sense of the righteousness of God; and morality transfigured into religion by a sense of his holiness."

So in the same writer Regeneration goes. "Regeneration is a correspondent giving of insight, or an awakening of forces of the soul. By resurrection he would mean a spiritual quickening. Salvation would be our deliverance, not from the life-giving God; but from evil and darkness, which are his finite opposites.'

Of course, the doctrine of the Trinity goes. Speaking of the faith of the Chevalier Bunsen, Mr. Williams says, "His doctrine of the Trinity ingeniously avoids building on texts which our Unitarian critics, from Sir Isaac Newton to Gilbert Wakefield, have impugned; but is a philosophical rendering of the first chapter of St. John's Gospel: the profoundest analysis of our world leaves the law of thought as its ultimate basis and bond of coherence. This thought is consubstantial with the being of the Eternal I AM: being, becoming, and animating, or substance thinking, and conscious life, are expressions of a triad which may be also represented; as will wisdom and love; as light, radiance, and warmth; as fountain, stream, and united flow; as mind, thought, and consciousness; as person, word, and life; as Father, Son, and Spirit." +

The Omnipotence of God goes. Mr. Baden Powell says, "The Divine Omnipotence is entirely an inference from the language of the Bible (here the italics are Mr. Powell's), adopted on the assumption of a belief in revelation." In the same Essay, the great end of which is to shatter the doctrine of the miracles of Scripture, testimony as evidence to miracles goes. "Testimony after all is but second-hand assurance; it is but a blind guide; testimony can avail nothing against reason. Antecedent credibility depends on antecedent knowledge and enlarged views of the connection and dependence of truths." But the Scriptures themselves are compelled to travel from the face of these enlightened men: all becomes easy when we are able to write thus:-"It has been matter of great boast within the Church of England, in common with other Protestant churches, that it is founded on the 'Word of God-a phrase which begs many a question when applied collectively to the books of the Old and New Testament; a phrase which is never so applied to them by any of the Scriptural authors, and which, according to Protestant principles, never could be applied to them by any sufficient authority from without. A Protestant tradition seems to have prevailed, unsanctioned by any of our formularies, that the words of Scripture are imbued with a supernatural property, by which their true sense can reveal

* Essays and Reviews, p. 25. + Ibid., p. 88.

Ibid, p. 113.

itself, even to those who by intellectual or educational defect would naturally be incapable of appreciating it. There is no book, indeed, or collection of books, so rich in words which address themselves intelligibly to the unlearned and learned alike; but those who are able to do so ought to lead the less educated to distinguish between the dark patches of human passion and error which form a partial crust upon it, and the bright centre of spiritual truth within.”*

But if the Scriptures lose their place as dogmatic, and objective, and absolute teachings, they still remain, if not to teach absolutely, they are still a voice, says Mr. Williams; but no longer the voice of God:-"Bold as such a theory of inspiration may sound, it was the earliest creed of the Church, and it is the only one to which the facts of Scripture answer, for the Bible is before all things, the written voice of the congregation." +

Of course, by this refining, critical spirit, Scripture facts, too, are frittered away; and very needlessly too, for why spend time in lopping off the branches when one bold, brave stroke has cut down the tree? Mr. Williams cautions us against the despairing school who would "kill our souls with literalism." "As the pestilence in the Book of Kings becomes in Chronicles the more visible angel, so the avenger who slew the firstborn may have been the Bedouin host akin nearly to Jethro', and more remotely to Israel." He of whom we had thought as bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows, stricken, smitten, and afflicted, "led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep dumb before her shearers," turns out to be the prophet Jeremiah! Yes, it was Jeremiah who "saw of the travail of his soul, and was satisfied." "Thus rhetoric melts in the crucible of so much searching inquiry."

These are some illustrations of the things to be met with in this volume. They are but some. Many others would come before us did we follow the course of its pages. From the same book we learn that the sufficiency of the New Testament as a guide goes. Dr. Temple tells us "when Christians needed creeds, liturgies, and forms of Church government and systems of theology, they could not find them in the New Testament." And so how did the Church help herself in this dilemma? Why, although the New Testament is so worthless, the Papacy lifts up its ghastly old head, for "the Church instinctively had recourse to the only means that would suit the case, namely, a revival of Judaism. The Papacy of the middle ages, and the Papal hierarchy, with all its numberless ceremonies and appliances of external religion, with its attention fixed upon deeds and not on thoughts, or feelings, or purposes,

* Essays and Reviews, p. 175–177. † Ibid, p. 78. Ibid., pp. 70, 71, 72.

with its precise apportionment of punishment and purgatory, was in fact neither more nor less than the old schoolmaster come back to bring some new scholars to Christ."

More recondite heresies peep out from the pages of this dangerous book. Among others, the eternity of matter, that old Manichæan heresy. Mr. Goodwin says:-"We are told in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' It has been matter of discussion amongst theologians whether the word 'created' here means simply shaped or formed, or shaped or formed out of nothing. From the use of the verb bara in other passages, it appears it does not necessarily mean to make out of nothing. It is asserted, then, that God shaped the whole material universe, whether out of nothing or out of pre-existing matter. But which sense the writer really intended is not material for our present purpose to inquire, since neither astronomical nor geological science affects to state anything concerning the first origin of matter."

