## Dialogues on the Essays and Reviews, section a.

Christianity and the Education of the World.

J. N. Darby.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is another enormous moral mistake, that internal power is that by which man advances in the moral scale of being. Power in man is limited to what man is. That is no advance beyond what he is. An acorn may become an oak, but in its nature it is never but an oak. Even so power is not the real thing that elevates man (though in man there is another question: an oak is not a corrupt fallen thing). "I can do all that may become a man; who can do more is none." There is man's power at its limit. If I may quote one who amongst men had hardly his like, I find more; I only say now, he pretends to more: let history and facts judge of his claim: — "I can do all things through him that strengtheneth me." Phil. 4:13 Here I find another and divine source of strength carrying him morally beyond man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the New Testament the saints (having the knowledge of perfect divine favour, the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost given to them, and that blessed Spirit dwelling in them) are supposed to be capable of praising God freely. It is expressed in a very wonderful manner in Psalm 22. After giving prophetic utterance to the sorrows of Christ, and His being forsaken of God, He is heard from the horns of the unicorn. As soon as He enters into the full light of His Father's countenance, according to the power of redemption and the work that He had wrought, He declares His Father's name, as He thus knows it, to His brethren: He puts them in relationship with the Father as He is Himself; as He historically did, "Go tell my brethren . . . I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." John 20:17 This was a position entirely new, consequent upon His resurrection, in which He had not only taken a new place as man, but acquired it for them. Then in the psalm He says, "In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee." Heb. 2:12 Our praises then are the free and joyful following of Christ in the praises which He can raise, as man, in entering into the full light of His Father's countenance, according to the work He has wrought. But this could not be till perfect and intimate love was revealed to man, and men were brought, according to a righteous exercise of it, into the enjoyment of the light of God's countenance, according to the value of that work which had given them the title to be there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

13 W. It makes rationalism and infidelity appear very superficial.

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

W. Have you any case on your mind?

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

English theologians are so shut up in traditional lore, that they think rationalists have upset all inspiration, if they overthrow their own traditions; just as a poor Roman Catholic turns infidel often, if he comes to think a bit of bread is not the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the Lord Jesus. Thus our Essayists tell us as a great discovery, that no man can now suppose that the tower of Babel was built to be high enough to escape the flood — a puerile conceit of which there is not a trace in the scriptural account, but, instead of it, an immense moral historical fact. Their declared object was to make themselves a name, to have a centre, which should hinder their being scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. It was centralization; not with God for a centre, but to combine the whole race in one system of united power. This God confounded, and made them into nations, which they had never been before at all. This immense fact in the history of the world they see nothing of, and think they have made a great discovery which upsets the scripture account in shewing that it could not be to escape the flood. "No doubt they are the men, and wisdom shall die with them." Job 12:2 We get in this part of scripture the two great elements on which all the world has proceeded since — nationalities, and individual ambitions seizing imperial power. But you must never trust the statements of this class of persons as to anything. There is the greatest pretension to new light; and some very questionable hypothesis of a moment is stated as a settled ascertained fact, with a coolness which is a mark of the want of the honesty of a conscience fearing God. In these Essays and Reviews there are statements which are a disgrace to any upright or honest man — Jesuitical to a degree which is sufficient to destroy all moral confidence in one who could have such sentiments; the publication of which proves that those who publish them are arrived at a point of moral insensibility at which they have lost the sense of shame in making their shame known. They are not aware how bad it is.

15 W. But this is rather strong language.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

W. They are very bad, in truth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are told, that the earliest commands almost entirely refer to bodily appetites and sensual passions. This may suit the theory, because they have to be corrected as children, but is otherwise a dream. There is no command before the flood, and after it the one declaration is, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." Gen. 9:6 It appears that wilfulness of temper, germs of wanton cruelty, characterize childhood, and are easily corrected by a mother; but here there was no education, no wise educator. The Governor of the world left the childhood of man to itself, to run into wanton violence unrestrained, to perfect its evil education without any restraint at all. This was a singular system of the education of the human race. "Each generation receiving the benefit of the cultivation of that which precedes it." "The easily corrected cruelty was here," we are told, "developed into a prevailing plague of wickedness."

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

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

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

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

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

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