifty clerical contributors to Smith's Dictionary of the Bible; that more than one half of the rural clergy stood altogether aloof from the document; and that when it was presented at Lambeth only four of the twenty-eight Bishops loaned their countenance to its formal reception. Stanley looks into the future and sees permanent blessings bestowed upon the country by the "timely decision of the highest Court of Appeal" that it has "no jurisdiction or authority to settle matters of faith, or to determine what ought in any particular to be the doctrine of the Church of England, since its duty extends only to the consideration of that which is by law established to be the doctrine of the Church of England, upon the true and legal construction of her Articles and formularies." He is also pleased that the Supreme Court of Appeal has refused to pledge itself and the Church to any popular theory of the mode of justification or of the future punishment of the wicked; and that it now stands declared that it is no doctrine of the Church of England that "every part of the Bible is inspired, or is the word of God." The Dean also looks with complacency upon what he declares to be a fact, and which we are startled to hear; that "the belief in endless punishment is altogether fluctuating, or else expresses itself in forms wholly untenable ... that the doctrine of endless torments, if held, is not practically taught by the vast majority of the Clergymen of England."

The First Broad Church will not accept entirely the theology contained in the Essays and Reviews, and complains of them that they are "almost entirely negative; hinting at faults in the prevalent religious opinions of the day, but not investigating them; indicating dislike to certain obligations which are imposed upon clergymen, but not stating or considering what those obligations are; leaving an impression upon devout Christians that something in their faith is untenable when they want to find in it what is tenable; suggesting that earnest infidels in this day have much to urge in behalf of their doubts and difficulties; never fairly asking what they have to urge, what are their doubts and difficulties."[221]

On the other hand, the First Broad Church will not unite in the organized opposition to that work, because the denunciations and appeals "took an almost entirely negative form; they contradicted and slandered objections; they were not assertions of a belief; they led Christians away from the Bible, from the creeds which they confess to certain notions about the creeds, from practice to disputation. They met no real doubts in the minds of unbelievers; they only called for the suppression of all doubts. They confounded the opinions of the day with the faith once delivered to the saints. They tended to make anonymous journalists the law-givers of the Church. They tended to discourage clergymen from expressing manfully what is in their hearts, lest they should incur the charge of being unfaithful to their vows. They tended to hinder all serious and honest co-operation between men who are not bound together in a sectarian agreement, lest they should make themselves responsible for opinions different from their own."[222] Thus, while the First Broad Church occupies a neutral ground in the controversy now rending the whole structure of English theology, its moral force is all against Evangelical Christianity, and in favor of the usurpations of Rationalism.

But the theology maintained by the First Broad Church is little above that contained in the Essays and Reviews and similar Rationalistic publications. With them, the Scriptures are better than any other books of antiquity because they contain the most of God's will, not because they alone contain his will. "These books," says a writer, "have been filtered out, as it were, under his guidance, from many others which, in ages gone by, claimed a place beside them, and are now forgotten, while these have stood for thousands of years, and are not likely to be set aside now."[223] They are indifferent as to their date, authorship, or contents. "Men may satisfy themselves," the same writer continues, "perhaps if I have time to give to the study, they may satisfy me—that the Pentateuch was the work of twenty men; that Baruch wrote a part of Isaiah; that David did not write the Psalms, or the evangelists the gospels; that there are interpolations here and there in the original; that there are numerous and serious errors in our translation. What is all this to me? What do I care who wrote them, what is the date of them, what this or that passage ought to be? They have told me what I wanted to know. Burn every copy in the world to-morrow, you don't and can't take that knowledge from me, or any man."[224]

The Mosaic cosmogony is not a matter of great consequence, but on a par with other cosmogonies, none of which are of any intrinsic value. "If all cosmogonies were to disappear to-morrow," says Thomas Hughes, "I should be none the poorer." The various difficulties of Scripture are not of sufficient moment to occupy much time or pains. Let the people be made to understand the liberal interpretations of what the cultivated teachers have to say, and that will be enough to meet the world's wants. Perhaps it is with secret admiration of Bunsen's Bible Work, the greatest exegetical triumph of Rationalism, that Kingsley asks: "Who shall write us a people's commentary of the Bible?"

Redemption is accepted in the Coleridgean sense. It is a term which does not express a Scriptural fact, but is borrowed from earthly transactions. Christ's work in our behalf is of no special value in itself, its known effects being all that make it of moment to the human family.[225] We should look at the results and not at the cause. The sacrifice which Christ made was one of obedience to his Father's will; it does not free us and elevate us above the curse of a broken law, for, in a certain sense, the law has never been broken to the extent that the evangelicals claim, nor does eternal punishment harmonize with enlightened and liberal notions of Divine mercy. Miracles are in danger of being worshiped by the friends of revelation. They have the misfortune of an improper term; wonders would be a far better word. Why not accept them in the domain of faith, since we meet with them in science?[226] Miracles of this kind, "wonders," are willingly conceded, for they are not suspensions or violations of the order of nature, but natural phenomena, whose laws we may not understand. The miracles of the New Testament are purely natural; but the people did not comprehend the laws which gave them birth, and hence they magnified them. "Where the people believed," says Mr. Davies, "rightly or wrongly, in evil spirits and sorcery, in malignant and disorderly influences proceeding from the spiritual world, there the powers of the true kingdom, the powers of order and freedom and beneficence, were put forth in acts which appealed directly to the minds of the ignorant and superstitious, and which proclaimed an authority stronger than that of demons. The common multitudes of Judea were of the class which thus required to be treated like spoiled and frightened children."[227]

THE SECOND BROAD CHURCH. This party maintains the avowed Rationalism of Jowett, the Essays and Reviews, and Colenso. Miss Cobbe, in defining the points of difference between it and the First Broad Church, says of the latter, "It holds that the doctrines of the Bible and the church can be perfectly harmonized with the results of modern thought by a new but legitimate exegesis of the Bible and interpretation of church formulae. The Second Broad Church seems prepared to admit that in many cases they can only be harmonized by the sacrifice of biblical infallibility. The First Broad Church has recourse, to harmonize them, to various logical processes, but principally to the one described in the last chapter, of diverting the student, at all difficult points, from criticism to edification. The Second Broad Church uses no ambiguity, but frankly avows that when the Bible contradicts science, the Bible must be in error. The First Broad Church maintains that the inspiration of the Bible differs in kind as well as in degree from that of other books. The Second Broad Church appears to hold that it differs in degree but not in kind. This last is the crucial point of the differences of the two parties, and of one of the most important controversies of modern times."[228] The First Broad Church has made antagonism to the doctrine of endless punishment one of its great specialties, while the Second Broad Church has made its most violent assaults upon the evangelical view of the inspiration of the Scriptures. The position of the latter is not fully defined. We may suppose, however, that in due time its apologists will assume an organized form, and perhaps produce their systematic theology.

We regret that the general opposition on the part of the clergy to the theology of the Essays and Reviews, on the first appearance of that work, has not been sustained. The Broad Church has therefore acquired many new adherents within the last two years. It is impossible to classify all the parties according to their exact numerical strength, and their approximate proportions, in round numbers, must answer our purpose. The clergy of the Church of England, exclusive of the Irish, amount at present to about twenty thousand, at home and abroad.[229] Making allowance for two thousand peasant clergy in the mountain districts, and missionaries in foreign lands, the remaining eighteen thousand may be classified as follows: