Well, H., have you read the "Essays and Reviews?"

H. I have; I am somewhat late in doing so; I thought I might have seen them abroad, but the book was not sent me as I expected. But my sojourn there has enabled me to judge somewhat more distinctly of the character of this effort. As might be supposed, it is not an isolated one in the remarkable working of principles, both good and evil, which we see in the present day.

W. You do not mean that rationalism is on the increase in Germany (I think you were last in that country).

H. By no means. It had found the extreme of its limits both religiously and philosophically, and the reaction has necessarily set in: for truth there is, and good there is, at least in God, in spite of man; and when men have displayed the extremes to which the evil of human nature and human will and its revolt against God can go, there is, under divine light (at least till man, as we read, be given up to believe a lie) a reaction of natural conscience, and the instinct which knows and feels that a God there is, and that He is and must be good. Under this influence man revolts against what shocks a conscience informed by Christianity, and, in a general way, desires to have to say to God, because he has learned that He is good, and feels that a bad God, a God with whom we have nothing to do, and a revelation that is only deceit and falsehood, can give no comfort. I have no thought that a man can go right without grace; but there is a natural conscience which sees through dishonesty, and wants truth and grace -- sees, at least, that the contrary is not a true representation of God. It wants something more sure in a revelation than a product of man's mind, a history of the Hebrew monarchy, or an inspiration somewhat, perhaps, superior to Shakespeare, which learned men can criticise. This may do for Essayists and Reviewers, but it will not do for the wants of the soul in daily life. It will not do for the poor. Such views may make pretentious infidels of them, retailing what they have read, and thinking themselves wise, because they have a certain number of objections against what is good and blessed; but they can give no help or food to any. I have always remarked of infidels, or infidel writers (for it is better to call things by their names), that they can make you doubt (no wonder) of many things, but they can give you nothing. They never give you one certain truth. The word of God gives you many certain truths. It makes you doubt of nothing It has no need; for it possesses the truth, and gives what is positive. This is an immense difference: it stamps both morally. When infidel minds speak of a love of truth, they never, that I can see, go farther than Pilate: What is truth? It is never a holding fast truth they have got, but a casting doubt on what others believe, and, professing to search for it, always to be ready to receive it, I suppose because they have never got it.

W. But when you speak of the wants of the soul, do you believe that in the mass of men these spiritual wants exist?

H. I believe there are hidden wants everywhere. I do not say a new nature, a changed will, but cravings of a soul that has capacities beyond the sphere in which it is imprisoned; rarely shewing themselves in the toil and follies of life, but which press into notice on particular occasions through the disordered throng of thoughts which crowd the avenues and people the busy interior of a dissipated and care-burdened existence. But it is not of this I speak now. I think that the mass of the poor have more reality of thought than reasoners -- see more justly the true character of things. The occupation with labour gives this. They toil to exist. That is now God's ordinance. What they get outside it must be real. Speculation has no place here. They may know nothing of a revelation, but if they have the thought that there is one, they want one that is a revelation from God -- something He has told them, not an improved Shakespeare. If they have Diana and Jupiter, they take Diana and Jupiter as realities. If they are under the law of Moses, they will not spiritualize everything with Philo, or his modern imitators. They will take it as Moses gave it, or not at all. If they are idolaters, they will be idolaters bona fide, not readers of Lucian. If they are sceptical -- if this pervades the population -- not merely religion but the state is near its end. By that I mean society. When man speculates on the sanctions of social life -- when the divine ever-living power of faith is gone, what holds man subject to something superior to himself -- when what links man to man is gone, self is dominant, conscious that it is self. A few minds may speculate on how much may be true, and seek refined notions out of the condemned mass of materials: the mass of men will be indifferent to all. Despotism or anarchy ensues. How long did the Roman empire survive Lucian, who was but a sign of the times? or the French monarchy the Encyclopedists? On the fall of Rome Christianity came in as a bond; now I see not what will, save the faithfulness of God and the Lord Himself from heaven. This does not prove that anything is true, I admit; but it proves that there is moral power in faith, and that the absence of faith is the destruction of society. And upon the face of it, the faith of the masses is not discriminative speculation.

W. But are you one of those who take religion to be a means subservient to society?

H. God forbid. The revelation of God is, for me, the putting an immortal soul, through grace, in communication with the eternal fountain of blessedness, of light, of love -- with God Himself. Doubtless, most important revelations accompany it, necessary for the existence or full development of this. I have God manifest in the flesh. I have the blessed relationships of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, without which it is impossible for man to be thus connected with God. Besides, I have the Church united to Christ -- subjects into which I cannot enter now, but which (while, when revealed, they give to us conscious links of union with what is divine, and develop divine affections in the relationships they place us in) must be the subject of revelation. Man's mind cannot go beyond its own sphere. It is not God, and, if it is to be really elevated, must be elevated by something that is outside and above itself. That is, there must be a positive revelation of something not within the sphere of its own proper apprehensions. It may develop its own powers, it may create poetically what is within the sphere of those powers; but in the nature of things it cannot by itself get beyond itself. You may have Shakespeare to give all the scope of the human mind, all its workings, in a course of pictures, from its highest to its lowest forms, with a graphic truth which may interest in the most absorbing way minds inferior to his -- minds which cannot do this for themselves; but it is always and must be the human mind, and within the sphere of its own limits, or it would not be the human mind. The consequence is that, though it may elevate these inferior minds above their level, it contents them with man, and in result, by excluding God, degrades them from what they might be. Poetry is the effort of the human mind to create, by imagination, a sphere beyond materialism, which faith gives in realities. But then it cannot rise above the level of its source, whatever displays of force there may be by its being conducted in a secret channel, and not exposed to be wasted in the open intercourse of the world. In result, it sinks down to the level towards which all human nature runs, and then settles, not to rise again. There may be a certain subjective development of mind in its use, but no more.

W. But men speak of the inspiration of Shakespeare and others -- even of ordinary men under happy or religious influences.

H. There is a confusion of language and thought between revelation and inspiration. We may use the latter term figuratively of the animated efforts of the human mind, compared with the platitudes of ordinary life, or, as is habitually done, of the instrumental power by which unknown truths are communicated by God to the human mind. But revelation is quite another thing, of which inspiration in the highest sense is but the form or instrument (for it is both) -- that is, the actual presentation to us of an object, or a truth, or a fact not otherwise known. Here I get an additional object not otherwise obtained for the human mind. As to will, moral or spiritual qualities, the mind may or may not be capable of discerning or appreciating it. That is a theological question, a most important one, but not exactly our topic now. But revelation is the declaration, the actual promulgation, of otherwise unknown truths -- often those which could not otherwise be known. Sometimes of those which in the actual condition of the individuals could not be known.

There is another enormous moral mistake, that internal power is that by which man advances in the moral scale of being. Power in man is limited to what man is. That is no advance beyond what he is. An acorn may become an oak, but in its nature it is never but an oak. Even so power is not the real thing that elevates man (though in man there is another question: an oak is not a corrupt fallen thing). "I can do all that may become a man; who can do more is none." There is man's power at its limit. If I may quote one who amongst men had hardly his like, I find more; I only say now, he pretends to more: let history and facts judge of his claim: -- "I can do all things through him that strengtheneth me." Here I find another and divine source of strength carrying him morally beyond man.

But (to state to you distinctly the principle I refer to) a dependent being (and a creature is a dependent being or a revolted one, perhaps a revolted dependent one) is elevated by its wants, not by its powers. Its powers may develop it, but cannot elevate it. But if I have a want, which is not power, and there is that which meets my want outside myself, I become acquainted with it. I appreciate it, not by power, but by dependence on the quality by which my want is supplied. Hunger is not power; but it enjoys and appropriates food which gives power. Weakness is not power; but if my languid body leans on kindly and supporting strength, my felt weakness makes me know what strength is. But I learn more by it. I learn the kindness, patience, goodness, readiness, help, and perseverance in helping which sustain me. I have the experience of independent strength, adapted, suited to my weakness. I know its capacity to sustain what is beyond itself, which is not my power elevating itself in internal development -- self-filling power. There is love.

Now this relationship of wants to that which supplies them in another is the link between my nature and all the qualities of the nature I lean on, and which supplies these wants. I know its qualities by the way it meets my not having them -- my want of power. It is a moral link too. I know love by it, and all the unfolding of goodness; self-power never does. The exaltation of what is human in itself is the positive loss of what is divine, that is, infinite positive loss. There is immense moral depth in the apostle's word: When I am weak, then am I strong. And the more I have of God, and the more absolutely it is so, the more I gain. All is appropriated, but self is destroyed. It is not that I cease to exist, or to enjoy. It is not a Buddhist or stoical pantheistic absorption into God. I am always the conscious I for ever; yet an I which does not think of I, but of God in whom its delight is. It is a wonderful perfection -- an absolute delight in what is perfect, but in what is perfect out of ourselves, so that self is morally annihilated, though it always is there personally to enjoy. This is partly now in the form of thirst, though there be enjoyment -- hereafter, for those who have it, perfect enjoyment face to face. God alone is sufficient for Himself, is aujtarce", and hence not self-seeking, for that comes from not being satisfied, not sufficient for self. Out of Him the aujtarceia is pride, satisfaction with misery, and itself a sin; dependence is the right, holy, loving, excellent place. To be independent, if we are not God, is folly, stupidity, and a lie, living in a lie. If we are God, we must be the only one, or we are not it at all. Yet in Christianity we are made partakers of the divine nature, in order to our having the fullest capacity of enjoyment; but for that very reason we have (He being perfectly revealed) such a knowledge of Him as makes us undividedly delight in His infinite excellence, and makes our dependence to be our deriving in love from infinite excellence, and in our normal state unmingled delight in it.

The connection of the derivative and perfect objective character of divine life and love is what is so brought out in John, particularly in his epistle; it makes its essential depth and beauty, and, when not seized because not possessed, its difficulty and apparently mystic character. It is this which makes the Trinity have so sure and perfect a place to the soul. I do not use this as a proof, save as the real present enjoyment of anything proves to the heart it is true. In the Father I have absolute Godhead in its own intrinsic permanent perfection. In the Son I find what is divine (if not in the same perfection, I have not God revealed) brought out in man, fully wrought into all that is sinlessly human; so that it is not only suited to man but to be apprehended (if morally capable of it) by man. All the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily, at the same time in the personal relationship of Son. And the Holy Ghost (besides my having a life from God, and so being partaker of the divine nature) is the power in me (morally as well as in power of apprehension) by which I apprehend and enter into communion with God, with the Father and the Son; while this presence of the Holy Ghost secures in my feebleness the truth and purity of this communion, because any inconsistency grieves Him; and He works in the conscience by the revelation of God, though not then in communion.

Now you must see that there is much that must be directly revealed in such subjects as these. Even of what is bodily brought before us, as in the life of Jesus on earth, though in itself a revelation, an account of it is needed, not only to perpetuate it -- which is quite true -- but also to give a divine view of the thing revealed, which, it is evident, man by sight would have hardly seized in its full extent or bearings; or could not in its links with other unseen or unknown things. But besides this we want a divine account of what is short of the revelation of God Himself to man; namely, a revelation of the terms on which man stood with Him, and of His ways with man. This will involve man's imperfection, and, if historically given, the expression of that imperfection, but will be God's account of it.

W. Yes; but it is just when we get on this ground that there are difficulties and objections which perplex the mind difficulties I mean both as to the record of truth, and as to the moral proprieties of evangelical truths.

H. I do not deny it, not that I judge they are very weighty. But as to the first point, it does not surprise me that, in a record which reaches over some fifteen hundred years or more, committed to the care of man -- for that it professes to be -- I should find the traces of the infirmity of man, while its state in those circumstances, and its whole history, is the most striking possible proof of the providence of God. It is of the essence of a revelation made in grace, to be adapted to man, connected with man, to pass through the medium of man's moral nature, and be put, so to speak, into his hands. It could not draw the sympathies of his nature in the same way if it did not. It would not associate man with God, if it did not connect God and man in interests, affections, moral nature, if it did not give a common ground of moral association. Hence the New Testament does it much more than the Old -- is more familiar, more human, takes its place more in every element of human circumstances.

In the Old, after the revelation of the creation, as a starting-point and sphere of God's manifestation by and in man, I find history as to which I am left to judge morally -- most instructive history, if I know how to use it; but a public government of this world, or occasional relationships between God and man, in which I have to form a spiritual judgment how far men are up to the height of a true association with God. For the true link was not yet formed by the full revelation of God in grace: only a partial revelation of it anticipatively, and particular communications; and God dwelt in the thick darkness; then oracular dicta, a "Thus saith the Lord" -- God shewing grace, speaking to man, but speaking Himself alone -- no doubt by the mouth of men, His word using them so as to approach man in sovereign goodness where man had failed. The word of the Lord came to such a one, it is said. But it was as an instrument, a channel of communication, so that they searched out the meaning of their own prophecies.

In the New, I find a history of perfection; for God is manifest in the flesh. It is not communications from a God not revealed, but the revelation of God. Hence it is perfect on His part in that association of which I spoke. It is the Word made flesh -- God in man moving in the circumstances of men amongst men, and is not what I have to judge of spiritually in man, but the perfection which judges all else -- the truth, an object, which, if I have a heart capable of seeing it and loving it, engages it absolutely, because it is God, because it is man, because it is God in man and I am a man; the perfect object linking itself with every moral delight of my new nature, meeting at the same time every want of my moral being in perfect grace; finding in those wants, yea, even in my sins, the occasion of manifesting grace to it, of making me know God by them -- at least by the perception of the way He meets them in love. It forms and fills the capacities of my nature in what is divine, as beauty does a capacity to perceive it. Yet it meets all my wants with good, which puts man in his right place of dependence, in grace, on God; but gives entire confidence, because He is come as myself, as far as being a man in everything but what is a defect in man (that is, sin). He is that by which I judge everything, not which I have to judge as a history of man, though it be of man in various relationships with God.

Besides, I have in the New Testament another immensely important element of our relationship with God. This blessed One was rejected. Such is the history we have. It is the full discovery of this solemn truth, that the carnal mind is enmity against God. And the other part of the New Testament is the unfolding of the way in which, through God's being sovereign in love over man's evil, He has, in the perfect display of righteousness, been able -- glorifying Himself perfectly in the work of Christ in the putting away of evil -- to associate man in his new nature with Himself, out of the reach of the evil, and according to His own perfection, where the feebleness and the misery will and can exist no longer. Thus a Perfect heavenly relationship is formed, ourselves holy and without blame before Him in love, and His own children in His house, associated with and like Him who became a man for us in grace. To this are added the various exercises accompanying the knowledge and faith of this in weakness, and the fitting display of the fruits of it in those partakers of this life, in connection with heaven, but in the weakness of an earthly vessel. This display of the divine in man, and the bringing man up to God in His own blessedness, form the contents of the New Testament: we may add, the setting the world right ultimately, in peace, by the divine government in man.

What I have just remarked, if you examine it a little closely, you will find to be the difference between the writings of Paul and John, and the reason of the special attractiveness of the writings of the latter. John brings God down in man to earth. It is the divine down here, and it is the perfection of loveliness and truth. Paul brings man out of the earth and up to heaven. You will see that, save in casual allusions necessarily made or complementary to the main subject, John never takes even Christ up to heaven. He brings the divine person- down here in human kindness, diffusing what is perfectly divine into the hearts of men that can receive Him, through his own person, and at any rate manifesting it among them. And hence too it is, that it was John's part to go on to the Apocalypse; because, though in certain respects on much lower ground, inasmuch as it is the government of the world, it is still the display of God's ways and character on the earth.

W. This to me, though thus briefly sketched, is profoundly interesting. But what place do the Psalms hold in this view of the character of the Old and New Testaments?

H. I was going to say a word on them. They have their own and a very peculiar place. We have no devotional pieces prepared for the Church in the New Testament, which gives this point more importance, and I think additionally shews the grace of God, and the perfect and divine harmony of that book we call the Bible. I say, that book; for, though there be many authors instrumentally, it is one book -- though our Bibliotheca Sancta, as Jerome says.

In the New Testament the saints (having the knowledge of perfect divine favour, the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost given to them, and that blessed Spirit dwelling in them) are supposed to be capable of praising God freely. It is expressed in a very wonderful manner in Psalm 22. After giving prophetic utterance to the sorrows of Christ, and His being forsaken of God, He is heard from the horns of the unicorn. As soon as He enters into the full light of His Father's countenance, according to the power of redemption and the work that He had wrought, He declares His Father's name, as He thus knows it, to His brethren: He puts them in relationship with the Father as He is Himself; as He historically did, "Go tell my brethren ... I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." This was a position entirely new, consequent upon His resurrection, in which He had not only taken a new place as man, but acquired it for them. Then in the psalm He says, "In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee." Our praises then are the free and joyful following of Christ in the praises which He can raise, as man, in entering into the full light of His Father's countenance, according to the work He has wrought. But this could not be till perfect and intimate love was revealed to man, and men were brought, according to a righteous exercise of it, into the enjoyment of the light of God's countenance, according to the value of that work which had given them the title to be there.

Hence, if I should find the same perfection portrayed in the Old Testament as in the New, I should know it was not true. Before the revelation of God Himself, and our being brought on a new footing into His presence (that is, in the Old Testament), the dealings of God with man, on the moral condition in which He was as a child of Adam, are unfolded -- God never leaving Himself without witness, for He is good, but for a time leaving man without an express revelation; afterwards giving one of promise or of law, so that the moral nature of man should be wrought on by hopes, fears, promises, warnings, judgments, and mercies. In a word, God was dealing with man on the ground of man's responsibility, and trying the effect of motives. Could man in flesh, walking on the earth, be in relationship with God? It was not God Himself revealed, and man reconciled to Him according to His unclouded heavenly character, but God governing the earth in mercy and righteousness, and man's moral condition tested thereby: on the one hand, wickedness and self-will breaking forth, and, where there was really grace, failure no doubt, but faith in God, confidence, hope, integrity, acknowledgment of sin, dependence on and delighting in Him, in spite of all. But man, not being reconciled to God, knows God only by His ways, and a word adapted to man in this outside position. How, with failure and conscious sin, could that confidence be maintained, without which no heart-link could exist? If we are reconciled to God, where the Spirit of adoption is, when by one offering we are perfected for ever, praise is easy and spontaneous, though acknowledgment of failure be called for. If repeated sacrifices give momentary ease, yet even these were the witness that sin still subsisted. The way into the holiest was not yet made manifest; nor was God revealed outside it. He was a God of hope, not of communion.

Here the Psalms, in the most gracious and lovely way, find their place, not the peaceful breathings of a reconciled soul, but God furnishing the true but tried soul with divinely given and therefore surely accepted expressions of every feeling which a soul in such a state could need to express, and the witness of the entire sympathy of the Spirit of Christ in all their sorrows and exercises of heart. To be perfect, man must be within -- children in a new accepted state. But for the heart divinely quickened, and exercised without -- wishing, hoping, fearing, confiding, yet tried, guilty, sometimes almost despairing, yet still clinging -- the Spirit of Jehovah puts His word in the tongue of the Psalmist to give a divine utterance to otherwise a perhaps distrusted feeling, or to draw the heart from a feeling of distrust: and the Psalms become the comfort of every tried and godly soul. Hence it is that, as the expression of a soul tried in the present dark government of this world, the judgment and destruction of enemies in this world is looked for -- a judgment which must take place for the power of evil to be removed by government out of it. The Christian has nothing to do with that, because he is entirely associated with heaven, enters within the veil by a new and living way, and will leave the evil to go to heaven, and is above it morally all his life long. Hence the thoughts and feelings of spiritual minds in the Old Testament must be imperfect. They are the fruit of grace, giving confidence to the soul when yet far from God, and the expression of its feelings at that distance, and according to the state it finds itself in, looking to God in and out of that. And all this I must have to know what the true condition of the human heart is, looked at in its exercised responsible condition out of paradise: man with a knowledge of good and evil; the goodness and righteousness of God as regards that state being revealed to him, and all the various workings of his nature under this provided for, with the promise of a better deliverance to come. Christianity is another thing altogether: exercises there are, no doubt, but they are the exercises of a reconciled soul, which has its place and dwelling with God, known Himself in love.

W. But you do not feign that Old Testament saints looked only for temporal promises.

H. I do not. I do not doubt that, according to the measure of their faith, though they did look for the exercise of God's government for deliverance here, yet in the delay of this they looked out of it all to a better place, though obscurely enough. But this changes nothing. They looked to it as a resource out of a scene they belonged to. The Christian dwells in it if in his right place, and has to cultivate the affections which belong to his Father's house as his own home. You will remark that I do not merely mean that in result Old Testament feelings are imperfect, for that may well be said of ours; but that the basis of them, the moral sphere in which they moved, necessarily made them imperfect; they were not in place, if they were not. God might inspire feelings right for those without -- hope, desire, confidence; but He could not truly inspire to those without the feelings which expressed being within, for those feelings would not have been true. My feelings, if right, are the feelings of one within in my Father's house as a known home, reconciled to God. Theirs, if right, were those of persons without, looking for the present government of this world, and confiding in God in spite of subsisting evil in a world to which they belonged. He that is of the earth is earthy, says the greatest born of woman, and speaketh of the earth: He that cometh from heaven is above all; and what He hath seen and heard that He testifieth.

W. I think I understand you; but it was very great grace God's entering into the very sorrows and condition of an earthly people, at least, by His Spirit and word, furnishing them with assurances of His faithfulness, and expressions for a heart which could not speak as at peace, reconciled, and within, and yet needed the sense and sustaining of favour. Yet of course it is better to have affections which belong to the house developed within as children of the house. It gives a wonderfully interesting and enlarged scope of thought in reading scripture, and makes God more familiar with the soul as truly estimating and dealing with its thoughts. But these saints will be in heaven.

H. Doubtless they will. They received that divine nature which has its place there, but not in the conscious heavenly relationship formed on known redemption. God had reserved some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. They will be made perfect in resurrection; but what a lesson shall we have learnt -- ay, will the angels have learnt, of the ways and dealings and goodness of God, and, instead of that miserable aujtarceia which was the heathen's boast, what a moulding of a thousand excellent feelings through dependence on God, in the midst of evil and in the sense of imperfection, which He met by His word as a resource for faith! How tender and familiar, while exalting His majesty by goodness, God thus becomes! Yet it was right we should understand that by a perfect sacrifice we could in a new nature enjoy God as He is in Himself, and that is our christian place. This is what the apostle unfolds in its elements in Romans 5. Being justified (for it must be a divinely righteous thing, or it is not really introduction to God's nature) we have peace with God: as regards all evil the question is settled; grace or favour wherein we stand; our hope that of the glory of God Himself. These, you would say, are all. Yes, as regards my place, but not my exercises of heart. "Not only so, but we glory in tribulations," not looking out of them merely in hope, but glorying in them as a refining work, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given to us; and I have the key to all my sorrows: God's love is the joy of my heart. Hence, again, not only so, but I joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have now received the reconciliation.

W. It makes rationalism and infidelity appear very superficial.

H. There is nothing more characteristic of it than superficiality. It never gets beyond the bark and shell of the divine fruit of the word. In the midst of the most admirable development of divine ways, it will stop to complain that the numberings of Israel and Judah are not the same in Samuel and Chronicles. How, they ask me, do you account for that? Suppose I answer (though in this case there is not much difficulty) I cannot account for it at all -- I should not be a bit the worse off. I have a positive proof of perfect divine wisdom in the book and in all its details, for these details give to the whole the character it has. Man's estimate of things, partly influenced by the Spirit of God -- his thoughts, his feelings, the evil, the rebellions, the faults, the unbelief, the way God met it all go to make up the picture of what man was before God, and the scene of God's dealings in mercy and truth with men, till, as it is expressed, mercy and truth meet together, and righteousness and peace kiss each other. Every detail lost, would be a loss of the completeness. Some trait would fail of these wonderful unfoldings of what man is in relationship with God. Suppose my intelligence of some of the details fails me, that I cannot account for some phenomenon, I lose something of course -- the proofs of the completeness. The dealings of God, however, have not disappeared. I cannot (I suppose the case) explain some particular point, nor solve an apparent discrepancy in a number. I pity the person whose perception of the perfection of all is hindered by a difficulty he cannot explain. To my mind the greatest part of these difficulties is the fruit of the ignorance and traditional views of the objectors. This volume proves it. I may not be able to solve, God may try our faith by, some such things, through the human weakness of those to whom these divine oracles were entrusted; but He will always answer and bless our faith.

W. Have you any case on your mind?

H. I judge that superficiality is universally characteristic of rationalist views, but I will allude to one prominent subject with them. Before I heard of rationalists I had, as others no doubt, clearly seen the Petrine and Pauline and Johannean characters into which parts of the divine revelation were thrown. Of the beauty and moral harmony, the goodness of God in this, the enormous gain and advantage to us, which fill the believer's mind, they have not the smallest perception. They can only spell out possible historical inconsistencies, and think of the books as the fruit of some ecclesiastical intrigues to reconcile christian factions, or give the authority of apostolic names to cover resistance to heresies come in long after. That God in perfect love to man should give in one instruction how far the Christian, redeemed from the world, should, as a pilgrim in it, be connected with its government by God as more directly displayed in the Old Testament, as Peter does; that the blessed revelation of God Himself (as it is expressed, No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him) and of eternal life in Him in all its nature and qualities, should be given in John; and man presented to God in righteousness and resurrection, and conferred privileges in heaven, be developed in Paul: -- all this is lost on them. They are trying to prove it imposture, or reconcile dates, or discuss the possible author, provided no one pretend it to be genuine. There is an incapacity to perceive the divine which is difficult to conceive. Yet I believe it is useful. Happily the most advanced of these wise men are so entirely unhistorical, that they have no credit with sober minds, even with those who are not much affected by the divine.

English theologians are so shut up in traditional lore, that they think rationalists have upset all inspiration, if they overthrow their own traditions; just as a poor Roman Catholic turns infidel often, if he comes to think a bit of bread is not the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the Lord Jesus. Thus our Essayists tell us as a great discovery, that no man can now suppose that the tower of Babel was built to be high enough to escape the flood -- a puerile conceit of which there is not a trace in the scriptural account, but, instead of it, an immense moral historical fact. Their declared object was to make themselves a name, to have a centre, which should hinder their being scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. It was centralization; not with God for a centre, but to combine the whole race in one system of united power. This God confounded, and made them into nations, which they had never been before at all. This immense fact in the history of the world they see nothing of, and think they have made a great discovery which upsets the scripture account in shewing that it could not be to escape the flood. "No doubt they are the men, and wisdom shall die with them." We get in this part of scripture the two great elements on which all the world has proceeded since -- nationalities, and individual ambitions seizing imperial power. But you must never trust the statements of this class of persons as to anything. There is the greatest pretension to new light; and some very questionable hypothesis of a moment is stated as a settled ascertained fact, with a coolness which is a mark of the want of the honesty of a conscience fearing God. In these Essays and Reviews there are statements which are a disgrace to any upright or honest man -- Jesuitical to a degree which is sufficient to destroy all moral confidence in one who could have such sentiments; the publication of which proves that those who publish them are arrived at a point of moral insensibility at which they have lost the sense of shame in making their shame known. They are not aware how bad it is.

W. But this is rather strong language.

H. To be sure it is; there are acts and traits in which, if they do not excite indignation, one is a partaker morally. What do you say to this? --

"It is stated to be the affirming, that any of the Thirty-nine Articles are in any part 'superstitious, or erroneous.' Yet an Article may be very inexpedient, or become so; may be unintelligible, or not easily intelligible to ordinary people; it may be controversial, and such as to provoke controversy and keep it alive when otherwise it would subside; it may revive unnecessarily the remembrance of dead controversies all or any of these without being 'erroneous;' and though not 'superstitious,' some expressions may appear so: such as those which seem to impute an occult operation to the sacraments ... .

"The other canon which concerns subscription is the thirty-sixth, which contains two clauses explanatory, to some extent, of the meaning of ministerial subscription, 'That he alloweth the Book of Articles,' etc., and 'that he acknowledgeth the same to be agreeable to the word of God.' We 'allow' many things which we do not think wise or practically useful; as the less of two evils, or an evil which cannot be remedied, or of which the remedy is not attainable, or is uncertain in its operation, or is not in our power, or concerning which there is much difference of opinion, or where the initiation of any change does not belong to ourselves, either of the things as they are, or of searching for something better. Many acquiesce in, submit to, 'allow,' a law as it operates upon themselves which they would be horror-struck to have enacted; yet they would gladly and in conscience 'allow' and submit to it, as part of a constitution under which they live, against which they would never think of rebelling, which they would on no account undermine, for the many blessings of which they are fully grateful -- they would be silent and patient rather than join, even in appearance, the disturbers and breakers of its laws. Secondly, he 'acknowledgeth' to be agreeable to the word of God Some distinctions may be founded upon the word 'acknowledge.' He does not maintain, nor regard it as self-evident, nor originate it as his own feeling, spontaneous opinion, or conviction; but when it is suggested to him, put in a certain shape, when the intention of the framers is borne in mind, their probable purpose and design explained, together with the difficulties which surrounded them, he is not prepared to contradict, and he acknowledges. There is a great deal to be said, which had not at first occurred to him; many other better and wiser men than himself have acknowledged the same thing -- why should he be obstinate? Besides, he is young, and has plenty of time to reconsider it; or he is old, and continues to submit out of habit, and it would be too absurd, at his time of life, to be setting up as a church reformer ... .

"We have spoken hitherto of the signification of subscription which may be gathered from the canons; there is, also, a statute, a law of the land, which forbids, under penalties, the advisedly and directly contradicting any of them by ecclesiastics, and requires subscription with declaration of 'assent' from beneficed persons. This statute (13 Eliz cap. 12), three hundred years old, like many other old enactments, is not found to be very applicable to modern cases; although it is only about fifty years that it was said by Sir William Scott to be in viridi observantiâ. Nevertheless, its provisions would not easily be brought to bear on questions likely to be raised in our own days. The meshes are too open for modern refinements. For, not to repeat concerning the word 'assent' what has been said concerning 'allow' and 'acknowledge,' let the Articles be taken according to an obvious classification. Forms of expression, partly derived from modern modes of thought or metaphysical subjects, partly suggested by a better acquaintance than heretofore with the unsettled state of christian opinion in the immediately post-apostolic age, may be adopted with respect to the doctrines enunciated in the first five Articles without directly contradicting, impugning, or refusing assent to them, but passing by the side of them -- as with respect to the humanifying of the divine word and to the divine Personalities." -- Essays and Reviews, pages 182-186.

And remark here, this does not refer to minute discrepancies of view which are often connected with the very structure of individual mind where there is no real difference in substance. It is directly referred to the fundamental doctrines of the Incarnation and the Persons in the Trinity; as to this they justify signing your assent, meaning that you do not agree, but "pass by the side of them." Now I say, that a person who could unblushingly avow such opinions does not deserve to be heard on any moral question whatever.

W. But you cannot charge them all with the views of one.

H. Not of course as to details; but when they agree to appear together, and bind up their articles in a common volume to act together on the public mind, by a common testimony, they are practically associated -- I admit, not in details of opinions, but in the general purport and moral aim and character of the book. And I do say, that such pages as 180-186 put them out of court as to their title to be heard on divine things.

W. They are very bad, in truth.

H. We will leave that, though to my mind it is not an evil that the minds of all who believe in the revelation God has given should know where the system of rationalism leads morally -- at any rate, when it is attempted to be connected with established Christianity.

W. What were you saying as to the tendency you had observed on the Continent?

H. We have indeed had a long preface, but the perfect beauty of scripture leads one on.

W. It is no loss to have had this much. I believe that the positive perception of the excellency and beauty of what is true and good is the best security against cavil and difficulties. These difficulties take their right proportion and their right place. The truth is divinely certain. And there are difficulties, not objections.

H. Surely, and the difference is of all-importance. A person who makes an objection out of a difficulty proves the spirit he is animated with, especially when the thing he objects against is supremely lovely. He shews himself incapable of judging. Either he does not perceive the loveliness, or he dislikes it. But what you refer to was this, an effort to popularize, in France, as well as England, the infidel conclusions drawn from German research. I bought a translation of Job, by a first-rate oriental scholar in France, not heeding his opinions, but hoping to find some profound examination of the text. I found in his introduction merely the assumption, that all the German infidelity was a conceded matter, and putting it into plain French. This is just what the "Essays and Reviews" are attempting. Now where there is divine faith, this does not do much; but the mass may have educational faith in the scriptures, so that they are respected as true, and have a hold on the conscience. They cannot have by this the proof that the believer has, in that the word has divinely reached his own conscience. But when the confidence of those who are believers in the word as such, by habit and education merely, is gone, you have to begin farther back in the matter; the population are tending to apostasy, not mere heart unbelief; and that is what Satan is seeking to do now. It is not the open honest denial of the old deist, against which the claims of a denied Christianity raised with most a rampart in the conscience too strong to be overcome; but the keeping up the name and garb of Christianity, and blunting its edge and undermining its foundations, so that what is of God in it may be wholly given up, and the authority of God's word over the conscience gone; for if it be God's word it has absolute authority. A man that would speak of Shakespeare having authority over my conscience would be a fool. They may parade human inspiration, and compare degrees of it. God's authority is wholly gone, and man is free in the perversion of his will. Shakespeare never made a saint. Modern infidelity will allow Christianity as much as you please, provided Christ be, as another, a minister to elevate humanity as it is -- comes in in his own place as one eminent instrument, and man, "I," be all. I maintain the authority of God's word because it is God's, that man is lost in himself, and that God has appeared. Owned, we possess Him in blessing; rejected, we are His self-condemned enemies. I maintain redemption which brings man out of the condition he was in into another new and blessed one before God, according to His own righteousness and holiness. I do not want humanity educated, but God known.

W. I see you have finished your preface, at any rate, and that your zeal has landed you at Rugby. Let us hear what you have to say of Dr. Temple.

H. I am sure you will excuse my zeal. I have not an unkindly feeling that I am conscious of towards a living being; but when I see what is divinely perfect and good and reverenced flippantly assailed, I have no wish to exhibit indifference: and when men jeopard the faith of millions, as far as their acts are concerned, when they treat with a light hand the Lord of glory, and the authority of His words, they merit scornful rebuke for what they do, if even its execution be pretentious and superficial.

Such, whatever my feebleness in shewing it may be, is the judgment I have formed of these "Essays and Reviews." They are mischievous, not by their depth and seriousness, for they are neither deep nor serious; but, as in a warehouse filled with oil, a spark that falls among shavings. I agree with two Irish Archbishops, that they are dishonest, and with an English one, that they are very feeble. But let us examine Dr. Temple on the education of the world.

The first thing that strikes me is, that there is no glimpse or appearance of a thought of anything in man, but of the lower part of man -- of man arriving as a race at a certain result down here in this world. God and a soul in connection with Him are altogether shut out. Supposing, what I do not believe, a succession of races, beginning and running through the same career in a succession of cycles, which is just the Platonic and Alexandrian idea; this would render, Dr. Temple tells us, the existence of each one of them unnecessary: the annihilation of a whole human race is absolutely nothing. Now as to progress in this world, or a development of man, as man merely, that is quite true. But what about the relationship of the souls which compose the race with God? Is that nothing? Or is that under the iron rule of a cycle which leads to no result? The supposition leaves out altogether every relationship between God and the soul. Redemption being an infinite thing in its nature, I do not believe there can be a repetition of such cycles, because I believe the Second Man is the Last Adam. Of course, this christian doctor and instructor of youth does not trouble himself about redemption in his education of the world, nor will I here insist upon it; but if there were uniform cycles, and the result of each the same as to the public result, as to humanity in this world, the difference might be infinite as to everything of the highest nature in man, unless man is morally an absolute slave to the circumstances through which he passes. To say nothing of redemption, that is, God's actings about men, which makes the whole theory of the education of the world nonsense, the whole reasoning of Dr. T. excludes the idea of God and a soul.

W. Excuse me: he speaks of the effect on the souls of men in the second paragraph of his paper.

H. To be sure he does, and this is the clearest proof of what I say, and that it is true in the most offensive way. He says that, on the supposition of his uniform cycles, the lives and souls of men become so indifferent, that the annihilation of a whole human race, or of many such races, is absolutely nothing. Now this makes the souls of men absolutely nothing, but for a result of progress in this world. It goes so far that the soul's non-existence after death is absolutely indifferent; for their annihilation is nothing if progressive result as a race is not induced. And supposing the soul were not immortal, and were annihilated after death, the progress of the race could go on just as well; the succeeding generation would inherit the progress of the preceding, and go on towards the ultimate result. Those that were dead need not exist at all for that.

W. Yes, my friend, but there is an aspect of this you have not considered; it may be alleged that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is necessary for this progress.

H. Excuse me, my dear W: I have considered it. Either the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is true, or it is not (and the doctrine itself proves the doctrine true). If it be not true, I have, on the supposition you make of its being used, an imposture which involves considerations leaving this poor world and its progress in the shade of nothingness, used for the sole purpose of leading the race to progress, as its result -- a use which makes the immortality absolutely nothing -- which is really as absurd as it is false and dishonest; or immortality and the all-important considerations which accompany it are true; and they make the progress of the race a mere accident comparatively, and all Dr. Temple's views miserably false, to the shame of one who could have held them. No, he has a world without souls, and souls without God.

W. I see you have considered it, and what you say is true. It is evident that this system ignores (or worse) God, and all the higher parts and relationships of man.

H. But it is as intrinsically feeble as it is morally low. His statement is, "Now, that the individual man is capable of perpetual or almost perpetual development, from the day of his birth to the day of his death, is obvious of course." If he had said development, and decay, and extinction (that is, as far as this world goes), he would have been right; but that would not have served his purpose -- a cycle of education of the race which ended in decay and extinction is a poor kind of progress. Yet this enters essentially into the condition of man. The sense that he is mortal is a necessary part of his moral existence. A Christian knows it has come in by sin -- that it is a silent yet loud-speaking witness of it, and of God's judgment against it. But is the education of the world to end in its progressive death, as well as the rest of its development? If not, the analogy is wholly false, for this is as real and true a part of the course of the individual as his growth from childhood.

W. It is true. I suppose, however, Dr. T. does not consider the world as arrived at its dotage.

H. No; of course, all the world were infants or boys till now. Now the human race is left to itself to be guided by the teaching of the Spirit within.

W. The human race! Is he a quaker then?

H. Oh! you must not look for anything like exactitude of thought in drawing-room rationalists. That the mass of men are heathens is all nothing, or that the Bible, of which they profess to be teachers, declares as one of its most solemn truths that the Spirit is given to those who belong to Christ. To speculation, heathenism, or Christianity is all alike. It is an element of progress of the human race. You must not be so particular as that. You must believe that the human race is left to itself to be guided by the teaching of the Spirit within.

W. Well, but there is a revelation. Surely Christianity is something. Do they believe that the Son of God is come to seek and to save what is lost?

H. Oh! that is part of the progress -- one of the things you can sign your assent to as agreeable to the scriptures, and pass by the side of. It is "humanifying the divine word."

W. Now do not be bitter. That is not Dr. Temple.

H. It is not; but it is one with whom Dr. Temple, the head master of Rugby, has associated himself, and given his weight to, in the hope that it will be received as an attempt to illustrate the advantage derivable to the cause of religion and moral truth from a free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language, and from traditional methods of treatment. You see, however independent of each other, it is a Band of Hope Review. They approve of each other, they consider the Articles as handled in a becoming spirit, though evidently some were a little squeamish in doing it. But we will go on with Dr. Temple.

Man, he tells us, cannot be considered as an individual.

This is a most startling but instructive statement, which I must take up, though I have touched upon it. Note, his soul is individual, his responsibility is individual, his moral state is individual, his feelings are individual, his conscience is individual. All that is elevated, excellent, and that raises him above the common stream of passions, is individual. All that constitutes him a moral being, all the inward man, all in which he is personally related to God, everything that does not perish with his death: and all is ignored, cannot be considered, by Dr. Temple. He is part of a great machine formed by the influences around him, that is all. Neither is he morally individual in himself, according to Dr. Temple; nor raised to be so by a known relationship to God. And this leaks out further on. In speaking of elements of progress, he says, The conviction of the unity and spirituality of God was peculiar to the Jews among the pioneers of civilization. Think of the unity and spirituality of God, or at any rate the conviction of it, making men simply the pioneers of future civilization!

Dr. T. argues that a child, brought up from its birth apart from its kind, becomes rather a beast in human shape than a man in the full sense at all.

If he used this merely to shew that God had so constituted man, that he should learn intelligently from others, and not grow up as animals with a mere instinct, I suppose he needed not have feared much opposition; but when he uses it to shew that man cannot be individually considered, it is utterly illogical. That man learns from others does not prove in the least that he is not a responsible individual when he does learn. Dr. Temple's statement destroys totally the whole moral responsibility of man.

That there is progress in knowledge, in civilization, up to a certain point in man's development as a race, is partially true. That a part of the race has been placed under progressive religious light is also true. But that that is the obliteration of individuality, or individual responsibility in and according to that state, is utterly and degradingly false.

If the education at Rugby were necessary to enable a man to go up to Oxford, does that prove he cannot be considered an individual when he is gone up? But all is so carefully generalized as to be false the moment we apply it to facts. Thus Dr. T. says, "We may expect to find in the history of man, each successive age incorporating into itself the substance of the preceding." Now I suppose no intelligent person would deny, that where European civilization has prevailed, the acquirements of one age become, in many points, that is when discoveries are concerned, the elements of the next. Every child who learns astronomy learns the Newtonian, or if you please, the Copernican system, not the Ptolemaic. But when you say the history of man, it is entirely false. The vastly greater part of the human race remain in statu quo. The Chinese are not more advanced than they were centuries ago; nor indeed, may we say, any of the Asiatic nations, that is, the greatest part by far of the population of the globe. Indeed, they have in many respects retrograded. None of the Africans have advanced; on the contrary, there also they have fearfully retrograded. In America, Europeans have supplanted the native population, but there has been no advance save in the conquerors. It is a question if Mexico and Peru are as civilized as when Aztecs and Tezcucans possessed the country of Anahuac, and Incas exercised their mild despotism as the legitimate descendants of the sun. There has been a history of man in those races that have come in connection with the despised people of God, but nowhere else. Somehow or other, the people whose records rationalism delights to call in question are the necessary centre, and I may say foundation, of all known history. The mind of man may speculate with interest on other histories, the ruins of Nineveh, and the hundred-gated Thebes; and Babylon may furnish evidence for antiquaries to build dynasties and histories on; but a documented history of those early days belongs to Israel only. It may of course be attacked, and conjectures hazarded to disprove it, as they may be hazarded to make kings out of tombs, and centuries out of priestly traditions; but in Israel alone are the documents there to be disproved. In this history only do we find the principles which Dr. T. speaks of as the true education of man. We will speak afterwards of the influence of Greeks and Romans on the present age and education of man, but they have nothing to do with his analogy of educational epochs, which are, the law, Christ, and the Spirit: for of course we must decently christianize everything, that is, reduce Christianity to the level of man and his progress. And this introduces another immensely important point carefully suppressed by Dr. T. in his account of this progress of man. I mean, the fact of revelation. He speaks of the progress of man; but the facts in which the progress is estimated are, really, exclusively revelations and interventions of God. He says, "First, the law, then the Son of man, then the gift of the Spirit." Is this progress essential to a spiritual being? Is this each generation receiving the benefits of the cultivation of that which preceded it?

But let us consider the facts. However he may borrow the principles of his education of the human race from scripture -- except to array himself in these borrowed plumes, revelation is totally ignored and all it contains. If there has been a fall, the progress of the human race, save in its lower aspects, comes to nothing at once. We are fallen beings. There is a guilty soul before God: the whole scene is one departed from and out of the condition He set it in. It is a progress in what, then? It wants, and wants individually, and in every way, restoration -- progress in its highest relationship. Christianity, and all the revelation from which the head master of Rugby quotes his principles of progress, treats man as in this state of alienation from God. It is false, or the theory is false. The law was given, but broken. The Son of man in the world, but rejected out of it by man, and a work of redemption revealed for a being not in progress, but lost. I reserve the consideration of what thoughts that man must have of God, who, looking at this world's universal state, does not believe in the fall of man.

But further, as to the world's history. The flood has taken place: so the Old Testament teaches, so the Lord declares; as Peter warns that it is by wilful ignorance it is forgotten. But if the flood has taken place, the whole race has been judged once, and judged for the progress it had made. That judgment will, it is true, not be repeated, but the now world is reserved for fire. At what point of progress will that come? Has Dr. T. ever heard of days in which mockers will be, who say, Where is the promise of His coming? for all things continue as they were -- of perilous times that will come, in which the scriptures will be the resource of the faithful who continue in the things they have learned?

But I am wrong to reason on scripture with them, as if they believed it. Let us take their own system as they take it up professedly from scripture. That I am not unjust in charging them with ignoring this mighty dealing of God with the world, which, while keeping the place they do, they have not the honest boldness to deny, while introducing what sets it aside, you may easily see. Dr. T.'s words are these: "The education of this early race may strictly be said to begin when it was formed into the various masses out of which the nations of the earth have sprung. The world, as it were, went to school, and was broken up into classes." Now that refers to the confusion of tongues at Babel. You would suppose that, before this Rugby education of the race, when a wise master began to deal with and educate it, in order that there might be some hope of the race's turning out well, it had been as yet nurtured in the graceful affections and first confiding impressions of the home of its childhood. Alas! no. It was a world outcast from God -- so bad that He had to destroy it. The childhood of man, before it went to school according to Dr. T., was violence, and that followed by sensuality, fallen or not. But the flood -- no trace of it is found.

We are told, that the earliest commands almost entirely refer to bodily appetites and sensual passions. This may suit the theory, because they have to be corrected as children, but is otherwise a dream. There is no command before the flood, and after it the one declaration is, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." It appears that wilfulness of temper, germs of wanton cruelty, characterize childhood, and are easily corrected by a mother; but here there was no education, no wise educator. The Governor of the world left the childhood of man to itself, to run into wanton violence unrestrained, to perfect its evil education without any restraint at all. This was a singular system of the education of the human race. "Each generation receiving the benefit of the cultivation of that which precedes it." "The easily corrected cruelty was here," we are told, "developed into a prevailing plague of wickedness."

Now let the reader remember that this was, to take Hebrew dates, as long a period nearly as since Christ -- some sixteen hundred and fifty-six years; but this is not all; from thence to the giving of the law there were some eight hundred years. That is, during some two thousand five hundred years the race did not get any education at all; and, if that history is to be believed which Dr. Temple uses as his proof of the value of the education, the whole race, save eight persons, had been destroyed because of the result of the education they had given themselves. But this is not only a discrepancy in the analogy, but it upsets the whole system. There was no such education going on. The world went on on another principle; leaving man, not without witness indeed from God, but otherwise to himself and with no education. And, if scripture is to be believed as to one of the most solemnly attested facts in it, the whole world was judged once, before its alleged education began.

But here we stumble on another strange instance of the falseness of all this. I quote still Dr. Temple. "The world was once a child under tutors and governors, until the time appointed by the Father ... . The education of the world, like that of the child, begins with the law." Now, note, not only was there two thousand five hundred years of the race without any education at all, if we pass over the flood, and the whole world judged if there was, and the theory an absurdity; but, even supposing this left aside, the facts are mis-stated. "The education," Dr. T. tells us, "of this early race may strictly be said to begin when it was formed into the various masses out of which the nations of the earth have sprung." That was at Babel or in Peleg's time; but there were some seven hundred years between Peleg and the law, so that the education of the human race began seven hundred years before it began. And I pray you to remark, that this is not a question of confounding chronology with a great principle. The theory of Dr. Temple is, that the dividing into nations strictly begins the education; it was the forming them into classes. But the very vital principle of his system of analogy with individual education is, that it began with law, but there were more than seven centuries between the two. I suppose the classes at Rugby are in before Dr. Temple. That we may admit. At least they used to be, as the rule, at Westminster, when I was there; but if Dr. Temple were to leave some period analogical to seven centuries before he came, I am afraid the sanction of the law, not the law, would be wanting. What riot in the schoolroom! It is true, the present generation may have profited by the cultivation of the last; but at any rate, in my time we should have had notable confusion. But we will be serious. Dr. Temple will forgive my recollections of these early days; he tells us they are often vividly remembered. But I turn to our scripture history; and you will see the whole principle of the theory proved false.

Scripture treats man as a sinner to be restored to God or judged: rationalists, as a race to be educated, and the previous parts sacrificed to the condition of a little fragment at the end. It is a base idea, but it is its justness we have now to think of. Now in scripture we are carefully told that, in the sense in which there was an education and progress in it, law was not the beginning. The promise came four hundred and thirty years before it. Now this is an all-important principle. It brings in God, whom Dr. Temple leaves out. Grace, only in germ it is true, precedes law, and law comes in by the by as a needed convincer of the conscience. That is the divine, the blessed, form of education revealed in the word, because it reveals God, and must reveal, therefore, love and grace. Law may be needed. It was needed. The question of righteousness must be raised. But God had to say to it, and grace and goodness and love must be the point of departure with Him, because He is it, and is it with man. Dr. Temple's is an education of man without God; and therefore, as he cannot deny "the prevailing plague of wickedness," he begins with man's only remedy, commandments, to an unintelligent nature. But think of such a scheme which lets the person to be educated get to a prevailing plague of wickedness before he begins to educate him! It is well Dr. T. leaves God out.

But this confusion of Peleg's time and the law, this lapse of some seven centuries, omits facts which shew in another respect the falseness of the whole system. After Babel or Peleg's time, when nationalities and races had been formed, a kind of departure from God came in of which we find no trace before. Not violence and evil; that is the recorded state of man before the flood. Now, man had been forced to recognize divine judgments. But, far from the true God, yea, not liking to retain the true God in his knowledge, he changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator -- changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Your fathers, says Joshua, worshipped other gods beyond the flood (Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor). Now the God of glory appears to Abraham, and calls him to leave entirely the system into which, as Dr. Temple justly remarks, God had formed the world -- countries, and kindreds, and father's house. The world was broken up into classes; but when God began to educate, He called out of all the classes one to be for Himself; not indeed by law, but then He gave the promises. The principle of a called people, or saint, was brought out, and Abraham became, as an immense principle, the father of the faithful, who were known as called out of the world. That the world was educated by it is absolutely false. The world, or the nations, had rejected God altogether, and taken devils to be their gods; and God, patient in mercy, begins a race of His own, calls Abraham and his seed, be they in the flesh or in the Spirit.

I have partially noticed some particular proofs of the progress of the world according to Dr. Temple and his companions; but, as they belong to this epoch, I will refer to one or two of their discoveries here. Lamech makes no comparison of himself with God whatever: it is all a dream, unless taking vengeance is comparing oneself with God, because vengeance belongs to Him. If so, many are guilty of it still, I fear. At any rate, he compares himself with Cain, and he is not God, I suppose. As to the gross ignorance about building a tower high enough to escape God's wrath, it is, without any contempt of Dr. Temple, his ignorance, not that of the sons of Noah. They acted very wisely according to man. They made (what Nebuchadnezzar tried afterwards, and a man who founds empires ever does) a great public centre which could be a name -- which God alone ought to have or give -- that they might not be scattered, but have united force. It was to be a Rome in the world. It was not ignorance, but profound political skill; but it met the power of one who had other purposes, and under His hand it brought on the very thing they wished to avoid. They built a city and a tower, a central capital to unite them all as one great company, and a tower which should distinguish itself, and to which all should be bound as belonging to it. Dr. Temple's notion is ignorance of the nineteenth century after, not of the twenty-second before, Christ.

But to return to our history. God separates a people carefully from the world, and gives them a law when He has separated them. The world was never under tutors and governors at all. When God dealt with the world, He returned, and returned necessarily, to the principle of grace, on which alone, even if law existed, He could really deal with a sinner. The education of the world never began with law. The world never had any law. God did give a law to a carefully isolated people, and carefully isolated them by it; made, as it is expressed, a middle wall of partition, so that if a Jew associated himself with the world, he was a defiled and guilty Jew. No doubt in this law great principles of moral government lay (I may almost say) concealed; but this only proves still more the great truth. God must separate a people out of the world to deposit, in a system carefully excluding others, the perfect rule of creature estate; and to preserve the knowledge of one true God in a world given to idols in their will, and given up by Him to a reprobate mind to work all uncleanness with greediness (as every one who has studied the working of heathen idolatry knows they were, and indeed are; and the whole system to be a consecration of vice in its filthiest and most abhorrent shapes). Yet these efforts of God with Israel were fruitless, and the law given in vain. Israel first went after idols; and when that unclean spirit was gone out, their house was empty, swept, and garnished. They neglected the pearl which the blessed Lord drew out of the setting of the law, turned its outward ceremonies, which unregenerate flesh could perform, into their righteousness, and hardened themselves against grace and Him that brought it.

So true is it that the law was not given to the world to educate it, and the education of the world is not in God's thought, that Israel, in order to be taken as a people, is redeemed out of it. Till that redemption there is no dwelling of God with man -- not in paradise, not with Abraham. When redemption is even figuratively presented, it is said (Exodus 29), "I have brought them out of the land of Egypt that I may dwell among them." Hence, as God's dwelling with man is never seen, so holiness is never spoken of till then. Because redemption is necessary to man's being near God, and that is (morally understood) holiness. The moment (Exodus 15) Israel is out of Egypt, holiness is spoken of. No doubt, all this was in an outward carnal way then; but the principle taught is all-important. Doubtless there were holy persons before; but here great principles are revealed.

