No More Learning

relation to Christian
Theology,
? ? ? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY. 37 1
thing that could not be brought under the rubric of practical applicability, would be forgotten, and in the end denied. Hampden himself, in his inaugural lecture, professed his full belief in all the doctrines of the orthodox faith in a way not
easy, it must be confessed, to reconcile with the expositions of his Bampton Lectures. Consistency seems rather to have been on the side of his assailants. But the manner of their attack upon him, their denunciation of detached propositions torn from their context, in order to convict him of heresy, aroused the fierce indignation not only of Whately and Arnold, but of wider circles, in which the reaction against the principles of the Oxford party began from this time to make itself felt. A pamphlet published at that time gives the following not complimentary picture of higher education at Oxford. In all higher branches of knowledge the aim is to put down free opinions. The endeavour is to give a safe direction to young minds, and to confine their movements within the narrowest limits possible. No inquiry which
might possibly lead to other results than those of the estab lished formularies is permitted. It is not easy to form any idea of the extent of moral terrorism with which this in tellectual tyranny is practised, with what jealousy the words, behaviour, reading of those is watched, who are under the suspicion of having diverged from the majority. This system is commended in and outside of Oxford as a thoroughly practical and wholesome method of training devoted servants of the Church, who shall be free from all doubt. But the evil fruits of it are a terrible distortion of sound intellect, widespread ignorance and hypocrisy. "The student who comes at every step upon the warning, Not too deep! " is discouraged and takes refuge in deliberate ignorance. He persuades himself that knowledge at best is a dangerous acquirement in his career. In the consciousness of his own inability to defend rationally a position he has taken, he regards all speculations that are foreign to his mode of thought with vague fear. The consequence is that theology is studied in Oxford to no purpose, however much is said about because studied apart from the simple object of discovering the truth, and merely with the object of finding proofs in support of dogmas which dispense with all further inquiry. Such was the view taken by an Englishman of the Oxford of those years. The less reason we have to
? ? ? it,
it is
? 372 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
doubt the truth of the picture, the more cheering is it to observe how great progress has been made there in the course of the last half century.
Even in those years bright exceptions were not wanting. Milman was connected with Whately, Arnold, and Hampden,
belonging like them to the pre-Puseyite generation. His History of the Jews, which appeared in 1829 (2nd ed. rewritten
1863), treated the narratives of the Old Testament in the same way as the historical traditions of any other ancient people, took up a critical attitude towards the chronological data of the Bible, explained not a few narratives as oriental poetry and allegory, and sought generally by its graphic style, catching the national and antique character of early
Hebrew times, to deliver Biblical history from the bonds of traditional sanctity, and bring it nearer to the mind and heart of the present day. It is the same freer attitude towards the
Bible which is seen in Arnold's method of interpretation, but Milman was as far as Arnold from holding the principles of scientific criticism now followed by Wellhausen or Robertson
Smith. He was rather an imaginative narrator than an acute investigator of history. Nevertheless, by his History of the Jews, and his later History of Latin Christianity,
Milman contributed his share towards making in the bulwarks of traditionalism breaches through which a freer spirit might enter when the time arrived.
The same is true of the Cambridge theologians Thirlwall and Julius Hare, who by their joint translation of Niebuhr's History of Rome, and by theological works, did good service
in spreading the knowledge of German historical science amongst their countrymen. Thirlwall published in 1825 a translation of Schleiermacher's book on the Gospel of Luke, with an introduction of some length, in which he accepted and defended the principles of Schleiermacher's Biblical criticism --a bold thing to do in those days, when the strict doctrine of inspiration was still in full force, and German theology was but little known in England, and on that very account was the more summarily condemned as heretical ! Next to Coleridge, whose way of thinking on philosophy he
? Hare was above all his English contempor aries the student best acquainted with German theological
science. As a youth he had felt on the Wartburg the breath of Luther's spirit, and subsequently wrote a thoroughly learned
adopted, Julius
? ? ? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY.
373
Vindication of the German Reformer, in reply to the charges of the historian Hallam and the Scottish philosopher Sir William Hamilton, and the Puseyites. Against the latter he wrote the important polemical essay, The Contest with Rome, 1842, which had the greater influence as Hare's Christian devotedness had been placed beyond doubt by his earnest and thoughtful sermons. Speaking generally, it appears that Hare made a deeper impression on his contemporaries by his noble and amiable character than by his writings, which were comparatively few, and of which the best known is his volume of sermons, The Mission of the Comforter, dedicated to the memory of Coleridge, 1846, in which he maintained the principle of development of Christian doctrine. Amongst his closest friends were Thomas Arnold and Frederick Maurice. Maurice was Hare's pupil at Cambridge, and later his brother-in-law, and to this intimate relation owed the most powerful stimulus in his mental development.
