Part 12 (1/2)

_Not all_ the divine sentiment, however, is embodied in the physical consequences Besides this deterht, written out on the finite world, there is an unexpressed ele behind, in his infinite nature: on the visible side of the veil is the suggestive manifestation; on the invisible, is the very affection manifested There is a personal alienation, a forfeiture of approach and syh creation were to perish and carry its punishments away; and would still cast its black shadow into empty space This reserved sentiment, and this alone, is affected by repentance But it is no seuilty teh its sorrow, the mind is clear and pure, the sunshi+ne of divine affection will burst it again In this the free Spirit of God is different froiven and eislation--will continue to wield the lash, andthe res his burden and visibly limps upon his sin, may all the while have a heart at rest with God And thus is retribution--the reaping as we have sown--in no contradiction with forgiveness,--the personal restoration

How far such ht as these would help to reconcile the conflicting clai's terrible friend, ”Logic,” we do not pretend to decide We refer to the--his desolating doctrine, that intuitions may tell lies; and in support of our statement, that his theoretic view lies entirely within the circle of a particular school,--a school, moreover, so little able to satisfy his aspirations, that he is obliged to patch up a coaland, of the metaphysics of Calvin with the physics of Bacon, has produced, in a large class, a philosophical tendency, hich the distinctive senti of all lines separating the natural and moral, the liation of all things to predestination, are a the chief features of this tendency, and the chief obstacles to any concurrence between the intellectual and the spiritual religion of the age

If some of the elements in the early Christianity are too hastily cancelled by our author, there is one sentiment whose inapplicability to the present day he exposes with an irresistible force;--that depreciating estimate of life which, however natural to Apostles ”i to pieces,”

is whollythose for whose office and work this earthly scene is the appointed place The exhortations of the Apostles, ”granting the premises, were natural and wise”

”But for divines in this day--when the profession of Christianity is attended with no peril, when its practice, even, demands no sacrifice, save that preference of duty to enjoyment which is the first law of cultivated hus, inculcate the notions, of men who lived in daily dread of such awful hty misconception; to cry down the world, with its profound beauty, its thrilling interests, its glorious works, its noble and holy affections; to exhort their hearers, Sunday after Sunday, to detach their heart fro, and unworthy, and fix it upon heaven, as the only sphere deserving the love of the loving or the htful insincerity, the enactantic lie The exhortation is delivered and listened to as a thing of course; and an hour afterwards the preacher, who has thus usurped and profaned the language of an Apostle rote with the fagot and the cross full in view, is sitting co their children, discussing public affairs or private plans in life, with passionate interest, and yet can look at each other without a sless farce they have been acting! Everything tends to prove that this life is, not perhaps, not probably, our only sphere, but still an _integral_ one, and _the_ one hich we are here meant to be concerned The present is our scene of action,--the future is for speculation and for trust We firmly believe that man was sent upon the earth to live in it, to enjoy it, to study it, to love it, to embellish it,--to make the most of it, in short It is his country, on which he should lavish his affections and his efforts _Spartam nactus es--hanc exorna_ It should be to him a house, not a tent,--a home, not only a school If, when this house and this home are taken from him, Providence, in its wisdom and its bounty, provides hiift,--let him transfer to that future, _when it has become his present_, his exertions, his researches, and his love But let him rest assured that he is sent into this world, not to be constantly hankering after, drea for, another, which may or may not be in store for him, but to do his duty and fulfil his destiny on earth,--to do all that lies in his power to improve it, to render it a scene of elevated happiness to himself, to those around him, to those who are to co contests with nature,--those struggles to suppress affections which God has implanted, sanctioned, and endoith irresistible supreonies of re for him,--which now embitter the lives of so many earnest and sincere souls; so will he best prepare for that future which we hope for, if it come; so will he best have occupied the present, if the present be his all To demand that we love heaven her place in our affections than the seen and familiar, is to ask that which cannot be obtained without subduing nature, and inducing ais love of life, and all its interests and adornments”--pp 271, 272

With all that is admirable in our author's book, he contemplates the whole subject frohts He professes to treat of ”The Creed of Christendo only the canonical Scriptures and the prireater part of ”Christendom,”

namely, of the Catholic Church For it is only Protestants that identify Christianity with the letter of the New Testa by appeal to its contents According to the older doctrine, Christianity is not a Divine Philosophy recorded in certain books, but a Divine Institution committed to certain men The Christian Scriptures are not its _source_, but its first _product_; not its charter and definition, but its earliest act and the expression of its incipient thought They exhibit the young atte to work upon theof a record which is prolonged through all subsequent tis of a Church in perpetuity; and are not separated from the continuous sacred literature of Christendoments of Divine authority

The supernatural eleeneration, but has never ceased to flow through succeeding centuries

Nor did the heavenly purpose--precipitated upon earthly materials and media--disclose itself most conspicuously at first; but rather cleared itself as it advanced and enriched its energy with better instrus would even lie secreted in the unconscious heart of the new influence, and only with the slowness of noble growths push towards the light; for the noise and obtrusiveness of the hu silence of the divine The disciples, hen events were before their eyes, and great words fell upon their ears, ”understood not these things at the ti out in the event, is known to others better than to theed less by its first form than by its last; and at all events be studied, not as it _once_ appeared, but in the entire retrospect of its existence

No doubt this doctrine of development is made subservient, in the Romish system, to monstrous sacerdotal claims A priestly hierarchy pretends to the exclusive custody, and the gradual unfolding, of God's sacred gift But sweep away this holy corporation; throw its treasury open, and let its vested right, of paying out the truth, be flung into the free air of history; gather together no Sacred College but the collected ages; appeal to no high Pontiff but the Providence of God;--and there remains a far juster and sublimer view of the place and function of a pure Gospel in the world, than the narrow Protestant conception Christianity becoion of Christendom, to be estiroups of the great human family; and the superhuman in it will consist in this,--the providential introduction a the affairs of this world of a divine influence, which shall gradually reach to untried depths in the hearts ofcentre of a new moral and spiritual life It is a power appointed--an inspiration given--to fetch by reverence a true religion out of man, and not, by dictation, to put one into him

For this end, it would not even be necessary that the bearers of the divine element should be personally initiated into the counsels whose ministers they are _Philosophy_the intensest light to others, may have a dark side turned towards itself There is no irreverence in saying this, and no novelty: on the contrary, the idea has ever been faes, of Prophets who prepared a future veiled from their own eyes, and saintly servants of heaven, who drew to themselves a trust, and wielded a pohich their ever-upward look never peruess Nay, to no one was this conception less strange, than to the very man who, in his turn, must now have it applied to himself With the Apostle Paul it was a favorite notion, that the entire plan of the Divine governress, and was opening into clear view only at the hour of its catastrophe Not only was there _ utterly _at variance_ with all expectation Its whole conception had remained unsuspected from first to last; undiscerned by the vision of seers, and unapproached by the guesses of the wise Never absent fro in its course of execution, it had yet evaded the notice of all observers; and winding its way through the throng of nations and the labyrinth of centuries, the great Thought had passed in disguise, using all an eye that, for want of special revelation, had been detained in darkness, or beguiled with the scenery of dreams The very people whose life was the main channel of the Divine purpose did not feel the tide of tendency which they conveyed; the patriarchs who fed their flocks near its fountains, the lawgiver who founded a state upon its banks, the priests whose temple poured blood into its waters, and the prophets at whose prayer the clouds of heaven dropped fresh purity into the streaions it should never visit, andthe point where it should be lost in the sea Nay, Paul seee of darkness to a later time; to include within it even the ministry of Christ and the Galilean Apostles; to imply that even they were unconscious instruht; and that not till Jesus had passed into the light of heaven did the tinificance of Messiah's earthly visit, and its place in the great sche this as his own special function, certainly implies that, previous to his call, no one was in condition to interpret the secret counsels of God in the historic development of his providence He feels this to be no reflection on his predecessors, no cause of elevation in hihty mystery, he is less than the least of all saints He simply stands at the crisis when a conception is perels have vainly desired to look into”; and though he may _see_ more, he _is_ infinitely less than the Prophets and the Messiah whose place it is given hiencies interpreted He is but the discerning eye, they are the glorious objects on which it is fixed