W. Well, I must say that this effect is produced on my mind by the facts you have gone through: If we are to take the scripture account of facts -- and what you have remarked is true that, save ignoring the flood, Dr. Temple's statements are based on scripture statements), but if we are to take them -- not only is he mistaken as to the alleged facts, but (what is far more important) if the scripture view be true, his is totally false. It is not a question of details of ancient history which a rationalist might contest, but the whole principle on which God has dealt with man is the opposite of that on which Dr. Temple estimates what has taken place. It seems to me very shallow indeed. It shelters itself under references to scripture, which might seem to give credit to the statements with those who have not yet thrown off all respect for those wonderful records; but when examined, it has not a shadow of foundation. The Bible is false in its own teaching, or Dr. Temple's views are as unfounded as they are trifling and superficial. I am glad of this conversation: for, though I rejected the principles of the book as really infidel, and morally unsatisfactory, I had not an idea of the hollowness of its views, at least thus far. The utter want of honesty of the part which speaks of consenting and allowing had offended me, as contrary to all uprightness. I confess that turned me at once away from all confidence. I cannot conceive how a man could openly avow such principles. But I had not examined the reasonings.

H. Mark another thing, dear W. It is a point to me most striking in the character of this system. You may have the law for a schoolmaster, Christ and the primitive Church for an example, the Spirit to set you free and leave you to yourself to be guided by the Spirit within; you may have Greece to teach you taste, cultivation, and logic; Rome self-restraint, obedience, and patriotism; mediaeval popery to keep Clovis in order. But God revealing Himself, revealing Himself in love, so as to draw out the heart, to teach it goodness by its enjoying it, so as to link the heart with Himself, and raise it above carnal and worldly and selfish interests of this low and sin-ridden world -- God producing the reflection of His own nature in the thankful and enlightened heart -- God revealing Himself to man, so that he should taste and enjoy what He is -- no, that must not be; the thought of being thus imitators of God as dear children -- you must not seek it here. Everything but God, everything for man to think well of himself by, to be what Paul calls gain to him, that is, the nurture of self, but God -- no: no revelation of Him must enter into the education of man.

W. It is true. This is immensely important. How often one reads books without seeing what is underneath the surface! But this is indeed grave; the whole moral education of man, without his being brought into heart-association with God by the elevating revelation of Him. I see it is anti-christian in principle, antidivine. It lowers the whole of what is carrying on in man to what he is in flesh, and thus separates from God, instead of bringing to Him in living capacity to enjoy Him, and making man morally like Him. I have difficulty (do you know) in expressing what the effect is on my mind: for leaving God out makes all so false, that it is impossible to express anything then fully. A being who can exist truly only in relation to another can have no truth of his existence without introducing the other.

H. To be sure; and then if he be a sinner, introducing that other must be accompanied by that which reconciles the sinner to that nature according to its own holy and blessed qualities. This brings in redemption; and the education of the world is trifling, immoral nonsense. You must give up that which alone elevates man, his association with God, or associate him with Him according to what He is. The nature and character of God must be maintained, or it is not with Him I am associated. And I must have morally the qualities which judge of good and evil as He does to be really associated with Him. But I do judge the evil, and see the guilt. Now Christianity meets this, and gives me a full blessing, because it gives me life. "He that hath the Son hath life." He is a life-giving Spirit. But then, besides that, it takes away all guilt from me. I can judge evil fully in my heart and conscience, because I know I shall never be judged for it -- that Christ has by Himself purged my sins, and sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. I affirm that, without these two principles, a new life, and the perfect purging of sins according to God's nature by redemption, no real moral elevation of man can take place; because he cannot be spiritually associated with God according to the perfection of God's nature. The communication of the divine nature, though absolutely necessary, does not suffice, because the communication of that nature makes one judge evil as God does, at any rate in principle. I see the selfishness and impurity that is in man's mind -- that is now in mine; and, for that very reason, I see guilt and wretchedness in myself; I have the conscience of evil or guilt (not necessarily by crimes or vices, but by comparing my whole inward life with the loveliness of the divine nature) on my soul; my conscience must be purged for God, as a consciously responsible creature before Him, that my heart may be free before Him, that His holy nature, which must repel evil, and which is the very source of my delight, may be maintained even for my soul to enjoy.

W. I see this very plainly -- what God is must be morally maintained for my soul, if I am to enjoy Him. If it is, I must judge sin as He does (that is, if I am honest myself). It is a gain, in a certain sense, to have a bad conscience in this way.

H. Yes; but a terrible burden, because sin separates from God, though we see He is love. But the purging the conscience by a work done without us, and which is perfect in glorifying God, gives me an unhindered delight in Him, and, I may add, in the love which has done it. God has put this in the simplest way (blessed be His name!) for simple souls, but it is of the deepest moral necessary truth. You may have amiable men, but no God if you have not this. When reading a work of Maurice's (a person of whom I know nothing, and speak, of course, only of his works) --

W. You mean him who wrote a work on sacrifice, and essays. I should like to know what you think of him.

H. I speak only of his books, I repeat, for I know nothing of him. I should say he was an amiable man, with many elements of a fine nature, though with amazing confidence in himself -- a trait which sometimes accompanies a fine benevolent nature, when it is not humbled in a christian way by the knowledge of itself and the supreme excellence of God and what we are our wretched, selfish, approbation-loving hearts. I should think, too, his books shew wants, perhaps divinely given wants, in the soul; but I should think the influences his soul had been under were half Socinian and half Quaker. But he has no knowledge at all of the effect of having a conscience before God. I said all along as I read (I forget which of his books), This man does not believe in guilt; and when I had got on a very considerable way in the book (two hundred or three hundred pages, I should think), I found, "guilt, that is, guile."⁺ Now there you can get the key to his whole story. He may have judged some evil, but he has never had his conscience before God at all. Hence he can turn what that gives into a play on words, or a question of etymology; but what a tale that tells! Ah! what a difference it makes when a soul has to say to God.

⁺I apprehend this is a mere blunder. Guile is the same as wile; and guilt, a Saxon word, fine or punishment (as now, in German, "vergelten").

W. I see plainly now both what was attractive in his views and the mischievous tendency they had, the mischievous influence they exercised on my soul. In fact, it strikes at the responsibility of man, our relationship to God.

H. To be sure it does. Holiness is the quality of a nature which repels evil in its nature, and delights in what is good. Righteousness is founded really on the same principle, but brings in the authority of God, which judges of this and the responsibility of the creature. Now man will admit holiness, because that exalts man, makes him like God, excellent in himself -- he has "no guile;" righteousness he does not, because this asserts God's authority -- the creature's responsibility. It is making good God's authority against evil by judgment -- our real relationship to God. This man will not submit to. He is willing to be free from guile: it exalts him in his own sight. But to be under guilt -- no: that humbles him.

W. How subtle evil is!

H. Yes; but a personal conscience makes all simple. I do not discuss with a bad conscience; I can principles with my reason. With a bad conscience I want cleansing, and, because I have offended a loving Father and God, forgiveness too; and, thank God, I have it in Christ. There is no personal having to do with God without this. I may theorize, and honestly enjoy my ideas; but theorizing is not the knowledge of God. A truly upright soul, a divinely taught soul, has a moral need that the love of God, the favour which is its light and its joy, should be a righteous favour (as scripture speaks, Grace reigns through righteousness) -- hence, that God should righteously not see sin upon it; it has need, therefore, that the conscience should be purged. And this it has through the truth, that the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses from all sin. Without it, God's love would be an unholy love -- would not be God or love at all. We walk in the light, as God is in the light; and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. Hence comes that bright and blessed testimony, though there in outward figures, "He hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, nor beheld perverseness in Israel."

W. I confess I see no moral perfection maintainable without this (for sin there is in the world), no true assurance of heart with God, no uprightness in man. And association with God, fellowship, is the one true and excellent blessing that belongs to us in this world, and the next.

H. Surely. But we will pursue our essay, though I have not, I believe, much more to say.

The principle of the essay is, each successive age incorporating into itself the substance of the preceding. The analogy is, the law, Christ, and the Spirit. But this wholly contradicts the principle. These are no incorporations of past growth or acquirements, but specific revelations of a full and absolute character in themselves -- indeed, as to the last two, the actual coming of divine persons. Not only so, but the law was given when men had plunged into every loathsome wickedness, and had learnt to worship devils instead of God; so that God had given them up to a reprobate mind, even as to what became them as men. And it was given therefore to a people carefully separated out from the rest of the world. It was no progress; it was a revelation to a peculiar people. When Christ came, it was after this had been broken, and the people become a whited sepulchre. He likewise, though introducing universal principles, separates a people to Himself, and is entirely rejected by men. When the Holy Ghost comes, we know, on the Lord's own authority, that the world cannot receive Him, "because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him."

In a word, it was no progressive incorporation by one age of the acquirements of the last; but revelations given to a people separated to receive them. The first, because men had departed utterly from God; the second, because the depositaries of the first had broken and falsified it, as they crucified Him who came. As to the third, it was manifested in power at the first; and instead of progress or development, there has been a corruption by the denial of the presence of the Spirit, and setting aside the word, which has made the annals of the Church the most painful history the world can shew (as has been insultingly said, the annals of hell); and if the degradation of heathenism was more open, it was not so morally abominable, nor clothed with the forms of christian grace. Sin among heathens was horrible to the last degree, and consecrated to deities who were only devils to help men's lusts; but there were no christian indulgences to allow or forgive it; no tax for what it was to be compounded at; no selling of grace and license for what was condemned. This was reserved for what is called the Church (and in the outward sense justly).

And remark here another point of vast importance in the present day when development is so much spoken of. What God reveals is revealed perfect in its place and for its purpose at first; and man declines from it. There is progress in the character of God's revelations, compared with one another; but in themselves, none. There cannot be progress in a revelation. It is itself. There may be in revelations. A revelation is given perfect. Man declines from it or corrupts it. That man should make progress in a revelation denies its nature. Now the things Dr. Temple speaks of were revelations -- different in nature, but still revelations. And when I come to Christ, I find another immensely important truth -- to talk of progress here is blasphemy. He is God manifest in flesh. He is perfection. Hence the apostle John tells us to abide in that which we have heard from the beginning.

And I find here too a principle of scripture, the ignorance and denial of which is the root of all these errors and modern reasonings. The scripture (I am not now to enquire whether its whole system be false) presents Christ as a second man, a new starting point of the human race, the last Adam. There is no progress of man in flesh spoken of: he is to put off the old man, or has done so, and put on the new, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. He is to reckon himself dead, he is crucified with Christ. He speaks of when we were in the flesh. That is, the blessed and admirable doctrine of scripture is the absolute moral judgment of man as man, a child of Adam in flesh, because sin is there; and, through the delight the new man has in God, he cannot bear this. He has crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts, and lives as alive to God in the last man. "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless, I live: yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."

And the great ordinances of Christianity declare this as its nature. We are buried in baptism unto death, risen again, and we celebrate a Christ in the Lord's supper, not who has instructed us (though blessedly He has done so those who are quickened, and warned the dead) but died for us. Thus Christianity is founded on the total condemnation of the old man (only that Christ has died for it in grace, and thus as a sacrifice for sin condemned sin in the flesh), and the introduction of a new, but a new connected in the power of Christ's resurrection with that which is heavenly, where Christ now sits. The object of this new life is not here, though its display is. It is the true character of power in a creature to live in the circumstances it is in, from motives and a power which are not found in them, or else he is governed by them (that is, is weak). So with the Christian, with peace in his conscience through a dying Christ, he has a heavenly Christ before him, and, his motives being wholly out of this world, he has, through grace, power to live in it according to the character of the motives which govern him.

This is not the place to unfold all the exquisite internal beauty of this principle, wrought out for its perfecting in dependence on grace, in the midst of the conflicts in which we are in a world of evil, with a lower nature in itself prone to it; and the continual association with Christ, our glorified Head, the Man at God's right hand, in which it is made good, so as to grow up to Him who is the Head in all things. This would be to unfold the contents of all the epistles as the development of it in teaching, and the gospels as the exhibition of the perfection of it in Christ: but I have said enough to shew that the system of the New Testament is the setting aside of the old man, the flesh, the first Adam, because there is sin (and sin is become unbearable when the true light, Christ, is in the heart as life), and the possession, the substitution for that, of the new man, Christ our life, unfolded in a life which we live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved us, and gave Himself for us. Was He a point of progress in the development of human nature or Adam fallen life? or the perfect exhibition of a new thing -- that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested to us, and became the source of it to others, while He has died for the guilt and sin which characterized the old?

W. I see it is indeed an immensely important principle. It strikes at the root of all this system. This builds up what scripture calls the old man, and develops it. You say, its principle in fallen man is sin and self, and that God has in Christ introduced a new life in Christ, and to others through Him; and as He has cleansed from sin, so He has given a heavenly object out of this world. But then do you mean that no one had this life till Christ came down to earth?

H. No, of course not. Life and incorruptibility were brought to light by the gospel; but this life did not begin to exist then. Christ, who is the Lord from heaven, is a life-giving Spirit -- has not merely a living soul, though that He had of course; and He communicated this life to others, from Abel, I may well say and doubt it not, from Adam downwards. But then, for that very reason, though the great contrast, the enmity of man -- of the carnal mind -- against God was not brought out till the cross, when the perfection of God revealed in flesh was fully presented, those who partook of this life through grace were hated and rejected of the world, whose boasted progress is depicted to us by the new philosophy. "He that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit." They were moral contradictions: one loved God, judged self, and owned God's authority; the other sought self, and would none of God for that reason. Conscience there was and is in all; conscience judges good and evil: but a new life is good in a divine way. Hence you will find that, with all this modern school of rationalism, even in its most infidel forms, Christ will be recognized, provided He be a restorer of what the scripture denounces as flesh. They will use what appears christian language to many a simple mind. But the just condemnation of a sinner, the absolute condemnation of flesh, and a new life in Christ, and atonement for the sin of the old -- all this will not be heard of; and into the antichristian system even Christians fall. It exalts man; and all the blessed light of God, the heavenly place into which Christ is entered, is lost.

W. But what do you say to the other elements of human progress, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the like?

H. If you mean civilization, arts, and mental development, and cultivation, and more particularly science, I do not of course deny it; though I think there is a good deal of mistake as to it. Discoveries, by which the knowledge of nature or the power of man over it is advanced, are undoubtedly multiplied. We know more physical facts than our ancestors. Astronomy, geology, on the one hand, and railroads, telegraphs, chemistry, on the other hand, have enlarged, not the domain, but the appropriation of the domain, allotted to man. And with every increase of knowledge there is a reaction. There is more reality and less hypothesis on all these subjects; but I doubt the development of much more than materialism by it. That this is a progress I more than doubt. As regards taste and cultivation, or intellectual powers, I should think also progress more than doubtful. All now is at best imitation. Take Grecian architecture or Gothic styles (whose ideal conceptions are the opposite one of another), or even Italian, all attempted is imitative. In intellectual power, I suppose Grecian or Roman was as developed in itself as any now. Plato, Aristotle, or what was more profound than either, the British triads or Bardic philosophy,⁺ present the expression of as powerful thought. And as to language, it is admitted that, as an instrument of thought, the Greek stands, of all commonly known languages, unrivalled. The powers of Sanscrit I am unacquainted with, and but little with the capacities of the daughter which most resembles it, they say, the Irish. In philosophy there is more truth in modern times, so far (not, as there has been progress, but) as revelation has exercised an influence on it, and no farther. So that I do not see great progress even in these earthly things. As to philosophy, all is necessarily false at all times, because it reasons upon the present state of man as a normal one, or else it becomes theology, and thereupon, as its necessary point of departure, upon his relationship to God, and what God is. Hence it is all necessarily false, both as to God, and as to man. It is in vain to say that you must not bring in religion into philosophy, because, unless religion be fable, it is the truth, so that it is only saying that you must not bring in truth. There, I believe, they have told the truth. That man is not fallen is a calumny against God. A God who made this world directly as it is would be a weak or a cruel God. But if man be fallen and in rebellion, and have to say to God in that state; if his whole moral condition be the acquired knowledge of good and evil, far from the source of good, then reasoning upon his relationships to God to prove what they are normally is to reason always against the truth. And that goes far deeper into the whole system than men are generally aware of. It affects every possible relationship of life. It is the reason there are magistrates, the origin of property, of labour, death, inheritances. I take the commonest, every-day, outward things on purpose. Philosophy, since it ceased to be cosmogony, is reasoning on morality, ignorant of the groundwork of the highest obligations, and of the whole state of things on which moral relationships are founded. Nothing can be right or set right, if the world has departed from God (because all its state is wrong -- the central obligation is, which was the groundwork of all others, though those others be true) unless we bring in the restoring power of revealed goodness applied to that state, and this is Christianity. Hence it is a necessary consequence, that all philosophy is, and must be, false. There is evidence enough that evil exists. The man who will say that things are morally as they ought to be is a devil, and not a man, take heathens or Christendom. If they are not, there is no sense in not beginning with the truth of this slate and its remedy, if there be one. But this is religious truth.

⁺But here the influence of Christianity is evident, as in Neoplatonism.

W. But you have made a sweeping clearance of philosophy.

H. Truth always does. The mind may be interested in it as an exercise; my own has been, though I never pursued it far. Truth, as to its title at least, had too early possession of my mind. But you cannot deny that speculation, whose starting-point is false, can but plunge the mind farther in error the farther it goes. There is no pousee footnote stwsee footnote. It is far worse than the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out. That to which all refers is wanting. If I leave out God, all is essentially false; and if I bring Him in and omit the groundwork of all present relationship with man as he really is (that is, a state of sin), all must be equally false. Sin is the groundwork of all God's dealings now.

W. Dear! How do you mean that? That is a strange statement, is it not?

H. Is not judgment in respect of sin?

W. Well, of course it is.

H. So much so that there could be none without it -- hence in itself can only be condemnation. If God judges His own workmanship as it came out of His hands, He is judging Himself, not the work, or, if you please, in the work. But if it has departed wilfully into rebellion, judgment as such must be condemnation.

W. But if man had never fallen, would there not have been a judgment?

H. A judgment of what?

W. Well, I do not know.

H. Nor can you know. There was nothing to judge, speaking of human nature: all was then as God made it. If man has abandoned God and gone into sin, I repeat, judgment must be condemnation; and that is the ground Christianity goes upon. Christ comes to seek and to save the lost. And so every divinely taught soul: "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord; for in thy sight shall no man living be justified." But I pursue my theme a little. Is not the exercise of mercy in respect of sin?

W. Of course.

H. And law?

W. Why yes, law forbids it.

H. And grace?

W. Of course.

H. And salvation, and judgments, and patience, or vengeance -- all is in respect of sin. Hence, the immensely deep moral development in the soul in its relationship with God. No angel would know God, or be in the kind of relationship in which a sinner brought to God is. All the highest attributes and qualities in Godhead are brought out -- mercy, patience, goodness, condescension, love in its perfect exercise in the shape of grace, on one side, and restoring in righteousness on the other to perfect delight in itself, in a word, redemption. The intimacy which the working of grace, whether in the incarnation or in the soul of one in whom grace is, the estimate of good and evil, by the proximity of what is divine to evil as it is in us; yea, the communication of what is divine to one who, on the other side, is weakness, and yet wilfulness and self, the dependence of a creature who has both on continual grace, and yet the capacity of the enjoyment of the highest good -- all this, which is not Christianity exactly, but its working in us, gives a display of divine wisdom, a purifying and elevating process, a knowledge of God in His highest nature, most intimate, and yet most adoring, which makes philosophy puny and dry beyond all belief, empty, utterly empty. Christianity is light and love come into darkness and selfishness, and in the human heart reaching all its springs, and destroying self, by shewing it and replacing it by God; and this, not by the flimsy spinnings of the human brain, but by a divine person; who, if divine desires are wrought in me, takes me out of myself by divine affections, instead of exalting self, by producing in it qualities to be admired, which being by self makes them bad and false. The Christian, quâ Christian, has divine qualities, but sees, and because he sees, only God.

W. Why, you are growing quite eloquent! But is it true?

H. There is nothing so eloquent as Christianity itself. Did you never remark, that Christianity makes the poorest mind eloquent? What is eloquence? Is it not elevated thoughts, clothed in what is perfectly adapted to the meanest capacity, and enjoyed because it lifts the poor heart, wearied with commonplace life and toil, out of itself? Now, this is what Christianity does, because it reveals a divine person, God Himself, who has adapted Himself to the lowest, yea, the vilest; who is holy enough (for He is perfect in it) to bring love into all the recesses of the human heart, because never defiled Himself, and awake, even by its sorrows and its miseries, the want of, and to the enjoyment of, the love that has visited it. It has set too, by a glorious redemption and atonement, the poor soul, that by love has learned to delight in light, at liberty to enjoy it, because it is spotless in it, and the adoring object of the love that has brought it there.

I look around. What can I see? Heathenism, men worshipping stocks and stones; Christendom, what would often disgrace a heathen; yet goodness and wisdom evidenced in the midst of it all. What can I think? All is confusion. The goodness and wisdom I see lead me in spite of me to God, and the thoughts of God confound me when I see all the evil; philosophy, poor philosophy, would justify evil to justify God. But when I see Christ, the riddle is gone. I see perfect good in the midst of the evil, occupied with it, and then suffering under it. My heart rests. I find one object that satisfies all its wants -- rises above all its cravings. I have what is good in goodness itself. I see what is above evil which was pressing on me. My heart has got rest in good, and a good which is such in the midst of and above evil, and that is what I want; and I have got relief, because I have found in that One what is power over it.

But I go a little farther, and I get a great deal more. I follow this blessed One, from whom all have received good, and who has wrought it with unwearied patience, and I hear the shouts of a giddy multitude, and I trace the dark plans of jealous enemies -- man who cannot bear good; I see high judges who cannot occupy themselves with what is despised in the world, and would quiet malice by letting it have its way, and goodness the victim of it. But a little thought leads me to see in a nearer view what man is -- hatred against God and good. Oh! what a display! The truest friend denies, the nearest betrays, the weaker ones who are honest flee; priests, set to have compassion on ignorant failure, plead furiously against innocence; the judge washing his hands of condemned innocence; goodness absolutely alone, and the world -- all men -- enmity, universal enmity, against it. Perfect light has brought out the darkness; perfect love, jealous hatred. Self would have its way and not have God, and the cross closes the scene as far as man is concerned. The carnal mind is enmity against God.

But oh! here is what I want. Oh! where can I turn from myself? an I set up to be better than my neighbours? No, it is myself. The sight of a rejected Christ has discovered myself to myself, the deepest recesses of my heart are laid bare, and self, horrible self, is there. But not on the cross: there is none. And the infinite love of God rises and shines in its own perfection above it all. I can adore God in love, if I abhor myself. Man is met, risen above, set aside in his evil, absolute as it is in itself when searched out. The revelation of God in Christ has proved it in all its extent on the cross. That was hatred against love in God; but it was perfect love to those that were hating it, and love when and where they were such. It was the perfect hatred of man, and the perfect love of God doing for him that hated Him, what put away the hatred and blotted out the sin that expressed it. There is nothing like the cross. It is the meeting of the perfect sin of man with the perfect love of God -- sin risen up to its highest point of evil and gone, put away, and lost in its own worst act. God is above man even in the height of his sin; not in allowing it, but in putting it away by Christ dying for it in love. The soldier's insulting spear, the witness if not the instrument of death, was answered by the blood and water which expiated and purified from the blow which brought it out. Sin was known, and, to have a true heart, it must be known, and God was known -- known in light, and the upright heart wants that, but known in perfect love, before which we had no need to hide or screen the sin; no sin allowed, but no sin left on the conscience. All our intercourse with God founded on this -- grace reigning through righteousness. Shall we turn to learn of Greeks and Romans after this?

W. God forbid. It is a wonderful scene. There is, in truth, nothing like it.

H. Nothing in heaven or earth, save He who was there for us. The glory we shall share with Him; but on the cross He was alone. He remains alone in its glory. Associated with Him there nothing can be, save as it is the expression of the nature which was revealed and glorified in it. That we find ever in God who is thus known. Eternal life is become thus association with God.

But, though reluctantly, I must turn again to our essay, to the effort to supplant the cross, for such it is, by the progress of corrupt human nature -- the cross, which writes death on corrupt man, and brings in a new and divine man risen up out of that death, and a walk in newness of life. The system, however, we have discussed, as far as a brief conversation will allow; but there are two or three passages which it may be useful to notice, some of them shewing the animus of this and of all these essays, and of the whole school, and the miserable ground on which they stand.

As to mere intellectual progress in the sphere of knowledge, no one, of course, questions it. I may pass over Egypt, though boasted Greece was, as the Egyptian priests told Herodotus, a shallow copy turned into poetry of far deeper moral intuitions found in Egyptian mythology -- deeper, because nearer the source of ancient truths. But as to Greece and Rome, no one denies that, as regards the upper orders, they exercise an influence over the minds of the present age in virtue of their education. Whether it be in all respects an advantage may be doubted. They are not what is highest in motive or thought, I judge; but so it is. That there is progress, I cannot exactly see in it, because we go back for models and influence. If Rome had been forgotten, and we were a fuller and riper development of what was gone by, I should understand progress. But this is not so. We try and get back to what they displayed. How that is progress, I do not understand. In progress I leave behind what preceded me. Copying Raphael (if I can) is not progress in painting beyond Raphael, though that copying exercise an influence over me. Then as to patriotism; it is human nature. Eisee footnoteJ" oijwno;" a[risto" ajmuvnesqai peri; pavtrh" was before Rome was heard of. If we desire to learn how consummate selfishness, which broke through every honourable and generous feeling, and trampled on all the world, disguised itself under the name of patriotism, we may surely learn it in Rome; and how democracy or human will closed in servility, and tried to hide its pain when oppressed in letting loose the same will in vice, we may go to Rome. If Greece have given reason and taste, I can only repeat, this is not progress in us. If heartlessness and poetry for conscience, if vanity and talent are a model, Greece may shine pre-eminent. Cultivation I admit, as far as it can go on without morality. But immoral beauty, and such was the mind of Greece, which excludes the truly divine (for even Plato declared the impossibility of any direct connection between the supreme God and a creature, whence probably Justin Martyr did too), which has the creatures of imagination, not of spiritual need for gods, which does not look at another world -- such beauty as this, admitting in the fullest way its very high development there, is a very doubtful subject of admiration, however it may call out certain faculties, which no one denies. A lively imagination connected with excessive vanity, and identified with immorality, is not a picture which attracts me. "What sort of morality the Gentiles would have handed down to us ...," Dr. Temple tells us, "is clear." I do not know (though the destruction of mental purity is a great evil) whether, with the present attempt to exalt human nature, it might not be well that maturer minds, at any rate, should know the excessive, atrocious, disgusting immorality of all classical, and indeed all heathen iniquity, the universal depravity, besides what is discovered by mythological and historical research. It might be painful to such minds, and they abhorrent from it; but it would act as a warning and preventive against such views as those of the "Essays and Reviews." It has been said, and said truly, that no decent persons would allow on their tables n English what is learnt by all classically educated youths at school. I may be told they do not rest on it -- be it so; but they become familiar with it in what they are taught to admire. Any one may see the picture of vaunted antiquity in Romans 1. That, Dr. Temple tells us, is what is to teach the world; aye, the christian world too. There is beauty, there is patriotism. What do I learn from this? That these passions of human nature and elements of his being are perfectly compatible with the most degraded possible state in which human nature can be found. Nothing could possibly exceed the degradation, by vices which eat out everything naturally noble even in nature, in which these Greeks and Romans lived. The beauty and the patriotism amused or absorbed them so that they should not find it out. Stifled conscience needed folly or pride.

W. But it is difficult to know what to do. Are we to leave young men uncultivated?

H. Difficulties there must be in a world in which sin has made deadly confusion. But there comes in the noble active principle of Christianity: "To him that overcometh;" "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." Christianity gives motives, objects, energies, which deliver man, when under their influence, from slavery to the scene through which he is passing. He has a right to be a stranger and a pilgrim in it. His ear has heard the solemn warning (which elevates, yet sinks, with a sanctifying sorrow as to all around, in the depths of the heart): "Arise and depart: this is not your rest; it is polluted." And he takes up his cross, and sets out, solemnized, broken in spirit perhaps (it is good in such a world), but cheerfully, because he sees that Christ has gone before, and that the victory which overcomes the world is his faith. For "who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" He can be himself, Christ being his life, in a world of evil and confusion, not conformed or belonging to it; not formed by it in motive or principle of life (though naturally as to mere outward circumstances not uninfluenced by it), but acting in it according to his own; happy to have companions in the excellent of the earth, but a Leader and a Lord in Christ. By this he judges of everything. He has seen perfection in Christ, and he is led by it. Greece and Rome were all judged by that. The assimilating power is one only -- Christ -- God manifested in flesh; folly to the world, of course. But he knows he has believed; he has no doubt as to the excellency of the object and model, nor of its absoluteness and completeness. The Christian believes that Christ gave Himself for our sins to redeem from this present world. Let not man tell me that meant the heathen world. What world was Greece and Rome?

But I must lead you to notice some particulars which shew further the shallowness and superficiality of this school. "The conviction of the unity and spirituality of God was peculiar," we are told, "to the Jews among the pioneers of civilization." You see how they never get beyond this point: man (not the Godman) improving, exalting self. It is deplorable. But it is another point I must refer to now. "To every Jew, without exception, Monotheism was equally natural." This with purity "are the cardinal points of education. The idea of Monotheism out-tops all other ideas in dignity and worth. The spirituality of God involves in it the supremacy of conscience, the immortality of the soul, the final judgment of the human race."

W. You surely do not object to that.

H. Patience, good friend. In the main, though Monotheism be a poor word, I do not. But, you know, these good people have other elements of instruction. You know, too, that Babylon was a cup of prostitution (as idolatry is justly called in scripture) for all nations; that Babylon and Jerusalem stand as the two seats of the two systems of idolatry, and Monotheism. No doubt, however faithless the Jews were, it was faithlessness to a known truth; which truth was Monotheism, involving, as Dr. Temple assumes, the immortality of the soul.

W. Well, that is quite just; but what conclusions do you draw from that?

H. How was I surprised -- no, I was not, from some acquaintance with these rationalist doctors, particularly superficial borrowers, as English rationalists are: I correct myself, I was not surprised -- to find: "She [Asia] had been the instrument selected [!] to teach the Hebrews the immortality of the soul; for whatever may be said of the early nations on this subject, it is unquestionable [what rationalists say is always, you must understand, unquestionable], that in Babylon the Jews first attained the clearness and certainty in regard to it, which we find in the teaching of the Pharisees." It is clear, therefore, that Monotheism involves the knowledge of the immortality of the soul; for it was taught to those who held Monotheism by the most idolatrous Polytheists in the world. Is this philosophical or historical? It is unquestionable, of course.

W. Now, do not be bitter.

H. Contempt is not bitterness; yet, I admit, no human being should be despised. It is the glory of Christianity to make it impossible; but reasonings and pretensions to light and superiority of mind of this kind I may despise, and do.

See again the superficiality of such a statement as this: "The New Testament is almost entirely occupied with histories -- the life of our Lord, and the life of the early Church;" and he refers to the Epistles. Now, that the New Testament does give us truth in living evidence of it, and works truth out in the actual living relationships of the soul with God, and is not dry systematic theology, I admit with all my heart; but it is exactly the use of this blessed character of scripture to deny the truth on which these relationships are founded, which shews the excessive superficialness of this remark. That all the Epistles were "the fruit of the current history" I admit fully. Very often mistakes and faults were their occasion; but what then? The doctrine is grace meeting need, not treatises for the competency of the human mind. But does that say that the revelation of grace to this need was not doctrine, and doctrine of the deepest and most wonderful character? Nothing but the incapacity of apprehension which cold-hearted rationalism produces could ever have such an idea for a moment. "That early Church;" we are told, "does not give us precepts, but an example" -- fine words; but as stupid as they are false. They will have only man. The Church gives. God must not be brought in -- must not even give. What a heartless system it is! Did God, by whatever instruments, give nothing to "that Church?" Were the epistles not given to it -- not by it? Nothing, moreover, can be more false than the statement itself. There is not what Dr. Temple states, save in the smallest degree; and there is almost exclusively what he states there is not. No doubt in St. Paul, from his very nature, the letters disclose the man; but the epistles are entirely composed of doctrines and precepts: whoever doubts about it has only to read them. All this is theory, perfectly regardless of facts. They are all "letters for the time," and all "treatises for the future." When Dr. Temple says, "To these pages, accordingly, the church of our day turns for renewal of inspiration," though somewhat acquainted with the pretensions of rationalism, I confess I can hardly understand it, unless it be a very common-place fact put in a bombastic way, to exalt men now to a level with the apostles, make the epistles a mere aroused energy of man, reference to which may arouse energy in us. They "turn for renewal of inspiration." I ask you, what does that mean?

W. Well, I really do not know. I remember Balaam went to seek enchantments: perhaps it is that in a good sense.

H. I know of no such going to God for inspiration in scripture. There is enquiring of the Lord. That, in the modesty of scripture -- and how lovely it is in everything! -- I can understand; and that a man taught of God, reading scripture may be animated, his soul refreshed and filled with the truth and Spirit of God; but "turning for a renewal of inspiration" I must leave to the high-flown pretensions of modern despisers of revelation. I remember once speaking to the very chief of this system in a foreign country, one who has largely spread it among evangelical men. He denied inspiration as held in the common belief of the Church of God. I said to him, "You speak of avoiding the question of the inspiration of the Old Testament. That is a very easy way of avoiding the difficulties of your subject, you who deny inspiration in the vulgar use of the word; because the Lord and the apostles plainly declare the Old Testament to be inspired." "O yes," he said -- declining to answer as to the Lord, as he had already given too much scandal by it -- "no upright honest man can deny that the apostles treat the Old Testament as inspired and quote it as such, but they deceived themselves." He said this with an aplomb that was inconceivable. I only said, "Then it is a question as to your or the apostles' competency and authority as to Christianity. That is soon settled." And so I must say to Dr. Temple, if he turns to biographical scripture for a renewal of inspiration in himself. He must forgive me, if I still trust somewhat more to the old inspiration than to the renewal of it -- more to the divinely-given teaching of those who were sent by the Lord and by the Holy Ghost, and fitted for this work, and separated to it, and who could say "He that is of God hears us;" and "if any man be spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord; and if any be ignorant, let him be ignorant." He who can go there for renewal of inspiration, and find only two lives there, must have a singular process of blinding himself.

Remark too the assiduous confounding what is divine and human. "The age of reflection begins ... . The spirit or conscience comes to full strength; and assumes the throne intended for it in the soul." Be it so, though the confusion of the spirit and the conscience is a mischievous one, as we may see. But mark what soon follows: "Now the education by no means ceases when the spirit thus begins to lead the soul." "The office of the spirit is, in fact, to guide us into truth, not to give truth." Note here the use of scriptural terms, so as to humanize and destroy their force: the spirit is first conscience; it is grown up at the age of reflection, and takes its seat on the throne; then it guides into truth. This in the scripture is said of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, who was to be sent down from heaven, who was to shew them the things of Christ. Here the spirit, which was just now conscience, guides into truth, but gives no truth. That is, the Holy Ghost reveals nothing -- shews nothing; the Comforter is only the conscience of man.

Further, note, there are no precepts to be found. The Holy Ghost is thus dropped into mere conscience, and no truth is given. But let us proceed in the description of this state of full age. "He is free, but freedom is not the opposite of obedience, but of restraint." "The law, in fact, which God makes the standard of our conduct, may have one or two forms. It may be an external law -- a law which is in the hands of others, in the making, in the applying, in the enforcing of which we have no share -- a law which governs from the outside, compelling our will to bow, even though our understanding be enlightened or not ... . Or, again, the law may be an internal law; a voice which speaks within the conscience, and carries the conscience along with it; a law which treats us, not as slaves, but as friends, allowing us to know what our Lord doeth; a law which bids us yield, not to blind fear or awe, but to the majesty of truth and justice; a law which is not imposed on us by another power, but by our own enlightened will." Remark here how all subjection to God, or authority of God, is wholly denied. But this all gets a distinct character, uniting the first and last quoted passages by words in a previous page describing this time of full age. "Thus the human race was left to itself, to be guided by the teaching of the spirit within."

Now I hold, as you know, that a Christian is not under law at all; he is dead to the law by the body of Christ. But it is one of the characteristics of modern rationalism, to take certain advances in truth, which the Church at large does not see, and to pervert them to evil. Here the conscience and spirit are identified; and the spirit gives no truth, but guides into it (that is, it is man's growing up into it); but there is no revealed truth. There is a life, an example, we are allowed "to know what our Lord doeth." The human race is left to itself, to be guided by the teaching of the spirit within, which is only conscience. But it is left to itself; no truth given, no precepts ever found in the word; and in addition to all this the authority of God wholly set aside. The law we have is this conscience or spirit within -- is not a law imposed on us by another power, but by our own enlightened will: we bow to the majesty of truth and justice, to God never. He may neither give truth nor impose a command. God's word -- His precepts, the Spirit giving any truth, the authority of God, obedience -- is wholly denied.

Now the scheme of Christianity is the opposite of this. It teaches of a Comforter, the Holy Ghost, who is sent by Christ from the Father, whom the Father sends in Christ's name, who comes and convinces the world. He testifies of Christ, and the disciples also bear witness. He does not speak of Himself, but what He hears He speaks. He was to teach the disciples all things, to shew them things to come, to bring what Christ had said to their remembrance; and he who loved Him would keep His commandments. Now this Christianity of the apostle John, these words of Christ, every honest man must see, are contrary to and contradictory of Dr. Temple's statements. He may think that he knows Christianity and Christ's teaching better than John. His opinion of himself in that respect I cannot doubt; but that his is the opposite of apostolic teaching is most evident. I prefer apostolic accounts of Christianity. Dr. Temple may think his conscience, and his, of course, enlightened will, superior to the Holy Ghost which Christ promised. I confess I prefer Johannean Christianity, if we are so to call it -- the commandments of Christ -- the truth taught and given by the Holy Ghost, to the first essay which is to illustrate moral and religious truth. It may be prejudice; it may be stupidity; but the shining of these modern stars does not, to my spirit and conscience, eclipse the teaching, ay, the giving of truth, of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven (for so the word of God speaks). Hear the apostle, who most clearly teaches, we are not under law as risen with Christ: "to them that are without law, as without law. Yet not without law to God, but rightly subject (e[uuomo") to Christ." How carefully he shews that there is subjection to God. So John, "This is love, that we keep his commandments." So Christ Himself, "I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in His love;" and in the highest of His free acts of grace, His offering Himself, He says, "but that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father has given me commandment, so I do." It is with us, as it was with Christ, the law of liberty; because the new man finds its delight both in what is commanded and in obedience itself, as Christ did: "I delight to do it; yea, thy law is within my heart." But we are sanctified unto obedience, the obedience of Jesus Christ. It is not a law stopping, or attempting, for it did not do it in fact, to stop an evil nature, but the will of God, the motive of the new man, as of Christ. It is not yielding to the majesty of truth and justice, but to God. The doctrine of the essay is the casting off wholly God's authority, the principle of revolt and apostasy; denying the Master (despovthn thn not cuvrion) that bought us, the only Lord (despovthn) God. The heathen were partially a law to themselves when they were a[qeoi atheists, in the world. This, with increased light, is what is recommended. It is a denial of redemption, of obedience, of God's authority; a denial of the Holy Ghost as giving any truth; it is merged in an enlightened will, our spirit or conscience. "That early church (i.e., the epistles) does not give us precepts even."

W. But he speaks of obedience.

H. He does, but it is "obedience to the rules of his own mind,!' not the child once obedient to a parent, now in direct subjection to God in love as Christ was, but the rules of his own mind -- all he knows. Christ's delight was to keep His Father's commandments; the saint's delight is the same; the rationalist's to be left to himself, and have nothing to say to God. It is the dignified liberty of a grown man, competent to guide himself, instead of being a child.

"The church, in the fullest sense, is left to herself, to work out, by her natural faculties, the principles of her own action." Can anything more completely deny the presence of the Spirit, and the authority of the word, that is, of God in every way? What makes her the church in this case, I am sure I do not know. It is an epoch when men have learned beauty from Greece, patriotism from Rome, the immortality of the soul from Babylon through the Jews when departed from God, seen an example in Christ and that early Church, whatever it was, and then are left to themselves to follow their own enlightened will: that is all the Church means. How the apostles blundered about the whole matter, to think that they were sent by the Lord, and laid down their lives for -- I am sure I do not know what! and were so bigoted, that they say "he that is of God heareth us, and he that is not of God heareth not us; hereby know we the Spirit of truth, and the spirit of error." Why the Spirit does not give truth at all! What a pity Dr. Temple was not there to instruct them! I suppose men were not ripe for it in the apostles' days. And they were obliged to be thus bigoted, or did not know any better; and now in this advanced age we can profit by and appreciate the teaching of these men grown to full age. I wonder whether they think that they that are of God hear them; though I do not know why they do not leave men to the rules within instead of writing essays.

W. I do not exactly see, to say the truth, how these men call themselves Christians, and clergymen too.

H. Oh, you see they can consent to many things they think very inexpedient. And though they have said that the Articles are not superstitious or erroneous, yet some expressions may appear so. If they have acknowledged the same to be agreeable to the word of God, some distinctions may be founded on the word "acknowledge." They have allowed them, but "we allow many things we do not think wise or useful." "He does not maintain it, nor regard it as self-evident, nor originate it. Many better and wiser men than himself have acknowledged the same thing: why should he be obstinate? Besides, he is young and has plenty of time to consider it" (when he has signed it of course), "or he is old and continues to submit out of habit, and it would be too absurd, at his time of life, to be setting up as a church reformer."

W. But Dr. Temple does not say all this: it is not in his essay.

H. No; he only joins in publishing the volume, in the hope that it will be received as an attempt to illustrate the cause of religious and moral truth from a free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer, etc.

But I have nothing to say to Dr. Temple. I know nothing of him but that he is master of Rugby. I have a book before me with these principles in it.

But there is a short episode in the progress of the world's education, which is somewhat curious. The progress of the patriotic Roman empire was such, that its utter decay gave occasion for the well-known swarms from the officina gentium to break in upon it. Now as they had neither Grecian cultivation, nor christian enlightened will, and their patriotism was rather rough-handed, what was to be done? Why the Church instinctively, not intentionally, gave up -- for herself of course, it was very gracious -- gave up her full-age Christianity, in which she had been fully left to herself and her own faculties, and took up law -- the only means of taming these myriads that had escaped the general education of the race -- gave up Christianity, and subjected herself (that is, the whole Church under its name) to the old principle of childhood -- the law, to tame these barbarians. It was more than apostolic. Paul kept his liberty, but condescended to the weak; but the church (not "that early one," but the mediaeval one) gave up Christianity for herself (of course, any duty to God or the truth was out of the question; she followed her instinct, the rule of her own enlightened will), and "had recourse to the only means that would suit the case -- a revival of Judaism."⁺ I admit the fact: only there was a deliberate mixture of heathenism with it. How it was a progress, kind and instinctive as it was, it would be hard to tell. Paul had struggled hard against this kind of progress; he thought it a falling from grace. Christ became of no avail if people did it, he thought. However, there is nothing an enlightened will and the Spirit guiding into truth, without giving any, will not do. It was, in fact, neither more nor less than the old schoolmaster come back to bring some new scholars to Christ.

"Of course, this was not the conscious intention of the then rulers of the Church; they believed in their own ceremonies as much as any of the people at large." But this is somewhat obscure. Did they believe the legal system before they imposed it? If so, they had set up the schoolmaster before he was needed for Clovis and his Franks; and it was no instinct at all, but they had sunk back by their own evil instinct to law. If they were in the full light of the age of reflection and enlightened will, they must have known what they were about. This does not quite hang together. Did they get into it themselves by their instinct, or, knowing it was retrograding themselves, impose it on others as necessary, and themselves adopt the revival of Judaism? Here I am at a loss. However, "nothing short of a real system of discipline, accepted as divine by all alike, could have tamed the German and Celtish nature into the self-control needed for a truly spiritual religion." But then, if they accepted the schoolmaster, they were not under it before, and must have known the difference. How they accepted it as divine is very difficult to understand, since they had recourse to it as the only thing that would suit the case. It was a singular procedure. They believed it as much as the untamed Germans, accepted it as divine, and yet had recourse to it, because it suited the case of the latter. Their believing it divine, and giving up an enlightened will, was a self-sacrifice of an unexampled kind, rewarded with darkness that made them think it divine.

⁺Remark how infidelity always excuses popery, and sides with it in these days.

When are they thus to get the truly spiritual religion? I suppose that it is not modern Popery and the immaculate conception of the virgin Mary. We have had some thousand years already to tame the German and Celtish nature into the self-control needed for a truly spiritual religion. The Celts are under it still perhaps. Dr. Temple thinks the Germans have got the start of them. But then this instinctive act of the Church assumes in the same page quite a new character. The question arises, why the less disciplined race -- Germans or Celts (though these last had been a good while under Roman discipline -- of full age too, for they were in the empire that was attacked) -- why, I say, they could not have learned spirituality from the more disciplined. You see they had the spirituality, and it was by this leap into the schoolmaster's hand out of instinct that they accepted the unspiritual, the Judaism, the divine, as much as the Germans. But why was the reverse not the case?" This may happen when the more disciplined is much the more vigorous of the two, but the exhausted state of the Roman empire had not such strength of life left within it. There was no alternative, but that all alike should be put under the law to learn the lesson of obedience."

The more disciplined, the Church, had then the spirituality to teach, but had recourse to a revival of Judaism as the only means which could suit the case. Still it was not the conscious intention of the Church. They believed in the divine character of what they had recourse to. And do you see the reason of this astonishing mystification of having recourse to a thing as the only means suited to this case, yet without any conscious intention, yet possessing the spirituality which would shew what it was? It was the state of exhaustion of the Roman empire, and that is progress. How charming is divine philosophy! They retrograde out of spirituality to Judaism, reculent pour mieux saufer, I suppose, to begin the progress over again. But alas! there is no good in meddling with low principles. They believed they were divine; they who were of the full reflective age had to be put themselves under the law to learn the lesson of obedience. Who put them, God knows; but why had they, the spiritual ones, to be put under law, when they had already learned obedience of a far higher kind, and were disciplined and had spirituality to teach, only that the others needed the law?

Ah, the truth will leak out in spite of theories; the professing Church, like man in all states, progresses backwards. What is perfect in its place is given of God first, and man corrupts it; so did Adam innocent, so did Noah, so did Israel under law, so did the priesthood, so did the royalty, so did the Church under grace. The whole of this statement is a wilful perversion of history: the progress of darkness and superstition, and the legal spirit, and of hierarchical and then monarchical power, is as notorious and well known as possible. The inroad of barbarians gave politic Rome the means of reducing it into a governmental system under Hildebrand. But the corruption itself had been growing from the time the mystery of iniquity began to work, and was ripened by degrees into the Papacy, which partially supplanted the empire by an influence of a new kind. But that the Church had to be put under law to learn the lesson of obedience, though thus laboriously obscured by inconsistent statement, is the admission that it had utterly fallen from its first estate. That going back to law was an advance towards spirituality, no true Christian will think a moment in presence of Paul's statements. The return to law was the corruption of Christianity, mingled, and avowedly mingled, with heathenism as it was. The rulers of the Church used this with a perfectly conscious intention, as the mission of Augustine to England proves, to bring them under their own hierarchical power. History shews, too, that, as to the first great inroad of barbarians, its whole history was different; the Goths were Arians; and the theory, confused as it is, has no historical ground at all.

W. Are you sure that you do not take a one-sided view as to a previous point? Is not Dr. Temple merely insisting upon the use of revelation as light rather than as a law, and while insisting on one point as that which he feels important, not denying the use of revelation, only urging the spirit in which it is to be used? A somewhat exclusive one-sided view is natural, when we are absorbed by one view of a subject important at the moment.

H. Your question is a very fair one. We all are liable to such excess in reasoning, if not very watchful. But my answer is very simple; and it shews that all this train of reasoning is a dead set at revelation; that is, an effort with unconscious intention, perhaps instinctive, as the only means which would suit the case. Dr. Temple says, "If they could appeal to a revelation from heaven, they would still be under law; for a revelation speaking from without, and not from within, is an external law and not a spirit." Is not this as plain as plain can be, that progress means emancipation from revelation? You see, too, what a spirit is. God, any expressed authority of God, or given truth, must be absolutely excluded; it is the childhood of law.

W. It is fatally plain. I had no idea it came to this. It is not even Deism.

H. It is remarkable, that a friend of mine once heard Mr. Powell (now no more, I believe) preach; and he said, "It is in vain they seek to escape mysteries. They must become Atheists, for the greatest mystery is the existence of God." What loss there is I need not say. The Lord says, that the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, which should come, should take the things that were His, and shew them to them; and all that the Father has is His, all the infinitude of the unseen heavenly, and, I may say, divine world, was to be revealed, and that in the intimacy of the relationship of the Father and the Son, so that we should have fellowship with them. And no man had gone up there, but He who descended thence. He could speak what He knew, and testify what He had seen -- declare the Father as in His bosom. He and He only had seen the Father; but this is truth given by the Spirit (all of it, even what Christ said). All of it is lost by this system. Instead, we are to have the spirit or conscience assume the throne intended for him in the soul, and draw from the storehouse of youthful experience, and legislate upon the future, without appeal, except to himself -- a law which is not imposed upon us by another power, but our own enlightened will. All that God can give of the heavenly blessedness of the Son, now a glorified man, is lost, for ever lost; and man is only to seek the development of what is within man.

W. It is, indeed, a loss -- a strange progress! It is inconceivable to me how any who respect Christianity, can put their sons under the influence of such principles.

H. Alas! my friend, the greater part of the world, and particularly the upper classes, go with the stream; and if God, in chastisement, sees fit to let loose Satan's influence, they float with circumstances. The air -- I use it only metaphorically -- is darkened with the smoke of the pit. And this rejection of objective religion is as unphilosophical as it is unchristian; for all creatures must be formed by objects. God alone is self-sufficient. He can create objects in the display of His love; but He needs none outside Himself -- a creature does. Man has no intrinsic resources within himself, whether fallen or unfallen; nor even angels. Take away God, what are they? Nothing or devils.

So man: if money is his object, he is avaricious, or covetous at any rate; if power, ambitious; if pleasure, a man of pleasure; and all other objects are judged of by the ruling one. In every case of a creature, what is objective is the source of the subjective state. In Christianity this is connected with a new nature, because the old will not have the divine object which characterizes and is the foundation of faith; but the principle remains unchanged. "We all, with open [unveiled] face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord." See what a magnificent picture we have in Stephen of this! -- in a remarkable way, no doubt; but still exhibitory of it morally, as well as by a vision. The whole question between Christianity and Dr. Temple's system is brought to an issue. The progress of human nature, with the very elements he speaks of, and the contrasted result, is stated. "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye." There is the relationship between man and the Spirit. Next, "Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One, of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers." These were their ways with those who unfolded the law in a more spiritual manner, and with the great living witness of perfection Himself. Such was man -- flesh in contrast with the law. Such was his state: he always resisted the Holy Ghost. Now note the contrast of the objective spiritual man. Stephen, "full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God." And what was the effect, the subjective effect in one full of the Holy Ghost, of his objective perception of heavenly objects? In the midst of rage and violence, and while being actually stoned, in all calmness⁺ he not merely bears, but kneels down, and says, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." So Jesus: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." Then he said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;" as Jesus had said, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." He beheld, with unveiled face, the glory of the Lord, and was changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord. But how full and complete a picture! -- man always a resister of the Holy Ghost; under law, not keeping it; with prophets, persecuting; with the Just One, a murderer; with the witness of the Holy Ghost, gnashing his teeth and slaying in rage. Christianity, in contrast -- a man full of the Holy Ghost, seeing Jesus the Son of man in heaven, changed into His image, and killed by man, falls asleep, Jesus receiving his spirit.

⁺The same calmness marks his whole discourse. He recites the Jews' history, their own boast, so that they could have no word to say; yet it said all. They had rejected Moses the true deliverer, Joseph their sustainer and help, and the temple they had trusted in, God had rejected by the mouth of their prophets.

Dr. Temple goes over this ground, rejects Christianity as an external revelation (that must be a law), takes up exactly the same elements as Stephen, and declares that man is progressively educated by them to do without that which Stephen enjoyed. Which am I to believe? Yet I have but coldly sketched the elements of thought. I must leave you to meditate over it, and appreciate the beauty and spiritual importance of it. It is a most enchanting picture, and the deepest moral principles are contained in it; but scripture is a wonderful book.

W. But, then, this was a vision.

H. No doubt; but what he saw is revealed and written for my faith to act on.

W. True; I see plainly that Christianity judges wholly that nature which Dr. T. educates for itself -- I cannot say for God. This rejection of Christ in the world made evidently a turning-point in the world's history, as to the proof of what it really was; and this history of Stephen shews man resisting the testimony to Christ's heavenly glory, as they had killed Him when He was the witness of perfection and of God on earth.

H. Just so. There is a silent witness to the divinity of Jesus, and, while truly and really a man, a contrast between Him and all other men, which has profoundly interested me. When man is blessed, morally blessed, elevated, he must have an elevated, and, indeed, to be taken out of self, a divine object before him. Jesus was the object even of heaven, instead of having one. When Stephen is before us, heaven was open to him as it was to Jesus; but he sees the Son of man in the heavens, and that- fixes his view, and lights up his regard with the glory he saw. Heaven is opened upon Jesus, and the angels are His servants; He sees it opened, and the Holy Ghost descends, witness that He is Son of God. But He is changed into no other image by it; He has no object to which to look up, but heaven looks down on Him, and the Father's voice declares, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

W. That is deeply interesting, and supremely beautiful. What a word, indeed, scripture is! I find often these traits, which, to the renewed soul, stamp the person of Jesus as divine, more powerful as witnessing who He was, than even positive texts.