Freder1ck Den1son Maur1Ce was one of the most impor tant English theologians of this century, with great individu ality of mind. To describe his mode of thought in theology in a brief sketch, such as this necessarily not easy, for his theology more complicated than that of any other theo logian, and on many points extremely vague. In his biography, published by his son two large volumes, there
presented the picture of a man of deep religious feeling and of decided speculative and dialectical power, but at the same time of man who failed to reduce his convictions into a consistent logical whole such as could fully satisfy himself, or make a dominating and prevailing impression upon his con temporaries, because his own thought lacked clearness and
steadiness, and his knowledge concentration and thoroughness. In reading his biography, the comparison of F. D. Maurice with the German theologian Dorner has again and again
forced itself upon me. In both the same high moral and re
ligious character compelling profound respect, the same mul tiformity of learned and moral interests, the same combination
of speculative theological thought with vivid concern for practical Church life, the same restless endeavour to mediate both practically and theoretically between opposing parties and modes of thought but in both also the same incapacity for taking a clear and logically consistent position on questions of principle, the same indefiniteness in dogmatic speculation, the
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is
a
is is
in
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? 374 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1S25. [Bk. IV.
same dislike of rational historical criticism, the same shrinking from the consequences of their own ideal principles, the same
hesitancy in estimating the real factors of life ; finally, as a result of all this, the same fatality of giving offence on all sides and the same waste of power on the endless frictions of the actual world.
Maurice's father was a Unitarian minister, but his mother and three sisters abandoned the faith of the father and joined various other religious communions. This division in the household made a profound impression upon the loving heart and thoughtful mind of the boy, and early led him to the conviction that every one's faith is true in what is positively asserted by and untrue what denies, in its negations, in charges against the opinions of others when they are not sufficiently understood. But this charitable view of religious differences did not prevent his own secession to the Estab lished Church, nor even his re-baptism, by which he accord ingly declared the Unitarian faith of his father un-Christian. At Oxford he became acquainted with the leaders of the Tractarian movement, which had just commenced and ap peared as zealous convert in his pamphlet, Subscription no
Bondage, in which he sought to prove that subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles (though few years previously he had left Cambridge without taking his degree rather than sign
? no infringement of liberty, but rather help in the of the studies of University. The Tractarians believed that they had found in him a hopeful ally for their cause, but they were soon disappointed, for he quickly turned his back upon them on account of Dr. Pusey's tract on Baptism, which he considered most dangerous, although, as
he thought, contained very important doctrine which was denied by the Dissenters, and was adapted to unite all Churches. Soon after this he published his first book, The Kingdom of Christ (1838), in which he seeks to show that the English Church the true incorporation of the spiritual universal fellowship of the kingdom of Christ, because
them) pursuit
alone teaches the full truth as to baptism, the apostolical succession, Scripture and tradition, and establish
ment, whilst Quakers, Lutherans, Calvinists,
and Roman Catholics respectively hold but part of it. But the optimistic champion of Anglicanism was later on com pelled to find by bitter experience that for the dogmatist
eucharist,
Philosophers,
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? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY.
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but a short step from the position of the defensor fidei to that
of the condemned heretic. When Maurice taught in his
Theological Essays (1853) that the Biblical phrases "eternal life" and "eternal death" do not signify states of time of indefinitely long duration in the future, but spiritual states of communion and oneness with or separation from God, that divine punishments are instruments of God's love employed for our salvation, and that the Gospel of God's love for all men, and not the fear of eternal torments in hell, constitutes the object of faith, -- it was found that these doctrines are not by any means in harmony with the Creeds of the Anglican Church, and Maurice was removed from his theological pro fessorship at King's College, London. But though thus deprived, he continued to assert his attachment to the Thirty- Nine Articles, when properly understood, that according to his interpretation of them. And when Bishop Colenso, who had been on terms of intimate friendship with Maurice, and had defended him at the time of his removal from King's College, gave offence to the orthodox by his critic ism of the Pentateuch, our unaccountable theologian put himself on the side of the same denunciators against whom Colenso had been his advocate few years before in fact, he declared to his former friend that he expected from him
the resignation of his bishopric, to which he had no claim as an unbeliever, receiving from Colenso the cutting reply that there were many who were similarly of opinion, that the author of the " Theological Essays " had no right to retain his chaplaincy at Lincoln's Inn.