In seeking, therefore, for the _divine element_ in older dispensations, the Apostle would assuredly _not_ consult the projects and beliefs of their founders and ministers In his view, the very sche what they were about; to let the they which should indeed fire their will and flow from their lips in _their own_ best purposes, but steal quietly behind them for _his_; so that as primary with them was perhaps evanescent with him; while that which was incidental, and dropped froood What Moses planned, what David sung, what Isaiah led the people to expect, was not what Heaven had at heart to execute

Even in quest of God's thought in the _Christian_ dispensation, Paul does not refer to the doctrines, the precepts, thehis ministry in Palestine,--to the memorials of his life, or the testimony of his companions He assumes that, at so early a date, the time had not yet come for the truth to appear, and that it was vain to look for it in the preconceptions of the uncrucified and unexalted Christ; as the religion, not in revelation, but in disguise If, therefore, any one had argued against the Apostle thus: ”Why tell us to discard the law? your Master said he came to fulfil it How do you venture to preach to the Gentiles, when Jesus declared his mission lies of your doctrine of free grace can be found in the parables, or of redee faith in the Sermon on the Mount”;--he would have boldly replied, that this proves nothing against truths that are newer than the life, because expounded by the death, of Christ; that God reveals by action, not by teaching; that no servant of his can understand his own office till it is past; and that only those who look back upon it through the interpretation of events, can read aright the divine idea which it enfolds

This vieas that made the Apostle so bold an innovator, and filled his Epistles with a system so different from that of the synoptical Gospels as alion He had seized the profound and sublime idea that, when men are inspired, the inspiration occupies, not their conscious thought and will, but their unconscious nature; laying a silent beauty on their affections, secreting a holy wisdoh the sorrows of faithfulness, telory That which they deliberately think, that which they anxiously elaborate, that which they propose to do, is ever the product of their human reason and volition, and cannot escape the admixture of personal fallibility But their free spontaneous nature speaks unawares, like a sweetit, what they say without thinking it, what they do without saying it, all the native pressures of their love and aspiration, these are the hiding-place of God, wherein abiding, he leaves their simplicity pure and their liberty untouched The current of their reasoning and action is determined by human conditions androck has waters that are divine If this be true, then must we search for the heavenly element in the latencies rather than the prominencies of their life; in what they _were_, rather than in what they _thought to do_; in the beliefs they felt without announcing; in the objects they accoency in history, and from the fruit return to find the seed

It is not peculiar to Mr Greg that, in estilected, and even reversed, this principle All who have treated of it from the Protestant point of view have done the saion was to be most clearly discerned at its coht it contained would be, not evolved, but obscured by tiinning of the ages, than realized at the end; that its agents and inaugurators nizant of its whole scope and contents, and set theround of their speech and practical career In the ion is identified exclusively with the ideas of the first century, with the creed of the Apostles, with the teachings of Christ The New Testa for which it is not answerable The consequence is a perpetual struggle between untenable dogma and unprofitable scepticism The whole structure of faith becoree about a date or a pedigree; if Mark should report a questionable le with his tenderness and depth some words of passionate intolerance; if Peter should misapply a psalm, and Paul indite mistaken prophecies; above all, if Jesus should appear to believe in dey, and not to have foreseen the futurities of his Church,--these detected specks are felt like a total eclipse; affrighted faith hides its face froh only to sho pure the orb that spreads behind, is denounced as a prophet of evil