H. They are; but that does not diminish the importance of the positive texts. We enjoy these revelations of His person, but the declaration that the Word was God (and many such like) is a declaration which has authority over my soul. I make God a liar, as John speaks, if I do not believe it; and so I can use it with others. God has declared it: he that believes not has made God a liar, because he has not believed the record which God has given concerning His Son. He that believes has the witness in himself. And all these traits which clothe, or rather reveal, the beloved person of Him who was humbled for us, are ineffably sweet; but the positive declaration is of all importance, too.

Note, in a passage I have alluded to, two other ways in which Jesus is presented, besides the actual declaration that He was God, and the Word made flesh. He gathers round Himself. If He were not God, this would be frightful -- a subversion of all truth -- a destructive impossibility: He would turn men away from God. He accepts this place. All that is attracted by what is good flows around Him, and finds there its perfect and all-satisfying centre. That is God. No one else could or ever did do this, except in sin or violence. The Church can say, Come and drink, I have the living water; so she has, but not, Come to me. That marks the spirit of apostasy. The stream (blessed be God!) flows there, but she is no fountain to which to go. This must be divine, or it is false. But mark, this is a new gathering by a divine revealed centre, not the educational progress of the race; it is the opposite, though blessed instruction for the whole race. The other way Jesus is revealed is in the words "Follow me." We have the same perfection, but now by and in Him as man there is a path revealed through this world of evil. It is one, only one, following Christ. There can be no way but a new divine one, yet necessarily a human one; there is no way for man, as man, in the world at all. When Adam was in paradise, he did not want a way; he had only, in blessed and unfeigned thankfulness, ignorant of evil, to enjoy good and to worship. When man has been cast out, and the world has grown up away from God -- away in nature, in will, there can be no way in a rebellious world, in a sinful corrupt system, how to walk aright, as in and of the world, when its whole state is wrong. But if what is divine comes into it as man (what has motives not of it, nor of human nature, though truly man); if it gives a path in which the divine nature is displayed in grace and holiness in these circumstances, yet always itself manifesting what it is in them; now I have a way. I follow Him truly -- in everything -- a man; but a man displaying divine qualities in the ordinary circumstances of human life. He says "Follow me," but when He has said "Ye are not of the world, as 1 am not of the world," and goes into glory, sanctifies Himself even externally, in His ascension, from the human race, that we may be sanctified by the truth. How thoroughly opposite, to be sure, Christ's system in every detail is, to Dr. Temple's!

W. It is. But what you refer to gives a scope to Christianity, and a character which elevates, indeed attracts to an object -- a divine object; yea, we may be allowed to say, attaches to it: but it shews that our ordinary Christianity is poor work indeed -- I mean poor in principle. I am not comparing persons: take myself, the first.

H. It is. Yet there is more of it practically, where it could not be unfolded in terms, among the poor of the flock, than we may be aware of. Still I am sure, alas! you are right. But it is the beauty of Christianity, that, being objective, being truth, "the truth shall set you free," and a person, "the Son shall set you free," it works effectually in those who receive Christ, and requires no intellectual development to receive its power. Christ is received into the heart, and, dwelling there by faith, produces the effect in us. Yet it takes us out of ourselves, because it is objective; and we, filled with delight in an object, in what is perfect, are like Him, but so forget ourselves (and are filled by doing so), as He did in grace.

W. How skilful God is!

H. Yes; it is divine wisdom. Man would produce virtue by the love of virtue in himself; but then he thinks of himself, and all his virtue is rottenness. God gives us a human but divine object, and our affections are divine, because we love what is so (and morally we are what we love); but we love it in another, and are delivered from self. I would just add, that I believe that this adaptation of the character of walk to our entirely new position in Christ is what is meant by "created again in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has afore prepared that we should walk in them." Hence, we are the epistle of Christ, engraved in the fleshy tables of the heart by the Spirit of the living God.

W. This contrast with the Christianity of the scriptures is, I think, what strikes one most, because it is not merely particular errors or difficulties, but evidently the whole system and principle of relationship with God, of moral influences, and the formation of the soul in God's image (and I must add, though I do not see any reference to such a thing in Dr. T.'s system, for communion with God) is in question. The whole system is the opposite of the christian one. I must reject one, if I receive the other. They are more than contrary -- they are contradictory.

H. Undoubtedly they are. The very starting-point is opposite. Christianity treats man as a fallen being, not merely as imperfect, but as departed from God, and needing a new nature and redemption. Christ meets Nicodemus at once on this ground.

The rationalist or infidel system takes in Christianity by the by, as it does Greece and Rome; but man, as he is, is to be educated.

There are a few points it may yet be well to take notice of. Can anything prove more completely how moral intelligence is lost, or does not exist, in the minds of these teachers, than the following statement? -- "The Pharisees had succeeded in converting the Mosaic system into so mischievous an idolatry of forms, that St. Paul does not hesitate to call the law the strength of sin." Nothing could shew more ignorance of the human heart or of Paul's reasonings. His principle is that "the carnal mind is enmity against God, and is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." "When the commandment came, sin revived and I died; and the commandment ordained to life became to me death." "If a law had been given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law." He sees an external exigence of righteousness, which imputes sin and gives no life. He goes to the very depths of our moral being; he shews the law to be spiritual, and our flesh carnal, and takes man out of the flesh, makes him dead to the law by the body of Christ, that he may live to God. All this which ploughs up the whole moral nature by its word, "thou shalt not lust," sinks in these eminently superficial men into the effect of a mere converting the Mosaic system into a mischievous idolatry of forms. The Lord Jesus did judge the neglect of substance for form, but, once the flesh had fully proved itself by rejecting Him (for lawless sin and lawbreaking were complete when He came), then its nature is judged, instead of the law educating it. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. And how even our hearts feel that Paul is truer, knew more about it, than the rationalists, if one morsel of spirituality be in us! But, turn on whatever hand you will, you are met by the superficiality of these pretenders to progress. Do you think, my dear W., that grace overcomes the lusts of the flesh?

W. So we have learnt, through mercy.

H. Not at all; "The moral toughness of the Jewish nature, which enabled them to outlive Egyptians, Romans, Mussulmans, was well matched against the baffling evil." And so it has been communicated, I suppose, to our natures, which are not tough at all. Is it not deplorable? There is only one more principle produced in this essay, but an important one of the rationalistic school, on which I would make a remark -- their view of the Bible; for they boast of the Bible and of Christ in their own way. "The Bible, from its very form, is exactly adapted to our present want. It is a history; even the doctrinal parts of it are cast in an historical form, and are best studied by considering them as records of the time at which they were written, and as conveying to us the highest and greatest religious life at that time." It has its value "by virtue of the principle of private judgment, which puts conscience between us and the Bible, making conscience the supreme interpreter." Now that every man has a conscience is a truth of the last importance. God has taken care that man, falling into sin, should, in and with the sin, acquire the knowledge of good and evil -- a profound and admirable ordering of divine wisdom, as it was impossible he could have that knowledge before. The knowledge of good and evil, in one necessarily above all evil in nature, is the sphere of, and inseparable from, holiness. In man this is impossible. He is in innocence, or with a conscience in sin. But then if conscience come with sin, while in itself it is the knowledge of good and evil, i.e., of the difference of right and wrong, it may be deadened, perverted, gives no motives more than approval and disapproval, no power, no living object, save as fear of judgment may come in.

To man in this state a revelation of God is made from the beginning a promise of deliverance in another than himself; the all-important principle we have seen of the mind being taken out of self -- affections, thankfulness, adoration of heart, introduced in contrast with judgment, while the truth of judgment is owned, law confirmed, but deliverance given from it. But God gives a full revelation as to the whole of His relationships with man, in responsibility, and in grace. That is, He either puts Himself in relationship, or shews a relationship which exists, with the being who has the conscience. We must consider it in both these lights. The latter is law, the former grace. Both were already seen in Paradise. In and out of Christianity, men have sought to reconcile them. Out of Christ they never can. But there they were, responsibility and life -- a command (not knowledge of right and wrong, but a command), and free communication of life -- responsibility and giving of life. Man took of the first tree, and never ate of the second. He goes out a sinner, with death on him and judgment before him -- the promise of a deliverer, but in another (no promise to him, for he was in sin, but for him), the Seed of the woman, which Adam specifically was not. The first creature, man, flesh, was no longer in communion, or heir -- he was lost. Then came God's witness to men, and temporal judgment of the world on that footing (i.e., the flood); then promise unconditional, again confirmed to the Seed, to that one only, as Paul says, and as is strictly and profoundly true. (Genesis 22.) No question of responsibility is raised; God would bless all nations in the promised seed. But could the question of righteousness be left as indifferent? Impossible. It is raised by law, obedience and blessing, disobedience and the curse. This is broken before it is formally given in its first and chiefest link -- that which bound man immediately to God. They made other gods -- turned their glory into the similitude of a calf eating hay. Then, after various dealings in mercy, and Christ presenting Himself to the world's responsibility, the work of God comes, not dealing with the responsibility of men, but recognizing it; grace, which brings salvation, sealing the truth of all the previous responsibility (for otherwise salvation were not needed), but going on another ground and meeting the case. Christ takes the effect of the broken responsibility on Himself, dies for sin, and is the source of life, and that according to righteousness. The whole question of the two trees of paradise (life-giving, and good and evil, and man's ruin in this) is settled, for those who receive Christ, for ever, with the largest -- yea, a perfect -- revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in all His riches and ways.

Two points come before us in what Dr. T. says: -- how we are to view the Bible, even the doctrinal parts of it; and conscience being between us and the Bible as supreme interpreter.

The whole question is, Is there a revelation? Is anything heavenly to come within the scope of man's thoughts? Has God to be known, or merely right and wrong discerned? And if He has to be known, must He not reveal himself?

Now I say, if we are to be blessed, God must be known. If I am away from God in sin (and so the scripture treats man, and conscience cannot deny it), doing right and wrong cannot be settled but by returning to God. If a child has wickedly abandoned his father's house, he may leave off particular faults, but he can never be right till he returns and submits to his father. But the true knowledge of God is lost, and the more man reasons in sin, the more it is lost. It will be said, God must be good. I can say this when once He has been revealed; for heathens did not know this as truth, though instinct looked for it -- wants looked for it: but they did not in their notion of God rise above the passions of men. When they did rise above them, they held that God could have nothing to say to men. But now God has been revealed, even the poorest man knows God must be good. But if I begin to reason, what do I see? An innocent child perishing in agony, the mass of the world degraded to the lowest degree by heathenism. How is He then good? An infinitesimal part of the race for centuries alone knowing the unity of the Godhead, and they almost worse than their neighbours; sin having power over myself; brutality in families, wars, tumults, and miseries -- how is He good? If I say, Ah! but that is fallen man departed from God: then I ask, How then can he be received back again? I cannot with any sense deny that he is a sinner; and if God did not make him bad, he is fallen. The cravings of nature prove he is. How can he be back with God, whom I must then think to be holy and pure?

A revelation from God and of God is the first necessity of my nature as a moral being. I get both in Christ. "He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God." I set to my seal, on believing Him, that God is we; but then it is not only the word received from above -- that a prophet, that John, had, and spoke of earthly things, moved in the sphere in which God dwelt with man as a creature on earth responsible to God; but He came Himself from above. God spoke in the Son; His words were, in a personal and complete way, though a man, the words of God. They were spoken by the Lord. Now he that receives His testimony sets to his seal that God is true. And note how this is stated: "No one is ascended up to heaven, but he who is come down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven," and "what he hath seen and heard that he testified." Oh! what a blessing is here, which none else can give! for none else has gone up to heaven to tell us what is there. In this poor distracted sin-beset world I have the sweet and holy ways and divine objects of heaven brought down to my heart, by One who is the centre of its glory and delights, and come to bring them to me in love, yet without leaving it.

W. But is there not a conscience which must and does judge what is before it? For instance, if a God were revealed who was not good, or who was not holy, how could I possibly receive such a being as God?

H. How long has that been the case with man? Was there ever a case where conscience made a difficulty when a revelation had not been given? Was there ever such a thing as a holy God thought of, or the need of holiness in God dreamt of, in any religion but a revealed one? We may find partial traces of goodness as to human need and deliverance from tyranny in India, in the avatars of Vishnu, in that otherwise monstrous idolatry; but all idolatry everywhere proves that the notion that goodness and holiness were required in a divine Being by the conscience of man is utterly false. The gods were the reproduction of men's passions with a superior degree of power. When revelation was given, and redemption was made known by God, then holiness and goodness were made known and estimated, but nowhere else. That is, instead of the conscience being between us and the Bible (or a positive revelation), there must be a revelation between God and us, and our conscience, or if you please, between God and us, in order that the conscience may feel that God must be good and holy to be God at all. When the revelation has been given, the conscience recognizes it, but never before. Now this is essential and conclusive on the question before us, and shews us that conscience within is wholly incapable of judging. But there is a conscience, and when a divine revelation or light comes to it from God, it is susceptible of impressions from it, so as to have a right judgment, but never without, as to what is divine. Modern infidels are reasoning from the effect of divine light to deny its necessity. As when light comes in, the eye can see; with none it cannot, and would never know it could. Scripture is true; when men had the knowledge of God, they did not discern to retain God in their knowledge.

W. I had not weighed these facts, or rather I had not thought of them; but they are true, and they certainly put the pretensions of infidelity and of man's mind in a very peculiar light. They are really vaunting themselves as competent to judge Christianity; whereas the only light they have to judge it by, they have got from it or from Judaism. Without it man's mind sank into the grossest idolatry and moral degradation. A revelation alone enabled them, by revealing what God really is, and so forming their understandings, to judge of what He ought to be. There is another point strikes me in our conversation -- how little their themes bear the test of history and facts! They make boast of philosophy; but it is well known that up to Socrates it was little but cosmogony, and Plato's morality was communism, and his theology demonism, and in truth metempsychosis. This argument from conscience was what I felt least able to meet, for I was conscious that an unholy God, or one that was not good, I could not have borne for a moment.

H. You could not, I am sure, because you have a revelation. It is their great theme abroad. But it is always useful to meet infidels on their own ground -- I mean on its untenableness. I have already referred to this. If God is simply good, and the fall and redemption are not God's truth, explain to me this state of this world, three-quarters heathen, and of the other, a great part mussulman or papist, and every kind of misery and degradation dominant, and selfishness the dominant spring of all its activities, where lusts and passions are not so. If man be not fallen, where is God's goodness? And if God be not good, what is? Christianity tells me man is fallen, and reveals to me God in goodness in the midst of misery, and redemption as an issue out of it: and the history of man, not succeeding generations, sacrificed to rationalists' theories of progress of the fifty-ninth century; but revelations of this goodness and deliverance for faith to lay hold of from the day of man's fall, though the time was not come to accomplish the thing promised.

And, allow me to ask you, if man be so competent, how comes it there is so much difficulty, and conflict, and uncertainty? Why is there so much difficulty in finding out God? Why any question of discovering Him, if men have not lost Him? Why men believe in Jupiter, or Siva, etc., or Odin king of men, or Ormuzd and Ahriman, or Khem, or a host of others which it is useless for me to follow? Why have they such difficulty, when it is owned God must be good and holy, in coming to Him and walking with Him?

No; it is evident man has got away from God, many horridly, degradingly; and that the fairest of Eve's daughters are caring more for a pretty ribbon, and of her sons for gold or a title, than for all which God presents to them to win their hearts in the Son of God's sufferings, and offering up Himself in grace for them. No; man is fallen, has lost the sense of what God is, and of His love -- has not his heart's delight in that which God is, or what is supremely good. Nothing proves it more than his not finding it out. God has given a conscience, but it does not judge the word: the word of God judges it. In one sense, every man must judge; but his judgment reveals him in presence of the word. A man's judgment of other things always reveals his own state. He is certainly lost, condemned, if he does not receive the word. God speaks, and gives adequate witness of who He is. "He that believeth not is condemned already." Light is come into the world. If men prefer darkness, it is not their conscience. Their will must be at work. Dr. Temple professes to believe, I suppose, that the Son of God is come. I ask, Is man bound to receive Him or not? There He is, to test every man's soul by His reception, or the contrary. It does test the soul. He has a right to judge, you tell me. If he does not receive Him, he proves himself bad, bad in will. He has to judge; but if he rejects what is perfect in goodness, his own state is shewn. He is judged by his approval or disapproval of what is there, because perfection -- because God manifest in the flesh -- is there. Because God is speaking, woe to him who does not hearken! Yes, he has to judge. It is not his right: he is a lost creature; but he is tested by it -- it is his responsibility. How he can meet it, I do not enquire here. I believe the grace of God is needed; but there is God speaking -- speaking in grace. Is He received or not? The two things John speaks of, in the passage I allude to, are the words of God, and One come from above who is above all. Am I not bound to listen? am I not bound to receive? You ask me, Must I not judge whether they are His words, and whether He came from above? I answer, Yes; but you are judged by the result you come to, because God knows He has given a perfectly adapted and gracious witness; yea, that He is it. If you have rejected this, you have rejected Him, and remain in your sins and under wrath. To them that believe He is of price, as He is to God; to them that are disobedient, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. It is a savour of life to life, and a savour of death to death; and the presentation of the truth and words of God and of the Son of God must be so, because their present rejection is the rejection of Himself.

Talking of conscience between us and the Bible is all foolishness and nothing else.⁺ The Bible is God's word in direct contact with us, telling to our conscience all that ever we did; that God is holy, but (blessed be His name!) that He is grace and a Saviour. What is conscience as distinct from us? It is that on which the word of God acts. If light comes (and God is light, and Christ was the light of the world), it makes all manifest, and acts on the eye. If the eye is in an ill state, it avoids the light; it does not judge the light: its state is proved by it; it judges colours, forms, and so on, by the light. But a conscience that is not "us," or a conscience between us and God, is an utter delusion. Conscience is the knowledge of good and evil in us: that it is, without any further revelation of God. It has the sense of responsibility, and, though obscurely, of judgment and the consequences of sin (at any rate, as far as vague fear goes). But if Christianity be true at all, the Son of God has come, and speaks God's words. The moment He is received (that is, that there is faith in Him) the first judgment of conscience and heart is to bow to Him; the first right thing (for right is the just maintenance of the duties of relationship) is to listen, and obey that word; the most essentially wrong thing is not to bow and receive His word. To judge God, when I know it is Him, is the height of sin.

⁺It is really a question between faith and infidelity. If I believe the Bible to be the word of God, the judgment is formed; I have only to bow. If I reject it, I am an infidel; my judgment of it is formed. I may be ignorant of it, then there is no judgment to be formed; though I am sure, if a new nature be in us, it will be received by us as light is by the eye, and known. The rejection of the word, it being what it is, is the judgment of what rejects it.

If Dr. Temple or these rationalists do not believe that He has come and spoken, I will seek to prove to their consciences that He has. There is God's way of doing it. They must judge whether He be come. To be sure; but this I tell them with certainty, from His own lips, that He is come, and if they do not believe in Him, they are condemned; if they do, they have eternal life. But if He be there, if they do believe He has spoken, their part is to listen to Him, not to judge Him. With the blinding of conscience by passions, ignorance, education, it is of the utmost importance to have a sure witness of God's mind, not dependent on the varying views of man. If I lose the Bible, I lose communications from God; I am infinitely, irreparably sunk. Dr. Temple, it seems, does not like God's word -- does not like He should reveal Himself. If he has a professed revelation, he "likes to consider it as records of the time at which they were written, and as conveying to us the highest and greatest religious life at that time." That man should be developed, that may be allowed; religious life, that too; but communications from God -- no. Now there have been such -- God's word spoken in this world, or Christianity is all a falsehood from beginning to end, a holy imposture! which there is nothing like in the world. But if there have been such, have we lost them for ever? Are we returned to darkness? for since the true light shone -- shone in one speaking the words of God, am I to have them no more, no more this revelation from God, no more any communication from Himself as such? I have lost all that was precious and elevating in the world; I have lost communication with God. I may speculate about Him -- may know something of right and wrong, but I have lost all communications from Him -- wretched man that I am! What was man when he had not it? What is man when he has not it?

To reduce divine communications to apostolic life is to shew a will not to hear God directly, not to have to say to Him -- a dislike to have to do with the words of His mouth. It is not, "Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and they were to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart." If God have spoken, and if we deny it, we are infidels; to exalt the conscience of man above it, as a judge, is to set corrupt sinful man above the authority of God. I read that the word discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart. It makes its truth and the authority of God known by its action in the conscience; it tells a man all that ever he did; but it reveals a God of grace not that the conscience judges the word. Christ did speak the words of God. Are they lost to us? If I have them, is my conscience to be between me and them? What profound nonsense such a sentence is! If you do not know them, I will not call you an infidel, but you are an unbeliever. You have not yet set to your seal that God is true. Do not, at any rate, pretend to teach others, when you admit that God has spoken, and you cannot yet tell what is His word, and what is not.

W. I am glad you spoke of this question, for it is one of the practical difficulties to my mind in their way of speaking; because I feel I have a conscience, and yet I recognize the supreme authority of the word.

H. But do you not see, my good friend, that the whole object is to get rid of revelation, and its authority over us? If God has spoken, if there be a revelation, would not the first act of conscience be to turn and bow to it -- of the heart to delight in what God has revealed? for He has surely revealed Himself.

W. Of course it would be the proof that there was conscience in activity, and not will, a heart to taste the blessedness One alone can tell of.

H. That is the very point, at least a very principal one; and it is connected with the fall, which is always ignored in this system. There are two parts of conscience: one, the knowledge of right and wrong; the other, sense of responsibility, and that to God. The first, sin has practically greatly darkened; the last, will resists, though it cannot deny. The word of God comes in, gives perfect light to the conscience, and much more, and presents the authority of God to the will. Men plead conscience as a competency against God and His word, saying they must have conscience supreme. God will settle that question, whether His light and word is perfect for conscience, His authority in it sufficient to claim obedience and submission. A child has departed wickedly from its father's house, and thrown off his authority. He professes to desire to go right; his father sends a message, yea, comes and speaks to him, communicating to him his mind, and will, and grace. He replies, "Oh, all that is a thing external to me; the real thing is the inward disposition in me." My answer to him is, "All very fair, my good lad; but the trial and test of your disposition is your submitting to your father's word, and receiving and bowing with a thankful heart to his testified kindness."

W. But suppose he were to say, But I must know if it be my father's word.

H. All quite right. But I reply, If your heart were right, you would be only too glad to know it is. And when you say, that, even if it be, it is only an external thing, and my conscience after all must judge, I see you take your own judgment still, and do not want your father's word. I know your disposition, your will likes to be master yet. Besides, let me tell you, had you been staying in the house, you would be familiar enough with your father's voice and words to know them at once. You are proving your own incapacity and evil. If you do not receive and understand his words, you will remain without, and prove that incapacity -- that is all. If your disposition were right, rebel as you have been, a word from your father would be heaven to you, and the heart would delight in bowing to his authority; and this very readiness is the disposition which, directed towards his own words, is that which, morally speaking, gives capacity to receive them; for the heart is right, and the will broken. If any man will (desire, be willing) to do my will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. If you talk of your conscience being supreme, when your father has spoken, it is quite clear that you wish to be independent of your father; the first proof of the true return of heart and conscience is the self-subjection to your father's declared mind and will. You are not returned to him yet. Your whole place is wrong, conscience and all.

There is the knowledge of right and wrong as a faculty without God; but where God speaks, conscience is proved by bowing to it. See Saul: "I thought I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, which thing also I did." There was conscience. Once he has to do with the Lord, once he is right, it is "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." All short of this is alienation from God. A conscience that wants to be away from God, to judge for itself, is not an upright conscience. It is will and sin. Conscience is not only judgment, it recognizes the authority of God (we are sanctified to obedience) and loves it, because it is true conscience, and the will of independent self is given up, the soul restored to God. For the word has authority as well as light. It tests the truth of conscience by giving light, but it speaks with the authority of God. Hence the Lord says, The word that I speak unto you, the same shall judge you in the last day. Judge it now, if you dare. I do not believe in the conscientiousness of a man who pleads his conscience against the word of God.

See how the apostles speak: "If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; he that believeth not God hath made him a liar." "He that heareth my word hath everlasting life," says Christ. "Why do ye not understand my speech? Because ye cannot hear my word." "Because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not." "He that sent me is true, and I speak to the world those things I have heard of him." "As my Father hath taught me, I speak these things." Because man has abandoned God on his original created ground, God has sent the testimony of heavenly things to bring him to a higher relationship with himself. And he -- the wretched sinner -- tells me he must listen to conscience, because this revelation is an external thing! To be sure heavenly things, and the record of them, are very external to him. He has told the truth. He is out of Paradise. This world is the scene which has grown up in man's exclusion from God, who comes with the revelation of what is divine and heavenly to bring him out of that, and into what is heavenly; and he puts it off, and says it is external to him. He is right. Only if he does not receive it, he will be external to it. He will have a conscience too; he is all right in that, and it will tell him what he has done, when the time of gracious reception is past. His sheep hear His voice. "But ye," says the Lord, "believe not, because ye are not of my sheep."

The word and confirming works are given, adequate testimony is given. Woe to him who does not receive it! He will die in his sins, and the same word will judge him in that day. If God has come and spoken and revealed Himself from heaven, and we do not receive it, He and all that is heavenly is external to us, and there is nothing but self within. But even in this notion they only shew their ignorance; for "he that believeth on the Son hath the witness in himself." The measure of the conscience becomes divine, which natural conscience never can be, even when it is right -- it must and ought to be human; whereas, when born of God through the word, on receiving the word I receive Christ, the revelation of God, and of what is heavenly. He is my life, He is within; and I am called on to be an imitator of God as a dear child, and walk in love as Christ has loved us, so that I am, if needed, to lay down my life for the brethren; for Christ has thus proved His love to us. My measure of conscience is divine, acting because I have both seen and received what is divine in receiving Christ by His word. So that, speaking of its fulness, the apostle is not afraid to say, filled with (up to) all the fulness of God. Hence, John says, "which thing is true in him and in you; because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth." And all this heavenly revelation of and by Him, who came down from heaven, I am to give up, to have patriotism from the selfish and treacherous Romans, whose patriotism was the deceitful oppression of the world; and to learn that courage, which I may find in a cock or a bull-dog, has been ignorantly forgotten by Paul! It is hard to have patience with such contemptible stuff.

W. But we ought. The Master you speak of had.

H. You are right. He was perfect in everything, and fleshly and unchristian feeling is apt ever to mingle itself with our state in such cases. Still though we are imperfect in it, indignation in itself is not wrong in such cases.

W. But there is still a question which I should like to put to you here.

H. Well, do so.

W. I enter into your feelings as to Christ. He whom God had sent spoke the words of God, and he who received His testimony set to his seal that God is true -- an immense principle evidently every way. I see plainly that, in receiving the word the very name given to Christ in this respect, I receive truth, submit to divine authority, am restored to God, enter in a heavenly way into a new relationship with Him, according to that which is revealed, and know grace, and indeed glory. But then the apostle's words -- how can I regard them? because the personal speaker is, so to speak, lost.

H. As regards Christ Himself, the ineffable loveliness of all He said and did, of course, necessarily bears the stamp of heaven, of one who came thence, and yet could say, who is in the bosom of the Father -- who spoke what He knew, and testified what He had seen. This is necessarily wanting in the subsequent communications; but, on the other hand, there is gain. "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come; but if I go I will send him unto you." Besides the perfect expression of divine good in Christ on earth, the question of good and evil was settled for ever. Christ being made sin, and God perfectly glorified by His offering of Himself, and His being the sin-bearer, the question of good and evil was morally settled. Thereupon man takes a place in heaven. This was a new thing. Thus you will find that characteristically (for, of course, the same truths are found in both) John gives us the divine thing, the heavenly thing -- God Himself manifested upon earth, Paul, on the ground of sovereign grace, man brought righteously into heaven. Now Christ must have suffered, risen from the dead, and gone to heaven, to have this before us, and the message or testimony of it given. Yet it must be divine testimony to have any value; and that I have through the Holy Ghost sent down.

W. You mean, that the New Testament gives us a witness and a record, with, of course, many accessory truths, of the divine -- God Himself, Qeovth" as well as Qeiovth" manifested in man; and man brought in a new and heavenly way completely to God.

H. I do. The former, as to its fruit in us, takes the character of life; the latter, of righteousness (but divine life -- that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested to us, and by which, Christ being our life, we now live; and divine righteousness). It is thus wholly a new thing -- a life that was with the Father before the world was, manifested in Jesus, communicated to us -- not in Adam innocent more than in Adam a sinner.

W. But, then, this becomes a kind of independent life -- at any rate, once it is received.

H. In no way. The character of this life, even in Jesus as man, was the perfection of the condition in which God has given to us eternal life, and that life is in His Son. "He that hath the Son hath life." It was obedience and dependence, and a constant heavenly regard. He was the ajrchlo;" and teleiwth;" faith, a Man with His eye always out of Himself on God. So with us. When I say Christ lives in me, I must add always "the life which I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Divine life in a creature nature is always objective; that is its essential excellence, as indeed we have already seen.

W. Let me ask you what place you give Peter, then?

H. What there is of connection in this life with the previous ways of God he pursues. It is government; and this in the strongest way confirms to me the authenticity of the second epistle. The first is government in favour of the just; the second, as regards the predominant and licentious wicked. Hence he goes to the consuming of all things in the stability of which they rest. The saint for him is a pilgrim. I he great fact of redemption, of course, is fully stated for this. But we are not risen with Christ, but He is risen, and we have a living hope through His resurrection; meanwhile the government of God is displayed in favour of His people upon earth. This evidently connected it with the Old Testament, though on new ground. Hence the quotation of the thirty-fourth Psalm, "He that will love life," etc.

W. Have you ever thought of the likeness of Jude and 2 Peter? There is something strange in it.

H. How it came about may be a difficulty -- perhaps a difficulty never to be solved, as many such external questions, after eighteen hundred years -- interesting in their place, but immaterial. But the difference as to divine teaching in them is clear and important. Peter speaks of wickedness, and God's dealings with it as such, God's government, as I said: Jude, of apostasy, or leaving the first estate, going briefly through all the characters of this, angelic, the natural man, ecclesiastical, and final rebellion against Christ, on which actual judgment will come; especially, of course, tracing it as regards the Church from false brethren first creeping in, till Christ comes to judge ungodly men. Thus Peter speaks of angels that sinned; Jude of angels that kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation. Thus scripture fills all parts of moral truth up. Like a dissected map, it proves its own perfectness.

In the gospels, which these ignorant wise men are talking about, as to be harmonized and compared, and synoptical and supplementary, we get in Matthew Christ presented to the Jews, Emmanuel, Messiah, and the result of His rejection, but still referring to the Jews (hence no ascension); in Mark, Christ the servant prophet; in Luke, Christ the Son of man in grace, leaving them, on going to heaven, under the blessing of His thence outstretched hand (that is, the various revelations of Christ on earth as man); and in John, out of all dispensational relationship, Christ, God manifest in flesh, the Word and Son, and divine life displayed, and the giver of the Comforter, but even here no ascension, because it is not man in heaven, but God on earth. Hence we shall find another distinct characteristic of John. The three so called synoptical gospels present Christ to the responsibility of man to receive Him. In John He is seen unknown or rejected in the first chapter and becomes the divine object of divinely given faith to those born of God, the Holy Ghost the Comforter being given on His going away. Were we to enter into details, we should only find this admirably, and of course perfectly, brought out. I confess when I read rationalistic views of the books (I do not mean, of course, criticism of the text, though even this be influenced by their state), I am astounded at their absolute moral incapacity. Eternal it is to them, sure enough; at least, all that is in it, all that is divine. They have hit here on the right word, condemned out of their own mouth.

W. But as we are speaking of this, what do you make of James?

H. It is equally admirable in its place; not a high revelation of what is divine, but the fruit of the patient and perfect grace of God towards us. When Paul had been in the third heaven, after all he was a poor mortal; and as, speaking reverently, God had put him in the danger, though by blessing, He sent him a corrective. It was Paul's evil, no doubt, that needed it; but it was God's own goodness, which thinks of all our evil in grace, that sent it. And Paul, as you may see, got profit and advantage through it (that is, as an occasion). Now I do not say that James' epistle is a thorn in the flesh, but it is an excellent corrective of it; it is a girdle about the loins. Our loins are girt about with truth by it; the exceedingly high and heavenly truth into which we are brought; the elevation to which faith brings us; its being faith (that is, a principle which takes us out of ourselves to rest on what is in God and His revelation) might lead us, not by its own nature, but by our utter perverseness, like Paul, not to be out of the flesh as it ought, but to be puffed up in it -- to use liberty for a cloak of licentiousness It is dreadful it should be so; but such we are, poor wretched creatures that we are.

James, that is really, God, comes in and meets us, and with an appropriate moral energy which is mighty in the conscience, shews that the real power of faith connects it with life. Its reality is shewn -- that is the testing word -- by its fruits. And no one speaks of this as more of sovereign grace than he, in all its Pauline excellency, so as to shew the connection. "Of his own will begat he us, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures." He too connects it with the law of liberty -- that is, when the nature, the new man, and the prescribed will, go together. If I command my child to go where he longs to go, and tell him the way, it is obedience, but it is the law of liberty. He speaks of three laws, or law in three ways. First, the law as such -- here, if guilty in one point, guilty of all. The authority of the law given has been despised in the point in which lust was active. We are wholly guilty. Secondly, the royal law of subjective perfection: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. That is doing well. Thirdly, the perfect law of liberty into which I look; that is, the revelation of the path of the divine nature, of which I am made partaker. Revelation shews me the perfection of it, the divine nature gives me the delight in it. I am as a present thing blessed in the doing it.

That James speaks purely of fruits of faith in justifying by works is evident from the fact that the examples he takes were no examples of the fruit of natural conscience at all. One was a father slaying his son, the other a harlot betraying her country. I do not know what the Romans or Dr. Temple would have said to her. But one was giving up everything, even the promises according to flesh, to God, in absolute obedience, counting on Him even to have Isaac again, according to His word; the other identifying herself with the Lord's people when they had not yet gained one victory in Canaan over their mighty enemies. No one pierces more deeply by the word than James into the principles and workings of the human heart, or takes grace and faith as all; but he will have it real and practical, not speculative knowledge. And we need this, and delight in it, if true of heart. Nothing shewed more the really weak side of Luther than his calling this an epistle of straw. And I have no doubt at all that it greatly hindered him entering into the blessed excellences of Paul himself. But you have led me away from our subject.

W. I do not know that I have. The natural flow of our delights in divine things is itself a testimony, and a powerful one. Besides, I apprehend, the positive production of what is good is an argument for it (it makes its very beauty), as well as, at least as strong as, mere reasonings against objections.

H. Well, I believe so; besides it keeps charity alive as regards those who do not taste them, which there is danger that reasonings which occupy themselves with evil may not do. You cannot be filled with the blessedness that is in Christ and the word, without both loving the persons of those that are simply wrong, and desiring they might partake of them. There are adversaries. This is somewhat different. There is such a thing as righteousness as regards wilful evil, and it is charity; but we have to watch ourselves close as regards this. If you saw a deliberate sinner seeking to corrupt a young practically guileless mind, would you not be indignant, and charitably indignant?

W. I should.

H. It is not reflective but it is right, and a high kind of right. It shews a soul living in what is right and caring for it. Seeing the connection between souls and God, which the other is disturbing or hindering, a millstone about such a one's neck and casting into the sea would be better for a man than his so doing; and that is felt. How far these rationalists are thus guilty I leave to God.

But to turn to our subject -- the word of the apostles as compared with Christ. 2 Corinthians 5 states the change from one to the other. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. There was the direct witness of God Himself in the person of His Son in grace; and when asked who He was by the Jews, He refers to His word: a[rchu, in principle, utterly and entirely, what I am saying to you (or, as in the English, "from the beginning"). His words expressed Himself. Then we have a third point, committing unto us the ministry of reconciliation. "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech by us, we pray in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God; for he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

God had Himself in Christ testified perfect grace in His words and ways with man -- revealed what was heavenly as one who had come down from heaven, and was the Son of man who was in heaven. It was the blessed gracious revelation of what was heavenly to men, meeting all their wants and sorrows withal. But man would none of it. "No man receiveth his testimony." He then accomplishes the work which was to bring His redeemed into heaven." Father, I will that they whom thou hast given me be with me where I am;" and He goes to prepare a place for them. But thus His ministry by the word was closed, and He, having secured everlasting righteousness and the glory of God in their admission, sends down the Holy Ghost to be to earth a witness of it in chosen vessels, and, practically, in all who should receive their testimony. He tells them that it should not be they that spoke, but the Spirit of their Father who spoke in them; and so far from inferior was that testimony, that He encourages His disciples, by saying that a blasphemy against Him who spoke in it would be unpardonable, while a word against Himself as humbled might be forgiven. (Luke 12: 10-12.)

Hence John says, "He that is of God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us; hereby know we the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error." And the apostle Paul: "If any one be spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord." Again: "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God; which things, also, we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing," or, as I have no doubt is the sense, using a spiritual medium for communicating spiritual things.

That these things animated their life too is true; but where did they get them? The Holy Ghost was come down from heaven, as the Son had come down. He was to shew them the things of Christ; to guide them into all truth; shew them things to come. I suppose, if they lived in the things, they must have learned them somehow. What wretched pleading it is, to say it is the expression of the highest and greatest religious life of the time! To be sure it was. But where did they get the things to communicate on which they lived? What was the power in which they communicated them? Can Dr. Temple, who fancies he sees this life clearer than his neighbours -- can he tell us anything he has not got from their revelations? He, we may hope, is living on what they communicated; but who communicated them for him to live on? All this is shuffling about the matter to deny revelation. No one could testify of what was in heaven directly but one who came thence. Christ did, and says so; the Holy Ghost did, and communicated through suited vessels the glory of Christ and the Father's love in Him.

Thus it was. After the law, the rule of God's government on earth, the prophets shewed the coming Messiah, His sufferings and glories; but it was as seeing it afar off, and recalling to the law, not announcing the kingdom as then coming -- the law and the prophets were until John. By him the kingdom is preached. He goes before the face of Jehovah to prepare His ways. He receives from above his testimony and place; but his testimony was of the earth, repentance, judgment, the kingdom -- Messiah coming amongst them. Then Christ comes, but does not receive from heaven, but comes from heaven, and can tell directly what He has seen and knows and has heard. He is in the bosom of the Father, and can declare God; and He does so. "No man receiveth his testimony." Man wills not what is heavenly.

But what an infinite blessing is this of which these rationalists would deprive us -- the positive revelation of what is heavenly, the blessed communication of what is there above! To talk of life and religious life is all simple nonsense. Can religious life reveal what it has never seen, the blessedness in which it has never yet been? True religious christian life is formed by this revelation; and think of reducing men to mere conscience! and rejecting the revelation of what is heavenly even to conscience! What a lowering thing it is! No; the Son speaks what He knows, and testifies what He has seen. It is the very essence of Christianity, and sole source of blessing. But, man being so evil as to reject it, God is not frustrated in His love; the need of it as above all is made manifest; redemption is accomplished, and thereon man takes his seat on high on the throne of God, and the Holy Ghost is sent down the witness and proof of it, and testifies of the glory he (man) is in, his relationship with God his Father, all the wisdom and glory of the counsels and work by which he is brought there; the Church's place with Christ, founding a perfected and purged conscience on the work of Christ, so that holiness is righteously connected with the entrance of a sinner into the glory he had come utterly short of. This links the heart to what is heavenly; while the testimony of the Holy Ghost is the sure foundation on which the soul can rest for the certainty of it as truthful, and thus a living enjoyment. God's will and counsel; Christ's accomplished work; the Holy Ghost's testimony (Hebrews 10); that is what gives liberty and boldness to enter into the presence of God. The scriptures are the recorded testimony for all times. Ministry does not cease, but revelation does, when all is revealed. The word of God is completed.

W. I see the divine system in what you say, and its wisdom and completeness, while we have to live by faith. But there is a question I should like to ask you in connection with this -- What place do you give to criticism in this?

H. I use it with all my heart. If my father had left a will of his, copied for the various members of the family, which we felt bound us all, in which all had an interest, and were all subject to; of course, in copying, some errors might have crept in. So in the scriptures, the oracles of God were committed to men (mark the expression -- the oracles of God, it is formal; that is, not mere life expressed), while Providence watched over them. But there was as to this the responsibility of man; as in all God's ways with us, there is this connection of responsibility, and yet security by grace. Well, errors have crept into this will; but we are all desirous of knowing accurately our Father's mind, assured that it is in the will. We compare copies to have it as accurately given as possible. I do so, because it has authority, absolute authority, over me the child: had it not, I should not do so. The multiplication of the copies which has so far multiplied occasional mistakes, quas aut incuria fudit aut humana parum cavit natura, has also multiplied the certainty that the whole will is right, and has enabled me to correct isolated errors in each one copy by comparing it with the others. If a word or two remain illegible, or not to be ascertained, I must leave that word, I lose its force, if the same disposition be not elsewhere. But it is evident I should, if I attached value to my Father's will as such, carefully compare all to have it exact. This has been done by men skilled in it, proving how little was uncertain, and that little affecting doctrine nowhere.

W. This I see very distinctly. The proofs of the divine record lie elsewhere. This is mere care for its correctness, because it is so estimated, in which providential care and divine faithfulness are to be trusted, as in everything we are blessed in.

H. Just so. There is no divine blessing but by faith, nor can be, when it passes beyond mere temporal enjoyments, and they are never divinely enjoyed but by faith. This is the necessary link between the soul of man and an unseen God. In truth it was needed when He was manifested; for no man can see God, morally speaking. Therefore it was said then, "He that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, hath everlasting life." Were it possible to see His glory and live, it would be no moral link of the soul with Him. If man were even kept from sin by it, which outwardly he might, it would be no real enjoyment of Him, nor living spiritual fellowship.

I think we have pretty well exhausted the subject of this essay, and enjoyed some excursions by the way to scenes it opened out to view as we passed. Many details might be taken up, but I do not know that we should gain anything material by referring to them; such as the habits of false moral estimation introduced by the heathen apprehension of things often current. His three witnesses quarrelled, but that proves nothing, if they had different partial elements of truth. It is seen every day in poor human nature, so that I do not insist on this; but some I will refer to. Two of these witnesses -- Rome and the early Church -- disliked each other. Yet that dislike makes little impression upon us now. What an advance through indifferentism to an anti-christian state! For so absolute is truth, is Christ's claim, that "he that is not with me is against me." This dislike, that Dr. Temple and his school remain unaffected by, is the deadly persecuting hatred of Christians, of the saints (certainly, whatever faults there may have been, the excellent of the earth), by the heathens -- the hatred of Christ and His people by the worshippers of idols and devils -- the enmity of man and Satan (for we are not going to give up our belief that Jesus was the Christ of God for these gentlemen) against the Son of God and all that owned Him. This makes little impression on them, no doubt. In the fourth essay we read, "It was natural for a Christian in the earliest period to look upon the heathen state in which he found himself, as if it belonged to the kingdom of Satan, and not to that of God; and, consecrated as it was in all its offices to the heathen divinities, to consider it a society having its origin from the powers of darkness, not from the Lord of light and life." And what do these clergymen and professed teachers of Christianity believe?

What were the heathen gods and goddesses? I read in the first essay, "The natural religious shadows projected by the spiritual light within, shewing on the dark problems without, were all in reality systems of law given also by God, though not given by revelation." No doubt, they say, they distorted and corrupted, etc. But can you for a moment believe that the worship of Jupiter, and Venus, and Bacchus, and horrors which are simple facts as they may be read in Romans 1 (which after all, though in just language, passes over the surface of turpitude, not to defile itself by sinking into details I cannot here refer to either), were systems of law given by God? The worship of passions and devils, gloating in the unutterable degradation of God's most wonderful creature, a system of law given of God!

And it is false as to its history. Heathenism was, even in this aspect, the departure under devilish influence from the knowledge of God: Noah had this; and they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, and God gave them up to dishonour themselves. They degraded God to a brute, and themselves to worse after. It never was a training parallel to, and contemporaneous with, that of the Hebrews -- a system of law given of God, and then corrupted. There was the knowledge of the true God, and men gave it up -- as far as the history of these dark ages can be traced, a system deliberately taken up in Babel, to leave God, and separated into two hostile branches: -- the Sabaeans, who did not go farther than taking fire as a representative of God, as the modern Parsees; and Ionism, a system of horrible wickedness and idolatry pervading India, Egypt, Phoenicia, and thence Greece, which made (possibly through Orpheus and the Cabiri, certainly in Hesiod and Homer) pretty poetry of it, and so passing on to Rome, and, I have little doubt, far and wide elsewhere, modified according to the spirit and character of nations -- at any rate, in historically known nations, a common universal system.

It is a perfect iniquity to say as to the principle of it, and false as to the history of it, that these were systems of law given of God, though not by revelation. There was a knowledge of God departed from. This was corrupted, and man with it. Devils and deified passions took the place of God in the heart. To say, "Ultimately the gospel was to have sway in doing more perfectly that which heathen religions were doing imperfectly," has only to be stated to revolt every divinely taught mind. What did heathenism do? Hold the State together. Be it so; but they admit this only decorated the surface of it. But morally in relationship to God, what did it do? That these educators of the world do not, I suppose, care about. Christianity, they say, was not only to quicken the spirit of the individual (what is that?) but to sanctify civil institutions -- heathenism decorated the surface. But even as to the Church, heathenism, they tell us, had its national churches.

This defence of heathenism seems to me, dear friend, as immoral in its character as it is false historically. In heathenism there was, as there must be in man, an instinct as to God, but laid hold of by Satan to pander to the passions of men -- God, with some instinctive remains of a supreme God (testimonium animae naturaliter christianae), turned into calves, cats, and monkeys, and beasts!

There were four principles as it seems to me at work in heathenism: -- the instinct of a supreme Being, or a superior one, at any rate, above man, impossible to be got rid of; heroism, or the deification of ancestors, traceable everywhere, and connecting itself, in its earlier and oriental phases, with Noah and his family and the ark (the idea is carried to excess by Bryant, but it seems to me incontrovertible); thirdly, the stars, as something wonderful, instinct with movement, and acting on the earth; and, lastly, what led to such horrible corruption, the sense of a generative power of nature, partly abstract, partly running through every sphere of thought and connected with the ruin of nature, and a certain resurrection in power, which linked it with day and night, and summer and winter. This, helped by various traditions, formed various systems; but all of man without God, to be found if at all, as the a[guwsto" Qeo;" in India, in certain respects, the most elevated, but the most monstrous, more of God's interest in man and His coming down, though there was Apotheosis -- in Egypt one more wise and applied to human morality and organization, yet the same system thoroughly, with more of the sentiment of a definite judgment of God, and conflict of good and evil, in the history of Osiris, Amenti, and Typhon, dead men not execrated were called justified -- in Greece, the lowest and poorest of all, which made man and poetry everything (gods became men, or swans, or bulls, to indulge their passions). It was the deification of man, and morally more contemptible than all. No gods but gods of human passions, money, war, corrupt lusts -- gods in which there was no single association with conscience, except a dreary Tartarus for those who might despise them, and an Elysium so poor that Achilles complained bitterly of being there It is the system of the deification of human passions, and another world only used to make gods of them, and these gods, that is devils, important, and this world the only excellent place. This was a system of law, we are told, given of God. I am silent. I fear I should be rebuked by you for something contemptuous and bitter, and say nothing of what I feel.

As to Rome there was nothing new, they were not poetical, but political; and their religion too. The god Terminus was immovable. Can these clergymen shew me one single proof of any heathenism being a system of law given of God? The instinct that there is something above him is in man -- cannot be eradicated; a conscience accompanies him, in spite of the devil. Is there anything to be found in heathenism besides this fact, perverted to men's offering the things which they offered to devils, and not to God; and the consecrating the worst passions, and their most intolerable effects to these devils or dung-gods, as scripture calls them, so as to destroy that conscience, if it had been possible? Do our Essayists think their judgment of heathenism, or that of scripture in the Old and New Testament, the most correct? Their admirable Trajan they must view as a heathen to admire. They turn round the other side, and see that the subduer of Dacia, the mighty emperor, is with heartless indifference of character the cool persecutor of those who owned the Son of God, and the restorer of sacrifices to devils. "They are so eager for light, that they will rub their eyes in the dark, and take the resulting optical delusions for real flashes." Excuse me I quote this not very elegant image of Dr. Temple's, as a singular but not inapt description of a state of mind in which, of course, he has not described himself.

In fine, the foundation of the whole system is false. There was progress in the revelation of God's mind, because of the alienation of man from God, and the ignorance that was in him; but it never was the education of the world at all. It began, not by law, but, as became the God of all grace, by promise, yet not by promise to the world, though in favour of it, and for all that should believe it at all times; then law, yet not given to the world, but to a people separated out of it because of the horrible state the world was in, and a careful separation made between them to keep at any rate, in one little corner, the knowledge of the true God, that all might not be wholly debased; then the Son of God coming into it, but the world knew Him not, His own received Him not, and they joined in crucifying Him. He was the Shepherd of a little flock. Then the Holy Ghost sent, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him; but given to those who believe; but with the fullest witness of grace to all who do believe the record God has given concerning His Son. Does Dr. Temple believe these facts, or deny them? Is he, that is, a Christian or an infidel?

Heathenism was not different contemporary systems of law given of God, but the giving up the knowledge of the true God, and plunging into devilish idolatry and bestial corruption, though God did not allow, let Satan do what he could, that they should destroy the -instincts that there was a God, nor flee from the torment of a violated conscience. The whole system is historically and actually false. I believe, dear friend, in Christianity, not in the reveries of those who (to use their own somewhat vulgar simile already quoted, which I only do use as theirs) "are so eager for light [not having God's and reflecting it, Christ come as light into the world in darkness], that they will rub their eyes in the dark, and take the resulting optical delusions for real flashes." It suggests to me the word addressed to poor Israel on lower ground than ours, for the true light now shines: "Who is among you that feareth Jehovah, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of Jehovah, and stay upon his God. Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks, walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have at my hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow."

You know well, your heart knows, dear friend, how utterly far my spirit is from an ungracious feeling towards the authors of these essays, of whom I have no knowledge whatever, and desire unfeignedly from the bottom of my heart their good and blessing. But such is their path. I speak of the system -- a system so hard and unfeeling, that it has no idea but of beginning with law; that even a mother's tender care of the fruit of the womb is known only as correcting wilfulness of temper, and germs of wanton cruelty; that it sees no promise, no grace, but God beginning with a law to repress already ripened wickedness -- a system which ignores the fall, yet sees only wanton cruelty and wilfulness of temper in an infant; and begins God's history after some two thousand five hundred years resulting in a plague of wickedness, to ignore the flood.

I believe in a revelation which contains an external law, brought in by the by to test man, and shew him what he was, but in a revelation of grace, life, redemption, the revelation of the Son of God, of God Himself, bringing down heavenly things which the human heart cannot spell out or divine if unrevealed; which brings a revealed God and light to man; and man, made fit for it by love, into the perfect light by redemption, and gives him a new nature capable of enjoying it, and soon (how soon One only knows) glory out of this world; a revelation through which (to close what I have to say in the blessed words of scripture -- how does it meet everything!) those who have received it, instead of learning from heathens, own in moral uprightness the ruin of the old man, and have put it off, "and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him; where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all, and in all."

W. I am uncommonly glad I met you. The system is a judged one for me. It is not of God. It is evidently exalting man and heathenism at the expense of Christ. I am not master of all the points to which you have referred, but I see enough to have the distinct conviction of the hollowness of the system, even as to facts. But how happy it is that the scripture itself gives so fully all that is needed, not only to save, but to make a man wise unto salvation, through faith that is in Christ Jesus, and then thoroughly furnished unto all good works!

It must be distracting and defiling to wade through these mythological systems, with all their aberrations and pollutions, but, with the holy judgment of God, the word of God in a few short verses tells us all its history. How admirable this is; how evidently one sees the hand and Spirit of God in it! There certainly is a stamp in the word of God of what is divine, which is unmistakeable, even where it is most human.

H. In truth there is -- a simplicity, a dignity: no one ever produced anything like it. You have only to read apocryphal books. There is effort in them; there is none in scripture. Not once do you find an epithet attached to Jesus (that were a human feeling, perhaps a right one), but what He is to tell its own tale of what He is. What human writer, in recording His history, would have kept uniformly to this? Yet how it becomes a divine person! Every epithet would lower. They may be put as the expression of my sentiment, but not as the cause of them. And how it has forced man to deal with it! Infidels or not, they must deal with it where it is. It is God telling us in grace, but telling us of Himself, telling of heavenly things, and for man. What can man do? It concerns him. He may be angry with the grace -- angry to be forced to say he does not like what is heavenly, he may exalt heathenism which has been tired of itself; but there it is, and he has to say to it. Blessed they who have tasted that God is in it -- speaks in it, and that have found Him to be holy, as He must be, but love in revealing Himself to them, and in bringing them by redemption and divine righteousness to Himself to enjoy Him for ever! But we must part, dear friend, in the common enjoyment, I trust, of this hope.

W. Shall we not meet again, and take these questions up? There are more of these Essays, and we may find means, through God's grace, to get profit in weighing them in the light, particularly as these questions are current.