plain from all Maurice's letters to his friends and con nexions that through all these paradoxes he was absolutely sincere and in earnest that the various changes through which he passed were not owing to outward considerations that his want of consistency was due to the indefiniteness of the fundamental principles of his thinking, to the disharmony existing between his heart and his intellect, between the need he felt of adhering to an authoritative ecclesiastical
communion and his strong theological individualism. To his father (Feb. 12, 1832) he explains his secession to Anglicanism from the necessity of his heart to have God, the Invisible and Unsearchable, revealed in human form as a man such as can be understood, "a man conversing with us, living amongst us," who, order thus completely to reveal God, cannot be
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a
;
;
It is
a
;
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? 376 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
less than God. The greater simplicity of the Unitarian faith he considers is of no value if it does not satisfy wants which we feel, if it does not account for facts which we know. As regards the Athanasian Creed, his explanation to a friend of the supposed difficulties in the way of its accep tation is simply this : To know God is eternal life ; God is perfect Love, the Father dwelling with the Son in one Spirit is this perfect and eternal Love, which is the basis of all things, whereupon we base our hopes for ourselves and the world. (Certainly a very wide and free interpretation of this Creed, an interpretation which may be made to include both Arianism and Sabellianism as well as Athanasianism. ) Par ticularly characteristic of Maurice's theological thought is a letter to his mother (Dec. 9, 1833), in which he endeavours to comfort her in her doubts as to the evidences of her being in Christ. The truth is that every man is in Christ, created in him, who is the Head of every man ; the difference between the believer and the unbeliever is that the latter does not perceive or acknowledge the truth, that except he were joined to Christ he could not think, breathe, live a single hour. It is the devil's lie to imagine that we are something apart from
Christ, and have a separate, independent existence. To believe that we are in Christ does not require any special re ligious experience. We have the warrant for this faith in that we cannot do one living act, or obey one of God's command ments, or pray, or hope, or love, without him ; and yet God bids us do all these things. The state of independence, the fleshly Adam state, is no state at all, it is a life of our own vain imagination. The one thing therefore is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lord of our own spirit, that our spirit belongs to him and not to the flesh, that Christ is in us, and that we must let him do his will in us and through us. This is a Christology which is a long way removed from ortho doxy, and is to a certain extent speculative and philosophical ; very much like Dorner's. Christ is the ideal man, or the Divine idea of Humanity, which is as a principle in the whole race, but exists also, realiter, in one eternal Person, who by the Incarnation became the historical Saviour Jesus. If humanity is thus from the first essentially associated with Christ, a
saving revelation pervades human history from the beginning ; there is no need for the reconciliation of a world alienated from God, but the work of the historical Saviour can be no
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY.
377
other than by his word and example to reveal and bring home to the consciousness of men what had always been the fact -- their being in the eternal Christ, and thereby in God. Con sequently Maurice reconstructed in this sense the orthodox doctrine of the atonement. In his book, The Doctrine of Saerifice (1854), he teaches that Christ so far partook of sin as to identify himself in sympathy with sinners. He did not bear as a substitute the punishment of sin, but by his loving
in the miseries of sin he delivered men from their sins, by teaching them to believe in the love of the Father towards them, for with this faith in the loving God the
from God is ended, which constitutes the essence of sin. It is a heathenish view of God to suppose that the punishment of sin had to be removed by a sacrifice presented to him. The Christian view is that God by the perfect self- sacrifice of his Son, who was in his sympathy one with sinners, made known his eternal love to the sinful world, and that on that ground peace has been offered which men could not of themselves have found. By this act of love on the part of Christ the one possible method of peace and harmony in the world generally is revealed. The principle of self-
sacrifice is revealed as the truth in which God displays his inmost character and which all creatures must obey by appro priating the mind of the loving Christ. Thus Christ, the
eternal Head of mankind, becomes the Head of a new moral
world, in which no longer selfish discord reigns, but lasting
and self-sacrificing love.
These ideas tend obviously in the direction of that idealistic
philosophy of Christianity which is represented in the specu lative theology of Germany and in the writings of such men as Caird and Green in Great Britain. But Maurice even more than the kindred German theologian Dorner failed to work them out consistently and thoroughly. The cardinal con tradiction of making the eternal idea of humanity at the same
time an historical individual of an absolutely supernatural nature
participation
separation
? involved everywhere the diversion of all ideal speculative effort of thought into traditional supernaturalism. And in the case of Maurice this supernaturalism was the more pronouncedly narrow, inasmuch as he found the spiritual community of humanity, founded by the revelation of Christ, embodied not in the universal kingdom of God, or the in visible community of the children of God, but in the Church
necessarily
? ? ? 378 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
of England. 1 Accordingly, while he teaches on the one hand that the entire human race is created and has its essential nature in Christ as its ideal Head, he seems to maintain on the other hand that it is only in the Church of England that the Kingdom of Christ has attained actual existence ! This is a contradiction that a German intellect finds it hard to comprehend, or can only explain by supposing that the strong national feeling of the Englishman had got the better of the intellect of the theologian.
The sources of the characteristic points of Maurice's
profession, had, by his own independent study of the Bible, arrived at the conviction that the orthodox representation of the Gospel did not properly represent its real and scriptural nature. 2 For the Gospel announces the forgiveness of sins not as a reward of faith any more than as a reward of works, but as the free unconditional gift of God, which was bestowed on mankind once for all in their representative Head, Christ, so that every man may appropriate Yet forgiveness
not itself salvation, but only the means of and salvation itself not a future good, but spiritual fellowship with God in the sanctification of the character by means of his holy love. The very purpose for which God offers his free unmerited love, as forgiving mercy to sinners, that they may thereby be encouraged and impelled to love him in return, and to grow themselves into the image of his holy love. Glad devotion to God, loving dependence on the Creator, the perfect condition of the creature, in which all the faculties
This, the fundamental thought of his book, The Kingdom of Christ,
stated in strong and emphatic language in letter of July 12, 1834 (Life,
p. 166).
