hold on the public mind, when the stir and clamour of the controversy has abated, for the writings have more the character of matured treatises, than was compatible with the prompt criticism and forensic brilliancy displayed by the authors of the "Replies," necessary for the immediate and successful refutation of the Essayists. Both books have their own distinctive usefulness, and may fitly be received in company. There is more of personality and indignant sarcasm in the "Replies," as might be expected-but the "Aids" do not fail to administer severe chastisement at times, on those who are held to have offended. That the same high principle which has animated the "Aids to Faith," has also been recognised in the organization of the "Replies," may be seen by the remarks by the Bishop of Oxford, in the preface to the latter volume. Speaking of the alleged difficulties in the acceptance of certain orthodox views of gospel truth, to which attention has lately been redirected by the "Essayists," he says:

"Such difficulties are to be set at rest in any mind rather by strengthening the deep foundations of the faith, than by the laboured refutation of every separate, captious, and casuistic objection, in which repugnance to all fixed belief of dogmas, as having been directly communicated by God to man, is wont to vent itself."-(Replies, p. x.)

He recognises the fact, which many of the other writers prove also, that the objections urged by the Essayists are neither new nor profound. That they are, in sooth, "old objections," the urging of which must of necessity, with our limited faculties, be possible against all revelation; and that, as such, they have been repeatedly answered. And he adds,

"That such objections to revelation should appear in this day, and should clothe themselves in the fresh garb which they have assumed, will not seem strange to thoughtful minds. Not, indeed, that it is other than a very narrow philosophy which would conceive of them as a mere reaction from recently renewed assertions, of the pre-eminent importance of dogmatic truth and of primitive Christian practice, or even from the excesses and evils which have, as they always do, attended on and disfigured this revival of the truth. To attempt to account for these phenomena by such a solution as this is to fix the eye upon the nearest headland, round which the stream of time and thought is sweeping, not daring to look farther; and so to deal with all beyond that nearest prospect as if it were not. No; this movement of the human mind has been far too wide-spread, and connects itself with far too general conditions, to be capable of so narrow a solution. Much more true is the explanation, which sees in it the first stealing over the sky of the lurid lights which shall be shed profusely around the great Antichrist. For these difficulties gather their strength from a spirit of lawless rejection of all authority, from a daring claim for the unassisted human intellect to be able to discover, measure, and explain all things. The rejection of the faith, which in the last age assumed the course and vulgar features of an open atheism, which soon destroyed itself in its own multiplying difficulties, intellectual, moral, civil, and political, has robed itself now in more decent garments, and exhibits to the world the old deceit with far more comely features. For the rejection of all fixed faith, all definite revelation, and all certain truth, which is intolerable to man as a naked atheism, is endurable, and even seductive, when veiled in the more decent half-concealment of pantheism. The human soul in its greatness and in its weakness crying.

after God, cannot bear to be told that God is nowhere, but can be cajoled by the artful concealment of the same lie under the assertion that God is everywhere, for that everything is God. The dull horror of annihilation is got rid of by the notion of an absorption into the infinite, which promises to the spirit an unlimited expansion of its powers, with the misty hope of retained individual consciousness."*-(Ib. p. xii.)

With quiet irony, the same writer makes the following observations concerning the patronising air with which the new Progressionists of the Essayists' and Reviewers' school, accept for direction the stammering utterances of the ancient world :—

"Nor in this system is all the former belief to be cast away at the rude assault of an avowed infidelity; on the contrary, it is to be treated with the utmost tenderness. It is not even stated to be false; in a certain sense it, too, is allowed to be true; for there is nothing which is wholly true or wholly false. It is but one phase of the true-an imperfect, childish, almost infantine phase, if you will; to be cherished in remembrance like the ornaments or the delights of childhood, only not to be rested in by men; to be put away and looked back upon, as early forms which, as soon as the Spirit which had of old breathed through them revealed itself in rosy light, dissolved like the frost work of the morning beneath the full sunlight of noon. On this theory the facts of the Bible may be false, its morals deceptive, its philosophy narrow, its doctrines mere shadows cast by the acting of the human mind in its day of lesser light; and yet, on the other hand, it is not to be scorned; it is to be loved, and honoured, and revered as a marvellous record of the God-enlightened man in his infancy, in the comparative obscurity of his intellect, in his youthful struggles, and reachings forth after the truth; only it is not to fetter his now ripened humanity. The man is not to be swathed in the comliest bands of his infancy.

