he thought subjects through which Maurice only touched, staid and toiled where Maurice simply alighted. Hence the two books that he produced cannot be matched by any in Maurice's voluminous collection. It is also true that the tie was not more that of theological agreement than of sympathy with the intellectual temper and feeling of Maurice, with his general characteristics and attitude quite as much as with his specific opinions. I do not intend to convey the impression that Dr. Mulford was not responsive to the religious thought of the age. On the contrary, he was keenly alive to what is called the modern spirit in theology; but his part in it was not that of following, but leading. Follow indeed he seems to have done; but for the same reason and in the same way that he did original work in politics, so he would have done in theology had the subject come to him as freshly. Had there been no Coleridge and Thomas Erskine and Maurice and Bushnell and Robertson, Mulford would have been a theologian of the same general character as now. His work on "The Nation" shows his ability to grasp a great theme in an original way; and the close alliance he discovered between political science and Christianity would have led him to substantially the same theological conceptions. Every page of "The Republic of God" may be read between the lines of "The Nation." It is sometimes said of him that he is vague, that he has no system and no formal logic; but it would be difficult to find an author whose years from first to last are linked together in such harmony, and whose positions on all subjects are joined by so rigid and consistent a logic.

it were, by an impulse of its own. He was no self-determining maker of books or collaborator with publishers, but finding himself with a message, he had no rest till it was spoken. The history of such a mind in its relation to the religious thought of the age is worth heeding, if we can get at it. It is now quite the custom to regard special thought or belief as a matter of pedigree; if one puts an emphasis upon his faith or shows a lack, it must be traced to some other mind, and so back to some great final name like Coleridge or Hegel or Calvin. But spiritual history cannot be so compassed; it may be self-originating. Some event in personal history, some peculiarity of mind, some obscure and remote influence may indeed cause a rift in the frame-work of belief through which it all flows out to be remolded in a form consonant with later knowledge. The origin of doubt, or denial, or question, or protest in matters of religion is often obscure and unknown even to self, and is quite as likely to spring out of depths within or from seeming accident as from what is called the spirit of the age. On my first serious interchange of thought with Dr. Mulford in 1856, I found him permeated with the influence of Maurice to a degree that suggested an absence of criticism, but I am now inclined to think that the main lines of his theology were fixed before the Jelf controversy made Maurice known here. In minds of the cast of Dr. Mulford's the reaction against Calvinism comes early and with power. Some features of his life in college are to be regarded in the light of a transition from one form of faith to another; there was a seeming indifference which was the mask of agonizing doubt. It is probable that he had mainly thought himself clear before he had opened a book of theology, and that his teachers then, as ever after, were the Bible, the masters in literature, and human life itself within and about him. But Maurice came to him like native air, the vast complement of his own immature thought, and he reveled in him without limit or criticism. He never wavered nor lessened in his almost boundless regard for Maurice, but he came to quote and name him less frequently. He may be regarded as very early ceasing to sit at the feet of his master and soon coming to walk by his side, and at last as having as long and stout a stride. Both are now beyond the reach of human comparison, and so I may say that in the last few years of his life his intellectual grasp seemed stronger and his vision clearer than that of his great teacher. He had not the saintliness of Maurice, nor did he trouble himself with such questions as subscription, which Maurice deemed important, nor did he enter upon so broad fields of study; but

While Dr. Mulford responded fully to the modern movement in theology, he was little affected by it as it appeared in New England. The protest made by him in Andover was total and fundamental. The strife in the always progressive theology of New England — and it was never more rapid in its onward movement than it was thirty years ago- was towards reasonableness and breadth, but it was without freedom. It must first be Calvinistic and then, if possible, in some way reasonable; it must be broad and free, but always under some overshadowing doctrine of divine sovereignty; it was always paying out cable to the same old anchor and interpreting the larger swing as a voyage. Hence it did not succeed in preventing, nor later in counteracting, the Unitarian defection. It beat a path for Methodism and Universalism. It grew more and more intellectual, but it never reached the end of its argument; and so, while protesting against rationalism, it became itself a system of mere reason and formal logic with some wire-like attachments of bib