H. Perhaps God may permit it to be so. We have gone over, I believe, the fundamental questions as to it. I am, as you know, constantly occupied with more direct work. Yet I fully recognize the importance of these subjects. These Essays, which seem to me very superficial, are but the sign of a state of feeling of a large class, or they would not be worth notice. It is an effort of Satan to pervert and really heathenize the country, and swamp revealed religion. It is going on everywhere in Christendom. The attempted counteraction of ordinances, whether Stahl and Hengstenberg in Germany, or what is called Puseyism in England, cannot meet the wants of a soul, even though there may be personal piety, which is anything but required for that system. In France it is the ultramontane system, which is the counterbalance. In the feeble Protestantism which is there, there is none. It is infidelity, or the new evangelical party infected with rationalism, with many individually pious persons. But I shall see you, and, if leisure permits me, will take up any further questions that may occur.

I would refer you in parting -- you who do believe in the word of God -- to 1 John 5 where the exactly opposite view to Dr. Temple on every point is given. For this is the will of God, that we keep His commandments. There is obedience to a commandment, the proof of love; and His commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. There is a new nature, and the world not educated, but overcome. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? There is faith on a perfect external revealed object, the only means of obtaining the victory. At the end of 1 John 3 you will find, as in Romans 8, the Spirit, the Holy Ghost given, carefully distinguished from the spirit or conscience within. Christianity is a deliverance sent by God to form the spirit according to a new life on an object supremely blessed without, so as to take out of self, and fix the heart on that supreme object of blessedness. Dr. Temple's or the rationalist's system is a rejection of it, for the spirit or fallen nature of man to form itself by heathenism and Christianity as pretty nearly on a par, the latter being reduced by him to within a shade of the level of the former.

If you would have blessing or holy and divine affections, hold fast the revelation of a divine object, and the divine revelation of that object.

WHAT HAS THE BIBLE TAUGHT? AND WHAT HAS GEOLOGY PROVED? A SECOND DIALOGUE ON THE ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

W. I am glad to meet you again. Though the subject was a painful one in some respects, I enjoyed the conversation we had when we last met. It embraced a large field of view: and though we could only step from mountain-top to mountain-top, and look down into the rich valleys below, still it shewed me there were such, and I see we possess a goodly country where I saw little but rock before or misty mountain. Scripture has something of another aspect to me as a whole. Could we not continue our researches in examining some of the other Essays? I have been interested in this new science of geology, and you are aware how the cosmogony of scripture has been attacked, the genesis of the world.

H. I shall most gladly accept your proposal: I cannot pretend to be a very scientific geologist, but the very objections of infidels you have referred to have made me examine it in the results professed to be arrived at, if I have not the science of details. These would require one to consecrate, to say the least, a large portion of a life to it and to the kindred sciences of comparative anatomy, and natural history, and of scientific botany; and this I neither can nor would I do. But our main object will be scripture, and, to tell you the honest truth, while these Essayists are very ignorant of scripture, I have not learnt to trust the depth of their science on any point. But our object will be: Is the scripture, viewed as a divine revelation, inconsistent with the facts discovered in the earth's structure? I do not say, with the conclusions of geologists, for it will be found that these are not very solid. The discoveries are full of interest, the results extremely uncertain. But some collateral subjects will meet us, which will diversify our conversation. You must always remember, that it is the habit of rationalist infidels to assume, that what their doctors, or rather doubters, have laid down as hypotheses are admitted truths -- things as unfounded as possible. It is one of its common deceits to allude to in passing, as to an admitted truth, what, if they had to prove it, they would find themselves utterly at a loss to do so. "It is settled," "universally recognized," "an admitted truth," merely means that German rationalists have satisfied themselves or pretend to have done so, even if that be the case.

We first find, in the Essay you refer to, the ignorant and stupid theory of Elohistic and Jehovistic documents. Now I should have no difficulty in supposing two, twenty, or twenty thousand documents, provided I have God's relation of the matter out of them. Human instrumentality I can admit to any extent, provided I have divine certainty and divine intention. These are necessary to my accepting anything as a revelation, because a revelation must flow from the intention of God to make known, and what He makes known is made known with certainty, and as He meant it to be presented to my mind. It is not that all contained in a revelation is right. I may have the devil's words, wicked men's words, imperfect men's words; but I must have all these things presented to me exactly as God meant it to be presented to me, and His own words besides. The account given must have His authority.

The use of the word "revelation" in this paper on the Mosaic cosmogony is, I cannot say merely as loose, but as nonsensical as anything I ever read. If such a use of terms be allowed, we may use any word about anything, and find we have one of Ossian's grey skirts of the mist, instead of our lost friend. What do you think a revelation, a divine revelation, is?

W. Well, I suppose something that God has revealed.

H. Ignorant man that you are, why, you are a plain Englishman! You do not know German depths, still less German depths brought to the surface in English vessels.

A revelation does not mean a revelation at all. It means, "God made use of imperfectly informed men [for the plan of Providence for the education of man is a progressive one] to lay the foundations of a higher knowledge, for which the human race is destined." "Is it wonderful, therefore, that they have committed themselves to assertions not in accordance with facts?" "As imperfect men have been used [in this progressive scheme] as the agents for teaching mankind, is it not to be expected that their teachings should be partial, and to some extent erroneous?"

W. Well, but then men could give no more than they knew themselves, and this is not a revelation; or else God gave it, revealed it, and then it was from Him, and had His authority stamped on it as His truth.

H. You are all out again. "It has been popularly assumed that the Bible, bearing the stamp of divine authority, must be complete, perfect, and unimpeachable in all its parts."

W. Well, but how could it bear the stamp of divine authority if God did not give it? You cannot make the notions of a particular time at which men had arrived, and erroneous ones, a revelation. It is simply absurd to talk of the stamp of God's authority, when they are merely the fancies of men. Why then the Ptolemaic system is a revelation.

H. No, no; you are all wrong again. "The humble scholar is willing to accept such teaching as it hath pleased divine Providence to afford. To do otherwise is presuming to point out how God ought to have instructed man. But, if we regard the Mosaic narrative as the speculation of some Hebrew Descartes or Newton, promulgated in all good faith as the best and most probable account that could be then given of God's universe, it resumes the dignity and value of which the theological Geologists have done their utmost to deprive it."

W. But what dignity or value is there in the errors of men ignorant of all true science, or how can that bear the stamp of divine authority?

H. Ah! you are not initiated.

W. Well, but God, according to this theory, made use of men to teach error. Why should He stamp that with His authority? Let them write for themselves, or, at least, God not give His authority to it.

H. Why, you see, the education of man was to be progressive: so He must begin, I suppose, in their infancy, by teaching them error. It is not for you to guess of His methods of providence, and then in that age "the early speculator was harassed by no scruples as to asserting as facts what he knew only as probabilities. He asserts indeed, solemnly and unhesitatingly, that for which he must have known he had no authority. But the difficulty as to this arises only from our modern habits of thought. Modesty of assertion is taught only by the true spirit of science." But then these things are better done now of course.

W. But then modern science is not a revelation, but founded on discovery, and the Mosaic narrative is merely an obsolete and erroneous supposition, when the truth was not discovered.

H. To be sure, and that, for our Essayist, is a revelation.

W. But is it honest to call that a revelation?

H. Honest! what a strange word. This way of using language so as to save appearances, though it be not what the word means, arises from our modern habits of thought. It is the spirit of true science. "It is the free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language and from traditional methods of treatment."

W. Well, but speaking of revelation is the repetition of conventional language.

H. Yes, no doubt of it; but the use of it is the becoming spirit, and the rest the free handling.

W. But this seems to me profoundly immoral, in the highest and deepest sense -- to talk of revelation and deal thus.

H. Oh! "our respect for the narrative, which has played so important a part in the culture of our race, need in no wise be diminished." "For ages this simple view of creation satisfied the wants of man, and both its consistency and grandeur may be preserved, if we recognize in it, not an authentic utterance of divine knowledge, but a human utterance, which it hath pleased Providence to use, in a special way, for the education of mankind."

W. But this is a deliberate denial of revelation. Providence uses what man has uttered.

H. Yes; and see what a convenient word Providence is, because there is no sign how it came to be used. As to the education of mankind, it is a bubble we have already seen burst; for none but those who received it as an absolute revelation of God (God providentially leading them, we are to suppose, to believe this lie) ever were educated at all. The heathen have their own cosmogonies, which it may be worth comparing; and we have got geologists to settle ours, or at least unsettle what was supposed we. Rabbin and fathers may have believed, in their superstition, the Mosaic account. The whole thing was a happy mistake, into which Providence led them, nobody knows how -- a singular operation of Providence to make man believe a lie, and that a false account was its own utterance!

W. Do you know anything of cosmogonies?

H. Well, popularly; but we may say in general that the immense fact of creation was unknown to the heathen. "By faith we understand," says the epistle to the Hebrews, "that the things which are seen were not made of the things which do appear." What we now feel must have been, was repelled by all the proud reasoners. A poor obscure ignorant Hebrew alone knew it. For all others ex nihilo nil fit was the practical maxim. That is a striking fact. What are the cosmogonies of other nations? Never, as I said, a creation. Matter was eternal. In India, it was pantheism. God was the soul of the world; or human passions were perfected into powerful and mysterious beings, moved in chaos, or in darkness; and systems impossible for our cold western reason to grasp were concocted. But a personal God and a creation did not enter into their minds. Brahm was at ease, asleep in the unconscious enjoyment of this state; he woke up, and the mundane egg split, the upper part becoming heaven and the lower earth. Their more serious philosophical views were, "The universe is Brahm; it comes from Brahm, it subsists in Brahm, and returns into Brahm." All the rest is a kind of maya or illusion. It is only Brahm revealing himself in various ways, first disengaging a female from himself, and then by emanations of gods who have each their goddesses, and thence into all nature, -- Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, and so on, identified with created existence, while Brahm is awake, and which perishes by a great catastrophe, when he is tired. The Kalpa then is over, and he goes to sleep, and the same story (for they had not learned Dr. Temple's philosophy) exactly is reproduced over again. In this way, what our Essayist calls Providence provided for the education of an immensely greater number of the human race than it did by the Hebrew Descartes. It was pantheism connected with the powers of nature, and the idea of decay and reproduction. So that the destroyer, Siva, was the god of life. The female deities were the productive power of the gods they were connected with, while the history of Adam and Eve, whose very names were used, and Noah and his sons, ran through it all; and even the names of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, in Sama, Cama, and Prajapati (the "a" at the end not being sounded, and "Pra," meaning Lord).

In the laws or institutes of Menu we have it directly stated that, the sole self-existing power having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, he divided his own substance, and the mighty power became male and female. This gives perhaps the most complete original system of idolatry which exists, its most stupid and early form being Grecian mythology; but the same was really current everywhere. You can see these things, if you are anxious, in Guigniaut's Kreuser, or Faber, and the Asiatic Researches, and in many curious facts in Bryant, in Wilkinson for Egypt, and Cory's Fragments for Orphic and Phoenician.

In more modern less metaphysical theories, matter was eternal. I will give you the Phoenician one by Sanchoniatho[n] preserved by Eusebius. I give the quotations of it from Cory's volume. He supposes that the beginning of all things was a dark and condensed windy air, or a breeze of thick air, and a chaos turbid and black as Erebus, and that these were unbounded, and for a long series of ages destitute of form; but when this wind became enamoured of its own first principles, and an intimate union took place, that connection was called pathos (Cupid or desire), and this was the beginning or origin of the creation of all things; but it knew not its own creation, but from its connection with the wind (or spirit) was produced Môt. This, some call Ilus (mud), but some the putrefaction of a watery mixture, and from this was produced all the rest of creation, and the generation of all things. He then proceeds to details.

The Egyptian was more strictly mythology, not cosmogony, though in ancient systems these are indeed the same. The unity of deity, or subsistence, does not appear; but their Vedas, the books of Hermes Trismegistus, are lost. But it was essentially the same as the Hindoo, save that the system common to both had adapted itself to the circumstances of the country. It was a more terrestrial and less imaginative system. Human nature took a tinge less kindly, but more righteous. The unity of the deity was less in relief, decay and return to life more prominent, and generation more than emanation, though these were all found in both. The original deity, Nef, or the Spirit, came down more into the ordinary rank of gods than Brahm; and while the eight great gods and goddesses were found in both, yet a triad of another kind was prominent -- male, female, and child, as Nef, Saté, and Khonso -- Osiris, Isis, and Horus: the former the more active principle, the second the passive or earth (the great mother as everywhere), and the order produced out of these. The latter triad, the Nile, or sun (for Osiris was both in certain respects, i.e., not the sun as sun, but its action on the Nile and Egypt for blessing), Isis, Egypt, and Horus, the return to blessing after Typhon, or the burning sun, had dried all up. There are traces of one divine origin, out of which all proceeded, but having no book like the Institutes of Menu, it is comparatively speaking lost. Ptha, though a great god, and the formative power, was in a certain sense a secondary one. He formed more than was an origin of all things. The Phaenician system was more historical and mythic. In all, the worship of Yoni Lingams attached to Siva, the same with Khem, and the history of Osiris, and Phallic processions of Bacchus, were, from Hindostan to Rome, the origin of a degradation of ideas and manners which need not be recalled. But it is universally recognized, that creation was unknown in these systems. There was pantheistic emanation, or eternal matter.

The Gnostic systems evidently linked themselves up with all this -- an effort of Satan to bring the old mythology spiritualized into Christianity. This I shall beg leave to call the devil's education of the world. The point of departure being an idea of one God, which man can hardly get rid of, he turned it by false human wisdom into idolatry, by deifying attributes, powers of nature, stars, and ancestors. All this was afloat in the world before Moses' account of things was written. There were traces of primeval history both of Adam, Noah, Babel, the giants, and the judgment of Babel, but all turned into idolatry. When this ripened, God gave a divine account, perfectly suited to the age, not science, which would have been unsuited to divine action, but rescuing the great facts in such a way that the divine actings -- necessary for man to know morally, and as far therefore as they concerned man on the earth, with which he had to do -- should be distinctly set out, and with the simplicity, dignity, and beneficence towards man, which bore the stamp of God. The whole world is witness that no man, neither the simplest nor the wisest, ever could have known, or ever did discover, such a thought as to creation as is given in Genesis. It stands not pre-eminent, but isolated and alone; short, simple, unscientific: no mental elaboration, no recognition of nature's powers (such as Jews fell into, not only in the gross way of idolatry, but in the refined Alexandrian system of Philo), no emanation or pantheism, no eternal matter, no deification of mythic ideas; no visible world counted for the Logos, as again Philo; every human thought is denied, but the fiat of God Himself brings the world into existence, and everything into order; and the relationships of God, the world, and man, are perfectly established. Had there been no cosmogonies, the value of this statement would not have been felt. The simplest mind would have known the truth, but the truth meets every error of every mind.

Let us just look, after the poor conceptions and wild imaginations of heathen cosmogonies, at the simple statement of the word of God. We shall see at once, in the former, the laborious efforts of the human mind in what it cannot reach, heaping up powers and conceptions to fill the imagination, and account for effects, because it does not know God, and is oppressed with the effect of His power; and in the other, God speaking with the simplicity of one who had made it all and knew it all. The Word that had made could tell what it had done, and creation takes its place of a mere creature, and Elohim maintains His own.

W. Before you go farther, I should like to hear what you say to the two alleged accounts of creation, Elohistic and Jehovistic.

H. From Genesis to Revelation, there are two ways of speaking of God, either as the one divine Being in contrast with men; God known as God (only that it is applied to the representations of His power as such, whether angels or judges hold that place); or in known revealed relationships with men. Of these relationships (besides that of Most High, in which He takes His great power and reigns -- is possessor of heaven and earth) there are three, Almighty, Jehovah, and Father -- the last never revealed till Christ the Son came. Elohim was revealed to Abraham as Almighty. He was to trust in Him in that character. It was to be the object of faith. To Israel, He was revealed as Jehovah, and He was to be known and trusted as such; to us, as Father, and especially as Holy Father, in which name He keeps us, and we who have believed in the Son, know and trust Him. Thus, in Exodus 6 Elohim specially tells Moses that He had revealed Himself to the fathers by His name El-Shaddai, God Almighty, but not by that of Jehovah, which He now took with Israel; and Christ particularly notices that He had manifested the Father's name to the disciples -- had declared and would declare it, the Holy Ghost becoming a spirit of adoption in us. Hence the apostle, beautifully connecting all these revelations of God, says (2 Corinthians 6: 18), I will be a Father to you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. That is, He who had been the God of Abraham as Almighty, and the God of Israel as Jehovah, now took His name and place of Father. Surely, He was ever Father in respect of the Son, ever Almighty, ever Jehovah; but He had not taken it as a name of known relationship.

Now there is never, in any case, confusion in this respect. In the Psalms, the difference is of the deepest interest, and when understood greatly facilitates reading them with intelligence. It is equally true now. God I may seek as God, thirst after as God, bow to as such. With a Father I am in sweet and blessed relationship according to the terms of that name. It was not in vain that Christ said, "I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." During His life here below, He ever said "Father;" on the cross, "my God, my God" -- perfect in faith, yet not enjoying the relationship. After His resurrection He uses both, according to the full perfectness in which He now stands in them according to accomplished redemption, and introduces His disciples in virtue of that into the same. Hence, too, when all was finished, even in the act of dying, He says, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

Now if you examine Genesis 2 from verse 4, you will see that nothing but the utmost prepossession could speak of it as a second account of the creation. Have you ever looked at it in this point of view?

W. I have not. I have, of course, often read it; but for positive instruction, not to meet any particular doctrine.

H. Far the best way too. But if you do come across rationalistic assertions, never accept them without reading the passage in question; because thus the divine intention of the passage is, with God's help, present to the mind, and in nine cases out of ten that suffices to make all their assertions utterly null. It is the case here. In chapter I and three verses of chapter 2, we have the simple but magnificent account, and magnificent because simple, of the creation of all things, and the orderings of the earth, the world, as subjected to man and in reference to him. This was God creating.

In the rest of chapter 2 we have the sacred historian entering into all the special circumstances in which man was placed in this world. He alludes to the fact of the rest of the creation subsisting without man, then speaks of the garden being planted in Eden, of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, how man was made and became a living soul, by which his special relationship to God existed, of the forming of Eve out of his rib, of his dominion over all animals (these and other circumstances being taken as symbolical expressions of higher things all through scripture). In a word, we have passed out of creation into the whole scene of moral, mysterious, and symbolical relationships between God and man. It is, first, responsibilities in an historical way, and then the figures of all the blessings and rights to come in and be conferred on man in the second Adam. I am not now arguing whether the application be just or not which subsequent scriptures make of this history; but to say it is a second account of the creation is simple nonsense. Not one subject in chapter 2, except the fact that a man was created and a woman, is spoken of in chapter 1. The fact that there were plants without a man is mentioned in chapter 1, and these are spoken of in chapter 2 in a wholly different aspect, and carrying the subject on to a farther point.

Now, it was of the last importance that he who wrote for Israel should shew that Jehovah, the God revealed to them, was the one supreme and only Elohim, the Creator, though He was their national God; and this the account most fully does. Chapter I shews that it was simple Elohim, God, the only one; chapter 2, that when special conditions of man came out, that one Elohim was Jehovah, the God of Israel. Had He put Jehovah in chapter 1, it might have been only the particular national God known by that name. But it was Elohim, God. There was none but He. Had He omitted it in chapter 2, it might not have been the God of the Jews at all. Had he laboriously affirmed it, it might have been a national assumption: the simple statement left it in its own eternal truth. So, when the great truth was restored under Elijah, the convinced people shout, "Jehovah, he is Elohim! Jehovah, he is Elohim!" The question being, whether Baal was Elohim, or Jehovah.

It would be well we should read the chapters; it will bring them, in the way I said, before our minds, and the contrast with the deplorable cosmogonies of the heathen, by which in fact the world was educated (and cosmogony and theology were identical), and the bearing and relationship of chapters 1 and 2 will become evident.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind; and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind. and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

How refreshing is the word after all the cavillings of men!

W. It is most truly so; but I seize your remarks on the different relationships in which God reveals Himself with men. It opens a wide field of interest in the study of scripture, and I see that it rests on the plain testimony of scripture itself. I confess I begin to think these essayists and rationalists excessively superficial; they seem always to rest in the mere outside of scripture, and in no case to get hold of the mind of God in it.

H. Naturally enough. They set out by not believing there is one; and the truth is, as scripture states it, the god of this world has blinded the eyes of them that believe not. They think themselves wiser than apostles, exclude God from the whole matter, and, of course, sink to their own level.

W. The passage from 2 Corinthians has singular beauty in respect of these relationships.

H. It is indeed of exquisite beauty; and these connections of scripture -- which unfold a whole scene of moral truths and elements, diverse in themselves, yet revealing the full force each of the other; and thus related in the deepest way one to another, bringing out what God is, and evolving in the revelation of it every exercise of the human heart towards God -- shew a divine unity of mind in scripture, which all the petty cavils of essayists cannot shake. That one verse embraces all the divine relations of God, and the dispensational connections of man with Him, and takes them all up to introduce them, though as isolated relationships quite different from one another in their abstract power, into that one new perfect one which has been revealed as the perfection of grace through Christ. But He hides these things from the wise and prudent, and reveals them unto babes. The moral need of the soul, the wants of a new nature, it is by which we get to understand scripture, not our intellectual powers. But let us turn to our geology.

W. Well, how do you reconcile the Mosaic account of the creation with geological discoveries?

H. To tell you the honest truth, I think the Mosaic account of the creation much more certain than any geological system. First, the direct proofs of scripture are to me infinitely more solid and sure than any geological conclusions; and the geological conclusions I have seen arrived at seem to me to rest in fact on very doubtful evidence.

W. But surely there are a number of well-ascertained facts and principles?

H. There are a number of facts which to me at least are of the highest possible interest. But (perhaps my mind is slow and apt to see difficulties, and not to come to a conclusion before they are cleared up) the results put together into a system are to my mind surrounded with difficulty. I have no disposition to controvert extraordinary facts. If it is proved to me that the tomb of Mahomet in the Caaba is suspended in the air, I say, Very well, I may be able to explain it, or I may not, and if so I wait till I can. If a man can cause a table to be suspended in the air, it is to me a mere question of physical fact -- is there such a power? Lifting my hand is just as wonderful in itself. I believe that in a certain sense the physical world is subject to man, and, if God allow him, I know no limit to his employing the powers of nature. Miracle is divine power over nature, the will of God in exercise, not ordinarily but extraordinarily, whoever may be the person who brings that will into play. The powers used are, to my mind, immaterial; they may be natural or supernatural; but when natural powers are in exercise according to the prescribed course of things, there is no miracle. The power exercised may be as great or greater, but it is the ordinary course of nature. But when not in that course, even though it be the same power, but by an extraordinary occasional action of the divine will any event is produced, that is a miracle. If I remember right, I am repeating the idea of John Wessel, Luther's forerunner; but I must not make him responsible for it; but I think I owe it to him. Of course, if the power itself is absolutely supernatural, as raising the dead, that itself proves a miracle.

W. I think, at any rate, the idea of miracle is just; it is one which has been a good deal discussed. It is referred to in these Essays.

H. It is. Take an example. A mighty east wind was a natural power at the Red Sea; yet it was a miracle, because it was an extraordinary exercise of the divine will, just as much as at Jordan, though there the river was arrested in its course supernaturally (i.e., by no known natural cause). However, I am ready to admit any extent of power over natural objects, subjected to him by God, being exercised by man. If he has found a means of making a table rap on the ground, the only question with me is, is it a power given to man? If he pretends to bring souls up, I do not believe it; because I do not believe God has put the souls of the deceased in his power. He may have devils deluding him, pretending to be the souls of the dead; but souls are in God's keeping, and cannot come unless He bring them.

W. And what do you make of the witch of Endor?

H. God brought up Samuel, I do not doubt a moment; the woman was as frightened as Saul at his coming.

Now the discovery of geological remains and the theories of successive formations are full of interest, and there are strong grounds to believe there have been such; nor can I see that the deluge accounts for all, because if -- but it is if -- the upheaval theory be correct (to which I have nothing to oppose, but presume to be true), or if, as others think, the breaking in of the crust of the cooling earth be added, then the mountains which existed already at the time of the deluge have broken up strata which had various fossils already buried in them; that is, the flood does not appear to have brought them, while unconformable strata prove deposits after the upheaval. Thus there is a proof of strata of different ages.

But I am not satisfied entirely as to all the data. If the present surface of land were submerged, and there were fossil English and fossil Australian remains, the Marsupia and duck-billed Platypuses of Australia would be treated as proofs of a necessarily anterior formation, because the Marsupia are an inferior class of mammalia, a transition order. The proofs might exist, I admit; but as far as this goes, why do Marsupian fossils prove in themselves an anterior formation? Superposition under certain conditions may, but remains do not.

Again, in the Wealden formation, fresh water remains are found and salt too, and I think alternating, and turtles. Well, this is a great difficulty. It is concluded that it must have been an estuary in a large bay; all very ingenious. It is alleged, however, after disputes between the chalk and jurassic or oolite formations, to belong to the Jura sea. But then, if it belong to either, according to the ablest geologists, as Vogt, who adopts the idea of the estuary and the Jura sea, there could have been no great river there at that time, nor a bay into which it ran, according to the limits which geological data give of dry land and the Jura sea.

But there are more serious objections. It is alleged that for certain sandstones some twenty thousand years must have passed to have a bed of such thickness deposited; but at Craigleith, near Edinburgh, a tree some sixty feet long, lies slanting at an angle of 40° across the strata in its whole length. Now that a tree remained twenty thousand years slanting thus, while the sea deposited this strata, is not to be believed. Again, they tell us that the formation of certain beds of coal would require twenty thousand years to make a bed of coal a foot thick, and some one hundred and twenty thousand years for the coal measures of England. Now one used to bogs may well doubt this. You may find some ten or twelve feet of bog formed in a comparatively short time, as in Ireland; in cut down forests, in a quarter of the first mentioned period. A particular kind of grass has always turf at the roots, if only a single plant; and I have seen trees retaining their form, but grown through by the roots of grass, forming the whole into a compact mass little different from coal. Where water is found, the progress is very rapid. In Lincolnshire I have understood that the number of the legion which cut down the forest has been found in the bog. Nor is this all; at South Joggins' cliff in Nova Scotia, and somewhere near Manchester, sigillaria grow through the coal, the roots being in and below it, and the stems rising up in their original position through the superincumbent sandstone and shale. So, in the Isle of Purbeck, dicotyledonous wood in limestone. Even Phillips says "the nearly vertical position of certain fossil plants, a phenomenon by no means rare among sandstone rocks, affords good ground for caution in assigning very great extension of years to geological periods; the accumulation of transported sediment must have been so rapid as to prevent the decomposition of the vertical portions of the plants. No one doubts that the bed of stone three feet thick, which encloses equisetum columnare at High Whitby, was laid by a single inundation; and again the sigillaria in the coal sandstones of Yorkshire pass through more than one, sometimes four or five beds of stone." Such facts as these, and they are their own facts, subvert, as far as I can judge, the whole system of geologists as to the time taken to form deposits.

Again, it was a settled point that human remains, according to the known geological progress of orders of fossil Fauna, could not be found in any deposits before our present world. The human petrifaction from Guadaloupe, in the British Museum, was held to be recent, as were some since discovered; but the question after all remains if that is just. Now, infidelity makes strenuous efforts to prove the antiquity of man, and the opposite theory is maintained. It is alleged that in Brazil and in North America (in the last case in so old a deposit as old red sandstone), unequivocal human remains have been discovered in strata too old for them, according to geological systems. In the caves of Gaylenreuth, they are mixed up with fossil remains of species, belonging (it is alleged) to anterior formations; and at Mialet in a cavern in which the hunted pastors of the églises du désert found constant refuge, and a place of common meeting and resort, human bones and those of the cave bear and others have been found. But here both rude Roman and still ruder Celtic implements have been found; but Dr. Phillips says as to this. "he will not hazard a definite conclusion." "In the meantime we may remark that the principal arguments for the co-eval existence of man, and extinct pachy-dermata and carnivora in the south of France, are the intimate mixture and equal conservation of the bones. And these arguments should not be slighted, for they would probably not have been resisted in any case of the mixture of quadrupedal remains." And Tepier, who examined them, finds that the human bones, much rarer where the bears' bones are, may have been carried back into the cave by subsequent natural or artificial means. Besides all this, however, rude instruments, constructed by human skill, have been discovered in drift of an epoch, according to geologists, very long anterior to that in which man ought to be found -- I think in the Eocene formation. The alleged colonies of Mr. Barrande in Bohemia, also inconsistent with the due succession of Fauna, and alleged to be carried there by currents, require evidently more explanation.

W. And what conclusions do you draw from these facts?

H. None; save that geologists, as Lyell has admitted, are but on the threshold of the science; that the conclusions of the earth's antiquity, and of the formation of strata, cannot be sustained in their details; and that we must wait for further light and additional facts, before any conclusion can be drawn.

W. That is a most lame and impotent conclusion.

H. Better to wait till I have adequate grounds to judge, than bewilder myself by premature assertions. Take an example of precipitancy in a confessedly able man. Sir C. Lyell gave in his second edition at least one hundred thousand years for the formation of the delta of the Mississippi, and human remains had been found deeply buried there. In his third edition he says his data were wrong and it was at least fifty thousand years. How can we trust conclusions liable to such errors as that? Further, he insists that in the cutting through the gravel brought down by a torrent at the head of the lake of Genoa, iron, bronze, and stone remains were found, and a skull connected with the latter which must have been long anterior to the date assigned to man's creation. But I know members of the Antiquarian Society at Lausanne who examined the locality; and one of them assured me they all thought him wrong, and that one side of the skull was evidently stained with bronze. On the other hand, that which is alleged as the most ancient of human remains, as the cave at Aurignac, has its antiquity only proved by the presence of Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorinus, and perhaps Ursus spelaeus. But the first and second have been found with the flesh on them frozen up in Siberia, and Ursus spelaeus does not appear to be more geologically ancient, and similar species are found in Market Weighton in Yorkshire with existing local species of fresh water shells. So that there is nothing in the extinction of the species to prove any geological antiquity of man. It is as likely the beasts were late, as that man was early. As to Albeville, Eliè de Beaumont, President of the French Geological Society, declares the strata to be quite recent ones.

There is another point, whether Lyell's system of the progressive effect of subsisting causes, acting with the power which they yet do, or that of other geologists of great catastrophes, is the right one. Our Essayists embrace Lyell's, and of course treat it as a settled point, as they ever do when it suits them. I judge with many (I believe most) English geologists, that, admitting the possibility of catastrophes, in general similar powers have been in operation, but in a far higher degree. It is absurd to compare the elevation of a mountain, such as Jorullo in Mexico, of sixteen hundred feet high, formed in seventeen hundred and fifty nine, with the Alps, Pyrenees, Himalayas, or its own kindred Cordilleras. Sir R. Murchison justly warns his readers more than once against comparing them; he calls them infinitely more intense. And if we are to believe D'Orbigny, the geologist who has most diligently searched into the subject in detail in France (confirmed he says by all his researches in South Armenia and elsewhere), no species survived these catastrophes. These last he enumerates, giving the species belonging to the periods between them. If I have rightly apprehended his statements, there were a few species the same after the last catastrophe as before. He connects these catastrophes, not simply with volcanic action, but with the breaking of the earth's crust as the earth cooled. It is only in the very latest that we get difference of climates connected with latitude.

W. But why should they find that suit them?

H. Because then miracles, by a faint analogy, are merged in the operation of ordinary causes.

W. Dear, what a poor and unsolid foundation to build on!

H. Yes, but it shuts out a living intervention of God in men's matters, and that is their great object. God may give an impulsion, but the intervention or intercourse with a living God does not suit the dignity or independence of man.

W. In result, where do you think, supposing there are Hypozoic, and Palaeozoic, and Mesozoic, and Kainozoic periods, they come in in the first of Genesis?

H. I have no kind of opinion or moral objection to the system of the days being lengthened periods, but it seems to me somewhat forced; McCausland's (a barrister of Dublin) is the cleverest book on the subject.⁺ And I have heard another thought expressed by a christian friend, that the day is an actual day, the state produced by it being of unqualified duration; but I was not persuaded by it. The structure of the chapter itself and the connection of the parts lead me to take it, after the first verse, as a statement of the formation of our present world, or covsmo". Once we have seen the laborious efforts at cosmogony which occupied the heathen world, and that not one ever arrived at the simple fact of a creation, the force of Hebrews 11: 3 becomes obvious; one sentence of revelation from God settled what all the profound elaborations of man never could arrive at; and, what is not very much to the honour of man's intellect, once the fact is stated, there is the consciousness that it could not be otherwise. Yet, instead of the best and most probable account (as the Essay calls it) that could be given, it is in absolute opposition to the uniform and universal view of the matter in every known record. Ex nihilo nil fit was the admitted maxim. Nothing can come of nothing, whereas the divine maxim is, Ex nihilo omnia hunt. Emanation, or, when the Grecian mind would not bear these oriental systems, the eternity of matter, taken for granted, was the only idea men had of the origin of the world.

⁺Dr. Dawson's book adopts this system.

Hence we have, In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth -- not the expanse simply, but in general and absolutely those objects we have before us: Eth hashamaim ve eth haarets. This great truth once laid down -- whose importance redemption only surpasses, as indeed it does infinitely -- what concerned man, the earth as we have it, was all man had to be taught by God. It would have been utterly unsuited to give a revelation to teach science, or to allude to it. The phenomena are explained, so far as it is needed to put what man saw before his soul as the work and ordering of God. What came between the first verse and the second does not enter into the object of the revelation; creation, and the forming of the present earth did.

As regards the words used, Maimonides has discussed them. He refers to Bara, Hasa, Chasa, and Yatsar. The last he affirms is never used of creating out of nothing, the three former may. I do not deny that bara may be used of what is not formed out of nothing, but it is not used for forming or moulding out of something. Bara speaks of the thing made as the absolute act of the Maker: the One who has simply caused it to be such. Hasa refers to the form into which it is put: he made it a man; but bara -- he created -- a man, or a whale. Yatsar refers directly to the material cause: he moulded something into a form (hence, yotser a potter). Bara refers to the efficient cause, hasa to the formal, yatsar to the material. Create and make quite sufficiently represent bara and hasa. I could not say a carpenter created a table: he made it. I could almost say Stephenson created railways, figuratively of course.

As to birds being formed out of the water, the margin would have removed the difficulty. The objection is either clap-trap or ignorance. Zung and De Wette both give gevögel fliege, "let fowl fly:" so the excellent Dutch, and Diodati's Italian version; the English has followed the Septuagint and Latin; the Hebrew ve yoph yopheph in the second member of the verse seems plain enough. Perhaps remains of ancient prejudices may have led our Essayists to follow the learned Patrick, who says, that it is clear fishes and birds have the same origin, for they both lay eggs, and both guide themselves with their tails!

W. Well, that is naïf enough, at any rate. What strange creatures we are! But you think, then, that the whole geological period, if such there be, comes between verses 1 and 2.

H. Would come; for the object of the chapter is to treat, as I have said, the fact of creation, that everything is made out of nothing; and then, our present earth, and nothing else. Hence, in the second verse, He confines Himself to the earth. The earth was tohu vohu. There is no idea of the heavens being in this state; and I confess I should not suppose chaos to have been a first creation of God. It looks like the result of some catastrophe. Here all the Orphic, Grecian, and Phoenician cosmogonies begin, and the Romans, as in the lines well known to boys, "Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia coelum, Unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe, Quem dixere chaos." Only they personify, in general, chaos, and erebus (or darkness), the mundane egg coming out of the former. We get the historical fact here (primeval creation properly speaking being distinct), chaos. They personify in general chaos, darkness, the waters, and the Vishnu Narayana of the Hindus. (I refer to those only to shew where the traditions fall into the ranks.) The Spirit of God moves upon them.

Now comes the fiat of God upon this scene of darkness. Darkness, mark, was only on the face of the deep. "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." He spake, and it was done. This was the great fact. But God distinguished darkness and light, and there was night and day. The how is not said -- we can well believe, by the turning of the earth round, which would suppose a fixed light; but God is not teaching science, nor is it mere observation, for observation would have led to speak of the sun, which, every one knows, lights the earth. Moses's is not the most probable account. The difficulty is one unnecessarily created by the writer in apparent divergence from what every one sees and knows. The difficulty overthrows the theory of infidels. The writer departs from the evident and apparent phenomena, not to raise mystic fables, but to state a singular fact gratuitously, if it were not a revelation.

Then the expanse is formed, or for a Jew the first heaven, as we see it. God set it over the earth. It is spoken of as we speak of it. Rakiang is an expanse, but there is no definition of it. Firmament is merely a word taken from the Septuagint and Latin. God produced what we see daily, this blue sky over our heads, and call sky, and heaven. It is not mere empty space, as our Essayist says: all but what the sun shone on would be pitch dark if it were, and the bottom viewed in a telescope is black. It is the air which is blue, yet we all say blue sky, and so on. It sufficed to say, that what was thus before us God had so ordered.

I am not aware that the waters above the heavens are more than the supplies of rain in the clouds. It has been alleged, that there was no rain till the Deluge, and that these waters came down then. It may be so. I see no proof of it.

Earth now comes out of the waste to be fruit-being. The notion that there were no heavens till the present sky was formed, the atmospheric heavens, is an utter mistake. We left the heavens as distinct from the earth behind us in verse 1, to speak only of the earth and what referred to it. This was the heathen idea, as may be seen in Ovid. The Mosaic account is much more just and true, when none else was. It distinguishes the empyrean heavens from the atmospheric heavens. In heathenism, man spoke; in scripture, God. The word used for what was now formed is not what is spoken of in the great act of creation; it is expanse. But this has the name of heaven, and that only is said, and this is true now. The rakiang is called heaven, and it is quite right it should be. Do I not rightly say, I shall go up to heaven? I do not excommunicate a man for believing there are antipodes; but I should think a man who should tell me, "I must not say go up to heaven, because my friend in New Zealand or Australia would then go down," a very unprofitable and foolish person. Moral ideas are associated with physically unscientific ones; and I am afraid we shall speak and sing of the sun's rising and setting, and the moon's waxing and waning, though the advanced science of rationalists in the happy age that is coming may have convinced incipient philosophers at National Schools that it is all a mistake, that suns do not set or rise, nor moons wax or wane. We are set in a system where these phenomena are meant to act on us, a wondrous world of images which are more true than science, because mind is more real than matter. And in moral things (and the scripture is throughout a moral book) God speaks to us according to this, not according to the (after all) petty discoveries of science. I call it petty, because it is only occupied with material things. All knowledge is the proof of ignorance: for what a man has learnt he did not know before; yet, if he has rightly learnt it, it was before, and he did not know it.

W. Is that all you make of man and his powers?

H. That is all. As Pascal has said, "All matter never produced a thought, and all intellect never produced charity." As to the day that is now before us, it is a mistake of the Essayists that fruit-trees and seed-bearing plants are first noticed. Grass, the green herb, is first noticed, which was not given for man's use. Of course the divine account does not set about botanizing to study what are the best kinds for man or beast. God created all. All are respectively given, and what is best is used. It is the fact of Elohim's making the beautiful clothing of this earth, and trees, and herbs to reproduce themselves, which is noticed as the great general fact.

We now arrive at what is the great difficulty presented to us, but which I have partly anticipated -- God's making lights for day and night. I repeat what I said: if this be not a revelation, it is a difficulty gratuitously created for himself by the writer; if it be a revelation, he must give it as he received it; and this explains why it is thus set forth. If it be not a revelation, it is perfectly inexplicable why He should have made light, and lights for day and night distinct things; for every one knows day and night come from the rising and setting of the sun. That it ever was otherwise must be a matter of revelation. But as a phase of truth the difference is great: light in itself is not a light, a governing central power that has light in it; and it is in this way it is brought before us here. Some doubts have arisen as to the sun's atmosphere in the mind of the distinguished French astronomer, who observed the last total (or, at any rate, annular) eclipse in Spain; but we may take it as an admitted fact, that the sun, as a body, forming a centre of gravity for the planetary system, is not in itself necessarily a light. The reproduction of light, before, was only to dissipate the darkness that brooded on chaos. Now we have a beautiful centre of order identified with light, just as Christ could speak of truth and say, "I am the truth." Nor, while taking the historical parts of scripture as plain facts, are their analogies of no import. Imagination may play us false; but that there is a world of images of truth the most stupid can hardly deny. Scripture is full of it. Language is formed on it. The mind of man is bred and fashioned in it. You must make him a materialist and a brute with physical wants (that is, destroy his higher nature), if you set aside this. You cannot utter a sentence without it, unless on mere material subjects. God has taken this up in the highest way. He is light. The right hand of His power makes all equal. His eyes run to and fro through the earth. No one is deceived by it, no more than they are by going up into heaven. They are taught by it. What is, strictly, materially inexact gives more truth than the contrary. Destroy it, and God cannot communicate with man, for he has not the same nature; nor man with man as a moral man. Language, the wonderful though imperfect expression of thought and feeling, ceases to serve man as a moral being.

W. But you take this Mosaic account of creation as literally true.

H. Undoubtedly; but I do not doubt it is so framed, as the world is of which it speaks, as to furnish images for higher relations. If the facts were not there, the images would not. If there were no cleanness, I could not speak of the heart being clean; but the last is a figure. Remember this, that science, however useful, is material. Phenomena, on the contrary, are connected with the higher and divine part of man; and these are for all the world. I do not believe, while no doubt demonstrating the wonderful works of God, that Lord Ross's telescope has awakened a higher feeling than breathed in the heart of the shepherd of Bethlehem, when, keeping his flock in the fields by night, he viewed the heavens, the work of God's hands, the moon and the stars which He had ordained, and God gave him to image out that Second and perfect man as the answer to his wants and aspirations, who should be crowned with glory and honour, and have all things put under His feet. Perhaps the first man may exalt himself by the discoveries which prove how little he is; but what has he gained by it?

I believe fully God set at this time the sun and the moon to be for signs and seasons and years, and to make day and night; but they are viewed here solely in this aspect towards the earth, and only as lights. God made the two great lights, eth shenee hameoroth, and God gave them as such. There is no creation of the bodies. There is the establishment of the phenomena, and their purpose. Hence, when he speaks of the stars, he only takes care to remind us, that God had made them too. Instead of men's worshipping them, God had distributed them to all men under heaven; but, as not having any other place with this earth, it is simply left in that way.

We have no revelation of the creation of angels. Man, Israel, is to be instructed as to what they were in danger of abusing, and told how it came from God. It is not, as Hugh Miller thought, a vision, or the impression of it related, but phenomena put in their right place in man's mind, or God as to the phenomena. And that is what we want.

W. It makes it very simple and infinitely more important when we see it in this light. I quite feel it would be utterly out of place to make of a revelation a course of science. Yet the distinction of creation, and the arranging the present order, the covsmo", of which Moses could have had no natural knowledge, leaves all discoveries of science their own place. It supposes a knowledge of them which God only could have, and yet does not take the mind from what was before it in all ages, and important for the development of truth in all ages, and the true condition of the masses in reference to God and the creation at all times. In this I see what is wholly divine in this account. There must be love and purpose in God's revelations: and in revelations to man, that love and that purpose must refer to man while it reveals God; and this the first of Genesis does admirably. It seems to me, as indeed I do not doubt it is, perfect in this respect.

H. Surely it is. And the question between us and the rationalists is, not whether the scripture gives scientific knowledge -- most surely it does not; but whether its contents are God's thoughts or man's thoughts of the subject it treats of. It does give us man's thoughts when man stands responsible (and that of course it must do to have a full moral picture), but God's view and thoughts of all this scene, with the perfection of man in Christ, but a second man. In the case before us, in this most simple account, we have all the needed phenomena on which man speculated ascribed to the right source, and put in their place, and all man's thoughts met. Elsewhere we have man's thoughts, schemes of emanations, personifications, and theories. One little chapter answers them all divinely.

W. I feel thoroughly satisfied as to the divine and perfect character of this account as given by revelation. It seems to me that it bears the stamp of a revelation on itself. The review of human systems shews evidently that it was not the product of man's mind.

H. I would notice only now a few statements of our Essay to shew its fallacy. Many such have been noticed in our general review of the subject. It is stated, that theologians should have accepted frankly the principle, that those things for the discovery of which man has faculties specially provided are not fit objects for a divine revelation. All quite right; I quite agree with this. But it does not touch the question. I have not even to discover the sun, nor the stars, nor the moon; but what man never did discover, but lost when he had it, was, that God had made the sun, the moon, and stars. Instead of which, man took them for gods and worshipped them. That God in mercy should give a revelation to deliver man from this, even though he was without excuse, is very worthy of God.

But now mark the consequences these reasoners draw: "Had this been unhesitatingly done, either the definition and idea of divine revelation must have been modified, and the possibility of an admixture of error been allowed; or such parts of the Hebrew writings as were found to be repugnant to fact must have been pronounced to form no part of revelation." Now this conclusion is totally false. If objects of scientific discovery are not proper objects of revelation, the conclusion is not by any means that there is error in scripture, but that what is a revelation does not set about to reveal them, and therefore has no occasion to be in error about them.

The writer's statement amounts to this: there is a revelation which God has given, and as scientific facts are not a proper subject of revelation, therefore there is error in the revelation God has given. I should have thought, as God was the revealer and THERE COULD BE no other, that if they were not objects of revelation, He would not have revealed anything about them, not that He must have been in error. If He revealed anything and there be error, He must have known the truth of it, and have wilfully deceived. If He has not revealed any object of scientific discovery, the position falls to the ground. I have found no revelation of Cephalopodes, or Trilobites, or Megalotheria, Megalosaurias, and Ichthyosaurias or huge Pterodactyls. Man has discovered them. I am not aware of any revelation on an object of science. I find the word of God as to natural things resting on the ground of phenomena, and God correcting the horrible wanderings of men's minds, by revealing Himself, whom man never discovered as the Creator of all. Let man resolve nebula with his telescopes, and find they are composed of stars. Scripture tells us that He made the stars also. Let him discover, if he can, that the whole world is made up of infusoria, if revelation be not true, he dies and becomes part of it in his turn. We must distinguish between the facts of geology and the conclusions of geologists. I admit the former; the latter are extremely uncertain, in some respects impossible to be true. There is nothing to conciliate, as I have said. The facts of geology are there. Scripture, which does not reveal scientific facts, is totally silent as to them, but leaves a gap which may have been filled by millions of years when we were not: but it does tell us the origin of the world (which no man could find out -- so horribly stupid was man without a revelation), namely, that God made it. If He did not, who did?

Our writer would have us learn from the history of man what God's procedure has been. History! where? India, or Egypt, or from the Edda, or Ahriman and Ormuzd? Where am I to find the history? The vast, vast majority of the world were in the most horrible state possible: is it from that I am to learn God's procedure towards man? Did God give him Kali, and Juggannath, or the Grand Lama, or Khem, and Yoni-Lingams, and Brahms? Where is this procedure? What history is it found in? History! Go to it, and see what man is. I do not say books of philosophy, though they are bad enough (and how truly judged in Romans 2!) but history, ay, rationalists, history! What a God you must have, if that be His procedure with man! And alas! our cosmogonists are only returning to what the first of Genesis brought the believer in it out of; for, "here geology steps in and successfully carries back the history of the world's crust" (think of that!) "to a very remote period, until it arrives" (where do you think?) "at a region of uncertainty? where philosophy is reduced to mere guesses and probabilities, and pronounces nothing definite." What a satisfactory result -- successfully arriving at a region of uncertainty! How these men tell the truth about themselves! Divine philosophy, occupied with the earth's crust till it successfully arrives at uncertainty! but, if reduced to guesses, it will guess: and, "to this region belong the speculations which have been ventured upon, as to the original concretion of the earth and planets out of nebular matter" (is there such a thing?) "of which the sun may have been the nucleus." It must have been a prodigious comet to have been concentrated into the sun, for they have no sensible power of gravity at all; but let that pass. Who made the nebula? The Hindoo could set the world on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise (his back was tolerably suited for it); but the tortoise on -- a guess perhaps. Mr. Godwin would be greatly benefited by one text of scripture, in which there is no scientific fact: -- "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

As regards carnivorous animals, and one man and one woman, the fact is a question of God's power. It is distinctly stated, that herbs were given for food to the beasts of the field, not clearly from ignorance, for lions were eating men in Moses' time, but, with the deliberate intention of alleging a revelation, Moses contradicts the whole existing order of facts as to animals. He had no need to be a comparative anatomist to know that there were wild beasts. He declares that at first they were given the green herb for food. Scripture gives us to understand they ate that in the ark, and speaks of it as representing the reign of peace. Whether God, who foreknew the fall, made them as they are, or whether they were changed in disposition and internal organization, I do not pretend to say (but I believe man fell the first day); but the passage is not ignorance of science, for no science was needed. It is a direct contradiction of universal experience, and professes to be a revelation. To say that it cannot be true is absurd. It is morally appropriate. All men had a tradition of a golden age of blessing. Plato said the beasts used to converse then:

"He did not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau If beasts confabulate or no."

As regards the single pair, Christ and His apostles, particularly Paul, speak of the first man and woman as alone; and all Paul's doctrine is based on it. I am aware that our Essayists, and all their party, think themselves far wiser than the apostles; but, as the same Paul says, "not he that commendeth himself is approved." I suppose they would have a little modesty as yet as to treating the Lord as a person of inferior wisdom; but the whole account in both chapters speaks, as the Lord says, of one man and one woman. He planted a garden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. He was alone, all the beasts subjected to him, but no companion; and then Eve taken out of his side: when fallen and driven out, he begets a son in his own image. It is not merely the doctrine of Paul, but the historical statement is as clear as possible. The fall and redemption are all set aside in the part of the essay I allude to.

I have already commented on the pretension that it is a second narrative. The whole subsequent history goes on the supposition that there was no other man. The whole moral meaning of the history is a brutum fulmen, if there were others. The history is written to shew an innocent man fallen and driven out, as the head of a race, from God. If this is not so, what does the history mean? Genesis is a book in which all the elements of the divine history are brought out, and anticipatively passed in review. In the first chapter the man is carefully spoken of in the singular, and then plural when the woman is added. It is quite evident that all kinds of traditions were afloat in the world as to creation, or formation rather; and when God called out a people, He informed them as to the origin of the world around them, put them into a right relationship to Himself as to it, and only spoke of it as far as that was needed; but did that, knowing everything and speaking according to that knowledge. We may rest in peace in that. Discoveries may interest us deeply, like the discovery of antiquities of Celts or Saxons in an old castle we live in. Our own relationship with God flows from the revelation He has made of Himself in Christ.

At the same time, according to the ablest enquirers (as Pritchard, Cuvier, and others), all races of men are derived from one stock. The American efforts to shew the contrary are excessively poor; contradictory as to Africa, and false as to America. Their object is to make of negroes another race. Livingstone's facts go to shew their physical peculiarities to be a natural result of heat and damp. But I am content to be ignorant of its cause.

W. I am perfectly satisfied. I see as clearly as possible that the light we have in the first of Genesis is of God, not of man, and is suited to and worthy of God; that man was incapable of it in every way; that its silence and its eloquence are alike of Him; its wisdom, and the absence of all that is not simple or what might be called science; that it is silent as to the contrast, and yet distinguishes creation and formation in a way no man ever in fact was capable of, shewing an account coming from divine knowledge, and yet fitted to human ignorance in its most childhood days, yet giving all morally important and elevating for any of us, testing our faith in some things, and proving itself divine for the faith that is to be tried. I am satisfied that none but God could have given such an account, though I could not have so judged if I had not had it, and the Essayists could not have commented on it as they have done if they had not had it. What conclusions would have been drawn from the discoveries of geology, if Christianity had not come? What a comfort it is to know one has God's own word, the communication of His thoughts and mind in the interest He takes in us!

H. In truth it is -- I am glad you are satisfied.

W. Satisfied, yet ignorant of many things; but the tone and spirit of these Essayists are sufficient, it seems to me, to prove that they have no sense of the divine; and even the historical comparison we have made, brief as it has been, of human thoughts and divine revelation, is sufficient to stamp its true character in the latter.

Well, I suppose we must part for the present. If spared, we may perhaps take up some other point of the Essays, though some, from their occasional nature, hardly merit any notice.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN THEOLOGY, BOTH COMPARED WITH SCRIPTURE

A Third Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews

H. Shall we take up the review of "Bunsen's Biblical Researches" today? It has specially as its object the spreading the German system of discrediting the scriptures as we possess them. It is evident that the mass of readers cannot enter into arguments founded on linguistic or even historic criticism. And if the scriptures have not authority as the word of God, substantially as they are, that authority is gone, and with it every direct communication from God. If scripture be not this, certainly nothing else is; and mankind are deprived of all direct communication from Him. The immense bearing of this is self-evident. The great question is, not whether there are defects through lapse of ages and man's want of care in the record of divine communications -- defects which every possible research may be used to remedy, but, first, whether there are such communications, and next, whether there be a divinely given record of them.

It is freely admitted that it is through man, and in a large portion of it the history of man just as he was, with a measure of divine light, or without it, in special if imperfect relationships, or with the divine light come down traditionally from those in more direct communication -- in a word, that scripture gives us the whole working of divine light in all its phases and its effects, and the workings of man's mind under it. It is admitted that the very object of a large part of it is to shew the results in man put thus to the test in various ways, that man may know himself; and that this is accompanied by the patience of a condescending God working in the midst of this. All this is admitted -- yea, insisted on. The question is not there. The question is, Are the scriptures a divine record of divine communications, in which God has unfolded all this before us, and given us besides, His own mind and thoughts as to it, and the ground of our relationship with Him?