The most interesting of Erskine's writings, which has been followed
the above account of his system, The Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel (1828); to must be added The Brazen Serpent, or Life coming through Death (1831) The Doctrine Election, and its Connection with the General Theory Christianity (1837) his first work, Remarks on the Internal Evidence for the Truth Revealed Religion (1820), of less importance.
are to be found in the idealistic philosophy of
teaching
Coleridge (whose metaphysical ideas, however, acquire in Maurice's system a Platonic modification), and in the doc trines of the Scottish theologians, Thomas Ersk1ne, of Linlathen, and John McLeod Campbell, at whom we must take a brief glance. The first of these men, an advocate by
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? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY.
379
of the soul are kept in their proper order by that ruling principle. The Fall of man consisted in the rise of the spirit of independence, in that " each man became an independent individual, loving and desiring and approving things accord ing as they affected himself, without regard to the will of God or the sympathies of the universal family. " And this sin of man was also his misery, his hell. The punishment of sin did not consist in external evils, which might be re moved by arbitrary acts, but it consisted in the very fact that the man himself had revolted from saving fellowship with God, and had
the love of him for the love of self and the world. " Restoration to a condition of salvation cannot therefore be effected otherwise than by the restoration
of the love of God to its place as the paramount principle in the heart, resulting in the due subordination of self and the creature under it. Any remedy which falls below this re storation falls below man's need. No pardon which leaves this undone is of any value to him. He needs no infliction from without to make him miserable ; and it is not the re moval of any outward infliction that can give him happiness. He must know that God is better than happiness, and that sin is worse than sorrow. The love of God, not the desire of happiness, is the true keystone of the arch. " The means which God has provided for the attainment of this blessing is the Gospel. It shows us, in the appearance of Christ, the gracious character of God in relation to his rebellious creatures, in order thereby to draw back our hearts to him, which had been estranged through hatred, fear, or
indifference, and thus to restore love to God and to the whole divine human family to its true place in the heart. It is particularly the sufferings of Christ in which the holy love of God has been revealed ; but not in the sense that God had to be reconciled, that his love had to be purchased, by the sacrifice of his Son ; on the contrary, his holy love itself was the source of the mission and the self-sacrifice of Christ. Christ, by his patient endurance of all the misery that had
from the sin of the world, overcame sin itself by love and glorified God by his obedience. His glorifying of the Father, by obediently enduring suffering from love of his sinful brethren, was both the expiation and the putting away of sin ; and because it was the Head of mankind who accomplished this as representing all men, the sin of the entire race is once
sprung
exchanged
? ? ? ? 380 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
for all forgiven in Christ ; the resurrection of Christ was the seal of this forgiveness. The message of this forgiveness is proclaimed to all the world as the free gift of God offered for its acceptance, but only those who actually accept it are really justified and made part of the Church of Christ. The fear lest the Gospel of free, unconditional mercy should pro duce a false peace in a world dead in sins, and expose the
moral interests of Christianity to the dangers of antinomian- ism, rests, as Erskine is continually reiterating, upon a mis conception. For the pardon, which is the free gift of God in Christ, is of advantage to men only as they receive and with Christ himself, the revelation of the holy, loving character of God, into their hearts and thereby the principle of holy, self-sacrificing love made the dominant power and the root of personal holiness and salvation. Pardon therefore, really received only when evinces itself as the effective means of sanctification and accordingly of salvation.
not itself salvation, for salvation cannot be given to men
? without conditions consists in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit heaven holiness, and the forgiveness of sins blessing only in so far as produces holiness.
Holiness the ultimate object God has view with us, and the Gospel message serves only as means to this end.
These ideas of Erskine's were further worked out and established by his friend, the theologian, McLeod Camp bell, in his very suggestive book, The Nature the Atone
ment, and its Relation to Remission of Sins and Eternal Life (1856, 5th ed. , 1878). As believing Biblical theologian, Campbell does not deny that Christ presented an expiatory sacrifice for us, but he maintains that when this sacrifice not interpreted in accordance with preconceived opinions, but looked at as and as represented in the Scriptures, cannot be regarded as the suffering of the punishment due to man's sin his stead, but moral and spiritual meaning must be put upon it. Christ effected our salvation by becoming the mediator between God and man, and representing both -- God with man and man with God. This twofold relation of the atonement worked out with reference to its retrospective and its prospective action. In the first respect, Christ's work was to reveal the Father in humanity and for humanity, to be the witness of God's holy love, a love which hates sin and seeks to save the sinner by
gratuitously
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? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY. 381
him. Christ felt the pain on account of sin that filled the holy heart of God, and in a perfect, vicarious contrition acknowledged the righteousness of the divine condemnation of sin, as the representative of mankind before God. When he identified himself with his brethren in the flesh by his compassionate sympathy, he endured the deepest pangs, such as only the Holy One could feel, on account of the sins of men, both as guilt before God and as the source of human misery. This pain on account of sin, and this perfect repentance of offered to God in the name of man kind, constituted the true atonement for the sins of mankind,
sacrifice well-pleasing to God, such as no execution of punishment could have supplied. With this complete con demnation of the sinful past of mankind by its representative
Head, full satisfaction was offered to the holy will of God.