"Thus no prejudice is to be shocked, no holy feeling rudely wounded, no old truth professedly surrendered. Rather, mighty revelations are to be looked for amidst the glowing feelings with which the past is fondly recog nised and the future eagerly expected. Thus the pride of man's heart is flattered to the utmost; thus the old whisper, 'Ye shall be as Gods,' disguises itself in newest utterances; thus in the universal twilight all the fixed outlines of revealed truth are confounded; the forms of Christianity are dissolved into nothingness, and the good deposit of the faith evaporated into a temporary intellectual myth, which has played its part, done its work, and may be permitted quietly to disappear amongst the venerable shadows of the past.

"Such a state of the human mind may be traced with more or less distinctness, during this century, everywhere in Christendom. It may be seen speculating in German metaphysics, fluttering in French literature, blaspheming in American spiritualism; or it may come, as it has come amongst ourselves, with dainty step and faded garments, borrowed from one school or another of stronger unbelievers, as it was supposed that our less prepared minds could endure the revelation.

"The conflict between such a system and all true Christianity must be

* The conclusion of H. B. Wilson's "National Church,” is connected with this pantheistic view of vague immortality :—" When the Christian Church, in all its branches, shall have fulfilled its sublunary office, and its Founder shall have surrendered His kingdom to the Great Father-all, both small and great, shall find a refuge in the bosom of the Universal Parent, to repose or be quickened into higher life, in the ages to come, according to His will."- (Essays and Reviews, p. 206.)

certain and complete. For, disguise it as you will, it is simple unbelief. Pantheism is but a tricked out Atheism. The dissolution of Revelation is the denial of God."-(Ib. p. xiv.)

This vigorous summary correctly shows the aspect presented by the school of thought represented by the "Essays and Reviews." The Lord Bishop of Oxford concludes his preface with a definition of the two distinct courses, which appear to him requisite, in opposing the present troubles.

"First, the distinct, solemn, and if need be, severe, decision of authority that assertions such as these [made by the Essayists,] cannot be put forward as possibly true, or even advanced as admitting of question, by honest men, who are bound by voluntary obligations to teach the Christian revelation as the truth of God.”—(Ib. p. xv.)

We formerly, when reviewing the Lord Bishop of Salisbury's "Charge," considered the propriety of proceedings whereby censure has been directed against such erroneous teaching as that advanced by Dr R. Williams and the Rev. H. B. Wilson. It is a matter which may be fitly left for the Prelates of the English Church to judicially determine. There can be no doubt that the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland would have early visited with an inquiry and reprobation the publication, by any clergymen in her communion, of what must certainly be regarded as heresy. The learned and zealous writer, from whom we have made the foregoing extracts, deprecates the mistaken supposition that it is a fear of any argument against the Christian faith, through the growth of free enquiry, which causes a recurrence to the decision of authority. He is convinced that "if such matters of faith' are admitted by us to be open questions amongst men under such obligations, [i.e., to teach the Christian revelation as the truth of God'], we shall leave to the next generation the fatal legacy of an universal scepticism, amidst an undistinguishable confusion of all possible landmarks between truth and falsehood." Again,

"It is not because believers in Revelation fear enquiry, that authority is bound to interfere. But it is to prevent the very idea of truth, as truth, dying out amongst us. For so, indeed, it must do, if once it be permitted to our clergy solemnly to engage to teach as the truth of God a certain set of doctrines, and at the same time freely to discuss whether they are true or false. First, then, and even before argument, our disorders need the firm, unflinching action of authority."—(1b. p. xvi.)

Thus far the principle involved is a vital necessity for any church, as an Institution, to avoid multiplication of intestinal disturbances and relinquishment of all groundwork of belief, such as would bring dissolution to the society. It is not merely the Church of England endangered, but every other form of Church would be imperilled by the presence of such "free-handling" as that indicated. What follows appeals directly to the leaders who, by their learning and judgment, and well-grounded faith, are fitted to be the champions of Christianity against the assaults of scepticism, leaguing together in ignorance or wilful perversion of the truth :

* Macphail's Edin. Eccl. Journ. October 1861.

"Secondly, we need the calm, comprehensive, scholarlike declaration of positive truth, upon all the matters in dispute, by which the shallowness and the passion, and the ignorance of the new system of unbelief may be thoroughly displayed.”—(P. xvi.)

Here we might stop, merely adding a personal recommendation of the "Replies" and the " Aids to Faith," as being works going far to meet the requisition—a recommendation well deserved and heartily given. But some good may be done by examining a few of the objections advanced by the Essayists, and answered by their opponents. At present we confine attention to a few assertions by the Rev. Benjamin Jowett, and the refutations of these.

§ 2.

