London, 1860. ART. VIII. Essays and Reviews. 1. The Education of the World. By F. Temple, D.D., Head Master of Rugby School. 2. Bunsen's Biblical Researches. By Rowland Williams, D.D., Vice-Principal, Lampeter College. 3. On the Study of the Evidences of Christianity. By Baden Powell, M.A., F.R.S., Savilian Professor of Geometry, Oxford. 4. The National Church. By H. B. Wilson, B.D., Vicar of Great Staughton. 5. On the Mosaic Cosmogony. By C. W. Goodwin, M.A. 6. Tendencies of Religious Thought in England, 1688-1750. By Mark Pattison, B.D. 7. On the Interpretation of Scripture. By Benjamin Jowett, M.A., Regius Professor of Greek, Oxford. London, 1860. HE volume, the title of which we have placed at the head measure of remark, which appear to us to be far greater than it would naturally have obtained by its mere literary merits. There is in truth in the volume nothing which is really new, and little which having been said before is said here with any new power, or with any great additions, either by way of amplification, illustration, or research. With the exception of the last Essay, we think the mere literary character of the volume below what we should have been ed to expect from the names of the several essayists. Especially does this apply to the contribution of Dr. Temple, with which the volume opens. There is really nothing in it but the working out, with often a pleasant fancifulness, and oftener still something of the prolixity into which the writer of allegory is so apt to be betrayed, of a rather forced similitude between the growth and progress of the race of men and that of the individual man from infancy to age. To what, then, is to be attributed the degree of interest which this volume has excited? Not certainly, we think, to its subject; for, well-suited as its speculations may be to the metaphysical mind of Germany with its insatiable appetite for mystical inquiries into history, philosophy, science, morals, or religion, they are certainly not of a class which has commonly attracted many English readers. What, then, is it which has secured a reading, and in some degree an attentive reading, in many quarters for this volume? In answer to this question, we gladly admit that we believe its first recommendation, especially to the young men amongst whom they live, is the apparent earnestness of character, piety of spirit, and high moral object set set before them by the most distinguished of its writers. No one, however deeply-rooted may be his contrary conclusions, or however plainly he may mark the presence of other tones,of a certain sense of disappointment and concealed bitterness, can read Mr. Jowett's Essay upon the Interpretation of Scripture without feeling the full power of those influences acting on his own spirit. But the sense of this, and the estimate of what must be the effect of such words upon young, ardent, and unsuspicious minds, especially if the teacher is one who has been exalted in their eyes by what they deem persecution, and if he stoops to sympathise with their difficulties and think their thoughts, all this only makes it the more imperative though the more painful duty of those who believe that infidelity, if not Atheism, is the end to which this teaching inevitably tends, to speak without reserve their opinion, and to endeavour, to the utmost of their power, to mark its tendency as well as to expose its fallacy. It is in this spirit we approach this task: for truth is dearer than Plato; and here are at stake truths more precious far than any which Plato could have endangered. But besides the interest with which these qualities of its authors may have invested this volume, we say, and we say it with pain, that we believe that the attention it has obtained is largely due to the position of its writers. It is not so much the 'what' as the 'who says it' which has excited such a general attention. It is with these speculations as to so great a degree it was with the jokes of Sydney Smith, which perpetually derived a peculiar piquancy from their utterer being a clergyman. There was about them just enough, if not of irreligiousness, yet of violation of professional fitness, to give them from clerical lips a peculiar sting. So we believe it to be here: if only certain professors of University College, London, had put forth the suggestions contained in this volume, it would not, with one or two marked exceptions, have been found to possess either the depth, or the originality, or the power, or the liveliness which could have prevented its falling still-born from the press. It has been read, because to all it is new and startling-to some delightful, and to others shocking-that men holding such posts should advocate such doctrines; that the clerical head of one of our great schools, recently elected by a body of staid Conservative noblemen and country gentlemen, and a Chaplain in Ordinary to Her Majesty; two professors in our famous University of Oxford, one of whom is also tutor of one of our most distinguished colleges; the Vice-Principal of the College at Lampeter for training the clergy of the Principality; and a country clergyman, famed in his day for special efforts on behalf of orthodoxy ;—that such such as these should be the putters forth of doctrines which seem at least to be altogether incompatible with the Bible and the Christian Faith as the Church of England has hitherto received it-this has been a paradox, so rare and so startling as to wake up for the time the English mind to the distasteful subject of a set of sceptical metaphysical speculations regarding many long-received fundamental truths. How far the book deserves the suspicion to which it owes its success we propose now to examine; and in entering upon this inquiry we are compelled by its peculiar form and profession to determine, first, how far it is to be considered as a whole for which all its writers are jointly responsible. The writers claim--and claim as a right which, when urged, cannot be withheld-that they should be tried on the contrary principle. It will,' they say, 'readily be understood that the authors of the ensuing Essays are responsible for their respective articles only. They have written in entire independence of each other, and without concert or comparison.' To a certain extent we admit the claim; but to a certain extent only. For the object and intention of the volume as a whole they are all clearly responsible. So far, indeed, in spite of the disclaimer we have quoted, they seem themselves to allow; for they add the expression of their hope that it will be received as an attempt to illustrate the advantage derivable to the cause of religious 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.' Here, so