The peaceful and holy centre of religion is shaken by storenuity or indevout acuteness spend the the impartial course of historical criticis, that, if the topics in dispute are open to reasonable doubt, they cannot be matter of _revelation_, and ht It is a thing alike dangerous and unbecoion should be narrowed to a miserable literary partisanshi+p, bound up with a disputed set of critical conclusions, unable to deliver its title-deeds from a court of perpetual chancery, whose decisions are never final The ti the Protestant Christianity from its superstitious adhesion to the enerously to that per sources of truth within the soul, of which Gospel and Epistle, the speeches of Apostles and the insight of Christ, are the pre-eminent, rather than the lonely, examples The _primitive_ Gospel is not in its for_ Gospel It is concerned, and, if we look to _quantity_ alone, _chiefly_ concerned, with questions that have ceased to exist, and interests that no longer agitate It often reasons fros which we cannot share Often do the most docile and open hearts resort to it with reverent hopes which it does not realize, and close it with a sigh of self-reproach or disappointment With the deep secrets of the conscience, the sublis of the religious life, it deals less altogether than had been desired; and in touching thelorify and satisfy the heart We are apt to long for some nearer reflection, some more immediate help, of our existence in this present hour and this English land, where our enemies are not Pharisees and Sadducees, or our controversies about Beelzebub and his demons; but where ould fain kno to train our children, to subdue our sins, to ennoble our lot, to think truly of our dead The merchant, the scholar, the statesman, the heads of a family, the owner of an estate, occupy a moral sphere, the probleelists and Apostles do not approach Scarcely can it be said that general rules are given, which include these particular cases For the Christian Scriptures are singularly sparing of general rules They are eminently personal, national, local They tell us of Martha and Mary, of Nicodeive few e foruidance first becomes available when its essence has been translated froht down from the universal to the modern application

They are felt to be an inadequateChristianity, and to leave untouched hts that aspire and pray within the racious and holy ie of Christ himself Yet, somehow, even that sacred forht, when regarded at a little distance in the pure spaces of our thought, than when seen close at hand on the historic canvas It is not that the ideal figure is a subjective fiction of our own, esture, all the simple majesty, all the deep expressiveness, we conceive to be justified and de veneration sees nothing that is not there But the original artists' sympathy we feel to have been somewhat different from ours They have labored to exhibit aspects that move us little; and only faintly marked the traces that to us are most divine

The view is often broken, the official dress turned into a disguise The local groups are in the way; the possessed and the perverse obtrude the cloud of prophecy and tradition is continually thrown between So that the ieye

All this, oftener perhaps felt than confessed, is perfectly natural and innocent It betrays the instinctive analysis by which our own affections separate the divine froht in his principle, that in history _the divine element lies hid_; is missed at the time, even by those who are its vehicle; and does not parade itself in what they consciously design, but lurks in what they unconsciously execute It coenerations instead of the foresight of one This doctrine is true of individuals, in proportion as they are great and good They labor at what is most difficult to them, and make it their end; but their appointed power lies in what is easiest They chiefly prize the beliefs and the virtues hest truth dwells in the trusts they cannot help, and their purest influence in the graces they never willed, or knew to be their own

And it is true in history; Paul hi the rule which he had applied to earlier times He had found, as he supposed, the Providence of the Past, which all had missed, from Moses to Christ; but in his turn he missed, as we perceive, the Providence of the Future, froency which he anticipated for Christ bears no reseion has actually exercised The only fault we can find with Mr Thom's admirable exposition is, that he attributes to the Apostle too distinct an apprehension of Christ as an impersonation of _moral perfection_; and supposes the purpose of the Pauline Christianity to have been the establishment, as sole condition of discipleshi+p, of reverential sympathy with the type of character realized in the Galilean life of Jesus He says:--

”In contrast with such teachers” (the Ritual and the Dogmatic), ”St

Paul, in our present chapter (1 Corinthians ii), refers both to the _matter_ and the _manner_ of his own ministration of the Gospel He did not teach it as a _Rhetorician_, to attract adive more lively impressions of Paul the Orator than of Christ the Redeemer from sin, nor as a _Philosopher_, to raise doubtful questions on metaphysical subjects, and become the leader of a speculative school; but as the Apostle of Jesus Christ, he proclai Gospel, that 'God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself'; that by the universal Saviour all distinctions were for ever destroyed, and the whole farow into the common likeness of that well-beloved Son,--for that now neither circu, nor uncircue of the Lord Where could an entrance be found for party divisions in a doctrine that professed nothing, that ai, except to awaken the consciousness of sin within the heart, and, through trust in the God of holiness and love revealed in Jesus, to lead it to repentance and life? All who felt this love of Christ constraining thee that had taken possession of their affections, and, through thetheir penitence to look for pardon from their God, must, of necessity, be one communion; for this Gospel sentist those who had it,--and those who had it not were outside the Christian pale, and, so far, could make no schisms within it Nohence comes this Gospel sentiment, this new principle of life? Were there any who had the exclusive power of co it?