If this be the case, then the scriptures are wholly and absolutely in contrast with every other book. Other books are not a divinely-given record of God's thoughts; the scriptures are. They have taken up humanity in all its forms, and held it up such as it is in the light, and under the eye of God, and given us that light, so that the darkness is past and the true light now shineth. We may have aspirations after God, the working of conscience, thoughts of need, giving much more real sense of what God must be to help us than the pride of intellectual reasoning. But the revelation of God is the full answer to all this; and that no man can give. God has in scripture given us the helpful description of these workings, so that the answer may be better understood. He has brought out, in historical realities and moral searchings of heart, without law, and under law, these wants and cravings, and the display of man's incompetency to meet God. We have the struggles of a Job, and the heart-exercises of the Psalms, the experience of all under the sun in the Preacher -- man left to himself before the flood, man on the ground of obedience to law, man in obedient royalty in Israel, and man in unfettered supremacy in Babylon. The results of all this are given, and in Christ, the last Adam, God is fully revealed; and He is (dying withal that it may be righteous) the way to God.

This is not a speculation of what God may be. It is a revelation of what He is and the way to Him. If Christianity be true, it is this. When, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe. It is not the speculations of man's mind, but Christ crucified; to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness; but to us that are saved, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. He has chosen the foolish things to confound the wise, and weak things and things that are not to bring to nought things that are. Such was the divine system, and such it is. If Christianity be true at all, it is the express opposite of all the system advocated by these Essays.

W. Of that I am fully convinced. I see plainly that the very essence of Christianity as a revelation is the bringing divine light into the course of this world and of the human heart; it is to shew, not indeed that there are no amiable natural qualities (for there are), but that, with them or without them, man is alienated from God -- that in his flesh dwells no good thing. I see plainly, too, that man's moral estimate of good must be lowered, if he does not so judge. But with this he has a perfect revelation of love, and of a righteous way for man through the cross into the perfect enjoyment of it. But the difficulties are to be met. I feel I am in the evening darkness when I take up this book, with all its pretensions; but it is difficult to catch a flitting bat who is in his element when he is there.

H. The main thing, I apprehend, in these cases is to bring in the light. Bats are gone when it comes, and crouch into more natural darkness. What they have of Christianity has given them this twilight -- a perplexing kind of light; their home is darkness. I speak, of course, of the principles, not of the men. There may be first last and last first.

Scripture calls God light, and it calls Him love, which are the titles you have used in speaking of Him. He is these. He is not holiness, for that is relative; He is not righteousness, though He be holy and righteous. To be holy, there must be knowledge of good and evil (and so of righteousness); but that, i.e., evil, cannot be within God; but perfect purity, and that which manifests all, He is; and the perfect activity of goodness, that is, love; and so scripture speaks. And this makes the cross so glorious, of which you speak as the way. God meets sin there. Oh, what a glorious meeting! yet in perfect love, but in perfect righteousness and holiness; yea, exalting them by it. Hence He says, Now is the Son of man glorified -- for it was glorious for a man to do it -- and God is glorified in Him. If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him -- shall not wait for the outward display in the coming kingdom, but shall glorify Him in Himself, who was glorified in Him. This is man's place in hope and in spiritual nature and affections now; hence not of the world, as Christ, who came from heaven and as a divine person was in heaven, was not of the world. This nature may display itself in a thousand exercises and relationships here, as it did in Christ, and in us -- mixed with failures, alas! for which there is provision in Him; but the proper association of our nature and standing as Christians is with Him in heaven.

Hence it is said, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hand, and that He came from God and went to God -- in presence of all He was and was going to, and in presence of treachery and failure -- takes the place of a servant to wash His disciples' feet, that they might have a part with Him. He could not stay with them in this polluted earth. Hence, too, when Peter would have other than his feet washed -- his need through defilement from daily walk -- the Lord says, He that is washed -- really partakes of this divine nature (for they were, save Judas, clean through the word spoken) -- needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit. What a picture of grace! what a witness of our portion or part with Him! and while giving the assurance that the truth of the divine nature is there (for here He speaks of water, not of blood), to give us morally elevating confidence in intercourse with God, and yet allow of not the smallest daily stain, yet learn grace in it.

W. It is a picture at once most lovely and elevated of the Lord's grace.

H. If you examine it. closely, you will see that it comes after His earthly claims are witnessed and closed. As Son of God, He raises Lazarus; as Son of David, He rides into Jerusalem. When the Greeks come up, He says, The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified; but then adds, He must fall into the ground as a corn of wheat and die. In chapter 13 He shews how we have part with Him when He could not with us. But note this well. If we are to be really elevated, it is taking us in spirit really out of this world. He gave Himself for our sins, to deliver us from this present world.

However we will turn from scripture to Dr. Williams and Baron Bunsen, if you are so disposed.

W. If you please. I should gladly pursue our enquiry into the whole of John's gospel; but I suppose for the moment we must pursue our subject.

H. Note, then, the principles Dr. Williams lays down. "There is hardly any greater question than whether history shews Almighty God to have trained mankind by a faith which has reason and conscience for its kindred, or by one to whose miraculous tests their pride must bow." I deny the alternative altogether.

But what shall we say to his account of English scholars at the universities? "They stand balancing terror against mutual shame. Even with those in our universities who no longer repeat fully the required Shibboleths, the explicitness of truth is rare. He who assents most, committing himself least to baseness, is reckoned wisest." What a picture!

W. It is no great compliment. Their faith has not reason and conscience for its kindred, at any rate, whatever kind of tests they may have to bow to.

H. It is just the effect of narrowness such as theology without scripture gives, tied up by system, and turning in its will to unlawful fields of delight. Sober research is not followed out, and as liberty cannot be had, to seem free, pretensions to it, which are really infidelity, must be had resort to. But though such a position be sufficiently despicable -- and we have not assigned it to them, nor do I see any good in discrediting thus morally the educational and religious heads of the country (I should at any rate leave it to themselves to do so) -- yet the evil is deeper. It is reducing Christianity to man, not raising man by Christianity. "Devotion raises time present into the sacredness of the past" (that is, what we have now of spiritual power is pretty much equivalent to the apostolic energy); "and criticism reduces the strangeness of the past into harmony with the present" (that is, the times of Christ and His works were no more than what we have now). Heathenism must itself be on the same level. We are not to "acknowledge a Providence in Jewry without owning that it may have comprehended sanctities elsewhere" -- not a very lucid statement, but which means, that if the Jewish religion was something more, yet heathenism was as much owned of God. "Its religions appealed to the better side of our nature, and their essential strength lay in the good they contained." So Bunsen "traces frankly the Spirit of God elsewhere, but honouring chiefly the traditions of His Hebrew sanctuary." Nor will they hear of anything superior to man. "Our author then believes St. Paul, because he understands him reasonably."

Now, it is difficult to follow the statements of the paper of Baron Bunsen, because, with an immense store of reading, Bunsen (evidently personally a most amiable and attractive person) skimmed everything more than he thoroughly searched anything; sought to reduce all events to their most abstract ideality, which was its only truth for him (and it is in this last point its fallacy and infidel character consisted); and indulged an imagination amiable by its very wantonness. You see a man who can believe anything, if he thought it, and mean no harm; but put that as truth, while research after certainty was too prosaic for him. Endless supposition and ideality; truth not necessary to the structure of his mind. He has read and studied a vast deal, thought a great deal, written a great deal, to shew what might be or must have been; the prose of what was does not seem to have occurred to him as a subject of enquiry. He felt, like our Essayists, the narrowness of conventional Oxford-like education and system, and sought (in emancipating himself and being suggestive, as our Essayists say) liberty, not truth. A balloon is free, but as yet no one has known how to guide it.

In his history, "giant shapes of ancient empires flit like dim shadows, evoked by a master's hand." The only misfortune is, they are only shadows -- they never existed. Then some twenty thousand years are needed for them. There must have been to form the empires, and the language too; but the empires were only shadows, and the twenty thousand years flit away necessarily like the empires. None of the allegations bear serious examination.

Next, the whole system is founded on believing in the goodness of man. He believes, as the reviewer says, in Christ, because he believes in God and in mankind. There you have the real truth. What is believing in mankind? That they are sinners? lost? So Christianity undoubtedly teaches. So the reviewer speaks of God's giving us, through His Son, a deeper revelation of His own presence. Present He always was in man: only this was somewhat fuller, and "the incarnation becomes as purely spiritual as it was with Paul."

All truth disappears under Baron Bunsen's musings. Ideas remain; nought else. Christ is an idea. This levelling of all facts to exalt man by ideas is followed out by the reviewer. "First, as regards the subject-matter, both spiritual affection and metaphysical reasoning forbid us to confine revelations like those of Christ to the first half century of our era, but shew at least affinities of our faith existing in men's minds anterior to Christianity, and renewed with deep echo from living hearts in many a generation ... . We find the evidences of our canonical books, and of the patristic authors nearest to them, are sufficient to form illustration in outward act of principles perpetually true; but not adequate to guarantee narratives inherently incredible, or precepts evidently wrong." We will speak of this hereafter.

But the first thing, in this chaos of words and abstract principles, which it is important for our minds to dwell on is, what Christianity professes to be. I say, professes to be. My business now is, not to prove it true, but to shew that the idea to which it is reduced here is false, and impossible if it be true. The reader must remember that the reviewers profess to be Christians, to be christian teachers, and to be teachers of those intended to be teachers. They cannot say we deny Christianity. They are only wiser Christians; they would suit Christianity to human nature, to men, to man's progress. They would not have the narrowness of ancient orthodoxy, and they abhor evangelical truth; but they must be Christians, or leave the position they hold. The explicitness of truth, they tell us, is rare. Now Christianity is very explicit. It does not speak of revelations of Christ -- that is, thoughts communicated by Him -- but found in living hearts in many a generation. It declares that the Father sent His Son to be the Saviour of the world. It is a religion of facts, and so suited to the poor. Half the population of England would not understand the sentence I have quoted above. The gospel may, alas! be rejected, but it consists in facts suited to every man's heart and conscience. Christianity states deep things, which, if received, reveal God in a way that makes Him possess the heart; but it states them simply, because what is perfectly known can be simply stated, and God knows perfectly what He reveals in grace.

But to return to the point I insist on. Christianity is a religion of immense facts -- facts which contain unspeakably important principles, but facts which connect those principles with God (being a revelation of Him), and not with man's thinkings or aspirations. Thus "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth ... . For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." "I," says Jesus, "came forth from the Father, and came into the world: again, I leave the world and go to the Father." Now principles are here: law contrasted with grace and truth; but the former in the facts which happened at Sinai; the latter in the fact that the Son of God is come from heaven into this world. And the essence and substance of Christianity was to believe that this person was the Christ, was the Son of God; it was to believe these facts which He asserted of Himself, or His apostles after Him declared to be so, alleging that they worked miracles to aid men to believe. Christ declares that, if men did not believe Him, they would die in their sins; that he who believed on the Son had everlasting life; that he who believed not was condemned already. He declares that nobody had ascended up to heaven so as to tell of heavenly things, but He who came down from heaven; but that He spoke that He knew, and testified that He had seen. Paul, too, for whom incarnation was so spiritual, sees that just One returned into glory, and hears the voice of His mouth, that he might be, as he insists he was, an eye-witness that in very deed He, who thought it no robbery to be equal with God, had made Himself of no reputation, and taken on Him the form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a man. Although his mission was mainly to shew man righteously exalted to heaven, John's to shew God come down in grace to the earth, still the same great facts are distinctly declared by him as by all. Stephen declares the wondrous fact, which in the order of revelation led the way on to Paul's ministry, that he saw the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.

If we take other facts constituting the bases of Christianity -- the incarnation; it lies at the outset and foundation of its history that Christ was not born as men are born, but conceived of the Holy Ghost; that a holy thing was born of Mary, through this miraculous interposition. This fact gives us a sinless man born of God -- a Son of man, indeed, but a Second man, a last Adam. An immense fact, involving an immense principle, completely brought into light by the rejection and death of this blessed One (for man, with all his analogous revelations out of living hearts, would none of a living Saviour; He was by wicked hands crucified and slain): the principle that man was a hopeless sinner and a new man to be set up.

But then comes another fact. The Saviour rises; the power of death is destroyed. I do not know what affinity, or deep echo, there is of resurrection in men's minds. I have not heard it. It has not reached the world of history. In what dell has Dr. Williams been where its echo has sounded concealed from all? The sound of resurrection once reached the ears of instructed men; but what echo did it bring back? When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; some, happily startled at the strange sound which spoke relief to dying man, said, "We will hear thee again of this matter." Death -- ah! its echo has sounded far and wide. Yea, it needs none. It speaks in its own voice on the right hand and on the left. It says, Who can escape me? who can tell what has brought me? who shall return out of my hand again? Is Paul wrong who tells that sin brought my terror-striking power on man? Who can tell where I bring those on whom I lay my hand? Is it to judgment? Where is it? Who has returned to tell the tale? What affinities shall help me here? What living hearts tell me more than I know? They fear or hope like me. Death makes them as serious as it makes me. If Christ be my God, it is a gain, the brightest moment of life; it is to depart and be with Him. But if not, who of these fancied revealers has ever revealed what is beyond? Hope. Yes; since Christianity, infidels can.

But resurrection goes farther; it destroys death's power wholly. What came in by the first Adam is destroyed by the Second, and brings into glory. The resurrection is an immense fact: glorious truths and principles in it; the power of divine life paramount to death; acceptance of man in a wholly new state, reasoned on largely by the apostles, especially Paul -- still a simple but immense fact. That God should become a man; that the Son should be personally revealed as man on earth; that He should die as man on the cross; that He should triumph over death, and rise again, and ascend as man in a spiritual and glorified body into heaven, assuring to those who believed on Him that they would be with and like Him: these are facts -- if Christianity be true at all -- which make it simple nonsense to talk of "affinities of our faith existing in men's minds anterior to Christianity, and renewed with deep echo from living hearts in many a generation."

No doubt aspirations there were before in men's hearts, through the moral desolation of the world; prophecies too, before Christ, which, in a chosen and called people, kept alive the hope of something better; and every Christian of course believes that these facts, and the principles of grace and truth they involve, are received in many living hearts since, with more or less depth of feeling, and find an echo there. But the prophecies were not the thing prophesied of, the aspirations were not the divine answer that met and more than met them. Nor is the blessed echo in the believer's heart, he well knows, the fact that has awakened it -- that heavenly sound which it echoes with joy in its praises. There is realization of it all, living realization, affinity, because the believer is partaker of the divine nature. If God be love, the believer loves. If God be holy, the believer is made partaker of His holiness. Is Christ glorified? The believer will be like Him, and seeks to be spiritually like Him now. But the person of Christ, His death, His resurrection, remain great and unchangeable facts. He does not speak of revelations of Christ (i.e., by Him), and affinities in other men's minds. But he knows that the Son of God is come; he knows that the Father sent the Son; that Christ is a person come down from heaven, so that He could reveal what is there (not merely aspire after it); that He loved us and gave Himself for us -- appears in the presence of God for us; that we have forgiveness of sins through Him -- salvation in no other; and that if He was God upon earth, the Word made flesh, He is man in heaven.

There can be no affinities to facts in men's minds; there may be effects produced by them, which bring the mind into suited feelings; there may be dark aspirations after what is better. But a revelation, and the Son of God coming into the world to create the one and to meet the other, are different things. The statement of Dr. Williams is a covert denial of Christianity. It reduces it to thoughts and feelings in men's minds, not confined to the revelations of Christ; and here Dr. Williams is even farther from Christianity than Bunsen.

Now Christ did reveal most blessed grace and truth. But Christianity rests on what He was, what He suffered, and on His resurrection. If that be not true, our faith is vain, we are yet in our sins, and, as the apostle confesses, if it be not, they were false witnesses of God. He had seen the Lord after His resurrection, and he could appeal, not only to the apostles, but to hundreds, as eye-witnesses of the fact. The apostles were to be witnesses of His resurrection, of this immense fact. What affinity is there to that? No; however covertly it may be done -- however Christ's revelations may be spoken of, and moral beauty be sought elsewhere as well -- the putting Christianity on this ground is the denial of it; for if Christianity consist in the great facts I have referred to, there is, and can be, no affinity to it as such. Affinity to resurrection is nonsense, if resurrection be related as a fact on which moral truth is based.

How wise is God! My thoughts are not God personally incarnate. My being dead to sin and alive to God is not the Son of God passing through death actually and rising again that I may be so. Let any one admit the facts (that is, that Christianity is true), and the views here given by Dr. Williams are at once seen to be the denial of it; because what passes in men's minds are not such facts. If Christianity be only what the affinities of men's minds are, Christianity, as a revelation, is not true. If there be affinities to Christianity, then the Christianity of the Bible and of the universal Church is false, for one states and the other has believed it as a religion of divine facts, however much they have disputed about doctrines. And no honest man can read the scriptures without seeing that the men who relate and reason on Christianity, the original promulgators of it to the world, rest all on these facts, declare themselves often eye-witnesses of many of them, and rest Christianity on their truth. It is impossible to read the New Testament, the references to the origin of Christianity in fathers, heretics, enemies, or pagans, and not see that it rested on a series of facts alleged to be supernatural and divine, which Christians believed, and their adversaries, save as to the fact of the cross, denied. The miracles they did not deny, but accounted for. With these facts the affinities of men's minds have nothing to do. He who makes Christianity to consist in them denies Christianity altogether as a religion of God. If it be not, is there any such? If none, where are we? where are we going?

If we take the character of the revelation of these facts, the contrast is equally great. He that hath received His testimony hath set to his seal that God is true. Not that what is said is truth merely: he has owned God to be true, as He has spoken. For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God. John, who spoke as a prophet, yet says "He that is of the earth is earthly, but he that cometh from above is above all, and what he hath seen and heard that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony." So Christ Himself (John 8: 47), "He that is of God heareth God's words." Read the whole chapter, and see where are the affinities of living hearts. Again, "He was that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us." The whole of the New Testament presents the testimony of Christ as a directly divine testimony; not the thoughts or aspirations of the human heart, but God's words, the words of one who could tell what was in heaven, if man was darkly aspiring after it, because He came down from heaven, and spoke what He had seen, heard, and known there.

In a different way the Holy Ghost has done the same in the apostles. It was not what passed in man's mind, but a clear revelation from God, because man's mind could not find out the truth and God, as history plainly proves. The world by wisdom knew not God, and it pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe. It presents itself in this form in contrast with, and as exactly the contrary of, what Dr. Williams says. If it be not such, it is false, and a horrible imposture, and yet a holy imposture, which there is nothing like in the world, to reveal all that is in man and all that is in God. Let any one produce anything at all like it. Take away this, and what have you as a revelation? What have heathens given us at best? -- a despairing recognition that, if man was to have any moral deliverance, it must be thus. The highest heathen philosophy held it impossible that the supreme God could have directly to say to a creature or to the creation. The fact of Christianity is that He Himself became a man. God is not afraid to compromise His name. He is God everywhere -- nowhere more so than when He is a man, for He is perfect love.

W. It is quite evident that Christianity and the whole system are in essential and total opposition. If the ideas of Dr. Williams are true, Christianity is false; and yet there is nought that approaches to it in excellence, nil simile aut secundum. If Dr. Williams's views are false, they are high treason against the goodness of God. That is plain enough.

H. Remark another thing -- their moral incapacity to seize the bearing of their own or their adversaries' views. There is a conscience, a sense of good and evil, without a revelation -- more of that anon. But Christianity, as a revelation of God, gives us entire confidence in goodness, but an object out of self, delight in goodness out of ourselves, faith in that which is revealed in another. The infidel party bring us back to self, to confidence in self, to value for self. Man is as good in other ways as what has been had in Christ; at any rate, it is a question of degree. All is man; that is, Christianiy takes out of self by a divinely perfect object. Infidelity exalts self -- lives in what is really degradation. What is exalted in this system? What is exalted in Christianity? I spoke once to an intelligent artisan, nurtured in this doctrine, of the beauty and perfectness of Christ. "Oh," he replied, "you will never see me do anything unworthy of a man." What man? Himself to be sure.

At the cost of his own humiliation the Christian admits the divine excellency which condemns him. These unhappy men, as we can again find here, in order to reduce all to a dead level, lower -- or rather see nothing divine in -- Christianity; and then, what really is disgraceful morally (as we have seen in Dr. Temple, and see again here), they put heathenism on a level with it, or as nearly as they dare. I confess this seems to me a vilifying themselves beyond all belief. But so they do. It is the direct point of the paper we are considering. "Devotion," it is said, "raises time present (i.e., ourselves) into the sacredness of the past; while criticism reduces the strangeness of the past into harmony with the present." What past? Why, revelation; that is what is criticised. That is, the object is to reduce what is divine, or presents itself definitely and absolutely as such, as the "words of God" and "works of the Father," to the level of what men say and do now, and give sacredness and importance to ourselves by saying we are as divine as what is revealed to us. Remove God Himself, whom Christianiy has revealed, far away -- lower what is divine, and exalt self -- that is the avowed object of Dr. Williams.

W. Well, it really cannot be denied. It is but spargere voces in vulgum ambiguas at present; but the interpretation you give does but put it in plain language, and it condemns itself.

H. Plain language they cannot boast of. I read, "we cannot acknowledge a Providence in Jewry without owning that it may have comprehended sanctities elsewhere." Now that God's providence acted sovereignly everywhere, that the confinement of specific relationship to Israel was only because historically men had everywhere departed from God, every Christian owns, and the Book of Job is the special witness of it. It is asserted in a thousand places by prophets, and in Psalms. Jonas is the public witness of its subsistence when Israel was fully formed as a people. But what is the meaning of this precious phrase, "Providence comprehending sanctities elsewhere?" If we are to be permitted to take a meaning out of it, as our Irish fellow-countrymen say, it is simply that the heathen were as holy as God's people, and as really in direct relationship with Him. If so, of course the Old Testament, and Christ's statements, and the apostles, and the whole scheme of scripture, are totally false. These do teach us that Christianity has broken down the middle wall of partition, but that, before, God had not had His name called on any other people, but had chosen Israel for Himself out of all nations. The whole scheme of scripture is on this shewing false; salvation was not of the Jews, as the Lord asserts.

The passage which follows, however, justifies the interpretation I have given of Dr. Williams's oracle. He adds, "But the moment we examine fairly the religions of India and Arabia, or even of primeval Hellas and Latium, we find they appealed to the better side of our nature, and their essential strength lay in the elements of good which they contained, rather than in any satanic corruption." So thought not Paul: but let that pass. Dr. Williams has, of course, keener spiritual perception than he. He was in conflict with the evil, saw it around him, would feel its evil and corruption, and could not take so philosophic and cool a view of it as Dr. Williams now. Indeed, it would have sadly cooled his zeal; his idea of revelation would have widened and deepened. Jupiter, whose ways appealed to the better side of our nature, would have had a part in his sympathies.

You may have remarked what is said in the essay on national churches. I will recall to you a specimen of this moral levelling: --

"It was natural for a Christian, in the earliest period, to look upon the heathen state in which he found himself as if it belonged to the kingdom of Satan, and not to that of God; and consecrated as it was in all its offices, to the heathen divinities, to consider it a society having its origin from the powers of darkness, not from the Lord of light and life ... . But the primitive Christians could scarcely be expected to see that ultimately the gospel was to have sway in doing more perfectly that which the heathen religions were doing imperfectly; that its office should be not only to quicken the spirit of the individual and to confirm his future hopes, but to sanctify all social relations and civil institutions, and to enter into the marrow of the national life; whereas heathenism had only decorated the surface of it. Heathendom had its national churches; indeed the existence of a national church is not only a permissible thing, but is necessary to the completion of a national life, and has shewn itself in all nations when they have made any advance in civilization." (page 168.)

Paul could bend himself, however, to human condition and human infirmity in a wonderful way, to seek a point where he could meet those he dealt with, and at Athens meet a weary and wandering conscience with an unknown God; and bring the true one to ignorant and more savage Lystrians, as not having left Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave rain and fruitful seasons, and filled men's hearts with food and gladness. He could lead people to the true God by this; but he could not justify corruption and devils, like Dr. Williams, nor call evil good, and good evil, and put darkness for light, and light for darkness. The true picture of it he gives in Romans 1. There is reason, as Dr. Williams alleges, and conscience; and I see Paul meeting, with the utmost earnestness of love, and the delicacy of tact which love gives, the point in man's state accessible to it, in order to draw him to the goodness and holy grace of the true God, out of the evil he was in; but never seeking, as Dr. Williams, to widen the idea of revelation, and lower it to the level of the heathenism it was to draw men out of, and thus make them content with their degradation. When Christianity sank morally, Porphyrys and Jamblichuses sought to do this by refining on heathenism, and making myths of it, as Julian sought in vain to moralize it to make a stand against Christianity, which, by its fruits, told on the conscience; but never did an apostle, or any one who had a sense of the excellency of Christ. Paul can quote their own poets, can use all means to win all, but never to sanctify evil, and so degrade the moral judgment of man. This was reserved for the pretenders to higher moral discernment of the nineteenth century.

But a word more on this. We have already spoken on this sanction of heathenism. It is characteristic of the system -- this moral levelling all excellency to make an unwholesome swamp of man's mind, where all stagnates and never rises above its own level. But some particular features of it occur in this paper. It is called widening revelation and deepening it. Widening means giving it so large a meaning that that should be considered a revelation which is no revelation at all. Man's mind works; thoughts are produced. How that is deepening revelation I confess I do not know. I suppose they think men's thoughts are deeper than God's. Less simple they are. All is seen in obscurity, and thought to be profound. But where are they -- these revelations? Is Jupiter a revelation, or Brahm and Siva? I deny all revelation save what revelation means, God's communications to man. Let it be produced. I do not deny shreds of the knowledge of God, but I deny revelation. There is conscience in all, and conscience of God; and there is reason; and there was a knowledge of God from His original revelations of Himself, which men had not discernment to retain, and there was the evidence of nature. This conscience could not be got rid of, nor reason, however fearfully perverted, nor the consciousness of superior power. But this was corrupted.

This side of human nature is found in heathenism, as the apostle largely declares; but heathenism itself is a vast system of diabolical corruption and sanctifying of lusts, which was obliged to let this in, for Satan can only act in and by what was in man; and conscience and the sense of superior power was in man. But the heathenism was the exclusion of God in unity as far as possible, and the deifying of lusts and powers of nature. It was only the connecting of man, such as man was in sin, with devils; a departure from God without being able to destroy the idea of one, or the conscience which God had taken care should accompany sin; but it in no way sought to maintain the one or to meet the other, but to exclude the one and deaden and pervert the other. It took the character of each distinct nation. In Greece it was- gay, poetic, and corrupt; in India, a wonderful apprehension of the powers of nature, with a tinge of kindness interspersed; in Egypt, wisdom, and sobriety of judgment as to man; in Canaan the filth of inveterate corruption: but in all, without exception, sanctified corruption. In the north, perhaps, the wilder and more warlike passions, but in all passion. It was the devil's revelation of a lie, if it was a revelation, unless Siva, and Jupiter, and Khem be truths. It seized existing facts, but only made a lie of them.

There is no "repressive idea of revelation," as regards conscience or reason. There is an authoritative revelation of facts, and teaching of truths by God, which act on conscience and give reason its best light. Reason judges probably, but never more, of the truth and falsehood of anything as a consequence. A revelation gives certain truth, or it is not one. If it be truth, conscience, liable to be misled, is rightly led by it. Reason, as to the direct reception of a revelation, is out of court, because reason draws conclusions, and a revelation is received as a testimony. To say that reason and conscience are absolute judges, or competent to be so, is palpably and historically false. Reason and conscience received Brahminism and Buddhism, and Ionism, and the Egyptian system, and Odin King of men, and Druidism -- all false and different in form. Did they judge rightly in this? If not, are they not at least incompetent to hold the balance, and rule above the will and corrupt influences? Why am I to trust them in judging of what is infinite in excellence? They could not secure man's judgment in the grossest cases imaginable of superstition and moral vileness.

I admit conscience, when acted on, recognizes holy truth and divine authority. But when it begins, not to judge good and evil in itself, but to determine the will as competent to judge for itself, as reasoning, it has ceased to be conscience; or rather conscience has ceased to act, and influences and motives are in play. Conscience knows murder, fruit of hatred, is wrong; that stealing is wrong, disobedience to parents wrong: did a religion come saying "that is good," as such, conscience could say "that cannot be from God, for it is not good: that is a lie, not the truth." But if, not conscience, but pride, begin to say, "God ought not to have done this: miracles do not suit man's better knowledge;" I reply, "Ah! my poor conscience, you are putting on these peacock's feathers, are you? You are too late. Why did not you judge all the juggling of oracles, false gods, and priestcraft these four or five thousand years? This is all very fine. Christianity has saved you from all this long-lasting shame, from which you never could save yourself, and never did, with all your fine pretensions now; and you now turn to set up to be competent to judge about what it ought to have been, and reject the very pretensions the power of which alone gave you any sense to judge at all. No, no; keep in your place, according to the light which you have got back to. In your own measure call good good and evil evil. This you have only learnt really to do through Christianity. Let us see how lively you will be as to this under its influence, and we will applaud it. And do not speak to us, at least by the mouth of those who tell us 'they stand balancing terror against mutual shame.' The eye, though capable of seeing, wants light; but do not fancy because you are the mind's moral eye, that you are therefore God, to know how in His workings and ways He ought to behave. Why did you not judge what man had to do when he was under your care? What did you make of him? Let history tell. If God has graciously used miracles, not against conscience, but to arouse it, and help man against influences tending to incredulity, and to shew that there was a power in God above the evil to which you, conscience, had succumbed, do not you complain or set up to judge God for a deliverance which, without this, you never did effect. Do not say it could be done without it. You can tell that, you say. Why did you not then do it in the four thousand years -- twenty thousand if you please -- which had elapsed? Your pretended competency to judge of means, and reliance on your own power in behalf of man, is an historically proved falsehood. You let him sink into the grossest superstition and corruptions. The Christianity you are calling in question delivered him somehow or another; that is a fact (deep as, spite of conscience and reason and all, he is fallen again in corrupt Christianity and rationalism): you never could."

I do not talk of "kindred reason and conscience." I admit both, and revelation speaks to both; but I say that it is an historical fact that with them man fell from the light he had into the pit of degradation. Christianity delivered him, and set reason and conscience in the light, and on their right ground; and nothing else did. I am talking of history. I trust my reason for things of reason, as far as it is reasonable; that is, as to what is subjected to it. I have to act according to my conscience when this is in the light; indeed it is honester to do so when imperfectly enlightened; but trust to man's pretended competency to judge of revelation by them and of what a religion ought to be, I cannot, because with them man has received everything as true that is false, base, and wicked to be God, and that is corrupt and abominable to be a duty, until God in power came in to deliver, and has rejected what was excellent and holy. I have got my senses, now I am in the light, to see that with my senses I fell into the ditch when I had not the light, and that all the eyes in the world could not make a ray of light, though now I have the light I know it is light. And I have no inclination, now I have it, to put it out, or to say that eyes without it were competent to see, kindred to light; and widen the sense of light, to make it comprehend men walking, and walking in darkness, and their feeling their way, an almost equivalent to having the light -- a deepening of the idea of what light is.

W. I feel that your estimate is just. I must get rid of history and facts, as well as every moral sentiment of my nature, to receive the theories of these men. Yet they use the name of Christ, while setting conscience above revelation.

H. Of their speaking of Christ anon; but conscience being above revelation is nonsense upon the face of it. A man may deny revelation; this I understand. I reject his thought as a horror, a moral impossibility, that man should be so left; but it is not nonsense. But if there be a revelation really, that is God. Conscience is man; and a conscience above revelation is man above God.

W. But must not I judge of a revelation?

H. It is not the common way of receiving it, because it acts with divine light on the conscience. I cannot say the eye judges light: light makes the eye see. A revelation, being holy, convicts of sin, and so proves itself. But when we have to judge of a revelation, if it be one, I am judged by my judgment. If I judge a beautiful picture to be a bad one, and that the painters ought to have distributed the lights so and so, what is judged when one knows what really is beautiful? Why I am. Our judgment proves what we are. There is no escaping that unless finally man is to judge God, not God man. Oh, what a judgment it would be! Yet that is really the question, and in truth we have seen it brought to a trial and issue in Christ. Golgotha can tell that tale. Our reception or non-reception of the truth is our judgment, and so the New Testament declares. Both analogy and history give us to understand this important principle, wholly overlooked by these unbelieving reasoners, that for the use of a faculty, power outside itself may be needed; so that when the power is not there, the faculty is useless. When it is there, it acts rightly and freely; but its action is wholly dependent on a power independent of it. It exists without the power, but cannot act without it. Conscience is a faculty of the soul, as the power of seeing is of the eye; but conscience without revelation, without light from God, has never judged rightly. Man with this faculty has received all the devilish horrors and corruption it is possible to imagine; he walks in darkness and knows not at what he stumbles. But light is independent of the eye, and the eye judges not light, but everything by the light Conscience judges, not revelation, but by revelation, or perfect divine light, that is, Christ Himself. God is light, and Christ is that light in the world. If men have had it elsewhere, let them say where.

W. It is clear. After all, it is only saying there is a God, and that as such He must be above man's judgment and the power of it. It is all confusion to speak of revelation being contrary to conscience, or having reason and conscience for its kindred. God, and God revealing Himself, has His place; and if God does not reveal Himself, we are godless creatures -- not without a sense that there is a God, but ignorant of what He is; in the deplorable condition of knowing there is a God, and not knowing Him; with conscience enough to know we are in evil, but ignorant how to get out of it. History, the complaints of a Socrates, the puny efforts of others, shew and tell -- the world by wisdom knew not God.

H. Surely, surely; and the sense of excellency gives the sense of wretchedness; of excellency (blessed be His name!) -- in God; of wretchedness in man; but then of infinite love towards us. If the world by wisdom knew not God, it did not know love; if it did, where is the knowledge to be found? I defy Dr. Williams, conscience and reason and all, to tell me. If God does reveal Himself, He reveals Himself as God. Man is not a judge of the way. He has received every kind of lie as God, then laughed at it in the end, in the mockery of despair, without finding out it was his wretched self he was laughing at. But this revelation does not exclude but awakens conscience, makes it for the first time see good, which it in this light can recognize. For God, who is light, is goodness or love manifested in the midst of men. Conscience is not the instrumentality of revelation, as they say. Such a statement is nonsense.

A revelation is God's making something known which was not otherwise apprehended, perhaps could not have been. Conscience is no instrumentality in revealing. It is a positive essential faculty in man, knowing or discerning good and evil: but that is not an instrument of revelation. It is a proper independent faculty, which the believer knows to have been acquired in the fall. But it must have its object before it, to say it is good or evil; that is, it has nothing to do with revealing. Its object must be there and then; when not perverted, it says, if good be before it, That is good; if evil, That is evil. Reason discerns cause and effect, and as reasoning draws consequences; in moral things it runs closely into conscience. But it is never an instrument of revelation, unless in the sense that the Holy Spirit uses a man as an instrument in revealing, but in itself never is. It must have its object to reason about. Revelation gives objects otherwise unknown, or fresh truth about known objects, or it is not a revelation. This neither conscience nor reason do in their very nature. I may figuratively say, It really was a revelation: that is, the perception of reason was so quick, that it was, in comparison with other minds, like one. But this only proves the difference I have stated.

In a word, conscience and reason must have objects to judge of. A revelation communicates objects which men have not. There is no contrast with revelation; they are no parts of its instrumentality. Reason and conscience have their own proper power in their place, needing, in order to act in divine things, a light wholly independent of them, that is, a revelation. In their place they are like every other faculty, and, as the most important ones, blessed. As I have said, when conscience has got light, it can say, Jupiter and Saturn cannot be gods; and reason can say, when it has got the idea of God, there cannot be two. Reason can never say, "is," or "is not," but "must," and "cannot." Ideas, and not facts, are its sphere. Revelation says "is" -- another most important difference. I believe the idea of God is, in spite of Locke, at the bottom of every heart -- corrupted and dimmed, but in every heart; and so, of course, are conscience and reason, though blind and corrupted, till light comes, and through passions, interests, and Satanic power, losing the light and being blinded when men have had it. They did not discern to retain God in their knowledge.

I have been, I am conscious, long in my lucubrations on this subject, but hope I have not lost your attention. Those who have followed the phases of the new school, and particularly abroad in its French forms (for it uses, but is not the old rationalism), know that their battle-horse is this point of conscience. All their statements are, however, error and confusion, and, like everything they say, as superficial as it is pretentious.

W. I have listened diligently to what you have been saying. It has not, of course, the interest which unfolding the range of scripture, or touching on its main beauties, has; but I see plainly the need of getting clear hold of the true place of conscience and reason, insisted on as they are by them; and it has deep interest as general truth. Happily history is there to refute man's pretensions, and the proof it gives of the need of light -- that is, of revelation -- to give conscience its power is all important. Whatever the cause (I do not doubt the fall, and Satan's power, man's utter alienation from God, is -- but whatever the cause is), the fact is so. By the Christian revelation, partially by the Jewish one, man had light to judge the absurdities and corruptions of paganism; without that, in point of fact, he never did. Conscience, one may see, existed, but was religiously incompetent -- incompetent to judge of a revelation, that is, of its truth or falsehood. I might question whether Dr. Williams's conscience and reason be much better or sounder in his judgment of the matter. I doubt it very much; but that we may leave. I refer to his attempted justification of heathenism in presence of Christianity, and, while favouring those horrible corruptions, questioning the divine character of both Christianity and its testimony. It seems to me as perverted as the heathenism it defends.

H. In a certain aspect, I judge more so, as it comes after the light. But we will turn to another part of the subject -- some of the scientific researches by which they call in question scripture accounts. It is easy to speak of chronology, of which Dr. Williams remarks, "Dr. Bunsen says with quaint strength, 'there is no chronological element in revelation.'" I see neither quaintness nor strength in the remark. I do see sophism and ignorance of the scope and nature of scripture; because it is impossible to separate chronology and history, and the enquiry into chronology is here with a view to history. Now the moral history of mankind is a large feature in revelation -- one of deep import; and the researches or rather suppositions of Dr. Bunsen, in which Dr. Williams revels, are calling in question the chronology in order to set aside the history. Whether Adam lived one hundred and thirty years (as the Hebrew Bible says) and begat a son, or two hundred and thirty years (as the Septuagint), is in itself of little moment. It shoves on dates one hundred years, but that is all. Quite right to find the truth, if we can; but if it be sought to disturb the history -- if (this Dr. Bunsen has too much sense to believe) Adam be not the head of the race, if even Noah be not, and other races escaped the flood, we lose the judgment of the world; the scripture history, in its deepest moral elements, is trenched on; the perishing of a world is only a national fable belonging to a race, drawn from some local phenomenon. And a flippant remark that chronology is not an element of revelation is impertinent or dishonest. But I confess I fear somewhat to enter on scientific questions, having really no pretension to be a learned man. My only encouragement is that experience has so taught me the superficial and flippant character of neology, and particularly of English neologists, that I have been emboldened -- using books current on the subjects referred to, and the little knowledge I have -- to examine the statements that are made, and see how far they are to be relied on. The result for me has been that there is a mass of charlatanism. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." I have only a little; but in their waters I venture to wade.

I would first draw your attention to the kind of statements and reasonings: "He could not have vindicated the unity of mankind if he had not asked for a vast extension of time, whether his petition of twenty thousand years be granted or not." Is this serious? "Do we see the historical area of nations and languages extending itself over nearly ten thousand years, and can we imagine less than another ten thousand years during which the possibilities of these things took body and form?" Chronology imagined at this rate ceases to be a dry study, no doubt; but a serious one it can hardly be called.

"Questions of this kind require from most of us a special training for each; but Baron Bunsen revels in them, and his theories are at least suggestive." Will the reader believe that such crudities are brought to make out history, and the revelling of Baron Bunsen in suggestive theories is to settle chronology and overthrow scripture? Why? Because it is scripture. As an ancient document there is nothing to be compared with it. Again: "The Semitic languages, which had as distinct an individuality four thousand years ago as they have now, require a cradle of larger dimensions than Archbishop Usher's chronology. What further effort is not forced upon our imagination if we would guess the measure of the dim background in which the Mongolian and Egyptian languages, older probably than the Hebrew, became fixed, growing early into the type which they retained!" "Efforts forced on the imagination" (hardly forced when a man revels in it) to guess the measure of the dim background of "languages, older probably than the Hebrew!" You have in this, my dear W., a very fair picture of Baron Bunsen and his suggestive theories. In point of fact, the only probable evidence we have is that these languages were contemporaneous; but the evidence is late; as to writing, the most ancient known in the East received it from Semitic language. Burnouf has proved this in his enquiry into the cuneiform inscriptions of Hamardan. But the date of Mongol is dim enough, no doubt.

But let us leave this. His excessive carelessness you may judge from other instances I lit on in Stuart Poole, in Smith's Dictionary, the other day. Bunsen ridicules Baumgarten for making fifty-six pairs out of seventy souls. He had never looked at the chapter, where it is evident that sixty-seven of the seventy were men. It would seem that he has taken Shaul the Levite for Saul the king in 1 Chronicles 6: 22, ff. But this is so gross, he may (in copying Lepsius, whom he greatly follows) have not seen that it was only a synchronism. I have not Lepsius here. At any rate it is the greatest carelessness. Bunsen set aside, to start with, the divinely-given history. Chronology was not an element of revelation. At any rate, that was the glory of liberal christian views. And then he revels in suggestive theories. Man has it all to himself. I will examine some; but I thought it well to notice Dr. Williams's own account of Baron Bunsen's procedure.

Dr. Williams asks, How many years are needed to develop modern French out of Latin? -- say nine hundred, that is, from six hundred to Francis I. Well, what then? How many, the divergence of the members of the Indo-European family? Probably, very various; some very early, some much later. The dispersion of the Aryan race is beyond history; and they seem to have had already dialects. The only supposed date is within Septuagint chronology. The Vedas do not go more than to about fourteen hundred years before Christ, leaving one thousand years within even Hebrew chronology to the flood. Circumstances influence the growth of dialects immensely. A tribe moves from a mountain to a plain, or to another climate; the names caused by local circumstances disappear -- plants, cattle, terms connected with culture and the like, all change. When long remaining in one place, a language changes; but it is easily seen it is in its forms by civilization. When tribes are entirely separate, with little intercourse, they become distinct languages very rapidly, though grammatical forms are analogous, or the style, as in North America. When a language is widely diffused, and there is much communication, it remains one, and is only developed according to a pretty constant rule, generally of abbreviation of forms. But if nine hundred or a thousand years sufficed to change or form a new language, that time can well be allowed to the history of the Sanskritian or Zend -- not more than there is room for in scriptural chronology. Take notice, too, that all this reasoning sets out with treating the history of the tower of Babel as a fable. It is not a nicety of interpretation, but a total rejection of the whole theory.

But I should think, while confessing that I am no comparative philologist, that Dr. Williams can know little or nothing about the matter. He says (and all the world is always to understand that the new theology brings from its stores well-authenticated results, mentioned as if every tolerably well-read man should be aware of it): "When again we have traced our Gaelic and our Sanskrit to their inferential pre-Hellenic stem," etc. Now I apprehend this sentence betrays total ignorance of the whole subject. Hellenism or Greek, as well as Latin, is a comparatively modern daughter of Sanskrit itself; Zend, as its twin sister, has its mixed or corrupted mediaeval derivation in Pehlvi, and its direct one in modern Persian and the Teutonic languages. Sanskrit is not traced to a pre-Hellenic stem. It is the root or stem of Hellenistic and Latin language, Zend and Sanskrit are very closely allied dialects of what is often now called Aryan -- Zend north of the Himalayas, Sanskrit south. The classical Sanskrit of the Vedas is still more closely allied to Zend than the common Sanskrit. Zend is hard in pronunciation, Sanskrit soft. Gaelic or Irish is held by some able philologists to be the closest existing representative of Sanskrit in the West, with the richest vocabulary of words. Others cite the Lithuanian as having the closest resemblance. This is from the use of soft instead of hard sounds in both, which characterizes Sanskrit, as contrasted with Zend. But Irish is pronounced hard and gutturally. Lithuanian German is very soft; but, as is well known, southern German differs from northern in the hardness of its guttural pronunciation. The aspirates and ellipses in Erse arise from the utterance stopping half-way between the preceding and following sound. If you examine bata (battha), mo wata, ar mbata, you will find the change -- that w is half-way between o and b, and in between r and b. It is an imperfect, undefined utterance.

To return to our dates. The most careful research into monuments compared with Berosus (whose chronology the monuments constantly confirm, and other chronological elements and dates) gives about two thousand two hundred and thirty-four years before Christ for the foundation of the first Chaldean kingdom. The common biblical chronology gives for the flood two thousand three hundred and forty-eight. It is alleged by German critics following Berosus (I say German, as freed from scripture authority), that there was a Median dynasty of eight kings, and this is conjecturally carried to 2458 B.C., one hundred and ten years before the ordinary Hebrew date of the flood. According to the Septuagint chronology, the flood was 3155 B.C., leaving six hundred and ninety-seven years between the flood and the first kingdom known to Berosus in Chaldea.

This Median kingdom I should not be disposed to reject, though its duration and character be conjectural and uncertain. Because the Chaldean or Babylonish, as we know, was the seat and centre of idolatry, invented and established as a system. Previous to and concurrent with this was another and less outwardly gross idolatry -- the worship of fire, and so far the sun and stars -- Sabaeism contrasted with Ionism. This did not reject star (or at any rate planet) worship, but connected it with making gods of men, of their ancestors -- and first of Noah and his sons. Now this Median kingdom would be the prevalence of Sabaeism, the first Chaldean (simply the kings of Babel from Nimrod) setting up systematic idolatry. All tradition points to such a change in these days. Epiphanius -- no great authority, it is true, but a witness of tradition in this respect -- says it took place in the days of Serug, Abraham's great grandfather. That idolatry had then come in, we learn from Joshua 24. It was the occasion of calling out Abraham to be the stock of a separate people that the knowledge of the true God might not be wholly lost; so that probably it was then quite established and prevalent, yet not very long established. The uniformity of its fundamental elements in India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, shews a regularly invented system connected with the deluge and Noah, and the prevalent principle in all countries connected with it of the setting up their first ancestors as the gods of their country, gives its fixed principle -- this, with their identification with some planet.

Thus we have 2234 B.C. for the first Chaldean monarchy; 2348 B.C. according to the Hebrew chronology, the date of the flood; 3155 B.C. according to the Septuagint, when our review says 2234 for the first Median conquest of Babylon. It is very certainly an error of Bunsen's, or a blunder of Dr. Williams's. It is the date of the first Chaldean kingdom, which overthrew the Median -- Berosus calls it Chaldean, at any rate; and the monuments, if not using the word Chaldean (which does not occur till the Assyrian inscriptions in the ninth century before Christ), confirm the fact of a series of kings reigning in the countries whence Abraham came called by Berosus Chaldean, or by scripture Ur of the Chaldees.

Now learned men may discuss these dates. We have no objection, but we have data, not suggestive theories. Research into Egyptian chronology and history leads to the conclusion that the suggestive theories of Baron Bunsen fall before the facts. The attempt of Lepsius to set up the long period which Manetho's lists would make out, and on which Baron Bunsen greatly builds, has no foundation to rest upon. The whole is utterly superficial. Not only does Manetho speak of contemporary princes, but the stelae and tablet monuments give unequivocal proofs of the co-existence of kings of different dynasties, sometimes subordinate one to another. I need not enter now into the details with you. But the names are brought together of two and even of several dynasties on the same monument, so that the chronology founded on their being in succession one to another is a delusion from beginning to end. But, leaving all reference to scripture chronology out, the commencement of Egyptian history has been estimated at some two thousand six hundred and fifty years before Christ.

Now no one, I suppose, pretends to give these dates accurately; but the coincidence of the Asiatic and African empires gives a general probability; while Baron Bunsen's is founded on want of research, on speculations from the boastful and legendary lists of Manetho, and the desire to make the time long, and chronology no element of revelation. He has neglected the evidently important evidence furnished by the monuments (some, perhaps, ascertained indeed since his time), of the co-existence of dynasties, and of very many too -- perhaps eight at a time. Moreover, his whole theory as to old and middle and new empires falls to the ground wholly, save so far as the fact of the presence of Hyksos kings goes, and with these other dynasties subsisted nearly all the time. His whole Egyptian system is, as Dr. Williams has described it, revelling in suggestive theories. The speculative result of elaborate enquiry into the great Aryan or Iapetic emigration supposes it was three thousand years before Christ, and this is avowedly mere theory. This you will find in Pictet's book.

I have thus taken up the historical part, and, I think, shewn that all is theory. But I would still draw your attention for a moment to the kind of reasoning. Even Dr. Williams, however gluttoning in the helps to incredulity, is obliged to demur, and finds puzzling circumstances in the strained etymologies which are made its foundation; but adds a justification of Bunsen, which reaches far beyond all my conceptions of the possibilities of logic: "That our author would not shrink from noticing this, is shewn," that is, noticing how he strained etymologies to make the two antediluvian genealogies legendary, "by the firmness with which he relegates the long lives of the first patriarchs to the domain of legend." Is not that a proof? It is this. His arbitrary boldness in making a legend of scripture statement shews that he will judge his own arbitrariness in making legends of genealogies by strained etymologies! At any rate, Dr. Williams admires him -- revels in the Baron's firmness.

W. But it is difficult to consider all this to be serious. I am glad you spoke of the Assyrian and Egyptian history; but the style of Bunsen's and Dr. Williams's reasoning seems to me trifling almost, hardly worth notice.

H. It would not be, if it were not an attack against scripture; but, though it be wearisome, it is well to shew the stuff these neological reasonings are made of. Bear with me yet a little, while I quote a passage or two. "The idea of bringing Abraham into Egypt as early as 2876 is one of our author's most doubtful points, and may seem hardly tenable." (According to monuments, it was before Menes, when the gods or heroes were reigning.) But why is this date? Some proof, perhaps, is given. Here it is: -- "He wanted time for the growth of Jacob's family into a people of two millions" -- (a question discussed on the shortest supposed period by Fynes Clinton, and others). However, Baron Bunsen wanted time for it, and he felt bound to place Joseph under a native Pharaoh -- therefore before the shepherd kings. He also contends that Abraham's horizon is antecedent to the first Median conquest of Babylon, in 2234 B.C. (We have spoken of this point: as far as I can gather, there is no proof or sign of such an event.) So the stay of the Israelites in Egypt is extended to fourteen centuries (it is well he let them go there at all); the 215 years is the time of oppression. Baron Bunsen's history puts me in mind of Vertot's account of a siege -- I forget of what town. He had written to have an accurate account of it from one present, but when it came, he said he was very sorry, but he had written his siege. Then Bunsen takes Manetho's wild account of the lepers and Avaris, quoted in Josephus, as confirming the exodus under Menephthah -- (the date is very possible: Wilkinson, after the Duke of Northumberland, is disposed to accept it -- I think Osborne too); but then says, you must accept the whole history, if you do the confirmation. That is very critical. In this case, no sober person does. And hence it was an invasion by the Jews; and the high hand with which Jehovah led His people, the spoiling of the Egyptians, and the lingering in the peninsula (!), are to be taken as signs, even in the Bible, of a struggle conducted by human means. Can absurdity go farther? What do you think the avenger who slew the first-born was?

W. Well, what?

H. "It may have been the Bedouin host, akin nearly to Jethro, and, more remotely, to Israel."

W. But, my dear H., enough of these excessive puerilities. Surely we need not go farther, or waste our time with the foolish and unbridled licence of an imagination which leads to no result. It is refreshing to turn to the gravity and simplicity of scripture accounts. The moral truths so richly encased in its simple tale are enough for a mind rightly tuned to see its divine character. It is well, perhaps, to see the contrast, and how God allows a most amiable, learned, and attractive mind to run into absurdity and senseless suppositions, when it lends itself to speculations which baser minds seek to profit by against all truth.

H. I have done. But it was well that the true character of these speculations should appear. We will turn to other points.

W. But I should like to ask you a question. How comes it that Dr. Williams recognizes the untenableness, as in this last case, of the statements and the straining of etymology for proofs, and yet delights in bringing forward the conclusions, and presses with satisfaction the results?

H. Allow me to reply by asking a question too. Do you believe that on any subject but one he would admit the premises to be false, and delight in the conclusions?

W. Well, I suppose not. No one would. Where the will is not engaged, no man pleads that premises are false, and conclusions excellent.

H. You have answered yourself. See what is said: "It is easier to throw doubt on some of the arguments than to shew that the conclusion ... is improbable." He is speaking of Bunsen's requiring twenty thousand years.

The truth is, the idea of human excellency and their own superior powers of criticism has led them to reject scripture a priori, because it sets down man as wicked and lost; and then to loosen by speculative suppositions the bands of all proof whatever. Bunsen, building on an excessively uncritical unphilosophical estimate of Egyptian periods -- speculations which have neglected all careful research into the facts -- has concluded that the emigration into Egypt was ante-Noahic, the flood only partial, and scripture not worth a straw, save as bright and eminent individuals gave an impulse suited to their day. His writings are a kind of skating over the surface of facts. I will give you here a specimen of scriptural interpretation to shew how far solidity of judgment can be looked for in Bunsen's writings: -- "In the event of Pentecost, not only the first legislation of mankind, founded on the permanent law of the conscience, became a reality, but the whole distinguishing character of the eighteen centuries, which separate us from that event, was typified and foreshadowed." All well, save that the Holy Ghost is not alluded to, only permanent conscience. I will refer to this farther on.