lical texts. Dr. Bushnell broke away from the orthodoxy of the day - made indifferent to him by his genius and doubly indifferent by insight and breadth of vision. Dr. Mulford, though profoundly admiring Dr. Bushnell, never fell into his habit of thought. It is very significant and revealing that Bushnell, with his superb rhetoric and spiritual insight and lofty freedom, made less appeal to the young Mulford than such an author as Thomas Erskine. The reason is that in one there was a subordination of the logical sense to the imagination, while the other struck straight to the heart of the Gospel with undivertible gaze. Dr. Bushnell often suggests the suspicion that he is trying to prove what he has already, by some other process, decided to be true; his way often lies through the air, and sometimes through the clouds. But Erskine and Maurice, whatever else may be said of them, were pitiless exegetes, with very slight regard for any systems or methods or conclusions beyond what they found in the revelation of God. Mulford is often spoken of, as these men were, as vague and fanciful; but these impressions are caught from surface features of his style. His strongest quality and few men ever possessed it in a higher degree is a relentless logic; but his logic is not that of dialectics.

The modern movement in theology may be said to have two main features, rationality and breadth; it consists with knowledge and it is larger than any system. These features are conspicuously illustrated in "The Republic of God." It begins by affirming that the consciousness of God comes into the consciousness of man through experience. Here is the appeal to life-a keynote that sounds throughout the book. The experience of the individual, the family, and the nation in the life of humanity, here is the revelation of God. This experience tends towards personality through freedom and morality, and so comes to a consciousness of God as personal and free and moral. As man becomes a person, he knows God as a person, and so comes into relations with God. Upon such a foundation - the denial and reverse of agnosticism and materialism — the author builds his fabric by a succession of statements, each one of which is the result of close reasoning, but is without its dialectic form. He is careful to show that personality does not involve limitation. The personality of man is grounded in the personality of God, and God is known through a realization of personality; as man knows himself he knows God, and so comes to a sense of freedom and morality and immortality. The most striking part of the book is that in which Dr. Mulford discusses the relations of Christianity to religion and philosophy, shocking

his readers at first by his emphatic assertion that "the revelation of and in Christ is not a religion and it is not a philosophy," - regarding it as a universal or total under which these are specifics. Christianity is not a religion, but a revelation; it is not one of ten great religions, but is God revealed in the life of humanity. It is not a cultus nor a speculative system, but is the divine order of human society. The main part of the book is devoted to the revelation by Christ,― the central thought of which is Christ's perfect oneness with the Father, and also with humanity; the latter is personal and universal; the history of Christ in death and resurrection and ascension and in the Holy Spirit is the history of humanity; the work of the Spirit in the conviction of sin and of righteousness and of judgment is the continuous revelation of God in and by Christ in the life of humanity. This is not a far-away, a future, a here-and-there and now-and-then process, but is a present, continuous, and universal process. It is here that Dr. Mulford links the revelation in Christ to that sentiment of humanity now so prevalent, making the former inclusive of the latter. His treatment of eschatological subjects is under a conception of eternity as a term of absoluteness, and not of time; the eternal world is here and now, not there and thereafter. He makes no dogmatic assertions as to destiny, but leaves such themes under the general spirit, scope, and trend of the Gospel as a redemption of the world, and so enveloped in an atmosphere of hope, but with an absolute and eternal emphasis of condemnation upon sin.

If it were asked in what the power of this book consists, or what is its peculiarity, the answer would be that it is not marked so much by originality as by thoroughness and intensity of vision from a certain standpoint,namely, the living God. His point of view gives him his vision and scope, and his fidelity to it is his power. The book seems to be dogmatic-an appearance that passes away when it is seen that the assertions are a succession of apprehensions or sights which when taken together form a self-supporting unity. As a whole, the book is the reverse of dogmatic and is profoundly scientific, presenting a view of theology in harmony with the human mind and dealing with the problems of life in a satisfactory way. It is like a look from the sun at the solar system, which so becomes a simple and self-explaining thing - the point of view rendering needless the long and intricate calculations necessary if the view be taken from the earth. As astronomy is a simple science to one who stands in the sun, so theology is a plain matter to one who stands beside God."