But this moral atonement of Christ had at the same time
prospective significance. must be conceived as effecting salvation, or eternal life, not merely as the indirect result of Christ's work, but as inwardly connected with as, in fact, already included in that work.
This would not be the case on the supposition of an imputation of vicarious punitive suffering to sinners, which leaves their moral condition in relation to God unchanged, and makes salvation only a future state of happiness. The atonement must therefore be con ceived thus Christ in his person represents humanity as
converting
? to God, and animated solely by love to Him, and by means of his identification with his brethren Christ communicated his righteousness as new life to them. He thereby not only revealed the Divine Fatherhood to men,
but he also discovered the treasure of the Divine image in man, which had until then been veiled under their sin. The
holy, well-pleasing
putation.
of Christ was the revelation of the latent
righteousness
capacity in man for righteousness, which he possessed by virtue of the indwelling Son of God. Christ must not be conceived as so standing apart from humanity that his righteousness could not avail for otherwise than by im
He as the second Adam, the Head of humanity, so truly one with that his righteousness counts the sight of God as the righteousness of mankind generally, and that
can pass from Christ to all men. Christ himself had in his human consciousness the witness to the ability of man kind to be filled with the love of God. In his love to his
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? 382 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
brethren lay the prophetic hope that they also would open their hearts to the love of God, from which they had for a time been estranged. Accordingly, the atoning work of Christ did not consist in the deliverance of men from future punishment and the obtaining of future happiness ; but in
to them his knowledge and love of the Father, and making them thereby children of God, in the possession of eternal life and a righteousness well- pleasing to God. Everything that the Son accomplished, and that the Father accepted, had the prospective intention of being reproduced in us ; both his pain on account of sin, and his confiding and obedient love to the Father, were intended to be appropriated by us. Nothing of a mere external nature
that God could do with us or could give to us, which is not involved in the relation of our souls to God and in the re lation of our own hearts answering to his heart, can possibly
be our salvation.
This is manifestly the same reconstruction of the Christian
doctrine of salvation which was effected by Kant and Schleier- macher in Germany, whereby it is converted from forensic externality into ethical inwardness and a truth of direct religious experience. Erskine and Campbell appear, however, to have reached their convictions in entire independence of German theology, by their own absorbing study of the Bible ; and I regard their ideas as the best contribution to dogmatics which British theology has produced in the present century.
That the Scottish Church rejected and thrust out from its
midst, in the person of Campbell, this line of theological thought, was the heaviest blow that it could inflict upon itself;
thereby it arrested its healthy development for more than half a century. For it is only just now that Scotch theo
logians begin to start once more from Campbell, though, it must be confessed, with great timidity, as may be seen from the book of the Glasgow theologian, Alexander Bruce,
The Humiliation of Christ in its Physical, Ethical, and
Soteriological Aspects (1876). It is here taught (following rather Hofmann, of Erlangen, than Campbell) that the Son of God entered into the condition of humanity, as it lay under the wrath of God, in such a way that he felt in himself the effects of that wrath, though he was not himself in his per sonal relation to God the object of it. The value of the sacrifice of Christ, Bruce holds, was equal to his Divine
communicating
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY. 383
dignity multiplied by his perfect obedience, multiplied by his boundless love, multiplied by his sufferings, which reached the utmost limits of what a sinless body could endure. As God took all this into account, and was thereby satisfied, we also must take it all into consideration, in order to say " Amen " to the Divine view of the sacrifice of Christ. This is an attempt to mediate between the old and the new, which does not approach in clearness of principle the thought of Erskine and
Campbell, although we must acknowledge that it is in the same direction which they took.
Though condemned in the land of their birth, the ideas of Erskine and Campbell were received in the soil of the
Liberal theology of England. The religious profundity of the Scotchmen admirably supplemented the thought of the Englishmen, which is characterised more by a practical breadth than religious and speculative depth. It is to them that Maurice's theology owes its best features. And from Maurice again Charles Kingsley received the dominant
direction of his theology, which gave fitting expression to the feelings of his heart in its warm sympathy for everything truly human, and supplied the theoretical rallying-point for his philanthropic aims. In the history of the Christian- socialist movements of the century, the names of Maurice and Kingsley occupy a foremost place. They showed by their deeds what was the fundamental thought of their theology -- that Christianity is the leaven which is destined to regenerate and to hallow the life of human society. Side by side with them stands the great preacher Freder1Ck W. Robertson, whom death too soon removed, who was equal to them in nobility of character and their superior in the wealth and depth of his mind. The biography of this man, so admirably executed by Stopford A. Brooke, reads like the life of a saint, but of a Protestant and modern saint, who does not escape out of the world, but, as a soldier of God, fights the great fight with all ungodliness, with the sins of the upper and the lower classes, with the unreality and falsehood of even religious parties, who at the same time keeps his own soul unspotted from the world, and who is compelled often and deeply to drain the bitter cup of suffering, which no
soldier of God can escape in this world of wickedness and folly. There is little in homiletical literature to compare
with the four series of Robertson's sermons, in
? respect
? ? ? 384 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1 825. [Bk. IV.