But now: "In what did that miracle consist? One hundred and twenty persons -- not only Galileans, as they were naturally supposed to be, but believers from various parts -- assembled together on that festive day, expecting the end of the world. Suddenly, during a violent storm of wind, accompanied by lightning, the persons so assembled felt moved apparently to praise God, not in the formularies of their sacred language, but in the profane sounds of their heathenish mother tongues, of which the Greek was foremost, as the Spirit gave them utterance." "What more portentous or deeply significant sign could there be that religion was henceforth to cease to be an external or sacerdotal and ceremonial worship? At this moment, and with that sound, the true temple of God was opened. This was in reality the temple which Christ had said He could raise on the ruins of the old." "The speakers themselves were overpowered by the sudden wind and scintillating flashes of the electric fluid (verse 3)" -- the verse is, "And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them" -- "while those who gathered round and listened to them were no less awe-struck by hearing the praises of God and wonderful things uttered in their own tongues, which they little expected to hear from Galileans. (verse 4-8.) The speakers at first made convulsive sounds, but soon recovered their equilibrium [I feel it hard to preserve one's own]; not like those who, in the time of St. Paul, after having lost, in the midst of the divine service, the power of articulation (that is, speaking with a tongue, note), were unable to express their emotion otherwise than by sounds of the brute creation, extorted by their overpowering sensations. Nor, according to St. Luke's account, were the pious hearers overcome to such an extent as some later learned interpreters appear to have been. They did not regard the screams which had been uttered at the first moment, but listened to what they heard spoken in their own tongue. If this be a rationalistic explanation, it is that of St. Peter. [!]. Where does that apostle state that he and his friends received the power of speaking languages not their own, or that the utterance of convulsive sounds was a proof of Jesus of Nazareth being the Christ, and of the Spirit of God having come down upon the believers in the Galilean?"

W. It is inconceivable; one's only comfort is that its folly proves honesty.

H. I agree with you. I believe there was a love of good, and that from God, in this amiable man. Are you aware that he declared, on his death-bed, that Christ was all, and that only was life all else nothing?

W. It is a sweet and joyful thought to know it. How wonderful, and wonderfully above man, is the grace of God!

H. It is, and sweet to turn to, and dwell on.

W. But how is it possible that one can be blinded to such a point?

H. It is hard to tell. That man should say, "I do not believe the account," is intelligible enough. But to take it and make this out of it is hard to understand. I account for it by the divine instinct which cannot bear to give up the words of eternal life, and the vanity which would go on with the supposed progress of science. All is the contradiction of the scripture statement. There was no wind, but a sound like one. The scintillating electricity of the storm resting on their heads would be rather awkward. There are no convulsive sounds, no screams; they are all Galileans, contrasted with devout men from every nation under heaven. Peter had no need to say they spake with tongues, because it was heard by all, and is stated by the historian. He does, both here and in his defence as to going to Cornelius, refer to it as the proof of Christ's glory and the seal of faith; and tells them if they repented and were baptized they would receive it too. Each particular is exactly contrary to the history, and the wind and electricity contemptible. Think of Paul saying they were not to speak with a tongue except there was an interpreter, when they were the sounds of the brute creation -- he spake with tongues more than they all -- I suppose of different brutes! But the explanation of Baron Bunsen is important here as regards the system of the school. "With true prophetic spirit St. Peter applied to this event what had been foretold of the Spirit of God, which was to come in the last days, and to be recognized by the outpouring of intelligence and wisdom over the unlearned men and women even of the lowest classes." Now this is not true. He speaks of visions and dreams, not of wisdom and intelligence. But further: "No, he tells them a story as simple as it is true; the great event of his days, and of all days -- the glorification of God through Christ, not as an external fact, but as a divine principle of life in mankind."

Now how striking it is that an upright mind, for such I doubt not was Baron Bunsen's, under the influence of this deceit of Satan, can misrepresent a statement, or rather, just as the Baron does in Egyptian history, give what he thinks ought to be here instead of what is! There is not one word of the glorification of God through Christ, but of God's glorifying Christ, whereupon the Holy Ghost was shed forth. He speaks of the power of God raising up from the dead and setting Christ, as man, at His right hand, and that He, having received the Holy Ghost from the Father, had sent, not a storm and electricity to rest on the disciples' heads, but the Holy Ghost. Nor does he even say one word of a principle of divine life in mankind. Christianity is that; but here there is not a word of it. The Baron adds, "On that day, accordingly, not only the christian Church was born, but also the christian state." I only add this to shew how all is the theory of his mind without reference to fact. Where is "the christian state" on Pentecost?

I need not say I do not quote this to refute it -- it would not deserve it; but to shew the character and spirit and materials of which the new school is made up God's exalting Christ -- overstepping the narrow bounds of Judaism to visit all nations in grace -- the blessed truth of another Comforter whom Christ had promised, is not seen for a moment. An invented storm, an electricity which would have left very few Galileans there -- what folly replaces it?

W. Refuting it would indeed be absurd; but it is a singular phenomenon, such an entire aberration of mind.

H. It is a state, and the proof of the folly, of man's mind, when, as such, it pretends to judge of God's acts. But I have a quotation from another part of Baron Bunsen's works which distinctly shews his notion -- the school's notion -- of revelation, and with this view I quote it: -- "Such a direct communication of the divine mind as is called revelation has necessarily two factors, which are co-operating in producing it. The one is the infinite factor, or the direct manifestation of eternal truth to the mind, by the power which that mind has of perceiving it; for human perception is the correlative of divine manifestation." "This infinite factor is, of course, not historical; it is inherent in every individual soul, but with an immense difference of degree."

"The second factor of revelation is the finite, or external. This mode of divine manifestation is, in the first place, a universal one -- the universe is nature. In a more special sense, it is an historical manifestation of divine truth through the life and teaching of higher minds among men. These men of God are eminent individuals, who communicate something of eternal truth to their brethren." "The difference between Jesus and the other men of God is analogous to that between the manifestation of a part and the totality and substance of the divine mind." I cannot follow the wild idealism of Bunsen in all its details. I may give as an example of it his interpretation of "Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation." He translates, he says, from Semitic into Japetic language; so he speaks thus: "The history of mankind will prove to be the judgment of God. Nations will perish by this judgment, and new nations will arise, and the truth and justice of God will become manifest as well by the destruction of empires as by the awakening of new national life." This is not exceptional. The Son having life in Himself, as the Father in Himself, and authority to execute judgment, means -- "This new period of mankind is now beginning; individuals of all nations will be awakened by divine consciousness [nota bene], and in process of time this divine principle in man will become the principle of all social relations, governments, and states."

Now how entirely opposite this is to Christianity I need not say, which speaks of man as lost, of redemption, of a new divine life given. But I only introduce it now as shewing the excess of spiritual idealism which makes all Baron Bunsen's views and statements a will-o'-the-wisp. The only thing I know like it, and from which much (at any rate in the form and habit of mind) seems to be drawn, is Philo. Of course to Bunsen it came philosophically through Hegel -- perhaps Schelling; but Philo is so extraordinarily like, because he connected Judaism and a like system, as Bunsen does Christianity with Hegelianism. I shall recur to this. My present point is the revelation of Christ. I believe christian instinct gave Bunsen a sense of what Christ was, which pierces through -- so great is God's grace. But I will give his ideas of Christ to complete the picture, and then turn to his ideas of revelation. I say "idea," for Bunsen is an honest man, and gives it; but we must never trust words in these men's mouths, because they all use common christian terms, but they mean with them totally different things.

W. That I see plainly enough. I am getting gradually hold of the system. We must have the key to the cipher. When once, however, one sees this, it produces a just distrust of all they say. They cover themselves with the mantle of Christianity to pierce it under the fifth rib. They are very Joabs in their character. They speak peaceably to Abner in the king's gate, but one has to learn to be aware that they have a hidden sword. However the fraud is tolerably apparent. God ever takes care of His people.

H. In a very angry correspondence in France, which I have seen published as a pamphlet since our first conversation, it is seriously proposed that they should openly say what they mean and think on the great truths of Christianity, that the mass of professing Christians may know what they really hold. They speak of Christ, His gracious life and the like, and unsuspecting persons assume commonly-received truths as at the basis; but the select few are initiated, and propagate doubts and unbelief; and the work is actively carried on. Such at least is the distinct statement in these papers; and one sees the shrinking from open dealing, or meeting it clearly, in the replies. At any rate, the first part is true, for that I have met with -- the speaking of Christ as if all were right, while not one word of commonly held christian truth was believed, yet the same terms largely employed. This is the case with Bunsen: only he honestly states what he thinks. Thus he speaks of judgment. But what does this mean? "The conscience of man, now represented by Jesus of Nazareth, will be the judge of man -- first, as to individual conduct, and in process of time, through faith in His Spirit, as to national affairs." What becomes of the judgment of quick and dead now? Christianity is gone for a reverie.

Again, he speaks of Christ's unity with the Father. He is identified and one with God. That sounds well enough. But what is it? "The willing self-sacrifice of Jesus is the cause of His unity with the Father." It is a mere moral idea. The truth is gone, and see how it works. He adds (Christ speaks), "What I say of myself, that I am one with God, is true of all men."

Having shewn the genius and character of all this teaching, I will now, before applying it to revelation, quote to you his interpretation of the apostle's (John's) teaching concerning Christ; --

"Before the visible universe existed, there was in God the conscious thought of Himself, as active reason. This thought was identical with God, the substance of the universe; it was God thinking Himself, making Himself objective to Himself." (As the Neoplatonists say, the intelligent no longer as existence, but in activity becoming the intelligible. For this is mere Neoplatonism, and, indeed, so does Bunsen explain it.) "This, then, is the divine existence of the word, as active reason;" according to Philo and the Alexandrian fathers, ejndiavqeto". "The creation of the universe is the manifestation in space and time of the same thought of God of Himself. There was nothing created which has not the principle of existence in that thought of God of Himself." These are the ideas of Plato, the nohto;n of Philo. "The universe, thus created, continues to have the principle of life in this divine self-consciousness; this principle of substantial existence is also the intellectual principle in man."

"God's eternal thought of Himself became personal in finite existence in a man conscious of his divine nature. In this man that divine word lived amongst us, and we behold in Jesus divine glory and truth. He alone, therefore, could declare to mankind the nature of God, for that primitive consciousness lived in Him constantly and perfectly."

I rejoice to think that true divinely-given faith in Christ pierces through Bunsen's idealism; I rejoice heartily in it. It is swamped in idealism, but there is not the cold calculating infidelity of the Essays and Reviews. Dr. Williams's language is, "The son of David by birth is the Son of God by the spirit of holiness" (a false citation). "What is flesh is born of flesh, what is spirit is born of spirit." This he calls the incarnation becoming purely spiritual. Having gladly owned this as to Baron Bunsen, which is my real feeling, we may pursue the research into the system. Save the last phrase I have quoted, it is merely a reproduction of Philonian (that is Alexandrian) Platonism, adapted by idealism to scripture statements.

The Logos was first ejndiavqeto" -- immanent reason in God; then proforico;" and thus the universe (not in matter, but existing in the thought of God in idea) was the lovgo". Then the lovgo" became the band and support of it when it took a form. So here with Baron Bunsen, in the wild notion that the universe, thus created, continues to have the principle of life in this divine self-consciousness. It is a living being. All this is pure Philonism. So is the notion that the "eminent" man -- "the wise man," says Philo -- has this partially in him, partakes intrinsically of the divine logo" in his reason. As in Bunsen, repeated in a passage I have not quoted: "In the progress of history, this principle (life in divine self-consciousness) manifested itself as intelligence" -- the sofo;" and ejpisthvmh of Philo. The only point where Bunsen leaves Philo, as far as I can see, is when he speaks of Christ as having the fulness of this in a finite person; but even here, with a very slight modification, Philo applies this to Moses. He could not see God Himself, but entered into the darkness and saw the original pattern of heavenly things. He is called God. "But what, did he not enjoy also a greater fellowship with the Father and Maker of all things; having been counted worthy of the same title? for he was called the God and King of the whole nation, and is said to have entered into the thick darkness where God was, that is, into the formless and invisible and incorporeal pattern essence of beings, mentally contemplating what cannot be seen by mortal nature." (De Vitâ Mosis, Mangey, 108 for 106.)

The prophets only enquire, and get answers. So the law of Moses is the perfect expression of the divine mind, and serves as such, and will be for all ages. It corresponds to the harmony of the universe, and is in unison with the reason (lovgw) of the eternal nature. (De Vitâ Mosis, Mangey, 2: 142.)

Bunsen's notion of the prophetic spirit in all eminent men is also Philo's, pavnti ajnqrwvpw ajsteivw oJ iJero;" lovgo" profhteivan martureisee footnote. But the word of prophecy has Moses for its name (Man. 1: 652.) Moses has power over all the elements of nature; each one of them obeys him. (Man. 2: 105. So Mangey, 2: 107 -- for 105.) He took the divine excellencies as preferable to worldly goods, so that God rewarded him with great and perfect riches. The reading is then said to be faulty in the text, ijsoth" (equality). It may be so, but I am not quite clear. Mangey reads, those (riches) of all the universe. But it then goes on: For having been thought worthy of being declared partaker of his own lot, [God] granted him the whole world. The elements own him Lord. "Nor is," he adds, "that wonderful; for if, as the proverb says, all things belonging to friends are common -- and the prophet is called the friend of God -- as a consequence as to usufruct, he will be partaker and companion of all His possession." What is this but Bunsen's Jesus of Nazareth's self-sacrifice -- the cause of His unity with the Father?

It is, I think, a mistake, unless I have overlooked some passage, to say that Moses is called oJ iJero;" lovgo", the sacred word, as has been alleged by Gfrorer. This applies to the scripture, but he is set in the same place really in the de migratione Abrahami. He is the dianoiva, the mind and thought of God, and Aaron His prophet to declare it. This under another name is the same thing, but it is not immanent as the lovgo", but more a gift. But then, on the other hand, the pneusee footnotema a[gion abode always with him. In most it visits and goes -- in an afflatus, but in Moses abides, touvtw me;n ousee footnotejn to Qeisee footnoteon ajei; parivstatai. (De Gigantibus, Man. 1: 269, 270.)

I will not go further. He largely insists in more than one place on his entering into the thick darkness -- so as prophet he knew all that as king, lawgiver, and priest he could not; and all completed his knowledge, he is (M. 2: 145) inspired, has breathed into him heavenly love; what he says is an oracle lovgion ejc ptoswvpon dij eJrmhneivan unmixed, not as others from enquiry and answer. (Man. 2: 163.)

W. It would be curious if Bunsen's wanderings were only a reproduction of Philo. But where are you leading my thoughts with all this?

H. Not an unnatural question. First we are examining a professed review of Bunsen, and enquiry into his real views is the best answer; and it shews the true character of the teaching sought to be introduced. Philo indeed was, while for ever allegorizing, so far soberer, that he recognizes the literal history, though, like Augustine, saying, when it is dishonouring to God's thoughts, it must be taken mystically. Still he respects the written word far more than Bunsen and our Essayists.

But I had also a more precise object. I have only, could only, in our brief intercourse bring forward points of contact, but the more Philo's views are before the mind as a whole, the more the similarity -- the identity, I may say, is apparent. Another character of the lovgo" which Philo gives will lead me to the point. The lovgo", or divine reason, is faith in us; that is, the logo", or divine immanent reason, becoming in its acting in man intelligence, the ojrqov" lovgo", or right reason in the abstract, which is divine, is, as far as it acts, right reason in man (i.e., in the wise); and the archetypal idea is in the mind of man faith; he has seized it as having, as the wise man, this right reason in himself, it being in himself so far as he is wise. That which is seized is the idea in God, but it is the idea in the man's mind, the lovgo" being his intelligence. It is a copy of the original copy, or production of the inherent mind of God. As inherent, it is unknown. As become intelligible in the lovgo", an idea, it is nohtov", capable of being a subject of thought; and the human mind, which is the action of the lovgo" in us, thinks it, has the idea, believes it as truth. Thus it is faith. This seems subtle, but it is not difficult to understand. The thinking power is not thinking. When I think, I have a thought. Thus what was simply intelligent, capable of thinking, is intelligible, becomes in the produced thought a possible subject of another's apprehension. If the same intelligence is in another as his mind, it is the spring of the same thought in him. The lovgo" as immanent reason in God is unknown, but as a whole of thoughts, when thinking has taken place, when the divine mind has had or produced thoughts, is not all known, but nohtov" knowable; and then archetypal ideas become by the lovgo" being also our reason, our ideas. Hence the lovgo" is the archetypal idea, and faith, according to Philo. Forgive me this dose of Alexandrian philosophy. You will see its application to revelation in a moment.

W. I begin to catch it already. But it denies positive revelation. It is a kind of deifying the intelligence of man, making him, in some strange way, the proper source of the same thoughts, called faith, and so, eventually, a part of God.

H. Yes. This comes from the connection of conscience and reason on moral subjects, the judging process of the mind and perception of good and evil. Thus, where the will, or that in which we take pleasure, coincides with the conscience -- the judgment of good and evil, there is moral perfection. God is realized; or, as Bunsen says, man is God.

W. But then, if I understand this, it is a direct denial of all revelation. It is a partial possession of the divine nature, which may be morally complete, in virtue of which man has in himself the thoughts of God, and that naturally, which equally denies what is revealed -- the sinful alienation of man from God. Scripture says, "All the imagination of the thoughts of his heart were only evil, and that continually;" and the deep practical experience of one who understood the spirituality of God's law could say, "I know that in me -- that is, in my flesh -- dwelleth no good thing;" and that, even when to will was present with him, how to perform that which was good he found not.

H. Precisely. It is a denial of revelation, and a denial of the truth as to man; and, in revelation, a dropping -- I will not say denial -- of every divine object.

W. But I have a difficulty here, because Philo surely recognized a divine revelation.

H. Your remark is quite in place; but it leads to the confirmation and clearing up of the real truth on this question -- "What is revelation?" From his education and habits as a Jew he distinctly recognized the inspiration of the Old Testament -- particularly of Moses' writings, but of all; and inspiration in the fullest sense, the operation of the Holy or prophetic Spirit; so that man was wholly shut out. He was far more a believer in his theory on this subject -- very far -- than Bunsen or the rationalists, even the most moderate of them. But two things are to be observed: first, he philosophized independently of the scriptures, though he sought to bring them in as confirmatory, and allegorized them even where he owned them to be historical. Abraham meant one idea, Israel another, Jacob another. He often admitted only ideas -- no literal history at all. He was the most outrageous spiritualizer, but reducing all to man as he is looked at as virtuous. Hence evident inconsistencies. But, what is more material, there was no divine object in revelation for him. God remained necessarily unknown in Himself. The revelation he had was of ideas. The lovgo" -- the universal idea of all -- the universe; the bringing this idea into finite man's mind, a little world of answering ideas, formed a microcosm as the philosophers called it. Man was, when virtuous, when partaker of qeiwsee footnoten ajretwsee footnoten (divine virtues), an ajsteisee footnoteo" ajnh;r (Bunsen's "eminent" men), a possessor, as we have seen, of the ojrqo;" lovgo", which, in its infinitude, was a kind of middle being between God and creatures (the evident origin of Arianism, and the early philosophical Christianity of Alexandria). The law for him was the expression of this perfect or right reason, and was to be perpetual and universal. But there were thus only great principles and ideas to be made good -- there was no divine object at all. God was inaccessible. The lovgo" comes out as a universal archetypal idea, realized finitely in creation, but not as a personal object of faith, though sometimes treated almost as a person, because acting in power; and this lovgo" was man's intelligence. Messiah is only referred to as a conqueror to come, subduing the Gentiles, and making good Jewish hopes; beasts to be tamed -- men too; sickness to depart; the Jews to be a kind of world priests. There is no proper revealed divine object of faith. The soul is an ajpovspasma, a shred, an ajpauvgasma, a shining forth, a ray, an ejcmageisee footnoteon ejmfere;" corresponding impress of God. It existed before, came into a body, and so was lowered and dualized (and this circumscription of our spirits in the limits of flesh and time, practical selfishness, Bunsen reckons the fall); and when it dies, goes back to heaven, restored to unity. There is a reproduction of the word in the soul, but no revealed object before it. This part of man is reason and conscience.

Now you will find that this makes the ground taken by the new school most distinct. They claim the title of reason and conscience to judge of all, that is, of the finite lovgo", so to speak, in man -- the moral perceptive power in man to judge of everything. By what? By itself. Man, as he is, is the measure of right and wrong and good and evil. Now, if the Word has been made flesh -- God revealed in man, this cannot be. He is the true and perfect measure, and His words, expressing what He is, will judge men -- not now, unless inwardly, but when the time of gracious revelation is over, the same will judge him in the last day. Now this is Christianity in its great elementary truths. It declares man has failed and is evil, though he had a conscience. God had taken care that when he left God and sinned, and sought independence (i.e., sin as to will, as corruption is sin as to lust), he should carry a conscience, a knowledge of good and evil with him. He has sinned without a law, and wallowed in corruption; he has sinned under law, which forbade the corruption and denied the independence, claiming obedience, and therein righteousness. Nay, he has sinned in rejecting goodness itself when it came into the world after all this. Now, wrath is revealed from heaven against both ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. But withal God's righteousness is revealed, not on a principle of works -- man was judged and condemned on that principle -- but as God's righteousness by faith, and so to every one, without law or under law, who believed. But how? In a divine object presented -- God Himself manifested in grace, as man dying to put away sin, that blessing might be in righteousness, and no allowance of evil, and a new divine life communicated. In a word, God is revealed in Christ to be the condemnation of flesh and man, but to be a new eternal life come down from heaven, making men thus partakers of the divine nature; and, while putting away sin, and glorifying God in this respect, giving a perfect object of this life -- the Father revealed in the Son. A divine object is before us -- the Word made flesh, "we beheld his glory, the glory as of an only-begotten from the Father." He "dwelt among us, full of grace and truth."

I have here (very imperfectly, but sufficiently at this moment) sketched the revelation -- a revealed object. My purpose here, of course, is not to unfold doctrine, but give the character of the revelation. Now the new school comes in and says, "But I must judge this by what is in man." Nay, I say, it judges what is in man -- in grace and for his good; but it is the truth. Christ is the truth and judges man. It is a revelation after man has had full scope, with conscience, reason, and a perfect rule for it, the law; and all in vain. It is a revelation coming because that was insufficient, because man was incompetent, and proves it; and brings in salvation in a new revealed object, which is not what was in man, but in God -- a second man, but the Lord from heaven.

Let us now see how Bunsen's statement as to revelation embodies the evil principle I have referred to. He says, "Such a direct communication of the divine mind as is called revelation has necessarily two factors which are co-operating in producing it. The one is the infinite factor, or the direct manifestation of eternal truth to the mind by the power which that mind has of perceiving it; for human perception is the correlative of divine manifestation." Now, absurd as this is, it is plain enough. It is Philo's ojrqo;" lovgo", right reason, and faith, or the reason and conscience of the new infidel school. A manifestation to, by the power of perceiving, is absurd -- absurd in every case. It supposes an object, but an object by a power of perceiving. Now God can will an object, but needs then no revelation, of course. If man perceives, he must have something to perceive; it is not manifested by his power to perceive; or he creates, or has the divine nature, with its thoughts, as a given mind. This is just Philo, and is false, metaphysically and morally, because he is not infinite, and he is evil. Scripture makes the contrast, and refers the knowledge of the divine mind to the believer only and the Holy Ghost who shews things to us. "What man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him? so no man knoweth the things of God but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God." A man knows the things of a man by the spirit of man; the things of God (these are new, freely given things, objects not inherent in the mind), the Spirit of God only. He is given to them that believe, takes the things of Christ and shews them unto us. I am not arguing now whether scripture be true; but shewing that the christian system is directly in every part in antagonism with the system we are examining.

W. Most clearly, and, I may say, rationally and morally so; but perfectly opposed in every particular.

H. What I think striking is, that it goes over the same ground, the mind, its thoughts, conscience, relationship of God to man, our being His offspring; but in every point, instead of building up the competency of man in his old position, treats him as incompetent and fallen, and brings in a new thing, the Second man, the revelation of God, and of the Father, and of the Son. It shews liberty from rites and legal ceremonies, the bondage of the law, the higher prophetic light, even before Christ; but instead of reducing it into the limits of the Adam nature to exalt man (that is, self), it uses it to shew him condemned in his Adam condition, incapable of thus knowing God, and gives new life, new objects, a new state, and a perfect revelation of all that was needed to introduce it, and to be that on and in which it lived.

W. But Baron Bunsen gives a second factor.

H. He does, but we do not gain much there. It "is the finite, or external." This mode of divine manifestation is, in the first place, a universal one; the universe, or nature. In a more special sense, it is an historical manifestation of divine truth through the life and teaching of higher minds among men. These men of God are eminent individuals, who communicate something of eternal truth to their brethren, as far as they themselves are true. They have in them the conviction, that what they say and teach of things divine is an objective truth, "will last" therefore; but mark, only a truth. "The difference between Jesus and the other men of God is analogous to that between the manifestation of a part, and of the totality and substance of the divine mind." Thus Christ is a perfect revealer at best, not a personal object of faith to whom we are subject as the Son. That is, my mind perceives truth partially. His completely, and so teaches. Thus it is expressed, "God's eternal thought of Himself became personal in finite existence in a man, conscious of His divine nature." Remark, He becomes personal, and is then finite. He is Son, and God is Father only in a finite way. Otherwise, "He is God's thought of Himself in space and time." "It has the principle of life in this divine self-consciousness." "That primitive consciousness lived in Him constantly and perfectly" -- in Jesus. The former part is pure Philonism; the latter, the incarnation of God's eternal thought of Himself in a man, who thus lived in the consciousness of His divine nature is of course not Philo's.

But we know now what revelation means, and why the reviewer speaks of the revelation of Christ, and of not confining it to Him.

I proceed with Bunsen. "God reveals, that is to say, manifests Himself directly to mankind by the mind. This manifestation addresses itself to man's rational conscience, or to the consciousness of truth and goodness. This direct manifestation is that of the eternal word or reason, and is the key to the indirect manifestation of God to man through the creation and through history." Hence, "there must be faith in the divine element in the soul." "The contemplation of God in the history of mankind is the most natural and most universal means of strengthening the innate faith of the soul in its own destiny."

"The scriptures of the Old and New Testament exhibit such a record of humanity;" "bearing eminently the character of humanity, they are eminently prophetic."

"Christ is the centre of the universal development, typically exhibited in the Jewish records."

He adds, "Moses had coined out of the law of conscience, which Abraham had made the distinctive law of his family, the ritualized law of that nation which he formed out of Abraham's descendants." In another place, he says, "the wickedness and stubbornness of the people obliged him (Moses) to surround this spiritual law (contrary to his original intentions) with ritual and ceremonial regulations."

"Jesus proclaimed it the law of mankind by attaching it directly, without any national medium, to the consciousness of God Himself dwelling in man and in mankind. He divinized man because He realized God." "He based upon faith in her (the soul's) origin and destiny ... the whole social life of mankind." Hence he holds that, by revolutionary destruction of hierarchy and empires, there will be by the prevalence of conscience a kind of moral millennium.

Now here God dwelling in man, the direct revelation to man's rational conscience, is the infinite factor, the judge of all. The finite (and even Christ comes in here, though personally Bunsen ascribes to Him a perfect consciousness of the whole of God's thought of Himself) is a secondary and external one. Mankind's history strengthens the internal, but no more. Jewish records give man's expression of this. Christ is the centre of this finite external one. Eminent men have given it out, as far as they thought they had the perception of truth. Christ is not a part but the whole reason of God in a man, to whom God gave eternal life, for so He says.

But revelation is, as a direct thing, merely and only the perception of truth by man's mind as man, through the eternal reason of God dwelling in him as man. And he must have faith in this divine element in himself. Eminent men may give out their consciousness of it, and, if true, give it out with a conviction that it is lasting truth. But this is all secondary and indirect. Direct revelation is only the inward perceptions of man's natural mind. And the Bible is prophetic in general, not because of its divinity, but because of its humanity, and that it is the expression of what passes in the human mind. The eternal reason of God dwells in man, and man by it perceives, and that is revelation in all. What makes some to be eminent, we are left to conjecture. Philo was dreadfully embarrassed here too. However, is this a denial of a revelation or not? Is it a denial of christian doctrine or not? That is the positive announcement of the word of God claiming absolute authority over the conscience, partial and preliminary by the prophets, fully and openly by Christ and His apostles. Men were to receive it as the word of God which was effectual in those that believed. It was for the obedience of faith among all nations, man being darkness, alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in him.

W. It is most clearly a positive denial of revelation altogether. For the secondary or finite one is only reproducing the first, and is good only as far as the conviction of the speaker goes (i.e., not God's word). It is a positive denial, too, of the whole doctrine of Christianity, as to the fall of man, and a redemption, and a new life.

H. You can now, too, clearly see why in this system rational conscience is to judge of all else, be it what it may; and this is the essence of their system. Man is to have faith in the divine element in his own soul. Hence "the evidences of our canonical books and of the patristic authors nearest to them are sufficient to prove illustration in outward act of principles perpetually true (is that revelation?), but not adequate to guarantee narratives inherently incredible or precepts evidently wrong;" i.e., we are finally judges of right and wrong. Now, the Gospels are, in another sense, an "illustration in outward act of principles perpetually true." For God Himself is love and man hatred against Him. But it is a mere record, according to Dr. Williams, of the truth and falsehood, the right and wrong, of which we are judges as of any other book. It is not a bit more the word of God or a revelation from God than any other book. It may be better, if those of whom it relates correctly the facts and sayings were better. But it is no revelation. We are judges of its contents, and select as we please. That is, God has given no revelation at all; for, if He has given a positive revelation of His mind, it is quite clear it must both guide and judge us, not we it. The whole system is infidelity without the honesty to own it, and nothing else.

And what, consequently, is man according to Baron Bunsen? "The finite realization of the Spirit of God as good in individual consciousness developed in time." We see that all this is historically false, and that man has received everything that is vile, and crucified Him who by their own confession was goodness and truth. No man received His testimony; those who did receive Him were born, not of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God. It was a work, a new work, wrought in them. They, and they only, set to their seals that God was true. St. Paul further declares, that what he had was communicated to him by the Holy Ghost, that He imparted it in words taught of the Holy Ghost, and that it could only be received by the Holy Ghost in contrast with the natural man.

I conclude that the system is historically false, theoretically false: i.e., its pretension that it is rationally christian is false. It is diametrically opposite to the theory of Christianity and all the principles of scripture; and in doctrine not merely infidel but anti-christian. Take away Christianity, and what have you? Let history tell.

I must add, that I think it dishonest to use christian language for the purpose of denying all that the words mean. To say that the perceptions of a man's mind are a revelation from God, is deceiving by an abuse of words. But it is well to get at the fact that the question is: Is there a revelation or not -- a revelation addressed to man, claiming authority over man because it is the word of God? If they say there is not, we know what we are about, which they are doing their best to conceal. In my judgment their views are from Satan himself -- the direct work of the enemy -- devilish in their nature. I do not use the word as vulgar and abusive, but in its strict and proper sense.

W. Well, I suppose we must admit them to be such if they are not of God; for they are not simply human mistakes and reasonings (though that may be the case as to individuals), but a systematic antagonism to a divine revelation of the truth, and of the truth revealed.

H. We have one or two points which we should do well to consider. The value of moral and miraculous evidences. It is a subject treated in these Essays, and has its importance.

W. It has considerable importance. Infidelity is evidently natural to the mind of man, i.e., when God is revealed, and the truth. And this question of evidences meets with this propensity in the heart as much as the truth itself.

H. First of all you must remark, that evidences suppose either reluctance to receive or difficulties inherent in man as to the reception of truth. If man's mind met the truth as such at once, there would be no need of any evidences, no need of our new school investigating so much; but men do reason to prove the truth (i.e., it is not intuitively known or necessarily received). The new school declare the human mind productive of truth as being an intelligence which is the divine word in finite action in man. Christianity declares the truth to be revealed in and by Christ, and those sent by Him; and, as to ordinary men, He has declared, "Because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not." And again, "He was in the world, and the world knew him not. He came to his own, and his own received him not." "The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." That truth was found by man is false; it was not. He arrived at "What is truth?" Christ came to bear witness to it.

Now, assuming that there is such a thing as truth (and there must be, or there is nothing; for if there is something, a true statement or knowledge of what it is, is the truth), either man is omniscient, or he wants the truth to be made known to him. If he does, he needs evidences, unless he be so absolutely proper for its reception, that to state it is sufficient for its reception (i.e., unless the truth be self-evident). If he be not so receptive of truth (and we are sure he is not), he needs evidences of it, because he has reluctance or difficulties.

But I go farther: truth cannot really be self-evident to a creature, because, let men be as proud as they will, in a creature the moral condition depends on the object he is occupied with. Is it gold? he is covetous. Power? he is ambitious; and so on. Hence the moral condition is the fruit of the object. There may be lusts and tendencies dominant; but actual character is determined by an object. Now, to know goodness as a creature without a revelation of it, I must be perfectly good. But I am not -- far from it. When therefore it comes, it finds me not perfectly good (i.e., so far averse to what is good). I do not know whether any one pretends to being perfect goodness; if not, he is something as a morally active being; he is selfish. Is it not true?

W. Alas! yes.

H. That is, a revelation of perfect goodness meets selfishness which is incapable of receiving it. Besides, in fact, there is corruption, prejudice, superstition, into which selfishness has formed itself. And God, who is light as well as love, makes havoc with this. "No man, having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new, for he saith, The old is better." If your infidel says, Man is innocent, and education has given him prejudices, and connected his will with his lusts, so as to make passions; I say, Be it so. I do not believe it; but be it so. But man is educated; he is a Jew, a Romanist, a Heathen, a Protestant. Pure truth comes; it meets his prejudices, and evidences are needed. If these are sent, it is the activity of grace. They are not simply to prove the truth (to a mind who sees the truth as truth, it needs no proof), but to prove it to man, because man is prejudiced, and deeply prejudiced. But man has a conscience (and the truth does reach it even when will is opposed), has a heart, yea selfishness, and is miserable; and can feel goodness, though opposed to the claim of God over his will as light and love (for if God reveals Himself He must claim subjection, and to bless must make man give up his will, that own will, which is alienation from God, and mixes in his lusts). Attraction is felt, the claim felt in conscience, the claim of goodness, the beauty of what is holy felt in conscience, what God is, is felt; but there are deep obscurities through prejudice and lusts, and reluctance through feeling how much it will cost. Ignorance of what God ought to be, prejudice against what He is. "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"

What is to be done? Man ought to receive grace and truth, light and love. Yet he would not want it revealed if he were not morally in contradiction of will with it. God gives adequate evidences to overtop the prejudices, to force on the mind that what is presented to it must be a revelation of God. Men have enquired as to receiving truth because of miracles, or miracles because of truth. Both and neither. Men ought to receive truth because it is truth -- abstractedly, ought: for unfallen he would not need a revelation; fallen puts the case that he is indisposed: but, abstractedly, a nature suited to truth would receive the truth. "If I tell you the truth, why do ye not believe me?"

But this is not so. Man does not like to come to the light, because his deeds are evil. God therefore in grace gives evidences, miracles if you please, when the revelation of the truth is there; not when, to speak historically, it has been admitted as truth. But this is great grace. "Believe me," says Christ, "that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very works' sake." There is the place of truth and of miracles, "which at first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard it, God bearing witness by signs and miracles," etc., so "confirming the word by signs following." Where faith was founded only on miracles, the Lord did not own it; there was nothing moral in it. But He did give miracles to help men to believe the holy truth of love.

But men say, all is to be reduced to general laws: and if anything cannot, it cannot be believed. God would not disturb general laws. The most general law is that God is love, and miracles, used as I have said, shew this more than a physical law. I affirm that, compared with miracles, general laws are nothing as a revelation of God. There are general laws, I admit: an increasing number of phenomena may be reduced to them -- perhaps, had we all the secrets of nature, all of them. I will suppose that, however irregular phenomena may appear, all can be reduced to general laws; but I do not know hereby a personal God; I do not now Him morally. All goes on admirably. I am so constituted -- for this is the real fact -- that, seeing a creature, I suppose a Creator. As has often been said, a design proves to the human mind (rather it is inherent in the idea, that is, in the constitution of man) a designer. When I say design, I think of a person, a cause for what exists. Constituted as I am, I cannot help doing so. Now, this proves I cannot know God; for I cannot think of a thing's existing without a cause. But He exists without a cause, as we have said -- that is, His very nature of God; and what makes me know there is one proves I cannot, in the nature of things, know Him. But that is not my object now.

The knowledge that there is a God is no personal revelation of God -- no revelation at all. I conclude there must be. I am right. I conclude to immense power, and pretty surely to His unity, as the apostle says, His eternal power and Godhead -- a solemn truth, from which many an enquiry may arise. Where is He? Who is He? Is He good? Does He think now at present of men? Does He govern all things? I have only a conclusion of my own mind that there must be a God of power who made the universe; not that there is. No conclusion gives this, because my conclusion is only the sequence of an idea. But am I in any relationship with Him? am I part of a system governed by general laws and no more? -- for the absoluteness of these is insisted upon. If I am not a part of these general laws, what relationship have I with God? My new-school man tells me I have a conscience and reason, am free, and so forth; that is, I am not governed, like a planet, by general laws. Ah! ah! Then, in all that is really important -- that is, what is moral -- I am not a mere machine, under a general law; and you would persuade me God is, and cannot help Himself, nor act freely in respect of my freedom! I am free, and He is not. Then certainly I am God, not He. Now, general laws give me no revelation of God personally; and when I enter into detail, I am lost even as to my conclusions. My conscience tells me He must be good. But I look around and see misery, evil; men worshipping Jupiter, Venus, Pluto; men in every degradation that human nature is capable of; babes in torture, grown man in sin, oppression; and a groaning creation. Is that a general law? Where is the goodness? There is another world, you tell me. Perhaps; I hope so. Will the oppressor, the seducer, the corrupter, the tyrant be there? What proof have you? Your instinct tells you so. Is that all you have to comfort me? Has the instinct of men given them any clear idea of it? Had the heathen such? Are life and incorruptibility brought to light anywhere? In theory, a God of mere general laws is a dead God for me as to present moral relationship; and, when I turn to facts, I see it is false, or evil must be a general law too.

Now, where there is One who reveals the truth and works miracles, I am brought into relationship with a God who acts personally, so that I know Him. I see what He is, what He is about. He is righteous, He is love. He thought it worth while to come down into a world full of misery, which man's free will had brought in, to shew Himself good in it, more mighty than the evil, to reveal Himself as a resource, to make Himself known, on the one hand, and to make the moral revelation of Himself in the truth valid to the hearts of men paramount to all prejudices, on the other. If it be love, it cannot be a general law. Not that love is not the general law of God's nature, as I said; but love in exercise must have its occasion -- suited occasion; must be free, or it is not love. But if God acts in this world to make Himself known, He thereby works miracles; for God's acting thus is a miracle. He does not contradict, does not suspend, the general law as a law. Men die as they died before; nay, they died again if He raised them; but He acted by a power which was not subject to the general law, because He is God, taking an individual out of it by His own power, without touching the law. The queen does not abrogate a law when she pardons. That power is part of a more general law. The most general law of all is, that God is always God -- cannot act contrary to Himself; but can always act as God when He pleases. Thus I know Him -- His own mind, spirit, disposition, interest in man, goodness, love. I know what sin is thereby; for it is departure of will from Him.

But, unless this new school deny all the truth of Christianity, their theory of general laws is wholly false. Is the resurrection by God's power or not? Does man rise of himself by some common law of his nature, or is the resurrection the fruit of the intervention of God in power? If so, the system of general laws adduced against miraculous Christianity is all nonsense. God does interfere by power, freely, to bring the great result of moral dealings to an issue. Besides, the theory of judging by general laws is false in principle. It takes man's experience of the physical course of things (for that this world is an adequate witness of God's moral government, though there is one, is a horrible lie) as the sole and absolute measure of what God is and can do. What proof is there of this? I am told it is complete. It is not; morally, it is no such thing: and your experience of what God is in the laws of the universe is no adequate measure of what God is. But, I repeat, miracles are a far more real revelation of God Himself than general laws, moral revelation. I am not personally in relationship with God by general laws; I am by free miracles, not done necessarily on me or for me, but in which God's free action shews what God personally is in His actings. I ask if Christ's miracles did not do this? -- did not shew the intervention of God in goodness in a world of misery? There are instances of judgment when it was to deliver others, and that is part of the character of God, permitted displays of Satan's power, that we might know it. Why are any of them inherently incredible? Who is the judge -- man's experience? Nonsense! He cannot have an experience of miracles. It is merely saying There can't be because there can't be; because I do not think God ought to do them. You do not. What is incredible? Was God not powerful enough to do them? You cannot say that. Was He not good enough? Ah! that is perhaps what is incredible to you. I thank God it is not for me.

But, if in a world of misery God was winning the confidence of men's hearts to His goodness, what more credible than miracles? i.e., extraordinary displays of power, sufficient to shew God's intervention, so that men might know not only that evil was not of Him, but that He had come to man's help as good. That may be incredible for the new school; they may study the movements of Jupiter, and speculate on the fall of empires, as based on general laws; but a personal God of goodness they do not like to know. It has inherent incredibility for them. But there is no personal relationship with God without it. I delight in the thought of seeing God manifested here below, spending Himself to win the confidence of hearts who as offenders were afraid, and using the very wretchedness they were in by sin to draw their hearts to God out of it. True, it was inherently incredible to Pharisees and Sadducees then. He could not be of God; He did not keep the Sabbath. They were grieved that the apostles taught the resurrection. But Jesus cared for the poor of the flock, and, in spite of the Pharisees, would win by speaking "as never man spake," and doing so that "it was never seen on that fashion." If power acting in goodness to win the hearts of the poor to God is inherently incredible, I know where the heart is to whom it is so. Such, then, is the place of miracles. The abiding thing is the truth of the being of that personal objective God who is revealed by their means. Miracles are a means of knowledge as evidence. The truth, and the Son, who is the truth, revealing the Father, revealing God, is that which is evidenced.

W. Do you admit what Hippolytus says, that miracles are useless when unbelief ceases?

H. I do not in an absolute way. They are useless as evidence; but, as being the fruit and exhibition of the power and love of God, they remain always the object of increased delight: and in Christ's miracles it is impossible to separate His ways and feelings and thoughts from them, when we have any detail. Have you not felt this?

W. Surely I have. I admit fully the justice of your remark, and it helps to judge of the nature of these signs.

H. Miracles, then, have a double character. They are confirmatory signs graciously given, and, especially christian miracles, a present witness of the intervention of power in grace. Where Christianity is believed and professed, so far as they are proofs, they lose their importance, are out of place. So far as they have the second character, the record of them (which is here supposed to be received) is a witness to the heart that God is come in to help, and how He is come in. The word alone reveals this directly as revelation. At any time faith founded on miracles was nothing worth, because miracles do not quicken. We are begotten by the word of truth, and so children by faith. When believed only by reason of miracles, the Lord did not trust Himself to them; He knew what was in man. As removing opposing hindrances in the mind, and strengthening man against unbelief, they are precious to our compound nature. There is much that removes unbelief, acts on our old nature (even solid reasoning does), that does not give faith nor a new nature; but removes the opposition of nature, and silences it, and attracts the heart. This if alone is nothing; there must be something positively new which a man cannot give himself, and which no proof produces.

W. You believe, then, in a really new nature and life which man receives?

H. Undoubtedly. It is a first principle, and one of the main vital questions of the day. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Except we are so, we cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Of His own will begat He us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures. Infidelity seeks to set up man as he is, will accept Christ if He serves for that. The doctrine of scripture is that there is a Second man, a last Adam; and as is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the Heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

W. But miracles now have to be proved, instead of being proofs.

H. There is truth in that. We have not now to do with heathenism and Judaism (I mean in our present inquiries, for we know with delight there are missionaries to tell Christ's blessed grace to them). When we meet with infidelity now, it has the character of apostasy and antagonism. It may be open as in the last century, or covert, as in this, but it has essentially this character. Early opposition was not apostasy; nor did it, indeed, deny the miracles; they were too recent. They ascribe them, as Celsus, to magic, or cited Apollonius Tyanaeus as having wrought such too; or the Jews to magic learnt in Egypt, and the theft of the Shem hammaphoresh out of the temple. Still that was antagonism, and had to be so treated. Now it is more. It is apostasy in principle, and has to be treated as such; covert I admit, using Christ's name, but only so much the worse. Christianity has been publicly admitted as the religion of God, its record accepted as the record of God, miracles and all; and then men begin to cavil and oppose and undermine, not being honest enough to throw it off, or sometimes happily kept back by spiritual instinct; but, as a system, it is apostasy in principle. Hence there is less hope, and the record has to be proved, objections answered, miracles to be proved, not a proof. In this case we must shew their folly as reasoners, and trust to the word, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. For them I should look much more to the power of the word in grace. If the record have power in them, they will see the miracles with it, and the perfect beauty and suitableness of them in such a revelation of God. Proofs may shew the absurdity of doubts, and so far are useful. They may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, but cannot give faith. Of this we have sufficiently spoken, and I suppose of general principles so delighted in by Dr. Williams. One soon sees there is not the soberness of inquiry, but delight in one like Bunsen, who, he thinks, may aid in overthrowing scripture as a divine record. You will soon see how little they are to be trusted. I may not be able to answer every objection; but if I find a man make a hundred, and ninety-nine are shallow and foundationless, and his will pierces in it all, I am not much troubled with the weight of the hundredth. Facts and principles will both come before us.

W. Proceed.

H. We have spoken of Abraham and Egyptian dates as one great battle-horse of Bunsen and his uncritical admirers. Asia was only alluded to. I would now touch on it. It is known from Layard that Assyrian monuments have largely confirmed scripture history. It is interesting, though of course no ground of faith. But then we are in historic periods, and it is pretty plain sailing, with difficulties in arranging names and dates incidental to ancient times and human accounts of them. I speak here of profane history, and the connection of Babylonish and Assyrian history. This is not touched on in the Review. But more ancient days are of course obscure, and here our Bunsens revel, and evoke the spirits of empires. But we will follow them there: not to prove all with certainty -- that no man can do as to these empires with the remains we possess and the imperfect knowledge of them -- but to prove that Bunsen's admired assertions are foundationless, wholly so, and against the documents we have. "He also contends," says Dr. Williams, "that Abraham's horizon in Asia is antecedent to the first Median conquest of Babylon in 2234" Let us examine this. He puts, we have seen, Abraham's descent into Egypt in 2876; his departure from Ur, of course, many years earlier.

The question is this: the observations of the Chaldeans, according to Berosus, give 2234 for their commencement; 1903⁺ from Alexander the Great. The length of the second dynasty is lost from the MS. The rest are there, or in modern history. From these we have 224 (lost), 458 (2nd Chaldean), 245, 526 Assyrian, and from other sources 209. Then Babylon was taken by Cyrus; that is, after 34,080 Mythic Chaldean, we have

224 Median.

-- Chaldean.

458 Chaldean.

245 Arab.

526 Assyrian.

209 Do. and Babylonian.

All the dynasties to Cyrus 1,662 + lost dynasty.

208 Persian.

All the dynasties to Alexander 1,870 + lost dynasty.

The Chaldean observations reached to 2234 before Christ, 1903 years before Alexander. The date of Callisthenes' visit being 331 before Christ, the third (second historical) dynasty must be added to complete the term. Cyrus was about 538 before Christ; 1662+538 =2200. If we add 258 for the dynasty missing from the MS, the first Chaldean, we have 2458 for the whole; but the first was Median, not Babylonish, if at Babylon: hence, subtracting 224 (2458 -- 224), we have 2234, exactly the alleged period of Babylonish astronomical observations; these Chaldeans being known observers of planetary movements in connection with their idolatry, which the Medians were not, so that it is unlikely the 2234 years of observations extend to their time. That is, the known date of Alexander, added to the alleged duration of stellar observations, agrees with the length of dynasties exactly, if we leave out the first which was not Chaldean, and give 258 to the lost one. Some would count back from Cyrus, because the empire was then transferred from Babylon to Susa. Bunsen finds the name of Zoroaster, and connects 2234 with the first Median dynasty; but this is far less likely as it was not religiously or historically probable. Not religiously, for the planet-gazers were the Chaldeans; not historically, as, though Babylon had fallen as the imperial race in Cyrus' time, the priests' observations were given to Callisthenes at Babylon. Such is the judgment of the ablest German critics. It does not affect much our enquiry. I know Bunsen attempts to deny a Euphratean Cush; but his notion is contrary to all testimony of history, names, and accounts of races and their movements. I shall therefore take this system. It is Niebuhr's and other Germans he quotes, as well as Rawlinson's, and a German whom he quotes; quite admitting that, though the proofs are remarkably strong, in these ancient dates and readings there is uncertainty. That is, the Median, not idolatrous as the Chaldees, was the first historic kingdom; then a Chaldean. Of this the earliest known monarch, Urukh, has left his name on the foundation of the earliest cities of Lower Babylonia, Ur (or Mogheir), Warka (probably Erech), Senkereh (Larsa), and Niffer. Here first idolatry is found -- the worship of sun, moon, and planets. He calls himself king of Ur, and Kinsi Akkad -- a supposed ethnical or national designation. Erech and Akkad are mentioned in Genesis. We have a known date of a king Ismidagon from an inscription of Tiglath-Pileser, which places him in 1861. This is, say, 340 years after Urukh.

⁺If we include the Median, or first historic dynasty, in the 1903 years of observations alleged by Berosus, then the duration of the first historical Chaldean is only 34 years. But I certainly judge the other scheme preferable.

When Babylon was founded does not appear from the monuments that I am aware of. The astronomical observations date from 2234. This, which is the date of Berosus, is not only from him, but from Callisthenes, a Greek, but probably from the same sources. Others seem to confirm it. And, 1861, or Ismidagon, being ascertained with some precision, we have bricks with the names of kings not doubted to be anterior to Ismidagon. Babylon does not appear on these. About 1750 Naramsin reigned there. Merodach Namana is the first who has been found named king of Babylon somewhat later. But we have seen the records at Babylon go to the beginning of the kingdom exactly according to the chronology adopted by the ablest enquirers, as preserved there, B.C. 331.

It is evident the kings changed their capitals. Werka was probably, it is thought, Ereck. Akkad we find Urukh king of Senkereh is Larsa in the monuments, supposed to be Ellasar. I need not enter into further details here. This will give an idea of dates. Language is a difficult medium of proof, because probably Turanic or Turano-Aryan (for there are Aryan words), Hamite and Semitic terms are mixed in the vocabulary; and the cuneiform signs represent, it appears, all. Afterwards Semitic prevailed in Assyria; but the older forms being preserved apparently as sacred, what seems older is sometimes more recent. I now turn to Abraham. A king is found on the bricks of not exactly ascertained date; but very early indeed in the above dates, part of whose name is the same as Chedorlaomer's -- perhaps the whole -- and who is called the Ravager of the West (ravager being questionable, west certain). There are probabilities from names that he was connected with Susa or Elam, but of a Cushite race. The great Chaldean empire of Berosus begins 1976 before Christ. The first lasted from 2234 to 1976. Chedorlaomer, if the name be right, comes somewhat later; not the first king of it. Scripture Hebrew chronology puts the arrival of Abraham in Canaan about the year 1922 before Christ; 54 years after the beginning of the first idolatrous kingdom: but he had been some years in Canaan, and been down to Egypt, when Chedorlaomer arrived, so that that was perhaps ten years later -- perhaps 1915 before Christ -- that is, Chedorlaomer was 61 years after Berosus' date of the setting up of the second Chaldean empire. Now Abraham comes from Ur, because idolatry was there; and the dates agree with the common date given to Abraham; the cause of his being called of God existing at that time, as is demonstrated; that is, idolatry was established. Indeed, it is at this epoch, it appears, that the Semitic races spread and left Chaldea, though not all escaped the idolatry, as we see in Assyria. But the date of 2876 for Abraham given by Bunsen, with an Asiatic horizon, is in any case long before any historical data whatever. It is in the fabulous addition of 34,080 years (or 33,091 invented probably, as Bunsen himself supposes, to make up 36,000 -- the first lunar, the second reduced by Eusebius to solar years). Nor could it be exactly said the Medians worshipped other gods. They worshipped one under the symbol of fire. The date Bunsen gives for Abraham, to indulge his fancy as to what ought to be as to Israel, and his mistaken chronology from Manetho unverified by monuments, is about a thousand years too soon, according to all that can probably be ascertained from monuments; and these monuments shew scripture to be right. No one can pretend to precision, but all the data we have prove that Bunsen indulged his imagination. I proceed to other points, concluding with Dr. Williams that Bunsen's details on some (and nearly all) these points are sufficiently doubtful to afford ground of attack; and with all due deference, that we are most logically and rationally free to more than distrust his conclusions, instead of holding them for certain when his premises are false, and the fruit of his imagination.

W. The character of his views seems to me pretty clear. It is simple idealism, and running a principle of his own to excess, and not sober research; merely using a mass of reading to controvert scripture, not to ascertain the truth.