The larger synthesis which Dr. Mulford thus makes displaces smaller theories, and vindicates itself by its simplicity and large reasonableness. In other words, he sees his subject in "the totality of its relations." When a writer does this, we do not accuse him of dogmatism, nor ask him to prove a point; if he will mount on his wings and tell us what he sees, we will accept his report. Still, while Dr. Mulford appeared simply to announce his thought, his discovery of it was by a slow, severe, plodding process and by exact logical stages. He spoke as a seer, but he was first a patient and careful thinker and student. His sympathy and imagination were large and active, but they never so gilded a sophistry that it dazzled his judgment.

While "The Republic of God" is eminently a fair and correct interpretation of Christianity, we value more highly the atmosphere of the book, and find here its greatest power and originality. It is the utterance of a great mind and bears its stamp. It is lofty beyond the usual sense of the word. It is passionless as to earthly feeling, but it is keyed to the fervency of heaven. It is world-wide apart from all theological strife; it makes no recognition of parties or schools, but is taken up and possessed by the one thought of the revelation of God in and by Christ in the life of humanity. In form it has the loftiest dignity; it shows no strife or struggle of words after emphasis, but has the calm of absolute conviction. The thought runs along the borders of poetry and sentiment, and one step aside would lead into the world of prophetic ecstasy. Indeed, the scriptural key to his theological and political thought would be found in the Apocalypse, a book to him of intense reality and present meaning. His style is not at first an easy one to read; it presupposes too much in the reader; it gives the last stages only of a process of thought, and requires one's assent to the whole; it is abstract and without emphasis, but it has a charm fully realized only when his pages were read by himself. Then the rhythmic form of the sentences appeared,falling from his deep and, as it were, distant voice like the breaking of waves on a sandy beach.

I would thus, if possible, indicate the spirit in which this man wrote upon theology. If a hard dialectic; if casting down other systems and setting up one's own; if a deft dove-tail

ing of doctrines and texts; if outcry for a school or zeal for orthodoxy are the signs of a theologian,- then he was not one. But if unfolding the relation of Christianity to the world is the real work of a theologian, he was one. That he possessed a glorious imagination; that he was awed almost into silence before eternal and infinite truth; that his thought trembled with deepest emotion and was always ready to burst into adoring ecstasy; that his sense of humanity ensphered and colored the whole action of his mind,— these qualities serve to make him that sort of theologian now needed, and still more to be needed as Christianity is applied in the redemption of society and comes to its own fullness. Dr. Mulford might be styled a social theologian. Theology has chiefly played about the individual; it needs no prophet to see that its field is to be humanity in a collective sense. It is henceforth to interpret the truth that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." Hence his work in some sense is prophetic in its nature; it provides for the questions which are now rising into the consciousness of the age and pressing to the front. It is the gravest mistake to regard him as the exponent of certain minor questions of destiny; his indifference to the current discussions of such questions was so great as to shut them out from even private conversation. Still, he allowed no inhuman theology or narrow exegesis to blur the glory and the reality of Redemption.

The true field of his life and activity is in the future. As the nation unfolds its life and discloses the divine plan on which it is built, it will be seen that this young scholar traced its lines and revealed its secret. And so also as humanity moves on in fulfillment of the redemptive purpose of God, it will be seen that the same hand has traced its mighty movement,—if not with absolute correctness, yet so near that he may be counted among the prophets and teachers sent from God. His character and his work have been well set down in the lines which Whittier addressed to his memory:

Unnoted as the setting of a star

He passed; and sect and party scarcely knew When from their midst a sage and seer withdrew To fitter audience, where the great dead are In God's republic of the heart and mind, Leaving no purer, nobler soul behind.

T. T. Munger.