of wealth and depth of thought, strength of moral pathos, warmth of religious emotion, clearness and vividness of style, and elevation and beauty of language. As his biographer says, Robertson " felt that Christianity was too much preached as theology, too little as the religion of daily life ; too much as a religion of feeling, too little as a religion of principles; too much as a religion only for individuals, too little as a
for nations and for the world. He determined to
make it bear upon the social state of all classes, upon the
questions which agitated society, upon the great movements
of the world. " After painful inward conflicts, which arose not merely out of theological difficulties, but from a percep tion of the falsehood and unrighteousness of the various political and ecclesiastical parties, he found rest in the Gospel of Christianity, the truths of which seemed to embrace the truth of Conservatism and the progressive tendencies of Liberalism, and to offer the solution of the questions of the
day, not by setting up laws or external limitations, but by the spread of a spirit of love, of duty, and of mutual respect. Those salutary truths he beheld embodied in Jesus, the per fect type of man as the child of God. He held that Christ was humanity, and in Him alone is our humanity intelligible. It is only in the feeling of fellowship and union with this life, in the acknowledgment of like feelings and conflicts, in a similar estimate of the world and its maxims, that our own life becomes bearable and desirable. Judging humanity in the light of this ideal, Robertson had, on the one hand, the keenest eye for its sins and weaknesses in their endless forms and disguises, and yet, on the other, he never lost sight of the Divine heart and root of human nature. The greatest truth which Christ revealed, as Robertson is always urging, is that all men are as men children of God, and each other's brothers ; they do not become children of God by baptism or by faith and regeneration, but are already such by virtue of the divine image in which they were created ; baptism is
the messenger to each one in particular, declaring that he is a child of God de jure. But in order to be this de facto, it is needful for him to receive this message in faith, and to realise it in life, i. e. that he should be regenerated. Faith does not create the fact of Divine sonship, but receives it and converts it from an unconscious reality, which would avail nothing, into a conscious and voluntary life after the likeness
religion
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY. 385
of Christ. Christ is our Saviour not by the vicarious suffer ing of the penalty due to our sins, but by being actually the typical realisation of that which every man is potentially, as
a child of God, and ought to be actually. The death of Christ was an atoning sacrifice, in so far as, having been endured in sympathy with human misery, it established the eternal principle, that salvation for man must always come from the sacrifice of self in ministering and patient love, a principle that is so universally asserted in nature and history that it must be regarded as a law of the universe. Faith is the life of Christ begun in us, which God counts as righteous ness, because, as the Divine life in the soul, it is the root and spring of righteousness. As the inward principle of a morally good will, it sets us free from external laws, which can only incite to transgression or produce conventional legality. This thought Robertson applied energetically in relation to the Sabbath question ; he openly declared the legal observance of the Sabbath a relapse from the spirit of the Gospel into
and Pharisaism. On account of this
? Judaism
genuinely
Lutheran view of the question, he claims almost more than
any other English theologian the sympathy of Germans 1 ;
of profoundest truth, he pronounced " bibliolatry " as super stitious, as false, and almost as dangerous as Romanism. The Bible is inspired, he says, but not dictated ; it is the word of God, but in the words of man ; as the former, per fect ; as the latter, imperfect. Indeed, the Divine wisdom is shown in the fact, that it has given a spiritual revelation, that is, a revelation concerning the truths of the soul and its relation to God, in popular and incorrect language ; for how otherwise could it have been understood by unscientific men and ages ? The highest truths, he maintained, rest ulti mately, not upon the authority of the Bible, or of the Church, but upon the witness of the Spirit of God in the human heart,
1 He claims this sympathy also for the reason that he did not share the national prejudices of his countrymen, but, on the contrary, spoke with fitting contempt of their contempt for everything German (see his remarks on '. German Neology," in his letter of 1849, Life and Letters, p. 97 of People's
In this respect how far he stands above Maurice !
G. T. C C
and not less on account of his views as to the authority of Scripture and the dogmas of the Church. Deeply as Robertson revered the Bible as the inexhaustible spring
ed. ).
? ? ? 386 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bit IV.
a witness which is to be reached not by the cultivation of the understanding, but by the loving obedience of the heart.
Accordingly, in interpreting the dogmas of the Church, he never troubled himself about their intellectual husks, but only about their kernel, the religious truths and moral principles which are to be found under the various dogmatic opinions as their real meaning. He was consequently, with all his strict ness in the condemnation of what is morally wrong, extremely charitable and catholic in the views he took of dogmatic differences of opinion. There was one principle which pro bably Maurice recognised in the dim distance, but which in his case remained confused eclecticism, but Robertson's deeper and clearer mind endeavoured to work out distinctly, and applied with unerring tact in various regions of contro versy : it was the principle, that the one truth which under lies the various partial views of opposing parties, and by this very partiality and onesidedness becomes falsehood, must be brought out into clear light as the essential thing common to both parties. An acute dialectical intellect and a rare power of sympathy in entering into the thoughts and feelings of others qualified him to perform, as few men could, the work of a peacemaker amid contending religious parties. If a longer life had been granted him (he died 1853, at the age of thirty-seven), and if he had had leisure to write the theological works which he had proposed to himself (that on
Inspiration, e. g. ), what a beneficial influence he might have
exerted on the development of theological thought, both in his own country and abroad ! But as it his Sermons and Letters are a rich source of truth and light, from which no
one can draw without feeling their purifying, strengthening, and elevating power they are the monument of genuine religious genius, whom for some time to come later generations will reverently recognise prophet of the higher development of Christian thought and feeling.