far as the purpose or attempt goes, they admit a unity from which joint responsibility cannot be severed. We would not press this common liability too far, but it must extend to the common action of the firm. Any one who undertook to unite in the 'free handling' of such subjects in a common volume, made himself responsible for the common effect of all the essays as a whole. If he entered on such a co-partnership without first ascertaining how far the 'freedom' of the hands he united with his own would reach, he would have evinced a levity and unconcern from which we honestly believe that many of these writers are altogether free. But even if this were so, still the common responsibility could not be disputed. A criminal levity in entering upon partnership does not destroy the joint liability of an ill-assorted firm. It is, moreover, in this case, of less importance to fix the exact limits of joint responsibility, because any one writer could seek to exonerate himself from the charges to which through it he might be exposed, only by showing that his own contributions differed essentially from the rest in aim and purpose, and so, in The point of fact, ought not to be there. Now, no such defence has been attempted; none such could, we think, succeed. The same purpose is before every writer; the same general tone of writing pervades the whole book; the free handling of most sacred subjects, the free insinuation of doubts, the freedom of assertion, the free endeavour to defend some shadowy ghost of Christianity by yielding up all that has hitherto been thought its substance, is everywhere present. True the several Essays have their several objects, as the several limbs of a body have their several actions and uses, but all minister to the common life and purposes of the whole. The several writers have their several tones of feeling and of speaking. pleasing but feeble religious tones of Dr. Temple and the earnest and often loving and plaintive utterances of Mr. Jowett are somewhat rudely contrasted with the scarcely-veiled Atheism of Mr. Baden Powell, with the open scepticism and laxity of Mr. Wilson, and the daring flippancy of Dr. Williams; but all combine in the great common lines of thought which pervade the whole volume and make it what it is, whether that whole be taken merely as the abandonment of the Church's ancient position of certainty and truth, or the attempt to occupy a new one free from certain difficulties to which, in these writers' estimate, that old one was exposed. Upon this point we are convinced that the verdict of the English public will be unanimous and clear. With great and admitted individual differences, marking most clearly different intellectual and still more different spiritual developments, the book must be taken as a whole, and, if condemned, it must condemn every writer in it who does not, by some after act, visibly separate himself from the fellowship of opinions to which he is here committed. As to one of these writers, at least, we give this deliberate judgment with the deepest pain. The English Church needs in her posts of trust such men as his past career has made us believe Dr. Temple to be. We lament with the deepest sorrow the presence of his name amongst these essayists. There is undoubtedly language in his Essay which, standing as it does amongst the others, must be construed in connection with them, and which, when so construed, contains the germ of their developed errors. Yet the Essay itself, as a whole, is different in tone from those around it, and contains nowhere any direct statement of such sophistries or scepticisms as abound throughout the rest. We cannot but hope that Dr. Temple has himself been shocked to find what the edifice is to which he has been led unconsciously to furnish the portal. If this be so, as we trust it is, the least atonement he can make to the Church, upon the the members of which he has brought suspicion, is that he should, with the manly openness which we believe marks his character, disclaim his agreement with the views with which he is here connected. But this is far from all. Important as it is, for obvious reasons affecting themselves and their position in the Church, to fix the real responsibility of the different authors of this volume, if, as we maintain, all are really responsible for the doctrines maintained by each, there is yet another, and, if possible, a more important motive for noticing the essential sameness of view which, under their apparent differences, pervades these Essays. For this throws great light upon their real meaning and on the legitimate conclusion of their mode of argument. In dealing with such writers this assistance is invaluable; for one chief difficulty of our task is to know where they themselves really mean to stop in their speculations. The authors deal largely we might almost say wantonly in suggestions of doubt and insinuations of unbelief; there is too often mingled with the beauty and attractiveness of the better parts of their writings, an uncertainty and ambiguity in their expressions, a haziness and indefiniteness, if not about their own conceptions, yet certainly about their expression of them; and in one, at least, there is a perfect mastery of the questionable art of making his meaning obscure. Hence the reader of their speculations continually finds himself in a thick fog of words. Through this the commonest objects of his daily life look out upon him with a grotesque and startling novelty of form which he only gradually discovers to arise solely from the indistinctness with which they are but partially revealed; and if for a moment the mist melts, the chimeras which seemed to have gathered round him turn again into the most harmless and familiar groups of domestic animals. To attempt to grapple with the meaning of these passages is like grasping at a nebulosity or seizing upon a sepia. Either there is nothing in the closed hand, or the evading substance suddenly conceals itself in its congeneric inky obscurity. Now, in dealing with a system of belief which is often thus darkly intimated, it is a great advantage to lay hold of those who have carried out the farthest their own views; for from them may best be learned the drift and ultimate conclusion of the common propositions. For this reason we shall cite freely, as interpreting the whole system, the words of those of the band who seem to us the most to have mastered the teaching of their school, and shall try to extract from their propositions what is its real scope and value. The first of these is Dr. Rowland Williams, Vice-Principal and Hebrew Professor of St. David's College, Lampeter. Dr. Williams |