ESSAYS AND REVIEWS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 129, 15 April 1862, Page 5

ESSAYS AND REVIEWS.

FROM REPLIES TO '• ESSAYS AND REVIEWS." BY THB REN. E. E. GOULBURN, D.D., REV. U. J. ROSE, B.D. REV. C. A. HEURTLEY, D.D., REV. W. J. IRONS, !>.»., REV. O. RORISON, M.A., REV. A. W. HADDAN, B.D. WITH PREFACE BY THE BISHOP OP OXFORD.) That such objections to revelation should appear in this day, and should clothe themselves in the fresh garb which they have assumed, will;not seem strange to thoughtful minds. Not, indeed,-that it is other, than a very narrow philosophy wliich would conceive of tbem as a mere' reaction from recently^renewed assertions of the pre-eminent importance of dogmatic truth and of primitive Christian practice, or eyenji from the excesses and evils which have, as they always do, attended on and disfigured this revival of the" truth. To attempt to account for these phenomena by such a solution as this, is to fix the eye upon the nearest headland round wliich the stream of time and thought is sweeping, not daring to look further; and so to deal with all beyond that nearest prospect as if it were not.." No"; this movement of the human mind has been far too wide-spread, and connects! itself with far too general conditions to be capable of so narrow a solution. Much more true is the explanation, wliich sees in it the first stealing over the sky of the lurid lights which shall be shed profusely around the great Antichrist. • For these difficulties" gather their strength from a spirit of lawless rejection of all authority, from a daring, claim for the unassisted human intellect to be able to discover, measure, and explain' all things. The' rejection cf the faith, which in the last age assumed the coarse and vulger features of an open atheism, whicli soon destroyed itself in its own multiplying difficulties, intellectual, moral, civil, and political, has robed itself now; in more decent garments, and exhibits to tho world the old deceit, with far more comely features. Forthe rejection of all fixed faith, all definite revelation, and nil certain truth, which is intolerable tonian as a naked atheism is endurable, and even seductive, when veiled in the more decent half-concealment of pantheism. The human soul in its greatne-s and in its weakness crying after God, cannot bear to be told that God is nowhere, but can le cajoled by the artful concealment of the same lie under the assertion that God is everyv,here, for that everything is God. The dull horror of annihilation is got rid of by the notion of an absciption into the infinite, which premises '1o tbe spirit an unlimited expansion of its powers, with tbe misty ■ hope of retained individual consciousness. Nor in tins 'v^tcm is all fcimer belief to be cast away at the rude r."avlt of an avowed infidelity, on the contrary, it is. to'be titated with the utmost tenderness. It is not even stated to cc fake ; in a certain sense it too, isallowed to be true; for there is nothing which is vliic-h is wholly tine or vholly false It is but one Phase cf the tiuc-an impeiieeV childish,; almost in fantine phase, if you will; to te cherished in remembrance like tbe ornaments -cr the delights of childhood, only not to be rested in by men ;to be put away and lcokcd tack upon, as early foims * Inch, as seen as the spirit which bad of old breathed through them revealed itself in rosy light, dissolved, "ke the frost work of tbe morning beneath the full sunlight of noon. On this theory the facts of the Biblo may

be'false, its morals "deceptive, its philosophy narrow, its doctrines mere shadows cast hy the acting of the human mind in its day of lesser light; and yet, on the other hand, if is not to be scorned'; it is to be loved, and honored, and revered as a marvellous recore, of God enlightened man in his infancy, in the comparative obscurity of his-intellect,-in his youthful strug : elesy and ' reacliings forth after • the truth, only it is not to fetter his now ripened huma nity. Tlie innii is not to be swathed in the comdiest bands of his. infancy. Thus uo prejudice is to lie shocked, no holy feeling rudely wounued, no old truth professedly surrendered, Rather, mighty revalations are to be looked for amidst, the glowing' feelings with which the past is fondly recognised and the future eagerly expected. Thus the pride of man's heart is flattering to the utmost; thus the old whisper, " Ye ,<hall be as gc.ds,-" disguises itself in newest utter lances.; thus.in the universal twilight all the fixed out lines of revealed truth are Confounded; the forms ot Christianity are dissolved into nothingness, and the good deposit of the faith evaporated into a temporary intellectual myth, wliich has played its part, done its work, and may be permitted quietly to disappear amongst the venerable shadows of the past. Such a state ofthe human mind may be traced with more or less distinctness, during this century, everywhere in Christendom. It may be seen speculating m German metaphysics, fluttering in French literature, blaspheming in American spiritualism'; or it'may come as it has come amongst ourselves, with daiuty step ana faded garments, borrowed from one school Or anothei of stronger unbelievers, as it was supposed that mir less prepared minds could endure the revelation. The conflict between such a system and all true Christianity must be certain' and complete. For, disguise it as you will, it is simple unbelief. Pantheism is but a trickedout Atheism. The of revelation is the denial of God; W Tith such a wide-spread current of thought, then, the strong foundations of Church of, England faith came rudely in contact. Her simple retention of tho primitive'forms of the Apostolic Church; her Ministry, and her Sacraments ; her firm hold of primitive truth ; her Creeds; her Scriptures; her Formularies ; her Catechism ; and her Articles;.all ot these were alike at variance with the new latioualistic unbelief. The struggles ami strifes of the last thirty years have been the inevitable consequence, The passionate re-asser-tion-of the old truths, with all tlie evils which have waited on that passion, as well as all the immeasurable good wliich has been the fruit of the re-assertion, —all of these have been themselves the consequence of the widely-acting influence to which the human mind has of late been subjected. Short-sighted men have looked at these things with their narrow range, and believed that the scepticism which on the one side has been evolved in the struggle, was the fruit of that energetic assertion of the truth which was itself but one consequence of the unbelief with which it was striving. As well might they believe that the causes-of the existence of some naked .promontory which has had its sharp and rocky point defined by the great current it has long breasted, or of that mighty oceamlike flow wbich sweeps against it, are to be found in the boisterous waves wliich roar down the lower stream, and fleck with foam the agitated waters of its troubled bosom. Two distinct courses: seem to me to be required by such a state of things. First, the distinct, solemn, and if need be, severe, decision of-authority that assertions such as these cannot be put forward as possibly true, or even advanced as admitting of question, by honest men, who are bonnd by voluntary obligations to teach the Christian revelation as tbe truth of God. I put this necessity first from the full conviction, that if such matters are admitted by us to be open questions amongst men under such obligations, we shall leave to the next Feneration tiie fatal legacy of an universal scepticism, amidst an undistinguishable confusion of all possible landmarks between truth and falsehood. To say this, be it observed, is to evince no fear of argument aeainst our faith though.freest, or of enquiry into it though the most daring. From these Christianity has nothing to dread. In their issue these do but I manifest the truth; The roughest wind sweeps the sky most speedily,- and shows forth the. soonest the unclounded sun in all his splendor. It is not, tliere(fore because believers in revelation fear enquiry that I authority is bound to interfere. But it is to prevent the very idea of truth, as truth, dying out amongst us. ! For so, indeed, it must do, if once it be permitted to ioiir clergy solemenly to engage to teach, as the truth; of God, a certain set of doctrines, and at the same itime freely to discuss whether they are true or false, First then, and even before argumeut, our disorders need the firm, unflinching act of authority. Secondly, we need the calm, comprehensive, scholar-like, declaration of positive truth upon all the matters in dispute, by wliich the shallowness, and the passion, and the ignorance of the new system of unbelief may be thoroughly displayed. ■ ' <