We have still to take glance at the course of Biblical
criticism in Great Britain, and the review may be the more
rapid as the labours in this department of theology practically commenced but a generation ago, and have hitherto produced little of independent value. The credit of having done the work of pioneer in these studies in England must be accorded to the learned classical scholar and theologian, Jowett, who
? ? ? a
a
in
;
a
is,
? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY.
387
published in 1855 his exegetical work The Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians, and Romans, with Critical Notes and Dissertations (2 vols. ), in which he introduced to his countrymen the results of Baur's critical labours. His own views hold a place midway between those of Baur and the traditional ones as to the relation of Paul to the earlier Apostles : there was not complete harmony, but neither was there absolute antagonism ; the difference was not so much of a dogmatic as of a practical nature, and on the part of the Twelve was due more to want of consistency than to an tagonism of principles ; though in accord with Paul on funda mental principles, they were attracted to Jewish practices by their national sympathies and habits. Some points of Pauline theology are discussed in the appended Dissertations with characteristic acumen and without
? dogmatic prejudice (e. g. the doctrine of election). Of special value is the careful
criticism of the text, and the amended authorised
English version. The principles of interpretation which Jowett ap plied in his Epistles of Paul he has expounded in the ex
tremely interesting essay, On the Interpretation of Scripture
the Essays and Reviews, 1860), in which he demands, quite in the spirit of Arnold, that the method of the classical scholar shall be applied in Biblical exegesis, in short, that
(in
" the Bible must be interpreted like any other book," and thus the study of the Scriptures be raised to the rank of the most valuable portion of the study of history and antiquity ; the best book for the heart ought to be made the best for the in tellect, so that its moral judgment of history might seem to
and correct the aesthetic standard of the classics. " Before we can make the Old and New Testaments a real part of education, we must read them not by the help of
custom and tradition, in the spirit of apology or controversy, but in accordance with the ordinary laws of human know
ledge. "
The year 1860, in which the Essays and Reviews appeared,
may be regarded as an epoch in the history of English theology, corresponding to the year 1835 in the history of German theology. The storm which this collection of theo logical essays by various authors called up in England had great similarity with the commotion produced in Germany by
Strauss's Leben Jesu. It is quite true that the causes of the commotion in the two countries were by no means of equal
complete
? ? ? 388 THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bit IV.
importance. For the Essays and Reviews contain nothing that had not already been thought and said from the days of Whately and Arnold by not a few writers belonging even to the Anglican Church. The first essay, by Temple, Arnold's successor at Rugby, deals with the gradual and progressive education of the world, a thought which had from the time of Lessing formed part of the ordinary consciousness of the educated world, and which is to be found indicated in the Church Fathers, and in fact in the New Testament. The second essay, by Rowland Williams, gave an account, ex pressing substantial agreement, of Bunsen's Biblical Re searches. This was one of the essays which the opponents, High-churchmen and Evangelicals combined, selected as the basis of a prosecution for heresy. The charge was laid, that the general scope, tendency, or design of the essay as a whole was to disseminate unbelief in the Divine inspiration and authority of Holy Scripture, to degrade it to the level of mere human writings, to deny prophetic predictions and miracles, or to interpret them in an unorthodox way, and to explain away articles of the creeds. The trial, which took place in the Court of Arches, before Dr. Lushington, and in which Mr. James Stephen defended the accused essayists in a masterly manner, ended in a complete triumph for Liberal theology. Mr. Stephen remarked in the course of his defence that a poor compliment would be paid to the English people if they were deemed incompetent to bring into open discussion the views of Baron Bunsen. The design of the accusation was really nothing else than to put asunder reason and faith, which
God had joined together. But the questions which learning and criticism had raised would have to be settled ; the de cisive question was whether the clergy should be allowed to co-operate freely in the settlement. The authorities might perhaps close the mouth of the clergyman, but not of the lay
man, or of literature and history. Is it allowable to make a compact between Christ and darkness ; reason and Satan ? It is of greatest moment to Christianity itself that theo logians should be free to study the Bible. The decision of the Court, which was in accordance with these principles, sanctioned the rights of free theology in the English Church.
A leading representative of this new party, which may be described as the left and progressive wing of the Broad Church, was Arthur P. Stanley, the pupil and biographer
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY.