Where will the gentlemen like to stop? We know not where they will stop. But our readers ought to form some conception of their destination, carefully look at the tendencies of this thingit promises for them a voyage through the infinite. We are unable to perceive that these men have any fixed principles of faith in any thing, in any doctrine, in any teaching. Order of Nature ?-Yes! But any order above Nature ?-No! From every point of the heretical compass the loud winds are blowing upon us. Reading these "Essays" we seem now to have reached the realisation of the dreadful night-dream of Jean Paul-"There is no God-the heavens are a waste-the everlasting storm groans on with none to guide it, and creation hangs like a gleaming rainbow over an abyss, but without a sun-and the heavens become an immeasurable world, and where seemed once the Divine eye is only the eye-socket glaring, and eternity lies in chaos, eating it and ruminating it. Cry on ye dissonances! Cry away ye shadows!-God is not-Christ is not!" Our Essayists and Reviewers are for the most part of their teaching to be classed with the great host now leading on the attack upon Christianity with horrible earnestness and zeal. There is not a single nail which holds together the temple of truth which has not been critically examined. Indeed, that is the characteristic of this hypercritical philosophy-it is not the building of truth, the temple of truth, which has been regarded. No! But the nail-Is it iron or is it gold? and will it come out? and can we pull it out? and will it not be remarkably curious if the whole temple falls?

* Essays and Reviews, p. 218.

Well, then, we say, if it can fall, why even let it fall; but even if it is durable and indestructible, we do not feel that the incendiary spirit claims much homage from us. And this book is like the

clash of the fire-bells, it wakens us all; we find there is not a teaching which is not called in question; there is not an inch of ground which has not to be contested and fought for-the Personality and goodness of God-the creation of the world and the universe by the fiat of His power. Old gnostic heresies and Manichæan heresies reappear quite fresh with all the volatility and juvenility of youth-impudent, audacious, and disgusting; as if they had not been dead and buried ages since. We are sending our missionaries to convert the Hindoos; but Boodism, Hindooism, in all its clattering deformity of creedless Pantheism, is approaching nearer and nearer to us; indeed, it is thus we go on repeating from age to age God's truth and the devil's error. The Essays and Reviews" have much in them that resembles-for the most part all resembles-the old "Age of Reason," by Tom Paine, and the "Philosophical Dictionary" of Voltaire: they are this without the power and satire of the last, or the coarse vulgarity of the first. But the "Essays" are related to a more dangerous class of thoughts and books than those referred to; but the end of all is the same. Think where you are going, we beseech you; compel these teachers to prove every position they lay down; concede nothing to them. For we can well conceive a person sitting down to the perusal of this volume, and rising with a faith shipwrecked and broken to pieces on the jagged rocks which rise along the book.

One of the blessings promised for the latter days is, "Thine eyes shall see thy teachers;" there is, however, a lower conception of a teacher-this, that he unteaches he creates in a mind made up a habit of disbelief-insinuates doubts of the foundations of things-loosens the links and the rivets of faith-there are ́ those who are thankful to the men who have done this. If this be all, they are thankful for small mercies. We will not say this even is useless sad service, however, if this be all the service-a torchlight in a ruin-a lamp revealing the room in which we stand, with its corpse-couch, a melancholy waking of the dead. We will not say that it is wrong to shatter old impostures and superstitions; but it is poor work if that be all. There are many whose only light is derived from spectres and corpse candles; they have reached a full assurance of quite another kind to the apostolic, namely, the full assurance of disbelief-thus it is in this volume. If you read it, your eyes may see your unteachersteaching there is none-absolutely none.

If we were to take the "Essays and Reviews" and put down in words its canons-great principles which all the writers seem to hold in common-we should perhaps assign the first place to that which is regarded by them as the verifying faculty. It would seem that Scripture has no truth in itself; it is no standard or measure of truth; but the measure of truth is in our perception of it-we are truth! We hold and have the measuring line by which the truth may be known. In these "Essays" the state of the man is his standard. We have quoted Dr. Temple, who says:-"The faculty of faith has now turned inward, and cannot now accept any outer manifestations of the truth of God." But how, if this is only an illustration of the apostolic proverb that "unbelief is the sin which does so easily beset us"-but if the faculty of faith has turned inward and cannot now accept any outward manifestation of the truth of God, where and how is the standard to be fixed and known? Then, indeed, we are all left to wander in the world's wide maze

"And follow every wandering star."

What should we say if we were told that the conception of all measurement had now turned inward, and we could not now accept any outward manifestation of the truth of the inch or the ell, the foot or the yard? Well, we suspect we should have some very contradictory and heretical ells, and yards, and inches. What if we were told that the faculty of weight had turned inward, and that henceforth we could accept no outer manifestation of the truth of the pound, or the ounce, or the hundred?— what if all value were left to drift in this hopeless way? And shall we have a standard in our commerce, and none in our religion? Shall we not have some unvarying and immutable principle of weight and value? It is true there are densities and distances which, for all the purposes of life, are a myth; but planets have been weighed and measured. The balances and the scales by which the tradesman transacts his affairs are held by the same beam which weighs the worlds; and we know who "hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance;" but these principles of Divine mensuration descend to the very lowest details of personal and private equity. It is most true that we must attain to a state within, but we must measure it by a state without. We must "compare" our "spiritual things with spiritual"-our spiritual state with God's spiritual standard. Manners and customs, indeed, may change; but it will also follow, from Dr. Temple's teaching, that there is no immutable morality.