H. Simply that. I proceed. Take another instance of careful research, cited by Dr. Williams, used to prove, what I have noticed, that the slaying of the first-born was by Bedouin Arabs, most choice in the effect of their successful inroad; only it is a wonder they did not carry off, in their razzia, the first-born of cattle. Perhaps they ate them; but the proof is, that it is, as the pestilence of the Book of Kings becomes in Chronicles, the more visible angel. Now, this is a mere dream. I suppose he means Samuel (called Kings in the LXX). But it is alike called a pestilence and an angel, both in Samuel and Chronicles (1 Chronicles 21: 14, 15; 2 Samuel 24: 15-17). In the case of Sennacherib, it is called an angel simply in Kings and Chronicles.

W. But this shews great carelessness. It is trifling.

H. Yes; trifling with truth. Never trust the alleged facts of this school. Make that a rule: I have learnt it by experience. Mark the excessive looseness of Dr. Williams in what follows: "It is no serious objection that Egyptian authorities continue the reign of Manephthah later." All these reigns in Egyptian authorities are confusion itself as to their length; but let that pass. Its objection means here no objection to Exodus 15. "A greater difficulty is, that we find but three centuries left us from the exodus to Solomon's temple." Here the difficulty is in Bunsen's scheme. Nothing can exceed the carelessness of the article; but this very carelessness is employed to cast a slur on the chronology of the Judges. "The uncertainty and popular character of which makes the difficulty [in Bunsen's scheme] of no moment." We are told the numbers in the book of Judges proceed by the eastern round number of 40. Now, it is possible that in the East they say -- though I am not aware of it -- (it is a sacred number, whatever its import) "this forty years," as we say, "this hundred years," which may be given in round numbers, though I see no reason to think so. In the case of the wilderness and David's race determinative details making forty years are given; in one oppression also. But we have thirteen other oppressions or judges of precise dates. One thing that has misled most computers of the dates of Judges is, that they have not seen that Samson and Eli are expressly during the oppression of the Philistines, and that Samuel and Saul are for a long time together. But these are details for enquiry, as every one recognizes.

When it is said, "Baron Bunsen feels himself compelled to see growth in the Pentateuch, and he makes it Mosaic, as embodying the mind of Moses rather than written by his hand," one can only say it is very little matter what he makes of it. A great part of it professes to give direct communications from God. They are true or false. The style is confessedly the earliest Hebrew as shewn by the use of hu for hi, nahar for nahara. That it was edited by Ezra and others may be very likely. That, and its being done by the great Sanhedrim in his day, is an old Jewish tradition, and may have so far general truth in it, as some such work of editing may have been called for after the return from the captivity. Josephus distinctly rests all on the authentication by the prophets, and hence owns none after Artaxerxes as scripture. This accords with what we read in the historical parts.

What Dr. Williams means by "the whole literature grew like a tree rooted in the various thoughts of successive generations," I do not know. If he means that they modified the older books continually as their habits changed, it is the most improbable absurd idea of any nation, and particularly for the Jews, and especially with books which they disobeyed, and which reprove and reproach them, as these do, which yet they held as sacred, coming from God Himself (persecuting the prophets, too, because they spoke so plain). There cannot be conceived anything more improbable or more purely an imagination, contradicting all the facts, than this gratuitous theory. That Moses and Joshua, for certain historical events, used popular documents -- as Paul Grecian poets -- is stated in scripture. That Moses may, under God's guidance, have used others which are not stated, is very possible. The question for us is, Was he guided of God, so that what we have is scripture? For this we have the authority of Christ and the apostles (which I suppose has little weight with Dr. Williams), and, I may add, the divinely given conviction of every child of God, and of every saint under the Old Testament too.

All the theories of Jehovistic and Elohistic documents are the merest claptrap; we have only to examine the passages to see their fallacy. We have spoken of Genesis 1, 2, and need not return to it. The history of Noah equally proves the perfect absurdity of it. I repeat, all through scripture, Jehovah is the name of relationship, as Almighty and Father are, and stated so to be; God, the simple name of the divine Being.

Again, I read here, somewhat to my astonishment, "When the fierce ritual of Syria, with the awe of a divine voice, bade Abraham slay his son, he did not reflect that he had no perfect theory of the absolute to justify him in departing from traditional revelation, but trusted that the Father, whose voice from heaven he heard at heart, was better pleased with mercy than with sacrifice; and his trust 'was his righteousness.'"

W. What!

H. You may well say "what!" Only, it is well to let these people talk, to shew what their talking is worth. How does the good man know there was such an event? Why, from the history; and yet to please his fancied wisdom, he upsets every fact and principle of the history.

Abraham had been called out from his country and traditions in the most absolute way by the "God of glory." He was not a Syrian idolater, and never worshipped with them, but had his tent and his altar apart: that is the gist of his whole history, its essence. It has no meaning else. It was not a traditional revelation for him; he had a theory of the absolute to justify him, both at first in departing from all idolatry, and now in not returning to the ritual of Syria. God had revealed Himself to him. The Syrian ritual had no divine voice for him; and instead of finding righteousness in not sacrificing his son, when the awe of a divine voice from fierce devils bade him, the whole point of the story is that he was blessed, because he did not withhold him. So the story states. It has no other meaning; and so James reasons in his epistle, and the epistle to the Hebrews quotes it as his glory.

They had better make popular stories for their views, a new Mormon Bible of their own, than edit such senseless stuff as this. It is a good specimen of rational literature. His comment on it is this: "So in each case we trace principles of reason and right, to which our heart perpetually responds, and our response to which is a truer sign of faith than such a deference to a supposed external authority as would quench these principles themselves."

I quote this that you may remark the object which we detect throughout -- the substitution of man's judgment, and what philosophers have called moral sense, for obedience to God; the putting them in contrast, so as to make a revelation needless, or an evil, because it is external. The lovgo", or word, may be allowed to work in man, in man's mind; hence man, as he is, is sufficient, but no word from God allowed. It quenches the natural conscience. Now, there is a conscience; but all history declares, and every-day life confirms, that it is not competent to guide man, and that man is wicked, and naturally hates the light because he is, and is in darkness if there is no revelation. All history proves it. Now, Christianity owns this conscience, but brings God in grace, and perfect light, into contact with it. And this is what they object to -- in a becoming spirit, they tell us. But, in fact, in the passage I quote from Dr. Williams, their avowed aim is to resist a revelation of God external to man's mind, and claiming obedience.

Now, it is an unhappy -- I had better say happy -- instance in which to make such a remark. No honest man can controvert that the whole and sole meaning of this history of Abraham is, that absolute deference to external authority was claimed, at the sacrifice of all natural affections in the case of an only son, and, what was more, in giving up all the promises lodged in his person. And this shewed absolute faith in God's faithful goodness. Abraham, as the epistle to the Hebrews tells us, was sure God must give him Isaac back, if even He raised him; for God would fulfil His promises, and fulfil them in him. When the sacrifice of self was made (for it is always self), God did not allow the sacrifice.

W. The contrast of principles between scripture and this school is as clear as day, and their desire to get rid of God revealing Himself -- the one great blessing of our souls -- in order to exalt man and his moral competency. It is war against revelation, and against obedience; for simply knowing or doing right is not obedience. And they resist the claim of God to obedience, as well as the revelation of God in grace. This exclusion of God is dreadful, and clearly proves what they will. It is moral wickedness in character, and here shews itself in direct opposition to the mind of scripture. The effort to give the character they wish to scripture is contemptible (happy, I agree with you), because it shews what their state of mind, and what their reasonings, are worth.

H. We will proceed to some other remarks; for, as Dr. Williams speaks of scripture, we must meet him in detail.

"The famous Shiloh is taken in its local sense as the Sanctuary where the young Samuel was trained; which, if doctrinal perversions did not interfere, hardly any one would doubt to be the true sense."

The sentence is this: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, till Shiloh come."

What the training of the young Samuel has to do with it I cannot tell. If it refer to this, it is still a prophecy; but, I should judge, a prophecy very badly interpreted. It seems to me it is very irrational to suppose that it is a divinely inspired prophecy about the name of the place where the young Samuel was trained, because the tabernacle was there. What is "till Shiloh come?" -- and yet more, "to him shall the gathering of the peoples be?" What has that to do with the place the young Samuel was trained in? It is not "people" (fancy might have spoken of the tabernacle so), but "peoples." But the truth is, this use of Shiloh for the name of the place is a modern Jewish opposition to the faith of Jesus being the Messiah. All the old Jewish interpreters referred this to Messiah with one consent, though the root of the word be disputed. R. Lipmann first proposed to read it, till they come to Shiloh; as in 1 Samuel 4: 12, where the words are so translated, and this a certain Teller in the last century defended, applying it to the fact in Joshua, that at the close of the wars they pitched the tabernacle in Shiloh, and then Judah ceased to have the lead which had been given him in Numbers in the wilderness, Reuben and Gad left, etc. This interpretation has been adopted by the rationalists, as Eichhorn, Ammon, Bleek, Tuch, etc., denying any application to the Messiah. The soberest and best Hebrew scholars, even rationalists, take it as referring to peace, and see Messiah in it as Prince of Peace, as the sceptre signifies dominion. They do so on Hebrew grounds, without troubling themselves about prophecy and its fulfilment. It is also translated, till he, Judah, come to rest; seeing in it the full accomplishment of the promises to Israel when the nations of the earth will be subject; some adding the coming to Shiloh, when the land was distributed as a first instalment and turning-point; because Israel got its rest of promise in first provisional fulfilment there.

Now, these questions of interpretation I cannot enter into here. The objections of some, as Kurz, to a personal Messiah being as yet the subject of prophecy, are null. It is said this was not within view of the faith of the patriarchs. That is a mistake; the Lord Himself says, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.'? In principle, I see nothing to object to in seeing a germinant accomplishment in responsible Israel, to be fully accomplished in their final glory with Messiah. That the chapter is a pretended prophecy after the event, has been shewn to be absurd on the face of it, for the statements are, in almost every particular, such as no one speaking from the events could have made. You must always bear in mind that these rationalists never search even whether a passage may be a prophecy. They start with the assertion, there can be none, and then seek to shew how the passage may have otherwise arisen. In this case the absurdity of their notions lies on the surface. Jacob declares that he speaks of the end of days, that this goes on to the full final blessing of Israel; and the gathering of the nations is therefore the natural interpretation for those who believe in prophecy and the divine inspiration of scripture.

That there was a provisional bringing in of blessing, and the first proposal of it on Israel's responsibility in the first coming of Christ, is the belief of all Christians, and the express teaching of Peter in Acts 3 -- now put off till Israel repent (while the Church is being gathered, and yet to be fulfilled), and then to be accomplished by a glorious intervention in the last days, I have no doubt. And Judah is preserved as a tribe (I do not see more necessarily in "Shebet") for that day. It certainly never will be fulfilled till then. It has had, in the progressive development of Israel's history, preparatory events. To make It Samuel's training place is simple nonsense.

It is a question whether the name be not itself given from the fact of Joshua's sitting down there to distribute the conquered land. The point difficult to receive from the words is Israel's coming to Shiloh; either it is, "until rest come," or "until Judah come to Shiloh;" if not, the sentence is broken off, and there is no antecedent to "come." It is people, "they," as the French "on," with no one mentioned before. If the ancient interpretations, Targums, etc., which all take it as Messiah, be not received, it is, "till rest come," or "till Judah come to rest." The words, "to him shall the gathering of the peoples be," is the difficulty then. If it be not translated "till Shiloh come," the gathering will be to Judah, looked at as representing the people, as Judah did, and specially the stock of the house of David and Christ, in contrast with the ten tribes. That the people first should be the vessel of God's testimony, and Messiah take their place on their failure, and gather the peoples, is the distinct declaration of prophecy. It is fully developed in Isaiah 49, where Messiah declares He has laboured in vain, if it be Israel; and then His gathering the remnant of Israel and the nations is fully set forth, going on to the rest and glory of Israel. It is the great subject of prophecy -- Messiah taking up the promise as a faithful servant when Israel had failed. Hence He is the true Vine, as Israel was the old vine but was fruitless, or bore wild grapes. Bunsen's and Dr. Williams's view is too puerile to pay attention to.

The alleged "Bible before our Bible is indicated ... rather than proved as it might be." This merely means the old story of Jehovistic and Elohistic elements, book of Jasher, book of the wars of the Lord, of which we have spoken. It may be seen expanded elaborately, as to the former, in De Wette, after many others, and is, I hesitate not to say, contrary to fact, and pure ignorance. Take Genesis 6, indeed the whole account of the flood, and see if any man with his senses, without a theory to support, could make two documents -- one with God, the other with Jehovah. Joshua also has referred to documents, to prove the truth of what he said to unbelieving enemies of Israel; so Jephthah used it against Ammon. The Kings and Chronicles constantly refer to the public records. This only says that the prophetic Spirit used but did not copy them. The statement of a bible before the Bible has no kind of ground whatever. We are told, "he rightly rejects the perversions which make the Psalms evangelically inspired." Who ever thought they were? Why is "evangelically" thrust in? Who ever supposed the Psalms were the gospel? The Psalms refer to the government of God, not to His intervention in grace, save as delivering Israel. For this their enemies must be destroyed, and this they look for. But it has nothing to do with the Christian now. He has "to do well, suffer for it, and take it patiently." The Jews in the latter day will look for their oppressing enemies to be destroyed when God comes in; and He will answer their cry. Jerome and Augustine I leave to answer for themselves; only their imagination was moderate compared with the system we are enquiring into. I admit fully the absurdity of much patristic interpretation; but calling Chaldeans demons, whose instruments they were, is not more absurd than saying: "the Father" (Semitic): Japetic interpretation: the eternal will of the realization of good in man (eternal decree of election). The Son: Man, mankind (Jesus and children of God) struggling with self for the realization of good in time. In an eminent degree Jesus of Nazareth as the conscious realization of God's goodness. "Man, the Son of man:" The finite realization of the Spirit of God as good in individual consciousness developed in time. "Resurrection:" The awakening of the consciousness of this divine life in the soul. "Eternal life:" The divine element in man's ethical life as union with God's will in time.

W. But whose interpretations are these strange bewilderments of mind?

H. Baron Bunsen's last improved.

W. Is it possible? It is well to know what kind of mind we are dealing with. I am not surprised at his idealizing history too, having his siege written before the history of it comes.

H. It was the Alexandrian manner of interpreting; and came into the church. It is very absurd, save in so far as facts carry moral ideas in them. As to Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, It is insisted that they refer partly to a present historical sense. This is not true of all. It is introduced here, as a great admission of the orthodox bishops, and I know not whom, as a discovery now forced on people which is to undermine these prophecies. As to the greater part of them, I do not doubt the principle at all. All Christians, since scripture has been studied, with a very few exceptions, have so understood them, applying the principle with more or less intelligence. God in goodness, who had announced from the outset a deliverance and a deliverer, when dealing with details, encouraged faith -- present faith -- by prophecies which had application then, but expressed the mind of God, which saw to the end of the vista; clothed it in language which went back to the original promise, and surrounded it with dearer light. God wrought in present deliverance, and encouraged hope. The prophets acted as revealers of His mind in this, but kept alive with growing light the hope of the full deliverance yet to come; so that the prophets searched into the meaning of their own prophecies, and saw it was not for them but for us But all this is so little new, that it is a principle laid down by Lord Bacon, who calls them germinant prophecies. Deliverance is promised as to Sennacherib, but the Holy Ghost takes occasion to point to a final deliverance from the Assyrian in the latter days Both were important, and both given.

If Paley could only find one Messianic prophecy, he was very ignorant of scripture. I do not say that none have an inferior application to circumstances, or that the prophet does not rise from circumstances to be "rapt into future times;" but if it be meant that there is but one prophecy in which the Holy Spirit meant to point out Christ, it is utterly false.

Baron Bunsen admits no prophecy, but a kind of second sight -- a spirit of prognostication in man, in which he is fallible, but conceives future things. The rationalist school deny all prophecy.

But take the Psalms: Psalm 2 is prophetic of Christ; Psalm 16 is; Psalm 22 is; Psalms 69, 72, 102, 110 are. I do not say that some part of some of these may not have had a partial application to other sufferers or triumphs. But they have Messiah directly in view. Many others rise up to His case while dealing in divine sympathy, more generally with the suffering remnant, whose place and part He took. But these speak directly of Him; some of Him only. For this we have the authority of Christ and the apostles. I am aware that is nothing with this school; but it is with Christians something. They think Paul, and Peter, and the records divinely given us of Christ, on which Christianity is authentically founded, are of more authority than Dr. Williams; for, soberly, that is the question. Can any one but a neologist doubt that Isaiah 8: 13 to 9: 7 connects, and is meant to connect, the present circumstances of Israel with a great future deliverance by a glorious personage who meanwhile is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence? that is, encourages Israel in those days in their distress, but goes on to an alleged glorious deliverance hereafter, when the distress should be yet greater, but a deliverer there? I say alleged. I am not enquiring here whether it be false or true, whether it was a fanatic prophet, holding out hopes of false deliverance, or the Holy Ghost predicting sure events; but I say, the prophet (or impostor) meant -- though connecting it with present events -- to encourage the people with the hopes of a glorious deliverer in future times, but who would be a stone of stumbling meanwhile, and who would have disciples. The character and terms of the prophecy prove it could not be an impostor; they are too detailed, and speak too much of the evil of Israel. But, be the prophet what he may, I say, a man wants either sense or honesty who will attempt to deny that the alleged prophet intended to point out a mighty future deliverer, who is said to be Jehovah, long hiding His face from the house of Israel, a sanctuary or refuge, but a stone of stumbling, and then a public deliverer in battles of fire. An unbeliever may deny Christianity, and any accomplishment.

If we begin by taking for granted it cannot be, we may spare ourselves the trouble of proving it is not. As a Christian, I believe a part is accomplished -- the last part clearly not until Christ comes again. All I say now is, that here is a passage which, referring to Israel's fears then and connecting the testimony with present facts, goes on through a series of alleged events to the time of a great deliverer, of the increase of whose government there will be no end, on the throne of David. Let it be a false prophecy or a true one, it is a prophecy, and a prophecy of Jehovah's being a sanctuary, a stone of stumbling, having disciples, the breaking of Israel on the stone of stumbling, to which the Lord and Peter apply this, and then a triumphant deliverer.

I will now take another character of prophecy referred to -- the servant; shewing that Israel is taken up as the servant, and replaced by Christ, who will deliver the remnant as again servants of Jehovah, who had long, as we have seen, hidden His face. I take this the rather as Dr. Williams has referred to it. Isaiah 42 says, "My servant whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. A bruised reed shall he not break," etc. This we know is formally applied to Christ in the Gospels. In verse 19, and more distinctly and definitely in chapter 43: 1-10, the servant is Israel. In chapter 49 this is again declared in express terms, "Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified." Then says one, If that be so, I have laboured in vain, and spent my strength for nought and in vain; and then goes on, "And now, saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of Jehovah, and my God shall be my strength." His judgment was with Jehovah, and His work with His God. Then comes the answer, "It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the preserved of Israel. I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, and to be my salvation to the end of the earth." Yet afterwards Israel is brought back, and Zion is remembered and glorified, and kings her nursing fathers.

Now here I have Israel a servant, apparently a total failure, because they are not gathered by a person who appears on the scene to do it, yet declares His work owned. Then the Gentiles brought in (a passage which Paul uses for his ministry); and then, after all, Israel restored and blessed. Now I am not saying again whether this is a false prophecy, or a true one; but it is there -- was there -- as a prophecy before the time, is not yet all accomplished certainly, but speaks of Israel as a servant supplanted by another who fails in gathering Israel, and turns to the Gentiles, and looks on to the end then even for Israel. It is (true or false) Messianic, predicts one who seems to fail -- outwardly does as to Israel, and then turns to the Gentiles. It is used by Paul in Luke's account in the Acts, and by himself in 2 Corinthians; the former to authorize his turning to the Gentiles, the latter to the gospel time, chapter 6: 2. Every one can judge whether Christianity, or the ribaldry of the Neologists and the idealism of Baron Bunsen most justly meet the statements in it. At any rate they are there. A man may reject prophecy, or say it is not fulfilled; but he who says there is not avowed prophecy, and prophecy of Israel's future glory (and glory through a glorious deliverer, commonly called Messiah), is not an honest man, or is in wilful blindness.

I will take up Isaiah 53 by itself as so important; but see chapter 59: 16-21, and all 60. Now I am not arguing for their truth now, much as I believe it; I only say they exist.

W. I understand you. It is a vital point; because if they exist, which Dr. Williams attempts but hardly dares to deny, we should soon be brought to the conviction, not that all interpreters of course are right (for I apprehend, for my own part, that when Zion and Jerusalem are turned into the Church, you must make confusion, though there may be some analogies); but that in fact God has accomplished in part what He has prophesied of beforehand.

H. And remark, I insist on the truth of what they make an objection of, namely, that there is the connection with present circumstances in Israel; that God had foretold a deliverance by the Seed of the woman; and then, when the world had fallen into idolatry, which no one can deny, chose out a people to preserve the knowledge of the one true God, Jehovah, and made them the centre of His earthly government: as it is said, "When the Most High [His universal name of dominion over the earth and all powers] divided to the nations their inheritance; when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For Jehovah's portion is his people, Jacob is the lot of his inheritance." This did not set aside the promise made before, though for a time He suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. But the promises as to the earth centred in Israel as a people. When the fulness of time was come, the promised deliverer came and presented Himself to Israel as a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God. Israel is not gathered. He is a stone of stumbling. Then the promises centre, as we have seen, in Christ. Israel has voluntarily forfeited them, and ceases for a time, save by the hiding of God's face from them, to be the centre of His earthly government, and remain, as we know, without their own religion, and without a false one.

Meanwhile believers are called to follow a rejected Lord, take up their cross, and have their treasure in heaven. Though not a sparrow falls without our Father, and all is under God's hand, yet it is not the time of God's direct government in respect of an earthly people. In due time God declares He will take up the Jews and Israel again; and while the saints who have suffered will have a heavenly portion, the earth will be governed in peace. But this will be introduced by a time of evil, tribulation, and judgment.

Now the prophecies all declare this, and we must not confound the government of the earth (and the promises made to the Jews and connected with it) with our heavenly hopes. God does not prophesy of heaven, but of events in the earth. These prophecies, while the Jews were connected with the present government of God, were addressed to them to warn and encourage them then; but God, knowing what they were, went on to the end, to the infallible accomplishment of His purpose, knowing that what rested on man's responsibility must fail. Hence prophecies do apply largely at the time, only they go often on to the end; and are all a part of this large general scheme -- are not of private interpretation, and not only as to Messiah, but as to Jews and Gentiles, all whose history and circumstances at the close of the world's history are much more fully gone into than the circumstances of the day. Christ's humiliation is spoken of, His rejection, as we have seen; but then prophecy, as it speaks of the government of the world, once He is gone on high, passes over to His future re-appearing in the world's government: for this was the subject of prophecy. Hence Christ and the apostles leave out often the last part of a prophecy -- it belongs to the end of the present order of the world -- and stop at its first coming or its effects. Thus Christ says "To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord," but does not add "the day of vengeance of our God:" this is to come. So Paul, quoting Psalm 68, says "He hath received gifts for men," but does not add "Yea, even for the rebellious, that the Lord God might dwell among them." This will be true when Israel is restored in the latter day.

Take another prophecy cavilled at -- Micah's prophecy; one, perhaps, as I have found, that strikes a Jew the most. Dr. Williams represents Baron Bunsen so as that, if he would quote Micah as designating Bethlehem for the birth-place of Messiah, he cannot shut his eyes to the fact that the deliverer who was to come from thence was to be a contemporary shield against the Assyrian. Why is "contemporary" added? Contemporary with what? Where is there a word in the passage about contemporary? This is dishonest.

Chapter 4, which precedes it, and is the same prophecy, after denouncing Jerusalem, and declaring that she shall be ploughed as a field, declares that in the last days all shall be changed, and the mountain of Jehovah's house established on the tops of the mountains, and exalted above the hills; and the peoples (not "people" -- a frequent unhappy mistake in the English version) flow unto it. And many nations shall come, and full blessings are promised to Zion in the last days after judgment. All the nations shall be gathered against her (as Zechariah prophesies also, and Isaiah 17, and other passages), but she arises and threshes them as sheaves on the corn floor. In the midst of this it is announced (not as before, chapter 3) that wickedness led to desolation (as Isaiah had in chapters 42 and 48), but that there was another great event in the interim -- the Judge of Israel should be insulted and rejected, and that therefore God would give them up. This Judge of Israel was to be born in Bethlehem; but His goings forth have been from the days of eternity. Therefore will He give them up until she which hath travailed hath brought forth; then the remnant of his brethren will return to the children of Israel. Israel will be taken up again, and this man, this Judge of Israel, will be the peace, when the Assyrian comes.

Now the Assyrian is, numberless times, designated as the great enemy -- I do not say oppressor of the Jews -- in the latter day; and the prophecy speaks explicitly of the latter day after Israel had been given up, because they had smitten the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. Now "contemporary" here is a dishonest word born of neology.

The prophecy I leave to any one to read through, and I would press the necessity of taking the context of passages as well as a single verse. I do not fear the result of reading the prophecy of Micah by any unprejudiced person; and the more he knows the scheme of prophecy in all the prophets, the clearer he will be, and the more he will be convinced that one Spirit wrote them. Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. If the Jews of whom the prophets speak are excluded from the interpretation by Christians to apply it to themselves, they must distort them. If Jeremiah says, God had plucked them down, and He would build them up; and the plucking down is applied to Jews, and the building up to Christians, nonsense is made of it at once, because passages are found immediately which it is impossible so to accommodate. But if we take them as they are delivered, they are comparatively speaking perfectly simple. Yet it is into this very error this new school falls. "The typical ideas (of patience or of glory) find their culminating fulfilment in the new," says Dr. Williams

W. But let me interrupt you with a question here. This ideal element recalls it to me. You quoted the Baron on resurrection does he not believe in one?

H. No; as far as I can find out. "He shares," Dr. Williams tells us, "in the aspiration of the noblest philosophers elsewhere and of the firmer believers among ourselves, to (sic) a revival of conscious and individual life, in such a form of immortality as may consist with union with the Spirit of our eternal Life-giver." It is Buddhism, and that pretty much avowedly, for he defends Buddhism from the charge of seeking annihilation. It is Philo who taught that the soul was in dualism in the body, came down from God, was a portion of Himself, and returned to be rejoined to Him. Save in Philo's respect for the scriptures, which is only in vague language held by Bunsen, and denied in fact, all the main points of his view are, as I said, Philo's. With all its pretensions to philosophy and science, it is only a return to the doctrine of that vain but active-minded Platonic Jew. Only that Bunsen necessarily brings in Christ, but reduces Him to be a mere completing the ideal system of which He is a more perfect expression. It is remarkable that Philo speaks little of Messiah, and only as an earthly king -- does not connect with Him the lovgo", of whom he speaks largely philosophically. I apprehend myself the whole ideal system came, as to parentage, from the Feroohers of Zoroaster, from whom Plato borrowed them, and Philo from Plato. You may find the account of Zoroaster's system in Heeren.

W. But it is the utter subversion of Christianity in all its truths.

H. What do you think Bunsen makes of the fall?

W. I know not; though I think you referred to it. All their system denies it altogether.

H. It is "ideally the circumscription of our spirits in limits of flesh and time -- then practically the selfish nature with which we fall from the likeness of God."

W. But then the fall and creation are the same thing; for, surely, our spirits were then circumscribed in flesh and time; and the selfish nature is only viewed as a practical state into which we may now come when free.

H. What you say is perfectly just -- the fall is simply creation; but this is again Philo. The spirits were pure spirits, part of God, and were lowered and brought into an inferior state by coming into the body. So, indeed, Origen; only, inconsistently, he made it partly the effect of previous conduct. This is the secret of the teaching of Origen, and Clemens of Alexandria, and of Bunsen's liking them, as having the spirit of freedom in the church, which was lost afterwards. But I will take up some more of the cavils against scripture, because that is important. Forgive me if I am tedious.

W. Continue. All this examination of scripture is full of interest.

H. Dr. Williams says he "cannot quote Nahum, denouncing ruin against Nineveh, or Jeremiah against Tyre, without remembering that already the Babylonish power threw its shadow across Asia, and Nebuchadnezzar was mustering his armies." Now, all this vague language is very convenient to make mere human foresight out of divine prophecy. But there is no manly grappling with the subject. According to the best research, theological and other, Nahum lived in Hezekiah's reign. This is drawn from reference to historical facts alluded to in the prophecy in connection with Assyria, Egypt, and Philistia, and Isaiah 20. Now, Jeremiah was more than a hundred years afterwards. In Nahum's time Babylon did not cast its shadow over the East, and Nebuchadnezzar was not born. Merodach-Baladan reigned in Babylon, and cherished, probably, ambitious views against Assyria, Babylon having been long a capital before Nineveh. But, though he revolted, in the confusion of Sargon's usurpation, as it appears, he was attacked and driven from Babylon into the marshes; and, though a party of his own race held to him and his family, so far was Babylon from rising then, that Esarhaddon ruled without any subject king at all in Babylon; and Assyria under Sennacherib and Esarhaddon was at a pitch of splendour it had never reached before. After that it began to decline; but it was not Nebuchadnezzar who attacked it. The last king -- as to whose name there is some difficulty -- sent Nabopolassar against Cyaxares, king of Media; but he joined him, married his daughter, and they attacked Nineveh together. Then, a hundred years after the prophecy, as Nahum had said, the gates of the rivers were opened, the Tigris washed away the brick defences, and the king burnt the palace over his head. Modern research has proved in detail that the fire devoured her palaces. The statement, therefore, as regards Nahum, is entirely groundless.

As to Nebuchadnezzar mustering his armies, and Jeremiah knowing it, the great body of his prophecies refer, not to mustering armies, but to the war being carried on before his eyes. What was important was not that, it required no prophet, but one to put a distinct limit to the captivity of seventy years, and predict the final glory of Israel, as the prophets universally announce it, but with even more precision. That prophecy of the seventy years was distinctly fulfilled; and if Jeremiah prophesied at the mustering of the armies, and saw Jerusalem taken and burnt, his prophecy of her restoration is fulfilled prophecy.

But, as to dates, Dr. Williams is wrong. Jeremiah prophesies in the 14th year of Josiah; that was the first year of Nabopolassar. It was not till after this that Nebuchadnezzar comes upon the scene. Marcus Niebuhr makes the 14th year of Josiah some twenty years before Nebuchadnezzar's Syrian campaigns.

We have still Isaiah, though briefly touched on, to notice, Psalms 2 and 22, and Daniel. The fact is, the only real ground alleged against the authenticity of the prophets is the foregone conclusion that there can be no such thing. Dr. Williams and Bunsen only repeat what the Geseniuses, and De Wettes, and Rosenmullers -- Koppe being the first -- have said before them. Isaiah 13, 14, 24-27, 35-37, and 40 to the end, cannot be Isaiah's, because the captivity of Babylon is spoken of as a present thing, and the Jews' deliverance proclaimed! Consequently it must have been written at that time; that is, there can be no prophecy, therefore this is not one. But that is begging the question.

"It is clear to demonstration that the later chapters are upon the stooping of Nebo and the bowing down of Babylon, when the Lord took out of the hand of Jerusalem the cup of trembling, for the glad tidings of the decree of return were heard upon the mountains." Clear to demonstration? demonstration of what? There is no need of demonstration at all. One has only to read the chapters to see they are upon the stooping of Nebo, etc. But that the decree was heard upon the mountains intimates, it is alleged, that it was gone forth, and the people went forth not with haste. Now, all this is Dr. Williams's loose manner. If it was on the mountains, it was not in Babylon, for there are none there; and Judah was not on their mountains to hear it or have it proclaimed. Further, the going out is a promise, not a fact. But the whole point of the passage is, that, as it speaks of Nebo's stooping, Nebo must have already stooped, because no one could foretell a thing. So De Wette: The events "are supposed to have actually taken place, which shews the author wrote in the time of the Babylonish captivity." So of the earlier chapters: "The passage which treats of the destruction of Babel and the Babylonian empire, etc., must be spurious ... because the writer takes his standpoint in the exile." So Gesenius: "The oracle supposes a prophetic poet being in Babylon; and the point of time of the composition can hardly be any other ... than when the hostility of the Medes against Babel, and their brilliant progress under Cyrus, gave to the Jews the sure hope that the seat of their persecutors would fall through them." "This situation is portrayed as present, not future, and in such a way that the ruin (of Babylon) should immediately follow. That this does not suit in the least the time of Isaiah needs no further proof." This applies specially to the last part after the history of Hezekiah, and the previous parts which speak of Babylon, and chapters 24-35. It is needless to quote more of the same kind from other rationalists.

Now, it is evident, that this pretends to no proof that it is not a prophecy. It assumes it, and uses the assumption to prove Isaiah could not be the author. There is no thought of proving that it is not a prophecy: as there can be none, the reference to Babylon is a proof of the time it is composed in! The allegation that it is spoken of as present, not future, is utterly without force. It speaks of things as present, which, by the supposition, were future, the destruction of Nebo and Babylon, which were only a sure hope. It pretends, that is, to be a prophecy, and of the glorious restoration of Jerusalem, when they were in exile. If, then, it be not a prophecy, it is an imposture. Indeed the notion of a person making a prophetic book of events to encourage the people when they were present is an absurdity on the face of it. They do not want it. That an impostor may arouse hopes from his use of coming events, which throw their shadows before, is very possible; but this does not suit the argument that they relate events when they are present. But more of this when we come to Daniel, who enters into details.

Only here I remark that the theory is an absurdity. A prophet may use present interventions of God as a ground of confidence for future ones of which he prophesies; but a prophet of present events is nonsense. But this is the rationalist theory. And see how little reality there is in all this reasoning. They say Isaiah's saying that Jerusalem lay desolate is a proof that the Jews were already exiles and Jerusalem destroyed. Yet of Nineveh it is said, she is empty, and void, and waste! But here they do not think of saying it was past. It is evident enough it is the prophetic Spirit rendering it present in vision in both.

W. But why should they insist on it in Isaiah and not in Nahum?

H. In Nahum there is no direct Messianic prophecy; and therefore they have no particular object: they are content to leave it in the shade. Isaiah is too plain. If it be a prophecy, it is a prophecy of Christ. We have seen, indeed, that their whole statement as to Nahum is false in fact. It is equally so here; for the greater part (indeed all the prophecy) speaks of future events, as the neologists admit. Nebo had not bowed down, and Babylon had not yet fallen. The Jews were in exile then, and a very large part indeed has nothing to do with Babylon, but speaks of the coming of the Lord to judge all flesh, the future glory of Jerusalem, and the like.

My part here is, not to shew Isaiah true, but the neologists false. There is, in fact, no ground at all for their statements. Prophets may take an immediately imminent fact and speak of it. Thus, when the people were besieged and hoped to escape, Jeremiah declares they should go to Babylon, and so they did. So Ezekiel; only he declares Zedekiah should come to Babylon, and die there, but not see it; as it happened, for they put his eyes out. But this is not the case in Isaiah. Besides, the stopping at chapter 14: 23 is perfectly arbitrary. The prophecy is the same, at any rate, to the end of chapter 27. But the reason is obvious: we get then the Assyrian destroyed after Babylon, and this does not suit present things in Babylon. It is avowedly future in the text. And the destruction of the Assyrian in the future, when Israel was in Babylon, will not do if it is a prophecy. What has the founding of Zion to do with the destruction of the Philistines, if we go to the end of the chapter? No, Isaiah prophesies Babylon will be destroyed: an immense event, because it was the great seat of idolatry -- the empire God had first formally given to the Gentiles (the four monarchies) -- that which stands as the type of man's idolatrous power in the earth oppressing God's people. Hence its judgment was in moral import all-important; and the prophet looks out from it to the great closing deliverance of the earth, and adds the destruction of the Assyrian, the great external enemy that attacked God's people (not where they were captive, and never substituted for Jerusalem, as Babylon was); and then the inward enemies in their own territory, the Philistines; and Zion would be really founded of God. Hence as to Babylon, though he does prophesy its present judgment, as he had the captivity there to Hezekiah, when he was in prosperity, yet he goes on far beyond -- to the day of the Lord.

The principle then is an assumption of the question which we have to prove, in order to conclude as to who the author of the book is, and has no pretension to be an argument as to anything else. And the alleged facts on which it is founded are no facts at all. Its being Isaiah or not is all one to those who believe it is inspired, although I doubt not the least it was Isaiah. Why should any one have shoved in parcels of prophecy into his? It is not merely the last twenty-five chapters, but parcels in the midst of the prophecies which are absolutely needed to make a whole of it; for, if we leave out Babylon and the then history of the nations which Isaiah prophetically gives, they are altogether incomplete. The main element, without which the rest have not their sense, is wanting. It is the main part of a whole, as any one reading it may see. And the only reason for taking it out is that it must be a prophecy if it is left in; and this avowedly. But the rest is prophecy, too, of Moab, Egypt, etc., so that nothing is gained.

I am aware that the style is alleged. But this is merely a help; and it is not denied that there are peculiarities which prove its similarity, while the general flow of the last half is naturally different from short burdens. I say, it is not denied. The explanation of these is, "But these peculiarities prove nothing." "Their agreement in this respect cannot have been accidental, and must be explained as an imitation of the genuine, or in some other way." One who can reason thus, De Wette, has not much title to claim attention.

W. Clearly not. It is well in these days to know what these neologists have to say. That I find difficulties in scripture does not surprise me. I wait, and profit by the overflowing mass of evidently divine instruction. But when learned men, or men who give themselves out for such and have credit for great research, present it as a settled thing in Hebrew and Chaldee (and I know not what, where most people cannot follow them) that the scriptural books are not inspired and cannot be, it is a relief to know what ground they go on. Thus, when I find that it is simply assuming there cannot be a prophecy, and no more; and that half Isaiah is cut off solely because the chapters speak of future events, and therefore must have been then written, their whole statement crumbles to nothing. It is simply making impostors or fanatics of all the inspired writers, because inspiration is impossible, that is, simply direct unbelief without any motive but the will of unbelief. And I through grace can judge for myself; I have tasted, and am assured that they are inspired. Besides, what you say is true, that the pretension that they were prophecies written at the time of the events, or after, is false as to the fact in the prophecies, and absurd upon the face of it.

H. As regards the alleged later words, the statement as to sagan is an absurdity. It is used in Isaiah when he is speaking of the conqueror (Cyrus) treading down the Babylonish power; and speaks of the half governors, half kings, or deputies, satraps or pachas, who had that title in the East: and Isaiah gives them their title. It is used by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as well as by Daniel. It would be just as much sense to say that I was not an Englishman because I spoke of the French Chambers, because in England they were called Houses.

As regards the alleged words of later Hebraism and Chaldaism, I have no pretension to be learned in Hebrew certainly, but I have examined them -- at least many of them; some are (as the use of zaba alleged by De Wette, is, I am quite sure) a blunder. Of another, which is an Aramaism, Gesenius says, an Aramaic form for the Hebrew one in a word much more common in Aramaean is less surprising. Others (as the use of then for if) I judge to be simply false interpretation. It has, I am satisfied, its usual Hebrew sense as the English gives it. Another, in which he follows Gesenius, alleging a Chaldaism, is entirely rejected by Rosenmuller, who gives the word as in the English as good Hebrew; and the LXX and Jerome so translate it: so Jarchi, one of the learned Rabbin. Hence I conclude, with Stuart of Andover, that the discrepancy has no solid basis of proof. The objections are wholly groundless.

The best Hebraists, nay, the objector, admit that the style is not that of the later Hebrew. De Wette will have it an imitation; Rosenmuller admits that the writer, who lived near the close of the Babylonish exile, personated some ancient prophet. He admits too, that all the latter part points to some glorious future restoration which the then restoration of Jerusalem in no way fulfilled. Only when Cyrus's decree came out he encouraged his compatriots by it. How little all this enters into the spirit of the prophet I need not say.

I will enter now into some examination of the last part, and shew their estimate of it to be as superficial as all the rest. I may mention that Gesenius treats it as an epistle to the Jews in exile. How then written in Babylon? They allege that the last chapters are a whole, and that the servant must be one throughout; and chapter 53 speaks of him. Bunsen alleges it is Jeremiah; Gesenius a personification of all the prophets.

W. But this is a deliberate denial of the authority of the apostles and New Testament, who quote the passage and apply it to Christ.

H. Do you fancy they trouble themselves about that? Not only the apostles, but the Lord, according to the evangelist, quotes their pseudo-Isaiah as a prophet (John 6: 45); Paul, Peter, John, all quote Isaiah 53, and that, too, as referring to Christ. But what are apostles to Neologists? They spoke according to their natural prejudices -- you would not suppose the new school to have any.

W. But why do they call themselves Christians?

H. It is, I judge, in some respect a mercy. Habit, convenience, and, I trust, in many an instance, the restraint of conscience, where only the mind is led astray; but the Jewish journalist has, while exulting in their denial of Christianity, reproached them with their want of honesty.

But to proceed with Isaiah: -- I shall shew you that the servant is not the same; that the portion is not one, though the parts compose a whole; and, though Christ be seen throughout, yet that (as I said before) Israel is first presented in one part, then in the next Christ takes Israel's place, and then He is the word of God to those that have ears to hear; and then the remnant in the last days take this place of servant.

The first part ends in chapter 48 with "There is no peace, saith Jehovah, to the wicked." In this, though Christ be named, Israel is distinctly brought forward as the servant, and the question of idolatry raised, which Babylon represents, and Israel is held guilty in respect of graven images, and not heeding God's word; but in the end full deliverance and blessing is promised after full chastisement, only distinguishing the wicked and the remnant.

In chapter 49 the second part begins; it ends in chapter 57, and again with, "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked."

Now, in chapter 40, 48, though in the first comforts and promises Christ be named as the servant of Jehovah after the glory of Jehovah has been insisted on, yet when the prophet speaks of restoring Israel, and turns to their moral condition before it, they are looked at as the responsible servant of Jehovah, and His witnesses as the one only true God. "Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servants whom I have chosen." But Israel had been weary of Him, yet He would restore and bless them, and idolatry and Babylon would be judged.

Then Israel stands forth in chapter 49 as the chosen witness and servant before the Gentiles. Then, in verse 4, comes the charge, not of disobedience and idolatry, but of the rejection of Christ. He is the true servant, but has laboured in vain; the true vine, the true Son, but is rejected, and Israel guilty of that. But God would infallibly make good His promises; yet Israel would be divorced: "Wherefore when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer?" Then we have Christ's humiliation. And now Israel itself is called upon to hear the voice of Jehovah's servant, and the lot of each depends on this. (Chapter 50: 11.) Here they who were the witnesses and servant are called upon to hear the Servant. Such and such only might count on blessing; and then restoration is gone through in a beautiful progress from the distress of the humbled remnant to the full latter-day glory of Jerusalem. Then the Servant is exalted and extolled, and very high, sprinkles many nations: kings shall shut their mouths at Him; for that which they had not been told shall they see, and that which they had not heard they shall consider. Then comes the confession of the way they had received Him when He was there, and the declaration that, when they esteemed Him stricken and smitten of God and afflicted, it was really an expiation work, and with His stripes they were healed. The result is blessing, but through judgment, because of not only this but subsequent iniquity; but in the end healing: only no peace to the wicked. With this the second part closes. He then, in the third part, enters on a full controversy with Israel for their sins, and the extreme departure from God in the latter days, owned by the faithful in spirit; and then God interferes in judgment for His own name's sake, and the Redeemer comes to Zion -- a passage quoted by Paul as yet to be fulfilled. This, in a certain sense, closes the part. The rest unfolds various subjects connected with the latter days. The glory and holiness of Jerusalem is depicted then in that day. Christ is introduced in a passage quoted by Himself, and passing from His first coming in humiliation to His second in judgment. We have the confession and intercession of the prophet in Israel's name in the last days; the answer of God, how He had had patience with Israel, and used their rejection to call the Gentiles, and He will judge the sins of Israel; but -- and here we find the servants again -- He will make a difference between His elect servants and the wicked nation. This is enlarged upon; the rejection of mere outward service in that day is shewn, and Jehovah, coming in judgment and vengeance to all flesh, is announced, but for the glory and blessing of these servants, the remnant of Israel. Thus we have Israel servant, faithless; and Christ servant. He is to be heard by the previous witnesses; now He is rejected. Then, at the close, those who hear His voice are in the place of servants, and inherit the promises to Israel, when Jehovah comes to judge all flesh. They tell us this must be one single servant! and, if we are to believe Baron Bunsen, and what Dr. Williams recommends as a masterly analysis, all this vast scope of prophecy, from a suffering Christ to a judged world, concerns Jeremiah.

W. It is difficult indeed to conceive anything so, I was going to say, imbecile. I really know not what word to use. That would not be a seemly one, I own.

H. Think of his sprinkling many nations, kings shutting their mouths at him, confounded, that is, at his being so extolled and so high -- the poor man that was dragged down to Egypt and died there! For here it is the same servant: the chapters, as they insist to their own confusion, cannot be separated; chapter 52: 13 begins the strophe, so to speak. Gesenius is not quite so absurd; he takes the whole body of prophets personified, rejected as they were by the people; and adds, against De Wette and others, that whether we look at the language, or reflect on the universal expiatory sacrifices, and the habits of thought of Israel, and indeed all nations, we must see here reference to an expiatory work. But Christ and grace cannot be accepted, so perverse is the poor heart of man; the sufferings of the prophets are looked at by him as expiatory, and the means of Israel's deliverance -- anything, provided it be not Christ. He adds that no man can doubt that the New Testament doctrine was founded on this. The poor unhappy apostles who did not know their own religion! And all this time has elapsed, deceived by the means of their teaching, and in the nineteenth century light has come in. Well might (not Tertullian alone but) John say, "That which was from the beginning;" and "Let that therefore abide in you which ye heard from the beginning: if that which ye have heard from the beginning abide in you, ye also shall abide in the Son and in the Father." And Paul, that we should continue in what we have learned, knowing of whom we have learned it, and that the scriptures can make us wise unto salvation. And again, John -- "He that is of God heareth us; and he that is not of God heareth not us: hereby know we the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error." I have heard the apostles, I have heard them quoting this passage of Christ; and I know the SPIRIT OF ERROR in Dr. Williams.

There is another point I would notice here. The sufferings of Christ are no doubt spoken of in Isaiah 53. The prophets were animated by the Spirit of Christ, Himself the great and perfect Prophet; and for the testimony of the word they, as He, were rejected and suffered: their report was not more received than His as the Great Prophet. So far there is a very important and interesting analogy. But that is not the chief point here. The fact is recognized, as in Psalm 22 and Isaiah 50; but it is only the occasion here of the people's recognition of something else. "We hid our faces from him." But what was the secret of this? "Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows," as faithful in the midst of their unfaithfulness. In a measure a prophet could say that, yea, or a Christian could say it too in a fuller way. "Therefore I endure all things," says the apostle, "for the elect's sake."

But now we come to another point. "Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all ... for the transgression of my people was he stricken ... it pleased Jehovah to bruise him, he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed ... and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied; by his knowledge shall my righteous servant instruct many in righteousness [so I translate the hiphil here], and he shall bear their iniquities ... because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." Now none can read the chapter without seeing that, as Gesenius admits, expiatory suffering is the point insisted on -- a principle of interpretation evident, from the terms of the passage, as being the point. They thought Him rejected of God as well as man; but He was really bearing their iniquities. This is the special force of the chapter, confirmed by the general conviction of the Jews on the subject of expiation, and of every nation under heaven.

Now what I note this now for is, that this point is (as a Christian can easily conceive) wholly omitted in the "masterly analysis." Not one word of it has Dr. Williams to produce from Bunsen, naturally enough. The pious and devoted prophet, though really representing Christ as a prophet, was far enough from pretending to be a sacrifice. But the folly of this interpretation is yet more evident, because, if our Isaiah prophesied at the end of the exile, Jeremiah was dead and gone; and that which is clearly future at the end can have no application to him. To apply it to a series of prophets is absurd; with any application to Israel as a people, the common modern Jewish idea, it is in contradiction. They are confessing their having misconceived the position of the sufferer, and that he suffered for their sins. No, nothing can be clearer than the prophecy. The servant who was to be exalted, and extolled, and very high, so that kings should shut their mouths, and he sprinkle many nations, was to be rejected by the Jews and of men, but make his soul an offering for sin, and then be highly exalted. The terms of the passage, its place in the prophecy, all give it its true and evident character, and enable us to understand why the apostles (that is, the same Spirit that dictated it) use it (I do not exactly say found their doctrine on it, for both it and their doctrine are founded on the fact) to confirm and illustrate the doctrine of the sufferings of the blessed Saviour. (Compare Psalm 22.)

W. It is as clear as can possibly be. I bless God for it. And indeed the attacks of enemies -- and able enemies, such as Gesenius and De Wette, and surely of Dr. Bunsen and Dr. Williams -- only prove their impotency in attempting to assail this foundation doctrine of Christianity and basis of all holy peace, that Christ is a propitiation for our sins.

H. And see the sad perversions to which it leads. "Israel," Dr. Williams tells us, "would be acknowledged, as in some sense still a Messiah (for in spite of Baron Bunsen he prefers really the perversion of Jewish unbelief to Christianity), having borne centuries of reproach through the sin of the nations; but the Saviour ... would be recognized as having eminently the unction of a prophet whose words die not, of a priest in a temple not made with hands, and of a king in the realm of thought delivering his people from a bondage of moral evil, worse than Egypt or Babylon." Israel, then, is the Messiah who suffered for I do not know what through the wickedness of the Gentiles; and Christ a king in the realm of thought to deliver us from moral evil. It might be rather said, if we are to take the new school, a Saviour from the bondage of apostolic Christianity, for this seems the greatest evil they see. "The vast majority of prophecies require some such rendering in order to christianize them," and "our Isaiah" too. "Chapter 53, which had been thought exceptional, is shewn to harmonize with a general principle." What is meant by christianizing the prophecies I do not know, as the prophets, they say, were only persons warning or arousing Jews by pretended prophecies (denouncing their compeers), compiled when the circumstances were present; but I take note that it is recognized that the vast majority of prophecies require some such rendering to reduce them to the measure of the new school. I believe it. Chapter 53 is a specimen of this rendering. The Jews are Messiah in a sense, and Christ has not suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust. He is a Prophet, a Priest without a sacrifice, and a deliverer from moral evil as King. The apostolic view of Christianity, the Christianity of the founders of the religion, has all to be corrected. It requires it. There is no propitiation, no sacrifice. All its great traits, as we learn it from the New Testament, are a mistake. How happy that there are some who understand a religion better than those who founded it!

I turn to Psalm 2. "If he would follow our version in rendering Psalm 2 'kiss the Son;' he knows that Hebrew idiom convinced even Jerome the true meaning was worship purely." This statement is false. He admits nescu (I quote) means "kiss," and says, as kissing the hand had the sense, as in Job, of worshipping, he has given the sense, not the letter. As to "Bar," he acknowledges he had (in his "Commentariolis," which are now lost) translated it "kiss the Son," contrary to the old Italic, which had translated it "learn discipline" -- probably an interpretation, and which is now found in the Vulgate, which has preserved the old Italic psalms after the LXX, as the English Prayer Book the old version.

Ruffinus attacked him for now giving this up, and saying, Adore purely. He replies: "Bar signifies different things -- Son, as Bar-jesus, etc., wheat, a handful of ears of corn, elect, and purely. What, then, have I sinned if I have translated a doubtful word with differing interpretations, and, having said in my notes, where there was the liberty of explanation, 'adore the Son' -- in the body itself, lest I might seem a violent interpreter, and give occasion to Jewish calumnies, should have said 'adore purely,' or 'in an elect way' (electe) as Aquila and Symmachus have translated? How does it hurt their ecclesiastical faith, if the reader should be taught in how many ways amongst the Jews one little verse can be explained?"

The reader will judge how far Hebrew idiom convinced even Jerome. He would not force it all one way to avoid Jewish calumnies, and so has given it several; in his own notes, when he was free, "kiss the Son;" in the text, "adore purely." Jerome alone gives, "kiss the Son," in Latin, as also "adore purely." The Vulgate "learn discipline," following the LXX (as did the Italic or old Latin), was used in the christian world, save in the Syriac translation, which, as a kindred language, followed the Hebrew closely, and reads, "kiss the Son." The Hebrew is no doubt obscure. But that the Hebrew idiom obliges to read, "adore purely," is anything but just. De Wette, a first-rate Hebraist and extreme rationalist (though it seems, thank God, drawing yearly closer to Christ as he grew older, yet the freest of the free as to doctrine), in his otherwise very beautiful though somewhat affected translation, gives, "kiss the Son." Rosenmuller declares that nashak is never used by itself for "adore" or "venerate." Hengstenberg, a Corypheus against rationalists, translates it, "kiss the Son," and quotes Gesenius, Winer, and Hitzig for the same; Venema the same, referring to the sense of elect in Bar, and giving "elect son." In the main, Rosenmüller approves, quoting many others. He translates "give the kiss of veneration to so great a King." Symmachus gives "purely." I am not aware of others (Aquila, I suppose, electe). The Septuagint translation, which is also the Chaldee, is a kind of interpretation like Rosenmüller's, and gives the sense. Jews avoided the term "Son," and so Neologists. "Bar" is more Aramaean; but Gesenius admits Hebrew tends to Aramaean in poetry. Vaihinger gives "kiss the Son." Hupfeld has it like Jerome, admitting that Gesenius, De Wette, Hengstenberg, that is, the ablest modern Hebraists, and most moderns, admit this -- the Son -- to be right. So much for the insinuation of Hebrew idiom convincing Jerome; and, if Hebrew idiom, it should, of course, convince others; whereas all the ablest Hebraists translate it, "kiss the Son." I repeat, never trust the facts of Neologians.