389
of Arnold. The fact that his high ecclesiastical position as Dean of Westminster did not prevent his sustaining friendly relations with Dissenters and heretics largely helped, no doubt, to modify the dogmatic exclusiveness of the Estab lished Church. His theological writings were valuable con tributions in aid of a free and unfettered study of Biblical and ecclesiastical history. Simultaneously with Jowett's com mentary on St. Paul, he published his kindred work, The Epistles of St. Paul to the Corinthians, with Critical Notes and Dissertations (1855), which had been preceded by his Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age (1847), in which the realistic historic method of Arnold was applied to the history of the New Testament period in a way that departed far from the lines of customary dogmatic exegesis. To the same category belong his Lectures on the Jewish Church (1862), in which the history of Israel is treated in a manner midway between poetry and criticism, following very much the lines of Ewald. In an essay on the Theology of the Nineteenth Century, published in Eraser's Magazine, Feb. , 1865, Stanley characterised the method which he had followed. The theory of development, he maintains, has taken the first place in every field of religious and philosophical thought. It has had an important effect on the proper understanding of the Bible itself. The gradual growth, the imperfect forms, the varied
? of Revelation itself are now understood, and thus the greatest difficulties in the way of understanding the Bible are removed. We no longer expect to find in the Jews of the Old Testament premature Christians, or premature
astronomers or geologists. Together with this historical spirit, a characteristic of modern theology is the importance it attaches to the moral and spiritual aspect of religion. The value of internal evidence has now been recognised in theory as well as in practice, in theology as well as in philosophy, and its superiority to the proof from miracles. The spirit is placed above the letter, and practice above dogma. The first and clearest statement of this new principle is found in Arnold's Essay on the Interpretation of Scripture, the man to whose memory Stanley has dedicated such a noble monument in his biography.
That the problems of Biblical criticism can no longer be suppressed, that they are as it were in the air of our time, so that theology could not escape them, even if it took the wings
degrees
? ? ? 39? THEOLOGY IN GREAT BRITAIN SINCE 1825. [Bk. IV.
of the morning and dwelt in the uttermost parts of the sea, was strikingly shown at the beginning of the sixties by the re markable case of Bishop Colenso. He had gone as Bishop to Natal with the orthodox belief in the inspiration of the
Bible, with the object of converting the Zulus, and returned home as a critic to call in question the integrity and historical character of the Books of Moses. In the course of his in struction of the heathen, their doubts led him to make a more careful examination of the Biblical text, and in the process it grew arithmetically certain to the keen and mathematical intellect of the Bishop, that it was impossible to maintain the correctness of the Mosaic records. The historical inquiries thus started led him step by step to further results; he per ceived the composite character of the Pentateuch as consist ing of component parts of various ages and sources (the Elohistic and Jahvistic sections), he perceived the gradual
growth of the Levitical Law, of which some portions origin ated before Deuteronomy, that before the time of Jere miah, other portions not until after Ezra, being inserted into the earlier portions of the Pentateuch. In a word, Colenso arrived, by his originally quite independent path of inquiry, at results which are in substantial agreement with the views of the Biblical science of our day. But the Bishops of the Anglican Church, instead of calmly examining the honest studies of their brother, felt called upon to break a lance for Moses and the infallibility of the letter of the Bible, and demanded the deprivation of the Bishop of Natal. Once more the Secular Court, the Queen's Privy Council, was wiser than the Churchmen, and pronounced the Bishop the legitimate occupant of his see (1865).
Amongst the opponents of Colenso was to be found not only Maurice, who had himself suffered as a persecuted heretic, but even Matthew Arnold, who substitutes the moral order of the world for the God of the Bible, and with this object in view takes great liberties in the interpretation of the Bible. In an essay in Macmillari Magazine (Jan. and Feb. ,
1863), he demanded that the Biblical historian should show great consideration for the edification of his readers. In order not to do violence to their devout feelings, and not to endanger the interest of the practical religious life, he ought, Arnold thinks, to attenuate the difficulties which might be stumbling- block to faith in the Bible, to go out of the way of what
? ? ? is
a
s is,
? Ch. II. ] PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN THEOLOGY. 39 1
doubtful, such as the miraculous stories, by using nice gener alities, a method of which Stanley had given a perfect model in his Jewish Church. Without doubt Matthew Arnold ex pressed the views of the great majority of Englishmen on this matter, and perhaps the views of the men of his age. It may also be granted that there are practical interests at the bottom of such advice which have some justification. On the other hand, it ought to be perceived, as Matthew Arnold seems to have subsequently perceived, that the claims of the purely scientific spirit to present the simple historical truth are equally well founded, and that both those practical religious, and these absolute scientific interests will be better promoted
by the separation of the two kinds of Biblical interpretation -- the practical and the learned, -- than by a confused amalga mation of both. These hybrid forms, with their indefinite- ness, half-truths and compromises, have little value in the pro motion of an exact knowledge of the historical facts ; the only use they serve is to check, in a time of transition, such as ours is, the too rapid advance of some and to prepare others gradually to receive what is new ; in that way facilitating and securing an orderly and steady development of general opinion, and avoiding sudden leaps and catastrophes of a
? kind.