## A Third Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews, section a.

Modern Philosophy and Modern Theology, both compared with Scripture.

J. N. Darby.

<09003E> 116 file section a.

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 incompetence 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.

117 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 show, 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.

118 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 John 13:32 - 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.

119 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."

120 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.

121 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.

122 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." John 16:28. 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.

123 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." Acts 17:32. 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."

124 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 realisation of it all, living realisation, 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.

125 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?

126 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." John 3:32. 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." 1 John 1:2. 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.

127 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.

128 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." (p. 168.)

129 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.

130 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.

131 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."

132 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 more honest 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.

133 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.

134 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.

135 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.

136 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.

137 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.

138 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.

139 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.

140 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.

141 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.

142 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?

143 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.

144 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 (ver. 3)" — the verse is, "And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them" Acts 2:3 — "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. (Ver. 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?"

145 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."

146 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."

147 "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 Iapetic 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.

148 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."

149 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, ἐνδιάθετος. "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 νοητὸν 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 ἐνδιάθετος — immanent reason in God; then προφοριχὸς and thus the universe (not in matter, but existing in the thought of God in idea) was the λόγος. Then the λόγος 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 σοφὸς and ἐπιστήμη 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.)

150 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 (λόγω) 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, πάντι ἀνθρώπω ἀστείω ὁ ἱερὸς λόγος προφητείαν μαρτυρεῖ. 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, ἰσοτης (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?

151 It is, I think, a mistake, unless I have overlooked some passage, to say that Moses is called ὁ ἱερὸς λόγος, 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 διανοία, 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 λόγος, but more a gift. But then, on the other hand, the πνεῦμα ἄγιον abode always with him. In most it visits and goes — in an afflatus, but in Moses abides, τούτω μὲν οὖν το Θεῖον ἀεὶ παρίσταται. (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 λόγιον ἐχ πτοσώπον δἰ ἑρμηνείαν unmixed, not as others from enquiry and answer. (Man. 2:163.)

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