I now turn to Psalm 22: 17. He finds, in the most ancient Hebrew reading, "like a lion." Now that there are difficulties of interpretation or readings in Hebrew no one doubts. Christianity is in no way concerned in this phrase. It is not quoted in the New Testament. The reason for reading it as it is in the English translation is that the ancient Jews insist it is so in the old Hebrew. It is no question of rationalism. The most High Church orthodox writers take it as meaning "a lion." The form is peculiar. There is the same in Isaiah, where it is translated, "as a lion;" but the ancient Jewish writers insist that it is not to be read so here. The LXX (a century and a half, say, before our Lord) translates it, "they pierced my hands and my feet:" so the Vulgate, so the Syriac in Walton; Montanus, De Wette, Hengstenberg, and many, "as a lion." Of the ancients, the Chaldee Targum only has "as a lion," and (according to De Rossi, the best authority) is of small authority, and founded on bad manuscripts. He insists on the manuscripts of the very learned critic of the Jews, Ben Chaiim, and the Masora, that "they pierced" is right; Rosenmuller prefers "they bound."

It is a question of reading. Cahari is, "as a lion;" most probably, though not certainly, caharu is, "they pierced;" and the difference in Hebrew is very slight (yrak -- wrak). Caru is, "they bound." Now, as all the ancient translations give "they pierced," the Masora confirms, and one of the most critical Jewish doctors approves, pleading his own good Jewish manuscripts; and the use of the text by the fathers may have induced the Jews to tamper with the text by a change hardly perceptible; and as the pointing is uncertain, there is nothing so sure in the matter. I avow I am disposed to think "pierced" right. What is the meaning of "the assembly of the wicked surrounded me, as a lion my hands and my feet?" I do not see much sense in it. What is most against "pierced," though it proves nothing, is that it is never referred to in the New Testament, whereas other parts of the Psalms are. However, my own conviction is that "they pierced" is right.

The difficulties and labour of those who take "as a lion" as the true reading, in making any sense of it, shew that it is no natural reading. Its place in the Psalm makes it inappropriate. It is not "the strength of bulls and lions" that is here spoken of (that is an earlier stage of the speaker's sorrow), but the "shamelessness of dogs." It is an interpretation of what is ascribed to the dogs. They "compass" him -- so the wicked: then to jump to a lion, who does not compass people at all, is out of place. Next, how "compass his hands and feet?" What does this mean? We have had the lion, but then it was only "gaping with the mouth," and in place; here he is going on with personal details. All tends, I think, to shew the ancient interpreters were right, had they cahari, or caharee, or caharu. Venema reads "as a lion," but connects "my hands and my feet" with "I can count" -- an additional proof of the difficulties of those who reject the ancient versions. That it is the most ancient Hebrew reading is anything but proved; that it is the common modern one is true. The versions have so far more authority in the Old Testament, that no Hebrew manuscript is so old by many centuries as the oldest of the New.

In any case, though the apostles have quoted the Psalm as a prophecy of Christ, Dr. Williams is sure they are wrong. "The staring monsters are intended by whom Israel is surrounded and torn." Only read the psalm through -- the declaring God's name to his brethren, and "in the midst of the church will I praise thee;" compare this with John 20, and you will see how impossible it is to apply it to Israel. But the greatness of the scope of divine thought, the moment Christ and redemption is the centre, these men seem incapable of.

I will give you a little sketch of the Psalms preceding 22, which will lead us to see how specially it applies to Messiah. That the whole book of Psalms is in methodical order I cannot doubt, though we cannot enter on it now. Psalm 1 gives the righteous Jew, the remnant contrasted with the wicked; Psalm 2, Christ as King in Zion, according to the decree of God, and owned Son; the nations and rulers raging against Him, but warned; then, Christ being rejected of men, the righteous are in trial, instead of the government of God securing their present blessing, as in Psalm 1. But in Psalm 8 Christ has a wider character than in Psalm 2. He is Son of man, not Son of David, and all things are put under Him, and Jehovah's name is excellent in all the earth. Thus the ways of God with earth are shewn. Psalms 9 and 10 enter into the details of Israel's condition in the land in the last days, and their deliverance. Psalms 11-15 go through this, and the feelings it produces, in various ways; hence they become a comfort in any trial. In Psalm 16, Christ first takes, in the most exquisite and deeply instructive way, His place among the excellent of the earth: it shews the path of life through death; and, as His trust was in Jehovah, Jehovah's presence was His joy as man. Psalm 17 treats the subject, not of confidence, but of righteousness; and here we get glory, and what I may call reward, more than joy. Psalm 18, I have no doubt, looks at the suffering of Christ as the centre of all God's ways from Egypt to Messiah's kingdom.

I now come to the Psalms I had immediately in mind. In Psalm 19 we have two testimonies of God -- the creation (the heavens), and the law. In Psalm 20 the true faithful Witness is prophetically viewed as rejected by men, and in sorrows. In Psalm 21, which directly answers to it, having cried for life, He is exalted, as man, to everlasting glory, and His hands find out His enemies. This was outward government and dealing. He had suffered from man imagining devices against Him; and when they took the character of enemies, they were judged. But (Psalm 22) Christ did not suffer from man only: bulls did not close Him in. Heartless, shameless dogs then surrounded Him; and He looked, not only to man to have compassion on Him, and there was none -- not one that could watch one hour; He looked to God, and was forsaken there. But suffering from God was avenging, not to be avenged; hence, when this is passed, all is grace, widening out in blessing. He declares His name to His brethren, as He did in John 20, there first distinctly calling them brethren, and leads the praises of the Church He has gathered; then brings in all Israel; then all the ends of the world remember themselves, and turn to Jehovah; and then the seed born in this time of blessing learn the great truth, to chant it with others, that He hath done this. It is evident to me there is progress in the bulls and the dogs; the first refers to mere violence, leading Him to the cross; the other to men's conduct when He was there. But the witness of creation, law, and Messiah, rejected of men, and He glorified and judging; and then His being forsaken of God, the result of which was not judgment (for He was bearing it), but grace, unmingled grace, makes the true import of the Psalm most clear.

Could we dwell upon it, and study the grace of Christ in it, the place He gives us in it -- what the declaring the Father's name was (see John 20), and the full import of this consequent on redemption, and the place He then takes in our midst, when redemption is accomplished, to lead our praises as being in, and having placed us in, the same perfect joy -- it would shew the extraordinary beauty of this psalm as applied to Christ. We may take the words of His lips upon the cross to shew us He was not a stranger to it. Now, I can only use the series as marking the place Christ has in it, when God after all did not despise nor abhor the affliction of the afflicted, and when atonement was made for sin.

I do not believe that "I have called my son out of Egypt" is a mere accommodation. It is an example of the universal principle of the substitution of Christ the true Vine, the Servant, for the old vine, the servant. He began all anew as the stock for Israel, as He did for man.

That Isaiah 9 may be translated "the father of the age to come" may be alleged. No Christian thinks of making Christ in the proper sense the Father. El Gibbor, it may be disputed, is "the strong and mighty one." Let us even suppose it is so, although it be undoubtedly contrary to the soundest criticism: one thing is certain -- it is Christ then owned by the Jews after Jehovah has hid His face from them, and the law has been sealed among His disciples only, and Israel has gone through depths of misery, and, finally, the judgment by fire. Then Israel will own the child born as all this to them. It is a divinely given prophecy of Messiah. As to Isaiah 7: 16, Dr. Williams may "not listen," but his judgment will not now have much weight with a serious and critical mind. I fully believe it to be a prophecy of Christ, as Matthew has declared it. The prophecy goes on to the passage already referred to (chapter 9: 7); and unequivocally gives all Israel's history till the time of rest and glory, including Christ's "first and second coming." The occasion of this germinant prophecy was the attack of Rezin and Pekah. But the children are symbolical children from their names -- "the remnant shall return," and "making speed to the spoil, he hasteneth the prey." So the then circumstances, in which confederacy was sought with the Assyrian, are used as a peg to hang the exhortation to look to Jehovah, and so introduce Christ's first coming, and its effects on his rejection, and thereby Israel's. Jehovah would be a stone of stumbling, and have disciples and children, and wait in this character of the faithful one in Israel on Jehovah. The safety was in Immanuel.

Now the wickedness of the house of David was the ruin of the last prop of Israel responsible to God, and thereon, as a stay to the faith of the remnant and all the promises, the virgin's Seed is promised. This is said to be Hezekiah. Now the application of the whole to Hezekiah only shews the utmost narrowness of spirit. It is absurd to think that all God's counsels end in a Jewish king who, after all, though blessed, wrought no great deliverance. The end of the prophecy cannot apply to him; he had no disciples, he was not the father of an age. But, farther, a little critical enquiry shews it could not be Hezekiah at all. Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he began to reign. Ahaz reigned sixteen years; consequently Hezekiah was born some eight or nine years before Ahaz began to reign; consequently there could not be a promise of his birth after Ahaz was reigning. So that the sign so solemnly given when the last hope of Israel failed in the apostasy of the house of David (for such it was in Ahaz) the sign that the Lord Himself interferes to give, calling him, "God with us," means that one (no one knows who), who till then had been a virgin, should bear a son. It certainly is not Hezekiah. Is it not evident that the Spirit of God is looking out to some greater deliverer, who should indeed be Immanuel? Even the learned Jewish Rabbin, Jarchi, etc., have given up the foolish attempt to apply it to Hezekiah. Since that they and other opposers of Christianity have been at their wits' end, seeking how to make a sign out of some younger wife of Ahaz's having a son at the epoch of the prophecy.

Now if you examine the prophecy (or pretended prophecy, for we are to assume nothing), you will find in symbolical and mysterious language the whole scene of Jewish history in connection with Messiah, and the state of the nation to the end when glory and deliverance comes to it. The main features are depicted in these children, one being already born, all bearing (as is usual in prophecy, and indeed in history) names indicative of the events they represent -- Shear-Jashub, Immanuel, Maher-shalalhashbaz -- the remnant of Israel and its restoration; God with the people, represented by this child; and the inroad of the Assyrian, the universal expression of the enemy of the latter day. The history of the people, as we have seen, is continued from Ahaz to the glorious time of Messiah. The occasion was this: -- the people despised the promises to the house of David -- despised the waters of Shiloah, and, trusting in human strength, cried out for a confederacy. The house of David itself, despising the promises, sought help by confederacy with the Assyrian, and removed the altar of Jehovah, putting a heathen altar in its place in the temple. In these circumstances, the prophet, or Isaiah giving himself for a prophet, unfolds the history of Israel. Already he owns a remnant only which shall be restored, for he sees all ruined. He goes with Shear-Jashub to the king. The king refuses the encouragement of an offered sign from Jehovah. He was too wise a politician and lover of arts to have faith in Jehovah. Then Immanuel is promised to Israel, born of the virgin; but the land was to be desolate. Next, the latter-day circumstances are entered on. The Assyrian comes up (prefigured by near approaching circumstances, which are almost always, perhaps always, the occasion of latter-day predictions); but the land is Immanuel's. The Assyrian overflows all up to the head, but cannot, so to say, drown altogether; for Immanuel -- God is with them. Next, the detail of the history is brought out, the people's history. The prophet is warned not to trust in confederacies, but in Jehovah the refuge of the remnant; that Jehovah, the sanctuary of those that trust in Him, would be a stumbling-stone to the mass of the people, but the law and testimony would be sealed and made good among the remnant, who are styled His disciples and His children, and are tokens to both houses of Israel that Jehovah would hide His face from the house of Israel (all this we know has taken place), that the remnant taught by Christ would wait for Him. The result would be for the nation (and this is the second part of the inward history) a time of unparalleled distress and darkness partially fulfilled but not complete, a time of darkness and oppression, leading them to rage and blasphemy. But another element was in the midst of this. Light would be there when all was the shadow of death. This would be in Galilee, not in Jerusalem; the result of this would be multiplying the nation, increasing its joy, breaking men's yoke from its neck by judgment of fire (compare Isaiah 66); for the Mighty One, the Child born to them, the Immanuel, the establisher of peace, was now owned and known by them in a kingdom never to be subverted, on the throne of David, a kingdom of peace and blessing.

Hence, Matthew, citing this prophecy, brings Jesus into Galilee, and at the close, with the true remnant, His disciples. He meets them there after His resurrection, no reference being made to the ascension, linking His life and resurrection on to future Jewish hopes and despised Galilean remembrances. The ascension took place from Bethany, the secret home of Christ, when the nation rejected Him.

W. And what do the Neologists reply to this remarkable scheme or outline of divine history, more deeply and fully known by its mysterious and symbolic character? That it gives itself for a prophecy up to the last days is clear; and the two sons of the prophet being prophetical, the third would be naturally thought so too.

H. Surely: only the prophet is in the circumstances, and with the people, and they are connected with him; but the virgin's Son is the intervention of God, God with us, and therefore not the prophets. Yet when He is seen on earth as a prophet (for so He was) He takes the prophetic place, and says, personified by the prophet, "I and the children which God hath given me." You remember the Epistle to the Hebrews quotes this as a proof of Christ's taking human nature, most rightly, as we see here. The Jews own Him, too, as a child born to them in the end, but as Immanuel withal. Verse 13 -- the stone of stumbling -- is also quoted by Peter and by Paul, and directly referred to, as applying to Himself, by the Lord, in view of the then state of the Jews as a nation, and predicting yet more awful consequences when He should fall upon them; for the rejected stone was to be the head of the corner. The rationalists insist, in reply, on the Fathers quoting it as a proof of the prophetical virginity of Mary, and urge that, had it been so, the Hebrew would be bethula, not alma, which does not imply necessarily that state.

W. But are you serious? Surely there must be something more.

H. There is, of course, that absolutely conclusive argument -- there cannot be a prophecy.

W. Yes; but that is nonsense, because it is assuming what is to be proved, and denying all revelation at once. If God can speak, He can reveal.

H. Well, I cannot help its being nonsense: it is all they have to say. Only you may remark how they labour in vain by seeking to shew what it can be. Gesenius holds it for the prophetess-wife. So Jarchi and Aben Ezra. But Gesenius admits the difficulty of calling her ha alma, because there was a son, Shearjashub. So it is another wife. But then Kimchi answers, But the land is Immanuel's land. How could Isaiah call the kingdom his second wife's baby's land? and, I may add, his second wife's baby -- "God with us?" So he says it must be a new wife of Ahaz. But then we stumble upon Hezekiah again, because it was his land in this sense. He was a kind of figure of Christ, as son of David, before whom the Assyrian fell. But then he could not be the person alluded to here; he was born some eight or nine years before Ahaz was king, and was now some twelve or thirteen years old. Evidently the same child is the glorious one of chapter 9.

But, further, Rosenmüller has shewn that the argument as to alma is unfounded, and that the scripture use of it is a virgin, and nothing else. And would it not be singular, as he adds, to call Ahaz's wife thus, and ha alma, the virgin? Remark, too, that not only Christians, i.e., the New Testament, distinctly apply this passage to Christ, but the effect was universal. The Jews expected a Messiah in the house of David, who would so deliver them and have universal rule; the Gentiles, too, as Tacitus witnesses of the expectation of the whole of the East, and as Virgil has sung, where ever he found the materials of his extraordinary ode to Pollio: --

"Ultima Cumoei venit jam carminis aetas;
Magnus ab integro soeclorum nascitur ordo.
Jam redit et virgo; redeunt Saturnia regna;
Jam nova progenies coelo dimittitur alto.
Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum,
Desinit ac toto surgit gens aurea mundo,
Casta, fave, Lucina."

Of course, in the last phrase we find the heathen, as in the whole eclogue, the courtly poet.

It is fair to add that Rosenmüller, though a rationalist, admits fully the usual sense of the passage; adding, like a rationalist, but which is confirmatory of the Hebrew truth of the passage in Isaiah: "The fact that the expectations held out by the prophet of speedy deliverance were not fulfilled should not make us deny that the prophet thought about that. He refers to the then universal expectations of a Messianic deliverer (referred to as a hope in every deep distress), confirmed by the language of Micah, a contemporary prophet." He admits, strange to say, that it predicted an incarnation (only as just coming), because one who was to be "God with them" was to be born of a virgin. He says it is evident from Matthew 1: 22, 23, that the Jews at the time of Christ so interpreted it. Not believing in inspiration they are forced to admit the facts. The statement that the word alma was not a virgin, but simply a young woman, comes from the Jews, after Christ, attempting to reject the facts of Christianity, as may be seen in Justin's dialogue with Trypho. I say after Christ, because the LXX give "the virgin," hJ parqevno" lhvystai, and Aquila and Symmachus' translations made after Christianity, the first to meet the feeling of the Jews, and the effect of the argument drawn from the LXX, give neasee footnoteni", a young woman.

W. I think what you have stated proves the flippancy of their objections. If Dr. Williams will not hear, what I have heard both shews to me the wide bearing of prophetic testimony, and how it hangs together as a whole -- how it connects itself with present circumstances, was to be an encouragement to faith then, and a revelation to future ages -- sometimes symbolical and mysterious, so as to comprise immense facts in a few words, and yet so place them in the whole scheme as to give them a plan of which Christianity is the sure, I may say necessary, interpreter. Thus Rosenmüller is so far right, that there was present encouragement; and faith met even its present reward in the ruin of Sennacherib; but, had he examined, he would have found at the same time, in the hortatory language and internal history of the nation from verse 12 to the end, to which you have referred, the evident ruin and rejection of Israel, in the rejection of Christ appearing as prophet, and having disciples, but not the nation from which Jehovah hides His face.

H. It is quite just, and you will find in this part of the prophet an unfolding of all the great principles of God's dealings. After four chapters of preface, in chapter 5 the prophet (for now I shall call him so) shews the judgment of Israel for its failure in respect of its first given blessings. In chapter 6 it is judged in respect of the coming glory of Messiah-Jehovah, but a remnant is preserved: a passage quoted in the Gospels and by Paul, as fulfilled in the blinding of the people as a people, which we know to be true (though these infidels would only make it the Gentiles' sin, not the Jews', and the Gentiles have sinned), but with an answer of peace, after judgment, to the inquiry of faith counting on Jehovah's faithfulness to promise, and saying, "How long?" Then the special prophecy as to the house of David and Christ, and the remnant, and the inroad of the latter days, and the delivering judgment and glory, which we have just considered. Then he takes up their history from Rezin and Pekah to the end, or Assyrian final invasion. But this is linked to the judgment of chapter 5 by the words, "For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still;" repeated in chapters 9: 12, 21; 10: 4. And as the Assyrian was the last enemy from without (from Babylon on they were captives, and the temple burnt, or under the Gentile monarchies), it is said, on the occasion of his destruction, "For yet a very little while and the indignation shall cease, and mine anger in their destruction" (chapter 10: 25); for he was the rod of God's anger, and the staff in his hand was God's indignation. Then (chapter 11, 12) we have Messiah, and the results of His coming, the rod of the stem of Jesse. The word "indignation" becomes technical in after prophecy for the later sorrows of the Jews, as in Daniel; and the expression in verse 22, "the consumption decreed," very definitely so, for the special dealings of God in the last days.

And, remark, this history of Israel, and the outward connection of Christ with the people, is never quoted in the New Testament; while the special dealings of God in connection with the revelation of Jehovah in chapters 6, 7, 8, are largely and repeatedly quoted -- a fresh confirmation how one divine mind runs through all scripture.

W. I enjoy your unfoldings of scripture more than your controversy; still I do not deny that this is useful and called for. Can you refer me to the texts where the expressions you call technical are used?

H. I am sure I enjoy them, at any rate, much more. I have hesitated as to whether any controversy was to be desired. But your own state of mind, though fully believing the truth of the divine record, and of many others, where unbelief lies floating, so to speak, has made me think it might be useful. I will refer to some of the texts; but if they did not refer to the same epoch, they would not have the same force they have, which you must note. As to "indignation," Daniel 8: 19; 11: 36: and as to "consumption decreed," Isaiah 28: 22, and Daniel 9: 27. I little doubt the Lord refers to this when He speaks of the shortening of these days in Matthew 24.

W. I thank you; I shall examine them. They not only connect the two prophets, but, if I understand their bearing, throw light on the whole nature of this last period, so often referred to in scripture. I think, by the by, this constant reference to the last days; to a special time, at the close of trial, judgments, and deliverance at the end, makes the rationalistic system of application to present events, or mere Bunsenian second-sight, utterly untenable. It was in all the prophecies, from the Pentateuch on, a distinct object held out -- a system of divine government before all their minds -- a system which (be it false prophecy, which would be, I think, incredible in itself, or true) at any rate proves the falseness of the rationalist view. But we have been led, I think, to Daniel.

H. I entirely agree with you. It is evidently a whole; the prophetic scheme connecting itself, of course, with present warning and circumstances, but in most various parts and divers manners, all bearing on one great delivering intervention, preceded by trials. We have the sorrows and joys of it in the Psalms, and the encouragement and warnings of it in prophets, Christ's connection with the remnant in rejection or in deliverance in both Psalms and prophets, but evidently one great moral scheme. And this is a proof of its truth, because it shews that it is not the fruit of individual mind, but of one divine mind; for it is not copying or carrying on a scheme one from another (there is only one such case of Micah and Isaiah), nor flattering the people. They fit into a whole, but do not apply to one another.

But we will turn to Daniel. The German critics in general have given him up, but we must enquire why. It is become an axiom, we are told. But German and rationalist axioms have not much hold on my mind. We will get rid of evidently false grounds of judgment to begin with. "The absence of any mention of it by the son of Sirach strikingly confirms their view of its origin" -- that of a patriot bard using Daniel's name in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. Now, according to the justest criticism, all the twelve minor prophets are omitted too, though even the fact of Daniel's being in the Hagiographa would account for its not being named there is only natural. But the connection of the phrase in Greek, as to the sense, proves, I think, the introduction of the twelve minor prophets to be an interpolation, and an unskilful one. Daniel's being by the Tigris, if it proves anything, proves the genuineness of the book, as a Jew would certainly have thought of the Euphrates, the great river, not of one all but unknown and unmentioned. But it really proves nothing, because it was in the third year of Cyrus, when Daniel had left Babylon, and was at Shushan and other places. The remark of Dr. Williams, "If the scene had been Babylon under Darius, the river must have been Euphrates," has no meaning. There is question neither of Darius nor of Babylon. He cannot have simply looked at the chapter. These and similar remarks we may leave as worthless.

The real objection to Daniel is, that prophecies and visions are impossible. Thus De Wette. It appears that Daniel is not the author of this book "from its legendary contents. It is full of improbabilities." "The events of a distant future ... are related with great distinctness and accuracy, even with the addition of the dates. This was evidently done after the events." Now it is perfectly evident that this is no argument. It is simply saying, as we have seen before, there can be no prophet, no revelation; therefore Daniel is not one, and this is not a revelation, but composed after the event! This can have no force; it is a mere petitio principii, a begging the question. But a statement is made connected with it, and repeated by all the rationalists, that the alleged prophet stops at Antiochus Epiphanes. This is simply false. He continues (after a most important reference to the state of the Jews, and a most accurate one from the time of the Maccabees) a very detailed account of the state of Palestine in connection with the kings of north and south on to the end, where Daniel was to stand in his lot at the end of days. You have only to read Daniel 11: 30 to end, and 12 to convince you of it. If their theory be true, Daniel must write the book when he stands in his lot; and the details are quite as full at the end, if not more so, than in the previous part. This is all entirely unfounded.

Along with this, there is an effort to make the account of the empires suit the fact of Daniel living in Antiochus Epiphanes' time. If so, he could not speak of the Romans, and his four monarchies must end with the Grecian. Thus with Bunsen, the lion is Assyrian, the bear Babylonian, the leopard Persian, the fourth beast Alexander. Now this is too bad. Not a trace of Nineveh existed even when the true Daniel was in Babylon, and it was wholly inconsistent, if a patriot forgery, to place him there. Nineveh had not taken Judah captive; the thought is contrary to all probability; but he did see the wings of Babylon plucked, and a tame heart given it.

The attempt to make the last beast Alexander -- that is, the beast with seven heads and ten horns -- is arbitrary and without the smallest apparent ground. It is simply impossible that Daniel could so describe the Grecian empire, if he lived in the time of Antiochus. Alexander's empire had never seven heads and ten horns. It had four, as the leopard is spoken of here; and more precisely (as in the following chapter is expressly said of the Grecian kingdom) four notable horns, and out of one of them Antiochus Epiphanes, it is declared, was to come. The previous one to this is declared to be Media and Persia.

All these statements are unworthy, I must say, of honest men. The previous attempt was to make Media one empire and Persia another, and so end with Alexander. This broke down because the prophet declares he reckons them one. "The ram with two horns are the kings of Media and Persia." What was to be done? Baron Bunsen's imagination sets at work, and the Assyrian empire is dragged in before. But this is going farther and faring worse; because, besides the utter improbability already noticed, here are clearly only four great empires contemplated, and we have another figure of them -- the statue, where the head of gold is Nebuchadnezzar; and we find the ten kings in another form in the ten toes. They are really to be pitied in their reasonings; their object cannot here be alleged to be truth, but at all cost to prove Daniel is no prophet -- that there can be no revelation.

W. Well, it is pitiable and pitiful, because there is no honest nobleness of truth in it. No one can read Daniel, be he true or false, and not see that the Babylonish empire is the starting point in his mind. The rest follows necessarily. Have they no other grounds?

H. The first chapter clearly shews where the starting-point of all his prophecies is, the basis of the scheme which the book carries out to the final deliverance of the Jews. But then, if this be so, he is a prophet, and all their system is false. Their anxiety betrays them.

Besides, chapter 9 ("Messiah is to be cut off and to have nothing," for this is the force of it) is clearly a prophecy. How they make this apply to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes I am at a loss to understand. It was poor patriotic encouragement to tell them that their Messiah, their Prince, would be there in a year and three months, be cut off, and get nothing, and then war and desolations. And the date is the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. De Wette says Daniel extends Jeremiah's seventy years to seventy weeks of years, so as to include Antiochus Epiphanes. But he admits the golden head and first beast are the Babylonian empire. Now, "include Antiochus Epiphanes" is rather vague. If we take the decree of Cyrus, which is very unlikely, it runs on to one hundred and twenty years beyond Antiochus Epiphanes, and, remark, beyond the existence of the Syrian monarchy. Cyrus took Babylon in 538 (Fynes Clinton). The Seleucidae ceased to reign in 65. But the 490 years end 48 years before Christ, so that they reach on to 17 years after the close of the Syrian monarchy. This is the most favourable case to De Wette. Yet it runs into the Roman power. If we take other decrees to be referred to, as surely they are, the prophecy runs on to the full-blown Roman empire. Why, then, "to include Antiochus Epiphanes?" But you will never find details fairly examined and compared. De Wette settles it in a much more suggestive way. It was a patriot bard; like many of our own, says Dr. Williams, who borrowed Daniel's name for himself, and then, being naturally afraid to speak of Antiochus Epiphanes, openly borrowed the names of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar to depict him; and, as Antiochus Epiphanes, from his conduct, was called Antiochus Epimanes, or madman, bethought himself of putting Nebuchadnezzar to eat grass for seven years!

W. Dear! on what principle do they apply the kingdoms? Must not the image harmonize?

H. That is not it at all. Daniel 7 cannot go lower than Antiochus Epiphanes; for you know the bard lived then, and hence you must make the others harmonize with that.

W. But do they really settle it in that sort of way?

H. That is the exact conclusion of De Wette. Because, till the new idea of Nineveh of Baron Bunsen, all begin with Babylon, as Daniel does; but then, to make four empires down to Antiochus Epiphanes is a torture.

W. But the other proofs of the epoch of Daniel's prophesying?

H. There are Greek words used for instruments of music. As to this, De Wette himself admits that it is possible that Greek instruments with these names may have been known to the Babylonians at this time. But a fuller enquiry into and deeper knowledge of languages, of which recent study has made almost a new science, has shewn that, not only does this attempt to impeach the genuineness of Daniel, from the use of Greek words, wholly fail, but the facts go to prove the genuineness. At the utmost, two names of instruments (which, if they came from Greece, would naturally keep their names) can be traced to Greek words. The others belong to that class of languages from which Greek proceeds -- the Aryan, or Indo-European, known now through Sanscrit and Zend. These words belonged to the East, and, save one, are not found where Greek and Aramaean were thrown together in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. The foreign words are, many of them, inexplicable from Greek, but are explicable from the sacred language of the Aryans, who were the priestly caste in Babylon, and under Cyrus. As I have said, when Aramaean was Hellenized, these words disappeared. The force of this is evident.

It is alleged, too, that the Chaldee and Hebrew are corrupt -- so say De Wette and Dr. Williams. I consult other authorities, and find the character of the Hebrew bears the closest affinity to that of Ezekiel and Habakkuk, who lived near his time; but it is less marked by peculiar corruptions than that of Ezra. The Aramaean also, like that of Ezra, is also of an earlier form than exists in any other Chaldaic document. Michaelis declares that the language proves it was no late compilation. Other words betray a source which renders it inexplicable how it could have been composed in Palestine. And the peculiarities urged as proofs of the late composition of Daniel are, by Havernick, on very strong grounds, shewn to be Babylonish peculiarities. Thus, like the alleged Greek, they too prove the genuineness of Daniel, which they were produced to impeach.

But this is not all. It was clearly received into the canon when the LXX translation was made; so that it was then a known book. Now, the whole of this was known as complete, at the latest supposition, in 130 before Christ, as it is mentioned by Sirach -- how long before cannot be said; but it was a well-known generally received version at that time. That is, Daniel certainly existed, was received, had been translated, not thirty years after Antiochus Epiphanes' death -- not in Palestine, but in Egypt. Within thirty years after his death it had been translated, and circulated, and added to, in Egypt. Esther was translated certainly -- some think only apocryphal additions and the book long before -- in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes. The Pentateuch is supposed to have been translated 285 or 286 years before Christ, 100 years before Antiochus, and we have a known public translation of Daniel noticed 30 years after him. Now, it is not, after all, very likely that they took 150 years to translate all; and when I say 30 years, I speak only of when the translation is first spoken of as a whole well-known. There is historical proof that the Old Testament began to be translated 1110 years before Antiochus began to reign; so that Daniel was translated probably long before the time he is made to live -- certainly at latest at-the time they say he lived -- as a part of scripture. Josephus treats him as the greatest of prophets.

W. The objections are evidently devoid of all weight; and the LXX version makes it in the last degree improbable that it can be brought down to Antiochus, even upon rationalist ground. But what do they make of the Lord's quoting it?

H. They make nothing of it; they do not trouble their heads about it. It is curious, if sorrowful, to see the spirit of these men. It is impossible that God can reveal anything; and when it is inquired if it be divine, that is out of the question. But "it suggests in the godless invader, no slight forecast of Caligula again invading the temple with like abomination, as well as whatever exalts itself against faith and conscience to the end of the world." Thus an impostor, pretending to be a prophet of olden time, can forecast a future tyrant -- make a germinant prophecy; but a true one there cannot be. This is the new school theology.

W. It is as low as it is trifling.

H. A short sketch of Daniel will facilitate our judgment of their partial interpretations. We have, first, the captive remnant, faithful and trusting Jehovah, but giving Him the name which suits Him when Jerusalem was laid low. He is the God of heaven. For the moment, His earthly place of habitation was laid low, but faith looked beyond. He was above all. Hence, in the returning intervention of God's power, the witnesses in the Apocalypse stand before the God of the earth. Next we have the Gentile powers, under which Judah was captive, presented as a whole (the man of the earth), beginning with Nebuchadnezzar. God entrusted supreme power into the hands of man. Next we find that man, thus entrusted with power, sets up an idolatrous centre, and persecutes the faithful remnant. Next it is shewn that the Gentile power loses its true sense, its dependent relationship to God (it is not exactly here idolatry, but great Babylon which I have built), and, during the whole time of the Gentiles, becomes a beast unintelligent. Next there is the contempt of Jehovah, the God of Israel; lastly, the setting up to be God. Thus we get a full picture of the Gentile world -- not alas! the finite realization of the spirit of goodness. This closes the outward history; what remains is made up of the visions of Daniel, in which the condition of the remnant, and the events of the last days are more clearly brought out. It is the inside, more than the outside, as was natural -- more relationships and conduct.

First we have the four great empires, but especially the last or western one, and its connection with the saints; and, when the explanation comes, the final persecuting power, and the triumph of saints by the judgment and coming of the Lord, are clearly brought out. Then we get the eastern part of these empires of the beasts, and that carried down to the end, passing over from the relationship of the Syro-Grecian monarchy with the faithful Jews to the last days, thus omitting the previously given western monarchy, but expressly and with detail recounting what was to happen in the last end of the indignation. Chapter 9 gives the promise of the Jews' return from Babylon, and of Messiah, in answer to Daniel's supplication; but reveals that Messiah will be cut off, and not take the kingdom, and then desolations be determined on the people. Chapters 10-12 give the history of the eastern part of the kingdom of the beasts in detail, from Cyrus and Xerxes to Antiochus Epiphanes; the coming of the Romans, describing the desolation of the Jews for many days, but then introducing the kings of north and south; but, besides them, the wilful and apostate king, and thereon the destruction of the king of the north, and the deliverance and gathering but judgment and cleansing of Israel for final blessing. We can see how complete a picture of the whole history of the world, in connection with the Jews, the book gives; there is nothing which has any pretence to be like it in what is uninspired. You may find pretentious details, and passions flattered, and solemn warning as to some cherished religions being neglected, but anything like the connected scope of Daniel does not exist.

W. It certainly is above all the puny and futile criticisms which the dislike of revelation has made men heap upon it.

H. In truth it is; and my only reply to Dr. Williams, when he says, "It is time for divines to recognize these things," is this: It is time for these servile followers of German rationalism to learn that a little attention is sufficient, for those even who are not learned, to detect their superficial flippancy, and despise -- not them, God forbid! but -- their dishonest dealing with serious subjects and with truth. Those who have the name of orthodox in Germany are too much afraid of them; the Tholucks and Neanders, and such like, men to be valued and respected in many points of view, have too much yielded to the current of popular professional pretensions to superiority, and have not held fast the groundwork of revelation. All earnest criticism to ascertain what God has said, to interpret it aright with every aid learning can bring, though a far less important thing than piety and the aid of God's Spirit, yet as to the outward text no one can object to; but no tampering with what God has said, if we recognize that He has said it. It is of the last importance morally for man that he have something to which he bows as God's word; the whole condition of my soul is different then, and when I judge, I am before God, and not a boys' professor. For the speaking of the inspiration of Shakespeare or Milton I have the most sovereign contempt. Can I feel my soul before God when I read them? Did Dr. Williams ever do that when he read the word?

W. It is an immense thing to have a revelation -- communications from God in this dark world. And, as you say, the whole moral condition of the soul is different when I place myself before the word as a direct communication from God. Besides, if competent to receive and enter into it, it is the highest privilege and enjoyment -- communion with God; not merely similarity of thought, but direct intercourse with Himself.

H. Surely it is. For one taught of God, the moral side of the question leaves no trace of doubt that these rationalists are without God in the matter. The scriptures are like the cloud at the Red Sea, a cloud and darkness to them; to the simple-hearted believer it is a light all the night. I do not know that we have much more to search into in this Essay before we close our long interview. I feel how little one can bring out the deep and rich stores of scripture in such a conversation. It is more to shew the worthlessness of the pretensions of these men. The great principles of what remains we have already reviewed. The rest is merely commonplace infidelity under the cover of indiscriminate and fulsome praise of Baron Bunsen. It is excessively badly written, turgid abstractions without a clear idea, "windows that exclude the light, and passages that lead to nothing." Dr. Williams tells us that the great result of making allowance for the distinction between poetry and prose, and not overlooking the possibility of imagination's allying itself with affection -- of holding that the Bible is an expression of devout reason, and therefore to be read with reason in freedom -- the holding that those who pretend to be inspired prophets are patriot bards using their name, and that these books contain no predictions, except by analogy and type -- can hardly be gainsaid; that the Almighty God has been pleased to educate men and nations by employing imagination, no less than conscience, and suffering His lessons to play freely within the limits of humanity and its shortcomings. "The great result is to vindicate the work of the Eternal Spirit; that abiding influence which, as our church teaches us in- our Ordination Service, underlies all others, and in which converge all images of old time, and means of grace now, temple, scripture, finger and hand of God; and, again, preaching, sacraments, waters which comfort, and flame which burns." What does that mean?

W. Well, I really do not know. Images converging in an influence may be very fine, as well as flame which burns; but it is a strange medley of a sentence.

H. Yet the object is plain enough. All that God has given of old, all revelation, all the expressions of divine power, are no more than the ordinary influence which the spirit of a man, as part of the Deity, possesses. It issues in this as the true result, be it great or small: "The Bible is, before all things, the written voice of the congregation" -- not of God to it. Let any one take and read it, and see if that be true. It is simply saying that when Isaiah says, "Thus saith the Lord," he had not the Spirit more than some other man. It was man's -- the congregation's -- voice, not God's; -- that when the magi said, "This is the finger of God," they made a blunder, and need not have been so amazed: it was only the underlying influence; -- that when Christ said, "If I, by the finger of God, cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come among you," it is still only what Dr. Williams or you may pretend to. This, he tells us, was the earliest creed of the Church. The sacred writers acknowledge themselves men of like passions with ourselves, and we are promised illumination from the Spirit which dwelt in them. Dr. Williams, if he set about it, according to this promise, could write a bible as well as they.

Now the illumination of the Spirit is promised and needed; but to confound the reception of divine truth, by the illumination of the Spirit, with the revelation of it, is as unintelligent as it is preposterous. Paul distinguishes them carefully, so that there is no excuse for so serious a mistake. "We should define inspiration consistently with the facts of scripture and of human nature; these would neither exclude the idea of fallibility among Israelites of old, nor teach us to quench the Spirit in true hearts for ever. But if any one prefer thinking the sacred writers passionless machines, and calling Luther and Milton uninspired, let him co-operate in researches by which his theory, if true, will be triumphantly confirmed." Then he tells us what it is he wishes, which, as far as I can see, has nothing to do with the matter, save of diligent criticism to have a pure text and translation.

I should like to see Dr. Williams write a bible; it would bring these lofty pretensions to a test. We should see what kind of a bible one of these true hearts would give us. He gives us fully to understand that he is one of them. He would avoid, of course, the awkward expressions of "Thus saith the Lord." He would use the theories of Lyell or Murchison, instead of giving an account of creation as from God. He would avoid the dangerous possibility of imagination allying itself with affection in giving accounts of the blessed Lord. He would profit by "the pathway streaming with light from Eichhorn to Ewald," aided "by the poetical penetration of Herder, and the philological researches of Gesenius." We will allow him to avoid the directly predictive, and even the forecast of coming tyrannies. It is dangerous ground to tread on if you do not really know what is coming.

Dr. Williams, it seems, has even the pretension to be a bard, as well as, of course, a patriot; but he may write in prose: let us see what kind of bible he will produce. He may be freely allowed all the collaborators he wishes. I think it might be fair they should be shut up in cells, like Ptolemy's translators; but we need not insist on this. They may write, not like these Essays, in entire independence of each other, but with concert and comparison, or without, as they like. Let us have their bible free from all traditional methods, and see what it will be. Do they shrink from this? Why so? The influence is abiding; they should not quench it: so their church teaches them. Their God cannot be, they assure us, as of the priests of Baal, talking, or pursuing a journey, or peradventure asleep and must be awaked. They assure us they have the fire from heaven. Let us see its fruits -- let us have their inspired communications. If not, in spite of all the water they may cast on it, we will own the true and blessed revelation from heaven, the true given fire; through a man we glory in it, but not of men, -- the true heavenly fire, the proof that our God cares for us, and that He is the true and only God, as He has revealed Himself. We can be as calm as Elijah, because we are sure, and only desire that all the people who may be misled may have their hearts turned back again; and may we fall on our faces because God has given us from Himself the true and perfect revelation of His love!

Only a few isolated passages remain, which I notice because they refer to scripture. "The verse, 'And no man hath ascended up to heaven, save he that came down,' is intelligible as a free comment near the end of the first century, but has no meaning in our Lord's mouth at a time when the ascension had not been heard of." Now he has quoted only half the verse -- it goes on, "from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven; and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness." That is, it is clearly presented as applicable before His death, not after His ascension. What precedes makes it still more evident: -- "We speak that we do know and testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you of earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" This He could do because He had come down from heaven and was divinely in it, though no man else had come down to bring word. Christ was then speaking to Nicodemus, and so speaks in the passage; it is no comment, free or unfree. The Evangelist might have added: -- and no one has gone up to do it like Him save He who came down, the Son of man who is now there, being gone back. This would have been very intelligible as his remark, without being free at all. But it is not so. They are the Lord's words at the time, only half of which are given by the reviewer; and their meaning is very simple and very evident. How shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things, when you cannot believe the earthly things of your own prophecies, which as a master in Israel you ought to have understood? And if you do not believe them, you must remain entirely ignorant of heavenly things, for nobody has gone up there to bring word back: but I can tell them; I came from heaven, and not only so, but I can, even in all their divine freshness, for I am in my divine nature always there, and it flows in my human nature to tell it according to my perfect knowledge of it.

As to faith being differently used in the Hebrews, it is a common stalking-horse of rationalists. It is not, they say, Paul's Epistle: faith is used differently. No Christian is held to believe it Paul's as it is not said so in the Epistle. I believe it is, but I am no way anxious or inclined to be dogmatic about it. I should be content to say with Origen, "Whose it is God knows," only assured that it is divine. Every one knows that very early, not two hundred years after Christ, it was doubted if it was Paul's (when fully received as scripture), because of the difference of style, and avowedly for this reason. But as to faith. It is differently applied, but does not mean a different thing. It is here looked at as an active principle of endurance and conduct, not as the ground on which we are justified. Both are true: that is all. A different subject is treated, and faith is shewn to be the principle of blessing in both; but in both it is the reliance through grace on God's word, and so on God, which is the ground of blessing. One is for peace, the other for practice.

As to Second Peter, the epistle most contested and latest known in the Church, I am thoroughly satisfied it is genuine. External evidence is not "against," but there is not so early evidence of quotation for it: that internal is, I formally deny. That mere critics who look at the surface have thought so I know. The similarity to Jude is dwelt on. There is an exactly suited difference. Jude speaks of apostasy; Peter of wickedness, because Peter speaks in both epistles of God's government, and gives the link between the glorious grace of the heaven-revealing gospel, and that government on earth as revealed already in the Old Testament: in the first epistle, viewed as exercised in favour of the just; in the second, against the wicked. Hence, he goes on to the end of all things. It professes to be the second epistle, and written by Simon Peter, saying, that he had been with Jesus in the transfiguration (and if thus an imposture, it is an audacious one; yet one which is most solemn in its denunciation of evil, and holy in its character). It properly and exactly completes the first. The question of the canon I need not go into with you, nor general councils. They do not in themselves command much respect when we read their history. There was what the rationalists, however, ought to delight in -- abundance of the human element. But I do not feel much more respect for the "first freedom of the gospel." What we have of the fathers here alluded to was mere Alexandrian speculation -- after the school whose views are presented to us by Philo -- Neoplatonism! But we can bless God, that (in spite of shameful human violence and intrigue, and the emperor's authority to keep the peace amongst the bishops of the holy councils -- for this is the real truth of the case) God, who promised that the gates of hell should not prevail against the Church, has maintained substantial foundation truth for saints to live by, through the means of, or in spite of, human aberrations. The early contentions of the Church, and the deplorable scenes of the first councils, are full of instruction in this respect.

As regards the explanation of christian doctrines by Baron Bunsen, we have seen enough to judge of them. Dr. Williams sums them up in saying, "he may be charged with using evangelical language in a philosophical sense." I only note one point as substantially important: "Salvation would be our deliverance, not from the life-giving God, but from evil and darkness, which are His finite opposites." Now this misrepresents atonement, and misrepresents the truth; it betrays the writer. Who ever heard of salvation delivering from a life-giving God? But there is a true character of God as a moral Governor, if we are to use philosophical or "Japetic" language, which, if it were shaken, would shake the universe; which God maintains, of which judgment is the witness; and God hates sin in His people, as everywhere else, and if He comes in judgment, knows no man. He judges right. When the judgment of God went through Egypt, Israel was guilty, and righteousness could not have spared. Hence the blood was put upon the lintel and the two doorposts, and there was righteous deliverance (in a figure) from a God executing righteousness. Can Dr. Williams understand this? God in judgment, where sin is, is a condemning God, not a life-giving God. Does Dr. Williams believe that? If he does not, let him not misrepresent what scripture does state. Now, at the Red Sea God said, "Stand still, and see the salvation of God;" and Israel was delivered from all his enemies, and from bondage. But in virtue of what had been wrought (here all is figure, but a figure applied by Christ to Himself, and by Paul to Him) it was a righteous deliverance. The Fathers did discuss what redemption was, and made utter confusion of it; but the scripture is clear enough. Love gives the victim. The Lamb is God's Lamb; but it is a victim God gives because sin must be put away. And thus we are delivered from all we were bound by, and which kept us from God, and brought to Him in the light according to His holiness.

Here is his doctrine of the Trinity, which I notice only to remark that its main points are wholly borrowed from Philo; for all this philosophy is only bringing us down to the reveries of the unbelieving Jew, who mixed the law with Neoplatonism. "The profoundest analysis of our world leaves the law of thought as its ultimate basis and bond of coherence." This is pure Philonism. "This thought is consubstantial with the being of the eternal I AM. Being, becoming, and animating -- or substance, thinking, and conscious life -- are the expressions of a triad which may be represented as will, wisdom, and love; light, radiance, and warmth, etc." Dr. Williams is very confused in what follows, or rather lower in doctrine than Bunsen; he makes wisdom the word, consciousness the spirit; but then, in order to have Christ, he says, "Consciousness or wisdom becoming personal in the Son of man;" it is the spirit or the word, and becomes personal. He adds, no wonder, "If all this has a Sabellian, or almost a Brahmanical sound, its impugners are bound, even on patristic grounds, to shew how it differs from the doctrine of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, and the historian Eusebius." Now Justin Martyr was deeply tinged with Platonism, and always wore his philosopher's cloak; Origen was plunged into every wildness Platonism and an extravagant imagination could plunge a person in. Eusebius was an Arian, not a Sabellian; whereas this doctrine is more Sabellian, or, as the writer justly says, almost Brahmanical -- rather Buddhist, which Philo tended to. And this is what we are to get by leaving scripture!

The love of heathenism, formed into popery, of anythingism except a revelation, is curiously shewn in a passage in this part of the Review: -- "The elasticity with which Christianity gathers into itself the elements of natural piety, and assimilates the relics of Gentile form and usage, can only be a ground of objection (objection to what?) with those who have reflected little on the nature of revelation." The fact is true. Mediaevalism is -- historical proof of it is abundant -- the assimilation of the relics of heathenism. Whether it is to be objected to is another question. I should, I confess, prefer Christianity as Christ and the apostles gave it. But the tendency of rationalism to accept popery, be assured, will daily be more evident. Pretending to be above it, it will leave it free to do all the mischief it likes. It is one of the ominous "forecasts" of the times of which I have no kind of moral doubt.

That I am not wrong in treating these rationalists as deniers of revelation -- open deniers, I cannot say, but absolutely so, I can -- while using christian terms (a procedure I do not envy them their use of), some closing passages of the Review will shew.

" So, when he (Bunsen) asks, How long shall we bear this fiction of an external revelation? ... or when he says, All this is delusion for those who believe it; but what is it in the mouths of those who teach it? ... there will be some who think his language too vehement for good taste; others will think of burning words needed by the disease of our time." What are we to think of one who quotes this: -- "What is it in the mouths of those who teach it?" It is a matter of taste, and there is no disputing about that.

I have done. I fear I have tired you. I feel lassitude creeping over me in long reasonings over men's ways; in scripture never. It is one thing that stamps its character. It renews, and feeds, and strengthens in every true exercise of mind upon it, because, though there be that exercise where the attention is fixed on it, we receive instead of judging.

W. But I am glad we have gone through it. This Review is the distinctively rationalist one of the volume; our sitting has been long, but I hope not without profit. What I am glad of is, that it leaves the Bible what it was in my mind, and in the simple reception of that is our blessing. What I dread in these inquiries is the loss of simplicity, the hindrance -- even though I do believe it to be the revelation of God -- to going to it as such, without any questions (even though answered) remaining in my mind.

H. The Lord grant that questions and answers may both disappear when you use the scriptures! We are in another element, in the use of another faculty, when faith receives the word. What? ... another nature? An objection is presented to the mind; the answer is presented to it, and convinces. The word stands higher than ever in its authority to my mind. It is well. But when I use the word itself, my quickened soul receives it divinely by grace; I listen to God. My mind is not at work about it; I approach it, and listen to God. Of course one's intelligence is in play, but not my mind actively judging. Now our proofs and reasonings only go to leave the soul free in its true enjoyment of these blessed divine communications, when we are taught of God. May yours be free!

W. I confess it has had another happy effect, though it may be a sorrowful thought too -- complete moral distrust of this whole class of reasoners; this is deeply engraved as the result in my mind. Have you seen the article in the "Edinburgh"?

H. I have. It is a most deplorable article; but I think we must close now. We have gone through most of the subjects of any importance, however rapidly. Perhaps Jowett's article may deserve our looking at it, it is on other ground, and somewhat more respectable than this: if we do, we can speak of the article in the "Edinburgh." Oh, how I bless God, in conclusion, that we have a revelation from God! -- a revelation from Himself, and of Himself, where love has made all easy when we are humble; where divine depths are found, but clear, because they are divine.

W. How true it is. I am sure I join with you in thankfulness for the word of God, however poor all our thankfulness is.

INSPIRATION AND INTERPRETATION -- A FOURTH DIALOGUE ON ESSAYS AND REVIEWS

W. Well, what do you say to Jowett? It has a different character from the other Essays. I cannot get so fast hold of it. The others rest on alleged facts or discoveries, which may alarm you if they can be maintained, and the deductions are just; but here there is nothing to lay hold of, and yet it leaves a painful impression on the mind that, if this be so, one has lost the word of God. It makes me not doubt of this or that, but doubtful of everything. I think it does me more harm than the others, if I am to have faith in God's word. I may say to myself, in reading the others, Well, this is all very well, but it rests on science or chronology, and people differ about that, and perhaps their statements will not stand examination; and there one leaves it. But here there are some sensible rules for interpretation; and yet, in interpreting, I have at the end lost the thing to be interpreted.

H. I quite agree with you. There is greater sobriety of manner, a more moderate tone: Christ seems at least to be treated with more reverence. There are many principles which I should not deny, provided other principles which are not here were associated with them. He circles round the outside of the word, may make some just and more plausible remarks to remove traditional apprehensions. These approve themselves to the mind; but when he touches the core, the substance of the word, it is simply that God is not there for him. It is infidelity as to any possessed revelation of God, and the same taking for granted that all rationalist objections are gospel, if the evangelists were not, and the same entire ignorance really of the heart and substance of scripture. You must always remember that with this class of persons the love of truth does not mean that there is any truth they love, or any to be loved, but simple pyrrhonism -- the keeping the mind always open to receive anything, and therefore always sure of nothing. Now this is not the love of truth. It is the love of making people doubt, and think there is no truth. Can you tell me one truth they have brought forward in their writings? Isaiah is not Isaiah, David is not David, the inspired word is not inspired. What is it? Mere expressions of men's feelings and minds. Why, if that is all, I may get Dr. Temple's renewal of inspiration, and have or give just as good now; perhaps, as the world is got so much wiser now, better still.

But we shall see that, as regards the word of God, Mr. Jowett is just as distinctly infidel as the rest. The others are as a stone rolled upon the mountain path I have to walk on, which bars my way. I look under, see it has no foundation at all, give it a tilt, and it is down in the valley, and the path clear. Mr. Jowett is like a green morass all across. It does not look such a hindrance, but there is no safe footing anywhere. If you had been in the bogs of Ireland, you would know that a green grassy spot is sure to be unsafe. It has no bottom, and if you tread on it, you are plunged in black mud: there are springs. There are springs of infidelity in Mr. Jowett. We must lay them bare, and the danger is over; they run in their own channel as infidelity, but the ground is dry.

I have looked at Mr. Jowett's commentaries too. I confess I was surprised at their emptiness, and, I must say, their perverseness: notes to take away the apostles' meaning, as received by faith in the word -- not merely false interpretations, or wrong construction of Greek, or traditional notions, but all divine points and truth gone, and that is all.

They suggest to you probable or possible human circumstances which may have occasioned what is said, but deny, or, more truly, ignore all springs of eternal divine truth as the true source of the writings. It is -- though the comparison is weak -- as if one should point out circumstances in the life of a man of uncommon nobleness and energy and truth and generosity of character -- circumstances in which his character had been developed, some of them possibly having as occasions done so, and attribute all to these circumstances, as if the character were caused by them. In such a case I should say of one who did so, That man does not know what the springs of truth and nobleness and generosity are. Circumstances may develop: he may think he is wise; but the spring is wanting in him which would enable him to understand the other, even supposing he was owned to be superior. The similarity of moral sentiment is wanting. So, when scripture is interpreted by these men, some of their remarks as to occasions, or the effect of circumstances, may be just; but, in thinking they have explained the matter, they shew they have nothing of the contents at all. As if a man should eat the hard skin of a pomegranate, and think he had tasted one, telling me that it was through that the pomegranate was ripened. Well, so it was in a sense; but he has not tasted the pomegranate for all that, nor does he know what the sun is either.