The popularity of the Essays and Reviews is not surprising. Men like to witness this defiance and contradiction of authority. If maintained awhile it is always certain to please a large number whose reason has little to do with adherence, either to one side or the other. It is sufficient for them that an excitement is provided by each new leader. As Robert Browning's Paracelsus expresses it :—

"His plain denial of established points

Ages had sanctified and men supposed

Could never be oppugned while earth was under

And heaven above them-points which chance, or time
Affected not-did more than the array

Of argument which followed. Boldly deny!
There is much breath-stopping, hair-stiffening
Awhile; then, amazed glances, mute awaiting
The thunderbolt which does not come; and next,
Reproachful wonder and enquiry: those
Who else had never stirred, are able now
To find the rest out for themselves-perhaps
To outstrip him who set the whole at work."

Of course, the objections are old objections; as the Bishop of Oxford has stated. Most of them are transplanted from German wildernesses of Scepticism-others are of the earlier and more rank vegetation favoured by English deriders of the Scripture, and more than a few are of a growth co-eval with the Christian Fathers of the first three centuries of Christianity, and were answered by those divines, as it seems to us, satisfactorily. But falsehood is long-lived. A lie, or even an error, is under the special patronage of one whose interest in the contest is too great to permit any neglect of so fruitful a source of mischief; therefore it passes on from age to age, not losing value by the circulation, but acquiring a sort of reputation by its mere antiquity. It is not creditable to the intellectual progress of the age -which we hear so much belauded by those who favour a "free handling" of the Scriptures,-that a multitude of Infidel objections, such as were advanced by Collins and other English Deists, long ago, and been answered; and which objections were eagerly adopted by Dr Strauss, with other German sceptics, (willing to outstrip their teacher if possible); should now again be presented for

popular acceptance by some of the Essayists,-men enjoying university distinction and clerical position. Either they know, or they ought to know, that a conclusive answer has been given, before this time, to almost every one of the revived cavils. The bold assertions, and the more insidious assaults of inuendo and implied difficulty, are neither new nor true. But it seems as though no amount of refutation were sufficient to expel the Lying Spirit when once it has taken possession. "This sort only goes out by prayer and fasting." What is observable is not the philosophic temper which suspends judgment during investigations; not merely Unbelief, a proneness to doubt; but, too often, it is the rank growth of an alienated mind;-an antagonism to truth which no amount of evidence can bring to an acceptance of Christianity. With perverse ingenuity are resumed all the fallacious arguments, the erroneous assumptions and perilous misrepresentations which have always been wont to hinder the spread of a saving and humble faith. The dark Spirit of Evil-the "Prince of the Power of the air,”— "that old serpent called the Devil," who is permitted to exercise dominion over intellect and direct depraving passions-is still busily employed, maintaining a grasp on the soul of man, making him stubborn in enmity against God, and in blindness to the truths of salvation. Apollyon, smitten by the sword of the brave Christian pilgrim, yields not early-though baffled. In such warfare victory is long contested; scepticism fights hard:

"Destroy his web of sophistry :-in vain!
The creature's at his dirty work again."

The assertion of Dr Rowland Williams and the Rev. Benj. Jowett having pertinaciously repeated old and already-exploded objections, is amply proved by Dr Chr. Wordsworth in the "Replies," and by both Dr M'Caul and Dean Ellicott in the "Aids to Faith." In "Essays and Reviews," we find the following passage, where alleged discrepancies in the gospels are enumerated by Mr Jowett, as indications that the synoptic Gospels contradict one another, and therefore cannot be literally correct :

"The result is in accordance with the simple profession and style in which they [the Evangelists,] describe themselves; there is no appearance, that is to say, of insincerity or want of faith; but neither is there perfect accuracy or agreement.* One supposes the original dwelling-place of our Lord's pa

6

* On this sentence Dr Wordsworth comments indignantly :-" The Essayist says that there is no appearance of insincerity in them, or want of Faith.' "No appearance of'insincerity or want of faith' in these holy men, whose writings are received by the Christian Church universal as given by inspiration of God!' Admirable candour, most Christian condescension! But let us see whether there may not be here some appearance of inaccuracy and want of learning and ability, as well as of modesty and humility, on the part of a writer who deals thus freely with the Gospels. The Essayist would quiet our alarms by assuring us that though there are, as he alleges, discrepancies of fact' [Essays and Reviews, p. 425] in Scripture, yet that when we become familiar with them they will seem of little consequence in comparison with the truths which it unfolds.'

"We cannot accept the proffered consolation. For, surely the answer must be, 'If the documents are in error, what will become of the doctrines?' It is rightly